0:12

This is writer and game designer

0:14

Robin D. Laws. And this is

0:16

game designer and writer Kennethite. And

0:19

this is our podcast, Ken and

0:21

Robin, talk about stuff. Bandwith brought

0:23

to you by Pelgrane Press. Stuff

0:26

we're here to talk about in

0:28

this episode include... GM notes. Napoleon's

0:30

Vampire. Kidnapped Korean filmmakers. And the

0:33

book Fish. Okay,

0:49

can we've been summoned? I

0:51

mean, invited to attend another

0:53

gloriously gloomy party at Castle

0:55

Slogar. Remember, keep your eyes

0:57

peeled and your reflexes ready.

0:59

The Slogar's festering festivity involves

1:02

more cleavers than confetti. Where

1:04

did everyone disappear to? Did

1:06

they all get ludicrously lost

1:08

in the hedge maze again?

1:10

I think I heard muffled laughter or

1:12

was a sobbing? It's coming from

1:14

behind that door. Oh! Of course,

1:16

it's locked. Just our luck. Hold

1:19

your skeletal horses, Ken. Look at

1:21

the floor. The tiles have markings.

1:23

Just like in that puzzle game

1:25

book I have. Unhappy birthday at

1:27

Castle Slogar! Aha! Found the book!

1:29

How will a book about a

1:31

birthday gone wrong help us find

1:33

a party that might not even

1:35

exist? Well, in unhappy birthday at

1:37

Castle Slogar, things go awfully awry

1:39

during Melissa Slogar's latest, night birthday

1:41

party. Guests are lost and Lord

1:43

Slogar is missing. Sound familiar? Whoa,

1:45

that's eerily similar. Wait, the book has

1:47

a map. But it's blank! How do

1:49

we navigate with that? Patience can. The

1:51

book describes each room in the exquisitely

1:54

eerie obstacles you have to overcome. You

1:56

can even use a special website to

1:58

check your answers. Get hints. then

2:00

veil the map as you explore.

2:03

So we need to solve a

2:05

puzzle in this room to get

2:07

to the party in the next

2:09

room. You're catching on now, let's

2:12

see. I remember the four-year puzzle

2:14

involved. And then you

2:16

just want... Look, the password!

2:18

And the door! It's unlocked!

2:21

Now let's go party like

2:23

it's 1899! Hey, can I

2:26

borrow that puzzle game book?

2:28

No way! It's mine! But

2:30

you can get your own

2:33

copy of Unhappy Birthday

2:35

Castle slogan from

2:37

Atlas Games at Atlas

2:40

dash games.com/B-D-A-Y. Or

2:43

check the link in

2:45

the show notes. of miniatures, the crunch

2:47

of Doritos and the benevolent gaze of

2:50

Peter Frampton coming alive, welcome us once

2:52

more, into the gaming hut. And here

2:54

on the table of the gaming hut,

2:56

we've got the Peter Frampton as the

2:58

GM screen, but behind the GM screen,

3:00

Robin, I believe, it's an old green

3:02

three-ring notebook, and it's jammed full of

3:04

graph paper and maybe some character sheets

3:07

and a couple of Xerox bits of

3:09

the rules and some notes and what

3:11

looks like a map that someone took

3:13

out of a national geographic a national

3:15

geographic a while back. Robin, I don't

3:17

want to harsh our GM's mellow, but

3:19

his notes could use some organizing. Perhaps

3:22

we could help him do that. Right,

3:24

so we mentioned this earlier as a

3:26

topic that was a segment worthy. So

3:28

yeah, we're going to talk about how

3:31

to organize your GM notes. And

3:33

I think you've described a very old

3:35

school GM with the actual

3:37

beautiful notebook and the Scrawl

3:39

Bits. And I've been working on

3:41

a project that requires me to

3:44

reference a product so old that I

3:46

purchased it as a relatively young person

3:48

long before I ever dreamed that I

3:50

would be doing role-playing for a living,

3:52

and it has a bunch of my

3:54

old notes that I made in it,

3:56

like in a loosely format. So there

3:58

and all of their retro... like you know,

4:00

entry made up and I drew a cover

4:03

for it and all that sort of stuff.

4:05

So certainly back in the day, we went

4:07

analog with our notes and I think there

4:09

are a lot of people who just for

4:11

the sheer aesthetic joy of it still

4:13

want to use physical notes. The

4:15

drawback of that is you're not

4:18

so much organizing them as just

4:20

adding to them, right? In today's

4:22

world, in the digital world, the

4:24

advantage of not having a beautiful

4:26

note work with scrawled. handwriting and

4:28

maps and stuff, but rather having

4:30

a bunch of Google Docs is

4:32

that you can start to put

4:34

them in some sort of order. So

4:37

can, am I right in assuming that your

4:39

sort of ocean of clues respond to

4:41

what the players do? Does this require?

4:43

a lot of notes or are the

4:45

notes just in the research that you

4:47

already did for the game that you're

4:49

now running? The notes are mostly in

4:52

the research that I did in the

4:54

game. There are some sort of cheat

4:56

sheets that I refer to. Like I've

4:58

made a list of Venetian families based

5:00

on which faction they seem to have

5:02

belonged to and seem is the important

5:04

thing. Not only history does not seem

5:07

to bother. to give me those factions

5:09

but also I have to sort of winkle

5:11

out well this guy likes the Pope

5:13

but he's got a Palladian house what

5:16

what faction does that sound like he

5:18

belongs to but I've basically been building

5:20

that list up over time because you

5:22

know Venetian factional politics is part of

5:25

the game and then the other notes

5:27

are literally there will be a page

5:29

usually a page for each sort of

5:31

bad guy or troublesome force and then

5:34

as more stuff either is uncovered by

5:36

the players or I think of it, I

5:38

write it down under the bad guy.

5:40

So I am still keeping an

5:42

old school, you know, exercise book

5:45

notebook notebook with my own handwritten

5:47

stuff in it and trusting, perhaps

5:49

increasingly unwisely, to my trick memory

5:51

to keep the rest of everything

5:53

spinning around. At some point we

5:56

will have, there is a subcommittee

5:58

of map reproduction. that will

6:00

eventually make a big map for the group

6:02

and then we can start writing notes on

6:05

that, that'll be helpful. If there's two, then

6:07

I can write on one and they can

6:09

write on the other. It's even more helpful.

