The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Banned Books, Hamas Coverage & Other Free Speech Matters with PEN CEO Suzanne Nossel

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

PEN CEO and author of the book Dare To Speak, Suzanne Nossel discusses the coverage of Hamas, the banning of books in school libraries, Twitter, and other free speech matters. Buy her book! https://www.amazon.com/Dare-Speak-Defending-Free-Speech/dp/0062966030

The Comedy Cellar Podcast, this week featuring the CEO of the Penn America Center and author of the book, Dare to Speak, defending free speech for all, Suzanne Nocelle. This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous Comedy Cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99, Raw Dog. And wherever you get your podcasts, Dan Aderman here, a comedian and regular at the Comedy Cellar with Noam Dorman, owner of the Comedy Cellar with Perry Alashenbrand as well, who is our producer. Is that an impression of somebody's voice? This is live?

I do that every time. Yeah, but it sounded a little different, didn't it? Well, not by design. If it did, that was a happenstance. First of all, before our guest arrives, you might have noticed that I colored my hair.

I mentioned that on our last episode that I was going to do it, and I have done it indeed. And if there's any thoughts... I think it looks good. It looks very natural. It's a little lighter than my natural color, but when I look at it in the mirror, it's a bit jarring because I'm not used... First of all, I've been gray for so long that I'm not used to it, but also it's not quite my natural color anyway. But Esty says it's good and I should keep doing

it. Keith Robinson approved. Marina Franklin so far. Keith has always been an advocate for that. How often do you have to do it now? Well, I think like once every two months. It's annoying. Did you go to a hairdresser to do it? I did. I went to a hairdresser. It was you know, $80. But Aruba Ray paid for it. And what happened to your eye?

That's psoriasis. That's nothing to do with my hair. I thought maybe it was a reaction to the dye. No, no. I have psoriasis. You've always had psoriasis. That's nothing to do with my hair. I thought maybe it was a reaction to the diet. No, no. I have psoriasis. You've always had psoriasis? Is it heartbreaking? Remember that old commercial,

The Heartbreak of Psoriasis? Oh, no. It's a mild... It's only mild. I mean, if I had watches all over my face... Not mild, but look at that eye. Oh, really? No, no.

But stop doing that. If I... Yeah. Can't you get a cream for that? Yeah, put cream on it. But I'm also trying to do a lower inflammatory diet, which may or may not work. It won't work. Okay.

Which involves less sugar, less carbohydrates, simple carbs, you know, white bread. Now, I get a touch of eczema, although I haven't had it lately. What's the difference between eczema and psoriasis? I have no idea. But psoriasis is autoimmune. I don't know if eczema is autoimmune or not. Psoriasis is autoimmune and inflammatory. Psoriasis is awful, actually I don't know if eczema is autoimmune or not. Psoriasis is autoimmune and inflammatory. Psoriasis is awful, actually.

Remember when you got poison ivy? Yeah, it looked like that. No. Oh, my God, that was crazy. Your whole leg. You know what? I'll post a picture on the video. I'll cut a picture.

The picture of my toe looked like gangrene. Finally, I got prednisone, and it went away like that. I don't know why they hold off on the prednisone. You should get that right away with you. Is that something you swallow or a cream? It's a swallow, but it's an anti-inflammatory. Okay, all right. Well, this is riveting.

With everything going on in the world, I'm glad that we're really getting— Please do not bash the cast. I think it is interesting. Do you want me to cut out the thing about your eye? I didn't mean to. No, that's fine. It just looks like you scratched your eye. Well, I did because I'm picking at it.

But anyway. So your hair looks good. I'm going to tell you what's wrong with it. Okay. You need to go spend $300 and get one of those people who put in a touch of gray so it doesn't look obviously dyed. Now, I'm not saying it looks obviously dyed and I would call it out, but if you continue this

way, imperceptibly, at some point, it's going to look obviously dyed and you're not going to know when you've hit that point and that's a point you don't want to be at. But I've seen people who get their hair dyed with just a little bit of gray, and it looks exactly like a guy who's sort of going gray because the sharp difference between a perfectly unicolored head, coif, or whatever. And a face that's clearly. And a face that's getting older. It's dark.

And people don't even realize. And somebody we know has that. I don't want to say who it is. Now, on black guys, it's easier, you don't really notice that as much. But on, on white guys, especially on the whiter shade of white that you are, paler guys, I think it's, I think it's risky. Well, Noam, you've kept, you've kept most of your original color, it seems, when I look at your, not your beard, which is quite white, but the hair on your head isn't particularly gray. But it's gray. But not ridiculous. If I had black hair, it would be more noticeable. Also, it was grayer. I had

more gray hair in my head when I was younger and I don't know... It doesn't go back, right? So I think it thinned. I think I lost... Would you ever dye your beard? Would I? I would if it was appropriate for going on TV or something like that, but I don't have any.

I'm not bothered by my beard. Like, you know, people like, a lot of people, Jon Stewart. I always admired that some people like Johnny Carson just went gray, and they said, fuck it, I'm going gray. Like, who am I kidding? I like that. It's interesting because usually men don't color as much as women do. It's like if a woman goes gray, it's like, usually men don't color as much as women do

it's like if a woman goes grey it's like oh my god a lot of men do though especially in show business I think it looks good I think Noam has a point I probably have at least a couple years before I get to where Noam is suggesting

but he's right you don't know men don't realize it, especially they've been doing it for so long. It's like women who get a lot of filler and Botox. They don't realize at some point. Somebody posted... You know my famous banana joke that Louis C.K. made?

Semi-famous, I guess. Yeah. But somebody said that... Apparently somebody did it in German. It looks like it's on a podcast. Somebody sent me the video, which I then uploaded to my story just to see if anybody can confirm

that this is indeed my banana joke. Somebody wrote that it is. The only word I can understand is banana in the German, and condom. How do you say condom in German? Condom. I mean, we could play it, I suppose. It's on my story on Instagram.

I don't know, can we pull that up? So I don't know if, I assume it's my joke. I don't know if he attributes it to me, but I don't hear my name in there anywhere. First they take my grandfather's factory. There is a teacher in front of a professional school, biology, and he says, I'll show you today how to make a condom over an irritated joint.

For that, I have these bananas with me, because without anything in my stomach, I don't get a latte. I think he told it better than you. Apparently, he's a better comic than me. Yeah, they were howling. Now, that's got to make you feel good, Dan. Yeah, like Perry, I'll ask if I had a problem with it. And I don't because everybody knows it's my joke. So it's not like he, you know, and plus I don't really work in Germany anyway.

But even if I did, I'm sure a lot of people in Germany know it's mine because Louis has a following in Germany too. And Louis was the one who quoted me. So anyway, so you. Yeah, so I don't, I'm not like, I don't really care. Like, I'm not like, oh my God, he stole my joke. How dare he? I'm like, good. It can only lead to, probably will lead to nothing.

But if it led to anything, it would lead to more people knowing who I am. I do have a question. Do you look at the things that I send you on Instagram now? Occasionally. Listen, I was fantasizing yesterday about not even carrying a phone anymore. It's ruining my goddamn fucking life.

I can't stop with these screens. My wife says I'm not present. Maybe it's time to retire then. What's that? Maybe if you retire. I don't want to retire. I just don't want to carry around this cellular

leash anymore. I don't want to look at Periel's fucking Instagram. And I don't want to get grief for not looking at them. I don't want to answer text messages. I don't want... I just I want to be free.

But I think the only way to accomplish that is to just retire. I mean, you have a business to take care of. Why are you pushing me off the stage, Dan? I'm saying, what other alternative do you have? You've got a business that needs to be rerun and that requires you to pay attention to fucking email. An alternative could be to

hire an assistant who has my phone, who then, and I have a phone, but nobody has a number, and that the assistant once a day or whatever it is will... It's not going to be once a day

because there are some things that require timely answers from you. Right, but she could... She. immediately is she they it's not going to be a he that she or they could um could uh you know use their judgment and decide what i should be bothered with i have good assistant knows when it's pressing and when it's not pressed i have taken now i have i just have to call him because he doesn't answer emails.

