January 12, 2022 • 61 mins
We finish one of Ben Shapiro's horrible short stories.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything, So don't don't ah, it's the Worst
(00:22):
Year Ever, the only podcast whose title was just plagiarized
by Radio Lab. We are in the process, I promise you,
of of pursuing legally. Um. I feel confident saying their
offices will be nothing but a bloody crater in the ground.
When wait, did they plagiarized us for their sure duke,
(00:44):
they have a series or at least an episode called
Worst Year Ever? They know the worst year to be
alive on planet Earth, and I have never been angrier. Yeah,
they just did. They just take um clips from our
show over the past few years. It's just our show,
is as I understand it. It's it's just our a show, um.
But but cutting it and editing it very carefully to
(01:04):
have Cody admit to being the UNI bomber. Well, yeah, no,
it's not a hard well that sounds like good journalism,
capustrated stitch together. That's my assumption. I've said it before
and I'll say it again. No, they put periods in
between the words. Oh yeah, yeah, that's just trying to
trick the algorithms so they don't get a d m
(01:25):
C A motherfucker's I'm going to burn radio Lab to
the ground. Yeah, I think it's a real lab, right,
It's like, oh yeah, it's it's a laboratory. So there's
a lot of flammable things in there. They should not
tried us. Yeah, they'll be they'll be too busy being
on fire, on fire a d O lab people collab.
(01:52):
Welcome back to the worst year we've been reading books.
Good we have been. Has there been news? I don't
think so. It doesn't seem likely, does not seem like
a thing there's been. The only news I care about
is what's going to happen to this tiny little guy
inside of another guy. That's what matters to me. The
(02:17):
emotion allegory we discovered this was this week. Yeah, you
know there's people in the reddit who are frustrated who
say that the story What's Fair had a point and
we didn't get it. I think we got it. They're like,
you doing an iron rand allegory. We got it, it's
just incompetently done. So there's not actually a point because
(02:37):
it's not really established whether or not um like, what's
his name? The murderer brother is any Like, we just
hear from his perspective that his physical labor is what's
saving the farm, and we never actually get a reveal
to show that his brother was actually doing anything that
kept the farm going or the family going. So again,
(02:57):
yeah's that's what Ben is trying to do, but there's
no message because he didn't do it competent do it.
That's my argument with reddit. Well, also the other brother. Uh,
not only did he not demonstrate that he was actually
doing uh uh, it did demonstrate that the work he
did do was build a tractor that did not work,
that did not work, that that was not effective. Didn't
(03:20):
it didn't work when you press the button should have
been easy. Uh. Yeah. If the messages that like, there's
uberman inventors and laborers and laborers need to know their place.
We never established that the Uberman's is in fact good
at anything. It's not actually shown by anything that happens
in the story. Yeah, one could argue that it demonstrated
that he was bad at it. Yeah, that that just
(03:42):
that the messages that sometimes two people who are bad
at things have a murder. Yeah, sometimes, and sometimes a
murder happens between two people with very fewer teeming qualities
or qualities at all, oh qualities whatsoever, because they're not
really characters in any meaningful way. Yeah, well, important thing,
are we? Where did we leave off on this other
(04:02):
this other book, I think the one that we haven't
gotten wrong yet. The pictures of the mechanical might have
been breaking through tearing the halo apart. I think we
created a cliffhanger um and two listeners to eagle eared listeners.
We may be repeating ourselves, and that's okay, because it
(04:23):
was so good that we had to read it twice.
The story is so nice we read it twice because
we forgot exactly where the story so forgettable that we're
gonna read. We may repeat ourselves. So I think the
mites are coming, dozens of them, hundreds of them. I pull,
I tug, I yank. Finally, I pry the damn thing open.
(04:47):
I think he's talking about the halo here halo. I
I skipped. I skipped some important bit. Okay, So first
of yeah, so he's climbing, all right, A climb through
the hole in the halo, grab the stomach, lining and
climb toward what looks like a closed ring above me.
I have to get out. I have to get the
hell out now. It takes me a second to realize
(05:07):
that the stomach acid is burning away layers of skin.
I'd scream, but I need the air instead. I grit
my teeth, breaking a moler as my shoulder muscle is exposed.
I do remember this. The mites are gaining. The liquid
is gluing me to the walls too, like a fly
stuck in a web. Yes, this is where. It's just
above me is the ring of the esophagus. Hand over hand,
(05:29):
I grab my legs, hang free. Wait, how did you
I thought you were stuck. I thought he was climbing
hand over hand. He was climbing hand over hand on
the walls. But he was stuck because of the liquid
that they said. It doesn't matter. My legs hang free though.
As I am hand over hand grabbing, I'm upside down.
A drop of stomach gas bathes my face, a drop
(05:52):
burning off the skin. I don't think almost fast. Okay,
all right, too late? Yeah, sure, sandwich goes in, Robert,
that's fine, that's fine. This is what might do. And
this is also the esophagus works. You PLoP it down
and it just Stomach acid is basically the acid from
(06:13):
alien exactly excellent. Yeah, yeah, we all know this. We
all learned this, we're all learning it now maybe, But
the important thing is learning is important. I'm upside down now.
A drop of stomach acid baits my face, burning off
the skin. But I'm almost there. I feel the jerk
before I see it. A mechanical might has my leg
(06:36):
claws at it frantically. Not a good sentence. Ken might
has my leg and claws at it frantically. But who
has the time to write the word? And I kick again,
But my leg feels slow, unresponsive. Then I feel warm.
When I look down. The mechanical might is gone, so
is my right leg. Below the knee. The bone hangs
(06:59):
out in shards. I bite right through my bottom lip.
Bone hangs out in shards. It would fall away in shards.
If it's in shards, it's not, it's others right, Yeah,
he doesn't hang out in shards. It hangs out right
like splintered. Maybe you know Ben's wife is a doctor.
Oh you're right, I'm sorry, Yeah, sure, she's the one
(07:24):
who said that if you if you wind up vomiting,
you have to get clear immediately because the stomach acid
will eat a hole in your floor. Oh yeah, whenever
you know, whenever you like throw up. Yeah, it goes
right through the toilet, is coated with stomach acid, and
you never speak again. Yeah. That's why everyone dies when
they throw up a single time. It's the leading cause
(07:47):
of death. Throwing up once. It's a real problem. Yeah yeah, Well,
you know we'll get through it h with collective action
together and not a rugged individualism. That will Oh god,
it's trying to get away from the news. When I
look down, the mechanical might is gone. So is my
(08:08):
right leg below the knee. The bone hangs out in shards.
I bite right through my bottom lip and the acid
gets in. I don't know. The adrenaline is coming. I
know to fight the pain, but I use it instead
to pull myself up, push myself through the ring, do both.
It won't give way. The mites are coming, dozens of them,
hundreds of them, So many fucking commas in this Uh,
(08:31):
it won't give It won't give way. Semi cool, and
the mites are coming. Comma, dozens of them, Comma, hundreds
of them. Period. I pull tug yank. Finally I pry
the damn thing open, pull myself halfway through formatting her
and it closes around my waist. I'm trapped. The clicking
sounds of the mites closer and closer. I'm dead and
(08:54):
I know it. I'm going to die down here in
the gut of the whale. Amy will never know what
happened to me. She might she knew you were, she
knew what you signed up for. You didn't tell her
that you were going to do this for three years. Yeah,
that does seem like something you would chat about, because,
like mentioned, I don't know what the risks are. Love.
(09:17):
Love is a powerful force. But also most people whose
partners abandoned them without explanation for three years will return
to find that person has moved on. Yeah, maybe don't
expect her to care happened to you if you just
sort of disappeared, So maybe expect her to be like livid,
because that's incredibly not okay. You should have told me
you were going to shrink down to a tiny guy
(09:38):
and go go help kill dust mites that are apparently bloodthirsty.
And I have been with some very forgiving people, um
but but I don't think anybody would forgive that really
really unacceptable. Love you, babe, but I just gotta do
it for me, you know, but even sign there, you
(10:00):
just like left right, just left, just out God, assuming
she's waiting, sitting at the door every day like a
that dog in the Futurama episode the Sad One, but
less sad because but less sad because no one competent
wrote this. Take a stomach acid for you, babe, drop
(10:20):
h Amy will never know what happened to me because
I didn't tell her. They'll they'll tell her some fiction
about dying, a huge plot hole, Like you're just assuming
she's going to be around and fine, yeah, waiting to
hear the news about the secret this is a secret company.
(10:42):
Oh yeah, again, we know nothing about this world about
because Ben is terrified of actually telling the story. We
know basically nothing about. Like is this a normal thing?
Do like all crazy rich people now do versions of this?
Is this guy famous for shrinking people down then to
shrinking technology, so you would think he'd be famous for that.
(11:03):
Like what is the extent to which any of this
is commonly known? Or like what is the actual cultural
relevance of all of this? How has it changed life? These?
These are the questions that a science fiction writer would Yeah,
I heard a great quote the other day, Cody Katie. Um.
I didn't come up with it. I don't know who
came up with it, but it's. Um, science fiction is
(11:25):
not anticipating the internal combustion engine. It's anticipating traffic, right,
Like that's like, what's actually interesting science fiction? And look
at this cool thing? It's how does this How how
would this cool thing impact people? Um, generally in ways
that are not obvious or would not be based on
the intent. Um. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it says it's
(11:48):
it's it says everything. UM. And I guess Ben is
telling us that the unintended consequence of shrinking technology would
be that tiny people fight dust mites on cigarettes. Yeah,
he really thought it through. I think that the primary
problem with Ben in general is that I think that
he can't be bothered. You know, we've danced around this,
but not just with you know, his works of fiction,
(12:08):
but with his tweets, with his articles, with just anything.
He can't be bothered to do the work of sitting
and thinking through and answering some of the questions he poses.
Otherwise it wouldn't make sense and he wouldn't have an answer.
But that's like across the board. So I guess it's
not surprising that that's how he shows up. Oh yeah,
but it is just, of course a fucking course. Yeah.
(12:30):
If this, then what is not a sentence or question here? No? No,
If this, then that's the fact. No. Bill has never
asked a question, like a real question where you actually
are hoping to learn something that might inform or alter
the way that you see the world, because that would
that would imply that his view of the world could
(12:51):
possibly change. Yeah. No, he asks uh quote like rhetorical
questions that like he has his prepared answer for. But
he was never He's not a curious mind at all. Yeah, absolutely,
he can't be. It's immortal to be a curious A
movie about Ben, A movie about Ben would be an
(13:14):
incurious mind. I'm curious mind. Curious someone write it, Yeah,
it would. I'm imagining it it being like, um, what's
that Ben Affle? Like Matt Damon movie where there's like
there's like a math problem on a chalkboard and he
just erases it in writes in sex is I don't
know penises or shouldn't do anything. That's something something terrible.
(13:38):
I didn't have together, don't have sex, don't be married yeah,
or like and like, don't be married unless you're straight. Yeah,
my wife is a doctor. Normalized straight marriage, normally straight
marriage and swallowing stuff and having whatever you eat go
plink plink plink against the walls of your esophagus machine
(14:03):
like a fuck it, it's amazing. Okay, please continue, all right.
So he's dead and he knows it, and he's gonna
die down there in the gut of the whale capitalized
T capitalized w Amy will never know what happened to me.
