Caleb Can't Read
Caleb Can't Read
Episode 92: Jules Verne Pt. 2
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Sacrebleu! Join us as we go through the remainder of Jules Verne's life, including some of the most notable works from his twilight years, as well as his ever-straining relationship with his son, a failed assassination attempt from his nephew, and our general thoughts on Jackie Chan. Hon hon!
Your eyes not lazy. Welcome to Caleb Can't Read. I'm Jordan Rabel.
SPEAKER_01I'm Nicole Rabel.
SPEAKER_00I don't think there's anything to really segue us into this. Um, I'm fine.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Last year. You know how we are Dragon Ball Z.
SPEAKER_00You know how I am because fucking We were together the whole day. Went out to breakfast. At a great breakfast.
SPEAKER_01There was a very period of time where we weren't together. Yeah, macho with my sister.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you mean just like in I thought you meant in the grand scheme of things, like in life. No, yeah. No, I d you you went and hung out with your sister and I fucking watched a uh found footage movie. It was good. It was alright.
SPEAKER_01It was alright. It was alright. It was alright.
SPEAKER_00Alright, well, you know, let's get started. In our last episode, we began the life of Jules Gabriel Verne, who refused the high-paying career of becoming a lawyer by any means necessary. After his father Pierre paid for years worth of schooling opportunities and even bought him his own fucking law firm, Jules. Jules decided what he really wanted to do that was right. With scientists being published right alongside him through publisher Pierre Jules Hetzel, as well as just generally hanging out at the local library to listen to old explorers' tall tales, Jules Verne would become known as the godfather of science fiction. And while sci-fi's stories had been written in the past, no one had dedicated so much towards perfecting its craft. In our last episode, we covered Ju uh several Jules Verne classics, including Five Weeks in a Balloon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and possibly his most well-known novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
SPEAKER_01Do they ever cover how they went to the bathroom? Spending five weeks in the balloon.
SPEAKER_00They weren't in the balloon the whole time. Like they touched down on Earth. We talked about it, like they you know, they had adventures in the balloon, but that was just the main source of travel. They went like Alright, fine. They dropped the they fucking caught their dukes and they fucking tossed him out. Is that what you want to hear? Just like me fucking shitting in the shower and just tossing it into the toilet. Is that what you want to hear? Yeah. Good.
SPEAKER_01Well How'd they do it in the submarine?
SPEAKER_00Any other qu they fucking ate it. Now do you have any other questions before we get started? No? Alright. How'd they go in the center of the earth? How'd they go in the center of the earth? They fucking in each other's butts. Alright. And now we've come to Vern with his newfound fame. Though while the money he was making may have given him some security in life, he was still working his ass off on these novels. Not only was he doing a shitload of scientific research to make his sci-fi novels more sci than fi, he was still producing these books at the rate of about one a year. To focus more on his work, the 42-year-old Jules Verne, his 40-year-old wife Honorine, and their nine-year-old son Michel moved away from the busy city life of Paris for the serene, quiet, coastal village of Le Crotoy. I mean Jules assumed he'd be able to get a little more work done without all that noise, right? Unfortunately, his little boy Michel, whom he regarded as the terror of Le Crotey, turned out to be quite the handful. Not because he was worse than any other kid his age, but because Vern's wife Honorine thought all his little misbehavings were funny. Which you know, not quite what a mother is supposed to do. Which was a weird reaction for Honorine because according to everyone else, she was sort of like the jumpy high strung type. You may remember that Honorine was actually widowed with two young girls when she first met Jules, but they got married off to some wealthy types well, and and they're essentially gonna be out of the story for a while. Yeah. To counteract the constant bothering of his wife and son, Jules Verne would just sometimes take his boat, the Saint Michelle, which he named after his son, and just fucking leave for long periods of time to write in the solitude of the sea.
SPEAKER_01In one of her long That sounds kind of fun, actually.
SPEAKER_00It sounds like a really good practice to not murder your wife and son with a hammer.
SPEAKER_01It does sound like you know, maybe you shouldn't Maybe you shouldn't be together.
SPEAKER_00I yeah, you know You know what?
SPEAKER_01Sometimes you just you just shouldn't be together.
SPEAKER_00You just couldn't do it.
SPEAKER_01Like if you find yourself like Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean she was that's the thing, is like back then though, it's like she's widowed. That was the only way that she got out of another marriage. That's just how it was done back in the day. You couldn't really just like leave and do like fucking the having the kid every other weekend. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So I guess he w I don't know. Long story short, he was caught in it. In one of her long, worrying letters, Onorim contacted Jules Verne's publisher Hetzel, accusing the work he was putting him through for driving Jules mad. Quote As soon as he sits down, he's up again. He complains about this state of affairs, and I'm the one he complains to. What can I do? What can I say? I just weep and feel disheartened. When the house annoys him and overtires him, he takes his boat and goes away. Most of the time I don't know where he is. Did Jules write to you about going away? Did you get a letter from him last Tuesday? Please let me know. He was very sad. Perhaps he told you what was on his mind. In my opinion, the worst thing my husband ever did was to leave Paris. He is too much on his own here. He is always by himself. Goodbye, dear friend. Forgive me and pity me. My husband is slipping away from me. Help me to hold on to him. I would leave too. I'd get it. Don't start doing that.
SPEAKER_01Make me I something about how you read that and like the contents of that letter just makes me think of a whitest kids you know skit.
SPEAKER_00Of what?
SPEAKER_01Just I don't know. Whenever they make it have impressions of like annoying women.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, which is usually their thing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01I like them, but they're always We've got better shit to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, it's i I I have noticed that with Whitest Kids You Know. It's like, oh, it's just a bunch of mid to young 20 somethings complaining about women being annoying, you know?
SPEAKER_01I mean not.
SPEAKER_00It is. It is. There's never like a a a woman in that show that they're playing that's of the right mind, you know?
SPEAKER_01Actually, one because I was a fan, too. So I watched a lot of people. Um but like one skit in particular, like it was like a, you know, the women characters were very being very reasonable, just having like a quiet discussion of like, you know, like maternity leave and paternal leave in Europe versus over here. And the comedy was coming from their boyfriends, their dates, accidentally touching feet, like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they also made gay jokes. Okay, fair. Because it was of the time. Yeah, because of the time, gays are just like women, and they're also ridiculous. Anyway, so I'm sure that's what you were going for. Uh no, I I have run.
SPEAKER_01They make fun of minorities.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, don't worry, they make fun of everybody. Minorities, women.
SPEAKER_01I'm sorry I forgot to silence my.
SPEAKER_00I did too. Somehow in 1870, Jules Verne would find the time to write a book called Around the Moon. It was a sequel to From the Earth to the Moon that he apparently felt was needed once he realizes that he ended the book with three guys getting shot in a giant bullet towards our moon with no conceivable way to bring them back. Which they do, in case you were wondering. But it was I you know what, man, I didn't like it. I didn't I didn't I didn't write it down. Uh the the basically the trajectory, he'd he sciences it all out with the fucking um the gravity of the moon and basically doing a lunar slingshot. Yeah, he he did that. Uh well it was also in this year of 1870 that France and Prussia would get into a bit of a scuffle. The Franco-Prussian War itself would only last about six months, but while it ended in Prussian victory, it would force France to reform their empire into a republic. The whole ordeal lost Verne some valuable riding time. With Le Cretoy being a coastal town, Verne decided to strap a cannon onto the Saint Michel and send his wife and kid to the city of Amiens. Unfortunately, while the Prussians never made it to Le Cretoy, they did occupy Amiens, where four Prussian soldiers decided to occupy the Verne household. Luckily, nothing rapey ever happened, but they did force Honorine to cook them their meals, which she packed with lots of rice to make them constipated.
SPEAKER_01I hey, that's fucking that's a that really like a French thing to do.
SPEAKER_00You want to go beast, but instead it's on boo-boo. Jules also got to witness a public execution which seemed to really affect him for some reason.
SPEAKER_01Wait, so did he get a lot of writing done during the war since uh his kid and wife were being held hostage and wherever?
SPEAKER_00Honestly, the same amount of writing that he did, which is already pretty impressive to do like a book a year, basically.
SPEAKER_01I think so.
SPEAKER_00But with his kid and wife out of there, of course he fucking well, yeah.
SPEAKER_01How do you do it without AI?
SPEAKER_00But hey, he got knighted that year, so that's nice. Uh something that his father, Pierre, at least got to see before he passed away later the next year at the age of 72.
SPEAKER_01See dad, I made something of myself.
SPEAKER_00Honestly, yeah, it's it that's as best of a, you know, see dad, it wasn't just a phase as he really could have ever made, but it's a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01If Pierre was an Asian father, I'm sure he'd be like, you couldn't figure this shit out before I bought you a fucking law firm.
SPEAKER_00I st I don't even think you have to be Asian to be upset about that.
SPEAKER_01That's a fucking That's true.
SPEAKER_00But you know what? Like, I don't know. Couldn't you have been knighted for being a lawyer too?
SPEAKER_01Like, why didn't you Yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_00As it would turn out, Jules Verne quite liked the city of Amiens. In Verne's own words, quote, it's near Paris, near enough to feel a reflection of Paris, but without its insufferable noise and sterile agitation.
SPEAKER_01It was in this half the Eiffel Tower at this point. Good question. Trying to paint a picture in my head.
SPEAKER_00Uh no, I feel like that was 1899. That feels like a bullshit ass year, but you know what? Let me check it out. Uh yeah, no, 1889. So it wasn't it's like 10 years off, like 15 years off at this point. Either way, it was in this year that the family would move to the city of Amiens completely, where Verne would later become part of the city council.
SPEAKER_01His wife and kid are traumatized from like being held in the city. Yeah, and and he's just like, let's keep staying here. That's the scene of your trauma.
SPEAKER_00I didn't think about that. Yeah. Well, in 1872, Verne would publish in Hetzel's magazine a story called Dr. Ox's Experiment. This story is kind of out of left field for Jules Verne because it really has zero scientific basis in anything. It's about a guy named Dr. Ox and his assistant, Mr. Eugene, who proposes to the town of Qui Kwondon to allow him to set up an oxygen plant that will pump powerful air through the town's street lamps to help enrich its inhabitants. They agree, and Dr. Ox and Mr. Yajin build their factory.
SPEAKER_01Through the street lamps.
