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- [00:02]
Craig
This is a Headgum podcast.
- [00:06]
Andrew
While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Overdue, a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read.
- [00:52]
Craig
My name is Craig, and this is Ground Control. I'm Andrew Craig. Your signal's coming in a little. A little weak, buddy. Could you. Could you mess with your knobs and your instruments?
- [01:05]
Andrew
I'm in a spacewalk.
- [01:07]
Craig
You're on a. You're on a spacewalk recording a pod. At the time we're supposed to record.
- [01:11]
Andrew
Our podcast, I'm recording from the moon.
- [01:15]
Craig
Wait, are you on a spacewalk or are you on the moon?
- [01:18]
Andrew
I just spacewalked to the moon.
- [01:21]
Craig
Whoa. And boy, are my arms tired.
- [01:23]
Andrew
There's a subway here. Eat fresh.
- [01:27]
Craig
Public transit or a sandwich.
- [01:29]
Andrew
Underwhelming sandwiches.
- [01:32]
Craig
Okay, all right, all right, all right.
- [01:33]
Andrew
Though they got rid of the yoga mat material.
- [01:40]
Craig
Yeah. I don't know. A subway on the moon. Why would you take. Why would you take precious oxygen up to the moon, right? And then make it stink like subway onions? I feel like that would be. They would have to outlaw it. If we had a functioning lawmaking body, I feel like they would outlaw making the refined oxygen stink like Subway onions.
- [02:00]
Andrew
It's similar to the 711 stink. That taquito smell.
- [02:04]
Craig
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [02:05]
Andrew
And it's like when you get.
- [02:08]
Craig
Science could get a subway on the moon, but science cannot make a subway not stink like onions.
- [02:14]
Andrew
It's like, we're going to talk about the book that Andrew read for our podcast, where each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. But I just need to say, like, I don't think that taquitos inherently smell bad. I think that there is something that happens inside of a 711 where the hot rollers and the warming box just, like, conspire to create nasty aromas.
- [02:40]
Craig
Exactly. What it is, is when you eat something that's really tasty, but then you're still tasting it in your mouth like an hour later. Somehow they've managed to. Somehow they've managed to make stink smell like that tastes where it's like, yeah, this is still identifiably that tasty thing that I had earlier, but it's just lingered for too long and it's worn out. It's welcome.
- [03:03]
Andrew
What if we had a subway on the moon and an alien showed up and said, this smells great? Great.
- [03:09]
Craig
That would be a successful First Contact, I think.
- [03:13]
Andrew
I think that would be this on Star Trek. Andrew, what book did you read?
- [03:18]
Craig
Subway. In Star Trek, Subway is free because there's no money anymore.
- [03:21]
Andrew
Oh, fair. So it's a no dollar footlong.
- [03:25]
Craig
Star Trek said in one movie, one time that we don't have money anymore. And the entire franchise has been struggling with that for decades since.
- [03:37]
Andrew
Well, yeah. Well, you could ask the replica. Is it called the replicator?
- [03:40]
Craig
They do have replicators, yes.
- [03:42]
Andrew
Is that the thing that makes your food out of whatever?
- [03:45]
Craig
Yes, it makes it out of. Just makes it out of molecules. It just kind of transmutes the matter into different kind of matter. But Craig, it does. It is like there are people and I don't know if they're like kind of future RFK types or what are. Like. It doesn't taste as good as food I grew and made myself.
- [04:05]
Andrew
Oh, yes, that. Does that explain why like Picard isn't. Does Picard have like a wine?
- [04:12]
Craig
I mean, he does have a winery, but that's not. It's. It's more of a. It's more Captain Benjamin Sisko, who's from Nolan's.
- [04:18]
Andrew
Okay.
- [04:18]
Craig
And he does cook authentic creole cuisine and like make fun of replicators all the time.
- [04:24]
Andrew
Great. Okay.
- [04:25]
Craig
But no, to answer what I think your question was. No, I don't know that you could replicate money. I think there's something that is just like when you try to make diamonds and you get cubic zirconia. There's something that's a little off about money that you would make in a replica.
- [04:39]
Andrew
I think my actual questions would be, could I make a sandwich longer than a foot?
- [04:43]
Craig
Depends on how big a replicator you got. Like, I bet they got different sizes, like toaster ovens or whatever.
- [04:48]
Andrew
Yeah. Okay.
- [04:49]
Craig
You could get like an industrial like part like a party size replicator.
- [04:56]
Andrew
Check out my hoagie tray. Nobody's on the Enterprise asking for a.
- [04:59]
Craig
Hoagie tray, though I also don't know if it's like a printer feed thing where you could grab one end of the sandwich and just slowly kind of pull it out of the replica.
- [05:09]
Andrew
Like a magician.
- [05:10]
Craig
Yeah. As it keeps replicating more sandwich like as you pull it. I'm not sure how that worked.
- [05:16]
Andrew
I love that.
- [05:17]
Craig
Yeah. So I read Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which does take place in space, which is why we're telling all why we're talking about Subway on the Moon.
- [05:25]
Andrew
Yep.
- [05:26]
Craig
The other reason I think we're talking about Subway on the Moon is this book is no plot Just vibes, baby. So I don't like. Well, there's. There's stuff to talk about. We will talk about.
- [05:35]
Andrew
Yeah, there is.
- [05:35]
Craig
We're gonna talk about Samantha Harvey. We're gonna talk about the book, which I did mostly enjoy. But okay. In terms of like concrete stuff you.
- [05:45]
Andrew
Talk about, you love to have.
- [05:47]
Craig
Yeah.
- [05:48]
Andrew
Some characters, some plot points and. And have them mishmash together in a way that you can then have opinions on how they mishmashed together.
- [05:58]
Craig
It does, it does make it easier to structure a podcast that way. Yes, sure. I did. I read one of the. I'm gonna. I'm not gonna play the song right now, but I did read a reviews website about books.
- [06:08]
Andrew
Oh.
- [06:09]
Craig
Where people. Yeah, people rate things on like a five star scale. And somebody said that Samantha Harvey described this as a space pastoral, which is evocative, I think. So tell me about, tell me about Samantha Harvey.
- [06:24]
Andrew
Yeah, happy to tell you.
- [06:25]
Craig
Let's get into it.
- [06:25]
Andrew
About author Samantha Harvey. Born in 1975. Born in Kentucky. It's in England. The United Kingdom.
- [06:32]
Craig
I suppose maybe you've heard of it.
- [06:35]
Andrew
Moved around a lot as a kid after her parents split up. Studied philosophy at the university's York Sheffield. Creative writing at Bath Spa University. What are we calling a place? Bath Spa University.
- [06:51]
Craig
Oh, that sounds like a place that you go to get kind of like your massage certificate so you can work at a massage Envy.
- [06:59]
Andrew
I just googled it to make sure that it was real and not like a typo or something.
- [07:03]
Craig
Oh yeah, we've all done that.
- [07:05]
Andrew
And it is real. And it says that they are a community of change makers committing to applying professional creativity to all that we do. So.
- [07:15]
Craig
So hippies maybe.
- [07:16]
Andrew
I'm going to submit my post grad application there. Who knows?
- [07:19]
Craig
Sounds like a bunch of hippies to me.
- [07:21]
Andrew
I think she also teaches there. She got her MA and PhD there. Her first novel, The Wildness, appears in 2009. All Is Song in 2012, Dear Thief in 2014, The Western Wind in 2018, and then The Shapeless Unease, a nonfiction work published in 2020 after she was dealing with some like, profound insomnia. Yeah, and it was written about that. And she also. She checked that a lot in interviews about this book and kind of its tone and its structure. You had mentioned to me just the observation that she loves to just kind of do something new and to like be a little formally adventurous.
