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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did

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Speaker 1: Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that people can do good

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Speaker 1: things and response to bad things, and also sometimes that

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Speaker 1: people can become better people than.

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Speaker 2: They started off. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my

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Speaker 2: guest today is Cavea, who's host of House of Pod

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Speaker 2: and a doctor. And you know, oh hi, yeah.

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Speaker 3: No, I'm a better person now for having been through

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Speaker 3: episode one of these two parter learning things about how

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Speaker 3: to improve as a person.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And you know he needs doctors a lot,

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Speaker 2: George orwell, oh, I thought you're gonna say me, Well,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to get to that too. Also is a

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Speaker 2: is our producer Sophie, who I would not have said

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Speaker 2: that about on air, but Sophie said about on air,

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Speaker 2: how do you like our sickly hero pop this week?

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Speaker 4: I don't know.

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Speaker 3: I think that. Uh, I don't know. I can't get

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Speaker 3: past some of the things, so I just don't like him.

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Speaker 2: That's fair, that's working fair. I did not like him

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Speaker 2: for a very long time after I learned.

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Speaker 5: Thought yeah, yeah, but you know, empathy to people who

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Speaker 5: also need to live in a bubble.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, also in our bubble of social helping create this

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Speaker 2: podcast is our audio engineer, Daniel and Hi Daniel H.

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Speaker 3: Danel, Danel. I liked it and.

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Speaker 2: Our theme musical was written forced by unwoman and yeah,

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Speaker 2: no it's Sophie. I like, I feel you about it.

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Speaker 2: I I don't know. It took me a really long

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Speaker 2: time to be like, I'm going to give this man

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Speaker 2: a time a day. Our hero, George Orwell, are complicated here.

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Speaker 2: George Orwell, he's in Spain and he joins a Marxist militia,

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Speaker 2: the Poum Poum. They're a smallish unit and they're like

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Speaker 2: famous in history because George Orwell wrote one of the

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Speaker 2: main books about the Spanish Civil War. They're not historically

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Speaker 2: important particularly, but they became important because warwells in it.

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Speaker 2: And they're Marxists. But the whole thing is that they're

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Speaker 2: not attached to Stalin. Stalin actually tries to kill them

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Speaker 2: all soon enough, and he wanted to join the anarchists

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Speaker 2: because they weren't but they weren't going where he wanted

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Speaker 2: to go. He wrote quote, as far as my purely

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Speaker 2: personal preferences went, I would have liked to join the anarchists.

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Speaker 2: And George ends up an officer soon enough, he was

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Speaker 2: a few years older, and he had basically had paramilitary

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Speaker 2: training from being a colonial cop. There was military rank

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Speaker 2: in terms of structure in these militaries, but not in

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Speaker 2: terms of social treatment. He said that quote. There was

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Speaker 2: no titles, no badges, no heel clicking, and no saluting,

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Speaker 2: and everyone from general to private drew the same pay ate,

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Speaker 2: the same food, wore the same clothes, and mingled on

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Speaker 2: terms of complete equality.

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Speaker 3: Why he wanted to be with the anarchists because he

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Speaker 3: just didn't like the pageantry of the military and being

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Speaker 3: like a cop and all that stuff.

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Speaker 2: Well, so he had like kind of come from like

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Speaker 2: he had this period already where he had been an

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Speaker 2: anarchist for a little bit. But actually it's this Marxist

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Speaker 2: militia is also like that. The Marxist militia that he's

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Speaker 2: part of is also complete social equality, even though there's

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Speaker 2: a command structure embedded within it, also within the anarchists,

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Speaker 2: or very similar structurally. But yeah, no, I think he

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Speaker 2: just he like kind of likes the anarchists. He's still

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Speaker 2: not one. He's a democratic socialist. He actually comes there

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Speaker 2: as part of the Labor Party, the Independent Labor Party,

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Speaker 2: distinct from the Labor Party. They move in and out

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Speaker 2: in British politics are very confusing to me, and so

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Speaker 2: these militias fight despite there being no force, making them

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Speaker 2: nothing but class loyalty. Orwell wrote quote in May. For

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Speaker 2: a short while, I was acting lieutenant in command of

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Speaker 2: about thirty men, English and Spanish. We had all been

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Speaker 2: under fire for months, and I never had the slightest

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Speaker 2: difficulty in getting an order obeyed or in getting men

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Speaker 2: to volunteer for a dangerous job. Discipline was built by

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Speaker 2: spreading revolutionary ideas, not as jargon and most as sloganeering,

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Speaker 2: but by quote, I'm a sneeze. Please cut this whole one,

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Speaker 2: or I'm going to acknowledge them with sneeze, and it's

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Speaker 2: not gonna happen. And you should include it because it's first. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: just include it. I hope people find it amusing that

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Speaker 2: I sometimes have to sneeze.

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Speaker 3: Look up at the sun. You can trigger an ocular

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Speaker 3: reflex if there's one available to you. There's a lamp.

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Speaker 2: Although it is midsummer as we're recording this, I'm sure

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Speaker 2: there's a sun outside somewhere. So they spread this discipline

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Speaker 2: by spreading revolutionary ideas by quote, endless arguments and explanations

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Speaker 2: as to why such and such a thing was necessary,

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Speaker 2: rather than being like, well, come on, man, dialectical marks

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Speaker 2: as materialism says that you should go to run into

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Speaker 2: that machine gun you know. Oh wait, maybe with sneeze again.

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Speaker 2: Who knows gonna happen at any time.

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Speaker 3: I don't know.

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Speaker 2: I'm not convinced. Almost certainly, oh, he also wrote quote

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Speaker 2: almost certainly. The main reason why the Spanish Republic could

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Speaker 2: keep up the fight for two and a half years

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Speaker 2: against impossible odds was that there was no gross contrasts

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Speaker 2: of wealth. The people suffered horribly, but they all suffered alike.

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Speaker 2: When the private soldier had not a cigarette, the general

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Speaker 2: had not won either. The militias held the line while

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Speaker 2: a regular army assembled and trained behind them, but eventually

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Speaker 2: the communist forces, and by this I mean the Stalinist forces,

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Speaker 2: swallowed it all. After about a year, the militias disbanded

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Speaker 2: or were absorbed into the communist controlled popular army, with

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Speaker 2: all the usual bullshit like officers getting paid a ton

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Speaker 2: more than the regular soldiers, or well described it, The

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Speaker 2: undoubted purpose of this change was to strike a blow

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Speaker 2: at equalitarianism in every Department, the same policy had been followed,

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Speaker 2: with the result that only a year after the outbreak

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Speaker 2: of the war, you get what was in effect an

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Speaker 2: ordinary bourgeois state with in addition a reign of terror

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Speaker 2: to preserve the status quo. And like when he says

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Speaker 2: preserve the status quo, he means that, like when the

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Speaker 2: revolution first broke out, everyone's like running around and collectivizing

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Speaker 2: farms and stealing land back from the landlords and shit

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Speaker 2: like that. Right, the Communists were like, no, no, you can't

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Speaker 2: do that yet. You're not allowed to collectivize property anymore,

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Speaker 2: and we will fucking kill you if you try.

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Speaker 6: So I'm look confused, though, Yeah, you're confused, so he

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Speaker 6: said a little bit. Yeah, okay again, I'm I'm not

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Speaker 6: socially just asking.

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Speaker 3: But I feel like that would have been a Communist

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Speaker 3: thing to do though, or were they There's like, no,

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Speaker 3: we're the ones to do that, not you people doing

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Speaker 3: it willy nilly.

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Speaker 2: So there's this thing that at this time the Communist

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Speaker 2: Party was kind of the right wing of the left

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Speaker 2: because they believed one they were like totalitarian right and

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Speaker 2: they believed in Stalin and all this stuff, right, But

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Speaker 2: they specifically were like, we can't have the revolution yet

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Speaker 2: because we don't want to piss off the rich, because

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Speaker 2: we want to consolidate power. They were specifically around politicking

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Speaker 2: and playing power rather than having a communist revolution. So

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Speaker 2: they're hypocrites and they are like counter revolutionary, is how

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Speaker 2: I Everyone who listens to this podcast knows, I have

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Speaker 2: a very low opinion of the USSR. But yeah, so

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Speaker 2: they are running around preventing the revolution in the name

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Speaker 2: of the greater revolution. Basically. Part of it also is

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Speaker 2: that Russia doesn't care about Spain except as a chess

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Speaker 2: piece on a global board, right, and so Russia is

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Speaker 2: afraid that if Spain goes communists too soon, the UK

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Speaker 2: and France are not going to have it, and they're

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Speaker 2: going to like try to stop Russia.

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Speaker 3: Got you, right, gotcha.

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Speaker 2: They're playing forty chess with yeah, people's lives instead of

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Speaker 2: having ideological consistency and trying to, you know, create a

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Speaker 2: communist society. Everyone else's trying to create a communist society

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Speaker 2: except the communists, is what's happening. The Labor Party is

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Speaker 2: down there trying to fucking cause a communist society because

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Speaker 2: the left wing of the or the Independent Labor Party

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Speaker 2: is to the left of the Communists.

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Speaker 3: Is the Labor Party back then it all similar to

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Speaker 3: the one that exists now.

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Speaker 2: No, So okay, so I'm gonna get this a little

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Speaker 2: bit messy. So there's the Independent Labor Party and then

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Speaker 2: there's the Labor Party, and then they kind of intertwine

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Speaker 2: back and forth every now and then. And I think

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Speaker 2: by like the mid nineteen forties, the Independent Labor Party

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Speaker 2: becomes the left wing of the Labor Party, which comes

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Speaker 2: into power. And it's around then I think that the

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Speaker 2: Labor Party starts getting a little bit more boring centrist,

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Speaker 2: even kind of sometimes center right, and that's like Or

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Speaker 2: will die shortly there after, and like, so we actually

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Speaker 2: don't know what he would have kind of done politically,

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Speaker 2: whether he would have like kept fighting for the left

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Speaker 2: wing of the Labor Party or whether he would have

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Speaker 2: peaced out on it. But he's down there with the

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Speaker 2: Independent Labor Party.

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Speaker 3: At this time.

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Speaker 2: So it's it is distinct at this time, and there's

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Speaker 2: no official English intervention, like the government is of Britain

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Speaker 2: is not intervening, but individuals are like, we gotta go

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Speaker 2: stup fascism. Yeah, I'm also going to just out of nowhere.

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Speaker 2: Read my favorite quote from this book because I like it. Quote.

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Speaker 2: I have no particular love for the idealized worker as

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Speaker 2: he appears in the bourgeois communist mind. But when I

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Speaker 2: see an actual flesh and blood worker in conflict with

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Speaker 2: his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to

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Speaker 2: ask myself which side I am on.

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Speaker 3: Wow that's pretty. That's a. That's a. It's a major

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Speaker 3: character arc from where he started.

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Speaker 2: I know he was a cop.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, wow, Yeah, that's pretty.

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Speaker 3: It's pretty interesting. I mean, we're going to get to it,

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Speaker 3: but I'm I'm like bummed to hear that he died

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Speaker 3: at forty six, Like I really wonder what would have

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Speaker 3: happened if, like, you know, he kept going.

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Speaker 2: No and everyone conjectures and they would have been like,

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Speaker 2: he would have been on my team. And I do

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Speaker 2: that a little bit too, But like everyone's wrong, you know.

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Speaker 2: Right soon after he gets down there, Eileen comes to

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Speaker 2: and we don't have as much of her words. He

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Speaker 2: didn't write much about her the famous war. His book

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Speaker 2: on the war, Homage to Catalonia, doesn't mention her by

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Speaker 2: name anywhere in it, and doesn't talk about what she's doing.

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Speaker 2: Really Some have read this as evidence of him ignoring

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Speaker 2: her and taking it for granted. Again, my read of

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Speaker 2: the situation, which could be wrong, is that it was

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Speaker 2: private and that neither of them wanted her dragged into it. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: but she went down there, and she was coordinating logistics

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Speaker 2: for all the independent labor union soldiers, and so she's

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Speaker 2: running supply and communications and financial stuff and producing a

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Speaker 2: newspaper and a radio show. And there's like photos of

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Speaker 2: her on the front lines and stuff. She's not fighting

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Speaker 2: on the front lines, but she's making it happen.

