Summer Reading 2019

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, you, welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick, and we have got your summer
reading episode for this year. Except it's coming late, as
it often does, or extremely early, depending on how you

(00:25):
look at it. Or it may be a sort of
like climate latitude derived impression of summer. Here in Atlanta,
summer kind of goes until December or so. Yeah, and plus, well,
you know, summer is is in the mind and the heart,
you know. But we've also kind of been thinking of
it as the death of Summer episode. It's the episode
that celebrates the passing it's awake for summer. And so

(00:46):
if you're if you have if you don't know what
we're talking about here, this has been a longstanding tradition
of Stuff to Blow Your Mind is to do an
episode in which the hosts and sometimes guests will just
bring up a few different books that they have read
in the past year that they enjoyed, that they found insightful,
that they recommend, or just want to you know, celebrate

(01:07):
in some fashion. Yeah, and oh and you mentioned guests,
We've got a special treat for you today. We're bringing
back a blast from the past, a former host of
Stuff to blow your mind as a as a guest
for the end of this episode. But before we get
to that, Joe and I are just going to discuss
a few books that that we picked out, books that
we enjoyed this year. Uh. And it can be kind

(01:28):
of difficult at times that I think we've discussed this before,
because generally, if we read a really good book, it
is generally going to fall into one or two categories.
Either it's something we're reading for work, for as part
of our podcast research, so of course we're going to
discuss it on the show. Or we end up just
talking and bending about back and forth on some episode
about it right, Or it's just something where we don't

(01:50):
start reading it for the show, but then there's just
something in there we learned, something that is just so
irresistible that it has to become an episode. So it
can be hard to come up with like fresh picks. So,
what's a really good book I read this year that
I didn't already talk about on one episode or another.
But but we've got a few today that's right, Robert,
did you want to go first today? Sure? Yeah, you know,

(02:11):
I'll just say in Passing, you know that obviously I
read a you know, a number of books that I
really love this year. But everyone I think has heard
me talk about, you know, I think I talked about
Broke's Brain, Reflections on the Romance of Science by Carl Sagan,
classic that I I read this year. Uh, And of
course we talked a lot about How to Change Your
Mind by Michael Pollen. I've discussed on the show how

(02:34):
much I've been enjoyed reading the writings of Terence McKenna
as well. But one book that I don't think I've
discussed on the show, or at least if it's come up,
it's only come up in Passing, is uh probably the
best one of the best pieces of fiction I read
this year, and it is Mongrels by Steven Graham Jones.
From Stephen Graham Jones. I think we mentioned him on

(02:55):
last year's Summer Reading episode because we didn't go in
full detail, but when I was just talking about what
I was reading at the time, I think I mentioned
After the People Lights Have Gone Off, which is a
short story collection by Steven Graham Jones, which is fantastic.
I am really into this author, and I'm actually currently
in the middle of another book by him, a novel

(03:16):
called Demon Theory, which maybe I'll talk about in a
minute after you talk about Mongrels. Oh, absolutely so. Stephen
Graham Jones is a Blackfeet Native American author who who
writes in a number of different genres. But I read
this particular book, Mongrels, on a trip out to Arizona
earlier in the year. In fact, I actually picked it
up in the gift shop of the Haired Museum of

(03:37):
American Indian Art. Uh. They're in Arizona, which is a
wonderful museum, by the way. But the gift shop is
also great and includes a lot of First Nation authors
in various genres, including like science fiction, young adult, and
of course horror. Because Mongrels. Uh, it is a lot
of things. But it is also a werewolf book, and

(03:59):
and I'll go I'll certainly easily go as far to
say that it is the best piece of werewolf fiction
I've ever read. I can't think if I've ever read
a werewolf novel. Wait a minute, you read that like
werewolf spy book, didn't you know? I just looked at
it a beach house. It was like, c I a
werewolf or something. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Like

(04:19):
when I try to think of like really great werewolf
fiction or even great werewolf movies, there kind of feeling
far between. Like the werewolf is a wonderful concept, but
it's not always utilized well in uh in a narrative form.
But Mongrels does a fantastic job with with the werewolf
uh in in in several different ways. So just approaching

(04:40):
it from just a monster geek kind of standpoint, Jones
takes the the existing like you know, motif of the
werewolf and sort of the you know, some of the
existing key points of the werewolf mythos and uh and
and not only like, not only does he utilize those
well in the book, but he he creates a few

(05:01):
new wrinkles in the mythology that that manages to just
make everything feel more real about the werewolf, and he
brings it more life without this, you know, without totally
recreating it, without like you know, totally just you know,
creating something new that we call a can't therapy. Uh.
He pairs it a lot with like themes about family,

(05:22):
though doesn't he yeah, because this is this is ultimately
a coming of age story. It is um it is
is about this young boy whose whose family moves around
there under like the fringes of society, and it is
um it is. It is I can't remember if it
is implied merely implied or or or or you know,

(05:43):
obviously stated that the family are are are our Native
American or Native American you know, descended, but but I
believe that is the case. So you know, you get
the you know, the sense that his family is you know,
existing on on on the the edges of everything and
just barely scrape by, and they are plagued by uh lecanthropy,
like where the werewolf blood runs in their family. And

(06:06):
the this boy at the very beginning, he's just he's
trying to figure it all out, like figure out the
like we all are at at a young age, trying
to figure out this wider world of adulthood and family.
And I'm trying to figure out where he fits into it.
And he's told, you know, you you might not be
you know, I might might not have the werewolf blood
in you. Uh, you know, you might have this normal

(06:27):
life but you but you also very very may very
well be one of us, and so a lot of
the book is about him struggling with that, like what
does he want to be? And who is he? And
um and gosh. Stephen Graham Jones just does a tremendous
job in this, Like it's it's just a beautiful book
to read, the way he uses this metaphor, and at times,

(06:47):
even at times you're like, oh, man, this is a
great werewolf book. But other times you almost forget that
it it is a monster novel because it's it's it's
more about about this young boy and about the like
family identity and uh and and and and how he's
figuring out his life and then it's uh, it's written
very elegantly, laid out very elegantly because each chapter is

(07:08):
pretty much a short story unto itself, so that the
structure is great. Like you, it's one of these books
where you finish a chapter and if that were the
end of the novel, uh, you would you would feel
pretty satisfied. So it's it's one of the more like
just structurally complete books that I've read in a long time.
Like there's no fat on it either, though it's not like, oh, well,
the short story just feels kind of, you know, a

(07:29):
little extra, but this this chapter is a little extra. Uh.
And and you know it's just filling in the gaps. No,
it's just it's it's it's all meat, just like a
werewolf would like. Yeah, I've thought for a long time
now if Stephen Graham Jones is a horror write not
just a horror writer. He's written in I don't know,
works that span different genres, but a lot of what
he seems to be known best for is his horror fiction.

(07:51):
Um uh. He seems to me like somebody who is
at the same time very creative and thoughtful and willing
to get experimental, but exact at the same time refreshingly
free of writerly pretensions. Some of the comments I've heard
and read about like his writing process and work and
all that seems kind of I don't know it, just

(08:13):
like not precious about it. And I think somehow that
attitude comes through, and at least what I've heard what
I've read of his as a kind of freedom that
crackles through the prose, like in this he he's a
very thoughtful writer, but at the same time has some
kind of distance from what he's doing that just allows

(08:33):
him to to spin a yarn with a kind of
with degrees of freedom that I don't often feel in
other authors. Yeah, there's and I'm probably not describing it well,
but there's there's there's something about this book where it
does not feel like deliberate in a in a writer's sense,
or or at least it's so good that I don't

(08:54):
I don't think about like the writing process when I'm
reading it. Uh, you know, it's just I remember when
when I was going it was chapter to chapter, it
was it was it was one of these book where
you just couldn't put it down. And I also ended
up when I was thinking about it, I was thinking,
you know, just totally about the characters and and and
they're and and wondering maybe even worrying like what was

(09:16):
going to happen to them? And it I think it's
been a long time since I've really had that experience
with the books. So you know, really I really have
to give this one, you know, top marks for sure. Yeah.
And another thing about Stephen Graham Jones that I've noticed
it and it comes through if you just read one
of his collections of short stories, like After the People
lights have gone off, is that he can write it
at very different levels. Like some of the horror. It's

(09:39):
all horror stories pretty much in this book, or at
least kind of strange, at least weird stories. Most of
them are you would think of his horror, but some
are like thoughtful I don't know what that sounds pretentious,
but what people would probably call literary horror kind of reserved, prose, contemplative, uh, eerie,
rather than than splatter horror. But then some of them

(10:02):
are just splatter horror. Like some of it is like
low brow, almost gross out horror, and and he's great
at that too, right, Yeah, in this book, there's I
would recommend this book for people who are maybe even
not horror fans, Like I don't want anyone to be
turned off by the werewolf aspect of it, because it's
not it's not really blood and guts, you know. Uh,
though it does have a few there are a few

