Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we have got your summer
Speaker 1: reading episode for this year. Except it's coming late, as
Speaker 1: it often does, or extremely early, depending on how you
Speaker 1: look at it. Or it may be a sort of
Speaker 1: like climate latitude derived impression of summer. Here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: summer kind of goes until December or so. Yeah, and plus, well,
Speaker 1: you know, summer is is in the mind and the heart,
Speaker 1: you know. But we've also kind of been thinking of
Speaker 1: it as the death of Summer episode. It's the episode
Speaker 1: that celebrates the passing it's awake for summer. And so
Speaker 1: if you're if you have if you don't know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here, this has been a longstanding tradition
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind is to do an
Speaker 1: episode in which the hosts and sometimes guests will just
Speaker 1: bring up a few different books that they have read
Speaker 1: in the past year that they enjoyed, that they found insightful,
Speaker 1: that they recommend, or just want to you know, celebrate
Speaker 1: in some fashion. Yeah, and oh and you mentioned guests,
Speaker 1: We've got a special treat for you today. We're bringing
Speaker 1: back a blast from the past, a former host of
Speaker 1: Stuff to blow your mind as a as a guest
Speaker 1: for the end of this episode. But before we get
Speaker 1: to that, Joe and I are just going to discuss
Speaker 1: a few books that that we picked out, books that
Speaker 1: we enjoyed this year. Uh. And it can be kind
Speaker 1: of difficult at times that I think we've discussed this before,
Speaker 1: because generally, if we read a really good book, it
Speaker 1: is generally going to fall into one or two categories.
Speaker 1: Either it's something we're reading for work, for as part
Speaker 1: of our podcast research, so of course we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss it on the show. Or we end up just
Speaker 1: talking and bending about back and forth on some episode
Speaker 1: about it right, Or it's just something where we don't
Speaker 1: start reading it for the show, but then there's just
Speaker 1: something in there we learned, something that is just so
Speaker 1: irresistible that it has to become an episode. So it
Speaker 1: can be hard to come up with like fresh picks. So,
Speaker 1: what's a really good book I read this year that
Speaker 1: I didn't already talk about on one episode or another.
Speaker 1: But but we've got a few today that's right, Robert,
Speaker 1: did you want to go first today? Sure? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll just say in Passing, you know that obviously I
Speaker 1: read a you know, a number of books that I
Speaker 1: really love this year. But everyone I think has heard
Speaker 1: me talk about, you know, I think I talked about
Speaker 1: Broke's Brain, Reflections on the Romance of Science by Carl Sagan,
Speaker 1: classic that I I read this year. Uh, And of
Speaker 1: course we talked a lot about How to Change Your
Speaker 1: Mind by Michael Pollen. I've discussed on the show how
Speaker 1: much I've been enjoyed reading the writings of Terence McKenna
Speaker 1: as well. But one book that I don't think I've
Speaker 1: discussed on the show, or at least if it's come up,
Speaker 1: it's only come up in Passing, is uh probably the
Speaker 1: best one of the best pieces of fiction I read
Speaker 1: this year, and it is Mongrels by Steven Graham Jones.
Speaker 1: From Stephen Graham Jones. I think we mentioned him on
Speaker 1: last year's Summer Reading episode because we didn't go in
Speaker 1: full detail, but when I was just talking about what
Speaker 1: I was reading at the time, I think I mentioned
Speaker 1: After the People Lights Have Gone Off, which is a
Speaker 1: short story collection by Steven Graham Jones, which is fantastic.
Speaker 1: I am really into this author, and I'm actually currently
Speaker 1: in the middle of another book by him, a novel
Speaker 1: called Demon Theory, which maybe I'll talk about in a
Speaker 1: minute after you talk about Mongrels. Oh, absolutely so. Stephen
Speaker 1: Graham Jones is a Blackfeet Native American author who who
Speaker 1: writes in a number of different genres. But I read
Speaker 1: this particular book, Mongrels, on a trip out to Arizona
Speaker 1: earlier in the year. In fact, I actually picked it
Speaker 1: up in the gift shop of the Haired Museum of
Speaker 1: American Indian Art. Uh. They're in Arizona, which is a
Speaker 1: wonderful museum, by the way. But the gift shop is
Speaker 1: also great and includes a lot of First Nation authors
Speaker 1: in various genres, including like science fiction, young adult, and
Speaker 1: of course horror. Because Mongrels. Uh, it is a lot
Speaker 1: of things. But it is also a werewolf book, and
Speaker 1: and I'll go I'll certainly easily go as far to
Speaker 1: say that it is the best piece of werewolf fiction
Speaker 1: I've ever read. I can't think if I've ever read
Speaker 1: a werewolf novel. Wait a minute, you read that like
Speaker 1: werewolf spy book, didn't you know? I just looked at
Speaker 1: it a beach house. It was like, c I a
Speaker 1: werewolf or something. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Like
Speaker 1: when I try to think of like really great werewolf
Speaker 1: fiction or even great werewolf movies, there kind of feeling
Speaker 1: far between. Like the werewolf is a wonderful concept, but
Speaker 1: it's not always utilized well in uh in a narrative form.
Speaker 1: But Mongrels does a fantastic job with with the werewolf
Speaker 1: uh in in in several different ways. So just approaching
Speaker 1: it from just a monster geek kind of standpoint, Jones
Speaker 1: takes the the existing like you know, motif of the
Speaker 1: werewolf and sort of the you know, some of the
Speaker 1: existing key points of the werewolf mythos and uh and
Speaker 1: and not only like, not only does he utilize those
Speaker 1: well in the book, but he he creates a few
Speaker 1: new wrinkles in the mythology that that manages to just
Speaker 1: make everything feel more real about the werewolf, and he
Speaker 1: brings it more life without this, you know, without totally
Speaker 1: recreating it, without like you know, totally just you know,
Speaker 1: creating something new that we call a can't therapy. Uh.
Speaker 1: He pairs it a lot with like themes about family,
Speaker 1: though doesn't he yeah, because this is this is ultimately
Speaker 1: a coming of age story. It is um it is
Speaker 1: is about this young boy whose whose family moves around
Speaker 1: there under like the fringes of society, and it is
Speaker 1: um it is. It is I can't remember if it
Speaker 1: is implied merely implied or or or or you know,
Speaker 1: obviously stated that the family are are are our Native
Speaker 1: American or Native American you know, descended, but but I
Speaker 1: believe that is the case. So you know, you get
Speaker 1: the you know, the sense that his family is you know,
Speaker 1: existing on on on the the edges of everything and
Speaker 1: just barely scrape by, and they are plagued by uh lecanthropy,
Speaker 1: like where the werewolf blood runs in their family. And
Speaker 1: the this boy at the very beginning, he's just he's
Speaker 1: trying to figure it all out, like figure out the
Speaker 1: like we all are at at a young age, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out this wider world of adulthood and family.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to figure out where he fits into it.
Speaker 1: And he's told, you know, you you might not be
Speaker 1: you know, I might might not have the werewolf blood
Speaker 1: in you. Uh, you know, you might have this normal
Speaker 1: life but you but you also very very may very
Speaker 1: well be one of us, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: the book is about him struggling with that, like what
Speaker 1: does he want to be? And who is he? And
Speaker 1: um and gosh. Stephen Graham Jones just does a tremendous
Speaker 1: job in this, Like it's it's just a beautiful book
Speaker 1: to read, the way he uses this metaphor, and at times,
Speaker 1: even at times you're like, oh, man, this is a
Speaker 1: great werewolf book. But other times you almost forget that
Speaker 1: it it is a monster novel because it's it's it's
Speaker 1: more about about this young boy and about the like
Speaker 1: family identity and uh and and and and how he's
Speaker 1: figuring out his life and then it's uh, it's written
Speaker 1: very elegantly, laid out very elegantly because each chapter is
Speaker 1: pretty much a short story unto itself, so that the
Speaker 1: structure is great. Like you, it's one of these books
Speaker 1: where you finish a chapter and if that were the
Speaker 1: end of the novel, uh, you would you would feel
Speaker 1: pretty satisfied. So it's it's one of the more like
Speaker 1: just structurally complete books that I've read in a long time.
Speaker 1: Like there's no fat on it either, though it's not like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the short story just feels kind of, you know, a
Speaker 1: little extra, but this this chapter is a little extra. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and you know it's just filling in the gaps. No,
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's it's all meat, just like a
Speaker 1: werewolf would like. Yeah, I've thought for a long time
Speaker 1: now if Stephen Graham Jones is a horror write not
Speaker 1: just a horror writer. He's written in I don't know,
Speaker 1: works that span different genres, but a lot of what
Speaker 1: he seems to be known best for is his horror fiction.
Speaker 1: Um uh. He seems to me like somebody who is
Speaker 1: at the same time very creative and thoughtful and willing
Speaker 1: to get experimental, but exact at the same time refreshingly
Speaker 1: free of writerly pretensions. Some of the comments I've heard
Speaker 1: and read about like his writing process and work and
Speaker 1: all that seems kind of I don't know it, just
Speaker 1: like not precious about it. And I think somehow that
Speaker 1: attitude comes through, and at least what I've heard what
Speaker 1: I've read of his as a kind of freedom that
Speaker 1: crackles through the prose, like in this he he's a
Speaker 1: very thoughtful writer, but at the same time has some
Speaker 1: kind of distance from what he's doing that just allows
Speaker 1: him to to spin a yarn with a kind of
Speaker 1: with degrees of freedom that I don't often feel in
Speaker 1: other authors. Yeah, there's and I'm probably not describing it well,
Speaker 1: but there's there's there's something about this book where it
Speaker 1: does not feel like deliberate in a in a writer's sense,
Speaker 1: or or at least it's so good that I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think about like the writing process when I'm
Speaker 1: reading it. Uh, you know, it's just I remember when
Speaker 1: when I was going it was chapter to chapter, it
Speaker 1: was it was it was one of these book where
Speaker 1: you just couldn't put it down. And I also ended
Speaker 1: up when I was thinking about it, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, just totally about the characters and and and
Speaker 1: they're and and wondering maybe even worrying like what was
Speaker 1: going to happen to them? And it I think it's
Speaker 1: been a long time since I've really had that experience
Speaker 1: with the books. So you know, really I really have
Speaker 1: to give this one, you know, top marks for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another thing about Stephen Graham Jones that I've noticed
Speaker 1: it and it comes through if you just read one
Speaker 1: of his collections of short stories, like After the People
Speaker 1: lights have gone off, is that he can write it
Speaker 1: at very different levels. Like some of the horror. It's
Speaker 1: all horror stories pretty much in this book, or at
Speaker 1: least kind of strange, at least weird stories. Most of
Speaker 1: them are you would think of his horror, but some
Speaker 1: are like thoughtful I don't know what that sounds pretentious,
Speaker 1: but what people would probably call literary horror kind of reserved, prose, contemplative, uh, eerie,
Speaker 1: rather than than splatter horror. But then some of them
Speaker 1: are just splatter horror. Like some of it is like
Speaker 1: low brow, almost gross out horror, and and he's great
Speaker 1: at that too, right, Yeah, in this book, there's I
Speaker 1: would recommend this book for people who are maybe even
Speaker 1: not horror fans, Like I don't want anyone to be
Speaker 1: turned off by the werewolf aspect of it, because it's
Speaker 1: not it's not really blood and guts, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: though it does have a few there are a few
Speaker 1: details in it that that do make your skin crawl.
