Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Seger, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick, and we're all three gathering for this
Speaker 1: one once more because the Summer Reading episodes kind of
Speaker 1: tradition with the Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where we
Speaker 1: highlight some interesting books that we've read, our reading that
Speaker 1: are that we're looking to read, stuff that may or
Speaker 1: may not appeal to Stuff to Blow your Mind listeners.
Speaker 1: Might make for some good beach reading, some intelligent beach reating,
Speaker 1: if if, if that's your thing, so yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's also probably a good opportunity for the audience to
Speaker 1: get to know Joe and I a little bit better,
Speaker 1: to kind of what our interests are and and perhaps uh,
Speaker 1: some parts of our personalities that maybe haven't come through
Speaker 1: yet in episodes about things like stigmata and glass mind
Speaker 1: conditions like you don't already know what kind of a
Speaker 1: creep I am I do, but the audience doesn't. That's
Speaker 1: what this is about, exposing our our inner secrets and
Speaker 1: creepiness to the listeners and you, and it tends to
Speaker 1: result in a lot of cool conversations with listeners because
Speaker 1: either either they've read the books that that we're talking
Speaker 1: about and have some feedback, or they have some recommendations
Speaker 1: based on some of what we're chatting about. So I
Speaker 1: look forward to all that interaction. Yeah, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: I was hoping for out of this, was that we'd
Speaker 1: get um some nice engagement and conversations going with the
Speaker 1: listeners and that they could possibly recommend some stuff back
Speaker 1: to us as well. You can contact us on Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: Tumbler where we are blow the Mind, or you can
Speaker 1: write us at below the Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Let us know what you thought about you know,
Speaker 1: the recommendations were about to give here, and let's know
Speaker 1: what your recommendations are based on what we tell you.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've got something that you can tell us about.
Speaker 1: Uh that that one of the three of us are
Speaker 1: all three of us who want to dive into Yeah,
Speaker 1: and inevitably they're gonna be questions about the titles. You know,
Speaker 1: what was that book you mentioned? How do you spell
Speaker 1: that last name of that author? We're going to make
Speaker 1: sure that on the landing page for this episode will
Speaker 1: have all the books that we specifically call out here,
Speaker 1: as well as links to where you can obtain them,
Speaker 1: you know. Getting into choosing books for this episode, one
Speaker 1: of the things I noticed was how little I've been
Speaker 1: reading the ideal kind of book to talk about on
Speaker 1: stuff to pull your mind in the past couple of years.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like, you know, what do
Speaker 1: I want to give this audience. I want to give
Speaker 1: them something very like strange science fiction or something like that.
Speaker 1: And I haven't been getting into that much lately. I mean,
Speaker 1: I still love it, but I just haven't been reading it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that, But I go through phases with
Speaker 1: content like that, I think. I mean, you're going to
Speaker 1: find out today that I'm obviously in a big horror phase,
Speaker 1: which is probably no surprise to anyone who's familiar with
Speaker 1: the stuff that I do outside of Us to Works.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that that stuff ebbs and flows
Speaker 1: for my own part, right, you know, we we moved
Speaker 1: offices here at How Stuff Works. We used to be
Speaker 1: located up in uh in Buckhead and now we're more
Speaker 1: in central Atlanta at the Coon City Market. So we
Speaker 1: went from being like a little short walk in like
Speaker 1: a forty minute train ride from my house to being
Speaker 1: just a ten minute car ride. So I really lost
Speaker 1: a lot of the core reading time that I had
Speaker 1: set aside. You know, because when you're on the train,
Speaker 1: or at least when I was on the train, like
Speaker 1: there was nothing else I could do but read the book,
Speaker 1: you know, and so there were no distractions other than
Speaker 1: you know, some weirdo on the train doing god knows what.
Speaker 1: But aside from that, there were no distractions. Just plug
Speaker 1: into my my music, pull out a book, and uh
Speaker 1: and read. And so I've been having I've been kind
Speaker 1: of struggling to find my key reading times again in
Speaker 1: my in my schedule. Yeah, I still ride the train
Speaker 1: and I take the shuttle here, but I haven't been
Speaker 1: reading as much. But I've been listening to a lot
Speaker 1: of audio books. In fact, one of the books I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk about today I listened to entirely as an audiobook.
Speaker 1: I need to get back in it all for me,
Speaker 1: I actually like a lot of audio books. I don't
Speaker 1: think any of the ones I'm going to talk about
Speaker 1: today I experienced to be an audio book, but I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of them because I don't know, I
Speaker 1: do all the cooking in our house and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and it's good to be able to listen to a
Speaker 1: book while you cook. Yeah. Yeah, this is not related
Speaker 1: to any of stuff i'm gonna recommend today. I've told
Speaker 1: this story to Joe before. But one of the audio
Speaker 1: books I listened to in the last couple of years
Speaker 1: was Cormac McCarthy Is the Road, and I listened to
Speaker 1: it entirely while I was exercising. And let me tell you,
Speaker 1: there isn't There is not a more depressing book to
Speaker 1: listen to while you're running. No, but it makes you
Speaker 1: want to be in good shape so you don't become
Speaker 1: part of the supplementary band of Katamites. Yeah exactly. I
Speaker 1: definitely was thinking about how it was getting, you know,
Speaker 1: prepared for the dystopian apocalypse. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great book,
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, it's pretty much everything. Also. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's dive into it. We're gonna start with
Speaker 1: a round of our non fiction recommendations, and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna skip to our fictional recommendations. Oh. I'm going to
Speaker 1: kick off here by recommending a book by Douglas j
Speaker 1: Emlynd titled Animal Weapons The Evolution of battle. Uh. This
Speaker 1: came out I believe earlier this year or the end
Speaker 1: of last year. So it's a new book and it's
Speaker 1: it's really exceptional. It's it's well illustrated, and it deals essentially,
Speaker 1: it's a comparison between the evolution of organic defense systems
Speaker 1: and man made weapons. So it looks at the arms
Speaker 1: race of evolution, with a particular focus on the economics
Speaker 1: of evolution, so you know, asking questions like at what
Speaker 1: point is a crab claw too large? And uh and
Speaker 1: and and and the other side of the coin is
Speaker 1: at what point is an arm's budget too ridiculous? And
Speaker 1: there's a chapter at the end that deals with mass destruction,
Speaker 1: you know, which is more of an exclusive domain of
Speaker 1: human weaponry. Uh, something you're not going to find in
Speaker 1: the natural world. Uh. And that's where the comparison kind
Speaker 1: of breaks down and the and the author discusses it.
Speaker 1: But but it's a it's a fascinating read. I mean,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're interested if you're interested in biology, if
Speaker 1: you're interested in warfare and uh and weaponry, and if
Speaker 1: you're interested in in fictional monsters like like I am,
Speaker 1: because um, you know, we we we love to throw outrageous. Uh,
Speaker 1: animal weapons that are monster designs, and it's it's always
Speaker 1: a fun exercise to to think, well, huh, well, why
Speaker 1: why would that creature have a claw that big? What
Speaker 1: would have things to pay for that? Yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: the thing. Weapons. Uh. He discusses that at length in
Speaker 1: the book. Weapons are always expensive, especially state of the
Speaker 1: art weapons, whether you're talking about a medieval night if
Speaker 1: you're talking about an aircraft carrier, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: an exceptionally large crab claw or a set of antlers,
Speaker 1: because those things end up requiring resources from the organism.
Speaker 1: They opened the organism up for for more damage, for
Speaker 1: more infections, and uh, you know, and sometimes that the
Speaker 1: species goes bankrupt because the weapon's budget is too large. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating thinking about some of the feedback
Speaker 1: loops that can be created in in evolutionary development, especially
Speaker 1: because if you go back far enough, you can trace
Speaker 1: it to maybe a single random event. You know, that
Speaker 1: one organism acquired a mutation that gave it a slight
Speaker 1: edge in some strange way that wasn't usual in that
Speaker 1: ecosystem before, and then suddenly every other species that competes
Speaker 1: with it had to keep up. So I'm wondering because
Speaker 1: I know you're a big Grant Morrison fan. Have you
Speaker 1: read We Three before? No, that's that's one I need
Speaker 1: to borrow from someone at some point, but maybe you
Speaker 1: can borrow for me. But um, it's related to this topic.
Speaker 1: It directly in that it is about house pet animals
Speaker 1: that are weaponized by the US government and they're intelligent, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're well, I mean they're a little above average intelligence
Speaker 1: for you know, it's a dog, a cat, and a rabbit.
Speaker 1: But they're also like implanted with I guess cybernetics, and
Speaker 1: they were sort of like exoskeletons and they're so is
Speaker 1: not the natural arms or no, this is not real?
Speaker 1: This is sci fi? Yeah, but it is. Um it's
Speaker 1: a very emotional, uh comic book. Oh yes, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you'll enjoy it. I will definitely have to check
Speaker 1: that out. Um. Yeah, I mean this book I definitely recommend.
