Brave New World (Part 1)

for that matter. But this week we are diving into our first piece of bonifide, bonafide English Lit required reading, Elvis Huxley's Brave New World. There's a pretty good chance you already had to read this in eleventh grade, and we are reading it now because it has been adapted into a series on Peacock, the NBC streaming service. But trust me, this will absolutely not be a high school English class discussion. In terms of the sex, it is one of the book with like the most amount of

sex but also the least sexy sex. Yeah. I mean, when the only sound effect is zip zip, it doesn't sound very sexy to me, in my opinion. Like they all want to. They're all horny for zippers. It feels like they're going to be horny for zippers. I finally feel seen, Melissa. I mean, listen, no shade to anyone who's into zippers. Welcome back to Popcorn Book Club. I'm joined as always by our co host Jennifer Wright, Tantran, Melissa Hunter, and Karladon Quall Los Angeles. You're all looking

quite pneumatic today. No, no, bros. Perfect transition to say that we are talking about Brave New World. The I Think two book by Alice Huxley, which has recently been adapted into a television series on Peacock, which Jennifer was just telling us, is very very different from the book. They've made the television series a lot more action. I watched one episode and I was like, what is this. I'm reading this and I don't know what's going on. I mean, I'll say that the book doesn't really have

until the end, which is action pact. At the beginning, like the first chapter is just a slow tour through a laboratory. I hated it so much. Okay, wait, I love the beginning of this book. It does feel very like Network executive bait in terms of the like future dystopian work, but very like, oh, this is The executives that wanted their own West World were like, what about Brave New World. It's it's ninety years old, but it's

relevant right now. So it makes that's like actually, word for word the pitch from the executive producer, it was me. I was the executive producer, Melissa, you've caught me. O, my god, Cora, I missed that deadline announcement. I used the pseudonym. The question I was curious about is which of it? Have any of you read this book before now? Because I read this book when I was in high school. Yeah, and I had barely remembered it. But I read this eighth grade. M I remember not caring for it at

all at the time. I liked it a lot more now, maybe because I'm more familiar with some of the topics that they're talking about, and I don't think that men like organs and by peeing into you, as I be impressed they did when maybe more I also we have a more bleak worldview. Also feels very early to read this book in terms of the themes, and like does everyone fucking each other and you know all of that stuff.

Everyone belongs to everyone else. In terms of the sex, it is one of the books with like the most amount of sex but also the least sexy sex. Yeah, just know, I had six women last week. Great, I don't care. It's never been so bored by constant fuckingly, particularly pneumatic. But it's sex without any longing. That's what's so interesting about it that whether or not sex is still sexy if there are no barriers to obtaining it.

I mean, when the only sound effect is zip zip, it doesn't sound very sexy to me in my opinion, like they all want to they're all horny for zippers. It feels like they're going to be horny for zippers. I finally feel seen, Melissa. I mean, listen, no shade

to anyone who's into zippers. Um. At the time that this was being written, though, a lot of people were transitioning over to using zippers, because there had been months before and zippers were considered by like serving Christian groups in the nineteen thirties to be this tool of satan that would enable licentiousness for everybody because you just be able to zip. So yeah, you wouldn't have to get laced in or up in yourself in anymore. It's also

very like technology. It is very amazing because like I don't know how zippers work, becos are amazing. I feel like I do know how zippers work. What sticks them together? The zipper zip? It's like two it's teeth, it's teeth. Here's my question. Could you make a zipper? Given plastic? Could you construct a zipper? Could I made you anything that I understand? And you handed me a raw chicken, I don't know if I could cook the chicken like I mean, I could, but I don't know if it

would be good. And I've been eating chicken for a very long time. In COVID times. You need to step up for meals. I am cooking my own meals, just not a lot of chicken because I'm scared of salmonella. I will say, reading this book and then remembering it was written in does make it like, oh, he didn't understand what genetic engineering was, but he nailed genetic engineering, yeah in a scary way. Goot on you for figuring

that out before he understood genetic engineering completely. Yeah. One of those things I loved about the introduction to this book where they're talking about creating these embryos and using different mechanisms to make the embryo stronger and better. Um. I've been going through IVF for the past year, and you end up thinking about your body in this incredibly

mechanical way. I was like, all right, I can't have any hot pass this week because this is the week where such and such chemical process has to happen, and therefore I can't have any best and this is why I can't have any mercury, so I can't eat any fish. And this is the problem that could result if you have teese. So UM, in a way, I wish I could just have a detachable womb where they could just

put all the chemicals into it. Because you do. Maybe it is because, um, because I'm going through VF and because I just didn't have sex and then you get pregnant. It has started to feel like an unbelievably mechanical process to me, which is exactly the way they portray it here, where yeah, it's just all chemicals and a big metal womb. I wonder what old A Hucks would feel about IBF. Was IVF around in the sixties when he no, not

