Last Podcast On The Left - LPN Deep Dives: Dune / Episode 1: Welcome to Arrakis

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

Last Podcast Network presents LPN Deep Dives: Dune, a 12-part weekly journey down the sandy wormhole of Frank Herbert’s beloved Sci Fi masterpiece, Dune (and it’s subsequent sequels). Navigated by the one and only God Emperor himself Henry Zebrowski (Last Podcast on The Left, Adult Swim), and his enigmatic spice fueled co-host Holden McNeely (Wizard and The Bruiser).This is episode 1: Welcome To Arrakis

Put your right hand in the box. What's in the box? Pain. Stuffed. Put your hand in the box. I hold at your neck. The gomja box. The start is here.

The fear is the mind killer. The fear is the little death that brings total liberation. But I will face my fear. I will be able to pass over me and throw me. The duke will die before these eyes and they'll know. They'll know that his eyes land. Follow me. I'm coming.

We jump as soon as we do. The sleeper awakens. What's the iPad and Dune? What do they call it? iPad and Dune. They kind of do. They have like a... By then they had no...

Well, they didn't have... Well, they have like crystal sheets. Yeah. They have those crystal sheets that they use to store many, many, many different types of filaments. Of information. No, it's not a fucking iPad. Because they specifically don't have machines. Because of the butler in jihad.

Is this how we're gonna start? Like legitimately? Because it's important to remember. A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care. That the balances are correct. And that's why beginnings, you see, are most fragile time. Which is why we're handling them. Like one would handle two precious eggs.

Right, Holden? Eggs? Eggs, indeed. They must be handled on a spoon or using... If it's a race. Delicate... Yes, if you're racing and there's an Easter Bunny nearby. There often is.

Yes, and Christ is of course... Not there. He doesn't... He isn't real. I'm glad we started like this. Welcome to LPN's Deep Dives. This time featuring... Dune?

It's Dunecast. I think we should begin and end every single episode with this quote in unison. Are you ready? Sure. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain and Dunecast. Hello. I am God Emperor Henry Zabrowski with my, I want to say, human wife. Holden McNeely. I have a wife.

Yes. I have a wife I make love to. But she, as you know, she is a sort of a robot person, right? I developed her. And I think human version. Yeah. You're the telexlue. Don't...

You already murdered the name. But today we begin our descent into Dune. The books of Dune. Six in total is what we will be covering. The original sex-tology. Is that how you'd call it? Sex-tology. And then, of course, his son, using his notes, wrote the final one.

And then there's also, of course, a prequel, which actually... There's many prequels. There's many prequels. But there's a prequel trilogy that kind of concerns a lot of our key players that we're going to be introducing today at the start of this first episode of Dunecast. To get you started, first of all, because Spotify, our beloved ascended masters at Spotify, have asked us to please begin to try to explain the plot of Dune for people that have not read Dune.

So first of all, because remember, I'm the God Emperor. This is my universe. I am bringing Holden McNeely against his will into my universe. It's like a Dunkin' Idaho Gola if you are familiar with the books. He's learning. And if you're not, I don't know what to tell you, man. I don't know. You've got a ways to go.

You're at the very... You're at the very bottom of the mountain. So I think because I'm bringing Holden McNeely into my world, I'm forcing him to read all of the Dune books the first time in order for me to have someone to speak to about it on microphones because I can finally get out of my system. I can finally get all this whole topic away from my family. I can get away from my other friends and I can just put it all squarely on the shoulders of Holden McNeely and the listeners at home.

Now, I will say that I actually started this journey, let's call it, because it is a journey of the mind, a mental odyssey, years ago. And I picked up this book, I told you this too, back in the day, which is I think the beginnings of what led to this. I picked up Dune and read it to understand Henry better, specifically why I did it. Everyone's asking to understand me better and I can't tell you guys more that all of the clues to my personalities are left to on various locations all over the world and different pieces of content that I've been on.

If you just parcel through each single thing that I've said, done, eaten, and experienced, you will see the true me, but you have to kind of put it all together. Right, I had been through extensive stuff for this. I had seen every, you know, all the comedy series he loves. I got access to his Pornhub history to understand his master beige top search. But Wormgod fucks big girl. That's my favorite. Wormgod fucks big girl.

My favorite way to, that's how we, I always just, because I like to challenge Pornhub, give it to me, you know, change, see what, see what comes from the bottom. I like to parody Porn's mindset, the Seinfeld and Ninja Turtles and whatever, but you sort of enjoy this kind of worm fetish. It's not about the worm fetish, it's about the man inside of the costume, and that's what this entire thing, Dune, is about. It's about the man inside of the worm costume. We won't get to God Emperor of Dune until episode five.

So just so you know, dude, there's a little bit more of an intro. We are going to be covering the main book of Dune, Dune 1, over these first four episodes, basically. We're going to be talking about topics associated with the first book. And just so you know, all 600 pages of Dune 1 is just the fucking appetizer. Yes, that's the intro to the whole world. You were just telling me this before we started. I think it's very important.

But the reason why we're going to spend so many episodes on it is we do have to build this world. But at the same time, if you just read the first book and you're like, Oops! Or congrats! Look at me! I went Dune! You're fucking not even close!

Like a turd on the tip of an ice cream cone. Typically, the book one of Dune technically is the best book of the sex pathology, but it's also just the very beginning. Yes. Because the real story of Dune does not begin until book two. Yes. You kind of set the scene. Dune 1 begins with a very tenuous transition between two houses, deep in space.

You got House of Traities and House Harkonnen. They are both fighting over what is supposed to be one of the most valuable pieces of property in the universe, if not the most valuable piece of property in the universe, which is Arrakis, Dune, the sand planet, home of the Spice. No water there though, so there's a lot of fights back and forth. But Dune 1 is the pretty classic action-adventure sci-fi story of the hero's journey of Neo, essentially Neo, Paul of Traities, is a good guy versus the classic bad guys, the House Harkonnen, like the Baron, Vladimir Harkonnen, who honestly, if you re-read the book, it's

actually a lot more sympathetic than you'd think he'd be. And it's about just the story of, oh, you know, a little boy who gets this quote-unquote terrible purpose thrust upon him, who is forced to now fight all these big bad guys, and I'm going to spoil it for you. He wins! But guess what? When you win an entire planet, you don't just get like a bunch of fun shit. It's not like roller coasters and just getting blown all the time.

You also win all of the problems with being a god-profit king and being in charge of the most valuable, I want to say, transport device. It's a transport device, drug, food, it's cocaine and oil, and also it can make you live forever, it can make you psychic, it can make you all the shit. And now you're completely in charge of it, and what comes from that? Yes, exactly. And that's why it was one of those situations for me personally when I read the first book that I was, I'm going to go ahead and say, bit of a slog for this guy for the first several

hundred pages. You're weak. Then I got into it. Then at the end, I was like, it was one of those weird feelings. There's got to be like a German word for it. I'm excited to finally finish this thing. Climbing clump. Yeah, climbing clump.

I had serious climbing clump, and I also had this feeling of not just relief that I was finished, but also this almost terrific curiosity, the fact that I knew now that I was set upon a path that I had to fully go through till completion, that the next book would be opened and read, which was something that I actually was not expecting. I really thought I was just going to read the first one, and then I'd heard about the intubated children or whatever happens in the sixth one. Tulalaxu. Either way.

The Tulalaxu, books five and six, just to kind of immediately, an insulting sum up of books five and six immediately is that it's Muppet Babies in Space, but that's how you will get to there. But also, the first book really is the classic hero's journey and is the most structurally like a big sci-fi book. A normal sci-fi epic, right? Yeah. And it is a new hope.

Like I said too earlier, it's like Dune is Star Wars a new hope, but then instead of like moving on to Empire Strikes Back, like Messiah and everything after it is like 2001 a space odyssey, right? It is. We get done with the how fun and great the Messiah is in book one. Yeah. It is done, which is also why I was so specifically attracted to Dune. But I wanted to understand the idea of like getting into the head of a superhero.

