July 16, 2025 • 36 mins
We're back from travelling, wiser & thankfully not sad about it.
In this special episode we are covering 3 books of essays/philosophical investigations by written by 3 authors in the 20th century. The books themselves are 'What Does It All Mean?' by Thomas Nagel, 'What Is Man & Other Essays' by Mark Twain & 'The Foundation Pit' by Andrey Platonov. All 3 books question meaning and have a tendency towards indulging in nihilism.
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Timeline:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:02:53) What Does It All Mean? - Thomas Nagel
(00:07:52) What Is Man & Other Essays - Mark Twain
(00:19:55) The Foundation Pit - Andrey Platonov
(00:34:00) Value 4 Value
(00:35:49) Coming Up
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kyrin Down (00:00):
We're back from traveling, wiser and thankfully not sad about it.
(00:11):
Welcome,
everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of the mere models book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 07/16/2025.
And we're back. Yes indeed. After a a couple of months away traveling in Europe, I am back, and I am going to be doing these live again. We do actually have some prerecorded,
(00:35):
episodes from one coming out at roughly the same time as as these are. And, actually, that would be something I'd love to know. Do you like it if it's
released back to back day after day, or do you prefer if it's got a bit of a break in between, like, three or four days? Because at the moment, they're scheduled for the day after this is released. So you'll be getting two book reviews in two days. Wow. How lucky you are. As you might some ice, this is the podcast where I talk about the grim loneliness of life.
(01:04):
Okay. We try. I mean, it can be grim and lonely at times, but that's not what this podcast is about. This podcast is about some book reviews.
And I actually managed to get through a couple of books on my journeys, not as much as I perhaps regularly do whilst at home. But I did my best with my old Kindle here. And when I say old, I mean it is old. This thing is from
(01:27):
2012,
'20 yeah. 2012, I think, and still going reasonably strong.
It's got a little bit of fading and,
the battery doesn't last forever. But, I mean, certainly enough for, like,
a week's worth of reading before I need to recharge it. So pretty damn good. And what I usually put on these, things that I could find free online from stuff like Gutenberg. And so upload a PDF or a mobi file. So I was just going through
(01:55):
essentially a whole bunch of older authors,
where they have released works on there. And,
I think I read five books in total. I'm gonna go over three today in this special episode.
That's because the themes were all relatively similar and also because
a couple of them weren't really worth a book review on their own. They're ones where I'd be like, I don't know if I I'd really wanna do a book review on this because it was shorter.
(02:21):
There were philosophical
essays, and they're rather nihilistic as well. So it's like, let's just bundle this all into one big thing.
And so the three books that I read were What Does It All Mean by Thomas Nagle
of What Is Man and Other Essays by Mark Twain, and then The Foundation Pit by Andrei Platonov.
(02:41):
So let's just get into them, and we'll go through them from my least favorite to favorite of them. And favorite is a strong statement because
I didn't even really enjoy the favorite of them. What does it all mean by Thomas Nagel?
I ended up giving this a four and a half out of 10.
This was published in 1987,
(03:01):
and
that technically doesn't mean it's under the Gutenberg
release because that's for for things that are out of copyright and whatnot. But this is a relatively short book, and I found I found it online somewhere anyway. So I was able to read through it. So this book is his attempt to lay a
broad understanding of philosophy
(03:24):
to people. The subtitle, a very short introduction to philosophy.
So he does this through
10 questions, and these are things like, how do we know anything?
Are there other minds? The mind body problem, the meaning of words, free will, right and wrong, justice, death, the meaning of life, things,
along those sorts of lines. And he'll have a question related to,
(03:45):
you know, do we actually have free will? How could one measure this? What does free will even mean to someone?
And
look, my reading from it was even though it is
an open,
short introduction to philosophy,
it doesn't necessarily mean that it's an easy one.
I'd say this is probably only comprehensible
(04:07):
to those with
a IQ
above the standard mean,
mean because
even though it's like the question itself is simple, I don't think he really answers it in a simple manner. And
although
my say my IQ is probably like one standard deviation above the mean, I'm certainly not the brightest of people out there. So even when I was going through this, I'm like, nah, you know what? This isn't that
(04:33):
good of an introduction to philosophy.
So the nine, sorry, there was nine questions, not 10,
are indeed simple in nature, but complex in the implications.
So even though you could ask, you know, what is free will?
There's
been many, many books,
learnings, people pondering, pontificating,
(04:56):
questioning over the ages. What does that mean? How are you actually going to cover that in a very short introduction?
Well, you can, but it's you're not going to get very far nor very deep.
As usual, from what I find with a lot of philosophy is that the main take takeaway is either nihilism
or these kind of pointless circular arguments that they don't really resolve anything. I didn't come out from this being going, okay.
(05:23):
I'm I've got more of an understanding on the nature of philosophy, the nature of meaning, of free will, of right and wrong, justice, death, anything like this.
I come away with this with more questions, which is fine. That's what philosophy is kind of about.
But
whilst the questions in themselves are fun,
the attempts to solve them or to
(05:46):
bring more understanding to them, at least in this book, lack the levity or fun,
that actually make it worthwhile.
Hence why probably the best philosophy book I've ever read is,
Batman and philosophy it because it's a humorous,
not even humorous. It's a it's an attempt to explain philosophy through these actual practical actions that Batman takes whilst fighting crime. You know, when he's fighting the Joker, you can understand about the trolley problem because he has to make a choice between,
(06:19):
you know, killing one person dying or five people dying, and yet he himself
has a moral dilemma in that. And so
when you get things like the trolley problem,
explained in that context, I find it much more valuable. Whereas here, where it's just this very dry academic style,
I didn't really get much out of it.
(06:40):
It it once again,
lacks the effectiveness
of
practicality
perhaps that you'll find. Hence why in the mere mortals, we have effective philosophy, which is really about philosophy that you can apply to day to day lives. If x is true, then y behavior in real life do or don't make sense.
(07:01):
And unfortunately, this book did not provide very much for that. So I cannot particularly recommend it,
although it is short and you can get some of the basic questions of philosophical thought. So if it's your very first introduction,
if if it's the very first philosophy book that you're ever attempting,
this is certainly better
(07:22):
to
read than something like Nietzsche
or any of the other kind of classic
philosophers
who I think by and large are largely,
not I'm not gonna say full of shit, but,
incomprehensible
and
unhelpful in understanding more about the meaning of life and and things like this. So that was the first book that I got through. I then came
(07:46):
over well, this was actually in terms of reading. This was the one of the later ones. But What is Men and Other Essays by Mark Twain.
