Hi, this is Katia, executive producer of On the Media.

I have some news for you.

Brooke wrote a book and it's out this week officially.

It's called The Trouble with Reality, a rumination on the moral panic in our time.

And in it, Brooke explores the idea that we are living in an era of smoke and mirrors as never before.

Basic facts have no impact and fundamental norms are violated at will.

How did we get here?

In the book, you follow Brooke down a rabbit hole as she searches for an explanation.

Our colleague Brian Lera, host of W at NYC's live morning show, spoke with Brooke on Tuesday about the book. It was a great

conversation. Here's Brian. You compare the two classic books, 1984 by George Orwell, and Brave

New World by Aldous Huxley through the lens of the late NYU Media Studies Professor Neil Postman.

Both those books describe totalitarian

worlds we could find ourselves in, but one of them struck Postman as more relevant to today,

and I think struck you that way too. Will you take us there?

Sure, absolutely. Postman was writing about this in his 1985 classic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death,

which still has a great deal to teach us, even though it does precede the Internet and the impact

of digital technology.

And I think some of the things that he projects are off.

But in terms of the Orwell-Huxley comparison, here's what he wrote. He wrote, what Orwell feared

were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book,

for there would be no one who

wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who

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