Caleb Can't Read
Caleb Can't Read
Episode 91: Jules Verne Pt. 1
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TW: Alabama
You ever wonder why that weird couple wears top hats and corsets with gears on 'em? Well put on your weird goggles you got from Etsy and strap yourself in to some sort of noun-powered rocket, as we explore such stories as "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", "From the Earth to the Moon, & "Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"! Yes, today we are looking at the early career of the man who may not be the inventor of-- but definitely the Godfather of-- Science Fiction, Jules Verne!
Welcome to Caleb Can't Read. I'm Jordan Rabel.
SPEAKER_04My government name is Nicole Rabel.
SPEAKER_01It yeah. And um while Caleb is pretty much just like done with this, he was just like, I I just don't care. That's fine. That's fine. But I do I do still have Caleb News. He almost fucking died. But not in like a fun like job way. Caleb Caleb. He uh yeah. I mean, usually he's like in danger because he's an arborist and he'll like fucking get crushed by a tree or some shit. But lately he was like packing for a camping trip or something.
SPEAKER_04Did he allow you to share this story?
SPEAKER_01Huh?
SPEAKER_04Did he allow you to share this story with him?
SPEAKER_01I told him I was gonna because it's just the dumbest shit. He fucking um he tried packing away a knife. He he tried packing away a knife for a camping trip into like a plastic sheath or something, and it just wasn't going in. So rather than like, I don't know, making sure that the passageway was clear or literally anything else, he had the sheath, like the bottom of it, in his fucking hand, and he was pressing into the sheath as hard as he fucking could, and the sheath split in two, and he stabbed the knife into his fucking hand. Um it uh what he told me is that it was like a bubbler but with blood coming out of his hand, and he was like, Oh no, I gotta drive myself to the fucking hospital. And then he uh he started getting real woozy. He had to have somebody else drive him to the hospital, and he fucking nicked an artery. And so he got some stitches after giving himself a fucking palmusy, after he fucking he almost died cleaning his room. That's why he never does it, fucking dumbass.
SPEAKER_04Can only laugh about it because he's fine now.
SPEAKER_01I I like I can't uh I haven't seen him since that incident that happened last week, but like as soon as I see him, I hope he forgets. I'm gonna dap him up, just like my boy.
SPEAKER_04No, don't split his artery stitches. Jesus. Do you know how expensive hospital trips are?
SPEAKER_01He's got his city job, it's fine.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, okay. He makes more than us.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's not a uh that wasn't a very good segue into this, but uh actually you just you came back from France. That's kind of a segue into this. Oh, how'd you like it?
SPEAKER_04Oh god, France. Yeah, you had a free. We're gonna work on it, we're talking to a French person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know, right? It's fucking disgusting. It's a fucking piece of shit.
SPEAKER_04But hey It was really hot. Well, there you go. It's it's global warming. They'll tell you it's not real, but then you know, everybody in all of Europe is frying.
SPEAKER_01But I can don't have an EC. It does not blow piss in my face. Yeah. No, it it sounds like you had a good time just fucking shopping. That's all that you did.
SPEAKER_04Oh no, okay. So, yes, there was like hella deals.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was like a girls' trip to fucking celebrate your sister graduating, like at the time. My mother retiring. Your mother retiring.
SPEAKER_04My cousin's first trip to France. I've been trying to get a chance.
SPEAKER_01You just being a piece of shit and just wanting to tag yourself on.
SPEAKER_04I'm alive.
SPEAKER_01Let's celebrate, yeah. I guess.
SPEAKER_04So, yeah, I bought shoes and bags and they were all deeply discounted despite being 100% leather.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, you really you really saved money giving that guy hundreds of dollars. You see, the joke's on them because they're really losing money by collecting your hundreds of dollars. Anyway, let's get started, shall we?
SPEAKER_04Oh, I I I will say, uh, I did not expect Marie Antoinette's hamlet at Versailles. We've gone to Versailles, like, ride facade.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we've gone to Versailles a couple times before, and every time we just don't have time to go, like, if you go to like the corner of the property, there's like a fucking poor cottage that she made herself.
SPEAKER_04So that place is fucking huge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but she wants to cosplay what it's like being a poor person on her huge fucking acres of land.
SPEAKER_04Like built to function properly. Like they had veget vegetables growing still. But things like this functioning mill and cheese.
SPEAKER_01I was expecting it to be like a hovel, and then the pictures you sent me back, it looks like something out of like the wild west corner of fucking Disneyland. Like it's a well put together house just with quote unquote poor aesthetic.
SPEAKER_04Jordan, there was a reason they were beheaded. Yeah. They had absolutely no idea what it being poor was.
SPEAKER_01She didn't do anything, she hoarded the wealth.
SPEAKER_04She was still complicit in a system that mistreated the working class.
SPEAKER_01She is truly the Taylor Swift of her day. Well, let's get started, shall we? Also, I'd like to add, it wasn't one cottage, it was a small fucking village so that she had several servants living to be poor with her.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And then, oh shit, it's a whole there's a fake white house with a little boat attached, a gardener's hut that they turned into bathrooms.
SPEAKER_01What a fucking piece of shit.
SPEAKER_04A little college college, cottage for the architect that built it. And then a McMansion. You're gonna spill all our drinks places that they ought not be spilled.
SPEAKER_00Thanks. For the heads up.
SPEAKER_04Well, it's on a work. Our setup is a cramped little table with the fucking.
SPEAKER_01Our house looks nice, but this is all IKEA.
SPEAKER_04Right, it's just gonna liquids and electronics don't mix, babe.
SPEAKER_01Well, Jules Gabriel Verne was born February 8th, 1828, in Nantes, France, to his mother Sophie and his father Pierre. The first of five children. While his father Pierre worked in a law office, his mother, while herself only a housewife, came from a family filled with navigators and shipbuilders, which seemed to capture the young Jules' attention from an early age. When he was six, Jules Verne would attend school under the tutelage of an old widow named Madame Sambin. According to Madame Sambin.
SPEAKER_04Sim Sim Salabin.
SPEAKER_01Shut up. Her husband was a naval captain who disappeared at sea thirty years prior, though she believed, or at least told the children, that he was still alive somewhere on a deserted island.
SPEAKER_04That's what I would tell people.
SPEAKER_01Why?
SPEAKER_04Well, no, not that part, but like, you know, if I just wanted to be a single woman back then.
SPEAKER_01Oh, tell them something mysterious. Exactly.
SPEAKER_04Because back then it was easily easy to just fucking get away with a lie. Like, you know what? I'm tired of my life. Let me go to the next town over where they don't know me. Yeah, no, reality. Literally, like, you know, a five-mile journey from my original living spot. I don't know, from our original town.
SPEAKER_01The reality is you probably shit himself to death. Like that just happens. Isn't it kind of funny? We've got a uh diarrhea bug going around right now with other politicians that need to be beheaded right before a fucking revolution happens. Anyway. I'll write new regulations regardless. Yeah. Now it's possible that she really did believe this, but more likely, she was leaning into the success of these types of stories among children in what were called Robinson Aids.
SPEAKER_04Named after Like Robinson Crusoe.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Named after.
SPEAKER_04I swear I was gonna get the name wrong.
SPEAKER_01Named named after Robert Crussum.
SPEAKER_04Robert Crimsons.
SPEAKER_01Named after the classic tale Robinson Caruso by Daniel Defoe, whom we covered in episode 35.
SPEAKER_04Is he related to Willem Defoe?
SPEAKER_01Nope. The story had released a little over a hundred years prior in 1719. However, the story was such a success that it culminated in a lot of impersonators over the years, including a man named Johan David Weiss, whom we covered in episode 36, who wrote The Swiss Family Robinson. Fucking hated that book so much.
SPEAKER_04His book I love the old Timey Disney movie, or at least the clips that I remember from my youth writing.
SPEAKER_01Okay, that's the thing. This magical island had all manner of animals.
SPEAKER_04It had no realism to it, and which is fine, but like I want realism in my deserted island fantasy story. Fucking Robinson Caruso was, and it was great.
SPEAKER_01Okay Swiss family Robinson, no realism, like a fucking 800 pages. Hated.
SPEAKER_04Have you ever read fanfiction? Because that's essentially that.
SPEAKER_01No. Now Johan David Weiss. I mean, technically, there's like virtual comedy, the divine comedy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Bible fanfiction. Still classics.
SPEAKER_02There's no My Hell A U.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Now the day Johan David Weiss, his book had released just 16 years prior to when Jules Verne started school and was still widely popular. So it is possible that Madame Sambin was just trying to entertain the kids. Regardless, the story of her castaway husband was something that would stick with the young Jules Verne for many years to come. What?
SPEAKER_04Because he was into wear.
SPEAKER_01Because you're hearing a story about how her husband fucking died. Now, when he was eight, Jules would attend the illustrious Eccole Saint-Stislas. As you can tell from the name, this was a prestigious academy that you weren't really expected to do well at. However, it was here that Jules Verne's incredible talent for memorization was revealed. Geography, Greek, Latin, Jules had the ability to nearly learn it all by heart. It was the same year of 1836 that his father Pierre bought a vacation home in a nearby village of Chantenay. The house went right along the local river where the young Jules would find a fascination with the passing ships, quickly learning every make and model that passed through town. However, the boys' fascination with a life at sea would cause a little bit of an incident. When Jules was twelve, he ran into two cabin boys that were working for a ship called the Coralie, uh-oh. Which was due for a shipment in the Indies, Indonesia. Well, Jules actually paid one of the cabin boys to stay home and let him take his place while the other boy would help sneak him onto the ship.
SPEAKER_04Now it was gonna be some kind of awakening when you introduced them, like he met two young cabin boys.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, even though it took a hard left from what you were initially thinking, once he got on that boat and it was about three months out, it might have been. Now, believe it or not, this plan was successful. They used the cover of fog to silently row their stowaway on board the Coralie in the early hours of the morning. However, Jules' mother Sophie noticed the house was a little too quiet that morning and had Pierre ride out into town looking for their boy. Pierre luckily ran into an old nurse of Jules's at the butcher shop who said she saw him crossing the town square earlier that morning. Riding further out, Pierre spoke with the ferryman, who said he saw three boys rowing out towards the Coralie. It was at this moment that Pierre knew exactly what had happened.
SPEAKER_04Fortunately, lost at sea.
SPEAKER_01While the Coralie had already left the port of Chantanet, it would be taking a quick detour to the nearby town of Pambof to collect the rest of its crew. It wasn't long before Pierre had his twelve-year-old son back at home, where he made Jules promise that from that point on he was to quote, only travel in your imagination.
SPEAKER_04No manual labor for my son. I'm sure there's an unwritten French No manual for my friends.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure there's an unwritten part there where he absolutely abused the shit out of the Are you fucking kidding me?
SPEAKER_04No, you get the belt. Run.
SPEAKER_01He takes oh he fucking takes the baguette from around his pants. The fucking like leather strap just cha- cha.
SPEAKER_04No, it's it's a baguette. It's more like crackle, crackle, crackle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, exactly. Well, luckily for everyone, Jules was quick to find a love for literature as a way to replace his fascination with sailing. Finding particular interest in the work of LeMez author Victor Hugo, the raven author Edgar Allan Poe.
SPEAKER_04Hey.
SPEAKER_01What?
SPEAKER_04Am I allowed to ask about other authors?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, there's no rules.
SPEAKER_04Did Victor Hugo have venereal disease?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I haven't read it. He had to have. Because all the whores?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. From what you tell me.
SPEAKER_01Oh, he was a whore mask.
SPEAKER_04Either like he was literally covered in whores, or he was just using it as a front to mask, you know, I don't know, asexuality or something.
SPEAKER_01No, if that dude was fucking wearing a beard, he was wearing it with the thighs wrapped around his neck. Also, I love how how just fucking uncomfortable you were saying, whores.
SPEAKER_04I'm sorry. Sex workers.