even that's not that different. I feel like everybody looked at me, like, but it didn't become like a thing, you know what I mean. Like it maybe was a thing that like labs were doing, but it didn't become like a thing people were doing until like the eighties or nineties. Right. But he's he's clearly invested in the medical field and in science and technology, so um. He Also I don't know if you guys read the same version as I do, but my version has like interviews

and a biography and stuff. He wanted to be a doctor, but he was nearly blinded for two years and that yeah, he just like went blind because that's a thing that happens to people. And uh, he recovered site later, but always had site issues and it halted his dreams of becoming a doctor. And that's how he sort of ended up studying literature. That's sort of that's like one of the stories that I feel like only happened in the Victorian era and then it got better, Like just random

things like that happened. Well, it happened, and never have I ever to Davy. She couldn't walk for a year and then she could walk. But also that is fictional What it's not Bendy Kalin's exact life. Oh my god, mind blown. Yeah, that does actually inform the reading of this book too, because it does feel like it's all about predestination and things you can't control. Obviously there's a lot of themes within that. But or someone who wanted to be one thing but couldn't was like physically barred

from that. That makes sense. So let's I do want to ask before we get into the plot and the story of this book. The major theme at the beginning is this idea that the eggs and the sperm are put together into an egg, and that egg is not genetically engineered, but engineered through the scientific process that I'll just actually, you know, fictionalize is too predestined, likes, dislikes, contentment, happiness level, which to some degree I think kind of

exists naturally. Like this is a big philosophical question. But where do you guys stand on the idea of nature versus nurture and that sort of thing. Do you think sort of the way you come out is the person you are. Well, I mean again, in like the world of ivf um, something that doctors do that I think is not especially nice to do to women is to make you feel lie. You know, if you have too much sugar during this pregnancy, first of all, the baby will probably die, but if it doesn't, then it will

be unhappy forever. Like that's been showing to increase the rest of depression. I think. I don't know if anybody else is on the nightmares fertility train yet, but if you get on it, you will be made to feel guilty for eating anything other than you greens and like maybe a little broccoli for punch for the next nine months. Jennifer, eat a cupcake. Your baby will be fine, and you're it's gonna make her, don't. I mean, your baby is

going to be so sure. Every need to eat a cupcake to give everybody else an advantage to catch up. That's very nice. You're welcome. My friend is eight months pregnant and she went to home depot pick up something and like it was like dropped off to her car and she got out and the woman who dropped off was like, oh you oh, how how far are you along? You're getting an epidural? Like immediately act within one second of seeing her, was like, are you getting an epidural?

She's like Yeah, everyone has an opinion on pregnant women and how babies are made. Yeah, And I think that part of that opinion is like the unknown. Also, people are just so scared and they want to control it. But I feel like for every study that's like, don't do this, then there's another study that's like, oh, but maybe if you do this, maybe It's like I feel like the fact that we don't have clear cut answers makes people more scared and more anxious to control it.

I feel like if men got pregnant, we would know so much more. Let me, let me actually fix that. Some men do get pregnant, yes, but if the majority aready of people who got pregnant were men, I feel like our research and our understanding of pregnancy and fertility

would be completely different. Yes. Absolutely. And when I when I think of like nature versus nurture, I always think about, like how when I was just coming out, I was so obsessed with, like looking at all the research of the gay gene because I was like wanting to have an answer or like a definitive sort of like scientifically backed reason as to why I was gay, or like

wanting to answer that. But like it just it feels so Now as an adult, I'm like that just feels so so so like just a singular mind to try to think of things so explicitly in black and white in that way that like that there can be a gene to do that or like that everything you know, like all of that that there is just like a nature side of things, and it is such essential ism

in a way. That's what that really um props up white supremacist patriarchal structures of like, oh, women are biologically assists. Women are biologically designed to like stay home and take care of their young or you know, they would use that back in the day against like students of color who are like, well they're just not as smart. And you know, there's a lot of unpack in this book about that, but it's like justifying all of that through. It's just the biology of gender or race or ethnicity.

It's it's all women's heads are just smaller, smaller. Wonderful. I have this wonderful quote from the eighteen forties. Um, my next book deals with medicine. In the eighteen I was gonna say, you just have one of those, and I was like, that's the most darling thing I've ever. It's my favorite quote because I've been saying it to Daniel um every time I forget anything. There's a doctor who measured women's heads and found that a woman's head

is too small for intellect, but just big enough for love. Oh, that's the most adorable sexes. You know what I'm gonna. I'm gonna cross stitch that onto a pillow for each And I know what is your next book because I am fast? Um Well, okay, first of all, I have to sell it. Um so, if I'm working on the proposal for all of quarantine, it's about Madame Rossell. She was an abortionist in the eighteen forties and the first female millionaire independently in America. Um so, she made a

