Ep A03 - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson (Annotated)

Summary

Overdue Podcast: Ep A03 — The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Annotated)
Date: April 27, 2026
Hosts: Andrew and Craig
Theme: Revisiting Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novella, discussing its origins, adaptation history, narrative structure, and thematic legacy.

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Episode Overview

This annotated episode revisits Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Andrew and Craig return to their 2013 coverage (Episode 20), reflecting on how their podcasting style and research methods have evolved, and diving deeper into the book’s context, literary significance, adaptations, and enduring cultural impact. The discussion is lively, filled with playful banter, insightful analysis, and several notable asides (including a notorious NES video game).

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Revisiting and Annotating an Old Episode

• Podcast Evolution: The hosts explain that new research and improved sound quality set this annotated revisit apart from their original take (04:00).
• “We did not approach author or publication or other context research with the same diligence that we try to do week to week now.” — Craig (03:28)
• Motivation for Revisiting: Opportunity to add richer context and background, especially regarding Stevenson and the novella’s adaptations (05:02).

Robert Louis Stevenson: Life and Work

• Stevenson’s background: Scottish novelist, best known for adventure fiction like Treasure Island (1883), Jekyll and Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped (1886); prolific in essays and travelogues (06:00-07:57).
• Chronic health issues prompted his many relocations, including stints in France, California, and eventually Samoa, where he died (08:16).
• Notable anecdotes: His early work, interesting friends (e.g., Fanny Sitwell, Sidney Colvin), and the family business of lighthouse engineering (06:27).

Origins & Inspirations for Jekyll and Hyde

• Rumored that Stevenson rewrote the novel in a week after his wife's criticism (08:53).
• Inspirations:
  • Real-life figure William Brodie, a Scottish city councilor by day and burglar by night (09:37).
  • French teacher Eugene Chantrell, infamous for poisoning his wife (10:04).
  • Stevenson’s social circle included closeted gay friends, influencing hidden identity themes (10:19).
• “It could be inspired partly by the secret lives of several of his gay friends. A friend of his... viewed this story as an allegory. That quote ‘touches one too closely.’” — Andrew (10:19)

Literary and Historical Context

• Examined alongside other works about the “divided self”: Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Wells’s Invisible Man (12:16).
• Publication as a “penny dreadful” (cheap, sensational paperback) for mass consumption (09:08).
• Legal and social context: The 1885 Labouchere Amendment (criminalizing “gross indecency”) and its connection to the novella’s subtext of dual lives and repression (10:31-10:47).

Stage and Film Adaptations

• The Richard Mansfield stage adaptation (1886): Noteworthy for the dramatic transformation scenes and casting a single actor in both roles (11:05-14:35).
• Tied to real-world hysteria: The London run coincided with Jack the Ripper’s murders, fueling the tale’s notoriety (14:35-15:22).
• Adaptations introduced women and romance subplots, shifting Jekyll’s motive to scientific hubris—a significant departure from the novella’s simpler compulsive desire (16:06-17:21).
• Film adaptations, especially the John Barrymore 1920 version; the Barrymore acting family’s legacy (18:27-19:08).

Jekyll and Hyde as a Cultural Idiom

• Quickly became a metaphor for duality in popular culture and journalism (20:30).
• “I just googled New York Times, Jekyll and Hyde...and I found...opinion articles [from 1891, 1903] that use Jekyll and Hyde as a metaphor.” — Craig (20:36)

Video Game Adaptation: NES’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

• Infamously difficult and confusing 1988 NES adaptation, attempting to capture the “duel between good and evil” (21:06-26:37).
• Jekyll’s gameplay: avoiding irritants, maintaining composure; Hyde’s gameplay: battling demons until calm returns.
• “To get the good ending, you have to make more progress as Jekyll than as Hyde. If Hyde gains the lead, evil will triumph over good.” — Andrew (26:03)
• Noted as one of the worst NES games but interesting for its thematic fidelity.

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In-Depth Book Discussion

Narrative Structure & Perspective

• Surprise at how little of the story is told from Jekyll’s point of view; instead, lawyer Mr. Utterson drives the narrative (36:24-37:03).
• The reveal—that Jekyll and Hyde are one and the same—is concealed until late in the book (41:01, 42:22).
• “It’s not about [Jekyll], it’s about this dude named Utterson...You don’t even meet Jekyll until a third of the way into the book. You meet Hyde before you meet Jekyll.” — Mandy Moore/Andrew (37:03-37:31)

Themes of Duality and Repression

• Victorian anxieties: the public vs. private self, the dangerous consequence of wholly separating desire from conscience (47:04-48:03).
• Stevenson predates Freud’s theories, but the novella resonates with later Freudian ideas of id/ego/superego (51:34-52:44).
• The “split” becomes allegorical, representing not just “good vs. evil” but humanity’s inherent contradictions.

The “Rules” and Ambiguity of the Jekyll/Hyde Divide

• The transformation is literalized, yet the rules are purposefully hazy, raising questions about identity and culpability (58:02-59:48).
• Jekyll alternately distances himself from Hyde (“that child of hell had nothing human”), but narrative voice often slips between “I” and “he” (63:41-64:16).

Tragedy and Loss of Control

• The tragedy: Jekyll increasingly loses control, ultimately consumed by his darker self (65:02).
• The ending—Jekyll/Hyde isolated in the lab, with only the final letter as confession—emphasizes the psychological horror over the physical (65:39-66:24).

Cultural Legacy and Shortcuts

• Observations on how the Jekyll/Hyde myth has been simplified in pop culture: duality as spectacle, not subtle threat (67:45-68:19).
• Importance of the Utterson character for suspense and social context, even though modern readers (who know the twist) may find those sections less compelling (71:46-73:29).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “If he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek.” — Utterson (73:42, 73:59)
  (Hosts agree: a truly groan-worthy pun that survives even into the abridged version.)
• On Victorian language:
  “I still, I think there were just—there were times where one or two times where I kind of lost the thread of what was happening because of how dense throughout it was.” — Mandy Moore (76:46)
• On adaptations:
  “The versions of Jekyll and Hyde that you have seen that…are not structured at all like the novella…I think we were both…kind of surprised by how the story is structured…” — Craig (17:21)
• On id and personality:
  “Hyde is pure evil with no conscience, no good part of him at all. And Jekyll is merely mostly good. But the evil is still there in him, like…he's just like you and me.” — Andrew (55:28)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|--------------| | 04:00 | Why revisit Jekyll and Hyde; podcast evolution | | 06:00 | Robert Louis Stevenson’s biography and work | | 08:53 | Origins, influences, legendary rewrite | | 11:05 | Stage adaptation history, impact on public perception | | 14:35 | Jack the Ripper hysteria and copyright issues | | 20:30 | Jekyll and Hyde as metaphor in early pop culture | | 21:06 | NES video game adaptation deep-dive | | 36:24 | Discussion of narrative structure and perspective | | 47:04 | Themes of duality, repression, Victorian morality | | 51:34 | Pre-Freudian psychology and duality | | 55:28 | The “rules” of Jekyll’s transformations and tragic ending | | 73:42 | “Struck me funny” section: iconic pun | | 76:46 | Language and readability for modern audiences |

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Conclusion

This episode not only revisits the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde novella with greater research and reflection but also considers its enduring legacy—from literary analysis to notorious video game—and why it so quickly became a metaphor for the hidden dualities within all of us. The conversation is rich with humor, critical insight, and an emphasis on the novella’s psychological and cultural afterlife.

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For new and longtime listeners alike, this detailed walkthrough will serve as an engaging guide to one of literature’s most interpreted—and misinterpreted—tales of the divided self.

Transcript

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Craig]

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[Mandy Moore]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

this is a Headgum podcast. While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any

[Mandy Moore]

well told tale, they will not shy

[Andrew]

away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[Mandy Moore]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now.

[Craig]

Hey everybody. Welcome to Overdue. It's a podcast about the books you have been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew and I. Oops. I'm evil.

[Mandy Moore]

Oh no.

[Craig]

I'm only not good. I'm just kind of.

[Andrew]

You're not. You're normal.

[Craig]

I'm normal.

[Andrew]

And I'm evil.

[Craig]

And two genders.

[Andrew]

And that's the. And that's what Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is about.

[Craig]

Yeah, it's about a normal guy and

[Andrew]

it's about the forces of normal with like good and evil mixed together versus the forces of evil. And I'm the. I'm evil. I took some serum, okay. And it made me evil.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And I. I'm gonna go trample some people right after we're done recording.

[Craig]

Love to trample people.

[Andrew]

I'm just gonna people. Because that's what evil, that's, that's all evil people could do back in like the 1800s. That was the most advanced form of evil that had been invented.

[Craig]

Well, they didn't invent the serial killer until after this book was published.

[Andrew]

So, yeah, I mean, it was close,

[Craig]

but it was very close. Welcome to our book podcast where each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. But we are breaking the format in two ways this episode, because this is our third annotated edition podcast where we are revisiting a book from the before times, from the long ago before, before

[Andrew]

we started researching our episodes and bringing any like, external knowledge to them.

