Pluribus |1x01+1x02| We Is Us + Pirate Lady

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Carol asks Helen what she thought of the book.
She didn't say I like it. She said people will like it.
I think that's a really good tell.
Even her own wife thinks she's not a good writer, I think.
And she put it to her nicely, Just like the collective is
trying to soften the blow of the11,000,000 she killed we are

(00:22):
outburst. We are Walking Dead, a podcast
pulverizing programs beyond The Walking Dead universe.
Sometimes we give you news, sometimes we make you laugh.
Most times we go deep. We're your host David Cameo, and
we are joined by. This individual is known as
Cosmo Mom, 09. This individual is Blasey
Gardner can. We're here to talk to you about

(00:43):
the inaugural series premiere ofPluribus.
We are not a collective, which is great.
This is the whole point. Squawking dead is the antithesis
of Pluribus because we do come together on our diverse
opinions. We don't walk away agree, I
think in which is great for you,the audience, because you may

(01:03):
not agree with us. And I'd like to hear more about
that in the comments section or in your reviews.
Yeah, Yeah. You'll hear more about that
later and how to do that. And obviously you know how to
use the comment section if thereis a comment section.
So get crack at lagging. But not yet.
We haven't said anything objectionable yet, unless maybe
we have. Maybe you should tell us.
They might have something to sayabout our opening there.

(01:27):
Not if I have anything to say about that.
Dave's going to work his editingmagic on it and it's going to
come out perfectly. Exactly.
Well, you could do it to be. Something.
We're like the Great British Bake Off.
We have this huge mess of footage and Dave molds it and
shapes it into a beautiful confectionery for everyone to
enjoy. Yeah, it's Mosley Fondant.

(01:47):
This podcast should be called Mouthful of Fondant.
Sounds delicious. Yeah.
Well, in excess, it's kind of. I mean, it'll give you a
bellyache, but it's good. But it's a good kind.
It's like a warm fuzzy bellyache.
It'll give you a bellyache. Rather than talk about the
titles just yet, let's talk about first impressions.
I loved it, especially the second watch, because the first

(02:09):
watch I was just like, what in the world?
I'd watched nothing about this beforehand, other than I watched
some of the really weird trailers I hadn't read any
articles about. I knew absolutely nothing about
other other than she was the miserable person on earth and
has to deal with the virus of happiness river.
So for me, the second episode, I'm going to say drag just a
little bit for me the first time.

(02:29):
The second time I enjoyed it a lot more.
Oh my God, racy horn number one.I mean, amazing.
The choice of shots and the camera angles, and I noticed a
lot of mirroring shots. All of the cinematography was
fantastic. The first episode spooked me out
a little bit. When you just, you look in like
to the hospital, everybody's just standing there shaking.

(02:51):
So in the scene where she's asking the pirate lady how many
people died because of her? Hundreds, thousands.
And they didn't cut away and show you pirate lady's face.
You got everything from Carol's reaction.
They just kept it on Ray Seahorn's face.
I'm ready for the next episode. I wish there was one up.
I would have already watched it.Well, we only have a couple more

(03:11):
days anyway. At this rate, they'll be here
before, you know, and we have another show to cover, which in
case you're hopping on for the first time, we are talking about
it. Welcome to Derry on HBO Max.
A little bit of housekeeping. Why not?
But also back to Pluribus. Let's go to you, Ray.
I only watched it once, first episode, second episode one
time. You didn't take notes.
No, I haven't had a child like Sharon D.

(03:35):
The first time you watch it, it's just kind of like what the
heck is going on? There's a lot of catch up that
you got to do. But I like that it drew me in
because I'm like, what is happening?
I need to know what's going on. I appreciate and it needs to be
said immediate answers. I appreciate knowing at least a

(03:57):
little bit of what's going on. We don't know the full picture.
We don't know The Who or the how, but we got some answers,
enough to keep me intrigued enough to say I want to know
more. The casting is phenomenal.
I think everybody that I've seenon screen so far has done an
excellent job. I love that there is a
seriousness to what's going on, but at the same time there's

(04:21):
enough humor in it that I found myself laughing at quite a few
places where maybe I wasn't supposed to.
Like she's she's, she's pushing the the Gurney around in the
hospital and she bumps into the guy or she's in the bar and
she's trying to get the phone out of the girl's hand and she's
like clutching it. I like it when you can

(04:42):
incorporate the in the laugh with it.
I kind of told Charney before westarted.
I don't really know, but I guesssitting here now describing it
sounds like I liked it, right? I mean, next episode.
I know it sounds like I'm sayingall good things so I must have
liked it. Is there anything about the show

(05:04):
that you didn't like? Well, the things that I didn't
like, I'm not supposed to like. Like Carol.
Yes, my feelings towards anything I disliked were very
much on purpose and it pains me so much to even utter this
sentence out. Loud.
It hurts. Oh right, I can't even like get
my face to form these words, butI didn't.

(05:26):
Girl sucks. I.
Did not like Carol. Let me back up just a little
bit. So Sharon, he had the tiniest
little hint of what this show was about.
Not even a synopsis. What am I trying to say?
Like a tagline of some kind? I don't know.
Something. I had zero idea what the show
was about. Absolutely nothing.
I knew the title of it, and I knew Ray Seahorn was in it.
No clue. I knew a little bit more than

(05:48):
that, but Sharon, he obviously knew more because she read about
it. More, I think I knew almost
nothing about it other than the trailer.
You had said something just a moment ago about her being the
most miserable person on earth. That's how Vince Gilligan
described it. OK, she's doing a very good job
portraying the most miserable person on earth.
However, I can understand why right now.
Mostly because she just lost themost important person in the

(06:10):
world to her and she has literally no one to grieve with.
I did not catch the first time that for everyone they were
together. Oh, I did too.
The first time it's obvious is they're right outside the bar
and Helen is reading the comments online, one of the
online people that are asking about Rabon specifically.

(06:32):
And is this character based on any real life man?
And then there's like this like awkward pause and Helen's like,
are you going to tell him the truth?
That was the indicator for me. I got that the second time, but
the first time I was like, oh, she's got some mystery past or
something, you know, that we're going to find out about later.
I knew when first watched that you don't have to make like
certain bargains in your brain, like, OK, at least Carol is a

(06:54):
lesbian by Helen saying that because Helen could still be,
oh, just her publicist, etcetera.
But then there's the knowledge about the car and obviously at
Carol's an alcoholic, so her carhas a breathalyzer in it.
But then again, it's their car. I find out in the second watch.
Then you start getting into moredefinitive evidence.
There's like a wedding picture of them together at one point
and I was. Like I didn't even see that.
Yeah, but it's very quick. So before she pick up the phone,

(07:17):
the core of this phone, right? Yeah, or she calls the
president, and even then she doesn't call the president right
away. She has a drink.
He was not the. President.
Not the president. Sorry, yes, Under Secretary of
Agriculture. Agriculture, right?
Right, right. But you know, it was that
president. She's on the presidents podium
anyway, so yeah, she's looking at the cordless phone from the
couch. It focuses on the photo for just

(07:38):
like a microsecond, like milliseconds, hundreds of
milliseconds long, and then it focuses on the phone.
But in that photo, you'll see Carol's wearing black and
Helen's wearing white. And it it appears to be framed
in such a way that it looks likea wedding photo.
Wedding photo. OK, No, I did.
I did miss that. But yeah, to me it was very
clear that they were together. But there's very black and white
thinking throughout the show. And of course, Helen and she are

(08:00):
both very black and white thinkers.
I'm talking about extremes of opinion.
And then even then later on in the second episode you have
Kumba. The guy from is her literal
mirror image. Oh the yeah.
He's like Hakuna Matata and she's like, are you kidding me?
How can you be so relaxed? I know, like I said, I noticed
that there were several mirror images throughout.

(08:22):
She's like sitting on the edge of her bed or something, and
there's a mirror on the other side of the screen and you can
see her reflected in that mirror.
In the cosmetic mirror, right? Yeah, a round mirror in her
bathroom. Very interesting shot.
Yeah, very Vince Gilligan. Did a lot of tracking shots that
were really good, especially when she was freaked out and
driving the car. Oh my gosh, yes.

(08:44):
Everything. Out the back window.
Very cool of. Course, he had to do that after
some shows recently had featuredthat in England.
I love that little detail of everybody fixing things because
usually when something like thathappens, everybody's out rioting
in the streets and they're burning down the buildings and
setting stuff on fire. And here everybody's running to
help everybody putting out the things on fire, helping people

(09:06):
out. And I was like, that was really
cool. Probably putting things back
right instead of taking them from their spot.
In episode 2, when they spend the entire first part with no
speech, no dialogue whatsoever, Socia leaving wherever she was
going to find the bodies. There's the shot of the
policeman when he's trying to get food out of the vending

(09:27):
machine and he's bending down and the reflection behind him.
You can see the doctor coming out the door and walking up the
hallway. And that was like it just really
long, slow shot. Like they didn't hurry it in any
way. Most shows they would have had
her coming really fast and it would have been a quick shot,
but this, it was like what, 30 seconds of her walking up the

(09:49):
hallway behind him? That's also a Vince Gilligan
thing because they did that a lot in Breaking Bad and and
Better Call Saul. But I feel like it's to another
level. It adds a level of suspense.
That scene specifically was verysuspenseful.
Like in the classic horror movies where you're like, turn
around, turn around, They're right there.
Behind you and yet the wolf is so nice he ends up kissing him

(10:10):
instead of I like those. Scenes where you have to be
paying attention and watch things as they unfold.
And then finally, when it gets to the end, you're like, oh.
By the way, Vince Gilligan has the lion's share of the credits,
the writing credits, the executive producer credit.
No Thomas. Now it's like not his usual team
too. But isn't that sort of a

(10:30):
commentary on his version of if you had to take it from the
point of view of a post apocalyptic viral outbreak,
zombie apocalypse sort of brain?Well, as opposed to anything
else, it feels like, well, this is how it would actually happen.
Very silently, very quietly, almost pleasantly, without you
really realizing it happened. Basically, rather than a zombie

(10:50):
apocalypse where people like blowing up and ripped apart and
it's in your face alone is bloodspatter everywhere.
There was a lot of chaos in the beginning.
I mean, she drives into the cityand half of it was on fire, so.
856 million people died in the first generation so.
But did we see all that death and destruction is the point I'm
making. OK, I you're saying as the few

(11:13):
words we didn't see but it happened.
But we did because we saw a microcosm of it.
We saw the truck drive into the other truck with the guy that
was passed out and then it. Drifted it.
It was like and then. Idle.
It was like Mark. And then Helen died.
We did see it. We just didn't see the
widespread. We saw a microcosm of what was
going on all around the world. We saw what we wanted to see in

(11:35):
fear of The Walking Dead, only not at all violent.
Basically, I had that in my brain as she's driving around
the city of Albuquerque and she's watching it in flames.
It was like, oh, it's like LA burning and Fear The Walking.
Did you have that in your head at all?
I don't know if any of you did. Not it was more like oh look
it's a burning city like every destruction apocalypse movie.
I also love that they were in Albuquerque.

(11:56):
Yes. And also the other tie in that I
picked up on was the Wayfarer airplane flight company that was
in Breaking Bad, the one that blew up over Walter's house and
ended up dropping all the debrisinto his pool.
Including the pink teddy bear. Wayfarer 515.
They're in the Breaking Bad universe.
They're just ahead in time, right?
Because I think even Better CallSaul isn't wasn't quite today.

(12:18):
I think if I'm not mistaken it was like 2015.
I think the post Breaking Bad was sort of present day, but the
bulk of the story was 2000 and four 2005 because that was what
was on their marriage license. It's like 2004.
Going back to my point though, it's like I again a commentary
on well this is how it actually happened.