For those who
are in the book reviews
world or the mere mortals book reviews world, you'll know that I am a rather big fan of Mark Twain. Life on the Mississippi,
I think, is a fantastic
(08:06):
book. And I've read probably about
a third of his other works, his bibliography
in total,
having read most of the the main ones, the main culprits of his, which everyone talks about. And I'm getting through his more lesser known back catalog gradually.
(08:26):
And this was published in nineteen o six.
It embraces a couple of things. So what is man probably takes up
a third of the book, if not
a little bit more, perhaps two fifths.
And it is a so Socratic dialogue between a young man and an elderly man
about,
free will and kind of determinism, I guess. So
(08:49):
it as usual with these kind of psych Socratic dialogues, if you've read any of Socrates,
you'll notice that
it's very it's very got a condescending attitude because typically it will be an older man and then a younger man and his, you know, disciple or pupil or someone.
And it's rarely two equals on equal footing discussing ideas.
(09:12):
It typically has this,
you know, the author uses this style to showcase their point of view and what they, I guess, believe or want to showcase in terms of philosophy.
And what this does is it has this weird feeling where you're like,
I don't feel like I'm getting the best of the other side of the argument. I'm getting a young man who
(09:36):
doesn't perhaps know some of the tricks, the wiles of wordplay
of the deviations.
Lawyers are very good at this of
going around a topic or
obfuscating
the real
their real thoughts or
pushing things to the side or going down a side path that leads you nowhere when you're trying to ask them a relatively simple question.
(09:59):
So this is kind of the feeling that I got from this.
I'd actually find it more compelling if the younger man had more valid points or was a bit stronger in arguments. And essentially what the elder man was saying that,
we are machines.
It's very kind of deterministic that
the
it doesn't go to the point of saying we have no free will, but it certainly says that
(10:24):
actions that you take are already
kind of inbuilt into you and that they your environment has already trained you,
to act in a certain way. So
if it is in a way saying, you know,
someone who is courageous, for example,
deserves no praise. It'd be like praising a robot for being courageous. Whereas we can say, oh, no, what we'd be, we built that into the robot to be courageous.
(10:52):
Therefore,
it itself has not overcome.
You can certainly say it did a good job, but you can't praise it for this action of overcoming a fear, of bettering itself, of changing itself. This is the kind of,
idea that is getting out in this. What is man? So that was, you know, a a decent section of the book. The rest are essays that deal with the death
(11:19):
of his children and wife, for example,
and
whether Shakespeare was actually Lord Byron. He spends a crazy amount of time
discussing
that. And there were some mini extra little essays about German opera, for example, where when he went to Nuremberg.
And
overall,
(11:39):
whilst not totally nihilistic,
I would say the and neither was the other book
particularly nihilistic.
There is a thing that happens when you
listen to philosophy or read about it and especially when it is investigating humans and
you typically will come to very similar conclusions or to ideas that, yeah, you know what? Humans are largely
(12:07):
machines and that there is not that much free will associated with us. So certainly, you know, if you think you're at 100% free will,
you're probably going to get down to saying, oh, okay, maybe we're at 10% free will. And even then, probably it's closer to zero. So
if not non existent, we don't have free will.
(12:29):
That is what a lot of philosophy tends to arrive at.
And,
you know, we see, for example, the young man losing his beliefs and feeling there is no real hole to fill them
As free will
disappears, everything essentially becomes deterministic
and outside of your control. It has this feeling of
(12:50):
inevitability,
of hopelessness.
And, you you know, nihilism as a philosophy in of itself,
is more directly related saying,
okay, there is no
free will.
Therefore, there is no meaning. Therefore,
the right feeling to have in in response to this is a hopelessness, is a depression.
(13:14):
This book, for example,
doesn't go that far. It's just saying, no, there's no free will.
But the old man, for example, finds this liberating. And and I think this can be true for some people. You can find
a liberation in the fact like, oh, you know, perhaps you're you're addicted. You've got a vice of
pornography,
(13:35):
of alcohol, of
sex, of, you know, insert x y z, anger, rage, you know, any of these sorts of things which
cause negative outcomes in your life. And you could
if you adopted this kind of stance and said,
oh, you know what?
This is out of outside of my control. I am largely dictated by these whims. And whilst that doesn't make it better, perhaps it's a a way to forgive yourself of
(14:03):
of having some
some
way of not feeling like
I'm responsible for all of these bad actions that I'm taking and
shifting that responsibility onto your genetics or onto the universe.
And perhaps that is a way of,
feeling less guilty about it, even if you still realize that your actions are bad and that you need or want to try and change them somehow.
(14:28):
So it's it's kinda it's kinda funny that you you that humans have this feeling that when
meaning starts to to grasp away or our our
our perception that we can control our lives or gain meaning or that the universe has meaning our lives have meaning
that we automatically
(14:49):
tend to,
by and large,
have a hopelessness
feeling related to this. And you can see this when people,
have their beliefs
eroded away, whether that be that their wife is faithful to them and then they realize she's not or vice versa
of perhaps religion,
(15:09):
and they're
they lose faith in their religion due to
an experience outside of their control, perhaps, you know,
their baby dies or something, and they can they're asking why is why was God so cruel as to allow this to happen? There is no God. Or perhaps they
have something else traumatic happened to them, or they perhaps see that, you know, for example, the Catholic church and all of the
(15:34):
disgusting
pedophilic behavior and switching priests around so that,
you know, the higher orders wouldn't get, you know, all of that sort of shit could perhaps make you lose your faith in the church and religion,
all those sorts of things. When you lose meaning, when you lose those beliefs,
it has this
(15:56):
void within yourself that happens, a resignation of sorts.
And what I have actually kind of noticed was perhaps this suits the energy of the elderly. So the elderly man, for example,
he finds a comfort in this and some sort of respect. For him, it's just like, oh, you know,
it's true. Like, there is no meaning in life, and that's okay. Whereas with the young man,
(16:17):
he
it it saps his energy. This is not a something that is an energy giver,
a belief or a system or a thought.
And
I also wonder
if the so Mark Twain wrote this in nineteen o six, which was rather close to the end of his life. I believe he passed away four years after that, so in 1910.
(16:37):
And he was an elderly man by that stage in his seventies
or very close to it.
And he'd experienced a whole lot of,
suffering in his life,
a lot of good things as well, which is what I love about him because, you know, he did travel the world. He was in the gold mines and as a miner. He was a pilot on the Mississippi River.
(17:01):
He was a journalist. He did all of these kind of, like, wacky, crazy, wonderful things.
Yet,
you know, his son died when he when his son was like six months old or very young.
Two of his three daughters passed away before him. That's obviously a terrible thing for a parent to experience.
