WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.319 You probably know Margaret Atwood as, well, the 00:00:02.319 --> 00:00:03.960 author of The Handmaid's Tale. Right. I mean, 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:07.559 that iconic red cloak and the white bonnet. Exactly. 00:00:07.679 --> 00:00:09.599 They're practically burned into our collective 00:00:09.599 --> 00:00:11.740 cultural retinas at this point. Oh, totally. 00:00:12.119 --> 00:00:15.539 But did you know she also holds actual literal 00:00:15.539 --> 00:00:19.199 tech patents? for remote robotic writing technology. 00:00:19.320 --> 00:00:21.839 Or that she wrote a superhero comic book about 00:00:21.839 --> 00:00:25.339 a mutant cat bird. Right. What about the fact 00:00:25.339 --> 00:00:28.339 that she penned a secret novel that no human 00:00:28.339 --> 00:00:31.260 being is allowed to read until the year 2114? 00:00:31.420 --> 00:00:33.719 Yeah, just sitting locked away in a vault in 00:00:33.719 --> 00:00:36.439 Norway right now. Just slumbering. So you have 00:00:36.439 --> 00:00:39.659 this stack of seemingly random puzzle pieces, 00:00:39.880 --> 00:00:43.579 right? A wilderness survivor, a robotics inventor, 00:00:43.929 --> 00:00:46.509 and accused witches' descendant. It's a lot to 00:00:46.509 --> 00:00:48.990 process. It is, and today we are putting those 00:00:48.990 --> 00:00:50.710 pieces together. We're taking our stack of sources 00:00:50.710 --> 00:00:53.530 on this Canadian literary giant and really diving 00:00:53.530 --> 00:00:56.170 into it. Our mission for this deep dive is to 00:00:56.170 --> 00:00:58.530 figure out how Margaret Atwood built a career 00:00:58.530 --> 00:01:00.670 out of perfectly predicting the terrifying futures 00:01:00.670 --> 00:01:04.000 we are currently building for ourselves. Yeah, 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:06.079 and to get there, you really have to discard 00:01:06.079 --> 00:01:09.260 that stereotypical image of the quiet novelist 00:01:09.260 --> 00:01:12.799 sitting in a dusty study somewhere. Atwood operates 00:01:12.799 --> 00:01:15.620 almost entirely outside traditional categories. 00:01:16.280 --> 00:01:20.099 She's this intellectual force who actively resists 00:01:20.099 --> 00:01:24.000 being boxed into like any single genre or political 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:26.959 camp or even timeline. I want to start with the 00:01:26.959 --> 00:01:29.739 origin of that independence, actually, because 00:01:29.739 --> 00:01:33.530 to understand how she's so clearly envisions 00:01:33.530 --> 00:01:36.209 the collapse of modern society, you really have 00:01:36.209 --> 00:01:38.530 to look at how she grew up completely isolated 00:01:38.530 --> 00:01:40.370 from it. Oh, yeah. We're talking about a child 00:01:40.370 --> 00:01:42.370 that sounds like it belongs in a totally different 00:01:42.370 --> 00:01:44.549 century. It really does. And it's basically the 00:01:44.549 --> 00:01:46.370 blueprint for everything she eventually wrote. 00:01:46.769 --> 00:01:49.129 So she was born in Ottawa in 1939, but her father 00:01:49.129 --> 00:01:51.790 was a forest entomologist. Wait, so he studied 00:01:51.790 --> 00:01:54.310 bugs. Exactly. Bugs in the forest. And because 00:01:54.310 --> 00:01:56.430 of his field research, she spent the majority 00:01:56.430 --> 00:01:59.150 of her early childhood deep in the remote backwoods 00:01:59.150 --> 00:02:01.150 of northern Quebec. And we aren't talking about, 00:02:01.189 --> 00:02:04.209 like, acute cabin near a town. We're talking 00:02:04.209 --> 00:02:08.189 about true isolation in the dense Canadian bush 00:02:08.189 --> 00:02:11.569 far far away from the comforts of any modern 00:02:11.569 --> 00:02:13.930 infrastructure. Yeah looking at the sources she 00:02:13.930 --> 00:02:15.990 didn't even attend school full -time until she 00:02:15.990 --> 00:02:19.090 was 12 years old. Twelve. I mean I kept thinking 00:02:19.090 --> 00:02:21.389 about this while preparing for today. It's almost 00:02:21.389 --> 00:02:23.889 like she was raised on a different planet or 00:02:23.889 --> 00:02:27.419 like she's this This alien anthropologist who 00:02:27.419 --> 00:02:30.659 just got dropped into modern society right at 00:02:30.659 --> 00:02:32.620 the onset of puberty. That's a great way to put 00:02:32.620 --> 00:02:35.340 it. Because she wasn't socialized normally during 00:02:35.340 --> 00:02:38.599 those really formative years, she looks at human 00:02:38.599 --> 00:02:42.870 societal rules, not as given truths. but as bizarre, 00:02:43.150 --> 00:02:45.830 arbitrary, and honestly incredibly fragile constructs. 