Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Feed

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

It's time for a little sci-fi horror! This episode we are joined by Bry and Fry from the Pontifacts pod to talk about Feed by Mira Grant. A near future were zombies are a fact of everyday life, bloggers are super important, and we look with post 2020 eyes at how someone in 2010 imagined we would react to a world wide deadly pandemic. Sometimes dystopia is actually more positive that reality.@pontifactspodhttps://pontifacts.podbean.com/patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Deception, lies, fakery, fraudulence, and forgery. This is what Intelligent Speech 2025 will be bringing you. We are delighted to announce three outstanding keynote speakers. We have Jo Hedwig-Tuisey from the awesome Fake History Hunter Twitter feed and author of Fake History Hunter Twitter feed and author of Fake History. We also have Otto English, author of Another Fake History and Fake Heroes, and presenter of the Utter Bollocks podcast. And finally, we have podcasting legend and intelligence speech stalwart Wesley Livesey,

host of the History of the Great War and the History of the Second World War podcasts. Intelligence Speech 2025. Deception will be taking place on the 8th of February 2025. Go to intelligencespeechonline.com to find out more. You Hello everyone and welcome to Sword, Sorceryy and Socialism, a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre fiction. As always, I am Aurora and I'm joined by my co-host, Ketho. How's it going, Ketho? Howdy. And we are also joined today by two special guests.

We are joined by the hosts of the Pontifacts podcast, Brie and Fry. Say hello. Introduce yourselves. Hello, I'm Brie. Hello, I'm Fry. We have special guests today because we are reading a book that they suggested and I somehow agreed to read. You did. This is your fault. As with most of the problems in my life, it is my fault. We have read as what I described, an incredibly optimistic, depressing book called Feed written by Mira Grant,

I believe a good podcaster would have that information up before I said it. But I don't. Which is the it's the pen name of well, you know, this is an Irish name because I. Do you want help? Yes. Yes. Seanan McGuire. OK, I was going to say like sheening, but it's Seanan McGuire. Yeah, there we go.

So Sean McGuire, AKA Mira Grant, what called feed, which is a post zombie apocalypse book. Now, we typically don't tend to cover, you know, more of the like, you know, zombie or horror kinds of books. However, this book goes through such great lengths to explain the science about why the zombies are the way they are, that I think it very clearly qualifies as just science fiction, thereby putting it in our wheelhouse, because I said so. So we read it and we read a lot about zombies and how the virus works and how the blood testing kits work.

We were told many times how the blood testing kits work. Sorry, I'm starting my criticisms already. I try to save those for later. So since you two brought this book to us, why don't you two start with telling us your history with feed and why you wanted me to read this. So, and Katho, of course, as well. Oh, Frye, you might have to start since you found it first. Oh, okay. Funnily enough, feed is one of the books that I started listening to via audio and was like,

audio books are fun, aren't they? Oh, when you joined the good side, yeah. Yeah, and I was like, oh, Brie, have you considered listening to an audio book? And Brie went, what if I listen to podcasts instead? That is a correct summation. I did not listen to the audiobook for this one. We would not have a podcast if it wasn't for feet. That's probably true, actually.

So this is a foundational text for Pontifacts. It is, weirdly. Yeah. In a kind of sort of way. Which to our listeners who don't know, is a podcast about talking about every pope. Mm-hmm. Okay. Which has nothing to do with this.

I don't think the pope ever appears in this book series. No, not even once. Though they did mention... Catholics do though. Yes. Yes. This is true. Catholics feature very prominently.

Thank you very much. But we don't know, we don't get the pope's opinion. We do get, well, we kind of do get the pope's opinion on zombies in that they describe how anyone killed via the virus is handled by the Catholic Church. That's true. Yes. So but anyway, more. Sorry, I interrupted you, Fry. This book, you made Bree read it and then you started a podcast about popes.

Yeah. Yeah. But Bree and I have read all of them. So we've read we've read all three of these, all of the novellas, all of pretty much everything. They were coming out as we were reading them, so there were chunks of time between them where we were like, we're thinking real hard about this for no reason. We had so many questions. Yeah, too many questions. And I think that's an important thing to say too, because you've already mentioned how There we had so many questions. Yeah, too many questions.

And I think that's an important thing to say too, because you've already mentioned how far she goes into the science of this. Seanan McGuire was so very proud of the intense amount of epidemiological research that she'd done for this. So we're sitting there like, oh, she's going to answer all our questions about the epidemiology of this virus. And we were nerds. Michael, Michael Crichton could never.

Yeah, Michael Crichton just kind of like fling stuff at the wall and pretend he researched it. He would read an article in Scientific Scientific Insider and be like, this is the next thing. And then would make some crazy bullshit. He'd be like, I read an article about nano robots. I'm going to write a book about nano robots. Or I read an article about, you know, gene replication from Amber. I'm going to write a book about it.

Where this Mira very much was like, I'm going to acknowledge that I talked to so many actual scientists. So many, which has definitely informed all of her writing because the next series that she wrote was about sentient tapeworms and how they symbiotically mesh with the body. So there's that. specific angle to suddenly tip into. Feel like there's a precedent for writing a zombie apocalypse novel. I don't know if there's so much of a precedent about writing a tapeworm sentience novel. I mean, there was that one episode of Futurama where the worms make Fry smart. It was, it's a lot like that. Yeah.

But make that a trilogy. But they also handle all of your medications for you. So diabetic no longer need to take insulin because the tapeworm just releases it. Sick. It's the argument we should be putting these tapeworms into our body. Yes. With it, with no further research on my part, I'm just going to say yes and not investigate that any further. Now.

Yeah, that's not the book we're talking about. Why would we? We'll worry about that later. OK, so you two read all these books as they came out. Yeah. I also you're both more into like, you know, horror and that sort of thing. Even though I don't really know if you can count these as horror. They're not. I also don't know if you could really count them as political thrill thing. Even though I don't really know if you can count these as horror. They're not.

I also don't know if you could really count them as political thrillers, even though I think you would want to. They kind of are, but kind of aren't. They're sort of straddling a lot of genres. Yeah. And like I called it sci-fi earlier, but it's like, what's the thought experiment? Like as we've discussed in the podcast a lot, sort of our criteria for science fiction is, you know, proposing a thought experiment and then taking it to its.

You know, it's logical conclusion. I guess the thought experiment is the zombies are an ongoing thing that people just have to deal with in their daily lives. And how does that how does life in America change when that's a fact? Which you could argue qualifies. Katharine, what do you think? Does that qualify for our typical criteria? I think the term thought experiment is a vague enough term that this fits like in general. But I mean, because there's also the underlying thought experiment of of what if.

What if what if what if blogging mattered and blogging became super fucking important. What if social media never happened? What if we never had social media and blogging and reading blog posts was all the rage? Because this this came out in what in 2010? Yes. So Twitter wasn't around yet. Twitter was around. It had only been around for like

two years. Twitter wasn't important. Twitter wasn't important yet. Facebook was the big thing. Yeah, we weren't at the stage of like right now I feel like the big the big individual little guy media thing is streaming. And it's like before that it was vlogging with a V because of YouTube. So there have been multiple waves of alternate forms of media since. But it is really interesting to see at 2010 because because in the 2000s, blogging was really big. You know, like people have...

I mean, there are still people on things like Substack now, but... And forums were a lot bigger. Yeah, so... I'm sorry, I couldn't help but laugh every time she was like, Get people on the forums! The message boards! Get people on the message boards! And I'm just thinking about, like, I don't know, just somehow, on the forums. People on the message board that are just

thinking about like, I don't know, just somehow, you know, like something awful became important. I do just really, like, think it's one of those like, hold it like, like, think about like the movie Alien, and the technology you see an alien, and they took the technology they had at the time and then extrapolated what they thought it might look like in 2000 years. Does that mean this book counts as retrofuturism? Oh yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah? Hauntology? There was a moment where they were describing their state of the art video conferencing that in a post-Zoom world was like, Oh, that's cute. Oh, you can get all that you can see everyone all at the same time. All their pixelated faces. Everything's voice activated.

Wow. Just by the concept of retrofuturism, it kind of has to shift constantly. So it's like, I mean, the aesthetic of retrofuturism immediately. What pops into your head is Blade Runner, the computers from alien or Blade Runner. And now you have, you know, a piece of media that's so recent. You don't think of it as retrofuturism, but technology and things like that change so quickly that it's like, I think even if you had if you had a thing about vlogging right now, I think it would be retrofuturism because it's essentially gone,

by the wayside at this point. I would say not quite. There's still a lot of big YouTubers that do like long form essays and stuff. Well, yeah, but it's I don't know. It's just funny to me. Like, I don't think I've ever read a blog in my life. I don't think I have. Because by the time I was old enough.

