Girls Gone Canon Cast - The Book of Dust Episode 3 - La Belle Sauvage Chapters 6-8

Episode Date: November 27, 2020

Things are heating up in Oxford as Malcolm gets confirmation about a murder, prepares for a flood and some break-ins while the League of St. Alexander begins recruiting children at his school.  CHAPTER 6 - Glazing Sprigs CHAPTER 7 - Too Soon CHAPTER 8 - The League of St. Alexander Please note that unlike the His Dark Materials episodes, La Belle Sauvage episodes will be spoilers all with the exception of The Secret Commonwealth. --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro by Alexander Nakarada;

Hello and welcome to another episode of Girls Gone Canon, The Books of Dust, La Belle Sauvage, Episode 3, Chapters 6-8, Glazing Sprigs, Too Soon, and League of St. Alexander. I am one of your hosts chloe and i am another one of your hosts eliana and this episode could not have come too soon no it could not have eliana and i can't really make glazing sprigs or league of saint alexander into a great clever segue pun but it is we are on a high of HDM, a high of His Dark Materials right now. We're coming off of episode three of His Dark Materials,

BBC, HBO produced a TV show adaptation of this lovely, wonderful book series that we love so much. And I'm enjoying it. I am enjoying the season mostly so far. If you're hearing this, you'll probably hear very soon our His Dark Materials Series 2 Episode 3 coverage of the episode Theft coming to you. Yeah, I think the episodes this season have been in a whole new league. Well, I found a way. Thank you so much.

I made it work. Hey, well, where there's a will, there's a way. Oh, wow. There is. But there's no will here. There's only Malcolm Polstad. I want to die. So the episodes that we have out now, right, we have, of course, been talking about the show and doing that coverage and we already of course have our season two or series two episode one

coverage with our special guest slow the links who is technically a guest in every episode if you think about it on the magpie city and we also have it our episode about season two episode two the cave already out that came out earlier this week and yes as chloe said soon have theft and really you know perhaps it's just will and lyra stealing our hearts oh my gosh they really are it is it's really nice no spoilers but we might see them go on a date sometime in the future i i love it i love it it's been a great adaptation so far and i'm just happy to have it so i will sit here and be happy yeah i am grateful we say this every time we have been burned we are grateful amen they say amen quite a few times yeah hallelujah in these episodes or these chapters

in these episodes or these chapters of La Belle Sauvage. You know, these chapters are kind of part of those starter chapters, right? We are still taking off. La Belle Sauvage has not left the dock yet. But we're about to get some action in these couple chapters, specifically in League of St. Alexander and in the end of Too Soon, right? Gets the heartbeat going a little bit. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, we are still in a lot of that exposition. Getting to know Malcolm Polstad, getting to know Hannah Ralph, getting to know main character Jesper. And Asta. Yeah. And Ben. No, Ben's great's great yes Ben is also a main character and of course

Alice all part of these so we're getting a sense of them queen of my heart we do get some good Alice in this episode we do and while we are here please be aware of our spoiler policy generally what we do is

we are following the book. We will not be spoiling all of the book. We will spoil in the discussion. Today, we will not be having a discussion, actually. So we will be keeping it within the realm of these chapters, the main trilogy of His Dark Materials, and some of the outer works and novellas like Lyra's Oxford, or Once Upon a Time in the North, or Serpentine.

Yeah, and we might lightly reference some things that happen a little later in this book or or in the books of dust in general but we're gonna try and keep it quite quite clean quite undusty we'll stay as clean as we can eliana as clean as we can as clean as we can i think this is it let's tear into it chapter six glazing sprigs malcolm has told his parents mostly the truth about the scholar who is lending him books and it works well enough he doesn't want to hide much from them except for you know the really really important thing where he's now got a job and part-time he's not paid with money, but exposure and chocolatel. And knowledge.

Knowledge, yeah. Exposure. Experience. He's getting experience. His internship. The two books that he chose are The Body in the Library and A Brief History of Time, precocious little shit that he is. And his mom says not to bring them into the dirty kitchen because they might get dirty. Because he was lending something nice and he needs to take care of them and then his mother tells him to hurry up and help since it's quite busy downstairs at the inn body in the library is of course an agatha christie novel and brief history of time is by stephen hawking what's fun about this is they strongly make these elements surrounding the story of mystery and science. Body in the Library is a

classic. It's a Miss Marple book, and it takes place in a couple locations that are old and new. St. Mary Mead, a fictional sleepy village where Miss Marple lives in southeast England, probably akin to Hampshire. Gossington Hall, a large home in St. Mary Mead where a body is found within its library and the Majestic Hotel where Miss Marple goes to find answers. It's not one-to-one, but this is kind of like what the novel is set up as. The Majestic Hotel would be the trout, right? St. Mary Mead would be the Wolvercoat area. Miss Marple, the spinster who lives alone in a little sleepy fictional village. Okay, Finster who lives alone in a little sleepy fictional village. Okay.

Sounds a little bit like Hannah Ralph. Wow. Yeah. And the murder, right? The whole idea of body in the library is a body is found in the library in this house in Gossington Hall. Brief History of Time is really, really relevant as well. It's a really interesting book. If you've got the stomach for it, may as well read. Hawking's a little, I don't know if I want to say nihilistic, just a little bit of a pessimist at points. But he discusses two major theories in this book, general relativity

and quantum mechanics. He basically says a lot of stuff about what scientists use to describe the universe. He talks about the search for a unifying theory that would describe everything in the universe in a coherent matter. Two of the quotes that I like and think have a little tug here. If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions, but it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say humans have free will is because we cannot predict what they will do. And then Hawking on a unified theory. Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire

into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? This is something we hear Malcolm say in this very couple of chapters, right? He asks at one point, why? Why did we exist? Did the world exist? Did we exist? When did it all happen? And I think it's just really interesting that he's being given all these books surrounding exactly what he's learning about, right? The detective work, the matter, learning about

quantum physics and matter. And we can see, I think, that connection, as you said, with this story and the main series right we can see a lot of the inspiration pullman draws on from both of these materials and i think we can even see its influence to an extent on the secret commonwealth where i am making my way through it i'm not going to say too much more so i don't i was thinking too much away but yeah that that idea of these questions about philosophy and existence. And yeah, it's interesting because I think Malcolm also especially, right? He's at an age where he's just starting to wrap his head around these deeper whys. And not yet quite whys he is, but he's getting there.

He's a, again, precocious little kid. He asks his mother if he could go to senior school after overcoat so he can maybe ask more why questions and she says to him that the answer is up to his father and he asks what what she thinks his dad would say and she says well he would say to eat your supper which means probably no in kid slash parent yeah it means no usually and he's getting all these ideas because of these readings that he's getting from hannah ralph's house and we talked a little bit of some of the politics and economics of the uk in episode two of our lavelle sauvage coverage it certainly feels economically like a post-world war ii era uh and to put that in context bartenders made $40 a week in the U.S. in the early 40s minimum wage

was 40 cents Alice would be making 20 bucks a week the family isn't making more than like 50 to 60 bucks a week if we look at it from a 40s lens and take a little money off the top and considering post-war times had a decade of rationing around them it doesn't consistently feel like it's coming off of a huge world war but the fiscal side of things really do this is of course when pullman was born and growing up so it doesn't surprise me that a lot of this feels like it might have come from his childhood yeah and i guess also for reference i i don't know how much this sort of family would be making in terms of pounds. Yeah, I'm not sure. In that place.

But $40 a week in the U.S. in the 40s would translate to about $929 today in purchasing power. But wages have stagnated. Anyways. I mean, also the nuns would start up charging for their produce today so the next day malcolm can't find an excuse to go to the priory to go see nuns because turns out the nuns are busy and he can't even be like uh i'm going to see mr tap house the carpenter because he's at home so instead nackham's like fine i'll just read these books that i got from hannah instead until it stops raining he thinks about applying a coat of paint to his boat labelle

sauvage but it's too wet so he goes back to his mom and makes a lanyard out of the cord that he had bought and we talked about the naming of lab belle sauvage a little last episode and our friend thunderclap brought up some of the the potential meanings of la belle sauvage and its origins and um just to reiterate some of the things from last episode that the deed for the original savage's inn or bell on the hoop those are two of the names that are on the original deed from 1453, would precede some of the Age of Exploration and those early colonies, right, and things where people would meet the indigenous people of the Americas. So I don't really think that, while the story is nice, that it could be referring to the savage beauty who is the Rage in Paris, the timing doesn't really match up. But there's a lot of power in

stories and those legends and myths as we'll talk about as this story evolves and and that's a big part of you know the the different references that philip pullman makes later malcolm goes back to working at the inn but a situation arises while he tends to the fire alice is washing up dishes and gathering them when a farmer, Arnold Hemsley, with a ferret demon, pinches her butt. Malcolm holds his breath and Alice calmly puts the glasses she's carrying down before she flares her nostrils and asks who touched her butt. Her demon turns into a bulldog, growling quietly, and the ferret hides in Arnold's sleeve. She tells the men the next time it happens she

doesn't care who it is she'll smash the nearest man with a tankard and then she smashes a tankard one of the ones she set down on the bar leaving a sharp jagged handle and as Malcolm's dad walks in asking what's going on Alice says someone made a mistake and she leaves the broken handle in Arnold's lap, who pulls away, tries to catch it, and cuts himself. Alice walks away indifferent, and Malcolm crouches in the fireplace, listening to some of the men mutter to each other, She's too young, you bloody- She wants to watch herself. It was a stupid thing to do, she ain't old enough-

Deliberately provoking me. She wasn't, and she got no sense. Leave her alone. She's old Tony Parsons girl. How funny. Philip Pullman had this whole exchange about how Alice is too young here. Interesting.