His wife passed away before him.
(17:23):
Many good friends passed away before him. Remember, this is the eighteen hundreds. If you're getting to like 70 to 80 years old, you're doing pretty well and
you're going to see
many people in your life
fade away before you do.
And so
I wonder if all of these losses in his life kind of contributed to this feeling that he was having. And, you know, let's just put him as the elderly man in this in this case,
(17:52):
that the
understanding or this conclusion that he comes to of of determinism or not having free will,
this it
it's perhaps nihilism that
makes everything better for him because he's already feeling pretty terrible. He also had plenty of financial troubles in his life as well.
(18:12):
The book
was interesting because
outside of the young man and the elderly man, the waters man essay, the others still had the spark of Mark Twain, which I love, which is this
this humor, this
this way of just,
for example, when he's talking about
these two camps of Shakespeare thought, which was that the man known as Shakespeare, the the physical person was the actual person who wrote it, whereas he's saying that none of this makes sense.
(18:43):
He I I believe
Lord Bacon was the man who actually wrote Shakespeare
because why was Shakespeare
not known and underappreciated
in his own time?
And none of it makes sense. Some some of the columnar signs. And so he is he's talking about this Shakespearean
camp and he was saying, like, you know, my the my opponents would like to call names and would,
(19:06):
act high and mighty, but I would not refer,
like, revert to these sorts of low base behaviors.
Yes, indeed. When these thugs,
these, like, imbecilic morons,
address a point, I would and so he's obviously,
being kind of, like, satirical and
flipping the switch and saying he's gonna be, you know, a calm, measured person and then throwing insults like that, which I love about Mark Twain. He's so funny. He's he's got a real nice twist,
(19:36):
to his humor.
When he had plenty of that still within this book. But I would say out of all of the Mark Twain books that I've read, this is the most serious and dower of them. So you can certainly see this kind of nihilistic
little bent to it, that that comes through.
And then finally, we have the foundation pit by Andrei Platinov.
(19:59):
This was published
in 1973,
so rather late, but he actually
was writing the work in the 1930s. So, you know, seven forty years beforehand,
he was a Russian writer or Soviet writer.
And
the reason it was published so much later was because of the book bannings, the censorship that was occurring in those times.
(20:24):
And this is an extremely sad book. There's no getting around that. Almost from the get go, you're like, oh, here we go. More Russian mopey suffering literature,
Dostoyevsky,
you know,
reminiscent,
or,
so Solzhenitsyn,
you know, Google Archipelago,
(20:45):
all those sorts of things.
So reading this book drives at the heart of what makes me afraid of large governments and organizations in general, to be honest. So,
and even perhaps, you know, you know, four hundred years ago, the church would have been,
the
the government type thing here. So this story,
(21:07):
fictional, tells about a Soviet Russia where workers are digging a foundation pit to serve serve as a housing for collectivization.
What you get from it is everything is gray. Everything is dreary.
I can't remember. I think it talks about snow in it. So it is probably winter as well. So, you know, cold, freezing,
people barely struggling to stay alive.
(21:29):
And
we have these
cast of characters. There's probably about 10 of them in total.
And what do we see from these types of different types of characters? And remember, this is in the
era of the of communism. So it's talking about these this collectivization.
We're gonna work together as people.
(21:52):
We don't trust the capitalist system. So people looking out for their own self interests. We need to do things as groups as is essentially. So they're digging this big, big pit, and there's a bunch of workers in it. We have,
kind of different camps of them. So we've got the pure believers,
who
are the kind of strong workers who just believe the the party doctrine and, you know, they're digging the pit with all of their force, all of their might. So these are characters like the, the bear or who's this just kind of mountain of a man or Chiklin,
(22:26):
who and I'm mispronouncing
these Russian names. I'm not gonna get them right.
They kind of survived due to their strong constitution
and, I guess, an unwavering belief.
But
because of their belief and their their constitution,
they're essentially worn down to nothing. These people
over
(22:46):
we don't see it in the book, but over years and decades,
they're
they will work their ass to the bone for
for their country, for
the
communism, for
their people, for their their fellow comrades.
Yet they don't see any particular benefits
(23:07):
for it,
other than perhaps some praise.
But they certainly don't get a rest. They certainly don't get
better life
experiences
in terms of the
physical
pleasures of life and, you know, a nice house or
the they they just work themselves,
(23:27):
and
they suffer rather gradually because of this.
We see a different type of people who are the kulaks, and we see them getting liquidated within the book. They
get
forced to be put on a raft and sent down the river. And
we don't know what happens to them, but presumably they die. And
(23:48):
these are the proletariat who
owned perhaps a small shack or had, you know, three cows or had just enough to be able to employ someone else
to help them till their land or something like this.
And the,
we associate this in Natia,
a young girl who dies of fever
(24:08):
and has a mother starved to death in front of her.
These are the people who are the extremely vulnerable
and they suffer
devastatingly
in terms of they die very quickly,
not due to
even having
done anything wrong. It's just purely,
(24:30):
economic factors that they don't have a house over their head. They don't have warm clothes. They don't have enough to eat.
And
that is unfortunately one of the effects that this collectivization
brings about, which is people
it was just a less efficient system. And so resources went to waste
and,
(24:51):
that's ended up what what happening a lot, unfortunately.
We also have these kind of believers,
but they're the kind of cruel. They're a bit nasty
and
perhaps are a little bit
not smart enough
to
to kind of get ahead in life. And so,
(25:11):
these are people like the activist Safranov
or his counterpart,
Koslov,
who hate each other, but they managed to get elected to the board of leave leadership because they are, you know,
following the party line to a t. They
are working their comrades up into a fever of, like, where, you know, comrade, what are you doing? You're not working hard enough. Or, comrade, we need to,
(25:36):
collectivize
more harder. And they're they're much more in the kind of political
realm,
less in the realm of actually doing the work they want to
inspire. Think of them as
motivational speakers
who
are extremely extractive.
I'm just I'm almost just describing normal motivational speakers who don't want to do any work.
(26:01):
Yeah. Very, very similar, but with a kind of nasty streak to them as well. They're they'll they'll take pleasure in liquidating the cool acts. They'll take pleasure in
being mean to people.
And what ends up happening to them? Well, they incur the wrath, the ire of the their communities,
and those two in particular get murdered,
(26:22):
which is in contrast to kind of the crafty version of these,
who survive and even prosper,
albeit with pain as well. So this would be someone like Comrade Patchkin,
who is this bloated bureaucrat
and who has a rather jealous wife,
who is always watching out for other women,
(26:42):
because of his
established
position within the community,
or this vengeance filled,
Shashev, Zashev,
who
abuses his position as a cripple
and therefore has some sort of political power because he is one of the unfortunates,
who
it's it's very weird. So you can have a cripple
(27:04):
who basically can do whatever he wants,
because in the Soviet system or communist
communistic system,
he was viewed as a
kind of like a special person
who the the collectivization
was really meant to help, you know,
to to each his ability,
(27:24):
from each from his ability to each of his needs. I always screw that up essentially because he had zero ability.
