Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: We're always talking about books on here. We read books
Speaker 1: when we're researching podcasts. We're fairly big readers, so we're
Speaker 1: reading books outside of the office as well. You'll hear
Speaker 1: us mentioned a title here title there. As the subjects
Speaker 1: between our work life and our entertainment and personal enrichment
Speaker 1: reading kind of overlap. So every now and then we
Speaker 1: throw up book recommendations. You guys write in and ask
Speaker 1: us about this book or another asked for us spelling
Speaker 1: on an author's name, and we chat back and forth.
Speaker 1: And we've been talking about doing a summer reading episode
Speaker 1: for a while now where we just go ahead and
Speaker 1: eliminate any other content from a short episode of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind and just talk about a few
Speaker 1: books that are both near to our hearts but also
Speaker 1: near to the heart of the show and close to
Speaker 1: the themes that we often discuss and Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. Yeah, and the presumption is that it's summer's
Speaker 1: coming up, and we're all gonna laze around for at
Speaker 1: least two weeks, uh, you guys over in Europe, I
Speaker 1: don't know, a month or two. We'll have some time
Speaker 1: here to tackle a reading list and hopefully you guys
Speaker 1: will be interested in some of the stuff that we
Speaker 1: have to recommend. Yeah, you know, so you can hunt
Speaker 1: these down, check them out from your library, load them
Speaker 1: up on your kindle. I can't speak for your list.
Speaker 1: I know on my list all these things are pretty
Speaker 1: readily available, so you shouldn't have to do any deep
Speaker 1: digging to find them. I like dusty books, like to
Speaker 1: crack them open, so but I'm assuming that most of
Speaker 1: the stuff is available. Yeah, I mean I do too,
Speaker 1: though I just switched. I finally jumped on the bandwagon
Speaker 1: and have a kindle. Now. Yeah, I'm going to get
Speaker 1: there soon, but it just hasn't happened yet. Put it
Speaker 1: that way, I mean, they don't smell near is nice.
Speaker 1: I'm just a cheap jerk and I'm not there yet.
Speaker 1: Like when it drops to fifty nine, probably without any
Speaker 1: further ado, let's roll this baby out. Well, I'll go
Speaker 1: first then, and I'm just gonna let you know most well,
Speaker 1: all my choices here are actually fiction sci fi kind
Speaker 1: of books, and you're gonna bring more of the non
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring the nonfiction. There's definitely some nonfiction books
Speaker 1: that I've been reading or I've read recently, but they're
Speaker 1: not necessarily things that I would say, yes, you should
Speaker 1: plow through this as well, because there are books that
Speaker 1: are informative and enriching and well worth the time you
Speaker 1: spend with them, but it's not necessarily the kind of
Speaker 1: thing you might want to take on a vacation with
Speaker 1: you or you know, squirrel away for a little personal
Speaker 1: enjoyment reading. Although you might be a nonfiction reader like
Speaker 1: I am. Mostly I enjoy great fiction, but a lot
Speaker 1: of times I just like to cozy up to something
Speaker 1: that's really going to stirre my brain. Said, I don't
Speaker 1: feel like I'm trapped in a certain world for a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time, because I tend to when that happens,
Speaker 1: you know, I get a really good piece of fiction,
Speaker 1: I want to squirrel myself away for seventy two hours
Speaker 1: and not eat or drink or talk to anyone else.
Speaker 1: So that's a really big time commitment for me. So
Speaker 1: nonfiction I really love because it's a balanced way to
Speaker 1: consume some really cool bits of information. Okay, Well, my
Speaker 1: first pick is a non by an author by the
Speaker 1: name of our Scott Baker. Sometimes he's just so listed
Speaker 1: as Scott Baker, depending on if you're getting a like
Speaker 1: a Canadian, British, shore Us version of one of his books.
Speaker 1: He's the author of a really thought provoking epic fantasy
Speaker 1: series called well overall. It's called The Second Apocalypse, and
Speaker 1: that includes the novels The Prince of Nothing. The Darkness
Speaker 1: That Came Before is the first trilogy in that series,
Speaker 1: and it's all very thought provoking stuff. He's a philosophy guy.
Speaker 1: He invokes a lot of neuroscience in his worlds, even
Speaker 1: if he's writing about a world full of magic. But
Speaker 1: those fantasy books are not always as accessible, I think
Speaker 1: to some readers. Luckily, he has written a couple of
Speaker 1: non fantasy books, and one of these is a book
Speaker 1: called Disciple of the Dog, and that's the one that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna recommend here. It's a really fun read. It's short,
Speaker 1: and it is about a sleazy, pothead private investigator with
Speaker 1: an abnormal capacity for memory. He cannot forget anything that
Speaker 1: it's said to him. The capacity doesn't allow him to
Speaker 1: remember everything that he's read. But if somebody has said it,
Speaker 1: if he's seen it, then it's cemented in his mind.
Speaker 1: Is that similar to some people who have ability to
Speaker 1: recall dates like from twenty years ago or in in
Speaker 1: the events connected to them. Yeah, that kind of thing
Speaker 1: should be helpful if you're a private investigator and you know,
Speaker 1: we've seen this kind of investigator before. To a certain incidentally,
Speaker 1: give me Sherlock Holmes is the classic investigator character. And
Speaker 1: certainly with Sherlock, you have a character that has just
Speaker 1: a phenomenal brain and it distances himself from various human
Speaker 1: experiences and makes him kind of an enigma to normal people. Well,
Speaker 1: the character and disciple of the dog who's the character's name,
Speaker 1: is a disciple manning just kind of gimmicky but fun.
