Reading The Beginning Of Ben's Absolutely Worst Short Story

exciting day. I got up at ten, which is Sophie will tell you very very um, and I got right to work composing a new version of the song but Baby,

It's Cold Outside, starring Hitler and Nava Brown. Hitler takes the ladies role in that um, which makes a lot of s because instead of being worried about what his family will say, he's worried about what the other members of the Nazi High Command, who have turned him into a sex sym and need him to be perpetually available to the German woman, what they'll say if he goes home and it's the one singing but Hitler, It's cold outside. I'm just so impressed. See all that you can accomplish

when you wake up just a little bit earlier. Need tap into those morning creativity juices. I still haven't recorded those ads, Sophie. So yeah, there were priorities. I mean, honestly, I accept that seems fair trade off. Yeah. Just let the advertisers know what you were up to, Robert. Just let the sponsors know. Hey, I'm trying to see if anyone wants to buy my Hitler. It's cold outside, so just and the When our adopts team messages me for the I don't know if youth time asking for an ad,

I'll just say listen. Robert was very busy, okay, but Hitler and they'll be like and Brown right right, they'll be like a fair h uh. Do I want the ending spoiled for me? Is it is this song? Is it like go Places? Oh? Yeah, I mean well no, actually Hitler Hitler leaves in order to plan further the invasion of Poland. Um and Ava christ yourself to sleep. Um it's a good song, yeah, like all good songs. I think it's good to be the hit of next winter when I when I get it properly produced, um collab.

I think Cody is always talking about producing music, So send it over. Maybe a new theme song for our well postal services. That's exactly right, um, I've always wanted to be the postal service of reimagined Christmas songs featuring Hitler. Hitler, Yeah great, specific right, um waving from such great Reichs. Come down boy nine. Stuff happening? Is there news? Oh god, no, why would you even ask that? No, we're on our Ben Shapiro book Club trajectory. Still we are. Can we

talk about Josh Wedden for a second. I don't know. I have a really narrow thing I want to talk about, which is that, like within the car, one of the things I think is frustrating is this this need to when when it comes out that somebody has done like

shitty stuff, um, pretend that like you never liked. There's like there's this this thing going on when now people are being like, oh well he wasn't that big a part of Buffy um or oh well he like and it's like like there it's this attempt because they're fans of the show he made, and also they find his behavior unacceptable, which it is they feel this need to be like, um, well he wasn't like you know that much of this or that, Like it's this idea that like if he turned out to be bad, he can't

have actually been good at making content that I liked. Uh, And I think that's a misdirected impulse. Interesting, Um, I would uh added that I think part of it is also that, um, the one could like described like we we didn't speak, you know, like the well that happened of it all. Yes, And I feel like that it was fine for the time when he did it, and it caught on and so everyone does it now in all the things, and so that is stuff part of yes, And that's part of also the backlash of like he

created this awful thing that's everywhere now. Yeah, well not be like you can watch Firefly and there's we didn't speak in it, but it still fits the tone of the show. Yeah. As opposed to other other works, I would I would say, well, that's one of the things. I think there's this this because we've gotten so like

exhausted from it. This in this I like tendency to be like, oh it was always like it's a horrible trend that he introduced, as opposed to like, well, he wrote some stuff that people liked and everybody copied him. It's like bullet time with the matrix, like it's he really like weed and speak is like the verbal equivalent of bullet time. And that's why it became exhausting, because Hollywood is not very creative, and if they see something that works, they run that motherfucker into the ground as

fast as they can. Yeah, there's a reason that caught on, and there's a reason it got really bad. Yeah, because it was. It was. It's the kind of thing that if if Josh Weeden had always kind of stayed at the level of fame he was when Buffy was on, and the same thing of his shows, like he had a bunch of one in two season shows with little cult followings, I don't think anyone would have gotten exhausted

by the way he wrote dialogue. But it became it ate everything, um, and it led to this kind of inability within the Hollywood to have any kind of moment, like this thing that's constant and Marvel, where like nothing gets to have any weight because you have to have like a crack every everyone say, yeah, it's very like it created this thing that Marvel does specifically, but other things do generally where you don't allow uh, you know, the emotion of a scene or literally again to sort

of land which is actually again, I'm not even I'm not even really a wedding fan. I've never even watched Buffy.

But it's not a thing that I think he actually did in most of his I guess you could say with like is more like like a Ventures, but like you know, within Firefly at least, and even like stuff like Dr Horrible, he had the ability to have like a scene that was sad, not like he he didn't do the thing that that people did when they started ripping off, like the kind of the way he wrote Dialogue, which I find interesting the genre of itself people start

to emulate, it becomes its own thing, not unlike Wes Anderson type stuff. Yeah exactly, um or or what's his name? The Nightmare Before Christmas guy, Tim Burton, a bunch of

stuff that Burton defied. Anyway, I think that like obviously his behaviors sucked up in Horrible, But I find it interesting the way in which I think when it comes to like the stuff that people are now criticizing about his his work, it's more just like, yeah, that's what happens when your ship is popular, it gets it gets turned into something insufferable within about four years, especially when Disney yes, yes, anyway, you guys wanna do something fun

