Say hello to the all-electric Kia EV5 SUV based on one of Ireland's most popular models, the Kia Sportage, but completely reimagined for the electric age. With best-in-class boot space, advanced technology, and unrivaled comfort, it's a consistent evolution that adds a new perspective to every drive. Unlock a world of adventure, book your EV5 test drive at Kia.com. Kia. If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why hands down, you count on Granger for auto re-ordering. With on-time restocks, your team will have the cut-resistant gloves they need at the start of their shift. And you can end your day knowing they've got safety, well in hand. Call 1-800-Granger-click-granger.com or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done. I'm Anne. I'm Liz. I'm Margonne. And we are joined today by a very, very, very special guest. If you have followed my content on Patreon, you have seen him and heard him. If you have seen me on social media, he's the guy behind the camera. We are joined today by my husband Chris. Hi Chris. Hello. Hi Chris. Hi. Hi. We are so excited to have you. This is something that I know people have been asking for since we had you do a cameo back on God. What episode was that? That episode we were talking about Trillani and I drive you away from a nap to read Trillani up to see? I vaguely remember this because I was definitely half asleep when I read that. So Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do? Where are you from? Hello everyone. I'm Chris Lisi. I'm an actor up here in Chicago in the storefront theater kind of scene originally from Richmond, Virginia and I live up here with Anne. What is your Hogwarts house? Well, I am thoroughly convinced it is Ravenclaw, but Anne disagrees and insists I'm a Gryffindor. You can be a Gryffind. A Gryffind Claw. Gryffind Claw? Sure. Why not? Yeah. Yeah. Well, go ahead with the rest of your info, babe. What's your Elbernorney house? Your wand? Your patronus? Okay, so kind of definitely didn't crash fill these out last night before I came on. Not at all, but apparently I am a puckwitchy for the Elbernorney houses. And my wand is black walnut with dragon heart string and patronus, I do actually remember taking that quiz way back when Pottermore first offered that, and I think it was like a cat or something, but that absolutely does not feel right. I have always believed it is some sort of ape, so I would say an orangutan is my patronus. So we're going with a longstanding tradition of what's a Pottermore says, but that's dumb, so we're not going to do that. No, they're wrong. They're wrong, I'm right. And what about your history with the Potter, franchise, and fantastic beasts? And I know part of it is, you know, by force because it was with me, but like separate from that. Well, I first read the books when I was like 16, I think I started reading them. My mom was actually reading them before I was, and I kind of, I have the dumbest way I started reading the original books. I started reading about halfway through Chamber of Secrets, then went back and read the beginning because I basically started reading at the point in the book where my mom already was. Then I read the first book, then the third book, and then the fourth book came out, and I read an order from there. You know, and I saw all the movies and theaters when they came out, especially once, and I had gotten together towards the end of that. So we saw them together. I think the last, what, for, last three for sure. Okay. Yeah. And from there, it's, it's always been, it's never been a, I've never been, I guess, a hardcore fan or anything, but it's always been interesting and I've always been like kind of intrigued, kind of at the edge of the, the Potter and fantastic beasts fandom, especially considering who my wife is, that, that definitely draws my interest as well. Cool. And do you have other fandoms that you all know? My, my primary fandom that I'm more thoroughly involved in is Magic the Gathering because that is a game I've been playing since I was 10 years old. God, that was 1995, so a long time ago. And so the story and the lore of that is something I've always been very deep into. And it has also kind of colored my view of a different fantasy, general genre. So that's, that's been very interesting to see different ways that, you know, magic is handled and that sort of thing. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So still, still a bit of fantasy and a bit of magic, even very, very much so, in a very different style of magic. Yes. You know, that would be something fun for some patreon content as we figure out the magic colors of different, fantastic beast characters. I definitely have opinions. I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm like, they play that like Harry Harry Potter has houses, magic has colors. Cool. How many colors are there? I don't actually know. Five. Oh, wow. White, blue, black, red and green, different philosophies, worldviews, essentially. That's so fun. A lot like the Hogwarts houses. Mm hmm. Okay. No, I need these bonuses because we don't want to learn about that. Be careful. It's an expensive hobby. Yeah. You see our living room. Yes. I'm sorry. Okay. Well, speaking of things, we are not sorry about, we are certainly not sorry for the support of this week's Patreon supporter, Jennifer. Jennifer was our former social media manager and now she is still patron and