6:11

I've done that before in games and it

6:14

focuses the mind well when players can sort

6:16

of look at the geography and say we're

6:18

here, the bad guys are here. Oh, look

6:20

at that. Red Lion Alley. I wonder if

6:23

that's alchemically powerful and of course the response

6:25

is, it is now. and that's you know

6:27

how how games work in my experience which

6:29

i grant may or may not be

6:31

fungible to other people right so my

6:34

current thing i'm also cheating in that

6:36

my notes are a ninety thousand word

6:38

book that i just wrote yeah yeah

6:40

what i was running nights black agents

6:42

my notes were far easier to keep

6:45

in digital form because they were the

6:47

play test manuscript right and so this

6:49

is a series of adventures and so

6:52

you know i take the chapter of my

6:54

manuscript and I upload it

6:56

to Google Docs for easy

6:58

reference and finding things in

7:00

play. I print out the stats of

7:02

the characters that I think the

7:05

players are likely to run into

7:07

that night and if they go

7:09

off in a surprise direction or

7:11

move through an encounter faster than

7:13

I expect, I declare a little break

7:15

and I run upstairs. I'll print

7:18

out some more stats and then

7:20

come back down. So that is

7:22

obviously having an entire manuscript that

7:24

you've just written is having super

7:26

extensive notes because I'm not writing

7:29

those notes for myself, although they're

7:31

useful to me now that I'm testing

7:33

them, but I'm writing them for other

7:35

people. So they're fully written out and

7:37

full of delicious bond modes and

7:39

all that sort of thing. The

7:41

previous... series that I ran was

7:43

not at all intended for publication

7:45

because I would have been instantly

7:47

sued for using DC characters. And

7:49

so my notes to myself were

7:51

extremely spare. It was a system

7:53

that was designed for improv play,

7:55

so I would come up with

7:57

a general concept for what was

8:00

going on. I think cast of characters,

8:02

names are notoriously difficult to come up

8:04

with on the fly. So I would

8:06

have names of characters and I would

8:09

find images to show the players in

8:11

the course of the scenario. So, you

8:13

know, when they encountered a classic Golden

8:15

Age villain, here's a picture of that

8:18

character from the Golden Age and having

8:20

all of those pictures in a file

8:22

also in its own way is a

8:24

visual set of notes. Here are

8:27

all the characters who can show up. And

8:29

rarely did they meet all of the

8:31

characters that I had images for. You

8:33

know, they didn't, if they didn't run

8:35

into the Bellhop character, that was fine. But

8:37

if they did, I have a picture of the

8:39

Bellhop and a name for the Bellhop or a

8:41

name, or a bunch of names that I could

8:43

assign to the Bellhop. I had a premise

8:45

and as far as just secret, GM

8:47

facing information, and a bunch

8:49

of that isn't secret because

8:51

it's eventually revealed to the players. That's

8:54

about all I had, I did not take

8:56

extensive. notes ahead of time to prepare

8:58

for things. On the other side of

9:01

things, though, is what happens after the

9:03

game, what events take place, and how

9:05

do you, in a game with a

9:07

continuity between a bunch of different sessions,

9:10

how do you either yourself organize that

9:12

information and present it to the players,

9:14

or what do you do to encourage

9:17

the players to compile that information so

9:19

that they have it when they need

9:21

it, when they inevitably forget. who

9:23

the Frankenstein guy was that they

9:25

met six episodes ago. My players

9:27

have adapted the iPad as a

9:29

vital tool. I think three of

9:31

them are now keeping fairly detailed

9:33

notes on iPads. And I think

9:35

that they've just learned that if

9:37

they don't keep the notes, I'm

9:39

not going to remind them of

9:41

stuff. And so they're doing it

9:44

as a way of exercising power

9:46

over me, which I encourage. And

9:48

my notes, as I say, are

9:50

there in my little notebook and

9:52

I... you know, write a little squib,

9:54

you know, something like in the pay

9:56

of the Spaniards, secretly a, you know,

9:59

sugar trader work. as muscle type stuff.

10:01

And then that reminds me of what

10:03

went on during the game however long

10:05

ago. And then for like details, what

10:08

was the exact layout of the tarrow

10:10

reading? Then they have to go back

10:12

to their notes and remember what they

10:14

were. And I think that's a wonderful

10:17

division of labor because I've got enough

10:19

to do thinking of what's going to

10:21

happen in the next hour without also

10:23

remembering every little detail of what happened

10:26

over the last six months, I think.

10:28

previous series like other series I have

10:30

actually gone after the session and written

10:32

up a little synopsis of what happened

10:35

with all of the characters and that

10:37

I think sort of helped the players

10:39

feel that they were you know involved

10:41

in a comic book series for the

10:44

current one though I said I'm not

10:46

providing you with notes at all if

10:48

you want to take notes take notes

10:50

and you will have to do that

10:53

in order to have notes and magically

10:55

There are no notes. So GMs, if

10:57

you volunteer to provide all sorts of

10:59

information for the players and spend your

11:02

time on that, which you may do

11:04

because it sort of helps you shape

11:06

the narrative and make sure that the

11:08

clues that matter are in the synopsies

11:11

the way sort of serve as a

11:13

previously on. But then on the other

11:15

hand, I think it is more engaging

11:17

if the players, especially if they do

11:20

it collaboratively. create notes together and that

11:22

way you can look at their notes

11:24

and you can see what they think

11:26

is important and either go, oh, well,

11:29

that's what they think is important, let's

11:31

have more of that, or you can

11:33

go, oh, they completely missed that thing

11:35

that I've been hammering home for three

11:38

sessions in a row, I can either

11:40

give up trying to point them in

11:42

that direction or I can point them

11:44

all the harder depending on what the

11:47

needs of the... And I think to

11:49

that point I should mention that for

11:51

the Monday group on Twitter and on

11:53

Blue Sky I post up the previously

11:56

in a little squib so it's not

11:58

the whole thing but it's like three

12:00

things that sort of caught my attention

12:03

that I think will be fun for

12:05

people to read about it also, maybe

12:07

we'll signal to the players. Those mattered

12:09

and we should think about those. And

12:12

then for my Wednesday game, most of

12:14

the notes are kept, again the players

12:16

are keeping them electronically themselves, but the

12:18

sort of group repository of notes is

12:21

the group discord where we also arrange,

12:23

you know, can we meet today type

12:25

stuff. And I have a little... GM-only

12:27

channel or handler-only channel where I just

12:30

you know dump all of my notes

12:32

as things occur in game and I

12:34

do that at the fall of Delta

12:36

Green on the Wednesday game because the

12:39

Wednesday game is again my sort of

12:41

attempt to you know meet the kids

12:43

halfway and you know not make everyone

12:45

pretend it's 1981 still the way that

12:48

I do with my Monday group. So

12:50

the discord group then you know handouts

12:52

and things get dumped into the main

12:54

channel so the big map of Saigon

12:57

is there the pictures of various NPCs

12:59

as you say get get dropped in

13:01

and that channel then becomes the sort

13:03

of communal notes and then the players

13:06

will sometimes add things on their own

13:08

hook to the campaign page or as

13:10

I say they've got their own notes

13:12

some of them keep them on their

13:15

character sheets which is fun so their

13:17

character sheets are on all in Google

13:19

sheets so we go and we look

13:21

and sure enough off on the right

13:24

most column of the sheet there's just

13:26

this lengthy list of things that they've

13:28

discovered either about themselves or about the

13:30

horrible world around them. So it's kind

13:33

of a digital soup of a notes,

13:35

but it seems to work for us

13:37

for Wednesday. And again, a lot of

13:39

this is because I do happen to

13:42

have this sort of trick memory that

13:44

lets me not completely flail around. And

13:46

obviously my players right now are listening

13:48

and saying, I don't know, I kind

13:51

of remember you flailing around a couple

13:53

of times. He started to slip recently.

13:55

Because his trick memory may have gone

13:57

away under the... influence of some mysterious

14:00

substance that he consumes a lot of.

14:02

But anyway, that's how the Wednesday game

14:04

works. And that is, I think, a

14:06

little more, as you say. today's GMing

14:09

style and more conscientious people than me

14:11

probably put even more stuff into their

14:13

GM-only channel on their campaign discord. Track

14:15

games are generally pretty agnostic about what

14:18

you do with your notes. They don't

14:20

suggest much at all or even necessarily

14:22

mention it or say, you know, indicating

14:25

passing that you maybe have notes of

14:27

some kind. On the other hand, I'm

14:29

sure there are indie games that make

14:31

the note taking intrinsic to the design

14:34

and certainly the solo game. movement, a

14:36

big component of that is encouraging you

14:38

to journal what you experience running a

14:40

solo game. And so it's a solo

14:43

game. So you're creating your notes for

14:45

yourself as a memento of what you

14:47

experience and also as a creative activity

14:49

in and of itself as a spur

14:52

to a self entertaining creative writing project.

14:54

The current book that I'm working on

14:56

does discuss the fact that you should

14:58

have a collaborative notes document and gives

15:01

you little bits of text to plug

15:03

into that when certain things occur in

15:05

order to shape the campaign and the

15:07

player's sense of reward. So a little

15:10

bit of tax which comes with the

15:12

mechanical benefit is part of... the reward

15:14

of achieving things in the scenarios. I

15:16

think that's sort of an interesting area

15:19

to explore that you get to add

15:21

something to your notes and feel a

15:23

sense of achievement around that in a

15:25

way that's sort of like, it's like

15:28

a magic item, except it's also a

15:30

bit of group shared information. Yeah, Jenna

15:32

Moran did something very similar with that

15:34

with weapons of the gods when she

15:37

weaponized. character creation and you would spend

15:39

character points on thousand demon sword and

15:41

now thousand even sword everyone could read

15:43

the write-up because it's there in your

15:46

character sheet and it becomes more that

15:48

the group has in common that's sort

15:50

of pre-noting because you will eventually get

15:52

the thousand demon sword you haven't got

15:55

it yet. yet, but that concept is

15:57

so robust that you can certainly flip

15:59

it around and the notes become the

16:01

treasure and in a, you can imagine

16:04

in a mystery game that, you know,

16:06

notes could very much be the treasure,

16:08

that you have, you know, a little

16:10

card with the NBC on it and

16:13

what they did and, you know, were

16:15

they good or were they bad? Were

16:17

they mean to us? What did they

16:19

know about the old mill? and then

16:22

you hand that to the players and

16:24

they then have that as a resource

16:26

that they can keep around. Well speaking

16:28

of notes, my notes tell me that

16:31

it's time for us to exit this

16:33

hut and see if there's another hut

16:35

on the other side of this exciting

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18:37

can hear you already clicking the

18:39

link in the show notes. You

18:41

know you want to? and black

18:44

cats, the most terrifying of ordinary

18:46

animals. And I hear chains rattling,

18:48

but in particular, I hear the

18:50

hissing of vampires. And I think

18:52

it's French hissing, because of course,

18:55

different hissings, you can tell the

18:57

accent, because Ken, beloved patron backer

18:59

Sam Rutsik, says, Joseph Fusche, Napoleon's

19:01

secret policeman, was famously bloodthirsty and

19:03

replaced Christian symbols with atheist Bonmose.