If you read The Maker of Dune, it's another collection of fun essays by the author of Dune, Frank Herbert. I don't know if we've even said his name. The best beard and sci-fi next to PKD. It's him, Philip K. Dick, holy shit, that's a lot of friction. If they were to kiss each other, what a fucking stinky campfire they would do. What would they do? How much cocaine would be shared between their nods?

Frank Herbert was a famous teetotaler. I think he might have had a drink or two. He might have had a drink or two, but PKD was not. PKD? Oh yeah. God, he liked it. Rigid. He liked it.

He liked it. He liked it. There's an essay, Frank Herbert, called Dangers of the Superhero, where he basically outlines what he thought of as the idea behind the structure of Dune and the idea where Dune came from. And his concept, the leitmotif of Dune, is the what happens when you put the responsibilities and your fate in the hands of a superhero who just so happens to also be a human being. Because in the world of Dune, there are no smart machines.

There are no computers. This is not hard sci-fi. There is no descriptions of massive ships or technology or different alien races. This is an entirely human future that completely lies on the choices and the mistakes that humans can make. So they look at this superhero, Paul Atreides, who we'll begin to describe in further and further detail, as you'll see, I love him, but he's a child. He begins the entire series as a undernourished 15-year-old boy that has this sort of, has

godhood put on him from a bunch of people, essentially a system of space eugenics, because that's what the Bene Gesserit are doing. Yeah, I mean, you say the words Bene Gesserit, that's a whole giant can of worms, talking about the whole humanization, though, of a godhead before we even get into the witch women's guilt. The witch women's guilt is important, because we might get into the witch women's guilt today. Well, we have to talk about Jessica Paul's mother, who, spoiler alert, is a member of

the Bene Gesserit. She's spicy, too. Just from the descriptions, do you get horny from books? That's an excellent question. I think there are definitely moments I have been horny in books. Unfortunately, I don't want to say Bukowski's women, but he talked about a lot of sort of sex stuff or whatever, you know what I mean, and they're pissing on each other and they're laughing about it and they're laughing at me kind of fun.

Oh, God, the rabbit novels got me horny, horny, too. That's weird. That's also a strange thing to say. There was piss play and rabbit is rich, I believe, which was actually, I was like, maybe I should try that. So you just straight up said that the two scenes that made you arouse from literary history involved piss play. They're in the shower already.

It's clean, technically, to do it. I'm the God Emperor here. I'm the one who needs to be showered in pee. And I'm just a pebble of sand in your fucking world. Yeah, bro, and everybody's staring at the God Emperor. Does he have a penis? Does he have a penis? But we'll get to that.

What is Dune? All right, Dune, let us begin. Yeah, so I like where we were headed. I think it's two houses divided. I think one of my main that we even had in our notes, Duke Leto is Biden, Harkonnen is Trump, Emperor is Pewton. I think that that is just a note we wrote. All right, because I'm not going to fully go into it as I because I started thinking

about it because then I was like, Paul Atreides is Hunter Biden. No, he's not. So that is not that's not really there. OK, it is more about maybe why we said that is just that Leto seems to be a wiser sage, less indulgent, more well, let's break it down. Yeah, break it down. So the planet Arrakis has been kind of fought over for many generations when we arrive at the very beginning of Iran, essentially, it's I would say, well, because Frank Herbert

says the spice is not oil, because in my mind, I always considered there's a lot of ecological and economical themes in Dune. Oh, and I also want to say again, at the very top of this, we are not English professors. We are not book reviewers. We are not literary theorists. We are just here to have a good time and talk to I am packing an average six inches that I have never gotten complaints with, but I am in no way an expert in sex or books. He's not definitely books, but we are here to just have a fun time talking about Dune.

So we're going to try to figure this shit out, because Frank Herbert, obviously, there is like, there is shit inside of Dune that's ecologically minded and economically minded, but that's the stuff that I'm not that fucking interested in. But the spice on Dune is this very, very important, what would you do? It's a strategic resource. Well, and I love that it's more than oil, it's more than, I love that it is, has these drug qualities to it. It does make it go, he sets, all right, what he's doing essentially in this first book

is setting up all these little seeds that will grow into these giant, wormy trees by the fourth book. And so a big part of the spice is that, A, it's highly addictive, B, we should mention that people's eyes go full blue. Blue within blue, your irises become blue, and the whites around your eye become completely blue. When somebody is like, fully hooked on this spice. And also if you're one of the native people who live on Arrakis, one of the Fremen.

The Fremen, we haven't even said the word Fremen yet, but yeah. There's a lot to unpack your whole thing. But they are kind of the, yes, we'll get into the Fremen for sure as well, but either way, and it is a drug, but it's more than a drug. I mean, I guess you could almost liken it to peyote or something like that. It's everything. Where it opens up your consciousness. It can take you to Dune layers to a dangerous degree, much like someone would go insane

if they say ate too much of the, of that acid, brown acid or something like that. Actually that's actually a fallacy, that story, the brown acid actually, which is, it was bad acid. You said don't take it because it won't get hot. It's not very good. Yes. And then people were like, oh man, when they told them not to take it. And so this resource is only available on Arrakis, and they don't know why it's only available

on Arrakis as you'll see. There's a lot of questions about why only on this planet. They learn why, right? Yes, absolutely. And they also, there's no way to synthetically reproduce it. They seem to not be able to figure it out. It is only on this planet. And now there's been an ongoing house war between House of Traities and House Harkonnen.

Now House of Traities symbolized by the red hawk, Duke Leto, man, hawk of feature, dark, swarthy, strong, able leader, lawful good, if we're going to use D&D categories. To see, and this might be getting too into the weeds, because honestly it's not that important, the backstory of like their political reign. You say this, I say this too, but then all of a sudden in my mind, I start to think and try to spell it out and you realize there's a whole bunch of shit with the landswrap. Yes. And chome.

Do they have planets? Where are they coming, like in terms of before, because okay, what you need to know is House of Traities and Harkonnen, who we'll describe in just a second, they've been button heads and kind of. For a while. And they, the Traities live on the beautiful planet Kaladin, which is the absolute opposite it's got. You know, rainforest, it's very temperate, it's gorgeous, they live in these like big

sort of, what they describe, these big like lodges, it sounds really nice. Duke Leto is not married. His main concubine is a woman named Jessica, who is a witch, the witch is technically derogatory term for members of the Bene Gesserit. The Bene Gesserit is a group of women that are highly trained. In the book, they don't say witch, they say the W word. They say the W word and it's important because you will get hashtag canceled on a wreckus, if you call them a witch.

But the Frank Herbert. My canceled would be the giant worm would bury you in front of a cheery crowd. Take me, take me. God, that would be fucking sweet to die by worm, dude. That'd be so sweet, slide down in his guts. That's where you and I diverge as people. I'm gonna slide down on one. It's come out of this fucking little asshole, man.

I'm not as cute as hell, because then you're Spice. Oh, that's the secret. Spiced out, dude. That's the secret. That's the secret. The worms did it, yeah. And we shouldn't have busted it. But Frank Herbert, love him to death, right?

This is a guy very smart. Don't look too deep into his politics, but he has a man, he's handsome. We look very similar. He is same body, great body, loved his wife. But the man loves strong women. And that's what I think is nice about Dune, is that Dune has this ribbon through it of very strong, very capable, very dangerous women. Duke Leto has essentially been assigned by this group, Bene Gesserit, right, which is

they essentially control all bloodlines, what they call, do they try to achieve balance? Because the Bene Gesserit say that their jobs are politics, which means they go and create using a series of these Bene Gesserit trained women that they marry and position in high places. And what they do is they take their progeny, all of their children, and their goal is to create what they say in their mind, this thing called the Quitsack Hatterac, which is essentially it's Neo, right? It's the, it's a dude Bene Gesserit, which is, and it has to be a male.