Speaker 1: In particular, he has his whole business about how like
Speaker 1: a werewolf has to be very careful about what they wear.
Speaker 1: Um because like imagine, for instance, if you're wearing spandex
Speaker 1: and you grow out into a werewolf, where we'll form
Speaker 1: this large dog like body covered in hair. Like the
Speaker 1: spandex is not going to rip away and be left
Speaker 1: on the ground. It's going to remain. It's gonna stretch out,
Speaker 1: and the hair of the wolf is going to poke
Speaker 1: through it. And then what happens when that hair recedes
Speaker 1: back into the body. Um, it's catastrophe. Uh and uh
Speaker 1: and and he describes it in in detail in the book.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's grizzly. It's the reason that I believe
Speaker 1: they always wear like blue Jane cutoffs in the book,
Speaker 1: because it's something that will tear away and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about it, like, you know, potentially killing
Speaker 1: you later. Wow. I'm in the middle of reading another
Speaker 1: novel by Stephen Graham Jones. Now I mentioned this other
Speaker 1: earlier novel. I think it's from like two thousand six
Speaker 1: or so. It's called Demon Theory, which is one of
Speaker 1: the strangest books I've ever read. I still, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like a hundred pages in and I'm still not
Speaker 1: quite sure exactly what's going on. But so far it
Speaker 1: seems to be a novelization of a nonexistent b horror
Speaker 1: film with scholarly footnotes. But it's it's getting a little
Speaker 1: bit weirder as it goes on, and it's it's striking
Speaker 1: me as a very exploratory, experimental kind of novel. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to see where it goes from here. Kind
Speaker 1: of shades of House of Leaves, yes, yes, sort of yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I would just say in general, Stephen Graham
Speaker 1: Jones really interesting author. If you like horror at all,
Speaker 1: or even if you don't like horror, worth given a
Speaker 1: worth given a try, absolutely, and Mongrels is available just
Speaker 1: all over the place. You can get an audio book
Speaker 1: form as well. Well, well, Joe, what are what's your pick?
Speaker 1: Then your first pick for this summer reading episode? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so I think you were mainly focusing on fiction this year.
Speaker 1: I think our guest is mainly going to focus on fiction,
Speaker 1: So I'm doing doing a few nonfiction books, so though,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, I will give a quick acknowledgment
Speaker 1: of like I'd say, probably the best fiction book I
Speaker 1: read this year was the Name of the Row is
Speaker 1: by Umberto. Yeah, it's a classic, and it's it's a
Speaker 1: classic for a reason. That is a fantastic novel, I
Speaker 1: mean just so rich, so good. I read it with
Speaker 1: a with like a companion glossary that you let me
Speaker 1: borrow this, like this whole other book that's like a
Speaker 1: key to all of this story. Yeah too, because like
Speaker 1: Umberto Echo was a genuine medievalist, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of the like the historical setting of the novel is
Speaker 1: rich with real details from from actual history and uh,
Speaker 1: and so the key to the Name of the Rose,
Speaker 1: I would I would recommend doing it that way. If
Speaker 1: you read the Name of the Rose, get that book
Speaker 1: and have it alongside with you when you read it.
Speaker 1: Right though at the same time, I would I don't
Speaker 1: want to scare anyone away from the Name of the Rose,
Speaker 1: because I feel like comperto Eco does a really good
Speaker 1: job with, you know, the contextual usage of these different references.
Speaker 1: So they'll be they'll be passages in other languages, there'll
Speaker 1: be references to historical figures or or you know, works
Speaker 1: of literature, various manuscripts or what have you. And he's
Speaker 1: pretty good about like grounding and within the context of
Speaker 1: the stories, you don't have to necessarily know what those
Speaker 1: things are. But on the other hand, it's that extra
Speaker 1: level of appreciation to be able to look it up
Speaker 1: in say the key to the name of the rose
Speaker 1: and and see exactly what it was referring to. Right,
Speaker 1: You don't have to speak Latin to recognize the Latin
Speaker 1: or vulgar Italian phrase for the black magic of Jesus Christ. Okay. So,
Speaker 1: uh So I'm gonna talk about some nonfiction books this year.
Speaker 1: Uh And this year, you know what, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to read all the junk that comes after the colon
Speaker 1: and a nonfiction book title. I wish publishers would stop
Speaker 1: insisting on all that stuff after the colon and just
Speaker 1: let the book have a regular title, Okay, And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna enforce that rule myself. So the first one I
Speaker 1: want to talk about today, it was a really interesting
Speaker 1: and important book. Uh. Is called a Cracking Creation and
Speaker 1: came out in twenty seventeen by Jennifer DOWDNA and Samuel
Speaker 1: Sternberg and at Base. This is a book about the
Speaker 1: Crisper Cassinine gene editing technology and the current spate of
Speaker 1: gene editing technologies. Uh. This is an unusual and really
Speaker 1: interesting kind of book because it's a book about a
Speaker 1: revolutionary moment in science and technology, written right in the
Speaker 1: middle of that revolutionary moment, not really looking back, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, what this book is about is still going
Speaker 1: on right now, and written by one of the leading
Speaker 1: scientists who brought about this revolution. In this case, that
Speaker 1: would be Jennifer DOWDNA, who is one of the main
Speaker 1: figures in discovering the Crisper cast nine gene editing potential. So,
Speaker 1: Jennifer down is a biochemist at you see, Berkeley. Previously
Speaker 1: she had worked in research on RNA and ribisims. But
Speaker 1: over the past decade she and colleagues both in her
Speaker 1: Berkeley lab and UH at a few other institutions, including
Speaker 1: work by Emmanuel Sharpentier and other colleagues around the world,
Speaker 1: they discovered the potential of the bacterial Crisper CASS nine
Speaker 1: machinery to change what's possible in gene editing, to make
Speaker 1: gene editing a much more plausible economical proposition in many
Speaker 1: more scenarios than previous gene insertion technologies. And so in
Speaker 1: this book there there are a few different sections Down
Speaker 1: and Sternberg. Oh, and Sternberg is one of her colleagues
Speaker 1: as well as I think a student who had originally
Speaker 1: worked under her. But they write about the discovery in
Speaker 1: a few different ways. So there's like a scientific background
Speaker 1: section where they explain the genetics and the microbiology that
Speaker 1: underlies the discovery of the Crisper cast nine system. They
Speaker 1: explain how it works, they tell thet biographical story of
Speaker 1: the research efforts that made the discovery. But then a
Speaker 1: lot of the book is them talking firsthand about trying
Speaker 1: to grapple with the real world implications of this powerful
Speaker 1: technology and trying to get the rest of the world
Speaker 1: to slow down and consider the ethical issues with gene
Speaker 1: editing before they say run off and start editing human
Speaker 1: germ lines. And of course, when you edit the human
Speaker 1: germ line, like the embryos or like the spurm ur
Speaker 1: egg cells, you make changes that don't just change one person,
Speaker 1: but will make changes that can be passed on to
Speaker 1: all future generations that come after that person. And so
Speaker 1: they've been trying to say, hey, wait, we should think
Speaker 1: out the ethical issues that that come along with this
Speaker 1: level of gene editing technology before we just go hog
Speaker 1: wild and apply it everywhere. And it's really interesting hearing
Speaker 1: dowbt On Sternberg wrestle with the the ethical pros and
Speaker 1: cons in real time. Like she talks about how at
Speaker 1: first she was just like, well, you know, I think
Speaker 1: we've got to have a moratorium right now on germline
Speaker 1: a thing, because you know, we we we haven't thought
Speaker 1: through all the ethical considerations yet. But then she talks
Speaker 1: about meeting with the families of people who suffered from
Speaker 1: you know, horrible or deadly genetic diseases that said, no,
Speaker 1: you know, like, if we've got the power to do
Speaker 1: something that could have that could have saved my loved one,
Speaker 1: or that could potentially save people like them in the future, yes,
Speaker 1: of course you should do that now. And so there
Speaker 1: are these powerful forces pulling in both directions. There's this
Speaker 1: strong resistance and fear about what this this technology could
Speaker 1: mean if it's applied to loosely or too quickly without
Speaker 1: thinking about all of the consequences. But then there's also
Speaker 1: this powerful interest on the part of people who are
Speaker 1: like that this is life and death for me and
Speaker 1: for people like me. Yeah, I mean, it's one of
Speaker 1: those moral dilemmas where like you to say, let's just
Speaker 1: have all of it, let's just let's just go at
Speaker 1: it and just you know, see where the cards fall,
Speaker 1: like that's that's irresponsible. But then the other hand is
Speaker 1: to just say we're we're not gonna we're just gonna
Speaker 1: shut an entire line of research here. We're not going
Speaker 1: to we're not going to investigate this technology any further
Speaker 1: when there's so much that could be could be gained
Speaker 1: from it. Yeah, gene editing, I think, is another example
Speaker 1: of something perhaps like sort of like nuclear technology, sort
Speaker 1: of like artificial intelligence. We have technological power before we
Speaker 1: understand exactly how that technological power can be used. And
Speaker 1: part of the problem is that with all these technologies,
Speaker 1: actually with nuclear with artificial intelligence, with gene editing, now,
Speaker 1: especially because of Crisper CAST nine, the the they are
Speaker 1: reaching a point of um dispersal basically where you can't
Speaker 1: just say, well, only the people in this one ivory
Speaker 1: tower can make the decision about whether to use these
Speaker 1: technologies or not. Because one of the things that the
Speaker 1: Crisper has brought along is that, you know, now gene
Speaker 1: editing is becoming so easy that you know, she talks
Speaker 1: about how with the right tools and the right know,
Speaker 1: how a high school student could do gene editing. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's literally the world we are entering now. And that's
Speaker 1: like a terrifying power because you know, she talks about
Speaker 1: how well, okay, so it's one thing to talk about, uh,
Speaker 1: the precise types of gene editing made possible by Crisper
Speaker 1: cast nine to say, knockout a gene that causes a
Speaker 1: double recessive genetic disease that is debilitating or fatal and
Speaker 1: saving lives that way versus On the other hand, this
Speaker 1: could be used in so many ways that people haven't
Speaker 1: even thought of yet. There's the idea of editing genes
Speaker 1: to create designer pets, like the micro pig created in China. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, where you can just alter a gene that
Speaker 1: controls how growth hormone is dealt within the body, and
Speaker 1: that one alteration suddenly creates an adult pig that's like
Speaker 1: the size of a small dog. And so okay, well
Speaker 1: maybe that doesn't sound so bad, but you could just
Speaker 1: keep going like that. She imagines that what's to stop
Speaker 1: people from trying to create dragons out of living organisms
Speaker 1: and all that? Not necessarily like, oh, we should be
Speaker 1: worried about the threat posed by the dragons, but like,
Speaker 1: is it ethical to be intentionally altering nature? This way.
Speaker 1: Then again, on the other hand, you've you've got the
Speaker 1: issue of like, well, we already do sort of alternature
Speaker 1: but in much clumsier way. Yes, again, as we we
Speaker 1: often point out, look to the pug. That's the example.
