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If you listen to the gist, you probably share a certain sense of curiosity, the kind that enjoys following an idea wherever it leads and asking bigger questions along the way. Which is why I want to recommend another podcast I think many of you would enjoy. In fact, some have enjoyed it because I've talked about it before. It's a great podcast called no Small Endeavor, hosted by Lee C. Camp, Liz, a professor of theology and ethics. And on the show, he brings together scientists, writers, psychologists, and philosophers to explore a deceptively simple question, what does it mean to live a good life? Guests have included Malcolm Gladwell, happiness researcher Lori Santos, and other thinkers who've spent their careers studying how humans flourish. What I like about the show is the range of perspectives Lee brings to the table. Each conversation looks at life's big questions from a different angle, whether that's science, philosophy, faith, or culture. Need somewhere to start? Try the recent episode with conservationist Paul Rosalie, who has spent decades protecting the Amazon rainforest. It's a fascinating conversation about purpose, sacrifice, what it actually takes to devote your life to something bigger than yourself. Follow no Small Endeavor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. It's Tuesday, April 14, 2026, from Peach Fish Productions, it's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. I was talking to a friend of Min. Hungary, or as she says, Madyar or Sog. I mean, she doesn't say that for a couple of reasons. I totally butchered the translation and she just wouldn't say that. She knows to say Hungary. But have you ever seen the name of Hungary, maybe written on the back of their tracksuits during the Olympics? It's a lot of letters, a few accent marks. And it's because Hungarian belongs to the Uralic language families, specifically Urich, the Urich part of Uralic. And they have 44 letters in their Alphabet. And a lot of them are an A and A with an accent and E and E with an accent. I know, I'm traipsing over their language and applying my American English, E with an accent, descriptions of actual distinct vowels. They have, hey, Khmer, you know, Khmer of Cambodia. 74 letters in their Alphabet. Interesting. So the only reason I bring this up is because I have ADD, which is spelled with 18 different letters in the Hungarian Alphabet. Now, it is because I was thinking about Peter Magyar and Magyar. Wait a minute, isn't that the first part of Hungarian? And Hungarian is land of the Magyars, the people of Hungary. So basically the guy who just won the election in Hungary's name is Peter Hungary. Now, I know it gets a little complicated because we got the hungry, as in the I'm quite peckish. And Mike Pesca is talking about someone being peckish. He's Hungarian and is a Peter who is hungry. But what I'm saying is the man's name is as if an American named Johnny America. One office. Now, here's the thing. I thought I was being clever when I said that to my Ma Yar or sog friend. And then I saw on NPR a guy named Aaron Astor was quoted as saying Peter Magyar is almost too perfect and Hungarian name. It'd be like a guy named Johnny America running for president of the United States. Wow. I'm not going to say great minds think alike. I'm going to say as soon as you find out that Peter Magyar is named after the country, how do you not go there? But couldn't we have gone with Timmy America or Jimmy America? I had an altar to that insight and it was this. You know how Asa Hutchinson ran for president? What if his name were an asa? Asa but usa USA Hutchinson. And that is way too obscure. So to unwind this all the way back, Peter Modyar, congratulations. You now have to decide whether to depose, ignore or ban the last leader of Hungary. Huh? Huh? Yeah. Hungarian puns on the gist on the show today, the other show I have how to in fact, we meet Brett, a foreign policy expert, a veteran of the State Department who loves mysteries and therefore wanted to know what it would take to be a private investigator. She, of course, thought that can all just be sleuthing and the glamorous side of being a PI. But no, the actual PI she talked to was pretty encouraging.
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I came in thinking that Christian was going to disabuse me of the notion that this is a romantic, exciting career. Christian, you have done the exact opposite.
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You have abused her.
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B
Exactly.
