Latest / The WritersWeekly Podcast / Episode 54 - Do YOU Think These Controversial Books Should Have Been Published?

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Episode 54 - Do YOU Think These Controversial Books Should Have Been Published? · The WritersWeekly Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Writers Weekly Podcast, a forum geared toward the writing enthusiasts and those who want to make money from their writing.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Witten, managing editor of Writers Weekly, and I'll be your host along with Angela Hoy, the creator of Writers Weekly, and president and CEO of BookBlocker.com, a full service book publishing company.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to find on the professional writer?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: How to find Writing?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Publisher.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be discussing all kinds of topics.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can also click over to writersweekly.com.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: There you will find not only thousands of articles about professional writing.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can also find current paying markets and job listings to help you boost your writing career and even your bottom line.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, let's get on to this episode of the Writers Weekly Podcast.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hello again, and welcome to another episode of the Writers Weekly Podcast.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Brian Witten.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Brian.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Angela.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: With me is Angela Hoy, president and CEO of BookLocker.com.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're still we're both still here.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We are.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're still alive.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: The uh the the scammer hit men haven't come to get us yet.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, everything's everything's cool.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Although there is a little bit of a little bit of an update.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um well if if y'all haven't heard yet, um I mean don't give too much information who's taking interest.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we received an email, and if you want to read about it, look at Brian's article on news from the home office on writersweekly.com that he posted last week, which is actually pretty funny.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can make anything funny, even death threats.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, you can.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we got a lot of comments on that.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it was a pretty serious threat, and we they contacted us in two different ways, and we contacted the local sheriff's department, and now the FBI is involved, and the GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, is involved.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they're making headway, and that's all we can tell you right now.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I was actually shocked.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was when we contacted the sheriff's office here, I just thought they'd be like, yeah, okay, we'll take our report.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, but they're sending extra patrols to our neighborhood.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're sending extra patrols here.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: They contacted Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm like, wow.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: They got a whole team working on it.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: These guys are really taking this seriously.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they even offered to put patrol cars in our driveway with cops inside to keep an eye on us.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: So love living in a small town.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's cool, isn't it?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So as you all know, uh, you know, Writers Weekly is our weekly basically easine that we put out online.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: But um, it is an well, it's parallel, I guess, to booklocker.com, which is our full service publishing company.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh based on recent numbers, a lot of you have been signing up with us uh and and using us.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for that.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we really appreciate it.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the business is going gangbusters.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: We think it's in part due in part to our scambusting activities online, and people they come, they they see what we're doing online.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they see how much how many millions we've saved people from getting scammed.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: And they know that we're trustworthy because we've been covering scammers in the industry for 28 years.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's just in the last two years it's you know really taken off.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, now wait a minute.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: What's that?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're saying you haven't contacted booklocker.com yet to publish your book?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know why you'd be hesitating.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've been we've we this is this is episode now 54 of this podcast.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been listening to this podcast for any time whatsoever, you should know we're good people.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: But hey, what if I could offer you a little incentive?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: How about we how about we do this?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: How about when you come to booklocker.com and you sign up for one of our publishing packages.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Any publishing package, Angela?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: The top three are well, we've got a la carte services, so we can't offer discounts on those, but the at your service professional author package and the works publishing package.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you sign up for one of those three, when you go to the checkout, you put in the discount code podcast200.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's podcast, all capital letters, 200.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna give you, what are we gonna give them, Angela?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: $200 off, whichever publishing package they choose.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Save$200, get your book published by some really non-sammers.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: If that my great grammar is all screwed up there, but anyway, really good people.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not gonna scam you, we're gonna take care of you, and we're gonna do you right.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: We have an excellent reputation.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, we would love to have you on board.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: So uh come on board, save two hundred dollars with podcast 200 when you check out.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Also, if you want your book published in time for the Christmas shopping season, we need to hear from you right away.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, now, now, now, now.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: We usually get a book to market within a month, however, of a month of the author sending their final file to us.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: However, if you sign up for the works, which includes proofreading, that takes longer.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: It takes about six to eight weeks.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, jump on board as soon as you can, or just contact me so we can start talking about the project.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're not quite finished with the manuscript, we can get started on the cover design.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: We we can get right to work for you.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's podcast 200 for$200 off on our top three packages.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Come see us at booklocker.com or publish.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Publishing.booklocker.com shows all the the all the services under each of the packages.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can contact Angela at angela at book.book at angela at booklocker.com.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and uh she'll respond to you directly.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Episode 54, let's get to it.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um today's title, at least so far, the title is we haven't discussed.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we tweak them later.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we tweak them later, but at the time of recording, if you were a the publisher, would you publish these books or authors?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're gonna talk about controversial books and authors.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Some that we feel should have never been published.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, see, the thing is here in America we have the First Amendment, which says you can pretty much say whatever you want, as long as you're not threatening to overthrow the government, stuff like that.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, and you can't threaten people and tell them you're gonna come kill them and their families.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's not nice.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's not nice at all.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you can write books about things that are very controversial.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the question is not whether or not those books should be quote unquote banned, but should publishers have given a little more thought before they you know went ahead and published these books.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So another thing you need to think about is obscenity laws.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's that's still very active.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's federal.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's that too.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: So um let's start in and the reason we came up with this whole this whole episode uh started out with um a little little uh call from a friend of ours in Israel.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she would the this person was a little bit um miffed that a particular book was being published, and um by Simon and Schuster.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: By Simon and Schuster, and and so we're gonna start with that one.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we were notified about this, and uh the the author is I'm just gonna say it, she's disgustingly anti-Semitic.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um Astria Books, which is a Simon and Schuster imprint, um, is going to be publishing, and by now they may have already published them.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't I didn't check today before we went to recording, but um two novels from an author named Susan Abu Abuhlhawa.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Abu Lawa.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you did that.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: She is self-described as an anti-Israel activist.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, she's described, I'm not sure if she described that herself.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I did a lot of deep diving into some of her uh social media and stuff like that.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um she has called the October 7th attack on Israel, in which several thousand people were killed.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, hundreds of people were kidnapped, taken into the Gaza Strip.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: There was lots of rape, there was lots of torture, um, all unprovoked.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Israel did nothing to cause this.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: A bunch of people from the Gaza Strip crossed into uh Israel proper, basically, and started killing and kidnapping people.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Civilians.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Civilians, not soldiers.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Susan Abdul Abulawa has called that attack a quote spectacular moment.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Disgusting.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um according to the Washington Free Beacon in September uh, I think of 2025, on a social media post, Abu Hawa called Israel a quote, cultureless, rootless human aberration in the form of a manufactured nation, unquote.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And she added that, quote, we live in the time of Jewish supremacist demons, unquote.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's got something wrong in her noggin.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, she she is uh a a quote unquote Palestinian, and we'll get into that in a little bit.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um in December of 2025, she posted on X calling Israelis quote ruthless, soulless ghouls, unquote.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean it's sounding more and more like Mein Kampf here uh than a person who's wanting to publish a couple of novels.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh can I interject?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jump in.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, our friend in Israel uh we invited her to be on the podcast and she refused.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um why did she refuse?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: She said it could get her killed.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can't even come onto a podcast if you live in Israel and talk about this stuff, or somebody might come across from the Gaza Strip and kill you.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: An elderly person, by the way.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: She's elderly.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was that it?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: She did not want to come on the podcast because she's afraid for her very life.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: If she's just talking about this person.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Just for talking about this stuff.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not afraid.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to keep talking.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you've already got a got a target on your head.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: May as well just may as well just paint another one with it right on top of it.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Also, in September of 2025, Abu Hawa uh described a pro-Israel commentator as a quote, lying Jewish supremacist cockroach, unquote.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, with the type of language she's using, I'm surprised she got a publishing contract at all.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you have to resort to name-calling, now how intelligent can you possibly be?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now these are all things she has just basically said in public.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: She hasn't written books about this.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ex exactly.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the the word cockroach and other words like that, folks, that goes right back to Nazi propaganda.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I can show you examples in Nazi propaganda where Jews were referred to as cockroaches.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, directly from that.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: She wrote two books.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh both have both seem to kind of have the same plot when I researched them.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So-called Palestinian families are forcibly relocated in 1948 by the newly established government of Israel and uh and the multi-generational struggles of the families thereafter.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so would you publish a book from someone whose language towards the Jews matches that of Adolf Hitler?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um again, Nazi propaganda used to refer to Jews as rats, vultures, and cockroaches.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: All of all of them, and more.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and why a a a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster would choose to go ahead and publish this person is just beyond me.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have a feeling if I wrote a book and was talking a bunch of white supremacist stuff and talking about how, oh, I don't know, Palestinians don't have the right to live, or that they were a bunch of cockroaches, or that black people or Jews or anything like that were uh subhuman, I don't think Simon and Schuster would want to publish me.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Nope.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but for some reason this woman's going to get a couple of her novels published.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um for those that that think I'm wrong on all of this and and think that there's something wrong with uh pointing out the qu the quote unquote Palestinian uh things, uh do you know your history?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Angie, you know where Palestine do you know where Palestine came from?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Nope.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: You wanna you want to take a little dive in history with the people?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I love history.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's do it.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do this.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be kind of a kind of a quick um because we've got a bunch of other stuff to do.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: But but let me let me touch on some things.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So so the the j the Jewish religion and the nation of Israel actually dates back about four thousand years.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh now it started with a guy named Abraham, and they estimate he was around um during about 2091 BC.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he had seven sons, right?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have to no, he only had a couple, but seven sons.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that's a good one.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have to go back and read through and see just how many sons he had.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know about Isaac and one other, but so Abraham had a son, Isaac.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Isaac had a couple sons, one of whom was Jacob.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Jacob was renamed Israel.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now God's original promise to Abraham was, if you follow my laws and follow me, I will give you lots and lots and lots of offspring, more than there are grains of sand in the desert.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's in the Bible.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when Jacob came around, he became the leader of these people, and he was named Israel.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Before at that time, there was no land of Israel.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Israel was a tribe of people.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't they weren't nomadic because they did stay put and they they they raised uh livestock and and and did agriculture and stuff.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: But they didn't really have a land of their own at that time.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and this but later on, after they were enslaved in Egypt for many, many, many, many, many years, and then they got out of Egypt with God's help, and they were originally taken to a an area and told, go into this area and take that land for yourself.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: But they went in and found some giants there and said, No, no, no, no, we're not gonna do that.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're scared.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: God said, Okay, then what we're gonna do is I'm gonna have you wander around the desert for 40 years until this generation dies off, and the next generation better be brave enough to go into this land, and your children will inherit the promised land, not you.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So 40 years later, they go into what was known as the Promised Land, a strip of land between the Dead Sea and the Jordan River.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that hence was called, named after Jacob or Israel.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Their first king was King Saul, and he reigned um from 1050 to 1020 BC.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm sorry, uh he he he was the king during t sometime between 1050 or 1020.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that was exactly when he reigned.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'd have to go back and search my history.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: So Israel had a lot of history and a lot of things happened and stuff like that.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then in 70 um AD, under Roman Emperor Um Vespasian.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Vespasian, okay.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this is 70 years after Jesus was born, which would be about 40 years after Jesus died.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Roman general Titus surrounded Jerusalem with four military legions.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now Jerusalem was and is the capital of Israel.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is where uh the the Jewish temple was constructed and and existed.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Roman forces destroyed the temple and razed the rest of Jerusalem and slaughtered and enslaved the population.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so after basically 2,000 years of existence independently and after I guess about a thousand years of having their own land called Israel between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan, they were conquered by Rome.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sixty years after this conquering, Emperor Hadrian was having a little bit of trouble with some of these pesky Jews that were saying, We're tired of your taxes, and we're tired of you telling us we can't we can't uh worship our God, we have to worship your gods.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and by the way, that there's that whole thing where your country came in and tore down our temple, right?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and they were having rebellions.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Emperor Hadrian implemented a drastic geopolitical change to permanently break the Jewish tie to that very land.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this this would have been around, let me see, 70 plus 60, 130 AD, sometime around there.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot to bring my Bible capital.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: So how is he gonna permanently break the Jewish tie to the land?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he merged the province of Judea with Galilee, both Israeli territories, to form a new large province called Syria Palestina.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: There it is.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Angela, do you know why he chose the name of Syria Palestina?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: No, I don't.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're gonna go back up in history a little bit to a little battle known as David and Goliath.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: You recognize that one?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I know that story.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know who Goliath fought for?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: The people that were against David?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're right.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, they were against King Saul and Israel, and David was just a little boy at that time.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right, yeah.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, Goliath fought for a nation called the Philistines.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: The Philistines were forever Israel's sworn enemies.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Emperor Hadrian decided to name about half of Israel Syria Palestina.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: He intentionally chose the name Palestina derived from the ancient Philistines, Israel's biblical enemies, to erase the Jewish identity of the region.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know what always confused me was it's not a lot of land.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a lot of land.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Can't we all just live next door to each other and get along?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I just you would think.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: You would think, yeah.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it didn't happen that way.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So after that was done, several other things, well, the Jew Israel, the land of Israel, was conquered several several other times after that throughout history.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Pal Pal uh Polymerine Palmerine Empire conquered the region between 270 and 271 A.D.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now little bit well, several years after that, several hundred years after that, Islam was founded.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: So all that was happening before Islam was even a thing.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Islam didn't even exist during these times.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, okay.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Islam was founded in 610 AD.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was 2701 years after Judaism was established.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, I did not know that.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, Brian reads his Bible every day.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: So Brian knows more about the Bible than well, not every day.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I forget.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty much anybody I know.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I also take what I read in the Bible and I compare it to archaeological studies.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And find, you know, matches where our arch archaeological archaeologists today um are actually finding things that match up with the Bible.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: With what the Bible says, no, we're seeing more and more stories like that.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: We are.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Between sixteen six thirteen and six fourteen, the Sassan Empire conquered the region during the Byzantine Sasanian War.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that was between six thirteen AD and six fourteen A.D.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: The region stayed in Muslim hands throughout the Crusades when it well, I'm sorry, and uh all that time until the Crusades, when it changed hands several.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Several times.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then the Ottoman Empire ruled the region for four centuries.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: The Ottoman Empire was Muslim.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: From 1516 to 1917, the Ottoman Empire ruled the area, which was known as quote unquote Palestine, which was named by a Roman Emperor.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Then came World War One.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now the British Empire, General, um, the British Empire then was able to take that.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: General Allenby defeated Ottoman forces during World War I, leading to the creation of the League of Nations British Mandate for Palestine.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now that was that was kind of an idea they were playing with to try to get Jews and Arabs into the same area to kind of get along with everybody.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it didn't work.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, of course.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then after World War II, following the 1947 UN Partition Plan, Britain withdrew its colonial rule from that area.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Up until that point, it would have been a British colony, basically.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And a two-state plan was established for Jews and Arabs.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Y'all need to listen to this because you keep hearing about two-state solution all the time.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's they've already tried two-state solution.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what happens.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: In 1947, they said, you know, okay, we're going to have two states.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: The Jews can stay here in what was known as Israel and used to be known as Palestine, and they're surrounded by all these Arab states.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in reaction to that, the United Nations saying that this is where we're going to let the Jews live because clearly Europe is a hostile area for them.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Arabs attacked the Jews.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Of course they did.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, in 1948, the Arab-Israeli War resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Both Jordan, uh, while Jordan took the West Bank and Egypt took the Gaza Strip.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: But then Israel later captured those remaining territories in 1967 during the Six-Day War when they were attacked again by Arab countries.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: So when you hear about the Gaza Strip and you hear about the West Bank, those are not sovereign territory for Arab nations.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was Israel.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Those areas were captured by Arab nations during the first Arab-Israeli War.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Second Arab-Israeli War, Israel took them and said, We are not giving these back.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is our land.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's happened since then is way too much to get into here.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: But that's basically your history of quote unquote Palestine.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for that.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk about Palestine, you're talking about Israel.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was just renamed by a Roman emperor to punish the Jews.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I I have little sympathy about somebody that wants to a quote unquote Palestinian that wants to write a book crying about the way the Jews treat them.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I just I just don't have any so if you were a if you were a uh were a publisher, would you would you publish these books from somebody that's calling Jews cockroaches?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Not only would I not publish the book, I will not be buying any books published by Simon and Schuster.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's Angie's take on it.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's move on to Angela's favorite book of all time.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child Lover's Code of Conduct.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: That book should have never been written and certainly should have never been published.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, do you know who published it?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why don't you start us out by uh telling us who wrote it and then you can talk about who published it?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was written by Philip R.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Greaves, the second.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it was published in 2010.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And well, now what would be wrong with a book about love and pleasure?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's I mean, and it's a code of conduct.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: What's wrong with it?
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically a book on how to groom children.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was published by CreateSpace, which was the first which evolved into Amazon KDP.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Create Space had a really bad reputation and Amazon renamed it later.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: But Amazon actually published that book.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: That book should have never been published.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So then what happened?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, tell us about the book a little bit.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it contained graphic descriptions discussing first-person narratives depicting sexual encounters with minors and advice aimed to avoid law enforcement detection.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can call this a book of love all you want, but when you gotta add the part about how to avoid law enforcement.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh red flags.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was purported by its author to establish rules to make situations involving adults and minors safer.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Safer from law enforcement.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing safe about that for the kids.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's anything safe for the children on that one.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it caused huge, huge backlash.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thousands of people were calling, were boycotting this book and calling to boycott Amazon.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the book was finally taken down.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: But Amazon waited months.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: That had to have been a lot of people.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: To to to uh actually um um get them to take it down because they usually don't listen to angry people.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and Amazon actually talked to the BBC, quote, Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable objectionable.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now that was before that was before the outrage came out.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when when people first started questioning this, so the BBC asked Amazon about it, and that's their answer.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon believe it's a simple it is censorship not to sell a certain book simply because we or others believe the message is objectionable.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was just ridiculous.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's objectionable and then there's child abuse.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, and this is another quote Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: However, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know how they you see how they tied in we don't support criminal acts, but we don't promote hatred.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning everybody that didn't want this pedophile book out on the market, Amazon was calling them basically a hater.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: So well, what finally happened?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this book apparently um did break a certain law because uh Grady Judd Grady Judd?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, Grady Judd.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: You he's great.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: He's uh he's in Florida law enforcement and uh he's a sheriff in Polk County, Florida.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Still is sheriff in Polk County, Florida.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: He had, I think, a colleague order a copy of the book.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: From the guy directly from Colorado.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and he had him sign it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, had him sign it.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sign it.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Wanted a sign copy, and uh they actually went to Colorado.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Florida went and arrested that guy.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yep.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: We have to look up whatever happened to him.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I imagine if he went to prison he probably didn't.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have to look back, but I don't I don't think he got a lot of time out of that.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: And Amazon uh what, 10 years later or something?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Amazon.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, it wasn't 10 years later.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, they they removed it uh same uh about about a month later um in 2010.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh okay.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh November 11th, 2010, the book was removed from Amazon.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, in the U.S.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: we have the First Amendment, and um you got the right to write some pretty nasty stuff, but if you were Amazon, would you have, you know, without without without the people and the pitchforks and torches outside your door, would you have ever let that book hit your shelves?
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, and I can tell you that we have received some absolutely disgusting manuscripts over the years.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was just a month or so ago I started reading the first page, and it was about a guy um I don't want to say the word, sexually assaulting uh child.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it was very dystraphic.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I've received books like that over the years.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then I've received books that are let's say they take sex to a extreme of age and you know, blood and everything.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah but when kinky doesn't describe it, right?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's worse than that.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: And and then a lot of violent books about men and I think some people actually write about that stuff to get their rocks off and then they want other people to read it.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: And and of course I don't publish it, and um I I just a lot of those I just don't even respond to 'em.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: We don't we don't do erotica here.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's just not not not our thing.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm talking stuff that's far beyond erotic.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's far but yeah, it ain't even erotica, it's just dancing.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody needs to read that stuff.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: So here's another book, and uh we're just gonna tell you about it.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're not gonna I'm not gonna give you my opinion.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe towards the end, but um the title is American Dirt, and it was written by um an author named Janine Cummins, and it was published by Flatiron Books in 2020.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now it debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oprah listed it in her book club.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Barnes and Noble's desig uh Barnes and Noble designated it in their book club club picks.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: It sold over three million copies when it first went out.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: There were actually film adaptation rights acquired by Imperative Entertainment, written by uh and and it was gonna be uh written by Charles Levitt, who also wrote Blood Diamonds, which starred um Leonardo DiCaprio.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the guy, you know, he's he's written some some serious movies.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Great place, yeah.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it caused a big uproar.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: So big that the publisher canceled the author's book tour.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: The publisher actually canceled the author's book tour.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what was going on that that that caused such a hubbub for a book that was selling so well?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's the plot.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: A Mexican woman in Acapulco runs a bookstore.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Her husband is a German.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is it German?
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Man, my mouth is just all today.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Her husband is a journalist.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as an author and a publisher, okay, she runs a bookstore.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Her husband's a journalist, and we're journalists.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds interesting so far.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty good.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'd buy it.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Her husband writes a negative story about a local drug cartel leader.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: The cartel uh comes in and murders 16 of the woman's family members at a celebration.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: The woman and her young son have to flee Mexico.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I guess they killed her husband as well.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: The woman and her young son have to flee Mexico and cross the border into the U.S.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: The story is basically a fictional account of the struggles of illegal aliens in the United States.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to figure out what's all controversial about.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Still sounds like an exciting book.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds pretty, pretty, yeah.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so what what happened?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, almost immediately upon release, American Dirt faced a massive wave of backlash, primarily led by Mexican American and Latino writers.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or, as they put it on the web, Latinx writers.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um the author, Janine Cummins, was accused of cultural appropriation and represent and and representation.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or misrepresentation.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Or misrepresentation.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Critics questioned why a massive multimillion dollar promotional campaign was granted to an author who identifies as white, so, yeah.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and is of Irish Puerto Rican heritage, so to tell a definitely uh a definitive Mexican migrant story, while actual Mexican and Mexican American authors are routinely underfunded by the 80% white publishing industry.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well I don't know.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she wrote a better book.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of sounds like reverse racism to me.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, it sounds like racism pure and simple.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not really the reverse of racism is non-racism.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: So this sounds like racism.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why why don't why aren't you publishing a book by a Mexican about this?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Show us one.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: I you know you know there are magazines and publishers, magazines specifically, that will only buy stories from a certain race.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um James Walsh actually did a uh did an article on that for Writers Weekly once about about uh r uh racism uh from publishers.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: They'll only they'll only do pieces from if you're black or if you're Hispanic or if you're gay or if you're this but they won't take it from a straight white person.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: What's funny is if they were actually hiring these people's employees, it'd be illegal to do that.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: But uh but a lot of writers get past that by pretending what they're not.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: Unless they ask you for a picture or you know, follow you online or something meeting, yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: That reminds me of the um this writer wrote three articles for us.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Great writer, fantastic writer.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I would, you know, pay pal him the money each time he wrote an article for us.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was contacted by one of our competitors, somebody who competes with Writers Weekly, and she said, Hey, he's been writing for me too.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know he's 14 years old?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I told him, I said, because we have an agreement we send to writers when it's very short.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is how it works.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Non-exclusive rights, here's how we're gonna pay you, and how much but it is a contract, you have to be 18 to agree to it.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Right in the United States.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote to him and I said, you know, you're and I wanted to encourage him.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I would love to keep working with you, but your parents have to complete the agreement each time you you we we send you a writing assignment.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I never heard back from him.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Weird.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I man, I wish I knew that story, that backstory.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, back to American Dirt.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um prominent critics such as author Miriam Gerba.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Miriam Gerba argued that the book heavily relied heavily on, quote, harmful Latino stereotypes, contained inaccurate Spanish language phrasing, and viewed the migrant crisis through an artificial white gaze designed for non-immigrant audiences.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let me ask you this if this person was writing a book that put illegal immigrants in a il illegal immigrants in a positive light, and you're a Mexican American or a Mexican who thinks that illegal immigrants should be able to stay here anyway and not be deported, what do you care if it was written by a white person?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: If it sold three million copies, yeah, and it's a book that's sympathetic to illegal Mexican migrants, what do you care?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, she got her she got her book tour cancelled.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as best I know, the book's still for sale, but she she went through a lot of a lot of hullabaloo over a bunch of people that it sounds to me like they were just very jealous that a white person wrote this story and and and got the fame.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: This reminds me of uh what is the term authors and publishers are hiring people to go through books to make sure sensitivity readers.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sensitivity readers.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: See, my brain's a lot of people.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: See, I don't think this book would have gotten through a sensitivity reader.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it would have if she just overlooked the race of the author.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's pure racism.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's all it is.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: But if you were um if you were flat iron books, would you have denied this book because it was from a white author?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, I would have published it.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't I don't think I would have had a problem with it.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, yeah.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, no matter what you write, somebody out there ain't gonna like it.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people are so pretend to be sensitive these days so they can complain about things online.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just sick of it.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just sick of all the victims out there.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's crazy.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of victims, what's next on the list?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, everybody's favorite victim, OJ Simpson.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: I can't stand that guy.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, y'all remember the OJ Simpson trial?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: He supposedly didn't kill his ex-wife and possibly lover.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I don't think anyone proved they were romantically involved.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, uh, but you know, the glove getting the glove didn't fit, so we had to acquit.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, crap.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in 2007, Harper Collins, well, I am I'm hang hang tight, stop, stop there.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he wrote a book after he was acquitted called If I Did It, Confessions of the Killer from by O.J.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Simpson.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Actually wrote that book.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Actually wrote a book about If I Did It, and it was a quote unquote hypothetical first-hand account of how O.J.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Simpson could have committed the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know what?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if he actually wrote that or if he hired a ghostwriter.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: Who cares?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it doesn't matter, but it's still it was it was it was just basically a big F you to Nicole's family.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: To everybody.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the other guy's family.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Ron Goldman's family.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um It caused massive outrage.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Every, you know, everybody was ticked off about this, right?
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: So Kim Goldman, who is Ron Goldman's sister on CNN's Larry King Live, said, he's telling us one more time, I'm gonna continue to get away with killing your family members, and I'm not gonna honor the judgment and look at me, ha ha ha.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, because Ron Goldman's family sued him in civil court in one.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and one, and OJ basically was just still gonna make money off of all this.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: He was just flipping his thumb at him.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, Harper Collins was going to um to uh publish that book, but they canceled their publication of that book.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Poor OJ.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Always a victim.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody picket on the guy, you know, dragging him through these crazy trials saying he killed people, then they won't promote his book saying how he killed these people.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh what ended up happening though is a Florida bankruptcy court awarded the rights of that book to the Goldman family.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now, isn't that a twist?
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the Goldmans changed the title.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, basically, all they did was they removed one word.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: So what the what was the original title?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: If I did it, Confessions of the Killer.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And what's the new title?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: I did it.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Confessions of the Killer.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Genius.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: That is.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was it was then published through Beaufort Books.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or Beaufort.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Bo, I think it's Beaufort.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Beaufort.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh total print copies sold uh were around 200,000.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's impressive.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's pretty good.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the Goldman's got the money.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then following Simpson's death from cancer in April 2024, public interest spiked once more.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: The public the paperback edition claimed the number one spot on Amazon's bestsellers in rich and famous biographies.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know that was cash.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: While the audiobook version ranked number one in criminology.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the Goldmans are still raking in the cash.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Newsweek acquired a chapter, and um I've I've got the chapter here.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Angie, you want to read this?
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'll read it really fast.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: I moved past the front door of Nicole's condo to take a closer look.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: There were candles burning inside, and I could hear faint music playing.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was obvious that Nicole was expecting company.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: I wondered who the F word go ahead, go keep it.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was this time.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: I wondered if maybe Faye was coming over with some of her boy toys so they could get wild and dirty while my kids were sleeping upstairs.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's in italics.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Just as I was beginning to get seriously steamed and bat the backgate squeaked open, a guy came walking through like he owned the effing place.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: He saw me in froze.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: He was young and good looking with a thick head of hair, and I tried to place him, but I'd never seen him before.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know his name.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Ron Goldman.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Who the F are you?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: I said.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: I uh I just came to return a pair of glasses, he replied, stammering.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: A pair of glasses, huh?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: So Yeah.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's uh an excerpt uh off of page 128 from the Goldman book now.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: I did it.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Confessions of a killer.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: That writing sucks.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Should should Harper Collins have ever even considered publishing this book in the first place?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad that the Goldmans took it to another publisher.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't have published it.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't I wouldn't want to give that guy any money.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, it's sleazy.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's so sleazy.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Whether whether you think he did it or not, it's just, it's so it's such a disgusting move to write this stupid book.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to make money off of it.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: And trying to make money off of saying, Well, let me tell you how I would have done it if I really did.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just it's so eh.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he did he was doing all kinds of stuff, try to make extra cash.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Listeners, do you Think they should have published that book.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Again, we're not talking about should they ban it, should it be illegal?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we still have the First Amendment, but as a publisher, would you have published it?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: Got two more books to talk about, both of which I had copies of when I was a teenager.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: Good for you.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: I did not have copies of either one of these people.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: You may not be so proud of me when you hear these things.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um don't worry, folks.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're not dirty.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um how many of y'all heard of the Anarchist Cookbook?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: I've had that.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Had you ever heard of that before?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I've got to be a good idea.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Before you met me?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the Anarchist Cook.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: One of my previous husbands also had a copy of that.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-oh.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh boy.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good news for you, I no longer have that copy.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Although, and uh towards the towards the end of this little segment, you're gonna find out why I'm really regretting why I didn't no longer own that copy.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the anarchist cookbook was written by a guy named William Powell.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was published by Lyle Stewart, Incorporated, a New York publishing company.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um Powell wrote this book when he was a 19-year-old anti-Vietnam War activist in 1971.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently he aimed this book at people who were interested in conducting guerrilla warfare in the United States.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what this book was uh was really it was just it was just a bunch of old army manuals uh that had been declassified from World War II that taught you how to make bombs, taught you how to how the uh the the techniques of sneaking up and killing somebody, uh how to make a silencer.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: I remember there was a chapter in there on how to make a Ruger 1022 rifle fully automatic.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of stuff that, you know, if you actually did the stuff, it was illegal as hell.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, doing the stuff's illegal, but writing about it, First Amendment, right?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: You can write about it.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you were in the military and you were a cop, so I could say.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I own I owned all this before I was in the military.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, I only was a teenager.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you could buy it at the bookstore.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was now uh I was a teenager in the 80s.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: This was written in 1971.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um now they did catch up with the guy uh about 50 years later, uh, William Powell, and they did an interview with him, and he actually was saying he wish he'd never written it and he wished it would just go out of print and that everybody would forget about it because he really, really regretted it.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, whether he regretted it because he looked back and said, Boy, that was a really dumb book to write, or if maybe the wrong side started using his uh instructions, because the people that were protesting the Vietnam War back in the 70s were mostly your left-wing activists, you know, and so he wrote this book so that if anybody wanted to conduct guerrilla warfare in the United States against the Vietnam War, well, apparently he was all for that back then.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't really have many um examples that we can find of left-wing uh terrorist attacks that use the anarchist cookbook as their base of reference.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: However, there were some crimes committed that they were able to link the anarchist cookbook to.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: First of which we'll talk about is the Columbine High School massacre.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: The teenage perpetrators of the mass shooting in Littleton, Colorado, which killed 13 people, were believed to have used the book as a resource for constructing explosive devices.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I can't remember.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: I know they set a bunch of IEDs in the school, but whether any I think one went off.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the others they were able to dis disarm.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: But um yeah, terrible day in American history, and they were able to link his book to them and their bomb-making attempts.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um prior to that, the Oklahoma City bombing.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Copies or instructions from this text have been linked by investigators and and media reports to Timothy McVeigh's planning of the federal building bombing back in 1995.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: So again, a a right-wing extremist used the Anarchist Cookbook to come up with how to uh commit his crimes.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the book has repeatedly surfaced in the possession of alienated youths involved in attacks such as the 2013 uh uh uh Arapahoe High School shooting in Colorado, as well as various other domestic and international terror cells planning bomb attacks.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: So again, First Amendment, you have the right to publish something, but do y'all think that Lyle Stewart Incorporated should have published the Anarchist Cookbook back in 1971?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I imagine it was very popular when it came out.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is that why you owned a copy?
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, I owned a copy because I was kind of a little deviant and I thought it was cool to be able to know how to make bombs and stuff.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I made any bombs or did any of this stuff, but I just thought it was cool to have that knowledge.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I owned a copy because I was a little edgy when I was, you know, a kid.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: We uh there's a podcast episode.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: We will put a link to it underneath this episode at podcast writersweekly.com slash podcast, episode 54, where Brian goes into detail about what what a naughty kid he was in teenager.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was an this is episode 54.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: We'll link to the episode that Angela interviewed me about my life and and what a little terror I was.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: You went from being a terror to army to cop to soldier to a cop to working for a publishing company.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: And your husband.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um today an original copy of the Anarchist Cookbook from 1971 typically sells for anywhere from$700 to$6,800.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, I can't believe you got rid of your copy.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on whether or not it was soft cover or the very, very rare hard covered hardcovered dust covered editions.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, I really wish I because I did I did have the original black cover soft softback.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh um now, I don't I I don't know if they had done uh because I probably owned mine in 1984, 85.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they had done uh reprints since then.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or I mean between 71 and that time, but uh I'm sure I could get a pretty penny for it today.
• 50:58
  unknown: Right.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, would it be ethical for me to sell it to anybody today?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: And spread that that knowledge around to somebody that might use it for nefarious purposes.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: I bet the AI companies already have it in their systems.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Probably.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: They probably do.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: Probably better that I would have just kept it around for, I don't know, in case somebody threatens my wife and threatens to come kill my family.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's neither here nor there.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh okay.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: What do you all think?
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: Should they have should they have uh should they have published the Anarchist Cookbook?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of publishers just do it for the money.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: They don't care what it sells.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, it made money.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: They it sold.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people were buying it.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: And and it became it uh it became kind of a boogeyman uh for a lot of um a lot of law enforcement agencies and stuff like that.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in fact, there's several um I found several quotes in which during various investigations into bomb making or terrorism and stuff, um, anarchist cookbook is kind of a a generic term that they're using for any printed printed instructions on how to build bombs.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they'll they'll just be like, yeah, they had an anarchist cookbook about how to make this and that.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um so yeah, it was it it was it became kind of a cultural icon, I think it's safe to say.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go to the last book in our list, and the title is Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is a this is an interesting book, it's got an interesting story behind it.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um the author on the cover was Rex Farrell, and it was uh published by Paladin Press Paladin Press, um and uh the book was released in Boulder, Colorado and sold approximately 13,000 copies.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's not much.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: No, not much, but it it made the papers.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, with a title like that, people were probably afraid to buy it.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it did offer step-by-step instructions on how to be a hitman.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: It literally walked you through what kind of firearms to select, how to disguise yourself, how to track your mark, how to plan your you know, your attack, and how to get away with it once it's done.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know what's ironic?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: Huh?
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're talking about hitmen.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we were just talking to the cops this morning on the phone.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that interesting that we're talking about Hitman today?
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hopefully they didn't know in this book.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hope they're not listening to this episode.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, well, yes, if they are listening to this episode, I know all your secrets.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: I read the book.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, I mean, it went into great detail about I mean, I mean, down to things like as you're, you know, once you've done it and you're getting away, you need to take the gun apart, take a take a rasp file and run it through the through the barrel of the gun so it'll mess up all of the all of the rifling, so they can't they can't trace the bullet back to your gun.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: Then you gotta throw, you throw one part here, you throw another part there, throw this in a lake, throw the, you know, so that you all they can't find the whole gun and all stuff like that.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just I mean, details, details, details.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right, you know.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it wasn't really written by a guy named Rex Farrell, it was written by a woman named Gail McLeod.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: McCool.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, McLeod.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have my game.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, she's got a really cool name.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Gail McCool.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: So everybody, you know, oh, this is such a great book, and this guy's so cool.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was written by Chick.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's pretty awesome.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: That chick was a housewife.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: That chick got her information from shows like Perry Mason and some other TV series.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: She had never done a hit in her life.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: She had actually written it as a novel, but her publishers thought it would be better, like a better written as a non-fiction how-to book.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so they re- they re-jiggered it to sound like a non-fiction how-to book, not a not a novel of a hitman.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's genius.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, so yeah.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: So uh all these people that were reading this thing and thought, wow, I'm I'm learning from a real expert.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: No, you aren't.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: You were reading about it from a bored housewife that wrote herself a little a little novel.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a problem.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: In 1993, a guy named James Perry murdered um Mildred Horne, her eight-year-old son Trevor, who was a quadriplegic, and Janice Saunders, who was Trevor's nurse.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lawrence Horne, who was Mildred Horne's ex-husband and Trevor's father, had hired James Perry to commit the murders with the expectations of inheriting a two million dollar settlement that Trevor received for his injuries.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: Perry, who had purchased a copy of Hitman, executed the crime by the book.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: Quote, by the book.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: He actually followed those instructions step by step to arrange his contract with Horn, select a weapon, construct a homemade silencer, and dispose of the bodies.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: But he still got caught.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: Still got caught, still got convicted.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: But can you imagine you wrote a book like that?
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then you find out somebody actually followed your instructions on how to kill three people, including a little quadruple boy.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, how do you how do you live with yourself the rest of your life if you do something like that?
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, based on a um on a um uh an article I read, uh, I think it was from Vanity Fair, it's been kind of hard on me.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: We'll put all these links for your research.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we got all my resource links here.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, apparently that was kind of rough.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're a publisher and uh and um now I'll tell you what, Paladin Press published a lot of controversial stuff.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: They were they were known for the the soldier of fortune type um publications.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: There was another uh when I worked for that internet marketing agency, I worked with a man who had previously worked for a very controversial book publisher that I'm not gonna name.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um they sold to another company.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: They their their books were about how to break laws.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like how to how to break a lock.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: So um but authors have to th authors and publishers have to think if I put this book on the market, what could happen?
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Liability.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: And how am I going well I don't think so much liability if somebody follows instructions morality thing.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: How am I gonna live with myself, look at myself in the mirror if somebody follows the instructions or gets an idea from this book that you know I another thing I want to talk about, the satanic verses.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: Satanic verses, uh Solomon Rushdie.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, he had to go into hiding.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes because it was it was um satirical treatment of Islam.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and he had a bunch of uh targets on his head like you do too.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he he r recently, I mean several years ago, uh was attacked and lost an eye.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: A knife attacked.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: He was speaking, he got yeah.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I would bet, despite all the money he made, I would bet he regrets writing that book.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: Depends.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because it completely changed his life.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_00: He no longer had freedom.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: If he was a former Muslim who really wanted the world to understand you know what the Quran really says about what you should do as a Muslim, maybe he still feels it was worth it.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it was it was fictional.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, satirical, so but um I wouldn't write a book like that.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: Just you know, I I I like my life, just you know, I only have you know scammers coming after us wanting to kill us.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be able to do that.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have like the whole right, right, yeah.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Which some of them actually might be.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those scammers might very well be Islamic terrorists.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you think, Angela?
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: Was that uh was that interesting?
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting, very, very I I love the historical stuff at the fur at the beginning.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um you did a really good job researching all this stuff.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll put all the links to Brian's research under this this at writersweekly.com slash podcast, episode 54.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I learned a lot.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what it really people need to think if you're a publisher or an author, is this a book that you want your name or your company's name on?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because once it's out there, your lame's on it forever.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, yeah, uh like I said, uh according to the interview they did with Gail McCool, she really regretted having a phone.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, sure she did.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um now she wrote under a pseudonym and she actually did not she kept she stayed in hiding for like 30 years.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't tell anybody I'm the one that writ that, but but but apparently her conscience was enough that she came forward and say, That was me and I regret it.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, but she you know, she has to live with herself.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: Three people died, and and you know, would the guy have killed them without the book?
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: But your poem maybe he wouldn't have been as successful if he'd your book played a part.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he would have goofed and and and messed it messed up and not made it happen.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, uh, that's that's that's tough.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about uh when you write a book.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: Authors and publishers out there, but I would rather live a nice peaceful life than make a million millions of dollars and sell millions of copies.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: I that's just not the life we're gonna do.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or worry about who you hurt to do that.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well that's it for episode 54 today.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you all uh had as much uh fun as we did going through these.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: This this was interesting.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Next week we have Clayton Jones joining us.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: Clayton Jones is gonna join us.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: Are we gonna are we doing a little AI trick?
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what we're doing?
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or is uh yes, we're going to be.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're going, it's going to be a humorous episode.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: A funny, a funny episode with Clayton Jones.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to trick AI.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll that's all we can tell you.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'll write a book about it.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna write it.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Teach other people how to do it.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: How to do it.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then AI will send robots to our house and bang down our doors.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, why may as well just, you know, go for broke.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, let's get everybody after us to kill us, you know.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: So all right, folks.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: Again, come to booklocker.com, podcast 200.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: Use that use that code podcast200.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get$200 off of uh any of our top three book publishing packages.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth it's worth the try.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: Come on over and you're gonna like us.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you won't get scammed.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna get scammed, you're gonna be treated right, and uh here's your incentive,$200 off.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: So come see us.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the Christmas shopping season is fast approaching.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: Angie, is there a time limit for this uh for this discount?
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not right now.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not right now.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it can it could end tomorrow.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're not gonna do that, or it might end next week.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: But uh we might, you know what, probably in January we'll come up with some other discount code.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: All right, but don't wait.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: Come on in, use that discount code.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's our it's our busy season.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, first come, first serve.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks a lot for listening.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Angie, anything more you got?
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, man, I'm just I gotta get back on my computer.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: We are slammed right now.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: Slam business.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: Business is good.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so we will see you all again on the next episode of the Writers Weekly Podcast.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: See you next week.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_02: Bye.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: That is if we're still alive.