Susan Sarandon is not interviewed in any of the excerpts below and is not discussed as a political figure, an actress or a subject in her own right. She appears instead as a recurring hypothetical in Bob Zadek’s exposition of a constitutional distinction: the First Amendment and the Constitution generally limit government, not private persons, so private boycotts, picketing and refusals to buy a performer’s work cannot violate that performer’s free-speech rights. The same example recurs in episodes spanning 2011 to 2023, in contexts ranging from campus speech to social-media censorship to public-sector labor law. A separate 2017 episode uses her, alongside other entertainers, as an illustration of a puzzle about income inequality.
The boycott example and the state-action doctrine
In the 2011 episode on public and private universities, Bob Zadek introduces Sarandon as an example of a category of complaint he considers misconceived. He describes people who feel their free-speech rights are being abridged complaining that they have a constitutionally protected right to say whatever they want, wherever they want, and he places Sarandon in that group, referring to her and to Barbra Streisand as figures who complain that their movies are picketed and avoided, or their records not being bought, because of what they think, and who say that this violates their free-speech rights. Zadek’s answer is that it does not: the guarantee of free speech in the Constitution is only a protection from government denying you free speech rights Is Your Alma Mater a Soviet Gulag? (2011).
The guest in that episode, Harvey Silverglate, agrees with Zadek’s characterization. Silverglate’s contribution is a refinement rather than a correction of the underlying point: he notes that the First Amendment does protect student free speech on public university campuses because, for constitutional purposes, they are considered the government, and that this is not true on private campuses, where free speech is protected instead by a principle known as academic freedom Is Your Alma Mater a Soviet Gulag? (2011). The Sarandon example thus serves, in that episode, as the intuitive case that establishes the state-action baseline before the discussion moves to the harder question of private universities and the promises made in student handbooks.
Zadek returns to the same example in the 2019 episode on social-media censorship, in a caller segment. A caller named Michael asks whether the Constitution limits only the government and says nothing about private people or private businesses, so that nothing Facebook could do would be unconstitutional. Zadek confirms that this was his point, and restates the Sarandon illustration: individuals will complain, he says, that if people boycott a movie because they do not like Sarandon’s point of view, she might complain that her free-speech rights are being violated by the boycott, when in fact no such violation occurs. Zadek’s formulation is that the Constitution only affects the relationship between citizens and government, not between citizens inter se Social Media Censorship (2019).
The same episode extends the analysis beyond the boycott example. The guest, Bill Ottman, raises a constitutional issue with NSA spying under the PRISM program that Edward Snowden exposed, describing revolving-door relationships between the NSA and companies including Facebook and Yahoo through which data was sent directly to the NSA, and identifying Fourth Amendment issues. Zadek agrees and characterizes the matter as a very specific holding by the court concerning data given to a third-party carrier such as a phone company, under which the individual has surrendered privacy to a third-party holder and the prohibition on government access to that data through the third party is diminished Social Media Censorship (2019). The Sarandon example and the PRISM discussion sit at opposite ends of the same doctrine: private action is not constitutionally constrained, while government access to data held by third parties is constrained only weakly.
The example in the public-sector union episode
The 2023 episode with Philip K. Howard on public-sector unions contains the latest appearance of the Sarandon example in these excerpts, and it is again Bob Zadek’s, not the guest’s. In the middle of a discussion of due process and work rules, Zadek observes that due process is a specific concept dealing for the most part with governmental behavior in a criminal context, and that people apply the First Amendment to employment relationships as they do the phrase due process. His illustration is that there is no free speech in that setting, and that Sarandon is not deprived of her free speech if people do not attend her movies Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023).
The surrounding argument in that episode is Howard’s. Howard argues that civil service was supposed to be a merit system, that it was a process of neutral hiring rather than tenure or lifetime employment, and that public employees are now the spoils system again, except permanent, because of total union control. He contends that collective bargaining must be gotten rid of because it puts unions first in line for benefits ahead of the public, and he points to bankrupt states, lousy schools, toxic police cultures and transit systems costing three times what they ought to cost because of work rules. He also describes arbitration in police discipline in which the arbitrators who decide are picked by the police union, and a subway-cleaning contract in which a private contractor did three times as much work for the dollar Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023). Zadek’s Sarandon remark functions in that episode as a brief analogy for the misuse of constitutional language, not as a claim about her.
The entertainer as a case in the inequality discussion
The 2017 episode with Ed Conard uses Sarandon for an entirely different purpose. Bob Zadek asks Conard, as a social commentator, why captains of industry and successful businesspeople are demonized and given negative qualities in media, movies, television and the writings of opinion makers, while successful entertainers — he names Leonardo DiCaprio and Sarandon, who make awful lots of money and spend it in a somewhat ostentatious way — seem to get a pass, even though their income is at least as unequal Debunking Inequality Myths with Ed Conard (2017).
Conard’s answer is that consumers can see directly the value a movie star or sports star creates for them, that they can see the entertainer is doing no harm and that no crony capitalism is involved, that one person’s developed talent does not hurt another’s, and that the audience recognizes the success was truly earned by working harder even when talent was inborn. He contrasts this with the CEO of Exxon or the CEO of Time Warner, where the process goes on behind the scenes and people are more leery, believing there is more corruption, crony capitalism, luck and nefarious dealing. Zadek adds that although everyone recognizes Steve Jobs improved life on the planet, there is no one-on-one relationship between an iPhone and the genius behind Apple, and Conard replies that Jobs and Bill Gates are given a pass and treated as sports heroes because the value they created is recognized Debunking Inequality Myths with Ed Conard (2017). Sarandon here is one name in a list, not the argument’s subject.
Across episodes: the same example, differently deployed
The Sarandon example is stable across the 2011, 2019 and 2023 episodes: in each, Bob Zadek uses her to illustrate that private boycotts and audience rejection are not constitutional violations, and in each the surrounding argument is supplied by a guest — Harvey Silverglate on public versus private campuses, Bill Ottman on platform censorship and NSA surveillance, Philip K. Howard on public-sector unions. What changes is the doctrinal setting, not the example or its owner; the 2017 episode is the outlier, using Sarandon in an economic rather than a constitutional argument, as an instance of the entertainer who escapes the hostility aimed at business success. The excerpts show no development in Zadek’s treatment of the example itself, and no episode in which Sarandon speaks or is interviewed.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no biographical information about Sarandon, no description of her political positions, no account of any film she appeared in, and no statement from her. They do not report any lawsuit, boycott or controversy involving her beyond the hypothetical complaints Zadek attributes to her as an example. Nothing in the sources indicates whether she ever appeared on the program, and no guest’s view of her beyond the passing references above is recorded.