Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

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Welcome to the Quilette Podcast. I'm Jonathan Kay.

If there's one subject that percolates below the surface

in most of the content we produce at Quilette,

it's free speech. Whether we're denouncing mobbing or defending

the scientific method from ideological attack or tallying up the costs of groupthink, the

subtext is usually that more free speech would help solve the problem.

Well, today, forget the subtext. We're talking about free speech full stop, because that's the title of the new book from this week's Copenhagen-based guest

Jacob Michangama, or to cite the title in full, free speech a history from Socrates to

social media. If you've heard Jacob's podcast, clear and present danger, you'll know that he's a

defender of free speech, but he also has a historian's appreciation for how fragile free speech can be.

For most of human history, free speech, as we now know it, was unknown.

If you told your average Roman or biblical era Jewish rabbi or medieval Lord

that we should all be allowed to say whatever we want.

You know, let's get rid of the king, there is no god, down with the bourgeoisie, that sort of stuff.

They would have thought you were crazy.

In fact, even now in 2022, as Jacob and I discuss, free speech is imperiled

...