Speaker 1: Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio Together Everything so down, Down Down, Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the Worst You're Ever Nap. I was very professional going
Speaker 1: for the big swings here on the worst Year Ever.
Speaker 1: We are back, Baby, I don't know how are how
Speaker 1: are you guys doing? How's everybody doing? Okay, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: as well as anyone is these days. I had an
Speaker 1: exciting day. I got up at ten, which is Sophie
Speaker 1: will tell you very very um, and I got right
Speaker 1: to work composing a new version of the song but Baby,
Speaker 1: It's Cold Outside, starring Hitler and Nava Brown. Hitler takes
Speaker 1: the ladies role in that um, which makes a lot
Speaker 1: of s because instead of being worried about what his
Speaker 1: family will say, he's worried about what the other members
Speaker 1: of the Nazi High Command, who have turned him into
Speaker 1: a sex sym and need him to be perpetually available
Speaker 1: to the German woman, what they'll say if he goes
Speaker 1: home and it's the one singing but Hitler, It's cold outside.
Speaker 1: I'm just so impressed. See all that you can accomplish
Speaker 1: when you wake up just a little bit earlier. Need
Speaker 1: tap into those morning creativity juices. I still haven't recorded
Speaker 1: those ads, Sophie. So yeah, there were priorities. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I accept that seems fair trade off. Yeah. Just let
Speaker 1: the advertisers know what you were up to, Robert. Just
Speaker 1: let the sponsors know. Hey, I'm trying to see if
Speaker 1: anyone wants to buy my Hitler. It's cold outside, so
Speaker 1: just and the When our adopts team messages me for
Speaker 1: the I don't know if youth time asking for an ad,
Speaker 1: I'll just say listen. Robert was very busy, okay, but
Speaker 1: Hitler and they'll be like and Brown right right, they'll
Speaker 1: be like a fair h uh. Do I want the
Speaker 1: ending spoiled for me? Is it is this song? Is
Speaker 1: it like go Places? Oh? Yeah, I mean well no,
Speaker 1: actually Hitler Hitler leaves in order to plan further the
Speaker 1: invasion of Poland. Um and Ava christ yourself to sleep.
Speaker 1: Um it's a good song, yeah, like all good songs.
Speaker 1: I think it's good to be the hit of next
Speaker 1: winter when I when I get it properly produced, um collab.
Speaker 1: I think Cody is always talking about producing music, So
Speaker 1: send it over. Maybe a new theme song for our
Speaker 1: well postal services. That's exactly right, um, I've always wanted
Speaker 1: to be the postal service of reimagined Christmas songs featuring Hitler. Hitler,
Speaker 1: Yeah great, specific right, um waving from such great Reichs.
Speaker 1: Come down boy nine. Stuff happening? Is there news? Oh god, no,
Speaker 1: why would you even ask that? No, we're on our
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro book Club trajectory. Still we are. Can we
Speaker 1: talk about Josh Wedden for a second. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have a really narrow thing I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: which is that, like within the car, one of the
Speaker 1: things I think is frustrating is this this need to
Speaker 1: when when it comes out that somebody has done like
Speaker 1: shitty stuff, um, pretend that like you never liked. There's
Speaker 1: like there's this this thing going on when now people
Speaker 1: are being like, oh well he wasn't that big a
Speaker 1: part of Buffy um or oh well he like and
Speaker 1: it's like like there it's this attempt because they're fans
Speaker 1: of the show he made, and also they find his
Speaker 1: behavior unacceptable, which it is they feel this need to
Speaker 1: be like, um, well he wasn't like you know that
Speaker 1: much of this or that, Like it's this idea that
Speaker 1: like if he turned out to be bad, he can't
Speaker 1: have actually been good at making content that I liked. Uh,
Speaker 1: And I think that's a misdirected impulse. Interesting, Um, I
Speaker 1: would uh added that I think part of it is
Speaker 1: also that, um, the one could like described like we
Speaker 1: we didn't speak, you know, like the well that happened
Speaker 1: of it all. Yes, And I feel like that it
Speaker 1: was fine for the time when he did it, and
Speaker 1: it caught on and so everyone does it now in
Speaker 1: all the things, and so that is stuff part of yes,
Speaker 1: And that's part of also the backlash of like he
Speaker 1: created this awful thing that's everywhere now. Yeah, well not
Speaker 1: be like you can watch Firefly and there's we didn't
Speaker 1: speak in it, but it still fits the tone of
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah. As opposed to other other works, I
Speaker 1: would I would say, well, that's one of the things.
Speaker 1: I think there's this this because we've gotten so like
Speaker 1: exhausted from it. This in this I like tendency to
Speaker 1: be like, oh it was always like it's a horrible
Speaker 1: trend that he introduced, as opposed to like, well, he
Speaker 1: wrote some stuff that people liked and everybody copied him.
Speaker 1: It's like bullet time with the matrix, like it's he
Speaker 1: really like weed and speak is like the verbal equivalent
Speaker 1: of bullet time. And that's why it became exhausting, because
Speaker 1: Hollywood is not very creative, and if they see something
Speaker 1: that works, they run that motherfucker into the ground as
Speaker 1: fast as they can. Yeah, there's a reason that caught on,
Speaker 1: and there's a reason it got really bad. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it was. It was. It's the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: if if Josh Weeden had always kind of stayed at
Speaker 1: the level of fame he was when Buffy was on,
Speaker 1: and the same thing of his shows, like he had
Speaker 1: a bunch of one in two season shows with little
Speaker 1: cult followings, I don't think anyone would have gotten exhausted
Speaker 1: by the way he wrote dialogue. But it became it
Speaker 1: ate everything, um, and it led to this kind of
Speaker 1: inability within the Hollywood to have any kind of moment,
Speaker 1: like this thing that's constant and Marvel, where like nothing
Speaker 1: gets to have any weight because you have to have
Speaker 1: like a crack every everyone say, yeah, it's very like
Speaker 1: it created this thing that Marvel does specifically, but other
Speaker 1: things do generally where you don't allow uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the emotion of a scene or literally again to sort
Speaker 1: of land which is actually again, I'm not even I'm
Speaker 1: not even really a wedding fan. I've never even watched Buffy.
Speaker 1: But it's not a thing that I think he actually
Speaker 1: did in most of his I guess you could say
Speaker 1: with like is more like like a Ventures, but like
Speaker 1: you know, within Firefly at least, and even like stuff
Speaker 1: like Dr Horrible, he had the ability to have like
Speaker 1: a scene that was sad, not like he he didn't
Speaker 1: do the thing that that people did when they started
Speaker 1: ripping off, like the kind of the way he wrote Dialogue,
Speaker 1: which I find interesting the genre of itself people start
Speaker 1: to emulate, it becomes its own thing, not unlike Wes
Speaker 1: Anderson type stuff. Yeah exactly, um or or what's his name?
