Episode 234: Like A Dog (Kafka's "The Trial" Pt. 2)

[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] Sometimes the people with the most shit have to shut up and let other people talk shit about them. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Alright David, we're interrupting our normal opening segment to bring you a special report, a live report.

[00:02:19] It's not live and it's not even coming out anywhere near when this incident happened, but it's definitely not breaking news. It might be fading news, although who knows? But all I know is that we got a ton of listeners just demanding that we at least say something

[00:02:37] about what happened at the Oscars Sunday night. This will be two Sundays ago for those who are listening right now. It was the Oscars and I think a lot of people wanted to know specifically my opinion because

[00:02:53] they know I have a personal connection to what went down rather than just say what happened and everybody knows what happened. I thought maybe I'd just play a clip, just to remind everybody and then we can talk about it.

[00:03:06] Oh my God, actually let me just show you what the seat fillers do. Here's a seat filler, can we get you up honey? You want to go to the bathroom? Okay. Let's just get you. Thank you seat fillers, love them. Chessie I love doing power up at all.

[00:03:22] All right so if you live on the moon or something and you don't know what we're referring to, that was Amy Schumer calling of all people cursed and dunced a seat filler and just the disrespect of that, the disregard.

[00:03:41] I honestly like I was, I didn't see this the night of the broadcast but when I heard about it I was so furious. I understood what all the fuss was about and I get it comedians make jokes.

[00:03:52] It's a roast environment that comes with the territory of being famous but all I have to say to Amy Schumer is keep my wife's name out you fucking mouth. Tamler it's not really what people wanted us to talk about. Oh it's not? You're very dedicated.

[00:04:09] I'll give you that. Oh there was the other thing too is that? Yeah so you have to be living under rock to not know this for real. That Chris Rock got bitch slapped.

[00:04:26] I want to ask you because everybody was like oh what would Tamler say about this because of your shit on honor and all blah blah blah but I was like here's my, like I just want to offer my prediction.

[00:04:36] I feel like you, like me even maybe more than me but probably around the same, hold comedy in the highest regard and that would trump nearly any feelings you might have on what to do if someone insults a loved one.

[00:04:54] Yeah I mean that's true and if it weren't for a bunch of other things also that would probably be enough to get me to not think yeah fuck yeah Will Smith just slapped. Because you're defending your wife's honor. What do people think that honor is?

[00:05:11] If you think it's that, I don't think you get it. But so yeah you're right that among a lot of other things. I was a little chagrined to see people that would predict it I'd be like no no no Will Smith had to do that.

[00:05:26] You don't understand because we live in a dignity culture when you think that Will Smith didn't have to just walk on stage and slap the comedian. He had his fucking hands behind his back. You had to like he had to do that for honor.

[00:05:41] Just smiling thinking maybe Will Smith was going to like be funny you know just like just sucker slap. Yeah it was a sucker slap. Those people who think that a slap is nothing. You know there are these slap contests have you seen these slap contests that

[00:05:57] people they're really dumb but if you hit with the base of your the palm of your hand you fuck somebody up. And that that was a hit with force like that was I don't know that I could have stayed as cool as Chris Rock state.

[00:06:14] Yeah yeah and I feel like people are appreciating that you know because you could take it the other way that like a slap is so disrespectful and so he should have gone after him in the crowd or something like that and like no

[00:06:27] like I think he handled it it's a really tough situation to be in but I think he handled it like about as well as you could possibly as well as you could and in fact like his his smile I think you know maybe projecting a

[00:06:42] little bit but I think maybe understanding Chris Rock a little bit like his smile basically was like oh shit I won this. To have somebody react that strongly to your joke I mean I'm sure he was not happy but I mean it's to be fair to

[00:07:01] Will Smith and this is the only thing I'll say like remotely sympathetic but like it wasn't a very funny joke and one of the things right that we've also talked about is if you're gonna say something offensive then it should be

[00:07:13] funny in this case it wasn't funny but it also wasn't that offensive. Like first of all he may not have known she had alopecia and even if he did like you know people are making it like like this was like a cancer

[00:07:27] joke you know I know that alopecia is a condition it's a medical condition but right like has an innocent woman long COVID. Well no I also have a real condition. I also have alopecia because that's just the word for losing your hair but

[00:07:43] it is different socially for a man to lose his hair and absolutely when I saw like I wasn't watching live because why why would I but when I saw pretty soon afterwards like as soon as people posted the clip I had the same

[00:07:59] response like emotional response that I had when I was watching what I was watching live years ago which is when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield. Yeah and it was just like surreal. Yeah it was like what what happened like you saw someone just kind of lose

[00:08:17] it and and Will Smith just just weirdly lost it like what does it take to go on to that stage in your fucking suit in front of like all those people in front of the world and think that that's like in any way an appropriate

[00:08:31] response to it a joke as as offensive as it might be. When you are about to win Best Actor for the first time in your career and like that's going to be a big thing.

[00:08:43] No it's crazy and and and it also it like it just has the optics of a bitch move like you just watch it. It just looks like a bitch move. Especially when he's laughing at first.

[00:08:54] Yeah exactly like it was like oh shit she wants me to go like pick up like like a carton of eggs and some milks and I got to drag my ass out of the

[00:09:04] car you know like that's how it seemed like it was and then he kind of talked himself into like being upset. Then there's all this other stuff about like you know what's he really mad about here. Right yeah there was a bunch of discussion about about like their

[00:09:19] open marriage which I thought was just a stupid place to take it. Yeah I don't think I don't know like I wouldn't surprise me if that was involved somehow but I also don't think like you need it.

[00:09:31] So here's the funny thing is that I was at a conference while this happened and that the night of the Oscars which just seemed like a train wreck at every way so I just didn't watch it. But also I had to get up at 5 a.m.

[00:09:43] because I was at I was going on a hike so I was invited for a conference on honor at the West Point Military Academy and there were people from all the different military academies gathering together

[00:09:53] and for some reason they invited me and one other guy who was a civilian we're the only civilians in this whole conference and so I had to wake up the next morning and I wake up first of all I have like 50

[00:10:06] texts and then like 20 plus notifications on Twitter and I just get the barest sense of like what happened before I have to go on this hike in the freaking freezing cold because it's upstate New York as you would know it was very cold there on this past Monday.

[00:10:24] And like I'm hearing about it and some of the other like cadets had heard about it but no you know everyone was just like we were all getting up and then what was funny is at this conference on

[00:10:36] honor nobody was talking about it except to make fun of it and when I got to my panel I made a joke about it but like other than that nobody was talking about it and that's what makes me not upset.

[00:10:49] I get it but like the fact that people thought oh I'm going to be on the side of Will Smith here or like implying that like if you're an honor culture like what Will Smith did was like you

[00:11:01] know you have to defend it. No right like that's like that's so not the case and I don't think anybody from a serious honor culture views this as anything but you know just it like celebrities get it being all fucked up for you know for

[00:11:19] whatever reason who knows and acting out. Plus I don't want to normalize slapping comedians for hurtful jokes because it's just going to ruin the industry. Yeah these are not these are not these are not men of war. These are not people who

[00:11:37] are. They got into comedy because they were getting bullied and just thought all right this is the way I'm going to disarm the boat. Yeah it was just disappointing to see and I think his you know his his acceptance speech was bullshit like I'm

[00:11:51] a guy. I didn't even have the heart to even look at that he's like terrible comparing himself to Richard Williams like raising his family five kids in Compton Jesus man. Right. And then he apologized on Instagram which was fine but

[00:12:09] like you know you want to know that he went up talk about honor what is required of him now is to meet Chris Rock in person and tell him absolutely. And you know who we haven't really heard from is Chris Rock so I'm kind of interested

[00:12:22] in that. Yeah I know it's kind of I kind of like like that he hasn't said anything it's intriguing to me like I think it's probably he knows how embarrassed Will Smith is because you would be like right after it happened like you would just

[00:12:36] be like fuck I lost my cool and there's something about him being silent on the matter that that is you know he pink holes on on Will Smith's head I think. Yeah that's true like he's just if he's not even dignifying it but I think what

[00:12:50] he's probably doing is this is this is so good for my like. Oh yeah. May June comedy tour. Even right after where he said all he said was like Will Smith just slapped the fuck out

[00:13:03] of here. But he was in a bit of shock there too which I totally understandably but yeah I think he's gonna he can do something good with that I think part of the problem with him lately is that he's just hasn't been as funny as

[00:13:17] you sort of expect Chris Rock to be so like. He's never been my favorite. His early stuff was super clever but I was never into the delivery I guess I mean about but I still love him for for what he's on that one special is pretty awesome

[00:13:33] yeah but yeah I agree he's also not in my top tier but I have respect the way he handled it I think it's a tough situation I'm glad that most people except like those Twitter states or whatever seem to think that he was right and

[00:13:51] he was you know right like and then that the whole thing was stupid there obviously there have been terrible takes like you know as a white woman I don't I have no right to having it been like that kind of I was so I'm so annoyed at those

[00:14:09] things like you even saw some people saying like white people shouldn't say anything about this I'm like oh come on this is just like a this this is also a moment between two human beings like I don't know what what you're trying to say

[00:14:21] here it's and it's not like they don't have an opinion on it they just want to say that they have no right to an opinion on Twitter but I'm sure that they like in their weird little worlds or maybe not like I don't know what the kind of

[00:14:37] super woke virtue signalers how they don't say anything shut up I am a little bummed that that it took some shine out of quest love who won an Oscar for Summer of Soul and he is somebody