Speaker 1: He is kind of screw up because of his condition.
Speaker 1: Like his condition is he cannot forget anything, so anything
Speaker 1: that traumatizes him is there forever. So he's a character
Speaker 1: that has had some severe bouts with depression and self
Speaker 1: loathing based on this ability, but he's also managed to
Speaker 1: use it for financial gain as a private investigator. And
Speaker 1: so our Scott Baker injects a lot of philosophical pondering
Speaker 1: into this because we get into questions that we've raised
Speaker 1: in the podcast before, to what extent are we shaped
Speaker 1: by our memory? And what to what extent are we
Speaker 1: shaped by our memory errors. We discussed the seven Deadly
Speaker 1: sins of memory, the various ways that we misremember something
Speaker 1: or alter the memory of something in our head, and
Speaker 1: these are things that the character Disciple Man and cannot do.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to see Baker play that out in
Speaker 1: the novel and Disciple the Dog. The character is looking
Speaker 1: into a missing person's case that concerns a new age
Speaker 1: cult where the believers are of the opinion that it
Speaker 1: is actually the year A D fifty million, and life
Speaker 1: as we know it is all just the dream of
Speaker 1: a quantum computer, and the sun is actually about to
Speaker 1: swallow the earth as it goes into a red dwarf stage.
Speaker 1: So you also end up with ponderings about what is
Speaker 1: our future and the idea that you know, when yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what would it look like? And ideas that what is reality?
Speaker 1: You know, what is it possible that reality could be
Speaker 1: the dreams of a quantum computer? And then this is
Speaker 1: all just a backward fantasy. The world around this is
Speaker 1: just this backward fantasy that we project for ourselves. So
Speaker 1: there are various levels of, to my mind, mind blowing
Speaker 1: ideas that Baker has fun within this. And then on
Speaker 1: top of that, it's entertaining because you have a wonderfully
Speaker 1: sleazy but likable protagonist and you have this now air
Speaker 1: setting like industrial Jersey, so it's not really a new
Speaker 1: war setting, but it's got very much a new war
Speaker 1: kind of vibe to it. Classic detective case, what's gonna happen?
Speaker 1: He's gonna find the missing girl who's the heart of
Speaker 1: the conspiracy and all of this. So it's short, gets
Speaker 1: the point, have some fun with the character and brings
Speaker 1: with it a lot of floor ideas. I like the
Speaker 1: dichotomy of a pothead with a really long memory too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a sharp memory. Well, pretty great because it's like the
Speaker 1: sharp memory is bringing him such trauma. It distanced him
Speaker 1: from so many people. He kind of has to self
Speaker 1: medicate through it. Yeah, what's on your list? Okay? Um, well,
Speaker 1: I have the best nature in science running. That of
Speaker 1: course is a series, and this particular one is the
Speaker 1: guest edited by Mary Roach. She's at the Helm there, yes,
Speaker 1: so she's made a lot of the selections here. You'll
Speaker 1: probably remember her from books like Stiff Pecking from Mars Bunk.
Speaker 1: She's just got a really great science journalism pedigree, and
Speaker 1: I think anybody familiar with her work knows that she
Speaker 1: has a great sense of humor and the ability to
Speaker 1: really deliver very accessible points of entry into some weighty subjects.
Speaker 1: If you go back through the catalog of our podcast
Speaker 1: far Enough, you're fun an interview with her from back
Speaker 1: when the podcast was stuffed in the Science Lab. So
Speaker 1: she's got the selection of different pieces of essays and articles,
Speaker 1: about twenty five of them. Actually. Some of them are
Speaker 1: from well known writers like Oliver Sacks and Leonard Lednov
Speaker 1: and Stephen Hawking, and others not as well known, although
Speaker 1: definitely up and coming, like Brook Hollard Builder, people making
Speaker 1: a name for themselves for their ability to reframe our
Speaker 1: understanding of the subject. In fact, Brook Hard Builder is
Speaker 1: the writer of the article that has to do with
Speaker 1: food safety, which right there sounds like incredibly wing. But
Speaker 1: this guy went into underground food movements like fermenting, which
Speaker 1: we talked about in a podcast, raw milk, the paleo diet,
Speaker 1: all these very different sort of movements going on right now,
Speaker 1: and what could have just been like a story about
Speaker 1: the safety of food became this incredible matrix of cultural
Speaker 1: ideas and scientific theories that are proven and disproven. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that that's why I really love this series is that
Speaker 1: it does take this sort of everyday stuff and reframe
Speaker 1: it for us. Another really good example is an essay
Speaker 1: by jarn Lanier. It's called the First Church of Robotics,
Speaker 1: and it explores our fascination with robotics. If certainly we
Speaker 1: have a fascination with it, We've talked about it quite
Speaker 1: a bit, and our need to project ourselves onto these
Speaker 1: machines and personify them. And he said that this is
Speaker 1: all going on at the same time we are increasingly
Speaker 1: treating our fellow humans like machines. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: interesting that you have this shift in the way that
Speaker 1: we are communicating with one another. We're communicating in way
Speaker 1: set rely on algorithms of technology instead of our own
Speaker 1: personal humanity. So if he's saying, hey, I mean it's
Speaker 1: more like a cautionary tale, like it's very compelling. He's saying,
Speaker 1: let's not deify a machine quite yet doing so just
Speaker 1: makes us sort of like these grotesque ventriloquists. So that's
Speaker 1: just another example of one of the more mind blowing
Speaker 1: aspects of these different essays. Kind of a buffet, right
Speaker 1: ideas with this you do you do? You could say
Speaker 1: it's sort of a snapshot of the year of eleven
Speaker 1: in journalism, and that would be absolutely true. But the
Speaker 1: fact of the matter is just that a lot of
Speaker 1: this has to do with topics that have been around.
