Love it or hate it, the freedom to say obnoxious and subversive things is the quintessence of what makes America America. But our say-almost-anything approach to free speech is actually relatively recent, and you can trace it back to one guy: a Supreme Court justice named Oliver Wendell Holmes. Even weirder, you can trace it back to one seemingly ordinary 8- ... Show More
Apr 3
Life in a Barrel
This week, in an episode we first aired in 2022, we flip the Disney story of life on its head thanks to a barrel of seawater, a 1970s era computer, and underwater geysers. It’s the chaos of life. Latif, Lulu, and our Senior Producer Matt Kielty were all sitting on their own littl ... Show More
54m 42s
Oct 2023
No Woo-Woo for Sarah Vowell
✍🏼✍🏼✍🏼Paul and Stephen love their history, so who better for this Chinwag than brilliant essayist, author and historian, Sarah Vowell?Listen in as they contemplate the tricky business of retelling history that doesn’t live up to the current moral code. Which President is the b ... Show More
51m 21s
Aug 2022
The Supreme Court's power grab
Sean Illing talks with Harvard Law professor Nikolas Bowie about the U.S. Supreme Court's recently-concluded term, which produced landmark opinions restricting the power of the EPA, expanding gun rights, and overturning Roe v. Wade. They discuss how the conservative court's argum ... Show More
1h 3m
Aug 2022
What Clarence Thomas really thinks
Sean Illing talks with Corey Robin, author of a recent article — as well as a 2019 book — about the life and thought of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Robin discusses how Thomas, whose concurring opinion in the case that overturned Roe v. Wade garnered recent attention, d ... Show More
1h 2m
Aug 2023
What Clarence Thomas really thinks
In this episode, which was originally published in August 2022, Sean Illing talks with Corey Robin, author of a 2019 book about the life and thought of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Robin discusses how Thomas — whose concurring opinion in the case that overturned Roe v. ... Show More
1h 3m
Apr 2023
Best Of: The War Within the Republican Party
<p>On Monday, Fox News abruptly announced that the network and its star primetime host, Tucker Carlson, “have agreed to part ways” after more than a decade. The announcement came less than a week after Fox agreed to pay $787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit that prominently feat ... Show More
1h 23m