Robert Corn-Revere: Pardoning Lenny Bruce, Janet Jackson's Super Bowl & a Life in Free Speech

He's been called the finest First Amendment attorney in the country... and he started out playing tuba in an Illinois high school band. Robert Corn-Revere joins Mike Jones to talk about the music that shaped him and the censorship fights that made his career, from "Louie Louie" to the Super Bowl. It's a warm, funny conversation about why words matter and who gets to police them. Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:03 What Bob's listening to: Dead South, Robert Plant, Brubeck 03:05 Classic rock kid, coming late to jazz 04:55 Tuba, debate, and the road to law 08:00 Music vs. AI and the lost ritual of the album 18:54 "I hate bullies" why First Amendment law 20:04 Moral panics: the jazz age, Tipper Gore & Zappa 25:12 The "Louie Louie" FBI investigation 28:42 Janet Jackson and the eight-year Super Bowl case 37:23 Pardoning Lenny Bruce 50:57 FIRE today: Ann Selzer and the fight ahead In this episode How a posthumous pardon for Lenny Bruce actually got signed and the phone call Bob took in a Sports Authority parking lot Why the FBI spent 18 months trying to decode "Louie Louie" before anyone checked the copyrighted lyrics What really happened in the control room during the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" Why Bob argues that "pretty much everything politics touches, it diminishes or destroys" The case for free speech that has nothing to do with left or right 🎧 Listen everywhere: TheStereoImage.com 📷 Instagram: @the.stereo.image 📘 Bob's book: The Mind of the Censor and the Eye of the Beholder jazz podcast, The Stereo Image, Mike Jones, Robert Corn-Revere, First Amendment, free speech, Lenny Bruce, Janet Jackson Super Bowl, Louie Louie, music censorship, Frank Zappa PMRC, FIRE foundation, censorship, Penn and Teller