Episode 233: Keeping It Surreal (Kafka's "The Trial" Pt. 1)

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] I'm not a tough guy. I knew I'm staying my ass aside. And the fucking FBI is on speed dial, bro. Not a fucking tough guy. I think people would say things about snitching. I'm fucking snitching. The Queen and I pay no attention to that man behind you.

[00:01:11] Brains and U.S. Anybody can have a brain. Very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards. I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, we're back in the beautiful place where it all started for us, the Harmony Hotel in Nosara, Costa Rica.

[00:01:29] Does that mean it's curtains for us after this week is over? You mean have we been sandwiched into our final, last farewell episodes? That's what I'm wondering. I mean, this is where it all started and this is probably where it all ends.

[00:01:45] It's not a bad way to go out. No, it really isn't. Yeah. If we had to end the podcast, this would be the place to do it. That's right. The only thing, you know, if we die in a horrible playing crash on the way home,

[00:01:56] I just hope that these uploaded to the cloud. And the archivists can find, you know, somewhere how to access them and then decide whether or not, because I don't know if you put this, but I put for all unedited episodes, raw audio to be burned. Yeah, me too.

[00:02:15] It's a good thing because it would be very awkward for only one side of the conversation. Well, I mean, you know, like it's a real ethical question whether or not they should honor my wishes or whether the world just deserves to hear some of our unedited

[00:02:29] episodes, raw audio. Like the unreleased Sam Harris audio that everybody was climbing. You are, my friend, alluding to the fact that because of someone's ethical breach, we have the book that we're going to be discussing in the main segment only because

[00:02:48] somebody was willing to tell Kafka's dead ghost to fuck off. We'll talk about the ethical dilemma maybe when we lead off. Yeah, so we're going to talk about the trial. Franz Kafka is the trial and what we think, although we're not sure yet, will be a two

[00:03:06] part episode because there's a lot to talk about with that book. That's right. And we don't want to record more. Because we're in fucking Costa Rica. Yeah, exactly. And the studio, which is very nice. Yes, very nice studio they have for us called Outpost.

[00:03:23] If you're ever stopped by in Costa Rica and you have to record a podcast. In a pinch. In a pinch. Wouldn't it be funny if just like you're so addicted to podcasting that late at night

[00:03:33] it's like two in the morning and you just have this, you're just fiending to record an episode and you just come up like a crackhead and I kind of rent out your studio. I just start doing opening questions and then like responding to them as you.

[00:03:46] I'm Dave Bizarro. That was more the nerd from this incident than you. All right, so we have to talk about something serious though in the opening segment and I know it's usually more lighthearted but and I know that I've

[00:04:09] I don't know, taken the piss on social psychologists in the past. And, you know, like I think often justified, maybe sometimes not justified. But I think now, you know, I have to rethink all my criticisms because your colleagues, your brethren have have written a letter to end the

[00:04:30] ongoing as we are as we're recording anyway, ongoing war invasion of Ukraine. They have written a letter, your social psychologist colleagues to Vladimir to just, you know, maybe rethink his current aspirations regarding Ukraine.

[00:04:51] And you know what I just noticed is at the top of the PDF, at least that we have, I think it might have been taken down from its original side, but it definitely was. But it says psychologists for peace.

[00:05:02] Like they're like they're an official organization, like that we are the world. It wasn't like that we are the world people. It was like, you know, singers against hunger or something. Yeah, rock and rollers.

[00:05:12] You know, I don't often compare things to Sun City, but this is this is, I think, the closest that we've gotten in a long time. To what? Sun City, when a lot of rock stars refuse to play Sun City because of the apartheid in South Africa.

[00:05:30] And there was a song, right? Like, ah, ah, ah, ain't gonna play Sun City. Hey. I do not remember that. Yes. This is a very, it's not even strongly worded. I, you know, I think, well, it's empirically rigorous and backed up. So you have strong words. Exactly.

[00:05:52] And I think, you know, often with with world leaders, if you start, you know, aggressive or antagonistic, they might be less likely to absorb the information you're giving them. They might stop reading. You might stop reading exactly.

[00:06:09] Can I just say before I go on to lightly mock my colleagues, I'm not doing anything. So I don't want to take away if people are feeling desperate and need to to feel like they're doing something. These people got together and they put together a letter.

[00:06:30] So I grant them that. They're in many ways better than me. Yeah. And as far as I know, the address at the top is correct. But I don't think they put it in the mail.

[00:06:42] No, I like, I would love to, I don't know if that was covered in any of, in the stories about it, but yeah, I don't know how they plan to get this letter into it.

[00:06:51] Maybe like CIA, they have to give up one of their agents just so he would get this letter and carrier pigeons. All right. Should we just go through it? Yeah. So let's say that this is how many is like 40, I think 40 psychologists,

[00:07:07] mostly from Europe, a few from Latin America and a couple from the US, which is neither here nor there. And I would assume, this is purely speculation on my part, but I would assume they're older people given the references that they put in

[00:07:28] the letter, the studies that they cite. They're definitely tenured. They were able to stop reading in 2012. Yeah, 2012 being like really 1995 when you look up that study. Okay. So let's, let's ask our audience to pretend that they are Vladimir Putin. Yes.

[00:07:47] And they have just like a messenger has just run into their office and handed them this paper and said, Mr. President is very important that you read this. Meanwhile, your country is, you know, facing sanctions. The ruble has collapsing. So think about that as you're reading this.

[00:08:02] You've also poisoned about 89 people. 89 is extremely conservative, I think. Yeah. And you just, you're in the midst of an invasion that is going less smoothly than you perhaps predicted. Yeah. All right. So Mr. President, we are contacting you to share with you our academic and

[00:08:23] practical knowledge about the consequences of initiating a war for the instigator. See, they're appealing to his self-interest. Yeah. And to offer a glimpse of a possible way out of such a perilous situation. Sorry. It's really important, like to have to nail that first sentence so that Putin

[00:08:40] doesn't stop reading right now. You know, it's so I'm sorry. We believe that we can all agree about the sad and dramatic consequences that war has for innocent citizens in the countries involved, as well as for soldiers conducting it. Physical injury, psychological trauma, death.

[00:08:57] Yeah, I think we could all agree. That has been known to happen in wars. Yeah. Well, you might not know. Despite that, for political leaders, the instigation of a violent fight with external forces often offers the attractive perspective that such

[00:09:11] a situation of insecurity and feelings of threat increases one's own citizens national identification and admiration for a powerful leader. Ah, so he's saying, so they're saying like, look, we know that war is like you want to be a wartime president. Right.

[00:09:24] And to to back up that empirical claim that feelings of threat increases one's own citizens national identification, they cite a Sharif at all. 1961. Now I looked this up and it's the very famous robbers cave experiment. Yes. Muzza first Sharif argued that intergroup conflict occurs when two

[00:09:49] groups are in competition for limited resources. This theory is supported by evidence from a famous study and investigating group conflict, the robbers cave experiment. Here's the key takeaways in the robbers cave experiment. Twenty two white 11 year old boys were sent to a special remote summer camp

[00:10:07] in Oklahoma robbers cave state park. This is the study that they're citing. Eleven sorry, twenty two eleven year old white Oklahoma kids were sent to a state park in Oklahoma and then did think developed attachments to their groups, chose names for their groups, the Eagles and the Rattlers

[00:10:30] and then had competition where group between the groups prejudice began to become apparent between the two groups. Now, obviously we hope that Putin goes to the actual study, but there is a very helpful summary for this. The website, Simple Psychology.

[00:10:51] So here's where I think this letter becomes at first it's just oh, that's lame, but there are these old like social psychologists, dudes like we should stop a war if we can. But then them citing this like it has relevance to what

[00:11:08] Vladimir Putin takes himself to be doing here like twenty two white kids in Oklahoma is going to somehow have relevance. Just like now it almost seems like it's a joke. Apparently, Tamler, you're not familiar with the clear evidence that was put forth by Sharif in 1961.

[00:11:30] The Rattlers and the Eagles started treating each other pretty badly. And Sharif found a way out. He made their bus break down and they had to join together and fix it. So are you telling me that this is not relevant?

[00:11:47] Is this summer experience for these twenty two Oklahoma kids might not be immediately, it might not be immediately obvious to Putin what how that bears on his own decisions during the crisis. Well, as you say, I only hope Mr. Putin actually reads the original paper because

[00:12:06] listening to you summarize it is not doing it justice. I mean, I like I didn't say anything inaccurate. Did I? No, no. But you emphasized white and I just want to point out they're white too. You know, generalizability.

[00:12:19] That's true. No, no, I didn't mean I wasn't saying that I was making this about race. You're making it about. Maybe a little bit. OK, such effects of increased national identification. The letter continues and leader admiration are however of a short term nature.

[00:12:35] They are usually then replaced by mid to long term negative effects. They're not certain. It's not they're not they're not making, you know, crazy claims that they know it's mid term or no. Yeah, right.

[00:12:45] So now it's actually that study is meant to show that Putin might feel powerful and that his own citizens might respect him. Yes, right. Right. But beware because they're usually then replaced by mid to long term negative

[00:12:58] effects for political leaders who are perceived to be responsible for the war. It's bringing in the attribution literature. Yep. This letter informs you about some of these effects. Colon and now some bullet points. Do you want to take some of the ballpoint?

[00:13:11] Citizens on both sides in a war suffer from national isolation. Human beings are dependent on an appropriate mixture of the familiar and the novel. They simultaneously look for inclusion and differentiation. Brewer 1991, did you look that up? No, I did not. I did.

[00:13:29] The social self on being the same and different at the same time by Marilyn Brewer. Most of social psychologists theories of self failed to take into account the significance of social identification in the definition of self. Social identity identities are self definitions that are more inclusive than

[00:13:47] the individuated self concept of most American psychology. A model of open distinctiveness is proposed in which social identity is viewed as reconciliation of opposing needs for assimilation and differentiation from others. So I mean, I know I was joking about how,

[00:14:03] you know, maybe the sheriff at all 1961 might not be as relevant as the psychologists believe, but this one I mean, it's so clear that even Putin is going to be like, oh, OK, right. I forgot about Brewer 1991. Right. This is no.

[00:14:19] So this this paper is the theory is known as optimal distinctiveness theory. And yeah, it says exactly what Tamler said, which is sometimes you want to be different and sometimes you want to be the same because being the same

[00:14:32] sometimes feels good, but being different also sometimes feels good. And so take that, Putin, like withdraw your troops. Yeah, with like just while there's still time, you know? Yeah, you want to take the next one?

