Jacob Mchangama, author of Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media, joins Michael to examine the evolving landscape of free expression amid rising political and cultural tensions. They discuss how far governments, universities, and tech platforms should go in regulating speech, and what’s at stake when they do.

In this episode:

• Should non-citizens have the same speech protections as citizens?
• Social media, mental health, radicalization, and the “moderation dilemma”
• The global shift toward stricter regulation of speech
• How today’s most divisive issues test the limits of free expression

Jacob Mchangama is the founder and executive director of the Future of Free Speech, professor at Vanderbilt University, and senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Is it really possible to change your entire personality in a year? An award-winning journalist experiments with her own personality to find out—and reveals the science behind lasting change.

Research shows that you can alter your personality traits by behaving in ways that align with the kind of person you’d like to be—a process that can make you happier, healthier, and more successful. Olga embarked on an “experiment” to see whether it’s possible to go from dwelling in dread to radiating joy. For one year, she clicked “yes” on a bucket list of new experiences—from meditation to improv to sailing—that forced her to at least act happy. With a skeptic’s eye, Olga brings you on her journey through the science of personality, presenting evidence-backed techniques to help you change your mind for the better.

Olga Khazan is a staff writer for The Atlantic and the author of Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World. She has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. Her new book is Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change.

The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely different from those of today. Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today’s economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers. When policymakers rely on such an antiquated conceptual tool, how can they measure, understand, and respond with any precision to what is happening in today’s digital economy?

Coyle argues that to understand the current economy, we need different data collected in a different framework of categories and definitions, and she offers some suggestions about what this would entail.

Diane Coyle is a Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and author of The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why it Matters and GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History. Her new book is The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters.

Read Diane Coyle’s new article for Skeptic.