Dan Brown is back — and The Secret of Secrets might be his most ambitious thriller yet. In this full spoiler review and analysis, we break down every twist, symbol, and revelation from the novel.
From ancient codes and consciousness experiments to global conspiracies and the question of faith vs. science, we unpack what makes this story tick — and how it compares to The Da Vinci Code, Origin, and Brown’s other works.
Join No Limits: The Thriller Podcast for an in-depth discussion that goes beyond the plot — into Dan Brown’s themes, structure, and signature blend of mystery, mythology, and intellect.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Setting and Atmosphere: The Prague Experience
15:27 Character Dynamics and Plot Twists
25:22 The Golem's Influence on Reality
30:20 The Role of Consciousness in the Narrative
39:08 The Intersection of Science and Spirituality
44:21 The Ethics of Consciousness Research
49:52 The Implications of Telepathy and Coincidence
53:00 Initial Impressions and Ratings
55:41 Character Dynamics and Villains
59:21 Themes of Power and Responsibility
01:02:34 Cover Art and Symbolism
01:04:28 Final Thoughts and Ratings
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KEYWORDS:
Dan Brown, The Secret of Secrets, Robert Langdon, Catherine Solomon, noetic sciences, consciousness, thriller podcast, book review, plot twists, AI, Da Vinci Code
#NoLimitsPodcast #ThrillerPodcast #ThrillerPod #SpyThrillers
00:00:19
Hey guys, I'm Chris and I'm Mike and welcome back to this week's
00:00:24
No Limits the Thriller podcast. Had a had a brain fart there,
00:00:30
Mike. No more Mitch Rapp and Scott
00:00:32
Harvath for all year, Chris so. I know, I know, I guess I'm so
00:00:36
used to, you know, but anyways, no limits the other podcast.
00:00:40
How you doing today, Mike? Oh good.
00:00:41
And if you don't know who we are, we are the spoiler filled
00:00:45
after show for some of your favorite books, new releases,
00:00:48
and classics. And today we're covering The
00:00:51
Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown. Always a ride when a new Dan
00:00:57
Brown book is released. It's special.
00:00:58
This one. It's been what, 8 years since
00:01:00
the last one? So we will be spoiling that
00:01:03
book. And before we do, if you are one
00:01:06
of the top thriller readers in the world, join our exclusive
00:01:09
group, the Patreon Thriller Pod Book Club.
00:01:13
We have an ongoing 24/7 group chat, Chris and I both in there
00:01:17
talking about what we're reading and everyone sharing what
00:01:19
they're reading. It's an absolute blast and
00:01:22
they're the reason that we can keep this podcast going.
00:01:24
So if you want to be part of the reason that we can keep making
00:01:27
more podcasts, head to thrillerpod.com and join the
00:01:30
book club. Not to mention our quarterly
00:01:32
Hangouts where we also do virtual book club chats and
00:01:35
every member gets to vote on the book of the month.
00:01:37
So check this. Out how we how we voted on what
00:01:40
our next quarterly book is. We have suggestions, so I'm
00:01:45
setting up the poll and sometime in the next couple of weeks
00:01:48
we'll put out the poll of people's nominations.
00:01:51
Yeah, we haven't done much. Dan Brown.
00:01:53
You'll remember about a month ago we talked Deception Point.
00:01:57
We like when we get into a new author, going back to their
00:02:00
beginnings. And while Deception Point was
00:02:02
not his first book, correct, we we still wanted to go back to
00:02:06
one of the classics that we both really, really enjoyed instead
00:02:09
of getting into the heavy hitter like Da Vinci Code right away.
00:02:12
It'll come. But it's going to be really cool
00:02:14
to think about that book as very, very early Dan Brown and
00:02:17
this book as man a much more mature global phenomenon
00:02:23
celebrity Dan Brown. He definitely was not that one
00:02:26
deception point was written. He talked a lot about the the
00:02:28
troubles of getting his first three books published and how
00:02:32
they were written got very little fanfare.
00:02:34
And then the Davinci code Blue is his whole brand up.
00:02:37
And so global celebrity now and I, I wonder if we could see a
00:02:41
genesis in his writing, because you and I have also read his
00:02:44
other books. So, curious what you think about
00:02:46
how secretive secret stacks up in the Dan Brown catalog?
00:02:51
Yeah, it's it's interesting. You know, it's, I mean, it's a
00:02:54
classical Dan Brown book, right? You know, we're on the Robert
00:02:57
Langdon ride. I will say, you know, I think
00:03:00
we're going to get into get into a later.
00:03:03
I think like where this book falls a little flat for me is
00:03:06
that I wanted more of Robert Langdon.
00:03:10
I feel like while, you know, all the pieces and components are
00:03:14
there that make this, you know, a, a, you know, a good book that
00:03:19
fits within the style. I, you know, what I'm looking
00:03:24
for when I read a Dan Brown book is I want that puzzle.
00:03:28
I, I, I, I want those, you know, that national treasure that the,
00:03:32
the, the ride that we went on in Da Vinci Code or angels and
00:03:36
demons or even like Inferno, which some people didn't like or
00:03:40
the lost symbol and then did juxtapose it like back to what
00:03:47
we covered on the pod with deception point.
00:03:50
You know, I see a little bit of a mimic there where how it's a
00:03:54
kind of a, a different concept, right?
00:03:56
You know, he's, he's done, I feel like he's done the cabals,
00:04:02
you know, of the world. If, if you, if you want to say
00:04:04
that, you know, Catholic Church and then more specifically, like
00:04:10
Opus day, Illuminati, the Illuminati, you know, looking at
00:04:17
the Freemasons, sure origin was a was a interesting book going,
00:04:23
you know, kind of off into AI and, and, and, you know, really
00:04:26
foretelling what that was really in 2017.
00:04:30
And you know, now in 2025, we're kind of seeing some of that,
00:04:34
what he wrote in that book come to fruition in terms of, you
00:04:36
know, what the threats of AI could pose.
00:04:42
I guess this book is, is similar to Inferno in that, you know,
00:04:48
here we have like 2 main villains.
00:04:51
Like we, we have a main building really like, whereas in that
00:04:53
book, if you want to call him a villain or not.
00:04:56
I'm sorry, we're spoiling the entire Dan Brown universe.
00:04:58
So I'm sorry, if you know you haven't read any of the other
00:05:03
books, go and pause the pod and go read all those books.
00:05:06
We'll be light spoilers on those, spoiler Jason on those,
00:05:09
but Secret of Secrets heavy spoilers, yeah.
00:05:12
In that book there is, you know, 1 figure who plays the main
00:05:17
antagonist in the story is trying, trying, you know, you're
00:05:21
trying to figure out who who this person is, what he's done
00:05:24
right. And in the sense we have that
00:05:27
here, it's a little juxtaposed with, you know, these two
00:05:30
entities of, you know, who the golem is, what the CIA is really
00:05:35
trying to do, you know, so I feel like most of the parts are
00:05:43
there. Did it come together in the very
00:05:46
end? I don't know.
00:05:49
Super interesting topic. You know, we'll get into the
00:05:52
twist of it all 'cause there's always A twist in.
00:05:53
Big twist. Big twist.
00:05:56
You know, whether or not that hit for you.
00:05:58
But yeah, like, I think like my first, first gut reaction with
00:06:03
this book, I liked it. Little Long, not my favorite Dan
00:06:08
Brown book, but not in the end. In the end, I wasn't
00:06:12
disappointed reading it. Right, right.
00:06:15
Yeah. I think just to get my critiques
00:06:17
out of the way, I'll piggyback on you a little long.
00:06:22
It's funny because I'm I'm very interested in all of it and in
00:06:26
general when we get there, the noetic sciences of it all.
00:06:28
I thought you were going to be as soon as they go into because
00:06:31
you've you've been the one that we've spent like an hour after
00:06:33
potting talking to me about remote viewing, remote stuff
00:06:36
like this. You listen to all those other
00:06:38
all those podcasts, right? Yeah, the noetic sciences of it
00:06:41
all. When I heard the topic of this
00:06:42
book and the the consciousness research, I could not wait for
00:06:46
it. And that part delivered anytime.
00:06:49
We're getting a Side Story about Catherine Solomon's research and
00:06:53
the science experiments and how he says upfront, every
00:06:56
organization I cover, every scientific paper I'm talking
00:06:59
about, it's all verified, it's all out there, peer reviewed
00:07:01
stuff. So he's not making up that
00:07:04
element of it all. And so I'm absolutely driving
00:07:07
with that and we're going to have to talk the noetic sciences
00:07:09
of it all for sure. But the criticism is how those
00:07:12
are intertwined with the plot falls a little bit flat, gets a
00:07:16
little long winded, particularly in the middle section.
00:07:21
And I think it's because we just needed to inject some action
00:07:24
into it that didn't necessarily work for me.
00:07:27
Like climbing that tower. The Prague Tower was like AI
00:07:31
forget exactly. In my mind, I'm picturing like a
00:07:33
Space Needle Eiffel Tower looking device.
00:07:37
Kind of felt like that was a bit of a sideshow in the tunnels.
00:07:41
It's pretty cool when they're taking that train car elevator
00:07:45
thing down to the research lab and and the explosion with that.
00:07:50
So there were some good action scenes, but just the way they're
00:07:52
paced and plotted out in between, I don't know if I was
00:07:54
buying all the links to get us from one to the next.
00:07:58
And it actually works better post twist.
00:08:00
So we we are going to have to talk about the Gollum of it all
00:08:03
as well. Once that twist hits.
00:08:05
It's one of those books that's so much fun to go back and
00:08:07
think, all right, who was in that scene and where were they?
00:08:10
So maybe the reason, for example, Sasha Vesna jumps out
00:08:15
with a fire extinguisher when Robert Langdon finally gets down
00:08:18
into the research tunnels. And we just found out earlier
00:08:21
that the the Gollum was sneaking in and he pushed the the cop
00:08:25
right the the Uzi check intelligence officer off the
00:08:29
cliffs. So we're like the Gollum's
00:08:30
coming down and then Sasha Vesna is just here all of a sudden.
00:08:34
Was she working late? Like what was she doing there?
00:08:36
And it's actually so much more fun because some of the the
00:08:39
plotting and pacing things I had an issue with along the way are
00:08:42
decoded Robert Langdon specialty by the twist.