19:06

Sounds like a classic vampire move

19:08

to me. Who are the secret

19:10

vampires backing Napoleon? So I guess

19:12

we're going to find out was

19:14

he a vampire and why did

19:17

he commit all of those acts

19:19

of vampirism? But even in our

19:21

regular non-vampire timeline, he was a

19:23

piece of work. He was not

19:25

a good guy, I think we

19:28

can say. Yeah, he was born

19:30

in 1759. His father is a

19:32

planter. He has plantations in Haiti

19:34

and he's a landlord in Brittany,

19:36

so he's definitely, you know, lower...

19:39

aristocracy, which of course means that

19:41

he becomes a radical socialist. He

19:43

is educated by the oratorian order,

19:45

a Catholic teaching order, and therefore,

19:47

of course, becomes radically anti-clerical. He's

19:50

going to become a professor. He's

19:52

sent to Eras in 1788. He's

19:54

teaching school there and becomes a

19:56

Freemason, and that is one of

19:58

the things that radicalizes him. as

20:01

the pre-revolutionary era ramps up, he

20:03

joins the Jacobin Club in Naus,

20:05

is basically the big city near

20:07

his own town. Right, because as

20:09

previously mentioned in many different episodes,

20:12

in France, Freemasonry is much more

20:14

political and revolutionary than it is

20:16

in the Anglo world. Right, yeah,

20:18

Freemasonry has officially been banned by

20:20

the church, so first of all,

20:23

if you're a Freemason, you're doing

20:25

something that is... sanctionable, and also

20:27

radical egalitarianism, which is sort of

20:29

the core of Freemasonry, where all

20:31

brother Mason's together, is a much

20:34

bigger ask in a country as

20:36

hierarchical and aristocracy-laden as France, compared

20:38

to the relatively shorter pyramid and

20:40

wider pyramid of England. Again, those

20:42

are overgeneralizations, but it's certainly true

20:45

that French... Freemasonry rapidly radicalized into

20:47

Jacobitism in many many cases and

20:49

in specifically in Foucher's case. He's

20:51

elected a representative from dance to

20:53

the National Convention in 1792. He

20:56

eagerly votes for the death of

20:58

Louis XVI. He says you should

21:00

not fear the shadow of a

21:02

king that's sort of a cool

21:05

vampirey type thing to say. And

21:07

because of his energy, he's sent

21:09

to La Vendé, which is in

21:11

Western France, to put down the

21:13

monarchist uprising, and then he goes

21:16

to Nevere, which is a little

21:18

bit southeast of France, to put

21:20

down counter-revolutionary movements there. And it's

21:22

during the convention that the de-Christianization

21:24

campaign begins. So this is before

21:27

Napoleon is doing anything, really. Right.

21:29

He has two repressive chapters in

21:31

his... First is the Jacobin and

21:33

the secret policing. For Napoleon, right?

21:35

Yeah. The decristianization campaign calls for

21:38

the seizure of all the church

21:40

treasures. The church loses its official

21:42

standing to destroy all holy objects

21:44

and crosses. So now we're maybe...

21:46

little question marks coming up. The

21:49

execution and exile of priests, it

21:51

became illegal to be a priest

21:53

in public. Instant death penalty, in

21:55

fact. The church was replaced with

21:57

the cult of reason in 1793.

22:00

There was a big installation of

22:02

the cult of reason at Notre

22:04

Dame de Paris, where they deliberately

22:06

profaned the altar and had a

22:08

lady dressed as the goddess of

22:11

reason to dance around. And then

22:13

the revolutionary calendar, with its famous

22:15

ten-day weeks, was intended to destroy

22:17

the influence of saints days and...

22:19

Sundays and all the other churchy

22:22

calendar stuff. And then specifically in

22:24

Naver, Fouchay bans crosses, bans the

22:26

images of saints, ransacks all the

22:28

churches, he orders the phrase death

22:30

is an eternal sleep put up

22:33

over the cemetery instead of a

22:35

Christian motto. Right, which is exactly

22:37

what you would do if you're

22:39

a vampire trying to trick people

22:41

into thinking that there's... There's no

22:44

undead follow-on to life. Right. Yeah.

22:46

It doubles as anti-clericalism and as

22:48

vampire propaganda. He places a bust

22:50

of Brutus on the altar of

22:52

the cathedral. Brutus, of course, famously

22:55

murdered a guy in great freshets

22:57

of blood for liberty, question mark.

22:59

Nationalizes all the gold and silver

23:01

as harming revolutionary paper money, but...

23:03

Do vampires want to get all

23:06

the silver out of circulation? You

23:08

tell me. And then other Jacobins

23:10

in other cities copied his activity

23:12

because he was sort of, there's

23:14

no such thing as the party

23:17

ideologist in revolutionary France, but he

23:19

was, to the extent there was

23:21

one, the party ideologist, he was

23:23

either the secretary or the president

23:25

of the Jacobin Club by now,

23:28

the national one. Right. And if

23:30

you set a pattern in which

23:32

you demonstrate your power to take

23:34

all the gold and silver, I

23:36

think that's somewhat attractive. Yeah, yeah,

23:39

yeah, absolutely. And again, you're, you're

23:41

saying, well, I'm so for the

23:43

revolution that I'm murdering all the

23:45

priests, and if you're not murdering

23:47

all your priests, you must not

23:50

be the for the revolution as

23:52

much. And this is during the

23:54

reign of terror, when the not

23:56

being for the revolution as much

23:58

was a death sentence. So. that

24:01

also encouraged others. So in Leon,

24:03

which rebelled against the reign of

24:05

terror and stopped doing that, he's

24:07

sent to get them to straighten

24:09

up and fly right. This is

24:12

November of 1793, and he basically

24:14

just murders his way through all

24:16

the resistors. He first tries to

24:18

set them up in the middle

24:20

of the park in the middle

24:23

of town and blow them apart

24:25

with a grape shot. That doesn't

24:27

work. A grape shot is apparently

24:29

not a mode of smooth execution.

24:31

So local businesses eventually complained that

24:34

the stench of blood was bad

24:36

for the bakery and restaurant business.

24:38

People didn't want to go out

24:40

and get food. And so he

24:42

moved the executions out of town

24:45

and they began more conventional firing

24:47

squads with the occasional mass sabering

24:49

to death. And while he's in

24:51

Leon, he kills about 1900 people

24:53

in his purges, even Robespierre is

24:56

saying... This guy is too bloodthirsty.

24:58

Yeah, if you're too murdering for

25:00

Robespierre, you're a problem. And you're

25:02

too unchristian for Robespierre, which is

25:04

again a problem. Robespierre sets up

25:07

the cult of the supreme being,

25:09

which is sort of a deist

25:11

unitarian system in 1794, and Fusche

25:13

makes fun of it. He says

25:15

that's stupid. You know, have the

25:18

courage of your convictions, Robespierre, you

25:20

weak. But Fusce has not the

25:22

worst thing that can happen if

25:24

you make Robespierre mad. Right, yeah.

25:26

But Fusce has been too close

25:29

to power for too long, and

25:31

he has a copy of Robespierre's

25:33

execution list, or at least can

25:35

plausibly claim he does. And he

25:37

starts showing it to all of

25:40

Robespierre's enemies and saying, you're on

25:42

the list. You didn't think I

25:44

was on the list. Well, I

25:46

just got fired from the Jacobian

25:48

Club. Clearly, the list. very big.

25:51

And so he helps energize and

25:53

even launch the anti-robs beer coup

25:55

in July of 1794 and he

25:57

has now basically got a bad

25:59

reputation with everyone so he stays

26:02

out of power. This is his

26:04

period of being poor and lonely.

26:06

But you can't keep a bad

26:08

man down. In 1797 he gets

26:10

a procurement job from the new

26:13

government of the directory. He's briefly

26:15

made ambassador to Milan where he's

26:17

so terrible that even the puppet

26:19

state of Milan sends him back

26:21

to France. He becomes Minister of

26:24

Police in 1799 under the directory

26:26

and his first act is to

26:28

close down the Jacobin Club entirely

26:30

and purge it. So those guys

26:32

have done. their job for Fuchshe,

26:35

he's out, and then he joins

26:37

the Bonaparteist coup against the directory.

