Speaker 1: It's a feeling fixing you to the road, filling every sense,
Speaker 1: the bold, dynamic lines you can't ignore, and smarter technology
Speaker 1: that guides and connects you. Cooper Layon powered by petrol
Speaker 1: diesel or next gen plug in hybrid, pure driving exhilaration.
Speaker 1: Explore our latest offers, including the Coopra five year warranty
Speaker 1: at Coopraofficial do Ie Coupra design that moves.
Speaker 2: On the go, NonStop gym sessions, deadlines, homework with Avonmore, Soups, comforting,
Speaker 2: flavorful taste.
Speaker 3: It all just hmmm with a range of different flavors.
Speaker 3: We've been perfecting soup for over thirty years so you
Speaker 3: can have a moment of delicious pleasure. So whatever it is,
Speaker 3: soup it with Avonmore.
Speaker 4: Take a second notice how you're moving, Turning the steering wheel,
Speaker 4: holding your baby, running on the treadmill, kicking the ball.
Speaker 4: Your lungs are expanding, your heart beating. Life is full
Speaker 4: of movement, and you are full of life from big
Speaker 4: to small. Movement demands and deserves protein. Avon Moore protein milk,
Speaker 4: deliciously fresh support for every move Avonmore make every day.
Speaker 4: This good protein supports the maintenance of muscle mass enjoys
Speaker 4: part of a varied and balanced diet and healthy lifestyle, meaning.
Speaker 5: A live man like this man letting butterfly, flatning wing,
Speaker 5: big down in force.
Speaker 1: Man, it gonna cause a tree fall, letting five thousand
Speaker 1: miles away.
Speaker 5: Man, nobody see.
Speaker 6: Nobody else.
Speaker 4: You know, need no man you don't like, you call.
Speaker 5: And you get back. That's the point. Got black a
Speaker 5: dag on the pan right now.
Speaker 6: You don't?
Speaker 7: All right, Thomas, welcome back to the jay Burd and
Speaker 7: show how you doing that?
Speaker 5: Very well? Thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so this is I don't want to say unplanned,
Speaker 7: but we move things around a little bit. We were
Speaker 7: initially going to talk about the West Memphis three resume
Speaker 7: our series on occultism, but obviously we've done now two
Speaker 7: in a row on the Blade Runner franchise. And for Christmas,
Speaker 7: you very kindly sent me a copy of Philip K.
Speaker 7: Dix Do Android's Dream of Electric Cheap, obviously the source
Speaker 7: material for those films, and I burned through it really quickly.
Speaker 7: I enjoyed the book a lot, and I figured, you
Speaker 7: know what, let's continue our series, get it all done
Speaker 7: at once, and discuss the book. It's a pretty easy read.
Speaker 7: It's maybe two hundred pages. It's something you can get
Speaker 7: through quickly. It is very different than the films. There's
Speaker 7: a lot of crossover, and if you've seen the films,
Speaker 7: there were things you will understand about the book. The
Speaker 7: main characters are largely the same, but it is a
Speaker 7: compliment piece. It is different enough to be well worth reading.
Speaker 7: And yeah, I haven't read a lot of Dick stuff,
Speaker 7: but it's obviously a master of the genre. So I'm curious, Thomas.
Speaker 7: I'll let you introduce this. When did you first read
Speaker 7: it and what sort of grabbed you about it?
Speaker 5: I first read it well, because I think I mentioned
Speaker 5: I got turned onto the film Blade Runner early on
Speaker 5: because very early cable I'm talking even before cable as
Speaker 5: we know it existed, the Chicago market was served by
Speaker 5: what was called on TV. It was quite literally just
Speaker 5: one channel. Then they'd played blocks of music videos sometimes
Speaker 5: other times they'd play cooking shows or phishing shows. Then
Speaker 5: at night they'd play movies, and Blade Runner was one
Speaker 5: of the consistent films on offer, and my mom was
Speaker 5: a huge fan of it, so I was always into
Speaker 5: it as an ip and then when I got into
Speaker 5: science fiction, as an adolescent, you know, twelve thirteen, fourteen
Speaker 5: years old, I was reading a bunch of Harlan Ellison
Speaker 5: and I got the paperback compilation Dark Visions, and in
Speaker 5: the back there was an advertisement for other paperbacks including
Speaker 5: do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep, which was then being
Speaker 5: the paper bank was being sold as a Blade Runner.
Speaker 5: So I'm like, go, wow, the source material. So I
Speaker 5: went out and I found it, I think a Crown Books,
Speaker 5: and it made a big impact on me. And like
Speaker 5: I said, I'm not Philip K. Dick's unusual because he's
Speaker 5: he's hard to categorize. I mean, obviously he's he was
Speaker 5: a science fiction author, but not in the sense that
Speaker 5: Arthur C. Clark was. I invoked Clerk because Clark was
Speaker 5: more into metaphysics and theological postulates in questions. But at
Speaker 5: the same time, he very much had heart sci fi aspects,
Speaker 5: you know to his writing. And you know, Philip K. Dick,
Speaker 5: he wasn't like Frank Herbert. He wasn't dealing with paradomatic
Speaker 5: systems as his subject matter. You know, socio political phenomena
Speaker 5: at scale was absolutely a framing device and essentially his
Speaker 5: world building. But Philip K. Dicks his narratives and his stories,
Speaker 5: it's about they raise existential questions and ontological questions about
Speaker 5: the individual and the individual mind amids disruptive aspects of modernity.
Speaker 5: And that's the strength of stuff like a Scanner Darkly
Speaker 5: and do Android's Dream. That's one of the reasons it's
Speaker 5: relatable because it's describing and depicting phenomena that the reader
Speaker 5: experiences in his own life. Because these things are intrinsic
Speaker 5: to late modernity. When I say late modernity, I'm speaking
Speaker 5: in Hegelian terms, not mercy and ones. This would be clear.
Speaker 5: And future shock is a real thing, and a lot's
Speaker 5: been written of future shock. The phrase was coined quite
Speaker 5: literally by Alvin Toffler. He wrote a book titled Future Shock,
Speaker 5: and there was humanist aspects to his analysis, particularly how
Speaker 5: marriage patterns and child rearing patterns at scale would shake out,
Speaker 5: and you know the implications of the mobility of populations
Speaker 5: and the sort of tensions that would derive. They were
Speaker 5: in as well as economic phenomena and consumption patterns of scale,
Speaker 5: and people like Seawright Mills and Christopher lash dealt with
Speaker 5: that kind of thing too, Because it's intrinsic to sociology,
Speaker 5: but very few people have ever written anything about the
Speaker 5: phenomena of future shock on the discrete individu usual mind,
Speaker 5: particularly situated in what's obviously an American context, you know,
Speaker 5: or if it's been attempted, it takes the form of satire,
Speaker 5: you know, like Kurt Vonnegut type stuff.