(10:23):
details in it that that do make your skin crawl.
In particular, he has his whole business about how like
a werewolf has to be very careful about what they wear.
Um because like imagine, for instance, if you're wearing spandex
and you grow out into a werewolf, where we'll form
this large dog like body covered in hair. Like the

(10:44):
spandex is not going to rip away and be left
on the ground. It's going to remain. It's gonna stretch out,
and the hair of the wolf is going to poke
through it. And then what happens when that hair recedes
back into the body. Um, it's catastrophe. Uh and uh
and and he describes it in in detail in the book.
It's it's it's grizzly. It's the reason that I believe

(11:04):
they always wear like blue Jane cutoffs in the book,
because it's something that will tear away and you don't
have to worry about it, like, you know, potentially killing
you later. Wow. I'm in the middle of reading another
novel by Stephen Graham Jones. Now I mentioned this other
earlier novel. I think it's from like two thousand six
or so. It's called Demon Theory, which is one of
the strangest books I've ever read. I still, you know,

(11:27):
I'm like a hundred pages in and I'm still not
quite sure exactly what's going on. But so far it
seems to be a novelization of a nonexistent b horror
film with scholarly footnotes. But it's it's getting a little
bit weirder as it goes on, and it's it's striking
me as a very exploratory, experimental kind of novel. I'm

(11:50):
really excited to see where it goes from here. Kind
of shades of House of Leaves, yes, yes, sort of yeah,
but yeah, I would just say in general, Stephen Graham
Jones really interesting author. If you like horror at all,
or even if you don't like horror, worth given a
worth given a try, absolutely, and Mongrels is available just
all over the place. You can get an audio book
form as well. Well, well, Joe, what are what's your pick?

(12:12):
Then your first pick for this summer reading episode? Well, okay,
so I think you were mainly focusing on fiction this year.
I think our guest is mainly going to focus on fiction,
So I'm doing doing a few nonfiction books, so though,
I mean, of course, I will give a quick acknowledgment
of like I'd say, probably the best fiction book I
read this year was the Name of the Row is
by Umberto. Yeah, it's a classic, and it's it's a

(12:34):
classic for a reason. That is a fantastic novel, I
mean just so rich, so good. I read it with
a with like a companion glossary that you let me
borrow this, like this whole other book that's like a
key to all of this story. Yeah too, because like
Umberto Echo was a genuine medievalist, and so a lot
of the like the historical setting of the novel is

(12:57):
rich with real details from from actual history and uh,
and so the key to the Name of the Rose,
I would I would recommend doing it that way. If
you read the Name of the Rose, get that book
and have it alongside with you when you read it.
Right though at the same time, I would I don't
want to scare anyone away from the Name of the Rose,
because I feel like comperto Eco does a really good
job with, you know, the contextual usage of these different references.

(13:20):
So they'll be they'll be passages in other languages, there'll
be references to historical figures or or you know, works
of literature, various manuscripts or what have you. And he's
pretty good about like grounding and within the context of
the stories, you don't have to necessarily know what those
things are. But on the other hand, it's that extra
level of appreciation to be able to look it up

(13:41):
in say the key to the name of the rose
and and see exactly what it was referring to. Right,
You don't have to speak Latin to recognize the Latin
or vulgar Italian phrase for the black magic of Jesus Christ. Okay. So,
uh So I'm gonna talk about some nonfiction books this year.
Uh And this year, you know what, I'm not going
to read all the junk that comes after the colon

(14:03):
and a nonfiction book title. I wish publishers would stop
insisting on all that stuff after the colon and just
let the book have a regular title, Okay, And I'm
gonna enforce that rule myself. So the first one I
want to talk about today, it was a really interesting
and important book. Uh. Is called a Cracking Creation and
came out in twenty seventeen by Jennifer DOWDNA and Samuel

(14:25):
Sternberg and at Base. This is a book about the
Crisper Cassinine gene editing technology and the current spate of
gene editing technologies. Uh. This is an unusual and really
interesting kind of book because it's a book about a
revolutionary moment in science and technology, written right in the
middle of that revolutionary moment, not really looking back, but like,

(14:48):
you know, what this book is about is still going
on right now, and written by one of the leading
scientists who brought about this revolution. In this case, that
would be Jennifer DOWDNA, who is one of the main
figures in discovering the Crisper cast nine gene editing potential. So,
Jennifer down is a biochemist at you see, Berkeley. Previously
she had worked in research on RNA and ribisims. But

(15:09):
over the past decade she and colleagues both in her
Berkeley lab and UH at a few other institutions, including
work by Emmanuel Sharpentier and other colleagues around the world,
they discovered the potential of the bacterial Crisper CASS nine
machinery to change what's possible in gene editing, to make
gene editing a much more plausible economical proposition in many

(15:33):
more scenarios than previous gene insertion technologies. And so in
this book there there are a few different sections Down
and Sternberg. Oh, and Sternberg is one of her colleagues
as well as I think a student who had originally
worked under her. But they write about the discovery in
a few different ways. So there's like a scientific background
section where they explain the genetics and the microbiology that

(15:54):
underlies the discovery of the Crisper cast nine system. They
explain how it works, they tell thet biographical story of
the research efforts that made the discovery. But then a
lot of the book is them talking firsthand about trying
to grapple with the real world implications of this powerful
technology and trying to get the rest of the world

(16:14):
to slow down and consider the ethical issues with gene
editing before they say run off and start editing human
germ lines. And of course, when you edit the human
germ line, like the embryos or like the spurm ur
egg cells, you make changes that don't just change one person,
but will make changes that can be passed on to
all future generations that come after that person. And so

(16:36):
they've been trying to say, hey, wait, we should think
out the ethical issues that that come along with this
level of gene editing technology before we just go hog
wild and apply it everywhere. And it's really interesting hearing
dowbt On Sternberg wrestle with the the ethical pros and
cons in real time. Like she talks about how at
first she was just like, well, you know, I think

(16:57):
we've got to have a moratorium right now on germline
a thing, because you know, we we we haven't thought
through all the ethical considerations yet. But then she talks
about meeting with the families of people who suffered from
you know, horrible or deadly genetic diseases that said, no,
you know, like, if we've got the power to do
something that could have that could have saved my loved one,

(17:18):
or that could potentially save people like them in the future, yes,
of course you should do that now. And so there
are these powerful forces pulling in both directions. There's this
strong resistance and fear about what this this technology could
mean if it's applied to loosely or too quickly without
thinking about all of the consequences. But then there's also

(17:39):
this powerful interest on the part of people who are
like that this is life and death for me and
for people like me. Yeah, I mean, it's one of
those moral dilemmas where like you to say, let's just
have all of it, let's just let's just go at
it and just you know, see where the cards fall,
like that's that's irresponsible. But then the other hand is
to just say we're we're not gonna we're just gonna

(17:59):
shut an entire line of research here. We're not going
to we're not going to investigate this technology any further
when there's so much that could be could be gained
from it. Yeah, gene editing, I think, is another example
of something perhaps like sort of like nuclear technology, sort
of like artificial intelligence. We have technological power before we
understand exactly how that technological power can be used. And

(18:21):
part of the problem is that with all these technologies,
actually with nuclear with artificial intelligence, with gene editing, now,
especially because of Crisper CAST nine, the the they are
reaching a point of um dispersal basically where you can't
just say, well, only the people in this one ivory

(18:42):
tower can make the decision about whether to use these
technologies or not. Because one of the things that the
Crisper has brought along is that, you know, now gene
editing is becoming so easy that you know, she talks
about how with the right tools and the right know,
how a high school student could do gene editing. I mean,
that's literally the world we are entering now. And that's

(19:04):
like a terrifying power because you know, she talks about
how well, okay, so it's one thing to talk about, uh,
the precise types of gene editing made possible by Crisper
cast nine to say, knockout a gene that causes a
double recessive genetic disease that is debilitating or fatal and
saving lives that way versus On the other hand, this

(19:26):
could be used in so many ways that people haven't
even thought of yet. There's the idea of editing genes
to create designer pets, like the micro pig created in China. Um,
you know, where you can just alter a gene that
controls how growth hormone is dealt within the body, and
that one alteration suddenly creates an adult pig that's like

(19:46):
the size of a small dog. And so okay, well
maybe that doesn't sound so bad, but you could just
keep going like that. She imagines that what's to stop
people from trying to create dragons out of living organisms
and all that? Not necessarily like, oh, we should be
worried about the threat posed by the dragons, but like,
is it ethical to be intentionally altering nature? This way.

