WEBVTT - Summer Reading 2015: Books to Blow Your Mind 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:14.320 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:16.720 My name is Robert Lamb. Hey, I'm Christian Seger, and 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.000 I'm Joe McCormick, and we're all three gathering for this 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:22.880 one once more because the Summer Reading episodes kind of 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:24.919 tradition with the Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where we 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.040 highlight some interesting books that we've read, our reading that 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.400 are that we're looking to read, stuff that may or 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:35.040 may not appeal to Stuff to Blow your Mind listeners. 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:37.680 Might make for some good beach reading, some intelligent beach reating, 0:00:37.720 --> 0:00:42.120 if if, if that's your thing, so yeah, I think 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:44.479 it's also probably a good opportunity for the audience to 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:46.280 get to know Joe and I a little bit better, 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:50.320 to kind of what our interests are and and perhaps uh, 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.080 some parts of our personalities that maybe haven't come through 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.960 yet in episodes about things like stigmata and glass mind 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:59.720 conditions like you don't already know what kind of a 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:02.880 creep I am I do, but the audience doesn't. That's 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:06.360 what this is about, exposing our our inner secrets and 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:08.920 creepiness to the listeners and you, and it tends to 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:12.400 result in a lot of cool conversations with listeners because 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:16.200 either either they've read the books that that we're talking 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:18.920 about and have some feedback, or they have some recommendations 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:22.000 based on some of what we're chatting about. So I 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:24.840 look forward to all that interaction. Yeah, that's exactly what 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:27.319 I was hoping for out of this, was that we'd 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.440 get um some nice engagement and conversations going with the 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:33.520 listeners and that they could possibly recommend some stuff back 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:36.760 to us as well. You can contact us on Facebook, Twitter, 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:41.000 Tumbler where we are blow the Mind, or you can 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:43.880 write us at below the Mind at how stuff works 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:45.800 dot com. Let us know what you thought about you know, 0:01:45.840 --> 0:01:48.040 the recommendations were about to give here, and let's know 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:50.040 what your recommendations are based on what we tell you. 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:52.000 Maybe you've got something that you can tell us about. 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:54.520 Uh that that one of the three of us are 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:56.400 all three of us who want to dive into Yeah, 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:00.280 and inevitably they're gonna be questions about the titles. You know, 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:01.840 what was that book you mentioned? How do you spell 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:03.880 that last name of that author? We're going to make 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:06.080 sure that on the landing page for this episode will 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:09.519 have all the books that we specifically call out here, 0:02:09.960 --> 0:02:13.240 as well as links to where you can obtain them, 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.480 you know. Getting into choosing books for this episode, one 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:19.359 of the things I noticed was how little I've been 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.800 reading the ideal kind of book to talk about on 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:24.840 stuff to pull your mind in the past couple of years. 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.200 I don't know. I feel like, you know, what do 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:30.079 I want to give this audience. I want to give 0:02:30.120 --> 0:02:33.680 them something very like strange science fiction or something like that. 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:36.280 And I haven't been getting into that much lately. I mean, 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:39.600 I still love it, but I just haven't been reading it. Yeah, 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.640 I could see that, But I go through phases with 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:44.959 content like that, I think. I mean, you're going to 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:48.360 find out today that I'm obviously in a big horror phase, 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:51.920 which is probably no surprise to anyone who's familiar with 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:54.120 the stuff that I do outside of Us to Works. 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:58.600 But yeah, I think that that stuff ebbs and flows 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:01.800 for my own part, right, you know, we we moved 0:03:01.840 --> 0:03:03.480 offices here at How Stuff Works. We used to be 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:05.680 located up in uh in Buckhead and now we're more 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:08.680 in central Atlanta at the Coon City Market. So we 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:12.000 went from being like a little short walk in like 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:14.760 a forty minute train ride from my house to being 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:18.480 just a ten minute car ride. So I really lost 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.720 a lot of the core reading time that I had 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:24.200 set aside. You know, because when you're on the train, 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:25.440 or at least when I was on the train, like 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:28.919 there was nothing else I could do but read the book, 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:30.960 you know, and so there were no distractions other than 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:34.080 you know, some weirdo on the train doing god knows what. 