Voltaire’s Candide, or Optimism Finale: Impossible Feets

Show Notes

We finally made it to the second/last episode in our Candide miniseries, and what a long strange trip it’s been.  Our hero visits El Dorado, England, and Turkey, gaining and losing money and companions along the way.  Will he be reunited with his true love (?) Cunégonde?  Will he be reunited with basically everyone he’s met throughout the book?  Will he continue to believe that he lives in the best of all possible worlds?  Listen in to find out!  Jackie brags about her great-great-great grandma Lucy. Theo morphs into the Reptile Lover (no comment).  Rachel revels in her recently-acquired ability to say “butt.”  Topics include: killing reflexes, country clubs, houses made of bitcoin, kingly roleplay, anti-Paris propaganda, didgeridoos, Yngvie Malmsteen, the Reptile Lover, wise dervishes, #girlboss feminism, hopepunk, fakenews.edu, and musically battling the devil over one’s buttcheek.
Content warning: violence, sexual assault, anti-semitism, slavery

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* Intro music plays -

THEO: Here's the quote for this episode. This comes from Candide.

JACKIE: KAHN-dide.

T: “Do you think,” said Candide, “that men have always massacred one another as they do today? That they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, and brigands, as well as weaklings, shirkers, cowards, backbiters, gluttons, drunkards, misers, and social climbers, in addition to being both bloodthirsty, slanderest, fanatical, debauched, hypocritical and downright stupid?”

J: I do. Yay, marriage!

RACHEL: In sickness and in health; in weaklings and in shirkers, in cowards and in backbiters.

J: In misers and social climbers.

R: Whoo! Hey, everybody.

J: Welcome to Candide, part two of… two.

R: The finale of Candide. Yeah, the end.

T: The podcast name is Fire the Cannon.

R: Indeed it is.

T: Candide, it is.

R: Candide it is. And the writer of Candide is Voltaire. And the first and primary host of this podcast is me, Rachel. Also known as - what was my name? King Nadab, son of Jeroboam.

J: And the second, and…what’s the opposite word of primary?

R: Secondary.

J: The second and secondary host of this podcast is me.

T: Aww.

J: Jackie.

T: You don’t have to be secondary, just because you're second.

J: Yeah, thank you. I think I might say I'm the ultimate host and Rachel's the penultimate host. So, we're finishing up -

T: Hi, I'm Theo. I'm the executive producer.

J: God, I always forget that guy's here. Sorry.

R: Oh, you promoted yourself again.

J: The last episode we recorded was with my old professor Ross, and Theo demoted himself to just producer for that episode. (Rachel laughs) So we found out that he does have humility.

T: I bowed my head to Ross.

J: Yeah.

R: He was too embarrassed.

J: He does have humility and he just never exercises it with us.

T: For some reason I had this sense that Ross would know what an executive producer actually does and he would call me out. And he would say, “You're not an executive producer.”

J: Or he would say, “Oh shit, I didn't realize you were an EXECUTIVE producer! Can you show me your boat later?”

T: What?

R: Yeah.

T: Oh, because they're richer, they have boats?

J: Yeah, I guess you wouldn't know, would you, Theo?

T: Shit.

J: Gotcha!

R: Typical.

T: Oh, I see. All right. So guys, I forgot all of the characters since the last time we talked about Candide.

J: You want us to go over the characters? Is that what you're saying?

T: Yeah, I forgot all of them.

J: Bark, bark! Timmy's in the well and he forgot all the characters? Okay! Let's talk about it!

R: I bet the audience also forgot.

J: I bet they did.

R: Unless they did what I told them to and listened to this episode a second time.

T: Hmm.

J: Yeah, it's been a long time since Candide 1 came out. Did you want to go over it, Theo?

T: So, Candide, he's our main character, and he sort of just believes whatever Mr. Pangloss - Dr. Pangloss - says. Dr. Pangloss just says, “We always have the best possible outcome.” Isn't that what he says?

J: Mmhmm.

T: Everything exists because it has a purpose?

J: Or, whatever outcome does happen is the way that it should have been and it couldn't have been any other way.

R: And it’s good.

T: So, Dr. Pangloss tells Candide that. And then Candide is going on a long journey and he's applying that philosophy to everything he encounters.

J: Which is generally all bad stuff.

T: Yeah.

J: There's a few good things he encounters, but a lot of it is really horrible.

T: Yeah, and it sort of seems like Candide doesn't really have that much personality on his own, other than he sometimes has this killing reflex where someone walks in and he stabs them.

J: And who is he in love with?

T: He's in love with Lady Cunégonde. I don't know how to describe her personality either, but she endured some pretty harrowing stuff.

R: Yes.

J: That's pretty much it. She's just an object that bad things happen to.

R: Who's the person she's been hanging out with lately?

T: The old lady?

R: Yeah, tell us about her.

T: The old lady, she has experienced far more harrowing things than Cunégonde and she only has one… butt cheek.

J: Child friendly version?

T: Ass cheek. Is there anything else we need to know about her? Not really, right?

J: She was the daughter of a Pope and a princess, and now she's fallen quite a lot and she's very old and ugly and she only has one buttock. And she's traveling with them.

T: Currently, Candide is in South America.

J: He's in Paraguay.

T: And he is traveling with his friend Cacambo now, right?

J: Friend and servant.

T: And Cacambo seems to know a lot more than Candide. Right?

R: Like most people he meets.

J: Yeah, he's worldly.

R: All right.

J: All right. So, right now we have lady Cunégonde and the Old Lady are in Buenos Aires, and [Cunégonde] has been unwillingly betrothed to the governor there. And Candide and Cacambo had to flee town because Candide kept, you know, doing that little ‘boop!’ reflex-killing-people thing, and they're in Paraguay. So here we are. Chapter 17.

R: Okay.

J: So chapter 17 is called ‘The Arrival of Candide and his Manservant in the Land of El Dorado and What They Saw There.’ So at this point Cacambo wants to go back to Europe, but Candide doesn't want to go back to Europe and he also keeps trying to get back to Cunégonde. So he's like, “We can't leave her over here in South America.” And so they head to Cayenne, which is… where is that?

R: Who knows, girl?

J: Oh.

R: They don't get there, so I don't know that it really matters.

J: Yeah, they're like trying to get there, but they come upon… (laughs) They come upon… (laughs more)

T: What?

J: I'm sorry, it’s just the way you wrote this.

R: Well, let the audience enjoy it too!

J: So they're trying to get to this place and they're not able to cross over the mountains, so they get into a canoe. And Rachel's outline says, “Misfortunes occur and they just randomly get in a canoe with a bunch of coconuts.”

R: That's true. I wanted to skip over it, because a lot of their misfortunes it's like… “This kind of animal died, and then this animal died, and then they fell down a well and they lost their provisions, and then they wash up to shore and they had to eat berries for a month, and then they found some coconuts, and then they were like, oh wait, there's a canoe there, let's fill it with coconuts and get in!”

J: Right, and then that doesn't work. So the canoe gets drawn up to these big rocks on the shore and it gets smashed to pieces. But they find out once they come to shore that they've gotten to this place that is extremely, extremely hard to get to. And they weren't trying to get there. But they realize that where they are is the land of El Dorado, where everything is full of treasure and the merest little pebbles of sand on the ground and the paving stones are precious jewels and gold, and they keep looking around like, “Oh my God, what? We could just pick this stuff up and have it?” And they meet some people, and the people are laughing at them because they're like, “Okay, you want, like, a bunch of dirt? Sure, go ahead and take the dirt. Whatever.” So they've got all of this really fancy treasure everywhere that's just part of the natural landscape, and they've also made all of their buildings and structures and everything out of it. But they're like, “Yeah, okay, whatever, we don't need this stuff, you take it.” So they're living a great life, the people of El Dorado.

R: Oh also, it turns out, the El Doradans, they speak what they call Peruvian. And luckily Cacambo just happens to come from a village where they only speak Peruvian. So he's like, “Wow, this is perfect.”

J: Yeah, this is working out for the best. Dr. Pangloss' ideas are coming into their own.

T: He's the glasses and the nose is that they happen to land in El Dorado.

J: Yeah, you got that! Yeah, good, good, good. So they get taken - right? Oh, no, they haven't visited the king yet. But so they get given a meal and luckily Cacambo was able to communicate with them.

R: It’s so good.

J: SO good.

T: It’s made of gold.

R: Like hundreds of pounds of fancy birds, and then the village headman is like, “Oh, sorry, we're a really poor village, so this food really sucks, but if you go anywhere else you'll get way better food than this. And also our houses, they're only made out of gold. Sorry that you have to look at it.”

T: Wow.

J: Yeah, so chapter 18: What They Saw in the Country of El Dorado. So this is the first start to them being in this place. He's trying to ask questions about how this place came to be and he speaking to a very, very old man who's 172 years old.

R: And very poor.

J: Yes, super poor.

R: He says. He only has a couple dozen servants and his house is only made out of like, beautifully carved gold.

J: Is El Dorado like a country club? Like, you go there and someone opens the door to their house and is like, (valley girl accent) “Oh my God, I'm so sorryyyy, it's such a messsss,” and then it's perfectly clean.

R: Is that what happens to you at country clubs?

J: I wouldn't know!

R: So, first of all, your question is really 1: What are country clubs like? 2: Is El Dorado like a country club?

J: Well, I don't know. You see little Tik Toks and things that are just making fun of people who are, you know, wealthy but try to pretend like they're not. Like, “I'm so sorry, it's just such a sty in here!” And then you have like six maids just, you know, doing their work in the corner.

T: Yeah.

J: “All I have is sparkling wine. I don't have any actual champagne. Is that going to be okay? Okay, we can have it outside on the veranda. I'm sorry, it's a little bit hot out here.” Like that's what this old man is doing.

R: “Let me get out my silken canopy. It’s last year model.”

T: That is a fun thing to think about, but I do think it's more fun to think about that he just has no idea that everyone else considers this valuable. Because it's like… gold isn't valuable.

J: Right.

R: Yeah.

T: It's just that we say it is.

R: His house is just made out of dirt.

T: It would be like we go to a city that's entirely made out of thousand dollar bills and they just think, like, “Sorry about my paper house.”

J: Yeah, yeah!

R: Or it would be like we go to a city where everything's made out of gold and they're like, “Sorry about my house. It's just made out of gold.”

T: So what if it's a house made entirely out of Bitcoins?

J: Then it wouldn't really be a house, would it. Because they're not physical objects.

R: You would need to apologize to me.

J: Yeah, I think so. But it's funny because they have so much, but they don't…

R: They are happy.

J: Yeah, they're happy, but that's yeah, that's what's funny about it. Like they're surrounded by wealth, but it's not really because of the wealth. But it kind of is, because they have everything that they need. People always say you can't buy happiness, but it's like, well… about $80,000 a year is about what people need for happiness. Like there is a limit, or a set point.

R: Yeah.

J: That's what people always say, right?

T: Damn.

R: Well, yeah, that is what they always say.

J: So this 172-year old guy is probably making a good 80 thou’. You know, in El Dorado.

T: But… hmm.

R: But what?

T: That's what I don't understand. If they don't think any of these things have value, how do they also get all the wonderful food and everything? Because clearly that has value.

