Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know and this is the somebody gives out even
Speaker 2: worse advice than we do edition.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you picked this one.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Do you have any history with The Anarchist Cookbook?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Did you have a copy of it?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: I could have told you that, did you No? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess first we should just tell people we're talking
Speaker 1: about a book called The Anarchist Cookbook published in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one that was, or that is rather a book
Speaker 1: that contains everything from like how to make your own
Speaker 1: LSD to how to find mushrooms to how to make
Speaker 1: a bomb. And you know, Dave points out that it
Speaker 1: was sort of a dorm room special and I did
Speaker 1: not have one, but you know, I had a couple
Speaker 1: of friends that had it, and it was just one
Speaker 1: of those things that were like, hey, got the Anarchist Cookbook.
Speaker 1: It meant you were like just an alternative thinker. And
Speaker 1: I mean, he's very silly thinking back. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think most of my friends that had it it was
Speaker 1: all about like the drug stuff. It wasn't They weren't
Speaker 1: like bomb makers, you know, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I actually hadn't even fully realized that there was
Speaker 2: like bomb making instructions in there. Yeah. Yeah, So it's
Speaker 2: a it's almost like I've seen it described as a
Speaker 2: book of forbidden knowledge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got such a bad.
Speaker 2: Reputation that it's in any court case I was reading
Speaker 2: about this. In any court case where the book has
Speaker 2: been confiscated as contraband not a single judge has ruled
Speaker 2: that that was illegal. They're like, yeah, get that book
Speaker 2: away from them. That's a terrible book. And it's also
Speaker 2: frequently it has been in the past used as circumstantial
Speaker 2: evidence to help prove cases against people suspected of crimes.
Speaker 2: They were also caught with the anarchist cookbook in their
Speaker 2: house and that was used against them in their trials.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think in the UK, I was trying
Speaker 1: to find specific incidents of this, but I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: in the UK, at least for a while, like it
Speaker 1: was if you got caught with it, or maybe if
Speaker 1: it was if something had gone wrong and you got
Speaker 1: caught with it, it was an extra charge or something.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it was officially banned there. It
Speaker 1: was kind of hard to little Murky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but so I mean, in the real world, this
Speaker 2: book has been used in plots that have resulted in
Speaker 2: real life deaths like, Yeah, Timothy McVay, the Oklahoma City bomber,
Speaker 2: he had a copy. A guy named Thomas Spinks who
Speaker 2: bombed ten abortion clinics in the eighties, he had a copy.
Speaker 2: The Boston marathon bombers, they had copies. The Column shooters,
Speaker 2: they had a copy. Like, even if it didn't directly
Speaker 2: teach them how to blow people up necessarily, it was
Speaker 2: still an inspirational book for them, right. And the craziest
Speaker 2: part about this whole thing is that these people were
Speaker 2: buying fully into a book written by an angry nineteen
Speaker 2: year old who went on to grow up very shortly
Speaker 2: after the publication of this book and denounced it almost immediately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a book that was, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a copy paste fest. Yeah, mostly information that was readily available.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would say completely, I don't think anything
Speaker 1: that he put in there was something that was like
Speaker 1: truly forbidden. No, uh, like you could find all this
Speaker 1: stuff out, because this kid found all this stuff out
Speaker 1: and just compiled it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the literal recipe for LSD was happied and
Speaker 2: pasted from the Eli Lilly patent that describes in depth,
Speaker 2: Like anybody can buy The Anarchist Cookbook or go online
Speaker 2: and figure out exactly how to how to make LSD
Speaker 2: based on these instructions. If you know what you're talking about, chemistry,
Speaker 2: that's a big caveat. But I mean it's not like so, Yes,
Speaker 2: every single part in this book was already was accessible,
Speaker 2: but it was presented at least by the publisher. As
Speaker 2: you know, again, this book of forbidden repressed knowledge that
Speaker 2: needs to be gotten in the hands of every American
Speaker 2: so that we can stage an actual revolution and take
Speaker 2: back our country from the forces of you know, evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty funny. I mean, not funny because it's been used,
Speaker 1: but just works. Like you and I having it around
Speaker 1: us in college is sort of an embarrassing.
Speaker 2: Trope, you know, I have mine in high school.
Speaker 1: Uh, of course you were. You're head of the game,
Speaker 1: my friend.
Speaker 2: For sure. So this book has been two million copies
Speaker 2: of The Anarchist Cookbook has been sold in the I
Speaker 2: guess fifty Yeah, more than fifty years since it was
Speaker 2: first published and it came from again an angry nineteen
Speaker 2: year old whose background and then also the backdrop that
Speaker 2: he wrote this book in really kind of inform what
Speaker 2: you need to know about the Anarchist Cookbook.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. As far as his background, his name is
Speaker 1: William Powell. He was born in the States, but moved
Speaker 1: to England when he was three, son of a philosophy professor.