before Disney buys our senses of humor. This is quickly become a highlight of my week that I look forward to talking about Ben Shapiro's Yeah, reading these books and I'm going to be sad when it's over. I'll be

honest too. This is a little o ways is in the Sea, and I think maybe what we could do when we finished this book is we could go back to True Allegiance but find the Spanish translation and we could all learn Spanish together in an attempt to read True Allegiance like I did with the in It in Latin when I was next Cool. That's a good idea for an app, anyone, If any developers are listening a teacher Spanish foreign language learning, UM, get on it. At

least three people will download the app. The three of us we will not, and then I will travel to Chiapas and tell everyone I meet take a bullet for you, babe and Espanol. I see no flaws with this plan. Yeah. Download promo code uh utopia h which is the title of that short story we're about to read. Yeah, Um, I I will say I will miss this. It is really entertaining. I don't think he realized how entertaining his

writing is. Um in the in the way that it is obviously who writes bad things on purpose and then releases them. Um but um cult following Ben did it? Um where we leave off, we haven't started. H that's right. I think you read the first sentence, but you can do that again. Um. So this is the final Uh, this is the final short story, collection of three short stories. It is fifteen pages. Um uh similar you know, it's same presentation, similar font uh, similar frequency of formatting, issues

with the indentation on paragraphs. I feel like there's going to be a lot of similarities, as there have been through all of his writing, despite the genre, despite the message. It's always kind of the same anyway. UM So yeah, this is called Utopia. And as we discovered early late last week, the very first sentence is in all caps. It is a quote. Somebody is screaming all men are

created equal. Okay, that's the first. That's bad, even though that's also a thing the founding Fathers wrote in Ben Shapiro can't stop coming over the Adams right his favorite musical seventy six, and that sounds right, Yeah, that sounds right. I mean it does have Mr Feenie, and look, I actually have nothing against seventeen. Mr Feenie is um oh geez one second, I forget which one of them, but he's he's gonna major role um which despite range the

fundamental problematic aspects John Adams, he's John Adams. Yeah, like, obviously the deification of the Founding Fathers is problematic, but just as a musical, pretty fun musical. Mr Feenie is great in it. Yeah, also still alive. I just googled that and found that out. That's right, William Daniels. Mr Feenie still young on the Girl Meets World reboots. So again, good it is. It is nice to know that that Mr Feenie still guiding their lives, helping helping children meet

the world. Yeah, yeah, okay, we should probably so. I guess I'll check out sent at some point. I've never listened to it. If you want to see Mr Feenie sing some ship as John Adams, that's basically your only option as far as I'm aware. Yeah, we needed a John Adams HBO show, needed more more show tunes in it. You just had Mr There. We are, all right, never going to get through these created equal first line new paragraph formatting issue. Um. He had seen those words somewhere before.

They were hazy in his memory. They were a dream, only partially remembered after waking up with bright morning light hitting his eyes. Each day he thought he came closer to remembering where he had seen them before, but then he would shake his head and moving with the teeming crowd past the enormous archway emblazoned with those words, past the Ministry of Education. He knew what education was. This is a parenthetical. He knew what education was, but I

had no idea what a ministry. This is going to make me. Oh, he's trying to Yeah, he's trying to do a nineteen eighty four. But again is bad everything the liberals are bad. Bah, well just a also it's

it's just bad. It's not very good, very good writing. Uh. Yeah, Like I think if you compare, if you, if you want to go listener, grab your copy of nineteen four and just kind of read the first page or two how Orwell introduces the way in which their thoughts have been like limited, it's it's it's you know, it'll be

a fun compare it's better. Yes, yeah, you might call it like a masterpiece, as opposed to this, which is clunky and and derivative, like the written like someone's bad script for a television show that they're trying to sell to HPO, which I'm sure Ben did. Did you say HPO? Because because I'm also a hack in a fraud. Yeah, that's why. That's how what makes you qualified to you know? That's HPO. Is is Home Pox Office, and it's a company that infects you with smallpox at home, pending on

what show you watch. Yeah, exactly, it beams, it beams it into your blood. Yeah. Shockingly, they've they've they've gotten four billion dollars in venture capital funding, so I think they're gonna make it. Yeah, coming soon to a home near you, with your at home using the gig economy to spread pox. Give me the next sentence. All right, we're in the second paragraph. Still, I'm gonna I'm gonna go back like because like almost out of outbreak. Then.

