Most Discussed Books (Page 10)

And so when I really took it seriously, I dove into Proverbs and man, if you read my Bible, it's just soaking wet. It's like dry tears on it just because I would read it.

And so if you're lost and you don't know where to start, read Proverbs because it's just a king who asks God for wisdom.

It gets overwhelming when I was really taking Bible seriously.

The Proverbs of Solomon, a wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother. Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit, but righteousness delivers from death. The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked. A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.

In the book of Proverbs chapter 9 verses 13 through 18. A foolish woman is noisy.

And so not only in the book of Proverbs do we have this sense of like, okay, Lord, you remind us that yet so many voices calling to us, so many voices saying, help over here, over here, over here, come over here. Give us your attention. Give us your heart. Give us your mind. Give us your life because everything that takes our attention is taking our life.

Everything that we give a minute of our attention to, we've given a minute of our lives to. A minute of our heart to. And so God, help us to be wise. Help us to not turn to every foolish voice, every foolish opportunity, but only help us only listen to those wise voices in our lives. Help us to only turn to the people that we know are wise, especially your word, Lord God, we thank you for your word because it's your word that gives life.

We're also reading from Proverbs chapter 8, finishing up that chapter with verses 22 through 36.

Proverbs is all about wisdom.

So as we continue to journey forward in the book of Proverbs, one of the things that we're going to keep coming back to is the wisdom of God and how not just I'm going to say how important wisdom is.

Yeah, that's kind of an understatement of the year, but how essentially connected to God is wisdom because those who are foolish are always disconnected from God and those who are wise.

The book of Proverbs chapter eight verse 22 through 36.

We're reading 2 Kings 22, 2 Chronicles 33, and we are reading now, not from Psalms, but from the book of Proverbs, one of the wisdom books.

The Bible translation that I am reading from is the Revised Standard Version, the Second Catholic Edition, and I am using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension.

And yes, so there's the imagery of even the imagery of sexual sin. Now, while that is real, obviously it's a real sin that can also be an imagery for all other sins.

But I think it's pretty common to the human race to know what it is to be tempted towards sexual sin.

And so while yes, they are specifically talking about that particular kind of sin here in Proverbs seven, it's also a metaphor for all sin that is seductive, like right? All sin that calls to our heart in particular in the Bible, adultery is often the image for idolatry.

Yeah, you know, we have the yeah, we have the proverbs and the wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiastes and so many wonderful books that we're going to be going through.

Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.

Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor and drowsiness clothes them in rags.

And we said one of the things that for technique-minded Americans is very frustrating about the book of Proverbs is that the book of Proverbs does not tell you, does not talk nearly so much about how to make right decisions as to how to become the kind of person who makes right decisions.

Proverbs the chapter never been to envy I've had that thing all of my life where your people are bending to envy

a sage named Solomon framed it this way in a book of the Bible called Proverbs Solomon says this as a man or woman thinks in their heart so is he

I'm gonna be me. I'm gonna be me. I'm a dance over this foundation that God gave me and I'm gonna work on it And I'm gonna read the seven habits of highly effective people and Proverbs and Philippians, and I'm gonna do it

See Proverbs 13 20 says walk with wise men and become wise but a companion of fools suffers harm

the Collected Teachings, which are like Proverbs but written in such a way as to convince the knowledge of the universe and the futility of vanity.

Look at Proverbs 6 and 25 with me if you would. Whom to have sex with? Says do not lust after her beauty in your heart. How to avoid certain kinds of sex? Nor let her allure you with her eyelids.

Jonathan would have, we've read Proverbs, the book of Proverbs every day, where he'd want me to read it if he couldn't speak to me.

He'd want me to memorize scripture.

The book of Proverbs is made up of short little sayings. It's like the ancient world's Instagram where you can kind of scroll through and just get little quotes that you like and you can put up on your mirror.

Proverbs 3, 5, Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.

Proverbs 6, 27, Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned?

Proverbs 4, 7, Wisdom is the principal thing. Therefore, get wisdom and with all thy getting, get understanding.

Proverbs 14, verse 4, Where no oxen are, the crib is clean. but much increase is by the strength of the ox.

Reading from the book of Proverbs chapter 1 verses 8 through 19.

The book of Proverbs chapter 27 verses 21 and 22. The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is judged by his praise. Crush a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, yet his folly will not depart from him.

Your friend and your father's friend do not forsake and do not go to your brother's house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away.

Be wise, my son, and make my heart glad that I may answer him who reproaches me.

A prudent man sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.

the book of Proverbs chapter 25 verses 1 through 3, further wise sayings of Solomon. These also are proverbs of Solomon which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied.

In the book of Proverbs chapter 9 verses 13 through 18. A foolish woman is noisy. She is wanton and she knows no shame. She sits at the door of her house. She takes a seat on the high places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way. Whoever is simple, let him turn in here.

And so not only in the book of Proverbs do we have this sense of like, okay, Lord, you remind us that yet so many voices calling to us, so many voices saying, help over here, over here, over here, come over here.

The Book of Proverbs chapter 6, verses 23 through 35.

And I just want to highlight, you know, in chapter five, chapter six, as we heard, it, you know, chapter five is the subtitle warning against loose women. And chapter six is practical admonitions and warnings.

But it does have this in this last section on chapter six, it does have this word of caution and talks about the thief.

Proverbs chapter 1 verses 1 through 7. The Proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel.

That men may know wisdom and instruction, understand words of insight, receive instruction in wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

We're reading today Acts of the Apostles chapter 12, as well as St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians chapter five and six and Proverbs chapter 28 verses one through three.

The book of Proverbs chapter 28 verses one through three, the wicked and the righteous contrasted.

What thinker was deified in Soviet Russia?

Marx.

Oh, and what book did Marx write?

Yes, he wrote Capital, and he also wrote the Communist Manifesto.

We are here to destroy the nuclear family and eradicate the family because it was the original oppressive tyrannical structure.

in societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation

the wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities. Our investigation must therefore begin with an analysis of a commodity

immense accumulation of commodities

immense accumulation of spectacles

Das Kapital is a book written way back in 1867 by Karl Marx, who Karl Marx was the founder of the Marx Brothers.

They transform his life into working time and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital, but all production of surplus value or at the same time methods of accumulation and every extension of accumulation becomes conversely a means for the development of these methods.

This is a big part of Marxist theory. And it suggests, Marx kind of suggested that immiseration is what tends to produce revolutions.

in Marx's words, quote, 'destroy the actual content of his labor by turning it into a torment.'

So Marx was a experiment, a psychological experiment run by the by Harvard University that was included in 1897. But he wrote he wrote a bunch of books and one of those books is Capital and in Capital.

Das Kapital is a book written way back in 1867 by Karl Marx, who Karl Marx was the founder of the Marx Brothers.

destroy the actual content of his labor by turning it into a torment.

They transform his life into working time and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital, but all production of surplus value or at the same time methods of accumulation and every extension of accumulation becomes conversely a means for the development of these methods.

It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment higher low must grow worse.

So Marx was a experiment, a psychological experiment run by the by Harvard University that was included in 1897. But he wrote he wrote a bunch of books and one of those books is Capital and in Capital.

Das Kapital is a book written way back in 1867 by Karl Marx, who Karl Marx was the founder of the Marx Brothers.

destroy the actual content of his labor by turning it into a torment.

They transform his life into working time and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital, but all production of surplus value or at the same time methods of accumulation and every extension of accumulation becomes conversely a means for the development of these methods.

This is a big part of Marxist theory.

in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment higher low must grow worse.

Das Kapital is a book written way back in 1867 by Karl Marx, who Karl Marx was the founder of the Marx Brothers.

And immiseration theory is the idea that because cutting wages and benefits to workers is the easiest way to increase profits, right?

destroy the actual content of his labor by turning it into a torment.

This is a big part of Marxist theory.

in proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment higher low must grow worse.

He read Das Kapital and he said it made him laugh and he couldn't finish it.

communism, Marx wrote a book called Capital

They don't have to sit there and put their hand on the Bible of Marx, Das Kapital and things like that.

Berger delivered the first impassioned message of socialism I had ever heard, the very first to set the wires humming in my system.

No one ever read Das Kapital. I mean, the whole thing is, it's nonsense.

If you go read Karl Marx, he talks about this in his book. You have to demoralize society after you get control. You remove all the intelligence, you remove all the doctors, all the educated people, you remove all the artists, and then you create a society of servitude.

Karl Marx's Das Kapital. The book is often radically misinterpreted by both its supporters and its critics.

Capital is really long. Reading this cover to cover is a serious commitment.

Marx's theory of surplus value was utterly and completely specious.

If you read Das Kapital, the basic idea is that Marxism is just going to magically arise and usher in a new world order.

In the end, the only thing there is to Das Kapital is a bunch of gobbledygook that results in basically nothing.

Yesterday he tweeted out a graphic said Das Kapital in a nutshell, Karl Marx's book.

He started reading Des Capital. His father gives him a copy of Sidney and Beatrice Webb's book, Soviet Communism, A New Civilization.

I did have a hammer and sickle flag, and I was dressed as Che Guevara, and I was reading Das Kapital.

So if you've been following Dope Sick on TV or reading Empire of Pain, this is what this is all about.

If you'd like to learn more about the opioid epidemic, we recommend the books Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Dovesick by Beth Macy, American Overdose by Chris McGreal, Painkiller by Barry Meyer, Dreamland by Sam Quinonez, the documentary The Climb of the Century directed by Alex Gibney, airing on HBO.

If you'd like to learn more about the opioid epidemic, we recommend the books Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, Dovesick by Beth Macy, American Overdose by Chris McGreal, Painkiller by Barry Meyer, Dreamland by Sam Canonas, and the documentary The Crime of the Century directed by Alex Gibney, airing on HBO.

I bet that book by the way, "Empire of Pain". I haven't read that one.

Patrick Radden Keefe. Brilliant book about how they started making certain, you know, kind of medical company, three brothers, and then the dynasty, how they created various drugs, each of them in different ways, problematic, like with side effects, and then the mother of all terrible drugs, which was the Oxys and whatever, and a lot of them live in Stade now apparently. Do you know Stade in Switzerland? Like, it's a playground of the wealthy.