00:02:45.949 --> 00:02:48.310 That alien anthropologist perspective is just 00:02:48.310 --> 00:02:51.110 crucial here. Instead of regular playground socialization, 00:02:51.189 --> 00:02:53.169 you know, playing tag or whatever, she became 00:02:53.169 --> 00:02:55.530 this voracious reader of Grimm's fairy tales, 00:02:55.650 --> 00:02:58.030 comic books, Dell pocketbook mysteries. Just 00:02:58.030 --> 00:03:00.919 reading about murder in the woods. Exactly. She 00:03:00.919 --> 00:03:03.560 was reading these dark stories of survival and 00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:06.439 murder while completely surrounded by the raw, 00:03:06.759 --> 00:03:09.319 untamed wilderness. And that extreme immersion, 00:03:09.319 --> 00:03:12.300 it just stripped away any illusion of human safety. 00:03:12.379 --> 00:03:15.719 It taught her from day one that the world is 00:03:15.719 --> 00:03:18.379 fundamentally a predator -prey environment. I 00:03:18.379 --> 00:03:21.180 mean, nature does not care about your societal 00:03:21.180 --> 00:03:23.909 rules. No. It doesn't care about your moral compass. 00:03:24.550 --> 00:03:26.770 Nature is an active force that will absolutely 00:03:26.770 --> 00:03:29.090 consume you if you aren't paying attention. Which 00:03:29.090 --> 00:03:31.830 she actually formalized later in her career. 00:03:32.859 --> 00:03:35.900 that background seems to be the entire basis 00:03:35.900 --> 00:03:39.780 for her landmark 1972 non -fiction book, Survival. 00:03:40.020 --> 00:03:42.919 It is, yeah. In Survival, she put forward this 00:03:42.919 --> 00:03:45.479 highly influential thesis that Canadian literature, 00:03:45.639 --> 00:03:47.360 and really by extension, the Canadian identity 00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:51.020 itself, is defined by this omnipresent symbol 00:03:51.020 --> 00:03:53.159 of survival. Right, just making it through the 00:03:53.159 --> 00:03:55.379 winter. Yeah, she argued that there's a pervasive 00:03:55.379 --> 00:03:57.300 victor and victim relationship running through 00:03:57.300 --> 00:04:00.159 the culture, and it's driven largely by a deep 00:04:00.159 --> 00:04:02.060 -seated fear of nature. Which is so different. 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:04.979 from the American view. Exactly. Unlike some 00:04:04.979 --> 00:04:07.280 romanticized American literature where the frontier 00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:09.939 is, you know, something to be conquered and tamed, 00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:12.580 her view of the Canadian wilderness is that it's 00:04:12.580 --> 00:04:14.599 just something you simply try to survive without 00:04:14.599 --> 00:04:17.899 it killing you. So because she views the world... 00:04:17.949 --> 00:04:21.089 Through that specific lens of actual physical 00:04:21.089 --> 00:04:24.870 survival against real threats, she gets incredibly 00:04:24.870 --> 00:04:26.990 defensive about how her work is categorized. 00:04:27.189 --> 00:04:29.990 Oh, fiercely defensive. Like she violently rejects 00:04:29.990 --> 00:04:32.509 the label of science fiction for her most famous 00:04:32.509 --> 00:04:35.129 dystopian books. She is famously specific about 00:04:35.129 --> 00:04:37.910 this distinction. For Atwood, science fiction 00:04:37.910 --> 00:04:40.509 is, in her own words, talking squids in outer 00:04:40.509 --> 00:04:43.670 space. Which is such a funny phrase. But, um... 00:04:43.689 --> 00:04:45.269 I have to push back on this a little bit for 00:04:45.269 --> 00:04:47.310 you listening, because I read through these notes 00:04:47.310 --> 00:04:49.889 and thought, come on, is she just engaging in 00:04:49.889 --> 00:04:52.670 literary snobbery here? It sounds like it at 00:04:52.670 --> 00:04:55.269 first glance. Right. Like, why is she so resistant 00:04:55.269 --> 00:04:57.790 to the sci -fi label when she's clearly writing 00:04:57.790 --> 00:04:59.589 apocalyptic stories about the future? I mean, 00:04:59.629 --> 00:05:02.189 look at her Matt Adam trilogy. Oh, Oryx and Crake 00:05:02.189 --> 00:05:05.389 and all that. Yeah. She has genetic modifications 00:05:05.389 --> 00:05:09.139 running wild in those books. There are pig goons, 00:05:09.319 --> 00:05:11.339 which are pigs bred with human brain tissue. 