Speaker 1: His father was a philosophy teacher and then would go
Speaker 1: on to work as in leadership at the un His
Speaker 1: mom was a therapist. They weren't like, you know, these
Speaker 1: radicals kind of enforcing their opinions on their son. He
Speaker 1: was just a regular kid who moved to England kind
Speaker 1: of didn't fit in there because he was bullied for
Speaker 1: being an American. Then when he came back from England,
Speaker 1: he was bullied for having a little bit of an
Speaker 1: English accent by Americans in White Plains New York. And
Speaker 1: apparently even like teachers would make fun of his accent
Speaker 1: and stuff and tease him. So he started getting pretty
Speaker 1: angry early on, started getting in with a bad crowd
Speaker 1: and skipping school and busting cars, and yeah, eventually I
Speaker 1: believe they sent him to a boarding school where he
Speaker 1: was expelled after he drove a teacher's ditch into a car,
Speaker 1: or I guess put it in neutral and pushed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, car into a ditch. That'll get you expelled pretty
Speaker 2: much every time. He also said that he was molested
Speaker 2: during this time as well at the boarding school, so
Speaker 2: like he had a lot of reason to be angry.
Speaker 2: This stuff like really impacted him. And he also said
Speaker 2: later on he became an educator, which is pretty amazing
Speaker 2: considering what we're about to describe him doing as a teenager.
Speaker 2: But he believes looking back that he had an undiagnosed
Speaker 2: learning disability that made it, on top of all, like
Speaker 2: the social mistreatment made his academic career like that much
Speaker 2: harder and frustrating as well. So you put all that together,
Speaker 2: you have a kid who's ripe for being antisocial.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, for sure. He eventually would go to
Speaker 1: New York City when he was seventeen on his own
Speaker 1: and lived on the Lower east Side East Village area
Speaker 1: in the Bowery And in the nineteen sixties, this was
Speaker 1: sixty seven. You talked about sort of what was going
Speaker 1: on around him. This was a New York that was
Speaker 1: in the middle of protesting Vietnam. He was even attempted
Speaker 1: to be drafted at least to go to Vietnam and fight,
Speaker 1: but he showed up drunk and stoned at the draft
Speaker 1: board hoping to get out of it, which I guess
Speaker 1: he did, right.
Speaker 2: He did. I think he was interviewed four different times
Speaker 2: before they gave him a section four F.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is what he wanted.
Speaker 2: It's exactly what he wanted. And this was another thing.
Speaker 2: This is part of that backdrop that I was referring
Speaker 2: to that was really important to understand. This was a
Speaker 2: time where if you were like a there was I
Speaker 2: think a twenty something year window in age. If you
Speaker 2: were this in that window, if that's how old you were,
Speaker 2: there was a chance that you were going to be
Speaker 2: forced to go fight in Vietnam and possibly die and
Speaker 2: possibly kill other people. And this was reality, and a
Speaker 2: lot of people were not okay with that. So this
Speaker 2: this pushing back on that whole sentiment to kind of
Speaker 2: form this basis of like this revolutionary you know sense
Speaker 2: that like this, the stakes were so high for what
Speaker 2: could happen to you if the government just insucially decided
Speaker 2: you're going over there. Now that to the people who
Speaker 2: were opposed to it. There's like, there's no response to
Speaker 2: this except for a bloody revolution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So his you know, sort of living situation
Speaker 1: certainly didn't quell any of this. He was roommate to
Speaker 1: a guy named Steve Hancock, who was the older brother
Speaker 1: of one of his former boarding school pals, and he
Speaker 1: was a genuine like anarchists. Steve Hancock was. He managed
Speaker 1: a bookstore called book Masters, got William Powell a job there.
Speaker 1: He started digging into, you know, all those sort of
Speaker 1: revolutionary guide books like from Shea Gavera and Abby Hoffman
Speaker 1: and other you know, supposed anarchist leaders at the time.
Speaker 1: And Steve Hancock was a big influence on him. He
Speaker 1: was sort of he was a member of the Industrial
Speaker 1: Workers of the World. I think we've talked about them
Speaker 1: at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you being DEBS was one of the founding members.
Speaker 2: Remember him. He ran for president as a social from prison.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Hancock was a member of
Speaker 1: this group and he told William Powell about this idea
Speaker 1: for distributing flyers, about making LSD, about making Molotov cocktails,
Speaker 1: and that was what the original anarchist cookbook was going
Speaker 1: to be from Powell. Once he kind of launched into
Speaker 1: this thing, was just a series of flyers, but it
Speaker 1: kind of quickly escalated to book level.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, So just one more thing about him working
Speaker 2: at book masters. Apparently he met Valerie Solange, the woman
Speaker 2: who shot Andy Warhol, when she came around peddling copies
Speaker 2: of her scum manifesto, and he was like, I like this,
Speaker 2: and actually got a few copies and put him in
Speaker 2: the window.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Nuts, I think this is a week before she shot
Speaker 2: Andy Warhol too.