(12:39):
It's like a fart, silent but deadly, not RIP roaring and
smelly. It's in your face.
You don't want it. Here slightly.
But you got it. You got to flaunt it.
It was like. No, without a doubt it was, but
it wasn't what we thought it would be there.
Was nobody eating faces? But being the only person
standing around while everybody else is is pretty freaking

(13:01):
scary. Well, even the way they
described how it happened or theway we find out her her name.
And at the end of the second episode, just because they were
trying to argue over who should have her Azosa, which I'm just
going to continue calling the pirate lady exactly because
she's it's not Zocia anymore anyway so it doesn't even
matter. Pirate Lady OK, this is going to
be an entirely different conversation for.

(13:22):
I'm like the Rachel of the podcast now it's pirate lady.
No, I agree, but there's a conversation to be had about
whether or not. We'll get there.
They are still themselves. Pirate lady says how it happened
when asked, and she said, we've got the astronauts and the Navy
people and the army people 1st. And we went individually 1 by 1
asking, sort of making it seem as though she'd asked them.

(13:44):
She introduced it to them and they were like, yeah, let's do
it until the army caught wind and then they had to accelerate
their plans, which is a whole other conversation.
The way she describes it was sort of like how Rome fell, The
fall of Rome. It fell so slowly and so
gradually over I think decades, basically because not everybody
knew that Rome fell when it fell.
And so it took so much time for people to figure out, oh, this

(14:07):
thing that we thought was happening was a thing like
civilization, oh, it fell a while ago.
Consider the fact that if you put this into perspective, the
whole thing fell 439 days ago when the show starts a year and
a half ago. Yeah.
So it is exactly like Vince Gilligan is basically telling
you it happened over a long period of time.
Not like in The Walking there would like.

(14:28):
No. Seemed to happen all at once,
and it happened before anybody was aware or had the wherewithal
to actually notice it too. Well, I think that was the goal,
but like she said, the wrong people found out about it and so
they had to speed up the process.
So then it was very noticeable because it was like everybody
all at once. When the pirate lady is talking

(14:49):
about how she had to accelerate her plan because this is, this
is a very big point of contention, it's.
Not her plan, it's their plan. You're right.
Well, their, their plan, right? The plan, the biological entity
thing. We'll talk about that more
later. Plan.
Not our I'm not there. I'm not there.

(15:10):
I'm just saying like, am I theirplan?
Their plan? This individual is David Cameo.
Anyway, so when she describes itand she says they had to
accelerate their plan, does thatimply that of the 800 and some
odd million, which I do have theexact figure of, who cares?
They had to buy, force, take outsome targets in order to spread.
Well, I think that they were using the chemtrails to spread

(15:32):
it. So they had drones that could
fly 40,000 feet above and drop that wasn't armed.
But when the doctors were working in the lab and doing
their very choreographed germ spreading thing, they had to
figure out how to. Aerosolize.
Aerosolize it and that's how they ended up spreading it.
That's why it caused so many accidents, because they had to
do people that were flying airplanes just out of nowhere

(15:54):
and. I think you discussing it just
now made me unlock a specific scene that I saw that made me
realize how fast they accelerated the process.
Carol asks Helen, hey, can we goout for a smoke?
She goes, oh, no, you're smoking.
And she goes, today I am and whatnot.
They go outside. As they're going outside, there
is a shot. It's very deliberate.
Of the TV. Of an air base on lockdown, this

(16:18):
is the moment in which not Zoysia but pirate lady is
talking about is that's when they decide to accelerate.
Because when the air base went on lockdown, that's when they
shot the planes out and did the thing and all over the world.
Because I was trying to figure out where where does that even
happen? So, OK, so it wasn't a bloody
coup in a sense, is what I was kind of trying to suss because
all throughout your thinking, just like Carol, am I to trust

(16:39):
what they're saying even though everything they've been saying
is basically the truth? It wasn't a bloody coup and the
fact that they went in guns and blazing and took out a bunch of
people, but there was collateraldamage, let's just say.
As a result of the change. They have an entirely different
alternate theory. Do you want to say real quick
that it was funny that they covered their drinks before they
left the bar and then they got poisoned when they were outside?

(17:02):
Women have to do that, you know.It is, but if somebody, oh gosh,
no man's ever going to figure out how to lift a napkin.
That's sort of what I was going to say in response to that.
For somebody to walk over and pick the napkin up and put
something, that's a lot more visually arresting than someone
sneaking by and dropping something in your drink.
I guess I took it as worse. Don't take these drinks away

(17:22):
like we're. Coming back.
Two things can be true. Right.
Oh, absolutely. The collective truth and also
these girls truth or Carol's truth, really.
I have an alternate dispersal theory, how it was dispersed and
how it affected everybody simultaneously.
Much like the zombie virus. We were all infected by some
food, drink, whatever because the chemtrails OK, but I feel

(17:46):
like there are going to be areaswhere something outside isn't
going to. They were all in the bar and
still all affected at the exact same time.
Even if there's chemicals outside, it's going to take time
to like drift it, like get through anyway.
So you're saying there's like a simultaneous?
I don't know that just in the air would be the most effective,

(18:08):
I guess, but like food, drink, things like that.
What if everybody was exposed toit and had it on board already?
And then there was a trigger andthat's why everyone kind of sort
of shut down and went into like reboot mode while they were all
trying to connect their brain waves.
And it just took that long for everybody on the planet to

(18:31):
connect their hive mind. What you're saying makes so much
more sense because like we're saying, OK, it doesn't pass
muster that they just started with like the people in the
North Pole, in the South Pole and the military people and the
astronauts and the Navy and all that stuff.
So how do you contain that? That's what they say a lot about
when it comes to conspiracy theories and who's in control
and how do you not allow a conspiracy theory to get out

(18:53):
when there's so many people involved in the conspiracy?
But what you're saying makes sense is if they started with
one lab and had half the formulain everything.
And I would even gather to say the easiest dispersal method
would be 1 would think is water but water dilutes.
I would say sugar. Sugar is basically in everything
and almost everybody has what would be the building blocks of

(19:14):
sugar like bread whatnot. And if not bread, some sort of
grain right? Sure.
Substrate like the Last of Us. Exactly in substrate.
Yes. And even that substrate is
composed of like wheat, and theyhave sugars in them, but you can
only carry some of the RNA, which is, by the way, that's
what the formula is for ribonucleic acid, right?

(19:35):
It's the DNA messenger sequence,basically.
And the formative for RNA is quinine, uracil, adenine, and
cytosine. That's the four molecular
components of RNA. But I just, I thought was pretty
cool, right? It's the messenger and right.
And they're just saying our DNA is now hyper connected.
It's like the psychic glue. All our DNA is connected

(19:58):
basically. And we can all communicate with
each other's DNA because again, human beings, we're essentially,
one could say we're I'll the different races and the race is
a social construct. We're all we all have the same
DNA And now on the show, they literally are the same.
How about that? Genetically, humans are only
like 10% different from a bananaso.

(20:22):
Not at all different than most animals.
I think with chimpanzees it's like 4% different.
I don't even think it's that farapart, by the way.
Maybe it was like 98.4 or something like that, but anyway,
it's very very small differences.
So going back to your thing, Rachel, I think that makes a
whole lot of sense. And then the air component being
the joiner of the two things like the sugars and the whatnots

(20:42):
and the water. Yeah, and it could be more than
one thing. Yeah, maybe the chemtrails were
like the last thing that was needed to trigger the whole mess
of it all. We're like a just in case
measure. It must be super, I don't know
word on before, but to not affect the animals who are we
are so closely related to genetically because they can't
control the animals. They said when they let them out
of the zoo the animals attacked and mauled people.

(21:04):
So that's. True.
Let's talk about that right now,right after this, But I just
want to close this one loop. Near the end of the second
episode, pirate Lady says to Kumba, I think it was when
asked, so are you vegetarians? She goes, we prefer it.
Yeah, which I thought was an interesting way of wording that.
We prefer it, meaning it's not like we can't eat meat or maybe

(21:25):
they philosophically won't eat meat, but they can consume it.
So I guess if all options are off the table, they have to.
Is that what you're to take fromthat?
She also said that they wouldn'tkill animals, but if they were
already dead, they'll prepare them.
So maybe if it's something that they get from a supermarket they
would eat it, I don't know. If you don't have people to work
and kill the animals, then who'sgoing to start the supermarkets?

(21:47):
Well, they won't, but they're still going to prepare what's
already there. Waste not, want not, yeah.
They say they don't kill, yet they killed 846 million people.
I guess they consider killing going in, purposefully killing
something, but you still did something that caused the deaths
of 846 million people. OK, so let's take Helen for an

(22:08):
example real quick. I'm going to say, and maybe I'm
wrong, Helen died as a direct result of whatever this thing
is. We can assume there are deaths
like that and then also deaths that occurred, say someone's
driving a car and then they go into this state and then they
die as a result. Of a crash.
Or an airplane or operating somesort of vehicle.

(22:29):
Maybe they're on a ladder and they fall off, maybe they're,
who knows. So there's going to be deaths
that happened indirectly as a result, and then there's going
to be deaths that happened like Helen, where maybe it was a bad
reaction. I think there are various shots
that imply that many of the folks just it just didn't take.
When Carol was home and she was looking out the windows and all

(22:50):
the cars left and then the truckpulled in and they went in and
got the body out that had blood all over its face.
It was bleeding like from the nose and mouth.
And I don't know if you noticed that Helen's eyes were red, like
they were getting ready to bleedor something.
She looked pretty rough. There were a lot of bodies in
that trailer that obviously it didn't take later Sosha, they
were getting bodies that had been killed in accidents rather

(23:11):
than ones that had died because of the So like maybe they went
and got all the people that diedas a result.
They went and got them first to hide it.
Who are they hiding it from? Because everybody's in the hive
mind. See, and that's goes to our
paranoid brain because I, I don't think it's that at all.
My analytical brain would go, maybe they're trying to get
whatever they can that they couldn't get before the process

(23:33):
took hold. And I don't know how they get
it. I'm not about to speculate how
the remaining memory. Studying the bodies.
Well, yes, if you want to effectively propagate your
species. Just like you're trying to
figure out how to get these remaining people to convert to
your religion. Kidding.
You're going to also want to know what went wrong in case you

(23:53):
come across other species that are similarly unaffected or
affected. And you're going to want to
perfect your formula, just like any supreme race of beings.
I also think they just don't want dead bodies hanging around.
But the question was why did they get the ones that didn't
take first is what I think was the question, wasn't it?
I mean, it's just rambling as I as things come to mind.

(24:14):
I'm with you. I don't know if I can say for
sure in which order they collected the bodies.
Me neither. If the question were to arise on
maybe that's what they were doing, I would say probably
that's why what went wrong here.Yeah.
Why didn't it take is the point.Yeah, their minds and bodies
just couldn't take the fusion. Maybe.
Maybe we'll figure it out. I mean, maybe the show will
actually explain it. Maybe Pirate Lady said that

(24:36):
Helen joined them before she passed, but did she join them
willingly or did they hijack herthoughts and memories before she
died? She smiled before she passed,
but she could have just because she was looking at Carol, not
because she was happy being in the hive mind or anything.
OK, let's stay here. Let's stay here.
I like this. I like this.
It's so good, very delicious because did she smile because

(24:57):
she resisted and stayed with Carol, meaning the process isn't
as pirate lady said it was like oh and what do you experiences?
It stays No, it's very violent and they do it anyway.
They take the consciousness and the memories and all that stuff
anyway to weaponize Carol whatnot.
Again, I'm not trying to be too conspiratorial, but even heart
Lady explains to us it's like breathing.

(25:18):
It's not a malicious act. And isn't that humankind also
humankind just do what it do, eat animals with abandoned, they
wreck whole forests and stuff like that.
We and just because we could. I think that that should be what
separates us from the animals isthat we know we cannot do it and
we don't do it. Animals just do what they do.
Oh, my dog tore up something? Well, that's just what dogs do.