[00:14:57] I really love and I'm so happy that he won I have not seen Summer of Soul but that's that's unbelievable that you haven't seen it I you know I don't know where it's out

[00:15:09] I think it's on Hulu is it on Hulu yeah but you know I take my time I have read two quest love books so my my fandom is certified yeah well we'll have to do an episode

[00:15:21] on it to get you hit me up quest though you sent me a tweet about it that was very funny that was the funniest one to those saying Will Smith hitting Chris Rock is funny ask you this

[00:15:33] replace will with the word airplanes and Chris with twin towers not laughing now are you that's exactly the kind of attention that it exactly we should be given that's the honorable response

[00:15:46] to to the um but so so yeah I like I said about the Mike Tyson thing when I saw Will Smith there like he seemed unhinged and like kind of worried me yeah that I you know like whatever

[00:16:02] Will Smith I'm sure has 20 million dollar therapists but but uh no don't dawd yeah yeah like I think like there was something obviously wrong with him then you know and like something snapped or whatever

[00:16:16] but like it's clearly something that like he's not fully well to do that because under the circumstances like you know given that he's going to be up there giving a speech given like I think

[00:16:27] it's just like there's no way he could have thought that that was anything but just you know like like a huge stain on his whole career as kind of a good guy and I don't think

[00:16:41] this means he's not a good guy but right but it's like a weird loss of control you know I mean there have been famous incidents of like you know much more dangerous people like at the

[00:16:55] you know the source awards in like 1996 where Shug Knight gets up there and this is this is all of New York like in New York we're like you know if you don't want to be like just dancing with

[00:17:07] all up in your videos I love that that's so funny we're like those were dangerous people like that totally yeah you know that could that could like that probably did lead to like people

[00:17:19] dying oh it did yeah and but but like that will Smith had a run up like it's like yeah something is miscalibrated in anybody's mind who thinks that that's the appropriate response yeah they're

[00:17:33] also both like in their fifties right yeah Chris Rock I was surprised to find out Nikki was looking him up on Wikipedia is 57 I know I would have thought I was as old or older than Chris Rock yeah I would have thought you were definitely older

[00:17:51] by the way this conference at West Point Military Academy I have to say like I was really impressed with what goes on there and I know I got to see a very small sliver but what I saw was like

[00:18:02] did not align with my preconceptions it wasn't like full metal jacket I thought it would be like the war room in Doctor Strange Love but no I yeah no it wasn't like it was like the kinds of

[00:18:17] discussions they were having and questions they were just addressing straight on like really uh yeah at some point I'll maybe talk about it but um yeah yeah super cool that's really cool and one tribute to them is they did not there was not a lot of conversation

[00:18:34] about the Chris Rock this thing even though you know it started to trickle through what happened yeah I'm I'm hoping by the time by the time we air this it'll be irrelevant

[00:18:48] I mean I think it'll be it's hard unlike most like 48 24-hour news cycle things like this one is something that will always be it like the the ear biting thing like it'll never

[00:19:00] the people are too famous and it's just at you know like a very famous annual event like there's no way that we're not going to be talking about this for a while yeah you're probably

[00:19:11] right and I think maybe most indicative of this is that the still shots of Chris Rock right after he was slapped yeah um have already been made into memes um yeah and that those will be

[00:19:26] those will be in circulation for a while and while I'm normally not a fan of mass incarceration I do think Will Smith should have been arrested charged and put away for you put away not for

[00:19:37] a life but pretty much we're American at least 25 at least 25 um no actually do you think I mean I think security should have grabbed him for sure after that I don't know like I was

[00:19:52] heard some people debating this should he have been allowed to like go accept his award should he have been I think it's a tough situation if you're there if you're one of the organizers

[00:20:01] or you know whoever's in charge of calling security whoever's in charge of you know because you also have like Denzel up there talking to him and you have uh well I would have thought

[00:20:11] that there were there would be security like right at the stage you know like at some guns and roses concert you know but I don't know if that's the case but they're not trained for

[00:20:20] that like how do you know and you're like well if one of the like actors comes up and slaps a presenter would they do this right so I'm sure they're trained like if one of the seed fillers

[00:20:30] like Kirsten Dunst ran up on the stage like or Jesse Plemons make your Jesse Plemons joke if you're gonna make it fat Matt Damon tried to run up there huffing and puffing but uh but so I don't blame them for not preventing it because you know

[00:20:54] Wilson it's Will Smith walking up to the stage who knows what's gonna happen but right afterwards I feel like there's there might be good reason to try to like escort him

[00:21:01] to the back yeah I agree like I'm not saying if they had done that it would have been wrong but I also totally understand them they probably weren't even sure if it was a bit at that point

[00:21:11] because until he starts yelling at Chris Rock I don't think if anybody knew yeah and that's when you see in his face that's where I knew right away in his face that it wasn't a bit because up

[00:21:19] until that point it could easily have been especially since Chris Rock seemed so unfazed sort of like he like he was like you say in shock but not visibly injured or I don't know you

[00:21:31] know he was so poised he was like I didn't watch it live and I already knew it wasn't a bit by the time I watched the the clip but I still think that I would have thought it was a bit up till

[00:21:41] that point like if I had been watching it live because like the alternative is that Will Smith just lost his mind and just went up and slapped him over a not that funny but also not that

[00:21:53] offensive joke it's yeah like like of course I would think it was a bit and then by the way I uh right afterwards put up a poll that's asking who would apologize first I was sort of surprised

[00:22:08] not by that so Will Smith the answer was 40% Will Smith 9% Chris Rock but the option that there would be no apologies made was 51% and that kind of surprised me yeah I think you know like

[00:22:19] if you just hear about him you're like oh she has LAPP shit then yeah you know like that's not cool or whatever you don't make fun of somebody's illness but he might he may well not have known

[00:22:31] yeah he might not have known but even if he did it's like I mean I certainly didn't know yeah no I mean I'm not Chris Rock but it's not like you're I think you have to be like

[00:22:41] heavy up on the the the pink at Smith Instagrams oh so just the idea that like she's a very famous person like she's not quite as famous as uh as Will Smith but she's very famous and the idea

[00:22:54] that Chris Rock just can't joke around about like uh like Jada pink at Smith is like ridiculous like why wouldn't he be able to joke like why would Amy Schumer and actually she shouldn't

[00:23:08] so this is terrible example but why should she like why should that be okay but like Chris Rock is making a joke about you know like that's it just doesn't make any sense toxic masculinity

[00:23:22] oh god those stakes though are just the worst awesome I mean it's toxic you know but I don't know what I don't know why it has to be about about anything other than Will Smith being crazy

[00:23:34] I was surprised watching it you know just first hearing about it and then watching it that there was just something about it that I don't know like it it exudes like bitch move

[00:23:45] you know what I mean like and I don't know why like I like because like you know he walks up there he's very like he's very poised he's like got that movie star walk slaps him just turns around

[00:23:56] and walks back but there's something and maybe it's just I already had made my judgment and so I'm projecting on it but there's something of the optics of it just seemed like a bitch move

[00:24:04] did you feel that yeah yeah um I think it's in part because he lost control in a way that actually made him seem like the weaker one yeah um and that his hand like Chris Rock is like not

[00:24:17] defending himself or anything like that he has like no correct anyway like yeah like it's the guy who played Muhammad Ali he's like uh oh what's going on you know slapping the zebra yeah Madagascar references for all our 10 year olds listeners

[00:24:37] no they're like 20 by now um all right look we've managed to squeeze like half an hour out of yeah maybe we should just put our this the opening segment we have for next time we'll just

[00:24:48] do this yeah I think so all right all right do you want to say coming up then all right so coming up we won't do it coming up in the in the next segment are the conclusion of our discussion on the trial by Franz you fucking forgot

[00:25:13] this episode of very bad wizards is brought to you in part by better help online therapy Tamler um both of our daughters are going to be off to college next year

[00:25:26] uh you know I know well we might need therapy for that but that isn't where I was going uh with this I remember for the first time when I was in college feeling stressed out like I guess life had

[00:25:40] just been kind of easy I mean it's not it's not like so like I'd never been stressed but I started getting uh stomach aches like digestive problems like real real bad stomach aches but I had no idea

[00:25:52] what they were I thought something was medically just wrong with me and I went down I remember driving myself to the ER and way to you know how it is when you have to go to the ER especially when

[00:26:03] it's like a stomach ache exactly it's just there for like days there are people with like their arms hanging like hanging off like like barely finally the doctor sees me asked me a bunch of

[00:26:15] questions and at the end she's asking me like is your semester particularly hard or are you having a hard time in school and it was and I was like yeah but what the fuck does that have to do with my

[00:26:23] stomach ache and she's like here I'm gonna give you this and they were just like super strength and acids it turns out that it was just I that I was only having symptoms because of stress

[00:26:38] but I had no idea that stress could have these bodily effects on me there's where I started learning really it really can fuck with you um it shows up in all kinds of ways we live in a world

[00:26:51] that tells you to do more sleep less grind all the time tamler oh god I grind my teeth and I know that that's stress it's not just that I like to grind it actually I've lost some thousands of

[00:27:04] dollars from grinding my teeth because of the little nubs that I had to get replaced because the cosmetic surgery doesn't make teeth so take this you could take this ad as a reminder to just check in with yourself um maybe pay attention to some of the bodily symptoms

[00:27:23] that that the stress can you know can wreak havoc on you and better help is a great solution to try to tackle that directly better help is customized online therapy that offers video

[00:27:36] phone and live chat sessions with a therapist you don't have to see anybody on camera if you don't want to it's much more affordable than in-person therapy so give it a try who knows it might actually

[00:27:49] help you it can help lower your stress might help you with your relationships it might help you with uh your depression sadness anxiety just give better help a try this podcast is sponsored by

[00:27:59] better help and very bad wizards listeners get 10 off of their first month at betterhelp.com slash vbw that's b-e-t-t-e-r-h-e-l-p dot com slash vbw our thanks to better help for sponsoring this

[00:28:13] episode of very bad wizards and I won't come round this way again will the lord ruin the minds of you who will not take my

[00:29:00] Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the predictable time of the show where we like to take a moment to thank everybody for being so supportive. We really appreciate all the

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[00:35:20] Thank you to everybody who supports us. It means so much to us. We may joke around about it sometimes, but it really does mean a lot to us. So thank you. Thank you. All right now, Tamler, after weeks has gone by. Completely different places. Completely different time.

