Producer’s Commentary: Revisiting Our First Episode

Summary

Gom Jabbar: Producer’s Commentary – Revisiting Our First Episode

Podcast: Gom Jabbar: A Dune Podcast
Episode: Producer’s Commentary: Revisiting Our First Episode
Hosts: Abu & Leo, Lore Party Media
Date: January 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this special "producer’s commentary" episode, Abu and Leo take listeners on a reflective journey through their very first episode of Gom Jabbar – “A Timeline of Dune, Part 1,” originally recorded in May 2020. With over six years and 250+ episodes behind them, the hosts revisit their humble beginnings, offering candid reactions, self-deprecating humor, and insights into how the show – and they themselves – have evolved. This episode is both a celebration of their growth and a playful critique of their early podcasting efforts, all while providing a meta-commentary on introducing newcomers to the dense lore of Dune.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Revisit the First Episode?

(00:36, 01:17)

• Abu and Leo frame the episode as a "producer’s commentary" – akin to a DVD director’s commentary.
• Aimed at giving fans a behind-the-scenes look and generating production bandwidth for “Project RE analog.”
• Plan to make this a recurring format at month’s end.

2. First Episode Goals & Structure

(04:08 – 04:56)

• The original intro aimed to cast a wide net as a spoiler-free primer to the Dune timeline, up to but not including the events of the first book.
• The episode was designed to help both newcomers and veteran fans ground themselves in the vastness of the Dune universe.

“We also wanted to be sure that our first episode was totally spoiler free. So what we're going to talk about today is the timeline of the Dune universe. But we're going to stop before the first Dune book starts.” — Abu, (04:08)

3. Canonicity & Sourcing in Dune Lore

(07:33 – 11:05)

• Early on, Abu and Leo established their hierarchy of canon:
  • Frank Herbert’s six original books as Tier 1 canon.
  • The Dune Encyclopedia as secondary (unless contradicted by Herbert).
  • Brian Herbert’s books as extended canon.
• They are amused by their past mistakes, like incorrectly citing “five” Herbert books.
• Pride in having stuck to this canon policy over six years.

“I didn't realize we established literally in episode one, our rules on canonicity, and we have stuck by those rules for the last six years.” — Abu, (13:13)

4. Dealing with the Scale of Dune’s Timeline

(12:32 – 19:48)

• Dune’s “Universal Standard Calendar” and the concepts of BG (Before Guild) and AG (After Guild) are discussed and explained.
• The episode attempts to provide relatable context by mapping Dune years to Earth’s history—e.g., placing Dune’s events 21,000–23,000 years in our future, and aligning events like Rome’s rise/fall and WWII with Dune's calendar.
• They laugh about early missteps, such as underestimating when language and art arose in human history, and playfully revise their “podcast prehistory” jokes.

“20,000 years ago, humanity was just using spoken language for having, like, creating their first settlements. That is how long ago? 20,000 years ago.” — Abu, (19:48)

5. Making Dune Relatable as Sci-Fi

(13:13 – 14:17)

• Leo explains why anchoring Dune in our own timeline makes it more compelling.
• Both hosts muse on thematic relevance: AI, tech advancement, and the prescience of Herbert’s warnings accelerating in today’s world.

“I like the idea that there are Bene Gesserit operatives right now on Earth... And I like that this is the future that we're heading towards with the Butlerian Jihad and with technology.” — Leo, (13:14)

6. Production Reflections & Podcasting Evolution

(05:53 – 06:26, 38:00 – 41:00, 52:00 – 54:00)

• Both hosts marvel at how much their voices, editing skills, pacing, and overall confidence have changed—a recurring meta-theme in their commentary.
• Abu notes: “2026 Abu has the gut instinct to know where to cut and trim. We spend way too much time on this Holtzman develops the interstellar telephone bit and we keep explaining it… in like three, four, five different ways.” (38:00)
• They celebrate jumping into podcasting unprepared, crediting their early naivety and the willingness to “bite off more than [they] could chew” for their later success.

7. Dune Lore Review: Key Historical Anchors

a) Colonization & Earth’s Fate

(24:19 – 30:39)

• Ceres (the asteroid) as humanity’s new capital after an asteroid disaster renders Earth largely uninhabitable.
• Earth (Terra) becomes a “protected national park,” reflecting Herbert’s environmentalist sensibilities.

b) Holtzman and Technological Leaps

(31:47 – 44:59)

• Holtzman, a pivotal scientist/cyborg, discovers interplanetary communication and shielding technology.
• The introduction of “Holtzman shields” fundamentally alters warfare; laser and projectile weapons are rendered less effective, necessitating reforms in tactics and even galactic law.

“Holtzman single handedly pulls humanity out of this literal dark ages where communication is difficult and now suddenly everyone's in contact.” — Abu, (37:43)

c) The Butlerian Jihad

(45:33 – 61:11)

• Jahan Butler leads a movement against thinking machines after her daughter is aborted by an AI.
• The anti-machine uprising (Butlerian Jihad) triggers the galaxy-wide eradication of AI and cyborgs, including Holtzman himself.
• The ethical implications of destroying sentient AI, the impact on technological progress, and the shift to “dumb computers” are discussed, as well as themes of human vs. human conflict.

“Jihad is already an extremely loaded term… the Bellerian jihad itself is described like the word pogrom is used in Dune. It’s described as a bloody conflict that just spreads across the galaxy… It’s not people smashing their MacBooks.” — Abu, (57:26)

d) Rise of Major Powers & Institutions

(63:00 – 77:20)

• Formation of House Atreides and House Corrino: establishing dynastic power structures thousands of years before the first Dune novel.
• The Emperor's authority over tens of thousands of planets is anchored at 0 BG (Before Guild).
• Emergence of key political and economic institutions: the Landsraad, Chome Company (choam/choam), and the Spacing Guild.
• The Spacing Guild’s solution to interstellar travel after AI is outlawed: spice-fueled “future-sight” navigators (inside joke: Spacing Guild member “John” runs on spice).

8. Memorable Quotes and Commentary

On their early mistakes:

“Who the fuck knows how many books there are? Five, six. What’s really the difference?” — Leo, (08:08)

On Holtzman’s impact:

“Holtzman, [the] reason humanity is possible now. And they're like, nah, bye.” — Leo, (62:11)

On the interconnected political system:

“All three of these parties exist both against each other and cannot exist without each other. So there’s constant sort of politicking and making moves against each other. But also they all have to be here because they are extremely dependent.” — Abu, (76:39)

On long-term podcast growth:

“Imagine listening to an episode from five years ago and being like, oh, shit, we don’t make stuff as good as this anymore. That’s the whole wrong trajectory, dude.” — Abu, (81:24)

9. Meta-Humor, In-Jokes, and Candid Self-Critique

Throughout the episode, Abu and Leo continually roast their past selves for wordiness, lack of structure, factual flubs (“Frunk Hebert”), and meandering tangents—while also recognizing the clear scaffolding, intention, and audience orientation that has remained Gom Jabbar’s signature.

Inside Jokes:

• Spacing Guild member “John” as a recurring running gag about the first spice-navigator.
• Repeated failures and self-teasing over names/pronunciations (“Atreides,” “Chome”).
• References to how much editing skills and production standards have changed.

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Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Canonicity Policy – (13:13) – “We established literally in episode one, our rules on canonicity, and we have stuck by those rules for the last six years.” (Abu)
• Timeline Anchoring – (23:51) – “The Roman Empire in the Dune Universe took place 16,000 years before the Spacing Guild was even established.”
• Producer’s Introspection – (38:00) – “We spend way too much time on this Holtzman develops the interstellar telephone bit and we keep explaining it… in like three, four, five different ways.” (Abu)
• Reflection on Growth – (54:00) – “Anyone can make Mac and cheese, but there’s a reason like a Michelin star restaurant Mac and cheese is different. And that sort of extra secret sauce is a thing that we clearly were still figuring out here…” (Abu)
• Joking about Flubs – (65:09) – “Not Frunk Hebert. He’s Frank’s evil stepbrother.”
• Establishing Political Pillars – (76:39) – “All three of these parties exist both against each other and cannot exist without each other…” (Abu)
• Producer Pride – (81:34) – “I'm glad we took the opportunity today to bully our past selves, because frankly, they deserved it. But also, I'm really proud of them because if they hadn't done that six years ago, we wouldn't be here.” (Abu)

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Notable Commentary Themes & Tone

• Conversational, irreverent, and inclusive tone: The hosts balance deep lore expertise with approachability and wit, making the immense Dune universe feel welcoming.
• Openly self-critical: Abu and Leo don’t shy away from roasting their rookie flubs, offering honest insight into podcasting as a craft.
• Persistent optimism/pride: Despite their playful ribbing, both are ultimately proud of their journey, and grateful to their “baby podcasters” for laying a solid foundation.

