Flowering bulb lotteries, plants with agency, humans never learning and... incel protagonists?! All by the War of the Worlds guy! Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're pollinating plots from our seventh book in the collection, ‘Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic,’ edited by Daisy Butcher (yes, really!). In this episode, our featured story is: The Flowering of the Strange Orchid by H. G. Wells.
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is reading Saga vol 1-11 by Brian K Vaughan; drinking Meier's Creek Mo Money Mo Kolsch.
Damien is watching Channel Zero: Candle Cove (2016; SyFy); drinking Boulevardiers (bourbon, campari, sweet vermouth).
Ryan is watching Eric (Netflix limited series, 2024); drinking the Talisker 10.
If you liked this week’s story, read The Ruins by Scott Smith.
Up next: "The Green Death" by H C. McNeile
Special thank you to Dr Blake Brandes for our Whiskey and the Weird music!
Like, rate, and follow! Check us out @whiskeyandtheweird on Instagram, Threads & Facebook, and at whiskeyandtheweird.com
Jessica: [00:00:00] I also don't have the best luck in life. So if I discovered a plant, it would probably be like super poison ivy. And in that case, I'm probably not going to name super poison ivy after myself.
Ryan: You'd name it after us. Welcome back everybody. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jessica: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we're Whiskey and the Weird. Here we are in our seventh season and it's amazing how much we've grown over the years. From our roots in Season 1 when we covered From the Depths, to the fruits we discovered in Season 6 when we read The Night Wire, Whiskey and the Weird is proud to once again till the soil of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.
Each season we cover one volume in this acclaimed series, and each episode we dig deep into one story. They always contain a full spoiler summary [00:01:00] by two of the best story summarizers I could find. Oh, yeah. And he took out an ad on Craigslist. So, make sure you read the story first and listen second. This season we're gleaning from Evil Roots, Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic.
Edited by Daisy Butcher. And now the sun lies low in the west and the soft light of the golden hour has begun. Join us, if you please, in the garden and let us see what has germinated from the minds of the best writers of yesteryear. Jess is our master story planner, so Jess, tell us, what story are we reaping tonight?
Jessica: We've got The Flowering of a Strange Orchid by your friend and mine, HG Wells. I
Ryan: think he could have worked a little harder on the title. That's just my opinion.
Jessica: That's strange. He's got the [00:02:00] gist.
Ryan: Well, before we get into that particular strangeness, we've got a little bit of bar talk to do. Damien, what are you drinking?
Damien: Tonight I decided to take a few weeks ago I bought a bottle of Puncher's Chance bourbon, and I didn't want to have just that. I had a, almost a full bottle of Campari and a lot of sweet vermouth, so I decided I would make a Boulevardier, which is a Negroni. So Negroni being gin sweet vermouth, and Campari, a bitter orange aperitif.
That you just sub out that gin with whiskey. And it is an entirely new drink called a Boulevardier, but still treated the same. Here's my feelings on it. I think I should have used a rye whiskey something with a little more spice bite to it, because I think punchers got a lot of sweetness in there already is a bit on the sweeter side.
Yeah. Yeah. And so when I mixed it with the sweet vermouth and the Campari, even though it's a bitter, it's still a high sugar [00:03:00] bitter. So, it was just, it was a little too sweet for me. That said, I, I'll drink three of these and then pass out, so it'll be a good day. As far as what I've been reading, watching or otherwise I did just watch after years of not watching it and it being in my queue and me being curious about it, but something about the poster art, as it were, just led me to keep pushing it off.
I finally watched the first season of SyFy's Channel Zero. Oh yeah. Anthology. Good work. Yeah. The first season is Candle Cove. Yes. Now, I wasn't familiar. Right. With the teeth boy. I wasn't familiar, but I guess the entirety of the six or five or six seasons of this channel zero anthology is they're all standalone seasons that are based around, uh, creepy pasta, and I never really got into it.
I thought, I'm pretty internet [00:04:00] savvy. And I thought that maybe this would be something with my fascination with horror that I would dive into the tomes of sort of original creepy pasta OGs and kind of catch up on that. But I never did. So all this was new to me. I could see the little subtle nuances of hat tips of some of the characters and whatnot within this storyline, which is basically there's an unimagined, or there is a TV show that kids of a certain town seem to remember watching when they were kids. But there's no evidence of it existing or anything like that, which is also very similar to a story that I read recently called Mr.
Magic. And then it turns out that it becomes this thing where it, hypnotizes, takes control of the kids and they start acting wonkily and getting very stabby. And there's a boy who's made out of teeth. Yeah. There's just a lot of like kookiness that goes on, but scary puppets. It was a lot thrown into that first season.
It was good. It had a few it, there were a lot of like little [00:05:00] nuanced things that I thought were very, very interesting. And I thought the acting was really solid. And the story was inherently creepy. All in all, I'll definitely watch the subsequent seasons, but I started with the first, which I've seen the first two.
Jessica: I've seen the first two and a half, the second, the
Ryan: second one. I liked better than the first one.
Damien: Okay. All right. Good to know. I'm about to kick that one off, but the first season is called the entire series is called channel zero. And the first season is called candle Cove. And so that's what I watched.
Nice. What about you, Jess?
Jessica: I am drinking a beer tonight. It is the Meyers Creek Mo'Honey Mo'Kolsch. I've had it before. It's good. I was trying to find something. I like a
Ryan: good kolsch. I do like a good kolsch.
Jessica: Like not often, but every once in a while. It has
Damien: to stay like super cold to me. As soon as the kolsch gets warm.
I get
Jessica: a cozy on it. Yes, but I hard agree and you have to drink it fast and it's very sweet. And so we'll see how this goes. It's a delicious pool
Ryan: beer comes right out of that icy [00:06:00] cooler. But I was trying to find something that was like botanical,
Jessica: but the closest I could find was that it's got a bee on it.
And bees like plants, so that's as thematic as we're getting this week. But I have been catching up on Saga, the graphic novel series by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. Have either of you ever read this?
Ryan: No, I'm afraid not.
Jessica: It's incredible. It's like
Damien: all of my graphic novel introductions come from you.
So if you're reading it for the first time, I have not read it.
Jessica: So this is, I think the one that was most recently published is like volume 11. So it's been going on for a long time. A lot of people read it monthly by issues or whatever, but I read the collections when they come out, it's this like big spanning, like technically war story, but really it's this like cute sci fi Family like they're caught up in this war and they're [00:07:00] trying to get away from it It's like a forbidden love story, but the art is incredible.
The character design is so wild like every My favorite character is a little seal who wears overalls, who farms walruses, and then the next scene someone with a cat gets murdered, right? So it's just, it's all over the place. But it's very good and it has been consistently really good for a long time, so if you're looking for something that you can dive into, That has back issues, but it's just one consistent story.
So it's not like jumping into Spider Man where you've got 40 Spider Man, like this has been going on for a while, but it's just one really lovely story. That's very sweet and sad and very funny. And the characters are cool.
Damien: Wait, so is it done and you're just reading through the volumes or is it still in progress?
Jessica: I just, I think the 11th volume came out. Early this year. And I've just been negligent in picking it up until recently.
Ryan: So these volumes, are [00:08:00] they like comic book length or they graphic novel? They're
Jessica: graphic novels. So imagine 11 graphic novels.
Damien: Gotcha.
Jessica: Full of, I did that with the,
Damien: with the boys and with that something's killing the children.
Like I just save it up and read. Cause otherwise I would just tear through those individual issues. Yes.
Jessica: And then it. Yeah. So pick it up or borrow it or find it at the library. It's. Popular, people like it. I like it, and that's why everyone should read it. Ryan, what are you drinking?
Ryan: Well, thank you, Jess.
I also wanted to go thematic with my drink choice tonight, so we're reading Does
Jessica: it have an E on it?
Ryan: No, it does it's not quite as thematic as that, but it's the closest I could get. So we're reading this book that has got plants in it. And so I picked a Scottish whiskey. Because Scotland also has plants.
Oh, perfect.
Damien: It's perfect.
Ryan: I
Damien: mean, you couldn't get
Ryan: more on theme. Thank you. I'm drinking one of my favorite Scottish whiskeys tonight, which is the Talisker 10 from the Isle of [00:09:00] Skye. I've been to Skye. I've been to the Talisker Distillery. They've got plants there. It's a beautiful place.
There are plants. There's plenty of plants. They're all over, really. I've stayed in the village of Ullanish and eaten at The delightful restaurant in the hotel there. What a wonderful experience that was. The Talisker is a powerful whiskey. It is explosive on the palate with fire and smoke and then mellows out towards the finish.
It's a really great whiskey to give to somebody that's never had Scottish whiskey before, if you don't want them to drink more when they come over and visit you. That's the Talisker 10, one of my favorite whiskeys. To not share As for what i've been doing, I took a a plane trip recently for work and so I had you know three hours in the air there and then three hours in the air back and I watched a netflix limited series that just came out apparently I'd never heard of it.
And again, i'm just continuing to try to avoid that like 45 minutes of decision making when you turn on A streaming service and so [00:10:00] just it was like You what is the number one streaming show right now? It's a show called Eric. And so I'm going to watch that. Have you seen, have I, have you seen it?
Yeah, I hear lots of good things. It's very good. It starts off as your run of the mill kidnapping crime drama. And quickly turns into something way more. Way more potent than that. It turns out to be a story about I think our human failures each character each character has failed at something Succeeded at others, but the show highlights the failures And yet how community is made in the midst of those failures In spite of those failures and even indeed because of those failures the main character Is is this dude Vincent who is a Jim Henson like puppeteer, puppet artist.
Has a TV show and he's obsessed with his own work. He's saturated with it. He's saturated with alcohol [00:11:00] as well. Which is part of his problem. And his son goes missing in, in the streets of New York and broad daylight while on his way to school. It's only six episodes long. I'm amazed by that as I think back of all the emotion they packed into those six episodes.
What a wonderful show. There's some redemption at the end. It's very well done. It's a beautiful arc. So that's Eric. It's on Netflix. If you see advertising for it that shows a big blue puppet monster, that's the one you're looking for. Of course. Yeah, I just don't want you to be confused.
So that's what we're drinking. That's what we're watching or reading and enjoying and we hope that you do too. We want to get into some author and publication info for this episode, but way back in season two, episode two, we learned all about H. G. Wells. We learned about his broken leg. We learned about his father's broken leg, his loose morals.
The name he called his wife that wasn't her name. We opined on whether or not he even knew his wife's name, [00:12:00] and we praised him for his sci fi writing. As much as I'm tempted to retread some of that juicy ground, I don't want to abuse long time listeners with repetition. What I will offer you, as we've done with repeat authors in the past, is regale you with some fun facts that you might not know.
