Something You Should Know - Why We Enjoy Suffering & Understanding Your Freedom of Speech

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking, Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world. Because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug. The play is pretend. The skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. Today on Something You Should Know,

Starting point is 00:00:29 there's something you need to hear if you like garlic. Then, human beings like to suffer. We actually enjoy it, and in very different ways. People's appetites for suffering differ a lot. Some people like scary movies. Some people don't. Some people like spicy food. Some people don't. Some people like spicy food. Some people don't. And psychologists have no idea why some people like some forms of suffering and others like different forms of suffering. Also, some good

Starting point is 00:00:55 news if you or your kids like sugary breakfast cereal and your right to free speech. What does it mean? Can you say anything you want? Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. So a lot of times I think people are under the misunderstanding that if you have a right to say something, you also are immunized from any response that people don't like. And that's not true. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations.

Starting point is 00:01:29 Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. And I want to start today with some very, very practical advice

Starting point is 00:02:15 that has to do with garlic. If you love garlic, but you would rather not smell like garlic after you eat it, according to Science Daily, you should drink some milk before you eat it. Whole milk works the best. The proteins and fat in the milk absorb the main smelly components of garlic, but won't interfere with the taste or health benefits while you eat it. Also, eating parsley at the same time as you eat the garlic seems to have a neutralizing effect.

Starting point is 00:02:48 If you've been eating with your fingers, or if you've been chopping garlic, the best thing to do is rub your fingers on a stainless steel utensil. Somehow the molecules in stainless steel bond with the molecules in the garlic and lift them off your skin, and you don't smell like garlic anymore.

Starting point is 00:03:08 And that is something you should know. Imagine for a moment that your life is easy. Really, really easy. You have no real problems. You don't have to work. You have plenty of money. You never have to wait in line for anything. Everything is just really easy. Wouldn't that be great? Actually, it probably wouldn't. It might be nice for a while, a very short while, but human beings actually like to

Starting point is 00:03:41 suffer to some extent. Suffering makes good things worthwhile. If everything came easy, if there were no challenges in your life, you'd be bored to death. And it gets even more interesting than that, as you're about to find out from my guest Paul Bloom. Paul is a professor of psychology at Yale University and he's author of the book The Sweet Spot, The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. Hi, Paul. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you so much for having me on. This is real interesting to me because I suspect every person has wondered at some point in

Starting point is 00:04:19 their life why we put ourselves in situations to suffer. Why do we do that? Why do we not always take the easiest route? Why do we just, why? Is it just part of the human condition that we need to suffer? I think it is. And one thing I've long been interested in is how can we do a deep dive into it? How can we figure out what itches these forms of suffering scratch? I think there's many different stories for why we choose to suffer

Starting point is 00:04:50 and how suffering benefits us. Some have to do with pleasure. They're just fun in surprising ways. And some have to do with other things, like being a good person or having a meaningful life. So let's talk about what you mean by suffering, because like you say, sometimes it's kind of pleasurable, but it's still suffering. So some examples of suffering that you

Starting point is 00:05:13 mean when you say suffering include things like what? Well, it includes things like that everyone would call suffering, ordeals like climbing Mount Everest. But it also includes more everyday suffering. So I'm thinking here of things like hot baths and saunas, going to horror movies, training for a marathon, things that pose difficulty, pain, but we enjoy them. We get something out of them. And the mystery for me is why would we willingly choose to encounter experiences that normally we'd like to avoid? And what do you think the answer to that question is? My sense is that the proper story is going to have at least two parts. So one part of it is we get a kick out of it. In some ways, suffering can be. And this could happen in all sorts of ways, but one is contrast,