The lovely thing about his writing is that he makes you want to stop in the middle of a sentence to talk about what a bad sentence? So many episodes out of this exactly, and he he's done it again because we stopped in the middle of that sentence. So I'm going to start the sentence again. Uh, which the sentence starts past the enormous archway emblazoned with those words, which is a great sentence. That's a that's a clause, we call it all right. Past the enormous archway emblazoned

with those words, Past the Ministry of Education. He knew what education was, but had no idea what a ministry was. Past the Ministry of Price Control. That's actually I think that's not you editorializing. Okay, no, yeah, sorry, this is a parenthetic. That was a parenthetical. He knew what education was, had no idea what ministry was. This is all separated from with semi colon's uh so, continuing past the Ministry of Price Control parenthetical, he had no idea what price

control was, semi colon. Past the Ministry of the Chancellor parenthetical. Everyone knew who the Chancellor was period. Who is he? Well, I I hope, I hope we find out, because we do not in this next sentence. Uh. Finally, he would shuffle to his workstation at the Ministry of Energy, where he would spend his day turning on an office pigot

sounds inefficient. Yeah, I mean I think the purpose of the thing the point is making here is that like it's some socialist state where everybody has to have a job, but they don't have as like a poor man's poor

man's poor man's sucking Brazil. It's just like yeah, And Ben doesn't really want you to think too much about that bit, because if the point he is making is that, well, actually there's not enough work that needs to be done for all of the people that there are doing jobs, then is the answer that people should have leisure time? Like what is what it? Maybe there's another option there. He's just trying to paint some disgusting version, you know,

the things that they want people to believe. That's it's interesting to be because four again very chilling vision of a society that's completely controlled. Um Or Well does that by talking about the ways in which languages is changed, fundamentally limit the ways people can think, the destruction of like concepts of the family, all these different these different things that make people feel inhuman when you get inside

their heads. Bins. One of the first things he focuses on his price controls that's very funny to me, that like, instead of the ways in which authoritarianism fundamentally restricts the concept of human thought, He's like, they're gonna put price controls in. That is very funny. It's very funny. There's so much so quick in this text. It's dense, it's dense.

It requires a lot of close reading. So that's so we're onto the third paragraph, which, in true Shapira style, is one sentence long and has a formatting issue with the indication, of course, every time the light turned green, he turned on this pigot, new paragraph. Every time it turned red, he turned it off, new paragraph, And with each turn he was happy. Year all right, Okay, getting into the mind of sounds better than a lot of people's jobs, to be honest. Yeah, feeling feeling happy and

productive with the hard work you put in. Uh. He was an older member of the city. City has capitalized, but he didn't remember that. In fact, he had no idea how old he was. He just remembered coming into his spigot station each day, putting his ID card in the machine, removing it, going back to his living space with its clean white walls, and it's fully stuck refrigeration system.

And it's television reruns. Nice, no new content. Sorry, going to sleep, waking up again another day older each morning. He knew this spigot would need to be turned on and off. It was comforting. He had no family. There was a woman who came to his living space once a week for sexual relations on Tuesdays. She spent it's try Sorry, what means there's a medical you, I'm told

from the author. Also, well, it's moist. One hour is longer cumulatively than all of the sex been Shapiro He's like, I don't know why, right, And that's if you include cuddling. M check out Ben's sex book on the pastors where you get your podcasts. Actually, that's a good place to point out. We need to break for an ad. Oh, oh my god, we gotta go, we gotta find out. Oh spoiler, Cliffhanger sex coming up. More details on the sex, but probably not actually because I think he's not talking

about it. Oh, Dane together everything, So don't don't. You're back. Yes, you're back. We're back in free so hot, I can't even so hot. What happens next? There was a woman came to his living space is what happened? She did? She did, Yeah, she did once a week for sexual relations on Tuesdays, just waiting for like more parentheticals, like he didn't know what Tuesday was. She spent exactly one hour.

She was not beautiful and she was not ugly. She wore the blue uniform of the Ministry of Personal Needs. He did not know her name. Today was Tuesday, and

he was happy. Yeah again, you know, just as a little like if you wanted to make this a good a good piece of fiction, maybe something to do would be like, in the midst of this woman who has been you know, made to look and feel as bland as possible by this government, he gets some sort of hint, catches a whiff of, you know, the scent of her hair or something about the way her skin feels that like leaves this brief yawning moment of horror at the

fact that, like something terrible is missing from his life, and then of course it's gone in another second, as he returns his thoughts to the you know something that makes it a story. Yeah, and like texture, you know that helps you get into it kind of well because stating this, well he said, I was happy that day or whatever, that's the most insight we've got we get into or his satisfaction at the work. Sure, but like you're not actually giving context for this world. I don't

understand how this is affecting you anyway. Yeah, and we don't. You know the thing, he's going to wind up breaking free of this system he has to, and there's going to be some sort of hackney bullshit. Um, but it has so like you you want to give some sort of hint that like there's there's elements of humanity, the irrepressible nature of the human soul that are trying to

like slowly break through. And he had maybe sex. Again, if Ben Shapiro had ever had a positive sexual encounter, I think a normal person would be like, oh, well, that might be a moment of like intimacy that they can't quite quash out every aspect of it. He gets some ghost of something that's missing, and that sets up that like he's going to break out of this system. I don't know. Again, if you were writing a story, you might do that, especially a short story where you

don't have that much time. I was gonna say, like you really want to move on that stuff? In my head, I'm like giving him the benefit of the doubt. I'm like, I'm sure that will happen later a little bit, right, but like there's no time, there's no time. You gotta do it. No, not with his size, fourteen times new roman print, three paragraphs on this page long. Um, alright, let's find out what else makes this fucker happy? Um.

