← Velshi Banned Book Club
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Nordstrom Rack Representative
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Customer
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Ali Velshi
Oh, I love these new Nikes.
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Customer
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Ali Velshi
Foreign welcome to season two of the Veli Band Book Club. I'm Ali Velshi. School libraries across the state of Tennessee have to sift through their entire collection of books to determine which novels, which memoirs and which classics are likely to run afoul of a draconian new state law that is so broad it could sweep up everything from To Kill a Mockingbird to to the Bible. Nearly 3,400 books have been pulled from library shelves across public schools in Iowa to comply with a new law that prohibits books that include a quote sex act, which sweeps up award winners and classics that have been studied for generations, including 1984 by George Orwell and the Giver by Lois Lowry. And Utah has outlawed 13 books, including works by Judy Blume and Margaret Atwood, from every single public school. And more books will be next. Under a new state law, it takes just three of the state's 41 school district boards to claim a novel contains objective, sensitive material to get a title banned. Censorship and book banning efforts in America are becoming more common, more accepted, and now they're being enshrined in law. These overt censorship efforts share something insidious in common. They successfully eliminate access to critical literature under the guise of protecting students from material that is inappropriate. Well organized right wing groups who claim to stand for parental rights have created a bogeyman around the idea of inappropriate books in classrooms and libraries. They pound the table about sex and violence, quoting out of context passages from the novels that have landed in their crosshairs to make the book seem dangerous and scary. But often they don't read these books. They don't know the arc of the character, the key plot points, or even the name of the author. They wouldn't know that a painful passage in the context of a novel exploring the effects of sexual assault on a young woman can make a reader experiencing the very same thing in real life ask for help. They wouldn't know that a story that includes a family with two mothers can make a reader understand a classmate better or feel more proud of who who they are. They wouldn't know that in story after story a so called inappropriate scene is part of a book that can save a life in a healthy, diverse, inclusive, democratic society. The classroom and the library are spaces where a student's preconceived notions, previously held beliefs and understandings of the world can and should be challenged and expanded. That space is being taken down brick by brick by the book manners. They say they want to remove inappropriate material from classrooms and libraries. But who gets to decide what is and is not appropriate for any given student? In Tennessee, in Iowa and in Utah right now, under these new laws, the answer is not you and your child's teacher or librarian or likely anyone who even knows you or your child. It's the government. The stakes are higher than they've ever been. These books are being removed from school reading lists and library shelves every single day. And when they finally do disappear, the empathy, the knowledge and the culture that is printed on those pages will be gone too. If you came to this season of the Welsh Ban Book Club hoping for good news, I don't have much. Book banning and censorship efforts are a critical and growing problem in this country. What I do have is a plan. Read, Read as resistance. Finish the book. Study the texts. Talk about them with your friends and family. It is incumbent upon us, as members of the Velshi Band Book Club and as free Americans, to understand what is in those books that is so threatening, so inappropriate that they're being targeted by book banners. This season of the Velshi Band Book Club is going to dig even deeper. From generation defining classics to contemporary takes on Shakespeare to radically honest memoirs to poetry. Every featured work has something to teach us about ourselves, our community and our country. You'll also hear a new voice this season, Hannah Holland, the Welshy Band Book Club's writer and literary editor. Right after a quick break, I'll kick off this season with Hannah, who's here to talk about a work that is close to my heart because, well, I wrote it. It's called Small Acts of Courage. Don't go anywhere.
- [05:49]
T-Mobile Representative
AT T Mobile we'll give you four free 5G phones and four lines for only $25 per line per month with eligible trade ins. And no, it's not a contest, it's every day for a limited time. Everyone's a winner on America's largest 5G network.
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Amon Mohadeen
MSNBC is now available as a podcast. Every Saturday and Sunday, host Amon Mohadin reads between the lines of the week's biggest stories, spotlighting the pressing issues facing our country, our world and those fighting to solve them.
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Ali Velshi
We are tracking the fallout across the Middle East.
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Amon Mohadeen
Tonight, search for Amen wherever you're listening and follow and for ad free listening to this show and other MSNBC podcasts, subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts.
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James Matthews
Donald Trump is heading back to the White House.
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Ali Velshi
Together we can truly make America great again.
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James Matthews
We are in for an unpredictable but fascinating four years and we're going to be following every twist and turn for the first 100 days. We'll be bringing you the latest updates and analysis first thing every morning. So join me, James Matthews, me, Martha Calneck and me, Mark Stone for Trump 100 every weekday at 6am wherever you get your podcast.
