The Battle For Free Speech

This is a particularly important episode, coming just two weeks ahead of the 1st round of high stakes presidential elections in Brazil. Host Michael Fox speaks with Artur Romeu. He’s a Brazilian journalist and the Latin American Director for Latin America of the international NGO Reporters Without Borders.  They spoke ahead of Episode 6 of The Battle for Free Speech, about Brazil’s fight against d...

Today, host Michael Fox speaks with Mary Anne Franks . She is a professor of Intellectual Property, Technology, and Civil Rights Law at George Washington University and the President of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative.  She is also the author of the book Fearless Speech: Breaking Free from the First Amendment ,which was published in 2024, by Bold Type Books. She has an incredible analysis about...

This is the first bonus episode of The Battle for Free Speech. Today, host Michael Fox speaks with Fara Dabhoiwala. He is a professor of History at Princeton University. And he’s the author of the book, What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea .  That book was published in 2025 by Penguin Random House and Harvard University Press. His book, in many ways, challenges the status quo about...

Today, we are pleased to share with you an episode from the podcast Scene on Radio. It’s hosted by longtime journalist John Biewen, with co-host journalism professor Chenjerai Kumanyika. It’s a series from the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and distributed by PRX. This episode is Season 8, Episode 6, of Scene on Radio: What Could Have Been?  Ever thought about whether America's over...

“Existence is struggle,” says Marc Steiner. “It always has been, and always will be.” In this podcast series, we’ve looked at the  attacks on free speech rights today in the United States. We looked at the history and how movements and organizations have stood up for and exercised free speech in their work. We looked at how social media, AI, and disinformation are undermining our free speech, and...

Disinformation is impacting our lives. Much of it is being pushed by unregulated Silicon Valley tech companies and their billionaire owners. But people in Europe are pushing back. In this episode, Michael Fox goes to Spain, to look at how members of the Spanish far right have been inspired by Charlie Kirk. Then we look at grassroots organizing against Big Tech in Ireland, media education initiativ...

This is really a tale of two countries: the United States and Brazil. In both countries, far-right presidents come to power — Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro. In both those countries, the presidents spent several years unraveling democratic institutions and public policy. Both presidents then ran for reelection. Both presidents lied about their country's voting systems in order to undermine the el...

On the eve of the United States' 250th birthday, Michael Fox sits down with Mansa Musa — longtime activist, former Black Panther, host of TRNN’s Rattling the Bars , and a man who spent nearly 49 years in prison — to ask a deceptively simple question: what does free speech actually mean? From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to Quito, Ecuador, to Frederick Douglass's 1852 address "What to the Slav...

Photojournalist Nick Stern still has nightmares from the night an officer fired a flashbang into his leg as he covered the LA immigration protests. He's one of dozens of journalists assaulted, arrested, or deported in Trump's second term — a year that pushed the US to 64th on the World Press Freedom Index, its lowest ranking ever. In this episode of The Battle for Free Speech, Michael Fox is joine...

On the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration—January 20, 2025—the heads of many of Silicon Valley’s most powerful tech firms sat in the rows just behind Trump. It was a sign of Trump’s deep ties to the industry and to these powerful individuals who are transforming how we communicate, and not for the better.   In this episode, Michael Fox visits Silicon Valley to try to understand the stranglehold th...

Free speech in America was never given — it was fought for, bled for, and died for. In this episode, hosts Marc Steiner and Michael Fox dive into the history of the movements that built and defended the right to speak out: the abolitionists who continued to speak — even as mobs attacked the building where they gathered — Ida B. Wells, who exposed the truth about lynching in Jim Crow Memphis, and t...

Mahmoud Khalil was detained and arrested at his Manhattan apartment. The video is chilling. Plainclothes agents are there. They refuse to give their names. He’s handcuffed and shoved into the back of a car. His wife — eight months pregnant — watches and tries to understand what’s happening. This is not a scene from some dark chapter of a distant past filled with black-and-white photos of bygone di...

This year, the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary. But there’s a problem. Our most basic freedom — the freedom of speech — is under attack. In this immersive series, hosts Marc Steiner and Michael Fox take you on a journey to look at the threats to free speech, from Trump to Silicon Valley. They look at the history of the fight for free speech and the battle being waged over it today,...