massive fortune selling birth control pills and performing abortions. At a time point abortions were still legal. Uh and then the medical establishments started cracking down on them very hard in eighteen fifty nine, in part because Madame Ristol was just like buying a mention in New York. She was

unbelievably rich. She was a British self taught immigrant who learned how to perform abortions, supposedly never lost a single patient um got into a huge fight with the Catholic Church, and the archbishop was planning to build a house right across from the cathedral in New York, and Madame Rossell I bedam for that lot by a hundred thousand dollars and then built her mention there where she performed abortions and she faked her own. She faked to ron gas

at the end. It's awesome, it's a great story. Question she became a millionaire before Madame C J. Walker? Yes, I interesting think so. I'm pretty sure c J. Walker was like the eighteen seventies, right, I believe so because she was born C J. Walker wasn't born ntil eighteen sixty. Yeah, so Madame Rossell was eight and forties. This isn't Women's

Millionaire podcast. I know. Well, I think so going back to the idea of like science and biology, I always you know, the phrase a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I kind of always thought that with like meddling in genetics and like genetic engineering, where it's like I bet if you get down to like the electron level, there might be a way to understand these things. But until then, like thinking we know these certain things and like playing

God is uh a nightmarish? Eventually I think Ford, yes, I'm so sorry playing forward of course Edith nightmares. You can pick your baby's I color now well, which was so fascinating playing, but only out of the colors if you if you want, and if you want to play an extra ten thousand dollars because you really came, they can Testie Brieus that you have and they can tell them all of the eye colors. So if you really want a blue eyed baby, you couldn't pick the one

that has blue eyes. But again, only only if you Jennifer and Daniela has recessive blue. I'm not getting a baby that because I immediately said, okay, I'll hit ask for ten thou dollars. I want violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor. Violet. That's what I'm going for. And it was explained to me that that is not an option. It's a little bit it's a little bit uh Jurassic Park like just because they thought whether they could, they didn't think whether

they should. Well, look, I mean it immediately, okay, if they can do that, um, I think when they told me they could do that, I immediately said so like theoretically can you tell me which one will be told if if we take a boy like he's there going to be one that's six four um. And they explained to me that it was both illegal and entirely unethical to do that. But yeah, but my question is why is high color ethic but height isn't. And so as

soon as that's possible, don't we think on ethical? People will pay you extra for it, like the yeah, I'll kid that can wear bangs. This is Popcorn Book Club. We'll be right back after this quick break. Okay, we're back with Popcorn Book Club. All right, but let's get into the plots. So yes, all right, Karama, you want to take the first The first act of the plot introduced us to the cast of character. Great. First of all, this book really has no ptagonists. A thing that pissed

me off. Everyone is bad is trying hard, but she's has a protagonist and more just a flat female character at any resolution that pissed me off a lot. I literally, no one is the main character in this book. So we enter in a factory tour, as was previously established, and that's sort of how we get the world that we're in. We understand that things have changed. We are using a different time system. It's the year after Ford.

It's like six hundred something after Ford. And the Ford seems to be Henry Ford of model t Forward fame and Built Ford Tough fame, um. And these babies are indeed built Ford tough. They Ford is also the inventor of the modernissembly line, which yes, correct, um, which is how they make the babies. They are built Ford Tough. And they have these different classifications or casts, and they which is a fun, fun entry into the deep world

of racism that exists in this book. Uh So they have these different casts, and they create different casts in these bottles. And you find out that there is this method that they use to bud these embryos so that they create dozens and dozens of twins. And page nine is when we get our first real, sort of very racist explanation of this birth thing where it's like, oh, well, we are able to create this many but in Mombassa, which is for those of you who don't know, Uh,

in Mombassa they're able to make so many more. But have you seen a Negro egg? And I was just like, oh, okay, this is where we're at. And I'm glad that it came up on the ninth page, but also I'm terrified that it came up on the ninth page. So does it keep coming And you're like, yes, yeah, that was my first yikes that I highlighted. I'm so excited for

all of the yikes. I texted my friend and I was like, I feel like, if you are a person of color and you read a book that gets weird racially, you should be able to stop at the first point that it gets weird and then say to everyone, yes, I did read that book, Like I feel like I could have read nine pages and then told everyone I read the book. I also want to remind everyone that that Ford was the type of guy who had a

newspaper called the Darborn Independent. And there's a very famous, a very famous headline, UH from the Forward International Weekly UH called the International Jew colin the World's Problem. So he is not a great guy in a lot of ways. That's sort of like his famous, like big headline. Because that's so terrible. I can't even make any of the jokes that I would want to make if it were

like it's so bad. It's like and the chapters are like exactly the type of things that people on like that, like the neo Nazis on Twitter, uh, talk about where they're like how Jews always played the victim, like you know, how Jews took over the world, how they are not American and like you know, like all the dumb like greatest hits. So yeah, I mean is bad. I think

