Freedom House: The Messy History Behind the World's Freedom Score

Episode Summary

Freedom House was born on October 31, 1941, not as a quiet academic think tank but as an aggressively interventionist wartime operation co-founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, Wendell Willkie, and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Operating out of a 19-room New York City building with a fully operational broadcasting studio, they sponsored CBS radio programs like "Our Secret Weapon" — where mystery writer Rex Stout went on air weekly to rebut Axis propaganda, produced by Paul White, the founder of CBS News. When the war ended, they didn't disband; they pivoted to fighting communism, vigorously supporting the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Vietnam War. This interventionist DNA created sharp paradoxes: they awarded Martin Luther King Jr. their Freedom Awar ...