[Craig]

Listen, I've listened.

[Andrew]

You don't need to hand it to past us.

[Craig]

No, what I will say is I've listened to all of the past US episodes that we've covered this month and we were doing a pretty good job. But we would just kind of acknowledge like, I don't know much about that. And then we'd move on and have like a pretty interesting conversation about a book, which is what you're going to hear in a little bit. But we did not approach author or publication or other context research with the same diligence that we try to do week to week now.

[Andrew]

So Susanna also mentioned that it was before we had our patreon. Patreon.com overduepod oh yeah. And partly because of that, there is a marked difference in sound quality between the episodes from like 13 years ago and the ones we put out now.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

So.

[Andrew]

Patreon.com overduepod yeah, keep us sounding good. Every five years or so we will buy new microphones and sound slightly better.

[Craig]

Yeah, that's how it works.

[Andrew]

And render all episodes recorded before then unlistenable.

[Craig]

So this week we are talking about the Strange case of, of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevens son. That's his name, right?

[Andrew]

Yeah, Robert Louis Stevenson Stevens.

[Craig]

All originally covered on episode 20 of this year podcast. You don't need to go back and

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

listen to it because you're going to

[Craig]

listen to it in just a few minutes after we tell you a bit more about the book than we did 13 years ago.

[Andrew]

Just a little tiny bit more. Not very much more.

[Craig]

If you want some additional information on Mr. Stevenson, you can listen to episode 230, our Treasure island live show, that

[Andrew]

arguably, arguably you can listen to that. Technically you can listen to it.

[Craig]

Per Andrew's note, the audio quality on that One from a live show was not what we would love, but I think the content is pretty good. So maybe just read a transcript.

[Mandy Moore]

I don't know, have a good.

[Craig]

It's not going to be the same.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Usually I don't know where you're going

[Andrew]

to get it from, but yeah, do that instead. I just have it transcribed by AI.

[Craig]

Yeah, we didn't make a transcript. Just go find one. I don't know, type.

[Andrew]

Robert Louis Stevenson is born in 1850, dies in 1894. He's a Scottish novelist best known for. He didn't exclusively write, like, adventure fiction and boys novels, but that's what we know him for. That's the kind of stuff that has survived to the present day as, like, stuff that people know about. Treasure island in 1883, Jekyll and Hyde in 1886. There's a boys novel called Kidnapped, which was also released in 1886. And he had some other stuff.

[Craig]

A lot of travel works, a lot of essay writing, some short stories. But a big part of his life is that he was moving around because he was ill. Like, he just had a poor constitution.

[Andrew]

And this is the era where people were like, listen, you seem ill. Maybe you should go to where the air is different and see if you get less ill. And it.

[Craig]

It did seem to, but not, you know, so much that he unfortunately died at a relatively young age. But he did not embark on the family business of lighthouse engineering and instead studied for the bar. Pursued writing early. His first printed work was about Scottish Presbyterians. He fell in with a cousin and their friend, Sidney Colvin. And Fanny Sitwell.

[Andrew]

That's the funniest name that anybody's ever had. I'm sorry, Fanny Sitwell.

[Craig]

Yes. Well, he did sitting.

[Andrew]

This is the novelty character I've made up with a big butt for sitting.

[Craig]

You can go listen to that Treasure island live show for more funny names. He did kind of said to have fallen in love with her a little bit, but that didn't work out. So they became friends. Married another Fanny, later, Fanny Osborne. Yes. And, yeah, he is in the 1870s, he's traveling around publishing kind of these travel books. An Inland Voyage, Travels With a Donkey in the Sevan Bunch of essays. He moved to California to marry Fanny Osborne and was eventually invited home to Scotland by his father, but of course had to go to Switzerland because he had tuberculosis. Of course, somewhere else.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And that's where he is, working on Treasure island, which was published in the Young Folks Magazine.

[Andrew]

Is that the name of it?

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah.

[Craig]

I knew it would get you. Because it also got you several years ago.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Okay. Young Folks magazine for kids.

[Craig]

Uh huh. And then after some other time in the south of France, they moved back to Britain due to a cholera epidemic. And that is where he writes Kidnapped and Jekyll and Hyde. Later he would go to America where he was kind of famous now. You know, books were popping off and then they set sail in the South Pacific where he would spend the rest of his life. They made it all the way to Sydney. They spent time on a bunch of islands. They settled in Samoa and he would pass away there eventually.

[Andrew]

So he's writing this Jekyll and Hyde book.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Right.

[Andrew]

Urban legend says that he burned the original version after getting feedback on it from his wife, rewrote a new version in under a week and then edited it in a few weeks after that. The book is originally published and sold in the UK as a one shilling paperback.

[Craig]

Just a Penny Dreadful.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Right. I was. I didn't have anything else to say about that other than that is where the name Penny Dreadful comes from. Which I'm sure we've talked about, but still makes me laugh. Who knows Some pos. He probably drew on a bunch of things for inspiration about this book. There's some question as to exactly where it comes from, but there's a lot of precedent for it. Could be Talking about the 18th century Scottish figure William Brodie.

[Craig]

Yeah. The Edinburgh City councillor.

[Andrew]

He was a deacon and politician by day, but it was a burglar with a secret life by night who needed to burgle to fund his prostitution and gambling habits.

[Craig]

Knowing about Jekyll and Hyde and reading about Brody, I kept looking for the spot where they're like. And then he murdered three people. It doesn't happen. He's just a burglar and a gay.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Of.

[Andrew]

He's just like. He seems like an upstanding member of society, but.

[Craig]

But he's not.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

He's.

[Andrew]

Yeah, he's not very. There's a French teacher by the name of Eugene Chantrell who seemed like a normal guy, but did poison his wife with opium.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Stevenson sat in on his. They were friends and paid a lot of attention to it. Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

There.

[Andrew]

It could be inspired partly by the secret lives of several of his gay friends. A friend of his named John Addington Simons or Simmons viewed this story as an allegory. That quote touches one too closely.

[Craig]

Yeah. I saw a biographer put that in context with the Labouchere Amendment, which was published in 1885. That's the gross indecency law. That Oscar Wilde would be tried under. Yeah, so it makes sense.

[Andrew]

Yeah. You know, it may be partially inspired by some dreams that he had while he may or may not have been under the influence of medication, which may or may not have included cocaine.

[Craig]

Listen, you're in the French Riviera, Rivieria, and you're not feeling good and somebody offers you cocaine. Why not?

[Andrew]

Yeah. Successful stage adaptation of this book follows in 1886, featuring a guy named Richard Mansfield, who is in a dual role as both Jekyll and Hyde. And then also, I guess he's in a triple role as the guy who bought the rights and helped to write the adaptation.

[Craig]

Yeah, this is what. This is the big one for me that we did not talk about at all a long time ago because it

[Andrew]

was like, the run was successful in New York as a touring production, and then he tries to do it in London, but then that run gets cut short partly because Jack the Ripper hysteria is reaching sort of a fever pitch. And apparently even actors who play murderers on stage are being suspected of being real murderers because nobody has any idea what's going on. And then. Yeah, I just have some of the adaptations, including. It adds women to the story, a wonderful innovation. Women. And a lot of the adaptations that follow in the wake of this also use a single actor who's dual cast as Jekyll and Hyde. So that's what I had about this. I have one other noteworthy adaptation to talk about after this, but you tell me about the play and what you think about it.

[Craig]

Yeah. So, like, the other thing I want

[Mandy Moore]

to mention before we get into the

[Craig]

play is that it is worth considering this within the context of other. Like, there's other Victorian works that come, you know, a few years before, a few years after, like Dorian Gray, Invisible Man, a few years later, actually, I think. But there's this interest in the notion of the divided self. So as you kind of listen to our episode from a while ago, we talk about which. Which characters in the story kind of allow that to happen. But the other thing I was thinking about as I was listening to it and rethinking about my experience reading the book so many years ago is, listen, My primary understanding of the Jekyll and Hyde tale is the musical that ran on Broadway and did eventually star David Hasselhoff, and that is the film version that I saw. But that version and a lot of other adaptations is based on this Richard Mansfield production that was. He. He basically commissioned it from this writer, Russell Sullivan. And Mansfield had played a father and son in a Stage production of Rip Van Winkle. And he wanted another, like, similarly showy role. So he.

[Andrew]

Apparently people just flipped out about how good the trans. The transformation between.

[Craig]

And that's the. That's the thing that one of the other things that kind of gets codified in your Jekylls and Hydes after this, which is that you have to see the transformation, like, if there's a version of it where there is an actor, which it's kind of interesting to think about the. The novella and how it's structured. Obviously. Listen to the rest of this episode and you'll hear us talk about. Is not told from Jekyll's point of view.

[Mandy Moore]

And.