Well, that's interesting because the reason I was asking was not to understand necessarily your ethical worldview but rather your journalistic instinct. If a story is black and white, is it less interesting to you and maybe not? Uh, yeah, I mean I would say so. Um I from a narrative point of view Literally just talking about myself and what what would I read on a Saturday afternoon if you gave me an hour I want something that's going to take some surprising twists and turns um Complexity you like complexity. I like complexity and surprise. And so if you have a story in which you know, you meet a character and they're totally virtuous on page one and Totally virtuous an hour later. Um It's going to sleep you're young yeah to be sure there are people out there like that and there are those stories should get Written but I may not be the guy to do it I want to ask you a question and then we'll get into some of the particular stories because they're fascinating and you mentioned a couple There's a question that I get a lot And i'm sure you get it as well given what you write about Why do people do bad things? And I can give you some context, you know, I get asked that because of the job I used to do and I answer in some measure that obviously There are people do bad things for different reasons and there's some Who do it for greet? There's some who do it because of love There's some who do it because they make a mistake and they double down And there's some who are just I think Rotten to the core. How do you answer that question?

And the reason I asked the question what I was going to say is the next book I did was on the Sackler family and that's all moral clarity. Like I think that's a pretty straightforward story.

He recently put out a book called Empire of Pain which is like, I mean it's popular everywhere okay? I'm not like special. It's his newest release. I highly suggest go giving that a read.

I interviewed both the author of the book Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe, and...

And I interviewed both the author of the book empire of pain Patrick Rad and Keith about his book about the Sackler family but also Kate Nicholson who started an organization you know to represent the interest of people who are using pain medications pharmaceutical opioids responsibly but now can't get to many more because doctors are afraid to prescribe them because there's the pendulum has swung so far the other direction

It's covered in the book dope sick, but there's another book called Empire of Pain that came out not too long ago that goes into Arthur Sackler in the 50s and the 60s. In such exquisite detail.

I call it Charles Dickens in hell. I mean, it's very I want to read that.

My favorite book about it is Patrick Raddenkief's Empire of Pain. It's about not just the introduction of oxycodone, but really how one family, the Sacklers, made billions of dollars by rewriting the story of the poppy seed.

Purdue-formulated oxycodone. Crucially, according to Purdue, oxycodone was not addictive.

Grief from the loss of a child is not a process. "It's a lifelong weight upon one's soul."

As the fascinating book Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe reveals, it was definitely greed.

I picked up at a bookstore on vacation at the beach earlier this year. Fantastic.

I just want to highlight another case it's kind of unusual at the court because it's a bankruptcy case but it's one that you might be familiar with if you've been watching dope sick or pain killer Tyler kish forever. And if you read Empire of pain then you know that Purdue Pharma which is the maker of oxy content has reached a settlement in the significant number of cases concerning opioid abuse in the United States...

There's another book called Empire of Pain that came out not too long ago that goes into Arthur Sackler in the 50s and the 60s in such exquisite detail.

They got Mustapha Suleyman who wrote the big book but co-founded DeepMind with Demis uh they got that core team and uh and they left this little shell you know of inflection for the other investors

I think anyone could benefit from reading the big book or the 12 Steps because it's just about kind of becoming a better person.

But you know, you're constantly redoing steps. I was on step four for years on end and I thought I was finally going to be over it.

That's why I highly recommend when someone comes to me in my DMs or, you know, on the streets and they're just like, I think I have a drinking problem. What do you recommend? I do. I'm like first and foremost, get the book and start reading and anything that resonates with you.

Highlight, fold the page, because you will feel like that book was written for you specifically.

It's just teaching you how to be a kind person.

in the big book they talk about this. It's like literally what I experienced. You try to limit yourself right.

you know what it's time to pick up the fucking big book and do better

the book, the big book definitely says that to stop everything, you know, because you don't want to pick up on other tendencies

Just get the big book the big book

If you're thinking about attending [AA], I would suggest you visit a library and get the AA Big Book.

If you're thinking about attending [AA], I would suggest you visit a library and get the AA Big Book.

If you're thinking about attending [AA], I would suggest you visit a library and get the AA Big Book.

Bill Wilson, the founder of AA famously was doing LSD therapy while sober and writing this book.

That's in the Michael Pollan documentary.

Which is almost godlike, that book is like, wait, where did that come from?

The big book of Alcoholics and Nonomus is the guiding text crafted in 1939 by the movements first 100 or so members.

Here's a recording of AA co-founder Bill Wilson, reading in 1963 from a chapter called How It Works.

from the big book of alcoholics anonymous

if we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through we are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it we will comprehend the words serenity and we will know peace that feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear we will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows self-seeking will slip away fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves are these extravagant promises we think not they are being fulfilled among us sometimes quickly sometimes slowly they will always materialize if we work for them

The big book of Alcoholics anonymous is the guiding text crafted in 1939 by the movements first hundred or so members.

Here's a recording of AA co-founder Bill Wilson, reading in 1963 from a chapter called How It Works.

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

From the big book of alcoholics anonymous,

There was an op-ed written and a subsequent book written by anonymous

And the allegation was that this guy Joe was a big time higher up Senior official in the Trump campaign excuse me the Trump administration

I said hey listen, yeah, I guarantee you this is a nobody in the White House

So anonymous we know who it is. It's now a guy Miles Taylor by the way Miles Taylor He was a DHS underling

He wrote back in CNN a while ago that he was like a major figure in the Trump world

I try to like- Oh, that's wild. Yeah, I say Dr. Silkworth, you know when he talked about the psychic change and the doctor's opinion in the big book.

in the preface to the group's 1939 book Alcoholics Anonymous the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism Dr. William Silkworth calls alcoholism an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer

keep in mind in the big book, they talk about this. It's like literally what I experienced.

I would absolutely sit there and say, here is the big book.

When I say I don't wanna help someone get sober, what I mean is, let's say that I was with someone who was struggling with addiction and we shared a child together. I would absolutely sit there and say, here is the big book.

The big book definitely says that to stop everything, you know, because you don't want to pick up on other tendencies.

I think it's important to talk about. And you know, there's some things that I wrote in my book where people like it made a very interesting and funny headline.

They read The Big Book... it's actually just a clock. It was called The Big Book because it was printed on cheap paper. It says flat out this book is mostly stories and we tell stories in the hopes that something in them will catch you and say, gosh, that life is like mine.

the great big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, which I'm a student of, it says we must surrender our identity as an alcoholic and as a drug addict.

the Little Prince's author saying, Perfections achieve not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing left to take away.

My son has a ring on a necklace and scribed with a quote from one of my favorite childhood movies, the little prince. Quote, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

It's like the little prince.

The principito.

Maybe this principito it has also helped you at something because if you didn't have that pride you couldn't have gone far in this country as an immigrant.

I think it's like the little prince who was equal. The little prince was too busy trying to show how much he knew.

Yeah, how good he was. He was just as good as everyone else.

I know when I was learning French, The Little Prince, Petit Prince, was the one everyone was supposed to read. And I just kind of like, meh, meh. I really wasn't that into it.

In The Little Prince, if you guys remember this as a kid or maybe you've read it to your own kids, he has this great line. He says, vain men never hear anything but praise.

I've read the little prince more times than I can count, you know?

So that's a book I give out quite a lot.

And then you've got the Little Prince's author saying, perfection's achieved not when there's nothing more to add, but when there's nothing left to take away.

is better and more iconic space children's stories, a more iconic space children's story than the Little Prince

We named it B612 because in Ed Lou's kitchen afterward he and Pete and I were sitting around drinking beer and we're saying what the heck do we call this thing? And Pete said, I think that the little prince, number one, the little prince came from an asteroid but I think it had a name.

B612, that's the cutest thing you ever heard.

The little prince came from an asteroid but I think it had a name.

So we went on... Dig it up. Before Google we went on the internet and Pete sure enough found that it was B612 was the little prince's asteroid and so we decided to name it...

And so we decided to name it...

if you read the little prince...he says we're responsible for what we've tamed

But the big model for me and this is why I wanted to talk to you about it was The Little Prince, because you have this sort of fantastical surreal kind of adventure story for kids. It's also operating on this totally different level for adults.

one of my favorite books the little prince has the essentialism visible to the eye the curiosity the empathy falling in love for the first time getting your heart broken having your heart grow back stronger realizing you'll you'll be okay with the resilience testing your limits you know all of these things what is essential as invisible to the eye there's a an impossible to measure joyous exploration in a safe place at his college

The little prince.

The little prince.

The little prince.

The little prince.

The little prince.

Yeah, that's the theme in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five

Where the protagonist is in his backyard and he's lifted up by aliens which I always want to have happen to me when I go into anybody's backyard and I look up I want to be abducted by aliens

And he can see his entire timeline from birth to death and he can access any point in that timeline

The books good too.

It's a it's it's a pivotal part of the plot the old lazy.

I would not only consult with a book that I've mentioned before, Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman, but also would turn to sometimes Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse-Five and just read a passage or two.

but also would turn to sometimes Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse-Five and just read a passage or two.

Like reading, um, slaughterhouse five helped me write the visit. I don't know why, you know, it just, it just, it evokes something in me.

Like reading, um, slaughterhouse five helped me write the visit. I don't know why, you know, it just, it just, it evokes something in me.

Kurt Vonnegut was big in the alternative comedy scene. It was a while there for about 18 months to two years where was big For an alternative comic to tag a joke with and so it goes and so it goes.

And I used to always think like, you know, there's a difference between being Kurt Vonnegut and quoting Kurt Vonnegut.

things like Lord of the Flies for example, certain books like Slowhouse Five, exactly books that are a little edgy potentially or have some other lore kind of associated with them.

certain books like Slowhouse Five,

certain ones that others, maybe we're a little controversial, things like Slowhouse Five, exactly books that are a little edgy potentially or have some other lore kind of associated with them.

In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five that time travel scenario is what you're describing, right? Because in it his entire time he's picked up by aliens and he lives in a cage an alien zoo but it doesn't matter to him because he still has access to his entire life's timeline and when he's describing this or they describe it to him, he said, when will I die? You're always dying. When was I born? You're always being born. When did I go to college? You're always going to college.

And by the way, that's also what happened in the story Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, which is a time travel story on top of being a World War II story.

But his, and I think Kurt Vonnegut got it right. Correct me if I'm wrong, Brian. He just described your life is always there. You're always being born. You're always dying. You're always in school. You're always in love.

And you just rejoin where you were on that timeline and relive that.

Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, which ostensibly takes place at the end of the Second World War, and there are other sort of historical details I won't get into.

What I was most intrigued by is the time travel that goes on in that.

So what happens is the lead protagonist gets abducted by aliens, gets put in a cage, and that sounds bad, but they said, no, you're still there, you're still being born, you're still dying.

And they went outside of his timeline.

So he would sit there and daydream, but by daydreaming he was living his life, and he could relive his life multiple ways and in multiple times.