So, did you know, for example, that Wells appears in the Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band? Not as a backup singer, that was what I initially thought, but on the cover image in the upper right corner in an article entitled, Sgt. 25 Things Even My Best Friend Didn't Know Until Now, published in 2009, Yoko Ono said, quote, John and I felt that we were like people in an H.
G. Wells story. Two people who are walking so fast that nobody else can see them. And so they memorialized that feeling in the album art.[00:13:00]
You may also be interested to know, if you're into Warhammer, that H. G. Wells is considered to be the father of modern wargaming. Two books he wrote, Floor Games and Little Wars, contain detailed rules on how to play. He was fond of trying out new rules with his friends and was quite the model builder as well.
So all you 40k people out there, H. G. Wells is your grandfather. I
Jessica: think that's how it works, yeah.
Ryan: Yeah, I'm gonna go with it. And before becoming a full time writer, H. G. Wells was a teacher. And one pupil would grow up to be a famous writer in their own right. And that was A. A. Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh.
Absolutely. Milne would later go on record to say that Wells was not a very good school teacher. laughter laughter laughter [00:14:00] So, there's some fun facts you may not have known, and If you did know those, then I guess you get to sit there for the rest of this episode and feel extra smart, so good for you. The Flowering of the Strange Orchid was first published in the August 2nd, 1894 edition of the Pall Mall Budget, which was a weekly London magazine.
It ran from 1868 until 1920. and was a weekly digest of material published in the evening paper of the Palmall Gazette. But if this story was first published there, then I'm guessing they also included some original material. So there's a little bit about the Palmall budget. And Jess, I think you've got our story summary for this evening.
Jessica: Do I ever. We open contemplating the joy and mystery of orchid purchasing. It's weird because you're not buying a plant or a flower, you're buying a clump of roots and it's so [00:15:00] magical or whatever when it starts to grow and unfurl. Plus, the hunt. You're always on the hunt. And that brings us to our protagonist, Wetterburn, a lonely incel type who just wants some Ah,
Damien: there it is.
Jessica: Am I going too far in calling him an incel? I bet we'll debate that later. But, he's a lonely dude with no ambition, who is waited on by his housekeeper, who is also his cousin.
Waterburn has enough of an allowance that he doesn't have to work and he spends his time puttering in his little hothouse greenhouse. But right now, he's sitting at his breakfast table, making plans and moping. First, the plans. There's a guy, or a business, or something named Peters that's going to be selling a bunch of plants later today.
Wedderburn thinks there might be something interesting at that plant sale, so he's excited to go. But also, moping. Intertwined with the planning are complaints about how nothing fun or [00:16:00] exciting ever happens to him. He's never been married, never had an accident, et cetera, et cetera. He just wants something to happen to him.
And what brought on this lament? Well, some kind of weird jealousy about the exciting life of a plant collector. A plant collector who gets to tromp all over the globe, looking at new species of plants to bring back to Europe. And it's a specific guy. And this cool guy got malaria. And he broke his leg.
And he got divorced.
Ryan: There's the broken leg. There it is.
Jessica: And he even Killed a native in a country he was visiting, and now he's dead. But wow, he was only six, and Wedderburn would kill to have an exciting life like that.
Ryan: Indiana Jones and the Strange Orchid.
Jessica: He's been having this convo with his maid slash cousin, who, in the grand tradition of HGL's not knowing the name of women, does not have a name.
His cousin maid thinks [00:17:00] that Wedderburn's story is horrific, And hustles him out the door to catch the train to the flower show. Pause! And now we're back with flowers, flower show's over. Or, not quite flowers, just gross looking root balls that Wetterburn can't stop staring at. They are all laid out on the table while he eats, including what he claims is the last specimen ever collected by Batten.
The dead guy from a couple of paragraphs ago. The cousin maid does not like how these plants look. There are roots sticking out that make it look like a spider playing dead. Waterburn says chill out, I'll put it in a pot tomorrow. But think of how exciting it would be to out there, to be out there collecting these plants.
The Cousin. Is unimpressed. Wutterburn says, Men must work, though women may weep. Which is an incredible thing for an unemployed guy on an allowance to say to his cousin who is currently [00:18:00] working for him while he looks at lumps on a table. Also, during this conversation, the maid is disgusted by Wedderburn's descriptions of swamps and specimen collection and the native population, and I think, is she going to talk about the horrors of colonialism?
About people marching all over and taking everything of value? Well, no. She's grossed out that Batten probably died because his guides are so uncivilized that they don't know medicine. Also, I bet that root ball has malaria on it. Get it off the table. Okay. Yay! Anyway, back to the specimen. One of these little root balls that Wedderburn purchased was unidentified, and it was actually found underneath Batten's dead body, in the swamp, where all of his blood was sucked out by leeches.
Isn't that exciting? Now we have a montage. Wedderburn's planting and trimming and watching the plants in the hothouse. [00:19:00] He is adjusting the teak and the charcoal. He's pointing out aerial rootlets. And well, okay, so he's killed most of the plants that he bought. The mystery orchid has started to grow.
His cousin doesn't like the look of it, and Wedderburn gets offended. But obviously, her dislike does not stop him from blabbing at her non stop about the plants that she hates. He's spending all of his time tending to this little plant, which eventually grows. Shoots up a shoot, wow, wow, wow! Is this the exciting thing he's been waiting for his whole life?
The roots are now a foot long and thick like creepy tentacles! Finally, it flowers. A set of beautiful white with orange and purple and purple y blue flowers have appeared. And they smell so strongly. And it's so hot and steamy in this hot and steamy room. What's happening? [00:20:00] Well, now it's tea time. And Wedderburn doesn't show up.