26:39

Napoleon then leaves him as minister

26:41

of police, obviously, because having the

26:44

secret police guy who just put

26:46

you in power, that seems like

26:48

a good idea of keeping that

26:50

guy on your side. Napoleon ends

26:52

the decristianization campaign entirely in 1801,

26:55

the Concordot. and then he notes

26:57

that Fuchsia is still hanging around

26:59

looking scary and so he sort

27:01

of soft fires him, he kicks

27:03

him upstairs to be a senator,

27:06

gives him a giant pension, says

27:08

you can keep half the secret

27:10

police money, and then he closes

27:12

down the Ministry of Police entirely

27:14

in 1802, and so Fuchs settles

27:17

into running French Freemasonry, and Napoleon

27:19

gets crowned emperor in 1804, there's

27:21

still anti-Napoleum plots and plans going

27:23

on, he has to bring Fuchsia

27:25

back. makes him Minister of Police

27:28

and then promotes him to Duke

27:30

of Atranto in 1808, but at

27:32

some level, Fusche is just too

27:34

scary and dangerous for Napoleon. He's

27:36

got fired again in 1810. So

27:39

he goes back, by now he's

27:41

got so much money and property

27:43

from being a senator that he

27:45

can just sort of be conspiring

27:47

along on his own hook. And

27:50

so when Napoleon returns from Elba,

27:52

Fusche has been attempting to negotiate

27:54

with the Burbons, with the Austrians,

27:56

with the Austrians. and with the

27:58

anti-Napolean parts of the French Republic.

28:01

None of that works. So he

28:03

welcomes Napoleon back and becomes Minister

28:05

of Police again in 1815. And

28:07

then he stays Minister of Police

28:09

under the Bourbons when they come

28:12

back after Waterloo. And then the

28:14

Bourbons are like, didn't you vote

28:16

to kill Lou? And he says,

28:18

well, that may have been a

28:20

different fouché. They say, no. Yeah,

28:23

I was excitable at that time.

28:25

It's written down. You have to

28:27

go be ambassador to Saxony. And

28:29

then they said, that's still not

28:31

a good luck. You're just exiled.

28:34

as an exile, a rich and

28:36

apparently happy man in 1820. And

28:38

that is the long sad story

28:40

of, you know, sort of the

28:42

first party ideology, Joseph Fusche, who

28:45

doubled as secret police guys. So

28:47

he's sort of, you know, Trotsky

28:49

and Zurjanski, all in one. So

28:51

as we start to look for

28:53

the vampire story behind the official

28:56

story, I think the fact that

28:58

his, he's the Duke of Atranto,

29:00

So his title is named for

29:02

the town of Ocranto, which is

29:04

in Italy. It's on the East

29:07

Coast of the Salento Peninsula. And

29:09

the title is hereditary but nominal.

29:11

It doesn't give him land or

29:13

money or any of those things.

29:15

It's just symbolic. And as we

29:18

know, symbolism is magic. And if

29:20

you're a vampire having symbolic power

29:22

might allow you to, say, access,

29:24

a whole bunch of death energy.

29:26

So it could just have been

29:29

a nudge nudge, wink, wink, wink,

29:31

wink, wink, to... The first Gothic

29:33

novel, Castle of Attrento, by Horace

29:35

Walpole, which was written in 1764.

29:37

And we talked about that extensively

29:40

all the way back in episode

29:42

94. It doesn't have a vampire

29:44

in it, but it's the first

29:46

Gothic novel and other Gothic novels,

29:48

including Vafic, have vampires in them.

29:51

So perhaps the town chosen for

29:53

his title sort of indicates... something

29:55

that Napoleon knew or something that

29:57

he requested in order to be

29:59

able to access power. One of

30:02

the reasons that someone interested in

30:04

death energy might want to be

30:06

magically connected to a Toronto is

30:08

that its town cathedral, the Cathedral

30:10

de Santa Maria Anuziyata, displays the

30:13

bones and skulls of 813 townsmen

30:15

who were killed by Turkish invaders

30:17

in 1480. And in this incident,

30:19

the invaders gathered everybody up, said,

30:21

okay, time to convert to Islam.

30:24

The towns folks said nothing doing.

30:26

And they said, well, we're going

30:28

to behead. you one at a

30:30

time until the rest of you

30:32

all convert. And in true martyr

30:35

fashion, they got martyred. They all

30:37

said no, they all got beheaded,

30:39

and they were all later declared

30:41

martyrs, but not just that, but

30:43

their bones and skulls were cemented

30:46

into three panels that are behind

30:48

the altar and on either side,

30:50

which you can still see in

30:52

the cathedral today. So even for

30:54

a vampire who hates crosses and

30:57

despises the church, this is certainly

30:59

at least on a sort of

31:01

a sort of a sort of

31:03

a... magical symbolic level a lot

31:05

of death energy yeah lots of

31:08

bedding especially which as we all

31:10

know is speaking beheading another reason

31:12

that a Toronto would be magically

31:14

resident for him is the fortress

31:16

there the Costello Aragonese which is

31:19

home to the ghost of Count

31:21

Giulio Antonio aquaviva de conversano which

31:23

means someone who converses with the

31:25

living waters well what are living

31:27

waters could it be blood Blood

31:30

and famously he did not let

31:32

a little thing like having been

31:34

beheaded Stop him from fighting the

31:36

Turkish invaders and mowing his way

31:38

through them. So the ghost of

31:41

a headless night I think is

31:43

also if you if you can

31:45

harness it right a powerful source

31:47

of undead energy and in fact

31:49

there are still dukes of Atranta.

31:52

They have lived in Sweden since

31:54

the 19th century, but I don't

31:56

know Swedish listeners if you want

31:58

to go vampire hunting I would

32:00

look and find out who the

32:03

current Duke of the Tracho is.

32:05

Go after them. Yeah, the... Another

32:07

thing that we do need to

32:09

sort of mention is that while

32:12

Fusche is out of power in

32:14

1796, there is a general named

32:16

Baron Josef Alvinci Berberic who is

32:18

a Transylvanian general and he's fighting

32:20

for the Austrians and he is

32:23

the guy who defeats Napoleon twice.

32:25

So you can imagine Napoleon barely

32:27

getting away from this crazy Transylvania,

32:29

who's only let down by his

32:31

Austrian underlings, and it very reluctantly

32:34

retreats back over the Alps, and

32:36

he's thinking, well, he's got something

32:39

going on, where's that guy who

32:41

maybe has some kind of blood

32:43

connection to Transylvania being a vampire

32:45

and all? And that's why Fushe

32:47

begins to be brought back into

32:49

power under Napoleon, just throwing it

32:51

out there as a possibility. If

32:53

you want to look for Fusse

32:55

in pop culture, He's a character

32:57

in Ridley Scott's 1977 movie The

32:59

Doolists, which is based on a

33:02

Conrad story. He's played by Albert

33:04

Finney. He was played by Gerard de

33:06

Purdou in the French TV miniseries

33:08

Napoleon. And can you be

33:10

excited to hear that your pal John

33:13

Dixon Carr, better known for locked

33:15

room mysteries, wrote a swashbuckling novel

33:17

called Captain Cutthrot. Speaking of having

33:19

your book explain what it's about,

33:21

in which Fushe is the antagonist.

33:23

Yeah, not to turn this into

33:25

the book hut, but John Dixon

33:27

Carr's swashbucklers are terrific. They're really,

33:29

really good. He loves the historical

33:31

era, really gets into the sort

33:33

of the vibe of it. It's

33:35

everything you want a good historical

33:38

actioner to be, and Captain Cup throws

33:40

a great one. So Fushe, as a

33:43

vampire, might well be around today. So

33:45

what would he be doing in a

33:47

conspiracy in a conspiracy? First of all,

33:49

you have to decide is Fouche

33:51

loyal to France? Does he

33:54

think that the France is

33:56

what he's meant to be

33:58

in charge of? he's meant

34:00

to sort of turn into his

34:02

little nursery garden, or is he

34:05

sort of a cosmopolitan, will betray

34:07

anyone for anyone type vampire?

34:09

Which I guess could still be, he

34:11

could still be in France, but he's,

34:13

the question is, you know, in what,

34:15

what's behind the string pulling of?

34:18

And I think that right now,

34:20

Fushe's real talent, as we saw,

34:22

is for betrayal and conspiracy and

34:24

secret policing. He would, you know,

34:26

draw out... plots, he would shut

34:28

them down. So I think that

34:30

he winds up being a sort

34:32

of well-paid consultant

34:35

in the sort of

34:37

high-colored movie spy world of Knights

34:39

Black Agents who various NATO governments

34:41

bring in to run mole hunts

34:43

because they know that they can't

34:45

trust their own agency to do

34:47

it because their agency has been

34:49

compromised by the mole and sure

34:51

enough Fushe always finds the mole

34:53

and that's because he's magic and

34:55

B probably half the time it's

34:57

his own guy and Therefore, he's

35:00

got sort of a shadowy entree into every

35:02

NATO and Five Eyes government all over the

35:04

world that, you know, the FBI calls him

35:06

in to purge people, the SDCE calls him

35:08

in, you know, just whoever needs a mole

35:10

to be hunted on the absolute down low.

