Factually! with Adam Conover - How Bankruptcy Shields Capitalists from Consequences with Melissa Jacoby

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Bankruptcy can mean totally different things depending on your wealth. For the rich, it’s a shield; for the poor, it’s a punishment. Despite this debilitating divide, in a country where we need to take on debt for homes, transportation, and medical care, we still rely on the bankruptcy system to keep the economy from collapsing. This week, Adam sits with Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at UNC Chapel Hill and author of Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal. Together they discuss how a system designed as an economic safeguard has turned into a major divider of wealth in America. Find Melissa's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me again. You know, the Dunkin' Donuts ads have been lying to you because America does not actually run on their cut rate coffee. America actually runs on debt.

People in our society often need more money than they have liquidly available, all right? That's a common state of affairs. If you want a house or a car or say a major life-saving surgery in America, there's a pretty good chance you won't have the cash in the bank to do it. And you will need a loan from someone.

In fact, everybody needs loans just as a part of daily life. Individuals need them, companies need them, even the government itself needs loans on many occasions. And that is why we as Americans hold nearly $18 trillion in debt. With this ocean of owed money sloshing around, it's no wonder that people can't always pay up. And so we have a system in place, a release valve called bankruptcy, which lets people disperse their debts

when they can't pay them and start fresh. Bankruptcies are simply a necessary part of our economy. It would grind to a halt without them. There were about 450,000 bankruptcies in America last year alone. But in our unequal, capitalism dominated, debt driven society, bankruptcy doesn't work the same for everyone. Oh, it provides that necessary escape valve

to wealthy people and organizations shielding them from consequence. But for the most vulnerable among us, it provides shoddy and uneven protection that is very divided across racial lines. As our guest today will argue, debt itself is a problem, but bankruptcy is the secret key you need lines. As our guests today will argue, debt itself is a problem, but bankruptcy is the secret key you need to understand and unlock just how our society got so unequal and so

unfair. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you that if you want to support this show, you can do so on Patreon. You know, on Factually, we do things that you cannot do on television. We critique our economic system. We talk to real experts for an hour on end rather than just giving pundits one little sound bite. We do things that can only be done with your support. So if you value what we do on this show, I hope you will chip in. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free for 15 bucks a month.

I will read your name in the credits of every single episode. And of course, if you love standup comedy, ad free for 15 bucks a month. I will read your name in the credits of every single episode. And of course, if you love standup comedy, please come see me on the road. Head to AdamConover.net for tickets and tour dates. Coming up soon, I'm heading to Phoenix, Arizona, Toronto, Ontario. I'm going to have a whole lot more tour dates on my website very soon. Head to AdamConover.net to check them out. And now let's get to this week's episode.

How exactly did bankruptcy, what was supposed to be a tool of financial protection, become a weapon for the rich and a punishment against the poor? And is there anything we can do about it? Well, to answer those questions, our guest today is Melissa Jacoby. She's a law professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,

and she's the author of the eye-opening new book, "'Unjust Debt's How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal. Please welcome Melissa Jacoby. Melissa, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks for having me. You have a new book out called Unjust Debts. How unjust is America's debt system? I'm sad to say it's very unjust.

The system is so important and it could do many positive things for people and communities and society, but it's lost its way. Okay, wait, I have to stop you right there. Debt could do many positive things. It's an important system that could do positive things. This is not what people normally think about debt. Oh, if things were a little bit better, debt could be good.

What do you mean by that? Okay, so what I mean is the book is about the bankruptcy system and debt, we do use various forms of financing for lots of useful projects in America. It is the way that people sometimes get housing. It is the way that they have transportation. When done right, it can make everybody's life better. When I say that the system has lost

its way, I'm really referring to our safety valve, and that is the bankruptcy system, which is really necessary if you're going to use credit as part of your economy in such a wide way, you need a safety valve. And that's where bankruptcy comes in. Well, let's talk about the necessity of debt first, because something that you hear a lot of people say about consumer debt is, oh, you just shouldn't buy anything that you can't afford.

Like that's a mistake to ever buy something on debt period. And so therefore it's kind of your own fault if you do it. This idea that people are going out and buying stuff on credit cards that they shouldn't be because they can't pay it off all in one month, et cetera. But that's not the case, right? Like debt is a necessary ingredient in the economy. Sometimes people simply do need to buy things

that they do not have the liquid funds for, like a medical expense or housing, or simply an advance on some money. And this is something businesses do all the time, right? Like if you don't have the ability to get debt, the economy kind of grinds to a halt, am I right? Sure, maybe it doesn't have to be that way, but the system we have really depends on credit and families that don't have access

to credit. There are many things they literally cannot do. It's hard to rent a car. It's hard to get a hotel room. These credit relationships seem to be so foundational to the way that our society is set up and increasingly around the world, that's true too. The terms are where we have to pay more attention of how costly is the credit. And what we also see is this is a society that puts a lot of risk at the household level, including things that are out of our control.

And even if we do everything right, we can end up in some real trouble, whether it's because of a financial crisis, there are layoffs, there are lots of things that happen. And our society encourages families to fill those gaps with credit. It is incentivized to do that. So again, I think that credit in our society, credit is necessary. Debt is necessary and inevitable. The question is, how do we deal with it on the back end when things get too much? And of course, ideally, how is it handled on the front end

to make sure the terms are fair? So this book talks a lot about the backend when things go wrong. And so that's why I say bankruptcy is the part that in theory is necessary and in practice isn't doing what it needs to do in a society that has so much credit and so much debt. Right, so let's talk about bankruptcy.

I'm familiar with bankruptcy from Wheel of Fortune. You can go bankrupt on Wheel of Fortune. It sort of like almost exists to me as like a monopoly version of money, like something that would happen to the monopoly man would go bankrupt. I don't have a really firm understanding of it as a mechanism.

So what is the theory behind it? How is it supposed to be used? The TV show I was gonna point out was Squid Game. Okay. The Korean show that was on Netflix that the world watched intently. And Squid Game shows what happens when you don't have a bankruptcy system.

