The Subtext: Free Speech with Jacob Mchangama Part 1

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Hi, Lee.

**Savannah Locke** (0:00)
Welcome to our show.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:01)
Hello, Savannah. Welcome to our show.

**Savannah Locke** (0:03)
How's it going?

**Lee C. Camp** (0:04)
Very well. You?

**Savannah Locke** (0:06)
Doing great. And I love when we're sitting across from each other in this way, because it means we have a guest.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:12)
It does mean that.

**Savannah Locke** (0:12)
Which is thrilling. Typically, we're in a different setup where we're sitting across from each other, so it's always good news when we're next to each other.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:18)
Yes.

**Savannah Locke** (0:19)
Today, we have Jacob Mchangama on the show to talk about a very light subject, free speech.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:26)
Welcome, Jacob. Welcome to the show.

**Savannah Locke** (0:29)
Typically, we like to start the show by asking if there's anything that you've been reading or watching or listening to lately, and there's no judgment if you're watching Bravo Reality TV. In fact, it would make me like you even more. What are you getting into lately?

**Jacob Mchangama** (0:43)
I am reading. I like to read a lot of different stuff, but right now, I am reading a lot of Stoicism, Letters from a Stoic Seneca, combined with a great book about the history of Europe from Napoleon up until the Cold War by a historian called David Thomson, which is really, really good.

**Lee C. Camp** (1:09)
Amazing.

**Jacob Mchangama** (1:09)
And then I've been binge-watching because I've been traveling the second season of The Agency, if you've watched that.

**Savannah Locke** (1:16)
Thank God you're watching some TV because I was about to say...

**Jacob Mchangama** (1:20)
That's a great show.

**Lee C. Camp** (1:22)
I'm more interested in the Stoicism. I knew you were going to love the Stoicism. Go ahead. Do you think of yourself as a Stoic?

**Jacob Mchangama** (1:29)
No.
The full package is culturally quite removed from our day lives. But there's a lot of... And I'm thinking of Stoicism, especially in terms of the topic that we're talking about today, free speech, because there's a lot of wisdom in there on how you navigate free speech as an ethical framework. Well, if you read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, he's the empress, like the most powerful man in the world when he lived. And he talks about the importance of free speech, freedom, about suffering insults and so on. But there's also an ethical framework around saying, well, you don't have to identify with what other people say about you. And I think in a social media world, that's actually quite good. That's a necessary skill and one that also mitigates the need for regulation if more people are able to sort of zoom out and say, okay, if you think I'm an idiot, that doesn't mean I'm necessarily an idiot.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:39)
I was rereading Epictetus' Enchiridion just yesterday, precisely because I needed to remind myself that it's okay if other people are angry with you. Yes.
And you don't have to have an opinion about it. Exactly.

**Jacob Mchangama** (2:50)
And you know, I think you can, if you think people who make criticism of you are acting in good faith, then it might be a good idea to actually try and be objective about as well. Maybe they have a point.
Maybe they have a point that you've missed and so you can learn from it. But if you find that it's just gratuitously offensive, then you can just zoom out and do your best to ignore it.

**Savannah Locke** (3:17)
Have a healthy detachment from it.

**Lee C. Camp** (3:19)
Yes.

**Savannah Locke** (3:19)
Yeah.

**Lee C. Camp** (3:20)
All right. You're reading?

**Savannah Locke** (3:21)
This is, well, it's reminding me, Lee recommended that I read the book, The Courage to be Disliked. I don't know if you've heard of it before, but I read that last year because of you, because I don't like when people don't like me.

**Lee C. Camp** (3:33)
I didn't know you'd read it. That's good.

**Savannah Locke** (3:34)
Oh yeah, gosh, I read it in like a couple of days. I don't know, am I less codependent?

**Lee C. Camp** (3:39)
I don't know.

**Savannah Locke** (3:40)
But yeah, it's like a healthy detachment, being able to take feedback from people and when it's in good faith to be able to say, okay, what might be true about this while still maintaining my own sense of identity. But then simultaneously wrestling with the fact that especially with social media, sometimes people are just jerks. Like even this week episode that we had a couple of weeks ago has gone some traction on social media and Mary Evelyn runs a lot of our socials. And a couple of guys had put an animated gif towards me that just said shut up.