[00:14:46] Yeah, wars create severe economic problems up to full blown crashes on both sides. Citizens typically compare their current economic situation with a situation before the war began and soon recognize that they are losing out. Feelings of deprivation are usually the basis for resistance, protest and revolution

[00:15:04] against existing state institutions. Foster and Matheson 2012. OK, do you know this stuff? That's the one I don't know actually. Abstract relative deprivation, which has been virtually ignored in research on relative deprivation was expected to predict women's collective action over and above egoistic and collective deprivation.

[00:15:25] The role of socio political forces in perceiving deprivation and participation in action was also investigated. So this is just female students, only female students. This balance out the robbers cave study that was only boys. Right? That's true. And now I don't know

[00:15:44] Putin's reputation when it comes to the ladies. But you know, maybe this, I mean, I don't know if this is what they're thinking. But maybe they maybe, you know, he may want women not to protest and revolt against him.

[00:15:59] Right. You know, that their sons are dying wasn't enough of a predictor. But they might have feelings about it. That's anecdotal. And it's just that I feel terrible being this snarky about it. But there is a point to the snark that I will get to, I promise.

[00:16:17] Because you're taking this very seriously in a way that's like. Well, I suggested it. I suggested it. I'm just saying there is, I know a level of snarkiness that can be hard to listen to when there's a war going

[00:16:29] on. But there's a point that I think this is I think deserving of mockery. And we're going to get like I just want to. And it's a deep moral purpose to it. Exactly. Yeah. Good. So OK, so point two was don't you know that war might make people

[00:16:48] have economic difficulties and they're going to start revolting against you? Women, women, especially. We don't know about men. Research has to be done. Yeah, further research. The conduct of war often involves active misinformation about the success

[00:17:02] of one's own troops and losses of the enemy, about the moral superiority of one's own group and the damnable motivations of the opposite side. Taj fell 1977. I don't think I like this one up. Yeah, some in-group out-group shit, I'm sure.

[00:17:21] But this is where Putin starts to think, well, am I attributing falsely kind of motives to Zelensky and the Ukrainian leaders where maybe, you know, like that's some sort of bias in-group bias that I'm feeling right now?

[00:17:36] You know, I there's just this deep irony about like to like pointing out that misinformation is involved. Putin himself. KGB like. Exactly. They tell us about misinformation. They're telling us. Who are these people? Right, the creation of such a world consumes resources and leaders end up

[00:18:02] in isolation within a bubble of yesears always endangered by the threat of being unmasked. Now, I don't know if this is an illusion, but Putin is apparently like paranoid about COVID. Oh, they're using some. Yeah, they're using some psyopsis themselves. Exactly.

[00:18:18] The real social psychology isn't in the citations. That's what this is. This is just CIA. Like this has CIA written all over it. Exactly. Finding oneself in a situation of maximum insecurity about what is right and wrong and uncertainty about the future activates citizens desire for explanations.

[00:18:38] This is a funny one. Festinger 1954. Was that just the cognitive dissonance book? It's just the was that is 1954. The book that's also like, you know, if you start if you invade like a neighboring country, the citizens might want more information about what's going on. Yeah.

[00:19:00] Oh, it's a social comparison book. Yeah. Basically. A theory of social comparison processes. This it's like, you know, when you're doing a report in high school and you know, you just need some parenthetical references to make it sound like, like, you know what you're talking about.

[00:19:21] But these are like emeritus professors. These like some of these studies are like like 70 years old. Yeah. And some of them aren't even studies. This will ultimately end up in a perception of reality as it actually is. People will discover who is responsible for starting the war

[00:19:42] and for all the consequent suffering injuries and death. So is this like trying to figure out what this is supposed to be saying to Putin? Is it is the assumption that Putin might think that the Ukrainians started it and that they're responsible and because of the misinformation?

[00:19:58] And so. But like people will find out eventually, Putin, you know, your people haven't even found out why JFK was killed. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Putin. It tolls for the. Yeah, no, it's true. Nobody like I mean, people have found out who killed Kennedy.

[00:20:17] We don't know which agent. But. But. The processes described above often generate an increasing application of state power and brutal repression. But isn't that what he's going for? That's what I guess. Oh, sweet. This is backed up by French and Raven in 1959. Yeah, he's probably psyched about that.

[00:20:37] It's like probably going to quote that to his cabinet. However, though, you see, you didn't read the however. However, such repression also ends up with increased rejection, isolation and physical endangerment of the political leaders perceived to be responsible. You know who didn't take this kind of advice?

[00:20:56] Who Napoleon? And that's and look at what happened to him exiled to some island. Yeah, that's why I put this. That's the way Hitler ate that gun. Oh, no, he just went to your country. Argentina lived out like a long natural flourishing life.

[00:21:14] Just shaved his mustache and nobody recognized him. Yeah, that was I mean, even I have to admire like the just the simplicity of that genius move that everyone knows me by my mustache. So here we get to the to the final.

[00:21:29] So you know, you always want a plan of action. You want to give a call to action a way out. You know, they've they've set up the dilemma. Like if he keeps going down this path, he's going to end up

[00:21:38] maskless, you know, in a bunker, you know, in a spider hole like Hussein. Just when the new variant is coming. Right. So that so the letter ends. What can be done to mitigate against such a predictable disastrous development? From our psychological point of view,

[00:21:54] the primary recommendation is to immediately stop shooting, stop bombarding, stop fighting and stop killing. Think again about the reasons for your decision to go to war and what can ultimately be achieved with this violence for the Russian people as well as for you personally.

[00:22:10] Think again about the alternative of a peaceful coexistence with neighboring countries, think again about the minimal conditions for ending up in a durable peace agreement and above all remain open for negotiations. Yours faithfully. Yeah. So I'm assuming that by the time we release this episode, he will have

[00:22:29] withdrawn all troops from Ukraine against the letter kind of sent an apology. The letter was taken down. So how do we know he's going to get it? Well, I think it was taken down because of like people were worried about something exactly like what is happening right now.

[00:22:44] That's my that's my prediction. I'm very sorry, professors, doctors, Rolf and Dr. Ulrich Wagner. All right. So what's the because I didn't know really that there was a deep moral purpose other than I think there is just moral to make fun of social psychologists like.

[00:22:59] No, you know what? Where I wanted to go with this after mocking it is there is a profound I read this sincerely. So I take it that that this letter was written with all sincerity and signed with all sincerity. They got together.

[00:23:15] They said, what can the literature tell us about this? It just seems to me so hubristic to think that this research could have an effect on a world leader that it that if shared, it would actually make a difference, that the research itself is

[00:23:36] conclusively saying anything about these processes. Well, that's the one of the most absurd aspects of it. Well, to the point that I want to write an open letter to these people to say how could you get into this mindset to think that this stuff is actually that relevant?

[00:23:56] Yeah, like it's because I really am taking it at face value that this is a sincere call. Look, like have you read Sharif 1961 where it's like, really? This is worse than nothing. Yeah, it's definitely like that's why we are better. That's why I'm morally better.

[00:24:14] But like that any of these points required a reference to be to be powerful. Like, do you know that war ends in death, dear, dear, dear, but it is that is just a tick that psychologists have.

[00:24:28] And maybe scientists in general of every time they make a kind of an obvious point, they just randomly select some studies like and then just, you know, like, and it could be like Kant 1751 or something like that. You know, it's just like,

[00:24:45] it just like automatically gives this veneer of this isn't just us talking here. This is this was 22 white Oklahoma kids. Do you want to know a dirty secret about I think most most psychologist, well, probably most, most anybody who writes papers. You're probably in on it.

[00:25:04] If you get cited, you know, like our currency is to get cited. Yeah. If you get cited sometimes, you get you see a new paper, you look and see that they cited you. A lot of the times what they're saying you said isn't really what you said. Right.

[00:25:19] But how many times does anybody ever contact that original author and say, hey, by the way, I think you should pull that reference. You know, I didn't really say that. No, we like being cited. So so just sort of continues the cycles.

[00:25:32] So if you a good, I think a really good exercise for students is to take a review article, look up all of the things that are cited and what the claims are that they're being cited for and just see just do a little like code for

[00:25:45] how many of them like really say what they say. I've been cited as saying the exact opposite of what my paper said. Right. I remember, I think we did an episode. Like I'm assuming Sharif, Moussa for Sharif. I'm assuming he's been dead for like 40 to 50 years.

[00:26:00] But I imagine he wouldn't want to be. The next deal is agent X lives on. Does this count as a citation? I don't think so. Like do you get from Google Scholar like your your paper has been.

[00:26:14] If it did, I would just be writing open letters, citing my shit to everyone. All right. So we should do an open letter to psychologists for peace. The hubris and the absurdity of this letter has raised our indignation and people who are the targets of indignation

[00:26:31] from others tend to be more dehumanized according to God. Yeah, I feel like you're teasing but also revealing the fact that we're going to do another opening segment right after this. It's true. We're in the studio for probably not that much longer.

[00:26:50] So but it's like this, you should have this humility at least to know. You know, it does really sound like these these researchers have not even paid attention to the fact that things are hard to replicate in social psychology.

[00:27:01] And as much as I defend, you know, I've been adamant about saying like, look, replication is good, but generalizability is is not as big a concern as some people seem to think. So long as you point out that what you're studying is a narrow band of people

[00:27:17] in your hypothesis testing like I'm on record saying all that stuff. It's like these people though have never really all of that just went by and they're perfectly fine citing studies with 22 people. Yeah. And generalization was just assumed.

[00:27:31] Like that's how the Stanford Prison experiment like could be cited and used and employed in all those contexts. And I fell for it. Yeah, sucker. No, no, we all knew. You all knew all you psychologists for quote unquote peace. Psychologists for deception and career advancement.

[00:27:51] We are the children given that we're in a studio, a real studio here. Like I feel like just breaking out in song. Yeah, psychologists for peace. We're going to make a beat. I can make a beat for Putin. Stop bombing Ukraine. Podcasters and beat makers for peace.

[00:28:08] Yeah, but seriously, Putin, if you're listening to this stop, just stop it. Like it's just going to end this could end either badly or really fucking badly with thing if you start feeling like you have nothing to lose. Right. A Rettzinger at all. 1942.