[00:35:39] Let's dive into our part two of Kafka's The Trial.

[00:35:44] So in this sort of the ending part of the book, the second half of the book, I think it makes more sense to try to hit on some of the themes that have come up that came up in the first episode and that continue in this half of the book.

[00:35:59] But one thing I wanted to say that you won't get until you read the book is the insertion of little details that really make the story, I think that evocative nature that you were talking about comes in part from the details that he chooses. To include.

[00:36:14] So for one, that there are these little girls when he's trying to find the apartment and one of them is just, oh, we're going to get to that. The hunchback. Yeah, the hunchback. Early on when he gets arrested, there are three clerks that belong to his bank.

[00:36:30] And he just makes a note that one of them has like a muscular twitch that makes it look like he's smiling all the time. And he's trying really hard not to make any comment about it because it would be embarrassing for him.

[00:36:43] But there is something about that description of a person who has a defect that makes him look like he's always smiling. I can't put my finger on what it is that seems meaningful about that.

[00:36:57] But given the kind of comedic darkness of this book, it seems consistent with that. It's nightmarish and clown-like also. It's like a scary clown or something. But it's, I would say, more unsettling than it is terrifying or scary. Exactly. It's just unsettling. Unnerving, uncanny.

[00:37:15] Also like the weird description of the webbed finger. Yeah. And you know, so this is when, I don't know if we even said this two weeks ago, but those men are at his house at the same time, that the people are arresting him.

[00:37:33] And they had thought to just bring three people from his work to escort him to work after he's been informed that he was arrested. Yeah.

[00:37:43] It's another example of like his work life or his real life, non-legal life, just merging with his legal life in a kind of an invasive way. Yeah.

[00:37:55] You know, there is something to maybe interpretations that want to see the law and the workings of the law as something supernatural because this is how it was always described to me that there are sort of hidden forces constantly at work,

[00:38:10] like the angels and the demons that are here, like right here in the room who are battling out for our souls. Right.

[00:38:18] And also that there's some rules you're supposed to follow and something that you did or didn't do, but like it's all very opaque, exact what you're guilty of or what. So I totally see that.

[00:38:33] That detail that you just read made me think as I often am want to do, that's a very lynching quality that I, you know, this ability to just unsettle you in a very kind of dreamy way.

[00:38:47] But to feel that deep sense of unsettling, of being unsettled or unnerved as you put it. And Lynch was a huge Kafka fan.

[00:38:57] I think like that's something that he picked up on, you know, is that with just tiny little details that are not that uncanny, but just a little bit off, you can do so much emotional, you can evoke so many just like strong emotions in the reader or the viewer.

[00:39:13] Yeah. And it's masterful the way he does that. I don't know if anybody does it quite as well. Yeah. Right.

[00:39:19] So we got in the last episode, we got to the part where he Joseph is Joseph Kay is realizing that his his actions might be affecting other people as well and so he's continuing into this sort of less and less control.

[00:39:34] And I think this part of the book you alluded to at the end of last episode is where now he starts more actively seeking out other people to help him. Well, or they seek him out. Yeah, it's more they seek him out actually.

[00:39:48] I mean he sometimes takes in an initiative to follow their advice or something. Yeah. And it's yeah. And it starts with a visit from his uncle. Uncle Carl. Uncle Carl.

[00:39:57] You know, nobody at to this point in the text has asked him really straight up whether he's guilty or not. Right. And the uncle doesn't either, right? He just comes in and is like, what are you doing? What's this I hear Joseph.

[00:40:11] And he clearly also has the trial is affecting his work, but also his family responsibilities and he has this niece, I guess that he or cousin that he should have visited and maybe pretended that he visited.

[00:40:24] So he's feeling bad about that when the uncle shows up as well. Right. Because the niece actually wrote to the uncle and said that told him about the trial. Well, the niece told him that the niece tried to cover for Joseph Kay not getting in touch with.

[00:40:38] She did. Yeah. Yeah, it was really sweet. Yeah. It was really sweet. Yeah. And the uncle is reproaching him. He's like, what are you doing? Not that he's guilty because he doesn't really ask that.

[00:40:47] But he says the way you're just sitting there, like you don't act like an innocent man. Yeah. Act. Like why aren't you taking a more proactive approach to your trial? Put real work into this young man.

[00:40:58] And he doesn't, you don't know at this point the dejection he's probably feeling. He yeah. He's at this point, he's very weird. Like this is not the Joseph Kay that's haughty and indignant. This is the Joseph Kay right now that just is made tired by the whole thing.

[00:41:13] We're in that stage of dealing with customer service where you're no longer mad, you've yelled yourself out. And now you just start getting, all right, well just tell me what to do then. Yeah. Yeah. And so his uncle says, look, I know someone.

[00:41:27] I know a lawyer who will help you out. He's a friend. And so that's when they head over to the lawyer's apartment. And they're like, I'm going to get in. They are met by his nurse Lenny, right? Yeah. Although she doesn't let them in at first.

[00:41:42] She doesn't have to minute first says he's sick. He can't, he can't see anybody. The uncle takes an immediate dislike to this nurse. Yeah. He thinks she's like a, like a band she of sorts or something.

[00:41:54] The lawyer is sick, but I guess is still willing to see him out of possibly respect for the uncle or something like that. And then just goes into this extremely long winded to the point where I had trouble

[00:42:06] following it, just description of the legal processes that he was facing and what he would do. And then I love this quote from, because this is being told kind of from Kay's perspective as he's hearing it. Was it consolation or despair the lawyer sought to produce?

[00:42:22] Kay didn't know, but soon he held it for an established fact that his defense was not in good hands. Everything the lawyer said might be true, although it was transparently clear he was primarily interested in emphasizing his own role and had probably

[00:42:34] never had a trial as important as he considered Kay's to be. Yeah. He, he mentions that Kay's case is interesting. Yeah. Like more interesting than most, but again, we never know why we never find out why. No.

[00:42:47] And we don't even know if he really knows what the accusation is, but there is something just undeniably interesting about it, both for him, for the painter, for Lenny, the nurse. Lenny the nurse. So this is the point where, where there was a shadowy person in the room

[00:43:01] that emerges who turns out to have been a judge. And again, very dreamlike, like somebody just as with his three coworkers who he had noticed in the room, but for some reason hadn't noticed that they were his coworkers.

[00:43:14] In this case, they're talking the uncle, the lawyer who I think is actually in bed. And then all of a sudden a figure, a shadowy figure emerges that he had no idea was there who turns out to be the chief clerk of the court.

[00:43:27] And that is kind of creepy. I forgot about that. Yeah. Just in the room. Yeah. And so, and then as they're talking, all of them, you could just see that. I remember now I do remember it. It's like a third man.

[00:43:40] It's like all of a sudden, yeah, exactly. Like another kind of dream that I've had, like I have those, there's so many things that it hits on of dreams that I just have. He, he knows how my dreams work.

[00:43:51] And nobody else does in the way that the same kinds of things are happening in my dreams, having Joseph K. Right. It seems to me that it's very challenging to write in a way that could describe that dream. Like I think it might be easier to show it.

[00:44:08] Yeah. Like, and this is where, again, you know, this is Joseph narrating the story of what happens, but, but I guess we have no reason to disbelieve what he says. But all of a sudden there's a sound of a breaking China plate on the wall.

[00:44:22] And it was the nurse Lenny who was trying to get his attention. Yeah. So he just leaves this very important meeting with his uncle, the lawyer, and now like the, this court official, he just leaves and it goes and, and. I mean, and probably rightly so.

[00:44:39] It doesn't seem like he was learning anything necessarily useful there. Yeah. Yeah. It turns out she just wanted to get his attention, right? And so, so they have like a dalliance of some sort. He says, this is very true.

[00:44:51] He says, I recruit women helpers, he thought, almost amazed. First, Frawline Birstner, although I don't think she didn't help him. Then the court's usher's wife and now this little nurse who seems to have an inexplicable desire for me. Yeah. Again, very like, you know, I have those dreams.

[00:45:09] And the nurse is clearly hitting on him and says, do you have a sweetheart? And he says, no, I don't. But then he's like, oh, no way to do that. Also, I mentioned before. May or may not exist. Yeah.

[00:45:23] And, and this is the creepy part that I was leading to Lenny says, is there anything wrong with her? Like, he's like, what? She's like, does she have a physical defect at all? And he's like, I don't think so. Do you? And she's like, yeah, check out this.

[00:45:36] So she spreads apart her middle and ring fingers of a right hand between which the connecting skin extended almost to the top knuckle of her short fingers. And then there's like a whim of nature. What a pretty claw. So weird. I have that mark down too.

[00:45:50] Lenny watch with the kind of pride as Kay opened and closed her two fingers repeatedly in astonishment until he finally kissed them lightly and released them. And then they just have what seems like a very kind of clumsy kissing scene with like kind of

[00:46:02] kissing all around the necks and bite. He says biting his hair. She's biting his hair. Like, what is that? Like his pubes. I mean. Yeah, I read in somebody's summary of the plot, they just assumed or inferred that they had sex.

[00:46:20] You could do that in them, although I didn't in any of these cases. I saw it as unconsummated and it's just another part of the frustration of not knowing what's going to happen

[00:46:29] or not being able to bring anything to a kind of closure. Right. It's like she's on his lap, so I guess it could have happened. But yeah, and then he just leaves her and goes out to

[00:46:40] the street to only to find his uncle and his uncle's like, what the fuck? I've been waiting here. Again, so it's like it's raining and he's like you just left the meeting.

[00:46:50] And also he's like, I've been waiting out in this cab because he was just leaving the house at that point and all of a sudden the uncle who you would think would be back with the lawyer

[00:47:00] still but he's now just in a cab going home and everybody's just kind of frustrated with him. And he just takes it at this point. Like he'll put up a fight every once in a while, but he's really just taking it. Yeah.

[00:47:14] And so he develops it. So the lawyer really says, yeah, yeah, I'm working on your stuff. But one of the things that emerges in this part of the book is that the lawyer doesn't seem to be getting anywhere and it's frustrating because isn't that his job to

[00:47:30] let me know? Like what he hasn't even submitted a petition. He says he's working on this petition, but he hasn't done anything. And Kay finally just resolves himself to, he resolves to go and dismiss the lawyer. He says like this guy isn't doing shit.

[00:47:44] Is that before or after the painter? I think it's so he resolves, but doesn't he actually fire the lawyer after he meets with the painter? I think so. I think so. Yeah, but there this is one of those order questions that I had because it seems clear

[00:48:00] at this point that he is going to leave the lawyer, but he hasn't dismissed him. And that's in fact a big scene that happens later. And so what happens is that he gets, he's told by, is it one of the bank clients? Yeah.

[00:48:14] Yeah, there's a bank client. He keeps like he's being derelict in his work and he keeps people waiting in this merchant. He goes off with the guy, goes off with the vice president, but then he comes back in and says, hey, listen, I heard about your

[00:48:28] trial. I know a painter who has very intimate connections with the court. I think he could help you, but it's even weird. Again, there's no reason why people are helping him

[00:48:37] like this, but not at all. But, but you know, again, a case of like, wait, how many people are connected to this whole thing? And it's also weird that a painter, right, like somebody

[00:48:50] who is his an artist and it turns out not even a very good artist would know or be able to help him with his legal troubles. Like it's so random. It's interesting the way the merchant is,

[00:49:05] you know, offering the help he's like, he says, look, I think you should go see him and like, I'm just, I'll write a letter of introduction. But then he thought, well, how about I'll just

[00:49:15] have him come here? But the merchants like, I don't think that's a good idea. That could reflect poorly on you in your job. But it's like, so there's this still assumption, I guess that the higher ups don't know about his trial and

[00:49:29] or I don't know. There's something very bizarre about, you know, how he has to delicately handle this painter and writing. And here's where he really is like, like starting to doubt his own,

[00:49:42] like his own wits. He says, no, that's fucking right. He's like, here I was about to like make a huge mistake and have this painter come to talk to me about my case in work. Like he's

[00:49:52] like, I can't, like I can't even trust my own judgment anymore. This is like really become like an all encompassing. And he had resolved to take up his own defense. Yeah. Which I mean,

[00:50:03] we should just talk about like how to interpret that. But so he resolves to do that. But now he is doubting whether he has he's up to it intellectually. He has his wits about him

[00:50:15] enough to be able to mount a successful defense. Yeah. So that this is one of the things that makes him like, oh God, I'm a mess right now. Yeah. And it's even weird at some point,

[00:50:26] I think it says that he starts to write his own petition, like he spends some time working on it. We're never quite clear what goes into that petition though. Like what is he even saying?

[00:50:35] And what's not clear to me is does he know what he does? Do you have a sense of what he's being accused of? So now he's writing some long sort of like here's why I'm not,

[00:50:45] you know, why I'm innocent. Or is this just him writing once again, kind of like the speech that he gave in front of the court, which was really had no content that had to do with his actual

[00:50:57] innocence. It was just more of like how dare the court do this? Like, I took it as more like him going back to the proceedings that the next week without having been summoned. Like nobody asked him to do a petition and it's not clear what the petition

[00:51:11] is for. The whole point of a petition is like you are asking for something, but I don't think it's ever clear what he's asking for. And how could it be clear what he's asking for? He doesn't know what

[00:51:21] he's charged. But in any case, I think the painter in like a throwaway line says, eh, petitions don't matter anyway. Yeah, exactly. So like it's all just feudal. Yeah. And I guess that's,

[00:51:30] I wonder what, how to interpret that idea. So like, I feel like the petition has symbolic resonances depending on how you read it. Yeah, it's almost like the painter initiates him into

[00:51:45] the deeper sort of knowledge where now you know, like at first you might think petitions are the things that you should do, but really like here's the skinny about it. But I guess what

[00:51:56] does that symbolize? If you read this in as a sort of a parable in some sense for religion or God, what would the petition be in a reading like that? Trying to understand the problem of evil

[00:52:10] or nothing that dramatic. I don't think. Yeah, I don't know. You know, I guess you could see in Christianity it's very clear that and in Islam, I suppose that you have to submit

[00:52:21] that you can't save yourself. And maybe this is the petition is an attempt to plead his innocence when in reality what you have to do is admit that you are guilty and flawed and throw yourself

[00:52:33] sort of submit to God or accept the salvation of Christ or whatever. You know, one thing I that I was really brought back to and thinking about it and I didn't really make this connection

[00:52:46] so much as I was reading it, but almost immediately after is the book of Job, which is similar in the sense that Job has clearly done something wrong, but he has no idea what. Oh, he hasn't done it. Job hasn't done anything wrong. But he thinks from his

[00:53:01] perspective I have been because look at all the bad things that are happening to me. His friends tell him you must have sinned. Yes, exactly. And that's sort of the friends and their speeches

[00:53:11] in Job remind me of a lot of the speeches that someone like the painter or the lawyer will give where they're just they're long winded and not helpful. You know, like they just make

[00:53:21] it more confusing, but also add little bits of reproach or little bits of like how do you how are you not like understanding this? How are you not getting it? And it just you know, and there's and they're you know, Job, I think we talked about this.

[00:53:35] There's something so unsatisfying about each of those speeches. They really aren't in any way answering the questions that Joseph, I mean, you say that Joe is asking and and he has a total right to ask it seems. Yeah, you know, yeah, but they don't even accept

[00:53:51] or acknowledge his right to ask those questions. Yeah. And you know, one of that makes me think the answers that Job's friends give him are basically like, no, there is justice, like repent for your sins and God will stop punishing you because you clearly did something wrong.

[00:54:08] There's a very legalistic way of thinking about this. Like you have a contract with God. If you if you behave, everything will go well. If you misbehave things will go poorly. You must have misbehaved. Therefore, things are going poorly. Therefore, you must have

[00:54:22] misbehaved. And it seems like in in the trial here as we're getting to this part of the book, one of the things that's becoming clear is that the law might not be just in the way

[00:54:35] that people would think that there is no deep fairness. And I think part of the giving up on the petition is the petition was to appeal to the reason of the court to say, like, look,

[00:54:46] here's my evidence. I've done nothing wrong. And what he keeps learning throughout this process is that the court doesn't really care about that. Right? Like, that's not the point. That's not in fact, it might even be like, definitionally impossible. Like, I get a little bit of like

[00:54:59] debunked divine command theory, vibes where like something is wrong because God says it's wrong. And so if the law says you're guilty, then you're guilty. Like it's conceptually impossible for you to be innocent even though the law considers you guilty. So, yeah, and the petition is just

[00:55:20] trying to get out of that situation but to no avail. And in this case, like, because he doesn't really know the law, he doesn't even know what the argument might be. There's

[00:55:33] a moment that I love here when he's talking to Tarelli, the painter. And the painter shows him this portrait of a judge and in that portrait, the judge is sitting on this like,

[00:55:47] magnanimous throne. And Joseph Kay is looking at the throne and trying to see the details of what's being represented in the throne. And the painter has to tell him, he says, it's the figure of justice. It's just not done yet. And I says, now I recognize it.

[00:56:04] There's the blindfold over her eyes and here are the scales. But then he goes, but then what aren't their wings on her heels? And he goes, yeah, yeah, it's like justice combined with the goddess of victory. And he points out like, well, that's a terrible

[00:56:17] combination because the whole point of the scales is that they're supposed to be carefully weighing right and wrong. If justice is in motion, those scales are going to be all over the place. And I think that just symbolizes the realization that he's having, which is that

[00:56:32] there is no fairness here. There's no justice. The law, the law is just only in the most superficial way that you might think. Yeah, well, it's, but it's superficial in one sense in

[00:56:43] that there's no fairness to it. But it's also so complex that it's also, you know, another way that it's inaccessible or indecipherable. It's just, it's completely indecipherable. You can't negotiate for it. It's like being an amaze that there's just absolutely no way of

[00:57:01] escaping. Right. So the superficial sense that I meant really is that like the naivete of interpreting the law as codified fairness, right? What he's getting here with the painter of all people is initiated into the depths of this. The clerks and the lawyer haven't really

[00:57:21] been able to tell him much. And the painter starts to shed a little bit of light on it. And here's where you start to say, wait, could you take this more literally that the law is a

[00:57:33] metaphor for the law? You know, like imagine being like, you know, you hear these horror stories from the criminal justice system of people who are actually innocent, but like the depths and the complexity of trying to even show evidence that could exonerate you,

[00:57:51] there's so many levels of obstruction. And the system seems designed for those, for that obstruction to be there. And so I definitely think he has this in mind as well. Yeah, I think that, yeah, that's a good point. And what's also made sort of clear throughout

[00:58:09] is that successfully, put it successfully in quotes, successfully navigating your trial is more about knowing the right people and being able to make connections than it is about going through any process like that. The process is not really available to you as a normal person.

