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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Seger, and

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're all three gathering for this

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Speaker 1: one once more because the Summer Reading episodes kind of

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Speaker 1: tradition with the Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where we

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Speaker 1: highlight some interesting books that we've read, our reading that

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Speaker 1: are that we're looking to read, stuff that may or

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Speaker 1: may not appeal to Stuff to Blow your Mind listeners.

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Speaker 1: Might make for some good beach reading, some intelligent beach reating,

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Speaker 1: if if, if that's your thing, so yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: it's also probably a good opportunity for the audience to

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Speaker 1: get to know Joe and I a little bit better,

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Speaker 1: to kind of what our interests are and and perhaps uh,

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Speaker 1: some parts of our personalities that maybe haven't come through

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Speaker 1: yet in episodes about things like stigmata and glass mind

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Speaker 1: conditions like you don't already know what kind of a

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Speaker 1: creep I am I do, but the audience doesn't. That's

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Speaker 1: what this is about, exposing our our inner secrets and

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Speaker 1: creepiness to the listeners and you, and it tends to

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Speaker 1: result in a lot of cool conversations with listeners because

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Speaker 1: either either they've read the books that that we're talking

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Speaker 1: about and have some feedback, or they have some recommendations

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Speaker 1: based on some of what we're chatting about. So I

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Speaker 1: look forward to all that interaction. Yeah, that's exactly what

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Speaker 1: I was hoping for out of this, was that we'd

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Speaker 1: get um some nice engagement and conversations going with the

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Speaker 1: listeners and that they could possibly recommend some stuff back

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Speaker 1: to us as well. You can contact us on Facebook, Twitter,

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Speaker 1: Tumbler where we are blow the Mind, or you can

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Speaker 1: write us at below the Mind at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Let us know what you thought about you know,

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Speaker 1: the recommendations were about to give here, and let's know

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Speaker 1: what your recommendations are based on what we tell you.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you've got something that you can tell us about.

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Speaker 1: Uh that that one of the three of us are

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Speaker 1: all three of us who want to dive into Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and inevitably they're gonna be questions about the titles. You know,

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Speaker 1: what was that book you mentioned? How do you spell

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Speaker 1: that last name of that author? We're going to make

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Speaker 1: sure that on the landing page for this episode will

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Speaker 1: have all the books that we specifically call out here,

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Speaker 1: as well as links to where you can obtain them,

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Speaker 1: you know. Getting into choosing books for this episode, one

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Speaker 1: of the things I noticed was how little I've been

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Speaker 1: reading the ideal kind of book to talk about on

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Speaker 1: stuff to pull your mind in the past couple of years.

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like, you know, what do

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Speaker 1: I want to give this audience. I want to give

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Speaker 1: them something very like strange science fiction or something like that.

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Speaker 1: And I haven't been getting into that much lately. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I still love it, but I just haven't been reading it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I could see that, But I go through phases with

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Speaker 1: content like that, I think. I mean, you're going to

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Speaker 1: find out today that I'm obviously in a big horror phase,

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Speaker 1: which is probably no surprise to anyone who's familiar with

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Speaker 1: the stuff that I do outside of Us to Works.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that that stuff ebbs and flows

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Speaker 1: for my own part, right, you know, we we moved

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Speaker 1: offices here at How Stuff Works. We used to be

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Speaker 1: located up in uh in Buckhead and now we're more

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Speaker 1: in central Atlanta at the Coon City Market. So we

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Speaker 1: went from being like a little short walk in like

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Speaker 1: a forty minute train ride from my house to being

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Speaker 1: just a ten minute car ride. So I really lost

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Speaker 1: a lot of the core reading time that I had

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Speaker 1: set aside. You know, because when you're on the train,

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Speaker 1: or at least when I was on the train, like

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Speaker 1: there was nothing else I could do but read the book,

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Speaker 1: you know, and so there were no distractions other than

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Speaker 1: you know, some weirdo on the train doing god knows what.

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Speaker 1: But aside from that, there were no distractions. Just plug

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Speaker 1: into my my music, pull out a book, and uh

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Speaker 1: and read. And so I've been having I've been kind

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Speaker 1: of struggling to find my key reading times again in

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Speaker 1: my in my schedule. Yeah, I still ride the train

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Speaker 1: and I take the shuttle here, but I haven't been

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Speaker 1: reading as much. But I've been listening to a lot

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Speaker 1: of audio books. In fact, one of the books I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about today I listened to entirely as an audiobook.

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Speaker 1: I need to get back in it all for me,

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Speaker 1: I actually like a lot of audio books. I don't

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Speaker 1: think any of the ones I'm going to talk about

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Speaker 1: today I experienced to be an audio book, but I'm

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Speaker 1: a big fan of them because I don't know, I

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Speaker 1: do all the cooking in our house and stuff like that,

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Speaker 1: and it's good to be able to listen to a

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Speaker 1: book while you cook. Yeah. Yeah, this is not related

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Speaker 1: to any of stuff i'm gonna recommend today. I've told

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Speaker 1: this story to Joe before. But one of the audio

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Speaker 1: books I listened to in the last couple of years

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Speaker 1: was Cormac McCarthy Is the Road, and I listened to

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Speaker 1: it entirely while I was exercising. And let me tell you,

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Speaker 1: there isn't There is not a more depressing book to

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Speaker 1: listen to while you're running. No, but it makes you

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Speaker 1: want to be in good shape so you don't become

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Speaker 1: part of the supplementary band of Katamites. Yeah exactly. I

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Speaker 1: definitely was thinking about how it was getting, you know,

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Speaker 1: prepared for the dystopian apocalypse. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great book,

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Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, it's pretty much everything. Also. All right, well,

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Speaker 1: let's uh, let's dive into it. We're gonna start with

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Speaker 1: a round of our non fiction recommendations, and then we're

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Speaker 1: gonna skip to our fictional recommendations. Oh. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: kick off here by recommending a book by Douglas j

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Speaker 1: Emlynd titled Animal Weapons The Evolution of battle. Uh. This

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Speaker 1: came out I believe earlier this year or the end

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Speaker 1: of last year. So it's a new book and it's

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Speaker 1: it's really exceptional. It's it's well illustrated, and it deals essentially,

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Speaker 1: it's a comparison between the evolution of organic defense systems

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Speaker 1: and man made weapons. So it looks at the arms

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Speaker 1: race of evolution, with a particular focus on the economics

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Speaker 1: of evolution, so you know, asking questions like at what

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Speaker 1: point is a crab claw too large? And uh and

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Speaker 1: and and and the other side of the coin is

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Speaker 1: at what point is an arm's budget too ridiculous? And

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Speaker 1: there's a chapter at the end that deals with mass destruction,

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Speaker 1: you know, which is more of an exclusive domain of

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Speaker 1: human weaponry. Uh, something you're not going to find in

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Speaker 1: the natural world. Uh. And that's where the comparison kind

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Speaker 1: of breaks down and the and the author discusses it.

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Speaker 1: But but it's a it's a fascinating read. I mean,

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Speaker 1: particularly if you're interested if you're interested in biology, if

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Speaker 1: you're interested in warfare and uh and weaponry, and if

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Speaker 1: you're interested in in fictional monsters like like I am,

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Speaker 1: because um, you know, we we we love to throw outrageous. Uh,

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Speaker 1: animal weapons that are monster designs, and it's it's always

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Speaker 1: a fun exercise to to think, well, huh, well, why

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Speaker 1: why would that creature have a claw that big? What

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Speaker 1: would have things to pay for that? Yeah, because that's

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Speaker 1: the thing. Weapons. Uh. He discusses that at length in

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Speaker 1: the book. Weapons are always expensive, especially state of the

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Speaker 1: art weapons, whether you're talking about a medieval night if

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Speaker 1: you're talking about an aircraft carrier, if you're talking about

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Speaker 1: an exceptionally large crab claw or a set of antlers,

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Speaker 1: because those things end up requiring resources from the organism.

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Speaker 1: They opened the organism up for for more damage, for

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Speaker 1: more infections, and uh, you know, and sometimes that the

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Speaker 1: species goes bankrupt because the weapon's budget is too large. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating thinking about some of the feedback

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Speaker 1: loops that can be created in in evolutionary development, especially

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Speaker 1: because if you go back far enough, you can trace

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Speaker 1: it to maybe a single random event. You know, that

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Speaker 1: one organism acquired a mutation that gave it a slight

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Speaker 1: edge in some strange way that wasn't usual in that

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Speaker 1: ecosystem before, and then suddenly every other species that competes

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Speaker 1: with it had to keep up. So I'm wondering because

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Speaker 1: I know you're a big Grant Morrison fan. Have you

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Speaker 1: read We Three before? No, that's that's one I need

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Speaker 1: to borrow from someone at some point, but maybe you

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Speaker 1: can borrow for me. But um, it's related to this topic.

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Speaker 1: It directly in that it is about house pet animals

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Speaker 1: that are weaponized by the US government and they're intelligent, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're well, I mean they're a little above average intelligence

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Speaker 1: for you know, it's a dog, a cat, and a rabbit.

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Speaker 1: But they're also like implanted with I guess cybernetics, and

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Speaker 1: they were sort of like exoskeletons and they're so is

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Speaker 1: not the natural arms or no, this is not real?

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Speaker 1: This is sci fi? Yeah, but it is. Um it's

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Speaker 1: a very emotional, uh comic book. Oh yes, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think you'll enjoy it. I will definitely have to check

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Speaker 1: that out. Um. Yeah, I mean this book I definitely recommend.

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Speaker 1: It's a very readable uh you know, it's not not

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Speaker 1: too thick for the for the average read in the

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Speaker 1: unity of the advanced science reader. And it's just like

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Speaker 1: every chapter you can actually actually can just spot read

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Speaker 1: this thing if you want, you know, you just set

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Speaker 1: it back on the toilet tank and pull it out

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Speaker 1: whenever you you just want a little bit of of

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Speaker 1: mind blowing science, I mean stuff like, Um, he spends

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Speaker 1: a lot of time with stag beetles and dung beetles,

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Speaker 1: you know, because they have a lot of of of

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Speaker 1: weaponry that they've evolved on their heads for fighting, and

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Speaker 1: he mentions at one point that in some male dung

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Speaker 1: beetles who actually see the diminishment of the eyes, uh,

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Speaker 1: so that they can grow these elaborate fighting mechanisms. So

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Speaker 1: so the weapons actually like limit the site of the

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Speaker 1: organism in a very real way. That kind of in

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Speaker 1: the same way that like wearing a great helm would

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Speaker 1: would limit your site as yeah yeah yeah, or that

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Speaker 1: wearing armor limits your mobility, right, And all of these

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Speaker 1: things come with a cost, even if it's just a

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Speaker 1: cost of resource investment. I had a feeling that going

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Speaker 1: into this episode, we're going to come up with some

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Speaker 1: future episode topic ideas, and this sounds like a good one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's I think in the past I touched on this

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Speaker 1: book a little bit in an episode about antlers and

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Speaker 1: one about dung beetles. But I mean it's it's a

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Speaker 1: great text to have around because it covers pretty much everything.

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Speaker 1: It's just a wonderful dive into the topic of of

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Speaker 1: animal and human weaponry. So cool, recommend it. All right, Well,

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Speaker 1: for my nonfiction selection, I'm gonna bring up a book

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Speaker 1: that's especially relevant to this podcast because we talked about

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Speaker 1: it in a couple of the episodes. Robert and I

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Speaker 1: did the ones about techno religion, and this book is

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Speaker 1: the Remarkable Life of John Murray, Spear Agitator for the

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Speaker 1: Spirit Land by John Benedict Beaucher. And I apologized to

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Speaker 1: John Benedict Beaucher for saying this, but every time I

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Speaker 1: say his name, I want to say John Carl Buckler,

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Speaker 1: who is the director of Friday the Thirteenth Part seven. Wow,

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Speaker 1: that's that's very specific. You don't know that this guy

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Speaker 1: didn't also direct Friday Part seven under a pseudonym. Well

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Speaker 1: that could be. I mean, it's close enough. They might

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Speaker 1: as well be the same. Way to separate his career.