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A
My notions have been fully abused. Abuse the subscribe button or at least go and check out how to solve a mystery. And on the gist in the spiel, President Pope, the smackdown. But first, Jacob Mitching Ma is back. He is the Vanderbilt professor who has been writing and thinking a lot about free speech. He also comes to it from a what we call a continental perspective, the continent that includes Magyar or Sag or in his case, he's Dutch, which gives him pretty interesting perspective as he writes the future of free speech, reversing the global decline of democracies. Most essential freedom. Jakob Michigama up next. Hey, it's spring and Spring means you might have a chilly morning and a very hot afternoon and mud and rain and everything that mother Nature throws at you, she's having a good time. Well, True Work will catch it, throw it back, or at least allow you to get the job done. Most workwear is made from cotton blends. It restricts your movement. It gets soaked after a few raindrops and not True Work. They use advanced performance fabrics to build products designed to work for you. They've been tested and validated for 10 years. They've been in the business, in the trades for a decade. 15,000 five star reviews. And I want to tell you about one of their products that I wear, the T2 work pant. I've used it outside to get the job done and I've just worn it out. And when I say worn it out, I mean it wears out. I mean, I've worn them to social events and they're really good looking. And I can tell you about the four way stretch. I can tell you about the water resistance. But I just want to tell you about the pockets. Let's not get too crazy, let's not get too scientific. The fact that they have nine pockets where you need the pockets even if you didn't know you needed them there. That is why the trade pro se and Mike Pesca says I'm wearing True Work. The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15 off your first order at True Work.com with code the gist that's True Work.com code the gist True Work. Built like it matters, because it does. We're joined once more by Jakob Michigama, who is the Vanderbilt professor and the author of the Future of Free Speech. Misinformation is just something that's wrong and we always have something that's wrong. And free speech principles dictate. And I think this is right. You just combat this bad information with good information and trust people or instruct people to get to the right answer. That's misinformation. Disinformation is someone trying to lie to you like a propagandist. And I think that's a whole other kettle of fish or a national security concern. For instance, do you have any analysis of what the conflation of those two terms, what it is doing? Is it purposeful? Does it misdirect us more than it lends clarity?
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But I mean, I think those two categories are often impossible to disentangle. Because how do you know whether, you know, let's say someone posts something on X which is wrong, false, how do you know whether that person was just misinformed, actually believed it might be true, or whether it was a nefarious actor who was purposely trying to deceive the public? That will, that will often be.
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A
Well, you don't know. But the, so much of First Amendment law and just ethical considerations of this is, is the person wrong or is the person lying? And that's.
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B
Well, yeah, well, First Amendment law, that becomes a question sort of in defamation cases. But it doesn't become, you know, the First Amendment doesn't punish you if you knowingly say, if someone like a big influencer on X goes out and says Donald Trump won the 2020 election and the Democrats stole it, even though there's no evidence for it, that would be, that would be protected speech even though you might classify it as this disinformation. But if you go out and accuse, you know, if someone says Mike Pesca committed a serious crime, then you might have an actionable cause for defamation. So.
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Right.
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So I think follow it up with
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you stole my heart, sir. And that,
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B
so I think it's also important to say that who determines what is disinformation? Right. So the classic example in our social media era is the suppression by some social media platforms of the lap league theory, right?
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A
Yeah.
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So at one point the lap leak theory is dismissed as almost like a racist conspiracy theory and there's attempts to sort of throttle it on social media platforms. But then new evidence emerges the that maybe this is not a far fetched theory, maybe it's plausible, I have no idea. Maybe we'll never know. And so this is why it's also important to not have categorical definitions of mis and disinformation or at least hard definitions that are backed up by state power. Another big discussion right now. You know, Jonathan Haidt is probably the most influential pusher of online age verification laws. He believes he has shown evidence that social media use usage of teens leads to an epidemic of mental health issues. A lot of other scientists in the field say, well, actually the evidence is very mixed and the science doesn't back up Jonathan Haidt's case. But a lot of governments are very influenced by, by Jonathan Haidt and are now legislating based on the premise that he is right. But this is a discussion that is unlikely. Well, maybe it'll be settled as new science emerges, but I think it would be extremely dangerous to declare one or the other position right or False. This is unfortunately the messy reality we live in. There's not always a clear answer to what is what what what is what is right and wrong.