- [08:09]
Craig
Yeah, that's what I just a brief, you know, you do the author research, like the most of that for this episode. Because I read the book yeah, sure. That's how we. How. That's how we divide labor on this podcast. That's how we make it equitable. But, yeah, based on a. Just a brief read of the other books in her repertoire and like a. Like a one or two sentence description about. Each one is about. She does really like to start with like a creative writing class prompt and then kind of build upon that. She likes a high concept or like something that you can, you know, if somebody asks you what a Samantha Harvey book is about, you can be like, oh, yeah, that's the one where they're on the International Space Station.
- [08:49]
Andrew
Yes, yes. It is not like, oh, Samantha Harvey. Her biography says she did XYZ and Z, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so all of her books are, like, rooted in that. That is not who she is.
- [09:01]
Craig
No. It's like, this is the one that's from the perspective of someone with Alzheimer's. And as it goes, it gets steadily, like, stranger and more abstract because it mirrors the memory loss of the person who it's about. You know, I like a strong pitch.
- [09:16]
Andrew
Yeah. This book was published in 2023. She started it and wrote 5,000 words. And then she said that she had space imposter syndrome and she stopped. She did not feel like she had the legitimacy to write this story. So, like, where did this book come from? I want to make sure I have my source on, like, where this was. I think this was the NPR interview. She said she'd always been interested in the experience of astronauts when she was younger. She collected quotes from them. She would sit in the library and go through books in pre Internet days, collect things that they had said about being space. There. There are only so many people who have been in space.
- [10:01]
Craig
Yeah. You can make a finite list of them.
- [10:04]
Andrew
Yes. And if you. So I think if you go to space and you want to write a book, someone will publish it. Right. So, like, there are published diaries, published nonfiction, like memoirs. And she was interested in those. And so she was interested in also in kind of writing a book about nature, like a pastoral book about nature. And she wanted something like, she wanted a point of view that was maybe a little bit beyond that. And she found herself thinking about being in orbit. And so she decided to do some research. And, like, what if she could keep writing it? She. It was. Lockdown was happening. And she was like, I think I'm gonna just write this book.
- [10:55]
Craig
Yeah, that's fair. Like, and I asked you to. So in the. In the back of the book, she does credit people at Like NASA and some other organization organizations, and then like a long list of names for like, providing research and other resources and stuff for the book. But yeah, like, when I saw that she herself had not been to space, and I don't know that I expected her to have to have been, I think it just would have made the most sense. But I was like, is this one of those books where I, an earthbound pleb, think that it is a really good, awe inspiring, accurate account of what being in space is like? But then an actual astronaut would read it and be like, wait, lady, what are you doing? What is this? What is this lady?
- [11:40]
Andrew
So I do have some quotes on that.
- [11:42]
Craig
Okay, all right, great.
- [11:43]
Andrew
I do just want to share that in. And I watched a couple YouTube interviews with her where she is asked about research and she basically says yes. I read a lot of books. I read a lot of diaries also. I stared at photos and video of Earth from the station, from the International Space Station for hours. Like, she. And she accredits the kind of lyrical quality of the book. I think the fact that there's maybe no plot, no major character, mostly vibes kind of stuff may also stem from her, like, not wanting to presume. Like, it's my understanding that this is a lot of. This book is also about the kind of profound mundanity of being in space.
- [12:27]
Craig
Yeah, there's. There's a lot of that. Yeah.
- [12:29]
Andrew
But that she isn't like that. It's not like. And it's an astronaut lady with this lived experience who is going through this, you know, crazy, convoluted plot. Like, I think maybe you don't go in that direction because she. In one interview, she said that there was like a. We live in an age of first person veracity, which is kind of what scared her off of this project in the first place. Yeah, but so she comes back to it and is like, really moved by these, like, beautiful, poetic images of Earth and of the space station. There is an episode of Science Friday, the podcast and radio program Science Friday, where Dr. Katie Colburn, who is. Who had spent six months on the International Space Station, was also a guest, has written about her experience and they both talked about the book. And Harvey is kind of geeking out because the astronaut is like, I love your book.
- [13:22]
Craig
Yeah, well, that's. That's a. That's a strong endorsement.
- [13:25]
Andrew
The quote that Coleman gave, each of us has our own experience up there. And I'll say, not always with the skills to express that. And so every part of it isn't my Experience. But for me, the book helped me go back to the space station and feel like I was back there. I feel like Samantha brought up these different points of view for people to try them on, whether they're astronauts who lived up there or people on Earth wondering what it's like to be up there. So I think she lays out some of the possibilities. She brought me back to so many little moments and touch points that really helped me sort of re. Experience my life on the space station. And it was everything from, we wake up in the morning and you always look at the morning messages. This is the quote. She had some expression like the sort of greeting from the ground of the morning mail on the computer. Like, it basically feels like Coleman is just grateful for this, like, fascinating work of fiction that is giving her turns of phrase and observations about her own experience. Sure, yeah, I'm sure there are astronauts who maybe don't feel this way, or we're thinking about other things. But that. That was one that I found where an astronaut was like, yeah, maybe not. Not all of this is my experience, but, like, the emotional truths are there and some of the details are very powerful. So.
- [14:43]
Craig
And I think in fiction, like, you know, you're trying to capture that emotional truth more than you're. More than you're doing a lot of other things. So, yeah, that. That's good. I think, you know, we. We talked a little bit about how some of her books, the, like, the narrative likes to follow the form, or, like, vice versa.
- [14:58]
Andrew
Oh, sure.
- [14:59]
Craig
Intertwined like that. To the extent that this book has a point, I think it does a lot of, like, this planet is so big and so few people have, like, this much perspective on how big it is. And doesn't it make you, the individual person, feel, like, small and insignificant in some way? So it's doing a little bit of that. And so, like, you know, maybe we have these characters and they each have, like, a trait and. Sure, but we don't. But they. They don't really like, drive anything. They're not what it's about so much. So much. Like they're more like little like security cameras that are just looking at everything than they are like people most of the time.
- [15:40]
Andrew
She gave an interview. No, she gave an interview where they were asking about the research and she talks about how she read a lot and looked at the pictures. The. The. Like, you can just go to NASA's YouTube and find the live stream that she was watching and just watch it. I'm watching it fly by the earth right now. It's bananas.
- [16:00]
Craig
Well, enjoy it while you can. Who knows what's going to come down next?
- [16:03]
Andrew
Well, it's a. Well, that the space station itself is scheduled to come down sometime after 2030, but.
- [16:10]
Craig
Yeah. Yes, I meant more like. Just like any information on any government website and less about the physical space itself.
- [16:19]
Andrew
But she says what she would do is she would do all this research and then she would try to get herself. And I've heard this from, like, playwrights and other people who base stories on real or realish things. She said that she tried to get herself, you know, mentally out of the research and into what she called an emotionally expanded spellbound state where she would kind of just write from there sometimes. She said someday she couldn't get into that state and she would maybe have to write anyway and she wouldn't use any of that stuff.
- [16:52]
Craig
Yeah, sometimes you just have to. Sometimes you have to get the junk out of there.
- [16:55]
Andrew
And then I have a direct quote here. If you don't have plot or drama or conflict, what do you have? A sense of spellbinding or suspension to draw the reader up into a state of otherliness, Something unfamiliar that holds their interest because it's extraordinary. And she. I just found it based on what you had told me before we got ready to record. I was just struck by her being like, yeah, I don't have a plot, I don't have drama, I don't have conflict. I have the vibes, the profound vibes of being in space. That's what I have to offer you today.
