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 Land, and I'm Julie Douglas. If
Speaker 1: you remember from last year, we did an episode where
Speaker 1: we discussed a few summer reading picks. We you know,
Speaker 1: during the summer, people go on vacations they said, on beaches,
Speaker 1: or they're man they're not in school, they're not teaching.
Speaker 1: For various reasons, sometimes we feel more inclined to pick
Speaker 1: up a book and enjoy it. Or or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you read something that's a little out of your
Speaker 1: normal reading uh diet, something maybe a little more fun
Speaker 1: or a little more technical in some cases. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just depends. Were just outside of the genres that
Speaker 1: you like to to prance around in. Uh So, last
Speaker 1: year we did the episode where we each shared a
Speaker 1: little fiction, a little science, and we let you decide
Speaker 1: if you wanted to read any of them. Well, everyone
Speaker 1: seemed to really enjoy those of that episode, so we thought, well,
Speaker 1: this year, let's do it again, except we'll do double side.
Speaker 1: We'll do one episode where um, Julie and I share
Speaker 1: a few more picks for you to consider. For this
Speaker 1: summer's reading, and then we'll do another episode where we
Speaker 1: just get some guests to share their summer reading picks. So, um,
Speaker 1: this is the first of those two episodes where Julian
Speaker 1: and I are going to go through some things that
Speaker 1: we have read, are reading on, and plan to read. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we'll see if they line up with what you
Speaker 1: would like to consume with your brain this summer. That's right,
Speaker 1: So get your scrunches ready, put your hair up, slather
Speaker 1: on the sunscreen, get your towels ready, because we're gonna
Speaker 1: give you some good stuff to consider reading in your
Speaker 1: lay about hours here. Yeah, and I'm just gonna launch
Speaker 1: into like quintessential beach reading right now. Okay, Now, when
Speaker 1: you say quintessential beach reading, uh, it is worth worth
Speaker 1: mentioning that for some people, I think beach reads people
Speaker 1: think leok, get the lowest level book you can get,
Speaker 1: you know, like a straight up airport grocery store. Sole.
Speaker 1: But but we were approaching all of this with the
Speaker 1: understanding that the stuff of all your mind listener um
Speaker 1: is going to want something that engages the mind on
Speaker 1: some level exactly, which is why I thought I would
Speaker 1: start with the book by David Deutsch the beginning of
Speaker 1: infinity colon explanations that transform the world. I mean seriously,
Speaker 1: if you are at the beach and you are staring
Speaker 1: out at the horizon the waves are crashing, then you're
Speaker 1: probably considering more than ever at this very moment, how
Speaker 1: the universe works, what it all means, right, And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's always my experience with the beach. I mean it
Speaker 1: summons deep thoughts, right, So why not go on exploration
Speaker 1: with David Deutsch. Um he is a pioneer in the
Speaker 1: field of quantum computation, uh, the multiverse theory. He is
Speaker 1: very much someone who was a proponent of that, and
Speaker 1: he has a variety of ted talks that you can
Speaker 1: check them out in other ways. But um, I thought
Speaker 1: this book would be great to really explore, and I've
Speaker 1: just now dealt into it and it has actually see
Speaker 1: my imagination from the first page because a lot of
Speaker 1: the sort of territory that he covers is stuff that
Speaker 1: we have touched upon or maybe even explored ourselves. So um,
Speaker 1: someone who is a great science communicator Deutsches, and he
Speaker 1: can sort of bring the whole story of the universe
Speaker 1: to us in a way that it's difficult, right to
Speaker 1: try to wrap all this up in one nice package. Um,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to say a little description from
Speaker 1: the publisher and he it says that he argues that
Speaker 1: explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have
Speaker 1: unlimited scope and parato cause change, and the quest to
Speaker 1: improve them is the basic regulating principle not only of science,
Speaker 1: but of all successful human endeavor. The stream of ever
Speaker 1: improving explanations has infinite breach. This is uh, the idea
Speaker 1: of infinity that he's exploring. Um, we are subject only
Speaker 1: to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper
Speaker 1: boundary to what we can eventually understand, control and the chieve.
Speaker 1: So he goes through all the different periods of historical
Speaker 1: thoughts by humans and you know, empiricism or enlightenment, and
Speaker 1: then he gets to the science revolution and says that
Speaker 1: we have ideas continue to exist and knowledge is the
Speaker 1: limit less and so we know. It's kind of reminded
Speaker 1: me of this idea that we talked about humans being
Speaker 1: meme machines, idea machines, and that our ideas just exist
Speaker 1: into the future and just transmutate as they go along.
Speaker 1: So anyway, very cool, book trying to scratch at this
Speaker 1: idea of infinity and knowledge and and how we move
Speaker 1: through the world with the information that we have available
Speaker 1: to this at this very moment. Wow, the I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna definitely have to pick this one up as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: in part because I dare say we shall record an
Speaker 1: episode in the near future on the topic of infinity.