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A
So one of my reactions to your 1961 example of COVID up of brutality and beatings of Algerians in France is that as you said, I agree this wouldn't be able to be covered up now, but what would happen is a lie that something like that did happen, or a lie that Algerians went marauding through France and beat up some French nationals. That would get widespread dissemination. I can't say that one is better than the other. We've got to a place where you can't really suppress the truth, but you can very much foment a lie.
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B
So let me give you what I think is a, is a very powerful rebuttal to that. Few months ago, this ICU nurse Alex Preddy was shot by border agent patrols in Minnesota. And immediately, you know, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller, Cash Patel, the Trump administration was out saying this is a domestic terrorist. He was essentially, it was his own fault that he was killed. What happened was within hours, Kash Patel, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller and the DHS X account were community noted on X because there was video evidence. There were all kinds of media organizations and others that had gone through play by play, all the available evidence. And the community notes, just to geek out a little bit, essentially is based on a bridging algorithm. So if someone proposes a community node, it needs to get a support from a critical mass of people with different perspectives, so coming from conservatives and liberals and independents. If it's only liberals, then the community node won't be shown. And I think that was a powerful example of how you push back on government lies and obfuscation. And what actually happened was one of the rare instances where the Trump administration had to backtrack and change its narrative and sort of say, okay, well maybe things were a bit more complicated than our initial narrative that this is a domestic terrorist. I think that is something that has immense potential when it's sort of organic, bottom up driven fact checking by a critical mass of ordinary American citizens from all kinds of different perspectives. Because it is essentially the American people fact checking its government. And these are still early stages of crowdsource fact checking, something that was actually pioneered in Taiwan. But if this becomes something that's also experimented with on meta platforms on YouTube, but if this becomes adopted on a mass scale, it becomes the default mechanism on social media platforms, you could imagine in the best case scenario that it becomes a powerful Disincentive for brazen lying by politicians and the most influential influence, because if a Trump administration official is being called out as a liar are by the New York Times or liberal media, that's almost a badge of honor. Right. You don't care because your base is, you know, doesn't regard anything that comes out of the New York Times as relevant. But if it's a, if it's a critical mass of users on X, a platform where a lot of your supporters get their information, then it's a whole different ball game.
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A
So, so let's articulate maybe what's going on. Tell me if you agree you can't fully suppress or largely suppress truth, given our media ecosystem. But as I talked about, you can't really fully suppress lies either. You could do some things to combat them, but you can't really fully suppress them like you could when a couple large families and three broadcast networks owned the means of dissemination of information. And a problem is that lies, even when they get 15, 20, pick a number percent purchase, have a lot of power, such as lies about vaccination and when you think about herd immunity or such, about lies about the election, when you're talking about a significant portion of the believers of one political party. So it's asymmetric. The truth is, can't be suppressed at all, but the lie can't be suppressed sufficiently. And what's sufficient with suppressing a lie is a different, there's a different level, a different bar than when it comes to truth.
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B
Yeah. Again, I think some of the, the research on mis and disinformation shows, you know, so initially there was this hyperdemic needle theory. Right. You know, people go on social media, they see misinformation, their beliefs and their evaluation of what really happened are changed and people become slaves to misinformation. I think the available research shows a very different picture. First of all, misinformation constitutes a relatively small share of content on social media platforms. And mis and disinformation tends to be most consumed and shared by hyper partisans. So it's actually more difficult. You know, it's not like you wake up in, in 2020 as a Hillary Clinton supporter, then you go on X and you see video that accuses her of eating children in her basement and suddenly you change your political views overnight. So I think that is to be
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clear, just the blood, not the actual children, is, is the.
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B
But of course, the problem here is that especially in a polarized country like the United States, the social media online environment that we inhabit is A gift for motivated reasoning in the sense that you can immerse yourself in a bespoke reality, coined, termed, I think by Rene derista, where you only engage with information that reinforces your views and lies, which would be more difficult in the old days where, you know, it would be harder to seek out those kind of things. So that is a real concern, a real, A real trade off that I think we have to take seriously. My sense is that it's not an effective cure to try to mitigate this through information control. I think I come from a very high trust society. America does not fit that description. Generally trust is just lower than very homogenous Scandinavian societies that I was born in. But also trust in academic institutions, in traditional media, in politicians is plummeting. And so I think the conditions are ripe for choosing conspiracy theories when you don't have trust in those traditional institutions that helped glue society together. So I think one of the bigger challenges is how do you reverse not only the free speech recession, but the trust recession? And that's below, that's above my pay grade on how you do that.