People had borrowed money that they thought they'd be able to repay or hoped they'd be able to repay that they could not. And they had no way out. So they were going to compete and either die or be able to pay off those debts. Bankruptcy is the safety valve so that you don't need squid game. And squid game isn't good for anybody, Netflix maybe, but not for real people. So the idea is there comes a point when it makes sense to cancel the debt. And that makes families better off,

it makes communities better off, but it also makes the economy better off. And frankly, in our economy, the debts that will be canceled have already often been quite profitable to the lenders. They have made money in extending credit at those terms. They build in a rate of default. And this is part of letting people get back on their feet, encouraging them to start businesses, participate more in the economy. And there will be consequences, of course, maybe

some people will not lend to them. And and that is going to flow from a bankruptcy. But the idea is, especially for humans, is a fresh start. Yeah, I mean, even when we send people to prison, they do get out eventually, often, right? There's a term, it's a limited time punishment in most cases. But you know, if debt, if you never have that safety valve, then people just carry it around forever.

And we used to send people to prison on mass for debt, right? That's right. That's right. And even there's still pockets of that that happen. Debt's imposed by courts and people not being able to honor that. But the principle is that that was not, again, not good for anybody.

It certainly didn't get the debt repaid. If you're in prison, can't repay the debt. I know there was this idea, because this might seem like a modern invention, but I know that there's been an idea for like many hundreds of years of like a debt jubilee that people in antiquity, I don't know exactly when, maybe you do,

but that, you know, there'd be this concept where a special day where all debts are relieved for precisely this reason, because it's like, hey, it's been so long, we gotta accept that people aren't gonna be able to pay this back, and it's better for everyone if we just sort of wipe this light clean, is that right? Well, I wasn't prepared for a history test today,

completely going all the way back to time. And yet it is absolutely the case that this is not a radical concept. It wasn't invented yesterday. It is something that is very deeply rooted in a lot of societies. And indeed, bankruptcy is in the Constitution, in the American Constitution from the outset.

Really? Yes, that's why the federal government can write a bankruptcy law. States can't, states can't say, Adam, you don't have to pay your debts to your creditors anymore. They don't have the right to do that. But the federal government does.

And that's why that law, it's so important that that law works effectively. And that's why it's concerning that it has become skewed. Wait, so the very concept of bankruptcy as something that the federal government has jurisdiction over is in the constitution, because even the founders of America were aware that this was a concept that we needed to have,

that bankruptcy was necessary in the economy. They were, and even though circumstances were certainly different, there was debt or credit or relationships were very different. And even how far that law would go is very different than what we see today. I think if the founders came back, they'd be shocked about a lot of things, we know that,

but they would not necessarily recognize all of the parts of the bankruptcy system that we have, especially the largesse given to corporations. But the idea that it is inevitable that people get into financial trouble and that you need some mechanism to deal with that fairly was reflected in the Constitution. And that goes to the other part.

I focused on the debt relief for the family, but we're also talking about making sure that bankruptcy is fair to creditors because we do generally have a system where contracts are enforced in this country. And so we have to make sure that any kind of creditor is getting a fair shake in the legal procedure so that I don't know everything that was on the founder's mind. Nobody really does about the bankruptcy clause in the constitution.

But I- They were thinking about a lot of stuff. They were thinking about a lot of unsavory things. Honestly. They really were. And that left very little time to think about bankruptcy. They're like, I wanna have sex with my maid. Ugh, sorry.

I'm not gonna go there, but I will say, one thing we do know that was on their mind was that if you left these issues to the states, they were gonna come up with different rules. And someone could go from state to state, it was going to be confusing. So they wanted to have the federal government to have that power. So, well, suffice it to say,

even the founders were aware that bankruptcy was very important, that it had to be universal for everybody, as you say. But what has become so unjust about our current bankruptcy system and the debt system overall? Well, let me focus on the narrow first, and then we should talk about the broader point

too. I completely agree that debt in general raises a lot of concerns the way it's run, although we now do have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, who I think is trying to root out some of the problems. But in terms of bankruptcy, I see two parallel things happening. The vast majority of people who need bankruptcy and use bankruptcy are families, individuals and families. And the bankruptcy system is falling way short on its promise to provide debt relief to those families and is doing it in a racially disparate way.

So black families are paying more for bankruptcy and getting less bankruptcy relief than white families. And that really is a double offense in terms of the personal bankruptcy system. So there's plenty to do that could clean that, to fix that and clean up those very serious problems. And then we flip over to the side of what I call fake people, which is really corporations, cities, nonprofits,

business organizations, they have rights of people, but they're not human. So fake is just the fastest way to get to that point. I am worried about the effects I see in those cases. There are good justifications that Congress laid out to give really strong protections to corporations that say they need bankruptcy protections. It's a big federal protection for corporations, but for the benefit of workers and communities and competition and all of those good things.

So the key is that bankruptcy is supposed to be a package deal. If a corporation goes into chapter 11, it's supposed to take the benefits with the burdens. It can't just go right to take the dessert and not eat its vegetables. And so some companies have found, with their lenders supporting them and parties that want to buy the company in bankruptcy,

they're all getting together and saying, we can't, we don't wanna use bankruptcy as it's written, we need to fast track it. And I think there are a lot of unfair effects that come from that. The other big example that I use here is that the definition of debt is so broad in the bankruptcy world, because think about it,

in our society, we have money becomes the way that lots of wrongs get remedied. That someone's constitutional rights are violated. Somebody is run over by a car. The usual legal impact is to say, well, someone's going to write a check. Someone's gonna send some money if there is a remedy. And then the bankruptcy law takes that and says,

everything's a debt. So police brutality, that's a remedy. And then the bankruptcy law takes that and says everything's a debt. So police brutality, that's a debt. Toxic products and coverups, sex abuse, they're all debts. So what we see happening is some cases that are motivated primarily to manage liability or coverups and wrongdoing, or at least alleged wrongdoing. So they're not traditional financial problems.

And they're asking a lot of a system that was designed to really be much more about loans and bondholders and that sort of thing. It creates a system where it maybe a company kills people who kills innocent people because they release a chemical into the water or they do whatever the, where maybe a company kills people who, you know, kills innocent people because, I don't know, they release a chemical into the water or they do whatever the, you know, whatever horrible things a company might do. And that ends up just, oh, that's just ends up a line on their balance sheet.

