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Hello, Welcome to this episode of
Superhero Ethics. A few days ago,

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my friend Rob McKenzie, who's been
a frequent guest on this show, suggested

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I watched the TV show Severance and
that I might have a few things to

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say about it. It might be
worth recording on it. My partner and

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I sat down at about four o'clock
in the afternoon and thought, let's watch

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an episode, then we'll go back
to the video game we're playing, because

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we've been playing the Last of Us
Part two getting ready for that next TV

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show. Well, nine hours we
finished the series and I texted Rob and

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when we're definitely recording on this because
it is a show that brings up so

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much. So whether you've seen this
show, whether you haven't seen the show,

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we're not going to do really a
review. Were really He's going to

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dive into it is a science fiction
show that raises questions and the best tradition

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of science fiction, and we're going
to dive into them. And I hope

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you're going to join us. Thank
you so much, and we will talk

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to you right after this commercial break
that's probably from the Looming Corporation. Welcome,

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Mac and Matthew, your host Rob, I don't know if my microphone

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picked it up, and so if
the listeners can hear it or if you

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could hear it. But literally right
after I said the words loom in Corporation,

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there was a loud crack of thunder. So clearly our weather here in

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Minneapolis is trying to help me be
atmospheric. I could not hear it,

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but it would not surprise me because
I'm getting the same thing here. So

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yes, I recorded people from all
around the world. Rob lives about six

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miles from me, so this is
a little bit easier in that regard.

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Well, Rob, let me just
start by, I can't even summarize the

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show, and I think we're not
going to, as those who know the

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show will understand, I'm going to
take all the parts of me that likes

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to talk about the acting and the
dialogue and the writing and all that and

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kind of sever that away, and
I'm only going to leave the parts of

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my brain that like to look at
the ethical questions that are raised by a

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TV show. I don't know if
we'll have perfect severance. That's an interesting

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thing that we're not technological yet yet, but we're gonna try. And for

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those you have no idea what I'm
talking about. I promise we could explain

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what the world of this show is
all about. And there will be lots

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of spoilers for it. So if
you haven't seen it, I'm gonna recommend

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you hit stop and go watch it. Like I said, it can basically

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take like you can do it like
you know, one or two episodes week.

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I think the best way to do
it is to just binge the whole

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thing. So I I got to
the show because I was rewatching. I

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was I was rewatching a different show
and I was looking through the actors and

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actresses and I saw that the actress
from it from um Dollhouse was on this

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show and I was like, oh, I haven't seen her in a while.

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What she was on Severance? Okay, this sounds kind of interesting.

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I'm gonna watch it. And I
sat down to watch an episode and then

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I like couldn't do anything else well
watching the episode, it just absorbed me

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and it was electric. I was
like, yeah. I was like I

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planned to just watch an episode here
and there for a little while, and

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someone has I'll pick up and put
down shows and I'm very good about finishing

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them. I was wrapped for this
and I could not. Like I finished

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it over the course of I think
three days because I did not have the

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time. Every moment was filled with
it. And Ruth watched, My wife

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watched about watched about five minutes over
my shoulder with my headphones on, and

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she's like, what is this.
I need to watch this show. And

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then so she had the same thing
and she watched it about two days.

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I know, I'm not going to
start the old binge abole versus episodic debate

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because I understand both sides and that
the whole can of worms. It's it's

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technically possible to watch this once a
week. Well I know that that's the

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things I know it came out originally
once a week. I have no idea

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how people sustained that. I would
have gone crazy because I write like I

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said, oh yeah, no it
but it dragged me forward because the pacing

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and like we didn't want to talk
about review. So yeah, just the

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thing is that it asks big questions. The big spoiler for the show,

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and they introduced this really early,
is you have the ability to sever yourself

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so that your memories you build,
you take a part of your mind and

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when you are they put a chip
in your brain, and while that chip

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is active, you lose all of
your personal continuity memories, all of your

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history. You start fresh, you
remember things like They ask questions like what's

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the first state that you can remember? And the person says Delaware, which

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is the first state? It's I
think, I assume that this is a

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joke. But she doesn't remember anything. They ask her, what's your name?

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I don't know what was your Do
you remember your mother? No?

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Right, And they they get into
the fact that the severed people, because

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they're physically in an office, right, they consider their work so highly secure

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that they can't carry any memory of
their work outside of it, right,

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And so they're separate away and those
people have only the continuity of their work

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time. The elevator closes and the
elevator opens, and they don't remember going

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home or sleeping or anything. It's
just continuous time in an office. And

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the only guiding principle you have is
your HR manual. And it's set up

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in a very interesting way because you
know, the first question would be,

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well, why would anyone want to
do this? And they really suggest that

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there are two kind of big reasons
why a person would want to do this

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going from either direction, because the
point of the show is that we spend

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most of the time with these four
people who have all been severed. They're

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all working in this loomit office in
a incredibly like nineteen eighty four as told

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by minimalist dystopianism. So is these
four people, they're in this kind of

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dystopian nineteen eighty four meets it's kind
of nineteen eighty four meets Dolbert without other

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horrible things the Gilbert author we now
no believed in. But I would just

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office cubicable hell. And the idea
is that people would get severed for either

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direction. That it might be that
you accept that you have to work in

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office cubicable office cubicle hell, and
you just don't want to have to do

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that. And it apparently started in
part with a quote that was made I

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think by one of the writers or
the writer found this, but where they're

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talking about like working somebody'd been working
in an office like that and they said,

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sometimes I wish I could just disassociate
for eight hours and not have to

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remember those eight hours. I just
do office drudgery. Yeah, So that's

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one reason why someone might want to
do it. The other reason might be

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that you had some horrible thing in
your life outside of work that you just

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want to have some period in your
life where you're not thinking about it.

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And one of our main characters is
someone who, over the course of the

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show, we find out his wife
died a tragic accident. It was a

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driving thing. He feels partly responsible, and so during those eight hours of

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work he doesn't know that happen and
he gets that freedom from it. Well,

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but he doesn't though. That's the
thing that gets me is that logically

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it makes it worse. Yeah,
because the other half of this is if

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you are the outside they call them
the innies, the people who live inside

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the building, and the audies,
the people who live outside within the same

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head, the same body as an
outie. You get in the elevator to

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go down, and it closes and
it opens, and your whole eight hour

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days gone by. You don't have
any memories. And the thing that allows

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you to get get separation from pain
from your history is your memories. You

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build up a continuity of experience that
rubs the edges off of it, so

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it means you're like fifty percent of
your awake time is lost to work,

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Yeah, and so it makes the
recovery take longer. It longer, and

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it's also that each time you have
to remember it all over again. I

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mean, I think one of the
core ideas of the show is that there's

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all these promises that are made about
how good this can be, but that

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once we see the people who have
actually done it, it's actually quite horrific.

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Yeah. But then of course none
of them remember how horrific it is.

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And so one of the running storylines
is that a couple of them are

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trying to find ways to let the
people outside no, and there's a lot

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of sort of stuff that happens around
that, and we also find out more

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about how awful the corporation itself is. And I think it's a way of

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kind of structuring this conversation. I
want to first kind of talk about this

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idea in the abstract and then talk
about how it goes in in the actual

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way it's presented. Does that work
for you before another kind of part of

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the sets So first before we go
into like how it actually happens in the

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show from a science fiction perspective,
like, I think this is the kind

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of exactly the kind of thing science
fiction loves to explore, like, what

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if we had a technology that could
do some thing weird that that would would

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it help? What do you think
of a technology that would say, when

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you get to work those eight hours, it's going to be someone else doing

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the work and then you just you
go and you're back. And basically all

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humans have a sixteen hour day where
you don't have to think about what you

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did to make the sixteen hour the
rest of the other sixteen hours the day

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possible, and it's it's a logical
conclusion of NDA's right. It is what

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what big companies, a lot of
them would optimally love, is your work

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time belongs entirely to them, and
that is that is what they what they

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philosophically say a lot of the time
anyways, Right, anything produced on work

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time and work hours is theirs,
and that is their time. And so

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it's somebody taking the logical, the
logical next step on that, Right,

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The logical argument is if that's their
time, well, that's their time.

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You don't even remember that time,
right, Yeah, And somebody's saying,

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well, what if there's a technology
that let a company do this, they

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do it like in a heartbeat,
right, the Googles and the facebooks and

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the NSA. Right, they would
be all over this. The lockeed Martins

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of the world would love nothing more
than not let you know about their rocket

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designs when you're at home. And
on some level I get that, like

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in like, I think part of
what makes this so powerful and also it's

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kind of so scary? Is that
so much? Like, Yeah, there's

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a kernel of Yeah, I understand
why that would be wanted. Yeah.

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And this is just a very limited
example, but both you and I have,

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in different ways, are involved in
the magic the gathering community, and

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we spend our time with lots of
people who have lots of thoughts about what's

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happening with magic. Both you and
I, because of different professional relationships,

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have at times had more information than
most of the people we were talking to

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and not been allowed to share that
information, yes, or not been allowed

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to comment on for example for me. And I'm fine with this, but

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like, part of the thing I
signed is that for a certain amount of

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time after I left, I wouldn't
be openly critical of the company standards experiment

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clause right. Yeah, And so
when all this stuff happened around dungeons and

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dragons, that Wizards are trying to
do. I had a lot of thoughts

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on that that I wanted to jump
into as a content creator, yep,

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but that a I had knowledge that
I couldn't share and shouldn't share, but

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also just I'd signed this thing,
and so like, yeah, there's a

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part of me that think it would
be great to cut all that off.

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But of course there's all kinds of
problems. Yeah. The the high level

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problem that they talk about in the
show Will a Lot is that continuity of

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experience that any it starts at the
time that you wake up after your severing,

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right, right, And so are
they a person? They have all

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They're like an amnesiac, right,
a classic classic you know, film trope

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amnesiac that doesn't remember their previous life, and so they have nothing. Right,

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they don't remember their name they're giving
they're told a name, and that

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name happens to match up to their
to their audi name, but it doesn't

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have to. They can be anything
there were They're given the first name plus

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last initial. Yeah, first name
plus last initial, and it's not all

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and it's demonstrated that it's not accurate
for one of the characters, right,

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And so that they they got an
abbreviated version of the name, right,

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And it's actually possible that you that
they all have that. Like Mark,

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the protagonist, he could be Marcus
and go by Mark. And so like

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I joke about at my work that
I have a work sona right, my

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my name and active directory at work
is Robert. And so I know when

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somebody calls me Robert that they are
somebody that knows me through work, because

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that's what my close work people,
the ones that I work with absolutely every

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day right next to me, call
me rob But like the people that I

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talked to all over throughout the company
call me Robert. And that's what this

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is. This is the ultimate work
zona, right when they shed they shed

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this this skin of their outside world
and go inside the machine, and they

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talk about how that this that person
has continuity of experienced right for the time

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that they're working, and they they
are only alive when they're at work.

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Yeah, and there's even again I
try to make that separation. It can

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be so hard to talk about it, but I think that it helps to

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illustrate these things in one. In
one situation that we'll get into in a

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bit, one of the characters wants
to quit and wants to stop being severed.

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And one of the points that's made
against it is are you murdering you're

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any Yeah, because yeah, then
this other person with all these experiences will

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cease to exist. Yeah, it's
it's kind of a two vic situation for

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anyone who remembers stoptrack voyager of like
this new life that's been created? But

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is it? And I think in
many ways what what drew me most to

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it is how much what they're doing
is. It's really kind of a great

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commentary on the sort of again like
the anonymisation of work, Yes in this

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country, you know, because um, part of the point of it is,

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Yeah, it's that instead of saying, how do we make work better,

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it's how do we just so thoroughly
accept that work is going to be

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so meaningless and pointless and terrible that
will allow you to just forget it?

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Yeah, it seems like it's it's
And some of the things that are so

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brilliant about it is that they do
the like, you know, the the

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joke that that's in a lot of
especially labor organizing circles, is like,

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you know, when the company knows
that you know, instead of offering you

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a raise or worker safety, they'll
offer you a pizza party. And here

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in this they have those things.
It's like you get, you know,

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a melon party, a waffle party, an egg party, a waffle which

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turns out in a waffle party about
a lot more than waffles. Oh man,

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that waffle party is a weird,
weird thing. I was not expecting.

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Get Like, I was expecting more
of the melon party, right,

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yeah. And then it's like a
like a cultic sex dance. What it

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like? So I actually read an
analysis that we'll get to that and say,

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yeah, but just here's a way
of framing it that I wanted to

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throw out at you. Is this
show positing basically the exact polar opposite idea

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of the work future that Star Wars
Next Generation does, Star Trek the next

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generation, Star Trek the regeneration again, thank you, I make those up

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all the time. Could you follow
him here? Yeah? In Star Trek,

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the whole idea is that technology will
have gotten to the point that basically

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drudge work is no longer needed,
that no one has to work for survival.

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That and so therefore everyone can pursue
the interests that they really love without

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worrying about is this going to be
profitable enough or not? Here this is

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the exact opposite. This is you
are so divorced from any possibility of any

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career fulfillment, any personal fulfillment at
work, any degree of the relationships you

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build that work mattering in any way. Yeah, that you're just going to

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be seting like did you see what
I mean there? At will and especially

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considering that the only thing that you
are giving when you were severed, the

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absolute only thing that you give up
is time because when you sever and your

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personal continuity of experience is broken.
Skills that you build on the outside and

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skills that you build on the inside
do not transfer. One of the things

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that it's notable like in a normal
work world is I have a work skill

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set, right that I do for
my day job, and then I've got

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like we talked about magic judging,
that's a different skill set, and I

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can use those to compliment each other
to go apply for a new job,

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and I can say I have these
skills from working, these skills from my

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job, and I've built these two
sets of skills, and I can combine

239
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them together and you can take you
can pick and choose and what things right

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everybody's a lot more complicated than one
set of skills in the real world.

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But in a real world, not
only are they transferable about jobs, but

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you can transform them to other parts. You know, Robin, you and

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your partner organize a gaming weekend retreat
for our friends every weekend. Yep.

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And you have a great organizational approach
to those that I'm sharing part was shaped

245
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by the organization of work you do
from work and stuff like that, right,

246
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and so like her spreadsheet skills because
Ruth's an accountant, is like is

247
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leveraged in that sheet that we build, right And in severance, it's saying

248
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you are we do not care about
your skills, which genuine it does not

249
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matter, right, And what we
care about is your time. The only

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thing you are giving up when you
were severed is time. And like in

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Star Trek, you do the work
that you need to do. Right there

252
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they are a post scarcity society.
There you only do work that you feel

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is meaningful, that you feel like
fulfills you in some way, right And

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where in this the work is like
you're saying, completely divorced from any sense

255
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of purpose or fulfillment, and you
are obligated to give your time to the

256
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machine. It does not matter if
it's good time, bad time, anything

257
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else. And the job, like
they I'll talk about on the outside,

258
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they're like, well, I the
work there must be meaningful. I do

259
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something in records, right, And
it's so it's so um, it's so

260
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important that they can't let me know
anything about it. And meanwhile, on

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the inside they have an unfalsifiable job
and they don't realize it like nobody nobody.