Yeah, because by the time I was old enough to use the internet and like know what I was getting on the internet for, I was getting on YouTube. I mean, I'm a bit I'm a bit older than that, but also I didn't get a smartphone until 2010, till about the year this book was written. Same. So I also I can joke about, you know, like something awful in the forum days, but like I was barely aware of those, to be fair, because I was not just like on the Internet going on forums. So I also missed a lot of that wave to this whole idea that blogging

is the thing is an interesting concept to me. I think it's I think it's cool. I think it's a vibe in this book. Honestly, it's a whole vibe. So yeah, for everyone listening, as usual, quick recap. This is the world post the zombie apocalypse. The Kels Amberley virus has infected literally every human on earth, but it doesn't always turn into a zombie. Sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes it just does on its own. Sometimes you get bonked in the head and then you become a zombie or you just die and then you become one anyway. It just happens a lot. Sometimes you cut your finger and you lick it and you turn into a zombie. Yeah, sometimes you actually lick blood and your own blood and become a zombie. Yeah. You know, sometimes you're just a dog.

So a dog over 40 pounds. Any mammal over 40 pounds. Yeah, sorry, my dog is toast. My cats are safe. And so everyone lives in the world of zombies are just a thing. There's like safe zones and exclusion zones. There's different threat levels based on every zone. You go through like blood testing just constantly, constantly. The author also makes sure you know how constantly you're going through blood testing

and that the lights go painful and that the lights go from, you know, red to yellow to green to red to yellow to red to yellow to green to red to yellow to green and that it pricks your palms to make sure you know that part. But you just like it's a world where you know this is such a real threat. Like all of society is adapted around this idea of the zombies and being safe from them. And then also because of the way the media handled the zombie apocalypse, like the most trustworthy media now are bloggers, essentially, who are on their own sites or with larger organizations. And everyone goes to these bloggers sites in their forums to talk about the news there's like three different kinds of

Bloggers essentially ones that talk about the news ones that go out and poke things with sticks which I to me is the most believable kind and people who write fiction Those are the three three genders of blogger Three doesn't exist in this I guess that would technically be the the fictionals apparently I would assume That's just a oh three. I Don't want to know what kind of zombie slash fic there is in that world. It was really funny because they were like, oh Some of Buffy staff was writing

erotic real person thick about some of the staffers on the campaign trail. Yeah, they're just writing actual fake about like politicians that there are people they're following around. Anyway, potential presidential candidate is like, yes, I will bring I will bring the news girl, the guy who hits zombies really hard. And this other girl that likes writing smut. Smut poetry about real people sometimes. This girl is a who calls herself Buffy because of a thinly veiled reference to Buffy the vampire slayer. But that is like, yes, but it's but it's like texturally

like we all acknowledge that's what it is. But like nobody, nobody in the thing knows other than Buffy, because nobody remembers Buffy except Buffy. Except also this world to me is just like the world of the children of former boxer. Buffy. Because nobody remembers Buffy except Buffy. Also this world to me is just like the world of the children of former boxer, the former boxer who named all of his children George Georgina. George Foreman. Because that's everyone's name.

George Romero. Yeah, because of George Romero, whose works existed textually within the movie. So everyone, he became like a god in retrospect because everyone's like, oh, he saw the zombies coming in. His rules actually work. So everyone is named George or Georgina or Georgette or whatever. So, yeah, you've got our main characters are George. Georgia, her brother, Sean and Buffy, also named Georgette.

So they they are their own site. They do their new stuff they get hired on to be on the campaign trail of a Republican senator who is running for president. They're like the first bloggers ever to be like explicitly included as part of a presidential campaign because he's one of the hip politicians that understands the power of media and telling the truth or something. So they get to tag along with him. And of course, there's shenanigans and political intrigue and other stuff.

And a bunch of people die and zombies and people die and all that sort of thing. And that's our, you know, our story. So let's talk. I don't know. That's probably enough of a plot. I don't know. Like, obviously. Can I OK. No, I know where I'm going to start.

I read it like five, six chapters into the book, and I messaged Brian Fry and I said I had a prediction. You did. What was what was my prediction? You thought that that Sean was going to die because he couldn't. No, I thought Georgia was going to die. I thought George I thought George was going to die because she was the only competent one. Yeah, because Sean wasn't and Buffy was Buffy.

And so what I imagined was going to happen was that George would die. And then the last whatever how much the book would be Sean and Buffy attempting to like, you know, solve the problem or whatever. So I was like half right. Half right. George did definitely die. But after Buffy, which I did not see coming. That's right. Because I remember thinking at the time, oh, there's one big wrong thing

with your theory and it was Buffy. Yeah, I definitely I will. I'll give her that. I didn't definitely I will. I'll give her that. Didn't see both. I didn't see that. I did not see that twist coming that Buffy was the inside agent. Now I might argue. But that twist felt a little unearned

that I don't think her religiosity and. Devotion to making America great again, if you will. Oh, my God. The fact that she said that. She literally does say the phrase make America great again. Mind you all listeners, this was 2010. It's 2010. So that that is technically then she's technically referencing Reagan. Yes, she's actually referencing Reagan, which I mean, you can see how

like Governor Tate is like a Reagan esque figure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But if I may level my first criticism at the book is I don't feel like Buffy's betrayal twist was earned personally. I don't think it was foreshadowed or her character explored enough for that twist to feel earned. Now argue, argue with me or not. No, I actually agree with you because it is referenced that she is religious

several times through it, but she seems very casually religious throughout the entire thing. She's not bothered by the fact that people don't share her religion. She's not bothered by the fact that her lifestyle doesn't align with the values of her religion as a general rule. So it does kind of come out of left field. You know, like she says she wishes more people, more people went to church, like, you know, in the early chapters when you're meeting her. Yeah. But it's not like a continuous problem that she brings up or she's like, Oh, man.

Like, they're not on the campaign trail and having her go, I really wish Senator Ryman would talk about God more often. You know what I mean? Stopped at a church on Sunday. Yeah, like it's Sunday on the campaign trail. Are we going to stop for service? Like, you know what I mean? There was none of those little like breadcrumbs to string the story along. I would have believed her motivation a lot more if it was just that she was scared because we do see her at one point get quite scared and be like, I want to get out of this. I want to go home.

I want all of us to go home. And the motivation was she was already in too deep. But if that was the motivation for what she was doing, she's like, I'm scared. I want this to end. And she got caught up in that. That would be more believable to me than her religion. Yeah, like I want the campaign to end so we can go home. So I'm going to allow someone else the the information access

so they can sabotage the campaign so it can end. So so Ryman's not our candidate. So George and I and Sean can go home. Yeah, can go home. That I think that would have been much more believable that her fear of the zombies led her to betraying everybody as opposed to the pope. Is the God the fear that she experiences is a lot more integral to the character of Buffy than the religious aspect of it, because that is kind of like the only time I can distinctly

there's a couple of times, but I only distinctly remember ever being mentioned in like the third person, like it's coming from George telling us that Buffy is religious. Yes, that makes any sense and not a lot of content coming from Buffy, where she's expressing her religiousness to anybody. So it's like, but at the same time, it is very clear that Buffy does not ever go into the field really other than to be in the van, that she didn't really want the higher level clearance that they got her. There's a whole

list of things that go on with her that are about just her not really wanting to be close to these zombies and not really understanding how terrible it is to be close to them until until that break in at the first. The rally at the speech at the round at the town hall or whatever in Oklahoma. Yeah. Equally, equally. I don't know. Fry opinions. Oh, yeah, you're on the podcast.

I'm going to ask you for your opinions. That's kind of the point. And I got to have them. You know what? I agree with you're on the podcast. I'm gonna ask you for your opinions. That's kind of the point. I gotta have them. You know what? I agree with you with the religion thing. They tried to bring it more in in the third act, especially when, um, Ryan, is that his name? Rick? Rick. When Rick joined? And, you know, Rick was supposed to be friends with Buffy and

like there were some side comments there about it and then once again just dropped yeah like comments on her religion once where she says that's between me and my prayers and yes in relation to yeah it was it was something Rick said fired back at one of her snide comments. She goes, that's between me and my prayers. I think it was about having a lot of boyfriends or something. Yes, I think so. And about her general promiscuity or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, like. Her being the traitor and being like, you know, the tech person secretly betraying them. That makes sense to me. And that like plot point totally like a Miranda. I'm with you. But I found her. The motivation behind it to be either not fully developed or,

as we just discussed, sort of misplaced. Like if it had just been on her fear of being in the field and her wanting the campaign to end, that would have made a lot more sense to me. And then realizing that her trying to make the campaign end had actually put them in more danger than simply being on the campaign. I think there's also like, I agree with you on the, because I didn't necessarily see that she would be the traitor, but I was kind of like sitting there going, Buffy is probably going to die mostly because I just thought she

was in that sort of, once she entered into an actual zombie scenario, that she was just going to die, mostly because I just thought she was in that sort of once she entered into an actual zombie scenario that she was just going to be kind of fucked. So she wasn't going to be able to do much. I should have predicted she was going to die as soon as she got a boyfriend on the trail. But, you know, that's my fault for not predicting that one. Sorry for. No, it's it's just that I think in general, there's like this air of despite her being really good with tech, there's like this air of naivety around her that makes sense in the context. But I don't know in the case of being the one to betray everybody, essentially, it does. For those specific reasons, again, it doesn't make a whole lot.