He needed more. So he was the one who could get free food or, you know, tasty cream, which was in short supply or,
a helping hand. Even though other people were, like, working their ass to the bone, they would still have to help him in some certain respect.
(27:49):
And
he he uses this to bully people around
to,
take
kind of unfair advantage of them in some certain respect. Even though he's the cripple, he's the one in position of power,
which is rather interesting.
And so he he survives and prospers, but and so does comrade Pashkin, but they they still have their troubles. So, you know, what do you get from this book? Well, everyone's suffering. And
(28:16):
the
characters who I found the most interesting had the most interesting insights, and this is where the philosophy and nihilism comes in.
Voshev, who was, I guess, the main character because the book's told and start starts from him and mostly is told around his actions,
joining the foundation pit after kind of being a a bit of a nomad wanderer.
(28:38):
And to a lesser extent, I believe his name was Prushevsky,
and who was the engineer.
They were
men searching for meeting in a rather bleak world.
So
we we encounter this world where, yes, there's a lot of suffering. There's a lot of people hurting.
And,
Voshev in particular
(28:59):
is trying to
understand this. Like, what's going on? Why is this happening?
And
his oscillations,
I guess, the
a point of interest in the story and,
funnily enough, other people's reactions
to his dilemma,
are interesting as well. So they chastise him for being a dreamer, for, you know, dreaming too much and not putting that energy into work.
(29:29):
But they don't
accuse him of being a plunderer or of wrecking of treason,
which
can happen in in these sorts of cases.
They kind of see his questioning and they don't understand
why he just doesn't fit into the system, even though the system is
broken,
causing a lot of pain and suffering
and his own
(29:50):
questioning of this, of where is the meaning of life? Why are we doing these things?
What does any of this matter?
Is only increasing his
mental mental suffering and,
you know, for everyone else. Sure. They've got the physical suffering, but the mental suffering is not there because
they're by and large believers. You know, we believe in the
(30:13):
the the system of collectivization.
Everything's gonna be alright. We're gonna live in this big foundation pit,
a big foundation pit in that big collective house, which the foundation pit is the
the base of.
It's kind of this metaphor of the foundation pit growing ever larger to house all of the world because
as people encounter more problems,
(30:35):
they they decide we need to build the pig the pit bigger because,
the problem the problems are just magnifying
like in infinitum.
So
I guess overall, what's to be learned from these books?
Honestly, digging at the heart of meaning of life of
(30:56):
of why are we here or what does my life mean?
It can be rather
destabilizing and cause a lot of mental suffering.
The
realizations
of the people, of the characters,
of
myself
reading this, of other people reading this, of the
(31:17):
general
tendency of a lot of philosophy when you're doing these questionings
Whilst they satisfy curiosity,
I don't think they necessarily
make you happier.
Almost certainly don't make you happier.
And whilst they
can
are fascinating
(31:38):
and I'm
continually drawn to them and I continually read these philosophy books, even though by and large, I found them useless.
There there's just there's a curiosity, I guess, perhaps is what you'd call it it or a searching.
And,
you know, am I particularly searching for something
for myself? No. But I I still enjoy
(31:59):
looking after,
new ideas in particular,
new ways of thinking. It's why I've delved into a lot of the religions of the world,
why in particular I find a lot more meaning in the Eastern
types
rather than the Western types.
And
there is just something
that whilst not nihilistic
(32:21):
in the sense that,
there is me it doesn't necessarily equate into mine that there is no meaning, and therefore,
that's a bad thing and that you should feel bad about it. That is just what tends to happen, and I don't know why.
You know, perhaps it's because their lessening of meaning gives of this feeling of of hopelessness.
(32:44):
Perhaps
it is very difficult to replace a belief or a meaning system in your life. And so
sometimes, perhaps it's better to remain,
ignorant intentionally, which is kind of what I did, to be honest. Like, going through all of these books,
I did not come out of these
sadder or worse
for my life. I was just going, oh, okay. That's interesting.
(33:06):
Yeah. Cool. Nice nice book. I gave this one, for example, the,
the foundation pit of five and a half out of 10.
None of these particularly
have affected me or made me
really ponder and think,
perhaps because I've just read so many books similar to these in my life that they didn't provide any new insights
(33:29):
because I've I've seen this before. I've I've seen
plenty of philosophy and the the type of effects it can have not only on myself, but of
on the characters within the book. So
it was not novel nor exciting to me. So yeah, that's just some
philosophical thoughts, some ramblings of essays. And if you got any enjoyment from this, well, kudos to you because most people don't, especially the characters in the books. So we've gone on long enough. Let's jump into the last sections here. There's a value for value podcast,
(34:02):
which essentially means I'm going to produce this free. It's never going to be ads or sponsorships
on these,
these episodes,
nor any ulterior motives of why I am reading these particular books. These are books that I just found, and
I am reading them for the pure enjoyment and learning that you can get from them. So what do I ask in return for all of this value that I'm providing you? I just ask that you give me something back, and you can do this in many different ways. Time, talent, and treasure. Time. Spend the time to join me on a live book review. I'm doing these live again 11AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday.
(34:40):
Put that into your AI and ask it what that is in your local time, and it'll show up.
And so, you know, liking, subscribing,
commenting is great. Give me some book reviews. What are some things that you really enjoy? What is your favorite book of all time?
What do you suggest that I,
read
(35:01):
in terms of classic books or in terms of books that are perhaps not well known. I would love to know all of those things. And then finally, if you want to send in some
treasure, a k a money, you can do this via any of the links down below. We've got a PayPal account
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(35:28):
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Of also
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and you'll be able to do that.
(35:49):
What's coming up? What is coming up? Well, as I mentioned, Juan's got a couple of prerecorded book reviews. I also have two more books, which I have read whilst traveling and will be doing, and then, you know, I'm getting back into the normal swing swing of things. These two are reminiscences
of a stock operator by Edwin
Lefevre.
And then on a very similar
(36:12):
bent
was The Wizard of Wall Street and His Wealth by Trimble White.
So these are dealing with people who were
in the stock market
in The United States
Of America
during
the early nineteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds period. And it's, rather fascinating tales. So look forward to that. Other than that, I really hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. I'm tuning out and regular book reviews coming back for
(36:41):
at least the next half a year, I imagine.