Speaker 1: Well, that all totally tracks with his sort of state
Speaker 1: of mind at the time, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And speaking of state of mind, so he is
Speaker 2: completely hooked on speed at this time. He's doing tons
Speaker 2: of drugs, just living the anarchist, anti government, anti war
Speaker 2: lifestyle in New York, which was I don't know if
Speaker 2: you said or not, this was basically like the center
Speaker 2: of the anti war movement in nineteen sixty seven sixty eight, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and like this whole idea, I should say, not everybody
Speaker 2: I said earlier, everybody who was opposed to it was like,
Speaker 2: the only way you can solve this is a bloody revolution.
Speaker 2: Not true. There was a lot of peaceful activism that
Speaker 2: did not think that, but the people there was a
Speaker 2: lot more militancy than say you'll see today in America.
Speaker 2: It was inspired by the idea that you could be
Speaker 2: drafted and sent to kill people and be killed. And
Speaker 2: those people were the ones who are like, we need
Speaker 2: to we need to overthrow the government. And so that's
Speaker 2: what William Powell was essentially doing when he sat down
Speaker 2: to write this book. He wanted to put the information
Speaker 2: or if you put it all together, you could overthrow
Speaker 2: the government or start a revolution into the hands of
Speaker 2: as many people as possible. And that's that was the
Speaker 2: anarchist cookbook that he sat down and wrote, or like
Speaker 2: you said, he sat down and copied and pasted.
Speaker 1: He wrote a lot too. And maybe we'll get to
Speaker 1: some of that actual writing after a break. Sure, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back, all right. So Powell decides to
Speaker 1: put this book together. He goes to the New York
Speaker 1: Public Library Library. I said it like I was seven
Speaker 1: years old, started researching this book. And because he you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully we've made it clear that this guy was not
Speaker 1: a weapons expert and didn't know how to make bombs
Speaker 1: and was not a gorilla fighter or true revolutionary.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 1: He's sort of inspired to collect this information. And the
Speaker 1: forward of the book kind of says it all here,
Speaker 1: which he wrote, this is a book for the people
Speaker 1: of the United States of America. It has not written
Speaker 1: for the members of fringe political groups such as the
Speaker 1: Weathermen or the Minutemen. Those radical groups don't need this book.
Speaker 1: They already know everything that's in here. And if the
Speaker 1: real people of America, the silent majority, are going to survive,
Speaker 1: they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there you have it.
Speaker 2: So you said that he had like zero experience in
Speaker 2: guerrilla warfare, hand to hand combat, making bombs, converting like
Speaker 2: weapons into other newer, deadlier types of weapons. But if
Speaker 2: you read his writing, he sounds like he's been there,
Speaker 2: done that, and now he's come to tell you how
Speaker 2: to do it yourself. That's the way it reads. He
Speaker 2: sounds like a total tough guy. And when you step
Speaker 2: back and realized, like, no, this guy just did a
Speaker 2: lot of research and then presented it as if he
Speaker 2: knew what he was talking about. It actually is kind
Speaker 2: of funny, Yes, but we don't pretend like, no, no, No,
Speaker 2: like we've done you know, like we haven't like hung
Speaker 2: out with porcupines or you know.
Speaker 1: We're about that.
Speaker 2: We've never you know, given our expertise on economic policy
Speaker 2: to any government. Like, yes, we're not experts, right, So
Speaker 2: this guy he presented, William Powell, presented himself as an expert.
Speaker 2: And that's just how the book reads. But when you
Speaker 2: step back and think about it like that, it's actually
Speaker 2: kind of funny some of the stuff that's in there.
Speaker 2: Like one thing he did do was draw a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff, and he wasn't a very good artist to
Speaker 2: begin with. But one of the pictures that stood out
Speaker 2: to me, and this is only funny if you look
Speaker 2: at a certain way, it's also very much not funny.
Speaker 2: But there's a section on garrots or garats. I can't
Speaker 2: I can't remember how you pronounce it, which is two
Speaker 2: pieces of wood that you hold in your hands and
Speaker 2: then a piece of like piano wire between them, and
Speaker 2: you strangle somebody with this. And there's a drawing that
Speaker 2: I guess William Powell did of somebody, you know, strangling
Speaker 2: a guy. He's coming at him from behind with his
Speaker 2: knee in his back, like strangling him with the garat
Speaker 2: and just the way that this picture reads and all
Speaker 2: the text around it is just the idea that this
Speaker 2: kid had never done or even seen anything like that,
Speaker 2: but is presenting it like this is how you do it.
Speaker 2: It's just so preposterous and ridiculous that people actually took
Speaker 2: this seriously. It'd be like taking life or death advice
Speaker 2: from Holden Cawfield.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, was there. I didn't see that drawing. Was
Speaker 1: there a speech bubble that said.
Speaker 2: Pretty pretty much? Yeah? There? It was implied for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: One other thing that stuck out to me too, Chuck
Speaker 2: was he would just toss out percentages very confidently, and
Speaker 2: if you stop and read it, you're like, I don't
Speaker 2: think that's true. One of them was if in hand
Speaker 2: to hand combat, first of all, you fight to the death.
