AUDITION by Katie Kitamura & and the Documentary BANNED TOGETHER

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast: "AUDITION by Katie Kitamura & the Documentary BANNED TOGETHER"

Release Date: April 9, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O’Neill and Rebecca Schinsky

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Introduction

In this compelling two-part episode of Book Riot - The Podcast, hosts Jeff O’Neill and Rebecca Schinsky delve into a thought-provoking discussion centered around Katie Kitamura's third novel, "Audition", and the newly released documentary "Banned Together". This episode offers listeners an in-depth exploration of contemporary literary themes and the pressing issue of book banning in the United States.

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Part A: Exploring "Audition" by Katie Kitamura

Overview of "Audition":

"Audition" presents a nuanced narrative that intertwines themes of performance, intimacy, and identity. The novel follows a nameless, middle-aged actress navigating complex relationships and personal introspections. The story unfolds with her attending a lunch meeting with a much younger man, leading to unexpected encounters that challenge her understanding of herself and her relationships.

Key Themes and Discussions:

• Performance and Authenticity: Jeff and Rebecca discuss how "Audition" blurs the lines between genuine emotions and performed behaviors. Rebecca notes, "Katie Kitamura is a good drug and I want it right in my face." ([02:55]) highlighting the book's intense engagement with the reader.

• Intimacy and Relationships: The hosts delve into the protagonist's struggles with intimacy, questioning the authenticity of her connections. Rebecca remarks, "What was a family if not a shared delusion, a mutual construction?" ([07:03])

• Narrative Structure and Suspense: The novel's unconventional structure, with a significant plot twist midway, is analyzed for its impact on the reader's perception. Jeff explains, "It's exciting to see that there's something that is bad. But the only thing worse than that is knowing more about what happens in the middle." ([05:12])

Notable Quotes:

• "Katie Kitamura is not afraid to let us feel like a little bit groundless." — Rebecca Schinsky ([05:25])

• "The suspense is not about who done it or how they done it, but about how we understand ourselves." — Rebecca Schinsky ([04:24])

• "The book is pretty Buddhist in its sensibility. Like, your identity is a prison." — Jeff O’Neill ([35:46])

Critical Reception:

Jeff and Rebecca commend Kitamura's masterful restraint and the novel's ability to provoke deep self-reflection without providing clear answers. They emphasize the book's suitability for readers who appreciate layered narratives and philosophical inquiries.

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Part B: Unveiling "Banned Together" Documentary

Overview of "Banned Together":

"Banned Together" is an incisive documentary produced by Alison Rice and Tom Wiggins, which examines the surge in book banning across the United States since 2021. The film focuses on Beaufort County, South Carolina, highlighting the efforts of student activists and the influence of organizations like Moms for Liberty in spearheading these bans.

Key Themes and Discussions:

• Origins and Evolution of Book Banning: Alison Rice explains how the documentary traces the roots of the current book banning movement, linking it to historical efforts by groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy. "They have started labeling anything that deals with race as CRT, which is not taught in K through 12 schools." ([57:34])

• Impact on Educators and Librarians: The documentary sheds light on the harassment and intimidation faced by teachers and librarians, leading to a decline in these vital professions. Rebecca notes, "Teachers and librarians are at times leaving their professions because they're being doxed online." ([55:30])

• National Implications and Wider Influence: The film expands its scope to show how book banning is not isolated but part of a nationwide strategy to control information and instill fear. Jeff points out, "Their politics now are about identity politics, right? It's about identity, it's about the fear of the other." ([63:14])

Interviews and Insights:

Alison Rice and Tom Wiggins provide firsthand accounts of their experiences producing the documentary, detailing the challenges of accessing information and the resistance from national organizations like Moms for Liberty. They emphasize the importance of featuring marginalized voices to underscore the broader consequences of censorship.

Notable Quotes:

• "She thought she was very cool and polished, but when you really listen to what she says, it's like there's this distortion that comes in." — Tom Wiggins ([48:25])

• "This is about how to control people by creating fear within them." — Alison Rice ([64:03])

• "Moms for Liberty and other so-called parental rights groups use fear to push their political agenda." — Alison Rice ([64:03])

Critical Reception:

Jeff and Rebecca laud "Banned Together" for its timely and thorough examination of the book banning crisis. They highlight the documentary's role in raising awareness and encouraging viewers to take informed action against censorship.

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Conclusion

This episode of Book Riot - The Podcast masterfully intertwines literary analysis with socio-political commentary, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of Katie Kitamura's "Audition" and the critical issue of book banning explored in "Banned Together". Through insightful discussions and poignant quotes, Jeff O’Neill and Rebecca Schinsky not only celebrate contemporary literary works but also advocate for the preservation of diverse and uncensored education.

Takeaways:

• "Audition" serves as a profound exploration of self-identity and the performative aspects of human relationships.

• "Banned Together" exposes the systemic efforts to suppress diverse voices and the detrimental effects of such censorship on education and societal progress.

• The episode underscores the importance of staying informed and actively resisting attempts to limit access to knowledge and literary expression.

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For those interested in delving deeper into the themes discussed, "Audition" by Katie Kitamura is available in bookstores and online, while "Banned Together" can be streamed starting April 10th on Apple TV and Amazon Prime.

Transcript

[Dan Souza]

Hey, everyone, it's Dan Souza from America's Test Kitchen. I'm super excited to let you all.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Know that we're launching a new video.

[Dan Souza]

Podcast that takes you behind the scenes into the messy, imperfect, but riveting day to day life right here in our test kitchen.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not only do I get to talk to my colleagues about the latest taste.

[Dan Souza]

Test they attended, I just came from.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A tasting of salted caramel apple pie bars and then roasted garlic.

[Alison Rice]

So I apologize.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Or about a recipe they're developing.

[Alison Rice]

The thing about this recipe is it's a secret. The restaurateur refuses to tell people what.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Her secret ingredients are.

[Dan Souza]

We also chat with amazing guests from.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The culinary world and beyond.

[Dan Souza]

The lamest joke I've ever said, I said to Marie Bamford.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's definitely great jokes.

[Dan Souza]

Thanks, Anne. Make sure to subscribe to in the Test Kitchen so you don't miss an episode.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You can watch in the Test Kitchen.

[Dan Souza]

On YouTube and Spotify and listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. Can't wait to see you in the Test Kitchen. This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Dan Souza]

Two part episode for you today. Up first, Rebecca and I are going to talk about Audition, the third novel by Katie Kitamura, which came out today. We're recording on Tuesday, April 8th, but this episode released on the 9th. And then the B block. Rebecca, you've got some cooked up. What's in the B block?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I got to speak with Alison Rice and Tom Wiggin, who are two of the producers of the new documentary Band Together, which is about the larger surge of book banning that we've seen since 2021, 2022. They spent time specifically in Beaufort, South Carolina, which has been a real center of book banning attempts and controversy following three student activists, but also in exploring how this is impacting really the whole nation. They talk to student activists, they talk to politicians at every level. They speak with some of the local people who have been in the Charleston area, which is near Beaufort, where their communities have been for centuries, who have been impacted in other ways by attempts to either limit or prevent access to education at all. It's a really holistic, in some ways difficult and in some ways very hopeful Watch. And it hits streaming on Apple TV and Amazon prime this Thursday, the 10th. So I got to speak with them. I got to watch the documentary in anticipation of the streaming release and hope you all will enjoy hearing straight from creators of a piece of work like that, but also be able to Take it with you and watch that documentary with friends and family just released now.

