I recently rewatched that Stomp HBO special from the la.

I recently rewatched that Stomp HBO special from the la.

Oh. It's just so stomped.

Oh. It's just so stomped.

Like we were like, damn, bro, these.

Like we were like, damn, bro, these.

People are playing cards, but it's rhythmic and.

People are playing cards, but it's rhythmic and.

And I just like, yo, they're not even playing They're playing pots and using brooms and ship I feel like there were a couple things, like just commercials, like the basketball commercial where.

And I just like, yo, they're not even playing They're playing pots and using brooms and ship I feel like there were a couple things, like just commercials, like the basketball commercial where.

Like the dude is dribbling. They edited together that, or that one Volkswagen commercial where the windshield wiper starts like going to the beat, and then everything outside the windows starts.

Like the dude is dribbling. They edited together that, or that one Volkswagen commercial where the windshield wiper starts like going to the beat, and then everything outside the windows starts.

Going to the beat.

Going to the beat.

Stop dude. The influence of stomp. They started stomping. It was so stumped, We stopped every everything so stumped. Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season three eighty, Episode two of Daily Night Day, a production of My Heart Radio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America share consciousness. It is Tuesday, March eighteenth, twenty twenty five.

Stop dude. The influence of stomp. They started stomping. It was so stumped, We stopped every everything so stumped. Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season three eighty, Episode two of Daily Night Day, a production of My Heart Radio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America share consciousness. It is Tuesday, March eighteenth, twenty twenty five.

Yep, yep, It's National ag Day, Shout out to Agriculture, National Sloppy Joe Day, National Awkward Moments Day.

Yep, yep, It's National ag Day, Shout out to Agriculture, National Sloppy Joe Day, National Awkward Moments Day.

Yeah, good times, good times, Slopy Joe, Awkward Moments. I know, let's just have an awkward moment the HR people who are really into these national.

Yeah, good times, good times, Slopy Joe, Awkward Moments. I know, let's just have an awkward moment the HR people who are really into these national.

Days DM like, oh, okay, awkward, Now we have to put this one up and put on the bulletin board.

Days DM like, oh, okay, awkward, Now we have to put this one up and put on the bulletin board.

Did not have that one on my twenty twenty five but had on my calendar. Yeah, tried to force an awkward moment. Okay, that was so awkward. It's like, no, oh.

Did not have that one on my twenty twenty five but had on my calendar. Yeah, tried to force an awkward moment. Okay, that was so awkward. It's like, no, oh.

Don't you love Joe Biden.

Don't you love Joe Biden.

Oh okay.

Oh okay.

Anyways, my name is.

Anyways, my name is.

Jack O'Brien aka Potatoes O'Brien, and I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles Gris.

Jack O'Brien aka Potatoes O'Brien, and I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles Gris.

Yes, he's still out here. Look, you can actually find me on Linkerson Boulevard from time to time. Now, even the boulevards of Ventura or Magnolia, you never know, because I'm in the San Fernando Valley, the Shogun Window gun.

Yes, he's still out here. Look, you can actually find me on Linkerson Boulevard from time to time. Now, even the boulevards of Ventura or Magnolia, you never know, because I'm in the San Fernando Valley, the Shogun Window gun.

Yes in d Yeah, stay out here. You're just all just walking making turning the value into a lot of city. Do a lot of walking, nice, a lot of walking.

Yes in d Yeah, stay out here. You're just all just walking making turning the value into a lot of city. Do a lot of walking, nice, a lot of walking.

They call me Chris.

They call me Chris.

Well, mister Walkin.

Well, mister Walkin.

We are thrilled to be joined in air third Seat Wow by the executive director of Civil Rights Corps, which is a nonprofit dedicated to fighting systemic injustice.

We are thrilled to be joined in air third Seat Wow by the executive director of Civil Rights Corps, which is a nonprofit dedicated to fighting systemic injustice.

He's been a civil rights lawyer, a public defender. He was named twenty sixteenth Trial Lawyer of the Year by Public Justice. The author of several books, The incredibly compelling Usual Cruelty and The brand New Copaganda, which we got to read an advanced copy of, is dropping April fifteenth, so good go pre order right now. We'll be talking about it. Most importantly a great follow on social media, of course, please welcome the brilliant and talented Alan Carcasone.

He's been a civil rights lawyer, a public defender. He was named twenty sixteenth Trial Lawyer of the Year by Public Justice. The author of several books, The incredibly compelling Usual Cruelty and The brand New Copaganda, which we got to read an advanced copy of, is dropping April fifteenth, so good go pre order right now. We'll be talking about it. Most importantly a great follow on social media, of course, please welcome the brilliant and talented Alan Carcasone.

Thank you all for having me back.

Thank you all for having me back.

Oh man, always open door. I got excited when I read the word zeitgeist at the end.

Oh man, always open door. I got excited when I read the word zeitgeist at the end.

Of your book.

Of your book.

I was like, oh, yeah, shout out to the show. Yeah, yeah, great word.

I was like, oh, yeah, shout out to the show. Yeah, yeah, great word.

I was thinking of you guys.

I was thinking of you guys.

Yeah, of course, totally.

Yeah, of course, totally.

Man, I've been well, I mean, at least as well as can be. I'm excited to have this book out there in the world, and I think the ideas are so important now and at times rising authoritarianism and a real assault on basic notions of kindness and truth and love. And you know, so I was I was trying to explore the last few years, you know, like what do we make of the mainstream media and how they're leading us to these really dark places, and I'm just glad to be able to be able to talk about it now in public.

Man, I've been well, I mean, at least as well as can be. I'm excited to have this book out there in the world, and I think the ideas are so important now and at times rising authoritarianism and a real assault on basic notions of kindness and truth and love. And you know, so I was I was trying to explore the last few years, you know, like what do we make of the mainstream media and how they're leading us to these really dark places, and I'm just glad to be able to be able to talk about it now in public.

I'd give them an a minus. I think I think they're mostly nailing it. What do you guess thinks? Sorry, I didn't read the book. But we like the mainstream media, right, They're cool.

I'd give them an a minus. I think I think they're mostly nailing it. What do you guess thinks? Sorry, I didn't read the book. But we like the mainstream media, right, They're cool.

Yeah?

Yeah?

I love the New York Times games. I mean, with with many a guest, we like to get to know them a little bit better and do a search history underrated, overrated, But we got a lot to cover, so we want to just kind of dive right in, if that's all right with you, Alec, unless you had a search history underrated or overrated that was particularly pressing that you wanted to get off your chest.

I love the New York Times games. I mean, with with many a guest, we like to get to know them a little bit better and do a search history underrated, overrated, But we got a lot to cover, so we want to just kind of dive right in, if that's all right with you, Alec, unless you had a search history underrated or overrated that was particularly pressing that you wanted to get off your chest.

You know, I don't do anything other than think about topaganda. So okay, I said, better just dive right in, you know, all right, let's do it.

You know, I don't do anything other than think about topaganda. So okay, I said, better just dive right in, you know, all right, let's do it.

I was actually it was funny.

I was actually it was funny.

Yesterday I was hanging out with some people who are from out of town, and like they hit me with the is LA Safe because.

