So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast

Latest Episodes:

FIRE Reacts: Trump's media ban Sep 23, 2026

Show notes

FIRE staff responds to President Trump's decision to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, with President Trump citing their "constant 'reporting'" of "FAKE NEWS!" Barring journalists from the White House because of their coverage raises serious First Amendment concerns and strikes at the heart of a free and independent press. FIRE experts break down what happened and answer your questions about the ban.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

02:06 Why does the White House Correspondents Association decide who serves in the White House press pool?

05:32 Can the president ban anyone from the White House?

07:07 Obama and Biden-era restrictions on press access

10:38 Access to the press room vs. being called on to ask a question

11:55 Could TrumpTV have a chilling effect on the press?

13:39 Can the White House reject a reporter but not their news organization?

14:56 What is a temporary restraining order?

17:27 The government's argument

22:03 National security and the First Amendment

23:57 What if a news organization publishes false information?

27:31 Does the White House have to justify press restrictions?

28:27 Is there something wrong with "a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories"?

32:04 The scope of the White House restrictions

34:03 Public distrust of the press

36:48 Does restricting press access really address any national security concerns?

39:22 Can future administrations exclude partisan or influencer journalists?

41:05 Is barring journalists from the White House a prior restraint?

42:17 The impacts of a collective media boycott

45:04 Outro

Joining us:

Marie McMullan — SPFI program manager and counsel

Jacob Gaba — Staff attorney

Aaron Terr — Director of public advocacy

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If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

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Ep. 283: Robby Soave on Trump's press ban, Macklemore, and free speech culture wars Sep 22, 2026

Show notes

The free speech culture wars look different than they did a decade ago.

Reason senior editor and Rising host Robby Soave joins us to discuss the White House's restrictions on media access, Macklemore getting dropped from Ed Sheeran's tour, and why efforts to suppress controversial speech so often backfire.

We also look back at how the free speech debate has changed since Robby and Nico began covering it — from campus censorship and cancel culture to social media moderation and the changing politics of free speech.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:44 How Robby prepares for Rising

03:35 How the media landscape has changed

10:44 Trump, the press, and censorship

20:26 Cancel culture

23:55 Macklemore, Ed Sheeran, and the Streisand Effect

30:31 Why should we defend the media?

36:58 Campus free speech

43:48 The changing politics of free speech

58:34 Outro

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

Ep. 282: Breaking down our 2027 College Free Speech Rankings Sep 11, 2026

Show notes

Harvard, institutional neutrality, how we determine the rankings, partisan censorship, how schools can improve their ranking, and more!

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

03:18 Learn about our inaugural Soapbox conference

04:02 Preorder Nico's book Free Speech Generation

5:00 Check out FIRE's 2027 College Free Speech rankings

06:05 Who are the top- and bottom-ranked schools?

09:27 What's new with the Harvard evaluation?

13:08 How does FIRE choose which schools to rank?

13:46 What can universities do to improve their ranking?

15:54 What is institutional neutrality?

18:05 What exactly are students being asked about campus speech?

21:25 How does FIRE make sure defending free speech doesn't inadvertently protect censorship in the classroom?

25:19 Is campus censorship coming more from the "right" or the "left"?

26:53 Did the University of Washington settlement involving Professor Stuart Reges affect its ranking?

30:45 What does it mean to pre-register our methodology?

31:35 Why did Claremont McKenna drop in the rankings?

33:07 What advice does FIRE have for students at low-ranked schools facing censorship?

36:47 Do politically homogeneous campuses make students more comfortable speaking freely?

40:26 Do low-ranked colleges tell FIRE how they are improving?

42:56 What can administrators do now to improve next year's ranking?

43:50 Does FIRE account for turnover in university leadership?

45:47 What do the rankings reveal about different student demographic groups?

49:41 Does FIRE account for differences between types of institutions?

52:00 What's up with MIT?

56:02 Should attacks on tenured professors carry more weight than actions against other faculty?

57:02 Who does FIRE contact when evaluating a university?

58:09 Are there regional patterns in the rankings?

58:57 Were there bigger ranking swings than usual this year?

01:00:44 Outro

Joining us:

Nico Perrino, executive vice president
Angela Erickson, vice president of research
Sean Stevens, chief researcher
Ronnie London, general counsel and director of litigation
Connor Murnane, campus advocacy chief of staff

Become a paid subscriber today to receive invitations to future live webinars.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

If you already are a paid subscriber and would like to listen to this episode via Apple Podcasts, click on the "Apple Podcasts" icon at the top right of this page!

Ep. 281: What's the First Amendment's original meaning? w/ Jud Campbell and Stephen Solomon Sep 09, 2026

Show notes

The First Amendment is only 45 words long. But more than 200 years and thousands of court decisions later, we're still arguing over a basic question: what do those words mean — and what did they mean to the early Americans who adopted them?

