Quick film review before we get back to the final part of Moby Dick.

Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited Frankenstein adaptation is absolutely cleaning up in the Oscar nominations, including a nod for Best Picture.

Benny and Rich make the comparison with Mary Shelley's source material and find it to be sadly wanting (altho we do have some nice things to say).

On the dumbing-down of nuanced morality stories, and the ubiquity of daddy issues/therapy speak in modern media. Can't a guy just be a crazy hubristic scientist anymore??

Plus: a brief detour through the horror of quantum immortality.

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• The final third of Moby Dick
• The Royal Game — Stefan Zweig
• Atomised — Michel Houellebecq

We continue our voyage with chapters 40-80 of Herman Melville's leviathan MOBY DICK.

Talking nihilism and meaning-making, the deeper significance of making the whale white (seriously), the terrifying vastness of the ocean, animal welfare and charismatic megafauna, and whether we're OK with reading an abridged edition of the book.

In short: we're having a whale of a time. Tune in next week for our third and final instalment.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) They should make some kind of 'abridged' version of this book (00:12:21) BULKINGTON (00:19:18) Whiteness conceptual analysis (00:32:10) First whale encounter (00:41:51) The bloody, brutal business of the sperm whale fishery (00:52:32) Charismatic megafauna / animal ethics (01:00:48) Tashtego falls into a vat of sperm (01:10:02) Listener mail: Is it OK to use another man's Anki deck?

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The final third of Moby Dick

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Starting the year off right by signing on for an epic voyage with Herman Melville's MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHALE, published in 1851, and widely considered to be the great American novel.

It's quite the beast so we're dividing it into three parts, with this first convo covering chapters 1-40.

Call me Ishmael: Dissecting the iconic opening line, why we love Ishmael as a narrator, on the optimal strategy for getting snuggly in bed, the precise nature of his relationship with (we claim) our fellow New Zealand native Queequeg, and the question of race and class politics onboard a whaling ship.

The mysterious Captain Ahab: various ominous warnings, initial thoughts on Ahab's motivations, punching through the pasteboard mask, and a climactic ritual atop the Quarter-deck.

Infamous infodumps: Benny's eyes glazed over at times, Cam skimmed the Cetology chapter, but Rich makes the case for soldiering through. Plus we look at some of the interesting formal choices Melville makes, the early seeds of modernism, and can't help but make some comparisons to Blood Meridian and Butcher's Crossing.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) Ahoy shipmates (00:03:20) Call me Ishmael analysis (00:11:33) NEW ZEALAND MENTIONED!!! (00:17:32) Race politics in international waters (00:23:51) Perilous adventures for young men (00:29:29) The infamous cetology chapter (00:34:44) Jonah and the whale/biblical allusions (00:42:20) We need to talk about Ahab (00:54:48) Infodumps, genre mashups and the roots of modernism (01:01:10) Listener mail: Adam G in NYC

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