So, for example, in Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, that involves cleanup efforts in Dresden after the bombing of Dresden in the Second World War. Okay, fine. But the rest of the book folded into that is the encounter that the protagonist has with space aliens.

And he has access to the fourth dimension in doing so, where he sees his entire life all at once. He's always being born, he's always dying, he's always living it out in between.

Who's the guy who wrote Slaughterhouse-Five?

I think it was Kurt Vonnegut

In one of his novels He said, I'm paraphrasing This is the last sentence ever spoken by humans It'll be one scientist speaking to the other saying Let's try it the other way

I think Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut was banned, Native Sun by Richard Wright.

There's an amazing story about Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph heller who wrote catch 22 and slaughterhouse five they're at the party this billionaire and Vonnegut is teasing heller and he says this billionaire that whose house were at he made more money this week than your book will make it its entire light.

Heller says but I have something that he doesn't have. Vonnegut says what's that and heller says I have some idea of what enough is he says I have enough this idea of enough is so powerful.

There's an amazing story about Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller who wrote Catch 22 and Slotter House 5. They're at the party of this billionaire.

Did you read Slaughterhouse-Five?

At the time, some of his catalog, including Slaughterhouse-Five, was being taken out of schools across the country.

Another famous book that uses or references Prometheus is the subtitle of Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein.

And yeah, or what's the full title? Frankenstein, a Modern Prometheus.

So I'm fascinated. So this is Dr. Frankenstein not so much bringing fire to the world but creating life.

This seems like you're transgressing God or something, right?

She read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Great Expectations by Dickens.

And it struck me that many, many literary ghost stories that you read begin... I'm going to tell you something that's quite unbelievable, but I really want you to know this really, really happened to me.

And it struck me, well, what they would do in TV if they told a ghost story is just put a camera in someone's face and the person would tell you, this really happened to me.

You know, in the Truth and Beauty, I write a chapter on Frankenstein, in which I make the argument that Frankenstein, the Dr. Frankenstein who creates this monster has not violated, as Mary Shelley did, has not violated God's prerogative. He's violated a woman's prerogative. He's created a being, which we all do. Anyone who has a child has created a living being, but he creates it without a mother. And if you read Frankenstein in that way, by immoral action.

I've always wanted to be an author. My ancestor wrote Frankenstein, Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft.

So Frankenstein comes from that

It's what inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein When she read about the experiments with dead frogs If you poked them with electricity, their legs jumped

Frankenstein was published in 1818, long before spies were getting nuclear scientists off their nut and asking them questions about fission.

Twenty year old author Mary Shelley published the book in 1818. She conjured up the monster as part of a dare while staying at a Swiss mansion.

Shelly and a group of friends held a contest who could write the scariest story. Well at midnight, Mary Shelley revealed the plot of Frankenstein, a cautionary tale about the dangers of playing God.

The ambitious doctor hellbent on defying death creates a human life by robbing graves and assembling body parts back together.

The film spawned 22 sequels, dozens of books, even a children's breakfast cereal.

I started like reading more about Shelley. Mary Shelley wrote that when she was 17 years old.

I liked that they made the monster human. Not as a real life human, but made him feel human. Able to talk too, because that's not a, that's never been a thing.

The most famous product of this is Frankenstein, which is a novel that in which the weather gets progressively worse and worse and worse.

I'd urge anyone who hasn't read it to read it because it's fantastic.

And Frankenstein. There's two creators who have created life. Geppetto creates the naughty puppet who redeems himself and then Mary Shelley writes Frankenstein, truly a masterpiece.

I interviewed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro about his lifelong obsession with Frankenstein and his new adaptation in which the creature is tormented by eternal life.

I just watched Frankenstein last night. You did? You did. Yeah. Wait a second. I just watched Frankenstein last night. No, I'm sorry. During the day yesterday, not last night. ... I can't say enough about you and Frankenstein. It's incredible.

Good luck with Frankenstein. We're all going to go see it. What a talent!

It eventually becomes Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus, which is the full title. I never knew that. The condensed refresher that no one needs, but it will be fun to do, is that Frankenstein's about a young scientist who makes the very risky decision to play God, designing a creature that looks somewhat human and using electricity to jolt it to life.

It's released anonymously. So her name is not on the book in the beginning. And it's a small publisher, not particularly well known. There's only about 500 copies that they put out on very cheap paper and with no fanfare.

Who wrote the novel Frankenstein? Mary Shelley? Fuck. Yeah. They got it.

I listened to the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It's a great exercise in cognitive empathy, hugely complicating a moral assessment of the situation by looking at things from the eyes of a monster.

I listened to the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley... it's a great exercise in cognitive empathy... it hugely complicates a moral assessment of the situation by looking at things from the eyes of a monster.

I listened to the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It's a great exercise in cognitive empathy... it hugely complicates a moral assessment of the situation by looking at things from the eyes of a monster.

Frankenstein proved that he was so dumb, he thought a monster needed a sport jacket.

But in any case, putting Frankenstein's dress code to the side, his point about privilege is important.

but mostly from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, which many consider to be the first science fiction book.

I really wanted to read Mary Shelley's novel, which I've never read before... I did, however, read your introduction to, like, I think it's a 2021 annotated version of the novel.

I was trying to capture ... Bernie Wrightson who illustrated for me the best illustrated version of the novel.

For the record, Rich, when you're done watching Frankenstein on Netflix, I was referencing unknown number of the high school catfish.

I'm about to fly home tonight. Anyway. Frankenstein.

I mentioned Frankenstein. Guillermo del Toro's Frankensteins on Netflix. It's actually pretty decent so far.

We talk Frankenstein.

Such a good movie. If you guys haven't seen Frankenstein, you got to go check it out.

There's a grave robbing episode. And of course, that's where they get the parts for the creature.

The creature was not Frankenstein. It was Frankenstein's monster originally when the book was written by Shelley.

the source material, the reason people keep getting the source material wrong is the whole thing is about how secular atheism robs people of their meaning. That's the entire basis of the Mary Shelley book.

I'm reading it to my daughter right now. She's a little young for it, but we're doing it anyway. She's 11 and I'm reading it to her. The entire thing is about how once you dispense with God, what you end up with is basically meat and how that robs people of their soul.

and from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein.

I really wanted to read Mary Shelley's novel, which I've never read before speaking to you again, and I wasn't able to find the time to do it.

No, no, no. There are so many things that are in the novel.

When the creature meets Victor in the frozen north, he says, well, this is what happened to me, and he proceeds to tell him his itinerary of degradation and humanization and learning the language with the family of the hermit. All of that is in the novel.

We will be looking at thrilling Gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like The Great Gatsby or Little Women, and then also some more modern stuff.

Frankenstein as a piece of cultural mythology, I actually hadn't read the book.

He's the author of nine books, including Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, and most recently, Rationality, What It Is, Why It Seemed Scarce, and Why It Matters.

Since I wrote Enlightenment now, went to press in 2017, I still try to keep track of trends.

would you rather believe the false view of reality and write a book called enlightenment now or do you want to actually look at how things really are

The first book that a reporter from The New Yorker Blinked was called Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker in paperback form.

It's 450 pages plus another hundred pages of notes on audible at last 19 hours and 49 minutes.

But over a series of nine blinks it takes just 24 minutes flat to listen to now.

Steven Pinker the Canadian popular psychologist and author of such bestselling books as Enlightenment Now and How the Mind Works

Steven Pinker the Canadian popular psychologist and author of such bestselling books as Enlightenment Now and how the mind works

Steven Pinker the Canadian popular psychologist and author of such bestselling books as Enlightenment Now and how the mind works.

Pinker makes this point in Enlightenment now, if you start off with Jesus died for our sins, that's the most important value to me. You're not gonna get agreement or roomful of UN diversity.

He is the author of several books, including Enlightenment Now, The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

So let's look at what that representative sample might look like and let's look at three basic measures that you discuss in the book, health, wealth, and happiness.

It's kind of a theme of my last book enlightenment now I also go into the psychology and more detail in my new book rationality which is among other things about how our sense of risk and probability and prevalence are driven by images and anecdotes and narratives and not by data.

writing books like enlightenment now or better angels rationality are inherently encouraging it's almost contrarian because of our propensity to focus on the negative why do we need an accurate view of the world that why is this important well it's for the same reason that it's better to see things than to wear a blindfold or hallucinate namely the more you know about the world the better equipped you are to act on it to solve problems when they arise to figure out what works and what doesn't to protect the institutions and the laws and the practices that have made life better get rid of the ones that have made life worse the more you know about the world the better equipped you are to act on it

In the past as we've automated, we found new things for people to do so there used to be elevator operators. I still remember elevator operators when I was a kid in the big department stores guys who just stand all day with a lever making the elevator stop at every floor. We don't have them anymore but we do have your tattoo removal technicians and pet psychiatrists.

Yeah and it's something I deal with in my enlightenment now because if I'm just saying well we are look at the way the the New York Times sensationalizes this story this morning. Some could say well you're doing the same thing you're just right cherry picking anecdote so actually have a graph showing the results of an algorithm that did sentiment mapping in stories in the New York Times in an example of world media going back to the 40s and it's really true the media have gotten more negative.

I do have a graph in my previous book Enlightenment now showing Working Hours in the United States in Europe which have gone way down for more than 60 hours a week to fewer than 40 hours and that's probably an area in which there could be there should be more progress.

It's kind of a theme of my last book enlightenment now I also go into the psychology and more detail in my new book rationality which is among other things about how our sense of risk and probability and prevalence are driven by images and anecdotes and narratives and not by data.

writing books like enlightenment now or better angels rationality are inherently encouraging it's almost contrarian because of our propensity to focus on the negative why do we need an accurate view of the world that why is this important well it's for the same reason that it's better to see things than to wear a blindfold or hallucinate namely the more you know about the world the better equipped you are to act on it to solve problems when they arise to figure out what works and what doesn't to protect the institutions and the laws and the practices that have made life better get rid of the ones that have made life worse the more you know about the world the better equipped you are to act on it don't get me wrong I agree with the idea that we should keep our eye on a positive view of the future because I think it also encourages us to solve the problems that we do have.