Speaker 1: The Nightmare Before Christmas guy, Tim Burton, a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff that Burton defied. Anyway, I think that like obviously
Speaker 1: his behaviors sucked up in Horrible, But I find it
Speaker 1: interesting the way in which I think when it comes
Speaker 1: to like the stuff that people are now criticizing about
Speaker 1: his his work, it's more just like, yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: happens when your ship is popular, it gets it gets
Speaker 1: turned into something insufferable within about four years, especially when
Speaker 1: Disney yes, yes, anyway, you guys wanna do something fun
Speaker 1: before Disney buys our senses of humor. This is quickly
Speaker 1: become a highlight of my week that I look forward
Speaker 1: to talking about Ben Shapiro's Yeah, reading these books and
Speaker 1: I'm going to be sad when it's over. I'll be
Speaker 1: honest too. This is a little o ways is in
Speaker 1: the Sea, and I think maybe what we could do
Speaker 1: when we finished this book is we could go back
Speaker 1: to True Allegiance but find the Spanish translation and we
Speaker 1: could all learn Spanish together in an attempt to read
Speaker 1: True Allegiance like I did with the in It in
Speaker 1: Latin when I was next Cool. That's a good idea
Speaker 1: for an app, anyone, If any developers are listening a
Speaker 1: teacher Spanish foreign language learning, UM, get on it. At
Speaker 1: least three people will download the app. The three of
Speaker 1: us we will not, and then I will travel to
Speaker 1: Chiapas and tell everyone I meet take a bullet for you,
Speaker 1: babe and Espanol. I see no flaws with this plan. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Download promo code uh utopia h which is the title
Speaker 1: of that short story we're about to read. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I I will say I will miss this. It is
Speaker 1: really entertaining. I don't think he realized how entertaining his
Speaker 1: writing is. Um in the in the way that it
Speaker 1: is obviously who writes bad things on purpose and then
Speaker 1: releases them. Um but um cult following Ben did it?
Speaker 1: Um where we leave off, we haven't started. H that's right.
Speaker 1: I think you read the first sentence, but you can
Speaker 1: do that again. Um. So this is the final Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the final short story, collection of three short stories.
Speaker 1: It is fifteen pages. Um uh similar you know, it's
Speaker 1: same presentation, similar font uh, similar frequency of formatting, issues
Speaker 1: with the indentation on paragraphs. I feel like there's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of similarities, as there have been
Speaker 1: through all of his writing, despite the genre, despite the message.
Speaker 1: It's always kind of the same anyway. UM So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is called Utopia. And as we discovered early late
Speaker 1: last week, the very first sentence is in all caps.
Speaker 1: It is a quote. Somebody is screaming all men are
Speaker 1: created equal. Okay, that's the first. That's bad, even though
Speaker 1: that's also a thing the founding Fathers wrote in Ben
Speaker 1: Shapiro can't stop coming over the Adams right his favorite
Speaker 1: musical seventy six, and that sounds right, Yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 1: I mean it does have Mr Feenie, and look, I
Speaker 1: actually have nothing against seventeen. Mr Feenie is um oh
Speaker 1: geez one second, I forget which one of them, but
Speaker 1: he's he's gonna major role um which despite range the
Speaker 1: fundamental problematic aspects John Adams, he's John Adams. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: obviously the deification of the Founding Fathers is problematic, but
Speaker 1: just as a musical, pretty fun musical. Mr Feenie is
Speaker 1: great in it. Yeah, also still alive. I just googled
Speaker 1: that and found that out. That's right, William Daniels. Mr
Speaker 1: Feenie still young on the Girl Meets World reboots. So again,
Speaker 1: good it is. It is nice to know that that
Speaker 1: Mr Feenie still guiding their lives, helping helping children meet
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, yeah, okay, we should probably so. I
Speaker 1: guess I'll check out sent at some point. I've never
Speaker 1: listened to it. If you want to see Mr Feenie
Speaker 1: sing some ship as John Adams, that's basically your only
Speaker 1: option as far as I'm aware. Yeah, we needed a
Speaker 1: John Adams HBO show, needed more more show tunes in it.
Speaker 1: You just had Mr There. We are, all right, never
Speaker 1: going to get through these created equal first line new
Speaker 1: paragraph formatting issue. Um. He had seen those words somewhere before.
Speaker 1: They were hazy in his memory. They were a dream,
Speaker 1: only partially remembered after waking up with bright morning light
Speaker 1: hitting his eyes. Each day he thought he came closer
Speaker 1: to remembering where he had seen them before, but then
Speaker 1: he would shake his head and moving with the teeming
Speaker 1: crowd past the enormous archway emblazoned with those words, past
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Education. He knew what education was. This
Speaker 1: is a parenthetical. He knew what education was, but I
Speaker 1: had no idea what a ministry. This is going to
Speaker 1: make me. Oh, he's trying to Yeah, he's trying to
Speaker 1: do a nineteen eighty four. But again is bad everything
Speaker 1: the liberals are bad. Bah, well just a also it's
Speaker 1: it's just bad. It's not very good, very good writing. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I think if you compare, if you, if you
Speaker 1: want to go listener, grab your copy of nineteen four
Speaker 1: and just kind of read the first page or two
Speaker 1: how Orwell introduces the way in which their thoughts have
Speaker 1: been like limited, it's it's it's you know, it'll be
Speaker 1: a fun compare it's better. Yes, yeah, you might call
Speaker 1: it like a masterpiece, as opposed to this, which is
Speaker 1: clunky and and derivative, like the written like someone's bad
Speaker 1: script for a television show that they're trying to sell
Speaker 1: to HPO, which I'm sure Ben did. Did you say HPO?
Speaker 1: Because because I'm also a hack in a fraud. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why. That's how what makes you qualified to you know?
Speaker 1: That's HPO. Is is Home Pox Office, and it's a
Speaker 1: company that infects you with smallpox at home, pending on
Speaker 1: what show you watch. Yeah, exactly, it beams, it beams
Speaker 1: it into your blood. Yeah. Shockingly, they've they've they've gotten
Speaker 1: four billion dollars in venture capital funding, so I think
Speaker 1: they're gonna make it. Yeah, coming soon to a home
Speaker 1: near you, with your at home using the gig economy
Speaker 1: to spread pox. Give me the next sentence. All right,
Speaker 1: we're in the second paragraph. Still, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go back like because like almost out of outbreak. Then.
Speaker 1: The lovely thing about his writing is that he makes
Speaker 1: you want to stop in the middle of a sentence
Speaker 1: to talk about what a bad sentence? So many episodes
Speaker 1: out of this exactly, and he he's done it again
Speaker 1: because we stopped in the middle of that sentence. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to start the sentence again. Uh, which the
Speaker 1: sentence starts past the enormous archway emblazoned with those words,
Speaker 1: which is a great sentence. That's a that's a clause,
Speaker 1: we call it all right. Past the enormous archway emblazoned
Speaker 1: with those words, Past the Ministry of Education. He knew
Speaker 1: what education was, but had no idea what a ministry was.