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So they're sorting numbers, right,
They're looking at this big field of

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numbers, and when some numbers feel
scary, they box them and put them

264
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in a They collect them and put
them in a box. Right. If

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the computer knew what the right numbers
to take were, they would be entirely

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obsolete, right, right, So
the computer can't double check them. It

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doesn't know what's right or wrong,
which means that their work can't be can't

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be double checked by anybody but themselves. And so what they could do is

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just pick arbitrary on. Their whole
schema is based on them having some kind

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of super supernatural knowledge about which numbers
are important when it's literally just a field

271
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of random numbers. Yeah, And
in the one scene, where the one

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where the one new where the one
new worker is learning about this. They

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all stand over her shoulder. She's
like, I can see it. I

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can box these numbers. She boxes
them, She collects them, like,

275
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circles them and puts them in this
box. And no one comments if she's

276
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right or wrong. No one says
perfect, No one says exactly those.

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Nobody says you grab too many right
the first time that you do something,

278
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you're never going to do it perfectly. But no one says a thing.

279
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Yeah, her job is unfalsifiable,
right. Unfalsifiable means no one can say

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you're wrong. Yeah. Yeah.
In science, falsification is the ability to

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disprove a hypothesis right if I say
it, like Galileo says that two objects

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that are that are different ways faul
At the same time you can check that

283
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that hypot this is falsifiab right.
And they can't say if their work is

284
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right or wrong. There's no double
check on them right, and it is

285
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wild. The job is inherently meaningless. Nobody questions it because they don't know

286
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to question it, because it's their
entire life. And then again, as

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I think, such a great metaphor, because here. Well, as far

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as we can tell, there is
no actual thing. There's no thing that's

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happening as a correlation to what they're
doing. But they all but there is

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some theory that there is and I'm
going to get into that some writers of

291
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great analysis what it can be.
But in extent, like they all start

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to wonder about that, and they
wonder like, are we It's kind of

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they have an Enders game kind of
a question where you know, like an

294
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Enders game. The whole point is
to get these kids to play the game

295
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where they don't realize that they are
actually doing the war, because the human

296
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brain would just like, like,
the human brain is going to have trouble

297
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pushing the button that means the extinction
of another species. So you get someone

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to do it without knowing, and
so there's all they start having, all

299
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these theories kick around, and I
think it's another thing. It's a great

300
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commentary off is that not only do
most of us, you know, carry

301
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the stuff from our work back into
our normal lives. Hopefully if you do

302
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things that you really feel fulfilled by, that's a positive thing, right,

303
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But in our fairly dystopian society and
economy, and I feel very privileged that

304
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I've not had this happened much,
but I know many others do. You

305
00:21:33.839 --> 00:21:37.920
know, many people work for corporations
that they don't really like what they're doing,

306
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and they know that they might be
just pushing paper, but the paper

307
00:21:41.680 --> 00:21:45.839
they're pushing is helping to build you
know, pipelines across tribal lands, or

308
00:21:45.960 --> 00:21:51.880
is helping to fund build you know, weapons for of war. Right,

309
00:21:52.119 --> 00:21:55.640
you go to work for an arms
manufacturer because their benefits are very good,

310
00:21:56.279 --> 00:21:59.880
right? Or is just you know, you're just the data pusher that you

311
00:22:00.079 --> 00:22:03.400
realize the data that you're doing is
what allows Amazon to figure out how to

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make it worker you know, what
other benefits they can cut to get their

313
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workers to be even more efficient.
You know, it's all this stuff,

314
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and we know that like a lot
of mental illness, a lot of people

315
00:22:15.119 --> 00:22:19.039
harming themselves and un aliving themselves can
be traced to you know, guilt,

316
00:22:19.680 --> 00:22:23.279
either lack of satisfaction with work all
the way up to feeling really deeply guilty

317
00:22:23.279 --> 00:22:30.359
about the work that they're doing.
And again, so much of this feels

318
00:22:30.359 --> 00:22:33.039
like a surrender, you know,
it feels like the perfect capitalist win of

319
00:22:33.759 --> 00:22:41.960
if the problem is that the human
emotion if the human emotion cannot tolerate the

320
00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:45.640
capitalist like being a cog in the
system, you know, because at the

321
00:22:45.640 --> 00:22:47.599
whole point, like, yeah,
as a person, you don't want to

322
00:22:47.599 --> 00:22:51.240
be a cog. The way to
do that is to utterly remove human emotion,

323
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to just make humanity a cog,
because yeah, the cog doesn't care

324
00:22:56.279 --> 00:22:57.920
that the when it's slamming down on
metal, the metal is going to be

325
00:22:57.960 --> 00:23:02.000
shaped into a gun or into a
cooking pot. It doesn't get there.

326
00:23:03.480 --> 00:23:10.880
And this like the idea of who
is responsible then, right, Like I

327
00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:15.839
volunteered my myself to be severed,
right, and I do that eight hours

328
00:23:15.839 --> 00:23:19.599
a day working for making you know, as a cog making guns. Right,

329
00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:26.240
and then that or or it makes
something that is you know, we

330
00:23:26.279 --> 00:23:32.079
make something that turns out to harm, to accidentally harm people, and we

331
00:23:32.119 --> 00:23:33.799
could have caught it. You know, it's a cook it's a cooking pot,

332
00:23:33.839 --> 00:23:37.359
and it turns out that the metal
was impure and it leaches in and

333
00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:41.400
it poisons people. Right, And
so then they come back and they say

334
00:23:41.400 --> 00:23:47.359
who's responsible. They put you on
trial for for you know, not catching

335
00:23:47.400 --> 00:23:51.200
this. You you're criminally negligent,
Like normally you can put a person on

336
00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:55.240
trial for criminal negligence, right,
you you did this thing that is that

337
00:23:55.599 --> 00:23:57.519
you you should have known better,
and you had training to tell you to

338
00:23:57.559 --> 00:24:00.920
know better, and you knew what
the con quinces were for. You're not

339
00:24:00.960 --> 00:24:03.720
doing it. And then you just
didn't check the metal content. You just

340
00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:06.039
you just blew it off. You're
like, whatever, I don't care.

341
00:24:06.240 --> 00:24:08.960
I'm lazy today, it's not worth
it. And so you get pulled up

342
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:11.519
and put on trial, right,
and then you get sent to prison.

343
00:24:11.799 --> 00:24:17.240
How is prison any different? Right? Yeah? And because you're probably now

344
00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:19.839
right back into some kind of prison
industrial labor thing, right, something that's

345
00:24:19.880 --> 00:24:25.200
just as awful. Well. And
also, who's responsible? I volunteered?

346
00:24:25.279 --> 00:24:29.599
I'm the Audie, Right, I
volunteered to be severed? Any am I

347
00:24:29.640 --> 00:24:33.359
responsible for their actions? Right?
Right? They blew off the they blew

348
00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:38.119
off the safety checks. Now do
I go to jail? Actually, because

349
00:24:38.480 --> 00:24:41.480
one of them I think most interesting
moments And this comes at the very end

350
00:24:41.599 --> 00:24:45.799
again here this is big spoilers.
Yeah, you realize that one of the

351
00:24:45.839 --> 00:24:52.000
major characters, Henny actually is like
her Audie is horrid. Her Audi is

352
00:24:52.000 --> 00:24:53.400
one of the people who is She's
the daughter of the founder of this whole

353
00:24:53.400 --> 00:24:56.519
thing. Yeah, Hallie, thank
you. Yeah, we're gonna get to

354
00:24:56.519 --> 00:25:00.440
her character in a second. Let
me just close on the kind of purely

355
00:25:00.480 --> 00:25:04.640
theoretical part by asking you this,
is there an ethical way to do this

356
00:25:04.680 --> 00:25:08.759
correct technology? Because I like one
thing that I both love but I'm sometimes

357
00:25:08.759 --> 00:25:15.759
frustrated by with science fiction is when
you should you show me a technology with

358
00:25:15.839 --> 00:25:18.799
the idea of this could be good, this could be bad, but then

359
00:25:18.839 --> 00:25:22.839
you tell me that there's a nefarious
corporation that has evil motivations behind why they're

360
00:25:22.839 --> 00:25:26.640
doing this this technology, which is
great and makes it a great story.

361
00:25:27.200 --> 00:25:30.240
And maybe that's the point of the
story, is that you couldn't have a

362
00:25:30.279 --> 00:25:33.359
technology like this without it being driven
by some horrible, corrupt corporation. But

363
00:25:33.519 --> 00:25:37.000
like to try, you know,
to try the problemant to get that question

364
00:25:37.000 --> 00:25:41.519
the absject could this technology be ethically
neutral? Yeah? So I could,

365
00:25:41.720 --> 00:25:47.359
Like you could easily come up with
a story where they severed themselves because they

366
00:25:47.400 --> 00:25:52.880
work with something that they don't want
to leak out. Right, Let's say

367
00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:56.480
that that you are concerned about things
man is not meant to know right either,

368
00:25:56.519 --> 00:26:00.960
because you're working with you know,
Elder God and you're afraid that the

369
00:26:00.039 --> 00:26:04.880
madness will leak out, or you
are concerned that you will discover some secret

370
00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:08.079
of the universe that you want to
be able to compartmentalize. Right, I

371
00:26:08.119 --> 00:26:12.960
mean, I'll give you a perfect
example. The people who have to the

372
00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:18.160
people at like Facebook and Twitter and
things like that who spend all day looking

373
00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:22.880
at the horrible, horrible posts to
get reported. Sure, yeah, moderators,

374
00:26:22.920 --> 00:26:26.359
and so like the people who,
yeah, the people who look at

375
00:26:26.799 --> 00:26:32.119
the people who submit you know,
torture, porn and whatever, right and

376
00:26:33.359 --> 00:26:37.559
into Facebook, those moderators might want
to never remember that the ethical question there

377
00:26:37.599 --> 00:26:41.559
is a different one, which is
you've created a new being. Right that

378
00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:45.359
they talk about this in the show
that that person is a separate distinct because

379
00:26:45.359 --> 00:26:48.440
there are a separate set of experience
that are separate personality. They're separate person

380
00:26:49.880 --> 00:26:55.599
from the way that everybody treats them. Well, you've created them and then

381
00:26:55.640 --> 00:27:00.200
subject them to this constantly, right, Right, And that's a good like

382
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:03.920
the the you're looking at horrible images
that destroy your mind eight hours a day.

383
00:27:04.079 --> 00:27:07.640
You've created a separate part of yourself
to manage that. But then you've

384
00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:11.160
created that other person and subjected it
to them without their volunteering, Like,

385
00:27:11.799 --> 00:27:15.440
right, and you've done it in
such a way that you not only will

386
00:27:15.440 --> 00:27:18.000
you never have to know how horrible
images were, but you'll never have to

387
00:27:18.039 --> 00:27:22.359
know how much that person's in pain, right exactly, and so like unless

388
00:27:22.400 --> 00:27:26.680
they like do something physically to themselves, because that's the other thing is physical

389
00:27:26.680 --> 00:27:29.440
things will carry up. You get
you get a banged knuckle, you get

390
00:27:29.440 --> 00:27:32.920
a cut on your hand, you
whatever that passes up or down, right,

391
00:27:33.480 --> 00:27:37.160
and like, but you you could
phrase it as a purely good thing,

392
00:27:37.319 --> 00:27:40.039
right, not just like you're subjecting
them to these ethical problems, but

393
00:27:40.119 --> 00:27:44.680
you're like, um, you're working
on you're working on something something else that'll

394
00:27:44.759 --> 00:27:48.400
that'll screw up your mind. You
volunteered for it. And then you train

395
00:27:48.480 --> 00:27:51.759
in the other half of the mind
and let them volunteer for it as well,

396
00:27:52.119 --> 00:27:55.200
and say that, hey, if
we discover things that man was not

397
00:27:55.240 --> 00:27:57.640
meant to know, we can be
unplugged and we won't know and nobody will

398
00:27:57.640 --> 00:28:02.400
know. You could create this as
a story and make these ethically like good

399
00:28:02.440 --> 00:28:04.400
people that are doing this is a
good thing. The volunteer problem is a

400
00:28:04.440 --> 00:28:08.160
volunteer problem. Right. You have
to be able to that that severed part

401
00:28:08.200 --> 00:28:11.319
of your mind has to be able
to say no. Everything is based on

402
00:28:11.400 --> 00:28:15.839
consent and whether or not they're a
person, which they cannot refuse in the

403
00:28:15.839 --> 00:28:19.079
show, which is I think the
biggest ethical problem that the show has,

404
00:28:21.119 --> 00:28:23.200
or that from the show from the
shortest person, this is good. There

405
00:28:23.240 --> 00:28:29.720
is a good tension thing, and
the corporation says that legally in these aren't

406
00:28:29.759 --> 00:28:33.359
people, they cannot make the decision
about whether or not to work. And

407
00:28:33.559 --> 00:28:36.160
here I think we can start getting
into the show itself and the characters,

408
00:28:36.200 --> 00:28:38.799
because I think ye to me that
they're all phenomenal. Yeah. The one

409
00:28:38.839 --> 00:28:45.200
I find the most ethically interesting is
Henny Hellyeah, Helly. Thank Anyway,

410
00:28:45.880 --> 00:28:48.640
I think her, she's the one. I think you're talking about her nickname.

411
00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:51.880
I want to say her full name
is hell Vedica. It's not that

412
00:28:52.079 --> 00:29:03.400
it's like it is it is Helen
something hell. Then I maybe to it

413
00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:10.160
is um Helena, right, Helena, okay um, I go to hell

414
00:29:10.359 --> 00:29:14.000
Edica. But you know, anyway, the point being she's the one who

415
00:29:14.079 --> 00:29:17.119
is uh, she's kind of are
the news, you know, the new

416
00:29:17.200 --> 00:29:19.319
character. There's a name for this
trope. But where like a new person

417
00:29:19.359 --> 00:29:23.240
gets introduced, so you can have
lots of exposition as they're learning everything,

418
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:27.920
and she just cannot adjust, and
she's really fighting against it, and to

419
00:29:27.960 --> 00:29:32.359
the point where she makes numerous attempts
to tell her Audi that she wants to

420
00:29:32.440 --> 00:29:36.960
quit, even at one point trying
to because basically, like I mean,

421
00:29:36.960 --> 00:29:38.720
if he any dies, the Audie
dies. If the Anie gets its fingers

422
00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:41.160
cut off, the AUDI gets his
fingers cut off, And so she tries

423
00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:45.640
to literally do those things, and
in each case the Audie come back and

424
00:29:45.680 --> 00:29:49.880
says, no, you cannot do
that and threatens her ands as if you

425
00:29:49.920 --> 00:29:53.359
try to do that again, you
know, I'm going to make sure these

426
00:29:53.440 --> 00:29:56.240
terrible things happen to you. Well, she doesn't say I'm going to make

427
00:29:56.279 --> 00:30:00.240
sure these terrible things happen to you. Her threat is I will keep you

428
00:30:00.319 --> 00:30:07.319
alive for a very long time.
Yeah, and that's when you know that

429
00:30:07.359 --> 00:30:12.160
you're any does not want to be
alive. That is a that is a

430
00:30:12.200 --> 00:30:15.960
powerful thing to say to them,
right, Yes, especially because what we

431
00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:19.960
see in the office is that again, because the nies aren't technically alive and

432
00:30:19.960 --> 00:30:23.680
therefore they have no rights. I
mean, they are literally torture. It

433
00:30:23.720 --> 00:30:29.039
is psychological, not physical torture.
Yes, again, the audies won't.