Oh, they had to pay somebody some money, but then maybe they go bankrupt. They're able to discharge that obligation and something that would have sent a private citizen to prison and actually been punished ends up with, oh, a CEO is able to walk away with a golden parachute and the company just sort of goes bankrupt and is reorganized. That sort of problem is what you're talking about. Those are the kinds of things that I'm talking about.

Now, I will say the companies who are in bankruptcy to deal with accusations of wrongdoing, they will say, we're setting up a pot of money. We do want to pay people. We just want to do it all in a very efficient way. We want to maximize value. We don't want to have a lot of lawsuits. We want to do it through this more streamlined procedure. That sounds reasonable on one level. And I think that there are some lawyers who believe that's truly the best way. There are just some, there are some problems with the argument.

First, what they promise in terms of the money is not always delivered. Second, the people going through this process, they're not really being heard, the individuals who've been harmed. They're treated like a giant group and some have been really harmed and some have said, well, maybe I was harmed.

And they're probably more that latter category. And so, but they're a giant group. It's very hard for them to have a voice in these cases. And there are people who have been involved in these cases who find them very unfair. And third, I'd say, well, there's this little thing called the Constitution of the United States. And while it does talk about bankruptcy,

it also talks about things like due process. There are also concepts of federalism, which are about that states have a lot of mechanisms to protect people that sometimes bankruptcy suppresses. So I do wanna make clear that when companies file for bankruptcy in the aftermath of wrongdoing, they are saying a lot of things that sound like they're trying to make things okay. And I think that there is a strand of that. It's just, that's not enough.

We have to ask more questions about it. Yeah. Do you have an example of a specific company that's been able to use the process to shield itself this way and a case in which, you know, voices of people who were hurt weren't hurt? Well, I'm gonna talk, I'll mention a much older case because it's really over.

We certainly have plenty of cases percolating now that you may wanna talk about, but there's a case I talk about an unjust debts. It involves the age Robbins company, which was known for some pharmaceuticals. They also made things like chapstick, robot, Tussin, I think, but the company also then bought what it thought was going to be a nifty birth control device called the Dalcon shield, and it marketed it heavily around the world. It was an inner uterine device.

This- I've heard of this. I've heard this story, but remind me how it ends. I don't think it ends well. Yeah, it ends very badly for a lot of women around the world, millions, where, well, so it didn't really work. It wasn't a really effective birth control,

but it was way worse than that because some women died. Some women lost their fertility, had all sorts of other troubles, and it took them a little too long to pull it off the market and own up to that this thing was a disaster. Now, H. Robbins was a company that had lots of other products, Yeah. Now, H. Robbins was a company that had lots of other products, but it was being sued a lot for the harm that the Dalcon Shield was causing or allegedly causing. And in addition, members of the Robbins family, the family that owned a lot of the company, not the whole thing, they were also being sued for their role in the coverup and not being forthcoming about the problems,

which resonates a little bit with the Purdue Pharma and Sackler family that we're dealing with today. That was the first company that came to my mind when you said you might be interested in some other companies. I was like, ding, ding, ding, Purdue Pharma. Yes, so I'm mentioning this because it is a real precursor to that, where you have the company comes in and says, we want to just resolve everything in one fell swoop in this bankruptcy

rather than litigating all these different places. And you know, if you ask bankruptcy lawyers, this is one of the cases, A.H. Robbins, they'll say this was a successful mass tort bankruptcy. This is why we should have these cases in bankruptcy and get some final resolution. When I've dug into it and I've relied on the research of other academics as well, as well, and of women who went through the case, and I've cited all them in the book so their names can be known. We get a little bit of a different picture. So first of all, the women who were so affected, they were the reason this case was happening. The women really didn't have a direct

voice in the court proceedings at all. There was a life tenured federal district judge who presided over the case primarily. And he didn't, as I think he said, and it's been documented in some books, he didn't want to hear from the ladies. And you know, they can come to court, but maybe they'll get tired and eventually go home. And you know, that is published in academic books, in other places.

The ladies who were hurt by this product, he's like, ah, we don't need to hear, we don't need to hear, they're yappin'. Just put them in a corner and maybe they'll get tired, give them some coffee cake. Like, what the fuck? Well, it definitely gave that vibe. And so today, I don't think anyone would say that directly,

but indirectly, there is still a sense that the professionals are in charge, that they're the ones who are going to figure out what's best for everybody. And yes, there will be consultation with people who are hurt, but I think A.H. Robbins and the way that the women were treated does resonate today. A second thing that I think is important that happened is that there were procedures that could be done that would for some of the women that would protect their fertility would reverse some of the damage. And that was something that needed to happen.

And actually the company was willing to do it and that judge I was talking about, he may not have been that polite to the women in the courtroom, but he supported doing that, that you set aside some money to make sure that this product didn't harm them more. Well, some shareholders of the A.H. Robbins company just didn't like that at all. It wasn't even that much money. They went to complain to a higher court who stopped that whole thing and said, nope, you can't give out that money to

these women. There's no authority in the bankruptcy law to do that too bad. I mentioned this because, A, it was terrible. But B, the number of things that that same court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal has now allowed to happen when other people ask for it to protect the Robbins family generally out of this bankruptcy, you get a very different answer. And I'm perplexed by that. A third example of- I'm not so perplexed.

I'm pretty familiar with how the justice system works. It seems like pretty much a normal MO, yeah. Well, hope springs eternal for people in my position, right? But I gotta hope for better, but it's very distressing. A third thing I'd point out is, so a pot of money was set aside to compensate women depending on their harm. And one thing that lawyers say about this pot of money

in a technically a trust was, oh, it never ran out of money. It was managed so well relative to some how other cases went. Well, that's maybe true as on a macro level, but on a micro level, the research shows that in the beginning of the process, women got a letter from the trust

that strongly encouraged them to take a very limited amount of money because it wasn't really sure what would happen. And this way they wouldn't have to fill out as many forms and it wouldn't take as many years. It's something like, now I can't remember, it was $700 or $750. Now this was a while ago, but still guaranteed

that did not cover the injuries that they had any huge proportion of women responded to that letter and said, well, I guess I better do this. And so it seems to me one reason they didn't run out of money is because they that people were who are not familiar with the legal system encouraged to take a very modest fee to end the whole thing. So I did not look at the I see the case as one where again, lawyers say, look how well it worked. And I say, we have to look at the details and we have to ask the women. They were the ones who were hurt.

