June 18, 2013 • 35 mins
Summer Reading: Robert and Julie's Picks: Once again, your Robert and Julie are here to share some summer reading recommendations with their curious listeners. Explore their delightful buffet of science, sci-fi, children's books, literary fiction and graphic novels. Something here might just make your summer. And don't forget to check out the accompanying blog post for a complete list of titles.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Land, and I'm Julie Douglas. If
you remember from last year, we did an episode where
we discussed a few summer reading picks. We you know,
(00:23):
during the summer, people go on vacations they said, on beaches,
or they're man they're not in school, they're not teaching.
For various reasons, sometimes we feel more inclined to pick
up a book and enjoy it. Or or you know,
maybe you read something that's a little out of your
normal reading uh diet, something maybe a little more fun
or a little more technical in some cases. I mean,
(00:44):
it just depends. Were just outside of the genres that
you like to to prance around in. Uh So, last
year we did the episode where we each shared a
little fiction, a little science, and we let you decide
if you wanted to read any of them. Well, everyone
seemed to really enjoy those of that episode, so we thought, well,
this year, let's do it again, except we'll do double side.
We'll do one episode where um, Julie and I share
(01:07):
a few more picks for you to consider. For this
summer's reading, and then we'll do another episode where we
just get some guests to share their summer reading picks. So, um,
this is the first of those two episodes where Julian
and I are going to go through some things that
we have read, are reading on, and plan to read. Uh,
and we'll see if they line up with what you
(01:27):
would like to consume with your brain this summer. That's right,
So get your scrunches ready, put your hair up, slather
on the sunscreen, get your towels ready, because we're gonna
give you some good stuff to consider reading in your
lay about hours here. Yeah, and I'm just gonna launch
into like quintessential beach reading right now. Okay, Now, when
you say quintessential beach reading, uh, it is worth worth
(01:51):
mentioning that for some people, I think beach reads people
think leok, get the lowest level book you can get,
you know, like a straight up airport grocery store. Sole.
But but we were approaching all of this with the
understanding that the stuff of all your mind listener um
is going to want something that engages the mind on
some level exactly, which is why I thought I would
(02:11):
start with the book by David Deutsch the beginning of
infinity colon explanations that transform the world. I mean seriously,
if you are at the beach and you are staring
out at the horizon the waves are crashing, then you're
probably considering more than ever at this very moment, how
the universe works, what it all means, right, And yeah,
that's always my experience with the beach. I mean it
(02:33):
summons deep thoughts, right, So why not go on exploration
with David Deutsch. Um he is a pioneer in the
field of quantum computation, uh, the multiverse theory. He is
very much someone who was a proponent of that, and
he has a variety of ted talks that you can
check them out in other ways. But um, I thought
this book would be great to really explore, and I've
(02:56):
just now dealt into it and it has actually see
my imagination from the first page because a lot of
the sort of territory that he covers is stuff that
we have touched upon or maybe even explored ourselves. So um,
someone who is a great science communicator Deutsches, and he
can sort of bring the whole story of the universe
(03:16):
to us in a way that it's difficult, right to
try to wrap all this up in one nice package. Um,
but I just wanted to say a little description from
the publisher and he it says that he argues that
explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have
unlimited scope and parato cause change, and the quest to
(03:36):
improve them is the basic regulating principle not only of science,
but of all successful human endeavor. The stream of ever
improving explanations has infinite breach. This is uh, the idea
of infinity that he's exploring. Um, we are subject only
to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper
boundary to what we can eventually understand, control and the chieve.
(03:57):
So he goes through all the different periods of historical
thoughts by humans and you know, empiricism or enlightenment, and
then he gets to the science revolution and says that
we have ideas continue to exist and knowledge is the
limit less and so we know. It's kind of reminded
(04:17):
me of this idea that we talked about humans being
meme machines, idea machines, and that our ideas just exist
into the future and just transmutate as they go along.
So anyway, very cool, book trying to scratch at this
idea of infinity and knowledge and and how we move
through the world with the information that we have available
(04:38):
to this at this very moment. Wow, the I think
I'm gonna definitely have to pick this one up as well. Uh,
in part because I dare say we shall record an
episode in the near future on the topic of infinity.
In fact, I just returned from visiting the World Science
Festival in New York City, where there is a There
was one lecture discussion on the nature of infinity. Is
(05:00):
there such thing as infinity? It's it's it's a really
fascinating topic because in some disciplines, if you run into
an infinity, you run into a problem, because an infinity
is an error in the computational process. Uh. So it's
a fascinating topic, and this book does indeed sound like
a great way to spend your time, uh, contemplating reality
(05:22):
on the beach. Yes, so there you go. That's that's
my first pick. You want to throw one in there too, Yeah,
I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw them start with the one
that I'm really most excited about because I just finished
reading it. I'm still at that stage where I'm I'm
trying to decide if I if I really really liked it,
or if I actually loved it I book like this,
I'll I tend to give it four out of five
stars right off the bat, and then as I think
(05:43):
about it out the side, well, I maybe should I
bump it up to five stars? Didn't really have that
kind of an impact on me? Or should I maybe uh,
you know, leave it for or even move it down
to three, you know, as you begin to fully digest
the ideas. So this book is a surface detail by
Scottish author Ian M. Banks. If you remember from last year,
I actually recommended another E. N. M. Banks sci fi
(06:05):
story called The Player of Games, which, like this book,
is set in the Culture Universe. The Culture Universe of
idean in Banks has created in in these ten different
books is um far future, almost kind of space opera world.
They are all these different galactic societies at varying levels
(06:25):
of technological advancement, with varying ideologies and uh and the
central civilization is called the Culture and it is a
very much a post singularity world where the Culture society
has all of these humans and pan humans in it,
but they kind of do what they want to the
for the most part, they kind of live you know this, Uh,
(06:47):
this free for all existence within the culture, while very
advanced artificial intelligences make all the decisions and the main
artificial intelligences here are these minds that control these enormous spaceships.
And the culture is kind of a benevolent entity that
that will, to varying degrees, involve itself in other galactic communities. Uh,
(07:11):
generally with the best intentions, but not always with the
best of results. And uh, even though this is a
ten there are ten books in this series. This is
not a part one, part two, part three book. You
can essentially jump in at any point. Not every book
is a great first book for someone to read in
this series. For instance, uh, The Player of Games. I
(07:31):
think it's an excellent first culture book to read and
I and I have a strong feeling that surface detail
also would work really well for someone who had who
has no idea or just a faint idea about what
the culture consists of. So the big thing about this
book that I found interesting, and certainly it has a
number of awesome sci fi ideas running around it. There's
digitized consciousness, there's a space warfare, their self replicating machines,
(07:56):
because even though it's post singularity, it's a it's for
the most party, very positive view of a post singularity civilization.
There's also the dark side of post singularity as well
as a there's a segment of the culture that has
to deal with with taking care of self replicating machines,
which they call smatter in the book, and keeping them
from becoming too much of a problem. So is is
(08:18):
boredom a problem? Um? It can't. Yeah, it can be
for sure within the actual pan humans. Within the culture,
they'll The way they tend to deal with this is
they get involved in the benevolent aspects of the culture,
trying to help other civilizations, etcetera. So they become sort
of like they tap into their inner opress. Yeah, yeah,
(08:39):
kind of. I want to see if you would win
souf I said that you did not, no, no, no,
no kind with that. But one of the things that
really drug dragged me into this book is, first of all, uh,
I've read a few culture books in the past, but
then the sad news recently is that ian and Banks
is dying of cancer and was not not long for
this world. Um, which is which is awful. We're gonna
lose a tremendous author and a tremendous mind here, who
(09:03):
has thankfully produced a number of books, both sci fi
and literary fiction. Uh. But I had I had heard
that his more recent books had dealt more with darker
issues and issues of mortality. And uh. And this book,
even though like a very advanced, you know, sci fi book,
deals for the most part, with hell, with theologies of
(09:23):
hell and the problem of hell. Because imagine a world
in which we can digitize human consciousness. We can create
a digital virtual version of you by just you know,
scanning the brain and put that into this virtual world.