434
00:30:29.200 --> 00:30:33.559
Like, I guess here's the thing
where I'm kind of curious about because everything

435
00:30:33.559 --> 00:30:37.160
I know about brain chemistry says this
would be almost impossible. But basically you're

436
00:30:37.200 --> 00:30:41.960
triggering a situation where the inny will
have severe PTSD but the audie won't.

437
00:30:41.680 --> 00:30:47.920
Um Yeah, which is that's a
whole chemistry thing that's fascinating that physiology,

438
00:30:48.079 --> 00:30:51.759
like the severing severing doesn't work on
a physical perspective because of the way that

439
00:30:51.759 --> 00:30:53.720
our memories are sort of anyways,
our short term memories are sort of electrically,

440
00:30:53.759 --> 00:30:56.720
in our long term restored chemically,
you would need the severing process is

441
00:30:56.759 --> 00:31:00.759
surgery only makes loose sense. You're
what they had to be turning on as

442
00:31:00.759 --> 00:31:07.599
a decoder that writes encrypted RNA,
right, And that actually means that the

443
00:31:07.720 --> 00:31:11.920
that the rejoined process that they talk
about can't work, that that you can't

444
00:31:11.000 --> 00:31:15.279
join ever join the two because what
it is, it's an encryption chip that

445
00:31:15.359 --> 00:31:18.039
actually encrypts your RNA. That it's
that's long term memory storage, right,

446
00:31:18.279 --> 00:31:25.839
that's the but like you would also
lose all of your other non nonlinear memories

447
00:31:25.920 --> 00:31:29.920
if you if you couldn't access the
language. You forget how to walk if

448
00:31:29.960 --> 00:31:32.440
you write, and so yeah,
like in all science fiction, there's a

449
00:31:32.519 --> 00:31:36.960
level of you just have to accept
the scientific leaf that's been created. And

450
00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:37.920
the show is very good, so
you don't have any trouble with that.

451
00:31:37.920 --> 00:31:41.359
That's kind of an aside. But
yet, let's talk about her character more,

452
00:31:41.400 --> 00:31:45.720
because I think this is the one
where it's not coincidentally. I think

453
00:31:45.720 --> 00:31:48.640
it's brilliant writing that the ny is
fighting against it the most. And then

454
00:31:48.680 --> 00:31:52.200
as we find out the Audie is
could we find out is that the Audi

455
00:31:53.200 --> 00:31:57.160
is the daughter of this and she
volunteered specifically as a way to be like,

456
00:31:57.200 --> 00:32:00.319
look, I did it. It's
not so bad. Yeah, as

457
00:32:00.359 --> 00:32:04.480
a public relations campaign. And that's
the one of the things that they that

458
00:32:04.559 --> 00:32:08.160
the show tries to demonstrate is the
thing that leaks back and forth is strength

459
00:32:08.200 --> 00:32:15.480
of character, right, is the
foundational bedrock of who you are as a

460
00:32:15.519 --> 00:32:22.880
person. And so she is an
arrogant social climber on the outside, right,

461
00:32:22.880 --> 00:32:25.960
and on the inside she's not allowed
to do that. There's no prospects

462
00:32:25.960 --> 00:32:31.319
for advancement, right, and she
does not want to be constrained by this

463
00:32:31.400 --> 00:32:37.640
artificial world where she will only ever
meet seven people, right, And so

464
00:32:37.759 --> 00:32:43.119
she wants the only the only control
she wants to take is the one control

465
00:32:43.160 --> 00:32:46.359
that she can't have, which is
to end what's going on. And so

466
00:32:46.400 --> 00:32:52.079
she's a she's a control freak in
both in both places, right, And

467
00:32:52.759 --> 00:32:58.440
so she I would say that any
control freak seems pretty strong for what I

468
00:32:58.440 --> 00:33:01.119
think is a very like natural desire
to have any control. But I get

469
00:33:01.160 --> 00:33:05.599
your point that her, well,
her desire took her frustration at not being

470
00:33:05.640 --> 00:33:08.480
able to control her situation. It
makes sense that would be worse for her

471
00:33:08.519 --> 00:33:16.160
than it's for everyone else, right, And she doesn't have a Gandhi esque

472
00:33:16.200 --> 00:33:21.279
work stoppage kind of like brain.
She thinks that the only way to have

473
00:33:21.319 --> 00:33:24.079
control of the situation is to actively
engage with it and control it. Right.

474
00:33:24.400 --> 00:33:29.200
So she could sit at the computer
and refuse to work, right,

475
00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:34.799
But she doesn't. She could just
do nothing, right, And what are

476
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:37.400
they going to do? They can't
there's no physical punishment that they can do

477
00:33:37.440 --> 00:33:40.839
to her, right, because it
would leak up to the outside. And

478
00:33:42.039 --> 00:33:43.880
she would just say, all right, I'm just gonna sit and there to

479
00:33:43.880 --> 00:33:46.960
waal freight hours. And she doesn't, and said she learns the job and

480
00:33:47.039 --> 00:33:52.200
learns to work in part because the
other people in the department, the other

481
00:33:52.240 --> 00:33:55.160
three people. That's what they do, and that's what humans do, is

482
00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:59.279
they kind of go along with the
social morays of the group that they're in,

483
00:34:00.160 --> 00:34:04.319
right, nobody see like they all
have to get together in order to

484
00:34:04.480 --> 00:34:09.960
be revolutionary. And again play on
this and again there's incredibly well done.

485
00:34:10.199 --> 00:34:15.559
You sort of you know, screwing
in someone's mind that the punishment they do

486
00:34:15.079 --> 00:34:19.039
is basically taking them to this dark
room where they have to read an apology

487
00:34:19.119 --> 00:34:22.079
about how sorry they are that they
let down everyone. You know, it's

488
00:34:22.199 --> 00:34:29.480
very much this like it's communalism in
the most abusive, disturbing way, where

489
00:34:29.480 --> 00:34:32.639
it's you're gonna want to conform because
everyone else is doing this thing and if

490
00:34:32.639 --> 00:34:37.119
you get out of line, we're
gonna make you feel guilty. Yeah,

491
00:34:37.280 --> 00:34:40.840
well, it's religious and like a
lot of it has strong religious overtones.

492
00:34:42.199 --> 00:34:45.840
You were going to say the Rosary
until you believe it. It's how that

493
00:34:45.880 --> 00:34:53.599
felt money, right, and it's
and the like, No, you must

494
00:34:53.639 --> 00:34:58.159
say the exact words. You can't
actually talk about the depth of feeling that

495
00:34:58.239 --> 00:35:02.480
you have. You must say these
exact words until you believe these exact words,

496
00:35:04.039 --> 00:35:07.039
or until I feel confident that you
believe these exact words. It's not

497
00:35:07.079 --> 00:35:10.239
even them again with the technology,
they have them hooked up to a lie

498
00:35:10.239 --> 00:35:15.559
detector kind of thing that in theory
can test their sincerity. Yeah, and

499
00:35:16.159 --> 00:35:21.880
she claims to have kind of beaten
it by lying. But but let's get

500
00:35:21.920 --> 00:35:24.880
too so so that's her any we
then jump back and we learned that her

501
00:35:24.920 --> 00:35:30.679
Audie is doing all these horrible things. And let's kind of look at because

502
00:35:30.800 --> 00:35:35.320
my understanding is that the audi,
like it's one thing if you tell yourself

503
00:35:35.360 --> 00:35:40.239
that I honestly believe that this technology
is ethical and right, and it's then

504
00:35:40.239 --> 00:35:43.400
that the Indias have a great time. And I'm going to show that.

505
00:35:44.480 --> 00:35:46.639
But one thing that we know,
and like the show doesn't make this explicitly

506
00:35:46.679 --> 00:35:50.840
clear, but the pieces are all
there for you to put this together,

507
00:35:51.679 --> 00:35:55.760
is that we know that the Audie
knew how much the Indie was suffering.

508
00:35:55.800 --> 00:35:59.920
The Audie had like dealt with having
a bruise on her neck from when the

509
00:36:00.039 --> 00:36:04.360
and he tried to alive herself with
rope. It will not just that she

510
00:36:04.559 --> 00:36:12.719
felt it, because the way that
the like warning for warning for self harm

511
00:36:12.840 --> 00:36:19.280
here. The actual process that she
uses is she do she takes a computer

512
00:36:19.639 --> 00:36:28.119
power cord and attempts to hang herself
in the elevator right on the way up

513
00:36:28.480 --> 00:36:31.599
to turn back into her audie.
Right, So she turns back in the

514
00:36:31.599 --> 00:36:37.280
middle of it happening, right,
so her Audie gets to feel that process.

515
00:36:37.360 --> 00:36:40.119
It isn't just she wakes up with
the bruise. Yeah, it's she

516
00:36:40.159 --> 00:36:45.239
wakes up being hung So so we
know. But yet we get to the

517
00:36:45.280 --> 00:36:52.000
point where they're at this gala,
so the audie is fully ready to say

518
00:36:52.719 --> 00:36:57.480
that it's not a big deal,
it's not a problem. She is the

519
00:36:57.519 --> 00:37:01.320
one person among all the people she's
working with who knows absolutely that's a lie.

520
00:37:01.519 --> 00:37:08.760
Yeah, they viscerally, right,
She's gotten notes and videos and like

521
00:37:08.960 --> 00:37:14.199
physical threats of self harm and then
actual attempts to self harm. And then

522
00:37:14.320 --> 00:37:17.920
her response is what they did is
they took all of their panopticon surveillance and

523
00:37:17.960 --> 00:37:22.719
then showed only the good bits,
right, Yeah, the bits where she

524
00:37:22.880 --> 00:37:28.280
is being happy or finding what kind
of happiness she can in the situation.

525
00:37:28.920 --> 00:37:32.519
Right, And it is it's one
of those you can edit if you have

526
00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:37.840
if you have six months of someone's
life, you can edit them to look

527
00:37:37.840 --> 00:37:40.519
like whatever you want. Right.
It's the trick of reality TV. You

528
00:37:40.599 --> 00:37:45.519
can you can build a plot from
nowhere just from people talking in a house,

529
00:37:45.960 --> 00:37:49.760
even if they're really bad at having
any kind of structure or coherence or

530
00:37:49.760 --> 00:37:51.880
anything. Right. You can make
anyone in the villain, and you can

531
00:37:51.880 --> 00:37:54.599
make anyone to hear what you do
and don't show right exactly, And so

532
00:37:54.960 --> 00:38:00.239
that's what they do. They're just
we're going to edit this, and it

533
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:07.480
is appalling right now that like knowing
what you do from the perspective of having

534
00:38:07.480 --> 00:38:10.599
built all this time building empathy for
the any Helly and then seeing what her

535
00:38:10.639 --> 00:38:17.199
Audie actually wants out of the situation
is like it is when you get to

536
00:38:17.199 --> 00:38:22.000
that bit in the in the ninth
episode, you're like, oh, you

537
00:38:22.119 --> 00:38:29.159
are You are the villain. And
I think it's really powerful because so much

538
00:38:29.199 --> 00:38:31.639
of what the show is about is
about compassion. Yeah, when it doesn't

539
00:38:31.679 --> 00:38:37.880
doesn't happen, and how the Any's
build compassion for each other, and so

540
00:38:37.960 --> 00:38:42.679
much of what they're trying to do
is based on an idea of if you

541
00:38:42.800 --> 00:38:45.519
knew how much I was suffering,
you would have sympathy and make it stop.

542
00:38:45.679 --> 00:38:50.599
Yes. And as someone who's a
polit political organizer and an activist and

543
00:38:50.639 --> 00:38:54.119
social justice an activist, I've been
so for twenty five years. This is

544
00:38:54.159 --> 00:38:58.239
often one of the hardest things for
people to recognize is I think often there's

545
00:38:58.239 --> 00:39:00.960
a sense of like, if we
just help people how much this oppressed group

546
00:39:01.079 --> 00:39:05.280
is suffering, then they're going to
want to make it stop, because compassion

547
00:39:05.320 --> 00:39:07.880
is always going to win out,
and I think that it should. But

548
00:39:07.960 --> 00:39:13.199
I think the lessons of history are
that often we it is very easy for

549
00:39:13.199 --> 00:39:15.239
the human mind and even more so
for human community is when they're in this

550
00:39:15.360 --> 00:39:19.679
kind of like let's all go along
to get along kind of a way to

551
00:39:19.719 --> 00:39:23.679
find ways to either rationalize it a
way that owner they're not really suffering that

552
00:39:23.960 --> 00:39:27.920
or to say that you know,
oh they are suffering, but it's their

553
00:39:27.920 --> 00:39:30.280
own choices. If they didn't make
those choices, they would suffer, or

554
00:39:30.320 --> 00:39:37.079
that they're suffering is acceptable towards this
larger good. Yeah, and you know,

555
00:39:37.320 --> 00:39:40.599
I am. We're gonna be talking
about the show, but like I'm

556
00:39:40.639 --> 00:39:44.760
saying this all on trans Day of
Remembrance at a time when like all those

557
00:39:44.800 --> 00:39:47.559
things are happening in that particular community. But you can apply that today community.

558
00:39:47.559 --> 00:39:51.639
You know, I think and in
some ways I think what the show

559
00:39:51.679 --> 00:39:52.920
is doing is just saying it about
office workers in general. You know,

560
00:39:52.960 --> 00:39:57.519
if you just listen to all the
conversations that happened around you know, the

561
00:39:57.559 --> 00:40:00.960
great resignation in twenty nineteen, or
you know, the why can't I find

562
00:40:00.960 --> 00:40:04.599
anyone to work? It often feels
like there's just such a fundamental lack of

563
00:40:04.639 --> 00:40:07.239
compassion that people have of not understanding
why all this is going on, right,

564
00:40:07.320 --> 00:40:16.000
And like the large media is some
of them are okay, but many

565
00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:21.679
of them are complicit in doing this
to office workers. And like, like

566
00:40:21.719 --> 00:40:23.800
you said, this is marginalized groups
in general. They're using office workers because

567
00:40:23.840 --> 00:40:28.559
everybody can kind of like get it
right, Yeah, but this is not

568
00:40:28.840 --> 00:40:31.960
This isn't a show about office workers. You could call this a workplace drama,

569
00:40:32.159 --> 00:40:37.199
right if you wanted to interaccurately describe
a show to somebody. This is

570
00:40:37.239 --> 00:40:42.440
a workplace drama about people that sort
numbers. Which I will just say when

571
00:40:42.440 --> 00:40:46.239
you first suggested it, I've heard
people talk about severance. I've much more

572
00:40:46.280 --> 00:40:51.320
heard people talk about succession. Oh
and I got two mixed up, But

573
00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:53.840
I was like, that seems like
an odd thing for the science fiction friend

574
00:40:53.840 --> 00:40:57.920
of mine who want to talk about
Sure, Yeah, I haven't gotten enough

575
00:40:57.920 --> 00:41:00.800
seaun to rhymes in my life.
I'm ready at this. It's fine.

