Book Club: THE SECRET OF SECRETS by Dan Brown

Summary

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Book Riot Podcast: Book Club – The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

Hosts: Jeff O’Neal, Rebecca Schinsky, Vanessa Diaz
Date: September 17, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this lively book club episode, Book Riot’s Jeff O’Neal, Rebecca Schinsky, and Vanessa Diaz dive into Dan Brown’s latest Robert Langdon adventure, The Secret of Secrets. The trio delivers a spoiler-filled, humorous, and affectionate critique, examining Brown's signature tropes, brand sponsorship, and the book’s merits as both a thriller and a pop culture event. They break down the “Dan Brown GPA” for this installment—grading its setting, big idea, villains, love interest, factoids, and classic Langdon-isms—and reflect on the enduring appeal (and quirks) of Brown’s work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Initial Impressions & Purchasing Experiences

Timestamps: 05:41–07:49

• None of the hosts discussed the book in depth prior to recording, preserving fresh reactions.
• Rebecca was the first customer at her local Barnes & Noble for the release:
  "Not so many doorbusters happening for Dan Brown these days." (07:06 – Rebecca)
• Vanessa bought the book in all formats:
  "I actually pre-ordered it in like all the ways you can pre-order, which I didn't know I had done." (06:01 – Vanessa)
• Jeff read the ebook on a plane, unexpectedly embracing the digital format.

2. Plot Setup & General Vibe

Timestamps: 08:07–10:44

• Rebecca lays out the premise:
  • The novel opens with a scientist’s near-death/out-of-body experience.
  • Robert Langdon wakes up in Prague with new love interest Katherine Solomon, a noetic scientist.
  • A potential world-shaking scientific book becomes the center of a chase through Prague’s historic sites.
  • The Penguin Random House security apparatus plays a central plot role:
    "The giant security apparatus of Penguin Random House gets involved." (09:47 – Rebecca)

3. Brand Placement & Product Mentions

Timestamps: 10:38–12:26

• Hosts have fun calling out excessive product placement:
  • Starbucks is credited with "the creamiest flat white on the island of Manhattan."
  • Fashion, luggage, and electronics brands are name-dropped conspicuously.
• Rebecca jokes:
  "The biggest lie in this entire book... is that a Starbucks is responsible for the creamiest flat white on the island of Manhattan." (10:50 – Rebecca)
• Everyone wonders how much of this is genuine spawncon (sponsored content).

4. Is this a Good Dan Brown Novel?

Timestamps: 12:47–15:41

• Vanessa and Rebecca both enthusiastically declare it as a classic Dan Brown ride, noting the “hater-free zone” for this episode.
• The book delivers all the Dan Brown hallmarks (red herrings, info-dumps, famous watches).
• The formula is intact, which is a feature for fans and a bug for non-fans:
  "If you like Dan Brown, you'll probably like this... If you don't, you're not." (15:22 – Jeff)

5. Setting: Prague as Character

Timestamps: 16:03–24:44

• The book is notable for being set almost entirely in Prague, providing an atmospheric backdrop.
• All hosts award the setting a “B” or “B+”—Prague is intriguing, but less iconic than Paris or Rome.
• Jeff, having recently visited Prague, notes its specificity but says:
  "Can you picture any of these places?... It's not like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre..." (22:05 – Jeff)
• Vanessa:
  "I wanted to go to Prague because I wanted to go... but you didn't make me want to run off and jet over there." (24:01 – Vanessa)
• Rebecca appreciated learning about Prague’s avant-garde art scene.

6. Love Interest: Katherine Solomon

Timestamps: 24:51–29:42

• The first age-appropriate and recurring love interest for Langdon.
• Katherine is “smarter than he is,” and “he’s into it”—refreshing for the series.
• Their relationship features mature, playful banter, including a “sex joke on page seven.”
• Discussion of their plausible (and implausible) dynamic:
  "I'm never gonna get tired of a story where, like, they're crime-solving together and the girlfriend is smarter." (25:58 – Rebecca)
• Some implausible details: Langdon hasn’t read Katherine’s manuscript; they email because he doesn’t like texting.

7. The “Big Idea”: Consciousness, Science, and Espionage

Timestamps: 29:54–40:09

• Core concept: “Non-local consciousness”—the idea that awareness exists beyond the physical brain, touching on Buddhism and science fiction.
• Vanesa jokes:
  "Did Dan Brown do shrooms and come up with this book?" (30:34)
• Katherine’s findings spark CIA and publishing intrigue.
• Major themes: weaponization of ideas, merging of science and mysticism, and remote viewing as a government tool.
• Hosts agree the “big idea” is creatively fun but less revolutionary than The Da Vinci Code:
  "At some point I kind of checked out on the plausibility scale." (37:01 – Jeff)

8. Villains & Conspiracies

Timestamps: 40:09–42:47

• The web of antagonists is sprawling: government, CIA, shadowy groups, and initially a culty figure called “the Golem.”
• The Golem’s reveal (as an alternate personality of another character) is praised as a clever, surprising twist.
• Recurrent Brown theme:
  "Is it the church or is it the government? It's both. It's always both, baby." (41:38 – Rebecca)
• The complexity of the conspiracy and multiple red herrings sometimes make the plot hard to track.

9. Factoids, Info Drops & Publishing Satire

Timestamps: 44:15–49:49

• The book is “rife with factoids”—from the real history of Prague to the security protocols at Penguin Random House.
• Amusingly detailed inside baseball about New York publishing life.
• Strong marks for the entertainment value of the info-dumps:
  "If you want to like model your lifestyle on Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon, you can Google your way to it." (28:03 – Rebecca)
• Info drop about the trick to beating a maze provided by Jeff as “dinner table trivia.”

10. Langdonalia: Classic Langdon Tropes

Timestamps: 49:49–54:23

• Rebecca tracks hallmark Langdon moments:
  • Mickey Mouse watch: 7 mentions
  • Claustrophobia: 5 mentions
  • Swimming/jogging/hot bod: Multiple references
  • Hair and height: Enthusiastic attention
• Vanessa observes:
  "Easy A is great to me." (54:49 – Vanessa)
• Hosts joke about the middle-aged wish fulfillment qualities and their fondness for the formula:
  "Very Dan Brown. Yeah. I'm giving it an A on Langdonalia." (54:41 – Jeff)

11. Future of the Series & Adaptation Prospects

Timestamps: 56:10–60:15

• Speculation on more Langdon books: All hope for another, perhaps at the rate of one per decade.
• Will Katherine Solomon return? Possibly, which would break the series tradition.
• On a movie adaptation: the consensus is “yes”, with a recasting needed to fit Langdon’s fifty-ish age.
• Jeff:
  "I really need one like Harvard. I need an academic one where, like, we're getting into some skull and bones..." (56:58)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Rebecca: "I want to live in the world that Dan Brown seems to inhabit where a book actually could rock the foundations of society." (44:47)
• Jeff: "It scratches the itch that I think a lot of people have that the world is other than it seems... and how many of these veins can he mine?" (36:48)
• Vanessa (on brand mentions): "Dan Brown wants us to know that he bangs." (26:23)
• Rebecca: "This is as fun of a love interest as we've had. It's not all the tropes, which is fine. We've moved on a little bit." (29:42)
• On Langdon's description:
  • "Seven mentions of the Mickey Mouse watch... at least five claustrophobia moments... his hot bod gets mentioned at least twice." (50:47–51:34 – Rebecca)