Speaker 1: Past the Ministry of Price Control. That's actually I think
Speaker 1: that's not you editorializing. Okay, no, yeah, sorry, this is
Speaker 1: a parenthetic. That was a parenthetical. He knew what education was,
Speaker 1: had no idea what ministry was. This is all separated
Speaker 1: from with semi colon's uh so, continuing past the Ministry
Speaker 1: of Price Control parenthetical, he had no idea what price
Speaker 1: control was, semi colon. Past the Ministry of the Chancellor parenthetical.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew who the Chancellor was period. Who is he? Well,
Speaker 1: I I hope, I hope we find out, because we
Speaker 1: do not in this next sentence. Uh. Finally, he would
Speaker 1: shuffle to his workstation at the Ministry of Energy, where
Speaker 1: he would spend his day turning on an office pigot
Speaker 1: sounds inefficient. Yeah, I mean I think the purpose of
Speaker 1: the thing the point is making here is that like
Speaker 1: it's some socialist state where everybody has to have a job,
Speaker 1: but they don't have as like a poor man's poor
Speaker 1: man's poor man's sucking Brazil. It's just like yeah, And
Speaker 1: Ben doesn't really want you to think too much about
Speaker 1: that bit, because if the point he is making is that, well,
Speaker 1: actually there's not enough work that needs to be done
Speaker 1: for all of the people that there are doing jobs,
Speaker 1: then is the answer that people should have leisure time?
Speaker 1: Like what is what it? Maybe there's another option there.
Speaker 1: He's just trying to paint some disgusting version, you know,
Speaker 1: the things that they want people to believe. That's it's
Speaker 1: interesting to be because four again very chilling vision of
Speaker 1: a society that's completely controlled. Um Or Well does that
Speaker 1: by talking about the ways in which languages is changed,
Speaker 1: fundamentally limit the ways people can think, the destruction of
Speaker 1: like concepts of the family, all these different these different
Speaker 1: things that make people feel inhuman when you get inside
Speaker 1: their heads. Bins. One of the first things he focuses
Speaker 1: on his price controls that's very funny to me, that like,
Speaker 1: instead of the ways in which authoritarianism fundamentally restricts the
Speaker 1: concept of human thought, He's like, they're gonna put price
Speaker 1: controls in. That is very funny. It's very funny. There's
Speaker 1: so much so quick in this text. It's dense, it's dense.
Speaker 1: It requires a lot of close reading. So that's so
Speaker 1: we're onto the third paragraph, which, in true Shapira style,
Speaker 1: is one sentence long and has a formatting issue with
Speaker 1: the indication, of course, every time the light turned green,
Speaker 1: he turned on this pigot, new paragraph. Every time it
Speaker 1: turned red, he turned it off, new paragraph, And with
Speaker 1: each turn he was happy. Year all right, Okay, getting
Speaker 1: into the mind of sounds better than a lot of
Speaker 1: people's jobs, to be honest. Yeah, feeling feeling happy and
Speaker 1: productive with the hard work you put in. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was an older member of the city. City has capitalized,
Speaker 1: but he didn't remember that. In fact, he had no
Speaker 1: idea how old he was. He just remembered coming into
Speaker 1: his spigot station each day, putting his ID card in
Speaker 1: the machine, removing it, going back to his living space
Speaker 1: with its clean white walls, and it's fully stuck refrigeration system.
Speaker 1: And it's television reruns. Nice, no new content. Sorry, going
Speaker 1: to sleep, waking up again another day older each morning.
Speaker 1: He knew this spigot would need to be turned on
Speaker 1: and off. It was comforting. He had no family. There
Speaker 1: was a woman who came to his living space once
Speaker 1: a week for sexual relations on Tuesdays. She spent it's
Speaker 1: try Sorry, what means there's a medical you, I'm told
Speaker 1: from the author. Also, well, it's moist. One hour is
Speaker 1: longer cumulatively than all of the sex been Shapiro He's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know why, right, And that's if you include cuddling.
Speaker 1: M check out Ben's sex book on the pastors where
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Actually, that's a good place to
Speaker 1: point out. We need to break for an ad. Oh,
Speaker 1: oh my god, we gotta go, we gotta find out.
Speaker 1: Oh spoiler, Cliffhanger sex coming up. More details on the sex,
Speaker 1: but probably not actually because I think he's not talking
Speaker 1: about it. Oh, Dane together everything, So don't don't. You're back. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're back. We're back in free so hot, I can't
Speaker 1: even so hot. What happens next? There was a woman
Speaker 1: came to his living space is what happened? She did?
Speaker 1: She did, Yeah, she did once a week for sexual
Speaker 1: relations on Tuesdays, just waiting for like more parentheticals, like
Speaker 1: he didn't know what Tuesday was. She spent exactly one hour.
Speaker 1: She was not beautiful and she was not ugly. She
Speaker 1: wore the blue uniform of the Ministry of Personal Needs.
Speaker 1: He did not know her name. Today was Tuesday, and
Speaker 1: he was happy. Yeah again, you know, just as a
Speaker 1: little like if you wanted to make this a good
Speaker 1: a good piece of fiction, maybe something to do would
Speaker 1: be like, in the midst of this woman who has
Speaker 1: been you know, made to look and feel as bland
Speaker 1: as possible by this government, he gets some sort of hint,
Speaker 1: catches a whiff of, you know, the scent of her
Speaker 1: hair or something about the way her skin feels that
Speaker 1: like leaves this brief yawning moment of horror at the
Speaker 1: fact that, like something terrible is missing from his life,
Speaker 1: and then of course it's gone in another second, as
Speaker 1: he returns his thoughts to the you know something that
Speaker 1: makes it a story. Yeah, and like texture, you know
Speaker 1: that helps you get into it kind of well because
Speaker 1: stating this, well he said, I was happy that day
Speaker 1: or whatever, that's the most insight we've got we get
Speaker 1: into or his satisfaction at the work. Sure, but like
Speaker 1: you're not actually giving context for this world. I don't
Speaker 1: understand how this is affecting you anyway. Yeah, and we don't.
Speaker 1: You know the thing, he's going to wind up breaking
Speaker 1: free of this system he has to, and there's going
Speaker 1: to be some sort of hackney bullshit. Um, but it
Speaker 1: has so like you you want to give some sort
Speaker 1: of hint that like there's there's elements of humanity, the
Speaker 1: irrepressible nature of the human soul that are trying to
Speaker 1: like slowly break through. And he had maybe sex. Again,
Speaker 1: if Ben Shapiro had ever had a positive sexual encounter,
Speaker 1: I think a normal person would be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that might be a moment of like intimacy that they
Speaker 1: can't quite quash out every aspect of it. He gets
Speaker 1: some ghost of something that's missing, and that sets up
Speaker 1: that like he's going to break out of this system.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Again, if you were writing a story,
Speaker 1: you might do that, especially a short story where you
Speaker 1: don't have that much time. I was gonna say, like
Speaker 1: you really want to move on that stuff? In my head,
Speaker 1: I'm like giving him the benefit of the doubt. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that will happen later a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: but like there's no time, there's no time. You gotta
Speaker 1: do it. No, not with his size, fourteen times new
Speaker 1: roman print, three paragraphs on this page long. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: let's find out what else makes this fucker happy? Um.