Yesterday I was hanging out with some people who are from out of town, and like they hit me with the is LA Safe because.

Like, and I was like, you, okay, yeah, Kelly's great man, what are you talking about?

Like, and I was like, you, okay, yeah, Kelly's great man, what are you talking about?

Like?

Like?

Because I see a lot of like you know that people running into stores and like grabbing stuff and things like that, and I'm like, oh, my sweet, sweet child, Yeah, this is These are like cherry picked videos that they play over and over again to sort of create that narrative.

Because I see a lot of like you know that people running into stores and like grabbing stuff and things like that, and I'm like, oh, my sweet, sweet child, Yeah, this is These are like cherry picked videos that they play over and over again to sort of create that narrative.

Like crime is actually going on, Like whoa really?

Like crime is actually going on, Like whoa really?

Oh?

Oh?

You know.

You know.

One of the things, the thing that I just think about a lot, is the curation selectively of anecdote. You know, you know, you could you could take a video montage of every missed shot that Michael Jordan took in his career, put them all together, and you make them look like a bad shooter.

One of the things, the thing that I just think about a lot, is the curation selectively of anecdote. You know, you know, you could you could take a video montage of every missed shot that Michael Jordan took in his career, put them all together, and you make them look like a bad shooter.

He's the worst player in the history of the NBA. You can't make a friend shot.

He's the worst player in the history of the NBA. You can't make a friend shot.

That's essentially what the mainstream media does with crime. So the most effective propaganda, this is such an important lesson that I learned in my years of studying this. The most effective propaganda is actually based on true anecdotes. Because if you do something that's that's blatantly blatantly false, unless it's something that people can't really figure out it is false, you actually lose credibility. But if you use a bunch of true anecdotes to suggest kind of false interpretations or then you actually have much more sophisticated propaganda. It's a lot harder to tell the difference. And so what we've seen the last few years as the example like you gave, you know, there was one video that went viral of shoplifting from a Walgreens in San Francisco that itself spawned three hundred and nine articles around the country, that one little video. And at the same time, in that one month period that these hundreds of articles are written about it, and nightly newscasts all over the country, by the thousands, there is virtually no stories about wage staff or tax evasion things that are happening way way more and that cost orders of magnitude more money for people. And that's the selective creation an anecdote that gets us afraid of of all of the wrong things.

That's essentially what the mainstream media does with crime. So the most effective propaganda, this is such an important lesson that I learned in my years of studying this. The most effective propaganda is actually based on true anecdotes. Because if you do something that's that's blatantly blatantly false, unless it's something that people can't really figure out it is false, you actually lose credibility. But if you use a bunch of true anecdotes to suggest kind of false interpretations or then you actually have much more sophisticated propaganda. It's a lot harder to tell the difference. And so what we've seen the last few years as the example like you gave, you know, there was one video that went viral of shoplifting from a Walgreens in San Francisco that itself spawned three hundred and nine articles around the country, that one little video. And at the same time, in that one month period that these hundreds of articles are written about it, and nightly newscasts all over the country, by the thousands, there is virtually no stories about wage staff or tax evasion things that are happening way way more and that cost orders of magnitude more money for people. And that's the selective creation an anecdote that gets us afraid of of all of the wrong things.

And if in case people are like yeah, but like it's better like storytelling, or it's like more salient to like see the violent thing happening. The wage theft is stealing from you, right like those people are stealing from Walgreens, a massive corporation. They're doing it like on a one off basis, and it's being strapolated into like a massive trend they're stealing from a corporation, and the wage theft is happening to you and it's not getting reported on right, and the Walgreens story is being you know that we've got to protect Walgreens. And that is why I gave them an a minus instead of a straight A, you know, because they they do they have some lapses. Sure, yeah, I just want to We're going to get into that because I think you do a great job of like kind of explaining how some of these things that if you ask the average American if these institutions are right or left, they are going to say left, like the mainstream, like Ivy League, universities, the Democratic Party. You do a great job of explaining like how they are some of the main ways that this kind of catastrophic system that we're all living inside of perpetuates itself. But you actually close your book with some amazing talking points that I just want to open with because I do think to your point, they put people in the right mind frame to have this conversation, if that's all right. So you have one about how police spend and this specifically relates to what has happened in the past four or five years since the conversation about defunding the police and all these stories that have come out, like they're the only thing that we have and they're the only thing keeping you safe. You point out that police spend about four percent of their time on what they categorize as violent crime. Such crimes account for only five percent of the rests that police make. For many years, until recent legalization, in dozens of states, the police made more arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crime combined with marijuana legal and almost half the states marijuana possession arrests are still about half of all arrests for all violent crime combined. So just that idea, I think because of all the movies, all the TV shows that we've been fed about police for like in my entire lifetime, Like that's the main genre, right is just like cops solving violent crime is like a top genre of movies. It's just it's not there. It's not there. It's just not supported by fact at all.

And if in case people are like yeah, but like it's better like storytelling, or it's like more salient to like see the violent thing happening. The wage theft is stealing from you, right like those people are stealing from Walgreens, a massive corporation. They're doing it like on a one off basis, and it's being strapolated into like a massive trend they're stealing from a corporation, and the wage theft is happening to you and it's not getting reported on right, and the Walgreens story is being you know that we've got to protect Walgreens. And that is why I gave them an a minus instead of a straight A, you know, because they they do they have some lapses. Sure, yeah, I just want to We're going to get into that because I think you do a great job of like kind of explaining how some of these things that if you ask the average American if these institutions are right or left, they are going to say left, like the mainstream, like Ivy League, universities, the Democratic Party. You do a great job of explaining like how they are some of the main ways that this kind of catastrophic system that we're all living inside of perpetuates itself. But you actually close your book with some amazing talking points that I just want to open with because I do think to your point, they put people in the right mind frame to have this conversation, if that's all right. So you have one about how police spend and this specifically relates to what has happened in the past four or five years since the conversation about defunding the police and all these stories that have come out, like they're the only thing that we have and they're the only thing keeping you safe. You point out that police spend about four percent of their time on what they categorize as violent crime. Such crimes account for only five percent of the rests that police make. For many years, until recent legalization, in dozens of states, the police made more arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crime combined with marijuana legal and almost half the states marijuana possession arrests are still about half of all arrests for all violent crime combined. So just that idea, I think because of all the movies, all the TV shows that we've been fed about police for like in my entire lifetime, Like that's the main genre, right is just like cops solving violent crime is like a top genre of movies. It's just it's not there. It's not there. It's just not supported by fact at all.

