Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuffworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, I'm Christian Sea, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And hey, it's our traditional summer reading episode.
Speaker 1: That's right, this is uh kind of kind of beach
Speaker 1: reading time. Will you guys go to the beach. I'm
Speaker 1: not really a beach person. Wait, I go to the beach. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, go to go to the beach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert goes to the beach. I like to go to
Speaker 1: radioactive beaches and read your books, right right. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this is kind of, you know, an annual tradition here,
Speaker 1: it's Stuff to Blow your Mind where we take a
Speaker 1: break from the research and we talked about what we've
Speaker 1: just been reading casually that we recommend our listeners go
Speaker 1: and read for the summer. Yeah. I mean this is
Speaker 1: the time, to your point, people are going on on vacation.
Speaker 1: People like to bring I like to bring a book
Speaker 1: with me on vacation if I'm whether I'm going to
Speaker 1: the beach or not. And uh, it's also the time
Speaker 1: when we have a lot of we're just putting together
Speaker 1: the podcast. People are in and out, people are going
Speaker 1: on vacation, so it's nice to have something we can
Speaker 1: we can put together without a whole lot of extra
Speaker 1: research involved. One thing I've discovered is that if you're
Speaker 1: going on vacation, not to the beach, but say, to
Speaker 1: your in laws house, it's also great to bring a
Speaker 1: book there because you can sneak away. And I say
Speaker 1: that as somebody who loves my in laws. I don't
Speaker 1: have in law problems. They are the greatest people in
Speaker 1: the world. But you're in somebody else's house every now
Speaker 1: and then you want to sneak off to another room
Speaker 1: and just read. Yeah. Well, And I have two thoughts
Speaker 1: on this as well. For starters, we have so many
Speaker 1: distractions built into our regular routine that if you just
Speaker 1: break your routine a little bit, even by just going
Speaker 1: on a small family trip or going to visit in laws,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to break free from the shackles
Speaker 1: of of of your life a little bit and maybe
Speaker 1: read a bit more. That's nice. And then in general,
Speaker 1: there's this rule of life always brings something to read,
Speaker 1: because if you bring something to read, you will not
Speaker 1: have time for it. But if you if you don't
Speaker 1: bring a book, then you will find yourself sitting in
Speaker 1: a in a waiting room somewhere with nothing to occupy yourself,
Speaker 1: but you know, staring at your fingernails and wishing you
Speaker 1: had your clippers on you, or you'll be looking at
Speaker 1: junk on your phone and wishing you hadn't. I'm one
Speaker 1: of those people who like overly prepares in that respect,
Speaker 1: Like I've always got something to read, and I've also
Speaker 1: always got like notebooks to write in, to the point
Speaker 1: now where I've got like an absurd amount of notebooks
Speaker 1: in my everyday bag, like because I got a field
Speaker 1: Notes subscription. This isn't an advertisement for them, but I
Speaker 1: gotta field Notes subscription, and now I have like six
Speaker 1: field Notes for like all different things that are in
Speaker 1: my backpack at all times. Plus I'm reading constantly. Well,
Speaker 1: until until very recently, you couldn't really have the kindle
Speaker 1: out on the plane while you're you know, during takeoff
Speaker 1: and landing. So I would always make sure, Okay, do
Speaker 1: I have a physical book for that portion of the flight,
Speaker 1: and then I can bust out the kindle for the rest.
Speaker 1: That's smart. Yeah, yeah, you don't have a kindle yet, right,
Speaker 1: you're still reading everything physical. I read physical books and
Speaker 1: on my phone, so I so this is funny. The
Speaker 1: majority of the books that I'm going to recommend today
Speaker 1: I read on my phone, even though I still like
Speaker 1: paper books much better. Yeah, how is that on your eyes? Though?
Speaker 1: I mean it's not great. It was one of those
Speaker 1: where I just wanted to start reading a book. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go out and buy it somewhere wait
Speaker 1: for it to arrive, so I just got the book
Speaker 1: and started reading or or started listening to an audio book.
Speaker 1: I mean I do both of those. So I I
Speaker 1: consume books digitally a lot, even though I'm much enjoy
Speaker 1: paper books. Yeah, I enjoy them much more. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was boy getting a kindle this again on an advertisement,
Speaker 1: like any whatever e reader that doesn't like flash light
Speaker 1: directly into your eyeballs. Man, it was a revelation for me,
Speaker 1: Like my reading increased exponentially when I when I got that,
Speaker 1: because I just, I don't know, there's something about it,
Speaker 1: like it got me really back into reading again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've also really enjoyed the various like free e books
Speaker 1: offerings that are out there. Like one that comes to
Speaker 1: mind is U Tour books. We talked about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll do a I think they're still doing this, a
Speaker 1: Book of the Month club where they'll just put out
Speaker 1: an e book and you can They'll just say here,
Speaker 1: here's the file downloaded, get it on your device. However,
Speaker 1: you get it on your device and then you get
Speaker 1: to go one of those, which is like a novel
Speaker 1: lette that I read recently. It wasn't free, it was cents,
Speaker 1: so it really broke the bank. But not on my
Speaker 1: list here, but I recommend it. Kelly Robeson, she's this
Speaker 1: up and coming kind of sci fi horror fantasy writer,
Speaker 1: and she wrote this story called I Think It's a
Speaker 1: Human Stain and it is wow, really good. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'm jumping ahead. I'm like, I'm already recommending stuff that
Speaker 1: isn't on paper in front of me right here. Well,
Speaker 1: where should we start, gentlemen? Should we start with fiction
Speaker 1: or nonfiction? Because we're gonna roll through some fictional selections,
Speaker 1: some nonfictional selections, and uh, Christian and I are gonna
Speaker 1: bust out at least a couple of comics. I think
Speaker 1: you have more than one. I'd have one comics selection.
Speaker 1: I surprisingly only have one comics. But knowing me, I'll
Speaker 1: end up talking about ten other comics by the end
Speaker 1: of this episode. Yeah, why don't we start with the fiction?
Speaker 1: All right? And I think one of you guys should
Speaker 1: go first, because my fiction is a little odd. It's
Speaker 1: not like one thing, Joe, why don't you kick it off? Then? Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of fiction picks this year. One
Speaker 1: is a book that is more recent I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: I guess it's about ten years ago now, but more recent.
Speaker 1: Another one is a classic that I just discovered for
Speaker 1: the first time this year. So I'll start with the
Speaker 1: more recent one, and that is going to be Blind
Speaker 1: Site by Peter Watts, which was published by Tour Books
Speaker 1: in two thousand six. And we're just given Tour all
Speaker 1: the love today. I'm gonna try not to interrupt you
Speaker 1: too much, Joe, but I am currently reading this book
Speaker 1: and and enjoying it quite a lot, so i'll I
Speaker 1: may interject my opinions as well here and there. Well,
Speaker 1: y'all tap me on the shoulder if I'm just gushing
Speaker 1: to too effusively about this book. I loved this book.
Speaker 1: I I picked up Blind Site after our interview with
Speaker 1: our Scott Baker because in his paper on alien philosophy
Speaker 1: or Scott Baker mentioned that there were really only two
Speaker 1: books he could think of that really achieved the imagination
Speaker 1: of a truly non anthropomorphic alien mind, and one of
Speaker 1: the two books he named was blind Side. I've never
Speaker 1: heard of it before. I've never read anything by Peter Watts,
Speaker 1: but I was like, well, I'm looking for a new
Speaker 1: sci fi horror kind of book right now, I'll check
Speaker 1: that out. I ordered it, and oh man, it is
Speaker 1: so great. Uh it's it's a great example of the
Speaker 1: themes we talked about on the show all the time.
Speaker 1: So I think it's like Dead Center, bulls Eye stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind fan kind of book. But also
Speaker 1: it's a it's a great example of, um, this common
Speaker 1: sci fi type story, the first contact story. I don't
Speaker 1: want to say too much about the story, though I
Speaker 1: will talk about some elements from the setting of the novel,
Speaker 1: because the story, I think you should just experience the
Speaker 1: surprises of the plot on your own. But I will
Speaker 1: say a bit about the themes and the setting. So
Speaker 1: Peter Watts is a Canadian marine biologist turned science fiction author,
Speaker 1: and his science background, I would say, really, really comes
Speaker 1: through in the novel because it's a novel about scientific hypotheses.
Speaker 1: Characters are scientists and are trying to solve scientific problems
Speaker 1: in the in the plot of the story, and it
Speaker 1: also deals with these fascinating questions about the biological origins
Speaker 1: of consciousness. I would say it's my favorite kind of
Speaker 1: science fiction novel because I want to picture there are
Speaker 1: like four squares in a grid, and I would call
Speaker 1: this in the square that I would call wild hard.
Speaker 1: So you could define you could divide science fiction into
Speaker 1: hard and soft, where hard sci fi incorporates scientific themes
Speaker 1: and it tries to stay true to real physics and biology.
Speaker 1: And then you've got soft sci fi has you know,
Speaker 1: unexplained magical elements, and that's fine, but that's its own thing.
Speaker 1: But then i'd separated also into dry versus wild. Dry
Speaker 1: sci fi deals with the standard themes of drama and fiction,
Speaker 1: familiar off interpersonal relationships and all that. Wild sci fi
Speaker 1: deals with unpredictable, bizarre creatures and scenarios. And so this
Speaker 1: this is in the corner of both hard and wild.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely bonkers, but at the same time it's extremely
Speaker 1: scientifically conscientious and concerned with scientific accuracy and plausibility. So well,
Speaker 1: this is I think would you agree with I would agree,
Speaker 1: And I think at this point you need to mention, uh,
Speaker 1: the plot element and one particular character that initially hooked
Speaker 1: me on it, Like, I think it's probably the first
Speaker 1: thing you told me about it. Yeah, I would say.
