I’m so thankful you are here, reading this, giving me your most important asset: your time. I’ll do my best to prove worthy of it.

For several months, I’ve been working on a new book. An hour here, two hours there. Over time, it adds up.

Starting today, I’ll share a piece of it with you each Sunday through this newsletter.

Each week you’ll see a new chapter, and I’ll also record a podcast to go with it. When the book is finished, I’ll publish it on Amazon and Audible.

Any sales of the book will support Prison Professors Charitable Corporation. Michael Santos started the nonprofit. White Collar Advice was the initial funder and still helps fund it today. Together, we’ve been able to reach millions of people in prisons and jails with free courses, books, and programming.

This week, I’m beginning with the Preface. The book is called After the Fall, and it’s about what happens after crisis, when the illusions are gone and you have to decide how to live, and what to do moving forward.

Preface — After the Fall

The first time I tested this book, I read a draft of Chapter One to my son, Jason. Dude was asleep by page two.

Not to worry. Alyssa was in the next room, eleven years old and deep into a Harry Potter book. I walked in, probably more excited than she was, and said, “Can you put your book down for a few minutes? I want you to hear part of my new book.”

She looked up. “Um… sure?”

I started reading. About 37 seconds in, she stopped me.

“I’m going to say this politely, and don’t take it the wrong way. Please leave my room now,” she said, patting me on the shoulder in a sympathetic way.

So far, not good.

But I wasn’t out of test subjects. That same night, around 9:30 p.m. I turned to Sandra, my wife of nearly twelve years.

“Sandra, big news. Chapter One is done. Want to hear it?”

She said, “Babe, tomorrow, for sure. Cannot wait. Been with kids alone all day and just sat down for the first time. Try Michael.”

“Michael? He’s up at 2 a.m. every morning; he’s been asleep for hours!”

Good God. Who’s next, our dog Maverick?

No. I got it.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Of course, honey. Read it to me.”

I did.

“Best book ever,” she said.

That was the first round of feedback.

In prison, I started writing a daily blog. It was October 12, 2008. I sat next to Michael Santos in the prison quiet room as we worked on my first post together. When I finished, I sealed it in an envelope to mail to my mom so she could type it and put it online.

Before I dropped it in the mailbox, Michael stopped me.

“The end of this blog says you will write daily. Is that a commitment you can fulfill?”

“Yes,” I said.

That promise, one blog a day until my release, became the first commitment I kept inside.

Later, in another blog on my birthday, January 22, 2009, I called myself a fool and a fraud. Fool, because I turned the other way for money. Fraud, because I knew better and broke the law anyway. Writing those words wasn’t easy, but it was honest. I was 33. Young enough to know that if I could admit what I was, I could live the rest of my life differently.

When I was released on May 20, 2009, my family picked me up from prison, and we had lunch at Pacific Dining Car in downtown Los Angeles before I reported to the Vinewood halfway house in Hollywood.

Before lunch, I went online for the first time in more than a year. I had never seen my blog while inside; there was no internet access. Thousands of comments had stacked up.

That’s when I noticed something. My mom had edited out the phrase “fool and fraud.”
She told me later that it hurt too much to read.

But for me, it wasn’t hurtful to write. It was true. And truth was the only place to start.

Overcoming a crisis, especially a self-imposed one, doesn’t begin with fantasy. Fantasy is what led me to prison: entitlement, arrogance, the illusion that I was different. Admitting I was a fool and a fraud was the first time I told myself the truth.

Why Philosophy?

I first saw names like Epictetus and Montaigne at USC. I underlined a few classic quotes, closed the book, and went back to baseball and whatever I thought was urgent at twenty-something. If there were a gun to my head, I couldn’t recall anything profound or insightful.

Years later, in a federal prison camp, Michael Santos asked me what I wanted to do after my release. I didn’t know. Not a damn clue.

That’s when he started handing me philosophy. Epictetus. Montaigne. Seneca. Nietzsche, Plato, so many others. At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. Michael was patient. He broke the ideas down (hundreds of times, no joke), explained them in practical terms, and showed me through example how to live with meaning and dignity, from prison.

I started small: a blog, a book report. Day by day. Tortoise, not hare. Identifying values and trying to live faithfully to them. Slowly, I saw it begin to work. The books I read mattered, but what mattered more was having a mentor who guided me through them, pressing me to practice instead of just underline, like I did at Southern Cal. That’s when I became a believer: the work was working!

Sixteen years later, I’m still a believer, perhaps to the detriment of my kids. Some days, they get Jim Rohn on YouTube, The Full Series. Other days it’s Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” And then, thankfully for them, I break it up with music.

Alyssa and I love Queen. Love. No song we don’t know. And by now, Alyssa knows what’s coming when Mercury sings, “I’ve done my sentence.”

“Alyssa, humans make bad decisions, “ I tell her as Freedie sings. “We all do. And consequences follow. Sometimes it’s an actual prison sentence. Sometimes it’s the sentence of sitting at home for years waiting to get sentenced. Sometimes it’s the sentence of living someone else’s dreams. Or people-pleasing. Or fear. You name it. The tragedy isn’t the sentence; the tragedy is letting it become your life. I presume this is all making sense to you. This is good stuff, right?”

She gives me the look, the one that says she’s heard enough. “Dad, great talk. Can you turn on We Will Rock You?”

“You got it,” I say.

Why This Book?

This book is about the gap between the story others write about you: prosecutors, journalists, Google, neighbors, and the record you choose to build yourself.

Each chapter follows a rhythm: a personal story (sometimes at my expense), a philosopher’s idea, and questions you’ll need to answer for yourself. Not vague prompts; direct ones: If someone Googled you today, what would they see first? What do your kids actually see in you? When people describe you now, what do they point to?

I’m not naive. I know the ideas I cover here have been covered for centuries; there is nothing new here. I hope my experiences and the lessons I learned impact you, despite much of what I write being easily available through a Google or AI search.

You don’t have to read this cover to cover. Start where you need it. When shame consumed me, Kierkegaard forced me to see despair differently. When I feared judgment, Seneca’s words cut through the noise. When envy ate at me, Nietzsche held up a mirror. When I needed an example of dignity and heroism, Witold Pilecki gave it. When I wondered whether disgrace could be turned into credibility, Michael Milken showed it was possible. And when I needed a real-life example of how to live through relentless adversity, I studied Michael.

Now, to our prison system. Like me, I know you never imagined you would end up here. Yet here we are, and the opportunity exists for us to help Michael drive change, the same work he began back in 1987 when he went to prison.

As I write this in September 2025, Michael Santos is in Washington, D.C., meeting with BOP Deputy Director Josh Smith to advance his Big Ideas initiative: expanding earned time credits, restoring furloughs, and creating more ways for people to earn freedom. After Washington, he will be back on the road, continuing his training inside federal prisons; I expect he will visit more than 40 facilities this year.

No person in prison pays a penny for the programming, books, or resources we send. White Collar Advice proudly funds this nonprofit work, which allows Michael to bring it directly into prisons without asking the BOP for a dime. If you want to learn more or get involved, visit PrisonProfessors.org, or text 949-799-3277 with the word “org.” I’ll call you personally.

On a personal note, I want to thank my wife, Sandra, and my kids, Jason and Alyssa. I never imagined, when I went to prison in 2008, that I would be so fortunate to have the blessings that followed. That experience taught me to focus on what I do have, not on what I don’t.

Every day, I remind myself to be grateful. Grateful for my family, for the people in this community, and for the work we get to do. When I self-surrendered on April 28, 2008, I had no idea any of this was possible.

Thank you,

Justin Paperny