#1705 Free Expression and Political Repression: Stephen Colbert's Exit
Listening to America
Listening to America
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 77 minutes
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Summary
Host David Horton interviews Thomas Jefferson about freedom of expression in America. Did the Founding Fathers know what they were doing when they ratified the extraordinary First Amendment of the Constitution? What limits, if any, should there be in the expression of ideas in a free society? When, if ever, can government suppress press freedom? What protections do American citizens have against malicious attacks on their character? When Jefferson retires and humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson takes the microphone, Horton asks Clay about the final episode of Stephen Colbert's Late Show, which among other things, gave Paul McCartney the last word with a fabulous rendition of the Beatles song "Hello-Goodbye."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to this introduction to this week's podcast. A slightly new format now. My friend David Horton is going to be hosting the program, not always, but a great deal of the time. Welcome, David. We're glad to have you. Let's talk a little bit about this program. So this was your idea, and I liked it very much, that the late show program with Stephen Colbert was going off the air, that it's become the source of a lot of national conversation and |
| 0:21.8 | controversy. And we all wanted to know how he was going to go out. And so I stayed up longer than I |
| 0:27.9 | normally do. I don't normally watch the late show, but I watched it and was thrilled by some of it, |
| 0:33.5 | particularly Sir Paul McCartney, one of my life's heroes. I thought he went out with great grace. |
| 0:39.2 | I think the program we did today ties it into Jefferson's view of discourse in a free society |
| 0:44.8 | and also Mark Twain's view that laughter is our only tool. |
| 0:48.8 | First, I want to say thank you so much for having me on board as a team member for the program. |
| 0:54.0 | And I think the podcast |
| 0:55.1 | provides us an opportunity to talk about moments in American life. And this was a moment last |
| 1:00.9 | night. I think there was a ton of attention. I haven't seen the ratings yet. But I'll be |
| 1:04.8 | interested to see how many people checked out what was happening just because it was a big |
| 1:09.9 | thing going on. It was a news story. It was an event. |
| 1:12.7 | I particularly love talking about it. And I wanted to talk about this in this program because of your |
| 1:19.5 | experience with Mr. Colbert and the things that had happened. And I love how you talked about your time |
| 1:25.5 | 20 years ago on the Colbert rapport and how cool that was. |
| 1:29.5 | But I love tying in those things to give it context because Mr. Jefferson does such a great job in helping us understand more about this. |
| 1:38.6 | And then you take that and give us a little bit different lens to say, well, this is what Jefferson said, but this is what |
| 1:45.0 | Jefferson actually did. |
| 1:46.6 | Yeah, there's that gap. |
| 1:47.8 | So just a couple of quick things, David, and welcome to everybody. |
| 1:51.4 | And please sign up for our newsletter. |
| 1:53.5 | It's free at LTAmerica.org. |
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