Welcome back to Game of Thrones 2 Electric Booc Kalu, I'm yours, Anthony.

This week, Professor of History from the Highlands and Islands in Scotland in Mechanes is back to help me cover a Theon chapter.

It's a great chapter that's not represented in the show, really shows Theon's war with himself,

trying to decide how much of his religion and culture will determine his own sense of leadership,

and then of course this is a crisis that leads to one of the most significant moments in the story I feel like,

and that is the unlikely sacking of Winterfell, which this chapter foreshadows.

I include a short conversation with my friend Alicia about the Wheel of Time influence on Martin's world.

Then I get to talk for the first time to someone I wanted to talk to for a long time, and that is Dr. Laura Young.

Laura teaches at Purdue, she's also the Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science,

Criminal Justice, and International Studies at Georgia Gwinnett College.

Together with a colleague, Dr. Young wrote a book about Game of Thrones and International Relations,

where she introduces the basic concepts of international relations, which is a very complicated

field of study, using examples from the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones.

So I learned a lot in that conversation with Laura.

All right, without further ado, here is my conversation with Dr. Ian McKinnis.

Dr. McKinnis, to what extent would you say that the ironborn culture

are a one-to-one correlation with Viking culture?

I think there's a lot going on that's very Viking like,

from the obvious in terms of just kind of dress, and even their names,

you know, Dagmar Clefjall, that whole use of various kind of by-names in a very kind of Viking-esque

way, and then down to the style of warfare, one that's very much wedded to ships,

which they can sail up onto the shore, and reading very much in that kind of Viking style,

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