He had no friends. He worked with others and once every week, for this is an awkward sentence, he worked with others and once every week, four new people would come to his living space on Wednesdays. The five would play cards together. Then they would never see each other again. It was all in good fun, and it allowed him to always meet new people. Wednesdays were not as happy as Tuesdays, but they were happy. This is so bad.

This is this is this is bad. He's really hammering on how happy is And I'm going to tell you, Ben, I get it all right. Tonight was a Thursday night. On Thursday nights, the members of the various ministries would come together for a nighttime stargazing. It happened on the well manicured lawn of the Ministry of Culture. When he got to the lawn, there were already thousands of people milling about. He did not look for anyone he knew, He knew nobody, nobody knew anybody. There were no clicks.

There were just thousands of people happy to see one another, and he was happy too. Yes, what a nightmare. So bad well comprehensively bleak vision been places of this god people are. He's still doing his thing where he um just horrendously over uses the same word. Yes, if you were a good writer, there's a way you could use kind of repetition of words and doing. Yeah, he's not because he's bad, it's just how he writes. Well, the

the the intention is there. He's trying to like reuse the like the happy phrase, talk about how they're happy. But he's doing it every other fucking sentence, so it seems laborious to absorb. I don't know if he's doing it on purpose. I think as I start, you think he is. Okay, I think he's doing this on purpose. Uh, it's just his habit is to do it anyway within sentences, and so that the thing that he does that's like a regular thing that happens is I think infecting our

view of what he's doing now. But the problem with what he's doing now is that it's like every three sentences instead of within the same sentence. So it still seems like it's both poorly executed and maybe not on purpose, but I think it is. It's just he's not very good at it. Yeah yeah, like again like okay, like a couple of pages and then you know, but he's very happy, Like you can get the rhythm going without

it being so obvious what's going on. Um, he's just not a subtle There's other ways to play with repetition than simply repeating yes, uh he can, he can. Like it's it's actually very funny because like you're you're so right that like he took the simple like it's this, it's like a shot the baby's first sentence exactly like that emotion is such a simple emotion, and there are more complex ways to describe it. Um. Truly, I truly have written better short stories than these as a child.

There's any example here of just how limited Ben's imagination is. Because again, if we go back to nineteen eighty four, by this point in nineteen eighty four, where you're like a couple of pages in, you've been introduced to an entirely new language functionally new speak, and you you you

all you feel. He doesn't tell you how it's limited, uh Winston's ability to feel you you feel it because you you you as like within the book he immediately like narrows the walls of perception around you by using that. Ben wants to do that, but all he can think of is just repeating that the person is happy and no other emotions because to him, that's the city. That's the same thing. Because he doesn't actually get what Orwell was was really doing there um and he's not He's

also not capable of imagining anything. But like being in an authoritarian regime is like being drugged and you're just like this happy, doped zombie as opposed to what it really is, which is these kind and what or Well depicts, which is these kind of walls of fear and like flex that kind of reflexively stop you from thinking and acting in certain ways because you you're you're fundamentally a machine that exists to survive, and you've been trained by

the regime that you just don't even even begin to go down certain roads because of the danger. Um. Again, Ben doesn't understand things like he doesn't get this. I think over and over I come back to he's just really lazy that you know, lazy probably with his education, probably lazy with his reading and reading comprehension. Um, but definitely lazy. And how he's approached all of this. I get the sense from anything Ben does is that it

has taken the bare surface level of thought. Actually, you can argue loud, he can argue and spin things around and be confusing and the fuddle stuff, but he doesn't actually dig deeper than the service. And that is reflected. I mean I've probably I've already said this, but in all of these short stories and in all of his articles in Drew Allegiance, all of it. Yeah, it's I think it's most apparent in his fiction writing. Um, but it is everywhere. You're right, Well, I mean it's it's

it's just seemed in his whole ideology. It's he screams as someone who just sits down and writes for twenty minutes and he's like, yeah, I did it, yeah today. It's there's no depth to it. It's like he is sort of replacing, like he thinks that like density equal stepth Yeah, and that's not true. Um, and so he just yeah, I mean this isn't particularly dense either. I mean it's dense in ways that we can make fun

of it. But yeah, but it's like I just mean like the volume, like the volume, even the quantity of it. Like there's so many aspects that he's sort of like replaced with replaced thinking or about something like carefully, um with anything else. Um. But the important thing is he was happy too. The night was not too cold, nor was it too warm. The climate control system made sure of that. The people all sat in ordered rows with enough distance between them to ensure personal space. Then hates

air conditioning and social personal space. It's personal space. Uh, weirdly hates like that. They're like seats in rows, like how seating is. Yeah, it's it's weird because it's this mix of like things that like any person should hate, like this this big stuff. They have personal space there, star gazing. There aren't clicks like the people all sat in ordered rose. I can't believe they're They lined the seats up so that you can see. Yeah, very funny society,

it's so funny. Um and the stars. Wait, all right, that makes me wonder. All of this does make me wonder what been what brings ben joy in life? Is it just owning the libs? Or actually ever like happy and satisfied in a moment, a smug little bit. That's that's certainly his chief love and life. I think it is. Yeah, it is um and getting those sweet sweet likes you know, uh, instead of getting his I don't know, stories published or

put on TV or whatever you know. Ah. But the other important thing is the people all sad and ordered rose with enough distance between them to ensure personal space, and the stars too were in their orbits their distances the same as always. I I'm gonna okay, will you read that sentence again? Yeah, I'm going to read both sentences again, because he's saying too as in also as in just like I just said in the previous sentence.

