[SPEAKER_08]: Welcome to the Pluribus podcast where the Lorhounds and I'm David, one of the regular hosts of the Lorhounds.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm Nicole one of the hosts of the Nevermind and the music podcast.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're an affiliate of the Lorhounds network and we've teamed up to cover season one of Pluribus on Apple TV.

[SPEAKER_06]: This is our podcast covering episode four.

[SPEAKER_06]: Please, Carol.

[SPEAKER_06]: Please, Carol.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're going to be talking a lot about Carol's backstory.

[SPEAKER_06]: We want to be mindful going into this episode that there are some sensitive topics here.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're going to offer you a content warning.

[SPEAKER_06]: If you've seen the episode, you know we're going to address issues of conversion therapy and like unhealthy family dynamics.

[SPEAKER_06]: So if that's something that's activating to you, just really tread lightly when you listen to this episode, and we'll mention it before we discuss it.

[SPEAKER_06]: We'll give you a little bit of heads up.

[SPEAKER_08]: Also, we are recording episodes weekly, but next week, episode five got milk is going to be a little bit early due to the American holiday thanksgiving.

[SPEAKER_08]: Thanks Cincinnati Joe for letting us know about that.

[SPEAKER_08]: And Cincinnati Joe let us know that it looks like they're going to drop it on Wednesday, which might mean it's Tuesday because they drop on GMT time.

[SPEAKER_08]: Nicole and I will assess our schedule because life is lifeing for the both of us right now and we'll figure out our schedule and when we will get the episode out so little hitch and schedule but look for the episode to drop on Apple TV their Tuesday or Wednesday.

[SPEAKER_08]: As always, we welcome listener feedback, hand to the pod, keep her the chronicles, Nancy M, aka two kids, two dogs, and our discord is kind of being our meta joined.

[SPEAKER_08]: She is the third member of this podcast.

[SPEAKER_08]: And she's been putting together all the feedback for us in the outlines, which, oh, my God, I cannot, the, the amount of help that she's offered us on this episode is just great.

[SPEAKER_08]: So thank you, Nancy.

[SPEAKER_08]: So you can send in your emails and voicemails to blurbus at thelorhounds.com.

[SPEAKER_08]: Get a ton of voicemails this week, in fact.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's awesome.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I'll say, I don't think, like I know it's hyperbolic to say it this way, but I don't think we could be doing this without Nancy.

[SPEAKER_08]: It would, one of us would be extremely stressed out.

[SPEAKER_06]: It wouldn't be me.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm telling you that.

[SPEAKER_06]: So we're super thankful for Nancy.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're super thankful for your, your comments in our community discord.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's when a really rich conversation there, really a lovely environment, a hopefully a nurturing environment that everyone has a space to say what they think in a, [SPEAKER_06]: I don't I trip over the term safe space, but I do think that our discord could be like a brave space to share ideas.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, I just got to note about that in a minute, too, when we kind of talk about some bigger topics.

[SPEAKER_08]: That said, if you like what we're doing and you appreciate the community, please, if you're able to subscribe, you can subscribe on Patreon or Supercast.

[SPEAKER_08]: There are links in the show notes.

[SPEAKER_08]: And if that is not available to you, then maybe consider giving us a rating and a review on Apple Podcast, because that helps promote the podcast overall.

[SPEAKER_08]: So all of that intro stuff out of the way, Nicole, as we said, life is life-ing.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so we're gonna zoom right into this episode.

[SPEAKER_08]: We're gonna start with our hot takes, we'll take a quick break.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then when we come back, we just have a couple of meta topics.

[SPEAKER_08]: We don't have any back episode research or anything like that.

[SPEAKER_08]: Just wanna touch on a couple of things.

[SPEAKER_08]: Then we'll get into our scene by scene.

[SPEAKER_08]: And we've mixed in all of the feedback to the scene by scene.

[SPEAKER_08]: get right into the subject matter as opposed to front-load any conversations and then at the end as usual we'll have some network updates That all sounds great.

[SPEAKER_08]: Good.

[SPEAKER_08]: What is your feeling on episode four?

[SPEAKER_06]: I think [SPEAKER_06]: It might be my favorite episodes so far, because it gave me what I wanted.

[SPEAKER_08]: You were thinking about the last episode with the supermarket scene.

[SPEAKER_08]: I was thinking about you this episode.

[SPEAKER_06]: Well, there's just like a lot to unpack from like a backstory perspective on Carol and that's something I was really thirsty for.

[SPEAKER_06]: even from, you know, our first episode, it was like, what's going on here?

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, we know that there's there's grit and depth to this character, but where is it?

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I want to know, I want the details.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it was really eager to learn about Carol's family history a little bit more her own personal history.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I know we'll talk about substance use later on in this episode, but there's a lot of richness unpacked with that.

[SPEAKER_06]: Really happy to see this Paraguay guy, what his deal is.

[SPEAKER_06]: He's a weirdo when I'm obviously, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, what's he doing with that radio?

[SPEAKER_06]: Do you need to tell me because I don't know?

[SPEAKER_08]: And we're in to the weirdness.

[SPEAKER_08]: We're here.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_06]: Why is he looking a sardine can that seems really like [SPEAKER_06]: other hot takes I want a whiteboard like that.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was like geeking out like this is my dream come true to be a office issue.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's a beautiful office like what a lovely space to work and I have a lot of I know we're going to talk about that whole scene so I don't want to right get pre spoiled it but I have a lot of questions about that content so those are my hot takes [SPEAKER_06]: I'm not going to say I'm jealous of Carol's situation, but I am jealous of her white board.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not going to say I'm jealous of Carol's situation, but I am jealous of her white board.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm not going to say I'm jealous of Carol's situation, but I am jealous of her white board.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm jealous of Carol's situation, but I am jealous of her white board.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not going to say I'm not [SPEAKER_08]: I was really struck by the tonal shift of this episode.

[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, let me just step half a step back to and just let folks know, I'm traveling right now.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm actually in my in-laws basement on the coast of Massachusetts.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I got a really funky setup going on.

[SPEAKER_08]: I recorded here before, but I was in a bit of a rush today.

[SPEAKER_08]: So if the audio is not as high quality as you're used to, [SPEAKER_08]: you know, understandable for the reasons why our school district closes for the whole week of Thanksgiving.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so we decamped, even brought the cat with us and so we're here in my, uh, so yeah, recording in the in the basement as I've done before.

[SPEAKER_08]: I've recorded from my car a couple of times, you know, we do a lot to keep the podcast wheels turning on the car.

[SPEAKER_06]: Your commitment is unparalleled.

[SPEAKER_08]: We love what we do and we love our community and it's just a it's stressful at times but it's a healthy stress I guess you could say we're achieving a lot that we want to all personally achieve anyway that all aside back to the tonality of this episode.

[SPEAKER_08]: Last episode, as I said, brought me a lot of personal joy.

[SPEAKER_08]: I really laughed a lot, and I was just geeking out on all of the Vince Gilligan nonsense with Montage's and choreographed background actors, and it's like that.

[SPEAKER_08]: This episode got real serious and real heavy.

[SPEAKER_08]: in a great way because we're actually learning some more about Carol and what's going on.

[SPEAKER_08]: Obviously we get Manusos in in Paraguay and it just, while the episode had moments of levity, this episode got very [SPEAKER_08]: like we've advanced the plot as what you were looking for.

[SPEAKER_08]: We're last episode, I was noticing in our discord, there was chatter, but for a few days, there was just nothing.

[SPEAKER_08]: There was nothing to talk about, like, after the initial, like, oh, this and that, there was, there wasn't as much substance.

[SPEAKER_08]: last week is there as this week.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so I'm just really noticing that tonal shift between the two.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's still expert level, performances, expert level, cinematography, everything that we come to expect from a Vince Gilligan project.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's all there and it got very real.

[SPEAKER_06]: I have another hot take, too.

[SPEAKER_08]: Please.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm wondering, if we're both Vince Gilligan fans, right, stated, I wonder if I would like this show as much as I do if it wasn't attached to him, like if Vince Gilligan wasn't in the mix and this was just a standalone show that came out on Apple TV and I was checking it out because the content seemed cool, would I be geeking out so much about it and I don't know [SPEAKER_08]: I hadn't thought about that.

[SPEAKER_08]: I have been thinking about severance from earlier this year, and there's been some conversation around the similarities and differences between these two shows, and there's some comments which I kind of agree with.

[SPEAKER_08]: that this show is more accessible, then severance is because of the joy because of the Vince Gilligan nonsense.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I say nonsense in the most positive way, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: The fun things that he and his community like to put in their shows.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's like can't be in a way that severance isn't at moments.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: And severance had funny moments, but it was always boxed by this.

[SPEAKER_08]: heaviness and the mystery box aspects of it and this is not a mystery box in the same way there isn't there's a mystery there's a central mystery this RNA but it's pretty straightforward like they told us like it's a signal from space right and we'll talk more about the joint and their motivations a little bit later but there's a [SPEAKER_08]: There's a, I do wonder if Vince Gilligan had, if they just released this and not said anything.

[SPEAKER_08]: would we have, you know, detected A that was Vince Gilligan and B would we appreciate.

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm going to have to think about that.

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't I don't have an immediate answer.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, there were just a comment on the discord I was reading.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't really chime in, but I definitely read it a lot.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know if something creeper.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it mentioned something about that, but a lot of folks they didn't watch breaking bad or better crawl solve, but they're enjoying this.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I wondered it made me think [SPEAKER_08]: Well, it took a thought.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I just wanted to put that in the put that out there in the world.

[SPEAKER_06]: We'll see what we'll think.

[SPEAKER_08]: Cool.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we'll talk about some of the bigger topics, which we don't have that many this time, because a lot of them are embedded in the scene by scene, and then we will get directly into the scene by scene.

[SPEAKER_08]: So regarding the conversation on the Discord, I wanted to make a couple of observations.

[SPEAKER_08]: Number one, I think both you and I are reading, but not interacting as much.

[SPEAKER_08]: And for me, that's about allowing people space.

[SPEAKER_08]: I have a big enough voice already.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so I like to allow people to have their conversation without me interjecting or sort of overdominating.

[SPEAKER_08]: I love to give some hot reactions, but otherwise I just like to see people have the opportunity [SPEAKER_08]: unfold their feelings about the show and about the podcast as well.

[SPEAKER_08]: And one of the things that I've observed is that there's a broad set of reactions.

[SPEAKER_08]: And we talked a little bit about this.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is my blog post where I'm a couple of weeks ago.

[SPEAKER_08]: And open text versus a closed text.

[SPEAKER_08]: We talked a little bit about encoding and decoding in media studies and literature, that kind of stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: And clearly this show is doing that.

[SPEAKER_08]: There is a broad set of interpretations about how carols reacting, what are our people's suspicious of the joint, et cetera, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_08]: that our discord is a accommodating, a accommodating may not be the right word.

[SPEAKER_08]: People are expressing their opinions and thoughts that are very divergent across the spectrum.

[SPEAKER_08]: So there's no center normality, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: There's no sort of bell curve thing here, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Most people have a real broad set of reactions.

[SPEAKER_08]: And in this day and age, that can be oftentimes space for friction and conflict.

[SPEAKER_08]: But what I see on our discord is people coming together to listen to what somebody else has to say, support them in that viewpoint, even when they don't necessarily feel the same thing about that point of view.

[SPEAKER_08]: But they're recognizing, [SPEAKER_08]: and support, and I get it, I understand, I think this, but I appreciate the fact that you're saying that, so that I can gain a different point of view on it.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I just think it's a really healthy level of discourse in a day and age when the algorithms and the social media platforms don't engender, [SPEAKER_08]: rich conversation.

[SPEAKER_08]: They engender reactions and engagement.

[SPEAKER_08]: And engagement isn't always positive engagement, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Because we often just go, oh yeah, I agree with that move on, wherever if it's something that we disagree with, like, wow, I got to stay my point, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: I got to get my point in there.

[SPEAKER_08]: And for me, just seeing [SPEAKER_08]: that healthy exchange of nuanced conversation.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, there are some nuances that are going on.

[SPEAKER_08]: This happened in Andor as well.

[SPEAKER_08]: And it just makes me very proud of this community that I get to be part of this and observing this because I don't think it's common.

[SPEAKER_08]: It may exist, it absolutely exists in other places on the internet and in society.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's just not as common as the dominant, which is a lot of, you know, our nation of teeth and lighting of hair on fire.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I just want to appreciate the community for the way that they're approaching all of this.

[SPEAKER_08]: And the nuance and the care and the consideration that they're extending each other.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's really cool to watch and be a part of absolutely this idea that you can change your mind and you can be brought opinions that are different from what you came into believing in like adapt right one of my favorite psychologists.