This is where this is where we keep getting stopped
up right, a tiny note, right, a tiny note, and
then then grow it. That's a perfect plan. Uh, They'll
(14:25):
they'll tell her some fiction about dying hero against the mites,
doing my job, the whole routine. My skeleton will be
digested by the whale. He'll outlive me. You can put
like a butt my skeleton with whatever is in sheer despair.
I slam my fist against the ring and miraculously it
loosens for an instant. I pull myself up and it
(14:47):
snaps closed, locking out the mites. This is like, like,
I know what he's going for here. It's just like happens.
So like quickly amidst like all this other bullshit that like,
like what he's doing is like the like the Sienna
Jones hat grabbing a hat right when the door closes,
Like he wants a suspensiful moment where's like getting through
a doorway and it snaps shut and the horde of
(15:08):
mites get like slams into it and he's safe. But
it's just like too much work to describe that. Nope, yea,
all of a sudden works and the mites are trapped
up way Okay, it's like incredibly boring, like and she's yeah,
just gets a ring miraculusly it loosens for an instant
and put myself up and it snaps close, locking at
the mites. Okay that and I know, I'm sure Again
(15:32):
Ben's intention is that the actual bad guy here is
the whale um. But he's also not a character um
not not really and uh there's no all of the
actual like action tension is between him and these very
boring enemies that that aren't exciting or cool, And that
(15:53):
would be fine if the focus of the story was
anything other than him fighting them, but that's all Ben
seems to want to right, Is this guy struggling against mites,
which is again the least interesting part of the story. Yeah,
it's the facials, horde of mechanical mtes that couldn't do
the job that he's hiring. He's tiny people to do. Yeah,
(16:14):
program to kill the other mites. It's like in an
alien the the alien is not the thing that is
like the most interesting. Like, that's not the bulk of
of the movie. The bulk of the movie is how
like these individual human beings react in the choices that
they make, and like the alien is important as to
(16:36):
how it pushes them to make choices and reveals things
about the characters and causes conflicts for them. But like,
the movie is always centered on the people and the
things that they are doing and what it reveals about
like them and and the world that they're in. There's
a lot of like commentary and one not in that movie,
and a number of things. Um then appears to think
(16:56):
that the thing people actually want is just a I
for no real reason, fighting weird hero. Yeah, it's like,
um another example, you kept saying the thing that people
want or whatever, like the thing. If Ben made the thing,
it would be like a bunch of battles with the
monster instead of a movie about like the isolation and
(17:18):
mistrust and all these characters and how they deal with that.
Um yeah, I was gonna say, to be fair, we
are referencing a lot of like much longer works than
a short story. But to be even more fair, doesn't
matter the principles of storytelling pertain to a short story.
I just felt like it's good to acknowledge, like, yeah,
(17:40):
we're talking about larger pieces of writing, but there's lots
of people that have written brilliant, beautiful, concise short stories
while also following these same kind of Right, you could
write a short story version of Alien and still get
all of that across us. A good writer would be
(18:01):
able to do that. A competent right, I'll go step
for further forward farther. Just a writer, a writer Philip K.
Dick could have taken this story and and thrown in
a giant head screaming at him from the sky. And
you know, with with just a couple of pounds of amphetamines,
we would we we might have something you could make
(18:21):
and do a Paul Verhoeven movie. Oh, this would be
a This would not be a good movie, no matter
who makes it sorry now, Like, wait, maybe no, you
would need that extra bit of Philip K. Dick being
on amphetamines listening to a giant head screaming at him
from the sky. Maybe it's like a sequel to the
Honey I Shrunk the Kids franchise. You can take a
(18:43):
nugget of it somehow, But yeah, honey, we gave we
resurrected Philip K. Dick, gave him or meth amphetamine and
handed him a bit Shapiro short story and he made
it like, Okay, it's family friendly, you give it back.
It's very erotic and erotic, family friendly foot a lot
(19:05):
of extra scenes with the mites, if you know what,
Philip K. Dick really focused in on the mites, really
focused on the mites. Yeah wait, wait, wait before we continue,
I think he's starting to take a quick ad break.
Oh but before we do a quick ad break, I
have one more paragraph to get through before they break
(19:26):
that pen makes So we got a cliffhanger coming up, surely,
and it's gonna be exciting because in Sheer Despair, I
slam my fist against the ring and miracuously it loosens
for an instant I pull myself up and it snaps close,
locking out the mites. The adrenaline is wearing off now
and I can feel myself losing consciousness. I shoved the
stump of my lower leg onto the ring. Let the
(19:47):
remnants of stomach acid on the ring caught aize the wound.
The blood turns, the flesh burns into darkness, just like
sign ends we'll be back. That's how it works. That's
how stomach acid works. That's why if you both puke
and cut open an artery at the same time, you
(20:09):
just jam some of that puke in the wound and
you're good to go. Baby. If you ever, if you
ever get cut, puke on yourself. Yeah, if somebody ever
gets an arterial injury where and you're around, just stick
your fingers down your throat and vomit on their open wound,
and you will save their life. That's actually what military
medics are trained to do in combat. They just puke
(20:30):
right on the gunshot wound. Star Wars was accurate, just
to be like a bunch of people puking on each
other's vomiting on each other's laser birds. And on that note,
here's a word from together everything. Don't don't and we're
(20:55):
back from Yeah, I care what happens. What happens? What
where did we leave? Where did we leave off our
hero anyone? Where do we leave off our heroes? I
already can't remember conscience. He slipped into darkness after losing
(21:17):
like a couple of his limbs. Yeah, he lost his
leg and he caught herrized it with stomach acid. So
we're good. He's fine. Yah. Yeah, thank god for stomach acid.
Mm hmm. Nature's turniquet. At least utilize natural remedy for wounds.
(21:38):
Get on a healthcare system. Okay, September. I've lost all
sense of time, But you just said what day it was.
He's done this a couple of times where he said
the date and he's like, I don't know how long
it's been, nonsense. I can tell by my size. I'm
(22:00):
now about three inches tall. That has been another thirty
six hours. So you haven't lost all sense of time.
You have a sense of time. I love saying something
and then immediately contradicting myself, like even the thing that
I've written and have the ability to edit, like if
I'm if you're in the woods and you don't have
a watch and you don't know how long it's been,
(22:20):
and you look at the sun and you can determine
how long it's been. That is a sense of time.
It's a it's an external you have, like you're like
using your environment. But like, Cody, do you remember we
just opened a part of this with him listing the
date and then saying, I don't know what day it is,
like I've lost all sense of time. So actually you haven't.
(22:41):
And I can tell by my size how how much
time there's gone by. It's very funny in the same sentence.
It's the sandwich of like contradictory, like it's so been
Try it a little harder, just like read read what
you wrote once. No, Cody, No, okay, anyway, it's been
(23:04):
another thirty six hours despite me having no sense of time.
The acceleration will be fast now, all acceleration is. It's fine.
It's fine. I'm fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine,
doesn't it doesn't matter, it's fine. There's no room to expand.
I'm standing in the whales esophagus. Actually there would be
a little room to expand. It's fine, discussed the esophagus. Okay,
(23:27):
it's fine. Sign sign I'm standing in the whales esophagus
on my one good leg. How are you wait, it's
fine standing, I know I'm curious about that too. What
are you standing on? How are you standing? I don't
want him to explain, because then that would be more words.
(23:47):
But also, yeah, you need to explain, like even just
like if you're in like as he's imagining a pipe,
then you're like your leg is against one side and
your hands are like pushing against this, either to hold
yourself up or something. It doesn't matter anyway, it doesn't matter.
(24:09):
I'm standing the whales's esophagus. Wait you have I mean,
what was the thing that snap clothes beneath him or whatever?
The halo the halo so theoretically, but like the edge
of the esophagus or something. Yeah, just say that. Actually,
you're right, that's where he's standing. He's standing at the
(24:29):
bottom where the little hole is closed. All right, there's
barely any air, Okay. I breathed slowly, laboriously, trying not
to use up all the oxygen the whale has swallowed.
The whale will realize I'm alive soon. I'm large enough
that he should be able to feel me. It's only
(24:49):
a matter of time before they try something else, right, Like,
isn't he like isn't the whale? Like wouldn't he be choking?
Right now? You're standing in his esophagus. There's a three
man's that's a really big thing to have on your vomiting.
I would think there's like that's huge. Yeah, that's like
(25:14):
that's like the size of an iPod or at least
an iPod nano stuck in your esophagus. This is nonsense.
Now now I'm upset because I'm sorry. It's only a
matter of time before they try something else, like I
don't know, the himlick or something, because sucking iPod nanos
in your throat, which gives me just a little while
(25:35):
to climb my way out. Uh huh, I've made up
my mind. I'm going to go out the way I
came in. Yeah, you have to. You didn't go the
other The esophagus will lead up into the throat and
then I'll force my way out. But before I can
try it, the water comes pouring down. It comes down
(25:56):
in great gushes. Bad, it comes down own like the
water comes pouring down period new paragraph formatting air. It
comes down in great gushes, washing over me, refreshing me.
But then the stream becomes too strong. The ring opens again,
sucking the water into the stomach. I grabbed the wall
(26:17):
of the esophagus and hold on for dear life. I'm
not going back in there with those metal mites, says
the iPod nano in the throat. The water stops, and
the whale takes a deep breath, swelling his belly out,
swelling out his belly. Now that I'm in the esophagus,
I can hear everything better. And now that I'm bigger,
(26:38):
the voices don't seem quite so distorted, which means I
can hear that the doctor is back. Too many new
paragraphs for so little to say. Sir, he's saying, I
cannot imagine how we survived. But oh I can't demadge,
and how you botched it, says the whale. But you'd
better fix it. I feel the pressure in my chist.
(27:00):
I know it is, and it's growing worse all the time.
How are you talking so well with an iPod nano throat? Yeah,
not quite throat, not quite throat yet, and the esophagus,
but like what it seems like it would make it
difficult to talk, difficult I've never shoved an iPod nano
(27:23):
into my esophagus, but I don't think I would be
able to speak the way I normally speak, especially if
it's like got little hands and it's grabbing. It seems
like it would be a problem, be a problem. I
don't know. We can ask Ben Shapiro's doctor wife. Perhaps
she will say, no, the esophagus actually does fine with
an iPod nano in it. We do it all the
(27:45):
time in our family. We eat I pod nanos, but
not all the way. We keep them in our throats,
keep them stuck. That's called medicine. Esopha. Guys that he
should started. Esophagus is a good band. It's okay band.
I've listened to them. Yeah, Esophagus rock rock joke on
(28:13):
hip hop fans out there radio in radio land. I smile.
At least I'm giving the bastard a little pain. But
you're clearly all right. He seems very actually notice at all.
Then I punch his esophagus from the Yeah, he flinches.
(28:38):
I feel it now, he says, I feel it now,
he says, kind of, because he's got the thing in
his throat. We tried the mice, says the doctor, how
about a metic smart, very smart. They know I must
be out of the halo one way or another. Yeah,
you punched his esophagus and then and they know that
(29:00):
I haven't been killed by the stomach acid because you
punched the esophagus. Wounds. It helps you. So if they
can't bring me to the acid, they'll have to bring
the acid to me. If he vomits, he'll bring up everything,
including the acid. I'll be burned beyond recognition. Or he'll
throw you up, and then you'll be outside of his
(29:23):
body in a very shallow pool of puke that you'll
get out of quickly, because puke doesn't dissolve, doesn't dissolve
skin particularly quickly. Guys his world, his rules, his world,
his rules, his dream. These facts don't care about your
(29:44):
feelings of how the world, But my facts do care. Ah,
I can't, says the whale. My ulcer. It'll start beating again.
Good point. So that's what that red spot was in
the stomach. He already knew this. Hold on, yes, hold on,
I gotta word. Just banged my head on the table.
(30:07):
What do you I feel like He's already noticed this
and guessed it was an ulcer but whatever. Uh, maybe
I'm just making it up because he should have. So
that's what that red spot was in the stomach. Well,
bless God for the whale's coffee and stress addiction. Okay, no,
it won't, she said. No, he's the doctor speaking. No
one won't, says the doctor. That medicine you talk earlier.
(30:31):
Here we go. No one won't, says the doctor. That
medicine you took earlier. Couded your stomach lining the acer
should be closed temporarily. The whale leans forward. I can
feel him do it, Yes, he says, I see your
point like it's like c W dialogue. No, the ced
(30:52):
the c W dialogue is always better written than this. Yes,
I see your point like it talks like that. All right,
I prepare myself to die, amy, if only I could
say goodbye. Also formatting error on that paragraph, of course,
(31:17):
it doesn't doesn't matter. The doctor pads out of the room.
The doctor pads out of the room. That is the
ridiculous pads out of the room. Is um a phrase
that you see when you're describing sleepy little children up
going back. Maybe he's like, he's just like being careful
(31:41):
not to upset the whale. You know. Ah, the doctor
pads out of the room, or at least it sounds
like it. A few minutes later he's back. See this
is where we get like earlier, when he's literally in
the person's stomach and he's describing like what the people
are doing with utter like complete, like omnipresent confidence, and
(32:03):
here he is, the doctor pads out of him, or
at least it sounds like it. Yeah, so just from
the beginning, describe what things sound like, not what is
literally happening. And then five pages later be like, well,
I mean it sounds like that's going on. It's like
it sounds like the doctor leaves and comes back five
minutes later. Yeah, Like it's like I hear I hear footsteps.
(32:23):
It sounds like having a thing the size of a
smartphone jammed in your esophagus is not a problem enough
that they need to like rush a ton. Also, the
doctor pads out of the room, or at least it
sounds like it, and a few months later he's back.
So here's the thing, Ben, Your character has resigned himself
(32:45):
to die. He's gonna die, and he wants to say
goodbye to Amy, whoever that fucking is but you've already
established it. Like he can grab onto the esophagus from
the inside, and like you're like standing in there and
you just like hanging out for a few minutes knowing
that he's gonna puke you up. So just like climb
use those few minutes to climb the esophagus. Right, he's
(33:09):
just like chilling down there. It's just like a wasted
seems like wasted time. Anyway. A few minutes later, nothing happens,
and now he's back. Follow he orders, and here comes
the shower again. Not water in a pill. No, they're
too smart for that. They know I'd grabbed the pill
prevented from hitting the stomach. Now you wouldn't it were
(33:33):
like knock. It's like it'd be like half your son. Whatever. No,
this shower is of epicac slime all over me. Too
many commas. You need to right, sens is better, very
apparent right now, No comma. This showers of epicac comma
slime all over me. The ring opens, sucking it in
(33:55):
just a few seconds now before the guys are of
acidic vomit comes up, finishing me. I rubbed my right
leg what's left of it, and looked down through the ring.
The epicac is washing through the stomach. The mechanical mites
are swimming around in it. Soon they'll be joining me
along with the acid. Okay, so the acid doesn't affect
the mechanical mines. Oh yeah, no, they're fine. It burns
(34:18):
through than very quickly. Yeah. The mites, well, obviously, that's
why there are so many mites in our stomachs. That's
why we got the mites. Soon they'll be joining me
along with the acid. New paragraph, unless I joined them first,
the script, the ulcer. New paragraph. It's the only chance.
(34:43):
New paragraph. All of these new paragraphs are designed to
be like dramatic and it's just dumb. Well, it's because
each of them is expressing a completely distinct thought. M
So you gotta switch, you gotta switch. Well, yeah, because
like it's like he wants the suspense of like timing
and space, um and like drawing it out, but he
can't write enough words, so he's got to make two
(35:06):
word paragraphs and like it's the illusion of suspense, right, Um,
but I'm full of suspense, so let's find out what happens.
I can't make it up the esophagus in time. You
had a few minutes while the doctor was gone. Buddy,
this is like, yeah, you could have been climbing up
by that. I can't make it up the esophagus in time.
(35:28):
You could have when the doctor was gone. I did,
all right, Not with this time bomb below me. Well
you had time. It wasn't a time bomb when the
doctor was gone. But I can make it down. I
hold my breath and dive down through the ring. The
fall seems endless. I feel like I'm skydiving through noxious air.
I briefly wonder if I'll survive the fall at all,
(35:49):
but then I'm on the side of the stomach. I
claw at the wall, grabbing a handhold, plastering myself as
the acid swirls below me. The mites haven't noticed me yet,
covered as I am, and the sticky gou that coated
the stomach just a few body lengths away. As the ulcer.
It's covered in that same coup, but not for long.
(36:11):
If I can keep holding my breath, I edged my
way down toward it. It's raised and throbbing, but yes, right,
but not obvious to the mites. I fall to my
knees and begin scraping away the now hardened black coating,
chunk by chunk, I rip it away. The mites turn
and see me, but they see something else, the red,
(36:31):
ugly flesh of the ulcer, bleeding, inviting them because they
love blood, love to as much as they love tobacco.
Mechanical mites. Um, yeah right, these are the mechanical mites too,
So they don't they eat, No, they're they've been programmed
to chase attack ulcers, to crave blood like normal mtes
(36:57):
also crave, apparently because the normal whites were also bloodthirsty. Correct.
That's fucking great, Ben, very good, and it's so good,
in fact, that I think this is a wonderful time
first suspense cliffhanger time. We'll be back. I promised that
this story is over in a couple of pages. I
don't promise ship because it's been Shapiro. There could be
(37:20):
a whole another version of this story that he's producing
with his new film team. Oh god, yeah, I hope
he is. I was gonna say that he is. I
bet he's not, because and hear what's some what's a
failed actor who turned into a right? I mean Kevin
Sorbos as guy fighting mites, Kevin Sorbo Dean Kane is
(37:44):
probably the whale or the doctor. Yeah, Dean Cane will
be the whale. Get like kid Rock in there or something. Yeah,
Kid Rock could be his friend who dies tragically to
the mites. Man, I'm already wow, perfect casting. Maybe could
be a throw Kirsty Alley in there. I know we
have a winner. M I'd watch it. I would too,
(38:05):
I absolutely would. Of course, will be right back together.
Oh we're back. I'm thinking of Kirstie Ali waiting at
(38:28):
home for Kevin Sorbo to finish his three years fighting,
having no idea where he went, having no idea where
he went, but waiting faithfully reading all these news stories
about the one guy who invented shrinking technology and exclusively
uses it to shrink down people to kill the mites
that he fears are drinking his blood. Yes, that's why
(38:50):
he made mechanical mites to drink his one. Exactly. You
gotta get those. It's more sterile, right because they're mechanical.
Oh absolutely, yeah, that makes sense to me. M M,
all right, what happens he's been Oh we're gonna get you,
We're gonna get you up from that cliff. The ulcers
(39:12):
bleeding and inviting the mites. They rush at it, pincers,
scraping together with twisted glee. The first mite virtually leaps
over me, and it's eagerness to be flesh. Oh yeah, firstually,
I didn't read it fairly. The first mite virtue. Man, No,
that's bad. That's not that's not that's not my fault.
(39:35):
Correct that the first mite virtually leaps over me, is eager.
It leaps over you. It leapt. It either leapt over
you or it did not. Yah, did it? Like? What
are you saying? Are you saying it like leapt and
then hit you in the head because it didn't get
above you? Are you saying that it it jumped up
and then like walked around you? Or yeah? At this bad?
(39:56):
At this? It plunges deep into the ulcer, dig blood
oozing from the interesting that the stomach acid is not
caught aizing the ulcer wound that he's describing. I thought
that that's what the stomach acid did to all wounds.
Maybe it's just if you're tiny. The whale screams convulsive. Sorry, Katie,
(40:21):
I cut you off with no, I did. I had
nothing to say. Really, screams gonna keep coming. I grab
another chunk, pull it off the ulcer, throw it away.
How big is this ulcer? Now the blood of the
whale is around my knees, and the mites are coming.
Oh they're coming. Yeah, sorry, and we're sure these are
(40:44):
still the robot mites which which he has programmed to
be insatiably attracted to his blood. To blood apparently, and
not just mites or one guy, but the blood of
the man who invent to them and is deploying them. Yeah,
it's a classic story of hubrists, the hubris of a
(41:06):
man who made mites that don't need to eat, but
somehow are again insatiably attracted to his blood. A little
to the sun, um a great, what happens? A little
too close to the halo? Mistic All right, oh what happens?
(41:26):
They're coming by the tens, the dozens, the hundreds, drawn
by the blood, and they follow the first much Where
are they coming from? All over? He is now the
size of like an iPod. Those mites will be almost
microscopically small. Tom shouldn't he be able to stomp on
(41:47):
him or something? Anyway? Also than this ulcer by now?
Yeah he's yeah, I was just thinking that too, But
they're coming by the ends. The dozens the drawn by
the blood, and they follow the first mite, tearing into
the open flesh, the first mite, which virtually leapt over me.
(42:11):
That's not included in this. It's fine. The whale screams again.
Then I'm horizontal, Comma flat. The whale has been pushed
to the ground. The acid drips towards me slowly. I
climb for higher ground. But something is going on above me.
(42:34):
A scraping, a cutting, too many commas. They're cutting open
the whale. They're gutting him. My breath is running out,
but the sawing is growing nearer. Then I see it,
a sliver of light. They're almost at the stomach. Then
they're through. I see the point of the scalpel sliced
(42:55):
through the tissue. An enormous hand reaches down towards the ulcer,
airrying an enormous piece of gauze. Is he gauzing the ulcer?
That that is what he's doing? Wait, I'm sorry? Is
that is that a treatment for ulcers? I don't think
cutting someone open is? I mean, I guess there's sometimes
(43:16):
you do. Sometimes there are surgeries for ulcers, And I
don't think you just like cut them open and shove
gauze on it. Not a doctor pretty sure that's not
the treatment. Is also pretty sure, like we have their
right and if he's like, if it was a bleeding
situation bad enough that they needed to do an immediate intervention.
We have stuff like cellocks today that like stops bleeding
(43:36):
extremely quickly, and I imagine in this future where they
can shrink things, maybe they have other options, but no,
they're just jamming gauze onto an ulcers. Just wanted to
make sure. Um, yeah, science has progressed to the point
of shrinking technology, but literally nothing else. So this is
(43:59):
my chance, and I take it. I leap as far
as I can grasp the hand so like quite a bit.
I hear a gasp. Remarkable for only having one leg, truly, yeah,
really pretty good jump for a one legged man. This
is where we find he's got some like moon boots
onto that. Yeah, like grappling sort of gutten type of thing,
(44:25):
or much like the actual left over him. He leaps
as far as he can, but literally I hear a
gasp from above, and suddenly I'm flying through the air
clear of the whale in the bright artificial light of
the office. I'm on the carpet, screaming, laughing, all at once,
(44:47):
covered in the whale's blood, covered in his filth, crying
for air and crying for joy. I'm alive. I got
to read the sentence again. I'm on the carpet. Comma screaming,
Comma laughing all at once, Comma covered in the whale blood,
Comma covered in his filth, Comma crying for air and
crying for joy. What a bad sentence. I'm alive. Period,
(45:09):
That's a complete sentence. No, Katie, you are right, and
I did it again. That's what this is for. We
can't just read all the way through. How is that
a way to enjoy this piece of art? Uh? Then
I look up into the eyes of the whale. He
sees me, his eyes widened. Kill him. Sherihspers and the
(45:34):
doctor turns, but he falls to his knees. Job second,
kill him, Step on him, whale, step will kill him.
He whispers, and the doctor turns. Period new paragraph. But
he falls to his knees, bleeding. I look up and
(45:57):
there's Jensen Giant in the light, sweating, holding a scissors.
My name is that the guy that was supposed to die?
Uh is the guy who's like on the calm, right, Okay,
I do my casting. This guy's kid Rock. Absolutely, this
(46:18):
is kid Rock. Uh yeah, with the my name. Okay,
to explained the thing I just did. I look up
and there's Jensen Giant in the light, sweating holding a scissors.
They're dripping blood to the blood of the doctor. Oh
(46:38):
my god, then we know it's the blood of the doctor.
But wait, just a point of clarification. Did he say
holding us scissors? He did, thank you. I kind of
glossed over that holding scissors, holding scissors, scissors, holding a
pair of scissors. Tiny, But that's important, nobody. Yeah, I
(46:58):
think in general, writing is important in a story. Yes,
I entirely agree. It's just like, it's just how like
a six year old would say it scissors. He pads
to his bedroom. His pads to his bedroom holding a scissors.
(47:18):
A thank you for because I thought I was putting
enough sauce on that that part to really to really
highlight I feel like, but I feel like it sort
of passed us by. Um, this is a team effort,
you know, what are the things passed us by? So
the doctor turns, he falls to his knees bleeding. I
(47:39):
look up and there's Jensen, giant in the light, sweating,
holding a scissors. They're dripping blood to the blood of
the doctor. Again, they're dripping bloods too. He did say
the words correctly or write them down correctly, but like
(48:00):
it's just it's bad. It's bad. This is this is
the this is the c W stuff where it's like, oh, oh, oh, okay,
now I get it. Now I've been explained enough to
understand this like dramatic thing you're trying to create where
we really realize Jensen has stabbed the doctor. I know
he stabbed the doctor. He doesn't explain the things he
(48:23):
needs to explain, and over explains the things that are obvious. Yes, anyway,
she over explained. He's she said, explaining Lee their whole
They're dripping blood the scissors or us is or is
dripping bloods the bloods of the doctor. He slumps beside me,
(48:44):
his dead eyes staring through me. Yeah, you know he's dead, Jensen.
I squeak. Oh sorry, I squeak camp, he says. The
whale's eyes turned to Jensen. You bastard, you betrayed me. Kemp,
(49:05):
whose name is Kemp his name is kemp Ah. You
you bastard. You betrayed me. No, says Jensen, you betrayed yourself. Okay.
Jensen sits down next to the whale, and the whale
bleeds period. He bleeds period. Yeah. Down by my feet.
(49:32):
I can see the dust mites feeding on his blood
as they do. Sure, that's what dust mites love. Also,
you can still see them, m I can see the
dust mites feeding on his blood. Dust mites are visible
easily by the naked eye. I laugh. I laughed for myself.
(49:52):
I laugh for Phillips, and I laugh for Amy, mostly Amy,
who has no idea where you been for three Oh? No,
oh no. I laughed for her. When she's gonna she's
gonna laugh at this story when she finds out what
I've done and why I didn't explain where I was
going and where contact or where my leg went, why
(50:13):
my entire body is burned. Sorry. Protagonist Amy is busy
fucking a guy who works for being there that invented
an enlargening ray, so she always knows where he is
because he's so big. He's so big, how can you disappeared?
She wanted a man who was so gigantic, she could
never not know where he was. This the sequel to this,
(50:34):
as he goes home and Amy hasn't been faithful and
he becomes some sort of in cell. Yeah yeah, he
like becomes an anti small game. Yeah yeah. He comes
home and Amy is living in the shoe with her
gigantic boyfriend. The tiny man got cut like but like
(50:54):
like if Amy did get together with like an enlarged guy,
like that would make this story just good, like I
would like every favorite an amazing Ah. Well, fingers crossed.
We still have a couple of sentences left, we do.
I laugh. I laughed for myself. I laughed for Phillips,
(51:18):
and I laughed for Amy. Mostly I laughed because I'm alive.
End of story. That's the conclusion. Um. So like, well,
I want to come back to like what the the
allegory was supposed to be about abortion, as he made
(51:41):
very clear two times within like two paragraphs and then
never again. I feel like nothing else in this story
does that. He didn't even like come back to it,
Like I guess technically the actions of like, oh, the
doctor and then like his friend the abortion doctor, right,
like that's what he's advocating for. I guess, unless do
(52:06):
you think that he doesn't he has to be conscious
that he was doing an abortion allegory. Oh, he definitely was.
He like there are so many uh sentences about like
choice and like it's my body, my purview. He was
very obviously an abortion, but then it wasn't. But then
it wasn't. So maybe he's just saying, um, yeah, you're
(52:28):
justified in killing people if they're trying to do abortions.
I don't know. I guess, yeah, sure, that's the message.
I just I guess we're giving him too much credit.
If there is a message, Well, I think the message
that people who are fans of him would get from
(52:49):
this if you read it was like, oh, I agree,
abortion is bad, Like that's what he like. It's so
empty and lazy that like all he needs to do
is those two sentences and then and someone like, oh, yeah,
I get it, but it's not really what you're doing.
These tech people not trustworthy. Maybe there's something I don't know. Um,
(53:10):
and like the idea that the law the law is
that like if you have a little guy inside you,
like some adult man shrunk down to kill your mites,
then you have the right to kill him, which again,
I feel like it's not the law unless he's again,
unless he signed a contract it said. Even then, I'm
(53:31):
not sure you can sign a contract to let somebody
murder you in this way. I don't know. Maybe I'm
sure you can sign a contract that like, if I die,
it's not his fault, but I don't know that it
would apply in this instance. Liability waiver, sure, but not murder,
not active murder. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he could
(53:52):
hide I accidentally swallowed you and like you're gonna be
the benefit of the doubt on that m That was
a great short story that changed my feelings about all
of society. Also, I have a quick question about society.
(54:12):
Um how is it? No? Um? So the because the
Maybe it's just because we've stretched this out over three
different episodes. Why did the whale want to kill him
once he was inside him? Um? Oh, because he'd seen
that the whale had cancer and was going to die
and could tell people and that would be bad for that.
(54:34):
Wait and why Yeah, that's that's why the way I
wanted to get him. You know, part of the reason
why you forgot Cody is because it didn't get mentioned
ever again. Ever, again, and you would speak, You would
think that that would factor in somehow, in some way,
body invented shrinking technology, business will be fine. But he
(55:00):
only uses it to have tiny men fight, never monet down.
Like it's like it's like sometimes as an artist, you
write something, or you you put together a song or whatever,
and you you just you don't want to sell it.
You just want to put it out there because you
didn't make it for the money, and you want just
(55:21):
one thing that's pure and disconnected from capitalism. That's shrinking technology.
For this billionaire, we all have our things I'd forgotten
that is so fucking stupid. Stop him from ruining his
company's stocks or something right, stop him from ruining his
(55:42):
company's stocks by like revealing information that like his technology
can fix. But also like if you just got him out,
he wouldn't like be trying to ruin your life. They
saved him and didn't try to kill him. Be like, man,
can we not talk about what you saw? I'm really
struggling to deal with my cancer diagnosis. Of course, of
(56:04):
course you saved my life. Also as like your employee
money suggests using this amazing shrinking technology to shrink the
tumor down to nothing. But yeah, maybe we could use
this miracle technology you invented to stop this, Like, don't
even you have, like, don't even tell anybody that you
used it for that if you don't want to use
(56:26):
like obviously you should, but like you can keep it
to yourself. Man. Also speaking of keeping things to yourself,
So maybe this guy signed a contract that said, if
I get stuck in your stomach, you can kill me.
But almost definitely if you have tiny humans in your
office killing the mites for years, because there's no other
(56:46):
way to kill the mites. If you have that, you
definitely have them. Like sign an n d A for
this exact reason. Yeah, the first time you overheard a
phone call in all your being a tiny guy in
this guy's office like this the last minute, I finally
(57:06):
heard a phone call, and I'm gonna tell everybody because
I didn't sign an n d A, which is utter nonsense. Um.
Bad job, Ben, bad job, no benefit of the doubt. Um.
So we're at the time. I guess that's that's all
we need. There is one more short story left and
(57:30):
before we go for listeners for you all, I think
we can play a little game a quick guess of
what you think this is called. Keep in mind, this
is a Ben Shapiro short story that is a very
poorly veiled allegory for something about how like I don't
know equality is wrong or fairness is whatever it is.
(57:54):
This one was I believe, sorry me, I believe this
was called in the in the Depths or something or
like in the whole. Yeah, it's from the Jonah and
the Whale. But I was gonna say it's real meaning,
like actual message again Jonah and want to read it. Yes,
I'm aware he had a message. He just did not
succeed in getting it across to absolutely obviously has a message.
(58:17):
It's bad, it's just incompetent. Mean when we say that
is that there's no actual message because of how badly
he wrote the episode. Complete nonsense. Yeah, and fair sex.
Oh interesting? Um, I guess I'm excited for Amy to
realize where her lover has been for three years. I
(58:39):
don't think she cares. She's got that big guy. She's
dating that giant guy. She got the enlargening array inventor
who weirdly makes tumors bigger. Yeah, it makes them so
big they can't hurt you. Yeah, you just live inside
your tumor. You get a free flesh house. That's the
trips um an answer to the housing crisis. Really, yeah, Robert,
(59:01):
what's your guest for the next chapter. I clearly guessed wrong.
That's the title of the story. Yeah, we're guessing um
why liberals um are bad. You're both wrong, but you're
both very close. Uh. The next one, and I cannot
wait to read this is called utopia. Oh my god. Okay,
(59:27):
a little nauseous because it's been I'm gonna guess it's
like some sort of leftist utopia that is uh nine
four but written by an idiot. I guarantee that that's
what it is. Okay, I'm very excited. I'm extremely excited dystopia.
In fact, I'm so excited for this I am going
to read the first sentence of this story out loud.
(59:51):
Oh Cody, what an embarrassment of riches for our listeners.
Oh my gosh, you are so lucky, you greedy listener.
Whip your dicks out, listening. Is it's time for happy,
It's time for the mites to come all right, in
all caps, it's a quotation in all caps, all men
(01:00:11):
are created equal, excellent fantastic. Yeah, yeah, Oh my god, utopia,
that's what I likes to hear. Well, we're all gonna
wait with bated breath for this next installment. This has
been a delight, the most excited I have of course.
(01:00:36):
All Right, all right, we'll be back next week. Check
us out, check in next week, Brohems and other teams. Oh,
there's so many words that he's capitalized for no reason.
Every Daniel Worst Year Ever is a production of I
(01:01:04):
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything, So don't don't ah, it's the Worst
(00:22):
Year Ever, the only podcast whose title was just plagiarized
by Radio Lab. We are in the process, I promise you,
of of pursuing legally. Um. I feel confident saying their
offices will be nothing but a bloody crater in the ground.
When wait, did they plagiarized us for their sure duke,
(00:44):
they have a series or at least an episode called
Worst Year Ever? They know the worst year to be
alive on planet Earth, and I have never been angrier. Yeah,
they just did. They just take um clips from our
show over the past few years. It's just our show,
is as I understand it. It's it's just our a show, um.
But but cutting it and editing it very carefully to
(01:04):
have Cody admit to being the UNI bomber. Well, yeah, no,
it's not a hard well that sounds like good journalism,
capustrated stitch together. That's my assumption. I've said it before
and I'll say it again. No, they put periods in
between the words. Oh yeah, yeah, that's just trying to
trick the algorithms so they don't get a d m
(01:25):
C A motherfucker's I'm going to burn radio Lab to
the ground. Yeah, I think it's a real lab, right,
It's like, oh yeah, it's it's a laboratory. So there's
a lot of flammable things in there. They should not
tried us. Yeah, they'll be they'll be too busy being
on fire, on fire a d O lab people collab.
(01:52):
Welcome back to the worst year we've been reading books.
Good we have been. Has there been news? I don't
think so. It doesn't seem likely, does not seem like
a thing there's been. The only news I care about
is what's going to happen to this tiny little guy
inside of another guy. That's what matters to me. The
(02:17):
emotion allegory we discovered this was this week. Yeah, you
know there's people in the reddit who are frustrated who
say that the story What's Fair had a point and
we didn't get it. I think we got it. They're like,
you doing an iron rand allegory. We got it, it's
just incompetently done. So there's not actually a point because
(02:37):
it's not really established whether or not um like, what's
his name? The murderer brother is any Like, we just
hear from his perspective that his physical labor is what's
saving the farm, and we never actually get a reveal
to show that his brother was actually doing anything that
kept the farm going or the family going. So again,
(02:57):
yeah's that's what Ben is trying to do, but there's
no message because he didn't do it competent do it.
That's my argument with reddit. Well, also the other brother. Uh,
not only did he not demonstrate that he was actually
doing uh uh, it did demonstrate that the work he
did do was build a tractor that did not work,
that did not work, that that was not effective. Didn't
(03:20):
it didn't work when you press the button should have
been easy. Uh. Yeah. If the messages that like, there's
uberman inventors and laborers and laborers need to know their place.
We never established that the Uberman's is in fact good
at anything. It's not actually shown by anything that happens
in the story. Yeah, one could argue that it demonstrated
that he was bad at it. Yeah, that that just
(03:42):
that the messages that sometimes two people who are bad
at things have a murder. Yeah, sometimes, and sometimes a
murder happens between two people with very fewer teeming qualities
or qualities at all, oh qualities whatsoever, because they're not
really characters in any meaningful way. Yeah, well, important thing,
are we? Where did we leave off on this other
(04:02):
this other book, I think the one that we haven't
gotten wrong yet. The pictures of the mechanical might have
been breaking through tearing the halo apart. I think we
created a cliffhanger um and two listeners to eagle eared listeners.
We may be repeating ourselves, and that's okay, because it
(04:23):
was so good that we had to read it twice.
The story is so nice we read it twice because
we forgot exactly where the story so forgettable that we're
gonna read. We may repeat ourselves. So I think the
mites are coming, dozens of them, hundreds of them. I pull,
I tug, I yank. Finally, I pry the damn thing open.
(04:47):
I think he's talking about the halo here halo. I
I skipped. I skipped some important bit. Okay, So first
of yeah, so he's climbing, all right, A climb through
the hole in the halo, grab the stomach, lining and
climb toward what looks like a closed ring above me.
I have to get out. I have to get the
hell out now. It takes me a second to realize
(05:07):
that the stomach acid is burning away layers of skin.
I'd scream, but I need the air instead. I grit
my teeth, breaking a moler as my shoulder muscle is exposed.
I do remember this. The mites are gaining. The liquid
is gluing me to the walls too, like a fly
stuck in a web. Yes, this is where. It's just
above me is the ring of the esophagus. Hand over hand,
(05:29):
I grab my legs, hang free. Wait, how did you
I thought you were stuck. I thought he was climbing
hand over hand. He was climbing hand over hand on
the walls. But he was stuck because of the liquid
that they said. It doesn't matter. My legs hang free though.
As I am hand over hand grabbing, I'm upside down.
A drop of stomach gas bathes my face, a drop
(05:52):
burning off the skin. I don't think almost fast. Okay,
all right, too late? Yeah, sure, sandwich goes in, Robert,
that's fine, that's fine. This is what might do. And
this is also the esophagus works. You PLoP it down
and it just Stomach acid is basically the acid from
(06:13):
alien exactly excellent. Yeah, yeah, we all know this. We
all learned this, we're all learning it now maybe, But
the important thing is learning is important. I'm upside down now.
A drop of stomach acid baits my face, burning off
the skin. But I'm almost there. I feel the jerk
before I see it. A mechanical might has my leg
(06:36):
claws at it frantically. Not a good sentence. Ken might
has my leg and claws at it frantically. But who
has the time to write the word? And I kick again,
But my leg feels slow, unresponsive. Then I feel warm.
When I look down. The mechanical might is gone, so
is my right leg. Below the knee. The bone hangs
(06:59):
out in shards. I bite right through my bottom lip.
Bone hangs out in shards. It would fall away in shards.
If it's in shards, it's not, it's others right, Yeah,
he doesn't hang out in shards. It hangs out right
like splintered. Maybe you know Ben's wife is a doctor.
Oh you're right, I'm sorry, Yeah, sure, she's the one
(07:24):
who said that if you if you wind up vomiting,
you have to get clear immediately because the stomach acid
will eat a hole in your floor. Oh yeah, whenever
you know, whenever you like throw up. Yeah, it goes
right through the toilet, is coated with stomach acid, and
you never speak again. Yeah. That's why everyone dies when
they throw up a single time. It's the leading cause
(07:47):
of death. Throwing up once. It's a real problem. Yeah yeah, Well,
you know we'll get through it h with collective action
together and not a rugged individualism. That will Oh god,
it's trying to get away from the news. When I
look down, the mechanical might is gone. So is my
(08:08):
right leg below the knee. The bone hangs out in shards.
I bite right through my bottom lip and the acid
gets in. I don't know. The adrenaline is coming. I
know to fight the pain, but I use it instead
to pull myself up, push myself through the ring, do both.
It won't give way. The mites are coming, dozens of them,
hundreds of them, So many fucking commas in this Uh,
(08:31):
it won't give It won't give way. Semi cool, and
the mites are coming. Comma, dozens of them, Comma, hundreds
of them. Period. I pull tug yank. Finally I pry
the damn thing open, pull myself halfway through formatting her
and it closes around my waist. I'm trapped. The clicking
sounds of the mites closer and closer. I'm dead and
(08:54):
I know it. I'm going to die down here in
the gut of the whale. Amy will never know what
happened to me. She might she knew you were, she
knew what you signed up for. You didn't tell her
that you were going to do this for three years. Yeah,
that does seem like something you would chat about, because,
like mentioned, I don't know what the risks are. Love.
(09:17):
Love is a powerful force. But also most people whose
partners abandoned them without explanation for three years will return
to find that person has moved on. Yeah, maybe don't
expect her to care happened to you if you just
sort of disappeared, So maybe expect her to be like livid,
because that's incredibly not okay. You should have told me
you were going to shrink down to a tiny guy
(09:38):
and go go help kill dust mites that are apparently bloodthirsty.
And I have been with some very forgiving people, um
but but I don't think anybody would forgive that really
really unacceptable. Love you, babe, but I just gotta do
it for me, you know, but even sign there, you
(10:00):
just like left right, just left, just out God, assuming
she's waiting, sitting at the door every day like a
that dog in the Futurama episode the Sad One, but
less sad because but less sad because no one competent
wrote this. Take a stomach acid for you, babe, drop
(10:20):
h Amy will never know what happened to me because
I didn't tell her. They'll they'll tell her some fiction
about dying, a huge plot hole, Like you're just assuming
she's going to be around and fine, yeah, waiting to
hear the news about the secret this is a secret company.
(10:42):
Oh yeah, again, we know nothing about this world about
because Ben is terrified of actually telling the story. We
know basically nothing about. Like is this a normal thing?
Do like all crazy rich people now do versions of this?
Is this guy famous for shrinking people down then to
shrinking technology, so you would think he'd be famous for that.
(11:03):
Like what is the extent to which any of this
is commonly known? Or like what is the actual cultural
relevance of all of this? How has it changed life? These?
These are the questions that a science fiction writer would Yeah,
I heard a great quote the other day, Cody Katie. Um.
I didn't come up with it. I don't know who
came up with it, but it's. Um, science fiction is
(11:25):
not anticipating the internal combustion engine. It's anticipating traffic, right,
Like that's like, what's actually interesting science fiction? And look
at this cool thing? It's how does this How how
would this cool thing impact people? Um, generally in ways
that are not obvious or would not be based on
the intent. Um. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it says it's
(11:48):
it's it says everything. UM. And I guess Ben is
telling us that the unintended consequence of shrinking technology would
be that tiny people fight dust mites on cigarettes. Yeah,
he really thought it through. I think that the primary
problem with Ben in general is that I think that
he can't be bothered. You know, we've danced around this,
but not just with you know, his works of fiction,
(12:08):
but with his tweets, with his articles, with just anything.
He can't be bothered to do the work of sitting
and thinking through and answering some of the questions he poses.
Otherwise it wouldn't make sense and he wouldn't have an answer.
But that's like across the board. So I guess it's
not surprising that that's how he shows up. Oh yeah,
but it is just, of course a fucking course. Yeah.
(12:30):
If this, then what is not a sentence or question here? No? No,
If this, then that's the fact. No. Bill has never
asked a question, like a real question where you actually
are hoping to learn something that might inform or alter
the way that you see the world, because that would
that would imply that his view of the world could
(12:51):
possibly change. Yeah. No, he asks uh quote like rhetorical
questions that like he has his prepared answer for. But
he was never He's not a curious mind at all. Yeah, absolutely,
he can't be. It's immortal to be a curious A
movie about Ben, A movie about Ben would be an
(13:14):
incurious mind. I'm curious mind. Curious someone write it, Yeah,
it would. I'm imagining it it being like, um, what's
that Ben Affle? Like Matt Damon movie where there's like
there's like a math problem on a chalkboard and he
just erases it in writes in sex is I don't
know penises or shouldn't do anything. That's something something terrible.
(13:38):
I didn't have together, don't have sex, don't be married yeah,
or like and like, don't be married unless you're straight. Yeah,
my wife is a doctor. Normalized straight marriage, normally straight
marriage and swallowing stuff and having whatever you eat go
plink plink plink against the walls of your esophagus machine
(14:03):
like a fuck it, it's amazing. Okay, please continue, all right.
So he's dead and he knows it, and he's gonna
die down there in the gut of the whale capitalized
T capitalized w Amy will never know what happened to me.
This is where this is where we keep getting stopped
up right, a tiny note, right, a tiny note, and
then then grow it. That's a perfect plan. Uh, They'll
(14:25):
they'll tell her some fiction about dying hero against the mites,
doing my job, the whole routine. My skeleton will be
digested by the whale. He'll outlive me. You can put
like a butt my skeleton with whatever is in sheer despair.
I slam my fist against the ring and miraculously it
loosens for an instant. I pull myself up and it
(14:47):
snaps closed, locking out the mites. This is like, like,
I know what he's going for here. It's just like happens.
So like quickly amidst like all this other bullshit that like,
like what he's doing is like the like the Sienna
Jones hat grabbing a hat right when the door closes,
Like he wants a suspensiful moment where's like getting through
a doorway and it snaps shut and the horde of
(15:08):
mites get like slams into it and he's safe. But
it's just like too much work to describe that. Nope, yea,
all of a sudden works and the mites are trapped
up way Okay, it's like incredibly boring, like and she's yeah,
just gets a ring miraculusly it loosens for an instant
and put myself up and it snaps close, locking at
the mites. Okay that and I know, I'm sure Again
(15:32):
Ben's intention is that the actual bad guy here is
the whale um. But he's also not a character um
not not really and uh there's no all of the
actual like action tension is between him and these very
boring enemies that that aren't exciting or cool, And that
(15:53):
would be fine if the focus of the story was
anything other than him fighting them, but that's all Ben
seems to want to right, Is this guy struggling against mites,
which is again the least interesting part of the story. Yeah,
it's the facials, horde of mechanical mtes that couldn't do
the job that he's hiring. He's tiny people to do. Yeah,
(16:14):
program to kill the other mites. It's like in an
alien the the alien is not the thing that is
like the most interesting. Like, that's not the bulk of
of the movie. The bulk of the movie is how
like these individual human beings react in the choices that
they make, and like the alien is important as to
(16:36):
how it pushes them to make choices and reveals things
about the characters and causes conflicts for them. But like,
the movie is always centered on the people and the
things that they are doing and what it reveals about
like them and and the world that they're in. There's
a lot of like commentary and one not in that movie,
and a number of things. Um then appears to think
(16:56):
that the thing people actually want is just a I
for no real reason, fighting weird hero. Yeah, it's like,
um another example, you kept saying the thing that people
want or whatever, like the thing. If Ben made the thing,
it would be like a bunch of battles with the
monster instead of a movie about like the isolation and
(17:18):
mistrust and all these characters and how they deal with that.
Um yeah, I was gonna say, to be fair, we
are referencing a lot of like much longer works than
a short story. But to be even more fair, doesn't
matter the principles of storytelling pertain to a short story.
I just felt like it's good to acknowledge, like, yeah,
(17:40):
we're talking about larger pieces of writing, but there's lots
of people that have written brilliant, beautiful, concise short stories
while also following these same kind of Right, you could
write a short story version of Alien and still get
all of that across us. A good writer would be
(18:01):
able to do that. A competent right, I'll go step
for further forward farther. Just a writer, a writer Philip K.
Dick could have taken this story and and thrown in
a giant head screaming at him from the sky. And
you know, with with just a couple of pounds of amphetamines,
we would we we might have something you could make
(18:21):
and do a Paul Verhoeven movie. Oh, this would be
a This would not be a good movie, no matter
who makes it sorry now, Like, wait, maybe no, you
would need that extra bit of Philip K. Dick being
on amphetamines listening to a giant head screaming at him
from the sky. Maybe it's like a sequel to the
Honey I Shrunk the Kids franchise. You can take a
(18:43):
nugget of it somehow, But yeah, honey, we gave we
resurrected Philip K. Dick, gave him or meth amphetamine and
handed him a bit Shapiro short story and he made
it like, Okay, it's family friendly, you give it back.
It's very erotic and erotic, family friendly foot a lot
(19:05):
of extra scenes with the mites, if you know what,
Philip K. Dick really focused in on the mites, really
focused on the mites. Yeah wait, wait, wait before we continue,
I think he's starting to take a quick ad break.
Oh but before we do a quick ad break, I
have one more paragraph to get through before they break
(19:26):
that pen makes So we got a cliffhanger coming up, surely,
and it's gonna be exciting because in Sheer Despair, I
slam my fist against the ring and miracuously it loosens
for an instant I pull myself up and it snaps close,
locking out the mites. The adrenaline is wearing off now
and I can feel myself losing consciousness. I shoved the
stump of my lower leg onto the ring. Let the
(19:47):
remnants of stomach acid on the ring caught aize the wound.
The blood turns, the flesh burns into darkness, just like
sign ends we'll be back. That's how it works. That's
how stomach acid works. That's why if you both puke
and cut open an artery at the same time, you
(20:09):
just jam some of that puke in the wound and
you're good to go. Baby. If you ever, if you
ever get cut, puke on yourself. Yeah, if somebody ever
gets an arterial injury where and you're around, just stick
your fingers down your throat and vomit on their open wound,
and you will save their life. That's actually what military
medics are trained to do in combat. They just puke
(20:30):
right on the gunshot wound. Star Wars was accurate, just
to be like a bunch of people puking on each
other's vomiting on each other's laser birds. And on that note,
here's a word from together everything. Don't don't and we're
(20:55):
back from Yeah, I care what happens. What happens? What
where did we leave? Where did we leave off our
hero anyone? Where do we leave off our heroes? I
already can't remember conscience. He slipped into darkness after losing
(21:17):
like a couple of his limbs. Yeah, he lost his
leg and he caught herrized it with stomach acid. So
we're good. He's fine. Yah. Yeah, thank god for stomach acid.
Mm hmm. Nature's turniquet. At least utilize natural remedy for wounds.
(21:38):
Get on a healthcare system. Okay, September. I've lost all
sense of time, But you just said what day it was.
He's done this a couple of times where he said
the date and he's like, I don't know how long
it's been, nonsense. I can tell by my size. I'm
(22:00):
now about three inches tall. That has been another thirty
six hours. So you haven't lost all sense of time.
You have a sense of time. I love saying something
and then immediately contradicting myself, like even the thing that
I've written and have the ability to edit, like if
I'm if you're in the woods and you don't have
a watch and you don't know how long it's been,
(22:20):
and you look at the sun and you can determine
how long it's been. That is a sense of time.
It's a it's an external you have, like you're like
using your environment. But like, Cody, do you remember we
just opened a part of this with him listing the
date and then saying, I don't know what day it is,
like I've lost all sense of time. So actually you haven't.
(22:41):
And I can tell by my size how how much
time there's gone by. It's very funny in the same sentence.
It's the sandwich of like contradictory, like it's so been
Try it a little harder, just like read read what
you wrote once. No, Cody, No, okay, anyway, it's been
(23:04):
another thirty six hours despite me having no sense of time.
The acceleration will be fast now, all acceleration is. It's fine.
It's fine. I'm fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine,
doesn't it doesn't matter, it's fine. There's no room to expand.
I'm standing in the whales esophagus. Actually there would be
a little room to expand. It's fine, discussed the esophagus. Okay,
(23:27):
it's fine. Sign sign I'm standing in the whales esophagus
on my one good leg. How are you wait, it's
fine standing, I know I'm curious about that too. What
are you standing on? How are you standing? I don't
want him to explain, because then that would be more words.
(23:47):
But also, yeah, you need to explain, like even just
like if you're in like as he's imagining a pipe,
then you're like your leg is against one side and
your hands are like pushing against this, either to hold
yourself up or something. It doesn't matter anyway, it doesn't matter.
(24:09):
I'm standing the whales's esophagus. Wait you have I mean,
what was the thing that snap clothes beneath him or whatever?
The halo the halo so theoretically, but like the edge
of the esophagus or something. Yeah, just say that. Actually,
you're right, that's where he's standing. He's standing at the
(24:29):
bottom where the little hole is closed. All right, there's
barely any air, Okay. I breathed slowly, laboriously, trying not
to use up all the oxygen the whale has swallowed.
The whale will realize I'm alive soon. I'm large enough
that he should be able to feel me. It's only
(24:49):
a matter of time before they try something else, right, Like,
isn't he like isn't the whale? Like wouldn't he be choking?
Right now? You're standing in his esophagus. There's a three
man's that's a really big thing to have on your vomiting.
I would think there's like that's huge. Yeah, that's like
(25:14):
that's like the size of an iPod or at least
an iPod nano stuck in your esophagus. This is nonsense.
Now now I'm upset because I'm sorry. It's only a
matter of time before they try something else, like I
don't know, the himlick or something, because sucking iPod nanos
in your throat, which gives me just a little while
(25:35):
to climb my way out. Uh huh, I've made up
my mind. I'm going to go out the way I
came in. Yeah, you have to. You didn't go the
other The esophagus will lead up into the throat and
then I'll force my way out. But before I can
try it, the water comes pouring down. It comes down
(25:56):
in great gushes. Bad, it comes down own like the
water comes pouring down period new paragraph formatting air. It
comes down in great gushes, washing over me, refreshing me.
But then the stream becomes too strong. The ring opens again,
sucking the water into the stomach. I grabbed the wall
(26:17):
of the esophagus and hold on for dear life. I'm
not going back in there with those metal mites, says
the iPod nano in the throat. The water stops, and
the whale takes a deep breath, swelling his belly out,
swelling out his belly. Now that I'm in the esophagus,
I can hear everything better. And now that I'm bigger,
(26:38):
the voices don't seem quite so distorted, which means I
can hear that the doctor is back. Too many new
paragraphs for so little to say. Sir, he's saying, I
cannot imagine how we survived. But oh I can't demadge,
and how you botched it, says the whale. But you'd
better fix it. I feel the pressure in my chist.
(27:00):
I know it is, and it's growing worse all the time.
How are you talking so well with an iPod nano throat? Yeah,
not quite throat, not quite throat yet, and the esophagus,
but like what it seems like it would make it
difficult to talk, difficult I've never shoved an iPod nano
(27:23):
into my esophagus, but I don't think I would be
able to speak the way I normally speak, especially if
it's like got little hands and it's grabbing. It seems
like it would be a problem, be a problem. I
don't know. We can ask Ben Shapiro's doctor wife. Perhaps
she will say, no, the esophagus actually does fine with
an iPod nano in it. We do it all the
(27:45):
time in our family. We eat I pod nanos, but
not all the way. We keep them in our throats,
keep them stuck. That's called medicine. Esopha. Guys that he
should started. Esophagus is a good band. It's okay band.
I've listened to them. Yeah, Esophagus rock rock joke on
(28:13):
hip hop fans out there radio in radio land. I smile.
At least I'm giving the bastard a little pain. But
you're clearly all right. He seems very actually notice at all.
Then I punch his esophagus from the Yeah, he flinches.
(28:38):
I feel it now, he says, I feel it now,
he says, kind of, because he's got the thing in
his throat. We tried the mice, says the doctor, how
about a metic smart, very smart. They know I must
be out of the halo one way or another. Yeah,
you punched his esophagus and then and they know that
(29:00):
I haven't been killed by the stomach acid because you
punched the esophagus. Wounds. It helps you. So if they
can't bring me to the acid, they'll have to bring
the acid to me. If he vomits, he'll bring up everything,
including the acid. I'll be burned beyond recognition. Or he'll
throw you up, and then you'll be outside of his
(29:23):
body in a very shallow pool of puke that you'll
get out of quickly, because puke doesn't dissolve, doesn't dissolve
skin particularly quickly. Guys his world, his rules, his world,
his rules, his dream. These facts don't care about your
(29:44):
feelings of how the world, But my facts do care. Ah,
I can't, says the whale. My ulcer. It'll start beating again.
