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Crichton · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

• 0:15
  Did you see that? I saw it.
• 0:16
  You didn't change the lighting. I didn't touch it.
• 0:23
  It's a. Lot, yeah.
• 0:25
  It's bigger than two microns, which means the infection is
• 0:28
  spread by a mere fraction of the green.
• 0:32
  I'm bringing down cameras. That's how the other micro
• 0:34
  scanning. Well, we've now reached the
• 0:43
  point where this show, this podcast has officially become a
• 0:52
  distraction. Supposed to be doing homework
• 0:56
  right now. I'm supposed to be writing a
• 1:02
  paper discussion point about my views on watching television,
• 1:12
  which is actually harder than it thinks.
• 1:13
  It's part of this mass communications class that I'm
• 1:15
  taking, which is kind of a RIP off because we're doing this
• 1:21
  chapter on electronic communication, I guess.
• 1:25
  I don't know. So it's film, TV and radio, and
• 1:32
  I have to write this paper on my television viewing habits.
• 1:35
  We had a discussion about movies and zip about radio, which is
• 1:40
  weird because radio podcasting, I put what I do podcasting, I
• 1:45
  consider to be radio is seen. I mean, there's there's studies
• 1:52
  out there. Bill was talking about one that
• 1:55
  that radio is more trusted as a source of information than these
• 2:00
  others are because, well, it should be.
• 2:06
  I, I anyway, I feel ripped off because the one thing I know
• 2:09
  something about radio, I don't get to talk about it in class
• 2:14
  anyway. I don't really watch television.
• 2:17
  Watch in the sense of do I sit down in front of the television
• 2:20
  and say, OK, this I have to pay attention.
• 2:22
  Do I have to walk in and go like I'm sitting in a theater or
• 2:26
  something? I've almost never do that with
• 2:30
  television. I certainly don't do it anymore.
• 2:34
  That was probably a time in my life when I did.
• 2:38
  Maybe back in the 90s, maybe back in the 70s, I don't know.
• 2:44
  Didn't do much in the 80s because obviously I was engaged
• 2:47
  elsewhere. But I don't know, I television
• 2:51
  just isn't my focal point. It's background news music.
• 2:54
  Radio is background noise, right?
• 2:56
  You turn on the radio of music in the background and you do
• 2:59
  whatever. I was told Once Upon a time by a
• 3:03
  so-called program director that talk radio is the same way.
• 3:10
  And then at the same time, the same person told me that people
• 3:13
  who listen to talk radio are very engaged.
• 3:16
  Well, it can't be background if it's just engaged.
• 3:18
  So if you're engaged, So which is it?
• 3:21
  And his theory was that people who listen to talk radio,
• 3:23
  they're they're focused in on it.
• 3:26
  They want to be entertained. They want to be made to laugh,
• 3:28
  they want to be made to to be angry.
• 3:31
  They're yelling at their radio slash podcast device and they're
• 3:37
  engaged. Television is not that for me.
• 3:40
  Television is very, very background.
• 3:42
  The vast majority of stuff that I watch is sports.
• 3:45
  And again, I'm not watching enough.
• 3:48
  I was actually joking with Bill yesterday about this, about the
• 3:52
  NFL. When I watch the NFL on Sunday,
• 3:55
  I do not watch the Denver Broncos game.
• 3:58
  I do not watch the New York Giants game.
• 4:02
  I watch on Sunday. I watch Red Zone, which jumps
• 4:06
  all over the place. Maybe I have a DHDI, don't know,
• 4:08
  but but it's much more interesting to me that way to #1
• 4:13
  because the Broncos suck, which I'm starting to really regret my
• 4:16
  $20 bet on them making the play offs, but for the moment they're
• 4:20
  not very good and so why would I concentrate on that?
• 4:24
  Neither are the Giants, and there you go.
• 4:28
  So. So really the only games that
• 4:30
  I'll stick with would be the Thursday night game, the Sunday
• 4:32
  night game, and the Monday night game.
• 4:34
  But even those are just background noise for whatever
• 4:36
  else I'm doing, whether that's homework, which is what I'm
• 4:40
  supposed to be doing right now but not, or literally playing No
• 4:45
  Man's Sky. I mean, it's just background
• 4:48
  noise. Oh, it's like a sermon in some
• 4:52
  ways. Sometimes I'll focus in on it
• 4:53
  for a few seconds, then I'll drift away.
• 4:56
  But podcasting and talk radio are different because people
• 4:59
  tend to focus on them. Yes, for some people it's just
• 5:02
  background. I get it.
