Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Jurassic Park

Episode Date: September 18, 2022

It's the first book of season 2! We talked about one of the most famous scifi books of all time,  Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. Capitalism, Chaos Theory, climate change, and just a tiny hint of racism all mixed together to (somehow) make a really good novel.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismFollow the show @SwordsNSocPodEmail us at [e-mail]: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

🎵 Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Sorcery and Socialism, a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre fiction. As always, I'm Darius, and with me is my co-host, Ketho. How's it going, Ketho? Howdy. And, as we told today, we are doing a book that is legitimately full of politics. Even though he doesn't try to, he pretends like it isn't. He pretends it isn't, but it is. He thinks it's about some sort of morality, which it is,

but maybe not the kind he meant. It's Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. I specifically want to do this one because I've been obsessed with Michael Crichton for a long time. When I was a teen, I read every single one of his books multiple times. I loved them. I was obsessed with them. I read every single one of his books multiple times. I loved them. I was obsessed with them.

I read them all. Even the obscure ones like sphere, Congo, prey, airframe. Well, didn't Congo also get turned into a movie? A lot of these got turned into movies eventually.

Yes. Was Congo the one that got turned into a movie that also kind of used the sign language? Gorilla. Yeah, they definitely talked to gorillas in Congo. OK, they bad science, everybody. Bad science. Yeah, that's so I mean.

I'll talk about that because that gets into one of Crichton's main things. So what I was going to say is I've been obsessed with him for a long time. Loved and read all of his books. I've also been thinking for a long time about the place he holds in our culture, because I may have said it on the, on the Q and a, I don't remember.

Michael Crichton is the first and only person in America to simultaneously have the number one book movie movie, and TV show. Who did the TV show at that time? And he did it twice. The TV show both times was ER. Okay, that's what I thought. Michael Crichton created ER. So the first time it was Jurassic Park, the movie, Lost World, the book, and ER.

The second time it was lost world, the movie, ER, the TV show and the book. I don't remember which one I'd have to double check the time. It was, I don't know, Congo or some something. I don't remember, but so he's fascinated me because he holds an outsized place in American culture again er was one of the most popular shows on tv for a really long time um jurassic park is considered by a lot of people essentially a perfect like blockbuster it i mean i wouldn't disagree like i know i know i know a number of people who are like literally write movies like for a living like i don't know them personally but i've listened to them give interviews of people who like write movies for a living who say like jurassic park

is their favorite movie they think it's like a perfectly constructed movie not maybe not perfect but you know what i mean like as close as you can get i mean there's a there's like a series of the the blockbusters in the 80s that fall into that category where you're like you could really easily use them to describe what someone could call a perfectly structured film yes talking here, but here's the thing. Spielberg did make a lot of, a number of changes, but I would say that Spielberg got basically the meat of everything he did directly out of this book. Yeah, I think I was actually surprised by how much it correlated, like the two were related. This is not one of those ones really where you read the book, then watch the movie and go, I mean, it's based on the same thing,

but they told a different, roughly a different story. Nice. The same story. He's telling the same story. He's just made better choices. Spielberg made better choices sometimes than Crichton did. For the,

however, a vast majority of the choices. Yeah. Yeah. However, made better choices sometimes than Crichton did. For the vast majority of the choices, yeah. However, and this is going to be one of my main conceits here. We'll get into it. Michael Crichton is a terrible human being. Was. Haha. Was a terrible human being.

Like the queen, he's fucking dead. Ding dong. Like the queen, he's dead dead he's a terrible human being we can get off the bat he was a climate change denier he was he was like called to testify before congress as an expert witness about why climate change science shouldn't be believed he was not a climate scientist he was a medical doctor he was an md um uh and i gotta wonder if he still used his md at that point

no like when was the last time he used his i don't think he'd been a practicing doctor for a very long time he makes so much money off of his books he's a very successful novelist so he's a horrible person with terrible views however god damn could that man write a book these these are like you know whenever I come across prose like this, the only good way to describe it is smooth. It's easy to read. It just completely runs right off the page. Like you keep going.

You're not going to read it and go, this is the most gorgeous prose I've ever encountered. You're not going to do that. But it also will never make, almost never make you go wait what you know it's it's extremely it's extremely clear it's extremely um straightforward it doesn't like beat around the bush but it also is extremely like it it kind of forces you to keep going it's effective because it's so low it's so low effort in time, in terms of like,

like you don't have to sit there for 10 years and try and figure out what you're reading. You just kind of move on with it. It really is. I think that's one thing in like how we talked about how so many people see the movie. This isn't going to be one of those episodes where we don't talk about the movie because it's Jurassic park.

I feel like everyone on earth has seen that. Like the way people talk about the movie being like perfectly structured and flowing from one act to another the book works exactly the same way at no point in the book are you like this is dragging at no point in the well maybe one or two points but i don't think it's dragging it's just annoying but it doesn't drag necessarily but so like like you said you start to read it and it takes almost no effort at all to just continue to read to follow the story like the drama is good the tension is good like everything that happens every time somebody dies every every time something happens,

like it's never like, I didn't see that coming at all. It feel, you know, that feels like it wasn't earned all the death, all the drama I feel is perfectly well earned. And so before we sit here and rag on him for the shit he's wrong about, I do want to give him credit for the fact that he's kind of,

he's pretty fucking good at writing. Unlike some of the other people we've read where we're like, I can't believe I have to make it through this prose. Crichton is just like, yeah, I can read this easily. No trouble, no effort.

I'm going to be enjoying the story as it happened. Even if I think it's wrong. Yeah. Even just comparing this to other books that have politics, we might not necessarily agree with, um, like trying to slog our way through starship troopers. Oh my God.

It was, it was like sincerely difficult to get through the last third of that book. And like, you're sitting there and you're like, how is this considered a sci-fi classic it's really terribly written it's boring and worst of all its politics are so abysmal that it makes you want to vomit it's like in the case of this it's like you can read it and if you're not paying

attention to the politics you can easily tune it out because the book is just going so quick and you're just blazing through it. Yeah. It's like, it's in a way it's almost kind of worse. It's almost more insidious because then people start absorbing it into the, you know, cultural collective subconscious.

Yeah. Very quickly without even noticing. Yeah. Which again, I will give a little bit of credit to Spielberg. He actually cuts out most of the heavily ideological nonsense. Yeah, Malcolm. Yeah.