Speaker 1: But I guess the idea is that the pug took
Speaker 1: considerably long or to produce, and you're talking about potentially
Speaker 1: creating a pug um, you know, not over the course
Speaker 1: of of generations and generations, but within like a single
Speaker 1: generation create a dragon pug. Yeah. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: it's a really really thorny issue, and it's one that
Speaker 1: we can't just stick our heads in the sand and
Speaker 1: like pretend like, Okay, that sounds scary. I don't want
Speaker 1: to think about because the future is coming. We have
Speaker 1: to figure out how we're going to encounter it, how
Speaker 1: we're going to deal with it morally, to how we're
Speaker 1: going to uh, you know, arrange our laws to deal
Speaker 1: with it. Yes, you can't escape this issue by not
Speaker 1: thinking about it, because other people, whether they're things king
Speaker 1: about it or not, are doing it. I mean, the
Speaker 1: capability is there now, um, and so there's no putting
Speaker 1: the genie back in the bottle. So I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: used a cliche like that. Uh, there's no putting all
Speaker 1: the what would be not a cliche, there's no stuffing
Speaker 1: all of the listeria containing salad back in the bag.
Speaker 1: We are we are in the gene editing era. Now
Speaker 1: we're in the earliest days of it. But are we're
Speaker 1: going to become more and more powerful and our abilities
Speaker 1: at gene editing, we're going to become more and more
Speaker 1: uh dispersed to more people, so you know, people can
Speaker 1: just make decisions on their own about what to do.
Speaker 1: And we should start to come up with a coherent
Speaker 1: ethical framework for what we think about what is right
Speaker 1: and what is not right to do in gene editing.
Speaker 1: And I think we have not solved these problems yet.
Speaker 1: We don't know what the right thing is yet. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I attended a panel at the World Science Festival
Speaker 1: a few years back where some of the leading UH
Speaker 1: experts in this in this field, we're talking about kind
Speaker 1: of kind of basically the same issue, like what like,
Speaker 1: how are we gonna going to to handle this, How
Speaker 1: are we going to uh you know properly, how are
Speaker 1: we going to try to you know, keep our wisdom
Speaker 1: at a level to where we're not completely outpaced by
Speaker 1: our power. And I guess in you know, in some
Speaker 1: ways it's it's like other things like one can certainly
Speaker 1: look to pharmaceuticals and drugs and in various other technologies
Speaker 1: that are you know that either have been have you
Speaker 1: been highly legislated from the beginning, or or you know,
Speaker 1: laws come in place and uh and bodies are established
Speaker 1: to deal with them early on. But but in in
Speaker 1: other ways it does seem unlike anything that we've really
Speaker 1: had to deal with before, Like it's far more specific
Speaker 1: in um in changing who we are potentially yeah, and
Speaker 1: changing other organisms sometimes without realizing like what the full
Speaker 1: ramifications are that of that are because we mentioned the
Speaker 1: pug earlier and the fact that the course humans have
Speaker 1: have always been changing their environment. But like that his
Speaker 1: sure you can look to the many catastrophic things we
Speaker 1: have done in interacting with our environment. I mean, another
Speaker 1: great example would be I think we've talked about this
Speaker 1: on at some point in the show before, but Crisper
Speaker 1: enabled gene drive technologies where you can drive certain genes
Speaker 1: into wild populations of organisms. One of the most common
Speaker 1: examples that has been floated here would be driving genes
Speaker 1: into mosquitoes to either like white mosquitoes out by making
Speaker 1: them sterile or creating like an all female population or
Speaker 1: all male I don't remember which one, but so you
Speaker 1: could do that, or trying to drive a gene into
Speaker 1: mosquitoes that makes them resistant to the malaria parasite, which okay,
Speaker 1: So on one hand it sounds like, yeah, malaria, you know,
Speaker 1: mosquito boarn illnesses kill millions of people every year. You
Speaker 1: of course you've got like an ethical responsibility to do that.
Speaker 1: But have we fully thought about all the consequences. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a lot. There might be consequences that we
Speaker 1: have not envisioned yet, and then there might be ways
Speaker 1: that we're not properly appreciating the ethics of the consequences
Speaker 1: that we do know how to predict. Right, and then
Speaker 1: whereas you know, if such a decision, say with mosquito,
Speaker 1: just to simplify things, like if the decision we're coming
Speaker 1: from just a purely from from you know, a public
Speaker 1: health standpoint, like the mosquito is one thing, but coming
Speaker 1: from a conservation standpoint, the mosquito is potentially another, Like
Speaker 1: you know, fact factoring in that a mosquito is also
Speaker 1: food for for various species. It is a pollinator. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it has a definite, widespread role in the environment,
Speaker 1: and one has to be careful not to jeopardize that
Speaker 1: because if it changes, if it moves, everything moves. But
Speaker 1: it's also not hard to imagine, just based on what
Speaker 1: we've already talked about, like about the idea of deploying
Speaker 1: certain types of tailored gene drives as weapons of mass
Speaker 1: environmental destruction, like if you were a terrorist and you
Speaker 1: just want, you know, something like that, or back in
Speaker 1: the in the more human in health domain, there are
Speaker 1: serious questions about like, Okay, so it's less controversial when
Speaker 1: you just want to talk about single point gene mutations
Speaker 1: to cure a genetic disease or something. But what if
Speaker 1: people more generally start thinking, there are a few ways
Speaker 1: I would like to improve my genome, you know, or
Speaker 1: maybe you can't improve your genome as an adult, but
Speaker 1: to improve the genome of my child and improve in
Speaker 1: quotation marks, you know, right, yeah, I mean, because we
Speaker 1: get down to the like the basic imperfection of of
Speaker 1: the species, you know, like we are we are not
Speaker 1: perfect beings that you know, we're drawn out of Holy
Speaker 1: butter or something, you know. I mean, we're uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're a creature that evolved into this state and
Speaker 1: they're there are various design issues with say, the way
Speaker 1: we walk and you know, among other things. So like
Speaker 1: if you start, if you start trying to fix everything
Speaker 1: that is wrong, like where where do you what do
Speaker 1: you stop? Yes? And what counts is wrong? I mean,
Speaker 1: it would just be a It would come down to
Speaker 1: individual preferences and what medical science allows us to do.
Speaker 1: And it's going to be more and more all the time.
Speaker 1: So this is I think an incredibly important, incredibly thorny
Speaker 1: issue that I think we're not ready for, and we
Speaker 1: need to be doing more to try to get ready
Speaker 1: to deal with this anyway. But but this is a
Speaker 1: great place to start with that. And the book again
Speaker 1: is called A Krack in Creation by Jennifer DOWDNU and
Speaker 1: Samuel Sternberg. Excellent. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: I think, and when we come back, we're going to
Speaker 1: roll through some additional bits of summer reading recommendation. Thank you,
Speaker 1: all right, we're back, all right, Robert, So I think
Speaker 1: you had a recommendation coming up next, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: every year, at least recently, I've been trying to include
Speaker 1: some sort of children's book because since I have now
Speaker 1: a seven year old, a lot of the reading that
Speaker 1: I do, uh is bedtime stories, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've probably celebrate reading in our household. But a
Speaker 1: lot of the books that are you know, some of
Speaker 1: the books that I read or you know, maybe not
Speaker 1: that great or they're forgettable, or they're fine for a
Speaker 1: seven year old, but they don't have much of an
Speaker 1: impact on an adult reader. But I have a particular
Speaker 1: book here that I picked up. I don't even know
Speaker 1: how it came into our house, possibly via a lending
Speaker 1: library and then possibly like I may have purchased it
Speaker 1: or you know, obtained it from a library because it's
Speaker 1: a former library copy. I one of these where like
Speaker 1: the you know, the scanning bar has been sharpied out
Speaker 1: and so forth. But it is a book titled First
Speaker 1: Painter by Katherine Laski with paintings by Rocko Babiera, and
Speaker 1: it's from two thousand and it is a book, a
Speaker 1: children's book, beautifully illustrated children's book about Neolithic people and
Speaker 1: Neolithic art um and it's UH for stars, I just
Speaker 1: want to read just a section of it, to give
Speaker 1: you just a glimpse, just a taste of of of
Speaker 1: its uh, of its of its poetry. Quote the moon
Speaker 1: of the Singing Grass has come and gone three times,
Speaker 1: and still there is no rain. Babies have been born
Speaker 1: and grown into little walkers and never seen rain. My
Speaker 1: name is miss Who. I have lived for ten moons
Speaker 1: of the Singing Grass, and now I am beginning to
Speaker 1: forget the rain. It's sound, it's shape, and how the
Speaker 1: water clouds gather like herds of Willie Mammoth's in the east.
Speaker 1: My people are hungry, they are starving. First the grass died,
Speaker 1: then the animals. Now us. So that that's the just
Speaker 1: the first page from the book, and it is the
Speaker 1: story of Mischu, of this Uh, this young girl in
Speaker 1: this neolithic dribe, whose whose people are are plagued by famine,
Speaker 1: and she is she realizes that she has to do
Speaker 1: what what women in her family have done for generations
Speaker 1: before her. She has to set out to a sacred
Speaker 1: cave and she has to, through the creation of art,
Speaker 1: call back the reins and bring rain and food back
Speaker 1: to her people. And it's uh, it's it's beautifully written,
Speaker 1: beautifully illustrated and written. It really gets into this uh.
Speaker 1: You know, it gets to some of the questions indeed,
Speaker 1: you know, larger questions I guess, like what is art
Speaker 1: and you know, what what role does it play and
Speaker 1: in the human experience, but also just like the mystery
Speaker 1: of neolithic painting and uh and some of the theories
Speaker 1: regarding it. Like it's one of these books that at
Speaker 1: the end of the author, you know, has a bibliography
Speaker 1: where she cites, uh, you know, about a dozen different
Speaker 1: sources where you know she really researched, you know, the
Speaker 1: the Shamans of prehistory for example, or you know, archaeology
Speaker 1: of early Man, and there there's an insightful afterward about
Speaker 1: her process here. So it's it's one of these books
Speaker 1: that I highly recommend for anybody who has a you know,
Speaker 1: a young reader in their household, or even if you don't,
Speaker 1: if you just if you're just excited by a topic
Speaker 1: like this, it's worth picking up. Katherine Lasky also, by
Speaker 1: the way, you're not familiar with her, she's she's a
Speaker 1: very well known children's author. She wrote The Guardians of
Speaker 1: the hul book series. She also wrote The Night Journey,
Speaker 1: which is about a Jewish family's escape from Russian pogroms
Speaker 1: of the early twentieth century. And she also wrote True
Speaker 1: North about the underground railroad. She's extremely prolific, uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And so this book is it's still out there. You
Speaker 1: should be able to pick up a copy or at
Speaker 1: least pick up a used copy of it somewhere. Check
Speaker 1: it out of your library. But I highly recommend it
Speaker 1: touches on some of the topics we've discussed on the
Speaker 1: show before as well. Yeah, I was just flipping through
Speaker 1: it earlier before we started, and some of the illustrations
Speaker 1: are very beautiful. There's like there's one where somebody's looking
Speaker 1: up through a crack in a cave at somebody standing
Speaker 1: above looking in. Yeah, that the sort of the the
Speaker 1: whole plot line where she's she has to descend into
Speaker 1: the cave and it's this you know, dangerous dark place
Speaker 1: and has to find this this place where people in
Speaker 1: her tribe have gone to create the art that you
Speaker 1: know that has this this magical power. So that's the
Speaker 1: children's selection of fourth for today's episode. Oh what have
Speaker 1: you got for us? Next? Joe? Al right, next is
Speaker 1: back to another nonfiction book. This one is a book
Speaker 1: by the British science writer Philip Ball published in ten
Speaker 1: called Beyond Weird Again. I'm not going to read what
Speaker 1: comes after the colon. The title is Beyond Weird. Now.