It never has been. Yeah, there has never been a time in US history when the significant bulk of police activity has been geared at violent crime. You take a look through the eras you know, the origin of the modern police forces had to do with capturing enslaved people who had run away and crushing union organizing in the rest of the country. And that's how the modern police force developed. And at that point they weren't even they didn't feel a propaganda need to make themselves out as agents of public safety. They were quite open about what they were doing. And as the twentieth century evolved and our sort of collective democratic values started to be articulated differently, police developed more and more and more of a propaganda need to justify their existence not as preserving distributions of wealth and power and racial and economic hierarchy, but as quote unquote public safety. And so then you see a massive effort in the modern era, through huge investments from the CIA, from the DoD, from the DEA, from local and prosecutor of to the multi billion dollar police pr industry today to shift the way we think through through video, through TV, through movies, and then, as I argue in the book, through a massive and mostly secret and kind of unprecedented network of relationships with the liberal media. And this is something in this book. As you mentioned, this book is really about the role of liberal institutions and the way that police and prosecutors and prisons and the multi billion dollar industries that profit off of them have co opted. Each of these institutions that is thought of as liberal, from the kinds of research that are done to the kinds of stories you see on your local news, And none of it is about helping us understand the things that are the greatest threats to our safety. And instead it's about creating and sort of a narrative that the things that we should fear are the things that poor people, immigrants, people of color, strangers due to us, and and those are actually not the greatest sources of risk that all of us are exposed to on a daily basis. For example, just to take one example of something that's almost completely ignored by the police, sexual assault or child sexual assault. Almost no police time, relatively speaking, is devoted to this. Right, they don't have undercover squads of officers going to frat houses and other places of rampant sexual assault. That's what they do for drugs in poor neighborhoods. You also don't have undercover cops going to frat houses for drugs, right.

It never has been. Yeah, there has never been a time in US history when the significant bulk of police activity has been geared at violent crime. You take a look through the eras you know, the origin of the modern police forces had to do with capturing enslaved people who had run away and crushing union organizing in the rest of the country. And that's how the modern police force developed. And at that point they weren't even they didn't feel a propaganda need to make themselves out as agents of public safety. They were quite open about what they were doing. And as the twentieth century evolved and our sort of collective democratic values started to be articulated differently, police developed more and more and more of a propaganda need to justify their existence not as preserving distributions of wealth and power and racial and economic hierarchy, but as quote unquote public safety. And so then you see a massive effort in the modern era, through huge investments from the CIA, from the DoD, from the DEA, from local and prosecutor of to the multi billion dollar police pr industry today to shift the way we think through through video, through TV, through movies, and then, as I argue in the book, through a massive and mostly secret and kind of unprecedented network of relationships with the liberal media. And this is something in this book. As you mentioned, this book is really about the role of liberal institutions and the way that police and prosecutors and prisons and the multi billion dollar industries that profit off of them have co opted. Each of these institutions that is thought of as liberal, from the kinds of research that are done to the kinds of stories you see on your local news, And none of it is about helping us understand the things that are the greatest threats to our safety. And instead it's about creating and sort of a narrative that the things that we should fear are the things that poor people, immigrants, people of color, strangers due to us, and and those are actually not the greatest sources of risk that all of us are exposed to on a daily basis. For example, just to take one example of something that's almost completely ignored by the police, sexual assault or child sexual assault. Almost no police time, relatively speaking, is devoted to this. Right, they don't have undercover squads of officers going to frat houses and other places of rampant sexual assault. That's what they do for drugs in poor neighborhoods. You also don't have undercover cops going to frat houses for drugs, right.

Yeah, fuse probably doing a lot of drugs, But.

Yeah, fuse probably doing a lot of drugs, But.

Do the laziest undercover works that copy uniform like you guys got some like.

Do the laziest undercover works that copy uniform like you guys got some like.

Blow cane or something like yeah last week.

Blow cane or something like yeah last week.

For years, in many major US police departments they had hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits, and instead the police were spending tens of billions of dollars on drug enforcement. This had nothing to do with keeping us safe or making intentional, reasonable decisions about which crimes should be prioritize and which crimes should not be. It had everything to do with using the police force to control certain populations and huge amounts of profit that could be made from policing of drug cases, which I explain a little bit more in the book, but I think that's a really important thing to understand. Yeah.

For years, in many major US police departments they had hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits, and instead the police were spending tens of billions of dollars on drug enforcement. This had nothing to do with keeping us safe or making intentional, reasonable decisions about which crimes should be prioritize and which crimes should not be. It had everything to do with using the police force to control certain populations and huge amounts of profit that could be made from policing of drug cases, which I explain a little bit more in the book, but I think that's a really important thing to understand. Yeah.

Yeah, you have the quote from Nixon's assistant to Domestic Affairs saying like literally just being like, yeah, this was our plan. Make it illegal to be either against the war or black or we can't make it illegal to be against the war black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities, like just straight up, we could arrest their leaders raid their homes, break up their meetings. And this is like when they came up with the war on drugs in its like nineteen eighties, nineties and kind of modern incarnation, and they just they straight had the plan and executed it.

Yeah, you have the quote from Nixon's assistant to Domestic Affairs saying like literally just being like, yeah, this was our plan. Make it illegal to be either against the war or black or we can't make it illegal to be against the war black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities, like just straight up, we could arrest their leaders raid their homes, break up their meetings. And this is like when they came up with the war on drugs in its like nineteen eighties, nineties and kind of modern incarnation, and they just they straight had the plan and executed it.

And I want you to understand, I mean, just take Chicago for example, at the height of the civil rights movement. I'm not even going to count the federal officers, so this let's leave out the Feds. The Chicago police had five hundred officers devoted to infiltrating and crushing the civil rights movement. Five hundred full time cops. Right now, the history of our current era has not been written. We really have very limited window into what the current police are doing with their intelligence divisions, right and the variety of informans they're using. But take a look, for example, at Chicago itself. After the police murder of Lakwan MacDonald, which the police had a video of and hid for a long time to get rama manual back elected. When McDonald was killed by the Chicago police, they had four full time dedicated public relations officials at CPD. Wow, in the couple of years after it started becoming a scandal, they jumped to thirty and then forty and now they've over fifty full time pr people the Chicago Police Department. This is this is affecting the information that you and I see on the news.

And I want you to understand, I mean, just take Chicago for example, at the height of the civil rights movement. I'm not even going to count the federal officers, so this let's leave out the Feds. The Chicago police had five hundred officers devoted to infiltrating and crushing the civil rights movement. Five hundred full time cops. Right now, the history of our current era has not been written. We really have very limited window into what the current police are doing with their intelligence divisions, right and the variety of informans they're using. But take a look, for example, at Chicago itself. After the police murder of Lakwan MacDonald, which the police had a video of and hid for a long time to get rama manual back elected. When McDonald was killed by the Chicago police, they had four full time dedicated public relations officials at CPD. Wow, in the couple of years after it started becoming a scandal, they jumped to thirty and then forty and now they've over fifty full time pr people the Chicago Police Department. This is this is affecting the information that you and I see on the news.

Right, full full court press all the time. By the way, Chicago was it was it a Chicago cop who grabbed the back of your neck and told you he had your DNA?

Right, full full court press all the time. By the way, Chicago was it was it a Chicago cop who grabbed the back of your neck and told you he had your DNA?

Was it?

Was it?

Or no?

Or no?

It wasn't any blew my fucking mind.

It wasn't any blew my fucking mind.

Yeah that was in Texas.

Yeah that was in Texas.

Jesus Christ, that was fucking mind blowing. Yeah, grabbed. It was basically like, I now have your DNA, I know, and here's the make a model of your car, and just the most like sinister threatening shit for what I have to assume you were holding up a room full of people with a handgun.