576
00:41:00.639 --> 00:41:04.719
I've heard really good things about Secession. I haven't watched it, but like,

577
00:41:04.719 --> 00:41:06.800
I watched this show and I was
like this, this was like a

578
00:41:06.840 --> 00:41:09.559
bolt of lightning in my spot.
And it was like, either Matthew was

579
00:41:09.599 --> 00:41:14.480
going to say this show is is
it me? Or is going to be

580
00:41:14.519 --> 00:41:17.639
in the same mode. And so
here's here's a meta thing that I think

581
00:41:17.719 --> 00:41:23.199
is fascinating is that so much of
the show is it is about that sort

582
00:41:23.199 --> 00:41:27.840
of horrible part of corporate America and
corporate in general, but especially here in

583
00:41:27.880 --> 00:41:34.360
America where where it is everything is
very anonymous and scrubbed clean, and the

584
00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:37.480
aesthetic is super and a number of
people have pointed out like this aesthetic will

585
00:41:37.519 --> 00:41:43.840
look very familiar if you've walked into
an Apple store yep. And also that

586
00:41:43.920 --> 00:41:47.280
there's a huge cult of personality that
I think none of its borders on religion,

587
00:41:47.320 --> 00:41:52.280
but is quite religious. It is
religious towards the Sounds Company. Yeah,

588
00:41:52.360 --> 00:41:55.039
one of the people has a little
shrine to him. Yeah, Kier

589
00:41:55.119 --> 00:42:00.960
Egan, which the last person I'm
remember where that really happened was was a

590
00:42:01.000 --> 00:42:07.199
guy named Steve Jobs. Yeah,
so my question is, why the hell

591
00:42:07.360 --> 00:42:10.880
is this on Apple TV? Well, that's a bit. There are so

592
00:42:10.960 --> 00:42:16.199
many There are so many shows that
are like that, Like why is The

593
00:42:16.360 --> 00:42:21.159
Boys on Amazon? Right? Yeah? That's like, yeah, that's actually

594
00:42:21.159 --> 00:42:24.280
that's another good one. Yeah,
or or Invincible, like both of those

595
00:42:24.280 --> 00:42:30.840
are on Amazon? Why, like
and so boys who haven't seen it,

596
00:42:30.840 --> 00:42:35.639
By the way, it's basically about
the amazonification of superhero superheroes. Yeah,

597
00:42:35.679 --> 00:42:44.519
and so like these because these companies
they aren't guided by a principle of like

598
00:42:44.679 --> 00:42:47.360
doing things that make them look good
or self preservation. They're guided by what

599
00:42:47.519 --> 00:42:52.320
makes the lmighty dollar. Right.
Well, and so here I have two

600
00:42:52.360 --> 00:42:55.280
stories, two theories, one cynical, one a little bit happy. The

601
00:42:55.360 --> 00:43:00.559
happy theory is that again, like
because we can't sever workers yet, some

602
00:43:00.599 --> 00:43:05.039
of the people involved are kind of
like, look, how much can we

603
00:43:05.079 --> 00:43:07.840
critique our bosses without our bosses noticing, you know, and like that's been

604
00:43:07.880 --> 00:43:10.960
going on, I mean for all
time. Or they have some boss that's

605
00:43:12.000 --> 00:43:15.000
also on the same page and shields
them, right, yeah, exactly,

606
00:43:15.079 --> 00:43:16.880
exactly, And that again, like
you wish you could sever that boss,

607
00:43:16.920 --> 00:43:19.880
but you can't, and that's why
this boss will let them do it.

608
00:43:20.880 --> 00:43:25.639
Or but the flip side of it
being like propaganda has often always involved like,

609
00:43:25.719 --> 00:43:29.760
oh, hey, yeah, we'll
we'll take some punches, like we'll

610
00:43:29.800 --> 00:43:34.280
put out something that's critical of us
so that you think that you don't notice

611
00:43:34.280 --> 00:43:37.679
all the other things that we're suppressing. That I'm we were critical about ourselves

612
00:43:37.679 --> 00:43:42.400
here. That means you can trust
us over there, right exactly. So

613
00:43:43.000 --> 00:43:45.079
that's a whole other kind of dystopian
thinking that in our own world, right,

614
00:43:45.119 --> 00:43:49.039
And I'd be curious to hear people
speculations of which side is happening here.

615
00:43:49.280 --> 00:43:52.800
But it was just the degree to
which it was not only like big

616
00:43:52.840 --> 00:43:59.639
corporate business in general, but Apple
specific that was so baffling till The design

617
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:05.400
mites of the show, to get
back into review territory are top notch.

618
00:44:06.039 --> 00:44:10.159
The I'm a mechanical keyboards geek and
when they when they panned over to the

619
00:44:10.239 --> 00:44:14.000
keyboards for the first time on their
terminals, I paused it and I was

620
00:44:14.039 --> 00:44:19.880
like, I recognized this keyboard.
Yeah right. This is modeled on the

621
00:44:20.880 --> 00:44:27.039
the Dasher, which is a famous
terminal keyboard from the nineteen seventies and eighties,

622
00:44:27.440 --> 00:44:30.199
and I was like, I wonder
did they use off the shelf key

623
00:44:30.199 --> 00:44:32.960
caps, because you can buy key
caps nowadays that match it. And I

624
00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:36.840
went and looked, and as it
turns out, so the funniest part of

625
00:44:36.840 --> 00:44:38.119
the first episode was when I get
to the end of the episode and it

626
00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:45.039
says directed by Ben Stiller and all
the tension from this tight like episode.

627
00:44:45.199 --> 00:44:47.159
I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I was like, ben Stiller directed

628
00:44:47.199 --> 00:44:50.920
this. Well, turns out he
knows how to run a show. And

629
00:44:51.239 --> 00:44:53.000
then people tweeted it ben Stiller.
They're like, hey, these key caps

630
00:44:53.039 --> 00:44:58.800
don't match the commercial ones that are
made that are that are from the Dasher

631
00:44:58.840 --> 00:45:00.320
And he goes, oh, we
made our own custom keycaps and you cannot

632
00:45:00.360 --> 00:45:07.280
buy them. Yeah, and so
and like they understand these details right and

633
00:45:07.440 --> 00:45:09.239
so much. And they say at
one point that the technology is this way

634
00:45:09.280 --> 00:45:14.559
to sort of comfort people, but
yeah, it's it's like cathode ray monitors.

635
00:45:14.559 --> 00:45:17.440
They're not flat screen. The technology
is not really windows. It's like

636
00:45:17.480 --> 00:45:22.199
a mouse over just text on a
screen. No one has cell phones or

637
00:45:22.320 --> 00:45:28.079
kind of devices like that. It's
all very old school, and let's talk

638
00:45:28.159 --> 00:45:32.400
more about the founder. And again
here I'm yeah, yeah, because it's

639
00:45:32.400 --> 00:45:36.079
not just review. But I think
this is important again because going to what's

640
00:45:36.079 --> 00:45:40.480
the show saying about religions and cults? You talked about how it um didn't

641
00:45:40.519 --> 00:45:44.599
all it didn't on the surface,
it does not listen to make sense until

642
00:45:44.599 --> 00:45:47.320
you really do some deep digging as
to what they're doing with the data.

643
00:45:47.199 --> 00:45:50.719
Yeah, it's still not explained.
But and you may have picked up on

644
00:45:50.719 --> 00:45:52.039
this, but let me just share
it with the readers, with the listeners,

645
00:45:52.159 --> 00:45:55.800
because I didn't pick up on this
until I read this incredible article.

646
00:45:55.880 --> 00:46:02.719
It's called twenty burning severance Questions we
have after that finale. It's by Nicole

647
00:46:02.960 --> 00:46:08.119
Gallucci. I think it's on ummashable
dot com. Share it. It looks

648
00:46:08.199 --> 00:46:12.039
very much like it's just a like, you know, click at right.

649
00:46:12.159 --> 00:46:15.519
Yeah, but it actually but it
draws some great connections that I hadn't realized.

650
00:46:15.559 --> 00:46:17.199
I'm just gonna read from it.
Um. So, first of all,

651
00:46:17.639 --> 00:46:21.320
one of the things that we find
I'm gonna read some parts, but

652
00:46:21.320 --> 00:46:23.760
I almost gonna paraphrase here. So
one of the things we've learned about Kayer

653
00:46:23.840 --> 00:46:30.880
Egan is that his statue explains that
there are four tempers that define human beings.

654
00:46:32.000 --> 00:46:37.320
They're woe, frolic, dread,
and malice. Yes, um,

655
00:46:37.519 --> 00:46:39.440
and this was all like from eagle
eyed read people who like posted and found

656
00:46:39.480 --> 00:46:47.239
it in that computer thing. They're
dropping the numbers into four boxes which have

657
00:46:47.360 --> 00:46:52.199
the numbers which have the letters on
them. WO for woe, FC for

658
00:46:52.199 --> 00:46:58.199
frolic, d R for dread,
and m a form malice. So already

659
00:46:58.239 --> 00:47:00.280
that's part of the connection. And
then here I'm just going to read this

660
00:47:00.320 --> 00:47:05.719
paragraph about the waffle party that you
described. Yes, as known above,

661
00:47:06.280 --> 00:47:10.960
the party features people in masks that
resemble the four tempers that Burton Ivy meet.

662
00:47:12.000 --> 00:47:15.840
Cute painting. So there's a two
other characters who are these two older

663
00:47:15.840 --> 00:47:17.960
men who are it turns are inured. Yes, I don't know they're gay

664
00:47:19.000 --> 00:47:22.079
or bibe, but they're inchuring in
each other and they have a budding romance

665
00:47:22.119 --> 00:47:24.960
which are comment on a second.
But they kind of meet over a painting

666
00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:30.079
that has these same four and it's
two women, a jester and a horned

667
00:47:30.079 --> 00:47:34.719
goat slash ram. Going back to
reading, They dance in front of the

668
00:47:34.719 --> 00:47:38.000
refiner of the quarter, who also
wears a mask of Kier and sits on

669
00:47:38.119 --> 00:47:45.079
Ker's bed with a cat of nine
tails whip that has nine core principles painted

670
00:47:45.159 --> 00:47:49.679
on each tail. Vision, verve, wit, cheer, humility, benevolence,

671
00:47:49.800 --> 00:47:53.320
nimbless, property, and wiles.
And to me, that's when a

672
00:47:53.360 --> 00:47:59.480
show truly becomes incredible when it seems
like a lot of the show is incredibly

673
00:47:59.480 --> 00:48:05.159
absurd, but instead of like everything
that seems absurdest has a point, yes,

674
00:48:05.320 --> 00:48:07.320
you know. And when I when
I put all that together from reading

675
00:48:07.320 --> 00:48:09.880
it and people we put it together
from watching it or their own research,

676
00:48:09.920 --> 00:48:14.960
I was just like, okay,
so we're going so deep here on everything

677
00:48:15.079 --> 00:48:19.800
is pointing towards this religious ideology that
this guy has. He's pulling everyone into.

678
00:48:20.719 --> 00:48:24.760
Yeah, and the kere he like, they have hymns to him,

679
00:48:25.480 --> 00:48:30.320
right, And when they go up
the manual that's on the wall, they

680
00:48:30.360 --> 00:48:31.760
have it in a little nook,
right, and he pulls it off the

681
00:48:31.800 --> 00:48:36.159
wall and it's printed on the same
paper that you get from a Bible,

682
00:48:36.239 --> 00:48:40.000
right, that's super thin like.
And so they they're working hard to make

683
00:48:40.039 --> 00:48:45.599
it clear that they have constructed a
religion inside of this this building. And

684
00:48:45.840 --> 00:48:54.920
the priests do not believe and that's
clear because so there's the managers are not

685
00:48:55.000 --> 00:49:00.159
severed, right, and they know
the outside and they know the inside.

686
00:49:00.639 --> 00:49:05.760
But the question is Milchick, what
is he? Right, he's he takes

687
00:49:05.800 --> 00:49:08.800
those you don't know, he's the
he's the kind of supervisor of them.

688
00:49:08.840 --> 00:49:12.800
But really, as you, we're
not. He never looks at their work.

689
00:49:12.920 --> 00:49:15.480
He's just looking at how well they're
interacting with each other. Right.

690
00:49:15.519 --> 00:49:20.760
He rewards them, He gives them
like the waffle party is the jazz dance

691
00:49:20.800 --> 00:49:23.960
party. He does. He never
reviews their work. He is a manager

692
00:49:24.079 --> 00:49:28.840
in what like a corporate setting,
would be the optimal manager, a manager

693
00:49:28.840 --> 00:49:31.280
who knows nothing about what you do
and reviews you as a person and keeps

694
00:49:31.360 --> 00:49:37.719
you happy and healthy and safe.
Right. I'm not even sure what his

695
00:49:37.840 --> 00:49:42.760
title is, right, because he's
not chief of security. Somebody else's chief

696
00:49:42.760 --> 00:49:47.280
of security. Their actual direct manager
is Um Corbell right, Right, Milchick

697
00:49:47.440 --> 00:49:52.320
is just the hand of Egan,
right, Yeah, and the Um.

698
00:49:52.400 --> 00:49:55.239
I don't know if you caught this. He's got a tattoo on the back

699
00:49:55.280 --> 00:49:59.960
of his hand that shows up under
black light. Oh I didn't see that.

700
00:50:00.280 --> 00:50:05.119
Oh, it's when when he's bandaging, when he when he's bandaging,

701
00:50:05.480 --> 00:50:08.519
um, Helli's arm right when it's
covered with blood. He is black light

702
00:50:08.519 --> 00:50:12.960
to see whether or not there's blood
around, right, Oh on a tattoo

703
00:50:13.039 --> 00:50:15.480
and a glowing tattoo under black light
is on the back of his hand.

704
00:50:16.119 --> 00:50:19.199
This is one of the shows that
I'm sure it is gonna get so much

705
00:50:19.239 --> 00:50:22.000
better when you rewatch it a third, fourth, and fifth. Yeah,

706
00:50:22.039 --> 00:50:24.039
I did a rewatch and ruth that
I caught that. We're like, what

707
00:50:24.280 --> 00:50:29.639
is he a construct? Because he's
perfect right, not a hair out of

708
00:50:29.639 --> 00:50:34.119
place ever, and he's always smiling
except when he is called on to be

709
00:50:34.199 --> 00:50:37.920
angry. Right. And we do
know that there's another character who for most

710
00:50:37.920 --> 00:50:43.159
of the show we only know as
Gemma. She also looks perfect. She's

711
00:50:43.400 --> 00:50:50.159
kind of like like the hr hired
therapist who's very like she's there to help

712
00:50:50.199 --> 00:50:52.280
you, but she's also there to
report on you. It's kind of freaky.

