the animal gazetteer is my favorite because i believe we need to do more to protect animals in our world and so i created that book to help children understand animals and there are a lot of numbers and that vote. that was created by some students who were available and they think they were only 14 and 16 and their buyer wanted them to have a summer job so i have them come in without love. close to one in the book -- one of the things in the animal gaze at tier you have the population and some of the stats about the state but at the bottom its zoo locations and the children's zoo is listed there at the top. can anyone contribute to the dictionarych project?

>> guest: yes. >> host: how would they do so? >> guest: we have a web site to dictionary project.org and they can call our office. we answered the phone and anyway that you want to contribute or participate we have thousands of people who volunteer their time and give dictionaries to children so we are so proud of the good work that they do in their community. they do many things and this is just one and very grateful that they are doing it. >> host: can anyone get the dictionary? >> guest: absolutely. we get phonecalls every day not phonecalls and prisoners but i get letters and when i read their letters they ask for a specific type of dictionary that they are looking for and i have

grandmothers who want to give it to their grandchildren. we have all kinds of people who want to get to dictionaries. we are happy to help anyone who wants a dictionary we will make sure that they get one. >> host: mary french is the director of the dictionary project. thanks for your time and thanks for joining us on today. >> guest: my pleasure. thank you peter. if you choose to research the origins of a topping being discussed frequently in the united states in recent months called critical race theory you will find the name derek bell law professor bell who died in 2011 was one of the principle originators of this much discussed subject. in november of 1992 derek bell appeared on booknotes to discuss his book quote faces at the bottom of the well, the permanence of racism unquote.

>> eric berkowitz is a writer lawyer and journalist. for 20 yearswa is practiced intellectual property and business litigation laws in los angeles and has published widely throughout his career and his writing has appeared in periodicals like "the new york times," "washington post" the economist "l.a. times." his previous books include and punishment in the boundaries of desire. he comes to us from san francisco. in conversation tonight we have judy miller and amy dupont-columbia peabody award-winning television correspondent and the o.j. simpson criminal trials. we have some very excellent

guess that we have here tonight. thank you for coming out everybody one last time an alternate over to eric and judy. welcome. >> takes a lot for that lovely introduction. >> you can corrected at the end of the show. thank you. i'm really thrilled to be talking today with eric berkowitz. eric is truly one of the finest know especially when it comes to tackling enormous subjects like the history of censorship in the west. and i love this book. most authors would be intimidated i think by the subject matter but eric has this great talent of taking a big subject and serving it up and delicious little morsels of history to the great storyteller and these are page turning

stories full of the trail in heroism and which is always helpful and all of those amazing dramatic things. it was called a masterpiece, astounding a comprehensive account of censorship and that was not his mother. there was a real reviewer. one of the major takeaways for me and i love this book after reading it, it seems to me a major same is that censorship never really works at least in the long run. is that how you see it to?ow to have all these examples that in the end all these attempts to censor thoughts and words in whatever form fails. is that true?

>> i thinkec it's almost entirey true because there's a real difference between censoring a book or a picture or even shutting down the demonstration or even killing someone from the idea that actually is embodied in ways like that on what we find in one form or another is that after either the mob are generally the government they are disturbed by an idea so they run down and try to eradicate all copies etc. etc. but copies always survive and even more than that the idea is a copy so when something is suppressed again when something is band you want to look at it. when something is buried you want to dig it up and oftentimes

those who arep. suppressing it r keeping copies for themselves so we see repeatedly that when an expression is locked down its squeaks itsit way through. most recently china has the most comprehensive internet scheme in the world. everything they can do to bar news reporters without orders have just found a way to follow thousands of forbidden news stories through the on line game minecraft. recorded stories on spotify. the examples are legion. >> i'm glad you brought that up it does we are still struggling

with how to keep dangerous ideas away from people. >> good luck with that. >> e right. but this book begins with some of the first emperors in china and what did they don to suppres ideas that they thought were dangerous? >> if you look at the opening antidote -- anecdote of the book the first emperor of china said and i'm going to butcher the pronunciation so we are now back in the third century and he is a warrior and a student of unified scientists. what he wanted his history to serve him and if you travel to the kingdom and it kills me that