- [17:31]
Craig
And it's. Yeah. And it's not like the book is, like, promising something that it doesn't deliver on. It's not.
- [17:36]
Andrew
Yeah, sure.
- [17:36]
Craig
Yeah. This is. This is a. This is a spellbinding, space opera narrative thing. And then it's just, like, bad. It's just. That's not what she's trying to do. And that may or may not be something that you as a reader are interested in.
- [17:49]
Andrew
Poem. Most poems aren't trying to be a movie, you know, so, like, you don't judge a poem for not being a movie. You should.
- [17:56]
Craig
Should try to adapt more poems into movies.
- [17:58]
Andrew
I think that might. That might be true. The Hank.
- [18:02]
Craig
Like, hey, my ice box. You took the plums. Where now. This time. Now it. Now it's. Now it's personal, you know, have we. Like Liam. Liam Neeson, but you took his plums. And you have.
- [18:13]
Andrew
We had many meme movies, Andrew, other than, like, at most, the emoji movie. It's not really a meme.
- [18:18]
Craig
I Don't know. Snakes on Plane was kind of.
- [18:21]
Andrew
Sure. But that was like, meme.
- [18:23]
Craig
Ish.
- [18:24]
Andrew
Yeah, well, they. They did reshoots because of the memes, which is one of my favorite things. But anyway, I just think you need.
- [18:31]
Craig
To do some movies. Like, oh, look, the roads are diverging in this yellow wood. Like, what are we now? What happens now?
- [18:37]
Andrew
What happens?
- [18:37]
Craig
We need to. Maybe we need to mine these characters for some drama while they decide that we have some emotional flashbacks about how, like, the guy's wife died or something. And that's gonna.
- [18:47]
Andrew
Please explain everything to me.
- [18:48]
Craig
Yeah, which. Which Forky takes down the road in the yellow wood.
- [18:52]
Andrew
Wow. I thought you said Forky from Toy Story.
- [18:55]
Craig
No, not Forky from Toy Story 4. Though if they do a Toy Story 5, they should consider basing it on a poem.
- [19:02]
Andrew
Hey, that's good. This book won the 2024 Booker Prize. It is apparently the second shortest novel to win it after Penelope Fitzgerald's 1979 book, Offshore.
- [19:15]
Craig
How do you know how.
- [19:16]
Andrew
I don't know how.
- [19:17]
Craig
How much? It was the second shortest.
- [19:19]
Andrew
This book is like 150, 140 pages or something like that.
- [19:23]
Craig
Like, in my paperback it was like 200, but they're pretty, like.
- [19:26]
Andrew
Sure. Okay.
- [19:27]
Craig
Small pages.
- [19:30]
Andrew
Physically, it is purportedly the first novel set in space to win the Booker Prize.
- [19:37]
Craig
Okay. I'm just saying, like, if you're writing a book.
- [19:40]
Andrew
A book, huh?
- [19:42]
Craig
And you like. Do you. Do you think Samantha Harvey's like, man, I could cut out that one chapter and I could have been the shortest. I could have done it.
- [19:48]
Andrew
I do like that.
- [19:49]
Craig
I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't do it.
- [19:51]
Andrew
She was also nominated for her 2009 novel, the Wilderness or the Wildness. Excuse me?
- [19:58]
Craig
Is the Wildness surprise on the Reaping?
- [20:01]
Andrew
Oh, boy. It also won the Hawthorn Prize. It was shortlisted for the Orwell and the Le Guin Prizes as well. I just have quick summary notes on the International Space Station, Andrew, before we take our break.
- [20:18]
Craig
Sure.
- [20:20]
Andrew
I'm also just double checking that that novel is called. It's called the Wilderness. It's not called the Wildness, which is now my book that I'm writing. Nobody take my title.
- [20:30]
Craig
Better make it short. Make it a short one, just in case.
- [20:34]
Andrew
99 pages. The International Space Station started in 1993 when the US and Russia merged their space station plans. It has been continuously occupied since 2000, which is. Was kind of news to me. I think I just presumed it had been there my whole life. I don't really remember paying attention to it in the 90s.
- [20:57]
Craig
My dad was always kind of like peripherally interested in space stuff. So I was like aware of, of them like sending different chunks of it up. Like I could give you blow by blow of when that happened, but it's just like right now like nowadays, given, given just how, you know, how things are out in the world. It's like it's this huge, you know, cooperation between like the US and Russia and all these other countries with their space programs, including many that were like previously, you know, serious rivals.
- [21:26]
Andrew
Yep. Huh.
- [21:28]
Craig
And it's born of this era in the like the 90s and the 2000s, where the, you know, Berlin Wall has come down and the USSR is not thing anymore. And there's more, you know, there's this moment of, you know, like, is democracy the, the form of government that's going to take root everywhere?
- [21:47]
Andrew
End of history stuff.
- [21:48]
Craig
End of history stuff. And are we going to, you know, are we all going to get along and are we all going to put these like old feuds behind us and it looks like, you know, it's going to come down whether it's on the timeline that Elon wants or if it's when it was originally scheduled to come down. But it just, it's, it's almost quaint in, in the way that it is like this, this link to this older era of like more openness and more cooperation that was like not perfect, but I think was preferable to you know, a world that is like rearming it, like actively rearming itself now.
- [22:25]
Andrew
Yeah, that's, that's the thing that was one.
- [22:29]
Craig
And that is not, that's almost not mentioned in the book at all. Like there's a, like a fictional moon voyage to the moon moon that's happening that's like in the periphery of this book and it makes like a passing reference to them being like on a billionaires rocket. So there's a little bit of stuff about like politics and war and like how it shapes the planet and whatever, but it's, it's not, you know, it is not what the book is mainly focused on. But that's, that's kind of what made me think about with the International Space Station. She was like this, it's this cool project that I don't think like you, you could never get something like this off the ground, like literally or figuratively off the ground.
- [23:09]
Andrew
She was asked about that in an interview I watched. I'm gonna try to find the publication. I think it was, was it France 24 no, it was, yeah, it was France. 24 English what is that? That's what I watched anyway. And she talked at the end, like about this era of space where you have like 20 years of just different countries bolting their own pieces onto the space station and like sending up their crews and that space exploration and research is this piece, as you said, Andrew, a peacemaking mission in a way. And that now she is seeing that like we've got commercial space flight which seems to be motivated by the same forces that have ravaged the earth. I don't think that she used ravaged, but she did use negative verbs and she just kind of is not happy about it and.
- [24:13]
Craig
Yeah.
- [24:14]
Andrew
And thinks that that is probably a net negative for us as a species and as a society. Yeah. And so yeah, it is, it is part of the DNA of the book, even if it's not like taking up a lot of page space. Just to close the loop Here on the ISS, construction stopped briefly in 2003 when Columbia exploded in space. Yeah, the space shuttle, they resumed construction three years later. It's fully operational as of 2009 with a six person crew. More than 200 astronauts from 20 countries have been there. Most tours are about six months. And at the time of this recording, they have sent up a new spaceship to bring back two people who have been there for nine months after they were supposed to be there for eight days and they were, they were left there because the spaceship they went on was busted. Thank you, Boeing. And then there were like scheduling. I think they could have come back in September, but it was like we got to wait until there's enough people to, to go up to be in the space station.
- [25:23]
Craig
Like, I don't want to, I don't want to fly from here to Boston in a Boeing craft at this point. Like, I, like, I would not, I would not want them to take me to space.
- [25:31]
Andrew
Take, let Airbus take me to space.