Speaker 1: In fact, I just returned from visiting the World Science
Speaker 1: Festival in New York City, where there is a There
Speaker 1: was one lecture discussion on the nature of infinity. Is
Speaker 1: there such thing as infinity? It's it's it's a really
Speaker 1: fascinating topic because in some disciplines, if you run into
Speaker 1: an infinity, you run into a problem, because an infinity
Speaker 1: is an error in the computational process. Uh. So it's
Speaker 1: a fascinating topic, and this book does indeed sound like
Speaker 1: a great way to spend your time, uh, contemplating reality
Speaker 1: on the beach. Yes, so there you go. That's that's
Speaker 1: my first pick. You want to throw one in there too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw them start with the one
Speaker 1: that I'm really most excited about because I just finished
Speaker 1: reading it. I'm still at that stage where I'm I'm
Speaker 1: trying to decide if I if I really really liked it,
Speaker 1: or if I actually loved it I book like this,
Speaker 1: I'll I tend to give it four out of five
Speaker 1: stars right off the bat, and then as I think
Speaker 1: about it out the side, well, I maybe should I
Speaker 1: bump it up to five stars? Didn't really have that
Speaker 1: kind of an impact on me? Or should I maybe uh,
Speaker 1: you know, leave it for or even move it down
Speaker 1: to three, you know, as you begin to fully digest
Speaker 1: the ideas. So this book is a surface detail by
Speaker 1: Scottish author Ian M. Banks. If you remember from last year,
Speaker 1: I actually recommended another E. N. M. Banks sci fi
Speaker 1: story called The Player of Games, which, like this book,
Speaker 1: is set in the Culture Universe. The Culture Universe of
Speaker 1: idean in Banks has created in in these ten different
Speaker 1: books is um far future, almost kind of space opera world.
Speaker 1: They are all these different galactic societies at varying levels
Speaker 1: of technological advancement, with varying ideologies and uh and the
Speaker 1: central civilization is called the Culture and it is a
Speaker 1: very much a post singularity world where the Culture society
Speaker 1: has all of these humans and pan humans in it,
Speaker 1: but they kind of do what they want to the
Speaker 1: for the most part, they kind of live you know this, Uh,
Speaker 1: this free for all existence within the culture, while very
Speaker 1: advanced artificial intelligences make all the decisions and the main
Speaker 1: artificial intelligences here are these minds that control these enormous spaceships.
Speaker 1: And the culture is kind of a benevolent entity that
Speaker 1: that will, to varying degrees, involve itself in other galactic communities. Uh,
Speaker 1: generally with the best intentions, but not always with the
Speaker 1: best of results. And uh, even though this is a
Speaker 1: ten there are ten books in this series. This is
Speaker 1: not a part one, part two, part three book. You
Speaker 1: can essentially jump in at any point. Not every book
Speaker 1: is a great first book for someone to read in
Speaker 1: this series. For instance, uh, The Player of Games. I
Speaker 1: think it's an excellent first culture book to read and
Speaker 1: I and I have a strong feeling that surface detail
Speaker 1: also would work really well for someone who had who
Speaker 1: has no idea or just a faint idea about what
Speaker 1: the culture consists of. So the big thing about this
Speaker 1: book that I found interesting, and certainly it has a
Speaker 1: number of awesome sci fi ideas running around it. There's
Speaker 1: digitized consciousness, there's a space warfare, their self replicating machines,
Speaker 1: because even though it's post singularity, it's a it's for
Speaker 1: the most party, very positive view of a post singularity civilization.
Speaker 1: There's also the dark side of post singularity as well
Speaker 1: as a there's a segment of the culture that has
Speaker 1: to deal with with taking care of self replicating machines,
Speaker 1: which they call smatter in the book, and keeping them
Speaker 1: from becoming too much of a problem. So is is
Speaker 1: boredom a problem? Um? It can't. Yeah, it can be
Speaker 1: for sure within the actual pan humans. Within the culture,
Speaker 1: they'll The way they tend to deal with this is
Speaker 1: they get involved in the benevolent aspects of the culture,
Speaker 1: trying to help other civilizations, etcetera. So they become sort
Speaker 1: of like they tap into their inner opress. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of. I want to see if you would win
Speaker 1: souf I said that you did not, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no kind with that. But one of the things that
Speaker 1: really drug dragged me into this book is, first of all, uh,
Speaker 1: I've read a few culture books in the past, but
Speaker 1: then the sad news recently is that ian and Banks
Speaker 1: is dying of cancer and was not not long for
Speaker 1: this world. Um, which is which is awful. We're gonna
Speaker 1: lose a tremendous author and a tremendous mind here, who
Speaker 1: has thankfully produced a number of books, both sci fi
Speaker 1: and literary fiction. Uh. But I had I had heard
Speaker 1: that his more recent books had dealt more with darker
Speaker 1: issues and issues of mortality. And uh. And this book,
Speaker 1: even though like a very advanced, you know, sci fi book,
Speaker 1: deals for the most part, with hell, with theologies of
Speaker 1: hell and the problem of hell. Because imagine a world
Speaker 1: in which we can digitize human consciousness. We can create
Speaker 1: a digital virtual version of you by just you know,
Speaker 1: scanning the brain and put that into this virtual world.
