Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas,
Speaker 1: and we have something about tradition here at Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind Every summer you only need the early
Speaker 1: goings of summer. We devote an episode to just sharing
Speaker 1: some of our personal weading recommendations for you. The Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind listener, it's right because summer breeze
Speaker 1: makes you feel fine blowing through the jasmine of your mind.
Speaker 1: You want a book to accompany that jasmine of your mind,
Speaker 1: and we've got a bunch of recommendations here. That's right.
Speaker 1: We have As always, we we try and get a
Speaker 1: collection a little fiction, a little nonfiction, because you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want just throw a whole bunch of scientific
Speaker 1: books at you, and we're you know, we're probably not
Speaker 1: going to hit you over the head with anything to stuffy.
Speaker 1: But likewise, we know that ourreers have diverse taste and
Speaker 1: we want to present you with some some fictional selections
Speaker 1: as well. All right, so I'm gonna launch and are
Speaker 1: because I feel like this is probably the best beachiest
Speaker 1: read if you are going to the beach and you
Speaker 1: do kind of want to put your brain on on
Speaker 1: hold for a second, but you're really interested in knowing
Speaker 1: how some people's brains work when it comes to their art.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about this book called Daily Rituals How
Speaker 1: Artists Work, and it covers everybody from like Gustav Roubert,
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison, Hruki Marakami, uh Igor Stravinsky. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's got a bunch of selections here that details the
Speaker 1: sort of habits that these people are made up of
Speaker 1: and how they create their art. And I find it
Speaker 1: fascinating because, um, you may have some favorite authors and
Speaker 1: here are favorite artists or even favorite scientists, and you
Speaker 1: will find out how they started the day and more importantly,
Speaker 1: how they obsessed. Because I feel like this is such
Speaker 1: a great little way to eavesdrop on people and and
Speaker 1: find out how they do the thing that they do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just I was glancing through this earlier. Um, it's segmented, correct,
Speaker 1: Like you can sort of skip through and you can
Speaker 1: see an individual in the individual's name and hone in
Speaker 1: on that section, right, Yeah, I mean yes, And it's
Speaker 1: it's done in little chunks. So again, it's something you
Speaker 1: can pick up and put down really easily. The writer
Speaker 1: is Mason Curry, and he collected these. I believe he
Speaker 1: has a website in which she sorted to detail people's
Speaker 1: daily habits, people luminaries mostly. Um, I'll just read this
Speaker 1: one little bit about Franz Kafka. This is frustrated with
Speaker 1: his living quarters in day job, wrote in a letter
Speaker 1: to police Bower in n quote. Time is short, my
Speaker 1: strength is limited. The office is a horror, the apartment
Speaker 1: is noisy. And if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible,
Speaker 1: then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers,
Speaker 1: so you get insight into their psyche as well as
Speaker 1: what their daily rituals are. Yeah, and you can say, hey,
Speaker 1: his life is chaotic, and he got some stuff done
Speaker 1: and made a name for himself. Maybe I can do
Speaker 1: that too. There's even this great bit about Patricia Highsmith,
Speaker 1: who is She wrote I believe the talented Mr Ripley,
Speaker 1: about how she had this intense connection with animals, particularly snails,
Speaker 1: and how she smuggled these snails into other countries by
Speaker 1: attaching them to I think under her breast. Good stuff. Wow,
Speaker 1: so there's another You know, she attached snails to her
Speaker 1: breasts and she got stuff done. Maybe I can do
Speaker 1: that as well, improving that's the answer work, all right. Well,
Speaker 1: the first book I'm gonna bring up is is when
Speaker 1: you may have heard me talk about a little bit before,
Speaker 1: and that is Dark Banquet Blood and the Curious Lives
Speaker 1: of Blood Feeding Creatures by Bill shoot Um. And he
Speaker 1: has a website devoted to this book, which is dark
Speaker 1: Banquet dot com. So this is a wonderful text, very accessible.
Speaker 1: This is not a stuffy science Texas is a fun
Speaker 1: science text. The book deals primarily with vampire bats, but
Speaker 1: it also discusses a variety of natural other natural world
Speaker 1: blood drinkers, and he goes into the surprisingly interconnected worlds
Speaker 1: of natural world single of wars, and the mythic world
Speaker 1: of humanoid vampires. He gets into into vampire hysteria and
Speaker 1: in this interesting reality where you had the idea of
Speaker 1: the vampire um in the West before we'd actually discovered
Speaker 1: vampire bats. I'm gonna read just a quick little section
Speaker 1: from this book. Clearly, though, once word of the existence
Speaker 1: of real vampire bats began to circulate, a new supernatural
Speaker 1: emphasis on these mysterious and as yet unidentified creatures began
Speaker 1: to take shape. Bats living in Europe, where blood feeding
Speaker 1: species had never existed, were gradually implicated as being vampires.