00:05:11.740 --> 00:05:13.879 Terrifying. And ray -cunks, like a raccoon -skunk 00:05:13.879 --> 00:05:16.680 hybrid. There are wool -vogs that look like cute 00:05:16.680 --> 00:05:18.699 dogs, but will literally tear your throat out. 00:05:18.699 --> 00:05:21.899 Yeah. I mean, how is a human -pig hybrid not 00:05:21.899 --> 00:05:23.879 science fiction? Well, it definitely sounds like 00:05:23.879 --> 00:05:25.800 it, and it's a debate she's had extensively. 00:05:26.339 --> 00:05:28.959 The most notable one was a fascinating discussion 00:05:28.959 --> 00:05:31.879 back in 2011 with the legendary science fiction 00:05:31.879 --> 00:05:35.000 author Ursula K. Le Guin. Oh, wow, to be a fly 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:37.939 on the wall for that. Right. argued that Atwood 00:05:37.939 --> 00:05:40.920 was absolutely writing science fiction. But Atwood 00:05:40.920 --> 00:05:43.300 clarified that what Le Guin calls science fiction, 00:05:43.639 --> 00:05:46.180 Atwood calls speculative fiction. Speculative 00:05:46.180 --> 00:05:48.560 fiction. Yeah. For Atwood, speculative fiction 00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:51.540 means things that could really happen. It employs 00:05:51.540 --> 00:05:53.680 means that are already at hand and takes place 00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:56.160 entirely on planet Earth. So the distinction 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:58.720 isn't about snobbery at all. It's fundamentally 00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:00.800 about the source of the terror. OK, so it's about 00:06:00.800 --> 00:06:02.879 the mechanism of the fear, not just the setting. 00:06:03.379 --> 00:06:06.529 Precisely. She operates on a strict golden rule. 00:06:07.170 --> 00:06:09.829 She famously applied this to the writing of the 00:06:09.829 --> 00:06:13.069 Handmaid's Tale. She says she never puts anything 00:06:13.069 --> 00:06:15.829 in her books that somebody, somewhere in human 00:06:15.829 --> 00:06:19.009 history, hasn't already done. Or that we don't 00:06:19.009 --> 00:06:21.389 already have the technological capacity to do 00:06:21.389 --> 00:06:24.019 today. That is chilling. It really is. If she 00:06:24.019 --> 00:06:27.680 uses talking squids in outer space, you, the 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:30.019 reader, can just brush the story off as escapist 00:06:30.019 --> 00:06:32.759 fantasy. You can close the book, put it on your 00:06:32.759 --> 00:06:35.399 nightstand, and feel totally safe. Because squids 00:06:35.399 --> 00:06:39.139 don't talk. Right. But if she uses real historical 00:06:39.139 --> 00:06:41.319 precedents, if she demonstrates that humanity 00:06:41.319 --> 00:06:43.399 has already committed these atrocities under 00:06:43.399 --> 00:06:46.339 different regimes, you are forced to face the 00:06:46.339 --> 00:06:48.800 reality of what we're capable of. It's almost 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:52.660 like she is engaging in a literary form of like 00:06:52.660 --> 00:06:54.860 stress testing. Oh, I like that. You know how 00:06:54.860 --> 00:06:56.660 engineers will take a piece of metal and bend 00:06:56.660 --> 00:06:59.100 it until it snaps just to find its breaking point? 00:06:59.399 --> 00:07:01.819 Yeah. Atwood is doing the exact same thing with 00:07:01.819 --> 00:07:04.860 societal norms. She takes a current political 00:07:04.860 --> 00:07:08.399 policy or technological trend, bends it to its 00:07:08.399 --> 00:07:11.379 absolute logical extreme using only real historical 00:07:11.379 --> 00:07:14.620 precedents, and shows us exactly where our society 00:07:14.620 --> 00:07:17.160 will snap. That is the perfect way to describe 00:07:17.160 --> 00:07:19.939 her process. She isn't inventing horrors out 00:07:19.939 --> 00:07:23.040 of thin air. She is just reorganizing them into 00:07:23.040 --> 00:07:25.920 our near future. And because she strictly limits 00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:28.579 herself to what humans are already capable of, 00:07:29.040 --> 00:07:31.819 her fiction functions as a literal economic indicator. 