Lord of the Flies (1954 Novel)

[00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome to our podcast. I'm Wendy. I'm Jason. I'm Cassie. And this is

[00:00:24] Yellowjacket's WTF Podcast. Woohoo! Back at it. Yeah, episode 41. I couldn't believe

[00:00:31] when I saw that. We've been gone for a little while. We've been on hiatus with Yellowjacket's

[00:00:37] WTF until season three comes out, but we thought you would enjoy another mid-season

[00:00:42] episode. And this time we're going to be talking about the 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies by

[00:00:47] author William Golding. And we'll of course talk about how it compares or doesn't to Yellowjacket's.

[00:00:53] Wendy, I'm glad you wanted to do this because Lord of the Flies, I think is pretty crucial

[00:01:01] to Yellowjacket's. I don't think we would have Yellowjacket's without Lord of the Flies.

[00:01:05] That's great. Yeah, I agree. I hadn't read it in a long time, so it was really cool to go back.

[00:01:12] I think I was 15 last time I read it. I think I was probably in my late teens.

[00:01:18] And we should welcome Cassie. I'm glad you wanted to do this. It's good to meet you and

[00:01:23] have you on. Hi, glad to be on. Was it your idea? I think so. I think we had talked about

[00:01:33] just the root of Yellowjacket's and how it came to be. And there were obvious parallels to the

[00:01:39] Andes disaster. And I think that was in the 70s or 80s. And then I was like, yeah, but it was based

[00:01:45] on Lord of the Flies first. And so I think it kind of spiraled from there. And can I ask who are you?

[00:01:54] I am Wendy's daughter, and I teach English, ninth grade English at a public school. So I have read

[00:02:02] and taught Lord of the Flies for eight years. Do you talk about Yellowjackets in your class?

[00:02:09] Yes. Yeah. Not a lot, but yes. How many of the kids have seen that?

[00:02:16] Not a ton. I would say in each of the classes that I teach, maybe like one or two students

[00:02:23] have read it or have watched it. That's cool. I wish it was more, but kids aren't watching TV

[00:02:30] these days. I don't think they're watching YouTube. They truly are. Yes. And TikTok, I'm guessing.

[00:02:38] And Instagram reels. Yep. That's where it's at.

[00:02:43] It really just makes me wonder what entertainment is going to be like 20 years from now.

[00:02:48] It's going to just be like 20 second bursts on you go to the movies and watch it for 20 minutes,

[00:02:53] seconds or something. I will say I have trouble like sitting down to something that's several

[00:02:59] hours long. This is the first novel I've read in I can't remember how long because mostly my

[00:03:08] attention span is just shattered. So I was really glad actually to have a reason to read a novel

[00:03:17] again. And I hadn't read Lord of the Flies since I was in high school, probably. And it was a

[00:03:24] pleasure. It was so great. Yeah, I agree. It took me a little bit to get into it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

[00:03:31] absolutely. But after I got into it, yeah. All right. I will give a little bit of background

[00:03:41] on the novel. First, I think we should state that we're going to spoil major plot points of

[00:03:47] Yellowjacket seasons one and two and the novel Lord of the Flies. So if you don't want to be

[00:03:51] spoiled by any of that, stop listening now. And if you haven't seen Yellowjackets yet,

[00:03:56] I don't know what to do with you. And I would we I think we all would recommend

[00:04:02] reading Lord of the Flies if you like Yellowjackets. I think you're going to like this

[00:04:06] book. I don't know. I'm pretty sure you will. It's it's interesting to me. Reading that I remember

[00:04:13] I loved this book as a kid. It was dark and it was pretty shocking. And I also liked 1984,

[00:04:21] which is also really dark and shocking. And I think TV kind of caught up to that aesthetic.

[00:04:27] You know, the kind of shows that we like are like that, like Game of Thrones and

[00:04:31] Yellowjackets and Handmaid's Tale. Yeah, but it wasn't back then. I don't think so much. So anyway,

[00:04:37] if you like that kind of TV like we do, I think you're gonna like this book.

[00:04:41] Yeah, I agree. So the book is written in 1954 by William Golding. It's about a group of British

[00:04:48] schoolboys that were evacuated from some type of atomic war when their plane is shot down

[00:04:55] and they're stranded on an inhabited island. And it's all about their attempts to

[00:05:04] police themselves, govern themselves, create a little civilization. Yeah.

[00:05:09] Survive. All right. Cassie, you're our guest. You want to go first? Your first point?

[00:05:17] My first point? I would love to talk about the face masks in Lord of the Flies and in Yellowjackets.

[00:05:26] It's one of my favorite symbols in the book. And it's something that I don't think we've seen a lot

[00:05:31] in the show so far. Like episode one, when we have, I guess, the flashback to all of them in

[00:05:40] the circle eating the meat and all their faces are covered. And we've seen a little bit of that

[00:05:45] when we hit season two, when Shana is butchering the body and she pulls her rag over her face or

[00:05:53] she pulls it up over her face. And also at the, oh man, I should have studied up, but Lottie's

[00:06:03] group that we think is like a cult, I forget the name of it, but they have their animal masks.

[00:06:08] Yeah. And we've seen it evolve. It's really interesting. We've seen how they get to it

[00:06:13] in the wilderness. We've seen how Lottie stole it for her little cult. But it's going to be

[00:06:18] interesting, I guess, in the upcoming season to see how exactly everyone got their mask.

[00:06:23] We saw that in season one. I can't remember what the episode was. The big dinner scene.

[00:06:31] Doom coming. Oh yeah.

[00:06:34] Some of them had face masks and stuff like that. So it's just going to be interesting to see how

[00:06:38] that develops. Right. And it's all, I feel like it's all about communing with the

[00:06:44] spirits and the essence of nature. And I can't remember, but does each one of the

[00:06:49] cannibal council have a different animal mask? They all have different masks in the cannibal

[00:06:57] council, I guess, partly because of all the different materials they would have had to

[00:07:01] scrounge up. But in the book, the mask is something that they use partially to camouflage themselves

[00:07:10] from the pigs. That's a major plot point in the book. There are wild boars on the island and the

[00:07:13] boys are continuously trying to hunt them. But the mask is also something they use for fun. And it's

[00:07:20] kind of like a way to remove yourself from your identity for them. Yeah, you're hiding from

[00:07:25] something. Yeah. Well, someone talked about, there was a line about the liberation of,

[00:07:31] when they go into those wild frenzies in the book and they're reenacting killing the pig and they

[00:07:40] just about kill two different kids and then do kill a third just because they're so frenzied. But

[00:07:46] there's some line about the liberation, I think of liberated from shame and self-consciousness

[00:07:52] probably maybe. And it's just, yeah, it just gives you, well, I don't want to step on your point too

[00:08:01] much, but I think there's a lot of it in here. I think Jack is the id. Who knows how much people

[00:08:11] take stock in Freudian theory anymore, but I think that it ego, super ego thing is kind of interesting

[00:08:16] still. And it is just pure drive and base savagery and things like that. And ego is more like trying

[00:08:24] to synthesize that and you're conscious so you can actually put it into action and function in

[00:08:31] society. And then super ego is like morality and consciousness. At least that's my sense of all of

[00:08:37] it. And I think Jack is more representative of the id and Ralph, the ego and piggy is like the super

[00:08:46] ego. And so I think Jack appeals like that liberation is liberation from having to worry

[00:08:54] about responsibility, morality or anything like that just to be able to go wild basically.

[00:08:59] Do you think Jack is the most savage of the boys in the book?

[00:09:03] Well, I'm really creeped out by Roger. Yeah.

[00:09:07] So that's a major thing in the book, right? You're meant to think that Jack is the most evil because

[00:09:12] he is the one who's giving the evil orders. He is the one who's leading the charge against Ralph.

[00:09:18] But in the end, Roger truly is the one who was the most savage. He's the one who

[00:09:23] purposely released the boulder.

[00:09:26] It's like he's empowered by Jack not stopping him from doing those things, almost like a

[00:09:35] Mengele or a Himmler or something like that. They might not have come to that power alone,

[00:09:42] but under the umbrella of Jack, he runs with it.

[00:09:49] And I think that comes back to William Golding, like his experience in World War II, his

[00:09:55] experience with the totalitarian states and the Nazi party. And I think that the point of that

[00:10:02] character was it's not just the people in charge, it's the people who once they get the tiniest bit

[00:10:07] of freedom to act how they want, those are the people you need to worry about.

[00:10:12] Yeah. All right, Jason?

[00:10:16] Well, I just have a whole point about comparing to Yellow Jackets. Maybe I'll just go through a

[00:10:22] few of those and see how it goes. Yeah, I have a couple of them too, so I'll jump in if you hit

[00:10:26] the same note. We can go back and forth. Yeah. So we know that Yellow Jackets writers had this book

[00:10:31] on their minds. There was this quote about the writers were told, well, you can't do Yellow

[00:10:40] Jackets with girls. Yeah, you couldn't do

[00:10:43] Lord of the Flies with girls. And they were like, have you met teenage girls?

[00:10:48] And so I always said it was like Lord of the Flies meets Lost meets Mean Girls. That's kind

[00:10:55] of how I describe Yellow Jackets. I need to get some cannibal thing in there. But anyway, I think

[00:11:02] it's like it's well written. It has great characters. It's horrifying. It's deep and has

[00:11:06] something to say both Yellow Jackets and Lord of the Flies. Both are what happens when kids are

[00:11:13] away from civilization, and you see what they bring in from civilization and what they get rid

[00:11:18] of and how they do things differently and what how they act reveals about human nature outside

[00:11:26] of civilization. But also I think in both cases within it, you know, you you think, oh, this shows

[00:11:34] that if we didn't have civilization, we might revert to savagery. But when you really look at it,

[00:11:40] it's like no, civilization is still a way that within civilization we all those impulses come

[00:11:49] out but in the guise of of sophistication and civilized way but like rationale, you know, I mean,

[00:12:00] God, I got so much on my mind trying to get it all out at once. But I think like the benefits

[00:12:05] of civilization where everybody can, there's rules and everybody can then be safe. And so then

[00:12:13] they don't all have to be warriors, they can specialize in different kinds of things. And

[00:12:16] that allows us to progress and bring good things like farming and you know, technology and knowledge

[00:12:23] and advancements, but also leverages those things that people like jack and Roger can then use to

[00:12:33] their own advantage, driven by these baser instincts that we're talking about, you know,

[00:12:38] nuclear war and war of any kind and destruction on a on a bigger scale. So these things, I say those,

[00:12:46] those kinds of things come up maybe more in Lord of the Flies than yellow jackets, but it's still

[00:12:53] examining how, if you strip civilization away, what does that show you about human nature? And

[00:13:00] then let's go back to civilization and see, oh, wait, that stuff is still there in some way,

[00:13:06] you know, which is why I love yellow jackets, because it's such a, you get to examine human

[00:13:13] nature. And I like anything that lets you do that. That's one. When I thought about it, I thought

[00:13:21] a comparison between Ralph and Natalie. And what I was thinking of is all the boys of all the boys

[00:13:29] in the story, Ralph, in my opinion, goes through the biggest metamorphosis. He starts out pretty

[00:13:35] shallow and selfish. He's immediately mean to Piggy. Piggy says like, there's one thing I don't

[00:13:42] want you to do. And that's to tell anybody my nickname is Piggy, which he immediately tells

[00:13:47] everyone and makes fun of him. And he hurts him really badly. And he doesn't even seem to know

[00:13:57] that he's hurt him. It's like so unknowingly mean and bullying. And he's really overjoyed with the

[00:14:06] island at first. He looks at it like an adventure. There's no grownups. He naively believes that his

[00:14:13] father will come and rescue him, even though how would he know he was there. And over time,

[00:14:19] he becomes more thoughtful. He wrestles with the wrong or right of things. And it seems like he

[00:14:25] tries to be on the side of right, even when it's the hard way to go. He defends the other boys. He

[00:14:32] defends Piggy. And this made me think a lot of Natalie, who I think has had the biggest metamorphosis.

[00:14:38] She starts out being really the outcast, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

[00:14:44] And she's smuggling alcohol on the plane, being belligerent and rude to most of the people.

[00:14:50] But over time, she becomes the one that stands up for things that are right. And she becomes a

[00:14:57] really good friend to Shauna and Travis. And then ultimately, making the biggest metamorphosis and

[00:15:05] becoming the Antler Queen. And who knows where we're going to see her journey go in the past.

[00:15:11] We don't know that she's the Antler Queen.

[00:15:14] I mean, it seems like all evidence is pointing to that. But we're going to find out.

[00:15:19] We'll see. She's the leader. We know that.

[00:15:21] Yeah. Of the two of them, you could really see the biggest change in them throughout the story.

[00:15:27] Yeah, I liked how Ralph started. He had this sort of burden of leadership and then he started

[00:15:38] thinking deeply about things. And yeah, he's a changed person and a better person.

[00:15:45] Yeah.

[00:15:46] And it's kind of like, I'm also doing the Walking Dead rewatch. So I've got that on my mind. And

[00:15:53] with Daryl Dixon, the zombie apocalypse, as horrible as it was, was good for his personal

[00:15:59] growth. You know?

[00:16:02] Yeah.

[00:16:04] So that's-

[00:16:04] I think Cassie.

[00:16:05] Do we think being in the wilderness is going to end up being good for any character other than

[00:16:10] maybe Misty?

[00:16:15] I think Misty's a horrible person.

[00:16:17] You think Misty's a horrible person?

[00:16:20] Well, she dragged a woman into her basement and killed her.

[00:16:22] She didn't kill her in the basement, but yeah. Okay. Point taken.

[00:16:26] I said and killed her.

[00:16:27] Well, yeah.

[00:16:29] Well, hey, look, she chose the cigarette. I'm just saying.

[00:16:34] Okay.

