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.

Next month, I'll be giving two talks in the Midwest. On November 19th, I'll be giving two talks in the Midwest.

On November 19th, I'll be giving a talk in Des Moines, Iowa.

And the following day, November 20th, I'll be in Chicago giving a talk at the famous Beat Kitchen Club.

For more information, and to get your tickets, go to Thaddeussell.com slash talks.

My uncle, David Russell, was born and raised in the Midwest in the 1930s and 1940s.

His father, my grandfather, was a Mormon minister.

His family, my family, was as puritanical as you can imagine.

All forms of sex and sexuality outside of marriage, of course, were considered to be sinful.

But even many forms of sexuality inside of a marriage were considered to be wicked as well.

I remember being amazed that my grandparents slept in separate twin beds.

My uncle Dave, like a good Mormon, got married at a very early age, had three children, worked as a librarian in places like Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Medford, Oregon.

When Dave lived in Medford, several times a year,

he would visit my father and me in Berkeley. And during the day, he would go off to San Francisco

...