Speaker 7: You know, so.
Speaker 5: They androids dream of electric sheep. It was a very
Speaker 5: unique book for that reason. I can't remember who wrote
Speaker 5: it on a senior moment, but the book The Star
Speaker 5: is my destination. I'm not a huge fan of that book,
Speaker 5: but it it was hugely influential and impactful. Arguably it's
Speaker 5: subjectively in the same conceptual vein, but it's it's too fantastical,
Speaker 5: you know, do android dream of electric sheep? It's not
Speaker 5: really fantastical at all. In a lot of ways, it
Speaker 5: came true, you know. I mean, that's and there's there's
Speaker 5: subtleties to it as well, you know that I think
Speaker 5: are adjacent that related to the primary topical thrust, but
Speaker 5: that raise interesting questions in their own right, especially the
Speaker 5: you know, how the United States and the Soviet Union
Speaker 5: collaborate on matters relating to replicants, you know, uh, decard
Speaker 5: runs across one of the renegade Nexus six who's posing
Speaker 5: as a KGB officer who's a blade runner, you know,
Speaker 5: because that's liaising with KGB blade runners is not a
Speaker 5: usual for a big city American cop who deals in
Speaker 5: the same grim professional duties. And that kind of interplay
Speaker 5: between integral matters of technology, particularly technology that's purposed for
Speaker 5: warfare and violence at scale, even or perhaps especially at
Speaker 5: times a heightened tension like that, that was a peculiar
Speaker 5: but unsurprising aspect of the Cold War. And that's something
Speaker 5: that's very much related to technology. It's not intrinsic to
Speaker 5: conflict paradigms. You know, it's just one example of what
Speaker 5: I was talking about. But it's also the the ethical aspects,
Speaker 5: the humanist aspects of technological civilization. They're not generally addressed
Speaker 5: in the same capacities that you know, Philip K. Dick
Speaker 5: deals with them, and that's very insightful. You know, the
Speaker 5: the criteria of what constitutes a human being becoming splendidly arbitrary.
Speaker 5: You know, obviously there's a there's a there's all manner
Speaker 5: of there's all manner of counterfactuals that are kind of
Speaker 5: on the nose in driving home some egalitarian message and
Speaker 5: what have you. But the you know, and the way
Speaker 5: they the way they deal with the subjective concepts of
Speaker 5: the in groups and out groups, and how such things
Speaker 5: are determined in political capacities. It sounds to be very
Speaker 5: simple minded, as most moralizing narratives are. But phil Kate
Speaker 5: Dick's not approaching it like that. I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 5: there's a strongly ethical component to the manner in which
Speaker 5: replicants are treated because they are a slave cast, but
Speaker 5: that's not the primary impetus for why they're disqualified as
Speaker 5: human beings. It's because if everybody is human, then nobody
Speaker 5: is really you know, If life forms that can be
Speaker 5: manufactured are as human as ones who are born of
Speaker 5: a woman's womb, that kind of neutralizes all epistemic priors
Speaker 5: about the human condition and what's unique about human beings,
Speaker 5: even if you're not religiously minded, even if you're a secularist,
Speaker 5: And that causes this sort of spiraling nihilism, and it
Speaker 5: also has a tendency to compromise all of their ethical structures.
Speaker 5: So it's essential that this criteria be maintained. It's not
Speaker 5: just some pretext, you know, to to rationalize why these
Speaker 5: life forms are forced to serve on death squads off world,
Speaker 5: or be prostitutes or work in you know, lead lives
Speaker 5: of endless toy and pain. Obviously, it's an aggravating factor
Speaker 5: that diminishes the potentiality of replicans realizing any sort of
Speaker 5: liberation or you know, being afforded full agency as human beings,
Speaker 5: whether it's not the primary titalyst and if there's that
Speaker 5: kind of nihilistic spiral, you know, the center cannot hold.
Speaker 5: Things fall apart quite literally systemically. That's really you know,
Speaker 5: and this is very much on people's minds owing to
Speaker 5: the Cold War as well, because when there's a kind
Speaker 5: of that, there's a kind of dialectical aganism that leads
Speaker 5: to you know, more like profound philosophical activity when there's
Speaker 5: quite literally systems competing for supremacy over this planet and
Speaker 5: over human affairs, and the subject matter was the the
Speaker 5: you know, the dignity of the human being. If you
Speaker 5: accept that, you know, the Cold War primarily was in
Speaker 5: dialectical terms of the confrontation between you know, progressives and
Speaker 5: and left to Galeans who have very different ideas on
Speaker 5: the historical process as well as the human condition. But
Speaker 5: the point being that this constant discussion of how to
Speaker 5: mitigate alienation amiss not just the dehumanization of labor and
Speaker 5: patterns of life that you know surround labor, but also
Speaker 5: the proverbial death of God, which on the twentieth century
Speaker 5: was just taken for granted by intellectuals and playable theorists alike.
Speaker 5: That becomes all the more of a existential moral hazard
Speaker 5: real will charge. And it's not it's not as if
Speaker 5: these things have abated or left us since the the
Speaker 5: you know, the onset of globalism and the defeat of
Speaker 5: the communists. But it's the character of the the dialectical
Speaker 5: process has changed a bit because there's not that agonistic catalyst,
Speaker 5: if that makes any sense. But you know, so it's both.
Speaker 5: It's both the books both a period piece as well
Speaker 5: as you know, as well as a highly conceptual sci
Speaker 5: fi novella that remains relevant in discreet ways, you know.