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Speaker 3: Sounded sad upon the radio. Sorry, I had to get

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Speaker 3: into Dixie being that runner.

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Speaker 2: Nice, well done you.

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Speaker 3: Eventually I find a way.

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Speaker 2: I only know, come on, Eileen, that the chorus you know, Oh.

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Speaker 3: God, I don't know. I love that song so much.

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Speaker 3: It is the greatest one hit wonder, even better than

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Speaker 3: PoCA Bell's canon. It's that good a one hit wonder.

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Speaker 3: That's how much I love that song.

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Speaker 2: It does something really well, which is like be a

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Speaker 2: like upbeat sad song. Yeah, exactly, that's right. Yeah, I

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Speaker 2: do like that about it. So, while George is fighting

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Speaker 2: at the front, a fascist soldier shoots him through the throat.

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Speaker 2: There's so many people who hate Orwell who write about Orwell,

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Speaker 2: And there's like this one writer who writes about everything

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Speaker 2: bad that happens to orwell's his own fault, and like

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Speaker 2: how he died of sickness as his own fault because

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Speaker 2: he kept being like dumb, you know. And so this

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Speaker 2: author whose name I genuinely forget, was like, oh, he

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Speaker 2: was really tall and he stood up and so they

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Speaker 2: he got shot and he should have known better because

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Speaker 2: he was tall and not to stand.

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Speaker 3: Should never have stood up in that war.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's like the same versus like he he

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Speaker 2: was slumming and that's how he got sick and destroyed

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Speaker 2: his health. So fuck him. And I'm just like damn.

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Speaker 2: And it's not even one of the people who was

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Speaker 2: writing about the bad thing he did.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, he gets shot in the throat, but he survives.

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Speaker 2: If he had been shot a millimeter in another direction,

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Speaker 2: we probably wouldn't have had the book nineteen eighty four.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, those a little important things going through your neck.

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Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, bad place to get shot. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I was gonna ask, as a doctor, is like is

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Speaker 2: that a good spot? Like I know, he just turned

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Speaker 2: out the best.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, turned to kit it really tight. Yeah, yeah, that's

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Speaker 3: a really bad place. I mean, aside from the blood

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Speaker 3: vessels that are major to bleed out very easily, the

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Speaker 3: is you know, you could get swelling from the wound

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Speaker 3: or the edemon and that could cause a restriction on

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Speaker 3: your air and your breathing, so not to mention your

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Speaker 3: spinal cord. So there's all there's a lot of stuff

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Speaker 3: in there, I mean, unless it just nicks you on

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Speaker 3: the side. Yes, it's not a good place to get shot. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: No, it's definitely threw the throat, not of graze, and

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Speaker 2: he definitely was apparently like millimeters from an artery and goodness,

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Speaker 2: but he's lucky in some ways.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: One thing that wasn't lucky is that while he was

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Speaker 2: at the front, the Communists had started attacking the Marxists

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Speaker 2: and the anarchists, and they started disappearing POM members, the

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Speaker 2: militia that he's part of. They start torturing them, they start,

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Speaker 2: but don't worry. The communist officers who did this disappearing

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Speaker 2: and torturing of their political rivals then got disappeared and

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Speaker 2: tortured by the Communist officers who replaced them, because it's

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Speaker 2: no one is good at killing communists like Stalin.

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Speaker 3: I mean, like why just to like we didn't like

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Speaker 3: the way you tortured and killed the anarchists. We're going

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Speaker 3: to do it.

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Speaker 2: Better or like yeah, like now they're politically untrustworthy, like

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Speaker 2: Stalin is like fucking paranoid.

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Speaker 3: You did what we told you to our colleagues, and

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Speaker 3: that shows us that you're not to be trusted, so

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Speaker 3: we are going to kill you now for it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, like like it's like it's almost inscrutable, like

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Speaker 2: Stalin has like the people closest to him are the

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Speaker 2: people who are getting killed, right, and so it's the

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Speaker 2: highest like it is the guy who disappeared a Pooh

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Speaker 2: member and was like the main torture guy. It's I

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Speaker 2: researched at different time, so I remember anyone's names who

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Speaker 2: like was then disappeared and tortured within months, you know,

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Speaker 2: And I don't know. I think that this is why

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Speaker 2: the Spanish Civil War, and other people argue that we

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Speaker 2: would have lost either way, but I think this is

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Speaker 2: why Franco won. There's certainly a big part of it.

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Speaker 2: It doesn't help when this kind of stuff happens. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: and so when he gets out of the hospit at all,

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Speaker 2: there's a warrnt out for his arrest from the Communists

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Speaker 2: because he's in and for him and Eileen, Eileen saves

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Speaker 2: the day. She has one eye on the exit the

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Speaker 2: whole time, and while he's recovering, she's like figuring out passport.

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Speaker 3: Shit.

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Speaker 2: I think they get out under an assumed name. It's

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Speaker 2: been a while since I read how much Catalonium and

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Speaker 2: gets them out of the country. And they were going

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Speaker 2: to be arrested and tried by the Communists. And we

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Speaker 2: know this because they were arrested and tried in absentia,

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Speaker 2: which is two things. One, what a way to start

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Speaker 2: a married life. They had been married for less than

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Speaker 2: six months when they go to this war. Yeah, and

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Speaker 2: it is like around their one year anniversary that they

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Speaker 2: are fleeing under assumed names from the Communists who they

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Speaker 2: were supposedly supposed to be helping.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, romance, I know.

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Speaker 2: And the other thing is that he hates Stalinists, and

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Speaker 2: with the burning heat of fiery son, the two things

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Speaker 2: he hates are fascists and Stalinists and he sees them

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Speaker 2: equally as bad. And because they killed probably an equal

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Speaker 2: number of his close friends during that war. Yeah, and

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Speaker 2: so yeah, Stalin gets stal George Horwell gets home, gets

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Speaker 2: really anti Stalinists at this point, and the left in

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Speaker 2: the UK fucking hates him when he gets back because

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Speaker 2: he doesn't like Stalin. Everyone's like, what, you can't be

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Speaker 2: mad at Stalin, the Man of Steele, He's our guy.

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Speaker 2: He couldn't get Homage to Catalonia published for a very

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Speaker 2: long time, and when he did, it's sold like a

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Speaker 2: couple hundred copies. He's like already a known author at

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Speaker 2: this point, right, but no one will buy it because

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Speaker 2: leftists right wing doesn't want it and the leftists don't

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Speaker 2: want it either. This is where Orwell starts getting taken

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Speaker 2: out of context constantly. His existing books are starting to

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Speaker 2: get taken out of context and being like, oh, or

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Speaker 2: was not a real leftist. He said the following about

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Speaker 2: the working class or whatever. Like there's this thing where

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Speaker 2: like in one of his books he was like the

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Speaker 2: working class smell, and you take that out of context,

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Speaker 2: that sure doesn't.

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Speaker 3: Sound great, right, yeah, sure.

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Speaker 2: And he's like talking about being like the sweat of

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Speaker 2: honest labor and hard lives and like bad hygiene caused

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Speaker 2: by poverty, and like, yes, there is actually a distinct

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Speaker 2: smell and you know, and so they're like, ah, or

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Speaker 2: Well just thinks that everyone, all the working class are

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Speaker 2: smelly idiots or whatever. Yeah, but Orwell remains a leftist

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Speaker 2: despite this, He wrote, quote, every line of serious work

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Speaker 2: I have written since nineteen thirty six has been written

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Speaker 2: directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism. And

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Speaker 2: what's funny speaking of being taken out of context after

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Speaker 2: he dies and they like are reprinting Animal Farm and shit,

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Speaker 2: they start off with a intro introduction where they take

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Speaker 2: out the for democratic socialism.

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Speaker 3: No kidding, yeah, oh my, what did they did? They

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Speaker 3: replace it with something or they took up that line completely.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's every line of serious work I've written is

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Speaker 2: against totalitarianism.

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Speaker 3: What point did he write animal Farm? Was this? Okay,

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Speaker 3: it's soon.

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Speaker 2: So he moves in with Eileen's family for a while,

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Speaker 2: and then they moved to another place and they got

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Speaker 2: a French poodle they named Marx and a rooster they

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Speaker 2: named Henry Ford. And he kept getting sick a bunch,

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Speaker 2: which is like, you know, his the style at the

347
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Speaker 2: time for him and a writer friend pays for them

348
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Speaker 2: to recover in French Morocco, and so he goes to

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Speaker 2: hang out in warmer air or whatever because he's stole

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Speaker 2: a middle class and by middle class and British standards

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Speaker 2: like vaguely boucheoisie guy.

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Speaker 5: You know.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Eventually World War two does its whole thing like start.

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Speaker 2: And prior to the outbreak of the war, George actually

355
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Speaker 2: came back from Spain and he was a pacifist, which

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Speaker 2: was like the further left position, which doesn't mean that

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Speaker 2: he was against It doesn't mean what it means today,

358
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Speaker 2: like no violence. It means he didn't believe in England

359
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Speaker 2: joining a hypothetical European war. As soon as the war starts,

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Speaker 2: he won eighties and he is very pro war. There

361
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Speaker 2: are Nazis to kill and there's an England to defend.

362
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Speaker 2: Eileen is off to working in the censorship department at

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Speaker 2: the Ministry of Information. Yeah, they sounds very nineteen eighty four.

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Speaker 2: His life is very nineteen eighty four. George Orwell is

365
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Speaker 2: going to soon we'll talk about it. First he tries

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Speaker 2: to sign up for the military. He's like, well, I know,

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Speaker 2: my shit, I've been in a war. I you know

368
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Speaker 2: and say what you want about George orwell, he was

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Speaker 2: pathologically fearless. As far as I can tell, the Army,

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Speaker 2: the Navy, and the Air Force all reject him like

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Speaker 2: one after the other.

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Speaker 3: Your next buddy, you can't come. No, we're not taking you.

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Speaker 2: You are sickly, you are constantly down with pneumonia. And

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Speaker 2: also I think the fact that he's like a leftist

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Speaker 2: is part of this, right, like he's been. He actually

376
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Speaker 2: like kind of tries to join like more proper like

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Speaker 2: Ministry of Information type stuff, and I think and they

378
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Speaker 2: don't let him because he's on there like sk lefty

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Speaker 2: watch list. Yeah but yeah, and he's in his late

380
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Speaker 2: thirties and shit, and he's like not medically fit for

381
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Speaker 2: the war. So he joins the Home Guard, and the

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Speaker 2: Home Guard is mostly made up of like brave but

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Speaker 2: too young or too old or too sick, people like

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Speaker 2: people who can join the regular military over under eighteen

385
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Speaker 2: over forty one. And they all were training to fight

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Speaker 2: as partisans in case Germany invaded the UK, which absolutely

387
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Speaker 2: could have happened. It didn't come super close to happening.

388
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Speaker 2: We now know, right because we can like look at

389
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Speaker 2: the war documents and shit, but it like absolutely could

390
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Speaker 2: have happened. Or well, wants to turn the Home Guard

391
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Speaker 2: into a socialist militia to have a socialist revolution during

392
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Speaker 2: World War Two.

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Speaker 3: It's strong, yes commitment.

394
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Speaker 2: He is not alone in this And basically he starts

395
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Speaker 2: talking about how we need to win the war against

396
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Speaker 2: Hitler for socialism to have a chance, but we also

397
00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:56,320
Speaker 2: need to have a socialist revolution in order for winning

398
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Speaker 2: the war to have a chance. And I mean, he's wrong.

399
00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:02,720
Speaker 2: They managed to defeat Hitler anyway without a socialist revolution.

400
00:21:03,160 --> 00:21:04,960
Speaker 2: And did you know what one result of us not

401
00:21:05,000 --> 00:21:07,600
Speaker 2: having had a social democratic socialist revolution in the nineteen

402
00:21:07,640 --> 00:21:08,199
Speaker 2: forties is.