[00:28:26] Do you feel a little bit bad taking war so lightheartedly? Yeah, of course. But like, you know, what are you going to do? You can't. We laugh to keep him crying. That's my motto for life. My people would make fun of the Holocaust.

[00:28:40] Like that's just it's the gallows humor is like Jewish currency. It is in addition to just all the other currencies we can show. That's what we have to end there. We have to end right. We'll be right back to talk about Franz Kafka thinking of great speaking

[00:28:57] of great Jews, the trial. Dave, I'm feeling a pleasant buzz right now. I don't know if you can tell. It's I assume you're not drinking because actually kind of early in the day. Well, actually, I am drinking, but I'm not drinking alcohol. Oh, are you?

[00:29:19] Are you drinking the tea? I am drinking for the first time ever. Kratom tea from Super Speciosa, our newest sponsor. One of our newest sponsors this time. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited about that. I like the tea. I you know, it's it's it's a nice buzz.

[00:29:42] It's not make it's it's relaxing. It's energizing, but I don't feel at all tired. This shit is good. That's you know, so yeah, we're talking about Super Speciosa Kratom. And I was recalling that like a few years ago, you were the one who first

[00:29:59] put me on the Kratom. Like I had never heard of it. And and I honestly don't remember how I heard about it. It is it was one of those weird things where it's most people just have no idea what you're talking about if you mentioned Kratom.

[00:30:14] But I think both of us over the last few years have become quite enthusiastic about this, this what do you get? Say what is Kratom? Is it it's a super leaf? Yeah, an all natural ancient super leaf that is related to the coffee plant.

[00:30:37] I don't know how how that relation could they're like third cousins. It's been used in Thailand for centuries. It just gives you this nice buzz. You know, if you get the dosage right, you're not feeling impaired in any way.

[00:30:55] You just feel a little more relaxed and it goes well with the nice glass of wine sometimes, that's based personal preference. Super speciosa has only one ingredient, pure Kratom leaf. Now, that's not true about some Kratom brands where they do try to mix it

[00:31:15] with with other things and all of super special as batches come with certified lab reports so you know exactly what you're getting. I don't know, like, did you pour over the lab report? I was going to say, you know exactly what you're getting.

[00:31:28] If you know how to read a lab report, I did not. I did not read a lab report. But I will say they are the only one that come with a lab report. However useful that might be.

[00:31:42] And, you know, we just got a nice package with powder capsules, tablets and teas. The super speciosa offers all of those. And like I said, I'm just trying to tea for the first time and I'm liking it. That's awesome.

[00:32:00] I've only ever done the capsules, but I will say this like it gives you. Kratom gives you a nice feeling and there are different kinds of Kratom. There's there's different colors of Kratom, which I guess are different stages of the plant.

[00:32:14] You're racist if you really do the white Kratom. That's right. You should say all Kratoms matter is what you're doing. The way I treat it is like, look, this is not, you know, this is not an FDA medicine or anything like that. This is an herbal supplement.

[00:32:33] I've treated it much like I drink mate, which is an Argentinian tea that gives me like energy that is, although it's caffeine, it feels a little different than coffee and this I treat it like that.

[00:32:47] But honestly, it works as a painkiller and I've had issues throughout the past few years with some pain from like just chronically sitting at my desk. And Kratom works. I mean, so it feels good. Exactly. If you want to try Kratom, if you haven't tried it,

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[00:33:37] That's getsuperleaf.com slash VBW and use promo code VBW for 20 percent off. Our thanks to Super Speciosa. For sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards.

[00:35:17] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time where we like to thank all the listeners and all the people who get in touch with us and interact with us in all the different ways that you do. You know, we're here.

[00:35:31] We were just at the Harmony Hotel in Osara, Costa Rica, which was a really nice example of people who listened and appreciated our podcast, hooking us up with with something pretty special. But a lot of you know, a lot of the guests there that attended our event,

[00:35:56] they weren't actually fans of the podcast in that. Well, you make it sound like they were like haters of the podcast. No, no, no. It's just they didn't know what the podcast was. They just didn't know about the podcast. I'm not a fan of Taylor Summers.

[00:36:11] We're not fans. Yeah, not a fan actually. No, no, no, they just didn't know about it. And it's funny, like I have gotten so used to in when I'm with you, just kind of interacting with people who get our jokes.

[00:36:27] And if I call you a Kantian or an anti-semite or something like that, they'll they'll get it, you know? I like it was it was weird adjusting back to, oh, wait, these people don't know who we are. Right. So they didn't get our inside jokes.

[00:36:44] Yeah, they're not going to get our inside jokes. But it also made me appreciate all the more the the community of people who for whatever reason have been with us long enough to get our references and just the internal humor to the podcast.

[00:37:02] Even when we even forget where the original joke came from, I think you texted me once like, why do I call you a Kantian again? Exactly. Exactly. I know why I call you an anti-semite because you hate your jokes, but that one's obvious.

[00:37:20] Kantian one, I'm not sure what the origin story of that is, but I think a listener enlightened me at some point. Also calling me an anti-semite, I got to say a little more risky in a novel audience than calling me a Kantian.

[00:37:36] Wait, did I? I don't think I know. No, you didn't. Yeah. OK, good. In any case, if we really appreciate everybody, whether you're new to the show or old to the show interacting with us, if you would like to do that,

[00:37:51] you can email us very bad wizards at gmail.com. You can tweet at us at Tamler at peas at very bad wizards. You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram. And you can join the lively community on Reddit, the very bad wizard subreddit.

[00:38:16] You know, our last episode on fan psychism, one of our most heavily commented on Reddit episodes, which I haven't even been on Reddit. What was the reaction? I mean, I didn't go through all of it

[00:38:32] because we were away in Costa Rica, but I just saw that it had like a hundred and something comments. And I think most of them are on like the actual topic, you know, pants, pan psychism and whether it is just terminological.

[00:38:48] You know, I think some people disagreed with our take that it that there wasn't much actual substance to the view. It was just more in different way of describing the same issues that the, you know, the materialists described.

[00:39:05] But, you know, and I looked at it more early on and I thought there were some interesting there was an interesting case to be made that we were a little bit or maybe overly dismissive of stuff. So yeah. Well, I knew we were going to get people to

[00:39:25] write about consciousness. People care about consciousness more than most topics and philosophy. If you want to support us in more ways than just commenting on Reddit, more tangible ways, you can do so by going to our very bad wizard support page,

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[00:42:06] All right, let's get to our main topic for today. And this is the first and what probably will be a two part discussion of Franz Kafka's The Trial, a book that was written in 1915. Is that right? Published in 1925, a year after Kafka's death. Right.

[00:42:29] Is it the case that most of Kafka's stuff was published after his death? I think he published some stories. Yeah. But he did not publish any of his novels. He wrote three novels, The Castle, The Trial, which we're going to discuss and America with a K,

[00:42:46] which I don't know that much about. But I think that's that one was more unfinished than the other ones. The castle is actually pretty well fleshed out. It just sort of stops. This one has a the trial has an ending

[00:43:00] that you presume is the ending that Franz Kafka intended. But my memory of The Castle is that although it's very well laid out, it just kind of stops. Yeah. And even with the trial, there were editorial decisions that had to be made about how it should be

[00:43:17] structured and it was turns out in different notebooks. He had written chapters in different notebooks and it was it was combined to make the final novel after his death. But all of my point is just that that was probably the end.

[00:43:31] There's clearly missing the chapter is called the end. I mean, I assume because, you know, the editor took some liberties, apparently putting fragments together, sometimes taking them out. But yeah, it seems like there's no other place for that story to go.

[00:43:47] Spoiler alert, if you haven't read the trial, then with Joseph Kay's death. So do you want to talk about why we have the trial? This very famous novel to even talk about and to read and to discuss forever. Yeah, I'm going to read.

[00:44:03] So the version of the trial that we both read because there are a few different translations just so you know, it's translated by Breon Mitchell. And the opening of the publisher's notes, it opens with this quote,

[00:44:19] dearest Max, my last request, everything I leave behind me in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters, my own and others, sketches and so on is to be burned unread, yours, Franz Kafka. It written that to his friend, Max Brod, who then publish it a year later. Yeah.

[00:44:39] Now, so the backstory, at least as Brod tells it, is that he didn't think Kafka really wanted him to burn them because if he did, he wouldn't have asked Max Brod because he knew that Max Brod would publish his works and Max Brod says

[00:44:58] he knew that because I told him that straight up. Right. But that is still the final request. And I assume a Kantian like you just thinks that we should not be reading this book, nobody should be like endlessly interpreting in it and being inspired by it.

[00:45:13] And it's not the Kantian in me. It's more like the loyal person, the person with honor who has bonds and commitments that death cannot tear apart. Well, I mean, the quite the honor like you just that. A simple, simple minded utilitarian. The morality is an algorithm.

[00:45:33] No, I think it's actually an open question, which is the more honorable choice here because I think Max Brod clearly recognized its greatness. This is a novel that is probably the thing he's most well known for,

[00:45:47] Franz Kafka, and it has brought and just publishing all of this stuff that he didn't publish has brought Kafka a level of honor and fame that certainly nobody would know, even know who he is. Right. But Kafka doesn't know that. No, right.

[00:46:02] Right. Well, I mean, depending on what the afterlife situation is, it may be his ghost. To me, it really does turn on whether there is truth to Brod's assertion that he knew that Kafka knew that he would be somebody to disregard. You know, and I can see

[00:46:22] being an insecure artist who who is so unsure that you kind of you kind of leave it to to a friend who who might have an eye as to whether or not this stuff is good or not, but you don't really want to show it to them

[00:46:36] while you're alive because he could. Well, I don't know the circumstance of Kafka's death. I know he was young, but it's tuberculosis. He could have burned it himself. Right. And and apparently he did burn some of his own stuff. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's what I read.

[00:46:50] I could be wrong. And so so it does leave the question of Kafka's intentions open a little bit. And you do want to sometimes say, look, your insecurity as an artist should not be what dictates whether the world

[00:47:03] should see your art. Yeah, given, you know, and this is one of those, I don't know, like go again, like questions too, because I think just its undeniable greatness justifies, you know, even if it had been a kind

[00:47:17] of promise that he had made or something like that, it would justify breaking it just because it's so great. But as I think you pointed out when we were having dinner the other night, he didn't necessarily know it was going to be a phenomenon. No. Max Broad.