SPEAKER_01Women of the night. You can actually see some similarities in Victor Hugo and Edgar Allan Poe's writing styles and Jules Verne starting as far back as 1845.
SPEAKER_04Edgar Allan Poe?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I also have not researched him.
SPEAKER_04No, are they like aren't they the buddies?
SPEAKER_01Oh, you know what? I I couldn't find anything in here that actually validated that.
SPEAKER_04So what I'm referencing, just for you listeners, is there used to be this Comedy Central show, um, Drunk History, where people would get drunk and talk about historical events, and there was an episode where they talked about Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne's being friends and like Dunkin' on H. G. Wells.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I really couldn't find anything about that, honestly. It doesn't mean that it didn't happen or it isn't true. It's just not super well documented. Uh unless I bought a book of Jules Verne's letters, and let me tell you, I bought the James Joyce Book of Letters. Fart fart, fart, fart. Yeah, I could read the fucking fart fetish shit, but really, man, Book of Letters are so fucking boring. So no way was I gonna pick that up. No. So but you can still see uh like some similarities in their writing styles and his starting as far back as 1845, where we've discovered the supposed first work of Jules Verne at just the age of seventeen.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_01It was called A Priest in 1839. And the main setting, coincidentally, is based entirely on the school he was attending at the time. The Petite Seminaire des Sont Donation.
SPEAKER_04He did a Tina Belcher friend fiction.
SPEAKER_01No. Whatever the plot, the main character apparently speaks about the school in less than appealing terms. Which makes sense, given that on July 29th, 1846, the 18-year-old Jules Verne would receive his graduating papers with the final grade of good enough. Literally. I didn't know that you could earn that. I should have asked my teachers for that rather than a pass fest. Now the thing is, Pierre Verne had expected his eldest to carry on the family profession. Law. Therefore, Jules was sent away to Paris to study. At least that's the official story.
SPEAKER_04He really went for shopping.
SPEAKER_01You can't believe these bags that I got on such a steal that only paid 400 fucking Leo.
SPEAKER_04Excuse you. No, it went down from 420 euros down to fucking 120. Eat shit. 300 euros off. Of course I was buying it.
SPEAKER_01I bought white bread and some cold cuts and spent like less than 20 bucks on that, and I fed myself for a week. But I think there was an ulterior motive to Jules Verne going to Paris. You see, Caroline was the love of Jules Verne's life. Also, his cousin.
SPEAKER_02She's a boat. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Was she a boat? I didn't see any pictures of her. She could have been a little hefty, yeah. Damn bitch, I want to bring you out to sea and float on your back. Christ. And as much flirtation.
SPEAKER_04You look just like my auntie who looks just like my father.
SPEAKER_01And as much flirtation as was happening over the years through letters, she was getting married to someone she wasn't related to later that year.
SPEAKER_04Good.
SPEAKER_01Now, maybe it's just because I've seen this happen to several of the other authors we've covered on the show. But I think he was doing the whole fresh new start thing that happens when you get shot down. Like, that's just my guess.
SPEAKER_04Oh, that was your cousin.
SPEAKER_01But like, no, he was very fucking distraught.
SPEAKER_04These males who are.
SPEAKER_01Do you think that I know this before going in? Like, I'm just like geared towards like, oh man, can't wait for a bunch of cousin fucker incest when you were covering female writers. Yeah, I know. But they're also gay, which is also a sin. So well, it would turn out that they weren't fucking their cousins.
SPEAKER_04Also, the woman's more writers. Also, not fucking cousins, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well, it would turn out that this may have been the right call after all.
SPEAKER_04Not fucking your cousin is the right call. No, going to Paris.
SPEAKER_01Because it was on his return trip back to Nantes that Jules would fall in love with another woman. Cousin? No. Named Rose Hermione Arnold Gros Setiere. And while he got plenty of writing practice penning some 30 odd poems to her, it seems his infatuation with Rose allowed him to fall away from his studies in Paris. And because Jules Verne didn't pass a woman.
SPEAKER_04Well.
SPEAKER_01And because Jules Verne didn't pass his exams, thus no closer to actually becoming a lawyer, Rose's parents hooked her up with a wealthy landowner, ten years her senior. Woof. Jules would later drunkenly write to his mother, quote, Personally, I shall console myself by killing the first black cat I meet. What the fuck? I'm sure that was a turn of phrase. He's just talking about unlucky, but I don't think he actually was like She dodged a bullet.
SPEAKER_04His cousin dodged a bullet.
SPEAKER_03There's more than one way to skin a cat, they said.
SPEAKER_01Women being married off against their will.
SPEAKER_04Jesus, that's dork.
SPEAKER_01Shut up. He's a brilliant writer. Truly, Jules Verne felt hopeless for the future. He hated that all his friends were getting married except for him. He hated that he felt no excitement in practicing law.
SPEAKER_04Shh.
SPEAKER_01And he felt a particular hatred for his hometown of Nantes, which to him had stolen two prospective partners from him. That's right, blame the town. To assuage his son, Pierre looked to send Jules back to Paris one last time, with the hope that he'd finish his law degree and maybe focus on his career instead. However, this was July of 1848. I know that was a mistake on their part. They didn't think that out. Or the French Revolution of 1830, which inspired the famous painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix. You know, the one with the lady holding up the French flag with her titties out.
SPEAKER_04You know that one, right? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01There's like a little boy, like, Lady, what the fuck? You know, like looking over to her. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That is his first titty, and he is deciding, you know what, maybe I like men.
SPEAKER_01The French Revolution of 1848 started when the last king of France, King Louis Philippe I, was overthrown. Troops were sent to fight the crowds, and Napoleon Bonaparte III won in a democratic election later that year. Again, not the Napoleon. This was like his nephew. Anyway.
SPEAKER_04Running off his uncle's name.
SPEAKER_01That if that's the input you want for it, yep.
SPEAKER_04Anyway, I just Nepo baby.
SPEAKER_01I just thought it was strange that five months into a whole fucking national revolution, Pierre sends his kid to the heart of it all to finish his logic creek. Like what the laws are gonna change more than likely.
SPEAKER_04Well maybe he just was like, you know what? I I don't want to deal with this fucking weirdo right now.
SPEAKER_01He might. He might have. I mean, he did have five kids. Now remember, like, Harriet Beecher's still or something, or like her mom had like 11 fucking children and shit.
SPEAKER_04Worker factory.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like I don't know, five kids is still a lot. It is possible that he's just like, okay, I can't deal with this.
SPEAKER_04He's old enough to like fend for himself. You know what? Go back and learn how to be a lawyer. That's literally. Well, that's what's fucking wild is like he could have had Rose if he had just stayed in fucking school. It's like, I'm sorry. Do you still live in a time where, you know, a parent is more concerned about like the business aspect rather than the true love aspect of a child of their offspring's relationships.
SPEAKER_01Here's the thing though. He would have had Rose if he became a lawyer, possibly, yes.
SPEAKER_04But odds would have been better.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, very much so. But he also was falling away from his law degree because of Rose. Like he he was on the right track, but he was like, oh my god, let me pen you 30 fucking poems.
SPEAKER_04No. I I think that's just a stupid excuse for the kid couldn't hack it.
SPEAKER_01Maybe, maybe.
SPEAKER_04I mean stop blaming. It's not women are not like drugs, alright?
SPEAKER_01Jesus Christ was killed because Judas, the only woman in his group, fucking made out with him in a garden. And that was illegal. Okay. I'm pretty sure. I didn't read the Bible, but I know that's what happened. Fuck, dude. That would actually be that sounds like a classic novel that would come out. Like people yelling about it on Fox News and shit. That sounds great. No, regardless, Jules Verne did find work in an attorney's office while he worked on getting his degree. But he mostly spent his time either reading or going to the theater. And while he was living on his own, I don't think he was, he was never gonna make it. His heart just wasn't in it.
SPEAKER_04Exactly.
SPEAKER_01And while he was living on his own in Paris, he'd often write his parents complaining about either how broke he was or that his stomach was always hurting.
SPEAKER_04Maybe you should fucking work. No despite.
SPEAKER_01No, you will find out. He he clearly does not give a fuck about law. He does not care. And while I figured at first that Jules Verne was just like kind of being a little bitch, I don't think he was a complete hypochondriac. He he actually did have something wrong with him. What it was, we'll never exactly know, but he had like a nerve in his ear that would just spaz out sometimes, and then half his face would be fucking paralyzed. And then it would go away. Like this didn't happen all the time, but it still sucks to be left with a traumatic injury as a as a boat boy. It's like it sucks to be left with something that's just kind of like, oh, shit, fish locked up again.
SPEAKER_04You know, like that's just a traumatic injury as a as a boat boy, because it's like she wasn't on the boat for more than uh like a few hours. Like if I were the fucking captain, like a motherfucking stowaway soccer blue.
SPEAKER_01Here's the Do you think a boat captain actually knows what the cabin boys look like? I don't think so. He's just like, Jimothy? And he's just like, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I know there's not supposed to be three of you, so to be fair, I'm gonna hit all of you.
SPEAKER_01He paid the other boy to stay home. That would suck though if another stowaway actually showed up and just started showing off and shit, like doing really well. He's just like, you motherfucker.
SPEAKER_04See, the one that he paid to stay home still got hit by his parents because they were like, You're supposed to be out making real money, not this actually, not this five dollars to stay home shit.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I'm gonna defend that kid and say, if I were a parent that has to put his kid onto a fucking boat to possibly get molested for 12 months, I'm gonna go ahead and say, Holy shit, did you just make your year's earnings without even getting on the boat?
SPEAKER_04Like, yeah, I fucking found this thing, this autistic kid that loves boats dependent on whether or not Jules Verne actually paid him fairly.
SPEAKER_01That's true. He could have paid him in like fucking dimes and just been like magic fucking beans.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I paid him in licorice. Mummy, daddy, look, feeds us for a week.
SPEAKER_01You fucking idiot. Like, it could have been. Well, in time, Jules would befriend a neighbor in his apartment complex by the name of Aristide Hignard. It turns out they were both interested in theater and sought to write a play of their own, with Verne writing plays and Hignard composing the music.
SPEAKER_04They didn't just write plays, they wrote musicals.
SPEAKER_01Well, okay. Yeah. Now together, they'd collaborate on a few different scripts, which would lead Jules to several different places to promote his work. Specifically, salons. Now I know it sounds kind of like a gay bathhouse, but it's not.
SPEAKER_04Now I know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, a salon back then is what you'd call a place where like you basically just went to hang out, talk, and drink.
SPEAKER_04And they trimmed your hair.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, what do you want? Television wasn't invented yet. So anyway, Sophie Verne, Jules Verne's mother, actually had a friend that ran one of these salons, which is where Jules would end up spending most of his time. Well, it was while he was here in 1849 that Jules would meet with the son of the great Alexander Dumas, the author of such classics as The Three Musketeers and the Count of Monte Cristo. His name was also Alexander Dumas, but we'll just call him Junior. Well, it turns out that Jules and Junior got along very fucking well. To the point that they actually No, stop making the fucking motion, that's not what they were doing. To the point that they actually collaborated on a play called The Broken Straws. And through Junior's nepotism, they had the play performed at the Theatre Historique the very next year. Unfortunately for Pierre Verne, when his 23-year-old son Jules finally received his license in law in 1851, he had already felt his destiny lie in becoming an artist. If you want to speak to the disappointment that parents feel when you become an artist, you feel free. So distraught.
SPEAKER_04Well you have to realize we're Asian. So it was ex especially difficult for her.
SPEAKER_01She's like, oh my god, if you're not gonna become a doctor, that means that you have to either be a maid or a nurse, and that's not. I mean, to be fair, you initially wanted to do like, if I remember correctly, marine biology. Your mom said, No, you're gonna be a doctor, so then you said, fuck you, I'm gonna do art. And that's kind of how that went.
