The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1176

00:00:00.000 Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters. Today is Friday the 30th of May

00:00:05.200 and this is episode 1176 and I'm joined today by Firas and by Luca. And we're gonna discuss

00:00:14.000 how Britain is broke, how the Wheel of Time TV series turned everyone including men into lesbians

00:00:19.700 and how it's so over for Harry Potter. But we have two announcements to make. Number one,

00:00:26.160 we have a Gold Zoom meeting at 3 p.m. See you all there. And we're selling courses. In case you

00:00:32.860 don't know, we're selling the Trivium. This is a bundle of courses but you also can see them

00:00:38.580 individually. The courses are Foundations of Writing, Foundations of Logic and Foundations

00:00:42.820 of Rhetoric. I think they are the courses of Academic Agent. I don't think I know basically.

00:00:48.100 So definitely check them out. Check them out. Right. So should we go to our first segment which is

00:00:55.300 a very jolly segment about how all of us are broke? So I wanted to sort of explain why Britain

00:01:03.440 is broke and I wanted to start with a bit of a technical story and explain what it actually means.

00:01:09.180 The Labour government, Rachel Reeves in her eternal genius, has decided that she wanted to do

00:01:16.320 something with pensions. And what she wants to do is to force everybody who is on a direct

00:01:23.420 contribution pension fund. It means that you're actually paying into your pension to actually

00:01:29.180 have that money in mega funds that are at least 25 billion. But then she also wants to force these

00:01:38.620 pension funds to invest at least a portion of their assets in projects that suit her, be it equities in

00:01:47.560 Britain or be it financing infrastructure or perhaps one day buying government debt. Now, why does this

00:01:56.980 matter? Because the only responsibility of a fund manager, typically in Britain, of somebody who you

00:02:05.640 give money to manage these assets for you, their only responsibility is to you as a shareholder or to you

00:02:14.720 as a customer whose money is being managed. That's the extent of it. They don't have any sort of you have to do

00:02:21.580 this in the national interest, you have to do this for the sake of the state. The Chinese do it and they do it

00:02:27.740 with some success, but they do it actually for the benefit of Chinese citizens, whereas there is a bit of a

00:02:34.280 complicating factor here in that these guys think that they want to save the world. Go on.

00:02:40.100 And I have a question. So basically, what you're saying is she's taking her money.

00:02:44.580 She's taking the money that she's using retirement.

00:02:47.560 Exactly. And she's using it to funds that you don't think are going to give money back.

00:02:52.720 She's using it. So they haven't specifically said what they're going to use it for.

00:02:58.120 Which is not good.

00:02:58.900 Which is not good. But they've said that they will gain the right to decide what to use a portion of it.

00:03:07.020 And the portion they're talking about right now is 10%.

00:03:10.380 You think 10% is a little, but it's actually a lot.

00:03:14.200 Because these funds rely on annual returns.

00:03:19.300 You have to keep growing the fund by a couple of percentage points every year

00:03:23.020 so that by the time you retire, there is enough money saved for you to be able to retire on it.

00:03:28.800 That's the logic behind it.

00:03:30.780 So taking any amount of that money is actually a problem.

00:03:36.140 And there's a market issue here, which is that if you have a preferred provider that you save that money with,

00:03:44.640 you might prefer to work with a smaller provider for all kinds of reasons.

00:03:49.600 People might prefer a smaller company that they think they can trust.

00:03:53.200 She wants to make sure that all of the funds are at least $25 billion.

00:03:57.100 Why? Because making the funds bigger into bigger pools of capital means that there are fewer managers

00:04:06.500 and fewer people to deal with.

00:04:09.260 So in a way, it's easier to impose things on them.

00:04:12.940 And it's easier to impose an omerta on them to keep them absolutely silent in case her decisions don't really work out.

00:04:20.440 So there is a political logic to this here where the state is trying to more fully consolidate over the money that's available.

00:04:33.720 Now, why do they think that this is necessary?

00:04:38.340 Well, the reason that they think is necessary is that they can't stop borrowing money.

00:04:44.960 They keep on spending.

00:04:48.280 They forecast that they're going to spend a certain amount.

00:04:51.100 And they usually miss it by a billion or a couple of billion pounds.

00:04:55.820 And it's happening at a rate that is slowly becoming out of control and astronomical.

00:05:04.080 Their government borrowing, they hit the third highest record in the last fiscal year.

00:05:13.020 The only two times they exceeded that record was during COVID, when Rishi Sunak just started printing money left and right like a lunatic.

00:05:21.940 Furlough and all the rest of it.

00:05:23.860 All of the other insane stuff that came from the COVID lockdowns.

00:05:27.260 And the previous one was during the 2009-2010 fiscal year, where they were dealing with the aftermath of the 2008 fiscal crisis, which we haven't, financial crisis, sorry, which we haven't recovered from since.

00:05:44.000 So they keep on borrowing more and more money.

00:05:47.660 And they're doing this at a record level now without any kind of crisis.

00:05:52.200 Like there's no sort of overarching reason for this.

00:05:57.300 They just have an agenda, they want to implement it, and they don't care about the consequences.

00:06:02.540 Now, it's incidental when it comes, it's frequent when it comes with big government, because they want the people to pay, to use their money in ways that support their agenda.

00:06:17.820 Yes.

00:06:18.060 They want to limit, in a sense, economic freedom, and say, I know how I'm going to use your money better than you.

00:06:24.080 Exactly.

00:06:24.380 Last week, we were talking about the way that the Equalities Act is being applied, and how this is forcing everybody to get onto the same wage level.

00:06:34.740 And this is trying to sort of socially engineer Britain to make sure that everybody is getting paid the same, no matter qualifications, no matter language spoken, no matter capability, etc.

00:06:48.200 To force this kind of thing is very expensive, because it's insane and extremely unnatural.

00:06:55.320 And this is not how society actually works.

00:06:57.940 A healthy society relies on a level of freedom and on a level of individual decision-making.

00:07:05.360 This has always been the Western tradition.

00:07:07.400 These guys think that the Western tradition is wrong, because it's based on white supremacy.

00:07:12.500 And so, to implement their ideals, they need to spend absolutely abhorrent amounts of money.

00:07:20.600 And this has led Britain to having a debt-to-GDP over 100%.

00:07:25.740 Now, what's debt-to-GDP?

00:07:27.220 How much you borrow in absolute terms, like the dollar amount or the pound amount, is not that important.

00:07:34.360 What matters is how much you borrow relative to your income.

00:07:38.120 So, if you're paying 50% of your income on debt, you're clearly managing your life extremely badly.

00:07:46.240 If your borrowing is five times what you've earned, you're clearly managing your life very badly.

00:07:51.780 The standard EU fiscally responsible level for debt-to-GDP is 60%.

00:08:01.080 Now, all of the EU is missing that.

00:08:03.840 Yeah.

00:08:04.680 Britain's is at 105, 106%.

00:08:08.620 The World Bank data, I haven't looked at the methodology, says 160%.

00:08:13.340 So, it's quite catastrophic.

00:08:16.340 The number sounds familiar from Greece.

00:08:19.580 Yeah, exactly.

00:08:21.060 Exactly.

00:08:21.780 And we saw what happened to Greece.

00:08:23.820 The unofficial number, when you include all of the pensions, is closer to 400% of GDP.

00:08:35.280 When you include the money that is owed for pensions and for unfunded liabilities, is the technical term that they use,

00:08:43.440 for basically things that you've promised to pay in the future, but you haven't issued debt to pay them yet,

00:08:50.200 it's 400%.

00:08:51.360 It's 400%.

00:08:52.140 And this is also comparable to Europe.

00:08:54.900 This is not a Britain-only story, but we're just using Britain as an example here.

00:08:58.360 Well, the goal is to crash everyone with debt and say, number one, because we care about the debt-to-GDP ratio.

00:09:04.860 So, we want to implement policies that make GDP go up, and there's no course correction when data shows that GDP sometimes doesn't go up.

00:09:13.240 Exactly.

00:09:13.620 So, basically, they've borrowed an absolutely insane amount of money, and with all of that, the amount of spending relative to the size of the economy is at a peak.

00:09:30.660 So, they're basically maxing out their spending relative to the size of the economy.

00:09:38.240 They've never spent that much.

00:09:40.620 They keep on borrowing more.

00:09:42.460 And part of the problem that they have is that the debt is growing faster than the GDP is growing.

00:09:53.320 And the debt is bigger than the size of the budget deficit.

00:09:59.620 Let me see if I can find the deficit here somewhere.

00:10:03.280 Anyway, the deficit is around 5% or 6% of GDP.

00:10:06.480 The growth is around 1% of GDP, which means that this 1% of GDP wouldn't even exist if they weren't borrowing money and pumping it into the economy.

00:10:19.860 So, they're borrowing to fund growth, and the growth is below the amount that they're borrowing.

00:10:26.500 This is crushing the economy because, apart from that, there is also the element of increasing taxes.

00:10:32.020 So, if you crush the private sector, if you make everyone who wants to engage in entrepreneurship want to leave, some of them will actually leave.

00:10:41.940 Sorry, carry on.

00:10:43.520 Yeah, and crush everyone with debt, the economy is going to be destroyed.

00:10:47.620 Well, we're going to mention both of these points.

00:10:49.820 Firstly, this is the sort of amount that they're spending and the amount that they're taxing.

00:10:54.540 And they expect it to keep going up indefinitely, and they expect to take more and more money out of the economy.

00:11:04.160 And secondly, and just as importantly, they're failing to achieve any kind of growth.

00:11:10.940 So, this is called the PMI, the Purchasing Managers Index.

00:11:13.780 This tells you how much companies are spending and the extent to which they expect the economy to grow.

00:11:23.160 So, it's not a measure of GDP, but it correlates very closely with whether or not there's economic growth.

00:11:29.380 50 means that it's neutral.

00:11:32.260 Above 50 means that it's growing.

00:11:33.800 Under 50 means that it's falling.

00:11:35.880 And you can see that especially the manufacturing output is falling apart.

00:11:42.040 So, Keir Starmer was attacking Nigel Farage yesterday because Nigel Farage doesn't support British industry,

00:11:47.900 and he's a bad guy, and Farage, Farage, Farage, Farage, Farage.

00:11:52.520 Well, Keir Starmer's policies obviously are not supporting industry in any way.

00:11:58.520 And part of the reason that they're not supporting industry is because not just they're pursuing this insane, woke agenda

00:12:07.180 of trying to create the utopia of total racial equality,

00:12:12.040 but it's largely to do with net zero and the fact that Britain is paying 50% more for energy costs than Germany and France.

00:12:24.040 Yes.

00:12:24.640 I actually, this is something that I previously covered on here about the fact that in particular to the, well,

00:12:30.320 I say steel industry, that the single steel works in Scunthorpe.

00:12:34.000 But, yeah, the energy that is required to make steel is owned by Electricité de France.

00:12:40.880 It's owned by a fully nationalized French energy company.

00:12:44.240 Yep.

00:12:44.500 So, the energy prices are entirely dictated by the French state,

00:12:48.640 who are obviously lovers and have our best interests at heart.

00:12:52.540 Always have, always will.

00:12:53.820 Yes.

00:12:54.020 But there's another interesting thing about this article is I can sort of understand it for France

00:12:59.380 because France has a, let's say, very powerful domestic energy network.

00:13:04.540 Nuclear.

00:13:05.120 But, yes, exactly.

00:13:06.640 And, but it's interesting for Germany because this is a 2024 article, as I saw,

00:13:12.900 and that means basically at least two years after the war in Ukraine started.

00:13:18.380 Yes.

00:13:18.640 I think that's all September, which means two and a half years.

00:13:21.300 And Germany based almost all of its energy on cheap Russian gas.

00:13:26.900 Yep.

00:13:27.740 So, the very fact that in Britain people are paying about 50 PC more than in Germany is really frightening.

00:13:35.600 You can thank Theresa May for imposing the net zero mandates,

00:13:39.600 and you can thank Ed Miliband for being even crazier.

00:13:43.460 Britain pays four times more for electricity than the United States.

00:13:51.860 The United States is doing everything that it can to deregulate and to pump more energy,

00:13:57.080 to make its energy even cheaper, and to make it expensive to produce outside the United States.

00:14:03.380 Britain wants to sign a free trade deal with the United States with these energy prices.

00:14:09.740 So, there's no way that they can make this work.

00:14:13.460 And on top of the energy prices, there is the extreme insane regulation that we spoke about last week

00:14:21.260 that is also paralyzing manufacturing, paralyzing industry, paralyzing pretty much everything.

00:14:28.220 So, they're borrowing more and more.

00:14:31.460 They're achieving less and less.

00:14:33.040 And in order to solve their problem, they're seizing the assets that you're supposed to be saving for your retirement

00:14:40.960 and trying to push them into their ideological projects.

00:14:46.400 So, you could easily see them deciding to force your pension providers

00:14:51.080 to put their money into Ed Miliband's harebrained energy schemes.

00:14:55.440 Or in the NHS, which continuously just isn't.

00:15:00.360 Or into buying government debt to fund the NHS.

00:15:02.880 Right.

00:15:03.320 Yeah.

00:15:03.640 Which is a void of an institution that money just disappears into with no improvement whatsoever.

00:15:10.380 Yep.

00:15:11.020 And they have zero coherence in their plans.

00:15:14.000 So, they were saying that they were going to cut spending and that they were going to sort of have to be financially responsible.

00:15:20.680 And so, they removed this benefit and that benefit and the winter fuel.

00:15:24.380 And they want to make it harder for people to claim benefits and so on.

00:15:27.740 And they're U-turning on all of this.

00:15:30.600 While at the same time giving pay rises above inflation to the civil service.

00:15:35.180 Politically, this is wise.

00:15:38.480 Because their voting constituencies include the civil service.

00:15:43.140 The civil service is a collection of extremely liberal, extremely progressive left-wingers

00:15:50.080 who all join in the worst kind of groupthink.

00:15:54.080 And then they have their aging lefties and their benefit claimants and so on

00:15:58.780 that they have to keep paying money to in exchange for their votes.

00:16:01.960 So, they can't actually do the sensible things that are required for them to survive,

00:16:08.540 for the economy to survive, and also survive politically.

00:16:13.520 The sound economics are very bad politics, especially for the Labour Party.

00:16:21.180 Especially for the party of welfare and the party of endless dependence on the state.

00:16:27.460 And then you look at what they are spending the money on.

00:16:34.240 There's other, which is the biggest one.

00:16:37.680 18.3% of government spending is going to healthcare, to the NHS.

00:16:43.180 Only.

00:16:44.360 I actually thought it would be more.

00:16:46.300 I expected it to be more. Fair enough.

00:16:48.620 Good news, everyone.

00:16:49.520 And then there's social security.

00:16:50.620 Because we don't think like leftists.

00:16:52.140 Yes.

00:16:52.360 And then there are benefits.

00:16:57.880 So, the benefit costs for people of working age are 10% of their total spending.

00:17:04.220 Education, fair enough.

00:17:05.740 Good for you, 9%.

00:17:06.840 But maybe less funding for people studying random disciplines

00:17:12.160 that can't actually do anything productive.

00:17:15.500 I won't name names.

00:17:16.820 Almost 10% on paying interest rates.

00:17:22.400 Paying off the interest on the debt.

00:17:24.440 So, that's quickly becoming a huge expense.

00:17:26.900 And the more they borrow, the bigger this proportion becomes.

00:17:31.400 They're okay for now, but it's getting really bad.

00:17:34.420 Defense, 2.2% of GDP, something like that.

00:17:37.200 So, 4.8% of spending.

00:17:39.600 And necessary things like transport are 3%.

00:17:42.760 Public order, another 4%.

00:17:46.660 So, it's mainly being spent on just current spending.

00:17:54.840 This is the graph that is most terrifying, though.

00:17:58.660 The total amount of spending that is going to investment,

00:18:04.160 which is what's going to generate future growth,

00:18:07.600 is something close to 0% or 2% out of their total spending.

00:18:14.220 So, the spending that they are making that Rachel Reeves,

00:18:21.840 in a best-case scenario, will use to support,

00:18:25.140 is the least amount that they're spending on.

