S02E13 — Flatland

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Flatland.

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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

Get ready to enter Flatland – where everyone’s a shape, women are literal lines, and political satire stabs as sharp as a triangle’s point. We’re breaking down the wildest novella you didn’t know you needed and the bizarre animated movie that tried (and sort of failed?) to bring it to life. Come for the Victorian shade, stay for the math jokes and CGI chaos.

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The Flatland book is dense, witty, and deeply satirical, using shapes and dimensions to critique Victorian society, class, and gender roles. The film adaptation gives it a low-budget CGI glow-up and adds wars, religious conspiracies, and an entire third dimension – sometimes helpful, sometimes… very confusing.

Tim: The book was better.
– Book Score: 7/10
– Movie Score 6/10

Donna: The book was better.
– Book Score: 8/10
– Movie Score 6.5/10

Rebekah: The book was better.
– Book Score: 6.5/10
– Movie Score: 5/10

Josiah: The book was better.
– Book Score: 8/10
– Movie Score: 8/10

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Full Episode Transcript

00:00:00] Rebekah: Hey, welcome to the book is Better podcast. We are four people. We happen to be family, Molly as well, and we review book to film adaptations. Um, today we’re gonna be reviewing flat land, a romance of many dimensions. So spoiler alert, oh, that 

[00:00:20] Tim: sounds so romantic. 

[00:00:22] Rebekah: You know, I thought it was gonna be romantic and I feel a little bit tricked, so we can talk about that later, Uhhuh.

Uh, but spoiler alert, if you have not had a chance to read this book, since it’s publishing in 1884, you might want, wanna stop listening now. Uh, we are also going to spoil the obscure and nearly impossible to find versions of this movie Wow. That were released almost 20 years ago. So, uh, you know, spoiler alert for those of you who were worried about that beforehand.

Um, I do wanna thank our, uh, listener Nicholas, for recommending. Flatland. Yeah. And this will become more apparent as we, uh, do our episode. But Nicholas is an incredibly brilliant engineer and mathematician, which probably makes more sense now to think about as we consider, uh, flatland his recommendation.

Thanks, Nicholas. So thank you for recommending and if you, baby listener would like to recommend something on our podcast, don’t you do that in the form of a five star review about how much you love the podcast. Yeah, you’d love to hear this. Yes. And then you can tell us what you would love to hear. I’m just kidding.

You can also tell us in Discord or text me, you know what? A lot of you have my number. Just text me. And so today as we introduce ourselves, the fun fact that we’ll share is what is your favorite book or film featuring gold commentary? So I’ll go first. Mine is easy. I’m Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the pod family.

And my favorite political commentary book bar none is definitely 1984. Um, I adore it. I like have so many quotes from it memorized and I think it is just an incredibly important and poignant picture of things that we all need to be aware of and need to need to see. And uh, if you have not read 1984, you really should.

I believe we’re covering 1984 later this year on the podcast. So. That’ll be a lot of fun. 

[00:02:14] Donna: So I’m Donna. I’m the wife and mom of our little two dimensional universe. I would say, I think my favorite is written into a book after it was put on the screen. So I, I don’t know if that counts, but, um, I said book or films.

You can barely pick whatever. Well, okay, I’ll, oh, see, I was just had film in my head. Um, I mean, I just had book in my head, so I’m gonna go with the Star Trek universe. Mm-hmm. Really? Um, there are several iterations of Star Trek from the original series all the way through t and g and Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.

I mean, there’s so many. There have been so many different spinoffs of the original series, and each one of them takes a very interesting look at what political landscape and what worldview will look like. Out in the future. I think the one thing they all have in common is they basically feel like this present world that we are in was just bad and we made mistakes.

And, and there’s reference in several things of, you know, nuclear wars and we just wiped ourselves out and rebuilt. Civilization had to be rebuilt, but, but a few people left, whatever. And I know that’s a lot of what sci-fi does. Obviously it builds a new world. Usually. I, I’m gonna make, that’s a grand statement because that might not be the majority of the time, but I think usually because the author or the creator of, of the work has some really strong thoughts about their current society.

So they craft, I mean, that’s our imagination, right? They craft a world that’s gone on. I mean, we could even go all the way back to scripture being written and inspired about what our world is and what choices we’ve made versus. What a perfect world will be and could be. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna go with Star Trek and it’s so full of, uh, it’s filled my life so much for the last, uh, 61 years.

[00:04:19] TJ: Hi, I’m Josiah, I’m the Pentagon to this square in line over here. Ha 

[00:04:27] Tim: Right. 

[00:04:28] TJ: I have some nervous laughter. I would say, you know, probably honorable mention to something like Dune, maybe Hunger Games. But my, my favorite book that has made me think the most about, uh, political realities over the ages is probably Game of Thrones and The Game of Thrones series.

A Song of Ice and Fire. 

[00:04:54] Tim: Nice. Well, my name is Tim. I am the square, um, of the family. Mm-hmm. And, you know, we’ve, we’ve produced a triangle offspring. You know, I actually, to be totally fair, 

[00:05:07] Rebekah: you’re a pastor, so wouldn’t that make you some sort of low level circle? 

[00:05:11] Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like significant polygon.

Right? I was lucky to make that in the hospital. Then I feel like I’m so high in the political hierarchy. Um, anyway, uh, I would say that I have a couple of different directions to go. Fahrenheit. 4 51 is one of. One of my favorite all time books, uh, and the political commentary, it is not as gray in its texture as 1984 is, but it is still very prescient.

People are controlled by the media that they’re given. And, you know, the wife of the main character, her biggest, her biggest aspiration in life is to have the TV that envelops the wall, uh, to have one on each of the four walls so she can actually play her role in the television soap operas or whatever.

That’s her life. Is being part of tv. So they’ll send her script and stuff like that. So it’s like being so immersed in that world. Uh, and books are banned, uh, fair Fahrenheit 4 51 is the temperature at which books burn. Um, so I think that’s, that’s great. 

[00:06:25] Rebekah: Don’t judge me because I am your daughter and I do love political spoiler, Gary Spoil.

I’ve never, I’ve never read Fahrenheit 4 51, like it’s been on my list, but I’ve just never read it. 

[00:06:35] Tim: I, I think you, I think you would. Mm-hmm. You would really enjoy it. And my second pick is actually, um, a conglomeration of books. I didn’t realize they were all connected until I got to the very end. Um, but Isaac Asimov’s, uh, foundation Trilogy, which turned into a foundation series, which then spoiler alert for anybody that’s reading any of the Isaac Asimov books.

Okay. The Foundation series connects with his robot series and several of his other series for a final conclusion. But it is, it is all political commentary. I already knew, knew that I’ve read them. Yep. I, I did. I didn’t know. Yeah. I, I read different series and get to the end of this one and he pulls everything together.

They’re all in the same universe. 

[00:07:24] Donna: Which, uh, which one did I ruin for you? 

[00:07:26] Tim: Uh, the one where you looked at the end of the book and said, oh, haha, I’ll read the last, the last words of the book.

[00:07:32] Donna: I was like, I wanna see like the very end. Yeah. Because I don’t know that I really get into this. Yeah. That Who is 

[00:07:36] Tim: de Neil Olive?

Yeah, she said, who is Dene Oliva? Well, he’s a robot. Different series, a completely different series. Thousand of years earlier. Oh, he’s in the end of this book. Yeah. Oh goodness. Tim had not read. Yeah, I had not finished it at that time. That’s hilarious. 

[00:07:51] Rebekah: Well, as we get into talking about this particular heavy political commentary, um, I will say, uh, we’re gonna talk a lot about the commentary of this book, unlike another recent film that we reviewed, Mickey 17.

The political commentary here is not necessarily about current political climate or about, it is about a specific time as written, but, uh, yeah, we think it’s a, it’s a fascinating discussion. So today’s episode’s gonna be formatted a lot differently just because we’re gonna talk a little more about the nature of the story rather than just the major changes from book to film.

Uh, to kick us off here, mom, would you like to tell us what flatland a romance of many dimensions is about? Because assumedly, it’s obviously some sort of. Wonderful spy romance. 

[00:08:36] Donna: I would love to do that in a world of only two dimensions. Attorney a square, and I learned later that the A is for Abbott, which I thought was pretty cool.

Recounts the unique nature of his universe for the perspective of third dimension beings, who are his readers. In this retelling, he shares a tale of how a sphere, one high label being from Spaceland entered his home and dragged him into space, introducing him to the reality of three dimensions. As he tries to share this revelation with others, he is met with disbelief.

Ultimate persecution. 

[00:09:14] Tim: Dun, dun 

[00:09:16] Donna: dun. 

[00:09:17] Rebekah: I know I’m not typically the trivia person, but I would like to introduce a tiny little bit of trivia that our listeners might not know. Because let’s be honest, I don’t, I don’t know that most people have even heard of this book, much less the author. Um, but Edwin a Abbott is the author of Flatland.

Do you know what the a stands for? 

[00:09:35] Tim: No. Is it Abbott? Abbott. 

[00:09:36] Rebekah: Abbott. His name is ab, literally Abbot Abbott. Edwin Abbott. Abbott. Abbott. 

[00:09:39] Tim: Oh my. And 

[00:09:40] Rebekah: I watched, I was watching a video and the, the commentator was like, I wonder if he ever wrote it as Edwin Abbott squared. ’cause he was like a mathematician. He was a theologian and mathematician, I think.