Speaker 1: It's not just like, hey, this is the zeitgeist moment
Speaker 1: right here for this subject. I knew that there's a
Speaker 1: one essay or that talks about prohibition and about the
Speaker 1: government's role and actually poisoning ethanol and in doing so
Speaker 1: taking the lot of many Americans during prohibition, And this
Speaker 1: is something that's probably not widely known, but here's a
Speaker 1: piece of journalism sort of bringing up the past and saying,
Speaker 1: did you know that at one point probhibition and it
Speaker 1: had taken hold so much of the government that they
Speaker 1: were actually trying to discourage people by making them really sick,
Speaker 1: by mixing together ethanol and other chemicals and in doing
Speaker 1: so poisoning them, which resulted in thousands of deaths. So
Speaker 1: it does it takes everything from subjects like can animals
Speaker 1: be gay? To prohibition to even space junk, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about. And it's very entertaining because it does allow
Speaker 1: you to enter into these subjects in a way that
Speaker 1: are very accessible. And I was even thinking about Leonard
Speaker 1: miledna Of and Stephen Hawking and their essay about m theory,
Speaker 1: membrane theory or string theory, right, which is this idea
Speaker 1: that we can get this theory of everything together. They
Speaker 1: asked the reader to imagine themselves as goldfish looking through
Speaker 1: the distorted glass of their enclosures, and in order to
Speaker 1: understand the limitations of this theory of everything that we're after,
Speaker 1: and they say, imagine the goldfish as they formulate scientific
Speaker 1: laws from their distorted frames of reference that would always
Speaker 1: hold true and enable them to make predictions about the
Speaker 1: future emotions of objects outside the bowl. So they're taking
Speaker 1: this really cool analogy of us being fish in the
Speaker 1: bowl and having a distorted view of reality and then
Speaker 1: this theory of everything and again a really good entry
Speaker 1: point into this subject matter. So that is why I
Speaker 1: recommend that book. Well, that does sound like a good one.
Speaker 1: My next entry in this list is a book called
Speaker 1: The Wind Up Girl by a Paolo Bassa Gallupi, and
Speaker 1: this is a really fun sci fi novel and a
Speaker 1: really thought provoking sci fi novel, and that it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of our fears associated with our use of
Speaker 1: science today and extrapolates those into a very engaging, until
Speaker 1: our extent nightmaric vision of the future. It takes us
Speaker 1: to the futuristic time. It's a post oil world, so
Speaker 1: we've used up all of our natural resources as far
Speaker 1: as oil goes, So the petroleum based system crashes to
Speaker 1: the ground and suddenly traveling across the globe is severely limited.
Speaker 1: The world in a way becomes much larger because when
Speaker 1: we have less ability to travel it and to intraverse it,
Speaker 1: the distances become vast because we can't just fly around
Speaker 1: the world in a day anymore. There's no more oil. Also,
Speaker 1: you have genetically modified organisms, specifically genetically modified crops have
Speaker 1: backfired in this world to the point where you end
Speaker 1: up with massive starvations, massive famines, and it's really crippled
Speaker 1: the world. So in the Wine Up Girl, we find
Speaker 1: ourselves in Bangkok, Thailand, and this is one of the
Speaker 1: few places it's us shut itself off from the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. It's managed to maintain a certain degree
Speaker 1: of non genetically altered vegetation, that has a certain amount
Speaker 1: of genetic purity to most of its vegetables, and it's
Speaker 1: able to feed itself. And you have these outside corporations
Speaker 1: that are interested, these colary companies they are called, that
Speaker 1: are interested in infiltrating Thailand and Bangkok and actually finding
Speaker 1: some of these examples so they can take them out
Speaker 1: genetically tinker with them. Well, yeah, I mean really, I mean,
Speaker 1: the bad guys in this the villains are basically sci
Speaker 1: fi versions of some of the large companies like Monsanta
Speaker 1: that we have today. And then you also have a
Speaker 1: character in this book called Imaco, and Imaco is a
Speaker 1: wind up girl they call it. She's one of the
Speaker 1: new people. She's a genetically engineered human. She's a very
Speaker 1: interesting character too, because she's originally bred as basically a
Speaker 1: pleasure person, like a roxy robot, but flesh human flesh
Speaker 1: one yeahs trying to say it in an acceptable way,
Speaker 1: but she's bred for this kind of life, engines up
Speaker 1: abandoned in Bangkok by her former master, and she's not
Speaker 1: engineered to really survive all that well, she's been conditioned
Speaker 1: to be this submissive, servant to businessman thing of pleasure.