So the culture and various other civilizations in this universe,
they generally reached the point where they either developed the technology,
borrow the technology, or steal the technology to digitize consciousnesses
(09:48):
and create a kind of afterlife for a virtual afterlife
for people who have died, for individuals who have died.
And for the most part, these various civilizations tend to
take a very um positive spin on things. It's just like,
you know, a hedonistic heaven for those have died, or
some sort of peaceful place you kind of store an
intelligence in a mind that you might want to, you know,
(10:09):
a loved one you might want to talk to later,
or a great thinker that you might want to consult
with later. But inevitably, some of these civilizations hold on
to their arguably primitive ideas of hell. So you have
societies that um end up sending digitized consciousness is too
at place of eternal suffering, and that's a problem for
(10:32):
the culture. The culture doesn't think that's cool to have
a you know, even a virtual world where an intelligent
being is tortured and had and suffers just horribly for
some you know, unimaginable length of time. So, uh, this
there ends up being this war that they call the
War in Heaven, but it's actually a virtual war game
(10:53):
that that ends up taking place between pro hell civilizations
and anti health civilizations, and the ideas it they'll they'll
have this virtual war and then whoever wins wins. If
the pro Hell side wins, then well then these these
few societies that cling to the idea of hell, they
get to keep it, they get to keep their virtual health.
But if the anti health side wins, well then they
(11:15):
all have to be eradicated. But in this book, there
are a number of storylines that are that are coming together,
and there's this increasing possibility that this, this virtual war
game is going to emerge into the real world as
an actual conflict and actual armed conflict. That's really fascinating
because I've been thinking about war a lot, and of
(11:36):
course only because my daughter continues to ask various questions
four years old and curious about war, and so that's
been on my mind lately. And and then I wonder
if you could get to a point where you could
play out of virtual war in society, yeah, and I
mean for us, and would it have the same sort
(11:58):
of dire consequences in one way or another that actual
war does. I mean, I'm not talking about fatality so much,
but more in terms of regime control or the ways
that we can strip our citizens of rights. Yeah. And
this this book does explore that territory where you know,
it's a situation where there's a big, huge conflict between
(12:19):
these two factions. And for the most part, they realized
that this is something that we can settle in a
virtual environment outside of actually bringing in real deaths and
real destruction. But then to what extent can that work?
Does it reach a point where it boils over into
the real world again. So so I found it to
be a really fascinating book. Um, and I recommend it
(12:40):
to anyone out there who is who's interested in sci fi,
who's interested in uh in a little theology, a little philosophy.
Uh And and I also I should always add that
Ian and Banks had injects a certain sense of humor
into it as well, so it's not just you know,
cold hard sci fi and cold hard philosophy. There's there's
some giggles thrown in there as well, so very good. Well, Um,
(13:03):
I had brought up my four year old ask me questions,
and so I wanted to let you guys know of
a book called Big Questions from Little People and Simple
Answers from Great Minds, And this is geared more towards
the four too, maybe twelve year old set, and I thought, well,
I really do want to do a kid centric book recommendation. Uh.
(13:24):
Last year I think it was the Magic of Reality
by Hawkins, and that is excellent that book, by the way,
although I would say that's for older children, but this
book is, I mean, all the questions are generated by
children and the answers are given by various experts we're
talking about Mary Roach, Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, David Eagleman,
(13:46):
Noam Chomsky, Mario Batali. Uh So, just a variety of
different people and the questions very I mean, it can
be uh you know, sort of the wrote stuff like
who named all the cities? Anyway? To do aliens exist?
What makes me me? Is it okay to eat a worm? Uh?
Can a beasting another? B? Why are some people mean?
(14:09):
Why is the or why is space so sparkly? Um?
And it really it's one of those kind of books
in the in the explanations that I've given are so
pithy and great and oftentimes have a lot of humor
that even if you think you know the answer to
this question as an adult, it will be reframed for
you in another way and you'll definitely learn something from it.
(14:31):
In My four year old loves it. Well, just flip
through it every once in a while and let's just
say that one and when we discuss it. But anyway,
it's a it's a great kind of book for for
kids who are coming online in terms of expanding their
consciousness about the various topics in life, like hey, why
are people mean? Why is the uh nighttime skuys so
(14:51):
sparkly and it kind of gets at the meat of
those questions, which is pretty great. Cool. Well, my next
recommendation is is a science book, and this one is
is definitely aimed at, you know, more more grown audience,
though younger minds well I think also find plenty of
of wonderful things in it as well. And the book
(15:12):
is called Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments by
Alex Bows. Alex's his his line of study is the
history of science, and this book is a it's it's
a great one. It's a great book to just pick
up and so sort of flip through and find something
interesting and start reading it, because, uh, there are several chapters.
(15:33):
In each chapter has all these subdivisions. Each to each
subdivision an interesting look and an actual scientific experiment or
series of experiments that have taken place, generally experiments with
kind of a either a surface level weirdness, you know,
one of those where you're you're like, well, why did
they you know, why are they giving Latte's two cockroaches?
That doesn't make any sense? And then you then you
read it and you're like, oh, well, of course if
(15:54):
they had not given latte to cockroaches, we would not
have this vital information. And then some of the other
ones are kind of reverse like, oh, well that seems reasonable,
but wow, they didn't really carry that out right. This
book gets its title from a nineteen sixty to experiment
that saw Oklahoma's School of Medicine researchers dose an elephant
named Tusco with l s D. Uh. Last, of course,
(16:14):
is the llucogen the artificial lucogens that we've talked about
in the previous episodes. Um. Not only did they give
Tusco the elephant LSD, they gave Tusco the largest dose
of LSD ever administered to a single organism, two D
ninety seven milligrams. That's three thousand times the level of
a human dose. Now, it's worth noting that at this
time everyone was getting in on LSD research. Okay, was
(16:37):
this is the heyday of LSD research and uh, and
we were fascinated by its effects on the human mind
and the way we we observe the world. Also, as uh,
as the author points out, UH, this was also a
time when the CIA was very interested in military applications
of l s D, so they funneled tons of money
through front organizations to various American LSD research projects. So
(16:59):
uh no, we're not sure. We can't say one we
or another. Uh if this particular experiment benefited from CIA funds,
but a number of them down. A lot of people
got their hands into that candy jar. So uh, this uh,
this is kind of a tragic experiment though, because of
what happens is that they they had a syringe of
(17:19):
this LST again, two seven milligrams of three thousand times
the level of human dosage injected into Tusco, and Tusco
staggers a bit, uh, trumpets his his trunk falls over
and seems to have a seizure. So they administer milligrams
of anti psychotics. The seizures subside a little, but not
(17:40):
much so. Then then they administer a bunch of barbagurates uh,
and Tusco dies a few minutes later. So it's sad,
not the first time an elephant has died neediously in
the scientifically experiment um, but but sad. Nonetheless, they performed
in that cropsy revealed that it died from asphyxiation. His
throat muscles had closed up, and there's a film this
(18:00):
somewhere in the u c l A archives, but it's
never been made public for obvious reasons. This was a
huge embarrassment. This was uh. It showed up in all
the papers. There were some misinformation floating about as well.