He'll ask me to do something or contact somebody or do something. And it's like, you know, he wants it done now. By the way, you say, you know, you... Careful. This is interesting. You say, oh, it's got to be a she. But the truth is, I don't care if the assistant's a he.

No, that's not... Hold on. The fact is that if I put an ad out for an assistant, it's much more likely going to be, from my life experience, women or gay guys who are going to answer that ad. I'm assuming it's going to be a she, not because I would

never have a cis male or whatever. I can't get the jargon right. But assistant is because that's who would come for that job. They're also not nearly as good. What, men? Yeah, straight men. No, you know, imagining yourself at the age you are now, did you imagine that you'd be busier than at any point in your life

or did you not or you never thought about it? I'm not busier than at any point in your life or did you not or you never thought about it? I'm not busier than at any point in my life. I've been way busier, but I was busier with less, with fewer numbers of things to do. Like I'm running a business, I get up and I go deal with the sound system

or coding or whatever it is that I've been doing in my life, rehearsals. But this is like constantly from 50 different people, emails, customers, one-star reviews. It's just Perrielle's dumb thing. Why do you need to send me an Instagram about some couple in marital therapy

and then the kids and Mila's texting me about her TikTok videos, and then she wants me to unlock her phone, and then it's literally, it's a barrage, and it's too much. It's too much. And then for the first time, I've been tweeting a little bit

because I'm trying to get the show, and then you want to see what's going on on Twitter. You want to see how many people have watched the YouTube video. I can't take it. I'm very unhappy. Well, speaking of the YouTube video, the last episode we had on Professor Rashid Khalidi,

who is a Palestinian professor, and it didn't end. We thought it ended amicably, right? Amicably? Amicably. Amicably, yeah. But apparently it didn't. Can we talk about this now?

Yeah, you can talk about it. I'm so glad. I can't believe we... This, yeah. But apparently it didn't. Can we talk about this now? Yeah, you can talk about it. I'm so glad. I can't believe this. Yes, please. Let's talk about it. We put Periel in charge of writing him a... Conciliatory email. Right, a conciliatory email.

And she instead threw gasoline on the fire. No, no. Tell the whole thing. Let me set the backdrop. Professor Khalidi fell to ambush. What happened, if you didn't hear the episode, is Professor Khalidi came on, he's a professor of Palestinian studies,

and Noam said, well, Noam accused him of saying something different from what he said on our podcast, and he says, no, I didn't say that, and then Noam played a clip from when he did say that. Like, he said, I don't remember precisely the thing that he denied saying, but you posted it.

You said, well, I have the clip right here. Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes used to do it. I guess they still do on 60 Minutes. So he said that's an ambush. So he doesn't want to come back anymore. No, no, no. First of all, I left that episode. Or Tim Russert, but go ahead.

I left that episode being like, wow, that was really intense. But I felt like it was such an important and good conversation and it was difficult. But it was really nice at the end. And what he said about us being cousins. No, I said that. But then he said that there's a word in Arabic that literally means that when Arabs say Israelis, it's the word is the son of my brother. In any case, we thought it ended on a good note, despite some of the some of the acrimony. And Noam, well.

So anyway, so Periel was in charge of sending a conciliatory email. Noam sent a really beautiful email to him. Yes, I did. And then you answered. No, and he didn't write back. Yeah, he wrote back. Oh, he wrote back. He wrote back.

I'm never doing your show again. I felt ambushed. And I thought that that was really unfair to Noam. So Periel essentially said, ambush? No, ambush is what Hamas did to Israel. Yeah, that's what you wrote in the email. No, I wrote a lot of other things. Yeah, but that is the thing that you wrote that you shouldn't have.

Well, that's what you think. Well, if your goal was to have him change his mind and come back on the show, that was not the appropriate thing to say. Well, I don't entirely agree. I wrote to him that... Well, just read the part that's relevant. Well, you can read up to that line. Read up to that line.

Dear Professor Kalidi, as the producer of the show, I wanted to reach out to you. It is not our MO to have guests on the show who leave feeling unhappy. I've been producing the show for four years and have booked hundreds of esteemed guests, and it is almost unheard of

for someone to leave and not shake hands or have a drink or accept our invitation for dinner after. So I'm reaching out because I don't want you to feel that way either. As I understand it, you said you felt ambushed. Objectively, this is an unfair and inaccurate representation. We invited you on the show and we were in good faith looking forward to having you on. We appreciated that you were coming. I told you as much several times. We did our homework. We showed up. We listened to you. We allowed you to speak. We shared your accolades and your achievements. We were at no point

disrespectful in any way, shape, or form. If you agree with me so far, and as a professor and an author, this is important. An ambush implies a deceptive sneak attack, like the one Hamas just executed on Israel. What's the matter with you? That is not what... And then I went on to say... We got the idea. I hope he comes to dinner with us. Why would he come to dinner with us?

Something like that. He's not coming to dinner. He said things too. Listen, my father used to say, and I want to introduce our guests, my father used to say, Perry L., you have to know what you want out of a situation before you go into it. If your goal was to make amends and talk him off the ledge, as it were, then you should not have added that snarky Hamas remark. I think that he made some really not nice comments to you on the show.

Right, but that's not the point. Well, it's fair game. You have to decide what you see. You need to know what you intended to accomplish. Sometimes you pick your battles. If you intended to accomplish, essentially, let's let by, you pick your battles, if you're intended to come and say, let's let bygones, essentially let's let bygones be bygones,

sir, and move on. Then you, then you, you, you, you, you forbear and you don't write little snide remarks like that.

I don't know. To be fair, I refused to, to look at the email before she sent it because I had enough. I don't think. Anyway, let me just say this. I don't think that it was just a snide remark.

I don't think that you can take what I said out of context. I think that I was very upset, and I still am, because I feel like it was a really disingenuous read on what transpired, and I felt like it really lacked integrity. Oh, take it easy now. I'm serious. It really bummed me out. Anyway, Noam is correct. If your goal was to get him back on the show, take it easy now. I'm serious. It really bummed me out. Anyway, Noam is correct.

If your goal was to get him back on the show, you failed at that. Our guest... Hi, how are you? How do you do? We had a bad interview. This one won't be bad, I promise. Our guest, Suzanne Nossel.

Nossel? Okay, okay. She's a former diplomat. Oh, I didn't know that. You have diplomatic immunity. And has been a human rights advocate. As a former diplomat, she probably identifies exactly what I'm saying. A diplomat would have told you that's not what you write.

Evan, go ahead. Go ahead. And a human rights advocate. And author of the book Dare to Speak on Free Speech. And speaking of free speech, tell me honestly, what do you think of my hair? Does it look natural? Awesome, yeah. I just got it dyed.

Can you tell? Is there a marked kind of disconnect between my hair and the age of my face in your estimation? No, I mean the eyebrows. You've got to talk into the mic. Well, the eyebrow is psoriasis. It's kind of more or less on cue. Okay. Anyhow, Noam brought you on to discuss...

Free speech. Free speech. Okay, so let's discuss. Wait, wait, finish the bio. That was the whole bio you sent me. Oh, okay. How about dare to speak on free speech? What about pen?

Pen. What about you, pen? America? Pen. That pen? You pen? No, pen. Pen and man.

I'm not a pen. You guys, this is why I need a new producer. You're the chair of the organization? CEO. CEO of PEN America. Is that an acronym, PEN? It used to be Poets, Essays, Novelists, like back in the day, but then it's like KFC. We just went to the acronym.

Yeah, because I couldn't find it. Or SCUBA. SCUBA, you know, Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus. Yeah, exactly. Now, you came on my radar because of the school book banning list, which I want to talk to you about. And I thought I was a free speech fanatic, but I'm not with you on the school banning things. We'll talk about that. But then just like in the last 48 hours, because I kind of got sidetracked from preparing for this podcast with the whole war thing,

it comes to my attention that you're a friend of, or a co-traveler with Greg Lukianoff. Well, he runs an organization called FIRE, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. But you guys have good, you're simpatico with each other. Actually, we did a comedy seller event together, I think. But we're, you know, we actually have somewhat different takes. Oh, do you?