Speaker 1: So the culture and various other civilizations in this universe,
Speaker 1: they generally reached the point where they either developed the technology,
Speaker 1: borrow the technology, or steal the technology to digitize consciousnesses
Speaker 1: and create a kind of afterlife for a virtual afterlife
Speaker 1: for people who have died, for individuals who have died.
Speaker 1: And for the most part, these various civilizations tend to
Speaker 1: take a very um positive spin on things. It's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, a hedonistic heaven for those have died, or
Speaker 1: some sort of peaceful place you kind of store an
Speaker 1: intelligence in a mind that you might want to, you know,
Speaker 1: a loved one you might want to talk to later,
Speaker 1: or a great thinker that you might want to consult
Speaker 1: with later. But inevitably, some of these civilizations hold on
Speaker 1: to their arguably primitive ideas of hell. So you have
Speaker 1: societies that um end up sending digitized consciousness is too
Speaker 1: at place of eternal suffering, and that's a problem for
Speaker 1: the culture. The culture doesn't think that's cool to have
Speaker 1: a you know, even a virtual world where an intelligent
Speaker 1: being is tortured and had and suffers just horribly for
Speaker 1: some you know, unimaginable length of time. So, uh, this
Speaker 1: there ends up being this war that they call the
Speaker 1: War in Heaven, but it's actually a virtual war game
Speaker 1: that that ends up taking place between pro hell civilizations
Speaker 1: and anti health civilizations, and the ideas it they'll they'll
Speaker 1: have this virtual war and then whoever wins wins. If
Speaker 1: the pro Hell side wins, then well then these these
Speaker 1: few societies that cling to the idea of hell, they
Speaker 1: get to keep it, they get to keep their virtual health.
Speaker 1: But if the anti health side wins, well then they
Speaker 1: all have to be eradicated. But in this book, there
Speaker 1: are a number of storylines that are that are coming together,
Speaker 1: and there's this increasing possibility that this, this virtual war
Speaker 1: game is going to emerge into the real world as
Speaker 1: an actual conflict and actual armed conflict. That's really fascinating
Speaker 1: because I've been thinking about war a lot, and of
Speaker 1: course only because my daughter continues to ask various questions
Speaker 1: four years old and curious about war, and so that's
Speaker 1: been on my mind lately. And and then I wonder
Speaker 1: if you could get to a point where you could
Speaker 1: play out of virtual war in society, yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean for us, and would it have the same sort
Speaker 1: of dire consequences in one way or another that actual
Speaker 1: war does. I mean, I'm not talking about fatality so much,
Speaker 1: but more in terms of regime control or the ways
Speaker 1: that we can strip our citizens of rights. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: this this book does explore that territory where you know,
Speaker 1: it's a situation where there's a big, huge conflict between
Speaker 1: these two factions. And for the most part, they realized
Speaker 1: that this is something that we can settle in a
Speaker 1: virtual environment outside of actually bringing in real deaths and
Speaker 1: real destruction. But then to what extent can that work?
Speaker 1: Does it reach a point where it boils over into
Speaker 1: the real world again. So so I found it to
Speaker 1: be a really fascinating book. Um, and I recommend it
Speaker 1: to anyone out there who is who's interested in sci fi,
Speaker 1: who's interested in uh in a little theology, a little philosophy.
Speaker 1: Uh And and I also I should always add that
Speaker 1: Ian and Banks had injects a certain sense of humor
Speaker 1: into it as well, so it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: cold hard sci fi and cold hard philosophy. There's there's
Speaker 1: some giggles thrown in there as well, so very good. Well, Um,
Speaker 1: I had brought up my four year old ask me questions,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to let you guys know of
Speaker 1: a book called Big Questions from Little People and Simple
Speaker 1: Answers from Great Minds, And this is geared more towards
Speaker 1: the four too, maybe twelve year old set, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I really do want to do a kid centric book recommendation. Uh.
Speaker 1: Last year I think it was the Magic of Reality
Speaker 1: by Hawkins, and that is excellent that book, by the way,
Speaker 1: although I would say that's for older children, but this
Speaker 1: book is, I mean, all the questions are generated by
Speaker 1: children and the answers are given by various experts we're
Speaker 1: talking about Mary Roach, Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, David Eagleman,
Speaker 1: Noam Chomsky, Mario Batali. Uh So, just a variety of
Speaker 1: different people and the questions very I mean, it can
Speaker 1: be uh you know, sort of the wrote stuff like
Speaker 1: who named all the cities? Anyway? To do aliens exist?