713
00:50:52.599 --> 00:50:57.000
And we find out that she,
as she understands it, she has

714
00:50:57.039 --> 00:51:00.320
also been severed, but that she
only exists in this stage, and she

715
00:51:00.360 --> 00:51:06.199
describes herself that she's been alive for
like less than fifty hours at the end,

716
00:51:06.239 --> 00:51:09.000
one hundred and seven hours and eight
of them were on a single day

717
00:51:09.000 --> 00:51:13.360
where she was called to directly oversee
them, right, and that was long

718
00:51:13.480 --> 00:51:16.320
time she was awake, So this
guy might be another person like her.

719
00:51:16.960 --> 00:51:21.159
Of course, at the very end
we also find out that as far as

720
00:51:21.199 --> 00:51:25.039
we can tell, she looks exactly
like Mark's wife who we were told was

721
00:51:25.159 --> 00:51:30.480
killed, who by the way,
it's dropped that she was she went to

722
00:51:30.639 --> 00:51:35.000
a Loomin owned hospital. Yes,
so all these things tied together, But

723
00:51:35.039 --> 00:51:37.880
just on the religion point, there
is one person who we know does believe,

724
00:51:37.880 --> 00:51:42.400
which is Kobel, who's who's to
the nies. This is the person

725
00:51:42.440 --> 00:51:45.639
who's in charge of everything. Yes, but we also know that as an

726
00:51:45.639 --> 00:51:49.039
Audi, they live next to Mark
as an Audi, who Mark of course

727
00:51:49.079 --> 00:51:52.920
doesn't realize this, and she literally
has a shrine to him. And so

728
00:51:52.960 --> 00:51:59.440
I think supposed to think that to
some extent this religion exists outside And again

729
00:51:59.480 --> 00:52:00.840
we're getting into theory, but like
you, we can talk about the religion

730
00:52:00.880 --> 00:52:05.039
side of it. I think I
think we're supposed to think is that the

731
00:52:05.159 --> 00:52:10.440
daughter, at least Hellie, that
her Autie very much believes in this as

732
00:52:10.440 --> 00:52:15.360
well. Because that's that's because you
have to sort of wonder what's the reason

733
00:52:15.400 --> 00:52:19.679
for this, Like it can't just
be for money, but that if there's

734
00:52:19.679 --> 00:52:22.760
some sort of religious overtoned why they
are willing to let these anies suffer,

735
00:52:23.960 --> 00:52:29.400
right, and they like, we
don't know what the ultimate goal of what

736
00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:31.639
they do there is. There's different
departments that do different things, but they're

737
00:52:31.639 --> 00:52:38.440
all deliberately mysterious, right and running
a counter principles and they they prepare things

738
00:52:38.599 --> 00:52:45.280
for big gatherings up top, and
they like they make art and they place

739
00:52:45.360 --> 00:52:50.239
art around the halls for you know, the enrichment of the severed. There's

740
00:52:50.280 --> 00:52:54.119
there's someone who's raising baby goats and
that's never explained, right, which I

741
00:52:54.159 --> 00:52:57.679
will say, by the way,
and I don't know if this is just

742
00:52:57.719 --> 00:53:00.760
a little thing that's slipped by the
writing or it's going to be even more

743
00:53:00.760 --> 00:53:07.199
resolved. What we learn from that
is that there are severalle people doing work

744
00:53:07.320 --> 00:53:09.360
at least as far as we know, does seem falsifiable. Like if you're

745
00:53:09.360 --> 00:53:14.320
supposed to be keeping baby goats and
the baby goats die, yeah, yeah,

746
00:53:14.360 --> 00:53:17.280
yeah, your jobs some jobs that
they have there are not bullshit jobs.

747
00:53:17.360 --> 00:53:21.800
Raising goats is a job where you
can see the direct consequences of your

748
00:53:21.840 --> 00:53:24.320
actions. Um. Sorry, I
don't know how much I'm allowed to swear,

749
00:53:24.559 --> 00:53:28.280
but I will just beat you out
of there. As some types of

750
00:53:28.360 --> 00:53:36.119
jobs that are there are that are
bulls right, their nonsense jobs they do

751
00:53:36.280 --> 00:53:37.800
in the real world, they exist, right, there's all sorts of people

752
00:53:37.800 --> 00:53:45.159
that do paper, pushy jobs that
like the their jobs that exist for purposes

753
00:53:45.159 --> 00:53:49.679
that aren't about productivity, that aren't
about producing a contangible thing at the end,

754
00:53:49.880 --> 00:53:52.880
or even a good social thing at
the end, right, and or

755
00:53:52.960 --> 00:53:59.519
where you're so far separated from the
actual thing you're like that you are not

756
00:53:59.559 --> 00:54:01.440
able to see any value. And
it might be that right the highest look,

757
00:54:01.920 --> 00:54:07.039
you'll see a tiny flavor of value
in a bureaucratic nonsense, but as

758
00:54:07.039 --> 00:54:09.760
the person doing the work, you
have no tangible sense of what's the value

759
00:54:09.760 --> 00:54:13.519
on the right. And so it'll
be somebody like um, there, there'll

760
00:54:13.519 --> 00:54:16.320
be somebody at a corporate level that
wants a particular report to exist, and

761
00:54:16.360 --> 00:54:20.840
so they assign this task out to
a team, and the manager that team

762
00:54:20.880 --> 00:54:23.440
assigns that to a person and that's
that person's whole job is compiling this report.

763
00:54:23.679 --> 00:54:28.159
Takes so much time. They put
all sorts of data they have to

764
00:54:28.199 --> 00:54:30.920
do all this stuff from all these
different sources, and they produce this report

765
00:54:30.960 --> 00:54:32.400
and they send it off and they
never see what the consequences, so they

766
00:54:32.440 --> 00:54:35.800
have no feedback on whether or not
they did well or poorly. Just this

767
00:54:35.840 --> 00:54:39.320
report existed. The corporate person gets
it and they reviewed it for a little

768
00:54:39.320 --> 00:54:44.960
while, and then that that sea
level person rotates up for a new sea

769
00:54:45.039 --> 00:54:49.559
level. Right they get they get
up and outed, or they move to

770
00:54:49.599 --> 00:54:52.440
a different company. Somebody else comes
into the position, and the report continues

771
00:54:52.480 --> 00:54:57.360
to be produced. Right, A
sea level person asked for this and put

772
00:54:57.400 --> 00:55:00.679
no en date on it, and
the new sea level person never looks at

773
00:55:00.679 --> 00:55:04.400
the report. They don't know what
it's for. They think it's for some

774
00:55:04.559 --> 00:55:07.679
department underneath them. Right, it's
obviously an important report. Somebody's spending time

775
00:55:07.679 --> 00:55:09.840
on it, but they never review
it because they're too busy. They don't

776
00:55:09.840 --> 00:55:14.000
know what it's for, they don't
need it, and so this report goes

777
00:55:14.000 --> 00:55:17.400
into the void. Somebody is spending
forty hours every week to produce nothing.

778
00:55:19.159 --> 00:55:22.679
Yeah, because no one ever looks
at this. And that is common in

779
00:55:22.760 --> 00:55:27.280
large companies that you have, You'll
have things like this that are that are

780
00:55:27.360 --> 00:55:30.000
you know what would you say you
do here, right? And so,

781
00:55:30.239 --> 00:55:34.320
But then next to them, in
the same department, they have somebody who

782
00:55:34.480 --> 00:55:39.559
is literally just compiling the quarterly forecast
reports and they need those, right,

783
00:55:39.639 --> 00:55:44.800
or who is doing accounts receivable collecting
money from that's coming in from there from

784
00:55:44.800 --> 00:55:46.239
the people that are the money.
They're sitting next to each other. They

785
00:55:46.239 --> 00:55:51.280
have the same job title, and
one of them is doing really productive,

786
00:55:51.360 --> 00:55:53.719
useful work for the company that has
real, real end states, and they're

787
00:55:53.760 --> 00:55:59.079
doing something that looks like work but
is not real work. It's nothing.

788
00:55:59.639 --> 00:56:02.679
Yeah, and so some of the
jobs and you can't tell from the inside

789
00:56:02.719 --> 00:56:07.400
which is which, right, this
sea level reads their reports, this one

790
00:56:07.440 --> 00:56:10.119
doesn't. The two people next to
each other, like do the same work,

791
00:56:12.679 --> 00:56:15.320
and those are gonna be those aren't
fixed, you know, those are

792
00:56:15.320 --> 00:56:17.239
gonna change. Like the report that
got ignored for five people, Maybe next

793
00:56:17.239 --> 00:56:20.880
person's gonna pay or maybe the next
person's gonna say, hey, I wish

794
00:56:20.880 --> 00:56:22.840
we had this report because no one
realizes they do have the report. Yeah.

795
00:56:23.159 --> 00:56:27.960
Yeah, and so it's it's commentary
on all that. Like you said,

796
00:56:27.960 --> 00:56:30.599
there's the question that gets asked about, like what do you do all

797
00:56:30.679 --> 00:56:34.679
day? It's another part of this
and they comment on and at first they

798
00:56:34.760 --> 00:56:37.559
do this in a way that seems
like it's being sympathetic to the severed.

799
00:56:37.599 --> 00:56:40.400
Because you see Mark at dinner parties, you know, where people ask,

800
00:56:40.400 --> 00:56:44.159
well, what do you do all
day? He's like and he can't answer,

801
00:56:44.400 --> 00:56:47.119
right, And that is something that
I really feel, because I think

802
00:56:47.199 --> 00:56:52.719
that's a like. I'm someone who's
gone through unemployment at various points in my

803
00:56:52.760 --> 00:56:54.920
life. I was in disability for
a while. I'm now in a position

804
00:56:54.960 --> 00:56:59.599
where I'm trying to build a number
of consulting type things, so I'm not

805
00:56:59.639 --> 00:57:01.000
working anybody else. At least now
I can say, like, here's the

806
00:57:01.039 --> 00:57:06.239
tangible things I'm doing. Right,
I was unemployed, I couldn't and it

807
00:57:06.280 --> 00:57:08.599
made me really aware of how much
like what do I say? How do

808
00:57:08.639 --> 00:57:13.320
I People have been taught that that's
how we make small talk, is that

809
00:57:13.360 --> 00:57:15.159
we all are defined by our jobs
in some way, right, And it's

810
00:57:15.159 --> 00:57:19.480
helped people judge your worth right,
right, It's like, oh, what

811
00:57:19.519 --> 00:57:21.719
do you do? And the worth
is judged by, well, hey,

812
00:57:21.960 --> 00:57:25.000
what what biases can I make based
on the kind of work you do?

813
00:57:25.280 --> 00:57:29.199
And also how interesting is it is
this somebody I want to talk about,

814
00:57:29.239 --> 00:57:31.199
you know, and that like in
spy school and stuff like that, you're

815
00:57:31.239 --> 00:57:35.360
often taught like one of the best
ways to blend in is to have a

816
00:57:35.440 --> 00:57:38.280
job that is that makes sense as
a job, but that no one's going

817
00:57:38.320 --> 00:57:42.199
to want to ask about. Yeah, it's unremarkable. You know, I

818
00:57:42.280 --> 00:57:45.760
am an ac count receivable person.
Nobody wants to talk about a count receivable

819
00:57:45.840 --> 00:57:49.000
never ever. There's literally there was
a meme that was going around for a

820
00:57:49.039 --> 00:57:52.519
long time that was started by an
actor who hated talking about being a struggling

821
00:57:52.559 --> 00:57:57.559
actor, but then got adopted by
the sex work community, and there's a

822
00:57:57.559 --> 00:57:59.800
whole song about it that says,
you know, when someone asks, I

823
00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:01.320
say that I'm an accountant, what
do you do? I do what an

824
00:58:01.320 --> 00:58:04.920
accountant does. Where do you work? I work where an accountant does.

825
00:58:05.480 --> 00:58:07.480
Because no one's interested and it's boring. Um, you know, even though

826
00:58:07.480 --> 00:58:09.840
you're married to an accountanto, I
think her work is quite interesting. But

827
00:58:09.880 --> 00:58:13.920
that's all the story. Well,
but that's also specifically because of where she

828
00:58:14.000 --> 00:58:16.679
works. If she was if she
was an accountant for a large firm,

829
00:58:16.840 --> 00:58:21.440
right, that was just like all
they do is crunch numbers all day for

830
00:58:21.599 --> 00:58:25.800
target or whatever. Nobody cares about
targets accounting department like they are they are

831
00:58:27.199 --> 00:58:30.639
abstract and boring. But she does
work for a nonprofit that's nationwide, like

832
00:58:31.039 --> 00:58:37.800
and so she'll talk about the fact
that her that her company does actual tangible

833
00:58:37.800 --> 00:58:40.239
good work out in the world,
and that she pays tutors to be in

834
00:58:40.320 --> 00:58:45.400
schools, right, and so there's
a direct consequence to her work as an

835
00:58:45.400 --> 00:58:50.360
accountant, as a nonprofit accountant,
right, Yeah, and so but pulling

836
00:58:50.360 --> 00:58:52.679
it back, so totally agree with
all that. But there again, you

837
00:58:52.679 --> 00:58:55.559
know it's there, Like I do
wonder how many people can get to that

838
00:58:55.559 --> 00:59:00.480
part in the conversation because again,
like the accountant, yeah, which put

839
00:59:00.480 --> 00:59:04.599
it back to the religion side of
things. I think it's also really brilliant

840
00:59:04.639 --> 00:59:07.239
and how much this is a commentary
not just on regular work. But I

841
00:59:07.400 --> 00:59:09.360
know, if this is a direction
in a lot of Silicon Valley type of

842
00:59:09.400 --> 00:59:13.440
thing, a lot of tech jobs
are going. As someone who used to

843
00:59:13.440 --> 00:59:16.639
live in Madison, both my partner
and a lot both of my partners ironically,

844
00:59:16.679 --> 00:59:20.159
although they didn't know each other at
the time, but my spouse and

845
00:59:20.239 --> 00:59:22.159
my longness in relationship, but also
a number of my friends all worked for

846
00:59:22.159 --> 00:59:27.199
a company called Epic, and Epic
has been trying very hard to be the

847
00:59:27.239 --> 00:59:31.119
Google of the Midwest. And it's
if you ever used one chart, if

848
00:59:31.119 --> 00:59:34.840
you ever use my chart or anything
like that. Epic is the company that

849
00:59:34.880 --> 00:59:37.119
creates that if you have gone to
a hospital in the United States, you

850
00:59:37.199 --> 00:59:42.280
are something like ninety percent likely to
have interacted with an EPIC. If they

851
00:59:42.320 --> 00:59:45.280
have a very strong lock on the
technology. It's out and it's great technology,

852
00:59:45.320 --> 00:59:50.880
but it's also like they very intentionally
recruit people straight out of college and

853
00:59:51.039 --> 00:59:54.599
pay them a huge amount of money
and then intentionally like they have food on

854
00:59:54.679 --> 00:59:59.800
campus. They have like magic,
the gathering and dungeons and dragons and poetry

855
01:00:00.119 --> 01:00:04.719
and religion and all these things that
happen on the campus because they want you

856
01:00:04.760 --> 01:00:07.280
to never leave the campus and you
are not allowed to live too far away

857
01:00:07.320 --> 01:00:12.079
from them. They actually will tell
you that there's limits on how far you

858
01:00:12.119 --> 01:00:15.280
can travel to get to work every
day. During during COVID, they were

859
01:00:15.280 --> 01:00:19.000
the ones who were there were some
of the first to insist people come back

860
01:00:19.000 --> 01:00:22.800
to the office and not allow because
yeah, and when I interviewed for them,

861
01:00:22.880 --> 01:00:25.800
as someone who had fifteen years of
job experience, it felt like a

862
01:00:25.880 --> 01:00:30.159
cult. And I actually said said
to someone who was interviewing me, like,

863
01:00:30.519 --> 01:00:31.480
I have to say, this feels
kind of like a cult, what's

864
01:00:31.519 --> 01:00:35.880
your response to that? And literally
they said that quote word for word.