00:18:29.180 They're just buying votes.

00:18:30.700 They're just buying votes and buying time.

00:18:33.260 They're just buying votes and buying time.

00:18:34.840 And now they want to use private pensions

00:18:38.560 in order to fund the ability to buy votes and buy time.

00:18:42.740 That's the last genius idea that they have.

00:18:47.840 Now, if this principle is conceded,

00:18:51.460 if they do get to dictate what do pension pools spend their money on,

00:18:59.640 why should they stop at 10%?

00:19:01.320 Why not 50%?

00:19:04.040 Well, this is, you know, I'm no hardcore Thatcherite,

00:19:07.220 but it really is the Margaret Thatcher dictum of,

00:19:09.940 you know, the problem with socialism

00:19:10.960 is eventually run out of other people's money.

00:19:13.840 100%.

00:19:14.320 100%.

00:19:15.740 So, if they allow this to go through,

00:19:20.360 it will start at a limited amount,

00:19:23.220 5%, 10%, whatever it is.

00:19:26.400 But it will not, by any means, stop there.

00:19:29.520 Because these guys, in their minds,

00:19:32.640 they don't have a breaking mechanism.

00:19:35.560 Evidence doesn't matter.

00:19:37.040 Reality doesn't matter.

00:19:38.300 Or they think that the problem is not going to knock their door.

00:19:41.340 It's going to knock the door of whoever comes after them.

00:19:43.940 Well, that's the disaster with democracy.

00:19:46.580 The disaster with democracy is that you think about a five-year time span

00:19:50.020 when the question requires a 100-year time span.

00:19:56.240 These kinds of decisions,

00:19:58.020 what are you going to do to provide for your retirement?

00:20:01.480 What are you going to do to provide for your children?

00:20:04.580 These are decisions that are taking on a time frame of 30 years,

00:20:08.120 40 years, 100 years, if you're wise.

00:20:10.320 Because these people can't think beyond the next election.

00:20:14.220 Well, this was entirely the case

00:20:15.880 when the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives

00:20:19.060 joined a coalition back in 2010.

00:20:21.960 And the discussion was being had about nuclear power

00:20:24.680 and nuclear power stations.

00:20:26.320 And I believe it was Nick Clegg who said,

00:20:28.600 oh, well, you know, it'll take 15 years to get it all up.

00:20:31.460 It's like, well, it's 15 years later now, Nick.

00:20:35.160 And we could really be doing with those nuclear power stations

00:20:37.920 right about now.

00:20:39.300 Yep, exactly.

00:20:40.740 And that's 15 years, never mind 100.

00:20:42.920 They're not green-friendly.

00:20:45.520 Ha-ha.

00:20:46.520 Nuclear is the greenest.

00:20:47.780 Yes.

00:20:48.380 But these people are so ideological.

00:20:50.680 It's hilarious that they think that.

00:20:52.440 It's true that this is what they believe.

00:20:54.640 It's true that this is exactly what they think.

00:20:55.440 It would be inconvenient for them

00:20:58.240 to acknowledge, you know,

00:21:01.260 the cleanliness of nuclear energy.

00:21:02.860 Because if you acknowledge that nuclear

00:21:04.960 is by far and away the best option,

00:21:07.100 and you just get the nuclear power stations up,

00:21:09.640 all of a sudden, you don't have

00:21:11.320 all of this reasoning to seize on other people's assets

00:21:14.540 and to strip them of their money and their agency.

00:21:16.780 I think there is an explanation in this

00:21:18.820 that it's basic,

00:21:20.760 I think is where their survival instinct kicks in.

00:21:23.700 Because to have nuclear power,

00:21:26.320 you need competent people.

00:21:27.480 They know they're incompetent.

00:21:29.380 They know the people who support them are incompetent.

00:21:31.980 So they say best not to go down this route.

00:21:34.220 Yep, don't touch it.

00:21:35.300 Don't touch it.

00:21:36.280 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:21:36.760 It's very short-term thinking.

00:21:39.860 You can see from Keir Starmer's last press conference

00:21:42.940 that the knives are completely out for him,

00:21:45.540 which means that now they're making

00:21:48.120 their spending decisions based on whether or not

00:21:51.460 there's going to be a leadership challenge.

00:21:53.700 And based on the polling and what that means for 2029,

00:21:58.460 not on anything like the kind of timeframe

00:22:01.760 that you need to be thinking about

00:22:03.340 if you're investing in infrastructure.

00:22:06.760 And the starkest example of this

00:22:09.120 is the collapse in investment spending in Britain.

00:22:14.760 There's no spending on investment from the public sector.

00:22:18.380 Yeah, it's bloody startling.

00:22:25.940 I think it's a criticism of the system

00:22:31.240 and of the fact that with a universal franchise,

00:22:38.380 you have a fundamental problem,

00:22:40.620 which is that people can vote for more money for themselves.

00:22:44.020 And that automatically leads to a broken system.

00:22:51.520 It's just not sane for people who are dependent on others

00:22:56.280 to be making these kinds of decisions.

00:23:00.020 And it's not sane to make these decisions

00:23:02.480 with a two-year timeframe or a five-year timeframe

00:23:06.100 when you should at least be thinking in a 50-year timeframe.

00:23:09.700 And these people are incapable of any long-term thinking.

00:23:12.740 No, and it's also a case of, you know,

00:23:14.980 when you go back to Starmer's recent rhetoric

00:23:17.480 on all of the immigration stuff,

00:23:19.700 you know, Starmer's saying,

00:23:20.720 well, you know, look at this hand,

00:23:22.100 what this hand is doing.

00:23:23.220 But in fact, if you see what the other hand is doing,

00:23:25.980 you'll see something far more sinister

00:23:28.060 and just as crippling.

00:23:30.500 Yes, exactly, exactly.

00:23:32.360 I mean, the immigration policy

00:23:33.840 is the ultimate example of short-term thinking.

00:23:36.360 We think that it might boost GDP by 0.x percent,

00:23:40.380 but it will destroy the ability of young people to get jobs

00:23:43.580 because there's alternative labor.

00:23:45.020 It will increase the pension liabilities

00:23:48.780 because you have people who will become pensioners

00:23:51.340 and rely on the state.

00:23:52.580 It will destroy social cohesion

00:23:55.560 and it will destroy the need for automation,

00:23:58.720 which is what actually underpins labor productivity

00:24:02.160 and therefore wages.

00:24:04.080 So it's the ultimate in short-term thinking.

00:24:06.480 And that's all these guys are capable of.

00:24:10.700 Right.

00:24:11.920 Should we get the comments?

00:24:13.360 Yes, sure.

00:24:14.100 Right, so Rage Quit Ninja.

00:24:17.840 Will this pension, what happened?

00:24:19.980 Sorry.

00:24:21.040 Okay.

00:24:21.420 Will this pension policy also apply to SIWP

00:24:24.700 or just auto-enrolled pensions?

00:24:27.400 I'm not 100% sure.

00:24:29.560 It depends on what they decide to do with which funds.

00:24:32.340 But so far, it seems like it's the auto-enrolled

00:24:35.780 direct contribution pensions.

00:24:38.420 Great.

00:24:39.120 Okay, so that's a random name.

00:24:40.620 Says, we don't think like leftists.

00:24:42.400 That's where you're wrong, Stelios.

00:24:45.080 You think.

00:24:46.060 Leftists don't.

00:24:47.300 Yeah.

00:24:48.700 That's a random name.

00:24:49.580 Says also, the problem with democracy is that the system is set up

00:24:52.680 to turn everyone into mercenaries.

00:24:54.980 The politicians sell out for voters and voters sell out for Gibbs.

00:24:58.920 Is it any wonder that they hate patriotism?

00:25:01.100 Yeah.

00:25:02.420 Jobs, McGee.

00:25:04.480 A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know

00:25:08.320 they shall never sit in.

00:25:10.100 And we wonder why we shrink.

00:25:11.580 Exactly.

00:25:12.100 Yes.

00:25:12.540 Well, this is, you know, when you look at, you know,

00:25:15.060 I'm actually continually fascinated by the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

00:25:19.680 because it's one of those last buildings in Europe that, you know,

00:25:26.760 when it was first starting to be constructed, the people who began the building

00:25:31.080 were like, we're not going to live to see the end of this.

00:25:33.140 You know, now, oh, if it's not up in two years, a year, we don't want to do it.

00:25:39.640 We don't want to try.

00:25:40.720 Never mind generational thinking, you know, passing on missions

00:25:45.140 and, you know, processes to the next generation.

00:25:49.560 Yeah.

00:25:49.700 100%.

00:25:50.620 100%.

00:25:51.440 And Tomrat247 says,

00:25:54.400 It sounds like you agree with me for us when I say

00:25:56.780 Heinleinianism fixes this.

00:26:01.520 I, okay, maybe.

00:26:05.500 Right.

00:26:05.820 Okay.

00:26:07.900 So, in case you haven't heard,

00:26:10.480 the Wheel of Time TV series has got canceled.

00:26:13.520 Now, I don't know what exactly to feel about it.

00:26:18.000 I feel bittersweet because, on the one hand,

00:26:21.500 a lot of it was atrocious.

00:26:23.480 But, on the other hand,

00:26:24.480 I think it means that we aren't getting any adaptation of it in the future.

00:26:28.580 So, let us get things straight.

00:26:31.960 The last 25 years, the last quarter of a century,

00:26:34.780 has been described as the golden age of fantasy TV.

00:26:38.300 And I can think of The Lord of the Rings,

00:26:40.460 which I think is basically the best triplet of movies ever made.

00:26:44.960 Incredible.

00:26:45.580 Easily.

00:26:46.220 Easily.

00:26:46.620 For me, it's just top number one.

00:26:48.700 And we also had The Game of Thrones,

00:26:50.080 which was a really good TV series.

00:26:51.980 If you make an exception of the fact that

00:26:54.520 the last two series were mostly people just sitting there

00:26:58.300 looking at each other and breaking,

00:27:00.560 and some occasional skirmishes breaking.

00:27:03.340 And at some point,

00:27:05.360 people decided to turn The Wheel of Time into a TV series.

00:27:09.760 And I was very skeptical of it from the beginning

00:27:12.640 because it has, as an endeavor,

00:27:17.220 it has several problems of its own.

00:27:19.440 First of all, it has huge length.

00:27:21.620 It's 14 books.

00:27:23.380 I think it spans around more than 11,000 pages.

00:27:29.900 It's just a huge,

00:27:31.680 a huge topic.

00:27:34.060 Okay.

00:27:34.520 Okay.

00:27:34.760 It's a huge series.

00:27:35.580 Something for retirement then for me.

00:27:37.720 Exactly.

00:27:38.360 And it's a high fantasy epic series.

00:27:41.860 And when you want to do something like this,

00:27:45.780 you want the main theme to be the battle between good and evil

00:27:48.960 and the clash between destiny, freedom, and duty.

00:27:53.340 And this is essentially what the books were.

00:27:56.940 But the people who were involved in making it didn't think so.

00:28:00.520 They thought that epic is about inclusivity.

00:28:03.380 And we will say more.

00:28:05.260 The other problem with turning The Wheel of Time into a series

00:28:09.780 was that it relies a lot on magic.

00:28:14.760 It has a very sophisticated system of magic,

00:28:17.140 which means that when you're going to try and portray it on the screen,

00:28:20.980 you're going to have many constipated faces.

00:28:23.940 Faces like this.

00:28:26.780 And sometimes faces like, you know,

00:28:28.300 you're going to have weird things here.

00:28:32.140 Just, you know,

00:28:34.540 let's see the magic flow from this character,

00:28:38.380 like a wizard queen.

00:28:41.340 Yeah.

00:28:41.980 So you're going to have weird visuals.

00:28:43.940 We also have your other magic visuals here,

00:28:46.980 by Rosamund Pike.

00:28:48.700 She is weaving a spell.

00:28:51.500 Now, to be fair,

00:28:52.880 it went a bit,

00:28:53.820 it improved as,

00:28:55.740 as the series got along.

00:28:57.660 So it was one of those things,

00:28:58.880 because I've read the books,

00:28:59.980 I would watch it regardless.

00:29:01.960 And I would also be the person who would be ranting.

00:29:04.940 You see,

00:29:05.300 at every episode,

00:29:06.480 what are they doing?

00:29:07.720 You're totally different to me,

00:29:09.040 because when the Rings of Power was announced,

00:29:10.900 and the interviews started to come out,

00:29:12.840 I was like,

00:29:13.360 I'm not even hate watching this.

00:29:15.360 Yeah.

00:29:15.540 I was like,

00:29:15.900 I'm not giving them a second of my time.

00:29:18.160 So fair play to you.

00:29:20.160 It's, you know,

00:29:20.560 different approach to things.

00:29:21.940 Honestly,

00:29:22.480 I think it's my second favorite fantasy series,

00:29:25.160 after Lord of the Rings.

00:29:26.380 Right.

00:29:26.620 And I just wanted to see it,

00:29:29.880 but they messed it up.

00:29:31.240 And the people who were involved in it,

00:29:33.300 show the same kind of disassociation

00:29:37.220 with the general public,

00:29:38.240 that we see when we're talking about

00:29:39.740 elites and the public.

00:29:41.000 Right.

00:29:41.720 They just live in another world.

00:29:43.620 Yeah.

00:29:43.980 And I have here this article from the movie web,

00:29:47.420 which was published two and a half months ago,

00:29:50.040 on March 16th.

00:29:51.460 It's actually my birthday.

00:29:53.380 And it says,

00:29:54.620 Prime Video's returning fantasy series

00:29:57.040 sets record-breaking Rotten Tomatoes score

00:29:59.840 for season three.

00:30:01.660 And they're saying basically

00:30:03.540 that this is a huge thing.

00:30:06.800 With season three now available for streaming,

00:30:08.760 its early ratings are already impressive,

00:30:11.320 earning a critic score of 94%

00:30:13.560 and an audience score of 89% on Rotten Tomatoes.

00:30:17.340 Since the third season has only just begun,

00:30:20.480 these numbers are bound to change

00:30:22.360 when more episodes are released

00:30:23.760 but the difference will most likely be minimal.

00:30:26.880 In any case,

00:30:27.900 the ratings have only improved with each season,

00:30:30.760 with the Tomatometer scoring 81% and 86%

00:30:33.700 for the first and second seasons

00:30:35.460 and the Popcornometer scoring 60% and 80% respectively.

00:30:39.960 This steady rise in ratings implies

00:30:42.160 that there has been a significant leap

00:30:44.520 in the series' overall production,

00:30:46.700 making season three potentially the best one yet.

00:30:49.440 However, with five episodes still to come,

00:30:52.120 the scale could sway to either side.

00:30:55.080 And they're saying basically,

00:30:56.040 as opposed to many fantasy stories

00:30:57.900 that tend to lose momentum over time,

00:31:00.000 I'm reading a lot from this

00:31:01.240 because it's very, very representative

00:31:04.640 of the kinds of mentality these people have.

00:31:08.500 They tend to lose momentum over time

00:31:10.420 or in the case of many Netflix series

00:31:14.600 that are cancelled before they have the chance to shine,

00:31:19.100 The Wheel of Time certainly defines the norm.

00:31:21.480 Actually, it didn't.

00:31:22.780 The show's growing success may lie

00:31:24.900 in the creator's liberty

00:31:26.400 to make some changes to the original story.

00:31:31.060 Could that be actually the problem

00:31:32.940 why it didn't work?

00:31:33.760 And following the premiere

00:31:36.480 of the first three episodes on March 13,

00:31:38.680 fans criticized the adaptation

00:31:40.140 for straying from the books.

00:31:41.920 So we have fans and we have critics.

00:31:44.600 Critics say this is just a masterpiece.

00:31:47.980 Fans saying this is deviating a lot from the books.

00:31:52.200 Many such cases.

00:31:53.440 Many such cases.

00:31:54.420 And Rafe Judkins,

00:31:55.440 who is basically the main reason behind this failure,

00:31:58.200 defended it saying,

00:31:59.340 I'm sure it will drive people crazy.

00:32:01.680 They're supposed to be the people

00:32:03.080 who are going to watch it, by the way.

00:32:04.900 But there's a reason why we do it.

00:32:08.020 And that's because we want viewers

00:32:09.640 to emotionally understand

00:32:11.100 the relationship between these characters

00:32:12.860 and how each one affects the other.

00:32:15.600 So you wanted to do something

00:32:17.060 that just wasn't in the spirit of the books

00:32:19.800 and actually it failed.

00:32:21.620 And you were making triumphant statements about it.

00:32:25.600 So The Wheel of Time

00:32:26.980 cancelled after three seasons.

00:32:29.320 This is two months afterwards.

00:32:31.480 Okay.

00:32:33.620 And basically they're going to say

00:32:35.380 it's about money.

00:32:37.740 You see them here saying

00:32:39.480 it seems that there simply isn't enough money

00:32:41.740 in the show to continue to justify

00:32:43.420 its high-end cost to produce.

00:32:46.800 Obviously if a lot of people were watching it,

00:32:48.820 there would be money.

00:32:49.740 There would be more money.

00:32:50.860 So if they hadn't said,

00:32:52.960 bragged,

00:32:54.420 oh, I'm going to drive the fans crazy.

00:32:56.780 I'm going to drive the people

00:32:57.960 who care about this absolutely insane.

00:33:00.360 There might have gotten

00:33:02.000 a little bit more money

00:33:03.240 and more people would have watched it.

00:33:05.580 Yeah, most probably.

00:33:06.740 And they have absolutely

00:33:07.840 zero excuse for doing so.

00:33:09.960 Capitalism is crazy this way, huh?

00:33:11.780 It is.

00:33:13.480 They have absolutely

00:33:14.520 zero excuse for doing so

00:33:15.900 because we live in a sense

00:33:17.640 in the golden age of fantasy.

00:33:19.320 Amazon wants to make money.

00:33:20.780 Amazon has money.

00:33:21.580 It's not exactly poor.

00:33:22.500 So if you failed,

00:33:24.440 the failure is on you.

00:33:25.380 Exactly.

00:33:25.980 Okay?

00:33:27.260 Right.

00:33:27.880 So let's move on.

00:33:30.000 So on the Rotten Tomatoes,

00:33:31.100 they did have 88%.

00:33:32.880 In IMDb,

00:33:36.540 it had 7.2%.

00:33:38.600 So 72%.

00:33:39.880 You see,

00:33:41.300 the thing is though

00:33:42.800 with, you know,

00:33:43.640 when it comes to Rotten Tomatoes

00:33:45.200 or IMDb,

00:33:46.500 I don't trust the ratings anymore

00:33:48.520 because we know

00:33:49.640 from previous cases

00:33:51.300 that they will just,

00:33:53.100 you know,

00:33:53.420 shadow ban,

00:33:54.720 you know,

00:33:55.120 a whole ton of it

00:33:56.020 as they did with

00:33:56.700 Rings of Power famously,

00:33:58.120 just erasing

00:33:59.320 negative reviews

00:34:01.000 by the thousands

00:34:01.940 until it averages out

00:34:03.960 at something just

00:34:05.100 that, you know,

00:34:06.760 contains the collateral damage.

00:34:08.540 Exactly.

00:34:09.020 So it got 7.2 there

00:34:10.760 as a series.

00:34:12.740 You know,

00:34:13.400 Lord of the Rings,

00:34:14.120 for instance,

00:34:14.440 The Return of the King

00:34:15.220 got 9.

00:34:16.620 Yeah.

00:34:16.820 2.1 million

00:34:18.420 ratings.

00:34:19.300 And that's authentic.

00:34:20.380 Game of Thrones

00:34:21.060 got 9.2,

00:34:21.940 which I think is,

00:34:22.920 honestly,

00:34:23.280 there's no universe

00:34:24.120 where Game of Thrones

00:34:24.920 is better than

00:34:25.480 Lord of the Rings.

00:34:26.300 Well,

00:34:26.580 it's funny actually

00:34:27.360 because I,

00:34:29.220 it's been a long time

00:34:30.180 but I think from memory

00:34:31.700 Game of Thrones

00:34:32.620 used to have

00:34:33.740 about 9.5 actually

00:34:36.300 so it was even higher

00:34:37.380 and then the last season

00:34:38.720 came out

00:34:39.360 and it lost 0.3

00:34:40.940 just purely off the back

00:34:42.720 of just how

00:34:43.520 But also with IMDb

00:34:44.860 you have the tendency

00:34:45.800 of people who watch

00:34:46.780 something and they like it

00:34:47.880 then go instantly

00:34:48.640 oh,

00:34:49.060 there's the best movie

00:34:49.720 of all time.

00:34:50.220 There's the best TV series

00:34:51.000 of all time.

00:34:51.660 Yeah.

00:34:51.900 The interesting thing

00:34:52.940 with Game of Thrones

00:34:53.660 though as well

00:34:54.240 was that,

00:34:54.800 you know,

00:34:54.980 when it first started

00:34:55.800 coming out in 2011

00:34:57.420 sure you had,

00:34:58.800 you know,

00:35:00.160 quite a good choice

00:35:01.500 of,

00:35:01.940 you know,

00:35:02.440 where you wanted

00:35:03.160 to get your TV from

00:35:04.640 but we were still

00:35:05.780 but we were still

00:35:05.800 in that stage

00:35:06.700 where the streaming services,

00:35:08.720 you know,

00:35:08.920 Netflix and Disney Plus

00:35:10.360 and Amazon Prime,

00:35:12.020 Paramount Plus,

00:35:12.980 all these things

00:35:13.920 didn't exist yet

00:35:15.100 and so there was actually

00:35:16.680 a greater concentration

00:35:17.960 of what people watched.

00:35:20.480 You found more common,

00:35:21.580 you know,

00:35:22.020 between you having

00:35:22.760 your Netflix show

00:35:24.160 that you were into

00:35:24.780 and someone else

00:35:25.480 having their,

00:35:26.200 you know,

00:35:26.600 it was one of those times

00:35:27.700 when Game of Thrones

00:35:28.440 came out,

00:35:29.260 you either were watching it

00:35:30.480 or you knew someone

00:35:31.640 who was watching it,

00:35:32.920 right?

00:35:33.180 It was kind of

00:35:34.120 the last great TV series

00:35:37.420 that everyone

00:35:38.660 kind of knew something about

00:35:41.160 and now.

00:35:42.960 And that's the issue

00:35:43.940 that whether IMDb

00:35:45.700 reflects trends

00:35:46.820 that are in a sense,

00:35:47.900 you know,

00:35:48.520 a bit irrational,

00:35:50.520 let's say,

00:35:51.400 and a bit whimsical,

00:35:53.340 it does show trends

00:35:54.800 and you want a movie

00:35:56.860 or a series

00:35:57.540 to generate,

00:35:58.340 you know,

00:35:58.980 affection.

00:35:59.680 Yes.

00:36:00.500 And before the third season,

00:36:02.960 it was even lower.

00:36:03.960 I think it was somewhere

00:36:04.600 like 6.7

00:36:05.600 at some point.

00:36:06.720 So people weren't

00:36:07.920 that much into it,

00:36:09.180 the critics were

00:36:10.220 and the people

00:36:11.500 who made it.

00:36:12.320 Now,

00:36:13.320 lots of people

00:36:13.980 are trying to do

00:36:14.820 damage control

00:36:15.640 and point the finger

00:36:19.000 to Amazon

00:36:20.080 and point the finger

00:36:21.200 to many,

00:36:21.800 capitalism

00:36:22.220 and, you know,

00:36:24.080 society at large.

00:36:26.500 But it had

00:36:27.040 two main problems.

00:36:28.260 I'll start with

00:36:29.120 a problem

00:36:30.200 that not many people

00:36:31.100 talk about,

00:36:31.700 which was the music,

00:36:33.420 the theme,

00:36:33.980 the score.

00:36:35.520 When you want to do

00:36:36.880 music for one of the most

00:36:39.000 epic

00:36:39.520 depictions

00:36:41.080 of a battle

00:36:41.760 between good and evil,

00:36:42.920 you want it to be

00:36:43.780 absolutely epic.

00:36:45.380 Right.

00:36:45.580 You don't want it to be

00:36:47.500 meh,

00:36:49.140 epic-ish.

00:36:50.100 You want it to be

00:36:51.040 absolutely epic.

00:36:52.040 Or like mock epic

00:36:53.260 where it's just

00:36:54.720 going through the motions

00:36:56.200 of an epic sound.

00:36:58.020 Exactly.

00:36:58.380 There's not actually

00:36:59.100 much thought put into it.

00:37:00.300 So think of Howard Shore's

00:37:03.120 score for Lord of the Rings.

00:37:04.560 Yes.

00:37:05.040 Best music for a movie

00:37:06.260 ever made,

00:37:07.040 hands down.

00:37:08.760 No, probably hands down.

00:37:10.800 Right?

00:37:11.700 Okay.

00:37:12.100 But also think

00:37:12.700 Game of Thrones.

00:37:13.540 It's a catchy tune.

00:37:14.840 You hear it.

00:37:15.520 You want to hear it again.

00:37:16.600 You want to hear it

00:37:17.220 when you exercise.

00:37:17.880 You want to hear it

00:37:18.720 when you want to be motivated.

00:37:20.740 It boosts you.

00:37:22.040 Okay?

00:37:22.280 It boosts your morale.

00:37:23.820 It makes you think

00:37:24.740 of battle

00:37:25.320 and glory in the battlefield.

00:37:26.580 You're weightlifting

00:37:28.160 to like the Game of Thrones.

00:37:29.680 Yes, exactly.

00:37:30.660 Yes.

00:37:31.560 Yeah, exactly.

00:37:32.200 And then put some

00:37:32.820 Two Stairs from Hell.

00:37:35.420 Remixes.

00:37:36.000 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:37:37.320 This is what it should do.

00:37:38.320 So the music,

00:37:39.100 it wasn't necessarily bad,

00:37:40.620 but it highlighted

00:37:41.300 the mysterious aspect

00:37:42.460 of the series,

00:37:43.760 which was there.

00:37:44.680 It was a very good part

00:37:45.780 of the books.

00:37:47.020 But at the end of the day,

00:37:48.100 you want this to be epic.

00:37:49.240 And it was an epic.

00:37:50.720 When you have an epic fantasy novel,

00:37:53.360 epic fantasy series,

00:37:54.600 you want it to be

00:37:55.600 about epic themes.

00:37:57.240 You don't want it to be

00:37:58.060 about LGBTQ presentation.

00:38:01.060 So I'll say

00:38:02.420 there were two main problems

00:38:03.780 with the agenda,

00:38:05.120 which was the basic problem there.

00:38:06.960 And I will say this.

00:38:08.520 The agenda is

00:38:09.560 a huge issue for me

00:38:11.480 because it's not

00:38:13.140 diverse casting

00:38:14.440 that's an issue with me.

00:38:16.740 The issue is

00:38:17.640 forced diverse casting.

00:38:19.520 I'll give you just

00:38:20.260 one example.

00:38:22.280 There was a comedy

00:38:23.360 with Jim Carrey.

00:38:24.760 I think God

00:38:25.920 who was God

00:38:28.720 for...

00:38:29.040 Oh, Morgan Freeman.

00:38:29.980 Yeah.

00:38:30.360 So Morgan Freeman

00:38:31.680 was playing God.

00:38:32.640 At the time,

00:38:33.580 this wasn't communicated

00:38:34.880 as an issue of Woke.

00:38:36.500 I didn't hear anyone

00:38:37.580 saying anything about it.

00:38:39.480 I think actually

00:38:40.120 he was really good

00:38:40.960 at the time.

00:38:41.700 It was one of those times

00:38:42.660 where every second trailer

00:38:43.940 at the cinema

00:38:45.480 had the Morgan Freeman movie.

00:38:47.820 You kind of wanted him,

00:38:49.400 wanted to see him anywhere.

00:38:51.220 You say,

00:38:51.540 he really is omnipresent.

00:38:53.180 Right.

00:38:54.460 So, sorry.

00:38:56.180 I was just going to say,

00:38:57.100 the thing with Freeman

00:38:58.300 with that as well

00:38:59.160 is that I feel like

00:39:00.120 so much of the reason

00:39:01.100 why he felt like

00:39:02.060 an appropriate casting

00:39:02.980 was because

00:39:03.800 of the text,

00:39:05.380 the richness of his voice.

00:39:06.780 Yes.

00:39:07.180 You know,

00:39:07.380 he had a voice

00:39:08.000 that you just wanted

00:39:08.760 to listen to.

00:39:09.580 It was so smooth.

00:39:10.240 It was so, you know,

00:39:11.280 and, you know,

00:39:12.100 it has a very wise

00:39:13.840 sound to it.

00:39:15.040 So I feel like the voice

00:39:16.000 was one of the main things.

00:39:17.160 So I don't think

00:39:18.020 that it's so much

00:39:18.940 diverse casting per se.

00:39:20.700 Yes.

00:39:20.940 It's the force.

00:39:21.900 It's the message.

00:39:22.600 It's the rumming

00:39:23.440 down your throat.

00:39:24.500 But also,

00:39:25.340 people hate.

00:39:25.800 But also,

00:39:26.300 there are times

00:39:27.800 where it's just inappropriate

00:39:29.600 to have a diverse cast

00:39:31.760 in any sense.

00:39:33.600 Yeah.

00:39:33.700 You don't want

00:39:34.180 an Irish peasant

00:39:34.940 to play Obama.

00:39:37.400 Well,

00:39:38.320 actually,

00:39:38.700 I do.

00:39:42.560 Right.

00:39:43.180 Okay.

00:39:43.440 So I'll talk a bit

00:39:44.440 about the casting,

00:39:45.140 but then talk to you

00:39:46.000 about Rave Judkins,

00:39:47.120 the showrunner

00:39:47.800 and the philosophy

00:39:48.420 behind it,

00:39:48.940 because I think

00:39:49.640 they made some good choices

00:39:51.080 in casting,

00:39:51.800 some choices

00:39:52.500 that were incomprehensible.

00:39:54.720 But we are going

00:39:56.320 to move forward

00:39:57.620 to themes

00:39:58.520 that are,

00:39:59.140 you know,

00:39:59.380 a bit more severe

00:40:00.600 and show huge failures

00:40:02.180 of the show.

00:40:02.760 So there were some good

00:40:04.300 casting choices

00:40:06.160 and I'll use

00:40:07.360 the fandom website

00:40:09.580 because it shows

00:40:10.980 fan art

00:40:11.760 as it develops

00:40:12.720 through the years

00:40:13.380 and you can see

00:40:14.300 sort of the

00:40:15.140 fan art depiction

00:40:17.080 of characters

00:40:17.820 and the characters

00:40:18.940 that were,

00:40:19.580 and the actors

00:40:20.360 that were chosen

00:40:21.000 and the actresses

00:40:21.980 that were chosen

00:40:22.480 for this.

00:40:23.040 So here we have

00:40:24.100 the Randall Thor

00:40:25.420 who was essentially

00:40:26.360 the chosen one.

00:40:27.740 He's the person

00:40:28.600 who is essentially

00:40:29.380 going to lead

00:40:30.000 the last battle.

00:40:31.200 Okay.

00:40:31.700 And the Wheel of Time

00:40:32.920 is a universe

00:40:34.340 in which time

00:40:35.200 is cyclical.

00:40:36.020 You have seven ages

00:40:36.980 and every time,

00:40:38.180 you know,

00:40:38.360 there's a sort of

00:40:39.240 defeat of the good

00:40:41.060 versus evil.

00:40:42.140 Then the bad one

00:40:43.040 is being imprisoned,

00:40:44.100 but then the,

00:40:44.920 the seals

00:40:46.240 of the bad one

00:40:47.080 are weakening

00:40:48.180 and then the bad

00:40:49.480 guy's influence

00:40:50.460 over the world.

00:40:51.860 It sounds a bit

00:40:52.440 simplistic.

00:40:53.500 Fair enough.

00:40:53.960 I'm following it.

00:40:55.060 He's increasing

00:40:55.700 and then all the

00:40:57.060 bad forces,

00:40:58.080 essentially it's like

00:40:58.800 a cyclical view

00:40:59.640 of history.

00:41:00.340 Fair enough.

00:41:01.100 Seven times

00:41:01.860 within a universe.

00:41:02.920 Okay.

00:41:03.440 Right, so here is

00:41:04.360 the chosen one,

00:41:05.340 essentially Randall Thor

00:41:06.460 and here's the actor

00:41:08.820 who they chose

00:41:10.080 to portray him,

00:41:11.740 which I think

00:41:12.100 is,

00:41:12.360 it's a,

00:41:12.740 it's a good pick

00:41:13.600 at least

00:41:14.300 the way he seems.

00:41:16.740 Looks like

00:41:17.760 faithful to

00:41:19.360 fan art.

00:41:22.660 Then we have

00:41:23.760 the baddest

00:41:25.000 witch.

00:41:27.020 Okay.

00:41:27.760 Not with a B.

00:41:28.920 No, no, no.

00:41:29.640 Lanfear.

00:41:31.400 She is essentially

00:41:32.320 one of the 13

00:41:33.380 forsaken.

00:41:34.100 They are basically

00:41:34.620 the officers

00:41:35.300 of the

00:41:36.300 ultra bad

00:41:37.100 force

00:41:37.740 and she is

00:41:39.160 in love with him

00:41:39.840 and she was

00:41:40.580 essentially a very

00:41:41.560 beautiful woman

00:41:42.520 but also very

00:41:43.600 powerful and she

00:41:44.400 had a soft spot

00:41:45.220 for him

00:41:45.680 which was

00:41:46.800 her weakness

00:41:47.660 in a sense

00:41:48.140 because she

00:41:48.940 didn't want to

00:41:49.500 kill him

00:41:49.960 because she

00:41:51.120 wanted to

00:41:51.660 basically

00:41:52.100 control him.

00:41:53.720 Is she like

00:41:54.560 a femme fatale

00:41:56.200 Morgana

00:41:57.180 Arthur?

00:41:57.640 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:41:58.220 And I think

00:41:59.060 the casting choice

00:42:00.280 was really good.

00:42:01.120 You can sort of

00:42:01.820 see how

00:42:02.420 this is the case.

00:42:04.420 She was a

00:42:05.200 good pick

00:42:05.580 and also

00:42:05.900 she was

00:42:06.320 playing well.

00:42:07.340 Fair enough.

00:42:08.260 Now, we also

00:42:09.260 had Shama,

00:42:10.280 one of the

00:42:10.740 bad guys

00:42:11.460 who gives

00:42:12.620 here some

00:42:13.200 he was

00:42:13.780 good

00:42:14.860 to be honest.

00:42:16.700 He was good

00:42:17.220 and he gives

00:42:18.380 some Persian

00:42:19.040 vibes

00:42:19.540 and now I'm

00:42:20.320 going to talk

00:42:20.780 about

00:42:21.200 the

00:42:22.440 incomprehensible

00:42:23.620 casting choices

00:42:24.820 and I think

00:42:26.860 it's Avienda.

00:42:27.580 Avienda is

00:42:28.000 one of the

00:42:28.380 three women

00:42:28.940 of the

00:42:30.780 chosen one.

00:42:32.640 It sounds

00:42:33.800 sexualized

00:42:35.300 but it

00:42:35.620 actually

00:42:35.980 wasn't

00:42:36.500 sexualized

00:42:37.100 because the

00:42:37.480 three women

00:42:38.040 represent

00:42:38.860 something

00:42:39.360 and he

00:42:40.180 was more

00:42:40.600 of a

00:42:41.100 person

00:42:41.400 who just

00:42:41.820 wanted to

00:42:42.280 be left

00:42:42.620 alone.

00:42:43.420 He didn't

00:42:44.240 want to

00:42:44.680 have a

00:42:45.420 harem

00:42:45.720 essentially.

00:42:46.680 Okay.

00:42:47.060 So Avienda

00:42:48.080 is portrayed

00:42:48.720 like this.

00:42:50.200 She's one of

00:42:50.880 the Ailes.

00:42:51.600 She is

00:42:51.960 ginger haired.

00:42:52.980 She's basically

00:42:53.560 like Amber

00:42:54.240 Valetta.

00:42:55.760 You know

00:42:56.320 Amber

00:42:56.520 Valetta?

00:42:57.260 Who?

00:42:58.300 No idea

00:42:58.940 what you're

00:42:59.140 talking about.

00:42:59.520 Samson,

00:43:00.060 could you

00:43:00.300 please show

00:43:02.060 us Amber

00:43:02.540 Valetta?

00:43:05.720 Yeah,

00:43:06.340 Samson is

00:43:06.960 going to do

00:43:07.680 this.

00:43:09.360 Is this

00:43:09.980 someone from

00:43:10.440 the same?

00:43:11.080 Oh,

00:43:11.360 right.

00:43:11.780 Okay.

00:43:12.220 Okay.

00:43:12.500 She may be

00:43:14.040 a bit old

00:43:14.480 for the cast

00:43:15.020 but that's

00:43:15.880 the type of

00:43:16.560 person you

00:43:17.280 are looking

00:43:17.660 for.

00:43:17.980 That's the

00:43:18.640 type of

00:43:19.300 actress you

00:43:20.320 look for

00:43:21.160 at Avienda.

00:43:22.420 And here

00:43:23.880 we have this

00:43:25.040 depiction so

00:43:25.860 wouldn't you

00:43:26.180 say that

00:43:26.540 that would

00:43:27.200 be her?

00:43:28.380 Okay.

00:43:28.860 Yes.

00:43:29.520 No, it

00:43:30.060 wasn't.

00:43:30.340 It was

00:43:30.560 actually her.

00:43:31.380 Now, I

00:43:31.920 don't want

00:43:32.180 to be

00:43:32.380 unfair.

00:43:33.460 It's not

00:43:33.980 unprecedented

00:43:34.520 that characters

00:43:35.880 who don't

00:43:36.420 look like

00:43:37.200 how they're

00:43:37.800 depicted in

00:43:38.720 series and

00:43:39.740 books have

00:43:40.100 done a good

00:43:40.520 job.

00:43:41.840 Example,

00:43:42.420 Idris Elba

00:43:43.000 in The

00:43:43.500 Ganslinger.

00:43:44.400 One of the

00:43:44.800 very few

00:43:45.500 good things

00:43:46.460 about this

00:43:46.980 atrocious

00:43:47.540 movie.

00:43:48.040 Right, I've

00:43:48.520 not seen

00:43:48.900 that either.

00:43:49.360 Just atrocious.

00:43:50.440 Idris Elba

00:43:51.140 was one of

00:43:51.860 very few

00:43:52.340 good things

00:43:52.960 but Stephen

00:43:53.420 King has

00:43:54.400 said that

00:43:54.700 when he was

00:43:55.100 writing it

00:43:55.600 he was thinking

00:43:56.480 of clean

00:43:56.920 tastewood.

00:43:57.800 So if you

00:43:58.540 are a fan

00:43:59.040 of the

00:43:59.300 Dark Tower

00:43:59.820 series, such

00:44:00.900 as I am,

00:44:02.020 you are

00:44:02.480 reading the

00:44:03.020 novels thinking

00:44:04.260 of someone

00:44:04.720 like clean

00:44:05.140 tastewood.

00:44:05.900 Right.

00:44:06.120 Yeah, but

00:44:06.600 Idris Elba

00:44:07.300 did a good

00:44:07.740 job.

00:44:08.260 So it's

00:44:09.240 still, it

00:44:10.820 was still

00:44:11.200 too early.

00:44:11.880 We don't

00:44:12.060 know if she

00:44:12.440 did a good

00:44:12.860 job or not

00:44:13.260 but the

00:44:13.960 point is

00:44:14.440 that was

00:44:15.480 forced.

00:44:16.420 It was

00:44:17.120 forced because

00:44:17.680 it was

00:44:18.080 integrated into

00:44:18.960 a very

00:44:19.320 forced

00:44:19.700 narrative.

00:44:20.760 That was

00:44:20.980 just, that's

00:44:22.160 the show

00:44:22.480 runner.

00:44:22.860 Also, I

00:44:23.620 don't remember

00:44:24.180 her being a

00:44:24.860 lesbian.

00:44:25.200 And you

00:44:31.080 see here

00:44:31.820 Elaine and

00:44:34.060 Avienda, they're

00:44:35.760 also women of

00:44:36.740 the Chosen One,

00:44:38.020 by the way.

00:44:38.280 Yeah, he

00:44:39.600 has a thing,

00:44:40.900 you know, he

00:44:41.340 Yeah, they

00:44:43.020 made the

00:44:43.320 women of the

00:44:43.760 Chosen.

00:44:44.320 Yeah.

00:44:44.740 And in the

00:44:45.500 original, there

00:44:46.120 was no sexual

00:44:47.280 interest.

00:44:47.780 And then in

00:44:48.980 the series, they

00:44:50.200 made the

00:44:51.260 wise women to

00:44:53.180 be lesbians.

00:44:53.920 Okay, wait,

00:44:54.300 wait, wait.

00:44:54.540 As a way of

00:44:54.980 saying wisdom is

00:44:56.080 lesbian or?

00:44:56.900 Let me, let me

00:44:57.580 rephrase it.

00:44:58.220 Let me rephrase

00:44:58.960 it a bit.

00:44:59.540 So in the

00:45:00.380 books, and

00:45:00.920 that this is

00:45:01.440 what has

00:45:02.260 angered many

00:45:03.020 fans, right?

00:45:03.920 is you

00:45:04.620 already have a

00:45:05.660 diverse set of

00:45:06.800 characters.

00:45:07.560 Okay.

00:45:07.800 Because it

00:45:08.160 involves massive

00:45:09.340 world building.

00:45:10.300 It's world

00:45:10.800 building at a

00:45:11.520 whole new

00:45:11.980 scale.

00:45:12.480 Right.

00:45:12.920 You have

00:45:13.280 tens of

00:45:14.080 kingdoms.

00:45:14.920 Okay.

00:45:15.340 So you

00:45:15.920 already have a

00:45:16.800 diverse set of

00:45:17.480 characters.

00:45:18.320 You have all

00:45:19.100 sorts of, it's

00:45:20.300 essentially a

00:45:21.380 matriarchy in

00:45:22.120 most of these

00:45:22.640 kingdoms.

00:45:23.480 Okay.

00:45:24.040 Basically

00:45:24.480 kingdoms.

00:45:25.480 Okay.

00:45:26.100 Yeah.

00:45:26.560 All right.

00:45:26.920 So they

00:45:28.300 didn't need to

00:45:29.240 touch anything.

00:45:30.100 All they had

00:45:30.600 to do was

00:45:31.260 just stick to

00:45:32.280 the books, but

00:45:32.900 they didn't.

00:45:33.960 So in the

00:45:35.140 books, you do

00:45:35.820 have people of

00:45:36.900 all walks of

00:45:37.880 life.

00:45:38.340 Right.

00:45:40.040 But not at the

00:45:41.040 extent that they

00:45:41.680 did it.

00:45:42.440 Right.

00:45:42.880 So you see

00:45:43.580 here, you

00:45:44.180 know, Elaine,

00:45:45.000 who was

00:45:45.380 actually a good

00:45:46.140 casting choice

00:45:46.980 for, for

00:45:48.100 the, for

00:45:49.120 this character

00:45:50.140 and at the

00:45:50.740 end, they're

00:45:51.140 looking at

00:45:51.640 each other.

00:45:52.260 You'd expect

00:45:53.000 them to just

00:45:53.900 say things to

00:45:55.660 each other and

00:45:56.080 be friends.

00:45:56.920 But actually

00:45:57.860 they were, they

00:45:59.580 were about to

00:46:00.160 get it on.

00:46:01.120 Right.

00:46:01.640 Right.

00:46:02.560 Okay.

00:46:03.140 So we have

00:46:03.980 here Avienda in

00:46:05.160 the fandom

00:46:05.800 character.

00:46:06.340 They created a

00:46:06.940 special wiki

00:46:08.220 thing here with

00:46:09.260 the Octobity

00:46:10.500 Q Plus

00:46:11.120 flag.

00:46:11.700 That's atrocious.

00:46:12.880 Yeah.

00:46:13.480 So you see

00:46:14.120 go back up,

00:46:15.140 go back up

00:46:15.760 to where you

00:46:16.360 were, just

00:46:17.760 hover over

00:46:18.480 where it says

00:46:18.900 six more.

00:46:19.940 Where?

00:46:20.600 At the top

00:46:21.440 sentence where

00:46:22.320 it says, oh,

00:46:23.160 well, it said

00:46:23.760 something like

00:46:24.340 there was a

00:46:24.780 particular, there

00:46:25.620 you go.

00:46:25.960 LBGT plus

00:46:27.520 characters, like

00:46:28.680 there's an

00:46:28.960 entire segment

00:46:29.900 devoted.

00:46:31.520 Yeah, yeah,

00:46:31.940 yeah.

00:46:32.300 To those

00:46:33.060 characters.

00:46:34.580 Yeah.

00:46:35.140 But, and you

00:46:35.780 see here saying

00:46:37.040 someone said here,

00:46:38.580 the Nerdist, the

00:46:39.260 Wheel of Time TV

00:46:40.060 series fixed some

00:46:41.260 of the book's

00:46:41.900 major issues with

00:46:42.820 women characters.

00:46:44.560 There weren't

00:46:45.360 that many.

00:46:46.080 So I want to

00:46:47.180 say, I want to

00:46:47.760 say something.

00:46:48.080 So I really

00:46:49.780 despise the

00:46:50.520 fact that they

00:46:51.160 took one of

00:46:51.780 the greatest

00:46:52.340 fantasy epic

00:46:53.640 novels.

00:46:54.420 Right.

00:46:54.920 It has sold

00:46:55.740 more copies than

00:46:56.680 the Game of

00:46:57.200 Thrones series,

00:46:58.020 than A Song

00:46:58.480 of Ice and

00:46:59.000 Fire.

00:46:59.500 The fan base

00:47:00.420 was there, has

00:47:01.600 sold more than

00:47:02.240 100 million

00:47:02.840 copies.

00:47:03.700 They didn't

00:47:04.560 have to touch

00:47:05.260 anything.

00:47:06.420 They didn't

00:47:07.220 have to touch

00:47:07.780 anything.

00:47:08.020 All they had to

00:47:08.680 do was stick to

00:47:09.320 the book.

00:47:09.600 A very successful

00:47:10.720 and good

00:47:11.220 franchise that

00:47:12.060 existed.

00:47:12.940 Yes.

00:47:13.180 And then

00:47:14.560 DEI did to

00:47:15.740 death.

00:47:16.840 Absolutely.

00:47:17.960 And I really

00:47:18.900 dislike the fact

00:47:19.660 that they made

00:47:20.380 it about

00:47:20.980 feminism, but

00:47:22.140 also the

00:47:22.660 opposite, anti-

00:47:23.840 feminism in this

00:47:24.840 case, because

00:47:25.280 it's about

00:47:26.000 neither.

00:47:26.760 You have

00:47:27.420 women in

00:47:28.680 places of

00:47:29.580 power, and

00:47:30.660 they are trying

00:47:31.340 to control

00:47:31.840 him.

00:47:32.620 This doesn't

00:47:33.140 necessarily mean

00:47:34.060 that it's

00:47:34.540 anti-male.

00:47:36.260 There are

00:47:36.980 elements of

00:47:38.080 that universe

00:47:39.480 and these

00:47:40.540 women who are

00:47:41.540 anti-male

00:47:42.160 essentially.

00:47:42.640 to say

00:47:43.380 the men

00:47:45.220 shouldn't use

00:47:45.820 the power

00:47:46.760 because last

00:47:47.520 time that

00:47:48.740 they used

00:47:49.220 it, it

00:47:50.040 was tainted

00:47:50.640 and it

00:47:51.460 broke the

00:47:51.880 world and

00:47:52.320 it was

00:47:52.580 destroyed.

00:47:53.040 So that's

00:47:53.860 there, but

00:47:54.720 you don't

00:47:56.100 have to see

00:47:56.880 it that way

00:47:57.560 at large.

00:47:58.720 You can

00:47:58.960 also see

00:47:59.380 it as

00:47:59.820 powerful

00:48:00.660 people trying

00:48:01.520 to control

00:48:02.140 exceptional

00:48:02.740 individuals.

00:48:03.660 So you're

00:48:03.920 arguing that

00:48:04.520 they needed

00:48:04.900 nuance and

00:48:06.180 that they

00:48:06.460 needed subtlety

00:48:07.320 and they

00:48:07.780 needed to

00:48:08.120 respect the

00:48:08.540 tradition.

00:48:08.820 I'm saying

00:48:09.340 that it's

00:48:10.700 a massive

00:48:12.020 epic.

00:48:12.500 It's a

00:48:13.360 massive

00:48:13.760 epic.

00:48:14.540 It involves

00:48:15.320 massive

00:48:15.740 world building.

00:48:17.040 It already

00:48:17.940 involves an

00:48:18.740 organically

00:48:19.440 diverse set

00:48:20.220 of characters.

00:48:21.520 Some of

00:48:22.160 them are

00:48:22.540 anti-male,

00:48:23.380 some of

00:48:23.660 them are

00:48:23.960 pro-male,

00:48:24.540 some of

00:48:24.740 them are

00:48:25.020 anti-female,

00:48:25.700 some of

00:48:25.860 them are

00:48:26.360 pro-female,

00:48:27.400 whatever,

00:48:28.180 but that's

00:48:29.340 organic.

00:48:30.360 Woken has

00:48:30.780 destroyed it

00:48:31.460 because it

00:48:31.920 tried to

00:48:32.520 mess with

00:48:33.060 it without

00:48:34.060 even having

00:48:34.700 to by

00:48:35.620 enforcing a

00:48:36.340 top-down

00:48:36.860 vision.

00:48:37.180 This is

00:48:38.140 always,

00:48:38.700 if I

00:48:38.880 may,

00:48:39.160 what

00:48:39.440 constantly

00:48:39.940 comes up,

00:48:40.620 this word

00:48:41.260 fixed.

00:48:42.680 We fixed

00:48:43.640 it.

00:48:44.700 That fundamentally

00:48:46.160 implies that

00:48:47.320 there was some

00:48:47.940 great flaw

00:48:49.340 in the

00:48:51.380 original work.

00:48:52.280 You always get

00:48:52.920 this with

00:48:53.320 Tolkien.

00:48:53.880 It's like,

00:48:54.240 Tolkien's world

00:48:55.720 was wonderful,

00:48:56.640 but we fixed

00:48:57.360 it with

00:48:57.740 diversity.

00:48:58.920 It's like,

00:48:59.520 no.

00:49:00.720 One, that

00:49:01.660 implicitly implies

00:49:02.720 that homogeneity

00:49:03.880 is in itself

00:49:04.860 an evil

00:49:05.520 and a flaw

00:49:06.220 that needs

00:49:06.900 to be fixed,

00:49:07.940 which it

00:49:08.540 doesn't.

00:49:09.380 But second

00:49:09.900 of all,

00:49:10.300 it also

00:49:10.760 implies that

00:49:11.760 you are

00:49:13.220 wiser and

00:49:14.880 understand how

00:49:16.020 to gain success

00:49:17.220 more than the

00:49:18.240 author whose

00:49:18.900 stories you're

00:49:20.060 taking on

00:49:20.960 and want to

00:49:22.220 use.

00:49:22.720 Because ultimately

00:49:23.380 you have no

00:49:24.360 ideas of your

00:49:25.120 own.

00:49:25.480 You have

00:49:25.760 ideology,

00:49:27.080 but you don't

00:49:27.680 have creative

00:49:28.300 ideas.

00:49:29.220 And so it

00:49:29.560 just comes down

00:49:30.180 to using

00:49:30.840 other people's

00:49:32.020 more successful

00:49:33.040 work as a

00:49:33.900 vehicle for

00:49:34.840 your own

00:49:35.240 ideology until

00:49:36.280 you just

00:49:36.760 run it into

00:49:38.060 the ground

00:49:38.600 in three

00:49:39.720 seasons.

00:49:40.440 Exactly.

00:49:40.920 And it's just

00:49:41.940 about epic

00:49:42.780 fantasy.

00:49:43.460 You want to

00:49:44.000 see epic

00:49:44.720 themes,

00:49:45.300 epic battle.

00:49:46.260 You don't

00:49:46.560 want people

00:49:47.080 to mess it

00:49:47.600 and make it

00:49:48.000 about identity

00:49:48.660 politics.

00:49:49.520 Speaking of

00:49:50.040 which,

00:49:50.340 I asked

00:49:50.720 Google Germany

00:49:51.340 how many

00:49:52.180 gay characters

00:49:52.960 were there in

00:49:53.500 the Wheel of

00:49:53.880 Time series.

00:49:54.560 I read it

00:49:55.040 about a decade

00:49:55.680 ago.

00:49:56.700 I don't

00:49:57.020 remember if

00:49:57.660 throughout

00:49:57.960 these 11,600

00:49:59.420 pages at

00:50:00.280 some point

00:50:00.700 there was a

00:50:01.200 place I missed

00:50:02.200 where there was

00:50:02.740 a massive

00:50:03.620 orgy or

00:50:04.280 something.

00:50:05.800 My memory

00:50:06.780 may fail me

00:50:07.940 occasionally,

00:50:08.340 but it says

00:50:08.960 here,

00:50:09.660 Google Germany,

00:50:10.500 the representation

00:50:11.160 of gay characters

00:50:12.480 in the Wheel of

00:50:13.080 Time series

00:50:13.560 differs between

00:50:14.260 the original

00:50:14.720 books by

00:50:15.260 Robert Jordan

00:50:15.780 and the

00:50:16.660 adaptation.

00:50:18.060 And it says

00:50:18.540 essentially in

00:50:19.380 the books,

00:50:20.560 Robert Jordan

00:50:21.360 included various

00:50:22.280 instances of

00:50:23.020 same-sex

00:50:23.440 relationships.

00:50:24.560 So there

00:50:25.000 were there.

00:50:26.000 They didn't

00:50:26.520 have to touch

00:50:27.080 anything.

00:50:27.620 When were

00:50:28.300 these first

00:50:29.120 starting to be

00:50:29.860 written?

00:50:30.180 In the 90s?

00:50:30.900 I think the

00:50:31.660 first one was

00:50:32.120 published in

00:50:32.640 1990.

00:50:33.360 Okay.

00:50:34.660 Primarily among

00:50:35.480 women, often

00:50:36.360 referred to as

00:50:37.020 pillow friends.

00:50:41.720 Yeah.

00:50:42.520 Okay.

00:50:45.000 I hope they

00:50:47.440 haven't shown

00:50:48.280 any scene of

00:50:49.060 them biting

00:50:49.600 pillows or

00:50:50.340 something.

00:50:51.000 Okay.

00:50:51.580 Sorry.

00:50:53.000 Okay.

00:50:53.580 These relationships

00:50:54.260 are common,

00:50:55.080 especially among

00:50:56.180 the Aes Sedai.

00:50:57.420 They are

00:50:57.520 essentially the

00:50:58.460 witch class and

00:50:59.200 are generally

00:50:59.760 accepted with

00:51:00.540 the cultures

00:51:01.280 depicted.

00:51:02.100 However, some

00:51:02.760 fans have noted

00:51:03.580 that Jordan's

00:51:04.240 portrayal of

00:51:04.840 these relationships

00:51:06.120 could be seen

00:51:07.240 as somewhat

00:51:07.680 vague or not

00:51:08.840 explicitly queer

00:51:09.960 in the modern

00:51:10.440 sense, sometimes

00:51:11.400 implying there

00:51:12.560 were a phase or

00:51:13.380 present which men

00:51:14.400 weren't available.

00:51:16.500 Just, you

00:51:17.200 know, to keep

00:51:18.480 each other

00:51:18.880 occupied.

00:51:20.800 So you see

00:51:21.680 here that

00:51:23.840 they sort

00:51:25.600 of, in the

00:51:26.180 Amazon Prime

00:51:26.840 series, the

00:51:27.540 show has

00:51:28.640 significantly

00:51:29.380 expanded and

00:51:30.460 made more

00:51:30.880 explicit the

00:51:31.520 LGBTQ plus

00:51:32.440 representation,

00:51:33.640 drawing in hints

00:51:34.360 from the books

00:51:34.940 and making them

00:51:35.520 central to certain

00:51:36.780 characters' arcs.

00:51:38.380 They have

00:51:38.660 polyamorous

00:51:39.260 relationships and

00:51:42.040 they are talking

00:51:42.920 about general

00:51:43.820 acceptance of

00:51:44.640 queerness.

00:51:45.240 The show's

00:51:45.740 creators have

00:51:46.420 stated that

00:51:47.040 homophobia does

00:51:47.920 not exist as a

00:51:49.480 societal problem in

00:51:50.520 the world of

00:51:51.060 Wheel of Time.

00:51:51.980 Why did you have

00:51:52.740 to change it

00:51:53.400 then?

00:51:53.840 There was

00:51:54.580 zero reason to

00:51:55.560 change it.

00:51:56.540 Just leave it.

00:51:57.940 This also

00:51:58.900 fundamentally comes

00:51:59.920 down to a

00:52:01.780 consistent pattern

00:52:02.740 that you get with

00:52:03.700 these fantasy

00:52:04.320 series and the

00:52:05.100 way, I think just

00:52:05.720 shows in general

00:52:06.780 to be honest,

00:52:07.400 where you get

00:52:09.220 this expansion

00:52:10.800 of queerness,

00:52:13.320 whatever you want

00:52:13.940 to call it,

00:52:14.780 because fundamentally

00:52:15.760 it's not about,

00:52:17.040 you're not looking

00:52:17.620 at, even though I

00:52:18.240 don't know the

00:52:18.680 series, you're not

00:52:19.140 looking at Wheel

00:52:20.240 of Time, it's

00:52:21.640 stances on

00:52:22.400 morality, it's

00:52:23.220 stances on good

00:52:23.900 and evil and

00:52:24.480 going, that is

00:52:25.760 something aspirational.

00:52:27.180 In fact, what

00:52:27.800 you're doing is

00:52:28.400 those heroes need

00:52:30.180 to be more like

00:52:31.100 me.

00:52:32.100 Yes.

00:52:32.400 There's a vanity

00:52:33.520 and a self-narcissism

00:52:35.500 to it.

00:52:36.080 It's really

00:52:36.880 corrosive.

00:52:37.600 And to speed up

00:52:38.760 a bit, it says

00:52:39.560 in summary, while

00:52:40.300 the books had

00:52:40.840 several implied

00:52:41.680 or subtly

00:52:42.360 depicted lesbian

00:52:43.320 relationships and

00:52:44.680 a few explicitly

00:52:45.500 gay male characters

00:52:46.660 introduced later

00:52:47.560 in the series,

00:52:48.580 the TV adaptation

00:52:49.400 has significantly

00:52:50.340 increased and

00:52:51.120 foregrounded queer

00:52:52.620 representation,

00:52:53.560 particularly for

00:52:54.220 central characters

00:52:55.160 and etc.

00:52:57.340 So that's the

00:52:58.220 issue.

00:52:59.020 They didn't have

00:53:00.900 to do anything

00:53:01.500 and they still

00:53:03.760 did it.

00:53:04.700 And you see

00:53:05.100 here, this is

00:53:05.740 Rave Judkins,

00:53:07.040 the showrunner,

00:53:09.480 who says

00:53:09.820 diversity and

00:53:10.480 representation

00:53:11.100 expands inclusivity

00:53:12.360 while staying true

00:53:13.100 to the world's

00:53:13.660 richness.

00:53:14.720 And here we have

00:53:15.280 an article from

00:53:16.060 Hollywood Reporter

00:53:17.000 saying that the

00:53:18.840 show is expanding

00:53:19.980 the queer universe

00:53:21.980 universe and

00:53:22.680 that was all

00:53:24.040 they wanted to

00:53:24.700 do essentially.

00:53:25.420 So at the end

00:53:26.740 of the day,

00:53:27.440 in a nutshell,

00:53:28.180 I'll summarize

00:53:28.760 what they did,

00:53:30.400 what they had to

00:53:31.200 do was do

00:53:33.320 nothing, stick to

00:53:34.320 the books, the

00:53:35.320 books were

00:53:35.640 perfect, they

00:53:36.700 were epic.

00:53:37.620 Instead of

00:53:38.120 doing it about,

00:53:39.040 instead of

00:53:39.500 focusing and

00:53:40.240 highlighting upon

00:53:41.320 the epic thing,

00:53:42.420 they highlighted

00:53:43.540 about their

00:53:44.820 political agenda.

00:53:47.640 And the

00:53:48.480 fan base was

00:53:49.200 there.

00:53:49.880 It has sold

00:53:50.600 more copies

00:53:51.960 than the

00:53:52.500 Game of Thrones

00:53:53.000 series.

00:53:54.640 There are

00:53:55.460 millions of

00:53:56.340 people who

00:53:56.740 wanted to

00:53:57.160 watch it, but

00:53:58.520 somehow they

00:53:59.080 didn't watch

00:53:59.520 it.

00:53:59.760 So to the

00:54:00.880 people who

00:54:01.300 are involved

00:54:01.740 in the

00:54:02.040 production of

00:54:02.520 this show,

00:54:03.480 keep being

00:54:04.400 in your

00:54:04.760 bubble that

00:54:05.520 you destroyed

00:54:06.100 a lovely

00:54:07.120 fantasy series

00:54:09.180 and I hope

00:54:11.080 this doesn't

00:54:11.640 mean that the

00:54:13.020 fantasy genre is

00:54:14.640 going to

00:54:15.320 completely turn

00:54:16.420 its back to

00:54:16.960 the Wheel of

00:54:17.320 Time.

00:54:18.640 Well, in 15

00:54:19.620 years we'll get

00:54:20.180 a remake, won't

00:54:20.960 we?

00:54:21.960 I hope so.

00:54:22.740 So the

00:54:23.100 hapsification

00:54:23.600 says the

00:54:24.800 Elder Scrolls

00:54:25.760 also have an

00:54:26.860 epic theme.

00:54:28.640 The engaged

00:54:29.600 few says I

00:54:30.460 love how

00:54:30.900 someone who

00:54:31.480 couldn't write

00:54:32.020 a pithy

00:54:32.820 limerick with

00:54:33.460 a gun to

00:54:33.940 their head,

00:54:34.800 things they

00:54:35.220 can fix,

00:54:36.020 perceived

00:54:36.460 problems that

00:54:37.200 are known

00:54:37.580 only to

00:54:38.060 them.

00:54:39.000 Again, that's

00:54:39.560 a random

00:54:39.840 name, says

00:54:40.500 you should

00:54:41.120 have shown

00:54:41.680 the scene

00:54:42.160 of a pregnant

00:54:42.720 woman fighting

00:54:43.500 in a war

00:54:44.060 while giving

00:54:44.900 birth.

00:54:45.680 I've worked

00:54:46.280 with women

00:54:46.740 going into

00:54:47.360 labor at

00:54:47.840 the hospital,

00:54:48.780 they can

00:54:49.220 do back

00:54:49.700 flips, even

00:54:50.660 with magic.

00:54:51.480 Lol.

00:54:54.980 Right, so

00:54:55.880 are we going to

00:54:56.560 talk about

00:54:56.980 Harry Potter

00:54:57.640 now?

00:54:57.820 We are,

00:54:58.260 all right.

00:54:59.380 So as I'm

00:55:00.240 sure everyone's

00:55:01.060 heard at this

00:55:01.640 point, HBO

00:55:02.580 are making,

00:55:04.320 remaking the

00:55:05.560 Harry Potter

00:55:06.120 series, less

00:55:07.480 than two

00:55:07.900 decades after

00:55:08.740 the original

00:55:09.340 films came

00:55:10.160 out, because

00:55:10.980 what are new

00:55:11.920 ideas anyway?

00:55:13.800 But ultimately

00:55:14.740 this is, well

00:55:17.100 on the face

00:55:17.760 of it, regardless

00:55:18.500 of how it was

00:55:19.580 going to turn

00:55:20.840 out, or how

00:55:21.600 it is going to

00:55:22.320 turn out, I

00:55:23.460 was against this

00:55:24.180 from the start.

