Have you ever tried to define a concept that feels completely obvious in your head, but the second you try to put it into words, the idea just disintegrates? In this episode of pplpod, we explore one of the most famous linguistic collisions in legal history: Justice Potter Stewart’s legendary admission during the 1964 Jacobellis v. Ohio case. Faced with the impossible task of defining "hardcore pornography" to determine its status under First Amendment protections, Stewart effectively threw his hands up, stating the now-iconic phrase, "I know it when I see it." This single moment of candor exposed the underlying fragility of obscenity law and the inherent limits of our shared vocabulary. We journey from the restrictive 19th-century Hicklin test to the modern-day  ...