403
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Speaker 3: I'm gonna guess it's something to do with the commercials.

404
00:21:12,880 --> 00:21:15,040
Speaker 2: It does the fact that we were about to pivot

405
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Speaker 2: to actually, you know, we'd probably be pivoting to like

406
00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:20,000
Speaker 2: the people's ads or whatever its because the world's a nightmare.

407
00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:33,480
Speaker 2: But here's ads and rebeca the beginning of the war,

408
00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:35,760
Speaker 2: he spends two years in the propaganda services for the

409
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Speaker 2: BBC nineteen forty one to nineteen forty three. He's doing

410
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Speaker 2: wartime news in propaganda for British India. Because people tend

411
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Speaker 2: to forget that Britain was still in imperial power, Like

412
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Speaker 2: this is the there's like a couple year period where

413
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Speaker 2: Britain looks good and this is it, Like that's it.

414
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Speaker 2: The only time that Britain ever looked good was when

415
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Speaker 2: they were fighting the fucka Dazis.

416
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Speaker 3: Yeah, because of all the movies. That's why all the

417
00:21:59,560 --> 00:22:03,360
Speaker 3: movies are about that time, because yeah, they look pretty cool. Yeah,

418
00:22:03,760 --> 00:22:04,320
Speaker 3: pretty cool.

419
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Speaker 2: People forget that Britain was an imperial power and a

420
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Speaker 2: fuck ton of Indian soldiers fought and died against the

421
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Speaker 2: Nazis and are often left out of the Like an

422
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Speaker 2: Indian friend of mine was like talking about basically being like,

423
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Speaker 2: oh yeah, whenever the like credit Pie for beating the

424
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Speaker 2: fucking Nazis gets rolled out, everyone leaves us out, you know.

425
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Speaker 3: Yeah.

426
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Speaker 2: And he was well aware of the irony of him

427
00:22:25,480 --> 00:22:28,320
Speaker 2: as an anti colonial writer working for the Eastern Service.

428
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Speaker 2: He told his superiors, quote, if I broadcast as George orwell,

429
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Speaker 2: I am as it were selling. My literary reputation, which

430
00:22:35,600 --> 00:22:38,240
Speaker 2: so far as India is concerned, primarily arises chiefly from

431
00:22:38,240 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 2: books of an anti imperialist tendency, some of which have

432
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Speaker 2: been banned in India because some of his books are

433
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Speaker 2: banned in India because they're anti colonial, and here he is.

434
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Speaker 3: Doing colonial radio for them.

435
00:22:51,880 --> 00:22:54,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is the like, I mean, this is

436
00:22:54,800 --> 00:22:57,320
Speaker 2: this is part of why a lot of his friends

437
00:22:57,359 --> 00:22:59,359
Speaker 2: were anti war is that were like, we hate the

438
00:22:59,359 --> 00:23:01,800
Speaker 2: British government, we can't support them, right, And he's like,

439
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:05,080
Speaker 2: this is a big compromise for him. He gets really

440
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:07,800
Speaker 2: jaded about this job. He's not much of a speaker,

441
00:23:08,560 --> 00:23:11,480
Speaker 2: he never had been at being sick and getting shot

442
00:23:11,520 --> 00:23:14,520
Speaker 2: in the throat probably didn't help that. He wrote amazing

443
00:23:14,600 --> 00:23:17,000
Speaker 2: scripts and he got like sort of interesting and sly

444
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:19,879
Speaker 2: things past the censors here and there. I forgot to

445
00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 2: include some examples. But who like invite anti colonial thinkers

446
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:27,160
Speaker 2: on to talk about something totally unrelated and just kind

447
00:23:27,160 --> 00:23:30,440
Speaker 2: of vaguely get at anti colonial ideas.

448
00:23:30,920 --> 00:23:33,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, well this is really I mean, this is a

449
00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 3: really interesting parallel to what's happening now with a lot

450
00:23:35,600 --> 00:23:38,720
Speaker 3: of people trying to decide in this current election state

451
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:42,840
Speaker 3: that we're in. You know, people who are very against

452
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:45,760
Speaker 3: what the current administration might be supporting or doing at

453
00:23:45,760 --> 00:23:48,720
Speaker 3: the border and in Gaza, but still having to find

454
00:23:48,760 --> 00:23:53,840
Speaker 3: a way to like support the state of our current government.

455
00:23:53,920 --> 00:23:56,600
Speaker 3: You know, it's a very interesting it's a very interesting topic.

456
00:23:57,680 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 2: No, totally, and it's a it is a very similar

457
00:23:59,880 --> 00:24:01,920
Speaker 2: like I feel, there's not a lot of things I

458
00:24:01,960 --> 00:24:04,479
Speaker 2: could say. A lot of people say that George row

459
00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:06,400
Speaker 2: will do this, George ro will do that, George Rowyll

460
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:09,360
Speaker 2: would probab Voe Forbiden, like and he feel dirty about it,

461
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:12,879
Speaker 2: and he talks shit about it, you know. Like that

462
00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:18,520
Speaker 2: seems to be because he believed in democracy versus fascism,

463
00:24:19,280 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 2: you know, and like he was willing to be in

464
00:24:22,880 --> 00:24:25,439
Speaker 2: some ways more like compromised in order to defend what

465
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:30,520
Speaker 2: he believed was common decency. He's interesting and he like, well,

466
00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:31,359
Speaker 2: we'll talk about some of it.

467
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:33,680
Speaker 3: More in a minute.

468
00:24:33,880 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 2: And uh, there's no recordings of anything he did during

469
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:40,160
Speaker 2: this period. Apparently there's no recordings of his voice at all,

470
00:24:40,400 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 2: which I like, wow, struggle to believe. I like read

471
00:24:43,320 --> 00:24:45,919
Speaker 2: that somewhere, but I didn't then do my independent research.

472
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:48,240
Speaker 3: That is wild. And we even have like recording of

473
00:24:48,240 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 3: like Abraham Lincoln somewhere, like on some cylinder somewhere, Yes,

474
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 3: some I actually heard. I never heard it. I heard

475
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:57,920
Speaker 3: that we do somewhere, And that's where they figured out

476
00:24:57,920 --> 00:24:59,639
Speaker 3: that his voice is a little bit more like tinny

477
00:24:59,720 --> 00:25:03,159
Speaker 3: nothing deep booming voice that you think he's supposed to have,

478
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:05,680
Speaker 3: but more like Kenny sounding. I don't know if they's

479
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:08,360
Speaker 3: like or not. Hey, Abraham Lincoln.

480
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:14,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another example where I'm like, like, the Civil

481
00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 2: War in the US is another one of these examples

482
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:21,239
Speaker 2: where I'm like, yay, the Union an evil empire, you know.

483
00:25:21,720 --> 00:25:24,520
Speaker 2: But I'm like, but the right side of that war.

484
00:25:24,640 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, like, undeniably the right side, even though they're terrible.

485
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:31,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, orwell tried to basically just be as good as

486
00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:33,639
Speaker 2: he could while he was there. He said, about this time,

487
00:25:33,960 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 2: I doubt whether I shall stay in this job much longer.

488
00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:38,919
Speaker 2: But while here, I consider I have kept our propaganda

489
00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 2: slightly less disgusting than it might otherwise have been. He's

490
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:44,720
Speaker 2: got insight, yeah, And he like because he read he

491
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 2: was listening to and reading all of the propaganda of

492
00:25:47,480 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 2: like Germany and all the other countries, you know, and

493
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 2: he was just like, how do I be less gross?

494
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 2: How do I tell fewer lies?

495
00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:54,400
Speaker 3: You know? Yeah?

496
00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:57,879
Speaker 2: While doing war propaganda? And he didn't nail it, but

497
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 2: he tried. It's around this time that the last trace

498
00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:05,800
Speaker 2: of anti Semitism has gone. World War two obviously a

499
00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:09,200
Speaker 2: high water mark for some anti Semitism. It shook a

500
00:26:09,240 --> 00:26:13,159
Speaker 2: fair amount of anti Semites who were basically decent people

501
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 2: into dropping that.

502
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 3: You know, they saw the extreme there, they saw where

503
00:26:19,840 --> 00:26:20,760
Speaker 3: that road goes.

504
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 2: Yeah. He quit the BBC in nineteen forty three before

505
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 2: the war's over. He's like, I can't do this anymore,

506
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 2: to focus on writing what became his breakthrough book, Animal Farm.

507
00:26:31,440 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 2: His wife Eileen probably helped him a lot with this.

508
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 2: This is contested because people like to argue about everything,

509
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:40,919
Speaker 2: and it seems very likely that she was like, not

510
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 2: quite a co writer, but like, I think they were close.

511
00:26:43,920 --> 00:26:45,680
Speaker 2: I think that they were like, actually they cheated on

512
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:48,879
Speaker 2: each other constantly, right, And I don't know whether or

513
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:51,640
Speaker 2: not this was like them being dicks to each other

514
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:53,400
Speaker 2: or whether they were doing what was actually the style

515
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:54,639
Speaker 2: at the time, which was just to be in an

516
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:58,920
Speaker 2: open marriage, you know. And because they didn't write about

517
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:01,280
Speaker 2: their personal lives, so I don't know.

518
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:05,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, something like sounds like a thing that like European

519
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:06,879
Speaker 3: authors would do.

520
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:11,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And they're both sickly. He's constantly down with

521
00:27:11,359 --> 00:27:14,679
Speaker 2: bronchitis and shit, and she is suffering from uterine bleeding

522
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:17,919
Speaker 2: and has been for years. They're trying to have a

523
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:20,680
Speaker 2: kid but can't manage. It's probable that George is sterile.

524
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:25,720
Speaker 2: He also becomes the literary editor of the Tribune because actually,

525
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:28,840
Speaker 2: by the way, it's all stored in the neck, you know,

526
00:27:28,920 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 2: and he had lost all that, right, isn't that the case.

527
00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:34,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll have to look at the pub med literature

528
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:35,879
Speaker 3: on that, but yeah, I think that's right.

529
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:39,960
Speaker 2: Okay. He becomes the literary editor of the Tribune, which

530
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 2: is a journal for the left wing of the Labor Party,

531
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:45,440
Speaker 2: what gets called the farthest left among the factions supporting

532
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:49,440
Speaker 2: the war. Further left of that is the anti war left.

533
00:27:50,040 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 2: His friend George Woodcock wrote about this time. Even more

534
00:27:54,280 --> 00:27:57,120
Speaker 2: than his predecessors, he opened the review pages to writers

535
00:27:57,119 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 2: of almost every shade of political opinion. Only the Communists

536
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 2: were uninvited. In those days. Quite apart from Orwell's particular

537
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 2: antagonism towards it, the Communist Party, which was constantly clamoring

538
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 2: for the suppression of rival minorities, was regarded as pretty

539
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 2: far to the right in the ever shifting political spectrum.

540
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 2: Basically since around nineteen seventeen, Anyone saying communist in the

541
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 2: West meant bolshevik. Prior to that the word had broader meaning,

542
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:26,480
Speaker 2: But to say communist in this era meant pretty specifically

543
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 2: like we take orders from Russia, not a we should

544
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:32,600
Speaker 2: have the worker's control for the means of production. The

545
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:36,480
Speaker 2: words for that were socialists, which usually implied democratic socialism,

546
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:41,800
Speaker 2: like Orwell, anarchist or Trotskyist. So and that helped me

547
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 2: that like broke through a lot of like reading about

548
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:47,040
Speaker 2: this era was to be like, oh, overall, if someone

549
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 2: says communist and they know what they're talking about, they're

550
00:28:49,120 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 2: not just throwing it around as a slur, like they

551
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 2: mean the communist party that is taking orders from Russia.

552
00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 2: And if they say trotskyist or anarchist or democratic socialist

553
00:28:58,680 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 2: or socialist, they mean something different.

554
00:29:00,280 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 3: M hm.

