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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
NIA: Hi, Aughie.
Aughie: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
NIA: Well, I'd be fine if I could tell time, I have time problems these days.
Aughie: Do we need to go back?
NIA: I'm struggling seasonally I think, a good way to put it. Not so much with hours on the clock but so much with seasons.
Aughie: We need to go back to maybe kindergarten or first grade where we were we learned the seasons.
NIA: We learn to put the podcast episodes out in order of the season. Yes. Go ahead, Aughie.
Aughie: You're about to listen to or read the transcript for a podcast episode that we recorded a couple of months ago. Our intention was to have a sum or a favorites, where each episode would be a discussion of some of our favorite things related to government and politics. They weren't our normal fare of government documents or political science or facts.
NIA: They were facts, they were pretty much fact-free in most instances in terms of how the government runs or based in government documents which are generally what we do.
Aughie: Yes, and our intention was to record a number of these episodes and then release them during the summer.
NIA: For a get to know you summary of our summer favorites so that you can get to know us a little more personally of what we think of when we think of favorites. All good plans.
Aughie: The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray, right?
NIA: Yeah, and in this instance one of us man, no one of us is a mouse. I didn't want to take away your manhood by saying we were mice, we're both mice.
Aughie: The quote though is from Dickens, right?
NIA: Right.
Aughie: Anyways, so were recorded these episodes, our intention was to go ahead and release them during the summer. However, we received a bunch of emails from faithful listeners who wanted to know if and or when we were going to have podcast episodes, about the recently completed Supreme Court term that finished up the last week of June.
NIA: The reasonably non-controversial, completely boring nothing else after in the whole thing US Supreme Court.
Aughie: Yes.
NIA: That's so when you mean, right?
Aughie: Yes, exactly.
NIA: Several of our readers slash listeners were on fire basically it were like, oh my God you have to address this.
Aughie: What we did listeners is we scrapped or summer of favorites. But we didn't scrap it we delayed release of those episodes so what follows is one of those episodes.
NIA: Thank you for your patience for us with our timing, and let's work through our fall of favorites.
Aughie: Yes.
NIA: We'll come back with regularly scheduled episodes of normal list.
Aughie: Yes, where are we focused on government documents, government processes, things in the news.
NIA: Facts and figures and all the things that are true.
Aughie: Yes.
Aughie: Instead of all the things that are our opinions which you may or may not be true.
Aughie: True
NIA: Thanks, Aughie.
Aughie: Thank you, Nia.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm quite good because today's podcast episode is about books.
N. Rodgers: I know and they are your favorite thing besides your kid.
J. Aughenbaugh: You got that.
N. Rodgers: That's your order of McKenzie books, rest of my family, teaching.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then coffee.
N. Rodgers: Then coffee goes fifth after all those. You're much more of a reader than I am, which I think people would be surprised by because I'm a librarian and everybody thinks that librarians just sit around and read. Turns out that's not the case with librarians. We don't get to sit around and read. Mostly what we read now, or at least what I read is nonfiction. That's because I don't work at the public library. Like I don't work in fiction. I work in non-fiction.
J. Aughenbaugh: Also too, a lot of what I noticed about librarians is that you guys take great joy in helping people get to resources, books, journals. That's the joy you all have.
N. Rodgers: It's the hunt. I'm like a dog that chases a cat. I don't really want to catch a cat because I don't know what I'm going to do with it when I get it in my teeth. But the chase is awesome. Trying to hunt down the right things so that people go, that's exactly the article that I need.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then if you can bring others into your joy of the hunt, all the better. You want other dogs in the neighborhood to also go ahead and chase cats.
N. Rodgers: I'll just run it down the road chasing a cat that's like I'm being chased by a herd of dogs. I don't think it's called a herd when it's dogs.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, it's a pack.
N. Rodgers: Pack of dogs.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Just like wolves.
N. Rodgers: What I think is interesting for listeners who have never seen where Aughie records, we record in our homes and we record on Zoom, which is why the quality of the sound is always a little iffy. But he records in his home office, which is one-half books and one-half music CDs. His professional books, his reading books for professional work, like his non-fiction stuff is at work. His office at work also has a metric ton of books, but no CDs because he doesn't listen to music at work at all that much. My home office has 12 books in it and they're all citation manuals. It's just funny to me how we do this very differently. I hate this about myself, but I'm finding this and it may be true for other listeners, so we have sympathy for you if is true for you, that my attention span, I struggle with an entire novel these days because a lot of what I read is journal articles on specific subjects and I struggle to hold my attention.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Because journal articles are typically what, Nia?
