Can a democracy defend itself without destroying the freedoms that define it? Todd explores the collapse of free speech into spectacle, the lure of censorship and strongmen, and what happens when citizens start begging for order over liberty.

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This week on The Thompson Show (WWCR), Todd rips into the hypocrisy of cancel culture, collapsing media institutions, and the dangerous slide from free speech to approved (licensed) speech. From Kimmel’s suspension to the killings of Charlie Kirk and the Ukrainian woman in Charlotte, this episode asks whether free speech has now become the insurgent-weapon-of-choice aimed at liberal democracy itself? If so, can a free society defend itself without dismantling the freedoms that define it?

Drawing on Walter Lippmann’s century-old warning about propaganda, "special pleading" and the “hullabaloo of sophistry,” Todd dissects how algorithmic media, tribal militias, and weaponized outrage are pushing citizens to beg for censors or Caesars. At stake is more than free speech. Can open societies can survive the assault of illiberal forces without becoming illiberal themselves? (hint: it's still the people)

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Broadcast Info: 📡 WWCR 4840 kHz, Fridays 11 p.m. CT / midnight ET 📡 WBCQ 7490 kHz, Mondays 10 p.m. ET Replays: Toddzilla X-Pod

Perfect for listeners who want direct confrontation with the roots of our cultural crisis—delivered clear, sharp, and challenging.

Toddzilla X-Pod #171

Recorded Sept 17, 2025

In this spontaneous and gloriously unmapped episode, Todd takes stock of a country whose fabric is visibly fraying and reaction has become the story. He opens with the online ghoulishness around Charlie Kirk’s killing and the equal-and-opposite counter-reaction: firings and public consequences for people who cheered it on. The line he draws is clear: speech is free; consequences aren’t, but the state must stay out of it. (He calls out attempts to criminalize awful speech, noting the backlash from the right against that idea.)

From there he unpacks why debate keeps collapsing. Using campus showdowns as examples and borrowing from Jonathan Haidt’s “elephant and rider” model, Todd argues that many disputes start with a snap emotive conclusion and then invent reasons to justify it. When the rationalizations run out, the insults start. That feeds a broader doctrine, “words are violence”, which quietly normalizes physical confrontation by redefining speech as a violent assault.

Finally, Todd examines why the cancel-culture boomerang snapped back this week, warns against turning subjective “hate speech” into a government weapon that will eventually change hands, and returns to a recurring theme: social media as the staging ground of a civil war. Finally, a familiar concept gets a new name: The Matrix Mind. Bodies live in the real world; minds live in the feed. When we reduce people to avatars, it becomes easier to treat speech as violence — and to answer it with the real thing.

Unfiltered, candid, and uncomfortable by design.

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📡 WBCQ 7490 kHz, Mondays 10 p.m. ET

📡 WWCR 4840 kHz, Fridays 11 p.m. CT / midnight ET

Narratives > facts. Todd Thompson dissects the reaction to Charlie Kirk’s killing, the UK's massive Unite the Kingdom march, and a new frontier: identity-based “self-defense” militia groups moving from slogans to weapons. When speech is spun as violence, dialogue, then people, die.

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Broadcast on WBCQ 7490 kHz (Sept 15, 2025, 10 p.m. ET), Todd Thompson takes on a week where storylines outran facts. He starts with the media spin surrounding the UK’s Unite the Kingdom marches and the online chaos after Charlie Kirk’s killing—noting how even basic details now fracture along partisan lines.

From there, the episode tackles the asinine “words are violence” doctrine and why it normalizes deadly confrontation. Todd examines public materials and reporting around Armed Queers of Salt Lake City—a self-described socialist, anti-capitalist collective that promotes “queer resistance.” Posters featuring rifles, militant rhetoric, and campus events have circulated widely; as of broadcast, there was no confirmed official link to the Utah shooter, and Todd makes the larger point: once identity politics moves from slogans to weapons, taboos disintegrate and copycats follow.

Closer to home, he touches on a ridiculous incident in Kalamazoo where an Office Depot "manager" refused to print a Charlie Kirk vigil poster and was promptly fired; an emblem of the cancel-culture boomerang finally, and predictably, striking in the opposite direction. The through-line is trust: collapsing institutions, informational anarchy with incompatible “truths,” and a culture that can't even agree on what happened five minutes ago.

Blunt and unfiltered, the broadcast argues that dialogue only works if both sides still want a country to share. When moral certitude replaces inquiry, and institutions reward loyalty over facts, tribes do what tribes have always done.

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📡 WBCQ 7490 kHz, Mondays 10 p.m. ET

📡 WWCR 4840 kHz, Fridays 11 p.m. CT / midnight ET