We can imagine this is unusual because the only thing this guy has going on is the one flower he hasn't killed yet. Eating and blabbing at his cousin maid. So
Ryan: he should be on time for tea. He
Jessica: should probably be there. He does not seem to have a busy schedule. Our housekeeper goes into the hot house to get Wedderburn.
The greenhouse is hot and smelly. And what's that big lump laying over there by the pipes? Of course, it's Wedderburn, with the plant's tentacle like roots stuck to his neck and face and hands. He's bleeding from the places that the tentacles are attached. The maid yells, grabs him, snaps off some of the roots, trying to Get him out of there.
The roots, of course, bleed red sap, but the smell and the heat are too overwhelming. She's worried her fate is gonna be the same as [00:21:00] his. So she takes a quick detour to open the door and also chuck a flower pot through a window. She drags For good measure. The crossbreeze or whatever. Yeah. She drags Waterburn out of the hothouse with a plant still attached to him, but manages to break off enough roots to separate them.
He is bleeding from a a dozen of these sucker spots. An odd job man hears all the ruckus, and the maid yells at him to get some water, then get Annie got a woman with a name here, folks, and call the doctor. Wedderburn wakes up and asks about the orchid immediately. The maid says she'll take care of it.
He's lost a lot of blood, but is otherwise okay. So she makes him drink brandy with pink extract of meat. Of
Damien: meat, yes! Which
Jessica: Actually is what we should all be drinking tonight thematically. The maid explains what happened to the doctor and they go find the orchid, which is now limp and withered. But when they approach, one of the [00:22:00] little aerial rootlets twitches towards them.
Ryan: Menacingly.
Jessica: The next morning, all the plants are dead, but Wedderburn is thriving because he had this big stupid adventure.
Ryan: Well done, Jess. Thank you very much. Well, y'all, again, I want to start with the writing. The last episode we recorded featured a story written by a children's author, and I think that we all agree that it showed. This story was such a refreshing improvement on that, in my opinion. I want to see if you agree, and if so, what particularly do you think it is that contributes to that leveling up of the writing.
Damien: Yeah, I definitely agree.
And I, while I didn't think that it was evident that it was written by a children's author, the last story, the the picture plan story, Jonkin or good boy, Jonkin, while I don't necessarily think that it reflected, it was written, it was definitely a very simplistic story.
Yeah. There were a couple, there were a [00:23:00] couple creative one liners, but it was a lot of floors. There was a lot of delving into the characters. It read like an Aesop's fable. Whereas this had some depth. It had, even though the characters were still a bit caricatured, it's still and nameless some of them, it's still offered a little bit of humanity to each of the characters that it featured, particularly the protagonist.
And whereas, Jess identified those characteristics as being like somewhat in Celeste, I just think he was like a lonely dude who just wanted something to happen to himself, and he was like jealous of all these hero explorer archeologist types. And he was just like, nothing ever happens to me.
I just think something's going to happen. He said that a few times that he had a premonition that something would happen on this day. Something's going to happen on this day. So I just think the dude was just lame, but it showed. And. It I think the complexity of the writing was more evidenced in this than, or it, [00:24:00] stylistically it was better, it was just stronger writing than last week's story.
I agree a hundred percent. Yeah. I
Jessica: think the dialogue was also written less like a TV script. Right. I think last week's was a lot of, oh wow, what are you doing over there? Where are those steaks going? Right? Yeah. Very straightforward, very we need to get these four points of information across. This just had like dialogue of people you could tell spend all of their time together and probably don't like each other very much.
Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan: There's a lot of things I could point out about the writing here. But the, the introduction of Wetterburn as a character, this whole paragraph in the, And the first page is brilliant, I think. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but just this line or two at the end.
He might have collected stamps or coins. Or translated Horace. Or bound books. Or invented new species of diatoms. As it happened. He grew orchids and had one ambitious little [00:25:00] hothouse. Yeah. It's just it's it's a complex sentence. It's a complex thought. It's a complex way of introducing a character.
You can hear it as a voiceover in the film version. It's just, it really He could have had
Jessica: any of these nerdy hobbies, and Ed's the nerdiest. It just really gives you
Ryan: a picture of who this guy is. So, we've commented on H. G. Wells stories back in episode 2 of season 2, and we liked the writing there too.
I think the writing here is a very strong component of this tale. And obviously, look, H. G. Wells is a storied author, and a legendary creator. His stories stand the test of time in many ways, but they also hold up on the writing side of things. Well, I've been thinking about The Little Shop of Horrors this season.
I can't imagine why. And in my research, I was surprised to learn that it was this H. G. Wells story that was the big literary influence for that film. And surprised, because, [00:26:00] right, this particular one over against any of the other possibilities. Even any of the other possibilities that we've read, right?
So what do you think it is about this story particularly that led to the little shop of horrors, maybe?
Damien: would have something to do with just the randomness of the universe and Okay, why like certain things happen to certain people like little lowly. Nobody's A wet or burn, who might've once been a stand. And it's also highlighted and just touched on this and like the opening of the story, it just talks about how, when you buy orchids it's a mystery.
It's like a, it's like modern Pokemon, right? You don't know if you buy them at the grocery store,
Ryan: they've done the hard work. Oh yeah. They have done the hard
Damien: work. Yeah. If you buy, yeah. If you buy, if you buy just a little root ball that looks like a desiccated something and then you never know what's going to happen.
It could be, it could already be dead and it's just a dud or it could grow into something fascinating [00:27:00] that no one's ever seen before. And the market for these things is incredible, right? That's what
Ryan: I'm
Damien: at. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't do much research on. On the orchid market.
Ryan: I
think you can spend a lot of money
on orchids.
Jessica: I think you can spend a lot of money on
Ryan: So man, I have a terrible time keeping anything alive But I will say that the one plant I have kept alive since christmas is an orchid So i'm patting myself on the back for that.
Damien: Well, Arguably, you have a bloomed orchid. It's really hard to kill you get over It's getting ready
Ryan: to bloom again, which is what I'm impressed by.
All right. Where
Jessica: did it come from? Did you buy it at the orchid market? It was,
Ryan: it was given to me as a Christmas gift as a potted already bloomed orchid. Perfect. Great. Yeah. Perhaps this is, listen, I have trouble keeping, basil alive, so.
I don't know. I want to say that it's not, it's So much of, and this is no shade against H. G. Wells, but it's not so much the quality of his writing that's going to lead to the inspiration for Little [00:28:00] Shop of Horrors as his prominence, as his notoriety. Like people know him, so they probably read this story.
For sure, yeah. And then
Jessica: it inspired the
Ryan: movie.
Jessica: Even says in the introduction, like this was a very well known and popular story from the time. Whereas,
Ryan: They might not, what was it last time that Professor Jonkin, one Jonkins, Professor Jonkin's Cannibal Plant, probably not a lot of people had read that one, even though it clearly fits as a better potential inspiration for Little Shop of Horrors.
Jessica: Mathematically. They read this one.
Ryan: Right. I think that's going to be the biggest influence.
Damien: Also. I have to wonder, cause I do believe and correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that. Audrey the plant or Audrey to rather the plant from Little Shop was it was an alien plant, right? So with HG Wells having like yeah Yeah
Ryan: I'll go with that. Absolutely So one of the common themes I'm seeing develop in is that humanity cannot [00:29:00] always dominate or tame the plant and by extension the natural world. Is this a lesson you think we've learned?
As
Jessica: humanity?
Ryan: Yeah, as humanity. Do you think that we've, do we keep screwing this up or have we learned our lesson?
Jessica: Yeah, humanity has screwed everything up I think is the gist of what we've learned. Why we're in our current situation in this year of our lord 2024. I think that comes across in this story particularly well because this is before we knew about global warming and how horrible it is to remove plants from everywhere and harvest whatever you want.
But there's still. Discussion about they're going into these, swampy areas, and they're getting sick, and they're getting malaria, and they're not prepared with the, even the trip of what they're doing. Right,
Ryan: right.
Jessica: They can't even win that [00:30:00] part of nature.
Damien: No, we're not learning any lessons.
As a matter of fact, I think we get more bold in our assertion that human beings are the dominant force. Not just, you think nature like other living creatures, but even weather patterns and the like don't worry, we'll survive. Yeah.
Jessica: Golf courses.
Damien: So, I'm just saying, we still like power through and think that, well manmade science is going to find a way to overcome this force or whatever, and then a tsunami hits and it wipes out, the 40, 000 lives. And you're just like, Oh, well, nothing we could have done would have stopped this or prevented or made people safer.
So it's just, it's probably one of those things that it's our own ego that gets like self propagated and we think that we're invincible. So whether it's, we're on a safari and. We're still taking selfies while leaning out a window. While a tiger just, or a lion jumps up and like bites or jugular, it's Oh, how could that happen?
That's right. You forget, right. You get too [00:31:00] comfortable with your own perceived dominance and that's over all things nature. So yeah, I think we're full hearted, full heartedly still approaching things with this like invincible vibe and. We pay the price for it. Yeah,
Ryan: I, I, I'm, I'm over fascinated by things underwater, you guys know this.
And I don't, and I don't mean to berate the loss of souls that occurred in the submarine explosion last year. Or implosion, excuse me. But I just saw a news story that there's another, there's another crew going down to prove that this is an okay thing to do. And maybe they'll be alright and maybe they won't, but it's guys,
Jessica: just take a break,
Ryan: right? Like we've, we just learned that this is a hard thing. And so maybe we don't do this until we. We have a little bit better technology. I don't know. It's the hot,
Damien: it's the hot wing eating contest of sub aquatic exploration, where you're just like, I know that these wings aren't good for me.
They don't taste good, but I'm going to do it just to show that I can. Right. Well, and
Ryan: to Jessica's point about the weather, the big news story today as of recording here in [00:32:00] South Florida is Miami is suffering horrific flooding, deadly catastrophic flooding. From an afternoon rainstorm, right?
It's I was looking at the weather headlines and was thinking like, this is the beginning of one of those apocalypse movies where you go, wow, I've never seen headlines like this. And yet we read them over our breakfast cereal and continue on playing golf. Yeah. These
Jessica: news clips are the montage at the beginning of, right.
The day after tomorrow. Yep. Yep. Yes. Chilling Hall. New form of flu, it's just Polar
Damien: vortex, instant freezes,
Ryan: half of New York. Yeah, I don't I, we haven't even come to tame, begun to tame the natural. There's a wonderful book that I read a couple years ago called The Adventurer's Son.
It was by Roman Dior, I don't know if either of you have heard of him. He was a, he was a bonafide adventurer, explorer type. Went [00:33:00] to the highest high of Everest and the lowest low of wherever. Of Everest. The sightest side of Everest. So his son grows up going on these trips with him, and becomes an adventurer himself, and goes off, I think, to the jungles of Costa Rica, and, And gets lost, like doesn't report back in.
And so the book is about the journey that they take to go try to find this guy's son. And the whole time he's waxing eloquently about did I screw up as a parent by teaching my kid the love of exploration like this. With, even though I taught him. It's dangerous and I taught him how to survive and I taught him how all that things did I fail my child By putting them in a situation where they would have a love for these dangerous things it was a really good well written book.
I don't mean to have another another recommendation here When I think about did we taint and that's this is not even some [00:34:00] extreme Place, right? It's not the bottom of the ocean. It's not going to the moon. It's going to Costa Rica and it has a disastrous Impact on a family.
So is the son dead?
Damien: Well, you'll have to read the book to find out the answer Okay, cuz I'm painting the ending right now and it's somebody in the party. Maybe the dad is Wandering through the jungles of Costa Rica and stumbles across a scraggly older version of who he believes to be his boy child And he looks him in the eye and says, living son, I presume.
All right. Okay, good. It was a little bit of a setup, but I'm glad that I got it.
Ryan: I got it. I got it. I wanted to check in. Does anyone know anything about the Victorian obsession with exotic plants? No. Do tell us what have you researched?
No, I don't know anything at all. I'm just wondering. If either of you [00:35:00] did, because it seems to be a
Damien: thing.
Has this continued to modern times? Is there, are there still Not particularly. Oh, okay. No, it was just I think
Jessica: there's a resurgence recently of people being very interested in houseplants, because we are at home more, generally. And so there is more of an interest in tracking down More unique plants again by that's interesting general population.
And so is that a result
Ryan: of kovat? Do you think I am? Being at home. Yeah, I need
Jessica: a hobby. So yeah, it's you know I'm gonna get this variety of this green plant because the leaves are slightly pinker and Everyone's hunting for these specific things
Ryan: No I don't know anything particularly about it, but, just making some assumptions, the whole Victorian attitude of, the sun never sets in the British Empire.
Right. And I should like to have a plant from each continent, because that's where we are. And I think that's entirely appropriate. No I, It just seems to be a growing theme in some of these stories the search for the more [00:36:00] exotic,
Damien: I like the fact that, unlike all the other introductions of exotic elements that are brought because of their magical properties or whatever, or, their unique unfounded properties that have some sort of supernatural bend or super scientific bend, whereas this is just Ego is just, no, I want something that nobody else has.
I want something that's so incredibly yeah, right. So I, I dig that. I dig that aspect of it, that it wasn't like, it wasn't like, jonking gets a plant he's obsessed with because it was so, sent from a buddy from Brazil or whatever. Right. And this is just, no, I bought orchids because they're expensive and because not a lot of people have them or because it's an expensive hobby.
Yeah. Right. My neighbor
Jessica: doesn't have.
Damien: Yeah. The scratch, the botanical scratch, take it as it were. Exactly.
Ryan: Exactly. So on page 94, we get the story of the death of Batten, who found the orchid. Is this effective narrative foreshadowing? And if you think it is, [00:37:00] why is it not successful at warning off Wedderburn?
Jessica: I read it as oh, this is too obvious of what is going to happen. Right, yeah,
Ryan: right.
Jessica: Oh, this guy was found dead cradling this
Damien: this plant
Jessica: ball and he doesn't have any blood Better go get that root ball
Damien: Get it Wipe off the malaria Yeah, totally. The own is he was exsanguinated by Jungle leeches.
Obviously leeches. Yeah. And which is natural. You're not going to draw the conclusion that it's this, blood sucking root ball that's underneath him. But I did think it was a cool little quirky. Oh, really? I read that. I was like, all right, I see where this is going. And not just because of the title of the tome, it's, or the title of the volume itself, and knowing that the all plants are nefarious.
And these here parts see the title as well. So, it was cool. It was cool. The way it was set up, just imagining this like desiccated corpse, laying upon said they roll it over and it's a little happy [00:38:00] little Recessed. Oh, well, just hey, what's up? How are you? Take me home. Sell me to someone who doesn't deserve a little Groot
Ryan: Yeah, I think it's extremely effective foreshadowing Why is it not successful at warning off wet or burn because he's one of these dudes who's like I've got to have that Yeah at any cost like and it's too bad that guy died getting it, but thank God he found it Because now I'm gonna get it You know it, you chase after that, which you cannot achieve and it ends up burning you.
Yeah. The hot wing.
Damien: Somebody died last year in the hot wing contest, so we're making you sign a Did they we're making you sign a waiver? No, I'm just saying like same. Oh, same analogy. Yeah. Oh, someone died. Oh, really? Oh, okay. So it's dangerous. Yeah. I'll, well then I'll definitely have to do, it'll do it right?
Yeah, exactly. This
Jessica: is his last specimen because he died. There's only one, and I'm gonna have it.
Ryan: And I have to appreciate Jess calling out the fact that the female characters don't get names and tying that to H. G. Wells own personal [00:39:00] story of not knowing women's names. One does. There's just a random Annie at the end.
One does, yeah, you're right.
Jessica: Go get Annie. Woohoo. Who's she?
Ryan: Yeah.
Jessica: The lady
Ryan: he was seeing at the time he wrote the story. And
Jessica: it's, and it's interesting in how it's written in that the section with our man. His name is said every time he does anything. So it's I can't remember his name. Butterburn?
Wetterburn. Wetterburn. Wetterburn. But I like Butterburn too. Butterbean. Every paragraph is, Butterburn does this, and Butterburn gets up and does this. And then when we switch to the housekeeper, it's only she. There's not even a reference to a name at all. It's because she's unimportant, Jess. Yeah, supporting cast.
But it's such an obvious switch where it's like, all of a sudden, she's like, Where is Butterburn? It's just a very funny ending.
Ryan: Oh,
Damien: you. I'm right here, you.
Ryan: It is [00:40:00] obvious. That's why I appreciate you pointing that out. So, if you discovered A new species of plant and let's, for the sake of argument, assume that the name John Smithia is off the table.
What would you name your new species of plant?
Jessica: Okay. I would have to do a little bit of research, I think. Because if it's something good, right, like if it's something that's this is the most. Cool. If the
Ryan: plant is good, you mean? Yes.
Jessica: It generates a thousand pounds of food for every one plant you plant. But not fruit. Not fruit. Not fruit. Like a cool vegetable.
Then I would name it after myself. I also don't have the best luck in life. So if I discovered a plant, it would probably be like super poison ivy. And in that case, I'm probably not going to name super poison ivy after myself.
Ryan: You'd name it after us.
Jessica: Yeah. [00:41:00] Brian and Damien.
Damien: Yes. The first two people that would come to mind when she discovers super poison ivy.
We've
Jessica: got some options. That's all I'm saying. So I think I would need to know a little bit more about what the plant does, because I'm not going to tie myself to something horrible.
Damien: All right. Good, bad, indifferent, like innocuous plant. Murderous plant, life saving plant. I'm still naming it after myself.
I'm still, I'm so egotistical I cannot, like if that's my legacy, so be it. I gotta put my name on something.
Ryan: For better, for worse. I'm naming mine James the Less.. Look James the Less was one of the one of the disciples, and I always felt like he got a raw deal, because James the Greater was the brother of Jesus, and so he obviously is the greater, so the other James has to be the less, but what a sucky name to have for all time.
Wait, couldn't it have just been Average James? Right, but it's ja, it's not, it's James the less So I wanna get, he's in a pole to own. I want [00:42:00] to give him some some credit here and give him a plant. At least.
Jessica: Congratulations on Poison Ivy James ,
Damien: good old Jimmy Lesser come across in a topical rash.
Ryan: I, I saw like a series of portraits was done. At this one church I visited of all the apostles. And in James the Less's portrait, he's pissed off. And somebody said, why is this guy so angry? And I'm like, well, if your name was James the Less,
Damien: you'd be mad
Ryan: too.
Damien: I thought still even in a painting, he's like running up, holding his change of clothes he was supposed to get into for the portrait.
Ryan: It's like half done. Well, that's going to bring us to, did it plant? Yes, this planted. I'm not sure I'm going to keep asking this question in this book, because it. It works all the time.
Damien: I don't know. I don't, I, but on a scale of one to 10 plants, I think this was a six. Really? Yeah. Why is this a six?
Because it was more about a testament of a lonely, sad man. And just like he [00:43:00] finds an obsession against better judgment and all the red flags that it sends up. And it just so happened to be a blood sucking plant, but I think the sword kills him more.
Ryan: Well,
Damien: he did not die.
Ryan: He was rescued at the last minute.
Jessica: He was rescued by, he was rescued by,
Damien: by a fill in the blank woman. Right. Yeah, so I mean it didn't plant it wasn't as central around the plant the concept of plant Like he so you want me to keep asking
Ryan: the question. Did it play? I
Damien: Like I just like you say did it plan? Yeah, to
Ryan: what level did it plant to what level did it plant for you Jess?
Jessica: I think this plants planted pretty high Particularly in a story where We're now getting into the stories where plants have a Agency, right? This plant decided to kill this guy. Okay.
Damien: See, now that's what I'm talking about. I would argue that this plant was. Was murderous.
Jessica: Yeah, so this plant was a
Ryan: predator.
Jessica: Yeah, he wasn't just being fed a steak Right going after us your
Ryan: start folks. You're starting to see the genius [00:44:00] of Jess's story plan It's really
Jessica: The central point is that like our friend butter burn
Damien: Not even close
Jessica: It's just like at the beginning like Nothing ever happens, like really Eeyore right
Damien: now.
He just went, he just went Eeyore. A A M M E L
Ryan: E. There
Damien: you
Ryan: go! Hey!
Jessica: There's a solution to this and it's go do something. But he doesn't. The plant does something and then he has a whole story about this plant. But at no point But
Ryan: isn't he the one that at the beginning said, I wish something would just happen to me?
Something did happen.
Jessica: Yeah, but also just Go do something. Go for a walk.
Damien: He did. He went for a walk to a local orchid sale.
Jessica: Yeah, so anyway, I would say this planted highly.
Ryan: All right. High level plant. I think every one of the stories we've read so far has planted highly in my opinion. So you don't have to answer the question.
You just need to ask it. You can pick your
Jessica: own scale. Six leaves. [00:45:00]
Ryan: I said six out of ten plant.
Jessica: Two and a half roots.
Ryan: I'm going nine out of ten plants on this. Wow, nine out of ten plants.
Damien: Unreal.
Ryan: What about the scare? Does the scare hold up? I thought it was a little
Damien: spooky. Yeah. Yeah. Well, mostly because I, because it seemed like this plant was a little more intended, a little more focused, a little more driven.