Speaker 1: My first thing to sell a stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind fan about this book is that it's a space adventure,
Speaker 1: hard sci fi, first contact book that has vampires, and
Speaker 1: I'm on board. So it's Life Force. No, no, it's
Speaker 1: not quite Life Force. So Life Force is definitely not
Speaker 1: hard Side. Right, So you're out there going like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, vampires, Okay, I thought you said this was
Speaker 1: hard sci fi. I would say it is. There's no fantasy,
Speaker 1: there's no supernatural elements. Watts does an amazingly good job
Speaker 1: of making vampires biologically plausible. And what he does is
Speaker 1: he envisions them as an extinct branch of hominids that
Speaker 1: went extinct in the place to see an epoch, uh,
Speaker 1: and their cousins of Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. But they've
Speaker 1: got all these interesting inherited glitches and features in their body.
Speaker 1: For one thing, they are obligate cannibals, like they have
Speaker 1: to consume other hominids because they need a necessary protein
Speaker 1: that's generated in hominid bodies, and they can't generate it themselves,
Speaker 1: so they've got to eat other hominids to survive. This
Speaker 1: is why they're, you know, feeding on us. Of course,
Speaker 1: this they eat, they're not drinking blood. They literally are
Speaker 1: eating people. Now, I think it's more like they would
Speaker 1: just eat people. They might drink your blood too. But
Speaker 1: the genesis of all vampire myths, though, got you. So
Speaker 1: how does this hold up in comparison. I'm looking to
Speaker 1: Robert here because we did an episode on Germo del
Speaker 1: Toro's The Strain, which is also very heavily scientifically influenced
Speaker 1: vampire creation. I would say that the major difference here
Speaker 1: is that in The Strain, they put a lot of
Speaker 1: effort into imagining a very monstrous um vampire species that
Speaker 1: is essentially parasitic in in its origin and in blind Sight,
Speaker 1: Peter Watts puts a tremendous amount of effort into creating
Speaker 1: It's still monstrous in a way, it's still inhuman, but
Speaker 1: it's a very very human vampire in well, that that's
Speaker 1: where it gets really interesting because he spends so much
Speaker 1: time just talking about how would a creature like this think,
Speaker 1: how would it uh. One of the examples that comes
Speaker 1: up is it's uh, the vampire character doesn't speak much,
Speaker 1: or when it does speak, if he speaks very briefly,
Speaker 1: and it makes a comparison to two orcas, to transient predatory,
Speaker 1: transient predator, and how the the ones that prey upon
Speaker 1: mammals speak less and are therefore, you know, creating less
Speaker 1: noise that would scare off potential prey. So even though
Speaker 1: this vampire is a member of the crew, it's still
Speaker 1: behaving and thinking like an evolved predator. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's so great, I mean, and they so they respond
Speaker 1: to it the same way you would respond in the
Speaker 1: presence of a predator, Like they feel the predatory gaze
Speaker 1: as if there's like a lion sitting across the table
Speaker 1: from them talking to them. Um, and it's all it's
Speaker 1: there's so many other little features he comes up with
Speaker 1: that are just fascinating, Like they have to go into
Speaker 1: these undead hibernation periods because of course, if you're just
Speaker 1: eating humans all the time, you run out of food,
Speaker 1: so they have to slow down their metabolism another thing
Speaker 1: they've covered the show before. Yeah. Uh. And then so
Speaker 1: they're harmed by looking at crosses. How does he make
Speaker 1: that scientifically plausible? Where he gives He gives them this
Speaker 1: inherited neurological glitch because perpendicular intersecting right angles almost never
Speaker 1: occur in nature, and they've got this problem where when
Speaker 1: they look at one, they go into seizures. And that's clever,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of that's essentially one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons they went extinct, right, is not because human were
Speaker 1: able to really outsmart them, because they are brilliant. There
Speaker 1: a rise of Christianity, well just the rise of human
Speaker 1: and you can't go into a human city and they can't.
Speaker 1: So if they okay, I see, So even if they're
Speaker 1: just like looking at a house that's spilt with the
Speaker 1: right angles, they start having these seizures. Yeah, wow, okay,
Speaker 1: and then they also, like another detail he brings up
Speaker 1: is um how they can they can hold two separate
Speaker 1: worldviews in their mind at the same time. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: like a they're like a multi core parallel processor and
Speaker 1: they can sort of divide their attention between solving multiple
Speaker 1: problems at the same time, they've got a divisible internal brain.
Speaker 1: This is not the example wats used, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tweak it. You know, the what is it the rabbit?
Speaker 1: What is the optical illusion? Sometimes it looks like a
Speaker 1: rabbit the duck, The rabbit the duck. The vampires can
Speaker 1: look at the rabbit the duck and they see a
Speaker 1: rabbit in the duck at the same time. Is it
Speaker 1: the Necker cube? Yes, that's the example. You know about
Speaker 1: this Christian right, Well, it's a It's a three dimensional
Speaker 1: illustration of a cube, like the wire our cube, and
Speaker 1: your mind, while you're looking at it will switch back
Speaker 1: and forth from seeing it as a cube oriented in
Speaker 1: one direction to a cube oriented the other direction. I
Speaker 1: do know what you're talking about. I just didn't know
Speaker 1: that's what it was called. Okay, So a human looks
Speaker 1: at that and your mind is naturally switching you back
Speaker 1: and forth. You see it one way, then you see
Speaker 1: it the other way. The vampires in this novel can
Speaker 1: see both cubes at once. One more thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to terrify. Yeah, they sound like apex predators totally. I'd
Speaker 1: say this novel it has really strong horror elements and
Speaker 1: they are of a very interesting kind, because I would
Speaker 1: say it's a cousin to the kind of cosmic horror
Speaker 1: you'd see in something like Lovecraft and related works, where
Speaker 1: there's this idea that there are vast powerful forces at
Speaker 1: work in the universe and you're just a speck and
Speaker 1: you have no reason to think that these vast powerful
Speaker 1: forces are sympathetic to you at all. Corror. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so in Lovecraft these are like alien god beings and
Speaker 1: these pantheons and things like that. In blind Sight, I'd
Speaker 1: say the same thematic role is played by the laws
Speaker 1: of biological evolution, Like the novel actually leverages real facts
Speaker 1: about biology and extending them into thinking about space to
Speaker 1: fill the role of cosmic dread brought on by the
Speaker 1: elder gods in love Craft. That sounds very nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to check this book out. Yeah, there, this
Speaker 1: is one of those books. I'm reading it in in
Speaker 1: the book format, and uh I keep making notes uh
Speaker 1: in in my device as I see that. See it
Speaker 1: tie into various topics we've covered, Like there's a scene
Speaker 1: where there are a number of scenes in the book
Speaker 1: where characters are are hit with very strong magnetic fields
Speaker 1: and it's causing hallucinations and also, um, like a god helmet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a god helmet. There. One of the characters
Speaker 1: sees the creator God and goes berserk over it. Another
Speaker 1: character essentially ends up having the Cotard's delusion, believing that
Speaker 1: she does not exist anymore. It's it. I would say
Speaker 1: that that in the portion I've read of it, the
Speaker 1: cognitive stuff, like all the characters in it are so
Speaker 1: cognitively trans human, so delightfully cognitively trans human. Um. But
Speaker 1: but I don't want to steal too much of your
Speaker 1: thunder here. Well, no, I just I think I'm about
Speaker 1: ready to move on. But I just want to say
Speaker 1: I think we haven't even touched on half of the
Speaker 1: amazingly fascinating ideas in this book. So it's just jammed
Speaker 1: with with stuff to contemplate really cool, interesting ideas. If
Speaker 1: you're into science, if you're into big questions and cosmic
Speaker 1: mysteries of existence, this is an excellent book. I think
Speaker 1: you'd really enjoy. And there's not there is not a
Speaker 1: quote unquote normal character in the book. Like now every
Speaker 1: character is has some sort of bizarre cognitive ability or transformation.
Speaker 1: Like there's a character with multiple personalities intentionally created in
Speaker 1: her head team, like in her right so very eclipse phase,
Speaker 1: where so they've got like the ability to sort of
Speaker 1: sleeve multiple identities into a body. One character does, uh,
Speaker 1: eventually maybe more than one, but yeah, another character has
Speaker 1: the main character has lost lost half his brain to
Speaker 1: an infection radical hemisphere ectomy. He had. He suffered from
Speaker 1: seizures when he was a child, and they were so
Speaker 1: bad that they did this procedure where they remove one
Speaker 1: hemisphere of the brain and that does stop the seizures,
Speaker 1: but it also has lots of side effects. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: it's it's like that level of of creativity in this
Speaker 1: book that that I think is just really really amazing.
Speaker 1: I thought one more fact I want to say, and
Speaker 1: then we can move on. This book also does something
Speaker 1: that I've never seen done before. Maybe somebody else does it,
Speaker 1: but I think it's great. You always hear the singularitarians
Speaker 1: being so excited about uploading our consciousness into computers, and
Speaker 1: that's always interpreted as and that's the end, that's the
Speaker 1: end of history. We just upload our consciousness into computers
Speaker 1: and then it's just heavenly bliss in a virtual environment
Speaker 1: for all time. And we don't need to worry about
Speaker 1: anything else. This book incorporates that as a historical event
Speaker 1: people start being able to upload their minds into virtual heavens,
Speaker 1: and then says, actually, that's not the end of history.
Speaker 1: That just happens at some point and things continue going on.
Speaker 1: What would be the consequences of that? And uh, and
Speaker 1: I love it. The way he deals with it is
Speaker 1: really interesting and oh yeah, like there are elements of yes,
Speaker 1: we've had were post singularity, but we we have difficulty
Speaker 1: communicating with the machines and understanding each other. You have
Speaker 1: to have individuals whose whole role is to sort of
Speaker 1: serve as an arbitrator between these two factions. It is
Speaker 1: he is, he's sort of depicting post singularity, but it's
Speaker 1: not a he's not sanguine about the singularity and its
Speaker 1: effects on our lives. It's more kind of like, here's
Speaker 1: just one more radically weird complication and human experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I seem to recall to that, like there are
Speaker 1: a few areas where we haven't pushed into like full
Speaker 1: singularity situations, such as the digitization of consciousness. Like I
Speaker 1: think the individuals who are in that heaven still have
Speaker 1: to have their body or at least part of it
Speaker 1: on file somewhere right, Yeah, squeezed into tenually smaller and
Speaker 1: smaller drawers. This reminds me of have you guys ever
Speaker 1: read any Charles Stross? A lot of his stuff kind
Speaker 1: of treats this singularity. This is funny. Charles Stross blurbed
Speaker 1: the heck out of this. Apparently Charles Stross loved blind Son. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's why it reminds me. Also, is Peter Watts
Speaker 1: a pseudonym? That's his real name, because Peter Watts is
Speaker 1: the the name of the character on Millennium that Terry
Speaker 1: o Quinn played. Yeah, just a fun coincidence. Terryo Quinn
Speaker 1: was in Millennium. Oh yeah, Terry Quinn was like a regular.