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Speaker 1: Uh No, this guy, as far as I know, has

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Speaker 1: not directed any slasher movies. But a good like spiritual

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Speaker 1: if the slasher movie might be, might be worth Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: that could be really cool. But I thought this, This

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Speaker 1: story was just fascinating because this is a this is

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Speaker 1: a biography of this guy, John Murray Spear, who we

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Speaker 1: talked about in the Techno Religion episodes. And John Murray

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Speaker 1: Spear was an activist, a reformer, you know, an agent

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Speaker 1: of political and social change in most cases for the better.

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Speaker 1: He advocated some really progressive topics for his time in

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Speaker 1: the early to mid eighteen hundreds. He was for women's rights,

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Speaker 1: He was an abolitionist against slavery, he protested against racism,

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Speaker 1: and so he was in a lot of ways a

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Speaker 1: really great guy for his time. But it's an interesting

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Speaker 1: study in how even people with really admirable intentions can

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Speaker 1: get swept up in bizarre belief systems where John Murray

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Speaker 1: Spear ended up becoming a spiritualist. Interesting. Yeah, And so

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Speaker 1: he began to think that he was a medium who

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Speaker 1: could channel the spirits from beyond, and he thought he

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Speaker 1: could deliver the words of Benjamin Rush giving lectures on anatomy,

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Speaker 1: and these were subjects he didn't know anything about. So

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Speaker 1: was this like many spiritualists at that time, did he

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Speaker 1: try to monetize this in some way? Like did he

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Speaker 1: advertise it as if like you know, pay him ten

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Speaker 1: bucks and he'll tell you the secrets of the universe.

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Speaker 1: That really I mean, I mean maybe, I don't know,

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Speaker 1: if you want to be cynical, you could maybe because

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Speaker 1: he did draw people to him through this, Like he

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Speaker 1: definitely lad some projects and had some followers based on

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Speaker 1: messages he was supposedly getting from the spirit world. But

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Speaker 1: I know, I don't get the sense that it was

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Speaker 1: just kind of a crass cash grab. I get the

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Speaker 1: sense that he was a true believer. He seemed really

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Speaker 1: invested in these these projects, you know. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: easy to think of his key project, which I'm sure

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Speaker 1: about to discuss. It's kind of an art installation, So

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Speaker 1: you can almost imagine him him as a like a

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Speaker 1: gallery owner who is just super committed to to curating

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Speaker 1: the the the main art installation in this gallery, and

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Speaker 1: and less concerned with actually selling tickets. The spiritualists of

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Speaker 1: that time that I was thinking of are more like

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Speaker 1: kind of I think Joe and I have talked about

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Speaker 1: this off air before, about like water diviners or oil diviners. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and that they would, you know, obviously like claim that

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Speaker 1: spirits were able to tell them where water or oil

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Speaker 1: could be found. But now John Murray Spear and his

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Speaker 1: followers are more into the idea that spirits could tell

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Speaker 1: you how to build a machine that would save the

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Speaker 1: world and become the new robot Messiah. Oh so he's

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Speaker 1: our buck Buckminster Fuller pretty much. Yeah, this is in

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Speaker 1: the realm of spiritualist. He was. He was a big thinker.

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Speaker 1: He was definitely outside the box thinker. Yeah, and so

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Speaker 1: that's this led to the New Motor Project, which we

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Speaker 1: talked about at length in our episodes on Techno Religion,

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Speaker 1: and if you haven't heard those, you can go back

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Speaker 1: and check those out for the fuller description. But basically,

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Speaker 1: he and a bunch of people got together and tried

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Speaker 1: to build a machine based on instructions from spirits that

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Speaker 1: he thought would bring about a new era and sort

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Speaker 1: of change the humans relationship with the spirit world and

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Speaker 1: bring about a positive end of days in a way.

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Speaker 1: So this book that's about him, Um, how how did

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Speaker 1: you find like, you know, the structure the pros it was? It?

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Speaker 1: Is it a den biography or is it um you know,

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Speaker 1: readable kind of page turner. No, it's not like highly dramatized.

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Speaker 1: So he he doesn't make it into a historical novel

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Speaker 1: or anything. I guess since it's more kind of an

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Speaker 1: academic historians work, But that doesn't mean it's uninteresting, just

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Speaker 1: because the story of John Murray Spear is so weird,

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Speaker 1: so fascinating just in the actual details of what happened

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Speaker 1: that I think even the non historian reader would be

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Speaker 1: interested in this. Cool. That sounds fascinating. Yeah, what's on

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Speaker 1: the artwork there? Yeah, the cover has this I don't know,

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Speaker 1: kind of creepy looking army of cherubim surrounding what looks

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Speaker 1: like a sewing machine table. Yeah, it seems to highlight

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Speaker 1: the themes. Yeah, there aren't a lot of great pictures

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Speaker 1: of of John Murray Spears, a key creation, so I

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Speaker 1: don't think there's a single photograph of it, just the illustration,

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Speaker 1: a couple of illustrations. Yeah. Yeah, spoiler alert. It looks

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Speaker 1: like a table with a bunch of stuff lude to it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think we described in the podcast what is a

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Speaker 1: is a dalek and um a coffee table mated? This

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Speaker 1: would be the offspring, Yeah, pretty much, and then you

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Speaker 1: hung that with some Christmas ornaments. Well that's actually a

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Speaker 1: good segue into the book that I chose to talk

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Speaker 1: about today. For my nonfiction selection, which is it's an

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Speaker 1: e book by Warren Ellis called Cunning Plans. And Warren Ellis,

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Speaker 1: for those of you not familiar, is primarily known as

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Speaker 1: an English comic book writer. He's written a couple of novels,

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Speaker 1: and he's also done some commentary and columns about society

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Speaker 1: and technology and sort of where we're going and how

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Speaker 1: they're merging. Uh. And this e book, which I think

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Speaker 1: it's only likes on Amazon or something like that, is

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Speaker 1: a collection of talks and presentations that he's given on

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Speaker 1: a variety of topics over the last I don't know,

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Speaker 1: maybe five or six years. One of the major categories

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Speaker 1: that he covers in these talks is sort of a

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Speaker 1: collision between spiritualism or magical thinking and technology and progress. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's it's an interesting, you know, set of

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Speaker 1: transcripts and it reads very well. But here's just kind

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Speaker 1: of a set of topics that comes up in the

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Speaker 1: In this book, he talks about futurism, the speed at

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Speaker 1: which we're progressing scientifically. Uh. The title of the book,

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Speaker 1: Cunning Plans, comes from the tradition in England that I

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Speaker 1: wasn't aware of called the cunning folk. Have you guys

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Speaker 1: heard of this before? He describes it as a they

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Speaker 1: were sort of like witch doctors or shaman in England

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Speaker 1: at a time. Um. And he compares the cunning folk

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Speaker 1: of that time to sort of technologists. So are time interesting. Um.

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Speaker 1: Mystical wearables is something he talks about. He also talks

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Speaker 1: about Alexander Graham Bell's harmonic telegraph, the combination of magic

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Speaker 1: in the digital world, why people murder each other. Uh,

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Speaker 1: pop music as sort of like a telegraph of the future,

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Speaker 1: like showing us what the future is going to become,

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Speaker 1: which I think is kind of a theme that stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your mind has has had over the years

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Speaker 1: when you write about space music. Uh. And he's also

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Speaker 1: you know, no surprise into hallucinogens and gardening on grapes sites.

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Speaker 1: I never thought about this, but this is one of

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Speaker 1: the other things he talked about was that apparently the

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Speaker 1: soil is rather rich where dead bodies are buried, so

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Speaker 1: it's easy to grow even even with like modern and

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Speaker 1: modern day and age, because we tend to just completely

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Speaker 1: cut the body off from any kind of natural you know,

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Speaker 1: if I remember correctly from the from the book, it

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Speaker 1: wasn't um, the grave sites that he was talking about

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Speaker 1: were not like modern so yeah, it was more like okay,

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Speaker 1: so it's not like you get your gourds from grandpa.

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Speaker 1: It's like you go fin well, yeah, yeah, m grandpa's

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Speaker 1: crawl space, mushroom. But this is a passage I'd like

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Speaker 1: to read because I think I think that Ellis would

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Speaker 1: probably like that grandpa's crawl space. You know. Sorry, that

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Speaker 1: makes me think. Recently, Rachel and I were driving through

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Speaker 1: South Carolina and who's Rachel for the audience, My wife Rachel,

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Speaker 1: and we're driving through We were driving through South Carolina.

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Speaker 1: We saw a little like neighborhood community that has a name,

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Speaker 1: as sometimes they have names, and it's called Moss Grove.

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Speaker 1: It's like, man, that is one letter off. Well, this

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Speaker 1: is there's a passage from Ellis's book of talks that

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Speaker 1: I wanted to read here today because I think it

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Speaker 1: kind of captures the big ideas that he's he's trying

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Speaker 1: to convey in these talks, and it's it's very stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your mind. So this is in I believe

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Speaker 1: the second one. The Olympus Mons Mountain on Mars is

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Speaker 1: so tall and yet so gently sloped that where you

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Speaker 1: suited and supplied correctly, ascending it would allow you to

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Speaker 1: walk most of the way into space. Mars has a big,

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Speaker 1: puffy atmosphere that's taller than ours, but there's barely anything

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Speaker 1: to it. At that level thirty pascals of pressure, which

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Speaker 1: is what we get in an industrial vacuum furnace here

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Speaker 1: on Earth, you may as well be in space. Imagine that.

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Speaker 1: Imagine a world where you can quite literally walk into space. Wow,

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Speaker 1: that's nice. Yeah, it's kind of fun stuff. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean like, that's a topic where I've certainly done my

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Speaker 1: share of reading about the geography of Mars, and I

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Speaker 1: don't think I think it's ever been presented quiet like

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Speaker 1: that to me. Now, Yeah, that's one of the things

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Speaker 1: I like about Ellis is that he tends to take

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Speaker 1: a lot of popular science type information and he translates

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Speaker 1: it in such a way that just really brings a

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Speaker 1: lot of kind of strangeness and wonder to it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that sounds like one that would be cool to pick up.

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Speaker 1: I haven't. I haven't read any of his, because he

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Speaker 1: has a has a couple of novels out right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Crooked Little Vein is one of them. I can't remember

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Speaker 1: the other novels title. He was supposed to release a

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Speaker 1: book called Listener, I believe, but I don't think that

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Speaker 1: one came out. But there I noticed when I bought

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Speaker 1: this that there are a couple of other books by

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Speaker 1: him available, which maybe other collections of you know, sort

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Speaker 1: of his Internet ramblings and things like that. But I've

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Speaker 1: always found that kind of thing interesting. In fact, I

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Speaker 1: think I was showing you guys the other day some

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Speaker 1: old issues of this collection of books called Bad Signal

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Speaker 1: that he put out at the early two thousands that

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Speaker 1: were basically his He would take these really sensationalist, kind

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Speaker 1: of weird science stories and then extrapolate them out a

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Speaker 1: little bit further and and they, you know, for the

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Speaker 1: most party kind of sites sources, and it was stuff

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Speaker 1: from newspapers in the late nineties. And I think it

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Speaker 1: would be sort of fascinating for us to take one

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Speaker 1: or two of those and dive into them, see if

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Speaker 1: you see, if there's some meat on the bone. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I loved trans Metropolitan and that's the one you told

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Speaker 1: me to read. Uh, Yeah, trans Metropolitan is probably the

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Speaker 1: one he's best known for. Spider Ruth. Yeah, it's basically

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Speaker 1: a sci fi version of Hunter S. Thompson. Uh, kind

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Speaker 1: of writing about a presidential campaign. Was that accurate? Yeah yeah,

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Speaker 1: and kind of got a weird like alien influence, stopian,

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Speaker 1: cyberpunky gonzo future, transhumanism is a big theme. It works. Um.

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Speaker 1: I think one of the other ones I might have

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Speaker 1: told you Joe to read is called Planetary, and that

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Speaker 1: is sort of his I think he describes as like

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Speaker 1: an archaeology of weird fiction. So he goes throughout the

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Speaker 1: history of sort of science fiction, weird fiction fantasy and

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Speaker 1: explores it throughout the the the context of this narrative

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Speaker 1: and Planetary, you know, he was involved early on, um

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Speaker 1: in the creation of the Dead Space video game franch Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's and I think he he hadn't has I don't

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Speaker 1: think he's really gone on the record much for talking

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Speaker 1: about like what specifically his contribution story, because I imagine

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Speaker 1: there were a lot of cooks, uh preparing that soup.