we love you, Jennifer. Thank you. We love you too. Thank you. Thank you. And we miss you. Oh, thank you so much. So, I guess it's time for the Phoenix register. And now, we'll message from our sponsors. Hey you, yes you. The magical cats and dolls waving your wands like bean chooders and a caper, looking to be on the up and up about Newt Scamander, famous suologist and world traveler, no need for gossip at the juice joint, just tune your ears to Speak Beasty. And now for as little as $1 a month, you can make Speak Beasty the measles me out. Support the show at patreon.com and suddenly you're the big cheese, the real McCoy, with exclusive access to swells, sneak peeks, bloopers, and behind the scenes features. But wait, there's more. You can also pick their gums at the joint with access to the Speak Beasty common room on Facebook. Now you're really on the clean sweep, fly boy, get a wiggle on to patreon.com/speakbeasty to learn more about becoming a sponsor today. It's the barely wigs me is, and how. So, the first point, it's actually a reaction from the, when I listen to the last episode. Because in the last episode you were very happy to, to celebrate the release of the, of the movie on HBO Max and soon on DVD and, and in Blu-ray and in the, the, the VOD, I don't know. But I'd like to remind you that the film is not a variable at home everywhere, and in France, it's still actually, you can still go to movie theater to see it. So that's pretty cool. But you, we will have to wait August 24 to have it on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD. So, and we don't have the HBO Max, so yeah, boom, thumbs down. I don't even know if it's still in theaters around here, like I think it's, I think it's been gone. Yeah, it's been gone for me, I think, it was only in theaters like a month by me. It was, it was pretty fast, like I want to say, even by the time the actual release date, there weren't a ton of showings and I don't think it ever really got to the kind of super wide release. Yeah, I think I already mentioned that in previous episode, but in France, we have a specific politics that protect the theater exploitation of movies, so they, I mean, the movies don't stay, every movies don't stay very long in theaters, but the biggest ones are staying longer. And most important, they have to wait a certain time between the movie release and the DVD release on Blu-ray release, and even more time for the streaming release. So, for example, our Disney+ in France is very different from yours. We have to wait for now, it's three years to have the movies on streaming. Wow. It's because Disney is not participating into the French production. If other streaming services that are financing French production, they can have release of their movie sooner, but yeah, so, yeah, it's the way it's to protect our French cinematic graphic industry and our theaters, so… That makes sense. Yeah. That's awesome. I'm kind of like… I'm sure American cinema owners wish they had that kind of protection here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I guess, but yeah, it's weird too, because it already was quite a mess, the release of this movie in theater, because we had so many different dates around the world, and now it's the same for the DVDs, so, yeah, but since apparently the US market is the only one that matters, they're going to report that from the "Wipe Stream" charts, that "Secrets on Double Door" was the most streamed movie in the United States during the first week of June, so, very successful streaming release for the movie, and yeah, it raised a question if it will influence the future of the franchise, because, yeah, they were not super… Happy about the box office result, but if it works well on streaming, I don't know what will happen next. Yeah, I know, we've talked at length about maybe there being a streaming release for the last two movies, so hopefully you would still get to see that even without HBO Max. Yeah. Maybe there'd be a theatrical release overseas, and it would just be streaming here in the US, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if they will do that, but, hmm, yeah, I don't know. I hope it would still be a theatrical release, but, yeah, I don't know. But interesting that it works, yeah, the movie is performing well on streaming. I guess it speaks more about the change of how US viewers consume movies, yes, but, yeah, I know a lot of people still aren't super comfortable going to movie theaters. I mean, I go at like 2pm on a Tuesday when there's like no one there, because I don't want to be in like a super packed theater right now, you know? Yep. No, I remember woman, Chris and I went to see Shang-Chi, like, for some reason we thought, oh, a 9 o'clock showing on a Saturday night in a college town. That's a really specific circumstance, but, yes. They were slammed. Yeah. It was not comfortable. So yeah, another news, not strictly, fantastic is related, but maybe we'll see. We learned that a new wizarding work experience experience is coming. It's called Harry Potter Magic at Play, and so it was this earlier this month. And we don't know much about it for now. So I quote the announcements, it says, "Wisers of all ages will enjoy hands-on magical moments in this new interactive experience, celebrating Harry's adventures in discovering the wizarding world." And some clues may lead to things that it may open this fall in Chicago. Maybe