[Dan Souza]

So it's in the First Edition feed as I speak. My interview with Katie Kitamura. So if this conversation inspires you to want to find out more, you can go check it out over there as well. Up later in the week, my conversation with John Hickey, the author of Big Chief, also hitting the First Edition feed. All right, let's do a sponsor break and we're getting into it. Rebecca, I tipped my hand when I said I really like this book. We can do some summary and what's about, but give the people what they want. Rebecca, what did you think of Audition by Katie Kitamura?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Katie Kitamura is a good drug and I want it right in my face.

[Dan Souza]

It's so good. Right? Okay, so it's not very long, I guess.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So let's give the people the P200ish pages.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah. And it reads as like it's 40 pages long. That was my experience of it at.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Least grabs you by the throat. And I've been trying to figure out what genre to call this because so are they.

[Dan Souza]

I mean, we could talk about the packaging that Kitty Kimura we've seen. Like what, what is this packaging? This black with I don't even know, sort of hello Kitty covers, but with like shattered like this. This is trying to figure it out too.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is, it's. This is not like domestic suspense is not what I would call it because usually that has some sort of like violence or an affair or like some drama is really at stake. But the stakes here are like humans being human. Questions of like intimacy and relationships and of reality, like of what is, what are relationships? What is a family is kind of one of the central questions of this book. And so the suspense, like the sitting on the edge of your seat ness of reading Katie Kitamura, at least especially in this book, is not about like who done it or how they done it or what anybody done, but about like how we understand ourselves. Not much happens. Like this is things happen, but also not much happens. It's people thinking about their lives and having some really critical, a couple really critical interactions.

[Dan Souza]

Like we're flailing because there's not a lot like this. I think that's one thing to say. There's not, there's not a lot of comps here that you can do with Kiddo Kimura. Like I, I think I said on the show or I said to you offline. It, it reminds me a little bit of like a mid century European Novel of some degree. We give this nameless narrator. We're in big cities. These are upper class people. They're artists and writers who have money and sort of don't need to care, but they sort of do care. It's kind of interesting. And then there's. There's other things too. So it has elements of what's going to happen, especially once you hit the half point. There's a hard break in the middle that we're going to talk around and through the best we can. Because I think it's worth, I think knowing that there's something is, is bad. But the only thing worse than that is knowing more about what happens in the middle. Katie and I get into that in our interview. If you want to hear more about that, we can talk.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'll say it didn't, it did not spoil it for me knowing that something was coming in the middle because you mentioned that when we talked about the book on a previous show.

[Dan Souza]

But I think any more than that, you lead people in a direction which I think is part of what you don't want to do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Correct. But like, I totally agree. Like, the suspense is really in. It's not. There's not a gun on screen. There's. Somebody's not about to die. The suspense is just like, what is happening here? How do these people understand themselves and do I understand what they are understanding? Katie Kitamura is not afraid to let us feel like a little bit groundless. I think you said when you were reading it that if you're a person who needs like a clear, closed ending to a book, this is not for you. There is a lot of groundless feeling in this. For me, I found it very pleasant because it's masterful, like, you're in good hands. I trust her. But I have changed my mind about what I think is happening in this book approximately 25 times since I finished reading it yesterday. And I think that's part of the pleasure. I don't know that I will ever come to a solid conclusion about what actually happens here. And I honestly don't think I want to.

[Dan Souza]

And that's not the. I don't want to speak for Kitamura, but that's like, not the point. There isn't a right reading of it. Like, that's not what the point is. And she talks explicitly about her own reading sprints. Like the book becomes the public's. You know, she's talked about that intimacies and separation too. Like, she certainly wrote it. But she is not in the. She's not interested in trying to control the narrative of. The narrative of, you know, what people should think or what it's about. Well, maybe what's about, like framing what she's interested in, but like being definitive about what happens in one read versus another read is not something she cares about, interested in, or wants to police in any kind of way.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So in the what it's about opens with our nameless narrator who we come to understand is like a solidly middle aged woman.

[Dan Souza]

Now how old would you say solidly middle aged is Rebecca?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, I think she reads as like 50s ish.

[Dan Souza]

Okay, I could believe that given like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Some of the other contexts. I use her career.

[Dan Souza]

The usefully euphemistic mid career actress.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, sure. Mid life, Mid career. Walks into a cafe, sits down at a table with a much younger man, very charming. And as they are having their meal, she's noticing that like other people in the restaurant are looking at them. And she knows that that's probably because they think, oh, she's an older woman who has hired this young man or maybe they have some sort of romantic liaison. But she knows that that's not what's happening between them. And she's conscious of all of this and she's observing this young man really closely. We know that he's asked her here for some reason and she's not sure she should have said yes to this lunch. And as all of this tension is happening and you're like, oh my God, what's happening between these two people? She looks up and her husband walks into the restaurant. He's in a part of town he's never in. He walks with a waiter.

[Dan Souza]

He said he was somewhat going to be somewhere else that day, said he.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Was going to be somewhere else. So she's surprised on multiple levels to see him in this place. The waiter walks him toward a table and then he does that thing that we do when like, you maybe can't find your keys and like is patting his pockets and kind of looks confused and then turns around and leaves the restaurant. And she thinks he hasn't seen her, but she's got to go home that night and figure out, did my husband see me at lunch with this much younger man? Was it a mistake that I haven't told him who this person is and at this point we don't know who this person is to her and what was he doing there and why didn't he tell me what he was, that he was gonna have lunch and be in this part of town? I'm holding A kind of secret. She doesn't think she's holding any malicious secret, but she's holding a secret. And so she's having this like, I'm holding a secret that's not really that bad. What kind of secret is he?

[Dan Souza]

Yeah, Dare I trade my medium tier secret for the possibility that there's something bigger going on with him in that day? And I think that initiates a series of. Again, it's called audition. She is an actress. Acting is in this performance is explicitly and implicitly maybe the central concern of this book is what other people do, how you read them misreadings that you're acting. You know, we do certain things, we perform certain things knowing that other people know we're performing. And somewhere in there is the real thing. But it's so mixed up with it, it's hard to know. Right. Even on audition is an audition, are you acting? Well, what you're acting is to get the gig. Like even that's kind of a fraught.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Scene in its own way. And like she talks early in the book about how she's been aware, like all women have, about the demands of like courtesy and public performance and meeting other people's expectations. She's aware that this young man she's having lunch with is also very attuned to this. He knows what people want from him and he's good at delivering it. In a social situation. There's. There's performance of gender, there's performance of relationships. Yeah, she's very concerned with the performances, but also the roles that we are cast in and the roles that we seek and how.

[Dan Souza]

And how ready they really are for us to inhabit and how well we know what's expected of us most of the time, that we can then perform them. Right. I used to teach an essay by Luigi Pirandello about masks and how, you know, you have masks that you put on in different social circumstances. And his fear was, and this always blew my students mind is the thinking, you know, the conventional wisdom is that there you put on a mask, but that covers up your real face. What if posit it's just a bunch of masks, right? That there isn't something quote unquote real or authentic that's being covered up. It is the sequences of masks that come on and off that comprises our identity. I think that's not a bad way of understanding some of the things Kitamura is thinking through here. Right. Am I, am I actually thinking and feeling this way? Am I perform? Like, how are our. If our master interacting? How can we ever have a real connection because we can't ever get out of this mediation of expectation and role playing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. There's a point where she says, what was a family if not a shared delusion, a mutual construction? And I think it's exactly that. Like, she's watching herself interact with these people that she lives her life with, and she knows what's expected of her and how to deliver it. And she can see that they are either that they're doing the math of what's expected of them and are they going to deliver it? And if they don't, if they buck that expectation in some way, what will the cost be? Will it be worth the cost? How might this, like, if. If our relationship, if our family is a mutual construction, how might I be destroying it or changing the shape of it if I don't go along with what the script is?

