Slow Learners Podcast
@slowlearnerspod
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A read-a-long podcast about big books. Hosted by Asher ( @asherdark1 ) and John ( @johnsemley3000 ) . Find Season One: GRAVITY'S RAINBOW...wherever you find pods.
"The White Visitation"
Joined October 2023
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We have created a BookShop affiliate store. Why? Well, it's a good place to index all the books we talk about on the show. And if you buy them using our affiliate links, we get a modest taste to keep our immortal lightbulbs burning. Check it out!
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SLOW LEARNERS: GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
a read-a-long podcast about a book. launching soon.
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Nathan Felder actually emailed us (John has a rolodex of all Canadian's in media) and told us that this clip, in multiple ways, was directly inspired by the DASTARDLY Cpt. Blicero (aka Weissman) shoving Gottfried into the 00000
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This week: we finish part III of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and talk to Matt Christman (
@cushbomb
) about the Masons, Old Magick, and disenchantment. Listen here:
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As we wind towards the end of out GRAVITY'S RAINBOW journey, as the rocket careens towards its terminus, that final delta-t, here's un petit tease for what we're planning for Season 2:
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Getting ready to record our final read-through episode. It's bittersweet, but thank you all for listening and reading along. Δt
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SLOW LEARNERS is now live on Spotify. and currently "pending" on Apple, Amazon, and other "podcatchers." please be patient as we figure out the RSS feed. we are slow learners!
Episode 1 is an intro/ "mission statement." Read-a-long starts next week!
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GRAVITY’S RAINBOW (Thomas Pynchon, Viking Press, 1973)
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THIS WEEK: We complete our read-through of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, talk to Gregory Marks (
@thewastedworld
) about the novel's Marxist (Marksist?) dimensions, and weigh the question...is this book actually any good? 🌈🚀 🏤
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what’s your favourite character name in GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, and why is not “Lloyd Nipple, the fattest kid in Mingeborough”?
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Slow Learners Ep 2 is LIVE. We begin our read-through of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, and talk to space and science historian Dr. Jordan Bimm (
@jordanbimm
) about the history of the V-2, rocket cosmology, and the mystical dimensions of interstellar travel.
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👀👀👀
There has never been a better time to read Gravity's Rainbow for the first time.
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Lyle Bland lying on his divan while his wife putzes around the house vacuuming
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Have a question, comment, or THEORY about Gravity's Rainbow??? Leave us a voice message by making our "hotline bling" at : (609) 353-6873
Let us hear your silly voices, and you just might be featured on the friggin' podcast!
Once again, that's (609) 353-6873
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A reminder of your HOMEWORK for the week:
1. Read "chapters" 1-9 of GR, from Pirate Prentice's Banana Breakfast through Roger and Jessica's amorous night on the outskirts of bombarded London
2. Leave us a voicemail
3. Like and subscribe and leave a 5 star review
4. Eat hoagie
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Just spotted Asher attempting to parallel park this:
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We're back! We continue our trip "Beyond the Zero," discussing S&M, prosthetic vaginas, Thomas Pynchon's jump-shot, and more! And
@alex_shephard
joins us to talk about GR's literary scandals, and the many mysteries of Thomas Pynchon.
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This week: Noah Kulwin (
@nkulw
) from
@blowbackpod
(and John and Asher's fantasy football league), joins us to talk about ZONES of influence, banana capitalism, and ur-evils. Also: we gab about absurdism, Balthus, and fascist fetishization of youth. Fun!
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exciting news for Slow Learners nation: we are officially Finland’s no. 6 Books Podcast. a hearty “Kiitos” to all our Finnish friends.
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NEW EPISODE ALERT: Slothrop is recast as "Rocketman," the John E. Badass gets ripped on Onerine, and we talk to chemist and filmmaker
@HamiltonMorris
about drugs, synthetic chemistry, and the extent to which GRAVITY'S RAINBOW is about both. Listen here:
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BREAKING:
DJ Khaled Pledges Allegiance to "The Counterforce"
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Tomorrow on SLOW LEARNERS, we go through the second part of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW--like all of it, it's a lot--and talk to filmmaker Alex Ross Perry about his GR adaptation/riff/essay/remembrance IMPOLEX. subscribe now, if you know what's good for ya.