Speaker 1: We've talked about some of Philip Ball's work on the
Speaker 1: show before. He's written a lot about physics and chemistry. Robert.
Speaker 1: I think we read a good article by him published
Speaker 1: in Chemistry World about the supposed chemistry of the tomb
Speaker 1: of Chin Chi Huong, the first Chinese import. But this book,
Speaker 1: Beyond Weird is a book about quantum mechanics. And you
Speaker 1: may think you know, I've read about quantum mechanics before.
Speaker 1: It was very surprising at first, but I know all
Speaker 1: this stuff now. If you're feeling like that, I think
Speaker 1: you should reconsider and give this book a shot. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this is the best book on quantum physics
Speaker 1: that I've read. A lot of writings on quantum physics
Speaker 1: sort of acknowledge the apparent weirdness in the disconnect between
Speaker 1: the uncertain, probabilistic world of quantum mechanics and the solid,
Speaker 1: factual world that we seem to observe at our macroscopic scale,
Speaker 1: and then they just sort of wave the hand and
Speaker 1: move on right, Like it's very weird. Isn't that very
Speaker 1: weird and interesting? Now let's get on with other stuff.
Speaker 1: But beyond weird. Instead, basically it just gazes straight into
Speaker 1: this apparent weirdness. It looks into the core of the
Speaker 1: black hole. Uh not literally, it's not about black holes.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I mean, you know, it's just like
Speaker 1: it's like staring into the sun. It's kind of unbearable,
Speaker 1: but it's fascinating for that reason. Tries to grapple with
Speaker 1: the supposed weirdness directly. It of course deals with a
Speaker 1: lot of common misconceptions about quantum mechanics that there's a
Speaker 1: whole section of like it's not exactly right to say
Speaker 1: that X is why about quantum mechanics And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: you have said that um and but but the the
Speaker 1: way he explains, uh, why these mis misconceptions are perpetuated
Speaker 1: is very interesting. It also deals with the war between
Speaker 1: the rival interpretations of of the theory of quantum mechanics,
Speaker 1: which could mostly be thought of as ways of attempting
Speaker 1: to resolve the apparent weirdness of quantum reality um. But
Speaker 1: he looks at it with a kind of clarity and
Speaker 1: focus that makes the book in my in my view,
Speaker 1: totally unique and worthwhile I haven't read anything like this before.
Speaker 1: It's really challenging, really truly mind bending, and I already
Speaker 1: want to read it again. What do you feel how
Speaker 1: would you recommend this to the just sort of the
Speaker 1: average reader. Do you feel like someone needs to already
Speaker 1: be somewhat versed in quantum mechanics, Did they have read
Speaker 1: like should they be like a regular reader of quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics related topics in science journalism? No, And I'd say
Speaker 1: it's at the intermediate level. You know, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not a book that's going to be super approachable to
Speaker 1: like kids or people who don't know anything about physics.
Speaker 1: And but at the same time, it's not you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't require you to be a scientist obviously. It's
Speaker 1: written for a popular audience, you know, So it's one
Speaker 1: of those middle world books. It doesn't assume you have
Speaker 1: any kind of specialized knowledge. It explains everything to you,
Speaker 1: but it also is dealing with, you know, the most
Speaker 1: complex subject matter in the world, probably literally so, so
Speaker 1: it's not as approachable as some other books, but it
Speaker 1: is a really, really Uh. I mean, it's a book
Speaker 1: that captures the attention because it drives home the fact
Speaker 1: like if you have read books about quantum physics before,
Speaker 1: you felt the weirdness back then, and then you're like
Speaker 1: you got used to it, and you're like, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I know all this stuff now. I don't know which
Speaker 1: interpretation is correct, but you know, I'm basically familiar with
Speaker 1: the weirdness. It doesn't bother me anymore. This will make
Speaker 1: it bother you again. That's a great thing. Like it
Speaker 1: really really gazes directly into the source of of how
Speaker 1: strange this feels to us, and it uh, it forces
Speaker 1: you to deal with it, and you know, it points
Speaker 1: out the fact that like this is what reality is.
Speaker 1: I mean, quantum physics is one of the best theories
Speaker 1: in all of science. It's totally predictive. We use it
Speaker 1: for all kinds of stuff. It's not like you can
Speaker 1: just pretend it doesn't exist and move on. I mean,
Speaker 1: is telling something about telling us something fundamental about reality.
Speaker 1: But what it's telling us, of course, is still up
Speaker 1: for debate or how we should interpret what it's telling us.
Speaker 1: And you've got to grapple with it if you want
Speaker 1: to understand what you think reality is, just as a
Speaker 1: kind of teaser. A lot of the definitions that the
Speaker 1: ball ends up dealing with then and maybe seeming to
Speaker 1: favor somewhat in the book are definitions of reality where
Speaker 1: that that say, the most fundamental aspects of reality or
Speaker 1: maybe not are maybe not facts and things, but probability
Speaker 1: and information. Interesting. So do you foresee any future episodes
Speaker 1: of stuff about your mind related to this content? Oh? Possibly? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean um quantum physics is funny because I was
Speaker 1: trying to think about how to put this. It's like
Speaker 1: it's something that it's hard to do episodes about without
Speaker 1: a visual aid, because you really need a visual aid
Speaker 1: in order to correctly conjure the inappropriate misleading metaph wars
Speaker 1: that you will ultimately use to try to explain the concept.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like explanations of quantum mechanics often
Speaker 1: fail at multiple levels at the same time, and some
Speaker 1: of those failures you just sort of must be resigned
Speaker 1: to them. Is it kind of you have to Is
Speaker 1: it kind of like you have to have like an
Speaker 1: incorrect version of what it is before you can like
Speaker 1: refine that version. Like it's sort of I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: part of the problem is that, like quantum, quantum reality
Speaker 1: is dealing with phenomenon that we have no analogies for whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And so when you try to create an analogy to
Speaker 1: illustrate it, you inherently bring along a lot of baggage
Speaker 1: that is misleading. So you've got a few choices, like
Speaker 1: you can try to picture it, which might give you
Speaker 1: a sense of security because you're like, Okay, now I'm
Speaker 1: trying to picture it, but now you've introduced a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that's sort of leading you off in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction and causing you to partially misunderstand it. So
Speaker 1: you can just back off and say, well, let's just
Speaker 1: not even try to picture it. Let's just look at
Speaker 1: them path and say, literally, what does it say? But
Speaker 1: then it doesn't feel like it's real. It doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like it makes sense in the It's not gonna work
Speaker 1: that way for everybody. Like certain mathematical minds are going
Speaker 1: to maybe you know, take that approach a lot more
Speaker 1: easier than the rest of us. Uh, And it just
Speaker 1: hammers home the fact that, like the quantum world is real,
Speaker 1: it's maybe more real than the macroscopic world that we're
Speaker 1: used to. Uh. Maybe A good way to think about
Speaker 1: it is our ability to picture things in the macroscopic
Speaker 1: world is the illusion. It's an illusion that is our
Speaker 1: best way of dealing with quantum reality as it presents
Speaker 1: at the scale of our bodies. But it doesn't really
Speaker 1: tell us what reality is. It's just sort of our
Speaker 1: best approximation. Well, speaking of approximations of reality, um m my,
Speaker 1: my next pick is another work of fiction, but it
Speaker 1: is a short work of fiction. Uh So, if anyone
Speaker 1: out there is like, I don't have time to read
Speaker 1: an entire novel or you know, a lengthy book, well,
Speaker 1: the good news is that this is a short story.
Speaker 1: It is by Peter Watts, who we've mentioned on the
Speaker 1: show before, and the short story is titled A Word
Speaker 1: for Heathens and it's collected in the short story collection
Speaker 1: from Watt's titled Beyond the Rift, which which is itself
Speaker 1: a very cool little collection of tales, including it includes
Speaker 1: his version of John Carpenter's The Thing retold from the
Speaker 1: point of view of the thing which, in and of itself,
Speaker 1: yes things to us, Yeah, And then that in and
Speaker 1: in and of itself is a is a wonderful bit
Speaker 1: of like biologically contemplative science fiction that I think it's
Speaker 1: is certainly must read for anyone who is, you know,
Speaker 1: a fan of of the thing h and also you know,
Speaker 1: is inquisitive about you know, the nature of like an
Speaker 1: alien consciousness, like what would that be? What would the
Speaker 1: mind of the thing be? Like? Um, But this particular
Speaker 1: story from that election A word for Heathens is about
Speaker 1: an electro magnetism obsessed the ocracy that invokes the spiritual
Speaker 1: experience of God via like god helmets and other technology.
Speaker 1: But they also use electromagnetic technology for like trains and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I consider like the holy power of their empire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's like it's Persinger's God helmet, but a crusade
Speaker 1: for that religion, right, and then the Heathen religion that
Speaker 1: they are so opposed to and or like fighting tooth
Speaker 1: and Nail is is a society that uses psychedelic mushrooms
Speaker 1: to invoke a spiritual sensation of of God or the divine.
Speaker 1: But I think you could just look at that as
Speaker 1: any like a version of natural religion. It's like the
Speaker 1: technological religion has a crusade against the natural religion because
Speaker 1: the natural religion is outside the true church, which is
Speaker 1: a technological uh infrastructure. Yeah, so it's um, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful set up. And then it's just such
Speaker 1: a stunning and complete short story. Like it's one of
Speaker 1: these these these rare short stories where I read it
Speaker 1: and it leaves me wanting more, but knowing I probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't have more. Like it's like the perfect dessert, you know,
Speaker 1: where you're just like, I'm completely satisfied. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: part of me would would would want the part of
Speaker 1: and part of me does want like the expanded novelization
Speaker 1: of this this world from Watts. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: like the short story accomplishes everything, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to give away the there's some twists and turns in
Speaker 1: there because you basically, you know, fall into the perspective
Speaker 1: of one of the crusaders and then you know, some
Speaker 1: things happen, uh that that causes his his perception of
Speaker 1: things to to to to switch around. But it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful, wonderful little short story. It would make
Speaker 1: for an amazing episode of say Black Mirror, if they
Speaker 1: ever wanted to do something that was a little more like, uh,
Speaker 1: broader and more fantastic. I think it could it could
Speaker 1: we could certainly fit into that world. Just a fair
Speaker 1: warning on that. Like much of Peter watts work, I uh,
Speaker 1: I do recall it being fairly disturbing. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's disturbing. It's for adults, So it's for adults. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not as disturbing as some other things
Speaker 1: he's written. But but but it's but yeah, but I
Speaker 1: do want to say it's it's extremely good. If you're
Speaker 1: looking for a really thought provoking short story, this one
Speaker 1: is worth checking out. Absolutely agree. Yeah, alright, and Joe,
Speaker 1: I believe you have one more selection before we uh
Speaker 1: summon our guests. Well, I just want because I think
Speaker 1: last year we sort of started a tradition of also
Speaker 1: just talking about what we're reading now. So I already
Speaker 1: mentioned the Stephen Graham Jones novel that I'm reading, which
Speaker 1: is very weird and engrossing in its own right. But
Speaker 1: I'm also reading another nonfiction book right now, which was
Speaker 1: I think I think I started reading this because of
Speaker 1: a recommendation from a listener a while back, but it's
Speaker 1: been a while so I'm not positive about that. But
Speaker 1: this one is called The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum,
Speaker 1: published in two thousand eighteen. Um not quite finished with it,
Speaker 1: but I thought I should mention it because it is
Speaker 1: absolutely disgusting in a profound way. So it's a historical
Speaker 1: account of the campaign for the earliest comprehensive food and
Speaker 1: drug purity laws in the United States, and it centered
Speaker 1: around a major figure in this process, which was the
Speaker 1: American chemist Harvey Washington Wiley, who was one of the
Speaker 1: most important researchers and crusaders from the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: through the early nineteen hundreds in this world of food
Speaker 1: purity and food additives, and in this period in the
Speaker 1: United States. According to Blum, you know, there was a
Speaker 1: very little reason to believe that if you bought a
Speaker 1: packaged food product or drug product, that it would actually
Speaker 1: consist entirely or even mostly, or even at all of
Speaker 1: the food or drug that was identified on the label.
