Ivory tower type economists. Host theres a picture in your boat here but is this . Guest this is a picture of my wife and i do in a waltz on a cruise ship and i thought i will dedicate this to my waltzing partner through life, my wife, joann scouts. Host the book that has been dedicated is a viennese waltz down wall street. Mark skousen is the founder of freedom fest and the author of this and many other books. This is booktv on cspan 2. Host the United States of paranoia is the name of the book. Heres the cover. The author is someone of recent. Mr. Walker, are americans prepared by people . Guest there has been paranoia at the heart of america for as long as there has been i cant speak to the recorded history. I assume there was paranoia that insert recent colonial days. Political paranoiac, cultural paranoia. I dont want that were more paranoid than any other country. The book is about america, so for all i know the french are paranoid people, but we are certainly scared. Postcode just because youre paranoid, does not mean youre not being followed. Is there some legitimacy to Conspiracy Theory quiet guest people conspire. That is part of life. One reason why we are always going to have Conspiracy Theory for fear of conspiracy is theres always some conspiracy. Eventually they figure there arent any vampires. There will always be examples. The investigations after watergate and all sorts of revelations came out about the cia, fbi, irs. So there certainly are real conspiracies. What i am also trying to do in this book is to look at conspiracy theories that say absolutely nothing true about the object of the theory, but they still say all sorts of things true about the anxiety and experiences of the people who accepted the lead and pass on to theory. The story doesnt catch on unless people feel of reason to believe it. Host but if a contemporary example . Guest authors of theories involve flooding against american liberty and sovereignty are naturally going to appeal to people who feel like they are losing control over their lives in some way or another. So its sort of a metaphoric way of speaking about the loss of control, even if the loss of control is not directed by 13 people in a secret room somewhere. This one is from a couple of decades ago. White doctors were injecting black babies. Obviously there is no truth to that. Would be irresponsible to say was true, but was able to catch on because many people experience highend used to treat it and it is easy to extrapolate that. Also, one other thing i stress in the book is powerful people have conspiracy theories as well. Its not just the future of the fringe. It has been a part of the american political spectrum and dissent are as well as the left and the right. So all of these examples of people who are in the society of very much afraid of the people they are pulling. Slaveowners, for example. They are talking to one another without worrying the rebellion was speaking. The history has trouble discerning sometimes which ones are real and which ones where slave masters getting alarmed. Host what about the contemporary 9 11 conspiracy eerie, building seven, et cetera . Do you look at that in the United States a paranoia . Guest i discussed it briefly. I had a couple of discussions. Theres a lot of talk about the troopers. And you know, they are interesting, but also in the way a sideshow. But gripped america was when someone could spill a little bit of coffee sweetener in an airport. That was the kind of paranoia that almost everybody got seized by. We went a little overthetop. You know, maybe when we saw some thing in a mailbox in east texas and this is a true story that turned out to be a science project, but we thought it was a bomb. After the World Trade Center and the pentagon, may be said would not be the preferred target. Even if you say its better safe than sorry, maybe the police did not meet after they figured out it was a project to confiscate it just in case. Thats the kind of paranoia that to spend time discussing in the book because it is some name thats easy to say that the crazy people who believe in conspiracy theories. There are some crazies in not book. All stories of everyday people who watch cspan. People can get different times and made her realize it was a little bit over the top. Host with the revelations about the nsa, irs come in your view should we be paranoid . Guest i never want to encourage people to be paranoid because thats a clinical term. It is certainly good to be skeptical and suspicious a lot of the time. I am all for good, solid Investigative Journalism is grounded in facts and evidence. Host jesse walker, who was one of your favorite conspiracies or leaders from our history . Guest well, some of the interesting things in the book are people you wouldnt expect. For example, John Quincy Adams was very much afraid of freemasons and their influence in the United States. There is a quote from him in there that in the election of 18 dirty too, saying the important thing isnt whether Andrew Jackson or henry clay wins the election. Its what we can do to stop the encroaching power. So you are surprised to hear them discussing any terms. The most familiar figure i wouldnt call him a favorite because he was a terrible person, but there is a guy named shawn tied, who in the 70s was on the circuit in churches saying he was a former are and telling these very elaborate conspiracy stories that brought in everything from the rockefellers, decoding the alleged meetings at ein rant was supposed to be a communist witch Atlas Shrugged was taken over and eventually turned out to be a serial and went to jail. But its not just a colorful story in itself. What he was saying in the 70s then entered the main stream in the 80s but the satanic and people went to jail in serious news program site 2020 gave credence to a really bizarre claims that didnt go as far, but actually came pretty close. Host president Andrew Jackson became part of the Conspiracy Theory. Guest i open the book with it. He survived an assassination. Richard Laurence Tribe to shoot him in his gun didnt fire. Afterwards he became convinced that a senator had hired the assassins at the same time, people who are antijackson were suggesting maybe this is a false attack. They be energex and arrange to attack and specifically masoretic guns didnt fire. Nothing was ever proved in lawrence was a genuine guy. He wound up dying in jail im sorry, in a silent decades later. But when youve read those accounts and go back to the original press accounts, a lot of it sounds like suspicion after the Jfk Assassination of insight that. Host when jfk was assassinated 60 years ago, what happened in this country with regard to paranoia and conspiracy . Guest people were already paranoid about a number of names and that sort of open up the floodgates. Theres this fear, for example, of the radical right that had been building. There was disbelief that Lee Harvey Oswald was the man of the far right. Yet she turned out to be a communist. That sort of exacerbated that. Other people, because of his leftwing connection plugged it into a cold war sphere. This is before getting into the assassination theories that start to come out. People naturally get fearful. What is assassinated and followed by the other things that scared people over the course of the 60s. I write more about conspiracy theories and urban riots and than i do about assassinations in the context of the 60s. Host what is your day job . Guest on the books editor of reason magazine. I am signing a book review, editing book reviews and writing for the magazine, doing other editing for the magazine and occasionally freelancing other places. Host what are the book titles youre interested in . Guest iowa make a plug for a feature we just came out with because we had her 45th anniversary issue that we asked a number of people, historians, economists, legal scholars to pick one or two books in your field that have come out in the last 45 years. We got a total of nine books. I think its a very interesting feature. Costco where can people find it . Guest they can go to reason. Com. Host the United States of paranoia is your second book. Conspiracy theory, jesse walker is the author. Here again is the cover. Heres a look at books he published this week you are watching booktv on cspan 2. Here is our primetime lineup. And Conscious Capitalism, professor raj sisodia argues the sources of business and capitalism can be combined to create value for shareholders, workers, customers and society at large. He Profiles Companies that is tastefully done this. He is interviewed at freedom fest in las vegas. You can watch this 20 minute interview now. Host Conscious Capitalism. The coauthors ron mackey at vester raj sisodia. Joining us at freedom fest here on booktv is professor sisodia. What is Conscious Capitalism . Guest it is a different way of hinting about business. This merited a definition of what our business is about. Its