N. Rodgers: 20-25 pages max.
J. Aughenbaugh: You sit down, you can go ahead and read those in a half-hour, 45-minute.
N. Rodgers: You digest that, and it's not a novel man. Four hundred pages and I'm like, is this ever going to be over? That's not a good sign for me. I have a friend who we have committed to each other that we are going to work on that by reading short stories first and then working into shorter novels and then back into longer novels because I used to read all the time. I used to read novels all the time. I've gotten out of the habit. Unfortunately, Aughie has not, which is why his list goes on. Aughie's favorite political books is like, how many episodes do we want to make on this? I'm like one and he was like, because for him it's like asking a DJ what's your favorite song? That would depend on which hour of which day of which week of which year that you were talking about when I have to pick a favorite.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia, do you remember when we were in our 20s and 30s and there was this, what 10 albums would you take with you?
N. Rodgers: To a desert island.
J. Aughenbaugh: To a desert island. I remember having that conversation with a couple of DJs and they were just like, what kind of desert island? I was like, what do you mean, what kind of desert island and they're like, it's going to depend because if it's in the morning at the desert island, I would want these 10 albums. If it was like during a rainstorm, I would want these.
N. Rodgers: For some people it is not a simple question.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then it just dawned on me. It's like, if somebody says to me, what's your 10 favorite spy novels, I'm like, no.
N. Rodgers: No, I will not answer that question.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay.
N. Rodgers: Because ask me today and then ask me again tomorrow and they will probably there may be some overlap, but there's going to be very much differences.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, again, this is during our summer favorites.
N. Rodgers: My section is going to be short and Aughie's section is going to be long. But one of the things we do agree on which I think is interesting is we both put George Orwell as our first favorite political author even though George Orwell was British. Was he not?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, he was British.
N. Rodgers: But it's funny because that's on our list separately done. We both chose George Orwell as our first and our one person that we have in common although Aughie's got some people on his sistomic. Those are great. That's the other thing is people remind you of things and then you're like, that's really good. He put Steinbeck on his list, which we will get to. I'm like, of course. Of course Steinbeck writing about the Depression and what that meant in those times and all that stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia when I went ahead and saw that you put Margaret Truman down, I was just like yes, of course. That's one of those great things when you have newspaper articles or magazine articles or podcast episodes that are about lists of things.
N. Rodgers: It reminds you like that's right. I can read or I haven't read that in so long. I want to re-read it, that thing. Can we start, Mr. Orwell? I'm going to start if you don't mind with Animal Farm.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, go ahead. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Animal Farm really is his view of early Soviet communism. A bunch of the characters, Stalin, Trotsky, represent those people. The famous line from that book that everybody knows is all animals are equal. That's how it starts out on the wall. All animals are equal, but then it eventually becomes all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. The whole point of the novel is this eventual corruption of any system, that power corrupts. Power and money corrupt. It doesn't matter how noble you're intent when you start. I have to admit this formed my cynical view of politics in the sense that I regularly will say about politicians, they start off with this hopeful they're going to fix the world and by the end, they are just as much criminals as the people who were already there. This whole thing of emptying the swamp.
N. Rodgers: If you emptied the swamp, there wouldn't be anything left. By its nature, power corrupts. By its nature, people who are in power think like Nixon, "Well, if the president does it, it can't be illegal." You're like, wait, what?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and as an institutionalist, my perspective on political science or politics, in general, is as an institutionalist. Even if you don't go as far as the notion that all power corrupts, Orwell's Animal Farm appeal to me in my youth. I don't know about you, Nia, but the first time I read Animal Farm, I think I was a freshman or sophomore in high school.
N. Rodgers: That's the age I read it too, yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. And I didn't understand fully then why it appealed to me until I got older, and I started learning different, if you will, explanations for the political world or public policy. Animal Farm has a very institutionalist view, which is, no matter what government institution a society creates, the people of that nation are going to be molded, shaped, and changed by that system, by those institutions. That's one of the reasons why it appealed to me. Because Orwell, and mind you. When the book was first published, it was viewed as an anti-communist, if you will, screed, but Orwell insisted until he died, that it was a critique of any government system put together by human beings.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: That he was merely pointing out to some of his British friends that you all are openly embracing communism because you hate British class system and the British form of democracy but hey, there's more than likely going to be these problems with communism.
N. Rodgers: Right. Just as a side note, we're going to try really hard not to ruin the ending of these books for you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia and I are not big fans of spoiler alerts.