Speaker 1: Like whatever it did contain might have undergone maybe no,
Speaker 1: maybe very little testing for safety. According to Bloom, there's
Speaker 1: this whole thing about milk. She talks so like, if
Speaker 1: you bought milk in the late eighteen hundreds, you might
Speaker 1: be very likely to get bacterially contaminated milk. Thinned out
Speaker 1: with unclean water colored like so the thinning it out
Speaker 1: to stretch the milk further would give it a gross color,
Speaker 1: might look gray. So then it would get colored with
Speaker 1: chalk or something else to get rid of the weird color. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then to simulate cream floating on top, which happens
Speaker 1: with natural milk, you might get pure a calf brains
Speaker 1: in there. And then because there's no refrigeration to keep
Speaker 1: the milk fresh, it might have preservatives like formaldehyde or
Speaker 1: borax um and so. And also at the time there
Speaker 1: were just these problems with like candies and other color
Speaker 1: enhanced foods containing dies a lot of diyes at the time,
Speaker 1: or cold tar dies. But then also there would be
Speaker 1: candy diyes made of arsenic or lead compounds that would
Speaker 1: just sometimes kill children. Um. The parts about spices in
Speaker 1: this book are hilarious, as like pepper might have a
Speaker 1: significant or even majority constituency of floor sweepings and ground
Speaker 1: up bits of charred rope. Coffee to coffee might be
Speaker 1: what was it? I think maybe it's like charred sawdust
Speaker 1: with all these additives. I mean, people were selling things
Speaker 1: as food that was not food and was in many
Speaker 1: cases not safe, and in a lot of cases there
Speaker 1: just weren't comprehensive regulations that would prevent UH sellers from
Speaker 1: doing that. And so so far in this book, one
Speaker 1: thing I would say is that, uh, one thing that
Speaker 1: I kind of wish is different is I wish it
Speaker 1: dealt more with like modern scientific evaluations of additives of
Speaker 1: the period. So we get like a lot of fascinating
Speaker 1: stories about like crazy, crazy sounding preservatives and things like
Speaker 1: formaldehyde and milk which people called himbalmed milk. Um, but
Speaker 1: so far not a lot of sense of exactly like
Speaker 1: how dangerous exactly these types of additives would have been
Speaker 1: at the concentrations they were used by like modern food
Speaker 1: safety experts, and not done yet. Maybe something like that
Speaker 1: is coming up later on. But um. But even without
Speaker 1: the context of like modern scientific analysis, it is a
Speaker 1: fascinating and disgusting historical tale. And it's interesting reading about
Speaker 1: the parallels to modern times because it's it's very familiar
Speaker 1: the way that the food and drug manufacturers back then
Speaker 1: fought against regulation, you know, saying that these attempts to
Speaker 1: regulate their products were unconscionable, unacceptable attacks on liberty in
Speaker 1: the free market. You know, this has given me a
Speaker 1: wonderful idea. So in the past, on Thanksgiving, we've tried
Speaker 1: to do American Thanksgiving, we do a dangerous Foods episode,
Speaker 1: and we've kind of in the I think all the
Speaker 1: episodes in the past, we've mainly focused on like naturally
Speaker 1: occurring food stuffs, be it like a fish or you know,
Speaker 1: or some sort of you know, fun our floor, you
Speaker 1: know that that we consume and the dangers of consuming
Speaker 1: those things or that may have incorrectly been perceived to
Speaker 1: be dangerous. Yes, so but maybe we should this this
Speaker 1: is where we get another dangerous foods episode, or at
Speaker 1: least one more where we talk about we we focus
Speaker 1: on industrial food products of the past. So maybe maybe
Speaker 1: look for that this Thanksgiving from stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, on that note, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, we're gonna introduce
Speaker 1: our guest. Thank thank Okay, we're back. It's time to
Speaker 1: jump in with our interview with our guests, which we
Speaker 1: actually recorded before the episode. So if anything sounds out
Speaker 1: of order like we've gone through a time warp, we
Speaker 1: we did. Yes, but this is going to be Christian Sayer,
Speaker 1: former co host Stuff to Blow your Mind, current host
Speaker 1: of the super Context podcast. We called him up, we said, hey,
Speaker 1: we'd love to have you back on the show, uh,
Speaker 1: to discuss summer reading, just like the old days. And
Speaker 1: he said yes, and so we're gonna summon him onto
Speaker 1: the show right now. What's going on, Christian? Hi, I
Speaker 1: am talking to you all the way from Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and you are currently in Atlanta, Georgia. Technology is cool. Huh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So before we got on Mike here, Christian was telling
Speaker 1: us about how he's recording from a murder basement. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I moved into a house in northeast Portland and the
Speaker 1: basement is a lot like Buffalo Bill's house in Silence
Speaker 1: of the Lambs. You just go downstairs and then there's
Speaker 1: just endless hallways and eventually instead of coming to a
Speaker 1: pit in the floor, uh, there's my podcast studio. Well
Speaker 1: it looks like a pretty cozy pit to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's wonderful down here. I'm making it work.
Speaker 1: I found a hobo spider down here the other day.
Speaker 1: That's my only concern. Oh, were those the ones with
Speaker 1: the huge legs? Yeah, they're really big. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: seems debatable whether they're poisonous or not. I don't think
Speaker 1: they wouldn't kill you or anything. It's not like a
Speaker 1: brown rec loose, but I don't want to get bitten
Speaker 1: by one. Fair enough, alright, So it seems like you
Speaker 1: are going to share some book recommendations for Death of
Speaker 1: the Summer along alongside ours today. Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: late summer reading. It happens every year we say we're
Speaker 1: going to do summer reading and then pushing it later
Speaker 1: and later Death of Summer, yea, the death Rattle of Summer.
Speaker 1: There here are some books, okay, Yeah, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: always reading, as you dudes know, and I had to
Speaker 1: whittle it down to three things. I used to do
Speaker 1: this when I was on the show with you guys.
Speaker 1: I used to try to make it be one nonfiction book,
Speaker 1: one fiction book, and then I would always throw a
Speaker 1: graphic novel in there for good Matcher. Well, that's a
Speaker 1: fair shake. I don't think we're going to do it
Speaker 1: exactly that way today, but but yeah, that that that
Speaker 1: helps us cover the range, especially since I don't think
Speaker 1: either you or I are doing graphic novels this year.
Speaker 1: I know I read like one one good graphic novel.
Speaker 1: But you've sent it to me. Yeah, that's right, and
Speaker 1: when I was done, I sent it to you. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's this graphic novel called Dull Margaret and it is
Speaker 1: written by the actor Jim Broadbent. Oh, the art is
Speaker 1: by an artist named Dix d i X and it's
Speaker 1: published by Fantagraphics. I believe um, But yeah, I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by just the idea of a Jim Broadbent written graphic novel.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite Jim Broadbent bits is in a
Speaker 1: Hot Fuzz when he's running away and he makes the
Speaker 1: lion roar. Jim Broadbent is so good. I think you
Speaker 1: were actually telling me about this. Robert she said, I
Speaker 1: had no idea he'd make a great actor, but uh,
Speaker 1: of course he makes a great actor, would make a
Speaker 1: great writer of graphic novels as well. But he he's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite actors because he's like a human
Speaker 1: version of the Chamberlin's skex Is from the Dark Crystal.
Speaker 1: You know, his his entire face is that sound. But
Speaker 1: he probably shouldn't diverge too much. But are you guys
Speaker 1: watching the Netflix prequel? I haven't started yet. We're gonna
Speaker 1: family um, oh, Simon Pegg, Yeah, I heard he's sort
Speaker 1: of a standout. He's he's the Chamberlain new Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I believe that the previous actor died many years ago.
Speaker 1: But does he do the the the high pitched oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, definitely. It's it's a highly prominent Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I recommend it. It's good so far. I'm only a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes into it. But we're not here to
Speaker 1: talk about television, guys. We're here to talk about books.
Speaker 1: So I'll tell you about the graphic novel that I
Speaker 1: selected that I've been reading this summer. It's called Schangra
Speaker 1: Law and it is a science fiction graphic novel uh
Speaker 1: from Europe. It is published by Ankara Editions, and it's written,
Speaker 1: drawn and colored by Matteo Bablei or maybe it's mattau
Speaker 1: Bable I can't really pronounce. Great. Yeah, I believe it's
Speaker 1: like the French version of that um and it came
Speaker 1: out in s And this is the most stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind book I've read this summer, so I
Speaker 1: definitely wanted to share it with you guys. Um, First
Speaker 1: of all, the art, this guy's art is insane, like
Speaker 1: he is this meticulous Draftsman, if you look up images
Speaker 1: from it, you'll see that he does these impeccable backgrounds
Speaker 1: that are all in really well detailed perspective because the
Speaker 1: whole thing takes place on a space station that's orbiting
Speaker 1: Earth and its way in the future, and uh so
Speaker 1: you just get these wonderful long shots of people walking
Speaker 1: down these like endless corridors on this massive space station.
Speaker 1: I'm looking up some art from it right now. So
Speaker 1: is the space station Does it kind of have some
Speaker 1: traditional architecture style, Like it doesn't look like a space
Speaker 1: ship but more like, I don't know, old buildings in
Speaker 1: the sky. Yeah. Inside, it's designed to be like an
Speaker 1: ecosystem for the human race. So the plot of the book,
Speaker 1: while the premise of the book is that there is
Speaker 1: no longer inhabitable space on the planet Earth. People can't
Speaker 1: live up there anymore, so they've all moved to this
Speaker 1: space station and yeah, everything it's it's very kind of
Speaker 1: like Blade Runner inside, like the architecture and what they
Speaker 1: have for technology. But it is a pretty heavy criticism
Speaker 1: of our current modern technology in that the culture on
Speaker 1: the space station is all run by this big corporation
Speaker 1: that owns the space station, and they are also the
Speaker 1: corporation that makes like all the phones and gadgets and
Speaker 1: stuff that the people have to distract themselves with on
Speaker 1: board the ship. Uh. In the main plot is about
Speaker 1: this I guess astronaut is the best term for him.