• 5:04
  But for the vast majority of listeners, it's a, it's a focal
• 5:09
  point. You, you want to hear what
• 5:11
  people in radio have to say, so you listen.
• 5:14
  And that's why it's more trusted, because even my Morning
• 5:17
  News, I turn on the news in the morning just to see if
• 5:22
  anything's happening that I need to know about.
• 5:25
  Primarily weather stuff. Not that I care because it's no,
• 5:28
  it's September, it rains here and I don't travel a lot, but
• 5:33
  I'm interested in the traffic report.
• 5:36
  But the actual news is just a regurgitation of what I can get
• 5:39
  anywhere else. It's just background news noise
• 5:42
  to me. What I like about podcasting in
• 5:46
  particular though, is unlike talk radio, live talk radio,
• 5:51
  which is great, believe me, I enjoy being on the air.
• 5:54
  But podcasting, you can back it up.
• 5:57
  You can rewind. It has that rewind function.
• 6:00
  I I like that. Did he really say that?
• 6:03
  What did he say? Something wasn't clear.
• 6:05
  Back it up a little bit. You can hear it again.
• 6:07
  That's what, that's what makes it nice.
• 6:11
  How many times have you wanted that on live radio?
• 6:13
  Let me tell you, back in my day, I wanted it a lot but couldn't
• 6:16
  get it. Anyway.
• 6:18
  All that said, I'm supposed to be doing homework right now
• 6:22
  about mass communications and television, which I do not have.
• 6:28
  Well, I'm a radio guy. I don't, I don't have the hair
• 6:30
  for television. It's frustration though.
• 6:33
  For me, this whole college experience has been very
• 6:36
  frustrating because I had this vision and believe me, this
• 6:41
  vision was not writing a 500 word piece about how I would
• 6:46
  explain reconstruction in 500 words.
• 6:50
  I literally have almost six hours of podcasting talking
• 6:54
  about reconstruction in the past.
• 6:57
  I, I, I didn't, I didn't envision myself having to have a
• 7:01
  mass communications course and talking about my television, my
• 7:05
  feelings about television, my feelings about it.
• 7:10
  I have feelings about television.
• 7:14
  Anyway, I had this vision and the vision was more of the 18th
• 7:18
  century French salon where people sat around and we
• 7:21
  discussed things and we talked about ideas, we talked about
• 7:26
  impacts and we debated those things.
• 7:30
  We didn't say, you know, as per the text, this is what it is.
• 7:35
  I have a professor right now who's telling me that in writing
• 7:38
  some of these papers, I can only quote the actual text of the
• 7:44
  course. I can't get outside of the text
• 7:46
  of the course. That's what I said.
• 7:51
  See all this baggage? See this shelf over here?
• 7:53
  Those of you watching the video, that entire shelf deals with
• 7:58
  just what we're talking about in that class.
• 8:02
  Can't, can't quote any of it. All right, So if I can't quote
• 8:05
  it, can I paraphrase it? He said.
• 8:10
  Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. I had this vision.
• 8:16
  This vision did not include a history class in the United
• 8:19
  States. United States history from 1865,
• 8:22
  essentially. April 1865 April 15th to be
• 8:25
  precise to the modern day. Now I realize it's only A7 week
• 8:31
  course. OK, maybe that was my mistake is
• 8:33
  taking it during No, I didn't take it during the summer.
• 8:37
  I took in the fall, which is a full full session.
• 8:39
  So 7 weeks. The entirety the the the actual
• 8:46
  statement was that World War 2 is the defining element of
• 8:52
  United States history since 1865, the absolute defining
• 8:56
  characteristic of the United States.
• 8:58
  All of those things comes from World War 2.
• 9:01
  So we spent a grand total of 14 minutes on US involvement in
• 9:05
  World War 2. Not making that up.
• 9:08
  I can show you the lecture if you want, 14 minutes, and it
• 9:10
  wasn't a bad lecture. But talk about a broad overview
• 9:18
  of what's going on. I had this vision and this is
• 9:22
  not it. This is little more than rote
• 9:25
  regurgitation of the text. That's all it is.
• 9:29
  And by the way, it's open book. All the tests are open books.
• 9:32
  So it's so far. I'm halfway now through this
• 9:37
  quarter. I've missed one question on the
• 9:39
  test, and that's because I misread it.
• 9:42
  It said all of these are conditions except and I missed
• 9:45
  the part that said accept. Tonight I got frustrated with
• 9:49
  the question and I almost emailed the presser saying this
• 9:51
  question is wrong. All these answers are correct
• 9:52
  and it didn't even dawn on me that it said accept.
• 9:55
  So it was my own fault. I'm sometimes I'm an idiot.