I'm on record as the second biggest contributor to Hillary Clinton among Harvard faculty but yes there is that danger that just analyzing things objectively in the case of the alt right I can tell you that it's true that not all of them are teaky torch wielding skinheads because at least one of my former students at Harvard University gravitated to the alt right to my horror but you know he was one of the smartest students I ever had and the point of that discussion that ended up on YouTube and selectively edited is that if you have an atmosphere in which has what we increase in we do in academia in which there's some things you just can't say well they're going to be people who are part of the tribe we're going to say well geez what are they what are they afraid of if you get punished for saying something that must mean it we should take a look at it because if it was so preposterous no one would bother suppressing it in the first place maybe there's something to it I think that academia has become something of an incubator of the alt right by having such an atmosphere of repression that people think that there are truths that are being suppressed that terrifies me a little bit right because I did a bit of a debunk of this fake documentary called planned to make which was something like an anti-vaxxer yes magnum opus and I went through the first half of it and I just deconstructed a lot of the so-called experts and things like that and people one of the primary comments on there was if it's not true why isn't it allowed on YouTube and that's hard to argue with in a lot of ways I mean it's hard to argue effectively obviously there are reasons for not disseminating misinformation and disinformation but it's very hard to convince somebody that they're not allowed to watch something because it's not true when usually they're going to assume the opposite is the case.

it's something I deal with in my enlightenment now because if I'm just saying well we are look at the way the the New York Times sensationalizes this story this morning Some could say well you're doing the same thing you're just right cherry picking anecdote so actually have a graph showing the results of an algorithm that did sentiment mapping in stories in the New York Times in an example of world media going back to the 40s and it's really true the media have gotten more negative.

He, like the psychologist Steven Pinker. Oh, I love him, by the way. He's brilliant. Yeah, I mean, I don't know Steven Pinker at all, but his book Enlightenment Now.

He's like, you know, we all run around like chicken littles and think the sky is falling. And he basically says like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, everybody. We live in the most glorious age of all time. Prosperous, safe.

He's also got a newer book, Enlightenment Now, which argues that the world is getting better despite what we think.

I would also recommend Steve Pinker's Enlightenment Now, which is of course, we're much healthier and wealthier than we otherwise would be.

1819 Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass very good very good

And the idea to me, what was so underrated about Emerson is his generosity, not just these financially supporting Thoreau and all these other people. But like when he found something he liked, he celebrated it.

He wasn't territorial. He wasn't egotistical. It wasn't about only himself.

But like when he found great work, he supported it and encouraged it. And like we might not get Whitman if it's not for Emerson's like sort of blurb on the cover.

So Emerson was this great supporter of other people. You know, they in sports, they talk about like a coaching tree. Do you know what that is?

And Emerson has an incredible coaching tree, not just through his work, but but literally, you know, Melville and Hawthorne and Whitman and Alcott. All all these great writers descend from not just Emerson intellectually, but like physically.

He gave them a place to live. He published them, he encouraged them.

And and I think that generosity of spirit and that that that openness was was one of his defining bits of greatness.

He goes, I greet you at the beginning of a grand career.

Or Whitman came to him and said, how can I make this leaves of grass a best seller? He said, well, take out the songs of Adam part, take out the homoerotic parts.

For me it's a it's poetry so like Walt Whitman does it for me Emily Dickinson does it for me Mary Oliver does it for me Rumi and Hafiz do it for me I feel like they they were directly channeling the divine like they were mystics who were directly channeling the divine and they were generous enough to leave the door open behind them so you're almost drafting in on them so you prime yourself into that state of being by reading something that feels to you like it comes from that place

He spent his whole life writing and rewriting Leaves of Grass, which was his search for meaning, right?

even though it's famous for the line, I celebrate myself. In Leaves of Grass, the most frequently used word is the word you.

Buried between parentheses in the middle of leaves of grass is Whitman's testament to this elemental truth which turned his greatest heartbreak into his greatest masterpiece.

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse unreturned love but now I think there is no unreturned love the pay is certain one way or another. I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not returned yet out of that I've written these songs.

Sure, maybe you have it on your Kindle. Somebody asked me that today, you know, because I'm reading this incredible book and which I can't name yet because it's not out yet.

Who the fuck has a book of Walt Whitman?

Next come the dirt eaters, each rolling before him his darling morsel of literary filth.

Disgusted with artificialities and linen decencies and finding a nutriment in leaves of grass, but not in fig leaves.

So much in love with nature that like the poor human earthworms, they wish to do in public what others do in private and abolish all laws against indecent exposure.

I even feel a little bit like, you know, Leaves of Grass is this amazing poetic work by Walt Whitman, but it also gave birth to a lot of terrible free verse poetry.

I even feel a little bit like, you know, Leaves of Grass is this amazing poetic work by Walt Whitman, but it also gave birth to a lot of terrible free verse poetry.

Look at Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. He wrote that book throughout his life. There's the young man's version and there's the old man's version. And some of the language changes as he gets closer to death and that's interesting.

We shot a little Halloween look in downtown Los Angeles and we were the twins from The Shining and it was so fucking funny.

She didn't tell me beforehand that we did not have a room or anything booked so we had to change in the hallways. Titties out in the hotel hallway and then we shot as The Shining twins and then we were like scaring strangers.

Oh my God, I just talk about Jack Nicholson in the shiny. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. He's just typing that over and over and over again.

It's the idea of somebody being trapped, like the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel and The Shining.

The Whining that was like The Shining, but it was about Peaches and Varla living in P-Town over the winter.

And there was like there was one part in particular that probably didn't even stand out to most people. It was like there was a part where I'm explaining how Stephen King got the inspiration for The Shining.

It's also the home to the Stanley Hotel, which served as inspiration for the Stephen King novel, The Shining.

A la the shining which is spelled The shinning.

Probably not because you're so used to Kubrick's "Shining".

So what's the the shining is probably the one I should read

That Stanley Hotel, the same one that inspired The Shining when Stephen King and his family vacationed there.

So what's the the shining is probably the one I should read

Probably not because you're so used to Kubrick's shining.

Just try to look the positive side that they think you're nuts...then I don't know what you fucking freeze to death like jack nicholson the end of uh, Uh weekend at bernie's there. What the fuck was it called? the uh snowy hotel Psycho killer keska say what was the shining?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know all of that shit is just like heavy stuff...Then I don't know what you fucking freeze to death like jack nicholson the end of uh, Uh weekend at bernie's there. What the fuck was it called? the uh snowy hotel Psycho killer keska say what was the shining?

...and I'll expect like the TV to come on and see the girl crawling out of the well or to hear the phone ring and I pick it up and it's going to go seven days, you know?

I'll expect like the TV to come on and see the girl crawling out of the well or to hear the phone ring and I pick it up and it's going to go seven days.

Have you guys seen that movie or read the book Doctor Sleep?

It's sort of, I guess, a sequel to The Shining. I just love it. It's sort of, I guess, a sequel to The Shining. I think it's one of Stephen King's better latter-day books.

It's sort of, I guess, a sequel to The Shining.

I just fucking maxed out on the shining. Shining rules.

Ready to start seeing those two red rum girls from The Shining.

When I asked what he knew about what it was like there, he said, have you seen The Shining?

Staying overnight at The Thirteen in November 2019, a Macau-based business journalist wrote that it reminded him of the hotel in The Shining.

He just finished reading The Shining by Stephen King.

I thought it was a line of the movie, but it's not; my wife googled it and we discovered it was from The Shining.

Whether it's, whether like you brought up Chinatown, like, or like some of my favorite movies, like Bonnie and Clyde, movies that you immerse yourself in, like The Shining, like, like you, you forget yourself.

My neighbor saw The Shining before I did and told me about it, recounted it, and completely lied about it. He said that Jack Nicholson got his arm cut off and you know how a human can grow an arm back. He grows an arm back. And all this stuff. And I just was expecting.

I've watched the shining so many times.

My dad took me to see The Shining.

We saw The Shining.

It reminds me of The Shining.

The people are on edge because it's the shining, it's one of the most frightening movies.

Those would be the four best ones. And The Shining he didn't even like.

Like The Shining is just an incredible idea.

Her most famous role of all, though, came when she worked for a different director, Stanley Kubrick, for his 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining.

This hotel is the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining.

The Shining. ... The shark in Jaws is a total of about four minutes ... The Shining ... it's a classic horror story that still scares people today.

I'm more of Goodfellas, The Shining, Silence of the Lambs.

They filmed The Shining at their summer home, as a matter of fact.

He looked like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Stephen King might be the king for this. Oh, yeah. So think about it. The Shining. It. The Shining. The Shining. The Shining. The Shining.

The main source is used for the story is a book called The History and Haunting of the Stanley Hotel... (later) ... the novel The Shining.

Stephen King said later, quote, except for our table, all the chairs were up on the tables.

When the novel The Shining comes out in 1977 and when the film adaptation comes out in 1980, the Stanley enjoys a renaissance, having been obviously made extremely famous.

You ever see the movie The Shining? Yep.

I think that UConn is like the Shining - they just keep going no matter what.

My wiener looks like Nicholson at the end of The Shining.

It is just like Nicholson at the end of The Shining.

Definitely dot on wrote this book called the firm about McKinsey and said McKinsey is maybe the single greatest legitimizer of mass layoffs of anyone anywhere at any time in modern history so there's just this hefty dose of irony that they themselves refuse to conduct any layoffs at their admittedly very bloated company right now.

Yeah. There's also a book, The Firm.

Grisham.

They're not creating fantasies. They're John Grisham. It's the Pelican Brief. It's the firm. It's Tom Cruise and the firm.

I thought the movie was great again with Tom Cruise.

I thought the movie was as good as the book.

It's a little bit like The Firm.

It's like a Mitch McDeere character, you know?

Remember, for those of you who are John Grisham fans, Mitch McDeere was his lawyer played by Tom Cruz in the movie and he finds this job at a Memphis law firm but their primary client has these Grand Cayman, these Cayman Islands bank accounts. Remember that whole concept?

Yeah, I saw that movie, man. It's a good movie. I saw it many times.

Great movie. Great book.

It's a little bit like the firm.

It's like a Mitch McDeer character.

You know, he remember for those of you who are John Grisham fans, Mitch McDeer was his lawyer played by Tom Cruise in the movie and he finds like this job at a Memphis law firm, but their primary client is has like these grand Cayman, these Cayman Islands bank accounts that they're remember that that whole like concept.

Back when Claude initially filed the class action, a judge compared the rampant overbilling to, quote, something out of John Grisham's novel The Firm, where someone in the law firm is doing something wrong, but no one can quite seem to solve the mystery of how it works.

And her unexpected death would get caught up in a chain of events right out of a John Grisham novel. Murder, betrayal and billions of dollars in fraud.

I keep on my desk some articles from way back then about how back in 2001, for example, that demanding the Federal Trade Commission take aggressive action to block the merger of Time Warner and AOL because that company would have an unbreakable monopoly on instant messaging.

More authors have sued OpenAI for copyright infringement including the likes of John Grisham, George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoult.

It reminds me just the other night we watched it's an older movie, but we just watched it because it was on, The Firm. You know, I don't know if you read that John that John Gershom book.