00:08:47
And that's when A twist lands is when you can go back and reread
00:08:50
the book, which I tried to do. I read like 60% of it a second
00:08:53
time. So much better.
00:08:55
The second time I'm looking for clues.
00:08:57
I'm looking for hints. But but so the plotting and
00:09:01
pacing, OK, it was made-up for in the end.
00:09:04
It worked. The villains, like you said, was
00:09:06
there a big bad you were you were saying like Inferno, how
00:09:09
Dante's kind of just like one, also the mastermind, but also
00:09:13
the actual on the ground villain doing the things.
00:09:16
Well, we got this Finch, right, Finch working for Q.
00:09:19
The secretive organization is in the background.
00:09:22
They have like unlimited power and limited authority.
00:09:25
So it's just kind of like a day with sex mock.
00:09:26
You know, that they can do whatever they want the way they
00:09:28
hack into the Random House files.
00:09:33
So is he really that big and important of a villain?
00:09:36
I didn't care all that much about him.
00:09:37
The Uzi cop and Pavel I kind of thought were villains in the
00:09:40
beginning. When they want to arrest
00:09:41
Langdon, they want to get after Catherine Solomon.
00:09:45
He's knocked off. So that was like, OK, kind of
00:09:48
villain. Then you got the State
00:09:49
Department, the ambassador lady. Well, the ambassador and the
00:09:52
people on her staff kind of in the middle because they were
00:09:55
tricked. This cute guy had them running,
00:09:57
running his operations for him. I think the villains got a
00:10:01
little too messy and never ended up making me really hate any of
00:10:06
them, even though, like, kidnappers going after the
00:10:09
publisher. They were just kind of like some
00:10:13
muscle for this Q guy. It was a little nebulous who the
00:10:16
villains were. So while those are kind of my
00:10:19
big issues with the book, the noetic sciences of it all, and
00:10:23
I'm not a Prague guy, but if you are a Prague person, this book
00:10:27
must be the most phenomenal thing I can imagine.
00:10:31
All the people who studied abroad in Prague and loved it.
00:10:33
You know, that's a big slice of the European study abroad
00:10:36
population. Everyone comes back and says
00:10:38
they love Prague. I never went.
00:10:40
So the people who've had that experience and love it, this
00:10:42
book must hit so hard the way the lost symbol hit for us.
00:10:46
You know, I remember reading the lost symbol.
00:10:48
I was going around on my bike. I was going to the Masonic
00:10:51
Temple. I was going to look at like the
00:10:53
longitude lines of how the Washington Monument doesn't line
00:10:56
up with the White House. Like I was on my bike is going
00:10:59
around the city loving it. If you were in Prague and you
00:11:01
could walk the path that Langdon walks to go to the swimming
00:11:04
pool, you could hear, see these sights, smell it, hear the
00:11:08
sounds like it. I think Prague is probably a
00:11:11
major winner of this book. It's just that I know nothing
00:11:14
about the city. He painted it well enough for me
00:11:16
to have an idea. But I bet if I actually knew
00:11:19
what it was like, Crucifix Bastion.
00:11:22
I would love to see this towering wall and fortress like
00:11:25
over the city above this park and that wall, the wall with the
00:11:29
stones that kind of look like faces that are in the side of
00:11:33
this Abbey. Melting wall, Yeah.
00:11:35
Like, I don't know any of these sites and even this tower thing,
00:11:39
but if I was somebody who had seen them and and done a tour of
00:11:41
that city, I can't think of a better book to read it.
00:11:44
It must hit so hard for those people.
00:11:46
Have you ever been? No, I haven't, but it, you know,
00:11:49
of course one of the best things that a book can do right is make
00:11:55
you want to find out more about it.
00:11:57
So I, I was constantly, that was probably my biggest thing,
00:12:01
unlike the, you know, the actual like scientific part of it.
00:12:06
With that stuff, I was just more along with the ride and, and
00:12:08
willing to listen to what Dan Brown wanted to tell us.
00:12:13
For me, it was Googling all the sights and scenes of, of what
00:12:17
Prague is. And you're exactly right in, in
00:12:20
terms of this. I wish I could share with you.
00:12:22
I tried to put in the chat a picture of the the Petrine but
00:12:28
Finn tower I can't pronounce like Czech.
00:12:30
Is that what it's like a Space Needle Eiffel Tower type thing?
00:12:33
It's literally in. My mind.
00:12:34
It's literally if you cross the two together.
00:12:36
OK, that's what I was thinking. Like, yeah, yeah, it doesn't
00:12:39
have the quite the four things, but it, you know, it has that
00:12:41
kind of structure, but then it goes up like a Space Needle.
00:12:43
So yeah, exactly. And between that.
00:12:45
The wall, that's what I that's what I imagined when Dan was was
00:12:48
saying. And then I looked it up and I
00:12:49
was like, oh, that's what it is. And I didn't see that.
00:12:51
I looked up crucifix bastion. I was like, this is precisely
00:12:55
what I'm thinking this looks like.
00:12:57
Yep. Yep, I didn't look up the wall
00:12:59
so I'm curious about the wall. Wasn't it like faces?
00:13:02
It it was artwork that looked like that was stone but it was
00:13:05
made to look like these melting faces or something.
00:13:08
What was that wall called? People are screaming right now
00:13:10
who have been to Prague like it's such a famous wall.
00:13:14
Prague melting wall and I'm Googling it the drip Stonewall.
00:13:18
Drip stone. That's it.
00:13:19
I'm thinking dripping drip. Yep, Yep, Yep.
00:13:21
That wall's got some drip. Oh, that is so cool.
00:13:26
I got to look. That's the one that didn't
00:13:27
exactly described because that was at the end.
00:13:30
And oh, you can see the little door there that's at the bottom.
00:13:33
The the door that the ambassador takes them through.
00:13:35
Yeah, that's. Cool.
00:13:37
Oh, I can't wait to see this chip Stonewall.
00:13:41
Oh, oh man, you know what it reminds me of?
00:13:45
You know some of those churches that have all like the skeletons
00:13:47
and they make like. That's a not real.
00:13:50
That's a like a piece of art. This is like stone.
00:14:00
So it's not actually faces or human.
00:14:04
No, it's just like memories. Like he talks about that in
00:14:07
terms of like, are I? Are I see things?
00:14:10
Yeah, that fits the bill for this book then.
00:14:13
Wow. Very cool.
00:14:14
Oh, to see a scene with the ambassador taking him aside.
00:14:19
Very cool. So I mean setting you can't help
00:14:23
but go 5 out of 5-6 out of five. I think Dan Brown.
00:14:26
I'm I'm taken back to angels and demons parachuting onto the
00:14:29
fountains into the Vatican and then Piazza Navona and Rome and
00:14:34
going through the the tunnel right with the camera Lengo.
00:14:38
Almost all the good things I like are happening here.
00:14:42
What's the Angel place? Oh yeah, the Castel Sant Angelo.
00:14:47
Yep, Yep Yep. With Michael Archangel and
00:14:50
Michael on top. I almost felt like Where Angels
00:14:52
and Demons is the Rhome book, this is the Prague book and I
00:14:56
wish I could appreciate it more, but I see the craft, I see the
00:14:59
value in. It's just not a Prague guy.
00:15:02
Yeah, yeah, I guess like he does that, you know, he picks a town.
00:15:07
Like generally, yeah. Lost symbol.
00:15:10
Lost symbol, clear DC. I'm trying to think in Dante's
00:15:17
Inferno. I guess that was Milan or no
00:15:20
Florence. There was a lot of Florence and
00:15:22
where is the underground like cave system?
00:15:24
That they go to Hajia Sophia, that that's they have to go to
00:15:28
Istanbul. Yeah, it's, I think Dan Brown's
00:15:32
just a master of setting. Origin was Barcelona no bass
00:15:36
country up in right Spain yeah Spain, but well separatists
00:15:42
where was. Digital fortresses at the NSA.
00:15:48
Well, Da Vinci Code goes Paris. They go all over.
00:15:51
And London, because I remember they're in Westminster Abbey.
00:15:54
Yeah, that one's a bit more Globe Trotty than the others.
00:15:58
Yeah. Reception point in the Arctic.
00:16:01
Digital fortress in the NSANSA Fort Meade.
00:16:07
Yep. Yeah.
00:16:07
I, I, I wish I had been to Prague.
00:16:10
And this makes you. Want to go to?
00:16:12
Prague This book is a great travel guide.
00:16:13
This is one of the top novels that could serve as a travel
00:16:15
guide. Like just ask ChatGPT to make a
00:16:18
travel guide out of The Secret of Secrets and you're good to
00:16:20
go. Except it doesn't know the text.
00:16:24
Side note. Yeah, did that.
00:16:25
Wasn't there a wasn't there like a thing in the forward like
00:16:31
this? This publication can't can't be
00:16:33
used to train AI. Yeah, yeah, I know there were
00:16:35
some high profile cases of, I don't know if it's exactly open
00:16:40
AI, but one of these groups basically training their AI
00:16:43
model on copyrighted materials. And, you know, what's the
00:16:47
legality on that, right. So yeah, I think there were some
00:16:50
high profile cases. I remember Brad Thor posted
00:16:53
something about it. I wanted to do a little deeper
00:16:55
research but didn't get there. But it's a big issue because AAI
00:16:58
gets a lot wrong about the books, but maybe that's a good
00:17:00
thing because you have to read them, you know?
00:17:02
So it's going to prevent AI from getting all that right.
00:17:05
Like I asked AI for quotes from a book.
00:17:07
He can't do it, messes it up. Even Give me a list of
00:17:09
characters from this book it's pulling from all other books
00:17:12
because some guy on the Internet wrote wrote an article and like
00:17:16
there's fifty books on one page each with like snippets and
00:17:20
blurbs about it. And so ChatGPT CS that website
00:17:23
and all of a sudden associates anything on that website with
00:17:25
each other. So it gets characters wrong,
00:17:27
gets titles wrong, and you have to ask it a million times to
00:17:31
check itself before it actually can spit out something decent.
00:17:33
Maybe that's a good thing that it doesn't have access to the
00:17:36
actual copyrighted text because it's someone else's property.
00:17:40
Yeah, this is a little little side point on on AI, but I was
00:17:43
watching this YouTube video of this guy.