00:55:25.240 If only for the

00:55:26.000 reason that, as

00:55:26.660 I say, it's not

00:55:27.820 good to be

00:55:28.620 recycling ideas,

00:55:30.180 especially that

00:55:31.000 soon.

00:55:31.560 If you want to

00:55:31.820 do it in 50

00:55:32.440 years, something

00:55:33.480 like that, maybe

00:55:34.720 an argument could

00:55:35.500 be made.

00:55:36.180 But, you know,

00:55:37.160 it's one of those

00:55:37.820 things that, you

00:55:38.420 know, I remember

00:55:39.120 being a child

00:55:40.120 and going to see

00:55:41.500 a Harry Potter

00:55:42.020 film became

00:55:42.620 almost an

00:55:43.720 annual occurrence,

00:55:44.920 you know, and

00:55:45.220 you go with

00:55:45.780 your family, and

00:55:46.600 you know, especially

00:55:47.420 those early ones,

00:55:48.460 those Christopher

00:55:49.000 Columbus ones, they

00:55:49.940 had a real warm,

00:55:51.740 childlike, you

00:55:52.780 know, whimsy to

00:55:54.000 them, and then of

00:55:54.860 course they got

00:55:55.440 darker as they

00:55:56.260 went on.

00:55:57.200 But fundamentally,

00:55:58.360 one of the things

00:55:59.040 that was most

00:56:00.280 important about the

00:56:01.680 Harry Potter films,

00:56:02.600 and this is me

00:56:03.560 speaking as not

00:56:05.260 the greatest

00:56:06.100 Harry Potter fan,

00:56:07.260 like, it's fine.

00:56:09.180 I wouldn't, I

00:56:10.900 personally wouldn't

00:56:11.680 consider it to be

00:56:12.600 one of the all-time

00:56:13.640 greats, but I

00:56:15.180 would consider it

00:56:16.320 to be the last

00:56:17.220 great, the last

00:56:20.540 great story to

00:56:22.600 come from old

00:56:23.620 Britain, to come

00:56:24.880 from old England,

00:56:25.980 you know, that

00:56:26.660 feels like it was a

00:56:28.120 part of the

00:56:29.440 mythos, the

00:56:30.120 continuum of

00:56:32.000 narrative storytelling

00:56:33.180 from the heritage

00:56:34.840 of what had come

00:56:36.280 from before it in

00:56:37.480 the parochial sense

00:56:38.500 of what life was

00:56:40.740 like for the

00:56:41.500 British Isles,

00:56:42.580 right?

00:56:42.820 You get this in the

00:56:43.760 sense that obviously

00:56:44.560 J.K. Rowling, you

00:56:46.000 know, Scottish author,

00:56:47.780 and, you know, but

00:56:48.880 all of the aesthetics

00:56:51.440 of Harry Potter are

00:56:53.480 just dripping with

00:56:55.580 British architectural

00:56:57.800 beauty.

00:56:58.920 You know, Hogwarts is,

00:57:00.220 you know, a very, very

00:57:01.520 elitist, it's like

00:57:02.560 Oxford for wizards,

00:57:03.880 you know, everything

00:57:04.980 about it is exclusive

00:57:06.760 and everything about

00:57:08.300 it is based upon the

00:57:10.220 idea of excellence,

00:57:11.940 right?

00:57:12.300 So, and all down to

00:57:14.440 the characters in it,

00:57:16.100 you know, you've got

00:57:16.740 characters like Hermione

00:57:17.800 Granger, and let's

00:57:19.400 face it, growing up in

00:57:20.940 England at school, we

00:57:22.540 all knew a girl who

00:57:23.620 was just like Hermione

00:57:24.820 Granger, you know,

00:57:26.260 that prissy, teacher's

00:57:27.760 pet, hot, you know,

00:57:29.040 sort of, but, but...

00:57:30.880 Maybe I just have a

00:57:34.120 very cynical reading

00:57:35.120 of her, or maybe my

00:57:36.080 school days were just

00:57:37.020 particularly bad, but

00:57:38.400 also in terms of, like,

00:57:40.120 the enchanted nature

00:57:41.240 of it, you know, that

00:57:42.200 these, you've got elves

00:57:43.920 and goblins and

00:57:45.320 trolls, you know, and

00:57:46.520 these are all mythical

00:57:49.060 creatures, totally

00:57:50.480 lifted out of the

00:57:51.600 European, you know,

00:57:53.180 pagan European, you

00:57:54.920 know, foundations, and

00:57:57.300 so it's, and one of

00:57:58.440 the most important

00:57:59.320 things, I would say,

00:58:01.180 was the fact that

00:58:02.420 J.K. Rowling, it's

00:58:04.540 long been established

00:58:05.240 now, but when those

00:58:06.440 films were first

00:58:07.200 coming out, J.K.

00:58:08.860 Rowling insisted that

00:58:10.820 they be a British-only

00:58:12.620 cast, that only British

00:58:14.680 actors play the

00:58:16.140 characters, and very

00:58:17.440 famously, this led to

00:58:18.900 the American actor,

00:58:20.000 of course, Robin

00:58:20.640 Williams, not being

00:58:22.380 cast, even though he

00:58:23.640 was obviously a

00:58:24.620 titan of Hollywood at

00:58:26.600 the time, he was

00:58:27.380 barred from being a

00:58:28.440 part of it, because

00:58:29.580 he was American,

00:58:30.800 which is, of course,

00:58:32.100 enormously based.

00:58:35.460 And it's, but, so

00:58:37.120 it's interesting to see

00:58:38.200 as well that there's a

00:58:39.520 quote here from the

00:58:40.240 casting director at the

00:58:41.260 time, Janet

00:58:42.620 Hershenson, and she

00:58:44.000 says, the only British

00:58:45.300 rule, the, sorry, the

00:58:46.820 only British rule was

00:58:48.160 so important that Robin

00:58:49.220 Williams was even

00:58:50.100 turned down to play

00:58:50.860 Hagrid, and that Robin

00:58:52.680 had called Columbus

00:58:53.960 because he really wanted

00:58:55.240 to be in the movie,

00:58:56.160 me, but it was, there

00:58:58.200 was this British-only

00:58:59.160 edict on it.

00:59:00.180 This says two things.

00:59:01.620 One, that even very

00:59:03.080 early in her career,

00:59:04.800 J.K. Rowling had

00:59:05.800 enough bargaining power

00:59:07.100 over her own creative

00:59:08.820 material.

00:59:09.640 Yes.

00:59:10.220 To be able to demand,

00:59:12.140 make that demand of

00:59:13.100 Hollywood, and for them

00:59:14.600 to actually go along

00:59:15.600 with it.

00:59:16.480 And it also speaks to,

00:59:19.200 on some level, her

00:59:20.320 loyalty, her love of

00:59:22.300 Britain, that she was

00:59:24.440 interested in Harry Potter

00:59:26.480 feeling as authentically

00:59:28.120 British as possible.

00:59:31.400 And so, naturally, we

00:59:33.220 were all wondering what

00:59:35.140 the next chapter would be

00:59:37.180 like.

00:59:37.860 And then we heard this.

00:59:39.800 HBO says Harry Potter

00:59:41.240 series will benefit from

00:59:43.220 J.K. Rowling's

00:59:44.160 involvement after committing

00:59:45.640 to inclusive, diverse

00:59:47.880 casting.

00:59:50.120 Mamma mia, here we go

00:59:52.020 again.

00:59:53.160 Go woke, go broke.

00:59:54.440 Right.

00:59:54.920 This is just...

00:59:56.320 Well, I don't...

00:59:57.120 Honestly, this is one of

00:59:58.320 those times where I don't

00:59:59.620 think it will.

01:00:00.740 No, I think that it will

01:00:02.920 just soldier on for as

01:00:04.820 long as it takes and get

01:00:06.660 through the cycle.

01:00:07.720 Because I feel like a bit

01:00:09.120 like with Rings of Power,

01:00:10.880 whatever happens, however

01:00:12.600 bad it actually is, it

01:00:14.780 would be a greater defeat

01:00:16.620 to cancel it than it would

01:00:20.540 be to admit that you were

01:00:22.000 wrong and that actually

01:00:22.840 people don't want this.

01:00:24.440 Right.

01:00:24.980 The ideological battle

01:00:26.320 is more important.

01:00:28.960 So fame is...

01:00:29.320 Is it going on with

01:00:30.080 Rings of Power?

01:00:31.600 Unfortunately, yes, for

01:00:32.760 now.

01:00:33.120 Although I am trying my

01:00:34.720 best to change that

01:00:36.020 personally.

01:00:36.780 I've been writing letters

01:00:37.820 every week.

01:00:40.120 Angry letters to Amazon.

01:00:41.480 And so, naturally, the castings

01:00:44.780 started to come out and this

01:00:47.900 is the most recent one and

01:00:49.140 what prompted me to do this

01:00:50.340 is that you had the casting

01:00:51.660 of Hermione, Harry and

01:00:53.880 Ron.

01:00:55.100 And, of course, one of them

01:00:56.800 is a little bit different.

01:00:58.480 Also, one of them doesn't

01:00:59.340 wear glasses.

01:01:00.180 Isn't Harry Potter supposed to

01:01:01.520 wear glasses?

01:01:02.000 Well, I'm sure he'll wear

01:01:03.320 glasses for the actual thing.

01:01:04.980 Let's not be petty now.

01:01:06.400 There's more than enough

01:01:07.200 criticism.

01:01:08.940 That was what I saw when I

01:01:10.920 saw the link.

01:01:14.080 Yes.

01:01:14.820 And so, and then, of course,

01:01:16.840 but then, so they've

01:01:18.380 essentially race-swapped

01:01:20.600 Hermione.

01:01:21.700 Now, obviously, I don't know

01:01:23.580 what this particular girl's

01:01:26.080 heritage is.

01:01:27.260 I don't...

01:01:27.680 Is she Spanish?

01:01:28.940 Is she Mediterranean?

01:01:31.260 Is she a little bit Arabic?

01:01:32.380 I can't tell.

01:01:33.800 And I don't know enough

01:01:35.000 about her.

01:01:35.660 And also, fundamentally, I

01:01:37.520 want to make it clear that

01:01:39.320 I'm not going to start

01:01:41.260 dunking and being mean to a

01:01:43.940 small child.

01:01:45.340 Right.

01:01:45.620 You know, as far as I'm

01:01:47.420 concerned, you know, this is

01:01:48.780 a girl who's grown up in

01:01:50.520 Britain, probably loved the

01:01:52.200 books, you know, grown up

01:01:53.340 with the books as, you know,

01:01:55.080 her mum probably watched the

01:01:56.680 films and then she's read the

01:01:58.040 books to her, whatever it may

01:01:59.480 be.

01:01:59.700 And as far as this girl's

01:02:00.920 concerned, she probably

01:02:02.860 considers this to be one of

01:02:04.880 the greatest, most magical

01:02:06.340 things that could ever

01:02:07.260 happen to her, that she's

01:02:08.580 going to get to take part in

01:02:10.180 a reimagining of a book

01:02:12.300 series, you know, a series of

01:02:13.500 films that she just loves so

01:02:14.720 much.

01:02:15.220 And so I'm not going to lay

01:02:16.480 blame at a child.

01:02:18.140 I am going to lay blame at the

01:02:19.740 casting director and I am going

01:02:21.860 to lay blame at J.K.

01:02:23.780 Rowling for licensing it in the

01:02:26.320 first place.

01:02:27.020 But this is not something, so

01:02:30.920 then it obviously comes down

01:02:32.820 to, well, does it really matter

01:02:35.360 so much?

01:02:36.620 You know, like, Britain's just

01:02:38.120 more diverse than it was back in

01:02:40.080 the 90s when all of this was

01:02:41.660 going on.

01:02:42.700 And so, yeah, what is a race

01:02:45.260 swap here and there?

01:02:46.740 And so fundamentally, but it

01:02:48.860 comes down to this thing where

01:02:50.060 even J.K.

01:02:50.900 Rowling herself, and I've just got

01:02:52.640 these slightly out of chronology,

01:02:54.320 but when the stage sequel thing,

01:02:59.400 which I didn't go see, came to

01:03:02.140 the West End, this was the new

01:03:04.700 Hermione.

01:03:06.160 And at the time, J.K.

01:03:07.960 Rowling got very defensive, very

01:03:10.760 defensive about this casting.

01:03:12.680 She said, I had a bunch of racists

01:03:14.540 telling me that because Hermione

01:03:15.980 turned white, that is, lost color

01:03:19.380 from her, this is a passage from

01:03:21.060 the book in Prisoner of Azkaban,

01:03:22.620 where it remarks on her face

01:03:24.720 turning white.

01:03:26.060 It says, the loss of color from

01:03:28.340 her face after a shock, that she

01:03:30.080 must be a white woman, which I

01:03:32.860 have a great deal of difficulty

01:03:34.140 with, but I decided not to get

01:03:36.440 too agitated about it and simply

01:03:38.680 state quite firmly that Hermione

01:03:40.380 can be a black woman with my

01:03:42.520 absolute blessing and enthusiasm.

01:03:45.140 And so it's one of those things

01:03:46.720 that, look, if that's the case and

01:03:49.320 you're saying, look, I had this

01:03:51.660 idea, I conceived of her as

01:03:53.740 white, but I'm fine for her to

01:03:55.920 be black.

01:03:56.820 That's one thing, even though I

01:03:59.000 don't like it.

01:03:59.980 But what I will not tolerate,

01:04:02.460 Ms. Rowling, is you gaslighting

01:04:04.820 us into basically believing that

01:04:08.000 Hermione was always ethnically

01:04:09.900 ambiguous, especially seeing as there

01:04:12.380 are numerous mentions in the text of

01:04:15.300 the fact that she was white and

01:04:17.200 also the fact that on the front

01:04:19.020 cover of The Deathly Hallows, she

01:04:21.780 was white as well.

01:04:22.900 She was British because it's one

01:04:24.920 of those things.

01:04:25.800 For an author writing in the

01:04:27.940 1990s, why would you have conceived

01:04:31.220 of her any other way?

01:04:33.620 Right?

01:04:34.460 It was, you know, Britain was much

01:04:36.340 more homogenous back in the 90s than

01:04:38.320 it is now.

01:04:39.360 And of course you would have just

01:04:40.800 cast the protagonist of your

01:04:43.200 British novel as actual British

01:04:45.480 people.

01:04:46.380 I think it goes to the essence of

01:04:49.720 the project, which is that the

01:04:54.320 past isn't real.

01:04:55.800 The present is great and it was

01:04:57.680 always this and what you think is

01:04:59.440 the past just isn't real.

01:05:01.240 So there is this ongoing

01:05:03.160 falsification of memory and

01:05:06.040 falsification of history.

01:05:07.600 I think they had a Black Anne

01:05:09.200 Boleyn or something like that.

01:05:10.340 Yes, they did.

01:05:11.040 Which is just hilarious in the

01:05:16.420 magnitude of untruth, but quite

01:05:19.500 nefarious in the fact that they're

01:05:21.840 trying to reinvent a completely new

01:05:24.500 history.

01:05:25.200 Yes.

01:05:27.160 This is what ends up rubbing people

01:05:30.600 the wrong way, I suspect.

01:05:32.880 Not only did you, was there a

01:05:36.000 political project to foist an

01:05:37.960 experiment on the public that nobody

01:05:39.640 asked for, but there is also the

01:05:42.500 attempt to impose the narrative

01:05:44.300 that it was always thus and it is

01:05:47.220 good and you're a bigot for

01:05:49.300 noticing.

01:05:50.100 You haven't seen Britain change in

01:05:52.080 front of your eyes for decades.

01:05:53.260 No, no, no.

01:05:53.760 You haven't.

01:05:54.300 No.

01:05:55.340 I mean, I came here 20 years ago and

01:05:57.660 I noticed an insane change and a very

01:06:01.800 extreme one and it's not for the best.

01:06:03.720 So, this is what rubs people the wrong

01:06:08.440 way.

01:06:09.280 It's not, oh, well, this poor little

01:06:11.060 child and everybody's going to say, oh, you

01:06:13.060 people are attacking a child.