35:12

You don't want it to show up in

35:14

front of Congress or Parliament, so you bring

35:16

in fuchs and he just takes care of

35:18

it, makes the problem go away. And so,

35:20

of course, that also means that he's

35:23

got lots and lots of blackmail and

35:25

lots of blackmail and secrets, so even

35:27

over and secrets, so even over and

35:30

his vampirism, which he indulges in various

35:32

unsavory ways, probably he does like to

35:34

eat priests best just because, you know,

35:37

you always love the appetite you got

35:39

as a kid, and I think that

35:41

that's just sort of his remit, right,

35:44

is to be the shadowy behind-the-scenes guy.

35:46

being an interrogator is a lot easier

35:48

when you have mental nomination power absolutely

35:50

yeah it's super easy in fact and being

35:53

a conspirator is easy if you can you

35:55

know have thralls that are you know in

35:57

various positions in government or

36:00

You have telepathic ability to read through

36:02

their eyes, that kind of stuff. So

36:04

he could show up to debrief the

36:06

player characters and they don't know whose side

36:08

he's really on. They probably have a feeling

36:10

they don't want to tell the whole story

36:12

because no player character wants to tell

36:14

the whole story. And speaking of stories,

36:16

we've got another one to tell on

36:19

the other side of this upcoming commercial

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message. Five

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the agent new meaning in

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the art, horrific murders strike

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a quiet Long Island town.

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to evils unspoken and barely

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The agents must sift superstition and

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across decades, across centuries. In presence,

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a young woman vanishes in Alabama.

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She reappears in a same instant.

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in Vermont. A door of discovery

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opens to secrets more virulent than

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the most appalling proliferations of life.

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In Jack Frost, suitable for use

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review and writhe in

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terror, interrupt stake-wielding enemies

38:38

as they make the

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mistake of trying to

38:43

end this podcast, joining

38:46

such beloved Patrian

38:48

Packers as Josh

38:50

King, Carl Schmidt,

38:53

Keelen Ohay, Lewis

38:55

Sylvester, and Ross

38:57

Ireland. with stuff

38:59

on your hands

39:01

because it's a combo

39:04

cinema hut, tradecraft hut.

39:06

And Robin, you have

39:08

done your characteristic deep dive

39:11

into what is perhaps, I

39:13

guess you'd say it's sort

39:15

of a both a standout story

39:18

and also a sadly sort

39:20

of normal story for the

39:23

North Korea-South Korea relationship in

39:25

that this is the North

39:28

Korea kidnapping the South Korean

39:30

film director Shin Sang-Ak and

39:33

his movie actress ex-wife Choi-un-hi

39:35

and there is obviously a

39:38

lot to this story begin with

39:40

Why would North Korea want these

39:42

people, I guess, right? Right. Well,

39:44

the story, I think we have

39:46

to go back even further than

39:48

that. Well, the reason that Kim

39:50

Jong-il wanted them was, it turns

39:52

out, Shin was an extraordinarily skilled

39:54

top director. His then wife, Choi

39:56

On He, was one of the

39:58

biggest stars in Korea. was also

40:00

feted on the festival circuit. And

40:02

Kim, as we will find out,

40:05

was a Sineast. He was a

40:07

film fan. So I stumbled into

40:09

this story by watching one of

40:11

Shin's movies, A Mother and a

40:14

Guest. A lot of his films

40:16

are on the YouTube channel Korean

40:18

Classic Film, which is an arm

40:20

of the Korean cinema tech and

40:22

regularly uploads classic. films and some

40:25

relatively recent ones like from the

40:27

90s, but films going all the

40:29

way back to the Korean Silent

40:31

Era and a lot of the time

40:33

they are freshly restored and it's a

40:36

huge amazing resource that they provide. So

40:38

I recently watched a film called Mother

40:40

and a Guest from 1961 and it's

40:42

a, it's a, I would argue, is,

40:44

you know, deserves to be up there

40:47

with any classic of world cinema from

40:49

that period. And very briefly, it's about

40:51

a household where there are three widows.

40:53

There's the... young mistress of the house,

40:56

the mother of her dead husband, and

40:58

also a servant who is also a

41:00

widow as well. And there's a

41:03

five-year-old girl who is just one

41:05

of the best child performances of

41:07

all time. The character is really

41:09

open, wears her heart on her

41:11

sleeve, she's very heartbreaking in that

41:14

sense, and she develops a strong

41:16

attachment to a teacher who arrives

41:18

in town and stays at their

41:20

guest house. I won't say anything

41:23

more about that except one of

41:25

the things about it is that

41:27

it's full of widows and widowers,

41:29

including the main characters and ones

41:32

were mentioned in passing, but there's

41:34

never any direct mention because it

41:36

is unnecessary to mention to a

41:38

Korean audience just why there would

41:40

be so many people whose spouses

41:42

were dead in Korea in 1961.

41:44

Anyway, it's a beautiful film. It's

41:46

sort of a little bit OZU-like,

41:48

but it's different because... Korean films

41:51

are much more emotionally expressive. Anyway,

41:53

I thought was such a great

41:55

film that I would look up, you know, who's

41:57

this director, and then I was

41:59

flabbergasted. to find out that he's the

42:01

guy in this famous story about the

42:04

kidnapping, that I think people have kind

42:06

of heard about, and often that's kind

42:08

of a weird joke, and don't get

42:10

the full extremity of the story. So

42:12

if you want the full version of his

42:14

story, check out the documentary

42:16

film, The Lovers in the

42:19

Despot, from 2016, it's a

42:21

UK documentary directed by... Ross

42:23

Adam and Robert Kanan. It

42:25

really gets into the story,

42:27

which we'll get into in

42:29

more detail now. So his

42:31

career is incredibly long. He

42:33

makes his first film in

42:35

52. His last in the year

42:38

2000, he directs 86 films.

42:40

He produces, including those 86

42:42

films, 110 films. And in

42:45

the period that a mother and a

42:47

guest was made into the early

42:49

70s, he is... not only a

42:51

film director, but he runs his

42:53

own studio. So the title card

42:55

at the beginning is Shin Studios.

42:57

And many of his films feature

43:00

his wife, Choi Unhi. And as

43:02

I mentioned, she's like a big

43:04

star. She's really beloved, and she's

43:06

the lead in Mother and a guest.

43:08

And you can see why she's a

43:10

big star and deserves all those accolades.

43:13

So they are married for quite a

43:15

while. They adopt a couple of kids.

43:17

And the thing is that Shin, first

43:19

of all, is more of an artist

43:22

than a businessman and he owns and

43:24

runs his studio and consequently he's always

43:26

going over budget on his films in

43:28

order to make them better. He wants

43:31

this shot, he wants this set and

43:33

so consequently he's in hawk big

43:35

time to people and in Korea

43:37

in the 70s if you owe

43:39

a lot of people money gangsters

43:42

show up to collect. So his

43:44

kids who are adults now obviously

43:46

remember the studio being besieged on

43:48

civil occasions. by creditors because he

43:50

spent more money than his in

43:52

his films made. Yeah, and that's,

43:54

you know, that could happen in

43:56

any film industry really, not just

43:58

Korea, but in Korea Robin at

44:01

that time basically are being run

44:03

by a dictatorship that is lucky

44:05

it lives next to a much

44:07

worse dictatorship I guess in terms

44:09

of PR. And that's just a

44:11

matter of degree right this is

44:13

South Korea in the 70s is

44:15

a capitalist country it's a really

44:17

weird form of mercantile central planned

44:19

but with fiddling on the edges

44:21

economy but it's a totalitarian society

44:23

as well that executes its political

44:25

opponents so it's and At this

44:27

point Shin gets into trouble in

44:29

both his personal and his professional

44:31

life. Personally, he strays from his

44:33

marriage and has two children with

44:35

a younger actress and so Troy

44:37

and he divorces him. But on

44:39

the public sphere, the government decides

44:41

for reasons that are unclear, but

44:43

you don't need a lot of

44:45

reasons to be banned from making

44:47

art by a totalitarian government. They

44:49

say you can no longer make

44:51

films. It wasn't the content of

44:53

his films, was it that he

44:55

owed many of the wrong people?