I don't think she would think about it that hard. Just the character that I see wouldn't think about it in these grand philosophical way. She wouldn't be thinking that we needed to make America great again to bring Jesus back into people's lives. She's not thinking big picture like I was like, it's it's Buffy. She's like also it. But at the same time, you're're right it does make sense that she's the one to betray them because she's also I think the most self interested in the actual group out of the group you have you have Sean and George you have like Sean is kind of in it for the thrill of it but Sean and George are both a lot more in it for the truth of the news. Yeah, like grand philosophical reasons, whereas Buffy is really just like, I need inspiration for my cool poems.

And, but she's also the one wearing all the fucking cameras and constantly recording everything. And she's the one who in the com yeah. And she's in in the conversations like the very first conversations they have with Ryman. It's like, like she's the one that's doing the most sneaky covert recording in this whole thing like both both George and Sean when when Ryman asked them he's like, you know, I'm not going to present myself in any other way than I

always would. Because if you present anything false, then we'll get rid of you, yada yada. But but he's like, but I'm not going to present anything false. So there should be no reason for there to be a problem here. First of all, I I'm gonna say I thought that that rhyming was gonna to be way more of a skis bucket than he ended up being. No, he's as genuine. He's as good and genuine as they present him being from the start. He's the perfect red herring for the entire book. Yeah, because there is nothing skeezy about him.

Of him being like, I was like, oh, he knows he's being recorded right now, like in that very first meeting they have with him. It feels very much like he knew when he was just presenting a facade, especially with how much they talked about, how much they trusted him already. Well, I do think he probably knew he was being recorded. He just was also being genuine at the same time. I would. Yeah, he's yeah, you're right. He's a good red herring because he seems like the I'm going to present the friendliest, most helpful image I possibly can only to at the, you know what I mean?

To at the end be the one that was doing this to you. But he's just not he's just just a good guy. He feels like too good to be true at every stage. Yeah. And in the end,'s just just a good guy. He feels like too good to be true at every stage. Yeah. And in that and in that first scene, Buffy's the only one that in my at least as far as I can remember, doesn't say, no, we're not going to use this to hurt you on the campaign trail. Well, it's because she's going to write fake stories about who which which staffer

he's having an affair with or something. Yeah. But again, it's like that. going to write fake stories about who which which staffer he's having an affair with or something. But again, it's like that she's like, seemingly the most self interested in this entire situation, compared to the other two who are like, I'm here for the news and for integrity. I think I think George is there for news and integrity. Sean is there because he's a good hearted himbo who will do whatever George believes is correct. Sean is there for George. He's there for George. Sean is there for George.

Sean is the world's greatest himbo for his sister specifically. I will say the, um, yeah, you mentioned that, that George was going to die and that Sean was going to finish everything. I think the audio book makes that more of than easy guess to make because there's two voices there's two. Readers and. At first there like like ninety percent of it is george's perspective so you get the one reader. Except for the sections that are blog posts by Sean. I think the whole book, the frame, I didn't mention earlier, the frame narrative of the

whole book is that every chapter is a blog post. That's how we're getting George's thoughts as she eventually eventually get posted. But then each chapter opens with a very specific like blog post entry. And you're right. It's mostly George. But occasionally it's Sean. The audiobook does have a different narrator for Sean, which does sort of give away the fact that at some point Sean will be narrating.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's true. Is that what you're trying to get out there, Ketho? Yeah, there's also a massive spoiler in one of those little things that's at the at the beginning of the chapters, the little snippets from the blog before she dies. There's one that goes out and it's from Georgia from postcards from the wall. It's either one or two. I think it's like one chapter before. I remember noticing that where it's like it's you know, from it's like, yeah, it's like

notes from beyond the wall, the unpublished works of George and Mason. And you're like, oh, as soon as I heard that, I was like, oh, here it comes. Yeah, here it comes. Yeah. Also, you're right, Katha, because Buffy never narrates an opening chapter blog post. Rick gets one. Yes, and one. And yeah, and here gets one.

I did. I would say the audio, the narrator for here was weird in the audiobook. It's I don't know. Oh, their accents were terrible. The accents were awful. But here's accent was fucking terrible. All over the place. I love where my here goes to Australia. My actions were awful, but here's accent was fucking terrible Where my here goes to Australia That's one of my favorites

Sorry, where's together? The accent that threw me off is that they they explain Ryman is having an incredibly thick Wisconsinite accent He does not yet. He does not. But they try. I could try every now and then. And I'm like, I'm like, stop. It's like you're not doing it. I'm sorry.

His accent is supposed to be the accent of my people. The place he's supposed to be from. Like northern Wisconsin, that's not how they sound. I'm sorry. Yeah. The narrator needed to watch Fargo like six more times. Yeah. So if he was supposed to be from northern Wisconsin, he'd sound more like this. So he'd be on the campaign trail, you know, going out there, talking to voters, you know, really like talking about his faith in God and worries about the zombies

and his wife and his horse farm. And like, that's just not the accent they give him. See, I'm allowed to do that. That's my family has that accent. I'm allowed. It's not offensive to go. Oh, geez. He doesn't say, oh, one time. No, not a single time.

He doesn't say, oh, once. I'm sorry. That's not my culture. No, geez. Nothing. He doesn't. He doesn't go sorry. That's not my culture. No Nothing. Yeah, he doesn't he doesn't go up. Geez. Excuse me He doesn't say let me squeeze right past you not a single time Does he walk disease coming into the conference room and go? Oh, let me just squeeze right past you there When the time for them to leave an interview, he doesn't like slap his thighs and go, Oh, well, getting pretty late. Like that is not like that's not my culture.

Sorry. Good. I call it my cultural insensitivity to Wisconsinites. So, yeah. The narrator kind of gives it away that Buffy's the traitor. Let's so let's talk a little bit more about what her motivation is supposed to be, though, is that she's supposed to be religious. We talked about that she gets essentially sort of seduced and turned by Governor Tate, that man. Yeah. And his the caricature that is Governor Tate

and his people to sabotage the campaign that Tate is working on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was that got real weird. But not to entirely derail it because he's on the campaign and he wants to win. What will you find out what he wants is just to introduce just enough fear that people are scared of zombies again, so that they will like look to the federal government more for more control and turn their hearts back to Jesus.

Now, does he do this by unleashing zombies on the opponents campaign? No, he does it by unleashing zombies on his own campaign. On his own staff. Well, specifically Ryman's. Yeah. Yeah, but that's eventually also his staff. It is. They're on the same ticket. Eventually. Yeah. Like, I'm sorry. That doesn't make sense to me.

Well, here's the motivation there. At least as far as Tate goes, because Tate wants to undermine Ryman's very let's call him very middle of the road for a Republican figure. Right. He's very let's get along. We don't actually make Republicans like this to be clear. They don't exist. Exactly. He's very, he's very middle of the road for a Republican. He's very gentle. He wants everybody to get along. He doesn't really want to be super invasive with his

policies and so what Tate wants to do is undermine him so that people will look to the vice president Tate and his hell fire and brimstone and be like, those are the policies we need. So we have like we've got like a weird Christian dominionist fight like VP candidate trying to undermine his like Eisenhower Republican or his Eisenhower running mate. Yeah. In a way, or to force his running mate to become more like him. And look, if Ryman then has a couple unfortunate Keles Amberley accidents, Tate's right there to take over. He just wants to puppet it until he can be in charge. It's very like,

like you said, it works for Kamala Harris, I guess. Well, Worked for Kamala Harris, I guess. Well. The zombies in this case are not infected yet. Somebody hit Joe Biden with that. Kill us, Amberley. Doesn't remember his name. Doesn't remember his name.

Doesn't remember where he was. Ever seen him walk around stage after he quits, give it a speech, and just kind of like wanders around directionless? I don't know. I think I think Joe might have amplified. Someone needs to come and fat him. You see him wearing those sunglasses a lot. Hot. So I think he's got retinal.

He's got retinal. He's got retinal. He's got retinal. I think Joe has turned, but he's so old that it doesn't matter because his body can't attack anyone because he's too frail. He can't even zombie properly because his body's too like wretched. Or it's the slowest amplification that's ever been recorded. His blood pumps so slowly that it's taking that long for it to amplify. Like molasses in there.