N. Rodgers: Well, actually, we are fans of spoiler alerts, we're not so great of spoilers and we try not to spoil. Although I did spoil by giving you the line of the book, but I think everybody knows pretty much that line from the book. But we're going to try to not do that. Your George Orwell is 1984.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It is a dystopian social science fiction novel. It's a cautionary tale. It was published in 1949. It was Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime.
N. Rodgers: Orwell died young, by the way. He died at 49 or 48. He was a young man when he died.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, he was in his late 40s. But he looks at the consequences of totalitarianism. But what most know of 1984 is the mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviors within society.
N. Rodgers: What is the name of that character?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh my God.
N. Rodgers: Big Brother.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, Big Brother.
N. Rodgers: Big Brother is watching.
J. Aughenbaugh: Big Brother is watching.
N. Rodgers: For people of a certain age, when you say Big Brother, it's shorthand for all the cameras and all the surveillance and everything constantly, like your phone being GPS trackable at any given moment. When we say Big Brother, that's what we're talking about. It's the encapsulation of that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: It's such a good choice you made.
J. Aughenbaugh: I see this a lot with my students because I will go ahead and drop Big Brother into a conversation, and they just look at me, and I'm like, 1984 George Orwell, and they're like, "Yeah, so?" I said, for a particular generation or probably-
N. Rodgers: We're living that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Two generations of Americans. A lot of politics in America is portrayed as older versus younger generations. Some of that is true. But older generations that grew up reading or in the case of 1984 watching the movie, we're very, very cautious about today's use of technology because it is so ubiquitous. So much of what we do can be tracked either by the government and/or the private sector.
N. Rodgers: Big corporations. Your phone company knows where you are all of the time.
J. Aughenbaugh: All the time.
N. Rodgers: Which is terrifying when you think about it. This was published in 1949. We are not that old, by the way if you're wondering.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: But it came sort of into vogue as a novel. Again, when we were in our early high school, I'm pretty sure I read this. I think I read Animal Farm in freshman year and 1984 in sophomore year.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Sort of around those times. So for us, we're talking about the early '80, when cellphones, they were like a foot and a half long, and they fit into a big box. It was ahead of its time, but it was also cautionary at the time. Our teachers were saying to us, "Be careful because these technologies are coming into your life, the Internet is starting to come into your life. Computers are starting to come into your life. Cell phones are starting to come into your life, and this will lead to, or could lead to."
J. Aughenbaugh: Could lead to this.
N. Rodgers: Orwell was brilliant and seeing this ahead. Now when a British person leaves their home, from the time they leave their home to the time they get back to their home in the evening, 112 pictures of them have been taken.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, CCTV.
N. Rodgers: CCTV. I don't know how anybody gets away with murder in Britain anymore. I don't know if you could make Midsomer Murders, that show where everybody dies every week, and you're like, "Dang, I don't want to go there."
N. Rodgers: I mean, it's amazing to me.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It is amazing to me with the number of cameras that we have that people still disappear. But anyway, that's a separate issue.
J. Aughenbaugh: The other reason why I love this book, and we've discussed this sub-theme in our podcasts. In fact, it was one of the reasons why you, Nia initially approached me about doing this podcast, and that is this idea of the role of truth and facts within society and how they can be manipulated and how if you want to avoid always being manipulated you as a citizen, need to seek out, find, read, and think about facts. What your government does or does not do, who's saying what and why? That's one of the sub themes of the book and good Lord, does that resonate today in regard to what is the truth? What are facts? How do we in a society, socially construct and individually construct what are truth and facts.
N. Rodgers: Well, the first line in the novel is, "It was a bright day in April and the clocks were striking 13". Already sets you up for truth is relative.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Your second book, if I dare say, is probably not a quote unquote favorite but you recognize how significant and important it was.
N. Rodgers: What's funny to me is that in my college years when I decided that I wanted to be a radical socialists and change myself to things and get arrested for protesting and stuff like that, which by the way happened, I will be honest and say it happened.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, let's be very clear here.
N. Rodgers: I have a criminal past just like Aughie does, we just have slightly different criminal pasts.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, and also too the diversions of us today.
N. Rodgers: Very different.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Have all the changed, filtered. You just went ahead and talked about your radical socialist stage. I had the I'm a communist phase but shortly after my communist phase I had a phase to where I consumed all the books of our next author and that next author is?
N. Rodgers: Ayn Rand.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I did the same thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I did the exact same thing in college. I had my communist phase then I had my anti-communists phase, and then I had my, I don't like anybody in politics anywhere phase. The only thing that I consistently did all those years was vote. It's just my votes were crazy. Now that I look back on them I'm like I was interesting.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia before we get to this book, which by the way listeners are just like well, which of Rand's.
