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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‑month peri­od in Holmes’s life when he seems to have done a log­i­cal U‑turn on what should be say-able. Why he changed his mind dur­ing those 8 months is one of the great­est mys­ter­ies in the his­to­ry of the Supreme Court. (Spoil­er: the answer involves anar­chists, a house of truth, and a cry for help from a dear friend.) Join us as we inves­ti­gate why he changed his mind, how that made the coun­try change its mind, and whether it’s now time to change our minds again.