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Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power, and prejudices.

This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year.

And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to,

and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am delighted to be joined by none other than Douglas Murray, our dear columnist,

who has had a little bit of a taste of anti-free speech behavior in the last few days,

I think we can say.

You are in America at the moment, Douglas.

I am.

I've been very struck by how many Americans are appalled at the limitations of free speech in Britain that we've seen in the days since the riots. We've seen judges very pompously sentencing people for writing often very shocking racist comments, but condemning them to prison for those comments.

And to Americans, that seems very strange. Are you getting the same reaction from Americans you speak to? Oh, yeah. I mean, people are amazed by it because, of course, in America, there's

the protection of the First Amendment. And that has,

by the way, a palpable effect on the discourse, including on the media discussion in the US,

which is far less scared, I think, than much of the most of the British media is, of dealing

with, you know, tricky people, difficult people, difficult subjects.

You know, it is a case that the UK court system very often favours.

For instance, rich plaintiffs.

The American media doesn't worry about that sort of thing nearly so much

because of the First Amendment, freedom of speech protection.

...