Speaker 1: He's a scientist who the corporation basically hires to try
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to create a a like
Speaker 1: alter alternate human race that is better than human and
Speaker 1: is capable of functioning near the sun, living near the sun,
Speaker 1: and uh, he finds out that he's kind of a
Speaker 1: pawn in this whole game. And the other thing that's
Speaker 1: really interesting about this world is that there are no
Speaker 1: animals on board the ship because all the animals died
Speaker 1: in whatever happened on Earth, so it's assumed to be
Speaker 1: like climate change disaster and uh, but there are these
Speaker 1: things called animoids that are human like, they're humanoids, but
Speaker 1: they have the features of old animals. So there's like
Speaker 1: dog animoids, cat animoids, I think there's like a fox
Speaker 1: one um. And they are treated like the lower class
Speaker 1: on this space station. So the humans are all kind
Speaker 1: of placated with their cell phones and then basically they
Speaker 1: take out all their aggression on these animoids and long
Speaker 1: story short, like the main character Scott finds out that
Speaker 1: things aren't the way that he thought they were. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just it is in an amazing piece of work.
Speaker 1: It's just this big, massive story. The artwork is just
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't imagine how many hours went into
Speaker 1: drawing this thing. It's gorgeous. I can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 1: And it's it's the perfect kind of science fiction in
Speaker 1: that it's really about today's problems with society told through
Speaker 1: the lens of this like you know, far reaching sci
Speaker 1: fi future. And is this a self contained, like single
Speaker 1: graphic novel? Is this a series? My understanding is itself contained?
Speaker 1: I have not seen anything about there being more stories
Speaker 1: in this. Uh. Sort of what you were talking about
Speaker 1: reminds me of the satirical role in the the implicit
Speaker 1: criticism of like capitalism that's in like Total Recall, where
Speaker 1: you know, Cohagen controls the entire environment on Mars, where
Speaker 1: you know, like it's a business, but it's through this
Speaker 1: business is the only way that you can get air
Speaker 1: that you breathe, and that that's always been an interesting
Speaker 1: potential I think of science fiction that you and like
Speaker 1: by removing people from Earth, you create these scenarios where
Speaker 1: whatever power, whatever the power structure is, this government or
Speaker 1: this business or whatever, controls the entire environment in which
Speaker 1: you can survive, whether that's a colony on another planet
Speaker 1: that's otherwise uninhabitable or a space station like in this
Speaker 1: graphic novel um And I feel like it kind of
Speaker 1: highlights the ways that we sort of have this illusion
Speaker 1: that like, you know, well, we're we're sort of free
Speaker 1: on Earth because like if we don't want to depend
Speaker 1: on governments and corporations, we could retreat to nature and
Speaker 1: survive and you know, we could just breathe the air
Speaker 1: and live off the land. I mean, whether that's actually
Speaker 1: feasible for a modern person is I guess more debatable,
Speaker 1: or you know, whether it's feasible like to actually that
Speaker 1: you could actually escape a society and you know, like
Speaker 1: in the developed world. But yeah, but what's a pure
Speaker 1: form of or more of an impure form of disruption
Speaker 1: than destroying the environment or taking humanity and moving into
Speaker 1: a place where there is no sustainable environment for our speech.
Speaker 1: And we've already partially done that, I mean in multiple ways,
Speaker 1: we've like sort of destroyed our ability to just like
Speaker 1: retreat to nature and say no, I opt out. But
Speaker 1: like this is taking that to the ultimate extreme. If
Speaker 1: you're on a space station or if you're on a
Speaker 1: colony on an uninhabitable planet, you literally can't opt out.
Speaker 1: It's just your survival is totally dependent on whoever owns
Speaker 1: whatever this environment is. Yeah, you guys are heading on
Speaker 1: exactly the heaviest theme in this story. Uh slight spoilers.
Speaker 1: This isn't going to like ruin anything for anybody. But
Speaker 1: the pivot point in the story is when the protagonist
Speaker 1: finds out that the corporation has been lying to them
Speaker 1: for at least a century now and that Earth is inhabitable.
Speaker 1: This is they've been keeping them on the space station
Speaker 1: so they can keep order and control. This is the
Speaker 1: same twist. I don't mean to diminish it because this
Speaker 1: does look great, but it's a solid twist. It's the
Speaker 1: exact same twist as Highlander to the Quickening. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, it's it's well worth copying in a graphic
Speaker 1: novel from France. Of course Highland or two would be
Speaker 1: the inspiration for for the levels of the shield are normal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Basically they find out like, oh, we could have
Speaker 1: been living on Earth the whole time, and they that
Speaker 1: makes them even more conscious of how they've been controlled
Speaker 1: and placated and uh and uh basically, you know, society
Speaker 1: starts to unravel from there. Well, that sounds really interesting.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to check that out. What have
Speaker 1: you gotten next, Christian? Let's see, I'm going to save
Speaker 1: the best for last. I my fiction pick for this
Speaker 1: summer is something that I think some people think of
Speaker 1: as a classic, but I had never read it before.
Speaker 1: So I took the time to sit down and read
Speaker 1: Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two mystery novel by her. Uh yeah, just last year,
Speaker 1: one of the books I recommended. Also, I guess I
Speaker 1: was hesitant about it be is it's a classic, I
Speaker 1: assume a lot of people have already read it. But
Speaker 1: the Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I read
Speaker 1: that for the first time last year's phenomenal, phenomenal ghost story. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. Um,
Speaker 1: I read Haunting of Hill House and the Lottery like
Speaker 1: a lot of people in uh, you know, English classes
Speaker 1: in high school, and then I think I read a
Speaker 1: Hunting of Hill House in college, but I never got
Speaker 1: around to this one, and everybody said to me, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the best book by her. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: heralded as being this real exemplar version of weird fiction.
Speaker 1: And so I wanted to figure out, you know what,
Speaker 1: what it was all about. Why why did everyone celebrate it?
Speaker 1: And so I finally sat down and read it. And
Speaker 1: it is a weird little story. It's not what I expected,
Speaker 1: especially based on reading her other stuff, but it's it's Um,
Speaker 1: I definitely recommend it. Um. The do you want me
Speaker 1: to tell you, guys the plot of this book? I
Speaker 1: haven't read this one. I'n't ready. Okay, I'll try not
Speaker 1: to go all the way through. I'll just give you
Speaker 1: the introductory plot. Um. So, there are these two sisters,
Speaker 1: Marrakat and Constance, and I believe they live in Vermont,
Speaker 1: in a small town in Vermont. It's based on the
Speaker 1: same town that Shirley Jackson was living in at the
Speaker 1: time that she wrote this. And the backstory is that
Speaker 1: their entire family was poisoned to death a few years
Speaker 1: previous to this, uh, and they were the only survivors
Speaker 1: as well. As their uncle Julian, and Julian was poisoned
Speaker 1: but not enough to kill him, so now he's like
Speaker 1: he's bound to a wheelchair, and he also has some
Speaker 1: like pretty significant memory problems. But the girls and Julian
Speaker 1: basically stay in this house all the time, and it's
Speaker 1: ultimately this exploration of a gore phobia. I think Shirley
Speaker 1: Jackson was struggling with that at the time, and she
Speaker 1: felt like an outsider in this small town in Vermont,
Speaker 1: and so she was trying to process those feelings through
Speaker 1: this book. So Constance is a total of groa fo
Speaker 1: never leaves the house. Julian can't leave the house because
Speaker 1: he's bound by a wheelchair. So Marrakat, who's the youngest,
Speaker 1: she's like seventeen years old, she's the only one who
Speaker 1: ever leaves the grounds of the house. She usually just
Speaker 1: goes to town and like picks up their groceries and
Speaker 1: brings them back. And everybody in the town hates the people,
Speaker 1: the main characters of the book. They hate them because
Speaker 1: they're wealthy and because they live in like a big,
Speaker 1: nice house, but they also hate them because they've never
Speaker 1: solved the mystery as to who killed the rest of
Speaker 1: their family with the poison Christian. Have you played the
Speaker 1: the card game Gloom, because because this this sounds like
Speaker 1: you could have easily along with the Adams family and
Speaker 1: other you know, obvious references, could have been the inspiration
Speaker 1: for this. Oh no, I haven't played that. I just
Speaker 1: got a board game called gloom Haven. But I don't
Speaker 1: know if they're connected or not. I don't. This one
Speaker 1: has more of aston Edward Gory kind of style to it.
Speaker 1: But the whole premises that you you build. It's like
Speaker 1: a kind of a it's not quite a deck building game,
Speaker 1: I guess, but it's a your building. You're putting this
Speaker 1: family on the table there, and you just want horrible
Speaker 1: things to happen to them, and whoever whoever manages to
Speaker 1: like kill off their family first wins. But there are
Speaker 1: all these little details in the cards about all the
Speaker 1: horrible things that have happened, like the tragic nature of
Speaker 1: the family and the gothic nature of the family. But
Speaker 1: but it reminds me a lot of what you're describing here,
Speaker 1: Like this family could very well be played on the
Speaker 1: table and in a game of Gloom. Yeah. Absolutely, it
Speaker 1: sounds like if it wasn't influenced by by this, then
Speaker 1: maybe it was influenced by something that Shirley Jackson had
Speaker 1: influenced because she's so she's such a like strong presence
Speaker 1: and horror and mystery fiction, I think as a as
Speaker 1: an influence. Um, and it's yeah, it's it's like the
Speaker 1: Haunting of Hill House, Joe, and that it's very internal
Speaker 1: and it's a lot about the thoughts going through the
Speaker 1: main characters heads, uh and things. Basically, you know, the
Speaker 1: conflict point that caused things to change is that a
Speaker 1: cousin of theirs appears out of nowhere and moves in
Speaker 1: with them and wants to change things, wants to take
Speaker 1: advantage of the family fortune, and uh, you can see
Speaker 1: a running theme here. Then things fall apart. So oh man,
Speaker 1: that the Haunting of Hill House also has a great
Speaker 1: like freeloader guy kind of character. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Um.
Speaker 1: Haunting of Hillhouse is fascinating. Have you looked into those
Speaker 1: adaptations of it? No, I've actually been meaning to do
Speaker 1: a double feature one night to watch the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: three film and then watch the nineteen or whenever it
Speaker 1: was the one with Katherine Zada Jones and Liam Neeson.
Speaker 1: I think that's the only one I've seen it had
Speaker 1: Owen Wilson, Yeah, Owen Wilson, Yeah, I've heard it's bad,
Speaker 1: but I kind of want to see it anyway because
Speaker 1: I love that like late nineties c g I horror phase.
Speaker 1: It's so it just does not hold up at all all,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not as good as Thirteen Ghosts. That's
Speaker 1: how bad it is. Well, that's a good point. I
Speaker 1: actually like Thirteen Ghosts. Um. But I would point out
Speaker 1: that the trajectory of the adaptations of Haunting of Hillhouse
Speaker 1: have like sort of weaved into what's great about Shirley
Speaker 1: Jackson and then weaved out of it. Um. The early
Speaker 1: one is great because you never see anything. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: all done through what's behind the door. The door bulges,
Speaker 1: you hear scary noises on the other side of the door,
Speaker 1: but everything's left to your imagination and then you're right Joe.