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Ali Velshi
We're opening season two of the Veli Band Book Club with a book that has not been banned or challenged or removed from any shelves. But it is nonetheless foundational to the Vel Band Book Club because it's my own family story. The book is called Small Acts of Courage, A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy, and in its pages I cover 125 years of my family history, which takes us from a tiny village in northwestern India to the shark infested waters of Delagoa Bay off the coast of East Africa, to Gandhi's Tolstoy farm in South Africa, to my childhood home in Toronto and to New York City and beyond. Shot through my family, history is history. From apartheid in South Africa to the end of colonialism in Kenya, to Pierre Trudeau's Canada, to the George Floyd protests in Minneapolis and the major effect a small act of resistance can have on the future of a family, a country and a democracy. But I can't interview myself about my own book. So joining me to ask the questions is a voice that will sound new to you but is not new to the Velshi Band Book Club. As I mentioned, I'll be joined this season by the brains behind the Velshi Band Book Club, our writer and literary editor, Hannah Holland. Hannah, I can't say welcome to the Velshe Band Book Club. Cause this is yours.
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Customer
It is not, but that's very nice to say and I'm happy to be here. This is a fun addition to the job.
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Ali Velshi
Yeah. Let's go behind the curtain just a little bit for a second and let our listeners understand how we pick these books that we feature. Because there are a lot of books out there and increasingly, with every passing week, there are more banned books and challenged books.
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Customer
Definitely. And that answer has evolved. We've been doing this for almost three years, which is insane. There is, as you said, no shortage of titles. In the beginning, we had a list of different titles that we wanted to feature. Right.
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Ali Velshi
So authors that we knew.
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Customer
Exactly, yeah.
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Ali Velshi
Been around for a while.
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Customer
Margaret Atwood was the name that kept coming up. People would write in. That's who we want to hear from, you know, so someone like that we would target. But increasingly it's become the lesser known titles that have a little bit stolen the show. You know, there's always something to be said for Shakespeare. Right. You don't need to argue why that needs to be part of curriculum and on library shelves. But a smaller children's book that no one has really heard of, like, that's the important part of the Band Book Club. So to answer the question, they come to us in all different ways through publishers, through authors, through members of the Band Book Club who email us. And some that I just like and have read along the way as well.
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Ali Velshi
And that's important. That last point you made about members of the Band Book Club who email us. Everybody's a member. Anyone listening to this is a member. You're paid up for life. Yeah, we do want to hear from them. And there's an email address, mystoryelshi.com and when people write, sometimes it's not in support of the book. It's about why they think it's problematic. We've had some important books on where people have said, I'm troubled by this which appears in the book, or I don't think that's appropriate. Overwhelmingly, people support the authors, but that's a meaningful dialogue when people tell us what they thought was problematic in the book because we then put that to the author.
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Customer
Oh, 100%. The one that comes to mind is Tehila Mockingbird. Of course, the author has passed away. But the arguments that people wrote in to say, like, it does make my child feel uncomfortable to use certain words.
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Ali Velshi
That we don't use today.
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Customer
And the author is white. I mean, yeah, those arguments are certainly.
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Ali Velshi
Valid, but that's why context matters, right? Because we can have that conversation in context. And if it's being taught to your child by a teacher in school, those matters come up and people can say, you know, this is not language we use these days unless it's in context or in an academic setting where you're researching something. But that doesn't mean we lose our history. There are stories out there that are tragic and that are difficult. There are things that are written by people who we think are very bad, but we have to learn about our world, and that's your choice. In fact, I would argue the Welshy Band Book Club is all about parental rights. It's all about the right Parents have to control what their kids read, not to have the government control what their children read.
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Customer
And a step further than that, when you read a book with a child or a student, whatever the case may be, it creates dialogue, right? These are topics that might be difficult to even broach with your child. When you read a book together, there is context, right? There's characters, there's language. And then all of a sudden, that's a conversation that's being had within a family. And the same can be said for a classroom as well. There is someone who's an expert to speak on it. So, yeah, definitely.
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Ali Velshi
Let's get started.
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Customer
There is one part of the book that I want to bring up to you that makes it particularly relevant to the Velshi Bamboo Club, and it's that your parents didn't know what a public library was until they left South Africa. So I want to read a quick passage here. Socially and culturally, my parents lived in a small community, maybe 3,500 people, one large extended family of Indians. That was the life. You were stuck in the tiny ghetto with no swimming pools, no parks, no libraries. My father didn't even know what a public library was until he left South Africa for the first time. Everything was closed to you. You were brought up to understand that you didn't belong, that you had no rights. I'd love to hear more about that.
