WEBVTT - Summer Reading 2018, Part 2 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:05.520 My welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how 0:00:05.559 --> 0:00:14.200 Stuff Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:16.720 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe M. Cormickin. 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.400 We're back with part two of our summer reading series 0:00:19.440 --> 0:00:21.720 this year because, as we told you last time, we 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:23.680 ended up talking about our favorite books from this year, 0:00:23.680 --> 0:00:25.680 and then we ended up just going for how long 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.160 do we talk? Like seventeen hours? It went on a while, yeah, 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:29.680 because what we were talking about the books, but we're 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:31.720 also talking about a lot of the ideas wrapped up 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:33.479 in them, and in doing so, discussing some of the 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.120 predominant themes of Stuff to Blow your Mind over the 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:39.640 past year. Yeah, so we decided we had to split 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:41.400 it into Here we are with part two. I think 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:44.080 last time we talked about nonfiction. This time we're probably 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:46.159 gonna be talking about fiction. All right, let's jump right 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:49.640 back into the conversation. Okay, Robert, I think you had 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.160 a couple of fiction books you wanted to talk about, right, Yeah, 0:00:52.240 --> 0:00:54.440 and again these are both books that you may have 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:57.720 heard me discussed at least in passing before, Because again 0:00:57.720 --> 0:00:59.960 I can't if I really like a work of fiction 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:03.320 and it's going to boil out in everything that I 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.520 do and until people were sick of hearing about it. Uh. 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:08.559 And So the first book I want to talk about 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:14.040 is Starfish by Peter Watts. From so my fiction pick 0:01:14.319 --> 0:01:17.480 last summer I think was Blindsite, but it was. Yeah, 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.119 that was a book from two thousand and six. And 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:22.960 and I read that one as well because you were 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.000 talking about it. And uh, I think when you told 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:27.120 me I had space vampires in it, I was like, well, 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:29.800 I have to read this now. It's definitely got the 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.320 best sci fi vampires of anything I've read. Oh yeah, 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:34.880 without it, without a doubt. So Peter Watts is a 0:01:35.000 --> 0:01:40.119 He's a Canadian sci fi author and former marine mammal biologists. Uh. Yeah, 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:42.680 we've certainly talked about him on the show before, and 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:46.240 we've talked about Starfish as well. Um referenced in in 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:49.520 a few of our Underwater episodes earlier this year. This 0:01:49.600 --> 0:01:52.560 is actually his first novel, uh and uh and I've 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:55.640 never read it before. I've been working on an underwater 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.400 sci fi podcast for How Stuff Works. And then I 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.160 realized that Watts had written something more or less in 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:05.520 the genre already. I thought, maybe I did. I think 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:08.080 may maybe he did. Yeah, And so when I realized 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.399 that it was that it was an underwater sci fi tail, 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:11.639 as like, well, I've got to I've got to jump 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.280 in and see what what Watts did with it. So 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:20.520 it is a just a very um addictive novel. Um. 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.200 So it it just to give a quick plot overview. Basically, 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:28.080 you have a crew of psychologically damaged people who undergo 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.680 cybernetic enhancement so that they can work on deep sea 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:35.200 geothermal plants in the near future. Uh. And they're and 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:40.440 they're doing this work, very dangerous work among some mysteriously 0:02:40.520 --> 0:02:46.200 gigantic deep sea organisms near dangerous hydrothermal vents. And they're 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:48.880 also dealing with the uncertainty of their own psychology and 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:54.320 an emergent biological threat that everyone is totally unequipped to handle. 0:02:55.360 --> 0:02:57.920 And that this thing is loaded with science, Like Watts 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:02.079 is an author who just really uh he really packs 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:05.600 a lot of scientific ideas. Sometimes it's more, you know, 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:09.720 scientific hypotheses, but he packs a lot in So this 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:14.359 particular book, for instance, is loaded with deep water biology, spreading, 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:21.239 zone tectonics, and geology, quantum theories of consciousness, AI, molecular evolution, 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:25.960 dream learning neuroplasticity as well as abuse and addiction psychology. 