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Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello and welcome to Cautionary Tales. I am Tim Harford.

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Speaker 1: This is one of our Cautionary Conversations episodes. We are

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Speaker 1: sponsored this week by Amazon Prime, the creators of the

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Speaker 1: Rings of Power. And I'm actually so excited i could pop.

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Speaker 1: I'm in the studio with Alice Fin's Cautionary Tales series producer.

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Speaker 1: And why am I so excited? Alis?

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Speaker 2: You're so excited because we're about to do a massive

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Speaker 2: rundown of all your favorite cautionary tales and the works

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Speaker 2: of your favorite author, Tolkien.

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Speaker 1: Yes, we're going to talk about Gerah Tolkien. We're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about the Rings of Power, and we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about cautionary tales. It's like all my birthdays

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Speaker 1: and Christmas have come at the same time. I'm in

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Speaker 1: case you haven't guessed, I'm an absolutely massive fan of Tolkien.

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Speaker 1: I've been a massive fan of Tolkien for approximately forty

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Speaker 1: five years. And I think that Tolkien is full of

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Speaker 1: cautionary tales. And this new series, Rings of Power is

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Speaker 1: also full of cautioning tales. So that is what we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about.

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Speaker 2: And I am this side of the glass today as

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Speaker 2: a non expert enthusiast who has also watched Rings of

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Speaker 2: Power and is also very excited to speak about it. Now,

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Speaker 2: if you haven't seen Rings of Power yet, there's something

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Speaker 2: for everyone in the mix. It's an action story, it's

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Speaker 2: a psychological thriller. It's a fantasy story. So make sure

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Speaker 2: you go and watch it.

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Speaker 1: My whole life has built up to this moment I've

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Speaker 1: been I sense that for you this is amazing. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: it's a fantasy about elves and orcs and all things

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Speaker 1: Tolkien esk, and we will get into that. But it

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Speaker 1: is also full of cautionary tales. It is full of

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Speaker 1: the kind of ideas that we explore in caution retales.

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Speaker 1: And as I was watching it, all kinds of things

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Speaker 1: sprung to mind, and I imagine they sprung to your

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Speaker 1: mind as well.

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Speaker 2: They certainly did.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so we should probably begin with a little bit

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Speaker 1: of background. The Rings of Power is a prequel to

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Speaker 1: the events of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.

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Speaker 1: It is set thousands of years before those events. Tolkien

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Speaker 1: wrote enormous amounts of law, so this is a new

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Speaker 1: story set thousands of years before the Lord of the Rings.

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Speaker 1: We do meet some of the characters in the Lord

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Speaker 1: of the Rings. For example, we meet el Rond, we

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Speaker 1: meet Galadriel. They are elves, Elands, half Elven. They lived

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Speaker 1: for thousands of years, so you know you can meet

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Speaker 1: them as their younger selves before they became those later characters.

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Speaker 2: Yes, so l Rond we know later as an elf

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Speaker 2: ruler in Rivendell. Galadriel a very powerful royal Elf. They

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Speaker 2: are played by Robert Rameo and Morphind Clark rather brilliantly.

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Speaker 2: So Rings of Power gives us their origin stories. And

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Speaker 2: it's also the origin story of the Rings of Power

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Speaker 2: themselves and the One Ring, which there's quite a lot

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Speaker 2: of fuss about. So tim, what is going on with

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Speaker 2: those Well.

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Speaker 1: A lot of fuss about. This is about the Ring

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Speaker 1: and the quest to destroy the One Ring. The Rings

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Speaker 1: of Power were made under the influence of the Big

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Speaker 1: Baddie Saron. There were three made by and four the elves.

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Speaker 1: There were seven for the dwarves. There were nine immortal

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Speaker 1: men and wrought by himself the One Ring. And this

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Speaker 1: is a source of ultimate evil and corruption in the

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Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings. So in the Rings of Power

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Speaker 1: we get to see, well, why were these things made?

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Speaker 1: Who made them? And I imagine in season two, which

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Speaker 1: we haven't watched yet, we're going to see a little

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Speaker 1: bit more about the consequences of making them.

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Speaker 2: We actually see quite a few sort of mini origin

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Speaker 2: stories peppered throughout season one. So someone else we meet

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Speaker 2: is an ancestor of Aragon Izildon, who actually.

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Speaker 1: Sorry to correct you there, Alison Aragon is actually descended

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Speaker 1: from an Arian who is Isolu's brother, Thank you so,

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Speaker 1: But yes, Isldure, we know, from the Lord of the Rings,

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Speaker 1: famous tool who fails to destroy the One Ring when

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Speaker 1: he could have destroyed the One Ring. And he's you know,

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a muppet in the Rings of

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Speaker 1: Power as well, isn't he.

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Speaker 2: I was about to say, if I'm honest, it's not

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Speaker 2: looking good for him.

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Speaker 1: No, no, but there you go. I mean, the character

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Speaker 1: arc is consistent. You know, he makes mistakes. He's going

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Speaker 1: to make mistakes in the future. So we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about some of the characters, and we are going

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Speaker 1: to talk about the cautionary tales they bring to mind

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Speaker 1: from the social science behind what happens in the Rings

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Speaker 1: of Power and some of the things that occur in

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Speaker 1: the Rings of Power that echo true stories that we

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Speaker 1: have told in cautionary tales, I should say there are

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Speaker 1: going to be some spoilers for season one. There are

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Speaker 1: not going to be any sort of spoilers for season

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Speaker 1: two because we haven't seen season two. It is out

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Speaker 1: on the twenty ninth of August on Amazon Prime. I

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Speaker 1: for one, am eagerly looking forward to it. So we

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Speaker 1: should begin with one of the key protagonists, the heroine,

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Speaker 1: one of the heroines of the Rings of Power, Galadriel.

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Speaker 1: We see her in The Lord of the Rings. Here

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Speaker 1: we see her as a child and then later as

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Speaker 1: an incredibly determined pursuer of evil. I say determined, I

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Speaker 1: mean maybe it's determined, Maybe it's obsessive, maybe it's irrational.

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Speaker 1: Everyone else seems to think that she's completely unhinged. Saron

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Speaker 1: has long since disappeared from the world, and yet Galadriel

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Speaker 1: will not give up the hunt for him.

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Speaker 2: So early on in the series covers a few centuries

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Speaker 2: of Galadriel's life. We see Gladriel and her beloved brother

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Speaker 2: Finrod battling Morgoth, who is a kind of evil entity

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Speaker 2: demonic actually who.

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Speaker 1: Moth Saron's boss, so he when he was defeated, Saron

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Speaker 1: took up the Baton and continued the pursuit of evil

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Speaker 1: in Middle Earth.

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Speaker 2: So Galadriel vows to take up her brother's mission, and

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Speaker 2: she spends centuries seeking out Sourn and this intangible evil

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Speaker 2: that she believes is there, And eventually others stop rallying

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Speaker 2: around the cause. She starts to seem like she might

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Speaker 2: just be kind of a lone zealot. And it all

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Speaker 2: comes to a head when she leads her company to

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Speaker 2: this sort of snowy wasteland.

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Speaker 1: It looks absolutely miserable, but because they're elves, I guess

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Speaker 1: they don't die of cold.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely. She thinks that she is seeing signs of Salon,

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Speaker 2: but others don't really believe that that's what she's seeing.

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Speaker 1: There are signs, right, but the signs are are centuries old.

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Speaker 1: So the fact that somebody wrote a sign hundreds of

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Speaker 1: years ago, what does that tell you now?

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Speaker 2: Right exactly? The threat is not imminent. There's this brush

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Speaker 2: with the snow troll. They lose faith in her, they

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Speaker 2: stop following her, and when they go home, she's commended

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Speaker 2: for her bravery. But it's all kind of a bit hollow.

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Speaker 1: It's very hollow. So the King of the Els, Gilgallard,

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Speaker 1: rewards her with a one way trip to Valenore, which.

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Speaker 2: Is false retirement, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of elf heaven, and I mean it's

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Speaker 1: supposed to be a big reward, but it doesn't feel

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Speaker 1: like a reward to her. Feels like she's basically being,

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Speaker 1: as you say, forcibly, retired and stripped of her duties,

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Speaker 1: and it feels like a punishment to her. It becomes

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Speaker 1: apparent later that Gilgalad did this deliberately. It's not just

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Speaker 1: that he meant to reward her, but she didn't really

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Speaker 1: view it as a reward. He wanted to take her

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Speaker 1: out of the picture. Because it becomes clear that Gilgallard,

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Speaker 1: the elf king, he thinks that Gladrial is actually the problem,

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Speaker 1: like the fact that there is still evil in the world.

