Listen Now: Dan Taberski’s Manifesto

0:00Hey, Dan Taberski here. You might know me from podcasts like Hysterical or Missing Richard Simmons. And now, my latest adventure, Dan Taberski's Manifesto. This project is my attempt to take the manifesto back from mass shooters and nihilists and return it to its rightful place with the artists and the warriors, the visionaries, the regular folks with just the right amount of crazy who've got something to say and the guts to say it. I compare notes with radicals, secessionists, internet trolls out for a laugh, and punk singers screaming their guts out, all trying to turn their anger into the world that they want to see.

0:34And along the way, I write my own manifesto about manifestos. But the question that rises up pretty quickly, just how cozy can we get with our rage before it takes on a life of its own? From Audible Originals and Please and Thanks Productions, this six-part series explores the power and precariousness of the manifesto and asks, can we get inspired again? And can we do it without a bullet? I'm about to play a clip from Manifesto. You can listen to Manifesto wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Manifesto ad-free right now. Start your Audible subscription on the Audible app or on Apple Podcasts.

1:13Dan Taberski:February 2013. 2013, Venice, California.

1:23Dan Taberski:It's my last few months in Los Angeles before I move back east. I'm in my late 30s, living by the beach, learning to surf the crumbly waves on my longboard. My skin smells like the ocean all the time. I feel amazing. I look amazing. I look amazing. But I'm not taking you back in my time machine because of how good I looked, which was very. It's because of what happened next in Southern California that cut through that dreamy scene and swapped it out with harsh reality. Police in Irvine, California, are investigating the double murder of a young couple in the parking lot of their apartment complex.

2:01Dan Taberski:Reports of a homicide in neighboring Orange County. 27-year-old Keith Lawrence and his fiancée, 28-year-old Monica Kwan, were found shot to death in Lawrence's car late Sunday night. Two young people, a couple recently engaged. The guy was a public safety officer at USC, and she was an assistant basketball coach at a local university. Murdered while parked in their white Kia Optima. Investigators do not yet have a suspect description or a motive. And immediately, the details of the crime begin to add up to something bigger than a one-time thing. Like, when their bodies are found by the police, the victim's necklace is still on her neck.

2:40Dan Taberski:Her new engagement ring is still firmly on her finger, which means this isn't a robbery. Also, investigators find evidence of 14 shots having been fired. That's a lot of bullets for just two people cornered in their car. But the number of neighbors who actually heard those 14 shots? Zero. So maybe there was a silencer on the gun, which would mean the killer probably isn't new to this, that maybe they're a professional. Irvine detectives have been working day and night since this tragedy. The Irvine police chief takes to the podium to tell the people of Southern California that they are going to have to buckle up for a ride.

3:14Today, we have identified Christopher Dorner as a suspect in this double homicide.

3:20Dan Taberski:Because the suspect, Christopher Dorner, is no ordinary suspect. Dorner was an LAPD officer through 2009 and a reservist for the United States Navy. Dorner is a former LAPD cop, and he's still out there. And there's reason to believe that he's going to kill again, that maybe he already has. And we know this because Christopher Dorner left something behind. A particular interest at this point in the investigation is a multi-page manifesto in which the suspect has implicated himself in the slings. And this manifesto on Facebook is 11 pages long. Grace, this manifesto from this suspect who's targeting cops, it's stunning.

4:01It is stunning, Shep, and it says... He's been very well trained. You know, LAPD, some of the best trained officers in the country. And I tell you, this manifesto, it scares the hell out of me.

4:12Dan Taberski:I'm Dan Taberski. From Audible Originals and Please and Thanks Productions, this is Manifesto. Episode 1, To America. Subject, Last Resort.

4:42Dan Taberski:I am in the market for a manifesto. I have been for a while now, to be honest. The world is on fire. I'll spare you the details. We've all got our own faves. And I mean, really, what fresh words could be left to describe what fresh hell we're presented with day after day? But even more concerning for me, even more surprising, has been my own reaction to it and how difficult it's been to get a handle on how angry it has all made me. I'm not an angry person. I am a relatively happy guy. But I find myself seething underneath all the time. My patience has become strained. My temper too short. My ability to hear anyone has...

5:25Dan Taberski:It happens at, of all places, a supermarket, where the whole economic order is reduced down to cans on a shelf, where you can buy two of crap you don't need for the price of one. And then this feeling of discontent that I've had in shopping at supermarkets, you know, for years and years before that and being dissatisfied with the whole feeling of walking in there and having the choices that they're giving me and the way that I, it just felt like something that I don't want to do, but I kept on doing it. He goes to grab a shopping cart, only it's one of those setups where you've got to insert a coin to get the cart.

5:56Dan Taberski:And you only get the coin back if you return the shopping cart, as if none of us can be trusted. Basically, they asked me to sort of use the shopping cart, put the coin in and take the coin back and put it back to where it belongs. Then all of a sudden there was that one moment when I sat and he said, fuck it, I'm not going to do this anymore. And I'm not going to stop other people from doing it as well. So he takes a coin and he jams it into the slot so it won't come out. So now no one's playing this stupid shopping cart game, are they? And it felt so good. It felt like a moment of liberation.

6:32Dan Taberski:That. That space right there. Where emotion becomes action, when you're inspired to just do something already. That is the stuff of manifestos. Individuals, groups, entire swaths of society use it as the funnel to focus their erupting rage. Number seven, we want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. This is activist Bobby Seale, reading the Black Panther Manifesto in 1968. They called it the Ten Point Program. Number eight, we want all black men held in counties, states, federal jails and prisons to be released because they have not had a fire trial because they've been tried by all white juries and that's just like being tried in Germany being a Jew.

7:24Dan Taberski:Manifestos aren't just pretty poems. They are, in a sense, a threat. A hard-packed snowball of grievance and timing and nerve. And real impact, a sparking of real, honest-to-God change, is the longest of long shots. But when it happens, when a manifesto catches fire, it can change our world. It can rewrite our future. But there's a hitch.

7:52Binge all episodes of Dan Taberski's Manifesto ad-free right now on Audible. Start your Audible subscription in the Audible app or on Apple Podcasts.