After a camel cricket update (!), Jesse and Chris try to untangle the conga line of affection and destruction that forms the structure of Egan's remarkable 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Bagg play

Play along with Dukes and Bagg as we play Neal Stephenson Bingo. We find that the final third does pick up a bit, with Goto Dengos story in particular providing a satisfying character arc. There are

Dukes and Bagg wonder about the length of the middle section of the book, which as far as they can tell, only establishes one major plot point. And they wonder at the stakes of the novel? Who cares if

Bagg and Dukes area little tired of Neal Stephenson, but our two codebreaking huffduff operators soldier on into Stephensons large 1999 novel Cryptonomicon. Haiku-composing marines, lots of math via

Dukes and Bagg talk scruffiness and the virtues of whiskers more broadly. Then they complain about Stephensons propensity to want to write three books into every book, his tendency to orphan MacGuffi

We hit pause on recapping, and talk the intersection of education and technology with a genuine educational technologist, Professor Justin Reich (and the man who introduced Dukes + Bagg). Justin consi

Bagg proposes Dukes would live in Dovetail in this scenario, and the UMBs set off to untangle this ambitious and elaborate neo-nano-steampunk plot. We note Stephensons obsessions with chaos v. order,

After blowing off steam about the pronunciation of Natick in the audio book, Dukes and Bagg reflect on the challenges of reigning in Stephensons firehose of talent" and speculate about which of th

Chris and Jesse try to figure out where Zodiac sits in the upper-middlebrow spectrum. Dukes wishes he could have commuted around Chicago a la Sangamon Taylor, Stephenson's protagonist, and we discuss

Bagg and Dukes dive into the second half of Highsmiths mystery in reverse. They discuss whether it should have been harder for Tom to get away with murder and how Toms rationalizations can feel to