Supplementary Material 3: Sand-worms, Anti-Capitalist Merch, and High Level Idea-Jacking

Love the phrase “selective decoupling”! You should trademark that Matt hehe!

SHOUNAK SARKAR

Yes, my mind kept wondering to pocket watches

Chris Wishy

Without a doubt, I'm sure it's still got mark up and it's not the cheapest it's going to be, I've got to point out that there are several factors that play into the pricing of print apparel that greatly impact the price. The shirts in that link are for wholesale prices, so they can go up to as "low as" those prices per shirt, but only if you buy large quantities. The more relevant factor is the printing. The shirts are screen printed, which are of much better quality than direct to fabric prints, and use shirts of also relatively good quality. I'm slightly pushy about this topic because I also do sell shirts I've designed and often hear "Oh, why is it so much more expensive than stuff you get from (international brand)?" For a shirt I sell for A$30, I only get about A$5 per shirt because I work with a smaller, local Australian screen printing company rather than outsource printing to China which would allow me to price lower and still make a better mark up. While I know the USD is worth more so $35 usd is more than just its equivalent dollarydoo amount, I'm far more sympathetic to a shirt costing $35 made by unionised labour when I math out how much the same mark up would be on something produced with cheap, outsourced labour.

Sanya Obeysch

I don't think that Hasan's merch is overpriced due to sourcing unionised US labour... https://www.blankstyle.com/bayside-apparel

Christopher Kavanagh

I think Walken in particular took me out of the movie. His delivery seemed to be almost comedically out of step with the rest of the film.

Robert Andrews

Just out of interest, does the 3 Body Problem series cover the whole of the trilogy or just the first book? I have only read book one and will probably read book two but want to know if the series contains spoilers for it?

Robert Andrews

Loved the movie chat. Really enjoyed 3 body problem. Read the book and I thought they captured the vibe pretty well. People complaining about characters but they never stood out all that much in the book, it was all about the epic ideas. Saw Dune too, looked incredible, Villineuve amazing director. My analysis not nearly as deep. I couldn’t get out of my head that I’m watching the Hollywood actor, Chalamet, Butler and Walken. On flip side, didn’t have that problem with Bardem, Brolin and Ferguson, so good! Just started children of time… enjoying it! 🙏

Chris Wishy

I mean, you're completely free to, but that doesn't change that the practices that lead to more equitable and worker-friendly, non-exploitative outcomes would mean paying more for your goods. American workers deserve fair pay regardless of what you might think of their country. :)

Sanya Obeysch

I liked Matt's comment about Dune examining unintended consequences. Yep! Ties in with the ecological themes too. For fellow sickos that love Dune, I recommend these. Both great! https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/03/18/the-world-spirit-on-wormback-what-is-dune-about/ https://youtu.be/-PDjwKZQVLw?si=z1xgvGnfA_T9xl3Z

Alex H

C’or this is a good one. Love the new music and speech at the end of the standard non Patreon podcast btw. It sounds…familiar? 😛 I just finished the 3 body problem book and on Dark Forest now. Think it’s much better than the series which I managed 10 mins of. It made me feel like a clever non humanities science person whilst reading- and then I tried to explain it to my wife and reality came crashing down. Sophons yea? Unfolded into 2 dimensional space.

Chris Clark

I would not buy anything from America. The whole country sucks

Julie

Just wait until you get to the women with mind controlling sex powers in the later books.

David Noble

Lwelyn

What you have bookmarks? You should have mentioned 😂 Sorry didn't even think to use them, despite you literally saying we should, I think maybe even in this episode 😂 I generally love the intros so when you said 'can skip' I instantly filed it away in 'shit I don't need to remember' Didn't occur to me I'd not want to hear things you have to say 😝

Paul Sees

Huzzah, it works!

Paul Sees

Bookmarks!

