Episode 67, Flowers for Algernon (Part II - The Story: The Rise of Charlie Gordon)
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast
Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane
4.8 • 604 Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2019
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Report: March 2nd After the successes we have had with Algernon, and with much deliberation, I have officially chosen our first research subject. Charlie Gordon, 32, was recommended to us by Alice Kinian from the Beekman School for Retarded Adults and she has assured us of his desire to increase his intellect. I have scheduled for Charlie to come to the lab over the next few days where Burt Selden will run some preliminary psych tests. We are also going to test his mental flexibility with a few maze puzzles with Algernon. All that remains is the consent of a family member to grant permission for the operation. According to Alice Kinian, his sister Norma might be the most appropriate person to seek out. Providing there are no warning signs during the testing, and consent is provided, we will be on the cusp of something truly ground-breaking. All these years of hard work will be vindicated and the trust of my wife and those who fund me will have been justified. Dare I say it, I might be remembered amongst the pantheon of great scientists. Strauss has insisted that we keep a close eye on his mental state and emotional growth. I am inclined to agree but feel we cannot be held fully accountable for the man’s personality. The success or failure of this experiment will rest on his increased intelligence, or lack thereof. One thing is certain, if the experiment works, Charlie Gordon’s life will change forever. Professor Harold Nemur
Contents
Part I. Life and Context.
Part II. The Story: The Rise of Charlie Gordon.
Part III. The Story: The Fall of Charlie Gordon.
Part IV. The Meaning.
Part V. Further Analysis and Discussion.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan Pan |
| 0:07.0 | Scicast |
| 0:09.0 | Part 2, The Story. The Rise of Charlie Gordon. |
| 0:26.5 | So before we jump into the actual story of flowers for Algernon, |
| 0:30.8 | should we say a little bit about how we're going to approach it, |
| 0:32.9 | how it's going to be different, what kind of things, do you want another trigger warning? |
| 0:36.8 | What's the admin here? |
| 0:38.0 | Well, I mean, I think one thing worth noting, and again, we've said a number of times in the first |
| 0:42.0 | episode that really you should hopefully have read the book or at least know about it. But if you are |
| 0:46.5 | coming in fresh and you know a little about it, one thing you may have picked up is that when we |
| 0:51.4 | did our introduction, that it was read as like a report, right? |
| 0:55.4 | It was from the perspective of Professor Nima, who's a character within the book, by the way. |
| 1:00.7 | And the whole of the book is written as progress reports from the perspective of Charlie Gordon, right? |
| 1:06.2 | So it's not told as like a straightforward narrative. |
| 1:09.1 | It's from the first person almost as like |
| 1:11.2 | describing events as Charlie perceives them to be as we break that down we kind of |
| 1:16.2 | are going to go through the progress reports and kind of simplify them so you get the core |
| 1:21.7 | understanding of it. Ollie's obviously spent a great deal of time preparing for this so maybe |
| 1:27.4 | you would like to talk a little bit about your approach. |
| 1:44.2 | Thanks, Andy. I think the first thing I want to do is give everybody, our audience, a massive part on the back, because they tapped on this being like, oh, this is Flowers for Algernon. I want to know some stuff about Flowers for Algernon. And currently they've listened to like an hour, and they don't know anything about the story. So very similar to our episodes on The Fall, which we did with Camus, and very similar to Franz Kafka's metamorphosis. This is a |
| 1:49.2 | novel. It's a story. And it's very difficult to talk about it and dissect it and discuss it without |
| 1:53.8 | going through the story. Now to kind of echo what Andy said, we are going to go through the story. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.