0:15

Pushkin. Hello

0:18

and welcome to Cautionary Tales. I am

0:21

Tim Harford. This is one of our Cautionary

0:23

Conversations episodes. We

0:25

are sponsored this week by Amazon

0:27

Prime, the creators of the

0:30

Rings of Power. And I'm actually so excited

0:32

i could pop. I'm in the studio with Alice

0:34

Fin's Cautionary Tales series producer.

0:37

And why am I so excited? Alis?

0:38

You're so excited because we're about to do

0:41

a massive rundown of all your favorite cautionary

0:43

tales and the works of your favorite

0:45

author, Tolkien.

0:46

Yes, we're going to talk about Gerah Tolkien.

0:49

We're going to talk about the Rings of Power, and we're going to talk

0:51

about cautionary tales. It's like all

0:53

my birthdays and Christmas have come at

0:55

the same time. I'm in case you haven't

0:57

guessed, I'm an absolutely massive

1:00

fan of Tolkien. I've been a massive

1:02

fan of Tolkien for approximately forty five

1:04

years. And I think

1:06

that Tolkien is full of cautionary tales. And this

1:09

new series, Rings of Power is also full of cautioning

1:11

tales. So that is what we're going to talk about.

1:13

And I am this side of the glass today

1:15

as a non expert enthusiast

1:18

who has also watched Rings of Power and is also

1:20

very excited to speak about it. Now, if you haven't

1:22

seen Rings of Power yet, there's something for everyone

1:25

in the mix. It's an action story, it's a psychological

1:27

thriller. It's a fantasy story. So

1:29

make sure you go and watch it.

1:30

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

1:32

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

1:35

it's a fantasy about elves and orcs

1:38

and all things Tolkien esk, and we will get into

1:40

that. But it is also full of cautionary tales.

1:42

It is full of the kind of ideas

1:45

that we explore in caution retales.

1:47

And as I was watching it, all kinds

1:49

of things sprung to mind, and I imagine

1:51

they sprung to your mind as well.

1:53

They certainly did.

1:54

Okay, so we should probably begin

1:57

with a little bit of background. The Rings

1:59

of Power is a prequel to

2:02

the events of the Hobbit and the Lord of

2:04

the Rings. It is set thousands of years

2:06

before those events. Tolkien wrote

2:09

enormous amounts of law, so

2:11

this is a new story set

2:13

thousands of years before the Lord of the Rings. We

2:16

do meet some of the characters in the Lord of the Rings.

2:18

For example, we meet el Rond, we meet

2:20

Galadriel. They are elves,

2:23

Elands, half Elven. They lived for thousands

2:25

of years, so you know you can meet them as their

2:27

younger selves before they became those

2:29

later characters.

2:30

Yes, so l Rond we know later

2:32

as an elf ruler in Rivendell. Galadriel

2:35

a very powerful royal Elf. They are

2:37

played by Robert Rameo and Morphind Clark

2:39

rather brilliantly. So Rings of Power gives us

2:42

their origin stories. And it's also the origin

2:44

story of the Rings of Power themselves

2:46

and the One Ring, which there's

2:49

quite a lot of fuss about. So tim, what is going on with

2:51

those Well.

2:51

A lot of fuss about. This is about the Ring

2:53

and the quest to destroy the One Ring.

2:56

The Rings of Power were made

2:59

under the influence of the Big Baddie

3:02

Saron. There were three made by

3:04

and four the elves. There were seven for the dwarves.

3:06

There were nine immortal men and

3:09

wrought by himself the One Ring. And

3:11

this is a source of ultimate

3:13

evil and corruption in

3:16

the Lord of the Rings. So in the Rings of Power we

3:18

get to see, well, why were these things

3:20

made? Who made them? And I imagine

3:22

in season two, which we haven't watched yet,

3:25

we're going to see a little bit more about the consequences

3:27

of making them.

3:28

We actually see quite a few sort of

3:30

mini origin stories peppered throughout season

3:32

one. So someone else we meet is

3:35

an ancestor of Aragon Izildon, who

3:37

actually.

3:38

Sorry to correct you there, Alison Aragon

3:40

is actually descended from an Arian who is Isolu's

3:43

brother, Thank you so, But yes,

3:46

Isldure, we know, from the Lord of the Rings, famous

3:48

tool who fails to destroy the One

3:51

Ring when he could have destroyed the One Ring. And he's you

3:53

know, a little bit of a muppet in the

3:56

Rings of Power as well, isn't he.

3:57

I was about to say, if I'm honest, it's not looking

3:59

good for him.

4:00

No, no, but there you go. I mean, the

4:02

character arc is consistent. You know, he makes mistakes.

4:05

He's going to make mistakes in the future. So

4:07

we're going to talk about some of the characters, and we

4:10

are going to talk about the cautionary tales

4:12

they bring to mind from the social

4:14

science behind what happens

4:16

in the Rings of Power and some of the

4:18

things that occur in the Rings of Power

4:21

that echo true stories that

4:23

we have told in cautionary tales,

4:25

I should say there are going to be some spoilers for season

4:28

one. There are not going to be any sort of spoilers

4:30

for season two because we haven't seen season two. It

4:33

is out on the twenty ninth of August on Amazon

4:36

Prime. I for one, am

4:38

eagerly looking forward to it. So

5:04

we should begin with one of the

5:06

key protagonists, the heroine,

5:09

one of the heroines of the

5:11

Rings of Power, Galadriel. We

5:14

see her in The Lord of the Rings. Here we see

5:17

her as a child and then

5:19

later as an incredibly determined

5:22

pursuer of evil. I say determined,

5:25

I mean maybe it's determined, Maybe it's obsessive,

5:27

maybe it's irrational. Everyone

5:30

else seems to think that she's completely unhinged.

5:32

Saron has long since disappeared from the

5:34

world, and yet Galadriel will not give up

5:37

the hunt for him.

5:38

So early on in the series

5:40

covers a few centuries of Galadriel's

5:42

life. We see Gladriel and her beloved

5:44

brother Finrod battling Morgoth, who

5:47

is a kind of evil entity

5:49

demonic actually who.