Speaker 2: That's how you fight hand to hand combat. You're not
Speaker 2: trying to knock the guy out. That was a piece
Speaker 2: of advice in this. But he also says that if
Speaker 2: you can get your opponent knocked off balance, you nine
Speaker 2: to one you can kill him in the next move.
Speaker 2: So nine times out of ten, your next move's going
Speaker 2: to kill the guy. Where did that percentage come from?
Speaker 2: Where did that ratio come from? You can just tell
Speaker 2: he's just making this stuff up. And when you take
Speaker 2: it like that, he just made all of it up essentially.
Speaker 2: And the stuff he didn't make up, he, like you said,
Speaker 2: just copied and pasted from legitimate sources, which is what
Speaker 2: really actually made the book dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or I mean, at the very least, he may
Speaker 1: have gotten that from someone who made that up, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different things you can you know, we've kind of mentioned
Speaker 1: a few of the things. There's a lot of drug stuff,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned how to make LSD and how to
Speaker 1: generate psychedelic mushrooms and stuff. But there's also a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, weapons stuff, how to kill somebody with
Speaker 1: piano wire and two pieces of wood, like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: how to modify guns, like how to make your own
Speaker 1: silencer or how to convert a shotgun into a grenade launcher. That, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a real big one. And this is the
Speaker 1: stuff that like, you know, in the I guess maybe
Speaker 1: since the sixties, but at least in the nineties was
Speaker 1: my experience, and it sounds like yours is. When you
Speaker 1: know your friend had it on the bookshelf and they're like,
Speaker 1: look at this man, you know, check this out. And
Speaker 1: it was never like let's build a silencer for a pistol. No,
Speaker 1: none of us had pistols. It was just like check
Speaker 1: this thing out, man, like this is a dangerous book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and let's do some nutmeg and smoke some banana peals, right,
Speaker 2: because this book is saying, yeah, that was in there too,
Speaker 2: pretty buzzed from it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So if you've ever heard of smoking banana peals,
Speaker 2: it's this isn't where it came from, but it the
Speaker 2: Anarchist Cookbook cribbed it from I think the Berkeley barbed
Speaker 2: some alternative newsletter. Yeah, like a couple of years before
Speaker 2: smoking banana pels was all the rage in like nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven, and then everybody finally figured out it doesn't
Speaker 2: do a thing to you. It was all just basically
Speaker 2: a hoax.
Speaker 1: But it made it or more expensive than just buying weed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a two hundred bananas.
Speaker 2: Or something, but allegedly it gave you like a totally
Speaker 2: different trip than weed or ls. So you know, the
Speaker 2: hippies were like, let's try anything we can, and then
Speaker 2: nutmeg actually does have psychedelic properties, but you have to
Speaker 2: take so much of it that you would just be
Speaker 2: hating life from taking that much nutmeg.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the other one, I'm sure this guy
Speaker 1: around was the toothpaste on a cigarette.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and bleach. You had to mix it with bleach.
Speaker 1: Oh, say see, I didn't know that part. I wonder
Speaker 1: it never did anything.
Speaker 2: Toothpaste and bleach. Yeah, which that doesn't do anything either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, by the way, don't try any of this dumb
Speaker 1: stuff that we're kind of jokingly reminiscing about hearing. It
Speaker 1: was a dumb thing to hear back then and spread around,
Speaker 1: and it certainly is now. So none of all of
Speaker 1: this stuff is very much not recommended.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's you saying. That reminds me of there's this
Speaker 2: great line from Malcolm in the Middle where I can't
Speaker 2: remember his mom's name, but his mom was like scolding
Speaker 2: his dad about like filling the kid's heads with all
Speaker 2: of these stories of like misspent youth, and his dad goes,
Speaker 2: those are cautionary tales, and she said, cautionary tales don't
Speaker 2: end with it was so.
Speaker 1: Cool, right, that was such a good show.
Speaker 2: It really was a great show.
Speaker 1: But speaking of cautionary there was he did, you know,
Speaker 1: lay out a little caution here and there, used care, caution,
Speaker 1: common sense. This book is not for children or morons,
Speaker 1: was one, even though plenty of children and morons got
Speaker 1: it into their hands. But he, you know, he was
Speaker 1: a sort of a dramatic writer. He I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say he was like untalented as a writer, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to judge the book on those
Speaker 1: terms at all, even, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't think a single writer in the
Speaker 2: history of the world has ever looked back at what
Speaker 2: they wrote at nineteen and was like this is great.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, you know, it's always cringey. So considering
Speaker 2: that he was nineteen when he wrote it, it's actually
Speaker 2: pretty good writing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, good point.
Speaker 2: So yeah, like you said, he did issue some warnings
Speaker 2: and that kind of thing, not necessarily as like a CoA.
Speaker 2: I don't get the impression that William Powell ever even
Speaker 2: considered covering his own rear.