[Dan Souza]

Right. And. And how do I even know I don't want to go along with the script? Because sometimes even not going along with the script is also scripted. Right. Like the joke I make to. In people we've grown up with is, isn't it funny how every generation rebels in the same way? You know, you listen to music you think your parents don't like, and you drink beers in parking lots. And like, isn't it so interesting how even our avenues of rebellion are cliche?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. That you kind of know when you turn 14, you're supposed to stomp up the stairs and slam your bedroom door and be moody.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah. And then they just sort of. It's been happening at least since like the 1920s. And again, that's just one example of how people fall into roles. And even seeing like something like Portlandia. Right. Which is lampooning. Even alternative lifestyles become cliches because the ruts get well worn into. And so there is an element of self invention. Seems so hard. Like it doesn't seem. It almost seems impossible to get out of these roles you play. And then they take on lives of their own. That's another thing that's I think metaphorized and maybe even literalized to some degree, is that roles that take on a different kind of life and existence that's can be unmanageable. It feels like you can't get out of it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And she's really concerned with intimacy and intimacies. And she uses both of those words a lot.

[Dan Souza]

And not for nothing, a title of an earlier book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. Which is interesting that like this book could be called Intimacy or intimacies, but she has titled a different book that already, and this book is called Audition, and that she's really concerned here with what we reveal about ourselves and what we see of others and how that makes us feel close to them and whether that closeness is real or this mutually constructed illusion. For some reason, this character spends a lot of time noting. Like, at one point, she's talking about something that she and her husband had shared, and she's. I remember I noted the line where we had revealed ourselves more than we intended. We had exchanged the blueprint of our most private desires in a way that was near iridescent. There's another point where she talks about this young man that she knows and says that I knew the details of the fantasy he had created. He had shared its private architecture with me, and that disclosure was a form of intimacy. And all of this, like, what do we show and what do we not show? And how does that connect us to each other, but also how do we understand ourselves through, like, are the things that we reveal more real or less real than the things that we keep close?

[Dan Souza]

Yeah. I mean, the three titles speak to each other. Intimacies, Audition and Separation are all. There's some polygon happening. I'm not sure how many nodes there are on this particular thing, but they are looking at each other askance or directly in interesting ways. You know, there's this. The first. The first thing I asked her about was pastries. Rebecca, in the interview.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, the ritual.

[Dan Souza]

Because there's a ritual of pastries that begins because she feels guilty, this nameless character, about something that's happened, and it becomes a thing that she gets the pastries and puts together breakfast every day, and he quite likes it. And at one point, they both kind of reveal that they had a misunderstanding about what that ritual was even about.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Dan Souza]

And who doesn't know that? Like, where you get to a moment in your relationship with someone, and it can be a various levels of familiarity and time where someone does something or you do something that elicits the response of, like, I feel like I don't even know you. Right. I thought we had a different understanding or acceptance or covenant about what this thing was. And by not being who I thought you were, you have somehow betrayed me. Right. Do I even. I don't even know you. Like, well, whose fault is that? And that's an interesting question.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. That it feels like a breach to her that she's been enacting this ritual every day, thinking that it shores up their relationship in some way. And he moved on from it, like, some time ago. And never said to her, like, hey, you don't have to go get those every morning, right?

[Dan Souza]

And she never said, this is a pain. Can we stop doing this? I still love you, but can we not with the croissants already, right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, I loved that she raises this question and just sort of like drops it into the pond of the book of like, there is a fine line between a ritual and like a rut or a ritual that you hold sacred and a thing that everybody resents doing day after day or year after year. And when that flips, like, if you miss when it flips, all kinds of things can, you know, can go sideways or can just start to not feel like they fit anymore. And like, right, if you miss that, your partner doesn't like this morning ritual of getting pastries anymore, what else are you misunderstanding about the contract of that relationship? Like, where is the ground? This episode is sponsored by Nobody's fool by Harlan Coben. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook read by beloved narrator Vikasa Adam. Sammy Kearse, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning covered in blood. There's a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend Anna, dead. He doesn't know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts. And then he runs. 22 years later, Kearse, now a private investigator, recognizes a familiar face, his late girlfriend Anna. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition of Nobody's fool by Harlan Coben. Narrated by Vikas Adam, who is one of the audiobook industry's most sought after artists, having recorded over 500 audiobooks in all kinds of genres. Thanks again to our sponsors at Hachette, Audio Foreign.

[Tom Wiggins]

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[Dan Souza]

And these roles and rituals have it's not, nor do I think it's a wholesale dismissal of these because I think that the book in Kitamurin, and I think I agree with this, recognizes that these things do things. For us to be completely like an open wound at all times and reinvent the world every morning is also too much to ask, you know, to to improvise every night on stage. I guess to bring it back to a, you know, a performative. That's too much to improv every night. But if you're playing the same lines every night, how do you quote, unquote, keep it fresh? But then how are you keep it fresh and you're not just keeping it fresh for keeping it fresh's sake. Like that's such a weird idea, but I find that compelling. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And like these people have been in a relationship for a long, long time. So through kind of multiple iterations of each other and multiple iterations of their relationship. And I think that, I mean, it's true in my experience that a thing that happens is like we use the language molting in my house. Like I have molted. There is a new version. And sometimes you know that you have molted and the other person is still like looking at or responding to a past.

[Dan Souza]

Your sloughed off skin suit that you left on the ground.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And there's this disconnect because, like, is it your job to have announced that you have molted? Should this other person have observed that now we're in a new place? It's both. I mean, ultimately it's probably both of you, but that's going on here in with everybody, I think in this book is that change has happened in like, in their desire, in their understanding of what they're doing with each other. And they are like standing on their stage with each other and everybody is saying lines. But like, are they speaking from the same script? Are they still in the same play?

[Dan Souza]

Yes. And who is this performance for ultimately? But it's like, I think that is interesting to think about too. And you know another thing that struck me when you were talking about the observations that this character makes, it's one of the hardest things in art to do is to represent someone who is really good at something because then you have to be good at that thing. Like we talk about if I don't want to name the book, but you people remember, if you're writing a book about stand up comedians, you should probably be funny or try to leak. And if that doesn't work, you can really make it fall flat. But this character, this nameless character is so observant and so attuned to the point of being subject to the. The gaze of others. And I know that's a loaded term, but like she is so interested in or unable not to be processing and paying attention to how she might be being perceived at every moment. And this is sort of an actor's job and lament. But I think this is also part of all of our lives. I think so many of us, there's these. There's moments where Kitamura is narrating this woman just walking down the street and she's sort of going through the possible interpretations that people she just sort of going by might think of her. And who hasn't had that experience? And why do we do that for people we're never gonna see again? Like this constant subroutine or maybe it's Even a primary routine of constantly assessing, assessing, assessing not just what other people are doing, but the interplay of what you are doing and how they're perceiving you. And the interpretations of these micro movements that feel indicative because they are, but they're also not. Like the whole thing feels. It reminds me of how exhausting it is to be alive. I guess that's why I, like, came out. Part of this came out for you. I was like, oh, oh, God, we do this all the time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I think that makes the title even more interesting. Like, who is auditioning and what are they auditioning for? And if this character is auditioning for these different roles in her life, for these different relationships, but also for just the role of being her out in the world.