Speaker 1: What makes me me? Is it okay to eat a worm? Uh?
Speaker 1: Can a beasting another? B? Why are some people mean?
Speaker 1: Why is the or why is space so sparkly? Um?
Speaker 1: And it really it's one of those kind of books
Speaker 1: in the in the explanations that I've given are so
Speaker 1: pithy and great and oftentimes have a lot of humor
Speaker 1: that even if you think you know the answer to
Speaker 1: this question as an adult, it will be reframed for
Speaker 1: you in another way and you'll definitely learn something from it.
Speaker 1: In My four year old loves it. Well, just flip
Speaker 1: through it every once in a while and let's just
Speaker 1: say that one and when we discuss it. But anyway,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a great kind of book for for
Speaker 1: kids who are coming online in terms of expanding their
Speaker 1: consciousness about the various topics in life, like hey, why
Speaker 1: are people mean? Why is the uh nighttime skuys so
Speaker 1: sparkly and it kind of gets at the meat of
Speaker 1: those questions, which is pretty great. Cool. Well, my next
Speaker 1: recommendation is is a science book, and this one is
Speaker 1: is definitely aimed at, you know, more more grown audience,
Speaker 1: though younger minds well I think also find plenty of
Speaker 1: of wonderful things in it as well. And the book
Speaker 1: is called Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments by
Speaker 1: Alex Bows. Alex's his his line of study is the
Speaker 1: history of science, and this book is a it's it's
Speaker 1: a great one. It's a great book to just pick
Speaker 1: up and so sort of flip through and find something
Speaker 1: interesting and start reading it, because, uh, there are several chapters.
Speaker 1: In each chapter has all these subdivisions. Each to each
Speaker 1: subdivision an interesting look and an actual scientific experiment or
Speaker 1: series of experiments that have taken place, generally experiments with
Speaker 1: kind of a either a surface level weirdness, you know,
Speaker 1: one of those where you're you're like, well, why did
Speaker 1: they you know, why are they giving Latte's two cockroaches?
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense? And then you then you
Speaker 1: read it and you're like, oh, well, of course if
Speaker 1: they had not given latte to cockroaches, we would not
Speaker 1: have this vital information. And then some of the other
Speaker 1: ones are kind of reverse like, oh, well that seems reasonable,
Speaker 1: but wow, they didn't really carry that out right. This
Speaker 1: book gets its title from a nineteen sixty to experiment
Speaker 1: that saw Oklahoma's School of Medicine researchers dose an elephant
Speaker 1: named Tusco with l s D. Uh. Last, of course,
Speaker 1: is the llucogen the artificial lucogens that we've talked about
Speaker 1: in the previous episodes. Um. Not only did they give
Speaker 1: Tusco the elephant LSD, they gave Tusco the largest dose
Speaker 1: of LSD ever administered to a single organism, two D
Speaker 1: ninety seven milligrams. That's three thousand times the level of
Speaker 1: a human dose. Now, it's worth noting that at this
Speaker 1: time everyone was getting in on LSD research. Okay, was
Speaker 1: this is the heyday of LSD research and uh, and
Speaker 1: we were fascinated by its effects on the human mind
Speaker 1: and the way we we observe the world. Also, as uh,
Speaker 1: as the author points out, UH, this was also a
Speaker 1: time when the CIA was very interested in military applications
Speaker 1: of l s D, so they funneled tons of money
Speaker 1: through front organizations to various American LSD research projects. So
Speaker 1: uh no, we're not sure. We can't say one we
Speaker 1: or another. Uh if this particular experiment benefited from CIA funds,
Speaker 1: but a number of them down. A lot of people
Speaker 1: got their hands into that candy jar. So uh, this uh,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a tragic experiment though, because of
Speaker 1: what happens is that they they had a syringe of
Speaker 1: this LST again, two seven milligrams of three thousand times
Speaker 1: the level of human dosage injected into Tusco, and Tusco
Speaker 1: staggers a bit, uh, trumpets his his trunk falls over
Speaker 1: and seems to have a seizure. So they administer milligrams
Speaker 1: of anti psychotics. The seizures subside a little, but not
Speaker 1: much so. Then then they administer a bunch of barbagurates uh,
Speaker 1: and Tusco dies a few minutes later. So it's sad,
Speaker 1: not the first time an elephant has died neediously in
Speaker 1: the scientifically experiment um, but but sad. Nonetheless, they performed
Speaker 1: in that cropsy revealed that it died from asphyxiation. His
Speaker 1: throat muscles had closed up, and there's a film this
Speaker 1: somewhere in the u c l A archives, but it's
Speaker 1: never been made public for obvious reasons. This was a
Speaker 1: huge embarrassment. This was uh. It showed up in all
Speaker 1: the papers. There were some misinformation floating about as well.