For the attention of older men. Interesting. I digress. This is... Do you digress? I don't know it's interesting this is uh this is my favorite character this is my comfort character alice parslow alice parslow is my comfort character and she does she does a lot in this novel where once we get into more of alice i mean and alice owes no one anything and she does a lot in this novel. And she takes so much bullshit like that she has to take later. But here when she has the moment, she doesn't take any shit.

And I really, really, really appreciate that. That like, at least he gave her that in this moment. At least he let her throw the jagged glass down. And I also want to add an anecdote that I think you specifically will love. That one time, I used to have a guy that I dated that was in 80s cover bands and they would play shows and it would be at these like yuppie ass college sports bars right so we'd go to these stupid Saturday night 80s shows and girls would get drunk off their ass and guys get drunk off their ass and there were a couple uh girls that their boyfriends or friends were in the band so i became friends with them at each of these shows and i just remember this one guy on saint

patrick's day would not stop dancing on one of these girls and she was really uncomfortable and i was really mad so when the guy turned around drunkenly and was dancing in the other direction i took mustard and i just poured it up and down his shirt. Nice. Amazing. And then the guy I was dating saw this happen and saw another guy try to tell him that I did that. And the guy I was dating was on stage like, I'm gonna fucking have to fight this guy. But I digress. If you ever have the chance

to fuck with a person that does this, you do it, you know? You just do it. Yeah, I tried to push someone into oncoming traffic. Good. He deserved it. I agree. This is just how it is i tried to push someone into oncoming traffic good he deserved it that's i agree it's this is just how it is you know and i mean that's that's what's great about this scene alice posted is just channeling what a lot of us wish we can do in those kinds of moments and sometimes we can't right it sucks like when you feel like you can't yeah uh it's the worst i i think a lot of people

listening to this cast might understand that feeling um a lot of people won't and you know that's a privilege if you don't understand it but it's a horrible feeling and you replay it over and over and the things that you wish you could have done anyways part of what frustrates me about this scene and i don't mean it frustrates me in a way that it's written poorly i think it's actually testament to yeah the way the way the scene is written well right because it's intentionally supposed to be frustrating and it's what these men end up saying at the table once alice has left there's like that line of one of them the the one right hemsley saying she was deliberately provoking me um and either it's insinuating that she was provoking him before and therefore he's

saying that sexual assault was the proper response uh during her job because he wanted to exert his power over her or that he's mad that she was deliberately provoking him afterwards with that display with the tankard um and so he's performing masculinity in front of the other men so it's good that the other ones shut him down right one of the other men at least says no she fucking wasn't he says and you got no sense and blames him which he should but what is frustrating to me is that the others like what they say to chastise and scold hemsley is that alice is too young or that she's tony parsla's daughter none of it is actually about respecting alice herself and her own ownership over her body the reasons that they give are that she's not yet a woman perhaps and

therefore not yet fair game because she's not old enough, which is emphasized by Ben changing in that moment. Or it's that she should be respected as a daughter and therefore belonging to another man. And as far as I can tell, unfortunately, this is kind of where the book stops on this sort of discussion, besides perhaps like one other character's intersection with Alice later on. one other character's intersection with Alice later on. Yeah, and regarding that intersection, I would argue this isn't where the book stops so much as not against you that it doesn't stop, but I would say it doesn't stop there

at showing the way the author regards this and regards sexual assault and the way that Philip Pullman takes it. I mean, it's not, he doesn't take it seriously, in my opinion, at all. Like this is, it feels really frustrating that she has the agency to bang the glass here and be all, you know, like next time you'll get it motherfucker. And then he immediately makes her a victim of an older man's sexual charm. charm and i don't know it what you take away from the scene is these old guys say oh don't bang tony parcel's 15 year old daughter leave her be don't touch her butt come on man don't do that like ah come on it's tony's kid and it's it feels accurate for a pub setting maybe you know it feels accurate for like a rowdy time at the pub back in the day um but it yeah it

obviously just shows that the author has never been sexually assaulted and it's not a real thing to him and as the series progresses not just in this book and i will give no other spoilers but it comes up as a main plot point in the secret commonwealth as well uh and i i feel that if you're going to write about sexual assault and you've never experienced it and you've never dealt with any trauma from it or dealt with any of it you should write it differently or maybe not write it at all i think you could maybe accomplish the same thing without writing it i wonder if that's what he was trying to do like not write it to an extent and therefore ends up playing that middle ground and not giving due diligence on either side i think that that is something you know george r

martin doesn't always do it correctly right doesn't always land it a hundred percent a lot of the time but i do think that he my understanding is that he speaks to a lot of women and asks them their perspective and their not necessarily their experiences i i don't know about that research but he does speak to them about their experiences being women and therefore tries to channel that the sexual assault of alice in this book does it's one thing that it happens in the book and that the way it's dealt with in the second half of the book i don't want to say it's like dealt well but the fact that he then then has Alice seduced by an older man and exploited sexually by him, it's just like messy. And the way it's brought up again in the next book, I will not spoil it, but it's like reiterated that it happened. And it's very frustrating to me. It's just very frustrating that it became a plot point or, you know, what purpose did it serve? it became a plot point or you know what what purpose did it serve yeah i i agree with all of that and it's it just shows a lack of i think research and experience on this and just it's

frustrating it's just frustrating it's a frustrating point uh the treatment of women in this series is a frustrating point sometimes for me yeah malcolm's father tells him to sweep up the glass though before he gets to eavesdrop more and so we we end that conversation it turns to the rain and the water levels the river board had released a lot of water into the river and kept the sluice gates open because the reservoirs were full meadows flooded, but the water isn't draining, and many of the villages are under threat because of it. And Malcolm thinks about making notes

on this, and then decides against it. Malcolm asks Mr. Anscombe, one of the waiters, if it's ever been like this before, and he says it was about this high back in 1952, or 1953's flood, every 40 or 50 years so this is then i guess 40 or 50 years after 1952 53 unsure there's a whole decade gap in there decade gaps

are a thing that phil pullman's into and they have a monstrous flood because the river isn't properly dredged the mass of water comes down the hills and is held up by the river bed which isn't deep yes uh the timeline is interesting as we'll talk about in a moment but father times is actually really wild in real life like the 1947 flood was one of the craziest 20th century floods that happened basically after a really severe winter and it affected most of the valley and there have been really significant floods and i'll just go from 47 on because i know 1928 there was a crazy one uh but 47 and on they've had floods in 68 93 98 2000 03 07 2014 and back in 54 hurricane hazel swept through as well and that's actually why the UK ended up implementing flood control at all.

They created many layers after Hurricane Hazel to help reduce flooding, levees, buns, many reservoirs. And they spent $2.6 billion on flood defenses and up. That's interesting. It's a real deal. I mean, this is based on real life yeah this part is yeah this part yeah that that's definitely i think being maybe not the whole sexual assault thing but this part this part yeah is based on reality and but i cannot get a grip on though in terms of reality and canon is like so there are a couple things retconned when it comes to people's ages in the Book of Dust and one of the

big ones is one of the big ones is here, right? And there's a couple things I don't quite get I think discussed Farter Coram's age in the previous chapters and I'm just confused now, like we've discussed it before but like how old

is Asriel? i just that flood right this one the the 1952 or 53 that they're discussing is that not the one that the egyptians reference in northern light slash the golden compass as like this is why we are defending lyra we love lord asriel because he like saved kids in this flood and stood up for our boat rights and like but like then how old is he here with baby lyra 40 yeah if that's like 40 or 50 years ago how old was he in that flood 18 was he like 10 i mean he could have been 10 apparently based on things that happened here

so is he like is this yeah super young like, super young, like, Lord Asriel? Like, 18. I mean, they remember. Maybe, or younger. Because, again, like, they remember, you know, Lyra goes and does a lot of saving of people at 10 or 11. Malcolm. Malcolm's here in a flood at 10. So maybe he's, like, that young.