N. Rodgers: Which of Ayn Rand's books we're talking about Atlas Shrugged this time. Although we can talk about The Fountainhead, but we will talk about Atlas Shrugged.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia did you have anarchist phase? I had one of those.
N. Rodgers: I did. College was the phase where I tried to figure out who I was.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was just like, all these structures are garbage, all these institutions.
N. Rodgers: I'm moving to the mountains to live by myself. People suck.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It was probably not all that surprising is when I first got introduced to jazz.
N. Rodgers: An anarchist form of music.
J. Aughenbaugh: The first time I heard Coltrane and his band go off on an eight minute tangent in a song and I'm like, " Hey, that's really cool."
N. Rodgers: Because it's who you were at the time. That is still cool by the way
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Coltrane is awesome.
J. Aughenbaugh: Anyways back to Atlas Shrugged.
N. Rodgers: Ayn Rand was a Russian author who moved to the United States. She had come from the Soviet form of communism. I say that because the Soviet form of communism and the Chinese form of communism are different.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: She had come from the Soviet form of communism and she went to the other direction as many ex communists do by being very capitalist. Very much about the individual in their fight against conformity and stuff like that. Atlas Shrugged is generally speaking, the broad storyline is that there is too much regulation in business and that it kills creativity and it kills the magnates of society.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That it drives them out of business because of too much regulation. There's this character in the movie, John Galt, who is often referred to on t-shirts as, "Who is John Galt?" Because that's a phrase used in the book. It has double meaning. In the beginning of the book, it means why bother, but in the end of the book, he actually is a person.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: He encourages these magnates to do things. I don't want to ruin the story and where it goes with that but it is very much a libertarian and ultra conservative. There's this weird mixture of people who really love Ayn Rand's work, The Fountainhead is another one of her works, it's about an architect who refuses to conform to architectural design norms.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's all about his personal freedom and his personal fight to be himself.
J. Aughenbaugh: To be an individual.
N. Rodgers: That's John Broak, he's the character in that book. In both of those, the individual is what's important because of course, she was coming out of society where the individual did not matter. She went to the other extreme of that. Fans of this, often you hear Paul Ryan who's the former speaker of House.
J. Aughenbaugh: Representative from Wisconsin.
N. Rodgers: But lots of conservative and lots of libertarian politicians will point to Ayn Rand and say that's the society we should be living in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's our Ayn Rand. She herself had a quite interesting personal life. By the way, just as a side note for The Fountainhead, she said that she made that character in that she had used a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright's what she thought his philosophy was and he wanted nothing to do with it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nothing to do with it.
N. Rodgers: He said, "I am not a part of this and she does not speak for me." That's interesting how people separate themselves from her. But it is good to read, it is quite long. If you are going to sit down with Atlas Shrugged, you need a long weekend or perhaps a week at the beach. I don't know if it's a brilliant beach read.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's not a beach read but if you're taking a break from society.
N. Rodgers: If you want to feel bad about other people. It's a pretty good way to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because part of Rand's argument in Atlas Shrugged is regulations are designed to go ahead and protect those who are trying to subjugate others because of their weakness. Right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: In many ways, Rand has elements of Nietzsche, where Nietzsche's argument that you get all these government institutions in large part to go ahead and prop up those who aren't talented [inaudible].
N. Rodgers: Right.
N. Rodgers: Your second novel is Steinbeck. When I saw Steinbeck, I was like, of course, and you chose the Grapes of Wrath. There also could have been Of Mice and Men, or similar thing, East of Eden. Like all of those, but you chose Grapes of Wrath, which I think is an excellent representation of Steinbeck.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, this is another book that I read in high school. By the way, listeners. I truly feel sorry for you if you did not have great high-school English teachers. Because I did have great high-school English teachers, and a lot of these books that either Nia picked, or are on my list, I first read In high school.
N. Rodgers: I read in college, and I'm saying goodness no high-school.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. I don't think I would have been able to understand particularly Atlas Shrugged, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Written by an American novelist, Steinbeck. The book actually won the Nobel Prize for literature. But it's set in the Great Depression, and the novel focuses on a family the Joads' who are poor tenant farmers in Oklahoma. Because of the drought during the Great Depression, they actually move to California. They were trapped in the Dust Bowl, agricultural conditions of the late 1920s, early 1930s. They set out with a whole bunch of other residents of Oklahoma who received the very dismissive, condescending nickname, Okies. They were seeking jobs and land and pretty much everything they no longer had or never had in Oklahoma.