It's a favorite.

Yeah. Right. So we were watching it stars Tom Cruz and it's like the star recruit comes into the organization, has all these trappings thrown at him. Everything looks, you know, white shoe and red leather. And, you know, wow, this is like next big phase of my career. And then in that case, spoiler alert, he finds out he's surrounded by a bunch of criminals and that his life is never going to be the same again.

The firm by John Grisham is my favorite book and he's probably the reason why I went to law school.

He'd first heard about the Caribbean hideaway in John Grisham's best-selling thriller, The Firm.

The Firm was the first pageturning thriller novel I ever read; I stayed up all night reading it during my first year of law school, and it showed me that a lawyer could write fiction and change my life.

John Grisham's backstory is unbelievable - he sold 300million books, failed at baseball, struggled in school, and after being rejected by 28 publishers he finally published A Time to Kill and then The Firm.

I reread The Firm about a year and a half ago. I have no time for leisure reading at all. But it was one of my favorites when I was early in my career.

From the author of The Firm and The Client comes a time audiences will always remember.

I still really like The Firm. As a movie? As a movie. We did, that was one of the first rewatchables.

John Grisham had said he witnessed the harrowing testimony... and that was how he ended up doing a time to kill, which was his, I think the first book he wrote.

The Client, Just Cause, Primal Fear, Time to Kill, Devil's Advocate, 1990. 1997, The Rainmaker, Liar Liar.

Another one that produces good books and movies would be John Grisham. The Firm. The Firm. The Firm is a great movie.

I downloaded The Firm book on my phone for our flight here. I read two pages. So I can't tell you a lot about it.

He said in his New York Times piece, he wrote it was the 13 page statement of facts that brought me two tears, right? This is the guy who was the number two at the National Enquirer, okay, because of the role they played in Catch and Kill and not just one story, multiple stories.

a lot of people don't like Ronan Farrow for various reasons uh but his book catch and kill highly recommend it it's a thriller like he's he's got so many interesting documents and inside sources that he's able to tell it like a novel and he and he'd tell catch and kill is is the phrase that the national inquirer would use to help somebody like trump um catch a scandal uh and then kill it so like uh you there's is there a love child somewhere sure that's interesting we'll pay you $30,000 for that story and then boom you kill the story and and now that person has signed an nda so they can't leak it anywhere else um and so that's that that's one of the services that the national inquirer was willing to provide for people like trump

He's the author of Catch and Kill, Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.

It's an account of his game-changing investigation into film producer Harvey Weinstein's history of sexual assault and the difficulties Farrow faced trying to get the initial story published.

So let's get to catch and kill.

So there's the book Catch and Kill, and then there's the podcast Catch and Kill.

I would not have written this book if I thought it was just a glum and dreary account of how broken our systems are or how acute the power imbalances.

Catch and Kill, 2019. I think I have the next one that's going to be a book.

Ronan Farrow did stop by. I had some tough questions for Ronan about his book Catch and Kill, including the impressions he does of a certain podcast host who he makes sound like a gay snake.

He does impressions of you in the audio book?

He does the accent of a gay podcast host. It sounds like a Disney villain.

The book is is very transparent about the fact that these were people I liked and respected.

The reporting is particularly meticulous. One of the best fact checkers in the world, a senior checker from The New Yorker, really raked over every sentence. And the thing is airtight.

This was a company with a lot of secrets, as it turns out.

It's a pattern. And I document a case in which there was another Catch and Kill operation where AMI went after buying the rights to the story of a Trump Tower doorman who claimed Trump had a love child there.

I'm selling a damn book, Jonathan.

And listen, and we all have our own version of that. Okay? We may not be as hot. All right. But we all have our own version.

As readers of a little book called Catch and Kill.

People need reading material during this crisis, Jonathan.

He wrote the book with Little Brown, Catch and Kill, a book about abusive men and what they'll do to control the story and prevent women from speaking out and smear women who tell the truth.

A book that also talks about what Woody Allen did to his family and the abuse that his sister suffered.

Ronan you are here because there are many new revelations about Trump that have come to light in your podcast Catch and Kill based on the book by the same name.

thank you last episodes just came out thank you guys some Catch and Kill podcast stans thank you but we weren't gonna allow you to come here and promote this podcast I figured we'd do it in the form of a game

we have a lot of new tape across this whole podcast and there's large tranches of David Pecker and his second in command Dylan Howard you kind of get David Pecker's life story like who is the guy that set up the catch and kill empire with Trump and agreed he was going to try to swing an election

so we decided to anonymize the family because the story was always about this trail of contracts and this payout which turned out to be a violation of election law and prosecutors deemed it illegal

you know through the book and then the show I get the question a lot like how do you maintain any hope about anything because there's a lot of dark stuff in there but here is one thing that I've learned there are times when the obstacles seem totally insurmountable and the status quo seems totally immovable but there are times when the story seems totally immovable but then all of these stories come out because over and over again someone does something really brave

You know, so many of my stories are about a lot of pretty dark things. They're about crimes and coverups, but also they are about the brave whistleblowers who come forward and the community of people in the general public and especially journalists who say enough and we're not gonna stop digging and we're not gonna stop asking tough questions, including of our bosses.

And it's incredibly moving to see that. And it's why I finished writing a book like Catch and Kill and still full of hope.

You can buy Catch and Kill at catchandkill.com.

And you know that while there is an Amazon link there, I recommend you go to one of the indie bookseller links because we need to support booksellers at this difficult time and we need to support Catch and Kill at this difficult time when it is number one on the indie bookseller list and not number one on the Amazon list where people are buying Elton John's book.

I watched you report the story for a year. I watched you work on this book for the better part of a year. You are the hardest working person I have ever met.

So many of my stories are about a lot of pretty dark things. They're about crimes and coverups, but also they are about the brave whistleblowers who come forward and the community of people in the general public and especially journalists who say enough and we're not gonna stop digging and we're not gonna stop asking tough questions including of our bosses

and it's incredibly moving to see that and it's why I finished writing a book like Catch and Kill and am still full of hope and it's really tough to organize in any context and it's tougher still when you're doing it and using it as a means to call out people who decide whether you get raised or get frozen out and that's what they're doing.

You can buy Catch and Kill at catchandkill.com.

And while there is an Amazon link there, I recommend you go to one of the indie bookseller links because we need to support booksellers at this difficult time and we need to support Catch and Kill at this difficult time when it is number one on the indie bookseller list and not number one on the Amazon list where people are buying Elton John's book.

I watched you report the story for a year. I watched you work on this book for the better part of a year. You are the hardest working person I have ever met.

And then he said, it's due on Wednesday, can you read it tonight? And I said, I can't read it tonight. It's a 600-page book.

He said, okay, well, can you read the next draft? I was like, yes, but you have to promise me I get one week to read the book.

He said, okay, not a week where Love It or Leave It's on the road, because then I'm doing shows.

And so I opened the book, and that is how I discovered that Ronan wanted to get married.

The proposal was in track changes in the draft of the book.

You denied it, he proved it.

They ordered a hard stop to reporting. They told me and a producer working on this that we should not take a single call. They told us to cancel interviews. The question for years has been why?

I mean, you lay out the suggestion that Harvey Weinstein was blackmailing NBC News.

Multiple sources do say that and the way in which that's framed is very careful. All of NBC's denials are in this book. We fact checked for many hours with them. That said, it is indisputable based on the evidence in this book that there was a chain of secret settlements at this company that were covered up with victims of harassment and assault.

Some of them about Lauer, some about others in the company. This was a pattern. It was concealed from journalists there.

They allow it because they were afraid information about Matt Lauer is going to get out. That is what the extensive conversations, transcripts and documents presented in this book suggest.

I guess it would have been it's either 2017 or 2018. I was in New York City on my book tour for conspiracy and my friend, Tib Irvin, threw together a little dinner at this stake house.

Conspiracy I think is my best book it's probably sold the least well of all the books it's still a success like if any other author published it and it sold that many copies they're like that's so nice you did a good job but like and you can make a living but it didn't do what I wanted it to do necessary like it didn't it didn't it it's success is not let's say its sales figures are not to measure it with like my judgment of it

when I interviewed Peter Tiel from my book Conspiracy and Peter is a complicated individual who I don't agree with on a lot of things.

Educating yourself about racism can start with books from authors such as Derrick Bell's Faces at the Bottom of the Well, James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk, and Toni Morrison's Beloved.

And that's how COVID started. They will force you to read Beloved.

So when my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk. It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine.

I read it in high school. I remember there being it's a wonderful book. First of all, there are some like dark parts of the book.

I also read it in high school, but I'm going to let you in on a secret. You don't think it's about that? I don't think this kid.

It's like replace Beloved with To Kill a Mockingbird. This also gave me nightmares. Replace To Kill a Mockingbird with Jane Eyre.

McAuliffe has been accusing Yunkin of wanting to ban books and silence black authors. His staff passed out copies of Beloved during the Biden rally.

So when my son showed me his reading assignment, my heart sunk. It was some of the most explicit material you can imagine.

I met with lawmakers. They couldn't believe what I was showing them. Their faces turned bright red with embarrassment.

I read it in high school. I remember there being it's a wonderful book.

I don't I mean, I don't remember. I don't know. I don't remember a sexually explicit material jumping out at me or what the fuck are they talking about?

McAuliffe has been accusing Yunkin of wanting to ban books and silence black authors.

It turns out that what she's upset about is that when her son was in high school years ago, he had to read the book Beloved by Toni Morrison and he had nightmares.

And the son is not embarrassed about this at all. He loved it, talks about it a lot, and is now a lawyer for the Republican Party in the District of Columbia.

When my son brought home the book Beloved by Toni Morrison, I put down my copy of Fifty Shades and said, no, a woman named Toni, not my America.

So I'm thinking now about this wonderful line at the end of Toni Morrison's novel, beloved which is really influential for me and thinking about my scholarship. And this is the line where the narrator says that this was not a story to pass on and you can read that in two ways you can read that this was not a story to tell again to pass on or this was not a story to pass on not a story to be missed.

So I'm thinking now about this wonderful line at the end of Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, which is really influential for me in thinking about my scholarship. And this is the line where the narrator says that this was not a story to pass on.

And you can read that in two ways. You can read that this was not a story to tell again, to pass on or this was not a story to pass on, not a story to be missed.

