Book Club: Chapterhouse Dune (Part 2)

Summary

Gom Jabbar: Book Club – Chapterhouse Dune (Part 2)

Podcast: Gom Jabbar: A Dune Podcast
Hosts: Abu and Leo
Date: December 12, 2025
Episode Focus: Chapters 4–6 of Chapterhouse Dune

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Episode Overview

In this episode, hosts Abu and Leo continue their in-depth book club journey through Frank Herbert’s Chapterhouse: Dune, exploring chapters 4, 5, and 6. The discussion dives into the narrative and philosophical depths of Frank Herbert’s world, including analysis of the Honored Matres’ motivations, Odrade’s inner life and unique humanity, and the intricate theme of “Sea Child.” The episode also features their trademark mix of humor, literary insight, and passionate fan engagement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Chapter Summaries and Narrative Arc

Chapter 4: Honored Matres’ Inner Life

• Focus: Follows Grand Dame Logno, Honored Matre senior aide, as she reports to her superior's chamber—during an explicit and bizarre ongoing sexual encounter.
• Toxic Work Environment: Both hosts comment humorously on the extreme absence of "HR" and the wild, dark tone (“Where is HR? ... This is a toxic work environment.” – Leo, 06:54).
• Honored Matres' Motivation:
  • They're fleeing a greater enemy—the Many Faced Ones and their futars (attack beasts).
  • Seeking to rearm by having the Ixians replicate their capital "Weapon," but are hindered by missing parts in a tongue-in-cheek comparison to modern tech: lost USB-C charger (Abu and Leo, 07:55).
  • Their ruthlessness is strategic; they're not interested in ruling the old Imperium but are resource-mining before returning to their real war (09:15-09:42).
• Quote:
  • Honored Matre: “I do not trust smugglers, Logno. Bond a few more of them and test this thing of Buzzle again. The witches may be weak, but I do not think they are stupid.” (10:21)

Chapter 5: Odrade and the Sea Child

• Odrade’s Introspection:
  • Experiences powerful visions of her childhood on the Gamu coast, conceptualized as her “Sea Child,” an emotional anchor (11:13-13:01).
• Recurring Nightmare:
  • Tightrope across an abyss, pursued by a faceless, axe-wielding threat—interpreted as a metaphor for her unique Atreides prescience and the precarious fate of the Sisterhood.
• Foreshadowing and Stakes:
  • The nightmare and Sea Child serve as fierce metaphors for the mounting threats: “The delicate strand on which I carry the fate of the sisterhood” (12:57).
• Devastating News:
  • Balanda informs Odrade that Lampadas has fallen, with total loss—no survivors, including key figures (Lucilla, Bersmali, Bashar Short).
• Grief and Humanity:
  • Odrade copes with trauma by focusing on mundane sensory details, paralleling real-world psychological responses (Leo, 17:23-19:45).
• Quote:
  • “Lift and fall of waves, the sense of unbound horizons with strange new places just beyond...” (16:13)

Chapter 6: Lucilla Among the Secret Jews

• Lucilla Survives:
  • Revealed alive and hidden on Gamu, in a farmhouse with a secret Bene Gesserit ally—a retired Suk doctor who is also a rabbi, part of a clandestine community preserving Jewish tradition (“Jews in Dune,” 20:41).
• The Secret Jews’ Survival:
  • Thousands of years hidden, unchanged, in alliance with the Bene Gesserit since the Battle of Corrin.
• Rebecca the Wild Reverend Mother:
  • Introduced as a “wild” Reverend Mother who underwent the spice agony outside of Bene Gesserit control. She can receive Lucilla’s vital memories and smuggled information, while the Jewish community maintains its cover by betraying Lucilla to local authorities (25:00).
• Tough Choices:
  • The survival strategy demands Lucilla’s sacrifice, justified by the quote: “It is the only way we can save ourselves and maintain our credibility.” (26:10)

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Takeaway Deep Dive: The Concept of Sea Child

[Begins 28:45]

What is Sea Child?

• Odrade's Sea Child is her deeply rooted sense of self, originating from a loving childhood by the sea—her "ultimate secret" and source of strength, not a Bene Gesserit implant, but innately human (30:23–31:16).
• “Her personal concept of sanity came from those times. The ability to balance on strange seas, the ability to maintain your deepest self despite unexpected waves.” (30:32, Leo)

Sea Child vs. Other Memory

• Sea Child transcends even the vaunted “other memory” of the Sisterhood:
  “A reassuring message spoken in a language older than Odrade's oldest other memory.” (32:30)
• Odrade derives a unique resilience from Sea Child, not subject to Sisterhood dogma or genetic programming.

Thematic Significance

• Humanizing Odrade:
  "Sea Child is a way for Frank to show us Odrade’s humanity, show us her fears, and reveal the Mother Superior’s vulnerabilities." (43:22, Abu)
• Contrast with Sisterhood’s Dogma:
  Odrade integrates her emotions and vulnerability instead of suppressing them, unlike most Bene Gesserit who fear emotion as a corrupting influence (41:46).
• Therapeutic Parallel:
  Echoes “inner child work” from modern psychology—healing and integrating rather than eliminating childhood emotions or wounds (44:55–45:50).

Noteworthy Quotes:

• “In a Bene Gesserit society where any form of love was suspect, this remained Odrade’s ultimate secret.” (35:51)
• “Sea Child remained intact.” (38:14, from powerful backstory segment)
• “Sea Child is insisting on the importance of basic human needs. For comfort, for safety, for love. That unarticulatable purity that exists at the core of your experiences that cannot be moved by strange waters.” (48:20, Leo)

Contrast with Balanda:

• Balanda embodies pure strategy, lacking Odrade’s Sea Child—her reactions are tactical, while Odrade’s are deeply empathetic (41:22–42:34).

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Spice Morsels

[Starts 52:19]

1. Guild Navigator Description: Who Inspired Whom?

• In Chapter 6, Lucilla visualizes a navigator with “tiny V of a mouth and ugly flap of a nose...giant face with pulsing temples"—much more detailed than earlier descriptions.
• Hosts speculate: was Frank Herbert influenced by David Lynch’s grotesque film depiction of navigators, or vice versa?
  • Timeline: Lynch’s film released 12/1984. Chapterhouse written 1984, published 4/1985. Likely Herbert was influenced by Lynch’s imagery.
• “Did Lynch's version inspire Frank Herbert to write this in Chapterhouse? Or is this the description that Frank gave to David Lynch?” (55:57–56:22)

2. Stygian Blackness

• Opening of chapter 4: “Stygian blackness in great Honored Matre sleeping chamber.”
• Stygian: Rare adjective meaning extremely dark/gloomy; from the River Styx of Greek myth (barrier to the Underworld).
• Possible deliberately mythic reference to the threshold of life and death, aligning with the Honored Matre's aura (58:57–61:46).

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Notable (and Hilarious) Moments

• The hosts’ satirical riffing on the Honored Matre sex scene and how abhorrent the workplace would be:
  “Where is HR? ... This is a toxic work environment.” (06:54)
• Tech humor about USB-C chargers for the Weapon, highlighting the Dune universe’s odd anachronism (07:55–09:15).
• Giddy shock and appreciation for Herbert’s poetic style in Odrade’s introspective chapter and how trauma is processed:
  “It’s straight poetry. It’s unbelievably beautiful.” (19:45, Leo)
• Playful engagement with new words ("stygian"):
  “Try to use stygian all the time...like, man, news cycle these days is stygian as dog.” (59:00)
• Tangent about audience breadstick challenges at Olive Garden (63:26–64:10).

