TDS Time Machine | Censorship

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Speaker 2 This episode is brought to you by,

Speaker 2 oops, I've got a box of cheese egg crackers staring at me, and I just wanted that irresistible cheesy crunch. Sorry, that was a total snack situation.

Speaker 5 What was I supposed to be talking about?

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Speaker 8 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 9 Clearly, television is dominating in the world of emotional, unbalanced news. But what about the state of investigative journalism in this country? Well, our own investigative journalist, Ed Helms,

Speaker 9 investigates.

Speaker 10 A free and vigorous press is crucial to any democracy, as long as reporters remember their place.

Speaker 11 But too often, investigative journalists are overzealous, nosy, or make us look at things we don't feel like seeing.

Speaker 11 Still, some defend this despicable practice.

Speaker 12 Well, investigative reporting is valuable in that you're getting at the stories beneath the surface, busting down doors, calling people, insisting on finding out the truth.

Speaker 11 Meet Rutgers University journalism student, Frady Reese. So seduced by the glamour of news, she took an investigative reporting class.

Speaker 12 So the story I chose was

Speaker 12 treatment of athletes at the university.

Speaker 10 You'd think reporting the fact that Rutgers actually has an athletic department would be enough.

Speaker 10 Am I right?

Speaker 12 I found that athletes are, as one might guess, getting perks that other students are not privy to.

Speaker 4 So what?

Speaker 12 Well, if you were a student at Rutgers University, would you want to know about that?

Speaker 10 No.

Speaker 11 As you can imagine, Fredes' expose caused quite a flap. John Pavlik, head of the Rutgers Journalism School.

Speaker 15 I think flap is a perfect characterization of it. There was flap.

Speaker 11 The athletic department tried to have the article censored, a move that didn't sit well with the chairman.

Speaker 12 John Pavlik freaked out. He tried to cancel the entire class.

Speaker 12 He laid a compromise and said, well, you can teach the class as long as students don't write about anything that has to do with the university.

Speaker 11 It seemed like a logical response to Fredie's whistleblowing article.

Speaker 15 Oh, well, we didn't actually change it in response to her article. You know, after this, you know, her story got rejected.
Subsequent to that, we changed the focus of the class.

Speaker 15 I wanted to get the students off campus to get them some greater, some broader experience covering the community, get them down to City Hall, things like that.

Speaker 11 Do you really expect me to buy that?

Speaker 11 Because I do.

Speaker 14 But that didn't end the controversy.

Speaker 12 Media throughout New Jersey and beyond started laughing at Don Pavlik.

Speaker 11 Writing headlines that played right into the shrewd professor's hands.

Speaker 15 We got a lot of headlines. We haven't had the involvement of the media, the journalism community.

Speaker 15 So this was just a stroke of luck for us to get that kind of

Speaker 15 coverage.

Speaker 10 It's like that whole Enron thing.

Speaker 11 Kinley never had that kind of publicity.

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 13 Pavlik has just the huevos that journalism needs.

Speaker 11 Investigative reporting is a scourge.

Speaker 11 It's nice to see someone finally cracking down.

Speaker 15 Trying to fix

Speaker 15 like trying to, you know, you get a broken axle.

Speaker 15 You want to fix it before you go any further. Or just keep plowing ahead, make things worse.

Speaker 15 Does that make any sense?

Speaker 15 Do you want to start this interview over again?

Speaker 10 Why?

Speaker 10 Why?

Speaker 11 As for Fredie, she still didn't get the investigative journalism game. Perhaps an old pro could show her the ropes.
Ready? Let's do this. You guys ready?

Speaker 3 Come on.

Speaker 15 Excuse me.

Speaker 11 I need to talk to the athletic director right now.

Speaker 18 Uh, he's actually in a meeting.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 15 Sorry.

Speaker 8 Thanks.

Speaker 3 He's in a meeting.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 19 He's in a meeting.

Speaker 20 That is how you do it.

Speaker 4 Let's get out of here.

Speaker 11 But if censorship and setting a good example didn't work for Fredie, I had one last chance to get her to change her ways.

Speaker 11 Fredie, I don't want to scare you, but you need to know that if you continue down this path of investigative journalism, you could become...

Speaker 3 That.

Speaker 3 Is that what you want?

Speaker 11 Years of finding things out has turned him into that.

Speaker 5 Look at that! Is that what you want?

Speaker 4 It's hideous!

Speaker 10 Sorry to bother you. Big fan.

Speaker 21 Big fan.

Speaker 11 Next up, the Rutgers Business School, where I'm going to teach them the beauty of using dummy corporations.

Speaker 21 Book banning fever is sweeping America, but is it possible that book banning may not be great?