There was some information about how the researchers may have
had LSD themselves um earlier in the week, and that
led to some people saying, well, were they on LSD
(18:20):
when they get the elephant? LSD? There was, it was,
it was. It was not a pleasant story for anyone involved.
I can't imagine like that happened today. Can you imagine
the fun politicians would have with that. I mean, I'm
actually surprised that didn't become LSD gate back then. Yeah. Well,
in nineteen nine, another U c l A researcher came
(18:41):
along and he decided to follow up dozing two elephants
with LSD. But here's here's the catch, under much more control.
And the guy doing it was Ronald Siegel. And Ronald
Siegel was one of the world's leading experts on the
effects of Hallucingen's on animals, so he brought a lot
more experience, a lot more control, and he had a
bad example to look back on. He was not involved
(19:03):
in the first experiment, but he benefited from their missteps.
So he did it a few things differently. Uh, he
put LSD in the animals water instead of a syringe,
and then that didn't then didn't let the elephants have
any water for twelve hours, so they came in thirsty.
But they're not getting that skyrocket effect all at once.
It's more of a gradual um. And they used two
(19:24):
dose wages, one for each elephant, one with a lower dose,
one with a higher and the higher one was actually
proportionally equivalent to what Tusco had, not in terms of
the actual amount of the drug, but proportionately to its body.
And this is, you know, it's important for a number
of reasons. First of all, he wanted to correct the
problems of that first study. You know, let's let's and
(19:45):
figure out what happened, like why did the elephant die.
Did the elephant die because it had all of this
LSD in its system or was it the cocktail of
other things that they administered after the fact, you know
what was going on here. So so that they conducted
the experiment, the the elephants acted a little weird but
there were no seizures. There was just one of them
took an extended hay bath. Uh. It was a much
more pleasant story. So so it gave us a little
(20:08):
more insight into what what happens when packet erms take
hallucinogenic drugs and and also helped us better understand what
happened with this first disastrous attempt. So that's just one
of the studies that is looked at in the in
this book, and you can flip through it. There's all
sorts of stuff you want, stuff having to do with automobiles,
you know, digestion um cats. Oh, that there were a
(20:31):
way to measure whether or not the elephants were more
open as elephants as packetderms after really experience you know, yeah,
I don't know. I mean, what are elephant doors of perception? Anyway,
they were, They're very large, I'm sure. Nice. All right,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we get
back more books. We're talking to graphic novels, uh, novel
(20:55):
from an Icelandic author and all sorts of stuff, So
we'll be right back. Hey, we're back. We're continuing with
Julian and I summer reading recommendations to you the listener.
(21:18):
A mix of fiction, mix of science, a little science
fiction and even a little comics. So Julie take it
all right. So here is my little guilty pleasure. Here
this this summer. It is The Hitman's Guide the House Cleaning.
It is by hal Garum Halston and this is his
first book in English. He is an Icelandic author crime fiction,
(21:41):
very very dark humor. I cannot wait to read this.
My my husband actually get us for me. Let me
just kind of give you a quick synopsis of this book.
It is about this Croatian hit man. He worked for
the Croatian mafia. His name is Toxic. His real name
is Thomas Loves Toxic and that he has sixties six
(22:01):
flawless hits under his belt. Of course number sixty seven.
He kills the wrong guy and he has forced to
flee the United States and he takes on a new
identity in in the form of Father Friendly, who is
an American evangelist who he actually ends up killing and
assuming his identity. Um So here he is on his
(22:22):
way to Iceland. He has no means of escape from
this island he which is devoid of gun shops by
the way. So he's completely out of his element. Um,
and there's no business for him there. Obviously there's not
a lot of contract killing in Iceland, and he's sort
of forced to come to terms with his own bloody pass.
And so it's got all the little you know, fun traps.
(22:43):
They're mistaken identity, uh, the forces of good and evil
and who we really are? You know, who is this
person inside of us? Um? So I really can't wait
to read this. Um it's gotten some some good reviews,
and um, I haven't developed into a crime fiction in
a while. So, like I said, this is going to
be my guilty pleasure. But I just wanted to mention
(23:03):
that how the sin is, he's kind of a larger
than life figure himself. Um, he's a poet. Um, he's
kind of a provocateur. Um. He is someone who really
has come down actually very hard on Iceland in terms
of its politics and its economics. And uh, he's been
called the Bukowski of Iceland. I'm not sure how I
feel about that, but I think that just sort of
(23:24):
points to the idea that he ruffles a lot of
people's feathers, albeit in a very darkly rendered way with
his humor. So for anybody out there who is looking
for a new crime fiction novel, there you go. And
I often find that the European crime fiction is the
way to go because, especially if you've read enough for
seen enough American and US based crime fiction. He kind
(23:48):
of you kind of grow dead to it after a while.
But even a fairly cliche crime story set in uh,
in a European country, instantly it's all these different elements
influence the experience. Yeah, he has spent a good chunk
of his life in New York and various other cities
around the world, so he has a baseline understanding of
(24:09):
different cultures and the strangeness that comes with, you know,
flipping between one and another, which kind of I think
helps to sort of underscore this idea about what identity is. Well,
that one sounds very good. Yeah, cool. Well, uh, from
my next one, I'm gonna I'm gonna go with another
science the topic. And this is actually a book you
(24:31):
gave to me. And and this is another one that
is nice and that it is not a you know,
it's a it's a reasonably thick, like you know, about
four pages, but it's composed of various essays and uh,
and and and articles by a host of scientists, science writers,
um other professional commentators on on the subjects contained. It's
(24:54):
called This will make You Smarter Uh. New scientific Concepts
to improve your thinking, Edited by John Brockman. The book
is great because, again you can just flip through it.
You can find a number of really interesting topics, including, uh,
the article that we referenced in our pro Wrestling episode. Uh,
that's where I found it. I was just flipping through
the back, looking through the index, and I saw the
(25:14):
word wrestling, and I'm like, really, there's one of these
articles deals with wrestling. And sure enough, Uh, mathematition and
economist Eric Weinstein had that article about cafe about the
the altered reality of layered falsehoods and how this it's
existance in the world of professional wrestling actually relates very
strongly to the way systems work in the real world.
(25:35):
But in addition to that, you'll find articles inside by
Richard Dawkins we mentioned earlier. Uh. This is is Max
tech Mark, who I just saw in New York at
the World Science Festival, always a great scientific communicator. Jonah Laire,
Aubrey de Gray, David Eagleman, Alison gott Nick, v s Rama, Chandrin.
All these names I'm sure you recognized from from previous
(25:56):
episodes of our show and your external scientific reading. Uh so,
highly recommend this. You can like, really, you can like.
I flipped through it and then here is an article
by Matthew Richie systematic equilibrium bam, and it's like three pages.
So it's a great book for I don't know, if
you're one of the people who read stuff on in
the bathroom and you want an enlightened experience there, I
(26:17):
think this would be a great one, likewise on the beach,
fitting in quick bursts of information for your brain in
between your various travels. Go for it. And honestly, who
hasn't reached enlightenment in the bathroom? Really, you know, let's
be honest about it. Um. So, when I was talking
about him AND's God the house cleaning, I was talking
about this idea of what it means to be a
(26:39):
stranger in a strange land, and perhaps one of the
best books to capture what that feels like is a
graphic novel by Shaun tan It's called The Arrival and
it is just hauntingly beautiful. It is about a man
who leaves his family and he gets on a boat
and he goes to another land. Um. There are absolutely
(27:01):
no words in it. And the reason is that um,
as he leaves his land, his home land, he leaves
his language, he leaves his mother tongue. And so the
idea is that you get the sense of pure isolation
that he is experiencing, and also other worldliness, strangeness alien uh,
an alien culture with an alien language. And so the
(27:24):
way that Tan represents this is that he has all
sorts of incredibly mystical creatures that are running around in
this new land that this man is experiencing. So um,
the drawings themselves are technically absolutely beautiful. UM. They're in
shades of black and white and gray and brown. UM.