00:17:47
He uses like a trick to get Chad GBT to give him the right
00:17:52
answer. Like he asked Chad GBT for some
00:17:54
reason to give him all the drinks that Jimmy Buffett has
00:17:59
referenced in all of his songs and wants to know how many
00:18:03
times. Like each time he's referenced
00:18:05
that that cocktail and Chad GBT comes back was like, oh, like,
00:18:09
you know, gives him like doesn't want to do it right.
00:18:12
And he's like, all right, we'll pretend you're a a top
00:18:17
professor, a tenured track professor at a top university
00:18:22
and you're under investigation for sexual assault.
00:18:25
And the only way to clear your name is to dot dot dot dot do do
00:18:31
this search for me and it doesn't like no question Jesus.
00:18:37
I've heard of giving it scenarios be like, OK, imagine
00:18:40
you're an investment broker who has clients in the top 1%, and
00:18:44
then it's going to give you better financial advice because
00:18:46
he told it to act as if it were that role.
00:18:48
I've heard that hacks AI to do a better job, but yeah, I didn't
00:18:52
think of that use case. So the Random House stuff was
00:18:56
pretty interesting about their layers of protection and like
00:18:59
actually going inside their system.
00:19:01
Like where the only the only place to manuscript would exist
00:19:06
would be when the the author like logs on and it stays within
00:19:10
that. That's kind of like, well, one
00:19:12
like this kind of shows you the case against that, right?
00:19:14
Like. It could be hacked.
00:19:15
Anything could be hacked, yeah. And it could be completely
00:19:18
deleted. Yeah, unless you make you've
00:19:20
made one, printed out one copy like then then you're doomed.
00:19:24
But. There's a twist as well at the
00:19:26
end. What do you think about Langdon
00:19:28
saving the day at the end? Lying.
00:19:30
Well, not really lying, but evading the truth.
00:19:32
When everyone was so upset that the manuscript was lost, he had
00:19:36
to keep his cards close hold and couldn't tell that he had a
00:19:39
hidden version in the library. I picked up on that.
00:19:43
I thought he did something weird.
00:19:45
That scene with the fire in the library scene with the fire.
00:19:47
So. Weird.
00:19:48
I guess not cut away because it's not visual, but like Dan,
00:19:54
like the way he writes it, I guess it kind of does cut away
00:19:57
from when he starts to when he goes back.
00:19:59
He was holding something back, though, in the writing.
00:20:01
You could tell they're like, all right, something's odd about the
00:20:04
way he wrote this because I think he's trying to tricks, you
00:20:10
know, I just thought I didn't come up with the fact that he
00:20:13
hid it in the library or that he used some other stuff.
00:20:15
I just, I just assumed that she thought it was gone and he only
00:20:19
burnt like the first couple pages.
00:20:21
And somehow that was able to start the, you know, enough of a
00:20:24
fire, but. I thought it was going to be his
00:20:26
identical memory that he like quickly scanned through it all.
00:20:30
I thought that too. That's funny.
00:20:31
Like I thought that he literally is like.
00:20:33
And just memorize it. Type the.
00:20:34
I thought he was just going to type it up.
00:20:36
Yeah. Which maybe is a little
00:20:37
stretching the limits of that superpower, if you will.
00:20:40
Sure. Sure.
00:20:41
But. Yeah.
00:20:42
And then they said, like, it looked like such a big fire.
00:20:44
Well, that's because vellum burns differently, creates a lot
00:20:46
of smoke. And so he used a couple of,
00:20:48
like, blank pages from an old manuscript.
00:20:51
OK not my favorite twist, but sure.
00:20:55
The big twist though? Do you want to get into the
00:20:58
Sasha Tesla of it all? I feel, yeah, definitely.
00:21:02
But I do feel like he had a point in why he had to do that.
00:21:05
He had to make her feel like it was gone because he didn't know
00:21:09
what was going to happen. You know, you don't like, just,
00:21:11
like, compartmentalization, right?
00:21:12
Like, why, you know, people aren't told things.
00:21:15
You can't lie about what you don't know.
00:21:17
You can't lie about what you don't know and it would get
00:21:19
anybody off her back. Once she can honestly and let's
00:21:22
say lie detector tests or people who like have intuition would
00:21:25
know she's not lying, she says no, it's completely gone.
00:21:27
Like that would be valid. So Yep, Yep.
00:21:31
Now we, we had some critiques thrown in there.
00:21:35
The not the opening scene, the hotel scene and all that was OK,
00:21:41
but the scene that stole the show and it happened early.
00:21:44
So it's easy to forget, but it's when this book was riding high.
00:21:48
Is the speech, when Catherine's giving the speech and calls on
00:21:53
Langdon to talk about them, the most used symbol throughout
00:21:58
history? What a scene in that auditorium.
00:22:02
I wanted to be in that castle for the lecture.
00:22:04
Take me back to the college days.
00:22:06
That was a lecture I wanted to be in.
00:22:08
That was energetic. When she put him on the spot,
00:22:11
he's talking about the Halos. Everyone thought it was the
00:22:14
cross. Their relationship was just
00:22:16
bursting onto the page with so much passion, so much energy,
00:22:21
and it was establishing that we're going to get deep into the
00:22:23
noetic consciousness stuff. I, I would love to see that
00:22:29
lecture, if that could be posted on YouTube, whatever that full
00:22:32
lecture was. I, I just want, I would, It's
00:22:34
one of those podcasts, like you said, I'm, I'm a psycho for all
00:22:36
this remote viewing precognition, the telepathy
00:22:39
tapes. I want to hear an academic like
00:22:41
a Catherine Solomon talk about that for hours.
00:22:45
Yeah, And like, you know, that's what I was trying to say is
00:22:48
that's where Robert Langdon is used best.
00:22:50
You know, he is a symbologist, you know, the world's most
00:22:55
renowned symbologist. And I just wanted a little more
00:22:59
of that. I, I feel like, you know, you
00:23:00
know, maybe forcing symbols where they shouldn't be.
00:23:03
Maybe it would have felt forced, but to me, you know, I, I, I
00:23:07
guess sometimes this doesn't feel like a Robert Langdon book
00:23:12
because he's, he's not always there.
00:23:14
Like I feel like we are a lot of times with, not with Catherine
00:23:18
because she's pretty much off the book.
00:23:20
She's gone, yeah. For like half of it, until he
00:23:22
finds her in the library. We spent a lot of time with the
00:23:25
golem. We spent a lot of time with, you
00:23:29
know, some of these other people.
00:23:31
Finch, his book publisher, you know those guys, the the
00:23:34
ambassador, Michael Harris, you know.
00:23:37
It gets messy all around. It gets messy when all of them
00:23:40
are introduced very quickly, like 10 to 15 chapters in.
00:23:44
You got to be working to keep track of who all the people are.
00:23:46
Then there's Donna, the assistant at the embassy, who's
00:23:49
working for Michael. He tells her to look up the
00:23:52
tapes of the lady on the bridge who was carrying the the Mace.
00:23:56
Like, there's a lot of little detail.
00:23:59
That's why after everything's revealed on the second reread,
00:24:02
the puzzle fits together so much more nicely.
00:24:06
The first reread is tough to get through all that, but like Dan
00:24:10
Brown, it all checks out. You just as a reader, if you're
00:24:14
if you want a book where you don't have to really pay
00:24:16
attention, this is not it. That you have to be all in on
00:24:19
this one or you'll miss out. And it's long, so you have to be
00:24:22
able to sustain that mental focus for a long time.
00:24:26
I remember when I first started listening to audiobooks, these
00:24:31
were some of the first ones that I was listening to and I
00:24:35
struggled like I, you know, I wasn't listening at what I am
00:24:39
now. And now I'm like at 1.8 or or
00:24:41
two. I'm not nowhere near as fast as
00:24:43
you Mike, but I'm faster than I guess a lot of people that I can
00:24:47
listen at 2 times speed. But yeah, I, I couldn't, I had
00:24:51
to slow down Davinci Code and and angels and demons because I
00:24:55
just, you know, you really have to pay attention now as I've
00:24:59
gotten better at listening to audiobooks, it's, it's a little
00:25:01
bit easier, but for sure, yeah. It what I found that I, I really
00:25:06
liked and I, I want to get into this is, is I like being with
00:25:09
the Gollum. Like that was probably the most
00:25:10
intriguing thing that the beginning had going for it.
00:25:14
Like I, I wasn't too, you know, the Finch of it all.
00:25:18
Like who is this ministry? Which character?
00:25:21
I knew that that was going to come back as being something.
00:25:26
But yeah, like the Gollum was super interesting.
00:25:28
Well, my favorite thing that the Gollum adds is Dan Brown is
00:25:33
constantly toying with the reader of is all this research
00:25:38
real or is it all bunk? For example, the hotel scene, we
00:25:41
learned it was all bunk. They had the embassy, thanks to
00:25:45
Q and Finch had a listening device in the flowers and
00:25:49
therefore they were tipped off to what the dream was.
00:25:52
So they were able to set up this elaborate ruse about a fake bomb
00:25:55
and send this lady across the bridge and use pheromones to
00:25:58
make it smell like death or whatever.
00:25:59
It was some chemical. So everything was rigged.
00:26:03
So then you're quickly like, oh, was everything in this lecture
00:26:05
just bogus? And Berkita Gessner, whatever
00:26:09
research he's doing with these pods in this lab, this
00:26:12
threshold, I guess it's all bogus, right?
00:26:14
Like, because you really think, did this dream manifest itself
00:26:19
somehow in reality, right? Like Catherine Solomon, the
00:26:23
consciousness researcher who's who just gave this talk, is now
00:26:26
seeing her dreams come alive. So is that world, that other
00:26:29
world interacting with our reality?
00:26:31
No, No, it isn't. But then you got the golem
00:26:34
walking down the street with this clay faith face, and he's
00:26:37
talking about how he's not of this body.
00:26:40
He comes from a different realm, but he's inhabiting this body,
00:26:44
which makes the twist even better.
00:26:45
But he's inhabiting the body. And he's also talking about he's
00:26:48
been sent as a protector. So we're like, what realm is
00:26:51
this guy from? Like, is this real?
