Dune ep 2 – The novel, Book 1: "Dune" (first half)

[00:00:00] Hello, Elysia here with a brief pre-intro. What you are about to listen to is a conversation recorded some months ago now between Luke, David and I about some key lore setting up the original story in the Duneiverse, but also a dive into the first 10 chapters of the book Dune. So the first half of the first section or book of the original Dune itself.

[00:00:23] If certain sections of this conversation sound familiar to longer-time listeners, it's because I edited parts of this conversation into a discussion setting up Dune Prophecy right before that series launched on HBO. This version has all the Dune Prophecy discussion cut out. You can still hear that in the Imperial Palace novella breakdown in the public feed. But the focus of this episode is on the original book from the 1960s.

[00:00:50] However, certain parts of the discussion such as the lore about the Bene Gesserit made sense to keep in here. So if you recognize anything we've said, you're not going crazy. Most of this conversation though has not been heard before. All right, let's get right into it. Enjoy and stick around until the end for more information on what's coming next. Spoiler, first up will be Dune the novel part 1b. But first, right now, Dune part 1a.

[00:01:49] Welcome back to Wool-Shift-Dust does Dune. I'm Alicia, of course, joined by my co-host Luke. Hi, Luke. Hi, Alicia. You know, whenever you say that, my brain automatically goes to Debbie Does Dallas and that doesn't say anything good about me. That's a you thing. Listeners, wipe that from your brain. I made the cover art.

[00:02:12] But yeah, while we wait for Silo to come back, we're taking a step forward in our Dune series with the first part of our breakdown on Frank Herbert's book Dune. So we're going to be covering book one or we're going to call it part one of the first book to be less confusing. But then it's also confusingly has a subtitle of Dune. So Dune part one, Dune. Only we're actually we decided to do this first part of the book in two parts. More on that in a bit.

[00:02:39] But that means this episode will lay the foundations for what you need to know to get the story started, covering slightly less than the first sixth of the book. The chapters aren't numbered, but this episode's covering through the hunter seeker incidents and reveal that follows. I tried to count. I think it's 10 chapters. It's page 102 in one of my editions, page 77 in another.

[00:03:01] So, you know, but basically we're stopping at the chapter that starts with an excerpt from Muad'Dib family commentaries by Princess Irlan that begins. It is said that Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis that he walked heedlessly into the pit. So if you hear or read those words, you've gone just past where we're covering today. And don't worry if all those names sound scary and foreign to you, they will sound familiar soon enough.

[00:03:27] And Luke, yeah, we are not protecting your innocence this time since you've read the book multiple times. No, I feel in a rare position of strength this podcast. So yeah, me and Alicia are meeting as equals this time. So this is going to be a slightly different dynamic. And we also have for this first part of this first episode, we're joined by a special guest, someone else who's read the book multiple times. Lorehound David, welcome.

[00:03:54] Well, thank you very much for inviting me to join in. It's an exciting time for Dune fans. Absolutely. Yeah, thank you for joining us. And I know Dune also holds a special place in your heart. In the intro episode to this series, which I have re-released just before this, Luke and I talked about our background with the series and why we care so much about it and are doing this. But David, what's your Dune story? You know, that's a good question.

[00:04:21] And I was thinking about that today and trying to reconstruct from memory my experience and remembrances. There was at some point – well, let me reframe that. I most likely saw Dune – the David Lynch 1984 Dune movie before I ever touched the books. Even though that I was aware that the books were around and they were some sort of, you know, part of it.

[00:04:50] And I honestly can't remember if I had read the books or seen the movie What Comes First. It's all a mismatch. Yeah, same. But the point being that it's just been part of life, just like Lord of the Rings and the three core books of that are just sort of part of my life. I don't know when I first read them or how I first encountered them. They were just there. They were always around.

[00:05:15] And then I certainly remember that and I remember playing one of the various Dune video games, one of those strategy games where you had to like harvest spice and build crawlers and those kinds of things. And then reading the books in my early 20s sometime around when I was attending, you know, some years attending college.

[00:05:39] I remember being really taken with the books and investigating them deeply and having them really hit me in a way that they hadn't hit before. And I think that comes into play with a lot of the sort of coming of age stuff that goes on with Paul, questions of politics and, you know, the nature of reality. Even it just sort of hits that, you know, that early 20s period of a young adult's life. You're really out in the world. You're questing. You're thinking.

[00:06:09] You're trying to find answers to things. You're trying to find your place in the world. And so those books, these books really fit into that space for me. I even have my original copy, my used bookstore copy, and I've got all my other ones over here. And I was looking through it the other day and I can still see all of the little highlighting marks where I marked pages. There's a lot of dog ears on them.

[00:06:34] I even found some old three-by-five cards where I had been writing out notes and actually really at that time trying to grapple with what Herbert was laying down. And, yeah, so it's been a background part of my life for a long time. I've read all of the core six books. I've not read any of the auxiliary books by Herbert's son or, you know, anybody else. I've only read the core books.

[00:07:03] And I've probably read them seven or eight times probably. I don't have them memorized. And I think maybe Dune Messiah is probably the one that's the most like, well, I don't know what's going on there. And then they're moving on. But, yeah, they're all. Dune Messiah is my favorite. Yeah, yeah. You know, and I've been actually been wanting to go back to read it, especially after Villeneuve's second movie and everybody talking about all that kind of stuff.

[00:07:30] Because the third movie is going to be based on Dune Messiah. Right. And there is a lot of this conversation, and maybe we'll touch on some of it today, and maybe you'll touch on some more of it in future episodes of your podcast, where what is the trajectory of Paul? What is the purpose of Paul? What is the – what's going on with Paul?

[00:07:52] And I – there was a whole bunch of discourse in the pop culture space around the second movie and talking about Paul and power and Messiah figures. And I was like, yeah, but that's like a tenth of what else is going on in these books. It's just because Paul is set up to fail. But Herbert set him up to have Precy. I don't know.

[00:08:16] There was a whole bunch of messy stuff, and people are talking about how the second book is really an answer to the question of Paul. And I'm like – and I'm always like, yeah, but. There's always so much more. But anyway, I think that's the long-winded way of saying I really do need to go back and read Dune Messiah again because it is such a – it's so distant in my memory, but it is a pretty pivotal book in the whole series.

[00:08:42] So, David, your sort of experience with Dune sounds kind of similar to mine. I was a bit younger than yourself. I'd be about 15, 16 the first time I read it. And what's been really interesting going back to it and preparing for this podcast and just listening to it is that when I first read it, you know, the character I identified with was Paul because, you know, he's kind of my age.

[00:09:11] And as I read it as an – as I read it as somebody that's older, I think the character I identify most with is probably – it's probably Leto. So – Sure, interesting. Does your kind of – as your kind of perspective on the book shifted as you've got older? That's interesting. I haven't – the last time I reread it was – oh, gosh.

[00:09:36] I kind of speed read – maybe it was around the pandemic was the last time I read it during the pandemic. And I don't remember – I mean, Paul – so we're – and we're talking about the first book. And I don't know. Paul – I never really identified with Paul. I never really identified with Luke either. I was more of a Hound Solo type of guy. Yeah. If you want to go in the Battlestar Galactica world, Apollo was my dude. But, you know, he was obviously one of the main guys.

[00:10:06] But I never really identified with Paul as a person, as an avatar for myself to live through. I mean, certainly his journey appeals to, you know, a young person at that age seeking adventure and going out. But I always thought that the world was so much more bigger and interesting than – for me, the intellectual complexity is always – I think I got caught up more on that than an individual.

[00:10:34] But it's interesting that you talk about Leto because I think he is such an omnipresent character in the entire storyline even though he – spoilers – dies so early on in the first book. Yeah. His presence is felt throughout. He creates so much tension in the text that I never really considered him as a character. So that's an interesting question.

[00:10:58] Because I never really thought that much or identified with Leto that closely. I mean, his sort of fatherly presence is there. And I guess if we really think about it, his character really sets up so much of the dramatic tension for the entire rest of the core six books. Even though he's not in it, his sort of ghost is there, you know, throughout the entirety.

[00:11:22] And certainly in the first three, it's the tension and the drama of his tragedy that really sets up so much for what goes on. So, no, that's interesting. I think it's – And then another important character is named after him later. Yes, indeed. Which we won't talk about on this podcast, I guess. No, no. Yeah. That's way down the line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was actually going to ask you the same question that Luke asked you.

[00:11:51] Because we were talking about in our intro episode, you know, how for me it's shifted where I probably looked at myself as Paul first. And now it's really Jessica who I identify with. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But of course, yeah, this is just – it's – Dune is overall. It's the prototype of like so much science fiction and fantasy, like Star Wars, Wheel of Time, all this – basically anything you can think of with the desert in it. Um, but it's also kind of a subversion of this chosen one savior trope.

[00:12:20] And I think, yeah, that definitely becomes more clear as the story continues. But you can already see the seeds of that planet in this story where it's more than he's the reluctant hero. It's like – it's more complicated than that. He knows he has to become the hero. But also he knows – he knows that the outcome is basically going to be terrible no matter what. So he's just trying to navigate what is the least terrible outcome on, you know, a galactic scale.

[00:12:51] And does he win? Does he fail? I guess he does his best. There's a whole podcast in just the discussion of Paul, I think, at some point. And I don't know how far we would have gone down that road because there is so much complexity there. The way that Herbert set him up and the way that his prescience plays a role in what is actually going on,

[00:13:15] I think it's a lot more complex than people make it out to in popular discussions where, well, yeah, see, you can't trust, you know, absolute power. And it's like, that's not exactly – he's not saying that, but he's also not explicitly saying that either. I think it's a way more nuanced conversation. Well, I think it's one of those things where the intention of the author and the intention of the text are actually a bit different. Interesting, yeah.

[00:13:44] Because I think if you read, like, interviews with Frank Herbert, it's quite clear that this is an anti-charismatic – this is meant to be a statement, anti-charismatic leadership. But I'm not sure that's entirely reflected in the text. I'm not sure that's entirely reflected in the text. It's almost like Herbert had an idea, but the story he actually wrote took him in directions he maybe didn't want to go.

[00:14:13] Because I've always thought the subtitle for – getting a bit ahead of ourselves – but I've always thought the subtitle for Dune Messiah should be, Paul was the baddie! Yeah. Yeah. But was he? But was he? But was he? Anyway, that's a whole other – I don't want to take you off your outline, Alicia, because I know you have some specific things you want to cover today. I mean, this first part is just open conversation.

[00:14:38] But what I find interesting about this first book is that the book tells us right away what's going to happen. It tells us that Paul is this Messiah figure, that his house will fall, that religious wars will be waged in his name. So my question is, what is our fascination that we keep rereading this over and over despite – I mean, obviously, yeah, we know what's going to happen even the first time we read it.

[00:15:06] But yet, it enraptures us. That's a good question. And I think, you know, going back to what Luke, you asked me, you know, at least on the – what characters are the most interesting to me? And I really have to think that it was never one character that drove me. And one of the things that keeps me coming back to this well over and over and over again, and I may even end up reading it before too long, rereading them all before too long,

[00:15:36] is the complexity of the world that Herbert builds and the obvious philosophical and religious and political and ecological thoughts and opinions and theories that he lays out

[00:15:56] and the interplay of all of us in the world and the history of all of us in the world and the history of all of us in the stars. What are the things that we're dealing with? You know, so that's the best of literature and the best of fiction, right, is that we get to see ourselves and have a self-reflection from a world that is displaced from us in the created world.

[00:16:23] And for me, the complexity of the world and the depth of the world and the way that he constructed the world, where the words come from, where the concepts come from, are so rich and so dense that I think that's what has always kept me coming back is just all of the facets that he has created in this, you know, these are silmarils.

[00:16:51] These are the things, these are so shiny and bright in my mind because of the intellectual nature of them. Yeah. And more so than any of the individuals. Silmarils being a Tolkien thing for anyone who doesn't know. Sorry. We lorehounds, you know how we roll. We're just going around fantasy. All the IPs. That's right. We're just doing it up. And I think that's something, you know, that interested me when I was a young man in college. And I think it's something that now as a podcaster that's interested me.

[00:17:20] And I've been toying around with this idea of how to maybe re-approach that analysis, that really close textual analysis of it. And I actually started working on a project. I don't know if this is a good time to talk about it. I don't, again. Yes, go for it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:37] So I think one of the things that has stopped me in completing or taking any forward motion on this project after the initial work that I started to do was to understand how to position the end product, you know, and, you know, how do we, you know, fine, we put a podcast out.

[00:17:56] But there's a whole bunch of other back-end stuff that needs to be resolved in there and the business, you know, the business of making the sausages that are podcasts. But as well as how did I want to present the core material? And I was toying with, like, do I read the whole chapter and then do my breakdowns or do I just read salient parts? Or, you know, so I was exploring with those different ideas.

[00:18:23] But basically what I started, and I think I worked already through the first three chapters, was doing a very, very close read of the text. And whenever I came across a word like Kwazatz Haderach or the Lanzarad or the Gom Jabbar or anything like that, I stopped and I would go and I would get lost for about half an hour, 45 minutes, tracing down the roots of this word. What was that concept? Where did Herbert get this word?

[00:18:52] And then I started to build a notion. And if you have been around the Lorehound stuff at all in the recent, in the last year or so, we've been using the, it's not even a note-taking application. It's one of these very rich database-like but text-based platforms that you can very easily build a body of, almost like a Wikipedia-like documents and databases.

[00:19:21] And we've been using it for the One Ring Guide, for Rings of Power. We had House of the Dragon. We had True Detective. We have some other stuff on there. So I was starting to build a glossary and then I actually was writing up my chapter notes. And so all of my notes are listed in there with the cross-referencing to the characters and that kind of stuff.

[00:19:42] So the concepts of what I'm trying to do is very clear, but then the question is, how do I get that into a podcast form that we can actually do something productive with it rather than just drop it on people? Because it's also a lot of work.

[00:20:27] Right. Like, okay, then just going into a deep dive on the voice. I'm just, the first three chapters are so dense and they, he gives us so much. And like you said, he sets up everything that we need to know. He sets the primary characters. He sets the stakes. He even flat out tells us though. He's like, you know, this is, this first part of the book is about the fall of the House of Atreides. Here we go. Here's how it happens. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's really brilliant writing.