Speaker 1: Her horrors are extra small because it supposedly looks nicer
Speaker 1: for her to have very poor, less skin, but it
Speaker 1: also means that she has trouble managing her body heat.
Speaker 1: And so the author does a gred job of exploring
Speaker 1: what life might be like for this genetically modified person,
Speaker 1: what kind of flaws are engineered into her. They call
Speaker 1: her a wind up girl because she's engineered so that
Speaker 1: she walks funny, with the idea being that new people
Speaker 1: will stand out if they're just seen on the streets,
Speaker 1: so there will be this threat of the new people
Speaker 1: taking over. And it heart's also just a story about
Speaker 1: a spy trying to steal something about political corruption and
Speaker 1: about the crimes of humanity and how they may fall
Speaker 1: out over the decades to come, what it is to
Speaker 1: be human too, yea or even subjugated. It sounds like,
Speaker 1: are there any wind up men? I have to ask?
Speaker 1: I forget if there are. I feel like there's mention
Speaker 1: of mercenaries, none that are engineering. It's been a year
Speaker 1: or two since I read it, but I seem to
Speaker 1: remember there was a detail about that technically the book
Speaker 1: is I think they called biopunk, which I'm kind of
Speaker 1: a critic of overuse of the cyberpunk terminology where someone
Speaker 1: just puts in another steampunk Yeah, well yes, steampunk, diesel punk.
Speaker 1: The more something fits one of those classifications, the less interesting.
Speaker 1: I think the biopunk stuff is really cool though. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the potential, I mean people are doing some
Speaker 1: really cool things with that. But any but but at heart,
Speaker 1: this book is really interesting because it's entertaining, because it
Speaker 1: is action and intrigue characters should care about. But it
Speaker 1: also takes a look at modern day a logical concerns
Speaker 1: and uses them to create this sci fi future that
Speaker 1: really speaks to readers today. That sounds really cool. I
Speaker 1: like the premise of that a lot. I'm going to
Speaker 1: put that on my list. I gotta say, so, do
Speaker 1: you go? All right? Well, I think we let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and when we get back we will
Speaker 1: talk about a book called Super Sad True Love Story.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, So Super Sad True Love Story.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned this one before. I have. I've talked about it,
Speaker 1: like sort of sputtered about it. But I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is a good opportunity to talk about why I'm
Speaker 1: always bringing it up. It's by Gary Steingart and just
Speaker 1: to fly our little futurists freak flag a little bit higher.
Speaker 1: It is again, a dystopian futuristic novel not too far
Speaker 1: in the future that I think they're talking about, maybe
Speaker 1: fifty years in the future. It is a fiction of
Speaker 1: work of fiction, of course, and it centers around a
Speaker 1: character not any enough, Lenny Abramof and he is a
Speaker 1: mid level drone for a massive multinational corporation in the future.
Speaker 1: By the way, the not too distant future, like everything
Speaker 1: is small talent national conglomerate, so it's like kmart g E,
Speaker 1: something ridiculous, something other, sort of like large company all
Speaker 1: melded together, which is just again it's extrapolating like what's
Speaker 1: happening in the present in the fifty years and sort
Speaker 1: of taking it to the nth degree, which is why
Speaker 1: it makes it such an interesting novel. Lenny is working
Speaker 1: in a division of this multinational corporation which promises to
Speaker 1: help the super rich live forever thanks to nanotechnology and
Speaker 1: super anti accidents and various other over hyped technologies. At
Speaker 1: this point, he falls in love with a beautiful young
Speaker 1: Korean woman named Unice. She lives with him, but and
Speaker 1: she really provides the perspective of the youth at that point.
Speaker 1: She's obsessed with consumerism. She's shallow, but she's not shallow me.
Speaker 1: She's drawn actually pretty well as a character. She's oversharing.
Speaker 1: She's obsessed with electronic media culture, in which everybody when
Speaker 1: you go out in public in this future world, everything
Speaker 1: is revealed about you via this sort of like iPhone
Speaker 1: looking device hanging around everybody's next and it projects to
Speaker 1: everybody else's iPhone device. I think it's called apparatus or
Speaker 1: something like that. Your credit score, your hotness score, every
Speaker 1: single thing about like, think about every piece of information
Speaker 1: about yourself that's out there that you could then just
Speaker 1: automatically transmit to someone. This is what's happening. So something
Speaker 1: you just posted on Facebook or Twitter. So you walk
Speaker 1: into a bar and all of a sudden, you can
Speaker 1: look down at your apparatus and you can see, like
Speaker 1: what your own hotness score is based on everybody at
Speaker 1: that very moment looking at you and entering it. So
Speaker 1: the premise of it is just really interesting. Everyone is
Speaker 1: divided into high network net work individuals and low net
Speaker 1: worth individuals um and basically you have a collapsing America
Speaker 1: which is hugely in debt to China, and it definitely
Speaker 1: has traces of Brave New World in four And it's
Speaker 1: the reason I really like it is it could have
Speaker 1: been watered down satire, but shine Gard is really a
Speaker 1: very spressive writer, and he builds a very convincing world.