555
00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 2: So he finish his animal farm and five presses turn

556
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:08,000
Speaker 2: it down. One of them turned it down because, as

557
00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 2: Orwell suspected, everyone thought, Orwell is crazy for thinkiness Orwell

558
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,760
Speaker 2: has lost his mind. He's he's so anti communist, he's

559
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:18,680
Speaker 2: seeing communists everywhere. He's Spain broken. I mean, I think

560
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 2: Spain broke him a little bit. But like, how could

561
00:29:21,320 --> 00:29:25,600
Speaker 2: it not. Yeah, he suspected that a Soviet spy embedded

562
00:29:25,640 --> 00:29:28,240
Speaker 2: in the Ministry of Information got a publisher to change

563
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 2: its mind. It turns out he was right, no kidding.

564
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:36,200
Speaker 2: Soviet spy embedded in the Ministry of Information went to

565
00:29:36,240 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 2: that publisher and was like, Yo, don't publish this.

566
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:40,040
Speaker 3: Wow.

567
00:29:40,360 --> 00:29:45,000
Speaker 2: And so everyone's turning it down because it's anti Soviet

568
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:48,360
Speaker 2: and it's World War two and people are like, those

569
00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:51,120
Speaker 2: are our allies right now? Yeah, yeah, we can't publish that,

570
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 2: which I even I even kind of get yeah, you know, yeah,

571
00:29:54,840 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 2: I even kind of be like, let's wait a couple

572
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:59,440
Speaker 2: of years on that. I don't know, I would probably

573
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:01,840
Speaker 2: still publish it, but I can and see where they're

574
00:30:01,840 --> 00:30:05,239
Speaker 2: coming from. But then one press turned it down that

575
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 2: I'm like sad about the anarchist press turned it down.

576
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 3: That's a real disappointment, I know.

577
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:13,479
Speaker 2: And some of his anarchist friends, George wood Cockway keep

578
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 2: quoting a lot because he's one of the first people

579
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 2: who write a book about Gorge Orwell after he died.

580
00:30:17,400 --> 00:30:21,240
Speaker 2: He as an anarchist historian and was friends close friends

581
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:24,480
Speaker 2: with Orwell, and he was like, hey, we should publish this.

582
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:26,840
Speaker 2: But he wasn't able to push it through like reach

583
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 2: consensus or whatever. I don't know if that were consensus

584
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 2: based because the anarchists they were anarchists and anti war,

585
00:30:33,240 --> 00:30:36,560
Speaker 2: and Orwell socialist and pro war, but.

586
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 3: It just such, you know, it makes me think that

587
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:41,600
Speaker 3: like if it had gone through and an anarchist press

588
00:30:41,800 --> 00:30:44,440
Speaker 3: had done it, I think in the long run, just

589
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 3: what it would have done for assuming it still would

590
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 3: have hit the same way, which I imagine it would, like,

591
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:53,160
Speaker 3: just imagine what that would have done for anarchist literature.

592
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 7: I know in general it would have made it mainstream.

593
00:30:56,560 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 7: I know, I'm so mad about this in retrospect. And

594
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,520
Speaker 7: eventually Animal Farm found a publisher. It found an anti

595
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:11,440
Speaker 7: Stalinist left his publisher called Secord and Warburg. And Warburg

596
00:31:11,520 --> 00:31:13,920
Speaker 7: of Secord and Warburg had been in Orwell's unit of

597
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 7: the Home Guard. I think Orwell had recruited him and

598
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 7: so it was part of that. Like, hey, yes, like

599
00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 7: pro war socialists are going to try and like have

600
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:22,160
Speaker 7: a socialist revolution with the Home Guard. That was a

601
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 7: total non starter, but it was like the fun idea,

602
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:26,280
Speaker 7: you know, Yeah, made some good friends, made some friends

603
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:32,160
Speaker 7: along the way. That's exactlytant. Yeah. Meanwhile, in May nineteen

604
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 7: forty four, the couple adopted a baby.

605
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 2: His name is Richard. Not long after, the Nazis blew

606
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,400
Speaker 2: up their house, but they survived. They weren't home during

607
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:45,120
Speaker 2: the Blootz. Their house gets blown up, and Orwell had

608
00:31:45,120 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 2: to like dig through the rubble for his books and

609
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:51,720
Speaker 2: kurt them away in a wheelbarrow. And as the war

610
00:31:51,760 --> 00:31:54,600
Speaker 2: wound down in early nineteen forty five, Orwell, as a

611
00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 2: war journalist, headed off to Germany. But then tragedy strikes.

612
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,480
Speaker 2: Eileen is home with Richard, who is ten months old,

613
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:05,520
Speaker 2: and she wants to get a hysterectomy because of her

614
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 2: uterine bleeding problem. But she's a kneemic And actually, you

615
00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 2: might be able to make better sense of this story

616
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,680
Speaker 2: than me. She's anemic, and the doctors aren't sure that

617
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 2: they want to do it. They actually specifically recommend against it,

618
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 2: not without her spending a month in the hospital getting

619
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:24,400
Speaker 2: blood transfusions, I think beforehand, but maybe afterwards she can't

620
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 2: afford that. She goes in for the surgery anyway, against

621
00:32:27,360 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 2: her doctor's recommendations, and she dies. It seems implied that

622
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 2: this was a response to the anesthesia, and the courts

623
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:38,040
Speaker 2: determined there was no malpractice or anything. It was just

624
00:32:38,080 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 2: really shit luck. And also anesthesia in nineteen forty five

625
00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 2: is not as good.

626
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean just just surgical rates were worse, obviously,

627
00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:53,600
Speaker 3: and I wonder if there was some pretty heavy bleeding

628
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:55,920
Speaker 3: during the surgery and there just wasn't enough blood product

629
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:58,520
Speaker 3: on top of that, and along with the lack of

630
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 3: blood product and maybe having a bad reaction to some

631
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 3: sedative or something they gave, probably combined to Yeah, there's

632
00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:07,680
Speaker 3: so many things that could go wrong with surgery at

633
00:33:07,680 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 3: that point. Yeah, I mean, there's things didn't go wrong

634
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:15,120
Speaker 3: with surgery now, right, I mean, we're much better than

635
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:16,840
Speaker 3: we were in the forties.

636
00:33:17,440 --> 00:33:20,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like the actually it's funny on the

637
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 2: on the you were you were the guest on the

638
00:33:22,320 --> 00:33:26,200
Speaker 2: episode about the ambulance or of paramedics. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

639
00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 2: And it was like, and those people were also the

640
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 2: folks who developed not the paramedics, but some of the

641
00:33:31,080 --> 00:33:33,960
Speaker 2: people who developed the paramedic practice were some of the

642
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 2: people who developed better anesthesia and stuff too.

643
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, you know that that episode you had

644
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 3: me on for the first paramedics in you in the

645
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 3: world after that episode, you inspired me to to reach

646
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 3: out to one of the main paramedics at the time,

647
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 3: Chief John Moon, who was still around and still practicing,

648
00:33:56,680 --> 00:33:58,800
Speaker 3: and I had him on the show and talked about it.

649
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 3: And he was the first person to intubate somebody in

650
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:05,520
Speaker 3: the field, which just hadn't been done before. Usually that

651
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:07,479
Speaker 3: there's someone just bagging them the whole time if they

652
00:34:07,520 --> 00:34:11,120
Speaker 3: have to, or giving them a suscitation, but no one

653
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:12,799
Speaker 3: had been intubated in the field before. He was the

654
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:14,919
Speaker 3: first person to do it. So that came like later

655
00:34:14,960 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 3: we're talking like, you know, seventies, like so sixty seventies

656
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 3: when these things start to happen, So things were much

657
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:24,000
Speaker 3: worse at the time of these surgeries. It's terrible. It's

658
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm and I know I always hate to

659
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:29,640
Speaker 3: like look back at medicine and judge because I know,

660
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 3: like in forty years people are going to look back

661
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 3: the things we're doing rightly so and be like monsters,

662
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:38,280
Speaker 3: monsters and the right because that's how medicine is supposed

663
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:39,680
Speaker 3: to be. We're suposed to be getting better. It's supposed

664
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:41,760
Speaker 3: to make look the things in the past look archaic.

665
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's an unfortunate. It's an unfortunate surgery that

666
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:47,080
Speaker 3: she had. I'm really curious to know if she was

667
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 3: having like, uh, what was the cause of her bleeding,

668
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 3: what was going on? But I'm sure there's there's no

669
00:34:53,560 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 3: good data on what it was or no good, no good,

670
00:34:56,120 --> 00:34:57,480
Speaker 3: nothing written down about it.

671
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:00,399
Speaker 2: And there's some books about her, and I've only read

672
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:04,480
Speaker 2: summaries of those books, uh, in preparation for this episode,

673
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:10,080
Speaker 2: you know, but like, yeah, it I'm not totally sure

674
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 2: or well, it happens like while he's en route to

675
00:35:14,560 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 2: Germany and he finds out and he turns around and

676
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 2: rushes back home. And he gets home and everyone is like, well,

677
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 2: you should probably unadopt that kid. I mean, you're like

678
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 2: a guy, you know, and orwell is a devoted father,

679
00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:31,479
Speaker 2: and he's like, the fuck, I will unadopt my child.

680
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:32,439
Speaker 3: That is a child.

681
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 2: And his friends and family all pitch in to help him,

682
00:35:36,960 --> 00:35:39,239
Speaker 2: and he is a devoted father.

683
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 3: His son is still alive. Oh wow, yeah, what are

684
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:46,640
Speaker 3: you gonna say? Sorry, No, that's that would have really

685
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:51,719
Speaker 3: taked I mean done with him. Yeah, he already did one.

686
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:57,080
Speaker 3: That would have been two strikes, yeah, exactly. No, he

687
00:35:58,560 --> 00:36:00,279
Speaker 3: his son is still alive and as we were cord

688
00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:03,799
Speaker 3: this as we recorded, he's still alive. And he wrote

689
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:07,400
Speaker 3: about his father's about eighty. He wrote about his father

690
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:10,800
Speaker 3: Beneath that intellectual exterior beat a heart of deep paternal warmth,

691
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 3: and he was determined to continue to bring me up

692
00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 3: as his son. And this and his writing actually about

693
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:19,279
Speaker 3: his father kind of helped me understand some of the

694
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 3: stuff about how he doesn't address the personal things in

695
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 3: his life. And his writing.

696
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 2: Orwell was very British. He was very stiff, upper lip

697
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,799
Speaker 2: about everything. He never talked about his emotions much. He

698
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 2: tried not to show them, and he didn't write or

699
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:36,680
Speaker 2: talk about Eileen or her death because his private life

700
00:36:36,760 --> 00:36:38,960
Speaker 2: was private. He also kind of didn't talk about it

701
00:36:38,960 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 2: to his friends, which fucked him up.

702
00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 3: I'm sure.

703
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:45,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, his son is absolutely convinced he was destroyed by

704
00:36:45,280 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 2: Eileen's death, and so his own journals, Orwell's George Orwell's

705
00:36:50,160 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 2: journals were almost entirely about his garden, and what he

706
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:57,479
Speaker 2: wrote about Eileen's death was Pollyantha roses on Eileen's grave

707
00:36:57,600 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 2: have all rooted well, wow, and it's like kind of sweet,

708
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:07,880
Speaker 2: you know, It's like you're like, oh, you're a sisman

709
00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 2: from Britain. You were not set up to understand your emotions.

710
00:37:13,239 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 3: Yeah right, He's just swallow it down yea. Yeah, and

711
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:24,040
Speaker 3: even then it found its way out. I mean that

712
00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 3: like translates deeply to like tremendous sorrow.

713
00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:32,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so he kept living his life for a while.

714
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 2: He has a flat. His writing room is a wood

715
00:37:35,560 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 2: shop with a carpenter's bench with chisels, because making bookshelves

716
00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 2: with no particular artistry is far more interesting in him

717
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:44,400
Speaker 2: than almost anything else. He makes a bunch of like

718
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 2: toys for his kid, one of his richer's like first

719
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 2: memory is like his dad carving a.

720
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:50,839
Speaker 3: Toy for him.