Speaker 5: I think that's the real strength of it, you know,
Speaker 5: And that's and like before it went live, that the
Speaker 5: big difference is, you know, it deals with religious belief,
Speaker 5: or Aristot's religious belief, like for those who haven't read
Speaker 5: this story. There's this sort of he's both a Messianic figure,
Speaker 5: but he's also kind of like Billy Graham. He's like
Speaker 5: this media personality named Wilbur Mercer. And in the world
Speaker 5: of Blade Runner in the novel, there's this entire mythology
Speaker 5: around him and this whole redemption narrative about, you know,
Speaker 5: the the moral integrity of the human being and human
Speaker 5: agency there in which you know, sets man apart and
Speaker 5: allows for the possibility of salvation. And Deckard develops a
Speaker 5: certain fascination with this belief system as the story goes on,
Speaker 5: and uh, the the critics of Mercer, as well as
Speaker 5: the liberationist minded replicants, claim that Mercer's not even a
Speaker 5: real person. He's either an actor who's playing this character
Speaker 5: with this entirely imaginary biography, or he's some sort of
Speaker 5: projected a I or a hologram or something. And uh,
Speaker 5: you know, it raises the question too, if, uh, if
Speaker 5: Messianism or you know, true theological commitments are even possible
Speaker 5: if things are discussed in these terms, if there's a
Speaker 5: presumption of all human experiences is being potentially simulated, you know,
Speaker 5: psychological experiences, the very very fact of that potentiality, it
Speaker 5: might you know, it self neutralize the potential for authentic
Speaker 5: spiritual life once. In other words, there's a categorical emphasis
Speaker 5: or fixation on authenticity that means that that you know,
Speaker 5: God is already dead, at least in terms of you know,
Speaker 5: precedented religious belief in things. So there's a lot packed
Speaker 5: into that two hundred pages. That's that's the best place
Speaker 5: to start, I'd say, yes.
Speaker 7: So the opening to this book, we get kind of
Speaker 7: off the bat a number of key differences. So one
Speaker 7: decord is married, uh, one of it is, And we
Speaker 7: see the introduction of two things very quickly. One uh,
Speaker 7: the so called mood organ right, which is a divice
Speaker 7: that allows users to from apparently thousands of combinations finally
Speaker 7: tune their own mood synthetically. So, for instance, you know,
Speaker 7: when this starts off, they're arguing, and part of the
Speaker 7: reason they're arguing is that his wife has sort of
Speaker 7: voluntarily plunged herself into depression. This is something she's been
Speaker 7: more and more drawn to, and in the course of
Speaker 7: the two arguing, he's constantly telling her, well, why are
Speaker 7: you even doing this? This is stupid. Just make yourself
Speaker 7: in a good mood. Also, we get introduced to, as
Speaker 7: you've said, mercerism. The religious right in Mercerism is the
Speaker 7: empathy box, where seemingly all humans across the Solar System,
Speaker 7: both on Earth and on you know, the Martian colonies
Speaker 7: have this sort of psychic communion where they become part
Speaker 7: of sort of the martyrdom of mercer right. It's this
Speaker 7: repeated motif of him walking up a hill while being
Speaker 7: struck with stones. We learn that this experience is emotionally
Speaker 7: intense that old people occasionally die involved in it. But
Speaker 7: there are several things there. One, because this is a
Speaker 7: world after a nuclear apocalypse, the condition of the Earth
Speaker 7: is even worse than the movies. Possibly effectively, anyone who
Speaker 7: can get off planet has the world is just bathed
Speaker 7: in radioactive ash, and so it is physically difficult to
Speaker 7: remain on Earth. DECKERD, for example, where's a lead lined
Speaker 7: codpiece so that he can potentially bear children. We also
Speaker 7: learn that this level of radiation has produced what they
Speaker 7: call specials. There's different varieties ant heads, chicken heads, basically
Speaker 7: people who have been mutated. One of our main characters
Speaker 7: in fact, is mutated. His brain is gone. He was
Speaker 7: at one point a talentan mechanic, and now they just
Speaker 7: sort of keep him around. But also one of the
Speaker 7: interesting things about mercerism is an extremement, sort of an
Speaker 7: emotional spiritual level to animals. Many animals have been driven
Speaker 7: extinct by this nuclear war, and so everyone has everyone
Speaker 7: wants to have one. This is a major status game.
Speaker 7: And so after this fight with his wife, he goes
Speaker 7: up to the roof to talk with his neighbors. His
Speaker 7: neighbor has gotten or has a mayor, which is extraordinarily expensive.
Speaker 7: This mayor is genetically notable, and she's you know, she
Speaker 7: has a foal, right, which is going to be both
Speaker 7: extremely socially and monetarily beneficial to this man. While Deckard
Speaker 7: he has, as the title of the book says, an
Speaker 7: electric cheap a very convincing but still mechanical replica of
Speaker 7: a real animal. We learn that this is sort of shameful.
Speaker 7: It's sort of looked down on having an imitation animal
Speaker 7: and their pole systems set up so that no one
Speaker 7: else knows. For instance, a large part of the plot
Speaker 7: is driven forward by electric animal repairment, and the whole
Speaker 7: thing is set up to look like a veterinary hospital. Obviously,
Speaker 7: again you know, in this world where animals are very
Speaker 7: we're very rare and valuable, they're often stolen or you know,
Speaker 7: there's there's a lot of money to be made. Uh.
Speaker 7: So we learned a couple of things there. One that
Speaker 7: attachment to animals, which is a central driving sort of
Speaker 7: thrust into this plot. Uh, just kind of going through.
Speaker 5: The aformative empathy to it as well, Like that's important.
Speaker 5: That's you know, authentic biology or authentic biology is is
Speaker 5: uh is fetishized. But having any animal that you know
Speaker 5: one is attached to and that you care for, that's
Speaker 5: part of the fixation of performative empathy, and that's really
Speaker 5: what underlies mercerism has practiced.
Speaker 7: Yeah, go ahead, well exactly, and uh we see another
Speaker 7: kind of constant referra. I think it's called it's English's
Speaker 7: Animal Handbook, which is this sort of constantly public published Uh.
Speaker 7: I guess you could say sort of like market watch
Speaker 7: of animals that indicates you know, their prices which are
Speaker 7: many many times normal person salary, but also right, the
Speaker 7: status of if these example, these animal animals excuse me,
Speaker 7: are extinct or not.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 7: The inciting push to this is very similar to the
Speaker 7: film there's a group of Nexus six androids, some of
Speaker 7: the most advanced ever developed, that have made their way
Speaker 7: to Earth.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 7: There's a discussion with the police chief who's played very
Speaker 7: differently in this book than he is in the film.
Speaker 7: Or they go through you know, talking about you know,
Speaker 7: the void comptest, right, the way that they determine if
Speaker 7: someone is human or an android. They go to Seattle,
Speaker 7: right to the corporation where he meets Rachel, Rachel Rosen,
Speaker 7: who you may remember from the film. This is slightly different.