Speaker 1: There was some information about how the researchers may have
Speaker 1: had LSD themselves um earlier in the week, and that
Speaker 1: led to some people saying, well, were they on LSD
Speaker 1: when they get the elephant? LSD? There was, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was not a pleasant story for anyone involved.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine like that happened today. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: the fun politicians would have with that. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: actually surprised that didn't become LSD gate back then. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: in nineteen nine, another U c l A researcher came
Speaker 1: along and he decided to follow up dozing two elephants
Speaker 1: with LSD. But here's here's the catch, under much more control.
Speaker 1: And the guy doing it was Ronald Siegel. And Ronald
Speaker 1: Siegel was one of the world's leading experts on the
Speaker 1: effects of Hallucingen's on animals, so he brought a lot
Speaker 1: more experience, a lot more control, and he had a
Speaker 1: bad example to look back on. He was not involved
Speaker 1: in the first experiment, but he benefited from their missteps.
Speaker 1: So he did it a few things differently. Uh, he
Speaker 1: put LSD in the animals water instead of a syringe,
Speaker 1: and then that didn't then didn't let the elephants have
Speaker 1: any water for twelve hours, so they came in thirsty.
Speaker 1: But they're not getting that skyrocket effect all at once.
Speaker 1: It's more of a gradual um. And they used two
Speaker 1: dose wages, one for each elephant, one with a lower dose,
Speaker 1: one with a higher and the higher one was actually
Speaker 1: proportionally equivalent to what Tusco had, not in terms of
Speaker 1: the actual amount of the drug, but proportionately to its body.
Speaker 1: And this is, you know, it's important for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons. First of all, he wanted to correct the
Speaker 1: problems of that first study. You know, let's let's and
Speaker 1: figure out what happened, like why did the elephant die.
Speaker 1: Did the elephant die because it had all of this
Speaker 1: LSD in its system or was it the cocktail of
Speaker 1: other things that they administered after the fact, you know
Speaker 1: what was going on here. So so that they conducted
Speaker 1: the experiment, the the elephants acted a little weird but
Speaker 1: there were no seizures. There was just one of them
Speaker 1: took an extended hay bath. Uh. It was a much
Speaker 1: more pleasant story. So so it gave us a little
Speaker 1: more insight into what what happens when packet erms take
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic drugs and and also helped us better understand what
Speaker 1: happened with this first disastrous attempt. So that's just one
Speaker 1: of the studies that is looked at in the in
Speaker 1: this book, and you can flip through it. There's all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff you want, stuff having to do with automobiles,
Speaker 1: you know, digestion um cats. Oh, that there were a
Speaker 1: way to measure whether or not the elephants were more
Speaker 1: open as elephants as packetderms after really experience you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, what are elephant doors of perception? Anyway,
Speaker 1: they were, They're very large, I'm sure. Nice. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we get
Speaker 1: back more books. We're talking to graphic novels, uh, novel
Speaker 1: from an Icelandic author and all sorts of stuff, So
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Hey, we're back. We're continuing with
Speaker 1: Julian and I summer reading recommendations to you the listener.
Speaker 1: A mix of fiction, mix of science, a little science
Speaker 1: fiction and even a little comics. So Julie take it
Speaker 1: all right. So here is my little guilty pleasure. Here
Speaker 1: this this summer. It is The Hitman's Guide the House Cleaning.
Speaker 1: It is by hal Garum Halston and this is his
Speaker 1: first book in English. He is an Icelandic author crime fiction,
Speaker 1: very very dark humor. I cannot wait to read this.
Speaker 1: My my husband actually get us for me. Let me
Speaker 1: just kind of give you a quick synopsis of this book.
Speaker 1: It is about this Croatian hit man. He worked for
Speaker 1: the Croatian mafia. His name is Toxic. His real name
Speaker 1: is Thomas Loves Toxic and that he has sixties six
Speaker 1: flawless hits under his belt. Of course number sixty seven.
Speaker 1: He kills the wrong guy and he has forced to
Speaker 1: flee the United States and he takes on a new
Speaker 1: identity in in the form of Father Friendly, who is
Speaker 1: an American evangelist who he actually ends up killing and
Speaker 1: assuming his identity. Um So here he is on his
Speaker 1: way to Iceland. He has no means of escape from
Speaker 1: this island he which is devoid of gun shops by
Speaker 1: the way. So he's completely out of his element. Um,
Speaker 1: and there's no business for him there. Obviously there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of contract killing in Iceland, and he's sort
Speaker 1: of forced to come to terms with his own bloody pass.
Speaker 1: And so it's got all the little you know, fun traps.