Yeah. So you've got I find Governor Tate. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was I was just going to. Comment a bit again on worse. We're talking about tape. Keep going. Keep going. I'm not I'm not important. We're good. I mean, you're very important to us, Cato. I know I was I was going to end up spinning it back to Ryman because I. We'll get back to him in a second.

Yeah, I will say that a few of the characters in this in this book, if I may. I'm not meaning to be as critical this episode as I think I'm going to come across at times that some of the characters are very stock. Mm hmm. Oh, they are. Governor Tate. Governor Tate is are very stock. Oh, they are. Governor Tate is a very stock character. Like we produce politicians like America produces politicians like him all the time, like they're everywhere. Oh, yeah. And especially nowadays, this very sort of Christian, again, Christian sort of dominionist, like we need to scare everyone back into out of degeneracy and back to God type deal.

I'd actually argue there's more of those now than there were in 2010 when she wrote this book. Yes, but they're now not considered the hard right, the way she was writing them back then. That's sort of more central. Something something something over to window normalization. You know, ratchet effect. Other such political nonsense. But yeah, he's he's like the far right of the party. But no, nowadays he would just be he's just Greg Abbott.

Like, I don't know. He would be he's I was about to say J.D. Vance, but. No, J.D. Vance is no J.D. Vance is weirder. And I don't think is I don't think his religion is as central as they might make it out to be. Yeah, he claims it's central, but it's like again, he this he's much more again, like to mention another Texas governor, you know, like a Greg Abbott type figure, you know, where like he's going to be bringing up God in all of his speeches or like the fucking the Florida guy. What's his nuts?

The Santas. Yeah, the Santas, you know, where he's like talking about degeneracy and that sort of thing. That's it. That's a good comparison. He's more of like he's more of like he's more of like a Ron to Santas like type figure. J.D. Vance is a whole new level of weird that we I don't think we've seen a book character for particularly at this time. Unless we count his own book.

Yeah. Well, I was going to I was going to that book. Anyway, I was going to say something very inappropriate. OK. What? Don't sit down on a couch while you read his book. Anyway, we haven't had a character in a novel that's fucked the couch yet. So first time for everything. So, yeah, it's Tate is this weird sort of, again, Christian dominionist. Ron Ron DeSantis for a new figure, for an older figure, be more like a televangelist type,

you know, like a Billy Graham or one of those type people. We didn't used to always make him politicians. They were like, you know, had like radio shows and mega churches and that sort of stuff. So you're going to bring us back to Ryman are what I want to call like an Eisenhower Republican, you know, compassionate Republican type Ryman. What were you going to say about him, Catho, a little bit ago? Well, I mean, I was going to say more and it's more of a generalizing stance. What we already said before about him being this genuine guy

and it being ultimately a red herring, just because when you look at all of the other adults in this freaking like any any figure of authority other than him in this entire novelization is just like their parents. Who suck something terrible. Like like all of these people are completely untrustworthy in every sense of the word. And then you get this. This guy's the trustworthy one. And he picks Tate as his running partner.

Terrible, terrible political instincts on this guy. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Can I? Oh, that right. Talking. Literary literary perspective here. That because of what you just said, the book gives a very, very like sort of like why a stance on that sort of thing or like your protagonist, the young people

are the only reasonable ones in the entire story. Every adult, every authority figure above them is worthless. We're doing a peanuts where all the adults just go. Yeah, kind of. But like to me, that's like a Y.A. trope, right? We're like the adults are worthless. So you have to trust, you know, the kids are the protagonist. In this case, the kids are what their 20s one. Yeah. Yeah.

They're in their early 20s. Early to mid 20s. But like everyone above them is, is, oh sorry. And then there's the, the, the, the Dr. Wynn at the CDC. Yeah. Who is trustworthy. Don't forget Steve. Steve is lovely.

Oh, Steve, the, the one moral, so secret service guard, he's just like, I saw my partner get killed and for that I will assassinate a sitting governor. Like Steve is Steve takes the least amount of convincing out of any adult. Like they just show Steve like, Hey, Steve Steve we have evidence that they don't even show it to him there's great Steve we have evidence that Governor Tate got your partner killed then he's like that sold let's go kill him and you're like oh god damn he is down he's ready he's been thinking about this for a while. This is just his excuse. Mums.

Yes, they've been ready to murder somebody for for that for a while. And when they're like, it was Tate, he's like, you got it. Murders on the menu. So, yes, yes, Steve's good. And Dr. Joe Wynn or whatever is good. We mentioned him, so I think we should move on talking about. Let's move on to more of these authority figures. Let's talk about the Masons.

Let's talk about their parents. Oh, yes. Parents is a strong word. Yeah. The people that technically raised them. Yes. Yeah. I so very like they're very Kardashian about this whole thing. raised them. Yes, we raised them. I, there's so much context. They're very Kardashian about this whole thing. Yes.

Yes. That's a very important point. Their kids, their kids, their kids are content. Yes. They are. So I don't think it, I don't think they really get to the heart of it as much as, as in this book, as they do in later books,

but like Stacey, their mom is the first Irwin, right? Like she is. And all of that is very much like a trauma response to losing Philip, their son. Yeah. But then it just gets like so gross. Oh, yeah. They just cease to be people. They yeah, they turn entirely to like to just like ratings driven content monsters

in some way, like sort of proceeding and predicting a lot of the current media economy. Yeah, I think in terms of content creators, like whether it be YouTube or TikTok or whatever. Yeah, I do think this was weirdly predictive about how a lot of people would end up essentially turning their own children into content, whether it be like mom, mommy bloggers or vloggers or YouTubers. Like a lot of people have made this exact same choice that the Masons did.

There's there's a moment early on when they're all going out for dinner and the paparazzi is there because they've just discovered that Sean and George are going to be following the campaign. And Stacey says to George, you owe me this. And all I could think of is like the current dialogue around, you know, honey, boo, boo, and Jojo Siwa, where these individuals were expected to perform for their entire family. And that sort of expectation that like, you owe me these ratings, you owe me this level of fame. And it's just why I raised you and took care of you. And so you owe it to me to like perform.

Yes, exactly. That dinner scene is actually one of my favorite scenes in the entire book, just for that one line, like as being this, like at that moment, I was like, up until that point, you get the idea that their parents are just kind of like content fiends, but maybe they're like something is back there. Maybe they're still good people. And then she says that and you're like, oh no, you are a piece of work. Like you're not cool at all.

And it's all of that like I'm looking at the camera and I'm smiling and as soon as I turn my head around, not. Like nothing. It's like what even is left of the person? What even are you at that point if you are putting on a facade 90% of the time to present yourself one way? Who even are you? When does the facade become to you and when, and vice versa? And they say that about Georgia comments that almost all of the physical affection she's ever received from her mother has been within reach of a camera that's viewing them rather than at home, and there's just none of that there. So the facade is very clearly demarcated in their life. there so the facade is very clearly demarcated in their life.

Only one of us has children so how do you how do you feel about that? Oh, so I so despite my children asking several times I never went the we're going to have a YouTube channel route because it was so, it's so invasive of your privacy. It's so invasive of them wanting to do it. Like there's a certain, uh, like event horizon where they don't really get to choose anymore. And like, I wasn't ever going to be a part of that. So you're saying you wouldn't use your kids to boost your own ratings on your blogging site? Absolutely not.

Well, the see, that's why you'll never get a good market share percentage on the Internet. Oh, well. Also, for context, there are far worse and more traumatizing child content later in this series for Fry to contend with. Oh, thank you. Oh, man. No, thanks.

Now, I will say that their parents' awfulness does help put into context how strong the relationship between George and Sean is, because they literally only have each other because their parents never gave them anything. Yes, that is that is actually really hard to talk about without you having read the other books. Yeah. Well, you can you can. Okay, look, I think it's for any of our listeners is a pretty given that our podcast will provide spoilers for books because we just have to by the nature of our listeners, this is a pretty given that our podcast will provide spoilers for books because we just have to by the nature of the podcast.

We can disclaim now that if you want to read the subsequent books in this series, I don't know, tune out for a couple minutes, skip ahead a few minutes so you can avoid spoilers of the upcoming books. That said, go ahead, spoil it for me. Let's go. I'm not going to read them anyway. Editor's note. Aurora read the next three books in four days. So they're fucking.

