1411: Banned Books | Skeptical Sunday

On this Skeptical Sunday, Nick Pell reads between the lines of banned book lists to show how outrage moves units — and what real censorship looks like.

Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by

Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1411

On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:

• Why most so-called banned books aren’t banned at all — they’ve been challenged, moved to another shelf, or pulled from a school, yet remain on Amazon. No US book has faced a legality trial since Naked Lunch in 1966, while the Bible is outlawed in nearly 60 countries.
• How underground cartoonist Mike Diana became a rare modern exception: convicted in Florida in 1994 over his comic zine Boiled Angel, barred from drawing anything obscene even for himself, and subjected to warrantless searches — yet his work never appears on banned-book displays.
• Why the real fight is over who decides what kids read: Florida’s laws let residents without kids challenge school library books, which are often pulled during review, while the Supreme Court’s Pico ruling says schools can’t remove books simply for the ideas they contain.
• How the old banned in Boston effect still sells books: a challenge lifts a title’s public library circulation by about 12%, Maus hit #1 on Amazon after being challenged in Tennessee, and marketers have long staged protests to make readers crave forbidden fruit.
• How to read between the lines: check whether a banned book is actually unavailable, save your outrage for real censorship like the death threats against Salman Rushdie, read troubling books to understand and counter their ideas, and turn controversies into age-appropriate talks with kids.
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