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Grading the Dan Brown “GPA”

| Category | Grade | Rationale | |---------------------------|--------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Settings & Locations | B/B+ | Prague is fun, specific, but less iconic/romanticized than previous locations. | | Love Interest | A/A- | Katherine is age-appropriate, smart, proactive; best love interest in the series. | | Big Idea | B- | Imaginative, but credibility stretches thin; less world-shaking than earlier entries. | | Villains | B- | Web of antagonists is busy and somewhat confusing; the Golem twist is a highlight. | | Factoids & Info Drops | A- | Entertaining, well-researched tidbits, and fun insider publishing detail. | | Langdonalia (Tropes) | A | All the hallmarks are here—watches, hair, claustrophobia, workouts—fan service delivered. |

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Final Thoughts

• The Secret of Secrets is a highly enjoyable Dan Brown novel, deeply self-aware, shamelessly product-placed, and packed with all the familiar motifs loyal readers expect.
• For fans, it's a delight; for critics, the formula remains unchanged.
• Even if the era of The Da Vinci Code seismic controversy has passed, Brown’s blend of speculative science, historical mystery, and thriller tropes is alive and well.
• The episode is both affectionate tribute and affectionate roast—a must-listen for Brown devotees and those curious about the enduring brand of Robert Langdon.

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Recommended for:

• Fans who loved previous Langdon books.
• Anyone who enjoys well-paced, clue-driven thrillers mixed with pop culture and publishing in-jokes.
• Those looking for book club fodder that’s easy to both poke fun at and celebrate.

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Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill. I'm Rebecca Schinsky and Vanessa Diaz is back with us again. Today we gather in robes to walk a cobblestone street with clues and spacious scientific papers bursting out of our briefcase. Rebecca and Vanessa, welcome to our discussion of the Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know what you mean about specious. All of the science in the Secret of Secrets is real.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Is real.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So we're going to talk about the Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown. We all have a special place in our heart for Dan Brown. This is a hater free zone. But having said that, part of what makes Dan Brown endearing is the foible is the the down Brown isms that we're going to get into here in a minute. So this is how we're going to go. We're going to do some general discussion. Do we like the book spoiler free stuff. 10, 15 minutes. And then I concocted a little structure we're calling the Dan Brown gpa. What GPA does the secret of Secrets get? According to standard Dan Brown courses courses like setting in locations, the big idea, the bad guys, Langdonalia the love interest and then of course factoids in info drops. If you're looking for something with a little more meat on the bone, might I suggest zero to well read which we're also doing. We contain multitudes here, Rebecca.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We really do wait until the Da Vinci Code hits a big anniversary and we do Zero to well read. The Da Vinci Code does Episode two.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Of Zero to wellrod is out today.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is as we are recording it is out today. It's Their eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. And as you are hearing this, the next one up next week will be Vineland by Thomas, upon which the new Leonardo DiCaprio Paul Thomas Anderson joint one battle after another, is based.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, so we're gonna take a quick sponsor break and then we're gonna get into it.

[Vanessa Diaz]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't. Unless you all have talked to each other about this, none of us have shared any reaction, any vibes except that Rebecca, you did shoot us or me a picture of your physical copy that. It has some Instagram friendly stuff on it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Vanessa, did you pre order day one? What's your. Where's your copy? How did you do your reading?

[Vanessa Diaz]

I absolutely pre ordered it. I actually pre ordered it in like all the ways you can pre order which I didn't know I had done. Like I thought I had. Anyway I had the audio which I actually just got an arc of because you can. But I pre ordered the ebook because I didn't think I was going to be around like busy wise. No, I also ordered the physical so I now own a digital and hard.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Coffee that seems right and proper.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's very good.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We Vanessa and I did text just a little bit about. Okay, just a little. We don't know each other's overall reactions but like there's a sex joke on like page seven of this book and I. And you were unavailable Jeff. So I had to tell Vanessa I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Stepped in spiritually, figuratively unavailable for the sex joke references. I read this in the plane in on the plane one go come back.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Perfection.

[Jeff O'Neill]

My only disappointment was I hadn't pre ordered anything ahead of time cause it was coming out while I was in New York and I just assumed I could find one in the terminal and I couldn't. I was a TA to jfk. It's under construction so I had my iPad. So I read on ebook which is not my ideal way of doing it but it was also, it was also fun.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I got up that Tuesday morning and drove to my closest Barnes and Noble which opens at 9am and I was trying to like play it cool. So I got there at like 9:07, not, not exactly at 9 and picked one up. I think I was maybe the first person to have gone in and gotten Dan Brown. Not so many doorbusters happening for Dan Brown these days.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Only in Prague apparently. I saw there was a. There was a piece about Prague had midnight release parties.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh I love that. And the person who was ringing me up was like oh we have these things for you. And there were these little limited editions. She said the store had only gotten I think eight of them little keyhole shaped pins. They the first lucky customers for D. Brown can take home. So I got a little sweaty.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There we are. It's been Eight years. Nine years.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Eight years since the last came out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So we've been a bit of a drought. And it's Dan Brown who wants to go first. Who, who dares to, you know, walk into the room and put on the virtual reality headset and tell us what they see when it comes to their experience.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'll take a crack at this. So it opens with a woman having a near death experience or an out of body experience. Her, her consciousness perceives that it of her body in a science lab and oh actually she's dying. And we learn that this person is a scientist and this experience at the very end of her life challenges all of her rational scientific assumptions that the afterlife is just a shared delusion. Lots of people get their assumptions challenged in a Dan Brown book. From there we jump into a big cast of characters. This felt like more characters to me than the typical Dan Brown. But you get there's usually a culty incel of some kind. And that character here is known as the Golem who paints, covers his head in clay and etches some letters into it. The Golem is going around doing some things. Then we finally get to Robert Langdon who is waking up in Prague smiling to himself, remembering that it's called the City of a Hundred Spires. And he is not alone. He's waking up in bed with a lady friend named Catherine Solomon. She is a noetic scientist which Dan Brown and Robert Langdon present as like the study of consciousness. But the more common definitions of noetic science are like these are the people who are trying to use science to prove that like ESP is real. And they're in trouble. They come to find out because she has written a book that could shake the foundations of society or poses some kind of national security threat or maybe both. And people are after it. And the giant security apparatus of Penguin Random House gets involved.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Huge plot point. We have a lot to say about PR age. It was weird because I was in that building literally the day before.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Day before.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it was so strange.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And from there we're off. We spend a day running through Prague and it's. The day starts early like Langdon is off to swim his morning laps before the sun is up. A whole lot happens before 10am we're all over historic places trying to crack codes. Langdon is getting set up for crimes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And they're trying to running all over an inappropriate footwear. That's a big plot point as well. We're running all over Prague.

[Vanessa Diaz]

There's a lot of brand placement in this book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have say I Have questions about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Trying to get comped at the Four Seasons. Is that what's happening with this?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Can we. Can I just do this now? I was going to say this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's do it now. Let's do it now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The biggest lie in this entire book, the hardest thing to believe, is that a Starbucks is responsible for the creamiest flat white on the island of Manhattan.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I was audiobooking at this point and thought I heard it wrong, so I rewound it. I was like, no, no, clearly, like, the creamiest flat white in Prague is at Starbucks in the.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, it's in New York. That's a new.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Oh, sorry. Yes, they're back in New York. Yes, I forgot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Starbucks logo makes an appearance on the page of the book. And I thought, how did this come to be? And then I read the acknowledgments, and Dan Brown, thanks a couple people for identifying, like, all of the great synergies that were possible. And then I started thinking about all of the brands that are mentioned in this book. Oh, yeah, men's clothing brands. There's a clutch purse, Patagonia phone charger situation. Kiana, which is women's clothing. Kuyana, like, how much of this is spawn?