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This is the kind of shit John texts to our FANTASY FOOTBALL GROUP CHAT
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hmmmm
Behold your first look at the first Paul Thomas Anderson film poised to break the $100 million mark: reuniting him with star Leonardo DiCaprio, following Anderson’s uncredited screenplay rewrites on 'Killers of the Flower Moon’
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Average leftist bookshelf: Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon and the Dark Passages of History, The Genocidal Gaze, Planet Dora, Walter Dornberger's memoir, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story.
Average RW bookshelf: Dan Brown?
Average leftist bookshelf: Harry Potter, Sapiens, mayb Adorno
Average RW bookshelf: Jünger, Solzhenitsyn, Bernal Diaz, Aristophanes, PhD dissertation on IQ, Caesar in Gaul, schizo book about CIA deep lore
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I still think about Lex Fridman saying that his favorite novel is Brothers Karamazov because "some of his best friends live in that novel."
Ah yes. The very likable and totally friendly characters of... Fyodor Dostoyevsky! A world we all would love to hangout in!
Here's the debate I hosted between
@BenShapiro
and Destiny (
@TheOmniLiberal
), two of the most skilled political debaters in the world. They each arguably represent the right & left of American politics, respectively. The topics include Trump vs Biden, Jan 6, Israel-Palestine,
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We are BACK with a GRAVITY'S RAINBOW Appendix episode, pondering the Q: is the book, somehow, an autobiography? Some readers aren't certain. Others? Aren't so sure. Also: we chat with
@AlbertRolls1
about his Pynchon scholarship, and biographical ephemera.
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co-sign this!
reading books is stupid! there is literally no reason to read big or ambitious works of literature other than posturing and pretension. they offer no other reward! anything anyone does, ever, is just fodder for dating profiles!
cheers,
slow learners
"If you’ve ever had a pea coat-wearing liberal arts student talk at you about the genius that is David Foster Wallace then you’d call Infinite Jest bro-lit too."
These TikTokers are coming after the Bros on BookTok.
More:
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This week: we close out the first section of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, and talk to professor and Pynchon scholar David Cowart about the novel's relationship to the unruly canon of postmodern literature. BUCKLE UP LIL PARDS!
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SLOW LEARNERS in the media (in a Lancaster, PA online news source). Some nice thoughts on Pynchon. Though we, the hosts, reject our characterization as "lit-bro types," and deny the very existence of the "lit-bro."
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In our latest ep, we take a trip to the Casino Hermann Goerring and put all of our chips on SCHWARZ. Also, renowned filmmaker Alex Ross Perry joins us to chat about his film adaptation of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW.
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This week: Roger Mexico almost gets eaten, Tchitcherine finally confronts Enzian (sort of), and we talk to researcher Jeff Severs about the inspiration for Pynchon's futuristic, fantabulous Raketen-Stadt. Listen here, why dontcha:
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the virgin Elon Musk: builds a rocket with all the resources on planet earth, which disintegrates and explodes
the chad Dominus Blicero: builds the 00000 out of V-2s, affixes it with an Imipolex-G casket, and fires it, transcending the earth, and, perhaps, even time
Update: After a successful liftoff, a test flight of SpaceX's Starship ended prematurely when both the rocket and spacecraft were lost
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In case you've been living in a love nest in the “stay-away zone" of London in the final months of WWII...SLOW LEARNERS is live! and available mostly wherever you get your podcasts:
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hell yea
One's an unquestioned masterpiece; the other's just hoping to be a good friend. Author copies have arrived!
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Final read-through episode drops tomorrow. John was in tears. "I can't believe it's over," he said. "I'll never be the same."
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Friday plans? Why don’t you CRACK open that copy of GRAVITY’S RAINBOW you’ve been using to prop up a busted sofa (or “chesterfield,” if you’re Canadian). This week we finished reading through the first part of the book. Next week? You guessed it: the second part of the book.
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Thomas Pynchon is in our fantasy football league
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(Note: we recorded this interview a while ago, before Matt’s recent health issues. We got permission from his family/friends to use the interview. We know people love Matt, and hope you all get a lot out of it. We did!)
