The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 17, 2026


PREVIEW： Chronicles #68 ｜ That Hideous Strength with Nick Dixon： Part II

Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Mentioned
Mark Jane C.S. Lewis Elwyn Ransom Bragdon Wood Chronicles Bultitude Dimble Frost Miss Hardcastles Arthur Denniston Philo Sophia Starrick Deniston Logris Eldila Merlin Roman
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1529 PREVIEW： Epochs #285 ｜ Elizabeth I - Part 2

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

164.55

Word count

2,806

Sentence count

163

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to Chronicles, where Nick and I are going to be
00:00:17.760 continuing our discussion all about That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis. So thank you for coming
00:00:23.840 back, Nick. No worries. Thanks for having me. No, always a pleasure. Some of the more perceptive
00:00:27.640 amongst you might have realised that we are not in the usual Chronicles space.
00:00:32.280 Instead, our studios are in something of a transitional period.
00:00:36.520 So instead, what you get on this occasion are these glorious top of the range
00:00:41.960 plain black curtains.
00:00:43.200 But hopefully it shouldn't matter to you because the conversation is, of course,
00:00:47.120 so riveting that you're not even looking at the background, are you?
00:00:50.520 So anyway, we'll just get on with it, I suppose.
00:00:54.140 So where we left off, Nick, obviously, Mark had finally been able to escape NICE headquarters.
00:01:03.260 And he'd just had that conversation where he'd obviously rushed back to his home so he could try to get Jane and rescue his wife because he believes her to be in immediate danger.
00:01:14.100 because Withers, Frost, all of these terrible people
00:01:18.860 at the Nice keep saying to him,
00:01:21.040 you know, Mr. Starrick, you really must bring your wife along
00:01:24.200 because really the only reason that Mark is there
00:01:26.960 is because they want to get to Jane.
00:01:29.980 Because Jane is a seer.
00:01:32.420 She's been having these prophetic dreams.
00:01:34.800 And obviously if Jane falls into the hands of their enemy,
00:01:39.040 i.e. the good guys, Elwyn Ransom, now the Pendragon,
00:01:43.240 and his whole little fellowship that are gathered at St. Anne's College.
00:01:49.320 Well, obviously, that's going to give them an edge in this war, 0.99
00:01:53.240 as Nysa, obviously, attempting to transform human nature itself, 1.00
00:01:59.440 abolish all standards of subjectivity and beauty. 0.99
00:02:04.500 And, yeah, they're terrible, terrible people. 0.89
00:02:08.520 Yes, pretty much well summarised.
00:02:10.480 I suppose it's a bit like discovering the Enigma code or something, isn't it?
00:02:14.040 If they get Jane, she can see the future.
00:02:16.840 So that's a very useful asset.
00:02:18.360 Though, as it goes on, they also want to use Mark
00:02:20.520 as a sort of sacrifice to the head and the microbes,
00:02:24.040 as far as I can see.
00:02:24.840 They start to realise, a bit like out of the Silent Planet,
00:02:27.880 where Weston was like, hang on, we need this guy as a human sacrifice
00:02:31.000 because they'd misunderstood the aliens.
00:02:33.520 In this, they're like, well, let's just use this guy,
00:02:35.480 then we'll send him to the head or whatever.
00:02:37.580 And Mark starts to realise that the pickle he's in,
00:02:40.480 Yeah, they originally want Jane, but they also find Mark of some limited use.
00:02:44.120 Right. And so Mark ends up having this very, very frank conversation with Mr. Dimble,
00:02:51.520 who is obviously a part of Ransom's team, although Mark is not aware of any of this.
00:02:57.840 He's kept entirely on the outside of any information that they might have as regards to the whereabouts of his wife.
00:03:04.900 And it's quite an interesting turn of events, isn't it?
00:03:07.260 But for a man like Mark, who has always found himself
00:03:11.020 wanting to bury himself further into the inner circle
00:03:15.100 of just whichever group happens to be the bigger one
00:03:19.880 than he's in right now, he just has this impulsive need to always find.
00:03:23.600 Well, the more exclusive one.
00:03:24.800 Yes.
00:03:25.420 Yeah, as I said last time, Lewis's essay, The Inner Ring,
00:03:28.580 believing there's an ever sort of concentric circles
00:03:31.460 of more and more exclusive inner rings.
00:03:33.480 That's what he always wanted.
00:03:34.120 Right. But Mark, by just throwing himself, so I almost want to say naively, but at the same time, he has done terrible things.
00:03:45.280 He has been complicit in terrible things and the genuine authoritarianism that's now coming to the neighboring villages. 0.85