Starting point is 00:06:06 where a really hot bath, the pain of that could make the moments when the bath cools very pleasurable. The spicy food in your mouth is painful, but when you drink the beer or drink some water, it feels so much better when it stops. We play with contrast and we know that pain is often an invitation to later pleasure. So that's part of it. And honestly, when I started writing about this, that was what I was mostly focused on. But there's other forms of suffering that don't give us pleasure in that sense. Think about things like climbing a mountain or raising children, which could be difficult and effortful and cause anxiety and stress, but have real value. And I think that sort of suffering has a different explanation. I

Starting point is 00:06:51 think there we seek out meaningful activities and meaningful lives. And we know that suffering is part and parcel of that. There is that sensation. I have it like when I go to the gym and work and do a really hard workout, it feels terrible while I'm doing it. But immediately when I'm done, I feel good. And it's not because the pain has stopped. Maybe that's part of it. It's more of a feeling of accomplishment than it is, oh, it doesn't hurt anymore. I think you're putting your finger on a really important aspect for a lot of the willy infliction of suffering, which is you feel you've done something. You feel a sense of accomplishment, of mastery. If you went to the gym and instead you sort of sat by the side and drank smoothies and looked at your phone, Maybe in a minute-to-minute sense, it'd be a lot more pleasurable than pumping iron or running on a treadmill. But when you're done, you wouldn't feel good about yourself because you haven't done anything. And so much of the suffering we commit ourselves to willingly, going to the gym or even something like a crossword

Starting point is 00:07:58 puzzle or a word game, doing Wordle, something like that. We feel good about it because it was hard and we feel good about ourselves when we do hard things. Is this true for other species? Is this true for all humans? Is this sliding scale? I mean, what is this thing? As far as we know, it's uniquely human. I think only humans have first come across the trick of using suffering as a way to enhance pleasure. And second, only humans care about meaning and morality and feeling good about ourselves and a sense of satisfaction. You know, your dog might go for a good run and whatever pleasure it gets from that is one thing, but it's not going to come back and say, wow, that was a great run. I really, I really, you know, I'm very proud of myself. Dogs don't think that way and humans do. I think it is universal. I think in every culture,

Starting point is 00:08:50 every society, every time there's all sorts of ways in which people inflict suffering upon themselves for religious reasons, for reasons of pleasure and part of sex, part of meaning. But at the same time, I'll tell you what we do know. I'll tell you what we don't know. People's appetites for suffering differ a lot. Some people like scary movies. Some people don't. Some people like spicy food. Some people don't. What it is differs a lot from person to person. And psychologists have no idea at all why some people like some forms of suffering and others like different forms of suffering. So other than being this kind of quirky, uniquely human thing where we like to put ourselves through suffering, what good does it do? What does it contribute to my life by doing this? I think without an appetite for chosen suffering, we would basically

Starting point is 00:09:47 fall into sort of hedonic lifestyles where we seek out pleasure and nothing wrong with pleasure, but there's other appetites people have. And our appetite for suffering is deeply tied in to the other appetites. So most people want many things. They want pleasure, but they might also want meaning and difficulty and struggle and morality and transcendence. And for all of this, you end up locked into some sort of suffering. People who climb mountains or any sort of interesting athletic pursuit involves suffering. Any sort of deep personal pursuit, like having children, or even a long-term relationship, is going to involve some degree of effort, anxiety, and difficulty. And I think a full life couldn't exist if you didn't have some appreciation that

Starting point is 00:10:38 what's hard and what's difficult is actually at some level good for you. Well, it's almost like you can't really understand what good is unless you experience evil and you can't understand what pleasure is unless you experience pain. That's right. There's a story I tell in the book from an old Twilight Zone episode where this mobster dies. And to his surprise, he's not in some sort of seemingly hell. He's in this wonderful hotel room and he has sex with beautiful women and he eats delicious food and he plays games. And every game he plays, he wins and his enemies bow towards him. And then he gets bored. And at one point, he just can't, he starts to go mad. And he says to his guide, hey, you know, I don't want to be in heaven. I want to be in another place.