Speaker 21 Michael Costa has more.

Speaker 23 Water skiing while intoxicated, mentioning climate change in government records, reading Maya Angelou in public schools. These are all things that are banned in Florida.

Speaker 24 That last one is because in March 2022, Ron DeSantis signed the Curriculum Transparency Bill, which made it easier for anyone to request that any number of books be removed from public school libraries.

Speaker 24 And if there's things like pornography, the parents have a right to say it should be removed from the schools.

Speaker 24 One individual has made more use of the law than anyone else in Florida, conservative activist and dirty bookworm Bruce Friedman.

Speaker 23 You are the number one book banner in the number one state of book banning. You're the Michael Jordan of book banning.

Speaker 20 Well, in the last two years, I challenged more than one book every calendar day.

Speaker 23 How many challenges have you made, would you say?

Speaker 20 Over 900.

Speaker 23 So, let me ask what your qualifications are for determining this.

Speaker 14 Do you have a doctorate in literature?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 23 Do you have degrees in child education and media?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 23 So, why are you the arbiter?

Speaker 20 A book with blatant sexual activity and over-the-top, grotesque, excessive profanity doesn't belong in any of our schools. That's what this is.

Speaker 23 I hate profanity.

Speaker 23 Let me offer a counter:

Speaker 16 The internet, phones, lyrics, and songs, movies.

Speaker 16 Do you think kids aren't seeing that shit?

Speaker 20 What does it take to control what's coming at your children? Desire. You have to want it.

Speaker 23 Okay, and do you have kids in the school system?

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 20 You do. He's not allowed in the public school library, so it doesn't matter.

Speaker 23 Hold on. Your son doesn't use the library at school.

Speaker 20 That is correct.

Speaker 13 It's polluted.

Speaker 23 So you're doing all of this work for all the other kids?

Speaker 4 Correct.

Speaker 24 That's right. Bruce is so good at protecting his own kid that he needs an even bigger challenge, protecting other people's kids.
But how do those parents feel about it?

Speaker 23 What is the big deal about having a random man named Bruce determine which books your kids read?

Speaker 27 I want my children exposed to different mindsets, different points of view. So if some random person tells me that, no, this is not how you should parent your children, I have a problem with that.

Speaker 28 First of all, when we're talking about anything that involves sex at all, it's not children, it's teenagers. These are in high schools.

Speaker 29 And that's what so many of these book challenges do, right?

Speaker 29 They take issues of racism, discrimination, sexual assault, and they label them as ornamic just because it makes it easier to remove the book.

Speaker 29 And he brags about having a list of over 5,000 books that he wants out of our schools.

Speaker 23 Are there even 5,000 books?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 23 In the world?

Speaker 24 i'm not a big reader so is bruce protecting innocent kids or forcing his own beliefs on others to resolve that question i'd have to do the one thing i had sworn never to do join a book club we've all read this book my me i know why the cage bird sings written by my angelou my angelou is a poet laureate

Speaker 16 that part she wrote porn but i know a pornographic book really because it's like

Speaker 26 and his his is and he shoots

Speaker 26 all over

Speaker 20 and all of those would be disqualified content.

Speaker 23 But that's not what Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Cage Bird sings.

Speaker 20 It's pornography. The content violates law.

Speaker 24 So Bruce would rather the cage bird just shut up. And some of his other targets are even more surprising and particular.
Okay, mixed.

Speaker 14 A colorful story.

Speaker 20 Two male characters getting married. That's it.

Speaker 13 Oh yeah, look at their big old dicks.

Speaker 20 Those two. They happen to be male if you read the rest of the crowd.

Speaker 23 Okay, so they're getting married. And then here's the most offensive part.

Speaker 1 Look Look what happens here.

Speaker 26 They have a green baby. What do they do?

Speaker 23 Shit it out of their butthole? That's their problem.

Speaker 20 I don't want to get lost in the mechanics of this.

Speaker 23 All right, so what happened to the challenge?

Speaker 4 Failed.

Speaker 13 I was appealed.

Speaker 23 And you immediately appealed?

Speaker 20 That's what I do.

Speaker 23 So, in your opinion, there's an alien creature in this book, and it's neither male nor female, and you believe it's part of a greater agenda.

Speaker 16 That is correct.

Speaker 23 I'm thinking of a person.

Speaker 24 Is it a boy?

Speaker 16 Nope. Is it a girl? Nope.
Is it me?

Speaker 23 Is it you? Okay, now I'm thinking of a planet.

Speaker 20 If your child was unclear on their sex, how would you resolve the issue?

Speaker 23 But this is not the issue.

Speaker 20 No, it's not.