N. Rodgers: Is there a song Okie from Muskogee?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that was written and performed by Merle Haggard. The Grapes of Wrath, when it first came out, was criticized as being socialists, and was also criticized by a whole bunch of politicians in California. Because when the Okies got to California, they were discriminated against, infrequently thrown in jail simply for traveling to that state, looking for work.
N. Rodgers: Some roads were closed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Closed, yes.
N. Rodgers: They were literally not allowed in?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: People in California are like we weren't like that, but yes, you actually were. We know because we have witness accounts, on both sides.
J. Aughenbaugh: There were prison records where.
N. Rodgers: Crime is being from Oklahoma.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Not being Californian.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: That was the phrase.
N. Rodgers: It's not just Oklahoma. They did that to anybody here, but that's foolish isn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: It has an implicit critique of capitalism. Again, even if you love capitalism, and in generally, at the end of the day, I'm still going to hang my hat on a capitalist economy instead of other ones. That's where I fall.
N. Rodgers: On this we civily disagree
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay. But capitalism, even if you like it as an economic forum, the market picks winners and losers.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: If you are a loser, you're going to suffer conditions of depravity, of loss that you may never recover from, and that's capitalism. Thus the reason why, even in democracies with capitalist economic systems, you need to have a welfare state to provide a safety net, okay?
N. Rodgers: Right. Can I just say these words coming out of my mouth are somewhat painful, but I'm going to say them to you. If for some reason you cannot or will not read the book, the movie with Henry Fonda is amazing, and does a really good job of portraying the book. Sometimes the movie and the book you're like, are those the same? How did we even get here? John Ford, who is the director of that film, did a fantastic job and Henry Fonda, of course, is a fantastic actor. Just as a side note that if for some reason your patience is lacking in reading that particular book, you might consider the movie, which we don't usually say about. What we would say about this one.
J. Aughenbaugh: This one, and I've shown the Grapes of Wrath in my politics and film class, and students, I've talked about how the movie stuck with them for weeks afterwards. Because there are images in the movie.
N. Rodgers: Very powerful.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and by the way, there is a great Bruce Springsteen song based on the character in this book and in the movie. It's the title track for it from his album that goes to Tom Joad. Which is one of my favorite Springsteen's songs, and it's one of the favorite songs of my dearly departed friend and colleague Herb Hirsch. He just absolutely loved this book, love this movie, and every time he had a chance to go ahead and play, The Ghost of Tom Joad, he was like, "We need to hear this, people should know this." But anyways, you have.
N. Rodgers: I'm going to mention authors but not specific titles. In my next, as we take turns. My next turn, I'm going to say Margaret Truman. Read anything by Margaret Truman. Gregory at the Supreme Court, Murder at the Smithsonian. They're all murder at, they are murder mysteries. But they give you a really good sense of Washington as a city, and how it works, and the political intrigues involved. The reason they do that, the last name Truman may sound familiar to you, because her father was president.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: She draws on this kind of insider knowledge. I love them.
J. Aughenbaugh: The books are so good Nia, at capturing the culture.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the thing.
N. Rodgers: Familiar of the city.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the thing that many Americans don't understand. Particularly your experience with Washington DC, personal or firsthand experience is just popping in to go ahead and see the monuments or deceiving museums. You do it for a weekend and then you leave. Well, you're not going to capture like Trumans' books do. Just the culture that has developed over the years. Again, this takes us back to the comment that you made a few minutes ago about politicians that are like, "I'm going go to Washington DC and I'm going to go ahead and clean up the swamp" or "I'm going to change the culture. "
N. Rodgers: No, you're not.
J. Aughenbaugh: Barack Obama.
N. Rodgers: Do you know how long that culture has been there?
J. Aughenbaugh: Trump said, I'm going to drain the swamp. Obama said I'm going to change the culture. Jimmy Carter said, I'm going to go to Washington DC. I'm going to show them how to go ahead and run ethical government like we did down in Georgia.
N. Rodgers: No, you're not.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, you're not. This national capital is built on land that is swamp land. It was land, the two states were willing to give up. That should tell you something.