[00:16:34] I know Misty's flawed, but to me, Misty is like the piggy with maybe more usefulness.

[00:16:43] Like she's so ostracized immediately because of how she is. And like Piggy never stood a chance.

[00:16:50] He was immediately ostracized from the group. And I feel like Misty's Piggy, except that she

[00:16:56] is legitimately more useful and Piggy in the novel is seen as pretty useless.

[00:17:01] But he's only useless because they don't listen to him. Like he has a lot of great ideas.

[00:17:07] But I do think like he's just- he has no self-awareness of how he is to other people.

[00:17:17] And some of that is like you said, he's ostracized because of how he looks and his

[00:17:22] upbringing. He seems to be, you know, a lower, you know, coming from a lower class of people than

[00:17:30] the other kids. But I do think that, you know, if they had listened to him, he had a lot of

[00:17:38] great ideas. Oh, yeah. He had the best. He was the smartest. He was everything he was saying.

[00:17:43] And I think that's like the biggest difference between them is that like Misty makes people

[00:17:47] listen to her with her usefulness, especially at the very beginning. Like Piggy had all the

[00:17:51] good ideas, but it's like he doesn't understand the implicit rules of society. Like don't bring

[00:18:00] attention to the flaws that you have, for example. Like he's always whining. He's always complaining.

[00:18:05] He's always talking about his mommy and his aunt. Yeah. He's always whinging about his asthma.

[00:18:11] Don't you think that's more of Misty in the old timeline and that she grew into figuring out

[00:18:17] how to make people listen to her? Yes. Yeah. She's needy like him. Yeah. At first.

[00:18:24] And also like having that lack of self-awareness, like when people are talking about her,

[00:18:30] she's shocked, you know, like at what people think of her.

[00:18:36] And one thing that he keeps doing that Ralph knows not to do is when he's, it's really whining. Like

[00:18:42] I got the conch, you know, it's like, shut up, dude. And, and when you do something like that,

[00:18:49] you're putting yourself out there and then it doesn't get respected and you keep doing it.

[00:18:55] Then your power just goes down and down and down. And it just brings up to me like how,

[00:19:00] how I've also really interested in how Lord of the Flies compares to real world, because I think

[00:19:06] that's kind of the point of the book. Like I was saying before, it seems like it's about what

[00:19:09] happens when you're away from civilization, but then we explore how these things manifest in

[00:19:13] civilization and like with leaders, it's so much, especially these days, probably forever.

[00:19:21] You want to believe that we choose our leaders based on their capability and their intellect

[00:19:26] and their wisdom. But it's also so much about charisma and how they carry themselves. And like

[00:19:31] when we're watching these presidential debates, all people talk about is how they acted, not

[00:19:36] so much what they said, you know, and Ralph in the book is very still and just calm and confident

[00:19:43] and they, and he looks good. And so they naturally choose him as their leader without knowing

[00:19:47] anything about him, but piggy's the smart one. And even Ralph knows that he says at some point,

[00:19:51] I'm not as smart as him. I don't have the answers like him. So he's a good advisor to have at your

[00:19:55] side, which is what presidents do. Right? Typically not always, but the ones that are either

[00:20:01] the most charismatic or at least appealing on some emotional level to enough people get to be

[00:20:06] the president. But then if they're good, they'll have people around them that are actually smart

[00:20:11] and can advise them. And that's what piggy is. And one more thing about him. I think I thought

[00:20:16] about anti-intellectualism with him a lot. Like he is smart, but people dismiss it even Ralph at

[00:20:21] first. And I think there is a trend of anti-intellectualism in our society too. And I

[00:20:27] think probably back in the fifties, cause I think Golding is really commenting on that here. And I,

[00:20:33] I think a big reason for that is people who don't feel smart or as smart as the intellectuals or the

[00:20:41] scientists feel like they will be less powerful that makes them less powerful. And so they dismiss

[00:20:48] it and that's how it is with piggy shut up piggy. But then they end up using the benefits of

[00:20:54] intellectualism and science for their own ends. They use piggy's glasses, even though as they're

[00:20:59] poo-pooing him, he didn't invent the glasses, but he's a smart guy. And in real society, you know,

[00:21:04] that people use the results of science all the time while dismissing science.

[00:21:09] 00.30 Yeah. Yep. I mean, you know, it's not cool to be the nerd, right?

[00:21:15] Yeah. Unless you're in our group, but usually

[00:21:21] I think, well, one of the big like comparisons that I like looking at is the ages,

[00:21:32] like the use of children. It's interesting because Lord of the Flies, they're obviously younger.

[00:21:37] And in Yellow Jackets, they're obviously older and not only different genders, but just the fact

[00:21:42] that like, they're still meant to be children in both. And it's like, we see because the whole

[00:21:51] thing started with William Golding was a father and he was a teacher and he knew, you know,

[00:21:55] how young boys acted. So it's interesting that you like look at how that influenced his novel.

[00:22:02] And then you look at the female actresses in Yellow Jackets and how certain things that they've

[00:22:07] talked about have influenced their acting in the show and like how to act younger and how to act,

[00:22:15] I guess, like with that less of a sense of civilization that you're tied to.

[00:22:22] I think he was specifically going for pre-puberty, but I also think that back in the 40s and 50s,

[00:22:31] kids matured earlier because they had to. I mean, in my family, pretty much out of grade school,

[00:22:39] kids went to work in the mill because their parents needed the money. And I had several

[00:22:44] aunts that married at 14 and this is back in the 50s and 60s. So I feel like kids grew up a lot

[00:22:55] earlier by force back then. Yeah, I think. But I do. I totally agree with that. And we're maturing

[00:23:06] later and later as time goes on. But I also feel like that's one way that they're a bit different

[00:23:12] because I do think Yellow Jackets is meant to have a bit of a different feel, an older feel.

[00:23:19] It's not pre-pubescent, like you said. I think that makes a big difference. Just the pre-pubescent

[00:23:26] because they're not preoccupied with the same types of things.

[00:23:31] Well, and that's literally a whole point. Plot point in the show is when they all have their

[00:23:36] periods and they're all syncing up and oh, Shauna's faking hers. And it's interesting that they

[00:23:45] brought that one guy in. They wanted that mix, you know, with Travis.

[00:23:54] Well, and Javi. Yeah. And Coach. Oh, oh. And that cabin daddy. I guess he doesn't count.

[00:24:01] Yeah. I bet you that's maybe if there were some girls in Lord of the Flies, then Yellow Jackets

[00:24:09] wouldn't have been made because just the fact that it was all boys made people want to go,

[00:24:15] well, what if you have some girls? You know, and if it's mostly girls.

[00:24:18] Does that come up when you're teaching the fact that it's all boys?

[00:24:22] Absolutely. Yeah. Not usually like in assignments or anything, but during discussions. And a lot

[00:24:27] of times I'll just ask, do you think it would be different if it was girls? Do you think it

[00:24:31] would be different if there were girls there? And answers are unequivocally yes every single time.

[00:24:38] And a lot of times my students say that Lord of the Flies, if there had been girls on the island,

[00:24:43] Lord of the Flies would have been different because the boys would have behaved better

[00:24:47] because they would have been embarrassed. Which I don't know if that would have applied to 1950s,

[00:24:54] 1940s kids in prep schools. There might've been worse things going on.

[00:25:00] Yeah. Even then we saw, you never know. But

[00:25:04] what do you two think? What if it was girls instead? Would it be different?

[00:25:14] Yeah, I think it would be different. But I think William Golding wrote about what he knew.

[00:25:20] And when he went to war, it was, I mean, I know there were women in the war,

[00:25:26] but it was mostly all men. Yeah.

[00:25:29] I feel like, I wonder if maybe it's because in his time, most of the movers and shakers

[00:25:37] in society were men because of stupidity. Yeah, it's just the way it was. And so maybe it would

[00:25:46] just to be a commentary on the people who are waging the war and things like that.

[00:25:53] But anyway, but I think it would be different too. I don't think it would be all sunshine and roses

[00:26:00] and everybody would just be getting along and it would be perfect. But I think there would be

[00:26:05] struggle and conflict and stuff like that, but I don't think it would be as violent.

[00:26:11] I think maybe more violent. Yeah. It's hard to put yourself in the age.

[00:26:15] I think it would depend. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:26:18] Yeah. I think it would depend because in the book you have, there's pretty much two groups of kids.

[00:26:26] There's a one group of kids that all came from some school and then there's the choir boys and

[00:26:30] that's like Jack and Roger and all of them. And so I think that dynamic with girls depending could

[00:26:38] have the potential to make things worse faster almost, especially teenage girls. I mean, I feel

[00:26:49] pretty knowledgeable about the subject. I think if you have two rival groups right off the bat,

[00:26:55] it doesn't bode well. Yeah. I just, and this is more a question for YouTube,

[00:27:03] but it seems like there would definitely be, there's tribalism, you know, that's,

[00:27:09] that's a thing in our culture to eat people want to stick with what they know with. And if you're

[00:27:14] a certain kind of person, then you'll ostracize everyone else. And I think the younger you are,

[00:27:18] the most more likely you will be to do that. But that's the same, like these are all the

[00:27:22] same impulses that lead to things in our society as you grow older from adults. Yeah. To adults.

[00:27:32] But anyway, I think girls do that so much. So people could be left out and, but I just,

[00:27:38] I don't know if there'd be as much like dropping rocks on people and stuff like that.

[00:27:43] Right. It's more, it's freezing people out more avert. Yeah. Okay. Can I do one?

[00:27:53] Yeah. Cause this, this brought for some reason brought into my mind to point I had about

[00:27:58] how meaning changes depending on context and perception. And one of the ways that Ralph

[00:28:05] starts thinking more deeply as a leader, a passage in the book says again, he fell into that strange

[00:28:12] mood of speculation that was so foreign to him. If faces were different when lit from above or below,

[00:28:18] what was a face? What was anything just talking about how the light hits them, I guess. And

[00:28:25] I think that comment is about how truth can depend on perspective and constant context.

[00:28:33] And there's a bunch of different ways. The novel explores this. It shifts the naming of things as

[00:28:39] they become different things to show that the reality changes. So Jack is just referred to

[00:28:44] as the boy until one of the choir kids calls him Mary do. And then the book calls him Mary do.

[00:28:49] And then Jack, once we know his name, but then when he takes control of everything,

[00:28:55] the book just starts saying the chief did this, right? Chief did that. You know, that's,

[00:28:59] he's changed. The twins are usually just called salmon Eric because they're like one thing.

[00:29:05] All one word. We never even get piggies or we never even get piggies name. We don't know his

[00:29:10] name. The book calls him the fat boy until he says they used to call me piggy. And then

[00:29:16] the book is all, it's just as mean as Ralph is just starts calling him piggy.

[00:29:21] Mary is not kind to piggy.

[00:29:24] No. And a piggy never should have told that was a dumb move.

[00:29:28] Now that was

[00:29:30] ever tell anyone a nickname you don't want because you will immediately get it.

[00:29:34] But I do think like that's piggy. Like he does.

[00:29:37] Yes.

[00:29:38] He doesn't get it socially.

[00:29:40] Yeah. But he just created that reality for himself, whether he even meant to or not.

[00:29:44] And then things can take on a different feel depending on frame of reference and context. So

[00:29:50] there's the, when you first see, well, Jack's friends, they're described as these black

[00:29:56] cloaked boys and they seem mysterious and intimidating. And then you find out they're

[00:30:00] the choir and it's like, Oh, that's so cute. But the point is that the way things used to be no

[00:30:05] longer applies. So they can form new meanings based on their new reality away from the world,

[00:30:09] like in yellow jackets and, and, you know, now they can sort of reshape what reality is because

[00:30:16] reality and sanity is just kind of what everyone agrees on. So now they're there.

[00:30:20] They used to be the choir. Now they're the gang of hunters and Jack is their leader.

[00:30:25] Also about how fear can prompt people to see the thing that they're afraid of.

[00:30:32] So Sam and Eric think this parachutist fighter pilot is the beast with wings. And most of the

[00:30:38] kids come to believe in that and fear that even though it's actually harmless. And so it's that

[00:30:44] thing, theme of how, when you're afraid of things, then they can become scarier if something is

[00:30:51] unknown. And we see that in the real world all the time where places are painted as dangerous

[00:30:57] and full of bad people. But if you go there, the people are lovely. My friend Dan is visiting

[00:31:01] Jordan right now and he went into Palestine and he had a great time. And I've been to Moscow and

[00:31:07] I'm lovely people there. And yellow jackets does that too. Like Shauna thought Travis was bad,

[00:31:16] but at least unless we learn differently, he was actually innocent or the big thing with

[00:31:22] yellow jackets. A lot of things are maybe supernatural, maybe psychological,

[00:31:28] ambiguous, ambiguous, but could be one or the other. And it's got to be one of the other,

[00:31:33] but we don't know. And then this is controversial, but in my opinion,

[00:31:38] Matt Syracuse, he looks one way, but he's actually not exactly that, but we'll see. We'll see. We'll

[00:31:45] find, we'll see how that pans out. But then another one when the officers get to Lord of

[00:31:53] the Flies, they get there at the end, the Navy and the scavenger, I mean, the savages are about

[00:31:59] to kill Ralph. And the guy's like, are there any adults, any grownups with you? And it says,

[00:32:05] dumbly, Ralph shook his head. He turned half pace on the sand, a semi-circle of little boys,

[00:32:11] their bodies streaked with colored clay, sharp sticks in their hands were standing on the beach,

[00:32:15] making no noise at all that description right after it, just this buildup of how they were

[00:32:21] killers and they were fierce and they were, but now they're just a circle of little boys with

[00:32:26] clay on them. It just shifts the perspective. And you go from them being called big guns

[00:32:32] and little ones and savages and hunters. And then all of a sudden they're little boys because

[00:32:37] that's what they were the entire time. They were little boys playing war, except that they

[00:32:41] weren't playing. Yeah. And it was savage. It was murderous. So it was kind of both.