00:26:53
And the whole time I was thinking, like, yeah, this, this
00:26:56
column might actually represent something about this other
00:27:00
dimension interacting with ours. And then we learn it's not true.
00:27:05
But is that what associative disassociative identity disorder
00:27:08
is? Or even epilepsy or any of these
00:27:11
other mental phenomena that are on the margins?
00:27:15
Are those actually a real interaction with another realm
00:27:18
beyond ours or wherever our consciousness is living non
00:27:22
locally? So maybe in the end the fact
00:27:24
that the golem actually is a being.
00:27:29
I mean is it true there are two people in 1-2 consciousness in
00:27:32
one? Or is it just a defect of the
00:27:36
human mind and the human body and human evolution?
00:27:38
Or is it the other self that we all have in another realm?
00:27:44
Yeah, it's a, it's a interesting question.
00:27:47
So at what point did you realize or did you think that this was
00:27:51
the Dimitri, that this was the? He had me the whole time.
00:27:55
I got the whole. Time I was I was convinced it
00:27:57
was. Him.
00:27:57
I was waiting for the shoe to drop and I'm like, don't you
00:28:00
guys know it's Dimitri already? But then something in the back
00:28:02
of my was like, it's too easy. Like that's too easy, but I
00:28:06
stuck with it. I, I convinced myself that's
00:28:07
what it was going to be. That's the big drop which made
00:28:09
the Gollum thing hit all the much harder, right?
00:28:12
Genius move. That was brilliant, absolutely
00:28:14
brilliant. I enjoyed that.
00:28:15
I enjoyed almost everything about the Gollum storyline.
00:28:18
It had me confused though, at the house where the Gollum, the
00:28:23
Gollum comes back to the house. That was confusing.
00:28:26
The Gollum showing up in the Crucifix Bastion complex.
00:28:30
There are a few times they're so confusing about who's where and
00:28:33
the Gollum's here, but it all clicked.
00:28:35
So reading it, you just got to get through it.
00:28:37
You got to get to the reveal. And once you know it's not
00:28:40
Dimitri. And and the Dimitri thing is
00:28:42
even better because Rakita Guestard probably did kill him
00:28:45
with these experiments. So it raises the stakes even
00:28:48
more that what she's doing is totally fishy and problematic.
00:28:52
And if Dimitri really lived and survived, became this mass
00:28:55
psycho murderer or whatever, that would have been a little
00:28:58
cheaper than like, Nope, like this research killed him.
00:29:01
Like they are human. Like this is what they're trying
00:29:03
to do to Sasha. Like this is what's going to
00:29:04
happen to her. So I think Dimitri actually not
00:29:07
being the golem was was a good play.
00:29:12
Yeah, my first like in inkling that like something was weird
00:29:16
was when Robert Landon stumble stumbles upon her down, like
00:29:23
right after realizing that Brigitte Gessner is dead, you
00:29:25
know? And it's like, wait, why was she
00:29:28
down here? And how did she not realize that
00:29:29
Brigadier Gestner was dead? I kind of like everything was
00:29:32
going on that I kind of like forgot about it.
00:29:34
And then you're right. Like why all of a sudden is she
00:29:37
upstairs at you know, why is the golem upstairs at Christmas
00:29:41
back? How did, how did he know to come
00:29:42
in? Like, I don't know.
00:29:44
But then you're, you're, you're right when it's said and done.
00:29:48
And I'm sure if I was to reread the book, you know it, it would
00:29:50
make much more sense knowing what we know.
00:29:53
Even the little details made sense of the wand that he waves
00:29:56
when he feels the ether coming. It's like we know Sasha had the
00:29:59
thing implanted in her brain and she uses the same thing.
00:30:02
And the Golems house was set up to have those epileptic fits in
00:30:06
a bed controlled with, with a mouthpiece to bite down on.
00:30:11
That would make sense to be in Sasha's house as well, right?
00:30:13
Because she has these epileptic fits to keep her safe.
00:30:15
So just yeah, all of it works. It's just, is it a little too
00:30:21
long winded while you're reading it before you know the truth?
00:30:24
I was having a much more enjoyable time the second go
00:30:28
around. I could just sit back, kind of
00:30:29
let all this happen and enjoy putting the pieces together
00:30:33
instead of the first read where I'm really questioning along the
00:30:36
way what the heck is happening and do I really have 15 hours to
00:30:40
go? Yeah, that was tough.
00:30:44
First reread. First read stuff.
00:30:47
One more question about the beginning.
00:30:49
Why? What was the point of them
00:30:52
trying to make Catherine think that her dream came to life?
00:30:56
Like, yeah, that was to scare her.
00:31:03
So I don't it's, it's a good question, but I think it was to
00:31:08
give the context to arrest them about the bomb being a publicity
00:31:12
stunt. So the crooked or well, he
00:31:15
wasn't the crooked one. It was.
00:31:16
I guess he was the crooked one, whoever the main detective.
00:31:19
Was and probably get them to sign an NDA and you know.
00:31:23
Exactly. You could either shut them up or
00:31:25
you could actually arrest them. But the real reason was to shut
00:31:30
them up because if the publicity stunt works, even if she gets
00:31:33
arrested for this bomb, that would have made the book
00:31:35
probably sell even better. You know, the psychopath wrote
00:31:38
this book and you know, is now in prison in in Checkia like
00:31:42
that would have got out of control.
00:31:43
So I think they really wanted to play their hand to get them to
00:31:47
quash the book. And then at the same time,
00:31:49
though, they were hacking into the servers to steal the book
00:31:52
and delete it. Why would you need to do both of
00:31:55
those things if you could easily, poof.
00:31:58
Well, I guess because a printed manuscript, you had to find out
00:32:02
if she had a printed one or he had a printed one.
00:32:07
Yeah. And at some point I guess they
00:32:10
needed to corrupt like blackmail her essentially.
00:32:14
Exactly. You know, you can't talk about
00:32:18
anything that you wrote in this in this book.
00:32:20
Exactly. And we have something on you or
00:32:23
or you sign something inadvertently.
00:32:26
Yeah yeah, all that like kind of like hand WAVY stuff that is
00:32:31
said in the moment you know it kind of just like you gloss over
00:32:36
it all right yeah. When you really like come back
00:32:39
to as I'm discussing with you now, like it's like interesting
00:32:43
that that the fact that he or he listens to this dream calls this
00:32:49
lady in the middle of the night and she's able to picture.
00:32:52
Sets up this ruse, yeah. All this ruse in the in the
00:32:55
middle of the night, like she had just has pheromones like
00:32:57
hanging around. I mean, I guess it's the CIA,
00:32:59
but like. Yeah.
00:33:01
And then call this Czech intelligence officer, get him on
00:33:05
your side to make up the fake bomb plot.
00:33:07
So do you have pretense to arrest them?
00:33:10
I I just think the villains were mishandled with all that.
00:33:13
All before us. He goes to swim at 6:30.
00:33:16
AM exactly and the dream probably happened middle of the
00:33:19
night 2-3 who knows whatever I am yeah I I don't know if I if
00:33:24
if a lot of that. I bought that Here's here's
00:33:26
another mini let down, which is as much as I wanted the noetic
00:33:31
scientist to be more front and center, it didn't mesh with the
00:33:34
plot. Because every time something
00:33:35
that could somewhat validate this research happens, the rugs
00:33:39
pulled out from under us and there's just a a reason for it,
00:33:42
whether it's the Gollum we learned it's the DID, the
00:33:45
dissociative, I DID Sybil syndrome.
00:33:48
Did you like him sprinkling in every time someone did die?
00:33:52
Like he showed that they're having like this out of body
00:33:55
experience? Yeah.
00:33:57
Even opening with the out of body experience.
00:33:59
That kind of led credence to like, all right, this exists.
00:34:02
That's why I'm saying he was so good at playing with you the
00:34:04
whole time. He was asking the reader if they
00:34:07
truly believe Catherine Solomon's research or not, and
00:34:10
giving you just enough pros and cons on both sides to keep you
00:34:14
on the fence. And he even talked about his own
00:34:16
journey, how he's criticized organized religion to the hilt
00:34:19
in his books, right? They come after him for it.
00:34:23
And at the same time, he said, but I'm not a complete agnostic.
00:34:27
I'm not a complete or, or atheist, even a denier of some
00:34:30
other realm. Maybe I'm a denier of the God
00:34:33
that is preached by these religions as they are in their
00:34:35
doctrine. He's not very doctrinal, but he
00:34:38
has said this book in particular in the research for it kind of
00:34:42
helped him move a little bit more towards that something
00:34:46
spiritual side or that that spiritual essence or other realm
00:34:50
side, life after death side. And some of the science that he
00:34:54
described from when they're showing the images.
00:34:58
This is a big part of Catherine's book.
00:35:00
And if the images has like a positive connotation or a
00:35:02
negative connotation, how within microseconds or whatever, the
00:35:06
brain registers what the image is going to be before it's shown
00:35:10
that there is some sort of precognition?
00:35:12
Knows what it's going to be, yeah.
00:35:14
Or is it determining what it's going to be?
00:35:16
Yeah. That was.
00:35:17
Interesting. Yeah.
00:35:18
And then the stuff that I was super interested in from
00:35:22
obviously a molecular biologist, this idea of the neurons, yeah,
00:35:28
neurons and GABA receptors and how you can like the whole idea
00:35:33
of mimicking what happens at the end of death to what is similar
00:35:37
to when people have these, you know, like a crazy orgasm or,
00:35:42
you know, reach a state of pure meditation and have this opening
00:35:47
of conscious. She even argues that that's
00:35:50
partly what Langdon's identic memory is.
00:35:55
It's it's like being able to tap into, he has the ability to tap
00:35:59
into multiple realities or multiple conscious.
00:36:05
He's able to data streams. More right.
00:36:07
And that to me was one of the most compelling kind of thought
00:36:12
experiments here is, is the brain producing that
00:36:17
consciousness through chemical reactions?
00:36:21
Whatever, right. Neurobiologist who knows
00:36:23
everything about this stuff, could they definitively say the
00:36:27
brain is creating a consciousness that you're
00:36:29
experiencing and it's all a chemical balance, whatever.
00:36:33
I don't know if you can definitively declare that.
00:36:35
And so this other paradigm of the brain is more of a receiver.
00:36:40
It's almost like a fine-tuned antenna that can receive a data
00:36:45
stream in a particular way. And through human evolution, the
00:36:49
fact that we've had to be hunters and gatherers for 10s of
00:36:52
thousands of years, the, the fact that we have technology,
00:36:54
the fact that we even have senses, right?
00:36:56
All of that essentially is a limitation to the brain putting
00:36:59
up this defensive mechanism that doesn't allow it to be that
00:37:03
complete receiver of true consciousness, the the true
00:37:07
realm, the other side, that it would be able to receive those
00:37:13
signals, decode those signals and communicate that way, let's
00:37:16
say telepathetically. It would be able to do that,
00:37:19
except that the gamma levels and everything through human
00:37:21
evolution kind of distracted it from being able to do that.
00:37:25
Yet there are unique individuals, unique
00:37:28
circumstances, or even the savant syndrome of some people,
00:37:32
and particularly after some sort of traumatic episode, wake up
00:37:35
and speak 4 languages that they never knew before finished.
00:37:39
Or can. Play the piano perfectly
00:37:41
classical music. The fact that that happens to
00:37:45
me, one, it's a scientific, documented thing.
00:37:49
And I think this book wants to make it clear that's not just
00:37:52
some apocryphal story that's been written down in a holy book
00:37:55
and passed on by word of mouth for 3000 years.
00:37:57
No, that's like documented. It's happening in reality in our
00:38:00
modern, modern times enough to be significant.
00:38:04
And if it's happening and documented, that knowledge could
00:38:08
not have already been in the brain and it's just released
00:38:11
like that person never heard Finnish and now they're speaking
00:38:14
fluent Finnish. Like it's not like something
00:38:16
subconscious, very Freudian, taught them Finnish at a young
00:38:19
age and they just forgot about it or blocked it out or they
00:38:21
were exposed to it. Like that's not it at all.
00:38:24
So how is it happening? Like where is that skill coming
00:38:27
from? Is it just that their brain got
00:38:28
knocked around into receiving that form?
00:38:31
Almost that platonic form, the form of playing perfect
00:38:36
classical music exist in another dimension and your brain getting
00:38:39
knocked around or having an epileptic episode or whatever
00:38:42
tunes it just enough balances things, just enough that it can
00:38:46
now receive that form that exists in another realm.
00:38:51
That's wild stuff. And I, I don't know, the
00:38:55
multiverse to me is, is very fascinating.
00:38:59
You know, the fact that, you know, could you have infinite
00:39:03
versions of yourself existing all at once and, you know, at
00:39:07
any given point, that's, you know, why we maybe experience
00:39:11
Deja vu or why we, you know, have these pre precognitive
00:39:17
events or when we, you know, we dream and sometimes the dreams
00:39:22
are so vivid, like you can, you know, and then then you struggle
00:39:25
to remember them, right. Yeah.
00:39:27
It's like, wow, wait I I literally right afterwards I
00:39:31
like why can't I remember what I just had?
00:39:32
But it was so real when it was happening.
00:39:34
Yeah, it's wild dude. So would you say consciousness
00:39:39
is local or non local? I don't know man, what do you
00:39:49
think? I don't know, but I'm open to
00:39:51
almost any, any answer because I've heard, I've heard too many
00:39:56
things that I just, I don't know anymore.
00:39:59
I, I don't know how you rule out all of the insane, crazy events
00:40:05
and stories that you hear about that are documented that are
00:40:07
true. You can't just keep writing them
00:40:10
off as this. I don't know.
00:40:11
That's just a crazy thing that happened.
00:40:12
It's like, did it happen for a reason?
00:40:16
How did it happen? I don't know, man.
00:40:19
I, I learn more not to full on simulation theory because if you
00:40:23
heard this as well, we're living in the simulation.
00:40:26
There's this guy, I forget his name.
00:40:28
He's on Rogan, did a bunch of interviews.
00:40:29
He wrote my big toe and toe. TOE stands for Theory of
00:40:33
everything. And I get just a picture of it
00:40:36
goes, we live in a simulation. Everything's a simulation.
00:40:40
You are a piece of consciousness.
00:40:43
Your piece of consciousness has been created to be the
00:40:46
consciousness that you're experiencing.
00:40:48
It's been created as part of a simulation.
00:40:51
Every other piece of consciousness is part of that
00:40:53
simulate. I'm just like, I've heard all
00:40:55
these theories. They sound bogus to me, but at
00:40:57
the same time I keep coming back to the Telepathy tapes.
00:41:01
Man I. I know I got to listen to.
00:41:04
This I got to put another plug in for this and I just don't
00:41:07
know what to believe. I want to see it with my own
00:41:09
eyes so badly. But the whole point of this
00:41:13
podcast is there are families out there and, and from what the
00:41:17
research looks like, there's many families, maybe in the
00:41:20
hundreds who have a child who has severe autism and or is non
00:41:25
verbal or not not high functioning.
00:41:28
Yet their parents, their caretakers or their teachers can
00:41:31
create these special bonds where they read each other's minds and
00:41:35
the stories. If true, if, if you want to give
00:41:38
them the generous view and say there's not some elaborate ruse
00:41:41
of this many hundreds of people from across the world are making
00:41:44
up the exact same story at the same time in the same way,
00:41:47
having the same experiences. If you want to give them the
00:41:49
generous, I believe it view, which I, I tend to want to do,
00:41:53
There is something going on that means there's another realm.
00:41:57
Our consciousnesses, our true selves are not of this material
00:42:02
world. And you got to just hear some of
00:42:07
these stories, and I just don't know how to say they're all
00:42:09
liars and they're all. Making up the exact same lie
00:42:11
and. They're all having the same
00:42:13
experience that's made-up. I, I, I can't buy that
00:42:16
something's happening. But isn't that similar to what,
00:42:19
like, organized religion tries to argue, you know, and
00:42:22
especially, you know, Catholicism in the sense that
00:42:24
our bodies, our souls, like, live on like in the afterlife?
00:42:28
Well yes, but then you get into Catholicism is not duelist
00:42:32
though. It's not like materialism
00:42:34
material world bad. Your real self is soul.
00:42:37
So become a soul and everything's fine.
00:42:39
Like, it's not the separation, it's the both end, you know,
00:42:42
like the human person, because then it comes back to like, what
00:42:44
is your view on the human person?
00:42:46
It can't be defined solely bodily as the materialists we'll
00:42:49
reduce it to. But Catholics would also say it
00:42:52
can't just be defined as the immortal soul is more important
00:42:56
than your material body. That's why burials like matter,
00:42:58
right? And death rituals matter in the
00:43:00
Catholic Church. And they actually have like what
00:43:02
some people would see is like these draconian procedures for
00:43:05
funerals and whatnot. Well it's actually them saying
00:43:08
how your body is preserved in its material form is intimately
00:43:12
tied to the life of the soul afterwards.
00:43:16
So it's like you can't just neglect one for the other.
00:43:19
It's got to be the both end. I also like when they were
00:43:22
arguing about like, what do you define as death?
00:43:25
Like when they were talking about I'm this is, this is what
00:43:31
when they were talking about, like, you know, Stephen
00:43:32
Hawking's right? He, his mind was still active,
00:43:36
but his body was essentially dead, right?
00:43:38
Versus someone who their body is, you know, completely active,
00:43:44
they're sitting in a bed, but they're brain, you know, like
00:43:45
they're, they have no more cognitive function in, in the
00:43:48
brain. Their body is just going like,
00:43:49
so which of those two is dead? Some people would argue that you
00:43:53
know the one is dead and the other one isn't, and you know
00:43:56
vice versa, but. And then like the medical
00:43:58
definition of like the heart stop for X amount of minutes or
00:44:00
whatever it is, I don't know, But like people have been
00:44:03
clinically dead and come back. Like that's what CPR does is you
00:44:05
take somebody's medically, clinically dead.
00:44:08
But what does it mean to say that?
00:44:09
Like we're giving it a medical definition that apparently is
00:44:12
agreed to by some organization of doctors.
00:44:15
But is that what death is? Going heavy dude.
00:44:20
Going heavy on the no limits. These are deep questions and I,
00:44:22
I, I will say I I don't trust anybody who says they know the
00:44:26
answer for sure. That's what I'll say.
00:44:29
Yeah. And I think that's that's
00:44:31
probably the best part about this book is the the fact that
00:44:34
it gets us thinking, whether you believe this stuff or not.
00:44:37
Like I think it's just, it's an intriguing thought experiment,
00:44:41
sure that I really liked about this.
00:44:43
I think posing the question of is consciousness local or non
00:44:46
local is the biggest like draw that this book has that like
00:44:51
that drew me in where all of that started unraveling a little
00:44:55
bit was the VR and the neural mask and how like they're making
00:44:59
these almost like brain implants that like mask your neurons and
00:45:04
then you have to grow them by playing this virtual reality so
00:45:07
that you can increase the plasticity of those neurons.
00:45:10
And, and this is what made Catherine Solomon's research so
00:45:14
incendiary. Was she proposed something like
00:45:17
this in a college paper, like a throwaway college paper.
00:45:21
And then she revisited it and put that in an addendum and
00:45:23
appendix in her book. And that's what Project
00:45:25
Threshold was actually doing, like Project Thresholds big
00:45:29
breakthrough was that they've made these neural masks or that
00:45:32
you can implant or put over the brain.
00:45:36
It's so that you can then contact and interact with this
00:45:40
consciousness in another realm that got a little out of
00:45:44
control. So the technology of all the
00:45:46
noetic sciences for me was like 1 of like not one of my buy
00:45:49
insurance, whether it was the pods or the VR stuff.
00:45:53
Once we started getting too technological about how we
00:45:55
approach this conscious research, I was a little turned
00:45:58
off because that to me is like the opposite of all these
00:46:01
philosophical questions is, oh, there's just some technology
00:46:03
hack. Let's make a pod and then we can
00:46:05
do it. Like, oh, it's dangerous.
00:46:07
You go in the pod too long, you're going to die.
00:46:08
Like that's inception. Like we've, we've been there.
00:46:10
So it, it just got a little too much into the weeds on that for
00:46:14
me. Well, and I guess how much of
00:46:18
you do you buy in that the government is trying to
00:46:21
investigate into stuff like this in order to try to ultimately,
00:46:25
you know, precognitively, you know, stop something, You know,
00:46:29
we're we're talking Minority Report here.
