Ep. 136
When Ken Paxton and Donald Trump started calling Texas Senate candidate James Talarico “Talafreako,” he didn’t flinch. He put it on a T-shirt.
This week we go looking for the history of that move: taking the insult somebody throws at you and wearing it like a badge. It turns out to be centuries old. In 1650, a magistrate in Derby, England, mocked George Fox and his followers as “Quakers.” They kept the name, and today nobody remembers it was ever meant to sting.
Three records, three insults (national, regional, and religious), and three ways of saying “‘aight. Bet.”
