Zombie Book Club
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Zombie Book Club
Pluribus (The Happiest Horde) with Special Guest Dr. Perlmutter | Zombie Book Club Ep. 138
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What if the zombie apocalypse looked like a group hug? Pluribus imagines a world where 99.9% of humanity has joined a blissful, all-knowing hive mind, and only 13 people are left to decide whether individuality is worth fighting for. We're joined by media scholar and Texas Tech professor Dr. David D. Perlmutter to unpack why this "happy horde" story is more unsettling than any brain-eater we've encountered: from the alien signal and government hubris that started it all, to the strikingly different choices made by survivors like Carol, Manousos, Koumba, and Kusimayu; each a window into what humans value when civilization quietly dissolves around them.
Together we dig into the show's deeper provocations: Is the hive a form of colonization? A euthanasia of the species dressed up as harmony? And why does the collective feel so uncomfortably like AI; endlessly accommodating, hungry for prompts, incapable of genuine creation? Whether Pluribus qualifies as a zombie narrative at all turns out to be one of its sharpest questions. By the end, we're not asking how to survive the apocalypse, we're asking whether a life without art, love, risk, and the friction of being yourself is a life worth saving.
Guest Contact & Relevant Links
Dr. David D. Perlmutter
- Texas Tech Faculty Page: depts.ttu.edu/comc/faculty/dperlmutter
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Welcome, Premise, And Guest Setup
SPEAKER_01The only book club or the book is the entire stem of human existence, all joined together as one organism.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like that. We'll discuss that. We'll discuss that.
SPEAKER_01I'm Dan and one of them not being a very small part of the entire stem of human existence. I am writing a book about a zombie outbreak that could be used for the benefit of the power-hungry elites to further enslave the survivors or as an opportunity to rebuild society into a more just system. But mostly it's about smashing in zombie heads.
SPEAKER_00All of that sounds fun. I'm Leah, and today we are joined again with Dr. David D. Pearlmutter to chat about our latest favorite zombie show, Pleuravis, a world where 99.9% plus probably more percent of humanity joins the happiest zombie horde you've ever seen, and just 13 people are left uninfected. And so we're going to be asking the question with Dr. Pearl Mutter Would you join the horde, the happiest horde? Or fight to save your individual humanity? If you have not heard episode 128, which is our first conversation with Dr. Pearl Mutter, he's a professor of media and communications at Texas Tech University and a scholar of how we tell stories about war, crisis, power, and our favorite topic, the end of the world. He's the author of Policing the Media, Street Cops and Public Perceptions of Law Enforcement and Visions of War, Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age to the Cyber Age. We are so happy to have you back. You are an in-demand guest, Dr. Pearl Mutter. Welcome back to the show.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much. Nothing like an apocalypse to cozy on up to. I appreciate the time.
SPEAKER_00Well, you did promise us pemmican. A truckload, if I remember right. Are you on your way?
SPEAKER_03Yes. I think the condition was that we are in an apocalypse and then I head towards you with my group, my survivor group, and a semi-truck. And I said that I would deliver a semi-truck full of pemmican. I've already arranged. So you just have to tell me when the balloon goes up or the flag goes down or whatever you young people uh you Elas Babylon. Is that our code?
Apocalypse Code Words And Pemmican Pact
SPEAKER_03What is our code? When you text me, you know, we uh uh for those of you who don't know this, Elas Babylon is a great uh end of the world novel. And it's also a code that two two people use that, yep, this is it. There's gonna be a nuclear war breaking out. So we need a code. So because it I think it takes about 25 hours of hard driving for me to get to you. So just you gotta you gotta give me like a couple of days warning that there's uh that the apocalypse is coming.
SPEAKER_00I mean, can it just be pemmican if I just text you pemmican? Pemmican now.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yeah, pemmican now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like an apocalypse now. I love it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but but don't do it as a joke because I really would be a big deal to drive all the way up there. You know, and then we're just gonna say April Fools or something. If the apocalypse happens on April 1st, there's gonna be a lot of disappointed people, right? Because like they their friends will be joking and no, no, right.
SPEAKER_01So I feel like that's the day it would happen.
SPEAKER_00Since you said that it would take you 25 hours, plus some stops, and you know, it might be some chaos on the roads. I would probably if I was gonna mess with you, which I would never, I'd probably text you Pemmican now on like March 29th, so that you'd arrive on April 1st, and then I'd tell you. I have a joke. So uh Dr. Pearl Mutter, when you were with us last, you were the one who actually brought up Pluribus, and we knew almost nothing about it, but were obsessed from the first episode. What about the show grabbed you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let me do a little bit of an introduction because it sometimes I've when I've heard myself on these podcasts, I find that I repeat the phrase, I am old enough to remember. So I've pledged I will only do that once. So I'm gonna say, I'm old enough to remember when there was such an entity as a water cooler show. This was a show that had very, very high ratings. So there was a quantity of people watching, but also it was talked about. So you would go to the water cooler. I don't know how many of our younger viewers and listeners need to an extraction, but like a place where you got water at the office. This is an in-home, this is I'm sorry, this is an at-work office. I'm talking about not your your cat's water dish at home. And you would talk about, like, hey, last night did you see that episode of MASH or All in the Family or Friends or Seinfeld, which some people think of as the last true water cooler show, of having these super high ratings and also being talked about. Now we have shows, and Plurbus, I think, is a great example of like actually, it was the number one show on the Apple network. So it was a popular show, but let's figure out how many people either bought it or have access to it compared to these friends of yesteryear. But these shows take up a lot of space culturally because I think what happens, and I have this discussion with my students all the time, they may not have watched an entire show, but like their friend invited them over because they had access, or they've watched a lot so many scenes, clips, or they've watched so many memes, or it's been talked about that they feel like they've watched the show. So I think it we're not alone. And of course, the lead actress of the show won the Golden Globe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, she's amazing.
SPEAKER_03I yeah, she absolutely will talk about her and her physicality and her uh the the tunes into Apocalypse and Zombie in a minute. But uh so I I feel like I'm not alone. This wasn't like some some some some professor egghead somewhere said, like, yeah, this is a very important show. But like my students loved this show and are talking about this show. You you had not watched it, you watched it, you you said it's your number one show. Of 2025, yes. 255, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Not in heated rivalry, if I'm honest, at the time, but totally different genre.
SPEAKER_01Heated rivalry is also a water cooler show.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for a different reason. Yeah. Not not for me, but yeah. I I I I think Pluribus, because it's part of this genre that I probably is the the most popular genre for people who don't necessarily love that genre, is apocalyptic movies. They see they seem to get uh I I just watched last night Begonia for the first time, and like, man, we have to talk about that one separately as well. I don't know if you've watched begonia.
SPEAKER_01Just like Pluribus, begonia is also one of those things that keeps on popping up on my TV that I'm like, what is that? At this point, we're just gonna come to you for Rex. Now you're telling us to look at.
SPEAKER_03Well, yes, and then the other problem, the problem is, of course, that like, for example, somebody spoiled the ending of begonia for me 30 minutes after the movie dropped, right? So, so it it uh, but it's still worth watching. I just would not watch it with anyone you loved, let's put it that way. Wow. Because it is so disturbing. Now, Pluribus, let's go back to Pluribus. Pleuribus is a very disturbing show, so we we do not recommend Pluribus for most for small children, for you know, anyone easily triggered by possible by violence and certain situations. But it is it is a fantastic show. I was attracted to it because A, I'm always interested in what my students are paying attention to and why, what what what becomes culturally relevant and resonant, especially through social media, which is sort of my area of of most study, and also shows that I think that this one does make a comment on society and also on media, on sort of the way we process the world. So if you you have an introduction, why don't you go ahead and you know, maybe I I I think I hope people have watched it because I hope we're we are going to be spoiling some things here. Yeah. Yeah. Although, although a lot of the plot is revealed in the first nine minutes. So it's true. The setup, it's not like it takes four episodes for the apocalypse to occur. It's like I think it's 10, 15 minutes in, you already feel like, okay, I wow, this is what's happening. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, you told us to watch it, and I'll give the intro in a second, but some some context there. And it was the holidays, and we thought, you know what? Dr. Pearl Mutter is going to have a good wreck. So we did, and then I pretty much harassed
What Makes Pleuravis A Water-Cooler Show
SPEAKER_00everyone that I love that know to watch it. So I could talk to them about it.