Speaker 1: In the nineties version, they just pulled out all the
Speaker 1: stops with c g I and there's like shape shifting
Speaker 1: statues and monsters and stuff in this Haunted house. It's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: but it's like the Mortal Kombat movie level of c
Speaker 1: g I. Yeah, yeah, exactly, UM, not for lack of trying,
Speaker 1: though the performances in it are great. What's her name,
Speaker 1: Lily Taylor plays the protagonist. Um. And then there's that
Speaker 1: most recent season of the TV show Haunt, The Haunting
Speaker 1: of Hill House on Netflix. Oh yeah, I haven't watched this,
Speaker 1: but I've heard it was only loosely based on the novel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right, So it's not connected to the novel.
Speaker 1: It has similar themes to the novel, but it's not
Speaker 1: the same plot at all. But I think you can
Speaker 1: see in that an attempt to merge the two things together,
Speaker 1: the like dreadful terror of the first one. And then
Speaker 1: there is a little bit of c G I like
Speaker 1: boo jump scare type stuff in the UM TV series
Speaker 1: as well. In the version of The Haunting of Hill House,
Speaker 1: I read there was actually an introduction or a preface
Speaker 1: or something that's some kind of piece of writing beforehand
Speaker 1: by Germo del Toro where he talked about his appreciation
Speaker 1: for the novel. And I remember it's been a little
Speaker 1: while now, but I vaguely recalled that he talked about, UM,
Speaker 1: the way that the house itself is written of like
Speaker 1: a predator in the natural world, the way that it functions,
Speaker 1: like a lion on the savannah or something that it
Speaker 1: tries to isolate and pick off weak members of the group. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember all that. That's great. Yeah, that's a really
Speaker 1: smart observation on his part. Um there is there are
Speaker 1: adaptations of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. In fact,
Speaker 1: just last year, I think a film version of it
Speaker 1: came out and it stars Sebastian stand Tisa Farmisia, Alexandra
Speaker 1: di Dario, and Crispin Gover Glover plays. Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: have not seen it. I'm hoping that they didn't inject
Speaker 1: it with as much c g I as went into
Speaker 1: the nineties hunting Ville House. But yeah, it looks from
Speaker 1: watching the trailer, it looks very faithful to the book.
Speaker 1: Well I gotta read that one too, now, all right,
Speaker 1: so you have one more pick to share with us.
Speaker 1: What what do you have and what is the classification
Speaker 1: on this one? All right? I saved the best for
Speaker 1: last because I know that this is something that you
Speaker 1: guys are going to be excited about. Because maybe the
Speaker 1: listeners aren't aware, but the three of us gentlemen used
Speaker 1: to sit together in a studio. I think it might
Speaker 1: be the same studio you're sitting in now and talk
Speaker 1: to the audience of stuff to blow your mind over
Speaker 1: Facebook every Friday. Yes, and this was a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. We would uh, we would frame it around
Speaker 1: trailers for horror movies that we're connected to, the topics
Speaker 1: that we had, you know, been covering on the show
Speaker 1: that week, and one that always came up. We all
Speaker 1: agree that we love this movie. Is They Live, John Carpenters.
Speaker 1: They Live. So I got this book called They Live.
Speaker 1: A Visual and Cultural Awakening and it is. It's this
Speaker 1: amazing collection put together by Rough Trade Publications, And you
Speaker 1: can order the book through Mondo, although I think it
Speaker 1: might be sold out now. They like, I got like
Speaker 1: a second printing of it. They like every year release
Speaker 1: a couple of copies of it. Um and it is.
Speaker 1: It looks like a magazine like it looks like a big,
Speaker 1: thick like variety magazine type thing, because it's designed to
Speaker 1: look like the magazines on newsstand in They Live. So
Speaker 1: the front of it just says obey and big letters
Speaker 1: on it um. But inside it is it's a it's
Speaker 1: a proper book with just a bunch of content in
Speaker 1: it that's all related to the movie and trying to
Speaker 1: dissect the movie and better understand it. So Uh. It
Speaker 1: includes the original short story that the movie is based on,
Speaker 1: as well as the comic book adaptation that they also
Speaker 1: based it on, both of which were written by a
Speaker 1: guy named Rain Nelson. And then there are articles examining
Speaker 1: how things work in the movie, like um, gender roles
Speaker 1: or portrayals of capitalism, and they're written by people like
Speaker 1: John Grant, Slaboy, Jack Shepherd, Fairy, Roger Luckhurst, and someone
Speaker 1: named brandalism Um. Some of those may be familiar to Shepherd, Fairies,
Speaker 1: the guy who made the obey stickers. Uh. Does anybody
Speaker 1: explain the wrestling match in the middle of the movie.
Speaker 1: I want to scholarly dissertation on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: There is quite a bit of conversation I believe in
Speaker 1: uh John Grant's piece. I'm not sure which piece it was,
Speaker 1: but they do talk about that that epic wrestling match. Well, now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, it is a It is a It
Speaker 1: is a standard fisticuffs fight that has some wrestling moves
Speaker 1: incorporated into it. No, I think it is notable for
Speaker 1: how long it goes on like notable for its length,
Speaker 1: but but it's it's more like they're just a few
Speaker 1: spots that are incorporated into the action, you know, clearly
Speaker 1: because Roddy Roddy Piper is the star exactly. Y yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean just like every time you think the fight's over,
Speaker 1: it starts up again. And that's the quality it has.
Speaker 1: That's like a wrestling match. And the I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that stands out about it is that
Speaker 1: this is the This is an example of a fight
Speaker 1: in a Western motion pick sure, in which the fight
Speaker 1: actually tells a story. And you you see much more
Speaker 1: of that in um in like Hong Kong cinema, it's
Speaker 1: in Japanese cinema, etcetera. But in Western cinema, especially in
Speaker 1: recent decades, it's it's all about just you know, slash
Speaker 1: cuts and a kind of a feeling of a fight
Speaker 1: happening without like the story of the fight. Yes, I agree,
Speaker 1: I hate most action movies because most action movies are
Speaker 1: boring because most fighting in movies is photographed in a
Speaker 1: way that is dramatically totally static, like there there's nothing
Speaker 1: really at stake other than like, I guess somebody's gonna wine,
Speaker 1: so in in in to whatever degree the fight and
Speaker 1: They Live resembles a wrestling match, I think it's I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously it's part of it is because there are wrestling
Speaker 1: moves roddy roddy pipers there, but professional wrestling is a
Speaker 1: a fictional uh fight, like a physical performance that that
Speaker 1: should tell a story. So yeah, yeah, except it's it's
Speaker 1: a fight. Uh So I'm curious that you have what
Speaker 1: do wee they go into into this, like who who
Speaker 1: is responsible for that that battle appearing like it does
Speaker 1: in the film. So one of the essays in here,
Speaker 1: I think it might be Craig Oldham's essay, Um, not sure,
Speaker 1: but one of the essays talks about that fight scene
Speaker 1: as being this great example of how difficult it is
Speaker 1: to pull yourself away from ideology and that um, if
Speaker 1: they Live is showing you what ideology is when you
Speaker 1: put on the sunglasses. Then when rowdy roddy Piper goes
Speaker 1: to Keith David and he says, hey, put on these glasses,
Speaker 1: and Keith David, no matter what, doesn't want to put
Speaker 1: those sunglasses on, to the point that he fist fights
Speaker 1: his friend for ten minutes in an alleyway uh. That
Speaker 1: Their Their argument is is like, look, this is proof
Speaker 1: that it's extremely difficult to pull yourself out of, you know,
Speaker 1: the culture that you live within and see it for
Speaker 1: something else. Um. And and that the fight is an
Speaker 1: example of that that, like the whole thing is Keith
Speaker 1: David is is fighting against kind of his instinct to
Speaker 1: he knows there's something else on the other side of
Speaker 1: the world, but he doesn't want to see what it is.
Speaker 1: It's interesting the way it portrays it almost like is
Speaker 1: an issue of like ego or dignity. It's like he
Speaker 1: you know, he won't stoop to putting the glasses on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean when we we see that every day. I
Speaker 1: mean I think to a certain extent we see that
Speaker 1: in ourselves too, you know. I mean with this, yeah,
Speaker 1: this this battle against the you know, the truth. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend this book because you know, I've I've loved
Speaker 1: that movie since I was a kid, but this book
Speaker 1: points out things about it that I never realized even
Speaker 1: as an adult, you know. Um. Craig Oldham has this
Speaker 1: piece in there that is about how poverty in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles is portrayed in the film and apparently, like the
Speaker 1: camp that rowdy Roddy Piper lives in was a real
Speaker 1: homeless camp that was in l A at the time,
Speaker 1: and they used the actual, um, you know, people who
Speaker 1: lived there as background actors and they live and apparently
Speaker 1: shortly after they shot this film, the city of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles tore it down. Well, isn't that what happens in
Speaker 1: the movie that like that basically the people in the
Speaker 1: homeless camp are just being assaulted by the police and
Speaker 1: the developers that come through with big machinery and everything
Speaker 1: to just drive them out. Yeah, exactly. So they point
Speaker 1: out that what you see in the movie eventually happens
Speaker 1: in real life to camp. Um. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you can argue about the politics behind it or not,
Speaker 1: but the fact is is that, yeah, they were removed
Speaker 1: from the city. Um. Yeah, I'm only about halfway through
Speaker 1: it and I'm just finding like every single piece in
Speaker 1: here is fascinating. Um. I never realized that it was
Speaker 1: based on a comic and so like a lot of
Speaker 1: the classic scenes that I remember from the movie are
Speaker 1: in this comic book that came out, you know, well
Speaker 1: before the movie was ever made. Um. But Carpenter apparently
Speaker 1: optioned it, you know, he saw it somewhere and he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I want to make something about that.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, I think like the the overall argument
Speaker 1: of this big book is like, there's so much going
Speaker 1: on in John Carpenter movies that is under the surface
Speaker 1: and isn't over you know, commentary on society, and obviously
Speaker 1: they live as one of the real big ones. There's
Speaker 1: all kinds of archived imagery in here, um from things
Speaker 1: like the w w E. So you get some perspective
Speaker 1: on rowdy Roddy Piper in it um, the relationship of
Speaker 1: uh this film to our current era and talking about
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and like I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 1: the imagery that shows Trump, but he's got like the
Speaker 1: they live alien face stuff like that. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a really interesting book. I mean, I would say, like,
Speaker 1: even if even if you weren't into the movie, which
Speaker 1: I can and imagine why you wouldn't be, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a lot to learn here. Well. I do feel like
Speaker 1: it's one of those movies that that some people may
Speaker 1: have seen when they were younger and they may have
Speaker 1: been been like, Okay, that bubble gum line is really cool,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe they pick up on some of
Speaker 1: the you know, the thematic power of it. But it's
Speaker 1: also I think easy to dismiss it if you if
Speaker 1: you haven't, you know, given it a more thoughtful viewing. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those that you go three levels all
Speaker 1: the way around on right, Like at first you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: that movie blew my mind? And then the more sophisticated
Speaker 1: person says, actually, that's a very simplistic critique of society
Speaker 1: and the movies. You know, it's kind of it's full
Speaker 1: of cliches. You know, wake up sheeple. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: but then if you get to the third level, you
Speaker 1: you you kind of come back all the way around
Speaker 1: and say there is something kind of insightful and subtle
Speaker 1: about it. Of course, the counter argument that might be
Speaker 1: that I feel like I go through all those three
Speaker 1: levels on terrible films. Oh yeah, films where they're probably
Speaker 1: there isn't really a third level there. But if I
Speaker 1: if I think about it, and if I created I
Speaker 1: think to some degree all three of us have that disease.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, certainly, I mean I do a whole show
Speaker 1: about that disease. But there is Yeah, I mean, what
Speaker 1: were we talking about before we came on air Guardians
Speaker 1: of Gohole three phases with that film yet Robert Um, Well,
Speaker 1: like I said, I've I've only seen I've only seen
Speaker 1: it once. Uh, but but now I'm kind of interested
Speaker 1: to check out the books, especially now that my my
Speaker 1: son's at the point where he could conceivably read him.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's reading all the Harry Potters so and
Speaker 1: he loves the animals. Who you know, thirty years from now,
Speaker 1: it might turn out that Guardians of Gohole was a
Speaker 1: commentary on capitalist ideology. Wait no, why did we talk
Speaker 1: about that? Is because somebody who the person who wrote
Speaker 1: it wrote something else. Oh yes, so the the So
Speaker 1: just to clarify for anyone listening, we're recording this interview
Speaker 1: before we recorded the part that you just previously heard.
