Podcasts Culture Radiolab What Up Holmes?

What Up Holmes?

Published: April 2, 2021, 7:09 a.m.

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\u2019s life when he seems to have done a logical U-turn on what should be say-able.\xa0 Why he changed his mind during those 8 months is one of the greatest mysteries in the history of the Supreme Court.\xa0 (Spoiler: the answer involves anarchists, a house of truth, and a cry for help from a dear friend.)\xa0 Join us as we investigate why he changed his mind, how that made the country change its mind, and whether it\u2019s now time to change our minds again.

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This episode was reported by Latif Nasser and was produced by Sarah Qari.

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Special thanks to Jenny Lawton, Soren Shade, Kelsey Padgett,\xa0Mahyad Tousi and\xa0Soroush Vosughi.

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Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at\xa0Radiolab.org/donate.\xa0 \xa0

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further reading:

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Thomas Healy\u2019s book The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes CHanged His Mind - And Changed the History of Free Speech In America (the inspiration for this episode) plus his latest book Soul City: Race, Equality and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia.

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The Science article that Sinan Aral wrote in 2018, along with Soroush Vosughi and Deb Roy: \u201cThe Spread of True and False News Online\u201d

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Sinan Aral\u2019s recent book The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy and our Health - And How We Must Adapt

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Zeynep Tufekci\u2019s newsletter \u201cThe Insight\u201d plus her book Twitter and Teargas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

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Nabiha Syed\u2019s news website The Markup

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Trailer for \u201cThe Magnificent Yankee,\u201d a 1950 biopic of Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment