October 15, 2024 • 41 mins
You might have owned the Anarchist Cookbook once, but you probably didn’t use it to turn a shotgun into a grenade launcher or build a bomb. Unfortunately some people did and the author called for this book of “forbidden knowledge” to be taken out of print.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know and this is the somebody gives out even
worse advice than we do edition.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm glad you picked this one.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Do you have any history with The Anarchist Cookbook?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Did you have a copy of it?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I could have told you that, did you No? I mean,
I guess first we should just tell people we're talking
about a book called The Anarchist Cookbook published in nineteen
seventy one that was, or that is rather a book
that contains everything from like how to make your own
LSD to how to find mushrooms to how to make
(00:57):
a bomb. And you know, Dave points out that it
was sort of a dorm room special and I did
not have one, but you know, I had a couple
of friends that had it, and it was just one
of those things that were like, hey, got the Anarchist Cookbook.
It meant you were like just an alternative thinker. And
I mean, he's very silly thinking back. Yeah, And I
(01:19):
think most of my friends that had it it was
all about like the drug stuff. It wasn't They weren't
like bomb makers, you know, right.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah. I actually hadn't even fully realized that there was
like bomb making instructions in there. Yeah. Yeah, So it's
a it's almost like I've seen it described as a
book of forbidden knowledge.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, it's got such a bad.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Reputation that it's in any court case I was reading
about this. In any court case where the book has
been confiscated as contraband not a single judge has ruled
that that was illegal. They're like, yeah, get that book
away from them. That's a terrible book. And it's also
(02:03):
frequently it has been in the past used as circumstantial
evidence to help prove cases against people suspected of crimes.
They were also caught with the anarchist cookbook in their
house and that was used against them in their trials.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, and I think in the UK, I was trying
to find specific incidents of this, but I'm pretty sure
in the UK, at least for a while, like it
was if you got caught with it, or maybe if
it was if something had gone wrong and you got
caught with it, it was an extra charge or something.
I'm not sure if it was officially banned there. It
was kind of hard to little Murky.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, but so I mean, in the real world, this
book has been used in plots that have resulted in
real life deaths like, Yeah, Timothy McVay, the Oklahoma City bomber,
he had a copy. A guy named Thomas Spinks who
bombed ten abortion clinics in the eighties, he had a copy.
The Boston marathon bombers, they had copies. The Column shooters,
(03:00):
they had a copy. Like, even if it didn't directly
teach them how to blow people up necessarily, it was
still an inspirational book for them, right. And the craziest
part about this whole thing is that these people were
buying fully into a book written by an angry nineteen
(03:25):
year old who went on to grow up very shortly
after the publication of this book and denounced it almost immediately.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, and a book that was, you know, kind of
a copy paste fest. Yeah, mostly information that was readily available.
In fact, I would say completely, I don't think anything
that he put in there was something that was like
truly forbidden. No, uh, like you could find all this
stuff out, because this kid found all this stuff out
(03:55):
and just compiled it.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, even the literal recipe for LSD was happied and
pasted from the Eli Lilly patent that describes in depth,
Like anybody can buy The Anarchist Cookbook or go online
and figure out exactly how to how to make LSD
based on these instructions. If you know what you're talking about, chemistry,
that's a big caveat. But I mean it's not like so, Yes,
(04:19):
every single part in this book was already was accessible,
but it was presented at least by the publisher. As
you know, again, this book of forbidden repressed knowledge that
needs to be gotten in the hands of every American
so that we can stage an actual revolution and take
back our country from the forces of you know, evil.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, pretty funny. I mean, not funny because it's been used,
but just works. Like you and I having it around
us in college is sort of an embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Trope, you know, I have mine in high school.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Uh, of course you were. You're head of the game,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
For sure. So this book has been two million copies
of The Anarchist Cookbook has been sold in the I
guess fifty Yeah, more than fifty years since it was
first published and it came from again an angry nineteen
year old whose background and then also the backdrop that
(05:21):
he wrote this book in really kind of inform what
you need to know about the Anarchist Cookbook.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, totally. As far as his background, his name is
William Powell. He was born in the States, but moved
to England when he was three, son of a philosophy professor.
His father was a philosophy teacher and then would go
on to work as in leadership at the un His
(05:49):
mom was a therapist. They weren't like, you know, these
radicals kind of enforcing their opinions on their son. He
was just a regular kid who moved to England kind
of didn't fit in there because he was bullied for
being an American. Then when he came back from England,
he was bullied for having a little bit of an
English accent by Americans in White Plains New York. And
(06:13):
apparently even like teachers would make fun of his accent
and stuff and tease him. So he started getting pretty
angry early on, started getting in with a bad crowd
and skipping school and busting cars, and yeah, eventually I
believe they sent him to a boarding school where he
was expelled after he drove a teacher's ditch into a car,
(06:33):
or I guess put it in neutral and pushed it.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, car into a ditch. That'll get you expelled pretty
much every time. He also said that he was molested
during this time as well at the boarding school, so
like he had a lot of reason to be angry.
This stuff like really impacted him. And he also said
later on he became an educator, which is pretty amazing
(06:57):
considering what we're about to describe him doing as a teenager.
But he believes looking back that he had an undiagnosed
learning disability that made it, on top of all, like
the social mistreatment made his academic career like that much
harder and frustrating as well. So you put all that together,
(07:18):
you have a kid who's ripe for being antisocial.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I guess, yeah, for sure. He eventually would go to
New York City when he was seventeen on his own
and lived on the Lower east Side East Village area
in the Bowery And in the nineteen sixties, this was
sixty seven. You talked about sort of what was going
on around him. This was a New York that was
(07:43):
in the middle of protesting Vietnam. He was even attempted
to be drafted at least to go to Vietnam and fight,
but he showed up drunk and stoned at the draft
board hoping to get out of it, which I guess
he did, right.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
He did. I think he was interviewed four different times
before they gave him a section four F.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, which is what he wanted.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's exactly what he wanted. And this was another thing.
This is part of that backdrop that I was referring
to that was really important to understand. This was a
time where if you were like a there was I
think a twenty something year window in age. If you
were this in that window, if that's how old you were,
there was a chance that you were going to be
(08:28):
forced to go fight in Vietnam and possibly die and
possibly kill other people. And this was reality, and a
lot of people were not okay with that. So this
this pushing back on that whole sentiment to kind of
form this basis of like this revolutionary you know sense
(08:49):
that like this, the stakes were so high for what
could happen to you if the government just insucially decided
you're going over there. Now that to the people who
were opposed to it. There's like, there's no response to
this except for a bloody revolution.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, exactly. So his you know, sort of living situation
certainly didn't quell any of this. He was roommate to
a guy named Steve Hancock, who was the older brother
of one of his former boarding school pals, and he
was a genuine like anarchists. Steve Hancock was. He managed
(09:27):
a bookstore called book Masters, got William Powell a job there.
He started digging into, you know, all those sort of
revolutionary guide books like from Shea Gavera and Abby Hoffman
and other you know, supposed anarchist leaders at the time.
And Steve Hancock was a big influence on him. He
(09:47):
was sort of he was a member of the Industrial
Workers of the World. I think we've talked about them
at some point.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, you being DEBS was one of the founding members.
Remember him. He ran for president as a social from prison.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Hancock was a member of
this group and he told William Powell about this idea
for distributing flyers, about making LSD, about making Molotov cocktails,
and that was what the original anarchist cookbook was going
to be from Powell. Once he kind of launched into
this thing, was just a series of flyers, but it
(10:23):
kind of quickly escalated to book level.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Okay, cool, So just one more thing about him working
at book masters. Apparently he met Valerie Solange, the woman
who shot Andy Warhol, when she came around peddling copies
of her scum manifesto, and he was like, I like this,
and actually got a few copies and put him in
the window.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Nuts, I think this is a week before she shot
Andy Warhol too.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Well, that all totally tracks with his sort of state
of mind at the time, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah. And speaking of state of mind, so he is
completely hooked on speed at this time. He's doing tons
of drugs, just living the anarchist, anti government, anti war
lifestyle in New York, which was I don't know if
you said or not, this was basically like the center
of the anti war movement in nineteen sixty seven sixty eight, right, yeah,
(11:16):
and like this whole idea, I should say, not everybody
I said earlier, everybody who was opposed to it was like,
the only way you can solve this is a bloody revolution.