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a great point, and I don't want to talk about it at all. I'm not in. I mean, you take the creamiest, whatever flat white in Manhattan undercuts all the good work Dan Brown is doing with the rest of the research.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, I don't care.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Feels especially blasphemous to y'.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't care if this is sponsored content. Get your bag, Dan Brown. But, like, let's be craftier about it. You just spent 700 hundred pages, like, red herringing us to death. I was surprised by many things. And the best you've got is let's try to make everyone believe that the best flat white in the entire city of New York is from a chain. Come on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a real tough look for that particular. I will say this about Robert Langdon, and I. I think I am fairly comfortable extending it to Dan Brown, who, as much as they are men of the world. Mm. I'm not sure. Their taste is amazing.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, I think that is extremely fair.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Anyway, so having said that, then we're off to the races. Vanessa, is this a good Dan Brown novel?

[Vanessa Diaz]

I am. I enjoyed it highly. I. I think part of it, yes. It had been eight years, et cetera. But as a person who has said multiple times that I feel like I've been in a bit of a reading slump where it's just taking me longer to finish things. I housed this thing very quickly. Again, there were enough red herrings and the funny brand placement stuff just made me laugh out loud enough times that I was like, oh, no, this is. I'm having a great time. And so, yeah, I do think this is a good Dan Brown book, Even with the little gripes I have with it. Aside, highly enjoyable if this is your brand of content.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Rebecca.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, 100%. I sat down on the couch Tuesday morning right after I got home from Barnes and Noble, and I started reading it, and I was cackling. So many of the Dan Brown hallmarks happen in the first 10 pages. It's like, he knows that that's what we're.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you think he's in on the joke? I had the same thought of, like, his longtime editor who he. Thanks. And there's obviously a character based on. Because, like, the initials and it's almost the same. Like, is it? Is it? We just don't tell Dan that that's what he does. Or they all howling and like, oh, he did it again. And italicized. Internal monologue aside, to make sure the reader understands what's happening. Because Langdon's own internal monologue is the most super textual inner monologue any character has ever had. But it's just for, like, they must get it right. It's a feature, not a book at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think they get it because there are a lot of bad versions of books like this. And this is well done and it's well crafted for what it is. Like, a Dan Brown book gives you a lot of opportunities to feel smart, Whether it's because you pick up on the references that he's dropping and you know what these things mean, or because you can hang through all of his very detailed explanations of them. And now you're a person who knows what these things are, and you're putting the pieces together, and he drops little breadcrumbs that make you think that you're figuring out, like, I thought on page 155 that I knew who the golem was. And then at the end, maybe I was wrong. And I had a moment of, like, Dan Brown is better at this than I even give him credit for. And I love these books. I think. I think it's very smart. I don't know. I don't know that he's like, yeah, we're gonna give him seven mentions of the Mickey Mouse watch. That's what the people want. Like, it's what I want. But I think people going, I think all of the, like, ingredients that go into the Dan Brown stew are things that he's. He and the publisher are pretty conscious that they're doing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Vanessa My sense of it was that if you like Dan Brown, you'll probably like this. It's not among the first drink. Well, the first rank is the Da Vinci Code. Like, it's that and then there's sort of everything else and we could maybe at the end do a ranking of within that. But if you like the Dan Brown experience, I think you're going to like this book and if you don't, you're not. Is that kind of fair? Vanessa?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, extremely. To the point where, like it almost. I mean, we just said this, but it sort of follows a formula, like, as far as what you're looking for. And like, if that's something that you hate, you're going to have a bad time. But if you showed up knowing that you were looking for the Mickey Mouse for like the galaxy, the weird incel, the like nefarious, you know, governmental or other power, like, if you go in with one of those things, you're gonna love it. It was a great time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I want to get to the structure, but I guess for those who maybe are on the fence, maybe they've liked Dan Brown in the past, but they're not going to run out it. One thing to recommend it. Well, I don't know. One thing that's a little bit different is this is in one city. It is Prague centric or not one day European hopping in one day. So we get more specific locations to the point, like hall of mirrors in one particular place. Like it's much more specific. Specific in that way. But you're not jetting around to all these different places. It is also noted symbologist Robert Langdon has very little symbology to do. There's some like password guessing. But you're not getting sort of a busman's humanities education here. There's some. But it's not the same as when you're at the Vatican or you're popping around. Do we even go to an art museum? I don't think we even go to an art museum.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They go to a museum and he's in that big library. There's that scene. There's a library and a hidden bookcase.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So, you know, I, I don't think it's. I, I think probably I like angels and demons better. I think I probably like Inferno better. But then after that I could. I think you could throw it you could throw it in with origin or God. What's is there's one more. I'm forgetting. The Lost Symbol. You throw it in with that second rank.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I thought it was better than the Lost Symbol. I remember just kind of. And maybe it was that the Lost symbol is set like in the US it's in DC it's in a city that I know pretty well. So there was less of a feeling of, you know, like delighted discovery along with Robert Langdon. What's happening in these places. And I think one of the reasons, or maybe the big reason that we think of the Da Vinci Code as the best one is that's the one that went really big and it was super controversial. That these books are about ideas that if they were to get out would make huge controversies and would rock the foundations of society. And then the book about that actually manages to do that, you know. And that also just seems like such a quaint relic of a different time than a book that's like. Like the ideas of the Da Vinci Code just don't seem that controversial from where we're sitting in 2025. But like the Catholic church was making big statements about it and the Today show was doing huge pieces about how this was like challenging people's long held beliefs. And has Dan Brown actually done the thing that his characters thought they were going to do? And I don't think we're in that realm here, but still very much fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the gag of going into the Louvre and finding clues.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

On Da Vinci's is just an all timer. Like lightning does not strike twice. Like there's none of the rest of them had anything close. Like in Inferno we get some of the same things. We're looking at the Mask of Dante and we're running around Italy. But it is, it's just an echo of that first high of that great opening sequence where the guy has written a message in blood and it's just for Langdon and only he can do it is pretty terrific. So we're grading on a curve here. If the Da Vinci Code is summa cum laude in the graduating class, we're going to figure out if we got an honor roll student here. Do we make the dean's list or are we going to do some summer school? We're going to do that after the break.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, so here are our grading courses, settings and locations. The big idea the bad guys Langdonalia which is just all the tropes of Robert Langdon. The love interest factoids and info drops. I could maybe love interest last secondary characters we can kind of lump in because that's something that's interesting thing here to do. Let's do this Jeopardy Style. Vanessa, where would you like to start? Of the ones that I just mentioned? I don't know if you have it in front of you, I texted it earlier. But does one of those strike you as being the one you want to you want to start out with?

[Vanessa Diaz]

You kind of already said this. I figured maybe get it out of the way. The locations and settings. I gave it a B. I don't know if we're doing pluses and minuses.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think we should.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

B plus.

[Jeff O'Neill]

B plus. Okay, say more about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it was.

