On the Ted radio hour, linguist Ann Curzan says she gets a lot of complaints about people using the pronoun they to refer to one person.
I sometimes get into arguments with people.
Where they will say to me, but.
It can't be singular.
And I will say, but it is.
The history behind words causing a lot of debate.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is FRESH AIR.
I'm Dave Davies.
I read a lot of books in this job, and now and then I come across one that I think everyone should read.
One of those is the latest by my guest, ProPublica reporter Abram Lustgarten.
It's about climate change, which you may think you've already heard enough about.
But Lustgarten paints a detailed and sobering picture of how global warming is already affecting the lives of many people, causing them to rethink where they're living.
Andy says climate migration will increasingly reshape the country as tens of millions of people move to escape rising seas, searing heat and humidity, catastrophic floods and wildfires, and earth withering drought.
Decades from now, he writes, the United States will be wildly different, even unrecognizable.
He examines what happens when climate refugees take flight, something we're already seeing in other regions, including Central America, and how migrants may be treated in places they choose to settle.
Abram Lustgarten writes about climate change for ProPublica and works frequently with the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, and PBS Frontline, among others.
His new book is on the the Overheating Earth and the uprooting of America.
Abram Lesgarden, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you so much.