Speaker 1: It's a very readable uh you know, it's not not
Speaker 1: too thick for the for the average read in the
Speaker 1: unity of the advanced science reader. And it's just like
Speaker 1: every chapter you can actually actually can just spot read
Speaker 1: this thing if you want, you know, you just set
Speaker 1: it back on the toilet tank and pull it out
Speaker 1: whenever you you just want a little bit of of
Speaker 1: mind blowing science, I mean stuff like, Um, he spends
Speaker 1: a lot of time with stag beetles and dung beetles,
Speaker 1: you know, because they have a lot of of of
Speaker 1: weaponry that they've evolved on their heads for fighting, and
Speaker 1: he mentions at one point that in some male dung
Speaker 1: beetles who actually see the diminishment of the eyes, uh,
Speaker 1: so that they can grow these elaborate fighting mechanisms. So
Speaker 1: so the weapons actually like limit the site of the
Speaker 1: organism in a very real way. That kind of in
Speaker 1: the same way that like wearing a great helm would
Speaker 1: would limit your site as yeah yeah yeah, or that
Speaker 1: wearing armor limits your mobility, right, And all of these
Speaker 1: things come with a cost, even if it's just a
Speaker 1: cost of resource investment. I had a feeling that going
Speaker 1: into this episode, we're going to come up with some
Speaker 1: future episode topic ideas, and this sounds like a good one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I think in the past I touched on this
Speaker 1: book a little bit in an episode about antlers and
Speaker 1: one about dung beetles. But I mean it's it's a
Speaker 1: great text to have around because it covers pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: It's just a wonderful dive into the topic of of
Speaker 1: animal and human weaponry. So cool, recommend it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: for my nonfiction selection, I'm gonna bring up a book
Speaker 1: that's especially relevant to this podcast because we talked about
Speaker 1: it in a couple of the episodes. Robert and I
Speaker 1: did the ones about techno religion, and this book is
Speaker 1: the Remarkable Life of John Murray, Spear Agitator for the
Speaker 1: Spirit Land by John Benedict Beaucher. And I apologized to
Speaker 1: John Benedict Beaucher for saying this, but every time I
Speaker 1: say his name, I want to say John Carl Buckler,
Speaker 1: who is the director of Friday the Thirteenth Part seven. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's that's very specific. You don't know that this guy
Speaker 1: didn't also direct Friday Part seven under a pseudonym. Well
Speaker 1: that could be. I mean, it's close enough. They might
Speaker 1: as well be the same. Way to separate his career.
Speaker 1: Uh No, this guy, as far as I know, has
Speaker 1: not directed any slasher movies. But a good like spiritual
Speaker 1: if the slasher movie might be, might be worth Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that could be really cool. But I thought this, This
Speaker 1: story was just fascinating because this is a this is
Speaker 1: a biography of this guy, John Murray Spear, who we
Speaker 1: talked about in the Techno Religion episodes. And John Murray
Speaker 1: Spear was an activist, a reformer, you know, an agent
Speaker 1: of political and social change in most cases for the better.
Speaker 1: He advocated some really progressive topics for his time in
Speaker 1: the early to mid eighteen hundreds. He was for women's rights,
Speaker 1: He was an abolitionist against slavery, he protested against racism,
Speaker 1: and so he was in a lot of ways a
Speaker 1: really great guy for his time. But it's an interesting
Speaker 1: study in how even people with really admirable intentions can
Speaker 1: get swept up in bizarre belief systems where John Murray
Speaker 1: Spear ended up becoming a spiritualist. Interesting. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: he began to think that he was a medium who
Speaker 1: could channel the spirits from beyond, and he thought he
Speaker 1: could deliver the words of Benjamin Rush giving lectures on anatomy,
Speaker 1: and these were subjects he didn't know anything about. So
Speaker 1: was this like many spiritualists at that time, did he
Speaker 1: try to monetize this in some way? Like did he
Speaker 1: advertise it as if like you know, pay him ten
Speaker 1: bucks and he'll tell you the secrets of the universe.
Speaker 1: That really I mean, I mean maybe, I don't know,
Speaker 1: if you want to be cynical, you could maybe because
Speaker 1: he did draw people to him through this, Like he
Speaker 1: definitely lad some projects and had some followers based on
Speaker 1: messages he was supposedly getting from the spirit world. But
Speaker 1: I know, I don't get the sense that it was
Speaker 1: just kind of a crass cash grab. I get the
Speaker 1: sense that he was a true believer. He seemed really
Speaker 1: invested in these these projects, you know. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: easy to think of his key project, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: about to discuss. It's kind of an art installation, So
Speaker 1: you can almost imagine him him as a like a
Speaker 1: gallery owner who is just super committed to to curating
Speaker 1: the the the main art installation in this gallery, and
Speaker 1: and less concerned with actually selling tickets. The spiritualists of
Speaker 1: that time that I was thinking of are more like
Speaker 1: kind of I think Joe and I have talked about
Speaker 1: this off air before, about like water diviners or oil diviners. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that they would, you know, obviously like claim that
Speaker 1: spirits were able to tell them where water or oil
Speaker 1: could be found. But now John Murray Spear and his
Speaker 1: followers are more into the idea that spirits could tell
Speaker 1: you how to build a machine that would save the
Speaker 1: world and become the new robot Messiah. Oh so he's
Speaker 1: our buck Buckminster Fuller pretty much. Yeah, this is in
Speaker 1: the realm of spiritualist. He was. He was a big thinker.
Speaker 1: He was definitely outside the box thinker. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: that's this led to the New Motor Project, which we
Speaker 1: talked about at length in our episodes on Techno Religion,
Speaker 1: and if you haven't heard those, you can go back
Speaker 1: and check those out for the fuller description. But basically,
Speaker 1: he and a bunch of people got together and tried
Speaker 1: to build a machine based on instructions from spirits that
Speaker 1: he thought would bring about a new era and sort
Speaker 1: of change the humans relationship with the spirit world and
Speaker 1: bring about a positive end of days in a way.
Speaker 1: So this book that's about him, Um, how how did
Speaker 1: you find like, you know, the structure the pros it was? It?
Speaker 1: Is it a den biography or is it um you know,
Speaker 1: readable kind of page turner. No, it's not like highly dramatized.
Speaker 1: So he he doesn't make it into a historical novel
Speaker 1: or anything. I guess since it's more kind of an
Speaker 1: academic historians work, But that doesn't mean it's uninteresting, just
Speaker 1: because the story of John Murray Spear is so weird,
Speaker 1: so fascinating just in the actual details of what happened
Speaker 1: that I think even the non historian reader would be
Speaker 1: interested in this. Cool. That sounds fascinating. Yeah, what's on
Speaker 1: the artwork there? Yeah, the cover has this I don't know,
Speaker 1: kind of creepy looking army of cherubim surrounding what looks
Speaker 1: like a sewing machine table. Yeah, it seems to highlight
Speaker 1: the themes. Yeah, there aren't a lot of great pictures
Speaker 1: of of John Murray Spears, a key creation, so I
Speaker 1: don't think there's a single photograph of it, just the illustration,
Speaker 1: a couple of illustrations. Yeah. Yeah, spoiler alert. It looks
Speaker 1: like a table with a bunch of stuff lude to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we described in the podcast what is a
Speaker 1: is a dalek and um a coffee table mated? This
Speaker 1: would be the offspring, Yeah, pretty much, and then you
Speaker 1: hung that with some Christmas ornaments. Well that's actually a
Speaker 1: good segue into the book that I chose to talk
Speaker 1: about today. For my nonfiction selection, which is it's an
Speaker 1: e book by Warren Ellis called Cunning Plans. And Warren Ellis,
Speaker 1: for those of you not familiar, is primarily known as
Speaker 1: an English comic book writer. He's written a couple of novels,
Speaker 1: and he's also done some commentary and columns about society
Speaker 1: and technology and sort of where we're going and how
Speaker 1: they're merging. Uh. And this e book, which I think
Speaker 1: it's only likes on Amazon or something like that, is
Speaker 1: a collection of talks and presentations that he's given on
Speaker 1: a variety of topics over the last I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe five or six years. One of the major categories
Speaker 1: that he covers in these talks is sort of a
Speaker 1: collision between spiritualism or magical thinking and technology and progress. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's an interesting, you know, set of
Speaker 1: transcripts and it reads very well. But here's just kind
Speaker 1: of a set of topics that comes up in the
Speaker 1: In this book, he talks about futurism, the speed at
Speaker 1: which we're progressing scientifically. Uh. The title of the book,
Speaker 1: Cunning Plans, comes from the tradition in England that I
Speaker 1: wasn't aware of called the cunning folk. Have you guys
Speaker 1: heard of this before? He describes it as a they
Speaker 1: were sort of like witch doctors or shaman in England
Speaker 1: at a time. Um. And he compares the cunning folk
Speaker 1: of that time to sort of technologists. So are time interesting. Um.