So I'm thinking now about this wonderful line at the end of Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, which is really influential for me in thinking about my scholarship. And this is the line where the narrator says that this was not a story to pass on.

the problem is y'all aren't reading Beloved as a black horror story.

read Beloved, but read it from the mind standpoint that this is a horror.

twenty five years ago, novelist Tony Morrison, you know, Tony Morrison, very famous, famously labeled Bill Clinton the first black president.

they're wonderful books like tony morrison's beloved um and important books

And now at the end, featuring this activist who went against Toni Morrison's book, Beloved, it's hearkening back to a day gone by in Virginia.

And in fact you vetoed the bill that would have allowed parents to opt out of letting their children study material that the parents felt was sexually explicit. And the dispute was prompted by a mother who objected to her son, who is a high school senior, reading things that were really part of the canon, literary canon, including Toni Morrison's Beloved. It became as the Beloved bill.

Have you ever read a beloved Toni Morrison novel?

You should read that too if you have. No, I haven't read that. It's very good, but there's a - it's mind-bogglingly good actually. But it's - there's a few scenes about a chain gang and just what it would have been like.

I would recommend Toni Morrison's Beloved as a book that I think many people have read ... it's one of the most beautifully, hauntingly written novels of the last century.

the Toni Morrison book that was written by - the screenplay was written by white people.

no matter how great Thandie Newton is in the movie, you do have a symbolism problem, right? Because you don't want to make an effects movie because you've got these great actors. But really, I mean, beloved is, I can't believe I'm going to say this, but like beloved is kind of, if you're going to make a movie, it's CGI.

the idea that you would have to make a CGIheavy version of Beloved showed how difficult it was to translate the novel's physical human connection to film.

Morrison did not have a Toni Morrison when she was writing Beloved. But you do.

All the other major contenders, and I'm thinking of books like Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick, Beloved, foreground the issue of race.

We're taking Beloved by Toni Morrison out of our libraries.

There's that old communist Howard Zins, a people's history of the United States.

There's that there's that story in the Howard Zinn book the people's history where it's like the I don't know if it's the Spaniards or whatever it is But a Spaniard just like cut someone's throat and like the natives are just like oh fuck.

I actually read it before my brother told me about that book and then I saw it mentioned in Goodwill hunting.

A long time ago. I read that People's History of the United States, which was just way on the other side I was just like this is what really happened man, George, Washington Everybody loves him that guy had his fucking dick out man

You're supposed to read a people's history of the United States Memorize it and then do that globally before you can go out and start dropping references and shit

I read it was really good.

I'm sure she wrote it herself.

Elizabeth Warren like no way. I know just no way.

to put to put Carl's experiencing context maybe this is in the late 1970s one of Carl's colleagues at the time was Howard Zinn who famously wrote a people's history of the United States published in 1980 you know John Silver who was the president of B.W. at the time this sort of no nonsense no nonsense Texan of conservative Presbyterian roots he didn't have the best relationship with Howard Zinn either he would deny the Marxist as he called him sabbaticals promotions and pay raises and you know Silver was no fan of the anti-war movement or revolutionaries and the idea of you know aligning the psychedelic gospels of enlightenment from Tim Leary and others with this with this anti-war movement was not was not welcome on campus in the late 70s or to suspect that a faculty member was going to introduce students to drugs which was of course not anywhere in the realm of possibility right but there I guess there's that the what would you say the uncertain consequence of taking this sort of hypothesis seriously right which is an uncertain there are uncertain consequences it's a very damage proposition because it opens up to the possibility that religious experience or spiritual realities are a part of our basic nature as humans

I'm thinking of like Daniel Walker house book that he wrote for Oxford on the history of the United States during that time period when he covers you know the book of Mormon and he says look you know true or not this is an impressive literary work right but but he doesn't really attempt to try to tell his readers where he thinks it actually came from

Books a joke. Remember that scene in Goodwill Hunting. Hey Howard Zinn Howard Zinn yeah sure.

Did you ever read the book, A People's History? I think it's by Howard Zinn. It's on my list because I think...

Isn't that the left-leaning take on the history?

It's a left-leaning take, but man, does he write... It's a good book. I'll have to check it out.

He actually says in a people's history of the United States that the American victory over Nazism was marred by the fact that America took Nazism into its bones, took fascism in, I mean he says this in his book, America took all of the lessons of the Nazis and integrated them, right?

And by the way it was not a direct response to Howard Zinn's people's history

And a good early example of that is from Howard Zinn, his People's History of the United States.

A fun book to hear you talk about that's been brought up on the podcast before is Catch 22. It's a very funny, it's a very funny satire punctuated by incredibly moving insight into the depravity and futility of war.

It also has cars, planes and whores. So you should have the ability to keep up just fine. The offer, the off offer, the author, J.R.R. Martin, the author, J.R.R. Martin, the author, J.R.R. Martin, The author, Joseph Heller

But you read a four page summary of that novel, you are fucked.

You don't know anything about Catch-22.

Joseph Heller with Catch-22. Yeah. That's certainly a one hit wonder.

Joseph Heller with Catch-22. Yeah. That's certainly a one hit wonder.

Because it'll be in print as long as Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

That also happened in the original Catch-22. It was just a printing error.

Joseph Heller with Catch-22. Yeah. That's certainly a one hit wonder.

All right, Catch 22, dear shiny head Bill, I do have a shiny head, you know, and it's not because I'm bald, that's my personality shining through the top of my hairless head.

I was listening to try to explain the origin and meaning of Catch 22 and had to write in, yeah, I didn't, I had never seen the movie and I was unfamiliar, so thank you for writing in to set me straight here in the book.

The soldiers are required to complete a certain number of missions in order to be released from their duties from what I remember the missions are World War II bomber missions and are extremely dangerous and the shoulders so soldiers have to complete 40 of them.

If a soldier agrees to go on a mission, the soldier is labeled as clinically insane and they are not allowed to fly because no one in their right mind would agree to go on such a dangerous mission, if you don't want to fly then the officers agree that is the right response and they deem the soldier sane and tell them to fly the mission.

The book was originally titled Catch 18, but the offer changed it since a different World War II novel came out around the same time with the number 18 in the title, 22 was chosen because it has a repeating number, number similar to repeating events that happen in the book.

Catch 22 means you're fucked either way. Do I go left or do I go right?

The 1960s title of novel.

Comes from Joseph Heiler's 1961 classic novel Catch 22. A satirical depiction of the American military bureaucracy in World War II.

A catch 22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations.

Catch 22, which describes absurd bureaucratic constraints.

how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday made more money than your novel Catch 22 has earned in its entire history and Heller responds he said I feel fine because I have something he will never have I have enough

it reminds me of Joseph Heller and catch 22 for anyone who's a fan of that book

it reminds me of Joseph Heller and Catch-22 for anyone who's a fan of that book the there seems to be an inherent absurdity but you got to check out that article we found because that will explain in depth just how carefully worded that kind of stuff had to be so we've got that timeline and we see some trends in some of these cases we see an initial act of terrorism a furious sudden accusation of left-wing groups and then later information seems to often reveal a connection between the state and these groups so at this point man having looked over this timeline and thank you for walking through that with us listeners at this point we're seeing something that we see often when we talk about shadowy organizations or government operations and that is that there there's some stuff that is proven and is is crazy and is illegal and is proven after the fact and then there's a much larger category of stuff that's unproven but alleged we're going to save that stuff for the end of course but we can start at least with the things that have already been proven

it reminds me of Joseph Heller and catch 22 for anyone who's a fan of that book the there seems to be an inherent absurdity

You have to explain catch-22 to Marcia.

but I have something that he doesn't have

I have some idea of what enough is

Catch 22 is one of my favorite like concepts. I read the book when I was in high school and I just love it.

Catch-22 was a great book. I love Catch-22.

There's an amazing story about Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph heller who wrote catch 22 and slaughterhouse five they're at the party this billionaire and Vonnegut is teasing heller and he says this billionaire that whose house were at he made more money this week than your book will make it its entire light.

Heller says but I have something that he doesn't have. Vonnegut says what's that and heller says I have some idea of what enough is he says I have enough this idea of enough is so powerful.

They're at the party of this billionaire. Vonnegut is teasing Heller and he says, this billionaire whose house we're at, he made more money this week than your book will make it its entire life. Heller says, but I have something that he doesn't have. Vonnegut says, what's that? Heller says, I have some idea of what enough is.

They're at the party, this billionaire. And Vonnegut is teasing Heller and he says this billionaire whose house we're at, he made more money this week than your book will make it its entire life. Heller says, but I have something that he doesn't have. Vonnegut says, what's that? Heller says, I have some idea of what enough is. He says, I have enough.

I said, Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel catch 22 has earned in its entire history.

And Joe said, I've got something he can never have and I said what on earth could that be Joe? And Joe said the knowledge that I have enough.

Joe how does it feel how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may may have made more money than your novel catch 22 has earned in its entire history and Joe said I've got something he can never have and I said what on earth could that be Joe and Joe said the knowledge that I've got enough not bad rest in peace Kurt Vonnegut

you wrote catch 22 but you know this guy made more money than you will ever make in your life like at work this week.

but I have something he'll never have, he says what's that and he says the notion that I have enough.

I have something that that guy doesn't have

I know what enough is

And Heller goes, but I have something he'll never have. And he says, what's that? And he says, the notion that I have enough.

you've never written anything as good as Catch 22 again. And he says, who has?

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Graduate. Catch 22 onwards.

Had you read Catch-22 that you haven't, you would be superaware of Flack. It's all over that book.

There was in high school, you know, there was an assignment. We were reading the book Catch-22, right? And, and very specific voice in that book, comedic, satirical. And there was an assignment, which is write your own chapter of Catch-22, right?

And that's really what I learned from her, you know, to, you know, how to use the, your words as a knife. And from my father, I learned that you don't stab someone with a knife. And that's really what, because my father's the one who said, in his effect on me was he said, he was reading Catch-22.

He goes, this book, it's really, it's very funny. And I said, should I read it? He said, yeah, it'll tell you everything you need to know about working in the real world.

And I think this is where, you know, you had the Christy Noem book tour, you know, that is where it's kind of faltered because if it's hard, if making it hard to defend yourself, it's certainly going to be hard to defend the top of the ticket.

Trump VP candidate Kristi Noem reveals she shot and killed her 14 month old trained assassin dog cricket and gunned down a goat in eye opening new book.

If you want more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that will have the media gasping pre-order going back.

I killed my dog by my book. That's so bad.

She said, we love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.

I spoke. Yes, I do speak to him.

No, I never. I never tell anybody my personal conversations with President Trump.

I talked to President Trump all the time. About a lot of things.

Yes, enough, Stuart. This interview is ridiculous what you are doing right now. So you need to stop.

Let's talk about some real topics that Americans care about. I'm afraid we're out of time. Oh, well, of course we are. But we do thank you for being with us. I know I pressed hard, but that's what people are talking about to this day.

