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.

Tickets are now on sale for two Renegade University weekend events.

First, we have the Renegade University weekend in Los Angeles with me.

That's February 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

And the second is the Renegade University weekend in Washington, D.C. with me,

and that's March 15th, 16th, and 17th.

For more information, and to buy your tickets for the Renegade University weekend events,

go to Thaddeus Russell.com slash courses.

Over the last hundred or so years, nearly all of the major foreign policy decisions in the United States have been made by a tiny handful of people,

all of whom were educated in elite universities, and virtually none of whom were elected.

My guest this week helps us understand why.

Daniel Bessner is the Ann H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle assistant professor in American

foreign policy at the Henry

M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He's also the author of

...