[00:58:29] This episode is brought to you in part by super speciosa cradum. David, this is a bad time of the semester. You know what I mean? And you go to the office, you have meetings, you teach a class on political philosophy, and then you got to come home and

[00:58:53] like deal with your family and you know, like my daughter, I mean, you know them, right, Jen, I got to deal with that shit now. And sometimes you just want to pop a few cradum,

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[00:59:37] I take cradum to deal with the physical pain that comes from aging. Like, for instance, I walked my dog longer than I normally do the other day and I got home. I wanted to take some

[00:59:50] cradum. Just from the like you were sore. Exactly. You were sore from the road, from the walk. Yeah, no, it works for that too. Like I'm talking about just the mental strain of being around people in academia and no God. And yeah, anyway, super speciosa cradum has only

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[01:00:32] and you can like look up the lab reports and the date, you know, like who knows maybe that's like biased sample or pull out your solar calculator and put on your thick rimmed glasses and start double checking their numbers. Hold on, they didn't even register this.

[01:00:54] Super speciosa offers cradum powder which I still haven't fully figured out, capsules which I love, tablets which I also haven't tried yet, teas which is I love. Have you done the tea? No,

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[01:02:00] Like I want to spend some time on the apparent quiddle, the protraction. Before we get there, I just like I don't want to just highlight the painter and the vivid nature and this crazy picture you get of this painter's house with these little girls and the hunchback

[01:02:18] and they're all trying to get into the painter's room and there's always people at keyholes. There's always people. It does get kind of nightmare. Just like there's always a threat for these girls to burst through the door and they're constantly laughing or reporting on what

[01:02:37] they can hear. Meanwhile, he's getting this actually what seems like the painter is actually giving him as you said something that he for the first time really wants to pay attention. Yeah, exactly. I love how the little hunchback girl is the only one who makes it past

[01:02:52] the defenses of the painter. The painter also asked is the first to ask him if he's innocent. Yeah, he's the first. That's right. Which gives you at least me gave me a little bit of a sense

[01:03:07] that okay, he might get something from this painter. And it says it was like a relief. But then so this is an interesting little thing. He says, are you innocent? Kay says yes. Answering

[01:03:21] this question was a positive pleasure particularly since he was making the statement to a private citizen and thus bore no true responsibility. No one had ever asked him so openly to savor this

[01:03:32] pleasure in full. He added I am totally innocent, but this is another thing that is like makes you think well, is he he's relieved that it's a you know, like it's private and so he won't bear any

[01:03:43] legal responsibility for lying. Yeah, yeah, totally. I actually hadn't caught that little bit but it makes me think yeah, what's going on in his mind is he doesn't really know. And part of that is well, that's fair because you don't know what you're accused of. But part

[01:03:59] of it is also maybe like he is guilty of some things, but he doesn't know if those are the things that he's being accused of. That's right. He doesn't know if he has guilt in

[01:04:14] the legal sense, but he seems to have a guilt in the emotional sense that is making him doubt whether or not he might be culpable of something bad. Which is also something I think that is a

[01:04:25] characteristic of our legal system where you know, even for people who are innocent, they get a lot of confessions out of people because if all this massive bureaucratic weight seems to be saying that you're guilty then you will say I guess I am guilty. Well and you know,

[01:04:42] things never go to trial like so many people who are innocent just get like their attorney makes a plea and that's it's a deal. Right? Okay, another surreal element which I think we mentioned last time is that the painter's bed, the painter lives in this very small room.

[01:05:00] Atelier. Atelier. The judges have to go through his room to go to the proceedings. The way they have to do that is open the door by his bed and climb over him as he's sleeping. That's how

[01:05:13] he gets woken up every morning and I love the sign. He says you'd lose any respect you have for judges. You could hear the curses I shower on him as he climbs across my bed in the morning.

[01:05:24] So weird, yeah. And I love the idea that I'm so disrespectful to these judges that you won't respect them either but meanwhile he's the one that's getting woken up by this guy's stepping on his face. So I do want to get right to the

[01:05:40] apparent acquittal, apparent acquittal and protraction but I did want to ask you why a painter? That's a good question. Yeah. So the painter, he paints these judges, he paints them in their haughty poses, their self aggrandized versions of themselves and he says that it is a position

[01:06:05] he inherited that the court painter is like a family position. His father was a court painter and it's just, it was odd to me. I don't have any theories as to why this role would exist and

[01:06:20] what it means. Yeah, no, that's a great question. I didn't really think about that. It's very slippery to try to figure out what that could be. Maybe it is something like interpreters of a legal system or something like that. You paint, you have to try to

[01:06:37] represent reality in some way but the painter who's like, as you said, not a very good painter, is always going to be imperfect so there'll always be things that they get wrong. Yeah. And it's made clear, as I've said before, that the judges are asking for portraits of

[01:06:55] themselves that are flattering, that make them both look physically bigger and maybe more attractive than they are but also petty judges being in these seats of high judges. And it's like, why? Why are they even allowed to do that? But it seems like a very important

[01:07:15] thing for these judges who by the way up until now we've seen just them in slums. Addicts. How important can they be? Well, this is one of these very strange things and again, if you take a more religious allegory is that you thought that the gods were these

[01:07:34] all-powerful supernatural entities but actually it's just more sorted than that. The real truth of why we're here is much more sorted. I don't know. Let's talk about this thing where the painter says, all right, you're innocent. That's great. Good to hear. Now we have to decide,

[01:07:51] like, do you want actual acquittal, apparent acquittal or protraction? And Joseph Gay is like, I'll ask you an actual acquittal. He's like, okay, but that never happens or at least there's no record of it happening ever happened. So really the choices are the illusion of choice.

[01:08:12] The choices are between apparent acquittal and protraction. He says apparent acquittal requires more effort up front. Protraction requires a more consistent effort throughout the process. So I guess an actual acquittal would be the case with you. The case is dropped, yeah.

[01:08:32] And there's no records of it either. So it's like it never happened. But that also never happens. That's also never happened. Like it's unclear that nobody that we've talked to or seen so far

[01:08:43] even knows a high judge. Yeah, so then there's apparent acquittal, which the painter can help him get apparently, which is to certify his innocence in some way. I guess the basic idea is you are for all intents and purposes, you are, but it's not an actual acquittal. And

[01:09:03] the upshot of that is at any point it can come back. You have to live knowing that they might show up at your door and then the whole process starts all over again.

[01:09:13] Right. It's like one of the high judges might notice that the lower judges stamped this thing, but like never really acquitted so they can just reinitiate it. And so he would go to bed every night maybe thinking that the next morning those

[01:09:28] like those same two guys, flungy flungy, will be there arresting him again. And the cycle starts over again. All right, well then after the second apparent acquittal then I'm free, of course not said the painter. The second acquittal is followed by a third arrest,

[01:09:47] the third acquittal by a fourth arrest and so on. That's inherent in the very concept of apparent acquittal. And then Kay was silent. Apparent acquittal obviously doesn't strike you as an advantage. Should I go on to the nature of protraction?

[01:10:03] Right, so protraction doesn't take that all of the work that apparent acquittal does on the front end like where you have to put the work in to get the judges to sign these papers or whatever. Rather it's just bogging down the system so that you never... It's kind

[01:10:21] of like people do in our legal system when say like there's somebody on death row what you can do is you keep appealing, keep appealing, do whatever you can to slow the case down.

[01:10:31] People do this all the time with discovery, right? So like if you have to go to trial one way to extend it is to just give everything in discovery and make the other side sift through every single piece of information. It's all... It's just working the system

[01:10:47] knowing that you're still technically on trial but it's never going anywhere. Corporations do this all the time when they get sued is they keep filing petitions and it's working the system in a way that's not at all like based on your actual case or the evidence

[01:11:08] in your favor. It's just inner knowledge of the system and what that does is just keep him away from the final verdict, right? It just postpones it. Yeah. And he says, you don't have to give me an answer now about which one

[01:11:23] you want of the two. And he says there's only a hair's difference between the advantages and disadvantages between these two hair and acquittal and protraction. And it's good that you don't want to decide now, I would say you should take some time. But if you don't come back,

[01:11:35] I'm going to go find you at your bank and get an answer. And it's like why is he helping him? Like what... It's so weird. It's very weird that he wants to help him but it and then gets

[01:11:44] almost to the point where he's threatening him. You have to let me help you even though the things I can do are really it doesn't matter. None of this shit matters. So what do you think these... I don't know, do you have any kind of metaphoric or thematic

[01:11:59] ideas about a parent acquittal versus protraction? Is that if we're talking existentially, it feels like... I don't know. I was trying to think about this. It does seem to me like protraction is living your life, putting off the difficult questions. Like never really

[01:12:19] tackling what you think... I don't know, the important things. It's living a life of inaction and passivity because it's easier. And not ever really figure out your purpose on earth if you

[01:12:34] have one or not trying to figure out why you're here or whether you've lived a good life or you're playing it out. And you're being able to do that because you've developed skills that allow you maybe to distract yourself from these deeper, more unsettling questions. You figure you're

[01:12:53] working the system in a certain way but at the cost of really grappling with the deepest elements of who you are as a person. Whereas the apparent acquittal you have to do some heavy work on the front end which means confronting some of these things.

[01:13:08] Confronting your demons or these tough questions. Protraction does feel like that sort of unreflected life of living for the weekend. You do your nine to five job, you don't really care about it. You look forward to the party on

[01:13:23] the weekend or maybe church on the weekend and it's... You take a kid to soccer practice. It's the unreflected life that some people might find worth living because it's an easier thing to do than to have that existential anxiety.

[01:13:39] Apparent acquittal then, if that's protraction, apparent acquittal might be somebody who does some work on themselves, some self-exploration and is able temporarily to feel like their life has purpose or meaning or maybe feel like they're a good person,

[01:13:56] morally speaking maybe they're able to also make it seem like that to others. You know, like, oh he's a good father. He's good at his job. He seems to find fulfillment in it. He's to the world. You seem like you're somebody who's fulfilled and you've figured things out

[01:14:13] and you have a degree of self-knowledge that's impressive but at any point those demons could just come back and all that just gets like... It's gone. It just gets burned like paper

[01:14:28] and then it's ashes. You've done the work to make yourself feel like you're a good person living a meaningful life and to the other people to think that but there's something still lurking

[01:14:41] that it can all get unmasked at any point. Right. The key I think is that in the term appearance, in A Parent Equital in the book you are justified only by consensus of slightly

[01:15:00] more important people than you. So like if you've managed to appear to the world as if you were just then that might be enough. That's enough for you but you're not really.

[01:15:10] Yeah and then actual Equital is just I don't know like that would be finding out the answers to some of these questions or something. It's something that is conceivable and yet very few people know anybody who reached it. Right. Exactly. Yeah and I think this is

[01:15:29] it's also like I don't know I think in both A Parent Equital and Protraction you would never find out what you were accused of whereas with actual Equital I think you would. That's right.

[01:15:42] Are you willing to sacrifice ever knowing what's going on just for the sake of living out like a yeah undisturbed relatively undisturbed life. Yeah. Yeah exactly. Yeah I love the painter scene

[01:15:53] it might be my favorite scene in the whole tax code also with the girls and the it's it's and it's still very funny. Yeah and I don't have an answer to why a painter but I kind

[01:16:05] of like that the artist is the one who sort of peels back the veneer. You know things aren't what they seem. And so we don't even know to what extent what he's saying is true. No.

[01:16:16] There's no way there's no way to confirm what anybody says. I mean this is pretty obvious but I don't know if we've said it explicitly but the reader is very much in the same position as

[01:16:26] Joseph Gage struggling to figure out what it all means and what's going on and like that's a very effective technique because we are feeling and sometimes weary too. Sometimes you're reading it because the way this edition goes it's like one paragraph essentially and so you get a little

[01:16:43] glazed over in the way that Joseph K is glazed over. Right. So okay so the next thing he does is he's now after having visited the painter and gotten this information he is really resolved to

[01:16:56] go dump his lawyer. Yeah. So he goes to dump the lawyer there is someone else at the lawyer's house along with a nurse Lenny who he's had whatever sexual doleons with or not or not

[01:17:08] there's this merchant block his name who comes to he comes to find out is also on trial. So Joseph K gets his will together musters his will and tells the the lawyer look I don't want you to represent

[01:17:24] me anymore I know what I need to do and the lawyer says all right like I see what you're saying but but like wait don't I'm not gonna let I'm not gonna allow you to dismiss me just yet

[01:17:35] hear me out and among the things that he says which again is not that informative one of the things he says is you don't realize how good you're being treated by the system right

[01:17:45] now. Right. You think everybody who's accused is in your position no let me show you and so then he just unleashes this abuse on this other guy block who is also on trial and just demonstrates

[01:17:57] that without the connections that Joseph has Joseph K has things would be quite different he would be basically the merchant for his trial that's been going on for five years has to basically show

[01:18:10] up to his lawyer's house at all times whenever he's summoned even when he's not and meanwhile so this is one of the things where his self-confidence briefly fleetingly comes back

[01:18:22] and he feels better than block so in a way that I think you know in a lot of bureaucratic nightmares in society the there is a person who makes it you seem like trust me you're glad you're not one of

[01:18:34] these people you know like and you do feel even though like like you're not getting what you want you do feel a little bit of like yeah well I'm glad I'm not glad I'm not that person. Let me

[01:18:44] show you how bad it could go. Yeah but this is another example where Lenny is making him jealous by paying a lot of attention to block. This is when the lawyer explains that it's just

[01:18:57] defendants are attractive like there's something about being accused that all of a sudden makes you attractive. And especially to Lenny. It's a Lenny. Yeah so it's not you even when good things

[01:19:05] happen to him it's also not fair it's just like a part of the tick of nature or part of the part of the system. Right throughout this there's like there is a passivity to even his actions

[01:19:18] it's weird it's hard to describe but even when he is resolved to take action it ends up in him being tossed around like leaves and wind you know. He doesn't have he

[01:19:28] can't pursue anything because they all lead into these you know dead ends anyway and so at a certain point he just starts to like abandon things before taking it to it's just inevitably frustrating conclusion. The lawyer treats block like the gimp. Yeah exactly he shows unlike block he

[01:19:49] shows a little bit of pride and thinks that he's not going to debase himself in the way that block does but. And I think at this point maybe whatever time goes by between the end of this

[01:20:03] scene the chapter where he's dismissed his lawyer and the next one which is sort of getting us to the end maybe he is maybe he did just resolve himself to say like look I have two options one is

[01:20:18] to keep being at the mercy of all these fuckers and like trying to actively figure out what's going on in my trial but not getting anywhere to just forget it. Fuck it. Fuck it. Yeah right

[01:20:29] like one must imagine Sisyphus happy. Yeah that's right. That's right. And I think it is block that shocks him into that he says he was no longer a client he was the lawyer's dog if

[01:20:41] the lawyer had ordered him to crawl under the bed as into a kennel and bark he would have done so gladly. Yeah yeah and at this point he just makes this kind of quiet decision like yeah I'm out

[01:20:52] of it and yeah now we're nearing the end. So now we're a year a yearish later right. Are we sure the time difference between the end the drill in the end so I don't know I don't know where

[01:21:04] we are here. No it switches gears right like all of a sudden back at the bank as if you know things were just copacetic one day at work the president tells him hey we have an Italian

[01:21:16] businessman who's coming to visit and I want you to show him around town so he's like fine you know like uh uh do it. He is still working on the trial but half-heartedly and he's like ah fuck it

[01:21:28] I'll just show this guy around. He's like what is he gonna do right so so he goes he actually prepares he starts like brushing up on his Italian he goes to work really early seven in the morning

[01:21:39] and he almost immediately gets called over by the president with the Italian businessman right there he's like show him go ahead and show him around. It's very funny this you know well not funny it's actually not that funny but it has that nightmarish or anxiety dream like quality

[01:21:54] where he can't really understand the Italian and the words and um and he can only get little pieces of it but the president can understand him even though and and now he knows that he's like has

[01:22:06] to show this person around but he can only understand like 10% of what he's saying. Yeah yeah but the one thing he really wants to see is this cathedral so he says all right I'll meet you at

[01:22:13] the cathedral uh at 10 in the morning this gives him time to go back to his office brush up even more in his Italian because he has this anxiety that he can barely understand the guy

[01:22:22] maybe get some key words about about the art so that he can describe it to the Italian so he goes gets to the cathedral goes inside uh or waits outside it's a rainy day all of a sudden

[01:22:33] it's dark and gloomy day and the Italian isn't there and I can only assume that the stereotypes of Italian people were active back then that like they're late so they're not like a good

[01:22:44] drill and it seems like almost nobody is there and it's very dark I picture it as kind of huge this cathedral yeah like you can get lost in this cathedral and it's also very poorly lit

[01:22:56] very poorly lit again that dream that that captures my dreams as well like things are poorly lit and they're very distressing dreams and all of a sudden the day is dark and rainy um yeah

[01:23:07] and he sort of starts exploring around he finds these different pulpits right yeah and eventually a priest comes and he thinks he's uh gonna be delivering a ceremony yeah he sees this little

[01:23:21] side pulpit it's not the main pulpit right yeah and he sees this priest finally emerge and he's like well that's weird it's like 10 in the morning on a work day is this guy gonna preach wearing rain

[01:23:33] yeah is it is like so he's like all right I guess he is gonna preach and so he's like well I'm not gonna stick around like but the Italian was an OSHA so the Italian just never shows up

[01:23:42] I think it's 11 o'clock by now he's done his due diligence or like he's done his duty and waited and he's like if this guy's about to preach I'm not you know I can't leave in the middle of his

[01:23:51] sermon so let me creep out now so as he starts uh walking away he just hears his name yelled out Joseph K yeah it's ominous so the priest says he's a prison chaplain right again the prison

[01:24:06] the legal system is everywhere it is there's no escape from it so even in this cathedral which really shouldn't have anything to do with with the law but even that is part of the prison

[01:24:17] system and like so at this point I thought he was going to be delivering some sort of verdict or some sort of um but that's actually not what happens at at all you know and he says