Speaker 1: Mystical wearables is something he talks about. He also talks
Speaker 1: about Alexander Graham Bell's harmonic telegraph, the combination of magic
Speaker 1: in the digital world, why people murder each other. Uh,
Speaker 1: pop music as sort of like a telegraph of the future,
Speaker 1: like showing us what the future is going to become,
Speaker 1: which I think is kind of a theme that stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind has has had over the years
Speaker 1: when you write about space music. Uh. And he's also
Speaker 1: you know, no surprise into hallucinogens and gardening on grapes sites.
Speaker 1: I never thought about this, but this is one of
Speaker 1: the other things he talked about was that apparently the
Speaker 1: soil is rather rich where dead bodies are buried, so
Speaker 1: it's easy to grow even even with like modern and
Speaker 1: modern day and age, because we tend to just completely
Speaker 1: cut the body off from any kind of natural you know,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly from the from the book, it
Speaker 1: wasn't um, the grave sites that he was talking about
Speaker 1: were not like modern so yeah, it was more like okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not like you get your gourds from grandpa.
Speaker 1: It's like you go fin well, yeah, yeah, m grandpa's
Speaker 1: crawl space, mushroom. But this is a passage I'd like
Speaker 1: to read because I think I think that Ellis would
Speaker 1: probably like that grandpa's crawl space. You know. Sorry, that
Speaker 1: makes me think. Recently, Rachel and I were driving through
Speaker 1: South Carolina and who's Rachel for the audience, My wife Rachel,
Speaker 1: and we're driving through We were driving through South Carolina.
Speaker 1: We saw a little like neighborhood community that has a name,
Speaker 1: as sometimes they have names, and it's called Moss Grove.
Speaker 1: It's like, man, that is one letter off. Well, this
Speaker 1: is there's a passage from Ellis's book of talks that
Speaker 1: I wanted to read here today because I think it
Speaker 1: kind of captures the big ideas that he's he's trying
Speaker 1: to convey in these talks, and it's it's very stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. So this is in I believe
Speaker 1: the second one. The Olympus Mons Mountain on Mars is
Speaker 1: so tall and yet so gently sloped that where you
Speaker 1: suited and supplied correctly, ascending it would allow you to
Speaker 1: walk most of the way into space. Mars has a big,
Speaker 1: puffy atmosphere that's taller than ours, but there's barely anything
Speaker 1: to it. At that level thirty pascals of pressure, which
Speaker 1: is what we get in an industrial vacuum furnace here
Speaker 1: on Earth, you may as well be in space. Imagine that.
Speaker 1: Imagine a world where you can quite literally walk into space. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's nice. Yeah, it's kind of fun stuff. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean like, that's a topic where I've certainly done my
Speaker 1: share of reading about the geography of Mars, and I
Speaker 1: don't think I think it's ever been presented quiet like
Speaker 1: that to me. Now, Yeah, that's one of the things
Speaker 1: I like about Ellis is that he tends to take
Speaker 1: a lot of popular science type information and he translates
Speaker 1: it in such a way that just really brings a
Speaker 1: lot of kind of strangeness and wonder to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds like one that would be cool to pick up.
Speaker 1: I haven't. I haven't read any of his, because he
Speaker 1: has a has a couple of novels out right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Crooked Little Vein is one of them. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the other novels title. He was supposed to release a
Speaker 1: book called Listener, I believe, but I don't think that
Speaker 1: one came out. But there I noticed when I bought
Speaker 1: this that there are a couple of other books by
Speaker 1: him available, which maybe other collections of you know, sort
Speaker 1: of his Internet ramblings and things like that. But I've
Speaker 1: always found that kind of thing interesting. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think I was showing you guys the other day some
Speaker 1: old issues of this collection of books called Bad Signal
Speaker 1: that he put out at the early two thousands that
Speaker 1: were basically his He would take these really sensationalist, kind
Speaker 1: of weird science stories and then extrapolate them out a
Speaker 1: little bit further and and they, you know, for the
Speaker 1: most party kind of sites sources, and it was stuff
Speaker 1: from newspapers in the late nineties. And I think it
Speaker 1: would be sort of fascinating for us to take one
Speaker 1: or two of those and dive into them, see if
Speaker 1: you see, if there's some meat on the bone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I loved trans Metropolitan and that's the one you told
Speaker 1: me to read. Uh, Yeah, trans Metropolitan is probably the
Speaker 1: one he's best known for. Spider Ruth. Yeah, it's basically
Speaker 1: a sci fi version of Hunter S. Thompson. Uh, kind
Speaker 1: of writing about a presidential campaign. Was that accurate? Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and kind of got a weird like alien influence, stopian,
Speaker 1: cyberpunky gonzo future, transhumanism is a big theme. It works. Um.
Speaker 1: I think one of the other ones I might have
Speaker 1: told you Joe to read is called Planetary, and that
Speaker 1: is sort of his I think he describes as like
Speaker 1: an archaeology of weird fiction. So he goes throughout the
Speaker 1: history of sort of science fiction, weird fiction fantasy and
Speaker 1: explores it throughout the the the context of this narrative
Speaker 1: and Planetary, you know, he was involved early on, um
Speaker 1: in the creation of the Dead Space video game franch Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's and I think he he hadn't has I don't
Speaker 1: think he's really gone on the record much for talking
Speaker 1: about like what specifically his contribution story, because I imagine
Speaker 1: there were a lot of cooks, uh preparing that soup.
Speaker 1: But but I really enjoyed that that gaming franchise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. I kind of like to to look at
Speaker 1: it sometime and try and figure out what what in
Speaker 1: this is is definitely has Ellis's d N Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that I had forgotten about that, But
Speaker 1: you're right. I just played Dead Space three last year.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. Yeah, that one was fun. I've
Speaker 1: never done any of those. Their survival horror science fiction games.
Speaker 1: I think is a wonderful You have techno religion at
Speaker 1: the center of it. Okay, cool, all right, so there
Speaker 1: are three uh promising nonfiction recommendations for you. You know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna dive into some fiction as well. Alright, we're
Speaker 1: back and now we're gonna talk a little bit about fiction.
Speaker 1: And you know, just because it's fictional doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: not loaded with a lot of mind expanding topics, a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of cool ideas. And that's why
Speaker 1: I I am. I'm always drawn to the work of
Speaker 1: the I n M. Banks Um. Yeah, it's the recurring
Speaker 1: theme I got I said something funny. No, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that you've talked about him a lot on
Speaker 1: the show before, and we were talking about this yesterday
Speaker 1: that I've actually never read his work before, and so
Speaker 1: I've heard nothing but good things about him. But what
Speaker 1: I've heard is that he goes by the name Ian M.
Speaker 1: Banks when he's writing science fiction, and he's just Ian
Speaker 1: Banks right when he's writing sort of just literary fiction. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: that's and his sci fi. I pretty much only read
Speaker 1: his sci fi except for his first novel, UM, The
Speaker 1: Wasp Factory. I believe that's what. That's more on this
Speaker 1: sort of literary kind of literary horror, I would say.
Speaker 1: But but for the most part, I stick to his
Speaker 1: sci fi, especially as culture series um and and I
Speaker 1: really think they. I tend to almost always read his
Speaker 1: books exclusively at the beach. So he's kind of my
Speaker 1: go to beach read. So let's back up here a second.
Speaker 1: I have never thought of you as a beach person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know, I'm also surprised, Elsie. I love a
Speaker 1: good walk on the beach. Um. I have to kind
Speaker 1: of be coaxed into doing all the other stuff like
Speaker 1: actually getting in the water and all right, and having
Speaker 1: a toddler certainly helps with that. But but I love
Speaker 1: walking on the beach. I love, you know, staring out
Speaker 1: and might of my creative juices run um. So I
Speaker 1: love reading at the beach. It's a good excuse to
Speaker 1: just dive into a book. Well, I gotta say that
Speaker 1: there are different kinds of beaches also because I don't
Speaker 1: consider myself a beach person in terms of like happy
Speaker 1: sunny beaches with people swimming. But you went to the
Speaker 1: beach just a couple of weeks ago, too, Well that
Speaker 1: was a family thing, you know, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't hate it. But but the kind of beach
Speaker 1: I can really get behind is like the Icelandic beach
Speaker 1: or like where it's like a gray hellscape that's beautiful,
Speaker 1: potentially hallucinate things on the horizon. Yeah, you're you're likely
Speaker 1: to see a troll walking up out of the water. Well.
Speaker 1: I tend to not go quite that dark in myne beaches.
Speaker 1: But I like a I like a less populated beach,
Speaker 1: and I don't like a bunch of people sitting around
Speaker 1: swift swiking beer and playing Jimmy Buffett. I like a
Speaker 1: like a you know, a fairly deserted beach. I like
Speaker 1: like clouds in the sky. But but I also like
Speaker 1: getting my feet in the water a little bit. And
Speaker 1: you know, I prefer sand rather than painful rocks beneath me.