- [25:34]
Craig
I, you know, I work with, with people who are like tech nerds and a couple of them are like the kind of nerd who like looks up what kind of plane they're going to be on, like proactively.
- [25:44]
Andrew
I don't think that's a kind of nerd. I think that's a responsible adult now.
- [25:48]
Craig
Yes, now it's a responsible adult. It's just like not a thing I defaulted to doing. It's just like, oh, this is the plane. It has words on the side. It's going to take me where I want to go. But one of them informed me of the catchphrase if it's Boeing, I'm not going.
- [26:03]
Andrew
Oh my God.
- [26:04]
Craig
I've not been able to get it out of my head since then.
- [26:08]
Andrew
Oh no.
- [26:09]
Craig
Anyway, this episode of Overdue is brought to you by the fine folks at Bowie.
- [26:13]
Andrew
Oh, probably never.
- [26:15]
Craig
Probably not.
- [26:16]
Andrew
Let's take a quick break and then I'm interested to hear about this Facebook. Andrew, this week's episode of Overdue is brought to you by Real Quick Reviews rqreviews on Instagram.
- [26:37]
Craig
Can you tell me about it real quick?
- [26:39]
Andrew
Real Quick Reviews doesn't waste your time. You see the pros and cons of a video game as well as the scores in a single picture. Individual scores on how good the good parts are and how bad the bad parts are. Real Quick Reviews rewards you. They do a free Steam game giveaway on every review and the most recent reviews include codes for Pizza Possum. Pizza Possum and Psychonauts. The classic Psychonauts. I don't know what Pizza Possum is, but I am intrigued.
- [27:07]
Craig
Psychonauts is one of those games that I think I own on three different platforms I've literally never once installed and launched.
- [27:14]
Andrew
Yeah, thanks to Tim Schaefer.
- [27:16]
Craig
People really like this and I'm going to get to it sometime. One day has not happened yet.
- [27:20]
Andrew
Recent reviews on Real Quick Reviews include Dragon Veilguard, which I appreciated the text in addition to the image because it did get to what I'd heard about that game, which you can go read the review, but it seems like Real Quick. It is real quick. And that game seems like a mess. But a game that doesn't seem like a mess is Indiana Jones that came out last year by the people who made all the Wolfenstein games. And the reviewer, Tom, talks about how they love punching Nazis in their games. Machine games do.
- [27:54]
Craig
I don't know why we have to make it so political now though.
- [27:57]
Andrew
I. I just like that Indiana Jones punches the Nazis.
- [28:02]
Craig
But why does Indiana Jones hate conservatives? So much?
- [28:06]
Andrew
So does Real Quick Reviews Head to at rqreviews on Instagram for pithy and useful quick reviews. Andrew, have you. Were you a space kid? I know you mentioned your dad being into space stuff, but were you like. I. I don't. I liked space, but I also really like Star Wars. So like, I couldn't tell you. Astronauts.
- [28:35]
Craig
Yeah, like, I liked space mostly through like Star Trek and, and like my, I do remember, like my, my dad had it on when Columbia. Oh yeah, he was watching. He was watching the coverage of that. Like he, he always paid attention to that kind of stuff. And I think still. Still does some.
- [28:54]
Andrew
I've watched a few of, like, we landed a robot on Mars. It's very. I like watching all the people in mission control get all emotional like that. That is moving to me.
- [29:04]
Craig
And there was like a cool phase of, like, privatized space in, like the mid, like 2000 and tens or something. Like, before all the people funding that revealed themselves to be, like, depraved freaks. And everybody was just kind of excited for science to be happening because, you know, NASA, like many government agencies had been, like, kind of underfunded and under, like, prioritized and just there was. There was a lot of stuff that was happening on very long, like, timescales or not happening at all. So it's like, hey, cool, somebody's making rockets again.
- [29:37]
Andrew
Yep.
- [29:38]
Craig
And that was always a. Those were exciting days to be on Twitter, even though, like, I personally was not.
- [29:43]
Andrew
Yes.
- [29:44]
Craig
Invested in, in, like, watching it.
- [29:46]
Andrew
But it was cool to see people.
- [29:48]
Craig
Thinking it was cool.
- [29:49]
Andrew
Yes. And it was. And it was neat to see all of the, like, just work paying off. Like, these are folks who, like, go to school and learn years of math I'll never comprehend. And then they get to go to work at a space, whether it's NASA or some private space company, and then all of a sudden they have something on another planet. Like, that is. That is unbelievable. I'm just.
- [30:12]
Craig
I listen. And I also. I just think it's cool that a billionaire sent William Shatner up into space. Yes, I know, I know. William Shatner has a problematic Twitter account sometimes that his daughter might be partially responsible for. I think. Yeah, think I'm just. This is just going off the top of my head. So this is not like defamation or anything, but, yeah, I like that someone was like, oh, this guy was in space on TV 50 years ago.
- [30:38]
Andrew
He should be in space for real.
- [30:40]
Craig
90. We should send him up to space for real.
- [30:42]
Andrew
So Variety did publish an excerpt from his, like, memoir Boldly Go, which he did have a co author for, I'm sure.
- [30:53]
Craig
I'm sure he did. I'm sure all of William Shatner's like, 17 memoirs have co authors on them.
- [31:00]
Andrew
One of our Discord users, Eron Hubbard, did share this article because the book made him think about it. And Shatner does kind of experience what he believes is the overview effect, which, which Sally Ride and Yuri Gagarin and others have experienced, which is the, like, you see Earth from an orbit and you have this, like, really profound sense of its fragility and our insignificance and the Line is, my trip to space was supposed to be a celebration. Instead it felt like a funeral. William Shatner wrote, or his co author wrote, and then it ends with like a, yeah, everything is bad. But like, what if we all like, agreed, we were all small and we worked together and made the planet better.
- [31:47]
Craig
But I think they shot James Doohan's ashes, Scotty, from the original Star Trek. I think his ashes went out into space. Okay, could be wrong. He died in like 1999 or something.
- [31:57]
Andrew
I think it's better to put your ashes out into space if you're going to put them somewhere.
- [32:03]
Craig
Just like the likelihood that my human body is going to become ashes in the process of going to space means that like, it's just safer to already be ashes when you're deciding to go.
- [32:14]
Andrew
I just mean that there was this show that Laura and I were watching the other day where like somebody's ashes were getting put in like the Hudson river. And we both were like, that no one would be allowed to do that. You could, you can't do that. You can't just do that.
- [32:28]
Craig
It just would not even make a top 100 list of worst things in the Hudson river, though.
- [32:33]
Andrew
Tell me about the book Orbital by Samantha Harvey.
- [32:36]
Craig
Sure. So, yeah, like I mentioned, this book is very, very vibesy, very sort of dreamy. And you. Can I go to dreamy as an adjective because there are some sequences where like astronauts on the space station dream and the way that it's described flows very smoothly from like here I'm describing what it looks like to see like Madagascar from orbit to like this guy is accidentally having a, like a sex dream about one of the other astronauts who's up there.
- [33:13]
Andrew
Okay.
- [33:14]
Craig
Instead of his wife, which only happens one time. It's not again, there's no like any, any given story element I mentioned in here is not a focal point of the book because it has no, it is a book with no focal.
- [33:25]
Andrew
Okay.
- [33:25]
Craig
But they're just like little bits and snippets that, that, that, that stuck out to me. But it is so in the, you know, in the course of one of our 24 hour Earth days, the International Space Station is going to orbit the earth 16 times and it's going to go through like eight different day, night cycles as it does this because it is, okay, spinning around the, you know, it's not spinning around in sync with the, with the sun or whatever. Like you were seeing night and day on all different parts of the globe. Like, the book opens with like a big, like, wow.
