Alright baby listeners, this week we’re heading to Mars… or are we? We’re diving into Total Recall, where memory is optional, reality is questionable, and Arnold Schwarzenegger solves existential crises with explosives. The original Philip K. Dick story is sharp, compact, and deeply unsettling, playing with identity in a way that leaves you slightly dizzy. The movie takes that same concept and says, “What if we add mutants, political uprising, and the most aggressively 90s action energy imaginable?” We talk about what makes the short story so clever, why the movie is wildly entertaining even when it abandons subtlety, and whether the spectacle enhances the idea or completely bulldozes it. Is it all a dream? Is it implanted memory? Does it even matter once someone says, “Get to the chopper” energy in space? Baby listeners, this one is chaotic in the best way.

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Alright baby listeners, buckle up, because this episode fought us every step of the way. We’re talking The Lost World: Jurassic Park, a sequel that somehow managed to give us more dinosaurs and less joy. We break down why Michael Crichton’s book, while not his strongest, still feels thoughtful and intentional, and why the movie feels like it was assembled by committee five minutes before filming started. We rant about wasted potential, weird chemistry, and the difference between tension and noise, all while asking the same question over and over: how did this follow one of the greatest movies ever made? Come for the dinosaurs, stay for the disbelief, and learn an important life lesson—greed never ends well, especially when it involves prehistoric murder machines.

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Episode page: https://bookisbetterpod.com/bibpod-episodes/ep-068-jurassic-park-the-lost-world/

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Sink your teeth into this one baby listeners. This week on The Book Is Better, we tackle the granddaddy of vampire lore: Dracula. From Bram Stoker’s surprisingly Christian, diary-driven nightmare to a century of wildly different film adaptations, we debate what actually makes this story work. We cover everything from creepy castles and plague ships to tragic love retcons, over-the-top sensuality, and why Mina deserves way more respect. It’s gothic, it’s chaotic, and it proves that sometimes the scariest thing isn’t the vampire—it’s what filmmakers do to the source material.

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Episode page: https://bookisbetterpod.com/bibpod-episodes/ep-067-dracula/

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