Speaker 1: A doom metal kind of beach. I guess, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know that makes it sound like the sky
Speaker 1: is full of smog and there's like like Viking ships
Speaker 1: on the horizon. There you go, all right, so you
Speaker 1: read you're reading in him banks at the beach, or
Speaker 1: you recommend reading it there. I mean, it works for me,
Speaker 1: but he's he's great to read anywhere. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you want this type of science fiction journey, um
Speaker 1: this particular book. I read the book Accession, which came
Speaker 1: out in ninety six, and it's the fifth book in
Speaker 1: his Culture series, which if you're not familiar with it,
Speaker 1: it's essentially a post singularity space opera that often deals
Speaker 1: with the meaning of life and a post scarcity society,
Speaker 1: the limits of utopia, machine intelligence, alien civilizations, war, horror,
Speaker 1: wonder and he also throws in a fair bit of
Speaker 1: silliness and humor that kind of balances everything out of
Speaker 1: kind of you know, Rye almost kind of it's almost
Speaker 1: like a Monty Python as silliness at times, and and
Speaker 1: the kind of pompous air to some of the characters
Speaker 1: in this uh in this universe, which which helps to
Speaker 1: you had to balance out some of the heavier ideas
Speaker 1: that he plays with. And he's British, right or he was,
Speaker 1: but she passed away last year. Yeah. Yeah, he died
Speaker 1: in two years ago now, but but he he contributed
Speaker 1: a number of books to us before before passing. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, and the Culture books aren't the only science
Speaker 1: fiction books, but there, it's that's the university keeps coming
Speaker 1: back to every key, kept coming back to a number
Speaker 1: of times. Yeah, it's it definitely sounds like something I
Speaker 1: need to dive into at some point. My wife has
Speaker 1: recommended as well. Yeah. The weird thing about the Culture
Speaker 1: series is that, first of all, it's each book can
Speaker 1: be read on its own. It's there, there's stuff that
Speaker 1: happens in the universe, uh, some key events, and there's
Speaker 1: definitely a timeline, but that timeline isn't doesn't reflect the
Speaker 1: order in which the books are published, and so technically
Speaker 1: you can come in at any point. But then some
Speaker 1: books are better entry points than others. So I always
Speaker 1: recommend the Player of Games is a great first culture
Speaker 1: book to read, as well as consider Flibus, which is
Speaker 1: the first one that he wrote. Um. I found Player
Speaker 1: of Games was the one that I came to first,
Speaker 1: and I found that one to be the most accessible,
Speaker 1: and it is one of my my favorite books. Um Accession, however,
Speaker 1: is very good too, and this one deals uh, like
Speaker 1: all of his books. You know, there are a number
Speaker 1: of different elements going on. There's what he calls an
Speaker 1: outside context event, uh, the appear, which is the appearance
Speaker 1: of this thing they refer to as an accession. So
Speaker 1: an outside context event for the rest of us would
Speaker 1: be like if you were a member of you know,
Speaker 1: a primitive tribe and you live on in some coastal environment.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're catching your fish, you're cooking them
Speaker 1: over fire, and you have all these questions about how
Speaker 1: the world works beyond you know, beyond your your standard
Speaker 1: myths that have been passed on, and then you look
Speaker 1: out one day and there's, say, you know, a Spanish
Speaker 1: warship out out in the harbor. That is an outside
Speaker 1: context of the the arrival of a of an advanced
Speaker 1: piece of technology and advanced civilization, the kind of thing
Speaker 1: you could not predict. And then once it is in play,
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of powerless against whatever changes it's going
Speaker 1: to bring into your world. So he's extrapolating that and
Speaker 1: imagining it into sci fi scenarios for our future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So like in the culture which is the culture is
Speaker 1: is one of several galactic civilizations that are employed that
Speaker 1: are in play in his world. And and this so
Speaker 1: this is an very space opera age in which ships
Speaker 1: are running all over the place. Artificial intelligence is extremely powerful. UH.
Speaker 1: There are a number of elder civilizations that have UH
Speaker 1: that have sort of gone offline. They've sublime as as
Speaker 1: as Banks refers to it. But the Succession UH, the
Speaker 1: Succession seems to be an entity or or even some
Speaker 1: sort of a ship that originates outside of our universe.
Speaker 1: So it's a significant advanced step in technology, far beyond
Speaker 1: anything that than any of these other civilizations have the
Speaker 1: power to grasp. And so it it it ends up
Speaker 1: playing into a couple of other scenarios. There's a there's
Speaker 1: a warlike species called the Affront that want to take
Speaker 1: advantage of it. And then you have the artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: minds that run the Culture and they're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how best to respond to it, while another faction
Speaker 1: of them are trying to figure out how to exploit
Speaker 1: the scenario to UH to deal with the Affront. And
Speaker 1: then at the center of this too, you have a
Speaker 1: tragic post human love story UH involving to human characters. Um,
Speaker 1: because his his post human characters are always so so
Speaker 1: interesting because he deals with very human qualities, but the
Speaker 1: human qualities of the sort of human who can live
Speaker 1: for centuries, that can change gender as much as they want,
Speaker 1: that can you know, essentially start and restart their lives
Speaker 1: several times and do anything they want to within this
Speaker 1: sort of semi utopian society. So this is sort of
Speaker 1: transhumanists as well. Then, Yeah, I'm assuming there's like an
Speaker 1: idea and the restarting of the lives is something that
Speaker 1: like the mind is separate from the body in a way. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: at times like there he explores so many different possibilities
Speaker 1: in these books, Like they're they're definitely individuals who are disembodied,
Speaker 1: their individuals who are stored away, their individuals who are
Speaker 1: whose mind is put back into a new body. And
Speaker 1: then individuals in the culture tend to have they have
Speaker 1: like a neural lace implanted in their brain that gives
Speaker 1: them all these uh, these these cybernetic interface features they
Speaker 1: have the ability to to gland different properties. So if
Speaker 1: they want they want to sleep, uh without being disturbed
Speaker 1: by dreams, they just have to think about it. And
Speaker 1: it happens. If they essentially want a powerful stimulant to
Speaker 1: rev them up, they just think about it and it happens.
Speaker 1: So they have their own, their own sort of pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: reserves just just waiting inside their head. And all I
Speaker 1: have to do is think that does sound utopian. I
Speaker 1: would love for a good night, but I just could
Speaker 1: think about it ahead of time. One thing I think
Speaker 1: is really interesting there is the idea of how to
Speaker 1: make a story that's sort of post singularity or post
Speaker 1: utopian interesting and full of conflict. That's something I think
Speaker 1: we've often seen problems within certain incarnations of Star Trek,
Speaker 1: for example, where people wanted to go to utopian with
Speaker 1: it and say, oh, these petty concerns people used to have,
Speaker 1: we've grown beyond that now. But then you've got no
Speaker 1: interesting conflict between the characters. There was just that I O, I, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say so, Robert. I read it, and
Speaker 1: then I saw that you posted it to the stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your own Facebook account. There was a start.
Speaker 1: You go ahead and describe it. It was basically stemming
Speaker 1: from like a new documentary. I think that Yeah, Shatner
Speaker 1: has come out with Ye, but apparently The really interesting
Speaker 1: stuff deals with roddenberries involvement. Jean Roddenberry created the original
Speaker 1: Star Trek, his involvement with the Next Generation um which
Speaker 1: it sounds like he was kind of dragged into it
Speaker 1: partially by his own ego where you really want to
Speaker 1: work on another Star Trek series, uh, but he also
Speaker 1: didn't want to see it happen without him. And so
Speaker 1: you have you have Roddenberry and in his key associates
Speaker 1: pushing for a really utopian vision of Star Trek and
Speaker 1: everything has to be perfect within the Federation at any rate.
Speaker 1: And then you have you know, the other voices that
Speaker 1: they were saying, but we want, we need conflict, we
Speaker 1: need these other things that are not necessarily in line
Speaker 1: with this utopia still supposed to be a story, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the pieces written by Charlie Jane Anders, who's a
Speaker 1: regular over there and one of my favorite writers at Ionine.
Speaker 1: And I suppose that you could go watch this documentary.
Speaker 1: In fact, I want to say that there might have
Speaker 1: been an embed at the link too, but you could
Speaker 1: find it on our Facebook page or probably search Ionine
Speaker 1: Star Trek The Next Generation. It will come up to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll put a link to it on the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode if anyone's interest. So again, that book
Speaker 1: is accession by I M. Banks. I recommend it. I
Speaker 1: recommend the entire cultures all right. Well, for my fiction selections,
Speaker 1: I didn't have anything just quite as perfect as that
Speaker 1: is a fit for this show. So I picked just
Speaker 1: a few of the books I've read recently that really
Speaker 1: wowed me, and I guess I'm gonna focus specifically on one,
Speaker 1: but I'll mention a couple others first that I've read
Speaker 1: in the past year or two that amazed me. One
Speaker 1: was actually went back and I never read uh Tony
Speaker 1: Morrison book, but I read The bluest I and that
Speaker 1: was man sad, painful, beautiful, brilliant. It was actually her
Speaker 1: first novel, and I get the impression a lot more
Speaker 1: people have read beloved or later books of hers. But
Speaker 1: one of the main themes in this book is not
Speaker 1: necessarily the external racism that happens in society, but the
Speaker 1: internalizing of racialized concepts, like how the young black girl
Speaker 1: in the book comes to adopt basically a white supremacist
Speaker 1: conception of aesthetics that equates beauty with whiteness, like her
Speaker 1: idea of what beauty is is what white girl beauty is.