They were the ones who were affected. How did they feel about it? But also what did they get at the end of the day? Well, and the company and its shareholders have all the fancy lawyers and they're very dedicated to navigating the system and knowing how it works. They're able to pay for all of that. And the women who are harmed is just,

it's just some lady in Iowa who is harmed by a thing, gets a letter in the mail, right? Like all those individual people have so much less power in the midst of the system to have a voice. What mechanism would they even have? It's, you know, power leads to more power, right? It feels that way. And again, there are ways that bankruptcy laws

are meant to protect individual creditor rights. And so they can make a variety of objections. You need a lawyer who knows the law to do that, and it can be expensive. There is a committee that is assigned to represent the interests of claimants. There are a lot of dynamics that go along with that. And they do know, they do the best they can, but they're not, they can't, they're not listening to everybody.

They're trying to make a rough judgment about maximizing the value for everybody. And people are in a really different circumstances. I do think a lot of this has to do with class and that the rights of individuals, they are treated as more fungible and again, as sort of a large, I go back to the term mass, they're a mass, they're not thought of as individuals with their own stories. Now, people will say that the legal system can't handle this many cases, and therefore, what else are you going to do? I have to say I'm not satisfied with that response because I don't think that's the response we give when people with more power

and institutions with more power say their legal rights have been hurt. You've got to figure something out that's fair. And so I think the system has a lot of work to do in that. And that's true, again, those are issues outside of bankruptcy as well as in the bankruptcy system, but I'm seeing it here. Those sort of power differentials that lead to unequal outcomes are like rife through all of society.

But that is the job. Look, the idea that the people with more get more, the people with more power get more power, the people with more money get more money, those with less get less. That is a law of the universe, right? But the point of social systems is to push against that tendency, right? To make sure that those with smaller voices or who are harmed, you know, have a little bit more power and are not unjustly harmed.

And it sounds like this is either we have plenty of social systems in the United States that actually do that, or at least attempt to that to some degree. It sounds like the bankruptcy system is falling into the old pattern, though. Folks, this week's sponsor is one I am thrilled to endorse that I have been using for ages and that I am always excited to tell you about, DeleteMe. Let's face it folks, our information is out there, and I mean that very literally. Your name, your phone number, your home address, even the names of your relatives and friends can all be accessed by anyone with an internet connection through data brokers.

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But I have here in my notes that the Catholic Church has done this as well. I'm curious about that. So a variety of diocese around the country that have been accused of cover-ups of child sex abuse have resorted to bankruptcy as a way to cap their liability. For child sex abuse and they're often doing that indirect response. to state legislatures being persuaded to open the doors of the courts to adults that have been traumatized for decades and are finally ready to come forward.

As states open the doors and say, yes, it was a long time ago, but we're going to permit you to come forward, organizations, most prominently the Catholic Church or diocese, have then responded by knocking on a different door, and that's the door of the bankruptcy court. They make the argument, again, I want to give credence to the argument before I critique it to say, we're trying to make the best of a bad situation. A lot of this happened a very long time ago. We want to compensate people fairly and equally. So if we deal with the cases one at a time in the civil justice system, in the state courts, some people will collect more and other people won't and it will take a long time and wouldn't it be more efficient

to just wrap this all up together? And I do have concerns about that, even though to those who think this is all about money, that might sound appealing. But first of all, it's not all about money. It is about justice. It's about justice. It's about accountability. It is about control. There are a lot of reasons when an individual who's been traumatized decides to come forward and bring a lawsuit, that is not an easy decision to make. It is not a happy day. And it's about that person.

Like each of those events happened to each of those people individually. And each one of those, you know, priests or whoever it was was shielded individually by the church and dealing with them as a mass is a little bit offensive to those people. They're not a mass of people. They're all individuals who are individually harmed.

They are individuals and their stories are not all the same. We see that even more in an example outside of the churches, which is the Boy Scouts of America, because they're so large. All of America, Guam, we have so many different circumstances. People who say they've been raped by their scout leaders multiple times, others who were groped by a fellow scout. I'm not saying either of those things should happen, but they are not the same.

And ultimately what these, the bankruptcies aren't aimed to say, we just need to get it through the process and then there's going to be a different process. And it's going to further individualize this again. It's going to say, tell us what happened to you. And the more severe it was, we'll write you a bigger check. If you have a less severe injuries or you can't document your harm, then you may not get as much. You may not get

anything. The problem is that leading up to that point, they're all treated as if they were exactly the same. So one big thing about Chapter 11 bankruptcy is that creditors get to vote. They're supposed to have their own voice in deciding what happens. Very, very important. If you're gonna let an organization reorganize, that's important. But isn't it just strange in the first place? There's so many things that are weird about this system, and I'm sorry to interrupt you.

That's all right. A, you just described the victims of sexual abuse as creditors, as though they were people who loaned the church money and are now owed money. Like they're victims. First of all, that's very odd. But second of all, isn't it rather strange that the bankruptcy system is something that you undergo when you can't pay. It's something that you undergo to avoid giving restitution. Oh, well, there's too much money. I can't possibly pay all of it. This is how I'm going to pay less or nothing.

And so by entering into that system, like they're, they are escaping that responsibility, which I am fine with when it's a individual person or, you know, even a company that, you know, fell on hard times and hasn't been able to repay its debts. And that's a necessary part of the economy, as we discussed. But that doesn't sit well when we're talking about the decades long protection of sex abusers. Like those things are not the same. Why would they be under the same system at all?

Why should that be something that you can escape via the bankruptcy system? It's not a form of debt. What are we talking about? And this, that was why I had to write this book for the general public rather than for my colleagues in the legal world, because we're so used to in the legal world saying,

well, they're all legal obligations, then they're all debts. And the legal world saying, well, they're all legal obligations. Then they're all debts. And I think one day I realized this makes no sense. This can't be right. That is why I'm glad we're having this conversation. And I want people in the general world to read this book because I agree with the concern that you're raising that these are not the same thing.

