I would of loved to have to privilege of meeting him. When I read him it feels like I’m sitting down with an old friend and I can hear him talking to me about everything that matters and nonsense too.

@@rachelbhall would "have" or "would've" loved to have the privilege. sorry but this is constantly showing up of late and im sure as an avid reader you won't be offended that i pointed it out. my favorite vonnegut is slapstick btw :)

@@21centdregs When I realized Neil Gaiman had picked up that loathsome habit, I wanted to smash a window.

@@Serai3 oh no are you kidding me? maybe he has an assistant that wrote the social media post with that awful faux pas? had to be social media right? i love neil gaiman's work :(

@@21centdregs No, it's in his BOOKS. I was flabbergasted. "Would of", "should of" - jeez, I was literally SCREAMING at him on the page.

The whole thing was, "... an astonishingly accurate prediction!!!".

The Internet was around - solid predictions but not like it was all dreamed up.

Listened to this on my phone, drinking a Sunkist orange soda

@@victoriapollard6995 Commercial Internet service would not be available until the following year, and although “invented” by 1988, the first WWW browser wasn’t widely available until 1990.

@@DanielNorton I'm no Kurt Vonnegut but I sure knew about AI before it was widely available. I am aware of the breaking of the space/time continuum; shall I make a prediction to be deemed astonishingly accurate in 30 years because I can read? I mean credit where due but don't pretend like things that are not widely available are forbidden knowledge to those that do research for a living.

That is a prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian and Christian realist

Amen

I say this to myself alot, and its is so helpful.

@@margotputnamdelaney4927 Max Ehrmann of Terre Haute, Indiana, wrote the work in the early 1920s. he didn't copyright it so it was reproduced by many others.

John Milton - say no more.

Yes, and every other species will breathe a sigh of relief in our absence.

@@SheilaR.08 Agreed.

I agree entirely, we're long overdue for extinction, having been the only animal to destroy its whole planet.

How absurd that thirty-three years later someone can say we are 'heading into his predictions.' If he was any good at predicting, we'd have got there already. He was a fiction writer. I don't know why people take fiction (DaVinci code, anybody?) as though it is fact and fiction-writers as being capable of accurately predicting the future. I can remember reading old magazines in family basements and attics when I was a kid - magazines dating back to the 1920s and 1930s - and they always had these predictions about the world in ten years, the world in 50 years, the world in 100 years. None of the predictions was accurate. It was all FICTION - leading us neatly back to Vonnegut, who also wrote fiction.

@@FigaroHey Ah. You're a very silly person, and you're wrong. Good fiction writers, as Vonnegut was, present the world to us as it is. They have the gift of truth telling.

None of his predictions have happened. Nor have any of the doom and gloom predictions all the way back to the alleged Apocalypse of the year 1000. The Population Bomb was bullshit. The elimination of the polar caps hasn't happened and isn't going to. Food didn't run out with a population of 4 billion. Nuclear war hasn't happened, despite a weekly scare. No Arquilian Battle Cruisers, Corrillian Death Rays, or Intergalactic Plagues. We just got done losing our collective shit over a cold with a morbidity about 3X that of plain old flu, not even on par with the 1968 flu, nothing like the 1917 flu, and irrelevant compared to the Black Death. What happened, as Kurt touched on and then stopped thinking, is that the entire universe exists despite us, and cares not one whit what we do. He almost reached a conclusion, and then he descended into PC virtue signaling.

Not really. His main prediction is overpopulation exceeding the food supply. That's a bit of doom repeatedly predicted since Thomas Malthus in 1798 and not in any way true. What Vonnegut is really demonstrating here is the power of pessimism. He even decries "over-optimistic" politicians. When was the last time you heard a politician run for office by saying things are great? Even incumbents insist everything is going to hell and they're the only one holding it together. Two things are true: The world is getting better and people think it's getting worse. My prediction is that these will still be true in 2088.

And we're just as unlikely to listen as we've always been. Our fate has been written in our DNA from day one.

Except for the malthusian overpopulation nonsense. There has been an excess of food produced in the world compared to the need of it's population since before ai was born, capitalism just dictates we throw it out if it doesn't make someone money for it to be eaten.

I came to the comments section to write the same thing. WALL-E makes even more sense now.

Spot on!

it surprised me. i was expecting him to sound English.

its perfect

Thanks for the recommendation 👍

Oh, nope, here it comes.

Kurt is dead.

@@nairocamilo not to me, he ain't.

I guess because Kurt Vonnegut was American

Yep, he’s reading a letter written by an American… !!🤦🏻🙄

They read in the accent of the original author. Vonnegut was an American author.

The amazing BC gave it away each time he pronounced "glacier" as a Brit by saying glay-see-err. We Americans say glay-sherr, as I imagine KV did as well. BC was spot on though when he said "water" without any Ts! 😄

What makes you think it was for a time capsule? The letter just says people (not just KV) were asked to provide wise words for people 100 years in the future. I think they were all available shortly after the collection

@@mariag.8242 you may be correct, in which event the exercise is even more fatuous than I realized. If we release information in 1988, or thereabouts, for the benefit of 2088, Fama's EMH teaches us that markets will act on the wisdom almost immediately. It will be already baked into 2088 valuations. Everything about Vonnegut irritates me. He is a master ego tethered to a journeyman talent and his artificial prominence was the direct result of elite opposition to the Vietnam War. The only consolation about white male authors being purged from memory is that a few of them randomly deserve it. Vonnegut is Exhibit A.

@@1rjbrjb I've found Kurt to be one of the most likable people on the planet. He is a champion of humility and self-deprecation. Having a sense of humor and a bit of humility as a reader is necessary to appreciate him.

@@alanmittlestead8490 "Kurt" has been pining for the fjords for 15 years and he was rather ancient when he died. He would be rounding out his first century if he hadn't tangled himself in that dog leash. So I assume you didn't know him personally. I didn't either. Maybe he was fun at dinner parties. I have seen no evidence of his humility, quite the contrary, he is in awe of his own importance as at least one of the letters read on this channel demonstrates. (I griped and sniped there too.) I have enough of a sense of humour to love Woodhouse and, Douglas Adams who was Wodehouse in Space, and Thurber who begat Dave Barry. Kurt's wit may elude me in its subtlety. I don't know why I would need to read him with humility though I am sure he would have strongly recommended doing so. You appreciate and enjoy his work. I happen to think he was a literary mediocrity riding an anti-war wave. I am perfectly capable of being wrong and your loyalty is commendable.

@@1rjbrjb Fair enough. He's definitely not for everyone. I have read virtually everything he has written, and I have met him personally while working on a TV trilogy series of his short stories. He was humble and amicable. He tolerated repeating multiple takes of his opening introduction, which required navigating a complicated set while 'performing' the script. He also took the time to sign a stack of paperbacks for all the crew, handed them out and spoke to everyone.He has written extensively about his own weaknesses, failures, and insignificance. His perspective helped me get my head around this world like no one else. Cheers.