- [34:00]
Andrew
So they're going around, they're going around the planet like a little over an hour and then they're around it again. If it's 16 times in a, in a 24 hour period.
- [34:10]
Craig
Yeah, that's what it says. Like, the book starts with like this big like parabola pattern of.
- [34:15]
Andrew
Whoa.
- [34:15]
Craig
How you go over it. And so you're, you know, you're always hitting different continents at different times of day or night, and you're always coming at stuff from like a, from like different angles on different, like different circuits and different days. So I'm like, the bulk of this book, like, I think if you, if you were to split it up by like volume, like what it's about. Yeah, the bulk of this book is spent describing what the planet looks like from space at various times of day. And I think, like. And so you get both descriptions of it at night where you can see lots of like, evidence of human activity, like lights and highways and cities and coastlines and stuff. But it's more, I think Harvey is more captivated by the way the Earth looks in the daytime when you can't tell that anybody is. Is there. And a lot of what it talks about when it, when it is choosing to, to be a little political is like you can't see, you can't see any borders. You can't see any, you know, you cannot see things that people would go to war about or like, feel a strong way about. It's just a bunch of land and a bunch of water and that's what flying around it endlessly, you know, 16 times a day for six months is gonna do to your perspective of Earth. And it talks about the sort of like, you know, some people on the, on the station pay attention to politics back home, some people don't. And you go through this, the book, as the book presents it, you go through this, these phases where you're like, man, shouldn't, shouldn't we all be, shouldn't we all be able to get over everything and just be like, all together on this big planet together? And politics shouldn't affect the Earth at all because look at it during the daytime. But then you think about a little more and you're like, oh yeah, there's global warming and there's algal blooms in the Atlantic Ocean and there's all these like, subtle but visible signs of how we have affected the planet. And the way we are affecting the planet is driven like, exclusively by politics and by public opinion and by governments and by what is like, possible.
- [36:33]
Andrew
Okay, okay.
- [36:35]
Craig
So, yeah, I Thought that was an interesting sort of cycle for.
- [36:40]
Andrew
I read the Joshua Ferris review in the New York Times. Now, we covered Joshua Ferris book. Then we came to the end in 2015.
- [36:49]
Craig
This podcast, anyway, and someone else, like.
- [36:53]
Andrew
I don't know who did, who did that.
- [36:56]
Craig
The boys cannot come back to town because it is not the same town.
- [37:01]
Andrew
You know, the boys are never in the same town twice. Is that the. Yeah. He says, he talks about, like there's, there's, Is there a photograph in this, in the, in the book that people talk about at all?
- [37:17]
Craig
I mean, I, I, the, there's the 124 hours of Earth orbits with daylight in the Northern Hemisphere, that, like, sort of pattern that I just showed you. But no, there's no like full color photographs from the movie or anything.
- [37:29]
Andrew
I, I think what, oh, I think, I think what Ferris is referencing is maybe a, a photograph that Harvey had like, maybe talked about in an interview or something, like from an astronaut. Okay.
- [37:42]
Craig
Yeah. The COVID of the edition that I have, which I bought to support a local bookstore in Washington, D.C. is very like, this looks like space, right? Like, it's not of, it's not of anything.
- [37:53]
Andrew
No, it's not of anything real. In reality, of course, life in space is surely still life. In that way, Orbital resembles Collins photograph. It contains the world, but fails to reflect it. Harvey lavishes the planet with her considerable rhetorical gifts, but the recklessness and miseries we know at pavement level have been scrubbed from her observation deck. It is all angels above, devils below. But then those transporting rifts, those fine rhapsodies. Theris had fun with with the review, where he was aping the tone of the book. It seems a little bit, but like, do you feel like you wanted more pointed critique of the, the conditions on Earth, or were you able to just kind of get on the wavelength with the book itself?
- [38:42]
Craig
I was, I was on a wavelength with the book. Like, I'll, I'll say that, like, the, the first half of this I read like. So it split up into different sections based on the different orbits, and most orbits have like a, like an up, an up and a down.
- [38:58]
Andrew
Neat.
- [38:58]
Craig
Okay, cool. And so a lot of it, the first half, I was reading like one or two sort of chapters at a time and then putting it down and going to do something else. And then the second half of the book, I mostly, I mean, I'm not gonna say I rushed through it like I did. I did read it attentively because I knew I'd have to come and talk about it on a Podcast. But I did sort of read it all in like a couple of big chunks.
- [39:25]
Andrew
Yep.
- [39:27]
Craig
And it's not like I get. I get what the book is doing and I respect what the book is doing. I do think it is much more amenable to being read the first way. Like I think it is. It is better to read it a couple chapters at a time and then come back to it. Because if you are. And this is, this is where. Hold on a second.
- [39:47]
Andrew
Andrew's got to get a prop.
- [39:49]
Craig
I gotta get a prop. Because we're like Carrot Top or prop comics on this podcast.
- [39:53]
Andrew
That is correct.
- [39:55]
Craig
So this is from three Star Goodreads review. Some of the three Star Goodreads reviews I read were like, yeah, this is obviously kind of beautiful, but I kind of got bored with it.
- [40:09]
Andrew
Yeah. Okay.
- [40:10]
Craig
Hanicky says this Space Odyssey is beautifully written, but I regret to say it bored me pretty soon. Initially it was special to get the world described from views from the windows of the spacecraft. Who would not want to see how Malaysia looks from space? But then it goes on and on. It becomes quite boring. A pity because it's written in such lovely language. I think you will mainly get that feeling about it if you are trying to read a bunch of it at once. Like if you're trying to go like cover to cover in a couple of sittings.
- [40:37]
Andrew
Which, which sometimes you're like, oh, wow, a 200 page book. Like that could be my day. Great.
- [40:44]
Craig
Yeah, exactly. And sometimes Craig, it's the second shortest book to win the booker Prize.
- [40:49]
Andrew
Well, sure. And sometimes with a, you know, second.
- [40:52]
Craig
Second winner. Craig is first loser. As. As they say.
- [40:55]
Andrew
They do say that sometimes when that crops up, that can be a. Like, if it's a plot driven book, then you might be in like, oh, that was like watching a movie. Like, that's kind of refreshing. Like I, I was in and out of that plot. But it sounds like this is a, a more meditative book.
- [41:14]
Craig
It is very much like this.
- [41:15]
Andrew
So maybe the, like, the length is. And she also said in that same interview where she talked about whether or not there was plot drama or conflict, she said she was interested in playing with time when she writes. Like, she's fascinated by contractions of time where you're maybe depicting an hour, but it's taking a really long time on the page.
- [41:40]
Craig
Yeah.
- [41:41]
Andrew
Or the inverse. Right. Where you're like covering years or days or whatever over the course of just a few sentences.
- [41:48]
Craig
Yeah, that's one of the very first. And you know, this is, this is where Having it like loosely tied to an astronaut's perspective rather than just having it be like a disembodied space station floating in space.
- [41:59]
Andrew
I would love to know more about these astronauts.
- [42:01]
Craig
Yeah, like you, I think you could get a lot of the, like, look, there's, there's France from, sure, but from space. Like, I think you could do that if it were, if it did not have any kind of focal point at all, but the point of putting humans in it. Like one of the first kind of runs that she goes on in the book is like, yeah, you, you get up here and within like a week you just, your body does not know what time it is anymore. And so you, you know, you, you live a regimented life. You go to bed on time, you get up on time, you eat meals on time. Like you've got to watch you, you adhere to this like 24 hour time period because that's, that's what our bodies know. And it's just something you need to do to just like have something to, to like hold on to. And it's, it's what. But yeah, like, you don't, you don't know, you don't know what time it is. It all kind of mushes together into a big kind of sludge of. Yeah, like, like, like you said, time kind of expanding and contracting and not meaning anything anymore. And this is just like a natural result of seeing like eight sunrises a day or whatever it is that they're seeing.