Speaker 1: He wasn't in every episode, but he was. He was
Speaker 1: like essentially like Leans Hendrickson's like Millennium group partner slash
Speaker 1: front of me. Okay, well, y'all have to stop me,
Speaker 1: or we have I have to stop myself. We some
Speaker 1: somehow this has gotta stop where I'm just gonna keep
Speaker 1: gushing about this book. Let's let's get your fiction pick
Speaker 1: in here, all right. Well, um, maybe maybe I'm a
Speaker 1: bit set in my ways here, but I decided to
Speaker 1: not shock anyone into feature an Ian M. Banks culture novel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, I think we're like N. M. Banks
Speaker 1: is like best like commercial service. Maybe. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not the only book I read, but I have
Speaker 1: to say I do love them, and I kind of
Speaker 1: resist the urge to really just drive through them all
Speaker 1: and just read all of them, because we're not going
Speaker 1: to get any more of them since an M. Banks
Speaker 1: it's no longer with us. But I generally read one
Speaker 1: a year, and it's always it's always a pleasure. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there are always so many stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind aligned themes that pop up in in these books.
Speaker 1: How many are there total? I want to say there, Um,
Speaker 1: it depends on how you count on because I think
Speaker 1: there's seven or eight that are considered culture novels. But
Speaker 1: some are are sort of clear culture culture novels that
Speaker 1: are you know, definitely involving members of the culture, and
Speaker 1: then others it's a case where okay, this seems to
Speaker 1: be a novel that's taking place in the same universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that that those varying levels of awareness actually
Speaker 1: come come into play in this book. The book is
Speaker 1: uh is Matter. So the book concerns the shell world
Speaker 1: of Sersamon, which is a titanic artificial planet that contains
Speaker 1: nested concentric spheres internally lit by tiny thermonuclear stars. So
Speaker 1: in the book we learned that it was built by
Speaker 1: a mysterious long dead race known as the Veil for
Speaker 1: reasons unknown. Uh. There there are multiple shell worlds spread
Speaker 1: throughout the galaxy in the Culture universe, but it's thought
Speaker 1: that the structures were originally intended to be fluid filled
Speaker 1: and utilized as a means of projecting some manner of
Speaker 1: of shielding around the entire galaxy. Now unknown if that
Speaker 1: shielding would have been to keep something out or to
Speaker 1: keep something in. Uh. You know, it's hard to question
Speaker 1: the ways of the ancients, right, But anyway, it was
Speaker 1: never completed, and in the ages that followed you have
Speaker 1: various space fearing races coming in, exploring it, taking control
Speaker 1: of it. And now various layers of this thing are
Speaker 1: home to implanted ecosystems, and two of these contain humanoids,
Speaker 1: feudal pre industrial humanoid races engaged in wars of conquest,
Speaker 1: while foster civilizations look on like different alien beings. One
Speaker 1: of them, they're just called the oct because they're kind
Speaker 1: of cephalopodic. Wait now, if you said this, I missed it.
Speaker 1: Do the do the people inside the shell worlds know
Speaker 1: they're in the shell world or do they just think
Speaker 1: they're in the world. That's one of the really interesting
Speaker 1: aspects of this book because the three main characters of
Speaker 1: humanoid characters are members of the Royal House of Sorrow
Speaker 1: and one of these internal levels that's again in this
Speaker 1: pre industrial feudal age. But they're not They're not living
Speaker 1: in complete ignorance of the world beyond them. Like they
Speaker 1: they know that the oct or an alien species that
Speaker 1: looks after them. They know that they live in a
Speaker 1: shell world and that there's a greater universe beyond. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, they they believe that their god
Speaker 1: lives in the center of the shell world and uh,
Speaker 1: and they're able to have like they're able to sort
Speaker 1: of think magically, to have sort of magical thinking about
Speaker 1: these greater powers while also believing that they are rooted
Speaker 1: in more of a logical universe. So through throughout the
Speaker 1: book he does a great job of exploring this question,
Speaker 1: what would it be like to exist in a society
Speaker 1: like this to to know uh, to know their aliens,
Speaker 1: to know that there's a there's advanced science that your
Speaker 1: people can't even uh, you know, graphs that you don't
Speaker 1: even have it, like a germ theory of of of disease.
Speaker 1: But yet to know that there are spaceships that travel
Speaker 1: around inside your shell world. Um, and then how would
Speaker 1: you and then how do you understand the the the
Speaker 1: universe beyond your shell world? Because the problem is like
Speaker 1: their cosmology is built upon this these layers within this sphere,
Speaker 1: and so it's even more complex for them to try
Speaker 1: and grasp this greater universe beyond. Now that makes me
Speaker 1: think about sort of the consequences of like what we
Speaker 1: see in Star Trek with the prime directive. You know,
Speaker 1: they always say like, don't interfere and try to help
Speaker 1: a less advanced species, uh, because you'd just be messing
Speaker 1: up their way of life and their natural evolution through history.
Speaker 1: And I often look at that and say, oh why not,
Speaker 1: why don't we just come in and teach them about
Speaker 1: spaceships and stuff like that. But you can imagine the
Speaker 1: trouble that could be caused with this radical disconnect where
Speaker 1: you don't have the scientific foundations already existing and suddenly
Speaker 1: you're just aware of advanced technology. Yeah, and banks explore
Speaker 1: some of this because you have these these various alien
Speaker 1: races that are watching these feudal societies and essentially setting
Speaker 1: back and enjoying their wars of conquest. And at the
Speaker 1: same time, they're not supposed to get too involved. There
Speaker 1: are there are laws involved that are keeping them from
Speaker 1: you know, showing up and handing over advanced technology. And uh,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to spoiling anything in the plot,
Speaker 1: but essentially, uh, it seems to be the case that
Speaker 1: someone has violated one of these these laws. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's a book where the plot, it initially seems
Speaker 1: pretty simple because within the shell world, you have a
Speaker 1: just king who's who's killed by a new server, and
Speaker 1: then you have the three children of the king who
Speaker 1: have to deal with it. Like one child witnesses the murder.
Speaker 1: He's not a child anymore, he's had grown up. Uh,
Speaker 1: the witnesses the murder and is on the run. And
Speaker 1: then the youngest son is there um uh you know,
Speaker 1: left is the air. And then you have the daughter
Speaker 1: who has actually left uh the shell world and now
Speaker 1: is a member of the culture. And of course the
Speaker 1: culture uh with a capital c is is the the
Speaker 1: inter planetary, interstellar society at the core of most of
Speaker 1: these culture books, and they're what I guess you would say,
Speaker 1: hum an anarchist, utopian society post scarcity. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: one of the details that comes up in this book
Speaker 1: is that so the AI s are each a ship.
Speaker 1: So these show run the culture essentially and they have
Speaker 1: converse with one another make decisions, but each one's operating
Speaker 1: system is built from the ground up, like it evolves
Speaker 1: from the ground up. That protects them from being like
Speaker 1: rapidly infected by anything. I think you just answered one
Speaker 1: of my questions about this. But it sounds like you're
Speaker 1: reading this book through the perspective of multiple cultures. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not like there's one character that we follow that's
Speaker 1: only in the culture and not in the show world.
Speaker 1: You're getting perspectives from all of them. Well, there are three,
Speaker 1: the three main characters all are rooted in in the
Speaker 1: House of Sorrow, but you do encounter various other individuals
Speaker 1: who are like there's a there's a character that was
Speaker 1: maybe once a humanoid and now as a essentially this
Speaker 1: metallic bush kind of a creature, like very trans human
Speaker 1: um Verry David Lynch. Yeah. I mean that's one of
Speaker 1: the great things about Banks sci fi is that he
Speaker 1: deals with some very serious, uh science fiction topic, you know,
Speaker 1: some very lofty ideas. There's a whole there's a whole
Speaker 1: bit in this and really the the title itself refers
Speaker 1: to uh section in it where they're they're talking about
Speaker 1: simulations in the theory that that we live within a simulation,
Speaker 1: that this is all computer simulation. And so they talk
Speaker 1: about that like whether how do we know that we
Speaker 1: are matter? How do we know that we are the
Speaker 1: we're like the prime reality and not some created reality
Speaker 1: for another's amusement. Uh, And then they agreed Deckard together, well,
Speaker 1: and then there's gonna be some sort of absurd punchline here.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's not I don't want to paint
Speaker 1: it like it's discworld or anything, but there is a
Speaker 1: there is a goodhearted silliness in a lot of of
Speaker 1: the culture series that I think, uh, you know, propels
Speaker 1: one on. There's an optimism there too. So what are
Speaker 1: the chances that Hollywood is eyeing this as like a
Speaker 1: big like franchise property. It sounds right for turning it
Speaker 1: into some kind of media property, since it's got all
Speaker 1: these different books and Enim Banks is so beloved as
Speaker 1: an author. I don't know. I have not heard any
Speaker 1: concrete plans to adapt any of the books, but there's
Speaker 1: some there's some lovely smaller scale books that in the
Speaker 1: series that I think would work. Wonders such as The
Speaker 1: Player of Games, which I think I've talked about on
Speaker 1: this podcast in the past before. But it's about a
Speaker 1: cultural operative who has to infiltrate in an effect and
Speaker 1: alien society, whose whole society has built around a single
Speaker 1: super complex board game essentially, so they have to bring
Speaker 1: him in a Master of Games Jonathan maybe, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: Jonathan will play We'll play him in the movie. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend matter. I I'm I'm torn if it's
Speaker 1: an ideal starting point for the culture series, but that's
Speaker 1: one of the ultimate beautiful things about it is that
Speaker 1: this is not like an eight seven or eight volumes saga,
Speaker 1: like each one can stand on its own, and each
Speaker 1: one may refer to the overall time line, um, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit or a lot depending on what the
Speaker 1: plot is, and each one I'm assuming does like a
Speaker 1: pretty good job of immersing you in this world and
Speaker 1: like kind of getting you settled into it before it
Speaker 1: proceeds with its narrative. Yeah, yeah, yeah that they do
Speaker 1: this one. This one is I think does an especially
Speaker 1: good job because you have characters that are at home
Speaker 1: in certain a certain layer, within a certain world, within
Speaker 1: this larger reuniverse, and you're able to sort of work
Speaker 1: out from there. Cool. Yeah, it's uh, my reading list
Speaker 1: grows by the day. I I really don't think that
Speaker 1: I'm going to ever be able to read everything that's
Speaker 1: been recommended to me. But uh, Ian Banks, I have
Speaker 1: The Wasp Factory sitting in my pile next to the
Speaker 1: bed that start Yeah. Um, but that's not one of
Speaker 1: his sci fi novel that was his for He had
Speaker 1: written some sci fi novels and he he had difficulty
Speaker 1: finding publishers, and so he said, well, heck, I'm going
Speaker 1: to write a kind of a literary horror tale. So
Speaker 1: he wrote The Wasp Factory and it's a tremendous hit,
Speaker 1: and it is a it's a tremendous um. It's kind
Speaker 1: of slightly surreal horror read. But one of the things
Speaker 1: that makes me want to read The Wasp Factory. Is
Speaker 1: that it's got a poll quote on the outside of
Speaker 1: the book where you normally have stuff like, you know,
Speaker 1: a tour to force, and the poll quote says something
Speaker 1: like utter trash, absolutely depraved. Yeah, it's kind of depraved.