Jesus Christ, that was fucking mind blowing. Yeah, grabbed. It was basically like, I now have your DNA, I know, and here's the make a model of your car, and just the most like sinister threatening shit for what I have to assume you were holding up a room full of people with a handgun.

Close I was. I was suing the jurisdictions around the country for legally jailing people. So that's just threatening to them.

Close I was. I was suing the jurisdictions around the country for legally jailing people. So that's just threatening to them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

But that's the thing you have to understand too, is is a lot of people don't talk about this, but many, many, many people around the country, progressive local and state officials. I've had judges, prosecutors, mayors, state assembly officials all come to me over the years and share vivid and well documented stories of police threatening them and their families if they took anti police stances. The organized right wing police bureaucracy is extremely unaccountable and goes to enormous lengths to threaten anybody like even me, just a visiting civil rights lawyer. You know, the idea that they would follow me and document the make and model of my car and take the time to you know, threaten me in that way. And I was, you know, I was also in another situation. I was leading a spring break trip. I was actually traveling with a New York Times reporter and a law student intern from Harvard, and I was detained by a group of armed sheriffs. You know, they've had their hands on their guns, on their hips, and they locked me in a room and they started demanding that I answer questions to them. But what I was, and all I was doing at that point, was was asking for publicly available records at a courthouse. So this is the kind of thing that happens a million times a year. You never hear about it, but right deeply shapes how the public officials you see taking pro police stands. A lot of that is actually driven by fear, right, Yeah.

But that's the thing you have to understand too, is is a lot of people don't talk about this, but many, many, many people around the country, progressive local and state officials. I've had judges, prosecutors, mayors, state assembly officials all come to me over the years and share vivid and well documented stories of police threatening them and their families if they took anti police stances. The organized right wing police bureaucracy is extremely unaccountable and goes to enormous lengths to threaten anybody like even me, just a visiting civil rights lawyer. You know, the idea that they would follow me and document the make and model of my car and take the time to you know, threaten me in that way. And I was, you know, I was also in another situation. I was leading a spring break trip. I was actually traveling with a New York Times reporter and a law student intern from Harvard, and I was detained by a group of armed sheriffs. You know, they've had their hands on their guns, on their hips, and they locked me in a room and they started demanding that I answer questions to them. But what I was, and all I was doing at that point, was was asking for publicly available records at a courthouse. So this is the kind of thing that happens a million times a year. You never hear about it, but right deeply shapes how the public officials you see taking pro police stands. A lot of that is actually driven by fear, right, Yeah.

I mean I felt like that in La right where in the summer of twenty twenty, like there was a lot of pressure on the city council to be like, are you going to address these budgets, and like these motherfuckers pulled up like they were going to get like all these cops pulled up to sort of protest that they thought it would be detrimental for budgets to be touched in any way. But it was so menacing that you knew that it was. It wasn't merely to be like, we're concerned about our wages. They're like, you know, fuck around with us and see what you know, you can learn how sort of off the rails we can get. And I remember just sort of like that image really sort of I think always inherently you have a belief that like these who are not here to protect us at all, But then you could really just see how organized they were in protecting this right to just execute violence on people for whatever reason and.

I mean I felt like that in La right where in the summer of twenty twenty, like there was a lot of pressure on the city council to be like, are you going to address these budgets, and like these motherfuckers pulled up like they were going to get like all these cops pulled up to sort of protest that they thought it would be detrimental for budgets to be touched in any way. But it was so menacing that you knew that it was. It wasn't merely to be like, we're concerned about our wages. They're like, you know, fuck around with us and see what you know, you can learn how sort of off the rails we can get. And I remember just sort of like that image really sort of I think always inherently you have a belief that like these who are not here to protect us at all, But then you could really just see how organized they were in protecting this right to just execute violence on people for whatever reason and.

Get paid for it.

Get paid for it.

That was very, very very scary, but also part of like I think what is important about this book is for us to have a bit of an evolution on how we're even looking at it because to Jack's point, we're all raised to be like, yeah, they're the good guys, and they like to break dance sometimes at the local basketball court, and they're fun people. But then they also keep us safe and these other things, while meanwhile we are hearing directly from their mouths, like in the case of like people in Nixon's cabinet, we're like, no, no, no, like we need we need these people to sort of create the air that people that are sort of opposed to what we're doing as a government or municipality that this is illegal, and we use the activity of the police to sort of connect the dots for people as a shorthand to be like, yes, hippie's bad, Yes, yes, this makes sense now.

That was very, very very scary, but also part of like I think what is important about this book is for us to have a bit of an evolution on how we're even looking at it because to Jack's point, we're all raised to be like, yeah, they're the good guys, and they like to break dance sometimes at the local basketball court, and they're fun people. But then they also keep us safe and these other things, while meanwhile we are hearing directly from their mouths, like in the case of like people in Nixon's cabinet, we're like, no, no, no, like we need we need these people to sort of create the air that people that are sort of opposed to what we're doing as a government or municipality that this is illegal, and we use the activity of the police to sort of connect the dots for people as a shorthand to be like, yes, hippie's bad, Yes, yes, this makes sense now.

And another thing you have that I talk about in the book that you have to understand is that what we're told now is called, in our current sort of propaganda discourse, community policing. And you know this this idea that you were just mentioning a cops breakdancing, and you know they were during the twenty twenty uprisings, there were some cops that were doing the macarena with protesters, and every local news station runs a story every now and then about like a midnight basketball league that the cops are running, or like a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway for four families. But you have to understand about all that is it's all extremely intentional and it derives from counterinsurgency theory that was developed by the French military in Vietnam and the British military in the Middle East, and it was used to great effect by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this there's huge police training industry and the industry of police consultants that got to work on converting what they used to call counterinsurgency. And they knew they need they couldn't call it counterinsurgency in the US. So actually Harvard made a mistake a few years ago and they had an ex military person teaching a class on counterinsurgency. A bunch of Harvard students were going to go into a black neighborhood in Massachusetts and help the police do counterinsurgency, and they just forgot like that you're supposed to call it community policing in the US the goal of and so the Harvard had to cancel the class. So they have just called it something different. They could have gone forward and even been celebrated for it, you know, But a lot of liberals over the last twenty or thirty years, and this is something that I try to delve into great detail into the book with lots of sources and recommendations for further reading for people. But liberals really to advance this idea that we can repackage authoritarian and repressive stuff that our military and other militaries were doing around the world to native populations. We can try the same strategies in the US but call them reform. And this is a central feature of the way the news media has covered policing over the last twenty or thirty years, and it's been a central strategic focus of the police to co opt certain marginalized leaders in different communities to get them to support these policies which actually result in more people being surveilled, more people being arrested, higher rates of incarceration, more profits for the policing industry. They're not a reform in any sense of the word, but they have come to have and have a whole thing in the book, and they've written a separate article which is also going to be a book on police body cameras, because LA plays a really prominent role in this. You know, for years, police body cameras were this thing that the policing industry wanted so badly, but they couldn't get the money for it. They wanted it so badly that the LAPD got people like Steven Spielberg to donate body camera technology to the cops.