5:52

Moth Saron's boss, so he when

5:54

he was defeated, Saron took up the Baton and

5:57

continued the pursuit of evil in Middle Earth.

5:59

So Galadriel vows to take up

6:01

her brother's mission, and she spends centuries

6:04

seeking out Sourn and this

6:07

intangible evil that she believes is

6:09

there, And eventually others stop

6:11

rallying around the cause. She starts

6:13

to seem like she might just be kind

6:16

of a lone zealot. And it

6:18

all comes to a head when she

6:20

leads her company to this sort of snowy wasteland.

6:23

It looks absolutely miserable, but because they're elves,

6:25

I guess they don't die of cold.

6:26

Absolutely. She thinks

6:29

that she is seeing signs of Salon, but

6:31

others don't really believe that

6:33

that's what she's seeing.

6:34

There are signs, right, but the signs are are centuries

6:36

old. So the fact that somebody wrote

6:38

a sign hundreds of years ago, what does that

6:40

tell you now?

6:41

Right exactly? The threat is not imminent. There's

6:44

this brush with the snow troll. They lose

6:46

faith in her, they stop following her,

6:48

and when they go home, she's commended for her

6:50

bravery. But it's all kind of a bit

6:52

hollow.

6:52

It's very hollow. So the King of the Els,

6:55

Gilgallard, rewards her with

6:57

a one way trip to Valenore, which.

7:00

Is false retirement, isn't it.

7:02

Yeah, it's kind of elf heaven, and I

7:04

mean it's supposed to be a big reward, but it

7:06

doesn't feel like a reward

7:08

to her. Feels like she's basically being, as

7:11

you say, forcibly, retired and

7:13

stripped of her duties,

7:15

and it feels like a punishment to

7:18

her. It becomes apparent later that Gilgalad

7:20

did this deliberately. It's not just that

7:22

he meant to reward her, but she didn't

7:24

really view it as a reward. He wanted to take

7:26

her out of the picture. Because it becomes clear that

7:28

Gilgallard, the elf king, he thinks

7:31

that Gladrial is actually the problem,

7:33

like the fact that there is still evil in the world. There's evil

7:35

in the world because Gladriuel is so obsessed

7:37

with evil. There's a line that a wind that can

7:40

blow out a fire can also fan the flames.

7:42

One of the things that really struck me here is

7:45

Galadril is treated a little bit

7:47

like our whistle blowing hero

7:50

in Whistleblower on the twenty eighth Floor,

7:53

which is our episode about the equity finance

7:55

fraud the equity finance Forward was effectively the equivalent

7:57

of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme only

8:00

in the nineteen seventies. And

8:02

the man who identified

8:04

that this fraud was taking place and delivered the

8:06

evidence of this fraud to the SEC cur

8:09

it as an Exchange Commission, the US financial

8:11

regulator. He was then prosecuted by

8:13

the SEC, and obviously

8:15

gladually is a rather more dynamic

8:18

and compelling and charismatic figure than Ray Dirk's.

8:20

But the way that we punish the

8:22

people who are trying to

8:24

alert us to danger, I think is a

8:27

is a theme in certain caution detales, and very

8:29

strongly a theme in the early episode

8:31

ser Rings of Power.

8:32

Yes, A key takeaway in that episode,

8:34

the Whistleblower on the twenty eighth Floor, is that whistleblowing

8:37

is often far more trouble than it's worth. You

8:39

might be shunned, it may be hard to find

8:41

employment after. People don't like bad

8:43

news. Essentially, you lose your

8:45

friends because your friends are

8:48

people from work.

8:49

It's difficult to survive financially and

8:52

emotionally. They don't like bad

8:54

news, and also they often blame the messenger, not

8:56

because they don't just dislike the bad news,

8:58

but because the people who are willing to

9:01

defy that social pressure

9:03

are often quite awkward. Whistleblower

9:05

once contacted my colleagues at the Financial Times.

9:08

When my journalistic colleague picked up the

9:10

phone, the first line the whistleblower

9:12

uttered was, my name is Tarantula.

9:15

That is not my real name. You

9:18

just sound mad. That's just who phone's

9:20

a journalist and says my name is Tarantela. Yeah.

9:22

You might not endear yourself to people by.

9:24

Doing that, really not. But it turns out, actually

9:26

it was a very important fraud that this person

9:28

was blowing the whistle on, and Ray Dirk's

9:30

was a kind of awkward character and glad Youel

9:33

is in many ways extremely obnoxious

9:35

in this series. She rubs people up the wrong

9:37

way. She's absolutely convinced she's right. She

9:40

doesn't hesitate to let other people

9:42

know that she thinks they're idiots, and this turns

9:44

out to be quite common behavior from whistleblowers.

9:46

She is right, but there are moments where you think,

9:49

oh, take a day off. We talk

9:51

in that episode, particularly about

9:54

anti money laundering officers in banks, and

9:56

there are these examples of how when you blow the whistle

9:59

on a bank. You're blowing the whistle on regulatory

10:01

failure. Yeah, you're blowing the whistle on

10:04

everyone not doing what they're supposed to do.

10:06

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

10:09

screwed up. You screwed up. And my job

10:11

is to tell you that you screwed up. And it turns out that

10:13

that's your job title, but your actual job is

10:15

to tick some boxes, not make a fuss.

10:18

Don't rock the boat. And Gladriel is absolutely

10:20

rocking the boat, right. She's pointing to everyone's

10:22

collective failure to vanquish evil and to stay

10:25

regilant. And it's

10:27

a lot easier to dismiss that lone voice that's

10:29

screaming into the wind than to say, hey, maybe

10:32

we do actually have a problem here.

10:33

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

10:36

As anybody who's read The Lord of

10:38

the Rings knows Saron did

10:40

not disappear. Saron comes back. We know Saron

10:43

comes back, and even if we haven't read The Lord of the

10:45

Rings, we kind of guess that Saron is still

10:47

out there, so we kind of narratively we

10:50

know Gladriel's right. And

10:52

so there is such a thing as as hindsight

10:54

bias, and I think it's hard to avoid

10:57

that as a viewer of the series. So the

10:59

classic example of outcome

11:01

bias is an experiment run by a couple

11:03

of psychologists in nineteen eighty eight Baron and Hershey.

