Stuff You Should Know - The Anarchist Cookbook: Funny but Dangerous

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

You might have owned the Anarchist Cookbook once, but you probably didn’t use it to turn a shotgun into a grenade launcher or build a bomb. Unfortunately some people did and the author called for this book of “forbidden knowledge” to be taken out of print.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Sheryl Swoops and I'm Tarika Foster-Brasby. And on our new podcast, we're talking about the real obstacles women face day to day. Because no matter who you are, there are levels to what we experience as women. And Tia and I have no problem going there. Listen to Levels to This with Sheryl Swoops and Tarika Foster-Brasby, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose. My latest episode is with Jelly Roll. This episode

is one of the most honest and raw interviews I've ever had. We go deep into Jelly Roll's life story from being in and out of prison from the age of 13 to being one of today's biggest artists. I was a desperate delusional dreamer. Be a delusional dreamer. Just don't be a desperate delusional dreamer. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want to miss this one. depressing issues and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue, but America, we are not going back.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Today at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat station. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff You Should Know. And this is the Somebody Gives Out Even Worse Advice Than We Do edition.

I'm glad you picked this one. Thanks. Do you have any history with the Anarchist Cookbook? Yes. Did you have a copy of it? Yes. I could have told you that. Did you?

No. I mean, I guess first we should just tell people we're talking about a book called The Anarchist Cookbook published in 1971 that was, or that is rather a book that contains everything from like how to make your own LSD to how to find mushrooms to how to make a bomb. And, you know, Dave points out that it was sort of a dorm room special and I did not have one, but, you know, I had a couple of friends that had it and it was sort of a dorm room special and I did not have one but you

know I had a couple of friends that had it and it was just one of those things were like hey got the anarchist cookbook it meant you were like just an alternative thinker and he's very silly thinking back yeah and I think most of my friends that had it it was all about like the drug stuff it wasn't they weren't like bomb makers, you know? Right, yeah, I actually hadn't even fully realized that there was like bomb making instructions in there. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's almost like I've seen it described as a book of forbidden knowledge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got such a bad reputation that it's, in any court case, I was reading about this, in any court case where the book has been confiscated as contraband, not a single judge has ruled that that was illegal. They're like, yeah, get that book away from them,

that's a terrible book. And it's also frequently, or has been in the past, used as circumstantial evidence to help prove cases against people suspected of crimes. They were also caught with the anarchist cookbook in their house, and that was used against them in their trials. Yeah. And I think in the UK, I was trying to find specific incidents of this, but I'm pretty sure in the UK, at least for a while, like it was, if you got caught with it, or maybe if something had gone wrong and you got caught with it, it was an extra charge or something.

I'm not sure if it was officially banned there. It was kind of hard to, it was a little murky. Yeah, but so, I mean, in the real world, this book has been used in plots that have resulted in real life deaths. Like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, he had a copy. A guy named Thomas Spinks who bombed 10 abortion clinics

in the 80s, he had a copy. The Boston Marathon bombers, they had copies. The Columbine shooters, they had a copy. Like, even if it didn't directly teach them how to blow people up necessarily, it was still an inspirational book for them, right? And the craziest part about this whole thing is that these people were buying fully into a book written

by an angry 19-year-old who went on to grow up very shortly after the publication of this book and denounced it almost immediately. Yeah, and a book that was, you know, kind of a copy paste fest of mostly information that was readily available. In fact, I would say completely, I don't think anything that he put in there was something that was like truly forbidden.

No. Like you could find all this stuff out because this kid found all this stuff out and just compiled it. Yeah. Even the literal recipe for LSD was copied and pasted from the Eli Lilly patent that describes in depth, like anybody can buy the Anarchist Cookbook or go online and figure out exactly how to make LSD based on these instructions, if you know what you're talking about, chemistry.

That's a big caveat, but I mean, it's not like, so yes, every single part in this book was accessible, but it was presented, at least by the publisher, as, you know, again, this book of forbidden repressed knowledge that needs to be gotten in the hands of every American so that we can stage an actual revolution and take back our country from the forces of, you know, evil. Yeah. Pretty funny.

