For most of us, the inside of a jail or prison is a mythical, albeit unpleasant, holding ground for those deemed by the state unfit to coexist with the rest of society. What we never really know is what it's like to be inside: strip searches, gang fights, overcrowding to the point of suffocation -- that is, until local author Charles Shaw's Exile Nation: Drugs, Prisons, Politics, and Spirituality, which is released this week. The memoir tells the gruesome story of an inmate at Cook County Jail in Chicago -- a vast facility that holds nearly 10,000 inmates and has been home to figures such as mobster Al Capone and serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Shaw was convicted of possessing MDMA -- you might know it as ecstasy (and even after his third arrest, Shaw continues to think of it that way) -- and spent a year in the facility. Much of the book retells his experience from inside the walls of the jail, but the self-proclaimed drug activist does frequently plead his case to the reader -- that he was using ecstasy not recreationally, but as treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by cocaine addiction.

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The sugary face of evil: Blinky Winky

Any overeducated, Prius-driving, lefty cultural elitist worth her|his|its daily $10 coffee drink knows that America spent eight catastrophic years in the grip of a wicked puppet named W. The privileged faux-Texan flaunted his village idiocy, not caring whether people knew his strings were really pulled by Dick Cheney, the real-life Mr. Burns. We're here to tell you, fellow San Franciscans, that another wicked puppet is racing toward the White House, and he comes from our own ranks. His name is Blinky Winky. This puppet -- sorry, marionette -- stands about 2 feet high and looks like something from a Stephen King nightmare, his icy stare a disturbing, multicolored mixture of menace and uncaring. He holds a presidential fundraiser tonight (Monday) at El Rio.

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"Moonlight Topaz"

Between 1942 and 1945, 11,200 Japanese-Americans were sent to Topaz Camp. It was located in a parched stretch of desert about 125 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. Most of the prisoners were from San Francisco. Some were forced to live in horse stalls at Tanforan Race Track before being shipped there. Two-thirds were U.S. citizens. None had been charged with a crime. Kids lucky enough to turn 17 while at Topaz were administered a two-question loyalty test, which could win them "freedom" through the draft; resistors came to be known as the "No-No Boys" and were immediately shipped to another camp.

Amazingly, in the midst of this madness, an art school was born. Boasting 600 students, the school offered classes in watercolor, architectural drafting, oil painting, and anatomy, taught by 17 reputable instructors. One was professor Chiura Obata, who found his own UC Berkeley students similarly interned. Because writing and photography were forbidden, these images became the only record of camp life, and its primary pastime.

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was on the United States' radar for about a decade before the 9/11 mastermind was finally caught on March 1, 2003. In addition to the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Mohammed has been blamed for about two dozen other offenses, including assassination plans for presidents of Pakistan, the United States, and Pope John Paul II. Most of these plans fizzled before coming to fruition, but the biggest and deadliest of them, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, succeeded. What's worse is that the attacks might have been prevented.

In their new book, The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, journalists Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer detail the United States' hunt for the man with some 50 aliases who went from a small target, connected to but not wholly responsible for any one event, to one of the biggest names on the intelligence community's hit list. The book describes how the CIA and the FBI's failure to cooperate with each other in the hunt ultimately prolonged it. McDermott and Meyer appear this week in San Francisco.

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Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi

Regardless of whether you believe Iran is trying to create nuclear weapons, and regardless of how you feel about going to war with another Middle Eastern country, it's impossible to deny that the nation's human-rights and free-expression record sucks. About a decade ago Marjane Satrapi told the story of the Islamic revolution in Iran in the late 1970s in the graphic novel Persepolis. In it she depicts how people in Iran's large creative, academic, and leftist political circles (including her parents) were excited by the promise of a more free and egalitarian society. Then came the hard-line fundamentalists, and folks like her parents were rounded up, beaten up, put in jail, or put to death for speaking their minds.

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi wasn't put to death, but he was punished by the Iranian government several years ago for doing what he loves -- making films. Unfortunately, those films contradict what's officially acceptable in Iran. So he was banned from doing it for a long, long time. He made an attempt to get around the law while still doing what he loves. The result is This Is Not a Film.