Speaker 23 I don't even know what the you're talking about by challenging this.

Speaker 16 Okay. I mean.

Speaker 20 And it fails, and we move on.

Speaker 23 Right, but it did fail, the challenge, and you immediately appealed it.

Speaker 4 Right, I always do.

Speaker 20 Anything that fails a challenge, I file an appeal.

Speaker 24 And due to Florida law, books are removed while the challenge is appealed. So the little perverts who get off on color blobs and Star Wars aliens are out of luck.

Speaker 24 But there is a cost cost attached to Bruce's relentless drive.

Speaker 28 We have spent more time and resources on Bruce Friedman than any other person in the history of Clay County.

Speaker 23 And how were you personally affected by Bruce Friedman?

Speaker 28 Well, essentially, I was the only

Speaker 28 librarian in the district who was speaking out against the book banning. And I guess I got to be too much trouble, and they decided to have me removed from the library.

Speaker 13 So Bruce had you banned?

Speaker 28 Maybe, I guess you could say that.

Speaker 24 Yeah, Bruce's campaign has been so effective. He's not only been removing books and money from the school's budget, but also people from the library.

Speaker 24 But even Ron DeSantis may be questioning this strategy for helping Florida children. Earlier this year, the governor signed a new bill limiting the amount of challenges any one person can submit.

Speaker 23 It's been mentioned that it might cost $100 to challenge a book.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 20 Would that deter you? Nothing's going to stop me.

Speaker 23 Bruce, do you think you'll one day write a book about this experience?

Speaker 4 Sure.

Speaker 23 And would that book be banned from a public school I'd read?

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Speaker 20 How about I grab some cough drops? This is not just a quick trip to Walgreens.

Speaker 31 I'm fine, honey.

Speaker 20 Well, just in case, you know what they say.

Speaker 26 Tis the season.

Speaker 16 This is Help Staying Healthy Through the Holidays.

Speaker 4 Walgreens.

Speaker 3 This story is about America's favorite pastime. The culture wars.
Ooh, they're back, baby.

Speaker 3 You see, every few months, especially before elections, Politicians in this country, they have to find a reason to rile people up so that they can drum up support and distract voters from the fact that they haven't solved any of their real problems.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I know the bridges keep collapsing and I know you don't have jobs, but we gotta focus on the real threat. People are using the wrong bathrooms.
But for me.

Speaker 3 And what always happens is the same, right? The problems pop up. And then after the elections, everything's magically not a problem anymore.
Yeah. Like remember kneeling during the anthem?

Speaker 3 Huge problem before the elections. Huge.
Then after the elections, suddenly it's over. Mah, even MM can do it.
Yeah, war on Christmas every year. Huge problem, huge.

Speaker 3 Then the elections, and then suddenly we can say Merry Christmas again. Oh, remember when Mr.
Potato Head lost his penis?

Speaker 3 Then the election came, and now he's got a huge hog, biggest one you've ever seen. Hits kids in the eyes with a bap, bap, bap.
Mr. Potato Head's back.

Speaker 3 Well, now we're getting close to another election.

Speaker 3 So that means it's time to find out what the latest fight is all about. In another installment of Culture Wars, Moral Combat!

Speaker 4 Culture Wars, Moral Combat.

Speaker 3 So the new culture war raging across America is over books. AKA movies without the cool sound effects.
Yeah, I always think the movies are better. I'm gonna read a book and then I gotta do it myself.

Speaker 3 Pew pew, pew pew, said Harry Potter.

Speaker 3 Now, even though most kids only read books in school to hide their erections, some parents and politicians have suddenly gotten very concerned about which books are available in schools.

Speaker 3 And they're dealing with this problem that they invented, by the way, in a time-honored way with a good old-fashioned book ban.

Speaker 19 According to the New York Times, the pace at which groups of parents and officials and lawmakers are challenging books in school libraries has reached a speed that many haven't seen in decades.

Speaker 34 Just since the start of the school year, the American Library Association has tracked more than 230 book challenges nationwide.

Speaker 35 Parents and school officials banning books at an unprecedented rate.

Speaker 35 Record requests to nearly 100 Texas districts found that during the first four months of this school year, parents made at least 75 formal complaints compared to only one filed during the same period last year.

Speaker 13 A Virginia school district is pulling library books off of the shelves and some board members say they want to burn them.

Speaker 33 I want to look at every book that you guys,

Speaker 20 a copy of every book that is brought, pulled out of circulation.

Speaker 33 I'm sure we've got hundreds of people out there that would like to see those books before we burn them.

Speaker 3 They want to burn books?