Speaker 7: It's sort of a similar hook where the Rosen Corporation
Speaker 7: is obviously they want to stay ahead of the detection
Speaker 7: technology for obvious reasons. And we learn a couple of things. One,
Speaker 7: the Void Comptest doesn't work on human either schizophrenics or psychopaths,
Speaker 7: so they begin to inject some doubt, have you ever
Speaker 7: retired a human? There are humans who are fully biological
Speaker 7: but lack empathy. Effectively, the Void Comptest is a test
Speaker 7: for empathy. And what's interesting is that, very similarly to
Speaker 7: the movie, right, there's a moment where he is supporting
Speaker 7: he tests Rachel. But what's interesting in this case is
Speaker 7: the first time he doesn't catch her. He goes through
Speaker 7: and when he gets a reading, they say, oh, we
Speaker 7: got you. We've got this on camera. She's just a
Speaker 7: schizophrenic or she's a psychopath, I can't remember. They have
Speaker 7: some explanation for it, and they're literally leaning on him.
Speaker 7: They try to bribe him with an owl, the same
Speaker 7: motif you'll note from the film, and then he figures
Speaker 7: her out very narrowly. He discovers, oh, wait, you actually
Speaker 7: are an android. And so the relationship between Decard and
Speaker 7: the corporation is different between the films, but also his
Speaker 7: relationship to Rachel is very different. Rachel is much as
Speaker 7: much less of a sympathetic character in the book instead
Speaker 7: of said of the film. So he goes to meet
Speaker 7: the first Android, and this android is apparently posing as
Speaker 7: a KGB official, right, a blade runner from the Soviet
Speaker 7: Union here obviously to see one of the first retirements
Speaker 7: of Nexas six. This new advanced android, unbeknownst to Deckard
Speaker 7: at least any this is the android in disguise. He
Speaker 7: tries to kill him. Deckord narrowly, you know, retires him,
Speaker 7: and then I believe I can't remember if it's right
Speaker 7: before right after Rachel calls him and basically says, you
Speaker 7: have to bring me on the next one. I want
Speaker 7: to be a part of this. I'm going over this
Speaker 7: quickly because I want to get to the introduction of
Speaker 7: I think perhaps one of the most interesting characters in
Speaker 7: the background. At the same time, this is sort of
Speaker 7: the b plot. Isidor, who is this you know, formerly
Speaker 7: intelligent mechanic who has become special due to radiation exposure,
Speaker 7: has met Ritz, one of the escape androids we don't
Speaker 7: know yet. Interesting thing about the difference in how androids
Speaker 7: are portrayed in this is they are much more sinister
Speaker 7: in the book than in the film. It is very
Speaker 7: clear that these androids do not have empathy. And the
Speaker 7: way this has shown with how PRIs is introduced is
Speaker 7: that again much like the film, this is depopulated earth,
Speaker 7: and so even in the city center, apartments are scarcely full,
Speaker 7: and there's these constant references to the fact that the
Speaker 7: earth is covered in junk, that there's other people's items,
Speaker 7: you know, their family photos, their furniture, all decaying around everyone,
Speaker 7: and so people live in largely empty apartments. His character Isidor,
Speaker 7: works at this animal repair facility and he runs into
Speaker 7: Priss he's simple minded, he lives by himself, he's very lonely.
Speaker 7: But when he encounters her, she's naked to the waist
Speaker 7: but has no sort of shame or shock about that whatsoever.
Speaker 7: Described very alien even in the way that she interacts
Speaker 7: with him. She lies to his face constantly, clearly taking
Speaker 7: advantage of him without really a second thought. There is
Speaker 7: no empathy in the way that she interacts with this
Speaker 7: simple minded man who clearly is lonely. And that's sort
Speaker 7: of the b plot going on in the background. And
Speaker 7: I'm skipping over a lot here, not because it's not important,
Speaker 7: but just because there's a character that I want to
Speaker 7: talk about, because he's, in my mind, perhaps the most
Speaker 7: interesting part of this. So Deckard goes on to sort
Speaker 7: of the next the next bounty he has to collect,
Speaker 7: which is this android who is serving as an opera singer.
Speaker 7: She's described as very talented, sort of hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 7: But when he goes into her dressing room a film
Speaker 7: or a scene we see sort of echoed in the film,
Speaker 7: he's arrested. Doesn't go well. She basically says, hey, this
Speaker 7: pervert's in my room, and an officer comes to arrest him.
Speaker 7: Now Deckard works with the police. He doesn't know this officer.
Speaker 7: They're taking him to a police station he's never heard of,
Speaker 7: but he goes along with it, and when he arrives there,
Speaker 7: he realizes that this is sort of an alternate police
Speaker 7: station run by androids. And when he's there he meets
Speaker 7: another blade Runner, another bounty hunter who's working for these androids.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 7: Do you want to speak about this character, Thomas, because
Speaker 7: I think that this character is one of the more
Speaker 7: interesting uh in the book.
Speaker 5: But also the faux police station that's the the end
Speaker 5: of these sorts of intrigues and intrigues. Like some people
Speaker 5: view that is a plot device like John McCurry might employ,
Speaker 5: just put to like a science fiction setting. That's not
Speaker 5: really what h Philip K. Dick is trying to convey,
Speaker 5: you know. The there's a that that's that's a recurring theme,
Speaker 5: not just into Androids dream of Electric Sheep, but in
Speaker 5: in most of most of his major works. And it's uh,
Speaker 5: but that's another but that's key too, because Deckord initially
Speaker 5: he can't distinguish between not just as you know, fellow
Speaker 5: humans and replicants, but these are people who are literally
Speaker 5: masquerading as a as police officers, and he still can't
Speaker 5: distinguished between you identify essential characteristics that supposedly distinguishes them.
Speaker 5: The replicant that he meets is obviously the model for
Speaker 5: Roy Baddy. What's his name in the book? I can't remember.
Speaker 7: Oh shoot, I can't remember. Let me pull up.
Speaker 5: It's been in minutes.
Speaker 7: If they're real Garlands Garland, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's and uh yeah, it's uh but Garland too.
Speaker 5: I mean your point, Garland's a lot more of a
Speaker 5: sinister character than Roy Batty is. I mean, Betty's also
Speaker 5: both tragic and advanced. As he is the baby character
Speaker 5: in the movie, there's this childlike naivete to him. Garland,
Speaker 5: uh is isn't like that at all, and the uh
Speaker 5: he embodies more human than human in in a way
Speaker 5: that is deliberately ironic, I think.
Speaker 7: But so, yeah, when they're at the at this police station, uh,
Speaker 7: Decord sort of realized is the game. Yeah, he meets
Speaker 7: this other human bounty hunter, Phil resh r E s h.
Speaker 7: And this is a really fascinating character, as I've said before,
Speaker 7: because he is a psychopath. He has no empathy whatsoever.