SPEAKER_00Yes, like it's gonna seem to be.
SPEAKER_01Is it electric?
SPEAKER_00I think at this point, because yeah, if they just pump straight like oxygen into the flight. So you blew up the fucking town. That's fair. Well, you see, their names uh actually together spell uh oxygen, which is the French word for oxygen.
SPEAKER_01I was hoping it was very clever stuff here for oxen.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_00It's it's even better. It's oxygen. And he's doing oxygen. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Well, as the anyway, it was out of left field for him. It is, and it's like, well, animals. That would be a good one. No, no, no, not that quite.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, that's fair. Well, as the enriched oxygen makes its way through town, plants grow better, the animals are more alert, and the people grow incredibly strong.
SPEAKER_01However, oxygen high.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're just fucking stoned.
SPEAKER_01Oxygen bars. Yeah, that was a weird kind of his idea was just yeah, oxygen bars. I mean, he would have been. Of course, everybody was fucking happy. They're high off of oxygen.
SPEAKER_00I really wish I'd gone to one because it's so fucking stupid, but we were just going crazy waiting for weed to get legalized. And we were just like anyway, we can. Yeah. So this is a bar where it's mostly just like You're breathing in rich air. We have a bar that's basically just those like keyboard cleaners, and you just stay in here and huff them. I don't know. It's not against the law, I guess. I don't well, however, the people of uh Kuiquindle uh also become horny for violence. The townspeople Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01Oh, and do you mean just violent? Yes, belligerent.
SPEAKER_00Like they want it. Well, the townspeople of Quiquindle, and which means who cares in French. So weird for I don't know. He doesn't do this. It's a very strange story.
SPEAKER_01They decide trying something out.
SPEAKER_00I guess.
SPEAKER_01Maybe he was high on oxygen.
SPEAKER_00Fucking he's finally with his wife and kid again after like years, and he's just like, I want death.
SPEAKER_01Everyone is happy and except like people are breathing nice clean air in their nice little town because he likes Amy Ren or wherever they are living in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But also the side effect is they want violence.
SPEAKER_00Well, the people of Quiquondon, they decide to attack their neighboring village since one of their cows dared to come over to their side of the river like 700 years ago.
SPEAKER_01However, as they gathered a metaphor for his wife and child coming into his writing room.
SPEAKER_00However, as they gather themselves for battle, Dr. Ox's oxygen plant explodes from a freak accident and the town returns to normal. It's an incredibly weird lapse in Jules Verne's style, but it seemed to be one of his favorites. He would continue to rewrite the story constantly and eventually even adapt it for the stage. As the world got closer to the 20th century, the industrial age trudged along, uncovering more breakthroughs in science and exploration. The Suez Canal had just opened, meaning you no longer had to sail through the dangerous waters of the Drake Passage at the tip of South America just to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Railroads were finally being connected through Europe and India that allowed for travel to be made from one continent to the other in quicker time. And most importantly, air travel was becoming more accessible through hot air balloons, as dangerous as they still were. Basically, Jules Verne was witnessing a new age for the common man. One that allowed anyone to travel the world without the need to become an explorer or some cartographer.
SPEAKER_01Unrelated, but kind of related. How air hot air balloon.
SPEAKER_00Like how hot air balloon? No, like how is it travel air?
SPEAKER_01No, like how do you steer it? How because I feel like the lack of steering should kind of like dictate how useful it is as a mode of transportation. Like, oh, I know, let's take a hot air balloon to travel to Germany from France, but then you get blown off course and and and end up in fucking Switzerland or whatever.
SPEAKER_00I feel like that does happen, but you know what? I don't know how they steer it. But I mean, like, I I thought I knew everything about them. I was like, oh yeah, well, you have air that like the the fire creates like obviously. I don't know how the fuck you steer it. No, you're right. We're gonna we're gonna look it up later. But I think it's hilarious to think somebody just immediately lifting off and going east instead of west, and they're just like, goodbye, family. I love you all. I'll see you soon. Help! Is there a wrong way?
SPEAKER_02Wrong way!
SPEAKER_00I mean, I don't know, dude. Like maybe we don't have an idea of how maybe it is just like charting what wind directions are gonna be or something. I don't know. And then did you just sit down and dudes who have like clown and wait for the wind to turn? Maybe. Well, because I know that that is a thing that happened to like that was a thing that happened with dudes who got in lawn chairs with a bunch of balloons on them. They would just like kind of chart it out beforehand and be like, all right, well, at least I won't get swept towards the ocean.
SPEAKER_01You really need like a meteorologist.
SPEAKER_00I mean, how hard was that back then though? You could they had almanacs, you know. They did have I don't know. Well, either way, I don't know. Well, one day, Jules Verne is sitting in a coffee shop and he sees an advertisement for the first around the world trip being made by Thomas Cook. It was from this, in 1873, that he came up with the idea to see the world through the eyes of the characters in his next novel. Around the world in 80 days. The story follows one Phileas Fogg, wealthy but lonely. He spends his days at the prestigious reform club in London, placing bets on anything and everything. Not to win, he says, but for the sake of playing.
SPEAKER_01Homie's got a problem.
SPEAKER_00He does. This is what rich people do now.
SPEAKER_01That's true.
SPEAKER_00Well, one day, Phileas Fogg and some other old money bitches talk about how you could possibly get around the entire world. What with all new rail line being built in India? They claim that it could be done by taking a boat from London to the Suez Canal in Egypt, another boat across the Red Sea to India, a rail line from Bombay to Calcutta, another boat from Calcutta to Hong Kong, a boat from Hong Kong to Japan, another boat from Japan to San Francisco, a train to New York, and then another boat to London. Phileas Fogg bets it he can do it in 80 days.
SPEAKER_01This is where the hot air balloon comes into.
SPEAKER_00There's no hot air balloon in this fucking book. It's on the cover. I don't I I was pissed. I I don't know. Because I didn't read five weeks in a hot air balloon because when I looked up, people were like, yeah, it's a bit long for what it is. Like it doesn't need to be fucking 400 pages or whatever. So I didn't bother reading it. And you know what? That probably could have told me. I'm willing to bet that would have actually told us how they steer this shit. More than likely did. This, the dude sits. He is mostly sitting. So alright. That sounds miserable. It's I had fun with it still. It was an okay book. So so he and his servant uh Pasapartu, and yes, it's pronounced that way because Vern thought he was being clever.
SPEAKER_01Pasapartu.
SPEAKER_00Passport passport, yeah, yeah. Uh set off on their adventure with the clock ticking. They arrive in Egypt right on time. However, the story of this insane wager has made it to the papers, and there's a police officer named Dr. Fix who tails them through their journey through Suez. You see, there's been high-scale bank robbery in London by a man matching Phileas Fogg's description. Detective Fix figures this journey around the world might just be an excuse as the perfect way for the robber to make his escape.
SPEAKER_01A Cab.
SPEAKER_00Well, basically, Phileas Fogg and Passapu. Racially profiling a white man. How dare he? And they say it can't happen to us. No, please, I'm one of the good ones. Well, basically. Basically, Phileas Fogg and Passapartu uh make episodic little adventures across the world with detective fix closely behind. Because the boat's leaving in like a week, you know? Like, I don't know. All while making the trip time perfectly to their itinerary. Phileas even bribes a boat crew to mutiny so that they can go in the direction he needs them to. That's lose the bet. People's lives are at stake now. You you were causing like 20 men to go hung when they get home. Just like a rich person. Yeah. I give a shit. Here's some money. Do what I want. But by the time they land in Ireland on their 80th day.
SPEAKER_01And if I had that kind of money, I'd be that way too. Let's be real.
SPEAKER_00I just hunt man for sport. Anyway, Phileas is arrested by Detective Fix. Who really doesn't have any more proof than he did before that he's the robber and just throws him in jail anyway. By the time Detective Fix finds out that the real robber had already been arrested just three days prior in Scotland, it's too late. The day is done and Phileas Fogg has lost the bet. But Passapar 2.
SPEAKER_01But he won.
SPEAKER_00Passapar 2.
SPEAKER_01Detective Fix's heart.
SPEAKER_00That's the chapter I'm making for AO3 later. But Passapar 2 figures out a loophole. Since they travel traveled eastward.
SPEAKER_01Are you gonna do a racist accent?
SPEAKER_00No. Since they traveled eastward, they raced against the sun. Meaning that while they've seen 80 sunsets, London has only seen 79. Phileas heads to the reform club as quick as he can, opening the doors just as the clock strikes its final hour and claims his prize. Oh yeah, and they found a So he made it on time anyway. He made it on time, just right right on right on cue. Oh yeah, and they found a woman somewhere along the way. Uh quote, Phileas Fogg had won his wager and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this, he had employed every means of conveyance. Steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman shut up. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvelous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? Nothing. What had he brought back from his long and weary journey? Nothing, say you? Perhaps so, nothing, but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men. Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?
SPEAKER_01So he did the white guy thing of like sex tourism.
SPEAKER_00He brought back a Filipina.
SPEAKER_01Was she yeah, I was gonna say, was she Southeast Asian?
SPEAKER_00I I I I honestly do not remember. Uh, this was a long time ago at this point. But you know what, man? I know that they listen, I don't think that uh Hetzel would have allowed him to make an interracial. You're right. Like you're right. I'm gonna be honest, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_01It wouldn't, but it's it's still such a like it's so God. Jules Verne was very prophetic, man.
SPEAKER_00Right? Of his time, like I said.
SPEAKER_01Like I said, ahead of his time. Like, how'd he know that white men were gonna travel the world to look for women that would put up with their shit.
SPEAKER_00And then he stayed in Bangkok for only three days, five days, a little over nine days, and then he got out. I just want to point out that almost every cover of this book has a hot air balloon on it, and the characters never use one. Maybe that's nitpicky, but I think somewhere along the line, people got it confused with five weeks in a balloon, and then they just continued to make that mistake. I'm glad that I wrote that down. Thanks, Jordan. Yes, I am still pissed about that. Anyway, the story I wanted hot air balloon travel. Jackie Chan was in one in his fucking version, was he not?
SPEAKER_01It's on the cover. Do you suppose Navikov had the same kind of rant? About what? Lolita cover of Lolita and how to get into that discussion on that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, the story was published in a magazine.
SPEAKER_01Sorry.
SPEAKER_00What?