Speaker 1: So Christian wasn't wasn't here? And actually, yeah, I'm referring
Speaker 1: to a conversation that Joe and I will have in
Speaker 1: the future, but we have already had on this show.
Speaker 1: But yeah, referring to stuff to blow your mind without
Speaker 1: me messing up time wise, not your fault, man, have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the book in question here is the First Painter by
Speaker 1: Katherine Lasky all right, well, Christian, before we send you
Speaker 1: on your way, I thought we should take a moment
Speaker 1: to talk about super context. Okay, yeah, sure. I do
Speaker 1: a podcast on my own now with my co host
Speaker 1: Charlie Bennett, who's also based in Atlanta near you guys,
Speaker 1: and it is we call it a podcast autopsy of media.
Speaker 1: Every week we take a look at entertainment kind of
Speaker 1: like how we are just talking about they live, uh,
Speaker 1: and we we do a deep dive into the research
Speaker 1: on it and try to figure out how it informs
Speaker 1: everyday culture. So we look at things like film, television, prose, music,
Speaker 1: and comics. Um. Basically, we're trying to apply like a
Speaker 1: critical thinking lens to the entertainment world. What are some
Speaker 1: favorite episodes of yours from the past few months that
Speaker 1: people should check out? You know, you guys just caught
Speaker 1: us at the tail end of what we were calling
Speaker 1: Lovecraft Month. For a long time, we've said we'll never
Speaker 1: do an episode on HP Lovecraft because Charlie and I
Speaker 1: both have strong feelings about his uh racism, and so
Speaker 1: what we decided to do instead to try to understand
Speaker 1: his influence on pop culture was we did five episodes
Speaker 1: on things that are all tangentially related to to Lovecraft,
Speaker 1: whether their adaptations or not. We did an episode that
Speaker 1: just came out last week on the podcast Welcome to
Speaker 1: Night Veil, which was really really insightful. I learned a
Speaker 1: lot about the podcast industry from reading about those guys. Um.
Speaker 1: We did one on the video game call of cthulu
Speaker 1: Dark Corners of the Earth. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys ever played that, Uh that there is a newer one.
Speaker 1: This one came out in like two thousand five or six.
Speaker 1: The new Call of Cthula did just come out this year.
Speaker 1: I think. We did one on the graphic novel Providence
Speaker 1: by Alan Moore and Jason Burrows, which is a real
Speaker 1: deep dive into trying to unpack Lovecraft in his influence
Speaker 1: on literature. He was from Providence, Rhode Island, right, yes, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: And then we did From Beyond, which you guys are
Speaker 1: well familiar with the Stewart Gordon film. And then the
Speaker 1: first one we did was about this novel that came
Speaker 1: out a couple of years ago and is about to
Speaker 1: be made into an HBO TV series called Lovecraft Country,
Speaker 1: and it's by Matt Ruff. Awesome Jordan Peel is producing
Speaker 1: the HBO series. The premise of Lovecraft Country is that
Speaker 1: an African American family in the nineteen fifties comes into
Speaker 1: contact with love crafty and stuff, but because they're so
Speaker 1: accustomed to prejudice in everyday life already, the dreadful nature
Speaker 1: of all of Lovecraft's monsters aren't as effective. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting book. I I was hoping for
Speaker 1: more from it, I'll be honest, but apparently the TV
Speaker 1: show all word about the TV shows sounds like they're
Speaker 1: going to expand things so that it's a lot more interesting.
Speaker 1: And uh, anything coming up that you're particularly excited about,
Speaker 1: you can share any hints. We are about to publish
Speaker 1: an episode probably by the time this comes out, Our
Speaker 1: episode on John Gardner's On Moral Fiction will be out.
Speaker 1: Are you guys familiar with John Gardener? John Gardner, the
Speaker 1: author of Grendel. Yes, that's exactly who it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I love Grendel, but I've I've never read
Speaker 1: any of his other works. So in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: he published a nonfiction book called On Moral Fiction, and
Speaker 1: it was this long. Some people call it a rant,
Speaker 1: some people call it a treatise arguing that modern day
Speaker 1: fiction is immoral and that all art and fiction has
Speaker 1: the responsibility to be moral, and including the people who
Speaker 1: criticize art and fiction. And Gardner took a lot of
Speaker 1: big name authors to task in that book, uh, and
Speaker 1: really just ripped into them about why he thought that
Speaker 1: their work was bad and why it was bad for
Speaker 1: modern culture and why it was, you know, slowing down
Speaker 1: the efforts of fiction in terms of like the human project. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so we sat down and just analyzed all the
Speaker 1: arguments around it. We talked about it's publishing, We talked
Speaker 1: about how he wrote it, when we talked about how
Speaker 1: all of these authors responded to it. So people like
Speaker 1: Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut, like all
Speaker 1: of them he attacked in this book, and essentially it
Speaker 1: ruined his career. Uh. Within Like he couldn't get good
Speaker 1: reviews for any of his books after this thing came out.
Speaker 1: And then he died in like this tragic motorcycle accident
Speaker 1: and a couple of years later, I remember reading I've
Speaker 1: read I've read about his death before. A lot of
Speaker 1: the a lot of the articles point out since you
Speaker 1: mentioned Grendel. They point out that they see a lot
Speaker 1: of parallels between his life and the way he depicts
Speaker 1: Grendel in that book. So I found it all really interesting.
Speaker 1: And I've never read Gardner before. Have you read Grendel?
Speaker 1: I have not. You should definitely read. I really recommend
Speaker 1: Grendel to to everyone. It's really just pick it up
Speaker 1: in your hands, and you will find yourself reading it,
Speaker 1: and then you'll have you will have you find yourself
Speaker 1: having read it. It's uh, it's just one of those
Speaker 1: books that just sucks you in. It's just so so
Speaker 1: well written. You do you don't even have anyone out
Speaker 1: there that you might you might be saying, well, I've
Speaker 1: never read Beyowolf from a familiar you don't. You don't
Speaker 1: need an Obayo wolf. If you if you know, be
Speaker 1: a wolf. Uh, you know you maybe you have a
Speaker 1: you know, a slide advantage. But h it's it's a
Speaker 1: book that it just stands on its own. But is
Speaker 1: that it's it's Bayowolf from the perspective of the monster Grundle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and so it's this monster that lives on
Speaker 1: the you know, the yeah, the earth rim Romer, the
Speaker 1: very boundaries of the world. Uh, you know, commenting on
Speaker 1: the nature of humanity and and and it really builds
Speaker 1: up Beaowolf. Is this you know, ultimately this just in
Speaker 1: human kind of monster like Baowolf is the monster of
Speaker 1: the Grindel. Yeah, well that sounds very John Gardner, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's good. But it's also that's kind of how
Speaker 1: he saw himself in a relationship to the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. It's a cautionary tale for sure. All right, well,
Speaker 1: well let everybody know once more where they can find
Speaker 1: super Context super context is. Our home base is Patreon,
Speaker 1: dot com, slash super Context. We have a community of
Speaker 1: listeners that participate there and that helps fund the show
Speaker 1: as well. And you can download it wherever you get podcasts.
Speaker 1: Were on Apple, Google Play, Spotify. What are the other ones? Guys?
Speaker 1: Are you still doing those ad reads? But we've we've
Speaker 1: kept we can't even keep that. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: naming all of the demons in a in any given
Speaker 1: a more. You know, you just you just have to
Speaker 1: conjure them with a symbol and then bind them with candles.
Speaker 1: Just infernal legion, that's all. You just cover them all general,
Speaker 1: we're on all of the Infernal Legion find us all
Speaker 1: of the nine Kings of Hell. Well, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us today, Christian, it's been really fun. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. Guys, it was good to talk to you.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all doing well. And say hello to
Speaker 1: everybody else at the office. We'll do and and please
Speaker 1: enjoy the rest of your summer. I think there's what
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks left, maybe a week left, a
Speaker 1: couple of hours left. Yeah, I don't know when it
Speaker 1: officially ends, but here in Portland at September three, so
Speaker 1: I don't know what day it is in Atlanta. You
Speaker 1: guys traveling backwards in time, Well, this episode is definitely
Speaker 1: coming out after September three, so uh. At any rate,
Speaker 1: I think we were perhaps recorded it just in time
Speaker 1: before the summer ended. Yeah, it's perfect. Everybody subscribe to
Speaker 1: super Context. Come on, all right, So there you have it,
Speaker 1: another episode of of summer reading. Uh is in the books. Uh,
Speaker 1: just in time or maybe a little late, depending on
Speaker 1: on on on how you view summer. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: we did it, uh, and we'll try to do it
Speaker 1: again next year, maybe a little earlier, so maybe in
Speaker 1: less than a year you'll see another Summer Summer Reading
Speaker 1: episode about eight months in the meantime, if you would
Speaker 1: like to check out past Summer Reading episodes, just past
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind in general, you
Speaker 1: can find us at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find the podcast uh anywhere you find
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Just shout out to the Infernal Legions and
Speaker 1: they will serve it to you. Um and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: beyond that, I don't know. If you want to use
Speaker 1: social media, you can, Um, you know the perils of
Speaker 1: doing that. Uh you've listened to the show, but um,
Speaker 1: you know that's that's your choice. That's not that's not
Speaker 1: ours to make for you. Don't passive aggressively shame them, Robert, No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I'm I also shaming myself. This is
Speaker 1: our this is our shame as a as a people.
Speaker 1: Uh so we all share in it. But anyway, yes,
Speaker 1: they're there social media accounts for Stuff to Plow your Mind.
Speaker 1: To do with them what you will. Um, let's see
Speaker 1: what else. Uh yeah, But the main thing is if
Speaker 1: you to support the show, the best thing you can
Speaker 1: do is, yeah, I don't can mess with social media.
Speaker 1: Just rate and review the show. Wherever you get it
Speaker 1: huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers, Maya
Speaker 1: Cole and Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: give us a feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, for just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.