Pushkin.

It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?

Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.

In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American

politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most

controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. So if you're trying to make sense at the present

moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on theHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

From Pushkin Industries, this is deep background, the show where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.

I'm Noah Feldman. For the next two weeks, we're going to try something a little different.

Over the past year,

I've been having conversations with experts across the ideological spectrum about a topic that

I care a lot about, the freedom of speech. I am extremely excited to share them with you now.

And one positive side effect of being able to do so is that it will

give a chance for our hardworking producer and showrunner here a deep background to have

a little summer break. This episode in our free speech series is about cancel culture.

The idea of, quote, canceling someone is itself relatively new.

One of the first times the word was used in this way was in the 1991 action movie, New Jack

City, I know I'm dating myself now, in which Wesley Snipes plays a drug lord,

and actually says it about his girlfriend.

The idea of canceling someone then pretty slowly made its way into pop culture, first used in a humorous way, and then eventually more seriously.

Ossita Wanevu, a writer at the New Republic, wrote a really insightful article about this phenomenon

called the Cancel Culture Khan. He's been following the evolution of the term.

...