Mexican Batman, Britain’s Downfall, Mr Bean’s Comeback & Jimmy Carr - Rabbit Hole #5 - #1143

“Hey, do you want to know an interesting, here's an tangential factor there? So I only find this out recently. So Finnegan's Wake is a book that I've read around a lot. I haven't read Finnegan's Wake, but I read about it a lot. It's kind of the great work of literature. It's James Joyce, obviously. So I didn't realize that Finnegan's Wake is Star Wars.”

“But basically, Star Wars is a sort of dumbed-down version of those books. Well, before Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero's Journey, his thesis was on the myths within James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. So he basically wrote that first, and then he thought, oh, this is really good, this thesis.”

“I don't have my phone on me. Describe your phone. I could sell my phone. It's a Quinn F22 Pro. It has applications, but it's too useless to get addicted to. Great. You purposely dumb phoned yourself. No, genuinely.”

“it's actually just too useless to text on. But I got the Quinn F22 Pro. But I love Jack because I was on holiday with him and he didn't mention it once. And I was like, Jack, what's this phone? And I feel like the way to get people onto these phones is to not ram it down people's throats.”

“That's what a cliche is. And you really want to just write original sentences. If you read East of Eden by Steinbeck, it's the last sort of big book I read. And you drop his sentences into Google. No one said sentences like that, like the whole book. And I looked at the chapter you had and you drop a couple of things into Google search, direct quotes, and it's just been said before.”

“Before that, it was all verbal story writing. Gilgamesh, wasn't it? The width of Gilgamesh is a bit older. Maybe. Slightly. Not to contradict you on your own podcast, but you know, I mean, feel free. Just to go back to that, isn't it interesting? Just hold this up for a second.”

“No idea. Is that J.K. Rowling's? When J.K. Rowling was stuck on Harry Potter. She turned it into a spreadsheet. This is the fifth Harry Potter. Like the entire storytelling sequence into a spreadsheet. Is that short? And how did that work out? Was it hit? All right.”

“But also even like Coca-Cola launched in 1886. Liquid Death. Yeah. Liquid Death. I would say, yeah, Liquid Death, Pepsi versus Coke. It's so interesting because you almost create, you almost create the, you know, the Dink Foster Wallace line of the fish can't see the water.”

“Even during the happy ending? He speeds it up. It's Napoleon. My younger brother works in politics and his idea is to understand what real people think. And he does a bloody good job of that. But I said to him, Well, what do real people think? And I'm in a taxi with him. And he's got his damn AirPods in, trying to listen to what real people think.”

“I certainly don't think the AI would have had that much to do with it. Had Annie Jacobson on the show who wrote Nuclear War, a countdown scenario, and that was a fun episode. Yeah. Well, her new one is about bioweapons. It's about collably. And she said the Russians during the 80s, when we are not working on enhancing weapons to make them”

“That's the. I think there's something to this. I think that whole anxious generation Jonathan Haidt thing of like, it's not good for kids. And there's this kind of, you know, they think it's social media is as harmful as cigarettes for kids. But I think what we need to do then is give kids cigarettes.”

“Tolkien would give C.S. Lewis his draft of the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis would give Tolkien his draft of Narnia or whatever he was working on. They would both read it out loud and then roast one another over a pint. Hey, do you want to know an interesting, here's an tangential factor there?”

“And I remember who was it? Hunter S. Thompson. He rewrote The Great Gatsby just to know what it felt like to write a good book. And I do think there's something in there. I keep rewrote. But by hand, yeah.”

“So Joseph Campbell, you've heard of Joseph Campbell? The Hero Has a Thousand Faces? The Hero's Journey, all of those kind of great books that informed Star Wars. But basically, Star Wars is a sort of dumbed-down version of those books. Well, before Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero's Journey, his thesis was on the myths within James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.”

“So Joseph Campbell, you've heard of Joseph Campbell? The Hero Has a Thousand Faces? The Hero's Journey, all of those kind of great books that informed Star Wars. But basically, Star Wars is a sort of dumbed-down version of those books. Well, before Joseph Campbell wrote The Hero's Journey, his thesis was on the myths within James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.”

“Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to meet up and have a pint. Tolkien would give C.S. Lewis his draft of the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis would give Tolkien his draft of Narnia or whatever he was working on. They would both read it out loud and then roast one another over a pint.”

“Tolkien and C.S. Lewis used to meet up and have a pint. Tolkien would give C.S. Lewis his draft of the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. C.S. Lewis would give Tolkien his draft of Narnia or whatever he was working on. They would both read it out loud and then roast one another over a pint.”

“James Joyce is actually the root of this. Yes, it's a distilled version of these things. That's brilliant. I had Alex Petkiss on the show, and he did a breakdown of The Odyssey, but because he can read the original Greek, he's able to get much more rich explanation of what's going on because sometimes words have multiple different meanings.”