Last year, Rae and Cody at Team Hyperfocus noticed something unnerving: The R-word was coming back into public discourse. People, especially people in power, seemed to be using it more often, and more freely. We weren’t the only ones who’d spotted this upsetting trend. Researchers, disability advocates, and other journalists were also concerned. If this word, long considered a slur, was being used by some very powerful people, what did that mean for people with disabilities? So we dove in, talking to researchers, members of the community, and even a famous comedy writer. (You’ll see!) And we surfaced with another, deeper question: If the R-word can, and does, cause harm, how do you get people to care?
Last year, Rae and Cody at Team Hyperfocus noticed something unnerving: The R-word was coming back into public discourse. People, especially people in power, seemed to be using it more often, and more freely.
We weren’t the only ones who’d spotted this upsetting trend. Researchers, disability advocates, and other journalists were also concerned. If this word, long considered a slur, was being used by some very powerful people, what did that mean for people with disabilities?
So we dove in, talking to researchers, members of the community, and even a famous comedy writer. (You’ll see!) And we surfaced with another, deeper question:
If the R-word can, and does, cause harm, how do you get people to care?
Related resources
We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at hyperfocus@understood.org.
Introduction: A difficult conversation (00:00)
Rae Jacobson: All right, should we talk about this?
Cody Nelson: Let's talk about it.
Rae Jacobson: It's not exactly the easiest thing to talk about.
Cody Nelson: No. We have to tell people who I am first.
Rae Jacobson: All right. So, first I have to introduce someone who you don't know that you know, but without whom we would just not have "Hyperfocus" at all. He's our producer, Cody Nelson, and today we're doing something different on "Hyperfocus." He's going to come on and talk to us.
Cody Nelson: Yes. Glad to be on our show.
Rae Jacobson: Well, welcome Cody to your own show. Anyway, Cody's here today for a serious reason, which is, Cody told me a story that, I can't say it blew my mind, but it certainly set me on a different way of thinking.
And I want to be clear, we're going to be using a descriptor for the word that we're going to talk about, but we're going to say it once for clarity at the beginning. The word that we'll be referring to as the R-word is the word "retarded." Some people say it, some people don't. We choose not to. And in this episode, you'll hear why.
Cody Nelson: Yeah, so the way this started was we were hanging out after a day of work, chatting over some things, and I wanted to bring up that I've noticed the R-word coming back. And what "coming back" means is it was something that I think we both grew up hearing and something that seemed to go away from the discourse in general. And I think in no small part due to a lot of activism by the disability community to say that this word is not OK to say.
And now it's starting to reappear in media, especially in comedy and in podcasts that are very unlike the one you are hearing right now.
Rae Jacobson: You can just say it. It's OK to just say it.
Cody Nelson: Yeah. The person who is the most popular podcaster in the world, Joe Rogan, really likes the R-word. This past spring, he called the return of the R-word the greatest culture victory of our time.
Rae Jacobson: So naturally, for us, this is a disturbing thing. We work in the disability space, I have multiple disabilities. We are curious not just about why the word is coming back, but about what the experience of this has been like for people who are affected when people use it.So we got the chance to talk to a really amazing assortment of people to help us sort this out.
Cody Nelson: Yeah. And since we had this conversation, Rae, back in January, we've been doing a bunch of research. We've been doing a bunch of interviews, and that's what you're going to hear and see over the next two episodes of "Hyperfocus." We're going to go back into the history of the R-word. We're going to talk to someone who is researching exactly how prevalent the word is and who's using it. And we're also going to talk about why the word is so destructive on an individual level.
Rae Jacobson: And our central question was this. How do you make people care? People like the kid on the internet who just throws it around. People like even some comedians who think it's kind of transgressive and funny and fun. How do you make people care?
This is something that we thought had gone, if not totally away, at least subsided.
Cody Nelson: Mm-hmm.
Rae Jacobson: And now it seems to be not just coming back, but coming back in a way that feels like people are thrilled to be able to be mean again.
Cody Nelson: Mm-hmm.
Rae Jacobson: And that more than anything feels disturbing. But for those of us in the disability community, this word is not just something that is sort of like a thing to shake your head at. It's dangerous. And we wanted to figure out how dangerous, what it means for us as a society, and what we can do to help people understand why they shouldn't say it.
So, we hope you're going to get excited — we are — for our two-piece "Hyperfocus" episode on the R-word.
Cody Nelson: I'm going to say the intro this week.
Rae Jacobson: Do it.
Cody Nelson: This week on "Hyperfocus": The R-word.
Rae Jacobson: And how do you get people to care?
"We're just people" (04:19)
Rae Jacobson: Michael, do you feel ready?