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Chapter 4 summary / Honored Matre focus: 05:49–11:13
• Chapter 5 summary / Odrade & Sea Child: 11:13–20:02
• Chapter 6 summary / Lucilla and secret Jews: 20:02–27:43
• Sea Child thematic deep dive: 28:45–51:51
• Spice Morsels (Navigator description, Stygian): 52:19–61:46

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Memorable Quotes

• “The delicate strand on which I carry the fate of the sisterhood...” (Odrade’s dream, 12:57)
• “You imagine her merging with Taraza’s consciousness... She’s like, you still have Sea Child? Ah shit. We failed.” (36:12, Leo)
• “Sea Child is a way for Frank to show us Odrade’s humanity... and reveal to us the Mother Superior’s vulnerabilities.” (43:22, Abu)
• “10,000 years of genetic breeding—they’ll do anything other than go to therapy.” (50:53, Leo)

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Conclusion: The Dune Book Club Experience

This episode offers a rich and insightful tour through pivotal early chapters of Chapterhouse: Dune. The hosts balance humor and deep literary analysis, especially in their dissection of Odrade’s “Sea Child,” the Bene Gesserit’s emotional limitations, and the wild narrative threads of Frank Herbert’s later works. Fans come away with a renewed appreciation both for Herbert’s prose and for the relatable, deeply human veins running through his science fiction epic.

Next reading: Chapters 7–9 in the ACE paperback, or up to the sentence “What have we done? Israel, help her.”

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Contact: Send thoughts (or stygian stories!) to gamjabbapodcastmail.com
Patreon/Merch/Links: In show notes

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"We float, therefore we are." — Abu (51:51)
"Whoever controls the podcast controls the universe." — Sign-off

Transcript

[Abu]

Gom Jabbar, a jewel in the sisterhood's network of podcasts. Home of their most prized episodes. Another lifeless RSS feed of ashes and hardened melt.

[Leo]

Oh, no.

[Abu]

And the producer, Leo Wiggins, with all of his hand picked scripts all dead.

[Leo]

That's me dying.

[Abu]

That's you dying.

[Leo]

That's the sound of me dying. Okay, here's the sound of one of my scripts dying. Okay, that was a script dying. And then.

[Abu]

Yeah, okay, wow.

[Leo]

It fully produced death.

[Abu]

Throes of a script.

[Leo]

Death throws of a script. Right?

[Abu]

We still print them out. Actually, we don't. We are not digital. We. We print them out on paper.

[Leo]

It's an incredible waste of resources. Ye. Welcome to Gom Jabbar, your guide to the iconic world of Dune. We'll be exploring the themes, philosophies and characters found in the sandy depths of this vast universe. From Frank Herbert's groundbreaking novels to the adaptations on film and tv. My name is Leo.

[Abu]

And my name's Abu.

[Leo]

I'm back from the dead. And today on the show, we are continuing our deep dive into the pages of Chapter House Dune. What a fucking crazy set of chapters. What an absolutely insane set of pages that Frank put together for this book. Incredible.

[Abu]

Incredible. It's been a delight revisiting Chapter House because I have to admit, it has been a number of years since I last read this book and I have forgotten much of it outside of, like, basic lore details and big plot points. I had forgotten how early some of the ideas we're going to talk about today were introduced in this book. So I'm excited to get into it and I'm excited that some of this is like, all new to me all of a sudden.

[Leo]

Let's take care of our housekeeping before we get too far into it. We're chomping at the bit to talk about it and shout out. Mapes is upset with us because we haven't done our housekeeping. As usual, dear listener, spoiler warning. We are talking about only the pages we've covered so far in our book club series. So if you're up to date in the book club, you are safe to listen to today's episode. But of course, that does include all of Frank's books leading up to this final book and these three chapters.

[Abu]

That's right. And of course, up top, we need to shout out our Kwisatz Haderach level patrons. And folks, today's an exciting day because we have some new names to shout out today. Daniel Dion, Seth Redding, Greer Brad Hutchins and Kevin Monroe.

[Leo]

Hell, yeah.

[Abu]

Look at that, folks.

[Leo]

And Kevin sent us pictures of his cat, cj. Oh, what a cute tuxedo cat. Oh, my God. With the different ears, like asymmetrical ears. Oh, love it. Love cj. Love it.

[Abu]

Thank you all so much for your generosity and for your beautiful cat pictures. Of course. Our thank yous extend to all of our patrons at every level who, as we say every episode, truly builds the foundation upon which this show runs. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We couldn't do the show without you.

[Leo]

We absolutely could not. And as a quick reminder, if you are not currently in a place, maybe you have subscription fatigue. I just canceled like six subscriptions two days ago, so I get it. If you are in a place where you can't commit to a subscription, we do have a one time tip link. So if you decide you want to buy us a spice coffee, treat us to a spice beer, something like that, we've got that link in the show. Notes. We always appreciate. Again, every little amount helps make this thing possible. So thank you so much, everyone.

[Abu]

Okay, so with housekeeping out of the way, y' all know the plan for today's episode. We'll begin with a summary of today's assigned reading, chapters 4, 5, and 6. Then we'll dive deep into a takeaway today. I'm very excited about today's takeaway.

[Leo]

Amazing.

[Abu]

And finally, we will wrap up by chomping down on a couple of delicious spice morsels that we have cooking in the oven right now. And as always, a reminder that we often live record these episodes. So throughout today's discussion, you might hear us responding to folks in the live chat right now who are participating in the discussion.

[Leo]

Indeed they are.

[Abu]

All right, Leo, before we dive into today's chapter summaries, let's take a quick break. Dear listener, don't go anywhere. When we come back, we're continuing our journey through Chapter House Dune.

[Leo]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

[Abu]

Listening to this podcast, Smart move. Being financially savvy.

[Leo]

Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle.

[Abu]

Home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan.

[Leo]

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer.

[Abu]

Availability, amount of discounts and savings and.

[Leo]

Eligibility vary by state.

[Abu]

My name is Percy Jackson. Getting in trouble is like breathing for me.

[Leo]

The hit series returns to Disney and Hulu. The danger the camp is under is greater than you can possibly imagine. For the key to our survival, three of you must quest to the Sea of Monsters.

[Abu]

Let's go do the impossible. I'm not gonna let some stupid monsters.

[Leo]

Stand in my way. Percy Jackson and the Olympians. New season now on Disney and Hulu. Learn [e-mail] whatson welcome back, everybody. Hope you enjoyed your break. Hope you're ready for some sexy sex. Let's get into our first chapter from the assigned reading. This is chapter four of Chapter House Dune and our first. Oh, my God. This chapter, our first chapter, rides along with Grand Dame Lagna, the great Honored Matres Senior Aide. We are with the right hand lady to the pinnacle of the Honored Matres.

[Abu]

That's right.

[Leo]

Lagna is reporting to the Honored Matres sleeping chambers for a chat.

[Abu]

Yep.

[Leo]

And throughout this chapter, Lagna is just sitting in the darkness, speaking with her boss as her boss is actively fucking. Just the whole time. There is the smell of fur in the air. Where is HR where is H. This is a toxic work environment.

[Abu]

That is exactly what I was going to say. There is no HR HR was killed.

