Content Warning

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Over the past five years TikTok has radically changed the online world. But trust us when we say, it’s not how you’d expect. Today we continue our yearslong exploration of what you can and can’t post online. We look at how Facebook’s approach to free speech has evolved since Trump’s victory. How TikTok upended everything we see. And what all this means for the future of our political and digital lives. Special thanks to Kate Klonick EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Simon Adler Produced by - Simon Adler Original music from - Simon Adler with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloome Fact-checking by - Anna Pujol-Mazzini Lateral Cuts: The Trust Engineers Facebook’s Supreme Court Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Oh, wait, you're listening.
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.5	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From W.N. Y.
0:13.9	See?
0:15.1	Yeah.
0:19.3	You're right in here.
0:21.0	Awesome.
0:21.9	You're going to be speaking in that microphone.
0:24.4	This guy? Nope. The one closer here.
0:27.0	Hey, I'm Simon Adler. This is Radio Lab.
0:29.5	One, two, three, four five. Can you hear me, Kate?
0:31.5	Yep.
0:32.0	And that is Kate Klonick. I'm a professor at St. John's Law School.
0:56.1	I've talked to her a bunch over the years. We did a couple different stories that felt like news at the time about Facebook's rules for what we can and can't post on their platform. Don't get me saying the F word again because last time my parents yelled at me. Did they? Yeah, they were like, Kate, you're an adult now.
0:57.5	Oh, come on. I prefer to swear on the radio as much as possible.
1:01.6	We covered the origins of these rules and just how complicated they can become.
1:06.4	But beyond the specifics, what we were really exploring was how the ideal of free speech plays out in different spaces in our society.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.