[Vanessa Diaz]

You kind of already said it. I love the hopping factor because we get to just spend more time in some of these different cities and places. And so the fact that this was just set in Prague is not a bad thing. Prague is great. We got lots of cool factoids. But I did miss a little bit of that. Like let's go all over the place. So that was where I landed at My B. Yeah. Pretty straightforward, but that's where I landed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Have either of you been to Prague?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No.

[Vanessa Diaz]

No.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I was there last summer, so some of this was quite familiar. Rebecca, how about you? B. Sound about right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

First, I need to know if you went to any of the places that Robert Langdon.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, yeah, I did. What's the name of the park? Kalinka Kalaminka Park. Which becomes. We're in spoiler territory, I should say, which is a former, you know, bunker system that's been turned into kind of an arts park. I went there. I went to the Czech National Library. I went to the Jewish cemetery. I went to the National. I think I went to a lot of the places.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Sounds like you did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, I didn't cover myself in clay and, you know, find a blacklight hotel room to hang out in.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's time.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Why?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I know there's. There's time. I think. I think I'm going more of a B. Just because Prague doesn't have. I've been there recently, so I know these. But, like, can you picture any of these places? It's not like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre. Even if you've never been there, it's hard to imagine it in some degree.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I also went with a B because I. I wanted more physical description of the places so that I could try to picture, like, what this old fortress, this bastion, what these underground places looked like. And there are, instead. They're, like, pages of history of what happened in them, and there are a couple moments where that really pays off or, like, something really bad is happening. And Langdon is reflecting on, like, how many other times in this building's history has this thing or this kind of thing happened here. Like, those moments worked for me really well. But there's also so much moving around in Prague. Like in Da Vinci Code, we spend a lot of time in the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Was there a map in the physical book, Rebecca? Was there a map?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. In the front of the book? Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I didn't look at the ebook. I should have.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I never remember to do it. Like, once I'm in the book, I don't want to. It's like this thing about, like, Infinite Jest and the two bookmarks. Like, I don't want to keep just, like, turning to the front page and looking at the map of the city. And also, I don't care. Like, I don't care if it's actually physically possible for a person to get to all those places in those times or not. I don't care how far apart they.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Are, but there isn't a lot of time underground.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Like tunnels. Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And sort of descending tunnels, which is kind of a tough hang. And Dan Brown has many virtues. Describing action is not one of them. There are a couple of scenes where like, I have no idea. Langdon's got to run across the room in 10 seconds. We got to go. We hide behind this door. I'm completely lost. A little bit more of that stuff going on that I would like. Vanessa, let me ask you this. Did this make you want to visit Prague? We're like, oh, Prague sounds cool.

[Vanessa Diaz]

No. And not because I don't want to visit Prague. I have had it on my list for a very long time. But this book didn't fill me with the way that some of the other books made me like, oh, I want to go see that really cool thing. Because it just sound. It was so vivid and beautifully described. This was very much like, okay, I wanted to go to Prague because I wanted to go to Prague, but you didn't necessarily make me want to run off and jet over there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's not super romantic when you go to like this weird drip wall avant garde thing that opens back into a Marriott presented by Marriott Bonvoy, which was a kind of a tough moment. So I don't know if the spawn con got in way of.

[Vanessa Diaz]

In the way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'll give it a solid B. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did not know that Prague had like such an avant garde art scene and that I have wanted to go to Prague as well, but that sort of bumped it up for me. I like a weird art scene.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Okay. Rebecca, where would you like to go next? Big idea. Bad guys. Langdonalia, love interest and secondary characters factoids.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I want to go to the love interest.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes, Kathryn Solomon. We have an age appropriate love interest and they do it multiple times. It's big news in Dan Brown world.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, so first of all, we have had like, the foundation of the Shinsky lore has been rocked because how old is Robert Langdon? We have to talk about first. He's said to still be in his 50s in this book, but he was 46 in the Da Vinci Code, which came out 22 years ago.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Look, their timeline doesn't go along with ours.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm just.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's one battle after another with Robert Langdon.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm like describing this to Bob and he's like, wait, how old is Robert Langdon now? Okay, but Robert Langdon here is in his 50s and his lady friend Katherine Solomon is four years older than him. We get like some cougar action they do do it it multiple times. I'm never gonna get tired of a story where, like, they're crime solving together and the girlfriend is smarter. Like, yes, Robert Langdon is a noted symbologist, and he does some things and cracks some codes, but his lady friends are almost always smarter than he is, and I find that to be very satisfying.

[Vanessa Diaz]

And he's into it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, he's into it. She's age appropriate. There was nary a ponytail. There was a questionable leg shaving decision.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I wrote points for mid chaos negligee.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I would dial down the descriptions of the boudoir if I'm. It was funny experience. It's not, like, spicy at all. Like, okay, no, I didn't fade to black here.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I also wrote down, Dan Brown wants us to know that he bangs. And that was sort of.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is new to this book. Like, yeah, I wish that I did not know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think the horse groomers opened up some doors for him.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Rebecca. I wish I didn't know as much about the author of this book as I do because, like, I had to think more about Dan Brown's sex life than I would have liked to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

His fiance gets an acknowledgement in, like, the hammer spot in the acknowledgments, which I read all the way through.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, yeah, 100%. You always read the acknowledgments. But anyway, Katherine Solomon is great. And when Robert Langdon tells her that he can't go swimming in the hotel pool because it's so tiny that he hit two strokes and he'd be finished, she makes the joke that anyone should make in that moment.

[Vanessa Diaz]

And this is when Rebecca and I text. It's like, vanessa, we're on page seven.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I appreciate.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Teleport me out of here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, you know, if anybody's earned the right to be, like, a little bit looser and to have their characters play a little fast and loose with things, it's absolutely Dan Brown. And I liked it that Robert Langdon's world is getting a little bit rocked. Like, I could have used with less of the impossible to believe. Like, we just had the most traumatic day ever, and she's taking a bath to shave her legs, which, first of all, no one shaves their legs into the bath, because that's.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Why would you do that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then she's gonna go seduce him in her magical negligee after the day they've had. That's a. Like, I'm so glad she got from.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Another name brand that she dropped. I forgot. Or, like, the name of the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, I didn't notice that.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Okay, I thought she did, but she definitely mentioned, like, ooh, it might have been La Perla, which feels like the easy grab, but I feel like she was something else.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But you're right, she didn't. Yeah, there's a lot. If you want to, like, model your lifestyle on Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon, you can Google your way to it.

[Vanessa Diaz]

After this, I'm gonna do the most obscure Halloween costume of life and see who picks up on it. Like my Patagonia and my Kuyana bag. It's gonna be great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I just need you to know secrets.com affiliate, you can find all the products mentioned.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I could say that there is not actually a quan a handbag that has a battery, like a phone charging battery in it. So we invented some things here.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Notes, notes. Kiana.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, so the love interest. I give Katherine Solomon an A, maybe an A minus. But this is the best love interest we've seen in a Dan Brown book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The. The only thing. It's not really demerit, but it leads to the dynamic where she knows the things and he's more of in the MacGyver role where he's got to make fire out of her charger or like, guess the passcode because, you know, that's what he does. He doesn't have a lot of Langdon things to do. He just does it. Which again, some of that has been used up. How can there be another art museum based symbology thing? And he has. He gets some good licks in, but a lot of it is like very information security, breaking into things in different doors. I'm like, okay, the third passcode hack. Like, okay, I've had enough of that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I found some things about their relationship to be preposterous. Like that he does not actually know what's in her book that I wrote.