00:07:32.339 --> 00:07:35.339 Yeah. We can actually track public anxiety by 00:07:35.339 --> 00:07:37.819 looking at the sales data of her books. It's 00:07:37.819 --> 00:07:40.519 wild to look at the numbers. It is. When we look 00:07:40.519 --> 00:07:43.509 at the data The Handmaid's Tale and its 2019 00:07:43.509 --> 00:07:45.529 Booker Prize winning sequel, The Testaments, 00:07:46.149 --> 00:07:48.750 saw massive rapid sales spikes immediately following 00:07:48.750 --> 00:07:51.769 the shifts in power during both the 2016 and 00:07:51.769 --> 00:07:54.129 the 2024 United States presidential elections. 00:07:54.810 --> 00:07:56.790 And I want to pause here really quickly just 00:07:56.790 --> 00:07:58.970 to be absolutely clear to you listening, we are 00:07:58.970 --> 00:08:00.870 not taking a political side regarding these actions. 00:08:01.069 --> 00:08:03.850 We're totally neutral on this. Exactly. We aren't 00:08:03.850 --> 00:08:06.149 endorsing any viewpoint here. We're simply looking 00:08:06.149 --> 00:08:09.110 at the data and observing how the public reacts 00:08:09.110 --> 00:08:11.829 to societal anxiety by buying Atwood's books. 00:08:12.269 --> 00:08:14.329 It's purely a cultural and economic phenomenon. 00:08:14.490 --> 00:08:16.829 And what's fascinating is how those book sales 00:08:16.829 --> 00:08:20.209 act as a completely nonpartisan anxiety barometer. 00:08:20.629 --> 00:08:22.610 Regardless of your political leaning, the data 00:08:22.610 --> 00:08:25.490 just shows a massive cultural reflex. Following 00:08:25.490 --> 00:08:28.329 the 2024 election, The Handmaid's Tale shot up 00:08:28.329 --> 00:08:31.529 to third on Amazon's bestseller list. The public 00:08:31.529 --> 00:08:33.909 essentially uses her speculative fiction to process 00:08:33.909 --> 00:08:36.889 their real world apprehension. Atwood herself 00:08:36.889 --> 00:08:39.289 even responded to that specific cultural moment 00:08:39.289 --> 00:08:43.350 in 2024 by posting on X, despair is not an option, 00:08:43.429 --> 00:08:46.259 it helps. No one. Wow. And we see that cultural 00:08:46.259 --> 00:08:48.220 reflex going in the opposite direction, too, 00:08:48.679 --> 00:08:50.860 with institutions basically trying to suppress 00:08:50.860 --> 00:08:53.179 or stress test. Oh, definitely. Like in 2024, 00:08:53.759 --> 00:08:56.220 the Utah public school system instituted a book 00:08:56.220 --> 00:08:59.120 ban under new state law. And right there on their 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:01.480 initial list of objectionable books was Atwood's 00:09:01.480 --> 00:09:04.100 Oryx and Crake. She manages to strike such a 00:09:04.100 --> 00:09:06.799 nerve that her work is simultaneously pushed 00:09:06.799 --> 00:09:09.480 to the top of bestseller logs and pulled from 00:09:09.480 --> 00:09:12.220 library shelves in the exact same year. It really 00:09:12.220 --> 00:09:14.980 just proves that her method of relying on historical 00:09:14.980 --> 00:09:18.039 precedent makes the work undeniably potent. But, 00:09:18.179 --> 00:09:19.820 you know, she doesn't limit her stress testing 00:09:19.820 --> 00:09:22.799 just to fiction. Right. She actively participates 00:09:22.799 --> 00:09:25.080 in building the technological future she writes 00:09:25.080 --> 00:09:27.110 about. Which brings us back to the patents you 00:09:27.110 --> 00:09:28.769 mentioned at the start of our deep dive. Yeah, 00:09:28.769 --> 00:09:33.230 I kept staring at this part of our sources. Because 00:09:33.230 --> 00:09:35.509 we're talking about a woman in her 60s at the 00:09:35.509 --> 00:09:38.590 time, famous for writing about how unchecked 00:09:38.590 --> 00:09:41.990 corporate technology basically enslaves humanity. 00:09:42.009 --> 00:09:45.950 Yeah. Deciding to jump head first into robotics 00:09:45.950 --> 00:09:48.429 and cloud tech. It feels entirely contradictory. 00:09:48.570 --> 00:09:50.409 It totally seems that way until you look at the 00:09:50.409 --> 00:09:52.230 actual logistical problem she was trying to solve. 00:09:52.330 --> 00:09:55.139 OK, what was it? So, in early 2004, she was on 00:09:55.139 --> 00:09:57.919 this grueling book tour in Denver for Oryx and 00:09:57.919 --> 00:10:00.559 Crake, and she realized the physical demands 00:10:00.559 --> 00:10:02.820 of flying across the world just to sign pieces 00:10:02.820 --> 00:10:05.399 of paper were completely unsustainable. I mean, 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:08.210 book tours are exhausting. Right, so she conceived 00:10:08.210 --> 00:10:11.129 the concept of a remote robotic writing technology. 