Hello and welcome to magical garbage, the podcast where our research is at risk of losing funding.

My name is Karen Hedanahue and I'm the gang of roving children, terrorizing a cat.

And joining me is the ex-none with a zest for life and a hunger for the truth.

It's Ella Rizbridgeer.

Hi.

How can all three of those things exist in the same novel for 11-Up?

That's what I ask of you.

How is this book real?

And how is it actually for children?

I guess the main questions are, how is this book real?

And how did this book get published?

And do you think you'd be

able to get away with it today? Some big questions. I'm just starting us off with the light ones.

Impossible to tell. I know the thing about Philip Pullman is that he's very old now and there's no

getting around that. And so like he's been answering questions about his dark materials for so long

that I think there's some kind of,

there's kind of an interview sickness that falls over creators who've been talking about the same

thing for a long time, which is that they, they often, they build a little myth or they build

a kind of a series of stock answers that they just kind of sort of wheel out to sort of protect their own

mental fortitude. And so it's gotten to the point where I'm no longer interested in hearing

from Philip Pullman about how he made these books. What I'm fascinated in hearing about is the people

who behind the scenes, like I would love to talk to the editors and publicists who were dealing

...