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Speaker 1: But but I really enjoyed that that gaming franchise. Yeah,

407
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Speaker 1: me too. I kind of like to to look at

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Speaker 1: it sometime and try and figure out what what in

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Speaker 1: this is is definitely has Ellis's d N Yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I could see that I had forgotten about that, But

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Speaker 1: you're right. I just played Dead Space three last year.

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Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. Yeah, that one was fun. I've

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Speaker 1: never done any of those. Their survival horror science fiction games.

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Speaker 1: I think is a wonderful You have techno religion at

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Speaker 1: the center of it. Okay, cool, all right, so there

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Speaker 1: are three uh promising nonfiction recommendations for you. You know,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we're gonna dive into some fiction as well. Alright, we're

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Speaker 1: back and now we're gonna talk a little bit about fiction.

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Speaker 1: And you know, just because it's fictional doesn't mean it's

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Speaker 1: not loaded with a lot of mind expanding topics, a

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Speaker 1: lot of a lot of cool ideas. And that's why

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Speaker 1: I I am. I'm always drawn to the work of

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Speaker 1: the I n M. Banks Um. Yeah, it's the recurring

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00:22:50,240 --> 00:22:53,920
Speaker 1: theme I got I said something funny. No, no, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I know that you've talked about him a lot on

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00:22:55,800 --> 00:22:57,800
Speaker 1: the show before, and we were talking about this yesterday

428
00:22:57,840 --> 00:23:00,760
Speaker 1: that I've actually never read his work before, and so

429
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,119
Speaker 1: I've heard nothing but good things about him. But what

430
00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:06,840
Speaker 1: I've heard is that he goes by the name Ian M.

431
00:23:06,880 --> 00:23:09,960
Speaker 1: Banks when he's writing science fiction, and he's just Ian

432
00:23:10,040 --> 00:23:13,520
Speaker 1: Banks right when he's writing sort of just literary fiction. Yes, okay,

433
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,520
Speaker 1: that's and his sci fi. I pretty much only read

434
00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:19,639
Speaker 1: his sci fi except for his first novel, UM, The

435
00:23:19,680 --> 00:23:23,119
Speaker 1: Wasp Factory. I believe that's what. That's more on this

436
00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:26,359
Speaker 1: sort of literary kind of literary horror, I would say.

437
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:28,080
Speaker 1: But but for the most part, I stick to his

438
00:23:28,119 --> 00:23:32,080
Speaker 1: sci fi, especially as culture series um and and I

439
00:23:32,440 --> 00:23:34,639
Speaker 1: really think they. I tend to almost always read his

440
00:23:34,680 --> 00:23:37,800
Speaker 1: books exclusively at the beach. So he's kind of my

441
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:40,879
Speaker 1: go to beach read. So let's back up here a second.

442
00:23:40,920 --> 00:23:43,880
Speaker 1: I have never thought of you as a beach person. Yeah,

443
00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:46,840
Speaker 1: well you know, I'm also surprised, Elsie. I love a

444
00:23:46,840 --> 00:23:49,119
Speaker 1: good walk on the beach. Um. I have to kind

445
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 1: of be coaxed into doing all the other stuff like

446
00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:53,240
Speaker 1: actually getting in the water and all right, and having

447
00:23:53,400 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 1: a toddler certainly helps with that. But but I love

448
00:23:56,160 --> 00:23:58,560
Speaker 1: walking on the beach. I love, you know, staring out

449
00:23:58,600 --> 00:24:02,000
Speaker 1: and might of my creative juices run um. So I

450
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:04,119
Speaker 1: love reading at the beach. It's a good excuse to

451
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 1: just dive into a book. Well, I gotta say that

452
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:10,040
Speaker 1: there are different kinds of beaches also because I don't

453
00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:12,879
Speaker 1: consider myself a beach person in terms of like happy

454
00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:15,560
Speaker 1: sunny beaches with people swimming. But you went to the

455
00:24:15,560 --> 00:24:17,639
Speaker 1: beach just a couple of weeks ago, too, Well that

456
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:23,479
Speaker 1: was a family thing, you know, you know, I mean,

457
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:25,760
Speaker 1: I didn't hate it. But but the kind of beach

458
00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:28,879
Speaker 1: I can really get behind is like the Icelandic beach

459
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:33,000
Speaker 1: or like where it's like a gray hellscape that's beautiful,

460
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:37,040
Speaker 1: potentially hallucinate things on the horizon. Yeah, you're you're likely

461
00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:39,880
Speaker 1: to see a troll walking up out of the water. Well.

462
00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: I tend to not go quite that dark in myne beaches.

463
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:45,879
Speaker 1: But I like a I like a less populated beach,

464
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 1: and I don't like a bunch of people sitting around

465
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:51,800
Speaker 1: swift swiking beer and playing Jimmy Buffett. I like a

466
00:24:52,320 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 1: like a you know, a fairly deserted beach. I like

467
00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:57,679
Speaker 1: like clouds in the sky. But but I also like

468
00:24:57,800 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 1: getting my feet in the water a little bit. And

469
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:04,080
Speaker 1: you know, I prefer sand rather than painful rocks beneath me.

470
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:08,359
Speaker 1: A doom metal kind of beach. I guess, yeah, no,

471
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:10,400
Speaker 1: I don't know that makes it sound like the sky

472
00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:14,080
Speaker 1: is full of smog and there's like like Viking ships

473
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 1: on the horizon. There you go, all right, so you

474
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:18,920
Speaker 1: read you're reading in him banks at the beach, or

475
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:21,679
Speaker 1: you recommend reading it there. I mean, it works for me,

476
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 1: but he's he's great to read anywhere. So you know,

477
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:26,680
Speaker 1: if you want this type of science fiction journey, um

478
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: this particular book. I read the book Accession, which came

479
00:25:29,760 --> 00:25:32,199
Speaker 1: out in ninety six, and it's the fifth book in

480
00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:35,199
Speaker 1: his Culture series, which if you're not familiar with it,

481
00:25:35,200 --> 00:25:39,080
Speaker 1: it's essentially a post singularity space opera that often deals

482
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:42,720
Speaker 1: with the meaning of life and a post scarcity society,

483
00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:48,440
Speaker 1: the limits of utopia, machine intelligence, alien civilizations, war, horror,

484
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:50,679
Speaker 1: wonder and he also throws in a fair bit of

485
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:53,159
Speaker 1: silliness and humor that kind of balances everything out of

486
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:57,160
Speaker 1: kind of you know, Rye almost kind of it's almost

487
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:00,080
Speaker 1: like a Monty Python as silliness at times, and and

488
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:03,879
Speaker 1: the kind of pompous air to some of the characters

489
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 1: in this uh in this universe, which which helps to

490
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:09,840
Speaker 1: you had to balance out some of the heavier ideas

491
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:12,439
Speaker 1: that he plays with. And he's British, right or he was,

492
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 1: but she passed away last year. Yeah. Yeah, he died

493
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:19,320
Speaker 1: in two years ago now, but but he he contributed

494
00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:23,520
Speaker 1: a number of books to us before before passing. Um

495
00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:25,600
Speaker 1: and uh, and the Culture books aren't the only science

496
00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 1: fiction books, but there, it's that's the university keeps coming

497
00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:31,160
Speaker 1: back to every key, kept coming back to a number

498
00:26:31,160 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 1: of times. Yeah, it's it definitely sounds like something I

499
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: need to dive into at some point. My wife has

500
00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:38,360
Speaker 1: recommended as well. Yeah. The weird thing about the Culture

501
00:26:38,359 --> 00:26:41,000
Speaker 1: series is that, first of all, it's each book can

502
00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 1: be read on its own. It's there, there's stuff that

503
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: happens in the universe, uh, some key events, and there's

504
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,399
Speaker 1: definitely a timeline, but that timeline isn't doesn't reflect the

505
00:26:50,480 --> 00:26:53,919
Speaker 1: order in which the books are published, and so technically

506
00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: you can come in at any point. But then some

507
00:26:56,359 --> 00:26:59,439
Speaker 1: books are better entry points than others. So I always

508
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:03,600
Speaker 1: recommend the Player of Games is a great first culture

509
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:06,800
Speaker 1: book to read, as well as consider Flibus, which is

510
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:10,680
Speaker 1: the first one that he wrote. Um. I found Player

511
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:12,640
Speaker 1: of Games was the one that I came to first,

512
00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:15,000
Speaker 1: and I found that one to be the most accessible,

513
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:18,960
Speaker 1: and it is one of my my favorite books. Um Accession, however,

514
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:22,159
Speaker 1: is very good too, and this one deals uh, like

515
00:27:22,240 --> 00:27:23,560
Speaker 1: all of his books. You know, there are a number

516
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:26,440
Speaker 1: of different elements going on. There's what he calls an

517
00:27:26,440 --> 00:27:29,719
Speaker 1: outside context event, uh, the appear, which is the appearance

518
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:32,040
Speaker 1: of this thing they refer to as an accession. So

519
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:35,480
Speaker 1: an outside context event for the rest of us would

520
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:37,919
Speaker 1: be like if you were a member of you know,

521
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:42,600
Speaker 1: a primitive tribe and you live on in some coastal environment.

522
00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:45,120
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're catching your fish, you're cooking them

523
00:27:45,119 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 1: over fire, and you have all these questions about how

524
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,800
Speaker 1: the world works beyond you know, beyond your your standard

525
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 1: myths that have been passed on, and then you look

526
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 1: out one day and there's, say, you know, a Spanish

527
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:59,360
Speaker 1: warship out out in the harbor. That is an outside

528
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: context of the the arrival of a of an advanced

529
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 1: piece of technology and advanced civilization, the kind of thing

530
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:09,040
Speaker 1: you could not predict. And then once it is in play,

531
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:13,919
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of powerless against whatever changes it's going

532
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:17,159
Speaker 1: to bring into your world. So he's extrapolating that and

533
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,400
Speaker 1: imagining it into sci fi scenarios for our future. Yeah,

534
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:23,920
Speaker 1: So like in the culture which is the culture is

535
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 1: is one of several galactic civilizations that are employed that

536
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:31,119
Speaker 1: are in play in his world. And and this so

537
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:34,359
Speaker 1: this is an very space opera age in which ships

538
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:38,600
Speaker 1: are running all over the place. Artificial intelligence is extremely powerful. UH.

539
00:28:38,640 --> 00:28:42,600
Speaker 1: There are a number of elder civilizations that have UH

540
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:46,720
Speaker 1: that have sort of gone offline. They've sublime as as

541
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 1: as Banks refers to it. But the Succession UH, the

542
00:28:50,400 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 1: Succession seems to be an entity or or even some

543
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:55,760
Speaker 1: sort of a ship that originates outside of our universe.

544
00:28:56,200 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: So it's a significant advanced step in technology, far beyond

545
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:04,760
Speaker 1: anything that than any of these other civilizations have the

546
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 1: power to grasp. And so it it it ends up

547
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 1: playing into a couple of other scenarios. There's a there's

548
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:13,360
Speaker 1: a warlike species called the Affront that want to take

549
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:17,040
Speaker 1: advantage of it. And then you have the artificial intelligence

550
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: minds that run the Culture and they're trying to figure

551
00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:22,120
Speaker 1: out how best to respond to it, while another faction

552
00:29:22,160 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: of them are trying to figure out how to exploit

553
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:28,960
Speaker 1: the scenario to UH to deal with the Affront. And

554
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:30,680
Speaker 1: then at the center of this too, you have a

555
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:37,000
Speaker 1: tragic post human love story UH involving to human characters. Um,

556
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: because his his post human characters are always so so

557
00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: interesting because he deals with very human qualities, but the

558
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: human qualities of the sort of human who can live

559
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: for centuries, that can change gender as much as they want,

560
00:29:51,000 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 1: that can you know, essentially start and restart their lives

561
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: several times and do anything they want to within this

562
00:29:57,440 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 1: sort of semi utopian society. So this is sort of

563
00:30:00,360 --> 00:30:03,200
Speaker 1: transhumanists as well. Then, Yeah, I'm assuming there's like an

564
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:06,000
Speaker 1: idea and the restarting of the lives is something that

565
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:11,640
Speaker 1: like the mind is separate from the body in a way. Um, yeah,

566
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:16,200
Speaker 1: at times like there he explores so many different possibilities

567
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 1: in these books, Like they're they're definitely individuals who are disembodied,

568
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:22,959
Speaker 1: their individuals who are stored away, their individuals who are

569
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 1: whose mind is put back into a new body. And

570
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: then individuals in the culture tend to have they have

571
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: like a neural lace implanted in their brain that gives

572
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:35,280
Speaker 1: them all these uh, these these cybernetic interface features they

573
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 1: have the ability to to gland different properties. So if

574
00:30:39,320 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 1: they want they want to sleep, uh without being disturbed

575
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: by dreams, they just have to think about it. And

576
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: it happens. If they essentially want a powerful stimulant to

577
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 1: rev them up, they just think about it and it happens.