there's also a problem. One of my my prior books was about treatment of diseases and it's and it's about heros the bottom um and what do you read about doctors practicing from I'm gonna say, like, do not thank you thirty is fucking impossible to find ones that are not at least enthusiastically interested in eugenics and what you can do. Um. It felt like I kept going along and I would be like, oh, this is great, like yeah, they're they're working with orphans and oh ship, no, they're

sterilizing the note they're in Eugenicist No one. Alexander Graham Bell was a eugenicist. Everybody to eugenis. They're all eugenicis. It's bad. But so in this world we have the director of the or is the director different from Henry I couldn't figure that out. Yeah, I think, oh, yeah, Henry the director is the one who then leaves at the end. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah. So there's this guy named Henry. He's introduced, Uh, we are introduced this

woman named Lenna who has lupus. That's super casually thrown in there. Dude, we say Lenna. I was saying Lenina on the show, they say Lenina, but in the audio book that I listened to make this bearable, they said Lenna. So I've been conditioned that comes up later to say Lennon. I think it's considered it's after Lennon, And yes, it's not exactly veiled. No, it's not. No, it's very very clearly stated. And I was like, oh, okay, that's where we're at. So we meet Lenina or Lenina however you

want to say. It is correct. She's not real and she sucks anyway, not as bad as everybody else, but she sucks at She's passive. She's just look, she wants to get laid and travel and that's it. She's like, she's like Daisy Buchanan and that she is just the representation of the system, you know what I mean. She like Daisy is actively bad in a lot of ways. But when we do our great get of somebody in

the future, we will talk about her. But so we meet Lenina or Lenina, we meet Um, we meet Henry, and uh, we are realizing that this world is different from ours, and that there's this conditioning that happens, this um sort of hypno what did they call it? Paid it, Yeah, hypnopedic hypnopedia, where it's basically like sleep training with sound, where they tell you these platitudes um, and they enforce the cast syst um where it's like, well, I'm so glad that I'm not an epsalon. I would never want

to play with those children. They wear khaki or the Gamas hate khaki. Ya, isn't it They reinforce racism in your sleep. Yes, also a hatred of khaki, which feels unfair, almost as unfair as the racism. Well, you know what, no one looks good in khaki, so maybe that's a good thing. Do you look good in khaki? I think I look kai, I look bad. I don't. Maybe dold you imagine you or me Dana and head to tokaki and I feel like I feel like Laura drn looks

good in Khaki. Everything all right, She's an out liar. She is no one can compare themselves to Laura Durn and feel like it was a fair comparison. This is just to say that I feel as if I had been sleep told that Khaki is bad because I don't think I look in Khaki. Yeah. So there they have this peptic sleep training, and then we learn more about how their destructions, and everybody's supposed to be doing activities all the time and nobody's supposed to be alone. And

we get to meet Franny, who's Lenina's friend. Franny. I think it's my favorite character because she's just like, she's like, have you just been having sex with Henry? You need to go do somebody else. Don't have another man. Also, I love your foe Moroccan belt, like asked Henry where he got it. She feels like Judy Greer would have played her if they had made this in two three money. So we meet these characters. Nothing really happens more than

just establishing characters establishing the world. And this future world has no family structure, so they very quickly established that the idea of motherhood is extremely vulgar and the idea of being born instead of being canted is like almost smut. I think they refer to it as like pornographic and smutty and all this gross stuff, and they're like, Oh, these people don't know the difference between science and smut and the line where that exists, so it's really hard

for them to talk about it. And um, we also learned that everybody has sex kind of without any feeling attached, no real relationships attached, because if you make relationships, then you're gonna want to make families. And uh, there is this or at least attachments, not necessarily families in the like nuclear family structure, but there are no real attachments and the goal is to have everyone and everyone belongs to everyone else, except not really because everyone's straight, which

was very funny to me. I was like, if everyone belongs to everyone else, shouldn't everyone belong to every And also the whole point is that they don't reproduce it, so like most of the women, they don't they like for sterilized, but like not all of them, you know, for reasons that they explain. But then it's like, well, why don't they just make everyone get yeah, or at least like experimental people do experiment orgies with everybody, I think, but the the orgies have meted out gender, so it's

like six of one six of the other. It does feel like the I mean obviously was written in nine so there's a lot it could have been updated, but it feels like everything is so regimented, like everyone belongs to everyone else. If you're a boy and you're a girl and you're an alpha plus and you're an alpha plus, like it had just still has to all like fit in this totalitarian regime. I do think that that's also

important to start talking about the characters cast. So Lenina is a beta minus in the book, but a beta plus on the show, which I was like, I think in the book I noticed in the book, I don't think they specified she was here. Find it keep talking else because because I just sort of filled it in because she like made fun of gammas and so you're like, she's not a gamma, and we know she is, so I just sort of like you just sort of fill

