Extra Nate: What More Can I Even Say About The Futurological Congress?
It’s Extra Nate! This week I have to write a long-overdue blog about the Futurological congress or I Ben will make me run a mile. So what can I say? Nothing. The end.
Okay, fine. These blogs are about supplemental material to the book rather than a book review or a rehash of the podcast anyway. So what can I say aout The Futurological Congress? Nothing. But it’s not the end this time. I already did that joke. It was hilarious and you laughed. No I’m more interested in how we came to even read this book to begin with. In order to select this patreon book, we spun a wheel. I’m sure we can come up with a catchier name for that wheel at some point. Something that really pops and stakes our brand all over it. The Wheel of WAB? The WAB Wheel? The WABEEL? We’ll figure it out. No the thing I’m most interested in, is that this gives me another avenue to read books I would have otherwise never looked at.
Because I didn’t care at all for The Futurological Congress. I wouldn’t have thought a book about the overpopulation crisis had any merit. That crisis will be solved when climate change destroys our way of life as we know it. We did it guys! Mission accomplished! Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the WAB SPINAROONI.
I’ve been talking with Ben about expanding Patreon content. We posted to our Discord about what we might be able to do. I can’t make any promises yet, but we want to try and expand the amount of bonus episodes we put on the Patreon each year. Right now it’s a quarterly bonus. Do we sometimes fumble the deadline? Shut up. This isn’t a Q&A. But yes, we do. Part of that is because we’re reading full ass novel-length books. Sometimes about OJ Simpson. Sometimes about Bill Clinton’s fantasy of getting laid in the oval office without anyone caring all while having a dead wife. Sometimes we even read things we like. So we’re looking at things that can grow this 4 bonus episodes per year to 6 or maybe even 8.
One of the ways we can do that is for only one of us to read the book. That way we can get it done faster and also tackle niche books or areas of interest in greater detail. Another way is to pick up sequel books to series we already covered. Think Goosebumps or Animorphs. Those books are easy to digest quickly and don’t necessarily need a spot on the main feed to cover it. Then there’s this wheel. It might be fun to spin it a few more times. Maybe once or twice a year we have our loyal patrons bust out 2-3 books they’d want to see. Maybe we put up a theme or some sort of guideline for what we read. Then we put them up on the WABOFFETT and… magic.
That’s what I took away from this whole thing. The book we ended up reading? Drier than the Sahara. I’m good. But the concept itself? I don’t hate it… yet. So maybe you guys can fix that. I think at the end of this year when we talk about the state of the podcast, we might bring up adding a few extras to the patreon moving forward. Anyway that’s all. I met my contractual obligation to write a blog. Go away now.