SPEAKER_01I I do want to give that warning though, because um everything from this point on will be a spoiler. And I feel like this is a a show that you don't even want the first episode spoiled for you. Like there's some there's some shows that we watch that are like, we're like, we can tell you everything that happened up until episode five, and that won't ruin it. But I feel like there's so many surprises in this show. Go watch it. If you're not ex you it's not what you expect.
SPEAKER_03They're big reveals seven minutes in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but they're huge because you didn't give them to us. You just said this is a virus uh apocalypse. And um, oh shoot, I was gonna say something.
SPEAKER_03And I don't even feel confident about that either anymore either. So go ahead, please.
SPEAKER_00Um you should all get a free three-month trial of Apple uh TV if you don't have it, because that's how we watched it. Because we usually, if it's on something that we don't have, we're just like, I'm not gonna bother. But we literally have a date in our calendar for when we're gonna get rid of Apple TV. Sorry, Apple TV. Uh so for those of you who have not heard much about the show, just to bring some context and bring us on the same page, if you're choosing to listen to it with spoilers or you've watched it and you need a refresher, it is a post-apocalyptic science fiction show set in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And it follows local author Carol Sterka. After an alien virus turns 99.9% of humanity into a calm, happy hive mind. Um, I would say, like, think peaceful zombies who don't bite, but do really want you to become one of them. Carol discovers she's one of only 13 people who didn't turn. And the world is suddenly quieter, it's more cooperative. Uh, but the hive still plans to absorb the last humans eventually because they say that those who are left of 13 are suffering. They just don't know it yet. Um, but Carol really, really, really doesn't want to become, I'm gonna just call her a zombie for now. We'll debate whether it's a zombie story in a minute. Uh, but there are other 12 others, and they all have various responses to this moment in time. And so we're gonna explore would you, would you join the happy horde or would you be somewhere else in this spectrum of reactions to the entirety of humanity suddenly becoming one singular hive mind? What would you what would you two add that I didn't put in there for the intro of what it's about?
SPEAKER_01Uh this is created and written by uh uh Vince Gilligan, who created Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Um so if you're a really big fan of the writing of those two shows, this doesn't exist in that universe, but it is the same type of writing, and you're gonna find both the horrific and uh the hilarious sometimes in the same scene.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it's also uh Carol Sterka's played by, am I saying it right, Raya Seahorn? She plays Saul's the lawyer's girlfriend in Better Call Saul and is incredible throughout this entire show. What else would you add, Dr. Pearl Mutter, for background?
SPEAKER_03Well, yes, uh it is a Vince Gilligan show. He is probably among the best showrunners and writers. He's a very writing-focused showrunner. Uh he recently made it the statement about how this show, Pluribus, used no AI. He's a very artisanal curated. Sort of the things I admire about your podcast, and like I think good books and good TV, and it it he he really wants to create something. And I don't want to accuse him of being an artist in the sense of like he's only writing for art. He's writing for the popular audience, and I think very successfully, but he's creating sort of deep, thoughtful commentary that you just don't find in the ordinary television show. So this is a show that works at many, many levels, at levels of like excitement, of like adventure, of like what's gonna happen. Oh my God, I can't believe this, but also making you think about culture, society, your your own choices.
Spoilers, Setup, And The Happy Horde
SPEAKER_03You just you said it best, like the one of the best um aspects of of any show and and or uh book or song, uh going back thousands of years to say the Iliad and the Odyssey is somebody saying, gosh, what would I do in that situation? Right? Where where where would my choices be? And that the answers are not simple, right? That I that you it wouldn't be, oh, well, I would obviously do this. I would obviously go with this person, I would obviously cheer for these people to win. It's complicated. It's it's comprehensive. And this is one of those shows because everything you said was factually correct, but I could by the last episode I was also questioning all of those statements.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03About even the basic description of who they are, who she is, who the other survivors are, and their choices. Uh it could have been a very simplistic show, uh, one one man, one woman, they're zombies, and we have to go fight and kill the zombies, and we have to survive, and and I've got the love interest and the survivor group, and they fight their way to their farm in Vermont. The end, right? But every single time you think anything has been established, there's the a reveal, there's a twist, and we're forced to keep rethinking. It's an unnerving show, it's unsettling, that uncertainty. Uh there's a there's a debate on social media about why do so many trailers for movies and TV series give away the entire plot, especially when there's a reveal or a mystery. Actually, that's not true. There's that's some that don't, but there's actually there's has been research done by people in psychology in my field that a lot of audiences want to go into a TV show or a movie or a book with certainty. They don't want to be surprised. Even in the murder mystery. Yeah. I hate when people describe it as a big thing. For some reason, people who do good podcasts are not those people. But a majority of the audience, this is why Hollywood does it, people feel, especially people don't want to feel like they're dumb. And I'm not saying the majority of people are dumb, but just people don't want to feel like something went past them. And so they want that's why a lot of times Hollywood movies or or uh TV series explain things. Like, okay, you you know what had just happened, let me explain it. So let's just start out with one great example of Vince Gilligan saying, I'm not gonna do that. The very first few minutes are somewhat familiar from some other TV shows and movies, like the movie Contact, there's or the movie Battleship, who are two very different kinds of movies, but sort of the same beginning. We get a signal from space, and we see scientists, oh, there's a signal from space. Is it actually from space or the microwave down the down the road? No, no, it's it's from space. At no point with all of those scientists does anybody say, uh, I don't understand. Explain it to me, or tell it to me in English, right? For a mainstream Hollywood movie, they would have some character implausibly working for NASA or a scientist themselves saying, some general comes in and says, Yeah, I'm an astronomer, but I don't understand this basic astronomy, so explain it to me so the audience can understand. They just talk science.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Boom. And then so far, we've never seen them again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03They don't show up. I wonder if they do.
SPEAKER_01We get we need to go back and rewatch.
SPEAKER_00I mean, aren't they joined?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So they're out there somewhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Maybe. Uh but but but but so we're introduced to characters, they do their work, they're actual science geeks, they discover something, and it's not done conventionally, right? And so if if you were nervous as an audience person, you'd be going, like, wait, what, what, wait a minute? And now now there is a little explanation later, right? But they detect the signal from space, it turns out to be how to build a virus, how to build messenger RNA, how to build RNA. I'm old enough to remember in the 1960s, this was the theme of like in Larry Niven's known space universe, that people could learn things. Like you would learn how to speak Spanish by just having some memory RNA injected. So it's interesting that that sort of came back as a you know, wait 30 years and everything up 40 years comes back. But so then Vince Gilligan also plays with implausibility, right? So we get a message from space, later we learn where it came from was many hundreds of light years away. There's another planet, but it's a water world. And so right away I'm thinking, like, man, how do you build a radio receiver, telescope, you know, sender on a water world? Is that was that intentional on his part to like confuse us? Are we gonna find out that that was like a relay station and not necessarily a planet where people things created that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. My understanding is that it was like an antenna array that was like orbiting that planet that they built that was like the size of Texas, maybe, I think is how they described it.
SPEAKER_00I thought that that's what they were doing on Earth.
Vince Gilligan’s Craft And No-AI Stance
SPEAKER_00There's a lot of mystery. Yeah. And I don't know if I want to know. You know, I don't know if it'll ruin it for me if they show us the alien planet next season. Or it's not important, right?
SPEAKER_03The plot moves on in really good shows. We don't we don't say, oh, that's a pothole or that's a goof. Like, like, okay, well, that's fine. Let's move on to to the next thing, right? That that's that's fine. But the point is that we've received we received this message, and then okay, there's implausibility number two, which has not been explained but during the entire season, but could be explained, which is somebody in the government, and it by somebody it would have to be, because we're talking about massive appropriations, massive personnel, massive facilities. Somebody said, Hey, we got uh virus from space, let's build it. Let's find out. You know, like what what what could go wrong? What's the worst that could happen?