[Leo]

With a kick to the neck, I think. Purportedly so. Yeah. Fucking the whole time. Insane. The chapter is also crazy dense. Like, I'm getting major flashbacks to that first chapter on Tleilax, Chapter 5 of Heretics, where it's just lots of new details about the Honor Matre that are just hitting us like, you know, sentence after sentence.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

Talking about this battle with the many faced ones that they're fleeing from the scattering. The weapon, capital T, capital W, has a two part thing. It's a little handheld tube. Combine it with a battery or a charge of some sort and it carves a bloodless swath through the battlefield. What the fuck? This is crazy. And we're just getting all of this as Dama's fucking in the shadow. It's an insane chapter.

[Abu]

Yeah. This is a wild chapter.

[Leo]

It is.

[Abu]

But also it's worth noting, we lost the fucking USB C charger for the weapon. Okay? We can't use it right now.

[Leo]

They've only got 300. They're all USB C. And all we've got is fucking lightning cables. This sucks. So they're having the Ixians make new USB C cables, but the Ixians are like, what? What is USB C? Is that like. Yeah, is that what it use on a printer? And you're like, no, it's like the. It's like Android. And they're like, we don't have Android or Planet X. We all use iPhones. But you Know, last generation. So we learn that the Honored Matre, part of the reason they're back in this old Imperium is they were fleeing this battle that they were losing against the many Faced ones and their futars, their kind of attack dogs. They are here and they have found the Ixians, and they are having the Ixians attempt to replicate the weapon, capital T, capital W, so that they can rearm themselves and return to that fight. So that's ultimately, like. That answers a big question for us, like, why are the Honored Matre back in this corner of the universe? They were fleeing a fight that they were losing, and they are now attempting to rearm themselves and get back to the real battle. So that also kind of explains why they're so like, yeah, we'll just eradicate that planet, because what do they have that matters to us? Nothing at all.

[Abu]

Right. Who cares? Yeah. Mine it. Mine it for resources. Move on. You know, none of this means anything to them. The old Imperium doesn't mean anything to them. They don't want to conquer it, to rule here. So it is interesting that we're getting this extra layer of motivation that they are here to mine the people and resources of the old Imperium, get what they need.

[Leo]

Yeah.

[Abu]

And go back and finish off this fight that they were losing out there in the scattering.

[Leo]

Yeah, yeah. It's. Oh, it's fascinating. Now, the. Speaking of, like, mining resources and stuff, they talk about Planet Buzzell, Buzzel and Planet Buzzel. I've said it three different ways. It's rich in something called sooth stones. Seuss stones. Seuss stones. But according to their intel that they've gotten from smugglers that they've, like, sexually bonded, the planet doesn't appear to be defended. There are a few Bene Gesserit on the planet, but not very many, so it seems like it's easy pickings. But they are suspicious and they don't trust the intel fully.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

So they are being very, very cautious. Here's the quote. Quote, I do not trust smugglers. Logno. She's saying this between, you know, fucking right between thrusts, between her furry companion. Okay. Quote, I do not trust smugglers. Lognome. Bond a few. Bond a few more of them and test this thing of Buzzle. Again. The witches may be weak, but I do not think they are stupid. End quote. And, And. And, you know, Lugna's like, all right, say less Queen. I'm getting the fuck out of this room. Smell sounds terrible. I'm getting out of here. And, yeah, and that's where the chapter ends.

[Abu]

Okay, continuing with our chapter summaries, let's talk about chapter number five, folks. In this chapter, we join Odrade in her workroom as she begins to experience visions of her childhood on the Gamu coast. And this manifests as her inner Sea Child. And for now, for the summary, we're going to put a pin in Sea Child for a second because we have a ton to say about this idea later in our takeaway. This is what our takeaway will be about. So let's just put a pin in Odrade's musings and these thoughts about her childhood and the Gamus echoes for now. We'll revisit it at length in just a little bit later in the episode. What is important to note from this episode is this recurring nightmare that Odrade has been having in which she is rushing across a tightrope over an endless chasm and being chased by some unknown person whose face she can't see, who's wielding an axe, intending to cut the tightrope, dropping Odrade into this bottomless cavern. Odrade senses that this nightmare that she continues to have is part of her special Atreides talent. Right? This instinct that she has to sense danger, and in particular, to sense danger to the sisterhood. Quote. As she sat in her workroom remembering the dream, Odrade felt the depth of reality behind that metaphor of a slender rope, the delicate strand on which I carry the fate of the sisterhood. Sea Child sensed the approaching nightmare and intruded with images of bloody waters. This was no trivial warning.

[Leo]

God, I love it. I love it. It's so good.

[Abu]

It's so good. And I think it shows that there's a lot to say about Sea Child. I'm going to try and not get into it here in the summary, but I think it's very interesting, the insights we get into a drade and her character, her role as Mother Superior in this chapter and of course, the foreshadowing that we get here. Right. Who's chasing who, theoretically, you know, quote, is chasing Odrade. Is it just the Honored Matres? Is there a greater danger? How is Dorad going to get out of this pickle? How much bloody water do we have to wade through? A lot is being set up here in this chapter as far as foreshadowing for the war against the Honored Matres and the rest of this book.

[Leo]

Yeah, in some ways foreshadowing the rest of the chapter, too.

[Abu]

That's truly.

[Leo]

It's a Quick payoff. It's like very quick payoff. Bad news is going to show up and Balanda's like, I've got news, right?

[Abu]

Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. Yeah, no, Balanda's not a knocker.

[Leo]

She just.

[Abu]

She opens that fucking door.

[Leo]

She's a chance.

[Abu]

She walks right in.

[Leo]

Whatever you're doing, dressed, undressed, doesn't matter. Balanda's in the room.

[Abu]

Doesn't matter. Yep. There's no stopping Balanda. Well, you're correct. So as the chapter continues, there is blood in the water. Balanda enters the room and delivers this terrible news that lampadas. Lampadas, who knows?

[Leo]

Sound delicious. I mean, whatever.

[Abu]

I kind of want it, right?

[Leo]

It sounds like a fried. You know, you get some lampadas with some like mint sauce, some sort of dumpling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Abu]

Anyway, lampadas has fallen. The dumplings have fallen off the tray, not the dumplings. And Belanda knows this because her CHOAM spies have relayed this information to her. And in fact the CHOAM spies have confirmed that there are no survivors on the planet, including First Molly. No, the Bashar Short and Lucilla. Remember her from heretics.

[Leo]

Lucilla.

[Abu]

Lucilla was also stationed on Lepatus and everyone is dead. No survivors.

[Leo]

That's what the reports say. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Abu]

That's what the reports say. Obviously the next chapter will. Not all of that is true. Oh, obviously shocked by this news as we all are. This is a huge loss. Not just of a planet and resources and human life, but of key personnel. We've lost Bruce, Molly. Yeah, the Bashar that was trained by the legendary Miles Teg himself, his hand picked successor has been lost. And that's a huge blow in the war effort. Certainly. Now, as this chapter ends, Odraid's thoughts turn toward the aging Tamerlane, the other member of her inner council. And it's clear that this loss of Lampadas, this loss of Bersmali and Lucilla has perhaps escalated her timeline of installing Shiana. Hello. Remember Shiana?

[Leo]

Yeah.

[Abu]

She wants to replace Tamerlane with Shiana. She's going to push Tamlain out into an early retirement and bring Shiana into her inner council. That is a key part of whatever Odrade's plan in this book is. And those are the thoughts that end this chapter for us.

[Leo]

I just want to say I thought this chapter was fucking breathtaking. I thought it was beautifully written. Beautifully written. I mean, there's a quote early in the chapter where she's talking about Sea Child, but she says lift and fall of waves, the sense of unbound horizons with strange new places just beyond the curved limits of a watery world. That thrilling edge of danger implicit in the very substance that supported her. End quote. What the fuck, Frank? That's so good. And the parallels, the way her prescience is. I should save this for the takeaway, but I'll say it now. The parallels between, like, Paul's prescience being seen as dunes that he's seeing just across the horizon of time, and she's seeing these waves that are kind of shifting and the unpredictability of it, but it's also supporting her.