it's not confirmed, but it looks like it, we see. And yeah, my question is, will fantasy be featured, because we know that in the exhibition that is touring and is now in Philadelphia still, I think, they have some fantasy-based part in it, even if it's Harry Potter the exhibition. So maybe Harry Potter Magic at Play will have some fantasy-based part, we see. Yeah, that'd be great. I hope so. And if it's indeed in Chicago, we count on the two of you to report. Yes, yes, you'll have, don't worry, you'll have your cover-porters on it. We're on it. And I didn't add it to the news, but I saw yesterday the cool Zuhu bag that was released. It's so cute, right? Yeah. It's an exclusive form, San Diego Comic-Con, something like that. It's really cute, and it lights up. Yeah. It does, I didn't know that. Yeah, it lights up. Oh. And I'm googling this. So imagine it at night, you're watching the colors display with your Zuhu backpack. It's an experience. Wow, that's amazing. So yeah, it's fun. Oh my god! It's so cute! Right? It's so fun. Okay, I'm going to put this link in the chat so that you all can see it. It is insanely cute. But it's interesting that they are, because Zuhu is really a crimes of Grindelwald beast, not a secret of Dumbledore beast or interesting that they are really seeing that now. Yeah. Why not? Because Zuhu is so cool, so. Yeah. Yeah. It is, even if it is just from Grindelwald, it is still iconic, and it was still such a huge part of that movie. Yeah. And it does make a very striking backpack. It does. It does. And it's like the only fantastic beast San Diego Comic-Con exclusive thing that's been confirmed so far. There's no funcos that are coming out for Harry Potter or Fantastic Beasts. Oh wow. Yeah. I was like, "Oh. Okay. Weird." Is it? I mean, pardon her. I don't. Like, isn't S.D.C.C. coming up soon? Yeah. It's next month. Yeah. Wow. Well, I was wondering if we'd get secrets of Dumbledore stuff then. But I'm like, "Yeah." I guess if they were waiting to see how the movie did, that it may not have been enough time from then to now to really put something into production in time for the con. If we get anything, it might be in the fall, you know? Oh, yeah, for like New York Comic-Con or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And again, I think a lot of the merchandise, even the companion books and so on are quite late because again, the movie at some point was supposed to be released in July. So they are still. I mean, the fact that we don't, we will only have the screenplay in July at almost the date that it was supposed, the movie was supposed to be released at some point. I think maybe the merchandise is the same, has the same, yeah, can under-issue to be ready in time. So. Yeah, I remember the, the Sports Act collection dropped. I think like the first week of June, which, or July 15th, release date is perfect because that really gets people hyped, people, "Oh, what does this mean? What does this mean? What does this mean?" So for an April 15th, you're already a month and a half behind the curve. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Not the best strategy for, but okay. On the ball is always one of brothers. I mean, but again, I mean, if the movie were still for July, it would have so much competition with all the other, the other big, uh, novel in the movie. Oh, yeah, with four of us in all that coming out. Oh, yeah. Oh. Ooh. I guess that means it's time for our post, right? Yeah. Yep. But there isn't any sad. No. I was hoping. Where are the olds? Why? Send in your thoughts. Do you have thoughts about the last episode? Thoughts about Secrets of Dumbledore? Tell them to send them to us on social media, and we will talk about them. And we love to hear from you. Yeah. And even if you're waiting for a mission that is like a cool, uh, cool, shielding backpack, tell us. That's what you're waiting for. Yeah. Tell us to murder your dream, merch, and who you want to make it. Well, we won't be able to make it happen, but we'll do that with you. Okay. Well, I guess that leads us to the main discussion. So this is something that has been on our master sheet, Marjorie, and put it on there, and it sounded so fun. I knew I needed to get the two biggest history nerds I knew together to talk about this. So today's main discussion is the election. What happened and how can we fix it? So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the state of the world in either 1928 or 1932. And I think we see for the historical background that it makes more sense if it's 1932. My main thing is that Thesius does not like a sogo path. If it's 1932, because if it's 1928, the love of his life was brutally murdered in front of him five months ago. Yeah. No, this is fine. Whereas if it was four years ago, that makes it a little bit more understandable. Yes. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. A lot of things make more sense more than five months later. Okay. Well, first things first. So we're going to talk about the state of the world at the time and how things differ. If it's 1928 versus 1932. And the first thing I'm going to say is that, as Margillian said, there's a newspaper graphic. It's a German newspaper that I guess it's featured in one of the mean only exhibitions. And it says 1932. Like it clearly is a 1932 newspaper. So that's so is Lolly just bad at dance or is she just making stuff up or does she just just why I don't know it's really deeply weird. Yeah. Wizards just perceive time differently. That's probably it. Yeah. That's awesome. Okay. It's 1928 for the Muggles, but 1932 for the Wizards. Yeah. There we go. Oh, man. They are truly living in the future. That's for me. If I'm not to tell them what's going to happen in 1929 though. I agree. They're those three thousand and eight. We're so two thousand and late. It's so embarrassing. Okay. Well, if it is 1928, the US president is Calvin Coolidge. And the German Chancellor is Wilhelm Marx. And later that year, Franz von Papen. And the German president is Paul von Hindenburg. We are just before the Great Depression. Why my Republic is still powering along and there are going to be German elections held in June of that year. Yeah. And so I looked, I went into a deep dive into what was Hitler doing in this time. Because yeah, we, we, we, I mean, yeah, but in 28, that's, yeah, that's the start. Because he, he didn't have a great start. And in 28, he was out of prison. So I, I just picked the fact that makes sense with the green devil comparison. So yeah, let's remember Hitler went to jail after a fake push. And he was forbidden of public speaking until March 1927. That, I think it was interesting to not that because, of course, he didn't respect that. But the comparison with Grindelwald being quite, yeah, outlaw, but still having rally, that's, yeah. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. That's quite the same. And, but specifically in 1928, Hitler was already developing the Nazi party a lot. And, but he was not yet elected. So. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, specifically also that later that year, Franz von Popin becoming chancellor was pretty important too, because he was a pretty hardcore reactionary right wing, chancellor, not a Nazi, member of a different party, the centrum party, which were a conservative Catholic party. But his big political project was to try and get a coalition going between the conservatives and the Nazis, because his party was never, the centrum party was never really super big in terms of electoral success. And he thought he could harness the kind of energy in the streets that the Nazis had going for them, and that he could control them. Hitler's just a silly little kernel, and he's not that big a threat. I'll make sure I'll be able to tell him what to do, and it'll be fine. Yeah. At first in the movie, I really thought that Fogo was clearly von Popin equivalent, but in, it's not, at some point, he really has the same kind of speech when he said, yeah, let's say Hitler, let's say we should let go in the whole run, we should let him participate in the election, because he will lose, and because we need to let his partisan to be legal in court, because they will legally lose, and that's quite close from von Popin strategy. We all know how fascists really respect election results that don't go their way. They just love following the rules. It'll be fine. But yeah, interesting to rediscover von Popin and the Fogo comparison. Yeah. In 1932, then the president is Herbert Hoover, the German chancellor is Heinrich Bruning. German president is still Paul von Hindenburg, who are about three years into the Great Depression, and German banks have collapsed in July. Yeah. And that's just, just before Hitler became chancellor in early 1933, in '32, he already brought the Nazi party to lead the elections, and, yeah, and I also, a little fun fact quite difficult. But you have to find the quotation mark, enough, fine. Yeah. For the comparison with Grindelwald, it's also earlier in this year that he gained the German citizenship through a political nomination, because before that, so he was born Austrian, and he was stateless since 1925 when he lost his Austrian citizenship, after the budge, so the last budge. So, yeah, he was citizenship for a long time, before through political election and through nomination, he gained the German citizenship just before getting the chancellor title, so, yeah. Interesting. So, then, based on the information that we've kind of pulled, I mean, I know that just because we have two different, what's the word I'm looking for, like, two different options as far as the years go, based on the state of the world in that time, and what we've kind of discussed here, what do y'all think is most likely the year? Because it doesn't feel like the Great Depression, but it also doesn't feel like the Weimar Republic in the bit that we're in Berlin. I have to say 32, you're right, it definitely doesn't necessarily feel like we don't see any kind of signs of the depression, but given how we've got the scary guys in trench coats and like, kind of a very ominous vibe that we're supposed to, we're clearly supposed to get from the film there, to me, that only makes sense if it's already 1932, because 1928, it's still in America, the roaring 20s, in Germany, they were called the Golden 20s, and like that, it does not necessarily look like the kind of, I mean, I guess we don't see that much of Berlin, so who knows what's going on out there outside that, like, one square we go to, but we don't see the kind of like bright shining lights and like dancing in clubs and nightlife that you associate with Berlin in the 1920s. We do kind of get that ominous, dark, oppressive of the early 1930s in Berlin. I feel like, I just rewashed the film last night, and when we first see