- [43:10]
Andrew
So the, the Ferris New York Times review kind of made some allusions to the individuals of the crew kind of forming into a collective and harmonized. Can you tell me a little bit, like, what does the book tell us about the people on the space station at this time? Eventing.
- [43:28]
Craig
So you've got four astronauts who are, I believe are all American. But you know, they're from. Being from America. They are from like kind of vastly different cultural backgrounds, some of them.
- [43:39]
Andrew
Okay, sure.
- [43:40]
Craig
And then you've got two cosmonauts from Russia.
- [43:42]
Andrew
Okay.
- [43:43]
Craig
And one of the, like another small like political thing that the book does is like the, the governments of these, that these astronauts are like up here representing. Give them directives like, no, you can't use the Russian bathroom. You can't, oh God, you can't eat the American food. It's kind of a little like tit for tat thing. But then you're up there, it's just the six of you, like you are in close quarters and you have to see each other all the time. Like you just kind of ignore it and do what you want.
- [44:15]
Andrew
Sure.
- [44:16]
Craig
And it's very. It's very, like. It's very unifying in that. In that way. Because, you know, we're. We're up in this place where borders don't exist. And, like, if we do. If we. Obviously there are some orders you don't want to disobey because they could break the space station and then you would die. But, yeah, like, if. Like, if it's just, like, piddly, like, political stuff, like, what. What are they gonna do? Like, are they gonna get Boeing to send another busted spaceship up? Somebody slap you on the wrist? Like. No.
- [44:46]
Andrew
Yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure.
- [44:48]
Craig
So, you know that this happens and. And they kind of do what they want anyway. But. But at the same time, like, there is kind of an informal, like, you know, we. We aren't getting too candid about our personal lives together too often. Like, we are all, you know, it's not quite a, like, we're all co workers up here thing, but it's like a. Harvey presents it as a. Like, we. We all have to be up here for an extended period of time. We're all kind of unmoored. We belong to these, like, political bodies and countries and whatever, but we are not, like, we are physically separated from them. And. And so, like, there's just a, like, an unwritten unspoken agreement that, you know, we're not gonna, like, stay up at summer camp and talk about our, you know, what we're gonna major in or whatever. Like, it's just not. It's not. So when people do share personal snippets, like one character's mom dies when she's in space, and that's most of her, like, sort of arc, such as it is. It's like. It's a surprising thing. And, like, they do, like, emotionally kind of support each other and go through cycles where they feel very close and, like, feel. Feel very separate. But. But, yeah, it's an interesting relationship where they are close but not emotionally.
- [46:13]
Andrew
How does it. Like, is it structurally hopping between perspectives or is it just kind of like, alighting between people as it wants to?
- [46:24]
Craig
There's a little bit of both, I think. Mainly, you know, the main structural device is the. Is the orbit thing. But then within, like, often when you jump to a new orbit, you will jump to a new character's perspect. You also do it in between. One plot thread that is sort of quietly unraveling in the background the entire time you're reading this book is there's this, like, giant typhoon that is bearing down on, like, the Philippines and the area around there. And so it is a thing that they have been asked to pay attention to as they go around the Earth, like, take pictures of it. So, you know, you could get a little bit more, like, data about it and. And maybe try to save people from dying in the typhoon. But it's. But it's also not a book that's about the typhoon. It's just every once in a while you'll get to something like, Chi's mom died. Chi is a Japanese character whose mom died. You get to her mom dying. There's somebody who is working with mice, some mice who are just, like, went up into space, as is some who are getting some, like, injections and some who have been, like, bred to be, like, hardier and more muscular just to study the effect of space on, like, oh, yeah, muscles atrophying and, like, how your body, like, responds to it. So, like, each person has kind of an, like, a thing that. That anchors you to them and, like, makes you remember, oh, yeah, this. That's this guy. And then the, you know, you have a little bit of. You have a couple threads, like the. The Typhoon in there too. But it's not like none of these are what the book is about. They're just, like, things that you come back to that can then be like a springboard for more talking about how the Earth looks from space. You know what I mean?
- [48:14]
Andrew
Yeah. No, none of them are the. This is a novel about when six people on the ISS have to deal with the typhoon.
- [48:24]
Craig
When six people on the ISS go up and start getting real.
- [48:28]
Andrew
I knew that's how I set that up. You did.
- [48:31]
Craig
You did sound like you were gonna talk about real. Real world space.
- [48:35]
Andrew
Yeah, I did. Did you watch the Real World as a kid?
- [48:38]
Craig
I did not, no.
- [48:39]
Andrew
Yeah, So I had two.
- [48:40]
Craig
We've talked on this show about the phase of. Of my life where I was not allowed to watch any kind of vaguely adult television.
- [48:48]
Andrew
I had. I had two older sisters who are like, five and six years older than me, so they were already watching the Real World before I even knew what it was. And then I was basically like, well, I guess I have to watch these kind of inferior seasons of the Real World because I'm, like, invested in them. But, yeah, no, I know what it's like to stop talking and start getting real. Andrew, any other, like, interesting character traits or people? I do want to, like, just get any passages from the book that you think are striking but before we get there, are there any other folks we need to know?
- [49:23]
Craig
There are six people on the spacecraft. I think she is the one who is the most fully formed because she is going through this. Not only is she dealing with her mom dying while she was up in space, but she also thinks back to her family history. So her grandmother, but for a twist of fate or a fluke, would have died in one of the atomic bomb explosions on Japan in World War II. Yeah, but like, her dad was sick and stayed home that day. And her, like, mom left her grandmother with. At home when she went to the market. And so, like, you know, if. If her grandmother had gone to the market or if her dad had gone to work that day or whatever, she would have been dead and then she would have been dead. So she thinks a lot about, like, you know, I'm. I'm. My. My being alive is like a statistical improbability. And then also I'm up here on the International Space Station. And also I'm thinking about my mom a lot. Like, she. I think she is the sort of focal point of all the. Of all the characters. If I had to pick one. Okay, you. And then you also have Roman, who is one of the cosmonauts. He is. He. You. You get a little like a description of everybody as body parts.
- [50:47]
Andrew
Oh, neat.
- [50:48]
Craig
Like, okay, each of the six.
- [50:50]
Andrew
That's clever.
- [50:52]
Craig
They have talked before about a feeling. They often have a feeling of merging. That they are not quite distinct from one another. Not. Nor from the spaceship. Whatever they were before they came here, whatever their differences in training or background, in motive or character, whatever country they hail from, and however their nations clash, they are equalized here by the delicate might of their spaceship. Ship. They are a choreographing of movements and functions of the ship's body as it enacts its perfect choreography of the planet. Anton, quiet and dry in his humor, sentimental, crying openly at films, at scenes outside the window. Anton, the spaceship's heart. Pietro, its mind. Roman, the current commander, dexterous, incapable, able to fix anything. Control the robotic arm with millimeter precision wire, the most complex circuit board. Its hands. Sean, its soul. Sean, there to convince them all that they have souls. Chi, methodical, fair, wise, not quite definable or pin downable. It's conscious. Nell, with her 8 liter diving lungs, its breath. Each of these characters, like, not, not all of them gets a thing to do. Like Anton is like, man, I'm gonna get. When I get back home, I'm gonna tell my wife that we. It's cool. We could just end our marriage. I know. It's not working.