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Ali Velshi
I didn't even know this part of the story, and I'm not even sure it would have come up. It was actually after one of our very early episodes of the Veli Band book. My parents tend to text me after every show. Sometimes during the show, love. And my dad texted me. He just texted me that one little thing he said. I didn't even know there were such a thing as public libraries until I left South Africa. What a remarkable example of how governments can use books as tools to keep people ignorant. They weren't even gonna let them read any books. They were gonna read what the government, through the school system, told them they were going to read. And in South Africa, if you were black, you had a different dictionary, and it was meant to give you definitions for words so that you could be an effective laborer. It was not meant to invoke your curiosity and cause you to want bigger things. It was going to be the words that you needed to exchange with your boss to get the job done. They actually designed a separate dictionary. So this is a remarkable concept that if you keep books away from people, you can keep them in their place, whatever you think their place should be. When you give knowledge to people, you give them a sense of adventure. You give them a sense of what life could be. And they might live up to that. They may be able to do that. At least they'll know something else is out there for them. I didn't realize this, because if you grow up in America, you take for granted that free public libraries exist. It's not a model that has been all over the world. It is something to aspire to. It is one more thing about America that we should be defending and promoting around the world. Free access to books in public libraries that are safe spaces for people to discover anything they wanna discover.
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Customer
It's reminding me of something Emily Drabinski said. The former ALA President, she gave someone a book in some event that they were having. And the child said, oh, I'm so excited. This is gonna go right on my library at home. And she said, how many books do you have? And he said, this is the first one.
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Ali Velshi
Wow.
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Customer
Which is a cute story. Right. But it speaks to, like, this is a luxury for most people.
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Ali Velshi
You know, books are expensive. Books are really expensive.
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Customer
Yes. And access to them is something that just cannot be taken for granted at all.
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Ali Velshi
Well, you remember I told Emily, I said one of the best things about the Welshy Band Book club is we have an author on. And I buy the. And you can see their sales going up. And everybody says they do. And she said, but that doesn't help the kid in the library. That doesn't help the kid in the school. So I'm glad you can buy the book. That's not the problem we're solving for. We're solving for the problem of kids in schools and in public libraries having free access to books.
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Customer
Small Acts of Courage kind of exists in a genre between memoir and narrative. You could have written a book just about you and your career. So why did you decide to go back so far? Like, what was the importance of that?
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Ali Velshi
First of all, I feel like I'm too young to have a memoir. But part of it is that the story doesn't stand on its own. Even if I had thought about writing about my own life, it becomes clear to all of us, I think, when we think about our own histories, that they're steeped in something else. And in my case, my involvement in this struggle for democracy today has an entirely different shape and tenor to that that my parents were involved in and that my grandparents and my great grandparents were involved in. But the line is that they were all involved in that. They all took in their small way the responsibility to either obtain democracy in the cases of India or South Africa, in the case of Kenya, to grow democracy, and in the case of Canada, to fully engage in it, because you could. And I kind of grew up thinking I wasn't involved in that fight. This was their fight. I grew up in Canada. I didn't have to fight for freedoms. I didn't have to fight because of the color of my skin. I thought I was in a different place. And all of a sudden it occurred to me one day a few ago that I am simply one more link in this chain.
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Customer
I was going to bring that up. I love that quote, link in the chain. So I joined Velshi after you were shot by the rubber bullet in Minneapolis, which you bring up early in the book. I'll just read part of the prologue. Quote, On May 30, 2020, I got shot in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I don't know who it was who shot me. It could have been an officer of the Minneapolis police or the Minnesota State Police, or it could have been a member of the National Guard. All I know for certain is that I got shot in the leg with a rubber bullet. Obviously, getting shot with a rubber bullet is not the same as getting shot with a real bullet, but it hurts. We're not talking about a Nerf gun. Also, the rubber bullet isn't really the point here. The point is that a law enforcement officer, likely aware of the fact that I was a journalist covering a peaceful march, raised up a gun, took aim, and pulled the trigger. It has become kind of, you know, show lore. You write that this changed your perspective on democracy and being an American, which you're talking about now. Had that been growing for you as a journalist? And it was just that moment where you're like, wow, I'm in the fight.
- [16:56]
Ali Velshi
It was unclear to me because, like you, I came up in financial journalism, which is a different game altogether. It's a bit more like sports. You're calling balls and strikes. You're interviewing people, generally speaking, without a ton of regard to holding them to account. That's not necessarily what it was about. And all of a sudden, I was in this different space where you have to wonder what your role is as a journalist, because we grew up thinking that journalism is about being objective and being to the side. And all of a sudden, when this rubber bullet hits me, I realize I'm in it. Yeah, I'm not on the side. I'm there. And you have to make some decisions about what that means. If you are there and if you think that a healthy democracy exists by virtue of there being an informed electorate, then that is your responsibility. And when I grew up in a house that was very political, we watched the news because the news was an important ingredient to making proper political decisions. So I saw myself in that environment. When I got hit by that rubber bullet, I realized I cannot be a spectator. I cannot be on the outside of this conversation. I am there. And I'm gonna have to think about this differently.