Yeah. I mean, I assumed that from the way they are written. Yeah, they are definitely having. There's a whole thing. Like the second book doesn't. They doth protest too much when people ask why they share a room. They are definitely having there's there's a whole thing like the second book doesn't They doth protest too much when people ask why they share a room. Yeah, right now. It's true Yeah, no, the second book doesn't have George at all in it and like Sean goes to sleep with Becks and then calls her George in bed, yes

Yes! Hahaha! So do you learn in retrospect that like, Sean and Georgia was like fucking the whole time? It becomes far more explicit the further on you go in the series. Not explicit in terms of like, scenes, but in terms of them actually being a couple. And so when you say that they are all that each other has that is so that is to the upteenth degree and reflecting back on feed, even though it's never explicitly stated in the book and it's never there. Or get the vibe. You get the vibe. But it's the adult the adults around them get the vibe. But it's not that heavily implied because

you're like, they're still like, they joke about, about having romantic partners with each other. And so it's there at this point, I'm not sure. It's also pretty clear, though, that neither of them have ever actually had really ever had other romantic partners. No, never. And that Sean just puts on the air of being interested because it helps his or witness. Correct. Yeah. If girls think he's cute and reflecting back on it,

having known the entire series, it becomes so incredibly obvious. But it makes that they were that they were fucking. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It is definitely a different tone for for a lot of that. We only have each other Yeah, yeah, so third book There's a clone of George Yeah, oh an alien resurrection on this one she doesn't have

You know, we're going full Duncan, Idaho. What do they call it in Dune? I forgot what they call it. They just resurrect clones of the person. Sorry, continue. So there's a clone George. Yeah, there's a clone George. And she joins up with them wherever they are. I think they're in Florida at that point.

Does she have normalized? Yes, she has normalized. George Clone George is a 97% accurate Georgia. And does she do she and Sean start fucking then? Yeah. Her and Sean retired to Canada and live their life. Sorry, what? Her and Sean retired to Canada and live their life.

Yeah. When I said the series ends kind of sort of happily ish that it's clone George. It's clone George and Sean living together in Canada. Yeah. You know what? You know what that reminds me of? I I'll only I'll ask this question and then I won't. If the answer is no, I will not elaborate. Have has anyone else here watch Doctor Who? Up to a certain point. Okay there's a bit where the tent where David Tennant

and Rose were always shipped by the community for a really long time. Yes, and then later on there becomes a clone Yeah, David Tennant Does as ten that gets left behind in the other universe with the Rose so that that can happen? But also David Tennant can leave and still do Because it's still weird because the other guy doesn't have all the same way. That's immediately what that makes me think of, because it's still weird, because the other guy doesn't have all the same memories necessarily. He's just a new- Yes, right. Does clone George have George's memories? Yes. Yes.

And the reveal of their incestuous relationship, well, not incestuous, because they're not biologically related, but the reveal of their relationship is how- Yeah, I forget that they're not technically, I forget that they're technically not biologically related. Yes. So that's how he goes. Oh, yeah. My George. Yeah. Putting big air quotes around that. Like it's like it's like it's one of the current like, you know, porn dreadnought calling it step. But so the the relationship between George and Sean allow Sean to be immune because being exposed to the

dormant virus in George's retinal K.A. has helped him build immunity. So that's why Sean never gets it. Yeah. Because Sean does later in the series get bitten and then just kind of chills. This is to me, this is getting me the same way as when like Trevor and Cuthill revealed to me the weird, the weird sex stuff at the second half of the Witcher series. You know, where it gets explained, it got explained to me and I was just like, what the fuck was going on here?

Yeah, that there's there's a lot of like. Witty banter between the two of them in this book. But again, you said there's nothing explicit about the two of them having a romantic relationship. Like Georgia even has like almost like a visceral negative reaction to anyone trying to be romantic or flirtatious with her at multiple points, or at least at one point. And now we know why. When the waiter gets a little flirtatious, she's like. Yeah. Fuck off. And it's like, I wonder how much of that the author knew at the time.

Like, did she know how much it was something that she added in in later novels? Did she know when she was writing? But just did she know that it was going to be a romantic relationship when she wrote Feed? Unclear, there's no way it does. Yeah, reflecting back on it, it does feel like it's there. But then again, there is a whole scene where when Rick is coming for the first time and Sean's like, Oh, you actually asked

him to come here and he seems very surprised and is teasing her about wanting to have a romantic relationship with Rick. And she's like, what are you talking about? Like that could be read one of two ways that I could be ready either way, but I just want to point out that multiple at least Multiple adults in the story Think that it's weird that they share a room still yeah, but the story the story tries to play us off like well We've only ever like had each other. We've never really been apart. So like we're just more comfortable that way We only trust each other because we might get attacked by zombies, which might be true

But also might also be part of a whole. But I will admit, I did think multiple times that I was going to say this earlier throughout the story. I have a sibling. We're not. I have. I have never felt the type of loyalty to my sibling that these two feel to each other. Like throughout the story, this is not me saying this now in retrospect of this information.

This is me. I was going to bring this up anyway that like I've like how closely bonded they are was not something that I could relate to. Even with a sibling that was three years older than me and who I get along great with despite the fact that she's a very like normal person and I'm not like that level of closeness. Like I just don't understand. So I didn't know if that was just the fact that I don't have siblings that I'm as close to. But now in retrospect, you're like, well, yeah, definitely not that close.

My siblings. Well, and again, you could take this two ways, because if she was implying that at the time, it's still quite masterfully slid in there in a subtle way or you could argue. The same way Sean was doing. Exactly. Or you could argue that it's more like the twin relationship.

If she was going to deny it at that point and be like more like a twin than just a sibling, right? Because they are only a couple of weeks apart in age and they grew up together in that sort of way. But clearly, it's the opposite. Now, to give her credit, it can be both things. Yes, that closeness could also lead to later closeness of a different variety. And that is. Yeah, I think the closeness of relying on each other

for emotional support by having cold and manipulative parents. Yeah. And the fact that they only ever felt close to could then therefore lead to the cost of the other variety because they only have ever known each other. Yes. Like the flowers in the attic level shit. Mm hmm. Very much so. I almost thought flowers in the attic for a second. But this is obviously a lot less.

I mean, they were locked in a closet, but like they weren't locked in the attic, but like they were essentially locked together against the rest of the world. And then they go to Canada and cut themselves off from everyone else. And then they go to Canada to live happily ever after with her her her resurrected golem or whatever it's called in Dune. Yeah. Someone's going to yell at me for not remembering the word of. I don't know if either of the two of you have either read any of the further

Dune novels outside of the first one. I have but not even the first one. Well, yeah, I don't know if either of you saw the movie for the first one. Nope. All listeners are listeners will know Duncan Idaho and the fact that later books, God Emperors and other such essentially resurrect this man. Oh God, how many times, Cato? Just like hundreds. I don't know.

That number is ridiculous. It's like hundreds of thousands of times. This guy is essentially brought back because of his skills and they need him. So he just keeps dying and being brought back and dying and being brought back, like over and over and over again. And for context, there there are more than one Georgia clone. There's more Georgia clones. Yeah. What are the other ones doing?

There was a whole science experiment. Who made them? I need to know this now before we continue the podcast. Who made the Georgia clone? Was it the CDC? It was the CDC. Yeah, here's another spoiler for you. Wim is not a good guy.

No. No. I see that now. They weaponized mosquitoes for a hotmail. That was something. That was terrifying reading that for the first time. Does he make the Georgia clone after the events of the first book? Yes. After she dies, do they like take her

the DNA from when they collect her body to make a clone? Yes. Clones, clones have been happening because Connolly, a character that just appeared right at the very end, she had to fake her death with a clone of her. So there are just clones. Was Connolly? Did Connolly appear in the film? Was it the other doctor? Yes. Yes. The blonde haired doctor that kind of looked like Buffy? Yes. Yes. That's Connolly. And she, yeah, she's involved in the cloning. So I think it's the CDC. Okay We'll talk about more of that later. I think when the podcast is over anyway, the first book

We're gonna take we're gonna take the siblings Set them aside in a room by themselves. That's the way they like it. We've talked about authority figures Let's talk about I guess if we're sticking with the kids, let's talk about Georgia. I'd say Georgia and Sean's, but particularly Georgia's idea about media and the truth. She believes very, very strongly in the idea that freedom of the press and the sort of this like high-minded idea of journalism is that you simply present the truth as it is and that people will then make, be free to make the correct decision based on information that they are given if they are given the pure unadulterated truth.

Yeah. So we do have to remember that this is pre-Russia trying to fuck with everybody on the internet. Pre-fake news, pre-bots. So yeah, let's talk about this idea. That that just ultimate freedom of the press brings ultimate pure information, brings question mark, question mark, question mark step for goodness. The thing at the beginning, at least that she like her manifesto at the like towards the beginning is about spin versus truth versus I can't remember the specific terminology. She uses, I know she loves using the word spin and but there there's kind of an a belief embedded in here that you can separate the truth from the bias.

It's possible to do that. And that the bias is a bias. That bias is a thing introduced by people to facts. And that you can register your bias. And yeah, but you know, in a way, it's almost. Yeah, there's the that somehow people there there's almost an implication that that news, especially corporate news is aware and chooses to not do anything about it. If that makes any sense, like there is an implicit assumption in the statement that that you can separate spin and bias from the truth, which is debatably, debatably possible.