Speaker 1: No, or that I don't even know how much he
Speaker 1: thought about this stuff ahead of time, like people actually
Speaker 1: doing some of the stuff.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, I don't know if he just if
Speaker 2: it was like like a bit of a lark like
Speaker 2: that where he was like, I'm just gonna do this
Speaker 2: and didn't think it through, or if he actually was
Speaker 2: like really trying to help people, say a revolution. I'm
Speaker 2: not exactly sure which way it went, but from what
Speaker 2: I've seen, most people site that he was actually quite
Speaker 2: serious when he wrote this book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But you know, they call it a cookbook.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of kind of quote unquote cookbooks
Speaker 1: that some featured real recipes for things, but some didn't.
Speaker 1: It was more like a collection kind of thing. This
Speaker 1: had plenty of recipes for druggy stuff, pot Brownie's, marijuana butter,
Speaker 1: how to make marijuana mints, and so there were genuine
Speaker 1: sort of drug based recipes in there. But just because
Speaker 1: if you've never heard of the Anarchist Cookbook, it is
Speaker 1: not just like a cookbook obviously.
Speaker 2: No, he also had warnings against sniffing glue or shooting heroin. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's pretty sensible and level headed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look at that kid.
Speaker 2: So we put all this together, and I think it's
Speaker 2: like a couple hundred pages, right, and remember it being
Speaker 2: semi thick and like large, large page format, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think so that's what they call it in the
Speaker 2: publishing world, right, large page format.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really just wanted to have it the spine
Speaker 1: showing on your bookshelf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or when you carried it around campus, like you
Speaker 2: made sure that your arm wasn't covering the title.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I never saw anyone actually carrying them around.
Speaker 2: So he tried to enter the publishing world with this manuscript.
Speaker 2: He sent it to thirty different houses. He got thirty
Speaker 2: different rejection letters, some like what is wrong with you?
Speaker 2: Others like this isn't quite the fit with our ethos.
Speaker 2: And then somehow, some way, he came into contact with
Speaker 2: a guy named Lyle Stewart. And Lyle Stewart was a
Speaker 2: publisher who just basically wanted to be a provocative publisher,
Speaker 2: and the Anarchist cookbook just fell into his lap and
Speaker 2: he was like, thank you, thank you God, and he
Speaker 2: ran with it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, big time. He didn't change a word. He
Speaker 1: was like, this is perfect as it is. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: your drawings are great. You're such a good little drawer boy.
Speaker 1: And he just he wanted it. I think he loved this,
Speaker 1: the idea that the idea of the book, and I
Speaker 1: think any thoughts to changing it were quickly squashed in
Speaker 1: his mind of like no sort of the genius of
Speaker 1: this book to him at least was just how taboo
Speaker 1: it was and it should look like, you know, crazy rantings.
Speaker 1: Because one there's a quote from him that I think
Speaker 1: is pretty telling of like who this guy is and
Speaker 1: also kind of smart for a book publisher. Was that
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, but like, people don't buy a bestseller like
Speaker 1: this to read it. They buy it to have it
Speaker 1: and just show it on the.
Speaker 2: Bookshelf exactly to carry it around campus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with your arm notut covering up the title.
Speaker 2: So in the hands of Lyle Stewart, like this book
Speaker 2: would take on its life finally, right, it would go
Speaker 2: from the rantings of a nineteen year old kid to
Speaker 2: a legitimately published book that was also heavily promoted by
Speaker 2: a guy who knew how to just play the media
Speaker 2: to get free exposure, essentially, and so he held a
Speaker 2: press conference where somebody supposedly an angry anarchist who was
Speaker 2: mad that this kid was sharing this forbidden information with
Speaker 2: the world, threw a smoke bomb into the press conference
Speaker 2: and everybody like jump for cover. And William Powell later
Speaker 2: said that he noticed that Lyle Stewart didn't dock or
Speaker 2: anything like that. He just kept his position behind the
Speaker 2: podium during the press conference pretty much. And he was
Speaker 2: like Lyle Stewart was just the kind of guy who
Speaker 2: who would think to stage something like that just to
Speaker 2: show how serious anarchistic this book was during the press conference.
Speaker 2: Like that's the kind of promotion that this book got
Speaker 2: from him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. If you're wondering, like, all right, where is
Speaker 1: our old friend jay Edgar Hoover and the FBI and
Speaker 1: all this, they were on it big time. They took
Speaker 1: this book seriously. They you know, you used to hear rumors. Again,
Speaker 1: these are probably just rumors that never happened about like
Speaker 1: there was a list and like where'd you buy it from?
Speaker 1: And like did you use a credit card? That kind
Speaker 1: of thing, because now you're on a list if you
Speaker 1: own a copy of this thing. It probably didn't go
Speaker 1: that far, but they did question his parents. They questioned
Speaker 1: his dad's colleagues at the un They never questioned Powell,
Speaker 1: like sat him down in person, because they thought it would,
Speaker 1: you know, it would hit the news. What they what
Speaker 1: they wanted to do was kind of quash this thing
Speaker 1: without giving it even more publicity.
Speaker 2: Right, But that didn't stop the media from running with it.