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Segment Timestamps

• [00:36] – The purpose of the producer’s commentary episodes.
• [04:08] – Overview of the first episode’s timeline-centric approach.
• [07:33] – Canonicity definitions and early fact checks.
• [13:13] – Anchoring Dune’s universe in our real-world timeline.
• [19:48] – Attempting to contextualize Dune chronology with human history.
• [24:19] – Earth’s destruction, Ceres as new human capital.
• [31:47] – Holtzman, technological leaps, and impacts on the structure of human civilization.
• [45:33] – The Butlerian Jihad: triggers, impact, and ethical themes.
• [63:00] – Foundation of House Atreides, House Corrino, and the Landsraad.
• [76:39] – Interdependence of political powers at the heart of Dune.
• [80:00] – Reflections on enduring catchphrases and outro lines.

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Final Reflections

The episode is both an affectionate roast and a celebration of the show’s origins, full of in-jokes, honest mistakes, and a testament to the joy of learning by doing. Listeners are left with deepened appreciation for both Dune’s lore and the art of evolving a podcast series from its first tentative steps to a well-oiled, community-minded fixture in the fandom.

Join Abu and Leo next time as they continue to revisit fan-favorite episodes with fresh commentary and a trove of behind-the-scenes insights.

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“He who controls the podcast controls the universe. We'll see you on the Golden Path.”

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Welcome to Gom Jabbar, folks. My name's Abu.

[B]

My name's Leo.

[A]

And Leo, today's episode is going to be a trip.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

A literal trip through time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because as you are well aware, and as many of our listeners might be aware, we've been making this show for six whole freaking calendar years.

[B]

Six standard years. Yeah.

[A]

And we thought it would be fun to dig back into our now pretty massive catalog of episodes. We have over 250 episodes of GoM Jabbar. We thought it would be fun to dig back into some of those episodes and re listen to episodes that I think neither you or I have literally heard since we hit publish.

[B]

Yeah. We've been busy making new episodes.

[A]

Right. You make it, you publish it, you move on. You don't think about the. You know, whatever. You made it.

[B]

Yeah. This is scary. This is really nerve wracking because I've heard like 10 seconds of the episode we're playing today, man. But you can think of this, dear listener, like a producer's commentary, like a DVD director's commentary.

[A]

Exactly. That's the vibe.

[B]

Yeah. And today you got both of us. But in the future might be one of us celebrating one of our favorite episodes.

[A]

Right.

[B]

This is going to be the pattern for the last episode of every month for a little while. Basically, a peek through time, additional commentary. And ultimately this is to buy us some production bandwidth which we are currently using for Project RE analog. If that sounds mysterious and you don't know what that is, listen to our State of the Imperium episode from the top of this year. We talked a little bit about it. And patrons of the Fremen Nabe level and higher will be hearing a little bit more about this very soon in our first ever production update.

[A]

That's right. Okay, housekeeping, out of the way. Intro. Out of the way. Leo. Are you ready, folks? For today, we've chosen to go back, all the way back and listen to the very first episode of Gom Jabbar, our timeline of Dune Part 1 episode.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, shall we hit play?

[B]

I'm so nervous.

[A]

We recorded this in May 2020, by the way. Some might call it the start of the pandemic.

[B]

Yeah, you could almost call it that.

[A]

Okay, I'm gonna hit play. Here we go.

[B]

Oh, Jesus. Okay. Today we explore the long and fraught journey of Terrans from the year 19,000 BG through to the moments leading up to Dune.

[A]

Okay, good intro, good intro.

[B]

Yeah. Good job, baby. Le.

[A]

Welcome to Gom Jabbar, your guide to the iconic world of doom. Oh, boy. 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. I'm Abu.

[B]

And I'm Leo.

[A]

And Leo, here we are on our golden path.

[B]

Oh, my God. So exciting.

[A]

I'm so stoked. This is the first official episode of Gom Jabbar.

[B]

Yes, it is.

[A]

And I can't wait to get into it.

[B]

Our path begins into an unknown future because, you know, neither of us have Spice Visions.

[A]

No, not yet, at least. I'm hoping this podcast will unlock something deeper inside me.

[B]

But we're early in the week.

[A]

There's time plenty.

[B]

Maybe by Thursday we'll have Spice Visions.

[A]

Definitely. So let's talk about what we're going to cover today, because we wanted our first episode to cast as wide a net as possible. We. We also wanted to be sure that our first episode was totally spoiler free. So what we're going to talk about today is the timeline of the Dune universe. But we're going to stop before the first Dune book starts.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So we're going to talk about basically the history, all the tens of thousands of years of human history that takes place before the events of the first book. So this is actually a great introduction. If you haven't read the books yet or you're about to dive into the books. Our hope is that this episode and the following episode, we actually have to break it up into two parts because lo and behold, you can't cover 30,000 years in, you know, under an hour.

[B]

Shocker.

[A]

These next two episodes, we're hoping, will help you have greater context and a greater understanding of the world you're about to jump into as you start reading the Dune novels.

[B]

And we want to make it clear.

[A]

Okay, I'm going to pause there for a second.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

I just want. I just want to say a little lengthy on the intro.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

I would have really liked to have trimmed myself down there a little bit.

[B]

You as the listener are already skipping ahead, right?

[A]

I'm already kind of hitting skip. But yeah, I will say, pretty good sales pitch as a first episode. I'm intrigued.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, we talked about that quite a bit of like, where do we begin? And what's a good thing for people to be able to go back to? And what's a good kind of open arm embrace for people who have never read Dune? They want to know where to start. Here's where they should start. We put a lot of time Kind of into crafting that handshake. And I think we did a good job. I do want to point out it sounds like both of our voices are actually deeper now. And that's crazy to me.

[A]

Like, I. Yeah, we have not aged. I mean, we've aged, but we haven't gone through a second puberty in the last five years or something.

[B]

Are we just. Do we have better. I have this. I think this is the same microphone.

[A]

Yeah, I've definitely switched through and cycled through many microphones. I think it comes down to just editing skills. Like.

[B]

Oh, yeah, I was not a great.

[A]

Audio editor back then, and I was just kind of making it up as I went. So I probably just used some, like, template and, like, barely cleaned up the audio or anything. And it probably just makes us sound like, tinnier and more high pitched than we actually are.

[B]

Back. This was back when we were cutting it on actual tape, right? We were.

[A]

That's right. That's right.

[B]

This was magnetic reels full of those reels constantly.

[A]

It was a lot of work.

[B]

The exacto blade cutting the record and gluing it back together.

[A]

Yeah. Well, good job on us. I think we really thought that first episode through and honestly, we positioned it well here in the first few minutes.

[B]

Yeah, just speed it up. Is your.

[A]

Yeah, I wish we set it up a little faster, that's all. Okay, let's keep listening.

[B]

If you have, like, a deep familiarity with Dune, this will be a nice refresher of what happens before the first moments of Dune. And if you don't know anything about Dune. Exactly. As Abu said, we're going to try to kind of equip you with a familiarity with the universe so that the early moments are not shrouded in confusion and can be exciting for you as well. Now we should mention that the Dune books, this kind of source material, are kind of heavily debated in where established canonical validity starts and ends.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we just want to make it clear anything that Frank Herbert wrote, which is like the first five Dune books, is kind of our tier one canonical. Fucking pause.

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

There's six books. It's not like, what uncertainty there. I hadn't heard a chapter house yet.

[A]

Wow, that's definitely a flub. My goodness.

[B]

You know, like, who. Who the fuck knows how many books there are? You know, they come, they new ones every day.

[A]

Five, six. What's really the difference?

[B]

Wow. Good job, Leo. Wow. Although I think at this point I had not yet read, I think anything past, like, Children of Dune, I think I was still pretty early on in the book series. So, I mean, forgive me if I didn't know the number of bug tricks.

[A]

Truly, we were not the Dune experts back in May 2020 that we are now. Clearly, we've poured six years of our lives into this. And the reality is we started production on the podcast while we were both still working our way through the six books by Brian Gerbert.

[B]

Yeah, that's true.

[A]

We really kind of leapt in before we were ready. It was a huge gamble. But here we are.

[B]

Here we are. All right, well, that factual. Okay, updating the record, There are six books.

[A]

There are six. We know that now. We figured it out.

[B]

It took six years, but we finally know how many books he wrote. All right, let's get back to it. Data. Like, that's legit. That's real. And then there's the Dune Encyclopedia, which Frank Herbert wrote kind of a foreword for or kind of commented publicly on it, saying, hey, this is great, unless I decide to do something different than what you've said, because the book was published, I think, in 1984, so there were still some books to come out after that.

[A]

But, hey, I mean, you created the world. Your rules apply, buddy. He has every right to say that.

[B]

Listen, you. Do you, Frank. So far, it's been working great. So definitely, so long as the encyclopedia isn't directly contradicting something that Frank Herbert wrote himself, we're considering that pretty much canonical. And then outside of that, we have Brian Herbert's writings as kind of extended canon when applicable. Because it might not come up very often. We just wanted to put that out up front. We won't talk about it too much after this, I promise. That's, like super niche interest. Disclaimer.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, that's our stance as the Gom Jabbar podcast. Obviously, everyone is free to understand the Dune universe in their own way, but we are interpreting it through the words of Frank Herbert first, then the encyclopedia, and then finally Hisan. Brian again. That's just our stance. This is a heavily debated and extremely confusing topic. We also, you know, you and I had to look up when the encyclopedia came out and when Frank Herbert wrote that forward and when he wrote his last book and when he died, and we had to, like, it was very confusing. But ultimately we decided that's our stance on the podcast, and we wanted to make that clear right off the bat. In the very first episode.

