On Book Banning
Quillette Podcast
Quillette
4.6 • 917 Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
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| 0:31.8 | Welcome to the Quillette podcast, hosted on alternate weeks by me, Jonathan Kay, and by Iona Italia. |
| 0:39.8 | Quillette is where Freethought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for |
| 0:44.3 | heterodox ideas and fearless commentary. You are about to hear a free preview of this |
| 0:50.0 | week's episode. To hear the full episode, and to get access to all our podcasts and articles, visit |
| 0:56.3 | us at quillette.com and click the subscribe button. And this week we're going to be talking about |
| 1:03.0 | book banning with University of Toronto English professor Ira Wells, author of a newly published |
| 1:08.9 | biblioacist book titled, Simply Enough, on book banning. |
| 1:13.5 | As Ira writes, The urge to ban books is older than the printing press. |
| 1:18.1 | Even the ancient Romans tried to burn books they didn't like, though, as Tacitus reminded |
| 1:23.2 | us, those efforts often backfired. |
| 1:25.9 | When it comes to modern times, Wells writes, |
| 1:28.3 | the instinct to ban books is alive and well on both sides of the political spectrum. |
| 1:33.8 | And yes, trigger warning, we're going to be hearing plenty of so-called both-sidesism |
| 1:38.8 | in this podcast episode. Using Florida as a case study, Wells describes how conservatives have tried to suppress |
| 1:46.0 | books they accuse of indoctrinating children into LGBT lifestyles. Meanwhile, here in Ontario, Canada, |
| 1:53.8 | where both Ira and I live, progressive censors have used anti-racism and related doctrines |
| 1:59.9 | as a pretext to strip thousands of books |
| 2:02.7 | from school library shelves. In some cases, for no other reason than that the book was written |
| 2:08.4 | more than 15 years ago, and so is presumptively unrepresentative of modern progressive values. |
| 2:15.3 | And full disclosure, Ira is actually a neighbor of mine here in Toronto, |
... |
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