- [18:05]
Customer
A few months ago in May, the Hollywood Reporter came out with a story that talked about America's most trusted news anchors, and you were MSNBC's most trusted name. I thought about that when I was reading this book. Like, do you believe that your inherent reason for becoming a journalist that you talk about, right, this idea of service is why you have this trust?
- [18:25]
Ali Velshi
I think we all think about this, right? That if you are. If you don't have trust, inherently, if you don't have viewers who trust you, what are you doing this for? What good is it for you? Is it just to hear your own voice? So I think we all want viewers to believe in us and trust us and give us grace, that sometimes we will be wrong, sometimes we will make mistakes. But do you believe that I'm working in your best interests? And that's much more complicated today than it was in the days of network news. It was important back then that Walter Cronkite was the most trusted name in America. But in this world where people inherently distrust media, and in some cases specifically cable news, it matters a lot to be trusted. It matters more than anything else. It matters more than ratings. It matters more than accolades. It matters more than an awards. All you want is to be trusted. Because if your viewers trust you, they will engage with you. They'll tell you when they think you've done something that disappointed them. And they do on social media. And we have to take that. We have to take that as if it's family or friends criticizing us. And there's criticism involved in that too. Trusting me doesn't mean that I have free reign to say anything I want to say. It means that you believe that I'm engaging with you in an honest fashion and that I'm being fair, or at least I'm trying to be fair, and I'm trying to be better every day. So I took that accolade as an admonition to do more. My literal first thought is, how do we become more trusted? Once somebody tells you something that you're doing is good, your instinct should be, then let's do more.
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Customer
Totally. Yeah, right, Exactly. It's not the moment to take the foot off the gas.
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Ali Velshi
It is definitely not the moment to take the foot off the gas.
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Customer
So where do you think the Valji Man Book Club falls into that then? Obviously there's a level of trust there too. What does that look like?
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Ali Velshi
Interestingly, less political than a lot of stuff we do. Right. The fundamental concept of banning a book is political, but it's the same answer to every book. Right. You and I have stopped asking authors, why ban. Why did you think the book was banned? Cause it's not interesting. There are only four or five reasons why books ever get banned, and they're the same four or five reasons that have been around for 500 years. So that's uninteresting. What's interesting is that we actually talk about the books and we talk to the authors and we talk to them about why they chose certain devices and vehicles in their book, and we compare it to other books or we talk to experts. If the authors author's not alive. I think that's what makes this trustworthy. It's smart. It doesn't discount the viewer at all, ever. Right. We are assuming that every one of our viewers or listeners is a member of the Valshi Band. Book club equal to every other one. And that means if you have a question about the book or you've read it 15 times, or you have a different opinion of it, or you've never read it, you are all equal. You all have equal voice in this thing. And I think that is important. And in this world where we are overwhelmed with all sorts of terribleness in the news, this is this little oasis for me. It's this little space where it doesn't matter what's going on in the world. We're still gonna do this. There are very few occasions where we have not done it. And that has been because the news has been so overwhelming.
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Customer
Yeah.
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Ali Velshi
Such breaking news that there was no way to even make it fit. But even when I've traveled around the world or we're talking about particular topics, we have brought books and authors in. Like in Ukraine.
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Customer
Yeah, I was just about to bring that up.
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Ali Velshi
Like in Israel and Gaza, we still find ways to talk to authors because book banning happens all over the world, and this becomes a way that it's relevant. It's not a weird left turn out of our show or our coverage or MSNBC or the news. It is this place where we can all feel either equally smart, equally dumb, or like we're learning together.