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Speaker 1: There's evil in the world because Gladriuel is so obsessed

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Speaker 1: with evil. There's a line that a wind that can

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Speaker 1: blow out a fire can also fan the flames. One

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Speaker 1: of the things that really struck me here is Galadril

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Speaker 1: is treated a little bit like our whistle blowing hero

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Speaker 1: in Whistleblower on the twenty eighth Floor, which is our

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Speaker 1: episode about the equity finance fraud the equity finance Forward

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Speaker 1: was effectively the equivalent of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme only

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. And the man who identified that

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Speaker 1: this fraud was taking place and delivered the evidence of

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Speaker 1: this fraud to the SEC cur it as an Exchange Commission,

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Speaker 1: the US financial regulator. He was then prosecuted by the SEC,

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Speaker 1: and obviously gladually is a rather more dynamic and compelling

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Speaker 1: and charismatic figure than Ray Dirk's. But the way that

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Speaker 1: we punish the people who are trying to alert us

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Speaker 1: to danger, I think is a is a theme in

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Speaker 1: certain caution detales, and very strongly a theme in the

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Speaker 1: early episode ser Rings of Power.

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Speaker 2: Yes, A key takeaway in that episode, the Whistleblower on

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Speaker 2: the twenty eighth Floor, is that whistleblowing is often far

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Speaker 2: more trouble than it's worth. You might be shunned, it

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Speaker 2: may be hard to find employment after. People don't like

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Speaker 2: bad news. Essentially, you lose your friends because your friends

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Speaker 2: are people from work.

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Speaker 1: It's difficult to survive financially and emotionally. They don't like

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Speaker 1: bad news, and also they often blame the messenger, not

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Speaker 1: because they don't just dislike the bad news, but because

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Speaker 1: the people who are willing to defy that social pressure

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Speaker 1: are often quite awkward. Whistleblower once contacted my colleagues at

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Speaker 1: the Financial Times. When my journalistic colleague picked up the phone,

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Speaker 1: the first line the whistleblower uttered was, my name is Tarantula.

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Speaker 1: That is not my real name. You just sound mad.

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Speaker 1: That's just who phone's a journalist and says my name

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Speaker 1: is Tarantela. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: You might not endear yourself to people by.

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Speaker 1: Doing that, really not. But it turns out, actually it

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Speaker 1: was a very important fraud that this person was blowing

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Speaker 1: the whistle on, and Ray Dirk's was a kind of

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Speaker 1: awkward character and glad Youel is in many ways extremely

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Speaker 1: obnoxious in this series. She rubs people up the wrong way.

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Speaker 1: She's absolutely convinced she's right. She doesn't hesitate to let

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Speaker 1: other people know that she thinks they're idiots, and this

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Speaker 1: turns out to be quite common behavior from whistleblowers.

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Speaker 2: She is right, but there are moments where you think, oh,

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Speaker 2: take a day off. We talk in that episode, particularly

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Speaker 2: about anti money laundering officers in banks, and there are

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Speaker 2: these examples of how when you blow the whistle on

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Speaker 2: a bank. You're blowing the whistle on regulatory failure. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: you're blowing the whistle on everyone not doing what they're

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Speaker 2: supposed to do.

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Speaker 1: You're telling people that they screwed up. This organization screwed up.

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Speaker 1: You screwed up. And my job is to tell you

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Speaker 1: that you screwed up. And it turns out that that's

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Speaker 1: your job title, but your actual job is to tick

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Speaker 1: some boxes, not make a fuss.

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Speaker 2: Don't rock the boat. And Gladriel is absolutely rocking the boat, right.

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Speaker 2: She's pointing to everyone's collective failure to vanquish evil and

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Speaker 2: to stay regilant. And it's a lot easier to dismiss

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Speaker 2: that lone voice that's screaming into the wind than to say, hey,

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Speaker 2: maybe we do actually have a problem here.

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Speaker 1: Yes, I mean there is another way of seeing this.

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Speaker 1: As anybody who's read The Lord of the Rings knows

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Speaker 1: Saron did not disappear. Saron comes back. We know Saron

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Speaker 1: comes back, and even if we haven't read The Lord

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Speaker 1: of the Rings, we kind of guess that Saron is

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Speaker 1: still out there, so we kind of narratively we know

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Speaker 1: Gladriel's right. And so there is such a thing as

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Speaker 1: as hindsight bias, and I think it's hard to avoid

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Speaker 1: that as a viewer of the series. So the classic

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Speaker 1: example of outcome bias is an experiment run by a

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Speaker 1: couple of psychologists in nineteen eighty eight Baron and Hershey.

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Speaker 1: Whether they're asking people to evaluate decisions. These might be

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Speaker 1: medical decisions, for example, or they might be financial decisions,

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Speaker 1: but they also explain how things worked out. So here's

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Speaker 1: a doctor, this is what the doctor did, and this

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Speaker 1: is in the ed what happened to the patient. And

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Speaker 1: people find it completely impossible to separate the decision making

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Speaker 1: process from the outcome. If you're told the outcome, you

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Speaker 1: can't neutually judge the process. And here we know the outcome.

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Speaker 1: We know sound's out there, so we know Gladriel's right.

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Speaker 1: So I think the storytellers have to work quite hard

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Speaker 1: in this series to make Gladriels seem irrational and seem unhinged.

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Speaker 2: When she's speaking about this intangible evil being out there,

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Speaker 2: what she keeps referencing as this inner intuition, it's not

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Speaker 2: really perceptible or measurable by her colleagues. They can only

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Speaker 2: kind of work with what's in front of them and

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Speaker 2: think about all the other things they need to balance.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, she thinks she's right. She thinks they're wrong. They

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Speaker 1: think the opposite. I mean, who's to judge?

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Speaker 3: Right?

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Speaker 2: I think there is another reading of Gladriel which is

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Speaker 2: possible here, which is that she is a grieving person

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Speaker 2: or a grieving elf. She takes on her brother's after

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Speaker 2: he dies, She takes his dagger. She says, his vow

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Speaker 2: became mine. She's grappling with her relationship with him even

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Speaker 2: though he's gone, which is sort of what grieving is.

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Speaker 2: There's a sense in which his death ignites this fire

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Speaker 2: in her. In her words, it whips up a tempest

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Speaker 2: that won't be quelled. Emotion and loss are kind of

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Speaker 2: propelling her on for l ron. For people observing her,

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Speaker 2: it seems like something's broken in her right. There's a

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Speaker 2: sense that emotion and anger are clouding her judgment rather

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Speaker 2: than helping her maybe see truths other people can't, which

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Speaker 2: reminds me of this trope of the mad woman that

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Speaker 2: we see kind of recur in history and in literature,

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Speaker 2: a powerful woman in particular whose emotion renders them overly dramatic,

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Speaker 2: overly passionate, It automatically undermines them in cautionary tails. It

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Speaker 2: reminds me of Anna Marie Jarvis.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, Anamary Jarvis. That's that's a deep cut. I

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Speaker 1: like that. So, yes, the inventor of Mother's Day? Or

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Speaker 1: was she the inventor of Mother's Day? She certainly thought

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Speaker 1: she was the inventor of Mother's Day and then was

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Speaker 1: incredibly defensive of it.

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Speaker 2: Indeed, so her life's work, I mean, Anne Marie Jarvis

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Speaker 2: is also a grieving woman, right, Her life's work is

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Speaker 2: honoring her dad, mother, and she believes that that. Then

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Speaker 2: her day, Mother's Day gets co opted by these sort

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Speaker 2: of cynical interests, and she tries to take back what

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Speaker 2: she has created, and she's upset. I mean, of course

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Speaker 2: she's upset.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, But she starts writing very vitriolic letters and everything

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Speaker 1: is sort of painted as good and evil and sort

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Speaker 1: of the noble idea of Mother's Day. And these corrupt florists,

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Speaker 1: the evil florists who have you initially of course supported her.

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Speaker 4: Why don't you stop fraud against Mother's Day through misrepresentation

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Speaker 4: about founder. You know, no person in your town ever

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Speaker 4: gave a cent for Mother's Day, nor was its promoter.

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Speaker 4: No honest person would make such a claim. Stop the

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Speaker 4: deception and game.

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Speaker 1: It's a miserable story at the end.

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Speaker 2: I think it is so. She does write these letters,

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Speaker 2: but it is striking to me that she starts something,

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Speaker 2: or she is instrumental in starting something that is still

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Speaker 2: recognized in the US today. But in the end, Time

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Speaker 2: Magazine remembers her as just this old woman, a busy body,

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Speaker 2: a recluse, a bit of a weirdo. And there are many,

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Speaker 2: many ways. I think that Galadriel and Anna Marie Jarvis

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Speaker 2: are very different, but I do think they are both

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Speaker 2: judged very harshly by the societies they live in.

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Speaker 1: Did Galadriel ever throw a Mother's Day salad on the floor.

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Speaker 2: I wouldn't put it past her. But they're judged for

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Speaker 2: their extremes of emotion and for the fire that lights

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Speaker 2: in them and the missions that gives them.

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Speaker 1: I think Gladril is going to come out very well

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Speaker 1: in the end. Well, I think we know that she is.

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Speaker 1: But I think you're right.

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Speaker 2: I will say overall, in Rings of Power, women come

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Speaker 2: across very well. They are very powerful, very wise, very brave.