[SPEAKER_06]: His name is Carl Rogers use awesome a huge humanistic psychology fan and color artist was like the guy for that and he said that we're always changing but never changed.

[SPEAKER_06]: that we always get to keep growing and evolving and iterating our own points of view over time.

[SPEAKER_06]: And that's one of, like, and thank goodness we can.

[SPEAKER_06]: Thank goodness we can learn and adapt and grow.

[SPEAKER_06]: And we're seeing that happen in real time in this discord community that people are sharing their ideas and their vulnerable ideas.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it takes a lot of bravery to share them because we're conditioned to think that an online community's you'll get ripped apart.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it's not happening here.

[SPEAKER_06]: and it feels really familial, it feels really kind and not normal.

[SPEAKER_06]: Where are you seeing?

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's mean, I mean, I think that it's safe to say that it's in current, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: That type of discourse on discord.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's like kind of cute, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I feel lucky that [SPEAKER_08]: You and I and Mark and John and Alicia Jean and Marilyn and, you know, Aaron and just the whole, the, the wider, you know, there's even more folks that I'm not on naming.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I thought I should be if I feel like this is an Oscar speech.

[SPEAKER_08]: That we get to, that we get to participate and that we have attracted.

[SPEAKER_08]: folks who are appreciating not only this level of intellectual discourse, oh this and that and learning about things and nerding out about shows and comics and superheroes and, you know, signals from space.

[SPEAKER_08]: But there's a real depth and humanistic component not only in our appreciation [SPEAKER_08]: But that we can be present to each other's humanity as we disassemble and take a part and nerd out on these fun aspects.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm going to show that's about like, I'm going to show that's about sterilizing humanity.

[SPEAKER_06]: And we can add our individual rich, richness and depth in conversation.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, okay, we get it.

[SPEAKER_06]: Our community is awesome.

[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much for helping me.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's also great to be here.

[SPEAKER_06]: Let's get to the scene by scene.

[SPEAKER_08]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_08]: All right, episode three, please, Carol, runtime is 45 minutes.

[SPEAKER_08]: So it was a tight episode.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, moved her on really quick.

[SPEAKER_08]: Zetna Fuentesh was the director, and this was written by Allison Tatlok, and Nancy, or third member of one guest theme on this one, added a couple of fun facts for us, according to Deadline film and TV, the launch of Pluribus.

[SPEAKER_08]: was Apple TV's most viewed drama of all time, and it broke the previous record held by severance season two.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's kind of eye popping.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then Alice Tattlock was nominated three times for Emmys for writing for Better Calls all, and she also worked on Stranger Things.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, do you do the local to ever cover?

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm really into Stranger Things.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I don't know what's going to happen when this new episode drops and the new drop, but like, see Stranger Things episode five drops.

[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, it's going to be a busy, it's going to be a lot to handle.

[SPEAKER_06]: Did you guys ever cover Stranger Things or have a conversation among [SPEAKER_08]: No, John had been a fan of the early episodes.

[SPEAKER_08]: I think I dropped out at the beginning of season three.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, season three's the best one.

[SPEAKER_06]: I just that was that the one that opened with the basketball game and stuff anyway There's something that just kind of I was just kind of like oh no Season three's when they're like in the mall and they get like there's like a hole in the rushing compound underground It's so good maybe it was season four that I dropped out and I can't remember all right Well, there's still time let's move we can't get stuck on stranger No, we can't moving on I want to okay go ahead [SPEAKER_08]: Just give up your psychology a professor job and just watch today.

[SPEAKER_06]: Do things that way.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, just podcast.

[SPEAKER_08]: Be a full-time podcaster.

[SPEAKER_08]: Less great one.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm paper.

[SPEAKER_08]: Come on.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: You don't have to grade papers.

[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, I'm so sick right now.

[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: The show opens with Manusos Oviedo, an unjoined man in Paraguay.

[SPEAKER_08]: He's scanning radio frequencies and we get to see the phone call from Carol from his perspective.

[SPEAKER_08]: But Carol, he is getting his meals delivered but refusing to eat them.

[SPEAKER_08]: He runs a storage locker business that's surrounded by security fences.

[SPEAKER_08]: We know he's hungry, as he starts delivering empty cans from his garbage and eating canned dog food.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's a montage of him breaking into units and searching for food, but first he feels the need to write and post a note to the customers apologizing and offering restitution.

[SPEAKER_08]: Carles, oh yeah, after Carles last call, he writes down her name, but then thinks that she might be from Turkey.

[SPEAKER_08]: Thoughts on this.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh my gosh, so many thoughts at eating dog food.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's a hard, hard pass.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I was watching with my husband.

[SPEAKER_06]: He's like, well, it's nutrition.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's food.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, it's just regular food.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm like, I don't know, bud.

[SPEAKER_06]: There's no, I'm over it.

[SPEAKER_06]: I would perish.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then also when he was going through storage lockers, I thought that that would be like kind of my dream come true because I'm such a snoop that I would like, that would be a great way to pass the time.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know why he's doing it at night time though.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, why not wait till the day?

[SPEAKER_06]: It just seemed, he seemed weird.

[SPEAKER_06]: Then of course.

[SPEAKER_11]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_08]: For me, all the work that he went through, this is the thought that I had in my head, was all the work that he went through to open these storage lockers to get three cans of dog food, a couple of packs of sugar and some other like a creamer.

[SPEAKER_08]: Treating.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, a creamer.

[SPEAKER_08]: That was a big expenditure of calories for very little return, caloric return, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: He had to burn a lot to gain what little he gained.

[SPEAKER_08]: Psychologically he gained, but maybe physiologically he didn't.

[SPEAKER_08]: Is it?

[SPEAKER_08]: It's an interesting conundrum.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's like a way to keep busy.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: Who wouldn't you be like?

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not just looking for, I have a little hoard.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'd have a little collection of things.

[SPEAKER_06]: But I was interested in that.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's very stubborn.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I was thinking about, like, what do we know about him?

[SPEAKER_08]: What do we learn about him?

[SPEAKER_08]: Because there's no dialogue, except for, you know, Carol and him swearing at each other.

[SPEAKER_08]: But I think we learned a lot about him.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: He's meticulous.

[SPEAKER_08]: He's stubborn.

[SPEAKER_08]: He's very suspicious.

[SPEAKER_06]: but also kind of kind for leaving a note to customize a apologizing.

[SPEAKER_06]: I can't just, yeah, right, very conscientious.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I'm curious to see more I was sad when the scene ended.

[SPEAKER_08]: Look at this and that you need more.

[SPEAKER_08]: I needed more.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, we got a bunch of voicemails this episode.

[SPEAKER_08]: And Rocky's in, wrote in or recorded in of voicemail.

[SPEAKER_08]: Rocky, thank you.

[SPEAKER_08]: Rocky wrote it sent in a like seven minute long voicemail.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I had to edit you down a little bit, Rocky, but I want to do and we've got one more clip later on, but I want to play his first clip.

[SPEAKER_04]: Hi everyone, Steve, aka Rocky Zim, just wanted to share my thoughts about the latest episode of the Pluribus episode before, you know, I like the part at the beginning with the man from Paraguay and showing that he has the similar reaction to Carol.

[SPEAKER_04]: interesting to see what happens with the radio and what he was doing there like if he's either searching for other people who might be in the same situation or maybe he's searching for the signal of the joined and maybe trying to figure out what they're doing.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, so that's a high frequency radio in HF radio that our HF radio is a fascinating science.

[SPEAKER_08]: These waves that bounce around our atmosphere and you can literally pick up transmissions from halfway around the globe.

[SPEAKER_08]: And he's being very methodical and he's shifting [SPEAKER_08]: by with 3100 or 310 of a frequency, which is just enough to get frequency separation, so you can hear another signal cleanly.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then it looked like you were setting a timer for like about three or four minutes listening on that frequency for something.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then when he doesn't hear anything, he's crossing it out.

[SPEAKER_08]: And he's got a big long list of frequencies, obviously that [SPEAKER_08]: And I think Rocky's in points to the question, is he looking for other humans?

[SPEAKER_08]: Or is he looking for something relative to the joint?

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't think it's clear yet.

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't think they've given us any indication of what the purpose is.

[SPEAKER_06]: I have a question about the radio.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know anything about any of this.

[SPEAKER_06]: So would that pick up terrestrial radio?

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, would that if someone's broadcasting a radio like say a Christina Aguilera song, you know, someone's not casting that?

[SPEAKER_06]: Would he be able to hear it?

[SPEAKER_08]: So, that particular radio has multiple bands and frequencies, and so, yeah, you could switch it to AM.

[SPEAKER_08]: Fun fact, I had a radio very, very, very similar to that when I worked overseas, and I listened to George Bush's inauguration speech on a radio very much like that to Voice of America, because I was in the middle of nowhere.

[SPEAKER_06]: So you could, like, hype and stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, switch bands and switch to AM and FM frequencies and other frequencies.

[SPEAKER_08]: which is used for, you know, radio operator, you know, people like, you know, CQCQ and they try to, you collect, it's a modern, the modern hobbies that you try to collect signals from around the world of different people.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_08]: And there's a whole, the whole world of, yes, these are terrestrial signals.

[SPEAKER_08]: And the question is, I can't, I don't know that he would pick up a space signal.

[SPEAKER_08]: These are these are very terrestrial radios.

[SPEAKER_06]: What a weird hobby, man.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm telling [SPEAKER_08]: And you know the military uses a for you know submarines use them to transmit from you know the middle of the ocean and things like that.

[SPEAKER_06]: So so we're thinking that he's thinking that this is like a virus that he can catch is that like what we're thinking he's thinking.

[SPEAKER_08]: He is very suspicious of that in Cincinnati Joe has a good comment saying that maybe he's trying to avoid catching that.

[SPEAKER_08]: And that's why he won't eat the food.

[SPEAKER_08]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: And that's why he tips over there.

[SPEAKER_08]: And he's clearly hungry.

[SPEAKER_08]: So he follows the fly.

[SPEAKER_08]: You know, oh, the fly must have detected the food.

[SPEAKER_08]: I can imagine the collective.

[SPEAKER_08]: grown of people watching his tongue get close to the shark.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's what it was for me.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was like, good to know what.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I think that guy from the real world boss, and like, bit his tongue off, goes tongue off.

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know about that one.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's okay.

[SPEAKER_06]: This is the deep cut for our 1990s, babies and our listening audience.

[SPEAKER_08]: Perfect.

[SPEAKER_08]: But he's desperate, but he's so in control of himself that he's able to tip over the food [SPEAKER_08]: And I got his acting when he's eating.

[SPEAKER_08]: So apparently that's Haggis.

[SPEAKER_08]: They put Haggis in those camp.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's what he's eating.

[SPEAKER_08]: And not done.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's actual dog food.

[SPEAKER_08]: That was on the upper floor.

[SPEAKER_08]: but his acting of him suppressing his own gag reflex.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, it's so bad.

[SPEAKER_08]: He had his gross, like, I think it's like, think it's better.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, and I loved that it interacted with the phone call.

[SPEAKER_08]: So he's pissed off already because he's eating dog food.

[SPEAKER_08]: his level of discomfort.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then so when he has that interaction, he's just annoyed.

[SPEAKER_06]: And like, he was acting so really great, because you can like, for sure, could feel it build up that like scratching irritation of the whole situation and just as punctuated by the Harold, Harold from Turkey on the phone.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I can't wait.

[SPEAKER_06]: I can't wait for more.

[SPEAKER_06]: I need them to get together.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's got to happen soon.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like it's happened.

[SPEAKER_08]: Capron.

[SPEAKER_06]: Crushed it.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's so good.

[SPEAKER_08]: Apparently, according to the official pot as well, he is a Colombian actor or not.

[SPEAKER_08]: So the actor himself is Colombian.

[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.

[SPEAKER_08]: And apparently that [SPEAKER_08]: Paraguayan accent is particular and he was joking there.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's like, there's no way I could have pulled off a Paraguayan.

[SPEAKER_08]: So the writers wrote him, the character is Colombian and lives in Paraguay.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, and there's much about their little Colombian clues scattered.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's true.

[SPEAKER_09]: This is so like that, yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: So we leave him, we move on to our second scene where Carol leaves the hospital using a police cruiser parked outside, which is like pretty badass.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think that's definitely the joy and contact to our via the police radio, which like wouldn't he be picking up those radio signals.