But there's an implication that, like, the bad journalists simply choose not to do anything about the bias, as opposed to everything having a bias to it. I don't know, I have my own strong opinions about media in general and it strikes me as a little naive about what would happen in the next, I mean, hindsight is 2020, but you know, over the past 10, you know, 14 years or so, it's difficult to argue that you can truly separate the spin and the bias from the fact, so to speak. And I don't know. But she presents it very much as though it is possible to present the truth without any spin whatsoever. And that Georgia can do that. Yes. And I think this is one of the ways where the the series it's weird to call this like post-apocalyptic dystopian sort of horror themed series idealistic. But this is something. But it is. It absolutely is. And this is one of these examples we have

very prominently her this idealistic idea of truth and reporting and journalistic integrity and people responding to that in a predictable way. But we also have the whole way that she's framed this pandemic of a disease, an entire outbreak, something that has been absolutely devastating to the world and how people respond to that. This is this is a very strangely idealistic series to read in 2024. That wasn't necessarily the vibe in 2010. Yeah, I knew we were going to get into it eventually, but like we we we need to talk about this book in relation to Covid. We need to talk about this book in relation to COVID.

Because this book does clearly have this idealistic, this idea that if when presented with a pandemic that devastates the world, the world will eventually come together with an understanding of the danger of said pandemic and that everyone should be doing their best to minimize the danger of said pandemic. Any of us that have been alive since COVID, if you and if you haven't, you're too young to be listening to this podcast, particularly the part where we talked about, you know, siblings fucking. That's just not what happened.

Yeah. And that sort of broke the author. Oh yeah. It really broke her. Maybe you want to talk about this Fry. So it was for the first good chunk of the pandemic, she would repost, you know, CDC articles and pretty much anything that was coming out of the CDC which was not a lot at the beginning there and then just people

refused to mask and refused to do anything and it's so counter to what she said older people would do in this sort of situation that it it absolutely just she fully spiraled and was clearly depressed for a long time. She wrote the other seasonal Furious books in this chunk and you can kind of tell if you've read those. Like the first one's weird as hell. But that came out in 2019. The other ones are weirder. But like it's it really it really messed with her in a way that I think had she not written

this it probably wouldn't have. So she this is one thing. I don't remember. We said at the beginning of the recording or once we started it that we often talk about whether the author is using a character as a mouthpiece for their own beliefs or whether the author is writing a character, you know, because there's a lot of books where it's pretty clear that the author is using the character to portray ideas that they don't necessarily believe that it's just

that is the ideas are wishing to explore, you know, like, I don't think anyone would argue that that like, you know, Deckard is speaking for Philip K. Dick, right? Because who God knows what Philip K. Dick actually thought about anything. But it was pretty clear in Starship Troopers that the professors were mouthpieces for Heinlein. And to all of you on Twitter, all the idiots on Twitter that think that it wasn't just go fuck yourselves.

Like he's a fascist and he was spouting. I get into an argument with I should stop. I get into an argument with with I should stop. I get into an argument with someone over Starship Troopers every two or three days. Every two or three weeks, because someone is like, actually, it was hyperbole. I'll kill you with a rock. I'm sorry. Um, he meant it. Isn't he long enough to have that many fights?

Are George and by extension, Sean. Mouthpieces for the author and the author's beliefs in this book? I think they are. Yeah, I would say absolutely. And I think that is proven by how negatively she reacted to the world reacting to COVID. If she didn't earnestly believe that people would come together to fight a disease the way they do in her books, I don't think she would have been as devastated by the way people took COVID and were like intentionally coughing on cashiers.

Yeah. And I will agree for this book. Because there's something that happens throughout the Newsflash series and the novellas, which I think becomes really clear, which is that pre 2016 even pre COVID pre all of that, Seanan McGuire's politics got a lot more radical. Radical in what way? Like, like towards like very, very left leaning because I think at this point, she was probably more centrist in her. I mean, she still clearly believed that you could like become president and make a difference. Yeah. And so idealistic centrist is sort of where she was at this time. But the further on you go in the series, it the way she wrote

George in particular would not go near far enough for her. So there are later characters, I think, who are are a louder mouthpiece for her at the time. The one from Feedback is a lot. So it's basically a retelling of this but from the democratic campaign. Yeah. OK. And so that definitely reflects more of where her own politics had gotten for that time. So I think, yes, George, at this point, is a mouthpiece for her idealistic views about that.

But she outpaces George and would probably, if she was writing about George at the time she was writing in her later books, she probably would have written George in a in a more flawed way. Or made George more radical, something like that. I don't I think she kind of painted herself into a corner to not make George more radical because of her dedication to the truth. Because well, because George's desires change.

George wants out later. That's why they retire to Canada and live on their own. Clone George wants nothing to do with this. They want nothing to do with this at that point. I think she realized that she had sort of painted herself into a corner with George's beliefs and couldn't use her as the mouthpiece that she wanted to later on in the series. We get a lot more of Shannon's voice in someone like Dr. Shannon. Dr. Shannon, yeah.

And I love Dr. Shannon. She's one of my favorite characters. But that is way more reflected in watching her develop her political opinion about things, as you can very much see that throughout the way the text develops. Okay. So, yeah, so over time, she radicalizes. But at the time that feed came out, this is how, where she stood. And I think, like I said, I think that explains why she took COVID so poorly. Oh, she's still tweeting about COVID. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, COVID is still around and people are still getting it. Like that is genuinely a thing that is still happening.

What I meant was that like the fact that she was so broken by how poorly humanity responded to the threat of COVID is something that in retrospect, you can see coming based on how even in her dystopian zombie apocalypse, she thought even the people that are evil and weaponize the disease. Like the idea that weaponizing the disease as a terrorist action is like the highest crime you can commit. Yeah. Not just like the most doing it every day. The most evil thing you can do is intentionally spread the Keles Amberley amplification. It's like all the countries in the world agreed to this

like singular definition of like bioterrorism because of how evil everyone just agreed it was to weaponize Keles Amberley and like I couldn't even get everyone on my block to you know what I mean to agree if you had asked people live on my block in like 2021 you couldn't even have gotten everyone on my block to agree that spreading COVID was bad or that COVID was even real. Yeah. Something else that kind of stood out to me is her presentation of how that I thought was both kind of prescient and a little bit off the mark at the same time. I mean, that's how pretty much every prediction works. But she talks about how the media, the corporate media wasn't the media that

was telling the truth in those moments. That it was, that they were trying to say, none of this stuff is going on, none of this stuff is happening, everything is as normal, the debt are not rising, everyone be blah, blah, blah. And then it was the bloggers that were like spreading this information, making it more obvious to everybody that that in fact was the truth. But it's almost like with COVID, it's like you had some corporate media trying to be like, yeah, this is a disease that's really bad. We should probably not do it. And you had other that were like-

But not at first. Yeah, not at first. At first, it was, I mean, it was downplayed until the lockdowns. And the lockdown started most, at least from what I remember, most corporate media was being very like, here's the guidelines on even even like Fox was being like, these are the guidelines. We're supposed to vote over. Here's Matt. We're Matt. Like they were they were all doing that until.

That was before the conservatives decided that this was a culture where they wanted to fight. Yeah, exactly. I will. I will think that her idea that if I can get up off you real quick there, that idea of like the corporate media would simply not report on the things while smaller people did is a thing that happens a lot. It just wasn't particularly that way about covid. I mean, we can look at that now with like the atrocities in Gaza. It wasn't until like the atrocities in Gaza.

It wasn't until like the past five weeks that news organizations started using the active voice in terms of the crimes committed by Israel. You know what I mean? Like it wasn't until the past month that they started using the active voice for that when they reported on them, as opposed to simply mentioning that bombs somehow happened to fall on the school somewhere that happened to have Gazans in it. You know, it's been quite a long time where non mainstream media sources were the only ones actually reporting on things that were happening.

And so the idea that like the corporate media would ignore or downplay something while alternative sources with only ones reporting the truth is, I think, a genuine and insightful critique. It simply didn't happen exactly that way with COVID because for at least like six weeks, we were all kind of on the same page. Oh, yeah, it was. Yes, it was a very short window there.

Definitely wasn't 20 years past the rising. People cooperated for 20 years. Oh, yeah. 20 years past rising. The fact that people are constantly getting their hands pricked just to go in and out of a building. You can't you couldn't get people to wear masks to the grocery store. In 2020, that's the bit that broke her. Is that you could get any blood tests like that?

