Ep 106 - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig

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Craig Getting, Arts, Books, Podcasts, Literature, Comedy, Andrew Cunningham

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2015

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rejected a world record 121 times before finally finding a publisher and going on to sell millions of copies, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of the most widely read philosophy texts of the 20th-century.

Robert Pirsig's semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional account of a motorcycle road trip with his son covers a lot of ground. America's psyche in the fifties and sixties; our fascination with and fear of modern technology; the age-old quest to unify the world around us: Pirsig crams it all onto one motorcycle ridden by one man. It should then be no surprise that we get a little lost in this one. So please bear with us as we fail to ask for directions and are forced to stop and check the fuel gauge/pistons/tappets/[insert motorcycle part here] more than a few times along the way.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well-told tale,
0:05.1	they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.
0:10.4	Plus, these are books you should have read by now.
0:30.7	Okay, so I was reading our emails. We get some really nice emails every once in a while.
0:40.8	This Alex wrote in from the UK and talked about our voices for Secret of the Ninja.
0:48.6	Specifically San Giro.
0:52.8	I was actually pointed out by Charlie, a recent listener, that I may or may not be just borrowing a
0:59.3	voice from a camper we had once, so I should probably watch that in the future.
1:05.0	Oh, you mean like a little kid from your playwriting camp?
1:09.6	Oh no, that makes it much less funny.
1:13.9	We're much more funny. That kid is hilarious, it's fun.
1:19.2	But so that was very nice. You know, Jaina Rodin, we've got people from like
1:26.2	English departments at universities writing in who listened to the show.
1:30.8	Jaina Rodin was very excited that we were talking about that crazy backgammon
1:36.1	image on the Tispedi. She's a horror book. We shared that on our Facebook page.
1:40.4	But then this one, Andrew, I just want to mention a little more detail. Abbey Rodin,
1:47.7	you know, just saying that she's enjoying the show. She got into podcasts because of cereal.
1:53.4	So we're her second favorite podcast.
1:59.0	I feel like she, okay, that's cool. I feel like we could probably
2:04.0	move up on that list if we tried to solve a murder.
2:10.3	Well, we just need to, we have not done a Nancy Drew on the show because every Nancy
2:15.2	Drew is about a murder, right? I think so or ghosts or something or a ghost murder.
	...

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