Speaker 3 Burn books. We're not in the 1900s.
We're living in 2022. We shouldn't be burning books.
We have air fryers and microwaves and all kinds of cool shit now. We could be like filleting the books.

Speaker 3 You know, we could be lightly roasting the books, put some butter and some salt. Ooh, you taste that book now? Mmm, that's food for thought.
See what I did there?

Speaker 3 But yeah, that's the situation right now. Parents across the country are trying to get books banned from certain schools, right?

Speaker 3 And I'll be honest, if I was a kid in school right now, I would jump in and use this outrage to my advantage. Yeah, the parents would all be there like, we have to get these books off the shelves.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and don't forget the trigonometry textbooks and the yearbook where I had that weird rash on my face. Burn them all.

Speaker 3 Now, I'll be honest, people, I don't know if these culture warriors have thought this through because making something forbidden just makes teenagers want it more. Think about it.

Speaker 3 Anytime, anytime parents would say something would make them mad, what would happen? Their kids would want to do it even more. Yeah, now they're going to be like, no books for these kids.

Speaker 3 You keep this up and soon, reading books is going to be the new dating a black guy.

Speaker 3 And look, there have always been, don't get me wrong, there have always been some parents who've wanted books pulled from schools and libraries. That's always been a thing.

Speaker 3 You know, like conservatives wanted to ban Harry Potter for promoting witchcraft. Liberals want to ban Huckleberry Finn for using the N-word.
Mockingbirds want to burn that book about killing them.

Speaker 3 But recently, recently, the number of books being targeted has gotten out of control. And the types of books that are being targeted now are very revealing.

Speaker 21 Books on race, gender, and sexuality are disappearing from school shelves.

Speaker 14 Books about coming of age and reckoning with real world problems like depression, gender politics, and racial injustice. History like the Holocaust or slavery.

Speaker 35 One Tennessee district banning Mouse, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust.

Speaker 34 One tells a story of school segregation through the eyes of Mexican-American students. One is about the March on Washington.
And two are about civil rights icon Ruby Bridges.

Speaker 35 One parent even asked the district to remove a biography of Michelle Obama, arguing the book promotes reverse racism. The district denied the request.

Speaker 3 I can't believe these people want to ban a Michelle Obama biography.

Speaker 3 It's a biography. That totally gives away the game that this is more about ginning up a culture war than protecting kids.
Because once you're banning a book about any first lady, that's political.

Speaker 3 I don't care what anybody says. There's no book about a first lady that's controversial, you know?

Speaker 3 Unless maybe it's like Martha Jefferson's book, 101 Tips for Owning Slave Children Who Kind of Look Like My Husband. Yeah, that's a little edgy for the kids, but otherwise...
It's pretty chill.

Speaker 3 And you can see how crazy this book banning trend has gotten, right? They're banning books about race, about gender, about sexuality, about emotions, about history. Guys, that's all books.

Speaker 3 Think about it. You take away all of those books and what are you going to be left with, huh? A how-to book about making pottery? Wrong! That bars is too sexy.

Speaker 3 I also can't believe that they're going to ban Ruby Bridges. You understand how crazy that is? You're going to ban a book about Ruby Bridges.

Speaker 3 So that poor girl needed the National Guard to get her into school. Now they're going to have the National Guard escort her out.

Speaker 3 And look, I'm not saying that schools shouldn't be allowed to curate what books they carry. I'm not saying that.

Speaker 3 I know people are going to say, you're saying that the schools shouldn't get to decide for themselves. No, I'm not saying.
I'm exactly not saying that. But you are saying, I'm not saying that.

Speaker 3 Libraries have always decided which books are in and which books are not in. Like, you can't have a Playboy in the school library.
I mean, I did it, but I brought it in myself.

Speaker 3 They didn't stock it for me. They just gave me the space to read it.
But I guarantee you, the vast majority of schools don't even have the most outrageous books that are on these lists.

Speaker 3 What's happening here? What's happening here is that people are finding the most scary parts of the most scary books.

Speaker 3 And then they're making a bad faith argument that kids are being bombarded with all of this stuff. So all the books have to go.

Speaker 3 And that happens even if you try and talk about books.

Speaker 3 Like if I say books shouldn't be banned, I know someone's going to pull out the most extreme example from some random library at a school and be like, oh, really, Trevor?

Speaker 3 You're okay with kids reading this?

Speaker 3 And I don't know. Maybe I'm not.
But now we're arguing about one page in one book as if that's the story.

Speaker 3 When the actual story is people are using these books as an excuse to go after all the books that they don't like. Because again, people, this isn't about books, all right?

Speaker 3 This is about keeping the culture war going for political benefits.

