A Geek History of Time - Episode 119 - Dune Back Again Part V

Episode Date: August 8, 2021

So first thing foremost, I think being the addition of pant leggings is really when you start to see your heroes get watered down. The ability to go straight man, that one. Which is a good argument for absolute girls. Everybody is going to get behind me though, and the support number's going to go through. When you hang out with the hero, it doesn't go well for you. Grandfather took the cob and just slid it right through the bar. Oh god, Bob. Okay.

And that became the dominant way our family did it. Okay. And so, both of my marriages, they were treated to that. Okay, wait, hold on. Yeah, rage, I could. How do you imagine the rubber chicken? My grandmother actually vacuumed in her pearls. Oh my god, you always had to sexual revolution.

It might have just been a Canadian standoff. We're gonna go back to 9-11. Oh, do we get over it? And I don't understand. But it's a school. Agra has no business being that big. With the cultists, what real big? This is a geek history of time.

Where we connect Nurtory to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a world history and English teacher up here in northern California. And this week I actually managed to achieve the same level in Call of Duty that Damien and producer George have been at since the day we started playing together. I finally have those five little stars next to my name and I finally, more importantly to me, I finally unlocked the China Beach. So now Damien and I can lob grenades at one another from across the battlefield.

I still haven't quite figured out how to gauge the aim entirely. Like, cause you know what? Once you go to indirect fire, I'm consistently overshooting. Like, I'm constantly, I wanna put it, like you're in the window of green, right? And I wanna put it just over the truck on the other side. And I'm regularly lob it like across the alley and Like outside the battle space because like well, you know, nobody actually goes out there, right, you know

but yeah, and and I have now played just shotgun duels against you and producer George and Against what was my record against you? I don't know, I mean it was like, it was eight to six. Like you got me, yeah, it was within two, no, producer George, like, like, Well, I told him he didn't have to take it easy on you.

Oh, you told him, yeah, yeah, don't bother. Well, that's true, that is true. You had said, no, we don't need to take it easy. I don't think he would have to begin with. But yeah, so that's my piece, I'm very proud of that. You should be. Coming from a learner mindset position, it's like, oh no, I actually am getting better at this.

So that's mean what I got going on. Who are you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony, I am a Latin and drama teacher up here in Northern California and this week. Good heavens. There's not much going on. I did manage to buy my daughter the speeches of Sojourner Truth and also got my son reading because because specifically because she was studying that in fourth grade.

And it did not like the very white wash curriculum they were using, even though it actually mentioned sojourner truth and so on. Okay. And it used terms that I didn't like. So, okay. So here's a question. Because I'm sure you're familiar with this. Did her school's curriculum use the transcript of her speech that was actually the

transcript of her speech that she gave? No. Or was it the one that was published by the... Oh, really? No, it was it was more about just her life. Okay. Third graders, so her life. And you know what talked about she was a slave. This is true. I said start using the word enslaved person. She talked about her owners. I said, no, they were slaveholders. There were people who kept other people in slavery. Use those words. And she had a problem with that because that's not what the book said. Now she wasn't challenging me on that at all. Yeah, yeah. These words work a lot more, but I could see her brain working like I want to do right by my teacher here. And so I

see her brain working like I want to do right by my teacher here. And so I emailed her teacher and said, here's what I'm using. Here's a list of words that I've told her to use. I appreciate that your curriculum includes Surgeon or Truth, but could you please give room for Julian support her on this? And she absolutely did and that was great. So this summer, they're reading,

because I assign my kids reading the summer. They read one and then they get to read what they like and then they read one. And then they get to read what they like and then they read one and then they get to read. Okay. So She read March by John Lewis and then she read Barefoot again. Oh, yeah, and then I mean he was her age when it happened. Yeah, it's from his perspective seems fair And then she got to read what she wanted for a bit, and now she's back to it, and she read,

they called this enemy by George K. Okay. Wow. Which I loved that she chose that. Just out of curiosity. Sure. I'm just, do you know what her lexile level is? Like what is her?

Yeah, I don't know her IQ. Because. Okay, and I kind of don't want to. Well, no, I totally, I get that. But I'm just thinking, like George Takeda's book is not written for fourth graders. No, but it's a comic book. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay, yeah, it's a graphic novel. So, everything I've assigned has been graphic novels. Okay. Now, I got her so Gerner truth speech as well as a few other speeches just in a little like those penguin classics. Yeah, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Um, and then I also got her, um, the, the autobiography of M.L.ine Pankhurst. Okay. So she's starting to read that as well. So yeah, and my son, he's now reading March, because I made sure that I'm doing it all.

But he's also very deeply into reading how to click or train your cat. So that is all of his time right now. So which I have zero problem with. So that's what I'm going on around here. I love how metaphorically your kids are Luke and Leia. Yes. Like Jason and Jaina, quite honestly.

Well, yeah. Yeah, but in my own head, I'm totally like Luke and Leia. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, very cool. But yeah. Very cool.

So when last we spoke about Dune, prior to friend of the show, Teo, my head was spinning. Okay. So much sand and so much. I hate sand, it gets everywhere. This is why I can never want to do it. Or did he? Yeah, well, anyway, later.

Later. Yeah, question for another time. So later on. So, catch me up to where we were. I remembered the plot by an audience. We had gone, we had gone into, we'd gone through the plot, we'd gone through the world building, and we had gotten into talking about the themes that Herbert was talking about or that are central. How much he was intentionally talking about the themes that Herbert was talking about or that are central.

How much he was intentionally talking about them. And how much they're just kind of there because the way he chose to frame the book. Like it's really clear there are some of these things that we're talking about that were like no no. I Frank Herbert have big ideas about this goddamn it. You're gonna listen to me. And then there are other things where you're just like, no, no, you chose to set this on a planet that was very clearly built around having seen Lawrence of Arabia one too many times.

You know, as at some kind of formative age. And so there's all kinds of shit unpack there. Yeah, you know. And so if I remember correctly, we'd talked about the theme of colonialism. Yep. We talked about empire and the politics of power, discuss the idea that it's built around this idea of the Potta Shia Emperor being the ruler of a hydraulic empire, everybody is dependent on spice. Iraqis is the only place where you can get it. And the and the last thing I have in my notes was the idea that even supreme power like the Shadam the fourth at the beginning of the book, Shadam the fourth is in this

position where he is literally the most powerful single individual in all of human space. Right. Okay, he can order a planet burned to a blister. Right. Like he has the power to do that. But once he does. But once he does, yes. And so his power is like, he's got to keep all these plates spinning.