Speaker 1: And I think this is an interesting example. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very sad in the book, but it it explores
Speaker 1: the concept that our esthetics can be charged with ideology,
Speaker 1: and I think that's something that's interesting too, maybe worth
Speaker 1: exploring on the show sometime if we haven't before. The
Speaker 1: idea of what you find visually interesting or what you
Speaker 1: find beautiful that seems to be politically neutral, but in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases it might not be. Like what
Speaker 1: our values are can determine what looks good to us. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm of the opinion that all of culture
Speaker 1: is us just trying to make sense of the sort
Speaker 1: of bombardment of chaotic information that the world presents us with. Right,
Speaker 1: and no matter how you do that, it's ideological. Last
Speaker 1: night I went to a presentation of there's a theater
Speaker 1: here in town called the Fox Theater, and they were
Speaker 1: playing Ghostbusters. They're playing the original Ghostbusters and before it,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys been to the Fox
Speaker 1: or not. This is my first time. They play old
Speaker 1: black and white newsreels from the nineteen thirties, and I
Speaker 1: was noticing, Um, there were a couple of them that
Speaker 1: were sort of celebrating female like stars of the time. Uh,
Speaker 1: either from you know, the stage or maybe the radio
Speaker 1: or something like that. But I was just noticing that
Speaker 1: that the conception of beauty even in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: between now and then is so different. Um. So I
Speaker 1: think that there's certainly something to be said for the
Speaker 1: culture change between the then. You know, I hadn't read
Speaker 1: the Blue Eyes book, but thinking back on the episodes
Speaker 1: that Julie and I put out earlier in the year
Speaker 1: about implicit bias and racism, Um, that work definitely came
Speaker 1: up in some of the sources that we're looking at.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so so that was an amazing book.
Speaker 1: Another amazing one I want to mention is actually in
Speaker 1: the title The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay by
Speaker 1: Michael Shabon. Yeah, this is a great book. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: I've got a friend who loves Shabon and he's been
Speaker 1: recommending this book to me for years. But I finally
Speaker 1: read it this I've been it's been recommended to me
Speaker 1: for years, and I almost read it several times. I
Speaker 1: think you would enjoy it. Oh man, it's absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1: I it's an amazing epic story. It's epic in the
Speaker 1: way that you know the great Dickens novels or epic,
Speaker 1: and that like you're almost amazed at the end that
Speaker 1: you that the story has gone this far and and
Speaker 1: completed this arc. And in many ways, I think this
Speaker 1: story is interesting because it's about the genesis of storytelling.
Speaker 1: Like it deals with how the contents of the stories
Speaker 1: that storytellers create can be equal parts inspiration, personal obsession,
Speaker 1: and just mercenary necessity, and how all those things come
Speaker 1: together to make the canons of literature we love. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I've read it, maybe ten years,
Speaker 1: but um, you know, it's no secret, especially if you've
Speaker 1: just didn't listening to this episode. I've already mentioned to
Speaker 1: comic book writers, but I'm big on comic books, and
Speaker 1: part of the plot of Shabon's book is that these
Speaker 1: two guys create a comic book character called the Escapist.
Speaker 1: I believe that is what the name of the book is. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this novel itself is a reflection of the Siegel
Speaker 1: and Schuster creation of Superman and the sort of political
Speaker 1: issues that went on behind that and the in this
Speaker 1: sleazy business that went on behind that. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: it's also a lot about being a Jewish American in
Speaker 1: that time, and and and immigration, uh, and sort of
Speaker 1: understanding again culturally, understanding your place in American society. And Superman.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't actually really show up in this book,
Speaker 1: but that the Golem does, and and and the Golem
Speaker 1: of Prague. And you can sort of see Superman and
Speaker 1: the Golem of Prague as like a sort of metaphors
Speaker 1: from one another. Nice. Yeah, And so I can't recommend
Speaker 1: those two books enough. And then I've got one third
Speaker 1: fiction selection that I want to mention, which is The
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo'keish. We ever read this, Yes, this,
Speaker 1: this has been recommended to me, but I have not
Speaker 1: read it. Oh, I think you'd love it, Robert. So
Speaker 1: it's called The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Dana location
Speaker 1: Kish was a Serbian writer. He's probably more well known
Speaker 1: among English speaking audiences for his book A Tomb for
Speaker 1: Boris Davidovich. But this book, The Encyclopedia the Dead, was
Speaker 1: published I think in nineteen eighty three. The translation copyright
Speaker 1: it's nineteen eighty nine. And the English translation was by
Speaker 1: Michael Henry him and this book is fantastic in my opinion.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a book of strange, fantastical short stories.
Speaker 1: They're pretty much all about death in one way or another,
Speaker 1: and they're fantastical elements are very much in the style
Speaker 1: of Borhees, and some of them are just so great.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about at least one of the
Speaker 1: stories have me at Boes. Yeah. So the title story
Speaker 1: is The Encyclopedia the Dead, and it tells the story
Speaker 1: of a woman who finds herself in a Swedish library
Speaker 1: overnight where she locates a copy of this book called
Speaker 1: the Encyclopedia of the Dead. And it's a tone written
Speaker 1: by this religious order that makes it their duty to
Speaker 1: record every single detail about a person's life, and I
Speaker 1: mean every single detail. Every person they meet every meal
Speaker 1: to aid all the flowers they grew in their gardens,
Speaker 1: and then also the historical context for every period of
Speaker 1: their lives. So if you lived in World War Two,
Speaker 1: the encyclopedia would also give you a complete and thorough
Speaker 1: understanding of what happened in World War two. And these
Speaker 1: are all like like on paper. Yeah, that's so there's
Speaker 1: a kind of surreal there's a sort of like impossible
Speaker 1: absurdity to the world it describes. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: the narrator of this story, she finds the entry for
Speaker 1: her father, who had died just a couple of months
Speaker 1: before the story takes place. And the only rule for
Speaker 1: inclusion in the Encyclopedia of the Dead is that those
Speaker 1: included and it cannot be included in any other encyclopedia. Interesting,
Speaker 1: and much of the story is just the narrator trying
Speaker 1: to make notes on her father's entry before she runs
Speaker 1: out of time and has to put the book down
Speaker 1: and leave the library. But I thought this was a
Speaker 1: fascinating take. And I don't want to spoil too much
Speaker 1: about the story. You should just read it. But I
Speaker 1: think it's a fascinating take on the sort of absurdity
Speaker 1: of of trying to capture human experience, uh in language
Speaker 1: that there's no way to really tell a story completely.
Speaker 1: And then there's another story in this book that I
Speaker 1: wanted to call out. It's called Simon Magus, which is
Speaker 1: just an awesome retelling of some of the apocryphal Simon
Speaker 1: Magus legends from the I'm unfamiliar with this. It's early
Speaker 1: Christian tradition that Simon Magus is a character that appears
Speaker 1: is in the Bible. He's in the Book of Acts,
Speaker 1: and he's sort of a a counter apostle in a way,
Speaker 1: like he's he's doing some magic tricks and he has
Speaker 1: a confrontation Peter Magus. Like mg U, s yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't heard of this guy before. Okay, yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: he has a confrontation with Peter that's in the Book
Speaker 1: of Acts, but they're also apocryphal legends that didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the Bible, but they deal in a more
Speaker 1: extensive way with with Simon Magus and something he sort
Speaker 1: of has like wizard battles with Peter that are pretty
Speaker 1: cool and one of those legends. Actually a couple of
Speaker 1: those legends are retold in this story. So I loved
Speaker 1: this book. I thought it was awesome. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot. Yeah, and touches on the things I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: I think you guys would be into it. The Christian sorcery.
Speaker 1: I'm awf So the wizard battle is with Peter the
Speaker 1: apostle in the apocryphal sources. Yeah, okay, it's like they
Speaker 1: like Harry Potter ization of the Bible. They have like
Speaker 1: miracle contests and they sort of curse each other. Okay, nice, nice,
Speaker 1: So it kind of flows into some before we were
Speaker 1: talking about in the Grim Moore episode we did. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: In fact, um, that's where I had read about Simon.