Speaker 3 You don't just have Republicans in dozens of states around the country suddenly realizing all at the same time that there are books that they want to ban in their libraries all at the same time.

Speaker 3 Come on. It's happening because they think it's a winning issue.
Or at least they think it's more of a winning issue than Trump is secretly still the president. But I am.
Shut up.

Speaker 3 You don't make us lose.

Speaker 3 And the problem with waging a culture war, instead of debating a political issue, is that when people are fighting a war, they don't want to just win an argument. No, they want to punish the enemy.

Speaker 37 In Wyoming, a county prosecutor's office considered charges against library employees for stalking books like Sex is a Funny Word and This Book is Gay.

Speaker 40 In Oklahoma, a bill sets a $10,000 bounty to be collected by parents for each day a challenged book remains on library shelves.

Speaker 35 Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for criminal charges against staff who provide kids with pornographic books.

Speaker 37 School librarians fearing for their own safety now over books.

Speaker 41 Many of us have had to take measures in our personal lives that we never would have imagined we had to do because of our profession.

Speaker 3 Wow, people, are you seeing this?

Speaker 3 You seeing this, Like, this is the interview an insider gives when they're ratting out El Chapo.

Speaker 3 Not when they've exposed the magical friendship between a pig and a spider.

Speaker 3 I mean, just think about how insane things have gotten, where school librarians feel scared for their safety.

Speaker 3 They've got these crazy parents coming after them on top of all the other stuff that they have to worry about on a daily basis.

Speaker 3 School shootings, COVID, their students finding out that they just made up the Dewey Decimal system to sound smarter than everyone else. This book is by Dr.
Seuss. Is that under S?

Speaker 3 No, actually, that book's in 791.45 slash 75, you idiot.

Speaker 3 And look, man, it's one thing for parents to be upset about a book that their kid is reading at school. But once you offer a $10,000 bounty, think about what you're doing there.

Speaker 3 Now, you're using money to just try and stir up shit. I mean, of course, people are going to start combing the shelves for anything that might pay out.
10 grand is a lot of money.

Speaker 3 10 grand for banning a book is more than most authors made for writing that book. So that's the latest culture war that's tearing America apart.
It's happening in schools.

Speaker 3 And who knows if it'll even stop there? Because maybe it'll start in schools, but pretty soon, any place the kids go to to find books could become a target.

Speaker 42 Hey y'all, LeVar Burton here, and I am so excited to read with you today. Our first selection is called

Speaker 24 Rosa, and it's the story of Rosa Parks who

Speaker 42 so as it turns out that book is banned because reading about segregation is divisive.

Speaker 42 But since almost any book with black people these days is considered divisive, here's one that doesn't have any people in it at all. It's about two penguins and their little baby.

Speaker 42 Both penguins are boys.

Speaker 42 Well, I'm told that that book is also banned because of sexual perversion, which is weird because there's no sex in the book at all. Y'all, they adopted the baby.
What do you guys want?

Speaker 33 A mommy and a daddy penguin so the kids can make sure that the penguins are knocking boots? All right.

Speaker 42 I've got one that they can't possibly.

Speaker 26 have a problem with.

Speaker 33 Hop on pop.

Speaker 42 What? Disrespectful to parents. You gotta be kidding me.
All right, listen, there are plenty of books to choose from.

Speaker 4 But you know what? No.

Speaker 42 Read the books they don't want you to. That's where the good stuff is.

Speaker 42 Oh shit. They're coming.

Speaker 42 Read banned books.

Speaker 3 Stay safe, Lavois.

Speaker 30 Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. This fall, get double points on every qualified stay.
Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Bestwestern.

Speaker 30 Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.

Speaker 7 This episode is brought to you by Netflix.

Speaker 7 From the creator of Homeland, Claire Danes and Matthew Rees star in the new Netflix series, The Beast in Me, as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences.

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The Beast in Me is now playing only on Netflix.

Speaker 3 Our next story is about school, the place where you get rid of all your extra apples.

Speaker 3 Right now, there's a big movement among conservatives to protect children from being exposed to liberal ideas in school. Ideas like racism is bad or gays are not bad.

Speaker 3 And you know, it's almost like conservatives learned too much about cancel culture and accidentally got really into it.

Speaker 3 You know, like sort of how when you start hate watching a real housewife show and then seven seasons later, all of a sudden you're like, I know Ramona and Sonia say they're best friends, but would you talk about your best friend like that behind their back?

Speaker 3 Come on.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I hate that show. And now this issue has been injected into the Virginia governor's race with a striking new TV ad from Republican candidate Glenn Yunkin.

Speaker 43 As a parent, it's tough to catch everything. So when my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk.
It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine. I met with lawmakers.

