True Stories #414 - The Uncensored Library

Clever journalists have hidden away a library of banned books, and their solution to censorship is pure genius.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Seth Andrews, and what you're about to hear is
a true story. Free speech, free expression the ability to
freely read books and publications deemed inappropriate or even dangerous

(00:23):
by the agents of censorship. The written word has long
been one of the primary targets of cult leaders, cultural panikers,
and cruel dictators. Ink and paper can change minds and
change the world, and oppressive leaders around the world want
to manipulate and control the flow of information out there.

(00:45):
And yet there is an online resource that is cracking
the walls separating oppressed people from supposedly heretical texts. It
is called the Uncensored Library, and it's one way that
up people are subverting unjust rules and browsing banned books
in their private spaces. A group called Reporters Without Borders

(01:10):
has exploited a loophole to sneak past the world's thought police.
The Uncentered Library officially opened its doors on the twelfth
of March of this year, specifically leaning toward reaching the
younger generation. Journalists from five different countries have contributed to
the project, which is being accessed in places where journalists, authors,

(01:34):
activists and their followers have been banned jailed, exiled, and
even killed. Bordered by Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti. Eretria is
located in the Horn of Africa. It is a one
party state. Political activity is banned, there have been no
election since twenty twenty, and free expression is almost nonexistent

(01:58):
in public. The organization The Committee to Protect Journalists has
ranked Eritrea the number one most censored country in the world,
followed by North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Azerbaijan. All
libraries are the bane of authoritarian governments. China has long

(02:19):
used book banning to protect the Chinese Communist Party from criticism.
Publications dealing with religion, sexuality, and other taboo topics are
avoided by booksellers lest they face consequences by the state.
LGBT themed materials are censored in places like Russia and

(02:40):
Hungary under the label of obscenity. We are even seeing
books ousted from school libraries right here in the United States,
prompting many independent booksellers to build whole displays that feature
the works deemed off limits elsewhere. America calculated a list

(03:01):
of the most banned books in United States schools, and
the lineup includes Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, the coming
of age love story by Jennifer Niven, Breathless, Patricia McCormick's
novel about sex slavery in India titled Sold, the romance
novel A Court of myst and Fury by Sarah J. Mass,

(03:26):
Stephen Chubowski's novel with themes including first dad's family drama, sex, drugs,
and suicide called The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the
prequel to The Wizard of Oz, which inspired the Broadway
musical Wicked, written by Gregory maguire. Jennifer Arman Trout's Storm
and Fury about an eighteen year old who might be

(03:49):
going blind and yet can see and communicate with ghosts.
And there are so many others. By the way, the
single most banned author in un schools as of this
week is Stephen King. Japanese author Hakkuri Murakami once wrote,

(04:10):
if you only read the books that everyone else is reading,
you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's
what high control cultures want, that's what the book banners need.
And yet the more they squeeze their fists, the more
free expression finds ways to slip through their fingers with

(04:31):
endeavors like the Uncensored Library and online Treasure Trove, with
hundreds and hundreds of works available to anybody and everybody
beyond the eyes and bands of the censors. Oh did
I mention that the beauty of the Uncensored Library is

(04:52):
that it is not a website. I mean, there is
a website if you want to find out more Uncensored
Library dot com. But the library itself, it exists elsewhere.
The building stands proud with open doors and a world
of players and pixels. The Uncensored Library is embedded within

(05:18):
one of the world's most popular video games. Look for
a ten browse within it the next time you fire
up the PC or the PlayStation or whatever for a
game of Minecraft. And that's a True story True Stories

(05:45):
podcast dot com.