So the people all sat in ordered rows with enough distance between them to ensure personal space, and the stars too were in their orbits their distances the same as always. Okay, But that that's meaningless because people don't people don't know that, like, like it's it's one thing to say that, like the temperature, which is the thing that changes all around naturally, Like it's been like telling us that the world is climate control.

To add something pointing out that the stars are the same as they've ever been, Like number one, how do you know you don't even know? Do you know what stars are? Like they tell you what stars are fundamentally, Do they let you know about the vastness of the universe outside of the rate You seem to have certain

words and understanding of things. Yeah, consistent with like a society is controlled as he's wanting, So you would have to to know enough about the sky, Like maybe there's like it's like a visual thing and like this like they're blocking out the sky with like their version of stars. Ye, stars move always constantly, they're whizzing through space. I mean, I'm just taking it as like the stars every night and you know, like the formations they keep their spacing

from each other. But also just on a grammatical level, and the stars too were in their orbits. You didn't say people were in their orbits. You said they were in ordered rows, which is very much not like a star. He's using the stars to refer to the distances being the same, but like that's not how he wrote. It's a great unimportant but whatever, because like you introduced the fact that the world is climate controlled. I have no other questions. I don't need to know how the climate

control works. I don't need to know how they power it, Like this authority, you live in a bubble. Great, I get that. That's that's perfectly fine. No, no further explanation needed. That's world building. You mentioned this about the stars, and now we have all these questions because again every time Ben mention is something that's factual in any way wrong, The stars are the same distance all like, none of

this work. Ben Shapiro's writing, Yeah, if if there's if he attempts to make a factual statement, it will be wrong, and it will be wrong in so many ways over I've thought of it several times lately, like, well, it's wrong in like five different ways are easily discoverable. Well, and it's like it it brings up it does the thing you never want to do in science fiction, which is it brings up questions that take you out of

the story. Like for me, I'm wondering now, like, well, okay, if this is really an authoritarian regime, like why do they why are they find with people knowing about like the wonder and majesty of outer space. Why is that

important to them? Because clearly if they're setting up stargazing, then that opens up the possibility that they're going to have some sense of like thought about the universe, thought potentially about like higher other forms of life, or about like a deity, like all these things people think about when they look at the stars, And it could be one thing you could do world building if you talked about how he had been taught to view the stars, or like you guys said, maybe they maybe they've put

their own false sheen over that isn't real. Stars are like all this stuff that you could do that would build the world around it. Like if you talk about the way they educated him to view stars, and that they taught him that stars all move in you know, the like the same way that the people do in these perfectly ordered things and as above, so below or whatever. Maybe that could work if again, you were a writer. But then is instead done nothing and now we're fucking

talking about what this goddamn star thing means. Honestly, if any nothing else, this whole exercise has been a great lesson in how not to write. Oh yeah, a lot of people might listen to this and be like, hey, I feel like I can handle writing my own work, because you should. If you think you can write a piece of fiction, your friend, you can it be than have you gone into the world and experienced a thing like joy or or or or even shame. Um, then you two could write a piece of fiction better than

ben Japiros just beautiful. Um, they go right, just like, take this premise and write something better, like go off into the world, Like think about a time that you felt something and then try to try to bring that to other people feelings, you know, imagine emotions. Yeah, it again like the thing like or Well and I four creates this very like soulless, horrific world, but you never cut off from feelings of the characters. Like that's such

an intense part. The way he writes this budding romance, the way like you get into these people's heads and like how they feel, is why the story has impact. It's not because Orwell lists out here are ways in which this is a bad government. It's because Orwell makes you feel what it's like to live in this horrific and human regime. Well, unfortunately, facts don't care about your feelings. And also the facts are wrong, So the facts will

inevitably be incorrect. Um, I tell you, if you're wondering about emotion though, A big surprise coming and it's corny and we're excited for it. Do we want it? Do we want it? Now? Yes? So, as we've discussed. And the stars too, were in their orbits, their distances the same as always, like all stars. Uh except one star. Oh, it's shot across the sky, a bright flare in the velvety purple black darkness, and he felt a disquietude move

through him. His stomach rumbled, his mind turned over. The star blasted through the calm of the evening, leaving sparks in its wake, and suddenly his hazy dream burst into consciousness. He found himself standing, tears rolling down his face, gazing up at the sky. A terrible longing filled him, a feeling of dread and of hope, a new feeling, an old feeling. The star tore the night upon leaving day

trailing behind it. So this is just okay, I need it, we need hold on, hold on wait wait no, no, okay, no, I mean it's just this is so that's all it took for him. Now, Okay, there's a lot going on there, like for example, again, why are they letting them watch the stars? Why is this? Like never been a shooting star? It was that easy for him to be like what they wouldn't let you look at the fucking sky? Okay,