And another thing you have that I talk about in the book that you have to understand is that what we're told now is called, in our current sort of propaganda discourse, community policing. And you know this this idea that you were just mentioning a cops breakdancing, and you know they were during the twenty twenty uprisings, there were some cops that were doing the macarena with protesters, and every local news station runs a story every now and then about like a midnight basketball league that the cops are running, or like a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway for four families. But you have to understand about all that is it's all extremely intentional and it derives from counterinsurgency theory that was developed by the French military in Vietnam and the British military in the Middle East, and it was used to great effect by the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this there's huge police training industry and the industry of police consultants that got to work on converting what they used to call counterinsurgency. And they knew they need they couldn't call it counterinsurgency in the US. So actually Harvard made a mistake a few years ago and they had an ex military person teaching a class on counterinsurgency. A bunch of Harvard students were going to go into a black neighborhood in Massachusetts and help the police do counterinsurgency, and they just forgot like that you're supposed to call it community policing in the US the goal of and so the Harvard had to cancel the class. So they have just called it something different. They could have gone forward and even been celebrated for it, you know, But a lot of liberals over the last twenty or thirty years, and this is something that I try to delve into great detail into the book with lots of sources and recommendations for further reading for people. But liberals really to advance this idea that we can repackage authoritarian and repressive stuff that our military and other militaries were doing around the world to native populations. We can try the same strategies in the US but call them reform. And this is a central feature of the way the news media has covered policing over the last twenty or thirty years, and it's been a central strategic focus of the police to co opt certain marginalized leaders in different communities to get them to support these policies which actually result in more people being surveilled, more people being arrested, higher rates of incarceration, more profits for the policing industry. They're not a reform in any sense of the word, but they have come to have and have a whole thing in the book, and they've written a separate article which is also going to be a book on police body cameras, because LA plays a really prominent role in this. You know, for years, police body cameras were this thing that the policing industry wanted so badly, but they couldn't get the money for it. They wanted it so badly that the LAPD got people like Steven Spielberg to donate body camera technology to the cops.

And I mean, who better. The guy works with cameras, you know, James, he's an issue, yeah, but minority report. Really he's bringing us into the future of police.

And I mean, who better. The guy works with cameras, you know, James, he's an issue, yeah, but minority report. Really he's bringing us into the future of police.

And but for years the police dreamed about this because you know, companies like Amazon and Microsoft and and Taser, which then rebranded as Axon after its tasers started killing people.

And but for years the police dreamed about this because you know, companies like Amazon and Microsoft and and Taser, which then rebranded as Axon after its tasers started killing people.

Much evil sounding Axon exactly fun.

Much evil sounding Axon exactly fun.

These companies used to talk privately and even you know, to shareholders and at policing conferences and stuff about how much money there This is a multi billion dollar potential industry if they could get the government contracts. But they couldn't get a lot of these most big city local governments in the US are run by liberals, they're run by democrats, and they couldn't get the fun thing for this. So actually what they did was they used Michael Brown's killing in twenty fourteen, where there was no video of it, and and they used that in Obama, you know, requested several hundred million dollars for body cameras, and it became a mantra of the Democratic Party all over the country. And and uh, Meanwhile, the policing folks were beside themselves with joy because they wanted to connect. They wanted billions of dollars to give every cop in the US a mobile surveillance camera. They could connect to artificial intelligence, facial recognition, voice recognition, They could go to a protest and scan the crowd with their chest camera and have everyone's identity. They also wanted and they knew that this evidence was only going to be used against very poor people. This is how they were going to get video evidence that the cops controlled to arrest unhoused people, you know, to do drug busts and things like that. They knew it was never going to be used or at least very very rarely ever used against police. And so we have this situation now where there's reams of evidence. Even the federal government admits that body cameras do not have any positive effect on reducing police violence or making them more accountable, more transparent, but they do dramatically increase the extent which police can prosecute and get people to play guilty more quickly because they have these videos that they that they control. So anyway, that's a good example of something that in the public imagination, and if you look at and I read every single article that I could find, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles about body cameras in the media, they were all portrayed as an initiative for accountability and transparency, when in fact they were developed exactly the opposite. They were built exactly to give police more power and less accountability by giving police control over what is filmed from what angle and when that film is edited and how it's edited and when they can release it in public.

These companies used to talk privately and even you know, to shareholders and at policing conferences and stuff about how much money there This is a multi billion dollar potential industry if they could get the government contracts. But they couldn't get a lot of these most big city local governments in the US are run by liberals, they're run by democrats, and they couldn't get the fun thing for this. So actually what they did was they used Michael Brown's killing in twenty fourteen, where there was no video of it, and and they used that in Obama, you know, requested several hundred million dollars for body cameras, and it became a mantra of the Democratic Party all over the country. And and uh, Meanwhile, the policing folks were beside themselves with joy because they wanted to connect. They wanted billions of dollars to give every cop in the US a mobile surveillance camera. They could connect to artificial intelligence, facial recognition, voice recognition, They could go to a protest and scan the crowd with their chest camera and have everyone's identity. They also wanted and they knew that this evidence was only going to be used against very poor people. This is how they were going to get video evidence that the cops controlled to arrest unhoused people, you know, to do drug busts and things like that. They knew it was never going to be used or at least very very rarely ever used against police. And so we have this situation now where there's reams of evidence. Even the federal government admits that body cameras do not have any positive effect on reducing police violence or making them more accountable, more transparent, but they do dramatically increase the extent which police can prosecute and get people to play guilty more quickly because they have these videos that they that they control. So anyway, that's a good example of something that in the public imagination, and if you look at and I read every single article that I could find, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles about body cameras in the media, they were all portrayed as an initiative for accountability and transparency, when in fact they were developed exactly the opposite. They were built exactly to give police more power and less accountability by giving police control over what is filmed from what angle and when that film is edited and how it's edited and when they can release it in public.

Right, I'm curious, just like along with that to create that narrative, like, were they also doing like performative resistance to make it feel like it was like a measure of accountability.

Right, I'm curious, just like along with that to create that narrative, like, were they also doing like performative resistance to make it feel like it was like a measure of accountability.

Were they giving us body cameras?

Were they giving us body cameras?

Yeah, you know what I mean, like just to kind of help that, because I feel like the flow of an article like that is like liberal politicians like we need the need for it and then there'd be like the police version where they're like, I don't think it's quite necessary to sort of create that tension, or was this just sort of like they were like, no.

Yeah, you know what I mean, like just to kind of help that, because I feel like the flow of an article like that is like liberal politicians like we need the need for it and then there'd be like the police version where they're like, I don't think it's quite necessary to sort of create that tension, or was this just sort of like they were like, no.

No, go ahead, go ahead.