in the blanks of the I was confused. I thought she was an alpha because she was having That was the thing. There's intercast sex. I don't think any women are alpha's in the book, I think, and women Yeah, yeah, I think you're I think it's like the professional women are betas they have they have smaller heads, so they can't think as much. They can only love, um, but they cannot so creative. But his creativity stops at that, like it's let me build this entire new world. But

nobody is queer and no women are alpha's. That's as far as gay people didn't exist yet, right, Okay, so then we need our hero Bernard Marks, who everybody hates for a good reason. It turns out like the very very good reason. Um. Despite a fact that everybody belongs to everybody else in this brief new world, nobody wants to belong to Bernard Marks because they all agree that he sucks. So he's slightly he's an alpha plus, but

he's slightly shorter than the other alpha pluses. And there is an ongoing and constant rumor that alcohol was spilled into his bottle when he was being decandid, which is such a shitty way to bully someone in this UM. I think it's also important to know the reason that is a rumors, because they do that to lower casts. Yeah, yes, but yes, to make. Isn't it funny than even in this dystopian future where everyone is constantly happy and distracted,

there's still ship. They figured out how to be shitty to one another immediately short I hope they'll have to lie on Tinder. There is one point where it's like I heard that through a friend of a friend of a friend that it really is the rumor is true. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, she knew somebody was in the room. Oh yeah No, it's just total shit talking. So this future of huge amounts of distraction and drugs and orgies has not made people stop being shitty to each other.

And it turns out it's okay to Polly Bernard because he does suck. They're just going home for the wrong reasons because he has a citty personality. He has a really personality personality of a guy named Bernard. I also think another thing I want to say, I'm still looking because I could have sworn it that she was a Beta minus, but I could have been wrong. So Danta so carefully to you publicly, Mike, you can cut that

part out if you'd like. I love vigilant you were no, no, no, I'm at the apology, not the not the beta minus part. So um, the alpha's are born one egg, one person, so each alpha is unique and every other cast is born out of this buchanizization methods. Bakovski Y. It's named after, it's named after. I looked this up. He was basically, So basically this entire book was Eldess Huxley's like subtweet

to the British political system. And he was a French like minister industrialist who like was an organizer in France, and so that's what he was facing an Alpa. So basically all the names and everything is like are real people who are just like people that sort of embodied these like I'm putting in air quotes like ideals of like organization and empiricism. So we haven't heard and he yes, uh so here's a cross on Lanina that's very pneumatic, which I think means musty um woman think who it

very means like curving. I looked at it. I feel like it's it's like but also the chairs are pneumatic, but I think it's a fluffy, like justush a chair cushing. Yeah. Um, so here's a cross on Lanina. She's very popular. Everybody likes Landina Um, but she's been going out with Henry Foster for a Whileie, it's starting to seem like they're monogamous.

It's been a few months, she hasn't seen anybody else, so she feels like she should go out with somebody else, and Bernard offers to take her to a reservation where she'll get to see native people in their native habitat, and she thinks that would be interesting because her other offer is going off with Benito Hoover, who is very nice and everybody likes him. But he took her to the North Pole and the hotel that they stayed at only had twenty five squash courts and his weird ears

and it's weird. He's a really nice person. Everybody agrees said, yeah, the most redeemable person for sure. We all agree with that. Benito is a super nice guy and Lenina should have gone off with him. She goes on a date with Bernard and first of all, he complains about having to do anything. I guess I just want us to be alone. Yes, he just wants them to be alone in a park, which which is fine. But she wanted to go see a sporting match, like she came up with a lot

of ideas of things that they could do. She was like, yes, have to exist. I don't know, she's trying to come up with the first date with the next day. It means something to talk about. Don't play the hell out of all. Oh my god, yes, the elector great. That is the least sinister part of this society is that like everyone after work like goes to play like the equivalent of like dodgeball, like a dodge They got helicopters to they get a little high and go like, God,

I wish we had in a society. We're after work everyone like joined an adult sports league. Yeah, and it seems delightful. So Lendi a super cool She takes him to a women's wrestling match. They just kind of authentically say that Bernard is horrible to all of her friends and Franny, who again it's a wonderful character. It's like, why would you go on another day with him? So

that's nice, Like people have some autonomy here. They don't have to belong to everyone else to the extent that they have to go out with people they don't like. And Lindia is very clear, I just want to go to the reservation. I think it'll be cool to see well that also he's one of few people because of his job and because of his position as an alpha, who has permission to go to the reservation, So she

can't even do it with somebody nice like Benito. It has to be with Bernard, which just feels like some guys dream. Like some guy's dream is to be like I can take you to Cuba and a rich boyfriend who's like, okay, I'll date him just until we take the trip to Paris, who would no one, no one, but before we go onto the reservation, which is I think going to be a topic. Uh, I just want to talk about Bernard a little bit as a character.