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Screenshots from a rare GRAVITY'S RAINBOW video game adaptation (actual gameplay)
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Some books we mentioned in our last pod:
Dictionary of the Khazars
The Moon and Sixpence
The Sot-Weed Factor
Slaughterhouse Five
The Magus
The Figure in the Carpet (short story)
The Golden Notebook
Mumbo Jumbo
Nazi Literature in the Americas
Rings of Saturn
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this was literally the same logic Osama Bin-Laden used to justify attacking American civilians on 9/11.
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here's an article by co-host John about GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, and what it can tell us about "these times." just to whet your beaks!
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Me when John tries to only read one volume of Proust
when it’s too much work to smoke weed but you power through it
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Some have asked about the format: we read through the book in chunks of like 5-10 chapters, and discuss. There may be some “spoilers” as we are trying to put the larger book in context. But also the book is pretty “unspoilable,” both plot-wise and witting-wise.
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ROGER MEXICO AND JESSICA SWANLAKE SPOTTED IN LONDON LEAVING ABANDONED ROWHOME
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@_ryanruby_
Marx was wrong. people actually act differently, and against their own interests, because their consciousness has been....falsified....somehow.
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You: THE IDEAL SHAPE AND TRAJECTORY OF A NOVEL DOESN'T EXI---
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust: Hold my Lime Blossom tea
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Thomas Pynchon! and Ishmael Reed, a bit.
other than PKD, Césaire, and Bolaño, who else are the great writers and artists of the "the postwar west is culturally secretly a nazi movement" argument?
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Rumor has it that the protagonist is called Lt. Arthur Nipple, distant forebear of Lloyd Nipple--the fattest kid in Mingeborough, and arguably the heart and soul of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
If Pynchon's Civil War novel never sees the light of day, it will be the greatest tragedy in the history of American letters
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We will record a few bonus interview episodes on Pynchon/GR, and then take a break to pivot to a new book/author. Is that ok?
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This week: we continue charting through Part One of GRAVITY’S RAINBOW, and discuss toilets, colonialism, and LSD. Also: we talk to author Stephen Kinzer about MK-Ultra, military mind control, and his biography of CIA poisoner-in-chief Sidney Gottlieb.
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the hosts are also hot, as well.
just wanna put out there how thankful I am for
@slowlearnerspod
, its the first GR related podcast I've listened to that actually Gets Gravity's Rainbow, and I've loved every guest they've brought on (the hosts are also really good)
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never take entertainment advice from men with figurines all over their walls. in fact: anything they say, about any subject whatsoever, can be safely disregarded.
“help! I’m on fire!”
“sorry! you own figurines! god bless!”
"Martin Scorsese movies are like going to the DMV"
Kiiiiilll meeee
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New-ass episode alert! We begin our read-through of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, and discuss rockets, causality, and the history of space travel "from the Reich to the rich." Like, subscribe, and do all that good stuff.
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Should we do an "appendix" episode about Jelinek? she translated GR into German. And John has to read/re-read all her books in the next dew weeks, anyhow.
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Okay they're back... phew
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Destroying monomyths? Is TOMMY "RUGGLES" PYNCHON the founder of wokeism? Listen to episode *two* tomorrow to hear more....
Never forget a main component of wokeism is destroying our monomyths
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this is the problem with capitalism. a sphere should be a public utility. would you bother mentioning that your regional waterworks posted a "loss"? no. taxes should be levied to subsidize your local sphere, and to fund the construction and promotion of more and more spheres.
Las Vegas Sphere reports $98.4 million loss; CFO quits
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it's hard to take much for granted on x, formerly known as twitter, these days. but two things are true:
1. SLOW LEARNERS is now live, wherever you get your podcasts (more-or-less)
2. Cheech & Chong gummies are now 100% legal
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NEW EPISODE: we enter the final--and weirdest?--section of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. Also: we channel the A.I.-generated spectre of literary critic Harold Bloom to talk about Pynchon, gnosticism, and Byron the Bulb.
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Mangled but wonderfully ambitious adaptations of unadaptable novels.
Which genre do u hope makes a come back now superhero movies are dying. Personally I hope it’s alien invasion films
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"It is an awesome book, in the strictest sense of the word. I think it is a human achievement on par with the pyramids."--
@HamiltonMorris
on GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, in our latest episode.
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should we interview Thomas Pynchon for our podcast?
yes
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leave him alone
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war crimes are actually good if they’re done by allies. this guy should realize that if he didn’t want to lose his job. it’s a free society after all!
