The book club takes a look at "It Ends with Us" by Colleen Hoover, a bestselling blend of romantic tropes and flawed portrayals of domestic assault. 

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This week, our dedicated dilettantes dissect Yes to Human Cloning, a techno-optimist utopian manifesto.

Is this the screed of a Silicon Valley pseudointellectual desperate to secure more runway? Don't be fooled: it's a 2001 work from Raël, notorious leader of the Raelian UFO sex cult, who believes humanity was cloned into existence by alien nudists.

The boys trace Raël's path from a UFO encounter in 1973 that rewrote the bible to the 2003 Clonaid hoax, and ask why his oddball movement fell into decline. 

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Mission accomplished! Book club coalition forces have secured Zabibah and the King, a romance novel / political allegory / nauseating sexual violence exploitation work written by Saddam Hussein in the twilight of his tenure as Iraq’s notorious dictator.

This episode attempts to make sense of the book in the context of Saddam’s brutal reign, US disruption of the Middle East, and the necessary ingredients for a good romance. Plus: news and doings, dictator lit, Saddam’s blood Quran, a round of Name That Dictator, and other tangents.

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The gentlemen grab their graduation gowns after completing Tyra Banks' Modelland, an ambitious and horrifying vanity project from the supermodel, media mogul and America's Next Top Model host. 

This episode explores Tyra's ill-fated attempt to create Harry Potter for models - or maybe Hunger Games for models, or maybe House of 1000 Corpses for models - it's not totally clear.  

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Gather 'round, gumshoes. The boys are on the beat this week cracking the case of 1933's Footprints Under the Window, a remarkably racist entry in early Hardy Boys canon centered on anti-Chinese xenophobia. Beyond the text, our detectives dig into the sleazy world of the Stratemeyer Syndicate (also known for Nancy Drew) and their immense impact on American YA fiction and the book world at large.

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The book club don their sun hats and carefully excavate a pseudoscience classic, Erich von Däniken's 1968 Chariots of the Gods. 

Brushing off this dusty tome, they dig deep into a convicted fraudster with seventy million copies sold, alien eugenics and Nazi ghostwriters, and the origins of an enduring theory that every great ancient civilization was built by aliens.

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The book club takes a breather from cults and controversy to investigate Guy N. Smith's 1976 splatterpunk horror classic Night of the Crabs - a tale of giant man-eating crabs that terrorize a Welsh seaside town.

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Slumber party! The boys cuddle up with John Boyne's shallow, exploitative Holocaust fable, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

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The fellas return for awards and festivities, followed by a feisty frolic through the infamous Twin Flames Universe - a spiritual romantic self-help grift turned alleged cult led by Jeff Divine and Shaleia Divine.

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In this episode, the book boys become book men. Grab a drink, or maybe 15, and join us wrangling with the Minister of War Crimes' 2024 manifesto on military masculinity. 

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