Speaker 1: He had no friends. He worked with others and once
Speaker 1: every week, for this is an awkward sentence, he worked
Speaker 1: with others and once every week, four new people would
Speaker 1: come to his living space on Wednesdays. The five would
Speaker 1: play cards together. Then they would never see each other again.
Speaker 1: It was all in good fun, and it allowed him
Speaker 1: to always meet new people. Wednesdays were not as happy
Speaker 1: as Tuesdays, but they were happy. This is so bad.
Speaker 1: This is this is this is bad. He's really hammering
Speaker 1: on how happy is And I'm going to tell you, Ben,
Speaker 1: I get it all right. Tonight was a Thursday night.
Speaker 1: On Thursday nights, the members of the various ministries would
Speaker 1: come together for a nighttime stargazing. It happened on the
Speaker 1: well manicured lawn of the Ministry of Culture. When he
Speaker 1: got to the lawn, there were already thousands of people
Speaker 1: milling about. He did not look for anyone he knew,
Speaker 1: He knew nobody, nobody knew anybody. There were no clicks.
Speaker 1: There were just thousands of people happy to see one another,
Speaker 1: and he was happy too. Yes, what a nightmare. So
Speaker 1: bad well comprehensively bleak vision been places of this god
Speaker 1: people are. He's still doing his thing where he um
Speaker 1: just horrendously over uses the same word. Yes, if you
Speaker 1: were a good writer, there's a way you could use
Speaker 1: kind of repetition of words and doing. Yeah, he's not
Speaker 1: because he's bad, it's just how he writes. Well, the
Speaker 1: the the intention is there. He's trying to like reuse
Speaker 1: the like the happy phrase, talk about how they're happy.
Speaker 1: But he's doing it every other fucking sentence, so it
Speaker 1: seems laborious to absorb. I don't know if he's doing
Speaker 1: it on purpose. I think as I start, you think
Speaker 1: he is. Okay, I think he's doing this on purpose. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just his habit is to do it anyway within sentences,
Speaker 1: and so that the thing that he does that's like
Speaker 1: a regular thing that happens is I think infecting our
Speaker 1: view of what he's doing now. But the problem with
Speaker 1: what he's doing now is that it's like every three
Speaker 1: sentences instead of within the same sentence. So it still
Speaker 1: seems like it's both poorly executed and maybe not on purpose,
Speaker 1: but I think it is. It's just he's not very
Speaker 1: good at it. Yeah yeah, like again like okay, like
Speaker 1: a couple of pages and then you know, but he's
Speaker 1: very happy, Like you can get the rhythm going without
Speaker 1: it being so obvious what's going on. Um, he's just
Speaker 1: not a subtle There's other ways to play with repetition
Speaker 1: than simply repeating yes, uh he can, he can. Like
Speaker 1: it's it's actually very funny because like you're you're so
Speaker 1: right that like he took the simple like it's this,
Speaker 1: it's like a shot the baby's first sentence exactly like
Speaker 1: that emotion is such a simple emotion, and there are
Speaker 1: more complex ways to describe it. Um. Truly, I truly
Speaker 1: have written better short stories than these as a child.
Speaker 1: There's any example here of just how limited Ben's imagination is.
Speaker 1: Because again, if we go back to nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: by this point in nineteen eighty four, where you're like
Speaker 1: a couple of pages in, you've been introduced to an
Speaker 1: entirely new language functionally new speak, and you you you
Speaker 1: all you feel. He doesn't tell you how it's limited,
Speaker 1: uh Winston's ability to feel you you feel it because
Speaker 1: you you you as like within the book he immediately
Speaker 1: like narrows the walls of perception around you by using that.
Speaker 1: Ben wants to do that, but all he can think
Speaker 1: of is just repeating that the person is happy and
Speaker 1: no other emotions because to him, that's the city. That's
Speaker 1: the same thing. Because he doesn't actually get what Orwell
Speaker 1: was was really doing there um and he's not He's
Speaker 1: also not capable of imagining anything. But like being in
Speaker 1: an authoritarian regime is like being drugged and you're just
Speaker 1: like this happy, doped zombie as opposed to what it
Speaker 1: really is, which is these kind and what or Well depicts,
Speaker 1: which is these kind of walls of fear and like
Speaker 1: flex that kind of reflexively stop you from thinking and
Speaker 1: acting in certain ways because you you're you're fundamentally a
Speaker 1: machine that exists to survive, and you've been trained by
Speaker 1: the regime that you just don't even even begin to
Speaker 1: go down certain roads because of the danger. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: Ben doesn't understand things like he doesn't get this. I
Speaker 1: think over and over I come back to he's just
Speaker 1: really lazy that you know, lazy probably with his education,
Speaker 1: probably lazy with his reading and reading comprehension. Um, but
Speaker 1: definitely lazy. And how he's approached all of this. I
Speaker 1: get the sense from anything Ben does is that it
Speaker 1: has taken the bare surface level of thought. Actually, you
Speaker 1: can argue loud, he can argue and spin things around
Speaker 1: and be confusing and the fuddle stuff, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: actually dig deeper than the service. And that is reflected.
Speaker 1: I mean I've probably I've already said this, but in
Speaker 1: all of these short stories and in all of his
Speaker 1: articles in Drew Allegiance, all of it. Yeah, it's I
Speaker 1: think it's most apparent in his fiction writing. Um, but
Speaker 1: it is everywhere. You're right, Well, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just seemed in his whole ideology. It's he screams
Speaker 1: as someone who just sits down and writes for twenty
Speaker 1: minutes and he's like, yeah, I did it, yeah today.
Speaker 1: It's there's no depth to it. It's like he is
Speaker 1: sort of replacing, like he thinks that like density equal
Speaker 1: stepth Yeah, and that's not true. Um, and so he
Speaker 1: just yeah, I mean this isn't particularly dense either. I
Speaker 1: mean it's dense in ways that we can make fun
Speaker 1: of it. But yeah, but it's like I just mean
Speaker 1: like the volume, like the volume, even the quantity of it.