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Speaker 1: Yes, But Gladriel, she certainly has an edge to her,

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Speaker 1: so Gladriola's Radix, the equity finance whistleblower, gladriel as Anna,

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Speaker 1: Marie J. Harvest, the salad hurling creator of Mother's Day.

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Speaker 1: These are depths that I had not previously seen in

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Speaker 1: the Rings of Power. We will plumb more depths and

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Speaker 1: we will explore more parallels after the break.

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Speaker 2: Okay, Tim, picture the scene. You're at home in Oxford,

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Speaker 2: in your living room, waging a very intriguing dungeons and

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Speaker 2: Dragons campaign.

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Speaker 1: Okay, it's all too easy to picture all of us

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Speaker 1: the typical Tuesday.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's all about to change. All of a sudden,

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Speaker 2: there's an almighty crash and through the floorboards appears an

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Speaker 2: ork who has been undermining your house. What are you

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Speaker 2: gonna do?

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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I'm hid in the cupboard. I think would

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Speaker 1: be my reaction.

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Speaker 2: That that's fair, because they're terrifying.

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Speaker 1: They are absolutely terrifying. In the Wings of Power. We

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Speaker 1: should just remind people. I'm Tim Harford, eur Alice find

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Speaker 1: we are sponsored by Amazon Prime and the Rings of Power,

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Speaker 1: and we're talking about parallels between the Rings of Power

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Speaker 1: and cautionary tales. And yes, they are spine chilling.

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Speaker 2: Spine chilling. They spend a lot of time digging that

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Speaker 2: scene I just described in fact unfolds in the show.

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Speaker 2: I have to say I would back you more than

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Speaker 2: most to survive the Orc Apocalypse.

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Speaker 1: Any particular reason.

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Speaker 2: Your extensive knowledge the enemy, the enemy, you know that weaknesses.

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Speaker 1: Yes, well sunlight one of the weekness. Yeah, which which

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Speaker 1: indeed the Orcs are planning to do something about that

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Speaker 1: particular problem in this series. But no, there they just

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Speaker 1: are unsettling. They're like something kind of a horror movie

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Speaker 1: rather than an action film. Here, they're thoroughly chilling, which

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Speaker 1: I think is is very welcome development in the Rings

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Speaker 1: of Power. But yes, so they've got this project though,

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Speaker 1: the Orcs, they have a project not just interested in

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Speaker 1: butchering livestock and kidnapping people and shooting people full of arrows,

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Speaker 1: although they do do plenty of that.

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Speaker 2: That's also a hobby. Yeah, I mean, we'll come to

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Speaker 2: the project. But I do have a question for you. First.

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Speaker 2: Rings of Power sort of elucidates where Orcs come from.

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Speaker 2: They are these twisted, tortured elves according to Gladriel. Yes,

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Speaker 2: I've not totally got my head around it. There seems

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Speaker 2: to be a limitless supply of them. How does this work?

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Speaker 1: Yes, well, I think orcs are quite feckened. I think

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Speaker 1: orks like to get busy with other orcs, and yes,

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Speaker 1: or I mean there are certain scenes where they appear

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Speaker 1: to be almost manufactured. But yes, I think they are.

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Speaker 1: They breed quickly as a race, and yes, Galadriel says

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Speaker 1: they're twisted elves. Tolkien himself actually gave different accounts of

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Speaker 1: where orcs came from. I mean, this is almost like

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Speaker 1: a theological thing for him. Could the master of all evil,

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Speaker 1: mor Goth? Could he create life? Or could he only

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Speaker 1: twisted pervert life? And so he had different different views.

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Speaker 1: But I think the view that is most popular, that's

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Speaker 1: expressed in the Lord of the Rings is that Morgarth

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Speaker 1: took elves and then he twisted elves in mockery and

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Speaker 1: turned them into into orcs. And that was the worst

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Speaker 1: thing he ever did, was to take elves and to

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Speaker 1: turn them into too orcs. It was of all the

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Speaker 1: evil acts he commits over thousands of years, and he

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Speaker 1: gets up to all sorts of mischief, the creation of

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Speaker 1: the orcs was that was the worst, the most spiteful

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Speaker 1: thing he did. But anyway, wherever they came from, their

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Speaker 1: their back and they are undermining, literally undermining human civilization. Serious.

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Speaker 2: This sense of them as an inversion of something is

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Speaker 2: very interesting. There's something kind of corpse like about them.

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Speaker 2: They're sort of bloated, rotting sun, sunken flesh almost kind

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Speaker 2: of it's like they shouldn't exist, really, I suppose, which

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Speaker 2: is partly what makes them terrifying.

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Speaker 1: Yes, and they killed, they kill things, so they kill livestock,

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Speaker 1: and they chop down tree and for no obvious reason,

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Speaker 1: they just destruction for destruction's sake. But in the end

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Speaker 1: they do have a plan.

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Speaker 2: They have a plan. We see them in prisoning elves

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Speaker 2: in what seems to be a kind of prison camp.

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Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, and we don't know what they're

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Speaker 2: building at first. We find out later yes.

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Speaker 1: Yes, but both humans and elves are being kidnapped and

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Speaker 1: enslaved and put to work on this project. So the

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Speaker 1: leader of the Orcs, who is this character called ad.

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Speaker 2: Are played terrifyingly by Joseph Moore.

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Speaker 1: He is very unsettling and we're trying to work out

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Speaker 1: who he is and where he came from and what

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Speaker 1: his connection is to Sarah. And that's one of the

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Speaker 1: mysteries of the show, But I think you've identified him.

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Speaker 1: He's a fair enoughon Brown.

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Speaker 2: Isn't Did you want to unpack that a bit?

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Speaker 4: Well?

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Speaker 1: As listeners to our epic V two Rocket trilogy will know,

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Speaker 1: Von Brown was this not so much brilliant engineer or

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Speaker 1: brilliant scientists, but brilliant coordinator of scientists, brilliant project manager

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Speaker 1: who had this vision of going to the Moon and

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Speaker 1: didn't really care who was hurt in seeing that vision realized.

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Speaker 1: And so while it all worked out very well for him,

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Speaker 1: in the end, he ended up working for NASA and

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Speaker 1: making films with Disney and living the American dream. He

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Speaker 1: first of all, was probably the single most important person

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Speaker 1: involved in the building of the V two rocket, which

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Speaker 1: is a weapon of mass destruction and targeted I mean

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Speaker 1: we're not really targeted at all, but to the extent

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Speaker 1: that it was even vaguely aimed, it was aimed at civilians.

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Speaker 1: So you're trying to kill civilians, and they successfully did

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Speaker 1: kill civilians with this rocket, and he didn't seem to

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Speaker 1: care because hate he's got funding to build rockets, and

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Speaker 1: he wants to build rockets, and in the end he's

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Speaker 1: going to go to the Moon. And then the second thing,

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Speaker 1: and this is the even closer parallel with the rings

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Speaker 1: of power, the use of concentration camp labor in just

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Speaker 1: the most appalling conditions, thousands and thousands and thousands of

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Speaker 1: people dying Indora Middle Bow, and Von Brown basically did

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Speaker 1: not seem to care. He was indifferent because he had

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Speaker 1: his vision.

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Speaker 2: What we discover about the massive construction project that the

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Speaker 2: elves and humans are working on is that in a sense,

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Speaker 2: it's all leading up to a kind of weapon of

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Speaker 2: mass destruction as well. Right, they're digging all these tunnels.

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Speaker 2: We don't know what it's for, but they're digging away.

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Speaker 2: And eventually in the series we see a kind of

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Speaker 2: would be lackey of Souron, who's longing for Souron's return,

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Speaker 2: put this sort of like a sword into a landmark

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Speaker 2: that triggers floods that run through the tunnels they've been digging,

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Speaker 2: that trigger a kind of volcanic eruption, I suppose. And

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Speaker 2: what unfolds are these horrendous fiery scenes that are reminiscent

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Speaker 2: of a bomb going off.

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Speaker 1: Really yea, it is like somebody just dropped an atomic

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Speaker 1: bomb on Middle Earth. That's how it reads. What has

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Speaker 1: actually happened is that ad Are and his orcs and

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Speaker 1: their slave labor have reactivated Mount Doom. They have taken

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Speaker 1: this dormant volcano and they have reactivated it, and it

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Speaker 1: explodes absolutely catastrophically, the extraordinary scenes. It's an absolute disaster.

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Speaker 2: I've always wondered where Mount Doom comes from. So this

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Speaker 2: is it.

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Speaker 1: This is it according to the Rings of Power Cannon,

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Speaker 1: so it was originally Ora dro In as a mountain

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Speaker 1: at the heart of the Southlands stroke Mordor sort of

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Speaker 1: symbiotic with Saron. So when Saron is there in Mordoor

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Speaker 1: and powerful Ora dro In is active, and when Saron

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Speaker 1: is dormant, oro In is dormant. When in the Rings

430
00:22:51,690 --> 00:22:54,210
Speaker 1: of Power, it's a very deliberate plan by add Are.

431
00:22:54,810 --> 00:22:59,090
Speaker 1: He causes this massive steam explosion and that causes in

432
00:22:59,410 --> 00:23:02,650
Speaker 1: Mount Doom to erupt. And we know, having read Lord

433
00:23:02,650 --> 00:23:05,490
Speaker 1: of the Rings, that in the end Mount Doom will

434
00:23:05,530 --> 00:23:09,450
Speaker 1: be where Saron's powerful Ring. You know, the ultimate, the

435
00:23:09,450 --> 00:23:11,930
Speaker 1: one Ring is going to be forged in Mount Doom

436
00:23:11,970 --> 00:23:15,210
Speaker 1: and it can only be destroyed in Mount Doom. So,

437
00:23:15,410 --> 00:23:18,250
Speaker 1: as well as being this cataclysmic event, as far as

438
00:23:18,250 --> 00:23:20,890
Speaker 1: the Wings of Power are concerned, we also know that

439
00:23:20,930 --> 00:23:23,770
Speaker 1: this is paving the way for the return of Sarah,

440
00:23:23,890 --> 00:23:25,490
Speaker 1: and it's going to pave the way for the creation

441
00:23:25,690 --> 00:23:26,730
Speaker 1: of the evil.

442
00:23:26,770 --> 00:23:29,970
Speaker 2: That is the one ring, which brings me to another thought,

443
00:23:30,250 --> 00:23:33,130
Speaker 2: which is that there are very big questions in this

444
00:23:33,250 --> 00:23:36,570
Speaker 2: series about what evil is, where it can be found,

445
00:23:36,850 --> 00:23:39,690
Speaker 2: how do we deal with it? Is it something you choose?

446
00:23:40,490 --> 00:23:43,250
Speaker 2: Is it an act of self determination? Is it something

447
00:23:43,250 --> 00:23:47,930
Speaker 2: you inherit? For example, the Southlanders early on, they're not

448
00:23:47,970 --> 00:23:50,930
Speaker 2: to be trusted because in their veins flows the blood

449
00:23:50,970 --> 00:23:53,610
Speaker 2: of their ancestors who allied themselves with More Goth.

450
00:23:53,690 --> 00:23:55,930
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, which is very deterministic, right as a sort

451
00:23:55,970 --> 00:23:59,410
Speaker 1: of you know, it's racial determinism. Absolutely, they are the

452
00:23:59,450 --> 00:24:01,970
Speaker 1: descendants of people who serve More Goth and therefore you

453
00:24:01,970 --> 00:24:02,730
Speaker 1: can't trust them.

454
00:24:02,970 --> 00:24:06,290
Speaker 2: It's this concept of evil is something primitive within us,

455
00:24:06,330 --> 00:24:09,770
Speaker 2: I suppose, But also evil maybe something you choose or deny.

456
00:24:09,850 --> 00:24:12,090
Speaker 1: But yes, there is this sense. A lot of the

457
00:24:12,130 --> 00:24:17,930
Speaker 1: people that we see have had their choices predetermined. I mean,

458
00:24:17,970 --> 00:24:20,450
Speaker 1: add are the leader of the Orcs. Interestingly, he argues

459
00:24:20,490 --> 00:24:23,890
Speaker 1: that they have free will and they need to be

460
00:24:23,930 --> 00:24:25,890
Speaker 1: viewed as individuals with names and soone that's one of

461
00:24:25,890 --> 00:24:28,330
Speaker 1: the reasons why they love him. But I think in

462
00:24:28,490 --> 00:24:32,410
Speaker 1: the in the universe of Tolkien, the Orcs are irredeemably

463
00:24:32,690 --> 00:24:36,450
Speaker 1: evil and the elves are inherently good. But one of

464
00:24:36,490 --> 00:24:38,890
Speaker 1: the really interesting questions is, well, where does that leave

465
00:24:38,930 --> 00:24:42,210
Speaker 1: the humans? And the humans are have moral agency, the

466
00:24:42,290 --> 00:24:44,370
Speaker 1: humans get to choose. The humans have to choose, and

467
00:24:44,450 --> 00:24:46,090
Speaker 1: some of them choose well, and some of them choose

468
00:24:46,130 --> 00:24:46,610
Speaker 1: very badly.

469
00:24:47,330 --> 00:24:50,290
Speaker 2: I did have another thought actually, as I was traveling here,

470
00:24:50,770 --> 00:24:54,050
Speaker 2: Ada is in fact mistaken for Sarin at some point.

471
00:24:54,690 --> 00:24:57,370
Speaker 2: He doesn't take that well. But that points to another

472
00:24:57,450 --> 00:24:58,650
Speaker 2: issue with evil, right.

473
00:24:58,610 --> 00:25:03,050
Speaker 1: Well, absolutely so Ada looks very unsettling. He's this scarred

474
00:25:03,130 --> 00:25:07,370
Speaker 1: or corrupted elf. He's coded as a bad guy, and

475
00:25:07,530 --> 00:25:09,570
Speaker 1: he's a bad guy, you know, he he does all

476
00:25:09,610 --> 00:25:12,730
Speaker 1: kinds of terrible things. The Orcs look horrendous. We know

477
00:25:12,810 --> 00:25:15,810
Speaker 1: the Orcs are evil, and the elves look beautiful and

478
00:25:15,890 --> 00:25:20,170
Speaker 1: do good things. So there is in Tolkien's universe, and

479
00:25:20,210 --> 00:25:22,450
Speaker 1: in the universe of the Rings of Power, there is

480
00:25:23,250 --> 00:25:28,090
Speaker 1: this association of people who look beautiful also being morally beautiful.

481
00:25:28,130 --> 00:25:31,130
Speaker 1: And you know, evil is worn on the surface, so

482
00:25:31,290 --> 00:25:35,210
Speaker 1: evil creatures look evil. Except it's not always like that

483
00:25:35,250 --> 00:25:36,890
Speaker 1: it's not always like that in Tolkien, and it's not

484
00:25:36,890 --> 00:25:39,170
Speaker 1: always like that in the Rings of Power, and.

485
00:25:39,130 --> 00:25:41,810
Speaker 2: It's not always like that in real life, I think either.

486
00:25:42,050 --> 00:25:44,210
Speaker 1: I certainly agree that it's not always like that in

487
00:25:44,250 --> 00:25:47,970
Speaker 1: real life. The favorite themes of cautionary tales, which we

488
00:25:48,010 --> 00:25:52,690
Speaker 1: come to again and again is the deceiver, the plausible deceiver.

489
00:25:53,290 --> 00:25:56,490
Speaker 1: So going right back to one of our very first

490
00:25:56,530 --> 00:25:59,890
Speaker 1: cautionary tales, the Rogue dressed as a captain, where this

491
00:26:00,210 --> 00:26:05,290
Speaker 1: impoverished shoemaker and a petty criminal Wilhelm Vot got hold

492
00:26:05,330 --> 00:26:08,890
Speaker 1: of a second hand army captain's uniform. This is in

493
00:26:08,930 --> 00:26:12,650
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds in Berlin, and just started bossing

494
00:26:12,650 --> 00:26:15,370
Speaker 1: around a platoon of soldiers he found on the street,

495
00:26:15,570 --> 00:26:18,530
Speaker 1: and you know, he's wearing a captain's uniform, and so

496
00:26:18,730 --> 00:26:21,010
Speaker 1: they do what he says because he looks the part.

497
00:26:21,090 --> 00:26:23,890
Speaker 1: And it's funny, but it's also it's quite dark, because

498
00:26:23,890 --> 00:26:27,570
Speaker 1: we know we understand where this unconditional obedience to people

499
00:26:27,610 --> 00:26:33,210
Speaker 1: in uniform later goes. And then of course there's Harold Shipman,

500
00:26:33,250 --> 00:26:37,610
Speaker 1: who's this kindly trusted community doctor who is one of

501
00:26:37,610 --> 00:26:41,570
Speaker 1: the worst serial killers ever in human history anywhere in

502
00:26:41,570 --> 00:26:43,450
Speaker 1: the world and he you know, he doesn't look like

503
00:26:43,450 --> 00:26:46,050
Speaker 1: a serial killer. He looks like the person who's going

504
00:26:46,130 --> 00:26:49,450
Speaker 1: to take care of your grandmother. So you would think

505
00:26:49,530 --> 00:26:52,370
Speaker 1: that's not part of the way that Tolkien views things,

506
00:26:52,410 --> 00:26:54,130
Speaker 1: that's not part of the way that The Rings of

507
00:26:54,170 --> 00:26:56,890
Speaker 1: Power portrays the world. But then you realize, oh no,

508
00:26:57,450 --> 00:27:01,210
Speaker 1: there are people in this universe who are not what

509
00:27:01,290 --> 00:27:04,090
Speaker 1: they seem. And one of the pleasures of watching this

510
00:27:04,130 --> 00:27:06,290
Speaker 1: season is trying to figure out who looks good and

511
00:27:06,410 --> 00:27:08,650
Speaker 1: is actually good and who's hard to place. And I

512
00:27:08,650 --> 00:27:11,410
Speaker 1: would say, I think, and we said they'd be spoilers

513
00:27:11,410 --> 00:27:13,370
Speaker 1: for the season one, and I don't want to spoil this.