Christopher Kavanagh

Maybe you could avoid chatting about new movies etc - not being funny but I don't want spoilers

Paul Sees

Oh dear lord. That Jordan Brett hypersonic bullshit. So funny

Kgar

Love that book by Tchaikovsky and agreed that it was such a good concept but also painted itself into a corner when considering the character arc

JGraves

Obligatory "I'm not really a fan of Hasan, and think there are ways in which he embodies the champagne socialist", I think that there is something being missed when his merch is described as overpriced and a demonstration of hypercapitalism. I say this because his merch is union made and produced in America. This would significantly increase the prices compared to what we would think of as affordable given that many of what we would compare it to would either be cheap as dirt because of essentially exploiting the labour of developing countries to produce them. I personally do still find the captions vaguely cringey, but don't believe that the price point is that much of a gotcha as it seems to be stated.

Sanya Obeysch

I've never read the original novels that the show is based on, but most of the main characters, and people referenced in it, do have real historical analogues: Blackthorne (Anjin) is based on William Adams; Toranaga is Tokugawa Ieyasu (third great unifier of Japan); The Taiko was Toyotomi Hideyoshi (second great unifier of Japan); Koda refers to Oda Nobunaga (first great unifier of Japan), and Akechi is Akechi Mitsuhide (Oda Nobunaga's assassin). I think the series has been great so far.

Robert Andrews

Oh, on Huberman, do I recall correctly that on the very DtG episode that decoded him, Chris may have mentioned that people were skeptical of Huberman even running a proper lab? Now, I am not one for gossip, but I wonder whether Huberman's "Lab" was an alibi to his large harem for why he couldn't meet each of them every night: "Sorry honey, busy at the lab testing out the TRT supplements again..."

Robert Andrews

On Dune, I really enjoyed it when I watched it in IMAX. I actually think these films have really helped me appreciate the book(s) more. I read that one way back in my teens and found it hard going. These films seem to bring it to life. On Three Body Problem, I'm surprised Matt didn't mention that he has talked at length about this novel on the podcast equivalent of The Travelling Willburys: Aaron of Embrace the Void, Thomas of Opening Arguments and Matt of Decoding the Gurus discuss the Three Body Problem with a special emphasis on Hume's problem of induction in Philosophers in Space. Check it out, people! https://0gphilosophy.libsyn.com/0g161-three-body-problem-and-maoism-pt1 Now, we need some commentary on Shogun. "Decoding the Shoguns", anybody?

Robert Andrews

He's got his life priorities straight

Leon White

First, shout out to Matt. In true para social fashion I was psyched listening to him talk about the Dune books (I’ve read the first book multiple times). Second, Chris is 100% right on the problem with the reaction to Huberman. It’s exactly the “defence” my friend gave (though in guru style he didn’t frame it as a defence. Just a purely rational observation). It would be completely inappropriate and unfair if your boss said they felt that your divorce casted doubt on your ability to do your job. However, cheating (and cheating is the word) on 6 different women all while gas lighting at least a couple of them suggests something more nefarious. One has to be willingly ignorant to not concede that it may imply other things about the individual. It's especially relevant if you have a public persona where you present one way in public and another way in private. And this all ignores the very legitimate concerns about his podcast that DtG and Conspirituality have already highlighted. As someone who did fall for a lot of this rational bro stuff, I’m so sick of this bullshit.

Adam

Ahh I was driving at the time, wasn’t exactly sure how long before the paywall kicked it. I was so happy when you started decoding Huberman, I used to listen to him, but stopped months ago, too many red flags and all the supplement ads made me ick. And that episode with the twitch streamer interviewing the Yemeni guy was hilarious.

emmajane

This one was 50 mins before paywall, felt weird to paywall Huberman chat… but glad we tempted you after that!

Christopher Kavanagh

Was listening to this in podcast app and was so frustrated after the free 30 mins ended I came home and immediately subscribed to Patreon! My first ever podcast subscription! Love it!

emmajane

Hmmm... time for an upgraded podcast App?!?

Christopher Kavanagh

Cheers Jeff! And yeah we might have undersold how much the atmosphere and scenery did in Dune!