00:10:11.690 --> 00:10:13.870 She wanted to be able to sit in her living room 00:10:13.870 --> 00:10:17.029 in Toronto, sign a screen, and have a robotic 00:10:17.029 --> 00:10:20.289 arm physically write that signature in real ink 00:10:20.289 --> 00:10:23.230 on a book in Tokyo in real time. But she didn't 00:10:23.230 --> 00:10:25.490 just have the idea and hand it off to some engineering 00:10:25.490 --> 00:10:27.809 firm, did she? No, she founded the company. That's 00:10:27.809 --> 00:10:30.620 amazing. Originally called Unnotch It Ink, they 00:10:30.620 --> 00:10:33.279 produced a device known as the Long Pen, and 00:10:33.279 --> 00:10:36.039 she had to actively participate in figuring out 00:10:36.039 --> 00:10:38.659 how to translate the physical pressure and the 00:10:38.659 --> 00:10:41.759 kinetic energy of a human hand across an ocean 00:10:41.759 --> 00:10:43.919 so the ink wouldn't blotch or skip on the page. 00:10:44.639 --> 00:10:47.519 She applied the exact same rigorous mechanical 00:10:47.519 --> 00:10:50.960 logic she uses to build dystopian worlds to solving 00:10:50.960 --> 00:10:54.000 latency issues in robotic arms. That transition 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:56.980 from speculative fiction author to tech CEO is 00:10:56.980 --> 00:10:59.320 just astonishing. And the technology didn't just 00:10:59.320 --> 00:11:01.519 stay a novelty for book tours, right? No, it 00:11:01.519 --> 00:11:03.940 evolved significantly. The company eventually 00:11:03.940 --> 00:11:06.480 renamed itself Syngraphate Inc. and they shifted 00:11:06.480 --> 00:11:08.620 away from book tours into high -level business 00:11:08.620 --> 00:11:11.580 and legal transactions, offering secure cloud 00:11:11.580 --> 00:11:14.580 -based electronic signature technology. Yeah. 00:11:15.299 --> 00:11:18.379 As of our source data... Atwood remains a director 00:11:18.379 --> 00:11:20.899 and continues to hold various patents related 00:11:20.899 --> 00:11:23.940 to this technology. She is navigating the bleeding 00:11:23.940 --> 00:11:27.019 edge of modern corporate tech while simultaneously 00:11:27.019 --> 00:11:30.419 looking way, way down the timeline of human civilization. 00:11:30.580 --> 00:11:33.039 Exactly. I mean, if the long pen is her dealing 00:11:33.039 --> 00:11:35.860 with the present, the future library project 00:11:35.860 --> 00:11:37.960 is her communicating with a world she will never 00:11:37.960 --> 00:11:40.820 even see. The future library is arguably one 00:11:40.820 --> 00:11:43.500 of the most profound poetic projects she has 00:11:43.500 --> 00:11:45.820 ever participated in. It's so cool. It really 00:11:45.820 --> 00:11:48.100 is. It's a public art project based in Norway 00:11:48.100 --> 00:11:50.879 where one writer a year contributes a manuscript 00:11:50.879 --> 00:11:53.480 that will be held in trust, completely unread, 00:11:54.039 --> 00:11:57.139 for a century. A hundred years. Yeah. The organizers 00:11:57.139 --> 00:11:59.779 even planted a specialized forest of trees that 00:11:59.779 --> 00:12:01.519 will eventually be cut down in a hundred years 00:12:01.519 --> 00:12:03.379 to print the anthologies. That's incredible. 00:12:03.580 --> 00:12:06.000 And Atwood was selected as the very first contributor. 00:12:06.639 --> 00:12:09.299 In 2015, she handed over a manuscript called 00:12:09.299 --> 00:12:11.600 Scribbler Moon. Meaning no one is allowed to 00:12:11.600 --> 00:12:14.379 read it, review it, or publish it until the year 00:12:14.379 --> 00:12:18.679 2114. Exactly. She likened the entire concept 00:12:18.679 --> 00:12:21.259 to a fairy tale, telling a guardian that it is 00:12:21.259 --> 00:12:23.519 like Sleeping Beauty. The texts are going to 00:12:23.519 --> 00:12:25.600 slumber for a hundred years and then they will 00:12:25.600 --> 00:12:28.139 wake up and come to life again. Wow. She even 00:12:28.139 --> 00:12:31.559 joked that readers in 2114 might need a paleoanthropologist 00:12:31.559 --> 00:12:33.879 to translate some of the obsolete cultural references 00:12:33.879 --> 00:12:36.320 in her story. That's so funny. But when you look 00:12:36.320 --> 00:12:39.059 at her overarching career, what does a project 00:12:39.059 --> 00:12:42.710 like that signify? We have this globally recognized 00:12:42.710 --> 00:12:45.690 expert on dystopia, someone who makes her living, 00:12:46.110 --> 00:12:48.789 warning us about our darkest impulses, leaving 00:12:48.789 --> 00:12:51.070 a manuscript for a civilization a hundred years 00:12:51.070 --> 00:12:53.669 from now. Well, it encapsulates a vital, often 00:12:53.669 --> 00:12:56.350 overlooked aspect of her ethos, which is her 00:12:56.350 --> 00:12:59.149 fundamental optimism. Optimism, really? Yes. 00:12:59.330 --> 00:13:01.470 Think about it. She writes incredibly bleak, 00:13:01.570 --> 00:13:04.070 cautionary tales where society collapses. But 00:13:04.070 --> 00:13:06.809 to write a book for the year 2114 requires a 00:13:06.809 --> 00:13:09.690 baseline belief that humanity will actually survive. 