And Maurice is, like, obviously like probably likely quite younger than him based on you know i mean but like they always cast them as like in their 40s at the time of the golden compass or at the time of like all of these cinematic adaptations you know you know how george rr martin which also makes timelines straight in his head and he has eight million characters that's true and he's like super practiced pullman doesn't either phil pullman does i think end up changing his mind he definitely does with some characters ages as we're gonna see in the books of dust but is this in pullman years this must be in pullman years that's what i'm calling lyra's age too right and like i thought before that like this isn't the 90s yeah right

it's not supposed to be but now they're telling us it's 40 to 50 years since that flood or it could have actually been less time right it looks like i think it's less some of these uh floods from the thames it's a kind of a supernatural-ish flood. We'll talk about that later, but the Thames floods are occurring maybe more and more frequently. I don't know. I don't know. It's just a thought. Is it a retcon? That I...

How old is Farger Coram? How old is John Fah? Mr. Anscombe, one of the watermen that's there, he has a friend dougie dougie says we should be taking precautions for the flood we're all vulnerable and if we built more reservoirs we might have been able to save the water and not waste it antscomb counters there's no shortage of water in england what are we gonna do mail it to the sahara they break into a debate on the best

river tactics to fix this and malcolm gets called anyway to the conservatory. They break into a debate on the best river tactics to fix this and Malcolm gets called anyway to the conservatory room to go serve beer. After his chores, he ends up going to Hannah Ralph's and he doesn't have anything big to report to Hannah from his home life, but the first thing he has comes from Overcoat Elementary School where he and his friends sit playing table football until his friend Eric breaks the game's tone with some very somber news. Robbie and Tom press at him to give the news that Eric says isn't legal to say, news he learned from his father, which he eventually tells them. Malcolm points out he always tells them eventually. Eric says the man who fell in the canal and drowned was strangled before entering the water and that he was actually thrown in the canal.

What? What? Gasp. Gasp. Who would do such a crime? Such a grievous affront. Pretends to look shocked. I know.

Malcolm's obviously he isn't really that surprised, but everyone else is like, what? He is a little surprised, though. He's kind of freaking out. He's like, what? Like, it's real. Because up until this point, he was like, haha, it's kind of real. But now it's like, this is my fault. He thinks it's his fault.

I mean, he thinks he could have saved this guy. Yeah, he does. And then he at least like eventually rationale comes over and he's like maybe i actually couldn't have but for now though you know eric says it's a police case and we won't hear anything about it unless they catch the murderer and go to trial interesting and that's gonna happen happen, right? Oh, of course. The murderer always gets caught and always goes to trial and always goes to prison forever. Absolutely. But before all of, you know, all these things definitely for sure happen, the bell rings and off to French class they go.

But then afterwards, Malcolm makes straight for the newspapers. And of course, there is no mention of the body in the pages he goes home to read the body in the library which was gripping and he finishes it just a little past his bedtime the ending is less violent and awful than the poor man who lost the acorn and he can't stop thinking about it he wishes he and Asta could have helped the man but the CCD was probably watching the entire time. The loneliness of the man's death is what upsets Malcolm the most. That's an interesting line.

I'm just gonna put a checkmark by it and go highlight it in my book and say it could be foreshadowing. Is it foreshadowing? We don't know. Yeah, I wonder if it is it it's interesting um if it's not foreshadowing it does at least i think serve somewhat of a purpose here in reflecting malcolm's own state at the moment his own loneliness especially at the beginning of the books like yeah he has a lot of like family and people around him but there are moments especially in regards to feeling isolated that he as a child has then kind of witnessed this man's death or last few moments and we see that especially soon right when he breaks down to hannah he's just kind of been thrust into this really lonely position dealing with it himself because

you can't just tell your parents and other kids yo i think i saw that guy get murdered and it's kind of the nature in general right of being a spy especially a child spy uh is especially we'll talk about it soon but um he's an only child you know that on top of it you don't even have a sibling you can fight in i mean you and i can relate to malcolm polstead here in this manner it wasn't that bad yeah it actually fucking rocked I really don't want you guys to think that we had an easy life but and we didn't always have an easy life but in this manner no bitch was up in my business

besides my mom you know yeah it's not that you kind of get just used to being alone but not in like a i'm a lone wolf way but just like in a it's fine i find i found ways to entertain myself like malcolm reading i mean i love to read and i just remember my best friend would sleep over as kids and i would pretend to be asleep in the morning so she would leave me alone because i didn't want to play

after sleepovers like like bitch i played with you all night and then we went to bed and you're still here like don't they leave imagine having one that doesn't leave that yeah you're all brave you're all very brave i had the good fortune of my other good friends were also readers and to an extent if not an only child almost a very only child experience. And we would actually just read together. That's so great. They always wanted to go outside. Those motherfuckers. But now look at outside, Chloe. Gone.

After school the next day, Malcolm goes to check on Lyra, but the nuns are acting a little weird. They aren't letting him see her. Sister Fenella usually is cooking, and he's seeing all the sisters he doesn't know in the corridors looking anxious yes he decides to wait to give her his present until he can see her again he questions sister benedicta asking if lord nugent was the influence for lyra staying here and asking why why does Lord Nugent even

have that much influence sister Benedicta says he had a part in the decision as he is the chief law officer of the crown and Malcolm says he doesn't understand how he could balance deciding all of the babies in the realm's home and Benedicta says Lyra is a special case because she's got rich parents it was a huge scandal she shoes him reminding him don't blab about all this everyone yeah malcolm oh i already told everyone actually more like malcolm oh my mom already told everyone polstead mrs polstead's out there everyone knows mrs polstead you need to mind your own business. Or not, I don't give a shit. Everyone knows.

He decides to check on Mr. Taphouse, the carpenter who's making heavy-duty shutters of two-inch oak. Malcolm's curious how he's going to mount them into the stone, and Mr. Taphouse shows him his anbaric drill in his cupboard. He asks him to help him sweep up handing him a broom yeah i'm just glad that they have electric drills you know someone who just hung up a bunch of paintings recently so it's a lot of work it's it's i i also you know along with being confused with the age i'm occasionally confused with like the level of technology so they got electric drills mr taphouse bless him offends most of malcolm's questions before malcolm can ask him you know he doesn't know why they're asking him to give every window a heavy duty oaks shutter but he's gonna do as he's told because it's his job and they're meant to cover all but the stained

glass windows the sisters think that those would be too precious for people to want to damage malcolm is surprised and incredulous who would want to hurt the nuns or break their windows and mr taphouse completes his thoughts for him saying he doesn't know who would threaten them but something seems to be up because they seem quite afraid and malcolm wonders if it has to do with the baby and taphouse says azrael had made himself a nuisance to the church but then tells malcolm to keep his nose out of it some things are too dangerous and then when malcolm pokes further tap house tells him that's adult for stop good night once he yeah pretty much uh yeah and that's why malcolm's like okay okay i get it says good night finishes the sweeping and then goes home yes when he gets back he returns to reading a brief history of time,

which it turns out is a lot harder than the Agatha Christie novel. He hopes to finish it by Saturday, and he manages to do so just in time. When he shows up at Hannah's house, she's replacing a windowpane. And he's like, whoa, what happened? Because it's broken. She says someone broke it it probably hoping her key was in the lock and he says well do you have putty and glazing sprigs she doesn't he offers to buy her some before checking through her tools and then he comes back shortly after with some glazing sprigs

from the store down the road and he shows her what mr tap house had taught him putting the glazing sprig in the frame and tapping it in warming the putty and explaining it'll weatherproof your window. She'd be able to paint it after. She thanks him and rewards their work with a cup of chocolatel and he tidies up. He imagines Mr. Taphouse's stern approval while he does so, which is very cute because he's just imagining Mr. Taphouse is in the corner nodding, going, very good, Malcolm. Very good. Sweep up. Yeah, all those lessons. And lessons and you know glazing sprigs

based on the description of how it works in the books I don't think you would truly understand what it looks like I encourage you to go check out a YouTube video of how this works it it's not I can see the attempt to try and describe it but it's more like the way the description is in

the book it sounds like you're tapping directly into the glass and i'm like that makes no sense you are tapping parallel they are definitely sprigs to the glass they're very spriggy they're skinny they aren't at all what i thought they'd be yeah so check it out. I'm not going to do a good job of explaining it as well. Interesting. Learn something new every day and perhaps it'll be helpful for all of you if your house ever gets broken into. Hopefully it

doesn't because now Malcolm's going to offer Hannah Ralph two pieces of information that he's learned. The priories getting reinforced windows for protection that's how he knows how to do some of this well, not really, through Mr. Taphouse and the weird actions of the nuns

which they discuss in length, specifically about Lyra and Lord Nugent I just like saying his name, and of course Eric's father who is bad at keeping secrets clerk of the court's information about the man murdered in the canal. He's gotta stop that.

That's like his job. You're not supposed to give that shit away, man. He is. Eric's dad is gonna get fired. God. So Malcolm admits to Hannah, sometimes Eric exaggerates, but it kind of seemed like the truth.