[00:20:56] And so, yeah, so I'm still toying with the idea of, of how to do that and what would be an interesting podcast, what would be helpful and entertaining. So anyway, that's, that's on one of the back burners, but the, the heat is still on. It's just on low, you know, simmering, you know, it's still simmering. You know, we've got a few things to do yet for the rest, to get through the rest of this year. And I think next year is going to be a banger year too. So we'll, we'll see where we go. So, yeah.

[00:21:25] So this, what we're doing in this book breakdown is sort of laying a foundation that that will be like a supplement, you know, a next level to basically. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cause this is like, that, that would be literally like word by word as opposed to the meta context and examining the overarching themes and discussing the themes. Yeah. As opposed to like looking through it with a magnifying glass. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know that Dune comes. Or a microscope even.

[00:21:53] Dune comes with a steep vocab learning curve. I know that's also why John's afraid of it. Which I find hilarious. I know. Cause he's like so into Tolkien, but it's not worse than Tolkien. That's for sure. Well, and he's a, he's a child of Harry Potter and he's a, you know, a wheel of time fan. And there's some, you know, there's some names in there. So. But Dune and Tolkien are the worst. But there is, yeah, there's a lot of vocab and weird names. So for these book breakdowns, going to try not to overwhelm you.

[00:22:23] So we're going to try to like lay the foundation for your Dune lore with key terms. So all this stuff that David's been saying it, most of it is stuff that we will talk about. So at the end of this, you know what these terms mean. They're not just science sci-fi gibberish. And this is one reason why Luke and I decided to split this first part of the book in half.

[00:22:47] So Dune is divided into three quote unquote books. And we're going to call them parts to try to minimize the confusion. And the first part, which is again, subtitled Dune. This episode is going to cover half of that first part about almost. So hope you're all still following me basically.

[00:23:13] And then we'll plan three more episodes after this to cover Dune part 1B, then Dune part 2 and Dune part 3. Plus the power ranking of the most memorable scenes. And I'll bring this up again at the end. But if you haven't yet, please send in your top three most memorable scenes from the book to woolshiftdustpodcasts at gmail.com. And the book's extensive appendices, I think that's more for David's project.

[00:23:39] For this, we're only going to focus on the information that's important for understanding the ongoing story and just weaving it in as relevant. So by the end of this, everyone should understand that the words Paul, Usul, Maldive, Kwisak Hadara and Lisan Al-Gaib, they all refer to the same person, but they mean different things. So what I love about this project is when Alicia first pitched it to me, it's let's break down Dune and we'll do it in two parts.

[00:24:10] And then it was we'll do it in three. Well, at first I thought it would be one part, but that was like crazy talk. That was crazy talk. So we're now up to a grand total of five episodes of this. Listen, it's one of the densest, most important books in science fiction history. Yeah, definitely.

[00:24:30] And you're not even touching the appendices and especially the first appendices, the ecology of Dune is probably one of the most mind-blowing chapters of literature I've ever read in my life. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we're going to weave that. It's about like the worm life cycle becomes important. Later in the book breakdown, we will be weaving discussion of that into, you know, because that's important for understanding what's actually happening. Can I partially answer Luke's previous question quickly?

[00:25:01] I think one character that always did interest me was Liet Kynes. I always thought that that was a – and Kynes' father as well. I thought those were two really important and influential characters. So anyway. I always say Kynes. What do they say in the movies? I don't know. You know, the thing is when I read it, we didn't have – you know, we had the movie and the way we said Harkonnens versus Harkonnens. Harkonnens. Right.

[00:25:25] So we didn't have a pronunciation guide back in the, you know, early aughts and late 80s and stuff, 90s. Luke, what do they say in the audiobook? So it's Kynes and it's Harkonnen. It's Harkonnen. Oh, no. I reject Harkonnen. It's Harkonnen. Yeah, no, it's Harkonnen. Let's get that out of the way right now. But I can say Kynes. Harkonnen. Harkonnen. But, yeah, so this first book – Oh, and I guess one more.

[00:25:53] Is it Jesseret or Gesserit? Oh, I see. R-G or soft G? Gesserit. Gesserit, yeah. Benny Gesserit. Benny Gesserit. Okay, good, good, good. All right. Now we're all in the same thing. Yeah, no, no, no. It's definitely not a hard G. Could be, but no. No, no, no. But, yeah, so this first book, it's going to set the stage for the adaptations we'll be talking about as we go and the story of the Benny Gesserit we were just talking about, Sisterhood,

[00:26:21] and their Missionera Protectiva. So, Luke, how would you describe the Benny Gesserit? They are a religious – well, they are an organization that clothes themselves in religion. Mm-hmm. But really what they are is a bunch of geneticists run amok. Basically.

[00:26:48] Because what they're – well, I'm sure we'll get into it – what they're trying to do is breed the perfect human. The human that can basically see the future, see the past, be everywhere all at once, be omniscient and omnipresent. And at the same time, they are like one of the three pillars of the civilization along with the Imperium and the Spacing Guild.

[00:27:18] So, really, political power sort of shifts uneasily on this tripod between these three organizations. And it really all goes back to this idea that is mentioned in the prequels that there are no – there is no artificial intelligence in the Dune universe.

[00:27:38] So, in order to, like, make civilization work, humanity has had to train itself to a higher state of, like, physical and mental preparedness, perfection, whatever you want to call it. And the Bene Gesserit are part of that. That's the most succinct way I could describe them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:02] And I think this series, Doom Prophecy, the prophecy in question is what's called the Missionaria Protectiva, which plays an important part in this original book we're talking about today. So, David, how would you describe that? The Missionaria Protectiva is an interesting thing because it's really a protocol of the Bene Gesserit. And it is a survival mechanism that the Bene Gesserit have seeded into the cultures of thousands of different planets.

[00:28:31] I think something that we have to kind of remember here is the scale, even though Dune is taking place on three planets – four planets, really. Right. But primarily, obviously, on Arrakis. There are thousands and thousands of worlds, and there are human inhabitants scattered across a huge chunk.

[00:28:52] And the Bene Gesserit, a sister of the Bene Gesserit, may find herself on some planet somewhere in some situation that imperils her life or the lives of the mission that the Bene Gesserit have there. And what they have done is they've preceded this concept of various concepts that will work culturally as escape valves for them if they get into trouble.

[00:29:19] So, maybe a common reference would be – maybe a relatable concept would be in the Tintin books, right? You know, the young adventuring boy, and he's out there. And then, like, oh, it's an eclipse, and the eclipse means that, you know, this is our god, and it's a sign. Or, like, say with the Ewoks in C-3PO, right? Oh, he's our metal god. They're playing – they've preceded a mythology that they can then activate by saying certain words, phrases.

[00:29:48] They can act in a certain way with that culture. And then that culture will go, oh, these people are our – you know, we can't harm them. You know, we must help them kind of thing. Right. So, it's a very subtle – They are the prophesied ones. Yes, they are the prophesied ones. And so, it's a very subtle manipulation of culture that allows, you know, for some safety and ability to manipulate things.

[00:30:12] But this is – it gets – it's such a complex and interesting thing that what happens with the intersection of Paul and the Quasatadirac. But anyway, I'll leave it there. I'm trying to bite my tongue. Because this is the interesting thing about the Missionario Protective. It's how it interacts with whatever culture is already there. So, it doesn't end up being the same legend or the same story on thousands of planets. Right. Because it always has to interact with whatever – Localized. Yeah.

[00:30:41] Whatever the native culture already is. So, you get this kind of weird sort of sense where it hits certain beats in whatever planet you're on. But it can also go off in wildly different directions. Right. And the thing to, like, understand about the Bene Gesserit is there's a – I can't remember whether it's in the book or whether it's just in the film. But there's this line about how their plans are measured in centuries.

[00:31:10] Like, what they're doing is over a vast span of time. And it passes down through, like, countless generations of the sisterhood. Right. Yeah. So, this – and by the way, I was going to draw the parallel between the Bene Gesserit and Wheel of Time fans will know that Aes Sedai are definitely based on the Bene Gesserit. And yes, people in universe call them witches. The Bene Gesserit witch must leave. Yes.

[00:31:38] But, yeah, these stories – so, these stories are set within our own universe. But they are thousands of years into the future. So, the main Dune book, you know, the one we're here to talk about today is set 20,000 to 25,000 years into our own future. Which means that Dune Prophecy, the HBO series, should take place about 10,000 to 15,000 years into our future.

[00:32:04] And this takes place shortly after, you know, Luke referred to the taking down of the thinking machines. And this was an event called the Butlerian Jihad. And to quote this section of this first book, Dune, once – this is what a character known as the Reverend Mother, a Bene Gesserit leader, she says,

[00:32:28] Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free, but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind, Paul quoted. Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible, she said. But what the OC Bible should have said is, thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind. The Great Revolt took away a crutch, she said. It forced human minds to develop.

[00:32:57] Schools were started to train human talents. So I have to ask you guys, what do you think that Frank Herbert would think of AI today? Yeah, no, I think that's probably Frank Herbert's deepest, darkest nightmare. I was going to say made flesh, but made unflesh, made non-flesh. But I also think that's partly Herbert wanted to distinguish Dune from other pieces of science fiction,

[00:33:25] and one of the ways he wanted to do that was by having no aliens and no machines. So this is all going to be about the human condition and what happens to humanity if you stretch it out over a long enough period. Yeah.

[00:34:09] Butlerian Jihad and thinking machines in our current modern day and age. I think this goes back to one of the core, what I see as one of the core things that he's advancing in this conversation of the book, which is, and this comes up later in the future books, but I won't spoil any of the details, but just talk about the concept that unless humanity is engaged in its own survival and its own,

[00:34:40] and it's kind of living on this precipice of being, of leaning forward into the unknown and trying to push ourselves further and further, then we will be doomed genetically as a species. We'll end up falling back in ourselves and collapsing. And one of the things that you read in that quote there, Alicia, is that when we take away our ability to think and have agency,

[00:35:06] we doom ourselves, and I think Herbert, I don't know him. I don't know that much about him as a person deeply. I mean, I've read bits and pieces, but nothing, you know, I'm no authority. But I would see that he would see that this is a, I would think that he would see this, our current age as we're going to have to go through this natural evolution. We are going to have to go through and grapple with,

[00:35:33] AI was going to happen no matter what. Once the moment we figured out microprocessors, it was an inevitability. And so we have to grapple with it. That's why they're illegal in silo. Sorry. Very good point. So I think it's, I think it's a, I think it, you know, I think he's like Luke is saying, he's, he's giving us a warning, you know, and, and like a good, I think the, the morality, the morality tale that is embedded in, in the Dune series as well,

[00:36:03] is, is that he's trying to think through these things in a complex way so that we have something that we can reflect on. And that's something that we can actually bring into our daily lives right here and have awareness. We may not be you, us three on a podcast aren't necessarily going to change chat GPT's fortunes. Right. That's, but the fact that we're aware and we're talking about it as part of, of humanity grappling with that.

[00:36:27] And, and so I can see, I could see that he would probably see this as an, you know, this inflection point is an inevitability. Yeah. And, and what we do after the, after this is, is the real question. Sorry, Luke. I kind of. And I mean, one of the things that makes me slightly uncomfortable about Dune and makes it a bit of a challenging book is I'm not sure this is true of Frank Herbert, but Dune, the book is definitely eugenics.

[00:36:57] Definitely eugenics curious. Um, and there's this, there's this, yeah, there's this whole thing about like, literally there's this whole thing where Paul goes on about like race memory and stuff like that. And there's, Oh, this is a bit, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I like this terminology and what it implies. Um, and yeah, I think I'm not saying, I'm not saying Frank Herbert necessarily believed

[00:37:24] in any of that stuff, but the text kind of makes you a little bit uncomfortable. Goes back to your previous point about author versus text. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think Frank Herbert is not a perfect personal to, I'll bring up something today that bothers me about it. But, um, I do some of his, his later books get a little funky. Just, just, just a little bit. You can tell the guy had a healthy curiosity about magic mushroom.

[00:37:54] Well, I'm thinking of him. I'm thinking of Gygax. I'm thinking of Roddenberry. I'm thinking of, uh, uh, Asimov. They were all handsy. They were all very, they all had very active imaginations and, and active libidos. Um, but, but I do have to say in the race memory in this way, I don't, he doesn't mean it like he means it as literally as lineage and, and sort of like a, you know, younging

[00:38:21] concept of collective unconsciousness that goes back through generations. That's not, but he says other questionable things. Yeah. I think like taken, I think all of it taken in context. Yeah. I stand by my statement that it's, it's eugenics curious. It's not. Yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. But it is interesting, like that these are set so far in the future just to, so the original book is set, uh, 25,000 years in our future, let's say ish.

[00:38:50] Um, and so if we were to look that far backward in our own history, then we are in the upper paleolithic era. So this is when humans have made it to Europe and are just starting to create permanent settlements. So us to them are essentially the stone age before there's even evidence of pottery being made. So we're just so far removed of all these groups we're going to be talking about today. The Mentats, which are the human thinking machines that replace computers, the Bene

[00:39:17] Gesserit, uh, the Souk school of conditioned doctors and the spacing guild who are the ones who learned to use a spice to fold space and time and travel through the stars. You know, somebody is reading all of the, the main Herbert books. When you get into the last three, it's very much about the Bene Gesserit and how Herbert is working to rehabilitate the Bene Gesserit.

[00:39:44] If I can say that without being too spoilery and how the, what their importance is to the survive, the literal genetic survival of the human species. Mm-hmm. And, um, they are very much, uh, flawed heroes, uh, in, in some way because the, you know, Luke had suggested that the, the, and I think rightly so that the Bene Gesserit clothed themselves

[00:40:12] in religion, but they are a highly political organization and they are a kind of politics that we, you know, um, we don't necessarily see at least in our, our, our modern age. And I'm sure it's, uh, occurred before, you know, when, um, I can think maybe in, in some, maybe, uh, uh, European history where we would see some of this, but this idea of being seated

[00:40:36] within the, the fabric of the, the, the, the social fabric of power structures. Was there, uh, anything else you wanted to add about this original Dune book before we part ways? I would encourage people to recognize, I, we talked about how that we keep coming back to it.