[01:24:28] the judgment isn't simply delivered at some point the proceedings gradually merge into the judgment yeah that's so interesting I had that highlighted too what does that mean yeah it's it all I could think of which is maybe simplistic but that's life yeah you know the proceedings gradually

[01:24:46] merge into the judgment yeah he does say at least for the moment your guilt is assumed yeah so your trial is going badly did you know that Joseph K says but I'm not guilty it's a mistake how

[01:24:56] can a person in general be guilty yeah that's a this is such the key question of of this novel I think how can a person in general be be guilty we're all human after all each and every one of us

[01:25:10] that's right so the priest but that's how guilty people always talk yeah but the priest isn't all bad right the priest seems to in as much as anybody could be on his side like the priest is now

[01:25:22] seems to be the most plain spoken and the one who's going to to just tell him like it is in a way that he hasn't been told the painter gave him what he knew but it's not like he knew the specifics of

[01:25:35] Joseph K's case but but the priest seems to know exactly in his judgments are fair like he says you seek too much outside help particularly from women haven't you noticed that isn't true help

[01:25:48] I figure that's just Kafka going to a prostitute you know that's right he's finding that's right but then Joseph K like he does have an excuse he's like you know women have great power and everybody

[01:26:00] here that works with the court seems to be skirt chasers exactly okay so exactly one of the things that he says which sounds like a very uh I don't know like a very human thing to say is no look

[01:26:12] everybody is prejudice against me like everybody who I've been dealing with is prejudice against me and that's something that is like probably everybody has felt at some point in their life but like really it's more that nobody cares it's not the prejudice against you

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[01:28:53] for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. Alright we have two more things to talk about the parable and then I guess inclusion but let's talk about the parable yeah there there is one quick

[01:29:05] thing I want to say like the priest comes down from the pulpit to talk to him yeah and one of the things that he says is I had to speak to you first from a distance otherwise I'm too easily

[01:29:17] influenced and forget my position made me think of uh of Paul's empathy stuff like he knew that he had to deliver in an impartial way from above like the hard news your shit's going badly and

[01:29:30] then when he gets closer to Joseph K he's like able to be more compassionate toward him right so yeah the the parable to want to summarize it it's a story of a man who wants to be admitted to

[01:29:44] the law capital L the there's a person at the door that says you can't be admitted to the law which is what does that even mean the introductory text to the law you know there's always this

[01:29:57] illusion to the to their being a codified written down capital L law that we have no access to but then it's also personified or deified in some way because it says like before the law

[01:30:12] stands a doorkeeper like what does that mean you know yeah the law is in this in this parable like a place that he can go to he can see he had access to a man from the country comes to

[01:30:24] this doorkeeper and requests admittance to the law but the doorkeeper says he can't grant him admittance now the man thinks it so it over and asks if he'll be allowed to enter later

[01:30:35] it's possible but not now since the gate to the law stands open as always in the doorkeeper steps aside the man bends down to look through the gate into the interior doorkeeper says you

[01:30:46] want to dash in there go ahead and try it but i'm only the lowest doorkeeper like after me these people you don't even want to look at them i get i feel sick if i'm trying to look at them

[01:30:57] so then the man just sits down and waits and waits and waits and the doorkeeper keeps telling him no and he finally dies yeah finally his eyes grow dim and he no longer knows whether it's

[01:31:08] really getting darker around him or if his eyes are merely deceiving him and he gets a glimpse of the radiance of the law through the door before he dies but yeah he lives out his life

[01:31:21] on that little bench as he is dying he doesn't have much longer to live before he dies everything he has experienced over the years coalesces in his mind into a single question he has never

[01:31:31] asked the doorkeeper he motions to him since he can no longer straighten his stiffening body the doorkeeper has to bend down to him for the difference in size between them has altered greatly to the man's disadvantage what do you want to know now ask the doorkeeper you're insatiable

[01:31:46] everyone strives to reach the law says the man how does it happen then that all these years no one but me has requested admittance the doorkeeper sees that the man is nearing his end and in order

[01:31:56] to reach his failing hearing he roars at him no one else could get admittance here because this entrance was meant solely for you i am going to go shut it now so this very puzzling ending

[01:32:08] that is you know so like bet is begging to be interpreted right like what does that mean that the entrance was only for him stri why does he stay there why does he never ask this question before

[01:32:21] k immediately launches into interpretations yeah and the priest tells him like this has been endlessly interpreted yeah this parable and they go through all the different ways of who's deceiving who did he actually gain admittance or didn't he yeah did could he have gone in

[01:32:40] the door was the the doorkeeper was doing his duty by not allowing him in but you know on the other hand the doorkeeper as a faithful servant of the law actually had his back to turn to the

[01:32:49] door the whole time so he couldn't even get a glimpse that the that the man did of the sort of brilliance of the law and there is here in this discussion of the you know he's basically

[01:33:02] saying like there's volumes written on this parable and the priest says the commentators tell us the correct understanding of a matter and misunderstanding the matter are not mutually exclusive yeah and i have like a big ol asterisk next to that in my in my reading because

[01:33:21] it just seems like something that's being told to us about this whole thing it's it's such an interesting meta um textual element right k says you know like i don't think he fulfilled his duty

[01:33:36] he he shouldn't he should he should have admitted the person and the priest says you don't have sufficient respect for the text and are changing the story the story contains two important statements so it's like you it's almost just this lesson in how you are supposed to interpret

[01:33:53] a text and i it's impossible to think like this is also a lesson is how to interpret Kafka's text and one of the things you have to do is have respect for it and not mold it into

[01:34:04] something that you want it to be for your own purposes but that it isn't right on the other hand maybe your interpretation is good fine is just as it's even the incorrect interpretation

[01:34:16] and again we're in that same position as joseph k we we don't know and we'll never and we'll never know as the priest is telling him all these interpretations it seems like literally every

[01:34:25] element of it has multiple ways of understanding it right you know in the context of what you just read that understanding and misunderstanding are kind of the same thing when it comes to

[01:34:36] uh interpreting the text it's like as long as you respect the text it seems like there's just multiple understandings you don't need to settle on on one it it's it's fruit the text itself will be fruit for podcasts yes multiple different interpretations and which is why these things

[01:34:58] last as long as they do yeah and i mean i feel like we've made this claim or point so many times on this podcast which is like you know i used to think that was a cheat when i was when i

[01:35:10] was young and i think more literal minded i used to think kind of like that docket and uh tweet about metamorphosis like what is this like you know that there ought to be one singular interpretation

[01:35:23] or that it's unsatisfying if there is no true interpretation and i you know i think that just with at least i want to say maturity but at least in the way that my mind is developed

[01:35:36] it is more satisfying when there are truths that have bearing on multiple aspects of life that can be communicated artistically this way yeah it almost is it feels like i agree like i've moved in this direction along with you um way more than i was probably even

[01:35:55] when we started doing the podcast but it almost seems like definitional to art now that there is kind of openness to it and that's part of what what makes it art we should talk about maybe some

[01:36:08] of the details here because it is also about deception but then there's this other element that kind of euthyphro dilemma divine command theory uh issue where he says uh the priest says

[01:36:20] namely that those who say that the story gives no one the right to pass judgment on the doorkeeper no matter how he appears to us he is still a servant of the law he belongs to the law and thus is

[01:36:32] beyond human judgment the man has uh he has been appointed to the post by the law to doubt his dignity is to doubt the law itself in case as i don't agree with that opinion um for if you

[01:36:45] accept it you have to consider everything the doorkeeper says as true but you've proven conclusively that that's not possible no said the priest you don't have to consider everything true you just have to consider it necessary and that also just vibrates with like theological

[01:37:03] existential just doubts and questions that have the answer you don't know and you can't know and it's some it's in some sense like impossible for you to know yeah there hints to me of like

[01:37:18] Abraham um and Isaac and Abraham being told by God to sacrifice Isaac which actually I thought it was the final the end is evocative a bit of that yeah where uh where the question has always been you know

[01:37:35] much ink has been spilled about whether if Abraham did in fact kill Isaac would he be doing the right thing just because God said so you know there's an idea I don't know if it's in Judaism

[01:37:45] at all and I wish I had a real Jew to tell me um but there's an idea in Christianity that the law here referring to the 10 commandments and everything else in the bible that the law is an expression

[01:37:58] of God's character yeah that that is uh our understanding of God's character really is through the law and that's a very also okay yeah I assume we're still on it there is also the idea that God is fundamentally unknowable right and so there is a tension there because

[01:38:18] the law is written out in real detail right there are real real specifics to the law and if it's supposed to be a reflection of God's character but yet God is sort of unknowable in the deepest

[01:38:29] truest sense the law is merely a uh a surface understanding of God's character and any glimpse at the true true meaning might evade us as humans but I also like what you were saying that the law

[01:38:44] just is God they're inseparable yeah so not necessarily a glimpse into it it just that is God in the same way the legal system is just in the walls in the tax the proceedings of it are just baked into

[01:38:57] everyday life um residential professional everything sexual I like that idea I feel like that's how that's something that is being explored here so shall we get to the end yeah I mean so the

[01:39:11] thing that Joseph K responds to that is a depressing opinion said K lies are made into a universal system that it this is all a lie like all these laws they're there you can interpret them in all sorts

[01:39:22] of different ways but ultimately it's not consistent you we can't make sense of it and that's just baked into reality and I love after he says that he says K said that with

[01:39:31] finality but it was not his final judgment he was too tired to take in all of the consequences of the story it led him to unaccustomed areas of thought toward abstract notions more suited for