SPEAKER_01You've never done Nabokov? You haven't done Navy?
SPEAKER_00No, I haven't done them yet. I know.
SPEAKER_01Well, there's I'm Clearly, I don't listen to all of my husband's podcasts.
SPEAKER_00I don't listen to my podcast. Well, anyway, the story was published in a magazine called La Temp over the course of 45 days, with the ending coinciding with the last day of Fogg's adventure. He should have taken 80 days. Well, because of this and because of the realism of the story, some believed either because they didn't know it was Jules Verne or because they thought he was just doing a rare bit of journalism that the story was real. And as such, bets started to be placed on Fogg's journey on whether or not he'd make it back to the Reform Club by the end of 80 days. Yes, people have always been this stupid. And since the story was such a sensation, there were actual railway and shipping companies that asked Vern for a shout-out in his book for a bit of capitalist commercialism.
SPEAKER_01I love it.
SPEAKER_00I think it's a good idea. Why the fuck not?
SPEAKER_01The uh first product placement. Is this the first product placement?
SPEAKER_00I fucking doubt it. There's no way. Thing is, the book was so popular that some explorers started hating on Vern because they all thought he was inspired by them and not just some random advertisement in a newspaper. Specifically, there was a man named George Francis Train who'd been around the world three times already and would eventually make a fourth. He said, quote, Verne stole my thunder, I'm Phileas Fogg. However, this dude was admittedly a little nuts. He ran for president in 1872, but was beat out by Ulysses S. Grant, which is lucky, because President Train wanted to run for dictator. Like, he basically was running on the Trump ticket 150 years early. He also refused to shake hands with others, instead shaking his own hand to show an alliance, and most times only spoke to children and animals. So while it wouldn't be far-fetched to say that this guy didn't really go around the world and just told people that he did, he had witnesses. I will say that. Go ahead. What did you have to say about President Train?
SPEAKER_01Uh, excuse you. One, he never got elected. He did in our hearts. He only spoke to children and animals to only shake your own hand. Only shaking my own hand of just looking him deadass in the eyes, like. Well, I already can tell that this would be a better handshake than what you're doing with each other our own hands.
SPEAKER_00At that point, fucking bow, dude. Like, I don't know. Like, it's weird.
SPEAKER_01So he only spoke to children.
SPEAKER_00Can you imagine? Listen, well, you vote for me on my next reform. It just He was running on the Trump ticket. He had a dementia. Suspicious. Why? Suspicious of what? Oh, you think he was a diddler? I don't know. I think I mean, listen, a lot of crazy dudes are pedophiles, I will say. But like, I don't know. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Just because they proved Henry Darger wasn't does not mean that other crazy dudes aren't as well.
SPEAKER_00I yeah, no, I get you.
SPEAKER_01He was, so Henry Darger could be, you know, skipped over.
SPEAKER_00He did it for Henry Darger?
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_00It's you know, like skipping a generation, but like because all the homeless are from sharing genetics. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Well instead, if anyone could I promise I was smart when we got married, alright?
SPEAKER_00I knew it. Instead, if anyone could claim to be the real Phileas Fogg, you need look no further than a man who almost identically shares his name. William Perry Fogg. Now, William Yes, exactly.
SPEAKER_01William didn't go the last name, but like his and it's spelled the same as well.
SPEAKER_00But his middle name's Perry. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Phileus and Ferb.
SPEAKER_00Now, William didn't go around the world four times or anything, but he did publish his experiences in Japan, China, India, Egypt, America, Malaysia, Singapore, Persia, Iraq, and Arabia. It was William Fogg's books. I fucking would. It was William Fogg. I would I mean I would fuck you in every one of those countries. Now it was venereal disease. I would give you venereal disease in each of those countries. It was William Fogg's books that Jules Verne would actually use as research, which when you're trying to make science fiction as real as possible, is a very important resource.
SPEAKER_01How do you not get busted for copyright?
SPEAKER_00He's just uh because they're nonfiction books. I mean, what's the problem? And he's using it in fiction. But he's not a good thing.
SPEAKER_01About what about like, oh he's ripping off my life.
SPEAKER_00Because he was making fat fucking checks and they weren't.
SPEAKER_01But you know what? He's taking your shitty story and making it fun. Everybody, if you're not the only one trying to claim that, you know, he's taking your life, maybe your life wasn't that special to begin with, idiot.
SPEAKER_00Honestly. Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_01Oh wow, a white man using his money to go travel the world to have experiences that others without money cannot have. Like, get in fucking line.
SPEAKER_00He may have been making bank, but he was still making bank as a writer. Like he could comfortably say I can buy a 12 pack instead of a six, but like, you know, like that's a fair point. Well, Vern's next hit, the 1874 novel The Mysterious Island, was a crossover sequel between the movie? Probably. I don't know. It was a crossover sequel between In Search of the Castaways and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. At a time when crossovers were actually new. So this is regarded as one of the first. Yeah, I honestly with the amount of like well as as many fucking like interesting explorers as there would be, it's just like as soon as like they they all step into a room together, just the the fucking walls paint just peals from the manly aura that they all have, just like I discovered pyramids in Antarctica. I've been 20,000 leagues under the sea.
SPEAKER_01Just fucking it would be 20,000 leagues under your mom.
SPEAKER_00That's stupid. Verne's neck Okay, so the the story is of five POWs and a dog from a Confederate Oh a dog! Yeah, there you go. From a Confederate concentration camp during the American Civil War. There, are you happy now?
SPEAKER_01Are they what do you mean it can who's being concentrated?
SPEAKER_00Union soldiers. Confederates did have concentration camps and they were No, dude, they were fucking like they actually this is why they had to be eradicated.
SPEAKER_01Your fucking culture, your fucking ants.
SPEAKER_00They had to Nicole, we didn't eradicate them.
SPEAKER_01We fucking I know we elected them into office.
SPEAKER_00Dude, Jefferson got fucking he lived the rest of his days a free man. Like fucking, he was yeah.
SPEAKER_01You mean Jefferson Davies?
SPEAKER_00Jefferson Davies.
SPEAKER_01I don't know why I was thinking like Thomas Jefferson.
SPEAKER_00Well, sorry, no, Thomas Jefferson never did anything wrong. What I really meant was Jefferson Davies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but like, dude, honestly, no, that's the big thing that we keep talking about. Did you know that those Confederate statues aren't historic by any means? They weren't built during the time of the Confederates. They were actually built during the 1950s and 60s, at a time when civil rights was trying to become a thing. I wonder why those could have been built. Uh so anyway, fucking burn down your local politician. So the story the the book begins in Midius Res, in the middle of the action, as they fly high into a storm and an air balloon over the Pacific. During the maelstrom, their balloon begins to rapidly descend and are forced to toss their supplies out of the basket to keep afloat with no land in sight. But suddenly, as they're about to lose hope, a mysterious island appears in the distance. The balloon barely makes it to a crash landing on the beach. But during the turmoil between the crash landing and the raging storm, they lose sight of one of their men and the dog amongst the chaos. They'll come back, no worry. In chapter two.
SPEAKER_01So wait, are we following Confederate soldiers who No, they're they're union men.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I believe one slave, I think.
SPEAKER_01And a dog.
SPEAKER_00And a dog. Kind of dog. Uh fuck, I don't think that they said. Is he cute? Yes. Now in chapter two, we go back to the very beginning. Back at the Confederate camp. Yes. That's why they crashed. And we're introduced to all of our characters. There's Captain Cyrus Harding of the Union Army, Gideon Spillett from the New York Herald, just a fucking journalist, a freed slave named Neb, short for Nebuchadnezzar, and a sailor named Pencroft with his son Herbert They discuss ways of possible escape before they catch sight of a storm that approaches their camp. Without much thought, they figure, fuck it, no plans as good as any. And they cram a bunch of supplies into one of the Confederate balloons and just float off to fuck knows where. So they do. Oh, and a dog jumps in at the last second, too. His name is Top.
SPEAKER_02Top!
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think his name is named after Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin.
SPEAKER_01Aw, poor Eliza.
SPEAKER_00Probably a black dog. So I'm just saying. Now back at the mysterious island, the others search for their missing companions, and Vern uses this as exposition to give us a lay of their surroundings in incredible detail. This is where the reader gets lessons on topography, geography, geology, and biology. Eventually, the men figure they're somewhere about 1600 miles east of New Zealand. The crew eventually hears the dog, Top, barking through the forest, and find an unconscious Cyrus Harding. After a slow recovery and more exploration, our heroes find that hope may as well be lost for how remote this island actually is, though they do see other islands in the distance. They figure that the island can provide for them all they need until rescue arrives, if it arrives. And in a sense of remembrance for their home, they name their new home Lincoln Island in commemoration of their president.
SPEAKER_01You shouldn't make your president, but your whole personality.
SPEAKER_00Stephen Hawking is already on his way. You're not taking credit for it?
SPEAKER_01As a woman, how could I ever take credit for the brilliance of a man?
SPEAKER_00Ah that's why I married, yeah. Now throughout the book, the chapters are pretty episodic about hunting or evading danger, but eventually the crew finds a message in a bottle from a nearby island. It turns out it's another castaway. Our crew manages to meet up with the other survivor who turns out to be the main character from one of Jules Verne's previous novels called In Search of Castaways, a guy named Tom Ayrton. In that book, Tom Ayrton is actually the villain whose fate is supposedly sealed at the end of the novel when he's abandoned on a desert island. But as our heroes in the mysterious island arrive on uh on the other island to find Tom, his old pirate shipmates arrive as well to rescue him. Bloodthirsty, these men attack our heroes, and while one gets wounded, the pirate ship miraculously explodes.
SPEAKER_01With all the bad guys on it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay. This isn't No, they're steering a hot air balloon.
SPEAKER_00No, it's meant to be a mystery. Like, why the fuck did it explode?
SPEAKER_01It's not just how they ended it by like Captain Nemo drove by and was like, I fucking hate pirates, and then he torpedoed it. Did I get it right?
SPEAKER_00This isn't the only divine intervention in the book, however. Earlier on, the dog top.
SPEAKER_01Did he meet the dog and they fall in love and make a family together? Not like that. They just, you know, he adopts a dog. Earlier on, the dogs get adopted.