SPEAKER_04It bounced around a lot as a child. Well, I'm sure. It's it's honestly it's insane to have a at artist at one point and was just like she was like, no, they they don't make money, and grade school me was just like thinking about fucking Van Gogh and shit. Like, it's okay, I'll be famous when I'm dead.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's not weird and depressing, but you know.
SPEAKER_04There were always signs that I needed to be medicated against.
SPEAKER_01Well, by his own family's admission, Jules was a great lawyer so long as he actually had to show up to court. But otherwise what does that mean? Like if he was the face fronting lawyer for it, then like he had to work on his shit. Like if he was gonna be presented at court, but otherwise, he was kind of shit at it.
SPEAKER_04Uh just I I don't know. Just the nature of having a job in general means you show up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, no, so here's the thing.
SPEAKER_04This is wild to me. He had He didn't have telecommunication capabilities, he can't fucking work from home with this shit.
SPEAKER_01Well, so here's the thing. He so he had a job at an attorney's office. Okay. He was technically an attorney. Okay. They wouldn't he wasn't anybody's first choice. He was actually great at it so long as he forced his ass into court to defend. Yeah, kinda. But usually if he was stuck in the office, they'd knock on his office door, open it, and he was just usually napping or reading. And that was it. He wasn't actually doing work, he wasn't doing paperwork, he wasn't doing anything.
SPEAKER_04Well, at that point, he if he's got his lawyer's license, then they've got paralegals now.
SPEAKER_01Right, exactly. So that's what I mean. Like he doesn't give a fuck, he's still raking in some bucks. Like now, at the same time, there was a magazine called The Family Museum that put out an ad looking for stories. Not just adventure or fantasy, mind you, but something that could educate the audience as well as entertain.
SPEAKER_04Glauber fiction.
SPEAKER_01Something where, through the exploits of the story's narrator, someone may be able to learn about history or geography or science. The idea interested Jules Fern. So he submitted a story that was set to publish in July of 1851 called Uh what is it? Ace Attorney. Yeah, Phoenix Ray! Holy shit! No. Uh it was called La Amérique du Nord at Hud Historique, la Première Navia de la Marine Mexicaine. Or, in its literal Google translation, North America, historical studies, the first ships of the Mexican Navy. The story is set in 1825, as we follow a sailor named Lieutenant Martinez and his mutiny of a sailing Lieutenant Martinez and his mutiny of a Spanish warship off the coast of Guam. He and his crewmates kill the captain, sailing for the newly independent Mexico, where they plan to sell the ship to the Mexican government. But as they dock and travel by land on their way to Mexico City, Martinez becomes paranoid that some of the men are still loyal to their old captain, and may strike at any moment to exact a revenge. By the end of the story, Martinez's madness drives him to turn on his own co-conspirators before ultimately being plunged from the cliffs above Mexico City down to his death. That's that that's their whole reaction to it.
SPEAKER_04It's a cycle of betrayal. I don't know. Yeah, I know. You just like you betray one guy and then get worried about, you know, other people deciding to betray you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. No, as as entertaining. As entertaining as that story is, I was asking myself though, like, what the hell can anyone learn from this? I mean, like, wasn't that the point to learn something?
SPEAKER_04Did he talk about lizards?
SPEAKER_01No, I honestly I have no I know I have no idea. Everything I look at talks more about the fact that it's a Jules Verne story than the incident it's supposedly based on. Well, so I mean the most I can say is that Verne apparently spoke with someone who participated in the Mexican War of Independence, but beyond that, I don't know if the guy Maritime Law. I don't know if the guy told him about a real account or if he told him like what the cliffs above Mexico City looked like or how a ship sails or what. No idea. I even tried looking for the story myself online. I couldn't find like a good translation.
SPEAKER_04How much was this?
SPEAKER_01Not at all. There's no way it could have been.
SPEAKER_04Because it's a family magazine.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well it's called fucking, what was it, the family cabinet or some shit? Yeah, yeah. The family museum, that's it. Well, so regardless, this story was a success though. And it would lead Jules Verne to write a second short story just a month later in August, titled Science for Families: A Voyage in a Balloon. Now, this story is a lot simpler than the last one. It's about a guy who's about to lift off in a hot air balloon, but the moment he does, another guy jumps in and tells him, I'm gonna take this thing straight up until it kills us.
SPEAKER_04Why is that so funny?
SPEAKER_01Because it's fucking weird. So this one is much simpler to tell you. But it tells you what the lesson is. Like while they lift up into the atmosphere, the main character narrates the history of air travel and what will happen to their bodies as the air gets thinner. Simple. Like that's honestly that that sounds fine. I would much rather read that one than the one before. But Jules Verne, he was hooked. He looked for more writing opportunities, but couldn't really find Educational Writing. Yeah, a bit. So he looked to his friend, Alexander Dumas Jr., who put him in contact with the new director of the theater historique, the place where their play had performed just a year prior.
SPEAKER_04Well, did it do well, by the way?
SPEAKER_01Uh it doesn't really I couldn't find anything that says one way or another.
SPEAKER_04Medling reviews.
SPEAKER_01Well, I would assume so. It's honestly like, hey, here's two guys, and one of them is a famous guy's son that he didn't really talk to. Like I looked into it and like Alexander Dumas Sr. fucking abandoned this kid. Like he's just literally by name. It's not his nephew. Yeah, it's his son. It's just by name. Right, I'm thinking of Napoleon. Yeah, no, it's by name only, literally. It was just like I'm sure But also for like a play that has never like they've never performed anything else. They've never written anything that's been performed before. I'm sure they gave him like a week, a couple weeks maybe at best. But nothing that like had them being like, oh my god, right, is something more. Well, this new director of the Theatre Historique, uh he didn't know anyone who was looking to publish any stories. But the theater did have an opening for a secretary. Now granted, it didn't pay Jack shit, but Vern still jumped at the chance, since it would offer him more of an opportunity to write than, you know, being a lawyer. He had to have been making fucking so much more. So much more than a secretary at a fucking theater. He's a fucking moron. Oh my god. But baby, that's passion. Now, this news, of course, devastated his father, Pierre. He spent this fucking money.
SPEAKER_04TD stay home for a week from work.
SPEAKER_01He stayed home for a week. No, he spent all this fucking money to get his kid through law school, and he's abandoning everything to go work at a fucking theater. So Pierre writes to him, stop with all this writing nonsense, lawyer up, quit Facebook, hit the gym. But Jules tells him, I can't. There's no jobs for lawyers out there.
SPEAKER_04I can't, Daddy, I love him.
SPEAKER_01So once again, his father puts his money where his mouth is and actually buys Jules his very own practice back in his hometown of Nantes. And all this poor guy wants is for his son to not waste his fucking degree. But even after everything, after buying him his own office and basically handing him a career, Jules writes back, quote, Am I not right to follow my own instincts? It's because I know who I am that I realize what I can be one day. And then he clicked his heels in the air while his dad shot himself. No. But I did uh I did end up reading a biography on Jules Verne that's written by his own grandson, and even he has this line in here that's like he was poor by his own choice.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Word, brother, word.
SPEAKER_04I not word.
SPEAKER_01So while Jules Verne would spend the next couple years writing shitty little comedies for the theater, ones that would never even make it to the stage.
SPEAKER_04It's because he put too many math jokes in.
SPEAKER_01He keeps himself entertained in France's National Library, the Bibliothek Nationale de France.
SPEAKER_04I was there.
SPEAKER_01Great story.
SPEAKER_04No, like I can sound like an asshole. I didn't realize we were there. We were just leaving some shop and we were just like, look, we really need to use a bathroom. And they're like, I'm so sorry we don't have one for customers. But if you go across the street, the library there, the national library.
SPEAKER_01I thought your mom was looking for glass in the street to slit her fucking wrists.
SPEAKER_04She just willingly went in. Your mom willingly went to a library. Yeah, I took a fucking selfie like my mom into a fucking library.
SPEAKER_01I wish that you could have gotten your mom into a library without piss or shit getting involved.
SPEAKER_04I've ever been to the library here with her. No. Like as a child and needing to like go to school materials.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure that they could get you a.
SPEAKER_04If there was a parental figure going to the library with me, it was my father.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no. Your mom's just like, I wasn't born to read. I can't read. Fuck that. So he goes to the bibliothèque where he continues to learn anything he can about great. About science regardless of the subject. Somewhere along the way, Jules runs into a man named Jacques Arago. He is a well-known explorer, recognized for his detailed trips around the world. And the two strike up a friendship. And it's while learning about Arago's adventures that Verne realizes the story he wrote in the past, the one about the Mexican Navy and the hot air balloon.
SPEAKER_05Oh.
SPEAKER_01They may have been written with a focus on learning and adventure as a prompt for these family magazines, but why couldn't that be the case all the time? Why not just write what he was interested in? A mix of science and fiction. This would, of course, lead Jules Verne to invent a new kind of story. One he called The Roman de la Science. Or the novel of science. Of course, this never this name never took off, but you and I would know it together as the science fiction.
SPEAKER_04Well Was he really the first?
SPEAKER_01Technically, no. Like there are other people that like But he made it more well known.
SPEAKER_04Well, there Is that why he's a landmark, or is it just he basically made it his whole career?
SPEAKER_01Meanwhile, there was like, I want to say like Frankenstein technically came out before that. That is that's true. It's technically science fiction. There were several stories in the past that did use science in their fix. Percy Shelley. But they never like she didn't fuck a cousin. Oh I'm thinking. No, no, she didn't.
SPEAKER_04She was not related to Percy Shelley at all. Percy.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, she was not. But um, I I did have to think about it because people back then were just really into fucking family, you know? Like I I was thinking like Lord Byron absolutely like did and a sister.
SPEAKER_04I mean did European because these are all white writers. Did European population never like run out? Did the I mean did the European population never bounce back from the plague? Is that why there's so much cousin fucking?
SPEAKER_01What would that have to do with cousin fucking though?
SPEAKER_04Because the plague decimated you guys.
SPEAKER_01Like so many to the point that like there were three families that were running about or something.
SPEAKER_04And like all you had to do was fuck cousins.
SPEAKER_01No. No, I honestly don't know what their excuse is. I've got like one girl cousin, was never into her saying I have no idea. Jesus.
SPEAKER_04So then what's up with these guys?
SPEAKER_02I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Ask a fucking cousin fucker. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you, man. I don't know. I've never had the example.
SPEAKER_04That just fuck cousins. Cousin fuckers.
SPEAKER_01I don't know, man.
SPEAKER_04And people from Alabama.
SPEAKER_01Hey, don't mention Alabama on this podcast. We've got a roll.
SPEAKER_04Oh, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01Now let's go into the trigger warnings.
unknownOh, hang on.
SPEAKER_01Alright, now the beer unintended.
SPEAKER_04Wait, is that really real about Alabama?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, we have a whole trigger warning whenever you bring up Alabama.
SPEAKER_04Why?
SPEAKER_01Because it's fucking Alabama. Some people may not want to hear the name. Place fucking sucks. Ooh, nice and shaking. Oh baby.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, watching the grocery man put the beers in a bag. Oh, they just go before he fucking I was looking at that like, man, I'm really glad we're not gonna drink these till later.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So anyway, as Verne begins to form this new genre, uh the uh roman de la science.
SPEAKER_04Science fiction.
SPEAKER_01Nope. He managed to. He manages to publish a couple more stories for the magazine, The Family Museum. But he and the editor get into some big fight, something that no one is ever sure what exactly it was about.
SPEAKER_04Don't you look at my cousin that way?
SPEAKER_01That's my woman. And Verne declares that he'll never publish a story in their magazine again for as long as he lives. Which he doesn't. But unfortunately, Jules Verne has no backup plan and he has no idea where the fuck else to publish.
SPEAKER_04Sounds exactly like him so far.
SPEAKER_01Honestly, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Fuck this career that brings me more money. I'm gonna work in the theater.