Everything is balanced on the point of a spear. Yes. And he has to keep working to keep everything moving. Right. Because the equilibrium is dynamic. And if one of those things falls apart. Right. He's blown.

Essentially, if he's got all this power, but the second he uses it, I mean, like I said before, it's a canucleer weapon, right? Yeah. There was a wonderful play called Other People's Money, which then got turned into a movie. And the guy, the guy that Danny DeVito played in the movie, he said, you know, got all these lawyers, he says, lawyers are like, what do you say?

Lawyers are like nuclear bombs. If you've got a lot of them, it's good threaten people with, but as soon as you let one out, it fucks everything up. Which, yeah. So, but so he basically, if you're one of the nobles,

you kind of want to outmaneuver someone into being the first one to get smacked. And then you want to hang back while the others go after them. And then you insert yourself. Oh yeah, and it's all everybody playing after you, sir. Right, no, after you. Right, you know, and.

Oh, are you a coward? How dare you? How dare you, yeah. And like the whole situation at the beginning of the book is like, letos, whole position at the beginning of the book is I have been pushed into a trap. Right. And I know that it is one.

I'm going to go in, but I'm, you know, my only chance is I've got to turn the trap into a weapon to turn on the people who are trying to kill me. Right. And so that theme of Machiavellian kind of plotting and Byzantine power structures, the statements that Herbert is making about politics and about power are very neatly crystallized in that at the beginning of the book.

And then everything else that happens after that is variations add nauseam on that point. It feels like there was a lever that got pulled and then we're just watching everything unfold. Yes. It's like a watch and you unwind the spring and something you just watch the 12 go-work goes. Yeah.

And it's remarkable that you use that analogy because one of the other things that is a theme that keeps coming up over and over again in not only the first book, but then in the later ones. Is the mega violence, and so it's a clockwork, but it's undoing, so it's orange. Nice. Thank you. Nice, not even mad about that one.

Nice, well done. And it's ultraviolence. Oh, goddammit. Yeah, I couldn't get a done. And it's ultraviolence. Oh, goddammit. Yeah, I couldn't get a little, a little of the old ultraviolence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, and the less said about that, beyond the pun, really the better. But the theme of fate and destiny. Oh, okay. And like Paul is aware of his terrible purpose, capital P, like throughout the book. And he's trying to, he's trying to find a way to thread the needle as I talked about. Right.

And, and his consciousness being so vastly expanded because they've been planning for five generations. Yeah, because, because, yeah, everything has been built up. And he's the culmination of this whole breeding program and His his parents training him from a young age to be a menta and him saying okay, yes, I'm gonna go forward with it And I'm like all of that There is this like he he is living through the experience of

being able to predict Where the spring is gonna go and having to try to thread his way through backward, backward, and here. But then there's always the limitations on how much can he actually act on the timeline, how much can he actually affect. And so there's these overarching ideas about fate and destiny and the gestalt psychic destiny of the human species. Because that is, yeah, those are big ideas. Huge big ideas.

And little self-indulgent to be perfectly honest. Yo, oh, huge leaf, self-indulgent. Like everything else in the Doon series, nothing is done with half measures. The self-indulgence is like, oh, hugely self-adulter. Like everything else in the Dune series, nothing is done with half measures. The self-indulgence is like, no, I'm just gonna whack off. Like, no, no, no, it is, yeah, no. I have a silly question, especially now that you said, I'm just gonna whack off.

Okay. At any point does Paul end up blind? Not in the first book. Oh, interesting. No. Okay. Does he fall off hand, interesting. No. Okay. Does he fall off hand sandworm? Uh, no.

Okay. No, just because it's very easy to be a book. Yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah. No, he does wind up blind in the second book. Okay. He gets a low yield, a very specific kind of nuclear weapon that Herbert kind of created for his universe called a stone burner is set off and the flare of that burns out his eyes, but by that time his

precience is so powerful that it doesn't matter that it doesn't that that like he's able to have whole conversations with people that he knows right like the whole thing from beginning through to the end. Sounds a lot like Matrix 3. A little bit. Yeah, yeah. And we can get into influences. Absolutely. Okay, so.

So that's, we've now bounced around a bunch, but talking about Empire, Politics, and Power, talking about Paul, politics, and power, talking about Paul and Fate, then brings us into the theme of expansion of consciousness. Right. This was something that was clearly really close to Herbert's heart. And you talked about that.

So about how he went in. You have the desert, you have the mushrooms. Yeah. He was a user of mind-expanding substances. Right. He was very clearly reading Leary and... Oh, Huxley. Huxley. Yeah. Clearly... I thought you meant Leary with an A for a minute. Oh, yeah. Oh, E Y. Yeah, yeah. And reading Larry, like what's he, Larry? What's he, Larry? Yeah, no, no, it was very clearly influenced by, you know,

everybody, the wing of popular culture of the intellectual cadre of society who were calling for, no, no, seriously, this is a tool for everybody to expand their consciousness. Right. We need, like, I mean, Larry was saying, no, no, seriously, this is a tool for everybody to expand their consciousness. We need, we need like, I mean, Leary was saying, no, everybody needs to drop acid. Right. And Huxley was saying, no, she should just be for the intellectuals.

The intellectuals, yeah. You know, the Beatles, everybody smoke pot, everybody smoke pot, like, Right. Seriously, that was a part, a thing going on in the zit guys. And so we see his main character, expanding his consciousness in not only into becoming a men's hat,

who's a superhuman computer, like to replace computers. Right. But then going one step beyond that, because as it turns out, he is this prophesied quizatz hoterach who then is that nay plus ultra. Right. Right.

And he spends a huge amount of time in the book, pages and pages in the book, describing the the experience of Paul having these moments where he is he is dissociated from himself, uh-huh, because his consciousness is now he's now looking Uh-huh. Because his consciousness is now, he's now looking across the valley of the immediate present to the mountains of the future.

Oh, okay. You know, yeah. And that like there are times where in his consciousness, there's this vast gulf that he can't see. And he knows that those are all the timelines in which something goes wrong and he dies. And then on the other side, you start seeing other stuff. Now you keep bringing this up and I'm wondering if

it's because you, you know, watched Loki at all, but like you're talking about different timelines, a multiverse. Yes. And that's something that Herbert had tabled in. Herbert doesn't in this, in the doon universe, he doesn't talk about the idea of multiple timelines existing simultaneously. So it's more functional to the clear of violence. Yeah, it's a function of the clear of violence. And it's a function, it's like it's quantum in its nature. It's right now the cat is both dead and alive.