I mean, not funny because it's been used, but just dorks like you and I having it around us in college is sort of an embarrassing trope, you know? I had mine in high school. Oh, of course. You're ahead of the game, my friend. For sure. So this book has been, two million copies of the Anarchist Cookbook has been sold in the, I guess, 50, yeah, more than 50 years since it was first published. And it came from, again, an angry 19-year-old whose background and then also the backdrop that he wrote this book in really kind of inform what you need to know about the Anarchist Cookbook. Yeah, totally.

As far as his background, his name is William Powell. He was born in the States but moved to England when he was three, son of a philosophy professor. His father was a philosophy teacher and then would go on to work in leadership at the UN. His mom was a therapist. They weren't like, you know, these radicals kind of enforcing their opinions on their son. He was just a regular kid who moved to England, kind of didn't fit in there because he was bullied for being an American.

Then when he came back from England, he was bullied for having an American. Then when he came back from England, he was bullied for having a little bit of an English accent by Americans in White Plains, New York. And apparently even like teachers would make fun of his accent and stuff and tease him. So he started getting pretty angry early on, started getting in with a bad crowd and skipping school and busting cars.

And yeah, eventually I believe they sent him to a boarding school where he was expelled after he drove a teacher's ditch into a car, or I guess put it neutral and pushed it. Yeah, a car into a ditch. That'll get you expelled pretty much every time. He also said that he was molested during this time

as well at the boarding school. So like he had a lot of reason to be angry. This stuff like really impacted him. And he also said later on he became an educator, which is pretty amazing considering what we're about to describe him doing as a teenager. But he believes looking back that he had an undiagnosed learning disability that made it, on top of all the social mistreatment, made his academic career that much harder and frustrating as well. So you put all that together, you have a kid who's ripe for being anti-social, I guess.

Yeah, for sure. He eventually would go to New York City when he was 17 on his own and lived on the lower east side, East Village area in the Bowery. And in the 1960s, this was 67, you talked about sort of what was going on around him. This was a New York that was in the middle of protesting Vietnam. He was even, you know, attempted to be drafted at least to go to Vietnam and fight, but he

showed up drunk and stoned at the draft board hoping to get out of it, which I guess he did, right? He did. I think he was interviewed four different times before they gave him a Section 4F. Yeah, which is what he wanted. It's exactly what he wanted. And this is another thing. This is part of that backdrop that I was referring to that was really important to understand.

This is a time where if you were like a, there was I think a 20-something year window in age. If you were this, in that window, if that's how old you were, there was a chance that you were going to be forced to go fight in Vietnam and possibly die, and possibly kill other people. And this was reality. And a lot of people were not okay with that. So this pushing back on that whole sentiment, um, kind of formed this basis of like this revolutionary, you know, sense that like

this stakes were so high for what could happen to you if the government just insouciantly decided you're going over there now, that to the people who were opposed to it, there's like there's no response to this except for a bloody revolution. Yeah, exactly. So his sort of living situation certainly didn't quell any of this. He was roommate to a guy named Steve Hancock, who was the older brother of one of his former boarding school pals.

And he was a genuine anarchist, Steve Hancock was. He managed a bookstore called Bookmasters, And he was a genuine, like, anarchist, Steve Hancock was. He managed a bookstore called Bookmasters, got William Powell a job there. He started digging into, you know, all those sort of revolutionary guidebooks, like from Che Guevara and Abbie Hoffman and other, you know, supposed anarchist leaders of the time. And Steve Hancock was a big influence on him. He was sort of, he was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. I think we've talked about them at some point. Yeah, Eugene Debs was one of the founding members. Remember him? He ran for president as a socialist from prison.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Hancock was a member of this group and Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Hancock was a member of this group and he told William Powell about this idea for distributing flyers, about making LSD, about making Molotov cocktails. And that was what the original Anarchist Cookbook was gonna be from Powell once he kind of launched into this thing was just a series of flyers,

but it kind of quickly escalated to book level. Okay, cool. So just one more thing about him working at Bookmasters. Apparently, he met Valerie Solange, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, when she came around peddling copies of her scum manifesto. And he was like, I like this, and actually got a few copies and put them in the window. Isn't that nuts? I think this is a week before she shot Andy Warhol too. Well, that all totally tracks with his sort of state of mind at the time, you know?

Yeah, and speaking of state of mind, so he is completely hooked on speed at this time. He's doing tons of drugs, just living the anarchist, anti-government, anti-war lifestyle in New York, which was, I don't know if you said it or not, this was basically like the center of the anti-war movement in 1967, 68, right?