Speaker 1: I pronounced that magus. Maybe it's wrong, but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: probably right. Before was that he was an inspiration for
Speaker 1: a lot of those grimoires. I think I'm saying it
Speaker 1: the anglicized way, meg, but yeah, um, he if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, from the research for that episode, there was
Speaker 1: even some legends that he was the one who had
Speaker 1: written some of the original text for those grand wires. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his And of course you end up sort of losing
Speaker 1: losing the individual and all of the myth lose him completely, probably,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, he definitely his name definitely came up
Speaker 1: a few times in that episode. Is that recall? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: it's my turn for my fiction selection. I had too,
Speaker 1: So I feel I feel better now that you had
Speaker 1: a couple, because I was a little worried that I
Speaker 1: had to. Um. The first is the audiobook that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that I had listened to. It is a
Speaker 1: recent novel by I believe you'd pronounced her last name Bukes,
Speaker 1: Lauren Bukes. She's a South African novel We talked about her.
Speaker 1: She wrote The Shining Girls was a novel that she
Speaker 1: came out with, and then something with like animals on wherever,
Speaker 1: Zoo City. That's the one I've read. Yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: read either. Well, I have read part of Shining Girls,
Speaker 1: but not zoos City. This one is called Broken Monsters. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I listened to the autobook version of it, and
Speaker 1: I will recommend to our listeners to just read the book. Uh.
Speaker 1: The audio book had several different actors narrating and playing
Speaker 1: the parts of the characters that are there's probably like
Speaker 1: four or five different protagonists throughout the book, and it
Speaker 1: was very distracting. Uh. There were there were points where
Speaker 1: I just stopped listening to it for you know, a
Speaker 1: month at a time, and then I would come back
Speaker 1: and give it a shot again. The story is great though.
Speaker 1: What she's written is fantastic. It's a contemporary murder mystery, um,
Speaker 1: sort of you know, along lines of that serial killer
Speaker 1: story thing that's kind of popular right now in fiction.
Speaker 1: The Detroit police find a dead body that's how it begins,
Speaker 1: and it's the dead body of half of a young
Speaker 1: boy fused together to half of a deer um, and
Speaker 1: this book just spins out from there. It's about everything
Speaker 1: from modern adolescents as it follows the daughter of the
Speaker 1: police detective investigating this murder, social media anxiety, and bullying.
Speaker 1: I really felt like Bukes had her finger on the
Speaker 1: pulse of kind of what's going on in social media
Speaker 1: right now, especially for adolescence. And I don't think I mean,
Speaker 1: I suspect she's probably, you know, in her thirties at least,
Speaker 1: but she just she's really insightful about, um, how that
Speaker 1: is affecting growing up. Uh. Also something that we're familiar with,
Speaker 1: the idea of clickbait YouTube journalism. There's a character in
Speaker 1: there that's sort of trying to create his own YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: personality presence um. And of course because it's in Detroit,
Speaker 1: they talk about urban renewal art quite a bit, and
Speaker 1: there's that they go to art parties the serial killer
Speaker 1: as an artist. Um. There's some interesting stuff going on
Speaker 1: aesthetically with that. I found this to be a genuinely
Speaker 1: creepy and disturbing book. I read a lot of horror.
Speaker 1: I watch a lot of horror, and it's it takes
Speaker 1: uh a lot to to kind of jar me, and
Speaker 1: the stuff in here jarred me. Um, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: read it, don't listen to it. Okay. Yeah. It's always
Speaker 1: weird with the audio books because they were kind of
Speaker 1: like the two the two approaches. One is to just
Speaker 1: have a solid narrator just reading you the books, and
Speaker 1: then it's then it's the other direction is performance, and
Speaker 1: so sometimes you get that weird area. We have a
Speaker 1: good narrator, but maybe he's just trying a little too
Speaker 1: hard to do like the female voices in the book,
Speaker 1: or you know, weird balance. There was, there there were,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure, uh, you know, our listeners can relate
Speaker 1: to this because they're listening to a podcast right now
Speaker 1: in which they're listening to our voice voices, and there's
Speaker 1: probably things about our voices that maybe, for instance, I
Speaker 1: I know that I am accused of having vocal fry
Speaker 1: often and that that can annoy listeners sometimes. But the
Speaker 1: cadence of some of the people reading this story just
Speaker 1: it just rubbed me the wrong way. Um. There was
Speaker 1: the woman who performed the adolescent girls chapters. She was
Speaker 1: a great narrator, but she was doing it from the
Speaker 1: voice of a thirteen fourteen year old girl. Uh, And
Speaker 1: it just graded on me after a while. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person who prefers the audio book
Speaker 1: where it's just a single narrator. I often prefer if
Speaker 1: it's the author themselves reading, because I feel like that
Speaker 1: brings a lot to it. Yeah, Neil Gaiman, particularly reading
Speaker 1: his own I could imagine if he would. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: The one audio book that I've listened to that did
Speaker 1: a very good job with the format of having multiple
Speaker 1: actors was the audiobook for World War Z. That was
Speaker 1: the one where I was really surprised. I felt like
Speaker 1: it was actually better than the pros um they had.
Speaker 1: You know, several actors, including like people like Henry Rawlins
Speaker 1: come in and do the voices of some of the
Speaker 1: characters that are interviewed throughout the course of that book.
Speaker 1: So the other uh A fiction recommendation that I have is,
Speaker 1: again no surprise, it's a graphic novel. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: a book called High Crimes by Christopher Sabella and Ibraham Mustafa,
Speaker 1: and it's a nice hardcover graphic novel collection of a
Speaker 1: twelve issue digital comic that these guys did over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, and I just I've loved the
Speaker 1: digital version of it. I've been following it since they
Speaker 1: first came out with it. Um if you've seen me
Speaker 1: on video before, you might have seen me wearing a
Speaker 1: high Crimes T shirt. Actually it's a skull with UM
Speaker 1: two climbing implements over it, and it's sort of in
Speaker 1: the shape of mountains because this is a murder mystery
Speaker 1: that's set on Mount Everest, and the idea is that
Speaker 1: the main character is a climbing guide who helps people
Speaker 1: get up Mount Everest, but also on the side, she
Speaker 1: robs the bodies of people who have died on Mount
Speaker 1: Everest and then uh promises to return either the bodies
Speaker 1: or their property to their families who are living back
Speaker 1: home for a for a fee, you know, for a price.
Speaker 1: So she's kind of like a vulture scavenger on Mount
Speaker 1: Everest and h the plot is that she she finds
Speaker 1: a body that has a connection to a government conspiracy
Speaker 1: back in the United States. So this leads to, you know,
Speaker 1: she tries to sell the stuff at leads to a
Speaker 1: sort of caton mouse game chasing up Mount Everest, but
Speaker 1: it's a meticulously researched Sabella does a really good job
Speaker 1: of depicting what climbing Everest is like. Not that I've
Speaker 1: done it, but it seemed very well researched, down to
Speaker 1: the equipment, the effects on your on the human body,
Speaker 1: especially at the like different sort of zones of the mountainous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I did climb Mount Kinnabalu when I was younger, which
Speaker 1: is in Malaysia, in Borneo, and it reminded me a
Speaker 1: lot of that. Yeah, I know that it's it's come
Speaker 1: up in episodes before here. It's stuff to put your
Speaker 1: mind discussing just just what the environment is like as
Speaker 1: you as you ascend a particularly high mountain and the
Speaker 1: atmospheric changes and the effects it has on the brain. Uh,
Speaker 1: sort of really fascinating stuff. And the character is a
Speaker 1: drug addict too, so it's interesting to see like her
Speaker 1: going through uh she's jones and really as she's traveling
Speaker 1: up the mountains, she sort of runs out of stuff.
Speaker 1: That effect, combined with the effects of the environment, that
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if people, if anybody climbs mountains to
Speaker 1: get like hypooxia trips. It sounds like an episode it
Speaker 1: will now all right, So now we're gonna finish up
Speaker 1: the podcast here by just going around and discussing what
Speaker 1: we're reading now, what we're hoping to read an the future,
Speaker 1: what's on the plate. Uh, and this, you know, will
Speaker 1: be another good place for for the listeners to say, yes,
Speaker 1: those are great selections, or no, don't read that that's
Speaker 1: or or you know, or just to mention some things
Speaker 1: that are in the same vein. Um. So I'll start
Speaker 1: right now. I am just jumping back into a reread
Speaker 1: of Frank Herbert's sci fi classic Dune, because this is
Speaker 1: the fiftieth anniversary of the book. And uh, and Joe
Speaker 1: and I are actually planning to do a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes on the science of Dune. Um. This is also
Speaker 1: on my now reading listes you're you're you're currently reading
Speaker 1: it as well. So I've I've also picked up The
Speaker 1: Science of Doom edited Doune edited by Kevin R. Grazier,
Speaker 1: pH d, which is a collection of essays that in
Speaker 1: which different individuals analyzed the science of everything from the
Speaker 1: still suit to the sandworm um to to the consumption
Speaker 1: of of spice. And it's and it's an and its
Speaker 1: effects on the on the human mind. And then I
Speaker 1: also picked up a copy of the Dune and Cyclopedia
Speaker 1: from the nineteen eighties compiled by Dr Willis E. McNelly.
Speaker 1: And this is this has been long out of print,
Speaker 1: so the book, the book just smells fabulous and has
Speaker 1: that wonderful nineteen eighties h aroma to it. And this
Speaker 1: is a book I have a lot of nostalgia for.