Um, so the format of this book is, uh, it’s one of those times, and I think we’ve read a couple things like this before, Lord of the Rings felt different than like the typical contemporary novels that we often read in that it was kind of before the, uh, page Turner idea of. Writing books and how every chapter has to end with a cliffhanger.

And you show, don’t tell you, you don’t explain the world building, you build it through the plot. And this book is definitely written before all of that, obviously in the late 18 hundreds. And so, uh, it is a novella. So it’s not a very long book. The audio book itself is four hours. And so I’m gonna use that to describe the format of this book.

Okay? Again, four hours of an audio book. Now, if you had to guess. How many hours of that do you think things happened in the answer to that if you weren’t paying attention was two hours. So I like, I start listening and I’m like, this is a fascinating thing. So the first several chapters of the book, and I’m actually gonna look, I have my Kindle with it on here, and I wanted to look at the actual chapter listing, ’cause I thought that this was absolutely fascinating.

Every, let’s see, we’ve got part one, section one, it’s like divided into parts. And so part one is this world and so it’s sections one through 12 and that describes like the, the existence of flatlanders. It talks about the shapes, it talks about how they recognize one another. We learn what touching is.

You know, you how touching is used to identify shapes and why that’s rude now. And we learn about, um, things, you know, determined by the shape that you are and what that means about you. It’s part two other worlds is where it starts halfway through about two hours in. And that is where we get into the actual like plot of the very.

Minimal amount of story in flatland. And so I thought, okay, I’m like an hour in at one point thinking, okay, how long is it gonna take for something to happen? How many parts was that? Um, part two is 13 through 22, so that’s, it’s only two parts. It’s just part one, part two. So in part one, he explains what flatland is.

I understand why he did it. And I do think that it made it interesting later on as he was going through the very short story to kind of understand all of the political and societal underpinnings. I did think that was interesting, but it was a fascinating read in that it was so different than anything I’ve read anytime recently.

’cause it’s. Obviously fiction and it’s science fiction, which by the way, I did read or listen to one thing that discussed the fact that it may be subtitled, a romance of many dim dimensions because sci-fi at the time was referred to as like romantic science or science, romance or something like that.

Scientific romance. It wasn’t referred to as science fiction. There wasn’t a delineator. 

[00:12:31] Tim: Do you know that this was written after some of the, the first science fiction I did. Not in the written in the 1860s. You know who tj? No. That’s fascinating. Messiah, Mary Shelley. Well, that was some of it. Jules, Vern.

Jules. Vern. Mm-hmm. Wow. And others. Yes. That’s that. Oh, that’s awesome. Those are probably two of the most, the most famous 

[00:12:51] TJ: and rei, you know what Mary Shelley wrote?

[00:12:53] Rebekah: Frankenstein, right? 

[00:12:54] TJ: Yes. Own. And you know what, Jules, Vern, wait. No. I own 

[00:12:58] Rebekah: Dracula. I don’t unring his name. Jules Verne. Journey to the Center of the Earth.

No. Yes. That’s not right. Is that right? 

[00:13:04] Tim: Yeah, that’s one. Did he 

[00:13:05] Rebekah: write something about the ocean? 20,000 leagues 

[00:13:07] TJ: under the Sea. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Sea. Those are the two big ones. Probably I 

[00:13:11] Donna: Am Sea. Is he one of the first? She’s making strides. 

[00:13:15] Tim: He wrote the first, I believe story of Traveling to the Moon.

Mm-hmm. 

[00:13:21] TJ: What was that? Yeah, to travel as well, but wow. Jules Verne Wow. Time machine. He’s so much cooler than Mary Shelley.

[00:13:30] Rebekah: Well, speaking of sexism, mom, uh, tell us a little bit about why Abbott wrote this novella and his intentions. 

[00:13:41] Donna: So, Abbott’s satirical novella uses a two dimensional world to deliver a sharp political and social commentary on Victorian England, while on the surface it talks about geometry and dimensions and shapes, et cetera.

The story is actually a biting critique of class hierarchy, gender roles, and super rigid societal norms. Through the depiction of its strict social order, he mocks inflexibility of Victorian politics where class, gender and tradition stifled any individual potential in societal growth. The two dimensional setting ends up being a metaphor for this myopic worldview, urging the readers to question flat assumptions of their own political landscape.

And I’ll just say here as I got into this in, like you said, it’s, it’s a lot of descriptive and it isn’t long. And so I’ll just tell on her. Rebecca reaches out to me and she’s like, I started reading Flatland. Is there a story? And I said, it’s 86 pages long. You’ll read it in about seven minutes. Would you shut it?

[00:14:53] Rebekah: I actually did listen to the audio book, believe it or not. Yeah, I 

[00:14:56] Donna: just, I just thought it was very funny because, um, wow, but because you’re right though it is, he develops so much and I thought, how is this only four hours? What, what 

[00:15:05] Tim: it is? It’s definitely political commentary. Slight aside, I suppose here, the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle class, the expansion of voting rights, the rise of industrial centers population increases strict moral codes and a shifting landscape.

Science, religion, entertainment, and societal norms. All mark, the Victorian era of Abbott’s world. It was a time of the rise of traditionalism as well as a questioning of all things considered normal, the industrial revolution. Think, um, steam punk, you know? Mm-hmm. That sort of thing. That’s where that comes from.

The middle class continued to get larger and larger, meaning people were coming up out of poverty. Um, voting rights were continually being expanded, and as I, as I read, read through some of that during. Uh, queen Victoria’s Long reign, which the was the longest until Queen Elizabeth II Pass surpassed it.

But she reigned for 63 years as the Monarch. During that time, voting rights kept expanding. By the time she passed away, they had not gotten to women’s voting rights, but it went from only men who owned large plots of land to men who owned less land, to men who didn’t own land at all to men from lower classes as well.

And the rise of industrial centers. People were leaving farms and going to live in big cities, and cities were getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and there were problems with that. Think of the kinds of things that were written during that period. Oliver was mm-hmm. Written that time. Uh, Oliver’s list and Yeah.

[00:16:45] TJ: Victorian. Yep. Commentary. I. Great expectations tale two cities. 

[00:16:50] Tim: Yep. And you also had the, the romantic kind of things that, oh, now I can’t remember the female author’s name. I looked at it 10 minutes ago. Emily Dickinson. Who, how dare you. Emily Dickinson. Mm-hmm. Is that really it? Oh, it may be. Oh, Jane Austin.

Jane Austin. That’s the one I was actually thinking of. Uh, Jane Austin. He tricked you. It was a quiz and those kinds of things. But all, all of that was kind of amazing because what Abbott is writing about is all of this being very strict and I moving toward the latter part or, well, I guess the mid to latter part of her reign.

And it’s kind of strange ’cause things were already changing a lot. Evolution was questioning our understanding of science, our understanding of religion. Uh, that was during this period of time. And so there’s so much upheaval while at the same time people are, you know, going back to traditional values.

The family is the center and the family’s the most important. So it was kind of strange. He’s making a commentary that’s almost in the midst of societal upheavals, hoping for societal upheaval. So it’s kind of like you’re in the wave and you don’t really realize it, perhaps. 

[00:18:03] Rebekah: So one of the things I thought was really interesting about the way Abbott develops his commentary is that he uses shapes and the number of sides of shapes to demonstrate who is higher in the social stratosphere.

And so flatland is two dimensional. So the more sides you have, the higher your rank in society, as long as you are what is considered a regular shape. Um, very irregular shapes are essentially treated as. Almost non-human. And I will say, I’m using the word human because he uses the word human. Mm-hmm. Even though they’re shapes.

Mm-hmm. He refers to them as men and women. They’re, and as humans, they’re, that actually helped me. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So he, I thought that was interesting. Like, they didn’t try to come up with another name for their species, but polygons with more sides rank higher. So priests who are the head of, you know, the religion and political and theological everything, um, they are at the top of the social stratosphere essentially.

Um, when one of Abbots, I think children or grandchildren asks, you know, if they have no sides, and he says basically they all have sides, but they have so many sides that each part, each line, you know, each side that they have is so small that they, each angle you angle can, you can barely 

[00:19:13] Tim: tell the angle.

Right. So it’s. Practically a circle. 

[00:19:15] Rebekah: Yeah. So an equilateral triangle, which would be a triangle with three equal sides is a member of the craftsman class. Below them are triangles with non equilateral sides, where you’ve got a very pointy end. Um, and but 

[00:19:30] Tim: two sides. Two sides have to be equal, 

[00:19:31] Rebekah: correct. Two sides still have to be equal, or they’re considered irregular, and that would make them worse.

So those are like. Blue collar. Well, I don’t know that they’re blue collar Exactly. Sort of, but like those triangles are police and law enforcement and like Yes. Essentially the, the people that keep people, soldiers in line. Soldiers, but they are just barely above women, which we’ll talk about separately.

Um, squares and pentagons are the gentleman class. So a square who’s our, um, our reader and the, the character writing the journal entries, like of flatland. He’s a square, he is a lawyer. So other like gentlemanly sort of things are like doctors and just kind of professions you would consider to be more white collar things.

Um, hexagons are the lowest rank of nobility, so, uh, then they kind of work their way up into being circles again, which make up that priest class. So the way that they do reproduction is very interesting because they say a triangle can only produce a triangle sun, but then at some point, once you’re an equilateral triangle, like eventually it’s possible to create a square.