514
00:27:13,970 --> 00:27:16,490
Speaker 1: We know Sarahon's coming back. I think there are four people,

515
00:27:17,250 --> 00:27:20,130
Speaker 1: at least four people in the Rings of Power who

516
00:27:20,530 --> 00:27:24,090
Speaker 1: who plausibly contenders contenders for being Sarah. And one of

517
00:27:24,130 --> 00:27:26,290
Speaker 1: the pleasures is to try to figure out who it

518
00:27:26,330 --> 00:27:29,290
Speaker 1: actually is or maybe it's maybe it's none of those four,

519
00:27:29,690 --> 00:27:33,210
Speaker 1: but yes, none of them well, with the exception of

520
00:27:33,210 --> 00:27:35,970
Speaker 1: ad Are. They don't look like Saron, they don't code

521
00:27:35,970 --> 00:27:39,370
Speaker 1: as Saron. What you're trying to see through is, okay,

522
00:27:39,690 --> 00:27:43,970
Speaker 1: the Orcs look evil, Ada looks evil. Mount doom looks evil,

523
00:27:44,290 --> 00:27:48,090
Speaker 1: that sword looks evil, but Saron himself is the great deceiver,

524
00:27:48,490 --> 00:27:51,690
Speaker 1: and he looks exactly how he chooses to look. And

525
00:27:51,730 --> 00:27:53,530
Speaker 1: that is one of the big challenges.

526
00:27:54,290 --> 00:27:57,130
Speaker 2: Now that you mentioned catching a Killer doctor. Our episode

527
00:27:57,170 --> 00:28:00,770
Speaker 2: about Harold Shipman, I am reminded of Karnaman and Teverski's

528
00:28:00,850 --> 00:28:05,530
Speaker 2: representativeness heuristic and this idea that certain things kind of

529
00:28:05,610 --> 00:28:09,410
Speaker 2: fit into our pre established frameworks. Yeah, and we may

530
00:28:09,410 --> 00:28:10,130
Speaker 2: not question.

531
00:28:09,930 --> 00:28:15,170
Speaker 1: Them, basically, absolutely not, absolutely so. So Shipman just fitted

532
00:28:15,170 --> 00:28:17,850
Speaker 1: into the kindly doctor shaped box that we have in

533
00:28:17,890 --> 00:28:19,930
Speaker 1: our heads. We've got this kind of stereotype of the

534
00:28:20,010 --> 00:28:22,170
Speaker 1: community doctor who goes door to door and is always

535
00:28:22,210 --> 00:28:24,690
Speaker 1: taken care of his patients and nothing's too much trouble.

536
00:28:24,730 --> 00:28:27,530
Speaker 1: And he just fit perfectly into that box, just so.

537
00:28:27,530 --> 00:28:30,290
Speaker 2: Much so that some people were actually thrilled that he

538
00:28:30,370 --> 00:28:33,250
Speaker 2: was coming to comfort their aged relatives. Yes, and the

539
00:28:33,530 --> 00:28:34,530
Speaker 2: dying hours.

540
00:28:34,210 --> 00:28:37,250
Speaker 1: Absolutely, but how how kind that he would he would

541
00:28:37,250 --> 00:28:39,410
Speaker 1: call on them where when no one else was around

542
00:28:39,450 --> 00:28:42,050
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day, and and oh and

543
00:28:42,370 --> 00:28:45,610
Speaker 1: then they died, And how wonderful it was that Shipman,

544
00:28:45,690 --> 00:28:48,770
Speaker 1: of all people, their doctor was there in that moment

545
00:28:49,210 --> 00:28:51,690
Speaker 1: to comfort them. And to be present they didn't die alone.

546
00:28:51,770 --> 00:28:53,730
Speaker 1: Of course was a reason they didn't die alone, which

547
00:28:53,730 --> 00:28:56,690
Speaker 1: because he murdered them and watched them die for reasons

548
00:28:56,730 --> 00:28:59,010
Speaker 1: that are still still unclear and I think will never

549
00:28:59,050 --> 00:29:03,530
Speaker 1: become clear. But yes, that representativeness heuristic is very, very powerful.

550
00:29:05,010 --> 00:29:07,610
Speaker 1: We should take a break, and I think we are

551
00:29:07,650 --> 00:29:11,450
Speaker 1: going to talk about one five theme in Tolkien and

552
00:29:11,610 --> 00:29:13,890
Speaker 1: how that is reflected in some of my some of

553
00:29:13,930 --> 00:29:16,690
Speaker 1: my favorite ideas from cautionary tales. We'll do that after

554
00:29:16,730 --> 00:29:30,570
Speaker 1: the break. We're back. I'm Tim Harford. I'm here in

555
00:29:30,570 --> 00:29:34,330
Speaker 1: the studio with producer Alice Fines. We are being sponsored

556
00:29:34,330 --> 00:29:38,730
Speaker 1: this week by Amazon Primes series The Rings of Power,

557
00:29:39,330 --> 00:29:43,570
Speaker 1: and we're having a cautionary conversation about what cautionary tales

558
00:29:43,770 --> 00:29:48,770
Speaker 1: spring to mind when you watch this epic series set

559
00:29:48,850 --> 00:29:52,570
Speaker 1: in Tolkien's Middle Earth. Alice, what sprung to your mind?

560
00:29:53,370 --> 00:29:57,650
Speaker 2: This isn't strictly a cautionary tale, but something we see

561
00:29:57,770 --> 00:30:03,010
Speaker 2: throughout the series is this idea that evil is somehow contagious,

562
00:30:03,530 --> 00:30:09,450
Speaker 2: so by touching darkness you will be changed. That happens

563
00:30:09,450 --> 00:30:11,730
Speaker 2: to Gladriel. There's kind of a sense in which she's

564
00:30:11,850 --> 00:30:15,050
Speaker 2: changed in wheys she can't quite convey to others, and

565
00:30:15,330 --> 00:30:18,570
Speaker 2: in that sense, knowing evil cuts you off from other people.

566
00:30:18,770 --> 00:30:20,570
Speaker 2: So she says, you have not seen what I've seen,

567
00:30:20,850 --> 00:30:23,410
Speaker 2: and she knows others believe evil infects you as well.

568
00:30:23,450 --> 00:30:26,130
Speaker 2: So you mentioned earlier this idea of the same winds

569
00:30:26,130 --> 00:30:28,570
Speaker 2: that seek to blow out a fire may also cause

570
00:30:28,610 --> 00:30:33,170
Speaker 2: it spread. Which is an interesting problem, yes, because it

571
00:30:33,290 --> 00:30:35,250
Speaker 2: raises a very practical issue, which is how do you

572
00:30:35,450 --> 00:30:38,810
Speaker 2: deal with evil? You know, it's not a single cautionary tail,

573
00:30:38,970 --> 00:30:42,370
Speaker 2: but many of our cautionary tales look at cruelty and

574
00:30:42,410 --> 00:30:44,770
Speaker 2: look at where cruelty comes from, and also how do

575
00:30:44,810 --> 00:30:45,570
Speaker 2: we respond to it?

576
00:30:45,850 --> 00:30:48,810
Speaker 1: Yes, and how the elves want to respond to it

577
00:30:48,850 --> 00:30:51,090
Speaker 1: is to bury their heads in the sand. They are

578
00:30:51,650 --> 00:30:56,490
Speaker 1: very keen at the beginning of this season to conclude

579
00:30:56,530 --> 00:30:59,490
Speaker 1: that makes it evil has been permanently banished, Saren has

580
00:30:59,490 --> 00:31:04,210
Speaker 1: gone forever. Gladual is a problem because Gladiel keeps insisting

581
00:31:04,290 --> 00:31:07,650
Speaker 1: that evil has not been vanquished and Saren has not gone,

582
00:31:08,130 --> 00:31:10,490
Speaker 1: And in the end she gets blamed not just from

583
00:31:10,690 --> 00:31:12,570
Speaker 1: causing a fuss, but maybe she is the source of

584
00:31:12,610 --> 00:31:14,010
Speaker 1: evil in making such a.

585
00:31:13,890 --> 00:31:16,490
Speaker 2: Fuss to somehow perpetuating it.