These are not matters of mere economic efficiency. It doesn't make sense. As to your point about when a company has fallen or any organization has fallen on hard times and why you would let them reorganize, the worry, some organizations don't have much money or assets, there was a question about the Boy Scouts of America, the national organization that filed

differing reports about how much they really had. Now, the key in that case though, is they also wanna protect all the local councils, some of whom, which have a lot of resources, that's one of the issues that is being considered by the Supreme Court about whether others can be protected. The Boy Scouts case I already went through, I think that's gonna stay no matter what.

We go to the church cases and I think, or the diocese cases, there's a real worry about which assets should be available. Even if we're just going to talk about money, and again, I don't think this is all about money, but on the monetary compensation part, people rightly want to know, well, what assets does this diocese have or whatever organization it is? Where did you put them? What trusts are they in? Who have they been transferred to in contemplation of this bankruptcy? And trusts are they in? Who have they been transferred to in contemplation

of this bankruptcy? And there are laws called fraudulent transfer laws, and some have other names that are trying to say, we get to investigate to make sure you're putting all your assets on the table and that you are actually in some financial difficulty. That gets very tricky with religious organizations. They raise, even though they're the ones who put themselves into bankruptcy, they have been known to raise First Amendment arguments about their religious rights. And so that's a whole other level I don't talk about in the book. But yes, this category of cases is driven less by we can't pay our debts as we traditionally think of them. And more as if we have to deal with all these lawsuits, we will be very strained

and it will take away from our mission on the other things we should do. Yeah. But like, who gives a shit about your mission? If you're allowing kids to be abused, you know, like it's, uh, the, the idea that, you know, these, these the idea that, you know, these organizations should not be, I mean, first of all, and I know this is a little bit outside the subject of maybe your work, but the fact that it's the organization

that's held coupleable at all rather than individuals in the organization is already offensive to a lot of people, right? That, you know, so- Well, it should be both. I mean, this is not, it should not be either, or let me just be clear. These are not, these cases are not defending

the individual perpetrators. The difference is the individual perpetrators don't even have all the information. They don't have the records of the coverup. And they also, they don't have money to compensate typically the victims, the survivors. But often when, you know, it's very, very common when an organization that is made up of people

harms someone or harms people. The real life people were harmed by the organization, but then when it comes to find accountability, it's spread across the organization, no individual person ever faces criminal prosecution. And then the punishment that's level on the organization is like, well, you gotta pay some money. You gotta reorganize, yada, yada, yada.

But it's not as though, you know, the state ever comes in and says, well, we're breaking up this corrupt organization. They just like charge them some money, move the money around, et cetera. It's a very diffuse form of justice, if you can even call it that. I do deal with some of these issues on just debts

and some of my other work, thinking about this culpability question. I think it's important that, so we should not let the institution itself off the hook and other organizations can be liable for employment discrimination. They can commit crimes, can't send them to jail. But we do, other laws do treat the corporation

as a culpable actor. And I think bankruptcy should do more of that rather than less because that's what it does to the humans. But I also see there is a really strong tendency and I saw this following and studying the Weinstein Company bankruptcy, this bad appalling effect that happens when you sort of look at it too much about an individual.

It is all well and good to say that Harvey Weinstein has been accused of terrible, terrible things. For everyone who pushed that organization forward, loaned them money, invested in the company, looked the other way, facilitated the treatment of employees, it is not okay to say, well, we got rid of Harvey Weinstein. Everything's fine now and we don't have any more complicity. That does not make sense to me.

But I think that bankruptcy sometimes helps that along because it doesn't treat institutions as much like culpable actors as it does individuals. Right. And yeah, I want to say that institutions can be structurally corrupt or structurally at fault, and then structural changes need to happen to that institution. But it doesn't sound like bankruptcy does that.

I'll give you an example just off the top of my head, something that has been done in the past, I think it's been quite a while before we've taken this approach, but when there's been, for instance, civil rights injustices in police departments or in state governments, there'll be a federal consent decree and the federal government will monitor, you know, this police department to like make sure that, you know,

the decades of racial bias that are present within it aren't continued, right? They'll be subject to like, they'll be forced to operate a certain way. And I don't think anything like that ever happened at the Catholic church, right? Right, and this goes exactly to my point about how the legal system prefers money as the remedy

because there's a perception, both from in the police context, school desegregation, another example that falls directly in the model that you're talking about, there's this perception that monitoring compliance is hard and it's hard to find the right institutions to do it. And there's also, our society doesn't value a full range of remedies that other parts of the world might like real apologies, like other kinds of reconciliation processes. And again, that's different from what you're proposing.

But overall, again, because people fall back on money being the way to compensate all sorts of really grievous harm, that contributes to the problem that I think we're both talking about. Now, the other thing is that your comments lead me to think about is the question of should bankruptcy favor continuation in all instances of these organizations. People come in and say, chapter 11 is to reorganize. And you say, well, so coal companies come in and say, we should reorganize. Companies that have other kinds of environmental problems

might say that. There are some people who have been hurt by the Boy Scouts, which by the way, was losing membership for a lot of other reasons too, who think, you know, it's not the end of the world if the Boy Scouts doesn't exist anymore. Now I don't have any direct relationship with the Boy Scouts of America.

It was not part of my family history. I was a Boy Scout and let me tell you, I was a Boy Scout and let me tell you, shut the fuck down. We don't need Boy Scouts. It's not necessary. First of all, it's a borderline paramilitary organization. My Boy Scout troop, we just learned how to march in formation.

It was very boring, not helpful in my life. Went on one white water rafting trip. You don't need to be a member of the Boy Scouts to go do that. No, even I've done that, white water rafting. Oh, you just pay 50 bucks somewhere in Pennsylvania and you can do it, it's you just pay 50 bucks in somewhere in Pennsylvania and you can do it. It's fine It's true that you know

Why not when a comp when a company or an organization has to go bankrupt because it has failed Spectacularly or because it has caused grievous harm. Why isn't the remedy more often? Okay Well, this organization simply ceases to exist down, fuck off, everyone go do something else because you guys shat the bed so badly, I'm sorry for swearing so much, but you shat the bed so badly, we just don't need this around here anymore, right? This was bad for the world and now it no longer exists.