Speaker 1: Once I finished that, then I'm gonna then I'll probably
Speaker 1: add a culture book to that stack, and then it'll
Speaker 1: be five years after that that I get to that.
Speaker 1: I'm still trying to finish that niff the Lean book
Speaker 1: that you love Me Borrow a year ago. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a good one, which I have also recommended all over
Speaker 1: the place. Michael Shay al Right, well, speaking of literary horror.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Michael, what's your fiction selection? Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: don't have one fiction selection. I have many. I have
Speaker 1: undergone a project for the summer. My wife, for my birthday,
Speaker 1: because I asked her to do this, got me subscriptions
Speaker 1: to a bunch of genre magazines that have short fiction
Speaker 1: in them. So I was like, you know what, I
Speaker 1: really I know about all this stuff that's going on.
Speaker 1: I write fiction. I should try to immerse myself and
Speaker 1: what people are currently publishing. So here I'll hand you
Speaker 1: guys the two physical copies that I brought in. You
Speaker 1: can take a peek while I'm going through these, But
Speaker 1: I have been reading, uh, and have subscriptions now to
Speaker 1: The Dark Nightmare Magazine, Apex Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy
Speaker 1: and Science Fiction, Clark's World, Light Speed, Cemetery Dance, Black Static,
Speaker 1: and The Lovecraft Easing. Uh. And if that sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot, it is. I had no idea how much
Speaker 1: I was getting into and how much I was gonna
Speaker 1: try to keep up with. But yeah, the basic idea
Speaker 1: was that I subscribed to these so I could be
Speaker 1: more aware of what is publishing within this ecosystem, Who
Speaker 1: are the new voices in genres like horror and fantasy
Speaker 1: and sci fi, and what are their concerns. I felt
Speaker 1: like I had a responsibility as a writer to to
Speaker 1: keep up with what my peers were doing, but also
Speaker 1: to support their work financially. Uh. So the copies I
Speaker 1: just gave you, I have physical subscriptions to Cemetary Dance
Speaker 1: and Black Static. Everything else is digital, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it actually only ends up being like something like twenty
Speaker 1: dollars a month for all of those subscriptions, which is
Speaker 1: kind of nice. And uh, there aren't as many avenues
Speaker 1: I think for beginning writers to break in anymore. Robert
Speaker 1: and I were talking about this earlier this morning, and
Speaker 1: to get paid on top of that, right as there
Speaker 1: used to be. So I decided I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to support these and do my best to keep up.
Speaker 1: Although wow, I'm I'm already way behind. It is a
Speaker 1: ton to keep up with. I don't think I'll ever
Speaker 1: be able to read all of it. I've already got
Speaker 1: a stack. I've only had it for three months. I've
Speaker 1: already got a stack of twenty plus issues to catch
Speaker 1: up on. But I've been trying to read like one
Speaker 1: short story a day, and then I again have a
Speaker 1: little field Notes notebook that I tracked the stories in,
Speaker 1: and you know, track which ones I like the most,
Speaker 1: so I can keep an eye out for those authors
Speaker 1: in the future. Cool. Yeah, I mean, I I have
Speaker 1: a I have a lot of thoughts about the UH,
Speaker 1: the the independent publishing industry, and and and the various
Speaker 1: horror publications that still survived this day and some of
Speaker 1: the new ones that have come out. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: I've I've written fiction. I do enough for a while,
Speaker 1: so I'm familiar with with these, but certainly, uh, certainly
Speaker 1: some legendary titles that a Cemetery Dance has been around
Speaker 1: for quite a while, and I think that's I remember
Speaker 1: when I was first discovering like Joe Lansdale and Poppy
Speaker 1: z Bright, I remember having their short story collections and
Speaker 1: I was always curious, like, where did these? Anytime I
Speaker 1: look at a short story collection, I want to see
Speaker 1: where things published originally? Curiosity and Cemetery Dance was always
Speaker 1: on the list. That was how I picked this group.
Speaker 1: I basically have been reading a lot of anthologies in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. Usually it's like the best
Speaker 1: Horror of the year, the best dark fiction of the
Speaker 1: year or whatever, and so I would go through those
Speaker 1: as bibliographies essentially and say, like, all right, where was
Speaker 1: all this stuff published originally? Cool, I'll go subscribe to
Speaker 1: that stuff now. Um. Surprisingly, yeah, it's not all that expensive.
Speaker 1: They're about like two or three dollars an issue. If
Speaker 1: you get them digitally, they get auto delivered to my Kindle.
Speaker 1: I don't even have to download them. Like all of
Speaker 1: a sudden. It's like at the on the first day
Speaker 1: of a month, there's like, you know, ten new magazine
Speaker 1: sitting on my Kindle. Um. There's some weird formatting issues though.
Speaker 1: The Dark in particular, like for some reason isn't Kindle ready,
Speaker 1: so it won't show up on my Kindle. But I
Speaker 1: can read it on like the Amazon app, on like
Speaker 1: a phone or a tablet or something like that. So
Speaker 1: sometimes I gotta switch devices or whatever. But it's fine,
Speaker 1: the first world problem. The cool thing about Clark's World
Speaker 1: that I'd like to point out is that it also
Speaker 1: republishes classic works by you know, really well known established
Speaker 1: sci fi fantasy authors. Uh So, like, for instance, James
Speaker 1: Tiptree Jr. There was a story by him her in
Speaker 1: uh in one of the issues that I was reading.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how familiar you guys are with
Speaker 1: James Tiptree Jr. But it's a pseudonym for Alice Bradley Sheldon,
Speaker 1: uh And she wrote sci fi from the sixties to
Speaker 1: the eighties, but she took on a male student in
Speaker 1: persona to make it easier to get published. She really
Speaker 1: wrote some amazing stuff, one of the greats, really, and
Speaker 1: she's got this huge body of work to explore. So
Speaker 1: it was cool that just like kind of popped up
Speaker 1: there in Clark's World. Uh, there's also nonfiction in these,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of stuff that looks at the
Speaker 1: industry as a whole. What's going on with publishing. Uh,
Speaker 1: what kind of awards are coming out? You know, brom Stoker,
Speaker 1: Shirley Jackson. Actually, as we're recording this, the Shirley Jackson
Speaker 1: Awards were just awarded like two two or three days ago,
Speaker 1: I think for sixteen nominees, and uh, they talk about
Speaker 1: genre films related literary criticism. It's really interesting. Uh so
Speaker 1: my favorite so far. I've been reading these for three
Speaker 1: months now trying to keep up. There's three stories that
Speaker 1: I want to call out in particular. One is Kiss
Speaker 1: the Mouthless Girl by Giovanni de Fio, and that was
Speaker 1: in Nightmare of May of this year. You were telling
Speaker 1: me about this, Yeah, yeah, this one really stuck out
Speaker 1: to me. And then there was The Witches Hour or
Speaker 1: just Witches Hour by Shannon Connor Winward, which was in
Speaker 1: the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction again May, the
Speaker 1: May issue. And The Lark Ascending, which is a story
Speaker 1: by Samantha Henderson that was in the Dark Again published
Speaker 1: in May. Uh, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction did
Speaker 1: you know, like that's where all the Dark Tower stuff
Speaker 1: was published originally, Like The Gun Slinger originally came out
Speaker 1: as five short stories in the Magazine of Fantasy and
Speaker 1: Science Fiction over the course of the late seventies going
Speaker 1: into the eighties. Yeah. So uh that magazine, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's been around since the forties. It has like this
Speaker 1: amazing track record of of talent that it's Foster Stephen
Speaker 1: King eventually worked up to that after all the all
Speaker 1: the Cavalier, Yeah, Stephen King is the opposite. Like if
Speaker 1: you go and you look at like Nightshift and Skeleton
Speaker 1: Crew and you're like, where was this originally published, and
Speaker 1: it's all like Cavalier and like Penthouse and stuff like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was back in the day where you could make
Speaker 1: money writing short fiction and just selling them to skin Mag's. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know a publication that I'll throw in there is
Speaker 1: being a pretty good one if you're into if you're
Speaker 1: into fantasy, particularly dark fantasy. Grim Dark Magazine, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was also on my list. I ended up not
Speaker 1: going with it because that's like a very specific genre, right,
Speaker 1: grim dark is a its own like sub genre, is
Speaker 1: my understanding. It depends how you're talking to ye. Do
Speaker 1: people not consider George R. Martin an example of grim dark?