The ideological nonsense, also known as Ian Malcolm. And I need you, dear audience, to separate in your mind for the duration of this podcast. When we talk about Ian Malcolm. Don't picture Jeff Goldblum. I mean, many of us may often picture jeff but not right now like you need to separate this is one of the few inappropriate times to envision jeff goldblum so like you this sounds like kind of silly but i actually mean it you need to separate the the the jeff goldblum ian mal, in your mind from the one that we're going to discuss

now. If you need to tie the one we discussed now to a different mental image, you actually should compare him to the ethics and history professors from Starship Troopers. They. He acts almost entirely. As the author's like. Philosophical mouthpiece. And that's basically all he exists to do. Since he's bedridden for most of it. Is to sit there. And say what the author thinks. That's his whole job.

Yeah. So he is much more like. I can't remember their fucking names from starship troopers oh yeah it's not worth the brain power but you know the ethics and philosophy professors from starship troopers that are like actually beating children is good and fascism is great um that's the role malcolm plays in this novel uh is to be that guy except this time he's essentially like i don't know weird pseudo-scientific libertarian yes so the other thing before we do we really need to cover the plot of jurassic park i don't think so i feel like most people know the plot of i mean

okay some we'll talk about a few of the things that are different, I guess, or important. But like, we're not going to cover the plot of fucking Jurassic Park. Park full of dinosaurs. A crazy rich old guy pays for some crazy science to bring dinosaurs back to life that everyone dies. The end. A lot of people die. Oh, yeah. But say a handful of people make it out on a helicopter. Woo, the end a lot of people die oh yeah but say a handful of people make it out on a helicopter

whoo the end cool we don't we don't get uh obviously there's not the same visual impact as the t-rex showing up at the end to eat the velociraptors in a beautiful deus ex machina which is still i think even though it's a deus ex machina oh no still a good choice on spielberg listen yeah listen people use the word deus ex machina, it's still a good choice on Spielberg's part. Listen, yeah, listen. People use the word deus ex machina pejoratively all the time. Listen. You shouldn't. You shouldn't because it's in like every story ever.

And like sometimes it's just badass. And it's also such an old concept that, you know, my go-to Tolkien had a whole different word for it because we hadn't invented deus ex machina yet or it wasn't in use. Oh, yeah, but he was super concerned about the eagles being that he well he he he had a whole thing that he called um a you catastrophe oh there we go he called it you catastrophe which is essentially victory or hope

unexpected and unlooked for that you cannot anticipate or plan for or expect to happen again he called it a eucatastrophe it's yeah freaking freaking han solo showing up at the end of star wars that is is a deus ex machina that's a eucatast Tolkien would call that a eucatastrophe you could call it a deus ex machina I think there could be slight variations between those two definitions, but they, a lot of things can be both of those. Yeah. Some people. Yeah. Again,

um, the, the T-Rex showing up was a good choice by, um, Spielberg. No, what a wonderful, even if it's really,

really cheesy. Yeah. It's the fricking banner falling down around. It's called the language of film. It's so good so michael crichton and his mouthpiece ian malcolm um it's not working i'm still picturing jeff goldblum i can't i mean we all are it's fine fall victim to what i want to call, I don't know what to call it, like the libertarian problem, libertarian syndrome, which is they are often actually plenty good at identifying problems

with society or whatever. Plenty good at identifying problems. But because as you said, before we started, Ketho, because they explicitly work from the foundation that capitalism is good, they can never properly address or come up with a solution to the problem that they have identified. In this book, the main conceit is that science overrun by like investor money in like biotech has made science advance at such a rate that it is wildly like immoral and uncontrollable and will lead to disastrous outcomes. moral and uncontrollable and will lead to disastrous outcomes. Yeah. It's, it's a, especially his introduction to the book lays it out extremely clearly, like just straight up lays it out where he feels as though science beginning

in like the mid seventies. Again, again, we'll get to that. So he believes that starting in like the mid century, like, like what he called academic science became overrun by investor capital science. Yeah, specifically because of bioengineering.

Yeah, he has a big – what do I call it? Like a bugaboo, like a big like thing against like bioengineering. It's in literally like every book. If you read Crichton books, you know, there's, there's two things Michael Crichton is incredibly scared of bioengineering and the Japanese.

And both, and those will both come up in nearly every book he writes. We'll get to the Japanese a little bit later. We'll get to them later. Yeah. We'll get to his, his well his problem with that later um so he had correct correctly identifies that when scientific advancement is basically monopolized by moneyed interests moneyed interests, investor capital, private firms. And for him, taken out of university departments, which just completely skips over the fact the university departments are also overrun by investor capital. And that even old school scientists were funded directly by the nobles who had the money.

The private rich people. like the the nobles the private money but anyway that in the modern day the fact that investor capital is the primary driver of scientific advancement he explicitly says is bad he says it in the intro and he says it it is you know and then he spends the rest of the novel via Ian Malcolm explaining why he thinks it's dangerous and immoral. I mean, everybody knows the very famous line, which is your scientists were so preoccupied with, with,

with whether they could, they didn't stop to think about whether they should, which I'll grant him. It's a good fucking line. See, he's a great writer. It's a good line. And he's, here's the thing about that point he's a great writer it's a good line and he's here's the thing

about that point he's right he's right the problem is he can't blame it on capitalism he has to blame it on essentially it's the it's the weird libertarian distinction between capitalism and in quotation marks corporatism as the two things aren't the same thing because and i and i was mentioning this to you before we started but the whole the backwards logic of starting with the the bedrock assumption that capitalism is good and then working backwards um ends up leading them to just that's what kind of led to them defining cap like the the widespread libertarian definition of capitalism as free exchange between free individuals which if anyone has ever read angles the free exchange of free producers that's explicitly a communist idea but like they're like oh no because it must mean the state um and then like they they just think

that capitalism is like people trading things well i mean libertarians try to spice it up by calling it like free exchange between free peoples acting in a rational way and they just use rational way to mean whatever they think is normal. Yeah. Like, like making profit or something. But it's like, I mean, it goes on to show,

it goes on to show that like people like, like Rothbard who are responsible for taking the word libertarian from anarchists, like explicitly Rothbard, like wrote essays saying how that's a thing they needed to do was to, to co-opt the word libertarian. And the funny thing about it all is that that's not the only thing they co-opted. They managed to twist a lot of actual leftist ideas and warp that into being a pro-capitalist stance.

into being a pro-capitalist stance. Despite it. Yeah. And then it just goes into the whole private versus personal property and then completely misunderstanding the distinction between the two. And yes, I'm going to steal your fucking toothbrush. Get out of here. Yeah.