To me, it was very funny that the character that you read that you assume would be the hero and protagonist of this story, which in a different story, the alpha who's so smart he sort of sees through the bullshit and he's a little bit shorter than everyone else in another story would be the hero. Yeah, and like like that would lead the revolution. And in any like dystopian y a novel, it's always like the person who's

like a little different, who people don't really like. But in this one, Bernard is almost immediately revealed to be like a very petty asshole. He's insecure that he's short, and he's like a whiny little asshole, and he's also like a huge coward like later in the book to his nice Friendholds, he's like a jealous book. So that's what I found very funny that Bernard is set up to be our first protagonist and then it's revealed to be just like a little cry baby zero zero, I'm

protagonists here. Yeah, I found that I found his ark to be very satisfying, Like I was very much into him having like a crying whiny And yes, you're listening to Popcorn book Club for My Heart Radio and we'll be back right after the break. So we're back with Popcorn book Club for My Heart Radio. Shout out to Helmholtz, who is also the only other He's great, he's our hero. He's my favorite character for sure, but like he's such

a side character and it's just so interesting. It feels like that one episode of Master of None where we just followed the side characters, Like I would love to just follow Helmholtz and figure out what his day to day is like, because we only see him in relation to Bernard and then later in relation to John who I'm just going to call him his name because his nickname is not Great. No. Yeah, people get really excited

about that. Yeah, it is. It is so weird. I really misread the opening of this book because I think I've read enough y I dystopian novels, and I'm like, Oh, it's gonna be Lenona and Bernard and they're going to fall in love and they both are a little different, Like it was the hint to me of she wanted to be monogamous, and I was like, oh, maybe she feels differently too, and she feels feelings of love and she's gonna and Bernard's going to be the one. They're

going to together and lighten everyone. Nope, that was absolutely not it. And neither of them are the protagonists. And Leonida gets no conclusion, which really bothered me. Uh, she's just out there, No no conclusion, Melissa. She is beaten and left maybe alive or dead. Yeah, She's said with Henry Foster at the end, but he runs away because he's understandably pretty freaked out by the whole situation. Yeah

she is. I think this is the only situation. I can remember spoiler jemming Head where a character is left for dead by the author, where he's like, don't care anymore? Well, yeah, I mean that's what I meant, and they like don't they don't. He doesn't call her out by name, like that was a choice is supposed to be because to me, I wasn't sure if that was her because I also said she had blue eyes, which is different than purple, and they didn't call her by name, and he was

in this rage. I feel like it was intentionally left like ambiguous. But I don't know even will get there okay, but is better than everybody else and everything's he just knows. He knows he'll never be as good as Shakespeare, but he wants to be. Also, he's so awesome that they changed this gender in the show. I thought, yeah, they made yes, it's um, it's a really cool choice. It's a woman who's in charge of making movies in the show, feeling yeah yeah, and she's trying to do something new

with them. But what she's my favorite character in the show. But we'll get to that later. So um, we meet Bernard and then they go on their fun cool date New Mexico to go explore a native reservation. Cool, and they keep referring to it as like the Savage Lands or something like that, something equally terrible, but the focus

is savage. And before they go, as previously mentioned, Bernard needs specific permits and specific permission, so he goes to the director and it's like, yo, can you sign my paperwork? And then he's like, you're going to see the savages? Oh my, what I was your age? I will say this and then I will finish my voices. When I was your age, I went to the reservation with a young girl and then she went to missing and then

we're like, oh, that's weird that you don't care. And then chump forward does carry his nightmare cboda, and then he covers it up by being like like we were a lover and up. And also it's just one person who cares like that covers it like that, right, we're all part of one large social being and she's gone, but you know, that's life. So then we go to

the reservation in Tienne. You want to talk about the reservation? Ah, yeah, I read this late at night, So let's go just instead of we can sort of assume that people have read it. What we're just your general impression. Great. So they go to the reservation and like Lenona and Bernard are just blown away by the fact that people are aging and are not as fit as this their world and are like compliment like not complimenting. Oh my gosh, we're marking on their like hygiene and looks and bodies

in a really gross, terrible way. Um. They are they witnessed like a very violent public ritual. And they meet Bernard meets this woman Linda, who turns out to be the lost woman from Um, the the who the director was in love with. And we find out that she's had a son, and that son is John, And we also learned about him that he like even though he spent his whole life on the reservation, he's kind of

the outsider. Um. Everyone treats him and his mother, which, by the way, mother is a dirty word in this world. Um treats his mother, uh like outsiders there. They mocked them, they abuse them. UM. And one of the big things about John is that he's learned to read because his mother or maybe the collection of Shakespeare was in there on the reservation, wasn't It wasn't his mom's right or