Speaker 1: Like the Throne stuff? Think sure, but basically their whole
Speaker 1: lengthy like Facebook arguments like is this author grim dark? Nope,
Speaker 1: not grim dark enough for me. Yeah, it gets a
Speaker 1: bit As with any genre classification and stub genre classification,
Speaker 1: it can get a bit silly. So what is it?
Speaker 1: It's it's fantasy where characters swear and they're mean and immoral. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like I think graphically violent, right, is part of it?
Speaker 1: Though this is the whole. These are all discussion points
Speaker 1: in the argument. But because I remember, like I wrote
Speaker 1: a short story. But both of you guys have read
Speaker 1: this short story I wrote last year and I sent
Speaker 1: it around to a couple of friends, and our buddy
Speaker 1: Michael we Hunt, who's an established writer who's published in
Speaker 1: some of these magazines, was like, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: little bit grim dark. I don't know if you're going
Speaker 1: to be able to get it published some of these
Speaker 1: And I was like, I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1: And then that's how I learned. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess grim dark is just kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of it's nihilistic. Um. Yeah, that sounds like
Speaker 1: Grim Dark Magazine in particular. I wonder the reason I
Speaker 1: started picking it up is because our Scott Baker has
Speaker 1: had a couple of short stories said in his uh
Speaker 1: his universe in that those books, So we should throw
Speaker 1: that out for people who haven't listened to the Art
Speaker 1: Scott Baker episode. So, uh, that universe is the Second
Speaker 1: Apocalypse socca yea, yeah, yeah, yeah, And these are dark
Speaker 1: fantasy books that he has what like at least like
Speaker 1: eight of or something like that, and it's a dark, dark,
Speaker 1: philosophically charged fantasy epic. Yeah. Again, another thing that's in
Speaker 1: my stack. I have the first book in that series,
Speaker 1: but I haven't gotten to it yet. Also recommended to
Speaker 1: me by a friend of the show, E. C. Steiner. Yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of people whose opinions I respect to love
Speaker 1: that stuff. So that's my fiction for the summer, Holy Cow.
Speaker 1: Other than comics, of course, But yeah, I've I've been
Speaker 1: diving into the deep end. I also just finished rereading
Speaker 1: Stephen King's for the summer, but that is not on
Speaker 1: my recommendation list. I love that book, but I don't
Speaker 1: know that I necessarily think it's for everybody to revisit.
Speaker 1: It's a huge Alright, So we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we'll jump into some non
Speaker 1: fictional selections. Uh, and then after that we'll probably take
Speaker 1: another commercial break, and then we will discuss a few
Speaker 1: comics and one final fiction selection from Joe. Thank Thank Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. Okay, So nonfiction, if I know you guys,
Speaker 1: there's some pretty dense stuff because you, especially Joe, Joe
Speaker 1: loves some like really dense scientific nonfiction material but also accessible.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you mean by Dent's. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't like, I'm not recommending like textbooks or anything. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's a textbook. Now. My pick this year
Speaker 1: is The Fundamentals of Physics, Volume two. Now it's a
Speaker 1: book by Ed Young, of course, one of my favorite
Speaker 1: science writers and has been for years. The book is
Speaker 1: his twenty sixteen book from HarperCollins called I Contain Multitudes
Speaker 1: The Microbes Within Us in a Grander View of Life. Now.
Speaker 1: Ed Young is, as you've mentioned before on the show,
Speaker 1: somebody if you're into our podcast, worth following on Twitter
Speaker 1: because he has some really interesting insights. So yeah, he.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's great on Twitter. Just if you ever
Speaker 1: see an article by him. He writes for different publications
Speaker 1: that he writes for The Atlantic, for National Geographics sometimes,
Speaker 1: but anytime you see an article by him, it's worth
Speaker 1: checking out. It's usually going to be about some really
Speaker 1: interesting feature of biology that you've never been aware of before.
Speaker 1: And he's one of the real great biology writers out
Speaker 1: there right now. He's one of those dudes that like
Speaker 1: every time we're researching, like I'd say, like once a
Speaker 1: month when we're researching, like something will just paying on
Speaker 1: the radar and it will be an ed Young. Uh So.
Speaker 1: I Contain Multitudes is about microbial life, and it's one
Speaker 1: of the best science books I've read in a long time.
Speaker 1: I'm actually hoping we can talk to Ed Young on
Speaker 1: the show sometimes. It'd be really great, and I've I've
Speaker 1: emailed with him once, but I want to get back
Speaker 1: in touch with them. Hopefully we can bring him on.
Speaker 1: We'll see. But like I said, he's been one of
Speaker 1: my favorite science writers for years, and I think this
Speaker 1: book is just gold. It hits the sweet spot of
Speaker 1: combining getting it right with making it fascinating, which sometimes
Speaker 1: you feel like science writers tend to spill more over
Speaker 1: onto one side of that than the other. He can
Speaker 1: do both. He's really good at getting the point across
Speaker 1: and being accessible. Yeah. Um, so, based on the title,
Speaker 1: you might guess that I Contain Multitudes because you contain them.
Speaker 1: Is about the microbiota within your body, and that is
Speaker 1: a major part of the book, but it's only one
Speaker 1: part of the story. One of the main themes that
Speaker 1: I took away from the book is that it's about
Speaker 1: the many ways in which this is not a world
Speaker 1: of plants and animals with some microbes scattered around it.
Speaker 1: This is a world of microbes. And if you were
Speaker 1: just to communicate from a purely biological perspective with an
Speaker 1: alien species, what is Earth life like? People would usually say, well,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's like humans. They've got a head
Speaker 1: with eyes and aren't. No, you'd be talking about the
Speaker 1: microbes because that is what the majority of Earth life is.
Speaker 1: We didn't put them on the Golden plates at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we should have that, that is, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is what's representative of Earth life. And so this is
Speaker 1: a mic anything about bacteria that surely they must that's
Speaker 1: an interesting question. We should look at in the future. Well,
Speaker 1: they did have carvings of naked humans, and those naked
Speaker 1: humans are crawling with bacteria, naked bacteria. It depends what
Speaker 1: the the alien encountering it knows about life. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: assume that the aliens that are encountering it are also
Speaker 1: going to be anthropo, more fick and subsequently have eyes
Speaker 1: and look at these etchings on a gold plate anyway,
Speaker 1: might feel them or yeah, you know it's but if
Speaker 1: they have harsh on voyage, are too bad. But if
Speaker 1: they evolved from microbial life, and I guess we to
Speaker 1: assume they did, that's our only modeled and they would
Speaker 1: surely look at a human being on a plate and say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what evolved from microbial life on their world, right,
Speaker 1: So okay, back to your ed Young book. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so well, that is one thing we can sort of
Speaker 1: expect that ed Young doesn't talk about this much. But
Speaker 1: it's like, if we encounter life somewhere else in the universe,
Speaker 1: one thing we can almost certainly be sure of is
Speaker 1: that it evolved from single celled organisms. And in what
Speaker 1: direction it evolved. You know, it's hard to guess. I
Speaker 1: might go in all kinds of ways. But single celled
Speaker 1: organisms are going to be the rule for life in
Speaker 1: the galaxy, and they're definitely the rule for life on Earth.
Speaker 1: Microbes are are not just a thing that we interact
Speaker 1: with on Earth. But one of the great things about
Speaker 1: his book is it shows all the hundreds of ways
Speaker 1: that microbes are so integrally a part of our existence.
Speaker 1: It almost doesn't even make sense to think of ourselves
Speaker 1: as humans with microbes living in and on us. We
Speaker 1: need them for our lives. We've co evolved with them.
Speaker 1: The more we learn, the more it becomes clear they
Speaker 1: are us. Microbes are part of what we are, and
Speaker 1: without them, we wouldn't be what we are. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna how stuff works eyes this conversation for a second.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff are one of our other shows here that
Speaker 1: I am the narrator on. UH. We have the classic episode,
Speaker 1: which is our version of this why are You Farting?
Speaker 1: Which is that that's basically like our version of that.
Speaker 1: It's like, here's about all these microbes that are inside
Speaker 1: your body, but we'll tie it into flatulence. Anyway, that
Speaker 1: book is definitely worth checking out, and maybe in the
Speaker 1: future we'll get to talk to Ed on the show.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Yeah, that'd be cool ed. If you're listening, give
Speaker 1: us a call. Alright, So I have two selections I'm
Speaker 1: going to run through here. Okay, there's a reason because
Speaker 1: you'll need the set one after the first one. The
Speaker 1: first book is Raven Rock, The Story of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government's secret plan to save itself when the rest of
Speaker 1: us die, by Garrett M. Graff. Uh. This is one
Speaker 1: of the more terrifying things you you can read this year. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the horror is twofold. So on one level, you
Speaker 1: can revel in the post apocalypse that might have been
Speaker 1: a United States ravaged by nuclear war, in which a
Speaker 1: replacement US government has stitched together from surviving political and
Speaker 1: corporate leaders. Post office employees travel the country to count
Speaker 1: the dead. It's it's sort of chronicle of the mega deaths,
Speaker 1: I guess. And uh, everyone else who crawled out of
Speaker 1: a bunker gets to spend those hoarded two dollar bills
Speaker 1: and eat Nibisco survival biscuits, so you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of it has something for fallout fans, you know. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, you get to learn all about our
Speaker 1: our nation's past rehearsals for nuclear war, the nature of
Speaker 1: the so called nuclear football, and just how much unchecked
Speaker 1: power a US president has to plunge the world into
Speaker 1: nuclear annihilation. So it will it will absolutely horrify de Beatreat. Well, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you get to what is it A Boy and his Dog? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in a way, if you're reading A Boy
Speaker 1: and his Dog, or The Road or The Stand or
Speaker 1: just about anything else you can you can whip this
Speaker 1: out and sort of fact check everything. So in this
Speaker 1: book you get to learn about the mobile aerial command
Speaker 1: centers for the US government and the Buried Bunker, essentially
Speaker 1: cities created to shelter the chosen few while you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of everybody else dies, And you get to
Speaker 1: consider all these different accounts of how these plans played
Speaker 1: into US history, such as there's this account of Defense
Speaker 1: Secretary James Schlessinger and he ordered the Pentagon, he had
Speaker 1: to order the Pentagon not to uh to disregard a
Speaker 1: presidential launch order of nuclear weapons because he was a
Speaker 1: raid that Richard Nixon, who at the time was this
Speaker 1: like the very end of his presidency. He's drinking heavily,
Speaker 1: you know, just thumbing through his enemies. This is what
Speaker 1: everybody was worried about, that he would like in a rage,
Speaker 1: just fire some nukes on his way out the door.