And you'll see street scenes and they look at first
(27:46):
glance completely normal, and then you see that that birds
have horns on them, or that there's a giant snail
just walking around. UM. I wanted to read a really
quick excerpt from Breton Nickel. He reviewed the book on
good Reads. I just thought he had an a good
take on this. He says, Tan's world here is struck
through with fantastical twist, as though we view a quantum
(28:07):
reality several iterations from our own. It is vaguely steampunkished
with perhaps a hint of anime. This is where you
find the genius of Sean Tan. He has imagined an
alternate reality that is fully alien yet instantly familiar. Many
an artist, when attempting to depict the alien, will lazily
skip straight to the zany, the nonsensical, the surreal, so
(28:27):
that the audience is struck on the head by the
message that this is not your earth. Tan is better
than that. He draws pet animals, food, architecture, and vehicles
that are certainly odd and whimsical, but the reader is
able to intuit how it might fit all together and work.
The strange horrors that the books protagonist and his new
found friends fled from in their homelands rest firmly in
(28:48):
the realm of fantasy that they can easily be interpreted
as nods to various evils and hardships in our own
real world, and some of the animals that are in here.
It's just like it's such a feat of imagination. Um.
You know, you see things that look like they could
be a reptilian, or you often see this sort of
tadpole looking dog. The tadpole looking dog is the one
(29:08):
that that caught my at first. It's just because because
very cute, very alien though, and and again the art
is wonderful here. It looks like like like sort of
classic CPI, A toned images of of of you newcomers
to New York and the Golden Age, but fused with this,
with with this alien world, this world of alien creatures.
(29:29):
And it's funny that you say that, because you know,
he began this as a children's book, and then he
realized that he had much more to say about it,
as is the child of a father who had immigrated,
and he spent four years researching it and really going
through the Ellis Islands records. In fact, you see a
lot of sketches of um people. Art really echoes those images,
(29:50):
those those iconic immigrant images that we see just so
well it just yeah. And then he shows these the
picture of the new city that the character is in,
and it's just so futuristic. It's like Blade Runner meets like, uh,
you know, nineteenth century America. It's amazing. Well, that's one
of the wonderful things about fantasy is that is that
like like fantasy, like pure fantasy, that's great. But when
(30:13):
you inject like a little bit of fantasy and a
little bit of of of real world, a little bit
of science, a little bit of history, what have you? Uh,
you can illuminate things in the history or in the
science that either you had grown numb to or you
never realize we're there to begin with. Well, and see,
that's what I think is so intriguing about this. We
often talk about this like there's there are certain tropes
(30:34):
that just are like the alien experience, right, or being
a stranger in a strange land, and it's very easy
to sort of fall into cliche. And when we've talked
about artists being successful at picking this, it's usually because
they're coming in at an angle that you would not
expect and it makes that trope feel new and fresh
and understood again for the first time. And one of
(30:56):
the ways that I think that Tan does this, it's
just by even uh this two page spread of clouds
and cloud formations that he has in the book, and
it's meant to show you what the character sees when
he's on the steamship to this new world looking up
at the sky each day, Each each cloud formation is
different and beautiful and just other worldly. And so I
(31:20):
mean just this page. I could sit here and stare
it probably for an hour and analyze it. Um. So
anyway that if you guys like graphic novels, if you, um,
if you want to, should have delve in deeper to
the psychological aspects of what it is to feel isolated
or to be uh, are you know, inserted into this
what feels like alien existence? Then check out the arrival.
(31:40):
Can't recommend it enough? Yeah, And this is one to
just look looking at you can tell it's not a
comic that you read and you put on the shelf.
You know, it's it's when you can keep out on
the coffee. Yes, people are gonna be drawn to it. Well,
and I tend to pick it up and just flip
through it again and again just because esthetically I can't
help it. But you know, thematically, it's just I find
something new every time I look at it. Okay, Well,
(32:01):
for my next pick, I just want I have to
mention this one because this is the most beautiful book
that I have read, uh this year. Um. And it's
called Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson. Uh. It's a story
of Robert Grenier a day labor in the American West
at the start of the twenties century, an ordinary man
in extraordinary times. Uh. He experiences some severe loss, loses
(32:23):
his family, and then struggles to make sense of this,
uh as the modern world creeps into this uh, this
this American West that he's grown to know and love.
Dennis Johnson's writing, and this is just beautiful. I'm gonna
read a little bit from it in just a moment.
But it's Uh. First of all, it's in novella. So
if you're wondering, what's I need something short from my
trip or from my my beach read or from my travels.
(32:44):
What is the shortest but but the most beautiful thing
I could possibly read, then I would I would suggest
giving this one a try. Um, there's nothing there's no
science in it. Really, there's uh, there's some some fun
little bits of history uh interesstpersed in there. Uh, there's
there's nothing really in the way fantasy. There's some dream
context uh involved, but that's about it. But still it's
(33:05):
the most beautiful thing that I've read. And I'm just
gonna read a quick bit here. This is a before
he experiences this loss, he has a conversation with his
wife about their about their infant, He says, how much
does she know? Do you suppose, Gladys, as much as
a dog pup? Do you suppose a dog pup can
live by its own after the bitch weans it away,
Gladys said. He waited for her to explain what this meant.
She often thought ahead of him. A man child couldn't
(33:28):
do that way, she said, Just go off and live
after it was ween. The dog knows more than a
babe until the babe knows its words, but not just
a few words. A dog raised around the house knows
some words too, as many as a baby. How many words, Gladys,
you know, she said, the word for its tricks and
the things you tell it to do. Just say some
of the words, glad It was dark, and he wanted
(33:49):
to keep hearing her voice. Well, fetch and come and
sit and lay and roll over. Whatever it knows to do,
it knows the words. In the dark, he felt his
daughter's eyes turned on him like a hornered brutes. It
was only his thoughts tricking him, but it poured something
cold down his spine. He shuddered and pulled the quilt
up to his neck all of his life. Robert Grenier
(34:09):
was able to recall that very moment on this very night.
Oh so it's uh, you know, it's it's it's a
beautiful novella. I highly recommend checking it out. It's it's
available in various formats and also as an audiobook. UM,
give you a shot. All right, it sounds very very good. UM.
So those are just some recommendations from us. We would
love to hear from you guys to do. Is there
(34:31):
something that you you feel very strongly that we should
check out, that others should check out. Um, if you
have one or two recommendations, UM, please blind by us. Yeah.
And also remember we were going to do a second
episode here that should publish after this one, where we'll
have some guests, some outside guests from from from various
parts of the end of the world, uh well two
(34:53):
parts of the world really, and then also some some
guests from various parts of our office. So we'll have
some guests from some of the other house Stuff Works
podcast on to share their recommendations. And through all of
this they're gonna be places where you're like, oh, that
book sounded really interesting. What was the name of that
how do you spell that? Well, luckily we have a
blog and on that blog you will find an accompanying
blog post where we will list all the books that
(35:14):
we've mentioned in this podcast episode and the other one,
and you can find that at stuff to bowl your
Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we keep
all of our our content, or at least links to
our content. But you can also find us on social
media where you will find us at Facebook where we
are stuff to Blow Your Mind. To find us on
Twitter where handle is blow the Mind. We're on tumbler
as well, and also YouTube where our handle is mind
(35:37):
Stuff Show. And you can always drop us a line
at the load of mind at discoveries dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Land, and I'm Julie Douglas. If
you remember from last year, we did an episode where
we discussed a few summer reading picks. We you know,
(00:23):
during the summer, people go on vacations they said, on beaches,
or they're man they're not in school, they're not teaching.
