treatment plan 100% online@forhours.com. >> good morning. saturday, january 11th. we begin today again, continuing with coverage of these catastrophic wildfires in california that have incinerated about 58mi!s of the greater los angeles area. remember, this is one of the most populous, most densely

populated parts of this country, officials say, based on infrared imaging, at least 12,000 structures have been destroyed. and when you see the images of what this destruction means, looks a lot more to me like a war zone. more than 180,000 people that we know of have been displaced from their homes. many others who are not in evacuation zones have voluntarily evacuated just preventatively to be out of out of harm's way. at least 11 people have died. officials were just beginning to access certain areas for welfare checks and missing persons reports on thursday, when they warned the death toll could grow. and since then we've seen more fires and more spread. look at this map. look at all these fires in the l.a. area. evacuation orders for the largest fire, which is the one on the left bottom sort of side of your screen, that's the palisades fire, have expanded as it spreads east and now threatens the brentwood and encino areas. that fire is only 8% contained, meaning officials have controlled 8% of the fire,

and that particular 8% is not going to continue to spread. doesn't mean other parts of it won't spread. the eaton fire in the pasadena area that's toward the center right of your screen has burned just over 21mi!s. its 3% contained. more than 150,000 residents remain under evacuation orders, and l.a. county has officially declared a public health emergency as smoke inhalation threatens residents. firefighters have struggled to contain the fires due to severe winds and a reported lack of water pressure to local fire hydrants. there are also issues not just with water pressure, but with actual water supplies from the santa ynez reservoir, which has capacity for 117 million gallons of water but has been closed for repairs since february of last year, according to the l.a. times governor gavin. gavin newsom is now calling for an independent investigation into that situation. several of my colleagues have been on the ground for days in and around

l.a, bringing us the latest updates. here's some of what they've encountered. >> there are people still here trying to fight this fire with garden hoses. there is still water in this area, but are with this much destruction, it almost seems it almost seems futile. you were. you were here fighting by yourself, right? >> yes. >> how long have you been out here? >> i've been out here since 4 a.m. this is an absolutely devastating, catastrophic, and i don't. >> i am not being hyperbolic when i say situation. >> this is this is pacific palisades. >> this is the community that i grew up in, guys. >> i was born and raised in this neighborhood, literally three blocks down that way, both supermarkets in this town, the library, many of the schools have burned to the ground. >> the gas stations have burned to the ground there. as far as we know, it is. is not pacific palisades any longer home after home after home, just absolutely reduced to rubble. >> whatever. family items,

pictures, things that were important to people if they didn't get them out when they evacuated, it is all gone now. i mean, there is literally nothing left inside of homes like this to be salvaged. >> fires obviously have impacted this area before they've impacted malibu, but to see a stretch like this along pch of, i think there's more than 80 houses that were demolished is just not something that anybody has seen before. and as you can see, just like in the palisades, just like in altadena, there's nothing left. >> joining me now, allison barber, live from los angeles. you and i talked 12 hours ago. allison, you were in altadena. i just want to ask you about this containment. it's a word that we use a lot. if you don't live in or cover fires, it's not clear what that means. sounds really positive, right? we heard percentage numbers about these fires that are contained. all it means is that percentage of the fire they feel will not spread further. but i think you've got even newer information than i just reported to my audience about the containment of some of

these big fires. >> right? yeah. >> and it's constantly changing and sometimes it fluctuates up. >> sometimes it fluctuates back down. let me run through the latest update we just got from cal fire. so the palisades fire, where we are now, that is now marked at 11%, contained the eaton fire, pretty big jump compared to where we were last night when you and i last spoke. they're saying, now, as of this morning, it's at 15% contained. palisades and eaton fires. those are the two largest, but we're dealing with a total of five active fires in los angeles county right now. in terms of the kenneth fire, that's now 80% contained. hurst fire now 70% contained the archer fire, a smaller fire that has burned 19 acres, that is currently at 0% contained. but look, one thing that we were seeing yesterday when we were near the eaton fires is how so quickly some of the areas that look like this area behind me, and this one is obviously this is dry, it is rubble, it is massive destruction, but there isn't any smoldering or any active fires. but what we saw a lot last night when we were with fire teams over near the eaton fire, was