[B]

It's sort of the most disappointing episode of Sherlock Holmes, where Sherlock Holmes does, like, hours of research and then decides that it's Just opinion.

[A]

Yeah, definitely. Okay, so let's get into the meat and potatoes of today's episode. Yes, a lot of what we're going to reference today is from the encyclopedia, because lo and behold, Frank Herbert himself did not give us a lot of context of what happened in the 20 to 30,000 years of time that takes place before the first Dune book. So the encyclopedia does a pretty incredible job of filling out that space for us. So a lot of today's episode is going to be sourced from there. And what we wanted to do first of all is just talk about this calendar. Right. Because it's kind of. The scope of it is kind of massive and hard to wrap your head around. So we wanted to help you and honestly help ourselves anchor in some real world events that also obviously take place in the world of Dune and try to anchor ourselves on this calendar. Because this calendar is huge. I mean, Leo, you have it written down here. Someone did the math and I guess Dune takes place on our timeline in the year 23,000 AD.

[B]

This was really fascinating for me because the first time I read Dune, I allowed it to be sort of like Harry Potter or like Lord of the Rings, where it was just a parallel fantasy world. But part of Frank Herbert's crafting of this universe and part of the beauty of the universe is that it is rooted in a distant future of the timeline we're currently on, potentially. I mean, really. Actually, a lot of the commentary of the books as you read them and as we go into these movies by Denis Villeneuve and the HBO series, you will likely see some commentary on pausing really quickly first, Villeneuve. Okay. We hadn't yet figured out we hadn't heard his name said a lot.

[A]

Villeneuve. Right, Right.

[B]

But also, I do think that, like, this point really stands for me. I've read some science fiction recently that is not in this timeline, is not in this current, you know, calendar that we're living.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it always feels disconnecting for me. I like the idea that there are Bene Gesserit operatives right now on Earth. I like that. I like that idea. And I like that this is the future that we're heading towards with the Butlerian Jihad and with technology. Maybe a little faster than Frank anticipated when he was warning about tens of thousands of years, tech CEOs were like, hold my six yachts, bro. I'm going to force this AI problem to much faster.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I do, you know, I think I stand by that, that there is something compelling that this is on our current timeline.

[A]

Yeah. What I find really interesting listening. We're like six and a half minutes into the episode so far. This still could be an episode released on the Gom jabbar feed in 2026, which I'm really proud of us for. Like, we established. I didn't realize we established literally in episode one, our rules on canonicity, and we have stuck by those rules for the last six years.

[B]

Oh, my God. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, I'm quite impressed. And nothing we've said so far is, like, outside of, you know, a flub here and there. Nothing we've said so far is, like, incorrect. As far as Gom Jabbar goes and, like, what the podcast will cover and how we're going to cover it and how we want to approach it. I think we're a little wordy, but this is episode one. We were still figuring things out. And I actually would have maybe structured the intro of this episode a little differently now that I'm a bit more confident in my ability to structure an episode and tell a story. I think I would have jumped right into timeline stuff and sprinkled canon stuff throughout the conversation. But it makes sense that it's the first episode. So we feel like we gotta front load the setup. We gotta set up a lot.

[B]

Yeah. My little disclaimer, we're not gonna come back to this all the time. And this is a niche concern that turned out to be totally false. That is, in fact, a huge concern. And we still get hate mail from people who disagree with us.

[A]

So true. So true. Okay, let's keep listening.

[B]

On the world around us and how the future might roll out.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I do think it's important to note it is entirely possible that Dune is kind of written in a future projection of our world. But you are. You are correct, Abu. Someone did the math. Now, this is making a sort of bold assumption that Dune chronology is using Earth years. A lot of space faring sci fi has to deal with the issue that we define a year as, like, the time it takes Earth to go around the sun. And when you're like hundreds of thousands of light years from Earth, why. Why would you ever count time that way? But that basically we didn't have any alternative to Earth years established in the dune canon until 2008, which was Brian Herbert's book. So basically, it seems pretty likely that in Frank's initial setting of the dates of Dune. Oh, my God. Speed up, my friend. 21,000 years from now. Easy, right? Just think about that.

[A]

So hard to wrap your head around. Yeah. Just think about that.

[B]

That sentence took me two minutes to say what even.

[A]

Right. What is that amount of time? That's just incomprehensible. I think another note we should also make here is the Dune Calendar. So jumping into the world of Dune now, in the lore itself, in the universe, the Dune Calendar is called the Universal Standard Calendar. And it's separated into two distinct eras of time. There's bg, which stands for Before Guild, and then there's ag, which stands for Leo. Hit me.

[B]

All the gummy bears. Wait, no. After Guild. After Guild. Sorry.

[A]

You got it. You got it. I'll get you.

[B]

I'm hungry.

[A]

After Guild. Right? So we'll talk about.

[B]

Okay. Credit where credit's due. I would have driven that bit into the fucking soil. I would have come up with six. Just like today. If we were to record that today, I would come up with nine more examples, samples of things that were a. And that I would, you know, make you stop me. So good self restraint. I lost that at some point. And now it's just all bit.

[A]

Right. Some shackles have truly come off.

[B]

Truly. Okay, here we go.

[A]

What the guild is, I'm sure, in future episodes, but all you need to know about it for today and for these next two episodes is that the establishment of the Spacing Guild is what denotes those two time periods. And before Guild, after Guild. So today's episode is going to cover the events before Guild. So everything we talk about today is bg. And then we'll stop when the Spacing Guild is established. And then in the next episode, we'll go forward from there until the first Dune novel. So everything today is going to be counted in bg.

[B]

And I do think it's not unhelpful to start getting familiar with this way of thinking. Like, we could have done the math to like, convert these years that we're going to be talking about into AD years. But in the books, when you're reading the books and probably in the shows and movies, characters will be referring to dates using this BG AG denotation. So I think it is worth starting to get familiar with kind of that.

[A]

Definitely. And we were talking about context earlier. I did some digging, Leo, and you had asked, what the heck even is 20,000 years?

[B]

Yeah. Well, what is that?

[A]

Based off of historical findings, 20,000 years ago is roughly 18,000 BC on our calendar. On our timeline, sure. Around those dates. Our best guesstimates are that this is around the time we've made the earliest discoveries of actual human settlements.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Made out of mammoth bones. This is around the time we discovered the earliest cave paintings. And there are some scientists who believe this is around the time spoken language was used by humanity.

[B]

Oh, my God. So podcasts could not have happened 20,001 years ago?

[A]

No, not at all. Based off of our best estimates, yeah.

[B]

Earliest possible podcasts, 20,000 years ago. Right, gotcha.

[A]

So that's just. That's just a little bit of an idea. Like, 20,000 years ago, humanity was just using spoken language for having, like, creating their first settlements. That is how long ago? 20,000 years ago.

[B]

Okay, I think that's not accurate.

[A]

That doesn't feel accurate.

[B]

No, that's. I feel like, because I'm seeing cave paintings 50,000 years plus. There's Maybe there are some ways to say that that would be more accurate, but. Yeah, that feels. Doesn't feel generous to actual human history. What was that? 20,000 years? First spoken languages, humanity, 100 to 200,000 years.

[A]

I guess it depends on what you define as a spoken language. And culturally is a unified language across many cultures. When you start defining it as a language, or it's just like grunts and pointing and guttural noises. A language. But yeah, no, I had the same exact thought. Hearing that back. I was like, wow, did I fucking fact check myself on this? What am I saying? I mean, it doesn't feel right.

[B]

We are very meticulous with things. So I'm sure you found a source that was saying, yeah, that's got to.

[A]

Be based off something. Yeah, but maybe just one source, rather than doing my two, like, due diligence and finding multiple sources.

[B]

Or again, maybe that is to your point, maybe qualifying it in some way. But I guess we should update the record. The first podcasts were probably, what, 70,000 years, 80,000 years ago?

[A]

That's right. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah, that's really what I wanted to.

[A]

We've yet to unearth them, but those RSS feeds are out there somewhere. We'll find them.

[B]

The cave paintings are just the COVID art for each podcast episode. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Wow. Yeah, that interesting little fact digression there again, knowing what I know now, I'd approach that part of the episode differently. I actually admire what we're trying to do here. You know, we're trying to help the listener wrap their mind around how long 20,000 years is and how much of a difference that can make over the course of humanity. But, yeah, I don't think we're exactly nailing it, but let's keep listening. Go flip that around. We're talking dune 20,000 years the other way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Insane. To think about another crazy fact I want to throw at you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Recorded human history as we know it today wasn't developed until roughly 5,000 years ago.

[B]

Oh my God. So.

[A]

But I wanted to throw some of those real historical facts and timelines.

[B]

We gotta pause here. So what was the zone for? We probably cut it. I don't know, some fucking tangent.

[A]

Wow. So, yeah, clearly we were not the audio editors we are today.

[B]

This is our first episode. Why are we so.

[A]

Yeah. Wow. Just left a dangling so floating there in the edit instead of cutting it. That's funny, man.

[B]

The temptation now to be like.

[A]

Yeah, so timelines at you to try and help give us and give our listeners some context of sort of the scale we're talking about here, the scope.

[B]

Absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about some real life past events in these new. The new way of thinking about years to start getting used to this. So the rise and fall of the Romans on Terra. Oh, and you'll see that Earth in the Dune universe is referred to as Terra, which. That makes sense. So rise and fall of Romans on Terra. This is going to be around 16,400 and 16,000 BG. This translates roughly to the kind of 400 year time span 31 BC to 1453 AD in our time. About. So again, that's 16,400 to about 16,000 BG.

[A]

BG before guild. Yeah.

[B]

Gosh, years are hard.

[A]

Yeah. It's only going to get harder. Yeah. So that's about the 400 year time span of the Roman Empire from the moment that Augustus Caesar proclaimed himself the first emperor to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. So that's a good anchor point to sort of anchor ourselves in the Dune universe. The Roman Empire in the Dune Universe took place 16,000 years before the Spacing Guild was even established.

[B]

Insane.

[A]

Now, moving forward a couple thousand years in 14,255 BG. It's recorded in the Dune universe that the first atomics were used. And we can assume here that this was the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II in 1945. So that's another anchor point we can use to orient ourselves. World War II in the Dune universe took place in 14,255 BG. And it's only. Only going to get wilder from here.

[B]

It's. It's only going to get crazier. It is worth noting that atomics are still a thing in the Dune universe. This is part of why we mentioned this. Not only does it help orient where we are, but like Atomics continued to be a thing in humanity's future in Dune as one of many options for weaponry. Just to be clear. So you'll, you'll likely hear about atomics in these movies. It's not a spoiler, it's just, it's true. This is a vocabulary term that you will see, which, you know, good to know.

[A]

Right. And again, think about when Frank wrote these. Height of the Cold War era. Oh my gosh, yeah, atomics were definitely a major topic in the world at the time. And it totally makes sense that atomics play a major role in the Dune universe as well.

[B]

So this is when we now start talking about Frank's projected future and the real path to dune. So between 14,100 BG and 13,360 BG, about that 800 year time span, we as humans are first colonizing the solar system. This is when the first colonization of the solar system begins. And Ceres, I think that's how you say it, right? Ceres.

[A]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[B]

Is this is. By the way, we mentioned this was gonna get wild. Step one, Ceres is an early planet that we colonized and it pretty, pretty quickly becomes an imperial capital when Earth is struck by an asteroid. So by Earth, sorry, you know, just starting off the history clean, we have a new home as a species. It's called Ceres.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And sucks. Sucks to be Earth for a little bit, right?

[A]

For a little bit. For a little bit. And in this same couple hundred year time span when Ceres becomes the capital, the new capital of humanity and the new capital of the Imperium, the treasures from Earth are salvaged in some sort of mission. Those treasures that survived this asteroid hitting Earth, which we have to assume was apocalyptic in nature, and wiped out a lot of Earth. Whatever was left over that was recovered. And this is really interesting because this to me is Frank Herbert giving himself a blank slate right now. He doesn't have to worry about there being a actual Earth history or the people in his universe knowing that Earth history because it's been wiped out. They know just the pieces and parts that were recovered in this salvage mission.

[B]

Do you think, do you think that was his editor going, well, Frank, what happened to Earth? And he goes, oh.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you can't really call it a cop out. He gets to do whatever he wants. It's his universe. But this is to me a very smart writing technique to make sure that his characters don't come off as idiots because they don't know like common Earth history.

[B]

Right.

[A]

It's okay. That they don't know now because it doesn't exist. It was wiped out by an asteroid and only parts of it were salvaged. And it's okay if his characters don't know much about it. The interesting thing here. And again.

[B]

Okay, pausing for a second, because first, it is funny that, like, we are just fully attributing this Dune encyclopedia stuff to Frank.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We're going, oh, yeah. Frank made this decision as a savvy move.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But also, we clearly hadn't really read, like, God, Emperor, Heretics and Chapter House, which have these characters with memories of Earth. Just constantly talking about memories of Earth and.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, a character singing an old French. You know, it's like. That doesn't really stand.

[A]

It doesn't. No. Yeah. I mean, the most egregious, like, fact error there is that we're attributing any of this to Frank or to the hypothetical Frank editor that asked him about Earth. None of that would have taken place because the encyclopedia was not written by Frank.

[B]

No, no, it wasn't. I mean, again, I think we're doing a good job of introducing people to the universe and that sort of thing.

[A]

Yeah. I think our logic still stands because the encyclopedia writers who decided to nuke Earth with an asteroid did so, knowing that characters in the Dune franchise don't often make reference to real world Earth history. And so the smart thing to do is wipe the slate clean as much as possible and only leave enough information there for there to be references in Frank's own novel. So I think the logic of what we are saying is correct.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just our attribution and giving Frank the credit for it is incorrect.

[B]

Right. By the time of Dune, human activity is centered around Chitin and Arrakis and these big planets and not old Terra. And the question of why not old Terra needs to be answered at some point.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Anyway, back to it.

[A]

This is going to tie into something personal with Frank. I keep saying Frank as if he's like our buddy, my friend, on the first name basis.

[B]

Who and Frank. Leo and Frank. F Man.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Fboy.

[A]

F Dog. Right.

[B]

F Boy's crazy.

[A]

So in this time period, after those treasures from Terra are salvaged, Terra, Earth is receded. It's terraformed and it's declared a national park by law, it's protected territory. It's a national park. And it's no longer the seat of human civilization. That is Ceres. And I think it's really interesting, especially considering Frank's own environmentalist views in real life, he was very much a public environmentalist.

[B]

And there's a sort of sentimentality to it, too. Right. Like, humans are progressing forward. We are spreading across the galaxy in this period of time. But even this place where we evolved and the first thousands of years of our culture is destroyed. We don't just abandon it and move forward. We reseed it. We make it a natural park. We protect it and we keep it. I mean, it's there. It doesn't have as much information on it, but it's there, right?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So that sort of answers the question of Earth in the Dune universe. If you're reading Dune and you're like, wait, why is nobody talking about Earth? Why is Earth not the capital? What's going on? It's because it was destroyed by an asteroid. Treasures were salvaged, and then it was receded and declared a natural park. And that's Earth's place.

[B]

You've got some new planet names to learn.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Welcome to Dune.

[A]

Okay, Leo, let's jump forward a couple thousand years. Not to give you timeline whiplash again.

[B]

But, like, 6,000 years.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All of writing and a thousand years.

[A]

Exactly. So we're gonna. We're gonna move forward a bit here. Now we're talking about the time between around 7593 BG to around 3832 BG. So that's. What is that? Some quick Math here. Round 30500 to 4000 years that we're gonna talk about here. Yeah, a lot happens. A lot of shit changes in this timeframe. And the first thing is, our boy.

[B]

Holtzman is born mvp. I mean, MVP of the universe by a very large margin. Holtzman, he. God, he changes everything. It's insane.

[A]

It's insane. And his story is so interesting. It's like, you know, give me his story. Like, make the movie about his life. Like, damn.

[B]

Oh, my God, please. A miniseries on Holtzman. Like, let's get. You know, let's obviously do it.

[A]

Hbo.

[B]

Hbo, please. That would be so good.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I cannot believe that we are pitching miniseries in the first ever episode. That's so aggressive. My God.

[A]

Wow. Honestly. Bravo to baby Abu and baby Leo for just the confidence.

[B]

Yeah, well, you heard earlier, I said, like, you're gonna be hearing AG in the movies, in the shows, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of that shit existed in 2020. And now that we do have, you know, six years later, we do have two movies, a third's on the way, a series, a season of TV show. I don't really feel like they Used the years that much in those, they kind of just.

[A]

It was just like a title card in one shot in Dune part one that said something about 10,191.

[B]

Yeah. And then a lot of website articles were like 8,000 years in the future. And Dune diehards everywhere clutched their pearls and screamed no. All right, back to it.

[A]

Let's talk about his life. A little early in his life, somewhere around his 20s, his mid to late 20s, he's disabled. And Leo, he becomes a cyborg.

[B]

Yo, it's somewhere between 75, 93 and 3,832 BG. That happens now.