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.440 But aside from that, there were no distractions. Just plug 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.480 into my my music, pull out a book, and uh 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:41.600 and read. And so I've been having I've been kind 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:45.960 of struggling to find my key reading times again in 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.680 my in my schedule. Yeah, I still ride the train 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.640 and I take the shuttle here, but I haven't been 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:54.720 reading as much. But I've been listening to a lot 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:56.400 of audio books. In fact, one of the books I'm 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:58.840 gonna talk about today I listened to entirely as an audiobook. 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:00.480 I need to get back in it all for me, 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:03.520 I actually like a lot of audio books. I don't 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:05.240 think any of the ones I'm going to talk about 0:04:05.280 --> 0:04:07.760 today I experienced to be an audio book, but I'm 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:09.600 a big fan of them because I don't know, I 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:11.960 do all the cooking in our house and stuff like that, 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:13.640 and it's good to be able to listen to a 0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:17.760 book while you cook. Yeah. Yeah, this is not related 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:19.800 to any of stuff i'm gonna recommend today. I've told 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:21.680 this story to Joe before. But one of the audio 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:23.320 books I listened to in the last couple of years 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.440 was Cormac McCarthy Is the Road, and I listened to 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.000 it entirely while I was exercising. And let me tell you, 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:33.279 there isn't There is not a more depressing book to 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:35.919 listen to while you're running. No, but it makes you 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:37.880 want to be in good shape so you don't become 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.720 part of the supplementary band of Katamites. Yeah exactly. I 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.040 definitely was thinking about how it was getting, you know, 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:47.800 prepared for the dystopian apocalypse. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great book, 0:04:48.279 --> 0:04:51.840 it is. Yeah, it's pretty much everything. Also. All right, well, 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.080 let's uh, let's dive into it. We're gonna start with 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.600 a round of our non fiction recommendations, and then we're 0:04:57.600 --> 0:05:01.400 gonna skip to our fictional recommendations. Oh. I'm going to 0:05:01.480 --> 0:05:06.359 kick off here by recommending a book by Douglas j 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:11.280 Emlynd titled Animal Weapons The Evolution of battle. Uh. This 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.279 came out I believe earlier this year or the end 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:16.400 of last year. So it's a new book and it's 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:21.360 it's really exceptional. It's it's well illustrated, and it deals essentially, 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:26.320 it's a comparison between the evolution of organic defense systems 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:29.799 and man made weapons. So it looks at the arms 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.640 race of evolution, with a particular focus on the economics 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:37.359 of evolution, so you know, asking questions like at what 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:41.240 point is a crab claw too large? And uh and 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:42.960 and and and the other side of the coin is 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.280 at what point is an arm's budget too ridiculous? And 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:49.520 there's a chapter at the end that deals with mass destruction, 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:51.800 you know, which is more of an exclusive domain of 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:54.359 human weaponry. Uh, something you're not going to find in 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:57.200 the natural world. Uh. And that's where the comparison kind 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.279 of breaks down and the and the author discusses it. 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:02.240 But but it's a it's a fascinating read. I mean, 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.000 particularly if you're interested if you're interested in biology, if 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:09.000 you're interested in warfare and uh and weaponry, and if 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:11.560 you're interested in in fictional monsters like like I am, 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:16.000 because um, you know, we we we love to throw outrageous. Uh, 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.719 animal weapons that are monster designs, and it's it's always 0:06:19.720 --> 0:06:22.520 a fun exercise to to think, well, huh, well, why 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:25.200 why would that creature have a claw that big? What 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.200 would have things to pay for that? Yeah, because that's 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.200 the thing. Weapons. Uh. He discusses that at length in 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.080 the book. Weapons are always expensive, especially state of the 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.320 art weapons, whether you're talking about a medieval night if 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:40.119 you're talking about an aircraft carrier, if you're talking about 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:44.039 an exceptionally large crab claw or a set of antlers, 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:48.159 because those things end up requiring resources from the organism. 