On this stuff, yeah. Because I'm a big fan of his. I'm a big, big, big, big free speech guy. Now, I don't want to get you in hot water, but if there is anything about the current firing of people who are mouthing off about this issue, if you have anything you want to say. I really didn't realize that Penn had a broader mandate

than just the school stuff, because Penn sounded like Penn, like student. But just today I'm finding out that – and I read something I thought was excellent that you wrote a whole thing about how journalists sort of approach what sources are reliable and what sources aren't reliable. I don't know if you want to talk about that. Do you want to talk about people getting fired, like the law firm that wouldn't hire the person? Well, any of that stuff or is that something that – No, I can talk about that. One at a time. Where did journalists go wrong

in terms of not following the procedure as you would have laid out in this recent hospital thing and other things that went wrong? Yeah. Look, we've done a lot of work on how disinformation is affecting the work of journalists. And, you know, there's disinformation, which we

define as kind of willfully spread false information. There's also misinformation, stuff that, you know, no one is nefariously trying to sort of seed and propagate it, but it's still just wrong. And both of those are increasingly having an effect on the work of journalists. They're being buffeted by it all the time. They're sourcing information online, on social media. Places like Twitter have now gotten a lot less regulated and a lot more freeform. You don't know who's who, who's saying what, and what you can rely on. Although those community notes on Twitter are pretty good. Those are good. I think that's one positive step. But I think, honestly, getting rid of the blue

checks has made life really difficult for me. I feel like I really have to, you know, you have to Google up to figure out who these people are. And then is it really that person? So you don't know. So it puts a heavy onus on journalists to take steps to be sure of what they're doing. And we had this incident of the hospital where, you know, one account came up blaming Israel, it was kind of syndicated all over the world. There were push alerts on media outlets. And it was really consequential because Biden was practically in the air and his meetings in Jordan fell apart. And Abbas decided he wouldn't meet with Biden. But the headlines did say, like a lot of people were saying, oh, you know, that the headlines were deceptive.

But the headlines all said, according to the Gaza health ministry, the Palestinians, the Palestinians say, like a lot of people were saying, oh, you know, that the headlines were deceptive, but the headlines all said, according to the Gaza health ministry, like the Palestinians say, yeah, they all said that. So does that, is that enough to, to, to cover your ass? Well, it's a good question. You know, it's something, it's saying what, what is the source of this information? And an informed reader may read that and think, all right, I got to, you know, take this from whence it comes and maybe I want to wait for more. But a lot of people just kind of see, okay, here's what happened. You know, they read it in the New York Times and kind of that's the gold standard. And we, you know,

we do a lot of work to sort of defend the role of credible journalism. And so when something like this happens, it, you know, it does, it causes people to kind of call into question whether journalism should be trusted. And that is damaging to the whole ecosystem because that sort of puts credible, serious journalism almost on the same level as whether it's propaganda or disinformation or material that's thinly sourced and not kind of handled professionally. So, look, it's the fog of war and things are going to happen. And I hope what comes out of that incident is a sort of doubling down on procedure and caution and thoughtfulness and sourcing before news outlets just burst out. And I think that the New York Times has been very thoughtful about that. They published an editor's note, which is

rare. I think it's the first one under the tenure of Joe Kahn, the current editor. They actually did an interview with him to kind of elaborate how this happened, why it happened, what they're going to do differently going forward. So hopefully it's sort of a teaching moment. It's a real struggle. We're doing work with newsrooms to try to help their journalists get equipped to sort of navigate this roiling ocean with a lot of unreliable stuff. So a couple of things. First, yeah, the headline did say that, but the article didn't do much to emphasize the unconfirmed nature of the story. And we know now, I don't know if you saw, we saw the Slack channels. So they essentially put Palestinians to sleep because they knew this was sketchy.

So, well, this will be enough. We can hang our hat on this. And then the article went pretty much and reported as if it was true. But even more so, there was a photograph of a hospital. I don't remember exactly, but it wasn't even the hospital that was not hit. But the hospital in the end wasn't destroyed. It was just the parking lot. So when you say Palestinians saved, but then you show a picture of a bombed building that, you know, we're only human.

It's in the New York Times. That becomes a disclaimer sort of that you don't take that seriously because you see the photograph before your eyes of a hospital that's been bombed. And so then the number of, you know, four or five hundred casualties becomes very easy to believe. This is a huge fail, obviously. And it's hard to believe that in some way they weren't leaning towards this. But, you know, you can't be sure of that. But so many mistakes fall in the right direction,

in the wrong direction. But the next question I have about that, that I still haven't figured out. So now, and by the way, our last guest told us, no, I know it's true because I have a friend who works at the hospital. So now we know it's not true. The hospital wasn't bombed. It's pretty clear that there wasn't 471 precise dead bodies, which 471 is like a really good number to give if you want to sound like you've really counted.

France or European intelligence said it's 50 or less. So then the next day, the New York Times, as if nothing happened, says 5,000 people have died according to the Gaza health ministry. And this now becomes, you know, the editor's notes can go fuck themselves because if you mention editor's note, there's no way the next day you will let anybody quote the Gaza health ministry on any numbers. Because, well, the first question would be, well, does that include the 471? Like, this is so foul that it's inexcusable. Everything that they said in that editor's note, to me, is washed away if the next day they continue to cite the same source that just took them for a ride. I don't see any way out of that. That's not my own personal

animus. That's just like two plus two equals four. What am I missing on that? Well, you know, if they did that, I think it took them honestly a few days to kind of come to grips with this and to kind of get the real facts. Nicholas Kristof, after this was already known, in his column cited Gaza health ministry numbers. I said, what the hell is going on with the time? They wouldn't let Tom Cotton. They fact-checked him and they fired a guy. And now they can just...

I'll tell you one thing I've noticed is that they always now refer to it as the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry. So there's that little, you know, additive piece. I also heard today that the ICRC is no longer sourcing casualty. The International Commission for the Red Cross. So that's like a, you know, a really serious international source of data and information that I don't know if this is true.

So I could be spreading disinformation and I want to caveat this. Misinformation, misinformation. I heard it's misinformation. Yeah, I believe it's true. So I could be spreading disinformation and I want to caveat this. Misinformation, misinformation. I heard it's misinformation. Yeah, I believe it's true. I heard it from a credible source, but that they're no longer publishing casualty estimates because they had done so based on this information coming out of the Gaza health ministry. And that has now been called into such serious questions. So, you know, one has to kind of keep drumming on these things and sort of sorting out what are the implications and making sure those implications are sort of wrought through their work. And I think there will continue to be debate and people pointing out,

you know, what you're pointing out. Yeah, I think I would guess that what happens is, listen, that's all we got. Like, we don't have any other sources. That's, I mean, and that's, you know, that's a legit issue. Yeah, but it's not other numbers. There's no other sources. That's, I mean, and that's, you know, that's a legit issue. Yeah, but it's not a legit excuse for public. Right. I mean, and I think another thing to look at is,

you know, how many numbers are we going to see? I mean, because there's been so much emphasis on those numbers, those counts from every incident. And, you know, do they kind of dial back

and realize, you know, maybe we don't know. We just can't know, you know, precisely what the civilian sort of casual, or you know, never mind who's a civilian is also something that's very hard to

parse in that environment. I don't know if you saw that video of a guy shooting a missile but he was wearing civilian clothes. Whoever posted it assumed the reason for that was so that if they find him dead, they can count him as a civilian. That makes sense to me, but I don't know that for a fact.

Yeah, it's very. So what would what should. The New York Times headline have been, if you could do it over, they can't just not refer to it. It's going shooting around the world on social media. What would be the right headline? Reports of hit on Gaza hospital origins of strike.