J: It's bestowed upon them by God.

R: It's easy to get. Get a hold of.

J: They're very grateful for everything they have. So this place is very secluded and it's like an Incan kingdom, and that's why it's so difficult for anybody to get there, and it's also difficult to get out.

R: I was going to tell you guys, did you know that in a lot of places with wonderful climates, such as in pre-colonized Hawaii, it was very easy to get enough food for the day? You can read a bunch of writings from Europeans who see these people and they're like, “Wow, they only have to work like one hour a day and then they just get to hang out. They're so lazy. Why aren't they trying to store up more stuff? Every year, these people, they all get together and in two weeks they gather all of the grain they need for the whole year and that's it? They only take as much as they need?”

J: Crazy!

R: “Why don't they just take all of it?”

J: “And sell it, and make profits, and make more work for themselves, and build factories? Idiots!”

R: Like, “They're just hanging out all the time. They're just singing, and playing, and taking naps. They're crazy!”

J: It's like the Greek isles from that Dostoevsky story that we read for my birthday.

R: Mmhmm.

J: Total fools. They're just wasting their life enjoying things instead of making things! So anyway. So they talk to this guy, and they do visit the king. And it says you have to hug him and kiss him on both cheeks. Right?

R: Yeah, because Candide’s like, “What's the custom here when you see the king? Do you prostrate yourself face first on the ground?” And they're like, “No, you give him a hug and a kiss, weirdo.”

J: Right. “You weirdo!” I'm not supposed to flog myself, or?

R: You also learn about their religion, because there's no priests, because everyone is their own priest and they never pray because God already gave them everything they want. So they just - all of them thank God all the time and they never have any religious disputes. And Candide's like “Whaaaat?!”

J: “Whaaaat?” Yeah, they don't ask [God] for anything.

T: Candide is such a bumbling fool. Like it's so obvious, if you don't know the customs of the land, you don't say, “Oh, what do I do when I meet this person? Do I do this?” And then suggest your weird things. You just wait for them to answer. You know? It’s so obvious you're going to be made a fool.

R: Theo would have done way better.

J: Yeah, Theo would have done great at this. [Candide] doesn't know his thing is weird! He thinks, “Yeah, when you see a king you're supposed to lick dust off of his boots.”

R: But he asked, so he obviously knew.

J: He's like, “I'm just checking.”

R: What Theo would have done is he would say, like, “What did you do the first time you saw the king?”

T: Oh, yes! “Can I see YOU meet the king?”

J: “Can I watch you meet the king? Can you do a little roleplay and pretend you haven't met before?”

T: That's not weird, right?

J: Like you show up in a bar and you're just like, “Ooohhh! What are you doing here?”

T: Oh! How about this: pretend I'M the king.

J: Hmm. But what if the first time you meet the king you have to punch the king in the face or something? And then you don't want to be the king?

T: Oof. Oh man.

J: You don't know. You just don't know. So I don't know if Theo would have done great.

T: Okay, Candide did better than I would have.

R: Well, just do what I said. Just say, “What did you do when you met the king?”

T: It’s too late, Rachel.

R: You've already been punched in the face?

T: Yeah!

J: If you ask Candide “What do you do when you meet anyone?” The answer is just, “stab them.” So we know that he's not trustworthy. So anyway, everything is absolutely wonderful. They meet the king and he's, you know, talking to Candide and Cacambo, and Cacambo is translating for him, or interpreting for him. And it turns out that his jokes are “even funny in translation”. So.

R: I always thought that was Voltaire being like “Wouldn't this be nice? This would be a paradise to me, if everyone saw how witty I was.”

J: I wonder if he was thinking about this as he was writing it and thinking, “Somebody's going to be reading this in not French one day.”

R: I mean I'm sure he thought they weren't going to read it in French, because already his stuff was being translated.

J: And also he wasn't really allowed in France a whole lot of the time.

R: Yeah.

J: Right.

R: Yeah, right.

J: Yeah, and so, but Candide keeps saying, “Look, this place is really great. I do understand that everything is wonderful, but it doesn't matter because I don't have the love of my life and if Lady Cunégonde is not here with me, then there's no point to having any of this stuff. So what I want to do is-”

R: Leave.

J: “We're going to ask for -” (laughs) leave. “We're going to ask for a bunch of sheep from the magical land of El Dorado. We're going to fill their saddle bags with gold and jewels. And even the ground, like the mud and dirt itself, again, is made out of gold. And so they fill their bags with this stuff, and the king is like, “I don't understand why you like our mud so much, but sure, take it, take as much as you want.” And he says, “Much good may it do you.” Uh oh. Foreshadowing.

R: While you were reading this - Oh, first of all, it's important to note that the sheep in El Dorado are red and they use them for everything, like they pull carriages or you put a saddle on them or whatever. But also, while you were reading this, were you thinking like, “Oh, there's going to be a twist, like something bad. Like maybe they have to sacrifice people, or maybe they won't let Candide leave!” But instead, they go on a tour and they see, “Whoa, you don't have any courtrooms, you don't have any prisons, there's just schools and like observatories all over.”

J: Yeah, what's the twist?

R: So when he said when he was trying to convince Cacambo to leave, he was like, “Cacambo, if we live in El Dorado, will be average people, but if we just fill our pockets with gold and leave, we’ll be way richer than everyone.” But, like, you can tell everyone here is happy! No one in Europe is happy!

J: Yeah!

R: Also, when he tells the king, “I want to leave,” I was scared that the king was going to be like, “NO!” But the king was like, “Okay. Man deserves freedom of movement, so you can leave if you want. Here, let me make you a hoisting machine to lift you over the mountains.”

J: But I mean the fact that he says, “Here, take all the gold you want. Much good may it do you,” that told me, “Uh oh, it's not going to do them much good.”

R: Well, we're only halfway through the book! Obviously he's not gonna just be like, “Sweet, I'm rich now.”

T: I mean also, if you literally think it's dirt, you're gonna say something.

R: You are going to say something.

J: I honestly didn't think there was going to be some crazy catch to it. I just figured Candide is going to leave and that's a stupid decision. And that's what happens.

R: Would you guys stay?

T: Is there a way to contact the outside world so I can tell my friends to come? My friends and family and girlfriend?

R&J: No.

T: Okay.

R: Okay, here's the problem. If Cunégonde was waiting for me on the other side, I would stay. If it was Stephen? I would probably have to go.

T: But Cunégonde got disemboweled for you, Rachel!

R: Not for me! It just happened.

T: What were you going to say, Jackie?

J: Wait, so you're saying if Cunégonde was in El Dorado, you would leave?

R: No. If I was in El Dorado and she was outside El Dorado, I would stay in El Dorado.

J: In El Dorado. Okay. But you would leave El Dorado for Stephen.

R: Yeah, probably. I would try to get back, but I would have to leave.

J: Wow.

T: I think for the rest of your life you'd be…

R: Bitter.

T: Filling canoes with coconuts and just sailing on the river and just hoping you get…

J: Yeah, crash, canoe, crash!

R: I could just use a compass to see what direction I'm walking.

T: Oh yeah?

R: And as soon as I find a place with people in it, be like what's this place called, and then just go to that place and walk in the same direction.

J: “Oh, this is Yellow Dirt Town.”

R: Yeah.

J: Yeah. I kind of feel like Joshua is in El Dorado and I went there and voluntarily left it.

R: Except they do have problems.

T: Singapore?

J: They have problems, but, like you know, not that many.

R: It's better than us. No, they do. They do have problems. He's a guy making a lot of money at his job. If he was not, he would be experiencing more problems.

J: Yeah, but everybody has a pretty good quality of life.

R: Okay.

J: Unless you're an immigrant.

R: Yeah.

J: Actual Singaporeans have a pretty good quality of life.

R: Right.

J: Eh, we're not going to talk about that. So anyway…

R: Yeah, what if they get mad at us and they put you in jail next time you go?

T: Yeah, and cane you?

R: Oh yeah, what if they cane you?

J: Oh no. 36 times by the whole regiment?

T: That would be good PR for us.

R: If Jackie got caned in Singapore because of our podcast?

T: Yeah.

J: They do cane people.

T: “Infamous podcaster gets caned.” Yeah.

R: Yeah!

J: Yeah. I don't know if the audience knows that, but that's not a joke.

R: Well, that's one of the reasons I was like, ‘it's not perfect.’

J: No, no, no. It's definitely not perfect, but yeah. So anyway.

T: All right.

R: It's not NOT perfect.

T: It’s not made of gold.

R: Oh.

T: That would be perfect.

J: It is kind of like an Eden, though. Like it's very just warm and nice all the time and full of delicious fruits that you'll never find anywhere else. It's very hard to get into and very hard to get out of.

R: Do you ever get mad at your European ancestors for going so far north? Do you ever think, why didn’t you stay where the weather was nice?

T: Mmm.

J: Um. I can't really be mad at my ancestors for that, because I can just continue to move south and undo their work.

R: I know, but your skin tone will still not be suitable for the tropical sun.

J: Yeah, that's very apparent.

R: They really screwed you over with that.

J: I never thought to be mad at them. Maybe I should.

R: You really should.

J: Wow, I have a whole new lease on life now. (angrily) “Great-great-great-Grandma!”

R: I think it was longer ago than that.

T: That was the one!

R: All right. Chapter 19.

T: Early homo sapiens, great-great-great grandma. Go ahead, Rachel.

J: She was Lucy, the first hominid ever found.

R: Whoa! You come from a very illustrious lineage. I had no idea.

T: First is worst. Second is best. I'm from second.

R: The second hominid ever found? Too bad you're not from the third, right, Theo?

J: Yeah, that one walked a little more upright than Lucy did.

T: Yeah.

R: Okay, here we go, Chapter 19. “What Happened to Them in Surinam and how Candide Made the Acquaintance of Martin.”

J: (chanting) Martin, Martin!

R: Did you immediately think, “Ooh, who's Martin? We love that guy!”

J: Yeah, I'm Martin. I changed my name to be Martin.

R: You did?

J: Yeah.

R: Theo? Your turn, Theo.

T: I do not care about Martin.

J: (gasp)

R: I really liked Martin.

T: I don't remember him.

R: I thought he was funny. Okay, well, hopefully this will reintroduce him. Okay, so they're walking, walking, walking, they just keep losing sheep. So by the time they arrive in Dutch Surinam they only have two sheep left. But the sheep are filled with gold, they're filled with gold, whatever.

J: “Filled with gold”? Like they just fed them a bunch of…

R: They might as well. Okay, so Candide, when he arrives, he sees a black man with only one arm and only one leg, and it turns out he's a slave and the slave belongs to a Dutchman named… Varderdendur?

J: Vanderdendur.

R: Vanderdendur. Whatever, I don’t care. It's a fake Dutch name to make fun of the Dutch.

J: Well, I had to pronounce Cunégonde Right. So who cares?

R: I mean that's actually a real name. Okay, anyway -

J: Vanderdendur, write in. I know you're a real person out there.

