Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks

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• 00:00

  Thank you. From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

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  I'm John McWhorter.

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  This is, by the way, my 175th episode.

• 00:12

  Thank you for those of you who have actually stayed with me for that long.

• 00:16

  But in any case, what I wanted to share is a kind of a summer romp.

• 00:21

  My birthday is in October, and big surprise, I got some books in 2022.

• 00:27

  And I've just now, because I've been really backed up lately, gotten around to reading some of them.

• 00:32

  And one of them was this one.

• 00:33

  wonderful book called The New Yorkers by Sam Roberts,

• 00:36

  who is a New York Times writer in the same way that I am.

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  And he basically has these 31 capsule histories of New Yorkers you probably haven't heard of.

• 00:48

  Real potato chip book.

• 00:50

  I wouldn't read in order because, you know,

• 00:52

  some of the Dutch 1600s ones, maybe they're only so interesting.

• 00:56

  But if you just kind of skip around and after a while you have read all 31,

• 01:00

  you really do get a sense of the history of New York.

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  And one thing that really grabbed me was about Levi Weeks.

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  He is early New York.

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  It's 1799.

• 01:11

  And And he is this guy in New York who is accused of murdering his girlfriend, Elma Sands.

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