How about unconfirmed reports? How about that? Unconfirmed reports of hit on Gaza hospital. And then they just say we haven't confirmed this. Unconfirmed reports, social media reports. Yeah. That would be a lot less explosive of a headline.

That would not have... Rando on Twitter reports. Right. Ricocheted around the world the way this did and, you know, caused the collapse of Biden's diplomacy and all of these protests in the streets. I think that would have gone down very differently. It's so upsetting because you can't put the genie back in the bottle. And now so many people are doubling down on it. And Biden, I don't know if you saw, listen, God bless President

Biden. He's been really good. And he has this habit that people don't like about him where he blurts out something that maybe he wasn't supposed to say. But today he kind of blurted out, I don't really trust those Hamas casualty numbers. I don't know if you saw blurted out, I don't really trust those Hamas casualty numbers. I don't know if you saw that report. Now, I don't know if he was supposed to say that or not, but it wasn't in prepared remarks. And I was very happy to see him, that good nature of his, come out in that way. And sometimes he says stuff that isn't true, but I'm not going to look that gift horse in the mouth. And I mean, we don't get sidetracked in politics, but, you know, the polls on support for Israel or not. So I shouldn't put it quite the way I'm putting it, because I don't want to assume that, you know, everybody has to support Israel.

But everybody knows that I support Israel, not whatever they do it, but generally. And the polls show more support for Israel in the Democratic Party than you might have predicted based on previous polls and how Democrats feel about Israel. And I think part of that is because the incumbent supporting Israel is the Democrat. And there is always on both sides when I mean, how many policies did the Republicans support, which they never would have supported except that Trump supported them. So they get in line behind their president. And I think to some extent, some amount of Democrats are getting in line behind Biden because they give their own incumbent president the benefit of the doubt. So for that reason, I think people who are concerned about Israel should be very happy that Biden is president right now, on top of the fact that he's actually been very, very supportive. Like, you know, no president we could have imagined so far. Right. You know, you know, so having said that, so book banning. Just to set the stage so you know where I'm coming from, I was raised by a father who let me see and read whatever I wanted at any age. And I have two memories of this. One of them I'd

forgotten about. One was my father taking me to see Straw Dogs, the movie, you've seen the movie Straw Dogs, Dustin Hopman? It has the most explicit rape scene ever filmed, Sam Peckinpah.

And I remember my father took me to see it on 42nd Street, and the lady at the ticket booth, if you remember ticket booth, it used to be ticket booth, lady at the ticket booth was screaming at my father, you can't take a child,

I was in fourth grade, you can't take a child to see a movie like that. My father said, leave the fuck alone. He brought me a cross. Tell me how to fucking raise my child.

Come on. He broke it. And it was horrible. And then another time in the sixth grade, I read The Exorcist. And The Exorcist has this horrible scene

of Reagan with the crucifix and her dead child. I didn't even know that was a book. Yeah, it was a book. Another time, in the sixth grade, I read The Exorcist. And The Exorcist has this horrible scene of, you know, Reagan with the crucifix in her. I didn't even know that was a book. Yeah, it was a book, William Peter Blatty. And the same thing in Genevieve's Drugstore. There's a woman telling my father, that's the devil. You can't let your son, leave me alone.

So I'm not coming at this from any kind of purist. And also, having said that, since it's kind of interesting, I'm not quite as free with my kids, by the way. I don't know why. I don't freak out about what they watch, but somehow, just as a gut reaction, I wouldn't take my fourth grader to see Straw Dogs. I don't think it traumatized me,

but I don't know why I wouldn't, but I wouldn't. I don't think any terrible thing happened. You let them read a lot. I mean, you, you're, I'm pretty, I'm pretty permissive,

but I don't think I'd be quite as permissive as my father. Okay. Having said that, just so you understand, like, it's, you know, where somebody is coming from.

I'm not, I don't at the same time. I don't think everybody has to be like me. And I, and I give a lot of latitude to parents who see it differently. Now, so I'll read just for your statement, what is a book ban? You guys say, what is a school book ban?

Pan America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other government officials

that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students or where access to a book is restricted or diminished. It's important to recognize, it's basically the same thing. So my first question to you is, do you distinguish between the ages? Because on your materials

of school libraries, I really don't see anything about the age. It could be the kindergarten library all the way to the senior and high school library, which to me makes, you know, incredible difference. But it doesn't seem to matter to you as an absolutist, maybe. Am I wrong? No, it does matter. Look, you know, the predicate. Sorry for that long thing. No, that's fine.

The predicate to, you know, what you read on What Is a School Band is the book is available. Okay, so that's like the first thing that happens. Someone has decided, a classroom teacher, a librarian, perhaps a principal has decided, we're going to put this book on the shelf in this kindergarten classroom in this you know 11th grade classroom whatever it may be so that decision gets taken and absolutely that decision needs to take into account age appropriateness of course you know there's drastically different things that uh you know right for kids of different ages and there's no you know there are no exact bright lines and kids you know each are a different. I mean, I like love stories when I was in second grade and,

you know, that's what got me reading and that's what I wanted. I, I know it cause I had a, um, my third grade teacher gave me a present as a book and in it, she, it was Anne of Green Gables and in it she inscribed like, dear Suzanne, I know you wanted a love story, but this is a timeless tale. And I was so disappointed. It was not, I wasn't, I read it years later, but back then I liked love stories. So every kid is different. We're not saying there isn't space to make those decisions.

What we're saying is when someone kind of comes in and calls those decisions into question, and most of the time with these book bands, before any, what happens is most of the time with these book bans, before any, you know, what happens is they pluck the book off the shelf, they take it either permanently and sort of that's that, and they do it summarily. That's happening in some school systems. Elsewhere, they'll say, all right, we have a committee, they're going to read this book and make a decision. But during that process, the book is gone. The book is withheld. And it can

take six months. It can take up to 18 months. And so a whole year's worth of sixth graders may be missing that book. And, you know, that's so it's really not a question of age appropriateness. No one's saying like books about, you know, teens dealing with puberty belong in, you know, fourth grade. No one's saying that. Like that's. That's really not what the argument is about. There are some very explicit books that are controversial, but the authors themselves are crystal clear. Those are books for older teens. Okay, so just to put it in perspective,

again, I did this research a couple weeks ago, so I believe it's accurate. If it turns out not to be accurate, before airtime, as it were, you could correct me. You guys had a spreadsheet there. I think the spreadsheet was for 20... No, it was 22, 23 it were, you could correct me. You guys had a spreadsheet there. I think the spreadsheet was for 20- No, it was 22-23. 22-23, yeah, the school year.

I researched somewhere. There's 13,452 school districts. There were 66 school districts on the spreadsheet. That's basically half of 1% in 18 states. But about half of the bannings are in three districts. So it's really now 315 in Texas in the Frisco Independent School District, 217 in the Wentzville School District of Missouri, and 145 in the Escambia County Public School District in Florida.

Now, I bought a bunch of these books, and I was shocked after seeing them that it was so few and so few school districts. Because these books, and I have examples printed out here, are so explicit. I mean, I probably would let my 11-year-old daughter read them. But if one of her friends said, hey, can I borrow Mila's book? I'd be like, oh, no. You have to ask your mother. There's no way I'm giving you, like, and then I also looked at the New York Public Library

because they rate books for age appropriateness. So for instance, the easiest case is the Toni Morrison book, Bluest Eye, which is one of the very top band thing, taken out of school libraries. The New York Public Library rates it as adult. If you look at some of the stuff that's in it, while he moves inside her,

removing himself from her was so painful to him, he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. She appeared to have fainted. The hatred would not let him pick her up. The tenderness forced him to cover her. So when the child regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt,

trying to connect the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her. Anyway, if she didn't love him, she sure let him do it to her a lot. That's nothing. How do you know? I saw them all the time. She didn't love him she sure let him do it to her a lot that's nothing how do you know i saw them all the time she didn't like it then why'd she let him do it to her because he made her how could somebody make you do something like that easy oh yeah how easy they just make you that's all you know and his talk of violent. She describes having an orgasm.