01:06:14.620 No, absolutely not.

01:06:16.780 What's being discussed is a project to

01:06:20.100 falsify history and to falsify reality

01:06:23.100 and to insist that the experiment was a

01:06:26.760 success in the face of all of the

01:06:28.480 evidence.

01:06:29.480 Also, I think fantasy fiction and I

01:06:32.280 don't know if Harry Potter technically

01:06:33.960 counts as fantasy fiction, but it

01:06:35.820 counts.

01:06:37.180 Yeah.

01:06:37.540 Definitely.

01:06:37.760 Maybe not epic fantasy, but it counts

01:06:40.040 as fantasy.

01:06:40.260 It is fantasy.

01:06:40.960 A lot of it is escapism.

01:06:42.540 We want to read fantasy fiction, watch

01:06:45.080 fantasy TV, fantasy series because we

01:06:47.960 can sort of escape the world around us

01:06:50.220 which contains stuff sometimes that we

01:06:52.040 just don't like.

01:06:53.160 Right.

01:06:53.360 All this, the DEI stuff in the genre, all

01:06:58.200 this is doing is ruining the escapism

01:07:00.480 thing.

01:07:01.100 Yes.

01:07:02.640 Because it's the forced nature of it.

01:07:05.440 Yes.

01:07:05.680 That's what's, that's the problem.

01:07:07.240 Yeah.

01:07:07.960 And in a way, it's a deliberate, let me

01:07:11.880 rub your nose in it.

01:07:13.180 Yeah.

01:07:13.580 You are not allowed any sort of escape.

01:07:15.920 Which one of Blair's henchmen said that

01:07:18.620 the objective was to rub the noses of the

01:07:20.540 conservatives in diversity or something like

01:07:22.400 I can't remember, it might have been

01:07:23.620 Jack Straw, but I might have been

01:07:25.520 No, no, it might have been Mandelson or

01:07:27.180 somebody like that.

01:07:27.500 Right.

01:07:27.840 Okay.

01:07:28.600 I'm not sure.

01:07:31.300 But there is definitely this element of,

01:07:35.060 no, you don't get to buzz off and do

01:07:37.760 something that you enjoy.

01:07:39.200 And it happens in video games and it

01:07:41.660 happens in television and everything that

01:07:44.700 they can get their hands on.

01:07:46.800 Yes, you're not allowed to escape.

01:07:49.340 We're in control.

01:07:50.500 We're in charge.

01:07:51.260 We're going to impose this on you.

01:07:53.380 And if it feels forced, it's because it is.

01:07:58.080 Absolutely.

01:07:58.880 But one other thing that I think is worth

01:08:00.980 considering is that you have to get into

01:08:03.420 the mind, regrettably, of these HBO

01:08:06.760 executives.

01:08:08.280 And I know it's a scary place, but you have

01:08:11.300 to get to, you have to just go with it.

01:08:13.660 Okay.

01:08:14.240 You have to go with it.

01:08:15.220 The thing is that as far as they're

01:08:17.440 concerned, they are just going to look at

01:08:20.140 Britain, go, wow, it's more diverse, you

01:08:23.200 know, 30 years on than when these original

01:08:26.040 films were made.

01:08:27.040 We just need to reflect modern Britain.

01:08:29.800 We need to reflect Britain as it is now.

01:08:32.360 And it's not fair to gatekeep all of these

01:08:35.900 minorities out of this very, you know, hang on.

01:08:40.400 And you have to understand as well that

01:08:43.060 fundamentally, even though we, you know, as

01:08:46.020 Europeans and as people who fundamentally want

01:08:48.700 to reverse mass immigration, reverse the damage

01:08:51.920 that it has done to our society, there is no

01:08:54.720 reason on earth why we should expect some Hollywood

01:08:57.720 executive not to think that the permanent

01:09:00.520 demographic state of European countries is not going

01:09:04.960 to be a permanent state of affairs, right?

01:09:08.600 Why would some Hollywood mogul ever think that 30

01:09:12.680 years from now, you know, re-migration is

01:09:15.660 inevitable or that, you know, we're going to at

01:09:18.380 least, you know, stop the boats or just reverse a

01:09:20.820 Boris wave, any of these sorts of things.

01:09:23.140 They're not paying attention to that.

01:09:25.060 They find it inconceivable.

01:09:26.700 And the reason that they find it inconceivable is

01:09:29.360 because it's totally contrary to their idea of progress,

01:09:32.980 because progress and diversity in their minds are

01:09:36.360 inexplicably linked.

01:09:37.660 I don't understand why I would want a fantasy

01:09:42.260 novel or series to represent any modern state

01:09:48.020 or any modern culture.

01:09:51.240 It's escapism.

01:09:53.700 It's a story.

01:09:54.840 It's, that's it.

01:09:55.860 More than that, the purpose of art is to create

01:09:59.220 something that is timeless.

01:10:00.300 And so if what you're doing is merely replicate the

01:10:05.740 present, that's not art, that's photography, which is

01:10:09.580 not quite the same thing.

01:10:10.880 So they don't have a notion of anything timeless or

01:10:17.160 anything eternal, including the nation, including

01:10:20.880 normalcy, including the family.

01:10:23.380 These conceptions don't exist in their minds.

01:10:28.020 What exists in their minds is just, you know, current year.

01:10:32.540 And what current year says is what you should always believe.

01:10:35.520 And we are in the eternal year zero.

01:10:38.060 That's the nature of the mindset that animates these kinds of decisions.

01:10:42.400 So it's not, you know, I like this actor.

01:10:44.660 I don't like this actor.

01:10:45.380 You can be of any race and be a wonderful actor.

01:10:49.120 Fine.

01:10:50.280 But Ryan Gosling is not going to play Mandela.

01:10:54.300 And it only goes one way.

01:10:56.860 And that becomes jarring.

01:10:59.020 You know, I say this as a Mediterranean person.

01:11:01.280 You know, it's not, you know, I fit in in multiple cultures in multiple places.

01:11:06.820 I don't care.

01:11:07.240 But there is something when you, like, if you were poking black people constantly, I would

01:11:14.620 find it annoying and insensitive, unnecessary.

01:11:17.220 And if you're poking white people constantly, I would find it annoying, unnecessary.

01:11:21.500 And just, you know, why are you doing this?

01:11:24.080 Right.

01:11:25.160 So that's the, that's what I think people find most insulting about this.

01:11:29.420 There's no sense that this is something timeless.

01:11:31.580 There's no sense that this is art.

01:11:33.300 There's no sense that this is supposed to provide an escape.

01:11:37.240 There's no respect for any kind of tradition.

01:11:43.000 Every tradition must be diversified because this is what we must believe today.

01:11:48.040 And these are the requirements of year zero.

01:11:49.900 End of discussion.

01:11:50.980 And a story fundamentally cannot belong to a particular people, right?

01:11:57.040 That's the assumption, right?

01:11:58.240 Yes.

01:11:58.560 You see this with, Harry Potter is a good example of this.

01:12:02.040 You see this with Little Mermaid.

01:12:03.280 But Tolkien is an even better example.

01:12:05.060 Yes.

01:12:05.340 Because Tolkien fundamentally wrote The Lord of the Rings for the English people.

01:12:09.700 Yes.

01:12:09.960 Right?

01:12:10.300 You can't have that.

01:12:12.200 Tolkien has to become accessible to the entire world.

01:12:16.820 It has to become accessible to, you know, universal audiences.

01:12:20.700 And they think that the only way that can happen, despite the fact that Lord of the Rings was enormously successful all over the world on its own terms.

01:12:29.240 Yes.

01:12:29.600 That the only way that can come to be is by making it look like the entire world.

01:12:35.520 When, in fact, what people, as I said at the beginning, loved about Harry Potter, the reason why, you know, whenever you go to King's Cross Station, you've got all the Asian tourists over there, you know, with the Gryffindor scarves and the robes and everything, you know, pretending to go through the platform, is because they loved the Britishness of it.

01:12:55.040 They loved the fact that it felt authentic, that it didn't feel like a corporately decided decision-making process that currently follows, as you say, just modern fads and trends based on where we are at now.

01:13:10.320 And so, let's go to Snape, because, obviously, again, I'm not a huge Harry Potter fan, but I do know that Snape was regarded as one of the most complex, the most well-recognized characters of the series.

01:13:25.380 And, of course, he was given an extraordinarily memorable performance by Alan Rickman, you know, the great Alan Rickman.

01:13:32.820 And so, even though I wasn't willing to dunk on a child earlier on, I am more than fair game at dunking on grown-ups and adults.

01:13:44.000 So, this is one of the things that I wanted to address, because when it comes to adult actors, then all of a sudden it becomes a question of, okay, you're not a child.

01:13:55.240 You actually know whether or not a part was made with you in mind, or whether or not you're trying to break past a barrier here that wasn't.

01:14:07.800 And this is something that I've seen many, many comments online with a lot of people, you know, those people saying, look, I'm not racist, it's just this isn't what the character was envisaged as.

01:14:18.980 This is, you know, this is what, you know, they're saying.

01:14:21.920 I think, here's what comes to my mind.

01:14:24.840 I think Jack Nicholson refused the role, a role in The Godfather, because he was of the opinion that it should go to an Italian actor.

01:14:36.360 I'm not sure.

01:14:37.220 I think it was The Godfather.

01:14:38.460 Right.

01:14:38.760 I think it was The Godfather.

01:14:40.140 And so, Jack Nicholson said, no, I'm Irish or whatever Jack Nicholson is, and this should actually go to an Italian actor.

01:14:46.380 So, these guys have been so marinated in this that, and they've been, like, Hollywood has been woke, woke-ish for a long time, and it's only peaked in recent years, but this has been going on for decades now.

01:15:00.160 So, these guys are marinated in this mindset.

01:15:03.000 What frustrates people, understandably so, is when things go only one way.

01:15:10.100 Again, there is never going to be a sort of white guy playing Nelson Mandela.

01:15:14.620 It will never happen.

01:15:17.040 But if I could just delineate something on that point, to go to your Jack Nicholson example, you see, I personally would consider that to be unnecessary, right?

01:15:29.920 Because you can at least change your accent and have, you know, you can characterize yourself as Italian, right?

01:15:37.460 Whereas with something like, and we also don't want to fall into a trap with, you know, because you get this a lot, because you have to bear in mind as well that the acting world, the theatre world, they see themselves as the vanguard of progress, right?

01:15:53.300 These people genuinely think that they are the changers of the world.

01:15:57.380 The dreamers of dreams.

01:15:58.460 The dreamers of dreams.

01:16:00.160 And the music men, yeah.

01:16:01.960 And fundamentally, they see just all of these barriers, you know, so then when you get something like Shakespeare, it doesn't matter if Cassius and Julius Caesar is suddenly played by a woman.

01:16:14.700 It doesn't matter if Hamlet, young, vital Hamlet, is played by an 80-year-old man.

01:16:20.780 You know, all these sorts of things.

01:16:22.180 Like, all of a sudden, well, does any casting actually matter anymore?

01:16:26.200 Does anything actually feel like it belongs or it should?

01:16:30.480 Because it's obviously, to act is to visually, to represent something.

01:16:36.320 And if you're not representing something convincingly, then, and this is the case with him.

01:16:42.080 Look, he might be a very talented actor, but does he visually look like the character as it was originally intended?

01:16:51.520 No.

01:16:51.760 Does it allow you to slip into the world that was being created in those books?

01:16:57.340 Yes.

01:16:57.600 And to actually have an immersive experience without being constantly reminded that there is an agenda that is being imposed.

01:17:10.640 And there's always the mistrust that comes with forced diversified acting, which is that once you know that this is imposed diversity, you will not trust it because you will not trust that it was done in the same way.

01:17:28.100 Any film by Morgan Freeman doesn't have that problem because you know that Wesley Snipes, Morgan Freeman, whoever, these are great actors, you know?

01:17:39.660 Like the Blade, you know, put him in the same category.

01:17:43.560 I mean, he's been in other films, whatever.

01:17:45.800 So it doesn't really matter because you trust that this is going to be whatever the role is, it's going to suit him.

01:17:54.640 Yes.

01:17:56.700 Whereas here, because you know it's forced, for all I know, this guy might turn out to be a great actor.

01:18:02.340 For all I know, he might be wonderful.

01:18:03.820 I mean, I'm never going to watch a Harry Potter film.

01:18:05.820 I haven't done it and I won't start.

01:18:07.860 However, for all I know, he could be a great actor.

01:18:11.660 But every time you look at it, you're going to be, is he really?

01:18:15.760 I know why you're there.

01:18:17.360 Yeah, exactly.

01:18:17.960 You know, that's what makes it annoying.

01:18:19.680 Right.

01:18:20.460 So if I, I'll just wrap, come towards the end of this then.

01:18:23.440 So he actually ended up being one of the actors who signed an open letter supporting trans rights.

01:18:30.520 Snape appearance, by the way.

01:18:32.000 Yeah, yeah, this is.

01:18:34.860 After the, you know, the British Supreme Court decided to just acknowledge reality.

01:18:41.660 And that men and women exist.

01:18:43.220 They're no Snape wore necklaces and gold watches.

01:18:46.400 So is this basically J.K. Rowling being made to repent for being realistic about sex?

01:18:53.840 Well, well, here's the thing.

01:18:55.300 So J.K. Rowling went on to say, you know, in view of this, she said,

01:18:59.220 I don't have the power to fire an actor from the series.

01:19:02.700 And I wouldn't exercise it if I did.

01:19:05.020 I don't believe in taking away people's jobs or livelihoods for holding legally protected beliefs

01:19:10.660 that differ from mine.

01:19:12.340 Absolutely fine.

01:19:13.500 Totally understandable.

01:19:14.920 But I would just draw to the end on this particular point,

01:19:18.480 which is that J.K. Rowling is probably the most famous TERF in the world, right?

01:19:24.220 Yep.

01:19:24.360 And the entire crux of her argument relies on the fact that, look, there is just something immutable

01:19:32.600 about being born a woman.

01:19:35.220 Yes.

01:19:35.460 In the same way that there is a man.

01:19:37.140 You are born it.

01:19:38.280 And then based on that, you either are the thing or you are not.

01:19:42.560 Yes.

01:19:42.820 But why can she not do the same for a British person, right?

01:19:49.200 All of a sudden, you know, like, so sex is this great immutable thing that can never be changed.

01:19:55.860 But in this, look, J.K., he's not British.

01:19:58.740 I'm sorry.

01:19:59.500 I know he was born here, but fundamentally, he's not British.

01:20:02.580 And this is one of those things where I get very wound up with the TERFs

01:20:07.580 because they seem to only really care about things that personally affect them.

01:20:12.760 Yeah.

01:20:12.920 And she's not being considerate of the fact that in doing this,

01:20:17.680 she is essentially bastardizing the vision of her own work.

01:20:21.580 Oh, she's an eternal liberal.

01:20:24.020 She will always be a liberal.

01:20:25.340 Yes.

01:20:25.940 It won't change that.

01:20:28.020 But it's just that there was one issue that she objected to, and that was it.

01:20:31.920 Exactly.

01:20:32.580 And good for her for objecting.

01:20:34.640 But I think any kind of expectation from somebody in that world is just, you know,

01:20:39.960 don't expect anything from them.

01:20:41.600 Yes.

01:20:41.780 That's it.

01:20:42.420 So the Harry Potter series is going to come out.

01:20:45.420 I'm very sorry if it ruins it for a lot of people.

01:20:49.080 I won't be watching it for myself.

01:20:50.960 But for those of you that do, let me know how it is.

01:20:55.560 Right.

01:20:56.080 Okay.

01:20:56.300 So let's go to read the comments.

01:20:57.700 The engaged few.

01:20:58.580 Robin Williams was forbidden to participate because his accent in Mrs. Doubtfire qualified

01:21:04.580 as a hate crime.

01:21:05.660 Okay.

01:21:07.960 So Ryan rambles 1993.

01:21:11.000 Hermione getting cold.

01:21:12.480 Mudblood will be interesting.

01:21:14.460 That's a term in Harry Potter.

01:21:16.440 Yes.