[Abu]

The ever shifting sands, the ever shifting water.

[Leo]

Yeah, yeah. The Coriolis storm as this metaphor for Kralazek, but then also the waves that are gentle and suit. It's like. It's so incredible.

[Abu]

Beautiful.

[Leo]

It's incredible. And I think that, like, continuing this pattern of what happened in this chapter, it was her in the office thinking, and Belanda came in and was like, bad news. And she was like, ah, shit. That was the whole chapter. And yet, yes, within this chapter, we get a sense of the stakes. We have a clear idea of what she's dealing with. It's the end of the Bene Gesserit. It's the end of humanity. It's the Golden Path, the noble purpose. It's all of that. But it's also the humanity, like, man, the fact that she hears that lumpiness. The dumplings have fallen off the train, right? It is like trillions dead, I think they say. Or like tens of billions. It's like so many dead. She fixates on, like, the frost on the window and the snowflakes outside, right? There it is. So I remember learning this, like, in an acting book. It was talking about, like people often try to. When you're trying to recreate a feeling. You go back to the feeling. You go, okay, I was sad. I was sad, sad, sad, sad. And that's how you get back to sadness. The reality is, though, oftentimes, in the most traumatic moments, our mind, as a protective measure, tries to cling to little mundane things. So it's like the smell of the air, that moment that you learned that this terrible thing happened, or the feeling of your, you know, backpack is heavier than you expected it. Those little details are the things that your consciousness clings to because it's avoiding hysteria. It's avoiding that loss of control and that total collapse. The fact that Balanda tells her lampadas has fallen, right? The dumplings, they're off the tray and the fact that she then goes on to multiple paragraphs of like, it's weird. The snow is so much earlier this season. It's like, oh, it's. It's her dealing with the loss in such a human way. I'm like, fuck. And you also realize, like, this is after Frank's wife Beverly passed away.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

So, like, how much is he channeling this idea of, like, trauma and how you work with trauma and how you do. It's like. It's straight poetry. It's unbelievably beautiful. My God. I think Frank's really, really firing on all cylinders here. And this is some of my favorite writing in the series. I think this is absolutely beautiful.

[Abu]

I agree. I couldn't agree more.

[Leo]

Anyway, can you tell I have strong feelings? This fucking book. Do you need to take a minute.

[Abu]

To look out the window at the snowflakes or you good to continue?

[Leo]

You know?

[Abu]

Oh, there he goes. He's in the.

[Leo]

New York is so cold.

[Abu]

He's.

[Leo]

Enter like 30 seconds of just silence on the podcast. Just like. And the two hosts looked their respective lights. Okay, let's finish our summaries. Sorry for that mini takeaway in our final chapter. Today we are with surprise, Lucilla. She's alive. Hello. Not yet. Not. Probably soon, though.

[Abu]

Not today, though.

[Leo]

Probably soon. Not today. Probably tomorrow. Lucilla has survived the destruction of Lumpidus and is hiding on. You'll never guess it. Gamu love it. And she's like, fuck, I came to the wrong.

[Abu]

I'm back here again. God damn it.

[Leo]

Back. God damn it. Oh, no. But anyway, Lucilla is in an old farmhouse in the care of a secret Bene Gesserit contact, a retired suk doctor who we learn is actually a rabbi of a secret ancient society of Jewish survivors. Wow. There is. We're going to do a whole episode on this at some point. But these are. These are Jews in Dune. These are. This is like a weirdly literal thing in the Dune universe. And Lucilla, a big part of this chapter is us riding sidesaddle with Lucilla as she pieced together the existence of this Jewish society. Man, that whole sequence was incredible. Like, yes, you're correct. And now that you know that, you have to promise that you will die before anyone learns of it. Like the. This is a secret that most Bene Gesserit probably do not know. Wild, incredible stuff.

[Abu]

A secret that's kept from the masters of secrets.

[Leo]

Oh, it's so good. Secrets upon secrets. And you're just discovering and even. Yeah, Lucilla talks about this feeling Of I've been like, again, I've been led into this new inner circle that I didn't even know existed. Whoa, that's so cool. And we, as readers are going, oh, that's so cool. And, oh. Dre explains that the Jews on Earth many eons ago decided we are going to basically, once space travel became possible, we're going to get out there into the universe, and we're going to create safe places for us because we have been so persecuted and so there's so much violence rendered against us because of our beliefs. They've been, like, hiding in. And just. What was it called? There was a great word for it. The great cover or something like that.

[Abu]

Yeah, the deep cover, Something along those line.

[Leo]

Yeah. Very cool. They basically said, we are never again going to be targeted for our beliefs. And they did it. They fucking did it so successfully that we are now, 30,000 years after being on Earth. They are continuous, relatively unchanged practitioners of Judaism.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

So much so that it's even pointed out that if you were to pluck a rabbi from old terror, they would feel at home with these people 30,000 years later.

[Abu]

Right.

[Leo]

Incredible. Fascinating. And definitely deserves its own entire episode, because there are a lot of divided takes on this generally. Now, o' Draid had explained to Lucilla that the Bene Gesserit and the Jews have been partnered up, have been secretly allied. Again, only the smallest, most select circle of Bene Gesserits know about this at all. But since the Battle of Corinth.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

So since the foundation of the imperial power structures as we know them.

[Abu]

Right.

[Leo]

The Bene Gesserit and. And the Jews have been partnered and have been, like, secretly allied. Now, in the present day, Lucilla is getting more and more panicked because she met with this rabbi. He seemed to be good. He seemed to be helping her, but he's not returned as soon as he should have. So she's starting to kind of panic.

[Abu]

Yes.

[Leo]

Now, when the Rabbi returns, it's clear that he's uncomfortable. He. They have this conversation about, you know, there's prescient seeking people on the. On the planet. There's, you know, the security is too tight. There is, simply put, no safe way to get her alive off the planet.

[Abu]

Right.

[Leo]

And the Rabbi has come up with a solution. We can't get you across the border, but we can take your. The thing that you carry. We can take that information, and we can make sure that that information gets safely back to the Bene Gesserit. Well, this leads up to an absolutely insane bombshell. The Rabbi reveals a new character. Rebecca. And Rebecca is a wild Reverend Mother. Hello. She has gone through the spice agony on her own, outside of Bene Gesserit influence. And she has the. Now, because she's another. She has other memories. She's a Reverend Mother. She can take all of that information that Lucilla has. She can airdrop all of that information to her. And because Rebecca isn't in any way aligned with the Bene Gesserit, no one knows who she is. She's this mystery, she's this unknown. She will be able to get off the planet safely, and she can go to the sisterhood and she can carry all that information back to them. Yeah, well, part of the catch, part of the thing that we know Lucilla is not going to be super happy about and why we're joking about her being dead tomorrow probably is, is all of this. Part of what will guarantee Rebecca's safety is if on the surface level, this rabbi and Rebecca sell out Lucilla and say, hey, Lucilla's here. We fucking got her. Get you. Big bounty on this person's head. Let's cash her in. We hate the Bene Gesserit. And they're like, cool, cool, cool. They're good. Oh, Rebecca's going on a sabbatical. Yes. Sweet. I mean, she sold us that Bene Gesserit. Like, why not? You know, that's the plan. And this. This is explained, summarized with the quote. Quote, it is the only way we can save ourselves and maintain our credibility.