[Craig]

And what I recall from other adaptations is that it's much more centered on Jekyll, which seems to come out of this Mansfield Sullivan adaptation, which makes sense. It's a guy who wants to play two cool roles. You're gonna shape the story around him. Right. And so there's also this, like, it does really well in the States, as you said. And then they're going to bring it to London.

[Mandy Moore]

Of course.

[Craig]

It premieres in London just before the Jack the Ripper murders, as you said. There was also a competing production by a guy named Daniel Bandman, Even though Mansfield and Sullivan had the actual. Right. This was an era where, like, you could just do anything. Nobody's enforcing copyright law. But Mansfield did actually get the proper rights. Bandsmen Bandam. Excuse me. He. His production flopped in the US because there was a big blizzard and nobody could come see it. So, whoops, you messed up. Bad weather. You can't go see the show. Then they are rushing the UK opening to beat Banman in London. They're staging it at the Lyceum in UK with acting manager Bram Stoker.

[Andrew]

The Dracula guy.

[Craig]

The Dracula guy. And they literally open the UK production of the Mansfield show three days after the first Whitechapel. Or no, three days after the opening, the first Whitechapel victim is found. So that's kind of. They get inseparable. They become inseparable in. In the public consciousness. Other things. You said that they introduce women. Specifically, they introduce a fiance for Jekyll, and they. Some of them also start to introduce a love interest for Hyde, which is where, like, Hyde, as this, like, sexual criminal enters the story, which is not a part of the novella.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Like, if you want to. If you want to read into the novella that some of the, like, behavior that's, like, too heinous for Jekyll to mention involves, like, homosexuality in some way or something, like that that's the only way you can kind of insert that into the, into the, into the originals by like reading it, reading between the lines and putting it in there yourself, basically.

[Craig]

Yeah, but even him as a like a lecturer who is like violating women and, and things like that is not even explicitly part sexually anyway of the novella. He is obviously trampling girls in the street or whatever he does. And the other thing that the play stretches is that the Jekyll has a much more high minded notion of what the serum or discovery is supposed to do. That he is setting off on this like almost hubristic. I will find a way to separate good from evil such that good can triumph and like mankind will be better for it.

[Andrew]

Because that's not the novella. Like the novella is like I wanted to. I wanted to cut loose and do some bad stuff. And so I invented an alternate.

[Craig]

A way for us to just be different people.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, right.

[Craig]

So that, that's just kind of the, the versions of Jekyll and Hyde that you have seen that do not. That are not structured at all like the way the novella is. I think we were both. You had read the abridged version is my recollection. I had never read the original. So we were both kind of surprised by how the story is structured through ancillary characters being the point of view characters.

[Andrew]

And I assume that is because at that point we only read 10 books.

[Craig]

We had only read 10 books in our whole lives. But I also think like the, the. The. The Hundred Years of Jekyll and Hyde, since that are very centered on the characters of Jekyll and Hyde. Do not use that structure at all. Do not use the kind of another character's remove to get it across. So that's kind of.

[Andrew]

Well, because I mean as I recall some, at least you know, some of the book is. Is told more immediately from Jekyll's perspective because you're like reading a letter that he.

[Craig]

But that's awesome.

[Andrew]

But yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's, that's. Yeah, that's at the end.

[Craig]

It's a reveal. There is a.

[Andrew]

Okay. All right, all right.

[Craig]

I'm almost done. There is a. There is a film version. Several, many, many film versions. But I do want to shout out that there's a film version in 1920 with John Barrymore. Andrew, how familiar are you with the Barrymore family?

[Andrew]

I know of Drew. I know of their awards and that's, that's mainly it.

[Craig]

Yeah. They are a Philadelphia acting royalty family that goes back to John the. And John Barrymore was Jekyll and Hyde. I believe his brother Lionel is from It's a Wonderful Life. Andrew Lionel Barrymore.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Who is.

[Craig]

He's Mr. Potter.

[Andrew]

Oh, yeah, that old cuss powerhouse. That ornery old cuss.

[Craig]

I believe Lionel to you in jail. I can't remember which John or Lionel is the great uncle of Drew Barrymore, but, yeah, that's a. It's a big old family. And I think one of the things we talked about in the episode, a keep an eye out. Keep an ear out. Rather you don't. You're not watching this. Keep an ear out for a very funny pun that Andrew and I both remarked upon in the episode. Just listen for it. And we also talked about how Jekyll and Hyde has kind of become like a metaphor or idiom unto itself. That. And it seems to have happened very quickly because, like, I was just googling, trying to actually find, like, contemporaneous reviews of the book or the play or whatever, and I just googled New York Times, Jekyll and Hyde, just to, like, get into the Times machine and see what happens. And I found, like, two opinion articles about that. Just use Jekyll and Hyde as a metaphor. One is from 1903, talking about new York City's mercurial voting public and how they had rejected Tammany hall as Jekyll and now they are Hyde, like, giving in to their base instincts and wanting that Tammany hall back. Okay, okay. And then in 1891, there was an editorial slamming the New York Tribune for their mercurial coverage of city politics and how they were a Jekyll and a Hyde. And so, like, very quickly, it just becomes a shorthand for having two personalities. So that's kind of interesting.

[Andrew]

I mean, that's just like now how every time anything that happens to you in a dream is getting incepted, like the movie Inception.

[Mandy Moore]

That's true.

[Andrew]

That's how that works. It's just exactly the same.

[Craig]

It is literally exactly the same thing. You're right.

[Andrew]

The most. I mean, you want to talk about all these adaptations, that's okay.

[Craig]

I know. Please tell me.

[Andrew]

Boring. There is one, the most culturally significant

[Craig]

adaptation, truly the most did this one get of this.

[Andrew]

Of this story comes in 1988 and 1989. This is a video game published in the United States by a bandaid for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It does have the official Nintendo.

[Craig]

I was going to ask. That was the question.

[Andrew]

It is a licensed game. It's not one of those, like, Bible adventures bootleg carts, like some tengen stuff. It's. No, it's officially licensed.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And this is a. This is a video game called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On the box it says Dual Worlds Challenge Jekyll's London and Hyde's World of Dreams. And it advertises prominently on the box that you can battle demons with Hyde's psycho wave.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

But this is a.

[Andrew]

This is a side scrolling video game

[Craig]

where you are like a Mario for people.

[Andrew]

Yes, exactly, like a Mario where you play as both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So here is the. I played like 10 minutes of this and it's totally unplayable and inscrutable.

[Craig]

I read this.

[Andrew]

The controls are awful. It frequently makes lists of like the worst NES games.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But I did look up the. Because back, back in, in the day when you were playing an NES game, like the game was not gonna tell you no. Like what it was about or how to play it or any of the story stuff like that. It was all in the manual. And so I found the manual and honestly it's. It hues pretty faithfully to the themes explored in the. In the original work.

[Craig]

Tell me more.

[Andrew]

This is from the manual about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The story the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.— Hyde was written by the famous Scottish author Robert Lo Stevenson, became a bestseller as soon as it was published in England in 1886 and is now famous throughout the world. Now in the Nintendo game pack version, you can experience firsthand the struggle between good and evil for control of the human personality. Who will triumph? Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? Dr. The story Dr. Jekyll has been researching the human mind and has found that it contains two opposite elements. Good and evil. After years of experimentation, Dr. Jekyll succeeds in creating a potion which separates these two elements of the personality and decides to test the potion. When he does, the normally kind and intelligent Dr. Jekyll is transformed into the brutal and savage Mr. Hyde. The good Dr. Jekyll soon has difficulty controlling his transformation into the evil Mr. Hyde and he finds that the two sides of his personality are in conflict for control of his mind. This Nintendo Entertainment System game allows you to experience this conflict, I guess the two worlds of the game. There are two worlds in this game because of the personality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When Dr. Jekyll walks down the street, he sees jolly old England with its charming buildings and parks. When he transforms into Mr. Hyde, however, the landscape becomes distorted and the beautiful city changes into an eerie world of demons. This contrast between the worlds of good and evil is one of the most important features of the game. So you fire up this game on your Nintendo Entertainment System. You blow in the cartridge, which you're not supposed to do because it corrodes the contacts, whatever, and you put it in and you turn it on. And you are Jekyll. And you're walking around London and it's not clear what you're supposed to be doing, but through reading the manual and a synopsis of the plot, it's like Jekyll is walking to the church to get married.

[Craig]

That's what. Okay, so they're going from the play adaptation. Okay, great.

[Andrew]

And you are walking down the street and then people just start running into you.

[Craig]

They're trying to trample you.

[Andrew]

They're trying to trample you. People just start running into you. There's like a guy dressed in red who will stop in front of you and then leave a bomb on the ground and run.

[Craig]

Victorian England. And then everyone was doing this.

[Andrew]

The manual calls him the Mad Bomber. In the manual there's also like a dog that doesn't like being woken up. There's a, a lady, a widow lady who like you remind her of her late husband. And so that's why she messes with Jekyll. Like this is just beset on all sides by people who want to irritate him.