Speaker 7: So the two of them escape together and go back
Speaker 7: to collect the bounty for this woman, Luba Luft, who
Speaker 7: is this opera singer. And throughout this interaction, the two
Speaker 7: of them are talking and Resh is genuinely wondering is
Speaker 7: he human or not right because again he found out
Speaker 7: that he was in the company of these androids, that
Speaker 7: the possibility of synthetic memories being injected into his brain
Speaker 7: he doesn't know, for example, because he you know, on
Speaker 7: first examination, he's like, ohyeah, I've been working there for years,
Speaker 7: and then he realizes, wait a minute, I can't have
Speaker 7: I've only been here for two I have all of
Speaker 7: these artificial memories. So the two of them again go
Speaker 7: to collect this bounty on they meet her in an
Speaker 7: art museum and she sort of realizes that the chick
Speaker 7: is up, but before she you know, asks like, oh,
Speaker 7: can you buy me a copy of this print I'm
Speaker 7: looking at. Deckard feels bad. He has empathy for androids.
Speaker 7: This it's a major plot point going forward, and Rush
Speaker 7: has no time for this. He's like, what are you doing?
Speaker 7: This doesn't matter. The two of them eliminate her. It's
Speaker 7: it's sort of a nasty scene, and afterwards, Decard basically
Speaker 7: says like all right, Like I'm going to need to,
Speaker 7: you know, run this test on you to determine if
Speaker 7: you're human or not. And what's interesting is that Resh
Speaker 7: is really not bothered by this at all. For instance,
Speaker 7: he says like, well, you know, if I'm an android,
Speaker 7: I'll just kill myself. He says, I'll just hold my
Speaker 7: breath until I die. I can do that. And it's
Speaker 7: again interesting because Deckard susses him out. He realizes like, oh,
Speaker 7: you know, you're human, You're just a monster. And there
Speaker 7: is a contrast there too.
Speaker 5: Decord's trying to raise the funds that he can buy
Speaker 5: like a real animal for his wife. I that's like
Speaker 5: a key yest point. So he's reluctantly continuing to retire
Speaker 5: these androids, but I go.
Speaker 7: Ahead, yes, And that's also you know, a major plot
Speaker 7: point right that he wants to his wife is despondent, depressed.
Speaker 7: And we see other instances throughout the book which I
Speaker 7: haven't mentioned, primarily through the eyes of the staff at
Speaker 7: this sort of robot hospital where people are you know,
Speaker 7: bringing in their animals to be worked on. There are
Speaker 7: there's a mistake which is ironic later enough, where a
Speaker 7: live animal is brought into this robot hospital and killed
Speaker 7: when isidor unbeknowingly basically plugs it into a battery charger
Speaker 7: and just electrifies this cat, which is obviously a serious situation,
Speaker 7: but it's a little funny, yeah. And so they have
Speaker 7: this conversation and Resh again is very clear with the record,
Speaker 7: he thinks he is bad at his job because he says,
Speaker 7: you have developed empathy for particularly female androids. You have
Speaker 7: this sort of attraction to him, and Race basically says like, well,
Speaker 7: there's only one way to get this out of your system.
Speaker 7: You need to sleep with one of these androids and
Speaker 7: then kill her. It's the only way you can do it.
Speaker 7: And so at this point, right, Deckard has been through
Speaker 7: you know, the Ringer, He's he's had a number of
Speaker 7: kind of violent experiences. So he goes up picks up
Speaker 7: the goat on finance, basically saying like, well, I'll pay
Speaker 7: it off on this, and goes back to his wife.
Speaker 7: His wife is immensely pleased, right, They've got this real animal.
Speaker 7: She's sort of over the moon, lifted out of her depression.
Speaker 7: But as you know, Deckard is sort of going off
Speaker 7: to bed. His boss calls him and says like, no,
Speaker 7: you've got to get the remaining androids tonight. In the
Speaker 7: intervening time, Baddie his I think they call her his wife.
Speaker 7: I can't remember her name in this have met up
Speaker 7: with Tris at isidor Is home. They've sort of prepared
Speaker 7: the place for a final battle. We're starting to see
Speaker 7: more and more this dynamic with UH is them sort
Speaker 7: of talking down to Isidor. And throughout the whole thing, UH,
Speaker 7: there has been this recurring character of Buster Friendly, who's
Speaker 7: this sort of like jocular, like comedy host who is
Speaker 7: on the radio, you know, twenty three hours a day,
Speaker 7: got this revolving cast of characters, you know, perfectly funny,
Speaker 7: always ready with equip and the whole time he has
Speaker 7: been teasing this big reveal. We're gonna let everyone know
Speaker 7: this big you know, journalism expose. And so the action
Speaker 7: is sort of building to a crescendo. Deckard realizes, all right,
Speaker 7: I've got to you know, retire these three androids. I'm
Speaker 7: already worn down. This white might well be fatal. And
Speaker 7: at the same time we're building to this crescendo, this
Speaker 7: big you know, obviously fight, but also this huge you
Speaker 7: know reveal, you know, what is going to be revealed.
Speaker 7: So he calls Rachel, and Rachel has said, you know,
Speaker 7: I want to be there. I will help you. He's
Speaker 7: sort of rebuffed her, and the two meet up at
Speaker 7: a hotel room, initially to discuss, you know, the sort
Speaker 7: of mission, but the two of them end end up
Speaker 7: going to bed together. We get a couple of things here.
Speaker 7: One this is described in sort of very clinical in
Speaker 7: human terms. She is not human, despite the fact that
Speaker 7: obviously they're capable of this act together. So I'm curious, Thomas,
Speaker 7: what do you make of that scene, the one between
Speaker 7: him and Rachel, because there's there's a lot there the
Speaker 7: two of them in talking one to another.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it Philip K. Dick was very the way he
Speaker 5: describes sex, not just in du Android's dream, but in
Speaker 5: other condicts as well. It's it's almost it's like people
Speaker 5: call without intimacy, and that's that's key to doing Android's
Speaker 5: dream of Electric Sheet because again it's it's it's you know,
Speaker 5: the it's another aspect of performative sociality, you know, and
Speaker 5: there's as if I it reminded me a lot of
Speaker 5: Crimes of the Future, which is the Cronenberg movie that
Speaker 5: I highly recommend where not to digress too much, but
Speaker 5: the protag and that Nigel Mortenson character the people of
Speaker 5: ere outicized extreme body modification to the point of where
Speaker 5: performance artists do things like removing their own organs and things.