Yeah. And like this whole idea, I should say not everybody, I said earlier, everybody who was opposed to it was like the only way you can solve this is a bloody revolution. Not true. There was a lot of peaceful activism that did not think that, but the people,

there was a lot more militancy than say, you'll see today in America. It was inspired by the idea that you could be drafted and sent to kill people and be killed, and those people were the ones who were like, we need to overthrow the government. And so that's what William Powell was essentially doing. When he sat down to write this book,

he wanted to put the information, or if you put it all together, you could overthrow the government or start a revolution into the hands of as many people as possible. And that was the Anarchist Cookbook that he sat down and wrote. Or like you said, he sat down and copied and pasted. He wrote a lot too.

Sure. And maybe we'll get to some of that actual writing after a break. Sure. All right, we'll be right back. I'm Cheryl Swoops, WNBA champ, three-time Olympian, I'm Cheryl Swoops, WNBA champ, three-time Olympian and basketball hall of famer. I'm a mom and I'm a woman. I'm Tariqa Foster-Brasby, journalist, sports reporter, basketball analyst, a wife, and

I'm also a woman. And on our new podcast, we're talking about the real obstacles women face day to day. See, athlete or not, we all know it takes a lot as women to be at the top of our game. We want to share those stories about balancing work and relationships, motherhood, career shifts, you know, just all the s*** we go through. Because no matter who you are, there are levels to what we experience as women. And TNI? Well, we have no problem going there.

Listen to levels to this with Cheryl Swoops and Tariqa Foster-Brasby, an iHeart Women's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and I'm the host of On Purpose. My latest episode is with Jelly Roll. This episode is one of the most honest and raw interviews I've ever had.

We go deep into Jelly Roll's life story from being in and out of prison from the age of 13 to being one of today's biggest artists. We talk about guilt, shame, body image and huge life transformations. I was a desperate delusional dreamer and the desperate part got me in a lot of trouble. I encourage delusional dreamers. Be a delusional dreamer. Just don't be a desperate delusional dreamer. I just had such an anger. I was just so mad at life. Everything that wasn't right was everybody's fault but mine. I had such a victim mentality. I took zero accountability for anything in my life. I was the kid that if you asked what happened, I immediately started with everything but me. It took years for me to break that, like

years of work. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust me, you won't want are not going back. Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Today at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free I Heart Radio app's Hip Hop Beat station. All right. So, Powell decides to put this book together. He goes to the New York Public Library. I said it like I was seven years old. Started researching this book. And because he, you know, hopefully we've made it clear that this guy was not a weapons expert

and didn't know how to make bombs and was not a guerrilla fighter or true revolutionary. He was sort of inspired to collect this information. And the forward of the book kind of says it all here, which he wrote, this is a book for the people of the United States of America. It is not written for the members of fringe political groups, such as the Weathermen or the Minutemen.

Those radical groups don't need this book. They already know everything that's in here. And if the real people of America, the silent majority are going to survive, they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book. Yeah. So there you have it.

So you said that he had like zero experience in guerrilla warfare, hand-to-hand combat, making bombs, converting like weapons into other newer, deadlier types of weapons. But if you read his writing, he sounds like he's been there, done that, and now he's come to tell you how to do it yourself. That's the way it reads. He sounds like a total tough guy. And when you step back and realize, like, no, this guy just did a lot of research and then presented it as if he knew what he was talking about, it actually is kind of funny. Yes, but we don't pretend like we've done,

you know, like we haven't like hung out with porcupines or, you know. We're always clear about that. We've never, you know, given our expertise on economic policy to any government. Like, we're not experts, right? So this guy he presented, William Powell presented himself as an expert.

And that's just how the book reads. But when you step back and think about it like that, it's actually kind of funny, some of the stuff that's in there, like one thing he did do was draw a lot of stuff. And he wasn't a very good artist to begin with, but one of the pictures that stood out to me, and this is only funny if you look at it a certain way.