Why does that not happen? Oh, so many reasons. But okay, so I'll give you the argument that we would hear, which is we wanna make things right for The people who have been hurt allegedly in the past and they keep emphasizing was long ago in the past Although some of the cases were not as long ago. I think that comes up with the Catholic Church as well They say it was really a long time ago and then You have to see when the cases were but

the argument is both that if we keep this organization going, we can help the people who have been hurt more. Now this doesn't work very well in some of these cases. In the Boy Scouts, I think the vast majority of money is coming from insurance and the assets of local councils. It's not necessarily coming from operations of the Boy Scouts going forward.

So it doesn't quite work there. But here's an example that this is really gonna, that sort of explodes this at another level. Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy and Alex Jones also put his company, Free Speech Systems into bankruptcy. I watched many of those hearings in the bankruptcy court, thanks to them making it more,

the court making it more transparent and offering that public service. And what's interesting is that there is evidence that the more conspiracy theories that Alex Jones would talk about on his show when he was broadcasting, the more money they would bring in. So if the objective of the only creditors in those cases were really the Sandy Hook families

and maybe a couple others who had been, have defamation judgments for terrible things being said about them. If their only goal was to collect more money, the theory is you would want the company to continue to operate and for him to spew, I'm talking about this in theory, spew those conspiracy theories.

But that wasn't what they wanted. Well, right. And again, we have to listen to the families and hear what they want, but this is a strange dilemma that, it's not bankruptcy's fault that we have this dilemma, but it's a really weird situation to be in. I think that's an extreme example, but it proves a broader point that if you say you're only going to continue businesses that many might

say is dangerous because the theory is you'll put more money into people's pockets. Is that something the federal government should be doing? I mean, I think there should be a, that's a real question. Right, so they reorganize because the remedy is money and if the company continues, then they'll be able to keep paying out the money

to the quote victims. But that means that the harm could be perpetuated as well because the organization was harming people. And also I'm really seeing your point when you say that it's weird that we put the justice in the form of money, that we're going to pay these people, that the form of justice we're gonna have for an organization harming people

is that there is going to be a payout because we're talking about companies and you know what companies are really good at manipulating? Money. Like that's what they do. They are money organizations. And so when you're talking about Purdue Pharma or whatever,

or any of these other companies, like bringing into the bankruptcy court, that's their home turf, right? That's not the home turf of the Sandy Hook families or the people who are harmed by the Dalcon Shield or whatever, that's the home turf of the money managers and the lawyers and the CEOs. They are the money people.

And so by having the justice system be the money place, it like allows them to welch out of their obligations or to do it on favorable terms or to get a favorable judgment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, at least it changes the terms and it changes the control. And that's why this whole category of case

that's motivated by litigation rather than an impasse in negotiation about loan terms. It's just a completely different story. And when, and shifting the forum into, from a court that's supposed to take a broader range of things into account to a forum where the law, the dominant law is about maximizing economic value. It definitely creates a lot of challenges

that again, I think the public needs to think about and has a right to ask questions, even if people are saying the right, saying noble things about why they want to be there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've been talking quite a bit about corporate malfeasance, which is one of my favorite things to talk about on the show. But I also want to talk about the effect of bankruptcy on average people. It's very beneficial, as we've talked about, for these massive organizations to be able to shift any liability to the bankruptcy sphere because it helps them get out of taking responsibility

or it helps them continue. I would wager that the average person who is simply in a lot of debt and needs the remedy of bankruptcy is not able to do so on such favorable terms. So we talked about what it looks like for Purdue Pharma. What does it look like for, you know, the average Joe when they need to go into bankruptcy? What it looks like for the average Joe when they need to go into bankruptcy?

What it looks like for the average person, first of all, it depends on whether they're white or black. And the vast majority of people who file for bankruptcy are either white or black with a small, very small percentage of other race and ethnicities. But- Interesting. And African- American families are disproportionately steered into a type of bankruptcy that is more expensive and gives less debt relief.

That's in addition to the fact that the rule, the way the rules are written about assets that can be protected and debts that can or cannot be canceled are, in the words of my colleague, Michelle Dickerson, optimized for white families. That the way that the categories of assets that you can keep or the debts that you, that stay with you forever, end up hurting African-American families much more. So all of that together, it makes black families less well off from bankruptcy,

even though the background conditions of discrimination in credit markets and income disparities and the like mean that African American families have a greater need for bankruptcy relief in America than their white counterparts. Now, everybody does need bankrupt. I do want to say that I don't, that there are also problems with how bankruptcy works for any family that tries to use it, but I did want to set that baseline first.

Well, how is it that black families are steered into a worse form of bankruptcy? You would think that the financial system would be pretty blind at that point to those sorts of differences. Is it something along the lines of, for instance, I know, you know, check cashing joints that give, you know, extra or payday loan establishments

that give horrible, horrible loan terms are like way more prevalent in black neighborhoods, for example. And that's a predatory form of loan that is like literally just physically more present in those neighborhoods and preying on people who are less well off. Is it that sort of situation? Like how does this disparity arise?

Families are bringing in the background conditions of this credit markets and how they've borrowed money. But then when they knock on the door of bankruptcy lawyers or they look at websites or what have you, what they learn is that there are two paths into bankruptcy for an individual or family. One of them is called chapter seven and it gives relief much faster and the cost to access the system are lower. They're still not trivial for a person in financial distress and it's mostly to pay a lawyer because the law is so confusing. We need a lot of help. So there's a lower fee for lawyers in chapter seven. Then there's a chapter called chapter 13. That's a repayment plan for three to five years. And if

you don't finish, you generally do not get to cancel any debt. The standard reason that people might use chapter 13, and it would be to their their benefit is if they have a home in foreclosure and their lender won't work with them but they think they can make up the mortgage that they could make up those less payments same with a car loan otherwise Chapter 13 was meant for families that were thought to be maybe a little too wealthy, too well off for the faster and cheaper version. So that's the choice that Congress put in the bankruptcy code, arguably trying to steer people to file chapter 13 because they're supposed to pay more.

They have to pay all their creditors more. They also pay their lawyers more. They pay a trustee that monitors the system more. There's a lot more money floating around there. Not a lot goes to actual, their credit cards or other creditors, but that's the perception. But here's a big difference.

If you file the cheaper, relatively speaking, type of bankruptcy that leads to faster debt cancellation. You're supposed to have the money to pay your lawyer upfront. If you file the kind where you're in a repayment plan where you might not finish and you might not get debt cancellation, they say, you can just deal with that in the plan.