Christopher Kavanagh

Have you seen this little cartoon of a man popping out of a well?!?

Christopher Kavanagh

The honest answer is you have to use a podcast player that has that functionality.

Christopher Kavanagh

Probably...

Christopher Kavanagh

Is whomst really a word?

Rod Hodges

On the prose in Three Body Problem: the translator tried to keep the English version as true as possible to the Chinese even at the cost of awkward phrasing. As a Mandarin speaker, I thought it was really cool that you could often see the Chinese coming through the English. Maybe not a great choice though. Also, Dune has mediocre prose and character development imo.

Trees

Turns out I'm a boomer who doesn't know how to use bookmarks in podcasts. I don't see them anywhere in the Google podcast app

Níall Faughnan

You don’t have to look hard to see significant drawbacks of #tradlife Measles outbreaks in ultra orthodox Jewish communities because they don’t vaccinate their kids plus. In South Africa, many churches remained open during the Spanish Flu, against general recommendations, because the disease was gods will. You might churn a mighty fine butter and also die horribly and young.

Adam Sher

You were testing the waters, it seems! Good news is you guys are delightful, so I'm happy to hear you pontificate in general.

Jesse Rimler

Hey we already made that jump! We have a special episode on IASIP!

Christopher Kavanagh

If you wait long enough, every podcast becomes a movie-review show.

Jesse Rimler

I'm using a podcast app to access the Patreon RSS feed. The app can skip through the chapters.

Roland Weber

This was great fun! I mistakenly downloaded the public version first, so I got to hear your fade-out ad, too :-) I'm considering to apply for free access. The term "Three Body Problem" is linked inseparably to this xkcd in my galaxy brain: https://xkcd.com/613/

Roland Weber

I think you're correct when you say that psuedo profound bullshitting comes naturally to Brette and Jorp and the like and that they're not necessarily expending effort to do it. I still think intention can be applied to them, though, because at any point they could reel back the style and speak more clearly; but they don't. Of course it's pretty easy to see why they don't. Their audience loves the bullshit! So who's manipulating whomst?

Jenson

This wave of religiosity among these characters is so annoying. Acting as if it's not clearly evident that nations with deep religious adherence don't have bug problems, some of which are even related to their beliefs in religious dogma. Give me a break.

Kyle

Guys, the supplementary episode was a delight. Thanks for lightening the mood and your friendship really shines through on the pod. As for Dune C2 (didn’t read the book), I think I rate it more highly than you guys. Sure it’s a space opera and the story is predictable but I think the aesthetic experience is transcendent and that’s the heart of the movie. That’s where they’ve achieved something entirely new. I watched at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in LA which has insane fidelity so I might have had a more earth shattering time with it.

Jeff Faulkner

Yeah. The idea of non-believers saying grace before a meal to own the libs, is objectively hilarious. The secular conservative argument for "cultural christianity" is nonsense. Martin van Bruinessen's classic study of Kurdish tribal structures, "Agha, Sheikh and State" lays out pretty clearly the social utility of monotheistic religion (albeit in the shape of sufi orders like the Naqshbandi) in creating a source of social authority capable of overriding and controlling the eternal internecine bloodletting in inter-tribal feuds, is compelling. It's easy to make a case that a couple of millenia ago, when a far greater proportion of humanity's lifeworld was dominated by tribal structures, transcendant religious morality represented social progress. But in a modern secular society where those kinship structures are massively reduced in social heft, the same logic doesn't apply. The irony is these unbeliever cultural christians seem mainly attracted by the association with the idea of a return to traditional patriarchal roles. Well you don't get much more patriarchal than the tribalism, with their honour killings and blood feuds. The very social problem that religions like christianity and islam were trying to mitigate and take steps away from in the first place. "Retvrn to tradition"? Dude, I really don't think you'd like it there.

Paul Bowman

Poorly!

Christopher Kavanagh

An epidemic of ‘selective decoupling’. 9/10

john statham

I did that a few weeks ago -- the joke at the end was the best laugh I've had in ages, having been a long time listener to the podcast the joke is parodying.