[Abu]

Yeah, Right.

[Leo]

So Lucilla agrees. Even she. Again, she was in before she even knew what the plan was. But she is. She understands. She's like, I accept these terms because I have to, because that's the only way to get this information. Again, sisterhood above all. If I. If I die, it's too much of a loss.

[Abu]

So, yeah, I mean, speaking of complete cover. Right. The Jewish people have not survived 30,000 years by making mistakes and helping, like, going out of their way to endanger themselves. Helping Lucilla get off the planet might put the target on the Rabbi and his people's backs, you know? And so he has come here with a solution that still maintains their secrecy and ensures his people's continued safety. Right. And that includes a difficult decision, like turning Lucilla over to the authorities. Yeah, I appreciated that. We got, like, a real world grounded example of the types of things that this community has done for the last many, many millennia in order to survive this far, you know?

[Leo]

Yeah. It's fascinating. Again, there's a lot to say about. About this book broadly and about the involvement of these characters. And we will talk about it.

[Abu]

Yeah, Yeah. I think once we wrap up this book, we'll have to have a couple of special episodes like we did the Taraza plan for Heretics. I think we'll definitely have to do a couple one or two for Chapter House to cover some big things.

[Leo]

Just talking about Dhamma fucking for like an hour and a half. Just like the whole time you're like. So today we're.

[Abu]

All right, folks, that is our chapter summaries for today. 4, 5 and 6. Let's take another quick break. Don't go anywhere though, because when we come back, we're going to be diving deep into the concept of Sea Child. All of the interesting thematic layers there in our takeaway. So we'll see you in a minute.

[Leo]

Yeah. Oh, let's do it. I can't wait.

[Abu]

Toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of Rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata, your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more. Drink responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream. Natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025 Agave Loco Brands, Pojoaquee, Wisconsin. All rights reserved.

[Leo]

This episode is brought to you by NBA on Prime. This Tuesday at 8:30 Eastern, it's the Emirates NBA Cup Championship game on Prime. This year's quest for the cup has been building to this the championship game live from Las Vegas. Not a Prime member sign up for a 30 day free trial to get started today. The Emirates NBA cup championship game this Tuesday at 8:30 Eastern only on Prime. Restrictions apply. See Amazon.com amazonprime for details. Welcome back everybody. Hope you're ready for some Sea children. Slash Sea Child. Yeah. For our takeaway today, we're going to talk about Sea Child and there are a lot of interesting thematic and narrative elements at play. Again, Frank, as an author is getting into some very interesting poetry and sort of non literal imagery which is, is always kind of fun to, to talk about. And broadly, Sea Child is described as a manifestation of Odrade's childhood or I've seen discussions about this as this is sort of the embodiment of her prescience and sort of that earliest memory of what does it feel like to be aware of the shifting tides of life, you know, that sort of thing. And as we're introduced to Sea Child, Odrade is thinking back to her memories of living with her foster parents along the Gamu seacoast. So again, literally, an oceanside, watery life. You know, swimming in the waters, swimming in the waves, that sort of thing.

[Abu]

And this is where her inner Sea Child is happiest. These are happy memories of a time on Gamm when her life was filled with the love and support of her foster parents.

[Leo]

Yeah. And ultimately, for Odrade, Sea Child is serving as sort of a powerful anchor. This sort of, like, safe place, this. This kind of totem that she can go back to when she needs to be calmed. Quote. Her personal concept of sanity came from those times. The ability to balance on strange seas, the ability to maintain your deepest self despite unexpected waves.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

End quote. So managing that relationship of internal, external. You are floating upon the water. You're supported by the water. But as the water changes, how do you stay yourself? And how do you kind of have that core of immutable you?

[Abu]

Right.

[Leo]

That is. That is. That is so powerful amid, you know, the Bene Gesserit, trying to stamp out her thoughts of love and attachment. It's like this is part of how she has remained herself.

[Abu]

That's right.

[Leo]

Despite all of the dogma and despite all of the indoctrination.

[Abu]

Right. By. By holding on to Sea Child, holding on to these memories and this love and nurturing it, you know, and what I think is actually so interesting about Sea Child is that it goes. This goes beyond like, just other memory or a dab or any other Bene Gesserit technique. Right. Like, Sea Child isn't like a literal other memory type of thing within Odrade's psyche. It is described as something that's more innate, more powerful, and frankly, just more human. This is the quote that really stuck out to me. O' Draid here is again thinking about these fond memories with her adoptive parents. A sense of balance radiated from those times. A reassuring message spoken in a language older than Odrade's oldest other memory. End quote. That felt significant to me that this is something that goes well beyond even her genetic memories. This is older. This is more human. This is something at the core of being human, this inner child, this Sea Child. And I think, thematically speaking, that's a powerful and kind of shocking statement to make because, again, especially in these latter two books, we are operating within a sisterhood and writing along with characters within the sisterhood to whom genetic memory and this concept of, like, shared ancestral learning. And so for Odre to have these deeply personal memories that are uniquely her Own. This is her childhood with her adoptive parents. This is not something she was trained on by the Bene Gesserit. It's fascinating that this gives her this deep well of strength that she can tap into, and it's strength that has come to her from outside of any Bene Gesserit frameworks. It's a deeply human internal strength that she can tap into.

[Leo]

Yeah.

[Abu]

I found that interesting in a sisterhood that relies so heavily on other memory as their strength.

[Leo]

Yeah. Those frameworks, again, this also reads to me as, like, the unarticulatable truth that. That. That, like, Chenua and Leto share. Right. This is going beyond language, going beyond culture or society or framework. The things that, again, the Bene Gesserit are the experts of manipulation, but we see them fall prey to their own traps. And maybe those traps are more fundamental than even religious manipulation. Maybe some of those traps are a reliance on, for instance, the oldest other memory. Who gives a fuck? You're human. And what does that humanity, and where does that humanity play a part in the decisions you're making? And then why is the cottages painted by Van Gogh such a resonant moment for you?

[Abu]

Yes.

[Leo]

Well, it's the humanity and it's the experience of each brushstroke, and it's, you know, all of it's wrapped up in this. And I think it's so resonant because, again, even as I've gotten. Even as I've gotten older and now I'm in my mid-30s, it's like, I find that we tend to limit ourselves so much by the language that we speak and by the lessons we've learned and the institutions that have taught us. And, like, all of those things are useful and are very, very helpful, and they're good tools to know how to wield. But when we limit ourselves to them, that's where we start falling into problems and we can kind of buy into our own narratives in a way that can be deeply destructive. And this is also where, like, you know, you go to therapy and you go, oh, shit. Oh, no. Oh, God. And, like, a lot of that is, I think, something that. Oh, draid is modeling really beautifully here. This idea of having, like. Yeah, yeah, that. That kind of safe harbor that she has within herself that goes beyond language and is all very poetic. I don't. I love it. I love it so much.

[Abu]

It's so good. Yeah. The Sea Child concept really touched me in a way that felt extremely powerful. And in fact, I wanted to share another quote that really resonated with me because you know, we're speaking like, this is a safe harbor for her. This is something that's so innately powerful for Odrade, and it sets her apart from her fellow sisters. It's also something that her instructors have never been able to root out. Seachild has been with Odrade since childhood.

[Leo]

Yeah.

[Abu]

Quote Mama Sibia. Only a foster mother had taught Odrade to love herself. In a Bene Gesserit society where any form of love was suspect, this remained Odrade's ultimate secret. End quote. Like chills. Oh, it's so good chills from that line.