It's also very much not funny, but there's a section on garrots or gar-ots, I can't remember how you pronounce it, And this is only funny if you look at it a certain way. It's also very much not funny. But there's a section on garrots or garrots, I can't remember how you pronounce it, which is two pieces of wood that you hold in your hands and then a piece of piano wire between them and you strangle somebody with this. And there's a drawing that I guess William Powell did

of somebody strangling a guy, he's coming at him from behind with his knee in his back, like strangling him with a garrote. And just the way that this picture reads and all the text around it is just the idea that this kid had never done or even seen anything like that but is presenting it like this is how you do it. It's just so preposterous and ridiculous

that people actually took this seriously. It'd be like taking life or death advice from Holden Caulfield, basically. Yeah, was there, I didn't see that drawing, was there a speech bubble that said, bleh? Pretty much, yeah. It was implied, for sure.

Okay. One other thing that stuck out to me too, Chuck, was he would just toss out percentages very confidently, and if you stop and read it, you're like, I don't think that's true. One of them was, if in hand-to-hand combat, first of all, you fight to the death, that's how you fight hand-to-hand combat.

You're not trying to knock the guy out. That was a piece of advice in this. But he also says that if you can get your opponent knocked off balance, you, nine to one you can kill him in the next move. So nine times out of ten, your next move is gonna kill the guy. Where did that percentage come from? Where did that ratio come from? You can just tell he's just making this stuff up. And when you take it like that, he just made all of it up essentially. And the stuff he didn't make up, he, like you said, just copied and pasted from legitimate sources,

which is what really actually made the book dangerous. Yeah. Or, I mean, at the very least, he may have gotten that from someone who made that up. You know? I mean, who knows? So, there are a lot of different things you can, you know, we've kind of mentioned a few of the things. There's a lot of drug stuff, like we mentioned how to make LSD and how to generate psychedelic mushrooms and stuff. But there's also a lot of, you know, weapons stuff, how to kill somebody with piano wire

and two pieces of wood. Like you mentioned how to modify guns, like how to make your own silencer or how to convert a shotgun into a grenade launcher. That was a big one. Yeah, that was a real big one. And this is the stuff that like, you know, in the, I guess, maybe since the 60s, but at least in the 90s was my experience. And it sounds like yours is when, you know,

your friend had it on the bookshelf, and they're like, look at this, man. You know, check this out. And it was never like, let's build a silencer for a pistol. None of us had pistols. It was just like, check this thing out, man. Like, this is a dangerous book. Yeah, and let's do some nutmeg and smoke some banana peels,

because this book is saying... Yeah, that was in there, too....pretty buzzed from it. Yeah, and let's do some nutmeg and smoke some banana peels because this book is saying. Yeah, that was in there too. Pretty buzzed from it. Yeah, yeah. That was, yeah, so if you've ever heard of smoking banana peels, this isn't where it came from, but the Anarchist Cookbook cribbed it from, I think the Berkeley Barb, some alternative newsletter

like a couple years before. Smoking Banana Peels was all the rage in like 1967. Then everybody finally figured out it doesn't do a thing to you. It was all just basically a hoax, but it made it pretty far. Or more expensive than just buying weed. Yeah.

Like 200 bananas or something. But allegedly it gave you like a totally different trip than weed or LSD. Oh sure. So, you know, the hipp like a totally different trip than weed or LSD. Oh, sure. So, you know, the hippies were like, let's try anything we can. And then nutmeg actually does have psychedelic properties, but you have to take so much of it that you would just be hating life from taking that much nutmeg. Do you remember the other one?

I'm sure this got around was the toothpaste on a cigarette Yeah, and bleach you had to mix it with bleach. Oh, so see I didn't know that part. No wonder it never did anything Yeah, which that doesn't do anything either Yeah, by the way, don't try any of this dumb stuff that we're kind of jokingly reminiscing about hearing it was a dumb thing to Hear back then and spread around, and it certainly is now. So none of, all of this stuff is very much not recommended. Yeah, that's, you saying that reminds me of, there's this great line from Malcolm in the Middle

where I can't remember his mom's name, but his mom was like scolding his dad about like filling the kids' heads with all these stories of like misspent youth. And his dad goes, those are cautionary tales. And she said, cautionary tales don't end with it was so cool. Right. That was such a good show.

It really was a great show. But speaking of cautionary, there was, he did lay out a little caution here and there, use care, caution, common sense, this book is not for children or morons, was one of, even though plenty of children and morons got it into their hands. But he was a sort of a dramatic writer.