[Craig]

The Jekyll verse is giving me Bart versus the Space Mutants energy.

[Andrew]

It's got a little bit of Bart versus the Space Mutants though I, I will maintain that that game is a bit more playable there, this one.

[Craig]

That seems fair.

[Andrew]

Yeah, but you, if you get, if you get bothered enough like you have a life bar and then you also have like a stress bar and if you get too stressed out you turn into Mr. Hyde. And at that point the game goes from being a left to right scrolling, just like walking through London game to a right to left like auto scrolling beat em up thing.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yes.

[Andrew]

And Mr. Hyde can punch enemies and he can throw his psycho wave, the all powerful psycho wave. And you're supposed to defeat enemies quickly enough that it de stresses you and makes you back into Jekyll.

[Craig]

That's, that's what the book's about.

[Andrew]

And to get the good ending you need to get the good ending. To get the good ending you have to get to the church as Jekyll. Like you have to make more progress through the game as Jekyll than you do as Hyde. Which is too bad because the Hyde sections are the only ones that are any fun at all. If Hyde gains the lead, evil will triumph over good. If this happens, the powers that be will intervene and shoot a thunderbolt down from the sky to eliminate Jekyll and Hyde, and the game will be over.

[Mandy Moore]

Whoa.

[Andrew]

So that's how the game. That's how the game Spec ops, the

[Craig]

line stuff like they want you to fail at the game because you're a bad guy.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Wow.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

It's not.

[Andrew]

I mean, I will say that the. The music on the title screen is pretty haunting.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Like a haunting, effective sort of way. And then there's just like a long, creepy monster claw that. You know how some menus have, like, a hand that points it, like, start or continue? It's that. It's like a long, creepy monster claw that does that. And I don't know what it has to do with anything, but I do think that the art is kind of neat on it.

[Craig]

Yeah. Listen.

[Andrew]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

[Craig]

There have been creative people doing creative things for the entirety of history, some

[Andrew]

of them since 1988, and some of

[Craig]

them were working on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the NES. Oh, yeah. I. I definitely rented this from. What was it called? Was it called Valley Forge Video? Was Hollywood video.

[Andrew]

When Dr. Jekyll changes into Mr. Hyde, he finds himself trapped in the mysterious world of demons. Here he must do battle with the demons sent to destroy him. It doesn't say anything about, like, where they're being sent from, who they're being sent by. It's just you're in the world of demons now, demons in the book. I mean, there's, you know, there's Jekyll's personal demons. Mr. Hyde himself is sort of a. Sort of a demon that represents the. The worst impulses of humanity.

[Craig]

So I'm always up for trying a game that's like two games in one, so maybe I got to give this a try.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But thank you for doing the research on this one, Andrew. I'm sorry.

[Andrew]

Happy to have played it.

[Craig]

We didn't think about this 13 years ago.

[Andrew]

We should have pretty.

[Craig]

I'm surprised we didn't. So, yeah. I hope that everybody enjoys this annotated edition of Jekyll and Hyde. I think you're in for a fun conversation about the book. We did both read the book because we are Jekyll and Hyde or something like that. I'm not quite. We didn't really explain ourselves very well other than it was episode 20, and we wanted to mix it up. So 20.

[Andrew]

I'm I'm sure at the time it felt like a lot episodes.

[Craig]

It did. It did. So, yeah. Have a good time with that. Are you Jekyll? Are you Hyde? See you on the other side.

[Mandy Moore]

Welcome to Overdue. We've ostensibly been talking about books for five minutes or so.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

We say ostensibly a lot. I've noticed this about us.

[Mandy Moore]

It's a good word.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I like it. Here's some people say, and I think I've heard you say obstensibly.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, I've said it before.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Put another B in there. And ostensibly, that is incorrect.

[Mandy Moore]

Bubstensibly. Now, if I put you on the spot, could you define ostensibly?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Ostensibly. Use it in a sentence.

[Mandy Moore]

No, the word we've just been using.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I know. Use it in a sentence because I'm trying to buy myself time to put it into words.

[Mandy Moore]

We are ostensibly doing a podcast about books right now.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Like you were supposedly doing it, but the implication is that maybe you're not. That's.

[Mandy Moore]

I don't think that's right. I don't think I used it right.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Define ostens.

[Mandy Moore]

While Andrew looks that up, I will tell you that this is Overdue. A podcast about books you've been meaning to read. And my name is Craig, and his name is Andrew.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, my name is Andrew. And I was totally right. Ostensibly. Adverb. Apparently. Or purportedly, but perhaps not actually.

[Mandy Moore]

I feel like I'm used to saying ostensibly because ostensibly just sounds so. Like, ugh. It doesn't sound like I'm actually. You know what I mean? Ostensibly, we're doing this podcast. It doesn't sound right. Sounds lazy.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I'm gonna create a workout video called Abstensibly.

[Mandy Moore]

Oh, no. Is that gonna be. Is that gonna make more money or less money than your soda shop? What is it called?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Soda Speak Sodas.

[Mandy Moore]

Oh, my God.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

It's gonna be great. They're both gonna do buku business.

[Craig]

Buku business?

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Buku bucks.

[Mandy Moore]

You need to go back to business school.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I'm gonna have sky high stacks.

[Mandy Moore]

Learned the wrong words. So it's episode 20, and we're a little punchy, and I think we decided to do something a little different this episode, right?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yes.

[Mandy Moore]

Rather than our normal structure. Thanks for not helping me out.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Our normal structure is that one or the other of us will read a book, and then we will tell the other one about it. But for episode 20, we are mixing it up and we both read the book. We're totally subverting your expectations.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah. We haven't teased this before, right?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I feel like maybe I teased it, but I'm not sure anyone's paying attention.

[Mandy Moore]

That's fine. So we're. Okay, we're covered. So we read the strange case of

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[Mandy Moore]

Thanks for picking that up. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Yeah,

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

and this is another one. This is kind of like Frankenstein in that everybody knows the basic thrust of the book, but maybe not everybody has actually read the book itself. Like people have probably seen like a parody or like some kind of movie version or a cartoon. Vers. Excuse me, but maybe not the. Maybe not the book itself.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, I think you're right. It came up the reason we decided to read it. It came up during the Frankenstein episode. And you're right. Both of those characters, or I guess in this case, sets of characters, have kind of taken on a life of their own from a literary and just, I don't know, like, cultural perspective. You know, like you can say Frankenstein in a myriad of different ways by like, it means cobbled together, or it is a cautionary tale about knowledge and science or whatever. And Jekyll and Hyde has gotten co. Opted into split personality disorder or whatever that means, you know, whatever you want to use it for. And you don't have to know the story itself to know the long lasting impact of these stories.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

That happens a ton with. With like classic literature. I mean, Moby Dick is another great example because everybody kind of knows that Moby Dick is shorthand for the relationship between Moby Dick and Captain Ahab and.

[Mandy Moore]

Oh, I thought you were going to go white whale. I thought you were gonna go white whale. Oh, that's exactly what you mean. Never mind.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I forgot. No, that's.

[Mandy Moore]

No, I literally just. That's what I mean.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I don't. Their. Their relationship. Yeah, I mean, did you know that Captain Ahab, the only reason he's going after Moby Dick is because he was spurned. He's like a jilted lover. And that's.

[Mandy Moore]

No, I need to read that book.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Actually, in reality, that book is like two thirds about wailing and it's super not that interesting. Like the stuff about their vendetta is actually a very small amount of the book. And it's all about reading about how like blubber is stored and stuff.

[Mandy Moore]

So this episode is ostensibly about the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was written in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson, which. I did not know that he wrote it. I will say that I knew that he wrote Treasure Island. I did not know that he wrote this book as well.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Did you think that Anybody in particular had written it, or did you just not. Did you. Were you not aware of.

[Andrew]

I don't know.

[Mandy Moore]

I guess I just didn't know. I mean, it's not a Dickens book, but it's. Yeah, I don't know. I knew it was somebody British. Ish.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

It's like, of that ilk.

[Mandy Moore]

It's of that ilk. I mean, it is Victorian, and so I just assumed it was some sort of Victorian author that I just didn't know.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

So. Okay, for me, this. This, like, it obeys the. The word of our show's premise, but not the spirit. Like, I had read the abridged version before, but I hadn't read the actual version. Had you read any version of this book before?

[Mandy Moore]

I've never read a version of Jekyll and Hyde before. As I said on the Frankenstein episode, I believe I had once, years ago, watched an HBO filmed version of the stage musical of Jekyll and Hyde starring none other than. I blanked on his name, David Hasselhoff as Jekyll and Hyde.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Really? Was there, like, a beach scene where, like.