11:06

Whether they're asking people to evaluate decisions.

11:09

These might be medical decisions, for example, or they might

11:11

be financial decisions, but they also explain how

11:13

things worked out. So here's a doctor,

11:15

this is what the doctor did, and this is in the ed what happened

11:17

to the patient. And people find it

11:20

completely impossible to separate

11:23

the decision making process from the outcome.

11:25

If you're told the outcome, you can't

11:27

neutually judge the process. And here we know

11:30

the outcome. We know sound's out there, so we know Gladriel's

11:32

right. So I think the storytellers

11:35

have to work quite hard in this series to make Gladriels

11:38

seem irrational and seem unhinged.

11:39

When she's speaking about this intangible evil being

11:41

out there, what she keeps referencing as this inner

11:44

intuition, it's not really perceptible

11:46

or measurable by her colleagues.

11:48

They can only kind of work with what's in front of them

11:51

and think about all the other things they need to balance.

11:53

Yeah, she thinks she's right. She thinks they're wrong.

11:56

They think the opposite. I mean, who's to judge?

11:58

Right?

11:59

I think there is another reading of Gladriel

12:01

which is possible here, which is that she is

12:03

a grieving person or a grieving elf. She

12:07

takes on her brother's after he

12:10

dies, She takes his dagger. She says, his vow became

12:12

mine. She's grappling

12:14

with her relationship with him even though he's

12:16

gone, which is sort of what grieving is.

12:19

There's a sense in which his death ignites

12:22

this fire in her. In her words, it whips

12:24

up a tempest that won't be quelled. Emotion

12:27

and loss are kind of propelling her on for

12:30

l ron. For people observing her, it

12:32

seems like something's broken in her right.

12:35

There's a sense that emotion and anger are

12:37

clouding her judgment rather than helping

12:39

her maybe see truths other people can't,

12:42

which reminds me of this

12:44

trope of the mad woman that we see kind

12:46

of recur in history and in literature, a powerful

12:48

woman in particular whose emotion

12:51

renders them overly dramatic, overly

12:53

passionate, It automatically undermines them

12:56

in cautionary tails. It reminds

12:58

me of Anna Marie Jarvis.

13:00

Oh wow, Anamary Jarvis. That's that's

13:03

a deep cut. I like that. So, yes,

13:05

the inventor of Mother's

13:07

Day? Or was she the inventor of Mother's Day? She

13:09

certainly thought she was the inventor of Mother's

13:12

Day and then was incredibly defensive of it.

13:14

Indeed, so her life's work, I

13:16

mean, Anne Marie Jarvis is also a grieving

13:19

woman, right, Her life's work is

13:21

honoring her dad, mother, and

13:23

she believes that that. Then her day,

13:25

Mother's Day gets co opted by these sort of

13:27

cynical interests, and she

13:30

tries to take back what she has created, and

13:32

she's upset. I mean, of course she's upset.

13:34

Yeah, But she starts writing very vitriolic

13:37

letters and everything is sort

13:39

of painted as good and evil

13:41

and sort of the noble idea of

13:43

Mother's Day. And these corrupt florists,

13:46

the evil florists who have you initially

13:49

of course supported her.

13:50

Why don't you stop fraud against

13:52

Mother's Day through misrepresentation

13:55

about founder. You know, no

13:57

person in your town ever gave a cent

13:59

for Mother's Day, nor was its promoter.

14:02

No honest person would make such

14:04

a claim. Stop the deception

14:07

and game.

14:09

It's a miserable story at the end.

14:11

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

14:13

but it is striking to me that she starts

14:15

something, or she is instrumental in starting

14:17

something that is still recognized in the US

14:20

today. But in the end, Time Magazine

14:22

remembers her as just this old woman, a busy

14:24

body, a recluse, a bit of a

14:26

weirdo. And

14:28

there are many, many ways. I think that Galadriel

14:30

and Anna Marie Jarvis are very different,

14:33

but I do think they are both judged

14:35

very harshly by the societies they live in.

14:37

Did Galadriel ever throw a Mother's Day salad

14:39

on the floor.

14:40

I wouldn't put it past her. But

14:43

they're judged for their extremes of emotion and

14:45

for the fire that lights in them and the missions

14:47

that gives them.

14:48

I think Gladril is going to come out very well

14:51

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

14:53

But I think you're right.

14:54

I will say overall, in Rings of

14:56

Power, women come across very well. They are very

14:59

powerful, very wise, very brave.

15:01

Yes, But Gladriel, she certainly has

15:03

an edge to her, so Gladriola's Radix,

15:05

the equity finance whistleblower, gladriel

15:08

as Anna, Marie J. Harvest, the salad

15:10

hurling creator of Mother's

15:12

Day. These are depths that I had not previously

15:15

seen in the Rings of Power. We will plumb

15:17

more depths and we will explore more parallels

15:20

after the break.

15:32

Okay, Tim, picture the scene. You're

15:35

at home in Oxford, in your living room,

15:37

waging a very intriguing dungeons

15:40

and Dragons campaign.

15:41

Okay, it's all too easy to picture

15:45

all of us the typical Tuesday.

15:48

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

15:50

there's an almighty crash and through

15:52

the floorboards appears an ork who has

15:54

been undermining your house. What

15:57

are you gonna do?

15:58

Okay, yeah, I'm hid in the cupboard.

16:00

I think would be my reaction.

16:02

That that's fair, because they're terrifying.

16:04

They are absolutely terrifying.

16:06

In the Wings of Power. We should just remind

16:08

people. I'm Tim Harford, eur Alice find

16:11

we are sponsored by Amazon Prime and the Rings of

16:13

Power, and we're talking about parallels between

16:16

the Rings of Power and cautionary tales.

16:18

And yes, they

16:20

are spine chilling.

16:23

Spine chilling. They spend a lot of time digging that

16:25

scene I just described in fact unfolds in

16:27

the show. I have to say I would back

16:29

you more than most to survive the Orc

16:31

Apocalypse.