[00:47:32] I mean, he might have suspected it, but you just don't know. You can't tell. And especially something like this, which is really its own style of novel. There's really there's a reason why the term it's a cliche, but Kafka Esk exists.

[00:47:47] And it's because he invented a kind of style that is so distinctive. It's just him given that it's this unique vision. Yeah, he couldn't have known that it was great. I'm sure he thought it was right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:48:02] I think the decision needs to be made case by case. There are artists who die and have left a whole bunch of earlier work. I only knew music, but like Jay Dilla left just a storage house full of old beat tapes.

[00:48:16] And there is actually debate as to whether or not he thought they were good enough to be released or whether he was just a pack rat. And so there's been some accusations that there are people just trying to make money off of his unreleased work.

[00:48:27] That would be the ugliest thing. Like if Max Broad was just like, I can make some money publishing this. You know, yeah. And I don't think that's the case, but I don't know. Yeah. Who knows? But it has straight up utilitarian way.

[00:48:38] I don't mind like I'm glad it was published. I don't know if I told you that. Just an aesthetic vision of morality, too. Like you want greatness, great works to be to exist and to be poured over. And yeah. Yeah. Who knows what we've lost by people

[00:48:54] honoring wishes of their dead friends? Well, I'll just tell you right now that I probably won't burn any of your beats because I'll know that you don't really want you won't be able to find them because it'll require you getting into a computer and navigating folders.

[00:49:11] I do some Mr. Roblox shit. Didn't that happen with Atticus Finch, the woman who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird? Oh, Harper Lee. Yeah, Harper Lee. She there was a posthumous book published to not write reviews. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That could have been, you know, yeah.

[00:49:29] And she had left this just undeniable classic that like until recently everybody in high school read. Right. But yeah, so apparently looking at Prince, eight thousand songs. Christ, these these people are workaholics. Like Kafka apparently was too. He was just incessantly writing incessantly.

[00:49:50] What I'm sort of curious about with the trial, given that there's 10 years between his death and him writing it is yeah, what happened to there? He just was on. Right. That seems seems like a pretty decent indicator that he had no

[00:50:03] interest, like he hadn't even collected them together. Yeah. In fact, although there were chapters that were pretty clearly the same chapter, they weren't numbered. And so there were editorial decisions just about what order of the chapters. Right. Right.

[00:50:17] As you point out, the end has to be the end because there's nothing to indicate that like his ghost came back. But but the other ones. Yeah. So what did you think of it overall? I mean, it's an amazing book.

[00:50:30] Like I think I have very little memory of reading it. I'm pretty sure I read it in college, but I love it. I loved it. I mean, it's a particular kind of absurdity that just feeds that feeds my soul. Like it scratches some kind of itch.

[00:50:49] It feels like life feels in a way that obviously literally can't be, you know? But it feels like what it feels like to live. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Yeah, I think it's a total masterpiece and actually reads

[00:51:04] and if you haven't read it, listeners, you should absolutely read it. It's not very long. And in spite of all the things we were just talking about, I think it's a pretty cohesive novel that has, you know,

[00:51:16] a clear arc of Joseph Kaye and sort of his his mindset, his mentality, where he is emotionally about all of it. And it's just and it's really funny. Like it is especially, I would say, the first half. But actually, I mean, it stays funny almost until the last,

[00:51:32] pretty much until the last couple of chapters where it turns somber and a lot of the just absurdist humor of it is lacking, even though you still have the absurdity in the in the cathedral chapter. It's not it has not played for laughs.

[00:51:46] I think that right shit starts getting real. You know, a lot of the descriptions in the scenes are as absurd as they are before, but you can tell things are culminating. The characters in the earlier chapters, they're all so completely sure of themselves in ways that are totally

[00:52:04] unhelpful to Joseph Kaye and a lot of the comedy just comes from their interactions with him, but the priest in the last chapter isn't like that at all. In fact, it seems like he probably is trying to help Joseph Kaye. Yeah.

[00:52:20] And to some extent, although we could talk about that when we get there to tie it to something we've talked about before, I'm still amazed that Gogol's The Nose was written so early because there is a lot of that same flavor, somebody wakes up to an absurd circumstance.

[00:52:36] Yeah, you see that in Metamorphosis, obviously trial. Yeah. So here's that's a good comparison. I would say that there there's a different kind of absurdity to me in that the Kafka absurdity is so dreamlike. There it's just all dream logic and

[00:52:54] but like you said, it speaks to something truly real. So even though you can't, you know, we'll talk about all the fantastical elements of it. None of that I think it's hard to take literally and it really does feel like a dream. It feels like my dreams.

[00:53:09] But but it's always hitting on something like, OK, I know what I feel this emotion when I'm trying to deal with customer service for an airline or something like that, whereas the nose, like I didn't feel that.

[00:53:25] Yeah, but the nose and I'm pretty sure we talked about this during the episode is also dreamlike in its sort of in this particular way, which is he wakes up and he doesn't know where his nose is. And that's something that happened in real life.

[00:53:40] You'd be like, what the mother fuck? And he's like, I wonder where my nose is. Like that's the kind of dream logic that is sort of common. But it's just like I don't have that kind of dream. You know, like, right? Though I could see having it anyway.

[00:53:53] We're talking about everything that the actual tribe. Yeah, it's my dreams aren't that I lose my nose, but I do do lose some things. I lost my sunglasses. Throughout all of the things that happened to Joseph Kay, the protagonist,

[00:54:09] they're more directly relevant to something that you could see happening in real life. Like overall, there's still this absurdity. Like for one, why doesn't he do a little more work to find out what he's accused of? It seems like that sort of he just.

[00:54:23] I think he does try to do that. It's just clear that nobody like he has no access to anybody who's aware of what he's accused of, but he barely does like and he'll proclaim his innocence, which we can get into. He'll proclaim his innocence.

[00:54:34] And I don't think that he knows what he's proclaiming his innocence about. Right. That sounds like something a guilty person. Yeah, it is almost as if he knows he's. Probably guilty of something, but since they won't tell him what he's being accused

[00:54:49] of, he doesn't want to give it up. Yeah, or he's guilty of something, but probably not the thing they think he's guilty of. So in that sense, he's innocent. Let's before we launch into it and we are we want to take our time with this

[00:55:01] and we'll probably go through it in some kind of order. But I wanted to get thoughts about how to approach interpreting a novel like the trial. So I was thinking about this and then I looked up a couple of things.

[00:55:16] Walter Benjamin claimed that Kafka took all conceivable precautions against the interpretation of his writings. And I think part of that was like burning some of them, burning them. But then also I think like that having that parable, which we'll talk about

[00:55:31] at length at the end, the parable of the law that the priest tells Joseph Kay is also a parable about interpretation. And it seems like there is a family of interpretation that really tries to map on every element of the plot and text to something like.

[00:55:48] So I came across something that says the law or the judge is like the super ego. And the super ego is judging and Joseph Kay represents the ego and also at times the subconscious, something like that just doesn't seem. I don't know.

[00:56:05] Like that seems reductive to me in a way that this book is telling you like loud and clear not to do. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because there is a temptation when you read it to find allegory. And I guess that thing that you just read where

[00:56:20] they claim that he did everything to resist interpretation doesn't also doesn't seem right. It just seems as if Kafka, but it seems like he knew that there you could view these things in any number

[00:56:33] of ways and there doesn't seem to be, to me, an attempt at making it so thematic or so allegorical that we would be able to win the argument about what this is really about. Yeah, it's not supposed to be decoded, although some people disagree.

[00:56:49] That's my feeling is it's not supposed to be decoded in a way where this is the definitive interpretation of the trial. It's meant to be open. Yeah. So here's what I'm always curious about because this isn't the kind of art

[00:57:04] I've ever done and I'm not barely an artist at anything. But it doesn't bother. It wouldn't bother me, say, to know that Kafka had a very clear interpretation in mind. And then he produced this. So long as I don't I never hear it.

[00:57:21] As long as I never like this is one of one of the things that I dislike about artists when they talk about their work is that they remove my interpretations just by giving their own because then it seems authoritative and

[00:57:36] it seems like maybe I'm a sucker for having read into it. Yeah. I mean, sometimes they do say that like they're like, I don't know, if everyone's overthinking this, it's really just a story about a guy who loves

[00:57:48] the girl and then dies trying to save her or something like that. It's like, no, it's not. I don't believe you that that's what you think about it. And you're psyched that everybody is trying to figure out what you're up to.

[00:57:59] Yeah, because I think interpretation is a creative act with a lot of works. And, you know, that's one of my favorite things about the trial is you have to be creative in trying to grapple with it.

[00:58:12] And I bet if we did this, we read this again in two years and do another episode about it will probably have completely different ways of understanding it. Yeah. And we've talked about this before. I don't remember what episode how different stages in life you might

[00:58:24] read something interpreted differently, like it hits different. He could have written it in a straightforward way. And I think the temptation there would have been for me more to interpret it as a straight up allegory of something. But with those weird, fantastical, absurdist elements, I feel like he's

[00:58:40] he's fucking with me in a good way, making me look at this in a whole bunch of different ways. A multiplicity of like even as you're reading it, yeah, it's you get this weight like a multiplicity of like emotions.

[00:58:53] Some of which I don't even think we're aware of. One thing this book does that I really I was thinking about it. Not a lot of novels do. This probably should and a lot of that is my fault.

[00:59:06] But I get as I'm reading this, these images in my head almost instantly and it feels really vivid and I feel like I have the emotions. Even if I don't fully understand what's going on, like the court scene in the beginning, I was like, wait, where is this?

[00:59:21] Who's there? What's going on? I still picture it like he's constantly bringing an images or the painter's little tiny room with the door behind his bed. And I just like that's so it's so evocative, but it's literally it also has a kind of Schrodinger's cat

[00:59:41] quality to it where you see it like this, but then you also see it like this. And you don't see him that way at the same time. But that's like I think interpretively it's like that too. Is that it has these kind of multiple interpretations,

[00:59:56] fruitful interpretations going on at the same time? Yeah, there is there is that evocative nature is something I definitely felt. Like in it's sort of what I was trying to lose to is reading this feels like you're living out something in your life.

[01:00:10] Even though it has nothing to do literally with anything you've experienced. Man, it's a talent to make the reader feel something when what they're describing is some like little attic room from the early 1900s in what was Czechoslovakia or whatever.