No Going Back

I guess if I were a better politician, I wouldn't tell the story here.

When I got back into my truck, Cricket was sitting in the passenger seat looking like she had just won the lottery. The picture of pure joy. I hated that dog.

The truth of this story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.

These horses were old. They were in their late, late 20s. They were our rodeo horses, ranch horses, and they raised my girls. They took care of them.

I'm not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders. I'm just not going to do that.

Well, I'll tell you, Stuart, I'm sorry you're not hearing from real Americans that live on farms and ranches.

Now in Noem's defense, the book is generating her a bunch of headlines like, for instance, quote, Kristi Noem describes executing puppies she hated in New Book and, quote, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem defends her account of killing own dog in New Book.

And finally, quote, Kristi Noem's VP chances appear as dead as the dog she killed.

If you want more real, honest and politically incorrect stories that will have the media gasping pre-order no going back.

I've always been an advocate of a of a of a of a woman as a VP because I think you have some strong woman, although Christy Noem, I think is maybe a little too based shooting the shooting the puppy in the in the gravel.

Who put that in the book? Like I think I was like your your ghostwriter must really not like you if they get to include that one.

her book is called 'No Going Back', I guess that's right yeah

she put it back, she hired those people again, she demanded it go in the second book and then she said the reason that she put it in the second book is because opponents and past races have used it against her so she thought she would get ahead of the story

Her book is called 'No Going Back', I guess that's right, yeah.

she apparently just went on Fox and said that the reason that she told this story in her book about killing the puppy was to prove that she's quote 'not like other politicians'.

she put it back in the second book and then she said the reason that she put it in the second book is because opponents and past races have used it against her so she thought she would get ahead of the story.

she also she read the audiobook herself by the way.

I've met with many many world leaders, I've traveled around the world, I think I've talked extensively in this book about my time serving in Congress, my time as governor before governor, some of the travels that I've had, um, I'm not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders.

The truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.

It had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive. We were her second chance and she was the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbors.

She attacked me and it was a hard decision. And the reason it's in the book is because this book is filled with tough challenging decisions that I have to make throughout my life.

Cricket was a wire hair pointer about 14 months, I absolutely hated that dog, the dog was untrainable, at that moment I realized I had to put her down, it was not a pleasant job but it had to be done and after it was over I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done

she talks about killing her puppy and then killing a goat and she wrote she wrote that this fan that this male goat she thought was nasty and mean and musky and rancid so she so she killed it and she dragged it into a gravel pit and hurried back to the gravel pit to put it down because when she shot the goat she didn't kill the goat right away

She talked about shooting a dog, her dog, let's just be honest, it was a puppy, it was 14 months old.

She says that this dog attacked chickens like a trained assassin. That's what she said.

But then she goes on after she killed the dog. She took, she took the dog to a gravel pit. She shot the dog, not even like she put the dog down with a vet.

I hated that dog, Noam recalls calling Cricket less than worthless as a hunting dog, untrainable and dangerous to anyone she came in contact with. At that moment, I realized I had to put her down.

And I think this is important to talk about because the book's called No Going Back. The truth on what's wrong with politics.

I'm not sure I have ever seen a politician write a book, make a voluntary choice to write a book and just light her entire political career on fire to the extent that she's finished.

It started with this bragging about shooting a dog, which many people are super fired up about. It now has turned into a more serious story, I think, in terms of the politics, where she wrote in the book that she met North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and was willing to kind of stand up to him, but it turns out she never met him.

So did Kristi Noem never read her own biography?

And this is what's going on, everyone. I mean, when you hear it, I think you need to hear the soundbite to understand why.

It's also frustrating because it plays into I don't like it when someone on the right does something that takes what the left always says about us and says, see, there you go. They're just frauds. They're just pretending to believe things to tell people in rural America that they don't really believe.

We talked about Kristi Noem and like the own goal that I think her book has been for her.

Governor of South Dakota that used to have a political future in national politics and now we did get some calls that think she does. That this is fine. Don't blow it out of proportion.

There are some diehards to me if you're this dumb your odds of making your way through a competitive Republican primary speaking of Kristi Noem any of the callers, but yes, are low because you are gonna have a lot of super bright people that are running for president in 28 and I think she's killed her chances of being the nominee in 24.

I think that Mario you may have been a little taken in by Miss Noem by the batting of the eyelashes by the uh the whole oh I'm like the good old American, uh, you know rodeo success or a ranch success story.

And you know some of the stuff has come out and it is likely she will not be VP now and I can understand there is disappointment there but it is incumbent upon us to be honest with everybody before somebody's in a VP role in a critical election that can determine the future of the country that we not have someone who will be annihilated by the Democrats and cause us to lose the election, right?

I can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my up-and-coming book, 'No Going Back'.

He wrote Animal Farm. I see Animal Farm leading up to this 1984 situation where they say the final and most important command from the government was to ignore the truth of your eyes and ears. Some quote like that, like just ignore what's right in front of you.

Animal farm, right?

Animal farm, right?

Because in animal farm, it's like the farm is the model.

I was just being silly.

So my question is, in Orwell's Animal Farm, who do the farmers represent? What's the analogy we're supposed to be drawing?

So you think like the pigs that take over or also the original farmers?

In Animal Farm, I have no idea. It depends on what the Orwell intended with the writing of the book, I guess. I don't know.

But I don't think that's true. I think they're interpreted as different countries.

I think we're dealing with a Nietzschean God is dead situation.

Orwell really warned about this about 100 years ago, right when he wrote "Animal Farm" in 1984, and he based those books are warnings. They're based on the totalitarian systems of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

And yet here we are. So what they do in this Orwellian twist is they completely upend the narrative and they completely upend the language. This is what all dictatorships do.

Why are people reading Animal Farm and think that there's animals in it? I mean, why?

Animal Farm? Napoleon? Is that the pig's name?

I would do it in a pig voice.

We're going to take over this farm.

If you wanna understand the collapse of Musk's free speech revolution, just go reread your copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm and remember how quickly the revolutionary animals reinstituted the old farms rules and hierarchies after they'd taken over and even invited the humans back on the farm.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig and from pig to man again but already it was impossible to say which was which.

If you wanna understand the collapse of Musk's free speech revolution, just go reread your copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm and remember how quickly the revolutionary animals reinstituted the old farms rules and hierarchies after they'd taken over and even invited the humans back on the farm.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man and from man to pig and from pig to man again but already it was impossible to say which was which.

it's like exactly the George Orers animal farm in the first generation they know they lived before the revolution they knew the time that was different but when you come to third ones the new animals they have no idea what the alternative life would be look like

I was educate I read books like Animal Farm in 1984 before I was in the cult but you suppress all of these things that do not compute to the narrative of what the ideal you want to believe the group is doing

it's like exactly the George Orers animal farm in the first generation they know they lived before the revolution they knew the time that was different but when you come to third ones the new animals they have no idea what the alternative life would be look like

I was educate I read books like Animal Farm in 1984 before I was in the cult but you suppress all of these things that do not compute to the narrative of what the ideal you want to believe the group is doing

i posted this video the other day and she's a defector from north korea and we went through her story and she wrote this book called uh um in order to live which is a harrowing book although i don't think it's as harrowing to read as it is harrowing to talk to her but in any case her book ends in 2016 so i asked her what did she do after 2016 and she went through high school and university in south korea high school and all the primary school in one year locked herself in a room basically and went through it all in one year and then went to a south korean university and they're hard to south korean universities and then after she wrote her book which was inspired by the way by george orwell's animal farm was very interesting she went to columbia to take humanities degree

I was reading this animal farm not even knowing what that is and it was I was seeing my grandmother in those all the pigs and these young pigs the when they like later when those young pigs born you don't even know what life was beforehand didn't even know the alternative life looks like right because the first biggest words of faith speak out.

That's when I realized oh everybody was responsible and that's when I started thinking about speaking out.

It took time it to me trusting what that meant was reading George Orwell's Animal Farm. That helped me to understand what happened to my country, what happened to my myself, why the country became that way.

Brazil is thus not just a dictatorship, but a lawless one its leaders are behaving like the hypocritical pigs in George Orwell's animal farm

If you're a communist and you've written a brilliant book like Animal Farm or 1984, do you really think you're going to be poisoning the brains of your children by introducing them to 1984? Good grief.

If you're a communist and you've written a brilliant book like Animal Farm or 1984, do you really think you're going to be poisoning the brains of your children by introducing them to 1984? Good grief.

she was drastically affected by george orwell's night animal farm when she was in south korea

And the reason I'm not surprised is because of the greatest novel ever written, which is Animal Farm, right? Animal Farm, George Orwell's work about a group of people represented by animals who start out as revolutionaries and become authoritarians and conservatives.

So there's this scene in Animal Farm, it's the last scene in the novel, the famous George Orwell novel, the one less referred to than 1984, but in some ways a lot better. And there's this scene where the pigs and the men are playing cards at a table.

And in the final scene, the other animals are gathered outside the house, nose is pressed against the glass, and the pigs are sitting, basically partying with the men. And for a moment they become indistinguishable. You can't tell the pig from the man, they've melded into one.

George Orwell in the preface to Animal Farm wrote - actually it's 1984 - wrote an essay where he was essentially saying that overt totalitarianism of the kind that was taking place in the Soviet Union is repressive, but it's not nearly as effective as subtle repression.

These experiences led him to write his most famous novels Animal Farm and 1984 giving us enduring phrases like Big Brother is watching you.

These experiences led him to write his most famous novels Animal Farm and 1984 giving us enduring phrases like Big Brother is watching you.

Well with Animal Farm, they are two of the defining books of the 20th century.

He thought of Animal Farm when he was in Wellington and he saw a little boy whacking a shire horse... the book was a warning about revolutions in general rather than just the Soviet Union.

All pigs are equal. Some pigs are more equal than others. Animal farm.

Every book we read in high school, college, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, 1980, or Animal Farm, like The Giver, which we read in middle school.

You know, it all kind of reminds me of the last few pages of George Orwell's book Animal Farm, which was obviously meant to be an allegory about communism, not artificial intelligence.

All people are equal, but some people are more equal than others, as George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm.

Even more so in my opinion in his allegory Animal Farm.

the other two are Harry Potter books. But the second reason is that so much of what we're experiencing today really was prophesied by Orwell in 1984 and even more so in my opinion in this allegory Animal Farm.

Animal Farm, another of Orwell's books, I think Animal Farm.

I see more of our current condition in Animal Farm even than I see in 1984.

