Book Bans with Dave Eggers

Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast

NBCNews

News, Nbcnews, Why Is This Happening?, The Chris Hayes Podcast, Chris Hayes, Politics, Government, Society & Culture, Msnbc, Withpod

4.6 • 8.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2024

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve seen a wave of campaigns in school districts and municipalities across the country to ban literary works over the past few years. One instance of this is the subject of MSNBC Films’ "To Be Destroyed," the latest installment of "The Turning Point" documentary series from Executive Producer Trevor Noah. The feature documentary explores a South Dakota community's fight against book banning after five books – including one by best-selling author Dave Eggers – were pulled from the shelves. Eggers joins WITHpod to discuss how he views his role as a writer in this era, the efforts to ban books, why and where they’re happening and the reactionary moment that we’re in.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I mean I've really think that the overwhelming majority of people in the country just find book bands un-American. They find them
0:16.9	horrifying. They know the historical corollaries with societies that they
0:21.8	don't want to be in league with, you know, that they don't want to be one of these book banning and book burning societies.
0:28.6	It's a very radical act and I don't think that people it just it's weirdly bipartisan I think that there are some of these issues but I think that you know what we saw with the Trump era just it emboldened the most radical loudest project 2025 sort of voices and these
0:49.8	things happen throughout history there's been sort of eras of increased book banning in, you know, every few decades.
0:56.8	Whether it's an organized group like Moms for Liberty or whether it's some demagogue that, you know,
1:06.4	riles people up or some small majority of them up. But I do think that there's a wide swath of reasonability in the middle there that feels like this is no matter right or left this isn't us.
1:17.0	Hello and welcome to why is this happening? We meet your host Chris Hayes.
1:24.0	Before we get to the show today I wanted to tell you about
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1:57.0	whatever device you're listening right now.
2:11.6	We have seen over the last three to four years a wave of campaigns in school districts and municipalities across the country in red states and blue.
2:16.0	To target literary works, books specifically children's books, adult books,
2:21.0	young adult books,
2:23.0	to remove them from school libraries,
2:26.0	sometimes remove them from actual public municipal libraries,
2:29.0	to kick them out of curricula,
2:32.0	to control the information that children of all ages have access to along strict
2:40.8	ideological lines, ideological lines that are hostile towards gay and lesbian trans folks,
2:47.6	gender equality, often discussions of
	...

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