(25:39):
But you don't expect a human. Oh, Dave tore up a paper.
Well, that's just what Dave does.
That's not the way it works. Dave didn't tear the paper up
because he's a human and he saidI need that later.
Humans should be able to separate the animals.
Animals just do what they do. Humans think about what they do.
Or they should anyway. Animals follow their instinct
where we have thought process. Right.

(26:01):
Thank you. That's we do a little bit.
Better way of the rambling I sayin the rambling I just did.
All I'm saying, even before all of that, is that what makes us
too dissimilar from this being or this consciousness, let's say
this collective consciousness, not that much different.
In the process of trying to liveor exist, we do inadvertently in
many cases, sure, but also purposely wreck certain

(26:23):
ecosystems, whether it's animals, whether it's plant
life, whether it's our own habitat.
Sometimes, in some cases, well even early on, we would poop
where we drank until we figured out that was bad for us.
We as a species are the worst. Hold on that way.
No, but we are. We are actively destroying the

(26:46):
planet we live on. Even without all that
speculation, we inadvertently dothings or just as a matter of
existing all the time without it.
Is very advertently. It is very much on purpose.
I don't want to get into that debate.
I just want to hit you. Open this door.
Oh, I didn't kick it open. I was like is the.
Door you you cracked it open andI grabbed the handle and.

(27:08):
She like. Kicked you.
Through it. Like what are you pussyfooting
around, bitch? We're absolutely the worst.
Humans have the ability for critical thinking and the
ability to change their actions.And self reflection.
Information you attack on, whereas animals just, you say do

(27:28):
what they do. Now you have some animals that
will be trained to not do things, but that is with human
intervention. Of course most animals are smart
enough to not poop where they eat.
That's that's an instinct. Apparently humans don't have
that one, or didn't for a while,but.
And now animals, through evolution, will also learn
things. They teach each other things.

(27:48):
Sure, animals are going to learnthat they can find food source
in different places if necessary.
Animals will adapt. We've adapted.
We're not that different, we just have.
Agreed. Well, more natural and also
intellectual tools at our disposal.
Agreed, but a human's like, oh, I need something better, so I'm
going to destroy something or create something that damages

(28:12):
the earth in order to achieve these goals.
Sometimes. Most times.
They were vegetarian, right? So a dog is not going to
voluntarily be vegetarian because that is not what a dog
does. Dogs eat meat.
That is what a dog does. Humans, on the other hand, have
the ability to eat things other than meat and still be healthy.

(28:33):
We make the choice to eat meat when we don't have to, and that
is destructive. Believe me, the meat industry is
one of the biggest problems on the planet.
But we make the choice to eat that meat, whereas the dog
doesn't make the choice. If the dog doesn't eat meat, it
dies. It's not going to live on peanut
butter. A humans not going to be healthy
and thriving if they don't eat meat either.

(28:56):
We are naturally carnivores. We have the ability to supplant
that protein. We can still have diets without
the meat and still get the protein in the iron, whereas
animals can't. They don't have the ability.
But even that comes with a tradeoff by the way, in order to
supplement the nutritional requirements necessary to
completely replace, if you're todo that right, to completely

(29:17):
replace a meat diet, you're going to be decimating all the
plant life that would take away from the animals.
And if we're getting into. That then we're getting into the
area where we just have too big of a population on the planet.
No, no, we're not going there. We're not going there.
No, listen, we killed already 800 some odd million from the
planet which is took out the billion that we gained in the
last 10 years. Another 11.
That's another question I had, which was, she said that figure

(29:39):
was as of this moment. Does that include Carol's
outburst beforehand? 11,000,000 died and there were
11 people that weren't affected by the. 12 They found a guy from
Europe. Later 12 later, but that was
after the 11,000,000 had died. True, interesting.
Well, they died before we found out about the 12th 1, so they
included the 12th and they all were ruining our theories here.

(30:01):
Guys. Going to the argument that Kumba
has with Carol about pirate lady, Pirate lady doesn't want
to get involved. Pirate lady has no desires.
They have that whole philosophical argument of you're
just going to let the Kumba sit there and have his way with you.
And she basically makes it out to be that this Organism has no

(30:22):
desires. The only desire it seems to have
is the betterment of the remaining individuals with free
will left. Is that a take that everybody
kind of is on board with this kind of like Jainist?
Not only do we not want to kill people, we don't want to hurt
their feelings or cause them anysuffering too.
But their ultimate goal is to include them in the hive mind.

(30:44):
The betterment of them is not a necessary thing because they're
going to join the hive mind anyway.
But are they? I think this is a tactic to win
them over and make them want to join them.
You would say that, wouldn't you, Rachel?
Somewhat agree with Rachel because number one, this
wouldn't be much of A show if there was some other kind of
antagonism or problem going on behind it.

(31:04):
So there has to be something else to it.
It can't just be the oh, we wanteverybody to be happy.
That's why I keep saying I'm waiting for the the other shoe
to drop because right now this sounds amazing.
She asked if it was aliens and they said there's no aliens, not
on this planet. Right.
Well, it is this alien invasion,she says.
It's not really, but. Right.
She's there no aliens on this planet.

(31:26):
So I mean, what they're doing isthey're telling the truth as
much as they can, but it's stillnot the truth, you know?
Because this code, whatever it is, came from what, 400 light
years away? 600, yeah. 600 light years away,
so not exactly the other side ofthe Earth.
It's alien in some form. It's drifting.
We could ski off that slope. Does Vince Gilligan know about

(31:48):
the alien ship that's hiding outbehind the sun?
I mean, was this Vince Gillian? He knew.
He knows everything. He knows everything.
He's a genius. OK, so desires.
OK, so let me get on to what thetactic is, if you want to put it
in so many words. OK, think about what their
weakness is. Negative emotions.
Right now, the reason why they're being so pacifistic is

(32:10):
if they're not the ones causing the actual rift between the two
people, let's say, or different people, then they're not the
ones who are going to get blamedwhen it doesn't go their way.
It's their fault because they couldn't work it out for
themselves. So they're the Switzerland of
this, of the remaining human race, let's say.
Does that make more sense than the more conspiratorial sense?

(32:30):
Switzerland didn't take out like99.9% of the planet but.
Switzerland was just breathing. And.
Just doing it what it do? No, I think I'm right.
I think I. Was just trying to give an
alternate explanation for like why they approach this.
No killing and not even no harming, but.
If that were the storyline, it would be far less interesting as

(32:54):
if they were doing this as a ploy.
I think it's far less complicated if your theory is
true, but I think it's so much more interesting if this is what
they're why why they do what they do.
Look, remembering Game of Thrones, when Melisandre was
about to sacrifice Gendry and she's like, if the lamb sees the
knife, it taints the meat. They're like, oh look how nice.

(33:17):
Everything is just be chill. And calm and your meat will be
so much sweeter. I'm just thinking same
conclusion, just different approach.
Rachel's like, don't let them see the knife.
And I'm like, well, also like, what else are we going to do?
Because our survival is at stake.
If we upset these people, we have to keep them super, super
satisfied. And maybe that actually also

(33:38):
answers the question of why theylet themselves be abused.
To them, the few ladies that arein the cockpit of that Air Force
One that are dressed skimpily and even pirate lady herself
using herself as a pawn, they'rejust but a of dust in the
organizational hole if you really think about it
clinically, rather than like, oh, she's an individual person.
She's not really an individual person.

(33:59):
She's just a fingernail off the collective, not even a clipping,
if you will. So of course they're Yeah, have
your way with my fingernail clipping.
Go bye. Kill it for all we care.
But every single person in the hive mind knows what's happening
to you. Yeah, equally true, yeah.
But then surely there's got to be someone in the millions of
people who is into SNM and bondage, so you let them be the

(34:23):
person who's being abused and then everybody's happy.
OK, I see. And so they can compartmentalize
basically of their various personalities.
And then there's another person who know who knows martial arts
and who could like, kick his butt if he starts not acting
appropriately So. They're not violent.
They can't hurt anybody. But they can, but can't.
I mean, can they not defend themselves?

(34:44):
I think we'd be better if they didn't, because then the second
they get violent with them, the whole system shuts down.
They're like fainting goats. They get stressed and they just
fall over. They are.
That's the fainting goat defenseis like, oh, I'm dead.
You don't want to eat me, right?So right, right.
Because then you feel bad. You're like, oh, let me help you
out. Wait, so are you.

(35:05):
Wait, wait, wait. Let's take this.
Let's take a breath. Because are you saying that
they're glitching out? Could be a defense mechanism
rather than a natural reaction to Carol's emotions.
OK, so it is dangerous to them because they can die from it.
Obviously, as we've seen, it's very clear.
But if Carol's yelling at you and freaking you out to the
point that you go into spasms, then what is going to save you

(35:28):
is you're going to make her so freaked out that she hurt you
that she's going to stop. It is hurtful, but it's also
partly a defense mechanism. I don't think it's Carol's
emotions that are killing them though.
I think it's a byproduct of what's happening, right?
Kind of like the initial wave ofeverything.
The one lady says her grandfather was driving a car
and died in an accident when that happened.

(35:49):
I don't think it's Carol's emotions that are killing them,
but if they happen to be doing something while they glitch out
that causes their death if that makes.
Sense I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying, yeah.
They don't die because of her emotions, they're dying because
they were doing something when they glitched out that caused.
And all I was saying was it affects them and if you want to

(36:09):
even put it further, it disruptstheir psychic glue as Taffler
Taffler. Also all those names in the show
is weird. That's all I meant is that it
affects them, and to the extent that it does affect them, they
could get killed. Why would it affect all of the
upper echelon of the government badly?
Because he's like, the presidentdidn't make it, he died and all

(36:31):
of the others didn't handle it well or something.
All of the That's why the Under Secretary of Agriculture was the
one talking to Carol. I welcome our overlords.
I wonder if we find out if otherpeople around the world who are
in a position of power also didn't make it.

(36:52):
For the audience, Rachel is holding up air quotes.
Air bunnies, Air bunnies. Air bunnies.
Air bunnies. Air bunnies.
I've never heard that before in my life, by the way.
Air bunnies. Thank you.
Yeah. It makes sense though, right?
Well, OK, doesn't. I don't have a conspiratorial
brain so that is very enlightening to me.
I'm on the fence but I love hearing it.
I know everybody's joined to this hive mind and everybody's

(37:12):
just like cool with it. Is there nobody part of this
brain waves that I don't know has an opinion?
Apparently not. Apparently there are no opinions
anymore. Before we get into that, I think
we should definitely discuss theanimals.
The the what this thing is is such a big conversation.
The animals is such an easy question to answer though.
Is it though? Yes, we just had a whole

(37:33):
conversation about how we're slightly different than animals
and it is enough. To be different enough to not be
affected. Exactly.
Yes, the same reason the zombie virus doesn't affect them.
What virus? Zombie virus.
And I don't know what you mean. Maybe it does on some level, and
maybe they don't have to kill the meat because the meat will

(37:54):
just die on its own. You know, like, Oh, my overlords
have instructed me to die so they don't have to kill me.
Because they mentioned like releasing dogs off leashes,
opening the cages to the zoos and.
Some people got more. The lady's like, I'm not giving
up my dog. I was like, power, power lady,
I'm with you. But your dog clearly would give
up on you because it sounds likethe giraffe's not giving an F

(38:17):
about the trees and the dog's not giving an F about the
owners. I think it's something we need
to watch because my question wasgiven that the rat was the first
thing you see assimilate, which is we have to get to the root
word of that assimilate. Dr. Jen with the bite because
she displayed the rat displayed the same symptoms as Jen and as
the subsequent people that got kissed or bit or touched or

(38:37):
licked as everybody else all. The doughnuts.
Doughnuts. Yeah.
Wow, so. Rude.
Then so like I put a footnote onthat, put a pin in that because
later on I knew the conversationwas going to turn to the zoo
animals and then Shumay talking about how there was a giraffe
outside my window shoe, giraffe shoe, and it didn't listen to
me. So I was like wondering, were

(38:59):
the animals also part of the hive mind?
And but then I realized, okay, if the animal was a part of the
hive mind, then the giraffe would have shoot itself after
Shoe. May said to Shoe.
Because when Carol screams basically out loud to the
converted people out in the cul-de-sac, I just want to be
left alone. All the people in the entire
cul-de-sac leave. I thought that was a function of

(39:21):
their behavior. No, but that's actually them
complying with Carol's wishes. They basically left her
completely alone. And the children said, give us a
few minutes to clear out. So she said it to the children
and then the children were able to brain wave it.
To the residents, I think that that was important too.
Tells you what their while theirpurported desire is.