I'm not gonna say he was like untalented as a writer, but it's kind of hard to judge the book on those terms at all even, you know? Yeah, and I don't think a single writer in the history of the world has ever looked back at what they wrote at 19 and was like, this is great. Oh God, yeah, totally. It's always cringy.

So considering that he was 19 when he wrote it, it's actually pretty good writing. Yeah, no, good point. So yeah, like you said, he did issue some warnings and that kind of thing. Not necessarily as like a COA. I don't get the impression that William Powell ever even considered covering his own rear. No, or that I don't even know how much he thought about this stuff ahead of time. Like people actually doing some of this stuff, you know? Yeah, I don't know if he just, if it was like a bit of a lark like that where he was like, I'm just gonna do this and didn't think it through. Or if he actually was like

really trying to help people start a revolution. I'm not exactly sure which way it went, but from what I've seen, most people cite that he was actually quite serious when he wrote this book. Yeah, for sure. But they call it a cookbook. There were a lot of quote-unquote cookbooks that some featured real recipes for things, but some didn't. It was more like a collection kind of thing.

This had plenty of recipes for druggy stuff. Pot brownies, marijuana butter, how to make marijuana mints. And so there were genuine sort of drug-based recipes in there. But just because if you've never heard of the Anarchist Cookbook, it is not just like a cookbook, obviously. No. He also had warnings against sniffing glue or shooting heroin. Yeah.

Which is pretty sensible and level-headed. Yeah, look at that kid. So he put all this together, and I think it's like a couple hundred pages, right? I remember it being semi-thick in like large, large page format, right? Yeah, I think so. That's what they call it in the publishing world, right? Yeah, I think so.

That's what they call it in the publishing world, right? Large page format? Yeah. Yeah, you really just wanted to have it, the spine showing on your bookshelf. Yeah, or when you carried it around campus, like you made sure that your arm wasn't covering the title. Right.

Oh man, I never saw anyone actually carrying them around. So, he tried to enter the publishing world with this manuscript. He sent it to 30 different houses. He got 30 different rejection letters, some like, what is wrong with you? Others like, this isn't quite the fit with our ethos. And then somehow, some way, he came

into contact with a guy named Lyle Stewart. And Lyle Stewart was a publisher who just basically wanted to be a provocative publisher. And the Anarchist cookbook just fell into his lap. And he was like, thank you, God. And he ran with it. Oh, yeah, big time. He didn't change a word. He was like, this is perfect as it is.

All your drawings are great. You're such a good little drawer boy. And he just, he wanted it. I think he loved the idea that, the idea of the book. And I think any thoughts to changing it were quickly squashed in his mind of like, no, sort of the genius of this book, to him at least, was just how taboo it was. And it should look like, you know, crazy rantings. Because one, there's a quote from him that I think is pretty telling of like who this guy is, and also kind of smart for a book publisher, was that, I'm paraphrasing, but like people don't buy a bestseller like this to read it.

They buy it to have it and just show it on the bookshelf. Exactly, to carry it around campus. Yeah, with your arm not covering up the title. So, in the hands of Lyle Stewart, like this book would take on its life finally, right? It would go from the rantings of a 19-year-old kid to a legitimately published book

that was also heavily promoted by a guy who knew how to just play the media to get free exposure, essentially. And so he held a press conference where somebody, supposedly an angry anarchist who was mad that this kid was sharing this forbidden information with the world, threw a smoke bomb into the press conference,

and everybody like jumped for cover. And William Powell later said that he noticed that Lyle Stewart didn't dock or anything like that. He just kept his position behind the podium during the press conference. Pretty much. And he was like, Lyle Stewart was just the kind of guy who would think to stage something like that just to show how seriously anarchistic this book was during the press conference.

Like, that's the kind of promotion that this book got from him. Yeah, absolutely. If you're wondering, like, all right, where is our old friend J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI and all this? They were on it big time. They took this book seriously. You used to hear rumors, again, these are probably just rumors that never happened

about like, there was a list, and like, where'd you buy it from? And like, did you use a credit card, that kind of thing, because now you're on a list if you own a copy of this thing. It probably didn't go that far, but they did question his parents. They questioned his dad's colleagues at the UN. They never questioned Powell, like sat him down in person because they thought it would, you know, it would hit the news. What they wanted to do was kind of quash this thing without giving it even more publicity.