Starting point is 00:11:29 This guy said, you are in other places. A world without this contrast you're talking about, a world that simply had pleasure and no pain, had ease and no difficulty, would ultimately be boring and stultifying and kind of hellish. Yeah, I remember that twilight zone. Well, I haven't thought about it for a long time, but when you brought it up that, you know, he thinks he's in heaven. And in fact, he is in hell because that is such a dull and boring life where everything goes your way. Who would want that? And I think we know this, we know this in our guts. So even

Starting point is 00:12:04 in a situation where we could just sit around and relax and do nothing, we set ourselves tasks. We set ourselves problems. We try to push our limits. We try to impose upon us a world where we could fail. triathlon, you're not hoping for injuries and blisters and bad nights and maybe failing. But if it wasn't the possibility of struggle and difficulty, there'd be no point to it. Because when you train for a triathlon, you know, you often hear the phrase, you know, keep your eye on the prize, that you know it's going to be tough to get from here to there, but getting there is going to be so great once you get there. But between now and then, it could be a living hell. That's right. And the math of it is that to the extent it's great when you get there is pretty much related to how much of a living hell it is on the way.

Starting point is 00:13:02 We're talking about suffering and why it is a universal human experience and why we sometimes seek it out. My guest is Yale professor of psychology Paul Bloom, author of the book, The Sweet Spot, The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine,

Starting point is 00:14:02 and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. So, Paul, I hadn't really thought about this before, but we have like rituals in our society to set ourselves up to suffer, like a funeral, for example. We deliberately put ourselves in a state of sadness and mourning, which is a form of suffering. And there's a moral sense that this suffering is important. There's a wonderful line from the British writer Zadie Smith, and she quotes quotes from a condolence letter and the letter says it hurts as much as it's worth and so we connect suffering to value sometimes do you differentiate

Starting point is 00:14:57 there seems to be as I think about this a difference between pain and suffering for the sake of pain and suffering and pain and suffering to reach a goal? There's quite a few things to distinguish. One thing is pain and suffering simply for its own sake. You know, you go to a scary movie and you say, the scarier the better. I want to be shaking. I want to be terrified. You know enjoy spicy food, you might say, make it hot, make me sweat, make my mouth burn. Then there's pain and suffering in the pursuit of some other activity. And sometimes that's just a cost. I have to go to the store, so I have to walk to the store. I don't feel like if I do it anyway. But sometimes, and these are the cases I'm most interested in, it's part and parcel of what gives the thing value.

Starting point is 00:15:47 Again, a lot of activities that involve pain and suffering wouldn't be worth it without the pain and suffering. And then there's a third category, which has long interested me, which is pain and suffering that's unchosen. You know, your child dies. You get a terrible illness. You lose your job. And there, I think pain and suffering actually probably doesn't do you much good. I'm very skeptical about claims of post-traumatic growth and whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. The evidence suggests that, you know, as much as

Starting point is 00:16:18 you can, you try to avoid pain and suffering. That's the type that you don't choose. It makes you wonder if maybe some of this other suffering that we do choose is sort of there to toughen us up for the suffering we don't choose. It's a good idea. It's a good speculation, and it might be true,

Starting point is 00:16:39 that to some extent we expose ourselves to difficult circumstances to prepare us for what's going to happen later on in life. And this is actually a theory for why we enjoy unpleasant fictions, why we enjoy, say, movies involving death and torture and all sorts of terrible stuff. And one theory is we do this to some extent to toughen ourselves up. We do this to some extent to sort of get in the habit of

Starting point is 00:17:06 imagining bad situations, worst case scenarios, so we can prepare for them. One analogy that sometimes gets used is that the imagination is like a flight simulator. So you want to get good in the world. You don't have to actually fly. You you could practice in a safe environment but when you get hold of a flight simulator you don't always prepare it for you know for for nice weather and and nothing bad happening you often set it to give you trouble and you said they give you trouble because it's a safe enough environment that you could get good with the trouble and then when trouble really happens you're more ready for it and I think this is kind of a nice theory of our imagination in general. It's a nice theory for why we often have unpleasant daydreams and dark fantasies and nightmares.