721
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 2: And then the reason is his first memory is because

722
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:56,640
Speaker 2: Richard then falls and gets stitches in his head because

723
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:58,560
Speaker 2: he's extending on a stool to see it. You know,

724
00:38:00,680 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 2: first memory, Yeah, totally. He enjoyed manual work as a

725
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 2: distraction from writing. He did his actual writing in the

726
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 2: living room on his typewriter. He never wore a suit

727
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 2: or a hat. He always wore shabby corduroys with patched elbows,

728
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:17,760
Speaker 2: a shaggy tie, and unpolished shoes. He also wore trench

729
00:38:17,800 --> 00:38:18,879
Speaker 2: coat instead of a suit.

730
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:19,840
Speaker 3: Wow.

731
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:23,680
Speaker 2: His friend George Woodcock wrote about him having once escaped

732
00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:26,520
Speaker 2: from middle class conventions orwell, just did not find them

733
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:27,800
Speaker 2: worth the trouble of resuming.

734
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:32,880
Speaker 3: Good for him, Yeah, good for him. When do you

735
00:38:32,960 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 3: do nineteen eighty four?

736
00:38:34,400 --> 00:38:35,080
Speaker 2: So that's next.

737
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:37,120
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, gotta keep cutting up.

738
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 2: But before we get into one of the best writers

739
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:44,600
Speaker 2: talking about the way that propaganda affects our brains, here's

740
00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:45,640
Speaker 2: some people.

741
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:47,920
Speaker 4: Who've paid us in order to have you listen to

742
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 4: what they have to say.

743
00:38:57,360 --> 00:38:57,959
Speaker 3: And here back.

744
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:02,400
Speaker 2: So the other thing that he before, we'll get to

745
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:04,120
Speaker 2: the nineteen four stuff in a minute. The other thing

746
00:39:04,160 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 2: he does during this eventful year nineteen forty five is

747
00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:13,280
Speaker 2: he throws himself into prisoner support for anarchists. On December twelfth,

748
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four, an anarchist publisher called Freedom Press, the

749
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:20,360
Speaker 2: one that had turned down Animal Farm, which is still around.

750
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 2: It's been around since like the eighteen eighties or something.

751
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 2: It's like one of the longest running presses period. I mean,

752
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:28,400
Speaker 2: there's it's England, so there's probably presses that go back

753
00:39:28,440 --> 00:39:30,880
Speaker 2: to eighteen or like eight sixty four or anything. I

754
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 2: don't know whatever, But anyway, Freedom Press gets raided as

755
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:38,359
Speaker 2: well as five houses, and because they've been running an

756
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:41,880
Speaker 2: anti war newspaper called War Commentary, and they get imprisoned

757
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:46,160
Speaker 2: for running an anti war newspaper. Now, George Orwell, he's

758
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:50,320
Speaker 2: pro war as fuck. He has sold his literary reputation,

759
00:39:50,960 --> 00:39:53,719
Speaker 2: as he's talked about, and he's been arguing with his

760
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:57,239
Speaker 2: anarchist friends for years. At this point, George Woodcock wrote

761
00:39:57,239 --> 00:40:00,560
Speaker 2: about it. Quote Orwell, who had been attacking the anarchists

762
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 2: in his Partisan Review articles, declared closed season on them

763
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 2: as soon as they became the victims of an immoderate

764
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:11,279
Speaker 2: exercise of authority, because yeah, he's pro war, but he's

765
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 2: really pro free speech and he likes the anarchists. He

766
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 2: just disagrees with them.

767
00:40:16,200 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it seems reasonable. Yeah, now he shouldn't. They

768
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 3: should not be arrested for that. Yeah yeah.

769
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:25,319
Speaker 2: So a few months after the anarchists all arrested, this

770
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 2: group called the Freedom Defense Committee was set up basically

771
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:31,680
Speaker 2: to fight for free speech for anti war dissenters, and

772
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 2: George Orwell asson the vice chair of this organization. This

773
00:40:34,920 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 2: is the only official position he will ever hold in

774
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:41,480
Speaker 2: any civil organization in his life, because he hates bureaucracy,

775
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 2: but fortunately anarchist bureaucracy is like kind of more chaotic

776
00:40:45,480 --> 00:40:47,440
Speaker 2: and lucy goosey, so it's like more up his alley,

777
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:51,960
Speaker 2: but he's still arguing about it. It's still kind of

778
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:54,839
Speaker 2: bureaucratic for him, and he like kind of bristles at it.

779
00:40:57,280 --> 00:41:00,759
Speaker 3: And the anarchists are two organs nice for him or

780
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:01,799
Speaker 3: yeah some ways.

781
00:41:01,880 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so he finances this group an animal farm

782
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:08,759
Speaker 2: is doing really well, and for the first time in

783
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,880
Speaker 2: his life, he's doing really well financially. So he throws

784
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 2: a ton of the royalties from animal farm towards getting

785
00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:18,120
Speaker 2: anarchist out of jail, and to me, that is really fitting.

786
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:21,160
Speaker 2: The other thing he does is he sets up a

787
00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:23,520
Speaker 2: trust fund for his son, and like most of his

788
00:41:23,560 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 2: money is going into this trust for his son. He

789
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 2: lives super modestly, you know. Yeah, And some people will

790
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 2: argue and I kind of buy it that he's like

791
00:41:30,920 --> 00:41:32,520
Speaker 2: he didn't know he was about to die, but he

792
00:41:32,600 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 2: like knows his health is kind of fucked.

793
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:39,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, so he's like forties. As a man

794
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:43,360
Speaker 3: in his forties, I feel that that's always on your mind.

795
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:46,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. How do I make sure my kids are okay,

796
00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:50,560
Speaker 2: and like, yeah, exactly, Yeah, And he's an interesting man

797
00:41:50,600 --> 00:41:53,040
Speaker 2: at this point. He has friends among everyone he considers

798
00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:55,720
Speaker 2: to be basically on some level fighting for a free world.

799
00:41:56,000 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 2: He's friends with the Labor Party, including British intelligence agents

800
00:41:59,440 --> 00:42:02,600
Speaker 2: and anarchists, and obviously those two groups don't like each other.

801
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 3: M hm.

802
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 2: He won't abide a fact. He want to buy two groups.

803
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:07,440
Speaker 2: He want to buy fascists and he won't to buy

804
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:11,760
Speaker 2: Party communists, but he actually fights for the free speech

805
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 2: of both of those groups. He believes that fascist and

806
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:18,240
Speaker 2: communists should be heavily socially shamed, and that everyone should

807
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 2: know their ideas are evil, but that they shouldn't be

808
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:24,880
Speaker 2: locked up for having terrible ideas, only acting on them.

809
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:28,799
Speaker 2: And considering he has thrown grenades into fascist trenches, I'm

810
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 2: willing to believe him that he is suitably anti fascist

811
00:42:31,160 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 2: to hold that position. He has the cred I think

812
00:42:34,080 --> 00:42:39,400
Speaker 2: he's the he is the guy to make this argument. Yeah,

813
00:42:40,080 --> 00:42:42,919
Speaker 2: but he's still organizing against them. When the last big

814
00:42:43,000 --> 00:42:46,560
Speaker 2: leftist bookstore that wasn't under communist control gets bought out

815
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:50,279
Speaker 2: by a communist chains store, that sentence blew my mind too.

816
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 2: If that blew your mind a little bit. That blew

817
00:42:52,520 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 2: my mind a little.

818
00:42:53,280 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 3: Bit well as you to repeat it.

819
00:42:55,680 --> 00:42:58,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, when the last big leftist bookstore that wasn't under

820
00:42:58,400 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 2: communist control got bought out by a communist chains store

821
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:05,359
Speaker 2: like Orwell, starts plotting with his anarchist friends to start

822
00:43:05,360 --> 00:43:08,880
Speaker 2: an actual leftist bookstore that would be like pluralistic and

823
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:12,439
Speaker 2: basically just like not you know, not stal not under

824
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:17,280
Speaker 2: control Stalin. Yeah, and he also financed an anarchist literary journal.

825
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 2: This does not make him an anarchist. I just as

826
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:21,640
Speaker 2: an anarchist, I'm going to find the places he overlaps

827
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:23,360
Speaker 2: with us more than other people. Right, you know, he

828
00:43:23,360 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 2: could do the same thing where he could other groups

829
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:28,200
Speaker 2: of people that he also was heavily involved with, right, Yeah,

830
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 2: But he likes his friends and he wants to fight

831
00:43:31,280 --> 00:43:34,719
Speaker 2: the communist stranghold on the left, you know. And at

832
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 2: this point his life is kind of winding down. It

833
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:40,919
Speaker 2: sometimes seems like he knows it. He starts spending even

834
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 2: more time in bed Sick. He moves up to an

835
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 2: island in Scotland called Jura and to live that good,

836
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:49,400
Speaker 2: good rural life, and he like first just for the summers,

837
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:51,160
Speaker 2: and he starts wintering there. Everyone's like, could you please

838
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:53,600
Speaker 2: fucking not winter there? You're always sick.

839
00:43:53,280 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 3: I was going to say, can you go back to

840
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:57,719
Speaker 3: like Algeria, Morocco or it was warm.

841
00:43:57,760 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 5: You know.

842
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:01,440
Speaker 2: But he like he moves up there and he spends

843
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:03,680
Speaker 2: his time chopping wood and fishing with his son and

844
00:44:03,719 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 2: like carving toys for his son, and he like gets

845
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:08,799
Speaker 2: a little bit of peace here at the end of

846
00:44:08,800 --> 00:44:12,360
Speaker 2: his life. The wars are over. He's lost his wife,

847
00:44:12,360 --> 00:44:15,120
Speaker 2: but he's got his kid, and he keeps fucking up

848
00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 2: his health by being too active. Whenever they release him

849
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 2: from the sick word, because I'll spend like months of

850
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:23,399
Speaker 2: a time down with ammonia or whatever, right, and they'll

851
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:25,279
Speaker 2: like release him from the sick word, and they'll be like,

852
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 2: if we let you go, are you just going to

853
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,200
Speaker 2: go back to the fucking island and chop wood? And

854
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 2: he's like, probably, I like the one they don't lie

855
00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:38,000
Speaker 2: to us, Okay, Yeah, he's pretty honest about it, I think.

856
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 3: Yeah.

857
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:41,640
Speaker 2: And at one time he almost drowns when his boat capsizes,

858
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:43,959
Speaker 2: and that was not good for his health, Oh my god.

859
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:46,840
Speaker 2: And the other thing he does is he writes nineteen

860
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:50,520
Speaker 2: eighty four, he's getting sicker and sicker. He catches friend

861
00:44:50,560 --> 00:44:54,360
Speaker 2: of the Pod tuberculosis in nineteen forty seven, and he

862
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 2: Fevershly writes this novel like Fevershly kind of literally in

863
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:01,480
Speaker 2: this case, he it's the most important thing he's going

864
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 2: to do with his life. And in terms of impact

865
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:08,640
Speaker 2: on society, it was I genuinely think this book helped

866
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 2: bring multiple generations of people towards recognizing the problems of

867
00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:15,560
Speaker 2: detalitarianism and how it can creep in anywhere. He also

868
00:45:15,600 --> 00:45:19,120
Speaker 2: wrote about writing. He was actually not known as like

869
00:45:19,280 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 2: Orwell the novelist. He was known as Orwell the political

870
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:27,800
Speaker 2: commentaor and essayist, and also like movie reviewer and book

871
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:32,919
Speaker 2: reviewer and like cultural critic and stuff like that, who

872
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 2: also wrote some books.

873
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:34,440
Speaker 1: You know.