Speaker 1: Hysteria and storytelling outpaced reason and science. Though to be frank,
Speaker 1: science has done a lousy job of getting its vampire
Speaker 1: bat story straight. So there's just a taste from the book,
Speaker 1: Like I said, very accessible, fun and when I ran
Speaker 1: across it, it it really blew my mind because I was
Speaker 1: just doing a quick Monster Science Monster the Week post
Speaker 1: on the blog series where I was just kind of thinking,
Speaker 1: how would a human vampire have evolved? Uh, the the
Speaker 1: answer or some suggestion of how this would work would
Speaker 1: be would would best be found in the evolution of
Speaker 1: the vampire bat. And when I was looking for a
Speaker 1: good source on that, I ran across his text and
Speaker 1: uh we ended up discussing this in a in an
Speaker 1: episode on vampire bats. For stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that. But essentially, you just
Speaker 1: get into this crazy idea of in this crazy world
Speaker 1: where you're you're imagining the evolution of this creature, how
Speaker 1: does it how does it end up in this scenario
Speaker 1: where it uh, it takes on blood uh as its
Speaker 1: eventual primary mode of feeding itself. It's primary food, right,
Speaker 1: because as we've discussed before, this is not an easy living.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like they found the get rich
Speaker 1: quick scheme in the in the hunger game that is uh,
Speaker 1: that is evolution. No, they ended up making a name
Speaker 1: for themselves on a on a really poor source of sustenance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it underscores this whole idea of of this,
Speaker 1: this heartbreaking idea when you talk about predation and you
Speaker 1: talk about being one of the animals and those circles.
Speaker 1: Because again, we're pretty lucky to have gotten out of this,
Speaker 1: right that no longer do we have predators going after us.
Speaker 1: But this heartbreaking idea where you have to, you know,
Speaker 1: constantly go after something, tear it apart, take its energy
Speaker 1: for your own day after day, particularly with these vampire bats,
Speaker 1: right night after night, you must seek this blood for sustenance.
Speaker 1: And to me, that underscores the whole predation thing. In
Speaker 1: the first place. We're all kind of vampires in a sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm one of vegetarian so plant vampire. Fine,
Speaker 1: and their sun vampires so dirt vampires. Good point. Good point.
Speaker 1: The next selection here is as a fiction work of fiction.
Speaker 1: It is called The Girl with All the Gifts by
Speaker 1: Mr Carey, and I guess you would put this in
Speaker 1: the sci fi realm um. I don't want to say
Speaker 1: too much about it because I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: any plot spoilers here, but it is just it's grabbed
Speaker 1: me by the khonies, the invisible coonies that I have,
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna read this little selection here says
Speaker 1: every morning Melanie waits in herself to be collected for class.
Speaker 1: When they come for her, sergeant keeps his gun pointing
Speaker 1: at her while two of his people strap her into
Speaker 1: the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes
Speaker 1: that she won't bite, but they don't laugh. I mean
Speaker 1: it just that's the beginning of it. And I'm reading
Speaker 1: that because I want you guys to understand that this,
Speaker 1: honestly is something that has completely arrested my attention here.
Speaker 1: I know that I'm not through it all the way yet,
Speaker 1: but it's excellent so far. Josh Weeden has said the
Speaker 1: story of Melanie that people around her is so thoroughly crafted,
Speaker 1: so heartfelt, remorseless, and painfully human. That it takes the
Speaker 1: potentially tired trope of the zombie apocalypse and makes it
Speaker 1: as fresh as it is terrifying. The story spirals towards
Speaker 1: a conclusions so surprising, so warm, and yet so chilling,
Speaker 1: that it takes a moment to realize it's been earned
Speaker 1: since the first page and even before it left me
Speaker 1: sighing with envious joy like i'd been Simmy. Simmy chanously
Speaker 1: offered flowers and beaten at chess a jewel. So just
Speaker 1: to give you guys an idea of of what it's
Speaker 1: about and sort of accolades it's getting. Yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: fascinating and I can't help but wonder I did the
Speaker 1: did the author take this on as a like a
Speaker 1: challenge to say, I'm going to write a zombie apocalypse novel?
Speaker 1: Even though that idea there everyone, when with any in
Speaker 1: irrational thought, is going to say, don't write a zombie book.
Speaker 1: Don't whatever you do, don't write a zombie apocalypse. But
Speaker 1: but then she's she's done it, and she's made it work,
Speaker 1: and she and done it in in a new and
Speaker 1: exciting way. Yeah, I was making me think about Richard
Speaker 1: Mouth heasons I am legend in the same way that
Speaker 1: you're the internal state of this person is being plumbed
Speaker 1: to the deepest depths that it's um that you kind
Speaker 1: of forget that there's this other horrific story that it's
Speaker 1: wrapped up And does that make sense? So and I
Speaker 1: am legend you're this man is so isolated and there's
Speaker 1: such existential terror having to board yourself up every night
Speaker 1: to keep you know, the Boogeyman away, that you forget
Speaker 1: that this is essentially a vampire story. And in the
Speaker 1: same way, you know, um, the girl with all the
Speaker 1: gifts is making you forget that this is a zombie story.