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:51.280 They opened the organism up for for more damage, for 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:54.279 more infections, and uh, you know, and sometimes that the 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:58.159 species goes bankrupt because the weapon's budget is too large. Yeah. 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:01.440 I think it's fascinating thinking about some of the feedback 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:06.000 loops that can be created in in evolutionary development, especially 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:08.799 because if you go back far enough, you can trace 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:12.480 it to maybe a single random event. You know, that 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:15.960 one organism acquired a mutation that gave it a slight 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.600 edge in some strange way that wasn't usual in that 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:23.640 ecosystem before, and then suddenly every other species that competes 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:27.360 with it had to keep up. So I'm wondering because 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:29.320 I know you're a big Grant Morrison fan. Have you 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:32.800 read We Three before? No, that's that's one I need 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:35.720 to borrow from someone at some point, but maybe you 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:40.000 can borrow for me. But um, it's related to this topic. 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:44.240 It directly in that it is about house pet animals 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:48.160 that are weaponized by the US government and they're intelligent, right, yeah, 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:51.360 they're well, I mean they're a little above average intelligence 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:53.520 for you know, it's a dog, a cat, and a rabbit. 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:57.760 But they're also like implanted with I guess cybernetics, and 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:00.200 they were sort of like exoskeletons and they're so is 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.680 not the natural arms or no, this is not real? 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:07.080 This is sci fi? Yeah, but it is. Um it's 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:11.280 a very emotional, uh comic book. Oh yes, yeah, I 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:13.560 think you'll enjoy it. I will definitely have to check 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:17.040 that out. Um. Yeah, I mean this book I definitely recommend. 0:08:17.080 --> 0:08:19.920 It's a very readable uh you know, it's not not 0:08:20.000 --> 0:08:21.640 too thick for the for the average read in the 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.520 unity of the advanced science reader. And it's just like 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:27.840 every chapter you can actually actually can just spot read 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:29.680 this thing if you want, you know, you just set 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:31.960 it back on the toilet tank and pull it out 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:34.240 whenever you you just want a little bit of of 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.640 mind blowing science, I mean stuff like, Um, he spends 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:39.960 a lot of time with stag beetles and dung beetles, 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.040 you know, because they have a lot of of of 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:45.000 weaponry that they've evolved on their heads for fighting, and 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:48.959 he mentions at one point that in some male dung 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:53.440 beetles who actually see the diminishment of the eyes, uh, 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:58.400 so that they can grow these elaborate fighting mechanisms. So 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:02.000 so the weapons actually like limit the site of the 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:04.920 organism in a very real way. That kind of in 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.280 the same way that like wearing a great helm would 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.480 would limit your site as yeah yeah yeah, or that 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:13.880 wearing armor limits your mobility, right, And all of these 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:15.760 things come with a cost, even if it's just a 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:19.480 cost of resource investment. I had a feeling that going 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:21.160 into this episode, we're going to come up with some 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:24.600 future episode topic ideas, and this sounds like a good one. Yeah, 0:09:24.679 --> 0:09:26.760 it's I think in the past I touched on this 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:29.040 book a little bit in an episode about antlers and 0:09:29.080 --> 0:09:31.920 one about dung beetles. But I mean it's it's a 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.040 great text to have around because it covers pretty much everything. 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:38.280 It's just a wonderful dive into the topic of of 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.560 animal and human weaponry. So cool, recommend it. All right, Well, 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:45.120 for my nonfiction selection, I'm gonna bring up a book 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:48.679 that's especially relevant to this podcast because we talked about 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.040 it in a couple of the episodes. Robert and I 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.320 did the ones about techno religion, and this book is 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:58.480 the Remarkable Life of John Murray, Spear Agitator for the 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:03.200 Spirit Land by John Benedict Beaucher. And I apologized to 0:10:03.280 --> 0:10:06.360 John Benedict Beaucher for saying this, but every time I 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.880 say his name, I want to say John Carl Buckler, 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.480 who is the director of Friday the Thirteenth Part seven. Wow, 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:15.720 that's that's very specific. You don't know that this guy 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:19.640 didn't also direct Friday Part seven under a pseudonym. Well 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.000 that could be. I mean, it's close enough. They might 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:24.000 as well be the same. Way to separate his career. 