578
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:52,400
Speaker 1: So they have their own, their own sort of pharmaceutical

579
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:55,800
Speaker 1: reserves just just waiting inside their head. And all I

580
00:30:55,840 --> 00:30:58,680
Speaker 1: have to do is think that does sound utopian. I

581
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 1: would love for a good night, but I just could

582
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 1: think about it ahead of time. One thing I think

583
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 1: is really interesting there is the idea of how to

584
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:11,440
Speaker 1: make a story that's sort of post singularity or post

585
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: utopian interesting and full of conflict. That's something I think

586
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 1: we've often seen problems within certain incarnations of Star Trek,

587
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 1: for example, where people wanted to go to utopian with

588
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:25,080
Speaker 1: it and say, oh, these petty concerns people used to have,

589
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 1: we've grown beyond that now. But then you've got no

590
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:32,640
Speaker 1: interesting conflict between the characters. There was just that I O, I, yeah,

591
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 1: I was gonna say so, Robert. I read it, and

592
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: then I saw that you posted it to the stuff

593
00:31:37,160 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 1: to blow your own Facebook account. There was a start.

594
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 1: You go ahead and describe it. It was basically stemming

595
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:45,959
Speaker 1: from like a new documentary. I think that Yeah, Shatner

596
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 1: has come out with Ye, but apparently The really interesting

597
00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:53,200
Speaker 1: stuff deals with roddenberries involvement. Jean Roddenberry created the original

598
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 1: Star Trek, his involvement with the Next Generation um which

599
00:31:57,600 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: it sounds like he was kind of dragged into it

600
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: partially by his own ego where you really want to

601
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:06,640
Speaker 1: work on another Star Trek series, uh, but he also

602
00:32:06,680 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: didn't want to see it happen without him. And so

603
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: you have you have Roddenberry and in his key associates

604
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 1: pushing for a really utopian vision of Star Trek and

605
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 1: everything has to be perfect within the Federation at any rate.

606
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:24,080
Speaker 1: And then you have you know, the other voices that

607
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:27,080
Speaker 1: they were saying, but we want, we need conflict, we

608
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:29,240
Speaker 1: need these other things that are not necessarily in line

609
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: with this utopia still supposed to be a story, right, yeah, yeah,

610
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 1: and the pieces written by Charlie Jane Anders, who's a

611
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:38,720
Speaker 1: regular over there and one of my favorite writers at Ionine.

612
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:40,880
Speaker 1: And I suppose that you could go watch this documentary.

613
00:32:40,920 --> 00:32:42,480
Speaker 1: In fact, I want to say that there might have

614
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 1: been an embed at the link too, but you could

615
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 1: find it on our Facebook page or probably search Ionine

616
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:51,400
Speaker 1: Star Trek The Next Generation. It will come up to. Yeah,

617
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 1: I'll put a link to it on the landing page

618
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,640
Speaker 1: for this episode if anyone's interest. So again, that book

619
00:32:55,720 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 1: is accession by I M. Banks. I recommend it. I

620
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: recommend the entire cultures all right. Well, for my fiction selections,

621
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 1: I didn't have anything just quite as perfect as that

622
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:08,520
Speaker 1: is a fit for this show. So I picked just

623
00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:10,640
Speaker 1: a few of the books I've read recently that really

624
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 1: wowed me, and I guess I'm gonna focus specifically on one,

625
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 1: but I'll mention a couple others first that I've read

626
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 1: in the past year or two that amazed me. One

627
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: was actually went back and I never read uh Tony

628
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 1: Morrison book, but I read The bluest I and that

629
00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:30,120
Speaker 1: was man sad, painful, beautiful, brilliant. It was actually her

630
00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:32,080
Speaker 1: first novel, and I get the impression a lot more

631
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 1: people have read beloved or later books of hers. But

632
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:39,080
Speaker 1: one of the main themes in this book is not

633
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:43,479
Speaker 1: necessarily the external racism that happens in society, but the

634
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: internalizing of racialized concepts, like how the young black girl

635
00:33:49,160 --> 00:33:52,280
Speaker 1: in the book comes to adopt basically a white supremacist

636
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 1: conception of aesthetics that equates beauty with whiteness, like her

637
00:33:56,960 --> 00:34:00,680
Speaker 1: idea of what beauty is is what white girl beauty is.

638
00:34:02,080 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 1: And I think this is an interesting example. I mean,

639
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: it's very sad in the book, but it it explores

640
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:12,160
Speaker 1: the concept that our esthetics can be charged with ideology,

641
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 1: and I think that's something that's interesting too, maybe worth

642
00:34:14,719 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: exploring on the show sometime if we haven't before. The

643
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 1: idea of what you find visually interesting or what you

644
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:25,960
Speaker 1: find beautiful that seems to be politically neutral, but in

645
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:27,719
Speaker 1: a lot of cases it might not be. Like what

646
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:32,919
Speaker 1: our values are can determine what looks good to us. Yeah, absolutely,

647
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:36,080
Speaker 1: I mean I'm of the opinion that all of culture

648
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: is us just trying to make sense of the sort

649
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:44,439
Speaker 1: of bombardment of chaotic information that the world presents us with. Right,

650
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:48,200
Speaker 1: and no matter how you do that, it's ideological. Last

651
00:34:48,280 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 1: night I went to a presentation of there's a theater

652
00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 1: here in town called the Fox Theater, and they were

653
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 1: playing Ghostbusters. They're playing the original Ghostbusters and before it,

654
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:00,520
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys been to the Fox

655
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:03,680
Speaker 1: or not. This is my first time. They play old

656
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:07,359
Speaker 1: black and white newsreels from the nineteen thirties, and I

657
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,120
Speaker 1: was noticing, Um, there were a couple of them that

658
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 1: were sort of celebrating female like stars of the time. Uh,

659
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:19,880
Speaker 1: either from you know, the stage or maybe the radio

660
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 1: or something like that. But I was just noticing that

661
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:25,800
Speaker 1: that the conception of beauty even in the nineteen thirties,

662
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:29,239
Speaker 1: between now and then is so different. Um. So I

663
00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:31,360
Speaker 1: think that there's certainly something to be said for the

664
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,200
Speaker 1: culture change between the then. You know, I hadn't read

665
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 1: the Blue Eyes book, but thinking back on the episodes

666
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:40,799
Speaker 1: that Julie and I put out earlier in the year

667
00:35:40,840 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 1: about implicit bias and racism, Um, that work definitely came

668
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:47,319
Speaker 1: up in some of the sources that we're looking at.

669
00:35:47,360 --> 00:35:50,359
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so so that was an amazing book.

670
00:35:50,400 --> 00:35:53,759
Speaker 1: Another amazing one I want to mention is actually in

671
00:35:53,800 --> 00:35:56,879
Speaker 1: the title The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay by

672
00:35:56,920 --> 00:35:59,880
Speaker 1: Michael Shabon. Yeah, this is a great book. Yeah. So,

673
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: I've got a friend who loves Shabon and he's been

674
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: recommending this book to me for years. But I finally

675
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 1: read it this I've been it's been recommended to me

676
00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 1: for years, and I almost read it several times. I

677
00:36:10,600 --> 00:36:14,319
Speaker 1: think you would enjoy it. Oh man, it's absolutely fantastic.

678
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:18,239
Speaker 1: I it's an amazing epic story. It's epic in the

679
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:21,160
Speaker 1: way that you know the great Dickens novels or epic,

680
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 1: and that like you're almost amazed at the end that

681
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:27,640
Speaker 1: you that the story has gone this far and and

682
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:30,520
Speaker 1: completed this arc. And in many ways, I think this

683
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: story is interesting because it's about the genesis of storytelling.

684
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:37,360
Speaker 1: Like it deals with how the contents of the stories

685
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:43,200
Speaker 1: that storytellers create can be equal parts inspiration, personal obsession,

686
00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:47,160
Speaker 1: and just mercenary necessity, and how all those things come

687
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:51,480
Speaker 1: together to make the canons of literature we love. Yeah,

688
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I've read it, maybe ten years,

689
00:36:55,440 --> 00:36:58,839
Speaker 1: but um, you know, it's no secret, especially if you've

690
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:00,759
Speaker 1: just didn't listening to this episode. I've already mentioned to

691
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:03,759
Speaker 1: comic book writers, but I'm big on comic books, and

692
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:06,680
Speaker 1: part of the plot of Shabon's book is that these

693
00:37:06,719 --> 00:37:09,320
Speaker 1: two guys create a comic book character called the Escapist.

694
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,359
Speaker 1: I believe that is what the name of the book is. Uh.

695
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:20,320
Speaker 1: And this novel itself is a reflection of the Siegel

696
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:25,319
Speaker 1: and Schuster creation of Superman and the sort of political

697
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: issues that went on behind that and the in this

698
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:32,520
Speaker 1: sleazy business that went on behind that. Yeah. And and

699
00:37:32,560 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 1: it's also a lot about being a Jewish American in

700
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:39,880
Speaker 1: that time, and and and immigration, uh, and sort of

701
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:45,400
Speaker 1: understanding again culturally, understanding your place in American society. And Superman.

702
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:48,479
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't actually really show up in this book,

703
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:52,480
Speaker 1: but that the Golem does, and and and the Golem

704
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:55,560
Speaker 1: of Prague. And you can sort of see Superman and

705
00:37:55,600 --> 00:37:59,239
Speaker 1: the Golem of Prague as like a sort of metaphors

706
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:03,200
Speaker 1: from one another. Nice. Yeah, And so I can't recommend

707
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:05,200
Speaker 1: those two books enough. And then I've got one third

708
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:07,799
Speaker 1: fiction selection that I want to mention, which is The

709
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:14,080
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo'keish. We ever read this, Yes, this,

710
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:15,480
Speaker 1: this has been recommended to me, but I have not

711
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:17,799
Speaker 1: read it. Oh, I think you'd love it, Robert. So

712
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:20,880
Speaker 1: it's called The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Dana location

713
00:38:21,120 --> 00:38:25,000
Speaker 1: Kish was a Serbian writer. He's probably more well known

714
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: among English speaking audiences for his book A Tomb for

715
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: Boris Davidovich. But this book, The Encyclopedia the Dead, was

716
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 1: published I think in nineteen eighty three. The translation copyright

717
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:39,120
Speaker 1: it's nineteen eighty nine. And the English translation was by

718
00:38:39,160 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: Michael Henry him and this book is fantastic in my opinion.

719
00:38:43,800 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: It's a it's a book of strange, fantastical short stories.

720
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: They're pretty much all about death in one way or another,

721
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:54,440
Speaker 1: and they're fantastical elements are very much in the style

722
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:57,759
Speaker 1: of Borhees, and some of them are just so great.