Jonathan Cano

I'm > 50 years, long time sci-fi reader. Comments on the first 3 Dune novels: If you are paying attention, Paul Atreides is the good guy. A bunch of the first book is Paul being able to see the coming Jihad but deciding it was the least bad of the options he could see. Book 2 is him trying to minimize the damage the Jihad will do in the long run (e.g. sort of like Foundation's Hari Seldon trying to minimize the dark age). 3-body problem: Great sci-fi ideas, terrible writing (sort of like Asimov in this). Netflix does a great job of keeping the essential plot elements while speeding up the pace. Sadly (but not unsurprisingly) they fabricate or change plot elements to make them far more dramatic. The San-ti (Trisolaran) faction on earth never murders anybody in the first novel but that would be too slow an un-netflix like. I'm also watching the Chinese made TV series for the same. The Chinese made TV series (2023) soft pedals the cultural revolution scenes (Netflix is true to the book in this regard) but is otherwise a lot more faithful to the original novels with some Chinese TV tropes added in. As I said, the writing for 3-body is bad but there are a lot of elements I liked that Netflix predictably discards to increase drama (i.e. the Drive to Survive-ification) As for sci-fi with (IMESHO) very good character writing, read 'The Expanse' novels the TV series is based on. The ideas of the entire series are not as creative as 3-Body but there are still interesting ideas and, of course, great writing.

Jonathan Cano

‘What are we? Moralising Church Nancys?’

john statham

There was an aristocratic lady who had trouble with her Bowels. Dr. ‘’Mattrix’ (Sic) Browne discusses this in his treatise on: ‘Lady Shatterley.’

john statham

But have you considered this irrefutable argument: “socialism is when no money?”

Ethan Milne

The soap operas continue.

Linda Sears

As the Gurusphere Turns…

Linda Sears

Very much enjoying your deconstructing of Bret and Jordans pseudo profound intellectual bilge in this supplementary materials ep. One issue I've noticed however is your ascribing of intention to their style of speaking and word choice as a manipulative tactic to portray themselves as saying something a lot more interesting than they actually are. I just can't see the evidence that they do this intentionally. I guess we can't really know one way or the other but it feels to me much more likely they their communication styles are authentic, in the sense that delivering psuedo profound bullshit comes perfectly natural to them and it's not intentionally manipulative towards their audience. Having said all that, the difference is probably inconsequential because people will continue to be beguiled by them regardless of their intent.

Spartacus Mills

So you finally got into the supplement selling business after all. Very disappointing.

JK-F

Maybe they’ll leave some of that troll in for the onlysubs

Adam Sher

I strongly recommend listening to the "non-subcriber-feed" - version. Well, at least to the last minute or so: "Subscribing will save the rainforest, bring about global peace and save western civilization. And if you cannot afford two dollars, you can request a free membership and we will honor zero of those requests..." :o) Sounds oddly familiar. ;o)

Claudia

For your records, I (re)subscribed to make sure I get all the Supplementary Materials — because that’s my favorite part….

Josh Lee

I love how Matt doesn't remember the name of potentially the second most important person in the world, but can instantly recall the name of a spoof brand from Zoolander.

Marcin Junczys-Dowmunt

How do the bookmarks work on patreon?

Moe's

Definitely big ups on the Broken Earth trilogy. I’ll have to check out her newer one!

Daniel Reed Miller

It's a perfectly cromulant phrase.

Ymirsdreams

I found this bit wild from the New York article: "Huberman lives 350 miles and a six-hour drive from Stanford University, making it difficult to drop into the lab. Compounding the issue is the fact that the lab, according to knowledgeable sources, barely exists." What? Seems like Huberman has followed the Peterson/Weinstein trajectory of transitioning from being an actual academic to a full-time podcaster/influencer who just likes to flaunt their credentials. He probably used to have a little lab, used to teach some in-person university classes. If he's truly living 350mi away, I don't buy that he's in the process of moving the lab between departments as Stanford said--he probably just has things in some limbo state where he can claim to still have a lab without actually having one. Maybe what's going on is that in response to New York's inquiry, Stanford asked Huberman what was up with his lab, and he said, "Oh, it's in the process of moving." I don't believe there's any actual "Huberman lab" anymore. From the article Huberman comes off as a guy who just selfishly does whatever he wants moment to moment. If you're someone or something in his life, he will seem to care and mean well, but once you're out of mind it's like you don't exist.

