I strongly recommend this Radiolab episode on Free Speech and "The Marketplace of Ideas"

(from April 2021)

What Up Holmes?

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.

Further reading:

Thomas Healy’s book The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes CHanged His Mind - And Changed the History of Free Speech In America
https://www.worldcat.org/title/great-dissent-how-oliver-wendell-holmes-changed-his-mind-and-changed-the-history-of-free-speech-in-america/oclc/1121441031
The Science article that Sinan Aral wrote in 2018, along with Soroush Vosughi and Deb Roy: “The Spread of True and False News Online”
https://politics.media.mit.edu/papers/Vosoughi_Science.pdf
Sinan Aral’s recent book The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy and our Health - And How We Must Adapt
https://www.worldcat.org/title/hype-machine-how-social-media-disrupts-our-elections-our-economy-and-our-health-and-how-we-must-adapt/oclc/1253750788
Zeynep Tufekci’s newsletter “The Insight” plus her book Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
https://www.worldcat.org/title/twitter-and-tear-gas-the-power-and-fragility-of-networked-protest/oclc/1198557402
Nabiha Syed’s news website The Markup
https://themarkup.org/people/nabiha-syed
Trailer for “The Magnificent Yankee,” a 1950 biopic of Oliver Wendell Holmes
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0EADzGGjuqI
Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought that We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment
https://www.worldcat.org/title/freedom-for-the-thought-that-we-hate-a-biography-of-the-first-amendment/oclc/1057159064

#FreeSpeech #OliverWendellHolmes #MarketplaceOfIdeas #Podcasts #RadioLab #ThomasHealy #ZeynepTufekci #SupremeCourt #FirstAmendment