that otherwise wouldn't have. it is morning and it's a lot of fun. being able to translate that knowledge into policy is also very exciting. we do that because it's relevant to what we are working on. >> it on both tv we want to introduce you to kevin young, author of his new book, "bunk: the rise of hoaxes, humbug, plagiarists, post-facts, and fake news". comes out this fall. before we go too far into the

book, what do you do for a living? >> on the new direct your in how much is part of the new york public library system. i have been there since the summer. it has been a great. we discovered james baldwin papers be announced in april it would just announce two days ago the sonny rollins paper. we are excited to have those archives come home and be part of a cultural life fair, which 36 and one x and we are really happy to have those materials come back. >> you say is part of the new york public library. what the focus? >> the focus is african-american and african diaspora. from fisheries to our two photographs, everything. we have about 11 million items related to the diaspora.

i think that is what makes this unique is our age we started in 1925 is the need for division of the new york public library in carnegie library still standing winning the national historic landmark in january. we really come full circle with these recent acquisitions which point to the long history of starting in the harlem renaissance and documenting black lives in black culture today. for baldwin and sonny rollins were born in harlem in sorted cd-r can have them come home has been really great. >> host: prior to joining chambre, where were you? >> i was a professor for 20 years. there i got archives as well, so that's what sort of god and the archive business. i'm also a poet and a writer. i had one previous nonfiction

book called the grey album and from that i got interested in hoaxes and layers of the american history of fakery. [inaudible] >> it's a great word. it comes from politics actually. the missouri compromise in slavery, someone from the county, which is north carolina that i have to talk more. people started using am then it became bumped as a way of political bs. >> the current term fake news is not really anything new in our culture? >> it's not. starting in the 1830s and barnum and it's really two centuries of thinking about how did this come about.

is it particularly american? what does it have to do with race and what does that have to do now? a lot of it in the 1830s starting with pt barnum is where i began the book, really comes about from new media coming in now, which sounds familiar, right? the new media, kind of the penny press and then it became a penny. they were pretty scandalous. they were filled with fakery. we are talking emmaus readers. someone pretended they could see life on the moon. that's really poured on a lot of what we are seeing now on fake news, but it's as old as 1835. >> host: in your book you write the transformative access most resembles the current change demonstrated this not

cause. >> yeah. i think the internet in the sense of taking the penny press to its extreme access for folks in austin getting requested back what they like. the penny press is very competitive and you see a lot of proliferation of them. a similar thing on the internet. also it is hard sometimes to debunk. they kind of circulate and circulate. whether we talk about the fake news that today or how hard it can be to untangle ourselves from some of the shared notions. some people become hard to eradicate. >> y p. t. barnum? >> r&m is a fascinating figure.

is helping to invent what we now think of as pop culture. he invented our notions of the service, to the sideshow domain of professional and people pay money and go to allocate places to see these figures that he was kind of concoct. a lot of them are centered around race. one of the most famous early hope of a successful showman wise to play the woman joyce and he pretended she was -- [inaudible] 161 years old in to occur around the northeast instead comes the away of sort of connecting to george washington, the father of our country and physically examined her.

it's very troubling because he has a medical theater where he dissects her. it gets pretty intense. he also then reveals that's also part of the hoax, in that top 10 a lot about this idea of not only what you could say and make it almost patriotic to believe, but also the questioning or wondering about it was also part of the hoax. he was really great at making that part of it and you see that now they are just as important as the revelation that they are fake. that kind of circle and circus as it were is part of the legacy. >> trump signals a mindset, one in which the truth isn't so much absent or contested us it doesn't matter.

>> i don't know if i'm alone in saying we are in an interesting time where there are these kind of questions about what is true. for those who predate our current situation in the proliferation of conspiracy very attitudes. but it fell apart to eradicate in debunk the false notion. take obama citizenry. what is that about this kind of barbarism that happens. why do we have that at all? it's about some of the same things life and death were about. they're about citizenry, patriotism, who belongs, all that kind of big cosmic things are part of our fabric of the nation. but they can be kind of the boat and resurrected just from a kind of suggestion. it is even hard now that

candidate tram, no president has denied and said that wasn't true. the notion of the longing that attack on the birth certificate of president obama represented. so why we believe this much is why we deceived. >> why do we believe so much? >> some of it depends on as people sort of want to believe, we are programmed to. it may be troubling. it would be easier to believe my discomfort comes from the facts be hidden from me. i think there was a notion that i am an expert in all so

ultimately he came to power two people to decide i am an expert. calexico mermaid to me. he had a famous fake mermaid. or that was part of the interest in the show. now there is no expert. climate change may be. there's a kind of fascinating denial and that becomes even more troubling and more of a difficult position to be in. >> host: "bunk: the rise of hoaxes, humbug, plagiarists, post-facts, and fake news" is the name of the bloke. kevin young is the author. thanks for joining me.