723
00:38:57,800 --> 00:38:59,200
Speaker 1: I want to talk about at least one of the

724
00:38:59,239 --> 00:39:02,720
Speaker 1: stories have me at Boes. Yeah. So the title story

725
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:05,840
Speaker 1: is The Encyclopedia the Dead, and it tells the story

726
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,719
Speaker 1: of a woman who finds herself in a Swedish library

727
00:39:09,719 --> 00:39:13,839
Speaker 1: overnight where she locates a copy of this book called

728
00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:17,560
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia of the Dead. And it's a tone written

729
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:20,080
Speaker 1: by this religious order that makes it their duty to

730
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:24,480
Speaker 1: record every single detail about a person's life, and I

731
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: mean every single detail. Every person they meet every meal

732
00:39:28,239 --> 00:39:30,840
Speaker 1: to aid all the flowers they grew in their gardens,

733
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 1: and then also the historical context for every period of

734
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 1: their lives. So if you lived in World War Two,

735
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:39,960
Speaker 1: the encyclopedia would also give you a complete and thorough

736
00:39:40,040 --> 00:39:43,560
Speaker 1: understanding of what happened in World War two. And these

737
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:48,399
Speaker 1: are all like like on paper. Yeah, that's so there's

738
00:39:48,440 --> 00:39:52,839
Speaker 1: a kind of surreal there's a sort of like impossible

739
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:56,479
Speaker 1: absurdity to the world it describes. And then, of course,

740
00:39:56,840 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 1: the narrator of this story, she finds the entry for

741
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:02,280
Speaker 1: her father, who had died just a couple of months

742
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:05,080
Speaker 1: before the story takes place. And the only rule for

743
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:08,479
Speaker 1: inclusion in the Encyclopedia of the Dead is that those

744
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:14,000
Speaker 1: included and it cannot be included in any other encyclopedia. Interesting,

745
00:40:14,800 --> 00:40:17,080
Speaker 1: and much of the story is just the narrator trying

746
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 1: to make notes on her father's entry before she runs

747
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:21,680
Speaker 1: out of time and has to put the book down

748
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 1: and leave the library. But I thought this was a

749
00:40:25,280 --> 00:40:27,799
Speaker 1: fascinating take. And I don't want to spoil too much

750
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 1: about the story. You should just read it. But I

751
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:34,880
Speaker 1: think it's a fascinating take on the sort of absurdity

752
00:40:34,960 --> 00:40:40,120
Speaker 1: of of trying to capture human experience, uh in language

753
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:43,759
Speaker 1: that there's no way to really tell a story completely.

754
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 1: And then there's another story in this book that I

755
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 1: wanted to call out. It's called Simon Magus, which is

756
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:53,320
Speaker 1: just an awesome retelling of some of the apocryphal Simon

757
00:40:53,400 --> 00:40:57,200
Speaker 1: Magus legends from the I'm unfamiliar with this. It's early

758
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:00,000
Speaker 1: Christian tradition that Simon Magus is a character that appears

759
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:01,760
Speaker 1: is in the Bible. He's in the Book of Acts,

760
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:06,040
Speaker 1: and he's sort of a a counter apostle in a way,

761
00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:08,879
Speaker 1: like he's he's doing some magic tricks and he has

762
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:14,239
Speaker 1: a confrontation Peter Magus. Like mg U, s yeah, I

763
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:16,719
Speaker 1: haven't heard of this guy before. Okay, yeah, yeah, So

764
00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:18,759
Speaker 1: he has a confrontation with Peter that's in the Book

765
00:41:18,760 --> 00:41:22,200
Speaker 1: of Acts, but they're also apocryphal legends that didn't make

766
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: it into the Bible, but they deal in a more

767
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:28,319
Speaker 1: extensive way with with Simon Magus and something he sort

768
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 1: of has like wizard battles with Peter that are pretty

769
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 1: cool and one of those legends. Actually a couple of

770
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 1: those legends are retold in this story. So I loved

771
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:40,040
Speaker 1: this book. I thought it was awesome. That sounds like

772
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:43,520
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, and touches on the things I'm interested in.

773
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 1: I think you guys would be into it. The Christian sorcery.

774
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 1: I'm awf So the wizard battle is with Peter the

775
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:55,799
Speaker 1: apostle in the apocryphal sources. Yeah, okay, it's like they

776
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 1: like Harry Potter ization of the Bible. They have like

777
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:03,440
Speaker 1: miracle contests and they sort of curse each other. Okay, nice, nice,

778
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:05,279
Speaker 1: So it kind of flows into some before we were

779
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:08,719
Speaker 1: talking about in the Grim Moore episode we did. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

780
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:11,760
Speaker 1: In fact, um, that's where I had read about Simon.

781
00:42:12,560 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 1: I pronounced that magus. Maybe it's wrong, but yeah, that's

782
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:18,920
Speaker 1: probably right. Before was that he was an inspiration for

783
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:21,080
Speaker 1: a lot of those grimoires. I think I'm saying it

784
00:42:21,160 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: the anglicized way, meg, but yeah, um, he if I

785
00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:30,880
Speaker 1: remember correctly, from the research for that episode, there was

786
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: even some legends that he was the one who had

787
00:42:33,000 --> 00:42:36,040
Speaker 1: written some of the original text for those grand wires. Yeah. Yeah,

788
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: his And of course you end up sort of losing

789
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: losing the individual and all of the myth lose him completely, probably,

790
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 1: but but yeah, he definitely his name definitely came up

791
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:48,879
Speaker 1: a few times in that episode. Is that recall? Okay, well,

792
00:42:48,960 --> 00:42:51,200
Speaker 1: it's my turn for my fiction selection. I had too,

793
00:42:51,280 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 1: So I feel I feel better now that you had

794
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:54,520
Speaker 1: a couple, because I was a little worried that I

795
00:42:54,520 --> 00:42:57,759
Speaker 1: had to. Um. The first is the audiobook that I

796
00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:00,920
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that I had listened to. It is a

797
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:04,760
Speaker 1: recent novel by I believe you'd pronounced her last name Bukes,

798
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:09,799
Speaker 1: Lauren Bukes. She's a South African novel We talked about her.

799
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 1: She wrote The Shining Girls was a novel that she

800
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:16,440
Speaker 1: came out with, and then something with like animals on wherever,

801
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:20,839
Speaker 1: Zoo City. That's the one I've read. Yeah, I haven't

802
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,200
Speaker 1: read either. Well, I have read part of Shining Girls,

803
00:43:23,200 --> 00:43:26,840
Speaker 1: but not zoos City. This one is called Broken Monsters. Uh.

804
00:43:26,880 --> 00:43:29,359
Speaker 1: And I listened to the autobook version of it, and

805
00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:33,960
Speaker 1: I will recommend to our listeners to just read the book. Uh.

806
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:38,360
Speaker 1: The audio book had several different actors narrating and playing

807
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 1: the parts of the characters that are there's probably like

808
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:44,040
Speaker 1: four or five different protagonists throughout the book, and it

809
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:47,440
Speaker 1: was very distracting. Uh. There were there were points where

810
00:43:47,480 --> 00:43:49,279
Speaker 1: I just stopped listening to it for you know, a

811
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:50,959
Speaker 1: month at a time, and then I would come back

812
00:43:50,960 --> 00:43:53,839
Speaker 1: and give it a shot again. The story is great though.

813
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:58,120
Speaker 1: What she's written is fantastic. It's a contemporary murder mystery, um,

814
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:01,560
Speaker 1: sort of you know, along lines of that serial killer

815
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: story thing that's kind of popular right now in fiction.

816
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: The Detroit police find a dead body that's how it begins,

817
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:11,879
Speaker 1: and it's the dead body of half of a young

818
00:44:11,960 --> 00:44:16,680
Speaker 1: boy fused together to half of a deer um, and

819
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 1: this book just spins out from there. It's about everything

820
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:24,360
Speaker 1: from modern adolescents as it follows the daughter of the

821
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 1: police detective investigating this murder, social media anxiety, and bullying.

822
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 1: I really felt like Bukes had her finger on the

823
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:34,360
Speaker 1: pulse of kind of what's going on in social media

824
00:44:34,440 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 1: right now, especially for adolescence. And I don't think I mean,

825
00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 1: I suspect she's probably, you know, in her thirties at least,

826
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,719
Speaker 1: but she just she's really insightful about, um, how that

827
00:44:44,840 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 1: is affecting growing up. Uh. Also something that we're familiar with,

828
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:53,400
Speaker 1: the idea of clickbait YouTube journalism. There's a character in

829
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 1: there that's sort of trying to create his own YouTube channel,

830
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:01,320
Speaker 1: personality presence um. And of course because it's in Detroit,

831
00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:03,759
Speaker 1: they talk about urban renewal art quite a bit, and

832
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:06,359
Speaker 1: there's that they go to art parties the serial killer

833
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 1: as an artist. Um. There's some interesting stuff going on

834
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:13,879
Speaker 1: aesthetically with that. I found this to be a genuinely

835
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:17,800
Speaker 1: creepy and disturbing book. I read a lot of horror.

836
00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,440
Speaker 1: I watch a lot of horror, and it's it takes

837
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 1: uh a lot to to kind of jar me, and

838
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 1: the stuff in here jarred me. Um, but yeah, I

839
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:29,800
Speaker 1: read it, don't listen to it. Okay. Yeah. It's always

840
00:45:29,800 --> 00:45:32,279
Speaker 1: weird with the audio books because they were kind of

841
00:45:32,320 --> 00:45:34,799
Speaker 1: like the two the two approaches. One is to just

842
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 1: have a solid narrator just reading you the books, and

843
00:45:38,480 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: then it's then it's the other direction is performance, and

844
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:43,800
Speaker 1: so sometimes you get that weird area. We have a

845
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: good narrator, but maybe he's just trying a little too

846
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:51,040
Speaker 1: hard to do like the female voices in the book,

847
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: or you know, weird balance. There was, there there were,

848
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:58,959
Speaker 1: and I'm sure, uh, you know, our listeners can relate

849
00:45:59,000 --> 00:46:01,319
Speaker 1: to this because they're listening to a podcast right now

850
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:03,759
Speaker 1: in which they're listening to our voice voices, and there's

851
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: probably things about our voices that maybe, for instance, I

852
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: I know that I am accused of having vocal fry

853
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:14,279
Speaker 1: often and that that can annoy listeners sometimes. But the

854
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 1: cadence of some of the people reading this story just

855
00:46:18,440 --> 00:46:21,480
Speaker 1: it just rubbed me the wrong way. Um. There was

856
00:46:22,120 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 1: the woman who performed the adolescent girls chapters. She was

857
00:46:26,280 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: a great narrator, but she was doing it from the

858
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:33,920
Speaker 1: voice of a thirteen fourteen year old girl. Uh, And

859
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:36,760
Speaker 1: it just graded on me after a while. I guess

860
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:40,279
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person who prefers the audio book

861
00:46:40,280 --> 00:46:42,840
Speaker 1: where it's just a single narrator. I often prefer if

862
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: it's the author themselves reading, because I feel like that

863
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 1: brings a lot to it. Yeah, Neil Gaiman, particularly reading

864
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:53,360
Speaker 1: his own I could imagine if he would. Yeah. Um.

865
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:56,839
Speaker 1: The one audio book that I've listened to that did

866
00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: a very good job with the format of having multiple

867
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:03,719
Speaker 1: actors was the audiobook for World War Z. That was

868
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:06,239
Speaker 1: the one where I was really surprised. I felt like

869
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:08,959
Speaker 1: it was actually better than the pros um they had.

870
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 1: You know, several actors, including like people like Henry Rawlins

871
00:47:12,680 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 1: come in and do the voices of some of the

872
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:17,759
Speaker 1: characters that are interviewed throughout the course of that book.

873
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:22,759
Speaker 1: So the other uh A fiction recommendation that I have is,

874
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:27,000
Speaker 1: again no surprise, it's a graphic novel. Uh. It is

875
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:31,640
Speaker 1: a book called High Crimes by Christopher Sabella and Ibraham Mustafa,

876
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:34,840
Speaker 1: and it's a nice hardcover graphic novel collection of a

877
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:37,160
Speaker 1: twelve issue digital comic that these guys did over the

878
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 1: last couple of years, and I just I've loved the

879
00:47:40,040 --> 00:47:42,920
Speaker 1: digital version of it. I've been following it since they

880
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: first came out with it. Um if you've seen me

881
00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:47,200
Speaker 1: on video before, you might have seen me wearing a

882
00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:51,080
Speaker 1: high Crimes T shirt. Actually it's a skull with UM

883
00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 1: two climbing implements over it, and it's sort of in

884
00:47:54,600 --> 00:47:57,760
Speaker 1: the shape of mountains because this is a murder mystery

885
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 1: that's set on Mount Everest, and the idea is that

886
00:48:00,680 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 1: the main character is a climbing guide who helps people

887
00:48:04,239 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: get up Mount Everest, but also on the side, she

888
00:48:08,120 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 1: robs the bodies of people who have died on Mount

889
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:15,760
Speaker 1: Everest and then uh promises to return either the bodies

890
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:18,919
Speaker 1: or their property to their families who are living back

891
00:48:18,960 --> 00:48:22,000
Speaker 1: home for a for a fee, you know, for a price.