Click through to see the trailer and read a short review by Village Voice Media film critic Karina Longworth.

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The Last Party is an unabashedly partisan documentary hosted by a mid-recovery Robert Downey, Jr., as both he and his generation (hey, that's us! Me, anyway!) try to make sense of the world they're inheriting. Through interviews with celebrities and civilians alike, this sense-making mission is set against the backdrop of the nonsensical 1992 election.

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California Department of Corrections

When Dutch filmmaker Jaap van Hoewijk heard a radio report in 1992 that the first California execution in 25 years was to take place, and that 50 people were to be present as witnesses, he was taken aback. It prompted him to make the film Procedure 769: The Witnesses to the Execution, a documentary on the reactions of those who were present for the gas chamber execution of Robert Alton Harris at San Quentin State Prison. The procedure in its title refers to the state's internal code for execution. The film screens Tuesday (April 3) in Koret Auditorium at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library.

Harris was put to death for the murder of two teenage boys (one of which was coincidentally the son of an arresting officer) in 1978. His was California's first execution after the moratorium was lifted, and the last before the gas chamber was changed from being the state's default execution method to merely an option.

The documentary neither advocates nor condemns capital punishment, yet van Hoewijk's interviewees -- family members from each side, the warden, a San Quentin psychologist -- include vivid description of what happens in the gas chamber. After seeing the film, one reviewer on IMDB.com asks, "Is capital punishment a hallmark of a civilized society? I suggest you watch the film and reevaluate your stance." That person also notes, "It's a very human film. It is rare that a film comes along that invokes such difficult emotions to deal with."

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Alain De Botton

"The Atheist and the Believer" is a tale as old as time, and a controversy as relevant this election year as ever. But author, philosopher, and entrepreneur Alain De Bottom proposes a middle ground and asks questions that blur the distinction between the two sides. What if we reject the notion of a deity, but personalize a kind of playlist of religious ideas that suit us best? Are we still atheists if we have religious-like philosophies in our life? De Botton address these questions in his latest work, Religion for Atheists, explaining that even if an atheist rejects religion, religion can still serve as a platform for good morals and ethics as well as a better life. We chatted with De Botton, who appears Thursday at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, to talk about his own beliefs, visiting San Francisco, misinterpretations of his book, and discovering the balance between atheism and religion.

The philosophy you share in Religion for Atheists, is it something you've practiced for a while? When did this idea come into your life, and how?
I was brought up an atheist and taught to think that all religion was nonsense from start to finish. Gradually I've lost that sarcastic attitude toward religion, and while I still don't believe, I've grown more curious and sympathetic toward certain religious attitudes and behaviors. While fully aware of the pain and bloodshed religions have been responsible for, I've also become more impressed by their high points, especially their attitudes to ethics, to aesthetics, and to ritual.

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Does posting political shit on Facebook ever affect the political opinions of people you're friends with who don't agree with you? I mean, even if my right-wing friends don't read all the anti-Santorum shit that I and half of my other friends are posting, is there any, like, ambient awareness of Santorum's awfulness created in them by the fact that there's so much of it that they have to ignore?

It's not very likely. There's a hefty amount of psychological research that indicates we base our opinions on our beliefs, as opposed to, say, thoughtful, logical consideration of facts and ideas. So if, for instance, I believe that Rick Santorum is a godsend GOP presidential contender, then my brain is going to be most receptive to information that confirms this belief and reject information that doesn't. This is called "motivated reasoning" and it's kind of an asshole.

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Mark Finkenstaedt

Dan Akerson

When Dan Akerson joined the General Motors Board of Directors in 2009, GM was being propped up by about $42 billion in federal money. By the time he became CEO in 2010, the company was emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and raised $20.1 billion in an IPO. Akerson speaks Wednesday at the Commonwealth Club, as GM's fall and rise has become a major topic in the presidential campaign. President Obama, in his January State of the Union address, referred to the bailouts as a bet -- one that paid off for the crippled American auto industry. Obama has thrown that back at Republicans who criticize his economic recovery plan.

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