Speaker 43 They couldn't believe what I was showing them. Their faces turned bright red with embarrassment.
They passed bills requiring schools to notify parents when explicit content was assigned.

Speaker 37 I was so grateful.

Speaker 43 But then Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed it twice. He doesn't think parents should have a say.
He said that. He shut us out.

Speaker 3 Whoa.

Speaker 3 What were these kids reading? Was this first grader reading 50 Shades of Grey? Was this like a little coloring in book of dick pics?

Speaker 3 No, it turns out it was actually the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tony Morrison novel, Beloved. And also, it wasn't a young kid, it was a high school senior in an AP English class.

Speaker 3 And I'm sorry guys, but any parent who thinks their 17 year old son's school assignment is too explicit, they need to check out his browser history because trust me, he can handle it.

Speaker 3 And this shows you that the real dangerous ideology in America isn't conservatism or liberalism, it's helicopter parenting. I mean, an AP class is basically a college course.

Speaker 3 Like, how long is this lady going to be trying to protect her kid, huh? This poor guy's going to have his mom bust into his dorm room like, don't make him chug, he'll get an owie and he's come tumb.

Speaker 3 Here's my problem. Banning so-called offensive books is a slippery slope because what's offensive is subjective.
Like what might bother one parent might not bother another and vice versa.

Speaker 3 Like I would never want my kid reading The Great Gatsby. I think it glamorizes friend zoning.
That's immoral.

Speaker 3 When Donald Trump was first elected, one of the biggest fears was that he would get everybody into a war.

Speaker 3 Like, we didn't know if it would be with Iran or Australia, but we all knew that it was coming. It turns out Trump's first big war is with a book.

Speaker 21 President Trump was venting again today, possibly taking a swipe at Michael Wolfe's new book.

Speaker 38 Here's what he had to say: Our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace and do not represent American values or American fairness. So we're going to take a strong look at that.

Speaker 38 We want fairness. You can't say things that are false, knowingly false, and

Speaker 38 be able to

Speaker 38 smile as money pours into your bank account.

Speaker 3 Seriously?

Speaker 3 Say false things as money pours into your bank account?

Speaker 3 That's the story of Donald Trump's whole life.

Speaker 3 It was the motto of his fake university.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 Trump is going to have a a problem making it harder for people to criticize him because one of America's founding principles is freedom of speech. It's the one thing the whole country believes in.

Speaker 3 Or do they? Hassan Minaj has more.

Speaker 44 You know, I thought my next Hassan the record would be about this guy.

Speaker 14 Colin Kaepernick kneeling.

Speaker 38 Get that son of a bitch off the field.

Speaker 46 But then I thought maybe it'd be about this.

Speaker 24 Very disturbing photo shoot.

Speaker 4 But then this happened.

Speaker 45 Then I thought, wait a second, it should really be about this.

Speaker 4 We're going to open up the libel laws so when they write falsely, shut up, you guys, you're all talking about the same thing:

Speaker 4 free speech.

Speaker 44 The first amendment. But there's one thing America's startup dads didn't think of.
What if speaking your truth meant saying stuff like this?

Speaker 4 Go back to Africa!

Speaker 13 Or this.

Speaker 44 So, what's up, America? Do you really love free speech or do you not?

Speaker 45 But should you?

Speaker 44 You're on the record.

Speaker 44 This thing on.

Speaker 44 Now, usually we think of people on the right as the ones wanting to curtail our freedom of expression.

Speaker 3 Players have the right for free speech off the field.

Speaker 38 Frankly, disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write.

Speaker 44 Uh, check your blood pressure, because you're salty, bro.

Speaker 44 But with actual Nazis marching in the streets like it's Berlin back in 1900, many on the left are like, hold my beer, by which I mean free speech. I don't like what you have to say.

Speaker 36 Those on the left have no tolerance for diversity in opinion.

Speaker 46 The left?

Speaker 22 Not my woke base.

Speaker 23 Violent protests erupting overnight at UC Berkeley. The campus locked down as more than a thousand people rallied against the appearance of a controversial editor from Breitford.

Speaker 3 Look at this place. Look at it.
What? What caused all this?

Speaker 3 Hey, seriously.

Speaker 3 It doesn't matter. We learn by talking.
We learn about listening.

Speaker 44 Yeah, you tell them, backpack guy. College campuses are supposed to be about free expression and racist-themed frat parties.

Speaker 22 Accurate.

Speaker 44 But now, college students have tried to stop far-right people from just speaking. This is the one time where I'm totally cool with calling these kids Snowflake.

Speaker 44 Especially you, Snowflake O'Brien. She later changed her name to Raindrop O'Brien.
Climate change, bruh.