Speaker 1: But because before I've read any of the Dune books,
Speaker 1: I picked this up in my local small town library
Speaker 1: and just started going through it and just you know,
Speaker 1: they have they have all these different encyclopedic entries about
Speaker 1: various factions, family members, individuals, technologies that that make up
Speaker 1: the Dune universe. And it's um just really inspiring stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not all cannon because it came out before Herbert
Speaker 1: had written all of his Dune books, but but it's
Speaker 1: it's wonderful stuff. I'm surprised there isn't a revised version
Speaker 1: that is that is still in circulation given the popular
Speaker 1: ality of that series. You think you think they would, uh, especially,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still an industry of the Dune books
Speaker 1: are still an industry, you know. I wonder if the Internet,
Speaker 1: like having the Web has really cut into stuff like
Speaker 1: fictional cannon encyclopedias. Because when I was a kid, I
Speaker 1: remember a lot of these things. When I was looking
Speaker 1: at this stude encyclopedia book, I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: I got that feeling like this is a book I
Speaker 1: would have found somewhere when I was a kid, like
Speaker 1: in a you know, beach house or something like that,
Speaker 1: and then sat down and started flipping through it and
Speaker 1: suddenly the entire days gone. Uh. It has that feeling
Speaker 1: because I don't know, for some reason when I was
Speaker 1: a kid that I love stuff like that Star Wars encyclopedia.
Speaker 1: I had the Star Trek. It's like I think it
Speaker 1: was called it was like a guy to the alien
Speaker 1: species of Star Trek. Yeah, and it was this came
Speaker 1: out like a you know, next generation era. So each
Speaker 1: each spread had you know, a nice little black and
Speaker 1: white drawing of the species and then you know some
Speaker 1: very uncy colopedic information about them in their home world.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just I just remember pouring myself into that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I suppose you're right that Wikipedia and like
Speaker 1: other sort of wicki uh data entry sites have sort
Speaker 1: of taken over that place. But there's still there's still
Speaker 1: something nice about holding a book like that, Like I
Speaker 1: love reading RPG manual even for games that I'll never play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a sucker for a monster manual. Yeah, it's that
Speaker 1: me a good monster manual and I will just I'll
Speaker 1: lose myself in it. You know, Robert's the guy to consult.
Speaker 1: I remember a while back, I was wondering, what kind
Speaker 1: of save do you have to throw from somebody, uh
Speaker 1: trying to drive you mad? They're casting a drive you
Speaker 1: mad spell? What did you say, Robert? I can't remember
Speaker 1: what my specific answer was, but I looked in the
Speaker 1: latest Dungeon Master Guide and also my Cathla book. So oh,
Speaker 1: I love Call of Cthulu. It was at the D
Speaker 1: one version. I don't know, it's not that I don't
Speaker 1: think it's the most current edition. Yeah, that's the the
Speaker 1: D one hundred is the is the older one? Um
Speaker 1: that I think that somebody else, another company maybe bought
Speaker 1: it up. A Chaos um is the company. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this one definitely came from that company. Yeah, that could
Speaker 1: be a great like workplace RPG, like, you know, you
Speaker 1: get pulled into the meeting room and the boss Monster
Speaker 1: is about to drive you mad. Yeah, I feel anytime
Speaker 1: I'm in a long meeting I started losing. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: especially when you're in a conference call. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the minus five standity points right after that. So just
Speaker 1: and then briefly, what's on the plate for later. I
Speaker 1: I fall into the trap every year of just thinking
Speaker 1: more about things I want to reread that I love,
Speaker 1: rather than exploring new things. So so along those lines,
Speaker 1: I would love to have some recommendations from other people,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I need to reread our Scott
Speaker 1: Baker's The Judging I and the White Luck Lawyer, The
Speaker 1: White Luck Lawyer, The White Luck Warrior. The White Luck
Speaker 1: Lawyer would be a different novel. What's his name? John
Speaker 1: graham Er John Grisham book um The White Luck Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Actually The White Luck Warrior, which is the second book
Speaker 1: in his second trilogy that all takes place in his
Speaker 1: dark fantasy, highly philosophical world of the Second Apocalypse. But
Speaker 1: he has the third book in this series coming out
Speaker 1: at some point in the next several months, hopefully titled
Speaker 1: The Unholy Consult. So I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: I'm I dive back into the world fully and then
Speaker 1: they're in a number. I feel like I probably need
Speaker 1: to finish reading Stephen King's Revival because people keep telling
Speaker 1: me it's good. I still haven't finished that one. I
Speaker 1: started it rather Uh yeah, it's been on my list.
Speaker 1: Yeah here, it has some wonderful science fiction elements in it,
Speaker 1: but I just need to press further along in it,
Speaker 1: I guess. And then and then we're gonna hit Halloween,
Speaker 1: so I'll probably reread some Lagatti, some Kings and Lovecraft
Speaker 1: and Clark Ashton Smith and of course Brian McNaughton, my
Speaker 1: my all time favorite horror writer. So that's what's on
Speaker 1: the plate for me. Well, as I said, I'm also
Speaker 1: reading Done right now, and I'm loving it so far.
Speaker 1: I love the richness of the world, how complete it feels.
Speaker 1: We were just talking the other day about how going
Speaker 1: back and reading Done, I feel some elements that you
Speaker 1: see in the George R. Martin Game of Thrones universe
Speaker 1: feel sort of not not lifted from Done, but similar
Speaker 1: to Doune in terms of, you know, all the backstabbing
Speaker 1: and these warring houses. And I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: it was a big influence on him, at least in
Speaker 1: terms of structure, and I guess epic nous. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's it's definitely a work that it's it's
Speaker 1: roots spread throughout genre fiction for for decades, for decades
Speaker 1: to follow. So I'm absolutely loving it and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to do the Science of Doune episode. But also,
Speaker 1: I was reading a book when I started reading Dune
Speaker 1: that I need to pick back up because I loved
Speaker 1: this one as well. It was The Secret History by
Speaker 1: Donna Tart read this, Yeah, I read that a while ago.
Speaker 1: What was it The story with that is it came
Speaker 1: out in like the nineties and then she didn't write
Speaker 1: another book for like twelve years or something, right, and
Speaker 1: I think Little Friend is the other book that she's
Speaker 1: come out with since then. Actually I didn't even look
Speaker 1: this up. I have no idea when this book was written,
Speaker 1: but I was. I thought it was fantastic so far,
Speaker 1: that's good. The pros is it's one of those books that,
Speaker 1: you know, this sounds like such a reviewers cliche, but
Speaker 1: it's very rich, meaning sort of the opposite of minimalist
Speaker 1: or stark or bear. It's just overflowing with ideas and
Speaker 1: images and jokes and very similitudes, and so I was
Speaker 1: really loving that one. It deals also with the kind
Speaker 1: of weird cult like behavior that can sometimes arise in
Speaker 1: a you know, college professor in student scenario. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: had a professor exactly like this, the the one that
Speaker 1: was in The Secret History, and I had a sort
Speaker 1: of classroom unit that was very worshiped him in a
Speaker 1: similar way. And if I remember correctly, it's been a
Speaker 1: long time since I read it, But isn't he a
Speaker 1: Greek historian? Yeah, well, I don't know if historian. I
Speaker 1: haven't finished the book yet, but yeah, he teaches Greek
Speaker 1: and classics, and he talks about Greek philosophy a lot,
Speaker 1: and that he does these sort of like long monologues,
Speaker 1: these lectures that the students just find all this crazy inspiration.
Speaker 1: In so far, the book was awesome and I'll have
Speaker 1: to go back to it once I've finished with Dune.
Speaker 1: But then also lined up next, I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: how I've apparently got to read to me and in Banks,
Speaker 1: So there we go on that. But that also I
Speaker 1: was thinking about reading Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine, which
Speaker 1: is a nonfiction book that she wrote about memetic theory.
Speaker 1: And Christian. You're kind of smirking. I have an interesting
Speaker 1: story about this book. So I read this book early
Speaker 1: two thousand's and I loved it. It's really good. I
Speaker 1: think that. And if you're looking for sort of an
Speaker 1: explanation of Dawkins memetics theory, this is a good place
Speaker 1: to start. I made the mistake of in my early
Speaker 1: twenties taking a young lady delightful young lady to uh
Speaker 1: Susan Blackmore presentation as our first date, so you know,
Speaker 1: not not not protecious at all? That goes? Do you
Speaker 1: want to go here about my medics from this British
Speaker 1: author with pink hair. I love her hair. She's bad.
Speaker 1: She's come up in in past episodes before. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she was super cool. I've seen YouTube videos of her
Speaker 1: giving like speeches and stuff. She seems really awesome in person.