[Mandy Moore]

No, it was staged Baywatch style. I mean, I don't. I. At this point in time, it's been almost 10 years since I saw that, so I can't say. Oh, it's definitely been 10 years since I saw that. I can't say if he was good or not. I will say that it was visually interesting and the music is decent for what it is, but that definitely does not, to my recollection, does not follow the plot of this book.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

So, okay, as somebody who had never been exposed to the book at all, what. Did anything about its structure surprise you? Because I'm always, like, whenever I read this, I'm kind of taken by

[Andrew]

how

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

little of the narrative is actually told from the perspective of Dr. Henry Jekyll. Yeah.

[Mandy Moore]

So it's not about him. It's about this dude named Utterson. Is his first name Sam. Is it Sam Utterson?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Gabriel John Utterson.

[Mandy Moore]

Thank you. Do you have notes or something?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

No, I got the Wikipedia page open.

[Mandy Moore]

Look at you.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Look at me.

[Mandy Moore]

So, yeah, I was not surprised. I think I knew this because I think my sister had read it, like, months or maybe a year or two ago, and she. And she remarked upon this as well, and I'd sort of forgot. I didn't really realize. But when you're reading it, it is surprising that it you. I don't think you meet Jekyll until a third of the way into the book. You meet Hyde before you meet Jekyll,

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

you meet Hyde very, very early. There's a. There's an incident. Utterson and this colleague, Richard Enfield, take these. Take these, like, constitutionals every once in a while. And they pass this. They pass this door. And Enfield is like, I have this weird story about that door. There was this guy, and he was running, and he, like, ran down this little girl and, like, stepped on her. And I, like, grabbed him and I caught him so that we could talk to the authorities and he could, like, make restitution for what he did. And he went into this door that, like, it's connected to the house that Henry Jekyll owns. And he comes out and he produces this check in Jekyll's name, drawing on Jekyll's bank account. And the thing that strikes Enfield about this. This guy that he runs into is just how instantly and completely and, like, lasting his. He, like, instantly loathes this guy. And it, like, sticks with him how much he loathes him. Like. Like there's something that he can't describe that is innately wrong with him.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah. I actually highlighted a quote from a little later in the book where they're talking about Hyde and his physical nature. And this one chapter ends with saying, only on one point were they agreed. And that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders. So, like, you look at Hyde and you know that he's terrible, but you don't even quite know why. It's just in his countenance. He is just embodying evil for some reason.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of the book, I think, is about Utterson's kind of fascination almost with Hyde and, like, trying to track him down. Because he is Jekyll's lawyer, I believe.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

He's a prosecutor, like, friend and lawyer. And Jekyll has left this will with Utterson, and it says, you know, in the. In the event of the death or disappearance of Henry Jekyll, everything that I own is to go to. To hide.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah. Which strikes Utterson as wrong.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah.

[Mandy Moore]

And terrible.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

That's, like. That's what breeds his, I guess, fascination with.

[Mandy Moore]

Well, coupled.

[Craig]

Coupled with.

[Mandy Moore]

Coupled with this, you know, trampling of the girl and those events. I mean, I will say that when I was even just reading that first chapter. Excuse me. And it becomes about, you know, Enfield and talking to Utterson and saying, oh, that door. There's this crazy story behind it kind of thing. I almost expected that to then become a frame narrative, you know, does that make sense.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. I mean, and it is very, very briefly, but not.

[Mandy Moore]

Not for very long. No. And I kind of expected that we would then go back and be like, oh, and there was this guy named Henry Jekyll and stuff. And it's. That's totally not the case. Utterson becomes the main pursuant of Hyde.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. And most of the book is about his pursuance. And you see Jekyll and you see a few other characters. Like there's a mutual friend they have named Lanyon. There is a man named Sir Danvers Keru or Carew. How would you.

[Mandy Moore]

I don't know. Danvers Carew. I think if I'm. If I'm hearing the musical starring David Hasselhoff in my head correctly. Danvers Karoo is how you pronounce it.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

We'll call him Dan.

[Mandy Moore]

Dan.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

There's this guy named Dan who gets brutally murdered by Hyde in the street.

[Mandy Moore]

That's a little later in the book, though, right?

[Andrew]

A little.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

A little past the book's midpoint. It's the catalyst for a lot of what follows. And you don't, like, the hints are there. If you. And. And any. Any modern reader coming at this book is gonna know, you know, Jekyll and Hyder are the same person. Like, that's not. It's not gonna be the revelation that maybe it was at the time. Which actually is kind of sad because.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, let's. We'll come back to that.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

What a twist that is. But, yeah, you get. You get a. I guess you get a first person. What. What do I. What am I trying to say? You get like a.

[Mandy Moore]

Well, because they watch it happen, right?

[Craig]

They watch high.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

You get the account of a primary source in like the second or third to last chapter in Lanyon. Like Lanyon's letter.

[Mandy Moore]

Oh, yeah. Oh, the book, Hyde. The book ends with a letter from Lanyon and a letter from Jekyll.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yes.

[Mandy Moore]

And that. And then it just. And then it's just done. Like, it doesn't even come back to Utterson.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

No. Like, he's. He's the main character, but he's not even that important ultimately. Like, what's important is the unraveling of this. Of this mystery. So. So, so, yeah, like, you don't. Like, the clues are there, but you don't even. It's not even made explicit that Jekyll and Hyde are the same guy until the next to Lazar, third to last chapter. And then you have the whole last chapter, which is Jekyll explaining everything. You know, Jekyll's admission and his letter to Utterson to be opened, you know, in the event of his death or disappearance. Again. Yeah, again, that word disappearance.

[Mandy Moore]

I know that maybe we should. I said we should talk about it later, but I guess we can talk about it now. Like I'm reading this book going, oh, wow, they are really delaying the information that Jekyll is hide. This is not a book about a man who discovers, at least for the good first two thirds of it is not a book about a man who discovered he can, you know, isolate and then transform into his. The evilest version of himself. You know, I think my impression of Jekyll and Hyde coming into the book was that from that stupid musical or other. Or other sources, man, this thing has

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

really colored your first section of this.

[Mandy Moore]

It really has. Because it's a very different plot like that version of the story and I would suppose other versions of the story, because I don't know where all of that came from is that, you know, Hyde is trying to separate the evil nature. Not Hyde. Jekyll is trying to separate the evil nature of man. Perhaps that if we can separate it off, like, then we can destroy it, you know, and so it is.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

And in the. Yeah, in the. In the book that's. It's not even about destroying it, just about like Jekyll himself is. He's. I think he's like most people. He thinks of himself as essentially good, but he knows has bad tendencies that kind of get in the way. And so his. The goal of like his experimentation is to separate the halves so that the. The darker half can go and. And be what it wants to be and the lighter half can go and be what it wants to be. And like, never the twain shall meet. Like, the conflict between the two will be.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Will be ceased by their separation. It's not. It's not about separating out the evil to get rid of it. It's just about letting each half of a conflicted person be who, you know, be who they want to be. I guess.

[Mandy Moore]

But. And so to that end, like other versions of the story that I've seen or read, you know, have this idea that, like, it's all about Jekyll, you know, it's all about what Jekyll's trying to do. It's all about his experimentation and his story. And it's not about this dude trying to uncover it. And so I don't know, like, if you pick up this book in, in 1886, do you know that this is what it's about? Do you you see the title, the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and you're just interested in these two guys, you know, in the same way that, like, anybody watching Romeo and Juliet now has a different experience of anybody who was watching it for the first time. That kind of thing.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, Actually, I really wanted. I really would have liked to. I really would like to know the reaction of somebody who read this, not knowing.

[Mandy Moore]

Is it, like a Fight Club thing? Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. Like, is it a big, like, crazy M. Night Shyamalan twist at the end, or do you kind of see it coming? Because there are these, like. Through Utterson's eyes, you see, like, there are these periods of Jekyll's life where he's really, like, virtuous and, like, in the public eye and, like, being great. And then there are these versions, these periods where he's, like, locked away and he won't see anybody.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, there's one or two later.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

And then in the. Like, the last chapter, you find out, like, the reasoning behind all of this.

[Mandy Moore]

But, yeah, there's one or two things where you'll see Hyde in. Occasionally Utterson sees Hyde, like, once or twice. Where he hears about it. Where, like, Hyde is wearing clothing that's way too big for him, you know. Or there's one moment where Utterson and Enfield are walking and they see Jekyll in a window. And then all of a sudden, Jekyll's, like, face completely goes blank, like, goes pale. And then he, like, shuts the window and they don't hear from him for weeks kind of thing.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. Like, certainly Utterson doesn't realize before someone spells it out for him.

[Mandy Moore]

No, not at all.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I don't know if a contemporary audience would have picked up on it before or not.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah. Which is interesting, you know, because it is an allegorical tale about evil and the suppressing of evil thoughts, I think, which is kind of very Victorian in a way, of the difference between your public self and your private self and, you know, what kind of desires you are willing to manifest in front of other people.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. Like, it's very. The book itself, and I made a lot of marks about. About this particular aspect, but it's. It's a lot about, like, the duality of. Of a person's nature. Yeah. I mean, like you said, they're public. Not just their public self and their private self, but, like, who they want to be and who they aspire to be versus, like, who they are or, like, who they would be if they let their impulses go just totally Unchecked.