SPEAKER_00Carol Sterkley just was like, this makes total sense. You're making a very good point. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Now remember, Carol Stirke in the movie, said in the series says, We've seen this movie before, right? So we talked about in the last zombie example that we've been through cases where they in a zombie movie or a zombie TV show, they pretend like there's never been a zombie movie or a TV show. Like they have to learn everything from scratch. What the dead are walking? I've never heard of this concept before. Like, you know, where should where should we shoot them? Like, okay, that's fine. But sometimes people go, oh, okay, well, you know, I did watch The Walking Dead, so like I know what I should be able to do at this point. This is this is a movie that that that TV show that recognizes the existence of previous pod people, hive mind, you know, takeover, mind control, whatever this is, there. So that's very interesting. The other thing that intrigued me was you said, and I don't know whether you were doing it um within fictional universe or within real universe, you said, Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, this is not in the same world. And that was one of my questions. Is this our world or not? Because there's some pieces of evidence like breadcrumbs dropped along that this may not be our timeline or this our our world. I I give you just one that sort of intrigued me. Is Carol says, is she's trying to make a case to one of the other survivors who's, and of course, this is one of the most heart-wrenching and disturbing elements of this, family members have been converted to what we'll talk about is the the consciousness, the the joining, right? And so there's a there's a woman from India who has a husband and a son, and probably many other relatives who are members of the hive mind. And Carol Sturka is saying, that's not your son. Can your son, you know, your son is now also your gynecologist. Your son can fly the space shuttle. Now, I have a problem with that if this was 2025 when this was happening, because we're not told what day this is. We're told we're we're given countdowns and clocks, right? Now, the space shuttle is something I would have said if I were Carol 20 years ago. But nobody's been flying a space shuttle for a long time. It's not the kind of example that you would pull out. I mean, I this person can fly an F-30 35 jet, you'd say that. This person can operate an aircraft carrier, you know, steering system. I thought that was very interesting. I also thought that there's no social media scenes. I mean, they just say like the internet is down and just move on from that. I thought that was interesting. Why why this would be a the the hype mind would be on the internet all the time talking to each other? Uh would they be affirming each other? Like every every post would get a billi seven billion likes. You know, they're not going to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00But do they need the internet? Because they seem to just all know what everybody's doing on the internet.
SPEAKER_03Are they the internet?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I don't think the thing is that's a question. Are are they making a statement that they are the internet in the But the b the nice internet where everybody's happy and all liking each other all the time. So all I'm saying is that the show sets up a lot of uncertainties as well as things that you are where you're there's a twist. And so you don't really feel strong knowing anything, which is the worst kind of situation, right? Like I would rather have a known horror where the rules are told to me. We talked before about like for science fiction
Signal From Space And Plausibility Gaps
SPEAKER_03and fantasy, it's I feel writers should set rules. Like if a dragon can fly in book one and spoo fire, that's fine, but let's not find out in book three they can also time travel and change into codes, right? So but Vince Gilligan is changing the universe, but it's all it always logically. Like the reveal is not crazy compared to what we knew before. I uh one of the many reasons I love the show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I mean I love going into a show where like it's it's all over my like way over my head because that makes watching it the second time even better when you start putting those pieces together. We haven't watched it a second time yet, but I want to because I want to I want to go back to the beginning and see all the puzzle puzzle pieces fit together from a point where I was not understanding yet what was happening, and then just like see it all fall fall in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the space between what you were witnessing and what you actually know is what makes really good TV sometimes. And like you said, that that that goalpost keeps shifting. Uh, even with Carol Sturka, sometimes I've hated her. Yeah. And I other times I was like, you know what? Fair. Uh they they took your wife from you, and now they all can like tell you everything that your wife thought about you and uh actually your book was shitty.
SPEAKER_03Plays with the idea of who we sympathize and empathize with. We've from what we've been told, Carol Sturka killed upward of 20, 25 million people. Now, the first time that she killed maybe seven or eight or ten million people, she didn't mean to. She didn't know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Although that is not acceptable by the law today, like if you killed 10 to 20, 10 million people and say, oops, you know, I didn't know. Do over. Um there are still consequences. It's called manslaughter, right? Or second degree of manslaughter.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, but then the second time she did, she killed another 10 million people by the by what we've been t infer and what we've been told. So so talk about a protagonist who you have mixed feelings for.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then she, I mean, there's so many things. You know, she calls everybody else. You said there were 13 survivors, um, thirteen people unaffected, unjoined, and she meets the English-speaking ones at the beginning. By the way, uh another great example of this show is the high production values, right? So one of the characters famously uh decides to fly for this meeting with Carol Sterka and the English-speaking uh non-joined, and he shows up in Air Force One because he wants to go first class in this new life that he's living. Uh I I I wonder how many people, by the way, w the the the gentleman from Mauritania, uh Kuma, I think is is his name. Yeah, he he uh I think he speaks for a lot of people of what they would do in that situation of just living the high life. Uh and Carol criticizes him, but then at some point says, what the heck, and starts living that life too, of just you know going on vacation to anywhere she wants and having any kind of food that uh she wants. So so it's really putting us in this position of in most zombie apocalypses, there's very few temptations except the complete breakdown of law and order and what people would do in that situation. Here, there actually is order.
SPEAKER_00Extreme order more order than before. Everything is very organized. Yeah. Um, it's interesting that you say that because I what I liked about the show is that every single person um had a different lens, but also weren't always completely internally consistent. And Carol's a good example of just different coping mechanisms. Like at first, she's very absolutely like doesn't want any contact, doesn't want to be near them, um, trying to find a cure. And then by the end, for a while, anyways, like you said, she can she completely succumbs. But as a just a fun sidebar question, Dr. Pearl Mutter, you are one of the 13, and you discover that the joined they love nothing more than pleasing you. Um, what's the one indulgent thing you would request while you were still an individual? Well, or would you? Maybe that's the first thing. I haven't.
SPEAKER_03One person on the show that I consistently identified with and said, if I could be anybody I wanted to be, if I had the willpower and the intelligence in that universe, this is who I want to be. And then I had another uh non-person that I identified with morally and empathically and sympathetically. The person that I identified with intellectually was Manusos, the gentleman from Paraguay. He, from the very beginning, he says, now he has certain reasons which maybe I would not apply. Like he he I it isn't fully explained, he calls these people demons, which is not technically incorrect. I mean, they're they're they're they're they they have been taken over in sort of the same way that sometimes in religious projections, you would have a demon possession of like some other belief entity taking you over. In this case, you could argue that the rest of the world, that's eight, seven billion people left, are all one person because they do know each other's history and feel the same way. And you you yell at one person, and somebody in Singapore can die from stress and and shock. But Manusos from the very beginning is first of all, he's acting like a scientist. Now, this guy owns he's the manager, I'm not sure he's the owner or the manager of a self-storage unit in Paraguay. And but but he's very systematic, he's very scientific. Like I he's the way I'm a social scientist, I would historian, I would like to be like him. You know, very thorough. He's going through every single possible, I think it's shortwave channel, something I I forgot to look that up, but like every possible channel, looking for something because he's seen this movie before, and he's thinking,
Is This Our Timeline Or Another
SPEAKER_03like, wait a minute, they all seem to be talking to each other. That can't be, there's there's nothing, there's no virus, there's no RNA that can make the human mind suddenly telepathic and reach around the circumference of the earth to be in contact with each other. That just can't work. That can't be the science, right? So there has to be some actual physical. So he starts investigating, and I love his handwriting, you know, very neat and precise. On another show, the the great uh conspiracy skeptic show with Carl Mamer, I talked about like he's the ultimate conspiracy theorist, like, you know, who's just so systematic in finding uh things which are ridiculous sometimes, but but in this show they're they turn out to be right. So I admire Minusos, and that's who I'd like to be. The creature that I feel the greatest sympathy for, and the one that swung me that this is evil, this is bad, what the what has happened to the world, the baby goat. I I I I my sympathy is with that little baby goat, because the horror of this world didn't really come home to me until the uh Andean girl decides she wants to join her family. Yeah, Simayo. And she they give her a gas, which apparently they've developed, or you know, that that will convert her, even though she's was immune before. And she was petting her little baby goat before this moment, and then she walks away. By the way, everybody walks off in a different direction. So you we we like we we use the term hive mind as if they're a community, but they're also a community that doesn't really interact like we think of community. We think of communities in Vermont, you know, we think of the Vermont Town Hall or a Christmas festival or or um, you know, a community event. There's none of those.