[A]

Right? We're so far into the future, cyborg, like technology has obviously progressed and he's disabled. In his 20s, he becomes a cyborg. Awesome. Already. Already a total badass. And then he goes on to discover interplanetary communication, instantaneous interplanetary communication, which as a result of that communication now being transmitted instantly between the thousands of planets that humanity has now colonized. Reunifies all these disparate colonies. It's because of this dude and him basically creating the iPhone or creating the tele, the like the interstellar telephone that humanity is reunited. Because something we haven't mentioned yet, around this era, around these couple of years, humanity has spread so far and wide across thousands of planets, but the technology hasn't caught up to where they can communicate effectively between them.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So there's all these like little pockets of humanity spread around the universe and it's kind of chaos. It's really considered the dark ages.

[B]

And I mean, this really goes back to like, you know, you remember the hundreds and thousands of years of human history where like, if you moved, if you like migrated as a family unit or like a culture or a population moved hundreds of miles, you're just never seeing the people that you're leaving behind ever again.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And on the very unlikely chance that communication is sent, it's like in the form of a messenger who walks. This is kind of the intergalactic equivalent of this. And a lot of sci fi books have wrestled with this problem. When you have humans so, so far away. Because right now we could put people on a spaceship and send them off into the, into the galaxy. That's fine, but how do we stay in contact with them? Meanwhile, Holtzman comes in here and his like, new cyborg body and discovers instant interplanetary communication. And suddenly people can like dial their friend in Germany and have a quick conversation. Germany doesn't exist anymore, but Germany, Germany, Planet. Planet Germany. Good job, Leo. Suddenly you can have these communications and humanity in a lot of ways becomes the species again. Right. Because this is no longer just pockets of dwindling. I don't know, like what is the species's momentum?

[A]

Right. If we're not unified and you know, talking political power here too, like.

[B]

Right, right.

[A]

These disparate thousands of planets probably had their own governments, their own leaders, their own infighting, their own whatever because they couldn't communicate effectively with the other thousands of planets. But now suddenly they can. And you would assume here that power begins to centralize. You know, the more the wealthiest planets, the biggest planets, the most military, like militaristic planets begin to consolidate power as like the scope of humanity expands. It's globalization, but on a scale of the entire galaxy, I was just going.

[B]

To say, if a pocket of humans arrive on a planet that's really rich in a particular ore, now there's a way to manage those resources and manage those shipping, manage, you know, getting things from point A to point B. And suddenly the whole species can thrive because of this stew.

[A]

Yeah, amazing. Holtzman single handedly pulls humanity out of this literal dark ages where communication is difficult and now suddenly everyone's in contact. This is going to become a trend you're going to notice. I'm going to pause right here real quick.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I am scrolling on my phone, listening to my own episode and this is a thing where 2026 Abu has the gut instinct to know where to cut and trim. We spend way too much time on this. Holtzman develops the interstellar telephone bit and we keep explaining it over and over again in like three, four, five different ways.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like yo, the listener understood by example number two. We did not need four more examples. So this is, this is an interesting pacing note that I have honestly for myself from six years ago.

[B]

But it's also interesting how much better we've gotten at just like getting the point across. Saying it partially. Yes, there's more editing that I do. Like if I were editing this episode today, I would cut out a lot of the repetition and some of the repeated. A lot of repeating and. And there's like a lot of. That's kind of grating on my ear as an editor.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

But it's also just interesting the intention. We say things so much more confidently and better now.

[A]

Okay, I'm glad you're noticing that too. I'm hearing a lack of confidence from us on Mike here, which totally makes sense. We had been on mic together before starting Gom Jabbar, but only in one off instances here and there. And yeah, this was the start of a new project. It's interesting that the confidence isn't quite there yet. Let's keep listening. Maybe the confidence will build by the time we get to the end of the episode with Holtzman. But after he does this, after he effectively changes the shape of interstellar humanity, he disappears.

[B]

Just like by.

[A]

He disappears for a couple thousand years.

[B]

Classic. What a sabbatical.

[A]

And something this sort of brings up is also the question of human lifespans at this point. Like, if we're talking thousands of years in the future. Technology is advanced, medicine is advanced. You have to keep in mind humans probably just naturally live much longer. But after Holtzman, our boy becomes part cyborg, I'm sure his lifespan is extended tenfold, hundredfold. So it's not out of the realm of possibility for him to disappear for a thousand years and then come back. The other theory I have, interestingly enough, yeah. Is that he died and was reanimated in some way. Like this is Holtzman 2.0. That comes back after a few thousand years. Interesting, because no one knows what happens when he disappears here, right? That's conjecture on my part. I can't state for certain that that is lore.

[B]

Wait, I guess we hadn't read the Holtzman. We hadn't done entry yet.

[A]

This is clearly before our episode that we committed to Holtzman, where it answers how he disappeared for thousands of years.

[B]

And also how he died. And also, you know, it's like, let's speculate about this thing that we haven't read yet. It's a shame no one knows. No one has any idea.

[A]

If only Abu and Leo knew back in 2020 that they would be getting bullied by themselves from the future.

[B]

There's a very real possibility that this commentary is just going to be me bullying me.

[A]

Okay, let's keep going. I'm excited for more Bullying is established. All we know for certain is that he disappears for a few thousand years and then comes back and then he pulls some more shit.

[B]

Leo, you can't stop him. You can't stop him. People are like, stop, Holtzman. You keep helping us. You should stop. You should just relax forever. And he's like, I did for 2000.

[A]

Years take a day off, my dude.

[B]

He's like, I took 2,000 years worth of days off. Here's shielding technology forever. Boom. Boom. Drops the mic. Drops the mic and it bounces off of a shield. Shields bounces off of a shield. It's future. It's future time.

[A]

It's Future time, baby. Like now we're getting into real sci fi shit. Like, humanity is in space. Holtzman the cyborg disappearing for 2000 years. Not real sci fi shit.

[B]

Yeah, shields, that's really where we draw the line. Until that, it's. That's nonfiction. Shields, that's crazy.

[A]

Interstellar communications. And then a few thousand years, he invents shielding technology and this changes warfare forever.

[B]

This is like deus ex Hultzman. Nice. Good job, Leo. Incredible.

[A]

Yeah, it's wild shielding. I'm sure we'll have an episode at some point dedicated to shields, but suffice it to say, because of this technology that Holtzman created, it changes warfare forever. Like, guns are no longer part of warfare. I mean, they are part of warfare, but they are much less effective. You can't shoot a laser gun at a shield.

[B]

Right. And that's. That is something that is that we. Yeah, that, that. That is good to know about these shields because, again, just a shield. We left that in, huh? You know, shields exist in our world. The Holtzman shields specifically are like energy barriers that reject things like.

[A]

Very sci fi.

[B]

Yeah, very sci fi. They reject fast moving things. They're almost like a, like a Newtonian fluid bullets and, and, and things that move really quickly. Like, throughout the series, it's pretty established that, like, if you talk faster baseball at me, and I had a shield active, the baseball would bounce off, but you could slowly walk up to me and it wouldn't interfere with your body. So it's an interesting dynamic, but it is established. One of the fun personality traits of these shields is if they come in contact with a laser blast or a lase gun, it creates a nuclear explosion, which, you know, maybe that's useful if the person with the shield is like far, far, far away from you. But the nature of most armed combat is if you're using lasers against them, you're basically sacrificing yourself because there's no real safe way of engaging in that combat. So you're exactly right. The nature of battle and everything shifts very dramatically with the introduction of shields.

[A]

Yeah, what a flex, Holtzman. What a flex.

[B]

What a flex. I'll add in. I think we under emphasized the fact that it was an agreement from all of the galactic powers that it's in our best interest to minimize the amount of times that, like, nuclear warheads are going off. Yeah, everywhere.

[A]

That's a good point. You would imagine some folks would be excited at the prospect of an easy way to start a nuclear reaction. Oh, I just got to shoot a shield wow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so. Yeah, no, you're totally right.

[B]

Well, if only I got it right the first time.

[A]

All right, let's keep going. Amazing. All right, let's jump forward another couple thousand years, easy. And let's put a pin in Holtzman for a second. He's going to disappear from the. He'll be back in a second, but he's going to disappear from the pages of history for just a little bit. So jumping ahead another few thousand years now we're around roughly 200 BG to 100 BG.

[B]

We are getting close.

[A]

We're getting close. Right. There's a really significant event that happens here that we really need to talk about at length. The Butlerian Jihad. This is something that's referenced many times throughout the original Dune series in Frank Herbert's books. And I would say the Butlerian Jihad is even more formative to the universe of Dune than Holtzman was. Yeah, this changes the literal universe forever.

[B]

Human evolution as well, which is really important to note. Like, the course of humanity, not only culturally and technologically, but also, like, biologically, shifts really dramatically at this point. The more you learn about it and the more as we talk about it now, you'll see there are some things that happen in the Dune universe that only happened because of this. It's important to note at this point in humanity's technological reserve, we now have artificial intelligence and thinking machines. Machines that have their own kind of autonomy and ability to think. I don't see a ton explaining what those machines like, how they came to be. It's kind of just like, oh, yeah, inevitably this happened. Artificial intelligence is just part of the process.