was it his lover his mom's mother's lover. And one of the big problems with his mom is that she wants to have sex with everyone because that was very normal in the world person she grew up and everybody hates her as a result. She's been conditioned being Yeah. Completely, it's a lot of slut shaming. Yeah, in a way where you're like, wait, eldest, is this are you in

favor of this? What is your because right? I gotta say I thought there was some wonderful comedy, even though it was so much slut shaming and the reaction was poor, but just the funniness of like I sucked all your husbands? Who cares? What is it? It's like a sick mom of like, that's what we do? You want to My husband's like, my god, oh silly Linda. She just doesn't get it. But that's not how that happened. It was a lot of violence. I thought. I thought it was

sort of funny. Um and also sit coming not in a in a hahawey. Um had the way that jumping ahead a little bit. John is like, oh, I love Lenina so much. I love her, but she's a Harlot, but strength it okay. Well, look, Lenia never gets to have good sex. I hope she got to have great sex with Benito Hoover and Henry Foster, because when she first had sex with Bernard, he has sex with her, and then afterwards she's like, oh, that was nice, and he was like, yeah, but I wish we hadn't had sex, Like,

wouldn't that have been cooler? I couldn't wrote that up before. Yeah, he's just so lame and like it is like the guy you have sex within college that you immediately like this was a mistake. Who like you think because he thinks he's so smart, he's special, but it's not and he's not even as smart as he thinks. Yeah, and you just find out that that's smart. It's not smart. It's just being mean. Yes, you learn the difference of quickly at that age. Um, but Linda didn't don't do

anything wrong, She's been conditioned a certain way. So then I feel like the next major plot machination, I'm sort of then moving us forward so we can talk more big big picture themes is Bernard you like his weird, petty like selfishness, like really for purely selfish reasons is like, whoa, won't it be a scandal and great for me in my social life and embarrass the director if I bring

back Linda and John? Well yeah, I mean just He also knows that that he's going to he hears it through him helmeholds that he's going to be sent to Iceland, and he's like, I'm going to get one over on the director and actually send him to Icelander, you know, cast him off. And that's exactly what happens um, which is such a quick hint of Bernard's weaselness that like

what we hates this world so much. But even when he gets a ticket out, which it later gets explained that maybe getting sent out of this world is like an okay thing is kind of like the best maybe the best, are you kidding? Or even as we learned to one of the tropical islands, it's just all the smart people who just want to hang out. I want

a dream. Yeah, So he comes, he and Lenona come back, but he like doesn't really care about Lenona anymore because he's famous because he brings back John and uh and everyone's fascinated by John and once once too. It's basically like being friends with Beyonce or something where it's like, oh, I can get you can meet Beyonce if you're friends with me, Like I, she's my roommate, and it's like shop, your roommate is Beyonce. So everyone wants to have sex

with him because he's roommates with Beyonce. Um and and so he's like having a lot of sex now with like but even started to interrupt, even like less than it's like less than Beyonce. It's almost like the Fiji water Girl, like a meme for the moment because as we learned that like like John, celebrity does like Wayne and then by default like Bernard's crash, as we'll learn, but like he just is like the trend of the moment,

people like, oh, what's it? Like? I think if John had played into the celebrity more and wanted to play the game like everybody can come see me, then it would have been different. I feel like it would have been closer to Beyonce as opposed to Fiji water Girl, which lovely throwback. Remember we're talking about it. I remember her pictures. And and also something that's important is that poor Linda also comes back and everyone is horrified by her.

They call her, they call her fat and disgusting. I think she's like forty, I've um, and they're just horrified by regular normal aging. And she is wants to be on a permanent Soma holiday, which I don't think we've really touched on exactly what Soma is, but it seems like just an opiate some kind of like magical opiate um where they just take a little bit to feel, take a half a gramma day to like get your worries away or whatever, but then you can have a

bunch and just it sounds like they're on Heroin. They're like Heroin and holiday. Yeah. And so she goes on a permanent Soma holiday and is going to die because of it. Um. But she's just so sad and miserable because she's been so cast away. She doesn't fit in either world. Um. And then John at the same time is starting to be very discouraged by this brave new

world with such people in it. And he's read all Shakespeare, so he's like just in his room reading Shakespeare a lot and really rooting, and he doesn't want to go to a party with with with Bernard. And Bernard then gets like completely cast out by all of the cool people. I love that scene because they are they are in

Bernard's house talking trash about him. Oh yeah, they're drinking his wine while they're talking about how he's deformed, and they're like, oh, I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that it's super true that there was alcohol in his bottle before he was decanted. Yeah, and they are the most fair weather friends. I mean, they're not even They're like, if the forecast changes, we're not even sticking around. Yeah. They just really really hate him.