00:03:54.200 Of course, the regular Bobbies on the beat are now being replaced by Miss Hardcastles, 0.96
00:04:01.280 the fairies and all of her men who are obviously only answerable to Nice themselves. 0.96
00:04:08.440 And so Mark has to, Dimble just lays all of this out to Mark and says, 0.96
00:04:12.640 look, why would I tell you?
00:04:15.680 What makes you think?
00:04:17.180 In what world do you think I should just trust you?
00:04:20.640 After everything you've been associated with, after everything you've been done,
00:04:23.700 you've done. And Mark is so taken aback by this. He hasn't even really been paying attention to,
00:04:32.180 I mean, we use the term all the time now about the slippery slope, but that is really what's
00:04:37.480 happened here. And before he knows it, the man that he was merely two months ago is no longer
00:04:44.600 that man anymore. Yeah. Chilling. And yeah, we talked about it last time. It's a great scene.
00:04:48.940 you're right it's that gradual corruption and it's a bit like the screw tape letters as well
00:04:53.860 one of Lewis's most famous works outside of Narnia probably is most famous which is all about the
00:04:58.140 subtle ways the devil can corrupt and quite subtle arguments and Mark it's like well yeah I just want
00:05:03.980 to be part of this in a ring and use my talents and of course this is about the scientific future
00:05:08.520 and isn't this just all very rational right gradually gradually yeah you do worse and worse
00:05:13.160 things and he's writing propaganda for them and he eventually realizes and yeah that moment he
00:05:18.040 He's stunned to find that this person he thinks is not somebody who really liked him,
00:05:22.300 but certainly didn't think of as an enemy.
00:05:24.020 And then he just see him as a liability and an enemy.
00:05:26.820 Yeah, it's just got Dimble there invoking the Schmittian friend's enemy distinction to him.
00:05:33.920 But then Mark, again, Mark refuses to just make the choice immediately.
00:05:42.300 Dimble says to him, look, I'm giving you this one opportunity then to come with me.
00:05:45.800 And Mark is still not able to just let it go after all of the trouble and torment it has brought to his life.
00:05:54.100 Apart about the fact that he's surrounding himself with people he doesn't even like or respect.
00:06:00.920 And how could you?
00:06:02.040 I guess he's also worried about they can frame him by that stage for the murder.
00:06:06.760 But he has a chance to get out.
00:06:09.040 And it's like, you're going to go back into the place where they're obviously trying to kill you.
00:06:12.460 Yeah.
00:06:13.080 But he's like, still can't do it.
00:06:15.700 I'm saying it's frustrating because this is great writing.
00:06:18.260 Oh, absolutely, yeah.
00:06:19.520 Just obviously, if it hasn't become clear over this entire trilogy that we've covered together,
00:06:24.220 every single page that C.S. Lewis writes is just the most astounding prose.
00:06:30.300 All killer, no filler.
00:06:31.440 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:06:33.820 And so Mark says, well, just give me an hour to think about it.
00:06:37.960 And it's whilst he's loitering about by the old campus that he's picked up, arrested,
00:06:45.700 and taken away. Not known at this particular point in the story whether or not it's nice or just
00:06:52.180 merely the regular authorities. If it's the case of the actual authorities then he's probably
00:06:59.220 certainly doomed because it looks quite conclusive that he did kill Hingist even though he's been
00:07:04.340 framed. But we follow the story now from Dimble who was already supposed to be going over to
00:07:10.500 St. Anne's by this point but was delayed because Mark came up and interrupted him. And so as soon
00:07:17.780 as Dimble gets to St. Anne's, everyone is in attendance. Everyone has been waiting for him.
00:07:23.300 Ivy Mags, Ransom, Jane, Arthur Denniston, just all of these... Mr. Bultitude. Mr. Bultitude,
00:07:30.820 the bear, and yeah, absolute hero of England, or Logris, I suppose. And they're all saying,
00:07:40.340 we've been waiting for you because it's time. McPhee, in particular, has been getting very,
00:07:49.860 very frustrated this entire time saying, Ransom, why aren't we doing anything? Why are we just all
00:07:55.780 waiting here? While it's nice, take over the surrounding areas. Why are we not meeting them?
00:08:00.980 Why are we not going in protest? He can only think in the most, because he's a skeptic of
00:08:08.260 the divine and the Eldila and Meleldil. He can only think in the most conventional means of
00:08:17.220 fighting back. Yes, as I said last time, he's very clearly based on Kirkpatrick, Lewis's tutor,
00:08:24.740 when he went and had this idyllic time being taught classics away from school in Kirkpatrick's
00:08:30.980 house, which he still described as a normal day, but his whole life he thought of that as a normal
00:08:36.100 day getting up studying classics going for war doing doing some fun reading then doing a bit
00:08:41.440 more right and he says he always thought of that as a normal day this was just it's i recommend the
00:08:45.240 film i've said it before the most reluctant convert to see a depiction of that and it's also
00:08:49.840 in the in the book surprised by joy um and this guy mcphee based on cutback yeah he's very skeptical
00:08:56.500 so he's saying why what are we doing because it's about faith it's about that's all it is it's really
00:09:01.540 faith. I suppose the flaw, if you want to say there is a flaw, is that that is a very little
00:09:07.240 deus ex machina because... This was Orwell's critique of the novel, wasn't it? The fact that
00:09:12.800 because Ransom and all of the other protagonists are on the side of the divine, you automatically
00:09:19.000 know from the very first page that, well, obviously Satan's not going to win. But that does seem like
00:09:25.380 a very Orwell way to critique this novel. It's obviously trying to explain something far different.
00:09:31.140 There's still a lot of feeling of despair and jeopardy
00:09:33.680 because things could still happen to the protagonist.
00:09:35.800 You know, it's not clear that Mark has to be okay, for example.
00:09:39.380 But just in terms of, yeah, if you wanted to critique it,
00:09:41.440 you'd say just waiting around for God is obviously not an ideal plot point.
00:09:46.760 And I can't remember if I said last time,
00:09:48.220 but Orwell wrote that review two years before writing 1984,
00:09:51.400 so apparently we can wonder how influenced he was by the nice.
00:09:55.520 But it's interesting as well, isn't it?
00:09:57.380 Because we say that they're just waiting around.
00:09:59.860 So he gets there, and they're like, right, get some food down here.
00:10:04.240 No questions.
00:10:05.060 Ransom's going to catch you up on what's just happened.
00:10:08.500 And Jane has had another one of her visions,
00:10:11.260 and she's found that there is this tunnel that passes beneath Bragdon Wood.
00:10:16.360 So they're able to circumvent, you know, avoid the eyes of Gneiss
00:10:21.440 and get into it where Merlin's well is.
00:10:24.480 And they found now, Jane has had revealed to her in a vision, the resting place of Merlin, the Merlin of the old Dark Ages and the Arthurian times and everything that that evokes.
00:10:40.600 In fact, I want to read that passage in just a moment.
00:10:43.260 But there's this great part as well where Mr. Dimble, who I was just talking about, he needs to go because he is actually able to speak Celtic, ancient Celtic.
00:10:54.480 And they're obviously going to have to speak to a man who has been dead for 1,500 years.
00:11:01.700 And McPhee is just like, well, I'm younger, I'm more capable.
00:11:05.320 And you can't go, McPhee, I keep explaining to you.
00:11:09.020 And you know what, as well, actually, to just say one more thing about McPhee,
00:11:12.060 I really like his presence within the group itself,
00:11:16.860 because even though he often kind of feels like the contrarian and the skeptic within the group,
00:11:23.640 He is still a valued member of it, right?
00:11:26.920 Ransom enlists him, right?
00:11:28.820 If he was such a burden to the group, Ransom wouldn't have him in.
00:11:34.040 But also McPhee, obviously, of his own free will, chooses to be there.
00:11:38.260 He chooses to align himself with them, even though it might seem at first glance that
00:11:44.440 he would be more naturally inclined towards siding with the nice.
00:11:51.880 He is actually on the side of right in all of this.
00:11:55.900 And also as well, but unlike the people at Nice,
00:11:58.780 whether it be Hardcastle or Frost or Stone, any number of them,
00:12:03.220 they're always interrupting one another.
00:12:05.700 They're always trying to just one-up one another.
00:12:08.220 There's no genuine respect for one another.
00:12:11.580 And even if the people at St. Anne's, part of the Pendragon Foundation,
00:12:16.520 don't necessarily agree with him all of the time,
00:12:19.080 you can still see that there is that genuine respect between them.
00:12:24.160 Yeah, I mean, you could say,
00:12:26.380 is it just a sentimental thing from Lewis that he reminds him of,
00:12:30.420 you know, he wants to put Kirkpatrick in there.