01:21:16.820 I didn't want to say it on air in the segment.

01:21:21.020 Okay.

01:21:21.300 Yes.

01:21:21.840 Fair enough.

01:21:22.240 That's a random name says in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Arian.

01:21:28.020 Thanks to his mudblood, Snape was able to use the forbidden curse that starts with N

01:21:33.940 to kill Dumbledore.

01:21:36.040 Truly tragic, but not unexpected.

01:21:38.680 The hapsification says, look when an outsider views England with movies like Castle in the Sky.

01:21:44.600 Miyazaki came to England and Wales.

01:21:47.360 He also saw and witnessed the miners' strike in the 80s.

01:21:52.600 Yeah.

01:21:54.160 Right.

01:21:54.800 Okay.

01:21:55.180 And that's a random name again.

01:21:56.700 No amount of polyjuice potions will ever make a woman, Malfoy, said Hermione the Turf,

01:22:02.900 before punching him in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Auschwitz.

01:22:10.180 All stupendous comments.

01:22:11.880 Okay, so do we have beautiful videos?

01:22:15.540 Yeah, we do.

01:22:16.500 Let's play the first one.

01:22:17.460 It is ironic that Carl made a video about being concerned about AI, and then a day later

01:22:22.700 admits on the podcast using it to get information.

01:22:25.680 Now, I called it years ago that folks would use AI as some sort of perverted oracle of science.

01:22:31.220 I still remember when I had to teach ChatGBT the phrase,

01:22:35.080 the lady doth protest too much, me thinks.

01:22:37.300 Remember, AI only works by giving the statistically most likely answer,

01:22:42.960 making it actually sophisticated statistics.

01:22:49.560 That's a lovely place you're building.

01:22:52.380 Yeah, very cool.

01:22:53.760 Let's go to the next one.

01:22:56.540 Sophie.

01:22:57.060 Before panicking over AI, it's worth noticing that it still can't do everything.

01:23:03.660 I mean, look, they are looking at each other.

01:23:07.060 AI actually can't do that, as well as just drawing the same character multiple times from

01:23:12.920 different angles and being the same character and more interesting face expressions, which

01:23:17.960 is my favorite thing to do.

01:23:19.120 So lucky me, as well as characters interacting.

01:23:21.720 So, no, the art apocalypse is not quite here yet.

01:23:27.400 Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of stuff it cannot do well at the moment.

01:23:31.440 But I think at the end of the day, I don't know, I'm not as pessimistic as other people

01:23:36.880 are, because if we bear history in mind, all of the time people were constantly worried

01:23:42.880 about new inventions that were going to destroy the world.

01:23:46.420 I'm just ready for the McLaren Jihad.

01:23:48.480 Good morning, Lotus Eaters.

01:23:56.080 Hope all the Americans had an excellent Memorial Day weekend.

01:23:59.380 It's a shame my neck of the woods only shows up in the news when leftists continue to ruin

01:24:03.220 everything.

01:24:04.240 Watch out for local DAs not pressing any charges.

01:24:07.120 This is far more important than arrests.

01:24:09.560 Anyways, with a break in the rain, some friends of mine and I hiked up to Snoqualmie Lake about

01:24:14.100 an hour and a half away from Seattle.

01:24:15.860 There weren't a ton of individual things to take pictures of, but the whole hike was

01:24:20.100 gorgeous, with the lake as the cherry on top.

01:24:23.080 Take care, y'all.

01:24:23.680 Beautiful.

01:24:24.680 Beautiful.

01:24:25.680 Stunning.

01:24:26.680 Thanks, man.

01:24:27.680 You're sending us really beautiful pictures, so thank you.

01:24:30.800 Very wholesome.

01:24:31.800 Let's play the next one.

01:24:33.800 I went home to the west side of Vancouver where I once grew up, where my grandfather bought

01:24:37.080 in in 1980 for only $40,000, and a few doors down I found a subdivided lot where I could

01:24:41.980 buy half the land and half the house of inferior quality to the 1935 unit for a measly $4.7

01:24:47.640 million.

01:24:48.420 Downright bargain in this town.

01:24:50.120 And though every street and sign bore the name of Queen Elizabeth, Dunbar, Lord Bing,

01:24:53.680 and so on.

01:24:54.280 Every face was foreign, and every advertisement was rendered in squiggle.

01:24:57.840 It still felt like home, but I could never afford to return, and it's quite clearly no

01:25:02.000 longer my town.

01:25:06.080 Brutal.

01:25:08.240 Brutal.

01:25:08.800 Sorry.

01:25:09.200 Yeah.

01:25:09.440 Let's play a video by Zesty King.

01:25:14.880 Bit harder.

01:25:17.060 It's it.

01:25:21.120 The battering ram.

01:25:24.080 They have hot oil they're going to throw.

01:25:28.320 What a siege.

01:25:30.240 This man sitting there at the back is like, you know, this was supposed to be my day off.

01:25:36.320 You know what they're going to do, aren't they?

01:25:37.720 In the end, they're going to ask him to do it.

01:25:39.380 Like, you know, when the woman just has to go to open the jar.

01:25:41.820 It's going to be like, can you just?

01:25:43.640 There we go.

01:25:45.000 Let's go to the next one.

01:25:47.600 I've been seeing this weird trend of liberals trying to say that, oh, the founding fathers

01:25:53.020 would have never stood for crushing their enemies.

01:25:55.820 And I'm thinking they literally like seized the assets of the loyalists after they won

01:26:01.360 the Revolutionary War and, you know, turfed them out to Canada.

01:26:04.860 Same thing they did to the Native Americans in that period also.

01:26:09.340 And let's not forget that, like, the reason Nova Scotia has loads of black people is because

01:26:13.340 the black soldiers had to flee up there or else they'd be re-enslaved by the founding

01:26:17.980 fathers.

01:26:18.800 Not to say they were evil, but they were men of their time.

01:26:21.420 And there's this weird trend of pretending that they were like Jesus Christ.

01:26:24.780 That's exactly what you're talking about.

01:26:29.000 The ideology of today being retrofitted to every single thing you could imagine.

01:26:36.080 No, the Boston Massacre was the least massacry massacre of all time.

01:26:40.260 Yes.

01:26:40.700 And the American Revolution was entirely, you know, unfounded.

01:26:45.380 Fiery, but mostly peaceful.

01:26:46.800 Fiery.

01:26:47.300 In his video, Why Intellectuals Are F-ing Idiots, Mark Manson correctly points out that

01:27:00.280 intellectuals construct models based on rigid measurements and analysis.

01:27:06.360 And when confronted with reality, they double down on these models, even though it's obvious

01:27:13.900 that they fail to account for certain outcomes and are impractical.

01:27:20.440 Yeah, it's just textbook ideological thinking.

01:27:24.360 Whenever theory clashes with facts, reject the facts.

01:27:29.080 Yep.

01:27:29.960 Let's go to the next one.

01:27:31.620 Welcome back to the gun channel of the Lotus Eaters.

01:27:34.740 In yesterday's Akkad Daily, Carl went over a call to blunt kitchen knives by one of the

01:27:40.740 victims of the Southport stabbing and pointed out correctly that she was trying to render

01:27:45.580 the world around her harmless in order to feel safe and that this was impractical.

01:27:50.880 He didn't really go into the fact that it is also immoral.

01:27:55.040 Harmlessness is not a state that a man should voluntarily let himself be reduced to.

01:28:02.100 Yes.

01:28:02.660 Very true.

01:28:03.300 Absolutely.

01:28:03.840 Very true.

01:28:04.280 Absolutely.

01:28:05.060 Completely true.

01:28:07.320 Next one by Thane Scottie Swindon.

01:28:10.280 I know I usually submit silly content or niche, but not necessarily groundbreaking political

01:28:15.000 observations, but I saw this recently and I thought it'd be nice to share instead.

01:28:18.420 I got into Zuby's music and content following his release of OK Dude and the ripples that

01:28:21.920 caused in the cultural war, and he's always been a daddist in his philosophy.

01:28:25.120 A couple of days ago, I saw this announcement from him and I'm genuinely happy for the guy.

01:28:28.620 I can't send him a personal message to say congratulations because I'm not verified, but if you

01:28:32.320 are, go and tell him that he's the man.

01:28:34.860 My God, lads, aren't you going to give him a cheer?

01:28:37.620 The greatest TV show of all time.

01:28:43.780 Sharp.

01:28:44.340 Far none.

01:28:45.220 Yeah.

01:28:46.320 Next one.

01:28:46.960 OK, so let's go to some comments and we can take a few extra minutes, Samson.

01:28:53.720 Yep.

01:28:54.160 Great.

01:28:55.720 So do you want to read comments from you?

01:28:57.480 Yeah, sure.

01:28:59.500 From Brian Tomlinson, regarding high energy costs in the UK, on-street EV charging is up

01:29:05.140 to double the price of petrol.

01:29:07.600 EV charging is now so profitable that BP and Shell now operate EV charging only on their

01:29:13.040 four courts.

01:29:15.200 Home EV charging equals 7.9p per kilowatt hour.

01:29:19.840 Public EV charging up to 95p per kilowatt hour.

01:29:23.680 What?

01:29:24.900 That expensive?

01:29:27.280 As with COVID lockdowns, we live in a two-tier society.

01:29:30.000 A big house with a large garden and off-street parking is only available for the wealthiest

01:29:33.540 among us.

01:29:34.540 The rest of us are second-class citizens.

01:29:36.220 Yeah, absolutely.

01:29:37.880 Also from Brian, I can confirm that thousands, if not tens of thousands of wealthy Londoners

01:29:42.940 have left the UK.

01:29:44.040 Yes, absolutely.

01:29:46.920 Sir Keir wanted to tax all their overseas profits, so they all disappeared overseas.

01:29:50.620 Another case of ideological bureaucrats not understanding that people like to spend their

01:29:54.940 own money and not give it to scabby LSE graduates to spend on Marxist claptrap.

01:30:00.740 Labour have reduced their growth and our GDP per capita because money has flown to Dubai,

01:30:05.520 Singapore, etc.

01:30:07.620 Can't agree more.

01:30:09.120 It's all extremist ideology.

01:30:11.100 Yes.

01:30:13.200 Dirty Belter.

01:30:14.060 If we cut off the end of this rug and sew it onto the other end, we'll have made the

01:30:18.480 rug longer.

01:30:19.640 This way of thinking will doom all who adopt it.

01:30:22.220 You can't borrow your way out of incompetence, inefficiency, or debt.

01:30:26.420 Yes.

01:30:26.940 Sir, true.

01:30:27.800 Yeah.

01:30:29.020 Incorrigible Frog.

01:30:30.160 I made the mistake of looking at my annual tax summary last year.

01:30:33.800 Yeah, man.

01:30:34.920 According to HMRC, 11.1% of all the tax I paid was spent on national debt interest alone.

01:30:40.860 This country is cooked.

01:30:42.700 That is very much an enormous long-term problem.

01:30:48.100 AZ Desert Rat.

01:30:49.320 The British government's poor planning does not constitute a financial emergency on the

01:30:53.100 part of its citizens.

01:30:54.180 Correct.

01:30:55.140 Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex.

01:30:57.540 What a name.

01:30:57.980 I love this name.

01:30:58.860 Okay.

01:30:59.640 Have we considered turning the NHS off for one day?

01:31:03.820 Imagine the money.

01:31:05.180 That would be right.

01:31:06.680 You know, it's going to happen.

01:31:07.960 They can't keep the NHS.

01:31:09.420 It's going to break.

01:31:10.300 Right.

01:31:10.640 Sophie Liv.

01:31:12.380 I'm going to be extra careful.

01:31:14.420 For some reason in modern Hollywood, new script writers and directors are actually explicitly

01:31:20.020 told not to engage with the source material and research it so they can make the new show

01:31:24.900 their own thing.

01:31:26.120 What a horrible thing if the new show is just too close to the source material, huh?

01:31:30.460 And yeah, one of the new Harry Potter writers has also outright said he didn't read the books

01:31:35.420 and Warner Brothers itself told him not to.

01:31:38.960 So yeah, that explains a lot, sadly.

01:31:40.580 You had this with the Witcher series where the producers got really angry with Henry Cavill

01:31:45.700 for being like a fan of the source material and wanting to try to do it.

01:31:49.360 But also, there are rumors of NDAs that are signed by actors and people involved in the production

01:31:56.780 of several series.

01:31:58.040 They tell them that if you want to be involved, these are things that you are not allowed

01:32:02.120 to do.

01:32:03.000 Anyway, Omar Awad says, drawing from a tainted source only leads to madness and ruin.

01:32:08.100 Yeah, like in the book.

01:32:09.580 There's a certain irony in feminists tainting one of the most pro-women series ever written.

01:32:14.860 Absolutely.

01:32:15.260 Daniel Butchers.

01:32:17.380 Of course, they had to change it.

01:32:21.880 The wood is basically ruled by backstabbing, screaming women who need a man to save them.

01:32:30.980 This is the great flaw they saw in the story.

01:32:34.160 Okay.

01:32:35.320 Arizona doesn't rat.

01:32:36.560 How much you want to bet none of the critics have read the books and all the fans have read

01:32:40.620 the books?

01:32:41.440 Yeah, I'm actually going to bet a lot on it.

01:32:43.800 If the critics haven't read the books, they're not going to know what they're missing in

01:32:47.500 praising the show.

01:32:48.740 And E. Moss.

01:32:49.440 If you like the novels and fantasy, you should be happy Wheel of Time was cancelled.

01:32:53.440 Perhaps next time they might actually want to follow the source material instead of working

01:32:58.200 on driving away the millions of people who like the books, which is why the IP was worth

01:33:02.200 buying.

01:33:02.880 This is why, this is one of the main reasons why Wokeness needs to be completely stopped.

01:33:09.760 Because so long as Wokeness exists, Wheel of Time will not be readapted.

01:33:15.020 We need to hammer the message that the reason why it failed was Wokeness, which is true.

01:33:22.060 And Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex, I salute you.

01:33:25.760 Okay, now for all the magic casters, remember to not use the toilet before your seams to ensure

01:33:31.240 you have the right facial expression when casting magic.

01:33:34.880 Magnificent.

01:33:36.400 I'll just go through a few that we've got time for.

01:33:40.260 Zombie Philip, the rest.

01:33:43.140 With Hermione and Snape being race-swapped, they're not doing it for the sake of diversity.

01:33:47.560 They're doing it so they can insert the topic of racism and racial supremacy due to the fact

01:33:52.880 that both characters have a heritage to Muggles in some way.

01:33:56.140 Yeah, I mean, a lot of people have been speculating on this and I could see them going down that

01:34:01.300 angle.

01:34:02.120 Stuart Beresford says,

01:34:03.820 I used to work with someone who was in the same school year as Rowling.

01:34:07.840 She based all the characters on her friends, including herself, Ginny Weasley, I think.

01:34:12.300 Kind of interesting that she's done this, I assume that means, as she's almost revising

01:34:19.080 her own life.

01:34:19.840 By the way, the story about her living out of a cafe with her kids whilst she was writing

01:34:25.080 novels is true-ish.

01:34:27.480 Her sister owns the coffee bar in Edinburgh.

01:34:31.200 Hardly a greasy spoon.

01:34:33.020 I do love a greasy spoon.

01:34:35.240 I'll just go.

01:34:35.660 Furious Dan, we race-swapped Harry Potter to better represent your race-swapped country.

01:34:40.140 You're welcome.

01:34:43.180 Magnificently stated, sir.

01:34:44.640 And Lord Enquisture, Hector Rex, how dare you stand where he stood in Harry Potter's

01:34:50.260 Age?

01:34:50.580 It certainly does, Rex.

01:34:52.360 It certainly does.

01:34:53.360 Right.

01:34:53.660 Thank you.

01:34:54.440 Right.

01:34:54.660 And on that note, we have run out of time.

01:34:57.460 See you at 3 p.m. at the Gold Zoom.

01:34:59.400 And for those of you who are not going to be there, have a lovely weekend and see you at

01:35:03.200 Monday, 1 p.m.

01:35:05.140 June is coming.

01:35:06.860 Everyone beware.

01:35:07.660 Yeah.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - May 30, 2025

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #1176

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