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 Terry Gross.
Today we remember actor Andre Brower.
He died last week of lung cancer at the age of of 61.
Hes best known for his work on the tv series Brooklyn nine nine and Homicide, Life on the street, and for the films Glory.
And she said, well hear two interviews with him, one that I did with him in 1995 and another that our tv critic David Biancouli recorded with him in 2006.
Well start with Davids appreciation of Andre Brower.
When Andre Brower first came to television in 1989 after studying at Juilliard and playing Shakespeare in the park, his arrival, like his performance, was nothing special.
He played a second banana to telly Savalas in a series of Kojak tv movie revivals.
But that same year, he also was featured in a movie on the big screen Glory, a drama about the first regiment of black soldiers to fight in the Civil War.
And Brower was amazing.
And after a few years and some other tv and movie roles, Brower landed the role that made him a star, won him his first Emmy, and gave him the platform and artistic collaborators to craft one of the finest dramatic series roles in the history of television.
The role was Frank Pembleton, a Baltimore homicide detective famous in his own precinct for his skilled methods of interrogation.