SPEAKER_01Daddy, I need a check. Yeah. A couple years later, in May of 1856, the 28-year-old Jules Verne would be the best man in a friend's wedding. He stayed with the bride's family and found himself infatuated with the bride's sister. It's not gonna work. A twenty-six-year-old widow with two young daughters, whose name was Honorine Anne Hebe Du France DeVion.
SPEAKER_04Her name was had the word Anne in it?
SPEAKER_01Uh Anne.
SPEAKER_04Oh, Anne.
SPEAKER_01Honorine Anne Hebe Du Fren. Hebe Du Fren Deviani. Now, of course, being a broke bitch is no way to find oneself married in high society Paris. That's true. But Verne had luckily made an impression on Honorine's family, and her brother was down to start a business with Verne as a stockbroker.
SPEAKER_04Oh no.
SPEAKER_01But they would need someone to help finance their venture.
SPEAKER_02Oh no. Now who could Nicole, who could possibly do that? Tell me Pierre Vern.
SPEAKER_01Pierre was quite outspoken about being fed up with his son's bullshit. So it was As he should be with some reluctance that yes.
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_01He still sent his son money to open up a business. I mean he probably did. The quant. He sent he sent his son money to open up a business with his girlfriend's brother just a few weeks after meeting him. I'm gonna just honestly, I I'm not for hitting children. Look, I'm not for it.
SPEAKER_04He's not a child anymore. You can bite him like a man.
SPEAKER_01I'm beating a man's ass.
SPEAKER_00That's what's going on. He's 28. I'm beating a full grain a full grown man. His frontal lobe is developed. I can bounce his forehead against the fucking concrete.
SPEAKER_04You don't need to belt anymore. Use your fist.
SPEAKER_01Just kick the shit out of him. He just comes back all swollen. Did you get the check from your dad? Yeah. Now to his credit, Jules Verne was actually very serious about this new business, but admittedly, he was doing it all to impress Honorine's parents. According to a friend of his, Verne had better personality than he did business sense. He would often wake up early to hit the library before work, where he would then quickly look up scientific facts, write them down on a little note card, go to the office, and then just continue writing adventure stories in his office instead of doing whatever the fuck he was actually supposed to be doing. Yeah, it sounds like when he was an attorney. But I I guess Honorine's brother carried the business for two because her parents saw enough promise in Jules that they accepted his marriage proposal. On January 10th, 1857, the two were wed, just two months after the business began, and eight months after their first meeting.
SPEAKER_04I wonder what the societal standard was? Yeah, because she is a widow.
SPEAKER_01She is. Well, I I I mean, and granted I only know this based off of honestly BBC stories and shit that have run in the background while I'm playing fucking games on my phone that you were watching, but they always seem like, oh, a widow? That's a broken woman right there. They're just like, yeah. So I don't know how true that is. Because honestly, I mean, okay, I'm not gonna say that anybody who's a widowed is a broken woman. Yes, but it depends on what age you are.
SPEAKER_04I feel like they seem like, you know, they prioritize.
SPEAKER_01Here's the thing a 26-year-old with two kids in today's society that's like on Tinder is like oh fuck. But usually But for back then, yeah, for back then, these people were getting married at like 16, 17.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, Jane Austen thought 20 years six-year-olds were old as fuck.
SPEAKER_01Like, if we if we were to go on Tinder for people our own age and saw that they had two kids, it's like, yeah, no, that was a whole lifetime ago. Like shit happens, dude. Like so a year and a half later, in July of 1858, Vern's old neighbor and composer friend, Aristide Hignard, uh you remember that guy? He'll he was an apartment complex next to him, and they like wrote a little pro uh play together where they did like he did the writing, he did the music. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04They tried to, yeah, musicals.
SPEAKER_01So Aristide Hignard and Hignard's brother offered Jules the chance to take a voyage sailing around the British Isles to Scotland with them. This had been, I mean, that's a fucking boat right there. This had been Jules Verne's dream since he was a fucking kid. So of course he jumped on the chance. This was his first time leaving France. He fucking loved it.
SPEAKER_04I forgot he was French.
SPEAKER_01I was starting to like the guy. I forgot he was French.
SPEAKER_04No, not like that.
SPEAKER_01He wrote a whole travelogue called The Backwards to Britain that he never bothered to publish. And then a few years later, in 1861, Hignard I don't know how to do it without it. Hignard. It's H-I-G-N-A-R-D. Hignard, probably. But something in me is just like, no, it's gotta be Scandinavian. Hignard Hignard. So Hignard and his brother took Verne to Scandinavia. Oh, there you go. Unfortunately, as the crew arrived in Denmark, Jules Verne would have to travel back home as fast as he could, and ultimately miss the birth of his only child on August 3rd, 1861. A child they named Michel Jean-Pierre Verne. I feel like taking the trip while your wife is pregnant He shouldn't have maybe a little don't do that. That that's on him, I think. But I feel like Well, also he's getting a letter like, hey, the baby's about to come, and it's like, oh, it took like a month for this letter to get here. I better jump on a boat at that point. Well, drink a shot with the boys.
SPEAKER_04She had to have been pregnant when he left, otherwise that's not his, you know?
SPEAKER_00So it's like you idiot.
SPEAKER_04I know, but that's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00Like, why the fuck would you do that? Like, no, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04If his fatherhood track record is like his work track record, maybe his wife is just like, you know what? You're gonna be useless to me. Get out of here. You know what?
SPEAKER_01It could be that. It really could be. I see.
SPEAKER_04And just like a letter like, hey FYI, I don't know if you remember, but you know, the the baby's by the way.
SPEAKER_01This kid is yours, technically. Yeah. I mean, okay, so here's the thing. Like, Dan, I brought it up to serial killer Dan again. And I was like, hey, you remember that you like proposed going to Bosnia sometime? I was like, Yeah, I'm still down for that. And it's like, okay, alright, you know, and it's so it's like, but like a flight Bosnia and Erzegovina. Yes, they serve you a cigarette with the coffee. That's very cool. But it's like that that trip, like what, a day is lost at most? Like months. If you were pregnant or something, I'm like, hey, I might take a trip with Dan, and the baby's not expected to be due any time now. I'm gonna be gone for like a week or something. That's a drop in the bucket compared to I'm sailing over to the mainland. You know, stupid. Also, fucking people died back then taking a boat. Like he almost left her widowed a second time. No, ultimately, these trips to Scotland and Scandinavia would inspire Vern to go beyond.
SPEAKER_04She's got a road trip too, because if he's coming from like Paris.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah, that is true. But these trips would inspire Vern to go beyond writing a short story and focus on his very first novel. He would base it on the exploits of a photographer he'd met named Felix Nadar, who in 1858 took the first ever aerial photographs. And not to lose any time in the development process, Felix did this by actually having his lab, like his photo lab, with him in a hot air balloon, where he went through the whole chemical process of developing the film and everything, while the whole thing was just jiggling about up in the fucking atmosphere. Felix was also the first person to shoot photos underground, setting up a lighting system in the Paris Catacombs. Oh, you guys should have gone to the Paris Catacombs. It would have been a cool they weren't interested. Really? Oh man. Yeah. You were literally the only person on that trip who was interested in like museums.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01Either way, the man would even build his own air balloon, a massive one he appropriately named the giant, which unfortunately crashed on its second ever flight. This incident, however, would be the inspiration to Vern's first novel titled Five Weeks in a Balloon.
SPEAKER_04Oh.
SPEAKER_01I know. You were thinking of another one. It comes a lot later.
SPEAKER_04Okay. He just has to take a look at the floor. Right. Okay, no, no.
SPEAKER_01Okay, go ahead and what what what book were you thinking of?
SPEAKER_04Was he around the world in 80 days? Or was am I imagining that?
SPEAKER_01And I'm pissed off about it after I read the book. Not a single hot air balloon in the entire novel.
SPEAKER_04Oh. Not a single fucking How does he get around the world in 80 days?
SPEAKER_01Mostly train.
SPEAKER_04Oh.
SPEAKER_01We'll talk about. Well, he takes like a boat. It doesn't matter. Anyway. Also, he goes the other way. Um, so the problem was after writing the whole thing out, Jules Verne realized that he had a whole ass novel without a publisher. It would take him a year before a mutual friend would introduce him to a man named Pierre Jules Hetzel. No. Hetzel had already published the likes of Victor Hugo, Emily Zola, and Honore de Balzac. Basically sh don't laugh at his name. Balzac is a proud name. Basically, the biggest names in France in the day. Landing a contract with this guy would be huge. And luckily, Jules Verne had just made the kind of story he was looking to publish. One that, just as Jules wanted, was one that could teach as well as entertain. Hetzel agreed to publish Jules Verne's story in his upcoming magazine. But even in its first draft, Hetzel could tell Five Weeks in a Balloon was not perfect by any means. Yes?
SPEAKER_04You said this was gonna be a two-parter?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Is that the entire script, or do you just have it?
SPEAKER_01No, this is the first part.
SPEAKER_04Ow!
SPEAKER_01I know, now you know how feel how fucking Caleb feels. We're not even halfway through. This is 18 pages. Yeah. Did you uh eat dinner? Yeah, you want to eat dinner?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Alright. Alright, we took a little break and now I'm uh uh podcasting here with fucking Patrick Bateman. You got a sheet mask on. Awww. That's not a good impression. Awww. That's not a good impression. Alright, so Hetzel agreed to publish Jules Verne's story in his upcoming magazine. But even in its first draft, Hetzel could tell five weeks in a balloon was not perfect by any means. So he came up with a series of edits to see just how many Verne could work into a story. Now, this is where an editor really comes in. You see, usually an author would be able to fit, say, three of the five required edits into a story, and the editor helps you plan the rest. Maybe you don't even need all of the edits done if the others you manage to work in well enough. But in just two weeks, Verne had come back with every item checked off the list, essentially rewriting the entire story. It was only the second draft because it became the final edition of what we have today. The thing is, Hetzel didn't really have a magazine to publish it like he said he did. At least not yet. He wanted to secure stories before it would launch, and something he called Magazine of Education and Recreation. But knowing that Verne's story would change the game, he quickly drew up a contract which would pay Jules Verne a salary in return for a certain amount of pages per year. On top of that, Hetzel would pay Verne a flat rate for publishing rights to each book. And Jules Verne, who never really had a steady income, immediately jumped on the contract. One they would revisit every few years. Yeah. You're right, you probably should read it a little better too. But it was a contract that at least and here's where Hetzel is good in this. They he actually allowed them to revisit like every few years for bigger and better opportunities. Like he wasn't a complete kind of him. Yeah, I know. He wasn't a complete dick. No, this was actually a very progressive thing for Hetzel to do at the time. He was a big proponent in authors' rights in an age when publishers would usually just buy the rights for the novels outright. But Hetzel believed that an author should earn royalties based on their stories just as much as the publishers that would get rich off of them for years afterwards. I mean, of course.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Now something It's so obvious. Yeah. But human rights business minded at all. Yeah. Oh yeah, this was the phrase I was teaching Dean on our trip was just it's people over profits is the ideal, but the reality is profits over people.
SPEAKER_01Yes, unless you uh kill the right people. Now, sometime between the writing of Verne's first work and its actual publication, Jules Verne would become good friends with his work's inspiration, the photographer Felix Nadar. Together, they discovered a shared love of space travel. Or at this point the theories surrounding it. So in 1862, Verne and Nadar established the Society for the Encouragement of Aerial Locomotion by Means of Heavier than air machines.
SPEAKER_04Is there an acronym for that?
SPEAKER_01SEAL SEAL MOM. SEAL MOM. SEAL MOMS NADAR would serve as president while Verne acted as secretary. How many meetings they actually had or how many members they collected, I can't really say. Regardless.
SPEAKER_04Five.