(20:08):
Then again, on the other hand, you've you've got the
issue of like, well, we already do sort of alternature
but in much clumsier way. Yes, again, as we we
often point out, look to the pug. That's the example.
But I guess the idea is that the pug took
considerably long or to produce, and you're talking about potentially
creating a pug um, you know, not over the course
of of generations and generations, but within like a single

(20:32):
generation create a dragon pug. Yeah. I mean, it's just
it's a really really thorny issue, and it's one that
we can't just stick our heads in the sand and
like pretend like, Okay, that sounds scary. I don't want
to think about because the future is coming. We have
to figure out how we're going to encounter it, how
we're going to deal with it morally, to how we're
going to uh, you know, arrange our laws to deal

(20:54):
with it. Yes, you can't escape this issue by not
thinking about it, because other people, whether they're things king
about it or not, are doing it. I mean, the
capability is there now, um, and so there's no putting
the genie back in the bottle. So I'm sorry I
used a cliche like that. Uh, there's no putting all
the what would be not a cliche, there's no stuffing

(21:14):
all of the listeria containing salad back in the bag.
We are we are in the gene editing era. Now
we're in the earliest days of it. But are we're
going to become more and more powerful and our abilities
at gene editing, we're going to become more and more
uh dispersed to more people, so you know, people can
just make decisions on their own about what to do.

(21:36):
And we should start to come up with a coherent
ethical framework for what we think about what is right
and what is not right to do in gene editing.
And I think we have not solved these problems yet.
We don't know what the right thing is yet. Yeah.
I I attended a panel at the World Science Festival
a few years back where some of the leading UH
experts in this in this field, we're talking about kind

(21:58):
of kind of basically the same issue, like what like,
how are we gonna going to to handle this, How
are we going to uh you know properly, how are
we going to try to you know, keep our wisdom
at a level to where we're not completely outpaced by
our power. And I guess in you know, in some
ways it's it's like other things like one can certainly
look to pharmaceuticals and drugs and in various other technologies

(22:22):
that are you know that either have been have you
been highly legislated from the beginning, or or you know,
laws come in place and uh and bodies are established
to deal with them early on. But but in in
other ways it does seem unlike anything that we've really
had to deal with before, Like it's far more specific
in um in changing who we are potentially yeah, and

(22:45):
changing other organisms sometimes without realizing like what the full
ramifications are that of that are because we mentioned the
pug earlier and the fact that the course humans have
have always been changing their environment. But like that his
sure you can look to the many catastrophic things we
have done in interacting with our environment. I mean, another

(23:06):
great example would be I think we've talked about this
on at some point in the show before, but Crisper
enabled gene drive technologies where you can drive certain genes
into wild populations of organisms. One of the most common
examples that has been floated here would be driving genes
into mosquitoes to either like white mosquitoes out by making

(23:27):
them sterile or creating like an all female population or
all male I don't remember which one, but so you
could do that, or trying to drive a gene into
mosquitoes that makes them resistant to the malaria parasite, which okay,
So on one hand it sounds like, yeah, malaria, you know,
mosquito boarn illnesses kill millions of people every year. You

(23:48):
of course you've got like an ethical responsibility to do that.
But have we fully thought about all the consequences. I mean,
there are a lot. There might be consequences that we
have not envisioned yet, and then there might be ways
that we're not properly appreciating the ethics of the consequences
that we do know how to predict. Right, and then
whereas you know, if such a decision, say with mosquito,

(24:10):
just to simplify things, like if the decision we're coming
from just a purely from from you know, a public
health standpoint, like the mosquito is one thing, but coming
from a conservation standpoint, the mosquito is potentially another, Like
you know, fact factoring in that a mosquito is also
food for for various species. It is a pollinator. Uh,
you know, it has a definite, widespread role in the environment,

(24:35):
and one has to be careful not to jeopardize that
because if it changes, if it moves, everything moves. But
it's also not hard to imagine, just based on what
we've already talked about, like about the idea of deploying
certain types of tailored gene drives as weapons of mass
environmental destruction, like if you were a terrorist and you

(24:56):
just want, you know, something like that, or back in
the in the more human in health domain, there are
serious questions about like, Okay, so it's less controversial when
you just want to talk about single point gene mutations
to cure a genetic disease or something. But what if
people more generally start thinking, there are a few ways

(25:16):
I would like to improve my genome, you know, or
maybe you can't improve your genome as an adult, but
to improve the genome of my child and improve in
quotation marks, you know, right, yeah, I mean, because we
get down to the like the basic imperfection of of
the species, you know, like we are we are not
perfect beings that you know, we're drawn out of Holy

(25:37):
butter or something, you know. I mean, we're uh, you know,
we're we're a creature that evolved into this state and
they're there are various design issues with say, the way
we walk and you know, among other things. So like
if you start, if you start trying to fix everything
that is wrong, like where where do you what do
you stop? Yes? And what counts is wrong? I mean,

(25:58):
it would just be a It would come down to
individual preferences and what medical science allows us to do.
And it's going to be more and more all the time.
So this is I think an incredibly important, incredibly thorny
issue that I think we're not ready for, and we
need to be doing more to try to get ready
to deal with this anyway. But but this is a

(26:20):
great place to start with that. And the book again
is called A Krack in Creation by Jennifer DOWDNU and
Samuel Sternberg. Excellent. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break,
I think, and when we come back, we're going to
roll through some additional bits of summer reading recommendation. Thank you,
all right, we're back, all right, Robert, So I think

(26:41):
you had a recommendation coming up next, right, Yeah, So
every year, at least recently, I've been trying to include
some sort of children's book because since I have now
a seven year old, a lot of the reading that
I do, uh is bedtime stories, you know, and you know,
we've we've probably celebrate reading in our household. But a

(27:02):
lot of the books that are you know, some of
the books that I read or you know, maybe not
that great or they're forgettable, or they're fine for a
seven year old, but they don't have much of an
impact on an adult reader. But I have a particular
book here that I picked up. I don't even know
how it came into our house, possibly via a lending
library and then possibly like I may have purchased it

(27:23):
or you know, obtained it from a library because it's
a former library copy. I one of these where like
the you know, the scanning bar has been sharpied out
and so forth. But it is a book titled First
Painter by Katherine Laski with paintings by Rocko Babiera, and
it's from two thousand and it is a book, a

(27:46):
children's book, beautifully illustrated children's book about Neolithic people and
Neolithic art um and it's UH for stars, I just
want to read just a section of it, to give
you just a glimpse, just a taste of of of
its uh, of its of its poetry. Quote the moon

(28:08):
of the Singing Grass has come and gone three times,
and still there is no rain. Babies have been born
and grown into little walkers and never seen rain. My
name is miss Who. I have lived for ten moons
of the Singing Grass, and now I am beginning to
forget the rain. It's sound, it's shape, and how the
water clouds gather like herds of Willie Mammoth's in the east.

(28:30):
My people are hungry, they are starving. First the grass died,
then the animals. Now us. So that that's the just
the first page from the book, and it is the
story of Mischu, of this Uh, this young girl in
this neolithic dribe, whose whose people are are plagued by famine,
and she is she realizes that she has to do

(28:51):
what what women in her family have done for generations
before her. She has to set out to a sacred
cave and she has to, through the creation of art,
call back the reins and bring rain and food back
to her people. And it's uh, it's it's beautifully written,
beautifully illustrated and written. It really gets into this uh.

(29:13):
You know, it gets to some of the questions indeed,
you know, larger questions I guess, like what is art
and you know, what what role does it play and
in the human experience, but also just like the mystery
of neolithic painting and uh and some of the theories
regarding it. Like it's one of these books that at
the end of the author, you know, has a bibliography
where she cites, uh, you know, about a dozen different

(29:34):
sources where you know she really researched, you know, the
the Shamans of prehistory for example, or you know, archaeology
of early Man, and there there's an insightful afterward about
her process here. So it's it's one of these books
that I highly recommend for anybody who has a you know,
a young reader in their household, or even if you don't,
if you just if you're just excited by a topic

(29:55):
like this, it's worth picking up. Katherine Lasky also, by
the way, you're not familiar with her, she's she's a
very well known children's author. She wrote The Guardians of
the hul book series. She also wrote The Night Journey,
which is about a Jewish family's escape from Russian pogroms
of the early twentieth century. And she also wrote True
North about the underground railroad. She's extremely prolific, uh and uh.

(30:19):
And so this book is it's still out there. You
should be able to pick up a copy or at
least pick up a used copy of it somewhere. Check
it out of your library. But I highly recommend it
touches on some of the topics we've discussed on the
show before as well. Yeah, I was just flipping through
it earlier before we started, and some of the illustrations
are very beautiful. There's like there's one where somebody's looking

(30:39):
up through a crack in a cave at somebody standing
above looking in. Yeah, that the sort of the the
whole plot line where she's she has to descend into
the cave and it's this you know, dangerous dark place
and has to find this this place where people in
her tribe have gone to create the art that you
know that has this this magical power. So that's the
children's selection of fourth for today's episode. Oh what have

(31:02):
you got for us? Next? Joe? Al right, next is
back to another nonfiction book. This one is a book
by the British science writer Philip Ball published in ten
called Beyond Weird Again. I'm not going to read what
comes after the colon. The title is Beyond Weird. Now.
We've talked about some of Philip Ball's work on the
show before. He's written a lot about physics and chemistry. Robert.

