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

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

The things you're not supposed to talk about if you're a schoolteacher, a college professor, a businessman, a politician, a parent, a neighbor, or even a podcast host. These are the things you're not supposed to say or even think if you're a good liberal, a good conservative, or a good citizen. Each week, I'll interview a person who has something bad to say.

They might be a journalist or a professor, they might be a porn star or a drug dealer.

They might just be an ordinary person with an ordinary job who doesn't care about the rules of

polite society. I'm not interested in breaking the rules just to be a troublemaker.

I'm interested in people who break the rules of conventional thought

and to expand the scope of what is possible to say in our society.

I'm interested in people who make me think.

The interview you're about to hear is one hour, 34 minutes, and 25 seconds long.

If you love it, it will fly by in an instant.

If you hate it, it will last in eternity.

It was recorded at 1 p.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, January 14th.

But you can listen to it at any time.

While you're listening to it, your mind might wander off into different places and different times.

But that's okay, because my guest this week and I both want you to think about

when you are and when you would like to be.

This is my mind-bending and time-bending interview with Vanketh Rao.

So I am in downtown Los Angeles in the famous Bradbury building, which is very appropriate for this conversation.

It's appropriate for the person I'm sitting with, too, to be working here. This is Venkatesh Rao, who's a fellow this year at the, as it pronounced,

Bergruwen. Bergruen Institute. And you must have been quite excited when you were offered

this fellowship to know that it was in the Bradbury building. Or was that part of it?

...