For various reasons, sometimes we feel more inclined to pick
up a book and enjoy it. Or or you know,
maybe you read something that's a little out of your
normal reading uh diet, something maybe a little more fun
or a little more technical in some cases. I mean,
(00:44):
it just depends. Were just outside of the genres that
you like to to prance around in. Uh So, last
year we did the episode where we each shared a
little fiction, a little science, and we let you decide
if you wanted to read any of them. Well, everyone
seemed to really enjoy those of that episode, so we thought, well,
this year, let's do it again, except we'll do double side.
We'll do one episode where um, Julie and I share
(01:07):
a few more picks for you to consider. For this
summer's reading, and then we'll do another episode where we
just get some guests to share their summer reading picks. So, um,
this is the first of those two episodes where Julian
and I are going to go through some things that
we have read, are reading on, and plan to read. Uh,
and we'll see if they line up with what you
(01:27):
would like to consume with your brain this summer. That's right,
So get your scrunches ready, put your hair up, slather
on the sunscreen, get your towels ready, because we're gonna
give you some good stuff to consider reading in your
lay about hours here. Yeah, and I'm just gonna launch
into like quintessential beach reading right now. Okay, Now, when
you say quintessential beach reading, uh, it is worth worth
(01:51):
mentioning that for some people, I think beach reads people
think leok, get the lowest level book you can get,
you know, like a straight up airport grocery store. Sole.
But but we were approaching all of this with the
understanding that the stuff of all your mind listener um
is going to want something that engages the mind on
some level exactly, which is why I thought I would
(02:11):
start with the book by David Deutsch the beginning of
infinity colon explanations that transform the world. I mean seriously,
if you are at the beach and you are staring
out at the horizon the waves are crashing, then you're
probably considering more than ever at this very moment, how
the universe works, what it all means, right, And yeah,
that's always my experience with the beach. I mean it
(02:33):
summons deep thoughts, right, So why not go on exploration
with David Deutsch. Um he is a pioneer in the
field of quantum computation, uh, the multiverse theory. He is
very much someone who was a proponent of that, and
he has a variety of ted talks that you can
check them out in other ways. But um, I thought
this book would be great to really explore, and I've
(02:56):
just now dealt into it and it has actually see
my imagination from the first page because a lot of
the sort of territory that he covers is stuff that
we have touched upon or maybe even explored ourselves. So um,
someone who is a great science communicator Deutsches, and he
can sort of bring the whole story of the universe
(03:16):
to us in a way that it's difficult, right to
try to wrap all this up in one nice package. Um,
but I just wanted to say a little description from
the publisher and he it says that he argues that
explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have
unlimited scope and parato cause change, and the quest to
(03:36):
improve them is the basic regulating principle not only of science,
but of all successful human endeavor. The stream of ever
improving explanations has infinite breach. This is uh, the idea
of infinity that he's exploring. Um, we are subject only
to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper
boundary to what we can eventually understand, control and the chieve.
(03:57):
So he goes through all the different periods of historical
thoughts by humans and you know, empiricism or enlightenment, and
then he gets to the science revolution and says that
we have ideas continue to exist and knowledge is the
limit less and so we know. It's kind of reminded
(04:17):
me of this idea that we talked about humans being
meme machines, idea machines, and that our ideas just exist
into the future and just transmutate as they go along.
So anyway, very cool, book trying to scratch at this
idea of infinity and knowledge and and how we move
through the world with the information that we have available
(04:38):
to this at this very moment. Wow, the I think
I'm gonna definitely have to pick this one up as well. Uh,
in part because I dare say we shall record an
episode in the near future on the topic of infinity.
In fact, I just returned from visiting the World Science
Festival in New York City, where there is a There
was one lecture discussion on the nature of infinity. Is
(05:00):
there such thing as infinity? It's it's it's a really
fascinating topic because in some disciplines, if you run into
an infinity, you run into a problem, because an infinity
is an error in the computational process. Uh. So it's
a fascinating topic, and this book does indeed sound like
a great way to spend your time, uh, contemplating reality
(05:22):
on the beach. Yes, so there you go. That's that's
my first pick. You want to throw one in there too, Yeah,
I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw them start with the one
that I'm really most excited about because I just finished
reading it. I'm still at that stage where I'm I'm
trying to decide if I if I really really liked it,
or if I actually loved it I book like this,
I'll I tend to give it four out of five
stars right off the bat, and then as I think
(05:43):
about it out the side, well, I maybe should I
bump it up to five stars? Didn't really have that
kind of an impact on me? Or should I maybe uh,
you know, leave it for or even move it down
to three, you know, as you begin to fully digest
the ideas. So this book is a surface detail by
Scottish author Ian M. Banks. If you remember from last year,
I actually recommended another E. N. M. Banks sci fi
(06:05):
story called The Player of Games, which, like this book,
is set in the Culture Universe. The Culture Universe of
idean in Banks has created in in these ten different
books is um far future, almost kind of space opera world.
They are all these different galactic societies at varying levels
(06:25):
of technological advancement, with varying ideologies and uh and the
central civilization is called the Culture and it is a
very much a post singularity world where the Culture society
has all of these humans and pan humans in it,
but they kind of do what they want to the
for the most part, they kind of live you know this, Uh,
(06:47):
this free for all existence within the culture, while very
advanced artificial intelligences make all the decisions and the main
artificial intelligences here are these minds that control these enormous spaceships.
And the culture is kind of a benevolent entity that
that will, to varying degrees, involve itself in other galactic communities. Uh,
(07:11):
generally with the best intentions, but not always with the
best of results. And uh, even though this is a
ten there are ten books in this series. This is
not a part one, part two, part three book. You
can essentially jump in at any point. Not every book
is a great first book for someone to read in
this series. For instance, uh, The Player of Games. I
(07:31):
think it's an excellent first culture book to read and
I and I have a strong feeling that surface detail
also would work really well for someone who had who
has no idea or just a faint idea about what
the culture consists of. So the big thing about this
book that I found interesting, and certainly it has a
number of awesome sci fi ideas running around it. There's
digitized consciousness, there's a space warfare, their self replicating machines,
(07:56):
because even though it's post singularity, it's a it's for
the most party, very positive view of a post singularity civilization.
There's also the dark side of post singularity as well
as a there's a segment of the culture that has
to deal with with taking care of self replicating machines,
which they call smatter in the book, and keeping them
from becoming too much of a problem. So is is
(08:18):
boredom a problem? Um? It can't. Yeah, it can be
for sure within the actual pan humans. Within the culture,
they'll The way they tend to deal with this is
they get involved in the benevolent aspects of the culture,
trying to help other civilizations, etcetera. So they become sort
of like they tap into their inner opress. Yeah, yeah,
(08:39):
kind of. I want to see if you would win
souf I said that you did not, no, no, no,
no kind with that. But one of the things that
really drug dragged me into this book is, first of all, uh,
I've read a few culture books in the past, but
then the sad news recently is that ian and Banks
is dying of cancer and was not not long for
this world. Um, which is which is awful. We're gonna
lose a tremendous author and a tremendous mind here, who
(09:03):
has thankfully produced a number of books, both sci fi
and literary fiction. Uh. But I had I had heard
that his more recent books had dealt more with darker
issues and issues of mortality. And uh. And this book,
even though like a very advanced, you know, sci fi book,
deals for the most part, with hell, with theologies of
(09:23):
hell and the problem of hell. Because imagine a world
in which we can digitize human consciousness. We can create
a digital virtual version of you by just you know,
scanning the brain and put that into this virtual world.
