← Book Riot - The Podcast
Book Riot - The Podcast
Project Hail Mary Gets a Trailer, AI Is Fair Use (for now), and more book news of the week
01:00:08
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- [00:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want, like that dream house or ride, is a great feeling. That's why the State Farm personal price plan can help you save when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [00:28]
Jeff O'Neill
Close your eyes, exhale.
- [00:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
Feel your body relax and let go.
- [00:32]
Jeff O'Neill
Of whatever you're carrying today.
- [00:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. This is. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts.
- [00:58]
Jeff O'Neill
This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'. Neill.
- [01:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.
- [01:03]
Jeff O'Neill
I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday weekend. For those of you got some time off over break. We're in the middle of summer at this point, Rebecca. It feels it was hot and now it's nice and cool. But these nice 60, 55 degree Portland sunny mornings don't talk to me for 55 minutes. This is a more important part of my whole existence that I dare admit that these like 12 weeks where it's really nice and cool in the morning.
- [01:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, it's a really mean thing.
- [01:32]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, you're coming here so you're going to enjoy this.
- [01:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
It was just kind of warm all the time. I'm very much looking forward to it, to being there with you next week. It'll be like two days from now by the time folks are hearing this in the feed because we're going to be doing best books of the year so far at Powell's on Wednesday the 9th at 7pm it's going to be.
- [01:51]
Jeff O'Neill
A good time link in the show notes there. Come visit with us. Let's see, on the housekeeping front, what do we need to tell people? We've been telling about that for a while. I get. There's some stuff come on the Patreon. You can always join over there. What else do we need to tell people? Anything kind of in a. In a. You know, just the regular time.
- [02:11]
Rebecca Schinsky
You know, we are back into regular podcasting here for a little bit. We're going to be doing a live mail episode episode together next week. That'll be the Wednesday episode next week. As you guys are listening to this, we will have already dropped something extra special and fun into the Patreon, a project that we're going to be working on. So if you want to join us and do some reading along of some things, you can of course do that@patreon.com BookRiotPodcast this Powell's event for best books of the year so far will eventually come into the public feed because you know, that's not a timeless thing. Kind of like the best books of the century so far is. So if you're on a different coast and you can't join us in person, like fear not, you will get to hear it. And then we'll be back in the swing of things. We'll be checking in on the hot list. We're going to be power ranking the books of 1995 in a couple of weeks.
- [03:05]
Jeff O'Neill
95. Wow.
- [03:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
Always a fun exercise.
- [03:11]
Jeff O'Neill
Berry Giant. We're going to do Patreon in August. So if you really want to get to that because you, you like Rebecca may be reading the Buried Giant for the first time.
- [03:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes. Join us to read the Buried Giant. Lots of fun stuff coming this fall as well. But as we were saying on the IT books episode, like summer is a little slow for new releases. So I'm really enjoying a chance to like I'm reading some debuts and some stuff that I might not have gotten to in a different kind of year, but also picking up just things that interest me. I don't feel quite as beholden to the new release list as I typically do. So that's been a nice part of summer season.
- [03:45]
Jeff O'Neill
We will be doing. We're going to go out with a bang. I don't know if Katabasis is ending the summer with a big bang beginning fall with a bang. I don't know. But we will be doing a deep dive into Kitabasis in the main feed at the end of August. When that comes out, do we know who's joining us for that? Is it just, I'm sure, I think probably other people.
- [04:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's you and me and Sharifah for sure. I think Vanessa might be joining us.
- [04:04]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay. So be on the lookout for those things. All right, let's do a break and we'll get into the news.
- [04:10]
Julianne Szbos
Today's episode is sponsored by Horrible Women, Wonderful Girls by Julianne Szbos. Head to wonderfulgirlsnovel.com now and click on the free cookbook link just for Book Riot listeners. Because Pie Neighbor, what happens when a sharp tongued misfit collides with a world famous brand built on small town secrets and lies? Behind the pastel perfect promises spun by an angry army of prairie Karens lies the ugly truth behind Littleburg's Wonderful girls. Freshly fired, forced into rehab and on the run from MeToo Hollywood, JC Grayson did not come to play. With no filter and nothing to lose, she sets out to expose a billion dollar fraud. With her job on the line, her sobriety at stake, and fellow outcasts relying on her resilience for their reinvention. Meet the hilarious new series heroine we didn't know we needed. Flawed, fearless and refreshingly unfiltered flipping the script on empowerment, image and identity in today's America. Thank you once again to Horrible Women Wonderful Girls for sponsoring today's show. And don't forget to click on wonderfulgirlsnovel.com for that free cookbook link. Today's episode is sponsored by Harlequin Publishers of let's Give Em Pumpkin to Talk About By Isabel Popp Textile artist Sadie Fox did not sign up for this when she agreed to come home to Pea Blossom, Indiana. It was to care for her father's beloved pumpkin patch. The deal was that just for the summer, she would grow a ginormous pumpkin, win the Indiana State Fairs Pumpkin Contest, and finally win back her father's grudging respect. Instead, a horde of wild hogs destroyed the entire patch. Which is precisely when the annoyingly sexy sunshiny next door neighbor shows up. Josh Thatcher is a tech millionaire who traded in the office for growing gourds including experimental squash hybrids. And for the life of her, Sadie can't understand what he sees in her sweary tattooed, prickly self or why he's offering to help his biggest competitor. But a storm fueled kiss proves there's something growing between them. Maybe it's just an attraction, maybe it's more. Whatever it is, it's already bigger than Sadie's fast growing pumpkin or the secret that Josh has been hiding. This is a spicy small town fall romance that you can read in one sitting. The perfect kind of read to transition from summer to fall. And this book is by one of our very own Book Riot contributors, Isabel Popp. The book is available now@harlequin.com thank you once again to Harlequin for sponsoring Today's show.
- [06:36]
Jeff O'Neill
Shop 4th of July Savings at the Home Depot right now and get up to 40% off plus up to an extra $600 off select appliances with free delivery like Samsung. From all in one washer dryers to smart refrigerators. Upgrade to tech you can trust with Samsung appliances. The Home Depot has what you need to simplify your routine. Don't miss 4th of July appliance savings at the Home Depot. Free delivery on appliance purchases of $396 or more offer valid June 18 through July 9, US only. See store online for details. We've got to put on our powdered wigs and robes again. Gotta talk about copyright law sometimes when we were talk we talked about this case brought against Meta on the behalf of a bunch of authors. I think just authors and not publishers who I'm not sure, but some creators, text creators, cadre versus Meta. This was a couple of years ago that it started. We said it take a couple of years to create the court system and it did. Federal judge ruled the company did not violate the law when IT trained its AI tools on 13 authors books without permission. But it left the door open for. But you didn't pay for these books. You just got them off the whatever. And that's part of it. But I think that I know people disagree with it, but from just sort of a I'm putting on my world's most reasonable man pageboy cap because that's what we wear. I don't know if I told you this Rebecca. We wear page boy caps.