16:33

Any particular reason.

16:35

Your extensive knowledge the

16:38

enemy, the enemy, you know that weaknesses.

16:40

Yes, well sunlight one of the weekness.

16:43

Yeah, which which indeed the

16:45

Orcs are planning to do something about that particular

16:47

problem in this series. But

16:49

no, there they just are

16:53

unsettling. They're like something kind of a horror movie

16:57

rather than an action film. Here,

16:58

they're thoroughly chilling, which

17:00

I think is is very

17:03

welcome development in the Rings

17:05

of Power. But yes, so they've got this

17:07

project though, the Orcs, they have a project not

17:09

just interested in butchering

17:12

livestock and kidnapping people and shooting people

17:14

full of arrows, although they do do plenty of that.

17:16

That's also a hobby. Yeah, I mean, we'll

17:18

come to the project. But I do have a question

17:20

for you. First. Rings of

17:22

Power sort of elucidates

17:24

where Orcs come from. They are these twisted,

17:27

tortured elves according to Gladriel.

17:30

Yes, I've not totally got

17:32

my head around it. There seems to be a limitless

17:34

supply of them. How does this work?

17:36

Yes, well, I think orcs are quite feckened.

17:39

I think orks like to get busy with

17:41

other orcs, and yes, or I

17:43

mean there are certain scenes where they appear

17:45

to be almost manufactured. But yes, I think they

17:48

are. They breed quickly

17:51

as a race, and yes, Galadriel says

17:53

they're twisted elves. Tolkien himself

17:56

actually gave different accounts

17:59

of where orcs came from. I mean, this

18:01

is almost like a theological thing for

18:03

him. Could the master

18:05

of all evil, mor Goth? Could he create

18:07

life? Or could he only twisted

18:09

pervert life? And so he had

18:11

different different views. But I think the view

18:14

that is most popular, that's expressed in the Lord of

18:16

the Rings is that Morgarth took

18:19

elves and then he twisted elves in

18:21

mockery and turned them into into

18:23

orcs. And that was the worst thing he ever did,

18:26

was to take elves and to turn them into too orcs.

18:28

It was of all the evil acts he commits over

18:30

thousands of years, and he gets up to all sorts

18:32

of mischief, the creation of

18:34

the orcs was that was the worst,

18:37

the most spiteful thing he did. But

18:39

anyway, wherever they came from, their

18:42

their back and they are undermining,

18:45

literally undermining human civilization.

18:49

Serious.

18:49

This sense of them as an inversion

18:51

of something is very interesting. There's

18:54

something kind of corpse like about them. They're sort

18:56

of bloated, rotting sun, sunken

18:58

flesh almost kind of it's like

19:00

they shouldn't exist, really, I suppose,

19:02

which is partly what makes them terrifying.

19:04

Yes, and they killed, they kill things, so they kill

19:07

livestock, and they chop down tree and

19:10

for no obvious reason, they just destruction

19:13

for destruction's sake. But in

19:15

the end they do have a plan.

19:16

They have a plan. We see them

19:19

in prisoning elves in what seems

19:21

to be a kind of prison camp.

19:23

I would say, yeah, and we don't know what

19:26

they're building at first. We find out later

19:28

yes.

19:29

Yes, but both humans and elves

19:31

are being kidnapped and enslaved and

19:33

put to work on this project. So

19:35

the leader of the Orcs, who is this character

19:38

called ad.

19:38

Are played terrifyingly by Joseph

19:40

Moore.

19:41

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

19:43

who he is and where he came from and what his

19:45

connection is to Sarah. And that's one of the mysteries

19:48

of the show, But I think you've

19:50

identified him. He's a

19:52

fair enoughon Brown.

19:55

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

19:57

Well?

19:57

As listeners to our epic V

20:00

two Rocket trilogy will know,

20:02

Von Brown was this not so much brilliant

20:04

engineer or brilliant scientists, but brilliant coordinator

20:07

of scientists, brilliant project manager

20:09

who had this vision of going

20:12

to the Moon and didn't

20:15

really care who was hurt

20:17

in seeing that vision

20:20

realized. And so while it

20:22

all worked out very well for him, in the end, he ended up

20:24

working for NASA and making films with

20:27

Disney and living the American dream.

20:30

He first of all, was probably

20:32

the single most important person involved

20:34

in the building of the V two rocket, which

20:36

is a weapon of mass destruction and targeted

20:39

I mean we're not really targeted at all, but to the

20:41

extent that it was even vaguely aimed, it was aimed at civilians.

20:44

So you're trying to kill civilians, and

20:46

they successfully did kill civilians with

20:48

this rocket, and he didn't seem to care because

20:51

hate he's got funding to build rockets, and he wants

20:53

to build rockets, and in the end he's going to go to the Moon. And

20:56

then the second thing, and this is the even closer

20:58

parallel with the rings of power, the

21:00

use of concentration camp labor

21:03

in just the most appalling conditions,

21:06

thousands and thousands and thousands of people dying

21:09

Indora Middle Bow, and

21:11

Von Brown basically did not seem to

21:14

care. He was indifferent because he had his

21:16

vision.

21:17

What we discover about

21:20

the massive construction project

21:22

that the elves and humans are working on is that

21:25

in a sense, it's all leading up to a kind

21:27

of weapon of mass destruction as well. Right,

21:30

they're digging all these tunnels. We

21:33

don't know what it's for, but they're digging away.

21:35

And eventually in the series

21:38

we see a kind of would be lackey of Souron,

21:40

who's longing for Souron's return, put

21:42

this sort of like a sword into

21:46

a landmark that triggers

21:49

floods that run through the tunnels they've been

21:51

digging, that trigger a

21:54

kind of volcanic eruption, I suppose. And

21:56

what unfolds are these horrendous

21:59

fiery scenes that are reminiscent of a

22:01

bomb going off.

22:02

Really yea, it is like somebody

22:04

just dropped an atomic bomb on Middle Earth. That's

22:06

how it reads. What has actually happened

22:08

is that ad Are and his orcs

22:11

and their slave labor have reactivated

22:14

Mount Doom. They have taken

22:16

this dormant volcano and they have

22:18

reactivated it, and it explodes absolutely

22:22

catastrophically, the extraordinary scenes. It's

22:25

an absolute disaster.

22:26

I've always wondered where Mount Doom comes

22:28

from. So this is it.

22:29

This is it according to the Rings

22:31

of Power Cannon, so it was originally Ora dro

22:34

In as a mountain at

22:36

the heart of the Southlands stroke Mordor

22:39

sort of symbiotic with Saron. So

22:41

when Saron is there in Mordoor

22:44

and powerful Ora dro In is active,

22:46

and when Saron is dormant,

22:49

oro In is dormant. When

22:51

in the Rings of Power, it's a very deliberate plan

22:53

by add Are. He causes

22:55

this massive steam explosion and that causes

22:59

in Mount Doom to erupt. And

23:01

we know, having read Lord of the Rings, that

23:03

in the end Mount Doom will be where

23:06

Saron's powerful Ring. You know, the ultimate,

23:09

the one Ring is going to be forged in Mount

23:11

Doom and it can only be destroyed in

23:14

Mount Doom. So, as well as being

23:16

this cataclysmic event, as far as the Wings of Power

23:19

are concerned, we also know that this is paving

23:21

the way for the return of Sarah,

23:23

and it's going to pave the way for the creation of

23:26

the evil.

23:26

That is the one ring, which brings

23:29

me to another thought, which is that there

23:31

are very big questions in this

23:33

series about what evil is, where

23:35

it can be found, how do we deal with it?

23:38

Is it something you choose? Is

23:40

it an act of self determination?

23:42

Is it something you inherit? For example,

23:45

the Southlanders early on, they're

23:47

not to be trusted because in their veins

23:49

flows the blood of their ancestors who

23:51

allied themselves with More Goth.

23:53

Right, Yes, which is very deterministic, right as

23:55

a sort of you know, it's racial determinism.

23:58

Absolutely, they are the descendants of

24:00

people who serve More Goth and therefore you can't

24:02

trust them.

24:02

It's this concept of evil is something

24:05

primitive within us, I suppose, But also

24:07

evil maybe something you choose or deny.

24:09

But yes, there is this sense. A lot

24:11

of the people that we see have

24:14

had their choices predetermined.

24:17

I mean, add are the leader of the Orcs. Interestingly, he argues

24:20

that they have free will and they need

24:23

to be viewed as individuals with names and soone that's one

24:25

of the reasons why they love him. But

24:28

I think in the in the universe of Tolkien,

24:30

the Orcs are irredeemably evil

24:33

and the elves are inherently good.

24:36

But one of the really interesting questions is, well, where

24:38

does that leave the humans? And the humans are

24:41

have moral agency, the humans get to choose.

24:43

The humans have to choose, and some of them choose

24:45

well, and some of them choose very badly.

24:47

I did have another thought actually, as

24:49

I was traveling here, Ada is in

24:51

fact mistaken for Sarin at

24:53

some point. He doesn't take that

24:55

well. But that points to another issue

24:57

with evil, right.

24:58

Well, absolutely so Ada looks very

25:00

unsettling. He's this scarred

25:03

or corrupted elf. He's

25:05

coded as a bad guy, and he's

25:07

a bad guy, you know, he he does all kinds of terrible

25:10

things. The Orcs look horrendous.

25:12

We know the Orcs are evil, and the

25:14

elves look beautiful and do good things.

25:16

So there is in Tolkien's

25:19

universe, and in the universe of the Rings of Power,

25:22

there is this association of

25:24

people who look beautiful also being

25:27

morally beautiful. And you know, evil

25:29

is worn on the surface, so evil

25:31

creatures look evil. Except

25:34

it's not always like that it's not always like that in

25:36

Tolkien, and it's not always like that in the Rings

25:38

of Power, and.

25:39

It's not always like that in real life,

25:41

I think either.

25:42

I certainly agree that it's not always like that in

25:44

real life. The favorite themes

25:46

of cautionary tales, which we come to again

25:48

and again is the deceiver,

25:51

the plausible deceiver. So going

25:54

right back to one of our very first cautionary

25:56

tales, the Rogue dressed as a captain, where

25:59

this impoverished shoemaker

26:01

and a petty criminal Wilhelm Vot

26:04

got hold of a second hand army

26:06

captain's uniform. This is in the

26:09

early nineteen hundreds in Berlin, and

26:11

just started bossing around a platoon

26:14

of soldiers he found on the street, and you

26:16

know, he's wearing a captain's uniform, and

26:18

so they do what he says because he looks

26:20

the part. And it's funny, but it's also it's

26:23

quite dark, because we know we understand where this unconditional

26:26

obedience to people in uniform

26:28

later goes. And

26:31

then of course there's Harold Shipman, who's this kindly

26:34

trusted community doctor

26:36

who is one of the worst serial

26:38

killers ever in human

26:40

history anywhere in the world and he you

26:42

know, he doesn't look like a serial killer. He

26:44

looks like the person who's going to take care of your

26:47

grandmother. So you would think that's

26:49

not part of the way that Tolkien views

26:52

things, that's not part of the way that The Rings of

26:54

Power portrays the world. But then you realize,

26:56

oh no, there are people in

26:59

this universe who are not what they seem.

27:01

And one of the pleasures of watching this

27:04

season is trying to figure out who looks good

27:06

and is actually good and who's hard to place.

27:08

And I would say, I think, and we

27:10

said they'd be spoilers for the season one, and I don't want to spoil

27:13

this. We know Sarahon's coming back.

27:15

I think there are four people, at

27:17

least four people in the Rings of Power

27:20

who who plausibly contenders

27:22

contenders for being Sarah. And one of the pleasures

27:24

is to try to figure out who it actually

27:26

is or maybe it's maybe it's none

27:28

of those four, but yes, none

27:30

of them well, with the exception

27:33

of ad Are. They don't look like Saron, they

27:35

don't code as Saron. What you're trying to

27:37

see through is, okay, the

27:39

Orcs look evil, Ada looks evil.