Speaker 1: So you can easily imagine yourself walking through the streets
Speaker 1: of New York in this future America where the National
Speaker 1: Guard is ever present. You've got a collapsing banking system
Speaker 1: and yet this technology that really turns people inwards so
Speaker 1: that they're sort of ignoring all these different things happening
Speaker 1: around them, and really nice cohesive world building by shin Guard.
Speaker 1: There's also a running gag where the National Guard stops
Speaker 1: people at checkpoints and they're forced to deny and imply.
Speaker 1: They deny that a conversation ever took place, and they
Speaker 1: imply their consent for an invasive search. It is funny
Speaker 1: because so many times and when you're online you're just
Speaker 1: agreeing to something. It's very much in that same sort
Speaker 1: of like, hey, you're agreeing to this right, but you're
Speaker 1: not really reading it and all right, let's go on
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. Document you need to
Speaker 1: read it before you visit a website, and you just yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: So again he's taken that idea to the degree and
Speaker 1: said that you know, you're now you are living in
Speaker 1: this this very public sphere where everything you do is
Speaker 1: being met with this idea of you deny and imply,
Speaker 1: and you're entering into these contracts that you don't even
Speaker 1: know about and the afterwards. Scheinert says that he read
Speaker 1: Ray Kurt's Wheels The Singularity Is Near while he was
Speaker 1: working in the book, as well as our friend Aubrey
Speaker 1: de Gray. I say our friend because I imagine this
Speaker 1: as friends, the bearded one, the biogenontologists. His book ending
Speaker 1: aging the rejuvenation breakthrough that could reverse human aging in
Speaker 1: our lifetime, and he definitely takes these ideas which are
Speaker 1: really cool and very cutting edge, but he does look
Speaker 1: at it through a lens of pessimism. He says, in
Speaker 1: this future, sure all of this would be accessible, but
Speaker 1: only to the super rich. Everyone else would be labeled
Speaker 1: impossible to preserve or I t P in this world.
Speaker 1: So that's why I think it's interesting. It touches on
Speaker 1: so many things that we've discussed, and it's done really well. Cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when I really need to add my reading list
Speaker 1: as well. You've mentioned it, i think in several times
Speaker 1: in relation to topics we've discussed, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny too. Yeah. He's got a great
Speaker 1: sense of humor and it really is. Actually, I mean,
Speaker 1: the title is apt It is a love story, but
Speaker 1: it's it's heartbreaking and it's beautiful, important and terrifying at
Speaker 1: the same time. Well, my next pick isn't very funny
Speaker 1: in fact, even though this is an author that I
Speaker 1: understand has written some things that have a lot more
Speaker 1: humor and absurdity to them, this is not one of
Speaker 1: those books. The book is Embassy Town by China me Evil.
Speaker 1: As we're recording this podcast, it is on the list
Speaker 1: of nominees for two thousand and twelve Hugo Award. I
Speaker 1: have a suspicion it might win it. We'll see how
Speaker 1: that plays out. This is a science fiction novel takes
Speaker 1: place in a far future. Humans of colonized distance space
Speaker 1: and they travel through these kind of a warp situation
Speaker 1: where they kind of they move through a an alternate
Speaker 1: dimension to emerge into real space again, and one of
Speaker 1: the stopovers, well not only stopped over, it t really
Speaker 1: The Distant Frontier is a planet that has an alien
Speaker 1: race on it called the Araiki. And in this story
Speaker 1: we have a human colonist named Abbess returning to this
Speaker 1: planet in the town their Inbassy Town after years of
Speaker 1: deep space adventure, and she ends up getting sucked into
Speaker 1: this adventure and they sell this intrigue between the human
Speaker 1: colonists and the Iraqis that live there, and a lot
Speaker 1: of it ends up having to do with language, in
Speaker 1: the nature of language, and not just ideas of like
Speaker 1: how might aliens communicate versus humans and how would humans
Speaker 1: communicate with aliens, So there is a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: of that. It also gets into just deeper ideas of
Speaker 1: what language is. For instance, the Arakis in their language,
Speaker 1: they do not have lies, like they cannot tell lies
Speaker 1: because built into their linguistic machinery and not just lies,
Speaker 1: but they cannot speak things that cannot be physically proven,
Speaker 1: so they end up having to like just to form similars.
Speaker 1: They end up having to an list actors and sort
Speaker 1: of construct them out of minor dramas and uh and
Speaker 1: so it's just thought provoking in terms of it's use
Speaker 1: of language, and it really makes you think about what languages,
Speaker 1: what lies are, and what the ramifications for these things
Speaker 1: could be when it comes to in contact with a
Speaker 1: potential alien species. So I recommend giving that one to read.
Speaker 1: It also has a strong female protagonist, which is always
Speaker 1: a nice change for sci fi, and like I said,
Speaker 1: it might want a Hugo Award this year. So one
Speaker 1: of the more remarkable science fiction books of the last
Speaker 1: few years. I really like the idea that aliens couldn't
Speaker 1: why because it's not part of the skill set that
Speaker 1: they need. And I know we talked about this before
Speaker 1: we did a podcast online and how with humans it's
Speaker 1: like integral to the way that we enter into social contracts.