00:12:32.520 I suppose, as I said last time, he's really a philosopher.
00:12:35.860 Philo Sophia, meaning the love of knowledge, of course.
00:12:37.700 So you go, okay, he's a genuine philosopher, McPhee, Kirkpatrick.
00:12:42.980 So he's asking questions.
00:12:44.420 Whereas if you think about the nice, they think they know.
00:12:47.080 They have the answers.
00:12:48.840 like no no that's all nonsense your moral values are all hokey superstition and we've dispensed
00:12:54.900 with all that now so that's not really philosophy no so that's a key difference to be a skeptic and
00:12:59.360 open like well prove that to me okay and he's open yeah he's open exactly so he's somewhat
00:13:05.180 probably like lewis you know disagreed with henry bergson but he still was interested in him you
00:13:10.020 could be a sort of you could have your heart in the right place and be a kind of sparring partner
00:13:14.540 versus evil, which is something quite different in Lewis's world, which it's always the same type
00:13:20.220 of people. It's in Experiment House in Narnia, in the silver chair, I think, isn't it? And then it's
00:13:26.320 nice here. It's the progressive element earlier in the book. It's always that same type of mindset
00:13:32.860 that Lewis really despises. And how would you characterize it? I think it would be something
00:13:36.660 like that. They think they have the answers and it's all been debunked. And now they're just
00:13:40.600 pursuing this ruthless progress. And that's what he critiques in The Abolition of Man.
00:13:44.540 I'm pointing because I've got it over there.
00:13:46.540 That's what he's critiquing there.
00:13:48.540 They think they've debunked everything
00:13:50.540 and that they're the wise, they're the innovators,
00:13:52.540 they're the conditioners.
00:13:54.540 Sounds like people we know in our own age, doesn't it?
00:13:56.540 Yeah, exactly.
00:13:57.540 So he goes with Deniston and Jane
00:14:01.540 out towards Bragdon Wood,
00:14:03.540 and we get this immense passage,
00:14:05.540 which I just really love,
00:14:08.540 going through his mind where he's just reflecting on
00:14:11.540 the fact that they are going out there to meet a man who is from a millennia and a half ago,
00:14:19.080 and it just says, the dark ages, thought Dimble. How likely one had read and written those words,
00:14:25.860 but now they were going to step right into that darkness. It was an age, not a man, that awaited
00:14:31.360 them in the horrible little Dingle, and suddenly all that Britain, which had been so unfamiliar to
00:14:37.820 him as a scholar rose up like a solid thing. He could see it all, little dwindling cities where
00:14:44.680 the light of Rome still rested, little Christian sites, Camelodonum, Carlia, Glastonbury, a church,
00:14:53.300 a villa or two, a huddle of houses, an earthwork, and then, beginning scarcely a stone's throw beyond
00:14:59.220 the gates, the wet, tangled, endless woods, silted with the accumulated decay of autumns
00:15:06.020 that had been dropping leaves since before Britain was an island. Wolves slinking, beavers building,
00:15:13.400 wide shallow marshes, dim horns and drummings, eyes in the thickets, eyes of men, not only pre-Roman
00:15:21.220 but pre-British, ancient creatures, unhappy and dispossessed, who became the elves and ogres and
00:15:28.280 wood wooses of the later tradition. But worse than the forests, the clearings, little strongholds
00:15:35.220 with unheard-of kings, little colleges and covens of druids, houses whose mortars had been ritually
00:15:42.040 mixed with baby's blood. They had tried to do that to Merlin, and now all that age, horribly
00:15:48.900 dislocated, wrenched out of its place in the time series, and forced to come back and go through
00:15:56.000 all its motions yet again with doubled monstrosity, was flowing towards them, and would, in a few
00:16:03.800 minutes receive them in itself. I mean, it's just such a wonderfully vivid description of the way
00:16:11.340 Lewis writes it, you could really just put yourself on that land and envisage the land of
00:16:17.480 ancient Britain, you know, there 500 AD, whatever it may be. And it's just such a fantastic part
00:16:26.040 because it's a danger of it as well. It's this danger of coming into conflict with something
00:16:32.160 so remote so far removed from how you understand the world when they talk about you know the
00:16:37.980 sacrifice of baby's blood and it's the fact that you're about to meet a man who lived and breathed
00:16:45.200 this world and not your own if you enjoyed this piece of premium content from the lotus eaters
00:16:51.040 head to our website where you can find more
00:17:02.160 Amen.