Speaker 1: Like there's so many aspects that he's sort of like
Speaker 1: replaced with replaced thinking or about something like carefully, um
Speaker 1: with anything else. Um. But the important thing is he
Speaker 1: was happy too. The night was not too cold, nor
Speaker 1: was it too warm. The climate control system made sure
Speaker 1: of that. The people all sat in ordered rows with
Speaker 1: enough distance between them to ensure personal space. Then hates
Speaker 1: air conditioning and social personal space. It's personal space. Uh,
Speaker 1: weirdly hates like that. They're like seats in rows, like
Speaker 1: how seating is. Yeah, it's it's weird because it's this
Speaker 1: mix of like things that like any person should hate,
Speaker 1: like this this big stuff. They have personal space there,
Speaker 1: star gazing. There aren't clicks like the people all sat
Speaker 1: in ordered rose. I can't believe they're They lined the
Speaker 1: seats up so that you can see. Yeah, very funny society,
Speaker 1: it's so funny. Um and the stars. Wait, all right,
Speaker 1: that makes me wonder. All of this does make me
Speaker 1: wonder what been what brings ben joy in life? Is
Speaker 1: it just owning the libs? Or actually ever like happy
Speaker 1: and satisfied in a moment, a smug little bit. That's
Speaker 1: that's certainly his chief love and life. I think it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is um and getting those sweet sweet likes you know, uh,
Speaker 1: instead of getting his I don't know, stories published or
Speaker 1: put on TV or whatever you know. Ah. But the
Speaker 1: other important thing is the people all sad and ordered
Speaker 1: rose with enough distance between them to ensure personal space,
Speaker 1: and the stars too were in their orbits their distances
Speaker 1: the same as always. I I'm gonna okay, will you
Speaker 1: read that sentence again? Yeah, I'm going to read both
Speaker 1: sentences again, because he's saying too as in also as
Speaker 1: in just like I just said in the previous sentence.
Speaker 1: So the people all sat in ordered rows with enough
Speaker 1: distance between them to ensure personal space, and the stars
Speaker 1: too were in their orbits their distances the same as always. Okay,
Speaker 1: But that that's meaningless because people don't people don't know that, like,
Speaker 1: like it's it's one thing to say that, like the temperature,
Speaker 1: which is the thing that changes all around naturally, Like
Speaker 1: it's been like telling us that the world is climate control.
Speaker 1: To add something pointing out that the stars are the
Speaker 1: same as they've ever been, Like number one, how do
Speaker 1: you know you don't even know? Do you know what
Speaker 1: stars are? Like they tell you what stars are fundamentally,
Speaker 1: Do they let you know about the vastness of the
Speaker 1: universe outside of the rate You seem to have certain
Speaker 1: words and understanding of things. Yeah, consistent with like a
Speaker 1: society is controlled as he's wanting, So you would have
Speaker 1: to to know enough about the sky, Like maybe there's
Speaker 1: like it's like a visual thing and like this like
Speaker 1: they're blocking out the sky with like their version of stars. Ye,
Speaker 1: stars move always constantly, they're whizzing through space. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just taking it as like the stars every night
Speaker 1: and you know, like the formations they keep their spacing
Speaker 1: from each other. But also just on a grammatical level,
Speaker 1: and the stars too were in their orbits. You didn't
Speaker 1: say people were in their orbits. You said they were
Speaker 1: in ordered rows, which is very much not like a star.
Speaker 1: He's using the stars to refer to the distances being
Speaker 1: the same, but like that's not how he wrote. It's
Speaker 1: a great unimportant but whatever, because like you introduced the
Speaker 1: fact that the world is climate controlled. I have no
Speaker 1: other questions. I don't need to know how the climate
Speaker 1: control works. I don't need to know how they power it,
Speaker 1: Like this authority, you live in a bubble. Great, I
Speaker 1: get that. That's that's perfectly fine. No, no further explanation needed.
Speaker 1: That's world building. You mentioned this about the stars, and
Speaker 1: now we have all these questions because again every time
Speaker 1: Ben mention is something that's factual in any way wrong,
Speaker 1: The stars are the same distance all like, none of
Speaker 1: this work. Ben Shapiro's writing, Yeah, if if there's if
Speaker 1: he attempts to make a factual statement, it will be wrong,
Speaker 1: and it will be wrong in so many ways over
Speaker 1: I've thought of it several times lately, like, well, it's
Speaker 1: wrong in like five different ways are easily discoverable. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's like it it brings up it does the
Speaker 1: thing you never want to do in science fiction, which
Speaker 1: is it brings up questions that take you out of
Speaker 1: the story. Like for me, I'm wondering now, like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: if this is really an authoritarian regime, like why do
Speaker 1: they why are they find with people knowing about like
Speaker 1: the wonder and majesty of outer space. Why is that
Speaker 1: important to them? Because clearly if they're setting up stargazing,
Speaker 1: then that opens up the possibility that they're going to
Speaker 1: have some sense of like thought about the universe, thought
Speaker 1: potentially about like higher other forms of life, or about
Speaker 1: like a deity, like all these things people think about
Speaker 1: when they look at the stars, And it could be
Speaker 1: one thing you could do world building if you talked
Speaker 1: about how he had been taught to view the stars,
Speaker 1: or like you guys said, maybe they maybe they've put
Speaker 1: their own false sheen over that isn't real. Stars are
Speaker 1: like all this stuff that you could do that would
Speaker 1: build the world around it. Like if you talk about
Speaker 1: the way they educated him to view stars, and that
Speaker 1: they taught him that stars all move in you know,
Speaker 1: the like the same way that the people do in
Speaker 1: these perfectly ordered things and as above, so below or whatever.
Speaker 1: Maybe that could work if again, you were a writer.
Speaker 1: But then is instead done nothing and now we're fucking
Speaker 1: talking about what this goddamn star thing means. Honestly, if
Speaker 1: any nothing else, this whole exercise has been a great
Speaker 1: lesson in how not to write. Oh yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of people might listen to this and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can handle writing my own work,
Speaker 1: because you should. If you think you can write a
Speaker 1: piece of fiction, your friend, you can it be than
Speaker 1: have you gone into the world and experienced a thing
Speaker 1: like joy or or or or even shame. Um, then
Speaker 1: you two could write a piece of fiction better than
Speaker 1: ben Japiros just beautiful. Um, they go right, just like,
Speaker 1: take this premise and write something better, like go off
Speaker 1: into the world, Like think about a time that you
Speaker 1: felt something and then try to try to bring that
Speaker 1: to other people feelings, you know, imagine emotions. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: again like the thing like or Well and I four
Speaker 1: creates this very like soulless, horrific world, but you never
Speaker 1: cut off from feelings of the characters. Like that's such
Speaker 1: an intense part. The way he writes this budding romance,
Speaker 1: the way like you get into these people's heads and
Speaker 1: like how they feel, is why the story has impact.
Speaker 1: It's not because Orwell lists out here are ways in
Speaker 1: which this is a bad government. It's because Orwell makes
Speaker 1: you feel what it's like to live in this horrific
Speaker 1: and human regime. Well, unfortunately, facts don't care about your feelings.
Speaker 1: And also the facts are wrong, So the facts will
Speaker 1: inevitably be incorrect. Um, I tell you, if you're wondering
Speaker 1: about emotion though, A big surprise coming and it's corny
Speaker 1: and we're excited for it. Do we want it? Do
Speaker 1: we want it? Now? Yes? So, as we've discussed. And
Speaker 1: the stars too, were in their orbits, their distances the
Speaker 1: same as always, like all stars. Uh except one star. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's shot across the sky, a bright flare in the
Speaker 1: velvety purple black darkness, and he felt a disquietude move
Speaker 1: through him. His stomach rumbled, his mind turned over. The
Speaker 1: star blasted through the calm of the evening, leaving sparks
Speaker 1: in its wake, and suddenly his hazy dream burst into consciousness.