So the culture and various other civilizations in this universe,
they generally reached the point where they either developed the technology,
borrow the technology, or steal the technology to digitize consciousnesses
(09:48):
and create a kind of afterlife for a virtual afterlife
for people who have died, for individuals who have died.
And for the most part, these various civilizations tend to
take a very um positive spin on things. It's just like,
you know, a hedonistic heaven for those have died, or
some sort of peaceful place you kind of store an
intelligence in a mind that you might want to, you know,
(10:09):
a loved one you might want to talk to later,
or a great thinker that you might want to consult
with later. But inevitably, some of these civilizations hold on
to their arguably primitive ideas of hell. So you have
societies that um end up sending digitized consciousness is too
at place of eternal suffering, and that's a problem for
(10:32):
the culture. The culture doesn't think that's cool to have
a you know, even a virtual world where an intelligent
being is tortured and had and suffers just horribly for
some you know, unimaginable length of time. So, uh, this
there ends up being this war that they call the
War in Heaven, but it's actually a virtual war game
(10:53):
that that ends up taking place between pro hell civilizations
and anti health civilizations, and the ideas it they'll they'll
have this virtual war and then whoever wins wins. If
the pro Hell side wins, then well then these these
few societies that cling to the idea of hell, they
get to keep it, they get to keep their virtual health.
But if the anti health side wins, well then they
(11:15):
all have to be eradicated. But in this book, there
are a number of storylines that are that are coming together,
and there's this increasing possibility that this, this virtual war
game is going to emerge into the real world as
an actual conflict and actual armed conflict. That's really fascinating
because I've been thinking about war a lot, and of
(11:36):
course only because my daughter continues to ask various questions
four years old and curious about war, and so that's
been on my mind lately. And and then I wonder
if you could get to a point where you could
play out of virtual war in society, yeah, and I
mean for us, and would it have the same sort
(11:58):
of dire consequences in one way or another that actual
war does. I mean, I'm not talking about fatality so much,
but more in terms of regime control or the ways
that we can strip our citizens of rights. Yeah. And
this this book does explore that territory where you know,
it's a situation where there's a big, huge conflict between
(12:19):
these two factions. And for the most part, they realized
that this is something that we can settle in a
virtual environment outside of actually bringing in real deaths and
real destruction. But then to what extent can that work?
Does it reach a point where it boils over into
the real world again. So so I found it to
be a really fascinating book. Um, and I recommend it
(12:40):
to anyone out there who is who's interested in sci fi,
who's interested in uh in a little theology, a little philosophy.
Uh And and I also I should always add that
Ian and Banks had injects a certain sense of humor
into it as well, so it's not just you know,
cold hard sci fi and cold hard philosophy. There's there's
some giggles thrown in there as well, so very good. Well, Um,
(13:03):
I had brought up my four year old ask me questions,
and so I wanted to let you guys know of
a book called Big Questions from Little People and Simple
Answers from Great Minds, And this is geared more towards
the four too, maybe twelve year old set, and I thought, well,
I really do want to do a kid centric book recommendation. Uh.
(13:24):
Last year I think it was the Magic of Reality
by Hawkins, and that is excellent that book, by the way,
although I would say that's for older children, but this
book is, I mean, all the questions are generated by
children and the answers are given by various experts we're
talking about Mary Roach, Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, David Eagleman,
(13:46):
Noam Chomsky, Mario Batali. Uh So, just a variety of
different people and the questions very I mean, it can
be uh you know, sort of the wrote stuff like
who named all the cities? Anyway? To do aliens exist?
What makes me me? Is it okay to eat a worm? Uh?
Can a beasting another? B? Why are some people mean?
(14:09):
Why is the or why is space so sparkly? Um?
And it really it's one of those kind of books
in the in the explanations that I've given are so
pithy and great and oftentimes have a lot of humor
that even if you think you know the answer to
this question as an adult, it will be reframed for
you in another way and you'll definitely learn something from it.
(14:31):
In My four year old loves it. Well, just flip
through it every once in a while and let's just
say that one and when we discuss it. But anyway,
it's a it's a great kind of book for for
kids who are coming online in terms of expanding their
consciousness about the various topics in life, like hey, why
are people mean? Why is the uh nighttime skuys so
(14:51):
sparkly and it kind of gets at the meat of
those questions, which is pretty great. Cool. Well, my next
recommendation is is a science book, and this one is
is definitely aimed at, you know, more more grown audience,
though younger minds well I think also find plenty of
of wonderful things in it as well. And the book
(15:12):
is called Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments by
Alex Bows. Alex's his his line of study is the
history of science, and this book is a it's it's
a great one. It's a great book to just pick
up and so sort of flip through and find something
interesting and start reading it, because, uh, there are several chapters.
(15:33):
In each chapter has all these subdivisions. Each to each
subdivision an interesting look and an actual scientific experiment or
series of experiments that have taken place, generally experiments with
kind of a either a surface level weirdness, you know,
one of those where you're you're like, well, why did
they you know, why are they giving Latte's two cockroaches?
That doesn't make any sense? And then you then you
read it and you're like, oh, well, of course if
(15:54):
they had not given latte to cockroaches, we would not
have this vital information. And then some of the other
ones are kind of reverse like, oh, well that seems reasonable,
but wow, they didn't really carry that out right. This
book gets its title from a nineteen sixty to experiment
that saw Oklahoma's School of Medicine researchers dose an elephant
named Tusco with l s D. Uh. Last, of course,
(16:14):
is the llucogen the artificial lucogens that we've talked about
in the previous episodes. Um. Not only did they give
Tusco the elephant LSD, they gave Tusco the largest dose
of LSD ever administered to a single organism, two D
ninety seven milligrams. That's three thousand times the level of
a human dose. Now, it's worth noting that at this
time everyone was getting in on LSD research. Okay, was
(16:37):
this is the heyday of LSD research and uh, and
we were fascinated by its effects on the human mind
and the way we we observe the world. Also, as uh,
as the author points out, UH, this was also a
time when the CIA was very interested in military applications
of l s D, so they funneled tons of money
through front organizations to various American LSD research projects. So
(16:59):
uh no, we're not sure. We can't say one we
or another. Uh if this particular experiment benefited from CIA funds,
but a number of them down. A lot of people
got their hands into that candy jar. So uh, this uh,
this is kind of a tragic experiment though, because of
what happens is that they they had a syringe of
(17:19):
this LST again, two seven milligrams of three thousand times
the level of human dosage injected into Tusco, and Tusco
staggers a bit, uh, trumpets his his trunk falls over
and seems to have a seizure. So they administer milligrams
of anti psychotics. The seizures subside a little, but not
(17:40):
much so. Then then they administer a bunch of barbagurates uh,
and Tusco dies a few minutes later. So it's sad,
not the first time an elephant has died neediously in
the scientifically experiment um, but but sad. Nonetheless, they performed
in that cropsy revealed that it died from asphyxiation. His
throat muscles had closed up, and there's a film this
(18:00):
somewhere in the u c l A archives, but it's
never been made public for obvious reasons. This was a
huge embarrassment. This was uh. It showed up in all
the papers. There were some misinformation floating about as well.
There was some information about how the researchers may have
had LSD themselves um earlier in the week, and that
led to some people saying, well, were they on LSD
(18:20):
when they get the elephant? LSD? There was, it was,
it was. It was not a pleasant story for anyone involved.