SPEAKER_00Top is attacked by a dugong and drug under the water. But the dog manages to get away as the dugong's dead body floats up to the surface, attacked by some unknown larger predator. And when the crew arrive back to their hideout on Lincoln Island after the Nemo. Yes. After the pirate attack, they find medicine and supplies waiting for them. As the months go on, the crew, plus Tom since he said he was sorry, began Yes.
SPEAKER_01It makes me really sad that he villainized a Dugong. I mean, aren't they it's a wild man? It's a fucking manatee.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you're right. Okay, yeah. But they're big, and I think that's why he I don't think he ever saw one. I don't think he ever he knew.
SPEAKER_01Wow, so much like that's so ridiculous. You keep talking about how he researches, thoroughly researches all these other books except for the Dukeong.
SPEAKER_00Maybe it had sea rabies. I don't know. Well, as the months go on, the crew, plus Tom, since he said he was sorry, begin construction of a new ship. One that will possibly take them to somewhere inhabited.
SPEAKER_01But then Wait, sorry, Tom is the guy from Tom Ariton, the guy from Insert of Castro.
SPEAKER_00He's a villain and his pirate buddies try to kill him. Yeah, so they were like, oh come on. Yeah, yeah. It's basically a long story short. That's how books were just written back then. But then they hear a bell and they go into the woods to find a message. Quote, come to the coral immediately.
SPEAKER_01It's Captain Nemo.
SPEAKER_00They find a wire that leads them to the waters beneath the coral. And when the tide recedes, they find a cavern. Inside, they come face to face with none other than Jeffrey Epstein and the Nautil Oh uh Captain Nemo and the Nautilus. As it turns out, Nemo made his escape at the end of 20,000 Leagues, and since then his men have I guess I forgot how that ended. Basically, there was a battle between the the U the USS Abraham Lincoln, the big ship, and the Nautilus, I think. And then uh the main character fainted and said, I don't know what happened.
SPEAKER_01Nemo a bad guy?
SPEAKER_00He was he's crazy. And he's basically he's an anarchist, so he doesn't pertain to government shit.
SPEAKER_01So like so no wonder the US government was trying to shut him down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, basically. He's mean to his communist, yeah. And since then, Nemo's men have died from one thing or another over the years until it was only himself left. But in that time, he has become old and frail and knows he is to die soon. Nemo reveals that his real name is Dakar, and he is the son of Indian royalty. Not Anglo-Indian like Rudyard Kipling, mind you, Jules Verne made Captain Nemo a brown guy. In fact, it was during the Indian Rebellion of 1857, where wouldn't you know it, Indians were hoping to represent themselves that led to the death of his family and had him run away to a life beneath the waves. At his deathbed, Captain Nemo rewards our heroes with jewels and binds them to honor that once he dies, they will destroy his ship. They agree, and with Nemo's last words he yells, quote, God in my country before passing away. They sink the Nautilus just as the mysterious island erupts, because of course it turns out it's a volcano, and the crew Why couldn't they just borrow the ship to go back to civilization? It doesn't matter because Deus Ex Machina, the crew is miraculously saved by a passing ship. The men return home to start a new life in fucking Iowa with their treasures. Quote, there to conclude, I don't think so, or he would not have chosen it. There to conclude, all were happy, united in the present as they had been in the past, but never could they forget that island upon which they had arrived poor and friendless. That island which, during four years, had supplied all their wants, and of which there remained but a fragment of granite washed by the waves of the Pacific, the tomb of him who had borne the name of Captain Nemo. Now, William Kingston was a contemporary English author to Jules Verne in his own right. However, he wasn't a very good one. Consequently, William Kingston ended up in dead. But with the popularity of Jules Verne, he saw a new opportunity. Now supposedly, William Kingston spoke French fluently, but so could his wife. Therefore, she should do the work for him just under his name, right? Now, Kingston didn't end up changing a whole mystery. Yep. Kingston didn't end up changing a whole lot in Verne's narratives, but he did change enough that when I read The Mysterious Island myself, it wasn't until I did research for this episode that I discover that I hadn't actually read the whole thing. For instance, Kingston didn't like Captain Nemo's speech about anti imperialism, so he just got rid of it. Also
SPEAKER_01What uh cuck.
SPEAKER_00Pencroft sounds better than Pencroft without the T, so he fixed that too. And I thought for a minute that I missed something when I looked up discussions about the book online and everyone was talking about some character named Cyrus Smith. I knew him as Cyrus Harding, because apparently Smith sounds too poor, so Kingston fixed that too. So anyway, heads up to anyone out there that reads the mysterious island in English, there's a good possibility that publishers have just been printing the abridged version for decades and you're not reading the real thing. So anyway, in 1876.
SPEAKER_01That's so shitty.
SPEAKER_00It is. I was a little bit let down. I was like, I'm like, oh.
SPEAKER_01That sort of thing is so offensive to me.
SPEAKER_00Because I still liked it, and I was just like, but how much of it did I fucking miss? Like, there were still sciencey bits and shit in there, but like, did he not include it? He probably nixed those too.
SPEAKER_01He's probably just like, this is boring. Cut it out to his wife. Like, cut it out.
SPEAKER_00You talk too much, Samantha. Cut it out. Yeah, no, I'm sure. In 1876, Jules would become sick of Honorine's leniency towards their boy, sending his 14-year-old son Michel, aka the terror of Lick Ratoy, to the Matre penal colony. A good 150 miles from their home in Paris. Yes.
SPEAKER_01What why why would you call a place a penal colony?
SPEAKER_00It's nothing but dong getting hung. But no, a penal colony is like not a fully built community. It's just like you're going out there to build a road, boy. Like it's kind of shit. What's with the word penal? I don't know. Now, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna hang sack, boy.
SPEAKER_00If there was an incident.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Is that a thing?
SPEAKER_00Hang and sack? Yeah, your balls get hot. I'll show you later. Now I don't know if there was an incident. That finally you certainly didn't marry a man.
SPEAKER_01I don't know how women's bodies work.
SPEAKER_00That's fair. I I don't know if there was like an inciting incident that finally broke the camel's back, but Michelle wasn't actually there at the penal colony for long, just about six months. Overall, the Metre Penal Colony wasn't all that bad when it was run by its founder, Frederick Auguste Dements. But since his death three years prior, things at the colony were run a little harsher. Luckily, Michelle only endured the beginning of the colony's worsening conditions. Because by its closure in 1937, it had a reputation for an almost sadistic discipline on its pupils. Either way, by the time Michelle returned home. Wait, pupils. So it's a school? No, well, you get kind of just run like a prisoner. Think of it like a prisoner. You put him in a in a prison. It's a it's a home for wayward boys, put it that way.
SPEAKER_01A colony of wayward young men.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Don't think of it any more than that. Put a stop to it right now, Nicole. Nope. Either way. Either way, by the time Michelle returned home, things were not much better between himself and his father. Now, in 1877, Jules Verne writes a novel called Off on a Comet. This is a really interesting one to me. It's about a 2,320 kilometer comet called Galia that just barely skims the surface of the Earth's atmosphere. But in doing so, its gravitational pull tears chunks of land off our planet and essentially becomes part of Galia. In doing so, there are now a handful of survivors who try their best to live out the remainder of their days on the comet. Over the course of the two years they're on it, they observe what can only be described as Verne's best guesses in astrophysics. Before the comet Galia starts making its route back towards Earth. During its return journey, the survivors take scraps to build, what else? A hot air balloon and escape the comet's gravitational pole while floating safely back to their own planet. Originally, Verne wanted the comet to crash into the He wanted the comet to kill everyone, basically. But Hetzel pleading with Vern that most of their readership were young children convinced him that he would need to change the ending. One thing Hetzel didn't have a problem with, though, was the anti-Semitism. And describing one of the characters, quote, he was a man of fifty years who looked 60, small, weakly, with eyes bright and false, a busked nose, a yellowish beard and unkempt hair, large feet, hands long and hooked, he offered the well-known type of the German Jew, recognizable among all. This was the Usir, with supple backbone, flat-hearted, a clipper of coins, and a skinflint. Silver should attract such a being as the magnet attracts iron, and if this Shylock was allowed to pay himself from his debtor, he would certainly sell the flesh at retail. Sorry, it's been a while since I had to read that. Um, it's not done yet. Besides, although a Jew originally, he made himself a Mahometan in Mohammedan provinces when his prophet demanded it, and he would have been a pagan to gain more. He said that he he changed himself like spiritually because he was able to earn some coin from it and would do it again. That was a rough one, actually.
SPEAKER_01When a rabbi of Paris complained about it, Rowling's inspiration for Snape.
SPEAKER_00And he's a big Gargamel Jew. Yeah. When a rabbi of Paris complained about the depiction, Verne and Hetzel put their heads together and decided that they just take the word Jew out of the script, but everything else stayed. That ought to do it.
SPEAKER_01I'm surprised they just didn't go.
SPEAKER_00Vern then found himself in a bit of legal trouble regarding an old story of his.
SPEAKER_01Dude, you were too racist. Yeah. You gotta chill.
SPEAKER_00Leon Delmus was a writer that alleged that the 1864 story, Journey to the Center of the Earth, was based off of his short story the year before, La Tete de Minerve. Beyond it being a story about adventures discovering an ancient document that leads them underground, there's not really anything there. I mean, this is thirteen years after Jules Verne's story was published, and a thousand francs in damages just feels a bit like a quick cash grab. Yeah. Well, once the case made it to court, it was quickly dismissed, but Leon Delmas uh didn't want to let the issue go. He put his case went to the tabloids. Worse, he put his case in front of the Writers Guild.
SPEAKER_01Ooh.
SPEAKER_00A community of people that ultimately have no authority over anything except to, I guess, discredit Jules Verne. But even then they found it.
SPEAKER_01What does that involve discrediting Jules Verne?
SPEAKER_00Saying we don't back him. He's he's not one of us. Yes, yeah, essentially. But even then they found no real similarities. In fact, this small issue allowed the writer's guilt to see similarities in Delmus's work with other author's stories, which in turn started a larger case where Leon himself became the subject of investigation.
SPEAKER_01I'm interested in that man.
SPEAKER_00In the end, Leon Delmus was found guilty of plagiarism by a multitude of different authors. While Jules Verne's reputation remained intact.
SPEAKER_01I want a niche manga series on that guy.
SPEAKER_00You can't just spring that on people. We were talking about niche manga interests, and just because there's always stories about like mangas about like I want to be the best creme de fraîche maker in the world, and then they just there's in a fucking 12-year series about that or whatever the fuck.