[Leo]

Also, you imagine her, like, merging with Taraza's consciousness. And Taraza then becomes the other memory. Taraza is now cognizant of Sea Child. She's like, you. You. Wait a second. You still have Sea Child. Ah, shit. We failed. Oh, yeah. Se. Like, hello. I. I actually want to also shout out another quote from. From this section because I genuinely thought this was incredible character. Like, just backstory about Odrade that I didn't. I don't. I. I fucking straight up forgot this. But here we have. So I'll read the quote and I'll talk about what it kind of meant to me. Quote. Not quite sure they had failed, but always suspicious they had sent her to Al Danab. Finally, a place deliberately maintained as a mimic of the worst in Seleucus Secundus. There to be conditioned on a planet of constant testing. A place worse than Dune in some respects. High cliffs and dry gorges, hot winds and frigid winds. Too little moisture and too much. The sisterhood had thought of it as a proving ground for those destined to survive on Dune. But none of this had touched that secret core within Odrade. Sea Child remained intact. End quote. The fact we didn't get fucking any of that. Oh, Draid's a, like, badass Fedaken survivor who was trained on a worse planet than Dune is crazy to me, but that's insane. I was thinking of her as, like, a Sherlock Holmes detective who's, like, making connections no one else had. They straight up sent her to a place that is constant testing grounds. Incredible. I loved that. Sort of. Yeah. As Norma Simva is pointing out in Chat. Umtal. Umtal. The fucking theme of Dune. I love it. And the idea that Sea Child, this. On this unarticulatable harbor that she floats upon in her inner world remained intact despite all of it.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

If we're talking about constant testing, I think that's a pretty good sign that it's something she can continue to rely upon.

[Abu]

Yeah. And I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Sea Child probably helped her get through some of the worst of that training.

[Leo]

Totally strange waters, right? Strange waters. Now all of this is kind of dancing around this idea of like a core of love, right? This thing that the Bene Gesserit want to root out but can't. And we see how powerful it has been for Odrade, right. We're talking about how it helped her through these difficult trying times and these testing grounds. And oftentimes it's giving her this kind of strength and clarity as she now faces the unparalleled challenges of being the Mother Superior. Literally holding and guiding the Bene Gesserit along this like narrow rope with a fucking axe wielding psychopath chasing him. Easy, no pressure, you know.

[Abu]

Right.

[Leo]

And oftentimes Sea Child is cutting through some of the over analysis or the over overthinking of that the Bene Gesserit can often fall prey to serving as sort of an emotional compass among those plans within plants.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

Now that doesn't mean that, oh, Jade is out here just fucking vibes based governing. She's not just like.

[Abu]

She's not vibe coding.

[Leo]

Not vibe coding. No, no, no.

[Abu]

She's.

[Leo]

She's again, that testing ground had a big old C Python element. She is simply. All of this is to say, she is simply unafraid to acknowledge the importance of emotion and seeing the value of that emotion and seeing the value of that attachment and letting that be a piece of the calculation. Basically.

[Abu]

Yeah. Hearing what Sea Child has to say.

[Leo]

Yes, yes, exactly. So in today's chapters, for instance, we see that one, two punch of Sea Child is giving her visions of bloody seas this visceral image of the cost of war against the honored matre. The longer you draw this battle out, the more lives are lost, the redder the water gets.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

And losing lumpiness, losing those dumplings from that tray is not just about the, you know, oh, this is another checkmate. They've taken the pawn off the board. It's all strategic. This is about human lives. And that's also why I think that the writing in that chapter is. Moves me so much, is we see that she is in shock. We see that she is reeling from the cost. The people, the humans that have been lost. What Sea Child is for her times a trillion, for a trillion different people who have those wordless truths that they live with gone. Utterly gone.

[Abu]

Right. And you can contrast that actually with Balanda's reaction Right. Balanda's reaction, her outburst was going to be, let's hit back harder, strategic. That is the analytical, strategic thing to do. Right. Balanda, I imagine, doesn't have a Sea Child who is showing her visions of bloody water.

[Leo]

Sea Child's got two guns. She's like, come on, let's fucking go. What should I do, Sea Child? Fucking kill them all. Okay, Sea Child, kill them all. Raise your hand in the zoom meeting. Do it, Belanda.

[Abu]

Sea Child. Absolutely chaotic.

[Leo]

Fucking chaotic. And just. Yeah, kick the boss from the zoom meeting. Kick him. Why not? See what happens.

[Abu]

Do it.

[Leo]

Do it. Do it.

[Abu]

Coward. So I do think we get a nice contrast there that. I don't think we're reading too much into this. This is very much in the subtext of the chapter that Balanda's reaction is not Odrait's reaction. Balanda is not looking out the window longingly at the winter, oncoming winter on chapter house and sad about these losses on Lampadas. She's thinking strategic, and there is a time and place for that. We're not saying never think that. Right. But Odrade's sort of superpower is. Her ultimate secret is this love and this humanity that she has kept at her core, and that she is open to listening to and responding to in a way that many other sisters are trained to ignore. Instead, it's.

[Leo]

It's. I. I love what you're saying. Like, this contrast is so huge. And I think that this is the sort of thing we need to keep in mind as. As we continue to. To kind of go through this book.

[Abu]

Yeah. I think it's also worth noting that from a narrative perspective, Sea Child as a plot device humanizes Odraid quite a bit.

[Leo]

Totally.

[Abu]

Right. In a way that many other sisters that we've encountered throughout the Dune saga have not been humanized. Perhaps Jessica was the only other one. And I think Sea Child is a way for Frank to show us Odrade's humanity, show us Odrade's fears, and reveal to us the Mother Superior's vulnerabilities. And I think it's a really elegant and smart writing choice from Frank.

[Leo]

Yeah.

[Abu]

Sea Child is a way for us to really connect with. Oh, trade in a way that we perhaps haven't with other characters, even main characters, you know?

[Leo]

Yeah, totally.

[Abu]

And I wanted to unpack this idea a little bit further because while we're here speaking of human vulnerability, I think we would be remiss in not mentioning how Odrade's Sea Child is very akin to the modern therapeutic practice of inner child work. Anyone who's been to therapy has probably had some first hand experience with this, working with their therapist on this. But if you don't know what that is, here, I think is a pretty good definition of what inner child work is in the realm of therapy. From the Cleveland Clinic. The process of acknowledging, understanding and healing the wounds of your inner child. This ongoing process requires unlearning past behaviors and replacing them with new ones. And that reinforce positive coping skills and present day beliefs about who you are as a person. It involves taking inventory of your past experiences and evaluating how they make you feel in the present day. End quote. And while Sea Child and Inner Child work isn't like exactly one for one, I do think there are some clear parallels to the way Odrade approaches Sea Child compared to how the sisterhood at large operates and has operated for many millennia. For example, rather than eliminating Sea Child or dangerous emotions like love, Odrade has learned to integrate them. You know, integrate these feelings and not be overwhelmed or overpowered by them. I think that is at the heart of the sisterhood's fear when it comes to love, is that it clouds her judgment. It overwhelms you.

[Leo]

Right.

[Abu]

Odrade is learning to manage that. Right. I can still feel the love. It doesn't have to control me. I can still make the hard Bene Gesserit decisions at the end of the day that I want to. And this very much mirrors the inner child work therapy approach of seeking to heal rather than eliminate your childhood wounds. Anyone who's been through that kind of therapy has certainly worked on that. It's not about getting rid of those bad feelings or those bad memories. It's about healing and integrating them into who you are now as a person. Which Odrade clearly has done with Sea Child.