[00:32:48] It's like, yeah. Well, and I think that also kind of goes back to what you were saying about like

[00:32:52] the settings and like thinking that something's a bad place and like, because in, I think,

[00:32:59] I can't remember which episode it is where they get to the cabin, but Lottie looks at the cabin

[00:33:03] and says, this isn't a good place. And you see that in a certain part of Lord of the Flies

[00:33:08] where they're describing the Rocky cliffs, part of the island where Piggy eventually dies.

[00:33:13] And some of the boys are like, this would make a wizard for it. And Ralph is like, nah,

[00:33:17] this is a rotten place. That's totally foreshadowing. Which is my nerd brain.

[00:33:23] Yeah. Yeah. And that little like narrow place that goes out to the castle rock,

[00:33:28] you know, with the drop far below. I'm like, this isn't going to be good.

[00:33:32] No. And they even describe it.

[00:33:35] And they say how it's like murky and there's no fresh water and there's no food up there.

[00:33:41] And it's like, why would you go up there? But it's interesting too, because in the book,

[00:33:47] well and in the show, in the book a major plot point is the whole setting. Like they are presented

[00:33:53] with this perfect pristine island and they are the ones who ruin it right from the very beginning.

[00:33:57] They're the ones who are ruining it with the scar on the island, which is like the nickname for the

[00:34:04] impact spot where the plane hit the island and then slid. And then you have chapter two where

[00:34:09] they set part of the island on fire and then you get all the way to chapter 12 where they set the

[00:34:14] entire island on fire. And we see that mirrored in Yellow Jackets where we just, we had a cabin,

[00:34:19] we had a place for our little society and now it's gone. Yeah. And it's all because of,

[00:34:27] well, the Lord of the Flies really. I mean, we can get into what that means. The pig with the,

[00:34:37] or pig head on a pike that has flies buzzing around it. That's like the literal thing,

[00:34:44] literal meaning of it. But then on another level, it's a representative of this beast

[00:34:50] that turned out not to be real. It was just their fears externalized. Well, it was kind of real.

[00:34:58] But it wasn't something that was a threat. Well, but they didn't know that. That's the whole thing.

[00:35:03] I know. Yeah, they didn't know what, I mean, I guess my point is, so they're worried about

[00:35:10] monsters, right? And the little kids, the littlest ones are the ones that bring it up first, which is

[00:35:15] interesting to me because they're the ones that have the least grasp on reality, how things really

[00:35:21] are so that their imaginations can really run wild and fear is about fear of danger and the unknown.

[00:35:27] And so they make up this sort of externalized thing. But I think then the pig head says to

[00:35:36] Simon, oh, you thought that you could kill me, but I'm in you or something like that. And Simon

[00:35:42] already had realized that maybe it has something to do with us. And so my take on it is that it's

[00:35:49] about, you know, on one level sort of our innate savagery, that's what the beast is. But I don't

[00:35:57] totally relate to that because I don't feel like, oh, I'm a savage inside. But when you think about

[00:36:04] what really led them to do the bad things that they did, it was like in Jack's case,

[00:36:12] wanting to feel powerful and wanting to feel in control. And I think a lot of times when people

[00:36:18] want to feel powerful and in control underneath that is a fear that they won't be powerful or

[00:36:22] won't have control. Right? So there's a fear basis to it too, but also there's just a lot,

[00:36:26] he had a blood lust early on. And so as soon as Ralph mocked him like, oh, you can't go.

[00:36:36] You're just a bunch of kids with sticks. That was all it took for Jack to decide you're not on my

[00:36:41] team anymore. I mean, he already was feeling, they were feeling challenged because Jack really

[00:36:45] wanted to be in charge, but he was letting Ralph be in charge. But as soon as that happened,

[00:36:50] he's like, fuck you. We're our own team now. And then it quickly escalated to I'm going to

[00:36:55] kill you. And I feel like that is similar to things that we see in politics today, where

[00:37:02] if someone challenges you in some countries, you might get poisoned or thrown out a window

[00:37:07] or here you might have your career ruined, you know, have your, all your followers sicked on

[00:37:15] someone just because they challenge you depending on which political year that is use your imagination.

[00:37:21] So I totally forgot how I got here. I don't remember.

[00:37:26] We use fear like people use fear now to manipulate and to retain power. I mean,

[00:37:33] I have rational people that I think are intelligent telling me that, you know,

[00:37:39] immigrants are amassing on the borders and, you know, like, how can you really believe that?

[00:37:45] You know, like it's, but it's, it's fear. We want them to be afraid of something because then we

[00:37:52] can control of them. And it's interesting. Cause I think a lot of times there is an actual fear

[00:37:57] that drives leaders and political leaders to do these things. But then they also

[00:38:09] add to it or completely make it up whole clock. And in the case of the Lord of the flies,

[00:38:14] Jack is afraid that there's a beast out there, but then when they kill Simon and he says, Oh,

[00:38:20] he was, that was the beast and he changed his form or whatever. He's just totally pulling that

[00:38:25] out of his ass because he realizes at this point that he can use it to control. Oh yeah.

[00:38:29] Yeah. Like I do think Jack's afraid and in the same ways, they're all afraid they're little

[00:38:34] boys. They're on this deserted Island. It's dark outside, but at times you can see that

[00:38:41] Jack is absolutely making that more than he really thinks it is. And using that to control the,

[00:38:48] you know, the kids, you know, I was thinking at first I was going to make a whole point about how

[00:38:57] yellow jackets is different because in yellow jackets, I do think like hunger is a big piece

[00:39:05] that's missing in Lord of the flies. And I was thinking, well, the reason why they do the things

[00:39:12] that they do in yellow jackets is because of survival and hunger. They're going to starve

[00:39:19] to death if they don't. But, but then I was like, no, there's other things, you know, especially

[00:39:24] towards the end of season two where coach burns down the house and Misty kills crystal. I mean,

[00:39:31] maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose, um, you know, that doesn't explain, you know,

[00:39:37] hunger doesn't explain those things. Well, I think it's just the idea of like resources,

[00:39:43] like you go after what you don't have. And so in yellow jackets, they don't have food. That's

[00:39:48] what they're going after on the Island in Lord of the flies. They don't have anything to entertain

[00:39:53] them. So that's what they go after because it's not like they need the pig meat in order to the

[00:39:57] flies. They don't need the pig meat. There's other stuff that they can eat on the Island,

[00:40:01] but they do it because it, it gives them a way to exert control over something else, which

[00:40:08] in the 1940s, 1950s British prep school boys, every minute of their day would have been controlled.

[00:40:13] So this is like the first time they've had any freedom. But I also think pig meat probably

[00:40:17] tasted pretty good when all you had is bananas. That's true. But I think the fact that there was

[00:40:23] so much fruit available on the Island and it was, uh, they weren't in trouble really that much,

[00:40:31] except for they didn't have their parents or whatever. I think that's a big part of it because

[00:40:37] they could have easily just gotten along fine. That's kind of the point, right? So the problems

[00:40:42] came from inside, not from external so much, you know? Right. Well, I think you could say almost

[00:40:49] the same thing about yellow jackets. Like if they had just been getting along, you wouldn't have had

[00:40:55] you know, Lottie half dead in the cabin and them all running after Javi and that's true. You're

[00:41:00] right. Yeah. Yeah. Can't everyone just be friends? And I like see another way that, um, yellow jackets

[00:41:07] and Laura, the flies are similar is, uh, they start to believe in supernatural things. Um,

[00:41:14] in yellow jackets, dark spirits of wilderness. And Ralph asks for a vote on who believes in ghosts.

[00:41:20] And he, I guess he's at least some people raise their hands and he, the, the quote is the world

[00:41:27] that the world, that understandable and lawful world was slipping away. Once there was this and

[00:41:33] that, and now the ship had gone and you know, they, of course they think this parachute is a beast

[00:41:41] and they, um, in yellow jackets, well, the fears of all of this beast feels like in yellow jackets,

[00:41:52] like the whole cabin daddy thing. And it's like, the beast is the wilderness. We're like

[00:41:58] the person in the wilderness, the thing in the wilderness. Well, and then Laura's applies. It is

[00:42:03] a real thing. There is really a body up on the mountain, which was scary to little kids. It's

[00:42:09] interesting how the rumors kind of, at the very beginning, they're talking about a snake thing

[00:42:14] that was crawling out of the trees. And like, realistically you're thinking like that was a

[00:42:18] snake. That was some vines falling down. They're little kids. It was dark. They don't have lights

[00:42:22] on, but then it evolves until the twins see it up on the mountain. They just see this thing hunched

[00:42:28] over in the dark. And then all of them eventually see it except for piggy up on the mountain. So

[00:42:33] there is this thing and it's like, you know, there was cabin daddy. There are body weird bodies of

[00:42:40] animals in the woods. There is stuff happening, but it's well, and there's a lot of like seems

[00:42:46] to know things that she couldn't know. So that's the part that makes me think, okay, maybe it is

[00:42:51] supernatural, but I always say, I really hope it's not because you know, a theme of Lord of the

[00:42:57] flies is that sometimes superstition is just a projection or an externalization of what's actually

[00:43:04] in us. And to me, exploring the dark sides of human psychology is way more interesting than

[00:43:10] it's a demonic force against us, you know? And like, I, you know, like I said, I've read that

[00:43:20] the show that someone told the writers, you can't make a female version of the Lord of the flies

[00:43:24] because women wouldn't be that brutal. And they like have, have they said, have you met teenage

[00:43:29] girls? But if the show ends up having a supernatural element, that's influenced them to this bad

[00:43:33] behavior, then it kind of reinforces the idea that women can't beat as, or wouldn't be as brutal as

[00:43:39] men unless there's something extra driving it. I don't know if it's ever going to answer that.

[00:43:46] I don't think it will either. Concretely. I think it's always going to leave us.

[00:43:50] I think it's always going to be something where, I mean, maybe it was, maybe, maybe it's just them.

[00:43:56] Yeah. I don't think it's going to answer that concretely. Like, like for example, like Lost

[00:44:02] went off the railroad tracks with that. Cause at first you weren't sure, but then.

[00:44:09] And I think that's good because it's a, I really think it's about,

[00:44:14] it's a reflection on the real world and we can't answer it concretely here either.

[00:44:20] Yeah. Really?

[00:44:20] I think a lot of it's going to hinge on Lottie. Like what you said about Lottie, where she,

[00:44:25] it feels like she knows something else. And like in Lord of the flies, that was Simon.

[00:44:30] Yeah. And Simon's my favorite.

[00:44:32] A whole lot of good that did him. Well, there's a, there's a ton of parallels between

[00:44:37] Simon and Lottie and there's also parallels between Simon and Laura Lee.

[00:44:41] That's what I saw was Laura Lee. Yeah. So Simon and Lottie both have

[00:44:46] something mental concretely going on. Like, I think Lottie, what is diagnosed schizophrenic

[00:44:52] in the show and Simon, we're not meant to know what Simon has, but we're meant to think it's

[00:44:57] like epilepsy that he's got some kind of seizure disorder. It's not like he's just.

[00:45:01] I couldn't figure it out. Like I saw, I was reading Cassie's copy. So I saw her little

[00:45:06] footnotes, but I was like, I don't, I don't get that from it, but something obviously.

[00:45:11] Well in chapter, in the very first time you see him, the choir boys are all like,

[00:45:15] oh yeah, Simon's always throwing a feint. And then he passes out a couple of times.

[00:45:20] And then that whole conversation that he has with Lord of the flies,

[00:45:24] we're meant to think he's having some kind of like seizure or some kind of like episode.

[00:45:28] Yeah. Or hallucination or.

[00:45:30] Yeah. And so you see that with Lottie, but then on the flip side, Simon's also kind of like

[00:45:35] the Christ figure where he knew the truth about everything and he was just trying to help everyone.

[00:45:39] And that was Laura Lee to me. Laura Lee was, you know, she was trying to get out. She had a way

[00:45:44] out. She was trying and then. And she was the quiet, nice one who was.

[00:45:50] Weird.

[00:45:51] Putting her work, but, but also, you know, always there to help someone. And

[00:45:56] that's what Simon was doing too.

[00:45:58] Yeah. And Laura was Laura Lee was helpful, but she was seen as weird and

[00:46:01] Simon is seen as weird by the other boys.

[00:46:04] Yeah. But he's yeah. He ends up being.

[00:46:10] Kind of nurturing to Ralph at one point when Ralph, I think is,

[00:46:15] I think he's just sitting there feeling bad and Simon seems to intuit. And he just says,

[00:46:21] you'll get back to where he came from. He didn't even say anything about that if I remember right.

[00:46:26] And I just was like, Oh, what a good kid, you know? Yeah. And he's also the one that figured

[00:46:31] out. I mean, you keep saying there is actually a beast, but my point is that really that corpse

[00:46:37] is harmless, but they think it's dangerous.

[00:46:39] But that's your adult self, Jason.

[00:46:41] It is harmless, whether I'm an adult or a kid, a corpse is not going to hurt me.

[00:46:46] I would think no, what I'm not talking about what you think I'm talking about what is actually true,

[00:46:50] what's actually true is this thing is not going to come after them, even though they think it will.

[00:46:54] And so Simon figures out that he's and that's why he goes up there to double check his intuition.

[00:47:02] Yes. Well, and it's he figures out everything like in one fell swoop,

[00:47:09] he talks to the Lord of the Flies, he passes out, he wakes up again, he sees the dead pilot,

[00:47:14] he tries to get to the boys, he crawls out on the beach. And then, which is obviously a

[00:47:19] difference. Lauralee was not you know, the other girls didn't kill Lauralee, but there's definitely

[00:47:23] something, you know, we're not meant to know the truth. We're not meant to get out.