Right. But that didn't stop the media from running with it, for sure. There was a headline that Dave, who helped us with this, he dug up from UPI that said, New Anarchist Cookbook Contains Recipe for Sabotage, Destruction. Yeah. And so, as people are reading this, they become genuinely scared of this book. So, like you said, J. Edgar Hoover is in charge of the FBI. I don't know if we said it or not, but it was published at the beginning in 1971. So, Richard Nixon is president.

This is not a time where people were cool with free speech when it came to making bombs and stuff like that. So everybody was like, you guys need to investigate this and just get rid of this. People were literally sending clippings of like book reviews to J. Edgar Hoover with like notes written in the margin. I think one was danger exclamation point. What are you going to do about this? And what's astounding to me is not a single head got cracked as far as I can tell. And in fact, the FBI was like, we've investigated it and this is all protected by the First Amendment as reprehensible as we think it is.

06 Yeah, which is, you know, a real victory in a way, again, as dumb as a book as it ended up being. It is a victory for free speech in this country to not have the government, even at that time. Yeah, especially at that time. Yeah, come in and like put their neck on everyone's throat, which is kind of surprising. Yeah, it's surprising and it's also ironic because it was exactly that kind of like censorship mentality that William Powell was raging against. He tested it and the system, the establishment actually passed.

It's pretty interesting. They're like, we're going to protect your crummy book, you little revolutionary yokel. Should we take another break? Yeah. All right. I think anytime you say the word yokel, that's our cue. It is.

All right. We'll be right back and talk about kind of when this book was in the wrong hands, what happened right after this. I'm Cheryl Swoops, WNBA champ, three-time Olympian and basketball Hall of Famer. I'm a mom and I'm a woman. I'm Tariqa Foster-Brasby, journalist, sports reporter, basketball analyst, a wife, and I'm also a woman. And on our new podcast, we're talking about

the real obstacles women face day to day. See, athlete or not, we all know it takes a lot as women to be at the top of our game. We want to share those stories about balancing work and relationships, motherhood, career shifts, you know, just all the s*** we go through. Because no matter who you are, there are levels to what we experience as women. And T and I, well, we have no problem going there. Listen to levels to this with Cheryl Swoops and Tariqa Foster-Brasby,

an iHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Elf Beauty, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and I'm the host of On Purpose. My latest episode is with Jelly Roll. This episode is one of the most honest and raw interviews I've ever had.

We go deep into Jelly Roll's life story from being in and out of prison from the age of 13 to being one of today's biggest artists. We talk about guilt, shame, body image and huge life transformations. I was a desperate delusional dreamer and the desperate part got me in a lot of trouble. I encourage delusional dreamers. a desperate delusional dreamer, and the desperate part got me in a lot of trouble. I encourage delusional dreamers, be a delusional dreamer, just don't be a desperate delusional dreamer. I just had such an anger, I was just so mad at life, everything that wasn't right was everybody's fault,

but mine, I had such a victim mentality. I took zero accountability for anything in my life. I was the kid that if you asked what happened, I immediately started with everything but me. It took years for me to break that, like years of work. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Trust me, you won't is clear in this election. Join me, Charlemagne the God, for We the People, an audio town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris, and you live from Detroit, Michigan, exclusively on iHeartRadio. They'll tackle the tough questions, depressing issues, and the future of our nation. We may not see eye to eye on every issue,

but America, we are not going back. Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Today at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat station. All right, Chuck. So you said this book ended up in the wrong hands. I guess we said at the very outset that it did, so it's not really a big twist in the story. But I think the first time blood was actually shed, like life was lost because of the Anarchist

Cookbook, or at least in part, was in September of 1976 when a group of Croatian independence guerrillas hijacked a flight from New York to Chicago and was like, this plane's going to Paris now. And they're like, do you know how many refueling stops we're going to have to make? And they said, we don't care. Just do it. And supposedly, as far as hijackings go, it was really polite. I think some of the people who were actually hostages later told the press, like, it was almost ridiculous

how polite and apologetic these terrorists were. And it turned out that the bombs they had strapped to themselves were like silly putty and alarm clock, were not bombs. But one of the demands that they had was that the Washington Post and some of the other papers had to print their manifesto or else they would set off a real bomb at Grand Central Station. And that one actually did turn out to be real.

