145. Greg Lukianoff — How Free is Free Speech?

<p>In this wide ranging conversation focused on Greg Lukianoff’s co-authored (with Jonathan Haidt) book <em><a href= "https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735224897/?tag=skepticcom20-20">The Coddling of the American Mind</a></em>, and his new documentary film <em><a href="https://www.mightyira.com/">Mighty Ira: A Civil Liberties Story</a></em>, about the free speech champion Ira Glassner, who headed the ACLU for decades, he and Shermer discuss:</p> <ul> <li>the state of free speech today,</li> <li>how coddled today’s students are,</li> <li>the data on rates of depression and anxiety in students today,</li> <li>possible causes of the coddling of the American mind: social media, screen time, culture of safetyism, culture of victimhood, helicopter parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play,</li> <li>cancel culture and its effect on self-censorship and silencing speech,</li> <li>current rates of deplatforming and canceling in academia,</li> <li>the polarization of politics,</li> <li>when self-censorship is healthy,</li> <li>default to truth theory vs. default to skepticism theory,</li> <li>How gullible are we, really?</li> <li>how to combat the negative influencers on social media,</li> <li>a brief history of free speech in the 20^th and 21^th centuries,</li> <li>why people in power want to silence dissenters (even free speech advocates in power), and</li> <li>the value of viewpoint diversity.</li> </ul> <p>Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Lukianoff is a graduate of American University and Stanford Law School. He specializes in free speech and First Amendment issues in higher education. He is the author of <a href= "https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594037302/?tag=skepticcom20-20">Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate</a> and <em><a href= "https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594038074/?tag=skepticcom20-20">Freedom From Speech</a></em>. Read about his new film: <em><a href= "https://www.mightyira.com/">Mighty