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:27.480 Uh No, this guy, as far as I know, has 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:31.199 not directed any slasher movies. But a good like spiritual 0:10:31.240 --> 0:10:34.640 if the slasher movie might be, might be worth Oh yeah, 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:37.480 that could be really cool. But I thought this, This 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:40.679 story was just fascinating because this is a this is 0:10:40.720 --> 0:10:43.640 a biography of this guy, John Murray Spear, who we 0:10:43.679 --> 0:10:47.480 talked about in the Techno Religion episodes. And John Murray 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:52.240 Spear was an activist, a reformer, you know, an agent 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:56.000 of political and social change in most cases for the better. 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:59.559 He advocated some really progressive topics for his time in 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:03.440 the early to mid eighteen hundreds. He was for women's rights, 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:07.960 He was an abolitionist against slavery, he protested against racism, 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:09.480 and so he was in a lot of ways a 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:13.960 really great guy for his time. But it's an interesting 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:18.160 study in how even people with really admirable intentions can 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:22.959 get swept up in bizarre belief systems where John Murray 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:27.800 Spear ended up becoming a spiritualist. Interesting. Yeah, And so 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:31.080 he began to think that he was a medium who 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:34.679 could channel the spirits from beyond, and he thought he 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:39.199 could deliver the words of Benjamin Rush giving lectures on anatomy, 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:41.880 and these were subjects he didn't know anything about. So 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:45.360 was this like many spiritualists at that time, did he 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:48.160 try to monetize this in some way? Like did he 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:51.120 advertise it as if like you know, pay him ten 0:11:51.160 --> 0:11:53.560 bucks and he'll tell you the secrets of the universe. 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:59.920 That really I mean, I mean maybe, I don't know, 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:03.280 if you want to be cynical, you could maybe because 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.000 he did draw people to him through this, Like he 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:10.760 definitely lad some projects and had some followers based on 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:14.200 messages he was supposedly getting from the spirit world. But 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:15.920 I know, I don't get the sense that it was 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.280 just kind of a crass cash grab. I get the 0:12:18.320 --> 0:12:21.720 sense that he was a true believer. He seemed really 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:25.160 invested in these these projects, you know. I mean, it's 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:26.959 easy to think of his key project, which I'm sure 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:29.480 about to discuss. It's kind of an art installation, So 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:32.319 you can almost imagine him him as a like a 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:38.359 gallery owner who is just super committed to to curating 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:42.800 the the the main art installation in this gallery, and 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.800 and less concerned with actually selling tickets. The spiritualists of 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:48.720 that time that I was thinking of are more like 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.000 kind of I think Joe and I have talked about 0:12:51.000 --> 0:12:55.200 this off air before, about like water diviners or oil diviners. Uh, 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:59.360 and that they would, you know, obviously like claim that 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:01.840 spirits were able to tell them where water or oil 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:04.640 could be found. But now John Murray Spear and his 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:07.480 followers are more into the idea that spirits could tell 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:09.720 you how to build a machine that would save the 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:13.439 world and become the new robot Messiah. Oh so he's 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:16.480 our buck Buckminster Fuller pretty much. Yeah, this is in 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.959 the realm of spiritualist. He was. He was a big thinker. 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:22.679 He was definitely outside the box thinker. Yeah, and so 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.360 that's this led to the New Motor Project, which we 0:13:25.400 --> 0:13:28.840 talked about at length in our episodes on Techno Religion, 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:30.480 and if you haven't heard those, you can go back 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:33.600 and check those out for the fuller description. But basically, 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:36.120 he and a bunch of people got together and tried 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:40.080 to build a machine based on instructions from spirits that 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:42.600 he thought would bring about a new era and sort 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:46.959 of change the humans relationship with the spirit world and 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:50.640 bring about a positive end of days in a way. 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:55.120 So this book that's about him, Um, how how did 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:59.120 you find like, you know, the structure the pros it was? It? 