SPEAKER_01I don't think it even got that high. Regardless, when Pierre Jules Hurt uh Hatzel finally released his magazine of education and recreation, Jules Verne's career really began. Where five weeks in a balloon would hit the stands on January 31, 1863. The story follows Dr. Samuel Ferguson, accompanied by his faithful manservant Joe and a friend of his named Dick Kennedy as they set out on an adventure across the barely explored African continent in a hydrogen balloon. Their goal? If Burton's name sounds familiar to anyone, he's the guy who translated the Kama Sutra into English and went tribe to tribe measuring their dicks. For more information a bit. For more information on this, you can go to episode 69 of this podcast, of course.
SPEAKER_04Seven days a week.
SPEAKER_01I think he did it more than seven. Now, anyway, throughout their adventures, Dr. Ferguson, Joe, and Dick managed to get themselves into trouble. You're gonna have to get over the name Dick. It was very common back in the year.
SPEAKER_04We were just talking about measuring them, like literally.
SPEAKER_01They managed to get themselves into trouble with these little episodic adventures, like getting attacked by vultures while they're in the air, or running out of water, or rescuing a missionary from tribal sacrifice. It's it's yeah. I I didn't read this one to be honest, but it sounds no, it sounds like the consensus on the internet is that 400 pages is a bit too fucking long for this story.
SPEAKER_04That is incr that's crazy.
SPEAKER_01It's it's skippable even by tools from fans standards.
SPEAKER_04If you're talking about like an adventure of the week, it probably worked really well for how it was being published.
SPEAKER_01Well, and remember, magazines magazines, yeah, but magazines back then were thick too. Were they? Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04Because the it would be like fucking 30 pages per chapter and it's also like coming out, you know, regularly. So people aren't reading it in one sitting. They're just huh, I wonder what's uh going on with the balloon boys.
SPEAKER_01The balloon boys. No, it's true.
SPEAKER_04It honestly tune in next issue next month.
SPEAKER_01See, that's a thing that I always thought was funny when we were like collecting comics and shit, was like a comic book is uh like without the ads, around 20 to 22 pages, right? And it was coming out monthly, and yet like in Japan, they were coming out weekly, being fucking like 50 to 70 pages each, no ads.
SPEAKER_04Well, do American comic book artists get like assistance?
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_04I I imagine they have to be holerists and letterers.
SPEAKER_01I you know, not really. I'm sure that they have some assistance, but like, but it was always wild to me because it was like, you know, with a with like a manga or something, it's like, yeah, week by week I can remember the story. But like the 20 odd pages that you would get in American comic books and you wait a month in between, like it was so funny because like Scott Snyder was ending his run on Batman. And so, like, to celebrate like the final run, I went back and reread all of Scott Snyder's run of Batman. Yeah, and there was so much shit in there that makes so much better sense when you're reading it all in a straight line.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Like I get that.
SPEAKER_01He did this whole thing with like, was it Dr. Bloom or Mr. Bloom or something like that? You remember the flat man? Yeah, yeah, but he looked like fucking uh string bean. What's his name? Um Slender Man, you know, and shit like that. There's a whole backstory about like losing a son in the Gulf War and shit like that. I had I did not remember any of that shit.
SPEAKER_04Like Yeah, that's true. Like, some of those stories would have benefited like uh an all-in-a-one shot kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01You know, I will say for a magazine of that length, monthly makes sense because it's like you are gonna read through over a hundred pages worth of shit. And granted, most of it you're probably gonna skip, like, nah, not into it, but either way, yeah. What amazed audiences the most, even this early on, was just how accurate Jules Verne was at predicting future scientific discoveries. For instance, in this book, he not only guessed that the location of the source of the Nile River was in Uganda, he also correctly described the tribes west of Lake Victoria, whose diet consisted of curdled milk. These are things which would only be confirmed later that year, after five weeks in a balloon had already been published. And once explorer John Hanning Speak released the findings of his African exploration.
SPEAKER_04He was a witch.
SPEAKER_01Uh you know, but here's the thing throughout his career.
SPEAKER_04Jules Stradomus.
SPEAKER_01Throughout his career, Jules would always have this almost prophetic sense of telling what discover discoveries lay in store for the future of science. Hell, when Five Weeks in a Balloon came out, not only did the adventure aspect draw attention from people of all ages, but legit geographers and cartographers of his day were impressed by how accurate Jules Verne was with his facts. Thing is, he was friends with a lot of scientists. He liked hanging out at the library with explorers. And shit. And as it would turn out, he and John Hanning speak hung out after he got back from Africa months prior to this. So Jules Verne actually had insider knowledge that he decided to put in his book.
SPEAKER_04Well then he's got that memory. If he's interested in it, he'll apply himself.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_04Not like the law.
SPEAKER_01Not like I would when a guy's like, yeah, they just take turdled milk and chug it down like cottage cheese, and I'd be like, I'm forgetting that as soon as I leave the library. That's gross.
SPEAKER_04Really? Because that would stick in my brain, like not in what you want. Oh, really? But then this is like, as you say, maybe this is before the invention of cottage cheese. Who decided to like eat in various stages of like dude?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I I mean this was before pasteurization, too, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_04I have no idea anymore. I don't remember. I don't know the timeline.
SPEAKER_01You know what though? You can tell me the date, and as soon as I walk out of the store, I'm gonna fucking forget it because I don't give a shit.
SPEAKER_04It's like cottage cheese. Maybe we should get some.
SPEAKER_01I do too. For breakfast and cottage cheese and fruits, man. You know what?
SPEAKER_04Honestly, I kind of like it savory. Like this is what I do. I add like a little a touch more salt, some black pepper, and put it on some crackers. Oh no shit.
SPEAKER_01It sounds delightful. Don't we have some cottage cheese?
SPEAKER_04Well, I I don't know how long it's been in the fridge, but I'm giving it to the I was gonna say I treat it kind of like um like a ricotta cheese where it's like you could push it savory or you could push it sweet.
SPEAKER_01Man, this is my fucking kind of podcast right now. Let's just talk about fucking milks and cheese. Now Vern did try, he did try to sell the previous book that he had written earlier to Hetzel, the travelogue backwards to Britain, about his time sailing through the British Isles. But Hetzel declined the project, basically hoping.
SPEAKER_04Didn't he have to cut that trip short because of his child?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but like he still used his like experiences to like Scotland and shit like that to like So he made it some of the British Yeah, yeah. He he he made it work.
SPEAKER_04Oh, right. You said they were they're like, hey, you know what? Now that we're done with the British Isles, how about Finland or Norway or something?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Scandinavia. And he had to cut it short. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So basically, he had to cancel his trip extension.
SPEAKER_01He had to cut his boys' trip. And really, that's a sacred law. And Nicole, you never cut a boys' trip.
SPEAKER_04Just cut your boys off, fucker.
SPEAKER_01But either way, Hetzel declined his project, basically hoping for something more daring and adventurous after the success of Five Weeks in a Balloon.
SPEAKER_04Hetzel knew Seven Weeks in a Balloon. Whoa shit. This time we're going to Scandinavia.
SPEAKER_01Hetzel knew the contract he had with Verne was a lucrative one, so he didn't want Verne's career to fizzle out too fast. Instead, Jules Verne hands him another science fiction story, one freshly written called Paris in the Twentieth Century. Now the story is of sixteen-year-old Michel Dufren Du Duf Dufrenoy. Michel Dufendoy in the far-flung future of nineteen sixty.
SPEAKER_04Oh shit.
SPEAKER_01He's a recent graduate from outside the metropolis of Paris. So he decides to find his future in the big city. However, as Michel comes to find Paris so far evolved from the rest of society is a bleak sign of what's to come for the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_04You know what's so funny that that's how it's described, because I feel like I've seen with the you know, in relation to the heat wave that's hitting Europe right now, is I I feel like I've seen um a lot of commentary being like, oh yeah, in France, or at least in Paris, they have to stick to, you know, when they do building do new buildings or renovations, they have to consider the other buildings around it to like build in in the same style. You're telling me like you have to get a conditioning machine, yeah. You have to make sure that your ACL from your landlord or your neighbor's at least not if it's if you want the you know the ones that hang out the window, but like if it's as long as it's in your apartment, that's fine, but if it's hanging out the window, you need outward approval from like neighbors and shit. In in landlords or whatever, and it just seems very like uh. So it's just funny that you know Jules Verne is describing it as like it's so far evolved when it's like I feel like certain neighborhoods, it's like, no, we're keeping it in that revolutionary era architecture down to the last we're pretending like we're still in the 19th century.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that's true.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that's how the that's probably how they keep the practice of guillotine building alive, is just no no, we can't modern protest, we have to revolu French revolution protests.
SPEAKER_01To be fair, as long as there are politicians, there will always be guillotine building. Now, when Michelle goes to the library, he finds that not only do they not carry the works of masters such as Victor Hugo, they don't even know who Victor Hugo is.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_01In fact, the library carries nothing more than books designed to teach technology and business, basically manuals, while any study of art has largely been tossed away. However, Michelle finds a man who claims to be his long-lost uncle. Uncle Huginon was seen as a black sheep in Michelle's family. Ulfur is a love of the arts. And although Michel knows nothing of him, Uncle Huginon has been keeping a close eye on Michelle in his studies. Most of the novel takes place here at the library and is mostly just a long list of predictions that Jules Verne had. Like war being unneeded, since technology has found a way for one country to wipe out another instantaneously, which leads all countries to a stalemate.
SPEAKER_04I feel like man. This is just so much more accurate than Nostradambus.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, yes. But that man was just a just a fucking shady salesman, too, but you know. But it's like Well, as as such, this would mean to accurately predict things like the Cold War of the 1960s, though we unfortunately do not seem to care who has nuclear w weapons in the real world today. We're just gonna keep killing each other no matter what. Anyway, as Michel gains friends and lovers throughout the novel, he finds a home in Paris, as the rest of the world quickly adopts the city's priorities on the automation of absolutely everything. However, as time goes on, a terribly cold winter kills the country's crops, and Michel finds his friends abandoning Paris, leaving him all alone. No one seems to be able to fix the machines that machines themselves have been maintaining for several years, and the harsh cold kills off any idea of future farming. All the rivers in Europe freeze solid, and people begin to starve.
SPEAKER_04The one wrong prediction. It's really, really cold in Paris.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. As Michel loses his mind from a slow starvation, he believes himself a target by the quote unquote demon of electricity. As the story ends, Michel walks in circles around an old cemetery before finally dying in the snow. The book would surprisingly predict a number of inventions, including cars powered by gasoline, trains guided by magnetic rails, fax machines, electric streetlights, buildings made of glass, and a worldwide communication network one would be inconsiderate to not see as the internet. Anyway, Hetzel declined the project. Said it made the future look too pessimistic, as if the year 1960 was gonna like it was gonna be shit or something.
SPEAKER_04They are not a half of it.
SPEAKER_01He told Verne, quote, I was not expecting perfection to repeat. I knew that you were attempting the impossible, but I was hoping for something better. He told Verne that he wasn't covering any new ground with the plot, and that writers have had bad shit to say about the future for decades. More specifically, Hetzel said, quote, I am surprised at you. The story is lackluster and lifeless. Paris in the twentieth century wouldn't be published until 1994. Instead, Jules Verne would introduce The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, which would be serialized in Hetzel's magazine over the next few years, and later adapted to the stage to extremely bad reviews.
SPEAKER_05Oh no.
SPEAKER_01According to Verne's own grandson, quote, Hollywood could hardly do worse. I have never been able to fathom why Verne let them do it, or why he did, which is worse.
SPEAKER_04Money.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah. Yet instead of focusing on the bad reviews, Jules Verne whiled away on one of his more groundbreak breaking works. Specifically in 1864, Journey to the Center of the Earth.
SPEAKER_04With Brendan Fraser.
SPEAKER_01Was he in that one?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01God man, what a time. I just I I imagine the rock in most of these because he really was just going for anything Disney owned, you know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, this was this one was Brendan Fraser.