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Customer
Yeah. I always make the joke when I do pre interviews that this is as much a book club as we can make it. You know, if people write in to my story.com for a little plug, the questions will go on air. There is a community around this, which I think was interesting and unlike anything else, really. But this is a good segue to get back into your actual book. So one of my favorite stories in Small Acts of Courage is when your father ran for office in Canada. And I've heard you say it, which I think is fun, right? To have the privilege of hearing you say it and then read it. Cause I can hear your voice. But I'll read a little. Now, as we were driving, my father flicked on the radio. Right. At 8pm, right as the station launched into the top of the next hour, which opened with news of the evening's election results. There is one race we can call and we can declare Dennis Timbrell the victor in the riding of Don Mills, Toronto. I was shocked. I glanced at my father, expecting him to be confused and angry as well. But the look on his face betrayed nothing but ease and contentment, which confused me. I can't believe we lost, I said. Of course we lost, he said with the biggest smile. We were never going to Win. We ran because we could. He said, I stood for what I believed in. People had a chance to vote for me. And more people voted for the other guy than voted for me. That was always going to happen. I knew that. But I ran, and now I've lost. Our life goes on. We don't get arrested. We don't get shunned. Nothing bad happens. When I was reading, I thought of the Teddy Roosevelt, the man in the arena speech, which I love. And I guess my question for this is, have Americans lost this idea of why you should run and why participating in democracy is so important at any level?
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Ali Velshi
Right. It's not. Running is one thing, but I was 11 years old at the time, so I had never read Teddy Roosevelt's speech. And I remember the first time I saw that, it's like. But that's what my dad was doing. That's exactly what he said, that you. You are in it. Get dirty. He had fought all his life just for the privilege of voting. And the point is, now he was in the arena, and he was not going to be a spectator. He was not gonna sit in the bleachers. He was going to get into the arena and get dirty. And that is the reward in and of itself. The second part of that, of course, is having grown up in Canada, I had no idea that people go to jail because they run for office or they lose or someone else wins. I didn't even know those were the consequences of elections because it was so genteel and polite, and you had no sense that this was a thing that was that serious. And it wasn't when my dad ran. But now we realize that it is. It's only because people will put themselves out there and take these small acts of courage on every level, whether you're running, whether you're supporting a candidate, whether you're getting a library card, whether you're going to hug your librarian and just tell them you're with them, or you are just being an informed citizen? The point that my father was making to me at the time was that you have an obligation. Citizenship is not simply the rights that you are accorded. It is the obligations you have. And he, in that day in 1981, was telling me that he had at least tried to fulfill his obligation and.
- [24:47]
Customer
Like, this inherent idea that, like, he wasn't scared of failure, embraced it. You know, the fear of failure, it's explored in lots of the books we talk about on the banned book club.
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Ali Velshi
In fact, very many. Right. This is a key idea through with many of Our authors, they either thought they might fail or they'd gone through parts of their life where they didn't belong, and they wanted to write about that was empowering. So it's the same concept, right? It's the idea that if I put myself out there and I share my thoughts and my ideas, I'm taking my power back.
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Customer
Right.
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Ali Velshi
And so to my parents, who didn't have that power because of the color of their skin, they couldn't vote. They couldn't be full participants in society. When given the opportunity, they said, I'm going to. And many of our authors do the same thing. When given the opportunity, I'm going to write this book.
- [25:31]
Customer
Yeah, we do. And later in the season, we'll cover two amazing memoirs. And, you know, this idea of not being concerned or at least facing the concern that people won't understand you there is real, you know, as you say, taking your power back. Another part that I loved hearing about was your family. I obviously know you in a work capacity, but learning about people's family is really how you get to know them. And your sister sounds amazing. At one point, you talk about how she exists in this kind of immigrant culture. You write culturally, my sister never felt like she fit in anywhere. None of the places she immigrated to ever felt entirely like home. And when you grow up like that, your only real home is the place you were born, even if that home is a place you never really knew. It was a kind of homesickness for a country in which she had never really lived. I'd love to hear more about that.
- [26:16]
Ali Velshi
Well, we've spoken, as you know, to a lot of people who have experienced this. So in my family, if you hadn't immigrated twice, you're kind of the loser in the family. And I was that guy. I've subsequently immigrated to the United States, so now we're all double immigrants. But it confused me as a child because my sister was born in South Africa, but hardly lived there, grew up, or at least got to the age of 10 in Kenya, and then moved to Canada. She had this identity issue because if you spend 10 years in one place and then you go somewhere else as a child, it's formative. But I never understood why she was talking about a country that was two countries away in South Africa that she couldn't have possibly had any meaningful memory of. Now, I write in the book about how some of her memories were formed after my family had lived. And they were really, really important to her, and they motivated her later in life to get involved in Politics. But I now understand that when you're shifting around in identities and you're in this melange and you're mixed, because not only were we immigrants, but we were minorities in every country that we went to, you have to find grounding in something, and that becomes really complicated and really hard, particularly in your second country. Now, are these my people? Am I an outsider? What do I do? And the interesting part about it is that my sister struggled with this her entire adult life, and yet it transformed into public service for her. And that's what I find the most amazing. It's not that she was troubled, because we all have something that troubles us or potentially holds us back. She transformed that into energy to say, others feel left out, others are on the outside. Others don't get the full benefit of society. So I'm going to devote my life to serving them.