If I’m not. Mistaken and then squares. Once you get to that point, each time you reproduce each like sun or grandson in the line will typically have one additional side. So like a square then produces a Pentagon. The Pentagon then produces a hexagon, if I’m remembering my order. Correct correctly. You’re doing great.

Thank you. So on and so forth. And so at some point though large like polygons with many sides, it no longer becomes a one generation per side. There’s a point at which a many sided polygon can try to produce a circle, which by the way, I don’t remember exactly how they described it. I just remember hearing it and thinking, wow, this is like weird and violent and horrible.

Because most of the time if like large sided polygons want to create a circle so that their family now becomes part of that priest class that’s like at the very top, um, they have to like do some sort of procedure or something. Anyway, the way it’s described is like it, it’s connected, usually dies to medical 

[00:21:30] Tim: science.

It’s, it’s, yeah. Yes. It’s something that has to be, it has to be some kind of a medical science intervention. Right, right. And then, and it’s sometimes works and most of the time, yeah, it sometimes 

[00:21:40] Rebekah: works. Most of the times it kills the child, which is just interesting ’cause it was like very clear that they did not care that most of the time that kid would die.

So I thought that that was fascinating. 

[00:21:50] Tim: That was also, that was also a part in the movie and I realize we’re not exactly at the movie, but there was a section there in the movie where I thought, wow. That that is in the book. It’s a little, it’s, yeah. Played a little differently, but yeah, but it’s there.

It’s, 

[00:22:04] TJ: you know, it’s very cartoonish, the blood, but there is blood when a shape dies in the movie. Hey, have we talked about women? We’ve said about women. Rebecca’s a woman. Your mother’s a woman. It’s, since we talked about women, here’s the thing. In flatland, you have to remember this. Women are straight lines, okay?

That’s just simple math. You gotta know this from simple from the beginning. Math, no angles. They are at the bottom of the social of the nobility ladder. Okay? 

[00:22:39] Donna: I had so many regrets as I read this that I did not. Pay more attention in geometry. So I knew what the, I knew what the words were and I was like, I’ve, the farther he got away from Square and Triangle, I was like, oh my gosh, what are these words?

Yeah. 

[00:22:56] Tim: So Josiah about the women being straight lines, 

[00:23:00] TJ: women are at the bottom of the social classes. Yeah. They possess very little status and agency. I think Dad, this reflects the rigid class system of Victorian society. I’m, I think that you fully comprehend how in Victorian society, birth largely dictated one’s position.

Uh, social mobility, very limited. Unlike it is in America today. Mm-hmm. Victorian society was rigid, much like a square. So anyway, Abbott uses this, uh, state of women. As low class lines to satirize the arbitrary nature of social rank, suggesting that privilege is often based on, you know, inherited traits rather than merit, like superficial traits.

In fact, there’s a biting critique throughout the book because the, the portrayal of women as lines, they are, you know, they’re, they’re shown as intellectually inferior. They’re, you know, they’re emotionally volatile. I know that that’s not a. A current, uh, topical political commentary at all. The emotional volatility of women, but, uh, they’re even dangerous.

This is when my jaw dropped, when I was listening to it in the car. My jaw dropped when it started talking about, ’cause I was like, oh, okay, this is a, yeah, it’s a sexist society. And then it started talking about how women are dangerous due to the sharp ends at the end of their lines. So they require strict control.

I was like, oh, that is a little different than than our world where I feel like the patriarchy oppresses women because they’re physic, you know, in general they’re physically weaker than men. So men can, you know, be evil towards them. But in this land they’re oppressed because women are more physically dangerous than men, which I thought was an interesting difference that led to a similar outcome of the oppression of women, which I am against.

By the way, 

[00:25:15] Rebekah: thank you for clarifying. That’s 

[00:25:17] Tim: good. Uhhuh. 

[00:25:19] TJ: There’s a lot of Victorian patriarchal attitudes. Uh, it’s just, I thought it was the book successfully exposed how absurd it is to reduce women to objects of, you know, regulation of fear. It’s, it’s arbitrary. I think the, the reasons in the book that women are given this, this status because, well, I mean men as polygons, they gain status with complexity.

More sides, the more sides they get this, uh, reinforcing the eras bias that intellectual and social worth were male domains. 

[00:25:59] Rebekah: I was just going to say, I thought it was very funny that he described their, um, status to the point where they are so incapable of like reasoned thought that they can only think in the present tense.

And young children have to learn what’s called the dialect of emotion. It’s completely different dialect than what they speak normally just to talk to their mothers because their lines as mothers are literally that dumb. And I thought it was also funny that they have to constantly make a peace cry off and on and be constantly moving when they’re in public because they’re such a danger to other people.

And I just thought that was so 

[00:26:36] Donna: funny in the video of this, the ellinger. Am I saying that right? Ellinger, um, the movie that, that he did, it was like the hour and 38 minutes, basically the depiction when he said, and at one point it got so bad that a woman took out an entire community and it shows the line going and stabbing and there’s blood spatter.

Everyone was like, oh my gosh. It was a great visual of, uh, of, of the, of the piece. 

[00:27:04] Tim: It is, it’s an interesting take on Victorian society. A lot of the sources that I’ve looked at, uh, for norms and things in Victorian society pointed to the fact that women were looked at as the moral center of the family.

They looked to women for the moral compass. Men, men were innovators and whatever, but, but women were the moral center. So while mm-hmm. History kind of looks at it and says, people look to women as the moral center. Abbott was kind of saying they’ve been reduced to, to this very one dimensional kind of character.

They’re, they’re simply emotion. I found that interesting. The realities versus the way you view things. And I think probably that has to do with your context and perhaps he, he was in academia and maybe maybe in academia, you know, women were so few and far between. That he felt like it was all around society.

While in other places, women were very highly regarded. Don’t forget a woman was the queen and was one of the most beloved, um, monarchs that Britain has ever had. Though she didn’t have the political power, she, at that point, she didn’t make the laws 

[00:28:25] Rebekah: so. Abbott released a second edition in 1884, a year after his first release.

He actually did such a good job as a square writing, like in first person, talking about women in this like very low, demeaning way that when he released the book, people thought that that’s how he saw women. And so people in the women’s suffrage movement movement and women that were fighting for additional rights.

Um, in the workplace and I believe for like the right to certain types of education and things like that actually accused him of misogyny. And so he wanted to clarify ’cause he wrote this as commentary on a lot of that, his intention as he stated it was actually to kind of point it out and, and all of that, not to say, oh, this is how I feel.

Um, so he was written, he quoted as, I think this is in his own notes, like in the preface that he released the second edition. He said the Square was quote writing. As a historian, he has identified himself perhaps too closely with the views, generally adopted by flatland. And as he has been informed even by spaceland historians.

In whose pages until very recent times, the destinies of women and the masses of mankind have seldom been deemed worthy of mention and never of careful consideration. End quote. Wow. Wow. And so he made the point to say, this was supposed to be satire. Please don’t take me seriously, like I’m not. I, I’m not trying to, I’m not a square, be a misogynist.

I’m trying to explain like, the absurdity of it. And I, you know, I saw a video that talked a lot about how they were even like, confused as to why people didn’t pick up on the, the satire part. Because he would say things like, about how women couldn’t do this or couldn’t do that. But even he said like that he believed his wife to be very intelligent.

He just assumed that it was an exception to the rule. And like there were just little things where he would a square write, you know, in the, in the actual writings of it, a square was like confused or like would say things that were a little bit contradictory to his own societal understanding. So he did a pretty good job writing it as satire, but I just thought that was really interesting.

[00:30:30] Donna: But think about what we’ve seen throughout our all of our lives. How many times have we said something, whatever, knowing in our, knowing our intention was to be. Funny or, you know, sarcastic, whatever thinking it was that was very clear and it’s taken to, it’s taken to mean something completely ridiculous or I do hear that that happens with other people or intention.

[00:30:56] Tim: Anytime. Anytime you put something in writing, every person is going to mm-hmm. To interpret it through their own lens. I think that’s, we well evidenced that a lot during email and now during, you know, when we comment on social media, the only voice that is speaking and giving emphasis is the voice of the reader, not the voice of.

The writer. 

[00:31:20] TJ: Yeah. I saw a funny meme on Instagram ment, Hey, remember when LOL meant literally laughing out loud and not, please know that this message is not threatening, threatening another 

[00:31:34] Tim: word for Yeah, I was kidding. Well, 

[00:31:38] Donna: and in our personal world, uh, dad as pastor, I, I mean, we can’t, he could have written a book about the times he has said something in, in a message, and somebody would either come to him later or worse, wouldn’t come to him and assume that they totally knew what he was saying and they misinterpreted something so incredibly innocent or seemed to be a very clear statement, and they would misunderstand it, and even to go back and hear what he said.

That they took in a certain way in him knowing where he was going with it. I mean, it’s, it’s a very, any anyone who speaks or presents it, it has to be something constantly, you know, on your mind. And it is difficult for me because I tend to be more narrative when I’m talking about things. I want to be more, I wanna expound on things a little more.

And I, I’ve had that bite me in a lot of different situations and need to go back and saying more than was 

[00:32:38] Tim: absolutely necessary. And people misunderstood. Um, Abbott was obviously speaking to people in his own time period. We are a hundred and, well not quite 150 years later, looking back at this. And we realize it was political commentary, it was satire where people that were reading it contemporaneously with him might have had the reactions of, you think this way?

You think this is okay? Yeah. As opposed to, no, I’m just. Trying to point this out. I think from the, from the window that we have almost 150 years later, we’re looking back and saying, well, it’s obviously satire, it’s obviously political commentary. Maybe it wasn’t as obvious. 