people criticize him was a great achiever and particularly intellectually. he says this is really better than the dark side? he realized confucius was the source of all these ideas. they gathered together not just confucius that all books of poetry literacy history and philosophy, gathered them all, not them all, he saved copies for himself so again censorship doesn't work. he also took the philosophers who were the leading confucius philosophers who carried the ideas and buried them alive, buried 400 philosophers alive. in fact going forward even to

discuss the past critically using confucius would gett herself killed along with your family. so that works for about three years. that worked for about three years until he had some mental problems. he was consumed with forestalling debt and he died drinking the elixir of life that the truth is chinese poetry lost -- lasted in he's the one who has the terra-cotta army and he was buried with that. >> oh okay that's interesting. you bring up a good subject that he tried to keep it away from the masses and this is another theme i see throughff your book treats censorship as a class struggle the haves versus the riffraff people that they do want to share stuff with from churchch pornography and what

really blew this apart was the printing press. is that right? >> absolutely. i can talk about that or we can into it inwo questions. one censorship doesn't work there's always the idea so what do you do with it? if you are in the upper class what you are most concerned about is channeling knowledge and shambling ideas rather than police suppressing them so when books were just in written manuscripts there was self-censorship. there weren't that many books to go around. they were expensive and it was blown all a blown all apart. all of a sudden what was exclusive progress the ruling classes became available to everyone instantly, well instantly in 16th century time that is in a few decades the catholicss, the catholic churchs

index of forbidden books cropped up in censorship laws crept up repeatedly in the whole thing was to keep knowledge away from the masses, keep them ignorant, keepep them docile and that reay has been the main preoccupation. >> i'm thinking of what they called the streisand effect. i've heard of this and you can explain where it comes from but the idea that the more you try to suppress something the more appealing it is. >> isn't that the case with you? >> course. you tell me you should shouldn't read this you shouldn't look there. why is it named after her per streisand though? where does that come from? >> barbara streisand objected very much to having -- there

were some aerial pictures of her place in malibu and she made a big trying to stop it and everybody said wait a minute what is this place in malibu so yes the forgotten fruit aspect of censorship never really stops and so for example when england was very consumed the 19th century with keeping criticism of the king down, keeping the masses from criticizing the king and the church in particular so there is one example. this guy was an antiquarian bookseller who wrote parodies and wrote some jokes, sort of the book of humor but really taking some hard bites at the ruling class and that the church. so what did the british government to? they put him on trial for seditioust libel. no one had heard of this guy. he was just a guy.

well the trial itself brought him fame and before the trial -- actually there were three trials. before the trials were done he was selling thousands and ff of his of copies criticisms of the church. >> and what happened to him? >> they finally gave up. he actually won the trial and you know he didn't set out to be a warrior for a free but that's what he became. >> and i'm thinking about the story of kendall. >> perfect, yes. >> talk about him because he didn't win in the sense that he lost his life but what he was trying to do became a fact so was the case of actually a boomerang effect peer talk about him a little bit. >> e, in fact let's start with

tyndall being now termed by the is a lessbrary important writer in the english language and that was shakespeare. >> tyndall lived in the early 16th century and he was a scholar, again a professor at oxford and cambridge and he read martin luther's illegal translation of the bible. there is a big battle back then. keep people from reading it in their own s languages that tyndl thought i'm going to translate this into english. he went to thehe bishop of londn and taken i do this in the bishop said of course not greatly will kill you if you do that. he went to the convent and did a brilliant job of it and smuggled it into england. thousands and thousands of copies began to get sold and

again because they were for bitten. and so the bishop was chasing all the illegal copies and he was telling people by copies of the illegal bible in order to bring them back to england and burn them. and so it tents all was finally caught and murdered. what is the epilogue to this? the illegal bible was so brilliant that times change very soon in henry viii broke with the church and tyndall's version of the bible became the core of the kingis james bible so this altar for bitten document became mainstream. >> of bestseller. >> a bestseller in it still part of the corey bible. >> e. theirs is boomerang effect and