R: So he talks to the slave and he slave is telling people… he's telling Candide, “Listen, this is how slavery works here, and this is where your sugar comes from in Europe, like it's all from the suffering of slaves in these colonies. And Candide is like, “Oh my God, I hate optimism now!!!” But he has so much money, he could just buy all the slaves and set them all free. But he's just like, “Aw, that's too bad,” and then walks away. He's talking to Cacambo and he has a plan, which is “I'm gonna go to Vienna and wait and since you haven't killed anyone, you go back to Buenos Aires and you bribe the governor and you get Cunégonde and you bring her to Vienna to meet me.”

J: Yeah.

R: And Cacambo's like, “Sounds great, okay, let's split off.”

J: And they have still quite a lot of money.

R: Oh, tons. I mean they only split off and they have sheep full of gold. So he's talking to Vanderdendur.

J: This part's funny.

R: And of course Vanderdendur scams him because he's like, “It's going to cost 10,000.” Candide says, “Okay!” The guy’s like, “Wait a sec, I should have charged more!”

J: Yeah, he keeps doing this. He's like, “It's gonna cost 10,000,” and Candide agrees without hesitation. And he's like, “Oh, wait a second, if this guy's ready to pay ten, then he must not have any problem with - you know, he must have tons of money.” So he says, “Actually, I can't leave for less than 20,000.” Candide's like, “All right, let's do 20,000,” and then the captain is like, “Actually, just kidding, it's 30,000.” So it keeps going up like this. You gotta… you gotta haggle.

R: Candide's truly - he was making me mad at this part. But okay, yeah, he gets scammed.

J: He gets scammed.

J: So Vanderdendur takes his sheep. So all he has left is the gold that's in his pockets and he's left behind in Surinam. And then he gets fined by the police and he's so upset he's like, “Look, I'm leaving, and I will pay for the passage of one other person: the person who hates this place the most and is the most disgusted with it.” So he gets the other twenty guys and he's like, “Tell me your tales,” and then he finally chooses a guy named Martin, because Martin's a scholar, and he's like, “There's no worse profession in the world, so he must be miserable. And also he can probably keep me amused.”

J: One other funny thing is that when he finds out that Vanderdendur has scammed him, he's like, “I'm gonna get him in trouble!” So he goes to find a judge and he knocks on the judge's door, and he gets fined 10,000 dollars or… whatever unit of measurement… he gets fined 10,000 jewels -

R: Piastres?

J: Piastres, yeah, for the noise he had made by knocking on the door. So he loses 10,000 more that way. He has to pay 10,000 more to even have a hearing. Then finally he has to pay the most unfortunate man to go with them and then he gives consolation prizes to all the other people.

R: That was nice, because they were depressed. They were disgusted.

J: They probably all were just making up their stories, right?

R: All right, chapter 20. No, they weren't. They were miserable, just like everyone else in this whole book, except the El Doradans. Okay, Chapter 20. “What Happened to Candide and Martin at Sea.” So he's talking to Martin on the boat because Martin, he had gotten in trouble because someone was like, “You're this kind of philosopher, these are your beliefs.” And Candide says, “Are those your beliefs?” So he says, “No, I'm not that, I'm a Manichean,” and Candide's like, “Are you serious? I didn't think there were any of those anymore.”

J: So that is someone who, instead of thinking that men were created by God in the image of God, he believes that men were created by evil. Like we're children of the devil, basically.

R: It's just a very, very pessimistic belief. So anyway, so Martin, he tells him, “Of course I am, there's so much stuff around you that's terrible.” And a quote that I thought was funny was he says, “When I look around at this globe… or rather, this globule,” and I don't know why he said that.

T: Does yours say the same thing?

J: Yeah, it does.

R: That is a globe, or rather a globule?

J: I think he's just trying to make it sound less impressive, to make the earth sound less cool. “When I survey this stupid little ball we all live on.”

T: Yeah, probably works better in French, right?

R: Globule.

J: No, I think it works pretty well in English! But he says, “When I survey this globe, or rather this globule, I am forced to the conclusion that God has abandoned it to some mischievous power, though I make an exception for El Dorado.”

R: Yeah.

J: Why did he leave El Dorado? If he's been there too, why did he leave it?

R: No, Martin's never been, he just heard about it.

J: Okay, so he's heard about it.

R: He heard about it from Candide.

J: Oh, okay.

R: Because he's been telling him what's going on. Okay. So, anyway, they're on their ship and then Martin's like, “Take a look at that!” And they look and they see two other ships, and one of them gets sunk. And Candide looks over and you see something red in the water and he's like, “Oh my gosh, it's one of my sheep!!” So they bring it onto the boat and it turns out the ship that got sunk was from the scheming Dutchman, and it was sunk by a Spanish ship. And Candide's like, “Look, Martin, God punished that thief!” And Martin's like, “Yeah, I guess God punished the one thief, but also the devil killed all those other people for no reason. Why did they have to die?”

J: He says, “Well! You see how men treat each other.” And Candide says, “There is certainly something diabolical about that.” I'll give you that. That's pretty devilish.

R: Yeah.

J: That that whole ship just sank.

R: All right, that was chapter 20.

T: Love it.

R: Love it, leave it. A really long chapter's coming up, though.

J: Oh God. So this one is “What Candide and Martin Discussed as They Approached the Coast of France.” So Candide says, “Have you ever been to France?” And Martin's like, “Yeah, I hated it. It was stupid. Everybody pretends to be witty. Wherever you go in France you find that their three chief occupations are making love, backbiting and talking nonsense.”

R: He's not wrong.

J: Funny for Voltaire to write. Voltaire’s like, “Hold on, what are my favorite things?”

T: Yeah. “What did I do earlier today?”

J: Yeah! “I made love, I backbit, and I talked nonsense.” And Candide's like, “Okay, what about Paris? Like Paris is great, right?” And Martin's like, “Yeah, I know Paris, that's the worst of all.”

R: “They do all of that all the time.”

J: Yeah, basically. So Candide has never been to France because he's, remember, from Germany. So he's like, “You know, I don't really want to go there. I've already been to El Dorado. That was wonderful, and any place that doesn't have Lady Cunégonde also holds no interest for me.” But he says, “I'm supposed to meet her in Venice and I have to cross France to get to Italy. So why don't you come with me?” Like Rachel said, they're philosophizing on this trip, and Candide says, “What was this world created for?” And Martin says, “To drive us mad,” which I thought was pretty funny. And so he says - well, Candide tells him about the two monkeys who were nipping on the buttocks of the Oreillons from the last episode.

R: He’s like, “Isn't that crazy?”

J: Yeah, he's like, “Look, isn't that crazy?” and Martin's like “No, there's nothing weird about that.”

R: “It's fine.”

J: “I've seen so many crazy things that nothing could be any crazier.” And then Candide says the quote that Theo had read at the beginning, like, “Do you think that men have always massacred each other in addition to being all of these other terrible things?” And Martin goes, “Do you think that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they could find them?” Which is, I guess, a thing that hawks do? I mean, he made it seem like, “Is the sky blue? Is the Pope Catholic?”

T: It's a very strange way to convey that concept. Yeah.

R: Yeah, it’s the French version of “does a bear shit in the woods?”

J: Yeah, but that’s not… it doesn't work anymore, because most people don't walk around thinking like, “Oh, yeah, hawks love eating pigeons.”

T: When they can find them.

R: When they can find them!

J: When they can get it.

R: It's a hawk's favorite food.

J: So anyway, they keep talking and the ship reaches Bordeaux. And chapter 22 is “What Happened to Candide and Martin in France.”

R: It's so long. It's like five times as long as the other chapters.

J: Yeah, so, Candide, they get to Bordeaux and he uses the last of his… well, some of his El Dorado pebbles to buy himself a really nice little carriage with two seats. So he brings Martin along, and now Martin is his new philosopher. He's replaced Pangloss.

R: He always has one buddy.

J: He always has a buddy!

R: That’s the thing about Candide. He can't be alone.

J: That's a nice thing, though, right?

T: Huh. And he turns his back on his old friends.

R: Which ones, the sheep?

J: The ones he killed?

T: I guess so.

R: He stabbed his old friends in the back, literally!

J: Yeah, my old friend, Don Issachar.

T: Haven't you met people before who will - like, they have a friend who they hang out with all the time, and then there's some falling out, and then they make another friend who they hang out with all the time, and they have a falling out, and it's just they move from one person to the next?

R: Yeah, but that's not what happens to him. His friends just keep dying.

T: Well…

R: That's way better.

J: I don't know. I've kept the same friends since infancy. So.

T & R: Woah.

J: I do still think about what it would be like if I knew everybody I know now as a baby.

R: Some of them wouldn't be babies at all.

J: That’s something I think about though.

R: Okay.

T: Huh.

R: Huh!

J: It's interesting. So he donates his one sheep that he found to Bordeaux’s Academy of Science, and they study this sheep. And my version says they decided to award a prize for whoever could, you know, produce the best explanation for why the sheep is red. And someone “demonstrated by a formula which is A + B - (C / Z), proves that the sheep is necessarily red and ought to die of scab,” which is scabies.

R: Mine just said, “And it will someday die of that.” It doesn't say it should.

J: Mine says “ought to die of scab.” I think that probably means the same thing, but it sounds funnier when you put it that way.

R: Wow.

J: So, anyway.

R: He really shouldn't have left the sheep. Just get a three-seater and have the sheep sit up there with you. That will be so cute.

J: No, it's going to die of scab one day.

R: Gosh.

J: Anyway, so Candide decides to go to Paris because he's always been told he should go there. He gets sick, and then he gets even sicker, because people are trying to cure him, but they're giving him terrible medicines.

R: They actually just want his money.

J: Yeah, and they're bleeding him, you know, in the literal and figurative sense. Like they're bleeding him dry financially, and they're also literally bleeding him. So he's getting worse and worse. Martin finally gets rid of those people who are trying to, you know, ‘cure’ Candide.

R: And literally kicks him out of the door of the room. So anyway, so while they're talking, we also find out that… so he's hanging out with a bunch of snobs. And we find out that Parisians, they always laugh, but they're laughing “with rage in their hearts.” And when they're complaining about stuff, they're laughing and complaining, and when they're doing really bad things, they're laughing about it. So I guess Voltaire was not feeling very positively disposed toward Paris at this time.

J: I guess not. I was imagining a jackolantern face, you know, where they're laughing but they've also got the angry eyebrows, and they're just like (evil laughter) like, that's the French.

R: Yeah, the Parisians.

J: Oh, the Parisians.

R: But so his new snobby friend takes him to the house of a woman who's a marquise, and she runs a gambling den. So when he shows up he loses a ton of money and everyone's like, “Damn, this guy's got a lot of money I guess, because he doesn't seem upset about it!” So they have a dinner party and the whole dinner party everybody's just complaining, which I don't really need to talk about it. And he meets a guy and he's like, “Oh man, you kind of remind me of my old teacher, Master Pangloss. Do you also believe what he believes in?” The guy's like, “No, I believe the opposite. This is the worst world.” But so the woman who runs the gambling den, she takes [Candide] up to her room, and she's hitting on him, and they have sex. And she takes his diamond rings because she - she keeps saying over and over, “Oh my Gosh, I love your rings!” And then finally he just gives them to her, I suppose. So on their way out, the Abbey is like, “Why do you like Cunégonde so much?” Because Candide’s like, “Oh my gosh, I cheated on Cunégonde! I feel bad. I guess I'll apologize when I see her.” And his fake friend says, “Does she write you letters?” And Candide's like, “No, she never has.” And then the next day he gets a letter that's like, “It's me, it's Cunégonde, I'm here to see you, come visit me!” And he goes to the room in the letter and it's totally dark. He goes to turn the lights on in there. She's like “No, don't turn the lights on, it's gonna hurt my eyes.” And of course it's someone who's tricking him and pretending to be his lost love. But anyway, he ends up getting sent to jail. And do you want to close out the chapter, Jackie?