[00:41:03] And the reason that we keep coming back to it is because it exists on multiple levels. There's characters, there are locations, there are, uh, there is ecology, there's politics, there's religion, there's sociology, there's, um, uh, philosophy, there's, you know, all kinds of stuff. And so this book exists on a multiplicity of levels. And I would encourage anyone who reads this

[00:41:27] to recognize that Paul's story is not the story of this. He is the start of this story and a start of a much larger process. And he's a spark in a powder keg. Basically. Basically. Uh, and I know, you know, when Herbert wrote this book, it's funny when I talked to some of, uh, uh, my extended family who were around when Herbert, you know, who are still around now,

[00:41:55] but you know, who, who were young when Herbert wrote this book and they were like, oh yeah, we remember Dune. Everybody thought he was trying to start a cult or something, you know, he was trying to create a religion. And so part of his pushback on that was to then come around in the next couple of books and really try to, uh, uh, alter Paul's, uh, uh, character arc in, in some ways he wrote in response to that. I don't know, because I think that he's already laying

[00:42:21] out his character arc at the beginning of this book. Like, I think he telegraphs the whole series in the first book. He may have, but he, he really put some spin on it in subsequent books to really try to push back against the, the idea. And I think it's debatable. So I think the point that I want to get to, and I'll, I want to hear what you, you know, I get Luke, just give me a second is that,

[00:42:46] um, that I don't, I would encourage people to see beyond the Paul character when they're reading the first book. It is very clearly a coming of age, young man coming into, you know, whatever, but there is so, when you take that layer off the top of just this book and you go down into the rest of it, there is so much more going on. And I think that is what the power of this first book is,

[00:43:11] is this in the world, in the creation of the world. So Luke, sorry. I, I, no, no, no, no, no, I, I don't think I was trying to put in. So I agree with Alicia that, um, the, that Paul's arc is very much laid out in the first book, but I kind of, it's interesting what you say, David, because I kind of get the sense that Herbert is a bit annoyed that people missed his point.

[00:43:36] Yeah. So he, so he goes back into Messiah and makes it really explicit. Exactly. Really explicit. Yeah. So if the people in the back aren't quite getting it. Yeah. But he was freaked out. He was legit freaked out because people were coming up to him and they're like, where do I sign up for your call? You totally misunderstand. You're totally misrepresenting. This is an anti-cult book. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

[00:44:04] And I give Paul a lot of latitude because it's not his fault that he's the Quazat Sadarak. It's not his fault that he's prescient. No, he just feels dread about it. Yeah. You know, it's not the fact, it's not his fault that he's a, a, a mentat and he's doing his best in an, he can see what's about to unfold and he's trying to find the shortest path through that thing. And, and, and can I, I don't know if I should say this or not, but he fails.

[00:44:35] Right. Ultimately. And it's, it's, it's his children that have to, to fix it. But then again, do they, because then, yeah, there's a lot of psych cyclic, you know, the, the way the real world works, you know, where things. Sure. We think that this is the answer and then maybe it makes some things worse. Right. And I think that's what, what, um, Herbert is trying to say is, is that we have to live on the edge and we have to live with agency and we can't just let systems of power,

[00:45:04] uh, um, operate without our paying attention to things and being engaged in things. And I think that's, that's one of the more ultimate messages that he has. This is that we, we as a species need to lean into the uncertainty of life. Yeah. There is no certainty if, if we have certainty. And I think we see this in the, the foundation, uh, television show by, uh, um, you know, show run by David Goyer, David S. Goyer,

[00:45:34] where the genetic dynasty is going to collapse in on itself because, you know, uh, which Asimov was writing about in his original story, which is, you know, that there, there is a, a doom that in, unless we find a way through it, it's going to last a really long time. How do we, how do we shorten that? And how do we, how do we come out the other side of it as a, um, a more wisened species, I guess is a way to say that.

[00:46:01] And I mean, the thing to bear in mind also, I think, and this gets, I think this gets somewhat overlooked in like analysis of doom is that for all Paul's gifts, for all his, for all his gifts, for all his curses, for all, he is not a normal 15 year old. He is still a 15 year old. Mm-hmm. This book. And so I think it sometimes gets underplayed that for all this power,

[00:46:29] for all this strength, for all this prescience, this is a child and it's a child, and it's a child that's just been orphaned after the first, well not orphaned, but just lost their father after the first third of the book. And yeah, in some senses orphaned because of what happens to Jessica and the change she goes through. So, and I think, I think Herbert underplays the fact that Paul is still a child, but he is still a child. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:57] He's a child who's suddenly forced to grow up. Yeah. Yeah. But I wanted to go into Tossey Station to pick up some power conversion. He's less bratty than Luke Enwiger. Far much less bratty-er. Which is the follow, I can't remember which of the follow-up Dune novels, but like, Herbert gets like really salty at Star Wars. Oh, does he? Yeah.

[00:47:22] There is, there is a, there's a character called 3PO that he kills off in a particularly unpleasant way. Oh God, I don't remember that. No. I don't remember that. I passed that. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. He gets really salty about Star Wars. He gets really salty about Star Wars. Yeah. Yeah. Lucas was not. Was not subtle about his borrowing. So yeah. Yeah. So, okay, well, let's, let's take a break here.

[00:47:49] And when we come back, Luke and I are going to get into the, we're going to introduce the characters, the situation overall, and Paul's first brush with danger in this first section of the book. Bye everybody. Thanks very much for Alicia and Luke for having me on and maybe I'll pop back in now and again. Yeah, absolutely. And, and thank you for joining us to, you know, talk through the importance of this book and introduce some of the most important key terms. Anytime. All right. We'll be back in just a moment.

[00:48:20] Receive the wisdom of Princess Irulan's writings. So I guess, you know, we kind of have been spitting out spoilers for the entire series, but that's exactly how, what Frank Herbert does. But just in case there is any doubt, this is your spoiler warning for the in-depth of the first, almost one sixth of the book Dune, about like 75 to a hundred pages, depending on which edition you have. I think it's 10 chapters, but anyway.

[00:48:50] Yeah. And we're, and there's a good chance we'll also be referencing the adaptations of this book, although we're going to be focusing on the book today and diving into the adaptations directly later in the series. But we will today, we'll give you the names of the actors who play the main characters in the Villeneuve movies, just as references for those of you who know who they are to help you remember who's who. But yeah, this is very much focused on the book story. So we lay the foundation so that later we can see what the adaptations have changed about it.

[00:49:22] So in that clip that's just played as we came back from break, Princess Irulan was referenced. And this is the character played by Florence Pugh in the Villeneuve movies. And Luke, do you want to remind people who she is? We mentioned her in the intro, but. So she is the daughter of the Padishar Emperor Shaddam IV. He is the emperor of the known universe when the book Dune starts.

[00:49:49] And she is, she basically spends her life writing a history of her times. Right. So there are various histories that are referenced in the book Dune. So there's like the collected sayings of Mordib. There's a Mordib children's, which is Paul Atreides is a Mordib for children's book.

[00:50:16] There's like a history of like Mordib's family. So there are a lot like Princess Irulan is definitely a very prolific author. Yeah. In the years after Dune takes place. Yeah. So she becomes an important character in her own right at the end of this book into the next one. But she is, every chapter is introduced with a quotation from one of these books that she's

[00:50:46] written. So we'll run through a couple of them as we talk through today. But yeah, give the intro episode that we did that was just re-released in this feed. A listen if you haven't yet for the whole backstory of how this book was created and published in the first place. I bet you didn't expect that an auto repair manual publisher would be the one who brought perhaps the greatest epic of science fiction to the world.

[00:51:12] But the book again was written by an ecologist and student of politics, Frank Herbert, and first published as a complete novel in 1965. And this is actually a quote from the inside cover of Sisterhood of Dune, the book on which the Dune Prophecies show is going to be based. And they point out there, Dune became the first novel ever to win both of science fiction's highest honors, the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

[00:51:38] Later, as the number of fans grew, Children of Dune became the first science fiction, which is like a sequel in the original series, became the first science fiction novel ever to appear on the New York Times bestseller list. When David Lynch's film version was released in 1984, the novel Dune hit number one on the New York Times. So just, yeah, it was a foundation was that series was begun before the Dune series. But this is the one that kind of broke through for science fiction.

[00:52:07] I mean, in mainstream. And not to get into it, but I think it is a better book. Than Foundations. I, I'll be honest, I had to not get far in the Foundation series. So I guess I'm inclined to agree. Yeah. Although, you know, great is so many interesting ideas there, too. The TV show is good. But anyway, so the dedication inside this book, my edition of it at least, is to the people whose

[00:52:32] labors go beyond ideas to the realm of real materials, to the dry land ecologists, wherever they may be in whatever time they work. This effort at prediction is dedicated in humility and admiration. So, yeah, we talked about his AI prediction. You know, this was released in 1965 again, but he's, his primary interest really is ecology. And that shows through and glimmers here in this book. Yeah, I mean. And more in later books.

[00:53:00] I mean, Frank Herbert was, and we touch on this in the, the re-released episode, Frank Herbert was a man of very wide, very varied interests. And, you know, all of those are reflected in Dune from his interest in politics, his interest in ecology, his interest in Middle Eastern history and languages and religious studies. And also, like it has to be said, his interest in, like I said earlier on, his strong interest in magic mushrooms.

[00:53:31] Well, that's called imagination. Yeah. But so, okay. So opening the actual first page of the novel, we get the first of Princess Irulan's writings. And so I'm going to just read that out because it does set the stage, but it's a big vocab drop. So don't worry. After we read it, we're going to break it down, the terms in the passage to set the stage for the story to come, because all the things she's saying now are important.

[00:54:00] And you've heard already Luke and David saying some of these things as well. But so from Manual of Maldiv by the Princess Irulan, she says, a beginning is a time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of the Moadib, then take care that you first place him in his time, born in the 57th year of the Padishal Emperor Shaddam IV, and take the most special

[00:54:30] care that you locate Moadib in his place, the planet Arrakis. Do not be deceived by the fact he was born on Caledon and lived his first 15 years there. Arrakis, the planet known as Dune, is forever his place. So, Muad'Dib, as she refers to him here, is Paul Atreides, played by Timothee Chalamet in the recent movies. And this first book is very much his story.

[00:54:57] And it does mostly take place in Arrakis, but we begin on the watery planet of Caledon, which is where he grew up. Now, Luke, does Caledon sound like a planet you would like to live on? Yeah, it sounds like a really nice place. And I think that's deliberate. It makes Arrakis seem even harsher, and it makes the Atreides seem even more out of place.

[00:55:22] For Caledon to be this lush, pleasant, almost sort of idyllic world. And it's kind of left unexplained in Dune. But one of the sort of interesting things going on in the background is how the Atreides become such a powerful house within this feudal system when they're based on a planet that doesn't

[00:55:48] have like masses of natural resources, unlike Arrakis. So, yeah, I think Caledon is, I think the way Herbert portrays Caledon is deliberately done as counterpoint to Arrakis. Yeah, I mean, it's very much my type of place. A lot of water, like watery places. I am definitely not a Fremen.

[00:56:16] But it's also, Castle Caledon's been their home for 26 generations. So that means like well over 500 years, like 600 or so years. And then suddenly the emperor comes in and was like, congratulations, you get to move to this harsh desert planet, but it'll make you rich if you don't die. Yeah, and sort of, yeah, it's sort of this idea of this is obviously because you get this very early on in the book.

[00:56:45] This is one of the great houses. This is a feudal system. And this is one of the major dukedoms. This is one of the major powers in this system. Right. And like you do get the sense that the Atreides are rich. They're not as rich as they will be if everything goes right on Dune, but they are a major force to be reckoned with. They're not wanting for resources or money or, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:57:13] They're one of the greatest houses stretching back many millennia. They are related, you know, in a cousin's kind of way with the emperor and with their greatest rivals as well. But yeah, this is also very much based on kind of medieval European royalty where it's a lot of intermarriage, especially when the Bene Gesserit are meddling. I mean, I think this is one of the cool things about Dune, because if humanity, you know,

[00:57:42] did spread out across thousands of worlds, the odds are just for the simplicity of managing a polity that complicated, you would have to resort back to something that looked a lot like feudalism because the emperor can't manage a domain that big directly himself. So he's got to create dukes. He's got to create barons.

[00:58:08] He's got to create people who can rule in his name, who can rule in his stead. So I actually think it's quite clever. And I think Herbert has thought through the implications of, okay, humanity is this large and it's this spread out. What kind of politics does that invite? Yeah. Yep. And they have their own family crest, which is the Red Hawk. Just that comes up as an important symbol from time to time.

[00:58:37] So it's pointing out House Atreides, Red Hawk. And yeah, this name Moadib keeps coming up and is going to keep coming up. It's one of the many names that Paul will take on. It's the name of a desert mouse that lives on the planet Dune. And it's also the name of a constellation you can see from there. And in the it's also the name of the second part of the three parts of this book. So it's very important. And don't worry, we'll be repeating this word and other tough but important vocab words

[00:59:07] and reminding you multiple times what they mean as we move through our breakdowns, including the adaptations. Another term that's come up that you've brought up a couple of times is the Padishaw Empire. I'm sorry, Padishah Emperor. And he is the head of, so we have these great houses, the federated great houses of the Lonsraads, which I have to point out Lonsraad is a Dutch word. And it basically means like council of nations.

[00:59:37] Yeah. But so to quote, I think this is from the Wikipedia, founded long before the butler in Jihad, but rising in prominence during the early days of the Carino Empire. And this is set during the Carino Empire because the Padishaw Emperor, who's played by Christopher Walken, by the way, he is a member of House Carino.

[01:00:02] And this is one of the three great houses that play an important role in this first part of the book. So we've got House Carino, the Emperor's House, House Atreides, Paul's House, and the reviled House Harkonnen, which we've been talking about where in the film, the Baron, the head of this house is played by Stellan Skarsgård. But yeah, just on the linguistic side, Padishaw is a Persian word, which means a shawl of shawls. Yeah.