Speaker 1: I've never read a book of her, so, so I
Speaker 1: wanted to read this also because I've read a little
Speaker 1: bit in about meme theory. Like you know, I read
Speaker 1: Dawkins The Selfish Gene, which came out in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and I think that was the first major exploration of
Speaker 1: meme theory. Yeah, I think, And if you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with meme theory. It's the idea that there are units
Speaker 1: of cultural copying and transmission analogous to genes and living organisms,
Speaker 1: but in culture they're they're called memes, and they're just
Speaker 1: like genes. They get copied with mutations throughout generations. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would also add to this, at least from my
Speaker 1: experience and graduate school, that the theories of memetics of
Speaker 1: Dawkins and blackmore a heavily frowned upon. Oh yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of people hate them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't feel like it has any quantitative value. Yep,
Speaker 1: I've heard that too. I I I still think that
Speaker 1: they're interesting, and in fact, we did a What's a Meme?
Speaker 1: Episode for brain Stuff that our colleague Jonathan Strickland performed.
Speaker 1: So if you if you want just like a short
Speaker 1: five minute primer on memetics, go find that. Of course,
Speaker 1: then again, one thing I will say is that it
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of the criticisms of memetics that
Speaker 1: I've heard. No, I'm sure there are some very good criticisms.
Speaker 1: Some of the ones I've heard kind of rang hollow
Speaker 1: to me and also seemed like they were coming from
Speaker 1: people who personally dislike to the people who promote meme theory.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what what to deal with that is,
Speaker 1: but I'll see once I read the book. Well, I
Speaker 1: am currently reading a book called Devils and Demons that
Speaker 1: I picked up at our local used book store. The
Speaker 1: booknook Uh. It is a collection of short stories all
Speaker 1: about hell, demons, and Satan that are selected by a
Speaker 1: guy named Marvin Kay. And this book was published in um.
Speaker 1: Some of it is is isn't really my thing, some
Speaker 1: of it's not for me, But there have so far
Speaker 1: been some good stories I've read in here. Paula Volsky
Speaker 1: wrote a story called The Tendency of Mr. Eks Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a great Robert Block story in here called Enoch.
Speaker 1: If you haven't read that, read that one. But he's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. And then this book led me down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole to really get into Arthur Macon because I've
Speaker 1: only read a little bit of his stuff before. But
Speaker 1: there's a story in here called The Novel of the
Speaker 1: White Powder by him, which led me to again going
Speaker 1: on to Amazon. It turns out that Amazon has these
Speaker 1: collections of books like like makens work, you can buy
Speaker 1: like twenty five of his stories for cents. So I
Speaker 1: got this collection and over this this last week. I
Speaker 1: actually just read The Great God Pan. Have you guys
Speaker 1: read this before? That is an incredibly potent and creepy fail. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a novella that he wrote first, was published in
Speaker 1: eighteen nine, and it is, you know, it's probably like
Speaker 1: one of the unsung stories of the history of horror literature.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard of it until until just the last
Speaker 1: you know, maybe two or three weeks, but it's it's
Speaker 1: hugely influential. Lovecraft called it. He said, no one could
Speaker 1: begin to describe the cumulative suspense and ultimate horror with
Speaker 1: which every paragraph abounds in that story. And Stephen King
Speaker 1: said he thinks it's one of the best horror stories
Speaker 1: ever written, maybe the best in the English language. I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. So I'm I'm thoroughly I'm planning to
Speaker 1: to to really take a deep dive into our they're
Speaker 1: makings material, and then what I've got on the plate
Speaker 1: for later, probably after I read all that making stuff,
Speaker 1: although I might dabble in this stuff back and forth.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine recommended this book by a guy
Speaker 1: named Layered Baron, who is another sort of weird fiction
Speaker 1: horror author. Uh. And this is a collection of his
Speaker 1: short stories called Occultation. And all I know about this
Speaker 1: guy is he's won a bunch of awards. He's a
Speaker 1: former I did a rod Racer And uh, my friend
Speaker 1: who is a is a horror writer just sings his
Speaker 1: praises loves of stuff. Yeah, this is an author that
Speaker 1: keeps coming up in um at least automated recommendations for
Speaker 1: me and things like Amazon. And and he's of course
Speaker 1: his name stands out so much. Yeah, uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: probably need to check out some of his work as well. I,
Speaker 1: like I said, I keep falling into the habit of
Speaker 1: rereading things. Uh, while I should really branch out and
Speaker 1: explore some some more contemporary horror authors. Well, I can
Speaker 1: let you borrow this when I am done with it.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm really looking forward to the idea of bouncing
Speaker 1: back and forth between a guy who's contemporary like us
Speaker 1: and a guy who was alive over a hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: really kind of writing similar stuff with Arker making Arthur
Speaker 1: Makin's kind of huge collection of short stories. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like you guys are really showing me up in
Speaker 1: terms of appropriately weird stuff here, I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: catch up for next year. It's gonna be it's gonna
Speaker 1: be all sci fi and demons for five days. That's
Speaker 1: gonna heavily influence the show. I think I'm already weighing
Speaker 1: this in the demon category. Maybe a little bit too much,
Speaker 1: but the uh, I mean that John Murray's Spear Book
Speaker 1: sounds really interesting and I've never heard of is it?
Speaker 1: Danilo kisses that there's a K I s And there's
Speaker 1: the little carrot over the s. So I think the
Speaker 1: Serbo Croatian way of saying keish. But yeah, I apologize
Speaker 1: if that is wrong. I believe that sounds appropriately weird.
Speaker 1: The Encyclopedia of the Dead, Yeah, now, um, author Makin
Speaker 1: and the the Great God Pan and all that, I think.
Speaker 1: I think I rich only saw reference to it in
Speaker 1: one of the Lovecraft's essays about supernatural And yeah, that
Speaker 1: quote that I just read from was from Lovecraft's book
Speaker 1: is it Supernatural Literature Literature and Horror or Supernatural Horror
Speaker 1: in Literature. It's a short nonfiction book that I believe
Speaker 1: he put. This is all off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: but I believe that Lovecraft compiled it from letters that
Speaker 1: he shared with people like Robert Block who were sort
Speaker 1: of in his circle of horror writer fans, and he
Speaker 1: sort of came up with this guide of how how
Speaker 1: to write horror literature. Yeah. Yeah, and that's where it
Speaker 1: was mentioned that where I pulled that quote from at least,
Speaker 1: so maybe that's where you saw it. Yeah. I also
Speaker 1: was turned on to a number of like old classic
Speaker 1: and horror and pulp writers. I used to go to
Speaker 1: a wrestling message board and one of the contributors there
Speaker 1: was this guy. It was this guy John Pellen, who
Speaker 1: who is a horror writer and editor. Do a search
Speaker 1: for his name and we'll see, you know, various anthologies
Speaker 1: he's edited. He's I think he's worked with Edward Lee
Speaker 1: on a few different books. And uh, and he was
Speaker 1: he has an encyclopedic knowledge of of horror literature. So
Speaker 1: he turned me onto a number of key authors that
Speaker 1: I've grown to to just completely adore, like Michael Say Yeah,
Speaker 1: Michael Shay actually wrote the introduction to that Layered Baron
Speaker 1: but abo to read. Yeah, and uh, I also thought
Speaker 1: of you as I was flipping through this last night
Speaker 1: and reading all the sort of in praise of layered
Speaker 1: baron stuff at the beginning, because he got a right
Speaker 1: up from St. Josh in here. Oh yeah, he's been
Speaker 1: on the show. You had St. Josh on the show. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of for for those who who don't know. St.
Speaker 1: Josh is, I guess like the Lovecraft scholar. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: known as the scholar of sort of weird fiction. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if Michael Shea recommends this guy, all the more reason.
Speaker 1: Sha was just brilliant and he's sadly passed and uh
Speaker 1: in the last year or so. But his particularly his
Speaker 1: he wrote science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but his his
Speaker 1: dark fantasy work particularly is his nipp The Leen Tales
Speaker 1: are just beautiful, just just phenomenal. Most of them deal
Speaker 1: with journeys into a into a subport into the sub worlds,
Speaker 1: which are kind of a fantasy, a fantastic Dante esque underworld,
Speaker 1: except with just concentric layers of of awfulness and wonder.
Speaker 1: And then he that man had a gift. So that's
Speaker 1: yet another person I'm adding just to the piece of paper,
Speaker 1: just between the three of us talking, I have a
Speaker 1: list here, probably ten different things I need to read,
Speaker 1: but I'm still curious of what the audience is going
Speaker 1: to recommend to these after hearing of what we're what
Speaker 1: we would recommend to them, what we're reading right now,
Speaker 1: and what we're going to read next. That's right, so hey.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, head on over to stuffable your mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes,
Speaker 1: all the videos, all the blog posts, and the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode again will feature all the titles
Speaker 1: and authors that we've mentioned here with appropriate links out
Speaker 1: to place who you can buy them and if you
Speaker 1: want to, let us know what books you recommend we
Speaker 1: read and maybe if we really like them, will repeat
Speaker 1: them back out to our audience and spread your ideas
Speaker 1: throughout the population. You can email us at blow the
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