Not true. There was a lot of peaceful activism that
did not think that, but the people there was a
lot more militancy than say you'll see today in America.
It was inspired by the idea that you could be
(11:38):
drafted and sent to kill people and be killed. And
those people were the ones who are like, we need
to we need to overthrow the government. And so that's
what William Powell was essentially doing when he sat down
to write this book. He wanted to put the information
or if you put it all together, you could overthrow
the government or start a revolution into the hands of
(12:00):
as many people as possible. And that's that was the
anarchist cookbook that he sat down and wrote, or like
you said, he sat down and copied and pasted.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
He wrote a lot too. And maybe we'll get to
some of that actual writing after a break. Sure, all right,
we'll be right back, all right. So Powell decides to
(12:39):
put this book together. He goes to the New York
Public Library Library. I said it like I was seven
years old, started researching this book. And because he you know,
hopefully we've made it clear that this guy was not
a weapons expert and didn't know how to make bombs
and was not a gorilla fighter or true revolutionary.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
He is.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
He's sort of inspired to collect this information. And the
forward of the book kind of says it all here,
which he wrote, this is a book for the people
of the United States of America. It has not written
for the members of fringe political groups such as the
Weathermen or the Minutemen. Those radical groups don't need this book.
They already know everything that's in here. And if the
(13:23):
real people of America, the silent majority, are going to survive,
they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book. Yeah,
so there you have it.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
So you said that he had like zero experience in
guerrilla warfare, hand to hand combat, making bombs, converting like
weapons into other newer, deadlier types of weapons. But if
you read his writing, he sounds like he's been there,
done that, and now he's come to tell you how
(13:54):
to do it yourself. That's the way it reads. He
sounds like a total tough guy. And when you step
back and realized, like, no, this guy just did a
lot of research and then presented it as if he
knew what he was talking about. It actually is kind
of funny, Yes, but we don't pretend like, no, no, No,
like we've done you know, like we haven't like hung
out with porcupines or you know.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
We're about that.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
We've never you know, given our expertise on economic policy
to any government. Like, yes, we're not experts, right, So
this guy he presented, William Powell, presented himself as an expert.
And that's just how the book reads. But when you
step back and think about it like that, it's actually
kind of funny some of the stuff that's in there.
Like one thing he did do was draw a lot
(14:39):
of stuff, and he wasn't a very good artist to
begin with. But one of the pictures that stood out
to me, and this is only funny if you look
at a certain way, it's also very much not funny.
But there's a section on garrots or garats. I can't
I can't remember how you pronounce it, which is two
pieces of wood that you hold in your hands and
then a piece of like piano wire between them, and
(15:03):
you strangle somebody with this. And there's a drawing that
I guess William Powell did of somebody, you know, strangling
a guy. He's coming at him from behind with his
knee in his back, like strangling him with the garat
and just the way that this picture reads and all
the text around it is just the idea that this
(15:23):
kid had never done or even seen anything like that,
but is presenting it like this is how you do it.
It's just so preposterous and ridiculous that people actually took
this seriously. It'd be like taking life or death advice
from Holden Cawfield.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Basically, yeah, was there. I didn't see that drawing. Was
there a speech bubble that said.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Pretty pretty much? Yeah? There? It was implied for sure.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
One other thing that stuck out to me too, Chuck
was he would just toss out percentages very confidently, and
if you stop and read it, you're like, I don't
think that's true. One of them was if in hand
to hand combat, first of all, you fight to the death.
That's how you fight hand to hand combat. You're not
trying to knock the guy out. That was a piece
of advice in this. But he also says that if
(16:09):
you can get your opponent knocked off balance, you nine
to one you can kill him in the next move.
So nine times out of ten, your next move's going
to kill the guy. Where did that percentage come from?
Where did that ratio come from? You can just tell
he's just making this stuff up. And when you take
it like that, he just made all of it up essentially.
(16:31):
And the stuff he didn't make up, he, like you said,
just copied and pasted from legitimate sources, which is what
really actually made the book dangerous.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, or I mean, at the very least, he may
have gotten that from someone who made that up, you know,
I mean, who knows. So there are a lot of
different things you can you know, we've kind of mentioned
a few of the things. There's a lot of drug stuff,
like we mentioned how to make LSD and how to
generate psychedelic mushrooms and stuff. But there's also a lot
(17:04):
of you know, weapons stuff, how to kill somebody with
piano wire and two pieces of wood, like you mentioned,
how to modify guns, like how to make your own
silencer or how to convert a shotgun into a grenade launcher. That, yeah,
that was a real big one. And this is the
stuff that like, you know, in the I guess maybe
(17:26):
since the sixties, but at least in the nineties was
my experience, and it sounds like yours is. When you
know your friend had it on the bookshelf and they're like,
look at this man, you know, check this out. And
it was never like let's build a silencer for a pistol. No,
none of us had pistols. It was just like check
this thing out, man, like this is a dangerous book.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, and let's do some nutmeg and smoke some banana peals, right,
because this book is saying, yeah, that was in there too,
pretty buzzed from it.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, yeah, that was.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah. So if you've ever heard of smoking banana peals,
it's this isn't where it came from, but it the
Anarchist Cookbook cribbed it from I think the Berkeley barbed
some alternative newsletter. Yeah, like a couple of years before
smoking banana pels was all the rage in like nineteen
sixty seven, and then everybody finally figured out it doesn't
(18:18):
do a thing to you. It was all just basically
a hoax.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
But it made it or more expensive than just buying weed. Yeah,
like a two hundred bananas.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Or something, but allegedly it gave you like a totally
different trip than weed or ls. So you know, the
hippies were like, let's try anything we can, and then
nutmeg actually does have psychedelic properties, but you have to
take so much of it that you would just be
hating life from taking that much nutmeg.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Do you remember the other one, I'm sure this guy
around was the toothpaste on a cigarette.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, and bleach. You had to mix it with bleach.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Oh, say see, I didn't know that part. I wonder
it never did anything.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Toothpaste and bleach. Yeah, which that doesn't do anything either.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, by the way, don't try any of this dumb
stuff that we're kind of jokingly reminiscing about hearing. It
was a dumb thing to hear back then and spread around,
and it certainly is now. So none of all of
this stuff is very much not recommended.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, that's you saying. That reminds me of there's this
great line from Malcolm in the Middle where I can't
remember his mom's name, but his mom was like scolding
his dad about like filling the kid's heads with all
of these stories of like misspent youth, and his dad goes,
those are cautionary tales, and she said, cautionary tales don't
(19:40):
end with it was so.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Cool, right, that was such a good show.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
It really was a great show.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
But speaking of cautionary there was he did, you know,
lay out a little caution here and there, used care, caution,
common sense. This book is not for children or morons,
was one, even though plenty of children and morons got
it into their hands. But he, you know, he was
a sort of a dramatic writer. He I'm not going
(20:10):
to say he was like untalented as a writer, but
it's kind of hard to judge the book on those
terms at all, even, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, And I don't think a single writer in the
history of the world has ever looked back at what
they wrote at nineteen and was like this is great.
Oh god, yeah, you know, it's always cringey. So considering
that he was nineteen when he wrote it, it's actually
pretty good writing.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, no, good point.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So yeah, like you said, he did issue some warnings
and that kind of thing, not necessarily as like a CoA.
