For a while now, you've probably been hearing about book bans, how they're gaining momentum everywhere in Texas, in Missouri, Florida, and Pennsylvania.
On the Code Switch podcast, we're taking a look at why.
Why are so many books suddenly considered so dangerous to kids?
Listen to our new series on the Code Switch podcast from NPR.
This is planet money from Nprdemen.
Hey, everyone, it's Erica Barris.
The show you're gonna hear today originally aired in 2015.
Here's Jacob Goldstein and David Kestenbaum.
Francis Galton was the kind of person who believed in experts, you know, people who had studied things, people who knew stuff.
He figured they knew things that ordinary people just did not.
I mean, of course they did, right?
Obviously, one day, Galton goes to a country fair.
This is about 100 years ago in England, and there's this contest going on at the fair.
Guess the weight of the ox.
Galton's a scientist and a statistician, and he figures, hey, I can do an experiment here, right?
He figures, I'm going to take everyone's guesses, take the average, and compare that to the actual weight of the ox.
We heard this story from James Surwicki.
He's an economics journalist.
So he thought what you were going to end up with was a really flawed guess, because in his mind, what you were doing was you were taking guesses of a few smart people, a few mediocre people, and then a lot of morons, because he basically thought everyone was dumb.
So he figured the group's guess was going to be way, way off the mark.