Hello, fellow law nerds.

Welcome to a special episode of Boom Lawyred, a Rewire News Group podcast hosted by the legal

journalism team, half of which is in California right now.

And so I am being joined by one of my absolute favorite people, Ellie Mistal. He is the justice correspondent for the

nation where he covers courts and the criminal justice system in politics. He is also host of the

legal podcast contempt of court, a podcast which I have yet to appear on, by the way. He is also an

Alfred Nobler fellow at the Type Media Center. And his first book is a New York Times bestseller,

allow me to retort a black guy's guide to the Constitution, published by the new press.

And now he's working on his second book, which maybe he'll talk to us about if he's willing to

spill some of those beans. Or I don't know, maybe he spent his entire writing sabbatical playing Baldersgate,

which is what I would have done, honestly. That's because I have no discipline when it comes to writing.

So, Ellie, thanks for joining us. So good of you to join us. I just beat Balders Gate a week ago.

You did? Finally beat the game.

It was a huge accomplishment. And then like six hours later, there was an earthquake. So I was

really feeling like I am bringing the fire in my personal life. My book writing life,

you know, not so much. But, you know, that's why I had to beat Baldersgate three before I get finished book two, right? Like that's just, that's just how it works. That's the, those are the laws. Those, them's the laws. So it's been almost a year to the day since you came on for our 200th episode. It was like last April. And we talked about your book, right? I told all my non-lawyer friends to read it because it's funny, it's smart, and it's written for lay people. So that's wonderful. And you also have a podcast. And can you just tell us a little bit about what you're covering on the podcast, contempt of court? Yeah. So the podcast is a limited series, which is why you haven't been on.

We have, we have, we have, we have run our course. And it was, it was meant to be just a, a focus on all of the different ways we can reform the Supreme Court, right? Because it's clearly

broken. Like I don't like, you know, when I started my career, you know, you go back 15 years ago,

I was like the crazy guy talking about, you know, the impending disaster in the disaster movie.

Like, you know, the guy who gets killed, the, you know, the scientist who's like, you know,

the global warming could eat and the global cooling.

And Dennis Quaid can you help us out. So you're like Dennis Quaid in the day after tomorrow, basically. I was Woody Harrelson in the day after, right? Oh, okay. I was a crazy scientist guy, right? Now I'm Dennis Quaid. Yeah. Now I'm like, hey, guys, have you, you can see that we're freezing to death here.

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