44:57

We're not so sure. Anyway, Choi

44:59

divorces him and she goes to

45:01

Hong Kong in 1978 on a

45:03

trip to sort of get over

45:05

her sorrows. And that's when she

45:07

is kidnapped by the North Korean

45:09

RGB. They're foreign intelligence agency. She's

45:11

hustled onto a boat, she's drugged,

45:13

she's deprived of calories, and before

45:15

she knows it, she's In North

45:18

Korea, being greeted by King Jong-il,

45:20

who at this time is not

45:22

the supreme leader, he's the son

45:24

in waiting, and the unpopular son,

45:26

who is not charismatic the way

45:28

his father is. But he's a

45:30

big movie buff, and there's Troy

45:32

going, oh no, I'm a bird

45:34

in a cage. He's captured me

45:36

what's going to happen. He doesn't

45:38

make advances on her, but he

45:40

does keep her in a little

45:42

cottage, and he's got nothing to

45:44

do, but, you know. work a

45:46

garden and she's suddenly a prisoner.

45:48

She's a trophy, she thinks. At

45:50

this point, Shin goes to Hong

45:52

Kong to look for her and

45:54

get That's what happens, Kim. He

45:56

falls in with a bad crowd

45:58

and makes a bunch of, no,

46:00

he gets kidnapped by the North

46:02

Koreans. That's what happens. Yes, he

46:04

does. The exact same MO, they

46:06

drug him, take him home in

46:08

a boat, take him to North

46:10

Korea. He does not get the

46:12

luxurious treatment, though. He's put in

46:14

a detention camp. They don't have

46:16

the a tour theory in Northern

46:18

Korea yet, so they don't know

46:20

that directors are important. He knows

46:22

directors are important, but I think

46:24

the theory here is that if

46:26

you want to have an important

46:28

director make films for you, you

46:30

have to break in. And so

46:32

he spends years in prison, he

46:35

makes an ill-fated escape attempt, he

46:37

gets out of the prison, but

46:39

how do you escape once you're

46:41

out of a prison in North

46:43

Korea? He gets on a train

46:45

that goes in circles and has

46:47

recaptured. And so years later, three

46:49

or four years later... Joy is

46:51

invited by Kim to a big

46:53

party and he sort of gives

46:55

her a little sort of nudge

46:57

in a wink and looks across

46:59

the room and there is her

47:01

husband Shin Sangah. She's flabbergasted to

47:03

see him and before they know

47:05

it they are being invited to

47:07

meet with Kim as he unveils

47:09

his plans for the North Korean

47:11

film industry to them. Shin knows

47:13

that they will be branded as

47:15

traders if they can. do anything

47:17

if they cooperate and that people

47:19

will not accept that they were

47:21

coerced unless they have evidence. And

47:23

somehow, Troy has a mini recorder,

47:25

which he puts in her purse.

47:27

And so they document all of

47:29

the things that Kim says to

47:31

them in these meetings and these

47:33

tapes still exist and they're played

47:35

in the documentary. And so he's

47:37

like, I'm sorry, I have to

47:39

engage in some self-criticism. When I

47:41

told my people to... to get

47:43

you. I guess they didn't understand.

47:45

And my bad, you wound up

47:47

in a detention camp for years.

47:49

Oh gosh. And you know, I'm

47:52

very sorry you're mistreated. I had

47:54

nothing to do with that. It

47:56

was my incompetent underlings. So it

47:58

just sounds like. like every studio

48:00

boss. Yeah, or my vague management

48:02

style. Right. Yeah, except, you know,

48:04

the studio bosses wish they could,

48:06

you know, drug people and keep

48:08

them prisoner. He is a big

48:10

phone fan. He has a projection

48:12

room in almost every room of

48:14

his mansion, and he's up on World

48:16

Cinema, and he's like, North Korean

48:18

films are terrible. They never play the

48:20

festival circuit, and they all have the

48:23

same stupid plot. And there's all this

48:25

crying in them. Why is there so

48:27

much crying in North Korean movies? You

48:29

guys know how to make movies. You're

48:32

going to make movies for me. And

48:34

of course, Shin, I'm not wanting to

48:36

be taken out and shot, goes, this

48:38

is great. I've always wanted an

48:41

opportunity to work with a big

48:43

budget. All sorts of resources to

48:45

make my films. You're a brilliant

48:47

visionary, Kim, and I'm going to make

48:49

some movies for you. So they wind up

48:51

making. like a whole bunch of

48:53

films starting in 1983. It really,

48:55

they make seven films over a

48:57

period of a couple years. They're

48:59

still completely exhausted and sleep-deprived while

49:01

they're doing this. Troy is not

49:03

only acting in many of them,

49:05

but she's also serving as assistant director.

49:08

And one of them, called Salt,

49:10

plays the festival circuit and is

49:12

somewhat acclaimed. However, another of the

49:14

movies that Kim has them make

49:16

is called Pulgusari. And it's a

49:18

Kajufik. And I think it's in

49:20

large part because of this, that

49:22

in the West, this story is

49:25

treated as a weird joke. Ha

49:27

ha ha, Kim kidnapped these people

49:29

and made them make a low

49:31

rent, God's movie. You would think

49:33

that we, genre fans, would be

49:35

aware of that snobbery and see

49:37

through it. Apparently not. So

49:40

the reason they only make seven

49:42

films in a period of three

49:44

years is that in 1986, as Kim

49:46

wants, their... have a prestigious film that's

49:49

fed it at a film festival and

49:51

their guests at the Vienna Film Festival

49:53

and that's when Shin stages a defection.

49:55

He and Troy rush out into a

49:57

cab and get to the American Embassy.

50:00

The American CIA people who eventually

50:02

interview them aren't used to having

50:04

defecting filmmakers. That's not who they

50:06

usually get is walk-ins. And of

50:08

course they're highly suspicious of anyone.

50:10

Any walk-in from any enemy nation,

50:13

especially from North Korea, which is

50:15

very few of them. And then

50:17

Troy pulls out all the tapes.

50:19

Look, here's the tapes of all

50:21

the meetings that we had with him.

50:24

And they are gobs Mac. Because

50:26

they've never heard him, John Yiel's

50:28

voice. and here are all these

50:30

extended interviews with him. Now,

50:32

the KCIA, the South Korean CIA, is

50:34

a little cagey about what they knew

50:36

about this situation. They can't reveal

50:39

the source and they can't,

50:41

you know, indicate why they're not

50:43

so surprised that these tapes exist,

50:46

which suggests, and this is

50:48

the talking, not anyone involved

50:50

with the story, it suggests

50:52

to me that someone in Kim's circle

50:55

was a mole. who slipped them the

50:57

tape recorder in tapes because the

50:59

KCIA had access to that. So

51:01

they are free, everything's great, oh

51:03

no it isn't, the South Koreans

51:05

treat them as traders. Despite

51:07

all the documentation that they

51:09

put together, they were in the

51:11

North, they made films for Kim, their

51:14

traders, and so their kids, who

51:16

were deprived of their parents for

51:18

years, get them back, but also

51:20

then they are scorned as the

51:22

children of red. So it's still...

51:24

things are still terrible for them.

51:26

So in 1989, Shin and Troy

51:29

moved to Virginia, I think taking

51:31

the kids with them, and then

51:33

it's a short hop to Hollywood,

51:35

where he gets work in

51:38

the film industry there. He

51:40

produces some straight-to-video movies, and

51:42

if you're a little younger

51:45

than us, you maybe enjoyed

51:47

the Three Ninges series that

51:49

Disney put out of Kids

51:52

Kick-In-ass. produced that series

51:54

and directed one of them. And at

51:56

any rate, 1994, he returns to Korea,

51:58

he makes one last... South Korean

52:00

film is a war movie called

52:02

My Happiness in 2000 and 2006

52:05

he's planning an epic movie but

52:07

Genghis Khan when he dies

52:09

of complications from hepatitis. By

52:11

then his reputation as being

52:13

a traitor has turned around

52:15

or at least his death

52:17

turns it around he's awarded the

52:19

gold crown cultural medal and

52:22

Troy and he lives until quite

52:24

recently until 2018 so she's a

52:26

key talking head in the... documentary

52:28

The Lovers in the Despot. But

52:31

it's a really astounding story on

52:33

every level and because Korea

52:35

makes so many films about its

52:37

recent history, it's obviously some sort

52:40

of rights issue that none of

52:42

them have made this movie yet

52:44

because this is obviously grist for

52:47

a film like that and it's

52:49

exactly the whole bunch of really

52:51

great Korean movies following different incidents

52:53

in their recent foreign difficult history.