SPEAKER_00No, they coordinate.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they coordinate, but they don't have community. Absolutely. That's a great way to put it. Um, but that baby goat went, it was abandoned. And I was thinking to myself, and this was horror for me as an animal lover. Think of all the billions of pets. Think of the hamsters, right? Think of what the cats, think of the dogs, think of the cows in the field.
SPEAKER_00Dr. Perlmetter, I'm not kidding, I might cry because I also love animals a lot. And this was also the thing that really got to me. Um, like we had the one example of the dog that was still hanging out, but I also couldn't figure out like, why aren't we joining all the other animals? Like, what's the what's the human boundary? Why, why are we stopping at humanity? There's plenty of other animals with a degree of intelligence that I think would be useful to the joint. What about dolphins and whales?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Are they joined? Apes. Right? I mean, the gas prefer I mean, I mean, again, this is something I I don't know. Are they gonna find the dolphins when they crested to breathe, they're they're air-breathing mammals, right? They became joint.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that would be I mean, that would be interesting.
SPEAKER_03Orangutans, yeah, or our our closest relatives and you know, chimpanzees, bonabos.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so like why do they love the 13 that are left over so much, supposedly, but they don't and they won't eat animals that are alive. Or plants. Or plants that are alive. Yeah. But they don't care enough for all of the they just open the door for these creatures that anybody who knows anything, and these people are now experts in agriculture, know that this they're not going to survive without human intervention because they've never done it. They're domesticated. Um, it is a huge, it's a huge question mark for me. But uh, it's interesting I didn't get to the point of deciding they were evil at that point. I just was like sad for the goat, but you make a good point.
SPEAKER_03Well, this is going to Manusos saying what manu what keeps Manusus, and he's tempted a couple of times, is his absolute rectitude. I mean, you guys come from a part of the world where the Puritan heritage is still remembered, and and we still tend to use the word Puritan as people who had a very absolutist moral code. Okay. Sometimes that's not viewed very positively. You go back to Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Scarlet Letter, right? He he wasn't viewing it necessarily. He he had a mixed feelings about it, but Manusas has an absolute moral code, ethical code, as and like like he's in the hospital and he has to accept surgery because he was unconscious, but he leaves money to pay, right? I mean, he just he he won't compromise with these people at all. There's a concept in Judaism that I think is interesting at this point to bring in, because there's an idea that sin is tempting. It is tempting to sin. Some of the sins that human beings can are tempting. That's why there's a there's ten commandments. Those ten commandments aren't there because everybody hates doing them. They're there because human beings over the our long history have been tempted to do those. And in the story,
Uncertainty As Design, Rules Of The World
SPEAKER_03God says, these are the top ten. Even though you might be tempted to do that. There's a great New Yorker cartoon where Moses is giving the Ten Commandments and he says, Thou shalt not commit adultery. And there's one guy in the crowd who looks a little bit awkward, and Moses says, And I'm talking to you, Ira. So Manusos is doing what is in Judaism is called building a hedge around the Torah. That is that you don't put yourself in situations where you could even be tempted to sin, right? So you don't go to to a party with uh you know late at night and get drunk with people of of the sex that you're attracted to and sleep over because you don't want to be in a situation where you could even think about it, right? Yeah. You want to stay loyal to your family and and so on. Well, Manusos believes that he doesn't want to he wants to stay away from any temptation whatsoever. That's how wrecked it. Now, and normally this kind of a character would be a bad guy or or would be looked down upon in the average Hollywood movie, but here he's the only one for most of the movie who's actually working to try to stop this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And he's his his his perception that it's theft is really interesting. I think he's the only one who really articulates that. Like Carol's pissed, and she in many ways basically uh says it's theft through examples of like, now you have all of my wives' memories, and um, you know, these you don't have a right to do these things. But at the end of the day, she doesn't name it that and she's willing to work with them at a certain point and even join the delusion for a little while, right? Like that Zoja, Zoja's now her girlfriend, they're having a great time. She tries to like actually get to know Zoja as the person. Uh, but Manunos is the only one who says this is theft. And like, whether you like or don't like public health care, I thought it was like a really intense moment to be like, I'm gonna pay for these services, even though the people technically who own this place aren't there because of the principled matter that this costs something and that nothing that they have is theirs. All of it is stolen. And I can't really disagree with him personally.
SPEAKER_03And and so he's the one who most consistently does not, I mean, the the gentleman from Mauritania, apparently day one, he said, Oh my gosh, this is the greatest day on earth, yeah, you know, and immediately ordered champagne lobster and uh wants to become a James Bond and lives the life of a fantasy character, like day one. Carol, who's supposed to be our protagonist, right? She's the the white, white third first per world person that is typically the the protagonist of these. Wait a second. Nine or ten minutes and twelve minutes into this, her her partner, her beloved partner is killed by this event. Fast forward a couple of months, she's sleeping with the enemy.
SPEAKER_00Literally.
SPEAKER_03So I mean she does she goes pretty far, and and the the enemy is in is in a fantasy form that she knows that they gave her in a form of the fantasy of her own books. The the male version of a of a male character that should have been a female character is if you've got to watch the show to understand this. But the point was that she tears burns down the hedge and then joins the the enemy. Monusos knows that even the slightest temptation, even accepting one piece of food from his mother, accepting one you know, free medical care would lead him in the path to giving up. And Carol proves he's right, yeah, but then she changes her mind, I guess.
SPEAKER_01I find it really interesting because Manusos and Coomba are both the extreme ends of that spectrum of like how comfortable you are with what's happening. And Carol's kind of like working her way back and forth on that scale throughout the whole show. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Do I want a full harem and everything I want at my fingertips at all times, or do I refuse even medical care when I'm clearly going to die? Um what's interesting for me though is that Carol, Carol gives in because she's lonely, and loneliness is experienced as a physical pain after a while. Like it's a physical feeling, it's not this abstract thing. Um, and we're designed as a species to feel lonely because our survival is about being in groups. And so I wonder what it is about Monussos that he's able to withstand that, or was it just his idea of Carol that there was somebody that he was walking towards? Whereas Carol felt that she had no one, that everybody had given in to some degree, and she was completely alone. And I wonder if things had been different, if she had known Manusos was coming, if she would have held out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Minussos is a suffering figure. I mean, I I think of the Renaissance art showing, I mean, it's it's a little old to analyze any property and say that somebody is a Christ figure, you know, any movie or something like that. But like he he is a a figure who's suffering for human for his idea of restoring good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean, literally, he his back is scourged.
SPEAKER_00That is one of the most gross and graphic things I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of graphic stuff, but that really disturbed me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, he he physically suffers for us, for restoring the world as it should be, and he's got this monomaniacal attitude, which might probably didn't help him in like his personal relationships before the event. I mean, you uh uh Dan, you you said a good point, is that we've got uh the gentleman from I I always mispronounce his name, the gentleman from Mauritania.
SPEAKER_01Oh, Kaboom.
unknownI'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01I actually don't know how to pronounce it, but that's how it's spelled. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So so he he to some extent he's he's adapted
Morality, Death Tolls, And Carol’s Choices
SPEAKER_03in the way that you know allegedly, we'll see, you know, whether he changes too. He seems like a very sensitive guy, though, intelligent, he's very intelligent. He's not just yeah, he's kind. He he he's doing everything consciously, right? Now, immediately Carol does raise the issue of consent, right? Because he is doing things and people these people, if there are people anymore, are giving consent, but they're giving consent because and this is a question, right? Like, what if your culture tells you you must consent? Is that real consent?