[01:00:31] And it's also, it's also the name of a dynasty in, I want to say it's like 15th, 16th century Persia. So the Padishas were both, yeah, it both means king of kings, but it's also, it was also taken as a surname by a Persian dynasty in the 15th century, I believe. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And so, yeah, Arrakis is the desert planet known as Dune. And as we said, it's been being handed from the Harkonnens to House Atreides.

[01:01:00] And the reason why it's, we talked about this great financial opportunity is because of this substance called the spice melange. And the spice melange is the most valuable substance in the entire galaxy. It's essential to the spacing guild, the people who control space travel, they need the spice melange to be able to do the space travel. The Bene Gesserit use it.

[01:01:27] It's used for medicine, life extension, and it's lethally addictive. So once you get started, you have to keep going with it. And apparently it tastes like cinnamon. Or does it? Because there's like this whole thing where it goes, maybe it just tastes like whatever you think it tastes like. Your body just learns to accept that it tastes good. But yeah, it mostly seems to taste like cinnamon. But I just imagine it. Because they often, like, they have it in coffee and stuff.

[01:01:52] And then I just imagine, like, having coffee in, you know, Morocco or something. And someone putting cinnamon in it. And like, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think it's worth saying as well why the spacing guild need it. Because like we said in the first half of the show, there is no AI. There are no supercomputers. So in order to be able to travel faster than light, these guild navigators need to be able to see all possible obstacles. Right.

[01:02:21] And the space melange gives people prescience. Yeah, it gives them the ability to see different futures all happening at the same time. So that's why the spacing guild need it. It's not just space travel. It gives them a specific set of abilities. Over the past 10,000 years or so, since, you know, we talked about this butler in Jihad, they have evolved to learn to use the spice melange.

[01:02:49] And apparently they just like, like gaseous clouds of it even, to fold space and time. And that's how you move through space in this universe. Yeah, I've never got that. Because let's say you fold a piece of, you fold space like you fold a piece of paper. What happens to all the people in the middle while you're doing that? Well, you're not, okay, they're not, yeah, you're kind of folding around. You're not actually folding like the three dimensions. You're kind of like folding to get through other dimensions.

[01:03:18] Okay, okay, okay. So, okay, so Duke Leto or Leto, how do you pronounce that one? Leto. What? Leto. Leto, okay, we'll go with Leto. So, so he's basically, the reason why he's being given this planet is because from the emperor's perspective, like Duke Leto is basically too popular. The great houses of the Lanzarad like him too much. And his military is too loyal and too powerful.

[01:03:48] So, yeah, can you explain, we talked about how, you know, this is a financial opportunity to take over Arrakis and the spice trade, but why is this kind of a dangerous punishment that he's being doled out? Because obviously with it being so valuable, everybody wants to control it. And the Harkonnen, who are the other great house that we meet in the book, are being kicked off Arrakis.

[01:04:16] Yeah, they've held it for 80 years at this point. By the end, they've held it for 80 years. So, the Atreides are perfectly aware that the Harkonnen aren't just going to hand all this potential wealth and power over to them. And one of the sort of aspects that makes this first third of the book like a Greek tragedy as it plays out is everybody knows they're walking into a trap.

[01:04:43] Everybody knows that this is going to be potentially lethal to the house. But the rewards, if it goes right, are such that you're willing, that the Atreides are willing to take that risk. And it's not like they can say no to the Emperor anyway. Well, I mean, they could because they have the option of, they have the option of going rogue. They have the option of like disappearing out of the Imperium. What, and leaving the entire system? Yeah.

[01:05:12] Then they're cut off from space travel. They're cut off from everything, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it's people like in the beginning of the book, people are just like the, like the Reverend Mother just flat out says to Paul, your dad's going to die soon and don't die with him basically. Yeah. And, and Paul, he's just like, he just wants to spend more time with his dad because he thinks his dad's like super cool.

[01:05:36] But it's just, it's just, it's so frustrating because I sometimes, I sometimes hear like the Duke Leto like compared with like Ned Stark as this kind of, you know, like babe in the woods. Well, I don't think Ned Stark's that naive either, but yeah. Yeah. Doesn't really know the danger he's stepping into. And I agree with you. I agree with you. I don't think Ned Stark is that naive, but Leto is not naive at all.

[01:06:03] He knows exactly, he knows exactly how risky what he's about to do is, but he's almost compelled to do it anyway. Because like you say, you can't say no to the emperor without starting, without either running after the imperium altogether or starting a war. And if he somehow pulls this off, you know, Paul could be emperor one day. Yeah. And that's what the emperor is worried about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:06:34] Um, and so we can't talk about this, all this wealth in the galaxy without talking about, and here's another one. And we have to discuss pronunciation. Do you say Chome, Com, Company? Chome. We'll go with Chome Company. It's an acronym. So Chome stands for Combine Honnets Over Advancer Mercantiles.

[01:06:55] So we're pulling from some languages like German, but it's basically, this is the super corporation that controls all commerce across the cosmos. And, um, the emperor and his allies currently control 59.65% of this company and thus almost 60% of the wealth in the galaxy.

[01:07:17] And, um, when the Atreides are given this new position on Arrakis, this comes with, they must be given a directorship position in the company as well, which they did not previously have. So meanwhile, the Harkonnens, they, they're planning, you know, they, they're in on this whole, like, let's get the house of trade is plan. And so they've been stockpiling the spice while they had control of the place.

[01:07:42] And now they mean to interrupt the production of spice so that the Atreides are blamed and the Harkonnens, uh, don't hurt because they have this stockpile they've been building for like a decade or so. So we have this situation where there's tension between the Lanzarads of the great houses, the Chome Company and the Spacing Guild interests.

[01:08:04] And then the Bene Gesserit, who keep insisting they only exist to serve, they, you know, they, on one hand, like the Bene Gesserit do want to control everything, but it's because they hope through their schemes that they can minimize the damage of this inevitable coming fallout. Yeah. So that's why they're doing so much. Yeah.

[01:08:26] Um, and this is, there's a great line that I think is, that I think is really, um, that is true and is, is a really great line where the, the Reverend Mother goes, the, you know, the universe, the, the political system of the universe is a tripod and a tripod is always the most unstable. Right. Um, system because it's always this constantly shifting balance between these three, between these three elements.

[01:08:53] And nobody, and nobody quite knows where power is going to shift next. Whereas if it's two legs or if it's four legs, it's easier to predict where power is going to go. And it's also easier to buy. It's also easier to balance against that power. So I thought, I thought, cause going off into like putting my professor hat on for a second, it's, it's, there's, um, there's a theory in international relations that actually says that you're more likely to get into it.

[01:09:23] You get wars when you have three players in a situation. Oh, interesting. Than when you have two. Okay. I didn't realize that was a real world theory as well. No, that's, that's a real, that's a real world thing is the idea that, that, um, power systems that are based on three parties are inherently more unstable than those based on two or four or basically any even number. Hmm. All right. Well then, yeah, they have a good point.

[01:09:51] Um, so the, we keep mentioning the Bene Gesserit, uh, now one of the most important Bene Gesserit characters is Paul's mother, Jessica, who's played by Rebecca Ferguson in the recent movies. And she has a former teacher who she served and learned from for at least 14 years. And she both loves and hates.

[01:10:14] And this former teacher, she has the status of reverend mother, which is, you know, someone, a higher level status, uh, Bene Gesserit. Her name is Gaius Helen Mulhaim. Uh, she's played by Charlotte Rampling in the recent movies. And yeah, she's come to Caledon to test Paul. And we'll talk about what this test means, but, uh, we have to talk about something else, which is that, uh, something that, what do you think about the holes?

[01:10:43] I know some people find it controversial to me, it makes so much sense that reverend mother is Jessica's actual mother. Ooh, I hadn't considered that. Um. So it's confirmed in the prequel books that are written by Frank Herbert's son, allegedly based on Frank Herbert's own notes. But I think that there are certain suggestions. Yeah, that would, that would, that would make a lot of sense. That would, that would make a, cause she actually says, you know, you were always my fight.

[01:11:13] You actually says you were always my favorite. Right. Well, she says, she says to Jessica, you're as dear to me as any of my own daughters, but I cannot let that interfere with duty. Um, which shows what kind of person she is, but she does show like real sadness about what she knows is going to be the face, fate of house atreides. And she wants Jessica and she, yeah, she wants Jessica and Paul to not go down with Leto. She's like, there's nothing we can do to save him, but you can save yourselves. Yeah.

[01:11:43] And Jessica wouldn't, Jessica has no idea who her parents are. We will talk later about in the next episode, we'll talk about who her father is. Um, but the Bene Gesserit in general, often their parentage is kept secret from them for political reasons and also for breeding reasons. Um, because sometimes they want to do like a little light incest. Yeah. Like, like I said earlier, a bunch of wackadoo geneticists run amok.

[01:12:13] I mean, yeah, they have this kind of breeding program because they want to create, we keep using this term, Kwisatz Haderach, which is a Bene Gesserit term, which is kind of like the male Bene Gesserit. We'll keep explaining and expanding on what this means as we go on, but let's just say it's a male Bene Gesserit savior figure.

[01:12:31] And so they've been trying to, um, for generations, they've been selectively breeding different royals and, and Bene Gesserits and other people together to try to create the ideal person, uh, with the right characteristics to become this person. And it was not supposed to be Paul because Jessica was instructed to give birth to a daughter who was going to be married off to, we'll talk about the, the Harkonnen heir.

[01:13:01] And, um, but Duke Leto, who's played by Oscar Isaac, by the way, in the movies, um, he's her partner. He never married her. She's technically his concubine, but she's like, there's, there's no one else in his life. He's, she is the one and the parents of his heir, but he wanted a son and she loved him so much that she was like, okay, I'll give him a son.

[01:13:22] And, uh, so yeah, the Reverend mother and a lot of people are like, Jessica, you did the wrong thing, but let's see, maybe this guy is, maybe we got the quiz act Haderach as a generation early. Yeah. So yeah, like the, the Bene Gesserit have such like exquisite control over their own bodies that they can choose, they can choose when they come pregnant and which sex, the, which sex the fetus is going to be as well.

[01:13:52] Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And so, uh, this is mother Mohamed, uh, description to herself in her head of Paul, just to lay out a description of him, a face oval like Jessica's, but strong bones hair, the Duke's black, black, but with a brow line of the maternal grandfather who cannot be named. Well, he shall be named later.

[01:14:15] And that thin disdainful nose shape of directly staring green eyes, like the old Duke, the paternal grandfather who is dead. I mean, actually, if you're going to, if you're going to cast, if you're looking at that as a casting director, like Timothee Chalamet, he pretty much does meet that pretty much does meet that physical description. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I think the casting is great for, for the films. Yeah.

[01:14:42] Um, and by the way, we don't, I don't really bring up the paternal grandfather again. He's apparently like was a bit of a bastard, but he's not that important to the story. No. There's a portrait of his that she hates. Yeah. Like Lito, Lito's dad was clearly something of an exhibitionist, was clearly somebody who was very harsh on Lito, you know, was very harsh on Lito's upbringing.

[01:15:05] And Jessica kind of puts all Lito's bad traits, his secretiveness, his harshness, his... That's all his dad's fault. Yeah, that's all, that's all his dad's fault. And we, we know his dad, we know his dad like bullfighting because there's a painting of him in like a, with a bullfighter's cape. And there's the, um, bull that killed him. Its head is mounted in the dining room with the blood still on the horns.

[01:15:35] They like added a fixative to the horns so the blood didn't run off. So clearly the guy was a bit of a showman. Mm-hmm. I'm getting, it's getting kind of vague Robert Baratheon. Right. Vibes, yeah. But less of, not, not like a, a drunkard or, you know, just sort of. Yeah, yeah. But yeah. No, it's the, it's the, he's not loved. He's not loved. Yeah, it's the, it's the idea, you know, eat the pig, eat the pig that killed me. Mount the head, mount the head of the bull that killed me.

[01:16:05] Yeah, so I think he was probably respected, but Lito, his son is more, has more loyalty out of love from people, I think. Yeah. Yeah. But the Reverend Mother, she is, by the way, also the emperor's truth-sayer, which makes her feared by all. And so truth-saying, it's a talent that you can be born with and or develop.

[01:16:28] And so the Reverend Mother discovers that Paul is a natural truth-sayer, though his mother is not. And she's not convinced yet that he's the Bene Gesserit's fabled Kwisatz Haderach, but she seems to be rooting for him, but tells Jessica to also accept that he may die. She's like, this is the Bene Gesserit way to the, to Paul, like, just accept your father will die and you'll impress me.

[01:16:54] But yeah, truth-sayers often also use particular drugs to open their minds and enhance their abilities. So obviously the spice is a great one for that, but they, there are other drugs that they use. And we'll see at least one ceremony later in the book about a, becoming a slightly different type of Reverend Mother. But just to quote from the book, the Reverend Mother says to Paul, Now lad, do you know about the truth-sayer drug?

[01:17:22] You take it to improve your ability to detect falsehood, he said. My mother's told me. Have you ever seen a truth trance? He shook his head, no. The drug's dangerous, she said, but it gives insight. When a truth-sayer's gifted by the drug, she can look many places in her memory, in her body's memory. We look down so many avenues of the past, but only feminine avenues, her voice took on a note of sadness. Yet there is a place where no truth-sayer can see.

[01:17:51] We are repelled by it, terrorized. It is said a man will come one day and find in the gift of the drug his inward eye. He will look, where we cannot, into both feminine and masculine paths. Your Kwisatz Haderach? Yes. The one who can be many places at once. The Kwisatz Haderach. Many men have tried the drug. So many. But none have succeeded. They tried and failed? All of them? Oh no. She shook her head.

[01:18:20] They tried and died. So that's setting the stakes. I remember very clearly the first time I read that. Because that was the moment where I knew, alright, I'm in. I'm hooked. I've got to finish this book. That's it. You've got me. Yeah. Will he die? Well, eventually everybody dies. Yeah. But no, it's just, and it's used in so many of the adaptations as well, because it's such a great line. They tried and failed. They tried and died. Died. Yeah.