[SPEAKER_06]: This is like these are my questions, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Those are VHF radio frequencies and he's using [SPEAKER_08]: and the signal dies off much faster, where the HF radio frequencies can bounce around in the ionosphere.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_08]: And literally they go up and then they go, being good, and you can listen to an australia on a good day.

[SPEAKER_08]: What depending on what's going on in the ionosphere, you can pick up signals from all over the world.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's a whole class of people.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's a whole subreddit of people like dialing dialogues.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: Well, okay, I trust you on all that radio stuff.

[SPEAKER_06]: The joint ask Carol, if she'd rather have her range over.

[SPEAKER_06]: and they even offered to deactivate the interlock breathalyzer device.

[SPEAKER_06]: She says, no, when she pulls up to her house, she's creating an unison by a work crew cleaning up after the explosion, including the actual mayor of Albuquerque.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then she finds out that she gave them permission to carry out the work and the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

[SPEAKER_06]: She surprised that the mayor's there sweeping up her driveway.

[SPEAKER_06]: So handsome.

[SPEAKER_06]: What are some of the things you ask?

[SPEAKER_06]: What are some hot takes from you from the scene?

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, we've got a ton of feedback interlocked with this about the joined.

[SPEAKER_08]: A lot of people are starting to think even deeper about the joined and their motivations and stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: Nancy had a couple of quick notes.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, so the Tim Keller is the actual mayor of Albuquerque, and I guess this is his second term, and he's a founder of an organization called Digital Divide Data that employs and trains people in Cambodia, Laos, and Kenya to help them apparently learn digital skills.

[SPEAKER_08]: So yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: So it seems like he's active both locally and internationally, and a couple of other quick notes Adam 12 gets referenced.

[SPEAKER_08]: That is a television show that ran from 1968 to 1975, about a couple of Los Angeles police department officers who patrol the streets in their cruiser, you know, and their call sign was Adam 12.

[SPEAKER_08]: So obviously, you know, deep cut by the writers to, you know, connect that to Carol.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then in the state of New Mexico, driving on in the influence, yes, that is one of the remedies that they have legally is an ignition interlock device.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's not an uncommon thing to have happened, but we've seen Carol not successfully manage her or consumption of alcohol if we could say it that way.

[SPEAKER_08]: I thought it was badass as well that she grabbed the police car.

[SPEAKER_08]: I was like, sure, why not?

[SPEAKER_08]: You know, she's like starting to coming to grips with the realities of the circumstance.

[SPEAKER_08]: That that social understanding that would prevent me from doing that.

[SPEAKER_08]: that the repercussions of that would be outsized and enormous, that she's accepting that I don't have to write in this smelling junker that has a bad version of a cassette tape of genie Nevada.

[SPEAKER_08]: sort of warbling out.

[SPEAKER_08]: She doesn't have to accept that.

[SPEAKER_08]: So she's to me it was just a signal of her acceptance of the reality.

[SPEAKER_08]: She doesn't she's not still agreeing with the reality of the circumstances.

[SPEAKER_08]: She's still obviously fighting against that.

[SPEAKER_08]: But hey, I can take this state trooper car and it's not going to cause any problems.

[SPEAKER_06]: And to see that mentality balanced against what we saw in the previous scene with him eating dog food, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: And then he reminded me of how far Carol has come from that state of mind to kind of like accept and living and working in the world that she's given, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: And also in the scene I clocked that this was the first time we saw [SPEAKER_06]: the joint just walking around.

[SPEAKER_06]: When she's walking to the car, there are a couple of extras in the background just walking towards the hospital and that was it stood out to me because we don't see that often here in this world that there are just people what milling around doing stuff like doing stuff with collective agency but still doing stuff outside of her narrative.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're not seeing that often, and we did see it in the scene when she walked to her beat up car.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I thought that that was kind of, I just noticed that because it stood out as something new.

[SPEAKER_08]: Last, I noticed the exact same thing.

[SPEAKER_08]: I noticed that last episode when she was sitting talking to DHL guy, that there was some background extras walking around delivering things or walking around.

[SPEAKER_08]: And it makes sense because it's a hospital.

[SPEAKER_08]: And there's references later about like we have a whole wing of people who are recovering from substance abuse.

[SPEAKER_08]: and all this kind of stuff that, and there's the injured, they're tending to the injured, the people that were injured, seriously during the mass joining event, you know, people who fell out of bucket trucks and things like that.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so it makes sense, they're taking care of people who need to be taken care of.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I thought it was just a really great transition scene that showed Carol's evolution and how where her mental state is for absolutely.

[SPEAKER_08]: All right.

[SPEAKER_08]: We have a whole bunch of feedback in this section talking about the joined and what they're up to and stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: And we'll start off with a voicemail from Jeff.

[SPEAKER_08]: Hey Jeff.

[SPEAKER_08]: Jeff's a buddy of mine here in town.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so he sent in a voicemail.

[SPEAKER_08]: Hello, Laura Hounds.

[SPEAKER_07]: My name is Jeff.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'm from Vermont.

[SPEAKER_07]: I had a couple of questions.

[SPEAKER_07]: Sorry, scratch that.

[SPEAKER_07]: I have a couple of observations about the show so far.

[SPEAKER_07]: There's in some speculation, which I love online about this being possibly an allegory about AI.

[SPEAKER_07]: I want to propose that it might possibly be literally about AI.

[SPEAKER_07]: I've had a lot of thoughts about this, but I'll give you two that I think are irrelevant.

[SPEAKER_07]: You know, we don't need to get people's feet back on.

[SPEAKER_07]: One.

[SPEAKER_07]: Why is there no internet in the show?

[SPEAKER_07]: The internet is not portrayed.

[SPEAKER_07]: I just find it not believable that someone like Carole wouldn't spend just a little less time watching Golden Girls and a little bit of that time Googling stuff and or using a chatbot.

[SPEAKER_07]: So there seems to be a strategic masking of that part of our [SPEAKER_07]: reality in our contemporary life.

[SPEAKER_07]: So thought number one, thought number two, how simple it would be for something that is even approaching a superintelligence, which all the galaxy brings out there tell us is imminent, to fake that that code, which created the virus, which led to everybody joining, [SPEAKER_07]: the planets, etc, while yours away, whatever.

[SPEAKER_07]: Imagine that a super intelligence that was newly created decided here's how we deal with the human problem.

[SPEAKER_07]: We just make them think that it came from aliens, literal aliens, and they will be so excited about that, that they will pressure it into their systems and infect themselves, basically.

[SPEAKER_07]: So those are my two thoughts that I'm sharing at this moment.

[SPEAKER_07]: I had a bunch of other ones that are bouncing around.

[SPEAKER_07]: I'll keep it to that.

[SPEAKER_07]: Look forward to who thinks what next.

[SPEAKER_08]: So Jeff and I serve on a nonprofit board together and I was, we were just chatting after a big event and we had the other week.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I asked him if he'd been watching Plurvis and he was like, what, no, Vince Gilligan, my God.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so he just wrapped Rushed Home and watched.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so he said in the voicemail.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I feel like I need to get some tin foil out because he's not super real.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's clear that you two are friends, like it makes sense.

[SPEAKER_06]: What an interesting set of observations.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm having a mild panic attack trying to think of how to respond to them, because I think that it might be right about it all.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think there's no need for the internet because they are the internet.

[SPEAKER_06]: They don't need to wonder or search.

[SPEAKER_06]: They just know everything.

[SPEAKER_06]: And if we're trying to consolidate resources, [SPEAKER_06]: That would be the first thing to go.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's a really good point.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_06]: We don't need the internet.

[SPEAKER_06]: We just think that know the answer.

[SPEAKER_06]: I know how to do everything.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm a collective unconscious.

[SPEAKER_06]: And so that's one thing.

[SPEAKER_08]: And all the data centers and all the infrastructure that is required all that energy and effort to keep the internet.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's huge.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, believe it's huge.

[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, like I'm a big ad.

[SPEAKER_06]: AI user, and I know that it's destroying our planet.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I'm every time I search, like, what's the best place to eat for dinner tonight?

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, trees are forest.

[SPEAKER_06]: You're just burning down.

[SPEAKER_06]: But is this really an AI takeover?

[SPEAKER_06]: I think he's right.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's been a bunch of that are as well people remembering the Mrs.

Davis television show, which I never got around to finish a John and yeah, Maryland covered it, and we have a channel in the discord about it, and I think people are reactivating that conversation, but yeah, the sort of quasi benevolent.

[SPEAKER_08]: AI.

[SPEAKER_08]: And in a way, I think the point in a lot of people have been picking up on this is that the joined R and AI right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Super collective distributed model network kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_06]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think that that's a really, really good theory about what is happening here.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm not sure where I am on the extraterrestrial question yet.

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't think this is a mystery box [SPEAKER_08]: I think it is kind of what it is, but I think there's a lot more questions, but I am not, I haven't personally gone as far down that rabbit hole.

[SPEAKER_08]: of trying to figure out what the alien signal is.

[SPEAKER_08]: But that's just me.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're rewatching last in our house right now.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, really?

[SPEAKER_06]: And with our daughter, she's really into it.

[SPEAKER_06]: And wow.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's a big undertaking.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know what we're thinking.

[SPEAKER_06]: But I am noticing, like, I'm finding threads connecting the two shows.

[SPEAKER_06]: So we're not going to really mention that too much here.

[SPEAKER_06]: those threads exist.

[SPEAKER_06]: Really great commentary there.

[SPEAKER_06]: Ah, we have another email from Lauren, B.

[SPEAKER_06]: Do you want me to read it or do you want it?

[SPEAKER_08]: Absolutely, go for it.

[SPEAKER_06]: Good afternoon.

[SPEAKER_06]: I just finished listening to your first two episodes and I have thoughts on this fantastic show.

[SPEAKER_06]: Currently, I'm obsessed with all aspects of the joint.

[SPEAKER_06]: First, I don't think we can consider the joint as humans any longer.

[SPEAKER_06]: Whether that is good or bad thing, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_06]: but everything that separates us from animals seems to no longer exist.

[SPEAKER_06]: As we noted on the podcast, the joint behave much more like ants or bees.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's something that just occurred to me, which I think is a really interesting.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is an interesting thought that is within the realm of science fiction, physiologically, all of the individuals are still physiologically human.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right, all the way down to reproductive systems and breathing and carbon and basalite wobble, all that stuff, but consciously, there are different species.

[SPEAKER_08]: I think that is a really interesting question of how do you physiologically inhabit and exist within the world yet from a different aspect, [SPEAKER_08]: human in the same way.

[SPEAKER_08]: You're not as affected by your emotions.

[SPEAKER_08]: You're not as affected by your hormones and all the other neurochemical stuff that's going on.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's a whole different mitigation level that's going on.

[SPEAKER_08]: That is taking away how we emotionally respond to the world, the intellectual governance, that whole frontal cortex thing.

[SPEAKER_08]: You're the expert on this area, expert.

[SPEAKER_08]: Like they have a sit, we have more than me.

[SPEAKER_08]: They have this ability to de-emphasize emotional response to stuff.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's more like the frontal cortex is there, like where we regulate risk and decision-making.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it's all connected.

[SPEAKER_06]: So they're not risk-taking.

[SPEAKER_06]: They're very calculated.

[SPEAKER_06]: You know, your limbic system where like your amygdala and your hippocampus were all like your emotions are created essentially.

[SPEAKER_06]: They're all interconnected.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's it's really fascinating.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't think that there's a a way to like prove this with brain science, like how could it be without some right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, it's sci-fi, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: This is the concern.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is a concern.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, you just have to say, [SPEAKER_06]: And I wonder about like the nervous system of ants and bees now.

[SPEAKER_06]: Now, I'm thinking of people having to do that.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm writing it down, like I'm just doing some research on ants and being nervous systems.

[SPEAKER_06]: Hold on.

[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, Lauren goes on.

[SPEAKER_06]: I would also not describe them as happy.

[SPEAKER_06]: They're content perhaps, but not happy, which I'll interrupt now and think I agree with that.

[SPEAKER_06]: Because the tagline of the show was like, come and be happy with us, but they're not happy.

[SPEAKER_06]: They're just complacent.

[SPEAKER_06]: is complacency happiness, like I don't know.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I think we've got some more feedback in this scene about this.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: Cool.

[SPEAKER_06]: They have no personal wants or needs and are fined with that.

[SPEAKER_06]: They know they have a job to do and just do without feeling excited, dread, or fear.

[SPEAKER_06]: In my opinion, the alien technology created a new species, but how does this technology work?

[SPEAKER_06]: Everyone knows what everyone knows.

[SPEAKER_06]: Everyone shares everyone's memory.

[SPEAKER_06]: Why does this lead to happiness or as I would describe a contentment?