Yeah. The bomb squad came in from New York City's finest. Very sadly, one person was killed. Officer Brian Murray was killed trying to defuse the bomb. A few other people were injured upon being charged. The hijackers said, we got this information on how to make this bomb from the Anarchist Cookbook. And that was the first case, like you said, of like real bloodshed happening. But not the first. You know, like you mentioned, this was found on every, not every, but like it seems like

any time you heard about someone committing some awful violent act against either a lot of people or planning something like this, this was sort of the one of the textbooks that they had on their shelf. Exactly. And by this time, so this is 1976, William Powell had completely transformed into a different, again, more grown up person. He became an Anglican. He became religious that same year.

By that time, he'd already gone off to college, graduated, worked in Alaska, discovered his true love of educating kids with learning disabilities, like what he would keep doing for the rest of his life. And so when it came out that this is actually now costing people their lives, he was very upset about that. He wanted to distance himself from the book. The problem was, as we'll see,

he never owned the copyright. In addition to knowing exactly how to promote controversial material, Lyle Stewart also knew how to rip off his authors too. So he owned the copyright to the Anarchist Cookbook. William Powell just got a couple thousand dollars from it and then said, okay, see you later. Yeah, well, a couple of thousand dollars up front. I think he said he ended up making about 50 grand in royalties over

the years. And that was despite him wanting to pull it from print. There was a period of about 11 years where it was out of print. You know, by this point, like in the 90s, he was moving sort of all over the world with his wife, teaching in the Middle East, teaching in Africa, really doing great work. appointed as the CEO of an international school in Tanzania. And parents complained and were like, hey, do you know who this guy is? He wrote the Anarchist Cookbook. And they, you know, they protested. It was an anonymous letter to the board and they protested his hiring. Ironically, it was that same year that the book actually went out of print for a little while, which is what he wanted more than anything. In 91, it was bought by a guy, a publisher named Steven Schragus.

And he was a, you know, I'm not sure how big time he was, but apparently he had a couple of thousand books that he was publishing over this 11-year period. And that was not one of them. He bought the rights and then sat on it and said, you know, the public shouldn't have this. And I agree with him. Oh on it and said, you know, the public shouldn't have this. And I agree with him. Oh wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, so it was like an 11 year period

where, you know, it was out of print. You could still buy it, of course, if you knew someone who had it or if it was in a bookstore or something. It's not like it was banned, but he pulled it for a little over a decade. Wow. I think something that's good to know

about William Powell too by this time, you said he got forced out of his position as CEO of that international school in Tanzania for being the author of the Anarchist Cookbook. Very shortly after he departed, the board got back in touch with him and was like, please come back. We don't care about this. We like what you're doing so much, we want you to come back. So he came back for eight more years as the head of that school. I think that says quite a bit. Yeah. Totally. Did you watch the documentary? No, I haven't. It's good.

There's a documentary called American Anarchists that like, you just, you really feel for this guy because it's a situation where everyone does something dumb or many things that are dumb when they're teenagers. And most of us are able to escape those and leave those firmly in the past and move on and grow up like everyone does. And this was a guy that was really doing great work and really, really, really had so much regret about this book. But there was just, there was nothing he could do about it. And you could feel this guy's pain of like,

my name is tied to this thing. I just wish it would go away. But you never felt like, well, like sometimes, like yeah, but you did it, so you deserve it. I always felt like that. Oh, you never felt like that? No, I always felt really bad for the guy with the interviews because he just went on to do such great work in special ed

and really turned things around and kind of had this stamp on him for the rest of his life. He had a hard time getting work a lot of times. That's one reason he kept kind of moving around. Man, that is really sad. So he's a very empathetic figure, huh? That's how he came across to me. I guess, sympathetic figure.

So, yeah, one reason why he was just like in agony, I guess, over this book, him not being able to do anything about this book is because after that Croatian separatist incident, like it ended up inspiring more violence, like more real world violence throughout the 80s and the 90s. I mean, from the beginning of the 80s

to the end of the 90s, there were some really high profile mass murders that were carried out, like we said, by people who owned the Anarchist Cookbook. So in one way or another, they were inspired or even maybe directed in some cases in carrying out the crimes that they committed, the atrocities even. Yeah.

