TGS Live: John McWhorter on Our Profane Discourse + Q&A

19 snips

Nov 24, 2025

John McWhorter, a distinguished linguist and cultural commentator, delves into the coarsening of public discourse. He highlights how social media has shifted the Overton window, allowing more offensive rhetoric into mainstream conversations. McWhorter and Glenn discuss the implications of figures like Trump and Nick Fuentes on civility, arguing for engagement over censorship. They explore societal grievances fueling extremist views, urban crime perceptions, and the normalization of vulgarity in politics, emphasizing a need for substantive responses to incivility.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Recovering A Lost Fats Waller Show

John McWhorter reconstructed a near-lost Fats Waller musical and staged it at the Triad Theater for 130 people.
He spent 15 years finding scraps, writing missing lyrics, and assembling a cast including his 13-year-old daughter.

INSIGHT

Social Media Makes Coarse Speech Inevitable

John McWhorter argues social media makes scabrous public speech inevitable and permanent.
He says suppressing speech is futile and we must rebut and engage rather than pretend offensive speech can be contained.

ADVICE

Rebut Provocations With Clear Explanation

Rather than vainly forbidding provocative speakers, John McWhorter advises rebutting their claims and explaining facts.
He recommends answering specific assertions so audiences see why those claims fail.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit glennloury.substack.com

Support The Glenn Show at https://glennloury.substack.com

Since we’ve got the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of the week, I’m releasing the first half of the conversation to everyone today instead of this Friday. For access to the entire conversation, including the Q&A, become a full subscriber.

This episode's central topic: the vulgarity of our present discourse. Though “vulgarity” doesn’t quite capture what we’re talking about on this show. It’s not news to say that the tenor of public speech has coarsened over the decades—words and phrases that would have been utterly taboo in the media of the 1960s hardly give us pause today. But what does seem new is the sometimes shockingly racist, sexist, and homophobic sentiments that have become a part of “ordinary” political debate.

The Overton window is shifting, and it’s not doing it on its own. One force moving it is surely the wide availability of online platforms. Everyone has a camera and a microphone, and as more and more people avail themselves of the communication tools available to them, views that were once filtered out by mainstream and legacy outlets are finding their way to the center of the conversation. But another force moving the window is what’s going on in the world. While I may roll my eyes when, for example, Nick Fuentes touts the virtues of Jim Crow, he’s responding to items in the news, like violent crime committed by black youth, that do need to be taken seriously.

Then it’s on to our subscriber-only Q&A session, where John and I took questions about God and morality, the Democrats’ electoral prospects, Black English vernacular, China’s outpacing of American economic growth, AI and education, Looney Tunes, and socialism vs. social democracy, plus questions from the YouTube chat.

The Glenn Show is almost entirely viewer supported, so to those of us who are already full subscribers, let me extend a heartfelt thank you. And if you’re not yet a full subscriber, please consider becoming one. The Glenn Show can only do what it does through the generosity of viewers and listeners. For a mere $6/month or $50/year, you’ll get weekly episodes of The Glenn Show earlier than their public release, monthly Q&A episodes with John McWhorter, access to the full Substack archives, and other exclusive bonus content.