Speaker 1: He found himself standing, tears rolling down his face, gazing
Speaker 1: up at the sky. A terrible longing filled him, a
Speaker 1: feeling of dread and of hope, a new feeling, an
Speaker 1: old feeling. The star tore the night upon leaving day
Speaker 1: trailing behind it. So this is just okay, I need it,
Speaker 1: we need hold on, hold on wait wait no, no, okay, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just this is so that's all it
Speaker 1: took for him. Now, Okay, there's a lot going on there,
Speaker 1: like for example, again, why are they letting them watch
Speaker 1: the stars? Why is this? Like never been a shooting star?
Speaker 1: It was that easy for him to be like what
Speaker 1: they wouldn't let you look at the fucking sky? Okay,
Speaker 1: Cody finished the quote, and and why is it the one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna, we'll, we'll get into this, um, but a big,
Speaker 1: a big break is coming. So the star tour of
Speaker 1: the night apart, leaving day trailing behind it. When he
Speaker 1: looked around him, he saw thousands of eyes in thousands
Speaker 1: of faces staring at him blankly. The star hit the horizon,
Speaker 1: he turned and ran, and there's a break of texts
Speaker 1: because time passes. Um. So, yeah, so it's utterly ridiculous
Speaker 1: that this is the first shooting star that has apparently
Speaker 1: ever existed. And during they do everything, they do it
Speaker 1: every fucking week. Every week, everybody gets together looks at
Speaker 1: the sky, and it's the only time that has ever
Speaker 1: happened to one guy. Um, and like, so there it's
Speaker 1: this special boy syndrome. Everyone's staring at him blankly. Why
Speaker 1: is he the one who is moved by this shooting star?
Speaker 1: He's the only one who feels anything, He's the only
Speaker 1: one who noticed it. Is there something special about him
Speaker 1: that sees this shooting star? Uh old feelings? Right, shouldn't
Speaker 1: they be staring at should they be incapable of noticing difference?
Speaker 1: And yeah? Um, But also like again to keep going
Speaker 1: back to night four, when we get a glimpse of
Speaker 1: like what that society allows as a recreation, it's very fitting,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's these like horrific, dank little bars where
Speaker 1: people drink watered down beer and play the lottery. And
Speaker 1: it again builds you It never you're never taken out
Speaker 1: wondering like, well, doesn't this provide you know, an opportunity
Speaker 1: for X or Y? And you see that like they've
Speaker 1: got all these different like secret police agents in there
Speaker 1: that are looking for sedition, and it builds. It's just
Speaker 1: all very believable as opposed to immediately like why would
Speaker 1: you let people look at the stars? Like like it's
Speaker 1: just like every step of the away you're like did
Speaker 1: you think of Because it's science fiction. If you're doing
Speaker 1: science fiction or like a dystopian fiction or something like that,
Speaker 1: that is like a huge part of it is that
Speaker 1: world building and trying to make it make sense these
Speaker 1: questions and like there's a way you could have built
Speaker 1: a shooting star. Had that be key to this, You
Speaker 1: could have it be not that there's like this dumb
Speaker 1: idea of community enforced like stargazing nights, but you have
Speaker 1: this idea that the government wants everyone to believe this
Speaker 1: is the way human society has always been. There was
Speaker 1: no before, there will be no after. And then one day,
Speaker 1: on his way home from the late shift, he notices
Speaker 1: a shooting star in the sky and he quite naturally
Speaker 1: believes that it's a star falling out of the guy,
Speaker 1: which suddenly sets off at him this chain of thoughts
Speaker 1: that like, well, if the stars aren't or beyond the
Speaker 1: control of the government or whatever, then like maybe like
Speaker 1: and you could again and you can pay what that
Speaker 1: experience was like a huge experiences unraveling this thoughts. You
Speaker 1: can play with the sensations you're not just yeah, I imagine,
Speaker 1: And that way it would be a explaining why the
Speaker 1: star was meaningful. What is opposed to like it's pretty
Speaker 1: and so now I'm I'm healed again, so lazy, so incurious,
Speaker 1: and like a child wrote it. We do have to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, right now, who else is a child?
Speaker 1: The companies to paid money. We are entirely supported by children.
Speaker 1: That's right, Cody, super cute m random kids. Cody, Katie
Speaker 1: and I show up outside of schools with with with
Speaker 1: blackjacks and threatened children for their lunch money. That's what
Speaker 1: keeps us on the air. And that's what these ads
Speaker 1: will describe. But more entertaining that people like they hire
Speaker 1: people to write the copy for We don't ever get
Speaker 1: in trouble for this stuff, do we. No. No, We've
Speaker 1: paid off all the cops together and we're back. And
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree that Ben Shapiro has
Speaker 1: never looked up at the night sky and felt off.
Speaker 1: We've never felt all all. Yeah, because again, you can't
Speaker 1: really feel awe if you're convinced that you have everything,
Speaker 1: that every single answer that was ever meaningful you had
Speaker 1: handed to you when you were a small child. All
Speaker 1: is fundamentally like uh an acceptance of the unknown and
Speaker 1: wonderment at it, and feel like a regular thing that
Speaker 1: goes Ben's head is unimpressed, Yeah, exactly, like because if
Speaker 1: he's not, if he's if he's ever impressed. Whatever his
Speaker 1: dad taught him about the world when he was nine
Speaker 1: was not a complete it was not everything he needed
Speaker 1: to know about life. Yeah, well, I can't wait to
Speaker 1: find out what happens to this special man, special man boy. Sure. Ah,
Speaker 1: so time has passed and he ran. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: he hit the third street that he heard the humming.
Speaker 1: The sound of the Ministry of Protection did not ululate
Speaker 1: or waiver. It was a steady, loud buzz, growing in
Speaker 1: intensity as it grew closer, fading into white noise at
Speaker 1: a distance. Now the buzz grew more intense as he ran.
Speaker 1: He could hear them approaching from his right and from
Speaker 1: his left. He sprinted forward. Ah, some some Yang endorsement
Speaker 1: in this short story. Oh yes, all right, this is
Speaker 1: not a big deal, but also another lazy thing. Just
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Education. Just be
Speaker 1: more creative, yeah, I mean yeah, just come up with
Speaker 1: something again, like orwell. Because he's a master for masterful
Speaker 1: writer manages to create, managed to use words in such
Speaker 1: a way that that enforces kind of the bnality of
Speaker 1: this world. Will also being completely new to use the
Speaker 1: readers so that you're never board. You know, you speak,
Speaker 1: you feel the way. It limited limits his thoughts, but
Speaker 1: it's also new to you as you're reading the book,
Speaker 1: and thus you're engaged because again orwell was a writer.