892
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:25,040
Speaker 1: So she's kind of like a vulture scavenger on Mount

893
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:28,240
Speaker 1: Everest and h the plot is that she she finds

894
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:31,320
Speaker 1: a body that has a connection to a government conspiracy

895
00:48:31,360 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 1: back in the United States. So this leads to, you know,

896
00:48:34,560 --> 00:48:36,400
Speaker 1: she tries to sell the stuff at leads to a

897
00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:39,239
Speaker 1: sort of caton mouse game chasing up Mount Everest, but

898
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:43,799
Speaker 1: it's a meticulously researched Sabella does a really good job

899
00:48:44,320 --> 00:48:48,319
Speaker 1: of depicting what climbing Everest is like. Not that I've

900
00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:51,840
Speaker 1: done it, but it seemed very well researched, down to

901
00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:55,360
Speaker 1: the equipment, the effects on your on the human body,

902
00:48:56,000 --> 00:49:01,280
Speaker 1: especially at the like different sort of zones of the mountainous. Yeah.

903
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:04,239
Speaker 1: I did climb Mount Kinnabalu when I was younger, which

904
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:08,480
Speaker 1: is in Malaysia, in Borneo, and it reminded me a

905
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:12,319
Speaker 1: lot of that. Yeah, I know that it's it's come

906
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:15,239
Speaker 1: up in episodes before here. It's stuff to put your

907
00:49:15,280 --> 00:49:19,000
Speaker 1: mind discussing just just what the environment is like as

908
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:21,520
Speaker 1: you as you ascend a particularly high mountain and the

909
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 1: atmospheric changes and the effects it has on the brain. Uh,

910
00:49:24,800 --> 00:49:27,759
Speaker 1: sort of really fascinating stuff. And the character is a

911
00:49:27,840 --> 00:49:31,640
Speaker 1: drug addict too, so it's interesting to see like her

912
00:49:31,760 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: going through uh she's jones and really as she's traveling

913
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:37,840
Speaker 1: up the mountains, she sort of runs out of stuff.

914
00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:43,440
Speaker 1: That effect, combined with the effects of the environment, that

915
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if people, if anybody climbs mountains to

916
00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:53,319
Speaker 1: get like hypooxia trips. It sounds like an episode it

917
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:55,480
Speaker 1: will now all right, So now we're gonna finish up

918
00:49:55,520 --> 00:49:57,920
Speaker 1: the podcast here by just going around and discussing what

919
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 1: we're reading now, what we're hoping to read an the future,

920
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:02,680
Speaker 1: what's on the plate. Uh, and this, you know, will

921
00:50:02,719 --> 00:50:06,560
Speaker 1: be another good place for for the listeners to say, yes,

922
00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:09,680
Speaker 1: those are great selections, or no, don't read that that's

923
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:12,759
Speaker 1: or or you know, or just to mention some things

924
00:50:12,800 --> 00:50:16,800
Speaker 1: that are in the same vein. Um. So I'll start

925
00:50:17,640 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 1: right now. I am just jumping back into a reread

926
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:26,759
Speaker 1: of Frank Herbert's sci fi classic Dune, because this is

927
00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 1: the fiftieth anniversary of the book. And uh, and Joe

928
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:32,319
Speaker 1: and I are actually planning to do a couple of

929
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:36,320
Speaker 1: episodes on the science of Dune. Um. This is also

930
00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 1: on my now reading listes you're you're you're currently reading

931
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:42,040
Speaker 1: it as well. So I've I've also picked up The

932
00:50:42,120 --> 00:50:45,400
Speaker 1: Science of Doom edited Doune edited by Kevin R. Grazier,

933
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:48,279
Speaker 1: pH d, which is a collection of essays that in

934
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:52,680
Speaker 1: which different individuals analyzed the science of everything from the

935
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:57,160
Speaker 1: still suit to the sandworm um to to the consumption

936
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 1: of of spice. And it's and it's an and its

937
00:51:00,600 --> 00:51:03,000
Speaker 1: effects on the on the human mind. And then I

938
00:51:03,040 --> 00:51:07,440
Speaker 1: also picked up a copy of the Dune and Cyclopedia

939
00:51:07,719 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties compiled by Dr Willis E. McNelly.

940
00:51:11,520 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 1: And this is this has been long out of print,

941
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:17,879
Speaker 1: so the book, the book just smells fabulous and has

942
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:22,560
Speaker 1: that wonderful nineteen eighties h aroma to it. And this

943
00:51:22,600 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: is a book I have a lot of nostalgia for.

944
00:51:24,760 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 1: But because before I've read any of the Dune books,

945
00:51:28,200 --> 00:51:31,120
Speaker 1: I picked this up in my local small town library

946
00:51:31,160 --> 00:51:33,759
Speaker 1: and just started going through it and just you know,

947
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 1: they have they have all these different encyclopedic entries about

948
00:51:37,480 --> 00:51:42,640
Speaker 1: various factions, family members, individuals, technologies that that make up

949
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:46,480
Speaker 1: the Dune universe. And it's um just really inspiring stuff.

950
00:51:46,560 --> 00:51:50,360
Speaker 1: It's not all cannon because it came out before Herbert

951
00:51:50,400 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 1: had written all of his Dune books, but but it's

952
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:57,240
Speaker 1: it's wonderful stuff. I'm surprised there isn't a revised version

953
00:51:57,320 --> 00:51:59,960
Speaker 1: that is that is still in circulation given the popular

954
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:03,640
Speaker 1: ality of that series. You think you think they would, uh, especially,

955
00:52:03,680 --> 00:52:06,479
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still an industry of the Dune books

956
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:10,759
Speaker 1: are still an industry, you know. I wonder if the Internet,

957
00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:13,799
Speaker 1: like having the Web has really cut into stuff like

958
00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:17,759
Speaker 1: fictional cannon encyclopedias. Because when I was a kid, I

959
00:52:17,840 --> 00:52:19,520
Speaker 1: remember a lot of these things. When I was looking

960
00:52:19,520 --> 00:52:22,680
Speaker 1: at this stude encyclopedia book, I was like, oh man,

961
00:52:22,800 --> 00:52:25,440
Speaker 1: I got that feeling like this is a book I

962
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:28,120
Speaker 1: would have found somewhere when I was a kid, like

963
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:30,560
Speaker 1: in a you know, beach house or something like that,

964
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 1: and then sat down and started flipping through it and

965
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 1: suddenly the entire days gone. Uh. It has that feeling

966
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: because I don't know, for some reason when I was

967
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:41,600
Speaker 1: a kid that I love stuff like that Star Wars encyclopedia.

968
00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: I had the Star Trek. It's like I think it

969
00:52:44,640 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 1: was called it was like a guy to the alien

970
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:49,239
Speaker 1: species of Star Trek. Yeah, and it was this came

971
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:52,880
Speaker 1: out like a you know, next generation era. So each

972
00:52:53,480 --> 00:52:56,600
Speaker 1: each spread had you know, a nice little black and

973
00:52:56,640 --> 00:52:59,400
Speaker 1: white drawing of the species and then you know some

974
00:52:59,520 --> 00:53:02,240
Speaker 1: very uncy colopedic information about them in their home world.

975
00:53:02,320 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just I just remember pouring myself into that. Yeah.

976
00:53:06,040 --> 00:53:08,719
Speaker 1: I mean, I suppose you're right that Wikipedia and like

977
00:53:08,800 --> 00:53:13,439
Speaker 1: other sort of wicki uh data entry sites have sort

978
00:53:13,440 --> 00:53:16,439
Speaker 1: of taken over that place. But there's still there's still

979
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:19,880
Speaker 1: something nice about holding a book like that, Like I

980
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:25,919
Speaker 1: love reading RPG manual even for games that I'll never play. Yeah,

981
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:28,160
Speaker 1: I'm a sucker for a monster manual. Yeah, it's that

982
00:53:28,320 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 1: me a good monster manual and I will just I'll

983
00:53:30,800 --> 00:53:33,760
Speaker 1: lose myself in it. You know, Robert's the guy to consult.

984
00:53:33,800 --> 00:53:36,240
Speaker 1: I remember a while back, I was wondering, what kind

985
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 1: of save do you have to throw from somebody, uh

986
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:42,600
Speaker 1: trying to drive you mad? They're casting a drive you

987
00:53:42,640 --> 00:53:45,600
Speaker 1: mad spell? What did you say, Robert? I can't remember

988
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 1: what my specific answer was, but I looked in the

989
00:53:48,520 --> 00:53:55,440
Speaker 1: latest Dungeon Master Guide and also my Cathla book. So oh,

990
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:57,440
Speaker 1: I love Call of Cthulu. It was at the D

991
00:53:57,520 --> 00:53:59,839
Speaker 1: one version. I don't know, it's not that I don't

992
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:02,239
Speaker 1: think it's the most current edition. Yeah, that's the the

993
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 1: D one hundred is the is the older one? Um

994
00:54:05,040 --> 00:54:07,560
Speaker 1: that I think that somebody else, another company maybe bought

995
00:54:07,600 --> 00:54:10,000
Speaker 1: it up. A Chaos um is the company. Yeah, and

996
00:54:10,040 --> 00:54:12,759
Speaker 1: this one definitely came from that company. Yeah, that could

997
00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:15,759
Speaker 1: be a great like workplace RPG, like, you know, you

998
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: get pulled into the meeting room and the boss Monster

999
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 1: is about to drive you mad. Yeah, I feel anytime

1000
00:54:21,680 --> 00:54:25,200
Speaker 1: I'm in a long meeting I started losing. Yeah, absolutely,

1001
00:54:25,880 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 1: especially when you're in a conference call. Oh yeah, that's

1002
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 1: the minus five standity points right after that. So just

1003
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:34,120
Speaker 1: and then briefly, what's on the plate for later. I

1004
00:54:34,120 --> 00:54:36,600
Speaker 1: I fall into the trap every year of just thinking

1005
00:54:36,640 --> 00:54:39,200
Speaker 1: more about things I want to reread that I love,

1006
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:42,399
Speaker 1: rather than exploring new things. So so along those lines,

1007
00:54:42,440 --> 00:54:44,560
Speaker 1: I would love to have some recommendations from other people,

1008
00:54:44,600 --> 00:54:47,520
Speaker 1: but I feel like I need to reread our Scott

1009
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:50,160
Speaker 1: Baker's The Judging I and the White Luck Lawyer, The

1010
00:54:50,160 --> 00:54:53,319
Speaker 1: White Luck Lawyer, The White Luck Warrior. The White Luck

1011
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:57,000
Speaker 1: Lawyer would be a different novel. What's his name? John

1012
00:54:57,040 --> 00:55:04,480
Speaker 1: graham Er John Grisham book um The White Luck Yeah, yeah,

1013
00:55:04,520 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 1: Actually The White Luck Warrior, which is the second book

1014
00:55:07,600 --> 00:55:10,840
Speaker 1: in his second trilogy that all takes place in his

1015
00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:16,480
Speaker 1: dark fantasy, highly philosophical world of the Second Apocalypse. But

1016
00:55:16,520 --> 00:55:19,200
Speaker 1: he has the third book in this series coming out

1017
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:22,840
Speaker 1: at some point in the next several months, hopefully titled

1018
00:55:22,840 --> 00:55:24,960
Speaker 1: The Unholy Consult. So I want to make sure that

1019
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:27,680
Speaker 1: I'm I dive back into the world fully and then

1020
00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:29,600
Speaker 1: they're in a number. I feel like I probably need

1021
00:55:29,640 --> 00:55:32,319
Speaker 1: to finish reading Stephen King's Revival because people keep telling

1022
00:55:32,320 --> 00:55:34,600
Speaker 1: me it's good. I still haven't finished that one. I

1023
00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:37,359
Speaker 1: started it rather Uh yeah, it's been on my list.