- [51:58]
Andrew
Oh, God.
- [51:59]
Craig
That's his thing.
- [52:01]
Andrew
Wow.
- [52:01]
Craig
Sean is, you know, he is Christian. And so occasionally there are references to debates where, like, Sean looks out at the universe and says, this is, you know, this is evidence for intelligent design. Somebody else looks out at the universe and is like, how could this be anything but, like, random occurrence? And sure, but, like. But like, what's the difference? Like, you know, talking about it through that lens a little bit.
- [52:26]
Andrew
Yeah, yeah.
- [52:28]
Craig
But, yeah, not. Not every. It's. It's not, like, about them. And so I don't think Harvey has even really gone through the, like, the work of saying, okay, I need. I'm gonna have these six characters on the space station. Like, each of them needs to have some, like, unique thing to do. Like, some of them just stick in your brain. More than. More than others.
- [52:49]
Andrew
It doesn't seem like it is a book that is, like, interested in, well, what if these specific six people were in the space station bouncing off each other? It is just like, yeah, these are six people who might be there.
- [53:02]
Craig
Yeah.
- [53:02]
Andrew
Hit me with some text.
- [53:04]
Craig
So, yeah, that's. That is. That is to the extent that I can describe what the book is about, that is pretty much it. I have. I have one, like, passage that I think kind of exemplifies what the. What the. You know, when it. When it has something to say.
- [53:17]
Andrew
Oh, okay.
- [53:18]
Craig
How it is. And then I have one struck me funny from toward the end.
- [53:23]
Andrew
Okay. I have two other quotes I want to make sure I hit.
- [53:26]
Craig
Sure. Where it's talking about the. It is doing a thing. And this, this goes to your, like, time dilation.
- [53:34]
Andrew
Yeah.
- [53:34]
Craig
From earlier, but where it's compressing all of the history of the Earth into, like, a calendar year.
- [53:41]
Andrew
Great.
- [53:42]
Craig
And then it's talking about all of the things that have. That have happened in, like, this. This last couple of seconds of this. Of this calendar year that they've split the. The Earth's history up into. In the closing second of the cosmic year, there's industrialization, fascism, the combustion Engine, Augusto Pinochet, Nikola Te, Frida Kahlo, Malala, Yousafzai, Alexander Hamilton, Viv Richards, Lucky Luciano, Ada Lovelace, crowdfunding, the Split Atom, Pluto, Surrealism, Plastic Einstein, Flo Jo, Sitting Bull, Beatrix Potter, Indira Gandhi, Niels Bohr, Calamity Jane, Bob Dylan, Random Access Memory, which is the reference, I think, to the computer memory and not to the Daft Punk album Soccer Pebble Dash, unfriending the Russo Japanese War, Coco Chanel, Antibiotics. The Burj Khalifa, Billie Holiday, Golda Mare, Igor Stravinsky. Pizza thermos flasks. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Thirsty Summer Olympics. Or thirsty 30 Summer Olympics and 24.
- [54:39]
Andrew
Thirsty Summer Olympics when that guy wasn't wearing a shirt from Tonga.
- [54:42]
Craig
No, we gotta leave it in 30 Summer Olympics and 24 winter. And it goes on and on. Virginia Wolf.
- [54:48]
Andrew
Leonard Bernstein.
- [54:50]
Craig
Yeah. I was like, it's very. We didn't start the fire.
- [54:53]
Andrew
Yeah, in a good way, I think, which is funny.
- [54:55]
Craig
I guess Lady Gaga makes the list. Like it. Like, we didn't start the fire. And the updated version of we didn't start the Fire that Fall Out Boy did. Oh, God, that thing, it weights. Stuff that just happened in a way that makes it absurd to listen to even like two weeks after it came out.
- [55:18]
Andrew
There is, if I recall.
- [55:21]
Craig
So I know you love it when I remind you of the Fallout Boy update of.
- [55:25]
Andrew
God, it's so bad. I'm so glad it exists because it makes me laugh, but I really dislike it. She. Harvey, in some like, I don't know if it was on the Booker Prize website or in another interview, talks about liking Virginia Woolf a lot. And a lot of this time contraction stuff reminds me of Part 2 of to the Lighthouse where there's this, like, the house is empty, 10 years have passed and the. The summer home is unoccupied. And like, Wolf moves through a lot of space relatively quickly or a lot of time relatively quickly. And that, that certainly seems like a thing that. That has stuck with Harvey. And it's not a thing that those are the only two authors that have done it. But I'm always intrigued when. When an author finds. Finds their own. We didn't start the Fire. And like, you know, has some fun with it because it is interesting. I find it interesting structurally, the song.
- [56:32]
Craig
We Didn't Start the Fire.
- [56:34]
Andrew
Well, no, like, what, what you can get away with by like, oh, I'm. I'm writing this book about like a day. But now I get to play the game where I list all of the 20th century in like a bunch of. Of recognizable names and memes and things, right?
- [56:51]
Craig
I put. I put fascism and the Higgs boson and Lady Gaga and pizza all on the same list. Yeah, like, these are all equally important.
- [56:59]
Andrew
Why not Grumpy Cat? Like, come on, Samantha Harvey, like, where's David after dentist? Come on. Do you want me to read my quotes?
- [57:10]
Craig
All your base are belong to us.
- [57:12]
Andrew
Do you want to read my quotes? And then you'll read your Final passage.
- [57:14]
Craig
Yeah, whatever. Whatever you want to.
- [57:16]
Andrew
And then, yeah, we can. One thing is, in the NPR interview that she gave, she talked about just like kind of the. The mundanity part of it. She said, we have been continually inhabiting low Earth orbit for 23 years now. That was Time publication. That is a daily experience for a very select group of people. But still, that's very much within the realms of reality and realism. So that's what I wanted to capture in the book. A sense of nature, writing about this wilderness and to see what it would be like to write about space without the projections that we usually put on it. Every other interview that I read has someone being like, so, like Star wars and Star Trek, though. And she's like, that's not what I'm do. And they all know that that's what they're doing. But. And then the other thing that she had said at one point that I thought was interesting, when she talked about kind of like psyching herself up to embark on the project after, you know, being kind of scared and not thinking she was qualified. She says, maybe the answer is that there's somewhere the imagination can go that experience can't. NASA's website has hundreds of fascinating but quite humdrum journals that astronauts have written while in space. I was thinking there's a gap here, a sort of metaphysical gap, a magical experience that isn't being documented the way I'd like to document it. And honestly, like, all of the responses from Dr. Katie Coleman on that Science Friday are like, yep, that's it. She nailed it. She nailed the metaphysical experience of me being in space. Love it. So that's kind of neat. What struck you about the book? What's left?
- [59:00]
Craig
I just wanted to read, in Harvey's words, some of the stuff about, like, the bigness of the planet.
- [59:08]
Andrew
Please do so.
- [59:09]
Craig
The insignificance of the humans on it. So then come discrepancies and gaps. They were warned in their training about the problem of dissonance. They were warned about what would happen with repeated exposure to this seamless Earth. You will see, they were told, its fullness, its absence of borders, except those between land and sea. You'll see no countries, just a rolling, indivisible globe which knows no possibility of separation, let alone war. And you'll feel yourself pulled in two directions at once, once exhilaration, anxiety, rapture, depression, tenderness, anger, hope, despair. Because, of course, you know that war abounds and that borders are something that people will kill and die for. While up here there might be the small and distant rucking of land that tells of a mountain range. And there might be a vein that suggests a great river, but that's where it ends. There's no wall or barrier, no tribes, no war or corruption or particular cause for fear. Before long, for all of them, a desire takes hold. It's this desire, no, the need, fueled by fervor, to protect this huge yet tiny Earth, this thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness, this thing that is given the poor choice of alternatives so unmistakably home, an unbounded place, a suspended jewel, so shockingly bright. Can humans not find peace with one another, with the Earth? It's not a fond wish, but a fretful demand. Can we not stop tyrannizing and destroying and ransacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend? Yet they hear the news and they live their lives. And their hope does not make them naive. So what do they do? What action to take and what use are words? They're humans with a godly view. And that's the blessing and also the curse. So I could, I could keep going.