Speaker 1: Very cool, Very cool. All right, Well, my next reading
Speaker 1: recommendation is another book that we've mentioned on the podcast,
Speaker 1: particularly in our Fraggle Rock Troglafauna episode, And this is
Speaker 1: The Wider Worlds of Jim Hinson, essays on his work
Speaker 1: and legacy beyond the Muppet Show in Sesame Street. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was compiled was edited by Jennifer C. Garland and
Speaker 1: Anissa M. Graham. You can find this in I think
Speaker 1: it's cheapest as a kindle book. You can order a
Speaker 1: physical copy as well. Uh. And I'm not going to
Speaker 1: read an excerpt but I just want to roll through
Speaker 1: the titles of some of the colle that essays by
Speaker 1: various authors just to give you a taste about how
Speaker 1: how deeply uh these authors dive into the world of Hinton,
Speaker 1: which you know, ultimately is a very thought out world.
Speaker 1: I mean, we Hinson wasn't just you know, spit firing
Speaker 1: some ideas and saying, now, let's make something about some
Speaker 1: muppets living in a cave. Now, that was a very
Speaker 1: nuanced idea. They were setting out to achieve certain things
Speaker 1: and and relate certain messages to a young audience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean psychological and talking about the bio diversity is
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah. So you have a four different essays
Speaker 1: on Fraggle Rock, including um, no sex, please were fragg
Speaker 1: holes which gets into uh gender and fraggle Rock. Uh,
Speaker 1: the wonderful Ecology of Fraggle Rock by Justin Verfel that
Speaker 1: we are referenced. You see either various essays in here
Speaker 1: about the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, including uh interpreting the
Speaker 1: various species in the Dark Crystal and Fraggle Rock, including
Speaker 1: what was sundered and undone shall be whole Union nature
Speaker 1: and agra in the Dark Crystal there are some essays
Speaker 1: about the Storyteller series, which I adore as well. Um,
Speaker 1: Everyone's Storyteller, the shifting rolls of story storyteller, storytellers and
Speaker 1: audiences in the Jim Hinson Hour, Uh, there's some stuff
Speaker 1: on em and Honor's jug Band Christmas of course. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's a let's see a couple here on
Speaker 1: far Escape as well, including exploring the alien other of
Speaker 1: far skate human puppet costume cosmetics. So if you are
Speaker 1: a Hinston fan, if you are a you know, a
Speaker 1: Labyrinth fan, Dark Crystal fan, Frankle Flan fan, It's, etcetera,
Speaker 1: this is a book you really should check out because
Speaker 1: they all all the authors take a deep, loving dive
Speaker 1: into these creations. All right, And speaking of representations of animals,
Speaker 1: my next pick is a non fiction pick um. It's
Speaker 1: called Wild Ones. It's sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about
Speaker 1: looking at people looking at animals in America. And it's
Speaker 1: by John Well um um who's also the author of
Speaker 1: the two thousand and ten New York Times piece and
Speaker 1: Animals Be Gay, which we did episode on based on
Speaker 1: his writing and research. So I was really excited when
Speaker 1: this book came out because I think that he has
Speaker 1: a very interesting perspective and his stuff is really well researched. UM.
Speaker 1: I was also very interested in his perspective on the
Speaker 1: relationship between animals and humans because he comes at it
Speaker 1: from the angle of In two thousand and ten, he
Speaker 1: became a father, he became a new parent, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, he was aware of this, this deluge
Speaker 1: of animal themed things coming into his life via his child.
Speaker 1: So you know what I'm talking about, Yeah, you get you.
Speaker 1: You all of a sudden have five books about animals,
Speaker 1: You have pajamas with animals on them, you have you know,
Speaker 1: um songs about animals. And he began to think about
Speaker 1: this in very serious terms, like what does this mean?
Speaker 1: This is a very illusory, uh fictional world that we're
Speaker 1: creating thing for these children. This is a fairy tale
Speaker 1: about animals when in fact, the actual state of animals
Speaker 1: and the animal kingdom on Earth now is going to
Speaker 1: be vastly different. When when you know, my daughter reaches
Speaker 1: the age of thirty, polar bears may not exist. So
Speaker 1: he started to take this on this idea of conservation
Speaker 1: and extinction, and he looks at I believe it's butterflies,
Speaker 1: polar bears, and the whooping crane, and follows their specific
Speaker 1: um trajectories through conservation through um looming extinction, and how
Speaker 1: humans are are actually trying to affect change. And it
Speaker 1: does get depressing at times because um, I don't want
Speaker 1: to ruin it for people. But the way in which
Speaker 1: we're going about this, he may argue, is that we
Speaker 1: may be creating a world that cannot sustain an animal
Speaker 1: kingdom in earnest as it has in the past. So
Speaker 1: even trying to conserve animals maybe uh, sort of a
Speaker 1: zero sum game because we have so altered the landscape
Speaker 1: and we are squarely in the anthroposyne era in which
Speaker 1: is the man made era, and we are manipulating everything
Speaker 1: around us. So it's a good one to read at
Speaker 1: the barbecue this summer, that's what you're saying. It is
Speaker 1: something that you should corner one of her family members
Speaker 1: about at the barbecue and just depressed the hell out
Speaker 1: of them. Sounds good, I mean, if you like me.