Starting point is 00:17:54 You know, I've often wondered about this. Like if you won some big, huge lotto jackpot, so you have $300 million, $500 million, and basically all your problems are solved. You can hire people to do everything for you. You don't need to work. You don't need to worry about money. You don't need – that might be really like the guy in the Twilight Zone. It would be like – and you hear stories about people who win the lottery who screw it up because probably they're just bored to death.

Starting point is 00:18:25 You do, and you can screw it up. It used to be thought that people who won lotteries would tend to commit suicides and be sadder, and that's not really true. But there are people who make poor choices and what they think. And a more mundane example is just retirement, where you say, man, I love sitting by the TV. I love playing golf. I love waking up whenever I want. I'm going to do that full time. And then people discover that actually stripped away from the challenges of life and the difficulty of life, things can get mighty boring and mighty aimless. You know, I don't know anybody who's won $300 million in lottery, but it could be argued that a more prosperous West where we're living in now

Starting point is 00:19:12 compared to most places that most places humans have lived, most places on earth is kind of like that where, you know, I don't worry about starving to death. I don't worry about being killed in the next day. My life is pretty easy and pretty challenge-free relative to other people on Earth. And as a result, it's been argued that people in the West engage in this sort of chosen suffering more than other people around the world. But there does seem to be a difference between the struggles of everyday life of, you know, getting up, going to work, pay your bills, get the kids to school and suffering. Because that doesn't, to me, fall in the category of suffering in the sense that it doesn't hurt. It's just effortful, but it's not painful. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:02 There's some of the sort of difficulties that we have in everyday life. You could think of it just in terms of the sort of math of pain and pleasure. You know, if I want to go to the movies, maybe I have to wait in line. If I want to, you know, if I have a baby, maybe I have to wake up in the middle of the night and feed the baby. And it's not really chosen and it's not suffering in any simple sense. It's just really the kind of crap you have to go through in life where in order to get what you want, you have to go through other things. And in this way, I think we're just like other animals where we have goals, we have things we want, and we're willing to pay the costs in order to get the benefits. But I think there's other ways when we seek out chosen suffering. And that does include some sort of serious effort and anxiety and difficulty that's where we show how we're

Starting point is 00:20:52 unusual it was still we're more than just doing the cost-benefit mathematics where the negative the seemingly negative things have value in and of themselves so let's go back to the guy that you said, I like scary movies, the scarier the better. I want to come out shaking and sweating. And then if you asked him, why, why would you want to do that? What would the answer be? I bet you'd say, I like it. But what is it you like? Yeah, we don't, it used to be thought psychologists would mull over why in the world would people enjoy fear? Because, you know, fear is negative. Psychologists would view fear as negative.

Starting point is 00:21:34 And so the theory that they had was that people who enjoy scary movies or haunted houses, they're just tough. They're harder to scare than other people. Turned out to be entirely wrong. The people who like scary movies are just as scared as people who hate scary movies. It's just they seem to like being afraid. And I think with all of this, the reason why we study these things as scientists is we don't really intuitively know why we like one thing rather than another. It just kind of comes out in our consciousness as I like this and I don't like that. But I think part of what happens here is that the person who leaves the movie saying that scared the pants off of me, but I loved it, is able to sort of take a playful attitude

Starting point is 00:22:21 about fear. Fear is often a terrible thing because it's connected to bad results. It's connected to terrible events. But if you could recognize that you're playing in the imagination and there's no real harm, you could explore your fear. There's a wonderful study where psychologists show kids an empty box and say to the kids, there's an invisible monster in here that bites people's fingers. And then they kind of watch how the kids behave around the box. And these kids are old enough, they just laugh and they say, I know you're just kidding, but they won't go near the box. They just keep their hands away from the box. But they know you're kidding.