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90% of hardcore songs are about what a braindead, drooling moron he was. so that’s good!
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This week! We follow Tyrone Slothrop into THE ZONE talk about German colonialism, the Herero peoples, and the "genocidal gaze" with historian Elizabeth Baer.
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@kvtp11
there has also never been a better time to listen to a podcast about Gravity's Rainbow...
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New episode: as we head into the last stretch of GRAVITY'S RAINBOW, we talk to tarot reader L.A. Labuschagne (Answers in Tarot) about esotericism, The Fool, and get a full, illuminating read of Lt. Weissman's Tarot spread.
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this is literally untrue. or rather, it is only true for people who think conservatives are only capable of “Heaven Is For Real” and not “The Searchers,” “Infinite Jest,” or any Jackie Chan movie.
Conservatives are incapable of producing good art because they lack empathy, which means they are incapable of creating anything which communicates to a larger audience. When they try to produce art, they only end up producing clumsy in-group signaling.
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Is any one fond of the music cues we use on the show? Should we put together a playlist? For fun?
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Speaking of Lit Bros, Dave Portnoy of Barstool Media has taken a stand against Blodgett Waxwing!!??!!
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@moon_is_sharp
several chapters or "episodes" per episode. aiming for about 12 total episodes. each one will have a summary, a discussion, and a guest who can help illuminate just what the HELL is going on--or who just wants to gab about GR/Pynchon/books.
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Many in the media are saying that SLOW LEARNERS, the hot new podcast, has "serious Skip and Shannon vibes." Tune in tomorrow to find out if they're right!
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Uh so apparently we got a voicemail and, uh... so.... well.... this is HUGE (Diet Ginger Ale Theorists Vindicated???)
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Got a succulent mailbag meal (voicemail episode) coming for y'all tomorrow. And then we sail off for Paris, Combray, Balbec, Doncieres, Venice, etc.
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We've been told that A24 is interested in acquiring the rights to GR so they can get the Danielses to film the hot air balloon pie fight scene. Apparently Brendan Frasier is in talks to play Major Marvey
A24 is reportedly searching for “action and big IP projects” in an effort to “to expand into more commercial films.”
()
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a preview of SLOW LEARNERS 2: MAD LADZ….coming soon.
“ho mon dieu i remember da time i ‘ad a crumb hoff a cookie with my hant. made my brain go PAFF!”—québécois Proust
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SOMETIMES THERE'S A MAN--I WON'T SAY A HERO, CUZ WHAT'S A HERO--BUT SOMETIMES THERE'S A MAN...
WHAT A MESS! Homes in Montana were buried under tumbleweed as some piles rose so high that they flowed over the roofs of homes.
#mtwx
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We played this last night and it was just a tennis mini-game the whole time?
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Some crank listener made fun of our amazing theme song, by Asher and Scotty. Would you buy the "Slow Learners Season 1 Theme (Here's The Mystery of Thomas Pynchon)" as a limited edition 7-inch collectible vinyl single?
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Do any of our wealthy benefactors want to buy us Doc's house from the INHERENT VICE movie? We'll also accept the $6.75M in cash, if you don't wanna fuss with all the paperwork. (Make it an even $7M, to account for closing costs and associated fees.)
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This week: we take a brief break from the read-a-long to chat with Robert Bramkamp, the director of PRÜFSTAND VII, a German doc about GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and the legacy of German rocketry.
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We are back, with a BONUS ep. We answer listener Qs and voicemails. And just gab! Two guys gabbing formlessly? Submit this for a damn Grammy. If not a "Poddy."
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tune in for future episodes where we discuss the life and legacy of Sybill Leek: the English witch and astrologer who helped the Allies win WWII.
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just an example of the LAFFS we have 'round 'ere.
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Finally, if any major podcast networks want to buy out a program with a great idea, and that has attracted a massive audience of LITERALLY THOUSANDS, and if you are keen to furnish the hosts with lavish salaries...we are not above that.
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@rick_paulas
you probably know this--and I think I mentioned it on an episode--but there's a theory that the Pynchon cameo in INHERENT VICE is this dude writing in a beach-adjacent quonset hut. writing...GRAVITY'S RAINBOW?
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He drafted Brock Purdy 1.01 and his team name is BROCKETMAN
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