No, go ahead, go ahead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there are a couple of interesting and complicated the internal dynamics going on with the policing bureaucracy. First of all, yes, some of it was performative, and you can I don't know if you've ever watched body cameras, but I've seen, you know, hundreds and hundreds of body care of viadas, especially when as a public defender. But the police are trained, so the cameras looking outward from their chests, so the camera is actually not showing what the police officer themselves is doing. And so if you notice in a lot of these videos the cops are just screaming, stop resisting, stop resisting, stop resisting, right, That's something they're trained to do, so that they're taught that it makes it harder to convict them of anything or hold them liable civilly because they're they're creating what they call a contemporaneous record of resistance, which then justifies their use of force, even though you can't actually see like what's actually going on anyway. But the internal dynamics were that some of the police frontline officers, who have the least power in the policing bureaucracy, were worried about you wearing cameras. They worried that it was going to enable their bosses to spy on them and reduce their their ability to engage in some of the activity day that might be illegal, et cetera that they tend to want to engage in. They weren't sure like what policies and protocols they were going to be for when they were being recorded, and who was going to control the video and so. But at the same time, police leaders and leaders in the surveillance industry really wanted them because they thought this would enable them to even more completely control the behavior of beat cops. And so initially there was a much stronger appetite for body cameras among police leadership and the companies that make them and that make the software then there was among beat cops. But then once it became clear that these that they had the right protocols in place that was going to make sure that the cops were you know, unless the cops really made a mistake. They were never going to be recorded doing something that they you know, that they didn't want to be recorded doing. And also they could control and edit the video. And also it was by and large going to make it much much more easier to prosecute the poor people, because keep in mind, like the body cameras have no say over like which neighborhoods are we going into, and which neighborhoods are we not? Where are we looking for drugs? And where are we not looking for drugs? These bigger questions that are really the core of like the discriminatory nature of policing in our society. Body cameras just ignore all that, Right, So cops became convinced that actually body cameras were not going to be a threat to business as usual, And there's now much more uniform support among even the lowest level line cops for body cameras than there was initially.

I think there are a couple of interesting and complicated the internal dynamics going on with the policing bureaucracy. First of all, yes, some of it was performative, and you can I don't know if you've ever watched body cameras, but I've seen, you know, hundreds and hundreds of body care of viadas, especially when as a public defender. But the police are trained, so the cameras looking outward from their chests, so the camera is actually not showing what the police officer themselves is doing. And so if you notice in a lot of these videos the cops are just screaming, stop resisting, stop resisting, stop resisting, right, That's something they're trained to do, so that they're taught that it makes it harder to convict them of anything or hold them liable civilly because they're they're creating what they call a contemporaneous record of resistance, which then justifies their use of force, even though you can't actually see like what's actually going on anyway. But the internal dynamics were that some of the police frontline officers, who have the least power in the policing bureaucracy, were worried about you wearing cameras. They worried that it was going to enable their bosses to spy on them and reduce their their ability to engage in some of the activity day that might be illegal, et cetera that they tend to want to engage in. They weren't sure like what policies and protocols they were going to be for when they were being recorded, and who was going to control the video and so. But at the same time, police leaders and leaders in the surveillance industry really wanted them because they thought this would enable them to even more completely control the behavior of beat cops. And so initially there was a much stronger appetite for body cameras among police leadership and the companies that make them and that make the software then there was among beat cops. But then once it became clear that these that they had the right protocols in place that was going to make sure that the cops were you know, unless the cops really made a mistake. They were never going to be recorded doing something that they you know, that they didn't want to be recorded doing. And also they could control and edit the video. And also it was by and large going to make it much much more easier to prosecute the poor people, because keep in mind, like the body cameras have no say over like which neighborhoods are we going into, and which neighborhoods are we not? Where are we looking for drugs? And where are we not looking for drugs? These bigger questions that are really the core of like the discriminatory nature of policing in our society. Body cameras just ignore all that, Right, So cops became convinced that actually body cameras were not going to be a threat to business as usual, And there's now much more uniform support among even the lowest level line cops for body cameras than there was initially.

All right, just real quick, I also wanted to do the talking point that just I think at the broadest level is helpful for people to learn that this is not normal. Is that the US confines people to jail cells at six times its own historical average five to ten times as much as other comparable countries and imprisons black people at six times the rate of South Africa during apart time. So many people have probably heard that. I think it's worth just stating up top, for anybody who are abnormal and unfucked up, it is very abnormal.

All right, just real quick, I also wanted to do the talking point that just I think at the broadest level is helpful for people to learn that this is not normal. Is that the US confines people to jail cells at six times its own historical average five to ten times as much as other comparable countries and imprisons black people at six times the rate of South Africa during apart time. So many people have probably heard that. I think it's worth just stating up top, for anybody who are abnormal and unfucked up, it is very abnormal.

And that's why you use so much propaganda, right, right, I mean exactly, Like, You've got a bureaucracy that is larger than any bureaucracy in the modern history of the world. Like no country, let alone any country that thinks of itself as democracy, has ever tried to spend this much money jailing its own people. And in the face of that, you've got enormous bodies of scientific evidence that show that imprisoning people actually does not make us safer, it actually makes us less safe. And you've got even more robust bodies of empirical research that show the things that make us safer and reduced crime are things like housing, healthcare, you know, early childhood education. Like it's obvious, right, And so you need a giant propaganda apparatus to get people so afraid of strangers and poor people and immigrants that they inspired of what all the evidence shows. They constantly think that they're in fear and danger that the only solution for them is increasing the amount of money that our society spends on police.

And that's why you use so much propaganda, right, right, I mean exactly, Like, You've got a bureaucracy that is larger than any bureaucracy in the modern history of the world. Like no country, let alone any country that thinks of itself as democracy, has ever tried to spend this much money jailing its own people. And in the face of that, you've got enormous bodies of scientific evidence that show that imprisoning people actually does not make us safer, it actually makes us less safe. And you've got even more robust bodies of empirical research that show the things that make us safer and reduced crime are things like housing, healthcare, you know, early childhood education. Like it's obvious, right, And so you need a giant propaganda apparatus to get people so afraid of strangers and poor people and immigrants that they inspired of what all the evidence shows. They constantly think that they're in fear and danger that the only solution for them is increasing the amount of money that our society spends on police.

Right, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll focus on some of these allegedly liberal institutions that are doing a lot of the a lot of the legwork and what we're talking about.

Right, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll focus on some of these allegedly liberal institutions that are doing a lot of the a lot of the legwork and what we're talking about.

We'll be right back, and we're back.

We'll be right back, and we're back.

We're back. And there's this one moment, as Trump was like taking office and dropping a bunch of like fascist executive orders and just attacking trans people, the Wall Street Journal had another op ed on the front page of their paper that was all about how Colleges two woke, and I was just I was kind of amazed at that, but it it really just was kind of an illustration of how relentless they have been and continue to be in painting these institutions. We're going to talk about Harvard and Columbia, The New York Times and like other mainstream media outlets, the democratic part, like these institutions that I guess benefit from being like, yeah, we are actually very liberal and just basically they are there to perpetuate the existing power structures, and you know, wealth distribution, But yeah, I wanted to start with Harvard. There's Harvard gets mentioned a few times in the book. Specifically, you talk about the study where two academics who claim to be coming from the left and to be like really bummed out by the conclusion that they arrive at are like, guys, sorry, we're just calling balls and strikes here. We're just re doing the math. And unfortunately, the only way for us to move forward as a progressive society is to like double the number the already record high number of cops that we have on the street. We just need to like become even more of a police state. But just more generally, you write in the book, I learned over time the most important qualification for teaching students. Oh no, this was actually a tweet of yours. You wrote, over time the most important qualification for teaching students at elite schools willingness to use your mind, position and power to preserve distributions of wealth and misery. But you just talk about like kind of what was this surprising to you at a certain point that these institutions like Harvard and Columbia were just so in the bag for the existing kind of power structure.