It has to be a male. It has to be the thing. And normally they're popping out girls. They're only doing girls. But what happened was, is that Jessica fell so deeply in love with Duke Leto and knew that the only thing that Duke Leto wanted in this world was a son. And with the first human impulse that starts at the very beginning of Dune, you see that not only is the generations of control that the Bene Gesserit have held over their many

different houses of the Lansrad, which is the union of all the different planetary houses. They've held this power for so long, and it was done over in a simple act of gushing inside. Now my question is this, can the Bene Gesserit just choose what the gender of the baby is? Yes. That's, they have total bodily control. And no one explained to them that it's a construct. No, no, they know it is.

They are not. No, the Bene Gesserit. Oh, thank you. They don't get to say, oh, you're trying to throw to me? Yeah, yeah. You're trying to fucking throw to me? I'm trying to get you fucked up. Are you fucking crazy?

I have a lot of coffee today. I mean, I will say, by the way, coming from, I think, not the same place that we're looking at gender nowadays, gender actually does come into play in a huge way. I mean, even in the fourth book with the all-woman army. Oh yeah, and that's sexy as hell, man. This is honestly, this is just sort of like what I've always wanted, the idea of being a god emperor in charge of all of these like, buxom, Amazon warrior women. That's like my fucking sweet spot, dude.

And there were thoughts towards, that's jumping away ahead, but there are thoughts towards having an all-female army and how that is superior to an all-male army based on kind of notions about male and female, which is fascinating, kind of an interesting thought. We'll get to it, but Lido II specifically said, men are too emotional to be good warriors. Which I think is very interesting. Same thing with the Bene Gesserit. So Duke Lido. And don't worry about the fact that he just said Lido II.

We're not going to worry about that. Oh, yeah. There was another, ah, it's a large, don't talk about this shit. But so Jessica's in love with Duke Lido. Yes. She lets him gush inside and she gives him a son, Paul. Now Paul was not supposed to be born. Paul is a young man that also, he immediately seems to have innate abilities that other

kids don't have. He has dreams that can see the future. He is very good at immediately accepting Bene Gesserit teachings because he starts teaching them very, very early on, all the tricks and trades of the Bene Gesserit. The thing is that this was all not supposed to happen. And everyone kind of knows it was not supposed to happen. But Duke Lido is super happy because he has an heir and it's all ready to go. So right now, this is the very beginning is that Duke Lido has defeated House Harkonnen

in essentially what they did, some kind of interwar they have. And they have a thing in Dune called Conley, which is a type of, I don't know how you'd put it. It's Parley. You have an official, the emperor, so there's an emperor of the entire universe, right? The emperor sort of sanctions these houses to have wars with each other. And then they enter into a term, a series of conditions called Conley, they're having this war over Dune.

And they basically said, okay, the emperor came in, y'all, it's over. Trades won officially. So that means, Trades, you all get the very special real estate grant of you are now the Duke of Arrakis, right? So Duke Lido has this shit kind of thrown onto his lap. You are now in charge of Arrakis, which is something he didn't even really want. Because he knew, as you read in the book, as soon as he finds out that he's supposed to be the Duke of Arrakis, he's like, I'm fucked.

Because it is what... It's like getting Hand of the King and Lord of the Game of Thrones, actually. They always die. It's the same thing. Like no one ever has a good time being Hand of the King. It's always like a weird jail sentence, even though it's a high position of power. It's because he also knows, in a little bit, that I've been put into a trap. Because the Duke Lido is up against the Baron Harkinum.

The Baron Harkinum is a, he's cute, and he's fun. And he is, there's nothing he likes better than a nice, sweet, fresh young boy. So can you actually describe what he really looks like as opposed to cute and fun? Because it's definitely... He's immensely fat, covered with boils, loves human flesh. He has people, like he has people attached to him, like guys that come up to him, he's like, let me have your heart, let me have your heart. And then you pop open like a can of Pringles on their chest, and blood pumps out, and then

he fucking licks it, needs it. And he just loves little boy cum. He's just the ultimate indulgence. Simple of indulgence. He is Epstein times a hundred. A billion, and he's on Suspenser lifts, because he's so fat that he can't move. So he's on the Suspenser lifts, I don't know if you've seen the David Lynch dude at home when he, that fucking great scene where he goes, and starts spinning on the ceiling and

shit, which is the only fucking, that's me, dude. When I got news of we sold Dunecast, I went, and I floated to the ceiling. And I went, all the way home, and by that I mean I pissed as I walked home. That's actually a problem. I call it leaving my snail trail. That's actually already a term. Yeah. That's more of a, yeah, I would just call that you're fucking, you're deeply, to use

a little bit of arachnid. That's my arachnid. So Harcudda, but you also, the emperor himself, to pull the curtain back a little bit more, is really the one fucking, well, that's where you really get to when you, you read it very beginning of Dune, has a sort of like breakdown of like just how and what way they are fucking with Lido, right? It's because Lido's a goody two-shoes. He is lawful good.

Yes. He is an excellent soldier. He leads by example. His men love him. His women love him. Jessica desperately wants to be married to him, but he can't marry his concubine. That's what they call them. He can't marry Jessica because if he does, it takes him off the plate for other people

because basically he's trying to do strategic weddings to somebody else within the lands rad to like shore up allyship, right? That's a big part of this whole series is not particularly being married or having babies with a person you're actually in love with or necessarily even like because you just need to create these heirs and create these deep lineage. That is literally marriage before 1965, like it's the same shit, but so he can't marry her. He's trying to do it the right way, but guess what?

No one really likes a fucking goody two-shoes because you know what happens? It's a Duke Lido who shows up and he has all these ideas of like, uh, I want to do regulations and uh, I want to clean up all the corruption and all the smugglers because what you're going to find out is that there's a thing called chome. There's a lot of like economic shit inside of doing that I just kind of my eyes kind of glaze over, but it's important to understand. And makes for really good real time strategy games and we'll talk about that in the video. I can't wait.

I can't fucking wait. Because yeah, it's the stuff that doesn't bore me in Civ 6, but bores me in a book. Shit, yeah. It's a fun, sci-fi epic, yeah. Yes, but he, uh, essentially their smugglers had been fucking, everybody's getting a cut off a dune. The thing is what was nice about having Harkinen in charge of dune is that everybody was getting a fucking piece, right?

Everybody's going in, smuggling in and out and the emperor himself, even the emperor, is so interested in keeping his own piece of the smuggling that's going on dude, which is people like siphoning off the top. Because what they're trying to do, like the real, it's, this is where it gets into kind of economics. Because their goal is to create so much of their own holds of spice, right? That's kind of what I understand of my, upon my fifth rereading of dune, I started to start to understand the economic part of it, which is that Harkinen and the emperor understood

the only way to get independence from Arrakis, because that's what they're desperate for. They're so sick of whoever's in charge of Arrakis, so they're working on getting their own storehouse of the spice, because from then whoever's had the duchy of Arrakis has had far too much power and the emperor doesn't like dealing with anybody who's below him having too much power and they have all this kind of complicated ship, because Chome is like where water comes in and out of Arrakis, which is one way to smuggle. They're fucking with the water on Arrakis, tightening the leash on whoever's there by basically saying you're going to give me what you want or I'm not going to fucking give

you water, but it turns out there might be more water on Arrakis than they thought. And there are also people saying like, I just don't want to deal with anybody on this planet, so we need to have so much money, and so much, I say money, I mean spice, that we never have to deal with these motherfuckers ever again, kind of like a basal situation or a must situation, why people acquire so much capital, because the point is to essentially become within your own country, your own little country. We who has the spice, controls the universe. At all, and so, yeah, exactly, it's the Tesla of this world, or actually, I guess rather,

it's the Amazon of this world, because you know, it's sort of like how people, serotonin goes up every time they get a dumb fuck package in the mail and you date, cycle. So now Conley has been instituted. So the fucking Duke has got control of Arrakis. Hey, what Vladimir Harkin calls it, which I love, the ultimate man trap, because he knows that he has the Lito deep in his hands, because the one thing that starts at the very beginning of the book, they're all just talking about how Duke Lito is just dead, that he's might as well be dead.