J: He gets sent to jail and he is like, “I don't know, this isn't how travelers got treated an El Dorado!” And Martin's like, “See, it's because everyone is evil.” So he bribes the officer at the jail with three little diamonds. And the man is like, “Oh my God, you know what, I would have let you out of jail no matter what you had done. If you had done every crime in the entire world, I would still let you out of here.” So he lets him out. He finally gets to leave Paris and he's like, “All right, great, I’m going to Venice. Everything's going to be fine.”

T: Perfection!

R: Perfection at its best. Things are finally looking up for old Candide. The next chapter is super short. It's ‘Candide and Martin Reach the Shores of England, and What They See There.’ So they get there and he says to Martin, “Have you been to England? Are the English just as mad as the French?” and Martin's like, It's a different kind of madness. The English, they're disposed to be very gloomy.” And they pull up to the docks, they look on the shore, and they see a fat man getting shot in the head by a bunch of people. And he's like, “What?!”

J: Promising start!

R: “Why did that happen?!” It was an admiral, and apparently [a man there explained to Candide], “Yeah, the admiral, he was too far away from the French admiral during a sea battle, and he didn't kill enough people. The English, they just like to kill their admirals occasionally.”

J: He says, “In this country we find it pays to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.”

T: I wouldn't want to be an admiral.

J: It's kind of like El Dorado, right? Where he's like, “Well, how do you treat your kings?” “Here's how we do it.” “How do you treat your Admirals?” “Watch this.”

R: “Yeah, let me show you how we treat our freaking admirals.”

T: Man.

J: So Candide’s so upset that he doesn't even want to get off the ship.

R: Yeah, he says, “I'm not getting off the boat, I'm not setting foot on English soil.” So he bribes the captain and the captain’s like, “Heck yeah, I'll take you straight to Venice!” And that's the end of that chapter. Whew! Okay, so chapter 24 is called ‘Concerning Paquette and Brother Giroflée.’ So they go to Venice, and Candide is looking around, looking around, and there's no information about Cacambo and he's so upset. So he and Martin are having another philosophical argument about whether people are happy or not. Whatever. They see a couple. There's a Theatine monk and a young woman, and they're singing and smiling and they look so happy. So [Candide’s] like, “I'll make you a bet. We’ll invite that couple to dinner with us, and we'll see if they're happy.” So they invite them to dinner, and it turns out the young woman is the maid from his past who gave Dr. Pangloss syphilis!

J: But received a lesson in experimental physics.

R: Yeah, so he's asking her, “All right, are you happy? Tell me about your life.” She's like, “No, my life has been really bad. Like, really bad.” And she was sex trafficked all over the place, and she's currently a sex worker and she really hates it. And then they talk to the monk and they're like, “Hey, you've got a pretty young woman. Things must be fine for you.” And he's like, “No, my life sucks, like I always want to kill myself, and also every other monk always wants to kill themselves. And most of my money I have to give to the church, and the extra money I just wasted on these sex workers, and it's terrible.” So Candide is like, “Oh damn.” So he gives Paquette 2,000… whatevers. Piastres? And he gives Brother Giroflée 1,000 and sends them on their way. And Martin's like, “Yeah… that's going to make their lives worse, bro.” But anyway, he has another argument with Martin. Martin's like, “Yeah, everyone sucks.” But they hear about a guy named Signor Pococurante, and they've heard that he's never known any troubles in his life. So they're like, “Let's talk to him!”

J: Yeah, this is a great chapter. So this one is ‘A Visit to Signor Pococurante, a Venetian Nobleman.’ So they get in the gondola and they go to visit this guy. And he receives them in his house, and it's a beautiful house. And there's two very pretty girls and they give them little cups of hot chocolate, and Candide is like, “Oh my gosh, everything here is so beautiful. Those girls are so nice, so pretty!” And Count Pococurante is like, “Yeah… they're fine. I sometimes sleep with them because I get so bored of all the other ladies in the town and they're always wanting to sleep with me, but that gets boring. Unfortunately, though, I'm starting to get bored of these two as well.” So he goes and walks along, and Candide sees some paintings and Pococurante is like, “Yeah, these are by Raphael.”

R: “They're boring.”

J: “They are said to be really beautiful, but they don't give me any pleasure at all. They're pretty boring. The color’s not that good.” They go to have dinner and there's a concerto performed. And, Theo, let's see what you think about this, if you remember this - Candide is like, “Wow, this music is so beautiful!” Pococurante says, “This noise can give half an hour's amusement, but if it lasts any longer, it bores everyone, though no one dares to admit it. Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces, and what is merely difficult gives no lasting pleasure.”

T: I guess I'm just thinking like… someone has said that probably literally every year since music was invented.

J: Really? The very first year, they were like, “Yeah, this is boring”?

R: With the didgeridoo, they were like, “Two notes? Do you really need that many?”

T: Yeah! Probably, like, the very first piece they were like, “Wasn't it better when it was simpler and we just heard birds tweeting or something? Why do we need to be doing this?” You know, it's…

J: Yeah.

T: Someone always has that opinion, that music has gotten too complex.

J: Yngwie Malmsteen does not agree. More notes is always better!

T: Who does? Who says that?

R: Some guy Jackie likes.

J: Yngwie Malmsteen. It was from our Father's Day episode last year.

T: Oh right. Yeah, I mean there's always going to be someone else saying that. That music is too simple and needs to be more complex.

J: Oh my God, Theo is Pococurante!

R: Where are the people who think music is just right?

J: Where are the Mama Bears of…

R: No, the Baby Bears.

J: The Baby Bears. Anyway, Candide tries to argue a little bit, but Martin is loving this. He's like, “Yeah, this guy is mad at everything! Get this!” He is complimenting his books and he's like, “Oh Gosh, you have Virgil, and you have Cicero, and you have, you know -”

R: Old chickpea himself.

J: “... Cloanthus, and Aeneas!” Yeah.

R: Listen to our episode on Cicero's book on friendship, if you want to know more about Cicero.

T: Ooh!

J: Pococurante is complaining about everything, and it says, “Candide was astonished at this, for he had been brought up never to exercise his own judgment.”

T: Ohh!

J: And he says, “Why, Cicero, you must never get tired of reading him!” And the guy says, “Psht. I don't read him at all! Nobody does.”

R: “Whatever!”

T: That's the whole point of Candide!

J: That he doesn't exercise his own judgment?

T: Yeah, don’t you think?

R: Yeah. He just gets buffeted around by the winds of chance.

T: Yeah, and just sort of takes on what other people think about things.

J: He's a chameleon.

T: Well, normally people… Does that normally have a good connotation? When someone is a chameleon?

J: Uh, no. I don't think so.

R: I think it's neutral.

T: Hmm. I think of it as good.

J: You could use it to be manipulative, but Candide doesn't.

T: Yeah, I'm kind of a reptile lover.

R: Wait, I thought you were the Lone Star Lover. Now you’re the reptile lover?

T: I could be lots of different types of lover!

R: So, ‘reptile’ describes the type of lover you are.

T: Reptilian lover.

J: Eurgh.

T: What would that mean though?

R: Dry and scaly.

T: Dry and scaly!

R: Cloaca.

T: Yeah, dry and scaly, and then… No, I’m not gonna go into that.

J: Euch!

T: I was gonna go into like, not taking care of my offspring and stuff, and then… well, we don't need to go into that.

R: Yeah, we don't need to give the courts any more evidence than they already have.

J: And just like that, we're not child-friendly anymore.

T: Aww. Almost made it through the whole episode!

R: No, it's fine.

J: Busted. So, yeah. But Candide and Martin are talking about this guy, and Candide's like, “This is awesome, he doesn't like anything! He must be so much smarter than everyone.” And Martin's like, “Yeah, I don't know, dude. He doesn't seem like he is that happy.” And Candide is like, “Well, no one's going to be any happier than me than when I see Cunégonde.” And Martin's like, “All right… we can hope that.”

R: “We’ll see about that.”

T: I think that's so funny. Like he is putting all his cards -

R: All his eggs in that freaking basket.

T: Yeah, all his eggs in one basket. It’s Cunégonde.

J: Oh gosh. But it's going to be great, right? It's going to be great, guys! I haven’t read this in a while. I'm pretty sure it ends fine!

T: Yeah.

R: Okay, before we move on, I wanted to read a little quote. Because there's a little speech that Signor Pococurante makes about Milton, and we will be covering Milton some day on this podcast. Paradise Lost? And this is what he had to say about him: “That barbarian who wrote an interminable commentary on the first chapter of Genesis in ten books of crabbed verse? That crude imitator of the Greeks, who distorts the creation story and, where Moses shows the eternal being producing the world through the word, has the Messiah pulling a large compass out of some celestial cupboard in order to take measurements for his work? You ask ME to admire the man who ruined the Hell and Satan of Tasso's invention, who has Lucifer appear variously disguised as a toad or a pigmy, and has him rehash the same arguments a hundred times, and shows him quibbling over points of theology?” And then he still continues to complain. But then he says, “Neither I nor any other Italian has EVER taken pleasure in THIS sad extravaganza.”

J: This reads like at least one or two of the Goodreads reviews that I found for Candide.

R: About Candide?

J: Yes, about Candide. Because there's one... Maybe I can just… can I just read this to you? Because not everybody who listens to the podcast watches the Tik Toks and vice versa.

R: Yeah.

J: So, let me find this.

R: Okay, that's insane for someone to watch our Tik Toks and not listen to the podcast.

T: But it happens.

J: A lot of people watch our Tik Toks.

R: I know, but that's crazy.

T: A lot more people watch each Tik Tok video than listen to the podcast episode.

R: Well, the Tik Toks are only like five seconds long!

J: They're a minute long.

R: Oh wow, a minute.

T: Yeah, we should condense this down to a minute.

J: Cyrano de Bergerac has over 2,000 views.

T: You think if I were a master editor, I could condense this down to a minute?

R: Yeah.

T: And it would still be comprehensible?

R: Yeah.

J: Yeah, if we put our voices at like 80 times speed.

T: I would be like, myth-level.

R: If you just sped up our voices 80 times?

T: But people could still understand it because I was such a good editor.

R: Yeah.

J: SUCH a good editor. Okay, sorry, let me find this one. Yeah, so this long, pretentious paragraph that Signor Pococurante says reads a lot like this review of Candide. You ready?

R: Mmhmm.

T: Preach it.

J: One star. “I have never read a book that fashions itself a satire so devoid of subtly.” I think he meant to say ‘subtlety’. “The concept must have been foreign to Voltaire, as aesthetics very much were, for this book is formulaic beyond belief. Voltaire shows us something he deems grotesque, immoral, unjust, and then goes on to show us that there are people who believe that ‘this is the best of all possible worlds.’ Wow, what a keen insight, Voltaire! What a salient point! Well, he must have thought it salient enough to keep repeating it for 120 pages straight. I could practically smell it while reading. It was in the air. That smell of righteous semen -”

T: Wha-

J: “ - from all the mental masturbation.”