I don't get the impression that William Powell ever even
considered covering his own rear.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
No, or that I don't even know how much he
thought about this stuff ahead of time, like people actually
doing some of the stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You know. Yeah, I don't know if he just if
it was like like a bit of a lark like
that where he was like, I'm just gonna do this
and didn't think it through, or if he actually was
like really trying to help people, say a revolution. I'm
not exactly sure which way it went, but from what
I've seen, most people site that he was actually quite
(21:15):
serious when he wrote this book.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, for sure. But you know, they call it a cookbook.
There were a lot of kind of quote unquote cookbooks
that some featured real recipes for things, but some didn't.
It was more like a collection kind of thing. This
had plenty of recipes for druggy stuff, pot Brownie's, marijuana butter,
how to make marijuana mints, and so there were genuine
(21:41):
sort of drug based recipes in there. But just because
if you've never heard of the Anarchist Cookbook, it is
not just like a cookbook obviously.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
No, he also had warnings against sniffing glue or shooting heroin. Yeah,
it's pretty sensible and level headed.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, look at that kid.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So we put all this together, and I think it's
like a couple hundred pages, right, and remember it being
semi thick and like large, large page format, right, Yeah,
I think so that's what they call it in the
publishing world, right, large page format.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, you really just wanted to have it the spine
showing on your bookshelf.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, or when you carried it around campus, like you
made sure that your arm wasn't covering the title.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Oh man, I never saw anyone actually carrying them around.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
So he tried to enter the publishing world with this manuscript.
He sent it to thirty different houses. He got thirty
different rejection letters, some like what is wrong with you?
Others like this isn't quite the fit with our ethos.
And then somehow, some way, he came into contact with
a guy named Lyle Stewart. And Lyle Stewart was a
(22:51):
publisher who just basically wanted to be a provocative publisher,
and the Anarchist cookbook just fell into his lap and
he was like, thank you, thank you God, and he
ran with it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Oh yeah, big time. He didn't change a word. He
was like, this is perfect as it is. Yeah, all
your drawings are great. You're such a good little drawer boy.
And he just he wanted it. I think he loved this,
the idea that the idea of the book, and I
think any thoughts to changing it were quickly squashed in
(23:23):
his mind of like no sort of the genius of
this book to him at least was just how taboo
it was and it should look like, you know, crazy rantings.
Because one there's a quote from him that I think
is pretty telling of like who this guy is and
also kind of smart for a book publisher. Was that
(23:45):
I'm paraphrasing, but like, people don't buy a bestseller like
this to read it. They buy it to have it
and just show it on the.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Bookshelf exactly to carry it around campus.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, with your arm notut covering up the title.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
So in the hands of Lyle Stewart, like this book
would take on its life finally, right, it would go
from the rantings of a nineteen year old kid to
a legitimately published book that was also heavily promoted by
a guy who knew how to just play the media
to get free exposure, essentially, and so he held a
(24:22):
press conference where somebody supposedly an angry anarchist who was
mad that this kid was sharing this forbidden information with
the world, threw a smoke bomb into the press conference
and everybody like jump for cover. And William Powell later
said that he noticed that Lyle Stewart didn't dock or
(24:45):
anything like that. He just kept his position behind the
podium during the press conference pretty much. And he was
like Lyle Stewart was just the kind of guy who
who would think to stage something like that just to
show how serious anarchistic this book was during the press conference.
Like that's the kind of promotion that this book got
(25:05):
from him.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah. Absolutely. If you're wondering, like, all right, where is
our old friend jay Edgar Hoover and the FBI and
all this, they were on it big time. They took
this book seriously. They you know, you used to hear rumors. Again,
these are probably just rumors that never happened about like
(25:28):
there was a list and like where'd you buy it from?
And like did you use a credit card? That kind
of thing, because now you're on a list if you
own a copy of this thing. It probably didn't go
that far, but they did question his parents. They questioned
his dad's colleagues at the un They never questioned Powell,
like sat him down in person, because they thought it would,
(25:50):
you know, it would hit the news. What they what
they wanted to do was kind of quash this thing
without giving it even more publicity.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Right, But that didn't stop the media from running with it.
For sure. There was a headline that Dave, who helped
us with this, he dug up from UPI that said
new anarchist cookbook contains recipe for sabotage destruction and so
as people are reading this, they become genuinely scared of
this book. So, like you said, Jaegar Hoover is in
(26:18):
charge of the FBI. I don't know if we said
or not, but it was published at the beginning in
nineteen seventy one, so Richard Nixon as president, this is
not a time where people were cool with free speech
when it came to you know, making bombs and stuff
like that. So everybody was like, you guys need to
investigate this and just get rid of this. People were
(26:38):
literally sending clippings of like book reviews to Jaegar Hoover
with like notes written in the margin. I think one
was danger exclamation point. What are you going to do
about this? And what's astounding to me is not a
single head got cracked as far as I can tell,
And in fact, the FBI was like, we've investigated it,
and this is all protected by the first amendments as
(27:01):
reprehensible as we think it is.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, which is, you know, a real victory in a way, again,
as dumb as a book as it ended up being,
it is a victory for free speech in this country
to not have the government, even at that time.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, especially at that time.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, come in and like put their neck on everyone's throat,
which is kind of surprising.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, it's surprising, and it's also ironic because it was
exactly that kind of like censorship mentality that William Powell
was raging against him. Yeah, he tested it, and the system,
the establishment actually passed. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. They're like,
we're going to protect your coming book, you little revolutionary yokel.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Should we take another break?
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I think anytime you say the word yokle, that's our cue.
All right. We'll be right back and talk about kind
of when this book was in the wrong hands. What
happened right after this?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
All right, Chuck. So you said this book ended up
in the wrong hands. I guess we said at the
very outset that it did. So it's not really a
big twist in the story, but I think the first
time blood was actually shed, like life was lost because
of the Anarchist Cookbook, or at least in part, was
in September of nineteen seventy six, when a group of
(28:35):
Croatian independence gorillas hijacked a flight from New York to
Chicago and was like, this plane's going to Paris now,
and they're like, do you know how many refueling stops
we're going to have to make? And they said, we
don't care, just do it. And supposedly, as far as
hijackings go, it was really polite. I think some of
the people who were actually hostages later told the press
(28:57):
like it was almost ridiculous how polite and apologetic these
terrorists were. And it turned out that the bombs they
had strapped to themselves were like silly putty and alarm
clock were not bombs. But one of the demands that
they had was that the the like Washington Posts and
some of the other papers, had to print their manifesto
(29:18):
or else they would set off a real bomb at
Grand Central Station. And that one actually did turn out
to be real.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah. The bomb squad came in from New York City's
finest very sadly one person was killed. Officer Brian Murray
was killed trying to diffuse the bomb. A few other
people were injured. Upon being charged, the hijackers said, we
we got this information on how to make this bomb
(29:46):
from the Anarchist cookbook. And that was the first case,
like you said, of like real bloodshed happening, but not
the first, you know, like you mentioned, this was found
on every not everybody, like it seems like any time
you heard about someone committing some awful violent act against
either a lot of people or planning something like this.
(30:09):
This was sort of the one of the textbooks that
they had on their shelf exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
And by this time, so this is nineteen seventy six,
William Powell had completely transformed into a different again, more
grown up Personeah he became an Anglican. He became religious
that same year. By that time, he'd already gone off
to college, graduated, worked in Alaska, discovered as his true
(30:37):
love of educating kids with learning disabilities, like what he
would keep doing for the rest of his life. And
so when this when it came out that like this
is this is actually like now like costing people their lives,
he was very upset about that. He wanted to distance
himself from the book. The problem was as we'll see,
(31:00):
he never owned the copyright. In addition to knowing exactly
how to promote controversial material, Lyles Stewart also knew how
to rip off his authors too, so he owned the
copyright to the Anarchist Cookbook. William Powell just got a
couple thousand dollars from it and then said, okay, see
you later.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, well, a couple of thousand dollars up front, I
think he said. He ended up making about fifty grand
in royalties over the years, and that was despite him
wanting to pull it from print. There was a period
of about eleven years where it was out of print.