To look through history and debate what originalism can — and can't — tell us about the First Amendment's free speech clause, we are joined by:

Jud Campbell, Stanford Law School professor and the author of Natural Rights and the First Amendment and Determining Rights
Stephen Solomon, Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism at New York University, the founding editor of First Amendment Watch, and the author of Revolutionary Dissent: How the Founding Generation Created the Freedom of Speech

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:20 Original meaning and modern First Amendment doctrine

09:12 Would the founders recognize our Constitution today?

16:00 The Alien and Sedition Acts

20:21 How the founding generation practiced free speech

24:35 Can we define "originalism"?

32:05 Representative government and the promise of liberty

45:00 The First Amendment's absolute language

51:36 New York Times v. Sullivan

58:01 Amending the First Amendment

01:04:30 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

Ep. 280: Social media, speech, and kids w/ Joel Thayer and Kate Ruane Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

**Editor's note: This episode was recorded before Meta settled a social media addiction trial with a coalition of state attorneys general on Aug. 26, 2026. The case alleged the company knew some of its features on Facebook and Instagram could be harmful to kids and the company publicly misrepresented those risks.

Social media and artificial intelligence are increasingly powerful tools for sharing and accessing information. They're also at the center of a push for the government to address their potential harms — particularly to kids.

So where's the constitutional line between regulating technology and regulating speech? And could this latest wave of legislation and litigation change what we can see, say, and create online?

Joining us to break down the latest developments in social media and AI and what it all means for free speech are:

Joel Thayer, senior fellow for AI and emerging technology policy at the America First Policy Institute and president of the Digital Progress Institute
Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Free Expression Project

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:02 The case for regulating social media

09:23 The case for social media as protected speech

18:12 Are social media design features protected speech?

23:46 Section 230 and platform liability

37:21 Privacy, COPPA, and online child safety

58:40 Are AI chatbots speech?

01:09:06 Will Congress regulate social media and AI?

01:12:27 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

Ep. 279: Legendary lawyer Michael Tigar on juries, free speech, and the trial of John Peter Zenger Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

Long before the First Amendment, John Peter Zenger stood trial for publishing criticisms of New York's then colonial governor. Although the law seemed to guarantee a guilty verdict, a jury refused to convict him. Zenger's trial was an early indication that the American colonists harbored a view of liberty more expansive than that offered to them by the British Crown.

Few people are better suited to explain the case than Michael Tigar. Over a legendary legal career spanning more than six decades, Tigar has argued before the Supreme Court (multiple times), represented civil rights activists and other controversial clients, taught generations of lawyers, and written what has become the definitive stage play about the Zenger trial.

Michael joins us to revisit the Zenger trial and reflect on his own remarkable career from the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the Chicago Eight trial to jury nullification and lawyers' First Amendment rights.

To read more about Michael's life, check out his memoir.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

03:11 The Berkeley Free Speech Movement

09:17 Michael's path to becoming a lawyer

13:44 Defending the Chicago Eight

20:25 The trial of John Peter Zenger

27:03 Jury nullification and the Zenger verdict

37:26 The Zenger play and its legacy

39:52 NYT v. Sullivan and SLAPP lawsuits

44:30 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

Ep. 278: The Trump admin wants to change how scientific research is funded w/ Catharine Young, Evan Morris, and Ryne Weiss Jul 29, 2026

Show notes

In May 2026, the Office of Management and Budget proposed sweeping changes to how the federal government administers billions of dollars in federal research grants.

That funding fuels scientific discovery, medical breakthroughs, and technological innovation. The proposal was open for public comment for 45 days and drew more than half a million responses.

Supporters of the proposal argue that it will prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending. Critics contend that the proposal will politicize research funding by giving executive branch political appointees greater influence over which research projects receive federal support.

Joining us to break down the OMB proposal and what it could mean for the future of research are:

Evan Morris, professor of radiology and biomedical imaging and of biomedical engineering at Yale
Catharine Young, senior fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Ryne Weiss, director of research here at FIRE

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:57 What's in the OMB proposal?

08:57 Research grant "kill switches" and their consequences

17:17 Limits on foreign research partnerships and professional activities

21:29 The importance of federal funding to medical research

23:23 Are pharmaceutical companies the "boogeymen"?

25:13 The gold standard of scientific research

26:22 The "replication crisis"

31:16 Open science and peer review

40:37 Bias in research funding decisions

44:06 Should science be shielded from politics?

49:04 Has research always been political?

53:14 How politicization could change scientific research

58:59 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

Ep. 277: Ada Palmer on the history of censorship from the Renaissance to AI Jul 15, 2026

Show notes

Censorship is often associated with authoritarian governments. But throughout history, efforts to control ideas have taken many different forms — and they haven't always come from the state.