Speaker 1: I mean I I like a good sobering read, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean we're not talking about escapist books here. We're
Speaker 1: talking about books that they make you think, make you
Speaker 1: re evaluate humanities, uh trajectory, your own personal trajectory. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's also digging deeper into um, you know, subconscious
Speaker 1: here too. He's saying, like, why why aren't those polar
Speaker 1: bears effective anymore? Have their cuteness actually usurped their message
Speaker 1: or the message that controversations are trying to put out
Speaker 1: there about habitat loss and extinction, And so it's very interesting.
Speaker 1: It sort of talks about how psychologically we are taking
Speaker 1: all this information in, how it's essentially becoming ineffective and
Speaker 1: why that is. Anyway, Yes, it's a it's a good read. Now, Julie,
Speaker 1: I understand that you are about maybe halfway through um
Speaker 1: watching True Detective, the HBO series right now? Correct, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you you're enjoying it? Yes? Can you see the
Speaker 1: spirals in my eyes? So I cannot think of better writing,
Speaker 1: better storytelling, and also UM stories that hit on a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that we talked about. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was when when I first started watching it, which was
Speaker 1: I guess it was like three or four episodes into
Speaker 1: the run, and I started hearing all the buzz and
Speaker 1: people were cornering me null here in the recording studio,
Speaker 1: was cornering me and producer asking me if I was reading,
Speaker 1: if I was watching at and why I had not
Speaker 1: watched the yet. It was hitting all these various themes
Speaker 1: that we've covered before. It was lining up with some
Speaker 1: of my own personal interests. So I love the show.
Speaker 1: And afterwards, I was really interested in the show's creator
Speaker 1: and writer, uh Nick Pizo Alatta, because clearly this is
Speaker 1: a guy whose brain is lining up with my own
Speaker 1: in some respects, and it's created some art that I'm
Speaker 1: really into. So I discovered his book, Galveston, a novel
Speaker 1: and uh I very strongly recommended, particularly if you're if
Speaker 1: you were a fan of a true detective and you
Speaker 1: want a little more of that kind of flavoring. UM
Speaker 1: in anticipation of a second season eventually coming out. Now,
Speaker 1: I wanna preface and say this is not a book
Speaker 1: that is rife with a bunch of super mysterious intrigue.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no mention of Yellow Kings, there's no
Speaker 1: uh sort of love crafty and sort of elements in
Speaker 1: the works. Um. But but it does have a lot
Speaker 1: of the uh, the the feel that you would find
Speaker 1: in the in some of the characters in true detective. Now,
Speaker 1: this novel deals with a character of the name of
Speaker 1: Roy Caddy who's a criminal, career criminal living in New
Speaker 1: Orleans and and he finds out that he has a
Speaker 1: terminal illness, or right about the time that he that,
Speaker 1: he finds out that his boss is a dangerous loan
Speaker 1: sharking bar owner wants him dead. So there's this uh,
Speaker 1: brutal sequence where he's double cross, barely makes out and
Speaker 1: makes it out of town with his life and he
Speaker 1: ends up on the run into coastal Texas with a
Speaker 1: prostitute and a young girl, and from there it just
Speaker 1: goes into some very interesting places. I don't want to
Speaker 1: give anything away, but but you do have a character
Speaker 1: who's really coming to terms with with what's important in life.
Speaker 1: What's he gonna do with the rest of the life
Speaker 1: that he has here? How does that square with what
Speaker 1: he's made of his life so far? And it's just
Speaker 1: beautifully written. Um. I was really impressed with Pizolato's use
Speaker 1: of language in this novel. Um that the character at
Speaker 1: times feels like he is kind of cut from the
Speaker 1: same cloth as the rust Coal character, Like they're like,
Speaker 1: there may be sort of cosmic twins in some way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, beautiful read and at the end I actually
Speaker 1: ended up tearing up a bit, so I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I do have one little section when I read for you.
Speaker 1: I really want to read you, read you the last
Speaker 1: couple of paragraphs, but that would be spoiling things. We
Speaker 1: were silent for a long stretch. Then, with the wind
Speaker 1: shushing outside and the rhythm of a skier, a cloud
Speaker 1: riddled heaven sealed the horizon, and I felt like we
Speaker 1: were bugs crawling along the edge of the world, which
Speaker 1: we were in a way. I kept this westward, the
Speaker 1: sun at our backs, the girl's faces turning sleepy. That
Speaker 1: old rule came back. You do your own time, not
Speaker 1: someone else's. But what about after your own time is done?
Speaker 1: I wondered. I looked down at the little girl sleeping,
Speaker 1: one fist curled under her chin. Why did you take
Speaker 1: the silencer off? I asked. Rocky shrugged and followed something
Speaker 1: out the window. I thought it looked meaner without it,
Speaker 1: I said, have you ever been to Galveston? She shook
Speaker 1: her head. So there's just a taste again already. I'm like,
Speaker 1: they're in that scene, so yeah, don't go into it. Expecting,
Speaker 1: you know, another slice of True Detective. But if you
Speaker 1: appreciate did the writing appreciated some of the feel of
Speaker 1: that show, then you really can't go wrong with that book.