Cody finished the quote, and and why is it the one? Yeah, we're gonna, we'll, we'll get into this, um, but a big, a big break is coming. So the star tour of the night apart, leaving day trailing behind it. When he looked around him, he saw thousands of eyes in thousands of faces staring at him blankly. The star hit the horizon, he turned and ran, and there's a break of texts because time passes. Um. So, yeah, so it's utterly ridiculous that this is the first shooting star that has apparently

ever existed. And during they do everything, they do it every fucking week. Every week, everybody gets together looks at the sky, and it's the only time that has ever happened to one guy. Um, and like, so there it's this special boy syndrome. Everyone's staring at him blankly. Why is he the one who is moved by this shooting star? He's the only one who feels anything, He's the only one who noticed it. Is there something special about him

that sees this shooting star? Uh old feelings? Right, shouldn't they be staring at should they be incapable of noticing difference? And yeah? Um, But also like again to keep going back to night four, when we get a glimpse of like what that society allows as a recreation, it's very fitting, Like it's it's these like horrific, dank little bars where

people drink watered down beer and play the lottery. And it again builds you It never you're never taken out wondering like, well, doesn't this provide you know, an opportunity for X or Y? And you see that like they've got all these different like secret police agents in there that are looking for sedition, and it builds. It's just all very believable as opposed to immediately like why would you let people look at the stars? Like like it's just like every step of the away you're like did

you think of Because it's science fiction. If you're doing science fiction or like a dystopian fiction or something like that, that is like a huge part of it is that world building and trying to make it make sense these questions and like there's a way you could have built a shooting star. Had that be key to this, You could have it be not that there's like this dumb idea of community enforced like stargazing nights, but you have this idea that the government wants everyone to believe this

is the way human society has always been. There was no before, there will be no after. And then one day, on his way home from the late shift, he notices a shooting star in the sky and he quite naturally believes that it's a star falling out of the guy, which suddenly sets off at him this chain of thoughts that like, well, if the stars aren't or beyond the control of the government or whatever, then like maybe like and you could again and you can pay what that

experience was like a huge experiences unraveling this thoughts. You can play with the sensations you're not just yeah, I imagine, And that way it would be a explaining why the star was meaningful. What is opposed to like it's pretty and so now I'm I'm healed again, so lazy, so incurious, and like a child wrote it. We do have to take a quick break, right now, who else is a child? The companies to paid money. We are entirely supported by children.

That's right, Cody, super cute m random kids. Cody, Katie and I show up outside of schools with with with blackjacks and threatened children for their lunch money. That's what keeps us on the air. And that's what these ads will describe. But more entertaining that people like they hire people to write the copy for We don't ever get in trouble for this stuff, do we. No. No, We've

paid off all the cops together and we're back. And I think we can all agree that Ben Shapiro has never looked up at the night sky and felt off. We've never felt all all. Yeah, because again, you can't really feel awe if you're convinced that you have everything, that every single answer that was ever meaningful you had

handed to you when you were a small child. All is fundamentally like uh an acceptance of the unknown and wonderment at it, and feel like a regular thing that goes Ben's head is unimpressed, Yeah, exactly, like because if he's not, if he's if he's ever impressed. Whatever his dad taught him about the world when he was nine was not a complete it was not everything he needed to know about life. Yeah, well, I can't wait to find out what happens to this special man, special man boy. Sure. Ah,

so time has passed and he ran. It wasn't until he hit the third street that he heard the humming. The sound of the Ministry of Protection did not ululate or waiver. It was a steady, loud buzz, growing in intensity as it grew closer, fading into white noise at a distance. Now the buzz grew more intense as he ran. He could hear them approaching from his right and from his left. He sprinted forward. Ah, some some Yang endorsement in this short story. Oh yes, all right, this is

not a big deal, but also another lazy thing. Just the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Education. Just be more creative, yeah, I mean yeah, just come up with something again, like orwell. Because he's a master for masterful writer manages to create, managed to use words in such a way that that enforces kind of the bnality of this world. Will also being completely new to use the readers so that you're never board. You know, you speak,

you feel the way. It limited limits his thoughts, but it's also new to you as you're reading the book, and thus you're engaged because again orwell was a writer. Oh so you're not left incredibly bored because the lighter did it? I see? Interesting. Yeah, the streets were not numbered or lettered. The people knew their living spaces by proximity from their workspaces, so there was no need for any distinguishing features. Again, fine, like, there's a way to

make that entertaining. As he's walking to work the morning before things break out, you can describe his walk to work, not the way a normal person would is now I took a left, Now I took a right. But like the distance it is from his home because those of you like, there's a way in which you But what if he just explains it and once if he just explains it rather you know what happens. Of course, that's

how you do it. They all looked the same, even Beije buildings, covered over with evenly trimmed ivy and evenly spaced balconies one per living space. They get balconies. No less, you better than how he wants a lot of people to live. Very funny, they have balconies. Okay, yeah, they had balconies, and therefore the people who lived inside those living spaces were happy with their standard issue artificial flowers, their standard measured televisions, and they're carefully stocked ice boxes.

