"His Dark Materials" 1x02: "The Idea of North"

Welcome back to Meta Station!

Sadly for you, several of our BEST jokes this week happened before we started recording, and we apologize to our longtime fans for depriving them of the newest installment of our ongoing “vases vs. botulism” debate. (You had to be there.)

Fortunately, this still ended up being one of our favorite conversations, because there is SO! MUCH! TO SAY! about Mrs. Coulter: from using femininity as a weapon to wield power over men, to the complicated relationship between women and anger, to why it matters that her (male) daemon has been silenced. We also talked Magisterium theology, Boreal’s dimension-hopping, and how relieved we are that our pure sons Roger and Billy finally found each other.

P.S. Rather predictably, we have already completely abandoned any attempt to remain spoiler-free for people who haven’t read the books, for reasons that will become very clear in the Mrs. Coulter section. If you are aggressively trying to avoid any plot details from the books, you might want to bookmark this one and come back to it after the end of the season.

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0:00 – Lyra and the Apartment: Art Deco Design Porn, Abuse Dynamics, and Gilded Cages
0:10 – The Interior Life of Marisa Coulter: Weaponized Femininity, Suppressed Emotions, a Daemon That Doesn’t Speak, AND A COUPLE OF REALLY BIG SPOILERS
1:01 – Mrs. Coulter: Severing Ties, Emotionally and Literally
1:11 – Boreal, Other Worlds, and Novel Versus TV Plot Pacing
1:24 – Fighting for Ideas . . . of North, and Other Things
1:31 – Claire's Catholicism Corner: What Does "Oblation" Mean? And What Does It Tell Us About Mrs. Coulter?
1:42 - The Magisterium's Cold-Blooded Daemons
1:47 - The Most On-Brand Moment Ever: Claire Ships All the Parents

NOTE: We apologize for some very mild sound issues on this one; Claire’s computer, like herself, has a very flexible relationship with the concept of Time, and froze up for a second before reviving so the whole middle of one sentence just disappeared, which is mostly upsetting because it was MILF flailing and we know that’s important to you guys. Also, Erin’s sound recording software was picking up the computer mic instead of her podcasting mic, so there are handful of places where she cuts out for a split-second as well. We edited around it as best we could, but hopefully it won’t be too distracting.