Speaker 1: And last I checked, the Kindle version is available for
Speaker 1: like twine, so you're basically losing money if you don't
Speaker 1: buy it. There you go. Alright, So in the realm
Speaker 1: of fiction, Joyce Carol Oates, the pick that I have
Speaker 1: here is Blonde. I believe this came out maybe in
Speaker 1: two thousand. It's an older book, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: go back to it because I think we were talking
Speaker 1: about Marilyn Monroe and her breathiness, and that got MA
Speaker 1: hated thinking, like I really would like to know more
Speaker 1: about Marilyn Monroe. And Joyce Carroll Oates is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite writers. Um. The first time I was sort
Speaker 1: of indoctrinated with her writing was in a short story
Speaker 1: where are You Going? Where Have You Been? And that's
Speaker 1: about a teenager named Connie, and she's got a really
Speaker 1: bad case of teenager on we at the same time,
Speaker 1: she's got this burgeoning sexuality that she's trying to deal with.
Speaker 1: And what I love about this story is that is
Speaker 1: a kind of coming age story that everybody knows about
Speaker 1: that they never discussed. And what I'm talking about here
Speaker 1: is like the burden of sexuality as a woman and
Speaker 1: essentially what that sometimes boils down to his predator and prey.
Speaker 1: And in that short story, um, this guy arnold friend
Speaker 1: shows up as the predator and this golden convertible and
Speaker 1: this this gold convertible becomes this kind of like death
Speaker 1: chariot for kind. So the reason I bring this short
Speaker 1: story up is because Blonde is about Marilyn Monroe obviously,
Speaker 1: but more about that burden of sexuality, and it is
Speaker 1: just a phenomenal take on this historic, iconic person who
Speaker 1: is in many ways unknowable and yet somehow Oates has
Speaker 1: gotten into her internal life, her into her thoughts what
Speaker 1: I think might be her thoughts, right, and has written
Speaker 1: this narrative that is so compelling that you think that
Speaker 1: you are reading Marilyn Mina Rose diary. And it's starts
Speaker 1: out with marily Monrose child and follows her through her
Speaker 1: suicide and it is so gripping I can't even tell you,
Speaker 1: like it's probably one of the most haunting texts that
Speaker 1: I've ever read. And I don't know how she did it.
Speaker 1: I really feel like that's one of those moments where
Speaker 1: she was struck by the muse and how she inhabited UM,
Speaker 1: this person who is very much sort of a flat
Speaker 1: character force. Right, it's this Um, this woman who is
Speaker 1: innocence and yet she's the sex kitten, and you see
Speaker 1: through this, this lens of her life, this other side
Speaker 1: to her. Maybe how she became Marilyn Monroe and Maril Monroe,
Speaker 1: by the way, in real life was freighted with all
Speaker 1: sorts of problems since we know and her mother UM
Speaker 1: had some very bad mental problems UM that obviously showed
Speaker 1: up in Marial Monrose life. Anyway, let me just read
Speaker 1: this New York Times review real quick, because I think
Speaker 1: it is pithy, and I will go on and on
Speaker 1: if I don't stop myself by reading this. So it says,
Speaker 1: and although sometimes sloppy and sentimental, it is perhaps the
Speaker 1: most ferocious fictional treatise ever written on the uninhabitable grotesqueness
Speaker 1: of femininity. No one embodied femininity better than mal Monroe,
Speaker 1: who concocted a persona who seemed to exist only for
Speaker 1: sex and at the same time to be oblivious of it.
Speaker 1: Who possessed an eroticism that was all responsiveness and no desire.
Speaker 1: How else to cater to a masculine sexuality that hates
Speaker 1: itself and demands that females receive and bear away that
Speaker 1: hatred like dutiful wives cleaning up after a husband's violent binge.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was that was great. That really
Speaker 1: takes the spirit of this book and the spirit of
Speaker 1: those times in which Miller Monroe um came to inhabit
Speaker 1: all of these anxieties about sexuality excellent. Well, I have
Speaker 1: to I have to admit that when I when I
Speaker 1: first heard about that book, it was hard for me
Speaker 1: to get excited about it because I love Joyce Carol Oates.
Speaker 1: Most of what I've read a verse is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: strange fiction stories that she's written and u uh and
Speaker 1: we've read read a longer work or two sort of
Speaker 1: dealing with with twisted, flawed individuals, um grotesque individuals and
Speaker 1: so the cell. Oh, she wrote a book about Marilyn Monroe.
Speaker 1: Just on the surface, it doesn't seem to match up,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'm thinking thinking, Joyce Carol Oates is
Speaker 1: on one end of the spectrum. Uh, Marilyn Monroe is
Speaker 1: on the other and and and never the two should meet.