[Dan Souza]

Right, right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, it is she. I think at one point she says, like, that she's aware that she spends too much money on clothes and she likes beautiful things. And she has a little moment about, like, kind of feeling silly that she does that. But then we get to see her walking down the street clocking that everybody is clocking her and wondering how they're interpreting these beautiful things or the watch that she's wearing or the certain handbag. And it's interesting to encounter that from a character who, like, is not presented as superficial or shallow in any way. Like, we get to interact with.

[Dan Souza]

That's a really good point. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know, like, we're in a deep place of revelation and consciousness with this character. But she is also still very concerned with, is she presenting herself in the way that she wants to be perceived? And really the reality that, like, how much control you have over that is extremely limited.

[Dan Souza]

Right. Yeah. And I think that's one of the situations where the stakes, they're so hard to control that anything you can do that feels like you might be able to control it, you over invest in. Right. Well, close is one thing you can buy, you can solve with money. So it makes sense that you would try to solve that with money. Now, does that help you? 6%? Maybe only 6%, but that's a 6% you can control.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, Right, right.

[Dan Souza]

You don't have access to, however people are interpreting that. So, like. Well, you might as well over index on the things that feel like actually matter. Even though.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Dan Souza]

Who knows how much it does matter?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that's 6% feels better than 0%.

[Dan Souza]

Right? Yeah. Some you're going to over invest in the part of it you feel like you can't control, even if it kind of doesn't matter on balance. But the other stuff is so hard. Yeah. And the idea of the audition is so fascinating too, because it is implicitly theatrical, which means that you are auditioning for what? With what? Right. You have your audition piece, your monologue. Right. This idea, though, if we're walking around the world, sort of always auditioning for other people, it's an initial evaluative mode, but it also suggests you're doing something other than giving you the white hot molten core of your being. Right. It is itself a practiced, studied, even unconsciously constructed performance meant to elicit a result that your true self could not elicit by yourself, which I've always been fascinated by.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's fascinating. And I think that's an interesting way to like, get into that flip occurs in the book and without revealing it.

[Dan Souza]

Other than what if the conditions were meaningfully changed? I think is. Yeah, right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. What if the relationships in the first half of the book are different than how those people relate to each other in the second half of the book or the second section? Then what are we. How do your performances change? How do you understand yourself when, like, you thought you were playing one role or maybe like you've been inhabiting a completely different role the whole time and what are we to do with that? Like, it is just the most pleasant kind of mind fuck. Like, it just really is.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah. Because one of the ideas is if the condition material or change and you then as a result, materially change. That really brings into the. It problematizes the idea of like a stable you. Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it's like, well, we talk about not being able to a B test the universe, but I think Katie Kitamura is kind of playing with that idea here. And the characters aren't even necessarily aware that that's what's happening. But we get to see a couple different versions of these people's lives and no resolution or a conclusion about whether one of them is the real story. Which one is the real story? Are these just two possibilities and there's an infinite, like, universe of other ones which I.

[Dan Souza]

Are they related? How are they related? You know, I think there's. For those of you who read this, there's going to be a temptation to select from available reasons.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You could write terribly boring book club questions. Yeah.

[Dan Souza]

I would encourage people to entertain all of them and not choose, you know, as many as you can think of. Entertain them all. Let's talk for a little bit about the pros because I think that's also a feature that we haven't really hit as hard, is what brilliant Restraint on the whole, these are. There's not a wasted word. And I know that's cliche to some degree, but there is a cleanness, a sparseness and a richness simultaneously that I think approaches the highest level of what you can do with this kind of writing. I mean, I don't know what else to. I don't know how else to put it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You just know that you're in good hands from the very first page. Like that. The big questions about this book are unanswered and I think delightfully unanswerable. But you're in good hands, you know where, like, I am where Katy Kitamura wants me to be.

[Dan Souza]

Yes. Yeah, that's right. It's like the old. The movie, the Game with Michael Douglas. Right. Like, you find yourself on the target, on the mat, and you didn't even know that this whole thing was to get you at the bottom of that building.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There are some books where you're like, I don't know what's happening. And that's a problem. And this is not that. This is. I don't know what's happening. And I'm like, my brain is tingly and everything is firing. It's so enjoyably, like, restrained is the right word. Like, it's tight and taut and that gives you space to, like, just wonder all kinds of things. Because she's not filling in a whole. She's not really filling in any of the details.

[Dan Souza]

And it's. And it's so controlled and so masterful that even you notice little deviations. Right. Like, I asked her about this scene you probably clocked, where this actress, the main character, has a conversation with the director about some other actor's performance who she thought was washed up. And he gives a late career performance that is so raw, authentic. It's like, brings tears to her eyes, gets him cast. Oh, and she's in the movie, the subsequent movie with this guy, but he's a mess, right? In this, he's like, he can't do anything. And what she learns is that his confusion and rawness was not acting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right.

[Dan Souza]

He didn't remember his lines. He was distraught in these moments because he almost like some sort of Alzheimer's, like, I don't know, dementia thing happening. And it calls it like, okay, so was that a performance or not? Right, right. That wasn't important to the plot, but it was important to this philosophical, I guess, I don't know, ontological questions, really. It's asking. It's like, okay, if you do one thing and it's interpreted a different way. Which one is the real thing? Your intention or the thing that was interpreted? And she. I don't think this is a. This is not a treatise on how to interpret and how to be in the world. No, this is not a here's. The world is false and we're all a bunch of phony. This is not Holden Caulfield.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's not. I don't think this book is declarative in any sense.

[Dan Souza]

No, no, it's. It's a. Yep. This kind of. This is weird, right? This is kind of little. This is a little uncomfortable. And so.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. Like, how weird to be a person. Let me just make it a little weirder for you.

[Dan Souza]

Remember how weird it is that we all know that we're not actually saying and feeling the thing. We're all. At all times. This happens always already, and there's no way around it. Okay, bye.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And that the world that she makes, it does. As you were saying, it feels so full from these tiny details that she observes so carefully. Like. Like the ritual around the pastries where you're like, okay, I feel like I know everything I need to know about this couple based on the one story about how that ritual came to be and that they are still doing it, like, 10 years later.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah. And subsequently, I think it's in the second half of the book. Where is his name? Tomas. It's been a while since I read it. Rebecca. The husband. Things occur, and he has an occasion to bring again. They live in a nice New York apartment, but it's still New York real estate where every square foot is precious. Precious. And he brings, like, a giant desk into their. Into their apartment. And I was like, oh, my first. Oh, no. You don't bring a giant desk into New York apartment without consulting your cohabitants. That's like. That's like bringing a third into the bedroom. Like, that you can't do. You can't just show up that day. You've got to have some conversations. Yeah, yeah. We got to go pick it out and con. We got. We have to figure this out. And, like, she is so good and she herself has to be so attuned to the ways we are attuned. Like, that's the meta stuff that blows me away. It's like, okay, she is conversant in this language of which she is suspicious but also subject to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. And it's just inescapable as a human like, that she can recognize when his shoulders are slumped a different way than usual that like, something is not right and he's keeping a secret from me or something is going on. He's wearing a different coat than he would normally wear. And it's like, these are all things. Like, this is part of intimacy that we become and familiarity with other people and the ways that that is beautiful, but also can make you feel kind of crazy.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah. And, you know, like, the thing you said about molting is really interesting because, you know, we talk to our kids about, we can tell if something is going on. Like, we say we're the greatest living experts in you. Like, that's just we and have been, and we've been there for every step of the way. And at some point that won't be the case anymore. But for now, like, we can tell if something's going on. Guterreal we know your moods, we know the slightest micro expressions, or you walk slightly with a different cadence, or even hearing you come down the stairs is full. We're all giving off so much information all the time. And both to perceive and be perceived that much is a load to bear. It just is a load.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that we, you know, we live in our own brains and our own experiences, so we understand that something has shifted before. Maybe we're capable of communicating or our.