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:28.200 Now I wonder something about it because I haven't read 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.040 this yet. I became aware of it uh while back, 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.040 and I've I've been wanting to read it, but I 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:35.880 haven't gotten to it yet. So my question is are 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.880 there characters that can be loved? Because blind Side, it 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:42.640 was my fiction pick last year because of exactly what 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:46.680 you're talking about, is just packed with thought provoking ideas 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:49.360 and unique bits of world building. Um one of the 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:51.960 most interesting books I've ever read, so much so that 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:55.160 I almost had to like keep constantly putting it down 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:57.400 to like write down thoughts I was having about the 0:03:57.440 --> 0:03:59.960 stuff in the book. But it was also a differ 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:02.440 book for several reasons, one of the main ones being 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.440 that like, the main character in in blind Side is 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.520 extremely unsympathetic. I mean that's by design since his character, 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.800 he's a character who essentially has no empathy due to 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.240 an experimental brain surgery. This actually played a role in 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.080 the plot and made for a very interesting narrator, but 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:22.680 not a very sympathetic or lovable one. So does Watts 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:24.920 throw us more of a bone in this story? As 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:26.919 as far as like character as you can fall in 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.839 love with. Well, I would say yes and no, because 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.520 on one level, you do see that that same trend 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:38.480 of of a lot of characters that are damaged or 0:04:40.040 --> 0:04:43.120 less human, perhaps in different ways, either due to something 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:45.120 that has been done to them or something that they 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:51.560 have voluntarily done through technological enhancement. But I would say 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:55.839 that the protagonist Lenny Clark, she you do root for, 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.440 perhaps more than some of the characters in blind Side, 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:03.039 like she's she's a very damaged individual with and she's 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.520 essentially transhuman at this point to the cybernetic enhancements and 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:10.120 some other stuff. But in Starfish you are rooting for 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.839 there is she is kind of an underdog, and I 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.000 think that is one of the things that that pulled 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:19.840 me in with Starfish, probably more than Blindside, is that 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:25.240 I wanted I wanted her to succeed or to survive 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:27.240 at the very least. Well, I'm going to read a 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.520 quick passage from the book here just to get everyone 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:34.960 a taste of some of the some of the biological 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:38.640 uh science that is invoked in Let's Hear It. And 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:41.520 in this we were following Lenny Clark as she is 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.040 out swimming in the deep dark ocean quote. Everywhere else, 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.840 living constellations punctuate the dark. Here, a string of pearls 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:53.080 blink sexual advertisements at two second intervals. Here, a sudden 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:57.920 flash leaves diversionary afterimages swarming across Clark's field of view. 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:03.239 Something flees undercover her momentary blindness. They're a counterfeit worm, 0:06:03.360 --> 0:06:06.760 twist lazily in the current, invisibly tied to the roof 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:10.280 of some predatory mouth. There are so many of them. 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:12.480 She feels a sudden surge in the water, as if 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:15.799 something big is just passed very close. A delicious thrill 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:18.800 dances through her body. It nearly touched me, she thinks, 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:21.719 I wonder what it was. The rift is full of 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:24.960 monsters who don't know when to quit. It doesn't matter 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:27.920 how much they eat. Their vorocity is as much a 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.160 part of them as their elastic bellies, their unhinging jaws. 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:35.520 Ravenous dwarves attack giants twice their own size. And sometimes, 0:06:35.560 --> 0:06:38.599 when the abyss is a desert, no one can afford 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:41.640 the luxury of waiting for better odds. But even a 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.520 desert has oasis, and sometimes the deep hunters find them. 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.159 They come upon the malnourishing abundance of the rift and 0:06:49.279 --> 0:06:53.400 gorge themselves. Their descendants grow huge and bloated over such 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.880 delicate bones. My light was off and it left me alone, 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.880 I wonder. She turns it back on, her vision cloud 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.080 in the sudden glare, then clears. The ocean reverts to 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:07.640 unrevealed black. No nightmares accost her. The beam lights empty 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:11.000 water wherever she points it. She switches it off. There's 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:13.760 a moment of absolute darkness while her eye caps adjust 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:16.840 to the reduced light. Then the stars come out again. 