Okay again, been you have not yet made this sound markedly worse than life for millions of people under capitalism. At least they all have food. Yeah, yeah, they all have food. They have flowers, Um, they have balconies. Honestly, artificial flowers are all the rage right now. I keep getting targeted ads for them because they don't die. Do not give in? Well I don't, don't do it. Don't do it, Okay, don't don't. Don't succumb to the dystopian left,

and they're artificial flowers. Um, then go ahead. It's free country. Um. It's it's just remarkable to me that Orwell a leftist so committed he got shot in the throat fighting fascists. Um. Imagines a better clearly inspired by kind of left wing movements, a more realistic authoritarian regime, um than Ben Shapiro, who's professionally terrified of the left, who can only make it seem slightly better than how a lot of people live today. They get free stargazing nights every night. They can see

the stars from where they live. Balconies stars. Everyone in Los Angeles, the people in this world can sit on their balconies and watch the stars. Like the idea of private space and whatnot. I don't know, it's carefully stocked ice box again, And if he was, if he actually wanted to make it unsettling in ways that we're consistent with his beliefs, it would make more sense for them to have like no senses of pub like space, like shouldn't shouldn't it be like because sex and physical like

none of that matters at all. There's no differences between men and women and so like everybody is just one physically entangled like indistinguishable mass, right instead of so atomized like random thought the ice box? What does he? Yeah?

What's weird? Specific? What a weird um choice again makes it like as if it's more orwelly and written of a different time, but just that just the word ice box yeah yeah yeah again and like British or something, I don't know if you're free that like just I think they probably they probably do, I don't know, but Ben's not British, uh, but also like describe him doing this at home, like go to your like watch something on your standard measured te It was like, wish the

show is more interesting, go to your carefully stocked icebox and have like your taste is I don't know, like just yeah, tell us what's because right now I'm just imagining like, oh, so they've got like Netflix and as much food as they need. It's like, right, imagine, I'm sure horrible government, you know TV, and like the food is all bland and not nutritious, but like we don't

get any of that. So because like nobody's starving and everyone has a balcony and a television, well, right, because he's operating from this sort of like this his whole punditry, like I'm this right leaning like conservative libertarian, I guess uh, And so his audience assumes these things because they know

the author, like I know Ben wrote this. Therefore I bet it's like really bad food and like boring a bad health, Like it's all stuff that we have to assume because we know the writer instead of the writer

doing a good job. I think there's actually something more insidious than that here, because I think the thing that is supposed to be horrifying about this more than anything, this is again a good example of like where he's a friend than the guy he's trying to emulate with Orwell, the thing that was frightening was the limitations on the human ability to conceive of things, to even think about liberation, to even think like independent, Like the the way in

which shutters were placed upon the human mind and thus the confines of the human soul was the central horror of nineteen eighty four. And or Well very ably depicts that the horror with beIN is that nobody gets to be rich. Like that's really what's going on here, is that there's no rich people. He's not horrified, Like he's not presenting the day to day life of these people. Is it is particularly a nightmare. The thing that he keeps going back to is that nobody has more, nobody

has bigger, a bigger apartment, everybody gets a balcony. There's not like everybody. Yeah, Like that's the thing he's frightened. That's that's scary to him, is that like nobody's rich in the society. And it's very telling that like the difference between nineteen eighty four a masterpiece and what's frightening about it and what been clearly thinks is frightening, which is there's no rich people. Yeah. Absolutely, you got hit

the nail ned Robert. Yeah, that's interesting, I think again, just incredible writing when you have to stop and just like question every single sentence. But now they were opening their regulation compliance double pain windows to watch him run. Oh no, double pain emphasized because of like ep energy exactly. Again, we go from like that good. Yeah, that that's the

thing like Ben has been finds. Ben finds like mandatory double pain windows for energy efficiency just as horrifying as a regime that annihilates the ability of human beings to engage in physical intimacy. Um uh, the the the elimination of history is as frightening to Ben as requiring energy efficient windows. It's very funny with an incredible sentence story. But now they were opening their regulation compliant double pain windows to watch him run. The horror of the double

pain windows unbelievable. Uh. He could feel the cement pound beneath his rubber souls and that's not correct. He could feel his feet, could feel his feet pound against the cement. Yeah, cement stop pounding. Mm. He could feel the cement pound beneath his rubber souls, all right. His breath started to give out. It's an awkward sense, so like this is okay. He could feel the cement pound beneath his rubber souls

semi colon. His breath started to give out. He breathed in and out in dash and dash out, which I'm I don't think that's bad. That's he breathed in and out burger, trying to find a regularity, anything regular to hold onto, trying not to panic. Too many regulars and regularity and regulation was earlier in this paragraph. Come on, uh, and you think regular to hold onto? He's just running down the street, all right. He and the and the

sirens hummed closer. Then he saw them in the reflection of the large mirrored glass panes of the Ministry of Food Provision. The cube shaped and the cube shaped enforcement pods were rolling down the street after him, gaining rapidly. This is unimportant. It's very silly that their enforcement pods. I would pose it that it's sillier that they're cube shaped pods. Well, I think I know what he's doing there.