R: Eww.

T: Oh my gosh.

J: “Voltaire is the type of guy to ram a stake up his ass if it somehow could demonstrate to others how virtuous of a person he is. He would try, but he could not do it, because his head is already so far up his ass that when he eats, the food gets confused by the whole loop he manages to set up. At this point, does he need oxygen to live, or is the consumption of his own farts adequate enough? I suspect we will never know the answer, but we could guess decently well.”

T: Nice.

J: …Are you okay?? ARE you okay? Sir.

R: Okay, one: Voltaire is aesthetic AF. Two: he doesn't really… I never got the impression he considered himself to be super moral. I think he's just making fun of people -

J: What, are you saying you can't smell the righteous semen right now? (laughs) It’s so disgusting!

R: No, I can’t smell it, and it's not because I have Covid.

J: Oh God, just… it was so gross.

R: Yeah, that's too gross.

J: Yeah, really gross.

R: I can smell the righteous semen from that guy.

T: Yeah.

J: (gagging sounds)

R: Look how much effort! He's like, (evil snicker) “Here’s the greatest take down of all time!” Okay, here's the thing. I feel like this book is kind of mid. But that review is making me like, “No, it's better than you think it is!”

T: Well, when you start bringing up semen it's almost always better than…

J: It’s just better to not. Yeah.

T: I'm just saying, if someone's comparing something to semen or excrement or something, then it's almost always better than that.

J: And just why does there have to be an odor involved? No one wants to think about that. Eeck! But my favorite part is where it says, “Yeah, he could eat food, but the food will get confused by this whole loop he set up! Because his head is so far up his ass.”

T: When he says formulaic, he meant like… I'm just assuming this reviewer is a he, for whatever reason.

J: I don't know why you would think that. But yeah, yeah.

T: When the reviewer says ‘formulaic,’ are they saying because each chapter seems kind of the same formula? Because the book overall does not follow a formula that other books follow. It's like…

J: Like in terms of all of the reincarnation, and the…

T: Or in the sense of like, the Goosebumps series follows a formula. Whereas this book doesn't seem to follow any sort of narrative formula that anyone else has come up with.

J: Yeah, this is not like a classic like… ‘Oh yes, this is a bildungsroman or something.’

R: I means… it is!

J: This isn’t like a classic coming of age story where…

R: It is!

J: It is, I mean it is, but like, it's not like…

R: It’s THE classic coming of age story.

J: What I’m saying is it doesn’t have - like Theo was saying, the elements where it's like, ‘Oh yes, what always happens is like, a girl moves to California and her little brother is always annoying, and…”

T: Yeah, like the parents die at the beginning or something, you know. Like in every Disney movie or whatever. Right?

J: Kind of the parents did die at the beginning. But then it turns out that they were alive, and…

R: Not his parents.

T: Hashtag #nothisparents.

J: I think he's just saying he doesn't like that the same lesson gets repeated over and over.

T: Yeah.

R: Well, obviously it didn't sink into his thick skull! Seems like Voltaire should have made it even longer.

J: They're… so this is chapter 26. Well, so, at the beginning of this chapter, Candide and Martin are there, and some stranger comes up to him and is like “Hey, Candide, get ready to go!” And Candide's like, “Oh, it's Cacambo, excellent! Okay, well, Cunégonde must be here, like, where is she? Let's go, let's go, we have to go die of joy together! We're late!” And Cacambo says, “Oh, no, she's not here, she's in Constantinople, she's in Turkey.”

T: What!!

J: Candide's like, “Well, shit, okay. All right, well, whatever. Even if she were in China, I would go. Like, we have to go there.” And so Cacambo’s like, “All right. Well, unfortunately I have to let you know that I'm a slave actually, and my master is waiting for me. So I have to go serve at your table. You go to dinner, and I will serve your supper, and just don't say anything to me” And Candide is happy to see Cacambo but very upset to find that he's now a slave somehow. So he sits down to dinner with these six strangers and Martin. He finds that everyone at the dinner is someone royal who has had something bad happen to them.

R: Every single one.

J: Every single one.

R: By chance. They're all in town for carnival.

J: Candide is like, “Now, wait a second, how is it that you all are just kings? Because I'm not a king, Martin's not a king.” So the first guy says - this is Cacambo's master - he says, “My name is Ahmet the third. I was the Grand Sultan for several years. I dethroned my brother. My nephew dethroned me. Now I have to drag out my days over here, and occasionally I'm allowed to travel for my health, and so I've decided to come to Venice.” The next guy says, “I'm Ivan. I was once Emperor of all the Russians, but when I was still a baby I got dethroned and my father and mother were imprisoned. I sometimes get to leave to travel, and I've also come here to Venice.” Next one says, “I'm Charles Edward. I'm King of England. My father ceded me his sovereign rights and I fought to maintain them. The hearts of 800 of my followers were torn out and used to beat their faces.” And he's been imprisoned. And just, why is everybody in prison allowed to go visit Venice? Like, this doesn't make any sense.

R: Cause they’re kings!

J: Yeah. So the fourth one says, “I'm the king of Poland, and I lost my kingdom in the war.” The fifth one said, “I'm also the king of Poland. I lost my kingdom twice.” That's why Rachel said me and Theo should both be king of Poland. He says, “I'm the King of Poland too. I also lost my kingdom, though, twice, and so I'm now imprisoned and I have come to Venice.” And the sixth guy says, “I'm not that big of a deal, but I am Theodore, King of Corsica, and I used to sit upon a throne and now I have come here to Venice, just like the rest of you.”

R: “And I'm really, really, really poor.”

J: “Really, really poor. Like they used to call me Majesty, and now they barely call me sir.”

R: “I barely have a valet to call my own.” Bla bla bla.

J: So all of the other kings feel bad for King Theodore, so they give him some jewels, and then Candide gives him a diamond worth, like, 200 times what the other jewels were. And the five kings are like, “Wait, who is this guy who has this diamond? Like, why does he have so much money?”

R: Yeah, he’s just a commoner.

J: “He's just a commoner. How did this happen?” They get up and leave from the table and some people come in who are ‘Four Serene Highnesses’ who had also lost their estates, and Candide doesn't pay any attention to them. He's like, “I got to go to Turkey, I gotta find Cunégonde.”

R: Yeah, so it would have been ten kings all having dinner together by chance.

J: That was pretty nice of them to put in a little pot for poor King Theodore, right?

R: Yeah. Theo?

J: … Dore?

R: You should have been King Theodore, change your name!

J: Oh, yeah!

R: I'm insisting now.

T: On Zoom?

R: Yeah, King Theodore of Corsica.

J: No, you better go straight to the actual social security office and change your actual, real name. Is that where you go to change your name? I don't know. City hall?

R: Yeah, probably. Probably, it's only registered with the city.

* Interstitial music plays -

T: Hey, guys, are you loving Candide's wacky adventures?

R&J: Yeah! We love them.

R: Let's hope he doesn't insert this in a terrible spot.

J: I think we just signed our own death warrants there.

T: If you like listening to our episodes about whatever… Could be about Candide or could be about anything… then consider becoming a donor.

J: Ooh, a donor!

R: How do they do it?

T: You can go to patreon.com/firethecanon, and there you'll find various ways or various amounts to give, each with its own prizes. I can’t stop saying prizes.

R: Rewards.

T: Rewards! You'll love the rewards, specifically the $3 and up tiers. You get access to all of our bonus content.

R: What a great deal.

T: That's a great deal. It's a great deal of bonus content as well. We talk about all sorts of things. Goosebumps, ugh.

R: Goosebumps again? Ugh!

T: I bet we’ll do it a third time too. We use patrons' money to pay for really important stuff like cloud storage, maybe buying a new microphone or two every time something goes wrong.

J: We've never purchased a new microphone.

R: Look, every time something goes wrong we buy two microphones. We have so many microphones now.

J: It doesn't matter what goes wrong. Like, if I fell and scraped my knee, I need two microphones, please!

T: Yeah. So we really appreciate anything you can give.

J: Okay.

R: Also, if you would like to support us in a way that doesn't involve money, you should rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and also, if you don't have that, but you have Spotify, you can leave us a rating on Spotify. We would love either of those things as well. Anyway. Thanks very much. Back to the episode.

T: Ta-ta.

J: All right, Rachel, your turn, and then we're almost done!

R: All right. So, chapter 27, ‘Candide's Voyage to Constantinople.’ So, while they're on the sultan's boat, Cacambo reveals that Cunégonde is currently a dishwashing slave to a deposed king.

T: Oof.

R: Yet another freaking deposed king. And he says, like, “Even worse than all that? She's ugly now.”

J: She’s ugly! Ahhhh!

T: (sucking in air through teeth)

R: Yeah. Candide is like, “Well, where'd all your money go??” And he says, “Well, I had to pay a lot of it to the governor of Buenos Aires to get Cunégonde, and then on our way to Venice we got robbed by pirates and I was captured.” So Candide's like, “Oh shit, okay.” So he frees Cacambo. They decide they're going to go on the way to get Cunégonde. So they go on a galley and they're planning to head to the shores of the Propontide. I don't know how to pronounce that. I don't know where it is. Can you Google it real quick, Jackie?

J: Sure.

R: Pro-pont-eed? I don't know how to pronounce it.

T: Siri, can you tell us what Propontide is?

R: I looked it up and it is the Sea of Marmara, which is an inland sea within Turkey.

T: Ohh.

(man’s voice speaking foreign language from Jackie’s computer)

T: Why are you watching a video about it, Jackie?

R: Is that a Russian?

(man’s voice continues speaking)

R: (in Russian accent) Prop-ahn-ti-dehhh.

(man’s voice continues speaking)

R: Is that a Russian person? Because they're not going to be able to tell us how to pronounce this.

T: Jackie, are you watching propaganda?

J: No, didn't you hear it? (Man’s voice speaking, naming the Propantide) Propantide!

R: What language is that person speaking?

J: That's Turkish. It's Turkish!

R: Oh, okay, well, Voltaire wouldn't have been speaking Turkish.

J: Well, this says it's Estonian, but I'm pretty certain it's Turkish.

R: Sounds Estonian to me.

J: Yeah, it… actually it's... Yeah, it's Estonian. Sorry.

R: So now we know how our Estonians would say it. And it's Pro-pahn-tee-da. Yeah, that's where they're going, all right. Anyway. So they're going to try to get Cunégonde. They are walking through the Galley and Candide sees two rowing slaves and he's like, “They kind of look familiar.” And it turns out they're Pangloss and Cunégondes brother, the Jesuit baron, who he stabbed!

J: Oh shit!

T: Both previously died, right?

R: Yeah, at least once.

J: Candide says, “Now, if I weren't mistaken, I would think that was Pangloss and the Baron, but that can't be them!”

R: And they're like, “No, it's us. Woohoo!” So he sets them free.

