Season 5, Episode 28 (#142):

Jim starts by sharing his excitement about his new super minimal reading glasses, wallet, and bank account. Lionel talks about how music gear reviewers are almost always biased toward the gear they are sent for free.

Jim recommends the tv series Dopesick, recommended by our guest Nyadenya from a few weeks ago. Dopesick is a fictionalized drama about the Sackler family and their role in the oxycontin epidemic, as shown by a series of characters. Michael Keaton plays a small town West Virginia doctor who starts to see the horror of opioid addiction in his community. Jim points out irony of a tv show about the dangers of a pharmaceutical advertising agency interspersed with ads for pharmaceuticals and proposes an alternative ad.

Lionel brings up Brian Aldiss, a British sci fi author and his book Helliconia, which is very close to the plot of the Steerswoman series in that it blends medieval culture and future tech. Helliconia is about a biosphere with extreme temperatures and about how living things survive.

After a brief discussion about time machines and the multiverse and finishing a trilogy, we talk a little bit about the book Putin’s People by Catherine Belton. Lionel launches into a thought about Viktor Bout, the arms dealer and how it connects to the book.

We have a new facebook page: facebook.com/jimandlionel/

Thank you to Jooooolia for helping us with our references.