[00:33:19] Rebekah: How common was it for people to even write political commentary at this point too?

Like, was, was writing it in a fiction, like, now we’re used to the idea of fiction being used to communicate political commentary, and I guess Shakespeare kind of did that in, you know, stage plays. But I just wonder, I wonder if people would even have processed it as normal. 

[00:33:37] Tim: There was a lot of question in, in Victoria, the Victorian area people were questioning.

But I think, uh, as opposed to satire, it was probably, it would’ve probably been straightforward saying the rights of women need to be protected or the rights of the poor need to be protected, or we need to get rid of the, the slums in things in cities, but that might not have been met. As easily met with, uh, as positive, uh, comments.

Yeah. As things like Oliver Twist and a Christmas Carol and some of the other things written around that time that were political commentary, but they weren’t in your face. Exactly. So maybe this is a little more in your face. 

[00:34:19] Donna: No. You, you use humor in so in those respects. Yeah. Uh, I think too, of not knowing a lot about Abbott before I read this.

I get the impression the farther we go in and more research we’ve done, that he is intelligent on like an upper level somewhere, one, to be able to communicate this. And two, knowing he was a school master, he was a theologian, a mathematician. And if I bring that into modern day when people, how many things have we heard, like from Stephen Hawking say, or Elon Musk even who you know after you listen to them.

They’re just two people I pulled out of modern culture, but there’s many, there are others. You listen to them talk and it doesn’t take long before you realize they think somewhere on a different plane than I think That doesn’t mean I’m unintelligent. That just means their, their level of intelligence is just completely different than, than where I am.

And so I think about this with Abbott, where in his mind he’s writing it, he knows it’s satirical, but it is, it is a very interesting read and I can see where, where contemporaries would go, oh, what? Because he. Puts things out there in a, an odd way to describe a very practical thing that’s going on.

Another thing that goes on with a square in the novella, he has these dreams and he goes into line land and point land. More of these dimensionality, uh, uh, little adventures he takes in line land. All the creatures exist in one line, a continuous line. And communication and reproduction are all based on sound rather than physical contact.

[00:36:03] Rebekah: Which by the way was a really, really interesting thing. Might have been, felt like, might have felt more interesting to me because it was like the first time I felt like he was giving a story. Yeah. But I really loved the design of this and there’s like every man, every male line has two female partners and that’s how they keep the population consistent.

And like there was all this stuff and how they like are I’m 6,000 something miles from wife number one and like just the way that they do mating and all of that was a really, really interesting story to me. It’s very thoughtful and it was a little sub plot 

[00:36:39] TJ: and it was story baby listener because the square main character was learning about this.

And it wasn’t just world building, it was world shattering to him that something else like this. Existed beneath his dimensions. 

[00:36:54] Donna: So that’s line land in, in point, land a single point occupies his own universe. He speaks nonstop. He assumes all other voices around him come from himself. So he is suggesting he can hear other points, but, um, I think that that’s how I took it.

He doesn’t think through other points, but he doesn’t think there’s only one point. He doesn’t think it’s just him. Yeah. He doesn’t rec recognize there’s anybody else. 

[00:37:17] Tim: So even when a square is speaking to him and these two things happened in a dream. Yeah. Uh, that a square had. 

[00:37:25] TJ: Oh, I’m so glad you said that.

’cause I did not remember them happening in a dream. So when they happened in a dream in the movie, I was like, wait, is that, but I guess that’s a book accurate. 

[00:37:36] Tim: That was a, a dream that he was having before he had an actual encounter. Later. The political commentary is particularly evident in the treatment of irregular shapes.

Those with uneven sides or deformities, uh, they’re marginalized, imprisoned, or executed to maintain order. Marginalized, I think, was the, the least subsequent, uh, or substantive, uh, effect. They were imprisoned or executed. This reflects the Victorian obsession with conformity and the suppression of dissent or difference, whether through legal systems or social ostracism.

The ruling circles enforce this order, claiming divine authority, which parallels how religious and political elites in Abbott’s time justified their dominance over the lower classes. I thought this was very interesting and very sad, uh, when, when they looked at it in the movie, the King Circle, I, I guess that’s the best way to talk about him, the King Circle.

Yeah. In the movie was He was a Crown. Crown. He technically president p President Circle President. Yeah. He had 

[00:38:37] Rebekah: a crown, but he was called 

[00:38:38] Tim: president. 

[00:38:39] Rebekah: Yeah, 

[00:38:39] Tim: president King, whatever. Um, he, he was having a child during, during that time, and his child was an irregular and they were performing this medical science thing to try to make him regular.

Mm-hmm. And it failed. And the cartoonish blood and pieces of irregulars being thrown in the furnace was stark. Um, disturbing, perhaps. Disturbing. Yes. 

[00:39:12] Donna: There was a, there’s a 1985 song written by a guy named Steven Taylor or Steve Taylor. Called lifeboat and it, it’s the, it’s a teacher and she’s in a class of children, okay?

Mm-hmm. And she gives them a lesson. Tim, what did we call this? It’s an assignment. It, it’s an assignment. It’s a group assignment. But we did this with, uh, our teens a lot. Mm-hmm. In youth group. And we called it something and I can’t recall the term anyway, it’s a dilemma they have and they have to make a decision.

It’s a lifeboat and there’s people in the lifeboat and the lifeboat won’t hold all of them. So I’ll read the, just the chorus because it tells you who the people are in this lifeboat. And it is parody, I will say it’s, it’s like a religious parody, basically. Here’s the, the chorus of the song says Throw over grandpa.

’cause he is getting pretty old. Throw out the baby or we’ll all be catching it’s cold ’cause the baby in the boat is sniffling. Um, throw over fatty and we’ll see if she can float. ’cause she’s fat, she takes up too. There’s too much pressure on the boat. Um. Throw out the retard and they won’t be rocking the boat.

And so the only two people left on the boat is a young white doctor with blue eyes and perfect teeth, and Joan Collins. And that’s who, who 

[00:40:26] TJ: is the female version of that? Who’s the 

[00:40:28] Donna: female version of that Was dark hair? Yes. And so hate, I thought as soon as I, it’s a got to this, I thought it’s a moral 

[00:40:34] Tim: dilemma.

Yeah. You know, at, yeah. The bottom line for, you know, what we had used it for was who do you decide to share the gospel with? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, who do you bring into the lifeboat? Um mm-hmm. Because there, you know, you think that there aren’t enough resources or whatever. Who do you save? Who do you go after to save and the end of the 

[00:40:55] Donna: song?

Uh, if you don’t want to just go listen to it, but it’s, it’s a fast, it’s funny, it’s actually very funny, but. Really eyeopening. The end of the song is the class says, oh, the teacher throw out the teacher, let’s throw out teacher. ’cause she’s getting pretty old. Uh, let’s throw her over and play another game of, of lifeboat.

Uh, she’s getting old and gray and wears an ugly coat, and so they, they decide to chuck her out too. And so it’s just one of those things that is similar to what Abbott’s doing here, but in a very, a little more contemporary. And 

[00:41:28] Tim: be careful who you decide is not worth it. Yes. Because you may become part of that class.

[00:41:35] TJ: Exactly. Well, of course we’ve talked about the narrator a square, but have we talked about how he embodies middle class complacency? But that all changes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s a, he’s a great every man character. You’d never think that a two dimensional square could be such an every man, but. Good. Good on Edward Abbott.

Abbott. So the plot really kicks off at the very end when it, when a sphere from the third dimension reveals a broader broad dimensions reality. Mm-hmm. And there’s not only dimensions below Abbott squares, as I’ll call him. No. There’s not only dimensions below a square, there’s dimensions above him.

Square’s initial resistance and eventual enlightenment. Critique the intellectual stagnation of real life society, which punishes curiosity or as high school musical would put it, challenges to the status quo. Stick to the status quo. Stick to the stuff, you know, it’s, uh, I got it reversed when the square tries to share this revelation with his world.

He is drum roll imprison da. Oh my. And so I think, yeah, I think Edward Abbott was trying to talk about entrenched power structures, whether it be political, religious, cultural, you know, they’re, uh, they’re silencing ideas. That, uh, don’t fall in line with their conventions, uh, you know, to preserve their authority, but also the, the society that currently exists, which, which, you know, roundabout what preserves their authority as well as, as other structures that they enjoy.

[00:43:29] Tim: I find it interesting, and here’s a comment, I suppose, on the politics of every time it’s easy for someone living in some degree of privilege. To speak about how privileged people are. Um, it’s, it’s kind of weird ’cause he was, he was a professor, um, you know, he was in, he was in academia and he was talking about these things that should be changed from, from his perspective.

These things that needed to be changed at a time when society was continually changing. There were lots of things happening and so he’s kind of standing aloof from what’s actually happening, saying some, some things need to happen. It’s interesting to me, you know, I, I find it fascinating, uh, when people get to a particular level of privilege or of.

Ability to see things, they tend to look at things and make some judgment calls. And the judgment calls aren’t always correct because some of those things are already changing. It’s like, well, everybody is oppressed by this thing. Well, yeah, but you are not, and according to what you’re saying, you would be, you know, based on your education, your social status, the color of your skin, or whatever thing you’ve been talking about, and yet you’re not, you’ve reached this place so that you can make generalizations that aren’t exactly true.

I think we always have to be able to look at things, but I think we have to be careful making generalizations. And I, I think that might have been part of what he was doing. That’s, that’s what a Square was doing. You know, he said, our society is right. And then when he saw. The, the three dimensional place and experienced that.

He went back to his own world to try to tell them. But one of the things he’d experienced when he was in the three dimensional space was that anybody in the 3D space that talked about four D or beyond was also considered a heretic. And so it’s like at every level questioning. Mm-hmm. This society. You know, you shouldn’t do that.

So it’s, it’s just interesting. 

[00:45:44] Donna: Isn’t this where he says, uh, every one thou, every thousand years? Yes. 

[00:45:49] Tim: It’s an every thousand years someone from the three dimensional space enters two dimensional space to try and enlighten them and like to pick one. Right. And the, the response to that is in two dimensional space, every thousand years or so they say there is, there is this sudden movement toward, there must be three dimensions and we have to crush it each time.

E the, the sphere makes an appearance with the president king and all of that. Uh, and the sub, the result of that is that everybody that witnessed it has to be killed other than the circles other than the circles has to be killed or imprisoned. Which a square’s brother is imprisoned for being there in the court when the sphere came in, and then later just for being present.

Right. Just for being present. Yes, and for being faithful. You know, he took care of his job and did his job, and then he’s imprisoned for the rest of his life because he witnessed this thing that nobody wanted. To admit happened. 

[00:46:54] Rebekah: Well, as we move in, that’s, I mean, I know that’s the major part of our discussion today was honestly just we wanted to go over what Flatland was about.

So we’ll take a few minutes, um, and just describe some of the major differences. Josiah, why don’t you explain why this one’s weird? 

[00:47:09] TJ: Well, there’s multiple adaptations. There is one that is widely accessible, one that is very, very difficult to access, and two more that are pretty much non-existent. I’d be interested if they’re lost media, but I didn’t have time to look too much into that.

They, they weren’t readily available, but I assume they’re still in existence. Have you guys ever like listened to Lost Media YouTube? No. Mm-hmm. It’s a sub genre of YouTube where, oh, wow. We talk about, no, I haven’t. Media that’s just lost. And it is, it’s so, it’s such a fascinating topic to me. I think one of the first ways I got into it, I, I’m not like a major lost media head, but one of the first ways I got into it, dad, was whenever we got into the new Dr.

Who and I went back, I was interested in old Doctor who, and there’s like most of the second doctor is just missing, lost. It’s just lost. ’cause back in the day, back in the sixties or whatever, BBC was like, oh, there’s no reason to keep this. We’ll just record over it. 

[00:48:17] Tim: Reuse the tape. It’s expensive. 

[00:48:19] TJ: Yeah, it’s expensive tape.

Oh, good Lord. So it, it’s a fascinating subject. That media that once existed, people watched it on their televisions or whatever, just was it recorded 

[00:48:32] Tim: or wasn’t kept. 

[00:48:33] TJ: It no longer exists. It’s, it’s just such an interesting thing to me. So 

[00:48:37] Tim: for the second doctor, just a, just a tiny little thing there. Mm-hmm.

Um, I have seen several episodes of the second doctor where they have, they have the soundtrack and they have animated Oh 

[00:48:49] TJ: yeah. They’ve 

[00:48:50] Tim: animated the actual show, but it, look, it’s the correct soundtrack. So it’s, it’s really neat. 

[00:48:55] TJ: Very interesting. Well, for flatland, I. There was an animated short film in 1965.

There was an Italian stop motion animated short film in 1982, both of which, uh, don’t even have Wikipedia pages if that tells you mm-hmm. How insignificant loss media they are. I don’t know, insignificant or how lost they are, but then for some reason, I, I have yet to see a reason why these, there are two relatively accessible adaptations and both of them were released in 2007.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I don’t 

[00:49:40] Tim: fully know why. Probab probably a resurgence of, of the book or attention to the book. 

[00:49:46] TJ: And maybe at first I was like, is that when it came to the public domain? But no, it was from the 18 hundreds. So it would’ve been, uh, decades prior that it went into the public domain. 

[00:49:56] Tim: Well, our friend who recommended this probably came across it as he was studying.

He’s an engineer, right? Mm-hmm. I think that’s what mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s what we determined. He probably came across it in his studies, and perhaps that’s the same type of thing that happened. Somebody said, oh, wow, I think I could do something with this. Mm-hmm. And 

[00:50:12] TJ: somebody else said the same. So we have two adaptations.

Which one do we do we watch and compare to the book? So there is the 2007 version directed by Dan o Johnson and Jeffrey Travis. It is a 34 minute short film. It’s animated, it’s considered. Educate, more educational maybe. Uh, it’s, uh, has some, it has some Hollywood voice actors in it and the animation a little more, a lot more money was spent on it mm-hmm.

Than the other oh seven adaptation. But a lot was also changed in this version. Uh, one of the biggest thing, ’cause this is not the version we watched, and we’ll tell you why, but one of the biggest changes I read about was that women were no longer straight lines. They were just polygons, which, 

[00:51:07] Tim: oh, that’s like the opposite of what said, 

[00:51:11] TJ: oh, I, so in plus magazine, someone wrote that this movie.

Received a welcome gender facelift. Women are not degenerate line segments anymore who have to emit warning whales, lest they poke someone in the eye with their sharpened. But they are fully fledged polygons. 

[00:51:33] Tim: So they’ve done a facelift on it because by pretending oppressed was bad, the women a bad thing and he must have meant for them to be oppressed as opposed to Yeah.

Satire. So they changed and the problem from before. Yeah. So they changed the story entirely. Yes. So I, I’m sure they have missed the point. 

[00:51:57] TJ: I’m sure that they didn’t miss the point for literally and figur silly to have spent money on something. Yeah. And missed the point. So, so extremely So the version, so we looked up and the only way we could find to watch this movie was.

By buying A DVD on Amazon full price, $20 for this. 34 minute, 

[00:52:21] Tim: mm-hmm. 

[00:52:21] TJ: DVD $20. And an unclear shipping time, which to me in experience tells me copy didn’t print it. Oh, we have to manufacture Uhhuh to order, we have to 

[00:52:37] Rebekah: make a copy of it if you want to, to 

[00:52:39] Tim: purchase it. So we have the master 

[00:52:41] TJ: and we usually do these episodes.

We usually like start the book and movie about a week or two at, at most two weeks before we record. So that was not exactly gonna work. But the other adaptation from oh seven directed by Lad Ellinger, Jr. It is available for free on YouTube, and I don’t know if I’m the only one of the US four, but I, I would encourage you to watch it if, if only to say it’s free, you know?

Yeah. It is an hour, 

[00:53:11] Donna: hour 38. Yeah, that’s, we watched that.

[00:53:13] TJ: Mm-hmm. It’s an hour 38, so it’s a, uh, yeah. Hour 35, hour 38. It is a full length animated film. It looks cheaper than the John the Johnson Travis version. Mm-hmm. But it, from what I’m reading, Wikipedia, IMDB read it. Uh, it seems as though the cheaper but longer one feels a lot truer to the original novel.

And a, although it was a, it was a little cringey first, it was a little cringe-worthy at the very beginning to mm-hmm. Oh yeah. For it to be so cheaply made, but, but I able to, it use a lot of, to spend my disbelief. 

[00:53:55] Tim: Yeah. Uses a lot of computer generated stuff that. That seems quite old, honestly. Yeah, 

[00:54:01] TJ: very.

But, um, it’s almost, it also seems like it’s a bit of a fan favorite. The IMDB ratings are similar. Um, the Wiki. I know this doesn’t matter, but I think it’s interesting that the, the cheaper flatland has a much longer Wikipedia page. 

[00:54:17] Rebekah: Yes. Wow. That is funny. 

[00:54:19] TJ: Yeah. 

[00:54:20] Rebekah: Okay, so let’s talk about the differences we found in that film.

[00:54:23] Tim: Okay. The book mentions the Chromat war, uh, in the f but in the film, war is also a theme of the present, or, um, even in the third dimension, used to demonstrate much of the social and political unrest throughout the story. Uh, at the end of the story, a square was left as the only shape alive from what he could observe, um, in the, in the film.

But in the book, this war occurred in the past and it was not part of the main plot. Uh, so in the book, there wasn’t a war going on, but in the film, there was in, in, mm-hmm. In each of the dimensions that we discovered. The 2D and three DI 

[00:55:00] TJ: think this is a great example of the film. It’s funny calling it a film, uh, because it’s so low budget.

You could just call it a 

[00:55:10] Rebekah: YouTube video. 

[00:55:11] TJ: I might call it movie for some reason feels less. Mm-hmm. Less Hollywood expensive. The, the movie was, it wanted to give you actual plot. And so one of the ways it did that was taking something that happened in the far past in the book and combining it with the present so that you would have conflict and action in the present, which I think is more interesting and exciting.

[00:55:39] Tim: It seems that in the film, the Chromat War and the, those who believe in their, the possibility of a three dimensional world are all something that happens about every thousand years. They kind of join those two together. Yeah. Put that together, you know, this using color as well as possible third dimension.

So I 

[00:55:59] Donna: thought that it was good because for one point. It told in general, it told the story of the book. It didn’t go way off and divert a lot of things there. There were some differences, but um, but they told it and you didn’t leave it thinking, oh, well these guys have this strong political opinion and they’re, this, I thought they were just making, and maybe they do or don’t, I don’t know.