27:42

Mount doom looks evil, that

27:44

sword looks evil, but Saron

27:46

himself is the great deceiver, and he

27:49

looks exactly how he chooses to look.

27:51

And that is one of the big challenges.

27:54

Now that you mentioned catching a Killer doctor.

27:56

Our episode about Harold Shipman, I am reminded

27:59

of Karnaman and Teverski's representativeness

28:01

heuristic and this idea that certain

28:04

things kind of fit into our pre established

28:07

frameworks. Yeah, and

28:09

we may not question.

28:09

Them, basically, absolutely not, absolutely

28:12

so. So Shipman just

28:14

fitted into the kindly doctor shaped

28:17

box that we have in our heads. We've got this kind

28:19

of stereotype of the community doctor who goes

28:21

door to door and is always taken care of his patients

28:23

and nothing's too much trouble. And he just

28:25

fit perfectly into that box, just so.

28:27

Much so that some people were actually thrilled

28:30

that he was coming to comfort their aged relatives.

28:32

Yes, and the dying hours.

28:34

Absolutely, but how how kind

28:36

that he would he would call on them where when

28:38

no one else was around in the middle of the day, and

28:41

and oh and then they died, And

28:43

how wonderful it was that Shipman, of all

28:45

people, their doctor was there in

28:48

that moment to comfort them. And to be

28:50

present they didn't die alone. Of course was

28:52

a reason they didn't die alone, which because he murdered them

28:54

and watched them die for reasons

28:56

that are still still unclear and I think will

28:58

never become clear. But yes, that

29:00

representativeness heuristic is very, very

29:03

powerful. We

29:05

should take a break, and I think we

29:07

are going to talk about one five theme

29:10

in Tolkien and how that is

29:12

reflected in some of my some of my favorite ideas

29:14

from cautionary tales. We'll do that after

29:16

the break. We're

29:28

back. I'm Tim Harford. I'm here in the studio

29:31

with producer Alice Fines. We

29:33

are being sponsored this week by Amazon

29:35

Primes series The Rings

29:38

of Power, and we're having a

29:40

cautionary conversation about what

29:42

cautionary tales spring to mind

29:45

when you watch this epic

29:48

series set in Tolkien's Middle

29:50

Earth. Alice, what sprung to your

29:52

mind?

29:53

This isn't strictly a cautionary tale, but

29:56

something we see throughout

29:58

the series is this idea that evil

30:01

is somehow contagious, so

30:04

by touching darkness you

30:06

will be changed. That happens

30:09

to Gladriel. There's kind of a sense in which

30:11

she's changed in wheys she can't quite

30:13

convey to others, and in that sense,

30:16

knowing evil cuts you off from other

30:18

people. So she says, you have not seen what I've

30:20

seen, and she knows others believe evil

30:22

infects you as well. So you mentioned earlier

30:24

this idea of the same winds that seek to blow out

30:27

a fire may also cause it spread.

30:29

Which is an interesting problem,

30:32

yes, because it raises a very practical issue,

30:34

which is how do you deal with evil?

30:36

You know, it's not a single cautionary tail, but

30:40

many of our cautionary tales look at cruelty

30:42

and look at where cruelty comes from, and also

30:44

how do we respond to it?

30:45

Yes, and how the elves want to respond

30:48

to it is to bury their heads in the sand.

30:50

They are very keen at

30:52

the beginning of this season

30:56

to conclude that makes it evil has been permanently

30:58

banished, Saren has gone forever. Gladual

31:01

is a problem because Gladiel keeps insisting

31:04

that evil has not been vanquished and

31:06

Saren has not gone, And in the end

31:08

she gets blamed not just from causing

31:11

a fuss, but maybe she is the source of evil in

31:13

making such a.

31:13

Fuss to somehow perpetuating

31:16

it.

31:16

Absolutely, absolutely because of the anger that

31:18

lives inside her this denial.

31:20

It reminded me of a couple of Caution

31:23

Tales episodes. So one fairly recent episode,

31:25

How Britain Ignored the Mother of

31:27

All Secrets, which was this extraordinary

31:30

story about how during the Second World

31:33

War and the British were told in

31:35

some detail by an incredible piece of

31:37

espionade brave intelligence leak.

31:40

They were told that the Germans had defensive

31:43

radar and therefore if the British flew

31:46

sorties over Germany, the

31:48

Germans would see them coming and would shoot them down as

31:50

a very very important piece of information,

31:53

and they just would not believe. They see

31:55

photographs of the radar equipment. But

31:57

they're even told before the war.

31:59

They're told by a German officer. He's on

32:02

a kind of like a I don't know, it's like a student exchange

32:04

kind of thing. He shows up because they were

32:06

how are you chaps getting on with radar? We know

32:08

you are making progress and we're making

32:11

progress too. In fact, we think we're ahead of you, and

32:13

that that astonishing conversational

32:15

tipbit just gets lost. So

32:18

there's a there's a huge amount of wish for thinking,

32:20

I think because the British want

32:22

to believe that the Germans

32:24

don't have this technology. They want to believe they're superior.

32:27

They want to believe that their technology is superior,

32:29

and they want to believe that this it would be bad if the Germans

32:31

had this, so they don't want to believe it's true. And

32:34

that denial continues for well over a year

32:36

after they should have realized. And

32:39

yeah, and the Elves are in the same

32:41

denial. They always wanting to rationalize the

32:43

way indications that Sarahn

32:46

maybe has returned.

32:47

So, however, we're going to confront

32:49

evil. It seems that acknowledging it's there is

32:52

the first step.

32:53

I think very very important, really

32:55

helpful to know what you're facing. And that, I

32:57

mean, there's another example of this, and this maybe gives

32:59

you more sympathy for the for the elf King's

33:01

position, which is our pandemic

33:04

episode that turned to Pascagoula, which

33:06

is all about deer

33:09

asters that are predictable and

33:11

predicted. So we compare and

33:13

contrast the spread of COVID

33:15

with Hurricane Katrina.

33:18

Everyone knew that New Orleans

33:20

was vulnerable. Hurricanes would come over from time

33:22

to time, just a matter of

33:24

time. People knew there were weaknesses and levees.