I can't imagine like that happened today. Can you imagine
the fun politicians would have with that. I mean, I'm
actually surprised that didn't become LSD gate back then. Yeah. Well,
in nineteen nine, another U c l A researcher came
(18:41):
along and he decided to follow up dozing two elephants
with LSD. But here's here's the catch, under much more control.
And the guy doing it was Ronald Siegel. And Ronald
Siegel was one of the world's leading experts on the
effects of Hallucingen's on animals, so he brought a lot
more experience, a lot more control, and he had a
bad example to look back on. He was not involved
(19:03):
in the first experiment, but he benefited from their missteps.
So he did it a few things differently. Uh, he
put LSD in the animals water instead of a syringe,
and then that didn't then didn't let the elephants have
any water for twelve hours, so they came in thirsty.
But they're not getting that skyrocket effect all at once.
It's more of a gradual um. And they used two
(19:24):
dose wages, one for each elephant, one with a lower dose,
one with a higher and the higher one was actually
proportionally equivalent to what Tusco had, not in terms of
the actual amount of the drug, but proportionately to its body.
And this is, you know, it's important for a number
of reasons. First of all, he wanted to correct the
problems of that first study. You know, let's let's and
(19:45):
figure out what happened, like why did the elephant die.
Did the elephant die because it had all of this
LSD in its system or was it the cocktail of
other things that they administered after the fact, you know
what was going on here. So so that they conducted
the experiment, the the elephants acted a little weird but
there were no seizures. There was just one of them
took an extended hay bath. Uh. It was a much
more pleasant story. So so it gave us a little
(20:08):
more insight into what what happens when packet erms take
hallucinogenic drugs and and also helped us better understand what
happened with this first disastrous attempt. So that's just one
of the studies that is looked at in the in
this book, and you can flip through it. There's all
sorts of stuff you want, stuff having to do with automobiles,
you know, digestion um cats. Oh, that there were a
(20:31):
way to measure whether or not the elephants were more
open as elephants as packetderms after really experience you know, yeah,
I don't know. I mean, what are elephant doors of perception? Anyway,
they were, They're very large, I'm sure. Nice. All right,
we're gonna take a quick break and when we get
back more books. We're talking to graphic novels, uh, novel
(20:55):
from an Icelandic author and all sorts of stuff, So
we'll be right back. Hey, we're back. We're continuing with
Julian and I summer reading recommendations to you the listener.
(21:18):
A mix of fiction, mix of science, a little science
fiction and even a little comics. So Julie take it
all right. So here is my little guilty pleasure. Here
this this summer. It is The Hitman's Guide the House Cleaning.
It is by hal Garum Halston and this is his
first book in English. He is an Icelandic author crime fiction,
(21:41):
very very dark humor. I cannot wait to read this.
My my husband actually get us for me. Let me
just kind of give you a quick synopsis of this book.
It is about this Croatian hit man. He worked for
the Croatian mafia. His name is Toxic. His real name
is Thomas Loves Toxic and that he has sixties six
(22:01):
flawless hits under his belt. Of course number sixty seven.
He kills the wrong guy and he has forced to
flee the United States and he takes on a new
identity in in the form of Father Friendly, who is
an American evangelist who he actually ends up killing and
assuming his identity. Um So here he is on his
(22:22):
way to Iceland. He has no means of escape from
this island he which is devoid of gun shops by
the way. So he's completely out of his element. Um,
and there's no business for him there. Obviously there's not
a lot of contract killing in Iceland, and he's sort
of forced to come to terms with his own bloody pass.
And so it's got all the little you know, fun traps.
(22:43):
They're mistaken identity, uh, the forces of good and evil
and who we really are? You know, who is this
person inside of us? Um? So I really can't wait
to read this. Um it's gotten some some good reviews,
and um, I haven't developed into a crime fiction in
a while. So, like I said, this is going to
be my guilty pleasure. But I just wanted to mention
(23:03):
that how the sin is, he's kind of a larger
than life figure himself. Um, he's a poet. Um, he's
kind of a provocateur. Um. He is someone who really
has come down actually very hard on Iceland in terms
of its politics and its economics. And uh, he's been
called the Bukowski of Iceland. I'm not sure how I
feel about that, but I think that just sort of
(23:24):
points to the idea that he ruffles a lot of
people's feathers, albeit in a very darkly rendered way with
his humor. So for anybody out there who is looking
for a new crime fiction novel, there you go. And
I often find that the European crime fiction is the
way to go because, especially if you've read enough for
seen enough American and US based crime fiction. He kind
(23:48):
of you kind of grow dead to it after a while.
But even a fairly cliche crime story set in uh,
in a European country, instantly it's all these different elements
influence the experience. Yeah, he has spent a good chunk
of his life in New York and various other cities
around the world, so he has a baseline understanding of
(24:09):
different cultures and the strangeness that comes with, you know,
flipping between one and another, which kind of I think
helps to sort of underscore this idea about what identity is. Well,
that one sounds very good. Yeah, cool. Well, uh, from
my next one, I'm gonna I'm gonna go with another
science the topic. And this is actually a book you
(24:31):
gave to me. And and this is another one that
is nice and that it is not a you know,
it's a it's a reasonably thick, like you know, about
four pages, but it's composed of various essays and uh,
and and and articles by a host of scientists, science writers,
um other professional commentators on on the subjects contained. It's
(24:54):
called This will make You Smarter Uh. New scientific Concepts
to improve your thinking, Edited by John Brockman. The book
is great because, again you can just flip through it.
You can find a number of really interesting topics, including, uh,
the article that we referenced in our pro Wrestling episode. Uh,
that's where I found it. I was just flipping through
the back, looking through the index, and I saw the
(25:14):
word wrestling, and I'm like, really, there's one of these
articles deals with wrestling. And sure enough, Uh, mathematition and
economist Eric Weinstein had that article about cafe about the
the altered reality of layered falsehoods and how this it's
existance in the world of professional wrestling actually relates very
strongly to the way systems work in the real world.
(25:35):
But in addition to that, you'll find articles inside by
Richard Dawkins we mentioned earlier. Uh. This is is Max
tech Mark, who I just saw in New York at
the World Science Festival, always a great scientific communicator. Jonah Laire,
Aubrey de Gray, David Eagleman, Alison gott Nick, v s Rama, Chandrin.
All these names I'm sure you recognized from from previous
(25:56):
episodes of our show and your external scientific reading. Uh so,
highly recommend this. You can like, really, you can like.
I flipped through it and then here is an article
by Matthew Richie systematic equilibrium bam, and it's like three pages.
So it's a great book for I don't know, if
you're one of the people who read stuff on in
the bathroom and you want an enlightened experience there, I
(26:17):
think this would be a great one, likewise on the beach,
fitting in quick bursts of information for your brain in
between your various travels. Go for it. And honestly, who
hasn't reached enlightenment in the bathroom? Really, you know, let's
be honest about it. Um. So, when I was talking
about him AND's God the house cleaning, I was talking
about this idea of what it means to be a
(26:39):
stranger in a strange land, and perhaps one of the
best books to capture what that feels like is a
graphic novel by Shaun tan It's called The Arrival and
it is just hauntingly beautiful. It is about a man
who leaves his family and he gets on a boat
and he goes to another land. Um. There are absolutely
(27:01):
no words in it. And the reason is that um,
as he leaves his land, his home land, he leaves
his language, he leaves his mother tongue. And so the
idea is that you get the sense of pure isolation
that he is experiencing, and also other worldliness, strangeness alien uh,
an alien culture with an alien language. And so the
(27:24):
way that Tan represents this is that he has all
sorts of incredibly mystical creatures that are running around in
this new land that this man is experiencing. So um,
the drawings themselves are technically absolutely beautiful. UM. They're in
shades of black and white and gray and brown. UM.