Yeah. Seriously. I want so badly to do toothbrush, dude. That's. But so Crichton and Malcolm, again, sort of like Starship Troopers. These are the same person fall squarely in this camp. The problems are bad, but the causes are good.

So we have to find a different way around it. Like you could take this book. And everything that happens in it. Like you could take this book and everything that happens in it. So a crazy rich guy using investor capital to, to recklessly advanced science for the purposes of making money via an amusement park, recklessly endangering his employees, getting a bunch of people killed. And then at the end of dying because of his own hubris that isn't that is inherently like an anti-capitalist story but it's written by a guy who thought capitalism was good and and you know what's really funny about all this is that

as a dude who we know despised the the concept of government. In general, like there's no way around that. He is a libertarian and you can feel it. It's like there is a yeah, there's a sense there's a sense of the solution to this is, you know. The freer the market, the freer the people and and it's like, but at the same time, bro, the only reason that anyone noticed anything was going on wrong with InGen is because the FBI was looking into it. No, the EPA.

Oh, the EPA was, oh my God, that's even funnier. It's the bad guys from Ghostbusters. It's even funnier that Michael Crichton, someone who was an avowed, like... Anti-government. Yeah, climate change denialist, would have the people who managed to figure out something was going wrong and send people there to figure things out in the first place

be the anathema to everything he believed in. The fucking EPA. Government Environmental Regulation. You know, the dickless nerd from Ghostbusters. APA government environmental regulation. You know, the, the dickless nerd from, from ghostbusters. Oh my God. So like, again, like I said, when you lay out the plot to the story, this could easily be an anti-capitalist story because everything it shows

going wrong are problems of capitalism and the profit incentive being valued over the over people's lives that is explicit in the novel that that's hammond's problem they talk about it the characters discuss it but instead of making it like an issue of the system he makes it an issue of the individuals it's hammond's fault it's not the fault that hammond can exist it's what's his name's fault for trying to steal the embryos like yeah nedry it's nedry's fault well it's the fault of the other corporation for doing espionage even though for read enough of his books you understand that crichton just thinks that that sort of industrial espionage is expected and is standard in our system.

And he still puts the focus on the people who do it instead of the system that allows people to do it to such extent. That's his, his like get out of jail free card from his own analysis is that at the end of the day, it's Nedry's fault for taking that bribe and even gives like Nedry list of grievances against his employer, which you're meant to not entirely be sympathetic to. And it's like, it's Arnold's fault for being too confident in his ability to control the park.

It's Hammond's fault for being such a greedy, old, arrogant bastard. And it's weird because you see, I think unintentionally, you see this fault that Crichton has with his story inside the character of Hammond. Right before Hammond dies, you hear his internal monologue of going, ah, well, Muldoon was, is just a drunk and isn't good enough. Arnold wasn't the best I could have done. I could have done better than Wu. This park failed because these individuals failed. Like Hammond says that explicitly.

Now it's, you're meant to see that Hammond has lost his fucking mind. Yeah. But unable to accept that he is the reason that he's at fault. But at the same time, Creighton is making that same judgment call about Hammond, that all of this is Hammond's fault personally and not a systemic critique of the fact that the system incentivizes people to do this sort of thing. That Hammond was incentivized to this by, in Hammond's own words, the prospect of making a fuck ton of money. Like Hammond says it outright.

And again, this even goes back, if anyone here has managed to listen to our bonus episode on Patreon, on everything, everywhere, all at once. I mentioned the hyper individualist mindset of libertarianism and it's like putting everything on the person an inability to accept or believe that systemic things even exist like to almost to the point where they're just unwilling to believe that systems affect how people act and not necessarily just the other way around or that people can affect systems exactly and he he even gets into that in here where he it's like oh boy does he and that's easily the most contentious political opinion presented directly in this book that i so, what we've talked to up to now is again, our own interpretation of the way

Crichton presents these things. This is us doing, you know, our analysis. Okay. I do think we're right, obviously, because I'm me and I think I'm right. Everybody thinks they're right. Well, I mean, obviously, but I mean mean i'm ontologically correct this is true um so this is us doing analysis of crichton's views right of what he of this is this is the part of the things he didn't say that we are interpreting let's talk about the things he said. Oh boy. That we don't have to interpret.

I want to take the small one first, which is the racism. Cause it's not as big of a deal. Sorry. That's just a strange combination of words. Okay. The small one first. Racism.

In this book specifically, it's one of the smaller things he does. If you read his entire oeuvre, you realize this is an ongoing thing. Michael Crichton is like simultaneously impressed by and terrified of the Japanese, which to our, any zoomer listeners we may have like my cohost here, this may seem a little weird.

That he's so obsessed with Japan and like Japanese investment consortiums. He uses that everywhere. The Japanese investment consortium. That seems weird. That seems weird. What you have to understand is, you know, the way conservatives talk about China now as being this like up and coming economic powerhouse that's going to like compete with America for like world economic dominance and how like you'll even you'll even see, let's call them statist people with red flags say that the reason China wins is because they can like take a long view of economic growth and do like better planning for the future. You've seen people say this online. Yes. I saw somebody just days ago saying that the reason that China has a better economy than America because they do better long-term planning. You know, a person that, you know, calls themselves a Marxist or something. You hear people say this now about China. In the 80s and into the 90s, that was just Japan.

China was not a world power yet, terms economically yet but japan was from like the end of the 70s into the 80s is when we had what i would call sort of the first like tech boom not tech like we think of now like apps but tech like sony walkman and yeah like, and like VCRs, the console, like, well, like yeah. Consoles, VCRs,

Walkman, that sort of stuff. Like, or like what I call early, like tangible technology. Again, a company like Sony. We're just like hitting their stride in the late eighties,

early nineties in Japan. I imagine they also had some, you know, bioengineering companies in Japan. I imagine they also had some, you know, bioengineering companies over there. I'm sure they did. I'm sure that Crichton knew. Yes. So, but again, in that time, Japan was like the Asian boogeyman that was going to overtake America economically. Japan was the people who had, who's, who had the long-term vision to invest in things that would pay off in a decade, not in a quarter. It's very funny to me because to be perfectly frank, it makes more sense from, in hindsight, that it would be China and not Japan that would be more likely to overtake the US in terms of economic power. Yeah. But they were, this was like a legitimate,

you can look up news articles and stuff like this was a legitimate, I'll call it a conservative hysteria in like the eighties and nineties that we were going to be overtaken by Japan. The Japanese had better technology. The Japanese were making cars that were outselling American cars for the first time. Like would really like when like Hondas and Toyotas and even Mazdas really hit the American market. Like when Sony started making things that was really hitting the American home entertainment market, people were legitimately like scared of the Japanese overtaking us economically. And Michael Crichton is a perfect

example of this every book whoever the bad guy is is being financed by some sort of japanese consortium sometimes it's pretty like i'll call it like low frequency racism where which is sort of like, and you know, they were financed by bump, bump, bomb the Japanese. And that's it. Like in Jurassic park, you just hear about them a few times, or you could read rising sun,

which is just as if that title doesn't give it away, which is just openly racist. You can also watch the movie adaption of rising sun with Sean Connery, which is also openly racist. Um, yeesh. Oh, I think airframe kind of gets that way too.

