Before we start today, this episode is about race and free speech.

It includes sounds from the violence and Charlottesville, as well as a racial epithet.

If you have small kids with you, please save this one for later.

This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantin.

A few weeks ago, the words Charlottesville and Tiki torches

weren't national symbols you'd associate with white supremacy.

Today, those words convey a very specific scene.

We begin with the deadly chaos on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Yesterday's dueling rallies turned deadly when a car

plowed into a group of those who opposed the alt-right.

It was a weekend of street battles and stark displays of racism.

Photos of enraged white men using the Nazi salute and marching with torches

shocked many Americans.

And since then, many of us have been doing a lot of soul-searching.

Who are we?

What do we stand for?

And as a nation, what do we tolerate?

Today, we want to zoom in on a specific issue that grows out of the events in Charlottesville.

The Constitution upholds the rights of Americans to say almost anything,

no matter how distasteful, without censure from legislatures, the police, or the courts.

Our protections for speech, even hate-filled, vitriolic speech, go further than most nations.

In recent weeks, many people have made free speech arguments to defend the white supremacists

...