[Vanessa Diaz]

That I was gonna literally.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because she would not have violated the publishing etiquette that I don't think is real of making sure your editor reads it before anyone else.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's not a thing. That's not a thing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Also that they communicate by email because he doesn't like to text. Like, come on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I believe that one. I've gotta say. I believe that one. How did you feel about that? She was once his teacher, back in 1909 or whatever. They were at Harvard together.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He took that class twice. And it wasn't because he was looking.

[Jeff O'Neill]

At the black twice, checking to see if her legs were shaved to see what was going there. And 35 years later, they, you know, they have a wonderful day in Prague. She's part of this lecture series. That's why she's going. Yeah. I think this is. This is as fun of a love interest as we've had. It's not all the tropes, which is fine. We've moved on a little bit. So I'm cool with an edge. I will take us next to. Let's go with the big idea. Right. The big idea here is really vague.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The biggest.

[Vanessa Diaz]

The idea of idea files are in the computer. In the computer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do we think Dan Brown did shrooms and came up with this book?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Just a little bit of microdosing to get the details.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's definitely stealthy Buddhism in this book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There are some things going on. So the idea here is that consciousness is not what we seem what it seems. Katherine Solomon has sort of cracked the code on the idea of non local consciousness. That your consciousness is not only determined by your physical body, your unique physical body, but rather is some like almost a fifth state of matter that you can have access to. If your GABA count is down, is it up or down? I don't know. You mess with your GAB account and you can have more or less access.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Your brain, generate your consciousness, your brain receives consciousness. And that as the. As you alter the chemistry of your brain, you can become receptive to parts of consciousness or reality that we're not typically aware of. And like the big. One of the components of the big idea then is that there are people who have medical conditions that already predispose them to this. So there's. You're going to learn a lot about epilepsy here as well.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, I think I'm adding that to the Jefftianary that will show up on the vocabulary corner post. Click Dull bliss. And then so then a couple of things become interesting for various parties. Clearly this is a scientific breakthrough. It's going to blow everyone's minds about how we just need to plug into the great wave or unplug, you know, get rid of our blinders that go on chemically, whatever. And then also death is not that bad because you just sort of go back into the big pool of consciousness. Right. It's. It's the ultimate rejoining which you know, will totally change how we think about everything because we live in a scarcity environment worried about death. And then of course this becomes more interesting because the CIA gets involved because what they want to do is use this idea of remote viewing where you can send your consciousness, eyeballs being remote controlled through a pod to go see what subs The. The Ruskis are building. I guess that's what's happening. Very important. Where the subs are, like, there's.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Who are the bad guys? Like, I had to write my own little version of Red String Corner. Like, okay, so there's the Mr. Rich who is running this shady group, and he's directing the ambassador, and the ambassador is directing some other people who are after. We think one of the women who is working in the lab and thinks that she's been a recipient of like, benevolent treatment from the scientist who died at the very beginning. But, like, who is in on this and who's not and how much they know or don't know about what the CIA wants. And then there are all these, like, side plots of other bad guys. There are the people trying to hack into Penguin Random House's mainframe and the people supporting that effort. And they're like. They all sort of flow up to the same one or two people, but it's. There are just a lot of people all over the place.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The CIA is overstaffed as far as they can tell. And I think my. My shortcut for the villain is hashtag not all CIA, because some of them are good and some of them are bad.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Indeed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right? I mean, is it Vanessa? Is that what you understood? It's like, yeah, these were not. It's not just the big bad CIA, but like a couple of nefarious actors and they got out over their skis.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, I. I know we're bleeding into two categories here, but the bad guys thing was. Yeah, I had to. I had to sit because I was audiobooking this at some point, and then I had to flip back to print because I was getting lost on the bad guys. The names were like blending into one another, especially because obviously it's just one narrator. And it's like, okay, so I'm. So Finch is the guy I'm worried about. No, Finch, another guy. Okay. There's. Oh, yeah. My bad. Or.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, that was my bad.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, there's marines, but I don't know which of these marines are to trust. And there's like, there's the embassy head, but then there's also the people. I. It was a lot.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a. It's a lot.

[Vanessa Diaz]

That was. It was potentially too much.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think there's a better version of this book that's 150 page shorter. It's a long book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't think it's 78. It is a long book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's quite a long book. And it feels like it's got a little bit of the Return of the King, multiple ending sort of problems there towards the end.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But the confusion about who was doing what, I think it probably holds together. I'm sure that's not like a plot hole situation, but in terms of following along who the bad guys were. The CIA has this like venture capital army that they figured out a financial loophole where they're not going to have congressional oversight because it's technically a VC firm and they're funding some stuff and they're like secrets within secrets and who knows what's. And it's all very complicated. Like really, the false. The multiple false doors and fake doors in this underground bunker in Prague is a literal and figurative, like, representation of all the false doors and everything else.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And there's always like the big idea that the characters are working on, and that's the stuff about consciousness here. But then there's the big idea of the Dan Brown universe, which is generally the, like, there are shadowy forces at work and you don't know what they are. And I was thinking so much about how like this, you know, Dan Brown comes out, like, makes the big splash in 2003. And that's really pre. It's pre Internet 2.0 in the way. It's pre social media. It's pre the existence of like modern conspiracy theories. And people really loved the idea. Like, you can read these books and then you could go back to, you know, like the Holy Grail books that he used for research and then you could know some things that like, you know, a thing that most people don't know about how the world really works. And like the Dan Brown of it all hinges on that still that like, there are these ideas that are powerful and the CIA, like, everyone has an interest in them. The US Government has an interest in them. Businesses have interest in interests in them. It's not just about advancing science, but the ways that ideas can be weaponized. And the people who have an interest in like, suppressing ideas or keeping you from knowing the things that you're supposed to know. And for me, that's also one of the things that makes these books fun and entertaining and escapist is that like, the stakes feel high on the page, but we all are like in on how this is going to resolve and that it's not like Dan Brown is not actually out pedaling conspiracy theories.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, it's. It's more of a. It scratches the itch that I think a lot of people have that the world is other than it Seems other than we're told. And how many of these veins can he mine? Like, how many of them are out there?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And this idea that your own particular consciousness is but one window in a larger cathedral of consciousness and you're just sort of looking in or looking out is kind of. It's kind of a fun idea. And some of the things are pretty wacky and. And there are multiple. It really does groan under the weight of. There's this study that shows. But it can't be repeated. Right. Which is such a wonderful Dan Brown substrate upon which to grow the mushroom of his interest. Because like, she's like, well, of course it can't be repeated because it doesn't obey our normal law of science. And everyone who should have their head screwed on straight is like, but then it's not science. Like, that is not how this work. But it's fun, right? It's like, like you can then say, okay, well what if we did push this door open and there was all this stuff behind it? But I didn't find the. I guess I didn't find the idea of that particularly compelling. Like, the beautiful thing about the Da Vinci Code thing is like, if big, if true. But like this long history of Jesus had kids and they've been protecting this thing, which is kind of a really cool idea about bringing the history into the. Into the present. Whereas this one, it's like, yeah, okay, I guess if they do go 50 years in the future and the CIA's figure out how to grow neurons, I guess that's cool. But I got a little bit of like sci fi fatigue of like, there's a couple things that happens. Like, okay, I guess, Danny, if that's what happens. Maybe that's interesting. But at some point I kind of checked out on the plausibility scale. I needed just a little more plausibility stuff going on towards. Towards the end. Which is why the science stuff is kind of tough. It's a kind of a tough thing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

For some of this.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah. I kept went into this thinking like, well, all the like witchy people. And this is me speaking from my own culture of like, you know, witchy intuition and like Latin American culture of like, these people are like, oh yeah, we done known the consciousness. I mean, it's silly to think, but there was. There's a piece of me that was like, this is a thing that people I think could be convinced already exists. And so it didn't feel super revolutionary. And then once you get into the sciency bits of it, it's A little like my eyes glossed over a couple times with the. This study. This study.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This study.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Even if it was like fun to go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I agree. I'm like, oh, did Dan Brown go on a yoga retreat?

