Who’s Banning Thousands of Books? The Left and the Right

Mar 17, 2025

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Take your pick: censoring, banning, removing, or “weeding.” However you want to describe it, Canadians are pulling books from library shelves. The books in question range from The Handmaid's Tale, Gender Queer: A Memoir, to the works of Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl.

The drive to rid our shelves, particularly school library shelves, of books comes from both left and right. Both sides censor. You can frame their motivation as opposition to woke indoctrination, or you could call it diversifying the cannon.

But does it really matter what you can or can not access with your library card when your phone can give you, or your child, access to almost anything? With all that “anything” implies. And if you’ve taken the time to read this far you’re an exception. People are reading less and less. So does any of this matter? According to Ira Wells, author of On Book Banning it does. For him it’s central to art, crucial to democracy, and fundamental to our basic respect for each other, and of course, our children.

Host: Jesse Brown

Credits: Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), max collins (Director of Audio), Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher)

Guests: Ira Wells

Fact checking by Julian Abraham

Additional music by Audio Network