Jacob, I feel like he isn't just being torn down because of everything that happened with Queenie. It feels like there's something more there, like, business hasn't been good, which leads me to feel like it's more great depression era than 1928. Yeah, that's exactly what I was about to say, and I think we even have a quote from Dan Vogler, implying that Jacob's depression is a reflection of the context of the time. And you're right, the state of the bakery is not just him being neglecting the bakery, it's also a context, a difficult context. Not as many people buying fancy pastries either way, whichever year it is, Bhutan is almost completely isolated from the outside world. It does have a friendly relationship with the British Raj, though, so which I think tracks with either way with the Bhutan that we see in the film is that it's completely isolated and only white people only pop in when it's politically expedient. Yep, that completely tracks Bhutan was basically able to keep its independence by promising to play nice with what the British tell them, just like Nepal. Yeah, but it works too with what they are just hinting about Bhutan and the meaning of Bhutan for the wizarding world, but that it's so isolated and so secret for the moguls and most of the moguls don't know anything about Bhutan and what happens in Bhutan. So it fits the state of the country in our world in this time and even today, it fits the fact that it's a reunion place for the wizarding world because it's protected from the outside world. Yeah. I feel like that's something else we're going to have to discuss on a future episode is because they do talk about how Bhutan is like the origin of the wizarding world time remembering correctly. So I think we're definitely going to talk about at some point. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if they talk about the origin, but they, I mean, he, yeah, like that it's some kind of the source, the source of magic, yeah, the Dumbledore quote. I think it's like a lot of our oldest magic comes from there. I think it's something like that. I want to know more, but that gave me old magic that's such an interesting question that's just raised and then, oh well, well, anyway, yeah, moving on. Okay. So what do we know about the election right now? We do know that it's for the head of the International Federation of Wizards, which is currently photo and interestingly, and I think correctly, they never call it supreme mug one. They always just call it head or president. I think so I think it's smart that they're moving away from that specific language for it. Yeah. What do we think the powers and responsibilities conferred by this position are? And is there, there's not really like, I, I'm not going to lie. I don't know what to know about like, no, no, there is no equivalent, but there's not really an equivalent of like the president of the world or whatever, right? Like the closest thing to the International Confederation of Wizards that would have existed at the time was the League of Nations, and the League of Nations was always very weak. Like, it was an idea for a proto-UN, but it was absolutely not able to enforce its rules when Italy invaded Ethiopia, the League of Nations, wagged its finger and did just about nothing else. The Nazis ignored it, the Soviets, I don't think were ever allowed in, which is a big oversight if you're going to have a country that big, not allowed into the League at all. Japan left as soon as they got any criticism, and the League could do basically nothing about anything. Yeah, but even if we compare it to the UN, it's very different because yeah, first of all, we don't have a general election for the head of the UN, so, so that's something. And yeah, it's more, the UN is more the assembly of the different states and not the overstate. So, it can't, it doesn't have the power to tell a sovereign state to do anything. I mean, it can, you know, ask, but any sovereign country can just say, no, and there's nothing that can really be done about that. I think the International Confederation of Wizards is, maybe we already talked about that. I don't remember, but, or if it's, maybe it wasn't, not a podcast, I didn't remember. But it's very connected to the protection of the statute of secrecy, I think. And so, maybe it was not created for that, but I mean, I think the main thing that they have to manage, and why they have this general international organization that has power above the state is to protect the, the statute of secrecy, because you can't protect it if you rely on, on the states, because it has to work, they have to work together to protect it, because if one state do, do, I don't know what they want, and they break the secret, it breaks the secret for all of the world. Everyone. Maybe I think that's the reason why they have that, but yeah, it's still, because every hint that we have in the Harry Potter books and in the additional stuff, they are involving a lot of things, they are involving Quidditch World Cup, they are involving, I don't know, a lot of things, but at the same time, the head is, we don't, we're not sure what red power has the head, because if Dumbledore was at the head of the international population, at the same time that he was headmaster at Hogwarts, and he can do both jobs, I don't know. Yeah, it can be that much responsibility, yeah, and maybe he was just, I don't know, doing a few