586
00:31:16,650 --> 00:31:19,850
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely because of the anger that lives inside her

587
00:31:20,010 --> 00:31:23,010
Speaker 1: this denial. It reminded me of a couple of Caution

588
00:31:23,170 --> 00:31:27,210
Speaker 1: Tales episodes. So one fairly recent episode, How Britain Ignored

589
00:31:27,250 --> 00:31:31,170
Speaker 1: the Mother of All Secrets, which was this extraordinary story

590
00:31:31,210 --> 00:31:34,210
Speaker 1: about how during the Second World War and the British

591
00:31:34,210 --> 00:31:37,610
Speaker 1: were told in some detail by an incredible piece of

592
00:31:37,890 --> 00:31:42,410
Speaker 1: espionade brave intelligence leak. They were told that the Germans

593
00:31:42,450 --> 00:31:46,570
Speaker 1: had defensive radar and therefore if the British flew sorties

594
00:31:46,730 --> 00:31:49,690
Speaker 1: over Germany, the Germans would see them coming and would

595
00:31:49,690 --> 00:31:52,930
Speaker 1: shoot them down as a very very important piece of information,

596
00:31:53,530 --> 00:31:56,410
Speaker 1: and they just would not believe. They see photographs of

597
00:31:56,450 --> 00:31:59,890
Speaker 1: the radar equipment. But they're even told before the war.

598
00:31:59,970 --> 00:32:02,250
Speaker 1: They're told by a German officer. He's on a kind

599
00:32:02,290 --> 00:32:03,770
Speaker 1: of like a I don't know, it's like a student

600
00:32:03,770 --> 00:32:06,850
Speaker 1: exchange kind of thing. He shows up because they were

601
00:32:06,890 --> 00:32:09,090
Speaker 1: how are you chaps getting on with radar? We know

602
00:32:08,970 --> 00:32:11,810
Speaker 1: you are making progress and we're making progress too. In fact,

603
00:32:11,850 --> 00:32:14,330
Speaker 1: we think we're ahead of you, and that that astonishing

604
00:32:14,530 --> 00:32:18,810
Speaker 1: conversational tipbit just gets lost. So there's a there's a

605
00:32:18,890 --> 00:32:21,890
Speaker 1: huge amount of wish for thinking, I think because the

606
00:32:21,930 --> 00:32:25,890
Speaker 1: British want to believe that the Germans don't have this technology.

607
00:32:25,890 --> 00:32:27,730
Speaker 1: They want to believe they're superior. They want to believe

608
00:32:27,770 --> 00:32:30,050
Speaker 1: that their technology is superior, and they want to believe

609
00:32:30,050 --> 00:32:31,850
Speaker 1: that this it would be bad if the Germans had this,

610
00:32:31,890 --> 00:32:34,170
Speaker 1: so they don't want to believe it's true. And that

611
00:32:34,210 --> 00:32:37,530
Speaker 1: denial continues for well over a year after they should

612
00:32:37,530 --> 00:32:41,170
Speaker 1: have realized. And yeah, and the Elves are in the

613
00:32:41,210 --> 00:32:45,610
Speaker 1: same denial. They always wanting to rationalize the way indications

614
00:32:45,610 --> 00:32:47,170
Speaker 1: that Sarahn maybe has returned.

615
00:32:47,410 --> 00:32:50,490
Speaker 2: So, however, we're going to confront evil. It seems that

616
00:32:50,530 --> 00:32:53,450
Speaker 2: acknowledging it's there is the first step.

617
00:32:53,210 --> 00:32:56,130
Speaker 1: I think very very important, really helpful to know what

618
00:32:56,170 --> 00:32:58,450
Speaker 1: you're facing. And that, I mean, there's another example of this,

619
00:32:58,490 --> 00:33:00,810
Speaker 1: and this maybe gives you more sympathy for the for

620
00:33:00,890 --> 00:33:05,170
Speaker 1: the elf King's position, which is our pandemic episode that

621
00:33:05,210 --> 00:33:09,610
Speaker 1: turned to Pascagoula, which is all about deer asters that

622
00:33:09,650 --> 00:33:14,650
Speaker 1: are predictable and predicted. So we compare and contrast the

623
00:33:14,650 --> 00:33:19,930
Speaker 1: spread of COVID with Hurricane Katrina. Everyone knew that New

624
00:33:20,050 --> 00:33:23,170
Speaker 1: Orleans was vulnerable. Hurricanes would come over from time to time,

625
00:33:24,210 --> 00:33:26,610
Speaker 1: just a matter of time. People knew there were weaknesses

626
00:33:26,610 --> 00:33:30,570
Speaker 1: and levees. Over and over again, people were told something

627
00:33:30,610 --> 00:33:33,330
Speaker 1: bad could happen, and they just didn't want to believe

628
00:33:33,370 --> 00:33:37,410
Speaker 1: it because the costs of preparedness were so great And

629
00:33:37,450 --> 00:33:40,210
Speaker 1: in fact, in the Rings of Power, we see that

630
00:33:40,250 --> 00:33:44,170
Speaker 1: the elves have been prepared for centuries. They have standing

631
00:33:44,170 --> 00:33:47,290
Speaker 1: garrisons looking over the humans in case the bad guys

632
00:33:47,330 --> 00:33:50,890
Speaker 1: come back, and ironically they abandoned them just before they're needed.

633
00:33:51,050 --> 00:33:53,090
Speaker 1: But the fact that those garrisons are there and there's

634
00:33:53,090 --> 00:33:55,610
Speaker 1: a real cost to maintaining them, there's a cost to

635
00:33:55,650 --> 00:33:58,410
Speaker 1: being prepared, and so you have some sympathy with people

636
00:33:58,450 --> 00:34:00,170
Speaker 1: who go, you know what, maybe this is just a

637
00:34:00,210 --> 00:34:02,530
Speaker 1: waste of money. Maybe this bad thing is never going

638
00:34:02,610 --> 00:34:02,970
Speaker 1: to happen.

639
00:34:04,730 --> 00:34:09,530
Speaker 2: And then, as we've discussed, sometimes evil is hiding in

640
00:34:09,610 --> 00:34:13,450
Speaker 2: plain sight and is unpredictable. Yeah, it's not something we

641
00:34:13,490 --> 00:34:14,490
Speaker 2: can totally prepare for.

642
00:34:14,850 --> 00:34:19,090
Speaker 1: No, absolutely. So you know that pandemics are a risk,

643
00:34:19,170 --> 00:34:20,770
Speaker 1: but you don't know what kind of pandemic, and you

644
00:34:20,810 --> 00:34:23,730
Speaker 1: don't know when you know that hurricanes are a risk,

645
00:34:23,890 --> 00:34:26,410
Speaker 1: or earthquakes, but you don't know when you know there

646
00:34:26,450 --> 00:34:28,330
Speaker 1: are some places they might strike in some places they

647
00:34:28,330 --> 00:34:30,650
Speaker 1: are unlikely to. And then of course there are things

648
00:34:30,650 --> 00:34:32,210
Speaker 1: that we just didn't see coming at all. So some

649
00:34:32,250 --> 00:34:35,410
Speaker 1: of the genocides that the world has suffered since the

650
00:34:35,490 --> 00:34:37,970
Speaker 1: end of the Second World War, some of them have

651
00:34:38,010 --> 00:34:39,850
Speaker 1: become in from us. Some of them, I think are

652
00:34:39,850 --> 00:34:42,410
Speaker 1: barely acknowledged, very hard to see any of them coming

653
00:34:42,410 --> 00:34:43,010
Speaker 1: in advance.

654
00:34:43,690 --> 00:34:45,770
Speaker 2: So what about you, Tim what's brings to mind for you?

655
00:34:45,810 --> 00:34:46,570
Speaker 2: In Rings of Power?

656
00:34:47,250 --> 00:34:51,850
Speaker 1: I think a really important theme in this series and

657
00:34:51,970 --> 00:34:56,770
Speaker 1: in Tolkien in general, is the idea that power corrupts.

658
00:34:57,810 --> 00:35:02,290
Speaker 1: So there's this sword that is a corrupting influence. The

659
00:35:03,170 --> 00:35:07,290
Speaker 1: rings are, of course a corrupting influence. The plantity, these

660
00:35:07,290 --> 00:35:12,330
Speaker 1: seeing stones are a rupting influence, and it's always tempting

661
00:35:13,090 --> 00:35:15,850
Speaker 1: to use them. So the elves attempted to use the rings,

662
00:35:16,490 --> 00:35:20,450
Speaker 1: the humans attempted to use the sword. The Newminorians are

663
00:35:20,810 --> 00:35:24,490
Speaker 1: a human civilization, very high human civilization. They have a

664
00:35:24,490 --> 00:35:26,730
Speaker 1: polante here. They want to look at the polant here

665
00:35:26,810 --> 00:35:28,930
Speaker 1: and use it to see the future, use it to

666
00:35:28,970 --> 00:35:33,250
Speaker 1: see things far off. And everybody is always convincing themselves

667
00:35:33,770 --> 00:35:37,930
Speaker 1: that it'll be for the best, that I won't lose

668
00:35:37,930 --> 00:35:40,810
Speaker 1: control of these things. And yeah, I'm a good person,

669
00:35:41,210 --> 00:35:43,370
Speaker 1: and I'm going to use this for good ends and

670
00:35:43,410 --> 00:35:47,130
Speaker 1: with good intentions, and therefore good will result, and good

671
00:35:47,290 --> 00:35:51,490
Speaker 1: does not result. Over and over again. In Tolkien, evil results.