Speaker 1: And I believe he It is not just like I
Speaker 1: wonder if he'll do this, like I think Nixon had
Speaker 1: had mentioned the possibility. Well, Nixon had been practicing what
Speaker 1: was known then as the Madman theory of of international relations,
Speaker 1: where he would he would get his subordinates to try
Speaker 1: to convince the Soviet Union that he was unhinged and
Speaker 1: likely to launch a nuclear strike in order to get
Speaker 1: more leveraging power in negotiations with them because he was
Speaker 1: The idea was, if the Soviets think that Nixon might
Speaker 1: is so crazy he really might start a war, then
Speaker 1: we can get more out of them when we're having discussions. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's it's that practics by any other world leaders. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I will just say that with with everything that continues
Speaker 1: to uh fill our news feeds, this this book is
Speaker 1: uting and relevant and uh and also you know anxiety
Speaker 1: uh aggravating as well. Alright, and this is why you
Speaker 1: have a second book. That is why I have the
Speaker 1: second book. The second book. Listeners to the show may
Speaker 1: remember from Joe and I's Cocktail episode, because after Raven Rock,
Speaker 1: you're gonna need a drink. The book is The Drunken
Speaker 1: Botanists The Plants that Create the World's Great Drinks by
Speaker 1: Amy Stewart. This is just this is a lovely volume
Speaker 1: to keep around. This is one that I pull off
Speaker 1: the bookshelf fairly frequently. Yeah, Robert, you let me borrow
Speaker 1: this when we were preparing for our mixology episode and
Speaker 1: I flipped through it. I really enjoyed it. It's it's
Speaker 1: got just cool little facts and uh stuff behind all
Speaker 1: these cocktails you might enjoy in the liquors that go
Speaker 1: into them, and it's uh, it's a cabinet of curiosities
Speaker 1: for the mouth and the stomach. Yeah. Essentially, if you
Speaker 1: if you drink, and you are if you're a beer
Speaker 1: drink or a and drink, or certainly if you're a
Speaker 1: cocktail drinker, you can look up to be different beers, wines,
Speaker 1: various liqueurs and see what is the botanical origin and
Speaker 1: then what is that plan? Where does it come from,
Speaker 1: how did it come to be? How did humans cultivated
Speaker 1: or interact with it? Uh? So it it turns every
Speaker 1: it turns every cocktail you might have uh into uh
Speaker 1: into a potential you know, botany lesson between this and
Speaker 1: our colleagues Annie and Laura and over on food stuff.
Speaker 1: I feel like, uh like we need to just have
Speaker 1: like a full bar set up here and how stuff works, well,
Speaker 1: I feel like we have a cabinet full of liquor bottles.
Speaker 1: But like I look at their feeding, like half the
Speaker 1: episodes that they do are about like some kind of alcohol.
Speaker 1: So it's clearly like really interesting. Scientifically, well, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of an imbalance, right. I mean they get the
Speaker 1: free alcohol and we get free copies of Raven Rocks.
Speaker 1: So there you go review copies. I should say they're
Speaker 1: not free. So yeah, the Drunken Botanist, Uh excellent volume
Speaker 1: looks good on a shelf, and it has cocktail recipes
Speaker 1: within it so you can bust it out to to
Speaker 1: see what you're gonna you know, uh, concoct for the evening.
Speaker 1: So at the beginning of this episode, I said that
Speaker 1: I would inevitably bring up other comic books. Raven Rock
Speaker 1: reminds me of this great series that I think is
Speaker 1: wrapping up right now called Letter forty four. Have I
Speaker 1: talked to you guys about this before? The premise is that, uh,
Speaker 1: the United States has detected a spaceship just within the
Speaker 1: Solar system, and they have already sent a ship full
Speaker 1: of scientists to go investigate what it is. And the
Speaker 1: beginning of the story, as a new president is elected,
Speaker 1: there's a letter on his desk in the Oval office
Speaker 1: and he opens it. It's essentially a letter describing to
Speaker 1: him like, here's all this stuff that's going on. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: you just inherited this huge problem. And the story goes
Speaker 1: on from there. The Raven Rock thing reminds me because
Speaker 1: a huge part of it is them preparing for what
Speaker 1: they assume is going to be some kind of doomsday
Speaker 1: scenario if the aliens are coming to Earth. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend this story. It's like the West Wing meets uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some like outlandish hard sci fi is really cool.
Speaker 1: And that leads me to a completely unrelated nonfiction recommendation
Speaker 1: that I have, so I recommend and this is something
Speaker 1: that I am about halfway through right now myself, Corey
Speaker 1: doctor Rose. Book Information doesn't want to be free laws
Speaker 1: for the Internet age. This is something I stumbled across
Speaker 1: when I went to south By Southwest earlier this year.
Speaker 1: They have they do this little thing where they have
Speaker 1: like a south By Southwest bookstore that they set up
Speaker 1: in the convention Center. And it's like all books that
Speaker 1: have debuted at south By Southwest where the the authors
Speaker 1: have given talks related to them. So I found this there.
Speaker 1: Um short. These are all short essays by Corey Doctor
Speaker 1: or like real short about copyright and navigating around it
Speaker 1: to be a successful creator of really anything in the
Speaker 1: digital age. It's about how old models have failed and
Speaker 1: are changing and what is actually coming down the road.
Speaker 1: And this is a book that's published by McSweeney's. You
Speaker 1: guys are familiar with mc sweeney's. So the physical copies
Speaker 1: got this really cool design to it. I'm reading it digitally,
Speaker 1: but it's got a it's got a beautiful cover. Um.
Speaker 1: Corey Doctor, if people aren't familiar, is a blogger and
Speaker 1: fiction writer. He's the guy who runs Boying Boying Uh.
Speaker 1: He's very active in copyright activism and in Creative Commons
Speaker 1: is writings. They're almost all available as free PDFs from
Speaker 1: his own site using Creative Commons licenses. So he's basically
Speaker 1: made some some interesting arguments. I don't know that I
Speaker 1: agree with all of them, and I don't I don't
Speaker 1: want to go through all of them here, but that
Speaker 1: distributing his content as such, making them free to everybody,
Speaker 1: actually helps his sales in other distribution models, whether that's
Speaker 1: print or digitally. So even though you can download a
Speaker 1: PDF of like this book, he argues, well, that acts
Speaker 1: as like fodder to get people to go and buy it,
Speaker 1: whether it's in print or digitally. It's kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting model. That's interesting that that kind of perhaps ties
Speaker 1: in with the comic book I'm gonna mention later. Oh cool,
Speaker 1: Oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that. That is a
Speaker 1: good launching point. Um. So there's some really good advice
Speaker 1: in this book for creative people who are trying to
Speaker 1: make a go at making a living off of what
Speaker 1: they do. Whether you're your musician, your writer, your podcast
Speaker 1: or whatever. You're making short films and you're putting them
Speaker 1: on YouTube. This gives you advice on questions like when
Speaker 1: should you quit your job, does copyright protection work in
Speaker 1: your favor? It tells you how to build an audience,
Speaker 1: and uh doctor makes this point that most creative people,
Speaker 1: when they're starting out, they don't want to worry about
Speaker 1: this stuff, right, They just want to make things. They
Speaker 1: just want to get it out there in the world,
Speaker 1: but rather than ignoring it, he recommends use this book
Speaker 1: based on the lessons that he's learned as a starting
Speaker 1: point so that you can learn the difference between These
Speaker 1: are the various sectors that he describes creators, investors, audience,
Speaker 1: and intermediaries and as well. This also describes how the
Speaker 1: industry is currently organized and where it's going, which is
Speaker 1: something I mean, I know it's of interest to us
Speaker 1: because we work within this industry, but I'm sure that
Speaker 1: there are many of our listeners out there that make stuff,
Speaker 1: whether they're they're writing articles, or they're doing their own podcasts,
Speaker 1: or they're making short films, or they're recording music. I
Speaker 1: think this would be of interest to most people who
Speaker 1: are trying to sort of get their creative projects out
Speaker 1: there into the world. Cool. Yeah, So if you're out
Speaker 1: there and you're listening to us and say, hey, when
Speaker 1: can I start a podcast and quit my job? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Read this before? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think basically, if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, there's a there's a chapter title that's like,
Speaker 1: when should I quit my job? Don't? Well, maybe we
Speaker 1: should take a quick break and then when we come
Speaker 1: back we can look at our our final selections. I
Speaker 1: know a couple of comics from you guys, and another
Speaker 1: fig book I wanted to mention. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So Joe, what do you have? You have one? You
Speaker 1: have one more fictional selection here before Christian and I
Speaker 1: share a couple of comics. Yeah, and now this one
Speaker 1: is a classic in science fiction. I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of you have probably already read it, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to mention it because it was new to me
Speaker 1: this year, and it's every bit as great as people
Speaker 1: say it is. It's deserving of the praise. And this
Speaker 1: would be the nineteen sixty nine sci fi classic, The
Speaker 1: Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Kay Lagwin. Ah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my wife has been reading a lot of Lagwin lately.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you guys read this book?