Well, if she didn't love him, she sure let him do it to her a lot. Like this is so beyond what a kid. Well, that's okay for like 12th grade. Maybe. Maybe it's okay for 12th grade. I don't know what adult means. 12th grade could be 17 years old, 16. called, but I guess what I would criticize is that the headline that this book was banned from school libraries, to me, it's like, they're banning books from school libraries? And then I look at it, I was like, well, thank God.

I wish they'd take that out of my kid's library, too. And I'm a free speech guy. I don't want, and again, it's like, I don't think what's right for me is right for every kid. There is no right or wrong answer to what's age appropriate. At some point, and please disagree, the community has to decide what they think is right for their kids. And through that process, the democratic process, the school people are chosen. And they represent the parents kind of in a representative way. And then at some point, the parents get wind of the fact, what the hell is going on here? These

people who are representing us have just run amok. We need to get some of these books out of here. And I'm not offended by that. I don't know. Should I be? Why am I not offended by that? Yeah. Well, let me, a couple of points. And one, look, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize laureate in literature. Like this is not, it might have an explicit scene, but this is an important work of literature that is, you know, venerated the world over. It's a book that has changed lives.

And so it's an important book. You might find it may unsettle you. It may be disquieting. I would agree not every kid or even teenager might be ready for it. But this is an important book. So to say that this book, which teachers or librarians have decided should be available, that because someone objects to it, and overwhelmingly if you've researched those cases, what you know is that these objections are lodged by single individuals in almost every case. It's one person, and what they do, this is not a parent like you, who say, like opening up Mila's backpack and, you know, picking something out of it and saying like, ooh, I'm not sure this is right for, that's not what's happening. What's happening is that lists

of books are being passed around by, from community to community. We see this and we talk about the report because the objections that people write down on these forms have the same typos. So you can see that they're getting it from these kind of centralized sources about, you know, how to lodge an objection to a given book. And look, at Penn, I mean, in terms of the volume at Penn, you know, it's funny, when I came into Penn, which was 10 years ago, I was gobsmacked that the organization did any work on book bands. I was like, book bands? That's like so 1950s. Like, is that even a thing anymore? But we did a couple a year, a couple times a year, somebody would contact us and say, like, this book's been taken off the shelf. And we would

usually write a letter to the library or the school, and they'd put it back. And like, that was the end of it. And, you know, what we're seeing now is a concerted campaign, and it's directed at books by and about people of color, LGBTQ narratives. It's encompassed in a larger what we call the ed scare at PEN America. Education scare. Yeah, because it's a whole raft of what we call educational gag orders. Those are bills dictating what can and can't be taught in school or higher ed, like the Stop Woke Act and the Don't Say Gay Bill law in Florida. Those are examples. And then there are also whole spate, which we've documented in another report of what we call educational intimidation bills and laws. And what those do is they require, for example, like a simple one is just requiring that

as a teacher, you post on a public website, every single reading and exercise that you're going to use in your classroom. And then they empower citizens, doesn't have to be a parent, citizens to come forward and say, you know, I object to this portrayal of World War II. Why are you focusing on Martin Luther King or Ruby Bridges? Can I push back? Sure. I don't doubt it's a great work of literature. That's really, I think beside the point,

there are all sorts of great works of literature. And it doesn't surprise me that it's only a few parents because how many parents know what's in their kid's library? But the fact is that the New York Public Library thinks this is an adult book. If you look up the reviews where kids rate the book, I didn't print it out, they all kids, like junior high and high school kids rate it pretty well, but the one comment is they all say too much sex. But the fact is when you come down to it, the fact that, you know, and I can't even tell from your website what year kid had access to this book.

The fact that a very explicit book that described sex was perhaps taken away from a third grader, fourth fourth-grader, fifth-grader's library. It's not going to be that for the Blue and White. Well, then you guys should make that clear because I would react totally differently. What you're suggesting is that there's kind of like a generalized problem where books are winding up on age-inappropriate shelves and that this is just kind of a kind of correction of that. Like, oops, ooh, this doesn't belong here. This should be over in the high school shelf.

And this one, they've kind of been mis-shelved. That's not what's happening here. I mean, that's the thing. It's not, again, it's not someone, it's systematic. It's not one parent who, it's not because it's one parent who bothers to see what their kid is reading. But let me just ask you a personal question, a personal question. At what age would you say it's reasonable for a parent to say, I will be the judge of what kind of explicit materials my kid can read?

You, school system, don't put that stuff in the school library. If my kids want to read that, you know, the number of things that kids read, what's in the school library is such a fraction of what they read.

I mean, as an aside, one of the things I want to talk to is how much this even matters in an age when people have the entire library of the world in their pocket. Like, do we really care?

But the, you know, can you, do you have in your head an age where you'd say, no, that's, that's, I'm against book banning, but I got to admit that one is reasonable. There are plenty of books that I would say, you know, I don't think the bluest eye should be, you know, in a classroom for an elementary school. So that's, that's easy. You know what, I think every parent until kids are 18, you know, you have the right to decide what your own child reads. If they come home with something and you don't want them to read it, you know, you can take it away. And, you know, that's your right

as a parent. You know, what is happening here, though, is it's not about what your kids can read. It's about what all these kids are reading. So in Escambia County, it's one person who has dictated that these 140 books are taken off the shelf for a county of 20,000 children. So what that does is it overrides. It overrides. It's one parent's

viewpoint overriding the judgment of teachers and librarians across an entire county. But wouldn't it be a stronger case if that one parent overrided the judgment, all that with a, with an innocuous book that didn't have explicit sex. Well,

there's plenty, you know, there's plenty of Ruby biography, Ruby bridges, you know, Katonji Brown. Well, that's,

that's how, you know, yeah, but there's tons of those. I wasn't, I mean, you could pick the most explicit and we can debate them. So I didn't pick the most explicit.

I picked the top ones that you identified as the most. So another one is this book, Something Happened in Our Town. Now, this is for young kids. That sounds like a title of a Twilight Zone episode. This is for young kids. And now this is for youngest kids, first, grade, or second. This is a story that came out, I post George Floyd about police it alludes to police brutality now this is also an interesting thing so I'll tell you

another story you guys know this already so my daughter in first grade came home and for whatever it's worth my daughter is mixed my wife's Hispanic and Indian so my daughter came home and and in the first grade and said, and it was the first time she'd ever considered this, Daddy, you're white, right? I'm like, yeah. She goes, do you treat people badly? I'm like, no.

Have you ever seen Daddy treat anybody badly? At this age, she still believes in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And she says, well, no, in school we learned that white people treat badly. And I said, now she goes, or maybe did you used to treat people badly? It was fuzzy to her. But not on my schedule, but on the expert's schedule, they introduced this concept to her, not in the way it was introduced to me, in the sense that she's already questioning her father. Does he have a mark against him because he's white? And I was very, very bothered by that.

And I shut up because I don't want to get canceled. Since then, I found out that tons of parents are outraged by that, but everybody's afraid to speak up at some sort of school board meeting because somebody will pull out their phone. There really is tremendous self-censorship in this country that you agree with. So I'm

sensitive to this book. In this book... Does she go to a public school? Public school, yeah. What do you think I am? Some kind of elitist? Yeah, public school. What happens in private school too? That's why I asked. I'm teasing. So in this book she says

things like, I know what a slave is, said Emma. That's what you have to do. We have to do whatever the other person says. Yes, slaves had to do whatever white people told them to do. Even after slavery ended, white people didn't let black people live where they wanted, go to school with white people or vote. Who are white people?