Okay. Right. Right. And you can see both. It's right now the cat is both dead and alive. Okay, right. And you can see both. And you can see both of those futures. Now if you're the cat, you only see the future in which you're alive. There's a dead space over here where. Right.

Now you didn't make it, which is Paul. But so Paul has this vastly expanded consciousness that eventually is so expanded that he's actually able to go into genetic memory. Like, like, hell, helled memory. And that's something that was possible for the women. They could only see the one line. And he could see male half experience.

He could go in and see the male half experience. Okay. And so he's not the only one who has this expanded consciousness. And that's something I kind of want to go into is because this is not just about expanded consciousness, it's kind of post-humanism. Okay.

Because he's not just human. He is something past, you know, normal human potential. He is the next evolution. He is well-known. Or I think what Herbert was kind of trying to have us think about was we utilize computers to do all of this math. But if we unlocked our potential, we wouldn't need them anymore. If we expanded our consciousness, if we trained people the right way,

eventually on some psychic kind of level, the potential would be unlocked for humans to do these things, for humans, to preacher naturally control their vocal tone and be so tuned in and paying such close attention that they could read somebody within a matter of five or six, you know, transactions and be able to know this is how I need to say this in order to get this reaction. And if everybody's doing that, then you're taking what do you call it, communication,

to just a very much next level. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. And so there's this huge emphasis within the books on kind of transhumanism, guild navigators. Explicently he says, after a certain point, they're not fully human in you. Right, yeah. They physically change into forms that are fish-like

and are not, they're consciousnesses so vastly expanded that they can't reliably relate to normal people. Right. On a regular basis. Yeah, and again, you're gonna talk about influences later, but I'm just thinking, in minority report, you have the pre-cogs. I do get a kick out of that.

Phil Kiddick really clearly, like, yeah, I'm sure he'd read it and went, you know. Yeah. Let me drop a couple of tabs. But also think about this harder. Also the fact that they're in water. Also the fact that you just said they go back to fish like yeah, which I also I said back to on purpose because it occurs to me that We're talking about

Humans yeah, that are so I'm gonna say evolved that they have like Gone from mammalian back to iqthian have gone from mammalian back to Ixian again. And there's something, the ocean is vast, the desert is vast, but there's something really interesting to me about the universality of, because you specifically mentioned fish like, the simplicity of a fish, for instance,

but also just like we are all kinda, you go back far enough, we got that common ancestor. Well, yeah. So I'm just thinking, what might have popped So just like we are all kind of, you go back far enough, we got that common ancestor. Well yeah. So I'm just, you know, I'm thinking, you know, what might have popped into his head as he was going. Well, and there's also, there's also the idea of evolutionary regression, like you evolved to a certain point and then there's nowhere to go, but back.

Yeah. Being, being a theme, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, looking at empires, you already have the going up in your work boots coming down in your slippers. Yeah, kind of, humanity could be doing the same. Yeah, okay. And so he spends this huge amount of time

talking about this. He talks about, he spends pages discussing, Jesse, Lady Jessica's awakening into becoming a Reverend mother, which is what Paul does on a slightly smaller scale. Well, actually, on a massively smaller scale. It's less codified, too. Yes. He's the, he's the Ur or the Proto. Well, he's the, yeah he he is what they've all been

preparing for. Right. She she's doing something that's been done many many many times before by many many other women. Much more refined. Much more. Yeah. With with the difference being that she is pregnant when she does it. And so, Al goes through the experience, like, and winds up actually becoming aware as part of it while she is still a fetus, which gets explored in exhaustive detail later in the series of books. Alia winds up becoming a fascinating character later on in fully in her own right. But so the theme of expansion of consciousness winds up being one he keeps going into. Like we're focusing right now just on Dune, but in the series of books afterward,

that's part of the evidence for like, no, no, this is something he really had, shitty wanted to say about it because like he builds out Alia and Paul's children wind up being powerfully psychic and it's yeah without spoiling anything for anybody who hasn't read the rest of the books like I mean it's been a very long time but I still it's like you've if you haven't read the series, do it. Okay. But anyway, so at the same time that he's doing

all this talking about expansion of consciousness, he says some very, very pointed things about religion. Okay. Because there is a quasi religious framing of Paul's experiences. Right. In the way that what he goes through is transcendence. Yes.

And there's also, I mean, you've got the time in the desert. I mean, there's a lot of parallel. Oh, yeah, no, yeah. Yeah. The parallels to any number of messianic stories are all there. Right, right. And, but beyond that, Paul's experiences are ecstatic.

They are transcendent. They are mystical. Okay. But at the same time, Herbert works very hard to thoroughly demystify them. Okay. There is a tension within what he writes as to is Paul, literally just not getting,

he sees the future like it's a movie in his head. Or is it that his cognitive abilities are so incredibly advanced that he's able to do the interstitial thinking from point A to point B to point C to point Z, minor, alpha, whatever, going many, many, many leaps forward. Sure. That he's just able to see it that clearly because he's doing the calculations

that fast, like, like a graphics card in your computer, doing all of the minute calculations to make the picture flow seamlessly. Right, right. In, in a, in a game or video. Right. We never really know for sure whether it's math done really, really fast or no, no, no, he is in fact a profit with a capital P. Gotcha. That's what people ask me about my puns all the time. Yeah. Is my brain just overclocked or am I a profit? And you know, it depends on the house. And you know, I've heard and they take at the door. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, a lot of people think it's, you know, it's, it's my ability to see the future as to what

someone's going to say or is it that I've, you know, explored all the various delta realities. Yeah. Yeah. So I understand completely what you're saying just because of my puns. Just because, just because of my puns. Yeah. Yeah. So I understand completely what you're saying, just because of my puns. Just because of my puns, yeah. Yeah, okay. Well, I will say your ability with them is nigh unto breeder natural. So I'm not gonna,

like you can pull them out of everywhere. Yeah, mostly your ass. But everywhere else too. Yeah. They just come pouring out. Yeah, nice. Thank you. Nice, well just come pouring out. Yeah, nice. Thank you. Nice.