(31:23):
I think we read a good article by him published
in Chemistry World about the supposed chemistry of the tomb
of Chin Chi Huong, the first Chinese import. But this book,
Beyond Weird is a book about quantum mechanics. And you
may think you know, I've read about quantum mechanics before.
It was very surprising at first, but I know all
this stuff now. If you're feeling like that, I think

(31:44):
you should reconsider and give this book a shot. I'm
pretty sure this is the best book on quantum physics
that I've read. A lot of writings on quantum physics
sort of acknowledge the apparent weirdness in the disconnect between
the uncertain, probabilistic world of quantum mechanics and the solid,
factual world that we seem to observe at our macroscopic scale,

(32:06):
and then they just sort of wave the hand and
move on right, Like it's very weird. Isn't that very
weird and interesting? Now let's get on with other stuff.
But beyond weird. Instead, basically it just gazes straight into
this apparent weirdness. It looks into the core of the
black hole. Uh not literally, it's not about black holes.
But I mean, I mean, you know, it's just like
it's like staring into the sun. It's kind of unbearable,

(32:29):
but it's fascinating for that reason. Tries to grapple with
the supposed weirdness directly. It of course deals with a
lot of common misconceptions about quantum mechanics that there's a
whole section of like it's not exactly right to say
that X is why about quantum mechanics And I'm like, oh,
you have said that um and but but the the
way he explains, uh, why these mis misconceptions are perpetuated

(32:54):
is very interesting. It also deals with the war between
the rival interpretations of of the theory of quantum mechanics,
which could mostly be thought of as ways of attempting
to resolve the apparent weirdness of quantum reality um. But
he looks at it with a kind of clarity and
focus that makes the book in my in my view,
totally unique and worthwhile I haven't read anything like this before.

(33:15):
It's really challenging, really truly mind bending, and I already
want to read it again. What do you feel how
would you recommend this to the just sort of the
average reader. Do you feel like someone needs to already
be somewhat versed in quantum mechanics, Did they have read
like should they be like a regular reader of quantum
mechanics related topics in science journalism? No, And I'd say

(33:37):
it's at the intermediate level. You know, it's not it's
not a book that's going to be super approachable to
like kids or people who don't know anything about physics.
And but at the same time, it's not you know,
it doesn't require you to be a scientist obviously. It's
written for a popular audience, you know, So it's one
of those middle world books. It doesn't assume you have
any kind of specialized knowledge. It explains everything to you,

(33:58):
but it also is dealing with, you know, the most
complex subject matter in the world, probably literally so, so
it's not as approachable as some other books, but it
is a really, really Uh. I mean, it's a book
that captures the attention because it drives home the fact
like if you have read books about quantum physics before,
you felt the weirdness back then, and then you're like

(34:21):
you got used to it, and you're like, Okay, you know,
I know all this stuff now. I don't know which
interpretation is correct, but you know, I'm basically familiar with
the weirdness. It doesn't bother me anymore. This will make
it bother you again. That's a great thing. Like it
really really gazes directly into the source of of how
strange this feels to us, and it uh, it forces

(34:44):
you to deal with it, and you know, it points
out the fact that like this is what reality is.
I mean, quantum physics is one of the best theories
in all of science. It's totally predictive. We use it
for all kinds of stuff. It's not like you can
just pretend it doesn't exist and move on. I mean,
is telling something about telling us something fundamental about reality.
But what it's telling us, of course, is still up

(35:05):
for debate or how we should interpret what it's telling us.
And you've got to grapple with it if you want
to understand what you think reality is, just as a
kind of teaser. A lot of the definitions that the
ball ends up dealing with then and maybe seeming to
favor somewhat in the book are definitions of reality where
that that say, the most fundamental aspects of reality or

(35:28):
maybe not are maybe not facts and things, but probability
and information. Interesting. So do you foresee any future episodes
of stuff about your mind related to this content? Oh? Possibly? Yeah?
I mean um quantum physics is funny because I was
trying to think about how to put this. It's like

(35:49):
it's something that it's hard to do episodes about without
a visual aid, because you really need a visual aid
in order to correctly conjure the inappropriate misleading metaph wars
that you will ultimately use to try to explain the concept.
I mean, you know, like explanations of quantum mechanics often
fail at multiple levels at the same time, and some

(36:11):
of those failures you just sort of must be resigned
to them. Is it kind of you have to Is
it kind of like you have to have like an
incorrect version of what it is before you can like
refine that version. Like it's sort of I mean, yeah,
part of the problem is that, like quantum, quantum reality
is dealing with phenomenon that we have no analogies for whatsoever.

(36:32):
And so when you try to create an analogy to
illustrate it, you inherently bring along a lot of baggage
that is misleading. So you've got a few choices, like
you can try to picture it, which might give you
a sense of security because you're like, Okay, now I'm
trying to picture it, but now you've introduced a lot
of stuff that's sort of leading you off in the

(36:52):
wrong direction and causing you to partially misunderstand it. So
you can just back off and say, well, let's just
not even try to picture it. Let's just look at
them path and say, literally, what does it say? But
then it doesn't feel like it's real. It doesn't feel
like it makes sense in the It's not gonna work
that way for everybody. Like certain mathematical minds are going
to maybe you know, take that approach a lot more

(37:13):
easier than the rest of us. Uh, And it just
hammers home the fact that, like the quantum world is real,
it's maybe more real than the macroscopic world that we're
used to. Uh. Maybe A good way to think about
it is our ability to picture things in the macroscopic
world is the illusion. It's an illusion that is our
best way of dealing with quantum reality as it presents

(37:37):
at the scale of our bodies. But it doesn't really
tell us what reality is. It's just sort of our
best approximation. Well, speaking of approximations of reality, um m my,
my next pick is another work of fiction, but it
is a short work of fiction. Uh So, if anyone
out there is like, I don't have time to read
an entire novel or you know, a lengthy book, well,

(37:59):
the good news is that this is a short story.
It is by Peter Watts, who we've mentioned on the
show before, and the short story is titled A Word
for Heathens and it's collected in the short story collection
from Watt's titled Beyond the Rift, which which is itself
a very cool little collection of tales, including it includes

(38:22):
his version of John Carpenter's The Thing retold from the
point of view of the thing which, in and of itself,
yes things to us, Yeah, And then that in and
in and of itself is a is a wonderful bit
of like biologically contemplative science fiction that I think it's

(38:42):
is certainly must read for anyone who is, you know,
a fan of of the thing h and also you know,
is inquisitive about you know, the nature of like an
alien consciousness, like what would that be? What would the
mind of the thing be? Like? Um, But this particular
story from that election A word for Heathens is about

(39:04):
an electro magnetism obsessed the ocracy that invokes the spiritual
experience of God via like god helmets and other technology.
But they also use electromagnetic technology for like trains and stuff,
and I consider like the holy power of their empire. Yeah,
so it's like it's Persinger's God helmet, but a crusade

(39:25):
for that religion, right, and then the Heathen religion that
they are so opposed to and or like fighting tooth
and Nail is is a society that uses psychedelic mushrooms
to invoke a spiritual sensation of of God or the divine.
But I think you could just look at that as

(39:45):
any like a version of natural religion. It's like the
technological religion has a crusade against the natural religion because
the natural religion is outside the true church, which is
a technological uh infrastructure. Yeah, so it's um, yeah, it's
it's a wonderful set up. And then it's just such
a stunning and complete short story. Like it's one of

(40:06):
these these these rare short stories where I read it
and it leaves me wanting more, but knowing I probably
shouldn't have more. Like it's like the perfect dessert, you know,
where you're just like, I'm completely satisfied. Uh, you know,
part of me would would would want the part of
and part of me does want like the expanded novelization
of this this world from Watts. But on the other hand,

(40:27):
like the short story accomplishes everything, and I don't want
to give away the there's some twists and turns in
there because you basically, you know, fall into the perspective
of one of the crusaders and then you know, some
things happen, uh that that causes his his perception of
things to to to to switch around. But it's it's

(40:49):
it's a wonderful, wonderful little short story. It would make
for an amazing episode of say Black Mirror, if they
ever wanted to do something that was a little more like, uh,
broader and more fantastic. I think it could it could
we could certainly fit into that world. Just a fair
warning on that. Like much of Peter watts work, I uh,
I do recall it being fairly disturbing. So yeah, it's

(41:11):
it's it's disturbing. It's for adults, So it's for adults. Yeah,
I mean, it's not as disturbing as some other things
he's written. But but but it's but yeah, but I
do want to say it's it's extremely good. If you're
looking for a really thought provoking short story, this one
is worth checking out. Absolutely agree. Yeah, alright, and Joe,
I believe you have one more selection before we uh

(41:32):
summon our guests. Well, I just want because I think
last year we sort of started a tradition of also
just talking about what we're reading now. So I already
mentioned the Stephen Graham Jones novel that I'm reading, which
is very weird and engrossing in its own right. But
I'm also reading another nonfiction book right now, which was
I think I think I started reading this because of
a recommendation from a listener a while back, but it's

(41:53):
been a while so I'm not positive about that. But
this one is called The Poison Squad by Deborah Blum,
published in two thousand eighteen. Um not quite finished with it,
but I thought I should mention it because it is
absolutely disgusting in a profound way. So it's a historical
account of the campaign for the earliest comprehensive food and