This reminded me of what my daughter would have asked. White people came here from places in Europe or Russia or other countries. We are white, even though our skin is light tan. Did our family do those bad things a long time ago? Asked Emma. Yes, answered her mother. Back then, many white people thought that they were better than black people. So already it's like, are these children old enough to understand that, which many adults don't understand to this day,

that we don't have collective guilt, that we're not born guilty, that what your family did many years ago has nothing to do with you because every child is born innocent. And then Liz added, some white people still think most black men and boys are dangerous, even though they're not. And by the way, I looked this up all slave-owning times. Basically, all white people came from England or Scotland. There were no Russians. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. In another part of the book, it says, Josh asked his mother, can police go to jail? Yes, said his mother. Why do you ask? That white policeman who shot the black man, said Josh, will he go to jail? What he did was wrong, said his mother. But he won't go to jail, said his father. Why not, asked Josh. Cops stick up for each other,

said Josh's brother Malcolm, and they don't like black men. This is heavy stuff to be giving to somebody's child in the second grade. I'm not soft on it. I'm like, you know what, I would have to say, now, I mean mean imagine if this were a book say well you know those Hamas people hate the Jews I mean you could think of all sorts of you know it's wrong to have abortions like you could reflect any societal

point of view in a book like this and then complain that the book was banned I don't I mean I send my kids to school to learn to read and write and critical thinking and whatever it is. I don't send them to school, even if I agree with this. It's not the point whether I agree with it or not. I agree with some of it.

I just don't want, I want to handle that kind of thing with my kids. I don't want some, forgive me, bureaucrat. My mother was in public school education. I'm quite aware of what, you know, the expertise these teachers have. It bothers me. And then, what are you, a book banner? No, I'm not a book banner. Nobody more free speech than me, as anybody who listens to the show knows.

I'm upset that every one of these people who were fired for defending Hamas, or however you want to put it, I'm furious at these people that fired. They should be able to say whatever they want. But I don't see the relation to that to a captive audience, which is a First Amendment exception. I'm required by law to send my kids to school. The school board is supposed to be a democratic in some way representation of me and what I believe. And they're marinating my kids in this pretty heavy stuff that a lot of people disagree with, right?

I don't know. What did I say? Yeah, look, there are a lot of books and there's curriculum that I think is tendentious. It's kind of one-sided. It's like a counterproductive portrayal of history or society. Like there's plenty of stuff out there that like, I don't, I don't subscribe to, I don't buy into. Like if I were

the teacher, I, you know, I might not pick these books to be on the shelf and, you know, it's going to be sort of a give and take. Like, you know, there are going to be different teachers in the school. Some of them, you know, hopefully most of them on balance are going to make sound judgments that like on balance, most parents are going to agree with. You know, at, you know, there are always going to be exceptions to that. If you feel like a school has kind of gone off the rails and it's, you know, everything she's being spoon fed is, you know, it runs counter to your values. Then you have to really consider whether it's the right place. But I think the idea that with a book like that, that the answer is to ban it. I mean,

you know, this is not a book, I didn't hear you say, and I don't think we've reported, that everyone's required to read it, that it's a book that's being per se taught. It's a book that's like sitting on a shelf. And if you don't like it, I think you could buy it or suggest that they buy a different book, some other books that portray these issues differently. But the minute you start giving someone the power to pick that book and say, the teachers, whatever the process is, the librarians, they made their best professional judgment. They have an agenda. They put this on the shelf. Right, but then someone comes in with their own viewpoint, whatever it may be, and says based on their viewpoint

that this book needs to be plucked off the shelf and withheld, and government gets behind that. And you have, you know, what books would Donald Trump get withdrawn from the shelves if you gave unlimited leeway for him to sort of pick and choose? Hold on, you're making a procedural point which i agree that if if one parent identifies a book they don't like i would not think it's a good idea that they just defer to that one parent and take it off without some sort of procedure or hearing or whatever it is i mean hearing sounds like a

highfalutin thing but like where like where the experts speak with the parents and are held accountable for their initial decision to have put that book. I don't place as much deference as you do to the fact that it was already in the library because that decision happened outside the eyes and ears of the parents. And when they get wind of it

is the first time they're able to react to it. So I don't, I don't think that, well, sorry, you didn't, you didn't know we bought it. Now it's too late. Now it really, to me is the same thing. Once it's on the shelf, before it gets on the shelf, the point is that these books should be chosen in a defensible way. And we should be able to somehow get to the bottom of which parents are, and then we'll get to the hardest matter in my view, which parents are just being completely overreacting and really a sliver of opinion compared to what the general principles. And which parents, like, most parents, like, you know, I don't really want my kindergartners or second graders to read that. But here's the hardest case.

I know you'll agree with me. The hardest case is these LGBTQ books because we feel that many of these kids may have nowhere to turn to learn about who they are and how they're feeling. And so we want to provide some method for them to, that these books can be therapeutic to them in some way. So at that point, we have to pause the hardest to decide what it means to take this book

out of the classroom. And there's a little taste of, we may want them to, we may, some of us may want them to have access to these books even if we know their parents don't want them to, we may, some of us may want them to have access to these books, even if we know their parents don't want them to. And that's a tough thing to say and stand by, but that's really what's going on. Because we're afraid that the parents themselves will not allow their children to read this stuff or will make their children feel horrible, will traumatize their children about it. So we want them to say, no, it's okay what you're feeling.

That's a much tougher one. There's no question about it. My gut is still, we talked about this before, my gut is still to say that, listen, the parents have to be able to decide until such time as someone can demonstrate that this parent is – that the state needs to intervene with this parent. But I understand that that means a certain number of collateral damage. Collateral damage is what we're seeing all over the world now. I don't know what to do. But – and having said that, some of these books like Genderqueer and Flamer,

they are rather explicit. And I'll just show you some, you know, there's one thing with her, we talked about having vagina goo on her fingers. This is, I'll put these in, this is one of the pictures of a boy in the shower. This is the guy looking at the guy that's peeing. This is a picture in, I believe this is the guy looking at the guy that's painted this this is a picture in uh one um i believe this is you know it's just showing what age is this this is for young kids no it's not for young

kids it's for older teens i mean the authors of all of these books are very clear clear these are not they're graphic novels they're not picture books books. No, but I got the feeling these were like fifth, sixth. No, it's really not. I mean, honestly, these books are for older teens. I mean, that's the debate. Okay, just to clarify, the New York Times reports that high schools and some middle school libraries stock the book genderqueer, and the New York Public Library recommends it for ages 13 and above.

Are for older teens. I mean, that's the debate, is whether they and above are for older teens that's what i mean that's the debate is whether they should be accessible to over older because i mean kids are having sex at 15 16 years old some are okay but and some parents are trying to prevent them well they can try to prevent it but that they they're not going to prevent their kids from having sex as you know my first kiss was in law school. And the shells all had just legal books on them.

Now, on top of this, you have the additional problem, and this is where I really am torn, that you have certain cultures, Muslim cultures, let's say, not exclusively Catholics, who really are offended by this stuff. This is really an override by the state on things that they hold very important to themselves

in terms of teaching their kids things that they fundamentally believe are wrong and against their religion and will lead to eternal damnation, right? But they're not teaching these books in classrooms. And last time I checked, there was a separation still of church and state. It's not like a teacher is getting up in front of a classroom and putting that on a screen. It's like these are books that are in the library. Or in the classroom, yeah. Maybe, probably mostly in the library.

I don't think we have classroom libraries in high school. So, you know, that's classroom libraries in high school. So, you know, that's more of an elementary school. Okay. Fair enough. Like, I mean,

I do think that you want kids to have access to books that reflect the reality of. I would want my kid to have access to it. If my kid were, were, were, were, I would, I mean, homeschool your kid.

Otherwise, I don't know what to tell you. Listen, let's not – I could think of hypotheticals that you would find difficult. But what I'm trying to say is that it's worth spending time thinking about what it means for the parents' representatives. That's what the school board is. They are representatives of the parents. It's not checks and balances. It's not like a separate government entity

that's supposed to check the parents to make sure there's no excesses. The school board is chosen as part of the democratic process of a community. And at some point, when that no longer represents the parents, like in Dearborn, Michigan or something, where it's a high Islamic population, I'm just saying I'm torn.

