Mike Grimshaw is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Canterbury. He joins Dane Giraud to make the free speech case for letting the Irish rap group Kneecap perform here, after Hungary barred them. You do not have to like the band to defend that, he argues.

The conversation then widens. Dane and Mike trace the transgressive history of rock and roll and hip-hop, and the long line of attempts to tame popular music. They start with the fear in the United States that the new music would bring young Black and white audiences together.

Grimshaw argues that earpods and algorithms have stripped music of its public power, and that subculture has faded. The manosphere, he says, has moved into the gap those subcultures left.

Free to Speak is the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union. Uncensored conversations on free speech, civil liberties, and the people defending them. Hosted by Dane Giraud.

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