Speaker 1: They're mistaken identity, uh, the forces of good and evil
Speaker 1: and who we really are? You know, who is this
Speaker 1: person inside of us? Um? So I really can't wait
Speaker 1: to read this. Um it's gotten some some good reviews,
Speaker 1: and um, I haven't developed into a crime fiction in
Speaker 1: a while. So, like I said, this is going to
Speaker 1: be my guilty pleasure. But I just wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that how the sin is, he's kind of a larger
Speaker 1: than life figure himself. Um, he's a poet. Um, he's
Speaker 1: kind of a provocateur. Um. He is someone who really
Speaker 1: has come down actually very hard on Iceland in terms
Speaker 1: of its politics and its economics. And uh, he's been
Speaker 1: called the Bukowski of Iceland. I'm not sure how I
Speaker 1: feel about that, but I think that just sort of
Speaker 1: points to the idea that he ruffles a lot of
Speaker 1: people's feathers, albeit in a very darkly rendered way with
Speaker 1: his humor. So for anybody out there who is looking
Speaker 1: for a new crime fiction novel, there you go. And
Speaker 1: I often find that the European crime fiction is the
Speaker 1: way to go because, especially if you've read enough for
Speaker 1: seen enough American and US based crime fiction. He kind
Speaker 1: of you kind of grow dead to it after a while.
Speaker 1: But even a fairly cliche crime story set in uh,
Speaker 1: in a European country, instantly it's all these different elements
Speaker 1: influence the experience. Yeah, he has spent a good chunk
Speaker 1: of his life in New York and various other cities
Speaker 1: around the world, so he has a baseline understanding of
Speaker 1: different cultures and the strangeness that comes with, you know,
Speaker 1: flipping between one and another, which kind of I think
Speaker 1: helps to sort of underscore this idea about what identity is. Well,
Speaker 1: that one sounds very good. Yeah, cool. Well, uh, from
Speaker 1: my next one, I'm gonna I'm gonna go with another
Speaker 1: science the topic. And this is actually a book you
Speaker 1: gave to me. And and this is another one that
Speaker 1: is nice and that it is not a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a reasonably thick, like you know, about
Speaker 1: four pages, but it's composed of various essays and uh,
Speaker 1: and and and articles by a host of scientists, science writers,
Speaker 1: um other professional commentators on on the subjects contained. It's
Speaker 1: called This will make You Smarter Uh. New scientific Concepts
Speaker 1: to improve your thinking, Edited by John Brockman. The book
Speaker 1: is great because, again you can just flip through it.
Speaker 1: You can find a number of really interesting topics, including, uh,
Speaker 1: the article that we referenced in our pro Wrestling episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's where I found it. I was just flipping through
Speaker 1: the back, looking through the index, and I saw the
Speaker 1: word wrestling, and I'm like, really, there's one of these
Speaker 1: articles deals with wrestling. And sure enough, Uh, mathematition and
Speaker 1: economist Eric Weinstein had that article about cafe about the
Speaker 1: the altered reality of layered falsehoods and how this it's
Speaker 1: existance in the world of professional wrestling actually relates very
Speaker 1: strongly to the way systems work in the real world.
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, you'll find articles inside by
Speaker 1: Richard Dawkins we mentioned earlier. Uh. This is is Max
Speaker 1: tech Mark, who I just saw in New York at
Speaker 1: the World Science Festival, always a great scientific communicator. Jonah Laire,
Speaker 1: Aubrey de Gray, David Eagleman, Alison gott Nick, v s Rama, Chandrin.
Speaker 1: All these names I'm sure you recognized from from previous
Speaker 1: episodes of our show and your external scientific reading. Uh so,
Speaker 1: highly recommend this. You can like, really, you can like.
Speaker 1: I flipped through it and then here is an article
Speaker 1: by Matthew Richie systematic equilibrium bam, and it's like three pages.
Speaker 1: So it's a great book for I don't know, if
Speaker 1: you're one of the people who read stuff on in
Speaker 1: the bathroom and you want an enlightened experience there, I
Speaker 1: think this would be a great one, likewise on the beach,
Speaker 1: fitting in quick bursts of information for your brain in
Speaker 1: between your various travels. Go for it. And honestly, who
Speaker 1: hasn't reached enlightenment in the bathroom? Really, you know, let's
Speaker 1: be honest about it. Um. So, when I was talking
Speaker 1: about him AND's God the house cleaning, I was talking
Speaker 1: about this idea of what it means to be a
Speaker 1: stranger in a strange land, and perhaps one of the
Speaker 1: best books to capture what that feels like is a
Speaker 1: graphic novel by Shaun tan It's called The Arrival and
Speaker 1: it is just hauntingly beautiful. It is about a man
Speaker 1: who leaves his family and he gets on a boat
Speaker 1: and he goes to another land. Um. There are absolutely
Speaker 1: no words in it. And the reason is that um,
Speaker 1: as he leaves his land, his home land, he leaves
Speaker 1: his language, he leaves his mother tongue. And so the
Speaker 1: idea is that you get the sense of pure isolation
Speaker 1: that he is experiencing, and also other worldliness, strangeness alien uh,
Speaker 1: an alien culture with an alien language. And so the
Speaker 1: way that Tan represents this is that he has all
Speaker 1: sorts of incredibly mystical creatures that are running around in
Speaker 1: this new land that this man is experiencing. So um,
Speaker 1: the drawings themselves are technically absolutely beautiful. UM. They're in
Speaker 1: shades of black and white and gray and brown. UM.