SPEAKER_01Oh, like if you're if your culture is like you must do this, it's what's expected of you, and then you do that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and those of us in another culture might look at that and go, no, that's that's assault.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03And in fact, the law in in Vermont might be it's assault, and and somebody couldn't say, Oh yeah, back in my culture, it's fine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like in from my lens, that was also at first I didn't like Kumba because of what I considered to be his non-consensual relationship with pretty much every woman he found attractive. Um, but he charmed me sometimes. So yeah, it it's confusing because I don't the if you have Manuno's point of view, then they're absolutely not consenting. But you're right, from a cultural lens, if this is now the this entity and we don't know if the people are still in there, right? Like the individuals. I mean, all their knowledge is, but like is their consciousness in there? I don't know if what you two would say to that. Yeah, like if it's just fully merged or if there's something that can remain separate. And if it there's nothing left that could be separate, then technically they've consented. And you're right, like within a cultural context, some things that we find abhorrent are completely normal and fine. So it's hard to draw that line sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Well, something that I thought was really interesting, and this is like goes back to Manuso's um scientific way of thinking, uh, he experiments with this uh weakness that they have, where if you scream at them, everybody in the world just kind of collapses and some people die from it. Um, from the information that he got through his research using his radio, he realized that there's like a carrier signal out there. And that when he screams at somebody and they collapse, that signal gets disrupted. And it's uh there's a possibility that during that time when that's disrupted, he's actually talking to the individual that the Polurbus inhabits. And that's what he tries to do, and we don't have any definitive answers on that.
SPEAKER_03Right. So that's that's a frequent trope, right? Is that somebody's taken over by the pod or the alien. Uh I'm thinking of Stargate, where they have the gold as a is a creature that's in you, but you're still alive in there, which adds to the horror, right? Yeah. Especially when you've got a bad alien. I mean, in in Stargate, there's good ones and there's bad ones, good ones who like are in a symbiotic relationship and bad ones who are parasitic and you know torture their host. We don't know whether for these 7 billion people there are real people screaming to get out and horrified at what they're doing. Especially since a lot of people are doing things which, you know, I'm uh when we're introduced to Zosha at the very beginning, she's like cleaning up bodies. Uh, you know, she's she's sunburned, she she's in the horrible, she's in a horrible situation. Yeah. So something people wouldn't normally volunteer to do except in an emergency to help their neighbors or something like that.
SPEAKER_01It looked like she crawled out of a burning building.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And and by the way, I that was again something I don't know whether that was like an intentional goof or or it was intentional about how she an hour later, her skin was completely clear. I I I thought she was scarred there at the front beginning, like sunburn scarred, maybe explosion scarred. Like, was she in an airplane or a car or something like that? And a lot of people, let's just go back to the beginning. A lot of people died. Like they didn't seem to care that there were airplanes in the sky, right? Carol brought up submarines. Like, you got to this that that that to me is a plot issue there. Like, really, they were able to get to the nuclear submarines who are actually on alert under the water to not to prevent zombie uprisings, but like to in case you know the you know uh command in the United States is compromised, they're supposed to remain separate. They wouldn't just surface and say, hey, what's going on, guys? You know, right? Like they're out there for like six. Yeah, did they just sink to the bottom? I mean, like I the airplanes fell from the sky, right? Yeah, cars crashed in that transition, right? About eight eight or nine. I don't I forgot how long when they shot. Carol and Hell at the beginning. I forgot the length of the transition time. And maybe it was different for different people, but it was at least 10 to 15 minutes. It seemed like that, yeah. If you're flying
Order Without Community And The Baby Goat
SPEAKER_03an airplane, maybe on autopilot, that's not a problem. If you were landing the time, it is a problem.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03If you're driving a submarine if you're driving a car, that's a problem. Yes. Yeah. So we don't know how many people. I mean, it was there a good time to do this? A bad time? You know?
SPEAKER_00I don't know. They seem they are hypocritical to me, and that's confusing. Yeah. Because they're totally fine with millions of I forget what the percentage was, but it was a large it was significant people who died in the transition to being the joined. I think it was a massive. And they're like constantly reassuring Carol that it's mostly okay that she keeps killing people until they use the best therapist speak ever that they need to make have some space from her, which made me laugh. I was like, clearly, the part of the all the people in the joined who are therapists crafted that message to her about why they were leaving.
SPEAKER_03Um, but there they're there are millions of people who have that as their voicemail message now, I'm I'm sure. I'm sorry, Carol.
SPEAKER_00But actually, that really annoyed me. I was like, Carol, just call them back and say, can you stop this message? Like I get it. Can you like just have a beep so I can make my request faster?
SPEAKER_01It seemed passive aggressive to me. I think they were doing it on purpose.
SPEAKER_00We need some space. My other, uh just a sidebar. My other plausibility issue really was that they didn't make bother to take the time to put beds where they were all sleeping, unless you're unless you're arguing, Dr. Pearl Mutter, that they actually don't really care about the comfort of each individual body. But I was like, really, you're all sleeping on the like you just got some blankets on the floor of a well, I don't know if it's a basketball stadium or what it was.
SPEAKER_03I think it was a hockey book. This goes to the intentionality, right? Like we don't know why this message was sent out. We know the the the results, the first I I I didn't calculate the entire time that's been I mean, there's a clock that I mean a countdown that keeps going back and forth. I think this is a couple of months at least that we see in this first season. Is that Dan Leland?
SPEAKER_00I think it was four months. She's alone for like, I don't know. I don't I don't I don't want to say 40 days, because if it is 40 days, then there's some well, that's interesting. There's certainly a biblical connection there if it actually was 40 days that she was totally alone when she called them. Um, but it was at least over a month that she was completely alone. I know that.
SPEAKER_03Just her? Yeah, so we don't know what the medium and long-term plan is, because right now it's looks like it over the next couple of decades, it's very possible humanity. We don't know whether they procreate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Right? So so the countdown on humanity, you could say, has started and wait 50, 60 years and there'll be no hum, no matter what they do, no matter what they drink. And by the way, let's toss in that they're cannibals. And John and Johnson very reasonably explains. Of course, he's the spokesperson you would pick to explain why we're all cannibals. I mean, but just again, as a plot point, uh, and the zombies are cannibals. You in most shows, that would add to the zombies are bad. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I don't want them around. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And Carol sure thinks so at first.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um the person she's sleeping with is a cannibal who drinks a glass of human every day. That would seem to be a first date red flag, you know, like if you were on Hinge and somebody said, I am a cannibal and I drink a glass of human juice every day. I guess maybe ironically, looking for a like-minded cannibal. Tell me more. You know, are you over six feet and do you make over six figures? I I'm willing to go go with a cannibal party if you're have full head here.
SPEAKER_00But it's okay because they're just they're mix, you know, they're very conscientious of waste and they won't eat an apple until it's fallen to the ground.
SPEAKER_01I think they're really comfortable with the uh the uninfected people and their impact around them. So like if Carol kills 23 million people, like, oh, that sure is sad, but that's a lot of food for the rest of us, and we couldn't do it ourselves because of our morals.
SPEAKER_00Convenient.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But they don't use her like that intentionally.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But if Carol were to also like set up uh an automated farm with drones that um sprayed pesticide and fertilizer and they and grew like kale uh in gr in mass quantities because she now owns all of the United States, so she turns the whole country into kale. And then they she was like, now you eat the kale, they'd be like, as long as we don't have to pick it.
SPEAKER_03She could run a pemmican factory. She's right. That would fix it. But but but humanity is doomed. So let's let's just say this is a problem, right? It with a typical zombie apocalypse, the the the zombies don't procreate. I mean, they can create new zombies by attacking living humans, but most zombie narratives don't have little baby zombies being born and raised and going to school and right. That's a spoiler.
SPEAKER_01I won't, I won't say it.
SPEAKER_00There's a quite there's I'll just say that in the 28 years later series, it's we wonder if they're reproducing, but that's a whole other conversation. Yeah. And it would be a new concept. I haven't seen that before.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So so whoever did this, now let let's let's
Manusos’s Ethics Versus Kumba’s Indulgence
SPEAKER_03talk about the motivations of, and I'm going to call them the founders. That's not used in the show, but like whoever started this, because we may it may very well be true, Dan, as you said that that the uh water world planet was just a relay station. There was something in orbit that said that passed it on, right? 800 million, I think it was 800 million or 600 million light years, which is a very long distance, uh, which does suggest that the signal started 800 million years ago. So somebody was planning this a long time ago. Um, there have been some really interesting science fiction stories over the years, and I I guess it's a spoiler to give them away, but I've read maybe four or five stories and books where an originator species, a founder species, says, you know, in our religion, in our moral formula, we should be the only intelligent life in the universe. And so we're gonna set off a chain of events to kill off everything else that's because as we spread throughout the universe, we don't want to meet any competition. So we will send out viruses, we will send out robot drones. I've just seen different plots like that. So that's that's one hypothesis is they just said, uh, yeah, one day we'll get to Earth with our colony ships, and we would like to find it, you know, nobody there except the green grass and the the uh the baby goats and dolphins and dolphins and whales, um and a bunch of that there have been some really amazing short stories which had that as a plot because uh most most alien invasions they blow things up, but we've talked before about how it's a beautiful planet. If if if it was possible for these evil aliens to just have humans die off in 50, 60 years, then then they they could come along and it would be fantastic real estate, like you know, prime, Albuquerque, yeah, uh suburbs. Like the one they built for this uh show.
SPEAKER_01Like is like what would you rather do? Put together uh uh a hundred thousand soldiers to go um invade and kill and uh and and colonize and uh years and years and decades long um wars that are bloody and difficult and expensive, or do you just rub some wool blankets all over your your uh smallpox sores and distribute them?
SPEAKER_03I'll I'll go one step further. Maybe this is euthanasia. Yeah. Say more. Because uh yeah, they don't I mean some people are dying horribly, but generally they're probably gonna be able to feed themselves for you know 20, 30 years with just our canned goods left over, and uh they'll just die off. And I mean, it you could from the point of view of the morality or ethics of some aliens who do want the real estate and have already said, like, yeah, only our species should be alive in the universe, uh, maybe they're not cruel. Maybe they just say, oh, you know, let's what's what is the most peaceful way we can get rid of humans? Well, we'll just have them, you know, slowly die off over their the years and and love you and feel good and happy. So it's it's literally like putting your pet to sleep. It's euthanasia. Uh um and that that's that's one theory of what this is.
SPEAKER_00I really hadn't thought of that before because I'm trying to think back and I'll be when we watch it again, I'm gonna pay attention to this because I think that I had just self-inserted the blank that when they said we only have this many decades left to be to survive as a species with the fact that we don't we won't eat anything that's alive. Um, I just assumed that they were trying to solve it. But I think I self-inserted that solution.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, like I think because that's my logic, which is I think part of the challenge here is right, and I really appreciate Carol's curiosity, and when you know it's for trying to figure out what their logic actually is. Um, I I think I might have just made that assumption and projected that answer that they're gonna try and solve this to keep humanity alive.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and they might, right? I mean, they're I mean, we might because they might figure out a way to make humans solar powered, you know, or or wind powered. We've got wind power and solar power here in West Texas, so you would have to move here. Uh I I don't think Vermont is as strong on solar and wind.
SPEAKER_00We actually got a great solar system right on our house.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh but you need to pick up battery, it helps.
SPEAKER_03But this mystery, this uncertainty, this existential horror, this question about who these people are, would you want to be them? Uh let's go back to the argument for the pro-5 argument. There's no war. There, I mean, as as pointed out, there's no racism. There it's interesting to me what they some other arguments that aren't made on either side. Do you notice the I I mentioned religion, but they've never mentioned religion once. Yeah. Anybody on the show has has no one has mentioned in front of religion.
SPEAKER_01Um so when Kusumaya, when she is making the choice to become part of the Pluribus, um they the her whole town, her whole village comes together, her whole family, they come together and they're dressed in their tr uh traditional clothes. Um, they are singing songs that she's familiar with, um, that I think probably have some sort of historic uh cultural relevance to her to make her feel very like they're they're putting on a celebration for her. They're putting on a celebration. The second that she turns, they all stop and they start walking away.
SPEAKER_03They put their their culture. We we wouldn't, as as modern people, if you said, Well, I've got something that will completely destroy the culture of the people of the Andes, you would be horrified at that, right? Yeah. You'd say, that's the worst thing. That's terrible.
Consent, Culture, And Who’s In Control
SPEAKER_03You're you're c committing cultural genocide, which happened almost historically, and we we condemn it today. But yet, this these aliens, they must have known that all culture would end. Um nobody is creating any new movies, any television shows, nobody's creating a new art. The art is gonna rot in the museums.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, it's not gonna be climate control. Maybe in the Southwest museums it'll it'll last a little bit longer. But like think of the museums in France or Norway or something, or Canada, or Vermont, right? You you need climate control for most paintings. Maybe, maybe this the pyramids will last a much, much longer, but there's no new art, there's no new procreation. Everything that has made us human has been stripped from us, and it's just bare survival and drugged up feeling good. So I I guess why I identified with Manuso. He's a science and religion combined in one person about this is evil.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I had a I had a thought while probably about halfway through the show, um, when you know, I was looking at how willing the Plurbus is to please the remaining 13, how they are basically the harbingers of not just all of human knowledge, but also all of human resources. Like you have to ask them for the resources. Like Carol wants her sprouts to be back open because they completely emptied it. Um, and she had to ask them to bring all the stuff back to the store that she was accustomed to shopping at. Um, you know, and like you said, there's not gonna be any new art created. Like, I don't know what the limitation is for the pluribus to create art, but it doesn't seem to be a high priority.
SPEAKER_00I mean, they're sure excited about her latest book.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. There's gonna be one book written and they are all so ready to go. They really don't provide it. But only one copy.
SPEAKER_03Only one copy is sold. It's bestseller. You know, a bestseller of one.
SPEAKER_01So my my thought is that this is a really great metaphor for AI. Like the pleuribist is kind of like it's it you you ask the pleuribist, bring me grapes. And they're like, here's grapes. And it's like, but didn't didn't our society own these grapes? Why are you bringing me these grapes? And Minusa is also calling them out for stealing everything, all of their ideas and the the knowledge and the culture and all the infrastructure is stolen by the pleuribists. And you can use it, but it's not yours. You have to ask for it. The pleuribist has to provide it. It's making you dependent on the pleuribist. And unless you ask, it's impossible for you to enjoy the benefits of the society that was created and then taken away by the pleuribist. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the tone is very sycophantic AI too, like where they're they really just want to make you feel good. ChatGPT is very good at affirming my self-esteem as needed. Yeah. So I think that there is an argument to be made that it could be um a metaphor for AI, because it can't create anything new.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But it can but it has it has all the infrastructure and all the And it's hungry for more. It's hungry for more. It can it can regurgitate anything that you want it to. Like if you asked the pluribus to tell you a poem, they would be able to recall a po a poem and recite it perfectly with inflection and tone uh with 100% accuracy. Even like um uh Kumba when he is playing out as James Bond fantasy, he had he he he lives in Las Vegas now. Las Vegas is his city. It belongs to him, kind of. It belongs to the pluribus, but it's where he resides, so the pluribus goes there and they all wander around this casino and pretend like they're all players in this fantasy so that he can win at a game of baccarat or whatever. Ultimate role-playing game. And then as soon as he leaves, you know, the the the gu the scary guy with the eye patch takes the eye patch off, and they all just go back to doing what they were doing before. Like it wasn't it wasn't uh a a creative endeavor that they did for him spontaneously. It's what he asked for, and they performed it as he requested.
SPEAKER_00I mean, we like AI though, they're still capable of learning and creating new things, hence the the solving of the problem of how do we make people like us. You gotta use the bone marrow and stem cells. I think that was the solution to fix the 13, the problem of the 13.
SPEAKER_01You need their bone marrow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um and they're building their giant what's it called? I'm losing my words. Their giant satellite to send this out to wherever they need to go next.