Even in that section too, I think he starts talking about essentially like the nirties version of frenemies. I think all this is called like victim friend or like friend victim or something way more traumatic and traumatizing, which I thought it was hilarious. And then they the Archbishop song store whatever. Uh. It takes home Lenina and she's like, all right if she doesn't want to, but it's like fine.

She was disappointed though, because uh, Lenna is developing feelings for John, and John clearly has feelings for Lenona, and but he doesn't know how to handle them, and she doesn't know how to like operate with him because she's like, why doesn't he just have sex with me? I don't understand it, Like he likes me sometimes, but he doesn't. And so they go on this one weird day they go to a feeling uh, very racist feeling. I mean

everything's racist. He uses the word oct roon like eight times, and I'm just like, if you use the word oct roon and you're white, I have a lot of questions, and none of them are good. I I have a question about that word and not anything that I want to ask, just because I genuinely don't know it was ever. Was it ever used like in a as a non

slur to just like in a legal setting ensive? I mean, I think that it was used as a classification, much like the class the cast system that they have where it's like, oh, okay, you get a little bit more rights because you're a quadroon instead of a mulatto, and you get a little bit more if you're an oct roon instead of a quadroon. But it was because of rights and because they were like if you're a little black,

that's naughty. It's like that one drop rule. So even in its classification term as like terminology for just figuring out, Okay, how much of a person are you? That's sort of where it was. Oh, the word and the meaning is super asist. I'm mostly just just curious because I don't know that slur. I'm not very familiar whether it was always There is a very funny Key and Peele sketch where they use it, but other than that, I don't

think it's ever been used positively. Good to know, Yes, you learned something new and it was not a slur I was familiar with. It's a it's an old timey one. But yeah, so the theory is interesting. Oh, it is basically like a birth of a nation but future. Yeah. Yeah, it's like sex, but sex the canting of a nation. That's like facing a white woman, right, and then the and then these three white male heroes come by and a helicopter and I don't know it's but the black man.

The black man wants her so much that he wants to have her exclusively for a weekend. Yeah, that's the crazy thing. That's a crazy thing. The crazy thing is that he gets hit on the head on the head. She's in love with her now and wants to be with her and them to have an exclusive relationship. Fortunately she is safe by I guess three men who immediately have sex with her. It is an instinct. It ends with it ends with an orgy as all happy. Yeah,

A good movies do end group, you know. I do feel like every movie should end with a dance number of the whole cast dancing and having fun and like, momma, here we go again. There just like slum Dog Millionaires I have. But it's like that, but orgy and I would be okay with that, like to show that the cast has fun together, like I love the John sees that and his immediate thought was a fellow. Yeah, He's like, oh, yes, that's a blackamore another word used in the book, eldest,

what are you doing? Points for variety, I guess yeah. But after the day, Lenona tries to make a move and she like zips off her a little cute outfit and he's like strumpet and runs away. I think she's very sad about it and confused. She's just confused. She's like, what's happening, Let's just have sex already. Um. Her outfits do seem really cute, she seems very fashionable, and to

see more of that in the show. I will say, there are some things about this world that sounds super fun, Like the outfit seems very cute and cool, and the sense that that's like all the perfumes of different things like that sounds great, like the like orchestras of smells. I mean, the pheely sound great, like if you know, it's like three D. But like all sensory I go down. I'd be into that. Soma is just alcohol without a hangover. I mean, I'd take halfrica it would also I will

say I'm pro little mini personal helicopters. That's really fun. I mean, what is the impact of that on the environment, though, Like if they're electric helicopters, sure, yeah, my fantasy electric and you go play some electric golf with your friends after work. Yeah, it's electroc golf different from obstacle golf. That's my question. Oh sorry, I think it was. It's opted to both of them. There's electro magnetic golf and then there's obstacle golf. Definitely. Okay. I have a serious

question when was miniature golf invented? Because did someone read this book and say, obstacle golf that's what we gotta DoD. Wow, Okay, wait, you know that the high five, the high five was only invented. You went to the moon before people high five. Okay, guys, yeah, eldest borrowed frum. Oh. I was really hoping it was the other way around. But that's okay, that's very disappointing, like almost disappointing. Is this whole book. That's our show

for the week. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Danis Schwartz and you can find me on Twitter at Danish Schwartz with three z s. You can follow Jennifer Wright at jen Ashley Wright Karama, Donqua is at Karama Drama, Melissa Hunter is at Melissa f t W and Tian Tran is smart enough to have gotten off Twitter, but she is on Insta at Hank Tina. Our executive producer is Christopher Hessiotes and were produced and edited by Mike

John's Special thanks to David Wasserman. Next week we continue our discussion of Brave New World, the book, and then we will go into Brave New World series, which is an experience. So uh, Papa Soma and I get ready to listen. Popcorn Book Club is a production of I Heart Radio. See you next week,