Speaker 45 Here's the problem.

Speaker 44 If we all start forbidding so-called hate speech, it turns the First Amendment into a popularity contest, just like my high school student council election.

Speaker 44 We never got rupee or those water fountains, Rodrigo.

Speaker 45 Empty promises, Rodrigo!

Speaker 44 The only people who get to talk are the ones who agree with the people who get to say what hate speech even is.

Speaker 25 But who is that people?

Speaker 44 This year, maybe it's your side. Next year, maybe it's Republican legislators saying Black Lives Matter is the same as white supremacists.

Speaker 44 So what do we want, Minagers? If we don't want to limit free speech, but we've still got those pesky Nazis marching in the streets, what do we want to do?

Speaker 44 Let's ask a country known for its sense of humor, Germany.

Speaker 44 You know how Germans are hilarious.

Speaker 15 Germany's most involuntary walkathon, the Nazis Against Nazis campaign officially gets underway.

Speaker 44 This is March of Dimes for racists. Instead of protesting, local businesses and residents sponsored the Nazis.

Speaker 44 They put up giant pink banners welcoming them to the Nazis Against Nazis walkathon, and they donated cash so that the longer the Nazis walked, the more money went to an anti-Nazi program.

Speaker 44 So maybe that's the key. These guys are real-life trolls, and if you want to get rid of trolls, you have to out-troll them.
So let's learn from the Germanians.

Speaker 44 and instead of stopping our shithead opponents from speaking, use some ideological judo. Okay here's some ideas.
Start your own tiki torch company and secretly fill them up with mosquito pheromones.

Speaker 44 Instead of punching white supremacist Richard Spencer in the head, dump a bucket of glitter on him because nothing gets glitter out.

Speaker 44 Make Confederate memorials the hot new destination for gay weddings. That floral arch is straight fire, my dudes.
As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, if you can't beat them, troll them.

Speaker 44 Think about it, you guys. Really think about it.
To all my Hasanabees out there, we restock them in AppSecs on HasandaRecord.com. They're soft, they're plushy, and they're made with my real hair.

Speaker 22 Mmm, lunchtime.

Speaker 44 I found a ninth hole on the human body, and I'll tell you about it on the next Hasan the Record.

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Speaker 25 Some people think nature is like this, but actually, it's like this.

Speaker 25 Mother Nature is not all sunshine and rainbows. Nature can be hotter than a sauna and colder than an Arctic skinny dip.

Speaker 25 That's why Columbia engineers everything we make for anything nature can throw at you. Columbia engineered for whatever.

Speaker 3 These days, it seems like every tech story is bad. Facebook is giving out our secrets.
Screen time is hurting our kids. Our Roombas are seducing our cats.

Speaker 3 But at least, at least, there's one dating app that's trying to do something good.

Speaker 48 The dating app Bumble is launching a private detector feature that can automatically detect crude images and warn you. The feature is part of a safety initiative expected to launch in June.

Speaker 48 Bumble already has measures in place to protect users by blurring all images by default, but recipients have to hold down the photo to view it.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 3 let that sink in, people. Bumble has had to write a program to censor dick pics

Speaker 3 Because men will not stop sending them. I honestly feel bad for women.

Speaker 4 I really do.

Speaker 3 No, because especially because like Bumble was supposed to be the safe dating app, right? Because on Tinder, you get a match and then guys will be like dick pic!

Speaker 3 But then on Bumble, women make the first move. So it's like match, and it's like, hello, John, nice to meet you.
And John's like, dick pic!

Speaker 42 Like, just wait, just wait.

Speaker 3 Let them ask for the dick. And as offensive as sending a dick pic is, I feel really bad for the guys whose dick pics make it through the filter.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's a really bad way to find out you've got a weird dick.

Speaker 4 When the filter's like, oh, oh, damn, oh, I thought there was the thumb. Oh, my.

Speaker 1 Yo, you didn't get that checked out, man.

Speaker 4 Oh, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 There's no question that the reputations of big tech companies have taken a hit in recent years.

Speaker 3 I mean, for instance, Facebook used to be the place where you reconnect with old high school friends and then block them when you you discover that they're married.

Speaker 3 But then in the last few years, it's become the internet's top destination for people who believe the moon landing was faked to cover for the JFK assassination.

Speaker 3 And now it seems like Facebook has recognized what it's become and they're finally taking steps to put an end to one of the biggest problems.

Speaker 32 Facebook says it is now removing all accounts associated with the right-wing conspiracy movement known as QAnon. Those accounts have become hubs for wild internet rumors and disinformation campaigns.