- [08:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
This makes sense to me that the world's most reasonable man wears.
- [08:05]
Jeff O'Neill
That. You trained this system like you a person would train by reading the books. I can disagree with it. One could disagree with. I don't think it's ironclad, but it on its surface kind of makes sense to me. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but it kind of makes sense to me. Does that. Does that interpretation?
- [08:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, this is. It's. The headlines about this have been interesting and a little bit frustrating to me because this decision came on the heels of the decision about the Anthropic AI case in which so as a refresher for folks or if you're just catching up in the Anthropic case, the judge ruled that copyright was not violated by using like by using the books without the author's permission. It was basically like anthropic is fine to do this as long as they legally acquired the books. So in the cases where Anthropic had pirated books, which a lot of the books in that books three data set, I think almost all of them were pirated. And then later on I think Ars Technica had a piece last week showing, like, Anthropic had destroyed millions of books in service of scanning stuff into. Into its servers, but that the pirating was illegal. So if you are training in the Anthropic case, if you use a copyrighted material without the author's permission to train AI and you paid for the book, you bought the ebook, you're fine in that case. But if you pirated it, that's probably not okay. In this Meta case, that judge disagrees with those findings. And these are both federal judges in California. So, like, this shows you how far away we are from any kind of set, bold agreement about how this stuff works, that the judge in the Medicase says it was not great to do this, but you have not shown that enough harm. He basically said the authors made the wrong argument that they didn't provide enough evidence that market harm was caused to them because one of the arguments that they made was, well, the full text of our books are in there. And so these AI tools could just basically reproduce the text of our books. And that does violate our copyright. And he said, actually, when we've tested it, like, what Meta has shown is that it could only reproduce about 50 words at a time.
- [10:15]
Jeff O'Neill
And so could a Xerox machine, by the way. Right, right.
- [10:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. So, like, it's a technicality. The headlines were all like, another big win for big tech. I think that what we're seeing here in some ways is the judges are teaching plaintiffs how to file better cases against these companies. Because in the Anthropic case, he says pirating books to do this is not okay. Okay, well, then you need to come with another case about how your rights were violated because they pirated your books and did this. And then this judge says you did not demonstrate enough market harm. And he basically lays a yellow brick road for them to follow of how you could demonstrate market harm in another case. So this is by far not like, the book is not shut on how AI copyright is going to work. It's not the end of the story. I don't think, for, like, authors don't need to feel despair at this point that these big tech companies are just forever going to be allowed to take your stuff. Little pieces of these rulings add up to, it's not okay to pirate them and use them. It's not okay to just take stuff without permission, but you have to demonstrate the harm caused by it. And they are, I think, laying out potential groundwork for future cases to do that. And like, Lord knows, there are many More authors whose books were included in those sample sets and could take these breadcrumbs and form them into a new lawsuit that maybe is more likely to succeed with what these judges are looking for.
- [11:39]
Jeff O'Neill
The Judge Chabria. This is verbiage directly from the decision. However, the court does take very seriously the idea that AI models trained on plaintiffs books could, quote, flood the market with endless amounts of images, songs, articles, books, and more, thereby harming the market for the original work. He probably takes it more seriously than even the plaintiffs did. That's not what they. They were really on the. Is it transformative or not? He's suggesting, as you say, that if you were to come say you go ask dad gave you the wrong answer. So maybe go ask mom, but with like a slightly different angle.
- [12:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And you see this like we see this even sometimes in Supreme Court cases where you'll hear one of the attorney attorneys arguing and one of the justices will be like, well, if you were to ask it this other way, like, what if one were to consider this other piece? And I think that's what this judge in the Meta case has done. So we have by far not seen the end of folks initiating lawsuits about this. They should continue to. We are also. It's going to continue to take forever for cases to work their way through. But I think also at some point lawmakers have to catch up. Policy is going to have to catch up to where the technology is.
- [12:52]
Jeff O'Neill
One of those people I think we talked about a couple weeks ago that had there was like an AI generated or AI or an LM was used to generate sort of a confusingly similar book in Amazon. Right. We talked about those. I wonder if one of those people would have a, a much stronger case like here, side by side in the listing. Here's what I wrote and here's what this other entity wrote and it was you and it used an LLM or AI to do it. Is that market harm because they made a duck that looks like a duck and walks like a duck and it was made out of rejiggered my duck. But I'm trying to sell my duck.
- [13:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Or like Amazon is full of. If you search for like popular titles and classic books, especially things that are in the public domain, often even the first result in the Amazon search results won't be the actual book. It will be a summary of the book that has been AI generated and some of them are pretty well packaged where it would be easy for a person to be confused. Like they don't all say, like summary of the Great Gatsby. It might say the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And then like in smaller details that this is a summary of a thing. If you own the copyright to something and we're talking about stuff that's not still in public domain. If I'm Lauren Groff and someone is doing a summary of Fates and Furies and it's been AI generated and that's coming up higher than my book in the Amazon search results and it might be then directing sales towards something that is intended to be a sale of my product. Like that is a firmer leg to stand on.
- [14:20]
Jeff O'Neill
I think you'd have to prove a. Some either prove some sort of material harm. I don't know how you prove that in this particular case. Like can Groff say I would have sold X number more of Fates and Furies? I don't know how one does that. That's why I'm not a white shoe lawyer. I also don't know is someone going to cop to using an LLM in writing those things? Is there a way to prove that? I don't know. I'm guessing that things may emerge in the future. I didn't write about this in today's books because I did some other things with today in books. I'm kind of going on a jag. I did a big list of summer reading and then today I. Yeah, you're on a little like today I'm trying some stuff. I don't know why. I guess there's things I felt like wanted to do, but something I might still link to, I don't know is there was a conference in. In the uk. The bookseller was covering it and they had someone who was like a market prognosticator saying he thought by 2030 AI would write bestsellers. I'm just putting that in the. We can come back in five years and see.
- [15:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
Interesting. Okay.
- [15:15]
Jeff O'Neill
Because that. That would suggest to me, like it's hard to me to see a way for an LLM not to write a bestseller that wasn't trained on prior bestsellers. How you prove market harm to James Patterson, like will be, I think, very difficult to prove. I would be curious to see how.