(39:43):
To the extent that she wanted tobe left alone, she wanted to be
left completely alone. Maybe there was an
interpretation, I don't know. Well, I mean they all the cars
left. Right, right.
And so you translate, translate to that to the animals which
didn't do as instructed. I thought that was actually kind
of a tell on what the thing was able to affect and what it
wasn't. But I am still wondering about

(40:04):
the animals because it feels like they're not.
We talked about this on Fear of The Walking Dead, how the
animals weren't behaving to their normal patterns normally
herd animals. It would be herd animals.
They would travel in packs and stuff like that.
But in Fear of The Walking Dead,post apocalyptically, they
stopped doing that. They started going out
individually. Dogs would start hunting down
people and stuff like things would be unusual in the animal

(40:25):
Kingdom. And I think they're happening
here too. Maybe it depends on the order of
the animals. Like the higher intelligence
animals may not be affected as much as lower intelligence
mammals are highly intelligent, so maybe they're not affected
but maybe lower. Or maybe vice versa, I don't
know. Well, I mean then.
And giraffes are notoriously dumb.
I just want to say that out loud.
They're dumbest ass. Like I'm like I have something

(40:51):
of a bone to pick with giraffe. I did this on The Last of Us
too. I just want to let you know, I'm
so angry. At them for a giraffe due to.
You they're in a front. They have long necks and he
doesn't. Exactly.
Think you'd be all high and mighty with me, giraffe?
You're dumb as kick rocks. Dress kick, kick.

(41:12):
Rocks and dumb. Yeah, go tie your neck in a
knot. Yeah, yeah, like a cartoon.
Break your Break your dumb neck with your dumb head.
Anyway, yeah, I guess question the animal thing, because we've
seen it. I think it's across so many
tropes. The zombie virus doesn't affect
animals either, and so if we're dealing with anything even

(41:32):
remotely similar then it wouldn't affect the animals.
I woke up 1 morning and there was a herd, a moon eyed cow
standing out my side my door just staring I'd.
Be terrified, yeah. Which I have to say, like the
shots where the the people were behind her walk, just walking
behind her car and stuff was so scary.
It was so. So creepy.

(41:53):
Just want to help Carol. Yeah, exactly.
Let's talk about what this is, because it's a lot.
Even Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear, basically the
video game who's done a lot of TV, movies and even anime
television shows, and of course he does the game all The Walking
Dead is famously known, known about, which is Dead Death

(42:13):
Stranding with Norman Reedus andNorman Reedus and Hideo Kojima
are best friends basically. But he commented about this
show. I just came across that right
before we came on, and he says that basically it's a great play
on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which I thought was
pretty close to what I was thinking.
But of course, this series goes way beyond the usual troubles

(42:34):
like, oh, let's take those troubles and invert every single
one of them. Basically zombie apocalypse pod
people and outbreak sickness that spreads.
Let's defeat it like Carols trying to play into the We know
how this film ends. I just want to get your take on
what this is. So let's start with Rachel,
because I feel like you had somestrong feelings about what it

(42:54):
could be. Honestly, at this stage,
anything I say is going to be a complete shot in the dark.
I really have no idea. I don't know.
The simplest thing would be thatit is aliens.
Like Robert Kirkman said, I meanSpace Force.
Let's say it is aliens and they send Earth this code and
everyone is now infected with this not not a virus.

(43:18):
Our stupid butts clicked on the link.
Yeah. Seriously, everyone on Earth
clicked the link and now? We're trying the antivirus on
our SETI antivirus. Yeah, which has created this
hive mind, which is just going to make it easier for some alien
race to come to Earth and take over.
That's kind of where where my mind was headed.

(43:39):
If it's humans from the future who are trying to save the Earth
from what they know is going to happen in the future.
Well, if that's the case, then this is beautiful and the hive
mind like I'm thinking right nowsounds awesome, but I don't.
Think very well-intentioned. I think these first two episodes
are meant to make us think, what's the problem here?

(44:00):
Come on, Carol, get on board. And we're supposed to hate her
right now because something's going to happen in the next few
episodes and all of a sudden we're going to go, oh crap, she
was right. I started to say something
earlier before we came on, but Istopped myself because you were
angry at Carol. But she's trying to preserve our
way of life. She's trying to preserve
humanity on most shows, like TheWalking Dead.

(44:24):
That's what our heroes are trying to do, is preserve our
humanity among the loss of humanity.
But because the loss of humanityis people being nice,
everybody's like, oh, Carol's a bee.
She wants to change everything. She wants to destroy this.
In reality, she's the one who's trying to save it.
And because of that, we're mad at her because they're nice,

(44:45):
They're being nice and we're like, oh, they're nice people.
They're just trying to help us. They are what you're trying to
save, basically. Is that what you're saying in a
way? Oh, I'm just saying that right
now everybody thinks Carol's theworst, but she's just trying to
do what all the heroes and all of our TV shows we watch are
trying to. Do she's doing what we want them
her to do? Well, she's just doing it in a
very unlikable way. She's got baggage.

(45:08):
What do? You want, she obviously wasn't
the most pleasant person. But then again, actually I was
watching that. I was like, Oh my God, is that
what celebrities feel like when we're at the conventions and
stuff? Like, is that really how they
feel? But we're seeing her at the
worst times, right? When Helen is like, maybe you
should write the book that you want to write instead of this.

(45:28):
Chrysalis. She cheered right up.
Yes, this is what I want to do. So we're seeing her at the like
worst times of her life. We're seeing her at an event she
feels is not beneath her, but she's wasting her time writing
crap. Even though it's made her money
and everything and made her famous, that's not what she
wants. She wants to explore deeper

(45:49):
things and do better things and she can't because she's stuck in
this rut. So the instant that she has the
opportunity, she parked right up.
But then immediately after her wife died and the world went to
crap and now she's a little bit angry and bitter about it.
And I really don't don't blame her.
When she and Helen were together, it was kind of fun,
right? They were good together, they

(46:09):
were cute. She was smiling and laughing.
But now that Helen's gone, we'rejust seeing the worst of Carol.
We didn't get the opportunity tosee any good out of Carol.
We're seeing Carol out of balance.
We're seeing Carol at her worst and we're judging her on that.
And isn't that everything Vince Gilligan does?
Walter White's the villain of the show.
Right now she seems very unlikable because they're

(46:31):
painting this hive mind in such a beautiful light.
Think about the people sitting around the table and they're
like, well, have you asked anyone what it's like?
Because they all say it's wonderful.
Well, first of all, of course they're going to say it's
wonderful. I was a little too busy morning.
My dead girlfriend. My dead wife, that was she's.
The only one that's alone. That's the outlier.
Of course they're going to say it's wonderful because
eventually down the road, they want you to join them.

(46:53):
They're not going to tell you that it's horrible.
They're not going to say anything bad about it.
I think she said the perfect response.
I don't ask a heroin dealer how great his product makes me feel.
Right. You're not going to get the star
reviews from when you ask the dealer themselves, right?
And Kumba is the same though as her.
He has nobody either it seems like at the very least, but he
again, opposite of the black andwhite cookie.

(47:14):
He's leaning into it where she is like please no, this is
scary. And yet everybody in between
like you said and even he thought to ask is it great even
though he probably still won't go for it, which is interesting,
I would like to know more about.It I mean, he's enjoying it
because he gets to live out his freaking fantasies with no
repercussions and no reckoning for what he's doing, which I

(47:37):
mean, he's not forcing these women, but they have no
resistance. So in a sense is forcing them.
And this is like, oh, I get to fly around and then Air Force
One, you know, like he's enjoying it.
Whereas Carol's on and she's like, no, this is not.
But would she be different if Helen had and died?
I was just going to ask that question.
Let's stay here because that's the question, isn't it?

(47:59):
Every nice thing that's happening to her and expression
of Helen, which is why in a sense she's rejecting it because
it isn't Helen, but it is Helen.This is what's very confusing is
that you have to keep that in mind.
Everything that's being providedfor her or relate to her, or
when they're speaking to her, they're speaking to her, as
Helen would put it, in a way that would be most receptive to

(48:19):
her. And yet she's still herself is
resisting it. It's getting to what I think
this series is about because like you said, she is the most
miserable person in the world. Whether it was before or after
this, whatever, I think it's. Just right now, we don't know
Harold before. I think this is what the series
is about. Everybody else seems to be
content with what's happening right now.
All the surviving members of theworld would say.
Agreed. Who's the only outlier?

(48:40):
Who is our quote UN quote protagonist of the series if not
the most miserable person in theworld?
And what if the world is Helen trying to create an environment
for her to be happy? OK, when I said right now, what
I meant was as a product of what's happening.
We don't know if she was a miserable person before.
This is what I'm saying. There's a tell when you guys

(49:02):
were talking about her 4 1/2 year serious book, Bitter
Chrysalis, basically, which is basically what she's in right
now. She's in a bitter chrysalis and
she will one day emerge as a beautiful butterfly.
Who knows? But for right now, she's a
bitter chrysalis. And when Carol asks Helen what
she thought of the book, she didn't say I like it.

(49:22):
She said people will like it. Will love it.
Yeah, I think that's a really good tell.
Like even her own wife thinks she's not a good writer,
basically, I think. And she put it to her nicely.
Just like all the collective is trying to soften the blow of the
11,000,000 she killed with her outburst.
All I'm trying to say is, like in my own head, I think what's

(49:42):
great about the series so far, Iwant to be on your side, Rachel,
but now I have to take the otherside because you're on that
side. What's my?
Side your side is like, I don't trust them.
Not for a moment. I'm Carol because a couple
episodes later they're going to show Carol was right all along.
I'm like, I'm not on that trade.Actually no, I'm on the IT would
be great if every single episodeall the way to the end of this,

(50:04):
the first season, the only antagonist is Carol resisting
all the way till the end. Wouldn't that be interesting?
We are notorious for no matter where you are politically,
where, what background do you come from?
Every one of us will find ourselves at one point in our
lives getting in our own way. Sure right?
Wouldn't that be key conflict inthe series?

(50:26):
Is Carol basically getting in her own way?
Every bit of conflict in the series is caused by Carol as a
result of environmental factors,the pressure that is being
introduced in the series, mainlythe collective.
But at every point in time whereyou think this is peace on
earth, whatever ever, she can't trust it.
So she has to do something to cause further conflict in the
series. So did you get the feeling that

(50:50):
Joshua pirate lady, there's something left in her?
Because when Kumba was like, I wanted her to go with me and
everything, she did not seem like she really wanted to go
with him. And it wasn't just a passive I
have to do it. You could tell she did not want
to go because I'm sitting here thinking like, what is the point
of Carol getting her off? Because that's obviously why she
stopped. His plane was seeing so OSHA

(51:11):
back. Carol getting her off.
Grow up, David. Never.
Never. Anyway, Carol trying to get her
off the plane at the end of the episode.
I feel like she's going to become some kind of an ally
because she's in the hive mind, but she still has her own wants
at least feeling that she doesn't want to do what she's
going to do. And when he's I.
Can't choose? Between you.