33:28

Over and over again, people were told something

33:30

bad could happen, and they just didn't

33:32

want to believe it because the costs of preparedness

33:35

were so great And in fact, in

33:38

the Rings of Power, we see that the elves have

33:41

been prepared for centuries. They

33:43

have standing garrisons looking over the humans

33:46

in case the bad guys come back, and

33:48

ironically they abandoned them just before

33:50

they're needed. But the fact that those garrisons are there

33:52

and there's a real cost to maintaining

33:54

them, there's a cost to being prepared, and

33:57

so you have some sympathy with people who go, you know

33:59

what, maybe this is just a waste of money. Maybe

34:01

this bad thing is never going to happen.

34:04

And then, as we've discussed, sometimes

34:08

evil is hiding in plain sight

34:10

and is unpredictable. Yeah,

34:12

it's not something we can totally prepare for.

34:14

No, absolutely. So you know

34:17

that pandemics are a risk, but

34:19

you don't know what kind of pandemic, and you don't know when

34:21

you know that hurricanes are a risk,

34:23

or earthquakes, but you don't know when you

34:26

know there are some places they might strike in some places

34:28

they are unlikely to. And then of course there are

34:30

things that we just didn't see coming at all. So some of the

34:32

genocides that the world has suffered

34:35

since the end of the Second World War, some

34:37

of them have become in from us. Some of them, I

34:39

think are barely acknowledged, very hard

34:41

to see any of them coming in advance.

34:43

So what about you, Tim what's brings to mind for you?

34:45

In Rings of Power?

34:47

I think a really important theme

34:49

in this series

34:51

and in Tolkien in general, is the idea

34:54

that power corrupts.

34:57

So there's this sword that

35:00

is a corrupting influence. The

35:03

rings are, of course a corrupting

35:05

influence. The plantity, these seeing

35:07

stones are a rupting influence,

35:10

and it's always tempting

35:13

to use them. So the elves attempted to use

35:15

the rings, the humans attempted

35:17

to use the sword. The Newminorians

35:20

are a human civilization, very high human

35:22

civilization. They have a

35:24

polante here. They want to look at the polant

35:26

here and use it to see the future, use

35:28

it to see things far off. And everybody

35:31

is always convincing themselves that

35:34

it'll be for the best, that I

35:37

won't lose control of these things. And yeah,

35:39

I'm a good person, and I'm going to

35:41

use this for good ends and with good intentions,

35:44

and therefore good will result,

35:46

and good does not result. Over and over

35:48

again. In Tolkien, evil

35:51

results. The inherent

35:53

power of the object corrupts the

35:56

user. And this really reminded

35:58

me of a cautioning tale that I have not

36:01

yet written, but I will write because

36:03

I think it's an amazing story. And

36:05

that is the tale of Herman Holloweth.

36:08

Herman Holloweth, I know nothing about Herman Holloweth,

36:10

Please tell me.

36:11

Herman Hollowith was an engineer

36:14

American engineer late eighteen

36:17

hundreds who designed the machine that

36:19

became known for obviously since as the hollow Earth Machine,

36:21

and the hollow Earth Machine was a kind

36:24

of proto computer. He

36:26

was trying to solve the problem for the US

36:28

Census, which is that you have the census

36:30

every ten years, and then you go

36:32

and you ask loads of loads of households who ask every

36:35

household in the country lots of questions,

36:37

and then you need to kind of organize all the answers and

36:39

analyze the answers. And it was taking

36:42

seven or eight years to put together

36:44

the analysis of the answers. By the time

36:46

the eighteen ninety census was being conducted,

36:49

they still would not have finished analyzing the eighteen

36:51

eighty census, the previous census.

36:53

So I'm going to guess Holloth is about to make this

36:55

process much more efficient.

36:56

There's a race. There is a race

36:59

between man and machine, and there are

37:01

various human teams the Census say, look, we're

37:03

going to have a competition. Somebody needs to figure out

37:05

how to analyze the census results more quickly.

37:07

Because they are also asking more complicated questions,

37:10

so they're being more and more ambitious. It gets more and more difficult,

37:13

and so there are various human teams involving

37:15

you know, colored cards and

37:18

various systems and all kinds of clever kind

37:20

of organizational devices. But it's all

37:22

a bit philo faxy. And then

37:25

there's Holloweth's machine. And Hollowth's machine

37:27

looks like it looks like an upright piano, and

37:30

it operates using punch cards. So you've got these stiff

37:32

cards with holes in them, and the

37:34

machine has these spring loaded pins

37:37

that dip into little cups of mercury.

37:39

And so you put the punch card in and the

37:41

pins come down and those that hit

37:43

a hole go through the hole and

37:45

into the cup of mercury, and they complete a circuit

37:48

and those that don't hit a hole are stopped

37:50

by the stiff cardboard. And that's fundamentally

37:52

how the machine worked. And the operator

37:54

of the machine was like, this is like the voice of God

37:57

producing this amazing insight. Clearly was

37:59

just high on mercury fumes. But

38:02

the Hollowth machine just destroyed the human

38:04

teams. It wasn't even close. And so the Census

38:06

Bureau adopted the Hollowth machine and

38:09

they all live happily ever after.

38:11

That sounds like a cautionary tail.

38:13

Yes, Because Hollerith

38:15

retired, his company turned into

38:18

IBM, and well, a couple

38:20

of things happened. One thing is that IBM Germany

38:22

became quite close with the Nazi regime,

38:25

who were very interested in buying Holloweth

38:27

machines.

38:28

I see where this is going.

38:29

Well, it is disputed exactly

38:31

how important the machine was to the

38:34

Nazi project of genocide, and were perfectly

38:36

capable of murdering enormous quantities of people

38:39

without a machine to count them. But I

38:41

mean, the German Census Bureau was utterly co

38:44

opted by the Nazi state and they

38:46

were very, very interested in trying to identify who was Jewish

38:48

who was not, and so

38:52

having these machines be so powerful it

38:56

kind of.

38:56

Helped, may have expedited the process.