I'm torn by the fact that the school board is not supposed to impose things that the parents find offensive. On the other hand, I do have certain limits. For instance, no matter how racist a community is, we can't allow the school to take out books that have black and white people dating. We can't allow that. In the same way, we can't force a teacher, where every other teacher can put a picture of themselves in a heterosexual relationship, a photograph. We can't allow the community to say, you can't force a teacher, where every other teacher can put a picture of themselves in a heterosexual relationship, a photograph.

We can't allow the community to say, you can't put a picture of you with your husband if you're gay. Because these are protected classes, and that, in my opinion, is going too far. But subject matter that is so controversial, I have trouble with it, that's all. I mean, it's not new. When we were kids, Judy Blume was very controversial, like forever. Super explicit.

Were you ready for it? Did your parents want to let you read it? I'm reading that with my fourth grader right now. Are you crazy? Not forever, but Judy Blume. But listen, I'm a little bit surprised at your take on this, because I feel like generally you're... He's just let it finish.

I feel like generally you really are... The position that you're taking seems sort of the antithesis of your general position. I think that it's a very slippery slope of this is too explicit. Excuse me, but this is OK. I mean, where does it end? Listen, continuums are tough.

Like I can show you a picture of a of a newborn baby wearing a diaper with no female newborn baby with a diaper with no shirt on. And almost nobody would say that's porn. And I could show you a picture of a 18-year-old woman with a diaper, with a shirt off, and everybody would agree that's porn. The precise day where—there's slippery slopes everywhere you look in life. Slippery slopes on abortion. There's slippery slopes on all sorts of tough issues. And so what's the best way to judge that slippery slope? Quite often, I believe the local community decides that slippery slope because there's no better way.

No. But here's the thing. I mean, that process has been kind of weaponized by this movement where they're kind of going on a national campaign to single out particular books overwhelmingly, you know, about certain kinds of people, certain kinds of narratives, and to get them withheld and withdrawn. And, you know, we do hear from librarians time and again, these books, and you alluded to this, you know, for some students, they're not for everybody. I think most kids kind of see that and they're like, you know what, this is not for me. I'm not ready for it. I'm not interested. Whatever their reaction is. I think a lot of kids would not pick up

that book, but for some kids it can be a lifesaver. They feel so isolated. And so, you know... But I took comfort in the fact that so many of the top four, five books, whatever it was that I looked at, I'm like, oh, at least this isn't like crazy stuff.

Like, I get why somebody... I didn't look at it and say, why the hell would somebody object to that? There is a picture of a guy or, you know, with his mouth next to another man's penis. You know, it's like, okay, that's that. Right, but 16 year olds do that. Okay. Let me tell you this. If this was a heterosexual picture, people would object and their objection would carry. If you showed a heterosexual, if you had a book for teens of heterosexual blowjobs, the only reason we make an exception for this stuff is what I said earlier, and

it's serious, by the way. It's significant. I wasn't just paying lip service to it. It's that we believe that in some way this might be necessary for the health, for the mental health of the kids who would read this book. We don't feel that way about a heterosexual book. I don't agree. I have two points.

Number one is I'm surprised that you're surprised from no one's position because he's articulated this position before in past episodes. She doesn't listen. And secondly, I'm wondering who, you're talking about books in a library that are not assigned. Correct. We don't know if they're assigned.

Now it becomes a very different debate when they're just proposed to get something. What child is reading books that aren't assigned? Certainly not me. I did. I know girls often my sister read Nancy Drew was a favorite. You could not

get me to read anything other than the Guinness Book of World Records, something like that. But to actually read. Who's reading? Wait, what do people think is going to happen? Could you address my point? Yeah, I read a ton. Well, you're a girl.

Maybe the girls are reading. You're a sexist. But girls read. I used to go to the library. Well, if there are no books left, nobody's going to read. And by the way, I went to school before the internet. Now there's really no reason to repost. Well, one of the interesting aspects that I do think is a factor here is that there's so much of what kids are ingesting, that they're ingesting on their phone, that parents really have no control over.

So when you feel like it's out of control, like what your kids are hearing and seeing and being exposed to is out of your control, there's an impulse to clamp down on that which you can control. And so thus going after books in the library when the reality is if you're worried about your kid learning about gay sex, where are they going to learn it from? I mean, it'd be wonderful if they learned it from a book where it's actually- Learned it from my uncle like I did. There's an editor. There's somebody responsible who's thinking about how this

is presented and whether it's accurate and whether they're talking about safe sex and all the things that you would want your kid to know. 99.9% of the time, they're getting it on YouTube. Well, if that's the case, then the book should be assigned. If we really feel that it's that important.

My daughter did a quiz on BuzzFeed. Was it BuzzFeed? She was able to identify 11 out of 12 LGBTQ flags. She cannot identify New Jersey on a map. Okay, like this is, so that's real life. So in some sense, yeah, this is all like parents get over it. Your kids are going to find this out anyway. Now, on the question of agendas, today I was, I got a new,

by the way, did you know you can get a New York State Public Library card, a digital one, and there's an app on your phone and you can basically read any book you want for free? Isn't that your friend does that? Yeah, yeah. So now let me preface. I try to be intellectually honest. There were certain examples that didn't match the general pattern that I'm going to show you now. But I looked at enough books to say that I feel comfortable saying this is the general pattern that I'm going to show you now. But I looked at enough books to say that I feel comfortable saying this is the general pattern. Gender Queer in the New Republic Library system has 92 copies.

Bluest Eye, which it says is adults only, has 196 copies. Brownest Eye even more, though. Flamer has 85 copies. The latest Ben Shapiro book has eight copies. This is the number one or very high bestseller. Abigail Schreier's book that was controversial has three copies in the entire state. The bell curve, which is extremely controversial,

I'm picking not because I agree with it, but because it's controversial, but this was a book which was reviewed by every major newspaper, you know, had one e-book, no physical copies. I believe this is all accurate. So the agenda goes both ways. Now, having said, let me just caveat what I just said, I did seem to notice that as the book got older, it seems maybe they pulled copies off the shelves. So I don't expect 10 years

from now there'll be 196 or 92 copies of Genderqueer because maybe there's limited resources and there's culling, as it were. So I don't want to ever be said that, you know, you represented blah, blah, blah, and it's not true. But there is something. Abigail Schreier's book

is recent, and the bell curve certainly ought to, as a matter of, somebody could check it for historical research, even, clearly should have copies in the library, because it existed and it's important. So that's what they're doing to adults, you know?

I mean, let me make a couple points about how pet america kind of thinks about that i mean it's interesting we we don't look we don't police the collections of any library like we've never sort of been involved in that we have though argued for the abigail schreier book when there was an effort to keep it off amazon to argue that it needed to be available on amazon and we tell people a little about the book so they know what that is. I don't know that much about it, but I think it is a book that argues, kind of calls into question some aspects of trans identity and sort of says it's being seeded with, kids are being sort of seeded with this artificially and it's all about sort of suggestion.

Contagion. And there's a movement. Yeah. So it's something like that. I think. Yeah, I believe. And then we also look at the phenomenon, which we find very concerning.

I don't know if you looked at our report that came out this summer called Book Lash about literary freedom and the language of harm because that was about this phenomenon where publishing houses and even authors themselves pull back books because of online outrage, because people are upset. You don't have the right to write this book. You're not from the right, you know, racial or ethnic group or gender. You don't have the authority or the credibility to write the book or you've done something bad.

You committed an assault or you are a discreditor. You made a racist bad. You committed an assault or a discreditor. You made a racist comment. One author made a comment that was construed as racist on the Washington Metro, and her book contract and her entire book was canceled. Or we're afraid that people are going to get upset about this book. We talk about in the report about a book about Adolf Hitler that's for young kids. It's a picture book about Hitler. And the author is an award-winning author.