A little bit, a couple of, maybe one of the other ones I don't remember. He's actually more racist than his ones that are more like corporate thrillers. Um, because it has Japanese companies doing shady stuff because they operate by a different code of ethics anyway i needed we needed to talk about that because it's referenced in this book but

not heavily talked about but anyone who's read any of these other books will know man does michael creighton is he worried that the japanese are just better at the economy and business than americans are again this weird like americans only worry about next quarter's profits the japanese worry about decade-long profits and i'm like they weren't worried about decade-long profits either my man they were doing the same capitalism that we are like i love i love that weird like it's almost fear of doing honestly the right thing like if he's scared that they're doing he's scared that they're doing the right thing and we aren't it's like it's so weird i don't yeah fucking capitalists are weird capitalist racists

capitalists are fucking weird bro so i just wanted to get that out of the way. He's racist as shit against the Japanese. You can read any of his books. You'll see it. Some more than others. Now let's talk about his most famous controversial stance, which if you haven't, if you only watched the movie, you don't wouldn't know about because they read the book, edited that stuff out. Cause Steven Spielberg made the great choice to not cover this um he almost explicitly says

that climate change the way we treat climate change science is nonsense and also i need you all to remember that this book came out in 1990. Really? 1990, this book came out. And in this book, he does almost explicit climate change science denial. Now, he doesn't outright claim that climate change isn't happening. He makes a different claim. Let's talk about it.

Ian Malcolm spends the entire book talking about chaos theory. Maybe we can talk about chaos theory a little bit after this. Any case, the way he talks about the concepts of chaos theory, we can maybe, again, maybe we can do a little bit. But the kicker we're talking about here is that one of his little like fevered rants, Ian Malcolm, is talking to Hammond and falls directly into the libertarian paradox. and falls directly into the libertarian paradox. He starts off by saying, you're basically,

John Hammond, you're dumb as shit for believing that you could create these creatures and try to dominate nature and that nature would not escape your grasp and have consequences that you could not foresee. Wow. Look at that. That starts out so nice. Which again, correct. I also don't believe that if this technology existed, that it wouldn't fuck up. And we mentioned it a little bit. But I mean, essentially, if you think about it for about 30 seconds, it makes sense, even outside the bounds of chaos theory, though, I believe this would fall into it.

Is that inevitably something like if you put all these dinosaurs on an island and then you put like an electric fence around them, inevitably something's going to happen. That electric fence is going to fail. Like, yes, you don't really have a choice because if nothing else time is going to wear that thing down um and it's like there's going to be a flaw at some point that you cannot foresee that will happen and there's nothing you can do to prevent that and that's that is the kind of the chaos theory that he talks about throughout this novel which as we've said we kind of agree with yeah there's nothing wrong with that statement because it's true in the real world you imagine our real world now if some rich fuck if fucking jeff bezos or elon musk built a fucking park full of dinosaurs people would end up getting eaten 100 i mean this is this is similar to the same reason that people are at least especially when they were first being created were anti-nuclear

weapons not just because oh man they could be launched but it's because just even having them i mean it's the argument against you even see some people make against nuclear power yeah it's like inevitably something is going to that like sure we can do all the argument against, you even see some people make against nuclear power. Yeah. It's like inevitably something is going to go wrong. That like, sure, we can do all the safeguards you want, but inevitably Chernobyl will happen. Like it's bound to happen eventually. Like you and I would say that statistically an accident will happen. A chaos theory person would say that that's just inevitable based on chaos

theory, that there will be unforeseen problems that cause unforeseen consequences. Anyway. So he's right. Hammond was doomed to fail and it was hubris. It was hubris on Hammond's part to believe that he could do this. But then Hammond is like, I don't understand what you mean.

So Malcolm continues to give examples and Hammond argues with him. And they end up arguing about the planet. And Hammond then iterates what we would then go on to see as being sort of like general sort of liberal Al Gore style talking points. general sort of liberal al gore style talking points even though this is long before that because it's 1990 and clinton isn't even president yet yeah the idea that like convenient truth was in like 2000 something was in 2000 like 2001 or some shit because after he lost the election Right. Yeah. That Hammond argues that like we need to be better stewards of the earth because the environment is changing. The climate is changing and it's going to be it's going to be destructive to life. And Malcolm is like, you utter fool, you fucking moron. And his point is, and this is where, again, the libertarian paradox hits. He thinks he extends the like it's it's human hubris to believe that we could create dinosaurs and control them.

Ergo, it is also human hubris to believe that we are important or powerful enough to affect the environment which i honestly i'd argue it's the other way around where it's like it it's hubris to believe that all this shit we do to the world does not have a lasting permanent impact upon it. It's like, there's no, like this is, it's, it's attempting to deny anthropocentric climate change. Yes. But at the same time, it's like by his own admission,

the belief that we could do all this and control it is the reason why anthropocentric climate change is happening. It's happening because we believe we could do it and then the idea that we could do stuff like carbon capture it's like it's like guys we could pump guys it was hubris to believe that we could just pull a bunch of shit out of the earth start burning it and then have no consequences for adding back millions upon billions of tons of stuff that have been locked under the earth's crust into the air it's like it's it's hubris to believe that over 250 years our actions could not have any impact but creighton malcolm argue and when hammond is like

but the world is but the environment is fucking changing. We're going. And he says the line, which I think is a cop out on Crichton's part is he has Hammond say the line, we're going to destroy the planet. Now you do hear people say this. And Malcolm hits him with the Uber kind of pedantic, but true thing where he's like, no, we can't destroy the planet. The planet is going to,

the planet was here before us. It'll be here after us, no matter what, whether we serve, we as humans survive, that transition is the only thing we can worry about. And whether, whether the majority of other species survive that transition is something that we maybe can worry about,

but probably not. And man, that it's, that's just the sort of thing where it's like, I love these sort of dumb straw man nonsenses where it's like, yeah, people will over exaggerate and say, we're going to

destroy the planet but what they mean is what crichton says and crichton knows that's what they mean and he's just being he's just building up a straw man to make people that think like hammond does in this scene look ridiculous when they're not don't get me wrong like yes the idea that like if climate change get bad enough, could we wipe out human life? Definitely. Could we wipe out a significant amount of biodiversity on Earth? Yes. Yes, we definitely could.