Speaker 1: Oh so you're not left incredibly bored because the lighter
Speaker 1: did it? I see? Interesting. Yeah, the streets were not
Speaker 1: numbered or lettered. The people knew their living spaces by
Speaker 1: proximity from their workspaces, so there was no need for
Speaker 1: any distinguishing features. Again, fine, like, there's a way to
Speaker 1: make that entertaining. As he's walking to work the morning
Speaker 1: before things break out, you can describe his walk to work,
Speaker 1: not the way a normal person would is now I
Speaker 1: took a left, Now I took a right. But like
Speaker 1: the distance it is from his home because those of
Speaker 1: you like, there's a way in which you But what
Speaker 1: if he just explains it and once if he just
Speaker 1: explains it rather you know what happens. Of course, that's
Speaker 1: how you do it. They all looked the same, even
Speaker 1: Beije buildings, covered over with evenly trimmed ivy and evenly
Speaker 1: spaced balconies one per living space. They get balconies. No less,
Speaker 1: you better than how he wants a lot of people
Speaker 1: to live. Very funny, they have balconies. Okay, yeah, they
Speaker 1: had balconies, and therefore the people who lived inside those
Speaker 1: living spaces were happy with their standard issue artificial flowers,
Speaker 1: their standard measured televisions, and they're carefully stocked ice boxes.
Speaker 1: Okay again, been you have not yet made this sound
Speaker 1: markedly worse than life for millions of people under capitalism.
Speaker 1: At least they all have food. Yeah, yeah, they all
Speaker 1: have food. They have flowers, Um, they have balconies. Honestly,
Speaker 1: artificial flowers are all the rage right now. I keep
Speaker 1: getting targeted ads for them because they don't die. Do
Speaker 1: not give in? Well I don't, don't do it. Don't
Speaker 1: do it, Okay, don't don't. Don't succumb to the dystopian left,
Speaker 1: and they're artificial flowers. Um, then go ahead. It's free country. Um.
Speaker 1: It's it's just remarkable to me that Orwell a leftist
Speaker 1: so committed he got shot in the throat fighting fascists. Um.
Speaker 1: Imagines a better clearly inspired by kind of left wing movements,
Speaker 1: a more realistic authoritarian regime, um than Ben Shapiro, who's
Speaker 1: professionally terrified of the left, who can only make it
Speaker 1: seem slightly better than how a lot of people live today.
Speaker 1: They get free stargazing nights every night. They can see
Speaker 1: the stars from where they live. Balconies stars. Everyone in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, the people in this world can sit on
Speaker 1: their balconies and watch the stars. Like the idea of
Speaker 1: private space and whatnot. I don't know, it's carefully stocked
Speaker 1: ice box again, And if he was, if he actually
Speaker 1: wanted to make it unsettling in ways that we're consistent
Speaker 1: with his beliefs, it would make more sense for them
Speaker 1: to have like no senses of pub like space, like
Speaker 1: shouldn't shouldn't it be like because sex and physical like
Speaker 1: none of that matters at all. There's no differences between
Speaker 1: men and women and so like everybody is just one
Speaker 1: physically entangled like indistinguishable mass, right instead of so atomized
Speaker 1: like random thought the ice box? What does he? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What's weird? Specific? What a weird um choice again makes
Speaker 1: it like as if it's more orwelly and written of
Speaker 1: a different time, but just that just the word ice
Speaker 1: box yeah yeah yeah again and like British or something,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're free that like just I
Speaker 1: think they probably they probably do, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: Ben's not British, uh, but also like describe him doing
Speaker 1: this at home, like go to your like watch something
Speaker 1: on your standard measured te It was like, wish the
Speaker 1: show is more interesting, go to your carefully stocked icebox
Speaker 1: and have like your taste is I don't know, like
Speaker 1: just yeah, tell us what's because right now I'm just
Speaker 1: imagining like, oh, so they've got like Netflix and as
Speaker 1: much food as they need. It's like, right, imagine, I'm
Speaker 1: sure horrible government, you know TV, and like the food
Speaker 1: is all bland and not nutritious, but like we don't
Speaker 1: get any of that. So because like nobody's starving and
Speaker 1: everyone has a balcony and a television, well, right, because
Speaker 1: he's operating from this sort of like this his whole punditry,
Speaker 1: like I'm this right leaning like conservative libertarian, I guess uh,
Speaker 1: And so his audience assumes these things because they know
Speaker 1: the author, like I know Ben wrote this. Therefore I
Speaker 1: bet it's like really bad food and like boring a
Speaker 1: bad health, Like it's all stuff that we have to
Speaker 1: assume because we know the writer instead of the writer
Speaker 1: doing a good job. I think there's actually something more
Speaker 1: insidious than that here, because I think the thing that
Speaker 1: is supposed to be horrifying about this more than anything,
Speaker 1: this is again a good example of like where he's
Speaker 1: a friend than the guy he's trying to emulate with Orwell,
Speaker 1: the thing that was frightening was the limitations on the
Speaker 1: human ability to conceive of things, to even think about liberation,
Speaker 1: to even think like independent, Like the the way in
Speaker 1: which shutters were placed upon the human mind and thus
Speaker 1: the confines of the human soul was the central horror
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty four. And or Well very ably depicts
Speaker 1: that the horror with beIN is that nobody gets to
Speaker 1: be rich. Like that's really what's going on here, is
Speaker 1: that there's no rich people. He's not horrified, Like he's
Speaker 1: not presenting the day to day life of these people.
Speaker 1: Is it is particularly a nightmare. The thing that he
Speaker 1: keeps going back to is that nobody has more, nobody
Speaker 1: has bigger, a bigger apartment, everybody gets a balcony. There's
Speaker 1: not like everybody. Yeah, Like that's the thing he's frightened.
Speaker 1: That's that's scary to him, is that like nobody's rich
Speaker 1: in the society. And it's very telling that like the
Speaker 1: difference between nineteen eighty four a masterpiece and what's frightening
Speaker 1: about it and what been clearly thinks is frightening, which
Speaker 1: is there's no rich people. Yeah. Absolutely, you got hit
Speaker 1: the nail ned Robert. Yeah, that's interesting, I think again,
Speaker 1: just incredible writing when you have to stop and just
Speaker 1: like question every single sentence. But now they were opening
Speaker 1: their regulation compliance double pain windows to watch him run.
Speaker 1: Oh no, double pain emphasized because of like ep energy exactly. Again,
Speaker 1: we go from like that good. Yeah, that that's the
Speaker 1: thing like Ben has been finds. Ben finds like mandatory
Speaker 1: double pain windows for energy efficiency just as horrifying as
Speaker 1: a regime that annihilates the ability of human beings to
Speaker 1: engage in physical intimacy. Um uh, the the the elimination
Speaker 1: of history is as frightening to Ben as requiring energy
Speaker 1: efficient windows. It's very funny with an incredible sentence story.
Speaker 1: But now they were opening their regulation compliant double pain
Speaker 1: windows to watch him run. The horror of the double
Speaker 1: pain windows unbelievable. Uh. He could feel the cement pound
Speaker 1: beneath his rubber souls and that's not correct. He could
Speaker 1: feel his feet, could feel his feet pound against the cement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cement stop pounding. Mm. He could feel the cement pound
Speaker 1: beneath his rubber souls, all right. His breath started to
Speaker 1: give out. It's an awkward sense, so like this is okay.
