Jad Abumrad

So here's a quote.

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.

And you're like, wait, that's this.

You're the same guy that nine months ago was like lock up everybody.

Had he said this sort of thing ever?

Why would this nearly 80-year-old...

heterosexual cisgender white uh privileged powerful wealthy man like what made him in those eight months change his mind so radically so quickly right so really the question is if you boil it down into three words the three words are what up homes um ridiculous

So in a way, it's like it's a mystery of one man, but it's a mystery that has this ripple effect into kind of the what is now perceived to be like the quintessential freedom in the land of the free.

Because that dissent, that argument he made after he changed his mind, it's the reason why people like Healy say that Holmes laid the groundwork for our modern understanding of free speech.

So this 180 in Holmes' head over the course of eight months, this is one of the biggest mysteries in the history of the Supreme Court.

And Healy gets obsessed with this very specific question.

Like, why did Holmes change his mind?

In this spreadsheet, he retracted each of those days in that year and a half around those eight months, right?

And he microscopically pours over Holmes' life, including what Holmes was doing.

He even reads the books that Holmes's friends are writing and reading just in case they had a conversation with Holmes.

That's great.

And like what possibly they could have said to Holmes that would have made him change his mind.

One thing he notices as he's digging into the daily doings of Oliver Wendell Holmes is that... He became very close with a group of young progressive intellectuals in Washington, D.C.

He had a group of very young friends, these brilliant progressive legal scholars.

Among them was...