The publishing house said, hey, you know, this is something kids might need to know about. And it was presented in sort of a very age-appropriate way. The award was the Iron Cross. Everyone liked it. I hope they saw his microphallus. Everyone thought it was a thoughtful, sensitive book,

everybody who was involved in it. But they just concluded that people, someone somewhere was going to get so upset about this that they killed the book and didn't publish it. You know, just for fear of someone kind of coming after them trying to cancel it. And so, look, there are threats to free speech from the right and the left at PEN America. We really try to call them as we see them and take them seriously. And it's part of the same phenomenon. I mean, the funny thing about it is that this language of harm, this idea that books are going to make you unsafe and that the books can be dangerous, that is invoked by the right and the left. I mean, it's almost mirror image

language to justify book banning in Florida and, you know, the pulling of these books that publishing houses are turning away from because people find them objectionable, you know, on Goodreads. You know, Ukrainians objecting to a forthcoming book about, you know, that's set in revolutionary Russia and saying this is going to harm us, you know, and the author saying, all right, all right, all right, I don't, you know, I'm going to pull back. We don't disagree, do we, that what somebody, the sum total of what they read, what they're told, what they read, what they're told, what they're taught can lead people to do things that are antisocial, dangerous, whatever it is, much of the hatred we're seeing now on campuses vis-a-vis this Israel thing, obviously

this is in some way a reflection of what they have read. I think that where you and I probably agree, maybe all of us at the table agree with, is that this is the price we have to pay because the alternative is far, far worse.

As soon as you allow somebody to start deciding what is and isn't dangerous, then all is lost. And that's the price for having free speech. I made the analogy before that in the criminal law we say better to let 100 guilty people go free then one innocent man go to jail. And I think that's the way it is with ideas. It's not to say that a guilty person won't get off. It's not to say that an idea can't be dangerous. I don't think that rings true. It's that grow up.

That's the only thing that we got. That's, that's, and this is the best of, and by the way, it's the most important thing about America. In my view, it is really 100% the reason we are way, it's the most important thing about America, in my view. It is really 100 percent the reason we are. When it all comes down to it, without free speech, we'd be nothing, in my opinion.

No, I'm with you. I mean, it doesn't mean that you have to turn a blind eye to hateful ideologies and just say, oh, that's fine. Or, you know, as a university, like, you know, it's free speech, throw up your hands. No, I mean, you can state your values. You can, you know, I argue in my book that it's important to use speech conscientiously, that you, you know, to live together in this pluralistic society, we have to be thoughtful about the platform that we have and what we're saying and how it's going to land with different groups of people in a pluralistic environment. And, you know, that's necessary to keep free speech free, because if hateful speech just courses freely through society,

the impulse to clamp down and to empower government authorities to curb and punish speech intensifies. So there is a kind of aspect of voluntary restraint that I think is essential kind of in this digitized world in a very diverse society. You know, we have to deal with hateful speech. Like we, it doesn't mean we just say, you know, that's, you know, que sera, sera. If hateful ideologies are, you know, running roughshod on our campuses, you know, there's nothing we can do. I don't agree with that. I don't think the answer is government bans and prohibitions. I think that's where we have to stay very firm.

And it's kind of getting this nuance right. Exit question. I'm sure you've given this some thought. We're doing another show after this. What, if you were in Elon Musk's throne, as it were, have you given thought to what your rules and regulations for Twitter would be? Yeah, I have. I mean, I'm part of the Meta Oversight Board,

which is a group of kind of human rights experts, journalists and others that reviews some of Meta's content decisions. And what I've learned is it is difficult. Some of this line drawing is unbelievably difficult. I mean, you have cases where, you know, it's a video of someone inciting violence against someone else, you know, in a region of the world that you're not that familiar with.

And, you know, is this something that could lead to real world violence? Or is this something people need to know about? Because maybe they need to safe, you know, they this something that could lead to real world violence or is this something people need to know about? Because maybe they need to safe, you know, they shut their shut their windows and hunker down. So those dilemmas are really difficult. undertaking under the previous regime was very imperfect, but better than this kind of free for all now where there's just so much unreliable information, like in a situation like this war right now between the Israeli government and Hamas, you know, it's very, you know, that kind of immediate up to the minute information that you were used to getting and authoritative voices that you could source on

Twitter, that's really been degraded. So I don't pretend to have a perfect answer. And then every type of content, whether it's disinformation or online harassment or incitement, like each one poses different distinct issues. So I think it's kind of trial and error, but I think they were sort of on the right track trying to go about this responsibly, you know, criticism, saying you're biased, you're not doing enough about this, or you're one-sided in terms of how content is policed. I'm surprised. I'm surprised. That's not what I was expecting. You thought I'd say free-for-all? Well, I'm surprised that you thought they were on the right track,

because to me, I think if you were to graph it, you would see increasing and more and more ad hoc censorship on Twitter. They were getting more and more very, very important things wrong based on the zeitgeist, I mean, crucial things. And the Twitter government complex was only going, if you imagine it 20 years from now, it was going to become. So this seems to me like a lot of things, unless you are affirmatively pushing the other way. But what is the other way?

I mean, let me say something about meta and being on this oversight board. Exercises that we undertake to parse this out and invoke international human rights law and try to make a decision about whether taking down certain content is necessary and proportionate and legal in the sense that users had a basis to know that the content broke the rules. I think that's a really good and thoughtful exercise. But the fact is, like, you know, we've heard, you know, maybe at this point, like 75 cases out of the billions and billions of posts that are made on Meta's platforms every, you know, day in and day out. And so the question of how you get any kind of really thoughtful, reasoned adjudication to scale is something that nobody has figured out. I figured it out. Okay, great. By the way, on Facebook one time during the last Gaza war,

because Chuck Schumer was worried about AOC running against him, and he was completely silent. And I, on my Facebook page, just posted a Chuck Schumer tweet without comment, and the tweet said, there's no moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. And I just verbatim posted Chuck Schumer's tweet and I was taken down from Facebook as violating community standards.

Because of the mention of a terrorist group. So this is... There's a dangerous individuals and organizations policy. And then there are exceptions. There's supposed to be an exception for newsworthy, for awareness raising. But hold on. They have automated systems that can't implement are exceptions. There's supposed to be an exception for newsworthy, for awareness raising. But hold on. They have automated systems that can't implement those exceptions. So I reposted an United States senator's tweet.

So this is obviously not working out. But I think that we're just going to have to grin and bear it and give it time. That ingenious mechanisms will sprout up. This community notes thing is coming up. I think we need to, and we already are. Our kids are growing up and they're learning about this and they'll start learning in school about strategies of how to judge what is and what isn't true.

The real-time fact-checking online will become much, much more robust with procedures and mechanisms we haven't thought of yet. And I believe if we just allow the genius of the marketplace to take its course, this problem will never disappear. But I'm very confident that we will get control of this problem on our own. I think inviting government into this will always backfire because once you have a government person doing it, you have an agenda.

And what we don't, we want an agenda-less system. So let it be grassroots. That's my opinion. We'll see. Yeah, we got to wrap it up. You were a great guest. You're looking at me like you don't believe me. No, I'm happy to hear it. No, we got to wrap it up. You were a great guest. You're looking at me like you don't believe me. No, I thought you really were. At some point, I'd like to know what you

and Greg Lukianoff disagree about. Yeah, the short version I would say is, you know, in our work, we've paid a lot more attention to, and in my book, to sort of these questions of, you know, how you really can live together in a diverse society and people who do feel vulnerable, targeted, menaced, how you can allow them to be part of what, you know, an academic environment, say, and feel kind of enough belonging so that they can sort of tolerate free speech and uncomfortable ideas. And that that's an affirmative obligation that an institution has to undertake. That's not Greg's focus. I will.

Maybe we'll get you both on one day. Yeah. Well, thank you very, very much. You're fantastic. Suzanne Nossel, everybody.

And although, although I poked an argument with you on the things on the small window of things I disagree with you about, I think hopefully you took from the, the old, you know from the general things I said that I'm a fellow traveler and a believer in free speech. Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Thank you, everybody. Podcast at ComedySeller.com for comments, questions, suggestions, constructive criticism, rants, and raves. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye.