Good evening and welcome to tonight's episode of The Mary Trump Show. I'm thrilled and

honored to have as my guest, Asha Rungapa, a Yale professor, a proprietor of the phenomenal

new sub-stack, Freedom Academy, which we're going to talk about, formerly FBI agent back in

the Auts and just awesome commentator on what's happening in our world today. Asha, thank you so

much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited and I'm obsessed with your

first book. Thank you. It was just fascinating. I devoured it and it was just like getting a peak into

like I don't know like it helped make everything make sense a little bit for a moment

and I still refer to it often. Oh I really appreciate that because it was as you can imagine not

the easiest thing in the world to write. Yeah or to live with. So I think it was an incredibly

useful contribution for the rest of us to kind of just understand what could be driving someone

and what like just the magnitude of the damage that is really motivating a lot of the behavior.

So thank you. Thank you. I mean that's really kind of you and it's actually quite quite a good

segue because you know my book was mostly about what one person, how one person became

not just so dangerous but how he was allowed to inhabit a space in which he could be as dangerous

as he is but you know we're also living in a time when disinformation has become so weaponized

and it's spreading at an alarming rate because of how information has become siloed and because

of social media that it's you know and that brings me back to your sub-sac again. It's so important

that people understand the mechanisms behind all of this. So if you could talk a little bit I

have so much to ask you but I want to start with your sub-sac because it sort of and by the way

guys for those of you who don't know it's called the Freedom Academy and it just started you just

had your first- just last little class- yes- released. So you know later on we could talk about the

format of it which I think is is quite fascinating but you know you draw on history and journalism

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