Kate Merlinton, Princess of Wales
Young Heretics
Spencer Klavan
4.9 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2024
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will the real Merlin please stand up? Every major new development in scientific knowledge comes with a period of upheaval in what it means to do magic--or in what counts as magic, and what counts as science. This week, in providential synchronicity with a listener question, I wanted to talk about two twentieth-century depictions of Merlin in the age of industrial technology. Was he friend, foe, or fraud? Mark Twain and C.S. Lewis will help us decide. Also somebody, please, tell me what I'm supposed to think about the latest royal scandal.
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Transcript
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| 0:16.1 | All right, obviously I have to start today's Young Heretics episode by talking about a major case of controversy, a suspected fraud involving a well-known English public figure, and if you can believe it, I'm really need help here. |
| 0:27.0 | Gondor calls for eight. |
| 0:28.3 | If some person, some listener out there can write in and tell me a hot take that I'm supposed to have, |
| 0:35.6 | something I'm supposed to think about whatever's going on right now with Kate Middleton. |
| 0:39.3 | I would really appreciate it because I do not follow the Royals at all. |
| 0:43.0 | Suddenly she's on every social media feed. |
| 0:45.8 | She's, I guess the Royals seem to have put out |
| 0:50.7 | a fake photo of her, a photoshopped picture after she went in for surgery nobody quite knows where she is and |
| 0:56.5 | everybody's doing the whole corkboard and string thing where they're trying to figure out where she's |
| 1:01.4 | really at and what's really going on. So if somebody has some |
| 1:04.8 | conspiracy theory or some hot take that they just want to foist upon me, now's your chance, |
| 1:09.7 | right in, my ears are open. I'm ready because I have absolutely no idea what's going on there and that is not in fact the suspected case of English fraud that I will be talking about today instead I will be talking about a much older English public figure in the Wizard |
| 1:24.9 | Merlin. And we started off with this last week. We've been on this whole magic kick, |
| 1:29.9 | which I've been really enjoying on the show. I've been especially enjoying all of the thoughts |
| 1:34.2 | that it seems to have generated in you guys, |
| 1:36.1 | because you've been writing in and telling me some things |
| 1:38.5 | that you've been thinking about this whole idea |
| 1:41.2 | that science and magic are kind of these parallel tracks. |
| 1:45.6 | They're these parallel projects. |
| 1:47.6 | And in fact, the development of successful science is often represented as the arrival of real magic |
| 1:57.8 | where the old magic was just fake and one thing I suggested last week is that that's really a process that's always ongoing. |
| 2:06.0 | And so you're always getting these claims that the magic of yesteryear, the magicians of the past period are frauds and they're really just |
... |
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