[01:18:51] Yeah. Yeah. But Paul's already showing signs. He's already having dreams of the future. And so the Reverend Mother wants to hear about them, of course. But she also, she came to give him a test involving something called the Gom Jabbar. So, yeah. How would you describe the test overall? Okay. So, the Bene Gesserit have this thing they can do with the inflection of their voices, where

[01:19:19] basically if they pitch their voice just right, you basically have to do whatever they tell you. Um, it's, they can compel people to do things. And. It's part of like their witchiness that they call the way. Yeah. And so basically the Reverend Mother compels Paul to kneel down and put his hand in this box. A green metal cube, about 15 centimeters, one side.

[01:19:47] One side was open, black and oddly frightening. No light penetrated the open blackness. All that was inside was pain by nerve induction. I mean, I mean, such good writing. Such good writing. So Paul puts his hand in this box and it, the sensation is that this hand is burning. His hand is on fire. But at the same time, the Reverend Mother has a tiny needle tip to his neck that's tipped

[01:20:17] with a drop of poison. That's called the Gom Jabbar. Yeah. Yeah. And if he moves, if he flinches, if he takes his hand out the box at all, he'll scratch his neck with the poison and he'll die. So he's got to keep his hand in the box no matter how much pain he's in. And what this is a test to try and determine is if you're human, according to, um, according

[01:20:43] to the Bene Gesserit, because the Bene Gesserit think that a human would always keep their hand in the box because they know the consequences of taking air out. And a human would always have the self-control to keep their hand there. Whereas an animal would just react on instinct. Yeah. So to quote the book, the old woman said, you've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap. There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the

[01:21:13] trapper and remove a threat to his kind. Is that true? Do you think that's accurate? Would you be able to keep your hand in the box? I mean, but this is, she's not saying that all people who look human are, have that level of self-control. Because basically she's, what she's asking is, can you master your base instincts to survive? Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Do you think you would be able to?

[01:21:40] I mean, I guess if I knew if I took it out, I would die. I mean, but it sounds so, okay. So the Gom Jabbar means the high handed enemy and the only rule, keep your hand in the box and live, withdraw it and die. But then the pain gets to a point where he thought he could feel skin curling back on that agonized hand, the flesh crisping and dropping away until only charred bones remained. And this is not happening. It's just nerve induction that's causing the sensation of pain when he eventually pulls

[01:22:10] his hand out. He, you know, he keeps it in. He passes a test when he's allowed to pull it out. He's like, oh, look, my hand's fine. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like again, like that is that, that whole thing like taken as a chunk of text is so well written. You can literally, you can literally feel your hand start to start to like curl. Or at least when you first read that, you can literally feel your hand start to curl into a ball. Yeah.

[01:22:38] It's so well done and so unpleasant. Yeah. Spoiler alert. When we rank the, the most memorable scenes in the book, that one ranks highly. It does. Yeah. It really, really does. Yeah. I also pulled out a couple of lines from the section because one of the things that I complain about with Dune part one from Villeneuve is that I feel like he made Jessica too much of a crybaby in the first movie. He of course corrects in the second movie.

[01:23:07] But, um, so I pulled out one quote showing that Jessica is not the crybaby he makes her out to be. And then a second quote that kind of supports him. So the first one is Jessica's. So while this is, this whole test is going to happen, Jessica has to just like stand outside the door knowing that her son is going through this and she's gone through it herself. It's part of becoming a Bene Gesserit. Um, but she also knows that he, if he flinches, he's dead.

[01:23:37] So Jessica's hand went to Paul's shoulder tightened there for a heartbeat, fear pulsed through her palm. Then she had herself under control. Thus has been taught your reverence. She said, so this is the Bene Gesserit training is not to be emotional. So when they do get emotional, then it's supposed to stand out more, but then they do also say at another point in this scene after the test, Jessica shook tears from the corners of her eyes. It was an angry gesture.

[01:24:04] You make me feel like a little girl again, reciting my first lesson. She forced the words out. Humans must never submit to animals. A dry sob shook her in a low voice. She said, I've been so lonely. And the old woman said it should be one of the tests. Humans are almost always lonely. And there's the, um, there's like a little mantra that Paul, um, repeats to himself while

[01:24:28] he's got the, got the, got his hand in the box, which we, yeah, the litany against fear, which is, um, I always get this wrong. Um, it's in the notes. Can you see? Okay. Um, so yeah. Um, fear is the, yeah. Fear is the mind killer. I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. My fear will pass through me.

[01:24:58] And then all that remains will be myself. And there's a friend of mine that did the, uh, that did like a takeoff of that, that I, I just always repeat. Wait, okay. Let me say the real, the full thing. And then you can say about your friend. Yeah. I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path where the fear has gone. There will be nothing. Only I will remain.

[01:25:28] And this is used in all the movie adaptations too, but yeah. So the, the, the front of my account with, um, I shall not fear the inbox. The, the, the inbox is the, is the little death that brings total obliteration. I shall, I shall allow the inbox to pass through, pass through me. And then only I shall remain after the inbox. Oh, inboxes are overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:25:55] And, um, the Reverend mother, she admits that she pushed Paul further than she's ever pushed another. Like she seems, she says at this point, I must have wanted you to fail because I pushed you so far. But then, you know, just talking about how rare it is for Bene Gesserit to cry. Um, Jessica notices that she has tears on her cheek when she leaves them because she, she does, she knows the house is going to fall. Hmm. Yeah.

[01:26:21] Um, so yeah, you mentioned the voice, uh, which is like how they, um, basically I, my impression of the voice is what you heard in princess Irlon's writings, uh, clip from earlier. Um, but this is one of the most powerful tools of the Bene Gesserit part of this, the way, you know, which you might call the weirding way, um, to make it witchier. But Jessica has been somewhat illegally teaching the stuff to Paul. Like he's, he's a man.

[01:26:49] So, or, you know, a boy, so he's not really supposed to learn this Bene Gesserit stuff unless he's a quiz at Tadarach, but how can he become the quiz at Tadarach unless he learns his stuff? And the Reverend mother kind of acknowledges that she's like, yeah, if I were you, I would teach him too. I mean, the, the best use of the voice, we won't, we'll probably cover it in the next episode. Right. But when, when Jessica uses it on Thufy and he's like completely wigged out that this,

[01:27:16] that this even exists as a thing, um, because he's, he's kind of one of the, one of the advisors to the Duke and he's kind of heard rumors of all these weird witchy powers that Bene Gesserit have, but he's never actually, he's never actually experienced them. And the way, the way Herbert writes that back and forth between the two of them is just so good. Yeah. Yeah. Paul, he's learning all this stuff and more.

[01:27:44] We'll talk about, he's beginning to sense his own terrible purpose. And he uses this phrase a lot throughout the book, my terrible purpose, my terrible purpose. So, you know, he's not like super excited to be the savior, but yeah, let's, let's go on to some key members of the household. It's starting with the person you just brought up through fear. Thufir Hawat, who is the master of assassins and a mentat.

[01:28:14] So he's played by Stephen McKinley, by the way, in the first film and cut from the second film because films are too short to do this book just. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I'm like, it's, it's so weird when I picture these characters in my head, they're a weird melange now of the Veal Nerd movie and the Lynch movie. And Thufy Howard is, I can't remember the actor's name off the top of my head, but Thufy Howard is definitely the guy from the Lynch movies.

[01:28:41] He's not, he's not Stephen McKinley because Stephen McKinley is just not in the film long enough to, um, that's fair. Yeah. And Thufy is, Thufy is one of my favorite characters. He's, um, so he's this, he's this old guy. He's served three generations of House Atreides. He's, you know, loyal to the core to the Atreides and the Duke.

[01:29:09] And he's master of assassins, but he's also a Mentat, which is like a human supercomputer. They're like hyper logical. They are meant to like be able to look through various scenarios and possibilities and be able to process an enormous amount of data very, very quickly. Basically. Um, basically they're the replacements for computers, you know, they started to evolve

[01:29:36] these people to when they took it down the thinking machines. But this is the thing that they have this ability, but they are ultimately human. So they are subject to emotion. They are subject to prejudice. They are subject to all the kinds of mistakes that a computer wouldn't make, but they also have greater insight than a computer because they have access to human emotion and human frailty as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:30:04] And they, um, in the first book, it's funny, this, there's a, something called Sappho juice, which is mentioned in the first book, which is something that Mentats drink, um, to it's another addictive, uh, substance that enhances their abilities. And it also turns their lips purple. So you might notice, remember that from the, especially the Dune, the, the Lynch film from 1984, although they show just like a little line in the bottom of the lip in the new Dune movie.

[01:30:32] But yeah, the Sappho juice it's, uh, from the root of a particular tree from the planet of Ekas. And oddly enough, they don't seem to mention the Sappho juice in any other books, but here we're told Mentats will drink it and that's why their lips are stained purple. Yeah. And like Howard is just one of these characters that he's, you know, he's master of assassins.

[01:30:56] He's a cold hearted killer and, you know, plotter extraordinaire, but you can't help but kind of like him because he's plotting and assassinating on behalf of the good guys. Right. And that makes it okay. Right. I mean, I like him when he's talking to Paul or to Leto. I like him less when he's talking to Jessica. Yes. But we'll talk about that more next time. We'll talk about that later. Yeah. Um, but yeah. So in addition to the Bene Gesserit training that Paul's getting from his mother, he's also

[01:31:26] been getting Mentat training from, from Hawat. So, uh, yeah, his Paul doesn't, he says straight off the bat, he doesn't really have friends, but his life has been full of all these various trainings. And, uh, we see, we see the effects of it a lot. Like the, from the Bene Gesserit, the Bene Gesserit were into mindfulness meditation before it was cool. Um, and his mother's taught him to be a super keen observer of the minutiae of human mannerisms.

[01:31:55] But then thanks to the Mentat training, he's also learning how to put emotions aside to process all this information at a high level. So really honing the mind in multiple ways. It's also worth saying that Howard generally has the reputation of being one of the best Mentats in, in the universe as well, even though he is starting to, he is starting to age a bit. He's right.

[01:32:19] He's, you know, he's generally somebody who the Harkonnen sphere, even the Emperor, even the Emperor seems to be a little bit afraid of him. Right. True. True. Yeah. And, uh, they also have a very highly regarded family doctor, uh, named Dr. Wellington Yue and played by Chang Chen in the most recent movies. And Dr. Yue was trained in the Sook Medical School and the Sook Medical School, they create the best doctors in the galaxy.

[01:32:47] Also with things like cybernetics and stuff, but, um, he's marked by the Sook School are marked by a diamond tattoo on their foreheads. And this shows that they have Imperial conditioning and Imperial conditioning is supposed to make it impossible for them to take a life. Um, and they also wear their hair long and bound with the civil silver ring, but yeah, we'll come back to Dr. Yue in a moment. Yes. We, yes.

[01:33:14] Well, we'll come back to Dr. Yue often, but yes, we will. Um, but then the other two most important members of the household are, we have Duncan Idaho played by Jason Momoa in the movies, uh, who's a sword master and Gurney Halleck played by Josh Brolin, who's the war master. And so, yeah, these are kind of two sides of the same coin, but they are drawn very distinctly. So, um, also of course they are training Paul.

[01:33:44] Everybody's training Paul. Um, Paul especially considers Duncan Idaho a friend and Duncan Idaho. He's known as a ladies man with cat-like movements and very pretty, um, Gurney Halleck. On the other hand, he is a warrior poet, basically like a troubadour of sorts. He plays a stringed instrument called the balisette, which is a descendant of our world's Zithra. And, but he served time in the Harkonnen slave pits and he bears the scars of it.

[01:34:13] So he's constantly described as ugly. Uh, his sister was also killed in the Harkonnen brothel. So he hates the Harkonnens for sure. And he's known for his valor. It's an, it's an interesting little production choice in the, the audio book version of this, that they give the Harkonnens, they give the Harkonnens an accent. They give them like this very guttural accent. And they have, they have, they have the guy that's reading Gurney speak in that accent as well.

[01:34:45] So that was a really cool way of making it clear that he has spent time on, on, on Getty Prime. Yeah. It's just, it's just a really nice little production choice that they have, because they have a, they have the Atreides have a slight accent as well. Okay. So that you can sort of see who's talking. You can sort of instantly identify who's who. Yeah. I have to listen to the audio book at some point. But yeah, they give, they give, they give Gurney a Harkonnens accent. Okay.

[01:35:15] Okay. Yeah. And, um, Gurney, the first thing we see him training Paul on is they're practicing with fighting with these, something called personal shields, which are on shield belts. So basically there are these shields that don't completely block things from the outside, but they slow them down. And, you know, like, uh, on Arrakis, they have it applied to their entire house. They also have these belts so they can have a shield that just goes around their person.

[01:35:43] So it's always interesting to see how that's interpreted visually in the films. Yes. It's very much one of those things that changes as special effects get better. But actually I've got to say, I don't think, I don't think any of the, I don't think any of the effects and I include like the Vialnerve one is the most recent one quite do it justice. Okay. Like I don't think they quite get what, I don't think they quite show what Herbert is describing.

[01:36:11] So I think that's one of the things for the next adaptation of Dune, that's clearly going to come along in like 20 years time. They still need to get right. They still haven't quite got that for me. So here's this first description of the shield belt. So it says, Paul snapped the force button at his waist, felt the crinkled skin tingling of the defensive field at his forehead and down his back. Heard external sounds take on characteristic shield filtered flatness.

[01:36:38] In shield fighting, one moves fast on defense, slow on attack. Paul said attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow admits the slow Kinjal and Kinjal is a typical sort of dagger type weapon that they talk about a lot. Um, but yeah, basically the, the shield, you have to, if you're wearing the shield or if you're

[01:37:06] fighting someone with the shield, you have to fight in a certain way. And this is the way that Paul's been trained to fight, which is becomes interesting when he goes to Arrakis and finds out for various reasons we'll discuss shields aren't so much used there. Yeah. And this is the thing they have to fight. They have to fight with swords and daggers because if you, if you fire a, what they describe as a laser gun, a laser gun, a shield, you get like this massive explosion. That's going to kill both you and the person.