You couldn't even get someone to wear a mask to go to the fucking grocery store. Yeah, there might be something to be said about the visual severity of a disease like one that turns you into a zombie versus one that has not a lot of visual immediate effects for a lot of people is survivable even though it's not for a significant population. I could definitely see people being like, I'm not amplifying. What do you, why do I get it? I'm going to the grocery store. I'm not amplifying. At the same time, if it became a requirement for you to be able to move from one location

to another, that you have to stick your hand in a box and get stabbed in a way that is physically painful. You gotta put your hand in the goddamn gom jibar. In a way that is explicitly noted to be intentionally physically painful. Which she will tell you multiple times is physically painful. What I thought was really funny is that They said that they had fixed it at some time in between to make it not painful But then people thought they weren't getting tested so they were like, yeah, okay. We'll just have it hurt again Yeah, they leave they leave some big needles in it so people can feel the pain so they actually think that something's happening. Yes. Well, there's also an extra layer to this,

where if you stick your hand in that box and it comes up red, what are they going to do to you? They're going to kill you. Yeah, like they will kill you like right away. Like right away. So I'm sitting here thinking if that was a requirement to go places, this country would start killing each other. No, we would. requirement to go places this country would start killing each other.

No, we would this country would dissolve into the zombies wouldn't even be a problem at that point because people would just be killing each other. But they address that too because there is when she's talking when she's inter when George is interviewing Tate they talk about gun control and all of that in sort of the context. And they say that the experts believe that gun violence has gone up because it's in indistinguishable to tell a murder victim from somebody who was previously amplifying for, for Keles Anderle. And they, and they mentioned it in like, when like someone tries to like shoot them or whatever in like the assassination attempt or whatever.

They're like, yeah, someone could just kill us and be like, yeah, they were amplifying and everyone just has to kind of go probably. Yeah. So that's what would happen. You'd get a lot of that. Well, they name a court case of like a trucker. I don't remember the name, but it's essentially like zombie castle doctrine Where you can just be like he was like you could just do it like the if I if I may show my age You do the really old South Park joke of just going guy. He was coming right at me

Is coming right for us and you just kill him and when everyone someone goes well, why'd you kill him? You're like Zombie and everyone just has to kind of go, I guess, unless that person literally unless that person literally got blood tested within the past five minutes, which again, it, I don't know, not again, but the if you think about it, there really is no way for you to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the other person was not amplifying.

Like, so it just becomes a complete mess in a modern court of law becomes a complete cluster. And that's exactly it. They just quit prosecuting murders. Unless the person literally just walked through a door where they got tested. Yeah. On one hand, that's a good reason that people should get tested as often as humanly possible. Yeah, because then someone might be convicted for murdering you. If you're like, look, I had three clean tests in the past seven minutes.

But also that's weird because also if you take any trauma at all, you might reanimate anyway. So someone could just like bonk you on the head with a bat. Well, it has to be it has to be like blood. Blood. So like, yeah, we're talking like. No, because what's is the Griggs kid just spontaneously amplified? Well, it's it had had it because of the birth, because the, I guess, the womb had it. The reservoir condition.

So he had a higher level of it. So he was... Because you can, there is a way to just spontaneously, for no other reason, don't need a bonk, don't need nothing, to just spontaneously amplify. It's rare, but it happens. If you have a heightened level in your system you are more likely to do that that's what I'm saying is that sometimes it doesn't take anything yeah just sort of zombified well it was implied that he went over the 40 pound mark yeah and so oh yeah cuz they he

mentions his weight at death sure okay. But if you are going to amplify somebody through injury, it usually involves blood and that becomes very that can happen very easily. As you said earlier, like cut your finger. Yeah. Blood. And it's not like other people's blood. It's your blood, too. It's weird. It's a lot. You can amplify off your own blood. Yeah. Yeah. OK. I have further.

But I'm not completely dead. Yeah, I have further questions, but I will save them for later because some of them aren't for the pod. They're just these are world building questions that I have. I'll ask you after we stop recording. Yeah. Like as we discussed, we discussed. I think this was what she generally believed at the time. And it makes sense that the world, but particularly the US's reaction to COVID would be mind breaking.

Because, like I said, as someone who worked in retail, I don't have to tell you how many times people would just not put on a mask or would come in intentionally and like pretend to cough at you. Yeah. Or like legitimately cough at you. I mean. Or legitimately cough at you. And you have to be like, God fucking damn it. Now I got to go. And this test doesn't even prick my fingers. I got to go swab my nose with a Q-tip to go find out if I have a debilitating disease for the next week and a half that might end my lung capacity for. I don't remember which book it's in, but there was a chunk of it about a grocery store that has stuck with me in that way. The like logs from Final Destination has.

Yeah, it was that the zombies decided that what they were going to do was to die on the produce. So when the misters hit up, it would miss a whole chunk of the store and get everybody in the radius. I don't remember that. Zombies like can think and learn and plan. It was it was it was one of the earlier. Yeah.

It was like there was a bunch of them and they just swarmed it. They talk about how the more of them that are around, they start to take on sort of a high mind. Yeah, it's the geth. It's nice to get. I was literally about as soon as the book started and they mentioned that, I was like, oh, my God, it's geth zombies. They're geth.

They're networking. They're networking. We literally just did a bonus episode about the Mass Effect series. There is a synthetic like a robot race, which individually are very stupid. They're not stupid. They just don't. They're robots. They don't have much intelligence, but the more of them you get together,

they make like a collective conscience that gets smarter. The more of them there are. Very bad. Also, that is also a trick from the zombies in the Stephen King book Cellular. The more zombies are gathered together, the like more intelligent they are, like as a group, which she loves. Truce and King. So true story. That was the only zombie book I ever read before this one.

It's it's it's also the only Stephen King book I've ever. Oh, sorry. One of two Stephen King books I've ever read. Well, that's good to know. Which I think is one of his I think it's one of the first of this wave of zombie apocalypse books, too, I think. The cellular. There was a there was a chunk in there. Oh, yeah. Like the more zombies are together, the smarter they get. And they make like a collective intelligence. Yeah. So anyway, I can't go by misters in the grocery store now without being like, is there COVID in there?

Yeah. Like think of all the things we did differently and then think of all the ways people just ignored that. Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't think actual humans would survive. No. And there's, there's a lot of questions that, you know, she she is supposed to answer about things like childbirth and menstruation. And like there there is a mention that like Georgia has a tattoo. Right. So these are questions that have to be. She has a tattoo, right? Yeah. Yeah. So how do you get that?

That was a question. She she had one like that she was writing but then coven made yeah I don't want to he was gonna answer all of her questions about these things and then cope it happened oh was she gonna go full JK Rowling and just answer everyone's questions about how the world works it was a novella Well, here and Maggie have a baby. Yeah. What? What'd you say? Here and Maggie have a baby. Yeah. Uh-huh. So she was going to answer all of that.

Yeah. Her blood and tattoos and. Yeah. OK. Because she does, she drops a lot of lore as she's going. So she has it all there. And she's like, I have this figured out. Don't worry.

I have answers for you. But then COVID happened. And she's like, No, can't touch it anymore. Gives me trauma. Fair. They COVID gave a lot of people trauma. Yeah, particularly not every one of these people were sort of dedicated to the idea that humans would be better than this. You know, yeah. Not a lot of us had a worldview hinging on the idea that humans would be better. Which leads me to the other part of this response is the idea that the CDC becomes this worldwide trusted institution of like, now obviously we hear from later books that that's not the case.

We are focusing on the first book, okay? We're focusing on feed. We can't delve into those really. From the perspective of feed, the CDC is a world renowned respected organization. Well, with like a massive budget and all the stuff. And what real life showed us was the CDC kind of sort of tried for like nine months and then just kind of gave up. Yeah, but I don't know if that was so much the CDC as the government itself.

Yeah, but in the in the world of the books, the CDC was still answers to the government. So those forces still exist. Uh huh. Although. Becomes obvious in the later books. And to be fair, if you had asked me in 2010, if I trusted the CDC, I probably would have been like, yeah, why wouldn't I? Yeah. What did they have to deal with? Ebola. They were doing pretty OK with that. They're going to get into like, you know, elite

like government capture of supposedly nonpartisan institutions and like the political pressures of set institutions and how, you know, for sure. Yeah, the power of global capital like ended up affecting things like the CDC and the World Health Organization. Absolutely. But, you know, I was also in high school and that was definitely target audience, right?

So I probably would have been like, yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I trust the CDC? Meanwhile, COVID hits and fully a third of America goes, I don't trust the CDC for any reason. They're trying to put, they're trying to put mRNA. They're trying to put trackers in my blood. Exactly. Do you need a tracker in your blood? You have a tracker in your pocket. Yeah, but that's 5G. That's also bad for different reasons.

Yeah, we got to go attack the 5G towers, everybody. Hey, people did attack 5G towers. Yeah. Like, again, I just think that's the thing that she, I think, unfortunately underestimated was how conspiracy brain a significant portion of a fully like a third of the US was just like, I don't trust the CDC at all. Like immediately they were like, this is a conspiracy to control me. So many Americans are just conspiracy brain.

