Episode One: Why I’m Worried about Words

Welcome to Words Do Things: a podcast about the powers and limits of language. I’m Dr. Sorina Higgins, and I’m interested in the ways words make things happen. I’m fascinated and sometimes terrified by what we can do to other people simply by speaking or writing certain sounds or symbols. In this introductory episode, I show how some statements perform the actions they describe and discuss the physical nature of words. I express my concern regarding the upsurge of hateful public rhetoric in the United States and introduce my first two series: 1. reruns of my old podcast 1916 & 1776; 2. "Bad Words," about public speech.