Will life as a thing can also continue beyond that? I do believe so. It's survived multiple extinction events just happen and that this is just another one of them. We didn't cause it. And the most we can hope to do is figure out a way for us as humans to live through it. That's his point. So he doesn't actually say that climate change isn't happening,

which to be fair, I don't think he ever said in his personal life either. Even when he was going before Congress, he never said that climate change itself wasn't happening. What he said was the way scientists interpret it as human driven was bogus yeah and then the really this is the funny thing it's like the whole reason this sort of ideology has been spread in the first place the only the whole reason it's been divested throughout the population uh from the get-go is because is because all this really boils down to is well we really can't do anything to stop it. So we might as well just keep doing everything like the way we're normally doing it. And don't raise my taxes, please.

Please don't raise my taxes. Please, please, mother of God, don't raise my taxes. And it's literally just make profit being oil companies. It's like this. Crichton's own view is explicitly corporate created. And then he just bought into it because it like that sort of thing is it's like like groups like Exxon and stuff. They'll have things on their websites. And even in the past admittance that what we're doing is causing problems. But it's like that they explicitly and intentionally disseminated falsehoods with the intent purpose of preventing any sort of profit loss. Any sort of action that would impact their profits.

And then convinced a shit ton of people that it would also mean if they tax us, we're going to have to charge you more. And it's like, how about I shoot you in the face? And then we're going to take away the way of life that you love. It's like it's essentially holding the world hostage and and like. All because of a couple of bucks and again, systemic problem, because no matter what company you put in that position, their material position is going to lead them to make those conclusions so it's like here's a systemic problem that it's again it's almost because libertarians cannot fathom that things operate within a system that they're like individuals we could never change this because they perceive as everything as being individual action and when you look at it in that way of course we can do absolutely nothing as individuals

we can do essentially nothing and it's like yeah you're right me using me using paper straws instead of instead of like plastic straws will not stop climate change you are correct you're correct this requires systemic change wow but you know what would help climate change if like celebrities stop taking 10 minute flights on their private jets that is something an individual could do that would have a significant impact on climate change um boy but again it's why i find him so frustrating because he's right again we do not we we do not not have the authority or the power to bend nature to our will that is true however that doesn't mean we are not impacting natural systems while we do it what's really funny is i'm pretty sure i'd have to look it up again but i'm pretty sure yeah Yeah. Chaotic complex systems, complex systems theory is one of the driving background ideas in why

anthropocentric climate change is real. Yeah. Chaos theory actually sort of points to the fact that the humans that have done this at the very least complex systems theory now, like, which is, which is related. So, so it's like it's like that's why we know that catastrophic climate events are coming in the future because you know when certain systems start to break down when you remove one animal from an ecosystem when you remove one thing over here one thing over here when you break down this one barrier here, all that happens is it

creates massive, essentially, if we want to get super weird with this chaos waves, that inevitably will ripple out like the butterfly effect into bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger problems that start running away. And there's no way to stop them at that point. Which is the whole thing that limiting attempting to limit karmic you know carbon output is even trying to do is trying to limit it before it gets even worse um you know keep things to one or two degrees instead of three or four degrees it's like because at this point one slash two degrees is inevitable you know it's like we can't stop that and now yeah and now any change would be need to be drastic would need to be astronomically huge

um in order to continue to prevent it because the longer you wait the worse it gets but now it's actually hubris to believe that we can have an impact on it that's all beyond us again it's like chaos theory in and of itself kind of proves the point where if you mess with one thing tiny thing it can ripple effect and it's like that's the whole point it's it's like do you think do you it's like do you not think that you know it's like if one tiny ripple butterfly effect style thing can change the way the world works i can't imagine how you can rationalize that tens of millions if not billions of tons of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere doesn't do that like what the fuck like it's just it's just ludicrous it's absolutely deranged

yeah like again i i'm sure audience you can tell by now that like i find creighton to be incredibly frustrating yeah because his writing is so good his stories are so compelling and his diagnoses are often on point his prognosis is so freaking horrific his his proposed solution is i'm gonna die at age 66 anyways uh let's not do anything and then whatever just he died in 2008 he didn't have to see any of them they didn't live to see the man-made horrors beyond his comprehension yeah this fucking book is good though yeah yeah seriously please don't let us discourage you from picking up this book if you haven't before like just going to it you know knowing that

there's a couple lines in there that are a little politically frustrating. And that for the most part, it's just a really well-written thriller. I'm ranting this much because I like it. You know what I mean? It's very much the, like,

I'm very frustrated with it because otherwise I really like it. It's just the, so therefore the things I don't like really stand out to me. Like I can't really, this is what Starship troopers because the whole book sucks yeah all of starship troopers sucked this is so like it's like you're eating like the most delicious chocolate chip cookie you've ever had and suddenly there's just like one enormous raisin right in the middle that you thought was a chocolate chip.

And it's just the worst experience of your life because the cookie has been so good. And the until you hit that one raisin, that raisin is entirely made up of a short stint of climate denialism, a tiny itty bitty, though still prominent piece of racism and also making you care about a white South African big game hunter. Why'd you make me like Muldoon? God damn it. Why do you make him one of the most reasonable people in the park?

I don't want to sympathize with the white South African big game hunter. I don't want to sympathize with jerk Vanda clerk. Like, Oh my God. It just makes, it just makes me think of fricking Jumanji. Yeah. Like I don't,

yeah. I don't want to sympathize with like the, the, the hunter from Jumanji or like a guy that used to be in the fucking South African defense force. Like, woof. Don't make me do that.

Crichton, you bastard. Especially this is 1990. That is not, that is. Apartheid is still happening. Shit. You're right. Apartheid isn't over yet when this book is written.