[SPEAKER_02]: There you go.

[SPEAKER_06]: Way to go.

[SPEAKER_06]: What happens to feelings of trauma and pain?

[SPEAKER_06]: How do memories of terrible things factor in?

[SPEAKER_06]: What happens when a joint is being hurt or ill wouldn't everybody feel it?

[SPEAKER_06]: I'll leave it there for now.

[SPEAKER_06]: Thanks for letting me share my initial thoughts looking forward to every, to enjoying the season with you, which is sure to be too short.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're already halfway done.

[SPEAKER_06]: I have this a lot of the same thoughts as Laura and we've discussed this in previous pods that like, what about the sadness, what about the trauma and the pain?

[SPEAKER_06]: It feels like it's just suppressed.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's got to still be there, it doesn't, things don't just go away, um, no.

[SPEAKER_08]: We get into the conversation with Larry, too, they seem to be happy about, or they seem to take, I want to say happy, that's the right word.

[SPEAKER_08]: They seem to take pleasure at things and can express pleasure, and certainly at the end of this episode, we see them expressing some, you know, something connected to sadness, concern, [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, and this idea that, you know, we'll talk about it with Larry, but this...

[SPEAKER_06]: idea that it's like such toxic positivity like even the bad things are spun to offer like the most generous explanation and I have more thoughts to say I'm that but I'm going to save it for later because that's good.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're going to do.

[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_08]: We're going to keep cruising.

[SPEAKER_08]: Keep cruising.

[SPEAKER_08]: Burlisa, Laura master furlisa at a long time, long time supporter of like I think she's [SPEAKER_08]: Pluribless does ask a lot of questions that some may find difficult.

[SPEAKER_08]: Here's a few from another Discord server that were pretty on point.

[SPEAKER_08]: What's the point of humanity existing if they're all one person?

[SPEAKER_08]: What's the purpose of existence?

[SPEAKER_08]: Once they don't have Carol and the others to make happy?

[SPEAKER_08]: What are the billions of people around the world doing all day?

[SPEAKER_08]: Assuming they're working on dismantling human civilization to fix the carbon footprint and all that?

[SPEAKER_08]: And what happens?

[SPEAKER_08]: when that is done.

[SPEAKER_08]: The endgame seems like it has to involve most people or all killing themselves or letting themselves die off.

[SPEAKER_08]: I think [SPEAKER_08]: I think that's reading into it a little bit too much.

[SPEAKER_08]: We don't know yet what the purpose is.

[SPEAKER_08]: We know that they have a biological imperative.

[SPEAKER_08]: They have told us.

[SPEAKER_08]: The screens have told us that they have a biological imperative to spread their virus because it's hard to explain it or anything.

[SPEAKER_08]: But so we'll just call it a virus for the sake of simplicity.

[SPEAKER_08]: That they're there to spread the virus.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I think a lot of people have surmised.

[SPEAKER_08]: that what maybe they're doing is after stabilization is then are they going to prepare to send their signal, you know, to propagate this, this are any signal further in the universe.

[SPEAKER_06]: And like we also haven't talked about other ways to propagate the species.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm wondering if that's going to come up at all in this show.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like what's happening with reproduction here?

[SPEAKER_08]: And I think we've got a comment about that later.

[SPEAKER_08]: Dopamine has some questions about what happens to sexual outlet.

[SPEAKER_06]: I have questions about that.

[SPEAKER_06]: So we're shadowing for a long time.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's a stay tuned.

[SPEAKER_08]: Subzero had a comment to that.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'll just kind of paraphrase that he thinks that it'd be far more interesting if the joint are exactly what they are.

[SPEAKER_08]: Have he hive minded collective that wants to spread?

[SPEAKER_08]: their brand of joy, hippy boards.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's still an invasion, but it's complicated.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's complicated.

[SPEAKER_08]: By most geometric, everything is better under the joint, no wars, no famine, no racism, no greed, no exploitation of animals or the environment.

[SPEAKER_08]: But the flip side, there's no individuality, and it's boring AF.

[SPEAKER_08]: Maybe not great for the human race, but maybe pretty awesome for the Earth.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so I think Sub-Zero is really enjoying that this tension, that's between the fact that humanity is pacified, it's not the right word, but we've just smoothed out all of the conflict and friction that exists.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, an individual and regional and sort of nation state level at the cost of what?

[SPEAKER_08]: And a lot of people, well, it's really interesting to watch how unnerved people are at this conundrum.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's like, there's a lot of strong reaction on this and I think it's great because it's a really interesting question.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, and it's awesome to hear as a selfish, but it's awesome to hear from sub-zero over here because they're a listener of never mind the music and often chime in on our music pod.

[SPEAKER_06]: So Rocky's him too.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's fun to like hear from you.

[SPEAKER_06]: You folks over here.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like we've had so great conversations over there.

[SPEAKER_06]: So thanks for listening.

[SPEAKER_06]: I agree with your points.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, [SPEAKER_06]: Can we just concede, and that's, and I think when we talk about the duality of opinion on the discord, that's really like what comes down to a lot of the conversation that I'm seeing like, do we just roll over and surrender our independence and our individuality for like the greater good and that.

[SPEAKER_08]: and even to say greater good is so loaded to totally right and it's like a trolley problem to secute in this way that is it throws a whole other conundrum into it which is by and large that the the overwhelming number of people are [SPEAKER_08]: not living under conflict and war and starvation and abuse and tyranny and in all these things.

[SPEAKER_06]: Sounds pretty okay.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I think what are the questions that comes up is the question of choice and agency.

[SPEAKER_08]: Do I need to choose that or whatever and for [SPEAKER_08]: And we're going to get into Carol's backstory about that, the fact that oftentimes was she was not given choice.

[SPEAKER_08]: She was forced into something.

[SPEAKER_08]: Do you know the Josh's?

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, Josh wrote in with some ideas.

[SPEAKER_06]: They say, I'm guessing we will learn that the hive mind has a goal if it's moving towards the biological imperative is to perpetuate itself.

[SPEAKER_06]: something sent that signal for a reason, at the very least, the hive mind would want to continue sending it.

[SPEAKER_06]: The transmitter sending the signal at its power range would have to be the size of Africa.

[SPEAKER_06]: So perhaps there would be some, would be an end goal of spreading the virus on where beyond that.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's hard to say.

[SPEAKER_06]: Perhaps it has a relatable desire to progress its knowledge scientifically and technologically so the hive will continue that quest.

[SPEAKER_06]: We don't know for certain if it's simply using humanity for a purpose only to discard us or is this a new way of being and it will try to survive and thrive as long as possible as any other species would.

[SPEAKER_08]: This for me is where I'm again stepping [SPEAKER_08]: We're all connecting two things differently, which is why we can consider this an open text.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I'll go back to the example of the airplane seats, and why I thought Carol was someone who is relating to herself as not deserving of love.

[SPEAKER_08]: Because that's something that I've had a thought about myself in my past, until I was able to sort of reason with that and find something new for myself [SPEAKER_08]: And were other people were like, no, it's this or that, it's survival or what have you.

[SPEAKER_08]: So for me, when I'm looking at the show and this is bringing back to this endpoint, this question of species survival and species propagation, I have an interest in things environmental and these questions of speciation and how species propagates completely armchair science and levels stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: But that question fascinates me.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so that the hive mind has this built-in imperative.

[SPEAKER_08]: How does that transmit biologically down like through the art age of a teenager?

[SPEAKER_08]: It's like it's so fascinating that this is an imperative and on the level of breathing.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is a not manageable, breathing is, is breathing is interesting.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's a whole other thing, our ability to consciously and unconsciously use that reflex.

[SPEAKER_08]: But at some level, if you try to hold your breath, you can't, after a point where you have to treat, you know, deep diver people can do this, right, the free diver people can do this.

[SPEAKER_08]: But it takes an extreme amount of training.

[SPEAKER_08]: So for most of us, the biological imperative to breathe when we can't takes over our system to agree that we don't have that frontal lobe intellectual control and more.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so for them to propagate their joinedness, it to me is just such a evolutionary, the interesting question.

[SPEAKER_06]: Sorry, you can say.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was just saying, I think that's something that's really [SPEAKER_06]: fascinating about the show is that you can agree or disagree or feel any certain way about the premise, but we're all finding ways to relate to this one character in a way that feels very intimate and very profound and deep.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's no wonder that the conversations around it are not even volatile.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's not the right word, but like they're emotional because it's like hitting a [SPEAKER_06]: for a lot of people in a lot of different ways, and as someone that lives in a cycle in psychology, I feel like that's really fascinating how we're all picking and choosing different things to really connect to.

[SPEAKER_08]: We're severance dislocated us far enough from it in time and place the old cars, the weird technology, all that kind of stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: It wasn't as affecting as this, which is conceivably our world today.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that that's it seems like, especially when we engage with AI, we're having a similar feeling, even if it's a subconscious feeling as Carol is when she's engaging with the joint.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's it's very, very relatable.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're a severance is [SPEAKER_06]: very interesting but not and relatable for some ways and if you think of work life balance, but it isn't as close to home as this feels.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: So, and we're able, we're all able to connect to Carol in all of these really interesting unique ways and see ourselves in her or opposite of her.

[SPEAKER_08]: but that still means that we're relating to her.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I don't agree with what Carol is doing or not doing, but that still means that you're connecting to what she's doing or not doing.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's not about agreement.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's about that empathetic question.

[SPEAKER_08]: Like I can see myself in this position and this is how I would do things differently.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I found a lot of that connection in the next scene that we're entering where she's coming home from the hospital.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's been a long day.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's been a long day.

[SPEAKER_06]: She's got all these people outside.

[SPEAKER_06]: She doesn't want anybody.

[SPEAKER_06]: She doesn't want to see anybody.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's how I feel after a day of teaching.

[SPEAKER_06]: But I come home and I just want people to leave me alone.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, let's get into scene three, but first let's take a quick break.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then we'll get into the scene proper.

[SPEAKER_09]: Sounds good.

[SPEAKER_08]: And we're back, scenes three, CSI, Albuquerque, inside the house Carol writes a list of what she knows about the joint on a whiteboard.

[SPEAKER_08]: She has a question mark after the words weirdly honest.

[SPEAKER_08]: She goes outside and picks up one of the cleaning crew to come inside.

[SPEAKER_08]: She asked what they think about her white caro books and then asks them to compare it to various works of Shakespeare.

[SPEAKER_08]: They love the series and they use the example of how it saved the life of one of her superfants.

[SPEAKER_08]: Carol learns that Helen thought her, [SPEAKER_08]: books were harmless and didn't like her latest manuscript, uh, which is bitter Christmas.

[SPEAKER_08]: Carol concludes on her whiteboard that the joined can't lie.

[SPEAKER_08]: Loved this scene.

[SPEAKER_06]: I love the scene.

[SPEAKER_06]: I love him as an actor and I will talk about him in a second.

[SPEAKER_06]: I thought even the title, I didn't track that before, but bitter [SPEAKER_06]: You know, like, it's sort of self-indulgent, even.

[SPEAKER_06]: I, one thing that I noticed in this scene, that I need our listeners to dial into and like explain to me.

[SPEAKER_06]: So on the whiteboard, when she opened it, there were notes for her next book, and we saw it for a minute, and she moved to the side.

[SPEAKER_06]: But if we assume that there were caro books, [SPEAKER_06]: are mirroring the plot of the show.

[SPEAKER_06]: And you know, and they're dropping chapters of it.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, the chapter, the completely forgot about it.

[SPEAKER_08]: Life was life ain't just a game did.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it did like, it was very opaque, like the connection.

[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was like, oh, you know, like a draw conclusions to my gosh.

[SPEAKER_06]: It would not even if you wanted it, it was like, slapped you in the face.

[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_06]: That makes me think, you know, they dropped that in advance of this episode where we're seeing notes from her next book.

[SPEAKER_06]: There's gotta be some clues on that whiteboard.

[SPEAKER_06]: They wouldn't have showed it to us if there wasn't.

[SPEAKER_06]: right.

[SPEAKER_08]: And they're having fun right there.

[SPEAKER_06]: They're having fun and they're playing with us and we're not picking it up.

[SPEAKER_08]: So like I need someone to screen grab, I probably could and like post that and try to figure out what amount of photographs that were being simultaneously taken across the globe when that's to happen.

[SPEAKER_08]: People pausing and like you can probably go into the Apple server.

[SPEAKER_08]: and be able to pick that moment.

[SPEAKER_06]: It was like a lot of thoughts about love potions, some sort of tincture or love potion.

[SPEAKER_06]: And right in this episode, she's looking for the cure.