- [27:47]
Customer
Maybe this is esoteric, but I do feel like there is this idea of the soil being physically back somewhere, even if you weren't raised there. My grandma's Irish, and I feel that way when we visit her cousins in Ireland. And there is something to that, like knowing your identity.
- [28:01]
Ali Velshi
We're humans. We like to belong. I have it on my social media profiles that I'm a citizen of the world because I literally have multiple citizenships. But we always want something to connect to. Right. And you can sometimes find that in your new country or your new neighborhood or your new city. But we do need connection. And when we don't have connection, we become unmoored. And we're in a political cycle right now where people feel unmoored because we're not sure what our identity is. What are we supposed to be as America, we were this thing that everybody looked to and everybody wanted to come to. So I think this concept of mooring or having some identity based in something is important. And I, having not grown up with that particular issue, writing about it with my sister was really interesting because she's been my sister my entire life, and I never explored her in this way. I never really had some of the. Like, I've interviewed my sister for this book. Right. It's just something I've never done.
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Customer
Yeah.
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Ali Velshi
Mostly if my sister and I were involved in a conversation for more than 10 minutes, it was an argument. So it was amazing to just learn from her and realize that two people of the same parents grew up similarly can have such different views.
- [29:03]
Customer
Yeah, 100%. A lot of this book talks about how you were raised to explore different ideas and people, especially around the dinner table. You Write. We kept the traditions that were important to us. Indian food and Indian movies with my grandmother and religious instructions at the Jamaat Khana. But outside of those things, my parents believed that good things come from exposing yourself to lots of different ideas. Never once did they think that these outside influences as diluting or diminishing who we were or what was important to us. Even though, of course, you're speaking about your own identity. This was such a alarm bell for what the banned book club is, Right? So many of these books expose you to culture and ideas that you would never have access to. People experience different ways of life through food, you know, through movies and especially through literature.
- [29:47]
Ali Velshi
Right. I mean, if you're one of these people who likes no other food, then I suppose I understand why you might want to ban books. But if you like anything other than the same thing you eat every day, if you've ever liked to travel or dreamt about travel or watched a travel show, how is that different? How is that different? I was brought up to understand that your traditions and values are important, but they are not exclusive of anybody else's, including learning about their religion, including their differences in life. I just. I was so fascinated to learn that people get so crazy about how other people live their life. I don't understand why this is anybody's business. People ask me all the time, why is Canada so liberal? I said, not that liberal. It's actually more libertarian. It's the concept that it is not the government's role or your role to get involved with people and who they love and who they marry and where they practice their religion. We openly took other people's religious traditions. My Muslim grandmother had a Christmas tree and Christmas lights on our house because she thought that was really nice. We didn't have such a thing. So I grew up understanding that that was never an issue. My best friend Mikey. Oh, yeah.
- [30:49]
Customer
I wanted to bring him up.
- [30:50]
Ali Velshi
He's Catholic. We would go to midnight mass for Christmas because you're a little kid, and if you can stay up till midnight, that's cool. But I loved it. It was nothing like our services. And it was just amazing. It's. And the voices and the sounds. I never understood that this was a bad thing. And I think mine is the natural state. I think that's right. Our natural state is not to be exclusionary of other people's practices and lifestyles. I see it as the opposite. To me, it's pluralism. How amazing that we can all live together and yet be so different and yet, like, different.
- [31:23]
Customer
Foods.
- [31:23]
Ali Velshi
The Ban Book club, to me is amazing in that I don't get it. If you don't want to read the book, don't read the book.
- [31:29]
Customer
Right.
- [31:30]
Ali Velshi
Why is it on you to tell somebody else not to read the book?
- [31:32]
Customer
100%. Yeah. And I think too, when you're a child and you do see these other kinds of, you know, religious practices or et cetera, it also too can make you feel prideful of your own home. Like, wow, I love that we do this. You know, I didn't even realize that this was cool or special.
- [31:47]
Ali Velshi
And it's wondrous. And it's always. It's positive. And I didn't know these things could actually be negatives, but boy, they sure can be. And I don't mean to suggest that I left Canada and came to America and I saw that it is happening all over the world. And I think when times get tough, we have been taught, I don't know where we get this idea that we should become a little tribal and we should fold unto ourselves. It doesn't work. It's not gonna work. It's not how the world's going. Again, my point of view is, and you and I have discussed this, every book is not a great book. But that's your choice, right? And it's your choice with your family. It's very pro family to tell people you and your family can decide what you wanna read. Someone else's family doesn't get to decide what you can and cannot read.