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.200 Is it a den biography or is it um you know, 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.199 readable kind of page turner. No, it's not like highly dramatized. 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:08.800 So he he doesn't make it into a historical novel 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:10.960 or anything. I guess since it's more kind of an 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:16.000 academic historians work, But that doesn't mean it's uninteresting, just 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.120 because the story of John Murray Spear is so weird, 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:24.200 so fascinating just in the actual details of what happened 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:26.960 that I think even the non historian reader would be 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:31.600 interested in this. Cool. That sounds fascinating. Yeah, what's on 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:36.000 the artwork there? Yeah, the cover has this I don't know, 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:40.120 kind of creepy looking army of cherubim surrounding what looks 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:44.040 like a sewing machine table. Yeah, it seems to highlight 0:14:44.080 --> 0:14:46.880 the themes. Yeah, there aren't a lot of great pictures 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:50.640 of of John Murray Spears, a key creation, so I 0:14:50.880 --> 0:14:54.440 don't think there's a single photograph of it, just the illustration, 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.200 a couple of illustrations. Yeah. Yeah, spoiler alert. It looks 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:00.920 like a table with a bunch of stuff lude to it. Yeah. 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:02.920 I think we described in the podcast what is a 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:07.400 is a dalek and um a coffee table mated? This 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.520 would be the offspring, Yeah, pretty much, and then you 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:13.720 hung that with some Christmas ornaments. Well that's actually a 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:16.600 good segue into the book that I chose to talk 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:19.640 about today. For my nonfiction selection, which is it's an 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:24.560 e book by Warren Ellis called Cunning Plans. And Warren Ellis, 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:26.800 for those of you not familiar, is primarily known as 0:15:26.800 --> 0:15:29.680 an English comic book writer. He's written a couple of novels, 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:34.280 and he's also done some commentary and columns about society 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:36.680 and technology and sort of where we're going and how 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.840 they're merging. Uh. And this e book, which I think 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:43.360 it's only likes on Amazon or something like that, is 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.400 a collection of talks and presentations that he's given on 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:49.920 a variety of topics over the last I don't know, 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:53.280 maybe five or six years. One of the major categories 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:55.800 that he covers in these talks is sort of a 0:15:55.800 --> 0:16:02.800 collision between spiritualism or magical thinking and technology and progress. Um. 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:05.160 So it's it's it's an interesting, you know, set of 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.040 transcripts and it reads very well. But here's just kind 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:11.160 of a set of topics that comes up in the 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:14.440 In this book, he talks about futurism, the speed at 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:19.120 which we're progressing scientifically. Uh. The title of the book, 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:23.040 Cunning Plans, comes from the tradition in England that I 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.720 wasn't aware of called the cunning folk. Have you guys 0:16:25.720 --> 0:16:28.600 heard of this before? He describes it as a they 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.200 were sort of like witch doctors or shaman in England 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:35.600 at a time. Um. And he compares the cunning folk 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:40.160 of that time to sort of technologists. So are time interesting. Um. 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:43.880 Mystical wearables is something he talks about. He also talks 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:48.240 about Alexander Graham Bell's harmonic telegraph, the combination of magic 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.600 in the digital world, why people murder each other. Uh, 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:55.200 pop music as sort of like a telegraph of the future, 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:56.840 like showing us what the future is going to become, 0:16:56.840 --> 0:16:59.360 which I think is kind of a theme that stuff 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:01.960 to blow your mind has has had over the years 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.840 when you write about space music. Uh. And he's also 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:09.920 you know, no surprise into hallucinogens and gardening on grapes sites. 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:11.639 I never thought about this, but this is one of 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.040 the other things he talked about was that apparently the 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:17.560 soil is rather rich where dead bodies are buried, so 0:17:17.600 --> 0:17:20.720 it's easy to grow even even with like modern and 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:24.640 modern day and age, because we tend to just completely 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:28.280 cut the body off from any kind of natural you know, 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:30.760 if I remember correctly from the from the book, it 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:33.560 wasn't um, the grave sites that he was talking about 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:39.040 were not like modern so yeah, it was more like okay, 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:43.119 so it's not like you get your gourds from grandpa. 