Under no circumstances should you stop and smell the flowers. We learned this lesson and had many more plant-based epiphanies chatting about Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1844 short story, “Rappaccini's Daughter.” This tale is set in a sinister garden in Padua, Italy, and we find out some similarly sinister facts about Megan's loving embrace of shrubs. We chat about science and medicine in the olden days, the gothic, monks who probably should have just peed their pants, scary Catholics, and (most importantly) incest. We meet a real hall-of-fame ding dong, Giovanni, and discuss his ill-fated courtship with Buca di Beppo's daughter, a living breathing Georgia O'Keeffe painting. This blooming maiden has both a morose and monomaniacal dad and a secret, and we dive deep into both. We conclude with a game that contains shocking Hamburger Helper-related revelations. After its initial publication, "Rappaccini's Daughter" was included in Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). After Melville read it he wrote his famous 1850 review "Hawthorne and His Mosses" and we highly recommend you check that out too--but please be sure to budget some time for a cold shower afterward. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @betterreadpod, and email us nice things at [email protected]. Find Tristan on Twitter @tjschweiger, Katie @katiekrywo, and Megan @tuslersaurus.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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