(42:16):
drug purity laws in the United States, and it centered
around a major figure in this process, which was the
American chemist Harvey Washington Wiley, who was one of the
most important researchers and crusaders from the late eighteen hundreds
through the early nineteen hundreds in this world of food
purity and food additives, and in this period in the
United States. According to Blum, you know, there was a

(42:38):
very little reason to believe that if you bought a
packaged food product or drug product, that it would actually
consist entirely or even mostly, or even at all of
the food or drug that was identified on the label.
Like whatever it did contain might have undergone maybe no,
maybe very little testing for safety. According to Bloom, there's

(43:01):
this whole thing about milk. She talks so like, if
you bought milk in the late eighteen hundreds, you might
be very likely to get bacterially contaminated milk. Thinned out
with unclean water colored like so the thinning it out
to stretch the milk further would give it a gross color,
might look gray. So then it would get colored with

(43:22):
chalk or something else to get rid of the weird color. Uh.
And then to simulate cream floating on top, which happens
with natural milk, you might get pure a calf brains
in there. And then because there's no refrigeration to keep
the milk fresh, it might have preservatives like formaldehyde or
borax um and so. And also at the time there
were just these problems with like candies and other color

(43:44):
enhanced foods containing dies a lot of diyes at the time,
or cold tar dies. But then also there would be
candy diyes made of arsenic or lead compounds that would
just sometimes kill children. Um. The parts about spices in
this book are hilarious, as like pepper might have a
significant or even majority constituency of floor sweepings and ground

(44:06):
up bits of charred rope. Coffee to coffee might be
what was it? I think maybe it's like charred sawdust
with all these additives. I mean, people were selling things
as food that was not food and was in many
cases not safe, and in a lot of cases there
just weren't comprehensive regulations that would prevent UH sellers from

(44:30):
doing that. And so so far in this book, one
thing I would say is that, uh, one thing that
I kind of wish is different is I wish it
dealt more with like modern scientific evaluations of additives of
the period. So we get like a lot of fascinating
stories about like crazy, crazy sounding preservatives and things like
formaldehyde and milk which people called himbalmed milk. Um, but

(44:52):
so far not a lot of sense of exactly like
how dangerous exactly these types of additives would have been
at the concentrations they were used by like modern food
safety experts, and not done yet. Maybe something like that
is coming up later on. But um. But even without
the context of like modern scientific analysis, it is a
fascinating and disgusting historical tale. And it's interesting reading about

(45:14):
the parallels to modern times because it's it's very familiar
the way that the food and drug manufacturers back then
fought against regulation, you know, saying that these attempts to
regulate their products were unconscionable, unacceptable attacks on liberty in
the free market. You know, this has given me a
wonderful idea. So in the past, on Thanksgiving, we've tried

(45:36):
to do American Thanksgiving, we do a dangerous Foods episode,
and we've kind of in the I think all the
episodes in the past, we've mainly focused on like naturally
occurring food stuffs, be it like a fish or you know,
or some sort of you know, fun our floor, you
know that that we consume and the dangers of consuming
those things or that may have incorrectly been perceived to

(45:57):
be dangerous. Yes, so but maybe we should this this
is where we get another dangerous foods episode, or at
least one more where we talk about we we focus
on industrial food products of the past. So maybe maybe
look for that this Thanksgiving from stuff to blow your mind.
All right, Well, on that note, we're gonna take a
quick break and when we come back, we're gonna introduce

(46:18):
our guest. Thank thank Okay, we're back. It's time to
jump in with our interview with our guests, which we
actually recorded before the episode. So if anything sounds out
of order like we've gone through a time warp, we
we did. Yes, but this is going to be Christian Sayer,
former co host Stuff to Blow your Mind, current host

(46:40):
of the super Context podcast. We called him up, we said, hey,
we'd love to have you back on the show, uh,
to discuss summer reading, just like the old days. And
he said yes, and so we're gonna summon him onto
the show right now. What's going on, Christian? Hi, I
am talking to you all the way from Portland, Oregon,

(47:03):
and you are currently in Atlanta, Georgia. Technology is cool. Huh. Yeah.
So before we got on Mike here, Christian was telling
us about how he's recording from a murder basement. Yeah. Yeah,
I moved into a house in northeast Portland and the
basement is a lot like Buffalo Bill's house in Silence
of the Lambs. You just go downstairs and then there's

(47:24):
just endless hallways and eventually instead of coming to a
pit in the floor, uh, there's my podcast studio. Well
it looks like a pretty cozy pit to me. Yeah,
it's it's it's wonderful down here. I'm making it work.
I found a hobo spider down here the other day.
That's my only concern. Oh, were those the ones with
the huge legs? Yeah, they're really big. Uh. And it

(47:46):
seems debatable whether they're poisonous or not. I don't think
they wouldn't kill you or anything. It's not like a
brown rec loose, but I don't want to get bitten
by one. Fair enough, alright, So it seems like you
are going to share some book recommendations for Death of
the Summer along alongside ours today. Yeah, this is the
late summer reading. It happens every year we say we're

(48:08):
going to do summer reading and then pushing it later
and later Death of Summer, yea, the death Rattle of Summer.
There here are some books, okay, Yeah, I mean I'm
always reading, as you dudes know, and I had to
whittle it down to three things. I used to do
this when I was on the show with you guys.

(48:28):
I used to try to make it be one nonfiction book,
one fiction book, and then I would always throw a
graphic novel in there for good Matcher. Well, that's a
fair shake. I don't think we're going to do it
exactly that way today, but but yeah, that that that
helps us cover the range, especially since I don't think
either you or I are doing graphic novels this year.
I know I read like one one good graphic novel.

(48:48):
But you've sent it to me. Yeah, that's right, and
when I was done, I sent it to you. So yeah,
it's this graphic novel called Dull Margaret and it is
written by the actor Jim Broadbent. Oh, the art is
by an artist named Dix d i X and it's
published by Fantagraphics. I believe um, But yeah, I'm fascinated

(49:10):
by just the idea of a Jim Broadbent written graphic novel.
One of my favorite Jim Broadbent bits is in a
Hot Fuzz when he's running away and he makes the
lion roar. Jim Broadbent is so good. I think you
were actually telling me about this. Robert she said, I
had no idea he'd make a great actor, but uh,

(49:31):
of course he makes a great actor, would make a
great writer of graphic novels as well. But he he's
one of my favorite actors because he's like a human
version of the Chamberlin's skex Is from the Dark Crystal.
You know, his his entire face is that sound. But
he probably shouldn't diverge too much. But are you guys
watching the Netflix prequel? I haven't started yet. We're gonna

(49:55):
family um, oh, Simon Pegg, Yeah, I heard he's sort
of a standout. He's he's the Chamberlain new Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
I believe that the previous actor died many years ago.
But does he do the the the high pitched oh yeah,
oh yeah, definitely. It's it's a highly prominent Um. Yeah,
I recommend it. It's good so far. I'm only a
couple of episodes into it. But we're not here to

(50:17):
talk about television, guys. We're here to talk about books.
So I'll tell you about the graphic novel that I
selected that I've been reading this summer. It's called Schangra
Law and it is a science fiction graphic novel uh
from Europe. It is published by Ankara Editions, and it's written,
drawn and colored by Matteo Bablei or maybe it's mattau

(50:42):
Bable I can't really pronounce. Great. Yeah, I believe it's
like the French version of that um and it came
out in s And this is the most stuff to
blow your mind book I've read this summer, so I
definitely wanted to share it with you guys. Um, First
of all, the art, this guy's art is insane, like

(51:03):
he is this meticulous Draftsman, if you look up images
from it, you'll see that he does these impeccable backgrounds
that are all in really well detailed perspective because the
whole thing takes place on a space station that's orbiting
Earth and its way in the future, and uh so

(51:25):
you just get these wonderful long shots of people walking
down these like endless corridors on this massive space station.
I'm looking up some art from it right now. So
is the space station Does it kind of have some
traditional architecture style, Like it doesn't look like a space
ship but more like, I don't know, old buildings in
the sky. Yeah. Inside, it's designed to be like an

(51:47):
ecosystem for the human race. So the plot of the book,
while the premise of the book is that there is
no longer inhabitable space on the planet Earth. People can't
live up there anymore, so they've all moved to this
space station and yeah, everything it's it's very kind of
like Blade Runner inside, like the architecture and what they

(52:08):
have for technology. But it is a pretty heavy criticism
of our current modern technology in that the culture on
the space station is all run by this big corporation
that owns the space station, and they are also the
corporation that makes like all the phones and gadgets and

(52:29):
stuff that the people have to distract themselves with on
board the ship. Uh. In the main plot is about
this I guess astronaut is the best term for him.
He's a scientist who the corporation basically hires to try
to figure out a way to create a a like

(52:49):
alter alternate human race that is better than human and
is capable of functioning near the sun, living near the sun,
and uh, he finds out that he's kind of a
pawn in this whole game. And the other thing that's
really interesting about this world is that there are no
animals on board the ship because all the animals died

(53:13):
in whatever happened on Earth, so it's assumed to be
like climate change disaster and uh, but there are these
things called animoids that are human like, they're humanoids, but
they have the features of old animals. So there's like
dog animoids, cat animoids, I think there's like a fox
one um. And they are treated like the lower class

(53:36):
on this space station. So the humans are all kind
of placated with their cell phones and then basically they
take out all their aggression on these animoids and long
story short, like the main character Scott finds out that
things aren't the way that he thought they were. Uh,
it's just it is in an amazing piece of work.

(53:58):
It's just this big, massive story. The artwork is just
I mean, I can't imagine how many hours went into
drawing this thing. It's gorgeous. I can't recommend it enough.
And it's it's the perfect kind of science fiction in
that it's really about today's problems with society told through

(54:18):
the lens of this like you know, far reaching sci
fi future. And is this a self contained, like single
graphic novel? Is this a series? My understanding is itself contained?
I have not seen anything about there being more stories
in this. Uh. Sort of what you were talking about
reminds me of the satirical role in the the implicit

(54:39):
criticism of like capitalism that's in like Total Recall, where
you know, Cohagen controls the entire environment on Mars, where
you know, like it's a business, but it's through this
business is the only way that you can get air
that you breathe, and that that's always been an interesting
potential I think of science fiction that you and like

(55:00):
by removing people from Earth, you create these scenarios where
whatever power, whatever the power structure is, this government or
this business or whatever, controls the entire environment in which
you can survive, whether that's a colony on another planet
that's otherwise uninhabitable or a space station like in this
graphic novel um And I feel like it kind of

(55:20):
highlights the ways that we sort of have this illusion
that like, you know, well, we're we're sort of free
on Earth because like if we don't want to depend
on governments and corporations, we could retreat to nature and
survive and you know, we could just breathe the air
and live off the land. I mean, whether that's actually
feasible for a modern person is I guess more debatable,

(55:40):
or you know, whether it's feasible like to actually that
you could actually escape a society and you know, like
in the developed world. But yeah, but what's a pure
form of or more of an impure form of disruption
than destroying the environment or taking humanity and moving into
a place where there is no sustainable environment for our speech.
And we've already partially done that, I mean in multiple ways,

(56:02):
we've like sort of destroyed our ability to just like
retreat to nature and say no, I opt out. But
like this is taking that to the ultimate extreme. If
you're on a space station or if you're on a
colony on an uninhabitable planet, you literally can't opt out.
It's just your survival is totally dependent on whoever owns
whatever this environment is. Yeah, you guys are heading on

(56:23):
exactly the heaviest theme in this story. Uh slight spoilers.
This isn't going to like ruin anything for anybody. But
the pivot point in the story is when the protagonist
finds out that the corporation has been lying to them
for at least a century now and that Earth is inhabitable.
This is they've been keeping them on the space station

(56:45):
so they can keep order and control. This is the
same twist. I don't mean to diminish it because this
does look great, but it's a solid twist. It's the
exact same twist as Highlander to the Quickening. I mean,
of course, it's it's well worth copying in a graphic
novel from France. Of course Highland or two would be
the inspiration for for the levels of the shield are normal. Yeah,

(57:12):
but Basically they find out like, oh, we could have
been living on Earth the whole time, and they that
makes them even more conscious of how they've been controlled
and placated and uh and uh basically, you know, society
starts to unravel from there. Well, that sounds really interesting.
I kind of want to check that out. What have
you gotten next, Christian? Let's see, I'm going to save

(57:34):
the best for last. I my fiction pick for this
summer is something that I think some people think of
as a classic, but I had never read it before.
So I took the time to sit down and read
Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle nineteen
sixty two mystery novel by her. Uh yeah, just last year,

(57:56):
one of the books I recommended. Also, I guess I
was hesitant about it be is it's a classic, I
assume a lot of people have already read it. But
the Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I read
that for the first time last year's phenomenal, phenomenal ghost story. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. Um,
I read Haunting of Hill House and the Lottery like

(58:16):
a lot of people in uh, you know, English classes
in high school, and then I think I read a
Hunting of Hill House in college, but I never got
around to this one, and everybody said to me, oh,
that's the best book by her. It's you know, it's
heralded as being this real exemplar version of weird fiction.
And so I wanted to figure out, you know what,

(58:39):
what it was all about. Why why did everyone celebrate it?
And so I finally sat down and read it. And
it is a weird little story. It's not what I expected,
especially based on reading her other stuff, but it's it's Um,
I definitely recommend it. Um. The do you want me
to tell you, guys the plot of this book? I
haven't read this one. I'n't ready. Okay, I'll try not

(59:01):
to go all the way through. I'll just give you
the introductory plot. Um. So, there are these two sisters,
Marrakat and Constance, and I believe they live in Vermont,
in a small town in Vermont. It's based on the
same town that Shirley Jackson was living in at the
time that she wrote this. And the backstory is that

(59:21):
their entire family was poisoned to death a few years
previous to this, uh, and they were the only survivors
as well. As their uncle Julian, and Julian was poisoned
but not enough to kill him, so now he's like
he's bound to a wheelchair, and he also has some
like pretty significant memory problems. But the girls and Julian

(59:46):
basically stay in this house all the time, and it's
ultimately this exploration of a gore phobia. I think Shirley
Jackson was struggling with that at the time, and she
felt like an outsider in this small town in Vermont,
and so she was trying to process those feelings through
this book. So Constance is a total of groa fo
never leaves the house. Julian can't leave the house because

(01:00:08):
he's bound by a wheelchair. So Marrakat, who's the youngest,
she's like seventeen years old, she's the only one who
ever leaves the grounds of the house. She usually just
goes to town and like picks up their groceries and
brings them back. And everybody in the town hates the people,
the main characters of the book. They hate them because

(01:00:28):
they're wealthy and because they live in like a big,
nice house, but they also hate them because they've never
solved the mystery as to who killed the rest of
their family with the poison Christian. Have you played the
the card game Gloom, because because this this sounds like
you could have easily along with the Adams family and
other you know, obvious references, could have been the inspiration

(01:00:48):
for this. Oh no, I haven't played that. I just
got a board game called gloom Haven. But I don't
know if they're connected or not. I don't. This one
has more of aston Edward Gory kind of style to it.
But the whole premises that you you build. It's like
a kind of a it's not quite a deck building game,
I guess, but it's a your building. You're putting this
family on the table there, and you just want horrible

(01:01:09):
things to happen to them, and whoever whoever manages to
like kill off their family first wins. But there are
all these little details in the cards about all the
horrible things that have happened, like the tragic nature of
the family and the gothic nature of the family. But
but it reminds me a lot of what you're describing here,
Like this family could very well be played on the

(01:01:30):
table and in a game of Gloom. Yeah. Absolutely, it
sounds like if it wasn't influenced by by this, then
maybe it was influenced by something that Shirley Jackson had
influenced because she's so she's such a like strong presence
and horror and mystery fiction, I think as a as
an influence. Um, and it's yeah, it's it's like the

(01:01:51):
Haunting of Hill House, Joe, and that it's very internal
and it's a lot about the thoughts going through the
main characters heads, uh and things. Basically, you know, the
conflict point that caused things to change is that a
cousin of theirs appears out of nowhere and moves in
with them and wants to change things, wants to take

(01:02:11):
advantage of the family fortune, and uh, you can see
a running theme here. Then things fall apart. So oh man,
that the Haunting of Hill House also has a great
like freeloader guy kind of character. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Um.
Haunting of Hillhouse is fascinating. Have you looked into those

(01:02:33):
adaptations of it? No, I've actually been meaning to do
a double feature one night to watch the nineteen sixty
three film and then watch the nineteen or whenever it
was the one with Katherine Zada Jones and Liam Neeson.
I think that's the only one I've seen it had
Owen Wilson, Yeah, Owen Wilson, Yeah, I've heard it's bad,
but I kind of want to see it anyway because
I love that like late nineties c g I horror phase.