672
00:35:51,730 --> 00:35:57,650
Speaker 1: The inherent power of the object corrupts the user. And

673
00:35:57,690 --> 00:36:00,650
Speaker 1: this really reminded me of a cautioning tale that I

674
00:36:00,770 --> 00:36:03,250
Speaker 1: have not yet written, but I will write because I

675
00:36:03,290 --> 00:36:06,210
Speaker 1: think it's an amazing story. And that is the tale

676
00:36:06,290 --> 00:36:07,490
Speaker 1: of Herman Holloweth.

677
00:36:08,410 --> 00:36:11,370
Speaker 2: Herman Holloweth, I know nothing about Herman Holloweth, Please tell me.

678
00:36:11,490 --> 00:36:18,050
Speaker 1: Herman Hollowith was an engineer American engineer late eighteen hundreds

679
00:36:18,250 --> 00:36:20,930
Speaker 1: who designed the machine that became known for obviously since

680
00:36:20,930 --> 00:36:23,210
Speaker 1: as the hollow Earth Machine, and the hollow Earth Machine

681
00:36:23,650 --> 00:36:27,050
Speaker 1: was a kind of proto computer. He was trying to

682
00:36:27,050 --> 00:36:29,690
Speaker 1: solve the problem for the US Census, which is that

683
00:36:30,050 --> 00:36:32,530
Speaker 1: you have the census every ten years, and then you

684
00:36:32,730 --> 00:36:34,610
Speaker 1: go and you ask loads of loads of households who

685
00:36:34,650 --> 00:36:37,170
Speaker 1: ask every household in the country lots of questions, and

686
00:36:37,170 --> 00:36:38,970
Speaker 1: then you need to kind of organize all the answers

687
00:36:39,010 --> 00:36:42,490
Speaker 1: and analyze the answers. And it was taking seven or

688
00:36:42,530 --> 00:36:46,010
Speaker 1: eight years to put together the analysis of the answers.

689
00:36:46,210 --> 00:36:49,170
Speaker 1: By the time the eighteen ninety census was being conducted,

690
00:36:49,210 --> 00:36:52,090
Speaker 1: they still would not have finished analyzing the eighteen eighty census,

691
00:36:52,130 --> 00:36:52,970
Speaker 1: the previous census.

692
00:36:53,010 --> 00:36:54,930
Speaker 2: So I'm going to guess Holloth is about to make

693
00:36:54,970 --> 00:36:56,370
Speaker 2: this process much more efficient.

694
00:36:56,970 --> 00:37:00,410
Speaker 1: There's a race. There is a race between man and machine,

695
00:37:00,850 --> 00:37:03,330
Speaker 1: and there are various human teams the Census say, look,

696
00:37:03,330 --> 00:37:05,330
Speaker 1: we're going to have a competition. Somebody needs to figure

697
00:37:05,330 --> 00:37:07,930
Speaker 1: out how to analyze the census results more quickly. Because

698
00:37:07,930 --> 00:37:10,610
Speaker 1: they are also asking more complicated questions, so they're being

699
00:37:10,650 --> 00:37:12,530
Speaker 1: more and more ambitious. It gets more and more difficult,

700
00:37:13,370 --> 00:37:16,010
Speaker 1: and so there are various human teams involving you know,

701
00:37:16,250 --> 00:37:19,930
Speaker 1: colored cards and various systems and all kinds of clever

702
00:37:20,050 --> 00:37:23,290
Speaker 1: kind of organizational devices. But it's all a bit philo faxy.

703
00:37:23,890 --> 00:37:28,050
Speaker 1: And then there's Holloweth's machine. And Hollowth's machine looks like

704
00:37:28,210 --> 00:37:30,770
Speaker 1: it looks like an upright piano, and it operates using

705
00:37:30,770 --> 00:37:32,930
Speaker 1: punch cards. So you've got these stiff cards with holes

706
00:37:32,930 --> 00:37:36,730
Speaker 1: in them, and the machine has these spring loaded pins

707
00:37:37,210 --> 00:37:39,690
Speaker 1: that dip into little cups of mercury. And so you

708
00:37:39,730 --> 00:37:42,370
Speaker 1: put the punch card in and the pins come down

709
00:37:42,610 --> 00:37:44,890
Speaker 1: and those that hit a hole go through the hole

710
00:37:45,370 --> 00:37:47,450
Speaker 1: and into the cup of mercury, and they complete a

711
00:37:47,490 --> 00:37:50,130
Speaker 1: circuit and those that don't hit a hole are stopped

712
00:37:50,130 --> 00:37:53,810
Speaker 1: by the stiff cardboard. And that's fundamentally how the machine worked.

713
00:37:53,850 --> 00:37:55,730
Speaker 1: And the operator of the machine was like, this is

714
00:37:55,770 --> 00:37:59,290
Speaker 1: like the voice of God producing this amazing insight. Clearly

715
00:37:59,450 --> 00:38:03,010
Speaker 1: was just high on mercury fumes. But the Hollowth machine

716
00:38:03,370 --> 00:38:05,570
Speaker 1: just destroyed the human teams. It wasn't even close. And

717
00:38:05,610 --> 00:38:09,250
Speaker 1: so the Census Bureau adopted the Hollowth machine and they

718
00:38:09,250 --> 00:38:11,010
Speaker 1: all live happily ever after.

719
00:38:11,410 --> 00:38:12,890
Speaker 2: That sounds like a cautionary tail.

720
00:38:13,330 --> 00:38:19,730
Speaker 1: Yes, Because Hollerith retired, his company turned into IBM, and well,

721
00:38:19,730 --> 00:38:21,690
Speaker 1: a couple of things happened. One thing is that IBM

722
00:38:21,810 --> 00:38:25,610
Speaker 1: Germany became quite close with the Nazi regime, who were

723
00:38:25,690 --> 00:38:28,090
Speaker 1: very interested in buying Holloweth machines.

724
00:38:28,130 --> 00:38:29,130
Speaker 2: I see where this is going.

725
00:38:29,330 --> 00:38:33,250
Speaker 1: Well, it is disputed exactly how important the machine was

726
00:38:33,330 --> 00:38:36,490
Speaker 1: to the Nazi project of genocide, and were perfectly capable

727
00:38:36,490 --> 00:38:40,330
Speaker 1: of murdering enormous quantities of people without a machine to

728
00:38:40,370 --> 00:38:43,370
Speaker 1: count them. But I mean, the German Census Bureau was

729
00:38:43,570 --> 00:38:46,890
Speaker 1: utterly co opted by the Nazi state and they were very,

730
00:38:46,970 --> 00:38:49,090
Speaker 1: very interested in trying to identify who was Jewish who

731
00:38:49,170 --> 00:38:54,450
Speaker 1: was not, and so having these machines be so powerful

732
00:38:55,970 --> 00:38:56,530
Speaker 1: it kind of.

733
00:38:56,490 --> 00:38:58,730
Speaker 2: Helped, may have expedited the process.

734
00:38:58,770 --> 00:39:02,250
Speaker 1: It may have expedited the process. And also the US

735
00:39:02,250 --> 00:39:07,890
Speaker 1: Census Bureau for decades denied that it had helped the

736
00:39:08,050 --> 00:39:13,850
Speaker 1: administration find US citizens of Japanese descent for decades and

737
00:39:13,850 --> 00:39:16,370
Speaker 1: decades and decades, said, we know the Census Bureau is

738
00:39:16,970 --> 00:39:21,370
Speaker 1: stands alone and is separate, and is independent and does

739
00:39:21,410 --> 00:39:22,850
Speaker 1: not do this kind of thing. We're just here to

740
00:39:22,850 --> 00:39:25,490
Speaker 1: count the people. And then in two thousand and six

741
00:39:25,650 --> 00:39:30,170
Speaker 1: Margo Anderson, historian found the smoking gun that in fact,

742
00:39:30,210 --> 00:39:35,730
Speaker 1: the Census Bureau had told the Roosevelt administration exactly where

743
00:39:36,050 --> 00:39:38,090
Speaker 1: all the Japanese Americans were living, and they were all

744
00:39:38,170 --> 00:39:40,730
Speaker 1: of course chipped off to interment camps. So again, you

745
00:39:40,770 --> 00:39:44,450
Speaker 1: see this machine. It's very powerful machine, designed for good,

746
00:39:44,850 --> 00:39:47,290
Speaker 1: supposed to be used for good. But then once you

747
00:39:47,450 --> 00:39:51,130
Speaker 1: have that power, are you really going to resist the temptation.