Starting point is 00:22:57 They know you're kidding. But then in some level, they don't know you're kidding. And we see this in adults. I can see, I went to a slasher movies and i come home and it's all dark at home and i and then i think i know there's not a there's not you know a serial killer in my house and yet i'm just not feeling right about going into the attic well i like this because we never talk about it this way you never talk to your friends and say you know so what kind of what kind of suffering do you like? And yet we all suffer. There's some kind of suffering that we all seem to get some reward out of. And it's a universal experience. I've been speaking with Paul Bloom. He's a professor of psychology at Yale, and his book is called The Sweet Spot, The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning.

Starting point is 00:23:43 And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for coming on and talking about this. Thank you. This has been a lot of fun. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert, as trains can pass at any time on the tracks.

Starting point is 00:24:03 Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives,

Starting point is 00:24:29 and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly

Starting point is 00:25:04 about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. In the United States, as in some other countries, we have the freedom of speech. It says so right there in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But what does it mean on a practical basis? Can you say anything you want? Can you say things that hurt or offend others?

Starting point is 00:25:41 Is it okay if others say things that offend you? What does it really mean to have freedom of speech? Ian Rosenberg is an attorney who serves as legal counsel for ABC News. He teaches media law at Brooklyn College, and he is author of Free Speech Handbook, a practical framework for understanding our free speech protections. Hi, Ian. Welcome. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me on the show. So what does it mean from your legal perspective? What does it mean when we say we have freedom of speech? It's the freedom to do what?

Starting point is 00:26:18 America actually has the greatest free speech protections of any Western country, and I believe any country in the world. And what that means specifically is what the First Amendment actually says textually, which is that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. And Congress has now been interpreted to mean both the federal government as well as the state government or government actors. But it's really a limit on government interference with our speech. And that's the American model. And that's very different than European countries, for example. Which their model is what?

Starting point is 00:26:56 Well, their model is that the government can have a role in regulating speech. For example, in Germany, they do regulate hate speech and certain terms such as Holocaust denial or symbols such as Nazi symbols are actually outlawed. So there's a greater emphasis on equity rather than freedom. For example, Angela Merkel, when Trump had been kicked off of Twitter, she said that this was not something she agreed with because she believed only the government should regulate speech, not private actors. And that's actually the opposite of our model. Our model is that private actors, private companies can essentially restrict or edit or control speech however they want

Starting point is 00:27:41 for their employees or people who use their platforms, whereas the government has to keep their hands off our speech. So I think people have this sense that of what free speech is. And, you know, we hear that, you know, you can say whatever you want. You just can't yell fire in a theater. But generally speaking, you know, you're entitled to your opinions and you're entitled to express them. That's right. except you bring up one of my favorite misconceptions to correct about the First Amendment. People, whenever they want to

Starting point is 00:28:11 restrict speech, they often will say, but I know you can't cry fire in a crowded theater. And actually, the correct phrase from Justice Holmes is that you can't falsely cry fire in a crowded theater and cause a panic. So what Holmes is saying there is that if we want to think about limiting speech, first, we should think about falsity and harm. Now, those aren't actually sufficient conditions to restrict speech. The First Amendment even protects some false speech and even some speech that causes harm. But that's a really good starting place. So if your listeners learn nothing else from this conversation, I hope that they can flaunt their knowledge of how

Starting point is 00:28:50 to use this expression correctly. It's how we are limited from crying fire falsely in a crowded theater and causing a panic. Because of course, if you cry fire and there is a fire, that's you're a hero. And if you cry fire and you say, I see smoke and the usher comes up to you and goes, no, that's a dry ice effect. Don't worry about it. Nobody gets out of their seat. There's no harm, no foul. So it's a misconception and it's a misconception that's often used to restrict speech. So I'm really happy to be able to clear that up for people. Well, what about when you just brought up the fact that there's some something about being false that enters into this, but opinions aren't necessarily true or false, they're opinions. That's right. And we have enormous latitude to express our opinions in the sort of public marketplace, be that social media or public park. Opinions are also protected from libel actions because you need a false statement of fact in order to have a libelous