And yeah, really hope you can come and join me for them. Ciao for now. Karen out. Bye.
We're back from traveling, wiser and thankfully not sad about it.
(00:11):
Welcome,
everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of the mere models book reviews. I'm your host here, Kyrin, live on the 07/16/2025.
And we're back. Yes indeed. After a a couple of months away traveling in Europe, I am back, and I am going to be doing these live again. We do actually have some prerecorded,
(00:35):
episodes from one coming out at roughly the same time as as these are. And, actually, that would be something I'd love to know. Do you like it if it's
released back to back day after day, or do you prefer if it's got a bit of a break in between, like, three or four days? Because at the moment, they're scheduled for the day after this is released. So you'll be getting two book reviews in two days. Wow. How lucky you are. As you might some ice, this is the podcast where I talk about the grim loneliness of life.
(01:04):
Okay. We try. I mean, it can be grim and lonely at times, but that's not what this podcast is about. This podcast is about some book reviews.
And I actually managed to get through a couple of books on my journeys, not as much as I perhaps regularly do whilst at home. But I did my best with my old Kindle here. And when I say old, I mean it is old. This thing is from
(01:27):
2012,
'20 yeah. 2012, I think, and still going reasonably strong.
It's got a little bit of fading and,
the battery doesn't last forever. But, I mean, certainly enough for, like,
a week's worth of reading before I need to recharge it. So pretty damn good. And what I usually put on these, things that I could find free online from stuff like Gutenberg. And so upload a PDF or a mobi file. So I was just going through
(01:55):
essentially a whole bunch of older authors,
where they have released works on there. And,
I think I read five books in total. I'm gonna go over three today in this special episode.
That's because the themes were all relatively similar and also because
a couple of them weren't really worth a book review on their own. They're ones where I'd be like, I don't know if I I'd really wanna do a book review on this because it was shorter.
(02:21):
There were philosophical
essays, and they're rather nihilistic as well. So it's like, let's just bundle this all into one big thing.
And so the three books that I read were What Does It All Mean by Thomas Nagle
of What Is Man and Other Essays by Mark Twain, and then The Foundation Pit by Andrei Platonov.
(02:41):
So let's just get into them, and we'll go through them from my least favorite to favorite of them. And favorite is a strong statement because
I didn't even really enjoy the favorite of them. What does it all mean by Thomas Nagel?
I ended up giving this a four and a half out of 10.
This was published in 1987,
(03:01):
and
that technically doesn't mean it's under the Gutenberg
release because that's for for things that are out of copyright and whatnot. But this is a relatively short book, and I found I found it online somewhere anyway. So I was able to read through it. So this book is his attempt to lay a
broad understanding of philosophy
(03:24):
to people. The subtitle, a very short introduction to philosophy.
So he does this through
10 questions, and these are things like, how do we know anything?
Are there other minds? The mind body problem, the meaning of words, free will, right and wrong, justice, death, the meaning of life, things,
along those sorts of lines. And he'll have a question related to,
(03:45):
you know, do we actually have free will? How could one measure this? What does free will even mean to someone?
And
look, my reading from it was even though it is
an open,
short introduction to philosophy,
it doesn't necessarily mean that it's an easy one.
I'd say this is probably only comprehensible
(04:07):
to those with
a IQ
above the standard mean,
mean because
even though it's like the question itself is simple, I don't think he really answers it in a simple manner. And
although
my say my IQ is probably like one standard deviation above the mean, I'm certainly not the brightest of people out there. So even when I was going through this, I'm like, nah, you know what? This isn't that
(04:33):
good of an introduction to philosophy.
So the nine, sorry, there was nine questions, not 10,
are indeed simple in nature, but complex in the implications.
So even though you could ask, you know, what is free will?
There's
been many, many books,
learnings, people pondering, pontificating,
(04:56):
questioning over the ages. What does that mean? How are you actually going to cover that in a very short introduction?
Well, you can, but it's you're not going to get very far nor very deep.
As usual, from what I find with a lot of philosophy is that the main take takeaway is either nihilism
or these kind of pointless circular arguments that they don't really resolve anything. I didn't come out from this being going, okay.
(05:23):
I'm I've got more of an understanding on the nature of philosophy, the nature of meaning, of free will, of right and wrong, justice, death, anything like this.
I come away with this with more questions, which is fine. That's what philosophy is kind of about.
But
whilst the questions in themselves are fun,
the attempts to solve them or to
(05:46):
bring more understanding to them, at least in this book, lack the levity or fun,
that actually make it worthwhile.
Hence why probably the best philosophy book I've ever read is,
Batman and philosophy it because it's a humorous,
not even humorous. It's a it's an attempt to explain philosophy through these actual practical actions that Batman takes whilst fighting crime. You know, when he's fighting the Joker, you can understand about the trolley problem because he has to make a choice between,
(06:19):
you know, killing one person dying or five people dying, and yet he himself
has a moral dilemma in that. And so
when you get things like the trolley problem,
explained in that context, I find it much more valuable. Whereas here, where it's just this very dry academic style,
I didn't really get much out of it.
(06:40):
It it once again,
lacks the effectiveness
of
practicality
perhaps that you'll find. Hence why in the mere mortals, we have effective philosophy, which is really about philosophy that you can apply to day to day lives. If x is true, then y behavior in real life do or don't make sense.
(07:01):
And unfortunately, this book did not provide very much for that. So I cannot particularly recommend it,
although it is short and you can get some of the basic questions of philosophical thought. So if it's your very first introduction,
if if it's the very first philosophy book that you're ever attempting,
this is certainly better
(07:22):
to
read than something like Nietzsche
or any of the other kind of classic
philosophers
who I think by and large are largely,
not I'm not gonna say full of shit, but,
incomprehensible
and
unhelpful in understanding more about the meaning of life and and things like this. So that was the first book that I got through. I then came
(07:46):
over well, this was actually in terms of reading. This was the one of the later ones. But What is Men and Other Essays by Mark Twain.
For those who
are in the book reviews
world or the mere mortals book reviews world, you'll know that I am a rather big fan of Mark Twain. Life on the Mississippi,
I think, is a fantastic
(08:06):
book. And I've read probably about
a third of his other works, his bibliography
in total,
having read most of the the main ones, the main culprits of his, which everyone talks about. And I'm getting through his more lesser known back catalog gradually.
(08:26):
And this was published in nineteen o six.
It embraces a couple of things. So what is man probably takes up
a third of the book, if not
a little bit more, perhaps two fifths.