Speaker 5: But uh, there's this one part where like this woman
Speaker 5: tries to seduce him and he says, I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 5: not good at the old sex.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: That's very much a nod to Blade Runner, I think,
Speaker 5: and that's and that's also one of the things that
Speaker 5: distinguishes it from the film because one of the obviously
Speaker 5: one of the aspects of the film is that there's
Speaker 5: this incredible genuine passion that flourishes between racial and decord.
Speaker 5: And in the source material, not only is that not president,
Speaker 5: but it's really the the statement on you know, the
Speaker 5: the fact that intimacy is precluded in this future where
Speaker 5: there's not real grounding elements to the way humans relate socially,
Speaker 5: you know, like a prerequisite, a prerequisite to intimacy is context.
Speaker 5: And I think that I think that's the key takeaway,
Speaker 5: unless I'm like reading too much into things, but that's
Speaker 5: a I think I think that's the subtext.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's there's several things there, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 7: For instance, Rachel is both physically and you know, emotionally,
Speaker 7: very very cold. Like the way that she is described
Speaker 7: is not trying to you know, be over sensational. Heres
Speaker 7: is not exactly She's beautiful but not sensual.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's nothing erotic about.
Speaker 7: It, right, It's very androgynous. And you know, this will
Speaker 7: this will come back up again later because one of
Speaker 7: the things that we find out in this novel is
Speaker 7: that androids are made by type. You know, they'll have
Speaker 7: several different variations, but ultimately there is a type. And
Speaker 7: we find out later that Rachel and PRIs are the same.
Speaker 7: They look the same, and this is one of the
Speaker 7: things that Rachel sort of has this crisis about that,
Speaker 7: you know, she is simply one of many that come
Speaker 7: off of an assembly line. She says that she's like
Speaker 7: a bottle cap right, pressed out identically. So when Deckard
Speaker 7: It goes to confront piece androids, she's with him in
Speaker 7: the car. They have sort of an argument of falling out.
Speaker 7: He threatens to kill her and she says, well, you know,
Speaker 7: I know you can never do it. I've done this
Speaker 7: with nine different bounty hunters before, and This sort of
Speaker 7: sends Deckard into a rage, but he realizes he can't
Speaker 7: do it. He is too empathetic for her even in
Speaker 7: this situation, so he basically tells her, He's like, all right, fine, whatever,
Speaker 7: I'm retiring after this job. I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 7: Get out now, go back, go back to Seattle and
Speaker 7: run like you you'll be able to be free for
Speaker 7: the remaining in her case, two years of her life.
Speaker 7: At the same time, we're seeing this the culmination of
Speaker 7: this big reveal from Buster Friendly, which is we learned
Speaker 7: several things, which is one, he is an android. He's synthetic,
Speaker 7: so are all the guests on his show. One of
Speaker 7: the interesting things that Isidor comes up with, and it's
Speaker 7: funny because you can clearly tell he is an intelligent
Speaker 7: man who has been made stupid.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: His memory isn't very good, he described as very foggy.
Speaker 7: But from his thoughts we get a certain kind of
Speaker 7: interesting insights. And one of them because he hears and
Speaker 7: I believe it's Isidor. I don't think it's Deckerdough. I
Speaker 7: might be wrong on that is picking up on the
Speaker 7: fact that Buster Friendly is constantly denigrating mercerism, despite the
Speaker 7: fact that mercerism is officially recognized by the US by
Speaker 7: both the Soviets and the Americans as pro social right
Speaker 7: after you know, war, exactly, it's necessary to have some
Speaker 7: sort of pro social force. This has created among humans
Speaker 7: a sort of synthetic ersatz empathy. Right, killing is extremely, uh,
Speaker 7: you know, extremely stigmatized. Obviously, in the example of animals,
Speaker 7: one of the tests on the uh well, actually several
Speaker 7: of the tests on the void comp or questions on
Speaker 7: the voice voint comp test, are about exactly that an
Speaker 7: idea of eating a dog or a leather couch or
Speaker 7: something like that is.
Speaker 5: To not helping the tortoise yet.
Speaker 7: Exactly is emotionally shocking. You know, this is something that
Speaker 7: is simply not done.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 7: And he has this great line where he basically says,
Speaker 7: I realized that you know, both Mercer and you know,
Speaker 7: Mercer and the CV host are fighting for control of
Speaker 7: my brain. That these are two kind of totalizing systems,
Speaker 7: one versus the other. Which is interesting both when we
Speaker 7: look back to uh, you know, your comments about the
Speaker 7: Cold War, right, the idea of these two totalizing systems,
Speaker 7: but also you know, there really is no there really
Speaker 7: is no freedom. You know, something will occupy your mind.
Speaker 7: And so you know, as we've said before, when you know,
Speaker 7: right before this kind of you know, pinnacle of the action,
Speaker 7: we see this big expose. The androids in isidor kind
Speaker 7: of you know, huddled around a television and it's revealed
Speaker 7: according to you know, to buddy here that Mercer is
Speaker 7: a lie. They've found allegedly the actor who played that role,
Speaker 7: who was captured, and you know these films which are
Speaker 7: you know, pushed out on the empathy organ. They say
Speaker 7: that the stones which were thrown at him were or styrofoam,
Speaker 7: they couldn't have possibly hurt him, that this was all
Speaker 7: made on a sound stage. The moon in this is painted,
Speaker 7: and so one we see that, you know, that idea
Speaker 7: that the androids are denying this form even of Ersat's
Speaker 7: religion or Ersat's empathy, and also that that sort of
Speaker 7: war for the soul. I think that the symbolism is
Speaker 7: interesting because in this synthetic memory, when you go through it,
Speaker 7: you feel sort of the pain in his side, right
Speaker 7: obviously a you know, sort of an echo of the
Speaker 7: Crucifixion when he is struck in his side. So he's
Speaker 7: depicted with you know, blood gushing out of his side, right.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 7: And so I think that's a fascinating scene. Do you
Speaker 7: do you want to speak about that sort of expos
Speaker 7: a Thomas.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's yeah. Well that's also why too, if you
Speaker 5: want to the danum Wa where as it were, where
Speaker 5: uh Decker goes. Uh, he goes to the Pacific Northwest,
Speaker 5: presumably to meditate on these revelations literally, and you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's he's a I think it's it's it's a
Speaker 5: metaphor for Alijah, the prophet who you know, who went
Speaker 5: into the wilderness, does Elijah? Right, Yeah, it's uh. And
Speaker 5: then when he discovers the when he discovers the frog,
Speaker 5: which he's convinced that first, I mean, he's it's it
Speaker 5: strikes him because it's so rare to see even little
Speaker 5: animals that you know, in the wild anymore. And he
Speaker 5: takes the frog home to his wife and then they
Speaker 5: just they eventually discovered that the frog is synthetic, but
Speaker 5: Decker's apparently made peace with that.