[Mandy Moore]

Oh, yeah. And it's interesting too, because I was doing a little bit of reading that initially there were a lot of. It was picked up. Part of its initial popularity was kind of picked up and the concept became very popular in sermons, like contemporary sermons and Christian teachings of knowing whether or not you are infallible, etc. And then there's kind of been backlash that it's not about capital G good versus capital E evil. It's more about the. More Freudian in a way of like, are you willing to accept that part of you is kind of rash and desire based and the other part of you kind of knows what society expects of you and how you balance that is incredibly important. Which is different from just like, you are a good person or you are a bad person. You know what I mean? And then even later in the book, in the letter that Jekyll writes where he's talking about. I was fascinated by this, where he's talking about just the way the. The potion or whatever it is works. He's like, I think in the future people will probably figure out how to split themselves into all sorts of personalities. Like, he doesn't even limit it to. Everyone has two personalities, you know, which is.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, like. Like getting to two personalities is just like striking the. You know, it's scratching the surface, really.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Though I was. I was pleasantly surprised to find the same cop out in this book that I found in Frankenstein.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I actually, I think I highlighted the exact moment and it's really awesome. Let me. Let me get the. Let me draw the highlight up and actually read it because it is a spectacular.

[Mandy Moore]

It's pretty great. And this I'm referencing in Frankenstein where, you know, Dr. Victor Frankenstein is telling the Captain who he's telling the story to. Like I said in that episode that, you know, no, I'm not going to tell you how I did it because then this is going to happen to you kind of thing. Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

For two good reasons. I will not enter deeply into the scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man's shoulders. And when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. Second, because as my narrative will make, alas, too evident, my discoveries were incomplete.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

So I'm not.

[Andrew]

Don't. Don't worry.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

And I think this still happens. Like, I always. I'm always struck by that scene in Looper.

[Mandy Moore]

Okay.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Where they, like, Try for a minute to talk about the time travel involved. And Bruce Willis is just like, shut up. Don't worry about it. Like, stop talking about it.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

And I think it's a really. It's a. It brings you out of the action of the story just for a minute and. And then you don't have to worry about it anymore. Yeah. Like, in that. In that sense, it's effective. Like, you, like, don't. Don't worry too much about. About how he eats and breathes. You should really just relax.

[Mandy Moore]

Well, and if these, you know, the stories theoretically should be about, you know, even if they're fictional, they should be about unique characters who are doing a thing that no one else has done. And if they actually go through this thing that they are going through that well, then they would never want anyone else to go through them. So it, you know, fictionally, it makes sense why they would never tell anyone kind of thing.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. Something. I. I don't. I don't know if we're gonna talk about this a whole lot, but something I kind of find interesting is that in. In Jekyll and Hyde and in their relationship with one another and in what Hyde is to Jekyll, you can, I think you see a lot of elements of, like, what Freud would later go on to, like, categorize as the id.

[Mandy Moore]

Yes, very much so.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Even though, Even though that paper, like the ego and the ID, the paper itself was not published until 1923, which is, oh, interesting, you know, quite a bit after this book was actually published. So it's interesting that even before we had categorized the stuff as, like, different psychological impulses, you have, you know, Stevenson here writing about Hyde as. As like a part of Jekyll that's just completely uninhibited by. By any of, like, society's, you know, pressures and any, like, personal conflict. Like, he just is, like, the only thing that Hyde responds to is pure, like, animalistic fight or flight.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I was just so like that.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because why don't you.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. Pick one of the. Pick up. What I'm putting down.

[Mandy Moore]

One of the things that was interesting is that, like, later, you know, a lot of. I think what you and I are talking about is getting. Is what's revealed in the last chapter. Because the last chapter is Jekyll kind of spelling everything out and how everything works, which some of it I find confusing and kind of unsatisfactory. A little bit.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Let's talk about that in a little bit because I'm interested to Hear what?

[Andrew]

Exactly.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

You're unsatisfactory.

[Mandy Moore]

Well, it just. But so he has a line or two where he says that, like Hyde, because Hyde has committed this murder of Danny Carew, he allows himself to be. To turn back into Jekyll. Like, I think one of the things that he kind of sets up is that he. There's no reason for Hyde to turn back into Jekyll except that he knows Jekyll is the one that allows him to continue to live.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

You know, he knows the alternative is being, you know, hanging for his crime.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Mandy Moore]

Later in Hyde, because it's, it's.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

It's known like instantly that Hyde is who did this because there are witnesses and they track him back to the, like, the address in Soho that Jekyll, like, he had bought him a little apartment as like, a cover and like, a place to go. And he was. When he was out carousing as Hyde. It's really, it's, it's interesting because, you know, initially when Jekyll, you know, brews the magic unspecified potion that makes this transition happen, he. He really, he revels in, in being Hyde. And he talks about how, you know, Hyde is younger than Jekyll and like, smaller in stature than Jekyll because he's like. It's a part of his, his self that's like, less used. And so it's like it's aged less than Jekyll.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, I found, I do find that fascinating that the way he describes Hyde and the way he describes himself physically are so different. Like, Hyde is smaller in stature, stronger, but not bigger. And it is, it's because it's like, from a moral perspective, Jekyll has been a good person, so his evil side is less exercised on like, a literal level. Like, I kind of found that a little cute.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, that was a nice touch. And for people who haven't read this, like, I guess we should, we should go through, like, what his undoing eventually is. He discovers this potion. Initially, he takes it, and sometimes he has to take it two or even three times, change it to hide.

[Mandy Moore]

Okay.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

And then one morning he wakes up. He had gone to sleep as Jekyll, and he wakes up without having taken a potion as Hyde. And this is the beginning of kind of a backsliding where slowly Jekyll begins to lose himself. And where once Jekyll had been the dominant personality, Hyde soon begins to be. Yeah, and I guess the, the, the way that it's laid out in the book is that, you know, Hyde is pure evil with no conscience, no good part of him at all. And Jekyll is merely mostly good. But the evil is still there in him. Like, he is not a pure character. He's just like. He's just like everybody. He's just like you and me. Like, he's. He tries to be good, he's mostly good, but he's not all the way good. Yeah, there's those kind of framed as inevitable that the evil side will eventually win out just by, you know, by pure strength of will. Because even. Even when Jekyll is still Jekyll, he is seized by these. These needs or these desires to become, you know, the unfettered Hyde.

[Mandy Moore]

Well, and one of the last changes that he goes through that he documents is that he's like sitting in a park in, like, the middle of day. And Jekyll's sitting there thinking like, he hasn't turned into Hyde in a good long time. He's tried to make amends for the crimes that Hyde has committed. And he's feeling really good about himself and telling himself he's such a good person. And then all of a sudden he turns into Hyde. And it's this kind of moment where it's like Jekyll thought he had become, I think, a purer good than he is. And in that exact moment is when he becomes the kind of heinous, evil version of himself. I think what struck me the most about that last chapter is just the way Jekyll talks about himself and the way he talks about Hyde because he always tries to refer to him as a separate character. But I guess what I found unsatisfying is that I don't. He still kind of talks about himself, if that makes sense.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

What do you mean?

[Craig]

I don't.

[Mandy Moore]

I'm trying to articulate it like.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I think I know what you mean. I just want you to articulate better so we can talk.

[Mandy Moore]

He talks about Hyde more as a bunch of his own impulses rather than this true other personality, if that makes sense.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

And I. I was actually going to say the opposite. I thought that he. He talked about Hyde as though he were a separate person. A little more so, as though, you know, so as to distance himself and so as to, like. I mean, Hyde has killed a man at this point. Like, he. I feel like he kind of goes out of his way to. To allude to Hyde as a separate person rather than an aspect of himself. Just to, like, calm, you know, just to ease his own conscience.

[Mandy Moore]

Okay, that's fair, I think. I guess I'm. I'm more responding to the like literal sci fi rules of how this works, if that makes sense. Like after each change or, you know, there's one, one or two changes where he talks about seeing himself in the new physical form and, and this, that kind of bleeding nature to me, I think just kind of muddies the rules of whatever's happening. Like that he is able to describe himself as Hyde for me, doesn't keep that delineation clear. And that's interesting from a like thematic perspective, I guess, but it doesn't quite support the, all of the efforts he's making to kind of make hide a different person. Does that make sense?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I think so.

[Mandy Moore]

It's just weird. I'm just like. Because he does have moments where he like looks into the mirror and sees Hyde or whatever it is, or like he looks down at his hands and he knows that he has turned into Hyde. Which I guess the presupposition I had was that as soon as Hyde takes over, Jekyll's gone, you know.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah.