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:20.800 They're so beautiful. Lenny Clark rests on the bottom of 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:24.040 the ocean and watches the abyss sparkle around her, and 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:27.720 she almost laughs as she realizes, three thousand meters from 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.640 the nearest sunlight that is only dark when the lights 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:32.960 are on. That's great, man. Well, you know what it 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:35.120 reminds me of Blindside. It reminds me of sort of 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:39.080 the richness of like the the sci fi horror atmosphere 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:43.960 that that Watts can create. Um, his his worlds are 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.480 so rich. Yeah, and this book really you can you 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:49.240 get a taste of it here. Like he is an 0:07:49.240 --> 0:07:53.720 author that clearly was Slash is in love with the 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.920 biology of the deep ocean. And even though this is 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:01.920 a slightly you know, there's some sci fi elements invoked here. Uh, 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.200 it is a it resonates with a love for the 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.560 the natural wonders of the deep. Robert, I know you 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:13.160 were a fan of the recent games Soma, which you 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.200 recommended to me. Do you think that maybe Starfish was 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:21.320 an influence on Soma? I bet it was. Um. Again, 0:08:21.360 --> 0:08:24.920 I didn't I didn't even know Starfish existed until uh, 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.720 you know, earlier this year really, but uh, but afterwards 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.840 I started looking into it. I read somewhere that the 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:37.000 the makers of the Bioshot games were also inspired by 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.400 by Starfish, so that would make sense. So I think 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:42.360 it has been highly influent influential in I mean, if 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:46.319 I can't imagine making some sort of underwater sci fi 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.560 horror at this point without of course being familiar with 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:55.000 the Abyssum, the James Cameron film, Yeah, Deep Start six, Yeah, 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.520 and at least finding out about Starfish and and realizing 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:02.360 that it is an important to to to read in reference. 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:04.720 All Right, if somebody were to make a Starfish movie, 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.719 what director should it be? Oh? I don't know. You 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:12.560 gotta have who's the most nihilistic director not there right now, 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:15.840 I don't know. Maybe I guess does Nolan count he's 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:20.160 he has some nihilistic he's nihilistic, Well, no, but there's 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:24.400 a there is a borderline sentimental. Okay, he's but in 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:26.840 terms of I guess I'm thinking about the visual universe 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:29.080 he tends to create. I feel like his his visual 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.560 world is nihilistic, even if even if there's hope everywhere else, 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:35.520 a lot of slate grays and stuff like that. I 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:37.720 don't know. So for some reason he comes to mind 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:42.400 um and also his it's it's so humorless, you know. 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.240 I tend to find that Nolan's uh movies are they're 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:50.000 they're not very fun. Usually I find that there. I 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:52.040 find they are not fun and they are not certainly 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:56.640 not funny. They're satisfying, they're they're they're beautiful, they're they're 0:09:56.679 --> 0:10:02.280 they're excellent films. Uh, but but you don't enjoy them. 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:04.959 I enjoy them, but I don't enjoy them in the 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:07.280 same way I enjoy other things. I don't know. For 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:09.800 some reason, I'm thinking, I think Christopher Nolan might be 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:13.280 the night be might be the director to to helm 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:15.880 something like this Okay, it's time to take a quick 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:18.040 break and then we'll be back with more summer reading. 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:22.360 Thank alright, we're back. All right. Well, I'm gonna go 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:26.240 ahead and hit my my final fiction uh selection for 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.559 this year's summer reading. And this is one again that 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:33.040 that if you have been listening religiously to the show 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:35.480 or and certainly if you've if you read it, take 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:38.760 pay attention to our social media. You've probably heard or 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.240 seen me mention it before. But it is a two 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.720 thousand nine novel by Terence Hawkins titled The Rage of Achilles. 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.400 Oh yeah, tell me about it? Okay, Well, Terence Hawkins 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:50.880 he's the author of two books in various short stories. 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:53.600 He was founding director of the Yale Writer's Conference, and 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:56.680 he now runs the Company of Writers, which offers workshop 0:10:56.679 --> 0:10:59.800 and manuscript service to writers at all levels of experience. 