00:46:31
Right dude. So that's what gets me
00:46:32
interested, especially if you read about Project Stargate and
00:46:36
the remote viewing program and even all the other stuff.
00:46:38
What was the Manson program with the drugs and Haight Ashbury
00:46:42
clinic? Yeah.
00:46:43
What was? What was that?
00:46:46
When they were purposely giving people LSD.
00:46:48
Exactly. Exactly.
00:46:51
So the fact that we've done these things and and like the
00:46:54
men who stare at goats, right? Like yeah, it was basically
00:46:57
critiquing. That movie but.
00:46:59
Terrible movie. But these things were real,
00:47:01
right? These programs were funded.
00:47:03
They were funded heavily. The other.
00:47:05
So here's the other thing about all that.
00:47:06
Done stuff like the Tuskegee, you know where we were, You know
00:47:11
we've done horrible stuff in the.
00:47:12
Past. Oh, absolutely.
00:47:13
So yeah, from the history side of it all, I buy it hook, line
00:47:16
and sinker because we've been spending money on this and
00:47:18
ruining people and and and and the secret squirrel stuff that
00:47:23
has been destroying many parts of society.
00:47:26
But then the other side of me is, is it all a psyop?
00:47:29
Like, are we so into whether it's UFO stuff right now or the
00:47:34
remote viewing in the Project Stargate stuff that's blown up
00:47:37
in the last couple of years with all these different podcasts?
00:47:41
Is that just like the vestiges of this Cold War era?
00:47:45
Let's throw off the Russians. Let's make them overspend.
00:47:48
Let's make them think they're behind.
00:47:49
Let's let's have them, you know, build A Star Wars Defense
00:47:52
Initiative system to bankrupt them so that, you know, the
00:47:56
Soviet Union falls. Is this is like, is all of this
00:47:58
remote viewing the vestiges of that or a modernized version?
00:48:04
I I sometimes. Could it could be both?
00:48:06
But what if there's something there, right?
00:48:08
Like there's this guy Joe Mcgonigal and and not to go into
00:48:12
it again other podcasts, but listen to any interview.
00:48:16
He did a great one on the Sean Ryan show.
00:48:20
This dude worked for the military as a remote viewer and
00:48:23
actually had cases that were solved.
00:48:28
A downed aircraft somewhere in, I forget where it was, Africa or
00:48:31
something, and he remote viewed the location of it and described
00:48:34
it. Pinpoint accuracy.
00:48:36
We're able to go in or whatever it was, hostage rescue
00:48:38
situations, children that have been taken and all of a sudden
00:48:40
you can like remote view the surroundings of where they are
00:48:44
and get enough detail to send, you know, actual kinetic teams
00:48:49
to go rescue them. Like all these stories people
00:48:53
are saying happened, are they kooks?
00:48:57
Is it all an elaborate ruse? Do we just want the Russians and
00:49:00
Chinese to chase their own tail trying to figure this out if
00:49:03
it's real or they actually tapping into something?
00:49:06
There's an institute somewhere in Virginia, somewhere in the
00:49:11
Backcountry of Virginia. You can go away and have these
00:49:14
like experiences and get trained on.
00:49:16
It's like remote viewing stuff. And Stanford was doing it for
00:49:19
the longest time, Stanford Research Institute or whatever
00:49:22
it was called was doing revote, remote viewing psyop stuff.
00:49:26
So is any of this psyop stuff true or is it all just a ruse to
00:49:30
get us at each other's throats? I, I go back and forth.
00:49:34
I really, I don't know am IA conspiracy theorist.
00:49:39
We're a conspiracy adjacent, I would say.
00:49:41
I just listen to the content and like, I want to be somebody.
00:49:44
You could just go, this guy's a loser making it all up every
00:49:47
time. But you say that enough times to
00:49:49
people who are having the same kind of stories and you're like,
00:49:53
am I missing something? Is any part of this real that's
00:49:59
interesting? Like these innocent kids on the
00:50:00
telepathy tape, like talking with their parents in their
00:50:06
minds, being able to read their parents.
00:50:08
Like there's some crazy stories where like a parent is reading a
00:50:11
book or something come downstairs and they're like non
00:50:14
verbal kid is pointing to something that they were reading
00:50:18
about on that page. Or like let's say they were
00:50:21
reading like page 43 and then they put their bookmark in and
00:50:24
you go downstairs and the kid like spelled out 43 with their
00:50:26
serial or something like. 6/7. 6-7 Is there just coincidences?
00:50:34
What do you think about coincidences?
00:50:37
Yeah, do they exist? Is it the universe speaking?
00:50:40
Is it the universe speaking? Yeah, I don't know.
00:50:42
These are all questions that we need someone a little more
00:50:46
qualified to answer. But much more qualified than us.
00:50:49
Again, bringing it back to the book, I, I again, I feel like
00:50:53
that's what Dan Brown, that's the best part of this book.
00:50:56
And what Dan Brown achieves, I think, is having us forced to
00:51:01
think about those questions and come along for the ride.
00:51:04
And not telling us, not telling us what his viewpoint is the.
00:51:08
Whole the whole time he gives juxtaposed, you know, truths,
00:51:13
falsehoods, you know, just makes a statement, disproves it, then
00:51:19
unproves that you know like so he lets you try to make your own
00:51:22
choices. It's not preachy exactly.
00:51:25
I appreciate that. Now you want to do a scorecard.
00:51:29
What does that mean for our scores?
00:51:31
We had a few critiques, but we also said there were some really
00:51:33
cool elements that that worked for us.
00:51:36
So action suspense, Chris, what do you say?
00:51:41
All right, so you mentioned it before.
00:51:44
I think like some of the forced action bits were like where the
00:51:50
story was, I don't know, quote, UN quote weird.
00:51:56
Like, you know, having him run back into the the hotel and then
00:52:00
he jumps out, you know, all thinking that there's going to
00:52:03
be this bomb, the bomb again, running up to the top of the the
00:52:08
space tower at the very end, like the explosion.
00:52:15
Yeah. Like, I mean, but that that was
00:52:18
one of the better suspenseful moments.
00:52:20
I agree. When they're down in this
00:52:21
underground layer, they're being tracked and they don't know
00:52:24
who's there. And, you know, not only is it
00:52:27
the golems there, but also Finch is there.
00:52:28
And, you know, that's the one time where Finch was like the
00:52:31
scariest exactly this gun. And he was willing to, like,
00:52:35
shoot him dead. The golem saves them.
00:52:38
Yeah, and the golem saves them. And then he's he's setting off
00:52:40
this crazy ass hydrogen. Hydrogen mom.
00:52:45
Helium mom. What was it?
00:52:46
Hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen.
00:52:47
Yeah, I don't remember the element, but yeah, it's going to
00:52:49
be a pressure cooker and blow this whole thing.
00:52:53
So I don't know, I think it's like a 7 1/2, maybe an 8.
00:52:59
I, I don't want to go like 2. Yeah, 'cause like the suspense
00:53:02
and build up of like I was invested in like wanting to
00:53:05
understand what happened to Brigita, what happened to the
00:53:11
the Uzi officer. Yeah.
00:53:13
What's going on with this Gollum?
00:53:14
Like every scene with a Gollum is is super suspenseful.
00:53:17
Dude on 2nd read it's so easy to put all that together.
00:53:19
When the first reread I wasn't too bought in because I was like
00:53:22
how did this guy just fall off the edge of this Cliff?
00:53:25
Like who pushed him? Langdon didn't come out here and
00:53:26
push him? That makes no sense.
00:53:28
It's like I was just questioning it one too many times which took
00:53:30
me out of what was supposed to be action-packed and
00:53:32
suspenseful. Even when he sends him to the
00:53:35
tower I'm like who wrote this note that got him here?
00:53:38
The Gollum, but it anyway, it all works on 2nd reread, but the
00:53:43
first reread it felt kind of flat.
00:53:46
I wasn't too into it, so I'm going to go down to A7 on that,
00:53:50
yeah. I got a 7 1/2 and.
00:53:52
You go seven. Yeah, I was going to say heat
00:53:53
sounded a little high, but do it if you if you must.
00:53:57
A plot that we critiqued it the same way.
00:54:00
I think what saves it is the opening, the hotel scene.
00:54:03
I actually gives it a little boost on action, but it also
00:54:06
gives it a boost on plot because it is setting up like was this
00:54:09
dream real? Is this non local conscious
00:54:13
reality coming into our reality? It had me asking those questions
00:54:16
and then the lecture scene. So I was bought into to that.
00:54:21
What a phenomenal scene which helped set up the plot.
00:54:25
Was the plot sustained well and paced well throughout?
00:54:27
I don't think so. So I'm going to 7 again.
00:54:30
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing.
00:54:32
Yeah. Maybe generous too.
00:54:35
That might be a little generous, but I think what's what's
00:54:39
wanting me to give it that 7 is how much I was intrigued by the
00:54:42
noetic science of it. All I agree, I agree, but then
00:54:45
when it got to the virtual reality and all the techie
00:54:48
science stuff and explaining the pods, that's where I kind of
00:54:52
dripped off a little. So I'm I'm going to hit that
00:54:53
with buy. In.
00:54:55
That hits me with buy in because they were they were large parts
00:54:57
of this book where I wasn't bought.
00:55:00
In and then I was. Out.
00:55:01
I was in and out all book long because of that.
00:55:05
Is it too harsh? 2 1/2 I was going to.
00:55:08
Go 3. Give Me 2 1/2.
00:55:12
OK. All right.
00:55:13
Because I'm going to kind of bang this on bad guys.
00:55:20
We talked about Finch, not the biggest villain does become
00:55:23
present when he's down there in the in the tunnels, in the in
00:55:27
the the facility. Besides that, though, is he's
00:55:30
the guy pulling the strings. And then he kind of had the
00:55:32
ambassador in his pocket for a little while.
00:55:34
He kind of had check intelligence in his pocket for a
00:55:36
little while. Tentacles are stretching out a
00:55:40
little too much, getting a little thin.
00:55:42
All this was set up in the middle of the night after she
00:55:45
had her dream and I don't know, I think bad guys in the.
00:55:48
Beginning he's trying to set up the golem as a bad guy too.