52:56

But it's a... a very strange story

52:58

that, you know, as you can

53:00

tell from the being in two

53:02

huts, mixes cinema history

53:05

with espionage and

53:07

intelligence operations. Yeah, the, I

53:10

mean, the, the reputational

53:12

turnaround is also partly going

53:14

to be because South Korea

53:16

democratizes in 86 and as

53:18

parties that were opposed to

53:21

the old governing party rise,

53:23

it becomes... less imperative to back

53:25

the old governing party's dumb ideas

53:27

such as let's ban Shin and

53:30

also you have I think sort

53:32

of a broader understanding as the

53:34

South Korean press becomes more available

53:36

to everybody that yeah this kind

53:38

of thing is going on all

53:40

the time that people who vanish

53:42

are not necessarily defectors they are

53:44

often kidnapped and One assumes that

53:46

you would rather believe that your

53:48

loved one was kidnapped by the

53:50

North Koreans than believe that they

53:52

were defecting at least maybe you

53:54

would be I think that that

53:56

sort of psychic space opens up

53:58

in Korea after the general democratization

54:00

of the country and again this

54:02

guy's a great movie maker and

54:04

storyteller and Koreans if there's anything

54:06

they love they love their movie

54:08

makers and their storytellers and you'd

54:10

hate to think mean things about

54:12

that guy forever right so if

54:14

a fictionalized version right you could

54:16

do a mission impossible style mission

54:18

where your job is to infiltrate

54:20

a country somewhere behind the iron

54:22

curtain or some other totalitarian regime

54:24

where they have kidnapped famous filmmakers

54:26

and you have this run get

54:28

them back out again, or your

54:30

job could just be to get

54:32

the tape recorder to them, or

54:34

they could have some sort of

54:36

information about the country after they

54:38

defect that you want to go

54:40

to them to get information for

54:42

your infiltration mission. Yeah, the notion

54:44

might be that the film director

54:46

is making a vampire movie, and

54:48

so that's how it ties into

54:50

your night's black agents guys. You're

54:52

like, oh, the vampires that are

54:54

active behind this totalitarian regime are

54:57

making a vampire movie for reasons

54:59

unknown, or he's making vampire movie

55:01

as a secret Samis Dot, and

55:03

it's a message to you guys

55:05

or to the Vatican or whoever's

55:07

occasionally giving you missions. You can

55:09

say, go get this guy out.

55:11

He knows a bunch of stuff

55:13

about the vampires. That's why he's

55:15

making this series of vampire movies

55:17

in Belarus or wherever. And so

55:19

you have to sort of extract

55:21

them from this situation while not...

55:23

Letting on that you know about

55:25

the vampires because that's the one

55:27

sure thing that the secret police

55:29

are on the lookout for and

55:31

That could be sort of a

55:33

fun You know, is it a

55:35

movie? Is it real life lots

55:37

of fake blood and fake fangs?

55:39

That could be a wild nice

55:41

black agents adventure right there Well

55:43

speaking emissions Ken it's time to

55:45

debrief you on a mission which

55:47

we're going to do right after

55:49

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four days in gaming. All year

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long. So,

57:16

Ken, Time Incorporated, which, of course,

57:18

as you can tell by the

57:20

clacking chronotons in the ring of

57:23

time gears, is the subject and

57:25

sponsor of this segment, monitors the

57:27

use of its time machines, and

57:29

sometimes they find... They are such

57:31

kill Joyce. Yeah, that their agents

57:33

have done some unexpected things, and

57:35

recently they found a change in

57:37

the time stream that they kind

57:39

of suspected Ken was you, and

57:41

they checked the chronoton emission meter,

57:43

and it turned out that it

57:45

was... a machine that you have

57:48

out. And so they're not mad.

57:50

They're not even necessarily disappointed. They

57:52

assume probably that you had a

57:54

good reason, but let's say they're

57:56

puzzled. So they want to know

57:58

why you did this. What you

58:00

did was arrange for a

58:02

collection of texts to be found

58:04

inside a fish. Yes, Ken, your

58:06

activities gave rise to what is

58:09

now known in the time stream

58:11

as the Cambridge bookfish. So

58:13

perhaps as you begin to

58:15

account for your actions, before

58:17

you explain why you did

58:19

this, perhaps you could. Tell us

58:22

what has now happened in the

58:24

time stream as the result of

58:26

your intervention. All right, so I

58:28

cast your I, your fictive I

58:30

back to mid-summer day, 1626, June

58:32

23rd. This is the fish market

58:35

in Cambridge. There is a lady,

58:37

her name is Joanna Brady as

58:39

far as you can tell or

58:41

Joe Quiana Brady, and she is

58:43

chopping the head off a fish

58:45

to demonstrate that it's still delicious

58:47

and good, and she chops the

58:50

head, and the axe only goes a

58:52

little bit through, and she like, what

58:54

the heck's going on? Pops the head

58:56

off, and inside of the fish, there

58:59

is a book. and it is

59:01

described as covered in slime and

59:03

wrapped in canvas cellcloth and that

59:05

the book had been somewhat dissolved

59:07

by the goo inside the fish.

59:10

And this is a giant codfish

59:12

and fortunately, as one might expect

59:14

at the Cambridge fish market, there

59:16

is a scholar handy and this

59:19

is a guy named Joseph Meade

59:21

and... He's the guy that they

59:23

call when the crowd sees the

59:25

book come out of the fish.

59:28

They say, come here a professor

59:30

and he shows up. He is

59:32

a naturalist Egyptologist, which I don't

59:34

know what that means in 1626,

59:36

but probably means that he was

59:38

interested in mummies. A demonologist said

59:40

that demons are real and they

59:43

cause bad stuff and don't get

59:45

over your skis, age of reason.

59:47

A student of the book of

59:49

Daniel and revelation, so an expert

59:51

in poor tents and eschatology in

59:53

general. And he... takes the book

59:55

that is extracted from this fish

59:57

and carries it back to his

1:00:00

chambers to ungoop as much as

1:00:02

he can to figure out what

1:00:04

the book is. Now most people

1:00:06

regarded this as an absolutely authentic

1:00:08

situation that the book was really

1:00:10

in the fish. There was even

1:00:12

at the time a fun runner

1:00:14

who pointed out quote the fish

1:00:16

woman was alone with the cod

1:00:18

for some time. Well yeah she

1:00:21

had to get the cod from

1:00:23

Kings Lynn where it was caught

1:00:25

to Cambridge she's on a cart

1:00:27

carrying the fish sure I don't

1:00:29

know what that's supposed to prove

1:00:31

I think that that book went

1:00:33

into that fish by some sort

1:00:35

of miracle or time machine. You

1:00:37

know the book went into the

1:00:39

fish because I put it there.

1:00:42

Because I put it there. How

1:00:44

dare you blame Joe O'Connor Brady,

1:00:46

a simple fish woman. trying to

1:00:48

earn a living, a decent lady,

1:00:50

and very fond of Apple brandy,

1:00:52

just a thing I'll point out.

1:00:54

Anyway, Meade has sort of a

1:00:56

description of how he sort of

1:00:58

conserves and preserves the book. He

1:01:00

puts paper in between the pages

1:01:03

to soak up the goo, and

1:01:05

Meade, by the way, is very

1:01:07

salty about people who say it

1:01:09

was faked. He said, anyone who

1:01:11

smelled my quarters would know that

1:01:13

I did not fake this. He

1:01:15

says, if you've ever smelled a

1:01:17

fish, you know that this book

1:01:19

really came out of a fish.

1:01:21

So he's very mad about it.

1:01:24

Yeah, it turns out to be

1:01:26

a recurring theme. Yeah, I've got

1:01:28

to back to you again later.

1:01:30

He dates the book to 1540

1:01:32

based on its typography. It is

1:01:34

a small book. It's a sextodecimo,

1:01:36

four by six and three quarters

1:01:38

inches. And, you know, he starts

1:01:40

piecing out pages that he can

1:01:43

read some of his old gummy

1:01:45

and goofy and goofy. guys at

1:01:47

Cambridge then pull down other copies

1:01:49

of the various tracks and the

1:01:51

book contains three treatises all bound

1:01:53

together. One of them is of

1:01:55

the preparation to the cross written

1:01:57

in 1540 by again a Richard

1:01:59

Tracy who was a well-known clerical

1:02:01

scholar. Two tracks by the martyr

1:02:04

John Frith and John Frith was

1:02:06

a Protestant martyr martyred like two

1:02:08

weeks before King Henry the eighth

1:02:10

turned England Protestant. So very annoying

1:02:12

on some level. But before his

1:02:14

martyring in 1533, he had written

1:02:16

a letter which was written to

1:02:18

the faithful followers of Christ's Gospel,

1:02:20

also known as the Treasure of

1:02:22

Knowledge, that was first published after

1:02:25

his martyrdom, sort of a compendium

1:02:27

of his thoughts on. Paul and

1:02:29

on Christ and why Protestant was

1:02:31

right and Catholicism was wrong. And

1:02:33

then another sort of self-help spiritual

1:02:35

guide, a mirror or glass to

1:02:37

know thy self, which was published

1:02:39

while he was alive in 1532.