[Leo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Abu]

So I wanted to draw some parallels there. Again, I don't think it's a perfect one to one comparison, but it very much read to me. I certainly have gone through therapy and am in therapy and I've done a lot of inner child work. So a lot of this was resonant with me. And I saw in Sea Child and o' Draid's relationship a lot of the work that I've done with my own relationship with my own inner child.

[Leo]

Yeah, I hear you. I think the parallel that makes sense to me as well within all of this is the idea of that Sea Child being unaffected by the things that have happened to you. So it's the trauma that happened to you. When you were a kid or what someone did to you and how you define yourself and all that, the Bene Gesserit teachings, the dogma, all of that stuff happens after you have that sort of like you're. You're alive and you're living and you have your. Your kind of core, immutable self. And then those things happen to you. And then if you wrap those into your identity, that's where you can kind of fall prey to redoing the trauma and the redoing the, you know, reenacting the violence that was done to you to others and things like that. So I. I see a lot of parallels there. Yeah, it's a really great call out. I think I'd heard of the Inner Child work, but I had not. I didn't know as much about it as I do now. That's. That's awesome. Thank you for pulling that out.

[Abu]

Of course.

[Leo]

Well, to wrap this up, to wrap up this point and to sort of land this ship like a dumpling that's fallen off of a tray, let's consider what ideas that Frank is exploring through Sea Child beyond naturally. It being kind of a clever, humanizing element of Odrade's character.

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

So Sea Child ultimately, it seems, represents Frank Herbert's understanding or belief that true strength comes not from eliminating or just, you know, banishing any sense of vulnerability, but from integrating it, from recognizing its part in the whole. That you are in a book series that is so often focused on, like Kwisatz Haderach level fucking speedster tag breaking necks at Mach 10. You know, the. The shit that's happening in Dune. The idea that this Sea Child metaphor for who? Someone who is now the most powerful, one of the most powerful people in the universe.

[Abu]

Correct this.

[Leo]

The idea of Sea Child is insisting on the importance of basic human needs. For comfort, for safety, for love. That unarticulatable purity that exists at the core of your experiences that cannot be moved by strange waters. You roll with those experiences. And that strength is something that is beyond any Bene Gesserit training. It survives the craziest conditions on the wildest planets. It's brilliant. And it's through this device that Frank is demonstrating that even in this far flung future universe of complexity, plans within plans, futars that seeking. That seeking and that inner work is not weakness, but wisdom. A guide toward genuine human wholeness rather than this illusion of invulnerability. Right. No one is invulnerable. No one is above getting bad news and being affected by it. And part of strength is recognizing that and giving yourself space to move with strange waters, as they say. And again, O'Drade recognizes this. It seems like the sisterhood is in this point of profound testing. The Bene Gesserit sisterhood itself is in those. You know, like that, that. That bizarre planet that was kept as a. As a recreation of the harshest conditions the universe has ever seen. The Bene Gesserit is being tested now, Amtal, on a cosmic scale. And the question is, will the Bene Gesserit get in touch with that immutable Sea Child self and survive the strange waters? Or will it add to the red that is flooding the sea, so to speak?

[Abu]

Right, right. Will they cling to dogma or are they willing to evolve and change and allow emotions like love or the emotions that seek out comfort and safety to be integrated into how they operate? You know?

[Leo]

Yeah.

[Abu]

Will they actually be able to embrace their. Their quote unquote, inner childs to find their own version of Sea Child institutionally, but also personally sister to sister?

[Leo]

Yeah. Will the Bene Gesserit sisterhood go to therapy? That's the question we've all been asking since the fucking first book. First book, first page, we were like these. These people need therapy. What is happening?

[Abu]

Yeah.

[Leo]

Truly will do.

[Abu]

That's the TLDR.

[Leo]

10,000 years of genetic breeding. They'll do anything other than go to therapy, you know.

[Abu]

Indeed.

[Leo]

Yeah.

[Abu]

So there you go, folks. That is our takeaway on Sea Child. What a beautiful chapter. What a beautiful concept. What a beautiful exploration of the core of humanity, the little human that's inside all of us that we should all be listening to. It's clear Frank was exploring all of these things through Sea Child. And it makes for one of the most compelling characters in the whole Dune saga. Right. I think both you and I would easily rank o' Draid in the upper echelon of all time Dune characters. And I think this is why we see so much of a drade here in chapters like this.

[Leo]

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Top three for sure.

[Abu]

For sure.

[Leo]

You'll never guess who my top one is. Anyway, I'll leave that mystery for later in this book. Now we're going to take one last quick break. But dear listener, don't go anywhere. We float. Therefore we are. We are going to be back with some lumpadas shaped morsels for you. Not on, not on the floor, not off the tray. We've got them fresh for you. Ready? Don't go anywhere. When we're back, we're talking about our.

[Abu]

Spice Morsels let's dig in. This message may be shocking to many millennials. If you are one, you might want to sit down. Right now, loads of people are searching the following on low rise jeans, halter top, velour, tracksuit, puka shell, necklace, disc belt. You likely placed these in the dark of your closet in 2004, never to be seen again. But if you can find it in yourself to dust them off, there are a lot of people who will give you money for them. Sell on Depop, where taste recognizes taste. All right, folks, welcome back. Let's round out today's episode by chomping down on some lampadas shaped spice morsels. Starting today with a question. Yeah, who inspired who? Leah? That's the question I want you to keep in mind as I work my way through this morsel.

[Leo]

Okay? So keep it in mind.

[Abu]

Follow me here.

[Leo]

Okay.

[Abu]

In chapter six, we get perhaps one of the most detailed descriptions of a Guild navigator in any of the six Dune books that Frank Herbert wrote.

[Leo]

Yeah, here's the quote.

[Abu]

And dear listener, see if any of this sounds familiar to you. Lucilla could visualize the navigator's tiny V of a mouth and the ugly flap of a nose. Mouth and nose appeared small on a navigator's gigantic face with its pulsing temples. She knew how threatened the rabbi must have felt listening to the sing song ululations of the navigator's voice with its simultaneous mech translation into impersonal Gaelic.

[Leo]

Tiny V of a mouth and the ugly flap of the nose. Frank Herbert's describing me. Oh, what a bastard. Fuck you. So rude, Frank. Oh, calling me out wow for my flap of a nose.

[Abu]

Oh, no, damn, your nose is not that flappy, Leo. Don't listen to Frank.

[Leo]

Frank keeps calling it flappy Flappy birds. More like flappy nose. You know what I mean?

[Abu]

Got him.

[Leo]

Got me.

[Abu]

So that is a pretty detailed description. That's pretty uncharacteristic, actually, for Frank to be so detailed in a description about a. A certain character. And actually, for contrast, here is a description of Edric the navigator from Dune Messiah back in that book, which is classic, Frank. Real vague and short. Quote, a repellent figure, the bold stare, those monstrous feet and hands moving softly in the gas, the smoking swirling of orange eddies around him. End quote.

[Leo]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Bold stare, monstrous feet. Frank, stop fucking coming for me. He's not coming. Me again. Piece of shit.

[Abu]

Frank, I know you're feeling so attacked. Oh, my God, So rude. You know what? This is ridiculous, Leo. Your. Your feet are.

[Leo]

They're pretty big. That's much more fair. To be fair. Just don't talk about my flappy nose, Frank. All right, you piece of. So rude.

[Abu]

Okay, so I call this out. Why. Why are we talking about navigators?

[Leo]

Why.