SPEAKER_02Shop!
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and so it's like what what niche manga would you make? I think I would make one about bartendering, like just it's shitty, no one wants to do it. Like either that or changing oil, it's terrible at this point, it's just oil change in the whist. Dude, my fucking boss was just like, you know what, Jordan, you might have a chance at the fucking do you know about the Oil Olympics? And I was like, the fucking what? Is that a is that a website that you go on when on your fucking lunch? What is that? It's like, no, it's about being the quickest oil changer out there. I'm like, I'm trying to get it through so that I can sit down, dude. I don't want to like I'm not gonna go on a free weekend to fucking know. Now at this point, Jules Verne had become such a typecast author to French readers that a French journalist named Albert Robida began making fun of his stories by making his own called The Adventures of Saturn and Farandur. They were goofy little tales about an adventurer raised by apes who travels the world and goes on outlandish adventures. However, as jokey as the novel was, Albert Robida found out just how much fun it was to actually write this shit. So he started a career in science fiction himself in earnest. He targeted more towards children than Jules Verne was, which made him an overnight sensation. Good for him. Good for him. Yeah, that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Set out to make fun of something and just fell in love.
SPEAKER_00Pretty much.
SPEAKER_01Aww, that's how we met. That's our that's our love story. We were just hating on each other.
SPEAKER_00And then we made fun while we fuck. Gross. But back at home, things hadn't gotten any better between Jules and Michelle as time went on. It had been two years since Michelle had his six-month stint at Metre, and now this 17-year-old boy was running up debts in his father's name. To counter this, Jules had his son incarcerated in the town jail having committed no crime, but which you apparently could just do in France until 1935. I looked it up. Your boy's underage? You want him in jail? Just ask.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. Do you know that makes God I'm remembering this thing that went viral, this clip of this 911 clip of just like a woman calling the police on her daughter being out of control and the police just being like, what do you want us to do? Yeah, shoot her?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, do you want us to come over and shoot her? And then it ended up all over the news, and it was like, dude, justice for that guy. He was calling her out on wasting fucking resources. My daughter's out of control and I don't know what to do. How about you leave her the fuck alone then?
SPEAKER_01Maybe you're like how is your daughter out of control? Is she like physically trying to fucking call what was the context? Call more. It didn't matter if you're not gonna be able to get it.
SPEAKER_00If she's not committing a crime, well, that's the thing. If she got physical, that's fucking assault. Call it in for assault. Yeah. Yeah, I honestly justice for that guy. Fuck her. Like, and if I remember right, it wasn't even like a teenager. It was like a kid kid. And it's just like, okay. Yes, it's like, okay, slap them, throw them in the dark room, and tell them that you control ghosts. Like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01It was much cuter when my cousins did it. They were like under five and just And being rowdy. They're being rowdy and like one cousin hit the other, so he called the police. Like 911, what's your legacy? She hit me.
SPEAKER_00Dude, okay. I don't know how young you have to be to sue for assault, but that is assault. And I honestly would knowing who was involved in there, I wish he fucking did.
SPEAKER_01You should cut that part out. Fuck You should cut that part out for sure.
SPEAKER_00When Michelle found out that his father had spoken to a ship captain about putting him to work on his boat headed for India, he was actually ecstatic. He only requested that his father's new novels be sent to him. The voyage to India was faced with extreme difficulty, including harsh weather, hard work, and worsening conditions. At least that's what Michelle told his father. In reality, it was quickly found out that Michel was the son of the great Jules Verne, and they basically treated him like royalty. As his other deckhands got off the boat in Calcutta, Michelle Verne stepped off in a frock coat and top hat, having just held supper at the captain's table. Meanwhile, Jules Verne was getting his letters back home just absolutely horrified at what he'd done to his son. What's funny is that in the biography written by Michelle's son, he shows letters written by Jules where he's constantly complaining about Michelle, and whenever he says something like, But what are you going to do with a boy of 17? The biographer points out that he's getting his dad's age wrong by like a couple of years. So it's not like Jules Verne was a super attentive father either.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00He never shit. Like I'm sorry. Your mom does that.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, God. She always adds years to my life and it just makes me feel terrible every time. Yeah, I know. She's just like the closer I get to 40. I'm just like, shoot me. Put me out to pasture.
SPEAKER_00To be fair, I don't know how old your mom is either. She's too old to be fucking doing that. I can tell you that. Now at the age of 19, Michelle never or sorry. At the age of 19, Michelle had moved to a town near Amiens. But the problems between father and So he What?
SPEAKER_01I thought he was taking a boat off to somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he did, but he's he's clearly back. Yeah, he's back. And he never had to work a single fucking day. Alright. But he kept writing his dad just like, oh god, what have I done to my boy? Like he's just making shit up, but he's he he basically just had a cruise.
SPEAKER_01He didn't just write back to his son like, well, if he hadn't done this, this, this, this, this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, as it would turn out, the problems between father and son weren't exactly over. Using his influence, Jules had police officers regularly stalk his kid to throw him in jail if he ever stepped out of line.
SPEAKER_01But it is Honorine just like cackling in the background.
SPEAKER_00Dude, I don't know what's up with her.
SPEAKER_01I don't like oxygen.
SPEAKER_00But even though cops fucking were just following him around waiting for him to, I don't know, jaywalk or anything, it never happened. However, Jules was convinced Michelle was insane and looked to have him thrown in an asylum anyway. But before he could, Michelle ran away with an actress he'd met very much against his parents' protests. Four years later, in 1883, Michelle Verne and his father reconciled for the first time. Michelle was still with the actress he'd run away with back in 1879, and father, it was time to marry. Jules and Honorine met with this actress and ended up liking her better than their own kid. But hey, they could see that their little boy had grown up.
SPEAKER_01It's wild to me that they're like, no, no actresses. Meanwhile, even an actress is better than our kid.
SPEAKER_00That's true.
SPEAKER_01I'm making a play. Like that's fair.
SPEAKER_00The sins of the father. And so right after Michelle and the actress married, the 23-year-old Michelle ran in away with 16-year-old Jean Ribeau. Wait, how old was he again? 23. And she was 16. 16. Right after they married.
SPEAKER_01Christ.
SPEAKER_00With whom he'd have two children before even being divorced. Jules and Honorine. I hate him too. The terror of Lecre toy. Jules and Honorine were willing to keep the first wife and basically just let their own kid go. But the actress convinced them that Michelle was their problem and they needed to face it.
SPEAKER_01God.
SPEAKER_00In the end, Michelle went on to marry this 16-year-old instead. Yep. On March 10th, 1886, Hetzel received a telegram from the Verne estate about an incident that happened the day before. Quote, Letter from Godfrey in Amiens. In fit of madness, Gaston fired revolver twice at Verne. Only one shot hit. Verne slightly wounded in foot. Apparently, Jules Verne's 26-year-old nephew Gaston had run up to the Verne household saying, quote, They're after me. But when Verne told him that there was no one there, he withdrew a pistol and said, So, even you won't defend me, and shot at Jules. One shot missed, and the other landed in Verne's foot.
SPEAKER_01It was agreed upon never walked again.
SPEAKER_00It was agreed Yeah, it's this ends like fucking million dollar baby. It was agreed upon by all the family not to publicize Gaston's little assassination attempt, but word got out regardless.
SPEAKER_01I don't think that's an assassination attempt, if anything. He fucking tried to shoot him.
SPEAKER_00Well in defense. In defense? He thought his uncle was conspiring against him. You could be insane and assassinate somebody. I'm sorry, you're right, Nicole. The guy that tried to kill Reagan was not in an assassination attempt. He just wanted fucking Jodie Foster's hand in marriage, okay?
SPEAKER_01I just think an assassination is more premeditated than just saying, oh no, my uncle has been taken in by the enemy. Pew pew.
SPEAKER_00I guess. Ha! I don't know. I feel like assassination just came. Because you're right.
SPEAKER_01Of you coming around to my side and my logic.
SPEAKER_00I'm always coming on your front. Now Gaston was. Right.
SPEAKER_01I hope you cut that part out.
SPEAKER_00Gaston was sent to a mental asylum where he'd spent the rest of his life until his death during the first world war in a clinic in Luxembourg.
SPEAKER_01I'm just picturing this poor guy looking at the city.
SPEAKER_00But dude, I hear Luxembourg's nice. I don't know. Not if you're in the mental asylum? But from a rich family? Like, I don't okay, I'll put it this way. There's asylums, and then do you remember in Rain Man, the facility that fucking Dustin Hoffman was in? That was also a modern movie. But what I'm saying though is that there's a difference in terms of like who's having you stay there based on money value. You know what I mean? I just I don't know. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01They had enough money to like spring for someplace fairly tidy.
SPEAKER_00I know that I don't know this guy. I don't even know what he looks like or anything. But all I'm gonna say is I hope so, dude. No, dude. I hope he I hope he had an okay life there. Like I hope he was happy. I don't know. Felt sick. I feel bad. He's clearly insane, and it's just like you can't have him around guns. I don't know. Well, Jules, on the other hand, would develop a limp in his left leg that would never go away. When they asked Gaston why he'd done it, he said it was to draw attention to his uncle Jules as he didn't feel he was famous enough. Yes, Gaston was a regular kind of crazy, which greatly depressed.
SPEAKER_01So maybe it is premeditated.
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't think that's true, though. I think he was switching up his story every time he got asked.
SPEAKER_01Fair.
SPEAKER_00But Gaston was a regular kind of crazy, which greatly depressed both Jules Verne and his brother Paul, Gaston's dad, because between the two of them, Gaston was the only son of theirs between Michelle and Gaston's two older brothers that seemed to be a good student and whose future looked promising. He was basically the one kid both Jules and Paul Verne were still rooting for. Isn't that sad? Still, even after this little shooting event, Gaston was allowed out of the asylum for a few hours at a time, where he lunched with his father Paul and his uncle Jules. And they just never mentioned the incident again. Yeah. Stop. Don't do that thing from the movie flipped.
SPEAKER_01You do that thing from the movie flipped. Ice cream! Yeah. Ice cream!
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_01Cut that out in post.