0:11:00.040 --> 0:11:02.439 And incidentally, he also chimes in from time to time 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:04.840 on our Facebook group the Stuff to Build Your Mind 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:09.800 discussion module with with commentary and literary recommendations. But the 0:11:09.880 --> 0:11:12.520 Rage of Achilles, this this is a novel, and it's 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:16.840 essentially a novelization of Homer's The Iliad, retold with modern 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:21.600 language and invoking Julian Janes the Origin of consciousness in 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:24.760 the Breakdown of the bicameral Mind. Okay, so, if your 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:29.000 recall from our Bicameral Mind episodes, the Iliad was one 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:31.760 of the pieces of evidence in literature from the ancient 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:36.640 world that Jane's uses to show. Basically, he uses it 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:39.880 to argue that people at this time, First of all, 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:43.679 two main premises were not conscious and did not have 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.600 an inner mind space. And number two, they had novel 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:51.040 activities directed by hallucinations that they believed to be the 0:11:51.120 --> 0:11:55.080 voices of God's And so he basically he determines that 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.840 this is the case for the people who produced the 0:11:57.840 --> 0:11:59.920 Iliad because he looks at the Iliad and he says, 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.080 there's very little consciousness in the Iliad. You don't get 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:07.240 people reflecting internal mind states. Instead, when people do things, 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:10.280 it says that God made them do it. Yes. And 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:12.040 I want to be clear here, I don't want to 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:15.480 make it sound as if Hawkins wrote a novel that 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:18.640 serves as a teaching tool for the bicameral mind. I 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:24.480 think rather Hawkins uses um uses the bicameral mind as 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:27.439 a means of understanding a lot of the decision making 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:30.640 and divine inspiration that takes place in the story of 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:33.280 the Iliad uh and It's and Also, to be clear, 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:35.920 it's not an epic retelling of the Trojan War. It 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:39.680 is just the Iliad itself, which only occupies a portion 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:43.760 of the Trojan War. So this is definitely a book 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:49.080 for mature readers. Hawkins doesn't shy away from the violent slavery, misogyny, 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:53.000 and sexual violence inherent in the in the culture at 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:56.319 the time. It's not ancient Greeks for great book, No 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.080 no uh and and and all of it is also 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:01.920 revealed again through very modern language. The characters speak to 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.280 each other like they are modern humans, even if they 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.600 in many of the cases do not have modern minds. Because, 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:11.080 especially through the eyes of Odysseus, the reader is is 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.199 forced to come to terms with the familiar yet alien 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:16.680 nature of this kind of ancient world. So the book 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:19.560 is grim, it's dark, it's violent, but not in a 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:23.160 way that betrays its historical and literary roots. So that 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.520 the book I found does a fantastic job of depicting 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.120 what it might have been like to exist as a 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:31.800 bicameral human and what it might have been like to 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:35.400 live among them as a more modern human with a 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:39.280 awoken consciousness. So the vast majority of the characters in 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:43.400 the Rage of Achilles are highly susceptible to bicameral hallucinations. 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:48.400 Odesseus says, our main window into modern consciousness, along with 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:52.559 the Trojan Prince Paris, and when faced with pressing challenges 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:56.800 or cognitive dissonance, the gods speak to these these people, 0:13:56.800 --> 0:14:00.600 to the bicameral characters, and even manifest visual the So 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:03.800 in keeping with Jane's theory, these these hallucinations are produced 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:06.439 by the of course, the non dominant hemisphere, and perceived 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:10.080 by the dominant voices within the mind wrapped within the 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:13.800 trappings of an outer pantheon, and the hallucinations range from 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:18.280 helpful to chaotic. For instance, the Achaean king Agamemnon experiences 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:23.560 his desire to claim achilles slave Brescius as a divine command, 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:27.520 and this endangers the entire siege, but it also but 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:33.160 he also rallies his men when Zeus speaks through him. 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:36.360 And then we have Achilles himself, who turns to buy 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:39.600 cameral visions of his mother for guidance. His mother, of course, 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.680 to the mythical fetis. And yet the very act of 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.960 locking eyes with a horse on the battlefield threatens to 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:52.440 transform into a chaotic hallucination. For Achilles Hawkins is a 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:53.960 is A is a great writer, and he has there's 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:56.600 so many passages in this book that really capture this 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:00.520 uh far better than than I can summarize. H For instance, 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.400 there's a part where Agamemnon speaking to Odysseus after Odysseus 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:07.120 has has presented some ideas, and he says, do you 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:08.680 ever have any thoughts of your own? Or is it 