- [15:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
That would be argued and also what kind of bestseller matters there. Because AI, like there have been a lot of studies recently about how AI is flattening language in several fields. Like apparently a lot of academics are all starting to sound the same because they're using the same same. Like because the AI tools have certain preferences like chat, GPT puts EM dashes in everything, whether it makes sense or not. And as a person who loves a well deployed EM dash, this offends me deeply.
- [16:02]
Jeff O'Neill
You know what? I don't care. I'll be on the side of the robots with the EM dash.
- [16:05]
Rebecca Schinsky
I made mine by hand. I put them in there on purpose. Yeah. And like I know how to use a semicolon chat. GPT don't come for me. But like they're a very repetitive stylistic things from AIs and so that could work for an author. That there are a ton of their books available and relatively simple language, relatively similar and repetitive patterns, that kind of thing.
- [16:31]
Jeff O'Neill
Maybe like Heart of Gold, like we can ourselves right now.
- [16:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, talk about like, you know, World War II lady librarian spies there. Certainly you could generate something. How good would it be? I don't know. But you could generate it in terms of like a literary bestseller. I'm a little more skeptical, at least.
- [16:47]
Jeff O'Neill
At this point, too much. Because it's stepping on something. We're going to be working. We're actually going to be recording tomorrow. But I had occasion to read something not written recently, let's just put it that way. And wow, does it feel different. It's been a while since I read something quite a bit older.
- [17:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
Something old. Yeah, me too.
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Jeff O'Neill
Even if it's not written by LLM. The kinds of literary novels I tend to read now, they're different, of course, but this particular book, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be Cage. I just don't want to step on it for everyone. I'm sorry. Like it uses. It has sentence structure and word choice that just is so unfamiliar. It's. I found it frankly kind of thrilling. But it did make me think. I was like, oh yeah, sometimes you don't even know. This is water, right? And this is water of the ChatGPTL. I'm thinking I've even seen it and stuff that. Because I've used it for some things, like I don't use the writing but like for research. It sounds like Wikipedia, right? Because Wikipedia is very much similar and that's not bad. It's actually quite useful and utilitarian. Is it artful? This is the question I still don't know about.
- [17:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And it's very good at reproducing language that has already been used and reproducing structures that have already been used. It is not currently good at inventing. But yeah, the deep research function on ChatGPT can be quite useful. You don't want to let it write anything for you.
- [18:07]
Jeff O'Neill
It's not. It's not voicey. And even if you try to make it voicey, it does it in kind of a marionette sort of a way. But, you know, I think it's interesting to think about here because I think most authors are morally objected to this idea that their novel got put into this big text slurry out of which other things are being made right. That does not seem to me to be the winning art. I mean, I think just legally, but also, I guess if forced to choose, I guess I sort of agree with that. And I say this as someone who has tens of thousands of words in these slurries.
- [18:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, maybe more than that, more.
- [18:45]
Jeff O'Neill
Than most novelists, probably the amount of writing I've done online.
- [18:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's important for us to say that, like, we're not operating under any delusions here. Of course, Book Riot has been crawled for all of these things. The whole public Internet has been crawled for all of the AI models. And I also know this because I recently, like, on a Lark, asked ChatGPT to describe my writing style to me.
- [19:05]
Jeff O'Neill
How'd it do?
- [19:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
Pretty well. And you can ask it, like, to describe our podcasting style. And it also can do that pretty well because it has access to things and to public reviews and all sorts of stuff. So, like, it's. It's all there. I don't think if I gave it a writing assignment and told it to do it in my voice, it would be something that I was happy with. But it can. It can give you adjectives that are correct for.
- [19:29]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, I talked to John Warner about this. He asked it to do something using it, plugged in a bunch of his works and said, like, that's a B minus version of what I do.
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Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
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Jeff O'Neill
Which is still kind of amazing if you think about it.
- [19:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
It is. And I think, like, all of these, to come back to your point, like, all of these arguments so far are hinging on fair use, which is that you can, if it's been legally acquired, which at least the judge in one case said, as long as you bought the book, if it's been legally acquired, and then it's a sufficiently transformative use of the material, it's allowed under fair use. And these judges so far are finding that it is sufficiently transformative and that it's not just a straight copy or reproduction in a way that violates the author's original material. I don't know enough about the fine points of, like, of fair use to know if I agree with that or not, but I understand the beats of logic there.
- [20:21]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, I mean, I think this goes back to our very early discussions about like, imagine someone who has read every romantasy that's been published and then they want to write their own.
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Rebecca Schinsky
Right.
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Jeff O'Neill
Well, it's not. You can see how this could be analogous to. It is the. Is the speed and scale that an alum can do that same thing different enough for. For it to violate the law? It doesn't sound like it is. And at first blush I guess that makes sense to me. Right.
- [20:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. I think what we're driving towards is not, I think a. A reality, like a possible reality that we're driving towards that I think is more likely than the one where AI companies are just not allowed to use anything is some sort of framework that requires permission, licensing, payment, something else.
- [21:12]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't even know if they're gonna need that, Rebecca, because if, but if it's this, if it is fair use, they don't even need that.
- [21:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, but it's fair use and like if you combine these two decisions, it's fair use if the books have been legally acquired.
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Jeff O'Neill
So if I've got a copy, I mean Google has done this and they've atmosphered and OCR'd into their database.
- [21:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
So maybe there's not licensing. Maybe I like licensing could get onto the next layer of it. Like is it actually okay if you buy one copy of a novel and then you use it to check it.
- [21:40]
Jeff O'Neill
Out from the library? I mean if we use the human analog, that's fair use. I can check out atmosphere of the library and read it and then like be influenced by.
- [21:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
But let's say you buy one 15.99 ebook of a thing and then you upload it into your LLMs training module and then you make millions and millions.
- [21:58]
Jeff O'Neill
Of dollars based on something that looks nothing. Like that's the thing. Like the step. The step C. Profit is still very murky on this. From. From the. Not.
- [22:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, yeah. From the art making and the. The drawing lines of what harm looks like and how the harm was caused. Like that's where the art and the science of this is going to come in. For somebody to win a case, I don't think it's impossible. I do saying think the judges are like showing people how to start constructing more compelling cases. But it's not going to be as simple as you took my toys without asking.
- [22:31]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, and the other thing I don't really understand because like, will it be the company's fault if someone makes a fourth wing copy that they decide, yeah, this actually is harmful to fourth wing because of whatever. Will that be the company's problem or that be the individual user's fault?