[00:47:27] I mean, they they helped her, you know? Yeah, they helped her fly off, which was a bad idea.

[00:47:33] Well, and this writer best.

[00:47:37] It's a good writerly technique where at least the way I came to it, I wanted them to find out the

[00:47:46] truth about this thing that it wasn't what they thought it was. It was just a corpse, which is

[00:47:53] creepy, but it's not going to hurt them. And so then you get Simon going up and confirming it and

[00:47:58] he's going to go back and tell them and I'm like, Oh, good, good, good. And then they kill him. And

[00:48:02] it's like, oh, it's so tragic. It's like a knife to the heart, you know, not only that, they kill

[00:48:07] it, which does add that's the worst part of it. But and that says a lot about their savagery and

[00:48:12] that Ralph and piggy were in there with them. But um, that's another way that it reminds me of

[00:48:18] Yellowjackets, by the way, because they go into a frenzy sometimes, like Jackie, you know, but also

[00:48:24] that he was about to tell them that it wasn't real. And then he didn't get a chance to so

[00:48:30] and then after he dies, the body of the dead pilot because in the book, a storm is happening.

[00:48:36] So the body of the dead pilot floats onto the beach, the boys all see it after Simon's laying

[00:48:42] there dead, then the body floats out to sea. So they never figure it out. They never know.

[00:48:46] And I feel like maybe we're going to end up seeing that in Yellowjackets. Like maybe there's something

[00:48:50] in the woods that we see the girls never see. I don't think they're going to give us that

[00:48:56] satisfaction. But I hope they do. I mean, I, you know, one can dream. I'd like to Yeah.

[00:49:02] I'm gonna talk about the language a little bit. I think it's beautiful and descriptive and poetic.

[00:49:08] And also, it took me a while to get used to the vocabulary. Yes, I felt the exact same way.

[00:49:16] I think it was made me feel kind of dumb, honestly. It was published in 1954 in England. So

[00:49:23] the language is a bit of a different time and place. It's a literary novel with a very descriptive,

[00:49:31] specific language and obscure, I would say, because our I think in part because our vocabulary has

[00:49:38] shrunk. Yeah, you know. But there's also a lot of language specifically related to things on an

[00:49:44] island rock formations and flora and words for waves and things like that. Creepers.

[00:49:50] Creepers. I looked it up. And creepers was mentioned 38 times.

[00:49:58] You can just because one cool thing about reading it on iPad, which is what I did,

[00:50:02] you can just tap any word and get a definition immediately. So that was great. It helped me,

[00:50:09] you know, expanded my mind a little bit. And, and I'm going to do a few definitions of words like

[00:50:16] creepers. But first, I wanted to read a passage just if people are decided to listen to this

[00:50:21] and didn't read the book, this will give you an idea of what it's like. This is a particularly

[00:50:26] dark passage that was one of my favorites. Because Simon looked up feeling the weight

[00:50:32] of his wet hair. Let me tell you what this is about first. So they have chopped this pig's

[00:50:36] head off and it's on a pike. And I guess Simon was hiding nearby. He was just off in the woods.

[00:50:42] I'm just hanging out. And so he's alone with it. Simon looked up feeling the weight of his wet hair

[00:50:48] and gazed at the sky up there for once were clouds great bulging toward towers that sprouted away

[00:50:54] over the islands gray and cream and copper colored. The clouds were sitting on the land.

[00:51:00] They squeezed produced moment by moment this close tormenting heat. Even the butterflies

[00:51:06] deserted the open space where the obscene thing grinned and dripped. Simon lowered his head

[00:51:11] carefully keeping his eyes shut, then sheltered them with his hand. There were no shadows under

[00:51:16] the trees but everywhere a pearly stillness so that what was real seemed elusive and without

[00:51:21] definition. The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzz like a saw. After a while,

[00:51:28] these flies found Simon gorge they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled

[00:51:35] under his nostrils and played leapfrog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green

[00:51:40] and without number and in front of Simon the Lord of the flies hung on his stick and grinned.

[00:51:46] At last Simon gave up and looked back and saw the white teeth and dim eyes,

[00:51:51] the blood and his gaze was held by that ancient inescapable recognition. So that's

[00:51:58] it's just beautiful. The writing is just beautiful. And I felt the same way like it took me

[00:52:04] like a chapter to get into it. But once you get into it, it's like you can smell here. Yeah,

[00:52:10] it all. It really brings it to life. I read this book when I was very young, read it a bunch of

[00:52:16] times. And I can remember, I still vividly remember that feeling I had the first time I read it when

[00:52:23] the scenes were right after piggy is killed, and Jack's running for his life. And the next

[00:52:30] morning he wakes up and he's being smoked out and hunted. Ralph and oh, I'm sorry, Ralph. And like

[00:52:37] I was so scared reading a book like I remember. And just that feeling that

[00:52:45] Ralph was alone and powerless, and there's no adults around to fix this situation. I can remember

[00:52:52] how scared I was. That's the saddest part of the whole book for me at the end when he wakes up and

[00:52:59] Simon's been dead, Piggy's dead. And then he's hiding in the jungle and he sees the twins.

[00:53:05] And they've been absorbed by the savages. And he hits him that one, the twins are not with him

[00:53:11] anymore. And then they tell him, Roger sharpened a stick at both ends. And he knows what that means

[00:53:15] for him. And then he goes to hide in the thicket in the jungle. And then the twin, he hears the

[00:53:21] twins telling Jack where he's hiding. And that's like what you were saying about fear. Like fear

[00:53:26] is what's ruling them at that point. And the twins are betraying Ralph because they're afraid because

[00:53:32] they know Jack and they know Roger too. At the end, they say like, Roger's the one that everyone

[00:53:36] needs to watch out for. I think they tortured them too. They were screaming. Yeah, they after Piggy

[00:53:42] dies. I think it says that they like just start whipping them and beating them and they just

[00:53:48] kind of dragging them into the tribe. But I mean, they never I don't think they ever

[00:53:54] in their hearts turned on him, which was nice. No, it was just they're scared. They want they

[00:54:00] wanted to live. Yeah, yeah. So I have just a little bit more on language. So creepers,

[00:54:10] I had to look it up because it kept coming up. And of course, I know that to mean someone who

[00:54:15] acts creepy. That's like the urban dictionary of it or Minecraft guys that explode. Yeah,

[00:54:23] me too. But it's any plant that did you know this? It's any plant that grows along the ground

[00:54:29] around another plant or up a wall by means of standing stems and branches. Yeah, I did. You

[00:54:34] guys already know that? I didn't know. I'm not a gardener. So I was like, what the hell is that?

[00:54:40] When Ralph was mad that Jack was hunting pig instead of tending to the fire when that ship

[00:54:46] came by, Eric says, wasn't he waxy and waxy means bad tempered, irritable or angry in the UK. That's

[00:54:54] a UK term, old fashioned. Apparently, Bill said at one point, this would make a wizard fort. And I

[00:55:02] just thought of the Phantom Menace. I thought that was a word that they made up for Star Wars. But

[00:55:08] apparently it's it's a regular word that just means great, you know, wonderful, excellent. I

[00:55:12] didn't know that. I thought it was only like Gandalf. And then on the way to find the beast

[00:55:21] on the mountain at night, Ralph says, well, maybe we should go back. And Jack says, windy.

[00:55:26] I guess that's British slang for afraid. Are you afraid? Chicken? Yeah. Chicken. Yeah. And one more.

[00:55:34] Piggy says, if we don't get home soon, we'll be barmy. And that means crazy. I didn't know that.

[00:55:40] And don't they say something like sucks your asthma or something like that?

[00:55:45] Asthma.

[00:55:45] Sucks to your asthma. Sucks to your-

[00:55:47] It's like a slur.

[00:55:48] Yeah. Sucks to your whatever.

[00:55:50] Yeah. That was funny too.

[00:55:55] Right. And, you know, I never know reading stuff like that if it's just some play that own words

[00:56:00] that the author made up or if it's something that people actually said back then. I'm guessing

[00:56:04] people said it. It seems like he was pretty in tune with the way people actually talked.

[00:56:09] But I don't know.

[00:56:10] Yeah. There's a couple there's like one of the boys are is describing Simon. They call him queer

[00:56:17] because that used to mean odd, not gay. So I have to explain that to my students.

[00:56:20] I think they say gay too at some point.

[00:56:22] Well, yeah.

[00:56:22] And that just means happy.

[00:56:25] Something else. Oh, and then, oh, this is a good one. When the Lord of the Flies is

[00:56:30] talking to Simon and he's saying, we're going to have fun or else we'll do you.

[00:56:34] Yeah.

[00:56:35] And my students are like, what is he saying? And I'm like, it's not. He means he's going

[00:56:39] to kill him. It's not the other thing.

[00:56:40] Wasn't did someone say something about diddling at some point?

[00:56:44] Oh, it's used as like an adjective or something like that somewhere in the book, I think. Yeah,

[00:56:50] there's or diddler or something. Yeah, there's there's a couple just like phrases.

[00:56:55] And then there's when he's when Ralph is confronting the group after the fire went

[00:57:01] out and they could have been rescued and they didn't. And he's searching for the worst word

[00:57:05] in his vocabulary and he comes up with bloody. And I tell my students that's that's the F bomb

[00:57:10] guys like that's about as bad as you can imagine.

[00:57:13] Think of. And that's still true, right? And in England.

[00:57:17] I think it's still used that way. Yeah.

[00:57:19] But it's not as bad.

[00:57:21] But they also now just use the F bomb as well.

[00:57:23] Yeah.

[00:57:24] Yeah. It's less than that now.

[00:57:26] I mean, even in my lifetime. Now they're saying fuck on TV pretty regularly.

[00:57:31] Yeah, that's true.

[00:57:31] You know, they did like 10 years ago. That was it says he pulled himself between the

[00:57:37] ferns tunneling in. He laid the stick beside him and huddled himself down in the blackness.

[00:57:41] One must remember to wake at first light in order to diddle the savages.

[00:57:47] Oh, yeah.

[00:57:50] What do you do?

[00:57:55] I didn't look that one up.

[00:57:58] It means mess with in that context.

[00:58:00] Yeah, clearly.

[00:58:03] All right, Cassie, I think it's your turn.

[00:58:06] OK, I think the only other one that I was really thinking of is like.

[00:58:15] In Lord of the Flies, we see that there was at least one missed opportunity for rescue,

[00:58:20] and we've also, I guess, technically seen that in Yellow Jackets when Misty

[00:58:27] destroys the what is it? The black box.

[00:58:29] Black box.

[00:58:30] Yeah. When she just.

[00:58:31] And I'm just wondering if you'll see anything else, because the whole point in Lord of the

[00:58:34] Flies was the two boys who are supposed to be watching the fire don't watch the fire.

[00:58:38] They go off to hunt. Fire goes out, the ship passes by. And I'm wondering if we're going

[00:58:43] to see anything similar to that in Yellow Jackets, like if they're going to hear a

[00:58:48] helicopter in the distance while all of them are like hunting or getting someone or something

[00:58:53] like that, that would be really interesting to see.

[00:58:56] Yeah, and whether they're like, oh, we don't need you anymore or something.

[00:59:01] Well, and they've also at this point, I feel like they've totally given up on trying to

[00:59:06] trek out of the wilderness too.

[00:59:08] Yeah. Yeah, it seems like it.

[00:59:11] Well, and you can't blame them. I mean, it's winter.

[00:59:14] But we know they go through a whole spring in the wilderness, so it seems like they had

[00:59:19] the opportunity, but I guess we're going to find out in season three.

[00:59:23] Yeah, and I would have thought that they would have tried a little bit harder during the

[00:59:26] summer as well, but I guess it makes sense since they just assumed that they would be

[00:59:30] getting rescued and then after a certain point, they were just mostly focused on survival.

[00:59:35] Well, and especially now they don't have the cabin.

[00:59:38] So in Lord of the Flies, Ralph is preoccupied, well, rightly so, with having shelter and

[00:59:47] safety and building the huts and fire so they can get out, be rescued.

[00:59:52] And Jack doesn't care about any of that because I guess he's just having a great time

[00:59:57] being a wild hunter.

[00:59:58] But after a while, Ralph starts forgetting why were we making the fire again?

[01:00:04] And I wasn't sure what the point of that was that Piggy had to keep reminding him so

[01:00:09] he can get rescued.

[01:00:10] He was just forgetting too or...

[01:00:12] Well, I think Ralph was kind of getting caught up in the hunting because if you think about

[01:00:17] it like, you know, what makes us civilized people?

[01:00:20] Fire, you know, we could rub two sticks together and like shelter that we were able to settle

[01:00:24] down.

[01:00:25] And so when those two things aren't being met or when those two things are being overshadowed,

[01:00:32] you know, like there's fun in hunting.

[01:00:34] There's entertainment in hunting.

[01:00:35] There's a sense of belonging in hunting.

[01:00:37] And so once he starts getting preoccupied with the hunting and the social stuff and

[01:00:43] Jack turning on him, it's almost like the fire is secondary because he's shifting from

[01:00:48] I want to get rescued to I'm just trying to avoid all of us going into war with each other.

[01:00:53] Mm hmm.

[01:00:54] Yeah, because I think once he the pig came in, he got to throw a spear at it and he'd

[01:01:01] never hunted before.

[01:01:02] He was like, oh, wow, this is actually pretty great.

[01:01:05] And you do see like he does there is like a tenuous relationship between Jack and Ralph,

[01:01:10] even like right before Simon's death when they go up the mountain together to like investigate

[01:01:16] the beast rumors and you can tell that they kind of don't want to go with each other.

[01:01:19] But then they do go with each other to like help each other out.

[01:01:22] And then, you know, once once Simon's gone, that's it.

[01:01:25] And there's there's no coming back.