Animal Farm. Animal Farm, which by the way, I think if we're looking for an Orwell comparison and everyone goes to 1984 and there's a lot, there's certainly a lot that's analogous there, many comparisons, but I think Animal Farm, more and more, is the better comparison.

You know, when people use the word Orwellian these days, they're normally referring to the book 1984 which was no doubt prophetic in many ways. But a book that seems even more relevant to our time is Orwell's Animal Farm, his allegorical satire of communism.

Police described her case as being like an Agatha Christie novel.

And Then There Were None. That's one of my favorite books, one of the books I've read, you know, many times, I can remember that and it was so scary. It's like the best mystery book.

It's a book, you know, I read it as a kid, and that book, it really scared me.

I was sitting on a metal stool in front of my desk holding a copy of Agatha Christie's and then there were none.

And Then There Were None is one of the best selling novels in history.

And until the 1980s, it was still being sold in the UK under its original name, which I cannot say because it is intensely racist.

The name is so racist that in the United States of America, they had to edit it and publish it under a different racist name.

I grew up loving both Haggert, the Christie books, but also specifically the movies that were coming out when I was a kid.

It's really like another Agatha Christie novel. It's a whole other cast.

I think that Christy, you know, I don't disparage what she did it was a great series of books I think you're done with it by the time you're 12 years old

But in another sense, it is also remarkable in that it's considered pretty widely to have given birth to the slasher film genre.

you would have ever thought that Agatha Christie with her nonviolence and poison and occasional racism would have been the one to birth the slasher film.

One book in particular, And Then There Were None was revised many, many times, not just in the US, but in Great Britain as well.

But in another sense, it is also remarkable in that it's considered pretty widely to have given birth to the slasher film genre.

One book in particular, And Then There Were None was revised many, many times, not just in the US, but in Great Britain as well.

But in another sense, it is also remarkable in that it's considered pretty widely to have given birth to the slasher film genre.

But there's a bunch of other elements in there, too. And they're like, you know, even on like horror fan wikis, they point to that as like the genuine birth, even more than psycho of the slasher film genre.

You know what's a good mix of like fun, be treaty, murder mystery and like semi serious book is like Agatha Christie stuff.

I'm reading a lot of Poirot.

Oh, yeah, I still do. Full camp, you know people that are in attack at the Christie are really into Agatha Christie.

You know what's a good mix of like fun, be treaty, murder mystery and like semi serious book is like Agatha Christie stuff.

I'm reading a lot of Poirot.

And then there were none was a great book.

And I think her bestselling novel, Then There Were None, which was very awkwardly titled in its original iteration, got renamed, that then turned out to be awkward. And then There Were None.

I'm I think about Victor Hugo, it's a it's a work of fiction, but his note for them to Pali that he was highlighting a forgotten forsaken overlooked Cathedral that most of us in the 21st century and In my childhood in the 20th We couldn't fathom Paris without it and the whole world mourned When the Cathedral caught fire a few years back

Francoise has been reading this book for many months now, a few pages or paragraphs at a time whenever she chances to pass by this bookshop.

She finds the page she is on and reads a heartwarming scene where the orphan girl, Cosette, is reunited with her friend, Jean Vergent.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo took 12 years.

The thief also said that he hoped this would be a turning point for him, like the candlesticks were for Jean Valjean.

I'm a huge Les Miserables fan and went crazy when I saw this reference.

What if he was literally taking the cash that he made off of ski rented ski boots and skis and went just straight over and bought front row tickets to Les Mis?

And he just can't stop and changed his ways because of it.

I refuse to pirate it. That's bad morals.

If you read the book Les Misrables or go see that Broadway show, if you see that awesome movie and you cry every time Anne Hathaway sings like I do.

He allowed himself to be led in a promise. Jean Valjean had his promise even to a convict, especially to a convict. It may give the convict confidence and guide him on the right path. Law was not made by God and man can be wrong.

He allowed himself to be led in a promise. Jean Valjean had his promise even to a convict, especially to a convict. It may give the convict confidence and guide him on the right path. Law was not made by God and man can be wrong.

He allowed himself to be led in a promise. Jean Valjean had his promise even to a convict, especially to a convict. It may give the convict confidence and guide him on the right path. Law was not made by God and man can be wrong.

This is actually a famous story about french poet and novelist victor hugo who authored lame as a rob and the hunchback of Notre Dame

This is actually a famous story about French poet and novelist Victor Hugo who authored Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

I actually read the book. A Little Gavroche?

Lambda talks about liking the themes of justice in injustice of compassion and God redemption and self sacrifice for greater good

Lambda talks about liking the themes of justice in injustice of compassion and God redemption and self sacrifice for greater good, which, you know, sure, kind of sounds like something a little bit out of a cliff notes, but then it keeps going back to this idea of like a soul and then like kind of like religious themes.

I actually read the book.

I've actually never seen the show but I have listened to that soundtrack 8 billion times.

Lambda talks about liking the themes of justice in injustice of compassion and God redemption and self sacrifice for greater good, which, you know, sure, kind of sounds like something a little bit out of a cliff notes, but then it keeps going back to this idea of like a soul and then like kind of like religious themes.

where Lambda talks about liking the themes of justice in injustice of compassion and God redemption and self sacrifice for greater good

So yes, obviously we're going to start with that bombshell report from the New York Times on two decades of Trump's taxes that they got a hold of.

And if you didn't know, the book was about the wealth disparities between the bourgeois class in France and the lower class that stoked the flames of the French Revolution.

And I think that Alison ended up telling her like, he died singing. I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis and doing kind of jazz hands at the bird's eye view camera.

It's Latin America ... it's this dream of, it's kind of something from Les Misrables or something.

It's like a scene from Les Miserables, Tom.

my daughter's favourite film was Marie Antoinette but they then moved on to another film which was of course Les Miserables ... the portrayal of the revolution then Les Miserables but the thing about it is it's a very minor revolution ...

He had the opportunity to pick up an extra gig playing for Les Mis. I don't have to take it, but if I do take it, it means I'm working on the night of your birthday.

I have the opportunity to pick up an extra gig playing for Les Mis. I don't have to take it, but if I do take it, it means I'm working on the night of your birthday.

he went to go see Les Mis last night, which of course is about an uprising against a tyrant, but that's lost on him.

Gaten Matarazzo was in Les Mis on Broadway as a kid.

I'm so glad you asked, because he had stolen Lea Michele's trench coat when she was eponene in Les Mis.

My wife, early in our marriage, forced me to go to the theater with her and with her mom and her sister to watch Les Miserables. It was the worst experience of my life.

Every actor in the film was deeply and painfully annoying. None of them would stop singing at all. They sang the entire time from start to finish.

La Miserable Lay yeah Les Miserables Yeah Life of Pi

Tom Hanks: "...the other guy. This sort of driven guy... The Les Misrables."

Les Miserables, as they say. We're gonna talk about Game 3.

What I call Les Misrables. Yeah, it was like a somber vibe.

yeah. What I call Les Miserables. Yeah, it was like a somber vibe.

Les Miserables. So, your thoughts.

Here he is singing Master of the House from Les Misrables.

The tone for the rest of my day was Les Misrables.

the tone for the rest of my day was Les Misrables.

The tone for the rest of my day was Les Miserables.

He was known to be fond of Persian poetry and classic Western novels, Rich, especially Victor Hugo's Les Misrables.

They didn't have books like The Four Agreements, you know what I mean? Like they do take things personally because they didn't have that book.

No one was like, you know what changed my life? The Four Agreements.

We have a chapter called Take Nothing Personally. And that's also one of the four agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz.

I love that you raise the four agreements. I love that book. That's a book that, you know, I've often I've read frequently and I actually just gave to all my two kids and my three step sons for Christmas this last year. I gave it to all of them.

I try to be impeccable with my word one year after I read like the four agreements 20 years ago.

It's super small that book will change your life for like three months at a time.

The four agreements and I think that every time I read it it kind of rejuvenates me to feel that way again.

About 10 years ago, maybe even 15 now, I read the Four Agreements book.

Great book changed my life.

I feel like also what you just said, whatever you recognize in someone, they'll repeat it. And it took me a long time to realize that if I make someone feel bad for something they don't do well, they actually get scared to try and do it right.

Yeah. I feel like also what you just said, whatever you recognize in someone, they'll repeat it. And it took me a long time to realize that if I make someone feel bad for something they don't do well, they actually get scared to try and do it right.

I just reread The Four Agreements

You know, I started reading like The Secret, The Four Agreements.

I started reading like The Secret, The Four Agreements.

you know one of the other books I love is the four agreements by Don McGell-Reeze the first agreement is being impeccable with your word but being impeccable to your court for me and stepping into that truth right if you can live in your own truth who cares what anybody else thinks as long as you're happy with yourself

Four agreements, right? Four agreements says don't go assuming things.

It's called Four Agreements.

I bought that book on Amazon. It's just sitting in my nightstand.

I just read the entire book within a day.

He said, there's a book I want you to read. It's called Four Agreements.

I said, that's funny because I bought that book on Amazon. It's just sitting in my nightstand.

I just read the entire book within a day.

Truth resonates and it resonates deep within you.

There's actually a book about this called the four agreements. You can read it. And it talks about not taking shit personal.

i think everyone would benefit reading

the fifth agreement is be skeptical

I think the four agreements is a book that every single human should read.

it helps you understand how important it is to, to, to not take things personally, to, um, not assume things and create stories in your head

It's never to take things personal.

And this goes back to the point we talked about being secure in your beliefs.

It's more about their problem.

there's a good book about that called the four agreements

There's a good book about that called the four agreements for agreements.

One of the things is don't take things personal.

the book the four agreements and you have to read the four agreements

don't take things personally in business that's one of the four

You know what, read the four agreements, be grateful and it's also not about you.

Read the four agreements, be grateful and it's also not about you. That's at least two of them.

I love the four agreements

And you can read that book in 45 minutes

The four agreements, yeah

It's a very, very small book

There's a whole thing on it on don't take anything personal in business

But like I love the four agreements And you can read that book in 45 minutes

This is a perfect book for you in this situation Because there's a whole thing on it It's a very, very small book There's a whole thing on it on Don't take anything personal in business

There's a great book called The Four Agreements. And it sets out four things you should agree to do every single day as you set out.

Number two is not to take things personally. Number three is not to assume. And number four is to always do your best.

There's a great book called The Four Agreements. And it sets out four things you should agree to do every single day as you set out. And one is to be impeccable with your word. Number two is not to take things personally. Number three is not to assume. And number four is to always do your best.

The four agreements are: be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, always do your best.

Don Miguel Ruiz added a fifth one and later a sixth, but the core four remain the essential guide.