N. Rodgers: People are willing to live there, willing to live in the swamp. She draws a lot of her insider knowledge from it. Your next book is Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In Catch-22, for anybody who isn't familiar with the phrase. If English is not your first language, Catch-22 has come to mean an unwinnable situation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It's an ironic and unwinnable situation, to where something can stand for one thing, and mean something else and they're not compatible. In the case of Catch-22, what's incompatible, at least according to the author Joseph Heller, was war.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's what Catch-22 about, it's a satirical war novel that was published in 1961. The novel set in World War II, it follows the life of Captain John. I always mispronounce the name, Azarian who's an Army Air Force, and this was before the Air Force became a stand-alone unit within the Department of Defense. He's Obama dear in this island of Pianosa in the Mediterranean, and it covers episodes from basic training to actually being in the war. It's about the absurdity of war and military life through the experiences of those who fight wars, those on the ground or in this case the air. They tried to maintain their sanity while they fulfill their service requirements.
N. Rodgers: A warning we should give listeners who wants to read this book, is that it is not chronologically told and it is told by different characters' point of view, it's a little bit like reading Pulp Fiction would be.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you've ever seen the film Pulp Fiction and you can see that chronologically it's not quite, and you're like, what are we? That's how you're going to feel reading Catch-22. Part of that is intentional to make you uncomfortable as a reader.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because one of Heller's points that he's making in the book is that war is disorienting to those who experience it.
N. Rodgers: The book is disoriented.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I read this in high school, I've had to reread it two or three times since. Every time I do I gained more knowledge about each of these characters and their perspectives. But again, younger listeners when you hear somebody older use the expression Catch-22 that's what they're referring to. Which is, if I do x even if that makes sense the catch may mean something else.
N. Rodgers: I think damned if I do, damned if I don't, either way it's a no win situation. Or a Kobayashi Maru for all of the Star Trek fans out there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. It may make sense in this context but in a different context that absolutely makes no sense whatsoever, and for our listeners who've ever been in the military or a paramilitary organization, you have Catch-22 experiences all the time.
N. Rodgers: Why are we doing that? Because I said so.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia and I have commented that because we work at a university setting, we frequently experience Catch-22. By the way this is yet another one of the books that was made into a movie and it's a good adaptation. I wouldn't say it's great but it's a good adaptation, it was directed by Mike Nichols. Who did a lot of good work.
N. Rodgers: By the way we should note these are all old.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: All of our choices are old.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Neither one of us is talking about Modern Fiction, selfishly I don't want to talk about Modern Fiction because it can be so divisive-like topic. We're talking about fiction that is considered relatively classic except for the next person I'm going to mention who is not considered classic, who is considered more of a bubble gum thing. But that's Tom Clancy, I love Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy's novels are research within an inch of their existence, when he talks about the technical aspects for instance, The Hunt for Red October when he's describing how submarines work, he is describing them from a place of deep research and knowledge.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Well, compare Clancy's books to Steinbeck's books. Steinbeck was purposely trying to provide social commentary.
N. Rodgers: Clancy is not.
J. Aughenbaugh: Clancy is not, on the other hand Clancy's books because the early ones were rooted in the Cold War, really highlighted how both the Soviet Union and the United States spent a whole bunch of money, and made some rather significant technological advances in regards to nuclear power, nuclear weapons, submarines being able to go ahead and do surveillance of other nations all because of the Cold War.
N. Rodgers: He does an excellent job describing those things, so if you are looking for a non-military person's understanding of military hardware and that thing. Tom Clancy was associated with the military but he explains it really well, he gives a really good, I should not have said bubblegum, I should've said they are a populist way of understanding those very technical.
J. Aughenbaugh: When I first started reading Clancy's books, I often thought that I wished our politicians explained.
N. Rodgers: Tactical stuff the way he does.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, that's right.
N. Rodgers: I agree.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, that's one of the purposes of good books is to provide you an entree into a field, a way of life, etc, that you may never have had without that book. Now, also let's be very clear, Clancy's books have, in my estimation some of the best drawn characters related to the Cold War of probably the last 40-50 years, let's face it. Jack Ryan.
N. Rodgers: He's a great character.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay, he's a great character. Marco Ramya in The Hunt for Red October is a great character, right?
N. Rodgers: Right. Don't say the movie. Sean Connery does not do a Russian accent worth a darn.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, he doesn't. What the character in the book is just utterly fascinating.
N. Rodgers: As a great best.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's the thing, many of the characters in the Clancy books do have great backstories, and I always thought that that was one of the primary, if you will, positives of the Clancy books was that he gave life to some of these government officials, who are fighting this Cold War who they really are even if it's not rooted into specific real life characters?