Good point. So that's what that red spot was in
the stomach. He already knew this. Hold on, yes, hold on,
I gotta word. Just banged my head on the table.
(30:07):
What do you I feel like He's already noticed this
and guessed it was an ulcer but whatever. Uh, maybe
I'm just making it up because he should have. So
that's what that red spot was in the stomach. Well,
bless God for the whale's coffee and stress addiction. Okay, no,
it won't, she said. No, he's the doctor speaking. No
one won't, says the doctor. That medicine you talk earlier.
(30:31):
Here we go. No one won't, says the doctor. That
medicine you took earlier. Couded your stomach lining the acer
should be closed temporarily. The whale leans forward. I can
feel him do it, Yes, he says, I see your
point like it's like c W dialogue. No, the ced
(30:52):
the c W dialogue is always better written than this. Yes,
I see your point like it talks like that. All right,
I prepare myself to die, amy, if only I could
say goodbye. Also formatting error on that paragraph, of course,
(31:17):
it doesn't doesn't matter. The doctor pads out of the room.
The doctor pads out of the room. That is the
ridiculous pads out of the room. Is um a phrase
that you see when you're describing sleepy little children up
going back. Maybe he's like, he's just like being careful
(31:41):
not to upset the whale. You know. Ah, the doctor
pads out of the room, or at least it sounds
like it. A few minutes later he's back. See this
is where we get like earlier, when he's literally in
the person's stomach and he's describing like what the people
are doing with utter like complete, like omnipresent confidence, and
(32:03):
here he is, the doctor pads out of him, or
at least it sounds like it. Yeah, so just from
the beginning, describe what things sound like, not what is
literally happening. And then five pages later be like, well,
I mean it sounds like that's going on. It's like
it sounds like the doctor leaves and comes back five
minutes later. Yeah, Like it's like I hear I hear footsteps.
(32:23):
It sounds like having a thing the size of a
smartphone jammed in your esophagus is not a problem enough
that they need to like rush a ton. Also, the
doctor pads out of the room, or at least it
sounds like it, and a few months later he's back.
So here's the thing, Ben, Your character has resigned himself
(32:45):
to die. He's gonna die, and he wants to say
goodbye to Amy, whoever that fucking is but you've already
established it. Like he can grab onto the esophagus from
the inside, and like you're like standing in there and
you just like hanging out for a few minutes knowing
that he's gonna puke you up. So just like climb
use those few minutes to climb the esophagus. Right, he's
(33:09):
just like chilling down there. It's just like a wasted
seems like wasted time. Anyway. A few minutes later, nothing happens,
and now he's back. Follow he orders, and here comes
the shower again. Not water in a pill. No, they're
too smart for that. They know I'd grabbed the pill
prevented from hitting the stomach. Now you wouldn't it were
(33:33):
like knock. It's like it'd be like half your son. Whatever. No,
this shower is of epicac slime all over me. Too
many commas. You need to right, sens is better, very
apparent right now, No comma. This showers of epicac comma
slime all over me. The ring opens, sucking it in
(33:55):
just a few seconds now before the guys are of
acidic vomit comes up, finishing me. I rubbed my right
leg what's left of it, and looked down through the ring.
The epicac is washing through the stomach. The mechanical mites
are swimming around in it. Soon they'll be joining me
along with the acid. Okay, so the acid doesn't affect
the mechanical mines. Oh yeah, no, they're fine. It burns
(34:18):
through than very quickly. Yeah. The mites, well, obviously, that's
why there are so many mites in our stomachs. That's
why we got the mites. Soon they'll be joining me
along with the acid. New paragraph, unless I joined them first,
the script, the ulcer. New paragraph. It's the only chance.
(34:43):
New paragraph. All of these new paragraphs are designed to
be like dramatic and it's just dumb. Well, it's because
each of them is expressing a completely distinct thought. M
So you gotta switch, you gotta switch. Well, yeah, because
like it's like he wants the suspense of like timing
and space, um and like drawing it out, but he
can't write enough words, so he's got to make two
(35:06):
word paragraphs and like it's the illusion of suspense, right, Um,
but I'm full of suspense, so let's find out what happens.
I can't make it up the esophagus in time. You
had a few minutes while the doctor was gone. Buddy,
this is like, yeah, you could have been climbing up
by that. I can't make it up the esophagus in time.
(35:28):
You could have when the doctor was gone. I did,
all right, Not with this time bomb below me. Well
you had time. It wasn't a time bomb when the
doctor was gone. But I can make it down. I
hold my breath and dive down through the ring. The
fall seems endless. I feel like I'm skydiving through noxious air.
I briefly wonder if I'll survive the fall at all,
(35:49):
but then I'm on the side of the stomach. I
claw at the wall, grabbing a handhold, plastering myself as
the acid swirls below me. The mites haven't noticed me yet,
covered as I am, and the sticky gou that coated
the stomach just a few body lengths away. As the ulcer.
It's covered in that same coup, but not for long.
(36:11):
If I can keep holding my breath, I edged my
way down toward it. It's raised and throbbing, but yes, right,
but not obvious to the mites. I fall to my
knees and begin scraping away the now hardened black coating,
chunk by chunk, I rip it away. The mites turn
and see me, but they see something else, the red,
(36:31):
ugly flesh of the ulcer, bleeding, inviting them because they
love blood, love to as much as they love tobacco.
Mechanical mites. Um, yeah right, these are the mechanical mites too,
So they don't they eat, No, they're they've been programmed
to chase attack ulcers, to crave blood like normal mtes
(36:57):
also crave, apparently because the normal whites were also bloodthirsty. Correct.
That's fucking great, Ben, very good, and it's so good,
in fact, that I think this is a wonderful time
first suspense cliffhanger time. We'll be back. I promised that
this story is over in a couple of pages. I
don't promise ship because it's been Shapiro. There could be
(37:20):
a whole another version of this story that he's producing
with his new film team. Oh god, yeah, I hope
he is. I was gonna say that he is. I
bet he's not, because and hear what's some what's a
failed actor who turned into a right? I mean Kevin
Sorbos as guy fighting mites, Kevin Sorbo Dean Kane is
(37:44):
probably the whale or the doctor. Yeah, Dean Cane will
be the whale. Get like kid Rock in there or something. Yeah,
Kid Rock could be his friend who dies tragically to
the mites. Man, I'm already wow, perfect casting. Maybe could
be a throw Kirsty Alley in there. I know we
have a winner. M I'd watch it. I would too,
(38:05):
I absolutely would. Of course, will be right back together.
Oh we're back. I'm thinking of Kirstie Ali waiting at
(38:28):
home for Kevin Sorbo to finish his three years fighting,
having no idea where he went, having no idea where
he went, but waiting faithfully reading all these news stories
about the one guy who invented shrinking technology and exclusively
uses it to shrink down people to kill the mites
that he fears are drinking his blood. Yes, that's why
(38:50):
he made mechanical mites to drink his one. Exactly. You
gotta get those. It's more sterile, right because they're mechanical.
Oh absolutely, yeah, that makes sense to me. M M,
all right, what happens he's been Oh we're gonna get you,
We're gonna get you up from that cliff. The ulcers
(39:12):
bleeding and inviting the mites. They rush at it, pincers,
scraping together with twisted glee. The first mite virtually leaps
over me, and it's eagerness to be flesh. Oh yeah, firstually,
I didn't read it fairly. The first mite virtue. Man, No,
that's bad. That's not that's not that's not my fault.
(39:35):
Correct that the first mite virtually leaps over me, is eager.
It leaps over you. It leapt. It either leapt over
you or it did not. Yah, did it? Like? What
are you saying? Are you saying it like leapt and
then hit you in the head because it didn't get
above you? Are you saying that it it jumped up
and then like walked around you? Or yeah? At this bad?
(39:56):
At this? It plunges deep into the ulcer, dig blood
oozing from the interesting that the stomach acid is not
caught aizing the ulcer wound that he's describing. I thought
that that's what the stomach acid did to all wounds.
Maybe it's just if you're tiny. The whale screams convulsive. Sorry, Katie,
(40:21):
I cut you off with no, I did. I had
nothing to say. Really, screams gonna keep coming. I grab
another chunk, pull it off the ulcer, throw it away.
How big is this ulcer? Now the blood of the
whale is around my knees, and the mites are coming.
Oh they're coming. Yeah, sorry, and we're sure these are
(40:44):
still the robot mites which which he has programmed to
be insatiably attracted to his blood. To blood apparently, and
not just mites or one guy, but the blood of
the man who invent to them and is deploying them. Yeah,
it's a classic story of hubrists, the hubris of a
(41:06):
man who made mites that don't need to eat, but
somehow are again insatiably attracted to his blood. A little
to the sun, um a great, what happens? A little
too close to the halo? Mistic All right, oh what happens?
(41:26):
They're coming by the tens, the dozens, the hundreds, drawn
by the blood, and they follow the first much Where
are they coming from? All over? He is now the
size of like an iPod. Those mites will be almost
microscopically small. Tom shouldn't he be able to stomp on
(41:47):
him or something? Anyway? Also than this ulcer by now?
Yeah he's yeah, I was just thinking that too, But
they're coming by the ends. The dozens the drawn by
the blood, and they follow the first mite, tearing into
the open flesh, the first mite, which virtually leapt over me.
(42:11):
That's not included in this. It's fine. The whale screams again.
Then I'm horizontal, Comma flat. The whale has been pushed
to the ground. The acid drips towards me slowly. I
climb for higher ground. But something is going on above me.
(42:34):
A scraping, a cutting, too many commas. They're cutting open
the whale. They're gutting him. My breath is running out,
but the sawing is growing nearer. Then I see it,
a sliver of light. They're almost at the stomach. Then
they're through. I see the point of the scalpel sliced
(42:55):
through the tissue. An enormous hand reaches down towards the ulcer,
airrying an enormous piece of gauze. Is he gauzing the ulcer?
That that is what he's doing? Wait, I'm sorry? Is
that is that a treatment for ulcers? I don't think
cutting someone open is? I mean, I guess there's sometimes
(43:16):
you do. Sometimes there are surgeries for ulcers, And I
don't think you just like cut them open and shove
gauze on it. Not a doctor pretty sure that's not
the treatment. Is also pretty sure, like we have their
right and if he's like, if it was a bleeding
situation bad enough that they needed to do an immediate intervention.
We have stuff like cellocks today that like stops bleeding
(43:36):
extremely quickly, and I imagine in this future where they
can shrink things, maybe they have other options, but no,
they're just jamming gauze onto an ulcers. Just wanted to
make sure. Um, yeah, science has progressed to the point
of shrinking technology, but literally nothing else. So this is
(43:59):
my chance, and I take it. I leap as far
as I can grasp the hand so like quite a bit.
