Drawn from over 1,000 interviews Eliza Jane Schneider conducted throughout the country, Freedom of Speech presents over thirty of the people she met in her travels. Sparked by a senior thesis project in World Arts and Cultures at UCLA (for which she received a BFA), she acquired a second-hand ambulance and criss-crossed the country in a 317,000 mile odyssey, conducting over 1,000 interviews. What began as a study of American Regional Dialects emerged as an extraordinary exploration of lives as they are lived in their wonderful variety across the expanse of this great nation.