But I think that he, I think Ellinger was able to put it out there and I don’t know, maybe I saw it that way because I knew we were covering it and I just wanted to watch it and compare it to the book rather than look into his, a deeper part of who he is because I don’t know him, I don’t know that person or anything about him, but we move on into another character President circle.

Uh, he’s introduced in the movie as the king of flatland. And remember, you know, circles are like the perfect elite class or, or shape, but he’s not specifically named in. Abbott’s book. Senator Chroma is the irregular advocate for Chroma, is also named in the film, but he’s not in the book either. Another character that they introduce in the film is the woman who a square visited in the prison as one of his defendants, uh, as a, as he was a lawyer.

Uh, this woman, you know, remember their lines actually ends up taking her own life right in front of him. And how 

[00:57:30] TJ: does she do that? 

[00:57:31] Donna: Wow. How did she kill herself? 

[00:57:33] TJ: She eats herself from the ba behind. From her behind. 

[00:57:37] Donna: I knew it was something bizarre that we both went, uh, uh, but I, 

[00:57:42] TJ: yeah, her behind turns around and eats herself.

I don’t know how else to put put it. And, ’cause 

[00:57:47] Donna: he’s, isn’t he like hollering at her or trying to, what are you doing? He’s just in total amazement. Stop it. 

[00:57:53] TJ: Help stop it. Help, yeah. 

[00:57:54] Donna: Well, in 

[00:57:54] Rebekah: the, in the movie, I thought it was interesting that the chroma chromat more, or what chroma. Whatever they call the war about the color stuff, which I don’t know that we described, but basically there’s.

Um, there was a point in time in flatland where people liked to use colors. They would paint their sides different colors. It was a fashion statement, and then it quickly turned into something that could mislead others about the nature of their shape. And so then it was outlawed because it became a way for people to pretend they were a different shape than they were.

And so the wars happened because the chromat wanted to be able to use color, um, to stop being, you know, treated as the dregs of society. And so that in the book was all. Kind of told as in the past, in the film, it was part of the war that was occurring, um, during the plot. And so we, I thought it was funny in the film where they used, like the president was always saying, attend to your configuration, meaning like, the configuration of your sides and the, um, Senator Pro, you actually are, yeah.

And Senator Chroma and his followers kept saying, attend to your, to your chromat as if, uh, color was the most important thing. And so I, I did think that that was interesting. I think that this is all a great example of how the filmmaker decided to take, and I mean, this totally makes sense. I thought this was a, a brilliant way to do it.

He takes the descriptions of all of that, like, you know, half of the book being world building and he makes them. Like show don’t tell. He demonstrates them using narratives. So you see the cists and how they behave and the why the war starts. And, um, you actually see things like president circle’s son, um, dying during his reconfiguration in the hospital, rather than being told about how children are often, you know, re Yeah.

You know, try to make them into circles or like, if you’re born irregular, you’re reconfigured. And so I thought that that was one of the biggest differences in the film that was really, really smart. 

[00:59:54] Tim: Yeah. Nice. The spaceland area of the, uh, of the film is massively expanded from what’s described in the book.

It’s developed into a billboard heavy, contentious place. Uh, Spaceland of the movie also features Messiah Inc. A religious organization whose Marques, uh, shows the existence of flatland within Spaceland. Or who, man, excuse me. Yeah, look, that a religious organization who manages. The existence of flat land within Spaceland.

So flat land is something that Spaceland is fully aware of and maintains, keeps under their control maybe. That’s very interesting. Um. Mm-hmm. The, the billboards got to be, um, uh, distracting. I was trying to read all of the billboards as we were moving through. I thought it was really interesting that even in Spaceland though, there was a lot of conformity, uh, unless you did it this way, unless you thought this way.

So I think that was also, you know, political commentary. 

[01:00:57] TJ: We know the film also uses Gravity in Spaceland as a reason why flat Landers have to not be there for very long. You have to get back to the flatland world. Mm-hmm. Because, uh, whenever. The Messiah sphere, the CEO of Messiah, Inc. Brings a square into space land.

Mm-hmm. He, it’s like expensive technology. You can only bring one person at a time, but he can’t say they’re forever because the gravity’s like bothering his configuration, a squares configuration. 

[01:01:35] Rebekah: It seems, it kind of seems like he’s about to die, like the way that it shows him in the film. 

[01:01:39] TJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, his insides are not designed to, to handle gravity from any direction, but this is not a part of the book at all. In fact, did we just talk about how Spaceland going to Spaceland is not at all in the book? 

[01:01:56] Rebekah: He does go to Spaceland. A PHE Pulls him out? No, in the boat. Oh. Oh, he, oh, oh my gosh. A pull pulls him out of flatland.

But it’s not, he doesn’t like go and explore Spaceland. He can barely, it’s very difficult for him because his eye is literally biologically not able to perceive it well. Mm-hmm. Even when he’s pulled out of it. But he’s essentially, I get, I got the sense that a sphere pulled him out of it enough to kind of see flatland and he took him around places.

[01:02:26] Tim: Yeah. He can see flatland, like from the top perspective from Ace Land. He can look at it and say, I see everybody’s insides and all of that kind of stuff. Because, you know, for the 3D you can see from that direction. 

[01:02:38] Rebekah: But he doesn’t get to like explore Spaceland. There wasn’t the whole thing where it like pulled him out of 2D kind of in that little machine and, and all of that was added in the film.

[01:02:49] TJ: So I think that it breaks the plot of the book a little bit to, for him to see so much of 3D Land and for it to be its own world where it has its own problems out that have nothing to do with flatland. But I think I, I like most of it, I’m, I’m fine with it being sci-fi magic of saying we just, we just figured out a technology that we can get one person to space land from flatland.

You know, I, I don’t mind that too much. And then there being all sorts of, it was, it was ominous. I kind of liked when the sphere said, well, we got problems of our own here in Spaceland. And I, I think part of that, part of the reason I liked it is because. It left it at that and it was like, oh yeah. I guess just ’cause it’s like a higher dimension doesn’t mean it’s better or anything.

It’s it’s another world, 

[01:03:43] Tim: right. In the film. Doesn’t, doesn’t this sphere, isn’t he killed in the war or deposed from his position or something like, oh, oh yeah. He’s like, 

[01:03:52] TJ: he’s tried ’cause because he brought the flatlander Oh yeah. To Spaceland without like asking the government or something. He is like, we did tasks, we did computer simulations.

It’s like, were you certain the computer simulations were right? It’s like, well no, a computer simulation is just a guess, but we’re all still here, aren’t we? And then he’s sentenced. I couldn’t tell if he was sentenced to like death or life imprisonment or how, but there was a war was 

[01:04:19] Tim: in Spaceland as well, right?

Yes. 

[01:04:21] Rebekah: There was At Spaceland also was having war because Messiah Inc. Was managing, keeping flatland open. Mm-hmm. 

[01:04:29] Tim: So that was what the war was 

[01:04:30] Rebekah: over. Yeah. 

[01:04:32] TJ: Yeah. ’cause all the protestors with the signs like flatland is, is heretical or something like that. I forget exactly what the signs said, but I remember the gist.

So yeah, just the, that’s kind of the, kind of the end of the major differences. Yeah. It, it’s mainly just that there’s a war in flatland. There’s more of spaceland. 

[01:04:54] Donna: So looking at a little bit of trivia, of course this one’s different because it wasn’t a theatrical release, and we’ve talked a little bit about.

The movie versions that were out. So not a lot to cover there, but a few things I did find, we had mentioned previously the book was released in 1884 and there had been other, uh, additions of it and other, I guess, additions the best word, um, that we talked a little bit about TR Abbott trying to clarify his intentions and the preface and things like that.

The book Reading on Good Reads, and there weren’t a ton of ratings out there, but the book rating was 3.81 out of five IMDB gave the inger version of the video, the video version or the movie, a 6.7 out of 10, and then a 6.8 out of 10 for the Johnson and Travis version that we’ve chatted about. Although I did, I did 

[01:05:54] TJ: notice that Lad Allinger version had about double the ratings.

So yeah, true the number. 

[01:06:00] Donna: A few other things we’ll cover in this section is a little bit about lead Ellinger that we found because he’s the one that did the hour 38, kind of the full length movie on it. But I will say before we cover that, Abbott also wrote two additional works that he put together in a trilogy called it’s, it still Includes Flat Land, a Romance of Many Dimensions, and then a disciple’s trilogy.

About Onesimus and Salina from the New Testament and then the message of the Son of Man. Now this trilogy on Good Reads receives a 3.97 rating. So of the people that read it, it got a higher take I would assume. I mean, since they read flat land. Right. So I, I found that to be interesting and honestly now finding it, I think I wanna go look for that because his take on, uh, scriptural ideals and, and writing based on scriptural stories or characters is very fascinating to me.

So I’m would be interesting. I’m interested to, interesting would be, be interesting 

[01:07:06] Tim: to look at. Yeah, well, nearly four decades after the book was written, William Garnet, uh, born in 1850 and died in 1932, was a British professor and educational advisor. He specialized in physics and mechanics, and he took a special interest in Electric Street lighting.

Uh, he pinned a letter that disagreed with the previous opinion entitled Euclid Newton and Einstein published in the Periodical Nature in February, 1920. Garnet described Abbott and his work on flatland as a kind of profit due to his intuition and importance of time to explain certain phenomena. After this was published, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography changed up the section on Abbott to state He Abbott quote is most remembered as the author of Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions.

[01:08:00] Donna: The reason that last part it was important is that a Oxford Dictionary, when it was originally published during Abbott’s lifetime in, in that time period, they didn’t mention flatland at all. He just, he just said who he was. And so later on this comes up and it’s like, 

[01:08:17] Tim: so like flatland in what they initially said was not really anything noteworthy in his life.

[01:08:23] Donna: Yeah. Okay. 

[01:08:25] TJ: Very interesting 

[01:08:26] Donna: Flatland appears in a number of, uh, books or, or a movie and film things that have occurred in our lifetime. So, Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking have both commented and postulated, I guess is a nice big word about the effects of flatland. Sagan recreated the thought experiment as a, as a discussing, uh, possibilities of like higher dimensions of the physical universe in both the book and the television series, cosmos.

So he discusses it there. Hawking noted this peculiarity of life in two dimensional space. Also, it was pared in a Futurama episode. The native organisms of flatland absorb food, kind of like amoeba. And so it’s, the protagonist tries to eat flatland food and, and all this occurs. So then in Star Trek, TNG, uh, in the episode, the loss.

They become trapped within a field of two dimensional life forms in the League of Extraordinary gentlemen. Volume two, issue two, chapter three. It’s mentioned in that in an unknown basement of New York flatland was discovered by a mathematician in the 2D blacktop episode of Futurama, which I mentioned before.

Uh, that’s, that’s the episode name. 2D blacktop, two spaceships moving at relativistic speeds, crash head on and are compressed together into a flat disc. They meet natives of the realm who chase after them when the concept of a third dimension is brought up. So interesting. I’m not, I’m familiar with what Futurama is, but I’ve never seen that.

In David Foster Wallace’s novel, infinite Jest from the 1990s, it’s briefly mentioned that students from the Infield Tennis Academy could be seen in studying and highlighting copies of flatland it, uh, flatland features in Big Bang Theory. On episode, the episode, the Physics Vortex, Sheldon declares it as one of his favorite imaginary places to visit, and as soon as I read that one, I was like, oh, I remember that scene.

But I didn’t, of course, didn’t put it together at the time. 

[01:10:40] Rebekah: Oh, I missed that because we’re watching Big Bang, but we’re way past that now. Yeah, I didn’t 

[01:10:44] Donna: remember that. On the series, the Orville episode, new Dimensions, after they enter a region of two Dimensional Space, captain Mercer references flatland and its themes of social hierarchy.

Then in Sons of Anarchy, it appears in episode named Straw, uh, clay Morrows lounging on a cot in a private cell in a county jail. And he first meets. Uh, this is when he first meets, uh, US Marshall Toric, and he kind of ignores Toric while he is keeping his eyes on a copy of Flatland. It’s also in Gravity Falls.

Um, it’s implied by the main antagonist, bill Cipher, that he originates from a dimension very similar to flatland and also in the Gravity Falls book titled The Book of Bill. Uh, a picture of the cover of the book cover is shown on a TV screen in the chapter titled My Story. Um, the novel, the physical novel appears in.

Interstellar and I need to go, oh my gosh, I need to go see that, where that is. And then in last one, in the 1964 episode of Outer Limits, the episode named Behold, E-E-C-K-A two dimensional creature accidentally visits Earth through a time hole and causes damage before it can get back home. So I found that pretty cool that such a small, seemingly small piece of fiction finds its place in so many contemporary things and a lot of unusual, some of the science fiction stuff I can see, but a few of those things like, oh, it’s okay, put it in there.

So. For what that’s worth. 

[01:12:24] Tim: So our friend who suggested it was not the only person who found it. An interesting Thank you Nicholas. 

[01:12:31] Rebekah: Yeah, so there were two things that I just wanted to briefly cover before we do our little closing stuff. One of them I thought was interesting. I’d never heard lad elgan gers name before.

Um, but apparently. There was some political controversy around him. Um, he is a self-proclaimed libertarian conservative, you know, do it that what you will, I know lots of people have different political opinions, which is not the point of this, but he created a bunch of political videos, so I don’t remember if you guys have ever seen this one, but he’s the guy who made the Nancy Pelosi ad, well, it was an ad for Dale Peterson in Alabama.

I think I saw this one time that portrayed Nancy Pelosi as the wicked witch of the West. So he like did creative ads that were like very like anti Democrat. And so they actually, the Democrat, democratic congressional campaign committee specifically mentioned like the controversy around another one of his ads in a fundraising email.

So he’s like come up as a controversial figure in that. And so I think that’s really interesting. I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s currently involved in any political controversy, but because he created this movie about this political commentary thing, I think then it was like interesting. ’cause a lot of the people that are kind of big cult fans of this film definitely lean more like liberal.

And so it was just an interesting dichotomy for some of the people that I saw reviewing and like discussing it and things like that. So I just thought it was interesting. Again, we didn’t see the other version, so I, I don’t know, uh, more than what Josiah already described that was in there. But, um, the other thing I thought was interesting, and this was also brought up in one of the, the commentary videos I watched that I thought was really good, was that in addition to the fact that he made a trilogy out of Flatland, he also wrote a sequel.

It’s not part of the trilogy called sphere land. Sphere land picks up generations later. Same story, but the narrator is a hexagon that is a descendant of a square, um, still in the two dimensional world, but the hexagon starts noticing weird math problems that suggest flat land might actually be somewhat curved and not flat.

And with a little help from mysterious, higher dimensional voice, he realizes that their whole world actually does exist on the surface of a giant sphere. Boo. Um, the, yeah. As the reviewer stated, like flatland, it mixes like math and sci-fi and some philosophy about the limits of how we see reality and what we think we know.

Wow. Um, which I do think is interesting because they worked that in to ER’s film. Mm-hmm. If you remember, he talks to his son, who is a Hexagon grandson, which was weird or grand, no, it wasn’t his grandson in the movie. He had one son that was a hexagon and the rest that were pentagons. Oh. In the book. I thought that was weird.

But he calls him son. Oh. In the, but it was his grandson book.

[01:15:26] Tim: Grandson. Okay. Mm-hmm. 

[01:15:27] Rebekah: But it’s interesting because in the film he points out to his hexagon son, like. The sun, basically the sun brings up a bunch of math things and was like, wait, but this doesn’t make sense. Like if you take this math concept and you do this, and he’s like, well, we don’t talk about that.

And so I thought it was funny. So it seems like Ellinger may have actually read Sphere Land as well and like integrated a little bit of that into, um, the film that he created. Who wrote Sphere 

[01:15:50] Tim: Land? 

[01:15:51] Rebekah: It was by, oh gosh, hold on. Lemme look that up. It couldn’t have been by 

[01:15:54] Tim: Abbott. I thought I wrote. No, 

[01:15:55] Rebekah: he was dead by the time it was written.

I think it was by a female author, unless he was a hundred years old. Translation Di Berger Berger. It was a, a German, um, novel translated into um, English. Gotcha. Di D-I-O-N-Y-S is like how the name is spelled so 

[01:16:12] Donna: well as we’ve gone through a lot of serious conversation on uh, uh, some very serious topics.

I had a little mini game that would bring us back to the reality of some of our more silly side. So my. Little mini game is we 

[01:16:32] Rebekah: Silly side what? No. Silly side with Larry. 

[01:16:36] Donna: So just so that I wouldn’t, you know, name call anybody. This is mom Nerd trivia. All right. So Joe Estevez is in one of the film versions.

He’s, I think he plays a square in the, the Johnson and Travis, uh, 30 some minute. He voices, uh, Abbott Square 

[01:16:55] TJ: and Rebecca. You know, Joe Estevez Uhhuh when he was from, that’s the question. That’s question. That’s what mom’s asking. No, 

[01:17:02] Donna: I mean, that’s fine. Mm-hmm. Because I didn’t, I don’t know who Joe Estevez is.

I, I didn’t think you guys would know. So, you 

[01:17:08] Tim: know Emilio, right? Yeah. Oh, like the 

[01:17:10] Rebekah: do 

[01:17:10] Donna: the Mighty Duck guy in Esteve. Estevez family. He’s the brother. Okay. He said his brother. Okay. And Martin Sheen. And they’re all like, there’s all relation there. So what other family favorite and I’m gonna say family favorite.

’cause our family, I love it. So, of course family 

[01:17:23] Rebekah: not you’re gonna families. It just helps. I’ll tell you after if I think it’s a real family favorite. Oh. So let’s say it’s this way, 

[01:17:29] Donna: it’s not. So baby listener, sorry if you misunderstood that. Our family has seen this movie a number of times. I have seen it more times than I really want to tell you ’cause it’s a little embarrassing.

But he’s a, a secondary ca character. 

[01:17:45] Rebekah: I do not know the answer to this question, but I’m just gonna make a random guess because this movie’s been on my mind. Is, is he in Galaxy Quest? No. No. Oh, darn. 

[01:17:56] Donna: He’d work in there. 

[01:17:57] Rebekah: Um, all right. Josiah knows the answer. I can already see it on his face. 

[01:18:01] TJ: Yeah, I was about to spoil it.

[01:18:04] Rebekah: Yeah, you, it’s okay. Oh gosh. It’s alright. So give us the answer. 

[01:18:07] TJ: Well, it’s a mystery science theater movie. Oh. And one of the jokes that the people make was Joe Estevez comes in frame and puts his hands on his hips. And the way he’s dressed is just so soft and cuddly and the, yeah. Mystery Science Theater, people say, look, it’s Winnie the Pooh.