[Dan Souza]

Bodies are communicating in a way.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, we expect things to stay consistent with the people that we're with. Like, this is just, this is how they were yesterday, so that's how they're going to be tomorrow. And those disruptions happen when someone knows that they have, that they've changed, that they've molded and you haven't caught up to it yet. And there's a real, like, wait, now we got a, oh, new version. Like, it made me think of wedding toasts I'll never give. And Ada Calhoun says something like, like, if you have a long marriage, you're going to be married to like five or six or seven versions of this, this person. And if you don't like the current version, you, like, hang on and you hope that you like the weather.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah, we get through February and March is around the corner.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That you like the next one better or that you understand the next one better. But, like, that's an easy thing to say. Like, that you will be, you will know multiple versions of people or long friendships or whatever, your own family members. We can understand the concept, but the lived reality of how those shifts occur and how groundless is the word. I keep coming back to, like, how you feel like there's no ground under your feet anymore when you realize that the thing that you've been operating, like, those assumptions that worked for so long and you've been operating under, those are no longer the shared reality of your relationship.

[Dan Souza]

Right. I mean, it's a real Sophie's choice to think I've got two. I'm not even sure I have a choice. But there are two ways of understanding what you want or what could be. One is that you and the people you're around never change, or you don't, or you do change, which. Both of those are terrifying. There's not a good answer. There's not a good answer. And then maybe the worst option is that both are always happening and you never know which one is going on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I feel like that's the one that Kita Moro would sign off on. They're both always happening. There is no. Like, there actually is no ground.

[Dan Souza]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The book is pretty Buddhist in its sensibility. Like, your identity is a prison.

[Dan Souza]

Right. Even pastries are your enemies. You can't even go out for a cup of coffee.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right? But, like, this expectation that there be a shared, consistent ground is a prison in some ways, but it's a necessary lie to tell ourselves in a lot of other ways.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah. And, you know, the almost. It's like I've said about the dream of liberal education is if, you know, the thing that maybe you can have some mastery of it. And I do think there is a. There is a place you can get to where maybe you could allow yourself and others some grace, right. To say, okay, maybe you can step back. Can you step out of. You know, maybe you can step out of the. Off the stage for a minute. You can go behind the scenes. You know, where is the. Where is the real in a theater is always an interesting question to me because the people are performing, like, is it the green room? Is it out on the sidewalk? Is it, you know, in the makeup chair? Is it on stage? There's some really good stuff about theater here, too, for those like, about. And she says in the interview, like, one of the things she likes about theater is how embarrassing it is. Like, it's just, like, it's a chance where you performing is the expectation. And that's embarrassing, but that's also what makes it great.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I feel this way about my chorus.

[Dan Souza]

I was gonna. I wondered. I was gonna say, speaking of embarrassing things, tell me about how your chorus figures into this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right? Like, we're just a bunch of people getting up on a stage and deciding that, like, we're gonna sing some songs and you're gonna look at us and we're gon. While you do it. And it is, it's just fundamentally ridiculous. Like it's one of those beautiful, ridiculous human things that just is. I think Ketomer is exactly right. There just are some elements of this that are embarrassing. But like, so is being a person, right?

[Dan Souza]

Yeah. And the other, the choice of never being embarrassed is to be so other and self policing at all times. Right. Like the tyranny of cool is real. Right. I mean, that's a real thing that you learn a little bit more as you roll.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that there' liberation in forgetting for a minute that you're auditioning for some role or that you're playing some role or you're being cast and perceived in some things. And the moments where those characters, where her characters find that I think are also really interesting. Man, if I can get a new Katie Kitamura book once a year.

[Dan Souza]

Well, I think we should at least stop here. I mean, we've got a quarter of our year under our belt and I'm not sure we've had a wonderful reading year so far. Again, January, February, March is not where you're gonna put most of your roulette ships for gathering. But I will say this. If there's a better. If there's a novel I get more out of than this one this year, I will be shocked.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know, also redemption for the letter A at the beginning of the alphabetical order for the New York Times Best books of the year list after I suffered from all fours being at the top last year.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah, that's really interesting. I'll be fascinated to see. Yeah, I don't know. So for, for readers, this is Litvik. You know, it's borders on experimental art writing borders on that. Not quite as much as Death takes me.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's not nearly as much.

[Dan Souza]

Not. Not nearly as. But I'm just trying to triangulate a little bit.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's like the. Maybe lower. It's the lower end of the spectrum and Hong Kong is the middle of what we've read this year. And then Death takes.

[Dan Souza]

Oh yeah. So this is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's. Because there's some experimental stuff and we do not.

[Dan Souza]

Yeah, no, it is. I think it is less. It's less arty than. Yeah, we do not part. But I almost think that belies its sophistication. Like I think you. I think it would be tempting to read Audition as being quote unquote simpler than we do not part. But I do not believe that that is true.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't think it's a difficult read, but it's like, it's not breezy. This is not a breezy 200 pages. No, you will not read it quickly.

[Dan Souza]

As a book club selection. It could be amazing for a certain kind of book club and terrible for other kinds of book clubs.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. If you're gonna have a book club. Who wants to, like, land on. Okay, so there's the A part of the book and the B part of the book. And which one? This is not the book for your book club.

[Dan Souza]

And how. And how welcome is a book that doesn't tell us what to think.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right, right.

[Dan Souza]

You know, it's certainly about what it's about, but it really confounds a tidy read or a tidy moralizing or philosophicizing. Okay, well, yeah, my favorite book of the year so far. And it's, it's not particularly close at this stage. All right, stick around for the B block. Thanks, everybody. Rek, we'll talk to you soon.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right, welcome back, listeners. As promised, I am joined by Alison Rice and Tom Wiggins from the Band Together documentary. You've heard about it on the show a little bit already, but thrilled to get to talk with them and and bring you more information. Allison and Tom, thanks so much for joining me.

[Alison Rice]

Thank you so much for having us. I just want to give a quick shout out to the rest of our small but mighty team. Of course, Jennifer Wiggin is also a producer on this. She and I are the owners of Atomic Focus Entertainment. And Tom is a director producer along with Kate Way, the other filmmaker.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Wonderful. Thanks so much. So I had a chance to watch the documentary last week and as somebody who has been following this closely for the last four or five years, I found it still really impactful. I learned a lot. And seeing the up close personal stories of the people that have been impacted, both the students, but also the teach, the librarians and educators, it was really powerful, very moving. And this is, I think, a great moment for y'all to be rolling out with this. I'm curious about how the project came about because this, the current surge in book bands kicked off in 2021. And you're at Beaufort County, South Carolina, school board meetings in 2022 already getting footage. So I don't know which one of you wants to take that, but when and how did you decide to tell this story?