N. Rodgers: The other person on your list who does that with extreme ability is Le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is one of his books.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Russia House.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
N. Rodgers: Talk about making people real.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: His people are so real that I believe they are actually people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Le Carre, was the pen name for a former British Intelligence Officer, David Cornwell. He worked in the SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service of the British government in the 1950s and early 1960s, but then started to write books under a pseudonym, in part because British rules at the time said he couldn't go ahead and write books under his own name. I picked Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy for a number of reasons. One, it came on the heels of one of the greatest spy controversies.
J. Aughenbaugh: In modern times. In Great Britain, there were five highly placed British intelligence officers known as the Cambridge Five, who were exposed as double agents. There were spies for the British KGB.
N. Rodgers: No for the Russian KGB.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the Soviet KGB.
N. Rodgers: They were in the British spy system but they were double agents for the Russian KGB.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because guess what? It's really hard to guard against that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is. That's one reason I picked this book. The second reason I picked this book is it really describes how Great Britain was beginning to have less influence on the world stage after the Second World War. The British Intelligence Service, whereas engaged in various operations and taking gambles so that they could remain relevant. But in the process of trying to remain relevant, they basically open the doors within their own organization to a whole bunch of double agents for the KGB.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: The other reason why I picked this and this is completely personal, the main character in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is, in my estimation, one of the great late 20th century characters in literature, George Smiley, who is a rumpled, nondescript government bureaucrat who shows up to work. Everybody underestimates him. Even his wife thinks so little of him that she serially cheats on him, oftentimes with some of his co-workers or best friends. But he's a grinder. He shows up every day, does work and the number of times that people have compared me to Smiley, I've lost count because I've had people who were like, "You know who you remind me of, Aughie?" I'm like, "No, who? They're like,"Have you ever read John le Carre's books? I'm like. They're like, "You know that Smiley character?"
N. Rodgers: A side note Smiley has been played by some of the greatest actors.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Jeff Mason, George Cole, Alec Guinness, Peter Vaughn and lately Gary Oldman in the 2000s. Smileys is the character that actors want to play?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, because so much of a Smiley is internal.
N. Rodgers: Right. You have to be a good actor inorder to get it get across.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, for those of you who are wondering, the title of the book refers to an old British Nursery Rhyme. The punchline to the nursery rhyme is Tinker Tailor, Soldier sailor, Rich Man Poor Man, Beggar Man Thief. I'm not going to give away the basic plot for the book, because if I go ahead and explain the book title I'll give away the entire book.
N. Rodgers: We will be here for.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Again, One last thing the movie version, the 2011 movie version with Gary Oldman is actually a really good adaptation of the book. Because if you read the book and I don't know about you, Nia. But if you read the book you're thinking there's no chance anybody to go ahead.
N. Rodgers: Is too complicated.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's complicated. There's a TV series in it actually I thought the TV series did a pretty good job, but it had multiple hours to go ahead and explain everything for the book.
N. Rodgers: Is one of those books where you need to sit down with it and be really be ready to delve?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because there are layers and layers and layers to this book, and same with Russia House.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Le Carre writes in layers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: None of his books are easy peasy to read. Can we do quick special mentioned?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You have a special mention which I think is fantastic, William Golding.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Lord of the Flies. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Everybody has read The Lord of the Flie., if they have not, they should have.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because it's a standard, this is what happens.
J. Aughenbaugh: When you leave.
N. Rodgers: A bunch of boys stranded on an island. I think it's not fair to say it would be boys, because I think it's people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The basic plot of the book is a group of British boys are stranded on an uninhabited island and they make various attempts to govern themselves, and boys the results are bad. But this book also won a Nobel Prize for literature. But it's an allegory. The central theme is there are conflicting human impulses about civilization in organization. The difficulties with living by roles, doing so peacefully perhaps even in harmony but the will to power can have disastrous consequences, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's one of the reasons why when you have somebody who says, I want to go ahead and live by myself or live with my loved ones and leave us alone.
N. Rodgers: It's so not going to happen.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even if it did happen, you are assuming that it's going to go well.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay.
N. Rodgers: But that is just a pure view of it not going well. I think it's a lovely mentioned on this list. My special mention is anything by Ian Fleming.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Good.
N. Rodgers: I put to you that this is because one, James Bond is a ridiculously fun character.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The ridiculous stuff that James Bond gets up to and doesn't get killed. Novel after, novel after novel, it's crazy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But I would recommend reading the books over, watching the movies. Not because I don't love Sean Connery, I do not because they don't love Roger Moore, I do. I'm okay with the others. But because I came up at a certain age, I have feelings.