You know. By this point, like in the nineties, he
(31:38):
was moving sort of all over the world with his wife,
teaching in the Middle East, teaching in Africa, really doing
great work. But in ninety one a couple of things happened.
He was appointed by or appointed as a CEO of
an international school in Tanzania, and parents complained and were like, hey,
(31:58):
do you know who this guy is? He wrote the
Anarchist Cookbook, and they you know, they protested it was
an anonymous letter to the board and they protested his hiring. Ironically,
it was that same year that the book actually went
out of print for a little while, which is what
he wanted more than anything. In ninety one, it was
bought by a guy, a publisher named Stephen Schregis, and
(32:22):
he was a you know, I'm not su sure how
big time he was, but apparently he had a couple
of thousand books that he was publishing over this eleven
year period and that was not one of them. He
bought the rights and then sat on it and said,
you know, the public shouldn't have this, and I agree
with him.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah, So it was like an eleven year period where
you know, it was out of print. You could still
buy it, of course, if you knew someone who had it,
or if it was in a bookstore or something. It's
not like it was banned, but he pulled it for
a little over a decade.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Well, I think something that's good to know about William
Powell too. By this time, you said he got forced
out of his position as CEO of the International School
in Tanzania for being the author of the Anarchist Cookbook.
Very shortly after he departed, the board got back in
touch with them. It was like, please come back, like
(33:11):
we don't care about this where we like what you're
doing so much, we want you to come back. So
he came back for eight more years as the head
of that school. I think that says quite.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
A bit totally. I don't know. Did you watch the documentary, No,
I haven't. It's good. There's a documentary called American Anarchists that,
like you just you really feel for this guy because
it's a situation where everyone does something dumb or many
things that are dumb when they're teenagers, and most of
(33:41):
us are able to escape those and leave those firmly
in the past and move on and grow up like
everyone does. And this was a guy that was really
doing great work and really really really had so much
regret about this book, but there was just it was
there's nothing he could do about it. And you could
feel this guy's pain of like, my name is tied
(34:02):
to this thing. I just wish it would go away.
But you never felt like, well like sometimes like, yeah,
but you did it, so you deserve it.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Oh you felt like that. No.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
I always felt really bad for the guy with the
interviews because man, because he just went on to do
such great work and special ed and like really turned
things around and kind of had this stamp on him
for the rest of his life. He had a hard
time getting work, you know, a lot of times. That's
one reason he kept kind of moving around.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Man, that is really sad to He's a very empathetic figure.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Huh. That's how he came across to me, I guess,
sympathetic figure.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
So yeah. One reason why he was just like in
agony I guess over this book, him not being able
to do anything about this book is because after that
Croatian separatist incident, like it ended up inspiring more violence,
like more real world violence. Throughout the eighties and the nineties.
(34:58):
I mean, from the beginning of the eighties to the
end of the nineties, there were some really high profile
mass murders that were carried out, like we said, by
people who owned the Anarchist Cookbook. So in one way
or another, they were inspired or even maybe directed in
some cases in carrying out the crimes that they committed.
(35:19):
The atrocity.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, yeah, And he was putting out statements all along.
He even contacted Amazon to try and get a message
kind of permanently posted. The central idea of the book
was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about
political change. I no longer agree with this. I want
to stay categorically I'm not in agreement with the contents
of the Anarchist Cookbook, and I would be very pleased
(35:42):
and relieved to see its publication discontinued. I consider it
to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication which should
be taken out of print. So yeah, I mean there
was nothing he could do about it because of Lyles Stewart.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, not just Lyles Stuart, but after the guy who
I guess said on it. Yeah, I think Lyle Stewart
sought him out and bought it back and it went
back into print, and then Lyle Stewart sold it to
another publishing house that owns it now that is keeping
it in print as well. And the thing to understand
(36:17):
about this Anarchist Cookbook, it's like that Abby Hoffman steal
this book thing, Like the idea of it being pirated
is kind of part of its whole jam, you know.
So there's so many like ripoff copycat published versions of
it that you can buy on Amazon and other places,
like no problem. They're like illegitimate counterfeit copies of the
(36:41):
anarchist cookbook, but it's still the anarchist cookbook to somebody
else publishing it as if it's in the public domain.
And then even if all those people stopped actually physically
publishing it, it's all over the internet now, Like I
was reading a PDF version of it on the Internet archive,
Like it's just out there. The way Dave put it
was perfect. The geniees out of the bottle, like this
(37:03):
information is out there now. And unfortunately, you'll probably continue
to keep inspiring people into acts of violence because of
that spirit behind it that the government needs to be
taken to task and overthrown and the people need to
rise up.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, and despite everything he tried to do, it just
he put it out there and it wouldn't go away.
He passed away in twenty sixteen, and you know, always
had great regret about what he had put into the world.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah, there was one other thing. There was another statement
he made after I think a school shooting where he
drew parallels between the work he was doing and then
the legacy of the book, where he was saying, you know,
he works with kids who have learning disabilities, and these
kids are alienated by their disability essentially, and he said,
(37:57):
no child should have to earn the right to belong,
And then he turns around and essentially empathizes with the
kids who are, you know, reading his book and then
going on and shooting up their schools and saying like,
these kids, I'm sure are alienated and feel ostracized as well,
and this book did not help them in any way.
(38:17):
It did the opposite. Probably. Yeah, yeah, he does seem
like a pretty amazing guy. I mean, just the work
that he did afterward is pretty remarkable. I know, he's
like an internationally renowned educator or he was. Yeah, so yeah,
in some ways he made up for what he did.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
And I guess if there's any thing to take away
from this if you're a young person, like we have
always encouraged people to be bold and use their voice,
but you know, maybe pump the brakes. You know, think
about ten years from now. What do you want? Do
you want that attached to you ten twenty, thirty, forty
years from now?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Right? Yeah, if you're writing nonfiction that calls for violence,
let's just stop and ask somebody, is this a good idea? Right?
Since Chuck said, right, everybody, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Nope?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Since Chuck said, right, and then nope, it's definitely time
for listener.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Now. Yeah, I'm gonna call this missed opportunities. This is
from AR or maybe just R No, it's AR.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
AR is talking about are would a love drug be ethical? Episode?
That just dropped? And Ar was a former musician and
thinks we missed a lot of opportunities for band names
and album titles?
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Ok kill, let's here, all.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Right, So here we go. You guys did mention sablesco
and herb as an oregon saxophone combo. I can't remember
that there were real gyms in there, though, Guys like
LUs Bucket, Yeah, that's a good one. Okay, experimental love
drug sure kind of on the nose, Electric roses and philosophers. Yeah,
(39:59):
it's a little, yeah, a little wordy.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
That sounds like an album title. Then if they're really wordy,
it's usually an album title.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Well, here's some album titles or song titles. He felt like,
we miss you're not good at loving. It's a great
one that needs a parenthetical, but like, you know, parentheses,
but you really are right, really low key mellow stuff. Okay,
I don't know about that. If you dose them, that's
(40:27):
pretty good and love is good enough. That's a really
good one.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
That's a great one. I love that. I can't believe
there's not a song called that already.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Yeah, well there may be. Ar points out that the
genres on these guys run the gamut from EDM to country,
and a really big fan have turned on friends and
family to the podcast. Just wanted to say, keep doing
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Thanks a lot, Ar, That was a great email. We
appreciate that big time, and as always everybody, if we
ever walk past a great band name or an album name,
or a song title or something like that, we want
to hear from you too. You can wrap it up,
spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
should know and this is the somebody gives out even
worse advice than we do edition.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
I'm glad you picked this one.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Do you have any history with The Anarchist Cookbook?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Did you have a copy of it?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I could have told you that, did you No? I mean,
I guess first we should just tell people we're talking
about a book called The Anarchist Cookbook published in nineteen
seventy one that was, or that is rather a book
that contains everything from like how to make your own
LSD to how to find mushrooms to how to make
(00:57):
a bomb. And you know, Dave points out that it
was sort of a dorm room special and I did
not have one, but you know, I had a couple
of friends that had it, and it was just one
of those things that were like, hey, got the Anarchist Cookbook.
It meant you were like just an alternative thinker. And
I mean, he's very silly thinking back. Yeah, And I
(01:19):
think most of my friends that had it it was
all about like the drug stuff. It wasn't They weren't
like bomb makers, you know, right.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah. I actually hadn't even fully realized that there was
like bomb making instructions in there. Yeah. Yeah, So it's
a it's almost like I've seen it described as a
book of forbidden knowledge.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Yeah, it's got such a bad.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Reputation that it's in any court case I was reading
about this. In any court case where the book has
been confiscated as contraband not a single judge has ruled
that that was illegal. They're like, yeah, get that book
away from them. That's a terrible book. And it's also
(02:03):
frequently it has been in the past used as circumstantial
evidence to help prove cases against people suspected of crimes.
They were also caught with the anarchist cookbook in their
house and that was used against them in their trials.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Yeah, and I think in the UK, I was trying
to find specific incidents of this, but I'm pretty sure
in the UK, at least for a while, like it
was if you got caught with it, or maybe if
it was if something had gone wrong and you got
caught with it, it was an extra charge or something.
I'm not sure if it was officially banned there. It
was kind of hard to little Murky.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, but so I mean, in the real world, this
book has been used in plots that have resulted in
real life deaths like, Yeah, Timothy McVay, the Oklahoma City bomber,
he had a copy. A guy named Thomas Spinks who
bombed ten abortion clinics in the eighties, he had a copy.
The Boston marathon bombers, they had copies. The Column shooters,
(03:00):
they had a copy. Like, even if it didn't directly
teach them how to blow people up necessarily, it was
still an inspirational book for them, right. And the craziest
part about this whole thing is that these people were
buying fully into a book written by an angry nineteen
(03:25):
year old who went on to grow up very shortly
after the publication of this book and denounced it almost immediately.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yeah, and a book that was, you know, kind of
a copy paste fest. Yeah, mostly information that was readily available.
In fact, I would say completely, I don't think anything
that he put in there was something that was like
truly forbidden. No, uh, like you could find all this
stuff out, because this kid found all this stuff out
(03:55):
and just compiled it.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, even the literal recipe for LSD was happied and
pasted from the Eli Lilly patent that describes in depth,
Like anybody can buy The Anarchist Cookbook or go online
and figure out exactly how to how to make LSD
based on these instructions. If you know what you're talking about, chemistry,
that's a big caveat. But I mean it's not like so, Yes,
(04:19):
every single part in this book was already was accessible,
but it was presented at least by the publisher. As
you know, again, this book of forbidden repressed knowledge that
needs to be gotten in the hands of every American
so that we can stage an actual revolution and take
back our country from the forces of you know, evil.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, pretty funny. I mean, not funny because it's been used,
but just works. Like you and I having it around
us in college is sort of an embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Trope, you know, I have mine in high school.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Uh, of course you were. You're head of the game,
my friend.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
For sure. So this book has been two million copies
of The Anarchist Cookbook has been sold in the I
guess fifty Yeah, more than fifty years since it was
first published and it came from again an angry nineteen
year old whose background and then also the backdrop that
(05:21):
he wrote this book in really kind of inform what
you need to know about the Anarchist Cookbook.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, totally. As far as his background, his name is
William Powell. He was born in the States, but moved
to England when he was three, son of a philosophy professor.
His father was a philosophy teacher and then would go
on to work as in leadership at the un His
(05:49):
mom was a therapist. They weren't like, you know, these
radicals kind of enforcing their opinions on their son. He
was just a regular kid who moved to England kind
of didn't fit in there because he was bullied for
being an American. Then when he came back from England,
he was bullied for having a little bit of an
English accent by Americans in White Plains New York. And
(06:13):
apparently even like teachers would make fun of his accent
and stuff and tease him. So he started getting pretty
angry early on, started getting in with a bad crowd
and skipping school and busting cars, and yeah, eventually I
believe they sent him to a boarding school where he
was expelled after he drove a teacher's ditch into a car,
(06:33):
or I guess put it in neutral and pushed it.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, car into a ditch. That'll get you expelled pretty
much every time. He also said that he was molested
during this time as well at the boarding school, so
like he had a lot of reason to be angry.
This stuff like really impacted him. And he also said
later on he became an educator, which is pretty amazing
(06:57):
considering what we're about to describe him doing as a teenager.
But he believes looking back that he had an undiagnosed
learning disability that made it, on top of all, like
the social mistreatment made his academic career like that much
harder and frustrating as well. So you put all that together,
(07:18):
you have a kid who's ripe for being antisocial.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
I guess, yeah, for sure. He eventually would go to
New York City when he was seventeen on his own
and lived on the Lower east Side East Village area
in the Bowery And in the nineteen sixties, this was
sixty seven. You talked about sort of what was going
on around him. This was a New York that was
(07:43):
in the middle of protesting Vietnam. He was even attempted
to be drafted at least to go to Vietnam and fight,
but he showed up drunk and stoned at the draft
board hoping to get out of it, which I guess
he did, right.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
He did. I think he was interviewed four different times
before they gave him a section four F.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, which is what he wanted.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
It's exactly what he wanted. And this was another thing.
This is part of that backdrop that I was referring
to that was really important to understand. This was a
time where if you were like a there was I
think a twenty something year window in age. If you
were this in that window, if that's how old you were,
there was a chance that you were going to be
(08:28):
forced to go fight in Vietnam and possibly die and
possibly kill other people. And this was reality, and a
lot of people were not okay with that. So this
this pushing back on that whole sentiment to kind of
form this basis of like this revolutionary you know sense
(08:49):
that like this, the stakes were so high for what
could happen to you if the government just insucially decided
you're going over there. Now that to the people who
were opposed to it. There's like, there's no response to
this except for a bloody revolution.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, exactly. So his you know, sort of living situation
certainly didn't quell any of this. He was roommate to
a guy named Steve Hancock, who was the older brother
of one of his former boarding school pals, and he
was a genuine like anarchists. Steve Hancock was. He managed
(09:27):
a bookstore called book Masters, got William Powell a job there.
He started digging into, you know, all those sort of
revolutionary guide books like from Shea Gavera and Abby Hoffman
and other you know, supposed anarchist leaders at the time.
And Steve Hancock was a big influence on him. He
(09:47):
was sort of he was a member of the Industrial
Workers of the World. I think we've talked about them
at some point.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, you being DEBS was one of the founding members.
Remember him. He ran for president as a social from prison.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. So Hancock was a member of
this group and he told William Powell about this idea
for distributing flyers, about making LSD, about making Molotov cocktails,
and that was what the original anarchist cookbook was going
to be from Powell. Once he kind of launched into
this thing, was just a series of flyers, but it
(10:23):
kind of quickly escalated to book level.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Okay, cool, So just one more thing about him working
at book masters. Apparently he met Valerie Solange, the woman
who shot Andy Warhol, when she came around peddling copies
of her scum manifesto, and he was like, I like this,
and actually got a few copies and put him in
the window.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Nuts, I think this is a week before she shot
Andy Warhol too.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Well, that all totally tracks with his sort of state
of mind at the time, you know.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah. And speaking of state of mind, so he is
completely hooked on speed at this time. He's doing tons
of drugs, just living the anarchist, anti government, anti war
lifestyle in New York, which was I don't know if
you said or not, this was basically like the center
of the anti war movement in nineteen sixty seven sixty eight, right, yeah,
(11:16):
and like this whole idea, I should say, not everybody
I said earlier, everybody who was opposed to it was like,
the only way you can solve this is a bloody revolution.
Not true. There was a lot of peaceful activism that
did not think that, but the people there was a
lot more militancy than say you'll see today in America.
It was inspired by the idea that you could be
(11:38):
drafted and sent to kill people and be killed. And
those people were the ones who are like, we need
to we need to overthrow the government. And so that's
what William Powell was essentially doing when he sat down
to write this book. He wanted to put the information
or if you put it all together, you could overthrow
the government or start a revolution into the hands of
(12:00):
as many people as possible. And that's that was the
anarchist cookbook that he sat down and wrote, or like
you said, he sat down and copied and pasted.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
He wrote a lot too. And maybe we'll get to
some of that actual writing after a break. Sure, all right,
we'll be right back, all right. So Powell decides to
(12:39):
put this book together. He goes to the New York
Public Library Library. I said it like I was seven
years old, started researching this book. And because he you know,
hopefully we've made it clear that this guy was not
a weapons expert and didn't know how to make bombs
and was not a gorilla fighter or true revolutionary.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
He is.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
He's sort of inspired to collect this information. And the
forward of the book kind of says it all here,
which he wrote, this is a book for the people
of the United States of America. It has not written
for the members of fringe political groups such as the
Weathermen or the Minutemen. Those radical groups don't need this book.
They already know everything that's in here. And if the
(13:23):
real people of America, the silent majority, are going to survive,
they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book. Yeah,
so there you have it.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
So you said that he had like zero experience in
guerrilla warfare, hand to hand combat, making bombs, converting like
weapons into other newer, deadlier types of weapons. But if
you read his writing, he sounds like he's been there,
done that, and now he's come to tell you how
(13:54):
to do it yourself. That's the way it reads. He
sounds like a total tough guy. And when you step
back and realized, like, no, this guy just did a
lot of research and then presented it as if he
knew what he was talking about. It actually is kind
of funny, Yes, but we don't pretend like, no, no, No,
like we've done you know, like we haven't like hung
out with porcupines or you know.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
We're about that.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
We've never you know, given our expertise on economic policy
to any government. Like, yes, we're not experts, right, So
this guy he presented, William Powell, presented himself as an expert.
And that's just how the book reads. But when you
step back and think about it like that, it's actually
kind of funny some of the stuff that's in there.
Like one thing he did do was draw a lot
(14:39):
of stuff, and he wasn't a very good artist to
begin with. But one of the pictures that stood out
to me, and this is only funny if you look
at a certain way, it's also very much not funny.
But there's a section on garrots or garats. I can't
I can't remember how you pronounce it, which is two
pieces of wood that you hold in your hands and
then a piece of like piano wire between them, and
(15:03):
you strangle somebody with this. And there's a drawing that
I guess William Powell did of somebody, you know, strangling
a guy. He's coming at him from behind with his
knee in his back, like strangling him with the garat
and just the way that this picture reads and all
the text around it is just the idea that this
(15:23):
kid had never done or even seen anything like that,
but is presenting it like this is how you do it.
It's just so preposterous and ridiculous that people actually took
this seriously. It'd be like taking life or death advice
from Holden Cawfield.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Basically, yeah, was there. I didn't see that drawing. Was
there a speech bubble that said.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Pretty pretty much? Yeah? There? It was implied for sure.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
One other thing that stuck out to me too, Chuck
was he would just toss out percentages very confidently, and
if you stop and read it, you're like, I don't
think that's true. One of them was if in hand
to hand combat, first of all, you fight to the death.
That's how you fight hand to hand combat. You're not
trying to knock the guy out. That was a piece
of advice in this. But he also says that if
(16:09):
you can get your opponent knocked off balance, you nine
to one you can kill him in the next move.
So nine times out of ten, your next move's going
to kill the guy. Where did that percentage come from?
Where did that ratio come from? You can just tell
he's just making this stuff up. And when you take
it like that, he just made all of it up essentially.
(16:31):
And the stuff he didn't make up, he, like you said,
just copied and pasted from legitimate sources, which is what
really actually made the book dangerous.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, or I mean, at the very least, he may
have gotten that from someone who made that up, you know,
I mean, who knows. So there are a lot of
different things you can you know, we've kind of mentioned
a few of the things. There's a lot of drug stuff,
like we mentioned how to make LSD and how to
generate psychedelic mushrooms and stuff. But there's also a lot
(17:04):
of you know, weapons stuff, how to kill somebody with
piano wire and two pieces of wood, like you mentioned,
how to modify guns, like how to make your own
silencer or how to convert a shotgun into a grenade launcher. That, yeah,
that was a real big one. And this is the
stuff that like, you know, in the I guess maybe
(17:26):
since the sixties, but at least in the nineties was
my experience, and it sounds like yours is. When you
know your friend had it on the bookshelf and they're like,
look at this man, you know, check this out. And
it was never like let's build a silencer for a pistol. No,
none of us had pistols. It was just like check
this thing out, man, like this is a dangerous book.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Yeah, and let's do some nutmeg and smoke some banana peals, right,
because this book is saying, yeah, that was in there too,
pretty buzzed from it.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah, yeah, that was.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah. So if you've ever heard of smoking banana peals,
it's this isn't where it came from, but it the
Anarchist Cookbook cribbed it from I think the Berkeley barbed
some alternative newsletter. Yeah, like a couple of years before
smoking banana pels was all the rage in like nineteen
sixty seven, and then everybody finally figured out it doesn't
(18:18):
do a thing to you. It was all just basically
a hoax.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
But it made it or more expensive than just buying weed. Yeah,
like a two hundred bananas.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Or something, but allegedly it gave you like a totally
different trip than weed or ls. So you know, the
hippies were like, let's try anything we can, and then
nutmeg actually does have psychedelic properties, but you have to
take so much of it that you would just be
hating life from taking that much nutmeg.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Do you remember the other one, I'm sure this guy
around was the toothpaste on a cigarette.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Yeah, and bleach. You had to mix it with bleach.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Oh, say see, I didn't know that part. I wonder
it never did anything.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Toothpaste and bleach. Yeah, which that doesn't do anything either.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Yeah, by the way, don't try any of this dumb
stuff that we're kind of jokingly reminiscing about hearing. It
was a dumb thing to hear back then and spread around,
and it certainly is now. So none of all of
this stuff is very much not recommended.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, that's you saying. That reminds me of there's this
great line from Malcolm in the Middle where I can't
remember his mom's name, but his mom was like scolding
his dad about like filling the kid's heads with all
of these stories of like misspent youth, and his dad goes,
those are cautionary tales, and she said, cautionary tales don't
(19:40):
end with it was so.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Cool, right, that was such a good show.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
It really was a great show.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
But speaking of cautionary there was he did, you know,
lay out a little caution here and there, used care, caution,
common sense. This book is not for children or morons,
was one, even though plenty of children and morons got
it into their hands. But he, you know, he was
a sort of a dramatic writer. He I'm not going
(20:10):
to say he was like untalented as a writer, but
it's kind of hard to judge the book on those
terms at all, even, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Yeah, And I don't think a single writer in the
history of the world has ever looked back at what
they wrote at nineteen and was like this is great.
Oh god, yeah, you know, it's always cringey. So considering
that he was nineteen when he wrote it, it's actually
pretty good writing.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, no, good point.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So yeah, like you said, he did issue some warnings
and that kind of thing, not necessarily as like a CoA.
I don't get the impression that William Powell ever even
considered covering his own rear.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
No, or that I don't even know how much he
thought about this stuff ahead of time, like people actually
doing some of the stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
You know. Yeah, I don't know if he just if
it was like like a bit of a lark like
that where he was like, I'm just gonna do this
and didn't think it through, or if he actually was
like really trying to help people, say a revolution. I'm
not exactly sure which way it went, but from what
I've seen, most people site that he was actually quite
(21:15):
serious when he wrote this book.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, for sure. But you know, they call it a cookbook.
There were a lot of kind of quote unquote cookbooks
that some featured real recipes for things, but some didn't.
It was more like a collection kind of thing. This
had plenty of recipes for druggy stuff, pot Brownie's, marijuana butter,
how to make marijuana mints, and so there were genuine
(21:41):
sort of drug based recipes in there. But just because
if you've never heard of the Anarchist Cookbook, it is
not just like a cookbook obviously.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
No, he also had warnings against sniffing glue or shooting heroin. Yeah,
it's pretty sensible and level headed.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yeah, look at that kid.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
So we put all this together, and I think it's
like a couple hundred pages, right, and remember it being
semi thick and like large, large page format, right, Yeah,
I think so that's what they call it in the
publishing world, right, large page format.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, you really just wanted to have it the spine
showing on your bookshelf.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, or when you carried it around campus, like you
made sure that your arm wasn't covering the title.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Oh man, I never saw anyone actually carrying them around.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
So he tried to enter the publishing world with this manuscript.
He sent it to thirty different houses. He got thirty
different rejection letters, some like what is wrong with you?
Others like this isn't quite the fit with our ethos.
And then somehow, some way, he came into contact with
a guy named Lyle Stewart. And Lyle Stewart was a
(22:51):
publisher who just basically wanted to be a provocative publisher,
and the Anarchist cookbook just fell into his lap and
he was like, thank you, thank you God, and he
ran with it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Oh yeah, big time. He didn't change a word. He
was like, this is perfect as it is. Yeah, all
your drawings are great. You're such a good little drawer boy.
And he just he wanted it. I think he loved this,
the idea that the idea of the book, and I
think any thoughts to changing it were quickly squashed in
(23:23):
his mind of like no sort of the genius of
this book to him at least was just how taboo
it was and it should look like, you know, crazy rantings.
Because one there's a quote from him that I think
is pretty telling of like who this guy is and
also kind of smart for a book publisher. Was that
(23:45):
I'm paraphrasing, but like, people don't buy a bestseller like
this to read it. They buy it to have it
and just show it on the.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Bookshelf exactly to carry it around campus.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, with your arm notut covering up the title.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
So in the hands of Lyle Stewart, like this book
would take on its life finally, right, it would go
from the rantings of a nineteen year old kid to
a legitimately published book that was also heavily promoted by
a guy who knew how to just play the media
to get free exposure, essentially, and so he held a
(24:22):
press conference where somebody supposedly an angry anarchist who was
mad that this kid was sharing this forbidden information with
the world, threw a smoke bomb into the press conference
and everybody like jump for cover. And William Powell later
said that he noticed that Lyle Stewart didn't dock or
(24:45):
anything like that. He just kept his position behind the
podium during the press conference pretty much. And he was
like Lyle Stewart was just the kind of guy who
who would think to stage something like that just to
show how serious anarchistic this book was during the press conference.
Like that's the kind of promotion that this book got
(25:05):
from him.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah. Absolutely. If you're wondering, like, all right, where is
our old friend jay Edgar Hoover and the FBI and
all this, they were on it big time. They took
this book seriously. They you know, you used to hear rumors. Again,
these are probably just rumors that never happened about like
(25:28):
there was a list and like where'd you buy it from?
And like did you use a credit card? That kind
of thing, because now you're on a list if you
own a copy of this thing. It probably didn't go
that far, but they did question his parents. They questioned
his dad's colleagues at the un They never questioned Powell,
like sat him down in person, because they thought it would,
(25:50):
you know, it would hit the news. What they what
they wanted to do was kind of quash this thing
without giving it even more publicity.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Right, But that didn't stop the media from running with it.
For sure. There was a headline that Dave, who helped
us with this, he dug up from UPI that said
new anarchist cookbook contains recipe for sabotage destruction and so
as people are reading this, they become genuinely scared of
this book. So, like you said, Jaegar Hoover is in
(26:18):
charge of the FBI. I don't know if we said
or not, but it was published at the beginning in
nineteen seventy one, so Richard Nixon as president, this is
not a time where people were cool with free speech
when it came to you know, making bombs and stuff
like that. So everybody was like, you guys need to
investigate this and just get rid of this. People were
(26:38):
literally sending clippings of like book reviews to Jaegar Hoover
with like notes written in the margin. I think one
was danger exclamation point. What are you going to do
about this? And what's astounding to me is not a
single head got cracked as far as I can tell,
And in fact, the FBI was like, we've investigated it,
and this is all protected by the first amendments as
(27:01):
reprehensible as we think it is.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, which is, you know, a real victory in a way, again,
as dumb as a book as it ended up being,
it is a victory for free speech in this country
to not have the government, even at that time.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, especially at that time.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Yeah, come in and like put their neck on everyone's throat,
which is kind of surprising.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, it's surprising, and it's also ironic because it was
exactly that kind of like censorship mentality that William Powell
was raging against him. Yeah, he tested it, and the system,
the establishment actually passed. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. They're like,
we're going to protect your coming book, you little revolutionary yokel.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Should we take another break?
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
I think anytime you say the word yokle, that's our cue.
All right. We'll be right back and talk about kind
of when this book was in the wrong hands. What
happened right after this?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
All right, Chuck. So you said this book ended up
in the wrong hands. I guess we said at the
very outset that it did. So it's not really a
big twist in the story, but I think the first
time blood was actually shed, like life was lost because
of the Anarchist Cookbook, or at least in part, was
in September of nineteen seventy six, when a group of
(28:35):
Croatian independence gorillas hijacked a flight from New York to
Chicago and was like, this plane's going to Paris now,
and they're like, do you know how many refueling stops
we're going to have to make? And they said, we
don't care, just do it. And supposedly, as far as
hijackings go, it was really polite. I think some of
the people who were actually hostages later told the press
(28:57):
like it was almost ridiculous how polite and apologetic these
terrorists were. And it turned out that the bombs they
had strapped to themselves were like silly putty and alarm
clock were not bombs. But one of the demands that
they had was that the the like Washington Posts and
some of the other papers, had to print their manifesto
(29:18):
or else they would set off a real bomb at
Grand Central Station. And that one actually did turn out
to be real.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Yeah. The bomb squad came in from New York City's
finest very sadly one person was killed. Officer Brian Murray
was killed trying to diffuse the bomb. A few other
people were injured. Upon being charged, the hijackers said, we
we got this information on how to make this bomb
(29:46):
from the Anarchist cookbook. And that was the first case,
like you said, of like real bloodshed happening, but not
the first, you know, like you mentioned, this was found
on every not everybody, like it seems like any time
you heard about someone committing some awful violent act against
either a lot of people or planning something like this.
(30:09):
This was sort of the one of the textbooks that
they had on their shelf exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
And by this time, so this is nineteen seventy six,
William Powell had completely transformed into a different again, more
grown up Personeah he became an Anglican. He became religious
that same year. By that time, he'd already gone off
to college, graduated, worked in Alaska, discovered as his true
(30:37):
love of educating kids with learning disabilities, like what he
would keep doing for the rest of his life. And
so when this when it came out that like this
is this is actually like now like costing people their lives,
he was very upset about that. He wanted to distance
himself from the book. The problem was as we'll see,
(31:00):
he never owned the copyright. In addition to knowing exactly
how to promote controversial material, Lyles Stewart also knew how
to rip off his authors too, so he owned the
copyright to the Anarchist Cookbook. William Powell just got a
couple thousand dollars from it and then said, okay, see
you later.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, well, a couple of thousand dollars up front, I
think he said. He ended up making about fifty grand
in royalties over the years, and that was despite him
wanting to pull it from print. There was a period
of about eleven years where it was out of print.
You know. By this point, like in the nineties, he
(31:38):
was moving sort of all over the world with his wife,
teaching in the Middle East, teaching in Africa, really doing
great work. But in ninety one a couple of things happened.
He was appointed by or appointed as a CEO of
an international school in Tanzania, and parents complained and were like, hey,
(31:58):
do you know who this guy is? He wrote the
Anarchist Cookbook, and they you know, they protested it was
an anonymous letter to the board and they protested his hiring. Ironically,
it was that same year that the book actually went
out of print for a little while, which is what
he wanted more than anything. In ninety one, it was
bought by a guy, a publisher named Stephen Schregis, and
(32:22):
he was a you know, I'm not su sure how
big time he was, but apparently he had a couple
of thousand books that he was publishing over this eleven
year period and that was not one of them. He
bought the rights and then sat on it and said,
you know, the public shouldn't have this, and I agree
with him.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah, So it was like an eleven year period where
you know, it was out of print. You could still
buy it, of course, if you knew someone who had it,
or if it was in a bookstore or something. It's
not like it was banned, but he pulled it for
a little over a decade.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
Well, I think something that's good to know about William
Powell too. By this time, you said he got forced
out of his position as CEO of the International School
in Tanzania for being the author of the Anarchist Cookbook.
Very shortly after he departed, the board got back in
touch with them. It was like, please come back, like
(33:11):
we don't care about this where we like what you're
doing so much, we want you to come back. So
he came back for eight more years as the head
of that school. I think that says quite.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
A bit totally. I don't know. Did you watch the documentary, No,
I haven't. It's good. There's a documentary called American Anarchists that,
like you just you really feel for this guy because
it's a situation where everyone does something dumb or many
things that are dumb when they're teenagers, and most of
(33:41):
us are able to escape those and leave those firmly
in the past and move on and grow up like
everyone does. And this was a guy that was really
doing great work and really really really had so much
regret about this book, but there was just it was
there's nothing he could do about it. And you could
feel this guy's pain of like, my name is tied
(34:02):
to this thing. I just wish it would go away.
But you never felt like, well like sometimes like, yeah,
but you did it, so you deserve it.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Oh you felt like that. No.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
I always felt really bad for the guy with the
interviews because man, because he just went on to do
such great work and special ed and like really turned
things around and kind of had this stamp on him
for the rest of his life. He had a hard
time getting work, you know, a lot of times. That's
one reason he kept kind of moving around.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Man, that is really sad to He's a very empathetic figure.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Huh. That's how he came across to me, I guess,
sympathetic figure.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
So yeah. One reason why he was just like in
agony I guess over this book, him not being able
to do anything about this book is because after that
Croatian separatist incident, like it ended up inspiring more violence,
like more real world violence. Throughout the eighties and the nineties.
(34:58):
I mean, from the beginning of the eighties to the
end of the nineties, there were some really high profile
mass murders that were carried out, like we said, by
people who owned the Anarchist Cookbook. So in one way
or another, they were inspired or even maybe directed in
some cases in carrying out the crimes that they committed.
(35:19):
The atrocity.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, yeah, And he was putting out statements all along.
He even contacted Amazon to try and get a message
kind of permanently posted. The central idea of the book
was that violence is an acceptable means to bring about
political change. I no longer agree with this. I want
to stay categorically I'm not in agreement with the contents
of the Anarchist Cookbook, and I would be very pleased
(35:42):
and relieved to see its publication discontinued. I consider it
to be a misguided and potentially dangerous publication which should
be taken out of print. So yeah, I mean there
was nothing he could do about it because of Lyles Stewart.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, not just Lyles Stuart, but after the guy who
I guess said on it. Yeah, I think Lyle Stewart
sought him out and bought it back and it went
back into print, and then Lyle Stewart sold it to
another publishing house that owns it now that is keeping
it in print as well. And the thing to understand
(36:17):
about this Anarchist Cookbook, it's like that Abby Hoffman steal
this book thing, Like the idea of it being pirated
is kind of part of its whole jam, you know.
So there's so many like ripoff copycat published versions of
it that you can buy on Amazon and other places,
like no problem. They're like illegitimate counterfeit copies of the
(36:41):
anarchist cookbook, but it's still the anarchist cookbook to somebody
else publishing it as if it's in the public domain.
And then even if all those people stopped actually physically
publishing it, it's all over the internet now, Like I
was reading a PDF version of it on the Internet archive,
Like it's just out there. The way Dave put it
was perfect. The geniees out of the bottle, like this
(37:03):
information is out there now. And unfortunately, you'll probably continue
to keep inspiring people into acts of violence because of
that spirit behind it that the government needs to be
taken to task and overthrown and the people need to
rise up.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, and despite everything he tried to do, it just
he put it out there and it wouldn't go away.
He passed away in twenty sixteen, and you know, always
had great regret about what he had put into the world.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Yeah, there was one other thing. There was another statement
he made after I think a school shooting where he
drew parallels between the work he was doing and then
the legacy of the book, where he was saying, you know,
he works with kids who have learning disabilities, and these
kids are alienated by their disability essentially, and he said,
(37:57):
no child should have to earn the right to belong,
And then he turns around and essentially empathizes with the
kids who are, you know, reading his book and then
going on and shooting up their schools and saying like,
these kids, I'm sure are alienated and feel ostracized as well,
and this book did not help them in any way.
(38:17):
It did the opposite. Probably. Yeah, yeah, he does seem
like a pretty amazing guy. I mean, just the work
that he did afterward is pretty remarkable. I know, he's
like an internationally renowned educator or he was. Yeah, so yeah,
in some ways he made up for what he did.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
And I guess if there's any thing to take away
from this if you're a young person, like we have
always encouraged people to be bold and use their voice,
but you know, maybe pump the brakes. You know, think
about ten years from now. What do you want? Do
you want that attached to you ten twenty, thirty, forty
years from now?
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Right? Yeah, if you're writing nonfiction that calls for violence,
let's just stop and ask somebody, is this a good idea? Right?
Since Chuck said, right, everybody, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Nope?
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Since Chuck said, right, and then nope, it's definitely time
for listener.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Now. Yeah, I'm gonna call this missed opportunities. This is
from AR or maybe just R No, it's AR.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
AR is talking about are would a love drug be ethical? Episode?
That just dropped? And Ar was a former musician and
thinks we missed a lot of opportunities for band names
and album titles?
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Ok kill, let's here, all.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Right, So here we go. You guys did mention sablesco
and herb as an oregon saxophone combo. I can't remember
that there were real gyms in there, though, Guys like
LUs Bucket, Yeah, that's a good one. Okay, experimental love
drug sure kind of on the nose, Electric roses and philosophers. Yeah,
(39:59):
it's a little, yeah, a little wordy.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
That sounds like an album title. Then if they're really wordy,
it's usually an album title.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Well, here's some album titles or song titles. He felt like,
we miss you're not good at loving. It's a great
one that needs a parenthetical, but like, you know, parentheses,
but you really are right, really low key mellow stuff. Okay,
I don't know about that. If you dose them, that's
(40:27):
pretty good and love is good enough. That's a really
good one.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
That's a great one. I love that. I can't believe
there's not a song called that already.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Yeah, well there may be. Ar points out that the
genres on these guys run the gamut from EDM to country,
and a really big fan have turned on friends and
family to the podcast. Just wanted to say, keep doing
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Thanks a lot, Ar, That was a great email. We
appreciate that big time, and as always everybody, if we
ever walk past a great band name or an album name,
or a song title or something like that, we want
to hear from you too. You can wrap it up,
spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
For more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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