sometimes, sometimes i think we don't know the full story. i'm thinking of salman rushdie here and i think you'd ask most people they'd say yes i remember he wrote a book that offended -- and they put a fatwa out on him and he had to go into hiding in england and that looks bad but now solomon rushdie, he was up here in the mountains where i live not long ago having dinner and i saw him near me and my first thought was fought the law, should i move? [laughter] but to most people it looks as though salman rushdie came out just fine. he still writing and all that. but isn't there a kind of lingering effect or something like that? a kind of censorship that's late

and that's underneath the people start watching themselves whether they are going to publish him? is there a lingering effect of censorship like that that it has on an author or the reading public? >> ito certainly does and theres a keen t live effect and a step-by-step process. there's a writer and i'm going to give a shout-out to keenan allen in england to spend a lot of time on this and he used the wonderful phrase which i wish i could claim called we have internalized the fatwa. just for our readers solomon rushed he. >> a book called "the satanic verses" and to meme was offensie to some in islam and there was a death sentence a fatwa for him. the british government had a lot of pressure to shut them down and his publisher stood by him. ande so his book was never fully

censored. he survived and he internalized the fatwa now in w a sense that was much more concerned with defense and we haveth covered a lot of plays that were produced in art exhibits the words staged, concerts that were put on because of our fear that perhaps there will be offense, not necessarily violence that we have internalized this notion and we can talk about this if you want that free speech is fine so long as it doesn't out there anybody so long as it doesn't offend anybody and that's not the free speech that we really care s about. it's the larry larry flynt's in this larry flynt's in the sum io rushdie's and the screamer nutcase down the street who is protecting your speech, not you and me. we just live their lives and so we have come to believe or at least many have come to believe

that freedom of speech itself is a risk, it's a source of harm rather than ever award of a free society and i think that the lesson of the lingering let's call it pulling punches from verses and the danish cartoons that in a diverse society offenses no longer the price that we pay for freedom. offense is something to be policed and shut down. i personally believe that is really incompatible with the notions of what free speech is. >> since we are on this have you ever personally self-centered or felt the need to? >> well you know yes. i think i know where we are going. i have self-censored on this book itself in a very painful

way. you taught me when you were my professor of journalism that a reporter should never be the story and the writer wasn't the story but in this case i was. i was writing about this. this book has been published in the united states and in the uk and my uk publishers are run by an extremely brave woman who was goading me the whole time, don't pull punches, tell the truth you know be bold. okay and i was writing about this whole issue we are talking about and there was a recent decision by the european court of human rights which i criticize very heavily and i will give you a quick background on that or this woman had given a seminar in ostrow in which she called the prophet mohammad a pedophile because he had ain yog wife, a very young wife and she

was prosecuted in this impairment for inciting hatred. the european court of human rights upheld that saying well the rules of discourse say that you shouldn't be crude to diceglie -- gratuitously offensive and i was astounded that the high score protecting human rights and are taking free expression, it's free expression unless you offend people. i said something to the effect is that now you have internalized the fatwa. my publisher was very bold and called me and said i can't do it. really? can'trn do it. i cannot write that line. i cannot say it fed death threats and we have had worked through the window. i have a child in my employees have children you got to rewrite it. for a minute i thought i'm going

to pull the book. i'm not doing this. i'm a hypocrite and then i realized from my hyperprivileged perch in san francisco where no one is threatening me it's very easy to be a first amendment absolutist and then i self-centered and then i rode around it and for those who want to read the american edition it's all there but the uk edition for the safety of others has been amended. >> and yet in afghanistan just last week, 50 young girls were killed at the school, clearly an attempt to stop the education of young women under very extreme islamic law kind of idea and that obviously is going to have an effect in the same way that it had an effect on you when somebody said you might be in danger if you he write this and

all that is not even subtle but it does have a censoring effect, correct? >> it does, it does. the difference between afghanistan, afghanistan is a much less diverse society. i think what we are paying the price on i'm not sure it's right and i'm not defending this and i'm not defending offense either. i'm easily offended. i've got my soft spots and when i hear things that hit my soft spots i feel pain but that doesn't mean i necessarily want to shut it down but it's not to say that it should be barred. we are in a diverse society now and universities are set up basically for white men. it's a lot different now and a lot of people are saying that the price of a diverse society is we have to be a little bit more careful. i'm not sure i agree with that.