[01:01:27] And I think that's like kind of where we are with Harvey and Coach Ben.

[01:01:31] Like once hot once they made that decision with Harvey, Coach Ben was never going to

[01:01:35] join with the rest of them like that was he was never going to sit there.

[01:01:40] I mean, he he tried to kill them all.

[01:01:46] I mean, no, no, he did.

[01:01:49] Well, I have theories about Coach Ben, but that's and I actually I loved that part.

[01:01:56] Like I loved that the guy that everybody underestimated and we thought was going to be

[01:02:01] gone or first comic release.

[01:02:04] Yeah, yeah.

[01:02:06] Well, because he was the only adult sort of adult.

[01:02:08] And so you thought he would they would eat him.

[01:02:12] So that was one of my points was about Ben.

[01:02:14] So I feel like he's the only adult when they crash on the island and he pretty halfheartedly

[01:02:22] asserts his adult authority over the rest of the kids.

[01:02:26] But as time goes on, his authority is eroded because nothing happens when they don't listen

[01:02:34] to him.

[01:02:36] And also he's he's not really comfortable in his authority.

[01:02:40] Really comfortable in his authority.

[01:02:44] And missing a leg didn't help.

[01:02:46] Yeah, yeah.

[01:02:47] He's been through this big trauma and was like half suicidal for much of it.

[01:02:53] But eventually they just don't recognize him as an authority at all.

[01:02:57] And I think he he actually sees that he might be in danger.

[01:03:01] And that was my would say, right.

[01:03:04] And that's why society there's no consequence.

[01:03:07] Right.

[01:03:08] And that reminded me of Ralph and Piggy.

[01:03:11] Like they had such a firm belief that because Ralph got voted in as chief on the first day

[01:03:20] that that was it.

[01:03:22] People had to listen to him.

[01:03:23] And they also had this really concrete idea that whoever held the conch shell, you know,

[01:03:32] had the right to speak.

[01:03:34] And they believed in that so much when everything around them was falling apart.

[01:03:40] And it seems like obvious when at the end, when Piggy's killed that they miss, you know,

[01:03:46] they shouldn't have went there.

[01:03:49] They should have seen what was in front of them, but they weren't.

[01:03:52] They were still holding on to those, you know, civilization beliefs that they had.

[01:03:58] I mean, to me, that's the whole like it ego thing.

[01:04:01] And it's also sort of democracy versus fascism.

[01:04:05] You know, fascism is about respecting only strength and dominance.

[01:04:09] And even people want the ruler that they think is the strongest to be a fascist.

[01:04:14] And that's kind of how these kids were with Jack.

[01:04:18] They but the conch is represents giving everyone a voice, democracy, you know, and and and

[01:04:25] rules and the rule of law.

[01:04:27] And it's sad to see that the rule of law did not win out.

[01:04:32] And we're hoping that doesn't happen in the real world.

[01:04:36] That's the way I kind of saw it.

[01:04:39] Well, it does happen in the real world over and over and over.

[01:04:42] Yeah, I know.

[01:04:44] Did you read Lord of the Fives' fable?

[01:04:46] Yes.

[01:04:48] Yeah.

[01:04:51] Yeah.

[01:04:51] It's scary how much you think things have changed.

[01:04:57] It's actually it's actually reassuring and scary all at the same time.

[01:05:01] Like sometimes I think when you look at history, it's like, well, it's the same.

[01:05:09] It's the same.

[01:05:10] They were afraid of this back then, but we're okay now.

[01:05:14] So so you when you think that the world is dissolving into anarchy, you're like, no,

[01:05:20] it's kind of always been like this.

[01:05:22] But then that's also scary that we don't evolve.

[01:05:25] I mean, right.

[01:05:27] And also just because it hasn't doesn't mean it won't.

[01:05:30] Yeah.

[01:05:31] It could happen anywhere.

[01:05:33] Yeah.

[01:05:39] This is sort of a non sequitur, but you'd mentioned early on that they like one of the

[01:05:44] first thing they did is set the island on fire.

[01:05:46] They scar it and set it on fire.

[01:05:48] And it's like, what are you doing?

[01:05:50] You're going to burn down this whole place.

[01:05:51] And it seems so stupid.

[01:05:53] But then I think if you look at, like I said, civilization lets us leverage things to a

[01:05:59] greater scale.

[01:06:00] And that could be for good or bad.

[01:06:01] And what we're doing to the planet, you know, it's like could be a metaphor for global warming

[01:06:07] and everything.

[01:06:10] Yeah, rushing to light this fire.

[01:06:12] Everything was fine till the men landed.

[01:06:15] Oh, yeah.

[01:06:15] Well, I don't think William Golding was all that concerned about, like, you know, the

[01:06:19] literal environment and greenhouse gases and all of that.

[01:06:23] But destruction, self-destruction, ruin everything we touch.

[01:06:26] Yeah.

[01:06:27] And sometimes it's by accident.

[01:06:28] Sometimes, you know, the plane crashed.

[01:06:31] That was one person doing that to another person.

[01:06:33] Sometimes it's by accident.

[01:06:34] It's a bunch of kids lighting something on fire and it gets out of control.

[01:06:37] And then sometimes it's on purpose.

[01:06:39] But we ruin everything we touch is the lesson there.

[01:06:42] I mean, yeah.

[01:06:43] And I think bombs on cities.

[01:06:45] That's what I think maybe the point I wanted to get to with the whole Lord of the Flies

[01:06:49] thing, but didn't is that it's talked about as a metaphor of the savagery or evilness

[01:06:54] that's inherent in human, you know, human beings.

[01:06:58] And I don't totally identify with that.

[01:07:00] But when you think about it in terms of drives that I do get, which is being afraid of the

[01:07:06] unknown or wanting to consolidate some space for myself so that other people don't encroach

[01:07:14] on it.

[01:07:15] And that sometimes means I choose myself over somebody else, you know, or whatever those

[01:07:21] things are that you do out of fear or even just wanting to watch TV and be entertained.

[01:07:28] And that uses up energy like all these drives that we have that are selfish basically can

[01:07:33] have a negative impact on other people or the world around us.

[01:07:36] And I think that's could be.

[01:07:41] Kind of also what the beast is, you know, it's doesn't have to be

[01:07:45] savage.

[01:07:46] It can just be selfish to the point where it's destructive.

[01:07:51] Maybe I'm a star.

[01:07:52] Maybe that's a stretch.

[01:07:53] I don't know.

[01:07:54] I don't think so.

[01:07:57] I mean, I definitely think like the idea of inherent evil is something that a lot of people

[01:08:04] are like immediately.

[01:08:05] No, immediately.

[01:08:05] No, I'm not evil, but I don't think that's really the point.

[01:08:08] I think the point is that everyone has the capacity to be evil and like in Lord of the

[01:08:13] Flies is fable, the essay he wrote about why he wrote the book.

[01:08:16] He talks about his experience in World War Two and he says something like, you know, these

[01:08:21] atrocities weren't committed by like savages.

[01:08:24] They weren't committed by like, you know, cannibal tribes in the Amazon.

[01:08:28] They were committed by educated people to beings of their own kind.

[01:08:31] Yeah.

[01:08:32] And it's just the point that like we are all capable, maybe not as individuals, but as a

[01:08:37] society, as a species, we're capable of doing terrible things to each other on a scale that

[01:08:42] no other mammal does.

[01:08:44] Truly.

[01:08:45] Yeah.

[01:08:45] Like on any two sides of a war, pretty much any war, most wars.

[01:08:50] If you just stopped the war and went to somebody's house on either side, you could have a good

[01:08:55] time.

[01:08:56] But both of those people on both sides fucking hate the other one and want to kill them.

[01:09:01] And that's today happening right now.

[01:09:03] You know, look at the Middle East or it's just like regular people can under the right

[01:09:12] or wrong circumstances tap into these impulses of.

[01:09:16] Right.

[01:09:16] Destruction.

[01:09:17] We hate people we've never met.

[01:09:19] Yeah.

[01:09:20] And it's interesting that we've been told.

[01:09:26] And it's an interesting parallel in the book that because they're meant to be evacuated

[01:09:31] during World War Two, I believe.

[01:09:35] And so there's the, you know, the threat of atomic war going off in the civilized world.

[01:09:39] And then there's the threat of the civil war going off on the island.

[01:09:42] And that's really interesting as well.

[01:09:43] You don't see that in Yellow Jackets, but I think like just the concept of war in general.

[01:09:50] That's a pretty distinctly human creation.

[01:09:53] Yeah.

[01:09:53] And it's that irony of, oh, look like this is what happens when you take away civilization.

[01:09:59] These boys go savage.

[01:10:01] And meanwhile, the whole story takes place not by accident, I'm sure during a war where

[01:10:07] people are bombing each other.

[01:10:08] Yeah.

[01:10:08] During war on a perfect paradise island.

[01:10:12] Yeah.

[01:10:13] Where they have everything they really need and still we ruin it.

[01:10:16] Yeah.

[01:10:16] Yeah.

[01:10:17] And I mean, but on a bigger scale, fucking World War Two, you know, it's just people

[01:10:21] bombing each other and talking about how well, this is the civilized world.

[01:10:25] Okay.

[01:10:26] I mean, there's nothing civil about war.

[01:10:28] Truly, there's just not.

[01:10:31] So I'll talk about my next point.

[01:10:34] And this goes into this and it may be obvious, but the ending, the remaining boys are saved

[01:10:43] when their smoke attracts a passing Royal Navy, which is the British Navy ship.

[01:10:49] And a group of soldiers, navy men come onto the island.

[01:10:56] They're pretty shocked to find the state that the boys are in.

[01:11:02] And the officer first dismisses their state and says, and their appearance and their demeanor

[01:11:10] saying fun and games.

[01:11:12] And then he says, what have you been doing having a war or something?

[01:11:16] And it seems to slow slowly dawn on the soldiers that they weren't just playing games.

[01:11:24] And then he scolds them.

[01:11:26] And he says, I should have thought that a pack of British boys would have been able to

[01:11:31] put up a better show than that.

[01:11:34] And but he's a soldier.

[01:11:37] Yeah.

[01:11:37] And the men on the, you know, the soldiers on the beach are, you know, they have their

[01:11:43] warship behind them where they've probably been sinking submarines and whatever else

[01:11:48] they're doing.

[01:11:49] And they're intent on defeating their enemy guns strapped to their hips.

[01:11:54] And these are the boys.

[01:11:55] They're their boys.

[01:11:56] I mean, you know, all their.

[01:11:58] I learned about watching you, dad.

[01:12:00] Yeah.

[01:12:00] All their fathers are probably at war right now.

[01:12:02] And so why are they so surprised?

[01:12:06] You know, I have my students react to this.

[01:12:09] And one of my students said, if I was stranded on an island and my government found me and

[01:12:15] told me basically I'm disappointed in you, that would have been my 13th reason.

[01:12:19] And I thought that was funny.

[01:12:21] But it's like true.

[01:12:22] Like you see these boy, the whole island's on fire.

[01:12:25] No one's doing that on purpose.

[01:12:27] You see all these boys and he makes a reference to I think he says like fun and games like

[01:12:32] the Coral Island, which is a story by a guy named Ballantine, which is what Lord of the

[01:12:38] Flies was kind of loosely based off of.

[01:12:42] But like you see these this this whole spread of the beach in your first reaction is to like

[01:12:48] chastise them and like nothing else.

[01:12:51] Like not gratitude that we found these kids, not like bewilderment that we found them on

[01:12:56] this tropical island.

[01:12:57] Just like I'm disappointed in you.

[01:12:59] Yeah.

[01:13:00] When I just think it plays into the theme that Golding wanted to get across that it's

[01:13:06] hypocritical.

[01:13:08] And it's adults versus kids that with the same conflict.

[01:13:13] Right.

[01:13:13] You want a kid to act a certain way till he turns 18 and then you put a gun in his hand

[01:13:17] and tip him off to war.

[01:13:19] Yeah, I think probably this is kind of an assumption.

[01:13:25] But these days, I think kids are more disillusioned with government.

[01:13:29] But maybe back.

[01:13:30] I mean, you hear Jack say early on the English are the best at everything.

[01:13:34] So I feel like they're patriots, maybe.

[01:13:36] And so they might that might be a letdown to have this guy say that versus they seem

[01:13:44] to be school kids.

[01:13:46] So I would think that there was probably a military.

[01:13:50] That's the mentality that and in the middle of I mean, it doesn't seem like it's World

[01:13:54] War Two, but it kind of seems like it's World War Two.

[01:13:57] So like in the middle of that, I remember my dad grew up.

[01:14:01] He was just a little kid during World War Two.

[01:14:03] And he said, like.

[01:14:05] All his friends would, you know, get around and take their plastic guns and play war like

[01:14:11] that was the best fun ever.

[01:14:13] And that's what they did.

[01:14:15] And he even grew up as a teenager thinking that he had missed out on something really

[01:14:19] great, because by the time he became of age, the war was over.

[01:14:28] That's some propaganda.

[01:14:30] So Stephen King wrote the intro to the volume that I read.

[01:14:34] Did you guys have that?

[01:14:37] He said, I'm interested.

[01:14:40] He said he read adventure books as a kid, but he thought something was off that the

[01:14:44] kids weren't right.

[01:14:46] And he this book mobile would come around.

[01:14:51] He didn't have a library.

[01:14:53] And so he asked the woman who ran it if she could recommend any books about how kids really

[01:14:57] are.

[01:14:58] And so she gave him Lord of the Flies and said, don't tell anyone I gave you this because

[01:15:01] he was too young for it or something.

[01:15:03] And years later, he listened to the audio book and William Golding in the intro said

[01:15:10] one night he asked his wife, quote, wouldn't it be a good idea to write a story about some

[01:15:15] boys on an island showing how they would really behave being boys and not little saints

[01:15:19] as they usually are in children's books.

[01:15:22] And so he that's, I guess, how this came about, at least to the story.

[01:15:30] But I think in making a story of how boys really are, he made a story of how people

[01:15:34] really are.

[01:15:36] It's funny.

[01:15:38] I'm betting this book really influenced King because I can I can see that in his writing

[01:15:44] and things.

[01:15:46] There's very much of a Stephen King vibe to this book.

[01:15:49] Or the other way around since he came first.

[01:15:52] And I think that's part of like the universal appeal of the story and the universal appeal

[01:15:57] of Yellow Jackets is like, this is all real.

[01:16:00] This is how people could really act.

[01:16:01] People have really done this before.

[01:16:03] Like Yellow Jackets, people have joined cults before.

[01:16:06] People have killed and eaten people before.

[01:16:08] It's not a thing that's like common in our society.

[01:16:11] But like, these are all things that people are capable of and have done and will continue

[01:16:16] to do because that's what we are.

[01:16:18] I also think we have a naive fantasy of getting away from the real world.

[01:16:26] You know, like we think go somewhere where we don't have to pay bills and we don't have

[01:16:30] to work and we don't have to worry about any of that stuff.

[01:16:32] I don't think that's reality, but I do think it's like that's why we're so attracted to

[01:16:38] shows like Lost and Yellow Jackets and shows that are just other worldly.

[01:16:45] Escapism.

[01:16:46] Yeah.

[01:16:48] It's a better form of escapism.

[01:16:50] Yeah.

[01:16:50] Because you're seeing people deal with problems that you're never going to have to deal with.

[01:16:54] We're never going to have to build huts on the beach.

[01:16:58] We'll see.

[01:16:59] I have a question for you, Cassie.

[01:17:02] I know this is a subscribed part of the curriculum that you teach for the county you work at.

[01:17:11] Do you think it should continue to be taught?

[01:17:15] Yes.

[01:17:17] I was just wondering if you were sick of it or if you thought that

[01:17:22] it didn't apply to modern day anymore.

[01:17:27] No, I think it's...

[01:17:28] I mean, there are books I would get rid of in our curriculum.

[01:17:31] Lord of the Flies isn't one of them.

[01:17:34] Lord of the Flies has also been pretty controversial.

[01:17:37] It's one of those books that we consider a classic, but it's also been challenged

[01:17:41] in a lot of places, including places in the US.

[01:17:45] In general, I feel like books that are challenged should be kept.

[01:17:49] I mean, I hadn't read it, like we said, since I was a teenager and I found it so relevant.

[01:17:56] Everything we've talked about sort of plays into that.

[01:18:00] That's cool.

[01:18:03] I do wish they would make a graphic novel of it, but that's for...

[01:18:07] Or a decent movie, because I don't think there's been a great movie.

[01:18:10] The 90s movie is awesome.

[01:18:11] There's just a major plot point that's different.

[01:18:14] The 90s version is so good, though.

[01:18:16] The acting is great.

[01:18:17] The 90s version also, like, I think it's supposed to take place closer to

[01:18:23] the start of the Vietnam War, maybe?

[01:18:25] And it's American.

[01:18:27] Yeah, they're military school boys.

[01:18:28] Of course we Americanize it.

[01:18:30] But yeah, the 90s version is good.

[01:18:31] The 60s version of the film is all in black and white, and that's very close to the original

[01:18:37] plot, but it's got some stuff to be desired.

[01:18:41] I mean, I don't...

[01:18:42] Yeah, I know a lot of people don't put much stock in it, but I was just curious.

[01:18:45] So I looked on Rotten Tomatoes and the 60s version has a 91 and the 90s version has a 57.

[01:18:52] So the critics think it's the other way around.

[01:18:54] That's so interesting.

[01:18:56] But I haven't seen either one.

[01:18:57] I think people are more forgiving of classics.

[01:18:59] Yeah.

[01:19:00] Yeah.

[01:19:00] Older movies.

[01:19:02] Yeah.

[01:19:02] I'm curious to watch both, actually.

[01:19:05] Oh, yeah.

[01:19:05] I think I've seen both, but it's been a long time.

[01:19:09] We can't show both at work because the 90s one is rated R, mostly for language.

[01:19:16] Really?

[01:19:16] I have them...

[01:19:17] Yeah, so we watch most of the 60s one and then I have them watch clips of the 90s one.

[01:19:22] And they usually like the 90s one better, partially because it's not in black and white,

[01:19:26] but also partially because I think the characters in the 90s version are a little bit more fleshed

[01:19:31] out.

[01:19:33] Baltazar Getty.

[01:19:35] I only have notes left.

[01:19:39] I got one more thing.

[01:19:42] Do you think this is the way boys would really behave in similar circumstances?

[01:19:50] Yes.

[01:19:52] And...

[01:19:52] I don't think so.

[01:19:54] So the reason when I was looking for articles for this episode, I found this nice tidbit.

[01:20:02] In 1965, a group of six teenage boys ran away from their boarding school in Tonga, which is

[01:20:10] an island in Polynesia.

[01:20:12] And they stole a boat.

[01:20:14] They wanted...

[01:20:15] I guess they didn't want to be in their boarding school anymore.

[01:20:18] They stole a boat.

[01:20:20] They ended up in a storm.

[01:20:22] Their anchor got lost.

[01:20:23] And so they ended up drifting like 300 miles and got shipwrecked on this ship, on this

[01:20:28] island.

[01:20:29] I think they were there for like 15 months or 18 months.

[01:20:33] And they survived on feral chickens, bananas.

[01:20:40] They captured rainwater in hollowed out tree trunks.

[01:20:44] They drank blood from seabirds when they couldn't get enough water.

[01:20:49] They divided up the labor, teaming up in pairs to work garden, kitchen and guard duty.

[01:20:55] One of the boys went on to become an engineer.

[01:20:58] They started fire with sticks, which they kept burning continuously for more than a

[01:21:04] year.

[01:21:05] And they sang and they played guitar and they composed five songs during their exile.

[01:21:13] And they killed five of themselves.

[01:21:14] Yes.

[01:21:14] And then they killed ten.

[01:21:15] On stone alternatives.

[01:21:19] And they attempted to escape on a raft, but that didn't work out.

[01:21:24] And then eventually they were rescued.

[01:21:29] So I thought that was interesting.

[01:21:30] They were a little older, I would say.

[01:21:32] They were like probably 15, 16.

[01:21:35] They all knew each other?

[01:21:37] Yes.

[01:21:37] Yeah, I think that might be a difference too.

[01:21:38] They were from a school.

[01:21:41] I think that might be a difference too because when you already have that familiar dynamic,

[01:21:46] it's a lot easier to make it last longer.

[01:21:48] Which is why I think because Lord of the Flies, the whole novel is supposed to only

[01:21:53] span about maybe three months.

[01:21:56] And we know that Yellow Jackets, they're in there for what?

[01:21:58] 19 months in the wilderness?

[01:22:00] Something like that.

[01:22:00] Yeah.

[01:22:02] And I think part of that is because they had that existing dynamic first.

[01:22:06] Yep.

[01:22:08] I have a seven-year-old and a 12-year-old and I was just trying to, I kept thinking about

[01:22:13] them as I was reading this and wondering how they might act.

[01:22:16] I was keyed in on the little ones because I felt so bad for them that they didn't have

[01:22:20] any parental figures and nobody seemed to give a shit about them when they were crying.

[01:22:24] And I could just imagine these little six-year-olds crying for their mothers.

[01:22:26] They were like first grade, that's terrible.

[01:22:28] Yeah, it's so sad.

[01:22:29] Yeah, I read shows.

[01:22:30] The one kid with the birthmark and he just disappears.

[01:22:36] I know, I had to even ask Cassie about that because I was like, I kept, even though I'd

[01:22:42] read it before, I kept expecting them to find him and that was the beastie.

[01:22:51] I kept thinking that would come back, but no, he's just gone.

[01:22:53] He probably fell off a cliff or something.

[01:22:55] Yeah.

[01:22:56] And just little things like one kid didn't know, he was too young to know to stay out

[01:23:01] of the sun and of course no one tells him.

[01:23:03] The little details like that are so good.

[01:23:05] The little kid who keeps, what's his name?

[01:23:08] Percival who keeps repeating his name and his address and then forgets his telephone

[01:23:13] number.

[01:23:14] And I talked about that with my students because they don't understand why he's doing

[01:23:19] that.

[01:23:20] And I'm like, don't you have to memorize your phone number and everything?

[01:23:24] And students today, I guess, don't really do that anymore.

[01:23:28] Because they have a mobile phone.

[01:23:29] Home address though.

[01:23:31] Little kids have to memorize their address.

[01:23:33] But not a home phone number.

[01:23:34] And also so many students don't know their home address, which is a whole other thing.

[01:23:39] Oh my God.

[01:23:39] I could've...

[01:23:40] Anyway.

[01:23:41] Wow.

[01:23:41] Yeah.

[01:23:43] But then he forgets his name at the end, which I thought was...

[01:23:47] Well, and none of them have names at the end, truly.

[01:23:50] I think at the very last page from that point, none of them really have names in the last

[01:23:57] chapter.

[01:23:58] They're the savages.

[01:23:59] They're the chief.

[01:24:00] They're the naval officer.

[01:24:01] It's a whole different reality.

[01:24:05] All right.

[01:24:06] Notes?

[01:24:08] Do you have any random notes, Cassie?

[01:24:11] Traps.

[01:24:13] Setting traps.

[01:24:15] I don't remember traps.

[01:24:18] Just the comparison setting traps between...

[01:24:22] The rock trap is like we see foreshadowing of that right in the very beginning in chapter

[01:24:27] one when they're first exploring the island and they push the boulders over the cliff

[01:24:31] to just watch it break because they're little boys and that's what you do.

[01:24:35] In episode one of Yellow Jackets, we see the pit trap.

[01:24:43] I think that's all I got.

[01:24:45] I can't read part of my notes.

[01:24:48] Okay.

[01:24:48] I had a few.

[01:24:52] This is just sort of random, but I liked when Ralph figured out how to blow the conch like

[01:24:57] a horn.

[01:24:58] I almost could hear it.

[01:25:00] Oh, yeah.

[01:25:01] Who tells him how to do that?

[01:25:04] Piggy.

[01:25:05] Yeah.

[01:25:05] Yeah.

[01:25:06] Piggy's the one who recognizes what it is.

[01:25:09] And says to blow it to attract others.

[01:25:12] Yep.

[01:25:12] And that's part of the reason why Ralph was elected for chief, partially because of how

[01:25:16] he looked and acted, but also because he had the thing that brought them all together.

[01:25:22] Even though the whole time it's really not a symbol for Ralph, it's a symbol for Piggy

[01:25:25] because when the conch dies, so does he.

[01:25:28] Yeah.

[01:25:30] Yeah.

[01:25:30] And I really think it is because like I said, I think it's a symbol of democracy where everyone

[01:25:35] has a voice, even the less advantaged or the weaker and they both died together.

[01:25:42] Poor Piggy.

[01:25:43] Yeah.

[01:25:44] I wondered if them eating, hunting and eating boar on Lost was a tribute to this show.

[01:25:51] I'm sure they had Lord of the Flies in mind when they were making Lost too.

[01:25:54] I feel like it has to be a reference to Lord of the Flies, specifically because they keep

[01:25:59] saying boar on the show, right?

[01:26:01] Right.

[01:26:01] And I also wondered if Misty's character was drawn from Piggy.

[01:26:09] It seems like it almost had to be with the glasses because they focus on Misty's glasses

[01:26:15] a lot in the beginning.

[01:26:17] She's always taking them on and off.

[01:26:19] That's true, yeah.

[01:26:20] And by the end, isn't one of her glasses lens broken?

[01:26:24] In that clip that we...

[01:26:25] I don't know.

[01:26:27] The like flashback of the, what did you call it?

[01:26:29] The cannibal circle?

[01:26:31] Cannibal council.

[01:26:32] The cannibal council.

[01:26:34] I'm pretty sure one of her glass lenses is broken and that's also a nod.

[01:26:38] Like Piggy, one of Piggy's glasses lenses is broken because Jack punches him and they

[01:26:42] fall and break.

[01:26:44] It's got to be a nod.

[01:26:46] I had to suspend my disbelief that they don't at least try other ways to make a fire.

[01:26:52] They kind of talk about it, but they don't try it.

[01:26:55] You know, making a string with a bow and twisting a stick or something like that.

[01:26:59] I kind of believe that just because they're kids and they're not like adults where they're

[01:27:04] finding backups.

[01:27:04] Like if I found a way to make it work, I'm going to get it worked.

[01:27:07] But when they don't have Piggy's glasses anymore.

[01:27:09] Oh yeah.

[01:27:10] At that point, maybe.

[01:27:11] Have you ever made a fire with sticks?

[01:27:15] I've not successfully done it.

[01:27:16] It's really hard.

[01:27:17] It takes a long time.

[01:27:18] We tried in Girl Scouts.

[01:27:19] No, I know.

[01:27:21] And we gave up and used flint.

[01:27:24] Try.

[01:27:24] We did at least go get some flint and we used that, but we tried for a long time.

[01:27:30] It was important to the plot that Piggy have the means of fire, you know, and that they

[01:27:37] would come in and forcefully take it for from him instead of just asking, which as Ralph

[01:27:41] said, they would have gladly shared.

[01:27:45] And then last back in grad school, I wrote a short story called Ginger's Ginger Grant's

[01:27:52] confession that was about the truth behind Gilligan's Island.

[01:27:56] It was kind of inspired by Lord of the Flies.

[01:27:59] And is it okay if I read a couple paragraphs from it?

[01:28:03] Yeah, I might need the original.

[01:28:06] It was the assignment was a funny fable.

[01:28:09] And so this is what I won't read the whole thing, but just the first page or two.

[01:28:12] We all wanted to look like decent human beings, but it was important to me, especially to

[01:28:16] paint a respectable picture of myself to let everyone know that I was no savage.

[01:28:19] I was still pure.

[01:28:21] I guess that must have been when I was thinking, when I told the press about the dresses.

[01:28:26] It seems silly now, but I actually said that sometimes crates would wash up on the shore

[01:28:29] full of gowns and glamorous jewelry.

[01:28:31] And I would put the things on and we'd stage mock soirees.

[01:28:35] A girl must keep up her image.

[01:28:37] Of course, we told everyone we'd been like a family for all those years.

[01:28:41] We told them that we built huts out of bamboo and grass and papaya leaves sat in a circle

[01:28:45] every night eating mahi-mahi and coconut cream pie together, strengthening our silent

[01:28:50] oath that we would never give up, never lose ourselves in despair like those boys from

[01:28:53] Lord of the Flies did.

[01:28:55] For all these years, we've been back home.

[01:28:57] We always kept up the front that we had worked together on that island.

[01:29:00] Sure, we made up goofy stories of Gilligan bungling up the work sometimes for credibility,

[01:29:05] I suppose.

[01:29:06] Everything can't be perfect, but we wanted people to think that we had never lost hope.

[01:29:10] We even told them we built stationary bicycles out of tree bark to keep in shape for the

[01:29:14] big rescue.

[01:29:15] Doesn't that sound hopeful and civilized?

[01:29:18] 15 years have passed since the rescue.

[01:29:20] The Howser Long dead, uh, left their entire estate to Thurston the fourth.

[01:29:25] From what I hear, which is perfectly expectable, I suppose.

[01:29:28] Jonas Grumby had to stop running his tours a few years ago, back problems, the poor big

[01:29:33] skipper.

[01:29:34] He's all alone somewhere.

[01:29:36] Roy, beloved professor Roy passed on last year.

[01:29:39] I'd seen him a few times since the rescue.

[01:29:41] I'd always seen him when he lectured at UCLA or USC and we at least have drinks afterwards,

[01:29:46] but it wasn't the same.

[01:29:47] His poor tender heart is what gave out on him.

[01:29:50] And Marianne Summers.

[01:29:51] I know some of you must wonder about Marianne.

[01:29:53] I may as well tell you the truth.

[01:29:55] I can't even bring myself to wretch up one kind sentence about that little whore and

[01:29:58] her sour pies.

[01:30:00] The mere sight of coconut triggers my gag reflex, and that's that on Marianne.

[01:30:04] Finally, Willie Gilligan.

[01:30:06] Well, he's the reason for this letter, I suppose.

[01:30:08] I can't be quiet.

[01:30:09] No, I don't want to be quiet about it anymore.

[01:30:11] You may feel that, you know, Gilligan, the best out of the seven of us, a good-hearted

[01:30:15] energetic pink cheek bumbling little guy with his tomato red t-shirt.

[01:30:19] His floppy white sailor's cap and his penchant for tripping over his own feet.

[01:30:22] My little poops, he can Gilligan's all of what you have heard of every little bit.

[01:30:27] It's all lies a strategy.

[01:30:29] Now let me tell you about the real Gilligan.

[01:30:33] So you basically wrote part of Yellow Jackets?

[01:30:37] Yeah.

[01:30:37] Because isn't that the whole point is that they put out this image of them all being

[01:30:41] survivors and then Gilligan ends up being a savage.

[01:30:46] Cassie, have you ever seen an episode of Gilligan's Island?

[01:30:49] Yes.

[01:30:50] Okay, I'm just checking.

[01:30:53] I'm a millennial.

[01:30:56] That was probably the best thing I ever wrote, which is why I did not become a writer.

[01:31:00] That was good.

[01:31:01] Oh, thanks.

[01:31:02] I like alternative realities or alternative ending stories.

[01:31:07] Okay, we're back and I asked for feedback on the Yellow Jackets on Showtime discussion

[01:31:41] group, which is a Facebook group and got a few responses.

[01:31:45] So I'll go ahead and read the first one.

[01:31:47] It's from LJ Walker.

[01:31:49] He said, I have thoughts.

[01:31:51] I never see people discuss how much of it is left over from the stage when Yellow Jackets

[01:31:57] was a gender swapped, but otherwise straight, a gender-swapped show.

[01:32:02] But otherwise straight adaption.

[01:32:06] Of course, that doesn't mean they don't discuss it.

[01:32:08] I just haven't seen it.

[01:32:10] That's one of the big reasons I'm team no supernatural because in Lord of the Flies,

[01:32:15] the beast is unequivocally not real.

[01:32:18] Golding firmly believes the beast is in us, although I think Yellow Jackets' stance is

[01:32:24] best summed up by adult Lottie saying, is there a difference?

[01:32:27] That's great.

[01:32:28] I love that.

[01:32:29] Or whatever her exact words were to that effect.

[01:32:32] Does it matter?

[01:32:33] Something like that.

[01:32:34] In other words, the wilderness is as real as we make it.

[01:32:38] Also, Jackie was such a huge misdirect based on Lord of the Flies because you'd naturally

[01:32:44] assume she's Jack being named that and starting out as the leader.

[01:32:49] But Yellow Jackets is extremely interested in the shifting dynamics of power and how

[01:32:54] the slightest change in context changes who has influence.

[01:32:59] Knocking Jackie off her throne and later killing her is a way of saying, this ain't Lord of

[01:33:04] the Flies, y'all.

[01:33:06] We're told explicitly by the coach that Jackie has influence, but long before Lottie tells

[01:33:11] her you don't matter anymore, we see it.

[01:33:14] Her losing her influence due to a new context.

[01:33:17] Even small changes in context like Ty's doomed expedition give us a new leader.

[01:33:23] In that case, Ty, my roommate who is so much smarter than me called this theme very early

[01:33:29] on like episode three.

[01:33:30] So by the time we go to Lottie crowning Nat, I was in awe of my roommate's genius perception.

[01:33:38] That is so good.

[01:33:39] And I don't know if LJ is a listener of ours usually, but we should post this episode on

[01:33:45] that thread just to maybe draw him or her in because I want to get more feedback like

[01:33:49] that.

[01:33:50] It's so great.

[01:33:50] Yeah, that's great.

[01:33:51] I think about that adult Lottie conversation all the time.

[01:33:55] And I think it's either Nat or Shauna that's like, all that shit in the woods was just

[01:34:00] us.

[01:34:01] Yeah.

[01:34:05] All right.

[01:34:05] Also from the Showtime discussion group on Facebook, Kate Marie had to say, the book

[01:34:10] is very symbolic and allegorical.

[01:34:13] The jungle slash wilderness at odds with the civilization the boys come from when their

[01:34:17] plane is shot down.

[01:34:22] I think that's incomplete.

[01:34:25] Is that the whole comment?

[01:34:26] Yep.

[01:34:27] Oh, I'm trying to understand what it means.

[01:34:33] Symbolic, the jungle wilderness at odd with the civilization.

[01:34:36] I think that's kind of going on to like the setting, like you're where no one else is

[01:34:43] civilization doesn't exist where you are.

[01:34:45] So any civilization in the middle of the wilderness in the middle of the jungle is stuff that

[01:34:50] humans bring with them maybe.

[01:34:52] Okay.

[01:34:54] All right.

[01:34:55] Nigel Robles says, the one thing I'll say is that more than anything else, the book was

[01:35:00] about how fucked up the British boarding school system was.

[01:35:03] Not a metaphor about humanity.

[01:35:06] That's true.

[01:35:08] I don't know anything about it.

[01:35:09] Oh, that's true.

[01:35:10] I have my students research British prep schools during that time period.

[01:35:14] It's really bad.

[01:35:16] Oh, I'm sure.

[01:35:17] They were big fans of corporal punishment.

[01:35:20] Hazing was like a huge deal.

[01:35:21] That's like, we see in the book, the little ones are completely ignored and that's better

[01:35:26] treatment than they would have gotten at the prep schools because in the prep schools,

[01:35:30] they're hazed and tormented basically.

[01:35:34] Yeah.

[01:35:34] On the island, they're just kind of left to their own devices.

[01:35:37] And I think that also goes back into the idea of savagery, especially with those boys, because

[01:35:43] every second of their day was timed and scheduled and they didn't have choices.

[01:35:49] It wasn't like school now where you get to choose electives and you can take this class

[01:35:52] or that class.

[01:35:53] It was like everyone had lunch at this time.

[01:35:55] Everyone had military prep at this time.

[01:35:58] And I feel like that's kind of a universal experience of the most controlled of us are

[01:36:05] the ones who are going to lose it the fastest when we're in an environment where we don't

[01:36:09] have constraints.

[01:36:12] It was weird how the book started off with just Ralph and he's calm and he's like,

[01:36:18] yeah, this place is cool.

[01:36:19] This is mine now.

[01:36:21] But what I got from it was that they're excited to finally have some freedom and some power.

[01:36:26] And you see that in the very beginning when they're exploring the island and they come

[01:36:30] back and they're like, this is a good island.

[01:36:34] They're excited this is a paradise and they can at least recognize that.

[01:36:37] It's like an adventure for them.

[01:36:39] Yeah.

[01:36:40] Versus in Yellow Jackets, that's not so much the case.

[01:36:44] But in the book, it's like it almost could have been a vacation.

[01:36:49] Yeah.

[01:36:50] Because they didn't show the plane crash.

[01:36:52] So you don't get this sense of that trauma.

[01:36:54] But in Yellow Jackets, they're like, we got to chop the coach's leg off.

[01:36:57] You know?

[01:37:00] I think that's a really interesting thing that the book does.

[01:37:04] And so the book was actually rejected over 20 times by different publishers before he

[01:37:09] finally got it published, which is also something that my students

[01:37:13] research.

[01:37:14] And part of the reason is because the opening of the book used to be different.

[01:37:20] Supposedly, the original opening of the book showed part of the plane crash and it wasn't

[01:37:25] super graphic, but people just didn't like it.

[01:37:28] People didn't like reading it before they're actually in the jungle walking around.

[01:37:33] Versus I think that's one of my favorite parts of the series is watching that initial crash

[01:37:38] and how they all react in the moment.

[01:37:41] And seeing Laura Lee praying and Shauna realizes like, oh my God, this is actually happening.

[01:37:47] I think that's a really...

[01:37:49] That kind of scene in anything contemporary, that's what people want to watch.

[01:37:54] The big crash scenes.

[01:37:55] Same with Lost.

[01:37:57] Same with anything.

[01:37:58] Same with Five.

[01:37:59] Same with...

[01:38:01] We like that big action scene.

[01:38:02] Our sensibilities have changed.

[01:38:05] Yeah, but it's interesting that it's just like left out because people didn't like it as much.

[01:38:09] Yeah.

[01:38:11] I hadn't even thought to look up other books of his, but I did now and he's got like 12

[01:38:19] books and they...

[01:38:20] Most of them sound really fascinating.

[01:38:22] One called The Inheritance, which is about...

[01:38:25] Well, I feel like I can't give away what it's about, but it's really interesting, the concept

[01:38:30] of it.

[01:38:31] And there's more themes of darkness in human hearts, but different perspectives and angles

[01:38:37] on it of perception and sanity.

[01:38:38] He seems like he was an interesting guy.

[01:38:40] Yeah, I want to read...

[01:38:41] He was raised by academics.

[01:38:42] I probably won't read since I haven't read a book in 10 years before this, but...

[01:38:47] He's definitely a philosopher as far as...

[01:38:52] He goes into the philosophical lens of literacy and looking at why people do the things that

[01:39:00] they do.

[01:39:00] Yeah.

[01:39:01] And I think probably filtered through the trauma of his World War II experience.

[01:39:05] Oh, for sure.

[01:39:05] So it's pessimistic or a bit cynical.

[01:39:08] Well, he also taught young boys too and not to be...

[01:39:12] Speaking of trauma, is that what you mean?

[01:39:14] Yeah, not to be like...

[01:39:15] But teaching young boys, especially during that time period where teachers had, I feel

[01:39:21] like a lot more reign back then and corporal punishment was a thing, that was probably

[01:39:25] traumatizing in its own way, especially teaching children in a time period where war

[01:39:31] was on the horizon.

[01:39:34] Because it's not fun doing that.

[01:39:35] Yeah, I mean, if you look at World War I and World War II, that all happened pretty...

[01:39:43] In that dense time period.

[01:39:46] So we can't imagine what that would be like.

[01:39:49] It would be completely different.

[01:39:52] All right.

[01:39:53] I have a couple articles.

[01:39:55] Cassie, you wanna read the first excerpt from the article?

[01:40:00] Taken from a PopSugar article entitled, The Unsettling True Story That May Have Inspired

[01:40:05] Yellow Jackets.

[01:40:07] Show creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson have noted that Yellow Jackets is influenced

[01:40:12] by William Golding's 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies, which is about a group of boys

[01:40:17] stranded on an island.

[01:40:18] Lyle elaborated this on the Hollywood Reporter's TV's Top 5 podcast in November 2021, saying

[01:40:25] Lord of the Flies is about how socialization falls away and how society is a facade.

[01:40:30] We thought who is more socialized than women?

[01:40:32] As girls, you learn early on how to make people like you and what the social hierarchies are.

[01:40:37] Furthermore, Lyle highlighted how the series explores gender roles and performance in even

[01:40:42] the most extreme of situations, noting, it's a more interesting way of having things fall

[01:40:46] away.

[01:40:47] The mask is even thicker.

[01:40:48] It's a more layered amount of preconceived notions of how to behave and act.

[01:40:53] I like that.

[01:40:55] All right, Jason, you wanna take the next one?

[01:40:58] Sure.

[01:40:58] From an expert, Fresh Air with Melanie Linsky.