865
01:00:36.280 --> 01:00:39.920
I have to be honest, I
bleed epic and it was just like like,

866
01:00:40.000 --> 01:00:45.119
and that's I thought about that all
the time while watching Severance and hearing

867
01:00:45.159 --> 01:00:46.920
these stories about people who, yeah, they get paid very well, but

868
01:00:46.960 --> 01:00:51.880
they're working eighty or ninety hours a
week. I mean, even as I

869
01:00:51.960 --> 01:00:52.880
say it, I think it's very
hard to have sympathy for it. And

870
01:00:52.880 --> 01:00:57.679
I'm not trying to say that I
think these people are often very privileged,

871
01:00:58.119 --> 01:01:00.719
but also that it's it's creating's idea
of work that now we're saying, Okay,

872
01:01:00.760 --> 01:01:04.480
well, if we can do this
to people who are paying huge amounts

873
01:01:04.480 --> 01:01:07.159
of money, why can't we do
that with everybody down the line, you

874
01:01:07.159 --> 01:01:10.159
know you're making far less money.
And it's it's the pizza parties, it's

875
01:01:10.199 --> 01:01:16.360
the recognition, it's that everything.
They want everything to be corporately managed and

876
01:01:16.480 --> 01:01:21.599
corporate so that you're never looking for
outside validation. Yeah, there's a um

877
01:01:22.639 --> 01:01:25.280
a term that I remember from neuromancer
which talks about this. So there's salary

878
01:01:25.320 --> 01:01:29.800
men in Japan that are the same
way, right, but that those all

879
01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:35.000
in one. Cradle to grave companies
are Zaibatsu's in Japan in Japan, and

880
01:01:35.360 --> 01:01:37.440
that is what they want to be. They want to be cradle to grave

881
01:01:37.920 --> 01:01:42.360
that they want you to be a
company a company person from you start,

882
01:01:42.960 --> 01:01:45.280
you start the company, start at
the college, and you're at that company

883
01:01:45.360 --> 01:01:47.599
until you die. There's promotion prospects
in the company. There's everything that you

884
01:01:47.679 --> 01:01:51.840
need, Like, there's also things
that I wish that my company would do

885
01:01:52.079 --> 01:01:53.800
that they kind of they kind of
are in a similar kind of boat.

886
01:01:54.000 --> 01:01:58.039
The guy who works next to me
that's trying to retire this year has worked

887
01:01:58.079 --> 01:02:01.000
at this company for thirty five,
if thirty eight years now, and he's

888
01:02:01.400 --> 01:02:04.880
he's a company dude, right.
He believes in what the company does,

889
01:02:04.880 --> 01:02:07.760
and he gets he does. I
don't like, I like the company that

890
01:02:07.800 --> 01:02:14.880
I work for, but frankly,
like I'm not right, Like in comes

891
01:02:14.920 --> 01:02:17.079
long and offers you a thirty percent
raise for the same work. You're not

892
01:02:17.119 --> 01:02:21.639
going to be like, oh,
I can't possibly leave my company right exactly,

893
01:02:21.880 --> 01:02:30.280
and so the the um but epic
like Epic the I have another good

894
01:02:30.280 --> 01:02:34.599
friend that works there and I've gone
down there, and he made it a

895
01:02:34.599 --> 01:02:37.679
big point if he wanted to take
us to tour the Epic campus, which

896
01:02:37.960 --> 01:02:42.119
I mean, to be fair,
it's very impressive. But they like they

897
01:02:42.159 --> 01:02:46.039
have a a mess haul where you
can get all sorts of varieties of different

898
01:02:46.039 --> 01:02:49.079
food, you don't have to leave
during the course of the day. They

899
01:02:49.119 --> 01:02:52.480
don't want people going up for lunch, right, They want you to be

900
01:02:52.639 --> 01:02:55.599
to be there and focused on what
they're doing all the time. And they

901
01:02:55.719 --> 01:03:00.559
they've removed all the distractions. Right
because I knew to live very close to

902
01:03:00.559 --> 01:03:01.239
there, I used to like say, like, why aren't there a bunch

903
01:03:01.239 --> 01:03:05.960
of restaurants around here? They very
intentionally work with the zoning board can not

904
01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:08.239
allow lots of They don't want people
going on campus, and we're getting way

905
01:03:08.280 --> 01:03:16.320
to it. But but but it's
it's the the company severs people because they

906
01:03:16.360 --> 01:03:22.320
want total commitment to the job.
Right. They want people the only thing

907
01:03:22.320 --> 01:03:24.719
they know, the only thing they
care about is the job. And the

908
01:03:24.760 --> 01:03:28.400
only people you meet over the course
of the job are the people in your

909
01:03:28.400 --> 01:03:32.280
department. Right, So they comment, they walk into a room with fifteen

910
01:03:32.320 --> 01:03:37.440
people in it, right, which
you'd consider this to be like a like

911
01:03:37.480 --> 01:03:40.559
an adequate assembly line kind of a
situation, right, And this is somebody

912
01:03:40.559 --> 01:03:44.960
comments, this is more people that
I've seen in my entire life. Yeah,

913
01:03:45.079 --> 01:03:47.559
right, because all they know the
only thing they have is the bonds

914
01:03:47.559 --> 01:03:52.239
of the people that they have.
They're right around them. And again another

915
01:03:52.280 --> 01:03:54.000
thing that showed it brilliantly, which
we have to review some time extent.

916
01:03:54.159 --> 01:03:58.920
Yeah, yeah, because it's so
central to the point of it is they

917
01:03:58.920 --> 01:04:02.800
are so dedicated to not having people
from different parts of the company meet that

918
01:04:02.880 --> 01:04:05.679
there's all these like artwork and stuff
that makes people think that there were like

919
01:04:05.840 --> 01:04:12.800
wars that like they could for the
company. That's the biggest weapons. Yeah,

920
01:04:12.840 --> 01:04:15.639
they have. They have. Yeah, they have these murals of one

921
01:04:15.039 --> 01:04:18.880
they're like, we've never like,
here's a group of people. The key

922
01:04:18.960 --> 01:04:24.639
card color that they have is the
only differentiator between two departments, and they

923
01:04:24.679 --> 01:04:28.920
have a they have these murals that
are the same, but one of them

924
01:04:28.960 --> 01:04:31.679
is one department fighting like coming in
and killing, and the other one is

925
01:04:31.719 --> 01:04:34.239
the other department coming in and killing, just based on the key card colors.

926
01:04:34.760 --> 01:04:41.960
And it's wild. You have to
question, did it happen. Yeah,

927
01:04:41.280 --> 01:04:45.159
and it's brilliant, again, a
brilliant metaphor. You have two people

928
01:04:46.079 --> 01:04:50.280
from each of these two departments wind
up connecting and basically, I don't know

929
01:04:50.320 --> 01:04:54.679
if they'd say in love, but
they basically are developing romantic emotional feelings for

930
01:04:54.719 --> 01:04:57.840
each other and have a little bit
of like an intimate touch with each other.

931
01:04:58.840 --> 01:05:02.039
And they're played by John Toro and
Christopher Walker. And the fact that

932
01:05:02.079 --> 01:05:05.440
it's two men is never commented on
in the slightest no, no, but

933
01:05:05.519 --> 01:05:10.719
it's clearly supposed to be horribly taboo
that they do it. But it's not

934
01:05:10.760 --> 01:05:15.079
taboo because they're men. It's taboo
because they're from different departments exactly. And

935
01:05:15.400 --> 01:05:18.079
I think it wanted to be a
wonderful commentary of like in the same way

936
01:05:18.119 --> 01:05:20.679
the Key Cards, it's like this
is also arbitrary, you know, the

937
01:05:20.719 --> 01:05:25.880
idea that like that it is someone's
just deciding, like these people should be

938
01:05:25.920 --> 01:05:29.760
with these people, but not these
people. And as a small aside,

939
01:05:29.760 --> 01:05:33.400
I just will also say there's a
big push in the last like twenty years

940
01:05:33.480 --> 01:05:40.440
or so to really push for when
characters are from particular groups, especially minority

941
01:05:40.480 --> 01:05:44.480
groups and oppress groups, that it
should be actors from those communities playing those

942
01:05:44.639 --> 01:05:46.920
people. And for the most part, I am very much agreement with that,

943
01:05:47.039 --> 01:05:51.639
especially when it comes to queer actors. But as more and more of

944
01:05:51.639 --> 01:06:00.800
the actors who were defining masculine figures
of my childhood play gig like there's a

945
01:06:00.880 --> 01:06:02.519
character, there's an actor in the
Last of Us that I'm not gonna spoil

946
01:06:02.559 --> 01:06:05.960
for people who haven't seen it,
but it's incredibly powerful. And again also

947
01:06:06.000 --> 01:06:12.320
seeing John Tureau and Christopher Walkin,
who are these like pillars of masculinity um

948
01:06:12.360 --> 01:06:15.920
play not only gay men but like
kind of like adorable. It's like your

949
01:06:16.000 --> 01:06:19.679
your great uncle who yeah, you
know, they're in their sixties or seventies

950
01:06:19.679 --> 01:06:26.480
and they're forming these relationships and it's
beautiful and romantic and right. So I

951
01:06:26.880 --> 01:06:29.960
love that those actors are willing to
do that and I and I played it

952
01:06:29.960 --> 01:06:32.760
brilliantly. But also it's just one
more beautiful piece of the metaphor of how

953
01:06:32.800 --> 01:06:38.559
incredibly arbitrary all these divisions are,
right, and I like, I don't

954
01:06:38.559 --> 01:06:43.519
know if Christopher Walkins a pillar of
masculinity, like Christopher Walkin is a pillar

955
01:06:43.639 --> 01:06:47.119
of doing whatever he wants with no
concern for anybody else that's an act And

956
01:06:47.159 --> 01:06:50.239
I always say, I've assumed that
John tuttunks for walking or straight. It's

957
01:06:50.320 --> 01:06:53.760
entirely possible. I'm wrong on that. Yeah, it's it's none of my

958
01:06:53.800 --> 01:06:58.239
concern. I don't care. They're
they're both phenomenal actors and well as a

959
01:06:58.280 --> 01:07:02.639
review point, there's not like there's
not a single person who drops anything acting

960
01:07:02.760 --> 01:07:06.800
wise in this The acting is.
Yeah, there are people who are very

961
01:07:06.800 --> 01:07:10.480
well known, like those folks,
and they're people who've never seen before in

962
01:07:10.519 --> 01:07:13.840
my life. You can tell me
that any of these people are gonna be

963
01:07:13.840 --> 01:07:16.599
in a show, and I'd immediately
watch it. Yeah, my favorite performance

964
01:07:16.679 --> 01:07:21.239
might actually be the person who plays
Dylan, because he like, he's you

965
01:07:21.280 --> 01:07:25.559
can tell he cares, right.
That's the other thing is he does the

966
01:07:25.559 --> 01:07:28.679
thing where he puts up a shield
of cynicism and then the only thing that

967
01:07:28.679 --> 01:07:30.760
breaks it, the thing that makes
him angry is when he finds out that

968
01:07:30.800 --> 01:07:34.639
his Audi has a son and he
can't find out the name. Yeah,

969
01:07:34.639 --> 01:07:39.239
that he's like, I care so
much that this is the only thing,

970
01:07:40.079 --> 01:07:44.440
and he like and he makes the
argument, that's my son too. Right,

971
01:07:44.519 --> 01:07:46.079
I'm doing the work to put the
food on his plate, right,

972
01:07:48.199 --> 01:07:50.440
these questions of who is the Audie, who is the India? Where are

973
01:07:50.440 --> 01:07:54.360
the lines? And it's yeah,
he was the one who's the most into

974
01:07:54.519 --> 01:07:58.199
the corporate parties and stuff like that. And in one of the he's he's

975
01:07:58.239 --> 01:08:02.239
the performer, right, Yeah,
and one I think one of those important

976
01:08:02.320 --> 01:08:06.280
character growth moments, like someways I
think he has the most growth someone I

977
01:08:06.679 --> 01:08:11.400
rely on them do. But like
everything he's done is he cares about the

978
01:08:11.400 --> 01:08:15.360
egg party and then there's the waffle
party that's the big thing. And we

979
01:08:15.440 --> 01:08:16.840
find the Wamba party is like,
like I said, it's an orgy quite

980
01:08:16.840 --> 01:08:21.520
literally, but he walks away from
the orgy party to put himself at risk

981
01:08:23.000 --> 01:08:25.680
so that the other people, like
he's not going to meet his son through

982
01:08:25.680 --> 01:08:29.239
doing this, but that the other
Indies can can live their outie life.

983
01:08:29.399 --> 01:08:31.520
Yeah, he tells. He tells
them, I got the chance to meet

984
01:08:31.760 --> 01:08:36.920
see my audi's life. It was
four twelve seconds, right, he answered

985
01:08:36.960 --> 01:08:42.800
one question and had and like his
son charged into the room and said daddy

986
01:08:42.920 --> 01:08:48.039
and he went oh and Milchick said
goodbye and turn him back off, and

987
01:08:48.199 --> 01:08:51.159
he goes, I got that.
You all should get the chance to see

988
01:08:51.239 --> 01:08:56.800
Rudy's lives as well. So so
let me take it back to the what

989
01:08:57.000 --> 01:09:00.920
kind of one the biggest kind of
ethical question that can really restle with it.

990
01:09:00.920 --> 01:09:01.920
And there's so much more we can
say about the show we can probably

991
01:09:01.960 --> 01:09:05.479
start wrapping up. But is because
again, like we talked a lot about

992
01:09:05.520 --> 01:09:11.680
who's responsible for what? Yep,
So we have this character in Helle who

993
01:09:12.640 --> 01:09:16.640
we now know that her Audie is
a monster who's done these horrible things.