that's what it comes down to. what happened m in afghanistan s heinous by any prospective. >> i want to get to academia in a minute but i think most americans have asked would say guess we believe in free speech. we are proud of the first amendment and yet there are signs that like to tinker with the first amendment a little bit. it's maybe gone too far for some people. w is there any evidence that americans are torn on this issue or little schizoid on this issue? >> ohh my. we are not a little schizoid, clearcut into pieces and we are in fragments around thesu floor. we are very proud of our traditions and we are very proud of our free speech but at the same time surveys are showing at least half of americans and more millenials believe the first amendment is outdated.

>> really? >> i have cited a few poles and it's becoming more and more and in fact there's this group the fire which tracked a lot of ivy league students and thought you could forcibly shut people down which you don't want or are becoming increasingly touchier. we can't very the idea of an idea that does not fit ours. so it's reallyt really interesting and in my opinion when the signature achievements of this country for the last 50 or 60 odd years -- years is the most free-speech environment that the world has ever known by a large and -- we have a supreme court that says the noise of free speech is powerful medicine for society and it makes us responsible for ourselves and responsible for taking care of a free society but now i think a

lot of people are turning to the government and saying censor us, protect me. stop that person. stop that person frombs saying things and when you ask whether we are torn that is absolutely part of it and we are looking to social media. allow me to say what i want but stop their. >> social media facebook and twitter at all they have almost weaponized the kind of hate speech and propaganda and lies that used to be censored and there are those who say facebook, excuse me, has become the biggest censor now in our country. how do you feel about how that

is all falling out their oversight council banning trump for another six months because of his insightful speech? nobody has lied more on facebook and twitter than the former president but yet you know somebody who has written about censorship you must be horrified at the idea that we would be censoring any kind of speech is a country. facebook is a private company and they are allowed to do that but give me your thoughts on that whole issue. >> you remember the disney cartoon from when we were kids called the sorcerer's apprentice? >> yes. >> i think when you start something it looks good and you have to be careful what you b wh for. that's the subtitle of what i talk about with respect to this.

the way that our country was set up the government at least at this point has almost no power to censor speech. unless it's a direct incitement of violence or copyright infringement, very limited exceptions where is thehe privae sector we talk about restaurants cafés in schools and things like that. don't tread on me okay and so because the normal model of censorship has been people versusus the government we have the sorcerer's apprentice that is private world has been expanded to encompass the world, facebook, twitter and the others are private companies. so they don't have to censor anyone. and they can't censor everyone

so in this country free speech andcr things like that, they are legal. government has no power so what we want is people are increasingly and i think rightfully are made crazy by what's going on on social media particularly when you have president himself and his minions shoving the hatred and the lies into the system and it's not justt on facebook. we want to social media companies to dok the work that the government can't and you know there was no one happier about this and he may look concerned when it shows up in the senate every few months but there's no one happier about this chaos then zuckerberg and jack dorseyte because every dispute makes them money.

they have set up the system to foster conflict because that keeps us on the platform and keeps us making out so effectively the censorship was set up on this pure first amendment schedule but as facebook went into europe and they had to observe a much more restrict your pearls of europe we reimported hate speech laws back into this country and i think we can badger facebook all we want but they are going to do what they want. it's just a whitewash and it's just basically saying look something bright, stay away from us. >> i want to remind those of you who w w t are listening in tunin that you can ask questions and put them up on the chat board and if we have time and we are going to try to make time we

will be sure to ask eric your questions. just put it on the chad and i will keep an eye on on it. while we are on social media, do you see a role? do you see any kind of push? >> a lot of the terrible things i do, there are two words that arise when i think about government regulations and donald trump, just think about the first amendment says he was an absolute enemy and absolutely ready to jail anyone who spoke up against him. he called the press the enemy or the people 5000 times. and it wasn't hyperbole actually believe that so because of our government regulations and a call for censorship this is one

of the lessons of my book reaching back 15,000 years uis have to look at regulation. if we think government can regulate hate speech or fake news or other terrible things to benefit us we always have to think what if donald trump had that power and what if jeff sessions have that power?ul what if josh holyhead that power -- what if josh hawley had that power. i'm very concerned about the solution being far worse than the problem. >> people talk a lot about cancel culture come up clinical correctness and this is a reaction to a movement that is understandably worried about hate speech.