[A]

So let's get into it. What is the Butlerian Jihad? The Butlerian Jihad is named after this woman named Jahan Butler. And her story begins when her daughter is aborted by an artificial intelligence hospital director. And this, you can't really call it a robot, but this artificial intelligence, very much in the image of a human, basically computed that Jahan's daughter would have been born, quote, unquote, too deformed.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So it considered it a mercy to both Jahan and to the daughter to abort her. At first, she doesn't realize it's an AI director. She assumes, okay, that something went wrong. The doctors made this decision for me. I'm pissed. I gotta investigate. She goes in, she investigates. She finds out this hospital is run by an artificial intelligence. And she's pissed. Yeah, she's like, this fucking robot doesn't get to decide whether or not I have a daughter. You know, like, based off of what computation? Based off of what moral interpretation of my birth, love my daughter's birth, did this fucking robot decide that I should not have had my daughter? And this sets off a series of events that just blows up across the universe. And Jahan, it's. It's extremely complex and it dives really deep into it in the encyclopedia. But I'm gonna try and cover like a very brief overview. Basically, Jahan and her husband, they're not like lords. They're. They're not like royalty of any sort, but they are sort of upper class people with power and prestige and influence. Jahan and her. But and her husband essentially plan a coup with the local priestesses who are also sort of. They find out about this plan because of Jahan and they're also pissed, and they plan a coup against their governing planet. So they're on a planet and the planet that oversees them is called Richees, I think is the pronunciation. And they essentially plan a coup because this artificial intelligence was developed and created in Richees. And Richees is the place.

[B]

Bro.

[A]

I could not be explaining this more poorly. I'm talking myself in circles. So I'm trying to cram. It's clear that I'm trying to cram too much info too quickly. And instead of going broad beat, hit the main anchor points of the story, beginning, middle, end. I'm trying to hit every little important point along the way.

[B]

Yeah, you could just say she overthrew the local power structure.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And instead you're like, well, okay, so she wasn't a lord. She wasn't. But they were part of the ruling class. It's really. It's giving like 10 year old tells a story excitedly.

[A]

Yes, very much so, yeah.

[B]

And both of us keep doing this where it's like, just say the fucking sentence.

[A]

It is interesting to see how much we've matured in our ability to just make a point, make a direct point, reinforce the point, move on. You know, like, that cadence is something we clearly learned over time.

[B]

I wonder how much of it is, though, because I know early on we were trying to tread the line intentionally between how much we script and how much we banter. And I think when we look back at this script, it's very bare bones. Like, we pulled up the script from May of 2020 and it's very sparse, which means I think we are trying to kind of talk around each bullet point in a way that is very untenable. And we did not yet have any of the. I don't know, established threshold for how much kind of beating around the bush we would allow.

[A]

Right.

[B]

These days we would have cut a lot of this.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But I think also these days we are much more intentional about how do I write a script that feels fun to read. And when we do read it, it works so that if at the very, at the very least, if we read the script, it's a pretty good episode. Even better if while reading and while talking we have additional kind of sidebars and stuff like that.

[A]

Yeah, that's a great point. I think that scripting balance, because the script really is the DNA of every episode. The episode is only ever going to be as good as the script is. And it's very interesting to look back at this original script and see like two bullet points about the whole jihad. And I'm like, what? Whereas now we would write a much more robust script that I think would also count for flow. Right. It'd be like, okay, this bullet point will flow into the next, will flow into the next, then it'll flow into Leo's next point, and then it'll flow back to me. I think that's something we very much had to hone and learn over time.

[B]

But it's interesting how much of that's behind the curtain. Like, I think when you listen to a podcast, like we are now listening to our podcast.

[A]

Right.

[B]

We have to speculate as to why it's coming across the way it is and we have the behind the scenes knowledge.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it really is. I don't know if you out there and listen to land love a podcast that you just have no idea how much production work goes into it and how much like every little skill is a muscle that needs to be continued to build. And you need to continue to practice those best practices. Otherwise you get this kind of weird talking ourselves to sleep. That's not a good look. That's not a good look at all.

[A]

I'm doom scrolling on my phone, listening to my own podcast. That's not what you want happening.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

But that's okay. I'm also, I will say I'll repeat this over and over again. I'm incredibly proud of us just jumping into the deep end. Should we start this Dune podcast? Let's fucking do it. Yeah. Should we cover the entire 30,000 year history of the Dune lore and the encyclopedia in the first episode? Sure. I think there was a bit of a confidence born of our own ignorance. Right. We maybe had not yet realized that we had bitten off more than we could chew at that point, but we just kind of kept biting our way through it and made our way through the whole pie. So I'm proud of us. There's a sort of confidence in that immaturity, I think.

[B]

Yeah. And also the scaffolding is there and is still the same scaffolding we use today. So ultimately, when I talk to people about how this podcast kind of got off the ground, part of it was that we took it very, very seriously at the beginning. Now we are much more experienced now and we can see how naive we are in some things. But realistically, it's all there. And ultimately the thing it was missing is the thing that is hard to generate out of thin air, which is.

[A]

The finesse, the secret sauce. Like, yeah, anyone can make Mac and cheese, but there's a reason, like a Michelin star restaurant Mac and cheese is different. And that sort of extra secret sauce is a thing that we clearly were still figuring out here, even though we knew the basic recipe.

[B]

It takes a lot of time to harvest secret sauce from you and me.

[A]

It does.

[B]

It's a lengthy and tiring process. It is to get secret sauce out of us. But, yeah.

[A]

Okay, well, speaking of lengthy and tiring, let's listen to me fucking explain the boat later in Jihad.

[B]

I hope you talk in circle some more.

[A]

It's sort of like a central hub. It's like Silicon Valley. That's where the artificial intelligence was developed. And the people there are all in. When it comes to AI, when it comes to thinking machines, they almost revere them and worship them.

[B]

And you'll see this throughout Dune. This like, you know, a strong force or a strong idea will develop. Artificial intelligence is a thing. And some people go super, super hard into it. And like these priestesses, they really don't like it. They're opposed.

[A]

They really don't like it. Right. So this coup is actually successful. They overthrow this governing planet. Riches.

[B]

And.

[A]

And Jahan is basically like, okay, cool, you know, we. We overthrew this governing body. We effectively got rid of AI on our planets and our governing planets. We can stop here. And the priestesses are like, no, there's AI across the universe and we can't stop here. We need to keep going. And that's exactly what they do. And suddenly these pogroms against artificial intelligence, against machines, this bloodshed, this violence which started on these two small planets where Jahan Butler started this revolution, suddenly start to spread across the galaxy. And that's what's known as the Butlerian Jihad. That's a huge oversimplification of it. But that is effectively what happens. These priestesses spread Jahan Butler's ideals across the universe and suddenly humanity turns against these thinking machines.

[B]

So Jahan is kind of as this sort of movement, as this effectively kind of techno genocide of these thinking machines kind of sweeps across the universe. She sort of pushes for restraint, but she ends up dying. She dies and effectively this movement continues completely. Well said. Keep it all in restrained and effectively all thinking machines are wiped out. Now, it's important to note now, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but it's my understanding that the thinking machines were the only reason humans could travel at faster than light speed. Right.

[A]

Because that's my assumption. Because the calculations required to make it aren't possible by the human mind.

[B]

Right. So it's important to note the ramifications of this because on a certain level I'm struck by the ethics of, like when you create artificial intelligence, as we call it in our world, what are the ethics around? If you destroy it, is that murder? You know, there are these questions that are worth considering, especially as we progress literally 20,000 years into the future.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that's where my mind goes. But in universe, what really happens is suddenly transportation between distant stars are very limited for a while. Like for a minute. I mean, for, for. Well, actually, I guess it's only like a couple hundred years. That's convenient.

[A]

Yeah, for a few decades. But actually, Leo, I really like that you brought up the ethics of it because I find it really interesting.

[B]

That's great.

[A]

But Larry and jihad, like, jihad is already an extremely loaded term.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Obviously, like especially in our world with the war on terror with its many like political and religious connotations. Jihad is already an extremely loaded word. But the Bellerian jihad itself is described like the word pogrom is used in Dune. It's described as a bloody conflict that just spreads across the galaxy. It's. It's described as slaughter. It's not described in a. It's like the imagery that I'm getting is not people smashing their MacBooks.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like the imagery that it's trying to instill here is that is basically what you're saying, like the ethics of killing an artificial intelligence.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

A robot that looks just like a human. How is that any different than murdering humans? So this is like a mass genocide of effectively conscious beings. These are artificial intelligence, but they're conscious thinking beings who are self actualized. And I really like that Frank Herbert's Dune and the Encyclopedia and this universe treats it like a jihad. Like something that's bloody, that's brutal, that's immoral, that's on many levels, is, you know, against humanity. And it ultimately wipes out this entire, effectively race of beings, this artificial intelligence race of beings. It wipes them out across the galaxy. Like, that's wild to think.