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A
So back to the idea of the government response to disinformation in the digital age. Is it accurate to say that there was some sort of consensus, and you're right, about the reaction to hate speech? So maybe it's not, but the classic Nazis marching through Skokie was to be allowed, maybe even celebrated as something that America allows, because if we come for this speech, hate speech that we object to, then down the line someone will come for our speech and call it hate speech. So what I'm saying is there was a consensus around what to do with hate speech, which was to put up with it because we have competing virtues. But that consensus did not apply to statements of fact. It was seen, and you're arguing it should have been seen by the same liberals as in the general category of Nazis marching through Illinois. But it was seen as something else. It was seen as something that it was possible to eradicate because we weren't talking about values, we were talking about facts or not facts.
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I would, I would argue that the demographics in the, in, in, in the United States that have that, that are very concerned about disinformation and maybe want the government to do something about it, has also become more concerned about hate speech. And often, often these two concepts are conflated actually and in general just put less value on speech and free speech in our digital age and see it as corrosive because it's now at scale and you don't have those traditional gatekeepers that you had before. But it is, I think, important to note that the American tradition of speech exceptionalism is a relatively new phenomenon. The seminal case Brandenburg vs Ohio is from 1969, where Clarence Brandenburg and his KKK buddy friends were standing in full regalia, armed and sort of saying that if the government didn't do something about the blacks and the Jews, they would do it themselves. He was convicted, but the Supreme Court said that you can only restrict speech when it constitutes incitement to imminent lawless action that is likely to produce such results. That's sort of the, the articulation of the, of the civil libertarian ethos underlying the First Amendment currently. So. So I don't know that people necessarily view these two things differently. I read a lot of articles where I see people saying we need to change the First Amendment because of disinformation and hate speech. And so they basically see these two concepts as two evils that outweigh the civil libertarian ideal, which maybe was misguided all along, forgetting what I think is a seminal part of American history. It's something that we write about. Jeff and I, my co author of the book in a chapter called Four Hateful Men, where you can actually see that American free speech law in some of the most important cases were the protagonists in those cases were very despicable human beings with viewpoints that were deeply hateful. But the principle that was crystallized in those cases has benefited unpopular minorities, the rights of anti Semitic racist people, benefited civil rights protesters who were arrested for peaceful protest. And I think that is still a valid case for free speech in our age.
- [23:03]
A
Jacob Mitchingama, thank you so much.
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B
Thank you so much, Mike. I really enjoyed it.
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A
And we have more with Jakob Michigama. If you are a Pesca plus subscriber, you get access to this. And if not, I beseech you to go to subscribe.mike pesca.com for all the speech on free speech. Subscribe.mike pesca.Com. Hey, it's spring. And spring means you might have a chilly morning and a very hot afternoon and mud and rain and everything that Mother Nature throws at you. She's having a good time. Well, true work will catch it, throw it back, or at least allow you to get the job done. Most workwear is made from cotton blends. It restricts your movement. It gets soaked after a few raindrops. Not true work. They use advanced performance fabrics to build products designed to work for you. They've been tested and validated for 10 years. They've been in the business in the trades for a decade, 15,500 reviews. And I want to tell you about one of their products that I wear, the T2 work pant. I've used it outside to get the job done and I've just worn it out. And when I say worn it out, I mean it wears out. I mean I've worn them to social events and they're really good looking. And I can tell you about the four way stretch, I can tell you about the water resistance. But I just want to tell you about the pockets. Let's not get too crazy, let's not get too scientific. The fact that they have nine pockets where you need the pockets even if you didn't know you needed them there. That is why the trade pro se and Mike Pesca says I'm wearing true work. The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15 off your first order at truewerk.com with code the gist. That's truewerk.com code the gist True True work. Built like it matters, because it does. And now the spiel. Donald Trump goes in so many directions with his slights and fights, it's hard to keep track. So especially during the first term, we didn't. We threw up our hands. We chalked it all up too, if we wanted to excuse him, Trump