[01:41:03] I've heard the show's creators tell the story at a panel where they were reading the comments

[01:41:07] on Deadline or something and people were like, oh, you can never do an all female Lord of

[01:41:11] the Flies because what are they gonna do?

[01:41:13] Compromise to death?

[01:41:15] Like all these things about women, about women not being vicious, women not being violent

[01:41:19] and not being willing to do what it takes to survive.

[01:41:22] And Ashley Lyle, who's one of the show creators was like, these people have never met a teenage

[01:41:27] girl.

[01:41:27] And then they got inspired to tell this particular story.

[01:41:30] Incredibly accurate.

[01:41:33] Melanie Linsky is in, is it the Tattooist of Auschwitz that I heard was really good?

[01:41:40] I haven't, I haven't seen it.

[01:41:41] Have you heard about that, Cassie?

[01:41:43] I don't know if she's in it.

[01:41:44] I would have watched it before I really knew who she was, but I've seen it.

[01:41:47] It's a great movie.

[01:41:48] It's based on a true story and a book.

[01:41:50] Yeah, that's on my to-do list.

[01:41:53] I love that quote by Melanie Linsky.

[01:41:56] Have you ever met, in school when there are fights, if it's two boys, maybe if it's two

[01:42:03] girls fighting, it's like everyone needs to stay 10 feet away.

[01:42:05] Oh yeah.

[01:42:07] Truly, truly, that's how it's handled.

[01:42:08] I've seen that.

[01:42:09] Girl fights are not, no.

[01:42:11] Why do you think that is?

[01:42:14] I think because girls are taught, I mean, I don't know.

[01:42:17] I could go on and on, but I think it's because girls are taught maybe not even explicitly

[01:42:22] to internalize their stuff.

[01:42:24] So when they do have an opportunity to externalize their anger and their frustration, they're

[01:42:29] just going for it.

[01:42:30] Explosive.

[01:42:31] I've literally watched two boys get in fights and they'll throw a couple of punches and

[01:42:35] then they'll just be like, all right, whatever.

[01:42:36] And they'll walk away and it'll be done.

[01:42:38] Girls, I've literally seen girls rip shirts off, rip hair out, blood on the floor.

[01:42:44] Rage.

[01:42:45] You know, being punched in the head because they're trying to get to each other.

[01:42:49] I think it's just how they're taught to express or handle that.

[01:42:56] But I don't know.

[01:42:57] I'm jaded.

[01:42:57] Yeah.

[01:42:58] It's like repression and then explosion when it comes out, right?

[01:43:02] Explosive.

[01:43:03] And I also think it takes a lot more, in my opinion, it takes a lot more to

[01:43:07] for girls to get into a fight than boys.

[01:43:11] Yeah.

[01:43:12] Yeah.

[01:43:13] I think that makes a lot of sense.

[01:43:14] A physical fight at least.

[01:43:15] Yeah.

[01:43:15] I think girls tend to do the social thing and, you know, tend to isolate each other and like

[01:43:21] mock each other and stuff like that.

[01:43:22] And I think that comes, you know, whether we're taught that explicitly or not, I think

[01:43:27] it just comes more naturally.

[01:43:28] And so when you get to the point of physical violence, like there's a lot behind that.

[01:43:32] Do you think there's anything to me?

[01:43:34] And I don't know, I'm asking if social hierarchies are maybe more important to like a

[01:43:40] girl's sense of identity.

[01:43:41] So if it gets disrupted, it's a bigger deal.

[01:43:46] I could see that.

[01:43:48] Yeah.

[01:43:50] I also think like not even like social hierarchy necessarily, but just like pride and like

[01:43:59] ego and like how that factors in for each person.

[01:44:03] Because very rarely these days are you seeing like groups fighting each other or like

[01:44:09] fights over like group drama.

[01:44:10] It's always like someone was mean mugging me, someone did this, someone said this, someone

[01:44:15] posted this.

[01:44:18] There's a lot of fights.

[01:44:20] It's real fun.

[01:44:22] I bet.

[01:44:24] All right.

[01:44:24] I have a news article.

[01:44:27] It's not a whole lot, but I was looking for any season three news about Yellowjackets.

[01:44:34] On the IMDB page, it quotes a joeblow.com article from January 2024.

[01:44:40] And it says while fans of the Showtime series Yellowjackets patiently wait to see the bonus

[01:44:46] episode that's going to air sometime between the second and third seasons, showrunners

[01:44:51] Lyle and Nickerson and Jonathan Lisko have let it be known that season three, which was

[01:44:56] of course greatly delayed by the strikes that hit the entertainment industry last year,

[01:45:02] is finally going to start filming in May, aiming for an early 2025 premiere.

[01:45:08] So hopefully this month they'll start filming.

[01:45:10] Could be filming right now.

[01:45:11] Yep.

[01:45:12] I know they started writing in September and I wonder if they will just fold that supposed

[01:45:18] bonus episode into the next season at this point.

[01:45:21] But who knows?

[01:45:23] They did say it was supposed to come out in 2020.

[01:45:24] I feel like if they're going to give it to us, they have to give it to us.

[01:45:26] I feel like if they've said it's a bonus, that's what they're going to have to treat

[01:45:29] it as.

[01:45:30] I feel like it's very close to the premiere.

[01:45:36] I feel like it's going to be a history too, like the origin of Cabin Daddy or something.

[01:45:41] Yeah.

[01:45:42] Isn't that what people think?

[01:45:43] Yeah.

[01:45:44] I had a couple news items.

[01:45:48] The Wrap talked with Ashley Lyle, the co-showrunner, and she teased just a little bit about what's

[01:45:56] to come.

[01:45:56] This isn't really spoilery that much, just maybe a tad tiny bit, but I don't think anybody

[01:46:01] would mind hearing that.

[01:46:02] She said, I will say we see season three as a little bit of a return to season one in

[01:46:07] terms of the vibe.

[01:46:09] And she said, all I will say is that the girls have been out there for a while and they're

[01:46:13] thriving and everything actually is supernatural.

[01:46:18] No, I'm just kidding.

[01:46:21] So I think that means like season, because I feel like season one, they were a lot more

[01:46:25] organized.

[01:46:28] Maybe like spring comes and things calm down and they have a food source, so they're not

[01:46:33] eating each other as much.

[01:46:35] And they're also like, they're drifting now.

[01:46:37] They're cabin-less.

[01:46:38] They're kind of leaderless.

[01:46:41] I mean, Nat's basically the leader, but it's also Lottie.

[01:46:45] So maybe they're going to fall into some kind of new little society, new hierarchy.

[01:46:50] Right.

[01:46:51] I'm ready for it, man.

[01:46:52] It's been too long.

[01:46:52] Oh, I'm so ready.

[01:46:54] And then the article mentions that Yellowjackets has been nominated for multiple Emmys, including

[01:47:00] Best Drama and Acting Nods for Melanie Linsky and Christina Ricci.

[01:47:04] Well-deserved, I would say.

[01:47:05] And Ashley Lyle said, we've said this many times in the writers room, and I don't know

[01:47:08] if I'll get in trouble for saying this, but we're always like, fuck the Emmys.

[01:47:12] We want a GLAAD award.

[01:47:13] I think it's more meaningful than just getting an award.

[01:47:16] We have an incredible collaborators in our writers room and we're queer.

[01:47:21] And to be able to have recognition that that's what we're doing is so important to us, especially

[01:47:25] in this moment where queer rights are under very direct attack.

[01:47:28] And to keep that as part of the conversation and to reach as many people as we can with

[01:47:32] the message that that is not okay is at the core list of our priorities.

[01:47:37] That was interesting.

[01:47:38] I think that's great.

[01:47:40] Like whatever they're doing is working.

[01:47:41] So keep it up.

[01:47:42] Yeah.

[01:47:44] And then I had one more.

[01:47:45] Ella Purnell.

[01:47:47] I'm sure most of you listening know this, but if you didn't know, she was the star of

[01:47:52] this new show, Fallout on Amazon.

[01:47:55] And it's a great show and you should go watch it.

[01:47:58] And she was very good in it.

[01:48:00] And she wasn't Jackie.

[01:48:01] She was totally different.

[01:48:03] Yeah.

[01:48:04] Her range is incredible.

[01:48:05] Yeah.

[01:48:06] It's so good.

[01:48:07] You guys have to watch it if you haven't seen it.

[01:48:09] A couple other podcasts, a host and I did a three hour podcast episode about the first

[01:48:13] season and it's on another show we do called House podcast.

[01:48:18] We'll put a link in the show notes if you're interested.

[01:48:20] I thought about releasing it on this yellow jackets WTF feed, but it's three dudes.

[01:48:25] It's a different vibe.

[01:48:26] So I just will point it out to you guys and you can go listen to it if you want.

[01:48:30] I haven't finished the series, but I've seen the first episode.

[01:48:34] Oh, yeah.

[01:48:35] It's really good.

[01:48:36] Yeah.

[01:48:36] I know.

[01:48:36] Have you all played it?

[01:48:38] I haven't.

[01:48:39] I know you haven't.

[01:48:41] I, I, I'm kind of surprised that I haven't because it looks like I am a gamer.

[01:48:46] You haven't played any of them.

[01:48:48] And it looks great.

[01:48:49] I've watched a friend of mine play a little bit of it, but not really enough to get.

[01:48:53] Oh, you got to play.

[01:48:54] Yeah, it's good.

[01:48:55] I've played Fallout three, Fallout.

[01:48:58] New Vegas, Fallout four, Fallout 76.

[01:49:01] I always hear New Vegas is the best.

[01:49:02] Do you agree with that?

[01:49:04] I think it's the best as a standalone game.

[01:49:08] I think Fallout 76 is like the worst, and I don't know anyone who would disagree with

[01:49:13] me, to be honest.

[01:49:14] Apparently it's improved over time.

[01:49:17] Yeah, I guess that's true, but I think it's mostly just the way that they've rolled it

[01:49:21] out in a beta version was just trash.

[01:49:23] But the show is mostly there's a lot of references to fall out for and fall out three.

[01:49:28] And then at the end of, you know, there's references to other stuff too, but it's really

[01:49:32] interesting how they like absorbed all these different games and then just kind of like

[01:49:37] absorbed all these different games and have all these little Easter eggs in it.

[01:49:41] I mean, I haven't played it, but it's great how video game adaptations used to be shit

[01:49:48] every single time.

[01:49:49] Oh yeah.

[01:49:50] Now we have Fallout and the last of us, and I think there's a couple others recently, so

[01:49:54] they're figuring out how to do it right.

[01:49:55] I think Fallout does something unique where in other adaptations, the first episode is

[01:50:02] mostly to get everybody in.

[01:50:04] And I think fallouts first episode really, really caters to the original gamers, but

[01:50:08] it's also like anyone can watch it.

[01:50:10] Yeah, but there are so many references in the first episode.

[01:50:13] That's like, it's just a nerd fest.

[01:50:16] I mean, when they can do it where it's great if you haven't played the game, but if you

[01:50:21] have, there's all these references and they can do that well without it taking non-gamers

[01:50:27] out of it, then it's awesome.

[01:50:29] I mean, I loved the last of us and I've never played the game.

[01:50:34] I've played it.

[01:50:34] Loved it.

[01:50:35] Yeah.

[01:50:37] So we of course don't know yet when season three will air apparently early next year,

[01:50:42] but we might do another one off like this one.

[01:50:45] I think we probably will.

[01:50:47] I think we should do another yellow jackets focused one, maybe when more news starts coming

[01:50:51] out.

[01:50:52] But if there's another topic that you guys want us to cover or you have any ideas, drop

[01:50:57] us a line.

[01:50:58] And if you want to write in or leave us a voice message for that, you can find all of

[01:51:02] our contact information at podcastic.com.

[01:51:06] While you're there, be sure to check out our other shows.

[01:51:10] I am looking forward to house of the dragon.

[01:51:14] I'm going to be a host on that show this year and I'm really, really excited about that.

[01:51:19] Yeah.

[01:51:20] I did a couple episodes last season and I was dying to do more.

[01:51:25] So I'm excited about this.

[01:51:27] It's coming in July.

[01:51:29] June.

[01:51:29] June.

[01:51:29] June.

[01:51:30] Oh, shoot next month.

[01:51:33] Yeah.

[01:51:33] I got to ready myself.

[01:51:35] What are you doing right now, Jason?

[01:51:38] I'm just sitting here.

[01:51:42] I'm doing a, like I said, pretty much focused on the walking dead rewatch that Lucy and

[01:51:48] I started.

[01:51:49] That's been a lot of fun to go back and revisit that series.

[01:51:52] Yeah.

[01:51:53] I'm enjoying that.

[01:51:53] I've been behind, so I haven't been able to leave timely feedback, but I think I'm on like

[01:51:57] seven.

[01:51:58] Oh yeah.

[01:51:58] Season two, episode seven.

[01:52:00] Cool.

[01:52:00] If you write in.

[01:52:01] Yeah.

[01:52:01] And they had the Rick and Michonne spinoff recently, so that's been great.

[01:52:04] That's uh.

[01:52:04] Oh yeah, that was great.

[01:52:05] I wanted to like call you guys and talk to you about my feelings, but I listened to it

[01:52:10] later.

[01:52:10] So listening to you and Lucy was great.

[01:52:14] Yeah.

[01:52:14] To watch.

[01:52:15] Yeah.

[01:52:16] Yeah.

[01:52:16] I enjoyed that one.

[01:52:18] And if you liked our podcast and any of our other podcasts, we'd very much appreciate it

[01:52:24] if you would leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts.

[01:52:28] There's a link in the show notes.

[01:52:29] Thank you guys.

[01:52:32] All right.

[01:52:32] That's our show.

[01:52:33] Thanks for listening everyone.

[01:52:35] Thanks for listening.

[01:52:36] Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.

[01:52:58] Beautiful.