SPEAKER_00Fuck no. But this little shooting began a period of Jules Verne's life that he referred to as his black period. Just a week after, on March 17, 1886, Pierre Jules Hetzel, Verne's publisher of 23 years, passed away at age 74 in Monte Carlo. Almost a year later, on February 15, 1887, Jules Verne's mother, Sophie Verne, would pass as well at the age of 86. By that point, Verne was still recovering from the gunshot wound in his foot and had to miss her funeral. Whereas before, when Hetzel was alive, he steadied Verne's hand against anything too drastically dark. Verne was now able to make the books however he wanted. Son taking over his business, Verne took a break from science fiction instead just relying on well fiction. He used to write stories of giant floating cities straight out of Bioshock Infinite. Like in 1871's The Floating City, or a giant mechanical elephant that houses an entire palace inside, in 1880's The Steam House. But now he was writing darker tales grounded in reality. Which is all well and good, but that's not really why anyone reads Jules Verne. There were also some adaptations of his work that were made for the stage, and some of them were so bad that Verne didn't even bother to show up for their premieres. It felt like Jules Verne's name was beginning to sink. In 1888, Jules Verne decided that he'd had enough of his town's bullshit when it came to the city.
SPEAKER_01The hot air balloon of his career.
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_01All he could do is bring it down.
SPEAKER_00Down twenty thousand leagues to the mysterious island of his heart.
SPEAKER_01Where Dugong attacked him.
SPEAKER_00Where he fucking drug a dog down to drown!
SPEAKER_01We're a slow swimming what is not omnivore. What's the planned only one?
SPEAKER_00Herbivore.
SPEAKER_01We're a slow-moving herbivore.
SPEAKER_00Try to kill a dog. In 1888.
SPEAKER_01Like how different are dugongs from like multies?
SPEAKER_00I don't fucking know. I know nothing about it. No, don't look it up. We're in the middle of a thing. In 1888, Jules Verne decided that he'd had enough of his town's bullshit when it came to underfunding certain aspects of Amiens. Therefore, he decided to run for city council.
SPEAKER_01Instead of paying his taxes?
SPEAKER_00Yep, as all rich people do. He won, leading to the final touches of a municipal building which was later named the Cirque Jules Verne. He also widened the city streets and switched their gas lamps to electric.
SPEAKER_01If we ever go back to France, do would you like to go to Amiens that just checked out the city?
SPEAKER_00Listen, I don't know if there's anything actually there. Like, there's I don't I don't know, man. I wouldn't I mean fuck. I'm not gonna say no, but it could also just be a bullshit ass town. I'll tell you this much. Um I I drove for hours to see the final resting place of Ernest Hemingway.
SPEAKER_01Bro, that is on you. You decided to go to fucking Idaho.
SPEAKER_00It was because it's the closest state to us that I hadn't been. And you know what, dude? That little town that Ernest Hemingway died in, fucking God rest his soul. God rest him. There's nothing there. This is like, oh my god, dude. It was like Sun River if there was nothing to do. Like there was there's oh my god. There's like it's like a town of 400 people that are all just retirees. Somehow there's two traffic lights in town, and we were in the middle of a fucking traffic jam at the end of the day. I don't know what the fuck was going on. I I it sucked. It was terrible. But you know what? Got to see his grave. There it was.
SPEAKER_01Was it worth it?
SPEAKER_00No. No, it wasn't. How exciting do you think a dead body's gonna be? I don't know. Like, he didn't get up and dance.
SPEAKER_01The potatoes you brought back were good, though.
SPEAKER_00Yes, but that didn't come from that fucking place. That came from a different city. Now, Jules Verne actually did quite a lot to modernize Amiens. And at least for a little while, this seemed to be it for Jules Verne. Maybe he just worked in small town politics until the day he died, while also wearing obscenely large shoes to not annoy his shot foot, which is something that he actually did. Um but in 18 yeah, he wore large shoes.
SPEAKER_01No, it just makes me think of like that racist uh caricature he wrote.
unknownWhat?
SPEAKER_01Well he was Oh the Jewish guy? Yeah, where he's talking about like how like the large feet, large shoe. Did he talk about large feet? I thought he did, and then there he is having to wear large shoes, like an idiot.
SPEAKER_00I guess, yeah, maybe this whole thing is just karma. I don't know. But you know. But in 1889, the owner of the New York Herald asked Jules Verne to write a short story for the paper. Now, Verne typically didn't dabble in short stories, so when the paper asked him to produce one about what he expected the world to look like in a thousand years, it's believed he just kind of rolled his eyes and handed the job over to his son Michelle.
SPEAKER_01So although the short story in the year 2889 with a bad like that he has a bad history with.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, I mean, while it the in the year 2889 is published under Jules Verdon's name, most people do suspect the writing style and ideas to be a lot closer to what his son Michelle would later be known for. Specifically, his use of pneumatic tubes. Do you know what those are?
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_00Those are those fucking things that like banks you sometimes. Yeah, where you fucking thunk and they like go shot up in a tube and shit. Yeah, that that's Michelle Verne would go on to have a small crew. I'm gonna kill you. So yeah, Michelle Verne would go on to have a small career in science fiction himself, and the dude loved pneumatic tubes. When you watch an old sci-fi movie or TV show specifically in like Futurama, that's how they how he went to the bathroom. How people travel from one place to another through those giant tubes, that's all thanks to Michelle Verne thinking they were cool, so he just put them in all of his stories. That's actually hilarious. I would love to just put a turd put a turd in a pneumatic. The bank fucking bounces my check and I just start thump. That would be fucking awesome. Oh my god. No wonder they don't use them anymore. Speaking of Michelle, he was doing his best with three small children and his wife Jean, though any endeavor he made didn't really earn him a whole lot of dough. Usually the idea was to borrow some money from Papa Jules and try to sell some newfangled invention, which never really worked out. According to his son Jean, Michel had invented some sort of confection oven, which would have actually done great.
SPEAKER_01Confection or convection?
SPEAKER_00Convection oven.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Which would have actually done great, but with the remaining 30,000 francs Michelle should have put into advertising, he put it all into production instead. So he had a bunch of product with no one understanding why they should even bother to buy it. So of course, that was a failure. Then he designed a new kind of bicycle. This one wouldn't have thin wheels in a flimsy black frame. No.
SPEAKER_01Instead it's like early Jules Verne's life.
SPEAKER_00A little bit, but you know what? At least he's really inventing stuff. And this bicycle, this bicycle had a sturdier frame with thicker wheels and a colorful feature. He invented fucking mountain bikes. Oh. But no one understood why anyone would go out of their way to possibly get dirty in the icky woods, so no one bought them. Regardless, as worried as Jules Verne was about his son's financial future, he was very proud that he had an inventive mind. Ironically, the all-black Buffalo soldiers implemented bespoke bikes to allow them to get around Yellowstone right around the same time to fight cowboys in the Old West.
SPEAKER_01That's kind of funny.
SPEAKER_00I want us to unpack that fucking sentence. The Buffalo soldiers rode mountain bikes around Yellowstone to fight cowboys. That is my niche manga.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00That is so cool. But if the rumors are true, and Michelle Verne wrote in the year 2889 for his father, then he predicted a number of things we'd have today, just like his dad did when he wrote Paris in the Twentieth Century. News being delivered through a voice device that predates radio and podcasts, cryogenic freezing, and chemical warfare, which would unfortunately become a reality in about 25 years' time. Hopefully, Michelle's prediction of advertisements being projected on clouds won't become a thing, but we already have skywriting, so maybe that's already here. No, dude, if I see a fucking ad for fucking jerk made up there, I'm bombing something.
SPEAKER_01What do you think Goodyear blimps are for, babe? They're cool though. It's an advertisement in the sky.
SPEAKER_00I know, but dude, I I want to see more blimps. They're they're neat. Are they dangerous? I feel like they're kind of dangerous.
SPEAKER_01Wasn't that the Hindenburg? Wasn't that a blimp?
SPEAKER_00And it just like Yes, but that was one time. 9-11 only happened once. We still fly. You know, like anyway. Anyway, just a year a couple years before, in 1887, American journalist Nellie Bly checked into a boarding house in New York City. She caused a ruckus for a few days by staying up late and just generally being negative to other guests. The police were called.
SPEAKER_01Why is that name familiar?
SPEAKER_00You'll you will uh yeah, you'll know it. The police were called, and once they saw that she was a woman acting up, they threw her into the insane asylum at Bellevue Hospital. Now this is absurd, yes, but Nellie Bly knew it was. In fact, she was banking on being sent there because Nellie was working on a piece about the abuse women endured in the hospital setting. As soon as she was admitted, Bly dropped the act. She became her normal self, and even then, the doctor said she was, quote, positively demented. After ten days, the newspaper she worked for secured her release, where her experim uh experiences would be published in a book titled Ten Days in a Madhouse. Yep. Her descriptions of uncleaned shit caked to the floors, dirty bathwater at freezing temperatures being poured over the patients. I think And being fed spoiled meat caused a long list of reforms within the hospital's treatment of their patients.
SPEAKER_01Granted, this is in America and the Jules Verne's nephew was in France, but I still think it it couldn't have been I mean, it was no fucking fortune. It wouldn't have been nice.
SPEAKER_00No. It wasn't a fucking, you know, hotel California kind of situation. I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_01But at least they knew enough to clean him up for those lunches with Papa and Uncle Jules.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I guess so. I mean, he seemed to be of right mind enough that they could have asked him, like, so how are you being treated? Oh yeah, they whipped me with the garden hose. Yeah, no, love it, love it. You know, and they would have been like, alright, we're taking you out.
SPEAKER_01Fingers at my bum.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's that's just what ice cream men do. Nicole, that's just what they do. That's how you earn the extra sonic ice cream. Anyway, so So the story had made Nellie Bly famous, and she was already looking for her next story. Inspired by the novelist Jules Verne, Nelly would see if a person could really go around the world in 80 days. However, a journalist from Cosmopolitan named Elizabeth Bisland said she could do it quicker than that. And so, Elizabeth and Nellie raced across the globe, with Elizabeth making it back home within 76 days. Nellie, on the other hand, was fully unaware that someone was even racing her. She didn't learn that there was someone else doing the same thing she was doing until she was already halfway through her journey. She said, quote, if someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern. What a badass.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00However, people around the world were placing bets, and Nellie even met with Jules Verne near the beginning of her trip in his home of in Amiens. But in the end, Nellie won against Elizabeth Bislin by four days, completing her journey in 72 days, six hours and eleven minutes.