Speaker 1: But but now that you've explained it, I mean it
Speaker 1: makes perfect since you mentioned the grotesqueness of femininity, so
Speaker 1: I mean that that bridges the gap right there. So
Speaker 1: I'm I'm actually more interested in checking the book out
Speaker 1: myself now. Yeah. And her narrative techniques are fascinating, and
Speaker 1: she uses smell a lot, and you wouldn't think that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this book about Marin Monroe and
Speaker 1: there's one of the tropes is going to be smell,
Speaker 1: and it comes to symbolize and really it even comes
Speaker 1: to to sort of symbolize, um, Milen Monroe's attempt to
Speaker 1: try to escape her more working class ressroots, you know,
Speaker 1: um and then a sent to stardom through the sense
Speaker 1: of smell. It's fascinating. But yeah, I mean this is
Speaker 1: the person Joyce Carol Ows who wrote the book Zombie
Speaker 1: about dam Yeah, great book. You've read that one, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, so you wouldn't you wouldn't think Dahmer
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe. But again, it it sounds like it works
Speaker 1: in her capable hands. Sure. My next selection is one
Speaker 1: is another one that I would definitely put in this
Speaker 1: category of the cell maybe not sounding all that great
Speaker 1: on the surface of things. And the book is sixty
Speaker 1: three by Stephen King. Now I'm a long time King fan,
Speaker 1: so I don't have to come. I don't have to
Speaker 1: get over a Stephen King hurdle. I think some people
Speaker 1: have that in their mind, like, here's a very popular author.
Speaker 1: Uh he's and he's been churning out books like crazy
Speaker 1: for years. Is he deserving of my attention? I would argue, yes,
Speaker 1: I think I think Stephen King has has earned his place,
Speaker 1: uh and has certainly earned his his literary reputation on
Speaker 1: top of his commercial reputation. But even m for me,
Speaker 1: this was a hard sell because the the idea on
Speaker 1: the book here is, hey, what have you traveled back
Speaker 1: in time to stop the Kennedy assassination, which of course
Speaker 1: occurred one It's kind of an interesting thought experiment, you know,
Speaker 1: you get into what happened, What would happen if you
Speaker 1: could travel back in time? What would happen if you
Speaker 1: change things? The butterfly effect of changing something in history? Um,
Speaker 1: And that's fascinating, but it doesn't necessarily um connect with
Speaker 1: me beyond that I like I, so when the book
Speaker 1: came out, I just kind of noticed that it existed
Speaker 1: and moved on. And then just in the last fall,
Speaker 1: I was in a situation where, of course I had
Speaker 1: a new child in the house. I seemed like I
Speaker 1: was spending a lot of time, uh, laying on the
Speaker 1: floor of his bedroom waiting for him to go to
Speaker 1: sleep so I could sneak out. And friends sent me
Speaker 1: a kindle copy of this book, and I started reading
Speaker 1: it and just could not put it down. It was
Speaker 1: just it's just highly addictive right from the beginning. There's
Speaker 1: no there's no hurdle to overcome in reading three because
Speaker 1: one of the really fascinating things here is, first of all,
Speaker 1: there's no worrying about time travel science, how you do it? Basically,
Speaker 1: magic portal opens up. How does it work? Who knows?
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a wormhole, maybe it's magic. Don't concern your
Speaker 1: stuff with that, because it's it's The story is ultimately
Speaker 1: about more than that. The idea is that this portal
Speaker 1: only opens up to a period in the past prior
Speaker 1: to three, and so in order to go back in
Speaker 1: time and change the past, you would have to go back.
Speaker 1: Uh you have you have to live in the past,
Speaker 1: you have to go back into the past and live
Speaker 1: for like for you know, a year or two to
Speaker 1: reach the point where you could change history. And there
Speaker 1: are these added complications and that you get into the
Speaker 1: idea that the time stream is like it's like a river,
Speaker 1: and to try and divert a river, there's there's resistance.
Speaker 1: So our character as he goes back in time and
Speaker 1: ultimately sets out on this quest to change history, he
Speaker 1: begins to encounter resistance to the change. So he's trying
Speaker 1: to be injected out of that time stream. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: to to a sense, it's sort of like there's so
Speaker 1: much writing on the way things work that there's a
Speaker 1: resistance to making small changes in the time stream, but
Speaker 1: he's trying to make a large one, and in doing so,
Speaker 1: the forces against him are are almost immeasurable. So it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating read. It's really one of the best
Speaker 1: King books I've read in quite some time. So they recommend, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that again, he is someone who is
Speaker 1: also just a master at his craft, and so I
Speaker 1: can't imagine a bad turn at a character or even
Speaker 1: just a plot line with him. And you also learned
Speaker 1: way more about the Kennedy assassination than you ever thought
Speaker 1: you wanted to know. Okay, that means that you can
Speaker 1: drop in on those conspiracy theory chat rooms, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know what they're talking about. You know
Speaker 1: who some of these figures are because they show up
Speaker 1: as figures in this book because part of it too.