[Abu]

Why are we describing them? Here's why I call this out. I don't know if anyone else felt this, but Lucilla's description here in chapter six of Chapter House sounds an awful lot to me like the goopy butthole ugly motherfuckers in David Lynch's 1984 adaptation.

[Leo]

Oh, in that film. Such a butthole. Yeah.

[Abu]

And so this leads me back to the original question I posed Leo. Who inspired who? This makes me wonder. Did Lynch's version inspire Frank Herbert to write this in Chapter House? Or is this the description that Frank gave to David lynch when lynch was designing navigators for his film?

[Leo]

Ooh. Yeah.

[Abu]

I sought out to try and answer this question, and it kind of pretty much comes down to timeline. Lynch's film was released in December 1984, and the film completed principal photography in September of 1983. Okay, okay. When we take a look at when Chapterhouse was written and published. Chapter House was published in April of 1985. And based on records that you dug up in the Fullerton archives, actually, we know that Frank hadn't sent his final draft of Chapter House to the publisher until somewhere in the ballpark of, like, April 1984, about a year before it finally made it to publication. So, you know, that doesn't definitively answer whether or not Frank had this image of a navigator in his mind and in some notes and drafts somewhere. It's fun to speculate that maybe this is the description that Frank gave to lynch as lynch was making his movie. Or even. Even my speculation even goes further, because what if the two of them sat down and thought of this together? What if lynch was like, what's the navigator look like, Frank? And Frank was like, I've never fucking once thought about that. And lynch was like, well, I got to make a movie, bro, so we got to come up with something. And maybe this is the end result of the two of them putting their minds together. I don't know. That's pure speculation on my part. What I can say is, based off of these timelines, when the film wrapped up principal photography, when Frank sent a final draft to his publisher, it does feel far enough away that I think what's most likely is that Frank wrote this description in Chapterhouse based on what lynch came up with for the film. Because it does have a striking resemblance, I think to the lynch version of a Dude Navigator.

[Leo]

Oh, that's so cool. Great find. And, yeah, again, love the timeline stuff. I get so nerdy about this stuff. It's great. All right, well, our final morsel today, Dear listener, buckle up. We're talking about Stygian blackness. Love it. This morsel's hard to see. In our very first chapter. Today, we're greeted with this banger of an opening sentence. Stygian blackness in great honored matres sleeping chamber. End quote. Frank out here so efficient with language, he's just leaving out verbs. There isn't a single verb to be found in that fucking sentence. Love it. And joking aside, had you heard the term stygian before?

[Abu]

Never.

[Leo]

I.

[Abu]

This is new to me.

[Leo]

Also had not. And it's the first word in the chapter, and I was like, well, I gotta look this up. Turns out some kind of cool imagery wrapped up in this poetic license. So stygian as a word can be used generally to mean. And this is from Miriam Webster. Quote, extremely dark, gloomy, or forbidding. End quote. So, yeah, makes sense. You're talking about a dark sex room. Super, super stygian. And that tracks. Now, dear listener, I want you to try to use stygian all the time in your language. Let us bring this word back. It sounds so fun. Let's do it. For instance, man, news cycle these days. So, Stygian. Oh, my God, are you kidding? Stygian as dog. Well, we don't see this word used very often, but I did want to point out, as I was looking up, like, oh, authors who use this word, Stygian. Who uses it. Turns out, not super surprising. HP Lovecraft used it quite a bit. There's like, a couple of books called, like, Stygian Poetry and blah, blah, blah. So it's used. It's used around. That being said, the word has a primary. This is the etymology of the word, the primary meaning, and it is quote of or relating to the river Styx. End quote. It's kind of cool. And for those of you who don't know, the river Styx, as a reminder, it's from Greek mythology. It's the river that flows as a barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead, AKA Hades, AKA the underworld, AKA hell. This is the river that Charon, the boatkeeper rides upon. And it's. It's all very mythological, right? This is the barrier of life and death. Which begs the question, did Frank intentionally elicit this mythological Greek river of life and death? As the bedchamber for the great honored matre. Is she this barrier of life and death? And this is, you know, again, also with some of the verbiage around the bloody waters and the water verbiage from Odrade's chapter. There's. There's a lot there. I think that's kind of cool. Or was he just dropping some gothic sat vocabulary? You know, hard to say, but either way, the language is hopefully for you, dear listener, a little bit more evocative now that, you know, Stygian, if you didn't already, was evocative of the river Styx and dark and gloomy and especially forbidding. Foreboding. I think it says forbidding in the Mary Whistleblower. I was like, do you mean foreboding? Anyway, either way, it's very clear to us. The room was stygian and dama, Dama was.

[Abu]

She be.

[Leo]

She be dog. She be stygian as dog. Well, those were our chapters. That's our episode.

[Abu]

That is our episode, folks. My goodness, another great set of chapters. This book has been a blast so far. I'm excited.

[Leo]

Yeah. Oh, my God. So fun.

[Abu]

Okay, we have a homework assignment for you. As always with these book clubs, dear listener, for the next book club episode, make sure that you have read chapters 7, 8, and 9 in the ACE paperback version. Or if you have a different copy than us, read through the chapter that ends on the sentence quote, what have we done? Israel, help her. End quote.

[Leo]

Man, what a. What a great book. What a. What a ride this book is.

[Abu]

I'm excited.

[Leo]

Well, before we let you go, dear listener, we want to remind you of some ways to support us and what we do here at Gam Jabbar. And of course, also keep in touch with us. Two best ways to support us. Become a patron. Get yourself some Dune themed swag from our merch store. Two best ways for sure. Those links are in the show notes. For as little as $2 a month, you can support us and what we do here at Gam Jabbar.

[Abu]

That's right, and we'd love to hear from you, especially during these book club runs. Your thoughts, your questions, pictures of your cute pets are truly what sustain these book clubs. So email us @gam jabbar podcastmail.com and you know what it tell us how stygian black your room is at night. You have blackout curtains.

[Leo]

Yeah.

[Abu]

Let us know. Come to our podcastmail.com. use the word stygian in your email. In some way, we challenge you.

[Leo]

Oh, that's Fun. I like that. That's cool. Yeah, we should give. Yeah, that. Oh, that's fun. I like that idea. Yeah, we used to. I mean, you used to say, like, yeah, just send us the number of how many breadsticks you could eat or whatever. Like the Olive Garden breadsticks at Olive Garden. Yeah.

[Abu]

If you went to unlimited bread. Breadsticks.

[Leo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Abu]

There was a per. There was an email we got one time that had. Was totally blank, and the subject line just said six, which is like, so. And I was like, what is this creepy email we just got?

[Leo]

Yeah, Also believe in yourself a little bit. You can't even do seven. Come on, have a glass of wine. Put down another three.

[Abu]

Oh, look, those. Those breadsticks are heavy. They're thick.

[Leo]

Boys.

[Abu]

No, no, six is a lot. I don't know that I could tell. Now I really want Olive Garden.

[Leo]

That's, like, right?

[Abu]

I'm not craving. Well, friends, there is no real ending.

[Leo]

And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

[Abu]

Fascinating.

[Leo]

It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Abu]

Uh, limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Leo]

Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings Fairy, underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Affiliates, excludes Massachusetts.

[Abu]

It's just the place where you stop the recording. But this podcast is always one step beyond logic. So help spread the word of Muadib and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And be sure to check out the other shows on the Lower party podcast network on laurparty.com you can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Lore Underscore Party. And of course, we're also on YouTube. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, whoever controls the podcast controls the universe. We'll see you on the golden path.