874
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 2: He wrote about writing. He believed in writing and plain

875
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:43,560
Speaker 2: language without jargon. Author Christian Williams puts it, Orwell is

876
00:45:43,600 --> 00:45:46,640
Speaker 2: not renowned as a deep thinker, partly because deep thinking

877
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:49,840
Speaker 2: has become confused with difficult writing. That is to say,

878
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 2: with writing that is difficult to read. It is in

879
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:56,319
Speaker 2: fact harder to produce smooth, clear prose, but readers are

880
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:58,399
Speaker 2: prone to assume that if they do not struggle over

881
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:01,600
Speaker 2: a passage, then the writer must not have either They're

882
00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 2: just as likely to suppose or a certain type of

883
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 2: reader is anyway that if a piece of writing is obscure,

884
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:12,440
Speaker 2: it is always necessarily profound.

885
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:15,319
Speaker 3: And that I know as a great breakdown for a

886
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:18,719
Speaker 3: simple person like myself. Yeah, who wants to read more

887
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 3: stuff but wants to be able to do it without

888
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:28,480
Speaker 3: always struggling, hurt in your brain and hurting my brain

889
00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 3: to get through. I know, sometimes you have to. Just

890
00:46:30,680 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 3: sometimes you have to. That's that's what has to happen.

891
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:37,120
Speaker 3: But that shouldn't always be the case. To get great

892
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 3: thoughts and to hear read beautiful words, you.

893
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:46,840
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, if we should say our ideas as simply

894
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:50,640
Speaker 2: as they can be said without dumbing them down right,

895
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 2: you know. And I didn't even I got that for morewell,

896
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 2: and I'd kind of forgotten. He wrote an essay in

897
00:46:57,640 --> 00:47:01,000
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six called Politics in the English Language, and

898
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:04,200
Speaker 2: it's about how to write persuasively and well. In it,

899
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:06,719
Speaker 2: he lays out six rules for writing, which I think

900
00:47:06,719 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 2: are useful to any writer today, so I'm going to

901
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 2: read them. One never use a metaphor simile or other

902
00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 2: figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Two.

903
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:21,400
Speaker 2: Never use a long word where a short one will do. Three.

904
00:47:21,640 --> 00:47:23,920
Speaker 2: If it is possible to cut out a word, always

905
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:24,960
Speaker 2: cut it out.

906
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 3: Four.

907
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 2: Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.

908
00:47:29,440 --> 00:47:31,640
Speaker 2: Actually he cut out the word voice out of that sentence,

909
00:47:31,960 --> 00:47:34,839
Speaker 2: but since the listener isn't necessarily a writer, I actually

910
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:36,680
Speaker 2: think it is an important word for context. So that's

911
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:41,040
Speaker 2: shout it that is. Yeah. Five, Never use a foreign phrase,

912
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:43,120
Speaker 2: a scientific word, or a jargon word, if you can

913
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:46,360
Speaker 2: think of an everyday or English equivalent. And this one

914
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:51,200
Speaker 2: people use to be like always xenophobic, right, And I

915
00:47:51,400 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 2: genuinely don't believe he's being xenophobic here. I genuinely believe

916
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:57,360
Speaker 2: he's talking about communicating clearly to people who can read. Yeah,

917
00:47:57,440 --> 00:47:58,840
Speaker 2: his writing as best as possible.

918
00:47:59,560 --> 00:47:59,840
Speaker 3: Yeah.

919
00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:03,760
Speaker 2: Six, break any of these rules sooner than write anything

920
00:48:03,800 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 2: outright barbarous. And I'm certain he would consider ZENOPHOBI even

921
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:10,719
Speaker 2: those that barbaras is actually kind of a kind of

922
00:48:10,719 --> 00:48:15,840
Speaker 2: has a xenophobic originally. Yeah, yeah, well barbar being like,

923
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:20,400
Speaker 2: oh they don't speak like us, But like, I'm certain

924
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:22,359
Speaker 2: that he would have considered xenophobia to be like an

925
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:23,880
Speaker 2: example of being outright barbarous.

926
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 3: You know.

927
00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:27,920
Speaker 2: Another thing that happens here at the end of his

928
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 2: life is what anyone listening this far, who's on the

929
00:48:31,120 --> 00:48:33,680
Speaker 2: far left of the more authoritarian type, has been mad

930
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:36,560
Speaker 2: at me for not talking about what he is infamous for.

931
00:48:36,600 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 2: In some circles, it's called Orwell's List. I'm assuming you

932
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 2: live in a beautiful world where you haven't heard of

933
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:44,680
Speaker 2: Orwell's list. You've heard of Orwell's list.

934
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:48,720
Speaker 3: I have not, and I'm a little worried, but I'm ready.

935
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 2: It sounds bad. Orwell's obsessive list maker, and he kept

936
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 2: like lists on everything. It was like ten flowers I

937
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:58,480
Speaker 2: want to grow. Or he would have fucking loved modern internet,

938
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:02,279
Speaker 2: right buzzy, Yeah, he would have. He would have probably

939
00:49:02,320 --> 00:49:05,120
Speaker 2: worked for some BuzzFeed articles. Like he was a working

940
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:07,120
Speaker 2: class in not working class, but he was a working writer,

941
00:49:07,320 --> 00:49:10,279
Speaker 2: you know. And one thing he did privately was keep

942
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:12,879
Speaker 2: track of whom he's suspected to be secretly in bed

943
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:16,120
Speaker 2: with the Kremlin, either Soviet spies or just Stalinists. He

944
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 2: used the word communists. One of his friends was this

945
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:22,480
Speaker 2: Labor Party woman, Celia Kerwin, and she was trying to

946
00:49:22,480 --> 00:49:27,759
Speaker 2: coordinate leftist propaganda against Stalinism. So she like asks orwell, like, hey,

947
00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:32,799
Speaker 2: can you write some leftist anti Stalinist stuff for us?

948
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:36,879
Speaker 2: And he's like, no, I'm sick of shit, Like I'm

949
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:40,120
Speaker 2: not doing that. I'm too sick. But then he thought

950
00:49:40,120 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 2: it over and he sent her a list of thirty

951
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:45,040
Speaker 2: eight names. This was a list of people to not

952
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:49,080
Speaker 2: ask to write anti Soviet propaganda because they're probably pro Soviet,

953
00:49:49,320 --> 00:49:55,920
Speaker 2: like secretly and tankies today make a huge deal out

954
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 2: of this, and it's like not good to provide a

955
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:01,880
Speaker 2: list of aims to the government of suspected communists in

956
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:07,040
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties, right, Yeah, can we understand it in context?

957
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 2: I can. It was nothing bad happened to any of

958
00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 2: these people. They were just not asked to write anti

959
00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:18,359
Speaker 2: Soviet propaganda, right.

960
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:22,440
Speaker 3: And it seems like it's being compared to like McCarthyism

961
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 3: in the US, which I don't know much about what

962
00:50:27,160 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 3: was happening in Britain at that time. So that was

963
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:32,680
Speaker 3: I feel like it wasn't to this extreme that we had.

964
00:50:33,200 --> 00:50:38,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it didn't go out to the intelligence community

965
00:50:38,040 --> 00:50:41,360
Speaker 2: more broadly that we're aware of. It might have. It

966
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:43,239
Speaker 2: might have been turned into let's go spy in all

967
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:46,759
Speaker 2: these people, right, you know, but as far as I

968
00:50:46,800 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 2: can tell, these were people that he did not believe

969
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 2: would be good at writing anti Soviet propaganda because they

970
00:50:52,160 --> 00:50:53,280
Speaker 2: were secretly pro Soviet.

971
00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:57,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds like a reasonable thing. Yeah, I mean

972
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:02,879
Speaker 3: the people like if if you have audience members who

973
00:51:03,040 --> 00:51:06,319
Speaker 3: are upset about that, I'm sorry, I apologize. I'm sure

974
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:08,920
Speaker 3: there's some nuance to it that I'm missing, But seems

975
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:11,520
Speaker 3: like it was a pretty reasonable thing in context for

976
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:11,960
Speaker 3: him to do.

977
00:51:12,480 --> 00:51:12,920
Speaker 4: Yeah.

978
00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:14,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's like it's one of those things where

979
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:17,040
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, probably he shouldn't have done it. I

980
00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:21,839
Speaker 2: don't know, but I'm not. The way it's made out

981
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:25,080
Speaker 2: is just like he's a snitch who provides lists of communists,

982
00:51:25,239 --> 00:51:27,400
Speaker 2: like keeps track of the communists and gives them to

983
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:31,640
Speaker 2: the government, which is like technically true and a brilliant

984
00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 2: example of the way that Orwell is taken out of

985
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:34,440
Speaker 2: context by everyone.

986
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:38,799
Speaker 3: You know, I mean you who do you think takes

987
00:51:38,840 --> 00:51:41,840
Speaker 3: him out of context the most? Of all the people

988
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:44,400
Speaker 3: who take him out of context? What bothers you the most?

989
00:51:44,920 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, what bothers me the most is when the

990
00:51:47,680 --> 00:51:51,239
Speaker 2: right wing try and have him. And actually we're going

991
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 2: to talk a little bit more about how that happened

992
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:55,919
Speaker 2: and how it's not like his fault, but he could

993
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:59,680
Speaker 2: have taken some better steps around it. Three months before

994
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:02,239
Speaker 2: he died, he marries a woman named Sonia Brown. Now

995
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 2: they get married in the hospital room. People like to

996
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 2: argue about her, implying she was kind of gold digging

997
00:52:08,680 --> 00:52:12,600
Speaker 2: to marry this famous man who's dying. Others say that

998
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 2: she was crucial to making his last days pleasant and

999
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:18,280
Speaker 2: that they were in love. There were people gold digging

1000
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:20,040
Speaker 2: on him when he was dying. I don't know if

1001
00:52:20,080 --> 00:52:21,320
Speaker 2: she was among them. I think in some way she

1002
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 2: might have been politically gold digging. We'll talk about that

1003
00:52:23,080 --> 00:52:26,680
Speaker 2: in a second. There's a lot of people who were like, wow,

1004
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:30,319
Speaker 2: while I was alone with orwell, he told me in

1005
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 2: private that I get twenty five percent of all the

1006
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:36,640
Speaker 2: money from his books from now on because he had

1007
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:39,799
Speaker 2: like set up a company, Like he got told to

1008
00:52:39,840 --> 00:52:42,680
Speaker 2: set up a company to manage his copyrights, right, And

1009
00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 2: I don't know whether those people were grifting him or not.

1010
00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 2: And like there's like a whole thing about his financial

1011
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:51,799
Speaker 2: legacy that I only half care about. So I only

1012
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:57,760
Speaker 2: half read about sure Tuberculosis killed George Orwell and January

1013
00:52:57,760 --> 00:53:00,359
Speaker 2: twenty first, nineteen fifty, when he was forty six years old.

1014
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 2: He wanted an Anglican burial, although he wasn't really religious.

1015
00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:07,480
Speaker 2: His son, Richard, was raised by his aunt, Avril Dunn

1016
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 2: and her husband, who was a Scottish wounded veteran named

1017
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:12,759
Speaker 2: Bill Dunn. He wrote in his will that no one

1018
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:15,279
Speaker 2: should write a biography of him. I hope you'll forgive me,

1019
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:17,239
Speaker 2: George that see what was broken a long time ago.

1020
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 2: And I tried not to be total biography. But immediately

1021
00:53:22,120 --> 00:53:25,320
Speaker 2: after he died, the right wing started using Orwell's legacy

1022
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:28,759
Speaker 2: in the Cold War, Cold War being a phrase that

1023
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:29,920
Speaker 2: George Orwell invented.

1024
00:53:31,239 --> 00:53:33,520
Speaker 3: I didn't know that. I didn't either want.

1025
00:53:33,440 --> 00:53:36,880
Speaker 2: To start this. I mean I always knew all of this.

1026
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 2: I don't have to do research. I know everything well clearly.

1027
00:53:41,800 --> 00:53:44,920
Speaker 2: People like often act like I know everything, and I'm like, no,

1028
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:47,640
Speaker 2: I just read a lot of books over the course

1029
00:53:47,680 --> 00:53:51,480
Speaker 2: of a week, like shrink it down to six to

1030
00:53:51,600 --> 00:53:52,560
Speaker 2: nine thousand words.

1031
00:53:52,800 --> 00:53:53,800
Speaker 3: It's pretty beautiful.