SPEAKER_01Did you watch it? No. I'm sure it was shit. Like he's having a I love him. He's had you love his character in in real life. He's I love He does not have a good career. He's doing fine now.
SPEAKER_04But let's do a fucking I love God, what was his name in the mummy?
SPEAKER_01The Rock.
SPEAKER_04No, no, I'm talking about Brendan Fraser. How dare you?
SPEAKER_01But his character? Yeah. I don't fucking know. It's every everyone just knows it as like, oh yeah, that's uh Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss. Yeah, that's yeah, that's all anybody knows. Nobody gives a shit about their names. She got thick ass, he got fucking good hammies. Like, what what else do you need to know? Quote Looking back to all that has occurred to me since that eventful day, I am scarcely able to believe in the real scarcely shut up. Able to believe in the reality of my adventures. They were they were truly so wonderful that even now I am bewildered when I think of them.
SPEAKER_04Did they do that one on Wishbone?
SPEAKER_01I didn't watch Wishbone. I really didn't watch anything that was like real life. I I only watched animated shit.
SPEAKER_04I mean Wishbone was the exception because it was all through the perspective of a dog.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Really cute dog.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I was one that had a dog in real life, so I don't know.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah. We didn't have a dog at that point yet.
SPEAKER_01Really? You didn't have Milo?
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay. Well, anyway, the story follows our hero Axel and his uncle, the German professor. The German professor Otto Leidenbrock, who stumbles upon the mystery. If you need to think of this in terms of dogs, that's fine. Uncle Otto has come upon an ancient Icelandic riddle which reads, quote, Go down into the crater of Snafeld's Jokel, which Scartaurus's shadow caresses just before the Calends of July, O daring traveller, and you'll make it to the center of the earth.
SPEAKER_03I've done so.
SPEAKER_01According to Uncle Otto, however, this isn't a riddle at all, but an instruction. So they depart to Iceland immediately, the professor believing this could be the clue to some sort of major discovery. But Axel thinks the whole thing is horseshit. Regardless, they arrive in Reykjavik, where they hire a rugged outdoorsman by the name of Hans Bjelki to take them up the mountain. That's a good one. I'm not gonna lie, shut up though. For days, they traverse into the empty caverns of the volcano Sneisfjelsjokel, which is a real volcano in Iceland, but uh today it's really only remembered as being part of this book. Anyway, as the trio travels further and further into the Earth's crust, it's cuter when they're dogs. Yeah, yeah. I get it. Axel and the professor debate over things like atmospheric studies and geological surveys, because this is still very much a Jules Verne novel, and he wants you to learn something, even if it'll all get disproven in like 30 years' time.
SPEAKER_04As they're talking, they're sniffing butts.
SPEAKER_01Why?
SPEAKER_04Because they're dogs.
SPEAKER_01Alright. Well, eventually the crew runs into an underground spring, and following the water vein, come across an entire underwater ocean. Our three heroes manage to scrap together a raft made from wood that seems almost petrified. And as the group What?
SPEAKER_04I'm just imagining them building their raft and they're like, oh, that's a good stick.
SPEAKER_01And as the group doggy paddles out to sea, they tried to guess what countries they're passing from below, coming to the conclusion that they're below the United Kingdom itself. And it's while they're on this journey that they're nearly thrown asunder by a plesiosaur and an Ichythe Ichithangawangosaur and a battle to the death. Quote, two liquid columns rose to a vast height above the level of the sea, into which they fell with a terrific crash, waking up the echoes of that awful place.
SPEAKER_03We stood still, surprised, stupefied, terror stricken at the sight of this group of fearful marine monsters, more hideous in the reality than in my dream.
SPEAKER_01They were of supernatural dimensions. The very smallest of the whole party could with ease have crushed our raft and ourselves with a single bite. Eventually, our crew was thrown to the shores of an ancient animal graveyard, where they find the remains of pterodactyls, mastodons, and yes, even a man. And yet, as they venture further into the petrified forest, they come across something that no one was expecting. Quote, fourteen feet high, covered with coarse hair, of a blackish brown, the hair on the arms, from the shoulder to the elbow joints pointing downwards, while that from the wrist to the elbow pointed upwards, it's advanced. Its arms were as long as its body, while its legs were prodigious. It had thick, long and sharply pointed teeth, like a mammoth's saw. It struck its breast as it came on, smelling and sniffing, reminding me of the stories we read in our early childhood of giants who ate the flesh of men and little boys. Suddenly it stopped. My heart beat wildly, for I was conscious that, somehow or other, the fearful monster had smelled me out and was peering about with its hideous eyes to try and discover my whereabouts.
SPEAKER_04Sounds like a family reunion for me.
SPEAKER_01My reading, which as a rule is a blessing, but which on this occasion seemed momentarily to prove a curse, told me the real truth. It was the ape Gygens, the antidiluvian gorilla. Basically, they find a 14-foot man with multiple heads who watches over a party of mastodons like a shepherd. Jules Verne found early inspiration in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and a lot of his early work ends with these cosmic horrors that really show that. Anyway, once the crew sees this, they of course run back to the boat and row back to where they came from. Unfortunately, their little raft is sucked into a whirlpool which acts like a black hole, transporting them out the top of the volcano Stromboli in Sicily. The trio's writings about their adventures go on to receive much acclaim where everyone gets famous and no one tries to think about the terrifying race of multi-headed giants that lurk beneath the earth. The end.
SPEAKER_04Yay.
SPEAKER_01How do you like it?
SPEAKER_04They all had a doggy biscuit.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_01A what had a dog?
SPEAKER_04I'm still remote thinking of them as dogs. One's a German Shepherd, one is of course a Jack Russell Terrier in honor of the OG wishbone. I don't know what the other one is. Maybe a golden retriever.
SPEAKER_01Otto, I think, is more of like a I don't know, something like a Malamute.
SPEAKER_04You're right. He's he's more of like a mountain dog.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's like Burmius Mountain Dog or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh.
SPEAKER_04Jules Verne for nephew is the terrier. No, well, of course.
SPEAKER_01Jules Verne would well, okay. No, I would say German Shepherd for Otto, the guy that they fucking get, or it was his name, Otto? It doesn't matter. But either way, like the the guy that they hire has to be sturdy, but an uncle an uncle dog is always going to be like a Saint Bernard, you know?
SPEAKER_04Really?
SPEAKER_01Like, oh, we're going to get the buccano. Yeah, that's true. Anyway. Anyways. Jules Verne would actually implement several life experiences into this work. An adventure brought on by Mysterious Runes was inspired by Edgar Al Po uh Edgar Allan Poe. Thank you. By Edgar Allan Poe's short story, The Gold Bug. The locations, although based in Iceland, were inspired by Verne's trip with his friends to Scotland. And the science of the Earth's crust, while now largely disproven, was inspired by Humphrey Davies' theories on geochemistry. Verne's publisher Hetzel was actually in the middle of publishing a book of Humphrey Davies, so either introduced Jules Verne to Davy or handed over the research to Jules Verne himself. But again, this made Verne seem like some sort of scientific genius who was wasting his time writing fiction. As ever though, Verne was more interested in the quick advancements of science happening around him than he was in doing any explorations himself. In particular, he was fascinated by the possibility of human flight. And so was Felix Nadar and the rest of the society for the encouragement of aerial locomotion by means of heavier-than-air machines, which possibly still just consisted of Felix Nadar and Jules Verne. Either way, their long discussions on the topic brought up a debate and what they thought it would take to send a man to the moon. Believe it or not, this topic seemed to start with a conversation about the American Civil War, of all things. Apparently, technology for bigger and badder cannons were being implemented during the war, and so the method of launching a man out of a cannon just seemed feasible to them. It just seems like they absolutely were uh introducing liquor during their conversations there at Seal Mom. Now the result was Jules Verne's next novel, published the next year in 1865. His classic From the Earth to the Moon, or in its more formal title, From the Earth to the Moon. A direct route in 97 hours, 20 minutes. I don't think that was correct, though.
SPEAKER_04I I like that he has it down to the minute, though.
SPEAKER_01I calculated it. No, our story begins at the Baltimore Gun Club, where a bunch of men debate on whether or not you could shoot a man to the moon if you put him in a gun big enough. Unfortunately, this is mostly what conversations with with my friends at the bars are like.
SPEAKER_05Oh no.
SPEAKER_01Unfortunately, this is what the entire book is about. It's about constructing men. No, it's about constructing the cannon itself in the shell that they would put the man in. And then like the very last chapter is them actually firing the goddamn thing and sending three dudes into space. It was like Verne just wrote down his formulas for how it could possibly be done, and then forgot to actually get his characters to, you know, get from the Earth to the moon. I'm not a big fan of this one, if you could tell. But I guess enough people were because this is a highly reg this is highly regarded as like a Jules Verne classic, and he wrote a sequel four years later.
SPEAKER_04So didn't they make a movie?
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, pr fucking probably.
SPEAKER_04If you're thinking of he told me that, and then the Smashing Pumpkins referenced it in the one music video when I was younger. George Millet just kind of freaked me out. The the jumping guys at the Yeah, the little demons and shit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04They're what I'm enjoying the song and then seeing those guys and getting freaked out, like, what the fuck is that? But I grade school me, like, uh no.
SPEAKER_01If there was a better time for you to not listen to the Smashing Pumpkins, that probably would have been it. But I don't want to give the impression that Jules Verne is a bad writer here. He actually has great prose. It's just that as far as stories go, he sometimes get like a little too focused on the science aspect of his science fiction. And I feel that I can accurately tell you, if you're reading a Jules Verne novel and you don't like it from the beginning, don't fucking finish it. I never ran into a Jules Verne story where it was somehow miraculously saved by its third act. It's either consistently great or consistently subpar. But I do think he's a great writer. For instance, I loved this passage from his 1874 novel, Adventures in the Land of the Behemoth, which I do recommend. After their departure, the Bushman's predictions were found to be entirely realized. All was demolished, and the soil was brown and bare. Every branch was stripped to utter nakedness. It was like a sudden winter settling in the height of summer, or like the dropping of a desert into the midst of a land of plenty. The Oriental proverb which describes the devastating fury of the Osmanlis might justly be applied to these locusts where the Turk has passed, the grass springs up no more. Anyway, Verne's popularity grew as a household name, and Hetzel knew it. He began re-releasing everything Jules Verne ever wrote under newer, more beautiful editions. He titled Verne's books as if they were from a series, with a big banner on the top of each cover declaring them Voyagers Extraordinaires. Hetzel and Verne would continue this formula for success by working very closely for each book. Verne would write out the big ideas and Hetzel would give him edits to make the book more consumer friendly. For instance, if Jules Verne wasn't a Christian, he was a deist. And Hetzel wasn't Christian, he was an atheist. But he still insisted that Verne implement Christian values into his books. Why? So moms would be more likely to approve their kids reading them rather than simply seeing them as nonsense. God damn right, and it worked. Jules Verne was finally making a living as an author for the first time in his life.
SPEAKER_04How old was he?
SPEAKER_01Eh. Unfortunately, what Jules Verne really wanted was to be taken seriously as an artist. And in his day, that never really happened. People knew who he was, sure, and they liked his novels, but no matter how famous he became, he was typecast as a children's author. Which honestly isn't fair. His stories have fantastical elements, sure, but they can be enjoyed by people of all ages. And he was coming up with scientific hypotheses that would be proven true outside of his own lifetime.
SPEAKER_04Was he coming up with them, or was he just getting sneak peeks at other people's notes? I know that's he literally just said he hung out with a lot of scientists.
SPEAKER_01But I think he was coming up with a lot of his own shit too. Like he did come up with like verified things, at least verified in their own day, but he was coming up with hypotheses for things, I think, because he valued himself as a scientist, even though he wasn't one. However, high society authors in his day looked down on him, quote unquote, high society. In fact, there was this prestigious council.