Speaker 2: For sure. There was a headline that Dave, who helped
Speaker 2: us with this, he dug up from UPI that said
Speaker 2: new anarchist cookbook contains recipe for sabotage destruction and so
Speaker 2: as people are reading this, they become genuinely scared of
Speaker 2: this book. So, like you said, Jaegar Hoover is in
Speaker 2: charge of the FBI. I don't know if we said
Speaker 2: or not, but it was published at the beginning in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one, so Richard Nixon as president, this is
Speaker 2: not a time where people were cool with free speech
Speaker 2: when it came to you know, making bombs and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. So everybody was like, you guys need to
Speaker 2: investigate this and just get rid of this. People were
Speaker 2: literally sending clippings of like book reviews to Jaegar Hoover
Speaker 2: with like notes written in the margin. I think one
Speaker 2: was danger exclamation point. What are you going to do
Speaker 2: about this? And what's astounding to me is not a
Speaker 2: single head got cracked as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: And in fact, the FBI was like, we've investigated it,
Speaker 2: and this is all protected by the first amendments as
Speaker 2: reprehensible as we think it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is, you know, a real victory in a way, again,
Speaker 1: as dumb as a book as it ended up being,
Speaker 1: it is a victory for free speech in this country
Speaker 1: to not have the government, even at that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially at that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come in and like put their neck on everyone's throat,
Speaker 1: which is kind of surprising.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's surprising, and it's also ironic because it was
Speaker 2: exactly that kind of like censorship mentality that William Powell
Speaker 2: was raging against him. Yeah, he tested it, and the system,
Speaker 2: the establishment actually passed. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. They're like,
Speaker 2: we're going to protect your coming book, you little revolutionary yokel.
Speaker 1: Should we take another break?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: I think anytime you say the word yokle, that's our cue.
Speaker 1: All right. We'll be right back and talk about kind
Speaker 1: of when this book was in the wrong hands. What
Speaker 1: happened right after this?
Speaker 2: All right, Chuck. So you said this book ended up
Speaker 2: in the wrong hands. I guess we said at the
Speaker 2: very outset that it did. So it's not really a
Speaker 2: big twist in the story, but I think the first
Speaker 2: time blood was actually shed, like life was lost because
Speaker 2: of the Anarchist Cookbook, or at least in part, was
Speaker 2: in September of nineteen seventy six, when a group of
Speaker 2: Croatian independence gorillas hijacked a flight from New York to
Speaker 2: Chicago and was like, this plane's going to Paris now,
Speaker 2: and they're like, do you know how many refueling stops
Speaker 2: we're going to have to make? And they said, we
Speaker 2: don't care, just do it. And supposedly, as far as
Speaker 2: hijackings go, it was really polite. I think some of
Speaker 2: the people who were actually hostages later told the press
Speaker 2: like it was almost ridiculous how polite and apologetic these
Speaker 2: terrorists were. And it turned out that the bombs they
Speaker 2: had strapped to themselves were like silly putty and alarm
Speaker 2: clock were not bombs. But one of the demands that
Speaker 2: they had was that the the like Washington Posts and
Speaker 2: some of the other papers, had to print their manifesto
Speaker 2: or else they would set off a real bomb at
Speaker 2: Grand Central Station. And that one actually did turn out
Speaker 2: to be real.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The bomb squad came in from New York City's
Speaker 1: finest very sadly one person was killed. Officer Brian Murray
Speaker 1: was killed trying to diffuse the bomb. A few other
Speaker 1: people were injured. Upon being charged, the hijackers said, we
Speaker 1: we got this information on how to make this bomb
Speaker 1: from the Anarchist cookbook. And that was the first case,
Speaker 1: like you said, of like real bloodshed happening, but not
Speaker 1: the first, you know, like you mentioned, this was found
Speaker 1: on every not everybody, like it seems like any time
Speaker 1: you heard about someone committing some awful violent act against
Speaker 1: either a lot of people or planning something like this.
Speaker 1: This was sort of the one of the textbooks that
Speaker 1: they had on their shelf exactly.
Speaker 2: And by this time, so this is nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: William Powell had completely transformed into a different again, more
Speaker 2: grown up Personeah he became an Anglican. He became religious
Speaker 2: that same year. By that time, he'd already gone off
Speaker 2: to college, graduated, worked in Alaska, discovered as his true
Speaker 2: love of educating kids with learning disabilities, like what he
Speaker 2: would keep doing for the rest of his life. And
Speaker 2: so when this when it came out that like this
Speaker 2: is this is actually like now like costing people their lives,
Speaker 2: he was very upset about that. He wanted to distance
Speaker 2: himself from the book. The problem was as we'll see,
Speaker 2: he never owned the copyright. In addition to knowing exactly
Speaker 2: how to promote controversial material, Lyles Stewart also knew how
Speaker 2: to rip off his authors too, so he owned the
Speaker 2: copyright to the Anarchist Cookbook. William Powell just got a
Speaker 2: couple thousand dollars from it and then said, okay, see
Speaker 2: you later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, a couple of thousand dollars up front, I
Speaker 1: think he said. He ended up making about fifty grand
Speaker 1: in royalties over the years, and that was despite him
Speaker 1: wanting to pull it from print. There was a period
Speaker 1: of about eleven years where it was out of print.
