2BR02B

WRITTEN BY:
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 

NARRATED BY:
Michael Anthony Scott

The idea of perpetual youth has always been part of human mythos epitomized by the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce De Leon searching for the Fountain of Youth in 1513. As age descends on us all, every individual looks back at their youth as the golden age of life. Every person wishes that science would develop a miracle cure for aging so they could live their youthful days in perpetuity. There is never a thought given to the downside of perpetual youth. Kurt Vonnegut takes a nose shot at the youthful mythos in The Big Trip Yonder.

The original story is set in 2185 A.D., 102 years after the invention of a medicine called Anti-Gerasone, which halts the aging process and prevents people from dying of old age as long as they keep taking it. As a result, generations are crammed into one apartment, where the only sense of space is Gramp’s bedroom. Somehow the idyllic concept of perpetual youth takes a nosedive as the futuristic story unfolds.

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ThoughtAudio PDF Transcript: TA0122_2BR02B_KurtVonnegutJr.pdf

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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published 14 novels, 3 short-story collections, 5 plays, and 5 nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death.

The Big Trip Yonder

WRITTEN BY:
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 

NARRATED BY:
Michael Anthony Scott

The idea of perpetual youth has always been part of human mythos epitomized by the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce De Leon searching for the Fountain of Youth in 1513. As age descends on us all, every individual looks back at their youth as the golden age of life. Every person wishes that science would develop a miracle cure for aging so they could live their youthful days in perpetuity. There is never a thought given to the downside of perpetual youth. Kurt Vonnegut takes a nose shot at the youthful mythos in The Big Trip Yonder.

The original story is set in 2185 A.D., 102 years after the invention of a medicine called Anti-Gerasone, which halts the aging process and prevents people from dying of old age as long as they keep taking it. As a result, generations are crammed into one apartment, where the only sense of space is Gramp’s bedroom. Somehow the idyllic concept of perpetual youth takes a nosedive as the futuristic story unfolds.

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ThoughtAudio PDF Transcript: TA0123_TheBigTripYonder_KurtVonnegutJr.pdf 

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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published 14 novels, 3 short-story collections, 5 plays, and 5 nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death.

The Unrest Cure

WRITTEN BY:
Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)

NARRATED BY:
Michael Scott

J.P Huddle and his sister live a staid life in the country where they have settled a little too comfortably into elderly middle-age. When Clovis, a fellow passenger on the train hears of their dilemma he decides that instead of a rest cure, what they need is an un-rest cure. Listen to the humorous chaos that ensues when the Huddle household is turned upside down in the name of an UNREST CURE.

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ThoughtAudio PDF Transcript: TA0090_UnrestCure.pdf

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SAKI
(Hector Hugh Monro)

This British writer poet and writer is best known for his short stories. He was killed in World War I while serving active duty.

Main Street (Excerpt)

WRITTEN BY:
Sinclair Lewis

NARRATED BY:
Michael Scott

This book tells the wonderful story of Carol Milford, a city girl in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the beginning of the story she is full of hope and aspirations as she completes her studies at college. Her dreams are those of changing the world in which she lives and making a true contribution to society. She marries a doctor from a small town in the country and moves to his home in Gopher Prairie, Minnesota. Gopher Prairie is a town like any other small town in America and the town folks don’t really see a need for change at all.. Follow Carol as she tries to impose her ideas on the small town folk and gradually her large dreams and aspirations fade into the tall grass of the middle Midwest.

EXCERPT NOTE: This audio is only the first third of the entire novel, but the complete book can be downloaded from http://www.gutenberg.org

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ThoughtAudio PDF Transcript: TA0050_MainStreet_SinclairLewis.pdf

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Henry Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American society and capitalist values, as well as for their strong characterizations of modern working women and he was the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Main Street was wildly popular, selling 180,000 copies in the first six months after publication in 1921 and within two years selling multi-millions of copies.

Songs of Innocence and of Experience

WRITTEN BY:
William Blake

NARRATED BY:
Michael Scott

William Blake is known for some very mystical hard-to-understand poetry, but his “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience” is very different from his other work. Innocence was printed five years before Experience, but the books complement each other: the first consisting of poems telling of the innocence of the world, and the second tempering these poems with contrasting tales about experience. Here in beautiful, almost child-like simplicity, he describes childhood and purity, as well as the darker realities of corruption and disillusionment.

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ThoughtAudio PDF Transcript: TA0038_SongsofInnocence_WilliamBlake.pdf

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William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and print maker. Though largely unrecognized during his lifetime, today Blake’s work, produced in partnership with his wife Catherine, is widely known.

Blake was a strong libertarian, with a deep hatred of the tyranny that was rife during his lifetime. This is reflected strongly in his poems ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’, where he portrays upper class institutions and the Church of England as corrupt and exploiters of the weak in society. He dreamed of an idyllic England, free from corruption, which is mirrored in “The Echoing Green”. However, the impending tyranny in the poem shows that even he doubted that England would be free.