[01:00:26] Like that's yeah, but I can smell the room. You know, when the air is stifling as it often is. Like I feel like I'm not breathing. Well, I'm not sure what other novelists even Dostoevsky. I love Dostoevsky, but I don't for some of the scenes.

[01:00:42] I don't really have a great sense of like the space and the environment. And even though all of this is dreamlike and sometimes just impossible, often impossible, it still just gives me these really vivid and visceral brains of pictures in my head.

[01:01:01] Today's episode is sponsored as usual by BetterHelp on line therapy. Dave, we were just asked by a listener how do you find the best therapist? I mean, what's the way of going about it?

[01:01:17] How do you, you know, because a lot of times you can you can be in a therapeutic relationship and it just doesn't go anywhere. And it's like, OK, where do I turn next? And I remember you answered something that's relevant to the spot.

[01:01:33] Yeah, you know, in a small town like Ithaca, it's kind of easy to feel frustrated because if you go to a therapist and they don't work out, there's just not that many therapists around. And the truth is with something like BetterHelp, we have all of these options

[01:01:52] that we never had before. So, you know, give your therapist a good chance to build a relationship. But if it doesn't work, there's hundreds of other therapists that you can choose from. So whatever it is that you are feeling, I think a solution like BetterHelp might work. Yeah.

[01:02:08] Yeah. And, you know, a lot of people don't realize the physical symptoms like headaches, teeth grinding and even digestive issues can be indicators of stress. And let's not forget about doom scrolling, sleeping too little, sleeping too much, under eating and overeating. I think I do all of...

[01:02:27] Yeah, I was going to say, I think that perfectly describes me. I do all of those except under eating and sleeping too much. I definitely teeth grind though. Yeah, I do. Stress can show up in all sorts of ways.

[01:02:44] I mean, we just had just an unbelievable time in Costa Rica. But because of that, a lot of things that should have been on the front burner got pushed to the back burner and right now, oh my God, I am grinding.

[01:03:00] Yeah. And so here's a reminder to take care of yourself. Maybe do less and maybe try some therapy. BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't

[01:03:19] want to. And it's much more affordable than in-person therapy. So you can try a bunch of people and find the one that you like. So just give it a try and see if online therapy can help lower your stress. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and very bad

[01:03:36] wizards listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash VBW. So you just go to BetterHelp, B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash VBW to get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com. Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode.

[01:04:00] Yeah, so can we talk broadly about just the experience that Joseph Kay is going through? So he's arrested, but not told why he's arrested. And the book is him basically trying to deal with the fact that he's been accused of something of which he knows not what.

[01:04:18] And this is what I really what really gets me, like what I really feel. There's always something just out of reach. There's some knowledge or there's some procedure or there's some person who he's supposed to be talking to, but that he can't quite get a clear answer.

[01:04:36] And he's working hard, it seems, to do all the right things to the point that his his normal job as a chief officer at the bank starts suffering because all he can think about is this trial.

[01:04:47] When they arrest him, though, they do tell him you're not going to prison or anything. He's just been arrested and he just has to sort of wait out like what's going to happen yet. There's no timeline. There's no he's summoned once to court.

[01:04:59] But it's that feeling of almost knowing of like always being just shy of the inside info that you might need that is so powerful to me. Yeah, no, that's a very dreamlike. That's that kind of anxiety dream of the thing that you that you want either

[01:05:19] to know or to happen is just out of reach. And if you could just but now you can't get your pants on properly. You know, like and that's that. And then by the time you get your pants on, it's gone. But there's some new thing.

[01:05:31] Right. Yeah. I mean, so he's he's woken up in the morning, told he's arrested by people who say they have no idea what the charges. It's not clear that anybody who he comes into contact with knows what he's

[01:05:44] accused of that there's just this idea that he has been accused and that in most cases when people are accused, they are convicted and found guilty. But he never really finds out. And like and maybe this is you alluded to this earlier,

[01:06:00] he almost he gives up even trying to find out what it is he's accused of early on because I think there are, unlike the things that you're talking about, there are so many barriers, it seems, to finding out what he's accused of

[01:06:14] that like that just seems to pie in the sky for him. Like he starts to focus more on immediate tasks over the course of it. And even we even get a sense that he is the first task that he needs is to

[01:06:28] submit a petition, a petition for what? Who knows? Right. It's unclear. But he is working on it. Yeah, he's working on a petition. He has a lawyer that may or may not have submitted a petition on his behalf. But again, it's not clear what the petitions do.

[01:06:43] And often people will say, oh yeah, petitions don't do anything anyway, even though he had pinned all his hopes on this petition and not knowing what it is. Yeah. And what's very funny about the book is two things, I think.

[01:06:55] First, his just attitude towards everything, which I would say starts out being kind of haughty and indignant and kind of arrogant and thinking like he's toying with the people that are arresting him and then slowly getting all his self-confidence and that kind of righteous indignation kind of drained

[01:07:15] out of him. And even though, and it's not like he'll never say something along those lines, but he just doesn't have the heart to really pursue it anymore. Yeah. And over the course of the novel, there's a bunch of people who offer help. Well, that's yeah.

[01:07:28] The other part that I was going to say is that not only is his information hard to come by, random ass people seem to know about about it and seem to know more than he does.

[01:07:39] And so like the desperation that I could feel that you might have if somebody, for instance, one of the merchants that he does business with at his bank tells them that he's heard about his trial.

[01:07:51] One of the things that he's worried about is like the president and vice president of the bank knowing that he's been arrested. So he's not really saying anything about it, even though at his arrest, three bank employees.

[01:08:04] And this merchant says just basically makes it known that he knows that he's been arrested and he's like, how did you know? It's not my business. Yeah. And it's also not just that that other people know. It's that other seemingly less important people than him know.

[01:08:20] Right. Just random ass like. And not only does he know that, but he knows a guy who can help him if he wants the help, but it's also somebody that might hurt him in his job. And so and then yeah.

[01:08:31] So there's a series of men that offer help, but turn out to be just like, you know, further sources of frustration and agony and just, you know, alienation from his own trial. And then and then there are women that he comes across.

[01:08:48] And this is another dreamlike element of it. There's all of a sudden he'll be in the room and there'll be a woman or he'll be in the court and they'll be a woman. And the woman will already, you know, she's kind of throwing herself at him.

[01:09:00] And he feels like he loves her. But that never gets consummated and often ends in rage and jealousy. Right. I mean, sort of more like just irritation and peak. Well, yeah, it's very weird. Like he has these like many, many affairs with women who he's never met,

[01:09:20] but he encounters in his capacity as a defendant. And there's even, you know, a conversation where somebody tries to make it clear why this is happening to him, that is why he's having women kind of throw themselves at him and they're like, well, there's something about being

[01:09:33] a defendant that makes you hotter. So to all the single men out there. Get arrested. Get arrested in a in a wildering way. And then ultimately people stop helping him. In fact, the Italian that he meets at the

[01:09:50] beginning of the last chapter turns out as somebody who is taking him to or at least enabling his ultimate conviction. Is is like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Well, why didn't you show up at the cathedral? Yeah, I guess so.

[01:10:05] Like he could have been, you know, was the president in on it? Yeah, exactly. It is funny and this is another absurdist element that he thought the president and vice president wouldn't know. And for all intents and purposes, it doesn't seem like they do know.

[01:10:17] But given that random people seem to know about it, almost nobody doesn't know about it in the novel. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much that I want to talk about. Maybe we should start going through it. Here I just want to say one thing.

[01:10:29] One of the aspects of this that is again, so frustrating is that there seems to be an entire legal system that is shadow, like it's not the regular courts and trials. It's not a public thing.

[01:10:44] The number of people who know about it and who have interacted with it, it seems astounding. It seems like he's never heard about. He's a 30 year old man and he's never heard about it until he gets arrested. Yeah.

[01:10:53] But there are entire groups of people whose whole life is devotion to this legal system and like there are courts in like the slums, you know? In addicts in the slums and yeah. And then there are this kind of shadowy, high higher courts.

[01:11:09] Yeah. But those are it's not totally clear like who knows them. If anybody knows them, they seem to issue final verdicts, but they don't. There's no records of their final verdict and nobody and no like justification. It is the law is this opaque bureaucracy.

[01:11:29] And yet it has just so many people. Ordinary people are like intimately connected. The judges just walk over the painter's head every morning. So yeah, they're both like totally inaccessible, but also like in the walls. Yeah, exactly.

[01:11:46] And he's only now becoming aware that this whole other world exists and sort of bewildered by it. And then there are these, like you say, supposed higher courts. So every official that he interacts with, even the lawyers and the judges

[01:12:00] turns out the lawyers, not really the high lawyer, like he's the petty lawyer. And it turns out like even the judges who have these portraits painted of them, everybody knows they're actually the lower judges. And so there is this whole shadow high court,

[01:12:12] but I don't think we ever see once like an actual person who is part of the higher secret group. It really feels like a secret society is. Yeah, it seems like a secret society. Or if you take it in another direction, like deities, like God. Exactly. Yeah.

[01:12:27] There's a strict hierarchy, like there's demigods and yeah. That's I think definitely it's hard to ignore that possibility if you're coming up with interpretations. So yeah, you want to go through it? So he's woken up in the morning on his 30th birthday. Remember how long ago that was?

[01:12:47] Your 30th birthday? Just a little tiny bit longer than it was for you. You want to read the opening sign? Sure. It's one of the more famous openings. Right. And as we said, there are different translations.

[01:12:59] But someone must have slandered Joseph Kaye for one morning without having done anything wrong, he was arrested. What a great way to start. And and he knows some things up because he doesn't get breakfast. Yeah.

[01:13:12] And instead there are these two officers who are telling him that he's under arrest. And when he asks for breakfast, they all kind of laugh. And this is where like this is the first like dream like element for me is

[01:13:26] like he has to be like jumping out of bed and pulling up his trousers while he's trying to figure out what's going on. And it and that takes a while. And he's acting this is the first part. He's acting pretty arrogant about. Yeah, he's indignant.

[01:13:41] You know, he's like, who are you? How dare you? Wait till frog Robach hears about this. Exactly. Because they're interrogating him or inspecting him in not in his own room, but in the room of somebody else who's staying at this lodging house.

[01:13:56] Right. Which is always a funny old timey thing. Like, did lots of people live in this way? Like there's just one landlady and they all everybody lives in a different room and the landlady cooks them breakfast or whatever. Yeah, I think so for single people.

[01:14:10] I kind of like that. And he out and he honestly doesn't know if it's a joke. Yeah. So he has the sizes that it is. And then he asked a question, should I play along with the joke? Or should I get really mad and kind of force them?

[01:14:22] I don't want to seem like I'm a I have no sense. Yeah, I'm not being punked. And because it's his 30th birthday, he thinks, oh, maybe this is what they're doing for like my birthday, like maybe I should laugh along for a bit.

[01:14:33] Another dreamlike element is when he's looking for his ID papers, which he thinks, well, this I'll just give them my ID and that'll settle that. But all he can find is his bicycle license. I've missed that. Oh, here my advocate. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:14:50] Yeah. And then I'd say the first real indication that you have to take seriously some possibility that he's guilty is that he's like, I can't believe they just left me in my room when I could so easily kill myself. Yeah.

[01:15:04] And it's like, well, why would you do that? And he does say, well, that would be so irrational that even if I wanted to kill myself, I wouldn't do it. But yeah, no, exactly. That makes you think, wait a minute, what's what is going on? Right.

[01:15:17] And whenever he does try to ask the question of the people brought to arrest him, he's just told very matter of factly, that's not our job. Our only job is to arrest you. We don't know anything early on. You know, they talk about the law.

[01:15:30] This is the law that is apparently condemning him. The law as an institution, as a set of guidelines, as a society. Yeah. The law is capitalized. And so there's always an appeal to the law. That's the authority that is, but they don't know.

[01:15:44] Right. They're like, it's the law. I mean, clearly this is something real and serious, but we have no idea what. Right. And then this is a point where one of the guards says, well, so you say you're innocent. Do you know the law?

[01:15:56] And he's like, no, I don't know the law. He's like, see, he claims he's innocent, but he doesn't even know the law. But they also don't know the law. So there is a little bit of a cat and mask, but not much of one.

[01:16:07] And in the end there, they just let him go. Yeah. And he's sort of surprised. He's like, all right, I'm under arrest. Take me away. And they're like, oh, no, you just got to go to work. He's like, what? Yeah. Just got to work. Don't worry.

[01:16:18] We'll find like we'll find you. Yeah. Here's what I wanted to ask you, because this is also part of what I can relate to is a microcosm. If somebody very close to you, say your wife said, Tamar, I know what you did.

[01:16:33] You know and I know that you're guilty of something. My mind would start racing through all sorts of things that I have done or that I possibly could have done that might be misinterpreted or that. So it's a relatable

[01:16:45] feeling that you might not feel so confident in your insistence that you're insistence that you're innocent and his insistence is even he knows he's just, I think, fronting like he's putting up a front. Right. But at the same time, I think he has no clue.

[01:17:01] It's not like he killed the person or something like that. And he's just like, I mean, I suppose you could think that maybe we should talk just briefly from the start. Like what do you think on the question of his guilt? Is he guilty?

[01:17:14] Is he guilty in a way that any of us isn't guilty? Right. I thought at times in the book that his behavior might be characteristic of somebody who might have done something. Say like a small embezzlement or something that he feels like he might

[01:17:31] there might be something on him. But throughout, I did get more of a feeling that like he's guilty in as much as we're all guilty. Yeah. And I think the question of his guilt probably isn't of a crime.

[01:17:44] It's more, yeah, this kind of vague, well, we are guilty and I don't know what exactly it is about him, but he can be pretty accusatory and he can jump to conclusions and make judgments about other people in a way that that's being done to him.

[01:18:00] And so maybe there's something about his judgementalness. Maybe there's something about his his attitude towards women. He clearly, you know, I think the dreamy aspects of this really focus on the sexual. And so I think like he feels guilty sexually in maybe in some deep, deep ways.

[01:18:20] OK, so he is they tell him you're free to go work and he says, how can I go to the bank if I'm under arrest? Oh, I see. Said the inspector who was already at the door. You've misunderstood me.

[01:18:31] You're under arrest, certainly, but that's not meant to keep you from carrying on your profession, nor are you to be hindered in the course of your ordinary life. Then being under arrest isn't so bad, said K approaching the inspector. I never said it was.

[01:18:41] He replied when you're the one who seems to be all huffy and puffy about this. Yeah. So and this starts off what I find is greatly anxiety inducing, which is from that from this point on, it's clear that he's not in any control over the legal proceedings.

[01:18:59] He doesn't, you know, he is told basically you'll expect something who knows what it might be years. Like throughout the book, he learns that some people have been sort of their trial, quote unquote, has gone on for years. Sometimes it's short.

[01:19:14] No, it's unclear what happens when you're sentenced. Everything is up in the air. And that's really what's so existential to me about this. Yeah. Nothing is promised. You never know. Like it might come to a swift end in a year.

[01:19:25] It might in 10 years or you might have cancer right now and you don't know. You know, like anything. I think it is like having this kind of illness that you're vaguely aware of, but you're not totally sure of what the actual nature of the illness is.

[01:19:40] And it might be fine or it might kill you. Exactly. And you don't know. You just don't know. I mean, that's another kind of mapping interpretation that it represents Kafka's tuberculosis or something like that. But maybe not so fruitful either. No, you've unlocked it. That's it.

[01:20:00] The whole story. That's why I wrap this up. That's why he had trouble breathing in those little attigrams. Join us next time on Very Bad Wisps. OK, so so then he has to have a discussion, right? This is now moving on to chapter two with his landlady. Yeah.

[01:20:20] And and another lodger named Frau Birstner. Sorry for my German. Frau. Pauline Birstner. Whose room he was interrogated in and they had kind of messed up the pictures, orders of her pictures. Yeah. And so he feels the need, even though it's late at night, it's like 11 30 at night.

[01:20:38] He feels the need to apologize to her. So weird, right? Like I guess I guess he's he's into her a little bit. But we also learned something about him that he has a girlfriend. Yeah, Elsa, which we never just never hear about again.

[01:20:54] Well, well, we hear about her. But we don't. Right. He kind of almost uses her to get over the hurt when one of the kind of slutty nurses ends up like not liking or also liking somebody else.

[01:21:10] Yeah, it also read like I had a Canadian girlfriend over the summer or whatever. Like really is there an Elsa? Yeah, no, totally right. She certainly talks about her, but nobody else refers to. Yeah, does he have an Elsa? It's a very good question.

[01:21:27] So I like the scene with the landlady. This is another kind of element that the book has, which is he always feels like he can get something from someone emotionally. And so just like he always thinks he can find out about the trial,

[01:21:45] he also thinks he'll be able to have some sort of emotional connection that will be helpful for his mindset and also that's out of reach. So at first, he really wants the landlady to believe in his innocence. Yeah.

[01:21:58] And she does, but then immediately is just realized just gets deflated as like, oh, this is meaningless to have that, you know, have her believe in my innocence is so worthless. And so like he doesn't get the kind of emotional fulfillment, I guess. Satisfaction.

[01:22:16] Yeah, that he craved and that he thought he might get. And so he just goes on to the next person, which I think is here is Fraulein Bursner. But oh, here's what I was going to ask you. They have a little bit of a conversation about

[01:22:27] Fraulein Bursner and because it's late at night and she's not there yet. Right. And so there's some illusion made about how young women shouldn't be single women shouldn't be out so late at night. And for the landlady makes some allusion to like, yes, this is bad behavior.

[01:22:47] And he gets mad and says, no, I didn't mean it that way. He is. He's also also kind of getting people into trouble and and Fraulein Bursner. And what's funny is he kind of protests her innocence.

[01:22:59] But then when she shuns his advances, he kind of says like, well, why are you home so late? You know, so he immediately accuses her in just the way that he was so mad that the landlady was super in cell with her.

[01:23:14] Like she makes it very clear that she wants him to leave his apartment or her room. Right. And he's but he's also super into it. He's like, OK, it is true that they were in her room

[01:23:25] for that the initial part of the of the hearing when he got arrested. And it is true that some of her photographs were moved out of place. But the landlady had said, look, we fix everything, everything's clean. But he feels this insistent.

[01:23:37] And when he's in her apartment, he wants to actually act it out. It's so weird. He's like getting energized. OK, let me move your nightstand to show you how it was here. Oh, I've forgotten the inspector who's going to play the inspector.

[01:23:47] Yeah. And she's, you know, she's good humored about it, but also tired. She's clearly come back from like she's had a night out and she's tired and she wants to go to bed, but she's humoring him.

[01:23:58] And yeah, and then it does get a little rapey after after that. I mean, there's no sex, but he does. He kind of forcibly kisses her. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like on like on her neck, it says that he kissed her on the neck

[01:24:13] right at her throat and left his lips there for a long time. And then he falls asleep like a baby very quickly, which was weird given before falling asleep. He reflected briefly on his conduct. He was pleased with it, but was surprised he didn't feel even more pleased.

[01:24:27] He was seriously concerned on Friehline Bursner's behalf because of the cap. So then he gets he hears that his his inquiries. Yeah, he gets a telephone call. Yeah, yeah, he just gets a telephone call that says it's going to take place

[01:24:44] the following Sunday and that Sundays is when it's going to take place. So then he kind of gets dressed up right for it, but he nobody tells him where it is. That's another weird dream like thing like he's he just has to show up.

[01:25:00] They don't like I don't even know if he knows at what time. Yeah, they just tell him it's going to take place on Sunday. And that's it. And yeah, yet he kind of he walks around. He I guess he has some sense of where the court would be.

[01:25:15] And then, yeah, I mean, this is all just very surreal at this point. How do you picture the actual area of the court? It doesn't the outside or the just? Yeah, well, it's a lot. Yeah, the outside first. Yeah, I was picturing it as like, you know,

[01:25:31] like the poor part of an old city with a lot of people and tenement housing kind of with the courtyards. And so maybe like almost like apartment buildings with court like a courtyard surrounding a courtyard, because there does seem like there's a courtyard in it.

[01:25:47] A lot of stairs that you can go up to get to different rooms and apartments. Yeah, I admit I had trouble. I had trouble following the description of some of these places. And I didn't know whether that was intentional or whether I'm just spatially badly like I can't.

[01:26:01] Well, no, because I don't think it makes sense. Yeah, the the the law, like I say, I get a picture of it. And I bet we might have different pictures and probably they're equally like well suited to the text. But like I think there's key details left out.

[01:26:16] And I think there's kind of logically impossible. Yeah, changes and there are changes constantly. So here's just a sample. Kay turned to the stairs to find the room for the inquiry. And he has no idea what room it is or even if he's in the right place.

[01:26:29] But then paused as he saw three different staircases in the courtyard. In addition to the first one, moreover, a small passage at the other end of the courtyard seemed to lead to a second courtyard. He was annoyed that they hadn't described the location of the room more precisely.

[01:26:43] He was certainly being treated with a strange carelessness or indifference. A point he intended to make loud and clearly. Yeah. Then he went up the first set of stairs. After all, it's mine playing with the memory of the remark,

[01:26:54] the guard will have made that the court was attracted by guilt from which it actually followed that the room for the inquiry would be would have to be located off whatever a stairway Kay chance to choose. Yeah, what does that mean? So is he just saying he's guilty?

[01:27:10] So I don't know. But he does just get to the right building. He goes up the right staircase and even creates this this excuse like I feel weird not a place trying to find a court here.

[01:27:25] So I'm just going to ask if there is a painter, a house painter. Carpenter. Yeah. And so he just goes around asking whether or not this carpenter lives there. And finally, one of the people just like, oh, yeah, come in.

[01:27:39] And then it's and then all of a sudden court. And then it's a court proceedings, which again, how do you picture this? Like it's it's I guess indoors somewhere, but there's a lot of people there. A ton of people.

[01:27:50] It seems like there are almost bleachers because this is the passage that really is a gallery of people. Only the people in the gallery continued making comments. They seemed as far as one could tell in the semi darkness, haze and dust overhead. Also very dreamy to me.

[01:28:08] Like in some of my bad dreams, it's hard for me. Like it's kind of dusk and I can't really see. Yeah. They seem to be dressed more shabbily than those below. They're in the nosebleeds. Some of them had brought along cushions that they placed between their heads and

[01:28:22] the roof of the hall, so as to not rub themselves raw. So like there in like the nosebleeds, but the roof is like pushing right up against their head to the cushion. Why are they like they live in this general area?

[01:28:33] When he's looking through, like he's constantly looking through doors to find his proceedings and he'll just find somebody like holding a baby and making dinner or cleaning or washing clothes.

[01:28:47] It's I read it as they kind of live there either as a part of the court or just like there's no real distinction between the court and these people and their jobs. Right. There is, I guess, the reason I was picturing tenements is because of this passage.

[01:29:02] But Julius Strauss, which where it was supposedly located. So I guess they gave him the name of a street. And at the top of which Kay pause for a moment was flanked on both sides by almost completely identical buildings, tall gray apartment houses inhabited by the poor. Yeah.

[01:29:18] And it's like, do all these people are all they all in on the fact that there is court proceedings that go on in their neighborhood? They seem to be and some of them like the usher and the usher's wife clearly work for the court.

[01:29:29] But then a lot of these people don't work for the court. And yeah. And this is where Kay is probably at his haughtiest. Yes. Right. Which might have actually if there is a logic to this all like that.

[01:29:42] The speech that he gives in front of the inquiry in front of the court is so arrogant that if there's logic to it, that might have been a really bad move. Yeah. So here's just a sample of some of what he says.

[01:29:56] What has happened to me case it continued somewhat more quietly than before and constantly searching the faces of those in the front row, which made his speech seem slightly disjointed. What has happened to me is merely a single case and as such of no particular

[01:30:09] consequence, since I don't take it very seriously, but it is typical of the proceedings being brought against many people. I speak for them, not for myself. So he's trying to maintain his dignity, his sense of superiority in the face

[01:30:23] of just people who he can't read like he can't read whether the crowd is on his side or against him or at any point they start cheering and he thinks that it's for him, but it turns out that it wasn't at all. Or we just don't know.

[01:30:34] Like and he yeah. And he and it's more like we're in his head and he fluctuates in terms of thinking whether they're for or against him. Right. You know, there's a there's a point where he the judge is leafing through the magistrate, the examining magistrate is leafing

[01:30:50] through a notebook and says, OK, so you're a house painter. And so he's like, no, I'm the chief financial officer of a large bank. And so this makes him angry. He's like, this is I think one of the things that sets him off.

[01:31:01] Like this is how you like you don't even your notes aren't even right. And at one point he tries to snatch the notebook that the judge was leafing through and he does grab it, but he doesn't see what's in it.

[01:31:12] And then later on we see what we see what's in it. Yeah, which is just really a great great. Just porn. It's just porn. The judge has had for it. It reminds me of Lebowski when that guy is like writing. Yeah, exactly.

[01:31:24] I bet I wonder if that was almost an own. I know. Yeah. So I'm referring to the scene in the big Lebowski when what's the name of the pornographer house guy, the guy. But anyway, it seems like he's writing a really important secret message

[01:31:36] from the phone and he was just drawing a dick. Yeah, so he thinks these are the law books where I'll find out something crucial about my case and it's just this naked man and woman on a couch.

[01:31:46] And he in order to even get those that those that notebook, he like really flirted hard with the the wife of the court usher only to find out there was nothing but. Yeah.

[01:32:37] So I'm referring to the addiction crisis. Speaking of cradum. Yeah, exactly. And we should connect these to crossover event. Exactly. The podcast is hosted by Dr. Michelle McMurray Heath, president and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a medical doctor and molecular immunologist by training. M.D. PhD.

[01:32:59] Fancy Dr. McMurray Heath has spent her career helping patients benefit from cutting edge innovations. If you're looking for a place to start, I have a episode recommendation. I just listened to the episode on the banana and the problem of bananas

[01:33:16] nearly getting wiped out, possibly getting wiped out because they're all clones and this potential solutions that we might have via biotechnology to save our beloved Cavendish banana. So get answers on how biotechnology is changing our world. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:33:34] And we'll have a link in show notes to the I am bio podcast. Our thanks to the I am bio podcast for supporting this episode of Very Bad Wizards. All right, so that's chapter four.

[01:33:45] The other thing he says is like once he feels like he's lost the crowd, he kind of turns on them and then again, tries to put himself above everybody by saying, you know, like, I know you're to the judge, I know you're signaling them.

[01:34:01] Just be open about how you're signaling them to right, because he saw him make some movement to somebody else. But then like the proceedings end because of like a domestic dispute between the usher and the usher's wife. And so then he just goes back. Yeah, it's incredible.

[01:34:17] If there's just no there's no order to this, like there is also just a description of the people in the crowd. The faces that surround quoting now, the faces that surrounded him, tiny black eyes darted about cheeks drooped like those of drunken men.

[01:34:33] The long beards were stiff and scraggly. And when they pulled on them, it seemed as if they were merely forming claws, not pulling beards. There's an image this is hardly worth mentioning, but there's the very first episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation is critically panned.

[01:34:47] But the scene is of a trial that Picard is put under and the rest of the crew. And there is just a rabble of crowd yelling and he has absolutely no idea what he's being put on trial for.

[01:35:03] Now, now reading this, it has to be like that, that like that confusion. The crowd yelling non-contingently, cheering or booing. Right. And you not knowing what you're accused of. Or even if they're paying attention. Or even if they're paying attention.

[01:35:17] Like it seems really plausible to me that at the end of this, maybe he wasn't even in a court. Like he was just talking to some old guy. Right. Right.

[01:35:24] I mean, there are a few things that make it seem like they know who he is, but not really. Yeah. Chapter four opens and this is again, maybe telling. He doesn't get any notification to come the following Sunday.

[01:35:37] But he says it says when the expected notification had not arrived by Saturday evening, he took it as an implicit summons to appear again in the same building at the same time. So again, like why is he going?

[01:35:49] I think this is where another arc is him feeling in control. Exactly. And starting to lose control and start, you know, that's this is another case where he wants, he gets to decide when they have the proceedings. So he thinks. That's right. That's right.

[01:36:05] But no, they're not happening. They didn't call them. And he goes to the same room and rather than find that hall, which in my head was big, like a big hall full of people, it's just a living room. And again, like absurd, like a dream.

[01:36:23] How is it the living room? Like how could it fit all those people and now be a living room? Yeah. And in fact, the woman who had been the woman who had caused the commotion or had been the cause of the commotion that ended the trial

[01:36:38] says she's the wife of the usher. And yeah, for the for the proceedings, we just they use our living room and we just move the furniture to the sides. Right. Yeah, that's another way that the law just bleeds into the into everything. Yeah, right.

[01:36:54] We'll get another example of that in the flogging chapter. But like, yeah, you know, like there's residential life, there's professional life and there is the law and it seems like the law is just it's intertwined in them like the red room and Twin Peaks.

[01:37:08] It's like another dimension of these other areas, these other spaces. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So she says we live here rent free, but we have to move our furniture out on days when the court is in session.

[01:37:18] I like that there are little explanations like the painter in the bed. It's like, you know, it's completely it's not a satisfying explanation by any means. It's like, well, still how did they fit all those people? Like why do you accept that?

[01:37:33] Yes. So many questions you would ask like you were in case place. But he never follows up. But his biggest question is, well, the living room furniture thing doesn't surprise him. What surprised him is that she's married

[01:37:46] because at the end of the previous, you know, during the during the actual trial, she hit like there had been a guy essentially hooking up with her. And and so now that she sees that she's actually married to another guy

[01:38:00] that was there, the court usher, he's surprised at this turns out that has been this kind of a cuckoo. Yeah. So this is another arc that you see repeated a couple of times where

[01:38:11] a woman just throws herself at him and he feels kind of a lust for her. Like sudden lust for the woman and kind of feels like, oh, again, it's like this will bring me satisfaction and everything is going well.

[01:38:25] But then the woman also has another person who he believes Joseph Kay believes that he is superior to this other person. So in this case, it's a law student. And yet the woman goes off with the student and then he turns on the woman.

[01:38:38] This is exactly like what happens to Joseph Kay is like he gets help. He thinks he gets like, oh, this is like it's like sexy time. And then no, it's like unconsummitable and he gets jealous and kind of furious. Right.

[01:38:54] And that he's being treated like this for an inferior. Exactly. I just have to read that when he finally gets the notebook that he's trying to get that the magistrate has Kay opened the book on top and an indecent picture was revealed.

[01:39:08] A man and a woman were sitting naked on a divan. The obscene intention of the artist was obvious, but his ineptitude was so great that at the end there was nothing to be seen. But a man and a woman emerging far too corporeally from the picture, sitting rigidly

[01:39:21] upright and due to the poor perspective turning toward each other quite awkwardly. I love that it's porn, but it was just poorly drawn porn. Apparently Kafka had an interest in pornography. So that's one way we're like soft. He's a human being.