(01:02:56):
It's so it just does not hold up at all all,
Like it's it's not as good as Thirteen Ghosts. That's
how bad it is. Well, that's a good point. I
actually like Thirteen Ghosts. Um. But I would point out
that the trajectory of the adaptations of Haunting of Hillhouse
have like sort of weaved into what's great about Shirley

(01:03:17):
Jackson and then weaved out of it. Um. The early
one is great because you never see anything. Oh, it's
all done through what's behind the door. The door bulges,
you hear scary noises on the other side of the door,
but everything's left to your imagination and then you're right Joe.
In the nineties version, they just pulled out all the
stops with c g I and there's like shape shifting

(01:03:39):
statues and monsters and stuff in this Haunted house. It's ridiculous,
but it's like the Mortal Kombat movie level of c
g I. Yeah, yeah, exactly, UM, not for lack of trying,
though the performances in it are great. What's her name,
Lily Taylor plays the protagonist. Um. And then there's that
most recent season of the TV show Haunt, The Haunting

(01:04:02):
of Hill House on Netflix. Oh yeah, I haven't watched this,
but I've heard it was only loosely based on the novel. Yeah,
that's exactly right, So it's not connected to the novel.
It has similar themes to the novel, but it's not
the same plot at all. But I think you can
see in that an attempt to merge the two things together,
the like dreadful terror of the first one. And then

(01:04:25):
there is a little bit of c G I like
boo jump scare type stuff in the UM TV series
as well. In the version of The Haunting of Hill House,
I read there was actually an introduction or a preface
or something that's some kind of piece of writing beforehand
by Germo del Toro where he talked about his appreciation

(01:04:46):
for the novel. And I remember it's been a little
while now, but I vaguely recalled that he talked about, UM,
the way that the house itself is written of like
a predator in the natural world, the way that it functions,
like a lion on the savannah or something that it
tries to isolate and pick off weak members of the group. Yeah, yeah,

(01:05:09):
I remember all that. That's great. Yeah, that's a really
smart observation on his part. Um there is there are
adaptations of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. In fact,
just last year, I think a film version of it
came out and it stars Sebastian stand Tisa Farmisia, Alexandra

(01:05:30):
di Dario, and Crispin Gover Glover plays. Okay, yeah, I
have not seen it. I'm hoping that they didn't inject
it with as much c g I as went into
the nineties hunting Ville House. But yeah, it looks from
watching the trailer, it looks very faithful to the book.
Well I gotta read that one too, now, all right,
so you have one more pick to share with us.

(01:05:51):
What what do you have and what is the classification
on this one? All right? I saved the best for
last because I know that this is something that you
guys are going to be excited about. Because maybe the
listeners aren't aware, but the three of us gentlemen used
to sit together in a studio. I think it might
be the same studio you're sitting in now and talk
to the audience of stuff to blow your mind over

(01:06:11):
Facebook every Friday. Yes, and this was a couple of
years ago. We would uh, we would frame it around
trailers for horror movies that we're connected to, the topics
that we had, you know, been covering on the show
that week, and one that always came up. We all
agree that we love this movie. Is They Live, John Carpenters.

(01:06:34):
They Live. So I got this book called They Live.
A Visual and Cultural Awakening and it is. It's this
amazing collection put together by Rough Trade Publications, And you
can order the book through Mondo, although I think it
might be sold out now. They like, I got like

(01:06:56):
a second printing of it. They like every year release
a couple of copies of it. Um and it is.
It looks like a magazine like it looks like a big,
thick like variety magazine type thing, because it's designed to
look like the magazines on newsstand in They Live. So
the front of it just says obey and big letters

(01:07:16):
on it um. But inside it is it's a it's
a proper book with just a bunch of content in
it that's all related to the movie and trying to
dissect the movie and better understand it. So Uh. It
includes the original short story that the movie is based on,
as well as the comic book adaptation that they also

(01:07:38):
based it on, both of which were written by a
guy named Rain Nelson. And then there are articles examining
how things work in the movie, like um, gender roles
or portrayals of capitalism, and they're written by people like
John Grant, Slaboy, Jack Shepherd, Fairy, Roger Luckhurst, and someone

(01:07:58):
named brandalism Um. Some of those may be familiar to Shepherd, Fairies,
the guy who made the obey stickers. Uh. Does anybody
explain the wrestling match in the middle of the movie.
I want to scholarly dissertation on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There is quite a bit of conversation I believe in
uh John Grant's piece. I'm not sure which piece it was,

(01:08:20):
but they do talk about that that epic wrestling match. Well, now,
to be clear, it is a It is a It
is a standard fisticuffs fight that has some wrestling moves
incorporated into it. No, I think it is notable for
how long it goes on like notable for its length,
but but it's it's more like they're just a few
spots that are incorporated into the action, you know, clearly

(01:08:41):
because Roddy Roddy Piper is the star exactly. Y yeah,
I mean just like every time you think the fight's over,
it starts up again. And that's the quality it has.
That's like a wrestling match. And the I think one
of the things that stands out about it is that
this is the This is an example of a fight
in a Western motion pick sure, in which the fight
actually tells a story. And you you see much more

(01:09:05):
of that in um in like Hong Kong cinema, it's
in Japanese cinema, etcetera. But in Western cinema, especially in
recent decades, it's it's all about just you know, slash
cuts and a kind of a feeling of a fight
happening without like the story of the fight. Yes, I agree,
I hate most action movies because most action movies are

(01:09:26):
boring because most fighting in movies is photographed in a
way that is dramatically totally static, like there there's nothing
really at stake other than like, I guess somebody's gonna wine,
so in in in to whatever degree the fight and
They Live resembles a wrestling match, I think it's I mean,
obviously it's part of it is because there are wrestling

(01:09:47):
moves roddy roddy pipers there, but professional wrestling is a
a fictional uh fight, like a physical performance that that
should tell a story. So yeah, yeah, except it's it's
a fight. Uh So I'm curious that you have what
do wee they go into into this, like who who

(01:10:09):
is responsible for that that battle appearing like it does
in the film. So one of the essays in here,
I think it might be Craig Oldham's essay, Um, not sure,
but one of the essays talks about that fight scene
as being this great example of how difficult it is
to pull yourself away from ideology and that um, if

(01:10:31):
they Live is showing you what ideology is when you
put on the sunglasses. Then when rowdy roddy Piper goes
to Keith David and he says, hey, put on these glasses,
and Keith David, no matter what, doesn't want to put
those sunglasses on, to the point that he fist fights
his friend for ten minutes in an alleyway uh. That
Their Their argument is is like, look, this is proof

(01:10:54):
that it's extremely difficult to pull yourself out of, you know,
the culture that you live within and see it for
something else. Um. And and that the fight is an
example of that that, like the whole thing is Keith
David is is fighting against kind of his instinct to
he knows there's something else on the other side of
the world, but he doesn't want to see what it is.

(01:11:14):
It's interesting the way it portrays it almost like is
an issue of like ego or dignity. It's like he
you know, he won't stoop to putting the glasses on. Yeah,
I mean when we we see that every day. I
mean I think to a certain extent we see that
in ourselves too, you know. I mean with this, yeah,
this this battle against the you know, the truth. I

(01:11:34):
highly recommend this book because you know, I've I've loved
that movie since I was a kid, but this book
points out things about it that I never realized even
as an adult, you know. Um. Craig Oldham has this
piece in there that is about how poverty in Los
Angeles is portrayed in the film and apparently, like the

(01:11:55):
camp that rowdy Roddy Piper lives in was a real
homeless camp that was in l A at the time,
and they used the actual, um, you know, people who
lived there as background actors and they live and apparently
shortly after they shot this film, the city of Los

(01:12:15):
Angeles tore it down. Well, isn't that what happens in
the movie that like that basically the people in the
homeless camp are just being assaulted by the police and
the developers that come through with big machinery and everything
to just drive them out. Yeah, exactly. So they point
out that what you see in the movie eventually happens
in real life to camp. Um. I mean, you know,

(01:12:37):
you can argue about the politics behind it or not,
but the fact is is that, yeah, they were removed
from the city. Um. Yeah, I'm only about halfway through
it and I'm just finding like every single piece in
here is fascinating. Um. I never realized that it was
based on a comic and so like a lot of
the classic scenes that I remember from the movie are

(01:12:57):
in this comic book that came out, you know, well
before the movie was ever made. Um. But Carpenter apparently
optioned it, you know, he saw it somewhere and he
was like, yeah, I want to make something about that.
But um, yeah, I think like the the overall argument
of this big book is like, there's so much going
on in John Carpenter movies that is under the surface

(01:13:19):
and isn't over you know, commentary on society, and obviously
they live as one of the real big ones. There's
all kinds of archived imagery in here, um from things
like the w w E. So you get some perspective
on rowdy Roddy Piper in it um, the relationship of
uh this film to our current era and talking about

(01:13:42):
Donald Trump and like I don't know if you've seen
the imagery that shows Trump, but he's got like the
they live alien face stuff like that. Yeah, it's it's
a it's a really interesting book. I mean, I would say, like,
even if even if you weren't into the movie, which
I can and imagine why you wouldn't be, Uh, there's

(01:14:03):
a lot to learn here. Well. I do feel like
it's one of those movies that that some people may
have seen when they were younger and they may have
been been like, Okay, that bubble gum line is really cool,
and you know, maybe they pick up on some of
the you know, the thematic power of it. But it's
also I think easy to dismiss it if you if
you haven't, you know, given it a more thoughtful viewing. Well, yeah,

(01:14:25):
it's one of those that you go three levels all
the way around on right, Like at first you're like, whoa,
that movie blew my mind? And then the more sophisticated
person says, actually, that's a very simplistic critique of society
and the movies. You know, it's kind of it's full
of cliches. You know, wake up sheeple. I mean, uh,
but then if you get to the third level, you
you you kind of come back all the way around

(01:14:45):
and say there is something kind of insightful and subtle
about it. Of course, the counter argument that might be
that I feel like I go through all those three
levels on terrible films. Oh yeah, films where they're probably
there isn't really a third level there. But if I
if I think about it, and if I created I
think to some degree all three of us have that disease.