meetings a month or two, I don't know, for the confiduration. One would think you'd at least have a full work week if you're, you know, president of the entire world of what it's or something. The thing I thought about it also is that that level of kind of, like, international cooperation and that kind of authority theoretically over individual national wizard governments, I guess it can kind of make more sense to me if you think about how much smaller the wizarding population is in relation to the Muggle population, like, if it's, it seems like it would be easier to have that kind of widespread coordination and, I mean, just less dissension and diversity of opinion, if there's just a lot fewer people, period for them to have to coordinate, like, it would be, you know, the, the wizarding population of Britain would be more equivalent to, like, the Muggle population of, like, Ohio or something like that. So, that puts the, puts the wizard populations just more along the lines of, like, a state level in a federal system, like the United States or Germany, as opposed to a full on, like, nation of millions of people, you're talking more about maybe tens of thousands. So, that just seems like it would be easier to govern maybe, but they are wizards. Yeah. Yeah. I'll literally, all of them have the equivalent of a nuclear bomb in their pockets. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But again, I think that we barely teach the math. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's a set of secrecy that's, I think, it, it has an influence on everything political in all of the, and I think it's also the reason why the wizarding world is not a democracy. No. Yeah. Clearly not. Because they, you can't, you, you can't have that disagree, the, this big thing that you have to protect at all costs and not be, yeah, not a return in regimes. That's not a provote. Yeah. And, but at the same time, the fact that they, the, that Fogo pardon Grindelwald, it's also, I mean, I think Grindelwald can, can be considered political outlaw because, because they are not considering the, the real crimes that they are, that he is doing, he, they are more considering him like a, like with Hitler, like the, the fact that that's his idea that are out of the, the system, the fact that he wants to break the secrecy. So, the fact that they pardon him, it's more understand, understandable if you are considering that. Yeah. When I first saw that scene in the movie, the thing it actually made me think of. It was a way more contemporary example. And the first time I saw the movie, I thought maybe Vogel was just a fool. The second time it became more clear, like, oh, wait, okay, he's working with Grindelwald, like, to, to me, the second, like, okay, I, I didn't quite catch that the first time through. But the first time through the contemporary example I thought up was David Cameron in, like, in 2015, calling the Brexit referendum, because the whole reason he did that was because he went to the EU, renegotiated the terms of Britain's membership, and got a bunch of concessions, and then in order to win his conservative parties, like, to win a, a majority, and to get a bunch of the, like, far right in Britain off his back, he promised that, like, I'm going to renegotiate our terms in the EU. I'm going to get a great deal, and then I'm going to put it back to a referendum on whether we stay in the EU or not, completely confident that he is just such a great politician. Everyone would listen to him, and they'd all see clearly what a good deal he negotiated. Of course they'd vote no on leaving the EU, they'd never vote to do that. But it'll just be a big political stunt that I can do, and everyone will, we'll be fine with it. And shocker of shockers, it didn't turn out the way he thought, and then he resigned. Yeah. Oops. But yeah, he blew it all up when, oops, I really screwed up anyway. Bye-bye everyone. Yeah. Take care of my missed. Yeah. So, something I was just thinking about, because we'll get to this a bit later on as far as, like, other positions. But do we think that maybe Vogel was able to pardon Grindelwald, not because he's the head of the International Confederation of Wizards, but because he is also the German minister for magic? Was it ever made clear what authority had, like, what crimes he was charged with under who's authority? Was it the International Confederation of Wizards, or was it a national government that did it? Because he was being held in America. Yeah, but the fact is, yeah, he was held in America, but it was the German official, I don't know. It was a title that went into transfer because they, yeah, the American wanted to keep him, but they-- He was being extradited, because it has to be the, I'm not sure about German, but at least in Europe that he had to be put on trial, I guess, in Europe. Right. Okay. That makes a lot more sense, so in that case, it might be in his capacity as German minister. Yeah, but again, at the time, we can guess that at the time, Vogel was already head of the Confederation of Wizards, so maybe they were transferring to Europe because the head of the Confederation of Wizards was there, we don't know. So, yeah, not clear, but it would make sense here, if it's a German-- Yeah. His capacity as a national head of government instead of the Wizard League of Nations can just do that. But at the same time, when he announced that he really