Michael: I'm ready if you are.
Rae Jacobson: All right. So first, I just want to say thank you for coming to talk to us. And I was hoping maybe you could just tell us, you know, your name and where you live and what you do.
Michael: Well, my name is Michael. I'm from Denver, Colorado. I work at Safeway where I live.
Rae Jacobson: And you're a movie buff.
Michael: Huge. Yeah.
Rae Jacobson: My first question is, what is your all-time favorite movie?
Michael: Well, growing up in the '80s, it was "ET."
Rae Jacobson: Yeah. For the record, "ET" always terrified me, but that's beside the point. Because in addition to being a huge movie buff, Michael has Down syndrome. We met through our mutual friend, Andrea, who you'll hear from later in the episode. And she told us that Michael might have some good insight on what we're here to talk about today.
So after we talked a little bit more about film, we got down to what we were really here to discuss. And I asked Michael, what does the R-word mean to you?
Michael: I know it's not the word that I want to hear because I think it's a huge part. It's an insult because we are people just like everybody else. We want to have a nice apartment, a job, feel loved, and be with people that we care about and love.
Rae Jacobson: Can you tell me about a time when you've heard someone use that word?
Michael: Actually, I can. I was in high school at the time and my friends were just showing off for their friends and they said the R-word. And they didn't know I was there at first, but then when they saw me, they actually told their friends that, "I think I better talk to my friend who has Down syndrome." And because they were just showing off, but they didn't mean to, but I told them that it didn't bother me because I didn't know what it meant then, like I do now.
Rae Jacobson: Mm-hmm. So why did you think he was having that conversation with you?
Michael: Because he wanted to have an open conversation about it and that it's a word that he never used before, but he didn't mean to actually say what he did.
Rae Jacobson: And it sounds like he said it and was thinking he was sort of just showing off, you said?
Michael: Yeah, showing off in front of his other friends. So, but when he saw me, he took me aside and we talked about it. We had a nice long talk.
Rae Jacobson: Once you understood what that word meant, what did you think about it?
Michael: Well, at first I was upset, but when I learned about it and then afterwards, I had other people talk to me about it. But it's a word that we should never use in front of other people, because we're just like other people.
Dehumanization and the power of language (07:36)
Rae Jacobson: "Don't use it in front of people." When we think about the R-word as a tool of harm, it's easy to imagine someone using it like the slur it is, hurling it at someone face-to-face like a bully in an '80s movie. But as Michael said, that's rarely how it is.
Overwhelmingly, what we see are people using the R-word in ways that, to them, seem like — and I'm using big air quotes here — no big deal. They're just joking, or it's like not personal. Or in this case, oh, I didn't see you there. And by and large, these are people who would be genuinely disgusted by the image of the slur-hurling '80s bully, who would never truly do something like that. But who also don't see the harm in calling someone the R-word when it's just a joke.
But Michael's experience, hearing the word offhandedly, is pretty universal for people with disabilities. We hear it all the time. But Michael, for his part, is willing to give the benefit of the doubt. He suggests, reasonably, that most people who use the word aren't trying to be hurtful, that they just don't understand the harm it carries. That if they did, they'd see and do things differently.
Do you think it's a word that people use when they don't understand what it really means?
Michael: I think some of them do, but a lot of them do actually, because they just don't know who they're talking to when they talk about it, because we're people just like them and they don't realize it until it's too late.
Rae Jacobson: Until it's too late?
Michael: Yeah, when it's too late, when they talked about that word, they didn't know that we're people just like them.
Rae Jacobson: They didn't understand that? That you're just people?
Michael: Yeah, we were just people, just like everybody else. We eat and sleep. We take care of ourselves. We're just like you, just like everybody else.
Rae Jacobson: I mean, I will say, you're different than me in that you know a lot more movies than I do.
Michael: Thank you, I appreciate that.
Rae Jacobson: Sometimes, something truly awful can sound banal. And when Michael, this chatty, funny, well-traveled movie buff, said calmly and without rancor, "We're just people," my heart crumpled. Because there's a word for this, for having to state your humanity, for when that humanity is defined not by who you are, but by how others see you. It's called "dehumanization."
Chris Cipriano: My name is Chris Cipriano. I use she/her pronouns. I'm an associate professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at the Yale School of Medicine. I'm nested in the Child Study Center.
Rae Jacobson: Chris is also the founder of a new project at Yale called "Disability Discourse Matters," that tracks how political figures speak about people with disabilities. The project uses a specially trained AI model to capture statements people in the U.S. government make about disability. They use only what are called "validated statements," which means real, full statements that were made by the person who said them, and not interpreted or excerpted by anyone else.