• 10:00
  It was the comedian that used to say that we're all idiots at
• 10:02
  some point. Even Einstein lost his keys once
• 10:04
  in a while. It's frustrating, it's
• 10:08
  irritating, but I have this show and I have my weekly appearance
• 10:14
  on radio and those things help. It really do.
• 10:19
  I was interviewing last week Ryan Walker, whose new book is
• 10:23
  coming out. You can get it at Putnam and
• 10:25
  Sons. It's about Henry Brow.
• 10:28
  Brow. It's pronounced Brow, but we're
• 10:32
  joking about that. His new book is about a
• 10:35
  submarine of the 1st and only so far enlisted recipient of the
• 10:39
  Medal of Honor from the submarine fleet.
• 10:43
  And off the air, we were having a conversation about my
• 10:46
  experience. His experience was talking to
• 10:48
  him about going to College in England remotely like I'm doing,
• 10:52
  but not in England. I'm in Arizona, Arizona State.
• 10:58
  And I was sharing with him some of my frustrations, these very
• 11:00
  frustrations that I've shared with you.
• 11:01
  It is not what I expected it to be.
• 11:04
  It is not this intellectual salon that I had envisioned.
• 11:11
  It is literally just open book rote regurgitation of a text
• 11:16
  where I've actually been told, don't get out of that text now.
• 11:19
  Again, my first session took those 22 history classes, U.S.
• 11:25
  history before 1865 and World History from about to 1565.
• 11:31
  Both of those classes were really good, learned a lot,
• 11:34
  enjoyed myself, had wonderful conversations with professors.
• 11:39
  Not happening this corner. And it's frustrating to me.
• 11:42
  But I was telling Ryan about this and he just shook his head
• 11:44
  and he said, yeah, undergraduate stuff is just painful.
• 11:50
  It's it sucks. It's, it's terrible.
• 11:54
  It's you might as well just beat your head with a brick because
• 11:58
  that's about what you're going to feel like you're doing,
• 12:00
  especially at our age where you're not because Ryan went
• 12:04
  after, he was in the Navy as well.
• 12:07
  It's not, we're not 1819 year old kids, you know, right out of
• 12:12
  high school with no life experience, nothing else.
• 12:14
  And so, yeah, it's going to be hard.
• 12:18
  I enjoy talking to other historians because I always
• 12:21
  learn something. It's always a learning
• 12:22
  experience. And, and in this case with Ryan,
• 12:24
  it was even, look, I knew about Henry Brown.
• 12:27
  I'm a submariner. Of course I knew this.
• 12:29
  I, I was interviewing him to help promote his book.
• 12:31
  And I hope that you will go buy his book because you'll learn
• 12:33
  some really cool stuff about somebody who did a really
• 12:36
  amazing thing. But what I really learned was
• 12:41
  undergraduate stud studies are are a pain in the ass.
• 12:45
  They're boring. But to get to where I want to
• 12:49
  be, got to keep plowing through. I got to keep going, got to keep
• 12:54
  moving, got to keep doing these stupid discussion board com
• 13:00
  questions about my, my feelings about television.
• 13:08
  So I tell you all that because this morning I got up and came
• 13:12
  across a a fellow historian who was writing about Michael
• 13:16
  Crichton. And Michael Crichton has to be
• 13:18
  one of my favorite science fiction authors.
• 13:21
  I, you know who Michael Crichton is?
• 13:23
  He wrote Jurassic Park, for God's sake, at one of the
• 13:26
  greatest books ever written. And even though they didn't
• 13:30
  exactly follow the book, it's pretty damn good movie too.
• 13:33
  It, it really is. So Michael Crichton has written
• 13:40
  dozens of books, including that one.
• 13:44
  He wrote The Andromeda Strand way back when.
• 13:49
  There was a 1970s film version of the Andromeda Strand that I
• 13:52
  thought was fantastic. The original 1, I have not seen
• 13:56
  the remake, but the original 1 was.
• 13:58
  It was creepy, it was good, it was exciting, and the book
• 14:02
  itself is amazing. I personally think his best book
• 14:07
  is the book he was working on when he passed away,
• 14:09
  unfortunately didn't finish it. It was called Pirate Latitudes.
• 14:14
  It's a really it's about pirates who doesn't like that?
• 14:19
  And it was, it was well done and I enjoyed it.
• 14:21
  And even though it wasn't completed, even though he never
• 14:24
  finished it, it still had that Michael Crichton feel to it that
• 14:28
  I really liked. So it was there.