SPEAKER_01Are they uh are they building that yet or is that just a I thought they were actively working on it? They're I know it's a plan, but I don't know if they had you know what progress they've made.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm gonna guess they're working on it because it's really important to them.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because they want to share it with other sentient beings in the universe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, share the gospel, share the joy of being one of us. Yeah. At the very least, some pretty deep colonizer vibes here. But they are all smiling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But are they smiling because they know it'll please you, or are they smiling because they're truly happy? You know, ChatGPT uses a lot of uh good language to
The Scream Weakness And Carrier Signal
SPEAKER_01make you happy. That doesn't mean that ChatGPT is happy.
SPEAKER_03And what is happiness? I mean, I took this show has raises about 50 questions, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Uh I the reason I I was awful, I mean, I was listening, but I was just checking something. When you get to be my age, you have all these uh memories of things that you read. And I remember a short story was absolutely brilliant, and maybe I got the title wrong because I was just looking it up. But any anyway, in the story, there is a person who's telepathic, right? He can read the minds of other people. And this is horrible because when he walks through the streets, he's hearing everybody else. This has been done in movies, um like the Mel Gibson movie, What Do Women? Yeah, yeah, yes. Uh there was an episode of either the new Twilight Zone or the New Outer Limits, where it had this society where everybody can remember their past lives, which is horrible because you're walking down the street and you go, Oh my god, you killed me in 1532, you bastard. Sounds like a bad time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So, but in this story, there's a guy who's telepathic and he he's miserable because he's in he can hear everybody think, and he he he's hoping he can find he's heterosexual. He's hoping he can find a mate, a woman, who's also telepathic, and they could have a relationship because she he can't have a normal relationship with a normal other person because he hears everything they're saying. So it's like a nightmare to to be telepathic and not be able to turn it off, right? Not be able to like shut it down and turn it on, turn it off. I'm not gonna I guess I'll give away the story. He does meet that and they hear each other's thoughts and immediately they hate each other because they hear everything, every single thing, every you know, every one minute, everything that goes through somebody's mind. So so I I would it all of the everything you list for these people, the the the the joining, if you listed it, cannibalism, no personality, no creativity, no procreation, no love, no not nothing, uh is horrible. Would make it just on its own, would be one element of an apocalypse movie where you're going, oh my god, this is a dystopia. And I find it interesting that people are still having conversations online and we are still having conversations about, well, well, maybe it's a utopia. Yes. The genius of Vince Gilligan of presenting us with a checklist of every dystopic element you could possibly think of. I mean, this is fascism. Talk about, like, you know, this is the totalitarian communism. Everybody has to sleep together. There's no families, you know, everybody must rigidly obey rules and can't deviate. There's no independence. What are you describing? You're describing not even Stalinist Russia or Hitler's Germany could imagine that level of control, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It's, I mean, it's very real. And it's like, what are it it brings it back to that very simple question? What are you willing to give up if it means certainty? Which you already brought up at the very beginning, Dr. Promotter, that we even like to know what a movie's going to be about. Um, and so like what is, I think it it calls the underlying impulse that humans have, which is safety, security, predictability. And sometimes that can be really appealing versus the messiness that it is to be uh one organism among many with lots of different competing priorities.
SPEAKER_03You think of some people, I mean, let's face it, there's a lot of people on this earth who are who are, I mean, besides for there might be mental reasons they're miserable, but like there are people who are poor and starving. There are people who are you know dying in in war, uh, there are people who are living in misery for different material circumstances. You could argue this is an upgrade for billions of people. Yeah. Right? They're suddenly living a s a quasi-first world lifestyle. Like every like there's no rich and poor anymore. You know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03The richest person in the world and the poorest person in the world are both sleeping in the same warehouse.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Wearing the same clothes.
SPEAKER_01Have access to the same information. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Same, yeah, same skills.
SPEAKER_01I will I love when they um when they needed to communicate with Carol and they and she was going through the TV and she found somebody um in front of the president's podium on TV that was just talking directly to her. And she's just like, she's like, What but why did they pick you? And and uh he's just like, Well, you know, I was nearest I was nearest to uh the podium and I was wearing the suit.
SPEAKER_03Now that's that's that's something I want explained in season two there. Is that that that that's very interesting. Uh can it be possibly coincidental that apparently most of Congress and most of the presidential cabinet aren't there, were wiped out. I mean, it can't be just an accident. Oh yeah, they just happen to be immune. And but but like Helen, like it it kills you, right? That the our leaders, where's the where's the the Pentagon chiefs, right? I mean, maybe they're around and they're in a warehouse, you know, moving bottles of liquefied human, but but it's interesting that they had to go down the ladder of the chain of command, you know, the United States like every other. Their country has a chain of command. If the president is incapacitated, this vice president somebody pretty low. Department of Agriculture was maybe
Cannibalism, Survival, And Long-Term Doom
SPEAKER_03that's pretty low in the chain of command. Yeah. There's a lot of people before that. And then and then we are we going to get the backstory of the incredible decision to actually make this virus? If this was not Vince Gilligan, if this was like a cheesy uh Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie, I would ask questions like, wait a minute, why did you make this recipe? And then why was the security for this recipe one donut eating security guard and two slightly inattentive lab techs? True. I just that was what was keeping us from the apocalypse was the you know there. As an always uh I mean this is but they've seen the movie before, Dan. That's the thing, right? Wouldn't somebody in the presidential candidate saying, Stop everybody, I've seen this movie before. Maybe they had 6,000 guards with you know bar remember I told you the new rifle that the special forces, I mean, not one security guard and and and uh vending machine to protect us from the apocalypse.
SPEAKER_01Oh, when I saw that vending machine, I'm like, that vending machine's gonna kill that soldier. I had flashbacks.
SPEAKER_00I do think that there's something there though, that which is like, you know, humans as individuals are messy and we make mistakes. Um and I can see like with all of the precautions in the world, somebody could still just, you know, pay a little. Like, for example, how many bathrooms do we go into that say, wash your hands? And they even, I remember at the university I used to work at, there was one that was like, sing happy birthday twice while you wash your hands. I'd be in there singing happy birthday, being my compliant little self, and I'd watch other people walk on out, fully knowing that they are disease spreading and fine with it. So I I can actually see it being plausible, sadly, that somebody would just make a silly moment decision to take their glove off because they don't think it's that big of a deal for whatever reason. And then here we are.
SPEAKER_03Well, the lab rats, the lab rats got their revenge. Yeah. Yeah. We talk about, you know, wiping out species. They were just about to kill all those poor little lab rats. Right.
SPEAKER_00Which also means that those lab rats were joined, now that I think about it. I think they're the only species that we know.
SPEAKER_01Were they? It did go into that the the seizure state. Yeah. It was still. That's the only example that we have.
SPEAKER_03I I've watched the first two episodes again, and I missed that. You picked up on it, Dan. You're right. But does it have a like like every rat in the world now? Like I'm if I'm eating cheese in France, you know, uh as a rat, uh uh the uh uh a rat in Paraguay says, oh, that's good.
SPEAKER_01Maybe. You know what this does mean though is that we can finally have the real life Remy from Rat Tatouille actually cook French food for us.
SPEAKER_00That's the children's version of this show I want to see, is like the cartoon Rat Pluribus. That would be great.
SPEAKER_03I mean from Pixar. Yeah. Minus cannibalism.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I do want to go back to the grocery store moment just for a second because I think, um, like you've both really beautifully pointed out, that it it shows there's extremes in this movie and it forces you to grapple with the fact that nothing is black and white, at least in my view. I'm not landed on 100% evil or 100% right uh or 100% good. I think it's messy, just like different systems for solving world problems amongst humanity is messy because Carol is staunchly an individualist in the beginning and she's like, I want to do it all myself. I don't need your help, yada yada, yada. But then when they have to fill her entire grocery store for her to get food, it destroys the illusion that she was ever independent because she always needed people to get her food to her. She just did, she had the illusion of complete independence.
SPEAKER_03She's living in a five million dollar house. I mean, that's that that did you watch that house and go like, wow, yeah, that's a beautiful house. I mean, I looked at the front door and I was going like, some crafts person. Yeah, that that's fine carpentry, Dan. I mean, is that a nice, nice front door there?
SPEAKER_01I don't remember the front door exactly, but it was a nice house.
SPEAKER_03Beautifully carved hardwood door.