I mean, while I was like, that guy's a lot, no one seems to give a fuck about Duke Lito. This is where I want to kind of come in and talk about the difficulty for me of the opening pages of this book, and a thing that I have to wrestle with, I think, throughout a lot of different sections of this book, and now I kind of love it about it, is that a lot of it reminds me of dream logic. Like Lito is in this situation, he knows he shouldn't be in, and yet he's just going forward with it, and as much as everyone's like, you know you're fucked, right? And he's just like, I am, but I'm just going to keep going forward.

It's like being in a dream where you're like, why am I even in this haunted house? I know the house is going to kill me, but I'm here because I'm in a dream and I'm like trapped in the dream's momentum. He's also never had a challenge that he's never not surmounted with his wit, his honor, and his power. So his whole thing is that what he said, the best part about having a trap is that knowing of the trap is half the battle, right? So he knows he's entering into a trap, but what he doesn't understand, I think that

now, again, this current rereading of it, is that he's not in Harkinen's trap. He's in Jessica's trap, and he never knew that he was, but Jessica never thought of it as a trap. She never thought that her love for him would actually be the thing that doomed them, but in a way, they thought that when Lito would show up to Arrakis, because again, like the end of Dune 1, it starts with the good guys winning. So the good guys have won. So there's this kind of flickering thought that means, okay, finally, somebody who has

some sense is going to be taking control of this very important part. Somebody's going to finally go and do all the things that they need to do. And Jessica, I think, is almost in her way, kind of like, I feel this. I feel this. I feel like, even though I am wise with the Benny Jessford feeling, I know that, well, maybe if anybody can see his way out of this bullshit, it's him. It's my Duke. My Duke will figure it out, but she doesn't understand that when she gave him Paul, she

fucked up this whole thing, because now we're back to Paul. Paul, the very beginning of this book, is dreaming. He's there. He's asleep in his bed. Little Timothy Chamoledino. I was going to say, imagine Timothy Chamoledino, sort of reciting Shakespeare in his sleep. I used to summer in Italy every year. That's my Timothy Chamoledino.

My Timothy Chamoledino impression normally involves someone who is too hungry to stand. Another important little tidbit that I didn't catch on to till later is, like, this actually exists in a far future of our actual world, like a comment on actual history on earth. They talk about literature from, you know, before times, because between now and what is our earth, there was a thing called the Butlerian jihad, which is a fun name. But the whole thing was about, but Larry, you had it. That's great. Save that.

That was, yeah. Save that for your album. Oh, let me repeat the joke, because I feel like most of you guys didn't get it. Larry. I've never seen, I've seen you guys at the lights, but I'm pretty sure I should have heard louder laughter from the audience at this point in my standup special. Larry. Larry.

Larry. He is having a stream. Timothy Chamoledino is actually a really good casting for Paul, because he's supposed to be 15. He's supposed to be small for his age. He's clever afoot. And his whole thing is that I would put him as a neutral good because of what goes on in his future.

He is, he looks up to his father. He loves his father. But he seems to understand things are not right at the very, very beginning. I like you say neutral somewhere in between order and chaos, because I think he sees how fucked up full order is. Well, because his, because Duke Leto does that, right? He just because, always by the rules, and he gets completely spoiler alert ass fucked. Ass fucked.

Because he was a goody-dooshoos. And when you find out it's in this world, especially in the world of Rackus, it's dangerous, man. Yeah. And it's not good to be the one person that's trying to like bring everything back to a quote unquote normal, because there are a lot of people that lose money when things are brought to a quote unquote normal. And I don't know what that's remotely comparison to.

I don't know what you think. What is that like? Story of this country, which again, I know it's like a dumb analogy, but I think it's why we had that analogy in our notes. Yes. Because it really is that way, right? Like the moment you see someone come into power who has actual decent intentions or you think they do, they just get either way, they get fucking steamrolled by the billionaires

that have been, they don't give a fuck. They're consistently profiting off of it. It's the whole thing where- How fucked up it is. All the smuggling on Rackus is not a bug, it's a feature. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a built-in part of it.

It's supposed to be a corrupt place. So this guy is a fucking mark. Paul though, that's living a life that he was never supposed to live. And the very beginning is that he wakes up to his mother, big bucks of mother staring at him. God, Jessica's so hot. Yeah. I mean, honestly, and Rebecca Ferguson in the movies are really fucking cutey-panty as

well. But they look at him and he knows something's up. He's immediately thrown into the world of the Benny Jetserit. Now, Paul was not supposed to get any of this training. He was not supposed to be taught how to use the voice, which we'll talk about in a later episode. He was not supposed to know how to truth say, which is one of these other things- These are all Benny Jetserit things, abilities, where he can see when people are telling the

truth. He's held by the- he can watch every move, kind of like the way Sherlock Holmes used to do, where you could tell somebody's profession by the way they walk and shit like that. He's that type. He has that skill set. And he immediately is tested by this Reverend mother, which you'd see excellently parodied in Henry Zabrowski's The Characters on Netflix, where he has to put- this is where he puts his hands in the box to find out whether or not he is a human or an animal.

So, he is threatened by the Gom-Jubar. It's a great- one of my favorite scenes in all literature, where he is sitting there. He is forced to put his hand in this box. The Reverend mother, like who is essentially Jessica's fucking boss, shows up with this thing called the Gom-Jubar, which is essentially like a thimble with a needle on it, and she presses to his neck, essentially saying, you move from your hand from this box. I'm going to stab you in the neck, you're going to be fucking dead in a second. And he's just like, oh no, because it's Timothy Chamele.

So he puts his hand in there, he experienced such an incredible amount of pain, right, that he thinks that his skin is boiling and ripping from the bones, and he's scr- DIE MOSS! I must leave it in the box! It reminds- have you ever seen those red ant bags in the sky? Yeah, I did! They have to- oh, I can feel it myself, like I feel the pain myself when I think about it.

So fucking sweet! But he puts his hand in the box. The Reverend's gonna- but because he doesn't remove it, it shows that he is a human and not an animal, because an animal would go as far as to chew their own leg off to take themselves out of a trap, where a human can see that it's not in fact a trap at all, and that when he removes his hand from the box, his hand is completely fine. And he's like, wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- wha- Yeah, it becomes Tim the Toolman-Taylor.

Immediately! And starts hosting a show on Arrakis. Tim Allen should have been Paul the Trades. But I- this is my one, like, thing in Dune. The reason why I love Dune is because I am not- I don't know if you can tell, I'm a bit of a contrarian, and people would say that sometimes I'm just, like, not a lot of fun. Like, I don't like what other people like. That makes me super cool, right?

Right. That's super- I'm too edgy for life. Yeah, you're my mean devil friend or whatever. But again, I like the villains. Yeah. I've always been that way since I was a little kid. I've always liked the villains more than the heroes. I think there's a lot of people like that.

But I was- I always sided with whoever would look the most evil. I love them. But this is a series where I love the heroes because they are not pure heroes. Because the pure heroes I don't get. The only pure hero I love is, um, Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks. That is the only pure hero. And even he has, like, he goes to the dark side. Because he's the only one who can handle the dark side completely because he's so pure

on the inside. Yeah. This shows immediately that there are hanks within this idea of creating a Neo. Because as soon as that Paul shows that he's a human, it's the first sign of, oh no, is this the aforementioned Quitsa Hatterac, right? Is this the one? Is this the kid? Because everybody's mad at Jessica.