it's altogether but what do you think of that term cancel culture and political correct this and the impact it's having on academia? >> the latest example of cancel culture is medina spirit. the owner said stop canceling out my pores. >> it's one of these terms like politically correct or woke. they are the terms that we use that are bleached of all meaning and even the word unconstitutional. they are unconstitutional. we hear these terms to label

things and developments that we don't like. >> but we understand there's a very renewed concern about words that offend people and transgender attacks but i've also seen such an overreaction in academia and professors being fired. professor recently during a a zm meeting with a couple of w students and one student asked to read a case study as a law student and in reading the case study van word was read from the case study and this created a huge thing and both the professor apologized and it sounds like something out of mao's cultural revolution where they are ordered to apologize or else and he was reading and

quoting certain words that have become -- >> radioactive. >> pardon me? >> radioactive or its >> radioactive and they are words and what kind of intentions do you say something with and for instance take a word if you stayed in anger it's sexist and awful and misanthropic but if you say a female dog it's also what day -- and it's just an expression and there's accounting france called -which as you know had to remove its name from facebook because facebook was upset that the word was in there. doesn't the intention have some

power here and have we lost our minds is what i'm asking? >> yes we have lost our minds. they spoke is based in europe gargantuan signs with billions of pieces of content roll through facebook every hour. their human content moderators that they hire who just filed a class-action lawsuit because the working conditions are so terrible so any addition to humanse content monitor they use programs called clean sweep. no human thought i'm going to -- where they saw the term and it was gone. the town renamed itself. there's a lack of intention on

social mediake platforms to keep up with regulation and they overran move which is a real problem and they also talk about cancel culture and you talk about the n t word. that word like swastika and a number of other things are simply radioactive. is a swastika allowed in germany? and no. it won't happen. they go beyond what they signify and the law school there was a student quoting from a judge's opinion that included that word. we get still pointed touchiness where that can't be allowed. talking about cancel culture and want to get a little more subtle because i was making fun with

the horse. a lot of times it's a revenge of the powerless that don't have power to get together and call out to make someone accountable for doing something hideous or has done something hideous and this is a way for people in social media to gather their powers and bring people down when power structures won't. sounds good in theory but what emerges is a good old-fashioned mob and there's a lot of lives ruined and maybe some lives should the ruined but a lot more are not and yes professors are getting cleaned out. i think it administrations are terrified of the mob.

>> it is censorship by a mob, is it not in the sense by political correctness? i'm just making this argument because so many people do. i'm not saying it's my opinion. it really is as though you can't escape censorship in one wayay r another. >> censorship used to mean exclusively actions by the government against people. that's how -- that's what censorship typically means whether it's a judge or a cop or something else. censorship is losing a lot of its real meaning and maybe silencing. >> there's a question on the chat that i want to get in. i don't want to get away from social media right away and if you have an opinion on section

section 230 of the act needs to be modified or eliminated and first explain what section 230 yes. >> yeahha sure. section 230 the statute that's no longer obscure. it's been called the 26th word that made the internet and what it basically says is everything from facebook to yelp and to wikipedia anything that involves users the platforms themselves the people that post they are not liable for anything said. they are just letting it happen. typically an old world of newspapers it was nice to case but it basically allowed interactive internet communications. the statute was passed in 96 and

section 230 has taken a lot of heat for being blamed for all this on the internet and this pervasive hatred. at some level yes and that some level now. the answer to the question should it be modified i guess my feelingg would the no. i qualified no one here is why. they can't be modified very well because it fed government starts to tinker with what the platform can do with free speech it's a first amendment problem. we still have a strong -- like it or not in companies such as facebook have speech rights and if they want to amplify something or they want to not amplify something that's their right to do it.

i personally think we should get them where they breathe and stop thee targeted advertising model. not you but there are weight-loss ads. they target ads to those of the targeted ad model the model that follow someone around in targets that is really in many ways the culprit because it keeps your agitated. i think we can monkey with ads much more safe in the first amendment than after five years of litigation telling facebook allow this, don't allow that and

do this and don't do that. >> i think you are right. it's all aboutut the money. it's all about appealing to our worst selves. whenever i get someone like you might page in the course that goes to an endorphin in my rain that says oh they like me. >> or when you hear that you're enemy is worse than you ever thought. i actually asked my publisher how did you target my book and they said it's not for my stupid book. so no one out of my set. >> nobody who marched in charlottesville and white supremacist groups is going to buy your book is that what you're saying?

because you have a great story about that. one of the fellows that was marching in charlottesville was allowed to w say whatever he was with free speech and then what happened to him? >> he was more than allowed he was protected to say what he wants. for curing those stupid tiki torches and screaming those ridiculous things, just lowlifes and absolute protected as much as you or i are. he goes back in the doors are shut a a dozen of the job anymo. >> so there you go. >> it perfectly illustrates public-private industry i want to add one more thing. he goes back to the free-speech center at the university and finds his free speech isn't so respected there. the owner of the hotdog place as we respect their employees that

they can make their own choices but they must accept the responsibility and that is no more job. these two chinese tourists go to berlin and are standing in front of the -- and they raised the salute and within 10 seconds they are arrested so it perfectly illustrates how various countries do it can't do that in germany. even if you are a tourist so yeah. >> almost every day we are hearing examples and the stories are everywhere. censorship doesn't have to be about veaux and it doesn't have to be about movies. they movies. there were two young black kids who were sent home from school and if i can remember the state even, oh well. they were wearing black lives matter t-shirts and the schools of this outrageous they can't

wear this sort of propaganda and i think these kids were seven and nine isn't my life matters. offensive about that? and that's one example and we have publishers saying weke dont want to rewrite history and we don't want any of that ugly stuff. we don't want to teach the 1619 project as "the new york times" has about black historyy in this country because it revises what we thought we knew. what do you think of that? that is censorship, is it not? telling people what they can wear in telling people they can't read that? >> absolutely. you and i chatted about this a couple of days ago. it's extremely sad. that's the only word. if he the kid can't wear t-shirt

that saying his own life matters that's an overaggressive school board and that the school board that's responding to pressure that equates black lives matter with terrorism etc. and being scared of african-american identity i suppose. there are a number of states saying you can't teach this. in 1519 there was this massive magnificent piece of research talking about how fundamental is established in this country and how it persists. there are buildings and a number of states hoping to prevent the teaching of that project. they will lose on first amendment grounds. that will happen but what it

means is well it's a long tradition. every regime gets to rewrite history in order to bolster itself. that's the democratic society as well. we are seeing the latest manifestation of it. >> we do have a question. karen foley asked you have any suggestions for whatat citizens can do on the topic of fighting censorship? what do we do? how do we as individual citizens in this country which purports to -- do we speak up when we see a kid at school? the that down to that point of view? is about refusing to be on facebook if they continue to use algorithms to track our marketingke desires?

c this isn't going to be a very good answer and i really held back in the book and trying to fashion myself as some kind of judge and jury and prescriptive or. society is chaotic and we are full of a lotao of conflict andt didn't start with facebook. we went into a war in iraq based on a fundamental lie that hussein was behind 9/11 amplified by "the new york times." there were decades and decades t were rethought or we were taut that african-americans have a different skull shape and these bizarre things that even living with us for a long time. you have to do things that scare you and you have to put yourself in harm's way just a little bit. there's a professor in the

school who if you don't agree with or whose views you find a bore and is getting canceled or getting fired or getting put under review for something that he said you have to argue against your own interests because they really deeply believe that without a robust free-speech environment in which we get a little bit dizzy, i honestly every day i would wake up andnd see what fresh -- fresh is trump bringing me but i also know full mating like he did on twitter it showed what a maniac he was and one of the big reasons we got rid of him. >> i love the saying you have to work against her own interests. i can remember in the 60s and

the aclu, the aclu backed their right to do that or they weree carrying flags. >> they got a lot of grief. >> i know they did it i thought wow that's true to free-speech. >> inc. of the head of the naacp to protect the rights of the ku klux klansmen calling for his own murder calling for the murder of african-americans. saying i hate this, it scares me but i'm not going to take the role of shutting down another person's view. what can we do? absolutely we can speak out against violence and absolutely can speak out but not to echo

what we are to believe to do what sometimes feels, if it doesn't hurt it doesn't help. >> i think the first first amendment is so misunderstood and the hardest thing. it's one thing to say yes i've are right to speak and it's another thing to say you have a right to speak even though i hate what you are saying. when the founding others but the hefirst amendment of the constitution it wasn't a deal and it wasn't the first thing i thought of and also it wasn't entirely free speech at that time. >> ben franklin and of all people no one had any real idea what the hell they were doing. there was no debate about it during the constitutional

convention. the idea of what free speech was it's extremely different. i don't want to freeze history but they also have to appreciate our achievements. seven years after the first amendment was passed we passed a sedition act which outlawed almost all the -- so the first amendment it was passed as an intention and i'm just really worried the fact that we are living in a highly partisan

environment, that we don't take that and say let's just rewrite the whole thing. >> and i notice you said f it. just joking. we do have a really good question and we do have time to ask it from lou who says you have an opinion about mark twain and the m n word as in hucklebey finn. a publisher did not want to use use the word imprint but it's historical and represents the times in which he lived. it now it does not the same book i believe. this encapsulates the free-speech censorship time moves on historical if what was the intention. it's all there and all across

the country people as ban huckleberry finn in schools. what do you think? >> i think as we are seeing a word worn in hatred and award born of everything wrong is radioactive. >> i should point out he's the character of jim and the n word is used in front of his name all the time because that was the style of the speech. >> yeah. that word is probably used 1600 times in a look and let's just say we took a -- one that would only call further attention to that word.ce of

when you erase something you simply highlight it. if you said jim that would make the word that much more wild than her head so the idea isn't going away. it gets to what he says yes i agree with you entirely. but book not only is a great literary achievement but a great example of the mindset during thatds time. he was using that word to extend to highlight the it injustices and he was not using it to call for violence or call for hatred. intention matters a lot here. in short the word is still there and we have to look at the -- and not the wordrd itself.

>> that's an important place to rap this up and have a great question which to do it. there's a debate that's going to rajon for centuries and it never goes away. people try to censor and it never works and here we go-round and round. and social media has weaponized the whole space and we h shall see. time will tell all of the platitudes. i can see that nick has rejoined us. i want to thank you eric for writing this book. it's wonderful and i cannot emphasize how many stories we are able to get there but they are there and they are wonderful and it reminds you that historyu is full of heroes who stood up against real oppression to keep freedom of speech going and

that's a great take away. >> that's a really great villain. >> henry viii. anyway really good stories and thank you for writing it and thank you for being with us today. nick. >> absolutely. the book is 'dangerous ideas" and her opera tonight was eric berkowitz. thankr you again for the conversation tonight. he was a really lovely conversation we had excellent conversations from from the chad and thank you tour v-12 showed up. it was a does -- interesting discussion there as well. it b was very in attaining and s part of it. you can purchase the book from book passage.com. you can follow it in the chat. if you happen to live near our store you can pick it up if you would like that even if you don't know with near as we will

ship it everywhere in the united states directly to your doorstep in addition to that if you have a local bookstore we have really will not begrudge you if you purchase from them in bookstores all across the country. but if you want to purchase it from us we be happy to have you. if you enjoy the conversation tonighton please subscribe to te youtube channel. it's completely free and you can joinl. the conversation you can click the thumbs-up button and help the algorithm recommend our videos. thank you again one last time forr showing up. 'dangerous ideas" and thanks again. i had a really good time. thank you for coming in we will see you all again i hope soon. goodbye.