Earlier this week, Lizzie O’Shea — lawyer, author, and co-founder and chair of Digital Rights Watch — joined me for some 5AM StoryTalk. You can listen to that here if you haven’t already. Today, Lizzie returns for a bonus episode exclusive to my superstar paid subscribers whose support keeps the lights on here. We’ll be discussing a seminal foundational piece of art from her life — Gustave Courbet’s perpetually controversial 1866 painting, L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), which you can check out below if you’re not afraid of the female anatomy.
This is a brilliant conversation about freedom of expression and censorship over the past 160 years. You’re about to learn a ton about Courbet’s work, the Paris Commune of 1871, the ethical challenges of content moderation today, how the political interests of technology companies often drives that content moderation, and much more. This is also an incredibly timely episode as we all struggle to recover our ability to communicate with each other after two decades of social media distorting our realities for clicks/profit.
If you’d like to hear more from Lizzie, but aren’t yet a paid subscriber yourself, you can upgrade now for $6 US a month or $60 a year. For that, you get full access to hundreds of articles and educational resources for screenwriters, arts seminars where you can seek direct help from me, and all of my podcast episodes — including bonus episodes — weeks, sometimes months earlier than you would if you subscribed to me at, say, Apple or Spotify. Most importantly, you help keep this independent media experiment alive with your support - thank you!
And don’t forget to listen to the first part of my conversation with Lizzie!