Speaker 39 Now it says it's removing all QAnon accounts on both Facebook and Instagram. It's a serious blow to the QAnon internet conspiracy campaign that most Americans would say sounds completely crazy.

Speaker 39 That big-name Democrats, Hollywood stars, and the mega-rich are actually child-trafficking pedophiles who kill children in satanic rituals.

Speaker 3 Okay, okay. You know what? Good for Facebook for doing this.
Although part of me is a little worried that it's too little, too late.

Speaker 3 I mean, Facebook is like that bar that decides to hire a bouncer after its 123rd stabbing.

Speaker 3 Because people, QAnon has become so widespread that basically every Facebook group right now is a QAnon group.

Speaker 3 Even your grandma's knitting group is like, today we're learning a new needle point pattern. Do you like it?

Speaker 3 Now, of course, for QAnon followers, This whole thing is just going to reinforce their belief that big tech is censoring them because they're also in on the conspiracy, which is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 No one at Facebook is eating babies, okay?

Speaker 3 Because without babies, boom, that's 90% of Facebook posts gone. So look, I'm glad that Facebook is trying to shut down these groups, but to be honest, I'm skeptical that it's going to work.

Speaker 3 Because when it comes to monitoring content on their platform, they don't exactly have the best track record.

Speaker 6 Facebook apparently thinks this ad is too risque for its users. Gay's Speed Company in Canada got this notification about its onions.

Speaker 6 According to Facebook, the placement of the vegetable was overtly sexual.

Speaker 3 Okay, what clearly happened here is that the algorithm that's supposed to detect sexy stuff got confused. Or who knows? Maybe it did it on purpose.
In which case, who are we to shame it?

Speaker 3 Love who you love algorithm. You don't let the people judge you.
But this is why you need an actual human involved in these decisions. Because no human would think an onion is sexy.

Speaker 3 Like, have you ever seen an onion? You know, it's just like it's round and it's firm and juicy and it's got all those layers that come off and

Speaker 3 does it just get hot in here?

Speaker 3 Man, I need to get out of the house. And there are other changes coming to social media too.
For example, Instagram. You know, the app that you use for stalking your Tinder dates.

Speaker 3 Well, if your feed has become a little toxic, here's something that might calm things down.

Speaker 18 Instagram says it will start hiding negative comments

Speaker 3 I want to go on Instagram and see sexy onions, butts. I mean, butts, not onions, not onions.
I'm a normal man that likes butts.

Speaker 3 At the same time, I'm a little worried that hiding negative comments behind a warning is just going to make people want to click on them even more. Oh, you don't want to see this comment.

Speaker 3 This was such a great burn. We had to hide it.
I mean, god damn, this was a sick burn. Don't look, don't look.
It's too good. Like, here's one of the problems with this policy.
Can it pick up tone?

Speaker 3 Half the time, someone comments brave under a picture. I'm pretty sure that it's just a form of bullying.
Oh my god. It was so brave of you to put that picture up of yourself.

Speaker 3 What do you mean brave, dude? That was just like my face. Yeah, so brave.
But you know what?

Speaker 3 As long as Instagram is going to be cracking down, how about they find a way to punish those people who post a thousand stories at once?

Speaker 3 You've got all those little tiny white dots at the top of your screen, like a game of freaking Pac-Man.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I wanna see how your day is going, not watch the Peter Jackson director's cut of your life. Highlights, people, highlights.
And finally, there's also a change coming to emojis.

Speaker 3 And this one is all about keeping up with the coronavirus.

Speaker 49 Something to leave you with a smile today. Apple is upgrading its mask emoji.
This new masked emoji covers a smile. So the facial feature matches the smiley emoji.

Speaker 49 The old mask had just two slits for eyes. Apple has not commented on why it upgraded the design to the one that now has a little bit more cheerful disposition.

Speaker 3 Yes, they now have an emoji for people who are happy to be wearing a mask. And what's also cool is that they have an emoji for people who protest masks because they love freedom.

Speaker 3 Now look, they say that this emoji is smiling, but it doesn't really look like it's smiling. We don't know if it's smiling, which I guess makes it really realistic.
Because think about it.

Speaker 3 For the last few months, we've been walking around with these masks. No one can tell what your expression actually is.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you're trying to smile with your eyes, but to the other person, some freaky shit is going on under there.

Speaker 17 Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 17 Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 1110 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus.

Speaker 8 This has been a Comedy Central podcast.

Speaker 11 As a raider scavenging a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement.

Speaker 11 But now you must return to the surface,

Speaker 11 where arc machines machines roam.

Speaker 9 If you're brave enough, who knows what you might find?

Speaker 11 Arc Raiders, a multiplayer extraction adventure video game. Buy now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC.
Rated T for teen.

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