SPEAKER_01I thought you said the other bitch.
SPEAKER_00No, I just said that she she said that she could do it quicker, and she did. She did it in 76 days, but Nelly's still fucking beat her by quite a bit. It was showing that Vern's science was sound. Then a few months later, George Francis train went around the world in 63 days just to show that he was better than a bunch of women. The same dude who just talks to children and dogs and shakes his own goddamn hand.
SPEAKER_01Traveling around the world, huh?
SPEAKER_00Wasn't there a whole thing in South Park about pedophiles just going around in 1896. In 1896, Jules Byrne wrote Facing the Flag about a scientist named Thomas Roque, who builds a gun so big that one shot could reduce a ship to pieces just by having the bullet fly over it. But when Roke tries to sell his invention to foreign governments, they all laugh him into insanity. He becomes a patient to an insane asylum, but he's later sprung by pirates who bring Rokue to their uh secret island to help build his powerful machine. While facing the flag was a big success for Verne, there was one reader who wasn't so happy with his depiction of the main character. Namely because the character was based on him. Eugene Turpin was a French chemist who patented the use of artillery shells carrying melanite, an explosive material. And when he read Verne's novel and saw what he believed to be a mad scientist and drew the parallels, he was not pleased. So the same year as the book's release, Eugene Turpin sued Jules Verne. The court case was a quick one, and Jules Verne was deemed not guilty, thanks in part to his lawyer, the 25-year-old Raymond Poincar, who would later become the president of France from 1913 to 1920.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Also, couldn't he have fucking done it himself if he paid attention in fucking law school?
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's been how long that he hasn't been practicing law? I guess so. You use information and like I don't know. It's basically a whole new concept.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. It was later discovered in a letter to his brother, however, that Jules Verne really did base the main character on Eugene Turpin. Quote, in a few days I will send you the proofs of my new novel. You know, the one about Turpin that I told you about. It's pretty cut and fucking dry. And although the 1818 novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley may have given us the most famous example of this trope, the mad scientist became popularized by both Jules Verne's Facing the Flag and H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, which was published that same year. And surely, although Jules Verne wasn't really making a splash with his novels anymore, he'd been in the sci-fi game for so long that the world was beginning to take on his influence. For instance, on November 17, 1896, the Sacramento Bee out of California ran a telegram from someone claiming to be the inventor of a flying airship, saying that he was planning to fly to California from New York. That same day, there were sightings from people all over California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington of a mysterious airship flying in the night sky. Although thousands of people claimed to have seen this flying machine, some newspapers claimed that the witness numbers were in the hundreds of thousands. Now, what was actually seen during that overcast night were a few lights about a thousand feet off the ground. But what some people claimed to have seen was the airship much closer to land, where they could see people pedaling to keep the craft afloat, extraterrestrials abducting people off the ground, and people in the aircraft saying that they were there to quote kill Spaniards.
SPEAKER_01Was this around the Spanish American War?
SPEAKER_00Actually, yeah. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was. I think that actually happened in like two years from then.
SPEAKER_01But like still So Spanish Americans sometimes were like ramping up.
SPEAKER_00Fucking Spaniards are pretentious. What are you gonna do? I'm sick of them too. I get it. Thorismo go home. Motherfucker, your Airbnb is the only way you're making money. Shut the fuck up. Anyway, regardless. Find a landlord. Yeah, go find. Yeah, fucking Americans are just there to take part of your capitalism, bitch. Alright? You want some real change? Bring your nude beaches over here. Anyway, so regardless, though the I told the identity of the airship.
SPEAKER_01Nude Americans.
SPEAKER_00No, the n No, the topless Spaniards were beautiful though.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but you're talking about bringing it here.
SPEAKER_00You're right.
SPEAKER_01I don't Nude Americans.
SPEAKER_00No, not what I want. Regardless, though the identity of the airship was never confirmed, it didn't take long for people to draw a connection between this event and a Jules Verne novel released ten years prior called Rober the Conqueror. It's about a guy in a elaborate spacecraft that kidnaps people and causes terror throughout the United States. At this point, it was perhaps Verne's latest great success, and I honestly don't doubt that this case of mass hysteria was at least in part thanks to his own creativity. There was also a ride called Trip to the Moon that premiered in 1901 as well on Coney Island. There was also a ride called Trip to the Moon that premiered in 1901 as well on Coney Island. You basically got to walk around a paper mache lunar surface while dudes dressed as aliens walked around. The attraction cost 50 cents. 20 bucks in today's money. Jesus. Yep. It just reminds me of. Remember that Willy Wonka experience thing that they did in like England or something? You don't, where there was like a sad-looking oompa loompa.
SPEAKER_01And when you think of the smashing pumpkins, that one video.
SPEAKER_00They did it much fucking better.
SPEAKER_02Chemtrails are real.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. When the when the attraction moved from Coney Island to Luna Park in 1903, the ride was transported by Topsy the Elephant as a gimmick. Yes, Topsy the Elephant was named after the character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, but she's better remembered as the elephant that was killed on film via electrocution by the Edison Company.
SPEAKER_01Jesus Christ. Did you ever watch that one? No, absolutely I refused. Okay. Fucked.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's not like there's sound to it.
SPEAKER_01Also fuck Thomas Edison.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And now I know this is a tangent, but please. Anyway, I always believed that Topsy was electrocuted for her crimes and killing a shitty trainer, but in reality, Topsy was just showing that she was stressed and tired. Her owners wanted to get rid of her and figured hanging the elephant would be cool. However, John Peter Haynes from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said no. But Topsy's handlers, as well as John Peter Haines himself, were like, yes. Agreed that if they fed Topsy poisoned carrots, strangled her with giant ropes, tie it up to a winch.
SPEAKER_01Give her the rasp in the treatment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and electrocuted her, then that would be humane. Now, I'd always heard that Thomas Edison himself volunteered to electrocute Topsy to the city.
SPEAKER_01He would, he fucking would.
SPEAKER_00To show the dangers of Nikolai Tesla's AC electricity during the War of the Currents, but in reality, the War of the Currents had already been lost by Edison ten years prior, and Edison himself was no longer in business, though his company was. Either way, Topsy the Elephant joined the 27 Club on January 4th, 1903.
SPEAKER_01Christ.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, isn't wasn't that fun to learn? I went through a day of just looking into that. I was like, Jesus Christ, a winch.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's funny you reference the 27 Club.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And we're talking about niche mangas because I read one once that was basically It was like Shaman King, but with the 27 Club, but with like this Japanese school teacher uh is like getting possessed by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix and All he wants to do is like play guitar.
SPEAKER_00I just want to play guitar and beat my girlfriend.
SPEAKER_01And he's like gonna die at 27 if she doesn't like make it in the music industry.
SPEAKER_00Uh sad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I didn't. There were only so many like bootleg translated chapters at the time. Like I didn't, they only just hinted at the fact that you know somebody had Kirk Cobain.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I mean, you know. Wait, so it they they only have Jimi Hendrix, and that's it throughout the game.
SPEAKER_01She only has Jimi Hendrix, but they hinted at another character. Like the last page of one chapter was like a guy who had the ghost of Kirk Cobain.
SPEAKER_00Oh. So you gotta fight like Janice Joplin's hand.
SPEAKER_01Other musicians are out there with their own 27 club ghosts, and maybe one of them has Topsy. Okay, you can keep that one in.
SPEAKER_00And in 1902, we saw the first adaptation of Verne's work to film. If it isn't the first, then anything before it has certainly been lost to time. Although it wasn't fully appreciated in his own day, Georges Malay's A Trip to the Moon was inspired by From the Earth to the Moon and its sequel, Around the Moon. Though it probably shared inspiration from the HG Wells 1901 story The First Men in the Moon as well, which had just been translated to French mere months before production. Georges Mallet would go on to create several more films based on Jules Verne's work, including The Impossible Voyage in 1904, based on Verne's play of the same name, Under the Sea in 1907, based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Conquest of the Pole in 1912, based on the adventures of Captain Heteras. You should conquest my pole. Yeah, there's not a lot of pole. In 1905, Jules Verne would publish his final novel during his lifetime, Invasion of the Sea. It's about a couple of guys that want to fill the Sahara Desert with water so they can commercialize off it. I guess it wasn't a totally original idea, as there were actually a couple of French dudes that proposed doing the same thing in the past. But since 1902, Verne's eyesight was so bad that he had to dictate his so his stories to his secretary. At eight in the morning of March 24, 1905, Jules Gabriel Verne would pass away at the age of seventy-seven from a complication of diabetes. Before he passed, Verne had called over his immediate family to join him at his side. Only when they had all gathered, according to his grandson, did he give them a fond look, turn his head to face the wall, and quietly die as if everything was in order. His wife Honorine would follow five years later on January 29th, 1910, at the age of 80. Jules Verne was buried in La Medelline Cemetery, where Honorine herself would later be buried as well. Two years after Verne's death, a sculptor named Albert Rose added a statue of a man breaking through his tomb and reaching for the sky. Yeah, looking at it doesn't make it any cuter. It's kind of yeah. Yeah, it's creepy. The inscription in French says towards immortality and eternal youth. Which might show you what he was going for, but honestly, it's kind of shocking to build a fucking statue of a guy breaking out of your tomb like a zombie. It's sick as fuck, though. Now there would usually be a ton of letters and journals from authors this far back, and especially for one as famous as Jules Verne, but it turns out that he pretty much just torched all his belongings in 198 uh 1898. His reasoning was that he saw that Michelle was really becoming a family man, and he wanted Honorine's two daughters from before their marriage to get more involved in the family. Well, both of her kids had actually gone on to marry high society people, and they tried to convince Jules that Michelle and his marriage were a stain on the family name. So despite them, Jules Verne burned all of his shit so they wouldn't find anything else to gossip about.
SPEAKER_01Nice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's fair. That's a fair play. It's not like good. It just made me think. I don't know. I was thinking before you finished up with like that reasoning, I was thinking about what's her face. Jane Austen's sister burning up all those letters.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but that was out of embarrassment for who her sister really was. But like he's just like, you know what then? Was it fuck you, you don't get shit. That's what they say.
SPEAKER_01That's what they say.
SPEAKER_00Well, what else could it have been? I think that's the le that's like the least cool thing that could be.
