WEBVTT - The Anarchist Cookbook: Funny but Dangerous 0:00:01.520 --> 0:00:09.320 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.399 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:15.720 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:22.079 should know and this is the somebody gives out even 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:24.120 worse advice than we do edition. 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:27.040 I'm glad you picked this one. 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:28.440 Thanks. 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:31.960 Do you have any history with The Anarchist Cookbook? 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:33.040 Yes? 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:34.600 Did you have a copy of it? 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:35.720 Yes? 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:41.000 I could have told you that, did you No? I mean, 0:00:41.040 --> 0:00:42.920 I guess first we should just tell people we're talking 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.440 about a book called The Anarchist Cookbook published in nineteen 0:00:46.479 --> 0:00:51.400 seventy one that was, or that is rather a book 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.560 that contains everything from like how to make your own 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:57.880 LSD to how to find mushrooms to how to make 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:02.120 a bomb. And you know, Dave points out that it 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.520 was sort of a dorm room special and I did 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.800 not have one, but you know, I had a couple 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:09.360 of friends that had it, and it was just one 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:12.240 of those things that were like, hey, got the Anarchist Cookbook. 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.399 It meant you were like just an alternative thinker. And 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:19.600 I mean, he's very silly thinking back. Yeah, And I 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:21.520 think most of my friends that had it it was 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.080 all about like the drug stuff. It wasn't They weren't 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.120 like bomb makers, you know, right. 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:31.679 Yeah. I actually hadn't even fully realized that there was 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:35.920 like bomb making instructions in there. Yeah. Yeah, So it's 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:38.800 a it's almost like I've seen it described as a 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:40.200 book of forbidden knowledge. 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:42.600 Yeah, it's got such a bad. 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:48.040 Reputation that it's in any court case I was reading 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.640 about this. In any court case where the book has 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:55.480 been confiscated as contraband not a single judge has ruled 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:58.240 that that was illegal. They're like, yeah, get that book 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:03.600 away from them. That's a terrible book. And it's also 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:07.480 frequently it has been in the past used as circumstantial 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.840 evidence to help prove cases against people suspected of crimes. 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.000 They were also caught with the anarchist cookbook in their 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:16.400 house and that was used against them in their trials. 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:19.160 Yeah, and I think in the UK, I was trying 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:22.680 to find specific incidents of this, but I'm pretty sure 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:24.720 in the UK, at least for a while, like it 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.359 was if you got caught with it, or maybe if 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:30.240 it was if something had gone wrong and you got 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:32.120 caught with it, it was an extra charge or something. 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:34.440 I'm not sure if it was officially banned there. It 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:36.359 was kind of hard to little Murky. 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.799 Yeah, but so I mean, in the real world, this 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:44.440 book has been used in plots that have resulted in 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:49.240 real life deaths like, Yeah, Timothy McVay, the Oklahoma City bomber, 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:52.760 he had a copy. A guy named Thomas Spinks who 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.280 bombed ten abortion clinics in the eighties, he had a copy. 0:02:56.520 --> 0:03:00.720 The Boston marathon bombers, they had copies. The Column shooters, 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:05.519 they had a copy. Like, even if it didn't directly 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:10.200 teach them how to blow people up necessarily, it was 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:16.160 still an inspirational book for them, right. And the craziest 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:20.639 part about this whole thing is that these people were 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:25.640 buying fully into a book written by an angry nineteen 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.680 year old who went on to grow up very shortly 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:32.880 after the publication of this book and denounced it almost immediately. 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:37.640 Yeah, and a book that was, you know, kind of 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:44.320 a copy paste fest. Yeah, mostly information that was readily available. 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.360 In fact, I would say completely, I don't think anything 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:49.560 that he put in there was something that was like 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:53.040 truly forbidden. No, uh, like you could find all this 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.040 stuff out, because this kid found all this stuff out 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:55.840 and just compiled it. 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:00.520 Yeah, even the literal recipe for LSD was happied and 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:04.640 pasted from the Eli Lilly patent that describes in depth, 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.160 Like anybody can buy The Anarchist Cookbook or go online 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:11.400 and figure out exactly how to how to make LSD 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:15.000 based on these instructions. If you know what you're talking about, chemistry, 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:19.240 that's a big caveat. But I mean it's not like so, Yes, 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:23.440 every single part in this book was already was accessible, 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:27.799 but it was presented at least by the publisher. As 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.000 you know, again, this book of forbidden repressed knowledge that 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:34.160 needs to be gotten in the hands of every American 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.280 so that we can stage an actual revolution and take 0:04:37.320 --> 0:04:40.960 back our country from the forces of you know, evil. 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:46.160 Yeah, pretty funny. I mean, not funny because it's been used, 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:51.640 but just works. Like you and I having it around 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:54.920 us in college is sort of an embarrassing. 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:56.600 Trope, you know, I have mine in high school. 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.120 Uh, of course you were. You're head of the game, 0:04:59.160 --> 0:04:59.919 my friend. 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:05.800 For sure. So this book has been two million copies 0:05:05.839 --> 0:05:09.400 of The Anarchist Cookbook has been sold in the I 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:13.520 guess fifty Yeah, more than fifty years since it was 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:18.120 first published and it came from again an angry nineteen 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.560 year old whose background and then also the backdrop that 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:25.400 he wrote this book in really kind of inform what 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:27.480 you need to know about the Anarchist Cookbook. 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.520 Yeah, totally. As far as his background, his name is 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:35.320 William Powell. He was born in the States, but moved 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:41.080 to England when he was three, son of a philosophy professor. 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.080 His father was a philosophy teacher and then would go 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:49.440 on to work as in leadership at the un His 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:51.520 mom was a therapist. They weren't like, you know, these 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:57.000 radicals kind of enforcing their opinions on their son. He 0:05:57.080 --> 0:06:00.400 was just a regular kid who moved to England kind 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:02.640 of didn't fit in there because he was bullied for 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:06.679 being an American. Then when he came back from England, 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:08.880 he was bullied for having a little bit of an 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:12.640 English accent by Americans in White Plains New York. And 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.640 apparently even like teachers would make fun of his accent 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:18.919 and stuff and tease him. So he started getting pretty 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.880 angry early on, started getting in with a bad crowd 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:27.159 and skipping school and busting cars, and yeah, eventually I 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:30.440 believe they sent him to a boarding school where he 0:06:30.520 --> 0:06:33.720 was expelled after he drove a teacher's ditch into a car, 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:35.640 or I guess put it in neutral and pushed it. 0:06:36.120 --> 0:06:39.440 Yeah, car into a ditch. That'll get you expelled pretty 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:43.880 much every time. He also said that he was molested 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:47.200 during this time as well at the boarding school, so 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:51.000 like he had a lot of reason to be angry. 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:54.320 This stuff like really impacted him. And he also said 0:06:54.400 --> 0:06:57.560 later on he became an educator, which is pretty amazing 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:00.919 considering what we're about to describe him doing as a teenager. 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:06.720 But he believes looking back that he had an undiagnosed 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:10.000 learning disability that made it, on top of all, like 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:14.600 the social mistreatment made his academic career like that much 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:18.240 harder and frustrating as well. So you put all that together, 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:22.600 you have a kid who's ripe for being antisocial. 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:26.560 I guess, yeah, for sure. He eventually would go to 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:29.440 New York City when he was seventeen on his own 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.280 and lived on the Lower east Side East Village area 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:36.040 in the Bowery And in the nineteen sixties, this was 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:40.120 sixty seven. You talked about sort of what was going 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:42.720 on around him. This was a New York that was 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:50.600 in the middle of protesting Vietnam. He was even attempted 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:53.600 to be drafted at least to go to Vietnam and fight, 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:57.320 but he showed up drunk and stoned at the draft 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:00.000 board hoping to get out of it, which I guess 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:00.800 he did, right. 0:08:01.440 --> 0:08:03.800 He did. I think he was interviewed four different times 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:06.000 before they gave him a section four F. 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:07.760 Yeah, which is what he wanted. 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.080 It's exactly what he wanted. And this was another thing. 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:13.520 This is part of that backdrop that I was referring 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:16.640 to that was really important to understand. This was a 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.600 time where if you were like a there was I 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:24.480 think a twenty something year window in age. If you 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:26.920 were this in that window, if that's how old you were, 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:28.680 there was a chance that you were going to be 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:32.480 forced to go fight in Vietnam and possibly die and 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.880 possibly kill other people. And this was reality, and a 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:39.720 lot of people were not okay with that. So this 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:44.800 this pushing back on that whole sentiment to kind of 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:48.960 form this basis of like this revolutionary you know sense 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:54.960 that like this, the stakes were so high for what 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.520 could happen to you if the government just insucially decided 0:08:58.600 --> 0:09:01.640 you're going over there. Now that to the people who 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:03.800 were opposed to it. There's like, there's no response to 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:05.400 this except for a bloody revolution. 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:10.560 Yeah, exactly. So his you know, sort of living situation 0:09:10.720 --> 0:09:14.600 certainly didn't quell any of this. He was roommate to 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.679 a guy named Steve Hancock, who was the older brother 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:22.199 of one of his former boarding school pals, and he 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:26.960 was a genuine like anarchists. Steve Hancock was. He managed 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:31.640 a bookstore called book Masters, got William Powell a job there. 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:34.679 He started digging into, you know, all those sort of 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:39.400 revolutionary guide books like from Shea Gavera and Abby Hoffman 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:43.520 and other you know, supposed anarchist leaders at the time. 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.520 And Steve Hancock was a big influence on him. He 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.240 was sort of he was a member of the Industrial 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:52.800 Workers of the World. I think we've talked about them 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:53.360 at some point. 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:57.000 Yeah, you being DEBS was one of the founding members. 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.800 Remember him. He ran for president as a social from prison. 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.080 Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Hancock was a member of 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:07.679 this group and he told William Powell about this idea 0:10:07.800 --> 0:10:13.360 for distributing flyers, about making LSD, about making Molotov cocktails, 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.160 and that was what the original anarchist cookbook was going 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.640 to be from Powell. Once he kind of launched into 0:10:20.640 --> 0:10:22.960 this thing, was just a series of flyers, but it 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:24.959 kind of quickly escalated to book level. 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.640 Okay, cool, So just one more thing about him working 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:33.559 at book masters. Apparently he met Valerie Solange, the woman 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:37.600 who shot Andy Warhol, when she came around peddling copies 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:41.360 of her scum manifesto, and he was like, I like this, 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:43.559 and actually got a few copies and put him in 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:44.079 the window. 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:44.840 Yeah. 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:46.839 Nuts, I think this is a week before she shot 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:47.840 Andy Warhol too. 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.320 Well, that all totally tracks with his sort of state 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:52.280 of mind at the time, you know. 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:55.120 Yeah. And speaking of state of mind, so he is 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.040 completely hooked on speed at this time. He's doing tons 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:04.320 of drugs, just living the anarchist, anti government, anti war 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:08.840 lifestyle in New York, which was I don't know if 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.360 you said or not, this was basically like the center 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:16.720 of the anti war movement in nineteen sixty seven sixty eight, right, yeah, 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.640 and like this whole idea, I should say, not everybody 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:23.360 I said earlier, everybody who was opposed to it was like, 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:25.720 the only way you can solve this is a bloody revolution. 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:29.480 Not true. There was a lot of peaceful activism that 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:32.240 did not think that, but the people there was a 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.760 lot more militancy than say you'll see today in America. 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:38.480 It was inspired by the idea that you could be 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.040 drafted and sent to kill people and be killed. And 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:43.960 those people were the ones who are like, we need 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:46.840 to we need to overthrow the government. And so that's 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:50.560 what William Powell was essentially doing when he sat down 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:53.559 to write this book. He wanted to put the information 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:56.920 or if you put it all together, you could overthrow 0:11:57.000 --> 0:12:00.160 the government or start a revolution into the hands of 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.800 as many people as possible. And that's that was the 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.000 anarchist cookbook that he sat down and wrote, or like 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:08.880 you said, he sat down and copied and pasted. 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:12.840 He wrote a lot too. And maybe we'll get to 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.200 some of that actual writing after a break. Sure, all right, 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:38.880 we'll be right back, all right. So Powell decides to 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:42.040 put this book together. He goes to the New York 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:45.880 Public Library Library. I said it like I was seven 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:51.040 years old, started researching this book. And because he you know, 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:53.520 hopefully we've made it clear that this guy was not 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:56.240 a weapons expert and didn't know how to make bombs 0:12:56.280 --> 0:12:59.599 and was not a gorilla fighter or true revolutionary. 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:00.240 He is. 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:05.280 He's sort of inspired to collect this information. And the 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.120 forward of the book kind of says it all here, 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:11.120 which he wrote, this is a book for the people 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:13.200 of the United States of America. It has not written 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:15.960 for the members of fringe political groups such as the 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:20.400 Weathermen or the Minutemen. Those radical groups don't need this book. 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:23.280 They already know everything that's in here. And if the 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.800 real people of America, the silent majority, are going to survive, 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:31.600 they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book. Yeah, 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:32.800 so there you have it. 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.880 So you said that he had like zero experience in 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:44.200 guerrilla warfare, hand to hand combat, making bombs, converting like 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:48.760 weapons into other newer, deadlier types of weapons. But if 0:13:48.800 --> 0:13:51.959 you read his writing, he sounds like he's been there, 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:54.079 done that, and now he's come to tell you how 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:56.240 to do it yourself. That's the way it reads. He 0:13:56.320 --> 0:13:59.360 sounds like a total tough guy. And when you step 0:13:59.440 --> 0:14:02.040 back and realized, like, no, this guy just did a 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.040 lot of research and then presented it as if he 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.240 knew what he was talking about. It actually is kind 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:11.400 of funny, Yes, but we don't pretend like, no, no, No, 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:13.520 like we've done you know, like we haven't like hung 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:16.080 out with porcupines or you know. 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:17.440 We're about that. 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:22.520 We've never you know, given our expertise on economic policy 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.920 to any government. Like, yes, we're not experts, right, So 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:29.200 this guy he presented, William Powell, presented himself as an expert. 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:32.400 And that's just how the book reads. But when you 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:34.440 step back and think about it like that, it's actually 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.200 kind of funny some of the stuff that's in there. 0:14:37.280 --> 0:14:39.760 Like one thing he did do was draw a lot 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:42.160 of stuff, and he wasn't a very good artist to 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.200 begin with. But one of the pictures that stood out 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:49.000 to me, and this is only funny if you look 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:51.440 at a certain way, it's also very much not funny. 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.920 But there's a section on garrots or garats. I can't 0:14:55.040 --> 0:14:57.080 I can't remember how you pronounce it, which is two 0:14:57.200 --> 0:14:59.160 pieces of wood that you hold in your hands and 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:03.080 then a piece of like piano wire between them, and 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:06.040 you strangle somebody with this. And there's a drawing that 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:09.880 I guess William Powell did of somebody, you know, strangling 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:12.400 a guy. He's coming at him from behind with his 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:14.800 knee in his back, like strangling him with the garat 0:15:15.320 --> 0:15:19.320 and just the way that this picture reads and all 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:23.400 the text around it is just the idea that this 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:26.440 kid had never done or even seen anything like that, 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.680 but is presenting it like this is how you do it. 0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:33.280 It's just so preposterous and ridiculous that people actually took 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:36.440 this seriously. It'd be like taking life or death advice 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:37.720 from Holden Cawfield. 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:41.120 Basically, yeah, was there. I didn't see that drawing. Was 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:42.760 there a speech bubble that said. 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:47.680 Pretty pretty much? Yeah? There? It was implied for sure. 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:48.600 Okay. 0:15:49.200 --> 0:15:51.000 One other thing that stuck out to me too, Chuck 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:54.400 was he would just toss out percentages very confidently, and 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:56.480 if you stop and read it, you're like, I don't 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.720 think that's true. One of them was if in hand 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:02.360 to hand combat, first of all, you fight to the death. 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:04.680 That's how you fight hand to hand combat. You're not 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:06.440 trying to knock the guy out. That was a piece 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:09.240 of advice in this. But he also says that if 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:13.720 you can get your opponent knocked off balance, you nine 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:16.240 to one you can kill him in the next move. 0:16:16.440 --> 0:16:18.520 So nine times out of ten, your next move's going 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:22.240 to kill the guy. Where did that percentage come from? 0:16:22.320 --> 0:16:24.840 Where did that ratio come from? You can just tell 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.840 he's just making this stuff up. And when you take 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:31.120 it like that, he just made all of it up essentially. 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:33.440 And the stuff he didn't make up, he, like you said, 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.840 just copied and pasted from legitimate sources, which is what 0:16:37.040 --> 0:16:39.160 really actually made the book dangerous. 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:43.040 Yeah, or I mean, at the very least, he may 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:45.800 have gotten that from someone who made that up, you know, 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:50.120 I mean, who knows. So there are a lot of 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:51.920 different things you can you know, we've kind of mentioned 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:53.800 a few of the things. There's a lot of drug stuff, 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:57.880 like we mentioned how to make LSD and how to 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:03.960 generate psychedelic mushrooms and stuff. But there's also a lot 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:09.119 of you know, weapons stuff, how to kill somebody with 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:13.080 piano wire and two pieces of wood, like you mentioned, 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:16.080 how to modify guns, like how to make your own 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:20.800 silencer or how to convert a shotgun into a grenade launcher. That, yeah, 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:22.119 that was a real big one. And this is the 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:26.160 stuff that like, you know, in the I guess maybe 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:28.960 since the sixties, but at least in the nineties was 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:32.720 my experience, and it sounds like yours is. When you 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:34.800 know your friend had it on the bookshelf and they're like, 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:37.159 look at this man, you know, check this out. And 0:17:37.240 --> 0:17:42.080 it was never like let's build a silencer for a pistol. No, 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:44.840 none of us had pistols. It was just like check 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:47.439 this thing out, man, like this is a dangerous book. 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:51.240 Yeah, and let's do some nutmeg and smoke some banana peals, right, 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.000 because this book is saying, yeah, that was in there too, 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:55.199 pretty buzzed from it. 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:56.720 Yeah, yeah, that was. 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.879 Yeah. So if you've ever heard of smoking banana peals, 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:03.960 it's this isn't where it came from, but it the 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.520 Anarchist Cookbook cribbed it from I think the Berkeley barbed 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:12.200 some alternative newsletter. Yeah, like a couple of years before 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.280 smoking banana pels was all the rage in like nineteen 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:18.160 sixty seven, and then everybody finally figured out it doesn't 0:18:18.160 --> 0:18:21.400 do a thing to you. It was all just basically 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:21.960 a hoax. 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:25.520 But it made it or more expensive than just buying weed. Yeah, 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:27.240 like a two hundred bananas. 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:29.760 Or something, but allegedly it gave you like a totally 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:32.879 different trip than weed or ls. So you know, the 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:35.920 hippies were like, let's try anything we can, and then 0:18:36.440 --> 0:18:40.159 nutmeg actually does have psychedelic properties, but you have to 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:41.760 take so much of it that you would just be 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:45.920 hating life from taking that much nutmeg. 