1032
00:53:55,280 --> 00:54:00,200
Speaker 2: And Sonia, his widow, worked for the Propaganda Department into

1033
00:54:00,200 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 2: the British Foreign Office, and they got Animal Farm translated

1034
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:06,480
Speaker 2: into sixteen languages, and then she, because she now owns

1035
00:54:06,520 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 2: the rights to his work, she married him. This is

1036
00:54:10,239 --> 00:54:14,400
Speaker 2: my conspiracy mindedness. I don't know enough about her. My

1037
00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:17,400
Speaker 2: like instinct is that she was like, I'm a British

1038
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:20,640
Speaker 2: intelligence person and I want to use or what I

1039
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:22,400
Speaker 2: was writing. I don't know.

1040
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:28,720
Speaker 3: You say, they don't know. Oh man, she could.

1041
00:54:28,560 --> 00:54:31,719
Speaker 2: Have been amazing and fine, I don't know, but she

1042
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:35,560
Speaker 2: certainly had very different politics than I do because she

1043
00:54:35,960 --> 00:54:38,400
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, she gets Animal Farm translated into sixteen languages,

1044
00:54:38,640 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 2: and then she sells the rights to Animal Farm to

1045
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:45,080
Speaker 2: the fucking CIA in the United States. What who made

1046
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 2: it into a feature length cartoon cartoon? Yeah, there's the

1047
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:54,440
Speaker 2: movie version of the nineteen fifty four version of Animal

1048
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:57,359
Speaker 2: Farm is animated. So the first feature length animated film

1049
00:54:57,440 --> 00:54:58,800
Speaker 2: produced in England.

1050
00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:01,400
Speaker 3: Actually, well, yeah, I think I have vague recollections of

1051
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:03,000
Speaker 3: seeing that somewhere at some point.

1052
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:09,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, produced by the fucking CIA. That's awesome. Yeah, And

1053
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 2: so I'm like, but you know what, Orwell might have

1054
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:13,839
Speaker 2: done that himself if he lived. I want to hold

1055
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:17,240
Speaker 2: him as like he was with thoughts, but he clearly

1056
00:55:17,320 --> 00:55:21,560
Speaker 2: worked with the government for anti communist propaganda. That was

1057
00:55:21,600 --> 00:55:24,680
Speaker 2: clearly something he believed in doing and did numerous times.

1058
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:27,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's probably was something again that he didn't like.

1059
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:30,120
Speaker 3: But he might have been like, all right, they seem

1060
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:33,480
Speaker 3: to be firmly against this group of people. I am

1061
00:55:33,640 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 3: firmly against right.

1062
00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:38,000
Speaker 2: The CIA might have been a step too far for him.

1063
00:55:38,200 --> 00:55:40,799
Speaker 2: It might not have been. I don't know, someone knows.

1064
00:55:41,719 --> 00:55:43,200
Speaker 2: People try to use him to be like he would

1065
00:55:43,239 --> 00:55:44,719
Speaker 2: have been pro Brexit, and there's like a lot of

1066
00:55:44,760 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 2: bunch of like orwell scholars who were like, oh, well,

1067
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:49,040
Speaker 2: he liked England, which is true. He was actually kind

1068
00:55:49,040 --> 00:55:52,760
Speaker 2: of a patriot. He believed in like the better parts

1069
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:54,840
Speaker 2: of what he saw in the English character, and so

1070
00:55:54,880 --> 00:55:57,600
Speaker 2: he hated colonialism partly for what it did to Britain.

1071
00:55:58,760 --> 00:56:01,440
Speaker 2: That wasn't his primary concern, but you know, yeah, I

1072
00:56:01,480 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 2: think And so people were like, oh, you would hated

1073
00:56:03,640 --> 00:56:07,560
Speaker 2: the EU or and wanted Brexit, but I'm pretty sure

1074
00:56:07,600 --> 00:56:10,560
Speaker 2: he wrote extensively about wanting to set up basically the EU,

1075
00:56:11,760 --> 00:56:13,760
Speaker 2: and he was like, no, we should all come together

1076
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:16,560
Speaker 2: to like make sure nothings don't happen again and stuff

1077
00:56:16,600 --> 00:56:18,960
Speaker 2: and like have like a I think even called the

1078
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:21,439
Speaker 2: European Parliament. I didn't include this in the script because

1079
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:23,920
Speaker 2: I didn't do enough deep research onto it. So I

1080
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:25,640
Speaker 2: don't think he would have been pro Brexit, but people

1081
00:56:25,640 --> 00:56:26,480
Speaker 2: like to argue about it.

1082
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:27,160
Speaker 3: M h.

1083
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 2: And these days you have Elon Musk and other evil

1084
00:56:29,719 --> 00:56:34,319
Speaker 2: motherfuckers calling things Orwellian or well might have shot those people.

1085
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:39,920
Speaker 2: Who's to say everyone wants to claim or Well, everyone

1086
00:56:39,960 --> 00:56:42,880
Speaker 2: loves Orwell everyone but one group, the authoritarian left. They

1087
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:45,720
Speaker 2: hate him with a fiery passion. That hatred was reciprocated.

1088
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:50,200
Speaker 2: It's part of why I like him. He actually wrote

1089
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:52,799
Speaker 2: explicitly about his words getting taken out of context. He

1090
00:56:52,840 --> 00:56:57,520
Speaker 2: wrote about animal farm, for example, quote I meant the

1091
00:56:57,600 --> 00:57:01,040
Speaker 2: moral to be that revolutions only affect improvement when the

1092
00:57:01,080 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 2: masses are alert and know how to chuck out their

1093
00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:05,640
Speaker 2: leaders as soon as the latter have done their job.

1094
00:57:06,280 --> 00:57:08,319
Speaker 2: The turning point of the story was supposed to be

1095
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:10,640
Speaker 2: when the pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves.

1096
00:57:10,719 --> 00:57:13,279
Speaker 2: And then in PARENTHESESI rights kronstat, which I did a

1097
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 2: whole six parter about, which was when the Soviets really

1098
00:57:18,520 --> 00:57:23,280
Speaker 2: finally betrayed the rest of the revolution and took power

1099
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:25,720
Speaker 2: or they kind of did it all along with that

1100
00:57:25,800 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 2: was like the final battle kind of it. If people

1101
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:32,480
Speaker 2: think I am defending the status quo, that is, I

1102
00:57:32,520 --> 00:57:35,280
Speaker 2: think because they have grown pessimistic and assume that there

1103
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:40,840
Speaker 2: is no alternative except dictatorship or lase fare capitalism. And

1104
00:57:40,880 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 2: so I do know he would have been fucking miserable

1105
00:57:43,200 --> 00:57:45,280
Speaker 2: about what has happened to animal farm and what has

1106
00:57:45,280 --> 00:57:49,840
Speaker 2: happened to his works to be used not for socialism

1107
00:57:49,920 --> 00:57:51,520
Speaker 2: but for capitalism.

1108
00:57:52,000 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 3: Every group will mis represent a historical figure to their

1109
00:57:56,720 --> 00:58:00,919
Speaker 3: own ends, for sure. Yeah, but no seems to be

1110
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 3: more oblivious and do it incorrectly than the far right. Yeah,

1111
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:10,080
Speaker 3: it's just it's amazing, like it, I know it's a joke,

1112
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 3: but the people who like are shocked that rage against

1113
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:16,240
Speaker 3: the machine was like maybe not into their thing, or

1114
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:20,240
Speaker 3: that the again, the show The Boys was making fun

1115
00:58:20,280 --> 00:58:24,560
Speaker 3: of them all along, like like it's it seems like

1116
00:58:24,600 --> 00:58:27,040
Speaker 3: a joke, but there really are people who just don't

1117
00:58:27,080 --> 00:58:30,240
Speaker 3: see it. They don't see like these they No, one

1118
00:58:30,240 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 3: seems to be more oblivious than the far right.

1119
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:38,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right, or they're just like because

1120
00:58:38,920 --> 00:58:42,440
Speaker 2: I think overall actually Orwall has this thing where he

1121
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:44,720
Speaker 2: said at one point there's no intellectuals on the right.

1122
00:58:44,960 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 2: There used to be, but the last one died in

1123
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:49,560
Speaker 2: like nineteen thirty eight or whatever. I don't remember exactly

1124
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:52,160
Speaker 2: the quote, but like he clearly didn't think much of

1125
00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:57,960
Speaker 2: the right wing from an academic or intelligency at point

1126
00:58:57,960 --> 00:59:00,840
Speaker 2: of view or whatever. Yeah, And I think that overall

1127
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:03,800
Speaker 2: the right wing is like not as good at culture.

1128
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:06,720
Speaker 2: They do it. Some amazing cultural stuff has come from

1129
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:09,240
Speaker 2: the right wing right, like, they are sometimes very good

1130
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:15,240
Speaker 2: at it, But overall, I would argue that the broad

1131
00:59:15,400 --> 00:59:19,360
Speaker 2: left is does a better job of it, whereas the

1132
00:59:19,440 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 2: right wing tends to like instead be better at like

1133
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:22,440
Speaker 2: political power and violence.

1134
00:59:23,040 --> 00:59:28,520
Speaker 3: You know, you argue it's more important to power.

1135
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:30,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you kill all of your opponents, then you

1136
00:59:30,880 --> 00:59:36,640
Speaker 2: don't have any opponents anymore, right exactly, Yeah, right, Yeah,

1137
00:59:36,680 --> 00:59:38,840
Speaker 2: And so I think in some ways they got to

1138
00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:41,640
Speaker 2: snipe our work, you know, right.

1139
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:43,920
Speaker 3: I mean it's like you don't find very many I mean, honestly,

1140
00:59:46,280 --> 00:59:50,560
Speaker 3: it's hard to find really funny right wing people, like

1141
00:59:51,040 --> 00:59:53,600
Speaker 3: the right wing like artists, it's hard to find ones

1142
00:59:53,640 --> 00:59:57,240
Speaker 3: they're really funny. You can probably find some they're really smart.

1143
00:59:57,320 --> 01:00:00,400
Speaker 3: I think that's that's for sure a given. But and

1144
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 3: certainly some musicians that are there are talented, but it's

1145
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:09,200
Speaker 3: hard to find really funny people. I mean, you get

1146
01:00:09,240 --> 01:00:14,360
Speaker 3: like comedians who are like somehow ashamed and go right

1147
01:00:14,600 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 3: sort of as like a weird response, like Louis c k.

1148
01:00:17,600 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 3: They do something bad and then they kind of like

1149
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:22,920
Speaker 3: steer into it, you know. Yeah, but I don't think

1150
01:00:23,000 --> 01:00:25,320
Speaker 3: Louis c K ten fifteen years ago would have ever

1151
01:00:25,360 --> 01:00:30,600
Speaker 3: considered himself on the right wing, you know, or conservative.

1152
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:33,120
Speaker 2: When I get you get into this thing where it's

1153
01:00:33,120 --> 01:00:36,280
Speaker 2: like I feel like overall, the edge lord as a

1154
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:40,040
Speaker 2: political construct, you know, like the person who's like edgy

1155
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:42,800
Speaker 2: on purpose and pushing the boundaries actually used to be

1156
01:00:42,880 --> 01:00:45,200
Speaker 2: kind of a left wing construction, like all throughout the

1157
01:00:45,280 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 2: nineteenth century of a lot of this like literature that's

1158
01:00:47,280 --> 01:00:52,720
Speaker 2: like all blood and amorality and you know whatever, and

1159
01:00:52,760 --> 01:00:57,640
Speaker 2: it's like leftist. And then at some point we've started

1160
01:00:57,640 --> 01:00:59,600
Speaker 2: to see that switch where the edge lord is now

1161
01:00:59,640 --> 01:01:01,400
Speaker 2: like kind of but more of a right wing construction.

1162
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:03,880
Speaker 2: It's like more often a right wing construction than it

1163
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:07,560
Speaker 2: used to be. And so like the edgy centrist, it's

1164
01:01:07,640 --> 01:01:09,680
Speaker 2: how you end up with, Like, what's that comedian who

1165
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:12,720
Speaker 2: I actually like but I don't remember.

