For centuries, they have been trying to keep us where they want us.

Why do demons disappear when you die?

And yet humans leave these nasty skeletons behind.

We've been our children back.

Welcome to the Authority, Slates His Dark Materials Podcast. It's season one, episode seven, The Fight to the Death.

We're Slate's resident scholars of experimental theology.

I'm Laura Miller, and my demon is a sea otter named

sake. I'm Dan Koes and my demon is a prairie vole named

Gilda. This episode brings Lyra to Zvalbard, the

fortress capital of the Panzerbjorn, the armored bears.

She fast talks her way out of the dungeon and into the confidence of Iofar Rocknessen, who is the ruler of the bears. She has this desperate plan to give

Eorik the chance to meet Iofor face to face. She persuades Iofur to challenge Yorek to single combat for the throne,

manipulating the king's desire to be human by convincing him that she is an artificial

demon that he can claim by defeating his rival. Eorek then crushes Yofur in this battle and reclaims his title.

In this week's steep dive, we're going to take a closer look at the Panzer Bjorn and their society.

Meanwhile, the Magisterium has immobilized to find and kill Lord Azrael,

and in our world, Lord Boreal is terrorizing poor Elaine with insinuations about working for some shadowy

intelligence agency. He uses this to try to bully her into giving him her husband's letters,

but Elaine will have none of it.

As always on the authority, we're going to be talking about the world of Philip Pullman's

books without spoiling the actual events that are still to come in the TV show. So you can listen even if you haven't read the books,

but if you are extremely spoiler verse,

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