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:49.040 Do you remember the other one, I'm sure this guy 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.640 around was the toothpaste on a cigarette. 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:54.760 Yeah, and bleach. You had to mix it with bleach. 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:57.359 Oh, say see, I didn't know that part. I wonder 0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:58.680 it never did anything. 0:18:58.400 --> 0:19:02.160 Toothpaste and bleach. Yeah, which that doesn't do anything either. 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:05.800 Yeah, by the way, don't try any of this dumb 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:09.800 stuff that we're kind of jokingly reminiscing about hearing. It 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:13.879 was a dumb thing to hear back then and spread around, 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:15.800 and it certainly is now. So none of all of 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:19.159 this stuff is very much not recommended. 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:22.320 Yeah, that's you saying. That reminds me of there's this 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.119 great line from Malcolm in the Middle where I can't 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.159 remember his mom's name, but his mom was like scolding 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:32.800 his dad about like filling the kid's heads with all 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:37.080 of these stories of like misspent youth, and his dad goes, 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:40.800 those are cautionary tales, and she said, cautionary tales don't 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:41.840 end with it was so. 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:46.080 Cool, right, that was such a good show. 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:47.520 It really was a great show. 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:52.600 But speaking of cautionary there was he did, you know, 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:55.560 lay out a little caution here and there, used care, caution, 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.399 common sense. This book is not for children or morons, 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:02.600 was one, even though plenty of children and morons got 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:06.159 it into their hands. But he, you know, he was 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:10.919 a sort of a dramatic writer. He I'm not going 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:15.320 to say he was like untalented as a writer, but 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:17.160 it's kind of hard to judge the book on those 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:18.600 terms at all, even, you know. 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:20.760 Yeah, And I don't think a single writer in the 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:22.560 history of the world has ever looked back at what 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:24.840 they wrote at nineteen and was like this is great. 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:28.560 Oh god, yeah, you know, it's always cringey. So considering 0:20:28.600 --> 0:20:30.439 that he was nineteen when he wrote it, it's actually 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:31.320 pretty good writing. 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:33.240 Yeah, no, good point. 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.959 So yeah, like you said, he did issue some warnings 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.560 and that kind of thing, not necessarily as like a CoA. 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:43.200 I don't get the impression that William Powell ever even 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:47.639 considered covering his own rear. 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:51.240 No, or that I don't even know how much he 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.400 thought about this stuff ahead of time, like people actually 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:55.320 doing some of the stuff. 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:59.360 You know. Yeah, I don't know if he just if 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:01.679 it was like like a bit of a lark like 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:03.399 that where he was like, I'm just gonna do this 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:06.280 and didn't think it through, or if he actually was 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.719 like really trying to help people, say a revolution. I'm 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:12.679 not exactly sure which way it went, but from what 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:15.359 I've seen, most people site that he was actually quite 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:17.159 serious when he wrote this book. 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:20.640 Yeah, for sure. But you know, they call it a cookbook. 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:23.680 There were a lot of kind of quote unquote cookbooks 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:27.159 that some featured real recipes for things, but some didn't. 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.680 It was more like a collection kind of thing. This 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:36.680 had plenty of recipes for druggy stuff, pot Brownie's, marijuana butter, 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:40.160 how to make marijuana mints, and so there were genuine 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:45.080 sort of drug based recipes in there. But just because 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.320 if you've never heard of the Anarchist Cookbook, it is 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:49.840 not just like a cookbook obviously. 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:56.280 No, he also had warnings against sniffing glue or shooting heroin. Yeah, 0:21:56.280 --> 0:21:58.080 it's pretty sensible and level headed. 0:21:58.760 --> 0:21:59.640 Yeah, look at that kid. 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:02.040 So we put all this together, and I think it's 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:05.960 like a couple hundred pages, right, and remember it being 0:22:06.040 --> 0:22:11.000 semi thick and like large, large page format, right, Yeah, 0:22:11.080 --> 0:22:12.639