SPEAKER_04He doesn't write enough about fucking cousins.
SPEAKER_01There was this prestigious council called the Academie Francaise, which is basically just a club that, if you're part of it, shows you are a true French author. It's like getting to sit on the Jedi Council. Well, Jules Verne applied several times, and unfortunately, they rejected his application just as much. As Jules would say in his later years, quote, the great regret of my life is that I have never taken any place in French literature. I think a big reason for this was something that would happen during his day. His books were very popular, but the highest-selling editions were the ones that were abridged. Now I don't know if Hetzel was doing this himself, or if he sold the rights to other publishers, or if this all came from bootleg copies of Jules Verne's novels, but publishers began taking out all the science-y bits, because admittedly, they are the most boring bits. In turn, these condensed novels became something more akin to children's adventure stories.
SPEAKER_04See, I dis okay. I of course would probably be like, oh, that's so dry. But at the same time, you are altering the creator's original intent. And I am always against that.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And however, I will tell you this though. The thing is, is that like you know I buy bootleg movies. Yeah. Because they're cheaper than getting them on Amazon.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, and then who even makes like physical media PCs anymore? That's the issue.
SPEAKER_01Right. Which is mainly my issue. And to be fair, I'm also getting bootleg copies of um fucking movies that have been out of print and that I just I'm just like, no, I want more samurai and fucking Yakuza and Kaiju movies. No, that's the argument for bootleggers as well. Right, right.
SPEAKER_04They're the only ones who care about preserving lost media. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay.
SPEAKER_01And that that actually destroys my argument. Because I was gonna say, no, books back then were like the only source of entertainment that you could bring home. So it's like, yeah, no, of course there's bootleggers. Of course.
SPEAKER_04Book book bootleg bookers.
SPEAKER_01Leg boogers?
SPEAKER_04Leg boop boop booklookers.
SPEAKER_01You know when I let the pee just kind of harden down my leg and I roll them up and I say, ah, leg boogers, you know? Anyway. Um, but it was a problem that would continue to happen, cutting out all these sciencey bits, especially in Vern's most famous tale, which just so happened to be his next novel. But hey, at least he was still raking in the dough. It allowed Verne to move his family to better housing in a coastal town called Le Crotoy, as well as purchasing a boat he deemed the Saint Michel after his son. Finally, no one could tell him not to sail. And it was from this that Verne would write the boat, I'll do what I want. He would write a new novel in admiration for his old love of the sea, saying, I'm in love with this assembly of nails and planks the way one is in love with a mistress when one is twenty.
SPEAKER_04Or your cousin.
SPEAKER_01And I shall be more faithful to my boat. From March of eighteen sixty nine to June of eighteen seventy, Jules Verne would cement his legacy as the godfather of science fiction with twenty thousand leagues under the sea. God damn right. Quote The year eighteen sixty six was signalized by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. But to mention rumors which agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind, even in the interior of continents, seafaring men were particularly excited. Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and the governments of several states on the two continents, were deeply interested in the matter. For some time past, vessels had been met by an enormous thing, a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger, more rapid in its movements than a whale. The facts relating to this apparition, entered in various logbooks, agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a cetacean, it surpassed in size of all those hitherto classified in science.
SPEAKER_04I'm so sorry to say that like I know of I knew of these things before I saw the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I'm not gonna lie, like then there's just like, oh dang, I recognize these names and titles watching the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but then that like you know what's really funny?
SPEAKER_01Not only do I plan on covering all the people, like, or at least the authors of the stories therein in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but also like Alan Moore really did good research into these books too.
SPEAKER_04I believe it. It's just too bad the people that made the film.
SPEAKER_01Dude, okay, so some people have like said that it's a it's a cult classic. Like when you walk back. No, it's not, dude, it's still boring as fuck. It's not good. It's not a good movie.
SPEAKER_04I remember like young me just like, oh, this is okay, I guess. And then like older me like finding out, no, the world panned this movie, and then I'm like bored one day, and I put it on like, is it that bad? Oh booty. Right, no, trust me.
SPEAKER_01We like we like bad movies. I don't know how you felt about the 90s Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando Island of Dr. Moreau. I fucking love it. I get it. So much fun. It's terrible. It's such a good movie. That movie though, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, fuck!
SPEAKER_04Wasn't that Sean Connery's last movie?
SPEAKER_01I I think technically he did something before that, but that's still never going to quell the the hurt in my heart about Dennis Hopper's last movie being that terrible animated wolf movie, Alpha and Omega. And that was his last Wolf. So, ships around the world have run into a mysterious beast. One that's supposedly bigger than any whale, faster too, and disappears with no evidence of it having ever been there. We're getting there. The US government decides to do what it does best and shoehorn itself into anything that doesn't concern them. It is Professor Arenax, our hero, who's tasked with accompanying the search party aboard their ship, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and their captain, strangely a real person named David Farragut. Captain Farragut served in the War of 1812 against the British when he was just 11 years old.
SPEAKER_02I kill I scot my first man!
SPEAKER_01And when he was an adult, he brought Union control against the Confederates down the Mississippi River all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. So he he's fucking knows it. So it's he and the USS Abraham Lincoln that runs into the mysterious beast off the coast of Japan after nearly five months of searching. Captain Farragut attacks it with cannon fire, and Aranax, his faithful manservant, which most of his stories seem to have, and the ship's harpooner are all thrown from the ship when the monster sprays a powerful beam of water that damages the ship. As the USS Abraham Lincoln sails away in fright, the sea beast breaks through the water upon our three castaways, but then a hatch opens. The beast, it turns out, is a gigantic submarine. Eight sailors take the men inside. They're locked in a cell, believing themselves to be waiting for execution, yet the food they're served is more than could be expected for any prisoner's meal. Amongst the dishes which were brought to us, I recognized several fish delicately dressed, but of some, although excellent, I could give no opinion, neither could I tell to what kingdom they belonged, whether animal or vegetable. As to the dinner service, it was elegant and in perfect taste. Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, plate, had a letter engraved on it, with a motto above it, of which this is an exact facimile. Mobilis and Mobily N.
SPEAKER_00Bloobity Boobity Shut up, you're shut up, you're ruining it.
SPEAKER_04The magic words. Oh the magic word in the fall.
SPEAKER_01Um googly googly. Googly googly googly be gone. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Mobly mobly moobly.
SPEAKER_01Man, I fucking prime that for 4K. I'm so excited for that to come get delivered. Such a good movie. And the next day, the men are greeted by the ship's commander, but not to enact any sort of friendship. He threatens our heroes, telling them that since he was attacked by their ship, he therefore shall rightly see these men as a hostile threat. Because of this, he says that he can do with them whatever he like. He can even stop. Nope, he's not fucking him. There's gotta be Jules Verne fucking AU out there on Corn. Of course there is a lot of people. No, I mean like on Pornhub. There's gotta be. He can even abandon them in the open water where he found them, should he choose to do. In Aaron X, he tells the man, quote, It might be the right of a savage, but not that of a civilized man.
SPEAKER_03To which the man replies, I am not what you call a civilized man. I have done with society entirely, for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating. I do not therefore obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude to them before me again.
SPEAKER_01Kinda hurt. The captives agree to their new captain's conditions, and Aranax asks the man how he wishes to be identified. I am nothing to you but Captain Nemo. And you and your acquaintance.
SPEAKER_04Maybe say it normal.
SPEAKER_01No, it's okay, I got this.
SPEAKER_03I am nothing to you but Captain Nemo. And you and your companions are nothing to me but the passengers of the Nautilus.
SPEAKER_01The name Nemo is Latin for no one, by the way, which just adds to his sexiness.
SPEAKER_04Still imagining like him as like Jack Russell Terrier. That's how I'm reading the Odyssey, to be honest. The wishbone version or no, the like uh I'm reading an actual Odyssey translation, but I'm still imagining it as if it if as if it were a wishbone book.
SPEAKER_01So Isn't that kind of weird how the story opens up with this dog fucking a woman for the last ten years, you freak.
SPEAKER_04No, I just replace it with cuddling.
SPEAKER_01God, you're sad.
SPEAKER_04So although Captain Nemo greets them with Odysseus just rolls on his back and Cersei rubs his belly.
SPEAKER_01So although Captain Nemo greets them with threats. I almost said treats. Greets them with threats. All three of our heroes are treated with the utmost respect. The ship has a ginormous library, is littered with treasures found on the ocean floor. And they even make their own cigars made from some sort of seaweed. That actually sounds kind of dope.
SPEAKER_04They got arts and crafts.
SPEAKER_01Above all, the Nautilus is powered completely by electricity. Remember, that was a really incredible idea back then. Anyway, the rest of the book is fairly episodic. Exploring underwater forests, the sunken city of Atlantis, and an expedition to the South Pole. All while Captain Nemo seems to lose his mind a little more as time goes on. Yes?
SPEAKER_04Is this still being published like episodically? Excuse me, like in the magazine. Oh, in the magazine? It's not like published as one book in its entirety. That's a great question.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, his ultimate goal so it no, it was it was published episodically uh for about a year-ish.
SPEAKER_04Alright. I'm just curious.
SPEAKER_01It's Captain Nemo's ultimate goal to fund revolutions across the world with the riches he finds at the bottoms of the sea.
SPEAKER_04Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_01All in the name of some just unknown quest for revenge. But what everyone really remembers It's against the system. Honestly, yes.
SPEAKER_04Fuck yeah.
SPEAKER_01What everyone really remembers about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Squid. Fight with the giant squids. Yeah. And yes, it is squids plural.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_01I think the idea that the Nautilus just goes up against just like one big squid is from the 1954 Disney movie. I wouldn't know. I haven't seen it.
SPEAKER_04I haven't seen it either. But either way, when it's fortunately, I've only seen the only adaptation of a Captain Nemo I've ever seen is League of Extraordinary Mission.
SPEAKER_01Oh, League of Okay, okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I have no idea if Wishbone ever did uh 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
SPEAKER_01I want to see Wishbone do Blood Meridian. Anyway, when a squid gets caught in the ship's rudders, the men have to go topside and fight these motherfuckers off with hatchets. One of the bastards even reaches inside the hatch and snatches a dude out. Quote, I looked in my turn and could not repress a gesture of disgust. Before my eyes was a horrible monster worthy to figure in the m Legends of the Marvelous. It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight yards long. Don't give me that look. I know it's called the cuttlefish, but it doesn't cuddle. It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes, its eight arms, or rather feet fixed to its head, that have given the name of cephalopod to these animals. We're twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the Fury's hair. It's awesome, but there's not really like a whole lot to say about this scene, honestly. It's not like they were writing out fight choreography back then, it just kinda happens. It's kind of short. Well, the book ends when the Nautilus is hunted down once more by the USS Abraham Lincoln, and Captain Nemo gets more crazed than ever. During a planned escape by our three castaways, their lifeboat is struck up in the middle of a maelstrom, and any fighting that may have happened between the Nautilus and the USS Abraham Lincoln are unknown, as Aranax loses consciousness and misses the whole thing. Aranax closes the story by basically saying, So where did the Nautilus go? Who was Captain Nemo? What is the fate of me and these men as we lie stranded in Norway? I don't know.