Starting point is 00:29:54 statement. But really, opinions are very protected in our free speech world in this country because the whole idea behind the First Amendment is that there is this marketplace of ideas that Justice Holmes, again, created in a key case called the Abrams case. And this idea that the best way to pursue truth is the power of an opinion or an idea to get itself accepted in the marketplace. So ideas are very protected. And it's not just facts. And some facts can be protected. And even some false facts can be protected. So there's a whole range of ideas that are protected by the First Amendment. Lately, though, it seems that people have been, if not told to shut up,

Starting point is 00:30:49 certainly somewhat intimidated because they might offend. That offensive speech, and that's being defined by the offended, that's not very nice. So there is actually a free speech and First Amendment right to offend. One of the great cases I talk about in Free Speech Handbook is a case where a man wore a jacket that said F the draft. I think your listeners can infer what it really said. And he wore it into a courtroom where he was a witness in a trial. And it goes up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court says in this case, Cohen versus California, that there is, in in fact a right to offend and that one man's vulgarity is another man's lyric. So there is a constitutional right to offend people,

Starting point is 00:31:32 but freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. So a lot of times I think people are under the misunderstanding that if you have a right to say something, you also have some kind of right to be immunized from any response that people don't like, be that on Twitter or public condemnation. And that's not true. Most of the free speech pioneers I talk about in Free Speech Handbook all suffered severe consequences, even when their rights to speak were ultimately vindicated by the Supreme Court. So there is absolutely a right to offend. People might be more wary of what they say

Starting point is 00:32:10 because of other people's reaction to that right to offend. But that freedom from consequences is not protected, just your freedom to speak. Is it a concern, though, that the bar for what's offensive seems to have gotten pretty low, that it seems like almost anything you say is going to offend somebody or they're going to claim that they're offended by it. And that if you put a Christmas wreath on your door and someone walks by and they're not Christian, that they could find that offensive. I don't necessarily agree with that. I would push back. I mean, we certainly have a, people have a right to put whatever they want on their own doors and in their own private spaces, and that's protected by another part of the First Amendment, the Free Exercise Clause of Religion, part of the First Amendment. But if you're talking about shared public spaces, then there can be limits on, you know, what's called sort of the reasonable non-adherent and how people can feel excluded from messages, be they religious messages or religious symbols, that might only represent

Starting point is 00:33:18 one religious point of view. So I don't necessarily agree that people are increasingly offended. I think there has been a long history of people being offended by dissenting speech. And I think sometimes protest movements of the past take on a rosy aura of inevitability, and people don't realize how controversial things that we now all accept as right and good, for example, Dr. King and the civil rights movement, were extraordinarily unpopular. And he was extraordinarily unpopular with a vast majority of Americans, even during such times as the March on Washington. So I think Americans have always had a real commitment to their speech rights and a real commitment to expressing when they disagree with the message and perhaps

Starting point is 00:34:05 offended or upset by it. And both things, I would argue, are protected by the First Amendment. Talk about one or two of these great free speech crusaders that you write about that you think really made a difference. Well, one of my favorite characters is Molly Steimer. And she was, I'm speaking to you from the Lower East Side, she was an immigrant fleeing Russian anti-Semitism here on the Lower East Side. And in the 1920s, during World War I, she threw out anti-World War I leaflets,

Starting point is 00:34:36 particularly regarding America's involvement in the war in Russia. And she was imprisoned and sentenced to 15 years for essentially criticizing the government. And that is the case in which I referred to before, where Justice Holmes, in a dissent, the majority of the Supreme Court upheld her right to be convicted or her speech conviction for criticizing the government. But Justice Holmes, joined by his friend Justice Brandeis, looked at things differently. And he believed that there was this marketplace of ideas in which the best test of truth is the power of an idea to get itself accepted in the marketplace. So when Molly Steimer was later deported to Russia, she said to her friends and family who had gathered at a dock in Brooklyn that she hoped in the future America would be a freer place than it was in the 1920s. And thanks to Molly, she really kicked off our modern understanding and our modern