Speaker 1: If the character goes back in time and he's not
Speaker 1: certain there's no one, they think there's like a nineties
Speaker 1: something percent chance that it that it is just the
Speaker 1: lone gunment theory. But what if you don't want to
Speaker 1: go back and and kill Lee Harvey Oswald if there's
Speaker 1: even like a two percent five percent chance even that
Speaker 1: he's not the guy, and then ultimately you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to change your history anyway. Yeah, and by the way,
Speaker 1: Marilyn Monroe is wrapped up into this as well, So
Speaker 1: you have fitting fitting pair of books there for the summer. Indeed,
Speaker 1: all right, My last pick here is Cabinet of Curiosities,
Speaker 1: My Notebooks, Collections and Other Obsessions by Guiannimo and Mark
Speaker 1: Scott Zacrie. And this was actually a book that I
Speaker 1: got for my husband because um, he likes Del Toro
Speaker 1: and he really likes a lot of this for I
Speaker 1: don't know if you would call it this like monster aesthetic,
Speaker 1: an art, grotesque ery. I don't know, but I've been
Speaker 1: pouring through it. It is kind of a much bigger,
Speaker 1: deep than that Daily Ritual's book I was talking about
Speaker 1: where you get to appear into artist lives. Here is
Speaker 1: this this really like lens into del Toro's life. You
Speaker 1: get to see his collection, just stuff that he collects.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm looking at this picture right now of
Speaker 1: a life size sculpture of HP Lovecraft by Thomas Cubler,
Speaker 1: which is watching over the horror library at the Bleak House. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean he has a life size closure of HP
Speaker 1: Lovecraft leering at you as you walk around the house.
Speaker 1: Very odd look on HP lovecraft face. And so you
Speaker 1: also have some of his influences, so Mary Shelley and
Speaker 1: Lovecraft of course, and Arthur mackin ed Garland Poe is
Speaker 1: it Macinnermashon, I'm not sure, but author of The Great
Speaker 1: God Pan which is an extremely creepy short story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in this sense, I think you get a lot
Speaker 1: more than you would bargain for from someone who is
Speaker 1: um a director, right, You would normally think, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: I'll get a little bit of access to how he works,
Speaker 1: but no, you get everything. It looks like here um
Speaker 1: short of a personal tour of his own home. So
Speaker 1: I just thought it was great for anybody who is
Speaker 1: interested in some of the monster science that you have
Speaker 1: been covering, um, and anybody who is interested in his films,
Speaker 1: because he's got thoughts for new films kind of scribbled
Speaker 1: in there, bits of dialogue. Um, He's got other bits
Speaker 1: of dialogue from plays and from stories that have colored
Speaker 1: his perception. And then of course just his sketches are fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his sketches are amazing, And apparently when he pitches projects
Speaker 1: like the sketches are very much a part of it,
Speaker 1: and they're the sketches sketches are are part of his
Speaker 1: writing process and a part of his way of of
Speaker 1: bringing his own ideas together and then ultimately presenting them
Speaker 1: to the studios. Yeah, so it is really kind of
Speaker 1: like cracking up in his brain. You're able to see
Speaker 1: all his obsessions, his influences, and then how he thinks
Speaker 1: and his representation of that and sketches is beautiful. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not a beautiful but horrifically beautiful. Yeah, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: He gets horrifically beautiful better than than just about anybody.
Speaker 1: And I mean certainly see in his work there's there's
Speaker 1: so much monstrosity. He genuinely loves monsters and understands what
Speaker 1: monsters are. You see a great deal of Catholic imagery.
Speaker 1: Like especially with Blade too. I love that he created
Speaker 1: a vampire that could only be killed by staking it
Speaker 1: through the side of the rib cage. Uh as in
Speaker 1: the same way that Christ dies on the Cross when
Speaker 1: the spear enters the rib cage and pierces the heart.
Speaker 1: Uh And he you know, he has his whole, this
Speaker 1: whole design in place where the bone is u is
Speaker 1: too solid over the heart so you can only go
Speaker 1: in through the side. I mean, it's just I love
Speaker 1: the man's aesthetic. It's wonderful, which makes it that much
Speaker 1: more exciting to know that he's working on HP Lovecrafts
Speaker 1: at the Mountains of Madness. And in fact, there's a
Speaker 1: couple of pages dedicated to that as well, So that
Speaker 1: level of detail. Seeing that come across and a film
Speaker 1: is would be amazing. Yeah, I really, I really hope
Speaker 1: that project comes together. It sounds sounds wonderful. Alright. I
Speaker 1: have one more reading suggestion, and this one has to
Speaker 1: do with monsters, and it's for young readers, so um uh,
Speaker 1: this one is certainly worth picking up. It's called Monsters
Speaker 1: and Water Beast Creatures of Fact or Fiction by Karen Miller,
Speaker 1: with illustrations by Sergio Rousier. And this is uh. This
Speaker 1: looks at a number of different monsters, including Bigfoot, the
Speaker 1: Big Bird of Texas, hoop Snakes, Mothman, the Jersey Devil,
Speaker 1: and then the water Beast, uh, Sea Maiden of Biloxi, chant,
Speaker 1: the Sea Serpent of Gloucester, and the Cadborosaurus. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is uh. This is ultimately a skeptics book on monsters
Speaker 1: for young readers. I mean, I mean I enjoy it,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to be you don't have to
Speaker 1: be too young to get into it. But it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's wonderfully illustrated. It's it's looking at these creatures from
Speaker 1: a skeptical point of view, but a fun point of view.