[01:39:42] discussion by the officials of the court than by him it's like an individual grappling with something of that magnitude and depth is too much it's too much to bear he can't bear it yeah and

[01:39:53] it's also it is the end of him like you know this is where he's he's gonna leave he gets to leave the cathedral yeah which I didn't remember that he even thinks oh so you're gonna like take

[01:40:04] me away it's like no you can leave yeah court wants nothing for you it receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go so then exactly a year later exactly a year later two gentlemen enter

[01:40:18] K's lodgings uh dressed in black and K himself was getting ready to go out as if he knew that something was going to happen he just didn't know what he was preparing himself for an evening out

[01:40:32] and when they walk in he's like ah okay okay so you guys are you guys are here for me and he's given up at this point I think he gave up at the end of the cathedral scene

[01:40:42] and now he's completely given up and he still will say oh they've sent supporting actors yeah it's like he's it's like bit players you can't he can't just I don't know if it's a defense or what

[01:40:55] that he can't just be like okay they've sent people to kill me yeah he has to at least put up a little fight even if it's only a flicker even if it's just and he fights it at first but then out of some

[01:41:05] sense of dignity um as they're carrying him away he says you know what I'm not gonna I'm not gonna fight this I'm not gonna like I'm gonna keep some dignity here they hold him in a way

[01:41:17] where like the imagery is of like uh marionette almost like with each man holding one side of him and walking along and the way that he doesn't fight is that he just goes in stride with them so it's

[01:41:30] like three people walking together to a stone quarry it's laid beside a building which is quite urban so it's like you're never fully leaving this even though I thought like that they were

[01:41:41] going into the woods somewhere um it's a very this is very nightmarish maybe the most horrifying of them kind of handing the butcher's knife to each other very uh gentile in a kind of gentile way

[01:41:54] to inspect it and seeing the sharpness of it in the moonlight you know like the blade glinting in the moonlight he almost takes the knife and plunges it into himself he feels like that's

[01:42:05] his duty now that's how he's been reduced to is he feels like he's supposed to relieve them of their work um but he doesn't do it they problem against the toe they problem against the stone and

[01:42:19] they're trying to get him in a good position um like they seem to put some work into making him comfortable um but finally the the final position that they put him in wasn't even

[01:42:29] the most comfortable one of them and uh and yeah they they uh stab him in the heart right yeah it seems like they're gonna cut his throat but they don't they stab him in the heart and with failing

[01:42:43] sight Kay saw how the men drew near his face leaning cheek to cheek to observe the verdict like a dog he said as it seemed as though the shame was to outlive him right sorry right before

[01:42:57] that um he saw in the building adjoining the quarry he saw a light on and there was a figure faint and insubstantial at that distance and height who was it a friend a good person someone who

[01:43:10] cared someone who wanted to help was it just one person was it everyone was there still help yeah and then it's thrust in his heart like a dog and the shame is gonna outlive him so

[01:43:23] it's a really tragic ending in so many ways it's like it's not just that he was unjustly accused but that didn't or not unmasked but just yeah bear like laid bare laid there yeah and and to the

[01:43:36] point where he has lost all hope and essentially consents to his own uh murder or right and you get the feeling that that's been for the last year he probably stopped working on the

[01:43:51] trial knowing that there would be no no actual acquittal no protraction he wasn't putting in the work for that so it's gonna happen he was ready for it yeah i mean that's the only way to

[01:44:02] to ward this office to do one of those two things and he you know there's no he thought there was no point to it so if you really think of it like in the sort of existentialist or

[01:44:12] absurdist tradition not the kind of upbeat version of the you know sisyphus being happy kind of conquering the rest of the of the universe by acknowledging it but still you know performing

[01:44:25] his tasks with full knowledge that they have no ultimate purpose like k just like he did you know he dies shamefully yeah and there he never gets any questions answered but also never rises above and yeah treats the universe scornfully right he's defeated he's just utterly defeated

[01:44:45] he's defeated and i can't help but read this as as metaphor for life everyone meets that end yeah right we all are going to meet that end and k just wasn't willing to shadowbox with god you know

[01:45:02] or whatever like he was like this is this is not gonna get me anywhere so so fuck your unfairness like life is unfair it's unjust there is no there's no right or wrong to this shit when it

[01:45:13] comes to like his guilt or or innocence he wasn't willing anymore to put up appearances so it's like that he wasn't willing to go for the apparent acquittal right he was just if this if it's all

[01:45:25] meaningless and bleak and unfair if that's what life is ultimately uh it's senseless it's open to multiple interpretations because it doesn't make any sense and it's also utterly unfair and people are suffering when they shouldn't or not or not suffering when they should

[01:45:43] then i'm not gonna i'm not gonna keep pretending anymore yeah and the the people in the in the world of joseph k who are actively involved in the court have some maybe some control some meaning

[01:45:59] that they have from being the agents of this but i think it becomes increasingly clear that even they don't really know what they're doing and he's not even willing to play the game anymore in the way

[01:46:12] that they are yeah i mean i i agree i almost the other people in it they they feel so much like k's projections yeah they don't seem like they have an inner life of their own um in a way that

[01:46:25] i almost think like it's hard to know what in if there is a reality if there is a true reality in the trial like what the other people besides k are are like because it's completely

[01:46:36] impossible that everyone else seems to know as i think you said in the first episode on this like how did k get to be 30 years old and not know that this shit happens given that everybody else

[01:46:48] seems to know or at least a lot of just random people seems to know and the fact that they're in the walls they're in the attics they're everywhere you know um i once took an adolescent development

[01:47:00] class in college where uh one of the cool things we did there was an awesome professor one of one of the cool things was that he showed us films uh coming of age films and he pointed out that in

[01:47:11] in most coming of age films there is a scene that he called the scene of mandatory disillusionment when you realize that you know what adults aren't all that like some of them are terrible and like

[01:47:23] the things that they were saying weren't necessarily true or right and things you thought were important aren't necessarily aren't that important and so so the dawn of his 30th birthday realizing that the

[01:47:35] world is full of machinations that he had no idea we're there seems like just something that we gradually realize over time but that the systems that are in place not only are unfair but like it's

[01:47:53] unclear where they come from and how deep they go yeah and in that parable you know when the the doorkeeper says look if you think you get past me there's at least two other doorkeepers

[01:48:06] that you'd have to get past and i'm afraid of even looking at the third one but even i get the sense that like multiple he's only seen like the third i think yeah yeah it's it's

[01:48:16] impenetrable yeah it's like the is the thing you start to realize yeah just we're talking about pan psychism you know and consciousness and you know maybe that's one of these things that we'll just

[01:48:27] never understand and we can fight it and we can come up with you know zombie experiments and we can run MRIs or whatever but that's just that's apparent acquittal or protraction you know we're

[01:48:40] playing out the string yeah um i do think there is something deeply epistemological about this too it's like he never finds out what he's accused of he never finds out how the system works he gets

[01:48:52] no answers for anything which is you know how most people are when they die well them and yeah and the more he tries notably the less he knows right so it's like why even try at that point

[01:49:03] right there's there's there's no point at which you feel like he's made progress and understand toward understanding no these there's there's the illusion of it sometimes like you know a little bit of upbeatness maybe when the painter is there um but i also love that you know maybe

[01:49:20] one of the reasons he's been so blind to all of this is that he's professionally successful it seems like and he has possibly Elsa his girlfriend and he's probably feeling pretty good about himself

[01:49:31] and then so sometimes it takes like a shock like that maybe a parent dying all of a sudden out of the blue or you or your you know a brother your younger brother or something like that where all of

[01:49:41] a sudden you start to realize holy holy shit like this life is full of suffering and injustice yeah you're right i like that i like that the you know he was an ambitious man he had at the

[01:49:52] age of 30 reached a position of worldly success that most people don't reach and so he was kind of feeling himself like riding high and then you know one day his life changed the hubris they

[01:50:03] takes to those opening scenes i think yeah reflects that and it's so funny the way how just impotent it is from the start yeah transparently like uh not powerful or you know uh effective it is

[01:50:18] if there's any sort of positive message that i can find here is that yeah that arrogance with which he approaches the unfairness of life um from the beginning compared to in the end where

[01:50:34] he's literally become a puppet a puppet for the other men walking realizing that if he doesn't resist it'll go better for everyone yeah there is some wisdom to knowing when to resign and

[01:50:48] knowing that you can't control things and i still think that it's a dark and depressing end to it but there is some there is a truth to you know because sometimes just become like water you know

[01:51:00] let it let yourself be carried yeah i mean that is the buddhist idea and you lose your attachments you try shed attachments to what you think the world ought to be and just accept the world as it is

[01:51:12] and give up he gave up Elsa he gave up his duties at the bank yeah a lot of the the comedy of it comes from the mismatch between his pretensions like i'm gonna give this speech and i'm

[01:51:22] gonna rile all these people up and you know start a general revolt against the law and then the actual reality which is he has no idea what he's talking about and the people aren't really

[01:51:34] reacting to him in the same way that that in the way that he thinks and and that's where a lot of the comedy is is that mismatch but then the tragedy is in it's matching now it's the acceptance you know like he's figured it out there's no answers

[01:51:48] there's no control and there's no justice so just let yourself be killed like a dog and have the shame outlive you i think there is no better way to end this than that well we've

[01:52:02] solved the trial you don't need to read it yet again you know we're just going through and solving things yeah it's not a great mystery to us yeah uh it's the two guys that killed him all right join us next time i'm very bad

[01:52:57] i'm a very good man just a very bad wizard