That's not something that to be fair, I don't think it's something she could have accounted for. Because clearly, nobody did. Yeah. Nobody accounted for the Alex Jonesification of it all. The QAnonification of it all. That's what makes it such a surreal read now. When back then it was like, OK, I get it's it's hauntology. It's a world that we didn't get.

Like it is the promise of a future that we did not receive because it's one in which people trust medical science. Now, whether later books show that trusting medical science is a good idea or not is irrelevant because we only read the first one. Yeah. In which case it is. Not the CDC so much. I mean, we got our fringe doctors. Yeah.

Dr. Shannon. We'll trust her. But that's just on. That's all I'm saying is that like within the context of this book, like more so many more people just just the CDC. Now you could also argue that the people that didn't trust the CDC are dead. Well, certainly not all of them.

You know what I mean? You could argue that in her world, a lot of the people that ignored. Yeah, absolutely. All the people that ignored like health professionals warnings about Keles Amberley simply died. And there was some natural selection that the only people left alive are the people that would actually follow safety instructions And would actually care about other people There's so realism of it all

Yeah The idealism of it all is that the people who disbelieved Would have died and that were the people the world was populated now by people who is to some degree at least believed in the existence of the virus now some of them as we like Tate, want to weaponize this to bring religiosity back to the Americans. But he doesn't, but like Governor Tate doesn't dispute the existence of Keles Amberley or it's like the way it works. I think there's a difference there, but if we're comparing it to COVID, where people dispute the actual like realism and existence of COVID. Nobody within the book that we're exposed to says that Kelly's Amberley isn't real.

It'd be weird to say that. Considered every person has seen a zombie at that point, and it has that. And that's you know, there are a lot of arguments about COVID that we would have had an entirely different response as humanity if it had been far more deadly, but you know, but I would argue that also basically everybody I know, know somebody that died from COVID. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, but you could still argue that you can say, well, it you know, was the flu and they put down COVID or, you know, something like that. It was they must have had cancer or something. I've heard it all. But. I guess because it wasn't didn't have as many outward signs and they didn't like immediately, like they didn't come back from the dead. Yeah. Also, the the fact that it could lay asymptomatic for so long,

but still transmissible, which is really like the perfect storm of some bullshit. Like where you're told for everyone's safety you have to be in a room for 14 days, even though you don't feel anything. So then you get people who are like, they're just trying to tell me what to do because of X, Y, Z reasons. Yep. But Keles Ambry also lays dormant in everyone.

Yeah, but that's a lot easier to check if you really doubt it. But again, then you have to get people to believe the blood test that they're taking. But you could just cut your hand open and then die And then you know And just know I ripped a hangnail off with my teeth earlier and my finger bled a little I think I'm amplified God I'd be screwed. What? Again, we'll talk about that. What caused Kellis Amberley?

So the original Kellis Amberley, talk about it in the book, was someone trying to cure cancer. No, it was common cold. Yeah, it was two different viruses that so there was there was one that had been designed to cure the common cold and one that was designed to go into your system and hunt out tumors. And when those two viruses interacted in the same somebody like somebody, I think it was what happened was that one of them, I think the one to cure the cold or the one to cure cancer, I don't remember.

Some people got it in their minds that like the scientific community wasn't giving this vaccine to people. Yeah. So they broke in and stole it and essentially aerosolized it. Yes. Yep. And so and then once it was aerosolized, everyone got it and then mixed with the other untested vaccine and created

Keles Amberley. Yeah. Yep. So it but at that point, the so the amberly virus, Margaret Marburg, Amberly was the one for cancer. And so there's only about 30 people in the world who had been exposed to the amberly virus. But the callus virus is the one that was was basically eco terrorism to everybody.

So it was those 30 or whatever. Yeah, they were like, so there's a whole novella. They were testing it on monkeys. And these people were like, no, we're not we're not for that. So they like broken and set it out. Yeah, it wasn't like one or two of the people that had. Yeah, the Marburg Amberley was all got exposed,

got exposed to the aerosolized callous and became like patients zero. Yeah. But that's why the side effect, the side effect of everybody having latent callous Amberley was that nobody got cancer anymore. Yeah. No, the cold or the cold. So you don't get cold, you don't get cancer, but you could become a zombie at any moment. Shut my finger in a car door amplification.

There is a there is one of the novellas features Dr. Callis as a as a main character and that ambush and the actual taking of the vaccine and and and spraying it out into the world. So that one's rough. That one is rough. That one is rough. That one doesn't have a dog in it. Yeah. Oh, by the way. Yeah, we'll say that. We'll say that.

We'll save that for after the recording. Yeah. Um, does any we'll be going for the wild. Does anyone else have anything specific they wanted to talk about? From feed, any specific political points you wanted to bring up or ideas or concepts about this book that really stood out to you that you feel like we haven't covered yet. Because I felt like the big ones were like authority figures and like how this related to the real world reaction to covid and sort of the sort of naive.

Idealism of the book, despite being depressing, it's still it's latent idealism. Does anyone else have anything else they want to cover or mention? I think we hit all my points. Yeah, I think we hit everything. Tetho. Anything? No, this is a. We hit the big ones.

We really did. And some big ones I didn't anticipate, which is my favorite. One of my favorite parts of this podcast is people tell me some shit that I. So again, I'm just thrown back to the Witcher series. Any of you that have been with us long enough, you'll remember how I reacted to learning about the second half of that series. Everyone's plans for Siri. Everyone's plans for Siri and the trauma that brought me personally.

But guess we'll leave it there. Yeah, that was feed. I enjoyed it. I will say I enjoyed it. Despite again, I obviously, her world building is very strong. Like we've talked about that a lot. The world building is strong. I guess that my only negatives, I think, would be again, I feel like,

you know, like is at the beginning. Buffy's turn felt a little weird and some of the characters feel a little stock. But I think one of the thing to the why anus of it all is that Sean and Georgia really are like. Sassy comeback. Oh, yeah. Like kings and queens, like they're all they've always got some sassy little response to everyone. And eventually I want to be like, just just say OK.

Like you could just say, OK. It's allowed. You don't have to be sarcastic all the time. As someone who is sarcastic, often you don't have to do it all the time, but who is sarcastic often. You don't have to do it All the time, but that's just me If we have anything else, uh, thank you, uh Brie and fry for coming on. Uh, would you go ahead and promote your own show, please? We like to promote good podcasts on our podcast beautiful

Okay So we are pontifacts of Papal History podcast ranking all the popes from Peter to Francis. In each episode, we go through a singular pope, we go through their life, we contextualize their pontificate in history, and then we rate them based on, you know, super serious objective, not at all ridiculous categories, like what their face looked like and how scandalous they were. It's true. How far are you through the popes? Halfway.

Halfway through the post. Good. Yeah. Wild. Which, by the way, is 135. I have to imagine that the further along you go, the more information about each pope there is. The last one I wrote had four biographers and I didn't know what to do with myself. It's amazing. That's the one that took like four weeks.

Yes. And it's our longest episode ever. Ketho, you know how often I'm glad that our podcast requires no research whatsoever? Every single time. I'd say that's probably something that goes through your head at least once a day. Constantly. I love you all. But all I need to bring to this podcast are general background knowledge I have about politics and writing and having opinions, which is something I'm good at.

So having hot takes occasionally. But thank you all for listening. We will put, you know, we'll link like the Pontifacts Twitter or whatever in the show notes. Thank you for coming on. And, you know, someday we're going to be on your show to talk about. A book we talked about ages ago. Yeah. About our favorite mechanical for Leibowitz.

What are the books, the books we pop all the time for someone to read? So you can hear about our sweet, sweet boy. Francis, our sweet, sweet boy. Sweet, sweet boy, Francis. You'll read about him. Perfect. We can't wait. We generally do have a sweet, sad boy.

We do actually have genuine affection for our sweet boy, Francis. You'll see. But thank you for coming. He's just a wonderful, sad idiot. I'm so ready. I have not read this book. He's me if I lived in the apocalypse. Oh, kind of. Yeah. Got it. Yeah.

We will be back probably with what will be our three year anniversary episode. After this, which, if I may announce now, anyone that's made it this long deserves the announcement for what that that is going to be. And we are going to go for a big one, folks, one we've been putting off for years. We're finally going to take it on one of our favorite books for both of us of all time. We are going to be doing

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Is it? Kethos in my favorite book by Le Guin. I think her best of the heinous cycle. It's it's one we put off for a long time because of how good it is and how much we have to say about it that we're going to be doing that for our three year anniversary. So come back for that.

Thank you so much. We love each and every one of you personally and non-Platonically, I promise. And if you sign up for the Patreon, I'll come to your house and smooch you on the forehead. Bye! Bro. Are you fucking real man? Come on. Bye!