Yahoo

So, yeah.

So now that that is over, the embarrassing story has to do with Yahoo.

That wasn't

embarrassing?

But now that I'm used to embarrassment on the show because of the infinite game, what more can I say? So in the mid 1990s, the first piece I read about the internet was in some local magazine sometime in the mid 1990s, which said there is a thing called the internet and these Indians are the pioneers and they are discovering it.

And one of the people profiled there was Shammi Kapoor because he was an early adopter.

And then there was something on Yahoo.

So my immediate impression was, oh, so Yahoo must be Shammi Kapoor's site.

Uh, whereas the, the civilized creatures are in the form of horses.

Um, he goes to where they live, and when he finally returns, he re-- understands that he's left as a Yahoo.

He is in human form, which he believes now to be malign.

So I d-- I, I, I constructed a kind of a dance of disin-- disi- disillusionment, uh, which is a long piece that, uh, just builds, builds, and builds into it.

It's actually a good thing.

Um, I-- there are a lot of contrasting passages.

So for example, if you're going to portray the savage, savagery of the Yahoos, you've got to write savage music, which doesn't necessarily have anything melodious about it.

And then if you're going to contrast that as Swift does with the peaceful and gentle Houyhnhnms, uh, in horse, horse form, you're gonna have a big contrast.

The horses are in charge.

And humans, who are called Yahoos, are these groveling, filthy, greedy, degenerate beasts that the horses use for labor.

It's so grim.

This section is incredibly dark, and it raises a vital question that has haunted Swift's legacy ever since.