Starting point is 00:35:33 sort of reevaluation of what speech rights are protected. We certainly can criticize the government today, and it's a large part in thanks to her and her compatriots' actions. The sense of what free speech means, and your story right there may be a good example of this, it's a moving definition. Free speech today is different than it was, say, in World War II or World War I, or that it seems to move a little bit, even though it seems to move pretty slowly. Well, that's absolutely right, because our rights are often much more perilous than we imagine. I think sometimes today people think that we have the sort of locked conception

Starting point is 00:36:14 of what the First Amendment has always meant, and we can access those rights, and there's really very little debate about them, but that's not true. Our rights keep evolving and increasing in the free speech context over time. You know, we've absolutely moved from a lack of ability to even criticize the government in 1920s to where we are today, where the free speech protections are really almost a superpower. They have incredible strength. And we have an enormous amount of sort of free speech rights to offend, to not speak, to protest in school. These are just some of the free speech rights we have. But they have evolved over time, one by one, through the actions of ordinary people. I also think that sometimes people perceive that these are always battles between the president of the United States and, you know, the New York Times or something, some August institutions, which is true in a case like the Pentagon Papers.

Starting point is 00:37:09 But most of the time, our free speech rights have become stronger thanks to individuals like Mary Beth Tinker, who is a 13-year-old middle school student who wore a black armband to school to protest the Vietnam War and created a recognition of the right for students to protest in school. So it's definitely an evolving ecosystem of free speech rights. But free speech rights are guaranteed by the by the Constitution to protect you from any kind of repercussions from the government. But today, people are shut down on Twitter and shut down on Facebook, and these platforms have a lot of power that no platform really used to have before. And none of the free speech rights apply. Well, there's a lot of good points you raise right there.

Starting point is 00:38:03 So first of all, you're absolutely correct that private actors, private companies like Twitter or Facebook or YouTube, they are not subject to the First Amendment. The First Amendment only protects against government interference. So they can edit speech, they can eliminate tweets or posts, and they can even kick off the president of the United States. There's no constitutional impediment to doing that. But what I actually think is interesting in comparing social media companies to sort of media of the past is that the media has always had a certain amount of power, the publishing industry with books, and then the newspaper industry. And then at the time, the newfangled radio and television

Starting point is 00:38:45 industries have all had enormous power in controlling what editorial decisions to make to put in their books or newspapers or radio shows or television programs. What's sort of remarkable about social media is that a lot of that power is given back to the individual, because you no longer need a printing press or a television station to get your express message out. So in many ways, our free speech rights are increased by social media, even though these companies do have the power to restrict our speech on their platforms. If you look back at the evolution of our freedom of speech

Starting point is 00:39:24 and see where it's come from and where it is now, what's the sense of where it might be going? Well, I think our free speech protections in the future are online, that the power of social media and people's ability to express their ideas on social media and the reach that they can get is really the future of free speech. And that is something that the court has recognized as recently as 2008 in a case called Packingham, which involved a law that prohibited North Carolina residents who were sex offenders from accessing social media. And the Supreme Court held that even disfavored, generally despicable

Starting point is 00:40:02 people like sex offenders have a right to access social media because it is so vital and so necessary a component of our speech rights today that to prohibit that access is too great an encroachment on our free speech rights. So the future of free speech is online and where that will go and how that will be limited in the future, I think is something that we need to look to the past to begin with to understand what our rights are in the free speech area online, and then maybe start making decisions about how we want to change them in the future. So we have this right of free speech, but we also hear things like, well, you can sue anybody for anything. So do you think that that ability to sue people, the threat of being sued, somehow stifles free speech because