Well done. Again, not even, now I'm starting to get mad. Now, now, yeah. So, but there's this, you have to kind of, as the reader, you kind of have to make your own decision about, is this, again, just overclocked brain math? Or is this a connection to some some bigger thing? Okay. Like is his sense of terrible purpose actually somehow a

mystical connection to the zit guys? Right. Right. And then he says much more pointed things about institutional religion. In the form of the Benny Jesuit being effectively their nuns, but their nuns who get sent off to be the concubines of powerful men in order to continue bloodlines. Okay. Like, I mean, and they're in their political, no, yeah, and they're in their, and they are their own political faction that works very hard to look like they're not political

because they wanna keep their agenda on the down low. Right. Which, as he stands in front of the Emperor's Court at the end of the book, Paul completely nukes that. He's like, no, I am what you've been, to form for the last 5,000 years. I am it. And everybody watch the way she shivers because I am what they've been planning for and they have no control over me. Oh, wow.

Okay. And it's this big, I mean, it's a very lynch-y in moment. Yeah, yeah. And it's sadly lynch, I didn't feel like lynch gave it the full lynch treatment in the film. Sure. I feel like that particular exchange should have gotten a little bit more operatic kind of treatment. It wound up being kind of kind of the kind of background noise

amidst, you know, staying shouting, I will kill him and, you know, leading to the duel and the final climax. Sure, sure. Which was awesome too. Like I'm there. There are lots of people who are fans of the book who really have very strong ambivalent and negative feelings about the Lynch's version of the book. I love both of them. Like unabashedly, I mean, I, like, there's so many things in that movie that are,

okay, I'm gonna take what Herbert did and I'm gonna go fucking bonkers with it. And I love it. It's amazing. So, but anyway, I'm talking about the book. Sorry, I got off the subject there. But so the Benny Jesuit are a multi-pronged statement about organized religion and a pretty cynical one.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Now, it also feels like a heaping helping of misogyny as well. Yes, there is that. There is certainly the fact that this was written in the 60s by CISHET male science fiction writer. Is that standard 60s sci-fi or is that the hexagrine against women? Yeah, no, I don't think he had an hexagrine against women.

I think that's just what the state of the tropes was. Okay. In the 60s. I mean, look at what popular literature was. I was gonna say, still get Star Trek women are many skirted up. Yeah, you know. Yeah, and Uhura is the communications officer,

which is great, which is a position of, you know, great, fourth in charge. Fority, knowledge, and everything else. which is a position of great authority, knowledge, and everything else. And that's great. But then every other, also she's a secretary, and also every other woman that you see on the ship

is a nurse, or a glorified coffee fetcher. Right, literally. And they're called Yoman, which I know I thought for the longest time that was a rank on a ship. It kind of is, but not like, Yoman is a rating, if I'm remembering correctly, or it was until the Navy changed a bunch of stuff about.

Gotcha. Okay. Okay. And interestingly, a Yoman in actual history going back farther than that was a in actual history going back farther than that was a non-noble man of arms. The king of England, Henry the eighth in particular, had his own unit of his guys who were yeoman, who were essentially non-noble professional soldiers who own land too. Who were who were who were small landowners. Right. And they were primarily archers.

Right. The order of yeoman waters of the Tower of London are the descendants of that group today. Okay. So they they wound up becoming his body, the king's bodyguards. And if I recall they were given the shittiest land Which was down by like the marshes so they're a yeoman lomen Yeah, and good because they used archery. They're a yeoman bowman yeoman lomen. Yeah, yeah

I say good day sir and a lot of them took in weaving as well. So they're yeoman bowman lomen so man And a lot of them took in weaving as well. So they're yeoman, bowman, lomen, somen. Loan, so... Okay, so... Oh, damn it. So, see, and again, overclocked brain or... Did I set this up? Did you set this up?

A podcast, no. I don't think, no, overclocked brain. In this case. But so anyway, the state of the tropes of the 60s was that if you're going to have a woman in a position of power, her power is going to need to be intrinsically tied to her sex. Right. Because that's the most powerful tool a woman has, Natch, if you're a science fiction writer

in the 1960s. Well, son, yeah. I don't think you meant to do that. I didn't, but I'll, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Everybody rewind by about 15 seconds,

and you'll hear Ed becrasses hell about a woman's vulva. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I'm retroactively embarrassed. So, all right. So, go ahead. Oh, no, I was just going to say.

So women, this is his cynical look at both women and religion. Yeah. Okay. And continuing with his analysis of religion, there's also this really interesting thing that happens in his world building. Okay. Where you'll remember from before that he talks about the Fremen being descended from Zen-Suni mystics. Yes. Yes. There's a blending that's happened. There is syncretism going on. A synthesis of syncretic beliefs. You know, one one group of beliefs kind of melding melding into melding with another set of beliefs and becoming something new, right, and and like was there an

Occidental equivalent because otherwise I'm going to call out a little bit of Orientalism here. Well, he also in the book He also talks about the orange cat like Bible. Okay, so yes there was. So yes there was. Okay, so he's synchronic on both sides. Yeah, he's synchronic on now. Interestingly, he doesn't talk about the, you know, Sunni Baptist or, you know, I said to actually more, more likely it would be shea Baptist, but that's my prejudice is showing themselves.

But he doesn't, you know, there is there is no union of a, of a Western religion with, with an Eastern philosophy. There isn't a bit of a divide. Clearly there isn't a hopeful, but there is, yes, there is a bit of a, the Levant is like where nobody crosses that, that weird philosophical line, but, but there, there is very clearly this idea and I think I think he kind of stumbled on to it But I think it it winds up being More potent than he thought I think he was trying to find a way to Show us just how far in the future this is

That like this is so far in the future that nobody's, because we already talked about nobody ever mentions earth. Like earth never gets mentioned. In the wider universe of Dune, it comes up that no one remembers where we came from. Like we've forgotten where humanity actually said, we don't know which planet was, we started on anymore because it's that far in the future. And this is, I think in his head, when he came

up with these ideas, number one, the synthesis of Zen Buddhism and Islam was useful for him and trying to come up with a mindset or a religious kind of outlook that would be useful for his protagonist. And also, he was just doing it in order to show us, no, this is just that far in the future. Right, right. Yeah, he can serve both masters. Yeah, it does, it's a neat little trick

that does both at the same time. The thing is though, I think because authorial intent don't mean dick. Right. I think there was also something else that he said that's less cynical about religion. Okay. In coming up with the idea of the synthesis

of these different religious traditions, there is a statement about what religion does for us as a species or what it is that draws us to maybe to maybe to change the framing a little bit what what it is why it is that we are religious as a species why why why we do this and and it ties in I think with his whole idea of there is this mass consciousness. You know, I would also say philosophically it's tying in with Claude Levy Strauss with his tree's tropics. Okay.

I don't, it's three sad topics. No sad topics. Okay. Or sad tropics, I don't remember. It's his memoir. But in it, he describes, this is like 1955. Okay. He describes essentially like 1955. Okay. He describes essentially structuralism.