- [32:27]
Customer
And there's been this interesting embrace that we've seen again and again with conservative groups that do book banning that say when you read these different sorts of books that white children feel shame.
- [32:36]
Ali Velshi
Right.
- [32:37]
Customer
And it just, I don't know, I don't see that. Right.
- [32:39]
Ali Velshi
History. There's always something to learn. I don't feel responsible for everything that's happened in history.
- [32:44]
Customer
Right.
- [32:44]
Ali Velshi
Wasn't there. I literally was not there.
- [32:46]
Customer
Right.
- [32:46]
Ali Velshi
I'm not going to be made to feel responsible. I am going to learn lessons, I'm going to hear what happened. And I will say I'm not even sure if you are conservative, then you wouldn't take this view. Because conservatives don't believe it's somebody else's business to tell you what you should and shouldn't read. This is just bad. It's just anti Democratic. It's anti intellectual. You go back to a man in the arena with Theodore Roosevelt. The idea is you can fight in the arena of ideas. If you don't like what somebody wrote, debate it. Write another book. Do whatever you want. Anybody can get a book published in America today. Write a book if you want to. There's no reason to tell somebody else what they can't read.
- [33:24]
Customer
Yeah, absolutely. One more bit that I love from your book. It's very interesting to hear about your connection to Gandhi. Right. So of course your family was part of Tolstoy Forum, the ashram that was initiated and organized by Gandhi during his South African movement. What I loved about that part is you connect these core tenets of Gandhi's ethos, or what it was at that point. Right. To what your family believes in truthfulness, self reliance and discipline. Might be a chicken or an egg. Did that come from being there or was Gandhi was like, yeah, these are my people. We belong the same sort of thing?
- [33:54]
Ali Velshi
Well, that's a good question, because the one guy I couldn't interview was my grandfather. He died in 1961. I did go back to Tolstoy Farm and I literally stood where I know he would have stood and sort of tried to imagine his world. I will say this. Gandhi and my great grandfather were friends. They were contemporaries. And when Gandhi asked my great grandfather if he could take his son and take him to this commune, I put words in their mouth because I wasn't there for the conversation. But my great grandfather was like a lot of Indian people in the diaspora. They're business people, small business people. Many of them are not politically involved. They don't want to put their heads up above water too much. Their whole thing is they got bills to pay and, you know, they got to put food on the table. I am guessing that my great grandfather thought Gandhi was a bit of a nut. That. I don't know. I don't want to be involved in some kind of anti government movement with you. But I think he deeply respected him.
- [34:46]
Customer
Right.
- [34:47]
Ali Velshi
So he let his son become Gandhi's youngest student at the age of seven.
- [34:50]
Customer
Is it remarkable?
- [34:52]
Ali Velshi
Literally, because I think he liked the guy.
- [34:53]
Customer
Yeah.
- [34:54]
Ali Velshi
Because I can't imagine this was good for the family. And nowhere in my family's history prior to that was there any evidence of social activism or politicization. And I think Gandhi instilled that in my grandfather, who then went on to be a successful business person, but followed those learnings and fought apartheid in his own way. And the irony is that he died in 1961, well before apartheid ended, believing he had failed. Gandhi left South Africa in 1913 believing he had failed, and he ended up taking India to independence from Britain. So this is the point of my book that sometimes you plant the seed. It takes a long time for that tree to grow. And you may not see it grow, but someone will sit in the shade of that tree. Someone will eat the fruit of that tree. My grandfather did not know his son would become a member of Parliament. We talked about when my father lost, but he subsequently won in another election. My grandfather would not have known his grandson would be sitting here having a conversation about banned books in a country that banned books.
- [35:54]
Customer
Right, Right.
- [35:55]
Ali Velshi
So did he fail?
- [35:58]
Customer
So I just wanna end on a little bit more of a general Velchi banned book club question. What is your favorite book that we've done so far?
- [36:07]
Ali Velshi
So knowing you, I knew you'd ask that. And the answer feels like a cop out, but it's true. The books tend not to be the thing that are my favorite. The stories that the authors bring to why they wrote the book, what effect the book had on people, because they hold feedback from their viewers, their readers, and that's been the most moving thing.
- [36:28]
Customer
Yes.