(51:31):
I can't choose between you, but you could tell she definitely
wanted. To choose me she definitely
wanted. To choose between them.
I would argue it's not so much Zosha as it is Helen.
So that's what I was trying to say a little bit, is that isn't
this whole thing a construction of whatever is left of Helen in
a sense? We know that her memories, at
least are part of this hive mindthey're very much using this

(51:55):
against. It's a lot to take in.
First of all, I can see why it'sso hard to grasp.
Yeah, because I'm not going to say that Zocia is any part of
Helen. And it brings up another
question. Even though everyone is
connected, can you still draw inyour own thoughts at any point?
Because if your mind is part of this whole hive thing, can you

(52:18):
still be you? Is there any particular in their
brains that is them? Like, is there a little pocket
of consciousness left that is still them inside?
Maybe that's coming out. Right.
When I think about this hive mind, I don't think about
everybody sort of getting wiped clean and now they all have one
thought process. What I see is every single fiber

(52:40):
connecting OK when they're at the dinner table and Carols girl
says to the little boy. He asked what kind of speculum,
what kind of speculum he would use because someone in the hive,
more than one someone would be akind of apologize.
That's what I'm saying. So Ravi would be able to draw
the answers from these particular individuals.

(53:03):
So the individual people are still part of the collective.
Right, because she has the bottle of water and she's like,
what's in it? And heart ladies like it's just
water. That's what so and so says.
She's like, who is so and so? He's the guy who bottled it in
Winston Salem, NC on May 8th andhe said it should only have
water. Months and months ago.
Right. And then she also had to ask the

(53:24):
people around, the other people who aren't connected, if they
wanted to meet Carol because shetotally zoned out for a second.
Carol's like, are you OK? She's like, yeah, I'm OK.
It's like a long time to meet you.
Yeah. In order for her to communicate
with the guy who bottled the bottle of water, they still have
to have their own personal memories.
Otherwise she would have just been able to be like, yeah, it

(53:44):
was bottled at this plant on blah, blah, blah.
But not their own personalities.That's kind of where I'm headed
is that you can borrow from the collective memory of every
person that ever we. Don't know that yet because
we've had very little it's. What we were told.
Interaction with any of the people other than the pirate
lady and the few seconds we get with the people who were with
the people who weren't affected,yeah, it's not like we've had a

(54:06):
lot of interaction to see what they like, if they have any kind
of personality to them or not. What I would say is like, you
can't prove a negative. So as much as we want to put our
own desires on this collective of that, that they do actually
have a personality, I think it'sjust the one personality.
No. The collective of.
I disagree. I disagree.
And I think and I think that we and here's.

(54:27):
And here's why you're wrong, David.
So at the. You know not because you have no
evidence. I do and I'm going to give it to
you right now. When they're at the dinner table
and it's panning around and it'sshowing the non infected having
conversations with their family members.
They're still, they're family members.
They're still conversing and talking as if they're family.

(54:48):
Robbie's mom, Lakshmi, yes, he has all of this collective
knowledge but still acts like her son.
I'm going to try to prove your point though, because even
Lakshmi's mother is talking to her husband, both of whom are in
the collective exactly. But I will say still.
They're having conversations. Who is that for?
I don't think it matters. I think you're asking the wrong

(55:09):
question. I think it's a perfect question.
Listen, you might not. We may not have an answer.
No. The point is they're doing it.
The point is, they can do that, which means they can be the
person that they are identifyingas.
They can assume the personality of the people who benefits from
them having a facsimile of a conversation that they would

(55:32):
typically have. See this is the whole.
Point we haven't seen how any. Of them did.
We haven't seen how any of them interact when they're together.
Without the non and. Without not why?
We haven't seen any of that, so we don't know how they are when
there aren't uninfected people around.
That's why I I I say you can't prove a negative.
Didn't we, though? Wait, no, we did.

(55:52):
We did at the beginning of the episode when there was no
dialogue, No. Because they need to have
dialogue. They're all the same Organism.
I'm trying to tell you that. To whom does it benefit for them
to speak to each other? What are all the other people in
the world doing then? Just standing around waiting for
someone to talk to? I mean, what are they doing?
Just it's like an Ant colony, they're collecting nutrients.

(56:12):
Yeah, they're working. Isn't that crazy?
They're. Cleaning the earth.
They're collecting bodies, they're fixing broken things.
They're doing jobs, they're doing work.
And maybe, like you said, maybe preparing the earth for the I
just. Want to say I love when the guy
was hanging from the crane and she's trying to fix it and she's
just dragging him. We're OK.

(56:36):
It's OK. Carol, thank you.
We're OK thank you. Please don't mess me up my 1
fingernail or clipping more thanit already.
Is Oh my God that was so funny. Thank goodness he had a hat on
because she was just dragging him right away.
His face was like. This great and it'd been fine.
It was so funny. It would, or they would have

(56:57):
repaired themselves. But they they're still human.
Do they eat? You know, do they actually?
Eat well. Let me see.
She answers the question. They have to eat.
They have to the body nourished.Yeah, and I'm sure they don't
need like, elaborate. See, this is another human
thing. Why do we need elaborate meals
that taste incredible? They probably need the very bare
minimum. High nutrients.
I'm sorry, but if I have the hive mind of a freaking chef, I

(57:18):
am making some delicious food. But if you have no desires,
right? If there's if you have no
preferences, I mean you have preferences, but only in as much
as it does not cause harm to anyliving being, but you don't have
any personal preferences on on mating or anything like that.
What did she say? She said they enjoy the
pleasures. Of the the people that weren't

(57:39):
oh, in fact. Specifically now I don't
remember the context. Well, and their own bonding
itself is a pleasure. They have to mate, otherwise
they're going to end the human race.
Well, if they don't, they're going to end the human race.
That's the question. Because they themselves are one
Organism. And if that's the case, they're
collective hive mind, let's say.If that's the case, they only

(57:59):
need to breed in as much as what's minimally required,
because organisms in life itself, in terms of efficiency,
it does the bare minimum it needs to perpetuate itself.
Safe for humans because we're having extra, but they only need
to eat as much as they minimallyneed to survive.
Maybe a little extra in case of natural disasters, but also they

(58:20):
would only breed as much as minimally required.
If they figure out, hey, we need1.6 billion babies per year,
then they're going to have 1.6 billion babies per year.
Right, because if they breed toomuch, they may not have a
portion of food, right? Well, yeah, they would produce
more than IS there to consume. Correct.

(58:40):
Right. Anyway, listen, ordinarily this
would be effing boring is sin. But what is the fascinating
point? The antagonists are the people
that remain because, right, you have this perfect society.
They're the protagonists. It's so Vince Gilligan.
They're the protagonists. And our antagonists are the
people we're cheering on, yet they're the worst.
But I also I loved that pirate lady pointed out that they can't

(59:04):
protect the non hive people fromeach other.
Well, like you can't even defendthemselves in order to save
another human. Could they stop another human?
And they can't, right? It's the non aggression
principle taken to the extreme. We don't interfere no matter
what. Because they get yelled at and
then they all faint. Exactly.
Your father. She's on my train.
I. Love it.

(59:26):
Because it's detrimental to them.
There's their survival. I love how now everybody's like,
Carol, watch your temper, Carol.Carol, calm down.
See. They're keeping themselves in
check. If Helen was one of the people
in danger because she couldn't keep her temper, would that help
her keep her temper? So Helen survived, she's now
part of the hive mind and Carol needs to keep her temper

(59:49):
otherwise she's hurting Helen. I think Carol as a character
would be entirely different if Helen were still alive.
I don't think we'd be seeing thesame character that's.
What I was saying before about we're seeing Carol right now as
a Carol out of bounds because Helen was the only thing.
And keeping her in balance. And now the hive mind is trying
to assume Helen but is being rejected because it's not hell,

(01:00:10):
it's. Like Star Man with Jeff Bridges
and Karen Allen. When Jeff Bridges is an alien
and he comes down to Earth, he crashes on Earth and he finds
his way to this cabin where Karen Allen lived with her
husband. Her husband had died.
So he watches a bunch of videos and stuff and has this magic
thing because he's an alien, andhe takes the body of her husband

(01:00:31):
so that he can get her to take him to the meteor crater in
Arizona where his ship is going to come pick him up.
But in order to keep her calm and not freak out because it's
an alien, he takes the shape of her husband.
Of course, taking the shape of your dead husband might freak
you out a little bit more than seeing an alien.
But anyway, the movie's the movie's super good.
The movie's super good. Yeah, that's exactly what now

(01:00:53):
we're coming on to is that maybethis is all for her.
We have an earth full of Jeff Bridges's.
And let's even take this teeny abit further.
What would it take for for Helento be happy is basic because
they got basically. Sorry.
Yeah, Carol. Yeah, Carol to be happy.
That's. Yeah.
I said Helen, didn't I? Yeah, I said.
Helen for for Carol. To live, he's going.
To do it again, Would it though?Would Carol be like happy?

(01:01:17):
She's does. She's a very miserable person.
Helen would be a lot happier if she would.
Be like right she. Needs to read Bitter Chrysalis
to the hive mind and get their unanimous opinion on it.
Series finale. Yeah.
And you're like, yeah. And then they'll still say it
sucks, but Carol would be like, you know, that's fair.

(01:01:38):
And that I'm finally happy, you know, I got an honest answer
because I think because. Okay, to the point of let's take
this seriously for a minute. She criticizes her own work and
nobody will call her out on it. Everybody seems to love it.
I think in a sense she just one wants one person to say be
honest with me. My own wife isn't being honest

(01:01:58):
with me. Like pirate Lady, she's not
saying the thing that would cause her harm because I think
at one point she is reading a review and she doesn't say what
the review is. She's just skips over it when
she was reading the reviews. It's the same thing as pirate
lady does. She won't say how many people
she killed because she doesn't want her to feel bad about that.
Isn't this whole thing, isn't this whole hive mind now taking

(01:02:19):
the form of Helen? It's not working for them very
well though, no? No, but I think that's that's
where the conflict is. I think that's pretty
fascinating. They're trying to know what
she's thinking and they can't. And because they always had
thinking just given to them, they're having a hard time
dealing with what they're supposed to do with her when she
won't do what they think she's going to do.

(01:02:42):
She's unpredictable and they can't deal with that.
Imagine having the entire host of humankind all in a
collective, including therapists, right?
And maybe even mentalists and people who would take like
people with Machiavellian tendencies to manipulate human
kind, the president, him or herself, right?
Like sociopaths who were trying to manipulate Carol, you have

(01:03:04):
all these people. You still can't get her.
To do what? To keep her happy or to keep her
satisfied? Well, I think what they're
getting at is that people with no one and nothing to lose or
dangerous because I mean, really, she has nobody and she
has nothing to lose because. And she is pretty miserable as a
person. She was unfulfilled in her
creativity. She hated which the crap she was

(01:03:26):
writing. Did you catch the little misery
moment with the lady at the bookstore?
Is Rabon coming back? Did he die?
I just can't. If he dies, I just can't go on.
That is a good point. Yeah.
Nicely done. Oh, and then I'd like to avoid
the misery situation. Page 238.

(01:03:46):
She just avoided a mass murder. Well, that wouldn't.
The guy with the sword who's like, oh, by the way, that boat
wouldn't have him as a mask because there's only two masks
on it. She was like, yeah, take your,
take your sword and get out of here, bud.
That was the most realistic scene and.
Tell the people why We know. It's because we're so heavily

(01:04:07):
involved in The Walking Dead universe, and you see people
like that coming out of the woodwork.
Yeah. Or you just go to Reddit.
He is Reddit. He's Reddit.
He's Reddit in flesh. Only The thing is, he's much
nicer than people have read it. Sometimes Vince Gilligan has
seen his share of fan conventions, so he knows what to
expect. That was probably a quote from

(01:04:30):
from someone he met. That would be nailed.
Pardon my French. It was literal French.
I was going to say one more thing about what this is, and I
would say less pod people more We are the Borg.
Resistance is futile but inverted because it's not like
we are the Borg, but your life is yours to keep, you know?

(01:04:52):
Do you know what I mean? It's like resistance is totally
justified, but please don't because it hurts us.
Yeah. Resistance would be offensive.
Actually, I'm triggered by your offense.
They really mean it when they say they don't kill.
They don't harm, even. Yeah, they won't even harm
because they could just kill these 12 people who are not

(01:05:13):
infected and then the hive, but they wouldn't have to worry
about them anymore if they couldjust kill them off.
I think you just touched on something, though only. 12
people. Right.
What's what's stopping? What's?
12 more after four 864,000,000 Imean.
Exactly which inadvertently, let's say the majority of them
are inadvertent. I'm down with that.
Exactly. We already said the first part
of the answer, which is OK. It's them saying to themselves

(01:05:36):
as a hive mind what went wrong here with these 12?
Can we harness it? Can we bypass?
It maybe resistance is what willend up destroying them in the
end. That's another reason to keep
them around is because how do weget past this?
It's their kryptonite, so. It's Carol Knight, Carol Knight,
Crypto Carol Knight. I hate everything.

(01:05:58):
I'm sorry. If given the choice, would you
join the hive mind? I really do feel both sides of
Carol and Kuba. His full name is Kumba Diabate.
Would I like to have everybody in the world waiting on me hand
and foot and doing everything I want?
Yes, but for what? If everybody I love and
everybody I know and everybody Icare about is a mine zombie,

(01:06:21):
then what good does it do me to keep going?
Because eventually the doing whatever I want and having
everybody do for me is going to either get bored or they're
going to figure out how to assimilate me anyway.
Super isolating SO. In someone like Carol's
position, where I'm all alone and I have nobody else, I don't
know, maybe I would. But what?

(01:06:41):
I want to make them work for it as long as possible.
Yes, go get me the Air Force OneI.
Want to know how the other side lives?
And let the kid fly it. Who's from TGI Friday's?
Specifically because I know thatCarol would get a kick out of
that, says Helen In the collective.

(01:07:04):
I wouldn't. Do you know why that's?
Kind of why we're here. There's two reasons, one of
which you're very well aware of.One actually, you're probably
well aware of both. 1 is I'm super stubborn.
You tell me what to do. I know it's a shocker.
You tell me what to do, I won't do it.
I won't do it ever. That's why our podcast is as

(01:07:24):
many numbers as it does. Second thing is human
supremacist. Come on guys, I don't even like
animals, so come on. Unit supremacy all the way.
But what is more supreme than one human?
All humans being one that is like the supreme human.
The essence of being human is the ability or right to make

(01:07:46):
mistakes and rather make my mistakes individually rather
they. Are making mistakes.
They made a bunch of big mistakes when they didn't.
They made 866 million mistakes. Their mistakes were they didn't
manage to get everybody under their thumb.
So they are making mistakes. They're making mistakes in the
way they're trying to. So I think you have to find a
little definition there, Dave. Just don't want.

(01:08:10):
I don't wanna. I just think I'm going back to
the first reason. Also, to be human is not to be
part of the collective is individuality.
I think about myself. I like watching TVI like
watching movies. All those things that I like to
do will no longer exist. Well, no, everybody's already
watched it. So you're enjoying it now as a
part of the collective so. And furthermore, you wouldn't be

(01:08:31):
bothered by that. You wouldn't think, oh, I don't
get to watch this or that or do this or that.
Because you're part of a collective experience.
Those feelings would be gone. You wouldn't have the feeling of
regret. What if all those people still
have that little corner of theirmind that they're still human
in, and they can't get it out? Yeah, it's a series of
trade-offs though, I think. Rachel, I love your question
because this is touching on a topic that I actually had

(01:08:53):
written in my notes, which was isn't what's happening here.
Isn't that what death is? Death is just going home to the
pool of collective shared experience.
Isn't that what some people define death as?
I don't know. I've never died before.
Have you though you could be reincarnated?
Maybe I die every night when I go to sleep.
You could be in the hive mind and live like the Matrix.

(01:09:15):
Yeah, you're just recharging your batteries in the matrix.
I'm going to be really. Disappointed if this turns out
to be a Matrixy type thing. You are but a drop being flecked
off the ocean. Your life is a drop spraying
from the ocean only to eventually come down back into
the collective ocean of the collective molecular water that
covers the earth. Let's say your life is the arc

(01:09:36):
of that drop and everything you experience with that leap, it's
just you coming back to your natural state, the moving water.
Let's say the moving collective of water that is of a big part
of water, that it is an ocean ona planet.
You having that individual experience out of that water,
out of that collective, is that's your individual
experience that you're bringing home when you finally land.

(01:09:57):
So you're saying that you share that with everybody when you are
back in the collective pool? Correct.
And I think that was even stated.
Kussimayu says that to Carol. Basically, I want what you say
is my individualness. I want to be able to share that
with my family. I want to be able to share that
with the world. That's what basically clicked on
for me is like, oh, this is exactly like that one person
said about actually, I'll quote it directly.

(01:10:19):
It's the Pete Holmes podcast. Pete Holmes, the comedian.
He explains that's what he sees death as is you coming home as
you being that drop finally returning to the ocean of water
in a way, should we fear it? So again, Carol is the enemy of
this, of the show. She's preventing her from doing
that. I just.
Want to say that Carol's not a bad?
Person No, I'm I'm just joking. I mean, no, but what I'm saying

(01:10:42):
is like, she's the miserable person, whatever, but she's not
a bad person when she sees people that need help.
No, she tries to help. Like when she sees the baby
about to fall off the counter. Yeah, which, by the way, when
she looked into the seat, the baby seat, and you can see the
look on her face, like, oh, my God.
OK, The guy hanging from the crane, her first instinct was to

(01:11:04):
try to help that person. So she's not a bad person.
She's just not a happy person. Happiness has nothing to do with
whether or not you're. Usually exclusive from what she
is trying to be as a human, basically.
When the guy crashed his truck, she was the first one to run
over there and see if he was OK.So she's not like a person who's
just going to walk by people whoare suffering.
Which is also why when she turnsaround at the end, when her

(01:11:28):
anger makes everybody glitch andshe turns around and actually
sees what she did. It was very abstract before her
because the only person that shesaw in effect was Pirate Lady.
But when she sees it happened infront of her, people with their
families, it wasn't like she didn't feel anything at all.
She let her addiction trump her.I guess her being careful about
that fact. First of all, she couldn't

(01:11:49):
handle being told good or didn'tright from Lakshmi.
And then she's just like, first of all, she'd already be
drinking herself to oblivion. And then when she falls, it's
kind of like, well, of course, now she's lost all control.
Carol's very. She is the vehicle, by the way.
Yeah, she is relatable. Very relatable.
She's us. She's doing all the things we
expect, which. Is why I can't stand her because
what David? We hate others what we hate

(01:12:11):
ourselves. Exactly.
You'll sell into my. Trap.
That's right. Who are you?
Who are you? Who is this person?
I came on here thinking we wouldn't have much to talk
about. Of course we're hitting on the
big themes and blah blah blah and whatever.
But like I did, I thought an hour, maybe it's an hour 55
right now. Then again, it's 2 episodes so.
Nobody asked me if I would join the hive mind.

(01:12:32):
You're right. Well, I am curious though, would
you though? I honestly don't know if I'm
going to answer this question for Carol.
I know, I want. I want to know you.
I know, but my thought process starts with Carol, and it's the
knowledge of Carol's memories being part of this web that

(01:12:53):
might be enough for me to want to be a part of it too.
Because you'd be part of Helen if.
That makes sense because if she believes it, and that's a whole
other question, right? If she believes what she's being
told, that Helen's memories are part of this web.
She's no reason to think otherwise.
See you by the way. It's true because everything she
has seen has has proven that this is true.

(01:13:13):
It would be a way of getting a piece of Helen back.
Getting Helen 24/7 to be rejoining her basically in a new
and even more profound way that you didn't have before.
I think from that perspective, kind of like Kusumayo, she says.
I want to share who I am with everybody else, and the reverse
of that would be I want everyoneelse a part of me and vice

(01:13:36):
versa. Let's ask the obvious question
though, right? Given what you see from Carol
right now, would you be ready toshare that part of you or all
the parts of you with everythingelse or everybody else in
existence right now? Given how the fact that she
killed 11,000,000, who knows howmany she killed after her second
outburst. Well, and I mean you're sounds
like you're taking a risk too, because what if you're one of

(01:13:58):
those 11,000,000 that Carol kills?
That would kind of stink. But it sounds like from
everything we've heard, once you're part of this, if Carol
were to join everyone, she wouldn't have this anger anymore
and it wouldn't be an issue. You wouldn't be feeling Carol's
anger. It would be gone.
It's. Kind of like, you know,
homeopathy. It's yes, homeopathy is how you
drop a tiny bit of the thing that ails you in was it 11

(01:14:22):
thousandth of water? And that's your remedy
essentially. That's basically what Carol
would be. You'd be an insignificant
nothing in a an ocean of it would have no effect.
So yeah, you would be healed in that sense.
It would be awesome to have the knowledge to do anything you
wanted to do. Like, for instance, be able to
climb into a plane and fly it, but you would have all that

(01:14:43):
knowledge and ability, but for what end?
Because you could not use it to gratify yourself anymore.
I want to go fly to Paris, so I'm going to go get a plane and
do it because I have that knowledge.
Unless the eyes. Agreed.
Yeah. So what would be the point of
having all that ability and knowledge if you couldn't use it
for anything? We'd all be a bunch of ants and
we're just doing everything to. My assumption is to better the

(01:15:05):
planet. Well, and then to what end,
really? Is it all biological imperative?
Did we lose? Getting it ready for another
species. As.
Far as joining the hive mind, loneliness is a powerful
motivator. Yeah, what's it's what we're
saying about. She's totally lonely because not
only does she, not even, she doesn't have Helen at all, not

(01:15:26):
even in the hive mind state. So she is completely alone.
Yeah. Have you ever had a dream where
you wake up and you're the last person on earth?
I've had those dreams do. You remember the recurring
nightmare I shared with you? I was the only one around and
nobody could hear me. Was the ghost roaming the land
of the living? People were here, they just
couldn't hear you. Exactly.

(01:15:46):
They're just moving on. Whatever.
Yeah, yeah, it's. Kind of like that dream too.
Yeah, there you go. It's like that.
And of course, even in those dreams, there's like that
glimmer of like, oh, oh, they you heard me.
They heard that person heard me.And it's.
But it's like, did they hear you?
I don't know. Seems like they're very
different than you right now. Goldberg to be your medium?
No thanks. You have a nice life.

(01:16:10):
You have a nice death. The part where she first calls
the elder secretary of agriculture and they're like,
hello, Carol. And she's like, Yep, so funny.
It was so funny. I mean, what do you say in that
situation, you know? Yeah, I'm.
With her, I'm with her. And he's just going on and on.

(01:16:31):
She's like, OK. I have to add another brick to
this log about Carol, about thiswhole thing being an invention
for Carol when she's reading thebook in the book, reading for
the release of her book. Oh, was it the winds of Why
Cara? Say it right.
Say right, Dave? Why Caro?
The scene that she's describing,let me just point this out

(01:16:52):
because who is Raban in the story?
But actually her because she says haughty and.
Raban was supposed to be Helen. Proud and hot?
Well, ideally, right? But of the two, who is more
haughty and proud? But.
I didn't read it as haughty and proud, I read it as disappointed
in what she's doing. Well, she did sacrifice her

(01:17:14):
pride. Well, maybe Rabon is technically
Carol's opposite, like the opposite personality of herself,
because she has nothing to be proud of according to her own
standard. Rabon is an expression of who
she imagines herself to be, let's say, or who she could be.
Well, either way. So Lucasia is essentially Carol
right now. Lucasia is the captain of the

(01:17:35):
ship. Rabon is gone.
Rabon jumped into the purple sand that this ship is gliding
on, essentially. And as a temporary pleasure
measure, she satisfies herself with the deckhand right, the
pleasures of the captain, right.But it's tales in comparison to
Rabon, essentially, because I know she's reading the opening

(01:17:56):
pages of her book. Actually, that was.
Apparently in the middle of the book if you look at it.
Yeah, Or something, something that effect.
I know that by the time, becauseRabon's not on the cover.
Well, where is Rabon? Where's Helen?
I just think it's interesting because by the end of the first
episode, let's say, let's say you didn't watch the second
episode, you can't distinguish Lucasia from Carol at that point
because Carol is alone. It seems like everybody on the

(01:18:18):
ship, even the deckhand, I thinkat some point, because there is
an implication that the deckhandhimself is gone after that and
that she is left alone. They're wiping up all the blood
from apparently there was a bloody battle, right?
And isn't that what happened that they're cleaning up after
this thing happened? And who's left alone but
Lucasia? It's interesting.
So the show was originally goingto be called by Caro 33.

(01:18:40):
Shut up. Why?
Why? What's the 33?
I don't know, I might be something.
Let me make sure it was 33. I might have the.
Plant a flag, let's put a flag in that 'cause maybe there's
there'll be a reference to like what the 33 is of that Was it
called the Winds of Waikara Waikaro?
It was Waikaro 339 was it was supposed to be originally 3. 39.

(01:19:01):
Yeah, I don't think they've saidwhat Waikaro is, unless it's the
place or something, because it'scalled the Waikaro series and
this one is Blood Song of Waikaro or something like that,
I think. What's the name of?
It I think the, the, the book series is called Winds of
Waikaro. Yeah, because of the ship,
right. And the I guess the ship is
called Waikaro. So the truck that she ended up
with also has a Unicorn with purple lightning behind it.

(01:19:24):
So she's the Unicorn in this in this situation.
One corn also why Caro so why Caro is why Carol why anyway, I
have a treat for you before I forget before we closeout this
episode, there is a number on the screen that Carol has to
call to get to Tafferty Dothan agriculture Under Secretary

(01:19:46):
agriculture. I called it and guess what
happens? You're.
Going to place. It's basically the outgoing
message on the answering machineHelen and Carol have.
That's what you get when you call the number on the screen,
basically. So let me just play that for you
right now. Yeah.
And it's actually a business called AL's Wheels, which I

(01:20:06):
think that's from a Vince Gilliverse.
The Gilliverse somewhere, AL's wheels.
But let me play this for you right now.
This is what you heard on the show.
You've reached 505-796-6933. We're on the French Riviera
drinking champagne. We're not here in our sweatpants
screening. Your call.
Make it a good one. They literally aren't.
If they were on the French Riviera drinking champagne, why

(01:20:29):
would the Guggenheim be on Helen's bucket list?
Didn't make time for it. What?
What do you have to do? What do you you definitely
toured New York. Before the show came out there
was a number that you could callwhich I called after watching
one of the previews. It was very vague, but it was
definitely the hive mind people.Oh, we could try calling it.
Well, it's the same number, right?
Or is it a different? Number.

(01:20:50):
It might be the same number, butlet's let's find out if it is
the same number, it'll say something different, but let's.
See, David, the number that you just played for us, That's the
outgoing message for an actual business.
It's A2 parter, so the number onthe screen is to call the Under
Secretary of Agriculture. But when you call it, you get
their outgoing message for theiranswering machine, right?
Who is there? Helen and Carol, the only thing

(01:21:12):
is that when you dial the number, the caller ID, sometimes
when you call something it showstheir caller ID and of course
when you get it, the caller ID says ALS Wheels.
OK. It's interesting that is a
reference to something, but I don't know exactly what it is.
I did look it up but. AL's wheels.
As in his wheels. He owns the wheels.
Yes, AL, be short. For Albuquerque.

(01:21:32):
Yeah, there you go. OK.
And there's also a play on visuals too, because there is an
AI Ness to everything that's going on, right?
If you have the collective consciousness of humankind and
there's a psychic glue between all the people that was in the
hive mind, how would you regulate that if not by
artificial intelligence? AL's Wheels is likely a

(01:21:53):
reference to the nickname for the specific car, a 1976
Fleetwood El Camino from the TV show Breaking Bad, which was
created by Vince Gilligan. The car was a significant
element in the show's narrative and was used by the main
characters. AL's Wheels.
This refers to the nickname given to the 1976 Chevy used by
Jesse Pinkman and Walter White. Wasn't that what the car that

(01:22:13):
was meant to be returned? Oh no, that's the kids car.
Was it also an Alcodo? That was a Dodge.
That was Glenn's charger. I do want to mention this on the
side though, because Lucasia is the captain of the ship of the
way car, Waikaro. Yep, I.
Don't know whatever. Raban was supposed to be another
woman, right? The Corsair.
The 1st edition. Raban.

(01:22:33):
There is a sort of mirroring of this concept at the very least
to Have you ever seen the show Our Flag Means Death.
It's really, really good. It revolves around a Corsair.
No, it's the it's Blackbeard. It's Blackbeard and a dandy
pirate basically getting together and having a male, male

(01:22:54):
homosexual relationship, basically.
But it's super, well, it's so funny.
It's super absurd. It's funny.
Oh yeah. It's supposed to be funny.
It's meant to be taken humorous.There's like tinges of
seriousness, right? There's like a tinge of, oh, I
want them to win, you know, likethat's sort of, it's kind of
lovely. The pirates aren't as, at least
on his ship, aren't as what would typically be construed as

(01:23:16):
pirates. Like 1 loves cats, one loves
nibbing. It's like bird.
Pirates can't love cats. Maybe they love them to death, I
don't know what. You give pirates a bad name.
Watch our flag means death. I think you'd like it.
I think it's on HBO Max too. If the whole series was I think
two seasons I think if I'm not mistaken.
Oh, so Sharon, he posted the number and it is a 202-808-3981

(01:23:38):
number. She also said Internet went out
so let's call that number together to honor Sharon D
Sacrifice I guess is not really what.
Happened. You have the number, so you're
going to have to dial it. I'm going to pull it up.
We're going to call from my special squawking dead phone.
Oh, wait, here we go. Pirate Lady is joining us.
Hey, Sharon D OK, now we're going to dial that number Sharon

(01:23:58):
D in real time. Look.
At all your phone numbers. Yeah, that's going to not show
up episode. I'll probably just include the
audio, I guess. I called Teo basically one
point. I'm sorry, have you seriously
not made a phone call since September 18th before today?
Well, this is the squawking deadnumber, which is technically

(01:24:19):
public, so. I'm like, how is it even
possible? It's possible.
Hi, Carol. We're so glad you called.
We can't wait for you to join us.
Dial 0 and we'll get back to youvia text message.
That's it. I dialed 0.
It didn't do anything. It sounded like Zocia.
It did sound like pirate lady. But it also sounded like one of

(01:24:41):
those like late night, hey, callthis number.
We have ladies standing by. All night long, Carol.
Something else you don't need with the hive mind anymore.
You just say come with me, woman.
Let me call this one more time just and see if I can hit zero.

(01:25:03):
But let's let's try it one more time.
David just wants to hear the voice again.
Hi Carol, we're so glad you called.
We can't wait for you to join us.
Dial 0 and we'll get back to youvia text message.
I did it when it first came out.I didn't do anything.
Oh my. Gosh, we're so excited for you

(01:25:26):
to join us. Yeah, I got a text.
Here we go. What you got?
A text. Oh please know your life is your
own, Carol. You have agency exclamation
point. That being said, reply yes to
sign up for updates from Apple TV Plus and agree to our Terms
of Use. Frequency varies.
Consent not a condition of purchase.
I thought you said my life was my own message and data rate

(01:25:46):
supply reply stop to cancel the Rep.
Oh yeah. So let's do yes, because I did
the same thing for Fallout when they posted their vault sales
Rep number, remember? And then you got that other
message, which I think they still have in my media board.
But let's see. Hey, let's do yes to sign up for
messages. The number for this, the teaser
text is 202-808-3981. And the number that we called

(01:26:09):
before for Carol and Helen's outgoing message is it's AL's
wheels. It's 505-796-6933.
Now. I got another couple text
messages just now. I said yes, you must have so
many questions for us. Exclamation point, understand?
We only want to make you happy. We'll be in touch soon.
Tech stop to stop help for help.Let's get help.

(01:26:31):
Should we get some help everybody?
And it shows an image of the Pluribus image and this file
type not supported. It's a contact card which
basically is the number that wasusually they send this stuff
like a VCFI think of the contactbasically so.
That you can like save it in your.
Contact is that? What?
Okay, okay. Basically to prevent spam like
sometimes if you don't remember right, makes.

(01:26:52):
Sense but. If you keep it in, they can keep
texting you. There's one thing that we didn't
really, I think we sort of touched on it several times.
But the big thing about Lakshmi's family, Ravi and her
husband and her mother, you had asked, is it her family?
And even them conversing with each other was like, oh, they
seem to have. You asked is it her family?

(01:27:12):
I said it was. Right.
I wonder what the audience thinks so too, because is it her
family? Are they still them?
Or are they just meant to be avatars of what they once were,
repeating behavior like AI but. They're not AI.
What in your definition would make them her family?
What to you would be the difference between them being

(01:27:32):
her family and not being I? Think the difference is pretty
clear. I think it's up for
interpretation. So what?
I think, I think it is too, yeah.
But it's, it's the same argumentthat we have about and it's also
a philosophical argument. If you could load up an AI with
your entire personality, your emotions, everything that made
you who you were, at least in expression, right, Because

(01:27:52):
that's all you have is external input.
If you could load up an AI, is it you right?
Or is it still just a facsimile of you?
If you can upload your. Conscious.
Is it your body that makes you who you are?
Is it your body plus your mind? Is it just your mind?
What is it? Is it everything?
Is it all of? These things right now with your
experience right now. Didn't they touch on this in
Westworld when they tried to replicate people and put their

(01:28:15):
minds into the bodies and it just never ever worked?
Because you can have the memories of the experience, but
it's not the same as having the experience.
Obviously there is the whole nature versus nurture is
weighted towards nature, but nurture is like the external
input that sets you on a particular path.
Even if you were born at the same time as another twin who

(01:28:35):
was exactly like you, whatever it is, the spice of life makes
you different. Just by nature of you existing
at the same moment in time, you wouldn't say the same exact
things. Yeah, but I mean, studies have
shown that twins, even separatedat birth, do live and lead
similar lives. But David, go back to your
original question for you. Forget about whether they are or

(01:28:57):
are not to you. What would make them her actual
family versus not? What to you would mean they are?
And do these individuals fall into that category?
I think they ceased being her family when they were absorbed
into the collective. So meaning because they can no
longer ever go back to the way they were, all they're doing is

(01:29:17):
predicting or imitating who theyonce were.
You're focused more on what is or is not.
What I'm asking you is how are you defining whether they are or
are not? What would it look like if they
were her family? Just simply not having anyone
else in their mind. Basically, yeah.
So because they have links to other individuals that

(01:29:39):
automatically make because they're not.
Individuals. Mentally, but their body, their
being, their physical form is still who they are and they
still possess those thoughts andexperiences that that individual
has had. They're like us, They know more
than they're supposed to know. Sure.
Part of being who you are is thelimitation of not knowing
everything, not knowing what theother person is thinking, right?

(01:30:01):
We kind of touched on this when it came to Collective Helen not
being able to please current individual Carol just because
they have Carol's memories. Carol's memories are a part of
an amalgam of memories and collective feelings and emotions
and whatnot that make up an entire being.
Even that is not able to quell Carol, so by the very nature of

(01:30:22):
her joining the collective meansshe's already lost.
You can imitate to a point to me, sure.
I think I'm right. I.
Would I would argue that they are still themselves but like a
two point O version of themselves.
They're them. Plus, it's like Disney Plus.
This is the. Situation where we we haven't
had enough interaction with any of them agreed to know how they

(01:30:46):
are. Yeah.
So let me ask you this, David. So Disney recently added Hulu to
its repertoire. Is it no longer Disney?
Or is it simply Disney Plus? I got a notice from Hulu that
said they were not being Hulu anymore.
Is that Disney plus would be assuming all the duties they're
in. It's good for the audience too,
by the. Way but if you go to Disney

(01:31:07):
plus, there's a Hulu section so you can still access Hulu
through Disney just. Proved my point.
This we think we just by assimilating Hulu, it became
Disney Plus and no longer Hulu. But if you go to Disney Plus,
you can still access. Hulu, sure, yeah, and but give
it to. Me still give it.
I still go to Hulu. I can still get to just Hulu.

(01:31:28):
I do too, no problem. But it's still Disney.
But it will no longer be Hulu and whatever.
That's just time. That's just time.
Well, it's kind of like I completely.
Bank of America is no longer fleet okay fleet fleet Boston
okay so I. Agree with Sharon though, we're
making these assumptions and drawing these conclusions based
on very, very limited information.

(01:31:51):
I think it's just a basic logic problem.
With the information at hand, I do think these people are still
somewhat themselves. Let's play a hypothetical.
This is the only play time and place I would be on board with.
What you're saying is if you could download Ravi and whatever
the rest of Lakshmi's family, we're just going to use them as
an example. If you could download them into

(01:32:12):
the appendage, that is what theycurrently occupy, right?
The bodies and cut them off fromthe collective, then there's an
argument because then you can say, OK, well then now they're
the AI version of them, they're collective memory experience,
etcetera. Resuming from that point on,
disconnected from the collective.
So if they could choose to sort of put.

(01:32:33):
Up the connection. That defeats the purpose of the
hive mind. Exactly.
Yeah. Right then, are they really
them? Not really.
They'll never really not be thembecause the question was asked
and answered. What speculum would you use in
your vaginal exam, Ravi? Not them, but they're not not
them either, because they're because they're everybody.
Which is why Helen cares about Carol, which includes.

(01:32:55):
Them. Yeah.
No, no, no, I do. So they're them, but they're
everybody else at the same time.You almost bely your own theory
about what their intentions are.Because right your whole thing
is, is like, I don't trust them one bit.
Like Karen's going to be right all along.
Yeah, I still don't. So then they can't be them
because that goes against what your theory is, because all it
is is a show. Well, maybe.

(01:33:15):
Maybe I need to be more specific.
I don't know that it's that it'sthe hive mind.
I don't trust, but I just feel like something else is going
you. Want there to be something
there? Yeah, I've totally.
You're supposed to, because you're a good person.
Well. I don't know what if there's.
No, I know what if. There's like 1:00 What if
there's like one bigger brain controlling all of them So.

(01:33:36):
There's aliens on the other planet.
Yeah, exactly. Improving exactly.
Exactly. It's kind of like, OK, that
story that came out about the robots, the automated robots
that people are planning on creating, but they're actually
guided by the humans just in case something bad happens.
There's like a recent article that came out about these server
servant robots. This is terrifying.

(01:33:57):
I don't need any real life examples like this floating
around in my Thank you for the nightmares tonight, David.
You're welcome. Well, that's the whole point.
Is that like, people are like, excuse me, wait, are these
automated robots? Are, are humans sort of piloting
them in case something goes wrong with the automation?
And yeah, nobody wants that. It's gone stupid.
I'll put the article up on the screen if I find it.

(01:34:19):
Or if I get it, never be clicking on.
You're better off. I have to mention a couple of
facts. Like quickly, because I know
we're in overtime, folks, I. Know are going a really long
time. The second episode opens with
Zosha pirate lady is in Morocco and case you were wondering, and
there's a couple of towels by the dress, which is some of that
is Berber dress, some of them Moroccan Berber dress, the

(01:34:41):
Arabic and French, right, because Morocco has Arabic and
French influence on the side of the dairy truck, which is
Levantine dairy in French and inArabic.
And then third, just before pirate Lady on her little
scooter heads to the airport, there's a sign on the right that
says Bucalef Airport, the main airport in Morocco.
I thought it was interesting that the truck she took the dead

(01:35:04):
guy out of at the beginning was a milk truck and the truck she
flew over when she left in the plane was a yogurt truck.
Dairy Yeah, Carol is getting in pirate ladies face about the
words she uses for what is effectively assimilation.
She uses the joining right? Well, it's pleasurable.
That's such a right. So she throws out this random
reference that you think is nothing.
Of course. Thank you, Vince Gilligan for

(01:35:25):
well, it's it's nothing dialogue.
It's not nothing. Everything means something.
She says the Celtiberians have abetter word for it.
What are the Celtiberians? Everybody.
Celtiberian refers to a Celtic people, right?
Rachel, who lived in the centralnortheastern Iberian Peninsula.
And we just went through the Celtic and Roman influence in

(01:35:46):
The Walking to Daryl Dixon. And we're talking about Galicia
and all that stuff, right. With the brujas that aren't
called Brujas, they're called something with an M.
Anyway, let me continue. It refers to a Celtic people who
lived in the central northeastern Iberian Peninsula
and their extinct language. That's what the language is.
The Celtic people who lived in Iberia, OK.
Known for the fierce resistance against Roman expansion.

(01:36:08):
Hello. They were eventually defeated by
the Roman Republic in the 1st century BCE.
The most famous Celtiberian stronghold, Numantia, fell in
133 BCE, leading to the assimilation of Calteberian
culture into Roman society. The whole point was they had a
better word for it. What was it?
What was the word? It's assimilation.

(01:36:28):
They assimilated the Calteberianculture into Roman society.
That's it. All of that for the word
assimilation. Basically, they probably have a
better word, but it's the whole idea of how they got assimilated
after being conquered essentially.
Doesn't that set off alarm bellsa little bit?
Because she's saying openly but flippantly.
Oh, the Kelta Barons have a better word for it.

(01:36:49):
They're no longer here to tell it.
Which is what you're going to doto us.
That's the only thing, like I was on their train about the
idea of that. Carol is the antagonist and
she's the constant pressure. She's going to be constantly
stir up the pot to constantly cause trouble.
But then she says that the person for whom she is part of
the collective says this thing. She's like, wow, that's what

(01:37:10):
we're doing to you is we're assimilating what you are into
us, and you are no longer you. Basically nobody's like messed
up about this at all. What?
The extinction, the genocide, the ethnic cleansing of a
people. Come on.
Yeah, but they're not purposefully killing anyone.
But the Roman Empire. Yeah, they did.

(01:37:32):
That's different. I mean they.
And again, Rome did fall, so there's.
That yeah, but they also didn't have hive mind.
Part of the reason Rome was so successful because they did
assimilate the people that they defeated into the empire rather
than keep them separate, and that's why they managed to
conquer a good chunk of Europe and remain in power for so long.
All the way to England, basically.

(01:37:53):
They had a hard time with England, but yeah.
Yeah, but once they got them, the King Arthur came around is
it's game over. But then the Rome fell, so there
you go. So I just thought it was very,
very, very fascinating, very telling of what they're trying
to do. Carol said that right, not Zoshi
the. Pirate Lady.
Pirate Lady had that reference. Okay, yeah.
She belted that reference. That's why it's so scary.
It's like I've been on the Knot Rachel trading the entire time,

(01:38:15):
but that's the one thing that I'm like, she's off to
something. She's off to something.
This pirate lady's being a pirate.
She's a Corsair. She's a Corsair for and she
literally is, isn't she? She's a Corsair for this entity.
Don't touch that dial. We'll be right back after these
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(01:38:38):
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Thank you for hearing us out andmaking it this far into the
episode. We now return you to our
regularly scheduled podcast. Somebody's up to something, but
I don't know who yet. It's Vince Gilligan.
Well, yes, it's always Vince. Saul Goodman just set this all

(01:39:43):
up. He's going to show up at the
end, Yeah. Saul's having a dream.
The long call. Yeah, it's the end of the
series. What the heck?
He's going to wake up and be like, oh Kim, I had the weirdest
dream. It's going to be like in black
and white. He's in prison.
He calls up Kim. I just had to talk to you about
this dream. He's in his classic Chicago
accent. I dreamed that I got to meet Ray

(01:40:06):
Seahorn last night. I mean it.
Wasn't weird. You.
Sharon D. Yeah, me.
Like I was at like a convention or something.
I got to meet her so. We did watch the series pretty
late, by the way. So it's like, I can't blame you.
So with that, everybody I think see when Rachel calls it to she
owns. That's how we know it's the
trouble. Yeah, we got the troubles.
So with that everybody, I think I will choose the Metal speculum

(01:40:29):
and say thanks for joining us onthis inaugural voyage into
Pluribus. I hope you enjoyed our
conversation. We kind of ran the gamut on the
1st 2 episodes and I hope you end up watching and discussing
with us the third episode. Again, something that we don't
really often mention is that youcan join these sessions if you
just follow us on Kofi and Patreon.
It's free to follow. It's free to join us in the

(01:40:50):
studio. We just post.
If you don't follow, you won't know when our schedule goes up
or when it changes when we record next.
The link is available for you tojoin us for free in the real
time I'm chat. If you happen to join a
membership, you can join us on script depending on the
membership join us on screen along with us to talk about this
episode. But in the meantime, I've been
your host David Cameo, and I wasjoined by.

(01:41:13):
This individual, Cosmo mom, 09. This individual is pirate lady.
They've been assimilated. They've been assimilated.
Well, at least they'll be compliant hosts.
We as us y'all. They all caught the alien
cooties. That's right.
We didn't we didn't say the names of the episodes.
We as us and Pirate Lady. Yeah, that's it.

(01:41:35):
All right. Well, Rachel, we as us and
Sharon D Pirate Lady, I bid you adieu and cheers, everybody.
We'll see you in the next one. And hey, watch our coverage of
Welcome to Dairy That's Cooking Soon.
We're going to watch that one. Get back to you.
Very gory. Hi, everybody.
Bye. Thank you again for making it to
the end of yet another episode of Squawking Dead, this one

(01:41:56):
covering Pluribus series premiere and its second episode.
I cannot wait to talk about the third episode, which is already
out as of today, which is November 14th.
Given the fact that we are covering 2 episodes concurrently
for I don't know how long, episodes will take a little
longer to come out. So I highly encourage you to at
least tip us on Kofi so you can get 30 days access to our

(01:42:19):
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endeavoring to cover at this time.
Which is why your donations willbe so very, very important and
helpful in this time period. Because I am looking for another

(01:42:42):
editor we spoke to vet on a while ago and he is out of the
business of doing editing. So hey, if you know anybody that
can help, definitely reach out via either
socialmedia.info@squawkingdead.comor even via your rating.
If you do have a handle I can reach out to you on and you are
following us on social media. If you write a review, I will DM

(01:43:02):
you and we'll get the ball rolling.
In any case, you've reached the part of our podcast where we
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Since we don't have any survivors members, we are moving
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(01:43:24):
stuff under score N as in Nancy under score.
Thanks THA and GS on TikTok. Pretty psyched to watch the next
episode right after I record this and publish this and hope
you are too. So in the meantime, just
remember that Pluribus, AKA we are squawking dead.

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