[SPEAKER_06]: I feel like there's a lot there.

[SPEAKER_06]: I missed until like just now I realized like there's something there.

[SPEAKER_08]: I would love, yeah, I would love, as well, for a listener to send in a deep dive on the Waikaro notes.

[SPEAKER_06]: I know.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I also consider this a request to the collective.

[SPEAKER_08]: So, collective mind, right, these individuals here require some knowledge of Waikaro five.

[SPEAKER_06]: I also thought it was interesting that all of her questions to Larry were really thirsty for praise.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like if she was trying to check if they could lie to her, there's other ways that you could check that.

[SPEAKER_06]: But she was like, tell me how good I am, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: And we see that as a theme with Carol throughout, like she's really eager for how her book is selling and to put her book on the top billing of the bookshelf.

[SPEAKER_06]: And she's really like thirsty for praise.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that that's just an interesting thing [SPEAKER_08]: One of the tensions on the show is Carol and Carol's motivations and Carol's actions, right, and we can be sympathetic, empathetic, to another individual, but still disagree with their actions, right, and have issue with it.

[SPEAKER_08]: And one of the things that I find interesting is that she's very fake to her.

[SPEAKER_08]: She's inauthentic with her audience.

[SPEAKER_08]: During the signing, she is effusive and generous and taking selfies and having a lot of fun with them.

[SPEAKER_08]: But then is clearly distasteful of her, especially when she talks about the quote-unquote crazy hat lady who sends her stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: She has a disdain for her audience, but yet is a driven author to the point that they're willing to go into a little sundry store and move the position of books.

[SPEAKER_08]: And what level did her book her new book reads a level when they were the Norway Ice Hotel?

[SPEAKER_08]: So, there's something very driven about her in that way, and yet she's deeply, in authentic relative to her fans, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: And we can look at that and we can think, okay, Carol is relatable, and we can have a lot of feelings about what she went through, but also like, dang, that's, like, that's some pretty cutthroat shit.

[SPEAKER_06]: And she like knows it too, like she identifies that and then when Larry says that Helen felt the same way, essentially, that you know, like I was derivative, not just these are my words, but like doing it in harmless and gave them a nice life, you could tell the kind of a noise with Helen having that point of view, vealary via gentlemen.

[SPEAKER_06]: So.

[SPEAKER_06]: that's interesting to me that she knows it.

[SPEAKER_06]: She feels that when other people say it out loud, she's not okay with that.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I think it's really interesting later that when we have the sort of the quote unquote truths here, I'm just calling it true sir, true simplicity, that there's some buried, there's a buried truth in there that she is then able to sort of validate.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, the truth serum stuff is working, but that in this case and I think I heard somebody [SPEAKER_08]: on another podcast that did Carol suspect, even though she reacts strongly to what Helen thought about bitter Christmas, did she somewhere inside have some of those thoughts and feelings that or suspect that Helen had those thoughts about?

[SPEAKER_08]: Um, what Helen thought about her work, because that's a, that's a truce, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: You know, you could say, you know, she could have picked a gazillion different other little factoids, but she knew that this was an emotionally charged frame for her to be interacting with the joined with and then to put them into that bind of, you can't, [SPEAKER_08]: your assessment of my relative happiness.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right, it was really, I mean, the Jeff Hillish performance here was really great.

[SPEAKER_02]: Great.

[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, he's a great comic actor, but has such tenderness to him.

[SPEAKER_06]: But something that, like, the costuming of the show is hilarious to me, like this dude's there, and like a bike outfit, like he's about to go on a cycling expedition, which is a weird way to say that.

[SPEAKER_06]: seven days after the Like I wonder why they're wearing looks like it's the same thing with a D.A.

[SPEAKER_06]: cell guy like what what are we doing?

[SPEAKER_08]: The TCS wrote in an email exactly on this [SPEAKER_08]: She says, thanks for the work you're putting into the podcast, sending that to Nancy as well as you and I, and Nicole, she says, your knowledge and perspective really adds to the experience.

[SPEAKER_08]: So you're getting a lot of love on that on the podcast.

[SPEAKER_11]: I think thanks guys.

[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's really an important topic that I don't think I've seen discussed yet, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's seven days past the event and the joined are still wearing the same clothes as today at a car.

[SPEAKER_08]: Doing it.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's very hot in Albuquerque.

[SPEAKER_08]: They're doing physical labor.

[SPEAKER_08]: The only words I have for that are, oh, and crows.

[SPEAKER_08]: But like for their broader physiological implications, if they can withstand this lack of hygiene, is that just Gilligan at all, wanting the levity and to demonstrate that they're all equal in the hive mind.

[SPEAKER_08]: You know, yeah, so good question.

[SPEAKER_08]: Thanks Tara for sending that in again Tara.

[SPEAKER_06]: As usual, mean you are very lined up on our opinions because it's all it's so I'm not going to say it's distracting because it like adds a lot of internal monologue in my head when I'm watching these scenes like what are they doing?

[SPEAKER_06]: What are they doing?

[SPEAKER_06]: Why is he wearing a cycling outfit right now?

[SPEAKER_06]: Is cycling part of the imperative right?

[SPEAKER_08]: And Jeff, the fact that he was on set all day in that very uncomfortable, it's like doesn't have the clicky shoes on too, is he wearing the clicky shoes?

[SPEAKER_06]: Are you familiar with the term mammal?

[SPEAKER_08]: Like, yeah, I guess.

[SPEAKER_06]: Humans are mammals?

[SPEAKER_08]: No, as in middle aged men in Lycra.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, no.

[SPEAKER_06]: But I think it's just a big comment.

[SPEAKER_06]: I knew a favorite thing.

[SPEAKER_08]: Anyway.

[SPEAKER_08]: We do not kink shame in this community.

[SPEAKER_08]: You know, I hope you wear as much as you want.

[SPEAKER_06]: Is that like a thing that this is just like a nod to you've seen out there, the, you know, oh, I mean, yeah, they're all in the, you know, and that's like a community of people.

[SPEAKER_08]: The all the cyclists, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: Cyclists.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I've told you before, I think middle-aged men get sorted into several different houses.

[SPEAKER_06]: One is protein, one is cycling, one is bird watching.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, as you get into middle-aged, you get exhausted, sort it into like a Harry Potter house of hobbies.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, you're in the protein house and maybe cycling house now, I'm just like...

No, I'm in the basement.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm literally the basement podcast dad.

[SPEAKER_08]: literally a dad in a basement podcasting right now.

[SPEAKER_08]: So that's my question.

[SPEAKER_08]: There are dozens of us.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I know I know several of them.

[SPEAKER_06]: Awesome.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was a racetrack.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're just going to have to watch and find out what happens next.

[SPEAKER_06]: And like I wonder if there's if there ever have any one from the costume department on the official podcast because that's what I want to hear about.

[SPEAKER_08]: Up next we've got a voicemail from NURLS.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, Laura Holmes.

[SPEAKER_01]: I heard leaving a voicemail.

[SPEAKER_01]: It would make you happy.

[SPEAKER_01]: So here I am.

[SPEAKER_01]: I did have an observation about the latest episode, and it's in regards to how the joined can cite Carol's book to her.

[SPEAKER_01]: They can cite Shakespeare.

[SPEAKER_01]: They can most certainly do this for any sort of media or anything at all that humanity, any human on earth knew before [SPEAKER_01]: But to me as someone who also did not see many negatives in the join, this one kind of lays bare a big one for me, as they will not learn anything new, nor have the curiosity to relearn things that might have been forgotten.

[SPEAKER_01]: There must be some thing that humanity knows.

[SPEAKER_01]: in the grand scape that the current set of humans on earth at the time of the joining did not know and that knowledge will be lost forever and to me that made me to me with a deeply sad thought.

[SPEAKER_01]: And like I said, it's something that pushes me more towards [SPEAKER_06]: uh...

so just a slight observation uh...

would love to hear your thoughts thank you bye what a lovely place now narals uh...

long time supporter of uh...

hot cast lore master thank you narals this comment reminds me of something might uh...

my friend and co-host mark says a lot or we were talking about a i music recently in [SPEAKER_06]: He said, like, what happens when, you know, right now we're feeding AI existing music to create new music, but what happens when we start running out of existing music and we start feeding AI AI generated music to make new AI generated music.

[SPEAKER_06]: there's something with that thought and where the narrals is common.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like what happens when we cycle out of new knowledge and are only populating the hive mind with hive mind consciousness.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like what happens in 50 years, 70 years, 80 years, whenever you one that's currently live is in a live anymore, because life's been and the only people alive are people that were born into the hive mind.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's really interesting.

[SPEAKER_08]: And that calls back to some of the stuff that other folks were saying, like, what happens to an extrapolating a little bit, what happens to the longevity of humanity?

[SPEAKER_08]: Not even talking about questions of art, right, and creating new thoughts.

[SPEAKER_08]: But that's a really interesting thought.

[SPEAKER_08]: Like, what happens when, yeah, all the only people left after a couple of generations are only hive-minded, bull.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: How do you perpetuate knowledge?

[SPEAKER_08]: Does it fizzle up?

[SPEAKER_08]: Is that the biological imperative like for this thing to continue yeah, well it fizzle out unless it propagates [SPEAKER_06]: You just had a homo and it's wild and other feedback like speaks to the same idea almost.

[SPEAKER_06]: But Namanah, thank you for your time.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't have to say it.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like there was a little tag in one of the comments, like think of the puppets and you'll get it right.

[SPEAKER_06]: And now I got it.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, but Namanah said, as a single human brain's neurons make new connections, they grow [SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, would the hive mind grow and develop similarly over time, perhaps eventually developing the ability to lie, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: So does...

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm trying to unpack.

[SPEAKER_06]: The first part of this has me tripped up as a single human brain neurons make new connections.

[SPEAKER_06]: They grow and develop in their personality.

[SPEAKER_06]: This is very like a simplified idea, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: Where's like personality sit in the human brain and can we change and grow over time?

[SPEAKER_06]: So, does the high?

[SPEAKER_08]: We know we can change because of brain injury, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: We see personality affected by that.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, for sure.

[SPEAKER_06]: And we can change just based [SPEAKER_06]: You forget and retain certain memories and certain information based on trauma, based on brain injury, based on preference, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: So, we know that memories are malleable, we know that personality is malleable.

[SPEAKER_06]: Does the hive mind grow and develop similarly over time?

[SPEAKER_06]: We kind of get nods to that in this episode.

[SPEAKER_06]: In the later scene, coming on our next scene, actually, [SPEAKER_06]: we talk about this changing of perspective from the hive mind.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I think that's interesting.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm thinking too of, you know, when you talk about our ability to change personality, that's what actors do, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: They inhabit different personalities.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, not just that.

[SPEAKER_08]: So it's kind of a weird metamorphic, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Having these great actors portraying anyway, Gary, what are you saying?

[SPEAKER_06]: We all do that.

[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, my personality talking to you is different than my personality talking to my kid or my students or my friends.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like we all have different aspects of our self.

[SPEAKER_06]: And what's interesting with this hive mind is you don't as an individual, you have the ability and the privilege to code switch and to maintain, like, [SPEAKER_06]: to compartmentalize your personality, but here in this hive mind, it's all visible.

[SPEAKER_06]: There's no boundaries anymore.

[SPEAKER_06]: And that's, that feels very vulnerable to me.

[SPEAKER_06]: And that's for me if there's a reason that I'm like triggered by the idea of being joined.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's the fact that I don't have control to compartmentalize my personality anymore, because I find a lot of power in that.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I don't like my students [SPEAKER_06]: And if it was all mixed up, I don't, I don't think that I'd feel comfortable with that.

[SPEAKER_08]: And so my, my fellow Laura Hound's Alicia rode in a comment and I just want to pluck this one part of it, which is I'd love to see what happens with somebody who is quote unquote cured from the joint.

[SPEAKER_08]: How would they cope being cut off?

[SPEAKER_08]: Like, how psychologically destabilizing would that be to be cut off from the collective?

[SPEAKER_08]: And could that, how would that affect that?

[SPEAKER_08]: What fragments of individuality, what if you were flying a jumbo jet in that particular moment?

[SPEAKER_08]: Was the maybe you downloaded a particular amount of that data, but you still needed a data stream to come in to tell you the next part which is landing or something like that, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: That's an extreme example obviously, but that's just on an intellectual skill-based level.

[SPEAKER_08]: What happens to your sense of self?

[SPEAKER_08]: What if you had somebody else's self mixed in with you when you got cut off?

[SPEAKER_06]: maybe, but maybe they're screaming inside to be let out.