[Vanessa Diaz]

And now we syllaby may have made an appearance. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I think he referenced the Michael Pollan book how to change your mind. I think he was even mentioned in the book. I do think Dan Brown has one of the more enviable corners. And I would like very much to take his corner sort of the wire style, which is he has all the research budget in the world to go on. Basically. Real life rabbit holes.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, rather than spend 40 minutes on Wikipedia, he's gonna go visit the Swedish institute of whatever and spend like two weeks talking to people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He thinks.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Who doesn't want to do that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Prague Tourism Board Tourism ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Yeah, he went and he had a good time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you think Prague gave him a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Kickback at this point?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would check from the check.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Any of it A check from the checks. Secret of secrets A check from.

[Vanessa Diaz]

There are. There are checks. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The secret of secrets is here is just how much spawn con on is in that. So big idea.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah. What are we grading it?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. What do you think, Vanessa?

[Vanessa Diaz]

I landed at B, which maybe feels generous, but like I think I wrote. Yeah, I wrote B minus just because I was a little like, okay, like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that I think I could get with the B minus.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I could get with a B minus.

[Jeff O'Neill]

B minus 2. All right. I guess it's the dovetail into the bad guys. Also a B minus.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah. I went into this already going, is it the government or the church? Like, just because those felt like the two options.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Those are the two options.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Are the two options.

[Vanessa Diaz]

And I was not wrong.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Also, shadowy church NGOs are also a possibility for the.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

For a while it seems like the Golem might be a bad guy. And that was interesting, but also a very familiar archetype of Dan Brown character.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Like the Sylas character from davinci Crone film.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like the self slagelating monk.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. Like since we are in spoiler territory now, like the switcheroo where it turns out that the Golem character is not only like not a bad guy, is a hero and is not actually a separate person, but is an alternate personality of one of the other characters who has been so traumatized that she's developed dissociative identity disorder. That was. That to me felt like Dan Brown being like, you think you know what I'M doing here? You think I've given you yet another culty incel, you know, with a weird like, sex habit and our weird ritual where they go into their black light room and they have a capital R release about things like there's some real.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not even Rebecca. A ball gag.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, there's some really S and M stuff in early chapters that turns out to not be about sex at all. But at one point I was thinking like early in the book about the like, every question about religion is a question about sex. Every question about sex is a question about religion. And it feels like that's very much on the table with Dan Brown, the bad guys. Is it the church or is it the government? It's both. It's always both, baby.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's always both. I kind of like that that the resolution of the Golem's identity was in some way related to this idea of like. Yeah, our consciousness is what? It's more complicated. Like the big idea of Freud is there's more going on there than you think.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like everything else besides that is sort of wrong, it turned out, except the big idea there. There's more going on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was delighted by page. I was surprised by the reveal.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I was too. I was gonna say the page shaving for me in my mind that I wanted was a lot more about the CIA stuff, just because after a while it started to feel a little bit repetitive. Whereas I was really interested in the Golem for two seconds. When the Golem first appeared on the page, I did a skirt like is this going genre? And then obviously it didn't. But yeah, that was much more interesting to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The Golem also is a quick study with pressurized helium. Real quick study on pressurized helium.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Vanessa Diaz]

Mmm, that's so hot. But it's so good.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Now onto the daring dab Ghost wings.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yep, there it is. I love the spice level attempt the Popeyes on hot ones menu in stores. Our hottest collaboration yet. Love that chicken from Popeyes. Limited time in participating US restaurants.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's see, where else was I gonna go there? I guess that's it for now. Let's go to. Let's go with. Let's end with Langdonilia because that's a Rebecca corner factoids and info drops. We'll do that. We'll do Langdonalia. So this is just where you learn stuff. You learn about all the things you learn about PRH being the biggest publisher in the world. You actually get their market share of prh. I don't know.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Called PRH over and over again. I was like, yeah, baby.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The relative busyness of the George Washington Bridge was really important to talk about for some reason.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I just need to. We need to have a moment for the role that books and publishing play in this book. Like I want to live in the world that Dan Brown seems to inhabit where a book actually could rock the foundations of society. Like if somebody is coming out with this kind of discovery now that shit is coming out on the Internet. Like nobody is waiting until a book to drop. That kind of thing first of all. But everybody in this book believes totally that like some book that contains world shaking knowledge is going to come out. And then there is so much about the security apparatus of Penguin Random House where I was at first I was like, like, sure, they have a whole floor of it. But like if anybody knows about the security procedures, that was the one I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Was wondering about is me too. Is there anything to this? Were they right on the secure.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like the secure server thing? Did Penguin Random House incentivize Dan Brown to write about how high their security is so that nobody will try to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because we have Italian manuscript thieves now. I know you got to worry about those guys. Yeah, that was super strange. The doorman at Prhiro's Moment. Marcus. Was his name Marcus? I think.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I can't remember.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Amazing.

[Vanessa Diaz]

He was hard.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The CI ops coming into that really got owned by Marcus, I gotta say. They need to work on their training at Blackwater, whoever they are in the door.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The MacGyver solutions that characters come up with are really satisfying.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Jan and I trying to get in and out of the security at big.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Five publishers last week was a reenactment.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It was a re. It was a real look at. I don't think it would have been that hard for the CIA to get in. I think they could have figured that out.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There are details about like the specific kind of coffee maker on one floor of the Penguin Random House building. Like the one department has the good coffee and you can make your coffee and then you can go. When you're editing in the middle of the night, you can go sit in the beanbag chairs on the children's floor. Like, okay, okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I also. All the big five publishers have wonderful wall sized, amazing automatic coffee make. Ain't no Keurig at the editorial floor where the secure server guys and gals are working. That's not what's happening there. But that, but like, you know the big wall of books. When you walk in the PR at 1745 Broadway, you can just walk in there. By the way, you, you know, you have to go by. But if you want to go see the wall of books and they've got first editions. One of the funny things Jan and I were looking at is I think they think only short people are thieves because only like the top, only like the bottom three shelves have Plex plexiglass. If you're over like 6:1, you can just reach up to the uncovered books. You can just go.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Are you trying to tell us something?

[Jeff O'Neill]

A first edition Gloria Steinem or a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

James Michener or something, if that happened to be a thing you were interested in doing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I walked over, I was like, come on.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Come and check Jeff's luggage.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Look at this. Look how trustworthy I am. I'm not even stealing this while I could. Anyway, that' behind the scenes. Yeah. There's just a. I mean, some of that stuff is pretty fun. Like we clearly. He got out Rick Steves Prague and was looking at sort of the history, which I think is cool.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Maybe he's just been smoking weed with Rick Steves.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Maybe that's the layer we missed. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Has Dan Brown ever smoked a joint? Is a really interesting question. I. I just don't think they reference.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Robert Langdon trying it at one point in a way that was very like. But that's all I've done, I want to say. So, yeah, it was very like, I'm an innocent boy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I. I think because you get so much publishing stuff, you get a lot of Prague stuff, you get a lot of science stuff. The factoids and infrared stuff is pretty good. I give it an A minus.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I think that's fair.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah. The only reason I Minus. Well, not minus it. It was just funny is that he also seemed to take this opportunity. Just any gripe he had with people's use of like, the English language. Like I want to say on page 12, it was like, and this person used data. And for the life of me, one day I'm going to get everyone to know that data is plural or like something. It's just a slip.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, yeah. The editor character is definitely a in for old man shakes fist at Cloud and this editor who's like, written treatises against AI finally caves in.

[Vanessa Diaz]

That was the second one I wrote down.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

When he's trying to, like, he'll cross that line, but just to try to save Robert Langdon.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Just to try to save. Yeah. Still a minus feels appropriate.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I will say that I beat Langdon to solving one of the. The codex.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Me too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was like, that's clearly The Devil's Dictionary. R.L. what's going on? And so, like, maybe that's one where Dan Brown gave us one. Like, it's just backward. I feel like some of the code stuff was maybe a little phoned in.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, backwards.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's just backwards. Backwards.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's either phoned in or like, he's like, here's one for the fans that, like, if you've read a couple Dan Browns, you know, some. Some code is backwards. And if you know that codex is a word that. And that shows up in the code.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I was like a gift for the plebs.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is gonna. I thought. But related to that, like, that the devil's book thing was super interesting. I'd never heard of it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Very interesting. Yeah, I actually would. Maybe. Maybe if I had a choice. And my next down Brown book was just like 25 short chapters about something he's interested in. I might prefer that to another one of these. Maybe I just want that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Dan Brown's YouTube channel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I don't know. Brown's miscellaneous. I would totally be into that to some degree.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He should have a fun stack.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, my God. You should have a substack. I mean, he's got, like, researchers. He's got researchers that help him do stuff. God, what sounds amazing on that side. Okay, let's see. All right. Rebecca, do you need me to clear out for Langdonalia? So, like, what are the. We need to talk about his hair. We have to talk about his watch. We have to talk about swimming.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Gotta talk about the bode.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Some codes. We gotta talk about the hot bod. Where do you want to go?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, I'm. I did these in descending order of Frequency. So I started with the most frequent because I just stuck a big post it note in the back of my book and started making hash marks for the frequent Langdon things. So we get seven mentions of the Mickey Mouse watch.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's not always that many. I didn't think it was that many.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's not always him referring to checking it, but like Catherine makes a joke about the Mickey Mouse watch, but it gets at least seven mentions. Claustrophobia. Not a Robert Langdon book without claustrophobia. There are five.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, right, I forgot that was one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

At least five claustrophobia moments.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've got to say, he does very well because he's locked in a lot of little spaces underground for a long time. In Neria, she's shakes or narya breakdown.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think maybe he's had some exposure therapy.

[Vanessa Diaz]

He's got some meditation techniques.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, Bobby's. Bobby's gone to see somebody.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He's freed his mind.

[Vanessa Diaz]

He just sent it out.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Lap swimming happens. He swims laps one time. It gets referred to three other times. And then he swims to escape a situation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He's in the river. Yeah, he's in the frozen river.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He swims to escape from the frozen river. His hot bod gets mentioned at least twice. And then they're at least. Least three mentions of his height.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yes. He goes, how tall are we?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Are we thinking is 6, 2?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A little over 6ft?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Maybe a little over 6ft.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

6162. At least 4 inches over 6ft tall.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I knew you were gonna do that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

As a nod to fourth wing.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Never.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Reading at least four inches. Could he be six, nine? No one knows.

[Vanessa Diaz]

No one knows.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It could be a power forward for the Knicks for all we know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think 6, 1, 162 is what I'm going with.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not too tall, but tall enough.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's a reference to like 6 foot tall Robert Langdon, but there's like a more vague reference to his height previously. So I don't think we're stuck at six feet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know what got me thinking about this time? Because he's in Europe this whole time, right? And what in. In.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

In.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you're in Europe, six foot isn't a thing. You're like what, 175 centimeters? Like, what is that? What is the. What is the meridian across? Because. Because six foot is like a nice round number for us. But are like He's. That guy's 180 centimeters. What a hunk. Seems weird.

[Vanessa Diaz]

What a hunk.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Langdon.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A tall Drink of water. It's 180centimeter. Drink of water.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I love it here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I look forward to the emails you're gonna get about your. Your conversion.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'd love to know. I'd love to know. No, I'm. I'm broadening my mind. How does the other. How do the Europeans live? How do they know if someone's attractively tall if it's not 4 inches? At least 4 inches taller than 6 foot? They have no way of knowing. He was at least 13 centimeters over 175.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Boy, he's American hot. And he's not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that's true. Robert Langdon is definitely not European hot. That's a whole.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He's a nine in Prague and five in la. Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He jogs a lot. We get referenced when he's not swimming. Yeah, when he's not swimming, he's jogging. Dude works out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The guy has never walked at a reasonable pace in his life. He's either running away from explosions, swimming or jogging.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I lost track.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Or jogging to swim.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I lost track of references to Harvard. He sends a couple. I think he sends two coded emails. He receives some coded emails. There's only one hidden bookcase. And then there are lots of references to his hair. There's like a lot of. Now you know that he has a saucy minx with him. There's a lot of like, flirtation that happens between them. And the very last scene where he has fallen, like, notably, she has put on her negligee and he has fallen asleep and she wakes him up with a like, so sorry to wake you, Professor.

[Vanessa Diaz]

And I was just like, I literally, like, I wrote. Yeah, I was dying. And he's like, oh, my God.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There is some real, like middle aged wish fulfillment happening here. And I love it for both Robert Langdon and Dan Brown.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Those are all of the things I tracked of Langdon. Alia.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It seemed pretty heavy. Swimming was especially hit hard.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Someone on Instagram sent me a link. I should have gotten it ready for the show too. I think it was the Guardians review and the person was like, if you like Dan Brown books, this is a Dan Brown book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's so Dan Brown. It's very Dan Brown. Yeah. I'm giving it an A on Langdonalia. Like, you get a lot of rock.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All the flavors.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Easy is great to me. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The gen. My. I have this for you. My I told my family about it at dinner moment from Secret Secrets was that you can beat amaze by just keeping your hand and just follow. It's like, I'm going to use that one. There's a lot more like dan Brown as MacGyver stuff here. I don't remember a scene quite like him trying to set the manuscript p. Manuscript pages on fire in the library. Like we've gotten this before. That was a very like, maybe he's been reading Andy Weir. He's like, I need a little of that action going on here. Because that was pretty intense and I think you're right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But you said earlier that there is some space where Langdon is clearing out a little for Catherine to do more of the brainy work and he still has to have something to do. So Catherine is doing most of the intellectual work of the book. And then Langdon's gotta come up with the third option of the plan to escape the embassy when no one else had thought of it. He has to do those kinds of strategic things rather than then use his noodle.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I mean, he's been in enough precarious situations. He just sort of, I think, has.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He's cool under pressure. Yeah, he's very cool.

[Vanessa Diaz]

We're going towards the slow Born ification of Bond vibe.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The Born Ification of Robert Langdon is absolutely like an N plus one long read I would pay money for.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I'm telling you, you heard it here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

First a couple more minutes ago. I've got some questions for you and tell me what you think. One, do we get another Robert Langdon book?

[Vanessa Diaz]

I asked myself this so many times while reading and I couldn't quite tell. I was. Yeah. Especially towards the end. I was like, is this fool going to do something weird like propose? There was the whole, like when he.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thought we were going to get a proposal at the end.

[Vanessa Diaz]

And that would have been like a little mucho for me, but. Yeah. So I. I can't tell.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He.

[Vanessa Diaz]

It didn't feel wrapped enough in a way for that to have been a deliberate. Like, this is the last Robert Langdon story you're ever going to get. As to whether the appetite for it, et cetera, I'm not. I'm not sure. I don't have a good answer.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I hope so. I want, like, it's okay with me if this is a once a decade situation. If we get one more in eight or 10 years and it's like Robert Langdon has to solve codes on the way to accept his lifetime achievement.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I really need one like Harvard. Like, I need an academic one where, like we're getting into some skull and bones like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or like a civil war.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Sign me up now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Freedom trail.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Revolution.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Get on that national treasure. Nick Cage isn't doing National Treasure 3.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yep. Let's go. You can do it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If there's another Robert Langdon book, is Katherine Solomon still in the mix?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That would be new for him. There's never been a carry forward, but she's such a big part.

[Vanessa Diaz]

He also dropped.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Go ahead.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I said, she's such a big part of this. And, like, they're falling in love with each other. And I really did think he was going to propose to her in the final. In one of the final.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah, I was going to say he made enough mentions of, like, this one feels different kind of thing that I thought, okay, this could be a character that we see. So that does leave it open for me for us to get it again. And maybe now she's involved in some way, but I'm not sure.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Last question. If you're at Robert Langdon and Katherine Solomon's wedding, how insufferable would the vows be?

[Vanessa Diaz]

They'd be encoded, and only those of you who can decode it get to know what they said to each other. That's what.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's. I think that's right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Imagine planning a wedding with Robert Langdon. The symbols. I mean, he couldn't even the. Which flowers. The whole thing.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Is only findable if you, like, know how to. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you think being Dan Brown's editor is fun?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yes, 100%.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because if these are the things that make it into the book, imagine the phone calls that are like the. And what if. And what if they do this and what if they do that? And then when his editor is like. Like, buddy, I don't think we can go.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's too much. That's too much, Danny. Too much.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It must be a great time. Like, when Dan Brown is punchy and he's been down a rabbit hole for days. Like, what does this man's Google history look like?

[Vanessa Diaz]

Oh, imagine. Yeah. I said something to someone about the title, and they gave me of, like, really? That title of, like, Secret of Secrets. Like, you. At this point, you can just phone it in. He must not get edited at all. And I said, no, I think he does. He's just in on the joke. And that his editor has a really fun time getting to, like, Delet deliver this thing that we're kind of expecting, and if anything, just reining him back when he gets a little. Little wild.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Last question. Would this make a decent movie?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I'm a nerd who wants any of these adapted. I have a great time with them. I don't care that people think they're bad Like I. Me and Tom Hanks go way back and I'm. I would be down.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I want Robert Langdon to be recast at this point. I think like Hanks is too old.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I think he would have to be.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

To play him the way he like is written. I would.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Because he's only 50.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He's in his 50s. I. Yeah, I would love to get to do this. I don't know. But there's a lot of like facial recognition stuff in some of the early scenes. And there were great scenes around that in the Amateur that came out earlier this year with Rami Malek. And I was thinking like that kind of technology plays out on screen in a fun way. Plus all the running around prompts.

[Vanessa Diaz]

I think it would help me conceptualize a lot of that. A lot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Who do you get to play this?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think it's a very tough. It's a very, very tough.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because Glenn Powell in 15 years.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, he's. He's too much of a. He's. No one who shows up on Longhorn sidelines can do this. That's not. Something can happen. You need someone like Hanks who you believe to be smart, but he's not a dweeb.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like that somehow that's what we're supposed to believe. This is not somebody who spent 40 years in the library. He's out there swimming. Laughs and not put notches in his belt. I don't get. It's very difficult to do. Okay, we gotta go. Vanessa, thank you. Rebecca, thank you. Always a great Dan Brown.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thank you Dan Brown.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Thank you Dan Brown.

[Vanessa Diaz]

Thank you, Dan Brown.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook edition of the Making of Jackson Parish by Liv Constantine, read by Arifliako Susannalise Freeman and Scott Brick. Thanks again to Penguin Random House Audio.

[Audiobook Narrator]

For sponsoring Jackson had been working at KJ Parish Insurance for 10 months now, but it felt like 10 years. How anyone could make this mind numbing drudgery their life's work he couldn't fathom. He felt like a caged animal stuck inside the gray cubicle all day. The fabric covered walls closing in on him as he cold called people trying to sell them life insur insurance policies. Unlike the drones he worked with, he hadn't adorned his walls with anything. It was amusing to see the photos and plants they added as if that would make spending eight hours in a tiny hole more palatable. As he swept out of the men's bathroom, Jackson gave a brief nod to Marty Everett. 1 of 20 Lower rung insurance agents just slogging through the ground. Jackson had always known he'd end up here at his father's empire, the sterile and faceless monolith built into one of the richest and most successful insurance companies in the country. But Jackson had bigger plans. He'd promised himself that he'd rise through the ranks, push his father out and take over. His life was supposed to be extraordinary, just like he was. He stopped by the kitchen and made two cups of coffee. As he made his way back to his desk, he stopped at Misty's desk, the admin to the sales team. She had a killer body, undressed to showcase it to its best advantage, her cleavage always on display and her tight little ass squeezed into close fitting skirts. Her face wasn't much to look at, her skin in need of an esthetician's magic touch, and she caked on too much makeup. He flashed her a dazzling smile. Morning, honey. How's your day so far? She rolled her eyes. Monthly reports. I've been hounding Grant and Morgan for their numbers all morning. Thought you might need this, he said, handing her one of the cups. You're a sweetheart, Jackson. Thank you. And thanks for getting your report in on time. No problem. It's not fair for you to have to work overtime because of those slackers. She nodded. You're telling me. By the way, a few of us are going to happy hour tonight at Rookies if you want to join. This wasn't the first time she'd invited him, but the last thing he wanted was to waste an evening with these nitwits. It was enough that he had to see them all week, but keeping Misty happy had its advantages. Flatter her enough, and she fast tracked his requests. I'll try. Her lips parted in a smile and he thought with distaste that she should really get braces or at the very least smile with her mouth closed. These days you could get those invisible ones so that no one even noticed them. No one wanted to look at those janky teeth. Some people just took no pride in their appearance. Well, back to the grind, he said, flashing her his own perfect smile and returning to his cubicle. He picked up his phone to check his voicemail and was surprised to hear his mother's voice. Hi darling. Hope your day is going well. Just wanted to let you know I've referred the Daltons to you. Their son is getting married and he and his fiance need life insurance. It should be a nice feather in your cap. He put the phone down and shook his head. He knew his mother was only trying to help, but he could find his own clients. He didn't need her to scout for him. And it would be immediately obvious to his father where the lead had come from, as well as to the other associates. He already had to prove he was worth his salt, and not just there because he was the boss's son. He was about to place a call when his manager tapped on the top of his cubicle. He inwardly groaned. Chip Morgan gave Jackson a withering look, hair neatly combed and kept in place by too much gel, holding a stained coffee mug with the company logo.