I hear a gasp. Remarkable for only having one leg, truly, yeah,
really pretty good jump for a one legged man. This
is where we find he's got some like moon boots
onto that. Yeah, like grappling sort of gutten type of thing,
(44:25):
or much like the actual left over him. He leaps
as far as he can, but literally I hear a
gasp from above, and suddenly I'm flying through the air
clear of the whale in the bright artificial light of
the office. I'm on the carpet, screaming, laughing, all at once,
(44:47):
covered in the whale's blood, covered in his filth, crying
for air and crying for joy. I'm alive. I got
to read the sentence again. I'm on the carpet. Comma screaming,
Comma laughing all at once, Comma covered in the whale blood,
Comma covered in his filth, Comma crying for air and
crying for joy. What a bad sentence. I'm alive. Period,
(45:09):
That's a complete sentence. No, Katie, you are right, and
I did it again. That's what this is for. We
can't just read all the way through. How is that
a way to enjoy this piece of art? Uh? Then
I look up into the eyes of the whale. He
sees me, his eyes widened. Kill him. Sherihspers and the
(45:34):
doctor turns, but he falls to his knees. Job second,
kill him, Step on him, whale, step will kill him.
He whispers, and the doctor turns. Period new paragraph. But
he falls to his knees, bleeding. I look up and
(45:57):
there's Jensen Giant in the light, sweating, holding a scissors.
My name is that the guy that was supposed to die?
Uh is the guy who's like on the calm, right, Okay,
I do my casting. This guy's kid Rock. Absolutely, this
(46:18):
is kid Rock. Uh yeah, with the my name. Okay,
to explained the thing I just did. I look up
and there's Jensen Giant in the light, sweating holding a scissors.
They're dripping blood to the blood of the doctor. Oh
(46:38):
my god, then we know it's the blood of the doctor.
But wait, just a point of clarification. Did he say
holding us scissors? He did, thank you. I kind of
glossed over that holding scissors, holding scissors, scissors, holding a
pair of scissors. Tiny, But that's important, nobody. Yeah, I
(46:58):
think in general, writing is important in a story. Yes,
I entirely agree. It's just like, it's just how like
a six year old would say it scissors. He pads
to his bedroom. His pads to his bedroom holding a scissors.
(47:18):
A thank you for because I thought I was putting
enough sauce on that that part to really to really
highlight I feel like, but I feel like it sort
of passed us by. Um, this is a team effort,
you know, what are the things passed us by? So
the doctor turns, he falls to his knees bleeding. I
(47:39):
look up and there's Jensen, giant in the light, sweating,
holding a scissors. They're dripping blood to the blood of
the doctor. Again, they're dripping bloods too. He did say
the words correctly or write them down correctly, but like
(48:00):
it's just it's bad. It's bad. This is this is
the this is the c W stuff where it's like, oh, oh, oh, okay,
now I get it. Now I've been explained enough to
understand this like dramatic thing you're trying to create where
we really realize Jensen has stabbed the doctor. I know
he stabbed the doctor. He doesn't explain the things he
(48:23):
needs to explain, and over explains the things that are obvious. Yes, anyway,
she over explained. He's she said, explaining Lee their whole
They're dripping blood the scissors or us is or is
dripping bloods the bloods of the doctor. He slumps beside me,
(48:44):
his dead eyes staring through me. Yeah, you know he's dead, Jensen.
I squeak. Oh sorry, I squeak camp, he says. The
whale's eyes turned to Jensen. You bastard, you betrayed me. Kemp,
(49:05):
whose name is Kemp his name is kemp Ah. You
you bastard. You betrayed me. No, says Jensen, you betrayed yourself. Okay.
Jensen sits down next to the whale, and the whale
bleeds period. He bleeds period. Yeah. Down by my feet.
(49:32):
I can see the dust mites feeding on his blood
as they do. Sure, that's what dust mites love. Also,
you can still see them, m I can see the
dust mites feeding on his blood. Dust mites are visible
easily by the naked eye. I laugh. I laughed for myself.
(49:52):
I laugh for Phillips, and I laugh for Amy, mostly Amy,
who has no idea where you been for three Oh? No,
oh no. I laughed for her. When she's gonna she's
gonna laugh at this story when she finds out what
I've done and why I didn't explain where I was
going and where contact or where my leg went, why
(50:13):
my entire body is burned. Sorry. Protagonist Amy is busy
fucking a guy who works for being there that invented
an enlargening ray, so she always knows where he is
because he's so big. He's so big, how can you disappeared?
She wanted a man who was so gigantic, she could
never not know where he was. This the sequel to this,
(50:34):
as he goes home and Amy hasn't been faithful and
he becomes some sort of in cell. Yeah yeah, he
like becomes an anti small game. Yeah yeah. He comes
home and Amy is living in the shoe with her
gigantic boyfriend. The tiny man got cut like but like
(50:54):
like if Amy did get together with like an enlarged guy,
like that would make this story just good, like I
would like every favorite an amazing Ah. Well, fingers crossed.
We still have a couple of sentences left, we do.
I laugh. I laughed for myself. I laughed for Phillips,
(51:18):
and I laughed for Amy. Mostly I laughed because I'm alive.
End of story. That's the conclusion. Um. So like, well,
I want to come back to like what the the
allegory was supposed to be about abortion, as he made
(51:41):
very clear two times within like two paragraphs and then
never again. I feel like nothing else in this story
does that. He didn't even like come back to it,
Like I guess technically the actions of like, oh, the
doctor and then like his friend the abortion doctor, right,
like that's what he's advocating for. I guess, unless do
(52:06):
you think that he doesn't he has to be conscious
that he was doing an abortion allegory. Oh, he definitely was.
He like there are so many uh sentences about like
choice and like it's my body, my purview. He was
very obviously an abortion, but then it wasn't. But then
it wasn't. So maybe he's just saying, um, yeah, you're
(52:28):
justified in killing people if they're trying to do abortions.
I don't know. I guess, yeah, sure, that's the message.
I just I guess we're giving him too much credit.
If there is a message, Well, I think the message
that people who are fans of him would get from
(52:49):
this if you read it was like, oh, I agree,
abortion is bad, Like that's what he like. It's so
empty and lazy that like all he needs to do
is those two sentences and then and someone like, oh, yeah,
I get it, but it's not really what you're doing.
These tech people not trustworthy. Maybe there's something I don't know. Um,
(53:10):
and like the idea that the law the law is
that like if you have a little guy inside you,
like some adult man shrunk down to kill your mites,
then you have the right to kill him, which again,
I feel like it's not the law unless he's again,
unless he signed a contract it said. Even then, I'm
(53:31):
not sure you can sign a contract to let somebody
murder you in this way. I don't know. Maybe I'm
sure you can sign a contract that like, if I die,
it's not his fault, but I don't know that it
would apply in this instance. Liability waiver, sure, but not murder,
not active murder. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he could
(53:52):
hide I accidentally swallowed you and like you're gonna be
the benefit of the doubt on that m That was
a great short story that changed my feelings about all
of society. Also, I have a quick question about society.
(54:12):
Um how is it? No? Um? So the because the
Maybe it's just because we've stretched this out over three
different episodes. Why did the whale want to kill him
once he was inside him? Um? Oh, because he'd seen
that the whale had cancer and was going to die
and could tell people and that would be bad for that.
(54:34):
Wait and why Yeah, that's that's why the way I
wanted to get him. You know, part of the reason
why you forgot Cody is because it didn't get mentioned
ever again. Ever, again, and you would speak, You would
think that that would factor in somehow, in some way,
body invented shrinking technology, business will be fine. But he
(55:00):
only uses it to have tiny men fight, never monet down.
Like it's like it's like sometimes as an artist, you
write something, or you you put together a song or whatever,
and you you just you don't want to sell it.
You just want to put it out there because you
didn't make it for the money, and you want just
(55:21):
one thing that's pure and disconnected from capitalism. That's shrinking technology.
For this billionaire, we all have our things I'd forgotten
that is so fucking stupid. Stop him from ruining his
company's stocks or something right, stop him from ruining his
(55:42):
company's stocks by like revealing information that like his technology
can fix. But also like if you just got him out,
he wouldn't like be trying to ruin your life. They
saved him and didn't try to kill him. Be like, man,
can we not talk about what you saw? I'm really
struggling to deal with my cancer diagnosis. Of course, of
(56:04):
course you saved my life. Also as like your employee
money suggests using this amazing shrinking technology to shrink the
tumor down to nothing. But yeah, maybe we could use
this miracle technology you invented to stop this, Like, don't
even you have, like, don't even tell anybody that you
used it for that if you don't want to use
(56:26):
like obviously you should, but like you can keep it
to yourself. Man. Also speaking of keeping things to yourself,
So maybe this guy signed a contract that said, if
I get stuck in your stomach, you can kill me.
But almost definitely if you have tiny humans in your
office killing the mites for years, because there's no other
(56:46):
way to kill the mites. If you have that, you
definitely have them. Like sign an n d A for
this exact reason. Yeah, the first time you overheard a
phone call in all your being a tiny guy in
this guy's office like this the last minute, I finally
(57:06):
heard a phone call, and I'm gonna tell everybody because
I didn't sign an n d A, which is utter nonsense. Um.
Bad job, Ben, bad job, no benefit of the doubt. Um.
So we're at the time. I guess that's that's all
we need. There is one more short story left and
(57:30):
before we go for listeners for you all, I think
we can play a little game a quick guess of
what you think this is called. Keep in mind, this
is a Ben Shapiro short story that is a very
poorly veiled allegory for something about how like I don't
know equality is wrong or fairness is whatever it is.
(57:54):
This one was I believe, sorry me, I believe this
was called in the in the Depths or something or
like in the whole. Yeah, it's from the Jonah and
the Whale. But I was gonna say it's real meaning,
like actual message again Jonah and want to read it. Yes,
I'm aware he had a message. He just did not
succeed in getting it across to absolutely obviously has a message.
(58:17):
It's bad, it's just incompetent. Mean when we say that
is that there's no actual message because of how badly
he wrote the episode. Complete nonsense. Yeah, and fair sex.
Oh interesting? Um, I guess I'm excited for Amy to
realize where her lover has been for three years. I
(58:39):
don't think she cares. She's got that big guy. She's
dating that giant guy. She got the enlargening array inventor
who weirdly makes tumors bigger. Yeah, it makes them so
big they can't hurt you. Yeah, you just live inside
your tumor. You get a free flesh house. That's the
trips um an answer to the housing crisis. Really, yeah, Robert,
(59:01):
what's your guest for the next chapter. I clearly guessed wrong.
That's the title of the story. Yeah, we're guessing um
why liberals um are bad. You're both wrong, but you're
both very close. Uh. The next one, and I cannot
wait to read this is called utopia. Oh my god. Okay,
(59:27):
a little nauseous because it's been I'm gonna guess it's
like some sort of leftist utopia that is uh nine
four but written by an idiot. I guarantee that that's
what it is. Okay, I'm very excited. I'm extremely excited dystopia.
In fact, I'm so excited for this I am going
to read the first sentence of this story out loud.
(59:51):
Oh Cody, what an embarrassment of riches for our listeners.
Oh my gosh, you are so lucky, you greedy listener.
Whip your dicks out, listening. Is it's time for happy,
It's time for the mites to come all right, in
all caps, it's a quotation in all caps, all men
(01:00:11):
are created equal, excellent fantastic. Yeah, yeah, Oh my god, utopia,
that's what I likes to hear. Well, we're all gonna
wait with bated breath for this next installment. This has
been a delight, the most excited I have of course.
(01:00:36):
All Right, all right, we'll be back next week. Check
us out, check in next week, Brohems and other teams. Oh,
there's so many words that he's capitalized for no reason.
Every Daniel Worst Year Ever is a production of I
(01:01:04):
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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