[SPEAKER_08]: We don't know.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that, you know, or the our last scene in this episode when you are spoilers, but when you see Zoisha, like, [SPEAKER_06]: She's screaming inside to be let out.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's like all I read and that's seen.

[SPEAKER_06]: She's like let me out of here.

[SPEAKER_06]: You could like see it in her eyes.

[SPEAKER_06]: She's like once she's told her truth, she won't, but she's like, she can't.

[SPEAKER_06]: She's being like, like, muffled.

[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I, my heart broke because that's what I thought of.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's like, yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: She wants, she wants out.

[SPEAKER_06]: But that's my, that's your, yeah, that's my stuff coming up.

[SPEAKER_06]: And that's why this show is awesome.

[SPEAKER_08]: So, well, would you want to switch into the scene for truth telling thing you want to lead us into this conversation?

[SPEAKER_08]: Because it's where we get into some conversations that are really, we're really impactful, like wouldn't it open up?

[SPEAKER_08]: I was like, wait, what's going on here?

[SPEAKER_08]: And then it didn't hit.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we're going to talk in the next scene is this truth telling scene by social's bedside and the scene we're going to talk about conversion therapy.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're going to talk about family dynamics that may feel actuated into you.

[SPEAKER_06]: So if that's something that you don't really feel available for right now, you can just skip ahead a couple minutes and join us, you know, in a little bit, just keep fast forward, until you can hear Rocky's voice mail, I think.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I will just say before you go, if you do need to skip ahead, I'll just give it not to win my favorite organizations.

[SPEAKER_06]: They're a nonprofit organization called the Trevor Project that offers 247 Crisis Counseling for LG, LG, BTQ plus youth, I love a nonprofit organization that supports this population.

[SPEAKER_06]: So if you need help, you should talk to them.

[SPEAKER_06]: They're awesome.

[SPEAKER_06]: scene four, where we've arrived.

[SPEAKER_06]: In a conversation at Soche's bedside, we learn that a young Carol was sent to conversion camp by her mother as a teenager.

[SPEAKER_06]: Perhaps an insight as to why Carol might be so against being quote, changed on quote.

[SPEAKER_06]: She surmises that there is a way to reverse the joining by Soche, no, by Soche's no answer and inability to lie.

[SPEAKER_06]: She wants to know [SPEAKER_06]: why they want to change her against her will.

[SPEAKER_06]: So she wants to understand why Carol is unwilling to try being them.

[SPEAKER_06]: So this line, she wants to know why they want to change her against her will is such a direct connection to Carol's past that she was sent to this conversion camp.

[SPEAKER_06]: If you're unfamiliar with conversion therapy is, [SPEAKER_06]: into that.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's pseudoscience, it's ineffective, conversion therapy, reverse to like a range of discredited practices that aim at changing an individual sexual orientation or gender identity.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's not a scientific or medically recognized for therapy.

[SPEAKER_06]: every medical and major mental health organization worldwide, including the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association discredits this as a practice.

[SPEAKER_06]: Despite this, about 700,000 queer adults in the U.S.

have been subjected to conversion therapy with about half of those subjected to that as an adolescence when they didn't have agency or rights [SPEAKER_08]: So, troubling practice is still happening, um, and Tennessee, uh, Nancy checked into it and apparently Tennessee does not have a, any laws ban in conversion therapy, and they actually have a lot of laws that have been passed to limit gender affirming care.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we see a lot in like areas with strong roots in, I hate to say strong roots from religion because that kind of devils.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, I think we can bypass that aspect.

[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, very good.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, so we just, the reality is that this state didn't have laws against it and that's where her character was sent, right, for that.

[SPEAKER_08]: So, and I think the parallel, [SPEAKER_08]: of in Carol says that those those counselors smile like you smile.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right.

[SPEAKER_06]: So we're seeing a lot of stuff coming up for Carol, which was clear, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: We knew like there's something happening with Carol, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: There's something that she's really activated towards this [SPEAKER_08]: the writing of the character, the dialogue, the plotting was all framing that question for pre-framing the question for us.

[SPEAKER_08]: So trying to understand and examine Carol, it was built into the show.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then you even go back and think of all the animosity she had towards the mother of the kid that was joined when the mother was enjoyed.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right?

[SPEAKER_06]: I think there's a lot of threads back to that.

[SPEAKER_06]: She was so angry at that mom.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that this is part of the reason why.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, you know, the scene was powerful.

[SPEAKER_06]: It gave us a lot of information about Carol.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it made a lot of sense.

[SPEAKER_06]: It really enriched her backstory.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, that's what we got.

[SPEAKER_06]: Do you have anything else to add about this idea of Carol's family or just questions about conversion therapy in general?

[SPEAKER_08]: The show not only gives us a character whose gay and married and was living a full life with all its complexities and intendants, ups and downs and what have you, and it was just normal.

[SPEAKER_08]: Like, okay, this is just a married couple.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: And then they just put right in front of us, this question of this really ugly practice of trying to disabuse people of the notion of their sexuality.

[SPEAKER_08]: And it's [SPEAKER_08]: It doesn't shy away from it, it doesn't try to package it, it just puts it right in front of us and I think it's, that's a really brave thing to do for a popular show that broke Apple TV's own records.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's a pretty incredible place to stand for the show.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I commend the writers and the network for being willing to just put this on the table.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, especially when you think of like how.

[SPEAKER_06]: She was really affirmed in her sexuality, and that must have taken a lot of struggle to kind of overcome that, and we see hints of that struggle in later scenes, which we'll talk about right after we hear from Rocky and some other bits of feedback here.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, and I just want to add one other thing too, too, is that, you know, she found a person that she could be comfortable with and build a life with and she's deeply creeping the loss of that, which will we see a bit of a week in right now.

[SPEAKER_08]: a way to be with somebody and to be successful in the world.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's a big deal, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: You know, so I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to take away Carol's grieving, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: She's really dealing with a lot right now.

[SPEAKER_08]: So, thank you.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's a really deal.

[SPEAKER_06]: It gets a lot.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, it's a style of collapse.

[SPEAKER_06]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_08]: All right.

[SPEAKER_08]: Let me find where did.

[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, wait.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, Rocky's other email.

[SPEAKER_08]: Sorry.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm in the basement podcast recording.

[SPEAKER_08]: I've got a.

[SPEAKER_08]: You're doing awesome.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm doing really great.

[SPEAKER_08]: I've done it a few times.

[SPEAKER_04]: So here's Rocky's voice.

[SPEAKER_04]: It was interesting when social mentioned in the hospital that [SPEAKER_04]: There's like her species or aliens whatever were alone and suffering like Carol was Makes me wonder, you know, what had happened to them like what happened?

[SPEAKER_04]: If they have them start trying to search outward for for planets to, I guess, take over or at least use their resources [SPEAKER_04]: like they have this biological imperative so that I guess they want to spread out as far as they can but has that been always the case or has it been just since maybe their planet became uninhabitable or whatever [SPEAKER_04]: But they, you know, they say it's in biological imperative and they don't mean to kill people and all the stuff, but it's hard to trust, I don't trust them.

[SPEAKER_04]: They, they're trying to manipulate by painting like a pretty picture for everyone.

[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's so great.

[SPEAKER_04]: Everyone's happy and go lucky, but then it seems like they don't know really what's going on, as far as why Carol can't be converted.

[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, I must have cut off his things.

[SPEAKER_08]: Sorry, I should have cut it off.

[SPEAKER_08]: I was in a rush this morning to edit this.

[SPEAKER_08]: So, but I think he opens up some really interesting questions about, again, to the motivations of the joined and how this is all working.

[SPEAKER_06]: I agree with all of it.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think, again, a lot of stuff that Rocky has to say, I'm pretty in agreement with just generally this perspective on where are we going from here.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: I think it's interesting to see the [SPEAKER_08]: everyone really distrust it, ding the joints to like, I may be on the other end of the spectrum.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm like, oh, that's interesting.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm really into the joint.

[SPEAKER_08]: Not that I want to join them.

[SPEAKER_08]: But I'm really fascinated and into the nuance and, and, uh, [SPEAKER_06]: I can't even address them.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I just trust them.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I'm not just drawing them.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm just looking at them and I want to infiltrate them from the inside.

[SPEAKER_06]: But I think I would lose the agency to do that.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think that they're all trapped in there.

[SPEAKER_06]: I do.

[SPEAKER_06]: Let's see what Dolphin Mini has some comments there.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I'm interested in these topics as well.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, I'm wondering if sexuality exists for the joint outside of currently being used to pacify the unjoined.

[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously, we know that they're intent.

[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously, we don't know their intention, so it's hard to speculate, but its sexuality, economical with the time, beyond reproduction, is intimacy with partners of your choosing still a value, [SPEAKER_06]: Are you now able to turn all the sexual experiences of anyone ever?

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, gross.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was Nicole commentary.

[SPEAKER_06]: What?

[SPEAKER_06]: What is the implication for monogamy?

[SPEAKER_06]: This concept may have been important to the body.

[SPEAKER_06]: They now inhabit to polyp people still get to exist.

[SPEAKER_06]: Is everyone polyacensually?

[SPEAKER_06]: It's way more confusing than one person figuring out the various facets of their own sexual identity.

[SPEAKER_06]: And I, these are all questions that we're stating don't meany.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I don't, we don't think we have answers to these questions, but I do think is everyone polyacunchil I think that the answer to that is, yes, if we all share the same consciousness, the same mind, the same set of shared experiences, then yes.

[SPEAKER_08]: Does the question apply, I think just goes back to that, earlier question is, okay, physiologically, [SPEAKER_08]: the joined or inhabiting human forms, but do we still need sexuality?

[SPEAKER_08]: That's the kind of the way I was taking dopamine is like, what does sexuality outside of reproduction mean anymore?

[SPEAKER_08]: Right, I think.

[SPEAKER_08]: Because it's such a deeply part of human experience.

[SPEAKER_08]: We are sexual creatures.

[SPEAKER_08]: And now it's fundamentally changed and I don't know what that means for that, you know, to what, do we call ourselves human anymore?

[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, not everyone's a sexual creature, plenty of people, I don't need that level of intimacy.

[SPEAKER_06]: And we're seeing more and more with younger generations.

[SPEAKER_06]: That intimacy isn't important, they don't want it.

[SPEAKER_06]: And a lot of ways, which is interesting, what we are seeing like ships, you're seeing like reduced sperm count, like beyond just like psychological intimacy like our.

[SPEAKER_06]: Well, that's the country.

[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_06]: No, I can't.

[SPEAKER_06]: I can't.

[SPEAKER_06]: I can't.

[SPEAKER_06]: Or I need a number of things, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: So I think that.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, gosh, it's such a complicated idea, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Like, if it's complicated to, it's one thing, you know, it's, it's one thing if you and I are, you know, sitting in a dive bar having a drink and we're friends and we're talking about it.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's a different thing to have a conversation that's being broadcast by signal to a lot of people and not necessarily having that same personal relationship where we can sort of, [SPEAKER_08]: mitigate any disagreements or ideas.

[SPEAKER_08]: And I certainly don't want to be a podcast that's authoritative, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't want to be telling people what they should be thinking or doing.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm just expressing our opinions and our critiques about a television show.

[SPEAKER_08]: So to always a fine line for podcasts to get into the stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: A pay mini stuff, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, for sure.

[SPEAKER_06]: But still, we hold opinions and we do.

[SPEAKER_06]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think, too, beyond this idea of monogamy and polygamy, I'm thinking about questions about consent here a lot.

[SPEAKER_06]: 100%.

[SPEAKER_06]: Which is something that I don't think we're going to turn into right now.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's so awful if we're not going to sleep.

[SPEAKER_06]: You know, and I want to have it at this point.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't think that we're going to like talk about high-flying consent.

[SPEAKER_06]: I do believe in this world that sexuality becomes solely for reproduction.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's right.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're my stance, my opinion on it.

[SPEAKER_06]: And that's an easy out because it is less complicated that way for me to unpack.

[SPEAKER_08]: I mean, it's selfish or to take that, you know, it's a question of sexuality that changes over time, right, a different physiologically different times of your life are infected by different physiological drives and chemicals in your body.

[SPEAKER_06]: You're like biological rhythms, you're circadian rhythm, you're biological clock, essentially, [SPEAKER_06]: It's a really interesting question.

[SPEAKER_06]: I wonder if they're going to even touch it in this season one.

[SPEAKER_06]: It seems like more of a season two thing.

[SPEAKER_08]: We know we're going to choose season two.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, like at least two.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, lots of great questions.

[SPEAKER_06]: I wish we had answers and maybe we will.

[SPEAKER_09]: But right now we're just going to press forward.

