#397 – Greg Lukianoff: Cancel Culture, Deplatforming, Censorship & Free Speech

The following is a conversation with Greg Lukianov, free speech advocate, First Amendment attorney, president and CEO of Fire, the foundation for Individual Rights and expression, and he's the author of Unleashing Liberty, co author with Jonathan Height of Coddling of the American Mind, and co author with Ricky Schlott of a new book coming out in October. You should definitely pre order now call called the canceling of the American Mind, which is a definitive accounting of the history, present, and future of cancel culture, a term used and overused in public discourse, but rarely studied and understood with the depth and rigor that Greg and Ricky do in this book, and in part in this conversation. Freedom of speech is important, especially on college campuses, the very place that should serve as the battleground of ideas, including weird and controversial ones that should encourage bold risk taking, not conformity. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got policy genius for insurance, Babel for learning new languages, betterhelp for mental health, insight tracker for biological data, and expressVPN for security and privacy on the place we all love and sometimes hate called the Internet. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team, we're always hiring. Go to lexfreedman.com hiring. Also, there's other ways to contact me if you go to lexfreeman.com contact. And now onto the full ad reads, as always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but if you must, skip them. Friends, please still check out our sponsors. They're awesome. They deserve all the love in the world. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will, too. This show is brought to you by policy genius, a marketplace for finding and buying insurance. Boy, can I tell you some stories about life and death. I've been hard at work tolling over videos that I recorded in Ukraine. Still looking to publish soon. There's just so much. It's so personal, it's so rich with feeling. And in one of the conversations, one of the soldiers has a kind of philosophical, existential discussion about life. And he describes the tension of having a kind of infinite value for life because it's so visceral in a time of war, but also not having such a high value for life that, uh, functioning as a soldier becomes, uh, debilitating. I don't know, something about that tension that really stayed with me about the value of life. When we look around us, how much we value life. When we look in the mirror, how much do we value life? That's something I constantly think about when I meditate on my own mortality, and when I do think about my own death and the death of people I love, the value of life becomes so intensely clear that life is beautiful and every single moment is precious. So it's funny when you think about getting insurance of any kind, and especially when you think about getting life insurance, those kinds of questions come to the surface of, uh, what is the worth of life? And also just the actual fact of death comes to the surface. It's a beautifully pragmatic, metaphysical, psychological, human reality of death. Anyway, head to policygenius.com or click the link in the description to get your free life insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's policygenius.com. This show is also brought to you by Babel, an app and website that gets you speaking a new language within weeks. Boy, do I have some cool announcements and developments on that front for you. There's going to be a lot of exciting translations happening of this very podcast. Translations and overdubs and all that kind of stuff. I think that's the future. Forget this podcast. Just the breaking the barrier that language creates using artificial intelligence is going to be incredible. Podcasts translated and overdubbed in all kinds of languages. It's so exciting to me because I am really intimately cognizant of the barriers, that loss in translation barrier that's created by languages. And if you want to yourself break down that barrier, you need to learn the languages. You need to learn Spanish and Russian and Italian and German and French. I know a little bit of each one of those, but uh, as they say, not enough to be dangerous. If you want to be dangerous in the best possible way with each of those languages, you should use Babel. Get 55% off your babble subscription@babbel.com. Slash lexpod spelled babbel.com Slash lexpod rules and restrictions apply. This episode is also brought to you by Betterhelp, spelled H-E-L-P. Help. Every time I mention betterhelp, I think about my friend Tim Dylan because his ad reads give zero f's about, uh, the sponsor or about, uh, civility or rules. He's like a wild stallion that no cowboy can ride. Now I will let the sexual innuend of that statement just ring for a bit and allow you to take it in the beauty of that. But I think he has a better help. Read that he does for like, I don't know, ten minutes. I remember hearing it. It's just a genius rant that has nothing to do with anything. And it's just hilarious. And I aspire to that because I think I have a little Tim Dylan in my heart, just like I, on his podcast, told, uh, him that he has the bluebird in his heart. I think I have a little Tim Dillon in my heart, and sometimes I let him out. I let him sing a bit, and it scares the neighbors, but it's good for the soul. Anyway. If you're anything like Tim Dillon or me, you probably need all the therapy you can get. I'm a big believer in conversation, period. And Betterhelp makes it super accessible and easy. You can check them out@betterhelp.com. Slash lex. And save in your first month. That's betterhelp.com slash lex. This show is also brought to you by inside tracker. It's a service I use to track biological data, data coming from my body. My body is a wonderland. I keep saying that because it reminds me that I really need to talk to John Mayer, one of the greatest living guitarists, blues musicians of our time, and also a hilarious, brilliant, and fun person to talk to. I had the great pleasure of having dinner with him, and it was just fun. His whole energy, his vibe, the way he moves his body, the way he moves his mind, the way he moves the conversation is just like non sequiturs. Interesting questions, profundity, hilarity, all mixed in together. I mean, it's a brilliant dude, brilliant dude. And plus, just ridiculously good at guitar in every way. So the technical and the musical and the creative, the popular, the fun, the simple and the complicated, all of it together, just a genius dude. I would love to talk to him. I would love to talk to him on the podcast. Not just conversation, but conversation intermixed with some guitar. I feel like there could be something magical created there. Why did I say that? Because my body is a wonderland, and it produces a lot of biological signals. And tracking those biological signals in order to make lifestyle and diet recommendations is the future. Inside tracker takes steps in that future. It gives you a shortcut to the future. Let's say it that way. You can get special savings for a limited time when you go to insighttracker.com slash lex. This show is brought to you by an oldie but goodie. Well, it's not really oldie. It's oldie for me because I've been using it forever. Expressvpn. I'm starting to have more fun with these ad reads because life is short, and fun is one of the best ways to experience this short life richly. I posted about eating a rotisserie chicken at midnight outside of, uh, a grocery store, which I've done hundreds of times. It's really a cheat code to life. Rotisserie chicken. There's been times it's been $5, sometimes six. At the super fancy California places you can get as crazy eight or nine or $10, sometimes like 999 or 980. It's, we're talking about 1500 calories, sometimes 2000 calories of delicious protein with some fat because of the skin. And it's the entirety, it's just me and the chicken, and it's just there. And we're thinking about what it all means, looking up at the stars, wondering where is this incredible life going to take us? And also filled with melancholy and hope and gratitude for how amazing the journey has been so far. Something about late night with a rotisserie chicken is the absolute gateway to that level of gratitude. When I posted it, somebody, uh, commented saying, eating rotisserie chicken at midnight, uh, outside of a grocery store is how men do therapy. It's funny, but it's a little bit true. Anyway, speaking of, uh, happiness and gratitude,