Speaker 1: You know. By this point, like in the nineties, he
Speaker 1: was moving sort of all over the world with his wife,
Speaker 1: teaching in the Middle East, teaching in Africa, really doing
Speaker 1: great work. But in ninety one a couple of things happened.
Speaker 1: He was appointed by or appointed as a CEO of
Speaker 1: an international school in Tanzania, and parents complained and were like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you know who this guy is? He wrote the
Speaker 1: Anarchist Cookbook, and they you know, they protested it was
Speaker 1: an anonymous letter to the board and they protested his hiring. Ironically,
Speaker 1: it was that same year that the book actually went
Speaker 1: out of print for a little while, which is what
Speaker 1: he wanted more than anything. In ninety one, it was
Speaker 1: bought by a guy, a publisher named Stephen Schregis, and
Speaker 1: he was a you know, I'm not su sure how
Speaker 1: big time he was, but apparently he had a couple
Speaker 1: of thousand books that he was publishing over this eleven
Speaker 1: year period and that was not one of them. He
Speaker 1: bought the rights and then sat on it and said,
Speaker 1: you know, the public shouldn't have this, and I agree
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was like an eleven year period where
Speaker 1: you know, it was out of print. You could still
Speaker 1: buy it, of course, if you knew someone who had it,
Speaker 1: or if it was in a bookstore or something. It's
Speaker 1: not like it was banned, but he pulled it for
Speaker 1: a little over a decade.
Speaker 2: Well, I think something that's good to know about William
Speaker 2: Powell too. By this time, you said he got forced
Speaker 2: out of his position as CEO of the International School
Speaker 2: in Tanzania for being the author of the Anarchist Cookbook.
Speaker 2: Very shortly after he departed, the board got back in
Speaker 2: touch with them. It was like, please come back, like
Speaker 2: we don't care about this where we like what you're
Speaker 2: doing so much, we want you to come back. So
Speaker 2: he came back for eight more years as the head
Speaker 2: of that school. I think that says quite.
Speaker 1: A bit totally. I don't know. Did you watch the documentary, No,
Speaker 1: I haven't. It's good. There's a documentary called American Anarchists that,
Speaker 1: like you just you really feel for this guy because
Speaker 1: it's a situation where everyone does something dumb or many
Speaker 1: things that are dumb when they're teenagers, and most of
Speaker 1: us are able to escape those and leave those firmly
Speaker 1: in the past and move on and grow up like
Speaker 1: everyone does. And this was a guy that was really
Speaker 1: doing great work and really really really had so much
Speaker 1: regret about this book, but there was just it was
Speaker 1: there's nothing he could do about it. And you could
Speaker 1: feel this guy's pain of like, my name is tied
Speaker 1: to this thing. I just wish it would go away.
Speaker 1: But you never felt like, well like sometimes like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you did it, so you deserve it.
Speaker 2: Oh you felt like that. No.
Speaker 1: I always felt really bad for the guy with the
Speaker 1: interviews because man, because he just went on to do
Speaker 1: such great work and special ed and like really turned
Speaker 1: things around and kind of had this stamp on him
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. He had a hard
Speaker 1: time getting work, you know, a lot of times. That's
Speaker 1: one reason he kept kind of moving around.
Speaker 2: Man, that is really sad to He's a very empathetic figure.
Speaker 1: Huh. That's how he came across to me, I guess,
Speaker 1: sympathetic figure.
Speaker 2: So yeah. One reason why he was just like in
Speaker 2: agony I guess over this book, him not being able
Speaker 2: to do anything about this book is because after that
Speaker 2: Croatian separatist incident, like it ended up inspiring more violence,
Speaker 2: like more real world violence. Throughout the eighties and the nineties.
Speaker 2: I mean, from the beginning of the eighties to the
Speaker 2: end of the nineties, there were some really high profile
Speaker 2: mass murders that were carried out, like we said, by
Speaker 2: people who owned the Anarchist Cookbook. So in one way
Speaker 2: or another, they were inspired or even maybe directed in
Speaker 2: some cases in carrying out the crimes that they committed.
Speaker 2: The atrocity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And he was putting out statements all along.
Speaker 1: He even contacted Amazon to try and get a message
Speaker 1: kind of permanently posted. The central idea of the book
Speaker 1: was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about
Speaker 1: political change. I no longer agree with this. I want
Speaker 1: to stay categorically I'm not in agreement with the contents
Speaker 1: of the Anarchist Cookbook, and I would be very pleased
Speaker 1: and relieved to see its publication discontinued. I consider it
Speaker 1: to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication which should
Speaker 1: be taken out of print. So yeah, I mean there
Speaker 1: was nothing he could do about it because of Lyles Stewart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not just Lyles Stuart, but after the guy who
Speaker 2: I guess said on it. Yeah, I think Lyle Stewart
Speaker 2: sought him out and bought it back and it went
Speaker 2: back into print, and then Lyle Stewart sold it to
Speaker 2: another publishing house that owns it now that is keeping
Speaker 2: it in print as well. And the thing to understand
Speaker 2: about this Anarchist Cookbook, it's like that Abby Hoffman steal
Speaker 2: this book thing, Like the idea of it being pirated
Speaker 2: is kind of part of its whole jam, you know.