I'd say this is still... Apartheid didn't end until like 1994. How long was Thatcher prime minister? I was about to say, this was still extremely close to, you know, all the hullabaloo around Thatcher and, and, and apartheid and then the queen bullying her. The one time the queen was based, she took her into the back room is like, listen, if you don't stop with the apartheid stuff where you're like going to reopen

trade here, like the embargo, like I'm going to destroy your political career. here like the embargo like i'm gonna destroy your political career and uh she was prime minister until 1990 dude so i mean this is all be present this would all be current events yeah and apartheid didn't end until 1994 i think jeez louise man i'm pretty sure i don't think it might have been 92 but I'm pretty sure it was 94. Yeah does anyone want to stop and think about how fucked up that is for like 30 seconds? You know that apart that um. Next time anybody tries

to tell you that oh things like Jim Crow and stuff that's all in the past that could never happen like bro apartheid was 30 years ago. So apartheid was 30 years ago. So apartheid, it basically ended when I was, let me see here, four years. I was four years old.

Huh? Uh-huh. Anyway. Yeah. So fuck you, Michael Crichton, for making me believe that a white South African big game hunter was one of the most reasonable people at the park because he was, you know, mostly because he can stay calm under pressure. Yeah. I mean, he was also a drunk, but whatever. Again, though, the actual part of the book is very quite good.

The raising of the stakes throughout the book works smoothly i talked about earlier sort of like raising the stakes by removing expertise from the island so by like nedry dying raises the stakes because that's one less person who knows what the hell is going on and then uh uh arnold dies and that raises the stakes even further and then uh woo dr woo dies and that raises the stakes even further. And then a Wu, Dr. Wu dies and that raises the stakes. And then all you're left with is a child trying to work. Use a touchscreen for the first time. Yeah.

Use, use a computer to control a highly complex security system. I will say that part feels a little dated when you're reading it talking about operating the computer like the computer systems of the park oh yeah it's it's but that yeah you just have to take that as a fact that like that actually was cutting edge technology and like night in 1990 yeah it's kind of like it's kind of like watching like alien or something and seeing their conception of future tech yeah Yeah, like you Zoomers don't remember the world when we actually didn't know how computers would be. Some of us do.

I really would love someone, if anybody gets the chance to at me on Twitter, with the name of a book, a science fiction book, movie, anything that accurately predicts the smartphone. I bet there is one. I bet somebody knows. I was like, there's got to be somebody. But like, it's it's disturbingly difficult to to to think of now with hindsight how few big sci fi projects ever assumed that computers could get so tiny yeah they always they always they always imagine them getting smarter but i don't think they imagine them getting smaller like you get a little like oh like hologram uh recorder things in like star wars or something but star wars is so much magic in it that you might as well not even bother. In the case of like Alien or something like this.

I mean, don't they have computers in Alien? You go inside the artificial intelligence and it's a big fucking room. I mean, Star Trek has like transponders or whatever. Yeah, but they're like little recorders that you talk. Those are basically like walkie talkies. Yeah, they're like pagers. Yeah, which they already have in like the 70s yeah so like if you can get again the computer bits just feel dated but that's inevitable when like somebody is writing about

tech there's a really great ms-23k line about oh wow the future past it's it's like anytime that a movie or something is like flash forward to the year 2000 and you're like, oh, it's the future past. At least to Crichton's credit, this is stuff that definitely could have been. Oh, yeah. Like and something similar to it definitely did exist. It's just that like because he's not writing about the future future. He's writing about like the stuff he read in science magazines like that year. I was about to say this is very much 1990.

He read in science magazines like that year. Yeah, I was about to say, this is very much 1990. Crichton very much falls into like with chaos theory and with a number of other things he brings up in other books. It's like this was the hot new topic in science that year. And so now he's going to write a book that includes it. So you kind of get that feel from him with like touchscreens and like these complex park systems which like you know parks like disney world 100 have complex control systems like he

describes like a dude with for a control room for a peek at whatever control booth freaking disney has for like one of their whole parks yeah like take me take me to the one in freaking was that mgm or is it Hollywood Studios? I can't remember the name. That would be Epcot. Like Epcot's control space would have to be nuts. It's insane.

So he was right about that. He just, the computers feel silly now. But otherwise, like you'd be sitting in a cockpit controlling all of Epcot. Like the tent,

the tension in this book is so good. Like a couple of the characters are a little flat. It's going to happen. It's a little, it's, it's slightly sexist from time to time to, to,

to Ellie Sattler. It's, it's, oh yeah, it's, well, I don't, then again,

I don't know if the book is sexist towards her or if certain characters are. And if Crichton's not really taking a stance on it, because there isn't a lot of like insinuated political stances to pull from the instances of sexism because I really can't tell whether it's just like Crichton writing how dudes act to women or if Crichton is like this character is a little sexist so yeah I I honestly in this situation don't think Crichton himself was being outright sexist because you often see Dr. Grant being like, yeah, she's a lady. She's also really fucking good at her job, bro. Yeah. Constantly like, you know, like a lawyer will come up and be like, hey, who's hot legs?

And he's like, that's Dr. Sattler. She's good at her job. And the other guys always like oh wow oh so like i do i don't think that's necessarily what i want to call like um him being sexist directly himself yeah i mean i'm sure i'm sure he i'm sure he was because he's a piece of shit but there is there is a pretty big gulf between having a character say something sexist in a book and then you being sexist yourself yeah like i'm sure he probably was because he was a shitty man but like the book itself isn't and the guys who are just a

shitty shitty man and like the guys in the book who are sexist are often like directly sort of like rebuked or snorted at by you know the one good man in the whole book who is dr grant oh shoot i forgot about this section on chilean bioengineered rabies vaccine oh about the scientist no the scientists who took a rabies thing on a plane on the way to chile just to test it out yeah well they well they they took it they were going to test it out wherever they tested out on a village in chile on like a farm in chile and they just didn't tell anyone and they like took this potentially airborne thing on a plane and didn't even think about it well just didn't care yeah they did they definitely um the bad guys in this one biosyn the company that's like trying to steal hammond's

secrets uh the lead scientist there um definitely lewis dodgson or whoever it was definitely um um yeah tested a rabies vaccine on unknowing chilean peasants which the book does say is a bad thing thank god uh well i mean that violates the nap so oh oh yeah yeah yeah yeah because they didn't consent to being tested on. That's the funny thing there. The NAP. Isn't the whole thing about libertarians being like, you can't do communism. It would require everyone to agree. That's what the NAP is, you dumb fuck.