Speaker 1: He could feel the cement pound beneath his rubber souls
Speaker 1: semi colon. His breath started to give out. He breathed
Speaker 1: in and out in dash and dash out, which I'm
Speaker 1: I don't think that's bad. That's he breathed in and
Speaker 1: out burger, trying to find a regularity, anything regular to
Speaker 1: hold onto, trying not to panic. Too many regulars and
Speaker 1: regularity and regulation was earlier in this paragraph. Come on, uh,
Speaker 1: and you think regular to hold onto? He's just running
Speaker 1: down the street, all right. He and the and the
Speaker 1: sirens hummed closer. Then he saw them in the reflection
Speaker 1: of the large mirrored glass panes of the Ministry of
Speaker 1: Food Provision. The cube shaped and the cube shaped enforcement
Speaker 1: pods were rolling down the street after him, gaining rapidly.
Speaker 1: This is unimportant. It's very silly that their enforcement pods.
Speaker 1: I would pose it that it's sillier that they're cube
Speaker 1: shaped pods. Well, I think I know what he's doing there.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember the name of the show. Um,
Speaker 1: it's the Prisoners, right, But were bubbles, which you could
Speaker 1: you could call those pods. I don't think you can
Speaker 1: call a Cuba pod. You can call it well, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's right. But I think he's literally
Speaker 1: just doing He absolutely is just I don't even think
Speaker 1: he watched The Prisoner. I think someone described it to
Speaker 1: him and he decided to do what he He absorbed that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's throughout like cultural losmosis. Right, we're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: know the image of the guy with a number on
Speaker 1: his chest the bubble comes after him. Um. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're yeah, they're I mean a lot of things silly
Speaker 1: about this. Um. I shouldn't harp on the cube shaped pod,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but it's just it's very funny. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's just like it's such a there's a there's a
Speaker 1: uc B sketch from the Upper Sketch show they did
Speaker 1: for like three seasons, and there's a sketch where it's
Speaker 1: it's clearly l Ron Hubbard like an analog reading his
Speaker 1: sci fi book that's like trying to get people to
Speaker 1: a cult, and it's like terrible sci fi and every
Speaker 1: word is like he put on his vision goggles to
Speaker 1: eat his nutrition food, and I like it's such bad
Speaker 1: sci fi writing, and I can't think of anything but that.
Speaker 1: Every single time he'd like capitalizes something importment or something. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the enforcement pods are after him. In the lead pod
Speaker 1: Capital P he could see the slack jawed face of
Speaker 1: a slightly bored enforcer Capital E, who leaned forward and
Speaker 1: pushed a button. Suddenly, the pod jumped, as though spurred
Speaker 1: with a cattle prod bucked and leapt toward him. The
Speaker 1: distance shrink one block. His feet were giving way now
Speaker 1: half a block. M hm ah. The pod loudspeaker opened
Speaker 1: up with that pulsating rhythm. He'd heard the rhythm once before.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say rhythm again. He'd heard the rhythm once before.
Speaker 1: You'd only seen God. He'd heard the rhythm once before.
Speaker 1: He'd only seen one enforcement action before. It had been
Speaker 1: a young girl ready for it. Okay, sorry keep going, Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm and I'm sorry for letting his writing trip me
Speaker 1: up and trying to read this out loud. He had
Speaker 1: heard the rhythm once before, He'd only seen one enforcement
Speaker 1: action before. It had been a young girl ready for
Speaker 1: recruitment to the Ministry of Personal Needs. She had his
Speaker 1: word repetition and now has stopped being purposeful and oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just this is just not very I feel
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to point that out here.
Speaker 1: It's also funny to me that like the thing that
Speaker 1: I'm sure one thing I'm sure that Ben finds horrifying
Speaker 1: about nineteen eighty four, or at least the television version
Speaker 1: of nine that I'm sure is what he's watched rather
Speaker 1: than reading the book, is that there's like there's no
Speaker 1: distinction between between men and women and their society right
Speaker 1: as a desire to to to kind of exercise from
Speaker 1: humanity the capacity to form families and fall in love
Speaker 1: because it's a threat to the state. Um been still
Speaker 1: has a very clear separation. Men do some sort of
Speaker 1: job in women are just there for sex. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that's that's yeah, just very revealing. That's consistent. No, it's
Speaker 1: consistently good. And it says nothing about Ben. Is this
Speaker 1: to wrap it up? Or yeah, So, like I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, I'm actually like frustrated reading this now, and
Speaker 1: I think we need to take a week break and
Speaker 1: compare to you too. I feel like that's the general
Speaker 1: we do talk about. Oh, I mean a week break
Speaker 1: in like real time in that meaning in a week
Speaker 1: we'll come back to Okay, we'll still come back then. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: we have to find out what happens. I just like
Speaker 1: I can't read today, you know what. We've got to
Speaker 1: digest what we've learned, and will finish now our trauma
Speaker 1: and my request for all of you in this next week,
Speaker 1: because we only have maybe one more week of going
Speaker 1: over Ben's storybook. Maybe fight where he lives, break into
Speaker 1: his home, steal his hard drive. There's got to be
Speaker 1: a file on there that we need. More men, short
Speaker 1: stories or scripts, you know, um, bring it, bring him
Speaker 1: to us. There's other people we could read. There's other
Speaker 1: people's work we could celebrate anyway, not as good as
Speaker 1: there's something special and tasty about this. He is a
Speaker 1: special boy. He sure is. Alright, guys, check us out online. Now,
Speaker 1: where's your pod? We'll be back next week, keeping the
Speaker 1: classy worst your enforcement pod. Ye cube shaped because he
Speaker 1: didn't want to do fears because that's from the prisoner
Speaker 1: and he couldn't do it the same way. Yea extremely
Speaker 1: And there's no way he's watched the Prisoner. He can't
Speaker 1: have like I can't imagine sitting down and watch is
Speaker 1: this cute floating or is this cube on wheels? If so,
Speaker 1: it's got to be floating. That's very funny. Floating cubes
Speaker 1: is such a funny in the world. So here's the thing,
Speaker 1: and we'll okay, we're the episodes not over yet, all right,
Speaker 1: So uh in the sentence that introduces these enforcement pods. Uh,
Speaker 1: in addition to the other things we talked about, the
Speaker 1: cube shaped enforcement pods were rolling down the street after
Speaker 1: him gaining rapidly. They were rolling down the street. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so they can't they can't roll unless they're on wheels.
Speaker 1: So I'm pretty sure the cube pods have wheels, just
Speaker 1: like yeah, there's cyber trucks that we cleared this up
Speaker 1: because obviously a sphere can roll down in different ways
Speaker 1: or float or however you want to get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but a cube can't. It needs wheels to roll. That's
Speaker 1: what I was thinking. Okay, I'm so glad we cleared that.
Speaker 1: I hope they're roller blades. Alright, Alright, the episodes actually
Speaker 1: over now now we're done by Oh dome n It's
Speaker 1: not against I tried. Daniel. Worst Year Ever is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.