Yeah. And he was putting out statements all along. He even contacted Amazon to try and get a message kind of permanently posted. The central idea of the book was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about political change. I no longer agree with this. I want to state categorically I'm not in agreement with the contents of the anarchist book, and I would be very pleased and relieved to see its publication discontinued.

I consider it to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication, which should be taken out of print. So yeah, I mean, there was nothing you could do about it because of Lyle Stewart. Yeah, not just Lyle Stewart, but after the guy who I guess sat on it, I think Lyle Stewart sought him out and bought it back and it went back into print. And then Lyle Stewart sold it to another publishing house

that owns it now, that is keeping it in print as well. And the thing to understand about this Anarchist Cookbook, it's like the Abbie Hoffman steal this book thing. Like, the idea of it being pirated is kind of part of its whole jam, you know? So there's so many, like, rip-off copycat published versions of it that you can buy on Amazon and other places, like

no problem. They're like illegitimate counterfeit copies of the Anarchist Cookbook, but it's still the Anarchist Cookbook, somebody else publishing it as if it's in the public domain. And then even if all those people stopped actually physically publishing it, it's all over the internet now. Like I was reading a PDF version of it on the internet archive. Like it's just out there.

The way Dave put it was perfect. The genie's out of the bottle. Like this information is out there now. And unfortunately, it'll probably continue to keep inspiring people into acts of violence because of that spirit behind it. That the government needs to be taken to task and overthrown and the people need to rise up Yeah, and despite everything he tried to do it just he put it out there and it wouldn't go away

he passed away in 2016 and You know always had great regret about what he had put into the world. Yeah, there was one other thing there was another statement he made after I think a school shooting, where he drew parallels between the work he was doing and then the legacy of the book, where he was saying, you know, he works with kids who have learning disabilities and these kids are alienated by their disability, essentially.

And he said, no child should have to earn the right to belong. And then he turns around and essentially empathizes with the kids who are, you know, reading his book and then going on and shooting up their schools and saying like, these kids I'm sure are alienated and feel ostracized as well, and this book did not help them in any way. It did the opposite, probably. Yeah. Yeah, he does seem like a pretty amazing guy.

I mean, just the work that he did afterward is pretty remarkable. I know he's like an internationally renowned educator, or he was. Yeah. So, in some ways, he made up for what he did. And I guess if there's anything to take away from this, if you're a young person, like we have always encouraged people to be bold and use their voice, but you know, maybe pump

the brakes. You know? Think about 10 years from now. What you want, do you want that attached to you 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now? Right. Yeah, if you're writing nonfiction that calls for violence, just stop and ask somebody,

is this a good idea? Right. Since Chuck said right, everybody, you got anything else? Nope. Since Chuck said right, and then nope, it's definitely time for listener mail. Yeah, I'm gonna call this missed opportunities.

This is from AR, or maybe just R. No, it's AR. Okay. AR is talking about our Would a Love Drug Be Ethical episode that just dropped, and AR was a former musician and thinks we missed a lot of opportunities for band names and album titles. Okay, let's hear them. Alright, so here we go. You guys did mention Sivalesco and Earp as an organ saxophone combo.

I don't remember that. There were real gems in there though, guys, like Lussbucket. Yeah, that's a good one. Okay. Experimental Love Drug. Sure. Kind of on the nose. Electric Roses and Philosophers. Yeah. It's a little mouth drug. Sure. Kind of on the nose. Electric roses and philosophers.

Yeah. It's a little mouthy. Yeah. A little wordy. That sounds like an album title then. If they're really wordy, it's usually an album title. Well, here's some album titles or song titles he felt like we missed. You're not good at loving.

That's a great one. That needs a parenthetical, but like, you know, parentheses, but you really are. Right. Uh, really low-key mellow stuff. Okay. I don't know about that. If you dose them, that's pretty good. And Love Is Good Enough, that's a really good one.

That's a great one. I love that. I can't believe there's not a song called that already. Yeah, well there may be. AR points out that the genres on these guys run the gamut from EDM to country. And a really big fan who turned on Friends and Family to the podcast just wanted to say keep doing what you're doing. Thanks a lot AR.

That was a great email. We appreciate that big time. And as always everybody, if we ever walk past a great band name or an album name or a song title or something like that, we want to hear from you too. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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