I'm trying to remember the name of the show. Um, it's the Prisoners, right, But were bubbles, which you could you could call those pods. I don't think you can call a Cuba pod. You can call it well, no, I don't think that's right. But I think he's literally just doing He absolutely is just I don't even think he watched The Prisoner. I think someone described it to him and he decided to do what he He absorbed that. Yeah,

it's throughout like cultural losmosis. Right, we're like, oh, I know the image of the guy with a number on his chest the bubble comes after him. Um. Yeah, so they're yeah, they're I mean a lot of things silly about this. Um. I shouldn't harp on the cube shaped pod,

but yeah, but it's just it's very funny. Um. And it's just like it's such a there's a there's a uc B sketch from the Upper Sketch show they did for like three seasons, and there's a sketch where it's it's clearly l Ron Hubbard like an analog reading his sci fi book that's like trying to get people to a cult, and it's like terrible sci fi and every word is like he put on his vision goggles to eat his nutrition food, and I like it's such bad sci fi writing, and I can't think of anything but that.

Every single time he'd like capitalizes something importment or something. Anyway, the enforcement pods are after him. In the lead pod Capital P he could see the slack jawed face of a slightly bored enforcer Capital E, who leaned forward and pushed a button. Suddenly, the pod jumped, as though spurred with a cattle prod bucked and leapt toward him. The distance shrink one block. His feet were giving way now half a block. M hm ah. The pod loudspeaker opened

up with that pulsating rhythm. He'd heard the rhythm once before. I shouldn't say rhythm again. He'd heard the rhythm once before. You'd only seen God. He'd heard the rhythm once before. He'd only seen one enforcement action before. It had been a young girl ready for it. Okay, sorry keep going, Yeah, no, I'm and I'm sorry for letting his writing trip me up and trying to read this out loud. He had heard the rhythm once before, He'd only seen one enforcement

action before. It had been a young girl ready for recruitment to the Ministry of Personal Needs. She had his word repetition and now has stopped being purposeful and oh, yeah, this is just this is just not very I feel I feel like I need to point that out here.

It's also funny to me that like the thing that I'm sure one thing I'm sure that Ben finds horrifying about nineteen eighty four, or at least the television version of nine that I'm sure is what he's watched rather than reading the book, is that there's like there's no distinction between between men and women and their society right as a desire to to to kind of exercise from humanity the capacity to form families and fall in love because it's a threat to the state. Um been still

has a very clear separation. Men do some sort of job in women are just there for sex. Uh. And that's that's yeah, just very revealing. That's consistent. No, it's consistently good. And it says nothing about Ben. Is this to wrap it up? Or yeah, So, like I was gonna say, I'm actually like frustrated reading this now, and I think we need to take a week break and compare to you too. I feel like that's the general we do talk about. Oh, I mean a week break in like real time in that meaning in a week

we'll come back to Okay, we'll still come back then. Yeah, No, we have to find out what happens. I just like I can't read today, you know what. We've got to digest what we've learned, and will finish now our trauma and my request for all of you in this next week, because we only have maybe one more week of going over Ben's storybook. Maybe fight where he lives, break into his home, steal his hard drive. There's got to be

a file on there that we need. More men, short stories or scripts, you know, um, bring it, bring him to us. There's other people we could read. There's other people's work we could celebrate anyway, not as good as there's something special and tasty about this. He is a special boy. He sure is. Alright, guys, check us out online. Now, where's your pod? We'll be back next week, keeping the

classy worst your enforcement pod. Ye cube shaped because he didn't want to do fears because that's from the prisoner and he couldn't do it the same way. Yea extremely And there's no way he's watched the Prisoner. He can't have like I can't imagine sitting down and watch is this cute floating or is this cube on wheels? If so, it's got to be floating. That's very funny. Floating cubes is such a funny in the world. So here's the thing, and we'll okay, we're the episodes not over yet, all right,

So uh in the sentence that introduces these enforcement pods. Uh, in addition to the other things we talked about, the cube shaped enforcement pods were rolling down the street after him gaining rapidly. They were rolling down the street. Uh. And so they can't they can't roll unless they're on wheels. So I'm pretty sure the cube pods have wheels, just like yeah, there's cyber trucks that we cleared this up because obviously a sphere can roll down in different ways

or float or however you want to get it. Yeah, but a cube can't. It needs wheels to roll. That's what I was thinking. Okay, I'm so glad we cleared that. I hope they're roller blades. Alright, Alright, the episodes actually over now now we're done by Oh dome n It's not against I tried. Daniel. Worst Year Ever is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.