Speaker 1: And you'll see street scenes and they look at first
Speaker 1: glance completely normal, and then you see that that birds
Speaker 1: have horns on them, or that there's a giant snail
Speaker 1: just walking around. UM. I wanted to read a really
Speaker 1: quick excerpt from Breton Nickel. He reviewed the book on
Speaker 1: good Reads. I just thought he had an a good
Speaker 1: take on this. He says, Tan's world here is struck
Speaker 1: through with fantastical twist, as though we view a quantum
Speaker 1: reality several iterations from our own. It is vaguely steampunkished
Speaker 1: with perhaps a hint of anime. This is where you
Speaker 1: find the genius of Sean Tan. He has imagined an
Speaker 1: alternate reality that is fully alien yet instantly familiar. Many
Speaker 1: an artist, when attempting to depict the alien, will lazily
Speaker 1: skip straight to the zany, the nonsensical, the surreal, so
Speaker 1: that the audience is struck on the head by the
Speaker 1: message that this is not your earth. Tan is better
Speaker 1: than that. He draws pet animals, food, architecture, and vehicles
Speaker 1: that are certainly odd and whimsical, but the reader is
Speaker 1: able to intuit how it might fit all together and work.
Speaker 1: The strange horrors that the books protagonist and his new
Speaker 1: found friends fled from in their homelands rest firmly in
Speaker 1: the realm of fantasy that they can easily be interpreted
Speaker 1: as nods to various evils and hardships in our own
Speaker 1: real world, and some of the animals that are in here.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's such a feat of imagination. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you see things that look like they could
Speaker 1: be a reptilian, or you often see this sort of
Speaker 1: tadpole looking dog. The tadpole looking dog is the one
Speaker 1: that that caught my at first. It's just because because
Speaker 1: very cute, very alien though, and and again the art
Speaker 1: is wonderful here. It looks like like like sort of
Speaker 1: classic CPI, A toned images of of of you newcomers
Speaker 1: to New York and the Golden Age, but fused with this,
Speaker 1: with with this alien world, this world of alien creatures.
Speaker 1: And it's funny that you say that, because you know,
Speaker 1: he began this as a children's book, and then he
Speaker 1: realized that he had much more to say about it,
Speaker 1: as is the child of a father who had immigrated,
Speaker 1: and he spent four years researching it and really going
Speaker 1: through the Ellis Islands records. In fact, you see a
Speaker 1: lot of sketches of um people. Art really echoes those images,
Speaker 1: those those iconic immigrant images that we see just so
Speaker 1: well it just yeah. And then he shows these the
Speaker 1: picture of the new city that the character is in,
Speaker 1: and it's just so futuristic. It's like Blade Runner meets like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, nineteenth century America. It's amazing. Well, that's one
Speaker 1: of the wonderful things about fantasy is that is that
Speaker 1: like like fantasy, like pure fantasy, that's great. But when
Speaker 1: you inject like a little bit of fantasy and a
Speaker 1: little bit of of of real world, a little bit
Speaker 1: of science, a little bit of history, what have you? Uh,
Speaker 1: you can illuminate things in the history or in the
Speaker 1: science that either you had grown numb to or you
Speaker 1: never realize we're there to begin with. Well, and see,
Speaker 1: that's what I think is so intriguing about this. We
Speaker 1: often talk about this like there's there are certain tropes
Speaker 1: that just are like the alien experience, right, or being
Speaker 1: a stranger in a strange land, and it's very easy
Speaker 1: to sort of fall into cliche. And when we've talked
Speaker 1: about artists being successful at picking this, it's usually because
Speaker 1: they're coming in at an angle that you would not
Speaker 1: expect and it makes that trope feel new and fresh
Speaker 1: and understood again for the first time. And one of
Speaker 1: the ways that I think that Tan does this, it's
Speaker 1: just by even uh this two page spread of clouds
Speaker 1: and cloud formations that he has in the book, and
Speaker 1: it's meant to show you what the character sees when
Speaker 1: he's on the steamship to this new world looking up
Speaker 1: at the sky each day, Each each cloud formation is
Speaker 1: different and beautiful and just other worldly. And so I
Speaker 1: mean just this page. I could sit here and stare
Speaker 1: it probably for an hour and analyze it. Um. So
Speaker 1: anyway that if you guys like graphic novels, if you, um,
Speaker 1: if you want to, should have delve in deeper to
Speaker 1: the psychological aspects of what it is to feel isolated
Speaker 1: or to be uh, are you know, inserted into this
Speaker 1: what feels like alien existence? Then check out the arrival.