Speaker 1: I have not read it. I have not. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just okay, So I've been meaning to read this book
Speaker 1: for years. I think there's a big resurgence with her
Speaker 1: stuff going on, right, Yeah, I just noticed that this
Speaker 1: is funny. So I started reading this book, and I
Speaker 1: was talking to my wife, Rachel, who doesn't usually read
Speaker 1: a whole lot of sci fi. Uh, And I found
Speaker 1: out at the same time, completely unknown to me, she
Speaker 1: had been reading a different Languin book. I don't know
Speaker 1: where all this sudden interest came from. I guess it
Speaker 1: just emerged from the ether. But hold on, Your wife
Speaker 1: and my wife are in the same reading group. I
Speaker 1: think they might have had a Luguin book assigned for that.
Speaker 1: That might be it may well. Anyway, this book is
Speaker 1: just excellent. Like, if you've never read it before, you
Speaker 1: should go back. It was published in nineteen nine, but
Speaker 1: it's fresh. It feels like it could have been published
Speaker 1: this year. Uh, it just jumps off the page. It's
Speaker 1: so good. All right, Well, we'll give us the cell
Speaker 1: beyond everyone knowing that this is a book we should
Speaker 1: have read. Why should we read it? Well, it's It's
Speaker 1: a very different kind of alien contact story. Unlike Peter
Speaker 1: Watt's book that I recommended earlier, Blindside, which is amazing
Speaker 1: on its own, and in that book, the alien contact
Speaker 1: is a confusing and dangerous meeting of utterly unfamiliar minds.
Speaker 1: This is more of an alien anthropology story. So it's
Speaker 1: set within Laguin's Hainish cycle, which is this larger group
Speaker 1: of books that I haven't read any of the other
Speaker 1: ones in this cycle, So you don't need to know
Speaker 1: anything about the cycle going in. It's all explained within
Speaker 1: the story. You can just jump right in to this novel.
Speaker 1: But anyway, in this story, there are many solar systems
Speaker 1: throughout the galaxy with similar related humanoid life forms that
Speaker 1: have been seeded by one original culture, and the humanoid
Speaker 1: world's gradually become absorbed into this one sort of galactic
Speaker 1: treaty organization called the Ecumen. And this is I guess
Speaker 1: sort of similar to the culture actually in the Banks.
Speaker 1: And in this novel, the Ecumen sends a single loan
Speaker 1: representative named ginli I to this cold frozen planet called Gethen,
Speaker 1: and it's his job to convince the planet's major governments
Speaker 1: to sign treaties and join the Ecumen. But it's kind
Speaker 1: of difficult because they're not a spacefaring planet. They have
Speaker 1: no spaceships. Uh, they don't have much technology that's sort
Speaker 1: of like, you know, a mid twentieth century industrial technology,
Speaker 1: but they that they have no goal of going into space,
Speaker 1: and so when he shows up, their reaction is not
Speaker 1: very interested. Surprisingly, But anyway, that that sort of gets
Speaker 1: into the cultural differences between like Earth culture and what's
Speaker 1: there on this planet? So that that's the opening set up,
Speaker 1: But most of the joy of this novel is just
Speaker 1: in the interactions of alien cultures learning from each other
Speaker 1: and learning about each other. And one of the great
Speaker 1: themes in this book, and it's sort of there in
Speaker 1: the title, is that light is the left hand of darkness.
Speaker 1: It's that we learn to understand thuring things through difference
Speaker 1: in distinction, Like they're oftentimes things we don't recognize in
Speaker 1: ourselves until we meet somebody very different from us, and
Speaker 1: we we learned to contrast that person with us to
Speaker 1: see something we never knew was there before. So the
Speaker 1: novels this kind of anthropology of the inhabitants of Gethin,
Speaker 1: but in doing that, it also a reverse anthropology of
Speaker 1: human Earth culture. And it's it's just full of I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil too much about it, because
Speaker 1: most of the pleasure and it is just discovering how
Speaker 1: the world works and how different it is from us,
Speaker 1: and and how the differences can be can seem so
Speaker 1: different and be the same, or can show us something
Speaker 1: about ourselves. It's just a great, great sci fi book. Cool. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like I need to actually pull it off
Speaker 1: the shelf and jump in, actually make it happen this
Speaker 1: year with the Left Hand of Darkness, not to be
Speaker 1: confused with the Right Hand of doom. What is that's
Speaker 1: a hell Boy graphic novel? Okay? Is the Big the
Speaker 1: Big Stone Hand? Yeah? Oh right, right right? The Big
Speaker 1: Punchy very different than the hell Boy world. But but
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of I mean, it's serious, but it's
Speaker 1: also got some humor in it. It's um I couldn't
Speaker 1: recommend it enough, and I think both of you guys
Speaker 1: would love it cool. The idea that there's some humor
Speaker 1: in it, I think is a good selling point because
Speaker 1: she has a very very serious sounding name. I know
Speaker 1: that sounds ridiculous, but well, it's not a silly novel.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not Star Trek e like it's a
Speaker 1: It's got a very serious story and a lot of
Speaker 1: serious stuff happens in it. But there there's also some
Speaker 1: joy and some humor in it to be had in
Speaker 1: the relations between the characters. Yeah, I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the That is one of the reasons I keep
Speaker 1: coming back to Banks, So there is a joy there,
Speaker 1: you know. I do enjoy some joyless fiction, I know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's like you want something that they wants
Speaker 1: to wake up in the morning. Sometimes. All right, well
Speaker 1: shall I cover my comic here? Comics? Okay, So I
Speaker 1: always have to to preface by saying I'm not a
Speaker 1: huge comics guy. I probably read like three comics a year.
Speaker 1: And uh and and I'm you know, a bit, a
Speaker 1: bit choosy and reluctant. Uh, but inevitably pick up a
Speaker 1: couple of things. So this year I I read Alejandro
Speaker 1: Jodorowski's Showman Killer, which I enjoyed. On you suggestion, Christian,
Speaker 1: I read James Stoko's Orc Stain. Oh God, so good. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm actually reading one of James Stocco's earlier works right now.
Speaker 1: Not on my recommendation list, but he did this book
Speaker 1: called Wanton Soup that's all about like space truckers, essentially
Speaker 1: who in the main space trucker is constantly in search
Speaker 1: for the best wanton soup in the galaxy. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that sounds fun too. Yeah. Stucco is great. But the
Speaker 1: book that I'm gonna highlight here is is a wonderful
Speaker 1: little comic. Uh. And it's actually a web comic, but
Speaker 1: there's the first uh what ninety two pages of it
Speaker 1: are available in physical form, and it's called Kill six
Speaker 1: Billion Demons by Tom Parkinson Morgan. And this one is
Speaker 1: actually recommend recommended to me by j M. Dragonis, who
Speaker 1: is another tought talented comic artist in a friend of yours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I met him because he's a listener to our show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wrote into me. I think he heard me talking
Speaker 1: about going to comic book conven at some point, and
Speaker 1: we sometime last year we met up at a comic
Speaker 1: book convention and became friends and we're comics buddies now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and I introduced you to him when we did
Speaker 1: our live show at C two e two earlier this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where we were chatting and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: you should check out six Billion Demons, So I looked
Speaker 1: it up. I did, and by while we're at it.
Speaker 1: His pen name for his comics is JM. But his
Speaker 1: name is Joe Uh. Joe Uh does a book called
Speaker 1: The Sires of Time, which is worth checking out too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he has this kind of this wonderful wood
Speaker 1: cut style that it's beautiful. You should follow him on
Speaker 1: social media and what like watching him the time he
Speaker 1: puts into like every single page is it's stunning. Anyways,
Speaker 1: kill sixteen billion Demons those sounds right up my alley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's it's it's a web comic, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a new thing to me. I'm not really
Speaker 1: that up on web comics and now they work. But
Speaker 1: you can you can go to kill six Billion Demons
Speaker 1: dot com. That's no numbers and there must went tough
Speaker 1: to get that domain name, but you can read it
Speaker 1: all there and it's like people it's like a guess
Speaker 1: kind of a patron system where people support that way
Speaker 1: and or by the physical book. But it's it's essentially
Speaker 1: the story of a young woman who sucked into an
Speaker 1: alien world of demons, angels, fallen gods. Uh. It showcases
Speaker 1: heavy inspiration from Eastern religion, so lots of like lots
Speaker 1: of iconography that feels reminiscent of Hinduism and various as
Speaker 1: well as various Buddhist works of art. And there's also
Speaker 1: uh this meant might just be me. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: you know him point to this artists and inspiration, but uh,
Speaker 1: I get a strong sense of Wayne Barlow in a
Speaker 1: lot of the designs Wayne Barlow, who you know, created
Speaker 1: and made a career out of drawing uh at times dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: some paleo art, but also aliens and demons. Ye, so
Speaker 1: gorgeous stuff. Like if you just if you're out there
Speaker 1: listening and you want to see what it looks like,
Speaker 1: like Google image search that or look for it on Pinterest. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Wayne Wayne Barlow is incredible. H So this uh, this,
Speaker 1: this is just a really really fun comic to pick
Speaker 1: up strong female protagonists, wonderful lore and there's just so many,
Speaker 1: so many scenes you turned to are just going to
Speaker 1: be like an epic landscape where they're all these different
Speaker 1: demonic or angelic creatures engaged in various activities around like
Speaker 1: strange locales, and you just kind of you just kind
Speaker 1: of lose yourself in the image. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: looking at a at a Bosch painting, you know, and
Speaker 1: you're just you're just picking out all the details and
Speaker 1: figuring out the smaller stories that are occupying the corners. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I had never heard of this until you
Speaker 1: you brought it in today into the studio and it
Speaker 1: completely missed my radar. But it looks gorgeous al right, Well,
Speaker 1: how about you, Christian you you were You, unlike me,
Speaker 1: are a big comics guy, so I know you've got
Speaker 1: something special for us. This is uh my favorite comic
Speaker 1: that's come out in the last I guess like twelve
Speaker 1: months maybe um. I think it was being published in
Speaker 1: single issues last year and the collected edition came out
Speaker 1: early seen. I believe it's called House of Penance and
Speaker 1: it's by Peter J. Tamassi, Ian Bertram and Dave Stewart,
Speaker 1: and it's published by dark Horse Comics. This is so
Speaker 1: the collection is a graphic novel horror story about the
Speaker 1: Winchester Mystery House and its construction. So we're probably all
Speaker 1: three of us fairly familiar with it. But if if
Speaker 1: you're unfamiliar with it. It builds off of the myth
Speaker 1: that Sarah Winchester thought there was a blood curse on
Speaker 1: her home thanks to her husband's gun business. So the
Speaker 1: idea here and this is real. You can go visit
Speaker 1: this place if you've not heard of it before. Winchester
Speaker 1: Mystery House is a real mansion in San Jose, California.