38:58

It may have expedited the process. And also the

39:01

US Census Bureau for

39:04

decades denied that

39:06

it had helped the administration

39:09

find US citizens of Japanese

39:12

descent for decades and decades

39:14

and decades, said, we know the Census Bureau is

39:16

stands alone and is separate,

39:19

and is independent and does not

39:21

do this kind of thing. We're just here to count the people. And

39:23

then in two thousand and six Margo

39:26

Anderson, historian found

39:28

the smoking gun that in fact, the

39:30

Census Bureau had told

39:33

the Roosevelt administration exactly where

39:36

all the Japanese Americans were living, and they were all

39:38

of course chipped off to interment camps. So

39:40

again, you see this machine. It's very

39:42

powerful machine, designed for good, supposed

39:45

to be used for good. But then once you

39:47

have that power, are

39:49

you really going to resist the temptation.

39:51

Here's the thing, though, you can't

39:54

always tell what's going to happen to an invention.

39:56

I'm thinking of our episode the

39:58

hero who wrote his segue off a cliff Jimmy

40:01

Hesselden invents the Hesko

40:03

gabions, these concert tinas for shoring

40:05

up coastlines to manage

40:08

flood risks. Ultimately, they're

40:10

used in places like Kosovo and Iraq

40:13

filled with sand to protect

40:15

people from bomb blast. Now

40:18

you could argue that they are co opted as instruments

40:20

of war, I suppose, But you

40:23

can't tell how an invention will travel once you

40:25

invent it. Maybe it can also do good,

40:28

yeah, yeah, no, not just evil. So what's the

40:30

answer.

40:31

Well, I think the answer for Tolkien. Tolkien was

40:34

quite conservative in his writings,

40:37

and I think the answer for Tolkien is that

40:39

you shouldn't take the risk. And in

40:42

general, technology is shown as being

40:44

not a progressive force. It's a potentially destructive

40:47

force. So whenever you have new technology,

40:49

it could potentially be used for evil, and

40:52

therefore people will be tempted to use it for evil,

40:54

and most people are not strong enough

40:57

to resist that temptation. There are a

40:59

couple of exceptions, but they're very, very

41:01

minor exceptions. They're the exceptions that I think

41:03

serve to highlight the rule in

41:05

Tolkien. There's another interesting parallel along

41:07

these lines. I mean, Tolkien strongly rejected

41:10

the idea that Lord of the Rings was an allegory.

41:12

He hated the idea that the Wandering, for example,

41:15

was really the atomic bomb. He once wrote,

41:17

if Order the Things was an allegory, that the Elves would

41:19

have used the Wandering immediately, which, of course

41:21

I guess is true, because the Allies use the atomic

41:24

bomb.

41:24

So there are allegories, and then there are drawing.

41:27

There's drawing on ideas which are in the zeitgeist

41:29

at the time, right, Yeah.

41:31

I think it's I think it's As a watcher of

41:34

the Rings of Power, it is hard not

41:36

to be tempted by that parallel

41:39

and in particular the character of Keller Brimble,

41:41

the Great elf Smith as a kind of Oppenheimer

41:43

figure or a von Brown figure, and

41:45

Herman Hollowith. You see these characters,

41:49

these these brilliant creators who

41:51

cause all kinds of trouble

41:54

for the world. They definitely have

41:56

resonances in the Rings of Power.

41:59

Tim This has been very

42:01

fun and very interesting, But if I'm honest,

42:03

also a bit of a downer. Do you think there

42:05

is hope that things will get better in series

42:08

two of Rings of Power?

42:09

I'm sure there will be ups and downs

42:12

in series two, as there always

42:14

are. But I was reflecting on this. I

42:16

think Tolkien is

42:19

a very It

42:21

is really a soulmate of cautionary tales.

42:24

And because Tolkien

42:26

he was fascinated by fairy stories,

42:28

he was the person who brought really

42:30

be a Wolf to prominence. Be a Wolf

42:33

is not a story with a happy ending. A lot of

42:35

fairy tales don't actually have happy

42:37

endings, a lot of cautionary tales don't have happy

42:39

endings, And a lot of Tolkien stories are

42:41

about yes, evil is defeated, but it

42:44

comes back and often comes back stronger.

42:46

There is a sense in Tolkien of

42:49

often of diminishment, of loss, of

42:52

death, and he wants us to look at that

42:54

and reflect

42:56

on it and learn from it. And in

42:58

cautioning tales, we want people to look

43:00

at diminishment and loss and death and

43:03

to learn from it. So I want to

43:06

paint too close a parallel, But there's

43:08

definitely what.

43:09

You're saying is you are basically Tolkien. Is that what

43:11

you're telling me?

43:13

Well, all I'm saying is that Toulkien died

43:15

September nineteen seventy three. I was born

43:17

September nineteen seventy three. I've

43:19

often reflected on this fact.

43:23

He's speechless, absolutely speechless,

43:26

the sheer gall of that there

43:29

are no words, There are no there are no words, big

43:32

fat. I love watching this. I really did

43:34

love watching this, and I'm looking forward to season

43:36

two. And just a reminder,

43:39

you can watch season two of

43:41

the Rings of Power on Amazon Prime

43:44

starting August the twenty ninth.

43:50

Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim

43:53

Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced

43:55

by Alice Fines with support from Marilyn

43:57

Rust. The sound design and original

44:00

music is the work of Pascal Wise.

44:03

Sarah Nix edited the scripts. It

44:05

features the voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie

44:08

Guttridge, Tella Harford, Jammas

44:10

Saunders and Rufus Wright. The

44:12

show also wouldn't have been possible

44:14

without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan

44:17

Dilly, Greta Cohene, Eric

44:19

Handler, Carrie Brody and Christina

44:21

Sullivan. Cautionary Tales

44:24

is a production of Pushkin Industries.

44:27

It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in

44:29

London by Tom Berry. If

44:31

you like the show, please remember

44:33

to share, rate and review,

44:36

tell your friends, and if you want to hear

44:38

the show ad free, sign up for

44:40

Pushkin plus on the show page

44:42

if Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin

44:45

dot fm slash plus

45:09

no