- [22:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's a great question, right?
- [22:51]
Jeff O'Neill
It's kind of like the gun maker versus the, the, you know, Colt isn't liable yet for shootings, nor is Toyota. When a drunk driver kills somebody, is it. The. Is it going to be a situation where. Yeah, sure, there's all those. But it's up to you not to make something that's sufficiently like something and to pull market from it.
- [23:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
And right. What. What's the market harm and who profits? So like if I write a novel, it gets sucked up into a large language model and then someone else is like some other user is able to make basically a copy of it and they put it into the marketplace and profit from it. Like, well, then I think I can pretty clearly demonstrate some kind of harm. This is a copy of my thing. You are selling it. But if they just, if, just. If ChatGPT just produced a copy of my thing and the person read it by themselves in their living room, never tried to profit off of it, have I been harmed? And I think the, I think the authors in these cases would say that they have been harmed, but we're not. How are you going to prove that it's the proof is really going to.
- [23:55]
Jeff O'Neill
Be the challenge in a normal sort of plagiarism case. Right. We see this from time to time. I had this book and someone else took my idea. You have to prove a couple different things. One is that they had some way of knowing, right. That where it came from. Or if I like, I'd like to write a dragon romance trilogy or something. Maybe I say something. I don't even know that series already exists. I asked to tell him to pump something out and it looks a lot like it. Well, that doesn't really pass the case because you have to prove that I had access to this thing. Well, I guess it just exists in the world and it's really messy. Super messy.
- [24:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
It is messy. We see cases like this, like in genre fiction pretty frequently. Anytime something gets big, you can go back and look at the ones that happened around Twilight. Some of them have happened around big, big romanticies. I think Sarah J. Maas has been the target of at least one where somebody is like, I had the same idea for this book 10 years ago and Sarah J. Maas stole it or whoever, Stephenie Meyer. And they owe me money because Twilight and like simultaneous invention is a thing. Ideas get into the zeitgeist and People come up with similar inventions at the same time. People write similar books. Like, all kinds of things happen. But unless you can prove that, like, Stephenie Meyer knew that you had this idea and had access to it, and then, like, will, like, willfully and knowingly took your stuff and made her book and you should be the one who got famous instead. Like, all you have is your word there, and that's not good enough.
- [25:25]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, but this case, maybe there will be some case where you have to check some box saying, like, anything you make based on this is still subject to plagiarism charges, even if you don't know it. Because, like, you're outsourcing your reading. Essentially, you're out. You've outsourced plausible deniability.
- [25:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's going to be really interesting. I didn't have a chance to get, like, all the way into it, but I saw that there was a little TikTok dust up this week over a creator who said that when she gets in a reading slump, she has AI generate stories for her to read based on exactly what she wants. And like, this is a use. It is a thing that people are doing.
- [26:02]
Jeff O'Neill
It sounds so much like it's like Huxley, Soma in the Brave New World to do that. I mean, I. I don't want to yuck on other people's yums, but I. There's a part of me that's like, kind of wigged out by that.
- [26:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
I know. I have a feeling that if we went and like revisited that, revisited Fahrenheit 451, we're gonna find a lot of things that make us real squirmy real quick.
- [26:21]
Jeff O'Neill
Let's see. Let's move on down the line here a little bit. Oh, great. Even better. I was in this weird position where I was actually walking outside of the Supreme Court when the last cases were being handled. On dump day last Friday, my family and I were traveling and through no intended. We saw people with doing their stand up setups out there as these decisions coming down. Not a great set of decisions for someone of my particular political persuasion, I would say, as it relates to our subject area here. The Supreme Court says parents can opt out of positively affirming LGBTQ public school lessons. It sounds just like what it says, I think, Rebecca. I mean, like, the headline's kind of there. And this is not one where there's some, like, other wrinkle or other side of it. Like, this is kind of the decision, right?
- [27:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And this is the. This is one of the cases that really points Back to the fact that it's not about the books, and it hasn't been about the books. The book bans have been the thin end of the wedge for broader cultural and legal change. Kelly Jensen, who wrote the piece for us at Book Riot, really does a great job laying out that this is a religious liberty case, and it's about being able to use religious liberty to shape what happens in public education. So the highlights are that in 2022, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland adopted a new curriculum for K through 5 that included more LGBTQ inclusive books. When they started, parents got advanced notice of the titles and they could opt their kids out. But in 2023, the school board changed the policy for several reasons. There was a lot of absenteeism. It was really administratively disruptive, having to manage, like, who was supposed to be in which classroom at which times, and getting the kids in and out and providing them with alternative lessons, a huge burden in terms of management. And also the students who remained in the classroom for those lessons, some of whom might identify as LGBTQ themselves or come from families that have LGBTQ folks, felt ostracized and stigmatized by it. So school board removed it. A group of parents from a wide variety of religious backgrounds sued. The district court, found that they had not been sufficiently damaged that their religious liberty had not been harmed. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. And so then they went to the Supreme Court in this case as Mahmoud versus Taylor, which basically found that just being exposed to material that presents LGBTQ people in, like, a neutral or affirming light presents a threat to someone's religious liberty. And if you think they're going to stop at LGBTQ content, you've been asleep.
- [29:05]
Jeff O'Neill
For, what, 10 years at this point?
- [29:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes.
- [29:08]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah.
- [29:08]
Rebecca Schinsky
I listened to a great strict scrutiny episode where they really dive into, like, the details of this case. And one of the things that they pointed out on that episode is like, okay, so a lot of religions don't believe that women.
- [29:20]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, this is.
- [29:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
This is outside of the home.
- [29:22]
Jeff O'Neill
This is the 14th amendment stuff. Right, or.
- [29:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Right. Yeah. So what happens when one of the picture books has mommy going to work and I have a religious belief that says women shouldn't work outside the home? Does that mean we're not doing that at all? Like, the. This is an erosion of the separation of church and state that the far right has been seeking since the 80s?
- [29:43]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I mean, I think. And I'm no legal scholar, as is made clear over and over again. I didn't know that we Maybe we should have gotten a JD when we started the podcast a while ago. It's super useful to us. But because gender is not a protected class, I think it is different. Now we can argue, you know, that's a different case. But the civil rights of 1964 is race, color, religion and sex, but not gender. And that sex, gender thing has been a thorn in a lot of people's sides in a lot of different ways. In this particular case, it's not about women, it's about lgbtq. It's like gender and sexual orientation. If that was covered by the Civil Rights Act, I don't think this would have passed because this, you, I don't think you can say because the sex part is protected. I actually don't think in that case that even this Supreme Court, he says with all of the optimism that's left in his bald head. But because gender continues, this is why we have the same thing about gay wedding cakes. Right? Because it's gender. Sexuality is not a protected class and covered by the rights.