(01:15:07):
Oh yeah, certainly, I mean I do a whole show
about that disease. But there is Yeah, I mean, what
were we talking about before we came on air Guardians
of Gohole three phases with that film yet Robert Um, Well,
like I said, I've I've only seen I've only seen
it once. Uh, but but now I'm kind of interested
to check out the books, especially now that my my

(01:15:28):
son's at the point where he could conceivably read him.
I mean, he's reading all the Harry Potters so and
he loves the animals. Who you know, thirty years from now,
it might turn out that Guardians of Gohole was a
commentary on capitalist ideology. Wait no, why did we talk
about that? Is because somebody who the person who wrote
it wrote something else. Oh yes, so the the So

(01:15:50):
just to clarify for anyone listening, we're recording this interview
before we recorded the part that you just previously heard.
So Christian wasn't wasn't here? And actually, yeah, I'm referring
to a conversation that Joe and I will have in
the future, but we have already had on this show.
But yeah, referring to stuff to blow your mind without
me messing up time wise, not your fault, man, have. Yeah,

(01:16:15):
the book in question here is the First Painter by
Katherine Lasky all right, well, Christian, before we send you
on your way, I thought we should take a moment
to talk about super context. Okay, yeah, sure. I do
a podcast on my own now with my co host
Charlie Bennett, who's also based in Atlanta near you guys,

(01:16:36):
and it is we call it a podcast autopsy of media.
Every week we take a look at entertainment kind of
like how we are just talking about they live, uh,
and we we do a deep dive into the research
on it and try to figure out how it informs
everyday culture. So we look at things like film, television, prose, music,
and comics. Um. Basically, we're trying to apply like a

(01:16:57):
critical thinking lens to the entertainment world. What are some
favorite episodes of yours from the past few months that
people should check out? You know, you guys just caught
us at the tail end of what we were calling
Lovecraft Month. For a long time, we've said we'll never
do an episode on HP Lovecraft because Charlie and I
both have strong feelings about his uh racism, and so

(01:17:20):
what we decided to do instead to try to understand
his influence on pop culture was we did five episodes
on things that are all tangentially related to to Lovecraft,
whether their adaptations or not. We did an episode that
just came out last week on the podcast Welcome to
Night Veil, which was really really insightful. I learned a
lot about the podcast industry from reading about those guys. Um.

(01:17:43):
We did one on the video game call of cthulu
Dark Corners of the Earth. I don't know if you
guys ever played that, Uh that there is a newer one.
This one came out in like two thousand five or six.
The new Call of Cthula did just come out this year.
I think. We did one on the graphic novel Providence
by Alan Moore and Jason Burrows, which is a real

(01:18:05):
deep dive into trying to unpack Lovecraft in his influence
on literature. He was from Providence, Rhode Island, right, yes, exactly. Um.
And then we did From Beyond, which you guys are
well familiar with the Stewart Gordon film. And then the
first one we did was about this novel that came
out a couple of years ago and is about to
be made into an HBO TV series called Lovecraft Country,

(01:18:28):
and it's by Matt Ruff. Awesome Jordan Peel is producing
the HBO series. The premise of Lovecraft Country is that
an African American family in the nineteen fifties comes into
contact with love crafty and stuff, but because they're so
accustomed to prejudice in everyday life already, the dreadful nature

(01:18:49):
of all of Lovecraft's monsters aren't as effective. Interesting. Yeah,
it's a really interesting book. I I was hoping for
more from it, I'll be honest, but apparently the TV
show all word about the TV shows sounds like they're
going to expand things so that it's a lot more interesting.

(01:19:09):
And uh, anything coming up that you're particularly excited about,
you can share any hints. We are about to publish
an episode probably by the time this comes out, Our
episode on John Gardner's On Moral Fiction will be out.
Are you guys familiar with John Gardener? John Gardner, the
author of Grendel. Yes, that's exactly who it is. Yeah,
I mean, I love Grendel, but I've I've never read

(01:19:30):
any of his other works. So in nineteen seventy nine
he published a nonfiction book called On Moral Fiction, and
it was this long. Some people call it a rant,
some people call it a treatise arguing that modern day
fiction is immoral and that all art and fiction has
the responsibility to be moral, and including the people who

(01:19:52):
criticize art and fiction. And Gardner took a lot of
big name authors to task in that book, uh, and
really just ripped into them about why he thought that
their work was bad and why it was bad for
modern culture and why it was, you know, slowing down
the efforts of fiction in terms of like the human project. Uh.

(01:20:16):
And so we sat down and just analyzed all the
arguments around it. We talked about it's publishing, We talked
about how he wrote it, when we talked about how
all of these authors responded to it. So people like
Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow and Kurt Vonnegut, like all
of them he attacked in this book, and essentially it
ruined his career. Uh. Within Like he couldn't get good

(01:20:39):
reviews for any of his books after this thing came out.
And then he died in like this tragic motorcycle accident
and a couple of years later, I remember reading I've
read I've read about his death before. A lot of
the a lot of the articles point out since you
mentioned Grendel. They point out that they see a lot
of parallels between his life and the way he depicts
Grendel in that book. So I found it all really interesting.

(01:21:01):
And I've never read Gardner before. Have you read Grendel?
I have not. You should definitely read. I really recommend
Grendel to to everyone. It's really just pick it up
in your hands, and you will find yourself reading it,
and then you'll have you will have you find yourself
having read it. It's uh, it's just one of those
books that just sucks you in. It's just so so
well written. You do you don't even have anyone out

(01:21:22):
there that you might you might be saying, well, I've
never read Beyowolf from a familiar you don't. You don't
need an Obayo wolf. If you if you know, be
a wolf. Uh, you know you maybe you have a
you know, a slide advantage. But h it's it's a
book that it just stands on its own. But is
that it's it's Bayowolf from the perspective of the monster Grundle. Yeah,
and uh, and so it's this monster that lives on

(01:21:42):
the you know, the yeah, the earth rim Romer, the
very boundaries of the world. Uh, you know, commenting on
the nature of humanity and and and it really builds
up Beaowolf. Is this you know, ultimately this just in
human kind of monster like Baowolf is the monster of
the Grindel. Yeah, well that sounds very John Gardner, I'm

(01:22:05):
sure it's good. But it's also that's kind of how
he saw himself in a relationship to the rest of
the world. It's a cautionary tale for sure. All right, well,
well let everybody know once more where they can find
super Context super context is. Our home base is Patreon,
dot com, slash super Context. We have a community of
listeners that participate there and that helps fund the show

(01:22:28):
as well. And you can download it wherever you get podcasts.
Were on Apple, Google Play, Spotify. What are the other ones? Guys?
Are you still doing those ad reads? But we've we've
kept we can't even keep that. It's like it's like
naming all of the demons in a in any given
a more. You know, you just you just have to

(01:22:48):
conjure them with a symbol and then bind them with candles.
Just infernal legion, that's all. You just cover them all general,
we're on all of the Infernal Legion find us all
of the nine Kings of Hell. Well, thanks so much
for joining us today, Christian, it's been really fun. Thanks
for having me. Guys, it was good to talk to you.
I hope you're all doing well. And say hello to

(01:23:11):
everybody else at the office. We'll do and and please
enjoy the rest of your summer. I think there's what
a couple of weeks left, maybe a week left, a
couple of hours left. Yeah, I don't know when it
officially ends, but here in Portland at September three, so
I don't know what day it is in Atlanta. You
guys traveling backwards in time, Well, this episode is definitely
coming out after September three, so uh. At any rate,

(01:23:33):
I think we were perhaps recorded it just in time
before the summer ended. Yeah, it's perfect. Everybody subscribe to
super Context. Come on, all right, So there you have it,
another episode of of summer reading. Uh is in the books. Uh,
just in time or maybe a little late, depending on
on on on how you view summer. But at any rate,

(01:23:55):
we did it, uh, and we'll try to do it
again next year, maybe a little earlier, so maybe in
less than a year you'll see another Summer Summer Reading
episode about eight months in the meantime, if you would
like to check out past Summer Reading episodes, just past
episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind in general, you
can find us at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

(01:24:16):
You can also find the podcast uh anywhere you find
your podcasts. Just shout out to the Infernal Legions and
they will serve it to you. Um and uh yeah,
beyond that, I don't know. If you want to use
social media, you can, Um, you know the perils of
doing that. Uh you've listened to the show, but um,
you know that's that's your choice. That's not that's not

(01:24:38):
ours to make for you. Don't passive aggressively shame them, Robert, No,
I mean, I'm I'm I also shaming myself. This is
our this is our shame as a as a people.
Uh so we all share in it. But anyway, yes,
they're there social media accounts for Stuff to Plow your Mind.
To do with them what you will. Um, let's see
what else. Uh yeah, But the main thing is if

(01:24:59):
you to support the show, the best thing you can
do is, yeah, I don't can mess with social media.
Just rate and review the show. Wherever you get it
huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers, Maya
Cole and Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
give us a feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, for just to
say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff

(01:25:20):
to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
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Robert Lamb

Joe McCormick

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