And it is a so Socratic dialogue between a young man and an elderly man
about,
free will and kind of determinism, I guess. So
(08:49):
it as usual with these kind of psych Socratic dialogues, if you've read any of Socrates,
you'll notice that
it's very it's very got a condescending attitude because typically it will be an older man and then a younger man and his, you know, disciple or pupil or someone.
And it's rarely two equals on equal footing discussing ideas.
(09:12):
It typically has this,
you know, the author uses this style to showcase their point of view and what they, I guess, believe or want to showcase in terms of philosophy.
And what this does is it has this weird feeling where you're like,
I don't feel like I'm getting the best of the other side of the argument. I'm getting a young man who
(09:36):
doesn't perhaps know some of the tricks, the wiles of wordplay
of the deviations.
Lawyers are very good at this of
going around a topic or
obfuscating
the real
their real thoughts or
pushing things to the side or going down a side path that leads you nowhere when you're trying to ask them a relatively simple question.
(09:59):
So this is kind of the feeling that I got from this.
I'd actually find it more compelling if the younger man had more valid points or was a bit stronger in arguments. And essentially what the elder man was saying that,
we are machines.
It's very kind of deterministic that
the
it doesn't go to the point of saying we have no free will, but it certainly says that
(10:24):
actions that you take are already
kind of inbuilt into you and that they your environment has already trained you,
to act in a certain way. So
if it is in a way saying, you know,
someone who is courageous, for example,
deserves no praise. It'd be like praising a robot for being courageous. Whereas we can say, oh, no, what we'd be, we built that into the robot to be courageous.
(10:52):
Therefore,
it itself has not overcome.
You can certainly say it did a good job, but you can't praise it for this action of overcoming a fear, of bettering itself, of changing itself. This is the kind of,
idea that is getting out in this. What is man? So that was, you know, a a decent section of the book. The rest are essays that deal with the death
(11:19):
of his children and wife, for example,
and
whether Shakespeare was actually Lord Byron. He spends a crazy amount of time
discussing
that. And there were some mini extra little essays about German opera, for example, where when he went to Nuremberg.
And
overall,
(11:39):
whilst not totally nihilistic,
I would say the and neither was the other book
particularly nihilistic.
There is a thing that happens when you
listen to philosophy or read about it and especially when it is investigating humans and
you typically will come to very similar conclusions or to ideas that, yeah, you know what? Humans are largely
(12:07):
machines and that there is not that much free will associated with us. So certainly, you know, if you think you're at 100% free will,
you're probably going to get down to saying, oh, okay, maybe we're at 10% free will. And even then, probably it's closer to zero. So
if not non existent, we don't have free will.
(12:29):
That is what a lot of philosophy tends to arrive at.
And,
you know, we see, for example, the young man losing his beliefs and feeling there is no real hole to fill them
As free will
disappears, everything essentially becomes deterministic
and outside of your control. It has this feeling of
(12:50):
inevitability,
of hopelessness.
And, you you know, nihilism as a philosophy in of itself,
is more directly related saying,
okay, there is no
free will.
Therefore, there is no meaning. Therefore,
the right feeling to have in in response to this is a hopelessness, is a depression.
(13:14):
This book, for example,
doesn't go that far. It's just saying, no, there's no free will.
But the old man, for example, finds this liberating. And and I think this can be true for some people. You can find
a liberation in the fact like, oh, you know, perhaps you're you're addicted. You've got a vice of
pornography,
(13:35):
of alcohol, of
sex, of, you know, insert x y z, anger, rage, you know, any of these sorts of things which
cause negative outcomes in your life. And you could
if you adopted this kind of stance and said,
oh, you know what?
This is out of outside of my control. I am largely dictated by these whims. And whilst that doesn't make it better, perhaps it's a a way to forgive yourself of
(14:03):
of having some
some
way of not feeling like
I'm responsible for all of these bad actions that I'm taking and
shifting that responsibility onto your genetics or onto the universe.
And perhaps that is a way of,
feeling less guilty about it, even if you still realize that your actions are bad and that you need or want to try and change them somehow.
(14:28):
So it's it's kinda it's kinda funny that you you that humans have this feeling that when
meaning starts to to grasp away or our our
our perception that we can control our lives or gain meaning or that the universe has meaning our lives have meaning
that we automatically
(14:49):
tend to,
by and large,
have a hopelessness
feeling related to this. And you can see this when people,
have their beliefs
eroded away, whether that be that their wife is faithful to them and then they realize she's not or vice versa
of perhaps religion,
(15:09):
and they're
they lose faith in their religion due to
an experience outside of their control, perhaps, you know,
their baby dies or something, and they can they're asking why is why was God so cruel as to allow this to happen? There is no God. Or perhaps they
have something else traumatic happened to them, or they perhaps see that, you know, for example, the Catholic church and all of the
(15:34):
disgusting
pedophilic behavior and switching priests around so that,
you know, the higher orders wouldn't get, you know, all of that sort of shit could perhaps make you lose your faith in the church and religion,
all those sorts of things. When you lose meaning, when you lose those beliefs,
it has this
(15:56):
void within yourself that happens, a resignation of sorts.
And what I have actually kind of noticed was perhaps this suits the energy of the elderly. So the elderly man, for example,
he finds a comfort in this and some sort of respect. For him, it's just like, oh, you know,
it's true. Like, there is no meaning in life, and that's okay. Whereas with the young man,
(16:17):
he
it it saps his energy. This is not a something that is an energy giver,
a belief or a system or a thought.
And
I also wonder
if the so Mark Twain wrote this in nineteen o six, which was rather close to the end of his life. I believe he passed away four years after that, so in 1910.
(16:37):
And he was an elderly man by that stage in his seventies
or very close to it.
And he'd experienced a whole lot of,
suffering in his life,
a lot of good things as well, which is what I love about him because, you know, he did travel the world. He was in the gold mines and as a miner. He was a pilot on the Mississippi River.
(17:01):
He was a journalist. He did all of these kind of, like, wacky, crazy, wonderful things.
Yet,
you know, his son died when he when his son was like six months old or very young.
Two of his three daughters passed away before him. That's obviously a terrible thing for a parent to experience.
His wife passed away before him.
(17:23):
Many good friends passed away before him. Remember, this is the eighteen hundreds. If you're getting to like 70 to 80 years old, you're doing pretty well and
you're going to see
many people in your life
fade away before you do.
And so
I wonder if all of these losses in his life kind of contributed to this feeling that he was having. And, you know, let's just put him as the elderly man in this in this case,
(17:52):
that the
understanding or this conclusion that he comes to of of determinism or not having free will,
this it
it's perhaps nihilism that
makes everything better for him because he's already feeling pretty terrible. He also had plenty of financial troubles in his life as well.