In this episode, Nico sits down with University of Chicago professor Ada Palmer to explore the history of censorship from the Renaissance to the present day. They discuss what motivates censorship, why it evolves alongside new communication technologies, how effective it has been throughout history, and what historical patterns can teach us about today's free speech debates.

Ada Palmer is a professor of early modern European history at the University of Chicago and the author of Inventing the Renaissance: Myths of a Golden Age. She is also an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy author, composer, singer, and expert on anime and Japanese popular culture. Visit her website to read her blog and explore her other projects.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:29 Palmer's interest in censorship

03:13 Renaissance censorship

13:15 The Inquisition and Jansenism

22:50 The blurry line between state and private censorship

31:35 Fear and self-censorship

35:12 Does America hide its censorship efforts?

38:45 The case of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

43:50 Will AI change censorship?

53:36 Censorship will always be with us

01:06:47 Are you a free speech absolutist?

01:13:46 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

Ep. 276: Book banning's trial of the century w/ Anthony Aycock Jul 01, 2026

Show notes

Over the past five years, book bans and book challenges have become a major flashpoint in American politics.

School boards, parents, librarians, and lawmakers are fighting over what students should—and shouldn't—have access to on library shelves. Supporters of library restrictions say they are protecting children. Opponents say they are censoring ideas.

But this debate isn't new.

In the 1970s, America saw a similar surge in book challenges. One local dispute in Long Island, New York, made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court and became the only school-library book-removal case the Court has ever decided.

That case was Island Trees School District v. Pico, better known simply as Pico.

In this episode, we're joined by Anthony Aycock, legislative library director at the North Carolina General Assembly and the author of Just Plain Filthy: The Story Behind Book Banning's Trial of the Century.

His book tells the story behind Pico, including the school board that removed the books from its libraries, the students who fought back, and the Supreme Court justices who delivered a fractured ruling that left some of the case's most important constitutional questions unresolved.

Don't miss the free speech event of the year! Get your tickets and learn more about our Soapbox Conference at soapbox.fire.org. The early bird discount ends July 4.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

03:02 How Anthony became a librarian

05:08 What inspired Anthony's book?

07:33 The origins of Island Trees School District v. Pico

13:25 The Miller test for obscenity

14:43 Steven Pico and the road to the Supreme Court

18:15 The local reaction to Pico

20:17 If libraries choose what comes in, why can't they choose what goes out?

20:51 How librarians build a collection

26:05 When and why books leave library shelves

26:52 The Supreme Court's plurality opinion

30:08 Why Pico still matters: the Llano County case

35:41 Libraries, viewpoint diversity, and public access

38:24 When is censorship justified?

39:55 Should parents decide what everyone can read?

51:01 Stress test: Should Hitler's Mein Kampf be available in libraries?

54:05 How librarians feel about literary censorship today

57:57 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

Ep. 275: Stress-testing the limits of the First Amendment w/ Chaz Stevens Jun 17, 2026

Show notes

Debates over religious freedom have shaped American life for centuries. From Quakers facing persecution in colonial America to The Crucible to South Park, fights over religious expression have repeatedly tested the country's commitment to free speech and religious liberty.

At the heart of these debates are a few difficult questions: Does the Constitution protect only popular beliefs, or all of them? If the government opens the door for one form of religious expression, does it have to allow every form? And if not, where does the Constitution draw the line?

Few people have tested those questions more directly than Chaz Stevens.

Stevens is the founder of the Church of Satanology and a longtime activist who uses satire, publicity stunts, and litigation to challenge what he sees as hypocrisy in how governments apply First Amendment protections.

In this episode, Chaz joins us to talk about those battles, the philosophy behind his activism, and what he's learned from years of pushing the boundaries of the First Amendment.

Follow Chaz on Substack here.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:26 What is Satanology?

04:15 Using malicious compliance to defend viewpoint neutrality

07:14 Pushing the boundaries of religious freedom protections

10:12 The First Amendment right to petition the government

11:20 Fighting state-mandated religious displays

15:37 Why Chaz puts Festivus poles in state capitols

19:59 Ron DeSantis, school libraries, and book ban controversies

23:44 Suing the government without a lawyer (pro se litigation)

30:18 Chaz's lawsuit against Rep. Chip LaMarca and Lindke v. Freed

34:48 How Chaz's activism started

35:54 The Consentivius tour and the Epstein files

38:55 What is Chaz's endgame?

41:27 Outro

Read the transcript here.

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and more.

If you became a FIRE Member through a donation to FIRE at fire.org and would like access to Substack's paid subscriber podcast feed, please email sotospeak@fire.org.

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