Everyone agrees to it. Anyway, in terms of other thematic stuff, it's sort of referencing the things that Spielberg changed. In the book, as compared to the movie, John Hammond dies before they get rescued. I think that is thematically actually necessary. Okay. Earlier, I said every change that Spielberg made was good. I think that for a movie that makes people feel nice at the end hammond living is fine if you're actually trying to follow crichton's thematic elements to their end him dying it is hubris yada yada it is necessary for hammond to die of his hubris and it's like a thematic little bow he puts on it by having him essentially panic, fall down a hill, and then die being killed by compies, the little tiny dinosaurs that attack the little girl on the beach and are also the first dinosaurs we see. And they also admit are one of the first ones that they made and that they made them explicitly to deal with waste removal on the

island so like it is it's a nice little thematic like storytelling package to have hammond be killed by the compies like at the end because he he has to pay for his hubris somehow otherwise the story's theme entirely falls apart to be fair in the film he's depicted as more of like an an old dope with a lot of money who is just very very infatuated by dinosaurs yeah the movie does not show him to be as narcissistic narcissistic and like arrogantly malicious as he is in the book. Yeah. In the book, he does not give a damn about anyone's safety in the book. In the book,

he's actively unpleasant. In the movie, they sort of make him the kindly old man that book Hammond pretends he is. Yeah. He's got, he's got a very like, oh, look at this old man demeanor in the movie.

Yeah. Like look at this cold man. Who's just sad that his island is falling apart. Like in the book, he's a dictator. Even though it's his fault. In the book, he's much more of like a dictator. Like things go wrong because he explicitly tells people to do things or not do things, as the case may be. And so it is thematically necessary for him to die. I also think for the book's themes to make sense, as in the book compared to the movie, Ian Malcolm dies, and not even of anything,

of just a slow decline into death. I think that's also sort of thematically necessary, because he's essentially like the prophecy of doom from the beginning. And so his whole purpose to exist is to say, this is what will happen. And therefore it like has to happen to him personally. His whole thing about how every new iteration is worse than the previous iteration. That's just him throughout the story. Every time we see him,

he's worse than he was the last time we saw him. And so I think that's also like thematic mirroring to the park is like Malcolm's own personal health. But they also, you know, they weren't going to kill him in the film because Jeff Goldblum. So because it's Jeff Goldblum, you can't kill Jeff Goldblum. So Nedry dying was almost identical. Arnold dying was basically identical. Even down to like the arm. Yeah, the arm and everything.

They do. Like I said, they basically in the movie, they exchanged Malcolm for Muldoon. Because in the book, Muldoon makes it off the island just fine. I think for the movie, I think I said this before we started recording yes that for the movie it's essentially a shorthand for showing you how dangerous the raptors are because in the book you have lots of scenes of them encountering the raptors and not having things go barely making it escaping it so you get us the raptors are much more of like almost want to call them a slow build enemy where like the danger of them gets ramped up throughout the novel until the very end where in the movie they don't have that much time to build the threat of the raptors so

by the time they're loose they have to have them kill it's that sort of that thing from a that storytelling we're like if you want to show how strong your bad guy is you have them kill the strongest good guy you know yeah so like you have to have them kill the big game hunter basically to prove that they're dangerous um it's fine whatever i mean i'm not gonna be mad that you killed the white south african whatever um i'm sorry i don't think you know he has the iconic line he gets to say clever girl um that that line has a lot more thematic weight too because he dies there i feel like if he didn't die there people would remember the line but they wouldn't remember it as well yeah it's definitely the whole point is like it's supposed to be like a

where he's like oh shit like wait but he's also acknowledging their superior hunting where he's like, he's like clever. And then he's dead. And then he's dead. Um, again, if we have any white South African listeners, I'm sorry,

I guess not really. I don't know. You know what you did. Yeah. You should probably leave and give back your family's blood money. You know what you did. Yeah. You should probably leave and give back your family's blood money. You know what you did. Though, you know,

all this aside, war was still really fucked. So give me that. All this aside, I don't know why you're listening. If you haven't, but like you haven't read the fucking book. It's good.

Do actually do. There's, there's like a number of, there are a number of Michael Crichton books that despite his specific issues, I would still recommend as good books. Andromeda strain is a really good book. And you know,

we're Jurassic park is good. We're obviously going to be a bit of a downer. Cause like, obviously our, we're political, we're a politics podcast, you know, a lit podcast.

I can't talk about Le Guin every day. Yeah. So, I mean, I, I, I can, but like, Hey, it's coming up. you know a lit podcast i can't talk about leguin every day yeah so i mean i i i can but like hey it's coming up it's coming up we're not going to so like we're not going to have all positives every time we review a book yeah so but i i just wanted to make sure we balance that like i do legitimately enjoy reading this book that's why i wanted to have kethel read it because i, despite the fact that it's one of the most famous stories now ever because of the movie.

It made it that way because it's really good. Read Andromeda's Train. Read The Great Train Robbery. The Great Train Robbery is a great Michael Crichton book. Jurassic Park is good. I'd even argue Lost World the novel is good. I wouldn't argue Lost World the movie is good, like the first movie is but lost world the book good movies other movies are cursed it's very rare

you get that that sequel that's better you know other creighton books like i don't know um i pray a lot i thought pray was a really good book. Sphere is interesting. Guys, my favorite is State of Fear. Okay. Yeah. We didn't even talk about yet that Michael Crichton did eventually write a book called State of Fear, where the bad guys are essentially terrorists that got a hold of technology that can cause earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes and are basically using it to make the world think that climate change is actively dangerous in order to score like for their political ends like but he wrote that one much later and you can tell that by that point much later he'd become actively more

hostile to climate change science than he was when he wrote jurassic park um where he's not just like oh don't worry about it it would have to fundamentally be challenging his core assumptions about reality repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly and you have one of two reactions to that if you're a human being you either accept it and change your worldview which is really rare and extremely like difficult or you cave in on yourself double down and just start mercilessly attacking anyone who disagrees with you. Yeah. Which is what state of fear is,

uh, where he basically just has like terrorists be like, I've stolen the machine that creates earthquakes and typhoons. It's, it's the, it's the, you know, showing of the classic.