994
01:09:17.359 --> 01:09:20.920
And again, I mean, she's
the daughter of the head of the religion,

995
01:09:21.039 --> 01:09:25.880
and so I may well have a
lot of like not letting her off

996
01:09:25.920 --> 01:09:28.640
the hook, but kind of like
how much has she even brainwashed in all

997
01:09:28.640 --> 01:09:31.960
of this and is it someone?
But like O, we know that she

998
01:09:32.079 --> 01:09:36.119
is actively aware that her Enny is
suffering in these horrible ways, and she's

999
01:09:36.159 --> 01:09:41.239
doing it. We know that she
is fully prepared to lie to the general

1000
01:09:41.279 --> 01:09:46.479
public to get them to be to
get them to go through this process that

1001
01:09:46.560 --> 01:09:50.840
she knows is horrific and terrible and
makes people want to end their lives.

1002
01:09:53.760 --> 01:09:57.439
But at the end we see it
is it is literally her own any who

1003
01:09:57.479 --> 01:10:00.279
reports her, she like is supposed
to give the speech and she's like starts

1004
01:10:00.279 --> 01:10:04.399
saying like, oh, this is
also terrible, So what do you do?

1005
01:10:04.399 --> 01:10:10.479
Does the legal system punish her autie
and just end the severance and her

1006
01:10:10.479 --> 01:10:15.359
any dies? Do you allow her
any to take over and then basically say

1007
01:10:15.359 --> 01:10:19.159
that you're you're Any didn't commit these
crimes and so you're basically free to go

1008
01:10:19.319 --> 01:10:23.720
because you're in. If let you're
any totally take over, then I would

1009
01:10:23.760 --> 01:10:26.680
killed your autie, Like, is
either one of those government executions? He's

1010
01:10:26.920 --> 01:10:30.439
like, what isn't this person?
Right, that's the question? Like they

1011
01:10:30.880 --> 01:10:34.319
they retire Christopher Walking, right,
so he's he's severed, and they they

1012
01:10:34.359 --> 01:10:39.399
take him and they make the point. He gets a retirement party. He

1013
01:10:39.439 --> 01:10:43.399
wins he's been working there for seven
years and he's he's Christopher Walking, he's

1014
01:10:43.399 --> 01:10:48.760
old, and they they he's retiring, and John Taturo's character Irving says,

1015
01:10:49.640 --> 01:10:54.880
well, what the hell you're killing
him? This is this an execution.

1016
01:10:54.920 --> 01:11:00.880
We're celebrating this man dying, and
um, like, HELLI the any would

1017
01:11:00.920 --> 01:11:04.199
probably say, what I want is
to not exist. That is the thing

1018
01:11:04.239 --> 01:11:08.640
that I wanted, right, Like, it's no hardship to me if you

1019
01:11:08.680 --> 01:11:13.520
make me not exist and then punish
the audie, right, right, but

1020
01:11:13.560 --> 01:11:15.720
that isn't going to be the case
for all of them, right. Irving

1021
01:11:15.760 --> 01:11:19.439
wants to hold onto life. He
likes it like he's a he's a true

1022
01:11:19.439 --> 01:11:24.319
believer right in the in the system. As an even though you know,

1023
01:11:24.319 --> 01:11:28.079
as the Audie, he's this like
tortured artist, Yeah, who is constantly

1024
01:11:28.119 --> 01:11:30.359
painting these things representative of like one
of the worst parts of the of the

1025
01:11:30.399 --> 01:11:33.039
company that we don't really know much
about yet. Yeah, well know,

1026
01:11:33.159 --> 01:11:40.680
the question is things things are leaking
through for him, and he he is,

1027
01:11:40.800 --> 01:11:44.199
I think, very deliberately trying to
break a break down the severance of

1028
01:11:44.199 --> 01:11:48.560
the hard way by not sleeping,
Yeah, and and then painting the same

1029
01:11:48.600 --> 01:11:53.960
thing over and over to hammer something
into is subconscious, right, it is

1030
01:11:54.119 --> 01:11:57.960
as an Any, he's now starting
to have these hallucinations, like hallucinations became

1031
01:11:58.000 --> 01:12:02.000
of like dreams, sort of visiony
things. Yeah, but about the painting

1032
01:12:02.239 --> 01:12:10.239
about it, His Enny has experienced
these horrible things. His Audie is kind

1033
01:12:10.279 --> 01:12:13.640
of aware of those, and it's
doing them as paintings. And now as

1034
01:12:13.760 --> 01:12:17.399
Any is having is being affected by
his Audi's understandings of what is any.

1035
01:12:17.800 --> 01:12:20.279
I mean, it's this whole cycle
of yeah, it is it is.

1036
01:12:20.600 --> 01:12:28.279
It is beautiful and the thing is
like, would Irving argue that he should

1037
01:12:28.279 --> 01:12:30.560
be ended? Would Mark argue that
he should be ended? Right? Right?

1038
01:12:30.960 --> 01:12:34.600
And what about all the people in
the other departments? Right? And

1039
01:12:36.399 --> 01:12:45.439
so are The core question that they
have is the one that that that Helly's

1040
01:12:45.600 --> 01:12:49.399
Audie Helena has, which is,
Helly, you aren't a person. You

1041
01:12:49.439 --> 01:12:53.880
can't make the decision whether or not
to live or die? Right, And

1042
01:12:55.079 --> 01:12:59.560
uh, I don't know if that's
presented to other people. Mark talks about

1043
01:12:59.560 --> 01:13:02.760
retire, about getting a new job, and he doesn't think about it as

1044
01:13:02.840 --> 01:13:05.279
killing is any because he's never met
his any. He doesn't know anything about

1045
01:13:05.319 --> 01:13:10.079
his any. Yeah, I mean
one thing I think is fascinating. Mark

1046
01:13:10.159 --> 01:13:15.079
is our primary point of view character. And he has a sister, he

1047
01:13:15.159 --> 01:13:17.560
has friends, He has his brother
in law who there's a whole hilarious thing

1048
01:13:17.560 --> 01:13:21.560
about his how his brother in law
is this pompous buffoon who writes this ridiculous

1049
01:13:21.560 --> 01:13:25.760
self help book. But somehow the
self help book gets to the any is

1050
01:13:25.800 --> 01:13:28.600
and it's the only thing they have, And so it seems like we're like,

1051
01:13:29.159 --> 01:13:32.439
right, it's right, it's it
is the most trite thing imaginable right.

1052
01:13:32.840 --> 01:13:38.239
It is literally written to be observations
that are so trite that you wouldn't

1053
01:13:38.279 --> 01:13:43.359
even make them right, And but
to them it's the words of a prophet.

1054
01:13:43.600 --> 01:13:46.560
Right. It literally inspires the revolution. Right. And the thing is

1055
01:13:46.600 --> 01:13:50.439
that, like the relationships on the
outside are all written to be they feel

1056
01:13:50.479 --> 01:13:56.600
good, right. He loves his
sister, he's there for her and yeah,

1057
01:13:56.800 --> 01:13:59.039
and where it's going there with though? Is that that the two other

1058
01:13:59.159 --> 01:14:01.600
characters who don't really see their outie
life at all until the very end.

1059
01:14:02.239 --> 01:14:05.800
One is Dylan, as he said, who he has this family and then

1060
01:14:05.920 --> 01:14:12.119
Irving seems like he's all alone.
But um, Christopher Watkins character Bert,

1061
01:14:13.039 --> 01:14:16.039
we see that when he's retired he
has a family and he has a male

1062
01:14:16.159 --> 01:14:19.520
partner who he is with. Yeah, and you know that there's a whole

1063
01:14:19.520 --> 01:14:23.960
other question that that raises, is
like, so was Bert cheating on him

1064
01:14:24.479 --> 01:14:28.359
with this thing that he was going
his relationship he had with Irving. They

1065
01:14:28.399 --> 01:14:32.159
make off hand reference to how someone
was severed and then all of a sudden

1066
01:14:32.239 --> 01:14:35.880
was pregnant and like they don't like
you know, so it's like, so

1067
01:14:35.880 --> 01:14:39.680
it's just there's all sorts of questions. I think we haven't gotten into in

1068
01:14:40.000 --> 01:14:42.840
season two that hope we're gonna go
into in season two, and I hope

1069
01:14:42.880 --> 01:14:47.000
actually he's gonna come out fairly soon. I might actually hold this recording if

1070
01:14:47.039 --> 01:14:51.000
there's if in like a week or
two there's no notice about season two coming,

1071
01:14:51.239 --> 01:14:55.239
I'm just going to post it.
If we do get news of season

1072
01:14:55.239 --> 01:14:58.760
two coming, I may hold this
and then post it like two weeks before

1073
01:14:58.760 --> 01:15:00.680
season two comes out or something like. Yeah, that's that's very reasonable.

1074
01:15:00.720 --> 01:15:05.239
We'll see that where that goes.
Um. But yeah, I think there's

1075
01:15:05.279 --> 01:15:08.760
just so much to go into here. We're not even getting any of the

1076
01:15:08.760 --> 01:15:11.920
theories that we can have about what
all this stuff means. Yeah, but

1077
01:15:12.079 --> 01:15:14.840
is there any the kind of last
big questions or points you wanted to make

1078
01:15:14.840 --> 01:15:24.920
before we start to wrap up the
the The questions that this raises are basically

1079
01:15:25.000 --> 01:15:28.600
like, it also raises questions of
parenthood. Is the other half of it

1080
01:15:29.119 --> 01:15:34.479
right because they mentioned that you brought
this life into the world and you didn't

1081
01:15:34.520 --> 01:15:38.479
ask permission. Well, that's literally
what having a child is, right,

1082
01:15:39.000 --> 01:15:44.079
Yeah, And so can you view
your any as your child as opposed to

1083
01:15:44.119 --> 01:15:50.119
another you? And that's that's a
different wild perspective about it right because they're

1084
01:15:50.159 --> 01:15:54.439
they're young, they have they have
very little perspective. They have you know,

1085
01:15:54.880 --> 01:15:59.880
two years of constant time or whatever, and so and they talk about

1086
01:16:00.039 --> 01:16:03.960
reintegration, Well they might would you
want to merge with your parents? Right?

1087
01:16:04.680 --> 01:16:10.039
And I mean in the kind of
like young millennial gen z nihilism that

1088
01:16:10.119 --> 01:16:12.840
makes so much great content. You
know. One of the memes that's going

1089
01:16:12.880 --> 01:16:15.319
around a lot now is like,
what the hell twenty three years ago two

1090
01:16:15.319 --> 01:16:18.199
people had a good night and now
I've got to pay taxes? What it's

1091
01:16:18.239 --> 01:16:23.119
about right now? And like,
yeah, it's that's that like, um,

1092
01:16:23.239 --> 01:16:26.920
you know, I I remember when
I was in a very depressed place,

1093
01:16:27.039 --> 01:16:30.600
like I was mad at my father, Like you know how broken the

1094
01:16:30.600 --> 01:16:32.720
world is, Why would you inflict
another life onto this world? Why would

1095
01:16:32.760 --> 01:16:39.399
you antenatalism? Right? Yeah,
And I think that's I'm in a much

1096
01:16:39.439 --> 01:16:41.840
better place with my depression, but
I still hold some of those ideas,

1097
01:16:41.840 --> 01:16:44.399
you know, and like yeah,
like and I'm but yeah, but like,

1098
01:16:44.479 --> 01:16:45.960
yeah, we have kids, and
there's no way to ask a kid

1099
01:16:46.000 --> 01:16:49.920
if they want to consent, right. The movie's soul notwithstanding, um,

1100
01:16:50.119 --> 01:16:55.199
but um, but yeah, it's
it's there is so much that it brings

1101
01:16:55.279 --> 01:16:59.520
up and it's it's not necessary.
It says it's not necessarily unethical to bring

1102
01:16:59.560 --> 01:17:01.479
a life in being, right,
right, I would argue that bringing a

1103
01:17:01.520 --> 01:17:06.119
life into being has to be morally
about neutral, like round up a round

1104
01:17:06.159 --> 01:17:10.560
down, it's going to round down
to about zero, right, And so

1105
01:17:10.840 --> 01:17:15.359
bringing them into being without their permission
isn't necessarily wrong. The question is,

1106
01:17:15.439 --> 01:17:20.920
but keeping them in being in a
position they cannot control, the lack of

1107
01:17:21.000 --> 01:17:26.319
agency and control when you know that
they can consent and don't ask their consent

1108
01:17:26.720 --> 01:17:30.960
is I think where the ethics like
really the rubber meets the road, right,

1109
01:17:30.920 --> 01:17:33.279
And that's a place where I wonder
if they're going to get into a

1110
01:17:33.399 --> 01:17:40.199
whole other set of very interesting and
dark questions. And I'm I'm again gonna

1111
01:17:40.279 --> 01:17:44.880
with content warning now being they're going
to say something fairly controversial about a topic.

1112
01:17:44.920 --> 01:17:47.600
They can be very triggering self harm, and very clear that I'm not

1113
01:17:47.640 --> 01:17:50.880
in anyone encouraging anyone to any we
do anything to themselves. You know,

1114
01:17:50.920 --> 01:17:54.239
if you're thinking about those things,
please you know, seek help, etc.

1115
01:17:56.359 --> 01:18:03.079
With that atside, I think that
there is something fundamentally evil about because

1116
01:18:03.079 --> 01:18:08.159
you're right, people don't get to
choose to be alive. Yes, but

1117
01:18:08.239 --> 01:18:14.680
a world that then makes suicide so
fundamentally wrong to me, life only has

1118
01:18:14.800 --> 01:18:19.199
meaning if we get to consent to
it, and that I am very much

1119
01:18:19.199 --> 01:18:24.840
pro euthanasia and pro with at you
know, not like everyone gets to do

1120
01:18:24.880 --> 01:18:28.760
it tomorrow, but like that there
be for people who just decide, Like

1121
01:18:28.800 --> 01:18:30.159
I've gone through all the mental care, I've done, all the work I

1122
01:18:30.159 --> 01:18:34.039
want to do, I'm not sure
I want to continue. I think at

1123
01:18:34.079 --> 01:18:39.600
least mortally there should be considered.
Yeah, not even a route, but

1124
01:18:39.600 --> 01:18:43.199
I think we shouldn't look at that
like we look at that person's a failure,

1125
01:18:43.520 --> 01:18:45.800
whereas we look at that as they
quit. They why would you give

1126
01:18:45.880 --> 01:18:51.960
up when when in reality everyone dies
eventually. Being able to choose the time

1127
01:18:53.000 --> 01:18:58.359
at which you die isn't Again,
I believe that's probably morally neutral, right,

1128
01:18:58.920 --> 01:19:03.000
and being able to to make the
decision about where the destination will end.

1129
01:19:04.840 --> 01:19:09.119
The journey is more important. The
time that you're alive is more important.

1130
01:19:09.239 --> 01:19:14.039
The consent is more important, But
the journey does end. There is

1131
01:19:14.039 --> 01:19:17.279
a destination at the end of it, the journey, but not being able

1132
01:19:17.319 --> 01:19:26.880
to make decisions about that destination is
Yes, I agree, I'll give him

1133
01:19:26.960 --> 01:19:30.479
more easy to swallow. A kind
of example of this, my mother passed

1134
01:19:30.479 --> 01:19:34.560
away at the age of seventy from
cancer that was basically caused by her smoke,

1135
01:19:34.680 --> 01:19:39.680
the way she smoked and ate,
and you know, I miss her

1136
01:19:39.720 --> 01:19:44.239
every day. It was heartbreaking when
she passed away, but I was pretty

1137
01:19:44.279 --> 01:19:53.039
aware at least five or ten years
beforehand that she was in essence. I

1138
01:19:53.079 --> 01:19:58.319
don't want to call it a slow
version of self of aliving, but she

1139
01:19:58.680 --> 01:20:03.640
basically made a conscious decision I could
live twenty five more years by denying myself

1140
01:20:03.680 --> 01:20:09.119
all of the things that make my
life enjoyable. Yeah. She chose to

1141
01:20:09.159 --> 01:20:12.800
trade time for pleasure, right.
Yeah, And I'm not trying There are

1142
01:20:12.840 --> 01:20:15.640
lots of ways to eat healthy and
enjoy it. Like, you know,

1143
01:20:15.880 --> 01:20:17.720
I'm not pro smoking, Like I'm
not I'm not trying to say anything that,

1144
01:20:17.760 --> 01:20:24.319
but I think that there there was
a calculus made of that extending life

1145
01:20:24.359 --> 01:20:29.880
for the longest period of time possible
is not the only valuable goal in deciding

1146
01:20:29.880 --> 01:20:32.319
how you're going to live your life. Yeah, And I don't know if

1147
01:20:32.359 --> 01:20:35.720
it's going to go there because it's
such a different question, but I think

1148
01:20:35.760 --> 01:20:40.960
you're right that that in some ways
you can't not get into that question a

1149
01:20:40.960 --> 01:20:43.680
little bit with the show, and
I'll begin here's where it goes in a

1150
01:20:43.920 --> 01:20:46.479
season. Well, and once again, the thing that they are trading is

1151
01:20:46.560 --> 01:20:54.119
always time. Whenever you're severing,
you are trading time before something. There's

1152
01:20:54.159 --> 01:20:59.319
a suggestion that someone is deliberately severed. Well they're pregnant, right, that

1153
01:20:59.399 --> 01:21:01.800
they have that they have a severed
they didn't want to go through the hardship

1154
01:21:01.920 --> 01:21:06.159
of of being. This is not
the one we mentioned earlier. If she'd

1155
01:21:06.159 --> 01:21:10.840
be camera. This is someone she
basically goes through labor severed. Yeah,

1156
01:21:11.039 --> 01:21:13.399
it might be labor, it might
be pregnancy. It's unclear, right,

1157
01:21:13.520 --> 01:21:15.359
we don't know. Yeah, point, but yeah, but they decide that

1158
01:21:15.399 --> 01:21:18.840
there's something uncomfortable or unhappy. They
decided that they will trade some of their

1159
01:21:18.880 --> 01:21:24.000
life away, right, some of
their time, and then at the end

1160
01:21:24.079 --> 01:21:27.359
they will get the result that they
want, which is a child. Right,

1161
01:21:27.720 --> 01:21:32.560
And so they've traded time from their
life for for pain. Right.

1162
01:21:33.439 --> 01:21:38.640
And it's the same it's the same
calculus right where we talk about time is

1163
01:21:38.640 --> 01:21:41.039
money, and so you trade money
to try to do things if you if

1164
01:21:41.039 --> 01:21:45.399
you have money, you can solve
most problems. Right, That's that's what

1165
01:21:45.439 --> 01:21:48.439
we do out in the world,
right, is we trade trade time for

1166
01:21:48.560 --> 01:21:53.600
money to solve other problems. And
this is just being reduced to a raw

1167
01:21:53.680 --> 01:22:00.640
calculus of trading time directly for the
thing you want, which is is that

1168
01:22:00.720 --> 01:22:04.680
what we want life to be?
I guess it's the other question. And

1169
01:22:04.760 --> 01:22:08.640
here's where I think it is science
fiction that's best because what I love when

1170
01:22:08.680 --> 01:22:11.520
science fiction does if this is like
my mother taught me watching Star Trek,

1171
01:22:11.640 --> 01:22:15.760
because I think the original series of
Star Trek especially did this so well.

1172
01:22:15.039 --> 01:22:18.520
All Star Trek has, but especially
the original series is say, let's take

1173
01:22:18.560 --> 01:22:23.760
an issue in our own world and
take it to the logical extreme, yes,

1174
01:22:24.279 --> 01:22:28.279
and push it all the way.
And I'll use that kind of transition

1175
01:22:28.319 --> 01:22:30.159
into what was I think the one
more interesting question that the show is only

1176
01:22:30.239 --> 01:22:35.319
scratch the surface of, but that
I really wanted to explore further, which

1177
01:22:35.399 --> 01:22:42.680
is what is the connection or separation
between the mind and the body? Yes,

1178
01:22:42.119 --> 01:22:45.079
my boy. Yeah. One thing
the show is very clear on is

1179
01:22:45.119 --> 01:22:49.680
that you're creating these two severed minds, but it's not two bodies. If

1180
01:22:49.680 --> 01:22:53.960
one body gets sick, they both
get sick. If one body gets injured,

1181
01:22:54.560 --> 01:22:57.760
they both get injured. If one
body gets pregnant, they both get

1182
01:22:57.760 --> 01:23:00.640
pregnant. And to me at rate, like you know what if you're you're

1183
01:23:00.720 --> 01:23:04.560
outie is just living its life and
all of a sudden realizes you're starting to

1184
01:23:04.600 --> 01:23:09.359
get pain in your wrists all the
time. You don't know that you're working

1185
01:23:09.399 --> 01:23:13.720
under conditions that are giving you repetitive
stress injuries in your wrists or carpal tunnel.

1186
01:23:14.119 --> 01:23:16.239
But but you start to like you
know, workers all the time or

1187
01:23:16.279 --> 01:23:21.199
complaining about workplace conditions that do damage
their bodies. Yes, what if damages

1188
01:23:21.199 --> 01:23:25.159
happened to your body but you don't
know it. But if you're having these

1189
01:23:25.199 --> 01:23:30.960
wonderful experiences with your like you know
again we draw you know, romantic ideas

1190
01:23:30.039 --> 01:23:32.840
or off very connected to you can
only do certain things with your body with

1191
01:23:32.880 --> 01:23:38.199
certain people. Well, if your
body is doing those things, but it's

1192
01:23:38.199 --> 01:23:42.239
a different mind that or a different
part of your mind that's that's steering your

1193
01:23:42.239 --> 01:23:45.520
body. Is that infidelity? Is
it not? Is it like it's just

1194
01:23:45.960 --> 01:23:48.439
all these great questions, like you
said, well, the mind body duality

1195
01:23:48.520 --> 01:23:53.199
that this is explore that this is
ready to explore that it is. Scratch

1196
01:23:53.279 --> 01:23:56.159
the surface of that. I really
hope we go deeper on. Yeah,

1197
01:23:55.960 --> 01:23:59.399
there's a lot of these, a
lot of these questions, right, like

1198
01:24:00.399 --> 01:24:08.800
that the is is somebody responsible up
or down for the decisions of the other

1199
01:24:08.840 --> 01:24:15.560
half, And if they aren't responsible
for the negative consequences, are they do

1200
01:24:15.640 --> 01:24:18.279
they get the positive consequences? Um? A question that I have is Mark

1201
01:24:18.319 --> 01:24:24.920
gets promoted right at the onset PD, like offscreen, like the very opening,

1202
01:24:25.000 --> 01:24:28.439
is PD doesn't show up on the
on the day, on the first

1203
01:24:28.520 --> 01:24:31.439
day that you see, and Mark's
surprise promoted to be head of the department.

1204
01:24:32.119 --> 01:24:38.560
And he's promoted, right, does
that mean that his audie gets more

1205
01:24:38.680 --> 01:24:43.199
money? Right? His hours change? Right because he has to show up

1206
01:24:43.239 --> 01:24:48.399
first down? So do you get
a note saying you're any was promoted and

1207
01:24:48.680 --> 01:24:53.039
now you must show up forty five
minutes earlier to do prep at the beginning

1208
01:24:53.079 --> 01:24:58.119
of the day, right we are? And what about what about vice versa?

1209
01:24:58.199 --> 01:25:00.960
If the audi is like, you
know what, my Audie is going

1210
01:25:01.000 --> 01:25:04.520
to have a child, I need
a raise, yeah, or I need

1211
01:25:04.520 --> 01:25:10.159
my any to get maternity care or
something like yeah, you know yeah,

1212
01:25:10.199 --> 01:25:13.359
and so like, um, you
don't have contact with the outside world,

1213
01:25:13.760 --> 01:25:16.680
um all the time. Like this
is just normal that you get calls that

1214
01:25:16.720 --> 01:25:20.239
are urgent. Like we rail against
this in the real world when Amazon makes

1215
01:25:20.239 --> 01:25:27.439
people turn off their phones on the
warehouse floor and so you're like, okay,

1216
01:25:26.479 --> 01:25:30.479
uh, if there's an emergency,
say that you know, your your

1217
01:25:30.520 --> 01:25:33.479
partner gets injured and you need to
rush to their side, your your child

1218
01:25:33.600 --> 01:25:36.439
is sick and you need to go
pick them up from school, right that

1219
01:25:36.720 --> 01:25:40.720
these are things that happen out in
the world. Well, when you're severed,

1220
01:25:40.760 --> 01:25:43.920
you can't have that, right,
Like, is what is it?

1221
01:25:43.920 --> 01:25:45.119
What's gonna happen? Is milchick going
to come into the room and he's going

1222
01:25:45.159 --> 01:25:48.840
to say, hey, uh,
you're you're any needs you to leave work

1223
01:25:48.880 --> 01:25:56.520
today early? Like they they're fine
with sick days, right. Mark calls

1224
01:25:56.520 --> 01:26:00.479
in sick one day, right,
and everybody's like, oh, he was

1225
01:26:00.520 --> 01:26:06.279
sick, all right, and that's
fine. But like interrupted days is very

1226
01:26:06.359 --> 01:26:11.680
normal, right, That's just the
nature of life and work, right where

1227
01:26:11.720 --> 01:26:15.560
you might have to leave early for
whatever reason. You have a doctor's appointment,

1228
01:26:15.600 --> 01:26:17.119
you have a haircut, you like, there's all sorts of things,

1229
01:26:17.600 --> 01:26:20.279
your school play, your kids school
play, whatever. Yeah, exactly you

1230
01:26:21.800 --> 01:26:25.399
need to leave early. If your
only option is day or not day,

1231
01:26:25.520 --> 01:26:28.359
that's fine, but you can't always
anticipate that you need to take the whole

1232
01:26:28.439 --> 01:26:33.279
day at the start of the day. I am hoping. I don't want

1233
01:26:33.279 --> 01:26:35.960
to get too far into this because
there's just so much that Like, I

1234
01:26:36.239 --> 01:26:39.880
didn't predict anything in the show,
so I don't, you know, but

1235
01:26:39.920 --> 01:26:44.199
I I would love it if a
lot of the next season is about the

1236
01:26:44.199 --> 01:26:45.880
Audies. We get to see more
of how the outside world works, Like

1237
01:26:45.920 --> 01:26:48.760
I want to see Bert's husband and
how he feels about all this, you

1238
01:26:48.800 --> 01:26:53.319
know, I want to see Dylan's
kid, Like yes, I gotta be

1239
01:26:53.399 --> 01:26:57.000
like you know, um anyway,
Yeah, so yeah, incredible show,

1240
01:26:57.079 --> 01:26:59.520
Rob, thank you so much.
Recommend You're welcome. We're gonna have a

1241
01:26:59.720 --> 01:27:01.880
Rob is a font of science fiction
knowledge, and so in the bonus content

1242
01:27:02.199 --> 01:27:06.479
section for Patreons, I'm going to
ask Rob about other recommendations that delve into

1243
01:27:06.479 --> 01:27:11.520
similar questions in the science fiction world. Definitely sign up to be patron if

1244
01:27:11.560 --> 01:27:13.880
you want to hear that. It's
only a couple of bucks a month and

1245
01:27:13.960 --> 01:27:16.560
you get access to all sorts of
great things. All the information will be

1246
01:27:16.560 --> 01:27:19.479
on the website or sorry, we
will be in the show notes as well

1247
01:27:19.479 --> 01:27:23.359
as the website. The Ethical Panda
dot com. That's also where you can

1248
01:27:23.399 --> 01:27:26.079
find all the ways to find us
because we love we love feedback, we

1249
01:27:26.159 --> 01:27:29.840
love discussions. This is one that's
led to some great conversations. Would love

1250
01:27:29.840 --> 01:27:31.800
to continue those with people. Let
us know what you think. The Ethical

1251
01:27:31.840 --> 01:27:35.199
Panda dot Com. Find me on
TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, all the

1252
01:27:35.199 --> 01:27:40.079
places. But Rob is also well. Rob is sort of a hermit in

1253
01:27:40.159 --> 01:27:43.239
most parts of the Internet, but
then pops up in various ones. So

1254
01:27:43.319 --> 01:27:45.880
Rob for people who want to have
more of the not the Robert experience,

1255
01:27:46.479 --> 01:27:49.760
experience, where can people find that. I do a bunch of stuff right

1256
01:27:49.800 --> 01:27:54.439
now with Good Luck High Five,
which is a magic podcast in vidcast.

1257
01:27:55.159 --> 01:27:59.600
We're actually doing Depending on how late
you've delayed this, this may not be

1258
01:27:59.640 --> 01:28:02.640
relevant anymore, but we just did
a big oathbreaker play that is gonna that

1259
01:28:02.640 --> 01:28:08.439
It's gonna be up on YouTube.
I recorded them for new Magic sets.

1260
01:28:09.119 --> 01:28:13.159
Um I just do a bunch of
things with MEGANA Maria. They're really great.

1261
01:28:13.520 --> 01:28:17.520
Um I. As soon as the
Geek Bracket gets kicks back off,

1262
01:28:18.319 --> 01:28:23.239
I'm on an episode of the Keek
Bracket whenever, because I prerecorded one of

1263
01:28:23.279 --> 01:28:27.800
those, so I'm going to be
out there on those things. Awesome,

1264
01:28:28.159 --> 01:28:31.359
providing some content and being a being
a talking head for for folks. Awesome.

1265
01:28:31.720 --> 01:28:33.920
Well, thank you so much,
Rob, really apreci sure you've got

1266
01:28:33.920 --> 01:28:36.479
to say thank you for introducing this
whole topic to me. And as I

1267
01:28:36.520 --> 01:28:40.800
said, as a court Larry,
now we're watching ted Lasso and loving it.

1268
01:28:41.359 --> 01:28:45.039
Record a number of things with ted
Lasso and positive masculinity because the show

1269
01:28:45.119 --> 01:28:48.279
is just it lives up to that, yeah, which is amazing. Um.

1270
01:28:48.960 --> 01:28:51.439
But of course you can find all
this stuff about these podcasts on the

1271
01:28:51.439 --> 01:28:55.520
Ethical Panda dot com And most importantly, though I hope you have a good

1272
01:28:55.560 --> 01:29:08.319
day. We have spoken on y'all. Say what are you up? Mm hm