Daniel

Massive debate in our house. To me- clearly underpants should be ironed- my wife- says wasted energy. The debate rages.

Brainbiter

Have to say - I was ‘skeptical’ as I’d previously ‘religiously’ listened to the decodings hoping for a long bantering introduction but this new format has made me ‘see the light’ and I ‘thank the lord’ and ‘give gratitude’ for these new episodes. Clearly you were both ‘touched by a Higher Power’ to have this idea. Happy Easter 🐣🐰

Brainbiter

At least 3 Body Problem doesn’t milk the trope of humanity uniting to fend of an alien invasion.

Tim Tripp

After settling the adaption question, we should interrogate why Matt thinks you should gamify ironing undies? Is this like the pants/pants issue, and undies is actually slacks? Trousers?

Margaret Drennan

Ursula K LeGuin writes fantastic science fiction with fantastic characters.

Devin Poore

When JP is going off on his kinship word embedding diatribe, the way he emphasised saying "concantenation" instead of concatenation is such a great example of his lack of substance. Whether intentional or otherwise it shows how little interest he has in actually communicating anything except that he knows academic sounding words (even if they are madeup)

BlockchainBill

Just to expand on what Matt was saying about Lex's response to the Huberman article. What about Lex's "love" for the affected women. Do they not matter? Were they all aware of his actions and his treatment of them? Why doesn't Lex's so called "love" expand to their feelings and how they were treated.

Matt Laine

You guys might like some of N.K. Jemisin’s books. Sooo good! She writes in trilogies, and i like them all, but the Broken Earth series is tops, as is her most recent one that starts with The City We Became. I also recommend Annalee Newitz’s new book The Terraformers. I realize no one asked for my recommendations, but I love ‘meeting’ other sci-fi/fantasy/speculative fiction nerds, erm, fans : )

Monica B.

A sabbath, a day down, a down day! Open source the technology but keep the technology closed source! As DtG said in an older JBP ep, they could go to a sermon. They might even find a lot of the people there don’t believe in god. Konstantin wouldn’t even have to convert!

Adam Sher

Is "adaption" Australian English?

apetrash

I feel the problem with the adaptation of 3 Body Problem is Netflix. Looking at the storytelling and character driven sci fi or fantasy on Apple or HBO its worlds apart. There's just a simpleness to the stuff that Netflix produces. No time taken to build characters. Or film making itself, no subtle colour grading or light touch musical score or character dialog that doesn't push the story forward. It just feels like they think the audience is dumb. There's so many irritating examples in 3 Body Problem that I find it almost unwatchable. Compare to Foundation on Apple, the source material is no denser for making interesting characters, it's probably worse, but it has such richness of interesting characters and relationships. It's always the same with Netflix, their idea of craft includes appealing to the masses first and storytelling second.

Kit McLean

I'm crumming chicken for dinner while listening to this pointless supplementary materials. BTW does this make you shills hocking your supplements....

Kyle

A relatively recent sci-fi book with an original plot: The Unincorporated Man

Adam Sher

Worth the $2

Lys

Re: Dune Part 2 I agree with Matt. I personally think we need more films that tackle the dangers of charismatic leaders as opposed to the standard hero journey arc. Although, I agree with Chris that it wasn’t subtle but, then again some of the audience may need it. I think it’s easier to be subtle with text where you can expand on the characters inner struggles. Apparently Tolkien hated the Dune saga. Might have to check out the 3 Body Problem.

Shane Partington

Thank you!!

Lillie