- [30:44]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And it's, it's that sexuality is not a protected class because gender related cases in the ways that like gender and sex get conflated, come back usually to a sex case like that, trans people, discrimination.
- [30:56]
Jeff O'Neill
That though, I mean, I mean, we don't have.
- [30:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, it does, it does. But like, you can say, you know, like, workplace harassment is sexual harassment where like women are experiencing it because they are, because of their sex, because they are female. And that make, like, that sex makes them a protected class. It's all very complicated. I, I don't think I have as much optimism as you do here. This is a big win for the far right. So like, and it, it is a big win for parental rights for that whole argument. So we will see someone else. I feel confident. Try, try another avenue.
- [31:38]
Jeff O'Neill
They're not getting a lot of no's that inclines them to stop doing this, let's put it that way.
- [31:42]
Rebecca Schinsky
What else can I opt my children out of? And then we'll see what happens when those things go.
- [31:47]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, the other thing Kelly's done a really good job of, of saying is the, it's not just the specific effect in force of this law, it's the secondary and or even primary effects it has. Like, what if you're an LBT plus teacher? What if you, you're. What if you're. I mean, of course, if you're a student, what if you're a parent? What if you and I, and I think this is maybe an underrated place. Maybe you just don't want to deal with a bunch of parents opting out and having to do two lesson plans. You know, like that kind of.
- [32:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
That was the. That was the original reason that they stopped allowing opt outs was that it was too. There was too much administrative burden for managing who was going to be in and out of the classroom and also having to construct alternative lessons for them because, of course, the alternative already exists. If you don't want your kids learning what we teach in public schools, you get to homeschool them or send them.
- [32:34]
Jeff O'Neill
To private schools or send them to Sunday school after to say, you know, that stuff. We don't believe that. You know, just kind of.
- [32:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right. But this also, as Kelly points out, then opens up the door for further attempts to use public money to fund private education.
- [32:47]
Jeff O'Neill
Why not evolution, though? I mean, I was thinking about this. Why not?
- [32:50]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, evolution. I thought about that too. Like, that was a big fight. When I was in high school in Kansas in the late 90s, there were kids, like, protesting that evolution was being taught in biology. I would not be surprised if somebody tries that one again, because I was.
- [33:04]
Jeff O'Neill
Walking around and I even hate to put this into the LLMs, I'm so going to say this out loud, but I was walking around the Museum of Natural History on the Smithsonian, right? This is federal property, federally funded. There's a whole bunch of stuff about evolution and climate change in there. And we know both the current administration and their sort of bureaucratic stormtroopers, that these people are like, what's to stop? There's nothing. I guess that's the answer. The environment is not a protected class, right? I mean, I don't know if there's something about science or some other. I don't know. But, like, in this particular case, if it really holds that the establishment clause protects people from being exposed in public settings, from things legal, things that somehow go against what they themselves believed. You cannot opt out. The brontosaurus skeleton, right? It's either there or it isn't. You can't opt out. The. The bronze statue of Charles Darwin my son was delighted to have his picture taken with. I'm not kidding. Like, they're gonna take it out if they get chance. They just will.
- [34:05]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, they're trying it in the national parks already. Like, there was a national park snitch line that the government opened up and put signs.
- [34:13]
Jeff O'Neill
You know what people? If you find yourself calling this the national park snitch line for climate or I'm sorry, whatever Rebecca's about to say, it's time to go home and get off the Internet and like just read the encyclopedia for like six weeks straight.
- [34:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And that was for Please report any negative depictions of American people or American history. So like if this national park or national monument talks about like, I don't know, a history of racism, oh say.
- [34:41]
Jeff O'Neill
Maybe the first four floors in the African American museum I just toured on something.
- [34:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Right. Then please report it now because the Internet knows what to do with the snitch line. It was flooded with, you know, fu and I believe that they have shut it down as most of those nichelines and you know, email addresses for reporting various things to this administration have been shut down. But that doesn't mean they're not going to try.
- [35:06]
Jeff O'Neill
You can read more about the decision there. Again, we point you both. We both point you to Kelly's continuing excellent coverage. Let's do another sponsor break. Put us in a box. Go ahead. That just gives us something to break out of the because the next generation 2025 GMC terrain elevation is raising the standard of what comes standard. As far as expectations go, why meet them when you can shatter them? What we choose to challenge, we challenge completely. We are professional grade. Visit gmc.com to learn more.
- [35:44]
Rebecca Schinsky
If you went on a road trip.
- [35:46]
Jeff O'Neill
And you didn't stop for a Big Mac or drop a crispy fry between the car seats or or use your McDonald's bag as a placemat, then that wasn't the road trip. It was just a really long drive at participating McDonald's.
- [36:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [36:31]
Jeff O'Neill
About things we're excited about and movies.
- [36:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Baby, let's go to the movies.
- [36:36]
Jeff O'Neill
I the last movie I was this excited for I was trying to think this is Project Hail Mellow. The trailer dropped on on Monday was probably I don't know. I really don't know because I love the book and now I've said before that the coin of the realm in my house is four quadrant family entertainment and it's not conventional four quadrant because ours don't line up to these sort of retrograde whatever.
- [37:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
But it's your household's idiosyncratic.
- [37:08]
Jeff O'Neill
So it's just a four that all four of us want to go to and be excited about. And maybe you've read the source material. It's science, it's Gosling, it's Andy Weir. It's fun. It looks great. I mean, I don't know what else I want from a let's go to the movies as a family situation and have a great time next March.
- [37:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, no, it looks great. I'm so excited about this Gosling being like, but I'm not an astronaut.
- [37:33]
Jeff O'Neill
What if Mark Watney didn't want to be there?
- [37:36]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right. Like just on the off chance that you have not read Project Hail Mary. So you don't know why we're excited. It's a book about like a mission into deep space because Earth is at risk, like humanity.
- [37:49]
Jeff O'Neill
The sun's being slow, leaked essentially.