- [60:43]
Andrew
But that sort of seemed. I could keep going, definitely.
- [60:50]
Craig
There's a flow to the, the prose in this and I think that is, it is good if you're reading it in small chunks and kind of a little, I mean, it's self disorienting if you're, if you're trying to read a bunch of it at once. Like it's a little hypnotizing, you know.
- [61:06]
Andrew
Yeah, well, that's, and that can be like. Well, you're just in there and then you, I guess you got to read it again or you know, dole it out. Like just have little bite sized chunks.
- [61:19]
Craig
But yeah, like, I enjoy it. I don't. I, I can, I completely understand anybody who bounces off it. I think it is like the shortness of it, like you mentioned earlier, I think gives a mistaken impression that you can just bang it out real quick. I don't think it benefits from that at all. It doesn't take a lot of time to read. I would just. If you're going to read it, I would generally encourage you to take that time in bits and pieces over like a week or two.
- [61:52]
Andrew
Sure, sure.
- [61:53]
Craig
Rather than just like sitting down and trying to do the thing cover to cover.
- [61:57]
Andrew
Cool, great.
- [61:58]
Craig
And I think, I think it lends itself well to like being read while you're also reading other stuff like you're not going to confuse with the, with the International Space Station, like Space pastoral.
- [62:10]
Andrew
Yeah. You're not keeping, like. You're not keeping track of, like, payoffs in that way. Like.
- [62:16]
Craig
Yeah, you just kind of. You just kind of read it and let it wash over you a little bit.
- [62:19]
Andrew
It.
- [62:19]
Craig
Okay. Yeah.
- [62:20]
Andrew
Hey, sometimes. That's right. Sometimes I need to take a meteor shower.
- [62:23]
Craig
You know, sometimes Star Trek has sonic showers.
- [62:29]
Andrew
What is that?
- [62:31]
Craig
It's so they. They don't want to use water in space. So you just stand in a shower that, like, blasts the nasty off of you with sound.
- [62:39]
Andrew
Can you hear it while it's doing it? What does it sound like?
- [62:43]
Craig
It's not often portrayed on the series because, like, famously, in the show Bible, for Star Trek the Next Generation, there is one bathroom on the entire ship and it's there as a joke.
- [62:57]
Andrew
Wow.
- [62:57]
Craig
They have a full schematic of the Enterprise and they drew one bathroom, like, right in the middle of the bridge.
- [63:05]
Andrew
That's funny to me, Craig.
- [63:07]
Craig
It's not a bathroom show. You don't see people showering a whole lot. But yes, you do get in the sonic shower and there's like, lots. And it goes like, woo. And it blasts all the nasty off your body.
- [63:17]
Andrew
I would love to blast the nasty off my body. If folks have been to space and they listen to this podcast, please send us an email. Overdupodmail.com.
- [63:27]
Craig
That'D be pretty cool. I really hope you have better things to do with your time, but if you don't, like, if you've ever listened.
- [63:33]
Andrew
To us, I appreciate.
- [63:34]
Craig
Whoa.
- [63:35]
Andrew
We need to know. Yes, Andrew, I will tell you after we are done recording. We did go to college with someone who has worked with the space station.
- [63:47]
Craig
Yeah.
- [63:48]
Andrew
Which is pretty cool.
- [63:49]
Craig
Yeah. I don't know that she listens anymore, but she did for a while.
- [63:51]
Andrew
Yeah, she did for a little while.
- [63:54]
Craig
But maybe she does still listen. I don't know. But that's. That's close. Like, that is our Kevin Bacon thing.
- [63:59]
Andrew
Yes.
- [64:00]
Craig
For the vastness of space. That's as close as we. That's as close as we know ourselves to have gotten. If you can beat that, I want to know about it.
- [64:08]
Andrew
We want to know. Send us an email. Overdue potato.com. or I guess send us, like, footage of yourself from space on social media. We're mostly on blue sky and Instagram at Overdue Pod, thanks to James, William, Rebecca, Desiree, Debbie, Emma, and Gigi, who all listened to the show. I don't know if you've been to space. You have to tell us. You have to tell me if you've been to space.
- [64:29]
Craig
Or it's entrapment.
- [64:30]
Andrew
Or it's entrapment. Thanks to Nick Laurentis, who composed our theme music. Andrew. If folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?
- [64:40]
Craig
Overduepodcast.com is our Internet website. If you go there, you can see the books that we have read in our schedule. For books we are going to read, we also have a link to our Patreon project. Patreon.com overdue pod support the show financially, directly help buy us books and equipment and pay our business taxes to the city of Philadelphia and all kinds of stuff that's on my mind right now.
- [65:05]
Andrew
Join the Discord. Hang out with us.
- [65:07]
Craig
Join the Discord and hang out with us. You get bonus episodes like the Sit Me Baby One More Time long read series about Ann M. Martin's Babysitter's Club, our monthly newsletter, dusty bookshelves, and a bunch of other stuff. So patreon.com overdue pod come on over. Let's hang out. Craig. Surprise. What are we reading next week?
- [65:29]
Andrew
Week Sunrise on the Weep. Weeping.
- [65:34]
Craig
Sunrise on the Weeping.
- [65:38]
Andrew
Sunrise on the Reaping.
- [65:40]
Craig
It's another Hunger Games book.
- [65:42]
Andrew
Another Hunger Games book starring Haymitch.
- [65:46]
Craig
I'm so hungry for these games.
- [65:48]
Andrew
By Suzanne Collins.
- [65:50]
Craig
Suzanne Collins, please.
- [65:55]
Andrew
I volunteer as Twibu.
- [65:57]
Craig
All the feedback we get about when we do our baby voices in real life are, like, uniformly across the board negative. So I don't know. I'm glad we're doing this right here at the end instead of at the beginning.
- [66:08]
Andrew
Katniss Evolution.
- [66:09]
Craig
Katniss Appletine.
- [66:11]
Andrew
I do really like. I volunteer. I volunteer.
- [66:15]
Craig
I volunteer. Oh, my sister.
- [66:25]
Andrew
Peter. They want to make us fall in love.
- [66:27]
Craig
He made me wed. Oh, he's sweet. Bled.
- [66:33]
Andrew
District 14.
- [66:39]
Craig
Hunger Games Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. We'll both be reading it and we'll be streaming it. Right? Right?
- [66:47]
Andrew
No, no, we're not streaming that one.
- [66:49]
Craig
What are we streaming? We're streaming something else.
- [66:51]
Andrew
Episode 700. Stay tuned.
- [66:53]
Craig
Oh, yes. Okay. I thought this was episode 700 because it was big. Nope, it was a tent pole. But now I remember the other tent pole that we did decide to do.
- [67:00]
Andrew
You'll find out about it soon.
- [67:02]
Craig
Yeah, it'll be a surprise.
- [67:05]
Andrew
Oh, my God. Get us out of here. Land the space station, please.
- [67:11]
Craig
Thank you. I'm gonna deorbit this podcast until we talk to you next week. Please try to be happy. That was a headgum podcast.