Speaker 1: You cannot actually be a human really without lying at
Speaker 1: some point however you define lying. Yeah, So that's that's
Speaker 1: an interesting premise. Is this added level to where in
Speaker 1: order to actually communicate with them, you can't just have
Speaker 1: one person trying to speak the Araki tongue. You have
Speaker 1: to have two individuals who essentially have the same mind
Speaker 1: that are performing a duet. So, like I said the other,
Speaker 1: but in an tremendous amount of thought and research into
Speaker 1: language and what language is. So if you're at all
Speaker 1: interested in alien linguistics, then definitely give this book a read.
Speaker 1: Very cool. Okay, So I have a nonfiction book called
Speaker 1: The Magic of Reality How We Know What's Really True?
Speaker 1: By Richard Dawkins. We've talked about him before, and he's
Speaker 1: offered many books. He's a big money time, selfish gene
Speaker 1: is one that probably a lot of people know. I
Speaker 1: love this book. I picked it up actually for my
Speaker 1: daughter because I'm creating sort of a library for her
Speaker 1: when when she gets older. And she's only three, so
Speaker 1: it's just going to be the official library, or is
Speaker 1: this the secret library that you're actually tricking her into reading.
Speaker 1: It's just a bunch of books that she can pick up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not gonna say like today we're going
Speaker 1: to pick up Richard Dawkins and you're going to go
Speaker 1: to page twenty six. It's just a book that I
Speaker 1: think would be really helpful for her as she develops
Speaker 1: at different stages in her life. So this book is
Speaker 1: actually built for all ages. But I kind of see
Speaker 1: this more is like maybe a really precocious, tent and up.
Speaker 1: But the reason why I selected this is because Dawkins
Speaker 1: basically takes sort of like this whole, like, Hey, here's
Speaker 1: the universe and we're gonna explain it to you now
Speaker 1: in no, in certain terms, I mean, it's really cool.
Speaker 1: Like he he starts out by talking about magic, because
Speaker 1: magic and magical thinking is very much a human construct, right,
Speaker 1: We've talked about this so many times. It can lead
Speaker 1: to errors on our thinking, it can lead to beautiful
Speaker 1: works of art. And he says that when it comes
Speaker 1: to science, that reality is actually much more magical than
Speaker 1: magic itself. I'm just going to read this little bit.
Speaker 1: This is actually a description of the book. Says magic
Speaker 1: takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used
Speaker 1: in order to explain the world before they developed the
Speaker 1: scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting
Speaker 1: the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believe the
Speaker 1: rainbow was the god's bridge to Earth. The Japanese used
Speaker 1: to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried
Speaker 1: the world on its back. That's not true, oh man,
Speaker 1: I've been I think I wrote that into an article.
Speaker 1: Bok you all right, I know what you're gonna be
Speaker 1: reading right after this. Yeah, it's not true that earthquakes
Speaker 1: occurred each time it flipped its tail. Oh man, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're telling after revise your articles. My whole world view
Speaker 1: is completely twitched around now that. Yeah. Yeah, these are magical,
Speaker 1: extraordinary tales, and they're wonderful. But there's another kind of magic,
Speaker 1: and it laws in the exhilaration of discovering the real
Speaker 1: answers to these questions. It is the magic of reality science.
Speaker 1: So there are twelve different questions or topics that he tackles,
Speaker 1: and they're all introduced with the supernatural explanation that we
Speaker 1: all know and love, and then Dawkins sprinkles his magic
Speaker 1: science dust on top and makes you realize that the
Speaker 1: rigors of scientific method uncover the old adage that the
Speaker 1: truth really is stranger than fiction, and it makes that
Speaker 1: even more glorious. Some of the areas that he covers
Speaker 1: are what is reality? Who was the first person? Um?
Speaker 1: He talks about DNA, and he talks about three million
Speaker 1: years ago. You can point to this lizard and say, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you and me we share a lot in common. What
Speaker 1: is an earthquake? There really is stone left unturned in
Speaker 1: the section, the last section he takes on miracles. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he ends by saying, and I won't go into
Speaker 1: all the different things that he talks about in terms
Speaker 1: of what is a miracle that he ends the section
Speaker 1: by saying. The eminent science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark
Speaker 1: summed up the point as Clark's third law. Any sufficiently
Speaker 1: advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If a time machine
Speaker 1: were to carry us forward a century or so, we
Speaker 1: would see wonders. Today we might think impossible miracles. The
Speaker 1: truth is more magical in the best and most exciting
Speaker 1: sense of the world than any myth or made up
Speaker 1: mystery or miracles. Science has its own magic, magic of reality.
Speaker 1: So again he's going back to sort of the basics
Speaker 1: of very mind blowing stuff to us that we've talked
Speaker 1: about before, in terms of how did our planet form?
Speaker 1: Talking about stardust, talking about how how do we really
Speaker 1: know that dinosaurs existed? Well, okay, you know, we've got
Speaker 1: fossils into um and and it's amazing even talks about like, okay,
Speaker 1: some of the things might have sounded like myth when
Speaker 1: scientists wore proposing them, especially with sci fi writers he
Speaker 1: talks about, he says, but they take these ideas and
Speaker 1: they create theories out of them, and then they create
Speaker 1: a model to test them. And DNA is the perfect
Speaker 1: example of this. This was an idea that was then
Speaker 1: modeled and then you know, through a series of different
Speaker 1: things of research and data that came up, we came
Speaker 1: to realize that this was a truth. That's why it's
Speaker 1: so entertaining because he really he takes on these really
Speaker 1: heavy concepts and he writes very eloquently and very humorously,
Speaker 1: but very clearly. Because again, this is for all ages.