J: “If I had not had the misfortune to kill him…”

R: That is funny. Like, “Oh, my bad luck. I killed a guy.” So he sets them free. Accidentally, they go back to Constantinople. Because what happened was, he tells like the owner of the ship, he's like, “Oh my gosh, this is my old teacher, he's a learned philosopher, and this is a German baron. So, can you set them free?” And the captain's like, “Wait, if they're so great, then you have to pay me a lot for them.” He's like, “Yeah, no problem. Take me back to Constantinople so I can exchange my jewels.” And then he's like, “Wait, no, no, let's keep going and get Cunégonde first, and then go to Constantinople.” But apparently it's too late. The captain has already sent them back to Constantinople. So they have to go to Constantinople. Some more antisemitism here. He exchanges his jewels for money and he gets cheated -

J: By a Jew.

R: Multiple, I think. Like, four Jews or something are involved.

J: Why did he have to add this?

R: He is not one to pass up the chance to be antisemitic. So anyway.

J: So, but at this point he pays the ransom. Pangloss, like, throws himself at Candide's feet and is like, bathing him in tears and thanking him. The Baron - who, you know, just remember - until this point we thought had been murdered by Candide. The Baron thanks him by nodding his head and says, “I'll pay you back soon.”

R: Nice. What a cool guy.

J: He's not as pleased with Candide.

R: So, they go back to get Cunégonde. So chapter 28 is called ‘What Happened to Candide, Cunégonde, Pangloss, Martin, etc.’ So we find out why those two guys are stuck in the galley. And it turns out that the Baron - I guess, basically, he didn't die. And the reason he was sent to the galley is because he was, quote unquote, “bathing” with a hot young Muslim guy, and it's illegal for Muslims and Christians to be nude together. So that's what happened with him. And then Pangloss, it turns out when they tried to hang him, the guy who hanged him was really good at setting people on fire, but not great at hanging. So he didn't die all the way, he just blacked out. And he woke up because someone was starting to dissect him.

J: Look, I gotta… I'm putting this on my core competencies. I will improve this in Q3.

R: So good at lighting people on fire.

J: I've got that, I’m gonna improve on my hanging skills.

R: He starts to get dissected and he wakes up, and he's like, “Aahh!” And then the guy sews him back up and he's fine. He ends up going to Turkey, and the reason he's in the galley is because he went into a mosque and saw a beautiful young woman who had a posy of flowers that she dropped, and he picked it up for her and, like -

J: Put it between her boobs!

R: - adjusting it on her bosom. Like, had to get it perfectly situated between her boobs. Like, perfectly. And he said he was taking too long fixing it, and so he got in trouble. They found out he was a Christian and that he was like groping a young woman, so he was sent to the galley. So it turns out that both men got lashed every single day because they were constantly arguing about which of them had it worse. Like, every day. And then Candide asks Pangloss, “Well, do you still hold true to your philosophical beliefs?” And Pangloss is like, “Yeah, I do.”

J: I mean, he's consistent.

R: He’s - yeah, that's true. Jackie, since there's two more chapters, do you want to do one and I'll do one?

J: Yeah, I'll do 29. This is a good one.

R: Okay.

J: So 29 is ‘How Candide was Reunited with Cunégonde and the Old Women.’

R: Woman.

J: Woman! Woman. They're kind of both old women at this point.

R: They’re multiplying!

T: Still one butt cheek between all of them.

J: Oh no, that means Cunégonde has lost both of her butt cheeks? I don't think that happened.

R: I like to think of the word being “be-butt cheeked.”

J: Be-butt cheeked.

R: Singularly be-butt cheeked.

J: Bebopazaballed, as we say. So Candide, Cunégonde's brother, Pangloss, Martin and Cacambo go to the Prince of Transylvania's house, where they meet Cunégonde and the old women. Woman! God, why do I keep doing this? Old woman. And they're hanging out napkins to dry on the line, because she's a laundress. And so they look at Cunégonde and they're like, “Ohh God, she has gotten real rough looking.” Her eyes are bloodshot, her throat is all drooping, her cheeks are wrinkled, her arms are red and scaly, and it says Candide has -

T: Oof.

R: Almost like a reptile lover’s arms.

J: Almost like a reptile! And so Candide remembers his manners and he's like, “Okay, all right, well, this is Cunégonde. I love her anyway.” Although he's disappointed. Cunégonde didn't know that she was so ugly, because no one had told her. But she reminded Candide, like, “Hey, remember you said you were going to marry me?” And Candide's like, “...Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah, I did say that.” So he goes to the Baron and he says, “Look, I'm going to marry your sister.” The Baron, the last time Candide said, “I'm going to marry your sister,” he got killed. Or, stabbed very badly. And he was like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait.”

T: He probably has some trauma associated with this.

J: Apparently he doesn't, because you would think the Baron is like - first of all, “Not letting Candide marry my sister didn't go well for me last time. Also, she's like, very, very ugly now, so surely no one's gonna want her.” But no!

R: And also, he freed me from slavery like two days ago.

J: Yeah! So, but instead he says, “No. I'm not going to allow her to disgrace herself even further. My sister shall marry none but a Baron of the Holy Roman Empire.” Candide says, “You unspeakable ass! I've rescued you, I've paid your ransom. I found your sister washing dishes, she's as ugly as a witch. And yet if you are going to still object to this, I will kill you again.” And the Baron is like, “You can kill me again if you like, but while I live, you shall never marry my sister.”

R: We'll see about that. So there’s only like three pages left in the book. So how will this get resolved?

J: I love that he's like, “You unspeakable ass! She's so ugly, and I'm going to marry her anyway! Like, just let me do it, god!”

R: It’s pretty funny. All right. Okay, so chapter 30 is just called ‘Conclusion.’ So it opens with Candide being like, “I don't want to marry her, but I'm so mad that her brother said I can't, that I'm definitely going to marry her.”

J: So it turns out that he didn't love her at all, right? He just loved her for her looks. Nothing else has changed about her.

R: I mean they were a big part of her appeal for sure. I don't know if it's just for her looks, but it was a lot of it.

J: It seems like it's basically all of it.

R: So he kind of talks to everyone. He gets his bros together, his fellowship, and he's like, “What should I do?” And Pangloss is like, “Let me write a treatise that explains that her brother has no authority over her.” So then Martin says, “Let's just push him into the ocean and drown him.” And then Cacambo's like, “Let's just bribe the captain of that galley slave ship to put him back in the galley and take him back to Rome.” And everyone's like, “That's a good idea, let's do that.” So they do that.

J: Let's take the kind route, and do that.

R: Yes, so the brother’s gone. So anyway. So now they're like - they're all living together, I guess, in Turkey, and they buy a farm.

T: Just imagine that's how your friends are talking about you behind your back. Like…

R: “Should we kill him, or…?”

T: “Should we just shove him in the ocean?”

R: “Or sell him into slavery?” Well, not sell him into slavery. Buy him into slavery?

J: Volunteer him into slavery?

R: Well, no, cause they had to pay.

J: Should we trick him into leaving his clothes on the beach and walk into the ocean nude? No, that would be too mean. Let's see.

R: Slavery. Why not?

T: Jackieeee.

J: Slavery!

R: So anyway, so they have this farm now. And it's Candide, Cunégonde, the old woman, Martin and Cacambo all together, and they're all miserable. Everyone hates it because, like, apparently Cunégonde is mean now, and the old woman is infirm and even meaner, and Cacambo's always walking their produce to the city and back, so he's exhausted. But Martin's totally chill because he's like, “Everything sucks, who cares?” So he's the only one who's basically the same as he always was.

J: Everything sucked before and it sucks now.

R: Yeah.

J: I don't know, I feel - this is my dream! Living on a farm with all your best friends? Come on, guys! Like -

R: It doesn’t sound very good.

J: Well, not if some of them are ugly. No uggos in this compound.

R: No uggos in the compound. So then the old woman, they're just all sitting there and she just lists out all of their misfortunes, and she's like, “Man, you remember all those terrible things that happened to us? I wonder what's worse - all those things, or us just sitting here on this farm?” And everyone's like, “Who knows?”

J: And Pangloss - you'll be happy to hear this - gets reunited with Paquette!

R: And also Brother Giroflée shows up. Apparently, the two of them, they -

T: Who is that?

R: Huh?

T: Who is that?

J: He's the monk.

R: It's the monk who had purchased Paquette’s services.

T: Oh, okay.

R: And then Martin and Candide had taken them to dinner to see what if they were happy, and they weren't. But so, after he had given them money, they were together for a time, then they got separated and they lost all their money, and then they found each other again and for some reason they made their way to this farm in the middle of the Turkish countryside. So they're also not doing great. So they go on this little, like, field trip together, like a friend field trip. And there's a very wise dervish who lives in the neighborhood, so they talk to him. So, he was supposed to be the greatest philosopher in Turkey. So Pangloss goes there and here's a little conversation they have. I don't know if we can do it back and forth, because Jackie and I have different translations.

J: No, let's try it. It'll be funny.

R: Okay, are you the dervish?

J: Yeah, I'll be the dervish.

R: Okay. “Master, we have come to beg you to tell us why so curious a creature as man was ever created.”

J: “What has that got to do with you? Is it your business?”

R: “But surely, Reverend Father, there's a dreadful amount of evil in the world.”

J: “And what if there is? When His Highness sends a ship to Egypt, do you suppose he worries whether the ship's mice are comfortable or not?”

R: “So what must we do?”

J: “Keep your mouth shut!” (laughs) What does yours say?

R: That's basically what it says.

J: Okay.

R: And then Pangloss is like, “Look, I think we should have a conversation about the best of all possible worlds and the origin of evil,” and the dervish just slams the door in his face.

J: Yeah, so at this point, Pangloss keeps maintaining his philosophy, but it says he doesn't really believe it himself anymore.

R: While they're on their way back, it's Pangloss, Candide and Martin - which, where the heck is Cacambo? So they meet an old man who's just sitting in the shade of a tree by his front door. And Pangloss is talking to him and he's trying to talk to him about politics and the old man's like, “Eh, I don't really care about politics, but why don't you come into my house and have dinner?” And they have dinner. He has some daughters and sons giving them delicious Turkish food and they say, “Wow, you must have a magnificent estate,” and the old man's like, “No, we only have twenty acres, but me and all my kids, we work on it together and it keeps away the three great evils: boredom, vice, and necessity.” So on their way back, of course, Candide is like, “Hang on a second… it seems like this guy is happier than anyone we've ever met! Like, way happier than those kings that we met.” And Pangloss is like, “Yeah, kings tend to have a really bad time.” And then he spends half of the final two pages listing kings who have been killed.

T: Oh God, I remember that.

R: I'm not going to read them.

T: I remember just thinking, I want to be done with this.

J: One of them is Mary, Queen of Scots, though, so there was a little bit -

R: Ah, one queen.

J: Yeah, there was one queen.

R: Feminism!

J: Feminism!

R: Girlboss!

J: Yeah, girlboss! Mary, Queen of Scots.

T: He's a feminist ally, Voltaire.

R: He really is. He's a #girlboss. So Candide tells him, “All I know is that we must cultivate our garden.” And Pangloss tries to be a little philosophical again, and Martin says, “Let us set to work and stop proving things, for that is the only way to make life bearable.” So then they all go to the farm and they start working hard and exercising their talents. But weren't they already working? Or was Cacambo the only one who was working?