1166
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:13,160
Speaker 3: He's dead.

1167
01:01:13,240 --> 01:01:17,760
Speaker 2: He smokes a lot. Fuck George Carlin, Yeah, George Carlin.

1168
01:01:19,720 --> 01:01:24,200
Speaker 2: You know he's like this like edgy, anti authoritarian, right. Yeah,

1169
01:01:24,240 --> 01:01:25,560
Speaker 2: and now the right wing is a little bit like

1170
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:26,640
Speaker 2: trying to have him as their guy.

1171
01:01:27,200 --> 01:01:31,440
Speaker 3: He's not absolutely so that that's hurtful.

1172
01:01:32,120 --> 01:01:36,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, me as a great sketch Politics in America.

1173
01:01:36,720 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 2: I'll show you politics in America. One man holding up

1174
01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:41,640
Speaker 2: both puppets. Oh, I like the puppet on the left. Well,

1175
01:01:41,640 --> 01:01:42,720
Speaker 2: I like the puppet on the right.

1176
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:47,600
Speaker 3: Like, I don't know that bit, but I'll google it afterwards.

1177
01:01:47,840 --> 01:01:51,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good. It's just yelling. He's like, you have

1178
01:01:51,400 --> 01:01:54,160
Speaker 2: the same fucking puppet. Shut up America, go back to sleep.

1179
01:01:55,640 --> 01:01:59,360
Speaker 3: He's you know, you see, like even on smaller levels,

1180
01:01:59,360 --> 01:02:03,280
Speaker 3: like just if you online, like the right wing trolls,

1181
01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:06,680
Speaker 3: all they do is basically use some variation of things

1182
01:02:06,800 --> 01:02:10,960
Speaker 3: they've learned from seeing people on the left respond to things,

1183
01:02:11,360 --> 01:02:13,520
Speaker 3: and then they just co opt them and make it

1184
01:02:13,600 --> 01:02:17,280
Speaker 3: sort of weirdly racist. That's just like the little trick

1185
01:02:17,320 --> 01:02:20,000
Speaker 3: that they use every time. And yeah, it's very, very

1186
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:22,360
Speaker 3: frustrating and it's very but it's really nice to do

1187
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:26,200
Speaker 3: this deep dive on Orwell because he is so ubiquitous

1188
01:02:26,240 --> 01:02:28,520
Speaker 3: in pop culture and he's influenced so many things, and

1189
01:02:28,560 --> 01:02:33,480
Speaker 3: he's used every day from like you know, Apple ads

1190
01:02:33,680 --> 01:02:37,080
Speaker 3: in the past to like HEDD movies to like, you know,

1191
01:02:37,280 --> 01:02:40,040
Speaker 3: Elon Musk now on Twitter, like you're saying, calling everything

1192
01:02:40,080 --> 01:02:42,480
Speaker 3: that he doesn't like or welling in. It's like it's

1193
01:02:42,520 --> 01:02:45,560
Speaker 3: constantly used. It's really nice to hear what a little

1194
01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:48,280
Speaker 3: bit more about what the person was actually into.

1195
01:02:48,520 --> 01:02:53,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was imperfect and absolutely committed to the

1196
01:02:54,000 --> 01:02:59,840
Speaker 2: left and overall tried to be better and like believed

1197
01:03:00,120 --> 01:03:02,720
Speaker 2: the end of the day his socialism. He didn't he

1198
01:03:02,720 --> 01:03:04,880
Speaker 2: didn't believe in common decency because he was a socialist.

1199
01:03:05,040 --> 01:03:07,840
Speaker 2: He believed in socialism because he believed in common decency.

1200
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:10,520
Speaker 2: And it's just the fact that he's willing to go

1201
01:03:10,560 --> 01:03:13,440
Speaker 2: after the left when they're evil as well as the

1202
01:03:13,520 --> 01:03:17,200
Speaker 2: right that like leaves him open to this misinterpretation. And

1203
01:03:17,200 --> 01:03:19,000
Speaker 2: I think it's because people are afraid of nuanced They

1204
01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:21,080
Speaker 2: want black and white stories with good guys and bad guys.

1205
01:03:21,720 --> 01:03:24,720
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a story where his anarchist friends

1206
01:03:24,720 --> 01:03:28,440
Speaker 2: are kind of being idiots, you know. I mean, I

1207
01:03:28,480 --> 01:03:30,680
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't I think I probably would have

1208
01:03:30,720 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 2: been pro war in World War Two. I don't know,

1209
01:03:32,480 --> 01:03:34,080
Speaker 2: Like I didn't live in England at the time, but

1210
01:03:34,160 --> 01:03:36,200
Speaker 2: like overall, I'm like, could we please just kill the

1211
01:03:36,240 --> 01:03:38,600
Speaker 2: Nazis and figure out the rest later, you know, right,

1212
01:03:39,680 --> 01:03:42,120
Speaker 2: And they shouldn't have turned down animal farm probably and whatever.

1213
01:03:42,160 --> 01:03:47,680
Speaker 2: But it's like, you know, like like he just believed

1214
01:03:47,760 --> 01:03:50,480
Speaker 2: in what he believed in and he tried to do

1215
01:03:50,560 --> 01:03:54,400
Speaker 2: it and he had he was emotionally stunted by being

1216
01:03:54,480 --> 01:04:00,480
Speaker 2: kind of a motherfucker and by yeah, I should poison

1217
01:04:00,560 --> 01:04:04,800
Speaker 2: you masculinity and Britishness and colonialness.

1218
01:04:05,120 --> 01:04:05,520
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1219
01:04:05,640 --> 01:04:12,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, But that's the story of George orwell as as

1220
01:04:12,000 --> 01:04:14,640
Speaker 2: I understand it. There's a million stories about him. They're

1221
01:04:14,680 --> 01:04:15,200
Speaker 2: all different.

1222
01:04:16,560 --> 01:04:17,240
Speaker 1: This is mine.

1223
01:04:18,160 --> 01:04:20,959
Speaker 3: That was very very cool. Thank you so much.

1224
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:25,680
Speaker 2: So where are you at in terms of imposter syndrome

1225
01:04:25,880 --> 01:04:28,400
Speaker 2: and still just kind of like fuck that guy? It's

1226
01:04:28,440 --> 01:04:31,360
Speaker 2: a great question. Okay, if you're still like this guy.

1227
01:04:31,640 --> 01:04:36,120
Speaker 2: I was still I wrote him off for years. I'm

1228
01:04:36,160 --> 01:04:39,640
Speaker 2: still at fuck this guy. Yeah, but he had imposter syndrome,

1229
01:04:39,720 --> 01:04:40,800
Speaker 2: But also fuck this guy.

1230
01:04:41,400 --> 01:04:44,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I mean he might have said

1231
01:04:44,920 --> 01:04:45,439
Speaker 3: the same thing.

1232
01:04:46,160 --> 01:04:46,400
Speaker 5: I know.

1233
01:04:46,880 --> 01:04:49,120
Speaker 2: I wish he'd fucking written about how he actually felt

1234
01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:51,200
Speaker 2: about ship so I had a better fucking sense of

1235
01:04:51,240 --> 01:05:00,720
Speaker 2: that stuff, you know. Yeah, but he didn't. That's my

1236
01:05:00,840 --> 01:05:04,760
Speaker 2: problematic fave. Yeah, that was the original subtitle. This was

1237
01:05:04,760 --> 01:05:07,720
Speaker 2: George Orwell pro problematic fave. Probably I'm gonna go with

1238
01:05:08,200 --> 01:05:10,560
Speaker 2: George Orwell and the War for Common Decency and then

1239
01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:13,640
Speaker 2: subtitle it Marvel talking about a problematic fave.

1240
01:05:13,880 --> 01:05:14,320
Speaker 5: Yeah.

1241
01:05:14,400 --> 01:05:18,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, listener will already know what happened because it'll

1242
01:05:18,640 --> 01:05:21,080
Speaker 2: be in your podcast app.

1243
01:05:21,120 --> 01:05:22,560
Speaker 3: You're in the future, I know.

1244
01:05:23,280 --> 01:05:26,400
Speaker 2: But if people have a podcast app, is there anything

1245
01:05:26,440 --> 01:05:27,240
Speaker 2: that they can do with it?

1246
01:05:27,960 --> 01:05:30,000
Speaker 3: Oh? You know what you could do with it? After

1247
01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:33,640
Speaker 3: you listen to these episodes, you should check out my podcast,

1248
01:05:33,760 --> 01:05:37,120
Speaker 3: The House of Pod. It is a fun look at

1249
01:05:37,240 --> 01:05:41,080
Speaker 3: things in public health and medicine and where it intersects

1250
01:05:41,120 --> 01:05:46,120
Speaker 3: with things like popular culture or the news. And I

1251
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:49,960
Speaker 3: think you'll enjoy it. And I'm gonna keep begging Margaret

1252
01:05:49,960 --> 01:05:53,480
Speaker 3: to come onto my show as well, so you might

1253
01:05:53,600 --> 01:05:56,120
Speaker 3: hear her as well on it. In the near future.

1254
01:05:56,280 --> 01:06:00,280
Speaker 3: You can definitely hear some episodes with Sophie and other

1255
01:06:00,320 --> 01:06:04,080
Speaker 3: people who've been on this podcast are also regular guests

1256
01:06:04,240 --> 01:06:08,120
Speaker 3: on the House of Pod And you'll like it.

1257
01:06:09,400 --> 01:06:13,600
Speaker 2: Hell yeah. And if you're listening to this when it

1258
01:06:13,640 --> 01:06:15,920
Speaker 2: comes out, you probably have like one day left to

1259
01:06:15,960 --> 01:06:19,000
Speaker 2: back my Kickstarter. And if you're late, it's too late.

1260
01:06:19,240 --> 01:06:21,080
Speaker 2: They only make books that the No, it's a book.

1261
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:22,640
Speaker 2: You can get it where we get books. It might

1262
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:24,880
Speaker 2: be in pre order if it's before September twenty four,

1263
01:06:24,960 --> 01:06:27,480
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. If it's after that, it's in print somewhere.

1264
01:06:27,920 --> 01:06:29,760
Speaker 2: Unless it's not unless you're listening to this three hundred

1265
01:06:29,800 --> 01:06:32,560
Speaker 2: years in the future, in which case, congratulations. And I'm

1266
01:06:33,000 --> 01:06:36,320
Speaker 2: impressed at the longevity of digital media. And I hope

1267
01:06:36,360 --> 01:06:40,520
Speaker 2: that you all are alive. I don't have a lot

1268
01:06:40,560 --> 01:06:46,800
Speaker 2: of faith in you, but being alive. Really that's our fault. Sorry, sorry, sorry,

1269
01:06:46,840 --> 01:06:48,960
Speaker 2: the future. We should have tried harder.

1270
01:06:49,120 --> 01:06:49,800
Speaker 3: We blew it.

1271
01:06:50,160 --> 01:06:53,640
Speaker 2: Yeah anyway, unless we did. I mean, if you're listening,

1272
01:06:53,640 --> 01:06:57,480
Speaker 2: we didn't blow it. Totally true, you're alive to hear it.

1273
01:06:57,800 --> 01:07:00,720
Speaker 2: I hope your underground tunnels are nice. You're You're welcome.

1274
01:07:01,080 --> 01:07:01,520
Speaker 3: Future.

1275
01:07:02,360 --> 01:07:07,680
Speaker 2: I might help dig those tunnels. We'll see, we will see.

1276
01:07:07,680 --> 01:07:09,240
Speaker 2: You all next week. What's the World?

1277
01:07:09,240 --> 01:07:17,800
Speaker 5: Bye Bye, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a

1278
01:07:17,800 --> 01:07:20,920
Speaker 5: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool

1279
01:07:21,000 --> 01:07:23,040
Speaker 5: Zone Media, visit our website.

1280
01:07:22,680 --> 01:07:26,360
Speaker 3: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1281
01:07:26,400 --> 01:07:29,240
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.