Hello, Trilbilly family. This week we have a very special episode about the book

Cloud Splitter by the late novelist Russell Banks. This episode is about John

Brown sort of. The reason I'm recording a preamble or caveats is that in this

discussion the line between fact and fiction often gets blurred. As it does in

the book we will be discussing. You don't have to have read the book to follow

along. The good thing about doing a story like this is that the spoilers are

basically already out. But I do think it would make for a more enriching

experience if you did read the book. But listen to this first and then maybe

go read it. Because I think that this kind of gives you an introduction to some

of the themes that Russell Banks is working with and we'll kind of put your

head in the right direction as you're trying to tackle this. It's an 800 page

book so you might need a little bit of spark notes or assistance. I also just

wanted to say that in this discussion we are talking about the legacy of John

Brown speculating on his state of mind blah blah blah. I just want to say

that if you take any issue with any of it or disagree with any of it please

before you enter my DMs or the comments and tell me how wrong I am. I guarantee

you I have probably already thought about those things myself. This is an

episode that we go deep into reflection on violence, identity, conviction,

these very heavy themes human nature and we're using John Brown to explore it.

So it's very ambitious just like the book we are discussing is very ambitious.

So like I said a lot of the events we discussed here you can just find them on

Wikipedia. There's some great books out there about John Brown. One specifically

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