You don't have to give me anything now or maybe just a little bit. That is having itself a huge effect. It sounds like you're going into debt in the process of going bankrupt. This sounds like what you're describing. You have to pay not to pay. That's exactly right.

That's ludicrous. You're literally trying to discharge your debts because you can't afford them. It's like, but it's okay, we can put you on a payment plan. Like, what the fuck? Well, this is what, so the, there's a lot about bankruptcy that,

that frustrates me that is very bipartisan. And one of the very bipartisan parts is the view that bankruptcy is self-funded. You have to pay not to pay. That affects corporate bankruptcy as well, but it definitely is affecting these personal bankruptcy cases that they're supposed to pay not to pay. That affects corporate bankruptcy as well, but it definitely is affecting these personal bankruptcy cases that they're supposed to pay a lot of money to get into the system, which then hurts all the wrong people.

It's not going to deter people who actually have money. That raises some different questions. Again, I should say that people who do file for bankruptcy, the humans are in serious financial distress. We've got decades of research on this. But here's another thing I think your listeners should know about the racial disparities. There have been studies done, again, these are not mine,

but I do cite them in the book so people can look them up and make sure I'm being honest about it all, to say the studies indicate some other forms of steering that go on even when people have equal access to assets and they have similar financial circumstances. It's true that African-American families because of existing background conditions may be less likely to come up with the money

to file a chapter seven, even though that would be the best kind of bankruptcy. But it also is unfortunately the case that these studies show that when lawyers are presented with stories about financially distressed families, the advice they will give about what kind of bankruptcy to file depends on whether they think the people are black or white.

And if they're black, they're more likely to be sent to chapter 13, even with identical financial circumstances. Wow. It's really crazy that, you know, we have this narrative about America that it's a race blind society now, or not one that where people do this. And then whenever there's an actual study of,

hey, are realtors showing black families different houses than white families? Are loan officers offering black families different loan terms than white? And then here, again, an example of bankruptcy, are bankruptcy lawyers offering different bankruptcy plans to black families and white families? The answer is always yes.

Like, whenever you do the research to find out like, hey, is there still active racism in the American financial or social system? The answer is always yes. And yet we are like really refused to look at this squarely and address it. People just wanna like blind themselves to the fact that this is happening.

Well, and that's another reason I wrote Unjust Debts. And again, I'm collecting research robustly done by my colleagues, both law professors and social scientists who did really rigorous work. And I want them to get the credit for that. But I pulled this together to write for the general public because the legal community has known about this quite a while and people lament it and come up with, try to come up with other explanations. And some of it may be implicit bias.

It's not all necessarily explicit. The point is something has to be done. It is not acceptable. We should not go another day with the system as it is. And so the general public does need to hear more examples that this is happening. It's not someone's imagination. Nobody was happy about this being the answer

to these studies. I think probably a lot of people hoped it was gonna come out the other way, but here we are. And so that's why these complicated systems do need to be exposed to the general public. Even if we don't always have a bad guy, someone who is actively trying to be racist, that's not the point.

The point is the effect. And it's not okay for a federal system meant to promote equality of opportunity, give this extraordinary debt relief to have this imbalance in it. So you said the system has to change, but yet it has not. Why is that? I imagine there are great lobbying forces trying to stop the system from changing. You mentioned the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

being a new cabinet level agency that is supposed to, I believe it's cabinet level, supposed to protect the American public from debt abuse at the hands of debt companies. And yet that organization, that agency has been under attack since its formation from the very industry it's supposed to regulate. It's been disempowered in many ways.

Tell me a little bit about the forces that are preventing the kind of change that we need to see. Yeah, so the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is an independent agency, completely independent, and boy, does the industry not like that because it can't be controlled by the forces of electoral politics and lobbying to the same extent. And that was a very specific design that keeps getting challenged and recently was upheld.

So that is some good news. It is really, the irony is exactly what you say that we've got corporate entities often challenging groups, organizations or agencies like the CFPB saying how dare the federal government get in our business. Bankruptcy is very much about the federal program getting in everybody's business on the corporate side to protect them. And as I've mentioned, they want even more. On the consumer side, here's why I think there is a hope. In 2005, when the law for personal bankruptcy filers

got even more complicated, more expensive at the behest of the consumer credit industry, it also made small business bankruptcy quite punitive. There was this attitude of, oh, those small businesses, they're never going to make it. They're just hiding out in bankruptcy. We need to make this even harder for them. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, reversed that judgment in 2019.

So the Trump administration, President Trump signed it and it went into effect in 2020. And lots of indications that it has restored Chapter 11 for small businesses to an actual working system to renegotiate loans and to get small businesses back on their feet. Now Congress had plenty to do in 2019. We know that. They were fighting about everything, and yet somehow they got that done. Bankruptcy is often bipartisan, and on the consumer side, it is more complicated now than it was in, say, I don't know, 1978 when things were, at least in Congress, a little

bit different in how they approach consumer protection issues. But there's economic evidence, or I should say, evidence from economists as well as legal scholarship and the like that there are good arguments for a simpler personal bankruptcy system that fit a lot of different ideologies. It's not just about protecting families in a way that sounds like it only fits one ideology. It's better for the economy. It's better for small business creation. There are a lot of arguments one can use and muster for this. So there is a proposal, the Consumer Bankruptcy Reform Act, that would simplify the personal bankruptcy

system to a great extent and really directly address the racial disparities as well as the general shortcomings of the personal bankruptcy system. I think it should be more seriously considered but you could go even more simply than that. You could do something that really does aim at some more straightforward debt cancellation, at least for people below a certain income level or something along those lines. Well, whenever there is a proposal that would be better for everybody

and it's not happening, right, of which there's many things, I'll just give you an example, public transit, right? You know, look at something like public transit, right? And I was just reading today about how all the bosses want everyone to return to the office, yet all the trains in New York are delayed, right? Because that city has not invested in its public transit the way everybody wants,

the way 90% of people get around using public transit, and yet it's not happening, you know? And so you have to ask why that is. And often to me, there is a genuine lust on the part of our society to punish those who are worse off, even when it is bad for everybody to do so. And so I wondered if some of that is what's going on here.

