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.

In April of 2016, I was flown to Atlanta to be a guest on a podcast that was hosted by Killer Mike, the great rapper of Run the Jules, who was also at that time emerging as a major public intellectual.

Mike's podcast was on the history of reconstruction after the Civil War and in

particular the history of black resistance to white racist violence. So I was flown to Atlanta

to be interviewed by Mike for this podcast. It turned out to be one of the greatest conversations

I've ever had, and I was so excited to know that this would soon be public. But unfortunately,

for many reasons I still don't know, that podcast was never aired, never produced, and no one would tell me why this interview was not being released.

For years and years and years, I begged and cajoled the two producers of the show for that audio so that I could release it myself.

Well, finally, last week I heard from one of the producers

that I could, in fact, release that audio interview on my own show. And so here it is

for patrons of unregistered. This is my interview with Killer Mike.

I'm just saying Michael Rinder or Killer Mike talking to people about interesting facts and historical moments during and post-reconstruction.

...