00:13:09.639 --> 00:13:12.700 to see the year 2114. Oh that's a great point. 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:15.600 Despite the horrors she catalogs in her speculative 00:13:15.600 --> 00:13:18.179 fiction, she believes there will be a future 00:13:18.179 --> 00:13:20.419 and there will be people in it who still have 00:13:20.419 --> 00:13:24.200 the capacity to care about stories. She genuinely 00:13:24.200 --> 00:13:28.009 trusts in human endurance. She refuses to be 00:13:28.009 --> 00:13:30.950 constrained by our current timeline, just as 00:13:30.950 --> 00:13:33.610 she refuses to be boxed in by the boundaries 00:13:33.610 --> 00:13:36.590 of literary genres. Exactly. And as we dig deeper 00:13:36.590 --> 00:13:39.129 into the sources, you see that she staunchly 00:13:39.129 --> 00:13:41.909 refuses to be boxed in by political or social 00:13:41.909 --> 00:13:45.090 labels either, even when her own readers desperately 00:13:45.090 --> 00:13:47.090 try to make her a figurehead for their movements. 00:13:47.450 --> 00:13:49.870 Oh, her relationship with ideological labels 00:13:49.870 --> 00:13:52.990 is incredibly complex, particularly when it comes 00:13:52.990 --> 00:13:55.889 to feminism. Right. Despite writing the Handmaid's 00:13:55.850 --> 00:13:58.870 which is widely taught and revered as a foundational 00:13:58.870 --> 00:14:01.809 feminist text, she has frequently balked at the 00:14:01.809 --> 00:14:04.769 label. She often prefers the term social realism. 00:14:04.870 --> 00:14:06.789 Which actually makes perfect sense when you remember 00:14:06.789 --> 00:14:09.269 her golden rule. Oh, so? Well, if she is only 00:14:09.269 --> 00:14:11.470 writing down what patriarchal societies have 00:14:11.470 --> 00:14:13.950 actually done to women throughout history, she 00:14:13.950 --> 00:14:16.500 doesn't view it as feminist theory. She views 00:14:16.500 --> 00:14:19.779 it as historical reporting. Ah, right. But her 00:14:19.779 --> 00:14:22.240 resistance to adopting ideological labels has 00:14:22.240 --> 00:14:24.840 gotten her into intense controversies with her 00:14:24.840 --> 00:14:28.480 own fan base. The 2018 MeToo controversy is a 00:14:28.480 --> 00:14:30.580 prime example of this. And again, just to be 00:14:30.580 --> 00:14:32.779 clear, we are neutrally reporting the events 00:14:32.779 --> 00:14:35.159 from the sources here. Yes, absolutely. So in 00:14:35.159 --> 00:14:37.899 2018, Atwood signed an open letter calling for 00:14:37.899 --> 00:14:40.620 an independent investigation into a university's 00:14:40.620 --> 00:14:42.700 handling of the firing of a professor who had 00:14:42.700 --> 00:14:44.919 been accused of sexual harassment and assault. 00:14:45.039 --> 00:14:47.779 Right. Her signature generated severe social 00:14:47.779 --> 00:14:50.360 media backlash from some feminist critics who 00:14:50.360 --> 00:14:53.139 felt she was betraying the MeToo movement by 00:14:53.139 --> 00:14:55.519 seemingly defending an accused abuser. And she 00:14:55.519 --> 00:14:57.799 didn't back down, did she? No. In response, she 00:14:57.799 --> 00:14:59.799 wrote an op -ed for the Globe and Mail titled, 00:15:00.399 --> 00:15:03.639 Am I a Bad Feminist? In that op -ed, she defended 00:15:03.639 --> 00:15:05.940 her position by stating she was strictly supporting 00:15:05.940 --> 00:15:09.000 due process in the legal system. She argued that 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:11.940 unquestioning condemnation without a fair, transparent 00:15:11.940 --> 00:15:14.799 institutional process is incredibly dangerous. 