And so that makes it scary as opposed to just by happenstance, I'm sitting here in fly trap gully and someone some drunk bully like falls into me and I'll never take a short cut through fly trap. Yeah. And then there's the picture plan where it's like, Oh, you fell in me. I guess I'll eat you even if it means choking myself to death and.
But this was like a, this was like a nefarious I sit here, I look innocuous and then all of a sudden I'm, and plus it's like blood sucking. It had tentacles. It had like tendrils sticking into his, major arteries and stuff. That was just cool. So I think as far as the plans we've read about so far, this was probably one of the creepiest.
Jessica: Okay. I think the scare held up. At the very end, when they [00:46:00] go in to check on the plant to make sure it's dead and it goes
Ryan: It like
Jessica: tries to reach its little root out. Great. Perfect. Very cinematic.
Ryan: Very cinematic. Absolutely.
Jessica: Great. Terrifying.
Ryan: I thought that it was perhaps scary, like if I was a Victorian gentleman, which sidebar would be awesome.
If I was a Victorian gentleman who was obsessed with foreign plants this would be scary as a cautionary tale. It's not terribly scary now. It did have a few creepy moments in it that you guys have both identified that I thought were really a lot of fun. All right. That's going to take us to our whiskey ratings.
This is how we rate our stories here on whiskey and the weird all the way from zero fingers of whiskey, which have we had a zero finger story yet? I don't think in the whole seven seasons, we've had a zero finger story up to the full fist or the coveted five fingers of whiskey. So Damien, where are you coming in on this one?
Damien: Yeah, I like it. It was good. It was very strong writing. [00:47:00] It. It was probably a little more layered in texture than the stories we've read so far, I think, which were more either parables or like I equated last week's to like an Aesop's fable, just a very and this had some more depth.
So I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and bump this up to a four. I'll give it four fingers of whiskey, Jess.
Jessica: I also gave it a four. I thought it
Ryan: was
Jessica: fun. had enough absurd things happening that I got a kick out of reading. Another nameless woman saving some doofus from a murderous plan. Delightful.
Ryan: Mark down the day and time friends, that's three fours in a row.
Four fingers from me too. I would never agree on anything. I thought, like I said, it's a little creepy in its context. Great writing, a little bit of humor, and just an interesting story overall, I thought. I really enjoyed reading this one. I can see
Jessica: why this would have been very popular. A hundred percent,
Ryan: [00:48:00] yeah.
Jessica: A story about a current fad.
Ryan: Right.
Jessica: Murdering you. Murdering you. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Ryan: All right, if you liked the story as we did, then have we got a recommendation for you? Damien what should people read or watch next?
Damien: Look, it's The Ruins. Okay? I could have done some setup here, but. This is about as much of an over.
Yeah, it's, this is about as much of an overlap. So the ruins was both a novel by Scott Smith released in 2006. I got adapted, got film treatment a couple of years later which turned into a fairly scary adaptation. And it's essentially, doofus American tourists along with some German tourists and some Greeks Are down in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, and they go to some backwoods area and discover this viney hill that's being fiercely protected by locals.
And it comes to find out that those vines are somewhat carnivorous and predatory, [00:49:00]
of course, it's also an exotic planet. It comes from an exotic source. And it just goes to show that there's this like perception of cultural dominance from one group and they get firmly put in their place by nature. That's being respected and tended to by locals.
Let's just put it that way. So again, that is the ruins 2006 horror novel by Scott Smith got turned into a film in 2008 and the film was directed by Carter Smith. I don't know if they're related to Scott Smith. So there you go.
Ryan: Well, I think I'm compelled here to highlight the incredible restraint my co hosts have shown in holding off until to recommend the ruins, right?
Like everyone in our discussion, we're like, Oh, the ruins. Oh, the ruins. Oh, the ruins. Yeah. And so here we are in episode four, You've Got the Ruins. We made it. Yeah, four episodes in before we, we finally broke down. But now
Damien: it's done, okay? The ruins is now behind us. That's right, and now we're, and the [00:50:00] hard work
Ryan: begins here.
Jessica: We don't have that to fall back on
Ryan: anymore. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this beautiful episode of Whiskey and the Weird. If you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed producing it for you, would you mind dropping us a rating or review wherever you catch your podcasts? We'd love to hear what you have to say.
We always want to thank Dr. Blake Brandes for providing the music for Whiskey and the Weird, and Damien if they'd like to tell us about their houseplants that have tried to eat them. Where could they do that?
Damien: Always interested to hear those stories. You can find us on Twitter at WhiskeyWeirdPod, at WhiskeyWeirdPod on Twitter.
We're also on Instagram and Facebook at Whiskey and the Weird, at Whiskey and the Weird on Instagram and Facebook. We spell our whiskeys with an e and we hope you do too. If not, don't be surprised if you get a bunch of crumpled up root balls that arrive and you gotta catch them all, water some of them, and maybe they'll feast on your family pets.
Jessica: Fingers crossed.
Ryan: I'm just pausing to delight in the terrified look that Jess gave the camera when you said feasting on your family [00:51:00] pets. Jess, what's the next story we're reading?
Jessica: Oh, baby. We've got the green death McNeil
Ryan: All
Damien: right. I'm looking forward to that Hr and hg and now an hc yes, there's a lot of initialisms going on here.
I'm like there is Alright, I'm R. R. Whitley.
Jessica: I'm just JB.
Damien: And I'm D. E. Smith.
Ryan: And together we're W& W. Somebody send us home.
Damien: As always. Keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages.
Ryan: BB everybody.