- [37:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, we'll just cease to exist if we don't do something. And so they put together a ragtag team. And the main character, played by Ryan Gosling, is an 8th grade science teacher who finds himself drafted into this mission and then is the sole survivor of the journey into space. And he wakes up after having been asleep for a long time and like, what the hell is he gonna do? Because he's not an astronaut, as he repeats several times in this trailer. And then he meets an alien and like they have a. It's kind of a two hander buddy movie, but it's, it's the astronaut and the alien. And how they were going to handle the alien has been one of the great mysteries we've anticipated from this. The audiobook is like, is the way to experience Project Hail Mary. I was looking for it this morning and was reminded it's exclusively on Audible.
- [38:43]
Jeff O'Neill
Is that right? I don't think I knew that it isn't.
- [38:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
The Martian and Project Hail Mary are Audible exclusives. I was like, oh, maybe it's on Spotify Premium. And I went, can I get it, Libby?
- [38:52]
Jeff O'Neill
Or does, I mean, I wonder if Audible's even put it on.
- [38:54]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't know. I found a bunch of translations of Project Hail Mary in other languages you can listen to on Spotify.
- [39:02]
Jeff O'Neill
Dust off my German, I'm sure.
- [39:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
But that is the like platonic ideal audiobook experience. I think it's really one of the.
- [39:09]
Jeff O'Neill
Great audiobooks and like, I'm not as efficient versed, especially in fiction, but in like the top five pantheon audiobook experience. It's like that lab Girl. Jim Dale doing the Night Circus and one other series I'm not going to mention right now. But like those, like they're sufficiently great.
- [39:27]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, they're great. It's. It is so good. And the Martian like is. Is stands up. It's like rewatchable to the nth degree. It's a great plain movie. And the team behind Project Hail Mary is a lot of the same fol. Drew Goddard wrote the adaptation of the Martian. That script like moves and is so funny and just a great time. The adaptation of Project Hail Mary is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller who you pointed out did all the spider verse movies. Super well received. Like this is a crack team. It looks like Lionel Boyce from the Bear is also. Yeah, it probably was a billion dollars. It's gonna be a great time. It comes out March 20, which is a super interesting release date.
- [40:09]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't know why it's not a summer movie.
- [40:11]
Rebecca Schinsky
Spring break. Yeah. This feels like it should be Memorial Day weekend.
- [40:15]
Jeff O'Neill
I think another thing that's interesting to think about here is how mad is Ryan Reynolds when he saw this trailer? It's like that's a Ryan Reynolds part. Ryan Gosling.
- [40:31]
Rebecca Schinsky
All the Ryan's. I don't know. I like Gosling. I have a little.
- [40:34]
Jeff O'Neill
No, I prefer Gosling too. But it's like kind of snarky and like you know, talking to the camera. Breaking the. Not quite breaking the fourth wall. But there is video journals. Not unlike. Listen, it's the Martian. I mean if you had to describe it. And that is fine with me.
- [40:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
That is me too. I'm looking forward to this. Maybe we can coordinate another reason for me to come to Portland because I would love a shared trip to the movies to see.
- [41:01]
Jeff O'Neill
Would love it if like the. That Rocky was a surprise to people who hadn't read the book.
- [41:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. When it got to the. Rocky is the name of the alien. And when we got very close to the end of the trailer without seeing Rocky and I thought like, oh, they're gonna make him a surprise for the movie. And I was excited about that. And then they revealed him, but not too much.
- [41:18]
Jeff O'Neill
Something that's based on source material that's out there. Like do you really buy. I mean people. Again, way more people will see this than have read the book though this has done quite well. I also say for people who have seen or read the Martian haven't done Project Hail Mary, I can double eyeball confirm that both Ames and I think it's superior to the Martian.
- [41:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's really great. We reread the Martian a couple years ago. The Martian is for an adaptation nation. Yeah, it holds up. But I do think Project Hail Mary is a more. Yeah, it's more interesting. And the Rocky thing is such a great surprise element. In other adaptation news this week, Jennifer Aniston is set to star as the mom in an Apple TV series of I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. I think we knew this adaptation was in the works, but we've been waiting on real info about casting. This is the only casting announcement.
- [42:11]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, this is the casting announcement. This is the one that I wrote about this today in books today.
- [42:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Like, yes. Yeah. Like, we don't know who will be playing Jennette McCurdy, but the mom is the center, like, the nucleus around which everything else revolves in the story. Gonna be interesting to see her in a role. Like, she's, like, overbearing stage mom. Really, like, high anxiety, kind of needy vibe. I remember from the McCurdy.
- [42:41]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, it's in the title, Rebecca, that this is not someone we're going to be like. Oh, and I guess, spoiler alert. Like, it's not an ironical title, right? No, I mean, McCurdy, it's not. She's not a demon. Like, she shouldn't be in jail, the mom. I don't think. Nor does McCurdy, but it's. She had a really hard time with this person, and she had a lot of problems and a lot of flaws. I'm not sure if I'm going through the people that are eligible in terms of age and stature for this. Aniston wouldn't have been. When was. I mean, I'm not a morning show person. Are you?
- [43:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
I watched the first season of it, so I guess I'm no longer a morning show person. I wanted to see what it was about, but it didn't keep me on the hook.
- [43:22]
Jeff O'Neill
Because the mom in this is you. You need to avoid a stereotypical stage mom adaptation because that cliche is already out there. Like, just doing that is not interesting.
- [43:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think we. I think you're looking for a vibe adjacent, like in the same universe to what Jamie Lee Curtis is doing on the Bear.
- [43:40]
Jeff O'Neill
Just. You need to be 30 years younger, essentially.
- [43:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes. Yeah. Like a generation younger. But that overbearing, really, like, anxious, neurotic, controlling can be mean. That kind of situation. And I. I don't know how I feel about Jennifer Aniston trying to pull that off. We'll see.
- [43:59]
Jeff O'Neill
I just don't know. I mean, what's the Internet meme from 10 years ago. I'm not sure she has the range. Like, Jennifer Aniston seems to be very good at playing Jennifer Aniston, like, roles. This doesn't seem like one of those. I think. I think she may be even a little old at this point. Because when McCurdy starts at Nickelodeon, she's, like, 9, and I think her mom's, like, 35. Like, whatever. People up and down. Yeah, I had a name, and I'm gonna throw this at you.
- [44:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
Tell me.
- [44:21]
Jeff O'Neill
Jennifer Lawrence. Different Jennifer.
- [44:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
I was just thinking that, yeah, I think she could do it because she.
- [44:26]
Jeff O'Neill
Can play mean and sympathetic. Weirdly. I don't know how she does it. It's, like, built into her DNA. Even from, like, something like Silver Linings Playbook, where it's like, yeah, she can be spiky, extremely spiky, but also seem extremely vulnerable at one. At the same time. And I think you need to pull off a spicy suite like that. Because ultimately, I think. Think if it's just that Aniston is a monster, this is not one of those movies. Like, it's a very difficult thing to point off. And I think it's going to be hard.