[01:37:35] It's going to kill both the person you fired at, but it's also going to kill you as well. So. And could be even bigger. It could be even bigger. So yeah, it's, it's this kind of weird thing where you've got all this advanced technology, but they're, but they're, their main sort of fighting style is with swords and knives and daggers. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it completely changes things if they can't use those. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I find it's interesting that, you know, so these are the main members of the household, um,

[01:38:05] coming off of Caledon and most of the household is employed in strategy, defense and warcraft. And the doctor, Dr. Yue is the only one who's not explicitly employed in, you know, in this, these darker assassin war ways, which is ironic because we're told right off the bat that Yue is the secret agent of the Harkonnens.

[01:38:31] So we're going to talk in the next episode more about how they overcame his Imperial conditioning, not to cause death, but it's, it's a tale as old as time. Basically they're controlling him with a threat of continued torture of his wife, Wana. Yes. And, and this is, this is the thing, like the way Yue's character is written, you both hate him and feel, and feel sorry for him at the same time. He hates himself. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:39:00] He absolutely despises himself. Um, it's this really subtle writing where he, it's very rare that you get a monster in a book, admitting themselves to be the monster and sort of seeing themselves clearly, but also, you know, he's okay with what he's about. He's not okay with what he's about to do, but he's come to accept it as necessary to save his wife.

[01:39:26] And he's, and the thing that kind of redeems you is he's honest, you know, he isn't trying to make up, he isn't trying to make up excuses or he isn't trying to. Right. He's honest with himself. Yeah. Yeah. He isn't trying to pretend that there's some way out of this where everybody can live happily ever after. He's honest with himself. Uh, that's what kind of stops him being a mustache twirling villain, even though, even though, even though he does have a mustache.

[01:39:56] Yeah. Yeah, no, he's, he's definitely, he's an antagonist, but because he's forced to be so. And he also will talk in the next section about how he, he tries to take steps to ameliorate what he's doing also. Yeah. But he's just make it worse. Yeah. Yeah. But so the, the, these are the main, um, members of the household that are coming from Caledon.

[01:40:22] And this book begins about a week before they leave and basically follows the Gom Jabbar test and Paul's studies of his new planet and training with his mother and these other characters. Um, and then we also, we get to get a glimpse of some other key players. Uh, we sidestep to the planet of Getty prime, which is the home of the Harkonnens. And so if you've seen doom part two, this is the black and white planet, although it's, it's not described like that in the book, but I think that was a cool twist.

[01:40:51] We'll talk about more when we get to that film. And yeah, the family's headed by the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the Stellan Skarsgård character. He is the cousin and arch enemy of house Atreides. And, um, he envies by the way, that the Atreides are also cousins to house Carino, the Imperial house, because the Baron mostly got his titles through his, uh, partial control of, of co Chome. That's how we're saying it. Chome. Chome.

[01:41:20] The, the, the business that controls the spice and everything else. Um, he is characterized in the book as fat, very fat. We'll go back to that in a second. Also as gay, which this is for me, when I'm talking about questionable author decisions, I noticed that, uh, I noticed that Frank Herbert, he keeps saying characters who like he describes Peter DeVries, uh, who's played by David Dasmalchian in the, in recent films.

[01:41:50] Who's Harkonnen. Who's Harkonnen's mentat. He's described as being effeminate and that's makes him evil. And then he also has this like implication with the Harkonnen because he's preying on little boys. Somehow that's worse than preying on little girls. And that, that makes, that's the part of the book that makes me a little uncomfortable. Yeah. Like, I mean, I, you know, I would say that the, the, yeah, the, I would say it goes a bit further than the Baron Harkonnen being gay. You know, he's a, he's a predator, but it's a difference if it was a girl. Yeah.

[01:42:20] He's a, he's a, he's a, he's a predator. And I think it's more than strongly hinted at he's probably a bit of a pedophil. He's probably a pedophile. Oh, I mean, he, he straight up says like, bring that pretty little boy into my room and drug him because I don't feel like wrestling tonight. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, like Herbert does not hold back that these are, that these are the bad guys.

[01:42:42] And I do, I do see where you're coming from with Pythor because he, um, he repeatedly describes him as mincing. Yeah. Like in the way he moves. So yeah, there is a, there is an undertow. I think of there is an undertow of homophobia to the way they're written. Yeah. But, um, also the Baron Harkonnen is, is very, very, very big guy. He is more than 200 kilograms.

[01:43:10] So Americans, that means he's like 450 pounds and he uses. So one of the most important recurring technologies in this book is suspenser technology. So we have suspenser lights, suspenser chairs, and these are basically, they just, it just means they hover, you know, they're not connected to anything. They just kind of hover and they can move around and follow you or whatever. Um, the Baron Harkonnen has suspenser suspenders.

[01:43:40] So basically he's, he's weighs this much, but he has these suspenders holding up most of his bulk so that he can walk with a light step. Yeah. I've always wondered like, cause okay, that explains how we can move. But like, how was he not, how was he not died of a massive heart attack? A massive stroke? Yeah. Yeah. Good, good medicine, I guess. Yeah. Lots, lots, lots of spikes. Yeah.

[01:44:08] He does not fly like he does in the movies, by the way, both the movies do that. He does not fly. He just walks lighter. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and he's, yeah, he's vicious and murderous and obviously rapey, but, um, he does, he, they're not really cannibals. Like is implied in the new movie. Like, or at least that's not something that's. Yeah. Like both David Lynch and Denis Villeneuve feel the need to make the Harkonnens weirder. Yeah.

[01:44:37] Weirder and even worse and stranger. And it's like, why? They're, they're, they're, they're bad enough as it is. Yeah. Stop making it weird. Yeah. Yeah. He claims in the book, he claims to have pity for the Duke being the object of this dastardly plan. But the Baron, when he speaks of pity, there's always contempt involved. So. Hmm. And yeah, we mentioned his mentor is Peter de Vries, who is a psychopath who has a crush on Jessica.

[01:45:07] And, um, he's addicted to spice. So people who are addicted to spice or who just like live in the spice, their eyes are completely blue. So they don't have whites to their eyes. It's just blue on blue. He, though, Peter de Vries is not necessarily held in his high regard as Thufir Hawat, the Atreides mentat. Um, for one thing, he incorrectly predicted that Jessica would bear a girl as she was ordered to do so.

[01:45:35] And the girl was supposed to be wed to, um, to the Harkonnen's nephew, but Jessica gave birth to Paul instead. And so the Baron Harkonnen, he has a plan to, he wants to use Peter de Vries in his plan to take out House Atreides and, and his plan for after that, he wants to basically set up de Vries as, um, to take the place on Arrakis as the Baron.

[01:46:04] And then he predicts he's going to mess it up. So then the Baron can be like, Oh, look, I'll save you from this awful guy. Get rid of him. And look, we'll install my nephew instead. Yay. Um, so he's basically, he's planning to get rid of de Vries. And we find out he's actually has another mentat being trained for him already.

[01:46:24] Uh, but yeah, at this point he, he's dangling lady Jessica in front of de Vries as a promised reward once the Atreides house is conquered. And I mean, I think it's heavily implied that Piter wants to get rid of the Duke as well. These are like, these are like two, these are like two scorpions in a bottle basically. It's just a matter of time before one, it's just a matter of time before one stings the other. Right. Yeah. I guess you're right. It should be pronounced Piter, but yeah.

[01:46:54] The name is so Dutch and it's Piter. Anyway, Piter. Um, but yeah, so then the spoken of nephew, the chosen heir of the Baron, his name is failed Rautha Harkonnen. And that's who was played by Austin Butler in the most recent Dune movie. Um, he's at this point, you just know he's around and he's basically shadowing the Baron to basically to learn, um, to learn the, the ropes so that he can be the heir of the future.

[01:47:23] And he'll become more important later in the book. Uh, and by the way, in the book, he's not hairless like his uncle, like in the movies, he has dark curly hair. He doesn't look like sting either, which is who plays him in the 84 movie. Um, yeah. I mean, it's, it's one of the, it's one of the interesting unanswered things that he's, he's described as being the Baron's nephew, but we never meet the Baron's brother or sister. We never meet, um, we never meet Fade Rautha's parent.

[01:47:51] Um, and I, you know, it's the, the, the, the Ville Nerve movie adds that he killed them, but that, that isn't in the, that isn't in the book. Right. Uh, yeah. And yeah, I just think it's one of the great sort of unanswered bits of law that I just, I want to know. So I haven't yet read, but there are prequel series that answer a lot of these questions from, from Brian Herberts and Kevin J. Anderson. Okay.

[01:48:18] And including about the houses, Atreides, Carino and Harkonnen. So, um, yeah, I'm going to read those and I, I'm wondering what we, what more we learned, because I know we learned more about like, for instance, kinds is a familial background. Okay. Interesting.

[01:48:36] Um, so another vocab word that we need to introduce here, because is there, there's a word called Conley and the Conley is basically a structured way to enact a blood feud or a vendetta, uh, according to something, an agreement called the great convention. And so the great convention was basically everyone agreed to follow certain rules in these cases of drastic feuds to minimize the damage to third parties.

[01:49:06] So for example, no use of atomics against human targets. Um, but yeah, at this point in the book, Leto and Vladimir Harkonnen are very openly like we have Conley. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the, one of the rules is you, before you engage in this, this war of assassins, this, this vendetta, you have to offer to settle the feud.

[01:49:32] So the Baron Harkonnen writes to, writes to the Duke at the beginning of the book, basically saying, I'm prepared to let bygones be bygones if you are. And, uh, Leto Atreides sends him back this very curt note, basically going, screw, basically going, screw you. Um, but there's this, there's this idea that the forms have been observed, you know, hand, hand has been offered and it's been slapped away.

[01:50:02] And therefore whatever happened. Which of course Leto knows is bullshit, but yeah, the forms were. The forms were observed. Yeah. It's a lot about like appearances in, in this world of the great houses, especially. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and yeah, one other massive group of people we have to bring up is the Sardar Kur, Sardar Kar. Sardar Kar. Sardar Kar. Yeah. Sardar Kar. Uh, so this is the emperor's army.

[01:50:30] So this is, uh, and they are, they are fanatics that were trained from a young age to be super soldiers, basically on the grim planets called Saluza Secundus. And, um, this is supposed to be the best army in the galaxy, but the emperor is afraid that maybe the Atreides army might be even better. So this is part of the reason why he's got to like take them out. Yeah. Because no one could be better than the Sardar Kar. Yeah.

[01:50:58] Um, and again, Sardar Kar is one of these things that has, that has a, uh, uh, it's a word that has real life meaning. So the Sardar Kar were the imperial bodyguard to the Ottoman Caliph. That's where that comes from. So, so actually the Sardar Kar in the, in the books and the Sardar Kar in real life kind, kind of similar. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. They're like, be like the Roman Praetorian guard. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah.

[01:51:28] But yeah, these, these are super intense. And, um, so we have two legions of them that are supplementing the Harkonnen army and their operations in Arrakis and they're dressed in Harkonnen armor. So that people don't know, um, because the emperor doesn't want the other great houses to turn on him, but Paul's family already assumed, assumes their involvement. And then we get several times where people just look at certain quote unquote Harkonnen soldiers and can tell they're like, oh no, that's Sardar Kar.

[01:51:57] The way they're moving, the way, you know, these are, they're conditioned a particular way. The reason the Atreides know that the emperor is behind all this is the emperor has been stockpiling spice as well as the, as well as the Harkonnen. That's what, that's what give, that's what gives the game away. Yeah. Um, and so, so really this is like the tragedy of it all.

[01:52:20] The Atreides not only know the danger, but they kind of know at least in the broad strokes, what, what the emperor has planned for them. Yeah. Yeah. And, but as you said, you know, it's all about appearances on the surface. You know, if they appear, if the emperor can plausibly deny being involved and obviously he's not going to turn, turn his own truth sayer on himself. Everyone else is afraid of the truth sayer, but, um, yeah, she's employed by the emperor.

[01:52:50] Um, and so basically he's getting the Harkonnens to do the emperor's dirty work and in return promising them big rewards. So in addition to getting control of the spice trade back again, and I guess they get to keep Caledon too. Um, they get an irrevocable directorship in the chome company. So just more security for the longterm of the Harkonnen family. Yeah.

[01:53:18] I mean, this is, this is the, um, this is something that I think is missing from Dune, which is, um, the Atreides don't leave like a castellan on, um, Caledon as far as we know. You know, they don't. I mean, weren't they forced to trade planets? So the Harkonnens were given, were given, uh, Caledon? No, no, I, no, I don't, I don't think so. Because I think there, there is one point the word trade is used. Okay. Okay.

[01:53:46] Cause like, oh, cause like the first time I read this, the first time I read this, I'm thinking, well, this is, this is silly. What you would do is you would take the Duke and Lady Jessica, but you would leave Paul on, you would leave Paul on Caledon. You wouldn't, you wouldn't take your heir and put them in somewhere this dangerous, this dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but they are, they all have to go. And so we're going to take a quick break.

[01:54:15] And when we get back, we're going to talk about their arrival on Arrakis and the first brush with danger that Paul comes up against. Receive the wisdom of Princess Irulan's writings. Okay. So they are transported to Arrakis by the Spacing Guild, of course, because they're the ones who control space travel. And the Spacing Guild, all we know about them so far, we'll learn more later, but they're very secretive.

[01:54:42] Their members are never seen, but there are rumors that they've mutated and no longer look human. We also learn about, in this part, another important source of literature and training for Paul, which is the Orange Catholic Bible. You said that this is like one of your favorite, most memorable things. Yeah. Do you want to elaborate on that?

[01:55:05] It's just, it's just, I love the idea of all these different parts of Christianity have just become smushed together. And I think Islam. And Islam and Judaism. Yeah. But I just, I just, the Orange Catholic, the idea of the Orange Catholic Bible just tickles me. Just, yeah. Well, it's also like orange in our world is, means Protestant. Yeah, exactly. So it's like the Protestant Catholic Bible. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:55:34] And like, there are passages that Dr. Yui reads that are like, redolent of biblical passage, but they're not passages from the Bible. So the actual Bible, the actual Torah, the actual Quran have probably been mixed into this new book at some point and kind of churned about and spat out. And a lot of it's to do with, a lot of it's to do with the aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad as well.

[01:56:03] There's this whole passage on, you know, do not create a machine in the image of a man. And I just, I love the idea that Herbert would be ambitious enough to come up with this whole, whole new religion that blends all these different elements from pre-existing religion. And also, like I said, the name just tickles me. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:56:28] I also, I really enjoy the technology in this book, especially because this is, was written in 1965. And some of it's so precious, so prescient, but some of it just like, for instance, like they, he's learning on film books. I'm like, are film books like tablets? Yeah. Yeah. But then one cool thing is Dr. Yue, who's, who's feeling guilty about his whole betraying the family thing.

[01:56:54] He's like, well, I'm going to give Paul this orange Catholic Bible so he can read it before he maybe dies. Um, but he's also going to try to help him to live, but we'll talk about that next time. So he gives him, but it's like, instead of these film books, it's this micro book. That's the size of a thumb. And so to quote the book, it's a very old orange Catholic Bible made for space travelers, not a film book, but actually printed on filament paper.

[01:57:21] It has its own magnifier and electrostatic charge system. He picked it up, demonstrated the book is held closed by the charge, which forces against spring locked covers. You press the edge thus, and the pages you've selected repel each other. And the book opens. It's so small, Paul says, but it has 1800 pages. Jesus. That's a lot of reading. You press the edge thus. And so, and the charge moves ahead one page at a time.

[01:57:48] As you read, never touch the actual pages with your fingers. The filament tissue is too delicate. It's like, it's such all these cool. We won't be able to go into all the technology that's brought up, but I just think it's a. Yeah. That, that one's a particularly cool piece of technology because yeah, the idea, the idea of having an 1800 page book and it actually is a physical book. Yeah. The size of your thumb is just, it's just a cool, it's just a cool idea. Yeah. And it, and it kind of, I mean, I don't know whether it's doable.

[01:58:18] It's probably not, but it kind of makes sense. Like the, the, the, the, the way it's described, it kind of make the technology of it makes some kind of sense. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No. And it's just, yeah, before we, he had like the technology we have today. I, um, he was thinking of these, uh, these original things, some that came to pass and some that, I don't know. Yeah.

[01:58:43] I would love to see someone try to make that, but I, the magnification part would be tricky. Yeah. How do you get the right part of the page? Yeah. Yeah. How do you, how do you, how do you like move? How do you like move to the next line? Right. Exactly. Nevermind the next page. Yeah.

[01:59:01] Um, but yeah, so Arrakis, the planet, uh, which is called Dune, as the name suggests, it's mostly desert or pretty, it's all desert basically with some cities and weather controls not possible on this planet. Like other places, uh, for reasons that shall be discussed as the series continues, there are terrible sandstorms there and the quote unquote rulers, these great houses are confined largely to their cities. Wow.

[01:59:29] A people called the Fremen rule the rest of the planet. And so they have a saying Polish comes from the cities wisdom from the desert. Um, and we have, um, the Harkonnen stronghold on Arrakis was this city Carthag, which is this kind of newly built city. It's a bigger city, but the Atreides decide to settle in the older, smaller, easier to defend Arakin.

[01:59:55] And, um, Arakin is protected from the giant sandworms, the prowl, the desert, seemingly eating anything that moves. And we're going to talk more about the sandworms a lot going forward. Um, but it's, the city's protected by a shield wall and they take over the Atreides take over the palace that was previously the home of house Fenring and Fenring. They, they're another one of the great houses. They'll come back more into the story later.

[02:00:25] They're aides of the emperor. Uh, count Fenring is known as the ambassador to the smugglers, but they are not friends with the Harkonnens. This is important to say. And so the Fenring couple who we'll talk about more in, in, uh, subsequent discussions is count Hassamir Fenring and his wife Margo. And Margo did appear in Dune part two, the movie, uh, played by Leah Sado. And, um, for now though, all you need to know about Margo is that she's also a Bene Gesserit.

[02:00:54] And she left Jessica a note in their house that they took over, which led her to a greenhouse with, uh, wet plants, which are, it's like precious that these plants like roses and water plants even are using enormous amounts of water. Which, yeah, is, is, um, unheard of on Arrakis. And the Fremen call this the weirding room. And in this room, Jessica finds the public note. To the lady Jessica.

[02:01:24] May this place give you as much pleasure as it has given me. Please permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers. She's like, wink, wink. I'm Bene Gesserit. The proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger. My kindest wishes, Margo, Lady Fenring.

[02:01:44] And then knowing she's a Bene Gesserit, Jessica's able to find another second hidden note that warns that Paul is in danger and there are traps hidden in his room, which Paul's about to discover himself momentarily. So what do you think of the, what they call the weirding room, this, um, this greenhouse inside the house? I mean, it's, it just goes to show how alien a planet, how alien a planet Arrakis is because none of these plants can live.

[02:02:14] None of these plants can live outside of this room. And there's like all the Fremen, all the housekeepers like really resent, uh, this room's existence because it's got like enough, it's got like enough water to keep a family going for years. Right. Um, and so they're both like intrigued by all this alien, by all this alien fauna and all this possibility.

[02:02:40] They both really deeply resent its existence at the same time. Yeah. And I think there's a load of stuff going on in the background that demonstrates how, how central water and moisture is to living on this world without any water, without any moisture.

[02:03:00] And this room is just another example of how priorities, um, shift on Arrakis and how everything has to be about conserving water, not consuming water, saving water. Except you have this huge room of like lush green plants in the middle of this house, almost as a, almost as a treasury, almost as like a, a treasure trove.

[02:03:27] Um, I kind of think of it as being like the Arrakis equivalent of like Scrooge McDuck's, um, vault. Um, you know, you're just swimming in money while they're just swimming in water and plants and all this green stuff. Yeah. And this, and this one, this weirding room is at least hidden from public view.

[02:03:48] So not everyone knows about it, but obnoxiously the palace also has 20 date palms, these rows of these palm trees that outside the palace. And each of these palm trees drinks five times the amount of water that a man does in a day. So it's just really like an in your face. We've got the power, we've got the money, we've got the water. Yeah. And there's a, there's a bit where Dr.

[02:04:15] Yui is looking out the window at people looking at these palms and he's sort of registering the mixture of hatred, envy, but also hope. Right. As well. Well, I think that was Jessica. Yeah. Oh yeah. But I think it's, it's Yui that's looking out the window and then Jessica comes to join him and she's looking at the site. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. The way the passing people looked at the palm tree, she saw envy, some hate, even a sense of hope.

[02:04:45] Yeah. Yes. And it's like, yeah, all of these things are contained within these trees because they represent, they represent luxury. They represent water that can be used, but they also represent the fact that these palms can actually survive in Arrakis. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's true. It's not impossible. Yeah. This will come up. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:05:07] And so we've mentioned several times that the, you know, outside the cities, the real people, the natives of this planet are the Fremen. And we're going to spend the rest of this book and beyond talking about this culture, especially above all others. Their world's the primary setting for parts two and three of this book. But they're basically, they're based on Bedouin cultures and other desert peoples of our world.

[02:05:38] And first of all, one thing you need to know about them is that the desert itself and all of their food is saturated with a spice melange. So all the Fremen, one of the ways you can identify them is they have those characteristic blue on blue eyes of people who are addicted to the spice. Because, I mean, they're not just addicted to it. It's just, it's part of who they are. Like they're born into it. Yeah. It's just saturated into the, yeah. Mm-hmm.

[02:06:04] They are fierce from a young age, extremely dangerous, definitely feared. And they are experts in extreme water conservation. So how would you describe one of the most important elements in this story, things that they invented is the still suit. How would you describe the still suit?

[02:06:23] So it's like a mechanical bodysuit that you wear that like stops water evaporating, but also recycles all your water and all your waste. So nothing, nothing evaporates. Like when Klein's is describing how they work, the most moisture you lose is through the palm of your hand. And you can minimize that by wearing gloves.

[02:06:48] So the idea of this suit is that it minimizes water loss. And then your body's own water is sort of diverted into these catch pockets across your chest and on your hips. Right. Like even your breath. Yeah, where you can drink and you can drink from it. So you're literally drinking recycled versions of your own waste and exhalations, which sounds... It's filtered. It's filtered. Yeah, it's filtered, but it doesn't sound yummy exactly.

[02:07:19] No. Like there's a bit later on where Paul, where Paul describes, it describes Paul drinking from this. And the water is described as like flat and tasteless because it's basically your own sweat and your own ick. Yeah. At least it's tasteless. It could be worse. At least it's tasteless. It could be worse. Yeah. Yeah. But the Fremen, of course, they're the ones who understand the planet's mysteries, like why water keeps disappearing there.

[02:07:48] And they've evolved so that even their blood thickens faster when they're cut. But the Harkonnens and the Emperor drastically underestimate them, underestimate how many of them there are and how deep in the desert they live. And the Fremen, they hate the Harkonnens. So the Harkonnens, you know, are just awful people. And the Fremen are like, that sucks. Bye. So but when the Atreides show up, they have no reason to think the Atreides are going to be any different.

[02:08:17] So they are, you know, wary at first, let's say. Yeah. And the Atreides' whole, like, plan to counter the Harkonnens threat and the threat from the Emperor is to recruit. The Fremen is to bring the Fremen onto their side and make them part of their army. On the perfectly valid assumption that these people must be excellent fighters and they know the conditions better than anybody else. So it's not just the Atreides aren't being decent to the Fremen just because they're good people.

[02:08:48] No, they're powerful allies. Yeah, although they are better than the Harkonnens. But they're doing it with the deliberate intention of basically recruiting the Fremen into their army. So they want five legions. I don't know how many five legions are, but that's like the task. Three more than the Sarducus and to the Harkonnens. Harkonnens, yeah. So that's like the task that Leto sets Duncan Idaho because Duncan Idaho is, like, assigned as the ambassador.

[02:09:17] So Duncan Idaho, again, is the Jason Momoa pretty boy ladies' man sword master. Yeah, but he's gone ahead of the main body of House Atreides and he's been like the Duke's envoy, the Duke's ambassador to the Fremen. So I don't know how far you want me to go with this, but he meets a... We'll talk about...

[02:09:45] Yeah, I don't want to throw too many people out. I'm trying to keep it to just the people mentioned in this part of the book. But yeah. Okay. But he... So we know at this point that Duncan Idaho, he's gone ahead. He went to Iraqis a day before everyone else. He's sent out into the desert to try to make friends with the Fremen. And basically they sent him because his personality is he's proud, he's ruthless, and he's honest. And these are qualities that the Fremen admire.

[02:10:14] I mean, and also he's probably got the physical stamina to actually go out in the desert and find somebody as well. Right, right. And yeah, the Fremen, they are in large part... I do like the way... We'll talk about this more when we talk about the Doom Part 2 movie. I like the way they played with us there. But they are, especially in the book, in large part, a religious people. And so we talked about the Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva.

[02:10:41] And that has particularly taken hold amongst the Fremen. They are just ripe to take on this idea of a coming savior who will save them from the hardness of their planet. And they even call their own religious leaders reverend mothers after the Bene Gesserit way of titling.

[02:11:03] And you get the kind of implication that the Missionaria Protectiva is particularly fruitful in harsh places. There's kind of the implication that maybe it doesn't take everywhere, but... Like Caladan, they're like, no, we're fine. We're going for a swim. Yeah, but we're just going for a swim. We're just off growing rice and living on our water planet.

[02:11:28] But I think there's the inference that this kind of Messiah complex fits very well with the situation the Fremen find themselves in. It sits very well with sort of pre-existing Fremen culture. So there's a niche that it fills. Yeah. And another way they're making friends with the Fremen is, you know, their own people are busy setting stuff up.

[02:11:57] So they decide to hire all new Fremen household servants because they're like, you know what? They hate the Harkonnens and that's good enough for us. Yeah. You can't argue with that logic. Yeah. And so their new, the most important staff member that joins them is their new head housekeeper is a woman named Shoutout Mapes. And Shoutout is a Fremen title meaning well dipper.

[02:12:23] And Shoutout Mapes, she wants to serve Jessica because she recognizes her from these legends, the Missionaria Protectiva legends. And so she's like, this is the potential mother of the chosen ones. So she's like, I want to talk to her and I want to find out if she is who I hope she is. And Jessica, she's able to read the situation and play it well because, you know, she's a trained Bene Gesserit.

[02:12:48] And she can, she has the, she knows that there are certain things in this Missionaria Protectiva that certain words she can call upon. And she also reads it, reads the way that Mapes responds to the things that she says so that she can sound even more like, oh, I know the ways of the Fremen, of course, because I am this mother of the chosen one.

[02:13:10] And so once Mapes is satisfied that Jessica is the mother from the prophecies, Mapes gives her something called a Chris knife. And a Chris knife is made from the tooth of a giant sandworm. It's milky white. This one's about 20 centimeters long, which is what is that? It's like a little underfoot or something. It's and it's something called an unfixed blade, which means it will disintegrate unless it's kept on its owner's person.

[02:13:39] But then she'll have it for her entire life. But she has to keep it hidden from all others upon pain of the viewer's death. Are you a fan of the Chris knife? Yeah, I mean, I like the idea. So it's not just a tooth of a giant sandworm. It's a tooth of Shai Halud, which is the Fremen name for it, which is just so much better than so much better than giant sandworm. Yeah, I was I was trying to minimize the vocab for this one.

[02:14:07] But yeah, Shai Halud is awesome. We're going to go into that name definitely as we talk more about Fremen culture. Yeah. So it's a it's never really explained how you would recover a tooth from a giant sandworm. Like, how do you how do you actually like price its mouth open to get a tooth out of there? I guess to be fair, its mouth is always open because it's eaten. I suppose, yeah, it's just like this massive maw. But I wouldn't want to be standing in front of it trying to pick out an individual tooth.

[02:14:37] So, yeah, it's kind of it's kind of left up to the imagination how you actually acquire the tooth of a sandworm. Mm hmm. I mean, the Fremen's are badasses. Yeah. And so, OK, there's one more character that we need to to introduce who will become later as a book who is important as the book goes on. And that is someone we've already referred to, Leet Kynes.

[02:15:03] And Leet Kynes is a man in the book, but played by Sharon Duncan Brewster in Villeneuve's film. Um, and Kynes is the imperial ecologist on Arrakis, the judge of the change and supposed to be loyal to the emperor. But Kynes is mostly loyal to his mother's Fremen culture and his own dreams for Arrakis. So we're going to discuss more about his dreams for Arrakis and especially the next episode.

[02:15:29] But this is, yeah, the the emperor is like, oh, we've got this one in our pocket. And Kynes is like, uh, Fremen interests come first. And not only is he the planetary ecologist, but he's also what's called the judge of the change, which is the imperial official basically charged every time. Every time a thief changes hands, every time a planet changes hands, the judge of the change is there to make sure it goes smoothly.

[02:15:58] And that's the, and that the rules in the form of Kynes is observed and that imperial interests aren't harmed by any vendetta. So Kynes is meant to be kind of, if you like, the referee in this conflict between the Atreides and the Harkonnen. But yes, but, um, the emperor does not expect Kynes to be neutral. Exactly. The emperor expects Kynes to be on his side. The fix is in. This referee has been nobbled.

[02:16:27] Supposedly been nobbled anyway. Right. Yeah. And we also find out later that Kynes is the father of another character named Chani, who's played by Zendaya in the films. And this is someone who Paul was having dreams about, uh, before he even got to Arrakis when he was on Caledon. He was dreaming about being on Arrakis, uh, talking to her in a desert cave where she calls him Uso.

[02:16:51] And he told her about the revered mother and the Gom Jabbar test before that test even happened. Uh, so this is one of his prophetic dreams. Um, but we won't meet Chani ourselves until part two of this book. And those are all the main characters for this part, at least. Yeah. There are, there are more to come. There are more to come, but that's enough for now.

[02:17:17] Um, now to get to this brush with danger that we're going to end with for this section. Um, so the Harkonnens, they, we, we got this, um, warning from Margot Fenring to Jessica that Paul had something rigged in his room, but Jessica, she only discovers and reads these notes about the same time that Paul is discovering this for himself. So the Harkonnens, they plan a diversion.

[02:17:44] Uh, it's an attempt on Paul's life and it doesn't really matter if it's, if it succeeds because, um, on the one hand, the Baron wants to take him out. Like he's like, Oh, that pretty young boy. It's so sad, but also he's his mother's son and that makes him dangerous. But the main thing is they just want to sow discord and put people on edge and, you know, start to set things down the wrong path.

[02:18:08] Um, so Dr. Yue again is the traitor in this, but nobody knows this because they all assume that he hates the Harkonnens, which is true. And that he's had Imperial conditioning, which they don't think can be overcome, but they don't realize the power of love. Um, so Dr. Yue gives Paul a sedative to rest in his new bedroom, but Paul only pretends to take it because he wants to sneak out of his room and secretly explore the house.

[02:18:38] So he's awake and he's starting to sneak out of his room. He's exploring within the room and he notices something called a hunter seeker. So to quote the book from behind the headboard slipped a tiny hunter seeker, no more than five centimeters long. Paul recognized it at once a common assassination weapon that every child of Royal blood learned about at an early age. It was a ravening sliver of metal guided by some nearby hand and eye.

[02:19:07] It could burrow into moving flesh and chew its way up nerve channels to the nearest vital organ. Yee. Yeah. Also, also just, just, just to back up a little bit. Um, Dr. Yue is very, very free handed with the drugs. And in this first third of the book, he is very much a Dr. Feelgood kind of doctor.

[02:19:32] He is constantly giving out like sedatives and people are on uppers all the time because the Duke doesn't sleep for days as he's getting settled. So there is, there is a lot of, there's a lot of free handed use of the meds in this, in this world. I mean, why not? And especially in his position. Yeah. Like everyone just be easier. Yeah. Until you die. Until you die. But so yeah, the fortunately Paul didn't take them this time.

[02:20:01] Um, and the, the hunter seeker, it has to be operated by a person who has like a person who has a secret console. So they must be hidden somewhere in the house. Um, but the room has low lighting. So there's, and the, the hunter seeker itself doesn't have the best vision. So, um, basically it only sees motion. And Paul, he's because he was like supposed to be napping.

[02:20:28] He's not wearing his shield, uh, to slow the hunter seeker. So he decides what he's going to have to do is sneak up on it before it can see him and grab it with his hands. But he knows if he shouts for help, whoever opens the door, that motion will trigger the hunter seeker to go for them. So he doesn't want to call for someone only at just that moment. It just so happens that shout out Mapes comes into the room because she's coming to get him for his father who wants to take him on a work field trip.

[02:20:57] And so shout out Mapes becomes the target. But Paul, he had been sneaking up on this thing and he just manages to catch it before it can kill her. And he smashes it against the door frame. And Mapes is so grateful that he saved her life. Uh, you know, this is of course, further raising the esteem of, of him and his mother in her eyes, but also she's like, I owe you a life debt. So she says, I have to tell you, we Fremen know that there is a traitor in this household.

[02:21:25] We don't know who it is, but we know that there is a traitor. And, um, then she runs off to go tell the Duke what happens so they can seal off the house and search for the hunter seeker. And Paul, he goes running into the weirding room where she's told him that his mother's hanging out. And so they drown the hunter seeker there. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is one of the more, this is one of the more high octane bits of the, this, the first third of the book.

[02:21:55] Cause as, you know, as, as fascinating as the book is in this first third, there is a lot of people sitting in rooms talking to each other. Laying the groundwork. So the, the, the gom jubar and the hunter seeker are really the, the, the tiny bits of action that just propel, that just propel the story forward. Yeah. And this first sixth of the book, because then. First sixth. Yeah. Spoiler alert. Next, uh, episode is the fall of the house atreides. Yeah.

[02:22:25] Um, but yeah, for the, in the hunter seeker, uh, operation, the Hawats men, the, the Mentats men do find a man hidden in the walls of the cellar with the seeker console. And it looked to be a native and he'd been hiding there for a month. Uh, but he died before they could question him. Yeah. And they like literally, he'd literally been like sealed into, he'd literally been like sealed into the wall as well. So they couldn't find them when they were doing sweeps of the house. Yeah. Before they moved in. Yeah.

[02:22:54] Which of course, so the Harkonnens, they want it to seem like on the one hand, like the lady Jessica is the traitor. Although like, come on against her own son. Um, but they're spreading this idea that it's Jessica and they're especially trying to get, um, the Mentats, Tufi or Hawat to believe it's Jessica. But also at the same time, they're instilling doubt in the abilities of Hawat who's aging. And they're like, oh, well you didn't find the person operating the console.

[02:23:22] And Jessica is actually really the most understanding of him, not vice versa. But, but also it's kind of one of those, one of those things where it pays off. It pays off whatever happens because if it fails, if it succeeds, it obviously kills the Duke of Laird. If it fails in a certain way, it might spread suspicion.

[02:23:44] But even if it doesn't spread, spread suspicion, even if it fails, it might lull the Atreides into a false sense of security as well. Because there's this whole bit, a bit earlier on when Piter is talking to, um, Baron Harkonnens. Because the Atreides have got to feel like they're gaining a measure of control. They've got, they've got, in order for our plan to completely succeed, it has to look to Duke Laird like he's winning.

[02:24:15] Right. Um, yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and they're also, they're sowing division between whatever everyone else believes. If, you know, if they can turn two of the Duke's closest people, you know, his, his partner and his mentor against each other, then that's going to weaken the entire house. Yeah.

[02:24:37] And they, you know, Jessica thinks about Dr. Yue, but they just keep quickly dismissing him because he has that Sook School imperial conditioning. So that's just means can't possibly be him. And he hates the Harkonnens. So couldn't be him. It's so frustrating. It's so frustrating. No, you were right. Keep looking.

[02:25:28] Yeah. Um, I think that's where the story turns into the desert saga with sandworms that people often think of. Um, before we go though, I wanted to, I thought that I would do, you know, we talked about princess Irulan's writings and how we have these excerpts that start every chapter. So I thought each time I could pull out a, a few of the most telling ones, most interesting ones that we could.

[02:25:55] So we have a sample of what these princess Irulan writings are about, but also what they're teaching the reader about. So one from one of the first chapters is from the manual of Moadib to attempt an understanding of Moadib without understanding his mortal enemies. The Harkonnens is to attempt seeing truth without knowing falsehood. It is the attempt to see the light without knowing darkness. It cannot be. So what do you think about that?

[02:26:25] You can't understand the Atreides or Paul without. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I love, I love, I love all the, I love all these little epigraphs. Yeah. Um, the scattered throughout the book. I think my favorite one is my favorite one is going to come up next time when we, when we see the emperor's reaction to the duke's, to the duke's death.

[02:26:52] Um, I think, I think that, I think that's my favorite because, because it's not, it's not Irulan writing about other people. It's pretty much unique. It's her own family. Writing about her own experience. Her own father. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of fathers. So, uh, another one that she wrote from Moadib family commentaries is she says, how do we approach the study of Moadib's father?

[02:27:18] A man of surpassing warmth and surprising coldness was Duke Leto Atreides. Yet many facts open the way to this Duke, his abiding love for his Bene Gesserit lady, the dreams he held for his son, the devotion with which men served him. You see him there, a man snared by destiny, a lonely figure with his light dimmed behind the glory of his son. Still, one must ask, what is the son but an extension of the father? Yeah.

[02:27:48] So I guess this is what David was saying about how Leto really hangs over the whole story, even after. Yeah. Spoiler, his death. Spoiler, his death. Um, and yeah, there's, there's this idea that, you know, Paul may be, you know, he may be Bene Gesserit.

[02:28:06] He may be trained by his mother, but the, you know, the genetic line, the, the inheritance that lets him become the Kwisatz Haderach, that's as much coming from Leto as it is from, as it is from Jessica. Mm-hmm. Um, and I like this sort of, and you see it a lot in the book, um, this distinction between Duke Leto. Yeah.

[02:28:33] You know, the Atreides Duke and Leto Atreides just the father. The father and the mother. The, the, the, yeah. And like, he's a character that, that has to wear a mask of authority, but he's worn that mask for so long that it's actually become part of his personality. It's actually become part of his personality. Yeah. Right. Right. And we talked about his own father, so. Yeah.

[02:29:01] And you get the sense that like, yeah, the, his relationship to his father might have been a little bit, might have been a little bit abusive. Hmm. Or at least Jessica seems to think it was. Yeah. At least very abusively cold, but maybe worse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we also, so the last, um, the last quote from Princess Irla and I pulled is from The Humanity of Moadib.

[02:29:25] Moadib and it's about, um, many have marked the speed with which Moadib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basics of this speed for the others. We can say that Moadib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was a basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

[02:29:53] Moadib knew that every experience carries its lesson. And I think that's a lesson we should all carry with us. Yeah. And that's, uh, that's something we should all remember kids. Yeah. I love this idea because when I think back on, um, you know, I did have a fancy education and when I think back on what I take away from it, it's not necessarily memorizing the dates or economic principles or whatever, you know, it's what I most learned was how to learn. Yeah. And that's something you carry with you forever.

[02:30:24] Yeah. Yeah. Anything you wanted to add about this first sixth of the book? No, I think, I think we'll wrap it up there. Yeah. We've, we've gone on a bit long. I'm glad we had the, uh, nice opening with David. Next time we'll dive right directly into the second half of this first book of the first book. Yep. So we'll, so we'll get, we'll get almost, we'll get almost to the half, but not quite to the halfway. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:30:55] I noticed in my book, it says that it's, um, 38% of the book at the end of the full first book, but that's not including the appendices, which we're not going to go through in that kind of detail. All right. So, uh, as far as what's going on elsewhere in the book club, we've wrapped up the silo book breakdowns, Abby and I, and, um, now in this public feed, we are also ramping up for silos.

[02:31:21] So we'll be back to chat about any trailers or additional info that might be released. And then you can expect while the season is on weekly breakdowns of every silo episode, as well as book spoiler extra episodes for subscribers going a little deeper into, uh, that spoiler and discussion.

[02:31:39] Um, plus, so subscribers have access to that, but there's also going to be silo season passes that I'm setting up for those who just want to access the silo special episodes without subscribing to the rest of the content. And on the public feed, we're also, uh, we're going to do periodic feedback episodes. So we want to hear all your thoughts about silo as we go. Please email that to wool shift dust podcast at gmail.com.

[02:32:05] And, um, yeah, feel free to send in feedback to be included in the book spoiler episodes as well. And before and after we'll of course be continuing this dune series. We'll keep the dune series going. So, uh, please do share this episode with any other dune lovers in your life who you think might enjoy it or anyone who wants a deeper understanding of this story with, with, or without having to read it themselves.

[02:32:29] And for those of you who have read the books do send in your top three most memorable scenes from the book, uh, to wool shift dust podcast at gmail.com. And you'll find that linked in the show notes. Um, now, as far as getting in touch with us, in addition to the email address, I'm still active on social media. Luke, not so much these days. I'm active on blue sky, but I have overthrown, I've overthrown our musky and overlord.

[02:32:55] Um, so exited Twitter, exited Twitter stage left. Um, and I will get more, I will get more active on the discord. I'm sorry that I don't spend enough time there, but it's my new season resolution for season two. So I love that. I will spend more time on the discord. Okay. Well, if you want to get in touch with Luke in the meantime, you can email us or you can leave a message on the wool shift dust channel of the lore hounds discord. And I'll make sure Luke gets it.

[02:33:24] And you'll find that discord invite in the show notes as well. In addition to all the links to the, uh, to the other affiliates on the network. Anything else you wanted to add before we go? No, I think that's it. All right. Well, thank you for sticking with us through this long episode. Hope it was, uh, an interesting dive into setting the stage for the rest of the dune story to come from here. It's all action and sandworms.

[02:33:50] Just remember if the gom jabbar is at your neck, you must ignore your hand in the box of pain. What's in the box? What's in the box?