You say, hey, if we had a simpler bankruptcy system that would be better for the economy, everyone would be better off, it would be so great, and it would be better for those who are everyone would be better off, it would be so great, and it would be better for those who have the least amount of power. And I would ask, well, is it that there are people, or maybe a lot of people in our society, who actually hate the poor, right?

They say, you know what, I like it when it's hard for those people. I like it when black people have a better, worse outcomes than white people. That's something that I enjoy. Maybe not that maliciously, right? But you hear it in rhetoric like, oh, don't buy things you can't afford.

Oh, it's just, it's their own fault, that kind of thing. There is a sort of strange moral judgment where people, when it happens to poor people, they say it's your own fault and you should be punished. When it happens to a big corporation or someone wealthy, they say, oh, well, that person probably meant well. Give him another shot. Give Elon or whoever else another shot.

Give the Boy Scouts another shot. Do you feel that that sort of deep rooted bias on a societal level is part of why we have this disparity? I do think there is that bias, but that the bias is cultivated pretty actively by pretty powerful interests. I'll say this, that people would like to think that the families who end up needing bankruptcy

are very different from themselves. And it's just not true. There is a lot of volatility in people's finances. There's been studied by sociologists and other social scientists for a long time. And- Easy to say until you get cancer, right? Easy to say until you get cancer.

That's right. And so the people who are in bankruptcy are, okay, they're not as many, not as many of them are homeowners as outside of bankruptcy, but quite a few are. They have jobs of a variety of levels of sophistication. They've attended college, they don't all finish, but there are, by all of these measures,

I don't love always using the term middle class because there's so much that goes into picking out where the line, yeah. But honestly, that is historically what a lot of researchers have said about bankruptcy filers that they're really coming from the middle class. So if people want to think that bankruptcy filers are very different from themselves, that is not necessarily true. The second thing I would point out though goes to, I think a question of what I hear other people

talking about in terms of solidarity and that, thinking about during the mortgage crisis and the financial crisis, there were proposals to help people modify their mortgages so that their interest rate didn't reset to a level that simply was unpayable. Now, if once neighbor was able to keep their home and keep making their mortgage payments, that actually helps the value of the homeowner next door. Having a foreclosure

next door is not good for anyone. But the message that we heard by corporate interests that lobbied against helping individual homeowners was, well, you pay their mortgage, you pay your mortgage. Why shouldn't they? You manage your bills. Why shouldn't you expect the same from your neighbor? We hear a lot of that about student loans as well when discussions of loan cancellation. Whether it's ingrained or cultivated, this idea of distrust and not feeling like

you're in the same boat and have sort of reciprocal, but also some reciprocal obligations to each other, is I agree with you, plays a role. Again, that's why I don't think bankruptcy reform's going to happen just because specialists convince members of Congress to do something when they've got everything else on their plate, it has to be an issue that's tied in with the other things that are being talked about

in political campaigns and elections. And if people think that's wild, then we say my colleague, Bob Lawless, has calculated that one out of 10 living Americans has been through bankruptcy at least once. And we're gonna see bankruptcy filings, even if the system isn't doing everything it can right now to protect families, the use is gonna go up in the coming years.

So this is not a niche issue. It is affecting huge numbers of people. Well, is there? Look, I can't thank you enough for coming on to tell us about the changes we need to make here and raise awareness of this issue. How can people join the fights? You know, are there any promising movements on the horizon that people can pitch in on? Well, the the Consumer Bankruptcy Reform Act is a bill that Senator Warren has proposed, and

I think expressing support for that would be fantastic. This is an issue where we don't have a natural debtor's lobby in Congress. That's why it has to be seen as a broader social insurance issue. But that's the proposal that is most, has been most fleshed out that's sort of ready to go. So, but I'd love it if people ask their libraries to order my book so people can borrow, borrow that book. You don't even have to buy it, but to learn more about it, talk to your friends, talk to your family, and don't pretend, don't assume this is an issue too complicated for you to understand.

Don't assume that it's an issue that has no effect on your life because it's affecting you one way or another and it's affecting issues that you care about. Yeah, borrow it for free from your local library and they will cancel your late fee now. That is a new thing. So you will not go into debt for borrowing it

from your library. And I just want to return to the point, by the way, about solidarity between debtors. In fact, I think a debtor's union would be something that would be great to have in America. If we had an AARP or an advocacy group for people who owe money, right, to lobby on this issue, that would be powerful because a lack of solidarity between people who owe money is right, to lobby on this issue, that would be powerful because a lack of solidarity

between people who owe money is a real problem. And if we realize, hey, we're all in this boat together, we all have student loans, we should be happy when our other folks' student loans are forgiven because that moves the boulder for all of us, that would be a great shift in perspective. So I can't thank you enough for coming on, Melissa. The name of the book is Unjust Debts.

You can get a copy at our special bookshop, factuallypod.com slash books, or at your local library. Where else can people follow your work online, perhaps? Well, I have a Twitter account. I know I'm not supposed to call it that anymore. I guess it's an X. Melissa B. Jacoby, I have a website, mbjacoby.org, and that also contains places I'll be in person Melissa B. Jacoby, I have a website, mbjacoby.org,

and that also contains places I'll be in person to talk about this book and also some other virtual events. So mbjacoby.org is where lots of stuff is collected. Incredible, thank you so much for coming on, Melissa. It's been wonderful. Thank you for this conversation. Well, thank you once again to Melissa Jacoby for coming on the show.

If you wanna pick up a copy of her book, you can do so at factuallypod.com slash books. And just a reminder, every book you buy there supports not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. If you wanna support the show directly, you can do so on Patreon. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show

ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name in the credits of the show and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. This week I wanna thank John Garcia, Andreas Gauger, Angelique Fouquet, Eden Welch, Patrick Flanagan, Krattone Linslat, Andrew Empurifoy, Marcus Mitchell, Vanessa Russell, and Josh Beol.

Thank you so much for supporting the show. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover, if you would like to join them. Of course, I wanna thank my producers, Sam Roudman and Tony Wilson, everybody here at Head Gum for making the show possible. You can find me online at AdamConover.net. All of my tickets and tour dates are there too.

Phoenix, Toronto, I'll see you soon. New City's coming soon, AdamConover.net. And until then, I'll see you next week on Factually. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know anything