Then, the program rates them in a way that's fascinating on one hand and pretty horrifying on the other. Does this statement talk about people with disabilities as whole people? AKA, people who are full, complex individuals, or not.
The AI model then gives a rating on a four-point scale. A score of one is the worst. It means the speaker used dehumanizing language. Using the R-word, for example, would give you a one. A score of four is the best, given to statements that discuss people with disabilities as who they are, whole people.
Since they've started the project in early 2025, what they've seen has been pretty alarming.
Chris Cipriano: We've been aware that there's been an increase. We've been seeing this trend and the increase of the rise of the R-word. And actually, what the data suggests is that since the R-word was endorsed on X, it tripled with over 312,000 instances recorded in just an eight-day window of the use of the term there within. And so, huge, huge increase.
Rae Jacobson: One key finding from Chris's Disability Discourse Matters project was this: Over 80% of comments on disability from White House officials between January of 2025 and April of 2025 were negative. They were negative for a lot of reasons, from the outright use of the R-word to things that were more subtle, including something called "deficit framing."
Chris Cipriano: Historically, when we think about people with disabilities and we kind of look at the rhetoric that was used around people with disabilities, you may have heard the expressions or phrases being used about like someone having challenges or being challenged. And that type of framing, that is a deficit frame. That means that we're viewing someone in terms of what they can't do. You know, get that job, play on that sports team, enjoy that particular restaurant, like fill in the blank with whatever that kind of activity or action might be.
Rae Jacobson: The deficit frame. The idea of seeing someone only through a lens of lack. To define another person purely by the things you think they're not. When we see people only as what they aren't, it destroys our ability to see the things they are. To see and talk about someone as a whole person, to see them in essence as a human, is the opposite. I could not stop thinking about this.
We're just people.
A brief history of the R-word (12:59)
Rae Jacobson: Where did our language around disability come from? And how and why has it changed? Because until fairly recently, the R-word wasn't just a word, it was a diagnosis. Dr. KJ Wynne, "Hyperfocus"'s wonderful research correspondent, has been looking into it.
KJ Wynne: So when I dove into the history, it was just really very interesting because it's so much like entangled into like the politics of the DSM. So it was originally used in the DSM, and that's shorthand for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. And that's the manual used by licensed mental health providers to start to gather evidence about the symptoms, behaviors, sensations people are feeling and put all of that together into like as much as they can, a neat category in order to help people get the help that they need. And so one of those categories that came together was the R-word.
Rae Jacobson: KJ told me that the R-word appeared in the first edition of the DSM, which was produced in 1952. Right now we're on the fifth edition of the DSM, and its latest iteration came out in 2013.
So, in the DSM, in this early version of the DSM, what was this collection of symptoms called?
KJ Wynne: Yeah, so this collection of symptoms was called "mental retardation." And there was an emphasis on IQ. IQ is based on like a test to try and determine a person's mental capabilities. There is a lot of controversy around IQ. It's controversial in a lot of context for a lot of reasons, but in this particular one, what's really like standing out to me is that it's reducing people down to their ability to score well on an exam as opposed to their overall quality of life. How are they functioning? How are they getting to school? How are they interacting with their friends?
And so, I'm always really hesitant and really cautious whenever I see anything reduced down to a score. But in this particular measure, reducing intellect down to IQ and then using it to stigmatize people is just really harmful and really not the way that our medical system should be working. A lot of people don't find it to be a good measure and the DSM agrees. It was actually removed whenever they updated the naming of mental retardation to be intellectual disability disorder in 2013. They also removed IQ tests as one of the criteria to determine if a person has IDD.
Rae Jacobson: That's really helpful. And so, since that was such a big piece of the MR diagnosis as it was, what was the practical effect of having an MR diagnosis at that time? Like, what stigma attached to it?
KJ Wynne: In the past, whenever we see that stigma attached, people were pushed and forced out of society. They would be taken to asylums, they might not socialize as much, their family might be embarrassed of them. And all of that combined created isolation and people not really being able to live the full lives that they deserve.
Rae Jacobson: So you mentioned that MR is no longer in the DSM.
KJ Wynne: No.
Rae Jacobson: Can you tell me a little bit about that? When did it change and why?
KJ Wynne: Yeah. And so, while the group of symptoms and the differences in daily lives is still in the DSM, what it was trying to capture is still in the DSM, it's no longer referred to as MR. And I have to believe it's because of the stigma associated so heavily with those words. And so now it's referred to as intellectual disability disorder or IDD.
And that, in that change, there was also this expansion to a more whole-person, holistic view of IDD. And when you look at like what is the criteria in this assessment, you see things like conceptual skills like language, reading, writing, social skills like empathy, judgment, communication, and also practical skills like self-management with personal care and recreation and school.
Rae Jacobson: This idea of looking at people as a whole, not what do you lack, but what do you need to live the fullest life is a huge shift. Not what aren't you, but who are you?
KJ Wynne: And those are a much more holistic set of skills that all people interact with and so, or all people experience in their daily lives. And so it becomes less about are you, do you have any intellectual deficits based on your score on this exam and more on like, how are you functioning overall?
The power of people (17:52)
Rae Jacobson: These changes KJ is talking about didn't just happen. The word didn't just go away. Behind the scenes, the disability community had been fighting tirelessly to change how we think and talk about disability for decades. And in the mid to late '00s, that work began to break into mainstream consciousness.
The Special Olympics led a now famous campaign called "Spread the Word to End the Word," asking people to sign a pledge to stop using the R-word. It's still going and has garnered over 6.2 million signatures.
And in 2010, Rosa's Law, named for Rosa Marcellino, a young girl with Down syndrome, was signed by then-President Barack Obama. The law removes the term "mental retardation" and "mentally retarded" from federal health, education, and labor policy and replaces them with people-first language: "individual with an intellectual disability" and "intellectual disability," which we still use today.
During the hearings, Nick, Rosa's then 11-year-old brother, said that the R-word, quote, "invites taunting, stigma, and bullying." "What you call my sister," he explained, "is how you will treat her."
Rosa's Law was a rare, total bipartisan victory, passing the House and the Senate with unanimous support, something that's pretty hard to imagine happening now. Let that sink in for a minute.
In 2010, the people in power agreed that the R-word was destructive enough to be banished from the language of our laws. So why, 15 years later, are we hearing leaders and luminaries toss this word around like it's nothing? I can't help but wonder if it's because they're unable or unwilling to understand what an 11-year-old child so clearly did all those years ago. Words matter. What we say matters. How we think is influenced by how we speak, not just the other way around.
I asked Chris Cipriano why. How does the way that people talk about disability affect outcomes for people who are in the disability community? I ask this as a member.
Chris Cipriano: So there's a couple of ways we can begin to think about it. So I'll draw your attention to something we refer to as like the big P and the little p of policy. And so when we talk about what a leader says and how they, you know, how they speak, we know over time that that shows up in the policies, policies with a big P, that get enacted. So the rights that a person with disabilities would have access to, be it education, health care, medication, services, insurance, and so on and so forth, many of the things you're seeing online.
The little p is the kind of actual practice, the socialization of that policy. And so when there are considerable messaging and, you know, an abundance of messages that are saying that people with disabilities can't fill in the blank, right? Even if the policy, big P policy, still hypothetically is supposed to allow for that access or opportunity to exist, that funding, that insurance, that school, and so forth, the ways in which those who are enacting the policy in the school system, at the doctor's office, and so forth, they have a, you know, can have an increased permission to not abide.
Rae Jacobson: As Chris puts it, the way people talk about disability affects the way they think about it, which in turn leads to the way that people in power think about making policies. And the research bears this out. Study after study has shown that language like the R-word fuels discriminatory policies, policies that mean people with disabilities have less access to education and health care and receive worse treatment socially.
On the other hand, they also find that using accepting language around disability can have the opposite effect. This is where, "Why can't I say it? It's just a word" starts to fall apart.
That's next time on "Hyperfocus," when we try to answer the question, if a word hurts, how do you get people to care?
Speaker 6: One of the things that in my career as somebody who works in the community of people with disabilities, I've learned that it just isn't very effective to be a purist about language, in part because language evolves really, really quickly.
Rae Jacobson: And we hear from a famous comedy writer on how he's had to reckon with his industry and his own past.
Speaker 7: And to my great shame, I looked back not too long ago to a screenplay I wrote that had that word in it. There was a joke where someone used that word. And I sat with it. It was like a punch in the face. I really almost burst into tears when I saw it because my son is now 18, and I've spent 18 years really reprogramming my mind and soul to and just seeing the world so differently.
Credits (22:37)
Rae Jacobson: "Hyperfocus" is made by me, Rae Jacobson, and Cody Nelson. Our music comes from Blue Dot Sessions. Samiah Adams is our supervising producer. Our research correspondent is Dr. KJ Wynne. Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Alyssa Shea. Briana Berry is our production director and Neil Drumming is our editorial director. If you have any questions for us or ideas for future episodes, write me an email or send a voice memo to hyperfocus@understood.org.
And for this episode, if you want to check out our sources, take a look at Chris' work, or sign the pledge to end the word, we've got links in the show notes.
This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere and Jordan Davidson. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, you can donate at understood.org/gift.