Hi, it's Michael.

Guys, guys, it's been a while, and I know.

But I want to tell you about my new podcast on Earwolf.

It's called Obscure.

And if you like topics, you're going to love this.

I have no idea if you like it or not.

But the first episode is out right now.

Here's a preview.

I'm telling you right now, this is probably not a good

idea. My name is Michael Ian Black. This is Obscure, the podcast in which I read Jude the Obscure

out loud and comment on it as I go.

He had read and a tract that a man who had begun to build the church and had no money to

finish it knelt down and prayed and the money came in by the next post. Another man tried the same experiment,

and the money did not come, but he found afterwards that the breaches he knelt in were made by a

wicked Jew. Hold on a second. Wait a minute. We were doing so well, Jude the obscure. What happened?

Some of you may recognize that Jude the Obscure is the title of a novel by Thomas Hardy.

My wife was a comparative literature major at American University, and so she still has all her books. And she's never read it and I've never

read it. And every once in a while, I'm like, can we get rid of this? Well, we can't because,

because they're classics. And that would be disrespectful. It's like throwing out a Bible.

There's plenty of copies of the Bible. I would have no problem throwing out the Bible.

No, but don't throw out my Bible. And so I said to myself, self, if you can't beat them, join them.

And now she's really going to, not this next line, she's really going to seduce him.

...