J: Yeah, Cacambo was like, “I don't have time for this.”

R: If I were him I would have ditched these white people.

J: Yeah.

R: But if you want to hear exactly what happened, here's what happens. Cunégonde remains ugly, but becomes an excellent pastry chef. Paquette embroiders, the old woman does the laundry. Everyone makes himself useful, including Brother Giroflée, who was a first rate carpenter, and even became quite good company. And Pangloss, it says, sometimes would say to Candide, like, “Look, this is the best of all possible worlds. If X, Y, Z, all these bad things hadn't happened to you, you wouldn't be here right now eating candied citron and pistachios.” And Candide says, “That is well said, but we must cultivate our garden.” And that's the end.

J: I like that ending line. “That's true enough,” said Candide, “but we must go and work in the garden.”

R: Mmhmm.

J: That's a hopeful ending.

R: Hopepunk.

J: Not an optimistic ending - It's hopepunk, yeah.

R: Yeah. Like the world sucks, but you can make a happy part of it for yourself and the people around you.

J: Or, he's not even saying the world sucks, but we can do this. He's saying, like yeah, whatever, like…

R: The world does suck.

J: The world does suck.

R: That's the whole thesis of the book.

J: Well, but Pangloss was saying you’ve been through all this stuff, but it brought you here to this nice place, and Candide is saying, “This too shall pass,” basically. Whether it's a bad thing or a good thing, either way it doesn't matter. We've just got to keep working. So there you go.

R: I don't know if I'd read that much into it. But if you want to, go ahead.

J: He just says, “That's true enough, but we have to go and work in the garden.”

R: I think he's dismissing him, like everyone's been doing since they got there.

J: Yeah.

R: Like nobody wants to hear Pangloss anymore talk about like, “Oh, the best of all possible worlds, like, listen to my philosophy.” They're like, “I think philosophy's bad.” Maybe that's the moral of the story.

T: Isn’t he just saying, like, you can't leave it all up to fate, basically?

J: Yeah, he's saying we have to go and be our own masters.

R: I don't know if it's…

J: You could read it lots of different ways.

R: Yeah, I think it's more like what I said.

T: I didn't get the impression of being your own master, but there's like, a slight bit of agency or something, is what he's saying, compared to what Pangloss is saying.

R: You can carve out a decent spot in a bad world.

J: But, Rachel, Pangloss isn't saying the world is bad. Pangloss is saying -

R: No, I think - I think Pangloss was demonstrably proven to be incorrect about his philosophy in the entire book.

J: Yeah, but what he is saying -

R: So I don’t care what Pangloss says.

J: Yeah yeah yeah, but what he says is, “It's a good thing all this bad stuff happened.” And Candide says, “Yeah, whatever, it doesn't matter, we have to go to work.”

R: Yeah, he's saying philosophy doesn't matter. Like it doesn't matter if you think, oh, all these bad things are necessary to arrive at a good thing. He's saying, regardless, this is what we have, so we need to make it good if we want something good to happen. It's not just fate making things happen.

T: All right, let's look it up. What does the last line of Candide mean?

R: What is the moral lesson of Candide?

J: I feel like there doesn't need to be proof that one of us is right. I feel like they're all equally valid ways of reading this.

R: I already said you can believe whatever you want, I don't care!

T: Well, this comes from a .edu website, so you know it's correct.

J: Yeah, this is definitive.

R: What's the - what's in front of the .edu?

T: Uh, fakenews dot… No, it's Brandeis.edu. It just says, “We should work on what we can control and have an impact on, not feats that are impossible.”

R: Like f-e-e-t-s?

T: Not feets.

J: Uh oh, human centipede reference! That's a bunch of impossible feets.

T: I have to say, from what you guys just said, I remembered getting to the end of this book and just thinking like… Like, I know it's supposed to be a naughty book that's supposed to annoy you.

J: Naughty!

T: Why on earth does he still have so much useless stuff in like, the last ten pages?

R: Like the list of the dead kings?

T: Yeah, and even going to the dervish, and like, why does the monk show up again? I was just thinking, this could have been over before…

J: I don't know.

R: I would rather the Jesuit - not the Jesuit. Who's the nice guy? Jerome or whatever? Jacques. I wish Brother Jacques had shown up and said… Jacques the Anabaptist. I'd rather him show up than Brother Giroflée.

T: Yeah, honestly, I thought it was kind of intentionally trying to be -

R: Annoying.

T: - unsatisfying.

R: Like you're almost there.

T: Yeah, it's like, we've introduced so many characters. I'm just going to pick some of them and give them back to you at the end, but like, they're not really the ones you want, probably. And it’s just like, ugh. Naughty book!

J: That seems like that is kind of, yeah, a choice. He knows that the good ones… I mean, I'm surprised he didn't kill Martin, because, you know -

R: He’s a troll. How do you say troll in French?

T: He is a troll.

J: Tra-la-la.

R: I’m looking it up. It’s “[le] troll”.

J: Trollolololo.

T: But I guess for those of us who don't LOVE the act of reading, those last ten pages are so - were, like, torturous for me. Like, I knew it was over and I knew this was pointless, what he was showing me, and I was just like, when’s he gonna stop?

J: Yeah, it should have ended when they got to Turkey and found Cunégonde and were like, “Oh, she's ugly now, but I'm going to marry her anyway.” And then whatever. They don't need to visit all these other people.

T: And they can even have a farm!

R: I like this ending better. This is like… Basically the only parts that I really liked were at the end where they're talking to the dervish and he's like, “Just shut up, dude!” That part I thought was good.

J: Yeah, just… “What should we do?!” “Just shut… just shut the fuck up!”

R: And why is this philosopher in Turkey? Yeah, who cares?

J: Yeah, so this whole thing kind of read and finished like Parable of the Sower. Like they go on a long journey, terrible stuff happens to them all the time -

R: Collecting people on their way -

J: People you think are dead might show up again. And then at the end they settle a little compound and grow a garden.

R: Wow.

J: It's basically the same thing.

R: Do you think she was influenced by this?

J: Nah.

T: Is there a sequel to Candide?

R: Uhhh…

T: Can you even imagine, like, what if he did make it into a trilogy or something? And it's just like… event after event.

R: Event after event, unlike other books.

T: I don't know, it just feels a little bit like so little of this was necessary.

J: Harry Potter and the Events After Events.

T: I don't think it's formulaic. I think it's just… there's just too much.

R: Absurd. It SHOULD have been formulaic.

T: Yeah, maybe! Maybe.

R: There's a reason we have a formula.

T: Yeah.

J: So Theo, are you saying you can smell the mental masturbation in the air, or whatever that guy was saying?

R: Well wait, here’s a better question - can you smell the gunpowder? Because you're going to fire the cannon any second now.

J: (gasp) Are we firing it?!

R: It's one of the only books you've ever read.

T: It's tricky because I was kind of gleeful about how naughty that book was when I read it.

J: What do you mean by naughty?

R: Every time he trolled you, you were like, “Yes! Yes!”

T: Kind of, a little bit!

R: This book, just like the world, was created to make men mad.

J: I googled “why is Candide important,” and what I got was “it's Voltaire signature work.” And it's like yeah, but -

R: Yeah, who cares? Why is Voltaire Important?

J: Yeah, but what did it influence? What did it do? “It's a savage denunciation of metaphysical optimism.” Yeah, I get that, but why is it important? “Well, it's a very important satire.”

T: That's why nobody's a metaphysical optimist anymore.

R: Okay, here's what I'm gonna say.

T: Oh God.

J: Oh God, what's she gonna say? (panicked squeak)

R: Fire it. I liked it, sometimes. Didn't love it. I don't think it needs to be in the canon at all. Like I think there was a reason it was written at the time it was written, and it was perfectly timed, and now its time is over.

J: It served its purpose. It was the pants for which the legs were made, or… something like that, I forget now.

T: I want somebody to just take the things that I liked about it, and write a new story with just those things.

J: You always say that! You can't just request that everybody rewrites the -

T:I'm putting that request out, to any of our listeners.

J: Right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I agree. It's not without merit. I mean I enjoyed it, parts of it, but yeah, I don't think it needs to be taught to everyone.

T: Fired! Let’s fire it.

J: Do we finally get to do a sound effect?!

T: Oh, never mind.

R: I think kids should just be told like, “Hey, there was a time when this was a popular philosophy, and in response, Voltaire wrote this book in which blah, blah, blah happens. \

J: “And now no one thinks that.”

T: Yeah, here's what it is. Yeah, they shouldn't have to read the book. They should just have to listen to the episodes of our podcast.

R: Yeah!

T: It's way quicker.

J: Oh, we should have fired every book we've ever done so that instead they have to listen to our podcast.

T: And it's just replaced with our summary.

J: Yeah!

T: The whole canon, just replaced with our summaries.

R: I do think some people would really enjoy this. Like, some weirdos who want to be trolled by a dead Frenchman, they should definitely read it. But no, I don't think it needs to be in the canon. I give it three stars, which for me means I like it, don't really like it, don't love it, don't want to read it again, but I don't regret reading it.

J: I also rated it three stars.

R: What does that mean for you? Isn't it some weird thing where you're like -

J: It's my favorite thing in the world.

R: Yeah, three is… it goes up and then down again.

T: Yeah, it's a bell curve.

J: Uh, it means I didn't actively dislike it, but I also didn't really love it.

R: So to you, three stars means it's okay.

J: It's mid. Yeah. It’s fine.

R: Or does it mean you liked it a little bit?

J: It means I liked it a little bit. If I didn't like it, I would rate it two or below.

T: Can I tell you the idea I had as I was listening to it? Listening to you guys talk about it?

J: Sure.

T: As you guys were talking about this stuff, I was thinking, Wow, all these people are going to need a lot of therapy.

R: Me and Jackie.

T: Yeah. You're right, sorry. BOTH of these people are going to need a lot of therapy. No, like all of the characters. I thought, oh, that would be an interesting fanfic of this, just after the whole thing they’re like… each of them talking to their therapist. But then I had this idea. Well, react to that idea first.

J: Woo!

R: I think that’s good, I think that's pretty funny. It would be kind of like the Sopranos.

T: Yeah, right.

J: So, I mean, wait, hold on, in that idea, do we get to hear the therapist's responses? Or is it just them?

T: Yeah!

J: Maybe we ONLY get to hear the therapist.

R: I think it's from the perspective of the therapist.

J: Yeah, because we've already gotten everything that happened to them.

T: I mean because, seriously, like just asking the question, “And how did you feel about that?” None of the characters have answered that question this entire book! It just moves on and on.

R: They have no feelings. They’re like little puppets.

J: All we could do is have the Old Lady…. We could have the therapist say, like, “Tell me about your mother.” And she would have been like, “The princess of Palestrina? Where do I start?!” But beyond that it's like… She had feelings. She did. She was like, “I wanted to kill myself a whole bunch.”

R: “I’m miserable.”

J: Yeah, “I was miserable, but I was still in love with life.” And she was the only one who really had any sort of personality.

R: Rich inner life.

J: Yeah.

R: Yeah. Rich inner life, one butt cheek. Fair trade off.