1:02:41

And in 1528 he was a

1:02:43

professor at Oxford, John Frith was,

1:02:46

but they said that he had

1:02:48

Protestant books in his library and

1:02:50

they grabbed him and they imprisoned

1:02:52

him in a fish cellar or

1:02:54

as the book as the... the

1:02:56

later book said a dark cave

1:02:58

full of saltfish right and he

1:03:00

was the only one who survived

1:03:02

being there were other prisoners there

1:03:04

yeah and the other one's also

1:03:07

come to quote the impure exhalations

1:03:09

of unsound saltfish yep that's that'll

1:03:11

like a deeply unpleasant way to

1:03:13

go it does he survive but

1:03:15

he he survives he gets out

1:03:17

and runs to Europe and then

1:03:19

comes back to England to preach

1:03:21

the Protestant teachings and he gets

1:03:23

martered for it burn at the

1:03:26

stake in 1533 in Smithfield. So

1:03:28

just like people were accused of

1:03:30

being prematurely anti-fascist, in the 40s

1:03:32

and 50s, he was prematurely promised.

1:03:34

Exactly. And his example was one

1:03:36

that in the 1620s, people were

1:03:38

sort of hearkening back to to

1:03:40

say, back in the day, we

1:03:42

didn't have truck with this pseudo-Catholic

1:03:44

stuff like King Charles I was

1:03:47

trying to sneak in. We died

1:03:49

for our faith. two weeks before

1:03:51

it wasn't necessary. And so John

1:03:53

Frith, between being the only survivor

1:03:55

of a fishhole and also being

1:03:57

a martyr to pure Protestantism, what

1:03:59

was later being called Puritanism,

1:04:01

although Frith predates Calvin in

1:04:04

England, so it's not quite as clear

1:04:06

as it might be, but they use

1:04:08

him as a symbol, and he was

1:04:10

the point. So that's why Mead, who

1:04:12

probably knew better, said that all three

1:04:15

books were by Frith in the republishing,

1:04:17

and the republishing was done in 1627.

1:04:19

The book was called Voxpiscus. a voice

1:04:21

of the fish, the argument being that

1:04:23

this is a voice of prophecy come

1:04:25

out of a modern day whale, just

1:04:28

like Jonah is vomited forth to preach

1:04:30

the gospel to the people of Nineveh,

1:04:32

the sinners in Assyria, therefore... The

1:04:34

fish has wholly intentionality. Exactly.

1:04:36

And that's what it's doing.

1:04:38

So the forward in the

1:04:40

Voxpiscus tells the story, even

1:04:43

repeats various undergraduate jokes about

1:04:45

the fish. This is the

1:04:47

story... Absolutely. This lovely plate

1:04:49

illustration of the fish. It's

1:04:51

contemporary as far as we

1:04:53

can tell. It's in other

1:04:55

records. Something happened, the story

1:04:57

of the fish happened. And

1:04:59

Thomas Gode, who writes the

1:05:01

forward, interestingly enough, Thomas Gode

1:05:03

is sort of an Armenian, which is

1:05:05

the sort of trying to soften the

1:05:07

harsh edges of Calvinism, you know, first

1:05:10

step to Catholicism that frith and the

1:05:12

frithites like mead would oppose, but Gode

1:05:14

is famous and... maybe needs to walk

1:05:16

back his Armenianism a little bit. So

1:05:18

in the preface he warns of ghostly

1:05:21

dangers which may and do on every

1:05:23

side besieges. And I think what he

1:05:25

needs is spiritual dangers, but I like

1:05:27

ghostly dangers. So if we were going

1:05:30

a whole different direction with this, this

1:05:32

was a Liptony hut, then we'd talk

1:05:34

about all the weird haunted stuff that goes

1:05:36

on in Cambridge. But this is Ken's time

1:05:38

machine. This is Ken's time machine. I'm not

1:05:40

going to explain why you're putting a book

1:05:43

in a book in a fish. change

1:05:45

the time stream for the better. Yes,

1:05:47

what it does is this is, and

1:05:49

it's not just the Vox Pissus, this

1:05:51

is not the only thing that does

1:05:53

it, but it is part of a

1:05:55

campaign of propaganda, and I think you

1:05:57

can use that term, to get the

1:05:59

Puritan. component of England sort of

1:06:01

alert to the erosion of their

1:06:04

liberties and the replacement of various

1:06:06

pure Protestants in the Anglican Church

1:06:08

with Armenians and pseudo Catholics at

1:06:10

the behest of Charles I. It

1:06:13

is perhaps not a coincidence that

1:06:15

the fish is found right after

1:06:17

the Duke of Buckingham becomes Chancellor

1:06:19

of Cambridge, which is a giant

1:06:22

scandal because the Duke of Buckingham

1:06:24

is a bad person on every

1:06:26

level and also not particularly good

1:06:28

Protestant and so the notion that

1:06:31

he's running Cambridge is a giant

1:06:33

ideological threat to the properly constituted

1:06:35

Anglican Church and the reason is

1:06:37

the same Duke of Buckingham who

1:06:40

was in the mummy story last

1:06:42

week no it's not that was

1:06:44

a 1717 this is a different

1:06:46

Duke of Buckingham is from the

1:06:48

three musketeers okay yeah but anyway

1:06:51

that Duke of Buckingham is a

1:06:53

problem and you know part of

1:06:55

the climate of danger and He

1:06:57

is assassinated in 1628 and is

1:07:00

it because someone is radicalized by

1:07:02

a fish? I couldn't say. But

1:07:04

the point is that what you

1:07:06

don't want is a steward either

1:07:09

crackdown that obviates the civil war

1:07:11

or a steward victory in the

1:07:13

civil war because then England becomes

1:07:15

a unitary monarchy, a power centered

1:07:18

in the crown and aristocracy country

1:07:20

like France. What that means is

1:07:22

that if England does get a

1:07:24

revolution, it becomes a bloody disaster

1:07:27

like the French Revolution, instead of

1:07:29

the American Revolution, best revolution ever,

1:07:31

and without the English Civil War

1:07:33

playing out the way that it

1:07:36

does, you aren't going to get

1:07:38

a proper American Revolution in 1776.

1:07:40

And also you're not going to

1:07:42

get, on a somewhat lesser degree,

1:07:45

England's tradition of civil liberty, which

1:07:47

is again preserved by having that

1:07:49

pushback. fatally in some cases against

1:07:51

the king. And in order to

1:07:54

get that message out and create

1:07:56

this inspiration you resorted to the

1:07:58

unconventional medium of... of a fish?

1:08:00

Well, that's because John Mead is

1:08:03

as primed as anyone to really

1:08:05

take that open of a new gospel,

1:08:07

an old gospel, coming out of

1:08:09

the mouth of a fish and

1:08:11

run with it. As I say,

1:08:14

he's a specialist in eschatology. He

1:08:16

knows all about naturalism, so he

1:08:18

knows about the fish. He's going

1:08:21

to be a very credible witness

1:08:23

on that, and he's also... a

1:08:25

great writer and great scholar and

1:08:28

very wired in to the Puritan

1:08:30

and Puritan sympathetic community in England.

1:08:32

So he's the ideal guy to

1:08:34

write the various works of propaganda

1:08:37

that will drive the country away

1:08:39

from the Carolinian unitary state and

1:08:41

that's what we want. So the

1:08:44

fish is because that's what would

1:08:46

get Joseph Mead's attention and really

1:08:48

amp him up. to do a

1:08:51

really good job of propagandizing this

1:08:53

situation. And also, it's fun. Right.

1:08:55

So I guess this is a

1:08:58

time-March scenario where your job is

1:09:00

to make sure that that fish continues

1:09:02

its journey in order to be discovered at

1:09:04

the right moment by Joseph B. Right. And

1:09:06

I bet there are all sorts of

1:09:09

complications where other people want that

1:09:11

cause. Want to buy, eat, or steal

1:09:13

that cod. Well, since that's... This is

1:09:15

also obvious. I think we can close

1:09:17

up the podcast for another week.

1:09:20

because there's nothing simpler than

1:09:22

a story in which you're trying to

1:09:24

protect a cod with a bunch

1:09:26

of religious manuscripts in it. Right, it's

1:09:28

that old chestnut. Yeah, so it's a

1:09:31

cliche, frankly. But we'll be back with

1:09:33

more original material next week.

1:09:35

Fresher stuff, so to speak. Yes. Stuff

1:09:38

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