[Alison Rice]

Tom should take that because he and Jen are down in, in South Carolina.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, well, the way this happened for us, Jen and I are married and so and she owns along with Allison Atomic Focus Entertainment. But we work together on projects, obviously. And we saw a headline in the local newspaper, which I know that book Riot is very bullish on as a real method for staying current with the issues, you know, that are impacting people. We saw a headline about teens fighting back against book bans. And it was in Beaufort, which is about an hour and change from us. And it was just one of those sort of odd moments where Jen and I both looked at each other and said, this is a movie. We've got to do this. And we'd never done a feature before, but we felt very strongly that it was a feature. Turns out Kate Way was down. She and her partner would go down to Beaufort every winter and had heard about this in late 2022. She's an independent filmmaker, and she thought, maybe I'll do a short on this story. So we found out about her early involvement. We asked her if she'd like to be involved with us to make a larger movie. She agreed. And so then we all collaborated to make this. To make this the movie that you see now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And the film follows primarily three student activists from different schools in Beaufort who met through a student organization, an organization promoting diversity and literacy. How did y'all get connected to them? Was it always the plan to follow these three young people, or did this emerge as you were going through the process?

[Alison Rice]

Well, they were in the article that Jen and Tom saw and that Kate had heard about. So that was always part of the plan from the beginning, was to follow these students. And when they approached Kate and said, we think this is a bigger film, Jen called me and said, as soon as you're done with your book launch activities, we've got a project. So because they were down in South Carolina and could handle the local story better than I could. And we also had to watch funds. You know, we were raising funds because it was an unfolding story as we went. So I focused more of my early energy on the national story because we knew that to make it relevant to everyone, it makes it personal. Watching the young women that we follow in their local stories, that's the emotional anchor to the film. But it's, you know, weaving in that national, the bigger picture nationally to make everyone who watched the film understand how widespread this is and how it's affecting them as well, whether they know it or not. At this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Let's stay with that for a minute and zoom out to that national story. Y'all spend some time in the film also in Brevard County, Florida, talking to local Politicians and really getting into what Moms for Liberty was able to do in the political apparatus in Florida. I was telling Jeff, my co host here on the show, that watching those folks talk about, like, how connected Moms for Liberty is and what they were able to get done because of those connections makes me feel like I should put my tinfoil hat on. Like, it kind of sounds like a conspiracy, because this one actually is a conspiracy. But seeing all the pieces laid out that way was really powerful to me. So, Allison, if you would talk a little bit more about that national piece.

[Alison Rice]

Yeah, so it was really lucky, you know, in terms of Moms for Liberty stumbling across Olivia Little's reporting. She's the investigative researcher with Media Media Matters for America, and she had been researching Moms for Liberty since early 2021. So she had an extensive body of information about. So we went down to Florida, since that was the. The sort of. The ground floor of the rise of Moms for Liberty. And there's an interesting thing I'll. I'll talk about later, about book looks as well. So we went down there to interview people. No one from the national organization would meet with us. They ignored, you know, our attempts to interview them. We were going down and. And we had gotten. Gotten permission from a local chapter chair in Florida to film a social event they were having at a gun range. And the national office heard about. I know, what a choice.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Alison Rice]

They. They heard that they had given us permission to come and interview them at their, you know, social event and said, you are not allowed to speak with them. So that was canceled at the very last minute. So the rest of Florida, Tom, had connected with another chapter chair of Moms for Liberty, and that's the one that you saw in the film. And they allowed her to speak in the film because she's the one that trains Moms for Liberty members in how to handle the media. So she had a lot of. I'll let Tom talk a little bit more about that interview with her.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Jennifer Pippen was. She thought she was very cool and polished, and in some ways she was. I mean, she didn't wear a tinfoil hat, so that was good. But when you really listen to what she says, it's all like you're in a. Sort of. In a funhouse. You're looking at a fun house mirror. First glance, okay. And then it's like there's this distortion that comes in, because it's not. It's. It's what she's saying, doesn't it? Makes sense to some people. But for most of us, it makes no sense. And so, you know, that was a, that was a very revealing interview. The tough part of the movie, I'll just do a quick aside with this, is that we felt strong. We had to keep a documentary to 90 minutes. And so there's so much we had to leave out. And some of the really outlandish stuff she said didn't really help pushing our narrative along, and so we kept it out. So in some ways, she sounds more reasonable than she really was. You know, I'd love to some someday put together a blooper reel or something of all these other things that we have. But. So we, we interviewed her, but she is virtually the only person from any of the opposition or pro book banning people who would speak to us. And you see that in the film. Declined our requests, declined our requests, ignored our requests. It's all through the film. They don't want to be. They don't want to put themselves on camera and so that we can have an everlasting record of, of, of their position.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What was it like? Oh, go ahead, Allison.

[Alison Rice]

Sorry. There's. There's also a false narrative that they are constantly pushing and they're saying they don't co parent with the government and they're just trying to protect the children. And, you know, people who aren't keeping up with all of the, the, the news and the developments tend to take it at face value and, and believe what they're saying. But what they do is they will go behind closed doors and come up with their plan, come out, have the false narrative that they're pushing, and then as soon as anyone starts catching on to what they're really doing and what they're really pushing and what's really behind this, they immediately win, withdraw, close everything up, pull up stakes, reorder what they're doing, and then come back out with a different approach. And what's interesting, and I wanted to mention Book Looks, was because Olivia Little's research shows that Book Looks was originally the Moms for Liberty Library Committee. That is how it got started. It has the same rating systems. It's everything. It. It was a Moms for liberty origination, booklook.info and then they did booklooks.org and that was started by a Moms for Liberty member. And Moms for Liberty has tried to distance themselves from Book Looks for a long time, making it seem like, oh, it's just this independent thing. And it's just everyone's just trying to protect the children and I don't know what may. I'd like to think that our film being out there for a number of months, months now, had something to do with this, but who knows? But at the end of March, Book Looks pulled up stakes and said, we feel like we've done our job and God is calling us to other things. We're gonna no longer proceed with Book Looks, and we're taking down every book review on the site. So it is gone. So if it was really about protecting the kids, you'd think that they would leave those up, but it was not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm really glad that you brought that up. That's one thing that my colleague Kelly Jensen has covered extensively as well. And for listeners who are maybe just tuning into what Book Looks is, as you were saying, Allison, it's a. It was a rating site that Moms for Liberty spun up based on a scale that they invented, based on the very usefully vague language in a lot of these book banning laws to rate the content of books that they were attempting to have removed from. From schools. And then they pass this off to parents who are, it seems to me, trying to do the right thing. But you have footage of parents sitting in some of these evaluation meetings going, like, how can this book be in my kid's library? It has a 3.5 out of 4 on the book Looks scale. And the higher you go on the scale, the worse it is. So it seems like they were relatively successful in, at least for a while, convincing a meaningful number of folks that this was a real thing that was based on. On something other than just a group of people, ideas, sitting in a room together, trying to pass it off, given the patterns. Go ahead, Tom.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, just. And an interesting aside, since we are, you know, this is the Book Riot podcast, and you guys are so bullish on literacy and reading. And, you know, the collateral damage of Book Looks is not just the rating system, but it basically encourages people to not read the book. I mean, it gives you a resource that says, you don't need to read the book. Now, if a parent, if a kid came home with an assignment to read David Copperfield and said, no, I got this, I got the Cliff Notes, most parents would say, no, that's not right. You got to read the book. But they're not doing that. And this has created a whole approach to literature, to anything, to anything, that requires some investigation by looking at the holistically to ignore that and just take the excerpt that that makes sense to you. And. And so there's a lot of collateral damage there by what they're doing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And that's one of the astonishing things in your film as well, that it starts off with 97 books being taken out of school libraries in Beaufort. And over. Over the course of the film, as the districts are developing the evaluation process and getting parents involved in feedback and figuring it out, the majority of those books go back onto shelves like this. This whole thing doesn't stand up to any scrutiny at all. But, Alison, a few minutes ago, you mentioned that y'all really worked hard to highlight how this is impacting people nationwide, even if they're not seeing book bans in their local districts, at least yet. I'd like it if you could talk a little bit more about that, too.