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, it's not full of negativity. It
Speaker 1: doesn't say don't love your monsters, because clearly this is
Speaker 1: a book that loves the monsters. While also saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I can, I can love this and also a lie
Speaker 1: a skeptic mind to it. So if you have a
Speaker 1: young reader or not a young reader in your household
Speaker 1: that is interested in monsters and and has that kind
Speaker 1: of skeptical mindset, then I highly recommend it. Indeed, which
Speaker 1: is actually a good reminder about your monster series called
Speaker 1: Monster Science. You should check that out on our mind
Speaker 1: Stuff YouTube channel. Yes, we have six episodes of it,
Speaker 1: and we're plotting six more. I'll let you know when
Speaker 1: those come to fruition. All right, Well what about you, Julia,
Speaker 1: do you have anything you were planning to read later
Speaker 1: this summer or later this year? Well, what's what's on
Speaker 1: the future? What's on the two? Read shell Um The
Speaker 1: Martian by Andy, We're in The Leftovers by Tom proto
Speaker 1: which Nolan, producer told me he is actually being made
Speaker 1: into a series. I believe. Oh. I've seen the ads
Speaker 1: for it an HBO and I can't tell what it's
Speaker 1: about except screaming and pain. And I think it's people
Speaker 1: who suddenly disappear. Really yeah, yeah. I have picked it
Speaker 1: up in my hands a couple of times and looked
Speaker 1: at it, and I have bought it yet, but it's
Speaker 1: on my list very very good. Uh. Two things I'm
Speaker 1: looking forward to reading. One, I don't know when this
Speaker 1: is coming out, hopefully sometime. It's supposedly coming out this year,
Speaker 1: sooner the better for my taste. And that is The
Speaker 1: Unholy Consult by our Scott Baker. I've mentioned Baker before
Speaker 1: on the podcast, probably way too many times. Actually he uh,
Speaker 1: he's written. He wrote a Disciple of the Dog, he
Speaker 1: wrote Neuropath, and he also wrote the trilogy The Prince
Speaker 1: of Nothing trilogy, followed by the the trilogy The Aspect Emperor.
Speaker 1: This is the third book in the Aspect Emperor trilogy.
Speaker 1: These all these uh, the both these trilogies take place
Speaker 1: in this dark fantasy world that it's created. You can think,
Speaker 1: think Game of Thrones, but with more sort of dark
Speaker 1: love Craft I and Clark Ashton Smithy sort of magic
Speaker 1: going on. But also Baker is deeply immersed in um
Speaker 1: in philosophy and neuroscience, so all all of everything he's creating,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it really like it's not pure escapism because
Speaker 1: even though you're reading about say, uh, you know, a
Speaker 1: barbarian on on the planes of some dark fantasy epic world.
Speaker 1: Uh that that character is is struggling with with the
Speaker 1: with his own self in a way that really forces
Speaker 1: you to reconsider uh you know, your own predicament. It's
Speaker 1: it's tremendous stuff. I highly highly recommend it, and I'm
Speaker 1: really looking forward to reading Beyond Holy Consult when it
Speaker 1: comes out. A bit of nonfiction that I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to reading as of this morning is The Body and
Speaker 1: Pain The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scary.
Speaker 1: I heard about this one listening to the episode Unspeakable
Speaker 1: Acts on the CBC radio program Ideas with Paul Kennedy, which,
Speaker 1: for for my money, is just about the best uh
Speaker 1: podcast or radio show out their Ideas CBC Paul Kennedy,
Speaker 1: check it out if you haven't. But this this book
Speaker 1: by Scary, apparently, you know, gets into this idea of
Speaker 1: pain and torture in a really deep manner. Looking at
Speaker 1: pain is is frame breaking, context breaking, our difficulty to
Speaker 1: understand the pain of others, the terrible power of torture
Speaker 1: to destroy the language. Uh. There's a quote just from
Speaker 1: the intro of the book where she says, this book
Speaker 1: is about the way other persons become visible to us
Speaker 1: or cease to be visible to us. It's about the
Speaker 1: way we make ourselves available to one another. So I'm
Speaker 1: as someone who has late been been interested in elements
Speaker 1: of torture and pain, this seems like a must read
Speaker 1: book for me. Yeah. It sounds like she'll be covering
Speaker 1: the territory of of objectifying someone and creating that space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like a very interesting realm to explore. Yeah, she she
Speaker 1: speaks in this uh this Ideas episode. I mentioned unspeakable acts,
Speaker 1: and it's really really interesting to hear her talk about
Speaker 1: about pain and in these terms that I hadn't even
Speaker 1: thought about yet. So so yeah, check check out the
Speaker 1: Ideas of podcast radio show and and check out The
Speaker 1: Body and Pain if this is the topic of interest
Speaker 1: to you as well. What does the author's name again?
Speaker 1: Elaine scary S C A R R. Y Okay, So
Speaker 1: dominative determinism at work again? Yeah? Yeah, indeed, part philosophical meditation,
Speaker 1: part cultural critique. All right, Um, I bet you guys
Speaker 1: have some books that you would like to recommend, But
Speaker 1: please let us know, like, what is the number one
Speaker 1: thing on your list to read or that you would recommend.
Speaker 1: Either way, we would love to know you can find us,
Speaker 1: of course, that's stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where you will find all our blog post episodes,
Speaker 1: our podcasts, our videos, as well as links out to
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