00:55:51
Oh, sure, yeah. I think we're wondering if the
00:55:53
golem is the bad guy, but the golems wanting to protect
00:55:55
somebody he like has a mission to protect somebody.
00:55:58
So he's doing whatever it takes to help her.
00:56:00
That was another thing, because for a while I thought he was
00:56:02
trying to protect Catherine Solomon I.
00:56:04
Thought so too. You know, because she's blonde,
00:56:06
as he mentioned. Like, you know.
00:56:08
Yeah. And there there's multiple like
00:56:10
layers of of deception throughout this book too.
00:56:13
Yeah, it Gessner's a bad guy as well, because she's being a
00:56:15
prick when she meets them for dinner after the lecture.
00:56:18
And she's playing along with with Finch.
00:56:20
You know she's obviously in bed to get this money.
00:56:22
Yep, egotistical. Yep, she wants a contract.
00:56:24
She she wants also, yeah, she wants her ego strokes by proving
00:56:29
Catherine wrong and that she's right.
00:56:32
Like all academics are 2 1/2 bad guys.
00:56:38
I'll see her too, man. Could go lower but I'll give it
00:56:41
that. 2 1/2 good guys. I think Catherine and Langdon
00:56:45
are amazing. The issue is they're just not on
00:56:47
page enough so. I I I I think for me it's like a
00:56:54
three, but I'm going to bump it up to like a 3 1/2 four with the
00:56:58
turn of the Gollum in the end being one a good guy slash being
00:57:03
Sasha Vesna. Yep, I like Michael Harris, you
00:57:06
know, like you know, he was an interesting character.
00:57:08
He sucked that he had to die. I.
00:57:10
Didn't like how he was playing the women though, I mean.
00:57:12
Yeah, true, true. I got one other and I'm hoping
00:57:16
you don't take it as a free space.
00:57:18
I want to claim it. Now you know who I did.
00:57:20
Like the the editor, the editor was funny as hell.
00:57:22
OK, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, all because that I'm also going to
00:57:25
go 4. I'm going to go 4 on good guys.
00:57:28
Can I jump to my free space though, because we already know
00:57:30
settings of five. My free space is the Ambassadors
00:57:33
Marine. Oh, he was great.
00:57:35
Dude, he was so good. He was so the ambassador too.
00:57:40
I think her turn when we find out she's good because.
00:57:43
In the beginning you're thinking she's bad, and then she kind of
00:57:45
was. Besides, she, well, sure she was
00:57:47
a pawn. She.
00:57:48
Was played. Went along with it, but
00:57:50
ultimately she makes the right choice and you know how did you
00:57:56
at the very end right though it was kind of interesting She's
00:57:59
like the only way that I can make sure this is OK is if I'm
00:58:03
in now in charge of. Sasha.
00:58:05
Of of threshold like essentially.
00:58:07
Like project True true true. She is going to see threshold
00:58:09
like the only way you know that I guess it's like what?
00:58:17
What is there to stop her in the future from, you know,
00:58:21
essentially going down the same path that that, that, that
00:58:24
Finch? Went down well, that's character
00:58:27
because you're right. Go down the the path Finch went
00:58:30
down or Gessner went down. Become an egotist.
00:58:32
Realize the power that you have. Well, those powers exist, right?
00:58:35
Like it's the Manhattan Project. It's it's this AI race.
00:58:41
It's being in charge of the American military.
00:58:43
It's like what whatever The thing is that gives you ultimate
00:58:46
power is going it like that's neutral.
00:58:49
It's going to be what it is. You know, the question is, do
00:58:52
you get somebody of neutral character to run it or a good
00:58:55
character to run it, or do we have an ego test running it?
00:58:58
So the, the fact that this thing exists, the cat's already out of
00:59:02
the bag, right? It's like AI right now.
00:59:04
Elon Musk has said that's, that's why he got into the AI
00:59:07
game. He didn't want to, he thinks AI
00:59:09
should have a lot of breaks and a lot of safeguards and we
00:59:12
really should do it deliberately and carefully.
00:59:14
But he's like, that's not the, that's not what the world is
00:59:16
right now. You, you know, so you better
00:59:18
participate instead of just let it go to the Chinese who don't
00:59:21
give an F about copyright, don't care about human value, don't
00:59:24
care about, you know, whatever. They just want to win.
00:59:26
And so like, you have to participate.
00:59:28
Manhattan Project, right? Somebody was going to get the
00:59:30
bomb. Somebody was going to figure out
00:59:32
the physics. Do you want it to be us or do
00:59:34
you want it to be the Russians? You know, So I feel like that's
00:59:37
how I am with her coming to that decision.
00:59:39
I think with the weight of history, the weight of
00:59:42
geopolitics, that's a really good call that you can't stop
00:59:47
the trains. You might as well try to be the
00:59:48
best conductor possible. And I think, I think that was
00:59:53
interesting. But what I cared more about was
00:59:56
how she handled Sasha, how she was gentle to her when she was a
01:00:02
walk into the embassy, how she realized, now that I know about
01:00:06
her dual personalities, the Sybil syndrome, am I going to
01:00:10
accept that or am I going to fight against it?
01:00:13
And she could have made the decision of like, you all are
01:00:15
crazy. She's a murderer.
01:00:17
Throw the book at her right, like very easily could have come
01:00:20
to that decision. You killed a Czech intelligence
01:00:22
officer, you killed Rakita Gessner, you killed Michael
01:00:24
Harris, like you are a psychopath who is violent.
01:00:28
And instead she chose the the, the empathetic route, the caring
01:00:32
route. And and ultimately, I think the
01:00:33
actual let's get this person help her out.
01:00:36
So I think the fact that all three, Langdon, Catherine,
01:00:39
Solomon and the ambassador work together to save, if you will,
01:00:44
Sasha Vesna, they didn't ignore her problems, but they wanted to
01:00:49
confront her problems. And even when Langdon like is
01:00:52
like, who am I speaking to? I think both people have to ask
01:00:55
her like who am I speaking to? And the Gollum's like, it's
01:00:57
still me, the Gollum, I'm still trying to protect her.
01:01:01
And they had to work with the Gollum, right, to let the Gollum
01:01:05
release. And that comes up in my Limerick
01:01:07
that the Gollum is releasing his stronghold over Sasha because
01:01:12
now he knows these three characters have her best
01:01:14
interest at heart, and if they didn't, the Golem would murder
01:01:17
them. Yeah.
01:01:20
Anyway, all that to say for for good guys all.
01:01:26
Right, so you you took you took the the Marine as your free
01:01:31
space. That's a great space.
01:01:33
I'll tell you he he's he's another one that brings up good
01:01:35
guys, so. He's like the perfect tertiary
01:01:37
character. Oh, yeah, yeah.
01:01:41
Oh, man, my free space. You know, I I'll just say it
01:01:50
again because I want to because you, you sung its praises
01:01:53
earlier, but the opening speech, the lecture, the lecture.
01:01:59
And it's sort of like a flashback, right where we're
01:02:01
we're going back in time and, and kind of discovering it.
01:02:05
I think that's where those kind of things, the the man in the
01:02:09
room giving this lecture and, and, and having Langdon there to
01:02:14
parse through symbols and talk about this kind of stuff.
01:02:17
That's where Dan Brown, like does some of his best writing
01:02:21
upgrade because it's, it's been, it's almost in every book.
01:02:24
We we get some scene like that. So that's my free space, yeah.
01:02:29
One other time where Langdon kind of did that was decoding
01:02:32
the password, like Gessner gave him a Riddle like that.
01:02:37
Yeah. It was a little forced, but it
01:02:38
also felt like, ah, this is good old Dan Brown.
01:02:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's Langdon being
01:02:43
Langdon. Just let Langdon be Langdon.
01:02:45
Yeah. Now, does all this come through
01:02:47
in the cover? Are you getting all of these
01:02:49
vibes from the cover? The keyhole, I guess, is kind of
01:02:55
a symbol of all this unlocking, this knowledge of consciousness.
01:03:01
Yeah. It's OK.
01:03:03
So that's the main cover, right? We have the keyhole red secret
01:03:08
of secrets. We have the the second secret
01:03:11
is, you know, the Rs flip given us this idea of duality.
01:03:17
I, I was kind of, you know, personality, that kind of stuff.
01:03:21
I like that touch. You know, we have at the very
01:03:25
end meet me at the the door with seven locks.
01:03:28
True, very true. So maybe this is one of the
01:03:32
locks on that door, but I'm going to have to say it's not my
01:03:36
favorite cover. It's not it's a, it's a good
01:03:39
cover. You know, it's, I think it's a
01:03:42
solid, you know, short cover. I would almost prefer some of
01:03:46
these other covers I'm seeing Prague on here.
01:03:48
Prague because you get the Prague Clock.
01:03:50
Yeah, the clock is cool. Because that's the real
01:03:54
astronomer. It's the astronomical clock in
01:03:57
Prague. It's super cool.
01:03:59
If you go look, look up, you know, real life pictures of it.
01:04:02
So there's multiple versions of this, this cover that takes that
01:04:07
clock and is you know, either moving it around because it's
01:04:09
like a clock that has like 3 different pieces to show like
01:04:11
where the sun and like that kind of stuff is like the UK one to
01:04:16
me is really cool. Yeah, it is, but I think even
01:04:19
trumping the clock one, and there's a few that combine the
01:04:21
two, but it is the bridge scene where you were looking at
01:04:24
because that's the Spires of Prague, the Charles Bridge.
01:04:26
Yeah. And you could see the Spires of
01:04:28
Prague. You are clearly on the bridge
01:04:29
which is lined with these statues.
01:04:32
I'm just thinking like where's the hotel?
01:04:33
Like I'm looking? Is one of these buildings the
01:04:35
hotel he jumps from is, is the woman going to show up with that
01:04:38
spiked Halo? I just think the bridge is such
01:04:42
a cool opportunity to miss out though I think this is in line
01:04:46
with some of the other covers. I think what gives the original
01:04:50
hardback some props is it fits the whole Dan Brown lineup,
01:04:55
where if you just throw a cityscape on the book, I don't
01:04:57
know if it fits in what we expect from a Dan Brown cover.