SPEAKER_01And I also don't live in Albuquerque, so I don't know if that's normal or not.
SPEAKER_00You didn't get the quote recently when I I called some people and asked them what it would cost to replace our door, and it was a couple grand for like a basic door. Yes. Oh my god. Okay, I'm I'll do it. Anyway, sorry.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we're we're we we agree that we are we are codependent and depend on each other as humans. And it's something we we just need reminding of sometimes. But maybe people who live a little further out in the country. Like I hear we had a snowstorm, and I've lived in the northeast, so I remember this. But like we had a snowstorm, and I had to go out to get something, and I saw a bunch of guys up on a cherry picker fixing uh like uh the power uh on a power pole, fixing something. And I was just reminded, like, yeah, these guys, they they get the call, they have to go fix the power. They do it. They're they're they're finely skilled technicians, and they'll they will go out when nobody else should be going out, and they will do it for us. And and we our whole world is interdependent like that. You know, like like the groceries, the average supermarket only doesn't stocks you know survive survival six months, right? That they're just filling up every three days or something. I will I don't forget what the I mean, some obviously some goods last longer, but if you go to a lot of supermarkets, you see them cycling out, you know, taking things off the shelf that have expired and and and so on. So we it's an interesting meditation among the seven thousand other things this show is about is this meditation on how we depend on each other, and this explicitly lays it out where we just become one. That's why I say the population of the earth you could argue is 14, because there's 13 individuals, but one fewer now when the Andean girl, the Quechua girl, uh converts, and we don't know about some of the other ones, um, and the 13 individuals, and then everybody else is one person, right? We we we have no evidence that anybody has any distinguishing personality anymore who are who's part of the joining.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think the truth of being human is that we're both inter interdependent and
Founders’ Motives: Colonization Or Euthanasia
SPEAKER_00individual. Um and so that I for me that's what this show played with a lot, but there's so much to unpack here. I do want to finish with one question before we I think this could be a conversation forever, and I cannot wait for season two. Uh, but I will ask you, because we we briefly exchanged an email about this. Do you think that this qualifies as a zombie apocalypse show?
SPEAKER_03I I think it obviously comments on the nature of people who are who lost their consciousness to make independent decisions, which is one of the definitions of a zombie, right? You go back to the you you you've discussed on your show, like the origins of the word zombie about somebody who loses their free will and either obeys the commands of another person or obeys sort of like a robot command of like just do these, do this in these situations. So these people have lost the either they've lost their free will or there's only one free will. Like there's one person. But even that one person obviously cannot break directives, right? So there's no possibility any individual among the third the the seven billion can just say, you know, screw it, I'm gonna pick some grapes. So so that to me is zombification at some level. So this is within the greater uh zombie genre in a way. Yes.
SPEAKER_01I agree as well. Um, you know, if if uh a a person a person or uh an organism that's controlled by another organism, and in this case, it's uh the the organism that is doing the controlling is everyone, but also only that they've they've created a new thing and you are no longer you no longer have your individuality. You do what the pleuribus wants.
SPEAKER_00And they desperately want to consume and keep consuming. Like there's a clear that is the one that they are willing to go extreme lengths to harm nobody, but totally fine with also going to extreme lengths to spread.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh and they're cannibals, as you rightly pointed out, Dr. Pearl Mutter.
SPEAKER_01So it is a strange thing. They they are very adamant about consent, except for when it comes to spreading the virus.
SPEAKER_00Or pleasing the few that are left.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, well, this has been exactly the conversation that I was hoping for, Dr. Pearl Mutter. I'm so glad that you suggested this show to us. I don't feel like I'd be a complete human without it. It has occupied so much of my thought space since we've watched it. Uh, and it's been a real pleasure to have you back and just talk about this. We'll have to have you come back and talk about Pagonia Pagonia, Pagonia. Pagonia.
SPEAKER_03Yes, but you may never speak to me again. Oh I'm just warning you. It it's I I recommended it to a number of people and said, I believe this uh my recommendation may be the end of our friendship. It's that disturbing. So if I never hear from you again, goodbye.
SPEAKER_01I mean that's kind of what we've got our own relationship on is things so horrible we may not speak to normal human beings about it ever.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And we'll both, Dan, thanks to your recommendation, Dan will watch it in separate rooms.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And not talk about it till we talk to you. And then we'll fight.
SPEAKER_03Goodbye, my friends.
SPEAKER_00Well, we'll see if we will remain friends with Dr. Pearl Mutter after watching Pagonia. Yeah, I didn't even know it was a zombie movie.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know it was a movie. I knew it was a movie, but only because I've seen it on like whatever streaming service it's on.
SPEAKER_00We'll have to put uh every trigger warning in the beginning of that episode.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01We might just be like, look, humans should not watch this movie.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I hope Dr. Pearl Mutter becomes one of the regulars because I really enjoy our chats.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, he definitely had some takes I had not thought about at all before.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean I love doing a deep dive into something. Um and I, you know, I I love a show or a movie that like leaves more questions than answers. Um, but not like impossible questions. They have to be solvable questions, but like I d I got a lot of questions about Polaribus, and I hope that season two answers some of those and gives me some more because when they stop giving you questions, that's when that's when it stops being interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks everybody for joining the Zombie Book Club. Yeah. Let us know what you think about the Polaribus. Would you join? If you haven't joined yet, what self-indulgent thing would you choose? Clearly, Dr. Pearl Mutter is a purist, a a Menunos character. He did not want to tell us what his self-indulgent choice would be. I will tell you right now, my self-indulgent choice would be learning how to scuba dive and then being taken to all of the best coral reefs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, we can do that. Um, I would like it if uh if if the Pluribus would um reenact all of my zombie apocalypse fantasies. Wow. You know, not with real guns, maybe just like, you know, I have some airsoft guns, just run around, um, hotwire cars, eat beans in a dark alley, you know, stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00That's the dream you're living waiting for. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But you know, when it when uh when it gets hard, that's when I'm like, okay, guys, I gotta I gotta take the weekend off. So I just go back home. And they're like, cool, they're all dressed up like zombies. And it's like, yeah, we'll see it. We'll see you next week when you show up for the zombie apocalypse. And I'm like, We love you, Dan. And I hop on my motorcycle and I ride away. Sounds pretty wonderful. We could we could alternate between that and scuba diving.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, we're gonna be having this conversation on Patreon. Uh, that's where we're hanging out now. It's a free place for anybody who wants to hang out. Patreon. Freatreon. If you've got some beans and you want to share them to support the podcast, we appreciate it. As you know, I am now employed. Um, but that doesn't mean that this thing stops costing money.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So if you do have some beans, we'd love them. But beans are not the requirement because we want everybody to join. All survivors are welcome. We're also currently reading, and actually, next week's episode is going to be about zone one by Colson Whitehead. I gotta read that. Yes, because in the past, when we're recording this at the end of January, neither of us have started it. Ollie is at least 90 minutes in and keeps asking me how I feel about the book I haven't started that we assigned in the book club.
SPEAKER_01To be fair, we both have ADHD.
SPEAKER_00Yes, we will be absolutely be procrastinating this to the last second.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna put it off until the last day, but I'm going to listen to it at 1.74 times speed. And uh and then everything will be fine. I'll just do a real quick panic audio book.
SPEAKER_00Maybe we can start it on the way to the movies tonight.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a good idea.
SPEAKER_00We'll do that. Yeah. Uh so read along if you haven't yet. You've got a week and come chat with us
Interdependence, AI Metaphor, And Art
SPEAKER_00about that on Patreon. You can also support the show by leaving a rating or review. You know, our egos love to be stroked, love a good review or a rating. Five stars, please.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, five stars.
SPEAKER_00And if you have deep dark thoughts about whether or not you'd like to join Pleuribus, send us a voicemail at 614-699-3006.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you can also follow us on Instagram at zombiebook club podcast. The end is nigh. Stay human, but not in the way that makes it so that you are joining as part of a Pluribus. Unless you want to. Unless you're into that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um which you can consent to.
SPEAKER_00But in the meantime, don't die.
SPEAKER_01Bye.
SPEAKER_00Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_01Bye-bye.