Speaker 1: It was the residence of William worked Winchester's widow, Sarah,
Speaker 1: and it has a lack of a building plan that's
Speaker 1: turned it into this odd curiosity for tourists. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was constructed in eighty four and Sarah and other people
Speaker 1: have claimed that it was haunted by the ghosts of
Speaker 1: those who were killed with Winchester rifles, so she kept
Speaker 1: building it into this crazy labyrinth. There's doors and stairs
Speaker 1: that go to nowhere, like our hotel in Chicago, stairs
Speaker 1: leading straight into a wall. I thought I thought of
Speaker 1: the Winchester Mystery House when we stayed there. Yeah. There's
Speaker 1: also like there's just windows inside that open up into
Speaker 1: other rooms, but they don't open outside. Like, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: not visited, but it's definitely on my bucket list. It's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. So this book is all about that. It's
Speaker 1: about this the construction of it. It's got this art
Speaker 1: that is just stunningly detailed. It's got this wonderful color palette.
Speaker 1: So if you don't recognize Dave Stewart's name, Dave Stewart
Speaker 1: is like the go to colorist in the comics industry.
Speaker 1: Like he is the guy who's one like best colorist
Speaker 1: at all the awards ceremonies for like the last like
Speaker 1: fifteen years or something like that. He's he's amazing, uh,
Speaker 1: and so he uses this really cool palette of beds
Speaker 1: that draws you into this myth. It's got some smart
Speaker 1: layout with really clever panel designs, but at the same
Speaker 1: time it keeps this story flowing. It's really haunting and
Speaker 1: unsettling too. Like Tamasi really takes the whole like Sarah
Speaker 1: Winchester myth and and builds out with it, you know,
Speaker 1: beyond what we know about Sarah Winchester. But it's rare
Speaker 1: for a horror comic in that it's actually unsettling and
Speaker 1: fills me with dread when I'm reading it. Like most
Speaker 1: horror comics, I write horror comics, so I have this
Speaker 1: problem when I'm writing mine. It's very difficult in the
Speaker 1: medium of comics to build dread in the same way
Speaker 1: you can in prose or in film, for instance, where
Speaker 1: you've got like audio to work with. Right in comics
Speaker 1: there's there's different tricks and tools that you can play with,
Speaker 1: but it's not as easy. And this book, man, it
Speaker 1: really does a good job of it. I mean, it
Speaker 1: gets your your skin crawling by the end of it.
Speaker 1: It's definitely for any horror fans who found our episode
Speaker 1: on the causes of human and violence interesting because really
Speaker 1: the larger theme surrounding the book, you know, outside of
Speaker 1: these like bizarre ghosts that may or may not be
Speaker 1: haunting Sarah Winchester as she's constructing this monstrous mansion, it's
Speaker 1: about human violence, you know. And and and the legend
Speaker 1: goes that for all the construction workers that lived on
Speaker 1: site that we're building the house, she wouldn't allow them
Speaker 1: to carry arms, and they weren't allowed to No violence
Speaker 1: was allowed on the property. If they ever gotten to
Speaker 1: a fight or anything, they were immediately fired. Um. It
Speaker 1: uses lettering in a really smart way too. So we
Speaker 1: associate bang in comics with a gun shooting, right, but
Speaker 1: they use the lettering. So there's bangs and blams all
Speaker 1: throughout this book, but it's associated with the construction of
Speaker 1: this building and all these guys constantly hammering and building
Speaker 1: these rooms and then tearing these rooms down and rebuilding
Speaker 1: them in a different configuration. But then gunshots get mixed
Speaker 1: in there too, and violence gets mixed in there. It's
Speaker 1: I was really really impressed with this book, so I
Speaker 1: highly recommended. I want to say, uh, the original series
Speaker 1: of something like five or six issues long, so it's
Speaker 1: it's a good one and done graphic novel that's just
Speaker 1: utterly creepy cool. And does it Does it have any
Speaker 1: overlap at all with the movie Thirteen Ghosts? No? I
Speaker 1: wish it did. Uh yeah No, unfortunately no, because that
Speaker 1: may be my favorite specially built. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: we need to, uh, we need to find a way
Speaker 1: to incorporate thirteen Ghosts since one of our trailer talks, right,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the remake with Matthew Lillard. Right, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he was yeah, and um god what yeah?
Speaker 1: So oh, you know what, this was another one of
Speaker 1: those movies where U two movies with the basic same
Speaker 1: premise came out at the same time. There was House
Speaker 1: on Haunted Hill and in thirteen Ghosts all came out
Speaker 1: like right around yeah, right right, yeah. Did thirteen Ghosts
Speaker 1: have f Murray Abraham in it? It might have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he might have been. He might have been the grand designer.
Speaker 1: I think. I recall from Roger Abert's review of Thirteen
Speaker 1: Ghosts where he started by saying, this is certainly one
Speaker 1: of the loudest movies I've ever seen. I will give
Speaker 1: Thirteen Ghosts this the designs of the ghosts in that
Speaker 1: movie are awesome. Like, the ghosts look really cool. I
Speaker 1: think I remember I vaguely remember f Murray Abraham, but
Speaker 1: he might not have even been anything. Don't you have
Speaker 1: to wear like special glasses or they're they construct glass
Speaker 1: around the house so you can see the ghosts, but
Speaker 1: only through this particular kind of made glass. Yeah what Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: this is completely unrelated, but definitely go see thirteen Ghosts.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, there you have it, some fictional, nonfictional
Speaker 1: and comic recommendations from your host here for you to, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, consider for your summer reading. Yeah, definitely if
Speaker 1: you listeners out there have something that you think we
Speaker 1: should read, which I'm sure you do after hearing us
Speaker 1: gab about what we've been reading for the last hour plus,
Speaker 1: let us know, right, you can write into us. We're
Speaker 1: all over social media. We're on Facebook. You can write
Speaker 1: us there, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. I'm loving Instagram right now, guys.
Speaker 1: Instagram's Instagram is my new social media platform of choice.
Speaker 1: You mean personally or for the brand both. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like brand the brand. Yeah, I just really like it.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, it feels like the one safe space
Speaker 1: in social media right now where people can't just be
Speaker 1: like utterly and human to each other. Yeah. I definitely
Speaker 1: feel like feel that way about like my personal Instagram. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can just go there and it's mostly pictures of
Speaker 1: people's kids, right Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's either like people
Speaker 1: sharing cool art or you know, self is aren't really
Speaker 1: my thing, but like doing selfies and feeling proud about
Speaker 1: themselves or taking pictures of their lives. Yeah, we should
Speaker 1: start uploading pictures of food and that how you get
Speaker 1: followers on Instagram as food? Yeah, I would assume so.
Speaker 1: Pretty much our Instagram feed is like our episodes or
Speaker 1: weird pictures Robert and I take throughout the course of
Speaker 1: our day. Oh. I should also mention that on our
Speaker 1: Facebook group we uh on Facebook page, we now have
Speaker 1: a group associated with that. So if you if you
Speaker 1: were one of our Facebook followers, and you you you
Speaker 1: would you would like to interact with us more and
Speaker 1: comment on the on the various content we put out,
Speaker 1: especially on the podcast episodes, but in a way that
Speaker 1: maybe is less lost. Uh, you know, it's not as
Speaker 1: lost as it would be on the main page. Then
Speaker 1: the group is uh, it's potentially a good place for that.
Speaker 1: We just rolled it out. It's we're still still building up,
Speaker 1: but we're just we're gonna see what happens with It's
Speaker 1: very small right now. I mean it compareson to our
Speaker 1: Facebook page. I think our Facebook page has a million
Speaker 1: plus followers, but like our discussion group right now is
Speaker 1: only like maybe twenty or thirty people. So yeah, definitely
Speaker 1: hop in there. Uh, it's a great place. Like some
Speaker 1: of our our listeners are already putting articles in there
Speaker 1: to get our attention and other listeners attention to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: did you hear about this? Check this out? Like the
Speaker 1: tartar grade thing. I saw that tartar grade piece and
Speaker 1: then Peter shared it on our discussion board, and I
Speaker 1: immediately thought of Joe. It was like Joe tart grades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so check this out and it should. This is a
Speaker 1: water Bears yeah, the client of Vassa Baron. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is a good place for if you've ever wanted to
Speaker 1: share something to our page. I don't think we have
Speaker 1: that functionality right now. You can share it to the
Speaker 1: group and you'll be able to accomplish the same effect. Yeah, yeah, totally. Hey,
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, As always, you can go to
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com if you want
Speaker 1: to see some blog posts Robert, you've done any good
Speaker 1: monster stuff on there lately? Oh man, it's summer's been
Speaker 1: too busy for mine. I think I did one un blade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw your blade. Well that was great to a slime?
Speaker 1: Might I think that's it? Seriously, best kept secret on
Speaker 1: the Internet. Robert's monster science posts on our site are amazing.
Speaker 1: If you're not like, subscribe to our assess feed, go
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind right now and just
Speaker 1: scroll through all the awesome stuff robertson putting up there
Speaker 1: for seven years now. Yeah, it'll be an easy trip.
Speaker 1: You will not be trying to be a slim mic
Speaker 1: crawling up hill ice ice skating up hill um. And also,
Speaker 1: as always, if you want to email us get in
Speaker 1: touch with us directly. You can hit us up at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com b B four five