[01:39:37] So he has the usher comes back and she went off. She goes off with the law student apparently to the magistrate, but carries her. Right. Is that the one where like the law student just like literally carries her because she's been summoned by the magistrate.

[01:39:51] And here's where and this is where he starts getting feeling very weak and the air is stifling and he has to get out of there and he has to get helped to the exit just to get some fresh air.

[01:40:02] But he really this is where the first time you see him totally deflated and weak, just weak and vulnerable. Yeah. Yeah. Again, like you were saying, it's sort of a visceral description of being like he doesn't know what's causing all of a sudden his deep physical weakness.

[01:40:20] But he's also ashamed of it. Right. Like he's he he doesn't know what's going on. Like why am I why am I so weak? But this is like me and Vancouver at the meetup. We're like, yeah, I wasn't particularly proud of like passing out from eating too

[01:40:38] much too many edibles having but yeah. And also I was just like, oh, and you just feel like, oh my god, I can't really stand up right now. I might go down. That's how he carried you like the law student carried. Yeah, I carried you to the usher.

[01:40:53] The usher. So yeah, this is the description of him starting to feel physically unwell. K sat down immediately and propped his elbows on the arms of the chair for better support. You're a little dizzy, aren't you?

[01:41:06] She asked him. Her face was now quite near it bore the severe expression. Some young women have precisely in the bloom of youth. Don't worry. She said there's nothing unusual about that here. Almost everyone has an attack like this the first time you're here for

[01:41:18] the first time while you see then it's nothing at all unusual. The sun beats down on the attic beams and the hot wood makes the air terribly thick and stifling on days when the traffic of involved parties is heavy. You can hardly breathe.

[01:41:30] That just felt like, yeah, like to me, like life, the stiflingness of life. Like when there's just a lot of people around in your under stress, it really is like you can't breathe. Yeah, you have all these responsibilities and all these kind of

[01:41:44] it just seems completely overwhelming and like your chest, it's like caving in on your chest. Right. Exactly. And it's just so vivid. Like that just oppressiveness and kind of heat and bad air of a place. But then also just feeling like life, like as you say, metaphorically,

[01:42:01] that just life is closing in on you out in a way that is just not sustainable for you. Yeah. And I like how you were describing about like sort of the move from control to loss of control.

[01:42:14] This is the first time he needs to humble himself and ask them to help him physically move. And it did strike me as just something like a small version of life, like the older you get, the weaker you get and you start needing help.

[01:42:27] Like you're you're hotty in your youth. And by the time life has had its way with you, you just need someone to help you get down the stairs so you can get some pressure. Yeah. I mean, it is having a my dad who was

[01:42:43] very old when he died and just watching those last 10 years. It does kind of symbolize that it is something we're all headed for. And it's demeaning. Yeah, yeah. There I believe this is what it's called in the Erickson stages of life.

[01:43:01] There's toward the end he referred to it as I think generativity versus despair where you really don't want to give in. You don't you still want to be able to do things. You still want to have that independence. There are old people who handle it well though.

[01:43:14] And then there are old people who are fighting every last step of the way. Like when I continue driving when they're 95 years old. And they just kill the fucking old people. I like that descent into loss of control.

[01:43:28] And I think maybe we can end with the vloggers sort of represent something new in his like not only is he lost is he losing control and hasn't learned anything useful, but now like his actions have affected

[01:43:42] these other people in ways that he didn't could never have predicted. And like he still like his last real desire for control is to like stop them from being flogged. Like he really does think that he can persuade the flogger to stop doing it

[01:43:58] and even tries to pay them off. All right, well, let's let's start to wrap up this episode as predicted. I think this definitely needs to go to two parter and we need to do a lot of analysis.

[01:44:09] But you know, in case some listeners are doing a read along or something like that, we're about to get to the chapter called flogger. Both of us had read this before, but a long time ago. So, you know, at this point, how did you feel?

[01:44:23] Where what was this text up to this point? You know, what are the themes and do you think that changed by the time you got to the end or did it just sort of complete the arc that you suspected it would at this point? Yeah.

[01:44:37] So, OK, up to this point, what we've discussed about about case starting to stop energetically and vehemently proclaiming innocence and then trying to do what he wants to do, given that I had forgotten most of the book.

[01:44:52] I just wasn't clear whether there the sense that I got a futile, futile, but active resistance, the tone shifts. And I didn't I didn't know whether it was going to or not. Like all I really remember was that this book was about a frustrated man who

[01:45:09] had like this hanging over his head. But I think it does subtly shift in this later part and it does get darker and the kind of loss of control is deeper. I don't know. Yeah. And actually, you said you brought up the flogger as an example.

[01:45:27] So actually now I see why it might be worth talking about because I think maybe there's a good breaking point after this chapter. So as you said, in the flogger chapter, he's now starting not to just get himself into trouble, but other people he's interacted with and two

[01:45:45] people who came to arrest him. He goes into he's in his office and he opens up a junk room and there they are. And there is a flogger that's going to whip them. And the reason they're going to whip them is because Kay complained about them

[01:46:01] at the trial. Yeah. At the procedure in his indignant speech where he was saying like, you know, I don't know who you guys are or how you carry yourselves, but I even had these two guards come in and eat my breakfast, right? And try to take my undergarments.

[01:46:15] And he tries to be magnanimous about it because he wants to he's still clinging to that I'm I'm in the right. I'm a kind of morally righteous party here. And so he says it's not their fault. It's the system's fault. Right. It's the larger system.

[01:46:30] But he's not able to get them off. And in fact, when he tries to bribe the flogger, the flogger was like, no, you'll probably just get me flogged next. That's right. That's right. There is something you alluded earlier to the bureaucratic feel of this book.

[01:46:44] And it does seem like lesson learned one, what you said about his actions actually having consequences now for other people. It's not just about him. But two, when those guys were saying, this is just our job, it really was.

[01:46:57] It's sort of like, you know, bitching about customer service and getting somebody fired when they were just all they were doing was was fall like doing what they were supposed to be doing. Like, you know, he was being yeah, but that kind of customer.

[01:47:09] But you can't. And this is the what's so frustrating about those situations is the person you're really mad at, you can't get a lot. You can't touch. They won't they'll never even know that you're mad at them.

[01:47:22] And so you have to you have to take it out on something it feels like. Because it's just so frustrating. And, you know, like, you're not going to it's not like you're going to reach the CEO of Verizon or something like that.

[01:47:35] And you tell them your fucking company is just like so poorly run like that's just you can't go to anywhere near that. And they put so many barriers in between them and you that like that's this helpless situation. Yes, it's a true lack of power.

[01:47:51] You break up Verizon. That's exactly what I was thinking was being on the phone with Bank of America and being so frustrated where and like I don't want to take it out on the person because I know that they're just doing their job.

[01:48:02] But I also know this thing runs so deep that there's no what can I say? Like I'm no longer going to give you my business. They don't give a fuck. And this is K realizing this is much deeper than I thought.

[01:48:13] Like not only do I not have control over whether these guys arrest me, like they don't have control over it. The flogger doesn't have control over it. And he never quite learns how deep it goes. Right. Yeah.

[01:48:28] And just as we never know how these things go, you know, like I think it could be a metaphor for government, you know, and like it could be a metaphor for something like the deep state where there's this idea that, you know, even the president

[01:48:40] is kind of the public face of what the government is doing. But there's this shadow shadowy organizations behind that that make it inaccessible. But really, even the president or your your state Congress people, like those people are also like, you know, you can write them angry letters about,

[01:48:59] you know, voting for some new atrocious like Texas bill that they just did. But they don't give a fuck and they don't they won't know about it. And sometimes they can't they can't do anything.

[01:49:10] And it is it does remind me of the feeling like when I was younger, the feeling I had toward authority was like, why don't you just do something about it? And now in like the small authority positions that I have, sometimes a student will will say,

[01:49:27] why doesn't Cornell do this, for instance? Yeah. Or like, why don't like as if I can do anything? And I'm like, no, you don't understand. Right. There's these committees. And then there's actually behind the committees, there's like a literal corporation that's a board of trustees that have money.

[01:49:39] They decide those things. The people on that board of trustees probably feel like, well, it's not just me. It's like it's like every, you know, there's a whole board. So I can't just single handedly do anything. The president says, I can't the board has to do something.

[01:49:53] And it's that it's just the nature of of hierarchy in a complex society that I think leaves us all kind of alienated. Yes. Even if we're have some amounts of power. Yeah, exactly. In fact, now I think there is just an easy mapping of Joseph K.

[01:50:09] And real life, which is a person getting denied tenure. But no real good explanation for why that happens. Yeah, no, no explanation why. Yeah. You know, this flogger scene, can I just say is so surreal because they're in

[01:50:28] his bank like for no reason in a junk room in the bank. He hears these noises as he's like leaving for the day. Yeah, for the day. And it really that's the point. That's the part where I thought this more than anything else I read

[01:50:41] reminds me of Sinecta Key, New York, the Charlie Kaufman movie, because that's the kind like all of a sudden the scene will change in a dreamlike way. Like what they're in leather, they're like in these leather garments. And he goes back the next day and they're still there.

[01:50:59] They're still like so really like I mean, it's been surreal the whole time. Now. And it's another example of just like the least should get in surreal. The title. The another example of like the court business being just like superimposed

[01:51:17] on everyday life in the bank, in the it's just like they're in the walls. They reach they can even though you don't know who they are and there's no way to get to them, they're also everywhere. Yeah, like God. Right. Right. Yeah. Right.

[01:51:30] So I mean, yeah, it's so evocative of so many things. I will say this is a good breaking point because one shift in it now that he's kind of lost control, he gets a little more docile and he's led around to people who are offering more specific help.

[01:51:47] And here you get more of a deep dive into not the details of the legal system, but the circles that everyone has to run around to try to like figure out how to negotiate something that's ultimately not negotiable. That's right.

[01:52:03] And so you're going to get a lot in the next in the next bit just more of this bewildering series of ways of describing how Byzantine the bureaucracy of this legal system is. But it's all just out of respect for the law. Respect for the law.

[01:52:22] All right, well, we still have a ton to talk about for our next episode. So let's read it. Read it. You read it between now and then and then we'll all talk about it together in two weeks. All right. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizard.

[01:52:38] Join us next time. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizard.