Summary: <p>Love it or hate it, the freedom to say obnoxious and subversive things is the quintessence of what makes America America. But our say-almost-anything approach to free speech is actually relatively recent, and you can trace it back to one guy: a Supreme Court justice named Oliver Wendell Holmes. Even weirder, you can trace it back to one seemingly ordinary 8-month period in Holmes’s life when he seems to have done a logical U-turn on what should be say-able. Why he changed his mind during those 8 months is one of the greatest mysteries in the history of the Supreme Court. (Spoiler: the answer involves anarchists, a house of truth, and a cry for help from a dear friend.) Join us as we investigate why he changed his mind, how that made the country change its mind, and whether it’s now time to change our minds again.</p> <p><em>This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and was produced by Sarah Qari.</em></p> <p><em>Special thanks to Jenny Lawton, Soren Shade, Kelsey Padgett, Mahyad Tousi and Soroush Vosughi.</em></p> <p><em>Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at <a href="https://pledge3.wnyc.org/donate/radiolab-it/onestep/?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=radiolab-redirect&utm_campaign=pledge&utm_content=show-notes" target="_blank" title="Pledge">Radiolab.org/donate</a>. </em></p> <p> </p> <p>further reading:</p> <p>Thomas Healy’s book <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250058690">The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes CHanged His Mind - And Changed the History of Free Speech In America</a> (the inspiration for this episode) plus his latest book <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781627798624">Soul City: Race, Equality and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia</a>.</p> <p>The <em>Science</em> article that Sinan Aral wrote in 2018, along with Soroush Vosughi and Deb Roy: <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146">“The Spread of True and False News Online”</a></p> <p>Sinan Aral’s recent book <a href="https://www.sinanaral.io/books">The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy and our Health - And How We Must Adapt</a></p> <p>Zeynep Tufekci’s newsletter “<a href="https://zeynep.substack.com/">The Insight</a>” plus her book <a href="https://www.twitterandteargas.org/">Twitter and Teargas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest</a></p> <p>Nabiha Syed’s news website <a href="https://themarkup.org/">The Markup</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EADzGGjuqI">Trailer</a> for “The Magnificent Yankee,” a 1950 biopic of Oliver Wendell Holmes</p> <p>Anthony Lewis, <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/anthony-lewis/freedom-for-the-thought-that-we-hate/9780465012930/">Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment</a></p>