00:15:15.539 --> 00:15:18.039 She even referred to the MeToo movement as a 00:15:18.039 --> 00:15:20.539 symptom of a broken legal system, suggesting 00:15:20.539 --> 00:15:23.039 that when institutions fail to provide justice, 00:15:23.480 --> 00:15:26.200 people resort to Internet tribunals, which she 00:15:26.200 --> 00:15:29.100 views as a dangerous precedent. And that position 00:15:29.100 --> 00:15:31.659 angered a lot of her longtime supporters, who 00:15:31.659 --> 00:15:33.519 felt she was failing to understand the power 00:15:33.519 --> 00:15:36.720 dynamics at play. But her stance really highlights 00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:40.299 her absolute refusal to toe any party line, regardless 00:15:40.299 --> 00:15:42.679 of the social cost. Wait, this connects directly 00:15:42.679 --> 00:15:44.360 back to her childhood in the woods, doesn't it? 00:15:44.440 --> 00:15:47.159 Oh, how so? She views the Me Too movement not 00:15:47.159 --> 00:15:50.019 through a partisan lens, but as the alien anthropologist 00:15:50.019 --> 00:15:52.820 watching a society bypass its own established 00:15:52.820 --> 00:15:56.379 legal structures. Oh, wow. Yes. To her... A society 00:15:56.379 --> 00:15:59.379 abandoning due process in favor of public tribunals 00:15:59.379 --> 00:16:01.799 looks exactly like the breakdown of rules that 00:16:01.799 --> 00:16:03.860 precedes the dystopias she writes about. That 00:16:03.860 --> 00:16:06.259 is a profound connection. She's applying the 00:16:06.259 --> 00:16:08.779 exact same critical stress testing lens to her 00:16:08.779 --> 00:16:11.440 allies that she applies to her adversaries. She 00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:14.799 demands rigorous critical thinking over mob consensus, 00:16:15.080 --> 00:16:17.120 even when the mob thinks they're doing the right 00:16:17.120 --> 00:16:19.850 thing. Exactly. And it's why she possesses a 00:16:19.850 --> 00:16:22.950 host of seemingly contradictory labels that just 00:16:22.950 --> 00:16:26.049 confuse people who try to categorize her. The 00:16:26.049 --> 00:16:28.789 list of her self -professed labels is wild. It 00:16:28.789 --> 00:16:31.350 really is. She has called herself a red Tory, 00:16:31.929 --> 00:16:33.850 which she defines in the historical Canadian 00:16:33.850 --> 00:16:35.990 sense as someone who believes that society should 00:16:35.990 --> 00:16:38.950 be structured with order, but that those in power 00:16:38.950 --> 00:16:41.850 have an absolute paternalistic responsibility 00:16:41.850 --> 00:16:44.470 to care for the community and the disadvantaged. 00:16:44.590 --> 00:16:47.110 Right. She has stated openly on social media 00:16:47.110 --> 00:16:50.370 that she is a monarchist. Yep. And her dietary 00:16:50.370 --> 00:16:54.029 restrictions are equally specific. She is a pescetarian 00:16:54.029 --> 00:16:56.669 who absolutely refuses to eat anything with fur 00:16:56.669 --> 00:16:59.289 or feathers, but she will gladly eat gastropods, 00:16:59.509 --> 00:17:01.669 like snails are fine. Yeah, she draws a very 00:17:01.669 --> 00:17:04.710 weird, firm, ethical line at eating snails. It's 00:17:04.710 --> 00:17:07.609 so specific. And on top of all this heavy intellectual 00:17:07.609 --> 00:17:10.589 philosophy, she has this incredible dry sense 00:17:10.589 --> 00:17:13.509 of humor. Oh, her humor's fantastic. In 2024, 00:17:13.970 --> 00:17:16.130 she just randomly popped up in a cameo on the 00:17:16.130 --> 00:17:18.910 Canadian procedural television show Murdoch Mysteries. 00:17:19.089 --> 00:17:21.869 She played an amateur ornithologist looking at 00:17:21.869 --> 00:17:25.470 birds. Naturally. So as a reader, how do you 00:17:25.470 --> 00:17:27.529 reconcile this? How does the woman who wrote 00:17:27.529 --> 00:17:30.809 the ultimate feminist dystopian text also anger 00:17:30.809 --> 00:17:33.890 modern feminist critics aligned with historical 00:17:33.890 --> 00:17:37.660 red Toryism? invent robotic arms, and joke around 00:17:37.660 --> 00:17:40.299 on daytime TV. It only seems contradictory if 00:17:40.299 --> 00:17:42.799 you expect her to follow a prepackaged ideology. 00:17:43.839 --> 00:17:46.640 Atwood's core defining characteristic is fiercely 00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:49.660 independent thought. Right. She views unquestioning 00:17:49.660 --> 00:17:52.059 adherence to any group or the blind acceptance 00:17:52.059 --> 00:17:55.079 of any dogma as the exact mechanism that creates 00:17:55.079 --> 00:17:58.180 totalitarianism. To Atwood, the moment you stop 00:17:58.180 --> 00:18:00.160 questioning your own side's method is the exact 00:18:00.160 --> 00:18:01.960 moment you start laying the bricks for Gilead. 