[Mandy Moore]

And so that way, in that way it's different than two separate dudes who inhabit one body. It's a dude's basic baser instincts, not basic baser instincts taking over that body. You know what I mean? I don't know. I think the rules are a little fast and loose.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. I mean, possibly, like it's, it's more, the book is more about the broader, like the, the, the, I think the duel, the duality of man, I mean, is obviously a big theme here. Is this like in each person there are these warring good and evil impulses. And, and yeah, it's more, it's more about, it's more about separating those out from each other and like what makes those, like what makes those halves different from each other or maybe even like what, like how the good can't escape from the evil. Or even how they, like how they, how they each balance each other out and how they each kind of need one another. Though I may be getting, though I may be thinking of a Star Trek episode talking.

[Mandy Moore]

Well, I think that that plays to what you were saying earlier in the book's relationship to Freud. Right. Is, you know, the idea of like, you don't. If you suppress it, that only makes it worse in a way. You know, if you cordon off the, you know, the primal aspect of your personality and try to contain it, then it only comes back stronger. And that's actually what in the, in the story of the book leads to the murder of Danvers Karoo, I think. Right. Like, yeah, yeah, like, there's two months off from being Hyde.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. Like, after he tramples that girl and. And what's his name? Enfield sees him.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Enfield is barely in it, so you don't really remember his name.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

But, yeah, like, every once in a while, Hyde will do something that so horrifies Jekyll, like the. The trampling the girl is one. Murdering our friend Dan is another. That he, you know, he puts the lid on Hyde and he's like Jekyll for a couple of, you know, two solid months, and he's just being, like, purely virtuous. And then eventually, once the, like, immediate fear or the immediate horror at Hyde's or I guess his own actions has faded, he has a moment of weakness. And that's when the evil. You know, when. That's when the lesser, the more evil half comes out and like. And does something even worse than.

[Mandy Moore]

Even worse than he. You know, as I was going to that section of the book and I found a highlight I made, I think kind of goes back to what I was saying before is that, like, there's this whole section where he describes what it was like to kill and then kind of like he basically stomps that dude to death, right?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Oh, yeah. No, it's really brutal. Beats him upside the head with a cane and then continues, like, beating and trampling him until.

[Mandy Moore]

This is like an elderly member of Parliament. From what I can glean from the book.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, like, he's not a young guy, but the, like.

[Mandy Moore]

So the way it's written in the book is like, instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me in rage, with a transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight from every blow. Which, you know, just from a writing perspective, I really enjoy. But it's in that section he is still telling that story from the first person, you know.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, yeah. I was just gonna say it's some. There. There's probably some really interesting research paper in there about when Jekyll says I. When he's talking about Hyde. And when he says Hyde, you know, when he uses the first versus the third person.

[Mandy Moore]

And I just flipped like a couple pages later. And there is a line that I remember where Jekyll does. He's talking about Hyde and he says, he. I say, you know, I cannot say I. That child of hell had nothing human. Nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. So it's like even Jekyll is trying to. I guess to your point earlier, maybe some of my dissatisfaction with how the rules are handled should Kind of be for naught because Jekyll is trying to create delineations between himself and Hyde and he just can't.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, yeah. Like, I think that's, that's less about what the author is doing and more about how the character is just trying to. Trying to cling to any last like, scrap of separation that he can, he can justify between himself and this like holy, evil, holy like impulse driven creature that is. That is Hyde.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah. I'm trying to think of like it has become this Jekyll and Hyde thing has become a shorthand for certain types of, you know, split personality stuff. And it's also, I mean, I think

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

a lot of the, the subsequent stuff has kind of lost some of this, Some of the tragic quality of the story. Because I mean, the tragic stuff is obviously that Jekyll by the end can't control it anymore.

[Mandy Moore]

Yes.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

And is like a slave to his own impulses almost. And, and what kind of gets glossed over in like, in like cartoon versions where they import this is just like, oh, it's a, it's a good guy and he can change back into an evil guy and back and forth like at will. It loses a lot of the, A lot of the subtlety. Now I did, I did. One thing I did want to ask you is like, do you have any thoughts about the end of the book where Jekyll has kind of sealed himself away and he is, he is Hyde most of the time and they're just kind of trapped in that room with each other. Like, do you have any particular thoughts about that section of the book?

[Mandy Moore]

Oh, I don't know. I don't know what you mean. Like, what am I thinking about? Like, it sounds terrible.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Well, he's. He's talking about how, I mean, Jekyll is writing this final letter to Utterson and he talks about, you know, I have to hide this away, where Hyde can't get it before I change or else he's just gonna rip it up. Or he's talking about how Hyde like defaced that picture of Jekyll's father and how he, he took Jekyll's Bible and like blasphemed all over his stuff.

[Mandy Moore]

I do remember that. Yeah. I mean that does speak to them being more separate than the rest of the book seems to indicate. You know, separate.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

But Hyde knows just how to get to Jekyll.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, it's that way where I guess, you know, rolling with the different versions of yourself, like, to put it, you know, kind of coarsely and humorously. It's the way that like, you kind of resent the drunk version of yourself or whatever it might be, you know, or like the version of yourself that is not on the clock if, you know, you don't have things to do and you're, you know, desperately trying to relax or kind of indulge like, I'm gonna eat this pizza cuz I want to right now and I don't care about anything else.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

The version of you who stays up till three in the morning and the way the version of you that has to get up at 7 just hates that guy.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, yeah. Isn't that a Jerry Seinfeld bit that you really like?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I mean, I do like it.

[Andrew]

I don't.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I thought, I thought that privately before I ever saw the Seinfeld bit. And I was like, yeah, this is funny because he's saying what I'm thinking,

[Mandy Moore]

you know, like all of Seinfeld's humor. Yeah, that's fine. But yeah, you're right, you're right about that. And I think that conflict does not play as much in the book as I would have expected it to, if that makes sense.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, I mean, you just, you get so little of it from Jekyll's perspective that I don't think there's a lot of room for those kinds of observations.

[Mandy Moore]

And I think that's what I'm used to from. And I'll call it a myth because at this point, like in the same way that Frankenstein has taken on a life of its own, like the character Jekyll and Hyde can mean so much from a storytelling perspective that it really is a myth. Like, it's just like you have this character that goes back and forth and that's it. You can kind of create a narrative around it however you want.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. Like the shorthand kind of, kind of loses some of the subtlety of the original.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, and the subtlety of the original is that it's much more of an allegory about the nature of humanity and the nature of, you know, moral behavior. But you. I would have expected more of these characters like messing with each other or at least Hyde messing with Jekyll deliberately. And that doesn't really happen until the kind of later the late stage, like

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

you're saying when they're trapped with each other. And there's actually, there's a quote that I didn't highlight, but I think I remember how co host is like they share memories, but they don't. They don't necessarily like Hyde especially doesn't necessarily care About Jekyll. There's like, there's something in there about how Jekyll takes more than a father's interest in Hyde and Hyde has less than a son's indifference toward Jekyll.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah, my iPad just died. I was going to look that up as you were saying it because I highlighted that.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

No, no, that's a really. That's a good line.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah. And if you, if you get the

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

free Kindle edition of this book, which I really strongly recommend that you. A couple typos, but otherwise it's pretty good. There, there's a lot of good stuff that just like when you're reading through the Kindle books, you'll see the sections that lots of people have highlighted and there's some good stuff just in there.

[Mandy Moore]

So I guess I was, you know, because I was struck by how the Jekyll narrative has very little to do with Utterson from a like thematic perspective. Does that make sense? Like there are no other character that that theme doesn't trickle down into other parts of the book? For me it's a pretty short story in that regard.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

It's kind of a short story within a short story. Like you could almost just have that chapter, almost have just the high. Just the chapter from Jekyll's persec perspective be its own teeny tiny short story.

[Mandy Moore]

And it would. What it would lose is the Tyler Durden moment. Spoilers for Fight Club. It would, it would lose that moment. Right, but. And maybe I guess you lose like 80% of the book's like suspense building to that moment, you know.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, I think that's, that's got to be especially for people who are coming at it. You know, contemporary readers would. Would have been wondering along with Utterson, you know, what is the deal with these two guys?

[Mandy Moore]

Yes, but when you're reading it now, I don't need all that Utterson stuff. You know, I'm more interested in Jekyll himself. So, you know, and the only times you ever see Jekyll throughout the book are like he's so old and tired because he's ugh. And I kind of. I was pleasantly surprised by how the book kind of justified the way his physical self was worn down by the way that Hyde's physical self kind of blossoms. You know, he was taking a very, you know, trying to say that like each moral half of his person kind of contributes to their physical well being. Which I found I was very surprised by that and I like that a lot. But you only encounter Jekyll sporadically throughout the book. So, yeah, I think you could. There is a version of this that is just that last chapter. And then I think a lot of the subsequent versions of this tale Take that last chapter and then run with it.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah. Like, I think the Utterson part does play a really crucial role in. In building suspense. Even if you know what's gonna happen the whole time. And this, you know, the story itself is so short. Like, it's not. It's not a long.