Okay. That take chicken. Okay. For example, chicken exists on multiple continents now, right? Yes. And everybody has in their family a recipe which differs from the dominant regional cultures just enough, but also we all know the regional cultures.

That was the Damian Harmony version of what he said. But then the regional culture is going to differ from this other region over here and also language changes and languages somewhat based on how we cook our chicken. That's again Damian Harmonyism. But context is everything. Linguistically speaking, context is everything. And you cannot ever 100% separate language from the cultural context in which it exists. But even more importantly, there are inherent structures in humanity that we take something natural eating and turn it into something

cultural, cooking. Okay. And therein lies the, you know, I would have taken fish, but there's so many inland people. But so his idea of structuralism is such that like we have these basic human needs that we answer in different ways based on our environments. Yeah. And then of course it's nothing grown in a vacuum. So then this grows out of that, grows out of that. And there in lie the differences and the wonderful mosaic that you could have. And I say mosaic specifically because I think he thought of them as separate things. Okay.

Feel free geek timers to correct me. And then you also have Nome Chomsky right around the 1960s talking about Universal Grammar, where he's talking about how pretty much every human, and he may have come away from this in his later studies, but in the 60s he brought up Universal Grammar essentially, which was another structuralism, and it was essentially that yes, we're all different, but we all start with the same grammar. Identifying yourself, identifying your chief verb, which is I hunger, and then identifying the person that will feed you. So you are the subject, you are verbing a direct object, you are objectifying people.

And I would point out that, you know, Freud had died long since then, but people took the baton Iran with that, and Jung talked about archetypes and such. Oh yeah. And so, but you had like, Nome Chomsky specifically talking linguistically about that. Yeah, yeah. And it didn't matter what the language was.

Applied Jungianism. Yeah, yeah. You know, but it also didn't matter what the language was because we're all starting his infants and structurally linguistically we all come from that same need I also remember talking to you about young Robert when he was a baby baby baby Baby and you were very frustrated And do you mind if I share this or do you mind? I remember yeah, I go ahead. Okay, I don't he was super super Baby like a few days old night. Yeah, then on you and you're just like it's it's so hard to hear him cry and I explained I was like

The only time he has ever felt hunger is yesterday and today Each pain is worse is the worst pain he's ever felt. Yeah, and he never felt hunger because he had an umbilical cord So now that's been severed and he hurts so the only way he knows how to communicate is to cry That's literally the only tool he has so he's gonna use that until he finds others and it's gonna take years But I remember and I said also and he gut pain that he's got It's the first time he's moving stuff through his intestines really. Yeah, and so that's also the worst pain ever And he's going to communicate that because he doesn't know what else to do. And I was drawing very much on, uh, Chomsky, when I was explaining, and I remember I probably could scroll back in our messages and you're

like, wow, that really helps. Yeah, if you go back on that. But, um, but yeah, so, uh, it seems like in that same time, and if you look at the utopianist that was a fuckboy rotten berry. So, yeah, boy, you want to talk about a case where the monkey meant the angel. Anyway, I like that idea. Yeah, but I wish I could, I wish I could take a break. I don't remember who who who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, I love it. I wish I could remember who it was who said it, but like Rod and Barry is a great example.

Yeah. Like all these aspirations and then you look at how he let his personal life and you're like, wow. You know, it's interesting too, because you talk about the month, because we came down from the trees to become human. Yeah. So we separated more from the angel.

Yeah. Yeah. We were closer. Yeah. We were, we were apes. But, okay, so what we still are, but you got the idea. Yeah, we were closer. Yeah, we were when we were apes. But okay, so what we still are, but you get the idea. Yeah. But you look at fuck boy Roddenberry and his utopianism was we're all the same. The only differences, therefore, are the words that we use, which are environmental ultimately. Yeah. And the way that we cook chicken, yeah. And the colors

of our skin, which all three of those are environmental. Yeah. And so it's very interesting that he's Herbert is using Gianna sweeping stuff to get back to the same spot that everybody in the 60s was kind of coming around to.

Right, and what's interesting is that in Tela Jensia, I mean, that is guiding the first half of the Civil Rights Movement. Yeah. Or maybe it's not guiding. They're pinging off of each other. Yeah. I think that'd be a better, better way to put it,

they're pinging off of them. Because it's, hey, we're all the same. Therefore, we deserve the same rights. Yeah. And then white America just kept killing all the people. And then they're like, fine, fuck you. Yeah. Like, rightly so.

Yeah. But, and I bet you, if he had written this book 10 years later, it would have been very different. Oh, I'm sure. Irreconcilable differences between you. Oh, there would have been, yeah. His vision of what the very far future would look like, those details would have been very different.

Far more schismatic. Okay, so, anyway. Far more. You know, but, but, I think, I, you know, I wanna stick for a second with that because, you know, you talked about young, and all of those being built off of young building off of Freud. And I'm certain like I am more sure about this than, than, and lots of other things that I've talked about in in this series. I am sure that Jung's ideas of archetypes and Jung's ideas of universal subconscious are were were fundamental to to her words her words whole outlook. It sounds very exciting. When writing this book, especially the idea of universal subconscious, I don't think he uses

that phrase directly, but he refers to the concept by a different name over and over and over again. And so, yeah, I mean, it's really clear that those ideas were part of the undercurrent of philosophical and moral thought kind of at the time. And again, I want to go back to, while we're talking about that, I want to reiterate, maybe I can go back to it, but I want to bring back up, that Dune really is one of the first major soft science fiction works in this new era

of science fiction. It was part of it's, and I'm gonna talk about it to influence kind of in our next, mostly in our next episode, but you know, it's, this is a good place for him to put a pin in that. Right. Because those Jungian ideas, But you know, this is a good place for him to put a pin in that. Because those Jungian ideas, the universal grammar.

Yeah, universal grammar. Universal grammar. And those ideas circulating were the ideas that were in sociology, that were the ideas that were in political science. Were the, I mean, they were the guiding school of thought at that time. Yeah.

Yeah. And so he set out to write the science fiction story that wasn't about, wasn't just about, I've come up with, you know, I'm going to play with what would it look like if we had faster than light travel. Right. Like, no, no, I'm going to use a science fiction story to tell a story about empire and about politics and about these other social ideas. And so I think that's really important to remember when we're talking about his statements on religion

and all these other things that this was a big deal within science fiction. And yeah, and I can expand on that later on. But the last thing I wanna bring up in this episode is Herbert says a lot about human relationship to technology and at the same time a relationship to ecology and the environment. And so the technology of the far future that he envisions is one in which las guns are a thing. Sure. Personal force fields are a thing. Right.

But radio still is recognizable as radio. Huh. Like in one of the big battle scenes, there is a Fadek and Death Command who is the radio man who's hunched over a big panel cathode ray tube radio set. It's so funny, and it makes perfect sense back then. I mean, I remember when Iron Man started using transistors in the comics. It was a huge big deal.

Big deal, and they made a big deal out of it. And prior to that, he transistors in the comics. It was a huge big deal. Big deal. And they made a big deal out of it. And prior to that, he was plugging into the wall. Yeah. Because Stan Lee's understanding and Jack Kirby's understanding of electricity was that. And how Star Trek, the original series, I keep coming back to it because it was kind of the war of it all,

is that look how far we can go on vacuum tube technology. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And looking back on it as children of the 70s, 80s, we're looking at it like no man. Yeah. Like within our lifetime, we have watched devices shrink. Yeah. So do you remember in the next generation, they turned into isolinear chips. Yes.

And I mean, that's flash drive technology. That's, which made sense because we had hard disks, well, we have floppy disks that were the 3.5s and we were working our way to zip technology eventually and on the one. But like, you know, isolinear chips, but I also do remember that they, when they first brought up the holodeck,

if you watch the episodes from first season to third season, it's very different when it comes to holodeck because they wrote themselves in no couple corners. One was apparently there were no safeties on the holodack because Picard did his like pulp 1930s. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Dicks, kind of stuff. He brought an expert, just some lieutenant, low grade junior lieutenant, who is an expert on 20th century,

who gets shot with a bullet and dies. Right. And it's like, what, what? Like you have this dangerous ass technology on here. And then, like, he's walking by the holiday deck and Wesley and his friend come out and a snowball hits Picard in the hallway. And later on, you start to see, like, no, that doesn't happen. And, like, you know, Wesley falls in a lake and gets really wet and he leaves leaking, you

know, and so like that. And then eventually, it doesn't do that. We can leaking, you know, and stuff like that. And then eventually, it doesn't do that. We can undo that. You know, stuff like that. And so it's, yes, the shrinking of technology. So yeah, you've got a radio man still. Yeah. You know, I mean, they were still printing things on paper, do you remember?

And they had data tapes on the original enterprise. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, they, no. The assumptions, it's one of the limitations of the genre that there's a limit to how far you can imagine anything before you go, okay, no, now I'm just pulling that out of my ass. I can't write that. I can't be wireless.

Yeah, I can't be like the amount of computing power for those of you not here, you know, for listeners. I'm holding up my iPhone. And the amount of computing power in this phone is I don't even know what multiplier more powerful than the first iPhone. Right. is I don't even know what multiplier, more powerful, than the first iPhone. Right. And the first iPhone had some 10th power,

I don't remember what number of powers of multiplication that the first iPhone had in terms of computing power over the computers that got us literally to the moon. Well, I can tell you right now, the iPhone 6's clock is 32,600 times faster than the best Apollo era computers and perform instructions 120 million times faster. A hundred that was 20 million.

That was the iPhone 6 compared to the Apollo. That's crazy, isn't it? And so, like, the limits on their imagination back in the 60s. Yeah, of course you're still going to be putting stuff on paper. What else are you going to do? Right. Like, it's a document. What else are you going to do with a document?

Well, and I loved how they would show on like the computer screens and they would scroll them like I'm playing a Racknet or something. Oh, yeah. It would just be a card. Yeah with stuff printed on it. It would be it would be a library Cavalog card. Yeah, you know of Harvey mud. Yeah, and and you know that that says something about the paradigm, the dominant technological paradigm of the time. Remember that in the 1960s, you were still programming a computer with punch cards. Yeah, exactly.

And so, that's how we program a computer. Yeah. That's how you do it. Like the very idea, they'd say you feed it into the computer. Yeah, yeah. And the very idea that you would be able to graphically interact with a computer in a way that was, like as we were talking, you're scrolling through stuff on your phone right now with a touch screen

and visual icons. Yes. Like the very idea of that would have been, you only would see that in something being written by somebody who everybody was like, oh yeah, well this is Philip K. Dick and like he's obviously on drugs. Like, you know,

the to give you a comparison. Yeah. The Apollo guidance computer was roughly equivalent to an NES. The thing that got a guy on the moon is the equivalent to Mario. A couple of generations old, handheld. Yes, wow. Yeah, yeah. a couple of generations old, hand-held. Yes. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So, anyway, the technological paradigm that he was dealing with was kind of weird because he was trying to make these statements about humanity and about the potential of humanity to transcend our current limitations, and actually, he's kind of down on technology. Okay. Because he's ultimately trying to say that we are more powerful than any of the tools we can create for the tools that we rely on. Yeah, it feels very false of doom.

Very honest. Oh yeah, yeah, riddle of steel. Yeah, he totally, totally look at at that and go I like it. Yeah Now I just got to figure out how to make it sound like something out of a verse from the Quran and I'm There I'm gonna put that in my main character's mouth. Sure, you know um And so he he has this kind of ambivalence Mm-hmm toward technology

and at the same time the power of humanity with our technology to literally reshape a world is remember that the start of the book came from his notes on a project to trap sand, to build up, use poverty grasses to fix dunes in place. So this ecological kind of application of technology is something that he was really clearly fascinated with and the visual of doing that to a desert was clearly something really, really powerful to him. But he's ambivalent about the technology that would be involved in making it happen. Okay. Or he's ambivalent about our relationship

to the technology. Right. That would make that happen. Yeah, I was gonna say there's a little bit more to that. It's about the hand that guides the machine. Yeah. More for him, it sounds like. Yeah, and the funny thing is it's not ever framed

as a moral ambivalence. It's not, is it right for us to do this? Because he's coming from the paradigm of the 60s, which was technology is going to make everything better full stop technology. Yeah, you know, and also I am become death. Yes. Yeah, but he's come what I'm saying is he's coming out of the science fiction tradition that came before him, I should be more precise. I guess so. He's coming from the somewhat utopian outlook

of science fiction as a genre before him, which was we have these tools, we're going to make the world a better place. Right. And so he looks at house nuclear weapons, you know, the house atomic, as being a plot point and a thing that Paul uses to blow up a mountain range so he can get his army

of crazed killers, you know, to the people he needs them to fight, and he doesn't spend any time looking at the morals or the ethics of the technology involved. He doesn't get into like a next generation writer could take the whole idea of training somebody to be a men's hat and go, let's really look at the ethics of yeah, training somebody from childhood. The earliest, it's explicitly stated, the earliest parts of the training

have to be done without the training being aware of them and then they have to be made aware of it and then they have to make a choice. Well, let's look at the ethics of that. Yeah, yeah, there's, yeah, I guess. You know, let's look at the power dynamic involved in, well, you know, our kid, we hear that our kid has the potential to be a men's hat.