being Trump. And if we didn't, we'll also Trump being Trump. Just a negative valence you may have picked up in that phrasing this time around. I do think some of his more outrageous, disgusting statements are, as the kids say, hitting different. When he denigrated the life and legacy of Rob Reiner days after his murder, I don't think anyone tried to excuse it. Recently he made quite a post about destroying a whole civilization in Iran. I don't think the biggest backers of the 101st Airborne Division were too enthused by that one. But in the last couple of days he really stepped in the poop over the Pope. Now if you remember, in term one, Trump put the then Pope, Pope Francis on blast, buttressed, he believed, by critiques of the very liberal. Francis is out of step with the traditionalists within the Catholic Church. This time around he just seems to like the Pope's brother more than the Pope. And that is because Louis Prevost is a MAGA guy. I have to say, if you told me that the President and the Pope would be tangling one day in My lifetime, I would say. Well, you know, one's old and probably doesn't understand most Americans, and that is exactly what's going on. But please understand that the Pope is the guy who's 70 and from Chicago. And the president turns 80 in precisely two months and seems extremely out of touch with middle Americans or people who aren't members of Mar a Lago. All manner of politicians have distanced themselves from Trump's remarks this time around. The Democrats, of course, are outraged. Even the rare Republican who is bold enough or leaving the Senate enough to speak out against the president has done so. Here's Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
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C
I thought it was absurd.
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A
Yeah. And his explanation, do you buy his explanation that he thought he was a doctor or.
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C
Well, you know, the way I look at it, that's an image. I'm a lifelong Catholic. That's an image that. The moment I saw it, you know, I saw it in abstraction. So anybody, he should add advisors warned him off of that. That should have been up for 30 seconds. If he really felt that way, some staff should have had a brain to let him know what it really was.
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A
And his attacks against the Pope, how do you. How do you respond to that?
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I think the Pope has taken a position that comes straight, straight from the Bible and his liturgical teachings. And it's never really a good look for politicians to cross swords with popes. Very seldom ends well.
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A
Whereas VP JD Vance is trying to put things in perspective. This on Fox News.
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D
I think the President was posting a joke, and of course he took it because he recognized that a lot of people weren't understanding his humor. In that case, I think the President, United States likes to mix it up on social media. And I actually think that's one of the good things about this president, is that he's not filtered. He doesn't send everything through a communications professional. He actually reaches out directly to the people.
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A
Sort of a pastoral outreach to the laity, if you will. Trump himself denied posting what is a clear image of himself as a Jesus figure, saying that. No, no, he was portraying himself as a doctor, the kind of doctor with glowing hands who was healing the sick. He was not, in that moment, truthing ex cathedra. I guess we would agree. The other thing to note is that these own goals, these excesses, these offensive untruths, call them what you will, would be one thing if Trump were riding high on his immigration and economic policies, but he is not. He is at this point with a net approval of 39.5%, according to Nate Silver and a disapproval of 56.7, the lowest in this term, though he was doing worse at certain points the first time around. The smart punditry will always tell you, nah, it doesn't matter. Trump's personality, the things he says, the outrageous truths, it's all baked in. And it is true. I don't think this will change many minds, but here's the thing about a guy with a 39.55% approval rating who is facing a midterm where the generic Democrat is out polling the generic Republican by about 7 or 8 points. Trump actually has to change minds. Not changing minds will not help him politically. It's not enough to bank on his MAGA coalition plus whatever stray threads of Q and on still exist when the most powerful man in the world tangles with the Vicar of Christ on Earth. To quote, not a politician, but royalty. In fact, Prince the musician Prince. I could be the President, but I'd rather be the Pope. That's it for today's show. Corey Wara produces the gist. Benister is our booking producer. Kathleen Sykes is out with a great gist list with me today. What a picture of a hippo wearing Hungarian flair. Not the usual hippo, just dressed up as if they voted in the Hungarian election. That's at mikepasca Substack. Michelle Pesca curates the Lauren Hunter Visual Arts Collection. We'll try to provide links to some of those paintings. And thanks for listening.