1024
00:55:37,440 --> 00:55:39,759
Speaker 1: Yeah here, it has some wonderful science fiction elements in it,

1025
00:55:39,800 --> 00:55:42,040
Speaker 1: but I just need to press further along in it,

1026
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:45,360
Speaker 1: I guess. And then and then we're gonna hit Halloween,

1027
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:49,600
Speaker 1: so I'll probably reread some Lagatti, some Kings and Lovecraft

1028
00:55:49,640 --> 00:55:53,360
Speaker 1: and Clark Ashton Smith and of course Brian McNaughton, my

1029
00:55:53,360 --> 00:55:56,279
Speaker 1: my all time favorite horror writer. So that's what's on

1030
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:58,760
Speaker 1: the plate for me. Well, as I said, I'm also

1031
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:01,520
Speaker 1: reading Done right now, and I'm loving it so far.

1032
00:56:01,560 --> 00:56:05,640
Speaker 1: I love the richness of the world, how complete it feels.

1033
00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:08,719
Speaker 1: We were just talking the other day about how going

1034
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:12,319
Speaker 1: back and reading Done, I feel some elements that you

1035
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:15,880
Speaker 1: see in the George R. Martin Game of Thrones universe

1036
00:56:15,960 --> 00:56:19,880
Speaker 1: feel sort of not not lifted from Done, but similar

1037
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:22,840
Speaker 1: to Doune in terms of, you know, all the backstabbing

1038
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:26,040
Speaker 1: and these warring houses. And I wouldn't be surprised if

1039
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:28,080
Speaker 1: it was a big influence on him, at least in

1040
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:32,440
Speaker 1: terms of structure, and I guess epic nous. Yeah, I

1041
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:35,000
Speaker 1: feel like it's it's definitely a work that it's it's

1042
00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:39,920
Speaker 1: roots spread throughout genre fiction for for decades, for decades

1043
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:42,560
Speaker 1: to follow. So I'm absolutely loving it and I can't

1044
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:44,760
Speaker 1: wait to do the Science of Doune episode. But also,

1045
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:48,480
Speaker 1: I was reading a book when I started reading Dune

1046
00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:51,080
Speaker 1: that I need to pick back up because I loved

1047
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:53,160
Speaker 1: this one as well. It was The Secret History by

1048
00:56:53,200 --> 00:56:56,359
Speaker 1: Donna Tart read this, Yeah, I read that a while ago.

1049
00:56:57,520 --> 00:56:58,880
Speaker 1: What was it The story with that is it came

1050
00:56:58,880 --> 00:57:00,520
Speaker 1: out in like the nineties and then she didn't write

1051
00:57:00,560 --> 00:57:02,480
Speaker 1: another book for like twelve years or something, right, and

1052
00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:04,279
Speaker 1: I think Little Friend is the other book that she's

1053
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:06,560
Speaker 1: come out with since then. Actually I didn't even look

1054
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:08,680
Speaker 1: this up. I have no idea when this book was written,

1055
00:57:08,920 --> 00:57:11,880
Speaker 1: but I was. I thought it was fantastic so far,

1056
00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:15,440
Speaker 1: that's good. The pros is it's one of those books that,

1057
00:57:15,520 --> 00:57:17,640
Speaker 1: you know, this sounds like such a reviewers cliche, but

1058
00:57:17,680 --> 00:57:22,040
Speaker 1: it's very rich, meaning sort of the opposite of minimalist

1059
00:57:22,240 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 1: or stark or bear. It's just overflowing with ideas and

1060
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:30,440
Speaker 1: images and jokes and very similitudes, and so I was

1061
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:33,680
Speaker 1: really loving that one. It deals also with the kind

1062
00:57:33,720 --> 00:57:37,400
Speaker 1: of weird cult like behavior that can sometimes arise in

1063
00:57:37,480 --> 00:57:41,560
Speaker 1: a you know, college professor in student scenario. Absolutely, I

1064
00:57:41,600 --> 00:57:45,480
Speaker 1: had a professor exactly like this, the the one that

1065
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:48,480
Speaker 1: was in The Secret History, and I had a sort

1066
00:57:48,480 --> 00:57:52,960
Speaker 1: of classroom unit that was very worshiped him in a

1067
00:57:53,040 --> 00:57:55,240
Speaker 1: similar way. And if I remember correctly, it's been a

1068
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:57,480
Speaker 1: long time since I read it, But isn't he a

1069
00:57:57,520 --> 00:58:01,520
Speaker 1: Greek historian? Yeah, well, I don't know if historian. I

1070
00:58:01,560 --> 00:58:04,040
Speaker 1: haven't finished the book yet, but yeah, he teaches Greek

1071
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:07,200
Speaker 1: and classics, and he talks about Greek philosophy a lot,

1072
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:10,600
Speaker 1: and that he does these sort of like long monologues,

1073
00:58:10,760 --> 00:58:14,600
Speaker 1: these lectures that the students just find all this crazy inspiration.

1074
00:58:14,680 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 1: In so far, the book was awesome and I'll have

1075
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:20,760
Speaker 1: to go back to it once I've finished with Dune.

1076
00:58:20,800 --> 00:58:24,720
Speaker 1: But then also lined up next, I've been thinking about

1077
00:58:24,720 --> 00:58:27,080
Speaker 1: how I've apparently got to read to me and in Banks,

1078
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:30,920
Speaker 1: So there we go on that. But that also I

1079
00:58:30,960 --> 00:58:34,640
Speaker 1: was thinking about reading Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine, which

1080
00:58:34,680 --> 00:58:38,000
Speaker 1: is a nonfiction book that she wrote about memetic theory.

1081
00:58:38,080 --> 00:58:42,440
Speaker 1: And Christian. You're kind of smirking. I have an interesting

1082
00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:46,280
Speaker 1: story about this book. So I read this book early

1083
00:58:46,320 --> 00:58:49,520
Speaker 1: two thousand's and I loved it. It's really good. I

1084
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:52,080
Speaker 1: think that. And if you're looking for sort of an

1085
00:58:52,120 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 1: explanation of Dawkins memetics theory, this is a good place

1086
00:58:58,200 --> 00:59:02,200
Speaker 1: to start. I made the mistake of in my early

1087
00:59:02,240 --> 00:59:07,440
Speaker 1: twenties taking a young lady delightful young lady to uh

1088
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:12,160
Speaker 1: Susan Blackmore presentation as our first date, so you know,

1089
00:59:12,840 --> 00:59:15,760
Speaker 1: not not not protecious at all? That goes? Do you

1090
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:18,720
Speaker 1: want to go here about my medics from this British

1091
00:59:18,760 --> 00:59:22,680
Speaker 1: author with pink hair. I love her hair. She's bad.

1092
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:25,480
Speaker 1: She's come up in in past episodes before. Oh yeah,

1093
00:59:26,760 --> 00:59:29,280
Speaker 1: she was super cool. I've seen YouTube videos of her

1094
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:32,640
Speaker 1: giving like speeches and stuff. She seems really awesome in person.

1095
00:59:32,840 --> 00:59:34,520
Speaker 1: I've never read a book of her, so, so I

1096
00:59:34,560 --> 00:59:37,080
Speaker 1: wanted to read this also because I've read a little

1097
00:59:37,120 --> 00:59:39,920
Speaker 1: bit in about meme theory. Like you know, I read

1098
00:59:40,000 --> 00:59:42,760
Speaker 1: Dawkins The Selfish Gene, which came out in the seventies,

1099
00:59:42,760 --> 00:59:45,000
Speaker 1: and I think that was the first major exploration of

1100
00:59:45,080 --> 00:59:48,360
Speaker 1: meme theory. Yeah, I think, And if you're not familiar

1101
00:59:48,400 --> 00:59:51,560
Speaker 1: with meme theory. It's the idea that there are units

1102
00:59:51,600 --> 00:59:56,760
Speaker 1: of cultural copying and transmission analogous to genes and living organisms,

1103
00:59:56,800 --> 01:00:00,680
Speaker 1: but in culture they're they're called memes, and they're just

1104
01:00:00,800 --> 01:00:04,680
Speaker 1: like genes. They get copied with mutations throughout generations. Yeah.

1105
01:00:04,680 --> 01:00:06,840
Speaker 1: I would also add to this, at least from my

1106
01:00:06,920 --> 01:00:11,200
Speaker 1: experience and graduate school, that the theories of memetics of

1107
01:00:11,280 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 1: Dawkins and blackmore a heavily frowned upon. Oh yeah, a

1108
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of people hate them. Yeah,

1109
01:00:17,000 --> 01:00:24,280
Speaker 1: they don't feel like it has any quantitative value. Yep,

1110
01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:27,000
Speaker 1: I've heard that too. I I I still think that

1111
01:00:27,040 --> 01:00:29,439
Speaker 1: they're interesting, and in fact, we did a What's a Meme?

1112
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:32,640
Speaker 1: Episode for brain Stuff that our colleague Jonathan Strickland performed.

1113
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:34,840
Speaker 1: So if you if you want just like a short

1114
01:00:34,960 --> 01:00:39,440
Speaker 1: five minute primer on memetics, go find that. Of course,

1115
01:00:39,480 --> 01:00:41,200
Speaker 1: then again, one thing I will say is that it

1116
01:00:41,280 --> 01:00:44,120
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of the criticisms of memetics that

1117
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:47,320
Speaker 1: I've heard. No, I'm sure there are some very good criticisms.

1118
01:00:47,320 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 1: Some of the ones I've heard kind of rang hollow

1119
01:00:50,360 --> 01:00:52,600
Speaker 1: to me and also seemed like they were coming from

1120
01:00:52,600 --> 01:00:57,200
Speaker 1: people who personally dislike to the people who promote meme theory.

1121
01:00:57,480 --> 01:00:59,640
Speaker 1: So I don't know what what to deal with that is,

1122
01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:02,600
Speaker 1: but I'll see once I read the book. Well, I

1123
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:05,920
Speaker 1: am currently reading a book called Devils and Demons that

1124
01:01:06,000 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 1: I picked up at our local used book store. The

1125
01:01:08,280 --> 01:01:12,320
Speaker 1: booknook Uh. It is a collection of short stories all

1126
01:01:12,360 --> 01:01:16,600
Speaker 1: about hell, demons, and Satan that are selected by a

1127
01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:20,960
Speaker 1: guy named Marvin Kay. And this book was published in um.

1128
01:01:21,200 --> 01:01:24,680
Speaker 1: Some of it is is isn't really my thing, some

1129
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:27,480
Speaker 1: of it's not for me, But there have so far

1130
01:01:27,560 --> 01:01:31,000
Speaker 1: been some good stories I've read in here. Paula Volsky

1131
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:34,280
Speaker 1: wrote a story called The Tendency of Mr. Eks Uh.

1132
01:01:34,320 --> 01:01:37,120
Speaker 1: There's a great Robert Block story in here called Enoch.

1133
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:41,200
Speaker 1: If you haven't read that, read that one. But he's yeah, yeah,

1134
01:01:41,200 --> 01:01:44,200
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. And then this book led me down the

1135
01:01:44,280 --> 01:01:48,080
Speaker 1: rabbit hole to really get into Arthur Macon because I've

1136
01:01:48,120 --> 01:01:49,840
Speaker 1: only read a little bit of his stuff before. But

1137
01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:51,480
Speaker 1: there's a story in here called The Novel of the

1138
01:01:51,520 --> 01:01:54,760
Speaker 1: White Powder by him, which led me to again going

1139
01:01:54,800 --> 01:01:57,640
Speaker 1: on to Amazon. It turns out that Amazon has these

1140
01:01:58,080 --> 01:02:01,040
Speaker 1: collections of books like like makens work, you can buy

1141
01:02:01,080 --> 01:02:03,800
Speaker 1: like twenty five of his stories for cents. So I

1142
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:07,120
Speaker 1: got this collection and over this this last week. I

1143
01:02:07,160 --> 01:02:09,800
Speaker 1: actually just read The Great God Pan. Have you guys

1144
01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:14,800
Speaker 1: read this before? That is an incredibly potent and creepy fail. Yeah,

1145
01:02:14,840 --> 01:02:17,600
Speaker 1: it's a novella that he wrote first, was published in

1146
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:22,120
Speaker 1: eighteen nine, and it is, you know, it's probably like

1147
01:02:22,160 --> 01:02:27,120
Speaker 1: one of the unsung stories of the history of horror literature.