We're back. And there's this one moment, as Trump was like taking office and dropping a bunch of like fascist executive orders and just attacking trans people, the Wall Street Journal had another op ed on the front page of their paper that was all about how Colleges two woke, and I was just I was kind of amazed at that, but it it really just was kind of an illustration of how relentless they have been and continue to be in painting these institutions. We're going to talk about Harvard and Columbia, The New York Times and like other mainstream media outlets, the democratic part, like these institutions that I guess benefit from being like, yeah, we are actually very liberal and just basically they are there to perpetuate the existing power structures, and you know, wealth distribution, But yeah, I wanted to start with Harvard. There's Harvard gets mentioned a few times in the book. Specifically, you talk about the study where two academics who claim to be coming from the left and to be like really bummed out by the conclusion that they arrive at are like, guys, sorry, we're just calling balls and strikes here. We're just re doing the math. And unfortunately, the only way for us to move forward as a progressive society is to like double the number the already record high number of cops that we have on the street. We just need to like become even more of a police state. But just more generally, you write in the book, I learned over time the most important qualification for teaching students. Oh no, this was actually a tweet of yours. You wrote, over time the most important qualification for teaching students at elite schools willingness to use your mind, position and power to preserve distributions of wealth and misery. But you just talk about like kind of what was this surprising to you at a certain point that these institutions like Harvard and Columbia were just so in the bag for the existing kind of power structure.

I was pretty naive when I when I got to you know, went to college at Yale, at the law school at Harvard, and I was pretty naive when I got to these places.

I was pretty naive when I when I got to you know, went to college at Yale, at the law school at Harvard, and I was pretty naive when I got to these places.

You know.

You know.

I was sort of thinking, Oh, these are institutions of learning, and they're so prestigious, and like, people who come here must be smarter, and they must be you know, really rigorous thinkers. And that's really not what goes on at these places at all. I don't want to speak a too broad of brushstroke, because like you know, I've a lot of incredible friends and relationships that I've made there. There are a lot of scholars at these institutions, just like at many other universities and colleges and non academic institutions around the country. There are people doing amazing scholarship and scholarship matters like research and matters. I'm not saying that those things are not important. That's not the lesson of the book. But one of the key functions of a place like Harvard is to launder policies and ideas that are designed to preserve existing distributions of wealth and power in our society, launder them with a veneer of academic backing and of rigorous thought and things like that. You learn very quickly at a place like Harvard, what does it take not only to succeed there as a student, but what does it take to becomefessor? What does it take to get tenure? And everybody who it's very political, and everybody who's there understands that certain kinds of research that benefits certain kinds of people in our society and certain institutions is going to be a ticket to success, and other kinds of research and views are not. And and Harvard is a you know, has an endownment worth tens of billions of dollars, is a huge industry, and so a lot of the scholarship that is produced at a place like Harvard is skewed by these other incentives. In other words, it's not this kind of pure place where like the best ideas are espoused and the people who are the smartest and best researchers with the kindest souls are the ones who succeeded it. You know, it's not how it works. And I think the example that I use in my book, I've a whole chapter devoted to this. I think it's one of the funniest. And I try to, by the way, throughout the book, I try to talk about all these issues with humor and get a little bit of joy, because to me, like life is not worth living unless you can laugh a little bit about these horrific things.

I was sort of thinking, Oh, these are institutions of learning, and they're so prestigious, and like, people who come here must be smarter, and they must be you know, really rigorous thinkers. And that's really not what goes on at these places at all. I don't want to speak a too broad of brushstroke, because like you know, I've a lot of incredible friends and relationships that I've made there. There are a lot of scholars at these institutions, just like at many other universities and colleges and non academic institutions around the country. There are people doing amazing scholarship and scholarship matters like research and matters. I'm not saying that those things are not important. That's not the lesson of the book. But one of the key functions of a place like Harvard is to launder policies and ideas that are designed to preserve existing distributions of wealth and power in our society, launder them with a veneer of academic backing and of rigorous thought and things like that. You learn very quickly at a place like Harvard, what does it take not only to succeed there as a student, but what does it take to becomefessor? What does it take to get tenure? And everybody who it's very political, and everybody who's there understands that certain kinds of research that benefits certain kinds of people in our society and certain institutions is going to be a ticket to success, and other kinds of research and views are not. And and Harvard is a you know, has an endownment worth tens of billions of dollars, is a huge industry, and so a lot of the scholarship that is produced at a place like Harvard is skewed by these other incentives. In other words, it's not this kind of pure place where like the best ideas are espoused and the people who are the smartest and best researchers with the kindest souls are the ones who succeeded it. You know, it's not how it works. And I think the example that I use in my book, I've a whole chapter devoted to this. I think it's one of the funniest. And I try to, by the way, throughout the book, I try to talk about all these issues with humor and get a little bit of joy, because to me, like life is not worth living unless you can laugh a little bit about these horrific things.

And these are definitely teetering on the edge of laughter or crying one or the other. Yeah.

And these are definitely teetering on the edge of laughter or crying one or the other. Yeah.

And if you can't laugh about two Harvard professors, you know, sort of proposing the greatest expansion of policing in modern world history by adding five hundred thousand police officers to you as based on rudimentary errors that they made that are somewhat comical, then you can't laugh about anything, right. And these two guys are particularly funny to me because they portray themselves not only as progressives but as socialists, and they understand something really important, which is it's very good for your future as a scholar at Harvard if you can be seen as one of those you know, it's almost like a false flag opera, right, It's like you're parading around as a leftist, socialist progressive, but the ideas you're promoting are right wing and serving the interests of the people who financially back Harvard and their social circles, et cetera. So it's very smart, actually if what you were thinking was that you wanted to advance your career. But anyway, these guys propose, and I think one especially comical thing about it is that in journal that they published this call for five hundred thousand more police. And by the way, the call for more police is, as I talk about in the book, it's absurd they made this proposal without counting the social costs of more police. You can't you know, say I want it. It'd be like installing a new heater in your house and not only getting the measurements wrong for the heater, but you neglected to include that this heater spews carbon monoxide into your house, you know, And.

And if you can't laugh about two Harvard professors, you know, sort of proposing the greatest expansion of policing in modern world history by adding five hundred thousand police officers to you as based on rudimentary errors that they made that are somewhat comical, then you can't laugh about anything, right. And these two guys are particularly funny to me because they portray themselves not only as progressives but as socialists, and they understand something really important, which is it's very good for your future as a scholar at Harvard if you can be seen as one of those you know, it's almost like a false flag opera, right, It's like you're parading around as a leftist, socialist progressive, but the ideas you're promoting are right wing and serving the interests of the people who financially back Harvard and their social circles, et cetera. So it's very smart, actually if what you were thinking was that you wanted to advance your career. But anyway, these guys propose, and I think one especially comical thing about it is that in journal that they published this call for five hundred thousand more police. And by the way, the call for more police is, as I talk about in the book, it's absurd they made this proposal without counting the social costs of more police. You can't you know, say I want it. It'd be like installing a new heater in your house and not only getting the measurements wrong for the heater, but you neglected to include that this heater spews carbon monoxide into your house, you know, And.