[Alison Rice]

Well, the cold open of the film, the way we start out was we looked for headlines all around the country. So it starts off with a very quick, moving cold open with just headline after headline so that people right off the bat can get a sense of. This is happening everywhere. There are states where libraries are becoming adult only because they refuse to take out the books that. That somebody had an objection to based on bipoc or LGBTQ themes. And there was even someone in Virginia who tried to sue. I think it was Barnes and Noble books. I mean, first they started by talking about, we're just protecting kids in school to make it age appropriate, but that's not what they were doing. They were banning things throughout schools, and then they went to public libraries, and then they tried to hit. Hit bookstores. And it's happening in every state. And one of the things that's also happening is the widespread, horrible harassment of teachers and librarians. Like, it is. It's criminal what's happening to them. These people who have dedicated their lives to devoting themselves to teaching our children, to helping them learn. Helping them learn how to use critical thinking. And there's been a systematic targeting of teachers and educators, calling them horrible names like child abusers, pedophiles, groomers. We have someone in the film who was called that who actually was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. So having them call her that, it's just like, I don't even have words for how disgusting I think this is. And it's happening everywhere. And teachers and librarians are at times leaving their professions because they're being doxed online. Their. Their family, their kids, names and ages and where they live. It's being put online. People are being threatened with violence, and we are losing people who have dedicated themselves to a profession that's already underpaid and undervalued in this country. And now the ones who really care deeply are starting to leave. Jonathan Friedman from Pen America talks about that in the film. So it's happening everywhere.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, the other thing that's also happening from a corporate level is that Penguin Random House has to commit millions of dollars to fight lawsuits. So even though they consciously aren't going to tell any, authors are going to turn down authors who have wonderful works based on content in the back of their mind. And I'm sure they've got a couple of lawyers saying, you know what, if you publish this book and it gets put in schools, you're going to be inviting more lawsuits. So maybe you want to rethink that. So, you know, authors who have a tough enough time getting published now have this against them as well. And it does have a negative trickle down effect on the entire industry and on what we eventually get to read.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that's a really important point because I think you're exactly right that a publisher is not likely to turn to an author and say, we're not going to pick up your book because we're concerned about the book banning potential. And the big publishers have been, you know, pretty active and united about fighting these bans. But it's impossible to think that there's no chilling effect at all or even on what authors feel like they can write if they want to have a shot at getting published or stepping out there. It's really stunning in the film how, how clearly the students understand that this is not for their own protection and that the rights that are being violated here are not just their rights of speech, but their rights about what information they have access to. One of the moves that y'all make in the film that I thought was really interesting was going to the Penn center to talk to the members of the Gullah Geechee community near Charleston who had the first school for emancipated slaves. And talking to historians there who say to you pretty clearly, very clearly, that marginalized communities know what this is about and it's not about the books. How did that interview and that component of the film come about?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, actually, Kate Way, when she was doing this for her short, had gone to the Penn center and had done that interview with Marie. And then we wanted to get into it a little deeper. In Charleston, we knew about Queen Kwet and the Gullah Geechee nation to a degree. But Alison, I believe you reached out to her and set that interview up. We just thought it was important. The whole idea, the irony is what got us, you Know, as. As Karen Garris, the librarian, says, in the back in your backyard, these are. This history could be silenced by this kind of approach to education. We thought was so ironic that we needed to find out where. What they thought, you know, what folks in that community thought that has been there as long as white folks have been there. Actually, indigenous people have been there for thousands of years before. And so we needed to get that reaction. And just a quick little making of the sausage aside, you know, again, time, what can we include? What can't we include? We got some early feedback that that was a, as you say, a move that was sort of, you know, a left turn a little bit. And we debated whether it. Again, it moved the narrative forward in a. In an organic way that made sense. But then we got feedback, and to Allison's credit, she always said, we got to keep it, we got to keep it, we got to keep it. And then the feedback we started getting from white people was that this is. This is one of the most fascinating parts of the movie, because this is something I really didn't even know. People in South Carolina didn't know about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So we were very gratified that it showed, you know, it filled out the story and put in an element that kind of made us. It allowed us to walk the walk, not just talk. The talk about including marginalized voices that don't get heard often.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm so glad that you left it in. Oh, go ahead, Alison.

[Alison Rice]

Yeah. It's also an example of what happens when there's academic censorship and real history isn't taught. You don't even learn about your area, what's happening in your area. So that was a really crucial thing because that is what is happening right now. And two of the interviews, and we were not able to include it for time, talked about the Daughters of the Confederacy after the Civil War, that Moms for Liberty and groups like that are using the Daughters of the Confederacy playbook. So, you know, I knew about them peripherally, but I had to look up, and I was like, well, what exactly was their playbook? And they also engaged in doing academic censorship, and they banned books that put the south in a negative of light. And so that is exactly what they're doing right now. They don't want real history taught in this country about how there has been racial abuse, discrimination that goes on to this day. They don't want that even mentioned, which is why they have started labeling anything that deals with race as crt, Critical Race theory, which is not taught in K through 12 schools. It's a college level course that has been around since. Since the seventies. But they, they know that if they can find one little word or one little phrase and demonize it and then apply it to anything that they're trying to eradicate from schools or books, it's very successful.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I live in Virginia. And that's what won the Republican governor his seat here in 2021 was the CRT argument, especially coming out of COVID and that carryover of parents. Parents anger. And that's a through line that you follow in the film as well, that how Moms for Liberty makes that pivot from sort of being against COVID policies and wanting, you know, freedom about their own parenting choices, but also freedom to impose on everyone else's. And that they pivoted then into CRT and these educational issues, the stuff with the Gullah Geechee folks and those layers of it in and around Charleston where the local schools aren't educated, educating students about the rich history of the place that they live, but also the members of the Gullah Geechee community who once did not have access to education and then gained access to education, they have seen this playbook before and understand what a government stands to gain from its citizens being ignorant. And that's one of the things that one of the folks you interview talks about. I imagine that that's kind of the message of the whole movie, right? That, like, this is a movement to remove important information and context from American history and culture. If you have a, like a nutshell summary for someone who's trying to get their friend to watch this documentary with them, or we're going to have our neighbors over and talk about it. How do you suggest that folks start to talk about that? Like, this is a big deal? Because it is an organized, orchestrated movement to try to keep us less educated. And that's for a reason.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think one thing that I would say is that history is repeating itself with this. As Allison mentioned, this is an old playbook. You know, I was reading an article that Book Riot wrote about, about this topic in 2021, and you guys, you guys labeled it. This is an old playbook of, of. Of censoring information that expands people's viewpoints and may be divergent to some of the things and values that you're trying to impose on others.