[B]

You know, there are a lot of conversations these days about artificial intelligence and how this, like, natural. And a lot of sci fi authors talk about this. This like, progression of. Of artificial intelligence until it attains sentience, like full sentience and then autonomy and then like, overthrows humanity and it becomes this, like, Terminator battle of robots versus man.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's this like crazy binary situation, but it seems so much more in line with human history that this would be almost like a religiously motivated purging of. Yeah, discriminated against purging is such a good category of living creature. You're so right that I think we could make the mistake of thinking, oh, they like, broke their computers. They, like, you know, hit the reset button. Whoops, you know, deleted the home drive.

[A]

It wasn't just unplugging your TV and calling it, you know, calling it a jihad. Right. And to really hit this point home, our boy Holtzman, do you recall something about him?

[B]

Okay, you know, pausing for a second. What we very clearly missed out on is the theme within Frank Herbert's books that it was humans against humans. Humans who are pro machine and humans who were anti machine. And the amount of human bloodshed and people.

[A]

Correct.

[B]

You know, Leto says men turned their decision making over to machines, but that only allowed other men with machines to control them. It was. It's always about humanity.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Humanity, the loss of humanity. I think it's all very compelling because ultimately we probably are talking about, like, androids and kind of robots that are indistinguishable from living creatures and all of that. That ethical conversation, I'm here for it. That's great. But we clearly had also fully missed out on the giant theme of it was humans versus humans with that division and the two different teams being pro machine, anti machine.

[A]

Right, right. More so about a mindset and a choice on what the relationship with technology is, and less about Terminator robots or wiping out sentient beings. Artificial sentient beings. Yeah.

[B]

So adding that context for our first ever episode. But hey, all things considered, still rolling. That's not bad.

[A]

We're doing a pretty good job so.

[B]

Far, I think, if memory serves, beyond being a badass.

[A]

Total badass.

[B]

Total badass. Yeah. 100% badass. Not 100% human.

[A]

Yeah. And our boy Holtzman here killed during this jihad because he's part cyborg. So that's another angle to think about. Where did the jihad draw the line here? Like how robot or how artificial intelligence was Holtzman, he started off as 100%.

[B]

Purebred human born human. Yeah.

[A]

But he was also wiped out during this jihad. So you have to imagine that this jihad exploded way out of control.

[B]

Also, even. Even just an individual like Holtzman, who was born human, fully human for 20 years, and then became cyborg because he was disabled. Like, that's of course. Yeah, you're right. Where's the line in the sand? But also, this is Holtzman who's like Holtzman, the reason. The reason humanity is possible now. And they're like, nah, bye, nah.

[A]

He's one of them. We have to wipe them out. Like you have to.

[B]

It's rude.

[A]

This totally changes the face of the universe because as you mentioned earlier, technology sort of stops here. Like, humanity now has to figure out how to do all of those faster than light calculations and all the things that computers even today in the 21st century help us do that humans simply cannot imagine all of that disappearing. Now humanity has to work with, quote unquote, dumb computers who can't do the things that artificial intelligence could help them with.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And this changes the face of the galaxy.

[B]

Right? Yeah. So this sort of sets the stage for the next. Basically the next 10,000 years of humanity.

[A]

All right, Leo, let's close it out. Take us down to zero bg, baby.

[B]

So the last hundred years of before Guild. We have a really important moment for where the Dune book starts again. We still have plenty of time before Dune. And again, we have a whole nother episode.

[A]

Oh yeah, we have a whole nother episode before we even get to Dune. The 0 bg is not where Dune starts. To be clear.

[B]

Okay, so we're in the last hundred years before. In the before Guild kind of era. We are still 10,000 years from the beginning of the Dune book. Like that's. Just keep that in mind. Remember all of writing 5,000 years twice before the beginning of Dune. So just keep that in mind, everything we've said. Great. 10,000 more years before the beginning of Doom. Now say it again. This is actually so between 100 and 0 BG is when a few very important, like families and houses of power are established. Including, and I'm going to say this wrong. Atreides. Was that right?

[A]

That's totally right.

[B]

Thank the Lord.

[A]

House Atreides.

[B]

House atreides Did I not.

[A]

Did we not look up how to.

[B]

Know how to say House Atreides?

[A]

Incredible. Incredible. Also. Also, can you remind me how many years between the Belarian Jihad and the formation of the Guild?

[B]

I didn't hear it. Let's rewind. Let's rewind.

[A]

I feel like I missed a crucial point.

[B]

Yeah, I was looking at my phone. Let's probably go back. I think I only said it six times. How are we supposed to remember if I only said it? Good Lord. I mean, listen, we don't say names correctly now. And I think we are now confident in saying things wrong. But it is so fucking ridiculous to be like, oh, I hope I don't. I'm probably going to butcher this. Frunk. Frunk. Heh.

[A]

Not Frunk Hebert.

[B]

He's a. Frank's evil stepbrother. Oh my God. Atreides. Yeah, Atreides. Good Lord. Can't wait for me to preface every made up word that way. That's exciting. Okay, back to it, I guess. House Atreides is established in this hundred year period. And the main character of Dune that you meet on page one, played by Timothee Chalamet, is an Atreides. So the beginning of this family is 10,000 years before the beginning of the book. Just bear that in mind because I think when I first read Dune, I missed it. How old blood. Old blood is in Dune. You know, like when someone's like, oh, I'm a Rockefeller. I'm like, oh, cool. You have like, you know, family ties.

[A]

To like one or two generations. Cool.

[B]

Yeah, neat. No, this is 10,000 years of family history. Paul Atreides, the main character, is part of a 10,000 year family house timeline. So just keep that in mind. There are some other characters we meet who are also part of that timeline, but yes. So between 100 0, House Atreides is established. And who else?

[A]

House Corrino, baby. They take power. And this is where the Imperium and the Imperial seat of power as we understand it and know it in the novels of Dune is created here between 100 and 0 BG. House Corrino, through, you know, conflicts, of course, establishes their dominance and establishes themselves as the Imperial might in the galaxy. They control the galaxy. They are the emperor of the entire known galaxy, which at this point we need to point out, is tens of thousands of planets spread across the galaxy.

[B]

Planets, tens of thousands.

[A]

The one emperor that is in charge of all of that is from House Corrino. And this is where the House takes power and establishes the Imperium and the imperial seat of power. So that's going to be very important going forward into the next 10,000 years. And of course, it'll be very important in the Dune books, but it's established here.

[B]

It's also worth mentioning. We mentioned that it's established here because it's like 15 pages into the book. I think 20, 20 ish pages into the book. You're hearing about the Emperor. Like, the Emperor is someone who is frequently coming up in. Especially because this imperial power structure is frequently involved in day to day life for the characters that we're gonna meet throughout this series.

[A]

Right.

[B]

The Emperor is kind of oppressing. He's around, people talk about him. He's considered.

[A]

He's important.

[B]

Yeah, right?

[A]

The Emperor does stuff. Yeah, yeah, y. He's important. So let's talk about the fallout of the Butlerian Jihad and not having artificial intelligence, because humanity here comes up with another way. They discover another way for interstellar travel to happen. And this is where our boys, the Spacing Guild, enters the scene.

[B]

You know, if you were to say like, guess, guess how humans figure it out. Interstellar travel without computers to chart like safe courses, I probably would not say drug powered future site. Space travel is a wild left turn.

[A]

But it's also a left turn.

[B]

But it's in line with like, thinking machines are now outlawed. They're not. You can't. You can't do that. That's not allowed. So, okay, how do we get from here to there safely? Well, if we dope up John over here with a crazy amount of. Spacing Guild member John, we're naming the first Spacing. Wow. Spacing Guild member John is the first episode. Wow.

[A]

I thought that was the Spacing Guild episode.

[B]

John's been with us since 20.

[A]

Holy shit. This is a revelation.

[B]

Wow. Yeah. You're about to give me shit for. You're about to give me shit for naming him John. But I was like, that's kind of the first name I would come up with.

[A]

Wow. Yeah. I mean, Spacing Guild member John has that joke is wow. Okay, back to John Spacing Guildmaster John.

[B]

John. Yeah, yeah, John. Space Guild member John.

[A]

Got it. Cool.

[B]

So we get John really doped up on this stuff, right? Just John is high. So high. He's so high on this stuff, he can see a year into the future. And he's like, cool, Chart a course. And they're like, we charted a course. He's like, that'll take you into a sun. And they're like, dang, John, you are high. That's what happens in 84 BG.

[A]

Yep. Spice induced travel. And this becomes a very critical part of the Dune books, I'm sure we'll talk about. But this, like spice guided interstellar travel establishes the Spacing Guild as a pretty dominant power in the structure of the Empire and the structure of the Dune novels. And the Dune novels are very political in nature, right? So power and power plays and backstabbing and all of that good stuff, politicking, comes into play. The Spacing Guild here is established as one of our players, right? Because basically, without them, no one gets around. No one can travel from planet A to planet B without a Spacing Guild member getting high on spice. Without our boy John.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Getting high on spice and telling the ship exactly the right path to take to arrive safely at the next planet. Because, again, these are computations that are too fast for a human to do in real time as the ship is hurtling through space. This is something an AI would have normally handled. But now John getting super high just predicts the right path because he can see the future, or somewhat of the future.