I like that one. Uh, it’s Werewolf. Werewolf. He’s 

[01:18:30] Donna: in Werewolf, or Werewolf is in real name. Sorry. He is in 

[01:18:33] TJ: werewolf. Someone works at the So family favorite means excavation. 

[01:18:38] Rebekah: Dig, think. I think the three of you. Family favorite. ’cause I’ve never seen it. I don’t know what you’re talking about at all. 

[01:18:43] Tim: Mystery Science Theater have to 

[01:18:46] TJ: 8,000.

We have to watch it when 

[01:18:46] Rebekah: you come back that I don’t know the last time I ever watched a full episode of Mystery Science, theater, anything. So I know you guys liked it, but I think you watched it after I moved away to college. Oh wow. And you’re having more wonderful family time. Without me. It was us.

[01:18:57] TJ: Stinks. Rebecca, stinky. 

[01:19:00] Rebekah: Uh, well I think we’re at the point where we can give our final verdicts. Uh, remember we’re giving out of 10 a star rating for both the book and the film and then establishing which we thought was better. And so, and again, and for this purpose, we are using the, uh, full length film from 2007 by lad Ellinger.

’cause we did not watch the other one. 

[01:19:22] TJ: I think that Flatland is an iconic classic book and the movie, while it improves. On the book. In some ways it is a worthy adaptation in a lot of ways, bringing the story to film, giving it more of a story, giving it more action and conflict to make it a more interesting screen adaptation.

Very, it was a successful adaptation, I would say, for what it is, for the budget it had, I think it’s, um, it just had so few problems Besides there was not money put into it for, for the amount of money that was put into it. I would give it an eight. It was a wow, really good use of the resources he had. I would, um, I would give the book an eight or a nine, somewhere, somewhere around there, but its reach definitely has to be considered in my comparison, so, mm-hmm.

By a, by a pretty long stretch. I’d say the book is better because. The movie has had almost no impact, even though it is a very worthy adaptation, whereas the book seems to be iconic across the generations, especially with scientists nerds, but also nerdy cinema people. So mm-hmm. I, I really enjoyed the book.

It gave me early Isaac Asimov vibes. Sure. The, have you, Rebecca, have you read the Foundation, the first foundation story? Uh, no. It’s a short story. It’s like on my list. 

[01:20:58] Rebekah: Oh, okay. No, I was thinking the first book in the series, but no series. So the first series book, the series 

[01:21:03] TJ: is on my list series. The first book in the series is four short stories that were published.

Okay. Independently of one another. And then he combined them into a book. So the first of those short stories especially reads to me like it was the same era, even though it was 60 years after. The fact after, uh, flatland, I really enjoyed this possibly more than any of you. I guess I, this, this might be dad sort of thing as well, but, uh, I enjoyed the mathematical world building the philosophy.

I wouldn’t call it super political. I think that has, you know, a different meaning and nowadays, but technically it is political commentary, even if it’s not on modern political commentary. I think it’s very contemporary. It’s not contemporary, but it feels very applicable, although not to specific people and specific political parties, but I think it speaks to how.

People in power keep those not in power, out of power, which is mm-hmm. Always something that we’re concerned about. 

[01:22:09] Donna: Well, I, uh, enjoyed reading. I enjoyed it more than I expected to. I just, I went in it, I tried to go in with no expectation because I didn’t know anything about the book or the story or anything like that, and so I did enjoy it.

I thought the brevity of it kept me interested in what he was saying, and I didn’t feel like he drug it out so far that I just could not follow him. He kept it moving along and giving you each piece of information in a way that just didn’t feel drug out. I would give the book, I, I would say. I, I, I would give it somewhere between eight and 8.5.

I felt like a lot of people could read it and even if it was something they weren’t normally into, they could read it and get a, get a lot out of it or find it, find it interesting. The film, I’m not gonna say I’d never watch it again ’cause there are some parts of it I think I would be interested to see.

Uh, but I’m gonna say probably maybe a six for me. Six and a half. I didn’t really have any issues with it or thought it was horrible, but I liked, maybe I liked the language of the book or the way the book was structured or something. I’m gonna give it the book over the film in this one. 

[01:23:23] Rebekah: Um, mine’s pretty easy.

I think that the book, as much as I kind of have complained about it a few times, and I know it was very strange. I think the first read through was just very strange. Not knowing when they were gonna get to the point mm-hmm. Uh, and get to the plot. But in general, I do think that having. The, the world set up ended up like being really fascinating and it scratched the like science nerd itch that I have.

And so I think for me, the book was probably like a six and a half. Like I probably will, I don’t know, I’ll maybe put it on in the background. I don’t reread a lot of heavy like political commentary again. Mm-hmm. Even if I liked it the first time, like 1984, I’ve listened to a few times or read physically a few times maybe.

And that one is like, I have to be in a very, very specific mood. I use books as escapism a lot. So for me, this wasn’t really escapism. It was like it was. Weird ’cause it felt like the movie especially tried to make it feel lighthearted when in reality it was like very dark in a lot of ways. And like some of the ways that they handle like relationships and stuff were very hard.

But all that to say, I think the book for me was like a six and a half. I will probably put the audio book on, I’ll probably buy a copy of it if I can find it at my use book store. I listened to the audiobook and bought it on Kindle this time. But um, like I would keep it on my shelf. The movie for me was probably like a five outta 10 max.

I had a hard time with the cheap CGI like, it just, it was so hard to take it seriously and it’s such a serious topic. But I was like finding myself laughing a lot. I really, I think the thing I disliked the most was he did seem, um, Ellinger did seem to understand the commentary, which we mentioned earlier.

May not have been the case with the other adaptation, but my problem then is I. The one thing I really was bugged by was that the irregular senator Chroma, testes, whatever. Yes. Um, that’s literally what it has to be. Yeah. He had a really do voice like everybody else kind of sounded similar and just had slightly different voices.

And he talked like this, like, and he, it was kind of like a, a goofy character. I’m trying to remember. There’s a cartoon movie that it sounded like the character of like one of the silly people. Um, so it felt a little weird ’cause it was like, wait a minute, you’re kind of not portraying well, the person that is like, maybe somebody who’s actually standing up for fairness and equality maybe.

I don’t know. It was like, it hit me a little weird. The weird CGI, I honestly, I think what makes it be like a five instead of maybe even a six for me is the scene where he goes back from Spaceland into flatland. He’s so long. Like the transportation scene, I’m like sitting there and I’m like. Oh my gosh, how much longer is this sound effect gonna go?

Like, what is he gonna get back? That’s very true. And so there was just like, you know, it’s kinda one of those things, it’s hard because it was such, like Josiah said, it was a very minimally budgeted kind of thing. So for the amount of money that they probably spent, it’s, you know, that’s great, like you did a great job.

But it’s the issue that sometimes occurs in like self-published books where people didn’t have enough editorial support of somebody to just be like, Hey, this needs to be fixed, this needs to be shortened, this needs to be cut, you need to clarify this. Like, whatever. And so the movie was kinda like, I’m never gonna put it on again, but it is free.

And so I do think commentary wise, like, you know, if I had more kids I was homeschooling, maybe I might use it as like a homeschooling tool and use it more educationally, like, put the movie on. In that case I’m not gonna watch it again. So book was better for me. Um, neither of them were like necessarily home runs, but I did like the nerdy side of that.

Uh, at, on the same token. So that’s me. 

[01:27:01] Tim: For me, I would say I would give the. Book, uh, seven. Um, I think it, and I think it was better than the movie. I would give the movie a six. Um, okay. I felt like in the book, I actually did care about a square. Um, okay. And love that in the movie, I cared about him until partway through the three dimensional world.

And it seemed like visually things kind of fell apart for me, and there was so much going on. It was, it was difficult to, to really be concerned about, about a square. So for me, I would give it to the book, a seven over a six for the movie, and I enjoyed it. It was very, very different, uh, than anything that, that I’ve listened to or read or watched or anything like that.

The computer graphics were very, uh, very much a part of making it feel a little strange once they got into. Uh, into the 3D world. I could handle it better in the 2D world. That made, that made sense. It worked. That was fine for me. Uh, when they went into 3D, it, it felt very early. C, GI, so, uh, mm-hmm. And I understand low, low budget, but I would have to give the edge to the book because it has, um.

It has affected or, or been, um, affecting in, uh, in society since it was written, which is pretty amazing considering it’s almost 150 years old and there are still groups and people making reference to it. And, uh, you know, 

[01:28:39] Rebekah: and it’s not like a commonly read thing. Right. And it’s not, it’s not like a cult classic movie in that it’s, it’s never been like released as a full-length movie in theaters that was like well done, right.

Created by a studio. That was really into it. So even we’ve had stuff like Lord of the Rings we’ve talked about, you know, it’s had this massive impact almost a hundred years later and like all this stuff. But for this, it’s interesting that it still is pervasive in all these other media, despite the fact that it’s like not necessarily mainstream, it’s most 

[01:29:10] Tim: people wouldn’t recognize.

That’s where this for sure reference comes from. Yeah, 

[01:29:15] Rebekah: exactly. I love that. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five star rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Um, apple Podcasts and Audible. Take full reviews. Spotify takes star ratings specifically. Those help us a ton. Uh, get new listeners in and just help communicate who’s gonna love the show.

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You can also find us online on x Instagram and Facebook at book is Better Pod. And uh, until next time, bye-bye baby listeners and attend to your configuration. Bye-bye. Bye everybody. Bye bye.