And so he can have a better life and get off this planet where we're just commoners and we're being ruled by this, you know, feudal aristocracy. You know, he can become useful to those people and move up in the world. And we're good for our child. Be good for him and do that. And it's not good for us. Could Be good for him and do that. And we're gonna be good for us.

Could be good for us as well. Right. You know, and let's look at the class ethics dynamics. Let's look at the power dynamics. You know, but he didn't do that. Herbert doesn't do any of that. Herbert is coming from a place where all of this stuff is ethically value neutral.

Does he do the same regarding religion? Because it seems like he doesn't. It seems like there is, like you said, there's a cynicism to the women, I forgot. I said the Benny Jesuit. The Benny Jesuit. There's a cynicism there. Uh huh.

But he and he points out the hypocrisy involved, but he doesn't ever, he doesn't make moral judgments. Herbert is not a moralist on any lot like he doesn't say what you are doing is wrong. He says, you all wanted to create this thing. Now you have it. You don't have any control over it. How foolish. So it's more about power than it is. Yeah, everything is pregnant. Yeah, it's all very pragmatic in the most.

It's not the beneficial pragmatism, the best for the most, but is this gonna work? Is this not gonna work kind of pragmatism? Do you think he's responding to the technocracy of the time? Is this going to work? Is this not going to work? Kind of pragmatism. Do you think he's responding to the technocracy of the time? Which was kind of fading out by 60s, because it had clearly failed to answer some very moral questions.

But do you think he's responding in some to the technocracy of the time? Because technocracy is what, I mean, tactical nukes were suggested on the regular by American generals. Oh, yeah. And it was, I mean, nukes were suggested on the regular by American generals. Yeah. And it was, it was, I mean, yes, it was, it's not that there wasn't a deeply moral issue there. There absolutely was. There had been people who've been protesting the bomb since the bomb. Yeah. But at the same time, it just kept rolling on. They kept making bigger and bigger ones

and then finding different platforms from which to launch. And the race was on no matter what. And it ceased to be a moral argument at the top and much more of a practical argument at the top. Hence you have the argument that like, well, no, actually, if we have more, then that will keep the peace. And you get into that. We're sure the lead's actually a sure distraction. And absurdism had tried to adjust, address it in the 50s, but moralism had too. And the technocracy just kept on plowing through. And then it became a,

there seemed to be another layer happening. Was he still stuck in that, do you think? Cause he'd hit his prime earlier,, do you think? Because he'd hit his prime earlier or do you think he was just... I genuinely think he just wasn't interested in making moral judgment. Okay, fair. I genuinely think he was coming from a position of beyond good and evil to paraphrase Nietzsche. Nietzsche, who he probably would have loved quoting and wouldn't really have gotten right you know Because Nietzsche is on some levels very profoundly moral, but people like talk about beyond good and evil They like throw out the the title of the work without like understanding. No, no, there's there's a lot going on there

Yeah, you know, yeah work without understanding, no, no, there's a lot going on there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm saying the same thing that gets done with Macchi Avelli. It was a satire. Yeah. Those are the same people that have a really big poster of pulp fiction into their 30s. Yeah. You know, they think that endless jest was a book that you can impress people having known.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I find it interesting that such a moralist as yourself really went for Herbert. I really dig the universe. I was gonna say, you're also a big pros guy. I'm a big, I'm a huge big, yeah, I'm a pros, pros is part of it. And his pros is clunky in a lot of places,

but he is working with... You like soaring prose though. Yeah, well, I do. You do. There is that, yes. I'm guilty of that. But he creates these characters and the charisma of the characters he puts on the page is enough to pick you up and carry you along.

Okay. And for me listening to the audio version of the book on my commute last few couple of weeks that I was driving to and from my old job, it was remarkable to me how the difference and experience of listening to it versus reading it was. In terms of what you're saying about you, the moralist, I'm like, whoa, backup, hold on, I got to rewind that.

Like when I was listening to it, I think because it was more passive, I was not bought into actively reading off of the page, I was listening to other people talking. There was an element on my brain that was not bypassed. Right. Where I stopped, I was like, wait, that's literally a work run. Right. Not just in the ultra-disted future, that's like now.

Right, that's also been. Like, oh my God. Yeah. And there were aspects of the story that I paused. I was like, okay, wow, that's so immensely misogynistic, holy crap. And had to take a beat and then start it back up and have those reactions.

Because of the force of what he's putting on the page, when for me, I can't speak for anybody else, but when I was reading the book, there was a, I don't want to say propulsive because it was slower than propulsive. William Gibson is propulsive. From the moment you start reading Gibson, you're, you know, snapped and you're moving. Yeah, you're, yeah. And you in. And you are moving at the speed of heat. He was passing through the terminal in Mexico City when the slamhounds caught up to him

and a crystallized lake of TNT, blow him into a bunch of pieces. That's the opening for one of his novels. Gotcha. And like from the first sentence you're moving and everything is kinetic and it sucks you in. Okay. Herbert is I'm going to start having a conversation

and you're going to be so caught up in, okay, wait, what? Or you're gonna be so caught up in what this character is thinking and the way I'm describing this character's reaction to this thing, that it's going to pick you up and carry you. It's not going to be moving at the speed of heat. Everything moves very deliberately because I have very big ideas I've got to get across and everybody has a literal mountain of exposition to explain because look at all the detail of my universe.

Right, right. But, but in the process of reading it, those details catch you and you're like, okay, I got to know, you know. And so it's, it's not propulsive, but it is magnetic. Oh, I like that. I would say, would be a good analogy for it. And so, you know, he says all of these really big things. He has all of these huge ideas,

these huge themes that he's working with. And so I think this is where I'm gonna put a pin in it for now by saying that it's these huge ideas that make Dune important within the genre. Okay. And I think it's these ideas and his operatic delivery of them that turned it into the meme factory that it remains for us. It is, even if you have it, who read the book, Dune is a cultural touchdown. Yeah. And I think the big ideas he talks about are ones that we are wrestling with constantly,

that we were wrestling with in the 60s that we continue to wrestle with. And so that's that's part of why well and and we'll we'll get into what exactly its role is right in the next episode. But so based on that what are what are you taking away? Uh, so I mean, I thought this in a previous episode, but didn't didn't get to the point where I'd set it out loud. But there are direct parallels for me between this and Star Wars in that they're both dealing with operatic themes. And that is like what you just said. That is why they continue to live as Mimic Founts, essentially Founts.