SPEAKER_04I love it. I love how you can just tell he was like, you know what? I'm tired. And I'm on to the next thing. I want to learn about rocks now instead of the ocean.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, my new book, Pigeons. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So anyway, they took just they just took a nap at the end.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, pretty much. The story was a hit from the very beginning. And both Verne and Hetzel. Yeah, yeah. Both Vern and Hetzel knew that it would be. However, they equally wanted control over the story, which would cause quite a bit of friction seven years into their partnership. Verne wanted Captain Nemo to be some Polish guy whose parents were killed by Russians during a revolt, with the end goal of taking revenge on the entirety of Russia. But Hetzel was like, You can't make Nemo hate Russians, dude. Those guys make up a chunk of our sales. How about you make him fight against, like, the slave trade or something? To which Verne wrote Hetzel, quote, If I can't explain his hatred, I won't. I'll say nothing about the reasons for his hatred, about his former life, his nationality, and so on, and if necessary, I'll change the ending. But to suppose for a moment that Nemo was living as he does out of hatred for slavery and to rid the seas of slave ships which no longer exist would be wrong headed in my opinion. You say that what he does is a moral infamy. I refute that. Again, remember what the original idea for the book was all about. A Polish aristocrat whose daughters have been raped, whose wife has been hacked to death, whose father has been tortured and murdered, whose friends have died in Siberia, and whose nationality is due to vanish from Europe under the tyranny of Russians. If that man has not the right to sink Russian frigates wherever he finds them, vengeance is just an empty word. In his situation, I would sink them without remorse. Anyone who does not feel as I do on this issue can never have known what it is to hate. I get what he's saying.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I also do think now that I'm rereading this, I think he was immensely influenced by the Count of Monte Cristo. Now we have not covered Alexander Dumas as of yet, but the Count of Monte Cristo is basically about three guys fucking over the narrator of the story. But when the narrator escapes his impossible situation, he doesn't lead a vengeance tale of I'm going to kill these three guys.
SPEAKER_00His story is essentially I'm not just gonna kill them, I gotta kill their aunts, their uncles, their fucking nephews, the dogs in their village. I'm gonna kill everybody, they're fucking prostitutes, I'm gonna kill them.
SPEAKER_01Like, and so I get what you're like, it sounds like he's trying. Trying to do that version of the story. Like, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_04Like, he wanted to make his own really big hater.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Which honestly, I it's a great hatering hater that ever was.
SPEAKER_01Love the Count of Monte Cristo, and he is for sure the world's biggest hater in literature.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, hell yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now, Jules Verne and Hetzel. Honestly, hey, I know you don't see genetics, apparently. To be a hater.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, my mom was like talking about her mother's side of the family. My grandmother on my mom's side, sweetest old lady. But apparently the rest of her family, biggest haters. They will talk shit.
SPEAKER_01What from from uh Lola's side?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, from Lola Seling's side, it's just, you know, nothing but the biggest haters.
SPEAKER_01No shit. Oh.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, just because yeah, Lola Saling was sweet. Oh, you weren't there. You weren't out.
SPEAKER_01No, because this was during her France trip, more than likely.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, no, no. She was telling me and my sister and and my cousin about it, just like, oh yeah, you know, your Lola's sister was just, you know, they're just sitting there like, dang, that dog is so ugly over there in the neighbor's yard. And Lola looks out like there's no dog there. It's just the neighbor. And she's like, Yeah, I know, bitch is ugly. For no fucking reason. Apparently. Yeah. They're just the biggest haters, just me.
SPEAKER_01It's so funny because like the the words in Tagalog are like more like impactful. But when you do translate like Tagalog insults into English, they do sound like old maritime type insults. They're always just like, look at that scurvy curr over there. You know, like it is always like that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, Jules Verne and Hetzel, they went back and forth on this whole disagreement about um Captain Nemo enough times that Verne decided to just make Nemo's backstory just completely ambiguous. Like the reader can make his own backstory whatever they wanted. The tensions Hetzel and Verne faced with each other during the writing of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea changed the way they'd work together forever. Before this, Verne took Hetzel's recommendations almost like a command, seeing Hetzel as some sort of surrogate father figure.
SPEAKER_04Now, he was almost completely because his real dad didn't approve of him following his dreams.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, now he was he was almost completely resistant to Hetzel's ideas, just like he was with his real father. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_04See a little bit of success, and then you get a big head. Now one thing now you're too good to write about Jack Russell Terriers.
SPEAKER_01One thing that still confuses a lot of people to this day, about 20,000 leagues under the sea, is the title. A league is about two to three miles long. To put that number somewhere in the middle, let's call it two and a half. So it's twenty thousand times two and a half, which is fifty thousand miles. That's over twice as big as the Earth. So when they talk about going twenty thousand leagues under the seat, they're not talking about just going straight down. They're saying that's how far they traveled over the course of the book.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Right. The confusion about the title was actually spoofed on Saturday Night Live back in the 90s, where Kelsey Grammar plays Captain Nemo, and he's trying to get Mike Myers and Rob Schneider to understand the measurements. Quote, the entire crew of the Nautilus, all 20,000 leagues of them, searched for Captain Nigo for over 20,000 leagues and nights. 20,000 leagues later, they still hadn't found a trace of Captain Nemo, the man they called old 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. That feels like it was written by Mike Myers.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Anyway, it's often misreported that Jules Verne actually created the concept of the submarine for this book, which is just plain and correct. Rudimentary submarines were first used all the way back in 1620, and modern ones had even been used during the Civil War. The American Civil War.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I remember that.
SPEAKER_01Jules Verne was inspired in his design of the Nautilus by a French submarine he'd seen at 1867. Was it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, like the sequel or something.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it probably was. They should do more of those. Like I know they kind of fun. Yeah, they kind of suck ass, but they're still fun. Like who gives a shit?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. It doesn't need to be like I don't know. It's it's like everybody expects popcorn films to be art. And it's like, are you an idiot? Exactly. Do you not read the label?
SPEAKER_01Dude, it I haven't even seen the last Indiana Jones movie. I already knew like know that another National Treasure would be more fun than that. I want it's gonna suck.
SPEAKER_02It's just a good old-fashioned adventure movie.
SPEAKER_01Oh fucking. So instead. Jules Verne was inspired in his design of the Nautilus by a French submarine he'd seen at the 1867 Exposition Universelle called The Plunger. I'm sure it's like plungier or some shit like that, but still. It it pretty much means exactly what you think.
SPEAKER_04The plunger. 20,000 leagues under the toilet, you bitch.
SPEAKER_01Into the ass water. He even named the Nautilus after an existing American submarine built in 1800. But I will say the innovations he made for the submarine in this book were again way ahead of their time. Like using ballast tanks to move the ship up and down, as well as electric propulsion. That was all his idea. One funny thing about Verne's influence of the Nautilus, however, shows evidence in Captain Nemo's motto, mobilis in mobile, which in Latin means moving within a moving element. You see, there was a commander of a Civil War era submarine called the C S the CSS Alabama. Not USS as that would stand for United States ship, but CSS for Confederate State Ship. Anyway, the CSS Alabama was commanded by a man named Raphael Semes. And Sems was from a town in Alabama called Mobile. Mobilis in Mobile? Huh? And Captain Nemo had parts of the Nautilus built in Mobile. Sems was even branded a pirate by Abraham Lincoln and pursued by none other than Captain Farragut. Nemo was branded a pirate by Captain Farragut and pursued by the USS Abraham Lincoln. Sems once took shelter in an empty volcano to hide from his enemies. Nemo took shelter in an empty volcano to do the same. Sems had his last stand in the town of Cherbourg, France. Nemo was said to have battled in Cherbourg, France. Coincidence?
SPEAKER_04We have to steal the Declaration of Independence to prove it. We're gonna suck off New Cage of John Wilkes Booth's family. Because I think that was the fucking plot of the thing.
SPEAKER_01I think Abraham Lincoln's head just did that. Even the squid encounter was said to have been based on a real event as well. On November 17th, 1861, the French ship Alecton sailed out near the Spanish Canary Allen Islands, Alans, the Islands on its on its way to Guyana. It wasn't long before a lookout called for an odd shape under the water, and it was swimming right for them. Of course, sailors have had their rumors about sea monsters since forever, but the scientific community wouldn't even acknowledge the existence of the giant squid for another seventeen years, when the body of one washed up on the shores of Thimble Tickle Bay in 1878.
SPEAKER_04Oh my. Hey, do you s do were people eating squid back then? You know, fucking probably. Do you think giant squid would taste like regular squid?
SPEAKER_01That's a good question, but I do think so. I feel like it would. Why wouldn't it? But I think that like probably somebody would I you'd have to definitely fuck with the temperature and shit like that.
SPEAKER_04Well, yeah, it's it's giant. Of course the cooking time's gonna be different.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Do you think a man tastes different than pig?
SPEAKER_04Nothing.
SPEAKER_01You wanna find out? Duncan. Now we wouldn't even have live footage of a giant squid until 2002. Woo! So when the captain of the Alecton saw this giant squid underneath the water.
SPEAKER_04Wait, are we still talking about a book or is this just current events in the street? This is current events. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_01He saw a giant squid under the water and he had one thought on his mind.
SPEAKER_04Tell Jules Verne.
SPEAKER_01We gotta shoot it. His men fired muskets and harpoons into the water, which seemed to have little effect against the beast. But eventually the crew managed to lasso the squid's fins at the top of its head, which unfortunately just yanked the fucking top of its head right the fuck off before the creature just swam away. Absolutely died like half an hour afterwards. Overall, I'd say this is a story about a curious little fishy coming to see what the boat was all about, and then a group of fucking guys just attacked it and dismembered it. But the rumors of their encounter were much different than what really happened. For years afterwards, the stories of the Electon's run-in with the fearsome kraken seemed to permeate throughout the ports, with Jules Verne himself being a believer in their stories. Now, believe it or not, we've only covered the first seven years of Jules Verne's career. This was a man who released at the rate of about a book a year. So we aren't going to cover them all. Even though there are some real winning titles out there like Michael Strogoff or Dick Sand, a captain at 15. However, the man off the man of Sands the man was responsible for a lot of classic science fiction. So join us next episode as we go over the remainder of Jules Verne's life, along with some other of his classic works. My sources today. Jules Verne, a biography by Jean Jules Verne, translated by Roger Greaves, Taplinger Publishing Company, Inc., 1976. Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne, translated by Richard Howard, Random House Inc., 1996. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, translated by Richard Baldick. E.P. Dutton and Company. Shh, he's a real person you can't make fun of him. He might still be alive. And Company, Inc., 1970. From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, translated by Edward Roth, Dover Thrift Edition, 2019. Adventures in the Land of the Behemoth by Jules Verne, Translator Unknown, Henry L. Shepherd and Company, Second American Edition, Variant A, 14th, 1874. 20,000 Leagues Under Sea by Jules Verne, Watermel Classic, 2001. How do you feel?
SPEAKER_04I want to watch an adventure movie now.
SPEAKER_01We're fucking I mean, you're jet lagged. I'm uh Saturday. It's only 9 30. It's less than that.
SPEAKER_04Let's watch an adventure movie.
SPEAKER_01We don't have fucking national treasure, which kind of sucks.
SPEAKER_04Oh no, we can, because you know what? I can uh mirror my phone screen on our TV because I got Disney Plus there. Oh, and they have both the National Treasures. That's right.
SPEAKER_02We can watch. Are you stealing Disney Plus from your sister?
SPEAKER_04Hell yeah, does she have Apple Plus? I don't know. Okay.
SPEAKER_01I feel like she would. I feel like because she's a she's got like uh I I really want to see the monarch show. Yeah, I really want to see that. There's also supposed to be a Beastie Boys like mini docuseries on there and shit.
SPEAKER_04I'm down for that.
SPEAKER_01Because you know, when uh Widow Widows Bay Windows Bay, whatever the fuck it is, people are like going ape shit about it. I I don't know anything about it, but it's like a comedy horror, and it's supposed to be really good to a TV show again.
SPEAKER_04We're really bad at watching TV. I know, dude.
SPEAKER_01I'm not good with TV.
SPEAKER_04I know. And it's too bad because that first season of Scream Queens was great, it's hilarious. Yeah. There's a young Glenn Powell there.
SPEAKER_01I always forget. Is Glenn Powell a man or a woman?
SPEAKER_04He's Chad Radwell.
SPEAKER_01Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04The Bimbo.
SPEAKER_01Now who am I thinking of that has a manly name but is also a woman? Is it another Glen? I guess it doesn't matter. Anyway, until next time.