(18:12):
The book
was interesting because
outside of the young man and the elderly man, the waters man essay, the others still had the spark of Mark Twain, which I love, which is this
this humor, this
this way of just,
for example, when he's talking about
these two camps of Shakespeare thought, which was that the man known as Shakespeare, the the physical person was the actual person who wrote it, whereas he's saying that none of this makes sense.
(18:43):
He I I believe
Lord Bacon was the man who actually wrote Shakespeare
because why was Shakespeare
not known and underappreciated
in his own time?
And none of it makes sense. Some some of the columnar signs. And so he is he's talking about this Shakespearean
camp and he was saying, like, you know, my the my opponents would like to call names and would,
(19:06):
act high and mighty, but I would not refer,
like, revert to these sorts of low base behaviors.
Yes, indeed. When these thugs,
these, like, imbecilic morons,
address a point, I would and so he's obviously,
being kind of, like, satirical and
flipping the switch and saying he's gonna be, you know, a calm, measured person and then throwing insults like that, which I love about Mark Twain. He's so funny. He's he's got a real nice twist,
(19:36):
to his humor.
When he had plenty of that still within this book. But I would say out of all of the Mark Twain books that I've read, this is the most serious and dower of them. So you can certainly see this kind of nihilistic
little bent to it, that that comes through.
And then finally, we have the foundation pit by Andrei Platinov.
(19:59):
This was published
in 1973,
so rather late, but he actually
was writing the work in the 1930s. So, you know, seven forty years beforehand,
he was a Russian writer or Soviet writer.
And
the reason it was published so much later was because of the book bannings, the censorship that was occurring in those times.
(20:24):
And this is an extremely sad book. There's no getting around that. Almost from the get go, you're like, oh, here we go. More Russian mopey suffering literature,
Dostoyevsky,
you know,
reminiscent,
or,
so Solzhenitsyn,
you know, Google Archipelago,
(20:45):
all those sorts of things.
So reading this book drives at the heart of what makes me afraid of large governments and organizations in general, to be honest. So,
and even perhaps, you know, you know, four hundred years ago, the church would have been,
the
the government type thing here. So this story,
(21:07):
fictional, tells about a Soviet Russia where workers are digging a foundation pit to serve serve as a housing for collectivization.
What you get from it is everything is gray. Everything is dreary.
I can't remember. I think it talks about snow in it. So it is probably winter as well. So, you know, cold, freezing,
people barely struggling to stay alive.
(21:29):
And
we have these
cast of characters. There's probably about 10 of them in total.
And what do we see from these types of different types of characters? And remember, this is in the
era of the of communism. So it's talking about these this collectivization.
We're gonna work together as people.
(21:52):
We don't trust the capitalist system. So people looking out for their own self interests. We need to do things as groups as is essentially. So they're digging this big, big pit, and there's a bunch of workers in it. We have,
kind of different camps of them. So we've got the pure believers,
who
are the kind of strong workers who just believe the the party doctrine and, you know, they're digging the pit with all of their force, all of their might. So these are characters like the, the bear or who's this just kind of mountain of a man or Chiklin,
(22:26):
who and I'm mispronouncing
these Russian names. I'm not gonna get them right.
They kind of survived due to their strong constitution
and, I guess, an unwavering belief.
But
because of their belief and their their constitution,
they're essentially worn down to nothing. These people
over
(22:46):
we don't see it in the book, but over years and decades,
they're
they will work their ass to the bone for
for their country, for
the
communism, for
their people, for their their fellow comrades.
Yet they don't see any particular benefits
(23:07):
for it,
other than perhaps some praise.
But they certainly don't get a rest. They certainly don't get
better life
experiences
in terms of the
physical
pleasures of life and, you know, a nice house or
the they they just work themselves,
(23:27):
and
they suffer rather gradually because of this.
We see a different type of people who are the kulaks, and we see them getting liquidated within the book. They
get
forced to be put on a raft and sent down the river. And
we don't know what happens to them, but presumably they die. And
(23:48):
these are the proletariat who
owned perhaps a small shack or had, you know, three cows or had just enough to be able to employ someone else
to help them till their land or something like this.
And the,
we associate this in Natia,
a young girl who dies of fever
(24:08):
and has a mother starved to death in front of her.
These are the people who are the extremely vulnerable
and they suffer
devastatingly
in terms of they die very quickly,
not due to
even having
done anything wrong. It's just purely,
(24:30):
economic factors that they don't have a house over their head. They don't have warm clothes. They don't have enough to eat.
And
that is unfortunately one of the effects that this collectivization
brings about, which is people
it was just a less efficient system. And so resources went to waste
and,
(24:51):
that's ended up what what happening a lot, unfortunately.
We also have these kind of believers,
but they're the kind of cruel. They're a bit nasty
and
perhaps are a little bit
not smart enough
to
to kind of get ahead in life. And so,
(25:11):
these are people like the activist Safranov
or his counterpart,
Koslov,
who hate each other, but they managed to get elected to the board of leave leadership because they are, you know,
following the party line to a t. They
are working their comrades up into a fever of, like, where, you know, comrade, what are you doing? You're not working hard enough. Or, comrade, we need to,
(25:36):
collectivize
more harder. And they're they're much more in the kind of political
realm,
less in the realm of actually doing the work they want to
inspire. Think of them as
motivational speakers
who
are extremely extractive.
I'm just I'm almost just describing normal motivational speakers who don't want to do any work.
(26:01):
Yeah. Very, very similar, but with a kind of nasty streak to them as well. They're they'll they'll take pleasure in liquidating the cool acts. They'll take pleasure in
being mean to people.
And what ends up happening to them? Well, they incur the wrath, the ire of the their communities,
and those two in particular get murdered,
(26:22):
which is in contrast to kind of the crafty version of these,
who survive and even prosper,
albeit with pain as well. So this would be someone like Comrade Patchkin,
who is this bloated bureaucrat
and who has a rather jealous wife,
who is always watching out for other women,
(26:42):
because of his
established
position within the community,
or this vengeance filled,
Shashev, Zashev,
who
abuses his position as a cripple
and therefore has some sort of political power because he is one of the unfortunates,
who
it's it's very weird. So you can have a cripple
(27:04):
who basically can do whatever he wants,
because in the Soviet system or communist
communistic system,
he was viewed as a
kind of like a special person
who the the collectivization
was really meant to help, you know,
to to each his ability,
(27:24):
from each from his ability to each of his needs. I always screw that up essentially because he had zero ability.
He needed more. So he was the one who could get free food or, you know, tasty cream, which was in short supply or,
a helping hand. Even though other people were, like, working their ass to the bone, they would still have to help him in some certain respect.