Founts. And... It's Fount. Potato potato. I do, Naraqus. Desert Planet. Yeah. Sting.

Sting. It's either the guy coming from the rafters with a baseball bat Yeah, um, sting. Yeah. Sting. It's either the guy coming from the rafters with a baseball bat or it's the musician holding onto a sword that slays at works. It's whatever. Yeah. Nice. Thank you.

So, uh, yeah, I think, I think the fact that he's dealing with such big things, I was thrown by the fact that it's, I'm not gonna say A moral, but it's didn't care about making a moral thing. I have a hard time because there's deep morality in Star Wars. Oh yeah. Deep. I mean, the ultimate lesson that you can pull from Star Wars was boiled down by Sam Whitworth, actually, in a podcast that I listened to years and years ago. And he said the basic theme of all the Star Wars movies has forever been, don't be a dick. Like that's really it, yeah, it's the DBA- and Mill Wheaton's mantra.

Yeah, like that's it. So, but that there isn't one for Dune, I wonder. I just, stuff like that fascinates me because like how can you have a deeply sprawling, multi-generational, so many, I mean, and like you said, just overall, language and all this without having a moral compass to it. Because it's a meditation, because it's a meditation on power. Oh, that's so weird to me. Because, because Star Wars is a meditation on power. Oh, that's so weird to me. Because Star Wars is a myth.

Right. Star Wars is a myth. And every myth has a moral lesson at the end of it. Yes. The story I don't remember his name, but Apollo's son and the chariot. Helios? I don't remember.

But is mortal demigod son who wants to ride the chariot across the heavens But he gets distracted new ones, you know burning planet Paul has to kill him Yeah, yeah Icarus You know the story of Icarus. Yeah, the story of the is What's her name with the box Pandora? yeah. You know, like all of those stories are, number one, they explain something about the world.

Why is there evil? Well, because Pandora couldn't contain her curiosity. Right. And, and, you know, and, you know, don't, don't fly, don't get over ambitious, don't go beyond, you know, don't, don't over reach. Don't over ambitious, don't go beyond, you know, don't, don't over reach. Right.

You know, and all of these stories that also explain something and Star Wars is very much in that mythic mode. Dune is not a myth. Dune is a meditation. Oh, yeah. That must be the difference. It is it is it is it is and it is an entirely internal framing for the story and if you look at a lot of the trappings the the the the scenery chewing the the argeness of the language all of that kind of stuff, is hard to escape.

The similarities are inescapable. Yeah. But they're using the same vehicle. They're just going to two different spring fields. Yes. There you go. I like that. I like that analogy.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, no wonder I haven't ever gotten into it. It makes sense. Yeah. I think if it was a role-playing game, I gotten into it. It makes sense. Yeah, I think if it was a role-playing game, I would love it. Oh yeah, because I love a world. Yeah.

But if there's no moral center to it, then I struggle with consuming it as, you know, a movie or a book. As passive media. Yeah, well, more active, shit. I mean, I think reading is very active media, but either way. Well, yeah, but you were, you were,

consumpt maybe consumptive media as opposed to participatory. Yes, yes. So yeah, all right, well, that's what I've cleaned. Okay. Got any books you want to recommend? Um, not immediately off the top of my head, I do not, but I see you have one here.

Yeah, I went down recently to my childhood bookstore and I picked up the new mutants, superheroes and the radical imagination of American comics by Ramsey Fawaz. I have not read it, I am intensely interested in it. Okay. And I am just sharing people what I'm reading read it. I am intensely interested in it. And I am just sharing people what I'm reading. Okay. So I'm looking forward to reading this as soon as I can. And it's, I mean, just to, it is thick and it is dense.

And oh, it looks like it was signed over to someone else, so it was used. Okay. But the family of Superman, the superhero team and the promise of universal citizenship, flame on nuclear families, unstable molecules and the queer history of the Fantastic Four. I will confess to having flipped through that before we started recording.

I saw that downstairs and I was flipping through it. And I immediately, he's got plates in it for shows, comic book frames, from different periods for each one of the essays that he's got in there and The ones about the Fantastic Four very clearly he twigged to what you said in an early episode of this very podcast about the subversive nature Oh me of the fan for of course he got paid to to do this. Yeah he yeah we're thrown out there. But still giving away the milk. I look forward to consuming my biases. There you go. But also you know deepening my understanding of these things and looking at things that I haven't seen. So that's what I'll be reading. Working people find you on social media. People can find me on

social media at EH Blalock on the Twitter machine you can find me also at EH Blalock on Instagram and at Mr. Blalock on TikTok. Where can they find you? Take a look at Twitter and Instagram and you'll find me at duh Harmony 2Hs in the middle. That's duh Harmony and than that, that should be good enough. Every Tuesday night at 8.30 PM, I will be... Pacific Daylight Time. Yes. I will be doing Capital Punishment on Twitch.tv4 slash Capital

Puns with my partner Daniel Humbarger. And we have a pun tournament. It's been going for more than five years now. When my kids get vaccinated, I'll go back to doing it live. And so in the meantime, y'all can enjoy the fact that I am at home doing it. And then, yeah, that should do.

I will be at the end of August, and I'll give more updates as it comes. I will be on the UK pun off, which is a lot of fun during a fringe festival. So that's nice. Yeah, so that'll is a lot of fun during a fringe festival. So that'll be a lot of fun. But yeah, that'll do. So, and we can they can find us. They want to praise you.

We collectively. Collectively. Collectively can be found at Geek History of Time on Twitter. Okay. And our website, of course, is www.geekhistorytime.com. So there you go, please, please, wherever you are viewing us or listening to us from, please give us a five star rating

because you know we deserve it. Hell yeah. And hit that subscribe button so that you don't have to go hunting for us again next time. Exactly. So you know where we are that you don't have to go hunting for us again next time. Exactly. So you know where we are and you'll be able to continue to hear us on the regular. Yeah, and you can go back and find the Fantastic Four episode amongst many others where we do all kinds of fantastic stuff. So, a lot of it's a wonderful buffet.

Like, come for the asparagus, save for the steak, for the soft serve. There you go. So, yeah. All right. Well, for Geek, stay for the soft serve. There you go. All right. Well, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, remember, fear is the mind killer.