00:18:02.200 --> 00:18:04.539 So to prevent the dystopia, you have to be willing 00:18:04.539 --> 00:18:07.420 to anger your own allies. Yes. You have to maintain 00:18:07.420 --> 00:18:09.859 that wilderness survival instinct and you have 00:18:09.859 --> 00:18:11.880 to be willing to look at the wolves even when 00:18:11.880 --> 00:18:13.599 they're wearing the sheep clothing of your own 00:18:13.599 --> 00:18:16.019 political party. You have to remain the alien 00:18:16.019 --> 00:18:18.920 anthropologist at all times. You can never get 00:18:18.920 --> 00:18:21.480 too comfortable with the societal rules of the 00:18:21.480 --> 00:18:23.859 present because they can be rewritten overnight. 00:18:24.720 --> 00:18:27.180 Margaret Atwood is an untamable intellectual 00:18:27.180 --> 00:18:30.670 force. She is a wilderness survivor who views 00:18:30.670 --> 00:18:34.269 civilization as a thin veneer. She is an inventor 00:18:34.269 --> 00:18:36.549 solving the mechanical problems of the future, 00:18:37.250 --> 00:18:39.789 and a writer who uses the darkest parts of human 00:18:39.789 --> 00:18:42.750 history to build a stress test for our present. 00:18:42.990 --> 00:18:45.490 She forces us to look squarely at what we are 00:18:45.490 --> 00:18:48.430 capable of, denying us the comfort of talking 00:18:48.430 --> 00:18:50.769 squids in outer space to distract us from our 00:18:50.769 --> 00:18:53.410 own reflections. But before we wrap up this deep 00:18:53.410 --> 00:18:55.609 dive into the source material, I want to leave 00:18:55.609 --> 00:18:58.210 you, the listener, with one final provocative 00:18:58.210 --> 00:19:00.529 thought to mull over on your own. Oh, this part 00:19:00.529 --> 00:19:02.710 is fascinating. It is a piece of Atwood's family 00:19:02.710 --> 00:19:05.369 history that we haven't touched on yet. And it 00:19:05.369 --> 00:19:07.890 fundamentally recontextualizes everything we've 00:19:07.890 --> 00:19:09.930 just discussed about her life and her work. It's 00:19:09.930 --> 00:19:11.950 one of those historical details that sounds like 00:19:11.950 --> 00:19:14.509 it must be fiction, but it is entirely real. 00:19:15.210 --> 00:19:17.049 According to Atwood's grandmother, their family 00:19:17.049 --> 00:19:19.369 is directly descended from a woman named Mary 00:19:19.369 --> 00:19:22.109 Webster. Mary Webster? Right. Mary Webster was 00:19:22.109 --> 00:19:24.930 a 17th century Puritan woman living in Massachusetts 00:19:24.930 --> 00:19:27.829 who was accused of witchcraft. She was subjected 00:19:27.829 --> 00:19:30.869 to a trial, convicted, and she was actually hanged 00:19:30.869 --> 00:19:33.150 from a tree and left for dead. But she didn't 00:19:33.150 --> 00:19:35.349 die. Unbelievable. When they came to cut her 00:19:35.349 --> 00:19:38.170 down the next morning, she was still alive. She 00:19:38.170 --> 00:19:40.609 survived the hanging, and she lived for another 00:19:40.609 --> 00:19:44.269 14 years. Atwood even wrote a poem about her 00:19:44.269 --> 00:19:47.369 called Half -Hanged Mary. And this is the kicker. 00:19:47.730 --> 00:19:50.269 She dedicated the Handmaid's Tale to her. A woman 00:19:50.269 --> 00:19:53.289 who literally survived the ultimate oppressive, 00:19:53.450 --> 00:19:56.029 dogmatic system of her time. Exactly. So I want 00:19:56.029 --> 00:19:58.670 you to ponder this. How much of Margaret Atwood's 00:19:58.670 --> 00:20:01.250 lifelong obsession with surviving oppressive 00:20:01.250 --> 00:20:04.410 systems is just creative brilliance? And how 00:20:04.410 --> 00:20:07.170 much of it is literally in her blood? Wow. An 00:20:07.170 --> 00:20:09.730 ancestral memory passed down from a woman who 00:20:09.730 --> 00:20:12.009 simply refused to die at the hands of a fanatic 00:20:12.009 --> 00:20:14.869 society. When you're the descendant of a woman 00:20:14.869 --> 00:20:17.549 who beat the hangman's noose, maybe you don't 00:20:17.549 --> 00:20:19.730 need talking squids to understand terror. You 00:20:19.730 --> 00:20:21.670 really don't. Maybe you just need to look at 00:20:21.670 --> 00:20:23.529 the world around you, bend it to its breaking 00:20:23.529 --> 00:20:26.210 point, and write down exactly what happens next. 00:20:26.730 --> 00:20:29.069 From the backwards of Quebec to the sealed vaults 00:20:29.069 --> 00:20:32.609 of the year 2114, the alien anthropologist is 00:20:32.609 --> 00:20:35.269 always taking notes. Keep that in mind the next 00:20:35.269 --> 00:20:36.210 time you see a red cloak.