- [36:28]
Ali Velshi
One of the books that stands out on that front is Boy Erased by Garrett Conley. Because the story which he tells in the book is amazing. This is a guy who went through such trouble because he was gay with religious parents who tried to make him ungay. And he went to conversion therapy. And he really struggled and yet loves his parents, has had grace. His parents have grace toward him. They all love each other. They're all still religious people. And they have figured out a way. It's that pluralistic nature. They've all figured out a way to say we don't all share the same views on things, but we love each other, we want the best, we think we're doing the right thing. Those are the kinds of stories that move me that I wouldn't necessarily have fully understood if I weren't in conversation with him. I think all the books are great, but it's these authors and why they wrote them and the fact that they changed the world and the fact that we've heard from them and from readers who have said, that book changed my life. There are a few instances where we've heard that book saved my life. People who were prepared to take their own lives who then saw themselves in a book. And that's a lot of what we do, because the trend these days is to ban books that are LGBT books. But there are a lot of people who see themselves in these books for the first time and are allowed to see themselves in these books. And it does allow them to flourish and feel seen and respected. So I want to say more than what my favorites are. I honor these authors who have gone out of the way to say I'm going to perhaps face scrutiny, but I'm going to do something brave and I'm going to tell my story or I'm going to write this book so that you can see your story in it. I think that's kind of amazing.
- [38:05]
Customer
Yeah, boy, Erased was amazing. I totally agree. I remember Conley said it's not very trendy to be religious at this point, especially within his community, but that tenet of forgiveness is just so clear in the book, and I thought that that was amazing.
- [38:19]
Ali Velshi
Yeah, we can have a lot of criticism about institutionalized religion, but keep the forgiveness part.
- [38:23]
Customer
Well, thank you so much. This is really fun. I think a great way to kick off season two of the podcast Foreign.
- [38:37]
T-Mobile Representative
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- [39:04]
Amon Mohadeen
Early CT mobile.com Eamon on MSNBC is now available as a podcast every Saturday and Sunday. Host Amon Mohadin reads between the lines of the week's biggest stories spotlighting the pressing issues facing our country, our world, and those fighting to solve them.
- [39:22]
Ali Velshi
We are tracking the fallout across the Middle east tonight.
- [39:24]
Amon Mohadeen
Search for Eamon wherever you're listening and follow and for ad free listening to this show and other MSNBC podcasts, subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts hey.
- [39:37]
Chris Hayes
Everyone, it's Chris Hayes. This week on my podcast, why Is this Happening? New York Times tech reporter Kate Conger on Elon Musk in the Trump 2.0 era.
- [39:45]
Kate Conger
I think a lot of other tech leadership is looking now at what Musk has been able to accomplish by aligning himself so closely with Trump and wanting to follow suit. And it is this very kind of transparent favor trading that's going on throughout the industry right now where people are feeling like, okay, I can cozy up to the President and that's going to have a beneficial impact for my business.
- [40:04]
Chris Hayes
That's this week on why Is this Happening? Search for why is this Happening wherever you're listening right now and follow.
- [40:15]
Ali Velshi
For anyone listening out there who might be a new member of the Velshi Band Book Club Club, write to us@mystoryelshi.com because a book club isn't anything without the ideas and the input of its members. We want to hear from you next time on the Velshi Band Book Club. We're covering a genre of books that's critical to the success of a country and of a democracy. A genre of books that pushes you to confront the worst case scenario head on. A genre of books that forces you to critically assess your own life and community. I'm talking about dystopian literature. Future. We'll be discussing two classics, Lois Lowry's the Giver and George Orwell's 1984 quote and when the Memory Failed and Written records were Falsified. When that happened, the claim of the party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted because there did not exist and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. When you do, you'll be able to listen to the Welshie Band Book Club podcast ad free, along with other MSNBC originals like Prosecuting Donald Trump, how to win 2024 and why is this Happening with Chris Hayes Without Ads? Plus, you'll get episodes of Season 2 of the Belshivan Book Club one week early, as well as exclusive bonus content from this and other podcasts. Sign up now on Apple Podcasts. I'm the host of the Velshi Band Book Club, Ali Velshi. Our producer and literary editor is Hannah Holland. Our executive producer is Rebecca Dryden, alongside our senior producers Jared Blake and Dina Moss, with production support from Associate producer Nicole McReynolds. Our coordinating producer is Lily Corvo. The executive producer of MSNBC Audio is Aisha Turner. The head of audio production is Bryson Barnes, alongside our audio engineers Katherine Anderson, Katie Lau and Bob Mallory.
- [42:19]
Amon Mohadeen
Stay up to date on the biggest issues of the day with the MSNBC Daily Newsletter. Each morning you'll get analysis by experts you trust, video highlights from your favorite shows.
- [42:29]
Customer
I do think it's worth being very clear eyed, very realistic about what's going on here.
- [42:34]
Amon Mohadeen
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- [42:48]
Ali Velshi
Com.