Speaker 6: It.
Speaker 5: Uh. I mean, any Phil k Dick's books never resolve
Speaker 5: in a tight little package conceptually, but I don't think
Speaker 5: I will have bass you know that whole people have
Speaker 5: already lost their ability to function within the historical environment
Speaker 5: they're situated in. If they've got to constantly that things
Speaker 5: that in there that populate their environment for authenticity, or
Speaker 5: if they constantly got to try and identify what concepts
Speaker 5: or what criteria render something conceptually authentic or real, that
Speaker 5: that that makes empathy, that those conditions preclude empathy and
Speaker 5: intimacy and all of these other essentially human things. And
Speaker 5: the only way out of that nihilistic spiral.
Speaker 6: Is the.
Speaker 5: Sort of fully embrace that reality, whereby these interstates can flourish. Again.
Speaker 5: This is the way I read it, because that's the
Speaker 5: whole The key aspect of the existential price of the
Speaker 5: individual in both the movies and in the book is
Speaker 5: that without these reference points to live historically, people without
Speaker 5: a past can't orient themselves as any not just you know,
Speaker 5: as a discrete individual distinct from other people, and you know,
Speaker 5: a human being with agency. But it becomes impossible to
Speaker 5: value things in any deeply committed way, because all emotional
Speaker 5: responses are merely cultivated around symbolic psychological items that are
Speaker 5: supposedly universal to human beings and are only aesthetically coded
Speaker 5: to appeal to whatever individual there tailored do fascinate, you know,
Speaker 5: and in acknowledging the irredeemability of the world as it
Speaker 5: is in Blade Runner, you know, one can access those
Speaker 5: spiritual you know, characteristics to the human being. Again, that's
Speaker 5: why I think it's profound. I mean, basically, he realizes
Speaker 5: his wife likes the frog anyway, if I'm remembering right,
Speaker 5: And that's kind of when he makes peace with things,
Speaker 5: you know. You know, he's no longer he's no longer
Speaker 5: disturbed by the it's inauthenticity, you know. And but that's
Speaker 5: when arbitrary criteria are assigned to qualify or just qualify
Speaker 5: human beings from from their essential humanity, you know, which
Speaker 5: again is an essential aspect of the social order. It's
Speaker 5: the only thing that's keeping things from falling apart. That
Speaker 5: bleeds into all other essentially human activities, you know, emotional, cognitive,
Speaker 5: and physical as well, and there becomes this confused and
Speaker 5: desperate effort to identify what is authentic within one's own
Speaker 5: emotional life. And that's why the characters who are truly sociopathic,
Speaker 5: they're the ones who are splendidly adapted to that environment.
Speaker 5: And I mean that's a commentary to or meditation rather
Speaker 5: on how corrupt thing it is to uh try and
Speaker 5: curate ethics according to some ideological paradigm, even if it's
Speaker 5: necessary to sustain systemic features of you know, of the
Speaker 5: of the political order anything else. I mean, even if
Speaker 5: the intentions behind such things are good, you you're doing
Speaker 5: violence to people's ability to curate within themselves a genuine
Speaker 5: moral intelligence. I mean I and I mean that that's
Speaker 5: that's obviously a huge, uh, a hugely relevant thing to
Speaker 5: the I mean, it's relevant anyway, but it's particularly Cold
Speaker 5: War coded and temporal terms, because that's exactly what their
Speaker 5: respective regimes, albeit the Second World and have much more
Speaker 5: brutal and ham fisted way, but that's what both regimes
Speaker 5: were very much attempting to do. You know, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: make the mistake there was an effort to create a
Speaker 5: new American man and woman as much as there was
Speaker 5: to create a new Soviet man. It just wasn't it
Speaker 5: wasn't characterized that way, and it was more nuanced, and
Speaker 5: there wasn't There wasn't an American version of the Great
Speaker 5: Purge or the Art to Death camps or annihilation therapy.
Speaker 5: So there were still deeply organic and historical tendencies in
Speaker 5: American life that were competing dialectically for dominance over the
Speaker 5: official ideology. But I think you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: forgive me if that was a bit too No, not
Speaker 5: at all.
Speaker 7: So obviously Deckard goes to retire these androids, and throughout
Speaker 7: the kind of last third of the book we haven't
Speaker 7: mentioned it, but deckerd is starting to have mystical experiences.
Speaker 7: He is seeing Mercer before him, and in fact Mercer
Speaker 7: warns him like oup, they're behind you, and he, seemingly
Speaker 7: without remorse, kills PRIs the woman who is or the
Speaker 7: android rather, who is physically identical to Rachel. They look
Speaker 7: exactly the same. He has this interesting interaction with Isidor
Speaker 7: you know where. He tells him, you know, I'm here.
Speaker 7: Isidor remarks, sort of internally, of course, that Decker doesn't
Speaker 7: look anything like he thought. He's just kind of this small,
Speaker 7: schlubby guy who's doing this you dirty job, seemingly very
Speaker 7: beaten down. And again, part of the reason that Isidor
Speaker 7: has run out is that in this apartment, while he's
Speaker 7: looking for supplies, he discovers a spider right, a genuine
Speaker 7: biological spider right, and the Androids have no empathy for this.
Speaker 7: But Chris pulls its legs off, literally because she says,
Speaker 7: you know, it can walk just as well on four
Speaker 7: as it does on eight. It'll probably die anyway. And
Speaker 7: of course his Stor is horrified by this. And we
Speaker 7: see again that lack of empathy when Deckard goes to
Speaker 7: the door and he not even particularly convincingly pretends to
Speaker 7: be Isidor. But they can't tell the difference, right then,
Speaker 7: what is there between them? He busts down the door
Speaker 7: and kills them. Batty is much less a character in
Speaker 7: the novel than he is in the movie. He's I
Speaker 7: think in the book he's a field hand, you know,
Speaker 7: He's not even necessarily you know, this this great leader,
Speaker 7: although we hear a little bit that he was experimenting
Speaker 7: with psychedelics and with religion to try and create empathy
Speaker 7: within his in his followers. What's particularly interesting is that
Speaker 7: there's a discussion I believe, just before this, at the
Speaker 7: kind of right before the climax of the book, where
Speaker 7: they talk about empathy, you know, and and when it
Speaker 7: is revealed at least allegedly that the mercer is a fake.
Speaker 7: They say, oh, we're you always hold this over us.
Speaker 7: You say that empathy is what makes you human, who
Speaker 7: make it better? But apparently that's all fake. Apparently that
Speaker 7: is simply synthetic. Which again, you know, looking to the
Speaker 7: fact that you know, uh friendly is a is an android,
Speaker 7: there's sort of an open question there. But afterwards, right,
Speaker 7: and this is shortly before his trip to the Pacific Northwest,
Speaker 7: we learn a couple of things, which is one h
Speaker 7: deckerd is almost completely broken, you know. He he is
Speaker 7: having a hard time relaying this mystical experience he has
Speaker 7: with Mercer. He claims to be Mercer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he starts believing he may very well be uh
Speaker 5: may be well, but he himself is a wilibor mercer.
Speaker 7: Yes, and his his fears kind of you know, shrug
Speaker 7: it off. But after he finds this toad, he has
Speaker 7: this ex hearing someuth in the wilderness, he learns that
Speaker 7: this goat, this extremely expensive thing he has purchased, has
Speaker 7: been killed, has it gotten sick where he could use
Speaker 7: the warranty to exchange it for another one. But Rachel,
Speaker 7: before she fled town, came to his house and killed
Speaker 7: his goat right, there's an element of jealousy, perhaps because
Speaker 7: in their interactions she talks about the difference between what
Speaker 7: they are doing, and then his relationship to his wife,
Speaker 7: where is a possibility of you know, giving birth and
Speaker 7: producing children. We also see a little bit of the
Speaker 7: fact that these and rowds basically our psychopaths, you know,
Speaker 7: they have no regard for anyone else and says you've said,
Speaker 7: you know that the action closes with Deckard sort of
Speaker 7: sleep on the couch after you know, Iran, his wife
Speaker 7: has discovered that this tote is synthetic, and there is
Speaker 7: that sort of you know, making peace with synthetic life.
Speaker 7: And I think that that's a very interesting point because
Speaker 7: you know, on one hand, we have seen Deckard you know,
Speaker 7: sort of shed his empathy, right, he was able to
Speaker 7: kill PRIs with you know, without a second thought really
Speaker 7: at least initially, that didn't bother him. And again we
Speaker 7: see him sort of adapting to this new world as
Speaker 7: you've said that psychopathy and Deckard I don't think becomes
Speaker 7: a full you know, psychopath like the other Blade Runner,
Speaker 7: but it is this sort of interesting you know, making
Speaker 7: peace with the world you find yourself in it to
Speaker 7: kind of close my remarks on it. This book is
Speaker 7: very very good. There's a lot that we weren't able
Speaker 7: to get into because even though it's a short novel,
Speaker 7: it's very philosophically dense, and there's only so much you
Speaker 7: can say in an hour. I don't want to say
Speaker 7: we've spoiled it, because look, it's the movies. It's the
Speaker 7: movies spoil a book. I don't spoilers don't even matter
Speaker 7: to a novel that's good enough, which this is. But
Speaker 7: there's a lot in there, boast about the kind of,
Speaker 7: as you've said, the creation of new men during the
Speaker 7: Cold War, and also the same kind of ruminations on
Speaker 7: you know, empathy, what it is to be human. I
Speaker 7: will say, for my money, this is not to say
Speaker 7: that the book is bad. Body means I think that
Speaker 7: the the movies are more interesting than the book. There
Speaker 7: it's sort of a tighter, more refined vision. It's personal preference.
Speaker 7: Still well worth your time, particularly if you're interested in, uh,
Speaker 7: you know, science fiction. But those are sort of my
Speaker 7: very broad thoughts on it. And it's a very neat
Speaker 7: compliment piece to the other two films. And you know,
Speaker 7: Taken is a sort of a loose trilogy. Between the
Speaker 7: three of them, there's a lot to gather from, you know,
Speaker 7: this novel as well as the two films.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree very much, And yeah, I think the
Speaker 5: films are superior, but it's it's essential reading, I think
Speaker 5: if you're a fan of the of the film or
Speaker 5: they're the ip generally, and Philip Kate Dick's a difficult author, right.
Speaker 5: I realize he's got a very dedicated fandom and I
Speaker 5: think he was definitely a serious individual, but his his
Speaker 5: stuff is a is not for everybody, and it can
Speaker 5: be difficult.
Speaker 7: Yeah. My my brother in law is a big fan
Speaker 7: of his uh and he's been he read recently and
Speaker 7: was a very big fan of the Three Stigmata of
Speaker 7: Palmer Eldritch. Yeah, okay, from his review, sounds very good.
Speaker 7: So who knows, I may I may drag you back
Speaker 7: after we've we've knocked out a few more of these
Speaker 7: uh these occultas of episodes to talk about sides fiction again.
Speaker 7: So as far as links, obviously you guys know where
Speaker 7: to find Thomas. I'll have his website, his UH sub stack,
Speaker 7: as well as a few other things down in the
Speaker 7: description where you can find him. I'm I think, like
Speaker 7: many people, Thomas getting very excited, uh for your long form.
Speaker 7: I think that you know, I'm I don't want speak
Speaker 7: out a term, but I maybe getting a you know,
Speaker 7: an early draft which I'm excited to go over. Obviously,
Speaker 7: you know there's a there's a lot in that and I,
Speaker 7: whenever it comes out, will be pointing people in that direction.
Speaker 7: As far as my stuff, Jay Burtons Show, apple Spot, YouTube,
Speaker 7: anywhere you want to listen to podcasts. If you want
Speaker 7: to support me and this is what I do, you
Speaker 7: can throw me a few bucks a month on Patreon,
Speaker 7: Substack or gum road. Get the episodes early in ad free.
Speaker 7: I know the ads are irritating, but look I got
Speaker 7: to pay my mortgage somehow, and that way you can
Speaker 7: get the content a little bit earlier without those irritating ads.
Speaker 7: And the value proposition's pretty decent. It's like twenty two
Speaker 7: to twenty three cents an episode less if you want
Speaker 7: to view it as hours of content. So you're welcome,
Speaker 7: and yeah, guys, in all seriousness, I do appreciate you
Speaker 7: supporting me. Also, check out our sponsor, Axios Remote Fitness Coaching.
Speaker 7: I use their workouts three four days a week. As
Speaker 7: far as things I recommend, this is something that I use.
Speaker 7: It's part of my daily life. And JD's a very
Speaker 7: very talented guy, good at what he does. Again, Thomas Man,
Speaker 7: thank you so much. This was a great time.
Speaker 5: Thank you my friend.
Speaker 7: Everyone home, keep your head up. I can't last forever.
Speaker 7: Good night.
Speaker 6: What what what? What's what? But that's Gary, Gary,