Episode 24 – Live and Let Die
The Worst Bestsellers
Worst Bestsellers
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2015
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kait, Renata, and their guest Molly read Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming. It’s the second James Bond novel and probably the most racist one. (We didn’t read the other ones to confirm, though.) Can 007 possibly win when literally all the black people in America have united against him? What about all of the sea creatures? Listen now to hear us once again urge you to watch the movie instead of reading the book.
Content warning: We recorded this episode before the Charlestown church shooting. If, in the wake of that horrific hate crime, you are not in the mood to listen to us talk about Ian Fleming’s gross 1950s-era racism, you might want to skip this episode.
Readers advisory: Here.
Footnotes: James Bond Memes food infographic
“Live and Let Die” by Paul McCartney & Wings
Crocodile Farm Escape Scene from the Live and Let Die movie
Candy pairing: Kait says candy cigarettes, Molly says Aunt Jemima syrup, Renata says Werther’s Originals.
Coming up next: True Believer by Nicholas Sparks.
* Worst Bestsellers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
(But no pressure, we’re also happy if you get these items from your local library or independent bookstore.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the worst bestsellers, where we read racist post-war lifestyle porn so you don't have to. |
| 0:17.3 | I'm Kate. |
| 0:18.3 | And I'm Renata. |
| 0:19.6 | And for this episode, we read Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming, the second James Bond novel. |
| 0:25.8 | Joining us to discuss racism, sharks, and breakfast food is Molly, recovering classicist, bookseller, and Bondage, James Bondage enthusiast. |
| 0:36.3 | Welcome, Molly. |
| 0:40.9 | Hi, thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. |
| 0:47.8 | This pod, I hope this podcast doesn't end up three hours long, but I also kind of don't care if it does. |
| 0:57.2 | So I just want to start off by saying that Molly and I have a lot of opinions that James Bond and they're opinions that are shared by almost no one else on the planet because we both |
| 1:04.9 | really like James Bond, but most of the other people who really like James Bond are like, take it real seriously. |
| 1:14.4 | And then most of the people who don't like James Bond are like, oh, like, I'm a feminist and |
| 1:20.1 | James Bond is gross. And we're like, yeah, he is. |
| 1:24.7 | But we- He is, but it's highly entertaining. How gross he can. |
| 1:28.3 | Yeah, for me, I think it almost, it's like Molly and I both really like drag queens. |
| 1:33.9 | And I kind of put James Bond as like the other end of the spectrum where he's like performing masculinity in this really like camp way. |
| 1:43.0 | Yes. |
| 1:43.9 | But I think a lot of people don't see it that way. |
| 1:48.4 | So like when we were in college, we had kind of a club. |
| 1:53.9 | I don't know. |
| 1:54.2 | In college, I had this tendency to call every weird project that I started a club, |
| 1:58.5 | even if it wasn't really. |
| 1:59.6 | So like our James Bond club was |
... |
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