that there were some areas that had actually looked like structures, buildings that had collapsed, that looked like they were no longer burning. but a lot of those homes have basements, and a lot of the buildings have basements. and what some of the strikers and firefighters on the ground were telling us is that it was difficult to tell which homes had basements, which buildings had basements, and then when all of the levels had collapsed in those buildings, there were still a lot of pockets of heat, particularly in places that had basements that were either reigniting and turning into hotspots and starting new fires again, or they were already still having little fires are still burning underneath the debris, and you just couldn't see it when you were walking by. and then they were reigniting. so they were having to go back to a lot of places that had looked like they were no longer actively burning. but then a few hours later, they were back to burning again. so it's this constant challenge and a lot of these spaces, and that's part of why they say they have been telling people in a lot of these areas, in mandatory evacuation zones, you still can't come back just yet, because they're not

entirely sure that every building is entirely cleared, dealt with, and all of the fire and the potential for hot hotspots popping back up has been cleared. but, i mean, you just look at the destruction behind me and it's hard to wrap your head around it, whether it's this fire in the area and the palisades or if it is over in altadena, near the eaton fire, people have lost everything. and there is so much frustration in los angeles about how this could happen, how it is still such a challenge for them to get these fires under control and where it goes from here. and that's something, ali, that has been stunning to hear from the la fire departments chief in the last 24 hours. in an interview she did with local news, where she said very pointedly, her department has been underfunded, she says we are underfunded, understaffed, under-resourced and that that has been the case for three years. she sent a 24 page memo to the board of fire commissioners on december 4th, warning about the issues with budget cuts, saying there's gaps in their resources. and she said that she feels like they were not able to fully do their job when these fires bursted out

because, she says there was a lack of funding. obviously the mayor and others have disagreed with that, but you hear that frustration so much when you're in los angeles talking to people who live here. they're saying, how could this have happened? and why are we still dealing with this now? it feels like it's not getting any better. >> ali, allison, thanks for your great reporting. thanks to our entire team and all the reporters out there who are giving some very important messages out to people, because at this point, this is not just a coverage of a story. people are needing to know what to do and what their loved ones are supposed to do. nbc's ellison barber, part of our extensive team in california, at least 12,000 structures across thousands of properties have already been destroyed by the multiple fires that are currently raging across los angeles. the destruction adds heavy strain to california's existing home insurance crisis. these fires in la are already likely the costliest wildfires in history. accuweather came out with an estimate damages of over $135 billion. jp morgan estimates property value currently totaling about $50

billion in damage. climate fueled disasters are having an impact in every corner of the planet, costing lives. it's costing livelihoods, costing houses and lots and lots and lots of money. the cost of natural disasters has been increasing significantly year over year for decades, according to noaa, the average yearly cost of major disasters has more than quadrupled over the last four decades. in 2020, two, major national natural disasters caused the united states about $177 billion in damages. this, by the way, this this fire might eclipse that entire 2022 number. by the way, insurers don't want to take the heat across the country, major insurance companies have been rolling back the coverage that they are willing to provide. they've been backing out of particularly disaster prone, high risk areas altogether earthquakes, floods and fires and hurricanes. it's happening in all 50 states, by the way. but states like california and colorado, which see disproportionately high fire risk, and florida, texas and louisiana, which see

increasingly high storm risk, are losing insurers left and right, mainstream, massive companies. last summer, the top insurer in california, the top insurers, one by one, announced that they would stop selling new policies to homeowners. american international group, allstate state farm they all pulled out of the state no new policies, and they're revoking existing policies or refusing to renew. much of this has happened in the last 12 months. people just got a notice your insurance is canceled. good luck to you. if you have a mortgage or trying to buy a place or getting a mortgage. some people are just existing without insurance on their properties. they cited rising risk from climate related disasters along with the rising cost of rebuilding. so never mind the bs you're hearing about how this isn't climate change. the people who actually make money in insurance are saying that it actually is. according to an analysis from the san francisco chronicle, more than 100,000 californians lost their home insurance between 2019 and 2024. by the way, sometimes you can still get it. but you

worried about inflation. the cost of insurance has multiplied. so what's happening now in california is there's a state run organization or company. they're known of insurers of last resort. if you live in florida, you know about this as well. and they're taking on the brunt of it all. an insurer of last resort is basically a company that provides policies to people and homes that are considered uninsurable by the normal market. these last resort insurers have been forced to take on billions of dollars in home insurance policies. they are last resort, which means they have to insure you. at that point. california's insurer of last resort is called fair. that stands for fair access to insurance requirements. fair people call it the fair plan. it's a state mandated. plan. the policies, the premiums for fair are typically much higher than private plans, but participation in the fair program has more than doubled in the last four

years. in the pacific palisades, for instance, where the largest of the la fires is still raging, the number of fair plan policies increased by 85% in the last year alone. now remember, that 85% increase does relate to the fact that lots of people just lost their insurance. but the fair program doesn't have unlimited resources. in fact, just this past march, the fair plan president victoria roach said the program last march was dangerously overextended. >> it's a gamble, right? >> and we are one event away from a large assessment. >> there's no other way to say it because we don't have the money on hand and we have a lot of exposure out there in march, she said. >> we are one event away from a major assessment. well guess what, it's january and they've had that event. in the face of the stark funding crisis, the california department of insurance made a change last

summer as a result of some of that. now, if the fair plan plan can't pay its claims, it will be able to ask the private insurance companies to cover its cost. and then those private insurance insurance companies can, with the permission of the department of insurance, recoup their losses because their companies, by raising insurance premiums for all californians. joining me now, dave jones, he served two terms as california's insurance commissioner. he's also the director of the climate risk initiative at uc berkeley center for law, energy and the environment. dave, thanks for joining us. if for people who don't follow this, this is this a lot it's a lot of information. if you don't live in a country, in a state where you have to deal with one of these insurers of last resort, it's hard to understand. but you have basically called insurance the canary in the coal mine for the climate crisis. and i think we've laid that out pretty well that that even the insurance companies who historically have made money coming and going have

said the climate is putting us out of business. >> that's right. the insurance industry and insurance products really are the canary in the coal mine for the climate crisis. temperatures are continuing to rise because we're not transitioning off of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emitting industries fast enough. so the climate scientists tell us global temperatures will keep rising. they'll keep driving more extreme and severe weather related events. and that's landing in all of the united states and forms of hurricanes, tornadoes, heavy hail, severe convective storms, atmospheric rivers, drought, extreme heat and wildfires. and as you pointed out in your opening, this is not unique to florida, louisiana, texas or california. this is landing in at least 18 states in which insurers are not renewing or declining to write new insurance and jacking up prices because of the impact of climate change losses. now, here's a big question. we know that fossil fuels are the main driver of this crisis. and we know, and the insurance companies themselves acknowledge, that the emissions from fossil fuels are a major

driver of the crisis, and that's causing them challenges to write insurance. why the heck are insurance companies in this country alone allowed to invest more than half $1 trillion in the fossil fuel industry? and why the heck globally are they allowed to actually insure the fossil fuel industry, which is the very industries whose emissions are making it challenging for them to write insurance for real people and real businesses? they collect about $9.5 billion in premiums from fossil fuels. so one thing the insurance industry could do to try to help address this crisis is stop enabling the very industry that's making it a challenge. and, as they say, in some cases, impossible to keep writing insurance because of the nature of the risk. >> talk to me a bit more about this version. in california, the fair program, we it was already strained for cash a year ago, as we heard one major event away from a problem. what happens now? i've heard from people in california who are insured under that program. they've lost their

homes completely. and that's the remarkable thing about some of these images. people's homes are gone. there's nothing left. it's scorched earth. will they be reimbursed? >> yes. thanks to strong insurance regulation in california, the private insurers have adequate reserves to cover claims. and even though these are horrific losses, the estimates are the insured losses probably exceed $20 billion. both the insurers and the fair plan will be able to cover their losses. the way that fair plans are organized in 35 states have them is that they are not state agencies, they're not taxpayer funded. they are private, involuntary associations of the private insurers in the state. but they're heavily regulated. and basically the states that have them are saying, look, insurance companies, because you get to cherry pick what places you'll cover and not cover, you've got to participate in this thing called the fair plan, which will write insurance for the risks that you won't cover. and in the event that the fair plan doesn't have enough money, you're going to be assessed based on your market share to cover any sort of shortfall. and that makes sense, right? keep the private insurers skin in the

game. they can't just pick the risk where they make money and then shove everybody off to a fair plan and then basically walk away. however, florida and louisiana, at the request of the insurance companies, changed that structure so that instead of the insurance companies being on the hook, it's all of the policyholders in the state of florida and louisiana are on the hook in the case that their fair plan, florida citizens and louisiana citizens has a shortfall. and just last year, california embraced that approach as well. so right now, the fair plan says it has about $200 million in reserves, $2.5 billion in reinsurance. the fair plan, exposure to losses in pacific palisades alone is $5.85 billion, so we very well could exceed the amount of money that they have and the amount of reinsurance they have, and then move to this assessment. how would that work? the first billion gets collected collectively from the insurance companies based on their market share, but based on an order issued last year, the remainder, which could be quite considerable, then goes to the insurance companies who then assess their policyholders. and it's in addition to the rate

increases we anticipate the insurers are going to get next year or this year, later this year, because of this horrific event and because of the changes in regulations last year. so people are going to see their rates go up and potentially get hit with an assessment. and that is something completely new. and that's never happened before in california, which, by the way, speaks to this entire problem that we've got in this country. >> and in california, particularly with housing affordability. because if you think that insurance is an important part of your your housing cost, these are this is inflation through from insurance is already and will be through the roof. this continues to be a major problem. dave you've explained it so well. thank you for being with us. dave jones is the former insurance commissioner of california. all right. still ahead, we'll continue to follow the devastating fires blazing through los angeles county. i'll bring you updates as they come in. and they are coming in. and after being sentenced in new york hush money case, donald trump is now officially a convicted felon. but trump says he's not finished fighting the conviction. and then today's meeting of the velshi banned book club will feature the book

on censorship a true american classic, fahrenheit 451, by ray bradbury. but the book is only half of what makes what makes this weekend's meeting so important. the other half is the guests. i will speak with the legendary lois lowry, author of the giver, and jason stanley, yale university's philosophy yale university's philosophy prof here's to getting better with age. here's to beating these two every thursday. help fuel today with boost high protein, complete nutrition you need, and the flavor you love. so, here's to now... now available: boost max! constant nasal congestion, constant blowing of the nose. >> the huge difference is the fact that navage pulls it out. it's very gentle in the sense of when that suction happens, it's literally grabbing that water and that mucus, and it's

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just get excited. >> when donald trump is inaugurated. nine days from now, he will be the first person in american history to be sworn into the presidency as a convicted felon. he was formally sentenced yesterday in his criminal case in manhattan, in which a jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. back in june. judge juan merchan, who presided over the case from the beginning, sentenced the president elect to what's called an unconditional discharge, which means that trump will not face any kind of punishment for the crimes for which he's been convicted. no jail time, no probation, nothing. before

handing down his sentence, judge merchan spoke about the extraordinary circumstances of his case. >> to be clear, the protections afforded the office of the president are not a mitigating factor. >> they do not reduce the seriousness, seriousness of the crime or justify its commission in any way. >> the protections are, however, a legal mandate which, pursuant to the rule of law, this court must respect and follow. >> with this sentencing, trump will now officially be seen as a convicted felon. in the eyes of the law. it's a designation that he had hoped to avoid. over the past week, trump filed multiple appeals all the way up to the us supreme court to stop the sentencing from happening. ultimately, justices john roberts and amy coney barrett joined the court's three liberal justices to deny his request and allow the proceedings to move forward. however, this is not

likely the end of trump's legal battles. on the night before his sentencing, he told reporters at mar-a-lago that he intends to appeal his conviction and he added, quote, this is a long way from finished. on top of that, his legal team is continuing its attempt to stop the department of justice from releasing special counsel jack smith's final report regarding trump's federal cases before the inauguration. earlier in the week, attorney general merrick garland said that he intends to make public the portion of the report related to the january 6th case. but the doj has determined that the second part of the report related to the classified documents case likely cannot be released, since that case is still proceeding against trump's former co-defendants. but neither part of the report can be released yet because efforts to block it are ongoing. late thursday night, the 11th circuit court of appeals ruled that the report could be released but kept it kept in place a lower court's order for a three day delay to allow for further appeals. and last night, trump's former codefendant in

the classified documents case made new filings that could lead to additional delays to that report's release, a strategy that the president elect's legal team has employed to great effect in recent years. so when we come back, we're going to continue this discussion with msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin, who was in the courtroom yesterday for trump's historic sentencing. >> what's the situation? >> the police are reporting that armed terrorists have attacked the athletes. >> we follow the story wherever it takes us. >> can we show someone being shot on live television? >> you're sports. you're in way over your head. >> we're making broadcast history. >> more people have seen this than watch armstrong land on the moon, freeing the hostages families. >> these are innocent people. >> we can't make one mistake. >> what's happening? >> september 5th, rated r. >> have yourself a merry littlee

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so you can use less. enjoy the go with charmin. [uplifting music] arearn: saint jude-- they gave it 110% every time. and for kenadie to get treatment here without having to pay anything was amazing. >> all right. donald trump was sentenced with something called an unconditional discharge in his criminal case in manhattan yesterday. he won't face any form of punishment, but he will enter office as a convicted felon when he's inaugurated nine days from now. for more on this, i'm joined by msnbc legal correspondent lisa rubin, to whom i always turn when these things are not clear. some things happen in the world that are just not clear to us. a lot of people thought he was convicted in the summer. why was he not a convicted felon until this happened? why was it important that this happened? and why was why was it determined that he was not

subject to any penalty? >> well, let's start with why he wasn't a convicted felon until this happened. i know this is going to seem formalistic to many of our viewers, but the final act of a conviction is the sentencing. and so until a sentencing happens, while you can say somebody has been convicted by a jury of a felony, or in mr. trump's case, 34 counts of a felony, he is not a convicted felon until the act of sentencing, which is what took place yesterday. and it was important to the manhattan da's office and also to judge juan merchan to have that sentencing, to formalize the verdict for two reasons. one, because trump has no appeal rights in the new york system until the verdict is finalized, but also to honor the verdict that those 12 people unanimously reached in convicting him. of those 34 counts, we want our rule of law to mean something. we want our democracy to mean something. jury service is one of the most integral functions that we have in our democracy. and if this verdict were vacated, i know it was the belief of the manhattan da's office. what signal does

that send to people who are called for jury service in the manhattan criminal court system writ large? and that's a feeling shared, i think, by law enforcement authorities all across this country. you want people to take that jury summons seriously, because being judged by a jury of your peers is integral to the functioning of our criminal justice system. as much as donald trump wants to say this trial was a mockery, it actually was, i think, emblematic of the best of jury service and of the performance of trials in our country. >> interestingly, he's not acknowledged anything that he was convicted of. he continued to try to make a mockery of it. he, in fact, in his statement in court, you were there. he wasn't. but he he talked about how this is embarrassing for new york, and it's bad for the new york court system. the ada made the point that donald trump continues to try to weaken the prosecutors, the people involved in the legal system. so everything you were talking about, why it had to happen, continues to be offset by by donald trump. >> yes. and judge roshan noted that, too. so i want to go back

to when you were talking at the very beginning, and you played that statement from justice roshan during his sentencing. he was talking about mitigating factors, and i want to contextualize that for you and our viewers. a sentencing begins with the range of sentence that someone can be sentenced to, in this case, for each count up to four years in prison and a $5,000 fine. and then a judge is supposed to take into account two things aggravating factors and mitigating factors. the judge here is saying, look, i've already outlined what the aggravating factors are. and my decision last week where i said i wasn't going to vacate the verdict or terminate the indictment. and those aggravating factors are the premeditation with which you committed this crime and the deceptive nature of it, but also your lack of remorse and your ever escalating campaign against the rule of law in the form of threats to the prosecutors, threats to the system, efforts to intimidate all of us participating in this and that just grew sharper and sharper as the case continued, even as your claims grew weaker. all of those

are aggravating factors. and he said, but i have to offset that against the fact that you have some constitutional rights here that will come into play ten days from now as a sitting president. make no mistake, and this is the part of the statement that you played that's not a mitigating factor. that's a protection that's afforded to the office of the president, but not to its occupants. >> he said it very clearly not to donald trump, but to the office of the president, not not the office holder. >> it's almost like a silent invocation of one of the things that a judge very early on in donald trump's legal travails wrote, this is judge victor marrero of the southern district of new york federal trial court. when cy vance, who was then the manhattan da, was trying to get his hands on financial paperwork related to donald trump, he had to go to the supreme court and back again. and judge marrero was one of the first judges to hear that case. he said, and our democracy presidents are not kings. similarly, protections go to the office, not the occupant. >> i'm glad we had you here to explain this, because i'm sure we could have all muddled

through and figured that out for ourselves. but it's much easier that you give us words and ways of thinking about it as you always do. thank you, my friend. >> very appreciative. >> thanks. good to see you. lisa rubin, msnbc legal correspondent and great friend to our show. all right. still ahead, today's meeting of the banned book club. we are going to examine a dystopian classic, one that encapsulates the dark realities of a society without books, without intellectual curiosity, and without critical thinking. a novel that warns us of what our world would look like under totalitarian government control. i'm talking about fahrenheit 451 i'm tayou know, when i taket 451 by rathe bike out like this, all my stresses just melt away. i hear that. this bad boy can fix anything. yep, tough day at work, nice cruise will sort you right out. when i'm riding, i'm not even thinking about my painful cavity. well, you shouldn't ignore that. and every time i get stressed about having to pay my bills, i just hop on the bike, man. oh, come on, man, you got to pay your bills. you don't have to worry about anything when you're protected by america's number-one motorcycle insurer. well, you definitely do. those things aren't related, so... ah, yee! oh, that is a vibrating pain.

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censorship. ray bradbury's dystopian classic fahrenheit 451. it begins like this. quote. it was a pleasure to burn. it was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. montag wanted, above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace while the flapping pigeon winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house, while the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. end quote. fahrenheit 451 tells the story of guy montag, a fireman whose job it is to destroy the most dangerous item in there government controlled society books. montag never questions why he starts these fires, nor does he ask why these books are so dangerous until he meets his young next door neighbor. clareese asks montag probing questions that force him to question everything he's ever known and to reconsider not just his role in society, but his entire life.

written by ray bradbury in 1953, fahrenheit 451 is an american classic. it's a book about the dangers of censorship. bradbury, who died at 91 years old in mid 2012, was prolific, writing some 27 novels and 600 short stories. bradbury famously said that he wrote every single day of his life, from when he was 12 years old, unto his death. he wrote across a variety of genres, from fantasy and horror, but his writing style remained specific and consistent. his sentences are poetic and adjective heavy. his characters are nuanced and complex. fahrenheit 451, bradbury's magnum opus, is replete with well crafted metaphors and imagery, largely about animals and nature. bradbury's use of fire imagery is masterful. in fahrenheit 451, fire is central to both the plot and to montag's character growth. as montag grows and changes, the fire symbolism does, too, first representing destruction and control, and then later rebirth and

rebellion. bradbury summarizes his most famous work in an interview with the paris review just a few years before his death. quote, you invent a fireman who's been burning books instead of putting out fires, and you start him on the adventure of discovering that maybe books shouldn't be burned. he reads his first book, he falls in love, and then you send him out into the world to change his life. end quote. at its core, fahrenheit 451 is a warning of what happens if you don't change your life. bradbury cautions against a world where people are entertained mindlessly by giant screens in their homes. they may be full of information, quote popular songs or the names of state capitals, or how much corn iowa grew last year. end quote. but they're not critically thinking everything is shorter, quicker, easier to digest. they drive fast. they're not talking to one another. language is eroded. so then thoughts are eroded, memory collective and your own is altered. government's in control and you don't even realize it. when you consider the literary

merit and the subject matter, it isn't any real surprise that fahrenheit 451 is one of the most assigned works of literature to american students in our nation's history. of course, those same reasons are what make it one of the most banned works of literature in our nation's history. banning a book about burning books. at the end of fahrenheit 451, montag escapes the city on the brink of war and joins a group of intellectuals who are trying to preserve literature by memorizing it. one of them, granger, turns to, says to montag, quote, come on now, we're going to go build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them. end quote books, of course, are the mirrors here. and when fahrenheit 451 is removed from classrooms again and again, it does make me wonder what so many americans are scared of seeing reflected back at them. so after a quick break, i will be joined by two people uniquely suited to discuss the late, great ray

bradbury's classic novel fahrenheit 451. the author of another celebrated dystopian classic, the giver and friend of the banned book club, the legendary lois lowry and jason stanley, yale university philosophy professor, author, philosophy professor, author, and the beard that doesn't itch. and you're using king c. gillette on that thing? king c. gillette? look! this beard trimmer pro's got 40 length settings and this beard oil's one of gq's best beard conditioner for soft, no-itch facial hair. the best a man can get... is king c. gillette. (♪♪) (♪♪) voltaren... for long lasting arthritis pain relief. (♪♪) indoors. but now there's a simple solution that won't have you scrambling for the mop and

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for all those making it big out there... ...shouldn't your mobile service be able to keep up with you? get wifi speeds up to a gig at home and on the go. introducing powerboost, only from xfinity mobile. now that's big. today, we're taking a look at one of the most assigned novels in american public schools a

true classic fahrenheit 451, by the late ray bradbury. here with me to discuss is the legendary lois lowry. she's the author of another celebrated dystopian classic, the giver. she is a friend of the velshi banned book club with me as well. jason stanley, professor of philosophy at yale university and an expert on fascism. he's author of the book erasing history how fascists rewrite the past to control the future. welcome to both of you. such an important and timely discussion. believe it or not, lois, the idea, the idea. and by the way, great to have you back of personal memory and collective memory is central to both the book you have written, the giver and fahrenheit 451. fahrenheit 451 ends on this idea. montauk joins this group of men who have memorized literature in order to retain it. let me just quote from the book. it says when they ask us what we're doing, you can say we're remembering that's where we'll win out in the long run. and someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest steam shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all

time, and shove war in it and cover it up. end quote. lois says no one better than you to unpack that for us a little bit. >> sounds great, doesn't it? i just want to insert my own memory here of reading this book. when i was 17 years old. i think it was published in the early 50s. i was 17 and 1954, and i now realize reading it, how many years later, 70 years later, because i reread it last week, how different my reaction was and is because at 17 i found it a fairy tale, a fantasy. i found it amusing. now i've read it again this past week and i have found it chilling. bradbury was prescient, as they say. he could see it coming, and he was warning us that the cautionary tale and i, of course, see it

happening around me now all the time. the erosion you mentioned in your introduction, the erosion of language. did you know that in schools now there are no librarians, there are media specialists. that's not a big deal. it's the same thing under a different name. but it is because the word librarian comes from the latin for book. lieber. and that's gone now. i don't know what else to say, except that i'm very unnerved by this book today in a way that i wasn't when i was 17 years old. >> yeah, now that makes sense, because either it was fantasy to you then, or it becomes history to you later. but in fact, the fact that it's real, and this is the case with many of the books that we focus on on this show, they are they are prescient and they are current. let me ask you, jason, i want to read one of the most encompassing passages in the entire book. it's where captain beatty explains to montag and his wife

how firefighters get involved in book burning. quote, with school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers and imaginative creators. the word intellectual, of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. we must all be alike. not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal each man the image of every other. then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. so a book is a loaded gun in the house next door. burn it. and so when houses were finally, finally fireproofed completely, with no longer in need of firemen for the old purposes, they were given the new job. as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior. official censors, judges and executors. that's you, montag. and that's me. that's my firefighters. >> that's right. so democracy is

about freedom. >> if you have an authoritarian society, and fahrenheit 451 is about an authoritarian society, you have to attack freedom. >> books give you different perspectives, different ways. you could have lived, different ways society could have gone. >> they questioned the status quo. >> that's what intellectuals do. that's what universities do. they make us uncomfortable. >> they question the status quo. >> that's why right now, universities and intellectuals are under attack for being anti-american. just have the cartoon idea of an authoritarian society in your mind. what is it? it's. it's a society in which you're told to love the nation and not think for itself. this book is about the construction of an authoritarian society. it's about how we ban free thinking and critical thinking that is central to democratic life. >> lois, the societies in both your book the giver and in

fahrenheit 451 falsely equate a problem free society as a happy society. here's a quick line from montag the firefighter, the central character in 451 quote. he was not happy. he was not happy. he said the words to himself. he recognized this as the true state of affairs. he worries happiness like a mask. end quote, complicated, messy feelings in the books and in real life end up being the secret as you write, as ray bradbury writes to a full life. talk to me about that. simplicity and happiness are not the same thing, and it involves comfort as well. >> the people in his book and in mine are very comfortable. so it's a trade off. they've traded their freedom without realizing it. of course, for a certain sense of comfort, which they miscall happiness. it would be interesting to see in a sequel how they re-attain happiness, but the people in the bradbury

book, having just reread it, they're so dull, they're so boring, and they're basically unhappy without realizing it. >> jason, this is interesting, this concept of comfort, the banning, the book banning epidemic in the united states currently is a little bit about this. i don't want you making my kids feel uncomfortable about things that happened in history that they had nothing to do with. it's a very dangerous road to go down, because already we have surveys that show massive percentage of people don't know what happened in the holocaust or don't believe that to be true. we forget history very quickly, knowing history is not the same as being made to feel uncomfortable. you may be made to feel uncomfortable in the process, but that's not the goal. >> the goal is to be able to participate in policies that address what happened in history. you can't function as a society unless you know what happened in history, unless you know how we got where we are. you can't understand political protests of people who've been excluded by history.

>> now, one thing that bradbury gets wrong is he he says in this book that minorities got offended by books. >> and so they were banned. yes, minority groups do get offended by books, but what we're seeing now is the majority group getting offended by books. and that's the reason why they're being banned. white guilt. white pain is being heterosexual discomfort. these are the reasons behind the book bannings that we're seeing in the united states. it's the majority group whose feelings are being are being comforted by these book bans. and we're seeing this all across the world. we're seeing the critical race theory bans in the united states being in germany, attacks by the far right on the teaching of holocaust history. >> lois, what's your sense? you just mentioned you read this when you were 17. you read it again this last week. we know a lot of our readers have done have done the same thing.

they've read it again between reading the giver and reading fahrenheit 451. no reader is going to miss the fact thatre pf you are talking about our current day without intention. i mean, we don't. we didn't know. i'm sure you didn't know you were going to. we were going to be in this weird place that we're in. >> now. and now i've forgotten what your question was, but here we are. >> it doesn't matter. answer whichever one you want. >> and i'm thinking about the teaching of history, as jason has just described. and the fact that it was 1933, i think, when they had the well known and well documented book burnings across germany. and yet. well, let me let me just back up and say one more thing in 2022, in this country, in tennessee, there was a highly publicized book burning. and yet i will now continue. i have a granddaughter who is a teacher in germany, and they are required to teach about the holocaust. a book of mine

about the holocaust is translated in german and read by kids in the german public schools. they take that responsibility very seriously. at the same time that here in this country, in some places, parents well-meaning, i suppose, don't want their kids to have to know about anything so painful. and yet that's how we learn. as jason pointed out, that's how we change by our knowledge of history and our attention to it. >> thank you to both of you. lois, it's great to have you back as a member of the banned book club. jason, great to have you. we have you here all the time, but not as a member of the banned book club all that often. so it's great to have both of you back. jason stanley is a yale university philosophy professor. lois lowry is someone whose books you should be reading, sort of nonstop. that does it for me. thank you for watching. stay right where you are. the katie phang show starts right now. >> this is the katie phang show live from telemundo