This is the Unregistered Podcast, and I'm Thaddeus Russell.

This is a show about ideas, people, and behaviors that are considered inappropriate, out of bounds, or beyond the pale.

The things you're not supposed to talk about if you're a school teacher, a college professor,

a businessman, a politician, a parent, a neighbor, or even a podcast host. These are the things

you're not supposed to say or even think if you're a good liberal, a good conservative, or a good

citizen. Each week, I'll interview a person who has something bad to say.

They might be a journalist or a professor.

They might be a porn star or a drug dealer.

They might just be an ordinary person with an ordinary job

who doesn't care about the rules of polite society.

I'm not interested in breaking the rules just to be a

troublemaker. I'm interested in people who break the rules of conventional thought and to expand the

scope of what is possible to say in our society. I'm interested in people who make me think.

I have been arguing for years now that we are living in an age of hysteria in the United

States, but my guest this week has argued that the United States has always been a nation

of hysteria and moral panics and conspiracy theories.

Unfortunately, I think he might be right.

This is my interview with Jesse Walker.

I am joined from outside Baltimore, Maryland by a good friend of mine, Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine and Reason.com, who I've known for 10 years now, and he was the first person

to, in the mainstream media, if you can call Reason Mainstream, which

I do, to care about my book, Renegate History of the United States. And he wrote a fantastic,

well, we did an interview and then you did an interview of me and there was sort of a review

...