- [44:50]
Rebecca Schinsky
Well, that's. I think. I think that's also what made the book so compelling, was that the McCurdy does not turn her mom into a caricature.
- [44:59]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, it's. It's very human writing that does that, and that's harder. You do not have that tool to deploy in a series like this unless you're gonna have a voiceover or something where McCurdy can characterize her mom in one way that is just not sort of the figure standing there before you. So somehow they're gonna have to figure out a way to provide that. Like, both the gimleted eye, but also maybe the slightly more. Now that she's gone and I'm an adult, I can kind of step even a half a half foot away. So it's not so close and painful. And that alchemy that the book captured, I think, is gonna be very difficult. I'll just say that I think it's very, very difficult. Difficult to pull off where something like Project Hail Mary, I can. I mean, literally, I can see it in the trailer, and we've had the Martian before, but, like, it translates well. Whereas McCurdy's characterization of her mom and her own interiority do so much to get us invested in their relationship and recognize that something bad is happening, but without being just judgy McJudgerson the whole time.
- [45:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. You know what I want is, like, Sally Field from 40 years ago.
- [46:04]
Jeff O'Neill
Mean, like, Shirley Mlan, maybe if we're going to go back. I'd take a think, Mlan, but yeah, I think we're thinking along the same kind of line.
- [46:10]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Shirley Mlan in the. In the Steel Magnolias mode of, like, I've just been in a bad mood for 20 years. Yeah.
- [46:18]
Jeff O'Neill
I kind of want the best for everyone, but also, this is what I'm doing and you can't tell me.
- [46:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right. Anyway, and then in other in hot Greek summer adaptation news, there's a teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan's adaptation of the Odyssey, which is coming out next summer. It has not been released online because Nolan did not want to release the teaser trailer online. He just wanted it to go into theaters. But of course, people go into theaters with their cell phones and some of them disregard the PSA that comes on before the movie with the guy in the hoodie, where they're like, don't do this. So somebody records the teaser trailer for the Odyssey and put it up on X. A few sites, like, if you go digging, which I will confess.
- [47:04]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh, you did. I didn't.
- [47:05]
Rebecca Schinsky
You can watch the teaser. I did. You can. And then I ended up at a URL that I was like, oh, you.
- [47:10]
Jeff O'Neill
Have to throw your laptop into the ocean now.
- [47:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right. So far it's okay. But it was dicey for a second there. So the Hollywood Reporter did a thorough write up of what is in the trailer because they didn't want to link to this, you know, illegal thing. I will say the teaser trailer has what I believe to be the correct amount of John Bernstall.
- [47:33]
Jeff O'Neill
So it's all John Bernthal. It's hot Bernthal Summer is what you're saying.
- [47:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
Sign me up. We just came off the Accountant too. I just watched the season of the Bear. Jon Bernthal is an important figure in my household right now. He's doing togas Matt Damon is gonna wear.
- [47:52]
Jeff O'Neill
So can you tell what characters people are playing in the trailer?
- [47:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, if you know the story. Give me two.
- [47:59]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, we know Damon. Give me two.
- [48:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
We get Damon as Odysseus, and I can never remember, oh, it's his son, Tom Holland. You get Tom Holland as Telemachus, and we don't know who Bernthal is. It's like an unnamed. But I think he might be the. The primary guy who's trying to woo Penelope. I forget that and, like, marry me, because Odysseus is never coming back. Yeah.
- [48:24]
Jeff O'Neill
Do we know, because Cersei. Do we know that people are playing like the pantheonic gods?
- [48:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
Do we know that we don't know anything else about casting? Like who is Lupita Nyong' o going to be? No idea.
- [48:35]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay, I, I so I did a quick rundown of some of these and I said the confidence for me is as high as it can be for something like this. Right. Because I know the source material, it's going to look great. Even if I have to plug my ears, it's going to look amazing. So that's raises the floor a little bit. So I, yeah, I'm going to wait to not have to go to spammeforever IO to see the trailer. So I'll wait, I'll see it as Christopher Nolan intended.
- [49:05]
Rebecca Schinsky
Did you ever, did you ever see the Return last year with, with fines. And it was that, that was great.
- [49:11]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay, Frontless foyer brought to you by Thriftbooks. You're doing your summer reading. Maybe you want to read some beach reads. Maybe you want to get a couple used books to take with you on the plane, leave at the hotel, leave at the beach, leave in a little free library.
- [49:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
I love that move. I love leave the books on the communal shelf. At the resort.
- [49:29]
Jeff O'Neill
I was in a coffee shop and in I think Philadelphia and they had like a little as pop up pride based little free library where people could leave pride and they had some stuff there. I thought that was a very cool idea. But ThriftBooks has over 19 million title sprouts. There's probably more now since we started this like 19 million 19.1 million titles to browse.
- [49:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
19 and then something change.
- [49:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Free US shipping on book orders or $15 delivered right to your door. I think people know how delivery works. I don't think we need to say delivered right to your door anymore. Just like I'm going to stop saying right in your inbox. Send it for email. Go right to your inbox. I think we all know where email goes. Can we all decide to stop saying right to your inbox? I don't. I'm never unsure. Like if I sign up to this email, is it going to show up in my refrigerator? Where am I going to find this?
- [50:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh God, I hope not. Can the fridge stay sacred?
- [50:19]
Jeff O'Neill
My new I will second smart underwear I just got that has an LED screens not going to be printing out my terrifying New Yorker daily. It's going to come to me. What have you been reading, Rebecca?
- [50:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
I just read the Mobius book by Catherine Lacy.
- [50:36]
Jeff O'Neill
You short formed about it?
- [50:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, before I Started it. It's super interesting. Like, I was mostly intrigued by the pitch of the book, that it's two books in one. And if you're holding it, like, if you're holding it the way you would normally hold a book with the spine on the left and you're looking at the COVID it says the Mobius book by Katherine Lacy. But if you flip upside down to the back, it looks exactly the same. If you open one cover, you get the start of a memoir about a bad breakup that she went through. But that is, like, it's not a straightforward memoir about a breakup because this is Catherine Lacy, and she does experimental kinds of things. So she's wandering in and out of breakup story and also just pondering, like, love and relationships and loss and all those kinds of things. You make that about 120ish pages. And then the writing starts looking upside down, which means that you're supposed to flip the book upside down, open it from the other cover, and start at the other page.