Speaker 1: Can't recommend it enough? Yeah, And this is one to
Speaker 1: just look looking at you can tell it's not a
Speaker 1: comic that you read and you put on the shelf.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's when you can keep out on
Speaker 1: the coffee. Yes, people are gonna be drawn to it. Well,
Speaker 1: and I tend to pick it up and just flip
Speaker 1: through it again and again just because esthetically I can't
Speaker 1: help it. But you know, thematically, it's just I find
Speaker 1: something new every time I look at it. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: for my next pick, I just want I have to
Speaker 1: mention this one because this is the most beautiful book
Speaker 1: that I have read, uh this year. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: called Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson. Uh. It's a story
Speaker 1: of Robert Grenier a day labor in the American West
Speaker 1: at the start of the twenties century, an ordinary man
Speaker 1: in extraordinary times. Uh. He experiences some severe loss, loses
Speaker 1: his family, and then struggles to make sense of this,
Speaker 1: uh as the modern world creeps into this uh, this
Speaker 1: this American West that he's grown to know and love.
Speaker 1: Dennis Johnson's writing, and this is just beautiful. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read a little bit from it in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But it's Uh. First of all, it's in novella. So
Speaker 1: if you're wondering, what's I need something short from my
Speaker 1: trip or from my my beach read or from my travels.
Speaker 1: What is the shortest but but the most beautiful thing
Speaker 1: I could possibly read, then I would I would suggest
Speaker 1: giving this one a try. Um, there's nothing there's no
Speaker 1: science in it. Really, there's uh, there's some some fun
Speaker 1: little bits of history uh interesstpersed in there. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: there's nothing really in the way fantasy. There's some dream
Speaker 1: context uh involved, but that's about it. But still it's
Speaker 1: the most beautiful thing that I've read. And I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna read a quick bit here. This is a before
Speaker 1: he experiences this loss, he has a conversation with his
Speaker 1: wife about their about their infant, He says, how much
Speaker 1: does she know? Do you suppose, Gladys, as much as
Speaker 1: a dog pup? Do you suppose a dog pup can
Speaker 1: live by its own after the bitch weans it away,
Speaker 1: Gladys said. He waited for her to explain what this meant.
Speaker 1: She often thought ahead of him. A man child couldn't
Speaker 1: do that way, she said, Just go off and live
Speaker 1: after it was ween. The dog knows more than a
Speaker 1: babe until the babe knows its words, but not just
Speaker 1: a few words. A dog raised around the house knows
Speaker 1: some words too, as many as a baby. How many words, Gladys,
Speaker 1: you know, she said, the word for its tricks and
Speaker 1: the things you tell it to do. Just say some
Speaker 1: of the words, glad It was dark, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to keep hearing her voice. Well, fetch and come and
Speaker 1: sit and lay and roll over. Whatever it knows to do,
Speaker 1: it knows the words. In the dark, he felt his
Speaker 1: daughter's eyes turned on him like a hornered brutes. It
Speaker 1: was only his thoughts tricking him, but it poured something
Speaker 1: cold down his spine. He shuddered and pulled the quilt
Speaker 1: up to his neck all of his life. Robert Grenier
Speaker 1: was able to recall that very moment on this very night.
Speaker 1: Oh so it's uh, you know, it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful novella. I highly recommend checking it out. It's it's
Speaker 1: available in various formats and also as an audiobook. UM,
Speaker 1: give you a shot. All right, it sounds very very good. UM.
Speaker 1: So those are just some recommendations from us. We would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you guys to do. Is there
Speaker 1: something that you you feel very strongly that we should
Speaker 1: check out, that others should check out. Um, if you
Speaker 1: have one or two recommendations, UM, please blind by us. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also remember we were going to do a second
Speaker 1: episode here that should publish after this one, where we'll
Speaker 1: have some guests, some outside guests from from from various
Speaker 1: parts of the end of the world, uh well two
Speaker 1: parts of the world really, and then also some some
Speaker 1: guests from various parts of our office. So we'll have
Speaker 1: some guests from some of the other house Stuff Works
Speaker 1: podcast on to share their recommendations. And through all of
Speaker 1: this they're gonna be places where you're like, oh, that
Speaker 1: book sounded really interesting. What was the name of that
Speaker 1: how do you spell that? Well, luckily we have a
Speaker 1: blog and on that blog you will find an accompanying
Speaker 1: blog post where we will list all the books that
Speaker 1: we've mentioned in this podcast episode and the other one,
Speaker 1: and you can find that at stuff to bowl your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we keep
Speaker 1: all of our our content, or at least links to
Speaker 1: our content. But you can also find us on social
Speaker 1: media where you will find us at Facebook where we
Speaker 1: are stuff to Blow Your Mind. To find us on
Speaker 1: Twitter where handle is blow the Mind. We're on tumbler
Speaker 1: as well, and also YouTube where our handle is mind
Speaker 1: Stuff Show. And you can always drop us a line
Speaker 1: at the load of mind at discoveries dot com.