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:14.240 always gray eyed athena um talking in there um? The 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.600 the idea that like any kind of inspiration, any kind 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:18.960 of like I guess you would say, sort of. You know, 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:22.000 major moments in cognition, they are not your own. They 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:24.520 must be the God speaking through you. And indeed those 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:27.120 with a bicamraal mind would be would be perceiving it 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.120 as such. It's a wonderful exploration of the concept. And 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.320 I love the idea of novels based on the idea 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.280 of the bicameral mind, because that that satisfies both of 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:38.760 my impulses. On one hand, I don't believe it's a 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.440 correct interpretation of history. I don't believe it's a correct 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:45.680 explanation of what consciousness is or what past human consciousness 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:47.920 was like. On the other hand, I think it's such 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:51.520 an interesting idea to explore, and so fiction seems like 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:53.880 a perfect realm for it, Like you don't necessarily have 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.520 to believe it was ever true, but you could explore 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.160 it as a sort of alternative reality. Yeah, I would 0:15:59.200 --> 0:16:01.560 love to read more that that that used the bi 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:05.000 cameral mind is a way of of making sense of 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.960 of the magical and the divine. Uh. Here's here's another 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:12.040 wonderful passage from the book. No one will speak to Achilles. 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:15.080 No one in his right mind would. All day he 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.600 has sat at the foot of Patroclus's unlit pire. The 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:21.480 only company he will tolerate is that of the priests 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:24.600 who flank it, droning away in the language that the 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:28.120 Achaeans spoke when their minds first awakened in the north, 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.800 when the ice rivers were still fresh memories to their grandfathers, 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:35.000 whose own grandfathers had been no more than puppets in 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:38.120 the hands of the gods, hunting and breeding with no 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:42.440 more consciousness of purpose than the animals they slaughtered. So again, 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:47.120 this captures a time when the bicameral mind would be 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.440 giving way to the modern mind, and you would be 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:55.080 in this this chaotic, uh realm between where you have 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:58.920 you have more and more modern thought. But then you 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:01.920 have these bicameral visions and these bicameral experiences. And then 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:06.000 a few few people such as Odysseus in this novel, 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:10.040 who do not know what it is to have a 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:13.280 bicameral vision and just exists outside of it, just have 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:16.280 to nod along when everyone else is talking about what 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:18.600 the gods told them today. Yeah, I've got to give 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:21.400 this one to read. I recommend it. Uh. Now, there 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:24.000 is another book by Terence Hawkins I want to mention briefly, 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.880 and it's a titled American Neolithic. Came out in fourteen. 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:29.879 It's a near future dystopian novel in which a tribe 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:33.159 of Neanderthals have survived into the modern world, and it 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:36.320 features some really thought provoking depictions of how this might work, 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:40.679 how Neandertal biology and cognition um I would differ from ours, 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:45.280 and how their eradication factors into human culture. Uh So 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.800 I have to read. Uh one one of my favorite 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:52.720 passages from this and this is told by the protagonist 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:56.000 who is in Neandertal, who has survived into modern times. 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:00.639 Quote you, for whom we have always been the other existence, 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.320 buried deep in your racial memories, since the time when 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:07.119 glaciers girdled the world and the contest between man and 0:18:07.200 --> 0:18:10.400 animal was yet to be decided. We haunt your legends 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.480 as we hunt your dreams, misshapen versions of yourself, bad 0:18:14.560 --> 0:18:19.520 copies formally Cobalds or Grimlin's now more locks and orcs. Oh, 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.040 that's creepy. So the idea that we we've got all 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:25.159 these humanoid monsters in our fiction, and that this is 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:29.880 coming from deep instincts we have about about other types 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:33.639 of human shaped creatures that very close relatives of ours 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:37.000 that existed, you know, a few as recently as several 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.800 thousand years ago. Yeah, yeah, there was there was another. 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:43.639 There was this this slightly inhuman other that we that 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:46.960 we wiped from the earth, and we keep recreating them 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:50.280 in uh, in all of these fantastic forms. It's it's 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:53.600 a it's a wonderful of poetic idea like it, though, 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.480 I I also like the idea that it implies, like 0:18:56.520 --> 0:19:00.240 Homo sapiens, like us, we were maybe the bad guys actually, 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:03.440 like we demonize them, but we do so unfairly, like 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.680 we were really the aggressive main ones that wiped them out. Yeah. Now, 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:10.120 this is an idea that is explored in a book 0:19:10.160 --> 0:19:13.080 that we haven't read yet, but we've both discussed reading. 0:19:13.400 --> 0:19:16.639 Um uh, what what is the title? The Descendants The 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.440 Inheritor The Inheritors? Yes, by William Golding, the author of 0:19:20.520 --> 0:19:23.800 Lord of the Flies. Oh yeah, and I've actually read 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:26.320 like the first chapter of it, and I'm very intrigued 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:28.159 to pick it up again later because it is the 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:31.359 story of Neanderthal annihilation from the point of view of 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:34.640 the Neanderthals. Man humans like us can be scary. We're 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:36.920 the worst. All right, Well, it looks like it's time 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:39.440 for me to talk about some fiction, now, Robert, last 0:19:39.440 --> 0:19:42.480 time you got to pick a classic, you picked Carl 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:46.080 Sagan's classic nonfiction work. So I'm gonna pick a classic 0:19:46.119 --> 0:19:48.919 work of fiction that I just read for the first time. Okay, 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:51.680 what do you have? This is The Haunting of Hill 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:56.200 House by Shirley Jackson nine. It is a Gothic horror 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:59.480 novel first published in fifty nine, with the most classic 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:01.359 of han a house setups. Right, So, you've got a 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:05.040 haunted house, it's got a malevolent ghostly presence reported over 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:08.359 the generations, it's got tragic history. And then there's a 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.600 kind of stuffy professor who's interested in the paranormal, and 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.720 he hires several psychically sensitive people to come live in 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:17.840 the house with them and study the hauntings that occur there. Now, 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:20.080 this has been made into a couple of movies, and 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.000 believe it or not, I've actually not seen either one 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:25.479 of them, or there there at least two. There might 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:29.960 be more. There's one supposedly terrible adaptation from that I 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.960 haven't seen, with Liam Neeson, Catherine's Aida Jones, and Owen Wilson, 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:37.480 directed by the guy who made Speed Twister and Speed 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:39.560 two Cruise Control. Oh. I actually saw this one, but 0:20:39.680 --> 0:20:41.880 I can't remember a single thing about except I think 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.720 it's like a beheading scene or something that's not in 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:48.040 the book. Um. I've heard it is radically different from 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:49.320 the book, but I haven't seen that. I kind of 0:20:49.320 --> 0:20:51.119 want to watch it maybe this weekend. It's time for 0:20:51.200 --> 0:20:54.480 some some trash ghost movies. Uh. There's also supposedly a 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:57.040 movie version from the sixties that is better, but I 0:20:57.119 --> 0:20:59.560 haven't seen either one. But if you've never read this 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:01.600 book and you're in the mood for a good old 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:05.879 fashioned haunted house story, this is a really fabulous read. 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:09.600 It's that kind of mid century New Yorker style of 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:15.440 prose writing. So it's thoughtful, really funny actually, but also reserved, 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.560 and um, I have to admit, for me, at least 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:21.880 genuinely scary. At least I thought so maybe you'll write 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:23.560 in so I didn't think it was scary. You know, 0:21:23.720 --> 0:21:26.080 you're you're a cry baby. But I thought it was scary. 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:29.280 And I'm not alone. Stephen King wrote an introduction to 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:32.600 the book in which he wrote that quote. It seems 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:35.439 to me that the Haunting of Hill House and Henry 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:38.000 James Is The Turn of the Screw are the only 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:43.560 two great novels of the supernatural in the last hundred years. Interesting. 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:47.119 It's a bold pronouncement. But you know, I do agree 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.280 that when a when a ghost story is done well, 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:54.879 it can be so terrifying. A ghost story, though, is 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:56.639 is like a lot of things in art, is typically 0:21:56.720 --> 0:22:01.359 not done well. Uh yeah, you're right about that, and 0:22:01.359 --> 0:22:04.720 and it is genuinely horrifying. And I think it's interesting 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:08.600 that can be genuinely horrifying two people like us who 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:12.240 are horror fans and who are largely desensitized to the 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:15.880 most piercing aspects of horror like I think I may 0:22:15.880 --> 0:22:18.119 have contemplated this on the podcast before, but I just 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:20.360 want to bring it up again because this is such 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.480 a perplexing question to me. Why are ghosts the scariest 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:27.640