[Mandy Moore]

No, not at all.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

It's not as though the stuff with Utterson, like, hurts it at all. Like, if anything, it makes it more tragic that this guy who is. Who is like a dear friend to Utterson and to some other characters in the book, like, it becomes more tragic that the Hyde stuff is happening to him.

[Mandy Moore]

Yes.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Than it would be if it were just like, if we were just the Jekyll chapter. It seems almost like, you know, it would be this guy brought down by his own hubris, and that would be it. And that, like, that's a story in and of itself. But I think the rest of the story kind of humanizes him and his struggle. Well, to see it from the outside like that.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Mandy Moore]

And I think when it was written, you needed Utterson there and those other characters there to kind of set up the society in which Jekyll was existing, which kind of creates all of that internal versus external behavior. You know, if you don't have an. A representation of Victorian London through Utterson and that kind of propriety and all that kind of stuff, Then the whole Jekyll Hyde thing might not work. I mean, it works, but it's a lot more abstract, I suppose it doesn't have a clear motivation.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Well, do you have. Do you have anything else? I do have something that struck me funny.

[Mandy Moore]

Do you have a struck me funny? Because I have a struck fun. I did have a struck me funny. And I'm not sure if it's the same one.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I'm wondering if it's the same one.

[Mandy Moore]

Is it a really bad pun?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

It is a really bad pun. I think we're at the same thing. So Utterson is looking for Hyde. And there's this point in the book where Utterson says, if he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek.

[Mandy Moore]

God dang it. Oh, no. I can't believe he said that.

[Craig]

I can't believe it.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

That's something that I liked even in the abridged version. Like, that made it to the abridged version. And I remember being. Even as a younger version of myself, being like, really oh, is that. Are they really making that?

[Mandy Moore]

No, I. God, I can't believe that happened.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I'm glad we had the same. Struck me funny, the.

[Mandy Moore]

There was also another one that they refer to. I don't know if it's. It's when they go to the morgue to identify Danver Carew's body or not. I don't remember if it happens then or happens earlier.

[Craig]

They.

[Mandy Moore]

They're talking about a doctor character, like a surgeon, and they refer to him as Saw Bones. Like, capital S. Saw Bones. Yeah, Saw Bones, which apparently is slang for doctor in that age.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

I knew about that because of Star Trek, because that's why. That's why Kurt calls. Yeah, that's why Kurt calls McCoy Bones.

[Mandy Moore]

Two star treks, and in one episode, we've already. Okay, I don't know how many times we've talked about Star Trek, but we've definitely talked about Looper in like three or four different.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Obviously it's left a really, really big effect on me.

[Mandy Moore]

But, yeah, I dug the book. I don't know what else we can say about it.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

No, I mean, I think that's. That's it. It's a pretty short thing, but yeah, it's another. There are so many good, quote, unquote, classic books that are available on, you know, in the public domain, and Amazon has made them really easy to get through its, you know, its Kindle store. So, I mean, even if you don't have, like, the E. Reader Kindle, like, there are Kindle apps for practically everything under the sun, including your web browser. So, like, go to Amazon, there's this whole free section of the store, and you can find, like, some Sherlock Holmes stuff. You can find Jekyll and Hyde. Like, there are all kinds of.

[Mandy Moore]

Am I gonna make you mad if I tell you that I read this on ibooks?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Are you. Are you kidding me? Did you pay money for this?

[Mandy Moore]

No, it was free on ibooks.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Oh, it's free? Well, I mean, you can do it on ibooks too. My point is there's a lot of really good stuff that's. That is. Has been around for so long that it has.

[Mandy Moore]

Real quick. What do you think about the language? It's an old book. What do you think about the language?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

It's a little. It. It takes a while to get to what it's saying, but I feel like. I mean, we talked about this last week a little bit with the Color Purple too. It was like, once I was in it for a while, I found it pretty easy to Digest.

[Mandy Moore]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

What about you?

[Mandy Moore]

I still, I think there were just. There were times where one or two times where I kind of lost the thread of what was happening

[Craig]

because of

[Mandy Moore]

how dense throughout it was.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, it's like you, you could have said that with fewer words if you'd really want.

[Mandy Moore]

And I did learn that the word holographic also means a manuscript. Like a handwritten manuscript, like written by the person who is writing it. That sounds terrible. Explanation.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, that's bad.

[Mandy Moore]

At one point, I think Utterson says that a letter from Jekyll or something was holograph, which means it was like written in his hand. It wasn't.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Okay. Instead of like taken down by a.

[Mandy Moore]

Which when I, when I asked ibooks to define it, it knew exactly what I was asking. It didn't try. It didn't mis. Define it as like a hologram or something. You know what I mean?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Good job, ibooks.

[Mandy Moore]

But that was. Yeah, it was just a little dense I think at times in ways that sometimes I kind of missed what was going on because it was very preoccupied with describing the characters from a personality perspective. You know, in manners of personality that I think sometimes got a little wordy.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah, I can definitely see that. But yeah, point. My point is definitely that there's a lot of really good old stuff that has. Has gone beyond the bounds of the weird US copyright laws and you can now get for free from. From either Kindle or Ibooks or I'm sure there are a lot of other third party like ebook stores that they're all available in. So. Yeah, go. Go grab them them. Go missing some good stuff.

[Mandy Moore]

Go out and get them.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Go get it. Get some words.

[Mandy Moore]

What?

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

They made their money. Just. Just get it for free.

[Mandy Moore]

Okay.

[Craig]

I can't believe you said all that stuff, Andrew.

[Andrew]

I can't believe I did either. But in my defense, I had taken a serum and turned evil like I said.

[Craig]

Yeah, I should have said that. 13 years. I should have mentioned during the podcast where you took the serum with the

[Andrew]

special like salts with the impurity in them that made me.

[Craig]

Yeah, but I, I myself had collapsed on the floor out of shock at your transformation. So.

[Andrew]

Yeah, and then I trampled you. So that makes sense. Anyway, thanks for listening.

[Craig]

Yeah, thanks everybody.

[Andrew]

What are we doing? What's, what's. What do we want to run them through?

[Craig]

Well, if folks want to email us, they can email us. The email has not changed in over a decade. Overdue. Podmail.com we're on different social media now, but you can still Use Overdue Pod to find us on your social media of choice. Maybe we'll be there. Our theme song is composed by Nick Laranges. Listen to it. Enjoy it. Andrew. If folks want to know more about our show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue podcast.com was and is the Internet website. We have links to the books that we have read and the ones we are going to read. We also have a link up there to our Patreon page. Patreon.com overdue pod if you think the audio you're listening to now sounds better than the audio you were listening to in the past, then that's partly because of Patreon money that we use to buy equipment and books and all kinds of other things that makes the show logistically possible. Patreon.com overduepod you get an ad free version of the feed. You get bonus episodes. You get access to our discord, all kinds of other stuff. So thank you for supporting us if you do, and if you're thinking about it again. Patreon.com overdue pod Craig, it's May soon. It's gonna be May.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

What are we doing?

[Craig]

I can tell you the whole schedule.

[Andrew]

Tell me the whole schedule.

[Craig]

Fresh episodes, hot out the kitchen. Starting with children's book week at the beginning of May, we're gonna be talking about the works of Eric Carle, starting with the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar. There are other bugs to talk about and there are other books to talk.

[Mandy Moore]

Join us then.

[Craig]

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, Annie Bot by Sierra Greer and Daisy Jones, and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reed. Should be a fun month. I'm ready to eat a lollipop. Salami.

[Andrew]

Five strawberries.

[Craig]

Probably a leaf. Probably.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

There's a leaf in there. I remember a leaf with a bunch of holes in it.

[Craig]

It'll make my tummy feel better.

[Andrew]

Yeah, and you'll turn into a beautiful butterfly.

[Mandy Moore]

Always

[Craig]

after I take my serum.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Okay.

[Andrew]

All right, everybody. Until we turn into podcasters again next week and talk to you again, please try to be happy. That was a Headgum podcast.

[Mandy Moore]

Hi, I am Mandy Moore.

[Andrew]

Sterling K. Brown.

[Mandy Moore]

And I'm Chris Sullivan. And we host the podcast that was us now on Headgum.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

Each episode, we're gonna go into a

[Craig]

deep dive from our show.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

This is us.

[Andrew]

That's right.

[Craig]

We're gonna go episode by episode. We're also gonna pepper in episodes with

[Mandy Moore]

different guest stars and writers and casting directors.

[Craig]

Are we gonna cry?

[Mandy Moore]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Little bit.

[Mandy Moore]

Are we gonna laugh a lot.

[Andrew (second Andrew)]

A lot.

[Mandy Moore]

A whole lot. That's what I'M hoping, man, listen to

[Andrew]

that was us on your favorite podcast app. Or watch full video episodes on YouTube or Spotify. New episodes every Tuesday.