(27:49):
And
he he uses this to bully people around
to,
take
kind of unfair advantage of them in some certain respect. Even though he's the cripple, he's the one in position of power,
which is rather interesting.
And so he he survives and prospers, but and so does comrade Pashkin, but they they still have their troubles. So, you know, what do you get from this book? Well, everyone's suffering. And
(28:16):
the
characters who I found the most interesting had the most interesting insights, and this is where the philosophy and nihilism comes in.
Voshev, who was, I guess, the main character because the book's told and start starts from him and mostly is told around his actions,
joining the foundation pit after kind of being a a bit of a nomad wanderer.
(28:38):
And to a lesser extent, I believe his name was Prushevsky,
and who was the engineer.
They were
men searching for meeting in a rather bleak world.
So
we we encounter this world where, yes, there's a lot of suffering. There's a lot of people hurting.
And,
Voshev in particular
(28:59):
is trying to
understand this. Like, what's going on? Why is this happening?
And
his oscillations,
I guess, the
a point of interest in the story and,
funnily enough, other people's reactions
to his dilemma,
are interesting as well. So they chastise him for being a dreamer, for, you know, dreaming too much and not putting that energy into work.
(29:29):
But they don't
accuse him of being a plunderer or of wrecking of treason,
which
can happen in in these sorts of cases.
They kind of see his questioning and they don't understand
why he just doesn't fit into the system, even though the system is
broken,
causing a lot of pain and suffering
and his own
(29:50):
questioning of this, of where is the meaning of life? Why are we doing these things?
What does any of this matter?
Is only increasing his
mental mental suffering and,
you know, for everyone else. Sure. They've got the physical suffering, but the mental suffering is not there because
they're by and large believers. You know, we believe in the
(30:13):
the the system of collectivization.
Everything's gonna be alright. We're gonna live in this big foundation pit,
a big foundation pit in that big collective house, which the foundation pit is the
the base of.
It's kind of this metaphor of the foundation pit growing ever larger to house all of the world because
as people encounter more problems,
(30:35):
they they decide we need to build the pig the pit bigger because,
the problem the problems are just magnifying
like in infinitum.
So
I guess overall, what's to be learned from these books?
Honestly, digging at the heart of meaning of life of
(30:56):
of why are we here or what does my life mean?
It can be rather
destabilizing and cause a lot of mental suffering.
The
realizations
of the people, of the characters,
of
myself
reading this, of other people reading this, of the
(31:17):
general
tendency of a lot of philosophy when you're doing these questionings
Whilst they satisfy curiosity,
I don't think they necessarily
make you happier.
Almost certainly don't make you happier.
And whilst they
can
are fascinating
(31:38):
and I'm
continually drawn to them and I continually read these philosophy books, even though by and large, I found them useless.
There there's just there's a curiosity, I guess, perhaps is what you'd call it it or a searching.
And,
you know, am I particularly searching for something
for myself? No. But I I still enjoy
(31:59):
looking after,
new ideas in particular,
new ways of thinking. It's why I've delved into a lot of the religions of the world,
why in particular I find a lot more meaning in the Eastern
types
rather than the Western types.
And
there is just something
that whilst not nihilistic
(32:21):
in the sense that,
there is me it doesn't necessarily equate into mine that there is no meaning, and therefore,
that's a bad thing and that you should feel bad about it. That is just what tends to happen, and I don't know why.
You know, perhaps it's because their lessening of meaning gives of this feeling of of hopelessness.
(32:44):
Perhaps
it is very difficult to replace a belief or a meaning system in your life. And so
sometimes, perhaps it's better to remain,
ignorant intentionally, which is kind of what I did, to be honest. Like, going through all of these books,
I did not come out of these
sadder or worse
for my life. I was just going, oh, okay. That's interesting.
(33:06):
Yeah. Cool. Nice nice book. I gave this one, for example, the,
the foundation pit of five and a half out of 10.
None of these particularly
have affected me or made me
really ponder and think,
perhaps because I've just read so many books similar to these in my life that they didn't provide any new insights
(33:29):
because I've I've seen this before. I've I've seen
plenty of philosophy and the the type of effects it can have not only on myself, but of
on the characters within the book. So
it was not novel nor exciting to me. So yeah, that's just some
philosophical thoughts, some ramblings of essays. And if you got any enjoyment from this, well, kudos to you because most people don't, especially the characters in the books. So we've gone on long enough. Let's jump into the last sections here. There's a value for value podcast,
(34:02):
which essentially means I'm going to produce this free. It's never going to be ads or sponsorships
on these,
these episodes,
nor any ulterior motives of why I am reading these particular books. These are books that I just found, and
I am reading them for the pure enjoyment and learning that you can get from them. So what do I ask in return for all of this value that I'm providing you? I just ask that you give me something back, and you can do this in many different ways. Time, talent, and treasure. Time. Spend the time to join me on a live book review. I'm doing these live again 11AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on a Wednesday.
(34:40):
Put that into your AI and ask it what that is in your local time, and it'll show up.
And so, you know, liking, subscribing,
commenting is great. Give me some book reviews. What are some things that you really enjoy? What is your favorite book of all time?
What do you suggest that I,
read
(35:01):
in terms of classic books or in terms of books that are perhaps not well known. I would love to know all of those things. And then finally, if you want to send in some
treasure, a k a money, you can do this via any of the links down below. We've got a PayPal account
where you could do that. There is also joining via any of the podcasting apps, which allow you to stream bits of Bitcoin in such as fountain,
(35:28):
Podfans,
sorry, called Truefans nowadays. I saw Lyceum, one of our supporters doing that recently. Thank you very much, my friend.
Of also
podcast guru, Cast O Matic. There's quite a few different ones out there. If you wanna know more about that, go to meremortalspodcasts.com/support,
and you'll be able to do that.
(35:49):
What's coming up? What is coming up? Well, as I mentioned, Juan's got a couple of prerecorded book reviews. I also have two more books, which I have read whilst traveling and will be doing, and then, you know, I'm getting back into the normal swing swing of things. These two are reminiscences
of a stock operator by Edwin
Lefevre.
And then on a very similar
(36:12):
bent
was The Wizard of Wall Street and His Wealth by Trimble White.
So these are dealing with people who were
in the stock market
in The United States
Of America
during
the early nineteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds period. And it's, rather fascinating tales. So look forward to that. Other than that, I really hope you're having a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. I'm tuning out and regular book reviews coming back for
(36:41):
at least the next half a year, I imagine.
And yeah, really hope you can come and join me for them. Ciao for now. Karen out. Bye.
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