Starting point is 00:40:54 you may win, but it may cost you a lot of money and it may be a lot of effort, so you don't say what you want to say? It sounds like you're mostly talking about libel and and libel is when there is a false statement of fact that damages reputation uh that has been publicized in some way so it could be in a newspaper or in a magazine or on social media somehow made public um and there is a false notion out there that the media can lie and get away with it there's nothing we can do or that people um saying false statements about other people um that there's the media can lie and get away with it. There's nothing we can do or that people saying false statements about other people, that there's nothing we can do. And that's not actually what the libel standard is. We can understand how our modern libel law has evolved

Starting point is 00:41:37 by a fascinating case called Sullivan. And in Sullivan, some civil rights defendants, including Dr. Martin Luther King, took out an ad defending the civil rights movement were sued by Southern officials. And ultimately, the Supreme Court said there is a right to criticize government officials and to to express facts and to get some of your facts wrong, as long as you are not intentionally lying or taking a reckless disregard for the truth. So there are limits to our free speech rights. Libel is a way to vindicate your reputational interests if a false statement was said about you. But free speech does protect and give people a really strong shield in this area because free speech and libel definitely are sort of forces that are in conflict. And there are so are now free speech protections built into our libel standards. Are there any groups or people or individuals or parties or whatever

Starting point is 00:42:38 that think that we need to re-examine that we have too much free speech? Well, one of the interesting things about a free speech law is that it doesn't break down into traditional Democratic and Republican or liberal and conservative camps. So Chief Justice Roberts considers himself one of the foremost champions of free speech on the court today. And in the past, it's been championed by, like in the Sullivan decision, by liberal justices like Brennan. So I think that in general, there's a lot of unanimity about continuing our robust free speech protections. But it's, you know, the disagreement happens along the margins about where the limits are and what are the nuances.

Starting point is 00:43:26 So I don't think there's really anyone advocating for less free speech, but there's certainly a difference of opinion about how that plays out. Well, you do hear people say things like, it's a free country. I can say whatever I want. I have free speech. But it's interesting to dig down into what that really means and the implications and the responsibilities of the free speech that we have. Ian Rosenberg has been my guest. He is an attorney. He serves as legal counsel for ABC News. And his book is Free Speech Handbook, a practical framework for understanding our free speech protections.

Starting point is 00:44:03 And there's a link to that book at Amazon. If you would like to purchase it, you can just click on the link in the show notes. Thanks, Ian. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. It was a real pleasure to have this conversation with you. Even though a lot of breakfast cereals claim to have more fiber and they're vitamin fortified, fact is that pre-sweetened cereal is still loaded with sugar. But here's some good news. A study shows that children actually like low-sugar cereals. Researchers at Yale studied cereal preferences in 91 kids.

Starting point is 00:44:38 The kids who were given low-sugar cereals chose to add more sugar and fruit to their cereal than kids who were given high-sugar cereals. to add more sugar and fruit to their cereal than kids who were given high-sugar cereals. But even with the added sugar, their breakfast still contained less sugar overall. And the kids eating low-sugar cereal ate half as much cereal as kids given the high-sugar cereal. The point is that kids will eat low-sugar cereal if you dress it up with a bit of fruit and a little table sugar. So if sugar consumption is a concern, something to try. And that is something you should know.

Starting point is 00:45:12 You know, our audience continues to grow. In the past month or so, it's grown quite a bit. And it's due in large part to people like you who listen, like the show, and tell other people they know to give it a listen too. And I appreciate you doing that. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney?

Starting point is 00:45:31 Do you love top 10 lists? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed.

Starting point is 00:45:57 I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures? You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada.

Starting point is 00:46:18 I'm crying. I'm so sorry. You win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural.

Starting point is 00:46:38 It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic

Starting point is 00:47:06 brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - Why We Enjoy Suffering & Understanding Your Freedom of Speech

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.