SPEAKER_01I just remember us making fun of her drawing.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, no, it's just filled with her sketches and that's why she torched.
SPEAKER_01Jane Austen making fun of her sister's drawings.
SPEAKER_00With Jules Verne releasing at least one work per year for the last three decades, he had plenty of stories on the back burner. For the next handful of years, his books would stay on the shelves with this song.
SPEAKER_01A deathdom? The game of death death him.
SPEAKER_00Oh, like yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Michelle was either editing or finishing his father's work along the way, basically, with the eighth and final posthumous book coming in 1919 with the title The Barsack Mission. Barsack. Don't laugh. It's the Bar Sack. You're laughing. Nope. You're laughing. I'm crying. It's sad. It's the Barsack mission. I'll show you what the Barsack Mission is all about. Michelle himself had become a businessman of sorts in the years prior to his father's death, becoming the owner of a successful paper mill before it burned down in 1904. Then was a successful banker before being fired due to several illegal transactions. That sounds about him. All in all, becoming the executor to his father's estate, I think, saved him.
SPEAKER_01Like an Alolan executor.
SPEAKER_00A what?
SPEAKER_01Nothing. It's a bad joke. Keep going. What was it? Alolan executor. What does that mean? This is a Pokemon. The Alolan Pokers of it is just really long neck.
SPEAKER_00It gave Michelle actually actual work to do that would earn him a quick buck, as as would sci-fi stories of his own before he himself passed away at just the age of 63 on March 5th, 1925. In his later years, mostly due to his long list of works and his novels being tagged as children's stories by the public, Jules Verne's popularity waned steadily until his death. The surrealist movement had already come and went, but its influence showed in people who were starting to get into the occult and otherworldly types of fiction like steampunk. To commemorate his 150th birthday, the Jules Verne Museum was opened in Nantes, France in 1978. Although he grew up in that town as a boy, he never really lived in the building that houses the museum, though the museum does have a ton of his shit that was given to them by his descendants. That same year in 1978, aboard the Salyut 6, Soviet cosmonaut Georgi Grektol Grechtel Grek. Broadcast a message to Earth in honor of Jules Verne saying, Quote, There's hardly a person who hasn't read his books. At any rate, not among the cosmonauts, because Jules Verne was a dreamer, a visionary who saw flights in space. I'd say this flight too was predicted by Jules Verne. Edwin Hubble, of which the Hubble telescope was named, even forewent his father's wishes to study law so that he could focus on science, because he saw that Jules Verne did the same. And of course, there have been a ton of shit named after Jules Verne in every branch of science. From satellites to craters to even a type of apocalyptic volcano event called a Vern shot, which is what they call it if a volcano gets all blocked up and a bunch of gas builds up, and then when it erupts, it just shoots debris everywhere. That's a Vern shot.
SPEAKER_01Exploding volcano.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna Vern shot! Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they think it's actually happened once or twice and caused an extent uh an extinction event or two. In 1989, Verne's great-grandson would find what would have been his second novel had it not been rejected by Hetzel, Paris in the Twentieth Century. When it initially came out, five years later in 1994, it was regarded as his lost novel. But it was never really lost. It's just that his family kind of forgot about it before picking it up one day and going, Oh yeah. In 1992, when a Disneyland was built in Paris, some critics complained that Disney wasn't showing enough French shit. What with Main Street USA and Frontierland? Where was all the French stuff that Disney was so famously known for? So they built a submarine ride called The Mysteries of the Nautilus. Which is just a set piece of a submarine and hyperspace mountain, which is just Space Mountain, but dressed up like it's from the book The Earth uh From the Earth to the Moon, and you know what? The French shut the fuck up about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was gonna say it worked. Put that shit all in tomorrow land.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. Boom, done.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You want some steampunk bullshit? There you go. There you go. We're gonna spray hot fucking steam into your face every so often. You know what, dude? No, no, no. You know how fucking uh Universal has like the misters and stuff that fucking Disney doesn't have when you're waiting in line in actual fucking shades so you're not getting cancer while you wait for your fucking capitalist dream. Uh fucking they could have done that. Have a bunch of fucking uh pipes like underneath, like running through and stuff, and you're standing under them, and they're every so often they quote unquote steam at you. It's really just mist. They just go that see, that's a million dollar idea.
SPEAKER_01Too much mister causes a desire for violence.
SPEAKER_00Trust me, too many misters do cause a desire in me. Today the Today the Jules Verne trophy is awarded to whosoever travels around the world by boat the fastest.
SPEAKER_01Whosoever travels.
SPEAKER_00I mean, that's a cool trophy to have, though. So long the way you phrased it was so long as you pay the entrance fee to the committee upon completion. This has caused a bit of a problem in the past. Where in 2004, American businessman and adventurer Steve Fawcett beat the world record. However, instead of the 11,000 euro entrance fee, they asked Steve to pay 30,000 euros instead. He said no, and the award instead went to a French sailor who completed the race in second place five days slower than Steve. The last person to complete the journey the quickest was French racer Francis Joyon, who completed the route in 40 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes, and 30 seconds. The trophy itself is actually pretty cool, though. It's like this massive magnetic plate that just hovers over the base.
SPEAKER_01I think it's wild that like you have enough money to go around the whole world and then you're not.
SPEAKER_00That's a principle of the thing. I'm only to bet it's because he's fucking American. That's what I think.
SPEAKER_01French were like, oh that is true.
SPEAKER_00He loves too much uh freedom. What can we do? He he loves his Coca-Cola and his guns too much. It's slowly turning Spanish, and I'm starting to feel sexy.
SPEAKER_01Agamemnon.
SPEAKER_00Shut up. God damn it. Who what's that actor's name? I love that guy. Ancazaria. Bankazaria, goddamn it. Agador. Uh Jules Verne was pretty much an international sensation from the get-go. And because of that, there have been several translations, as well as mistranslations of his work. There are editions upon editions of his books, which can get pretty messy when you consider all the reprints from all the different companies that pirated his works as well. Because of this, there are websites out there that can help you categorize your Jules Verne novels easier, so you know just what you have on your hands. The website hetzel.free.fr is a good resource, though the website is in French. There's also Jules Verne.ca that helps as well. Verne has been translated more times than William Shakespeare, giving him the number two spot right behind Agatha Christie. If you don't count all the stage plays, short stories and essays, he still wrote well over fifty fucking novels. He's shown his influence in other artists' works, such as Hayo Miyazaki, tons of space objects, such as comets and craters being named in his honor. And the subpar restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower called Le Jules Verne. So it's no wonder that people still call him the godfather of science fiction. My sources today. She's actually eaten there. Oh, I like your nails. They remind me of like uh fucking evil eye. Thank you. Kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01I know, but it's nice anyway. Um, let's see, thoughts. Uh the mistranslation thing that offended me makes me think of um this ra this trailer for a rom-com I saw where this guy's like a failing author, you know, finds out he's really big in Mexico, and it's because the woman who's translating his books is basically rewriting them.
SPEAKER_00That hurts, man.
SPEAKER_01But they fell in love.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's stupid. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um I didn't say it was like Nah man.
SPEAKER_00Like I know I know without Jules Verne, there wouldn't be fucking steampunk. And I hate steampunk, but that's just I don't know. It it'll die out for diesel punk once people punk is not his fault.
SPEAKER_01I know it's not his fault that like people just took his work and just decided to, you know, to put their tits and corsets on it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00There's gotta be steampunk porn out there. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Of course there is.
SPEAKER_00Maybe that'll get me into it. I don't know. Well, I don't know. Um did you ever watch the Jackie Chan movie Around the World in eight days? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so there was that in Shanghai Noon that came out around the same time. Didn't they both have Owen Wilson?
SPEAKER_01I have no idea.
SPEAKER_00Or was Owen Wilson in either of those. Owen Wilson was in Shanghai Noon. He was. Oh, Shanghai Nights. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Nights. There was Nights is a sequel.
SPEAKER_00Oh, no shit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they go to London. Oh, that's they're still cowboys.
SPEAKER_00All right, I'll be right back.
SPEAKER_01I was more interested in Shanghai Noon and Knights because that promised actual kung fu.
SPEAKER_00Look, uh well, okay. Here's the thing about Jackie Chan, and I know that this has a lot to do with Jules Verne, but listen, I just like okay, I I love I love Drunkenmaster. Like I'm not talking about like the one that he made in America, but like the 19 like seventy-eight Yun Wu-Ping one. I love that fucking movie. It's so good. His like when he's actually doing like kung fu movies, he's great, but when he has to like go to America to make movies, he kind of dumbs them down.
SPEAKER_01It's because that's what Americans want. They want like ignorant foreigner comedy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that is what they all were, wasn't it? Like throughout Rush Hour, he doesn't get smarter. And then there's just like haha, the other one's black. Like you know what's great though is the words coming out of my mouth. See, you're allowed to do a black voice because you're practically black yourself.
SPEAKER_01Now, the what I did find about about Chris trailing the word maybe what is it?
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Aquafina.
SPEAKER_01So I can run.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Now, anyway, so Chris Tucker though, I did look it up. That man is largely retired, and he's basically like, yeah, if they want to do another rush hour though, like I'll come back for that. Essentially, rush hour two and three were him coming out of retirement. He'd already retired. Yeah. Because they're just, god damn it, he likes it. Good for him.
SPEAKER_01If it's fun, it's fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Exactly. And you know what? That brings me right back to Jules Verne. You know what? If it's funny, I like them. They're fun.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01They're fucking fun. Well, I wasn't making fun of you for liking Jules Verne.
SPEAKER_00It's okay. You can't make fun of me any more than you already do when I pull down my pants.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's you earned that.
SPEAKER_00I didn't earn that. I didn't make it small.
unknownRecording what?
SPEAKER_00Oh, I was recording the podcast. Um, hey, I called because uh so we're doing a fucking episode on Jules Verne, and the restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower is called Le Jules Verne. How was it? Really? It wasn't just subpar? Because I wrote that it was subpar.
unknownNo, the ravioli that I actually had, the Jules Verne was the best ravioli I've ever had.
SPEAKER_00So there you have it, folks. Fucking if you have a taste buds for Chef Boy RD, then the best thing that you're going to have is at the top of Eiffel Tower for how much was it for a bowl of ravioli?
SPEAKER_02I don't fucking remember.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you didn't pay it. Anyway. Alright, well, see ya later.