Hi, everybody. Hi, friends. Well, from beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah. It's Thank God. I'm Abyus. The podcast. I'm Dan Beacher. I'm filling in for Frank. I'm whoever the fuck I am.

You're a person. I'm somebody. You count as a person. That's too nice of you to judge. I'm too kind. Thanks for filling in. You're welcome. Well, Frank. Lounge is about on the beaches of beautiful Hawaii. You guys in your Hawaiian vacations being in tropical paradise all the time. It's a it's a tough life, but somebody's got to live it. Clearly, it's just everybody on this podcast, except me. Well, you got to

stay here and do the show. Somebody's going to be doing the show and it falls on my shoulder. Usually not. I'm happy to do it. You know that I'm happy to do it. All right. Well, do you have a story for the people? I'm going to start us off with a story, but I'm going to start by saying, Dan, I don't know if you know this about me, but I've written some books. Did you know that? I knew that. I feel like you're using me as a stand in for all of the people that you're trying to brag to. Well, it's not.

It's just to say that I am in the bookish community. And and some of the bookish people that I'm friends with, like very recently, I had a friend on Facebook who just posted that one of her books had been banned. She was on a band book list and. Where? Oh God, I wish I feel like New Jersey. I think it was. Yeah. And. Bitches be banning. Bitches be banning. And I've got to say my.

Initial reaction is jealousy. Which I always absurd. I mean, there's two reactions. There's like. Fury. Outrage and outrage because it's it isn't

pure eating right. And people should not be banning books clearly. But then also like. If you write a book, you want to be on a band book list.

In my opinion, well, it's like a compliment. Honestly, yeah, it says it says that you're you're writing something that's not

bland. Yeah. And people you're worrying people. Like I always look over the list and they might should have been on there. There's bad things in my book. You should write to them and say, Hey, this is consider banning this book. It's very

objective. On your next band book list, please consider me. I know. You know, I wonder if anybody does that. I feel like, maybe I could be the first.

I mean, you know what? Write an open letter and send it into like the New York Times. Actually, I'm going to go. I'm going to do that. I love that.

Anyway, so so the segue into the story is that in Florida, you know, a lot of counties, they are just kind of going like bananas with the book banning. It's crazy. I read over the lists. I mean, it's different per county. But like some of the counties have hundreds of books that they're banning in like middle schools and high schools and down telemetry schools. Right. And which by the way, if you want a better way to inspire kids to read.

Yeah, there is none. No, just like tell them it's banned. And then they're like, you're not allowed to read this. It's like Pavlovian, you know, you just automatically start drooling wanting to read those books. By the way, someone out there, if you live in Florida, go near a school and buy a bunch of band books and then just sell them or give them away just outside of the school.

Oh, I wonder if we could start a thing for a free little library just outside of, oh, we should do this. A free little band library.

Okay, you guys, somebody get on that because that's actually a, that is a brilliant idea. I love that idea. Yeah, I might make a news and then all the kids will learn about it. And then, and then they can come and get free band books.

You guys, I actually love this idea. And I might have to start a fundraiser for this so that, but I have a hunch that you don't want the book that you're about to talk about in that library.

Well, that's true. Okay. So I guess I should actually tell you the story instead of just blabbing about the books, which I'm rather excited about. But so this is actually I think a hilarious story. Obviously it takes place in Florida.

And usually when there's a headline that says Florida man, it's followed by something that's like embarrassingly absurd. And this is like, like, like, you know, guy rides an alligator to, yeah, yeah, Florida, Florida man's got stuck in a wall for

a year and lived off of turtles. I don't know what. But, but so, so this man is, is reacting to all of that book banning. And he has petitioned the public school superintendents across the state to immediately remove the Bible from classrooms and libraries and all instructional material.

So and also additionally, he said he wanted every reference of the Bible. If there is a reference in a book to to the Bible, then that also needed to be banned. And I just love this. I think it's brilliant. So this guy's name is

something's Chaz Stevens. And apparently he's he's kind of well known in Florida for kind of pushing against the system when they come up with right. So when they're dicks. Yeah, when they're dicks. So he him

having a stunt like this is not something new, but he his actions have often led to them kind of pulling back on whatever stupid

laws or whatever they're trying to enact. But so he's very rudely pointing out their own absurdity, which is what and their hypocrisy, which is exactly what he's doing in this. So there was a bill that was signed into law by Ron Santis last month that was allowing parents to object to educational materials and like basically be able to say like, you know, we we want these specific things banned for whatever reason.

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