She was not supposed to have a son. They fucked up generations of control over DNA lines, right? Well, and I was going to say too, and then it takes that question of, oh, is he Neo? And like, if you think about even the Matrix in the same vein, it's like, do we want to break people out of the Matrix? Is Neo actually a good thing for humanity and the world? And I think that's kind of where the book takes us to and where the rest of the series ends up trying to answer that question.

I think that's the fascinating angle to doon is it doesn't just give you this, like, Luke Skywalker and give you this amazing hero journey. It totally gives you that. It does. And then it also goes like, yeah, but is that actually a good thing? Because now I start to wonder, because the Benny Jesserit has been talking about this Quitsa Hatterac for so long, right? And this idea of this fabled dude.

Because the idea is that the Benny Jesserit, they can share memories with each other. So each reverend mother, as they die, has to give their memories to another reverend mother. And somebody that is a trained aid up within the Benny Jesserit shares memories of every only female line that is behind them. So they can see all of these memories, right? They have access to this giant collective unconscious. Because remember, there are no machines.

So all of these various little groups have decided to train and hone the human mind to act as if they were computers versus just flawed filled goops of shit. And Henry's introducing this idea now of being able to delve back into every like ancestral lines, memories and to inform oneself. This is actually one of the probably most repeated concepts and themes of the entire series. So that is actually a very important bullet point. And I actually did not realize that began with them and this thing, this concept you're

talking about. That's why we're doing this fucking show. Yeah. Oh, wrestle you to the fucking ground. I'll teach you everything. Before we started, I refuse to allow you to do it again. We must wrestle before the end of this limited series. And see who physically can beat the other.

See who can get the other person's shoes off. Yeah. And then I guess we'll fucking kiss. Yeah. Oh, man. I wanted to. Hey, yeah. Hey, man.

That's front row tickets. Freeman ceremony. And then we'll be complete then and then we'll drink the water of the world. I've already have a worm farm. I've been harvesting in my office. I want to trip balls. But you see the Benny Jesterick can only look into the female line. The Quitsack Hatterack though can look to where none of them, what they say, the unlookable

place, which is into the male side of all of their memories. It's very gendered. I don't completely understand why, but this is Frank Herbert's world. We're just loving it. Yeah. Completely. So they think, oh God, he might be the Quitsack Hatterack, but this is the thing. They always start to realize they wanted this Quitsack fucking Hatterack.

They've been talking about this shit for generations. They've been God one on accident. And then they're super pissed about it. They don't want Paul. They don't. They're very mad at Jessica for doing this, especially the very beginning. What is their prophecy for tell a Quitsack Hatterack doing? I think that they like, why are they afraid of it?

Because of how powerful this person is. The prophecy is how powerful this person's supposed to be. It'll seal their shine. But what I don't think that they understood is that when they created a Neo, why do you think you'd be able to control Neo? You created the most powerful entity, quote unquote, in the universe, so now you also expect him to be this funny, do whatever the fuck it is that you say? No, because Paul is immediately, he's a little brat, right?

Again, also perfect for Timothe Shama Lemon Ding Dong, right? He is a, he's a little brat. And he's immediately just being like, I resent what you are for thrust upon me this terrible purpose. There's your hero, ladies. There he is. I don't believe the toy should be at the puppet strings of the beanie jessonette. And they look at him and they're immediately like, who's this little fucking bitch?

Tell me what to do. But they also did not fucking fully read what's going on because the Messiah has been born and the Messiah is out the fucking stable and it is going whether they like it or not. And classically the Messiah, and I know we're going to wait on talking about the Freeman for later. Fuck shit. Of course the Messiah is going to tap into the poor and the kind of, not cast away but sort of this like massive numbers of desert people that are just going to flip the whole

thing on its head. This is where they really get lumped in the pussy is because when they're putting all of this shit together, yeah, I'm not blowing through that. We can keep moving fast that. When they put all of that shit together, the beanie jessaret doesn't just control blood lines. They also control the religious myths of the entire universe. They have this thing called the missionary of productivity, which is this, they send

out members of the beanie jessaret to all corners of the universe and what they do is go to various what they would consider quote unquote primitive civilizations that haven't yet fully gotten the touch of beanie jessaret and what they do is insinuate themselves inside of these groups and create myths and mythos for them to later complete in order to basically fool various races across the world. So what they did, an example is here on Arrakis, as it seems that the fremen already have this like as the Duke leader arrives, they have this sort of like mumbling thing about how there is supposed to be this, this special boy that is born out of essentially out of

love, but against duty for the beanie jessaret. There's supposed to be this like boy more D than desert mouse, which rifling through the fremen, but it was placed there by beanie jessaret like a millennia ago. But now their profit has shown up. And can you imagine being like this is like one thing we were talking about that you arrive on Arrakis, Paul has already been told by his mother, dad's fucking dead here. Nobody cares. Right.

Nobody gives a shit. It is really the truth. And one of the most weirdest things that throw you off right at the very beginning is just like what you think is the main character, totally the Ned Stark, right? It's fully, it is very much Ned Stark, but he's just the lamb for the slaughter. And you think he's kind of like, I guess you kind of know Paul's the main character. But if you don't know, like I didn't fully know. I thought, you know, Lito is going to do a little bit more in this whole thing.

I thought he'd get more fights in because he seems like a fucking badass. And I use with, with beak and claw, we will rise above as hawks among lesser birds. That's my favorite toast. I do that toast at home. Fantastic. I love it. You think he's going to do some crazy shit. But man, he gots fucking gitty, gitty, gitty, got dog in this weird way though too, because

Frank Herbert can never just have him be stabbed in the back. But that's the best part about Frank Herbert. He's got to have like a poison capsule in his teeth. Oh, well get there. Well get there. It's so good. But so Paul, he's getting lessons, right? So, you know, he has trainers.

Well, here's, well, let's introduce you to some of his other, his, these boys, dog. Yeah, it's time to bring the boys. Paul's dog. Paul's dog. Paul's dog. Gernie Halleck, who is just the funniest, coolest dude in the motherfucking book, right? Gernie Halleck, he's the weapons master. He trains Paul, this little boy, in how to fight.

They have this thing called like the many wanded fighting tree. That's like one of the weird things that David Lynch got right in that movie, which is like that tree thing that Kyle McLaughlin fights. Gernie Halleck trains him on that. He's got this ballast set, which I believe is somewhere between a violin and a guitar that he brings everywhere. And he's always kind of fun. See, he's the bard.

Yeah, he's the bard. But he's got an inky vine, this like scar on the front of his face that comes from being tortured by the Harkonnins. And all right, so he hates Harkonnins, he hates into this fucking gnarless fucking nuts. And he is, he's played by Patrick Stewart in the movie. When you read books, do you imagine actors when you read books? I definitely imagine them if they are, even if I haven't seen the movie, if like, I know that they're the character of the movie.

But no. And again, like, I imagine you as that worm god in the books. But do you, like, because in my mind, because it's like what I'm reading, dude, it's like I see Kyle McLaughlin, obviously, as Paul. And then all the other characters from the David Lynch movie, Paul. But except I make Dung in Idaho, another one of Paul's buddies, who is one of the swashbuckling dude that for some reason, is becomes this massive part of the sexthology. I don't particularly understand, but as we talk, we will talk more and more about Dung

in Idaho. His name pops up again and again, but I imagine him as Carl Urban for some reason. I imagine him, and again, I don't even think about Game of Thrones this much, but it's just been in my head, I guess, but the onion thief, that guy, the bearded guy, that, that's him, right? That's Gurney Halleck. In my mind, I put him as a Gurney Halleck. I see him as Dung in Idaho, because he's, like, weathered, he's, like, been through shit,

but he's handsome enough, but he's also, and I'm thinking actually, by the way, it's hard because I have to separate it out, the version of Dung in Idaho that is that, the onion thief character guy, is in, like, book. That's, like, book three and book four, like, it's, like, the weathered, the kind of frustrated, bewildered, why am I still in this book series version of Dung in Idaho that we get to? He gets, but in this one, he's, like, he's, like, a swashbuckling guy, right? Yeah, he's slick. But that's another one of Paul's trainers, and then the other one is Thufir Hawat, who

is one, it is the House of Traities' warrior mentat. Now, mentats, we'll cover in another episode. But basically, what's a mentat? They're human computers. Yes. They're trained to be, essentially, like, you shoot them a bunch of choices, both political and not, and their jobs are to come up with, like, and take all of the factors and variants of, like, different things, of, like, highly complex issues, like, all these kind of shit,

and their brains kind of go, like, and then they come up with, like, what they consider to be the most logical response. Now, you brought up something earlier that I actually want to go back to because we're talking about this, because I never thought too deeply about this. Is there a reason why there aren't actual computers? Well, it's because the Butlerian jihad happened in the before world of Dune, which was, essentially, a massive revolt of humankind against thinking computers that had taken over the world. So what they're stipulating is that this is the year that this happens is the year 10,193

in our world. Yes. So 8,000 years from now is when Dune is happening. Okay. And so the eight... And the Butlerian jihad is essentially just hopefully what's going to happen when we finally reach the true culmination of how shitty Twitter is. I guess, but also I think we should give the robots a shot.

Okay. I think that they should... I think that humans have shown... You just want to play your weird games with them. Yeah, I do. Deep in the closet. I want to be a jester for a series of AIs. I will be...

I'm one of the good ones. Listen to me, machines. I'm one of the good ones. But he also has a teacher named Dr. Yui. Dr. Yui is a part of a... I forgot what the term is. He's like this conditioned, imperial conditioned doctor. So the goal is that he's supposed to be incorruptible.

And he teaches Paul all the shit that Paul needs to know before he gets to the planet. Now, imagine this fucking Holden, right? Imagine that you were a young kid and you were supposed to go... You're moving to a new state, right? You're moving to another country or some shit. You don't know anything about this. You're moving to a fucking Lithuanian. I don't have such a fucking prick about that.

Oh my God. You should have seen when they changed high schools. Fuck. That's the fifth grade I changed schools. I was just like... Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I friend you.

I don't want to, daddy. This is what Paul does. Yes. But imagine you showed up in a place that you don't know, you don't speak the language, what's going on. And not only are they, like, everyone's kind of running scared around you. You're 15 years old. But then they show you footage of murals inside of caves that look just like you, that have

been painted, that by people a thousand years ago that say, this is going to be our prophet, that's going to lead us to actual ownership of this planet one day. Can you imagine the head trip of being 15 years old and literally they're like, yeah, some of these cave people for some reason think you're a god. And then he has to like, oh, daddy, I wish it wasn't so, I wish today with the sphere rods and kind of done. But actually he's in the end, he kind of gets hardened. That's why he's truly is duped.

Well, you gotta go out to the fucking desert, bro. That's what happens, dad, fucking rips you up, hardened in a couple ways because he also does get that. Yeah. Yeah. He loves that. Um, so that's like, that's Paul's basic team in the very beginning. Yes.

And then we all will slowly meet because the thing about the Harkinen team, who else do we need in Harkinen? Harkinen, we've got. We got Peter. Yes. Who is the fucking? I love this character played by Brad Dwarf and fucking David Lynch movies. First book.

He's only in the first book. Yes. He has a ghost in book two and three, like there's some shit like that. And actually, weirdly enough, also in the movie ghost, which no one experienced. We're like, why is the mentor, the Mentat here, when these, they're running through space must flow. You wonder why they had a whole thing about sandworms in the middle of that movie. That's why.

Deep cut. Big doon. That would be Goldberg's like, well, who's the spice will be the doon head? I'm certain that was what she pitched. That's my whoopie Goldberg impression was the spice. That's perfect. SNL. I've got your new boy here.

Whoopie Goldberg. I was married to Techman. Good Lord. Also love Impressious. You just say the name of who they are. It's important. It's facts about themselves. How else are people supposed to know?

That's what I do. That's how you know. That's how you do it. Impression. I was in Goodfellas. Little bit. Little bit. I'm the master of impressions.

You're fantastic at it. Oh, I'm Al Pacino. I'm a Shakespeare. I'm Petty. What's the name? It's me. It's Petty. Yeah, I'm Tom Petty.

I'm Tom Petty. I'm Joe Petty. Oh, this is great. That fucking episode, man. That's a great fucking episode, dude. But then there's also Fade Ralpha, his nephew. Now, one thing about Baron Herkonen. Herkonen's nephew.

Yeah. Yeah. The Fade Ralpha is he thinks that he's own nephew is very sexy. And he really, he really hit that because what's weirdest, the book shows Herkonen is like almost sad about what he has to do to Duke Leto because what we are now going to find out is that Duke Leto has what it's called a faint within a faint within a faint, which is also a term that comes up in doing quite a bit where he is ready to get Lito's goat. He hates how handsome Duke Leto is.

He hates how much everybody fucking respects Duke Leto because Baron Herkonen does not care about respect or anything all he cares about is money and power. And that's all he wants. It's really strange how all of this really is about money weirdly. And what's funny though, too, is that like, and again, this speaks to that kind of lame analogy at the very beginning is like, that does kind of remind me of our former presence. This is like, he's got this money, he's got this stuff, but it'll never be pretty. And never be pretty, never be liked by the right people.

That's always what's just going to be at the heart of all of the dumb, shitty, petty stuff that it's just interesting, but how in the first book, Herkonen is labeled as like the villain of all villains, right? But he actually has sympathy for Leto. And he has like these like weird moments where it's like, because technically he has this like way in. So what he has done is that he has corrupted Dr. Yui, who has these conditioning, this imperial conditioning, which is supposed to never be broken, he's supposed to be incorruptible,

but they've managed to get to him, which he says every man has his lever, which I think actually is very true. You can break a man. And we're talking about mental games here, we're not even talking about bribes or anything like that. Like it's literally just them. Well, he's got his wife. Basically, he's been torturing Dr. Yui's wife for a very long time.

Now it comes back. Oh, this is the problem with us having wives. Well, and it's that we gives us something to lose, dude. This is our problem. We're giving our enemies levers because we allow ourselves to feel love. Any person in Dune that loves dies. I was about to say, love is the catalyst for all shenaniganry. In the entire book.

I literally wouldn't say gutter per dude, I was going to say it should just be called Dune 4, the fifth element. It is true. That is what it should be called. It's really true. It is just the key to all chinks in the armor, let's say. You just, there's something about this idea because Frank Herbert, again, married, loves his wife.

Obviously, love Brian Herbert didn't beat him with a fucking stick. Right. But also, he is just saying that love makes you weak. And every single time you love, you don't, your head, you're distracted. Your head's on a fucking, you're not on the proper swivel. But that makes so much sense because all of this is just a bunch of different groups to be in Jester, at Harkonnen's, the emperor himself. Everybody is just a bunch of different groups trying to plan out the next like 3,000 years

of a human existence. And guess what the problem is, is that when you decide in this idea that I can accurately predict the future of how humans will behave, you find that it is actually, it doesn't work out like that at all. It is the living in New York City, the books. Like it is like, when you go to New York, the first thing you learn is everything's out of your control. And as soon as you try to control like the way your day is going to go, you just get

slammed in the face. You just get the opposite, the moment you, but as long as you're like willing to just kind of go with the flow, the spice flow, then you may prevail. Very good turn. Very good bringing it back. Bringing it back to the spice. You got it. Yui now is, now he regretfully too, is in this shitty position where he does not want

to do this to Lido. He does not want to. But he is now in Harkonnen's pocket. So Harkonnen knows that, all right, I have this, I'm going to get Duke Lido. I'm going to get my ultimate revenge. I am going to go in. Now that he's doing his fun little games. He's taken over Arrakis.

I'm going to go. I'm taking Arrakis back. I have what turns out to be the full backing of the Emperor, because that's also sort of a reveal that the Emperor, even though he loved Duke Lido and even admitted to his own daughter, I wish that he was my son. He also can't let Duke Lido fuck with his money or fuck with his spice. So when he knows, when it comes down to it, we got to get this fucking guy out of there. He believes up to a point he can control Harkonnen because Harkonnen really does in his way have

simple tastes. He just likes money, violence, boy dick. He loves boy dick. And then when you find out is that he promised Jessica, so he's going to flip them from the inside. And he has promised Jessica to pitter, which is not good, because pitter's like, I was so, I was so, all of my different machinations of pain, they would see when she goes into my pain chambers, what's that happened to Jessica who lost her body.

Go back to the boy dick because I'd rather be in boy dick right now than highter. I want to see the points on the globes, points towards me. But Harkonnen also, and the problem is that Harkonnen, he's looking for Paul. He wants some of that. He wants a couple slices of that 15 year old boy, but that PD, that Paul dick, Paul dick. And this is where we're at the first quarter of this book. This trap is unleashed on the Duke Lido. Now he's got, he thought he got all this shit set up.

Also one of my favorite scenes in the very beginning is the dinner scene, when he does that first like, because Duke Lido is very much like JFK in my mind, because when last podcast did the JFK series, there's like one thing we kept saying, he's like the most murdered man who ever lived. There was just so many people trying to kill him and anyone go, and there's like so many people trying to fucking kill this dude. And it's, he has this scene where he basically tells all of these shitheads that have had this very comfortable world on Dune, how shit gone done change around here.

Because what he finds out when he arrives is that apparently, so the one thing is that they flocked how much water that they can have. The leaders of Dune, a prerequisite is to sort of like boast about how much water you have access to versus anybody else. Water is the OLED 4K flat screen TV, the Tesla, let's say, of, of Arrakis. They love it. They say not to say Tesla again in this episode, but it is that. Sponsorist Tesla.

Please Tesla sponsorist. I need a self-driving car. I will kill my wife in future jobs. That's, give him a self-driving car. He cannot be driving. But it is that ultimate like luxury item, the fancy Nike shoes of Arrakis is water. But basically he found out that they would take the extra water from this party and was common courtesy for them to go and sop it all up because they do this kind of ceremony

where they pour water on the ground. And then one of the Fremen like housekeepers would go and sop it all up with a rag and then charge people to get a drop of it where she would squeeze it into their mouths. And he was like, fuck that. We're not going to, I'm changing shit. We're not going to boast about our water fatness anymore, which is the term that they come up with. And so he changes everything.

He like throws over the bulls. He does this whole thing. Basically he calls out everybody at this fucking party. They all know it's a huge mistake. All the smugglers. And then there's a guy that's obviously a harken, an agent. And there was another little girl that was put there to fuck Paul just to like get into his head to try to play with this 15 year old mind.

But for some reason Paul is the least horny 15 year old I've ever seen. He really is. And that's his power. And I would say the same thing with Elron Hubbard is the reason why Elron Hubbard did so well for so long is because his penis didn't really get involved. Right. But I thought he was a horny, horny man later in life. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, okay. I thought he was a horny weirdo. No, but he was not. Yeah. LRH actually never really used the penis much. He didn't get wrapped up into it. He made a bunch of people dress them like admiral outfits and shit, but he never made them a less.

Right. But I would also attribute that to just having a deeply intense speed addiction as well. But he maybe he couldn't get it up. And also Paul, he's a lover, just like his father, because his father was the same way. His father just loved his fucking concubine. He didn't love anybody else and he regretted forever that he wouldn't get a chance to marry Jessica. Paul's also a mopey-mope.

He's a mopey-mope. He's like Hamlet. Yeah. He's a goth superhero. Yes. This is very much. I saw one joke on, I believe it was on Twitter that called dude in Star Wars for Goths, which is very true.

You see, because he talked about him electronically, like sitting in a lounge, and you know, and Duke Lado was like, he would be on the address of Duke very well, because he liked somebody who holds his shit together. He doesn't like somebody who's so fucking a frivolous nitwit, right? So the trap is sprung. Duke Lado is surprised. They try to kill Paul. They manage to get away.

The main, again, one of my favorite scenes in the whole book was when Dr. Yui, he's the one that captures Duke Lado. He basically says, I'm sorry. I got to do this. They got my wife. But what we're going to do is I need you to kill Baron Harkinen. And what I'm going to do is have this tooth, I'm going to have this hollowed out tooth. I'm going to put it into your mouth.

And then when you are presented to the Baron, you're going to bite on the tooth, release this poison gas, and you're going to blow it into his face and kill him. Yeah. Super fucking cool way to kill someone. Fucking dope. Absolutely. This is where Frank Herbert's imagination, I think, is absolutely incredible. I love it because he has to come up with all of these sort of like hyper analog ways to

do things. And it's got to be mousetrap. It's got to be, speaking of analog, but also it's got to be like this will knock this over, which will lead to this. So it's like, we've got... It took him six years to write these fucking books. Exactly. Right?

We've got you captured, but I'm going to give you the tooth, but then you have to do that. And then obviously, well, not obviously, but it does not go as to plan. It does not. He ends up only killing Pitter in the exchange, which is so sad that we only had Pitter for so long. That's one of my fucking favorites. I really wish you could have done that impression for episode after episode. Hey, we'll continue to do the evoesence, Pitter.

No, I will look at her moist round bush. So I'm busy this weekend. I want to pleasure her mounds with my knife needles. I mean, with my girlfriends, and we're going to the mall to get our... I can't. Can I come or is it women only? It's really just the girls for this one, but I'll call ya. I don't think she is going to call Pitter.

I, you know, I love him and say that he died, but Baron Harkonnen, it just misses him. But then he realizes is that he surrounded himself by these emperor's troops. And then he realizes that not only so Duke is gone, right? So he set up this whole plan that just gun Paul would be immediately killed. And this is also how you know that the Baron Harkonnen is actually not as bad as you think he was because he was supposed to give Jessica over to Pitter to be essentially tortured to death. And then he was supposed to suck Paul to Paul was a fucking empty bag, right?

Right. So it turns out he wasn't that stuck on it because what he did, so Jessica is burned, right? Like down on the ground. And then she sees a burp, burp, burp, burp, burp, burp. She sees him float in, right? Because the one thing about Baron Harkonnen is that they say he glides because he's got these like sensor things like lifting him up, like he's fucking Louis Anderson and a

fucking wrecking balls like he's in Cirque du Soleil, but you know, for fat people, it's fun for him. So he rolls and she wakes up to see him, but he gives Pitter a choice. So they sit there and they're about to like, they're about to expose you. She's supposed to go to the pain tanks and Paul's supposed to be there, but he looks at Pitter. It's like, I'll give you a choice, Pitter. You can take the woman and exile from the Imperium.

All the duchy of a trade is on a rackets to rule as you see fit in my name. And so he basically says, what if I give you this shit, right? But meanwhile, Jessica knows in the meantime, what that means is they're all dead. Anybody that Baron Harkonnen like says anything to, they are dead, right? Because he's constantly backstabbing anybody around him, but he looked at Jessica and the way he views Jessica as a tool and that what he thought Pitter was going to do to her was such a waste of this incredible tool. The way he put it was, understand yourself, Pitter.

You want her because she was a Duke's woman, a symbol of his power, beautiful, useful, exquisitely trained for her role, but an entire duchy, Pitter, that's more than a symbol. That's the reality. With it, you can have many women add more. So what the fuck does he do with Jessica? He fucking gives them the fucking they go. They bound Jessica and Paul and then they do the thing that every overconfident villain always does, which I think is on purpose.

Leave them for dead. Basically, he says, we're going to go, we'll drop them in the desert. The desert's going to handle them. They don't know anything about the desert, but they don't understand that Paul's actually been highly, highly trained to deal with the desert. So is Jessica, they already had a meeting with Liet Keen, so we're going to talk about next episode, who is the planet ecologist, who is a off-worlder dude that has insituated himself so deep into the frame and like studying Arrakis.

Like he is there, he's part of it, and they actually learned quite a bit on how to handle themselves in the desert. And he's kind of thought, we'll dump them, they'll die, I won't have to deal with them anymore. But it turns out, as it always does, you always need the corpse. Yes. Remember that, Holder. We don't have that listeners at home, especially our younger listeners that may not have had

the thirst of kill just yet. You always need the corpse. It got to have the corpse. And I've said this in the last podcast and left, and that's the truth, is that if you don't have a corpse, you don't have a crime. Yeah, and I said this to my mom just the other day, my God, I just want to fucking jerk off, hunched over a giant, bloated, dead corpse. And this is what brings us to the end of the first episode of Dunecast, because that's

what this is really all about. Right. I'm not jerking off on the corpse, but the energy behind it. And how you really have to think about the consequences of your actions. And you also have to think about, I think big questions we're going to lay on you are, do you really want to know the future? Do you? If you had the chance to play God, should you and would you?

I would. You would? Of course. I feel the opposite. Reading God Emperor the whole time, I was just, I mean, not to jump ahead too much, but I was just like, I never, I, A, I don't even know if I like this fucking guy. And I don't. You won't even get to know him.

The person. You won't even fucking get to know him. You're just so like, disgusted by his form that you won't get to know the man inside. There's a man in the worm, bro. You see the man in the worm. That's what makes it worse. I'd rather just be a fucking worm. They're all the carapultures if I have a penis.

The loneliest worm in the world. He's the loneliest worm in the world. But yes, I, you know what, that's how I wooed my wife, Natalie. That was like one of the things I used to talk to her about. This is really true. So when we were first dating. A worm guy. Are you going to say talking about dude because she seems exasperated every time you talk

about doing around her. But go on. She has been worn down by love. But I used to tell her, which is a bit that I used to do about how, a bit about how I'd love to be dictator because I'd be a dictator who listens. And I think that's what's important. I don't also understand about Harkinen is that he comes, he comes from this like world of shit.

What you'll find also about like Yeti Prime where he's from is this like black rock filled with just like essentially like orcs like working and just like filled with just fucking pollution and corruption and all this kind of bullshit looks like man flesh is back on the menu. It is all of that shit. But it's like, if you're a dictator, like if I was a dictator, I'd like also put in fun shit. Yeah.

I mean, like I would put in like all sorts of like merry-go-round and holodex and like a silent, silent, that one of the silent discos where everybody's wearing the headphones. All of that shit. Ice cream for free every Tuesday. If you don't get a culture ticket, because culture tickets will be big. That's just more about making sure you fit in with the environment. So just changing it to a first grade classroom is what we're doing. But you get ice cream and holodex and all that kind of shit.

Why are you complaining? It's a really thin slice of pizza for a pizza party. You get a piece of pizza and you didn't have to pay for it. That's what you pay your taxes for, because there's a lot of taxes in my world. But that's, they does open up on one chapter when they are wondering what the hell, basically when they're wondering where the hell Jessica and Paul is, they cut to Getty Prime and they fade Rautha is just, their way to like have fun is that his nephew who's played by Sting in the movie, who's just like, you know, there's like a ruthless cunning like fuck.

Like he basically just slits the throat of a hundred slaves and they're all like, yay, because they're like forced to like it with fear. But that's, you know, that's where I want our audience to be. A hundred percent. I want you to be afraid to not like this show. Right, absolutely. And I agree with that. I love, I think when fear is the basis of anything, it seems to work out really well.

People love it. Thank you so much for joining us on our first journey into the sands of Dune. Next week we will take up more of the plot of Dune. But I will say episodes after four are not going to be about plot. We're going to be talking more about themes and bullshit. Yeah. And a lot of this, you know, and if you're thinking like, oh, that just give it away all the plot points.

You wouldn't understand anything if we didn't. It's like, A, you wouldn't understand anything. B, it's like this is all just setting up pieces to put into motion so that we can talk about philosophical concepts so that we can talk about political structures and these these also trying to wrap my fucking brain around the concept. I was reading this like article about the fractal nature of Dune and this idea that he wrote it as fractals. Know what those are?

Yes. Like a recurring shape. All the math, mathematics shapes and patterns, smaller patterns, like micro patterns also exist on a macro level. Yeah. I see that. It'll be difficult to understand. He also, not to bring it back to dreams too much, but again, I think that he purposely

has, especially as the books go on, I don't think it's like bad writing or laziness either. He's constantly cycling back to these concepts and adding more to them. And again, I think that big one is that past sense concept of being able to have all of your ancestors' memories inside one person and how that makes you transcend being one human being. Or even as a child, you're also like an old woman and you're also this that and the other at the same time. But what happens when you're so focused on listening to the quote unquote memories of

the past and also visions of the future that you don't take the time to live in the present? Abomination! I'm taking the knife. But thank you so much. We will be back next week with more Dunecast. All right. Let's close it out with the proper way. I must not fear.

Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain. And now a scene from Dune Theater.

The scene opens with Jessica having just left her son, Paul, in the hands of the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mojian. Paul, put your right hand in the box. From the folds of her gown, she lifted a green metal cube. She turned it and Paul saw that one side was open, black, and oddly terrifying. What are you going to do to me, Reverend Mother? I hold at your neck the Gom Jabbar, the high-handed enemy. It's a needle with a drop of poison on its tip.

Don't pull away. You'll feel that poison. How did you trick my mother into leaving me alone with you? Here's the rest of it. If you withdraw your hand from the box, you die. This is the only rule. Keep your hand in the box and live, withdraw it, and die. What is in it?

Pain. Oh, sorry. Yeah, just need to do a little vacuum in here, you know, friendly neighbor of janitor, don't mind me. Paul, this is to determine if your human be silent. Pain throbbed up his arm, sweat stood out on his forehead. Only Fiber cried out to withdraw his hand from that burning pit, but the Gom Jab- Can someone tell me where the toilet is around here?

Is it the one of these round doors? The ones that lift? Excuse me. Someone called a janitor said there's a leak of that brown water, something about not wasting it as is the custom. I don't get it all I do, right? Say, is this kind of pain ceremony happening here? Is that what's going on on a Sunday?

Leave us, you fool. What's in the box? Pain, quite a bit of it, stop distracting me, tears the mind to kill it. Yeah, I know a thing or two about pain, I'll tell you what, my wife Linda left me for the dog trainer. The dog one. Fucking Linda. It's actually much more painful to listen to this janitor talk about his personal life

than leaving my hand in this box. If I had to choose between the two, I'd definitely choose the magical pain box any day. Am I being nagged here, is that what's happening? I read all the books, I know how the game works, that's how I got Linda. I did a magic trick full of the nightclub, now I'm here, look, I can tell you guys want me to go. I can tell your eyes are screaming, get out of this room janitor. So much pain.

I'll do just that. You know how many toilets are in Caledon? I'll give you a hint. So let me let you go, I'll get out of here, but I'll tell you, if anyone's a human it's all over here. I know I'm gonna see him. Pain. Pure pain, nothing, please, please let me take my hand out of the box.

Enough! Cool wahad! No woman child ever withstood that much. And the whole janitor thing happened as well, an unexpected barrier. Still here actually. Get out of here. All right, well it'll be the last time you see me as a reoccurring character that I'll have you know.

I'll be in the background, I'll be signalling stuff. Take your hand from the box, young human, and look at it. Paul jerked his hand from the box and stared at it, astonished, not a mark, no sign of agony on the flesh. A human can override any nerve in the body. We, Benidesserit, sift people to find the humans. Wow, that's deep. You guys wanna hit this?

I got a sativa and an indica. The Reverend Mother uses the voice. Couple of hybrids. You, you, you, you, you, you. Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!

Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!

Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Ohhhyyyy! Ahhhhhh! Ahhh!

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