• 14:30
  Anyway, I was reading about him this morning, sorry, need some
• 14:35
  coffee here, and they were talking about the fact that when
• 14:41
  he had first started out in college, he was an English
• 14:43
  major. I toyed with the idea of
• 14:49
  majoring in English, something that interests me.
• 14:53
  But history is my passion, and if I was going to do this, I
• 14:57
  wanted to. I knew I was going to have to
• 15:00
  stick with it, so I knew it needed to be about my passion,
• 15:03
  which history is. Michael Crichton wanted to be an
• 15:07
  English major because he knew he wanted to be a writer, but he
• 15:11
  was so frustrated during his undergraduate studies because
• 15:15
  they were not what he expected them to be.
• 15:19
  Furthermore, he was dealing with a professor who he thought was
• 15:26
  unqualified and was just phoning things in.
• 15:30
  He, he, he questioned the grading system that this guy was
• 15:33
  using. And to prove that the grading
• 15:36
  system was flawed, he actually took an essay by George Orwell,
• 15:41
  put his name on it. Michael Crichton turned it in.
• 15:46
  Now, if you did that today, you would get immediately in trouble
• 15:51
  because you plagiarized George. And, and he didn't even change
• 15:53
  any words. I mean, it was just word for
• 15:55
  word. He just changed the name on the
• 15:56
  top of the essay, turned it in. Today you'd get academic
• 16:02
  suspension for that, but back then he got AB minus on it.
• 16:07
  Now going to tell you, I have a similar experience.
• 16:11
  When I was in seminary, I did we, we had a paper that was due
• 16:16
  and I thought it was pointless. So I wrote the front page, which
• 16:21
  was basically the, the summary, you know, the introductory
• 16:23
  stuff. And then it was just 12 pages of
• 16:25
  gibberish. I mean literally gibberish with
• 16:29
  the last page being the the closing paragraph.
• 16:33
  And because of the way things were set up there, I actually
• 16:35
  turned that into like four classes, got 3A's and 1F.
• 16:40
  The one guy that actually read it was like, what's the point of
• 16:43
  this? And so I took him the other
• 16:44
  three and said this is the point of this.
• 16:47
  Well, Creighton did the same thing, turned it in, got AB
• 16:50
  minus on George Orwell. George freaking Orwell essay got
• 16:56
  AB minus from this professor and he Crichton's position was this
• 16:59
  kind of proves that this guy is he's off his he he doesn't know
• 17:04
  what he's doing. Took it to the Dean, showed him
• 17:07
  this said, you know, look, if if George Orwell is only worthy of
• 17:12
  AB minus, then I don't belong in this school.
• 17:15
  I don't belong in this program. And he shifted from an English
• 17:19
  major to his passion, which happened to be Biological
• 17:24
  Sciences. Yes, he wanted to be a writer,
• 17:28
  and he wanted to be a science fiction writer, but his passion
• 17:31
  was about biology. And as you can see that in his
• 17:34
  books, whether you're talking about Andromeda Strain, Congo,
• 17:39
  Jurassic Park doesn't matter. And he was able then to graduate
• 17:42
  with honors in that program. And the rest is history, as they
• 17:48
  say. And I thought back in my
• 17:52
  conversation with Ryan and I thought back on some other
• 17:55
  things that are happening. And I realized that just going
• 17:58
  to have to tough it out. Just going to have to keep
• 18:00
  plugging away. Just going to have to keep
• 18:02
  explaining to people what my feelings about television are
• 18:06
  and mass communication are, because my goal is to be able to
• 18:10
  communicate in a mass communication way.
• 18:14
  History. I want to be able to tell the
• 18:17
  stories of history, the things that fascinate me, to as wide an
• 18:21
  audience as possible. That's why I enjoy doing Dave
• 18:24
  Does History so much. It's given me an opportunity not
• 18:29
  just to share those things, but to experiment.
• 18:34
  The whole website, davedoeshistory.org is an
• 18:37
  experiment. It's me trying to learn how to
• 18:40
  use technology to bring those stories to life.
• 18:46
  And eventually that that that site will continue to evolve as
• 18:50
  I learn new things, as I learn new techniques, as I learn new,
• 18:53
  new things. It'll, it'll become a growing
• 18:58
  project, but it all will come back to my passion, which is
• 19:03
  history, which means that, well, I have to get to work on this
• 19:08
  stupid paper about my feelings on television.
• 19:13
  I guess what I could do is just transcribe this and write that
• 19:16
  down. But we'll see what happens.
• 19:19
  I don't know. Meantime, hope you have a great
• 19:22
  day. Hope you enjoy yourself and
• 19:24
  we'll see you next time right here on Plausibly Live, The Dave
• 19:29
  Bowman Show.