Speaker 1: And I do recommend it to adults because I think
Speaker 1: that you would get a lot out of it. But
Speaker 1: I also think it's really worth its weight in gold
Speaker 1: because it talks about the skeptics. I not as someone
Speaker 1: who like, you know, let's pick apart everything and take
Speaker 1: the magic out of things, but more like, let's not
Speaker 1: be run by our superstitions or magical thinking. Let's you
Speaker 1: the magic of reality just in day to day life
Speaker 1: and be able to sort of to look at the
Speaker 1: invisible world and see how incredible it is. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a huge message to kids well into adults
Speaker 1: as well well. The final book on my list of
Speaker 1: four summer reading recommendations is a book called The Player
Speaker 1: of Games by Ian M. Banks. And this is a
Speaker 1: book from the Culture series, which I've mentioned before. I
Speaker 1: generally bring it up because it takes place in a
Speaker 1: distant future where humanity and machines live in a symbiotic relationship.
Speaker 1: So it's a post technological singularity world where we see
Speaker 1: the more positive ramifications. Not to say there's not some
Speaker 1: darkness in this world, oh yeah, yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: benign singularity. Definitely a benign singularity situation, though you do
Speaker 1: have some dark things that end up happening in this universe.
Speaker 1: And this book deals specifically with a clash between the
Speaker 1: culture again, robots humans living in harmony. Basically humans doing
Speaker 1: whatever they want while robots look after them and do
Speaker 1: the hard work, and so humans end up living lives
Speaker 1: of complete freedom. In this book, we have a human
Speaker 1: by the name of Gurga, and he has used his
Speaker 1: life to become a master of games. He's the Player
Speaker 1: of Games that we referenced in the title, So he's
Speaker 1: the master of all these different board games and travels
Speaker 1: around just having a good time and playing them in competition,
Speaker 1: very obsessive about winning, and he ends up being recruited
Speaker 1: by the culture, by the robots that run the culture,
Speaker 1: to serve as an emissary to this civilization that exists
Speaker 1: outside of the culture in non culture space, called the
Speaker 1: Empire of Azad, and they are at cruel, incredibly wealthy,
Speaker 1: destructive alien race. But at the heart of their culture
Speaker 1: they have this one super complex game and it serves
Speaker 1: as the backbone not only their empire and its laws,
Speaker 1: but also the very cognitive development of the race. So
Speaker 1: imagine a civilization where there's one game, then, in all
Speaker 1: its complexity and reasoning, is the backbone of everything they
Speaker 1: hold deer and everything that they are. And so the
Speaker 1: culture wants to send him in, and he's on this
Speaker 1: long journey, so he has plenty of time to practice
Speaker 1: and learn the game and play it against one of
Speaker 1: the AI's on the ship, and then when he gets there,
Speaker 1: he's expected to compete with members of this cruel alien race,
Speaker 1: the idea being that by playing a human in the scenario, though,
Speaker 1: somehow achieve a balance and they'll avoid war with the
Speaker 1: Empire of his odd So it's a great introductory read
Speaker 1: to the Culture series, because the Culture Series is not
Speaker 1: one of these series where you need to like start
Speaker 1: with the book one and then read through book eight.
Speaker 1: Most of them, to my understanding, stand on their own.
Speaker 1: I haven't read them all, I've only read a handful,
Speaker 1: but everyone seems to exist well on its own, and
Speaker 1: the player of games certainly does that. It's a fascinating
Speaker 1: look at what a post singularity world might consist of,
Speaker 1: when some of them were positive visions of that. It's
Speaker 1: a great analysis of what games mean to a civilization.
Speaker 1: And Ian and Banks is great about throwing in some
Speaker 1: really cool science and stuff, like he's clearly clearly has
Speaker 1: a very scientific mind, so he'll do things like for
Speaker 1: instances of planet in this book, where the only land
Speaker 1: on the planet everything is water except for the single
Speaker 1: strip of land that goes all the way around the equator,
Speaker 1: and you have a firestorm that moves along that strip
Speaker 1: of land, so that the ecosystem on this planet is
Speaker 1: a fire based ecosystem. And in the same way that
Speaker 1: you have plants that depend on forest fires to reproduce,
Speaker 1: all the life on this planet has evolved to deal
Speaker 1: with this ce cyclical firestorm that goes all the way
Speaker 1: around the world. So he'll throw in things like that
Speaker 1: when he's thinking about life and other worlds or planetary
Speaker 1: physics or whatever it happens to be. Andy'll incorporate that
Speaker 1: even if it's just a fascinating nugget along the way.
Speaker 1: And unlike some of the other authors that I mentioned,
Speaker 1: Ian Ebanks tends to write with a certain degree of
Speaker 1: humor that is not necessarily prevalent in the other three works.