[B]

House Atreides, House Corrino, House John.

[A]

House John, baby.

[B]

He takes care of it. Now, this is also, again, you will hear endlessly about spice, Spice and melange, and however we want to call it is. So keep in mind, this is 10,000 years. We're still 10,000 years before the beginning of the book. By the beginning of the book, the drug spice is the lifeblood of human civilization. Now, like, people get around because of this. It is, like, in many ways considered sort of a currency in ways.

[A]

I think spice is very much, like, directly related to political power. So the Imperial Imperium has the most. Yeah, the Spacing Guild is. Their asset that they provide is people who are trained to take the spice and then run the ships safely through interstellar travel.

[B]

By the way, John is, like, mutated. Like, John doesn't look like a normal folk.

[A]

Yeah, man. He's like a fish floating in a tank. It's real weird, but we'll talk about that. Tbd.

[B]

Yeah. Still human, but still like. Like, it's strange. And this is kind of why I mentioned. Yes, this is part of how the technology has to go, because if you don't have computers, you have to find some other way. So, okay, they take future sensitive people, dope them up on this new drug, and that helps them guide space travel.

[A]

Cool, right?

[B]

But also, the future sensitive people are, like, now being bred and, like, genetically engineered and altered as much as possible to make them as future sensitive as possible to the point where I almost wasn't sure if they were alien or not. But they are humans. But again, human evolution is shifting really dramatically in this time.

[A]

Yeah, definitely. And again, as a direct result of the Butlerian Jihad.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And another result of the jihad here and this final pillar of the empire that's formed as a result of this, like, mass genocide of machines is something called the Chome Company, I assume Choam comb. Cho Am.

[B]

Oh, no, I'll stop at saying chome. I'll say chome until we know that it's wrong.

[A]

Until someone corrects our ass.

[B]

Until, hey, that's a reason to engage with us on social media.

[A]

Yeah, Tweet at us. We're going to get so many pronunciations.

[B]

Wrong, it's going to be great.

[A]

Tell us the right way to say.

[B]

Was it still called Twitter?

[A]

So the. The Choam Company is established and the Landstrad. Landsraad is essentially the. Think of it. The parallel you can draw for the Landstrad is like a House of Parliament, all of these different families, both major houses and minor houses. So something like House of Tradies is a major house.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And then there's a number of minor houses beneath him. All right, I gotta pause here for an episode that's titled the Timeline of Dune. It has been a full fucking 10 minutes since we've talked about a date. Yeah, we are way off of the timeline topic at this point. We're talking about the Spacing Guild, we're talking about the Landsraad. I'm getting annoyed at myself. Like, when's the last time we checked in with the timeline? Where in time are we?

[B]

Yeah, I understand that we are trying to introduce people broadly to the Dune universe and we are trying to say, hey, here's the vocabulary you're going to need. But that's a different episode. We prefaced this with here's the timeline. I also, I'm checking real world timelines right now. Twitter became X in 2023. So this was three years before the, like, shittification of the platform Twitter. So you said, tweet at us, and I didn't. I was like, wow, shit. Yeah, this was before the before times.

[A]

Damn. The before times. So, okay, we're almost done with this episode. Four minutes here. All of these houses come together in one political body known as the Landsraad. And Choam Company is the company that's established to manage sort of, in my mind, I imagine, like the stock market of spice, I guess. And all of these houses basically have shares in choam, which means they have shares in the value of spice. And this is how they obtain power. The more shares of CHOAM you have, the more power you have. Obviously House Corrino, who are the seed of power, they're the emperors. They have the greatest share of Choam and they have the greatest store of spice. And then the rest of the houses divide up the rest. And it's not explained in depth, obviously. Like we're not going to give a Marketing 101 class on how interstellar financial markets might work. But the idea again here is that this is another pillar in the politics of the world. And like I want to back up here, big picture. The Jihad established these three key pillars in the universe of Dune as we understand it. Pillar number one is House Corrino and the imperial seat of power. Pillar number two is the Landstrad and CHOAM company. And pillar number three is the Spacing Guild. All three of these parties exist both against each other and cannot exist without each other. So there's constant sort of politicking and making moves against each other. But also they all have to be here because they are extremely dependent. The Landstrad can't go get around without the Spacing Guild. The Spacing Guild can't get access to spice without showing company and their shares. The imperial seat of power doesn't get its power without owning most of the shares, without controlling some aspect of interstellar space travel. All of these things are like interconnected in a really convoluted, confusing web. But that's where a lot of the politics of Dune comes into play in the novels. And this is where it's established around 0 BG. All three of these pillars of the modern age. There we go. There we go. We got a timeline check.

[B]

We got a fucking date. We got a date. Timeline. Episode.

[A]

My God. Okay, one more minute left in the episode. Here modern universe come into play.

[B]

Only 10,000 years to go.

[A]

Only 10 more thousand years to go. Wow. What a journey. So that covers bg. We did it, Leo. We have covered all the way to the establishment of the Spacing Guild. That was exhausting.

[B]

You know, something like 16,000 years passed so quickly.

[A]

So quickly. It just flew by. You know, time flows by.

[B]

I think I have new gray hairs.

[A]

When you're John getting high on spider.

[B]

House John. Always remember he's the fourth pillar. John.

[A]

Yes, he's my fourth pillar. Never forget John, the first Space Guild member. So that officially wraps up today's episode. And again, like we mentioned earlier, this is just Part one. In part two of our timeline episode, we're going to talk about the events of Eiji After Guild. Now that we've established these three key pillars, the Spacing Guild is here. We're entering, I guess we could call it the quote unquote modern era of Dune, but it's essentially the universe of Dune that we will experience in the novels and in the movies and in the show. So that's going to be next episode. We're going to focus on all the key events that happen in Eiji leading up to Dune in a totally non spoiler way. So we hope you'll join us.

[B]

So keep your ear to the ground in podcast land. That episode's going to be out soon and we can't wait to tell you all about After Guild. It's a wild 10,000 years. Well, friends, there is no real ending. 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 Wadib and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify to check out the other shows on the. We're also on YouTube.

[A]

Didn't matter back in time.

[B]

You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Lore Underscore Party. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, he who controls the podcast controls the universe. We'll see you on the Golden Path. Yeah, that was before we switched to more inclusive language. So whoever controls the podcast. Wow. Wow.

[A]

Here's another thing I'm really proud of. Yeah, the intro and outro we wrote six years ago basically never changed because they're so good.

[B]

Yeah, we've made, like, tiny adjustments and sometimes. But, yeah, I mean, we've read them hundreds of times now and they're still good. I do, I appreciate the rhythm that we found. You know, the, like, we'll see you on the Golden Path is just always the rhythm. And that feels very good. We'll see you on the Golden Path. Well, you got somewhere to go, right? You busy? You rushed through that. Oh, my gosh.

[A]

Wow. That was fun. That was a fun look back at, Gosh, the start of our own journey. Any final thoughts as we wrap up here?

[B]

No. I am excited to go back to kind of specific episodes, things like Ecaz. I want to look at that Holtzman episode again, partially just because we put a lot of research into those episodes and realistically, some of it slips away. So I'm excited to kind of get a refresher on some of those deep dive topics. But also, yeah, I think this is A good place to start. We were so young, so naive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But we had the right idea. We had the right scaffolding. And again, I think what we have now is just the kind of thing that it takes years to build up.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Glad for it. Because, man, I have to edit. When we're editing our episodes and listening back to them, it's like, I'm glad they're better. I'm glad they're better than what they were.

[A]

Same. That's what you want, right? Like, imagine listening to an episode from five years ago and being like, oh, shit, we don't make stuff as good as this anymore. That's the whole wrong trajectory, dude.

[B]

True. That would suck.

[A]

That would suck. Yeah. So I'm glad we took the opportunity today to bully our past selves, because frankly, they deserved it. But also, I'm really proud of them because if they hadn't done that six years ago, we wouldn't be here. And frankly, fuck it. I'm still proud of that episode. Yeah, same five books by Frank Herbert and all. I'm proud of it all. Every word of it. I stand by it.

[B]

I was going to say, if only we knew how many books Frank Herbert had written.

[A]

All right, folks, well, we hope you enjoyed that little behind the scenes peek at that first episode we recorded all those years ago. We're going to continue to revisit old episodes from the archive and provide this sort of producer's commentary. So if you have a favorite episode from years ago that you want to resurface and that you'd love to hear some behind the scenes commentary on, let us know. Drop it in Discord. Email us and we'll hop in the time machine and go back and listen to that episode.

[B]

Man, Spacing Guild. John, I never had weed when we recorded that episode. Wow. What a time in my life. What a time.

[A]

What a time.

[B]

It wasn't legal.

[A]

I hadn't seen Mulan when we recorded.

[B]

On episode back when you hadn't seen Milan. Keep it up, buddy. We'll be able to make that joke for decades.

[A]

That's right. Two decades from now, I'm going to make a joke about not seeing Milan. All right, folks, thanks for hanging out. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you in the next one.