J: Yeah, I would... I'd probably give up a butt cheek if I had no inner life and I needed to get one.

T: Hmm.

R: I thought you were gonna say, to finally get one.

T: What if it's like you already kind of feel like you have an inner life, but then someone says, “You could have an inner life that you can't even dream of at the moment. It's so rich. Give me that cheek.”

R: “Give me that cheek.”

J: What if someone felt like they had three, and then you could just get rid of one and be back down to two and feel fine?

T: Okay.

R: What if the devil, instead of bargaining for your soul, all he wanted was one butt cheek.

T: It was mistranslated in the Bible or something.

J: Yeah, yeah.

R: Yeah, like, “The devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a butt cheek to steal.”

T: Wow!

R: That would be pretty good.

J: Yeah!

T: Honestly, I would be like, “You know, Lucifer, I think you can dream bigger.”

R: I thought you were going to say, “Lucifer… I get it, man.”

T: Yeah.

J: I think you can dream of two butt cheeks, Lucifer.

T: You could ask for people's souls, even. You're pretty powerful. But if that's your thing...

J: That's his thing. I mean, in that case… So, I can't foresee them having a fiddle battle for a butt cheek, right? So what instrument would they do instead?

T: Tuba! It has to be tuba! (fart sounds)
R: No, it would still be a fiddle battle. It's just the stakes would be really low. Who cares?

J: No, whoever wins the tuba battle gets to keep their tuba…tts.

R: So he would get the devil's butt cheek.

T: Whoa! That thing has some powers, you know it does.

R: The most coveted butt cheek of all.

J: Yeah, I won the tuba battle and now I have the devil's butt cheek. (dissolving into laughter) I… maybe I don't want to win the tuba battle. Maybe I'd rather give him a butt cheek. I don't want his!

T: How do you explain that to your guests at your house, like, “What's that mounted on the wall?”

R: You go in someone's house - Yeah, there’s a wooden plaque, and on the plaque -

J: This is the most dangerous game.

R: And you’re like, what is that? And you look at the little little plate at the bottom and it says like, “Devil's Butt Cheek. Won in a fiddle contest, 1982.”

J: No, a tuba contest.

T: Yeah.

R: I don’t know, man. A tuba contest? It's hard to tell if you're good at that or not.

T: I'm just saying because it sounds like farts.

J: All right.

R: What’d you say, Theo?

T: I said, I'm just saying that because it sounds like farts.

R: I know. I know why.

T: Yeah. You didn't know why.

J: Yeah, she’s never heard a tuba in her damn life.

R: Never heard a fart.

T: You're a little sheltered.

J: Women don't fart, and we don't know what tubas sound like, so we're lost.

T: Right.

R: I told you guys recently that I wasn't allowed to say the word ‘butt’ until I was in college.

T: What?

R: I wouldn't have been able to record this episode. I wasn’t -

T: Who wasn't allowing you?

R: My mom! We had to say ‘bottom.’

J: What if you like, injured yourself? You had to say ‘bottom.’

R: You say, “I hurt my bottom.” You couldn't say ‘butt’. So I couldn't say butt cheeks.

T: Does your mom say butt?

R: I think she says it now, and sometimes she says worse words, too. Even worse than butt. I also wasn't allowed to say ‘crap.’ We couldn't say ‘holy cow,’ because cows are not holy, that's paganism.

J: I mean, some places they are.

R: Not to me, apparently. According to my parents.

T: Wow. Oh, then the the next idea I had after I thought about that fanfic -

R: The fanfic.

T: - for Candide. I also realized this is the kind of idea that one of you has probably already said and I forgot, so I apologize in advance.

J: Oh, I’m mad in advance.

T: But we should do a bonus episode where we pick a book that we've done and we each do like a two paragraph fanfic of it.

J: Oh, I've never come up with that, actually.
R: Yeah, we can do that for a bonus episode.

J: Is that you want for your birthday?

T: Nice!

R: We're doing ‘My Dog Talks!’

J: He doesn't want that.

T: Yeah, we - okay, we'll do fanfic of ‘My Dog Talks’ for my next birthday.

J: My dog fucks.

T: We're going to read ‘My Dog Talks’ and we're going to do fanfic of it.

J: I like how no one responded to my idea.

T: What was your idea?

J: I said, my dog fucks.

T: That's… that's an idea? Oh, that's your fanfic idea.

J: That’s my fanfic.

T: That just sounds like your porn parody.

J: That's what a fanfic is, basically.

R: No, they're not all porn.

J: Nah, they're basically all porn.

T: Whoa, you've insulted Rachel's favorite genre.

R: Porn?

J: Rachel wrote a smutty Lord of the Rings fanfic that to this day she won't -

R: It was not a smutty Lord of the Rings -

J: It was smutty. It was smutty.

R: No, it wasn't smutty.

J: Yes, it was. If it wasn’t smutty then why are you hiding it? Huh?

R: Because it's fanfic written by a preteen!

J: Does it say ‘butt’ in it? I bet it - I bet it even says butt.

R: It does not say butt. That's one thing I can guarantee you.

J: It says bottom.

R: It doesn't say bottom, either. It doesn't - nobody's butts are involved at all. So take that.

J: Freaky.

T: Holy bleep!

R: Okay, I think that's enough. I feel like we're not going to top the devil stealing people's butt cheeks.

J: All right, I really just want there to be permutations of that with different places. Like he doesn't go down to Georgia, he goes somewhere else. And he doesn't have a fiddle battle, he has something else.

R: “The devil goes down to Houston. He's looking for a cheek to steal.” And then it keeps going.

J: Yeah.

T: But I think Jackie wants a butt-themed place.

R: Butt-themed?

J: No, uh -

R: There's a place… What about Butte? That would be funny.

J: I don't know. Georgia's already pretty butt-themed because it's got the peach, you know.

T: Ohh! Me likes.

J: What about Bunn? What about Bunn? “Devil went down to Bunn!”

R: (gasps) “Devil goes down to Bunn, he's looking for a bun to steal.”

J: Looking for a vulture to steal.

R: Looking for a vulture. He's welcome to as many as he wants.

J: I know, he doesn't have to steal any. Bunn’s like, “God, Devil, please take this, take all these vultures!”

T: Can I just say that, because the name Bunn for your hometown has been normalized for us, but I think for other people they wouldn't even recognize that could be a name of a place.

J: Yeah, I know.

T: So can we just mention every time we talked about Bunn that that's the town where Jackie grew up?

J: Bunn is the name of the stupid place I'm from. Yeah.

T: Okay.

R: You're never going to get a key to the city.

T: Ooh!!

J: A key to the city? You think there's a key to Bunn?

R: I mean no cities have real keys! There’s no gate!

T: There's a ceremony and all that.

R: It's symbolic.

T: Rachel - Okay, who has the best chance of getting a key to their hometown based on this podcast?

R: Probably me.

T: Yeah, probably you, because Emerald Isle has… it’s kind of classless.

J: No, I'm a big fish in a little pond. I honestly think I could.

R: Wait, why would I be more likely to get it because it's classist? Classiest?

T: Classless. It has no classes.

R: Classless?

T: That's what classless means!

R: Did you say classist, classiest, or classless?

T: I said class-less, and what classless means is that it has no class.

J: Yeah, that is what classless means.

R: Okay, so you said because it has no class, they don't give a fuck what how bad our podcast is.

J: Whereas Bunn is the classiest place on earth. So.

T: There are lots of like, poets and artists and Hillsborough. So even though it's just as small, it's probably like, I'm not going to get a key to the city before… Billy Strayhorn or somebody. Yeah.

R: Cause of competition.

J: Yeah, before my neighbor Vernon. “We're honoring Vernon with the cat feeding award of the year.”

T: “You inspired us all when you told us you liked that white cat.”

J: (exaggerated Southern drawl) “I like a white cat.”

T: “Yeah, you changed this town's reputation worldwide.”

J: (drawling) “Vernon went down to Hillsborough. Looking for a white cat to steal.”

R: Also, I have connections with the town government. So that's why I think I could. Also, I think my mom rode in the mayor's float for the parade this year or something.

T: Oh my gosh, really?

R: Yeah, the St Patrick's Day parade?

T: So corrupt!

R: So corrupt?!

J: I was in every Bunn Christmas parade, on every float.

T: You were at every Christmas parade, on every float?

R: She was Santa Claus. On every float?!

J: Yeah, I was Miss Bunn, I was Santa Claus -

R: Mr. Bunn -

J: - I was in the marching band. I was Mr. Bunn.

T: In Bunn they just do one float at a time that goes down the entire parade route, and then you had to drive back -

J: It turns around.

T: Yeah, it turns around.

R: It’s an eternal float. It’s just a circle.

J: We call it a merry-go-round. It’s not a parade. We're confused.

T: Wow, y'all know about me when I did the parade, right? Eh, we don't have time for this story.

R: Are you serious?

J: Sure we do. What is it?

T: There was a Christmas parade, and it was in high school, and we were all marching, because I was in marching band one year. And we're all marching down the street playing Christmas tunes. I noticed that the people in front of me were sort of… they were marching and then they sort of - they would like, move a few feet to their right and then get back in line. I noticed that everybody was doing this and I was like…

R: Oh, yeah.

J: Theo was taught never to exercise his own judgment. So he said, “Keep walkin’ straight!”

R: “Fuck you guys!”

T: “You’re not following the rules! This is marching band. Rules are important!”

J: Yeah! “I march to the beat of that guy's drum!”

R: Yeah.

T: Yeah. And then, so I didn't move out of the way. And then, guess what I stepped on?

R: Poop.

J: Ohhh.

T: A dead squirrel.

J: Bleeeeeghh.

T: A squirrel that had been run over -

J: By the other members of the marching band?

T: No, no, by -

R: Were you the only one in the whole band who stepped on the squirrel, because everyone else avoided it?

T: I suspect. I mean the person behind me -

J: No, I bet the person behind you probably also stepped on it…

T: bBecause I set up a chain reaction of people behind me?

J: Yeah.

T: No, the person behind you was like, “Ugh! Theo!”

R: Good for them.

J: Like they took their mouth off the instrument from playing, you know, jingle bells or whatever, and they're just like -

R: They said it through the tuba. (low silly tuba voice) “The-o.”

J: They said it through the trombone. Did you squeak when you walked across the squirrel?

T: No, I didn't squeak. Actually, I wouldn't have been… I must not have been playing that at that point yet.

J: Theo was a clarinet player. So when you get surprised by roadkill, you often do squeak.

R: He still is! It's like in the Marine Corps. Once a clarinet player, always a clarinet player.

J: It's like in the Girl Scouts.

T: It's like Vegas.

R: Once in Vegas, always in Vegas.

T: What happens in the Christmas parade stays in the Christmas parade, except that I just told you guys about it.

J: You did. Yeah.

R: Now you'll get the key to the city taken away.

T: Damn.

J: All right. Well, go get some sun, Rachel.

T: Yeah, go get some sun, Rachel.

R: I wish I freaking could.

T: All right, we love you guys. Thank you for listening to this whole podcast.

J: I, uh… I'm not quite ready to say it yet, but I, ah… I like spending time with you guys.

R: The audience?

T: …Oh.

J: Yeah.

T: Thank you for the love.

(Outro music plays)