Speaker 1: So if you want something that is at times lighter
Speaker 1: and might get a giggle out of you, I find
Speaker 1: Ian in Banks tends to fit the bill on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'd say too, that seems like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the commonalities between all of these or most
Speaker 1: of these, is that there is some sense of humor.
Speaker 1: That author enters into the the information with a good
Speaker 1: stance of humor. It sounds like, so, but you know
Speaker 1: it's important to us, all right, very cool. I was
Speaker 1: going to mention a book that I'm going to check out.
Speaker 1: It's called Internal Time, The Science of Chronotypes, Social jet
Speaker 1: lag and more. You're so tired, And I thought it
Speaker 1: was really interesting because we are at a point in
Speaker 1: our history where we are not I think because of
Speaker 1: technology as tied to time as we used to be,
Speaker 1: and so it does seem like there is a bit
Speaker 1: of a shift in the way that people are approaching
Speaker 1: their schedules. Not only that, you know, as everybody knows,
Speaker 1: despite that and some sort of flexibility, we seem to
Speaker 1: be cramming so much into our time and really suffering
Speaker 1: for it. So I I really am interested in finding
Speaker 1: out more about this, these chronotypes that supposedly all of
Speaker 1: us possess a different chronotype and internal timing type. So
Speaker 1: some people are early risers, some people are late risers,
Speaker 1: and this seems to be Historically we thought, okay, well
Speaker 1: that means that you're lay about if you get up late,
Speaker 1: or you know your go get or if you get
Speaker 1: up at six am or whatever. Those are just very
Speaker 1: arbitrary terms that have been abscribed to people. That this
Speaker 1: idea of chronotype is something that is more hardwired into us.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to check that out. And then two
Speaker 1: quick mentions. I won't go into them too much. Some
Speaker 1: we love, some we hate, and some we eat. We've
Speaker 1: talked about this book. It's great. I am A relationship
Speaker 1: with animals. A relationship with the animals are ten years
Speaker 1: relationship with animals, how confused we are kind of butt
Speaker 1: over tea kettle when it comes to us, right, and
Speaker 1: how we receive animals, and as the title says, some
Speaker 1: we love, some we hate, and some wheat. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to check that out a little bit more this
Speaker 1: summer because there are some things I want to revisit.
Speaker 1: Especially there's a chapter on animal cruelty and this myth
Speaker 1: that serial killers start off as killers of animals, that
Speaker 1: this is actually not true, that children do this as
Speaker 1: sort of a mastery of their own places in the world,
Speaker 1: and this idea of trying to figure out what power
Speaker 1: is over another person or thing. So I want to
Speaker 1: check that out. And the next book, last book, The
Speaker 1: Family Fang. It is a fiction book. It's about Caleb
Speaker 1: and Camille Fang, their performance artists, who use their two children,
Speaker 1: Annie and Buster are otherwise known as Child and Child
Speaker 1: be as parts of their performance pieces. And it seems
Speaker 1: like it's going to be like a pretty smart debate
Speaker 1: about the human cost of sacrificing everything for art and
Speaker 1: this idea of family. Everybody always thinks that they have
Speaker 1: the freakiest family, so it'll be interesting to see that
Speaker 1: that idea played out with the family fang cool. Well,
Speaker 1: for my part, I'm I think this may be the
Speaker 1: summer I finally read Dan Simon's Hyperion. Oh yeah, classic
Speaker 1: SciFi booked at our our our boss. Many people's always
Speaker 1: read that, yet Yeah, I think I have a friend
Speaker 1: who's gonna try reading it, So hopefully this will be
Speaker 1: the summer. On that, I should also point out real
Speaker 1: quick that the fiction books that I mentioned here, if
Speaker 1: you're obviously, if you're a parent, you're involved then and
Speaker 1: whatever your kid reads, that's your own deal. But I
Speaker 1: would like to point out that the author Polo basaka Loopy,
Speaker 1: the author of The Wind Up Girl, he also has
Speaker 1: a couple of young adult novels. One in particular that's
Speaker 1: out as we're recording. This is called The Shipbreaker, and
Speaker 1: it deals in the same setting, a post oil, ecologically
Speaker 1: ravaged world, but it's aimed to the younger audience, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about there being anything inappropriate
Speaker 1: in there. I would list that as an alternative or
Speaker 1: if you're just I mean end up playing of adults
Speaker 1: who prefer young adult novels. I mean, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of great young adult novels out there that can
Speaker 1: be enjoyed by any age. So because I take those
Speaker 1: as alternatives, so we present you this list of books.
Speaker 1: You can use this if you're trying to think of
Speaker 1: something you want to you want to read. So if
Speaker 1: you do happen to pick one of these up, if
Speaker 1: you read something that we have recommended, or if you're
Speaker 1: reading something that we're planning to read this summer, or
Speaker 1: if you've you've read it already and have some thoughts
Speaker 1: on it, if you would like to encourage us in
Speaker 1: these choices that we have made, or say, actually, you're
Speaker 1: making a huge mistake by reading Hyperion or whatever, let
Speaker 1: us know. We'd love to hear from you. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and you can find us on Twitter.
Speaker 1: On Facebook, we're stuff to Blow your Mind on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Our handles Blow the Mind, and you can drop us
Speaker 1: a line at blow the Mind discovery dot com. Okay,