Speaker 2: So there's so many like ripoff copycat published versions of
Speaker 2: it that you can buy on Amazon and other places,
Speaker 2: like no problem. They're like illegitimate counterfeit copies of the
Speaker 2: anarchist cookbook, but it's still the anarchist cookbook to somebody
Speaker 2: else publishing it as if it's in the public domain.
Speaker 2: And then even if all those people stopped actually physically
Speaker 2: publishing it, it's all over the internet now, Like I
Speaker 2: was reading a PDF version of it on the Internet archive,
Speaker 2: Like it's just out there. The way Dave put it
Speaker 2: was perfect. The geniees out of the bottle, like this
Speaker 2: information is out there now. And unfortunately, you'll probably continue
Speaker 2: to keep inspiring people into acts of violence because of
Speaker 2: that spirit behind it that the government needs to be
Speaker 2: taken to task and overthrown and the people need to
Speaker 2: rise up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and despite everything he tried to do, it just
Speaker 1: he put it out there and it wouldn't go away.
Speaker 1: He passed away in twenty sixteen, and you know, always
Speaker 1: had great regret about what he had put into the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one other thing. There was another statement
Speaker 2: he made after I think a school shooting where he
Speaker 2: drew parallels between the work he was doing and then
Speaker 2: the legacy of the book, where he was saying, you know,
Speaker 2: he works with kids who have learning disabilities, and these
Speaker 2: kids are alienated by their disability essentially, and he said,
Speaker 2: no child should have to earn the right to belong,
Speaker 2: And then he turns around and essentially empathizes with the
Speaker 2: kids who are, you know, reading his book and then
Speaker 2: going on and shooting up their schools and saying like,
Speaker 2: these kids, I'm sure are alienated and feel ostracized as well,
Speaker 2: and this book did not help them in any way.
Speaker 2: It did the opposite. Probably. Yeah, yeah, he does seem
Speaker 2: like a pretty amazing guy. I mean, just the work
Speaker 2: that he did afterward is pretty remarkable. I know, he's
Speaker 2: like an internationally renowned educator or he was. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 2: in some ways he made up for what he did.
Speaker 1: And I guess if there's any thing to take away
Speaker 1: from this if you're a young person, like we have
Speaker 1: always encouraged people to be bold and use their voice,
Speaker 1: but you know, maybe pump the brakes. You know, think
Speaker 1: about ten years from now. What do you want? Do
Speaker 1: you want that attached to you ten twenty, thirty, forty
Speaker 1: years from now?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, if you're writing nonfiction that calls for violence,
Speaker 2: let's just stop and ask somebody, is this a good idea? Right?
Speaker 2: Since Chuck said, right, everybody, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: Nope?
Speaker 2: Since Chuck said, right, and then nope, it's definitely time
Speaker 2: for listener.
Speaker 1: Now. Yeah, I'm gonna call this missed opportunities. This is
Speaker 1: from AR or maybe just R No, it's AR.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: AR is talking about are would a love drug be ethical? Episode?
Speaker 1: That just dropped? And Ar was a former musician and
Speaker 1: thinks we missed a lot of opportunities for band names
Speaker 1: and album titles?
Speaker 2: Ok kill, let's here, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So here we go. You guys did mention sablesco
Speaker 1: and herb as an oregon saxophone combo. I can't remember
Speaker 1: that there were real gyms in there, though, Guys like
Speaker 1: LUs Bucket, Yeah, that's a good one. Okay, experimental love
Speaker 1: drug sure kind of on the nose, Electric roses and philosophers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little, yeah, a little wordy.
Speaker 2: That sounds like an album title. Then if they're really wordy,
Speaker 2: it's usually an album title.
Speaker 1: Well, here's some album titles or song titles. He felt like,
Speaker 1: we miss you're not good at loving. It's a great
Speaker 1: one that needs a parenthetical, but like, you know, parentheses,
Speaker 1: but you really are right, really low key mellow stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. If you dose them, that's
Speaker 1: pretty good and love is good enough. That's a really
Speaker 1: good one.
Speaker 2: That's a great one. I love that. I can't believe
Speaker 2: there's not a song called that already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there may be. Ar points out that the
Speaker 1: genres on these guys run the gamut from EDM to country,
Speaker 1: and a really big fan have turned on friends and
Speaker 1: family to the podcast. Just wanted to say, keep doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Ar, That was a great email. We
Speaker 2: appreciate that big time, and as always everybody, if we
Speaker 2: ever walk past a great band name or an album name,
Speaker 2: or a song title or something like that, we want
Speaker 2: to hear from you too. You can wrap it up,
Speaker 2: spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Speaker 2: Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.