748
00:39:51,890 --> 00:39:55,330
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, though, you can't always tell what's going

749
00:39:55,370 --> 00:39:58,530
Speaker 2: to happen to an invention. I'm thinking of our episode

750
00:39:58,730 --> 00:40:01,530
Speaker 2: the hero who wrote his segue off a cliff Jimmy

751
00:40:01,530 --> 00:40:05,770
Speaker 2: Hesselden invents the Hesko gabions, these concert tinas for shoring

752
00:40:05,810 --> 00:40:11,130
Speaker 2: up coastlines to manage flood risks. Ultimately, they're used in

753
00:40:11,210 --> 00:40:15,650
Speaker 2: places like Kosovo and Iraq filled with sand to protect

754
00:40:15,690 --> 00:40:19,330
Speaker 2: people from bomb blast. Now you could argue that they

755
00:40:19,370 --> 00:40:22,490
Speaker 2: are co opted as instruments of war, I suppose, But

756
00:40:23,410 --> 00:40:25,610
Speaker 2: you can't tell how an invention will travel once you

757
00:40:25,690 --> 00:40:29,250
Speaker 2: invent it. Maybe it can also do good, yeah, yeah, no,

758
00:40:29,370 --> 00:40:30,850
Speaker 2: not just evil. So what's the answer.

759
00:40:31,850 --> 00:40:34,930
Speaker 1: Well, I think the answer for Tolkien. Tolkien was quite

760
00:40:34,970 --> 00:40:38,490
Speaker 1: conservative in his writings, and I think the answer for

761
00:40:38,570 --> 00:40:42,490
Speaker 1: Tolkien is that you shouldn't take the risk. And in general,

762
00:40:42,530 --> 00:40:45,970
Speaker 1: technology is shown as being not a progressive force. It's

763
00:40:45,970 --> 00:40:49,370
Speaker 1: a potentially destructive force. So whenever you have new technology,

764
00:40:49,450 --> 00:40:52,730
Speaker 1: it could potentially be used for evil, and therefore people

765
00:40:52,730 --> 00:40:55,010
Speaker 1: will be tempted to use it for evil, and most

766
00:40:55,010 --> 00:40:58,690
Speaker 1: people are not strong enough to resist that temptation. There

767
00:40:58,690 --> 00:41:01,970
Speaker 1: are a couple of exceptions, but they're very, very minor exceptions.

768
00:41:01,970 --> 00:41:04,850
Speaker 1: They're the exceptions that I think serve to highlight the

769
00:41:04,970 --> 00:41:08,170
Speaker 1: rule in Tolkien. There's another interesting parallel along these lines.

770
00:41:08,170 --> 00:41:11,410
Speaker 1: I mean, Tolkien strongly rejected the idea that Lord of

771
00:41:11,410 --> 00:41:14,130
Speaker 1: the Rings was an allegory. He hated the idea that

772
00:41:14,170 --> 00:41:16,930
Speaker 1: the Wandering, for example, was really the atomic bomb. He

773
00:41:17,010 --> 00:41:19,130
Speaker 1: once wrote, if Order the Things was an allegory, that

774
00:41:19,170 --> 00:41:21,730
Speaker 1: the Elves would have used the Wandering immediately, which, of

775
00:41:21,730 --> 00:41:23,850
Speaker 1: course I guess is true, because the Allies use the

776
00:41:24,130 --> 00:41:24,730
Speaker 1: atomic bomb.

777
00:41:24,890 --> 00:41:27,850
Speaker 2: So there are allegories, and then there are drawing. There's

778
00:41:27,930 --> 00:41:31,250
Speaker 2: drawing on ideas which are in the zeitgeist at the time, right, Yeah.

779
00:41:31,050 --> 00:41:33,450
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's As a watcher of

780
00:41:34,250 --> 00:41:36,970
Speaker 1: the Rings of Power, it is hard not to be

781
00:41:37,090 --> 00:41:40,690
Speaker 1: tempted by that parallel and in particular the character of

782
00:41:40,770 --> 00:41:42,850
Speaker 1: Keller Brimble, the Great elf Smith as a kind of

783
00:41:42,850 --> 00:41:46,730
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer figure or a von Brown figure, and Herman Hollowith.

784
00:41:47,010 --> 00:41:52,970
Speaker 1: You see these characters, these these brilliant creators who cause

785
00:41:53,010 --> 00:41:56,810
Speaker 1: all kinds of trouble for the world. They definitely have

786
00:41:56,890 --> 00:41:59,010
Speaker 1: resonances in the Rings of Power.

787
00:41:59,130 --> 00:42:02,570
Speaker 2: Tim This has been very fun and very interesting, But

788
00:42:02,690 --> 00:42:04,890
Speaker 2: if I'm honest, also a bit of a downer. Do

789
00:42:04,970 --> 00:42:07,330
Speaker 2: you think there is hope that things will get better

790
00:42:07,490 --> 00:42:08,930
Speaker 2: in series two of Rings of Power?

791
00:42:09,530 --> 00:42:13,370
Speaker 1: I'm sure there will be ups and downs in series two,

792
00:42:13,450 --> 00:42:16,250
Speaker 1: as there always are. But I was reflecting on this.

793
00:42:16,410 --> 00:42:22,250
Speaker 1: I think Tolkien is a very It is really a

794
00:42:22,250 --> 00:42:27,730
Speaker 1: soulmate of cautionary tales. And because Tolkien he was fascinated

795
00:42:27,730 --> 00:42:30,890
Speaker 1: by fairy stories, he was the person who brought really

796
00:42:30,930 --> 00:42:33,330
Speaker 1: be a Wolf to prominence. Be a Wolf is not

797
00:42:33,410 --> 00:42:35,530
Speaker 1: a story with a happy ending. A lot of fairy

798
00:42:35,570 --> 00:42:38,570
Speaker 1: tales don't actually have happy endings, a lot of cautionary

799
00:42:38,610 --> 00:42:40,730
Speaker 1: tales don't have happy endings, And a lot of Tolkien

800
00:42:40,850 --> 00:42:44,290
Speaker 1: stories are about yes, evil is defeated, but it comes

801
00:42:44,290 --> 00:42:47,290
Speaker 1: back and often comes back stronger. There is a sense

802
00:42:47,370 --> 00:42:52,370
Speaker 1: in Tolkien of often of diminishment, of loss, of death,

803
00:42:52,810 --> 00:42:56,610
Speaker 1: and he wants us to look at that and reflect

804
00:42:56,610 --> 00:42:59,490
Speaker 1: on it and learn from it. And in cautioning tales,

805
00:42:59,530 --> 00:43:01,930
Speaker 1: we want people to look at diminishment and loss and

806
00:43:01,970 --> 00:43:05,290
Speaker 1: death and to learn from it. So I want to

807
00:43:06,010 --> 00:43:09,890
Speaker 1: paint too close a parallel, But there's definitely what.

808
00:43:09,730 --> 00:43:11,810
Speaker 2: You're saying is you are basically Tolkien. Is that what

809
00:43:11,810 --> 00:43:12,330
Speaker 2: you're telling me?

810
00:43:13,050 --> 00:43:16,050
Speaker 1: Well, all I'm saying is that Toulkien died September nineteen

811
00:43:16,090 --> 00:43:19,770
Speaker 1: seventy three. I was born September nineteen seventy three. I've

812
00:43:19,810 --> 00:43:20,970
Speaker 1: often reflected on this fact.

813
00:43:23,170 --> 00:43:29,410
Speaker 3: He's speechless, absolutely speechless, the sheer gall of that there

814
00:43:29,450 --> 00:43:31,410
Speaker 3: are no words, There are no there are no words,

815
00:43:31,930 --> 00:43:34,570
Speaker 3: big fat. I love watching this. I really did love

816
00:43:34,610 --> 00:43:38,370
Speaker 3: watching this, and I'm looking forward to season two. And

817
00:43:38,530 --> 00:43:41,770
Speaker 3: just a reminder, you can watch season two of the

818
00:43:41,810 --> 00:43:46,210
Speaker 3: Rings of Power on Amazon Prime starting August the twenty ninth.

819
00:43:50,850 --> 00:43:54,410
Speaker 3: Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.

820
00:43:54,850 --> 00:43:58,170
Speaker 3: It's produced by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn Rust.

821
00:43:58,650 --> 00:44:01,210
Speaker 3: The sound design and original music is the work of

822
00:44:01,250 --> 00:44:02,210
Speaker 3: Pascal Wise.

823
00:44:03,010 --> 00:44:06,850
Speaker 1: Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It features the voice talents

824
00:44:06,890 --> 00:44:11,170
Speaker 1: of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Tella Harford, Jammas Saunders and

825
00:44:11,250 --> 00:44:15,130
Speaker 1: Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without

826
00:44:15,170 --> 00:44:20,010
Speaker 1: the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohene, Eric Handler,

827
00:44:20,290 --> 00:44:24,810
Speaker 1: Carrie Brody and Christina Sullivan. Cautionary Tales is a production

828
00:44:24,970 --> 00:44:29,610
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London

829
00:44:29,850 --> 00:44:33,930
Speaker 1: by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember

830
00:44:33,970 --> 00:44:38,090
Speaker 1: to share, rate and review, tell your friends, and if

831
00:44:38,090 --> 00:44:40,490
Speaker 1: you want to hear the show ad free, sign up

832
00:44:40,530 --> 00:44:44,370
Speaker 1: for Pushkin plus on the show page if Apple Podcasts,

833
00:44:44,490 --> 00:45:11,970
Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot fm slash plus no