[SPEAKER_06]: Carol enters the pharmacy and knows a lot about pharmaceuticals.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like I know a lot about pharmaceuticals and I never have heard of phyopental sodium before.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I have questions.

[SPEAKER_06]: So she enters the hospital pharmacy and looks up the dosage for phyopental sodium.

[SPEAKER_06]: I might not even be saying that correctly.

[SPEAKER_06]: Folks, she finds the drug in pocket.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that's all.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's the teacher voice.

[SPEAKER_06]: to say it and hope for the best.

[SPEAKER_06]: She finds the drug in pockets two vials.

[SPEAKER_06]: A man enters hilarious conversation.

[SPEAKER_06]: A man enters and she asks to have heroin and hyper-dormic meals delivered.

[SPEAKER_06]: We learn that she may have been addicted to heroin in college, or at least is used to it.

[SPEAKER_06]: Or that's what she says to him, whether she does or not.

[SPEAKER_06]: She could have been lying, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: There's a great Vince Gillick in Montage here.

[SPEAKER_06]: Do you want to talk about some of the nonsense about this principle?

[SPEAKER_06]: Not too much.

[SPEAKER_08]: The needle drop is a song called Vessel by John Lemke and just some great uses of the shelves and looking at each other and tracking shots across that.

[SPEAKER_08]: But it was a very restricted and demonetized montage.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is the kind of thing that in Better Call Saul, Mike Irman-Trop would have been sneaking around somebody's house or doing something, and it would have been 10 minutes long.

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't not literally 10 minutes, but it would have felt like 10 minutes, and you would have had this really cool S song in him doing all this stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: So this was really short, and this was a very foreshort, and it would have been skill again.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I liked this scene.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think, you know, when [SPEAKER_06]: I'm struggling to think that Carol was, like, actually used heroin in college.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think that she just said that as a test.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then you go, you know, they knew.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, they knew.

[SPEAKER_08]: Remember, you remember last time.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, yeah, that was like weird.

[SPEAKER_06]: They endearing to me in a very strange way.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's just her reaction.

[SPEAKER_06]: If she had a strong history of addiction, she has a lot of access in that room, you know.

[SPEAKER_06]: What access?

[SPEAKER_06]: Two points.

[SPEAKER_08]: We're right there.

[SPEAKER_06]: We should pocket anything, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, I would have pocketed something and I'm not even that deep.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I don't know, you can do edit that out if you like or whatever.

[SPEAKER_06]: But it's just in that state of mind, in that time in place, like you're, I'd be holding a mission though.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'd be coordinating antibiotics, but she is on the mission for sure.

[SPEAKER_06]: But I got it.

[SPEAKER_06]: I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, I just [SPEAKER_08]: for the thio pental sodium and you know, grabbing the book, you know, obviously, don't try this at home kids.

[SPEAKER_08]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: Well, you're the clear.

[SPEAKER_08]: Do not be your own pharmacist.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is what pharmacists do.

[SPEAKER_08]: They don't just fill pill bottles at the, at the drug store.

[SPEAKER_08]: They think about drug interactions and understanding dosages and all kinds of stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: Q notes, Nancy's got some research for us, but then I'll add something first, which is, so I, you know, grow up playing Dungeons & Dragons.

[SPEAKER_08]: I still play actively today.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm playing a new great game called Draw Steel.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's excellent.

[SPEAKER_08]: We love it.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's kind of played lots of different games.

[SPEAKER_08]: And as a game director, as a dungeon master, as a game master, when I'm building complex scenarios, [SPEAKER_08]: my internet search history is just wild.

[SPEAKER_08]: Like I would not win a law enforcement agency to access my search records.

[SPEAKER_08]: And like learning about, you know, or how artillery fire patterns are, you know, set up and weird obscure facts about countries and, you know, spy organization.

[SPEAKER_08]: So it gets really wild.

[SPEAKER_08]: So that a writer like Carol has this random knowledge of something or some indication.

[SPEAKER_08]: I, to me, I totally buy it.

[SPEAKER_08]: I was like, okay, I get it.

[SPEAKER_08]: that's the way my head that I worked it out.

[SPEAKER_08]: She's a writer, she's researched a lot of stuff.

[SPEAKER_08]: She might have come across something at some point, gone down a little rabbit hole, maybe used it, maybe not used it, you know, inspiration, what have you so.

[SPEAKER_08]: It tracks as a as a creative person that she would have had some [SPEAKER_06]: I can understand that.

[SPEAKER_06]: And we see that in her whiteboard that she has like research and it's like kind of weird of scary search.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I'll also render that.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like I think that's fine.

[SPEAKER_06]: But she knew just what to look for, which is really interesting.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: Let's just read some of Nancy's research because it's helpful if you don't know what Biopental sodium does.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's for the soul use as an anaesthetic agent for brief 15 minute procedures for induction at a Vesthesia prior to administration of other anaesthetic agents or to supplement regional anesthesia.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, provide it also to provide hypnosis during balanced anesthesia with other agents for analgesia or muscle relaxation for the controlled convulsive states.

[SPEAKER_06]: uh, in neurosurgical patients with increased intercranial pressure.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's like an anti seizure type of anesthesia, um, which is really interesting, right?

[SPEAKER_06]: We think of this like seizure presentation.

[SPEAKER_06]: So, uh, there's also a side effect of the drug decreased cardiac output as a noted side effect.

[SPEAKER_06]: So that's something that we're coming up with.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: Did you see this note here?

[SPEAKER_08]: The Narco Analysis and Narco Centetics.

[SPEAKER_08]: Synthesis in Psychoactric.

[SPEAKER_08]: This order.

[SPEAKER_06]: Psychoactric disorders.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right.

[SPEAKER_06]: And not those synthesis.

[SPEAKER_08]: I can see that those are English words.

[SPEAKER_08]: I don't know if it's a knowledge system.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know what that is.

[SPEAKER_06]: Marco analysis and narcosystems.

[SPEAKER_08]: We have a number of medical and therapy professionals in our community.

[SPEAKER_08]: So if anybody has insights into this, please, we would welcome your input.

[SPEAKER_06]: Um, I'm, you know, we can welcome there and put in a, we can just ask AI, which I've just done.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm not going to go sinthens this was a psychiatric treatment popularized during and after World War II that uses sedative drugs to induce a dream like state to help them process trauma.

[SPEAKER_06]: So we're seeing a saying, [SPEAKER_06]: We do that now with like MDMA as well to help people process trauma, which is really interesting.

[SPEAKER_06]: So let's just a little bit of information there.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: So I think the key is the cardiac decreased cardiac output.

[SPEAKER_08]: So we, dear listener, are running on time.

[SPEAKER_08]: So we're going to speed run the last couple of episodes apologies, but life is [SPEAKER_08]: gets delivery of the heroin in the needles.

[SPEAKER_08]: She dumps the heroin.

[SPEAKER_08]: She sets up a video camera and injects the thio pental sodium.

[SPEAKER_08]: I say that, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: This is so, this coded so severance for me with the whole video, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Anyway, we see next that she's waking up on the couch, time has passed.

[SPEAKER_08]: She reviews the video footage.

[SPEAKER_08]: we get a montage of what she did while she was high.

[SPEAKER_08]: One moment, playing in the video called Coss' Carol Flinch, when she asks why Zosa is so attractive.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm very crazy.

[SPEAKER_08]: Carol, this is the memory card down the toilet.

[SPEAKER_08]: She pulls the second bile out of her pocket.

[SPEAKER_08]: Players, we have a winner.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's so reckless.

[SPEAKER_06]: It makes me so on.

[SPEAKER_06]: And this whole scene has a so uncomfortable.

[SPEAKER_06]: I just do it very reckless.

[SPEAKER_06]: We should not be injecting ourselves with things.

[SPEAKER_06]: No.

[SPEAKER_08]: No.

[SPEAKER_08]: And the acting, though, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: So good.

[SPEAKER_08]: God, Ray, she learned was a phenomenal in this playing.

[SPEAKER_08]: At somebody who is that kind of high, I was just blown away at her ability to [SPEAKER_08]: And, you know, a lot obviously is caught, but because she didn't know in the edit where they were going to cut or anything like this.

[SPEAKER_08]: So there's stuff that is been filmed of her doing this and more and just just a beautiful piece of cinematography and writing and acting like the whole everything from a production standpoint came together in this scene in a way that I never thought was possible.

[SPEAKER_06]: So maybe in the, maybe in the extras, we'll, we'll just get on edge and see what this is.

[SPEAKER_08]: Exactly, release them with afterage cut.

[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, my gosh, you're so fast.

[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, my gosh.

[SPEAKER_06]: Awesome.

[SPEAKER_08]: All right, Nancy's got a waste mouth, so we have to listen to that really quick.

[SPEAKER_08]: If I can find it, that's Rocky's.

[SPEAKER_08]: There is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hi again, Dave didn't know cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a thought about Carol's drug trip.

[SPEAKER_00]: At first I couldn't figure out what she was doing.

[SPEAKER_00]: She looks up information about Theo Pental Sodium, steals two vials, orders hair ruin, but flushes it, set up a video recorder, and then after watching says, we have a winner.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was so confused.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then I realized that saying out loud that Zoja was so fuckable, she had proof that this drug made you vulnerable to telling the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Carol must have been suppressing that thought, but the drug removed her ability to keep it secret from herself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now she had the proof that using it would allow her to get the truth from Zoja.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I can't wait to hear what everyone else has to say about the episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: Take care.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's a good point.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's such a good point.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it's such a good point.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was really confused too to be honest.

[SPEAKER_06]: I'm right with Nancy.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was like, well, what is she doing?

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I didn't get it.

[SPEAKER_06]: I didn't really get it for a while in this episode.

[SPEAKER_06]: If you want to picture it from the pharmacy, it was like, what's the plan here?

[SPEAKER_08]: I thought it had, it might have to do something to stop seizures or something like that.

[SPEAKER_08]: You know, in the, in the joining.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right.

[SPEAKER_08]: So yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: I was confused as well.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was like, I knew in my head, I was like, oh, it might be like a truth serum or something, and then it's essentially what happened.

[SPEAKER_06]: So yeah, I think a lot of us were with you.

[SPEAKER_06]: So then she flushes everything, she has a plan, she goes back to see So Shethahospital, and she offers to take her outside for fresh air.

[SPEAKER_06]: In the elevator, she crudely administers this.

[SPEAKER_06]: Outside, she begins asking social random questions until it's obvious that she's affected by the drug.

[SPEAKER_06]: When Carol starts asking kind of reverse the joining, the join started approaching from all, [SPEAKER_06]: over and begin changing, please Carol, it's like heartbreaking.

[SPEAKER_06]: And then Carol handcuffs herself to Socia and begins asking with more urgency as the chance becomes louder.

[SPEAKER_06]: She collapses to the ground and goes into cardiac arrest.

[SPEAKER_06]: An AED is about to administer a shock when the episode ends.

[SPEAKER_06]: And they're all crying.

[SPEAKER_06]: They all have tears streaming down their face.

[SPEAKER_06]: And we've established earlier in the this world that when social drinks not everyone gets drunk right so it's not like everyone's affected by the drug but they're affected by so she's feelings.

[SPEAKER_06]: And again, I'll say it like the look in her eyes such an incredible actress, but the look in her eye was like, let me out.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's all I could think of.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's like, get me out.

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I want to tell you, but some things choking me from saying it out loud.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I was really heartbreaking and the robotic voice of the AD.

[SPEAKER_08]: in contrast to the police carol, the chorus of police carols.

[SPEAKER_08]: It was so sterile, and then it was, I remember feeling shocked by the analyzing, analyzing, and the fact that I saw it, you know, and it was so alien compared to the, or some sort of go ahead, please.

[SPEAKER_06]: Well, also the idea that if you ever, like, if you're in a situation, I haven't been personally, but like that you're, you're using an AD.

[SPEAKER_06]: There's probably a lot of like anxious energy and tension and yelling and chaos around that voice [SPEAKER_06]: right and it wasn't and that's what stood up to me here there was like no humanity anywhere of like get help you call 911 like get out of the way give her space it was just so quiet and in a human experience it wouldn't be there would be like an energy like an anxious tentuous tension energy around that and it didn't exist here and that's so haunting to me [SPEAKER_08]: Um, we're learning that cut to black and then just hearing the shock thing.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's a behind the see, sorry, did you have more?

[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, no, that's fine.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_08]: There's a go to the official pod.

[SPEAKER_08]: If you're interested because it's a lot of behind the scenes and how the show is made conversation, one of the things that they brought up was that Baba Odin Kirk during one, I forget, which episode, which season.