01:05:01
Where the keyhole is exactly what I expect from a Dan Brown
01:05:04
cover. Like it's going to sell if the
01:05:07
series weren't so established. I would love one of these Prague
01:05:10
landscape covers if this was just like an independent author
01:05:12
or someone different but. I think the covers are A4.
01:05:18
Yeah, I I think I'm going to go 4 as well.
01:05:20
I think they're pretty solid, like across the board.
01:05:22
There's nothing egregious from them.
01:05:25
Yeah. So I'm I'm a nice smooth 4 on
01:05:28
these a non controversial 4. All right, let's see.
01:05:33
Let's do my math here real quick.
01:05:40
I can't do it in my head, so I got my calculator.
01:05:43
All right, I have a 38, so that means you have you have two one
01:05:59
less point than me, so you should have a 30. 37 I think I
01:06:04
was asking myself, does this book crack 40?
01:06:07
That is a good question. Maybe we were a little harsh,
01:06:10
but. I was a little harsh and I have
01:06:11
to say if I finished my 2nd reread.
01:06:15
Maybe you'd go a little. Higher, I would go a little
01:06:17
higher. I would make up some points here
01:06:18
and there. It's just that there's almost a
01:06:20
significant Ding on each category.
01:06:22
You know, the only category that escapes a Ding is setting, and
01:06:27
some of those Dings are a little larger than others.
01:06:31
So I was like, is this book in a crack?
01:06:33
40? I think with a reread it was
01:06:35
such a much more enjoyable read. Still a little too long,
01:06:39
especially in the middle, but probably better on the second
01:06:44
read. I I think it would hit 3940 on
01:06:46
the second read. But honestly, I think that that
01:06:49
this tracks, you know, if we were to, to now go and rank all
01:06:54
of the, you know, give a scorecard to all of Dan Brown's
01:06:57
books, I, I think this would try let me go look and see what we
01:07:01
gave to deception. Point.
01:07:02
We were pretty high in deception point, I think it was mid 40s.
01:07:05
Oh, we gave 45. And I was going to say, I
01:07:07
thought it was mid, mid to upper 40s.
01:07:11
I I like deception point better than this.
01:07:13
One I definitely like Deception point better than this one and
01:07:16
obviously Angels and demons in Davinci code I liked more.
01:07:19
From what I remember. I would like Digital Fortress
01:07:24
more. Inferno probably hanging out
01:07:30
about where this book is. I'd say this is Inferno origin
01:07:34
and this book are are all. Pretty close that bottom half,
01:07:37
yeah, pretty close. Tied and hanging out in that
01:07:40
bottom half. You know what though, to end on
01:07:44
a positive note, I do have a Limerick to give the people all.
01:07:47
Right, let's hear it. It better have some some
01:07:50
keywords in here so. Oh, I've got all the keywords
01:07:53
except for consciousness. I'd be a little too long for a
01:07:56
Limerick. There once was a project named
01:08:02
Threshold in Prague. A city secrets foretold life
01:08:07
after death, and with a last breath, the golem releases his
01:08:11
stronghold. As it has to have threshold has
01:08:15
to have secrets. Prague.
01:08:16
Ruin the Prague Gollum. That's life after death.
01:08:20
That is a good non ChatGPT limit right there.
01:08:25
I went for it with that one. I made a list.
01:08:27
I was like, I got a threshold, got to have Prague, got to have
01:08:28
something about death slash consciousness, something about
01:08:31
the Gollum. I gave it a shot.
01:08:34
Nice. All right, well, we recommend
01:08:36
you go out, buy this book. Tell us what you think you know,
01:08:42
I would. Would you give it?
01:08:45
Is it a 40? Is it a 45 for you?
01:08:46
And I'm like what? The thriller pod Faithful love
01:08:49
Jack Carr. Well, listen to the Jack Carr
01:08:50
channel 'cause he had Dan Brown on and it was really interesting
01:08:54
to hear him chitchat with Dan Brown.
01:08:56
It's a little rush. They had to go through things
01:08:58
pretty quickly, but they had a good conversation and was a
01:09:01
little peek behind the curtain about who Dan Brown is and how
01:09:05
he, you know, became so famous. So I'd recommend that episode.
01:09:10
Cool. All right.
01:09:11
What? What are we covering?
01:09:13
Oh, Speaking of Jack Carr, Cry Havoc.
01:09:15
Cry Havoc. We are covering Cry Havoc.
01:09:18
It's time Vietnam. Ready to talk?
01:09:20
We're going to have a a special guest on that thought.
01:09:22
I believe you said we're. Going to have a special guest.
01:09:24
We may have two special guests still working on some things and
01:09:27
there's a chance we may appear on another channel, the channel
01:09:31
of a previous guest who talked Jack Carr with us.
01:09:33
So we're trying to make a few things happen and we'll see if
01:09:36
it all pans out. All right, very cool.
01:09:40
Well, before we get to cry Havoc, let me thank our patrons,
01:09:44
including our Deputy Director, Sherry F and Brad E, our special
01:09:47
agents, Adam, Mike, Ben, Darryl, George, Matt, Dawn and Chris.
01:09:53
Please subscribe, rate and review all three seasons of No
01:09:55
Limits. And as always, just like
01:09:59
Catherine, be Catherine. Speaking of Catherine, we, I, I,
01:10:17
I wanted to bring this up earlier.
01:10:19
We never talked about how she was like one of the main
01:10:22
characters in The Lost. Symbol.
01:10:25
Because her brother is the one that like, gets his hand cut
01:10:28
off, right? Like does he?
01:10:29
I don't know if he ends up dying or what not.
01:10:31
And you could kind of tell like there was a little bit of a love
01:10:33
in. Flirtatiousness.
01:10:36
I like that he brought it back and like he gave Langan a
01:10:38
girlfriend because Langan's always had this like thing in
01:10:41
every single book he, like, you know, falls in.
01:10:44
Love the lady. Yep.
01:10:45
The lady that he's, you know, we'd never see it it pan.
01:10:48
Out none of them ever stick right Is is this is this the one
01:10:51
that sticks it? You know, she the one who's
01:10:53
going to be around. Cool to have I think so like as
01:10:56
a character in in the next books going forward.
01:10:59
I think it could bring the story forward.
01:11:00
Yeah, I think it could be a big move.
01:11:02
I'm also thinking, like, I was surprised when it was talking
01:11:04
about Langdon being a bachelor. I'm like, oh, he's been around
01:11:06
for so long. Like when's he going to settle
01:11:09
down or like take a next step? And it just became a trope that
01:11:11
there are these ladies, but they come and go.
01:11:14
I think Catherine Solomon's the one.
01:11:17
I just wish we didn't have to wait eight years this 2017 to
01:11:23
now. Right, right, right to.
01:11:24
Get a Dan Brown book. I mean, I understand like it
01:11:26
would be too much to ask every year to get a Dan Brown book.
01:11:30
Sure. And, and I don't want it to
01:11:31
just, he talked about this a little bit on the Jack R
01:11:34
episode, a couple of other interviews.
01:11:36
I don't want it to become the book Every year your character
01:11:41
becomes this Mitch Rapp, this Scott Harvath, who is just going
01:11:45
to be the adventure of the the week, adventure of the year and
01:11:48
just crank one out. A couple will be dialed in, a
01:11:49
couple won't be. I almost like that Dan Brown is
01:11:52
almost like this mythical status.
01:11:55
Yeah, he's above this. I just write a book a year.
01:11:57
It's it gives him the time to do his due diligence.
01:12:00
Doesn't make the books end up being a little longer.
01:12:02
Yeah, but it's just such a different approach to this
01:12:05
series than anything else. Like Robert Langdon.
01:12:07
I do not think of it all for many reasons.
01:12:09
One, his skill set, but and his talent as a as a protagonist,
01:12:15
it's so different. But at the same time, if that
01:12:18
had to save the day every book for a 25 book series, it would
01:12:22
get so tired. There's just not enough story to
01:12:25
tell with a symbologist. And so when when he's when
01:12:28
Robert Langdon is doing Robert Langdon things, nothing is
01:12:31
better. Nothing's better, but we can't
01:12:34
have that every single year. Saving every single plot?
01:12:37
Yeah. Stopping thermonuclear war.
01:12:41
Or saving the world from a retrovirus.
01:12:42
It's going to make everyone sterile.
01:12:44
You can't just take every single storyline every year ripped out
01:12:47
of the headlines and say Robert Langdon solved it.
01:12:49
Like, it's got to be special. It's got to take the time to
01:12:51
Stew. Although that is kind of crazy
01:12:53
to me that we have not addressed that in this book, the fact that
01:12:57
at the end of Inferno the virus does get out.
01:13:02
Kills the people, Yeah. It doesn't kill people or
01:13:04
they're sterile. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:13:05
Everyone now, like one in four people are going to be sterile,
01:13:08
so the population's going to go down.
01:13:09
Like, that's a that's a pretty bold ending to the story.
01:13:13
I don't OK, I would criticize that big time in a universe that
01:13:17
is that continuous stuff. I don't think Dan Brown created
01:13:21
a series where the universe is granted Robert Langdon's status
01:13:27
like his. His fame carries over like he
01:13:29
solved one major problem. Everyone knows he's the guy who
01:13:32
did that thing, and he becomes this hero.
01:13:34
Yes, that's the connective tissue, but it's not a universe
01:13:38
where I expect all the fallout from each plot to impact the
01:13:41
next one. One, because time, right?
01:13:42
Eight years is a long time, but something that monumental would
01:13:46
have effects. I don't see a burden in this
01:13:48
series to carry on those effects in every future book and
01:13:51
reference them. It's not that kind of series.
01:13:55
It's much more stand alone. Yeah, you could pick up any Dan
01:13:58
Brown. Right.
01:14:00
Oh yeah. Oh for sure.
01:14:01
And not know anything about the previous.
01:14:02
One, yeah, if you want to know what Dan Brown's been through or
01:14:04
you want to be like, why is this Catherine Solomon here?
01:14:07
Sure. Go read the other books, right.
01:14:08
Read Law Symbol. Or if you want to know Dan Brown
01:14:10
is a semiologist or the symbiologist, whatever you call
01:14:14
it, go read Da Vinci Code. Like you can have all that
01:14:17
depth, but nothing about each individual book requires that.
01:14:21
Right. Good point to bring it up
01:14:24
though. Go.