- [51:33]
Jeff O'Neill
I haven't had enough Dramamine in the last two weeks. Do I need to have. Do I need a half a quarter just to get through this?
- [51:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
And the other part, like, the other half is a kind of a mystery. You can start them in either order. Like, you can read the mystery first and then the memoir, or the memoir and then the mystery. They kind of speak to each other, but they're not. You're not flipping back and forth like it is just one straight jag of about 100 pages and then turn the book upside down and go another. But really interesting. And she even kind of gets into at the end of the memoir section that, like, she had started. She's talking to a friend. She had started writing something, and she struggles with endings. And I thought, well, this is a really interesting way to avoid.
- [52:15]
Jeff O'Neill
Because all we're going to end in the middle from both sides. Right?
- [52:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right. Because you're just gonna write about your breakup kind of until you're done writing about it, and then transition into this thriller story or start on the thriller side, and you don't really know which is which. Like, the synopses on the inside covers are the same. The contents don't start getting different until you get to the dedications, and then the dedication is different. And then, of course, like, the stories are different. I just thought this was a fascinating way to put a book together. And it's the kind of construction that could be really gimmicky in other hands. Like, it could have a choose your own adventure flavor. But Catherine Lacey is a great writer and she has an interesting mind that I just like to spend time with and I wanted to see what she would do here. I think she makes very intentional choices. So this wasn't. Let me do this with this book just because it'll be kind of a weird gimmick. They do feed into each other. The stories can be kind of recursive in their own ways, in the way of a Mobius strip. It's not for everybody, but it's also not nearly as, as weird as the setup of the book would make you think. It is. Like it feels like reading 120 pages of someone winding their way through reflecting on a relationship. I really liked it. I'm glad I picked it up.
- [53:24]
Jeff O'Neill
This was on my list. I don't know that I'm going to get to it, but that supports it rather than diminish my interest in it. I did a little place based reading.
- [53:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I can see that on your notes here.
- [53:35]
Jeff O'Neill
So this could be a Patreon, I guess, if we can do the episode of Jeff's travel notes from the East Coast. But one of the hidden gems was the USS Constitution Museum in Boston. The USS Constitution.
- [53:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's pretty cool.
- [53:48]
Jeff O'Neill
The original six frigates built for the U.S. navy in the early 19th century. And one of the, one of the top five highlights of our trip was talking to a model maker who volunteers on Mondays to build his old ship models for Let people Watch. And we talked to him for like a half hour.
- [54:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh my God.
- [54:07]
Jeff O'Neill
Built it from the.
- [54:08]
Rebecca Schinsky
And you're gonna apprentice for him. This is the end of it.
- [54:12]
Jeff O'Neill
Building this 1806 British frigate. And every. It's a quarter, quarter inch, a quarter inch to the foot or something like that, I can't quite remember. But it's, you know, it's a couple feet long. And he's building it by hand and every. It's not a kit so he's like has to cut each piece and do everything. He's about halfway done and he's 3, 500 hours into it. So.
- [54:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh my God.
- [54:33]
Jeff O'Neill
And he was talking to us about the boats and his passion and anyway, so I got into this, this early, these early days of the U.S. navy and this is the history of the founding of the US Navy and six boats essentially, I guess ships at this point.
- [54:47]
Rebecca Schinsky
Happy vacation reading.
- [54:49]
Jeff O'Neill
And I really liked it. And it made me think that if Amanda and Bob need a book club book, it's this is perfect for them. We get Founding Fathers arguing about like taxation, great boats. And then we get Tall Ships for Bob.
- [55:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't think they've had a book club book in a while.
- [55:04]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, they could pack on six by Ian Toll. I came out 20 years ago from Norton, but it was pretty.
- [55:11]
Rebecca Schinsky
Bob was actually just lamenting that he hasn't had a tall ship book in a while.
- [55:15]
Jeff O'Neill
So it's pretty good. I also read because I was at the US Constitute the Constitution center in Philadelphia and reminding myself of the founding fathers and all they did. We took a tour of Independence hall where you know, they hunkered down and wrote the Constitution in the summer of 1787. And I was reading about the details and I, you know, it's weird. I never really thought about the. I knew about the sort of philosophical underpinnings or putting together government, but I never thought about the actual prose that they were fighting about. They had a committee on style as part of this. And so I'm like, I'm into this. So I like, well there's got to be a book about this. So I picked up the summer of 1787 by David O. Stewart. Also 2008. I guess 2008 there was a reflection of colonial era dad books. But it's a TikTok account of sitting in this hot room in Philadelphia and boy was it hot. Was that Philadelphia 101 degrees and how they wrote the note. James Madison keeping notes, Ben Franklin cranking Joes from his chair that he didn't get out of because he had gout. Also they're trying to avoid the yellow fever which broke out like every summer in Philadelphia. That's what I told the kids. Like you know, it's hot now, but at least we don't have the yellow fever. One out of the ten of us would die in this bus. But I read that as well. My other place based reading was the Doorman which is a mystery thriller by Chris Pavone. The titular doorman gets involved in something and it's a little bit of a grittier. It's not SA Cosby, but it's like toward SA Cosby from Only Murders in the Building but still has a little Only Murders in it.
- [56:47]
Rebecca Schinsky
It.
- [56:47]
Jeff O'Neill
I thought it was great. I loved it.
- [56:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
Cool. We're moving away from. It's not just the Maids anymore. Now we've got.
- [56:52]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean eventually this is going to be like every single person who works in a high end apartment building will have a thriller written from their point. Are you the porter? Are you the doordash guy? Are you the dog walker? Every single one of you is going to have to solve a crime. These crimes, they're just bodies. All these probably the most dangerous buildings to live in in America. A high end apartment building in New York City at this point. The body count is enormous.
- [57:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Man, I love this themed reading for you. I was watching you enter the titles into the agenda before we started the show and I was like, jeff had a good couple weeks.
- [57:23]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, I was up early and I had some reading to do, so I enjoyed that there. Okay, bookride.com listen for show notes. Come check us out at pals July 9th. It's just in a couple days, so you're probably going to need to be either on your way here by boat or plane or be in the area.
- [57:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
If you're coming by boat.
- [57:39]
Jeff O'Neill
If you're coming from a frigate, you needed to leave. Well, probably 1789 right when these things launched because it took some time. Rebecca. Also being on boats in the late 19th century, it was a real drag, as I was reminded again. Yeah, shoot us an email podcast book riot.com. we'll talk to you all later.