[Dan Souza]

But.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So this is an old playbook. But what I always like to say, there is a hopeful antidote, and that is the voices of young people who are ready to start to lead and need to lead. And we show how that happens and we show, show how older folks start looking to them to create a new playbook for this kind of thing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's really powerful to see that happen. And I did have a real, like the kids are going to be all right feeling at the end of this, some real hope for the future. Having spent a couple of years observing this movement in the rooms where it happens, what are your biggest concerns about the moment that we're in right now? And what do you see as our biggest opportunities?

[Alison Rice]

I think that one thing that has been very clear in this whole book banning movement, it's about how to control people by creating fear within them. That is the technique that Moms for Liberty and other so called parental rights groups use. They make people and they get parents to do the work that they need them to do to push ahead their political agenda, which the parents may not even realize that's what they're doing. So they are creating fear by going, your kids are in danger. And anyone who's a parent is like, what? My kids are in danger. So it creates fear and people get reactive. And that is the moment that we're in. Everything that is happening right now out there is about creating fear in people because that makes people easily controllable, easily led.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I think a lot of this, our politics now are everything. It's about identity politics, right? It's about identity, it's about the fear of the other. That's nothing new again, but it's really been weaponized by one side of this. And of course, the fear that Jodi Picoult highlights in her comments about kids feeling different from their parents. We have a generation that is becoming colorblind, that is, that doesn't care what your gender identity is, that, you know, they don't, that, that's not crucial to them anymore. And as, as an older generation sees that drift away and sees that the power of identity politics is slipping through their fingers, they're trying to hold on to it as much as they can. And I think that's the moment we're in. And I think that's, that's why, you know, I'm. I'm just hopeful because of young people and where we're heading. But the danger is will is real. I mean, this is the last gasp of the old order, you know, and they're going to fight as hard as they can. And if they got to burn down some institutions to pres. To preserve, ironically, to preserve what they think they've got, that it's going to be hairy for A little while, no doubt.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There are certainly precursors to this destruction of the Department of Education that we see the groundwork being laid for in your film. And I was watching the documentary that same week that all of that was happening and just thinking, wow, you can see the pieces laid out over the last several years of where this is going.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. We were gratified that our storytelling was so prescient, but we're not happy about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's not what you want to be right about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, I wish all of that had been debunked, but unfortunately, most of what was in that film, you know, and everybody could see coming down the road.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know, I think that you're right that we're in a last gasp moment. And we're also in a moment where a lot of folks are just really tuning in to this happening, that it's become widespread enough that there have been enough headlines. It's not just like small niche publications talking about this, but it comes up in political campaigns where it's a great time for a film like this to be coming out for education and greater awareness of the population.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And I also think that if you're sitting at home and you're. You're not really sure whether you want to become a member of a 10,000 person protest on the mall or something, this is watching our movies. One small step you can take. You know, watch the movie, get informed about this. Because these issues do connect. They spider. They spiderweb to all these other things that we talked about here and other things. And this is one way you can get. You can get educated, maybe you can get a little activated by. And start here, and then you'll be connected to people and ideas that can help you get activated even more.

[Alison Rice]

And I wanted to say one last thing also. Another word that they have demonized is the term woke. But what woke is, is being awakened to something. So I would like people to keep that in mind about waking up to what's actually happening and all of those characteristics that they throw into that. Oh, the woke. You know, things like love, kindness, respect, compassion, empathy. I have been telling people to lean into those things like that is something you can do whether you're at a protest or whether you're going to a school board meeting. You can shine your light where you are by leaning into being kind and being loving and being compassionate toward others. Lean into that every day as hard as you can.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a beautiful note to end on and certainly poignant for this moment. Thank you both. Alison Rice and Tom Wiggin producers and and Tom's the director of the new documentary Band Together. You can find it at is it.

[Alison Rice]

Bandtogether.Com bandtogether doc d o c band togetherdoc.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Com. We'll have links to that in the show notes and the documentary will be streaming April 10th on Apple TV and Amazon website. There also has terrific resources for other ways you can get involved, other ways that you can educate yourself. So if you see it and you get activated, and I certainly believe that you will, you'll have a lot of places to go for whatever your next steps may be. Alison and Tom, thank you so much.

[Alison Rice]

Thank you so much for having us.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook edition of Nobody's fool by Harlan Coben. Narrated by Vikas Attention. Thank you to our sponsors at Hachette.

[F]

Audio I stand behind the tree and snap photos of license plates with a long lens camera. The lot is full, so I go and order from the most expensive car. I can't believe there's a Bentley parked by this toilet and move on down the list. I don't know how long I have before my subject, a wealthy man named Peyton booth, comes out. Five minutes, maybe 10. But here's why I take the photos. I send them to my shadow partner at the dmv. Said partner will then look up all the license plates and get the corresponding emails. She'll email the pics and threaten exposure if they don't transfer money into this untraceable cash app account. Only $500. No reason to be greedy. If they don't respond and 90% don't, it goes nowhere. But we make enough to make it worthwhile. Yeah, times are tough. I'm positioned across the park and dressed like what we used to call a vagrant or hobo or homeless. I forget the proper euphemism they use nowadays, so I asked Debbie. Unhoused, Debbie tells me. Really unsheltered, too. They both suck. Which do you prefer? Goddess Debbie the Goddess says. She's 23, but she looks younger. She spends a lot of her days standing in front of various gentlemen's clubs. Talk about a euphemism with tears in her eyes and yells, daddy, why? At every guy that walks in or out. She started doing it for kicks. She loves the way some guys turn white and freeze, but now a few of the regulars say hi and maybe throw her a 20. I do it as an exercise in capitalism and ethics, she tells me. How's that the capitalism part is obvious. Debbie has good teeth. That's rarely the case out here. Her hair is washed, she's sleeveless and her arms are clean. You make money, I say then. And the ethics. Her lower lip quivers. Sometimes a guy hears me and runs off like I knocked some sense into him, like I reminded him who he should be. And maybe, just maybe, if some girl had yelled that at my daddy, if some girl like me did something, anything, to stop my daddy from going into a place like that. Her voice fades away. She looks down and blinks her eyes and keeps the lip quivering. I study her face for a second and then I say, boo friggin who? The blinking and quivering stop as if her face is a shaken Etch A Sketch. What, you think I'm buying the daddy issues cliche? I shake my head. I expect better from you. Debbie laughs and punches my arm. Damn, Kears, you must have been an awesome cop. I shrug. I was. I don't know how Debbie ended up on the streets. I don't ask and she doesn't volunteer and that seems to suit us both. I check my watch. Showtime? Debbie asks. Has to be. You remember the code? I do. If she yells Daddy Y, that means wrong guy. If she yells but Daddy, I'm carrying your child, that means my man Peyton just exited. Debbie came up with a code. I'm giving her $50 for the job, but if I land what White Shoe needs, I'll up that to 100. Debbie heads down the path to a spot where she can see the club door. I can't see it from my perch. Debbie saw Peyton Booth's pick on my phone. So she knows what he looks like. You probably guessed this, but Peyton is getting divorced. My job here is simple. Catch him cheating. This is what I've been reduced to since getting chucked off the force for messing up big time. Worse, even though I'm working for a high end, whitest of White Shoe Manhattan law firm, I am not getting paid. This is a barter arrangement. I'm being sued by the family of a high school kid named PJ Dawson. According to the lawsuit, I perilously pursued PJ onto the rooftop of a three story building. Because of my negligence, young PJ slipped and fell off the roof, plummeting those three stories and sustaining critical injuries. The White Shoe law firm, actual name is Wit Shaw, but everyone calls them White Shoe is representing me in exchange for my working jobs like this off the books. America is grand.