<p>We were delighted to have the chance to speak with <a target="_blank" href="https://adam-szetela.com/">Adam Szetela</a> about his new <a target="_blank" href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049856/that-book-is-dangerous/">book</a>, <em>That Book Is Dangerous! How Moral Panic, Social Media, and the Culture Wars Are Remaking Publishing</em>. </p><p>Adam shares what he learned from authors, agents, and editors about the effects of cancel culture in the publishing industry. His behind-the-scenes account is fascinating and sobering in equal measure.</p><p><strong>Show Notes</strong></p><p>* For more info on Adam Szetela, check out his <a target="_blank" href="https://adam-szetela.com/">website</a> </p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049856/that-book-is-dangerous/">Here</a> is the official MIT Press link to Adam’s book </p><p>* The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie audio clips come from her 2022 Reith Lecture on Free Speech (listen <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fmtz">here</a>; read the transcript <a target="_blank" href="https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2022/Reith_2022_Lecture1.pdf">here</a>)</p><p>* Matt Yglesias coined the term “The Great Awokening” in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-white-liberals-race-polling-trump-2020">this</a> 2019 <em>Vox</em> essay</p><p>* “a rapid change in discourse and norms around social justice issues”: That’s a <a target="_blank" href="https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/the-great-awokening-of-scholarship-may-be-ending/">quote</a> from Stony Brook sociologist <a target="_blank" href="https://musaalgharbi.com/">Musa al-Gharbi</a>, one of the nation’s foremost chroniclers of “The Great Awokening”</p><p>* see Musa’s 2024 <a target="_blank" href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691232607/we-have-never-been-woke?srsltid=AfmBOor1Ialkw3XY9y-090s-wTNYtrpVdwd548MTqc68QXk-2GXRnHul">book</a> <em>We Have Never Been Woke:</em> <em>The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite </em></p><p>* here are two Banished episodes featuring Musa: <a target="_blank" href="https://banished.substack.com/p/you-cant-be-an-egalitarian-social">You Can’t Be an Egalitarian Social Climber</a> & <a target="_blank" href="https://banished.substack.com/p/who-speaks-the-language-of-social">Who Speaks the Language of Social Justice?</a></p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/">The Harper’s Letter</a></p><p>* Michael Hobbes, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cancel-culture-harpers-jk-rowling-scam_n_5f0887b4c5b67a80bc06c95e">“Don’t Fall for the ‘Cancel Culture Scam,’”</a> <em>HuffPo</em>, July 10, 2020</p><p>* <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/10/24/zadie-smith-in-defense-of-fiction/">This</a> 2019 Zadie Smith essay from the <em>New York Review of Books</em> is the definitive rejoinder to the cultural critics who insist that we “should write only about people who are fundamentally ‘like us’: racially, sexually, genetically, nationally, politically, personally”</p><p>* On the controversy surrounding Amélie Wen Zhao’s <em>Blood Heir</em>, see Alexandra Alter, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/books/amelie-wen-zhao-blood-heir.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p08.zsUo.efxW3W-rOrrn&smid=url-share">“She Pulled Her Debut Book When Critics Found It Racist. Now She Plans to Publish,”</a> <em>New York Times</em>, April 29, 2019</p><p>* On the cancelation of Kosoko Jackson’s book, <em>A Place for Wolves</em>, see Jennifer Senior, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/opinion/teen-fiction-and-the-perils-of-cancel-culture.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p08.ky6S.5R05e5scaqkf&smid=url-share">“Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture,”</a> <em>New York Times</em>, March 8, 2019</p><p>* On the cancelation of a romance novel based on “criticism from readers over dialogue that some found racist or that praised Elon Musk,” see Alexandra Alter, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/books/sophie-lark-sparrow-vine-bloom-books-cancelled.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p08.L8Cl.sj6FxVvfsh6g&smid=url-share">“A Publisher Pulled a Romance Novel After Criticism From Early Readers,”</a> <em>New York Times</em>, March 5, 2025</p><p>* On the demographics of the people who work in the publishing industry, with an emphasis on racial diversity, see this 2022 report from Pen America, <a target="_blank" href="https://pen.org/report/reading-between-the-lines/">“Reading Between the Lines”</a></p><p>* For more on literature and the culture wars, see Deborah Appleman’s incisive 2022 <a target="_blank" href="https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324019183/about-the-book/product-details">book</a>, <em>Literature and the New Culture Wars: Triggers, Cancel Culture, and the Teacher’s Dilemma </em></p><p>* On the perils of teaching literature from a narrow social justice lens, see <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jeffreyaaronsnyder.com/_files/ugd/5c295d_d5fce094cc5b4c9985714f136ad9103c.pdf">“Poverty of the Imagination,”</a> an essay we wrote a few years back in <em>Arc Digital</em></p><p>* On what we keep getting wrong about the cancel culture debate, see <a target="_blank" href="https://banished.substack.com/p/what-we-keep-getting-wrong-about">this</a> September 26, 2025 Banished post </p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. 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