J. Aughenbaugh: My two favorite actors were Connery first and then the most recent, Daniel Craig.
N. Rodgers: Daniel Craig is fantastic. We have an unfortunate Pierce Brosnan period, and there we have an unfortunate Tim Dalton period in there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, Tim Dalton by the way.
N. Rodgers: George Lazenby, only got one movie, but he did okay with it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Timothy Dalton, great stage actor. I don't know what they were thinking or what he was thinking by agreeing to do three of those. When you read the books. Here's the thing.The books again, and I still remember this. Nia, I read the Fleming books when I was in high school
N. Rodgers: Same with me.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were an entree again to a world that yes, I knew it was fictitious. I knew that people were saying, this actor just can't live through all this stuff, etc. That's fine. But because they were fun and because the Bond character was so over-the-top, they gave me an entrance into.
N. Rodgers: Cold War politics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Cold War politics.
N. Rodgers: They made no offense to Cold War politics, but they made Cold War politics fun.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because it was a while Ian Fleming, Ian Fleming actually served, I think, in the military and the intelligence services.
J. Aughenbaugh: He was a spy for a period of time.
N. Rodgers: Things like that. It's not like he didn't respect the work. But he also wrote, again, a populist in a populist style.
J. Aughenbaugh: To a certain extent, he was using humor in the misogyny.
N. Rodgers: Bond is one of the most misogyny in his characters. He believed that we don't recognize that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Exact.
N. Rodgers: Recognize.
J. Aughenbaugh: But he was using all of that in part to go ahead and poke fun at what nations we're doing in this Cold War.
N. Rodgers: At the military services, at the intelligence.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They were like, oh, we have a gadget office where we will make these ridiculous gadgets where your car turns into a submarine and then turns into an airplane and they're like, That's not possible, so there's some fun in that, but there's also poking.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, there's an implicit.
N. Rodgers: Don't forget Ian Fleming. Well, anyway, go ahead.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, there was an implicit critique. I mean, you mentioned, the gadget. There's an implicit critique that ends up having more resonance. It becomes more powerful as modern society goes on, which is thinking you can use technology to go ahead and conduct a war, even a Cold War is in many ways ludicrous. By the way, it's the same bizarreness that you see in a movie like Dr. Strange Love that you could rely upon technology to go ahead and make these really tough choices? No, you can't. Because at some point in time, human beings have to step in and say, we are willing to forsake this, for this.
N. Rodgers: Well, the other thing about that, I'm just going to say is Ian Fleming came from wealth.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: James Bond is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is an orphan.
N. Rodgers: He's fake.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Everything about all of his elegance.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is fake.
N. Rodgers: Is fake.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Taught by the government to go ahead and do what particular role for the government.
N. Rodgers: It's all political.
J. Aughenbaugh: In case there's an implicit critique about.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: Modern democracy frequently uses its castaways as assets for a larger purpose, and we're all disposable.
N. Rodgers: The veneer of civilization.
J. Aughenbaugh: They should, yes.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. He's got a lot of lawyers there too, but mostly they are a lighthearted way to get into the Cold War ride off. If you want to read something that's a little easier to start with. I think Fleming is a pretty easy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, you mentioned this before.
N. Rodgers: Pretty easy entree into the spy of genre.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. You mentioned this before the recording, Nia. You want to first get into the spy genre, Cold War politics. Start within Fleming.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, don't start before [inaudible].
J. Aughenbaugh: That's why.
N. Rodgers: That's like saying, don't start with calculus, start with algebra, and work your way in. Yeah. Because if you start with calculus, you'll think I'll never get this massive thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But those are our favorite books. Again, listeners, we encourage you.
N. Rodgers: We stopped in the '80s.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, we did.
N. Rodgers: If you have modern things that you're excited about and want to email us, we'd love to hear that from you. You can find our email on the research guide. Both of our emails we would love to hear if you're like, oh, you need to read this book or you need to put them on our list. Aughie, I don't know if I'll get to a lot of fiction.
J. Aughenbaugh: But I will.
N. Rodgers: But Aughie will get to it, and we might make a future episode where we do 80 and beyond. Between '80s [inaudible].
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you Nia this was a great idea. In to your credit, you stood fast, and you're like one episode which I.
N. Rodgers: Just like the whole summer of books and I'm like, I don't know if people may want summer books.
J. Aughenbaugh: But that's one of the great values of those [inaudible].
N. Rodgers: We should however, do a nonfiction at some point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, we should.
N. Rodgers: We'll do that someday. Maybe we'll do that next summer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that would be good. Again, I promise, one episode.
N. Rodgers: One episode. That's going to be hard for me too. Thanks Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh my dear, thank you.
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