So you're saying this heater, yeah, They're like, well, you know, we're installing this heater in this house and it's going to increase you know, the heat by a degree over other heaters, you know, And not only did they get that measurement wrong, but they also just neglected to tell you it's also going to kill your whole family.

So you're saying this heater, yeah, They're like, well, you know, we're installing this heater in this house and it's going to increase you know, the heat by a degree over other heaters, you know, And not only did they get that measurement wrong, but they also just neglected to tell you it's also going to kill your whole family.

Right, So you can't promote, you don't make a social policy proposal without even asking the question of, like, what are some of the costs and downsides to the proposal? Right and anyway? But I think like the funniest part about it to me is that the journal they published this in was created in the wake of the twenty twenty George Floyd uprisings by Harvard as a way of pacifying student unrest. They're like, we're going to create this Journal of Law and Inequality, and it's going to be this new thing that people publish to like confront these issues of our day. And then and then just a short time later, that Journal of Law and in Equality or whatever they call it is already publishing bold Please by Harvard professors to add five hundred thousand cops.

Right, So you can't promote, you don't make a social policy proposal without even asking the question of, like, what are some of the costs and downsides to the proposal? Right and anyway? But I think like the funniest part about it to me is that the journal they published this in was created in the wake of the twenty twenty George Floyd uprisings by Harvard as a way of pacifying student unrest. They're like, we're going to create this Journal of Law and Inequality, and it's going to be this new thing that people publish to like confront these issues of our day. And then and then just a short time later, that Journal of Law and in Equality or whatever they call it is already publishing bold Please by Harvard professors to add five hundred thousand cops.

Yes, I remember when it came out and we were like, oh my god, the mainstream media is going to eat this shit. Yes, and sure enough they did. There's also just a little detail in that because you kind of you know, came at this study and pointed out all the ways that it was ridiculous and speaking of these two Harvard professors as comical figures, just the fact that they were using their students to try to construct arguments against your critiques of their book. Was pretty pretty wild.

Yes, I remember when it came out and we were like, oh my god, the mainstream media is going to eat this shit. Yes, and sure enough they did. There's also just a little detail in that because you kind of you know, came at this study and pointed out all the ways that it was ridiculous and speaking of these two Harvard professors as comical figures, just the fact that they were using their students to try to construct arguments against your critiques of their book. Was pretty pretty wild.

Sure.

Sure.

Oh wait, so they were asking the students to basically like defend this against evil alec.

Oh wait, so they were asking the students to basically like defend this against evil alec.

Well, no, I mean I think I don't know that they were. I don't think that they were, you know, specifically talking about me. But they were instead of like testing students on like the basics of first year criminal law, you know, one of the professors during the exam was apparently asking and the students you know sent me these exam questions. They sent in the screenshots of them to me, and and he was asking for their help developing counter arguments to his proposal more police.

Well, no, I mean I think I don't know that they were. I don't think that they were, you know, specifically talking about me. But they were instead of like testing students on like the basics of first year criminal law, you know, one of the professors during the exam was apparently asking and the students you know sent me these exam questions. They sent in the screenshots of them to me, and and he was asking for their help developing counter arguments to his proposal more police.

You know.

You know.

It's weren't meet you the wrong way about it, But I thought was really funny about it. Was like he was he was asking students for help with this research project, you know, just.

It's weren't meet you the wrong way about it, But I thought was really funny about it. Was like he was he was asking students for help with this research project, you know, just.

Like crowdsourcing, like the fleshing out of research project.

Like crowdsourcing, like the fleshing out of research project.

Yeah, And it turned out like the students you know told me that like we had like raised a number of the objections that you've lad helpfully with them privately before. They So it's not like these people just like had like a huge brain fart and forgot about, you know, a lot of the critiques and they just like didn't care to respond or even rigorously addressed in the first place these things. And that's why I think the copaganda book that is full of this stuff.

Yeah, And it turned out like the students you know told me that like we had like raised a number of the objections that you've lad helpfully with them privately before. They So it's not like these people just like had like a huge brain fart and forgot about, you know, a lot of the critiques and they just like didn't care to respond or even rigorously addressed in the first place these things. And that's why I think the copaganda book that is full of this stuff.

Right.

Right.

What I try to do is take some of the most outrageous, funniest examples of kind of mainstream liberal institutions, whether it's it's professors or news organizations, journalists or whatever nonprofits sometimes and illustrate stuff that is actually really important that we might miss if we just look at the news. Because it's not just these Harvard professors are publishing this stuff. It's how does that stuff then get translated into the mainstream news that you consume right as conventional wisdom, right, And that's that's the process that I really try to examine in the book with some humor, because you know, this is it's you know, there's a lot of upsetting stuff in here about about how we're being lied to and misled and how many of the institutions that we're told to trust are actually really untrustworthy and we need to develop better mechanisms of critical thinking. And that's another reason why you know this book. We've raised money so that any teacher who wants to teach any part of this book in school, any person in prison. We have free copies of the book available with the people, like, obviously I hope that you support the book and and all the I don't make any money off the book, right, any copy that sold, all the worlties go to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which organizes on house people in skid row in Los Angeles. But even if if you can't afford the book, you know, we can get free copies to people because we just want people to have a more critical understanding of the news that they're being shown.

What I try to do is take some of the most outrageous, funniest examples of kind of mainstream liberal institutions, whether it's it's professors or news organizations, journalists or whatever nonprofits sometimes and illustrate stuff that is actually really important that we might miss if we just look at the news. Because it's not just these Harvard professors are publishing this stuff. It's how does that stuff then get translated into the mainstream news that you consume right as conventional wisdom, right, And that's that's the process that I really try to examine in the book with some humor, because you know, this is it's you know, there's a lot of upsetting stuff in here about about how we're being lied to and misled and how many of the institutions that we're told to trust are actually really untrustworthy and we need to develop better mechanisms of critical thinking. And that's another reason why you know this book. We've raised money so that any teacher who wants to teach any part of this book in school, any person in prison. We have free copies of the book available with the people, like, obviously I hope that you support the book and and all the I don't make any money off the book, right, any copy that sold, all the worlties go to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which organizes on house people in skid row in Los Angeles. But even if if you can't afford the book, you know, we can get free copies to people because we just want people to have a more critical understanding of the news that they're being shown.

Yeah, which is like interesting that the way you ring up Harvard, it immediately relates to the newsroom, right, like the way professors and academics can ascend. It's not that there's like marching orders, but you can pretty clearly into it. You're like, Okay, if I talk about this in this way, this is how I get my things pop in, which I feel like is another criticism we have of a lot of journalism too, where clearly other journalists know, Okay, if I write from this perspective or stories with this sort of bend to it, that's how I'm able to ascend, and that's how it further just sort of reinforces this kind of thing, and I think, you know, the New York Times is probably a great example of this kind of thinking.