Who owns the right to learn, to publish, to access ideas? Can scholarship ever truly serve the public if it remains locked behind walls of privilege and profit?

John Willinsky is the Khosla Family Professor Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and one of the world’s leading voices in the movement for open access to scholarly knowledge. He is the founder of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), a research and software initiative that has transformed how academic research is shared globally. His work spans literary theory, curriculum studies, lexicography, and the history of education, all woven together by a lifelong commitment to making knowledge a public good rather than a private commodity.

In this episode, John and I explore how the history of education is tied to the politics of access. He traces the evolution of universities from their monastic origins to their modern role as engines of research, revealing how both authority and exclusion became embedded in the idea of scholarship. We talk about the power of language, dictionaries, and literature to shape our moral and cultural imagination—and how those same tools have been used to define who gets to know and who does not.

Our conversation moves from literary theory and imperialism to technology, open science, and the age of misinformation. John explains why he believes knowledge must be treated like air—something that belongs to all of us—and how opening access to research can restore trust in truth itself. We discuss the moral urgency of creating systems that reward generosity rather than prestige, and the cultural shift needed to view learning as a shared human right. This episode invites listeners to imagine a world where curiosity, not profit, is the currency of knowledge.