It's, it's the libertarian going insane because their fundamental view of how reality functions is incompatible with reality because that's not how reality functions. Yeah. So yeah, don't read State of Fear. It sucks. I mean, I read it when I was like 16 and I was just like, this was interesting. I didn't even think that hard about the politics of it. Excuse me me back then um but that's because i was just reading and you can pretty easily divest the politics from it if you're not looking for it yeah which i wasn't because i was like 16 yeah um just be careful

because if you if you show it to someone who could you know i wouldn't i wouldn't i of his books i wouldn't advise anyone read that one because the politics are almost impossible to divest in State of Fear. But you can definitely, but you can definitely read, you know, like Jurassic Park or Prey or Airframe or Andromeda Strain or The Great Train Robbery. And just have yourself a good time. Yeah, because it's only really a couple of passages that are like problematic. only really a couple of passages that are like problematic again i honestly do believe that jurassic park if you simply remove those like sections is actually a pretty strong critique of capitalism in scientific advancement if you're just willing to take their critique that one more step and admit that systems exist um it's actually a pretty anti critique of capitalism

within science and uh you know that's good dinosaurs are cool they are pretty cool i'm not gonna lie they're pretty cool and i will say he was a phase as a child so it is i mean most of us did uh obviously he's partly at fault for popularizing the idea that they, all the dinosaurs were scaly instead of covered in feathers. Well, to be fair, that's also was the scientific consensus at the time. Yeah.

But he was also correct. Wouldn't they think now that dinosaurs were significantly more bird-like than they were reptilian? I think like the way they act, you know, the way the copies like Bob, their heads up and down like chickens and the way they sort of go in like flocks almost that their behavior is actually more much more avian than it is reptilian um he says that a lot in jurassic park and i think that so far science has borne that out to be reinforced as probably true um as true as we can manage to be about behavioral patterns of 65

million year-long dead creatures which is a point dr grant makes numerous times in the in the novel the fact that there's simply some things we will never know because they're an alien species that we can't possibly begin to understand for many reasons yeah this this might as well be like us digging up freaking bones on Mars. Like, I know how this animal behaves. Yeah, it's like, I can get that vague idea based on fossilized poop. Um,

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. Read the book. Watch the movie. They're both really good. Yeah. They're both good. Um, if you don't like reading, watch the movie, but at the same time if you don't like reading, why are you listening to this podcast? I mean, unless you're just an audiobook

bro like me. That counts. It counts. Yeah, yeah, it counts. But you know, it's fine actually. Of the things we've read, it's one of the least objectionable. It just happens to be newer so the objectionable bits are still around um yeah that's true oh man yeah it's not so

abstracted anymore no it like this guy died you know like 20 years ago or whatever it was i don't remember when he died 2008 or something yeah so it was like 2006 it's like 14 years ago or whatever it was. I don't remember when he died. 2008 or something. Yeah, so it was like 2006. It was like 14 years ago. 14, 15 years ago. No, fuck him. He's dead just like the Queen. Hey! Ba-ba-boom-boom! Airhorn. People in the future will know exactly when we recorded this episode.

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. I think that's all I've got to say about Jurassic Park. That'll just start repeating myself myself any other final thoughts from you uh no go read it yeah sure it's neat um as you said before up next next episode is going to be the tombs of atuan by ursula k le Guin it is the sequel to wizard of earthsea um it's the it's that's the sequel it's really good we're going to talk about it next you'll to Wizard of Earthsea. It's the sequel.

It's really good. We're going to talk about it next. You'll definitely have time to read it between when this one comes out and when that one comes out because it's actually not that long. And like most Le Guin, it's pretty easy to read. Yeah.

Well, most Le Guin also, not that long. Not that long. Pretty easy to read. It is. I think it might be. I don't know if it's my. It's like tied for my favorite of all the Earthsea novels with the one after that, which is the Farthest Shore. I kind of like the story in Tombs of Atuan a little better. I like sort of the philosophical message of the Farthest Shore a little better, but it's kind of a toss up between the two of them for me. I will find out. After that, we will be doing an episode, as I said, on the essay Starship Stormtroopers by Michael Moorcock.

It is an essay about sort of the inherent, maybe not inherent, but very common incipient trends of fascism in fantasy and science fiction are written by a leftist uh thank goodness we're gonna read two things by by anarchists in a row yeah michael moorcock if you didn't know is one of the most even if his name is not as well known one of the most prolific and uh best-selling fantasy authors of uh the like 20th century fictionp fiction, but good. Sort of pulpy fantasy. He was also an anarchist. He's the guy that invented the Chaos Star as a thing. He's the one that invented

it for his books. And he wrote this essay, which is critical of a lot of other sci-fi and fantasy authors and sort of the insipid fascism in their stories. So we're going to read that as well. We actually don't know what's going to come right after that.

But as we said in the Q and A's October is going to be dark fantasy month. We're going to be doing spooky fantasy. Spooky, spooky, spooky. It's going to be, it's going to be spooky season for October. I've got the company on back order. November is going to be cyberpunk month. We're going to do some manga. We're going to do some cyberpunk stuff.

So we're going to have some thematic stuff going on. I will have some tweets pinned for our Twitter account as soon as we have like a sort of a set list of the things we're going to read so you guys can go there and read ahead as always if you like what we do we do have a patreon we'll release just about one bonus episode a month where we talk about something that's not a book uh usually a movie or a video game or something um i think we actually still have yet to do a video game uh maybe we should do that one this month you know what we should do this month so i still have yet to do a video game. Maybe we should do that one this month. You know what we should do this month so I don't have to do any research at all?

We should just talk about Knights of the Old Republic. Yeah. We should talk about Kreia. Oh, boy. I'm going to talk about Kreia. Oh, boy. Last month was everything, everywhere, all at once. We talked about nihilism, existentialism, and the way the internet is

destroying our brains. And I'll be honest, it's one of my favorite discussions we've had. Yeah, it is one of the most philosophical discussions we've ever had, surprisingly. I think I mentioned this in the last episode, but I did call Ayn Rand a nihilistic piece of shit. Though everybody can hear that in our little

bonus snippet. Yeah, a little teaser. But yeah, we'll also I know we kind of slacked a little bit there of shit though everybody can hear that in our little bonus snippet yeah actually teaser yeah we'll also uh i know we kind of slacked a little bit there getting bonus episodes out but that's because my job was terrible and i was very tired i have a better job now uh and we will get bonus episodes out more frequently my apologies uh yeah that's it follow us on twitter uh thanks for listening and goodbye. Wow. Don't make dinosaurs. Bro.

Are you fucking real man come on