[SPEAKER_08]: Had a massive heart attack on set and they had to revive him, Racy Horn was there.

[SPEAKER_08]: Oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_08]: They did heal.

[SPEAKER_08]: They literally saved his life with CPR compression.

[SPEAKER_08]: So don't play with drugs and go learn CPR.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's your PS.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's for that episode.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's really scary.

[SPEAKER_08]: And the person who was administering the AED in this scene was the same person who performed chess compressions on Bob Odenker.

[SPEAKER_08]: And they set it up.

[SPEAKER_08]: They dealt with it.

[SPEAKER_08]: Ray was see where him was all part of it.

[SPEAKER_08]: Like they you hear Ray talk about the how this was all done.

[SPEAKER_08]: And it was just an incredible moment for this cast in this crew [SPEAKER_06]: Like, relive their prayers, trauma.

[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, no, but they're connected and move past the trauma, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Like, you know, dissolve the trauma and somehow interesting.

[SPEAKER_08]: That's yeah, they dealt with it very carefully and very conscientiously.

[SPEAKER_08]: And it wasn't the original intent in the writing.

[SPEAKER_08]: It was something that came up through the process.

[SPEAKER_08]: and then they reconnected it to their production community and they dealt with it in this really intentional and accidentally therapeutic way, I guess.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's really intense.

[SPEAKER_08]: It is.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: But to me, it says something about the community that's involved that they could attempt something like that.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_06]: And that it is very familiar and, you know, that [SPEAKER_08]: supportive and yeah.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it's important to process trauma just exactly.

[SPEAKER_06]: Hello, my full stop.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's important to like give those moments even though they're uncomfortable to work through them together.

[SPEAKER_06]: And that's what they did.

[SPEAKER_06]: And it's kind of a beautiful testament to humanity on a show that's talking about sterilizing humanity.

[SPEAKER_08]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_06]: No.

[SPEAKER_08]: My one comment on Carol here is that she is really clever, but her cleverness, the way that she did it in the elevator, she looked around for cameras, she got the music going to as a distraction, all of the getting the drugs, all of the stuff, all very clever.

[SPEAKER_08]: But her tactical brilliance, I'll say, [SPEAKER_08]: downstream thinking, sort of wisdom level of, oh, I don't know what other kinds of medications oceans are on.

[SPEAKER_06]: Well, like, what was the play even with the handcuffs?

[SPEAKER_06]: Like, what?

[SPEAKER_06]: What?

[SPEAKER_08]: Just to stop them, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: You can't touch me, therefore, you can't touch her because we're handcuffed.

[SPEAKER_06]: You just screams, I have agency.

[SPEAKER_06]: You got to say it.

[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, so we have some comments on this.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, from TCS, this week, Carol was laser-focused on whether the joint can lie.

[SPEAKER_06]: And since she's determined they can't to get information about a cure.

[SPEAKER_06]: At this point, she's racing against the clock, especially with the common that they've learned so much.

[SPEAKER_06]: It must be like they're closing and unfinding to how to get her joined.

[SPEAKER_06]: I think we're like in that episode away because now she's like now she needs to be detained, right?

[SPEAKER_09]: Now she's a threat.

[SPEAKER_06]: Cincinnati Joe continues with some other comments.

[SPEAKER_06]: I was glad Carol and Terry gregated the hive members for details.

[SPEAKER_06]: I wish she asked more questions.

[SPEAKER_06]: Me too.

[SPEAKER_06]: I wanted her to ask how they're able to communicate how quickly as the [SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I feel like she had the chance and she just asked about herself, you know, and what she asked so short earlier about you guys know more about it and she's like, yeah, we're getting a better handle on it, which was interesting.

[SPEAKER_08]: Oh, and the other thing that Joseph said, [SPEAKER_08]: I can't remember, so I'm just going to paraphrase, I was left with the impression that they have needed advancements into the clock is ticking and they needed advancements into being able to administer something to the unjoined so that it feels like there's been advancements, so the time pressure is coming.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right, like it definitely, the clock is ticking and you could even tell and zocious space that like they're getting closer.

[SPEAKER_06]: We'll get this soon.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_08]: So here's Benamana's voice mail on this, which I think is interesting.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is about zoisha.

[SPEAKER_08]: This is a little outside this ending scene, but I think it's a fun little crossover moment.

[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, Laura Hounds, just jumping in real quick with the thought about the acting choices that get to be made in the blurbest this time.

[SPEAKER_03]: I was thinking Zosha is like the new Spock, because like, Leonard E.

Moist choice is a Spock, like dictated how everybody would act as a Vulcan from then on.

[SPEAKER_03]: So now like Zosha or the actress there, she gets to decide how to the others act.

[SPEAKER_03]: And I thought that was just kind of a neat little thing.

[SPEAKER_03]: I saw it in the DHL.

[SPEAKER_03]: He's like, his [SPEAKER_03]: based on what Zosha was doing.

[SPEAKER_03]: So, anyway, that's all for now.

[SPEAKER_03]: Love you, bye.

[SPEAKER_08]: Thanks for having me.

[SPEAKER_08]: I love that insight.

[SPEAKER_06]: I like our he says to in the D.A.

[SPEAKER_06]: channel.

[SPEAKER_06]: That's just what we're calling.

[SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, is Zosha like the queen bee in Carroll's hive of people around her and then just like every other [SPEAKER_08]: Well, I think it's interesting too because so much of our hive mind, you know, the xenomorphs and other creatures, there's always a controlling element, the board, etc.

[SPEAKER_08]: What if there is, you know, what if there is no controlling element, is there?

[SPEAKER_08]: is the Queen B or the Queen Ants really in control or are they merely a mechanism of reproduction?

[SPEAKER_08]: And obviously centered, society is centered around that for propagation of the species.

[SPEAKER_08]: But it would be anthropomorphizing bees and ants for us to assume that the Queen is in control, quote unquote, in control.

[SPEAKER_08]: as the way me would understand control as a human being control, right?

[SPEAKER_08]: Does that make sense?

[SPEAKER_05]: It makes sense.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm asking, skating way out of thin ice and I'm going to get a lot of emails about this one.

[SPEAKER_06]: I feel like that's kind of like what we're doing here.

[SPEAKER_06]: I feel like that's like part of it.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right.

[SPEAKER_06]: Skate out on the fact that you enjoyed my text.

[SPEAKER_08]: In a supportive community, that is welcoming of discussing these things.

[SPEAKER_06]: First of all, it's absolutely, thanks for all your feedback.

[SPEAKER_06]: The voicemails are so fun to listen to and incorporate.

[SPEAKER_06]: It really lets us feel like we're not sitting alone in our basements.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're recording the information and geeking out about a show.

[SPEAKER_06]: So it really feels great to be part of them.

[SPEAKER_06]: like a conversation with you also.

[SPEAKER_06]: Please keep sending us your feedback at plorabus at thelorhounds.com either email or voicemail and you can check our show notes for links to everything.

[SPEAKER_08]: Look at you professional podcaster.

[SPEAKER_08]: We're going to skip the network news because you got places to go.

[SPEAKER_06]: But no, we can't skip all of it because we have important never mind the music announcement.

[SPEAKER_06]: David, that you're coming on soon.

[SPEAKER_08]: I can't talk about generational music.

[SPEAKER_06]: Talking about my generation with David Lorehound coming up.

[SPEAKER_08]: We have one generation effects.

[SPEAKER_08]: Another generation, musically.

[SPEAKER_06]: Right.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's like the high mind.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, absolutely.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I just I couldn't let you out without giving that plug.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's a really cool conversation.

[SPEAKER_06]: So we can't wait to share it with everybody.

[SPEAKER_08]: We know when the I had a look at the sister.

[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know when it's coming up.

[SPEAKER_06]: It should come out in a few weeks.

[SPEAKER_06]: So that's coming out, it's getting released early December.

[SPEAKER_06]: So we have a couple of episodes before then talking about our ultimate holiday playlist.

[SPEAKER_06]: Nice and then talking about hello by Lionel Richie and that kind of led us to this generational music theorem and the conversation with you.

[SPEAKER_08]: Did you see my message to Mark the other day about the new Beatles documentary thingy that's being released nine part.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's like a oh my gosh.

[SPEAKER_08]: No, he's probably losing his mind about it.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I can't wait to listen to that.

[SPEAKER_05]: I haven't had a chance to check it out.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I can't wait to truly dive in.

[SPEAKER_05]: I bet.

[SPEAKER_08]: It was really cool.

[SPEAKER_08]: It was a different style of podcasting on that.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm just this more raw reaction and less fast and analysis.

[SPEAKER_08]: I think that was great.

[SPEAKER_08]: Maybe that would be fun to do with the Beatles.

[SPEAKER_08]: Exactly what I was thinking.

[SPEAKER_08]: See, I've mind.

[SPEAKER_06]: Hi, I've been seeing this high thing.

[SPEAKER_08]: And should we mention the thing that's going to happen in a couple of days that in real life, [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, we're hanging out in real life.

[SPEAKER_08]: Yes, we can't wait.

[SPEAKER_08]: You, me and Mark are all going to be geographically in the same spot.

[SPEAKER_06]: We're so close that we're going to go to the, um, I would love to go to a nice fancy dinner with you guys, but you boys are more interested to go to the grossest, dive-fire in Boston.

[SPEAKER_08]: Wait, you know what I mean, I mean, I mean, something else or whatever.

[SPEAKER_08]: No, you're sure.

[SPEAKER_08]: You guys choose.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm the, I'm the stranger here.

[SPEAKER_06]: No, it'll be fun.

[SPEAKER_06]: It will post a picture in the discord.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that'd be really fun.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's kind of wild like that we haven't met in real life, ever.

[SPEAKER_08]: Isn't it crazy?

[SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, anyway.

[SPEAKER_06]: So I can't wait.

[SPEAKER_06]: But lots of stuff going on throughout the network.

[SPEAKER_06]: Check us out on discord.

[SPEAKER_06]: And yeah, thanks for being part of the conversation.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm going to just speed through the thank yous really fast if that's okay unless you want to do it.

[SPEAKER_06]: No, I'm really stumbled last time, but I'll get better.

[SPEAKER_06]: But you can take this.

[SPEAKER_08]: I only have muscle memory, so it's okay.

[SPEAKER_08]: Air and K, Taylor the Thriller do 71 Athena Agilell, the Stu Nancy M goes to Perdition, radioactive Richard, and Adrienne thank you all for supporting the place where our community gets together and have these amazing conversations.

[SPEAKER_08]: We have a different subscriber levels and our top tier lore masters really anchor the community they're real cornerstone and we always like to say thank you to Samarshan Michael G Michelle E FSC Peter OH Nancy M.

Doob 71 Brian 863 Frederick H.

Sarah L.

Garth C.

Androby Kwongmu, Nathan T.

Sub-Zero, Aaron K.

Dali V.

Mothership 61 [SPEAKER_08]: Garthie W, let's do it so holy set as a question, let's do Jeffrey B, at least you, not just an uptick, but it's got to be a you have to question.

[SPEAKER_05]: My got the girls.

[SPEAKER_08]: Girls.

[SPEAKER_08]: Ben B, Scott F, Steven N.

Julia F, Callie S, Ill Mario.

[SPEAKER_08]: Okay, Rocky's him, Jessica H, Red Zippy, the TCS, Dopa Mini, catch it.

[SPEAKER_08]: LNR and always last but never least in our hearts of Adrienne.

[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you all.

[SPEAKER_08]: So very much for your support.

[SPEAKER_08]: And Nicole, you'll get better at these.

[SPEAKER_08]: It's just practice.

[SPEAKER_06]: Thanks.

[SPEAKER_06]: I believe in myself.

[SPEAKER_08]: You're a professional.

[SPEAKER_08]: I'm going to relate to you like a professional.

[SPEAKER_06]: It's all about how we see each other.

[SPEAKER_08]: And boy, I don't know about you, but I feel like I left so much on the cutting room floor of this episode Is we're like rushing through a little bit, but I really cherish these opportunities to talk about something.

[SPEAKER_06]: You see you later [SPEAKER_10]: She just comes to me, baby [SPEAKER_08]: The Laura Hound podcast is produced and published by the Laura Hounds.

[SPEAKER_08]: You can send questions and comments to Laura Hounds at thewarhounds.com.

[SPEAKER_08]: Get ad free access to all Laura Hound's podcasts on Patreon or Supercast and connect with us on BlueSky and Join us on our Discord server.

[SPEAKER_08]: Links for everything are in the link tree in the show notes of this episode.

[SPEAKER_08]: Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities.

[SPEAKER_08]: Thanks for listening.