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:48.600 It's like you go fin well, yeah, yeah, m grandpa's 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:51.320 crawl space, mushroom. But this is a passage I'd like 0:17:51.359 --> 0:17:55.040 to read because I think I think that Ellis would 0:17:55.040 --> 0:18:01.320 probably like that grandpa's crawl space. You know. Sorry, that 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:03.720 makes me think. Recently, Rachel and I were driving through 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:07.240 South Carolina and who's Rachel for the audience, My wife Rachel, 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:10.720 and we're driving through We were driving through South Carolina. 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:13.440 We saw a little like neighborhood community that has a name, 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:16.040 as sometimes they have names, and it's called Moss Grove. 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:22.920 It's like, man, that is one letter off. Well, this 0:18:23.000 --> 0:18:25.600 is there's a passage from Ellis's book of talks that 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:27.760 I wanted to read here today because I think it 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:30.440 kind of captures the big ideas that he's he's trying 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:32.679 to convey in these talks, and it's it's very stuff 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:35.200 to blow your mind. So this is in I believe 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:38.879 the second one. The Olympus Mons Mountain on Mars is 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.199 so tall and yet so gently sloped that where you 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:45.520 suited and supplied correctly, ascending it would allow you to 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:49.280 walk most of the way into space. Mars has a big, 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:53.280 puffy atmosphere that's taller than ours, but there's barely anything 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:56.920 to it. At that level thirty pascals of pressure, which 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:59.440 is what we get in an industrial vacuum furnace here 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:03.080 on Earth, you may as well be in space. Imagine that. 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:08.639 Imagine a world where you can quite literally walk into space. Wow, 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:11.879 that's nice. Yeah, it's kind of fun stuff. Yeah, I 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:14.920 mean like, that's a topic where I've certainly done my 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.760 share of reading about the geography of Mars, and I 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:21.359 don't think I think it's ever been presented quiet like 0:19:21.400 --> 0:19:23.000 that to me. Now, Yeah, that's one of the things 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:25.440 I like about Ellis is that he tends to take 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:30.680 a lot of popular science type information and he translates 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:33.320 it in such a way that just really brings a 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:35.960 lot of kind of strangeness and wonder to it. Yeah, 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:37.879 that sounds like one that would be cool to pick up. 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:39.920 I haven't. I haven't read any of his, because he 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:42.920 has a has a couple of novels out right. Yeah, 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.199 Crooked Little Vein is one of them. I can't remember 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:48.480 the other novels title. He was supposed to release a 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:50.879 book called Listener, I believe, but I don't think that 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:53.440 one came out. But there I noticed when I bought 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:56.359 this that there are a couple of other books by 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:00.200 him available, which maybe other collections of you know, sort 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.000 of his Internet ramblings and things like that. But I've 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:05.679 always found that kind of thing interesting. In fact, I 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:07.919 think I was showing you guys the other day some 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:12.320 old issues of this collection of books called Bad Signal 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:15.080 that he put out at the early two thousands that 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.960 were basically his He would take these really sensationalist, kind 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:22.639 of weird science stories and then extrapolate them out a 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:26.480 little bit further and and they, you know, for the 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:28.840 most party kind of sites sources, and it was stuff 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:31.159 from newspapers in the late nineties. And I think it 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.080 would be sort of fascinating for us to take one 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:34.720 or two of those and dive into them, see if 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:36.480 you see, if there's some meat on the bone. Yeah. 0:20:36.480 --> 0:20:39.560 I loved trans Metropolitan and that's the one you told 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:43.280 me to read. Uh, Yeah, trans Metropolitan is probably the 0:20:43.280 --> 0:20:46.840 one he's best known for. Spider Ruth. Yeah, it's basically 0:20:47.000 --> 0:20:51.040 a sci fi version of Hunter S. Thompson. Uh, kind 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:54.840 of writing about a presidential campaign. Was that accurate? Yeah yeah, 0:20:54.840 --> 0:21:00.639 and kind of got a weird like alien influence, stopian, 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:06.320 cyberpunky gonzo future, transhumanism is a big theme. It works. Um. 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:07.800 I think one of the other ones I might have 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:10.880 told you Joe to read is called Planetary, and that 0:21:11.040 --> 0:21:13.760 is sort of his I think he describes as like 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:17.960 an archaeology of weird fiction. So he goes throughout the 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:21.239 history of sort of science fiction, weird fiction fantasy and 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:25.320 explores it throughout the the the context of this narrative 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:29.120 and Planetary, you know, he was involved early on, um 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:33.960