And you'll see street scenes and they look at first
(27:46):
glance completely normal, and then you see that that birds
have horns on them, or that there's a giant snail
just walking around. UM. I wanted to read a really
quick excerpt from Breton Nickel. He reviewed the book on
good Reads. I just thought he had an a good
take on this. He says, Tan's world here is struck
through with fantastical twist, as though we view a quantum
(28:07):
reality several iterations from our own. It is vaguely steampunkished
with perhaps a hint of anime. This is where you
find the genius of Sean Tan. He has imagined an
alternate reality that is fully alien yet instantly familiar. Many
an artist, when attempting to depict the alien, will lazily
skip straight to the zany, the nonsensical, the surreal, so
(28:27):
that the audience is struck on the head by the
message that this is not your earth. Tan is better
than that. He draws pet animals, food, architecture, and vehicles
that are certainly odd and whimsical, but the reader is
able to intuit how it might fit all together and work.
The strange horrors that the books protagonist and his new
found friends fled from in their homelands rest firmly in
(28:48):
the realm of fantasy that they can easily be interpreted
as nods to various evils and hardships in our own
real world, and some of the animals that are in here.
It's just like it's such a feat of imagination. Um.
You know, you see things that look like they could
be a reptilian, or you often see this sort of
tadpole looking dog. The tadpole looking dog is the one
(29:08):
that that caught my at first. It's just because because
very cute, very alien though, and and again the art
is wonderful here. It looks like like like sort of
classic CPI, A toned images of of of you newcomers
to New York and the Golden Age, but fused with this,
with with this alien world, this world of alien creatures.
(29:29):
And it's funny that you say that, because you know,
he began this as a children's book, and then he
realized that he had much more to say about it,
as is the child of a father who had immigrated,
and he spent four years researching it and really going
through the Ellis Islands records. In fact, you see a
lot of sketches of um people. Art really echoes those images,
(29:50):
those those iconic immigrant images that we see just so
well it just yeah. And then he shows these the
picture of the new city that the character is in,
and it's just so futuristic. It's like Blade Runner meets like, uh,
you know, nineteenth century America. It's amazing. Well, that's one
of the wonderful things about fantasy is that is that
like like fantasy, like pure fantasy, that's great. But when
(30:13):
you inject like a little bit of fantasy and a
little bit of of of real world, a little bit
of science, a little bit of history, what have you? Uh,
you can illuminate things in the history or in the
science that either you had grown numb to or you
never realize we're there to begin with. Well, and see,
that's what I think is so intriguing about this. We
often talk about this like there's there are certain tropes
(30:34):
that just are like the alien experience, right, or being
a stranger in a strange land, and it's very easy
to sort of fall into cliche. And when we've talked
about artists being successful at picking this, it's usually because
they're coming in at an angle that you would not
expect and it makes that trope feel new and fresh
and understood again for the first time. And one of
(30:56):
the ways that I think that Tan does this, it's
just by even uh this two page spread of clouds
and cloud formations that he has in the book, and
it's meant to show you what the character sees when
he's on the steamship to this new world looking up
at the sky each day, Each each cloud formation is
different and beautiful and just other worldly. And so I
(31:20):
mean just this page. I could sit here and stare
it probably for an hour and analyze it. Um. So
anyway that if you guys like graphic novels, if you, um,
if you want to, should have delve in deeper to
the psychological aspects of what it is to feel isolated
or to be uh, are you know, inserted into this
what feels like alien existence? Then check out the arrival.
(31:40):
Can't recommend it enough? Yeah, And this is one to
just look looking at you can tell it's not a
comic that you read and you put on the shelf.
You know, it's it's when you can keep out on
the coffee. Yes, people are gonna be drawn to it. Well,
and I tend to pick it up and just flip
through it again and again just because esthetically I can't
help it. But you know, thematically, it's just I find
something new every time I look at it. Okay, Well,
(32:01):
for my next pick, I just want I have to
mention this one because this is the most beautiful book
that I have read, uh this year. Um. And it's
called Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson. Uh. It's a story
of Robert Grenier a day labor in the American West
at the start of the twenties century, an ordinary man
in extraordinary times. Uh. He experiences some severe loss, loses
(32:23):
his family, and then struggles to make sense of this,
uh as the modern world creeps into this uh, this
this American West that he's grown to know and love.
Dennis Johnson's writing, and this is just beautiful. I'm gonna
read a little bit from it in just a moment.
But it's Uh. First of all, it's in novella. So
if you're wondering, what's I need something short from my
trip or from my my beach read or from my travels.
(32:44):
What is the shortest but but the most beautiful thing
I could possibly read, then I would I would suggest
giving this one a try. Um, there's nothing there's no
science in it. Really, there's uh, there's some some fun
little bits of history uh interesstpersed in there. Uh, there's
there's nothing really in the way fantasy. There's some dream
context uh involved, but that's about it. But still it's
(33:05):
the most beautiful thing that I've read. And I'm just
gonna read a quick bit here. This is a before
he experiences this loss, he has a conversation with his
wife about their about their infant, He says, how much
does she know? Do you suppose, Gladys, as much as
a dog pup? Do you suppose a dog pup can
live by its own after the bitch weans it away,
Gladys said. He waited for her to explain what this meant.
She often thought ahead of him. A man child couldn't
(33:28):
do that way, she said, Just go off and live
after it was ween. The dog knows more than a
babe until the babe knows its words, but not just
a few words. A dog raised around the house knows
some words too, as many as a baby. How many words, Gladys,
you know, she said, the word for its tricks and
the things you tell it to do. Just say some
of the words, glad It was dark, and he wanted
(33:49):
to keep hearing her voice. Well, fetch and come and
sit and lay and roll over. Whatever it knows to do,
it knows the words. In the dark, he felt his
daughter's eyes turned on him like a hornered brutes. It
was only his thoughts tricking him, but it poured something
cold down his spine. He shuddered and pulled the quilt
up to his neck all of his life. Robert Grenier
(34:09):
was able to recall that very moment on this very night.
Oh so it's uh, you know, it's it's it's a
beautiful novella. I highly recommend checking it out. It's it's
available in various formats and also as an audiobook. UM,
give you a shot. All right, it sounds very very good. UM.
So those are just some recommendations from us. We would
love to hear from you guys to do. Is there
(34:31):
something that you you feel very strongly that we should
check out, that others should check out. Um, if you
have one or two recommendations, UM, please blind by us. Yeah.
And also remember we were going to do a second
episode here that should publish after this one, where we'll
have some guests, some outside guests from from from various
parts of the end of the world, uh well two
(34:53):
parts of the world really, and then also some some
guests from various parts of our office. So we'll have
some guests from some of the other house Stuff Works
podcast on to share their recommendations. And through all of
this they're gonna be places where you're like, oh, that
book sounded really interesting. What was the name of that
how do you spell that? Well, luckily we have a
blog and on that blog you will find an accompanying
blog post where we will list all the books that
(35:14):
we've mentioned in this podcast episode and the other one,
and you can find that at stuff to bowl your
Mind dot com. That's the mothership. That's where we keep
all of our our content, or at least links to
our content. But you can also find us on social
media where you will find us at Facebook where we
are stuff to Blow Your Mind. To find us on
Twitter where handle is blow the Mind. We're on tumbler
as well, and also YouTube where our handle is mind
(35:37):
Stuff Show. And you can always drop us a line
at the load of mind at discoveries dot com.
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