He tells her he thought the poor man looked so unhappy and to his embarrassment he gets a little upset and gets tears in his eyes and remembers when he was a kid when his mom would comfort him and suddenly malcolm kind of realizes he's been upset about this for a hot second and he's wanted to cry about it since he'd heard all of it but he couldn't go to his mom to cry because of these secrets poor malcolm yeah it's like he's still a kid you know who needs his mother's comfort but you can't just go around telling people i saw a man get murdered yeah we can like him for like 10 more years you know that's all i'm saying

he apologizes to hannah who's more upset with herself for getting him into all of this telling him please don't apologize malcolm she tells tells him they should stop. She has no business asking him to participate in this, but Malcolm says no, he wants to understand it all and that at least he has her to talk to. She makes him promise that he won't start asking more into the dead man and to use his best judgment when he hears about it from other people and they go into their other business, books. He'd never had a conversation about books in this manner. He was usually in a class of 40 at his school with no time in the curriculum, even if his teachers were interested.

And his mom and dad weren't really readers, and his friends, well, they weren't advanced either in this subject. Their demons start to chatter together while they discuss the books, having their own little exchanges. Asta, a ferret, sitting next to the kind-faced marmoset jasper yes professor jasper oh jasper it's the best the my comfort character and it sounds to me like what malcolm polstead Malcolm Polstad needs is to find one other person and to host a podcast about books. You think that would make Malcolm Polstad's life more fulfilling?

I mean, it's made my life more fulfilling. You make my life more fulfilling. You fulfill me too, Eliana. You fulfill me too that sounds weird but you say it like that well that's what you sound like so malcolm asks him what sort of ideas she was an historian of and he wonders if it's like the ideas in a brief history of time she says it is similar big ideas about the universe good evil and why they exist in the first place like we were saying earlier he had never thought about why they existed.

He didn't even know you could think that. He just thought things were. I think that's interesting, especially maybe we'll talk about it one day in the context of some of the other things in the Book of Dust. Hannah adds that also it could be dangerous to think the wrong things or talk about the wrong things as well. And, you know, that's happened across history too, setting us up for the chapters that we're going to discuss soon. Malcolm understands this and says, it is now too. Well, Malcolm, it's going to get even more like that now too. Hannah says as long as they keep to what's published, they probably

won't be in too much trouble. He thinks about asking her more about the secret service that she's in and if they were part of this history, but he decided to instead ask for more books on experimental theology. And she gives him the strange story of the

quantum. And then he chooses another murder story from the same author of The Body in the Library. Yes, and this is the same exact thing as last time, right? You have two books absolutely enveloping what Hannah is helping Malcolm understand or read. The Strange Story of the Quantum is by Benesh Hoffman. It's an account for the general reader of the growth of ideas underlying our present atomic knowledge basically it's a book in somewhat layman's terms that describes matter and what is matter and how does it work right all those crazy thoughts about quantum

mechanics of what is and isn't and i do wonder which agatha christ Christie book he then chose if he chose another from the same author and part of me no spoilers for the secret commonwealth like the idea that it might be murder on the orient express hmm that could be that could be interesting but yeah I do think that the books that Hannah is giving him to help understand Dust and also understand detective work and mysteries, I find that so fun. Especially because those are supposed to be fun throwaways. And he actually goes on to say, wow, how many of these stories do you have, Hannah? And Hannah says, that author wrote thousands. He asks how many books Hannah has read.

And she's like, oh, thousands, but not as many as she wrote. And she says that she remembers good ones. Murderers and thrillers aren't always good. So she says if she lets time go by, she can reread them. Their rereadability goes up. And I totally get that. I do. And I think it's funny because the Bible and Shakespeare are the only books to outsell

Agatha Christie's works. Did you know that? That's a fun fact. I didn't. She wrote at least 77 published works. Wow, that's pretty prolific. That's amazing. Hannah and Jesper,

I think that they're the ones maybe who should start a podcast about Agatha Christie books. They can let Malcolm Poulstead come on as a guest, I guess. Yeah. Their afternoon comes to an end with one another, and Malcolm promises to save up any new info that he has for her and then tells her to remember the new window fixing skills that he's taught her in case she gets another broken window, which hopefully she doesn't. And instead of her usual evening dinner at Sophia's, Hannah Ralph takes a note to Jordan's porter and goes home to make scrambled eggs.

She drinks a glass of wine and at 9 20 a knock comes to her door. The man who recruited her to Oakley Street, George Papa Dimitri, stands in the rain at her door asking why she summoned him to her home. This is the man who actually ate dinner with Ted Nugent at the Trout. I really like the way Pullman pulls these characters together and kind of gives us a soft introduction, them in the background, and then brings them back louder. Ted Nugent, for example, becomes such a supporting role. And I like that this George Papa

Dimitri was brought up like this very softly at first, and here he is, and he's a whole character. Yeah, yeah, especially because I wasn't sure. I don't think I would remember him right if he didn't get his own scenes like this. Hannah tells him that she fucked up and he's like wait before we talk about that i too would like some wine and she spins her tail for him then about the boy from the trout in the acorn the alethiometer the books and the murdered man she told the tale carefully but left out important

details heavy-eyed george asks her if like so is it the real deal or do you think that all this is a child's fantasy but she believes malcolm if it's a fantasy well then it comes from malcolm's friends from school they're the ones to blame and papa dimitri doesn't really waste his time chastising her and instead he's focused on dealing with it he tells her that actually I think Malcolm could be quite useful and she agrees but is very angry about putting him at risk and George says as long as Hannah covers it and accepts accountability then Malcolm will not be at risk there's such a big power imbalance here we talked about it last chapter with the chocolatel being really symbolic of this and even here hannah is questioning the ethics behind it but these are government rebels exploiting a child

spy whichever way you look at it as we'll talk about in the next chapter of course as well with the league of saint alexander that the government if any of them are caught in this leaks with their work and that malcolm was involved they could use that as major propaganda. You know, they could be charging all these people caught with Oakley Street with a bunch of stuff just because a child was involved with some fake charges, get him in jail forever. I mean, that's what our government would do. So I'm just guessing off the top of my head, you know, they could angle it, plant propaganda and do whatever they want. And I don't know, it's both of them promising that this is for the greater good. But Hannah, moreover, is promising that she will vow to ethically police the safety of the boy in the face of that greater

good and take the fall and I don't feel that George Papa Dimitri was on the same page as her right he's like yeah yeah like just don't make me look bad it's your your problem if you die and she's out here like okay but what about this boy who's gonna grow up traumatized because of the stuff he's seen because of us like what is our work affecting this boy you know like if it's affecting this boy is it affecting other kids that's really interesting and like the juxtaposition of the northern lights yeah it is and i think that part of that is like there's an ambiguity in terms of who the audience for this book is, right? Especially as Pullman says that The Secret Commonwealth is a much more adult book, right? And therefore this book, right, is in many ways also a more adult book,

perhaps, than His Dark Materials. I don't think it's super weird to read books where your main character, spy, or getting up to going in danger on a quest right is a child and that's what happens to malcolm here he's sent on that because i mean that makes sense right especially if children are the audience and they're seeing themselves in these stories but there's yeah there's a slight ambiguity and i think at the very least hannah ralph is acknowledging that but and it also ends up becoming an interesting contrast to what happens in chapter eight, which we'll discuss, you know, Malcolm's position.

But also we know that some people just in general don't really think about age and those power imbalances in general. Hannah thinks, like I said, there's way more at stake than just taking the fall if this kid gets caught, you know, like emotionally damaging him. She can't stop thinking about Malcolm's tears, which she tells George about, and he shrugs it off as a young child, but she thinks his relationship to the nuns and to Lord Asriel's daughter might be another really important factor to this situation. George reveals that not only did he know about the child, Lyra, Everyone knows about the child.

but that his trip at the Trout, specifically when he met Malcolm, was centered around her, and Malcolm had been serving him and his companions, which he then comments, well, that'll teach all of us a lesson on what we say in front of youngsters like Malcolm. That's a cute little nod, right,

to Lyra in the closet, in my opinion. Or Lyra in general, you general you know yeah that'll teach us a lesson shit lyra's always listening she is george calls malcolm very observant and says you know wow he's fascinated with the baby even though he's an only child and doesn't have siblings so this is a really interesting comparison it's almost like he's giving a familial relationship and role to Malcolm and Lyra. And I really like that. It's like a little family, the sibling that Malcolm never had, right? It's a brotherly thing. He's brotherly to her. That is how I read it, you know, in these

chapters. And I think I find that very tender and nice, the protectiveness that he feels as an older brother to Lyra. Tender. Very, yeah, very brotherly. I come from the city of brotherly love, so I know a lot about brotherly love. And I can tell you this is brotherly. Nothing else. Yeah. It is, though. It is written as such here.

It is written as such. Hannah tells George that it seemed common knowledge the baby was there when she dined at the inn. And he's like well the child's mother didn't want her the father wanted her but the court forbade it because he was unfit and he thinks this could all become pretty important really it could be the plot of the fucking book it could be the plot yes in fact of one of the other books which it's so funny that they played off as like this big mystery northern lights slash golden compass and i'm like well interesting because now it kind of seems like everyone

fucking knows so it's it's weird in that either it means that it kind of changes then the framing and the experience perhaps of how we read northern lights slash the golden compass because is it what everyone in the world turns out knows in kind of a strange way, because it does seem like that? This specifically is the big secret. So this is why everyone in Northern Lights looks at Lyra and is like, yeah, haha, your parents

that no one knows anything about, because everyone knows, because it gets out here at the beginning of it happening, and by the end, everyone knows the tale that Lord Asriel stole her no malcolm no alice um yeah everyone kind of like turns out knows and like perhaps i i mean maybe it's just read meant to be read of how like how sheltered lyra is right and we do see her growth in perspective and what she learns throughout like the main series it's interesting

the connotations that it gives to like i mean there's as someone with immense abandonment issues there's like a lot of abandonment obviously with asriel lying to her all these years and only coming to check on her like annually and choosing his life and adventure and exploring and the greater good uh instead of choosing her right i mean obviously he could keep her in a manner of speaking due to the courts but like i don't know he also was a chicken shit i think that was the bigger thing he was too afraid to in some manners i mean he could face everything azrael could face whatever you put in front of him, a pantserborn, but he couldn't face fucking raising a child. Come on.

It sucks because neither of her parents could do that, right? Yeah. It's arguable that perhaps they wanted to spend time with her here at the beginning. And you kind of see that in this book. But I'm like, but everyone could have tried harder. could have tried harder well hannah remembers something that she originally left out and she tells george that the ccd tried to arrest a local man george boatwright and they had interest in the men from the trout meaning george papa dimitri ted nugent and the third man george finishes his wine and she offers him a little bit more he says ah no thank you and tells her don't contact

me like this in the future the jordan porter is a gossip he tells her to contact him with a card on the notice board by the history faculty library saying candle and he'll meet her at the even song at wickham alone where they can speak very quietly under the music. He finishes by telling her that she did well to recruit the boy and to look after him. Aw, look after them. Jordan Porter. Jordan Porter, future Eric. Right, Jordan Porter and Eric.

Yeah, absolutely. That's the job. Eric, you can get that job someday. Gossip enough, it's yours. And yes, it is a sweet ending, but Hannah's got to look out. Especially here. Got chapter seven. Too soon.

Oakley Street's headquarters is positioned where no respectable Chelsea residence would ever be near it. the headquarters and only had contact with professor papa dimitriu since her insulator robert luckers as we all know has been murdered the goal for insulators is to keep secrets isolated neither can reveal the other's knowledge that's why me and eliana have a podcast it's like marriage she could leave queries to the professor and left luggage boxes that oakley used which she did but there was one last way to contact the agency to alert them of her insulator's death this is through the cataloger at bodleian library she submits a query about a specific book and the author's surname would dictate what her query was about this chapter right here is for anyone who's horny for books i am actually that's true and yeah the boldan library is of course mentioned in the

original series and i think that's because it's it is for people who are horny about books and it is real i've never been but i hope to one day it's apparently enormous we're gonna go there we're gonna read a book there we're gonna sit on a bench maybe i hear we're gonna sit on a bench sit on a bench maybe i hear we're gonna sit on a bench we're gonna eat at the peacocks these are our dreams chloe and i are like one day when we can go outside again hopefully hannah leaves a note with the author's surname like she's supposed to for the query and she receives a note inviting her to speak with harry dibden the cataloger he's a thin man with a tropical bird demon and he offers her coffee warning her this could take some time she's like okay i'll take that coffee but harry dibden i think is interesting

we don't really get him much but his bird demon obviously i associate a bit with the witches and his role here at oakley street and connecting people actually kind of reminds me a little bit of the role that the console for the witches plays and he does feel like a lancellius character right i want to know more about harry dibden's life and job this i do i hope we get harry dibden again i don't know if we will but i hope so hannah explains that her insulator was murdered and tells him the story while he makes coffee he asks if oakley street knows about this yet and she doesn't think so she's worried what they might have learned about him of oakley street's practices from the guy that died they discuss how many luggage boxes there are, nine, and that the CCD doesn't have enough agents to watch all of them.

He says he'll contact them to install new boxes and she'll be contacted when she has a new insulator. She pushes her luck and she says, hey, do you know, is Lord Nugent an Oakley Street man? And he kind of gives a very small reaction at that. Nothing big, but just small enough to convince her, yes, he is. She continues asking what the significance of Lord Asriel and Coulter's child is, and the man sits quietly, asking what she knows of the child.

She knows Nugent had an interest in her, and he responds, oh, he's probably just a friend of the parents. Not everything is a conspiracy, Hannah. She agrees, making her way back to Duke Humphrey and deciding not to mention Oakley Street to Malcolm. She was already feeling guilty about making him spy. Malcolm and Mr. Taphouse have been busy making and pulling up the new shutters. Taphouse mentions the expense of the thick oak, super expensive, and that Sister Benedicta agreed

to it in the end, despite the price. He explains to Malcolm, well, Malcolm says back to Mr. Taphouse some of his own words of, it's only as strong as the fixing anyway. And Mr. Taphouse says, yes, but because the oak is so strong, these would take a long time to unscrew. And so this inspires Malcolm because he's been thinking a lot about things that screw in different ways, left or right,

like the acorn lately. And tells him, oh, here's an idea, an innovative way to fix the worn screw holes. And then Mr. Taphouse shoots his reams down and says, actually, this is counterproductive because what if Sister Benedicta changes her mind later and doesn't want shutters and nukam's like god damn it but also feels a very challenged at this and asks mr taphouse his plans with the aesthetic of the shutters he plans to add danish oil to the wood but warns malcolm that it can also spontaneously combust

if you don't add water after using it and then malcolm is delighted by this new phrase it is a fun phrase spontaneous combustion and then goes to help sister finella chop up vegetables in the house that reminds me of ma costa with the flower with lyra teaching her that the flower can light up spontaneous combustion there you have it malcolm asks sister finella about the new shutters she says well the police advised they'd help against break-ins that are happening in oxford they had thought of the precious vestments she claimed malcolm casually is like oh i thought it was for the baby and finella said oh well it will protect her as well. He wants to see Lyra again, but Fenella thinks against it and then finally decides to let him. He has a present to give to her. The room is dark

with only a gloomy lamp to light it, and Lyra is making cooing little baby noises at her demon, who is currently rat-formed. Malcolm is incredulous when he realizes she's teaching Pan to talk. Fenella lifts her, the demon turning into a shrew now, and Malcolm takes out the lanyard he made, now tied to a larger ball of beechwood he carefully sanded after consulting his mom. He explains the toy to Sister Fenella and the safety measures he gave it, while Lyra immediately puts it in her mouth. Fenella is worried about the string choking her, and Asta agrees it's probably not a good idea yet. He tries to take it away from her but she starts to get upset. He cheers her up with some pretend hiccups and asks to hold her, sitting in a chair as Fenella puts her in his lap. Pan scampers up and down,

avoiding Malcolm's touch, and Lyra gazes calmly at Malcolm while Fenella speaks in a soft voice to her and Malcolm thinks that Fenella, nice as she is might not actually know how to talk to babies so he decides he knows better and takes over telling Lyra about her new toy and you're not old enough yet for this Lyra and how he'd take her for a ride someday and La Belle Sauvage

when she's older too and when he teaches her to swim in the summer What is happening? That's like six months from now, Malcolm. Settle down. Sister Fandella comments, she might be a little young still for all of that. And Malcolm's like, I don't... Turns out maybe Malcolm thought that he understood babies better,

but actually doesn't. Yeah, she might be a little young still. Turns out Malcolm doesn't understand Lyra's age ever. But then suddenly, voices in the corridor interrupt them, and Fenella quickly takes the baby from Malcolm as the door opens. Sister Benedicta enters with a hard-faced woman in a blue suit, a badge with a gold lamp and red flame adorning her outfit. So we do learn what this lamp stands for.

It is the League of saint alexander's badge the lamp is the symbol of the lamp that was used by alexander to guide the soldiers to his family one night they were put to death in the marketplace the next day and he was rewarded becoming a hunter of atheists pagans and made a saint after his death that's what happens to all the shittiest ones but the symbolism of the badge reminds me of kind of like a sanctuary lamp or eternal flame, something commonly seen in both Judaism and Christianity. In Christianity, it's present in front of the altar, usually hanging over the tabernacle or upon it, and lit as a sign to say the Lord is present or rules here. Modern Judaism continues a similar tradition. They have a sanctuary lamp, the Neretomid, which is always lit above the Ark in the synagogue.

After World War II, such flames also gained further meaning as a reminder of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. I find all this interesting because this woman seems to be appointed by the CCD to watch over Lyra, quote unquote, watch over her, who's in limbo of sanctuary, speaking of a sanctuary lamp due to her birth. And sanctuary becomes such a significant theme as we move forward in the Books of Dust, absolutely instrumental to the close of this book. Yeah, I think that's such a, those are really interesting insights on the meanings of this flame and and playing on it because as you said it's instrumental to the closing of this book and it's it's quite ironic as this woman's pin and i think a lot of it has to do with some of what you were saying you know it'll tie into some of the things that you talk about regarding the league of saint alexander

later and those inspirations. And there's kind of a few meanings going on here, right? That sanctuary going on with the flame, especially because I find it interesting with Hannah Ralph's codeword to summon Papa Demetrio being candle, a flame. But that meaning of sanctuary that the that the flame carries is quite inverted with that league of saint alexander so it's very interesting the woman who she's she's pretty scary that's what the boy is doing here and malcolm pipes up that he made a toy for the baby and the and the stranger demands to see it and says it's unsuitable. It is unsuitable.

And that he should go home. None of this is his business. Lyra begins to cry at this harsh woman and Malcolm squeezes her hand goodbye, saying also goodbye to Sister Fenella, who looks frightened. The subtext here is that the lady's bad because Lyra cried about her. Just so you guys know, if you all didn't realize, that's what that means. Yes, we can tell because Lyra can feel it intuitively, I guess, and then we have this line. Sister Benedicta took Lyra away from Sister Vanilla, and the last thing Malcolm heard as he left the priory was the baby wailing properly. That was something else to tell Dr. Ralph, he thought.

I thought that was clever that the baby was crying at the lady, again, telling us lady bad, Lyra baby, lady mean, and that he knew he had the comprehension to go oh shit something's off here something is and interestingly enough we get the answer in the next chapter in chapter eight the league of saint alexander i'm glad that we get it so soon to be honest sometimes i don't have the patience for the wherewithal too much too much i'm glad we get the i'm glad we get it so soon to be honest sometimes i don't have the patience for the wherewithal too much suspense i'm glad we get the i'm glad we get the payoff one day at school malcolm forgoes his lunch to try to solve his mr tap house screws puzzle children play around him in the cold wind and his friend eric approaches him ignoring his sort of like i'm busy vibes because eric's got more secrets that he shouldn't be telling people but i'm glad we get it for this story he's got an update on the murdered man it's kind of stuff we kind of already knew but anyways malcolm reminds him that eric you're not

supposed to talk about all this and eric goes on telling him that the man was a spy his dad wasn't supposed to tell him that because of the official something i'm noticing in this chapter is malcolm is a lot stronger talking to his friends in this first half of the chapter than he felt in the last chapter the last time we saw him um coming off of his last hannah ralph meeting in the books he's kind of establishing more self-confidence and as he speaks to eric here he completely like as hannah told him you can't tell anyone about this anymore you can't even you've got to act a certain way around people and he actually is he's acting very specific he's like oh that's so funny eric you're such a good time guy and he's holding back which i am impressed with uh they even go on he holds

back on what he knows in his secrets, but he actually is quite good at trying to still get Eric to talk. Yeah, he's very charismatic for a little 11-year-old. I'm interested in that. Because he does, so they go on, they speculate on the killer. Eric is like, ah, maybe it was the Muscovites, and

Malcolm agrees. He's like, yeah, have you told anyone else? And Eric's like, no, man, I only told you, Malcolm. Malcolm's like, yeah, have you told anyone else? And Eric's like, no, man, I only told you, Malcolm. Malcolm's like, well, you should look up the penalty for breaking the Secrets Act and maybe be safer because there are spies everywhere. He has no clue. Malcolm has no clue, but he's about to. Eric says, not in school, but Malcolm says teachers could be spies, maybe even Miss Davis. Eric says a real spy would be

conspicuous and blend in and Miss Davis short-tempered does not uh they keep going back and forth and Malcolm finally gets Eric to admit that his dad said I wouldn't be surprised if he was a spy not he's a spy and they but but but to be fair ass is like but why would your dad say that then like he's probably a spy and eric's like thanks that's what i've been saying like done case closed that's what i'm saying asta and malcolm's like well you should find out like all the details and eric's like well i need to be suitable you know he means subtle but eric doesn't know words interesting that emphasis on the word subtle.

Like a knife? Yeah, quite sharp. Quite sharp, you know? The bell rings, and they have to go in. Usually they got in a line and went in and all got back to normal, but today was quite different. Something is not right. They wait in line, and the headmaster comes out with the

woman that Malcolm had seen in the priory the night before in her blue suit with the same hard face and hairstyle. They are instructed to go to their morning assembly to sit and wait and make no noise or trouble. Everyone is whispering about who's in trouble around them and asking about the woman who Malcolm watches as inconspicuously as he can he hides behind eric's height when she scans the crowd watching the children the hall smells like cabbage and jam roll from lunch and since they're near the gym there's a permanent sweat smell as well sounds gross i know what they're talking about like i know exactly what that is it's awful that foot smell i i'm sad that they have to eat in the same reminds me of the jerseys in basketball in like gym class that they had

i have blocked that's oh it's in my okay well i digress malcolm watches the teachers sitting in the back who are mostly expressionless, though the math teacher is scowling and the music teacher, Miss Davis, has tears on her cheeks. Yeah, poor Miss Davis. I know that two seconds ago they were trying to envision her as a spy, but decided maybe not because she's got a short temper. And I don't think she's just short-tempered like angry. She's just very sensitive sensitive as we can see well and coincidentally it's really funny because the whole time of course the joke is that malcolm is the spy yes it is and we'll come back to that

in in a bit because i mean throughout all this malcolm takes mental notes for Dr. Ralph and they are commanded to sit down while the headmaster introduces Miss Carmichael to explain what she's doing I really like the the language used here because the teachers are described as expressionless and throughout here the couple of pages it kind of reminds you of the specters because they look kind of helpless against the power of the CCD each one of them is kind of zoomed in on like he said about miss davis and the math teachers scowling this has gained a lot of meaning ever since we've listened to pullman talk a lot during quarantine about his time teaching and different things the teachers in this scene that are taking this to heart and they're obviously quite upset about the restrictions it's going to place on their teaching and on their kids are quite obviously the good guys from his experience

even earlier when we hear that malcolm has 40 kids in his class and he doesn't always get taught individually uh pullman has publicly advocated as the president of the society of authors that the uk has a fetish for exams and children don't learn anything in that industrialized education setting very truthfully advocating because it's the truth and what this woman is doing is worse than that because not only is it encouraging that lifestyle they're not going to do anything to change how the schools are operating but it's exploiting these children in the opposite manner and reason than what hannah has been doing with malcolm it's exploiting them for bad teaching them to be

isolated from their families and trust no one, which, as we see in the Northern Lights, this is the method CCD continues to use to capture children and experiment and torture upon them. And we're going to obviously talk more about this right in the following chapters, but it's really interesting. I think this is one of the most interesting parts of the book,

The League of St. Alexander. It's one of the most interesting parts of the book, The League of St. Alexander. It's one of the most chilling parts as well. The headmaster sits with his crow demon, and Mal notes that his face is as thunderous as the math teacher Mr. Savory's was. She waves a revised history to them

of the Holy Church and the Magisterium that works for the good of the Church. She is a representative of the League of St. Alexander and the magisterium that works for the good of the church she is a representative of the league of saint alexander and begins to tell his tale she claims that saint alexander had lived in north africa when the church struggled against the evil pagans alexander's family worshipped an evil god too and the boy heard a man in the marketplace speak of jesus christ and the religion of the lands in the Mediterranean Sea where he and his family lived. Alexander heard the story of Jesus's life,

death, and resurrection and told the preacher that he wanted to be a Christian too. He, along with the governor of the province, Regulus, and many others were baptized and Regulus ordered all the officials to convert to Christianity as well but some didn't and Alexander thought he could help serve God in the church by selling out the people that he knew that were pretending to be Christians even his own family who were helping shelter some of these pagans he told the authorities who came to his house in the middle of the night and took his family and the pagans captive and put them to death in the square and alexander was given a reward and

went on to hunt atheists and pagans being canonized after his death what a badass marvel movie that you just told right out loud miss carmichael was the star I do love that the language is very obviously like, this is a story she's telling, and only one-tenth of it is true. Probably because Alexander was a weasel. There's something playing here on that same idea earlier as we talked about sanctuary lamps with... This is obviously like a breaking of sanctuary or people that, you know, have come to this life and they were practicing

pagan rituals which could be like lighting a fucking candle and going to bed you know and like hopefully they don't burn the house down but combustion literally combustion but there's this idea here that like the church as we know some of these churches offer sanctuary right you have sanctuary being offered by the nuns at the priory and here alexander's family quite obviously were just straight up sold out by him by the church because the church is saying listen we can't straight up murder you but if someone says you're a heretic then i can murder you like we're supposed to give sanctuary but if we can pin some heresy on you we will we will and get out of it get out of that sanctuary you know yeah they are they love

doing that and that's a lot of what goes on here yes next few chapters we did get a quick message from our friend lo again who is basically just a unofficial host of every episode can't help it Lo sends us great thoughts and they did send us a thought about the magisterium and this story that the magisterium did missionary work in North Africa and they're very interested in the church's history and how colonialism has worked out in this world the magisterium is obviously kind of a colonial regime in many ways, but they want to figure out some more of the specifics. And I had really, I don't know, Africa hadn't jumped out at first. And I'd imagine as we progress into the third Book of Dust, we're going to get maybe more

answers about this politically, geographically speaking. But it's also on the border of where a lot of conflict happens in the secret commonwealth that we hear about. Geographically, this is close to Turkey and Syria with a really heavy laden history of both communal violence, religious discrimination and conflict. And I think that while maybe categorizing it in colonialism and dictatorship, especially for examining places like Algeria or the United Arab Republic may not be the best approach, it can cause more cloud than clarity, keeping it under that microscope. But a significant part of Africa was colonized by the 1900s and the resources were heavily exploited, right? Rubber, timber, diamonds, gold, and of course, trade route protection. The exploitation of resources like oil being discovered in Libya in the 1950s is more recent

than a lot of people recall. I think there's going to be a lot stronger discussion about this as we get into the secret commonwealth eventually, chapter by chapter someday. Get ready, Eliana, buckle up. But I'm more interested though in this, especially in connection to Coulter's involvement there. She went to Africa. I want to know if it was as a member of the Magisterium or maybe as an independent trip because it's not necessarily clarified. We know from the Northern Lights she went to study the zombie that they made and that's actually what helped her progress her studies with intercision and likely how she could control the specters as well in the subtle

knife. The elephant on the alethiometer stands for africa we learned that pretty early on in the northern lights because of the spy fly if you recall the spy fly is said to originate from africa so i'm guessing coulter would have picked that up there as well but it's banned by the magisterium so it's obviously something from africa's culture that the magisterium does not want happening in their land. That they don't want happening if they're not. Yeah, that too. That too.

Hypocrisy. In about 12 to 13-ish years from this story, Kang Anunwe will join Asriel with his army for the Great War. And it makes me think if maybe Africa's, I don't know, necessarily untouched by the Magisterium, but if parts of Africa might be untouched because the story is pressing so much in this area of the map as we go on and I'm wondering if the goal is to get to that area for the resources and try to capitalize and lock down that market and maybe it's mirroring more after that discovery of the lucrative resources post 50s but because of the language that this woman is using it's mirroring more after that discovery of the lucrative resources post-50s, but because of the

language that this woman is using, it's so outrageous that none of it's true. It just makes me wonder if maybe this could even just be some heavy propaganda in some areas from the magisterium for everyone to think, hey, we've got it all under control now, you know, that was just a blip in history what happened with Alexander, but it caused this wonderful thing to happen which is this league i don't know in 20 years it seems that maybe they're breaking into africa and into of course the areas of turkey and syria uh maybe that was their plan for resource stealing as we've said economically this is very post-world war ii feeling so resources were key after World War II. It could be a similar play Pullman is making on these made-up world.

There's some interesting stuff that's going on with that development. I will speculate a little on what the colonial aspect could look like in terms of how this world developed. I'm not sure that there was World War II in Lyra's world. world developed, right? I'm not sure that there was World War II in Lyra's world, but as you said, it does feel heavily pulled, of course, from Pullman's own

life, which is post-World War II. And there is, I think, some indication that there might have actually been a World War I like event, based on what I know. I haven't finished the Secret Commonwealth, right? But based on the fact that the Ottoman Empire

was broken up, insinuates that there might have been something like that that happened. And based on what we know of the maps that we have from the Globetrotter maps at the back of the Lyra's Oxford novella, and the nomenclature

for some of the countries in Lyra's world in Africa, in the African continent. I think that there is evidence of colonization, mostly at least in the northwestern and western areas of the continent, with countries that are named like Empire of Niger or Niger, depending on if you're thinking French or Anglophone and places that are called the Atlas States, I don't really know what that means. But there are also like large swaths of countries or even potentially undefined territory. Like these aren't the clearest maps. And I think sometimes the canon changes depending on what's being released.

But these are based on the Globetrotter brand within large world maps that could attest to the lack of the scale of colonization and imperialism we saw in our world. I don't know. And could be seen as evidence of those territories not having been sliced up for all those different Western countries, especially with Empire of Niger and empire of Benin, in my opinion, insinuating that these are African-based empires, that the base of that the power lies there and not external from the continent, or that maybe some of them secured independence already. And securing independence, of course, doesn't necessarily guarantee autonomy, but it's a thought and you know for what it's worth looking at the north american continent and the naming conventions of countries that would be in what we consider the united states nowadays uh it kind of intimates i think you know the country's names are texas new denmark new france beringland mexico and the isthmus and hispania nova it may have had less of that English influence that we had in our own world with those like 13 original colonies. And maybe we shouldn't even be thinking,

and obviously we do for like ease of our own reading reasons, they might not even speak English in Lee's Texas, right? And that he might be speaking like even very differently from our own world's texans and also i don't think that philip pullman put that much thought into all that i think he thought it was hysterical i think he was like what if it was texas but like not texas what if we just put it here it is i guess yeah yeah, like, you know, they've tried to, it's not like they haven't tried to like, listen, Texas thinks they're their own country. So it doesn't surprise me.

They do. They're actually interesting theories. If you look at, uh, there's some sociology things out there that assert that the United States is actually made up of 11 different nations or so, like based on culture in the different regions. It's really interesting. Check it out. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.

Anyway, back to the League of St. Alexander, I do think it's interesting that they call it that, and that they have him be from North Africa, including again, some of those implications of colonialism in terms of the missionary trips, which were a way to, of course, begin that process and start seeing it in there. But I do also wonder, you know, within this world, you know, thinking about St. Alexander himself, where he would have come from, like, I think it would have most likely maybe been Egypt, Alexander, Alexandria, and Egypt does, it seems, based on the maps, if I'm not mistaken, exist in Lyra's world. And, or that's what I assume, that it would be there. And while Christianity might not

have necessarily been the dominant religion in the region, we don't know, as it is in the Magisterium's area of the world, right, especially where it's got such a root there, it would have been an existent religion. The church, not just the Catholic Church, though, in our real world in Egypt, has a long history, with positions like the Patriarch of Alexandria going back to allegedly as far, maybe as early as 43 AD with Mark the Evangelist. And

Alexandria was a prominent city in Christianity, especially in North Africa. There actually was, there was a lot of St. Alexanders, turns out, but there was a St. Alexander of Alexandria who was like the pope of alexandria and he's not very much like this little boy saint alexander to be honest there was a lot of theological drama that he went into uh during his time about the nature of the trinity with his rival

arius and it seems like it was a pretty serious like pretty serious theological debate but honestly it sounded really dramatic xoxo gospel girl and yeah no it makes a lot of sense because i mean egypt in their world is in north North Africa just below and next to Turkey and Syria, according to these Globetrotter maps. Yeah, I mean, the maps are not the easiest to read. And also, there's like some of the stuff that shows up on the map that's listed and it doesn't like always translate to what's on the Wikipedia page in the list. It's hard. It's hard to parse out. I'm working on it. Not actually, I'm not going to publish it anywhere. i'm working on it um not actually i'm not going to publish it anywhere i'm working on it personally in my head sometimes regarding theology though you know and

that schism i think that this might actually be like when they talk about the story of saint alexander the first time that we ever hear jesus explicitly referred to in the context of lyra's world and even wills i, in these two series. Because Jesus is never actually mentioned in all of the His Dark Materials books. And I wonder if part of it had to do with the publishing at the time. Maybe he couldn't. But he also doesn't come up much throughout this book or even the next one, as far as I can tell and part of me thinks like maybe like it

does somewhat speak to or strengthen more of the story's um action in terms of serving as a critique of religion like of religious systems and how it's used to abuse power by focusing less on the actual like content of jesus' life and story. So I just think that's interesting that it actually comes up here and almost never anywhere else. He's really been made into this huge icon and that's it. Yeah, like once for

St. Alexander's story and everything else is just like the magisterium stands in for all of it. Yeah, which is interesting because that's how God acts in almost all mythology like yo i'm the powerful one there's no one before me but you can have these cute little fables that was a big part of the schism that saint alexander and arius were talking about they were like so god and jesus are they all one? Are they not one? Speaking of unity theories, a different kind of unity theory,

but still unity theories. What was it? I read some funny thing the other day about how Augustus would have been like, oh, I'm too busy preparing hell for the people that don't believe in you. Yeah, and Jesus would be like, what? What are you doing? Excuse me? And yeah, so it's more of like

about that and i guess how doctrine gets twisted because that's obviously what's happening here right in this story restructuring at a lower level yeah and i mean it's also weird because we don't see the jesus figure come up at all in the part where lyran will go and kill god no i mean hell you get metatron you get enoch yeah it's back into malcolm's life miss carmichael tells them the league of saint alexander is in memory of the brave boy and the lamp on the emblem is the one he signaled to the soldiers with on his roof to take his family away. Interestingly enough, oftentimes the eternal flame and lamps- Yeah, nart. Oftentimes the eternal flame and the sanctuary lamps are also lit in honor of soldiers,

in honor of people that have done brave things and ceremonial things. So this tracks with that lamp on the emblem. Miss Carmichael says this is a christian country and a christian civilization that still has enemies new and old she then gives a little speech there are people who say openly there is no god they become famous some of them they make speeches and write books or even teach but they don't matter very much. We know who they are. More important are the people we don't know about. Your neighbors, your friends' parents, your own parents, the grown-ups you see every day.

Have any of them ever denied the truth about God? Have you heard anyone mocking the church or criticizing it? Have you heard anyone telling lies about it? Have you? And I'm not gonna tell him. I'm not a narc. I mean, yeah. This is what it is. This is Narcs Incorporated.

She offers them membership in the League of St. Alexander, which comes with a badge to be the eyes and ears for the church in their corrupt world malcolm surveys students and teachers alike those with hands up some with excitement on their faces but the teachers all gaze at the ground expressionlessly despite one or two of them who are probably like way sadder and robbie and eric both shoot their hands up immediately then they look expectedly at malcolm

for his choice and malcolm's like i do want a shiny cool badge and it looks like a really handsome badge that comes with all this but he keeps his hand down knowing he doesn't really really want to join then eric puts his hand down for like a second then he's like no i want it and then robbie changes his mind actually and keeps his hand down completely robbie he's just going along and hoping to make the right choice you know for what it's worth malcolm is like he knows right from wrong and he knew this was wrong he had a bad feeling about it just like he had when he left the priory and he said no i'm not joining this uh-uh good boy yeah malcolm sensed bad vibes from that woman yesterday and he's like these are all still bad vibes still bad this brings to mind a lot hitler youth and soviet youth young communist league komosal

uh and it's really funny we've talked about this actually on our other podcast about a song of ice and fire the other book series that we cover and we discussed how this like other fantasy series like a song of ice and fire has a little bit of that hitler youth vibe going on and polman actually confirmed it during the waterstones event a little bit ago if you were listening into the webinar that he did there for Waterstones, he confirmed that this is what he had in mind. So the Soviet Youth Young Communist League during its early years, 1918, was when it was established in urban areas and it was a Russian organization known as the Russian Young Communist League or RKSM. During 1922, with the unification of the USSR, it reformed

into an all-union agency, the Youth Division of the All-Union Communist Party. Even in the badge and clothing, as we've been discussing, it kind of reminds me of the uniforms that are slightly different that Hitler Youth would wear. The Hitler Youth would often be leveraged against their parents for their behavior. The Third Reich would isolate the child from their family, reprogram them, indoctrinate them, teach them their family was bad, use them as pawns for the Reich when they needed to overcome obstacles. The Third Reich actually banned Boy Scouts, and then they began to co-opt the activities that the Boy Scouts did, like scouting, camping, singing, crafting, hiking. They had summer camps, they did recitals and

had pledges and campfires and uniforms but over time that changed because the youth got older and they could train them into a militia and then the program became an industrial war machine while lyra's world hasn't really had world war i, the Magisterium really seems to be ramping up and gearing for battle and strengthening its hold on power, places, and people as we're seeing in this chapter with the League. There is a great war that comes in like 10 years, but you know, whatever. But I think that's a great point. And that makes a lot of sense for why this is happening now. And as said getting them ready for a war and i mean the timing does work right 10 years and i i didn't put those together that's really interesting and i think the similarities that you've pointed out between that and hitler youth um but yeah pullman has has confirmed come through very well and the league is very effective in its use of that propaganda to recruit children and obviously you know children are probably more susceptible to

propaganda because they're children but anyway there's like a really clear narrative within it like whether or not like the story's true i think there are elements of it that are definitely quite true but the framing of the narrative of who's good and who is supposed to be evil, critical thought be damned, children, is quite clear. And I think it comes through especially for a reader, right? Us knowing. And the hero of this story is a child just like them and tells them that this is important, vital work, and then promises that they too can have a role in the story also as a hero and then you get this cool ass shiny badge and that will tell everyone your values and what you stand for what you believe you don't have to

take action you just gotta wear a cool badge and then by joining automatically somehow you're brave and you know the league of saint alexander has this very dangerous destabilizing effect that we're going to see and discuss more in the chapters to come as opposed to now you know i don't want to jump the gun here right and how it erodes that social trust within the community and weakens it and the power dynamics that it creates and you know power dynamics it's that thing that is on on occasion maybe the story's cognizant of it is inconsistently in the story i'm so pleased said miss carmichael looking around the hall god will be very happy to know so many boys and girls are eager to do the right thing

to be the eyes and ears of the authority in the streets and the fields in the houses and the playgrounds in the classrooms of the world a league of little alexanders watching and listening for a holy purpose miss carmichael explains the next step in the process their teachers will help them fill in a form and they'll be given a badge. And they'll receive a booklet with the rules of the League, as well as Alexander's story. Yeah, so speaking of power dynamics, we spoke earlier about the power that Hannah wields over Malcolm,

and that Papa Demetrius is like, yeah, don't worry about it. And we're like, we're pretty worried about it, but Hannah does, you know, again, and Jesper is the real hero of the story, and we'll end up seeing Malcolm's role, I think, ju, and Jesper is the real hero of the story. And we'll end up seeing Malcolm's role, I think, juxtaposed with the League's children later on. But we can talk about some of that here, especially because it's at the forefront of this discussion, and we see the weight

that it takes on Malcolm. And it does operate differently, right? Like, the way that the adults have systematized using the children as spies here with the league of saint alexander where is i think hannah's legitimately concerned with malcolm's well-being and malcolm's role relies on and operates very much in secrecy he has little power that he can wield over others in a way despite acquiring that knowledge and the knowledge that he acquires isn't used to force people into certain action. And it's not used to inspire fear the way that we see the teachers are kind of reacting right now. And Malcolm's role as a spy, again, being secret, isn't used to signal or stand in for any sort of values or alignment the way that the badge is supposed to here.

But again, we're going to dig into this more in the next few chapters. It's kind of like, you know, I'm special. Look at me. I have a badge. I'm doing so much good in the world. But you're actually doing horrible, wrecking bullshit for your community. Whereas you have the spy being quiet, being tormented within, crying at the guilt they feel over all this sadness in the world

yes i get it i get it i really like it good job eliana for writing it i i made my god you made this i broke this you know the grossest thing about it is that like the back of the pamphlet even has an address you can write if there's any wrongdoing being committed. Narcs. Yes. She leads them in prayer, and most of the children say amen at the end. Malcolm lifted his head and looked at the woman, who seemed to be looking straight back at him, so he felt horribly uneasy for a moment, but then she turned to the headmaster.

Thank you, headmaster, she said. I leave it in your hands. She walked out. The headmaster stood up, stiffly and wearily. Lead off, class five. That's all he said. Damn. Rough, rough he said. Damn. Rough. Rough shit, Headmaster.

I mean. Indeed. Quite the cliffhanger. He didn't have a choice, but he did. You know? Yeah, he did. He did, but then, like, there's a high price for exercising that choice. I mean, he could say no and then die.

Yeah. And that's how they get you. That's how the Magisterium works, which is pretty awful. And we'll talk about that more as things go. You know, I don't know. It's a bummer because it does get darker and harder for Malcolm fast. Talk about growing up quickly. He really does have to.

A lot of the kids do, right? This is kind of a moment that forces them to. And honestly, actually, a lot of them do too in general, because I'm sure a huge natural disaster does that to people. But yeah, it forces you to really reconsider some stuff, that is for sure. Well, indeed. This is going to be it for

La Belle Sauvage, episode 3, chapters 6 through 8 for now. Next month in December, we will be returning with episode 4. We'll be covering another few chapters, so stay tuned for that. Yeah, but if you can't get enough returning with episode 4. We'll be covering another few chapters, so stay tuned for that. Yeah. But if you can't get enough of

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dollars and up that's the thunder tier yes we're having a blast over there we do a monthly brunch so what we do during brunch happy hour is everyone grabs a drink of their choosing non-alcoholic alcoholic or a snack and this month we did something fun where we did a presentation everybody that wanted to participate brought two to three slides on something they liked or something important to them or just something they wanted to share and we just have a blast and we chat and we laugh and it's fun it's a really fun community so come hang out on our Discord channel with us. Thanks so much for listening. This has been a blast.

As always, I have been Chloe. And I have been another one of your hosts, Eliana. I don't know what Chloe's role is on here. You guys know what I do. I do a lot. I just like making fun. No, it's not very nice. As always. As always. You've just been switching it up. Are you fulfilling me, Eliana? I just like making fun as always as always

you've just been switching it up are you fulfilling me Eliana? I don't know I want to keep you on your toes on your tippy toes we'll talk to you next week or wait no it's month god well yeah but

we'll talk to you next week about Davos if you want us to talk to you about Davos we'll talk until cows go home I mean well but we also will talk to you next week about Davos if you want us to talk to you about Davos we'll talk until cows go home I mean but we also will talk to you next week or even this week about his dark materials the television show if you turn me on we'll be there what is happening I'm fulfilling her alright