1148
01:02:27,560 --> 01:02:30,760
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of it until until just the last

1149
01:02:30,800 --> 01:02:33,040
Speaker 1: you know, maybe two or three weeks, but it's it's

1150
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:37,280
Speaker 1: hugely influential. Lovecraft called it. He said, no one could

1151
01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:41,560
Speaker 1: begin to describe the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with

1152
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:46,040
Speaker 1: which every paragraph abounds in that story. And Stephen King

1153
01:02:46,120 --> 01:02:48,560
Speaker 1: said he thinks it's one of the best horror stories

1154
01:02:48,560 --> 01:02:52,560
Speaker 1: ever written, maybe the best in the English language. I

1155
01:02:52,640 --> 01:02:57,880
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. So I'm I'm thoroughly I'm planning to

1156
01:02:57,880 --> 01:03:00,160
Speaker 1: to to really take a deep dive into our they're

1157
01:03:00,200 --> 01:03:03,400
Speaker 1: makings material, and then what I've got on the plate

1158
01:03:03,440 --> 01:03:05,959
Speaker 1: for later, probably after I read all that making stuff,

1159
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 1: although I might dabble in this stuff back and forth.

1160
01:03:08,560 --> 01:03:11,160
Speaker 1: A friend of mine recommended this book by a guy

1161
01:03:11,240 --> 01:03:14,200
Speaker 1: named Layered Baron, who is another sort of weird fiction

1162
01:03:14,320 --> 01:03:17,240
Speaker 1: horror author. Uh. And this is a collection of his

1163
01:03:17,280 --> 01:03:22,440
Speaker 1: short stories called Occultation. And all I know about this

1164
01:03:22,480 --> 01:03:24,120
Speaker 1: guy is he's won a bunch of awards. He's a

1165
01:03:24,160 --> 01:03:27,320
Speaker 1: former I did a rod Racer And uh, my friend

1166
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:30,560
Speaker 1: who is a is a horror writer just sings his

1167
01:03:30,600 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 1: praises loves of stuff. Yeah, this is an author that

1168
01:03:32,680 --> 01:03:36,240
Speaker 1: keeps coming up in um at least automated recommendations for

1169
01:03:36,280 --> 01:03:38,640
Speaker 1: me and things like Amazon. And and he's of course

1170
01:03:38,680 --> 01:03:41,880
Speaker 1: his name stands out so much. Yeah, uh yeah, I

1171
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:44,400
Speaker 1: probably need to check out some of his work as well. I,

1172
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:46,520
Speaker 1: like I said, I keep falling into the habit of

1173
01:03:46,560 --> 01:03:49,680
Speaker 1: rereading things. Uh, while I should really branch out and

1174
01:03:49,840 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: explore some some more contemporary horror authors. Well, I can

1175
01:03:53,240 --> 01:03:54,920
Speaker 1: let you borrow this when I am done with it.

1176
01:03:55,000 --> 01:03:57,720
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really looking forward to the idea of bouncing

1177
01:03:57,720 --> 01:04:00,160
Speaker 1: back and forth between a guy who's contemporary like us

1178
01:04:00,160 --> 01:04:02,280
Speaker 1: and a guy who was alive over a hundred years ago,

1179
01:04:02,840 --> 01:04:06,320
Speaker 1: really kind of writing similar stuff with Arker making Arthur

1180
01:04:06,400 --> 01:04:12,360
Speaker 1: Makin's kind of huge collection of short stories. Yeah, I

1181
01:04:12,360 --> 01:04:14,440
Speaker 1: feel like you guys are really showing me up in

1182
01:04:14,520 --> 01:04:17,400
Speaker 1: terms of appropriately weird stuff here, I'm gonna have to

1183
01:04:17,480 --> 01:04:20,240
Speaker 1: catch up for next year. It's gonna be it's gonna

1184
01:04:20,280 --> 01:04:24,120
Speaker 1: be all sci fi and demons for five days. That's

1185
01:04:24,160 --> 01:04:27,240
Speaker 1: gonna heavily influence the show. I think I'm already weighing

1186
01:04:27,280 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: this in the demon category. Maybe a little bit too much,

1187
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:34,800
Speaker 1: but the uh, I mean that John Murray's Spear Book

1188
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:38,080
Speaker 1: sounds really interesting and I've never heard of is it?

1189
01:04:38,400 --> 01:04:43,080
Speaker 1: Danilo kisses that there's a K I s And there's

1190
01:04:43,160 --> 01:04:45,320
Speaker 1: the little carrot over the s. So I think the

1191
01:04:45,360 --> 01:04:49,880
Speaker 1: Serbo Croatian way of saying keish. But yeah, I apologize

1192
01:04:49,920 --> 01:04:52,680
Speaker 1: if that is wrong. I believe that sounds appropriately weird.

1193
01:04:52,720 --> 01:04:55,840
Speaker 1: The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Yeah, now, um, author Makin

1194
01:04:55,960 --> 01:04:58,360
Speaker 1: and the the Great God Pan and all that, I think.

1195
01:04:58,880 --> 01:05:01,800
Speaker 1: I think I rich only saw reference to it in

1196
01:05:02,240 --> 01:05:06,080
Speaker 1: one of the Lovecraft's essays about supernatural And yeah, that

1197
01:05:06,240 --> 01:05:09,400
Speaker 1: quote that I just read from was from Lovecraft's book

1198
01:05:10,000 --> 01:05:13,880
Speaker 1: is it Supernatural Literature Literature and Horror or Supernatural Horror

1199
01:05:13,920 --> 01:05:17,000
Speaker 1: in Literature. It's a short nonfiction book that I believe

1200
01:05:17,680 --> 01:05:19,680
Speaker 1: he put. This is all off the top of my head,

1201
01:05:19,720 --> 01:05:23,600
Speaker 1: but I believe that Lovecraft compiled it from letters that

1202
01:05:23,680 --> 01:05:26,840
Speaker 1: he shared with people like Robert Block who were sort

1203
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:30,560
Speaker 1: of in his circle of horror writer fans, and he

1204
01:05:30,640 --> 01:05:33,040
Speaker 1: sort of came up with this guide of how how

1205
01:05:33,080 --> 01:05:36,560
Speaker 1: to write horror literature. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where it

1206
01:05:36,640 --> 01:05:38,960
Speaker 1: was mentioned that where I pulled that quote from at least,

1207
01:05:38,960 --> 01:05:40,760
Speaker 1: so maybe that's where you saw it. Yeah. I also

1208
01:05:40,920 --> 01:05:43,880
Speaker 1: was turned on to a number of like old classic

1209
01:05:44,480 --> 01:05:47,840
Speaker 1: and horror and pulp writers. I used to go to

1210
01:05:47,920 --> 01:05:51,800
Speaker 1: a wrestling message board and one of the contributors there

1211
01:05:52,000 --> 01:05:54,640
Speaker 1: was this guy. It was this guy John Pellen, who

1212
01:05:55,200 --> 01:05:59,600
Speaker 1: who is a horror writer and editor. Do a search

1213
01:05:59,640 --> 01:06:01,880
Speaker 1: for his name and we'll see, you know, various anthologies

1214
01:06:01,880 --> 01:06:04,280
Speaker 1: he's edited. He's I think he's worked with Edward Lee

1215
01:06:04,640 --> 01:06:07,040
Speaker 1: on a few different books. And uh, and he was

1216
01:06:07,520 --> 01:06:10,760
Speaker 1: he has an encyclopedic knowledge of of horror literature. So

1217
01:06:10,800 --> 01:06:12,360
Speaker 1: he turned me onto a number of key authors that

1218
01:06:12,400 --> 01:06:16,000
Speaker 1: I've grown to to just completely adore, like Michael Say Yeah,

1219
01:06:16,160 --> 01:06:18,919
Speaker 1: Michael Shay actually wrote the introduction to that Layered Baron

1220
01:06:18,960 --> 01:06:22,000
Speaker 1: but abo to read. Yeah, and uh, I also thought

1221
01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:23,640
Speaker 1: of you as I was flipping through this last night

1222
01:06:23,640 --> 01:06:25,600
Speaker 1: and reading all the sort of in praise of layered

1223
01:06:25,600 --> 01:06:27,720
Speaker 1: baron stuff at the beginning, because he got a right

1224
01:06:27,800 --> 01:06:30,040
Speaker 1: up from St. Josh in here. Oh yeah, he's been

1225
01:06:30,080 --> 01:06:32,960
Speaker 1: on the show. You had St. Josh on the show. Yeah, yeah,

1226
01:06:32,880 --> 01:06:35,960
Speaker 1: it's sort of for for those who who don't know. St.

1227
01:06:36,080 --> 01:06:39,880
Speaker 1: Josh is, I guess like the Lovecraft scholar. Yeah, he's

1228
01:06:39,960 --> 01:06:42,800
Speaker 1: known as the scholar of sort of weird fiction. Yeah.

1229
01:06:42,800 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 1: And if Michael Shea recommends this guy, all the more reason.

1230
01:06:45,480 --> 01:06:48,840
Speaker 1: Sha was just brilliant and he's sadly passed and uh

1231
01:06:48,880 --> 01:06:51,680
Speaker 1: in the last year or so. But his particularly his

1232
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:55,280
Speaker 1: he wrote science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but his his

1233
01:06:55,400 --> 01:06:59,080
Speaker 1: dark fantasy work particularly is his nipp The Leen Tales

1234
01:06:59,440 --> 01:07:04,160
Speaker 1: are just beautiful, just just phenomenal. Most of them deal

1235
01:07:04,240 --> 01:07:07,800
Speaker 1: with journeys into a into a subport into the sub worlds,

1236
01:07:07,800 --> 01:07:12,560
Speaker 1: which are kind of a fantasy, a fantastic Dante esque underworld,

1237
01:07:13,400 --> 01:07:18,560
Speaker 1: except with just concentric layers of of awfulness and wonder.

1238
01:07:18,600 --> 01:07:21,920
Speaker 1: And then he that man had a gift. So that's

1239
01:07:22,040 --> 01:07:24,280
Speaker 1: yet another person I'm adding just to the piece of paper,

1240
01:07:24,360 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 1: just between the three of us talking, I have a

1241
01:07:26,280 --> 01:07:28,640
Speaker 1: list here, probably ten different things I need to read,

1242
01:07:28,920 --> 01:07:32,000
Speaker 1: but I'm still curious of what the audience is going

1243
01:07:32,080 --> 01:07:34,840
Speaker 1: to recommend to these after hearing of what we're what

1244
01:07:35,000 --> 01:07:37,320
Speaker 1: we would recommend to them, what we're reading right now,

1245
01:07:37,320 --> 01:07:40,360
Speaker 1: and what we're going to read next. That's right, so hey.

1246
01:07:40,400 --> 01:07:42,400
Speaker 1: In the meantime, head on over to stuffable your mind

1247
01:07:42,440 --> 01:07:44,880
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes,

1248
01:07:44,920 --> 01:07:47,160
Speaker 1: all the videos, all the blog posts, and the landing

1249
01:07:47,160 --> 01:07:50,640
Speaker 1: page for this episode again will feature all the titles

1250
01:07:50,640 --> 01:07:54,040
Speaker 1: and authors that we've mentioned here with appropriate links out

1251
01:07:54,360 --> 01:07:56,240
Speaker 1: to place who you can buy them and if you

1252
01:07:56,240 --> 01:07:58,680
Speaker 1: want to, let us know what books you recommend we

1253
01:07:58,760 --> 01:08:01,600
Speaker 1: read and maybe if we really like them, will repeat

1254
01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:04,320
Speaker 1: them back out to our audience and spread your ideas

1255
01:08:04,320 --> 01:08:06,880
Speaker 1: throughout the population. You can email us at blow the

1256
01:08:06,920 --> 01:08:12,640
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on

1257
01:08:12,760 --> 01:08:15,240
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff

1258
01:08:15,240 --> 01:08:21,880
Speaker 1: works dot com