is in his head of the Confederation hat, and because he's organizing the Tea Party between the Canadian, that's really the main point of this event, was the election, it was not a ministry thing. It was very the Confederation rally for the Tea Party for the candidates, so-- Yeah. Okay. So, other things that are unclear, how the heck do people vote? I don't know. No. That's a really good question. Because no one knows. Because it seems like people voted, but then they had the Chilin, and the Chilin boughs too, Grindelwald, and they're like, "Okay, JK, all votes are now no one void because the baby giraffe chose the fascist." I thought the order of things was they brought out the Chilin and reminded everyone, "Hey, this is the special magical creature that always--that only bows to like the best person ever. And anyway, we're going to do this and then vote for whoever, but you know, you just saw the infallible as far as you know, magical creature that always picks the best person. Maybe that'll influence how you vote. Maybe it won't. Who can tell? Yeah. That's what I gather, because I think there is a quote from Don Modor, maybe, I said that at some point in the past, we used the Chilin to choose our leader. And it was the only thing that was required, is the Chilin to bow. But now, of course, we vote. But the fact that we have this Chilin, and it's the first in I don't know how many generations that we found just in time for the election, of course, we will use the Chilin, but like you said, vote. We'll still go through the form of voting. Yeah, right. But maybe there's a lot of people out there that will vote like, "Eh, I don't want the best person told to me by the divine creature. I'm going to vote for someone else instead anyway." Okay. So, I rewatched the sequence really closely, because I was trying to figure out why the Chilin was about. So Lally's the one that tells us in the in Aberforth's pub that there was a time many, many years ago when the Chilin chose who'd lead us, and that's not really clear, like, how long ago that was. And then up in Bhutan, when Vogel pulls the Chilin out, he's like, "Remember, this is what we used to do to ensure that only a candidate with the purist of hearts would lead us." And I took it as a, he wanted to make it look like that there wasn't corruption and fraud going on, that by having the Chilin once again pick who would lead them, even though, you know, it was a necromanced Chilin, that they were trying to eliminate the whole voter fraud election fraud kind of vibe, that people wouldn't be able to argue that, "Oh, the votes were skewed intentionally or something like that for Grindelwald." That's how I took it. I'm not sure if that's correct, but that's what I infer. Yeah. It makes sense. No, it makes sense. What's really kind of interesting is that also, just not necessarily in Harry Potter lore, but in, like, Chinese mythology, like, the Chilin was frequently cited by a whole bunch of emperors throughout Chinese history. It was this creature that only appeared before, and especially, like, righteous person, like, a person chosen by heaven to be, that this was, like, the best, most deserving, just, and unsurprisingly, a whole bunch of monarchs, emperors say, "And I totally saw one." So that, that tells you all that you really need to know about how good I am and how much you should all trust what I say, because I totally saw one. I promise. Yeah. And I think I mentioned that when we did the Chilin focus on the Newt case before the movie. But, well, yeah, when I researched some facts, I learned that North Korea used the Chilin quite recently, and, yeah, they said that they discovered a Chilin nest in the cave. And that was supposed to be, to be a good sign for the country that they were in good hands, and, yeah, so it's still used. That the Kim Dynasty's righteous rule shall continue to guide the people and all that. Exactly that, that's, yeah. Yeah. No, it's really just very traditional of them to do that, I guess. That's why. It just feels weird in the modern era. Yeah. But, yeah, they are presenting that like an archeological discovery. Cool. Okay. We kind of discussed the Chilin as well as voting, and we still have no idea how to do that. Yeah, we still don't know how they voted. Like as far as I could tell, I'm just like what it looked like to me, and then like assumptions I kind of just made to make it make sense. I don't know. A bunch of people fired their wands up in the air with a specific mark, and then they also appeared to be people doing this not on the site in Bhutan. So, are they doing that, because when we see, the second vote through, we see them doing it in like Brazil as well. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. We don't see that the first time though. You're right. It's the second time. I don't know if those votes count. I don't know if there's some way that the people in Bhutan, like no, just I kind of assumed there was some kind of enchantment, and this is entirely me trying to like cobble something together that makes sense in my head. But there's some kind of enchantment that like some official vote counters or collections of maybe one for each candidate or whatever. However many wizards around the world within this specific time frame, send that mark up into the air or a firm of vote in some way, they just like they know in there, they that knowledge just goes into the head of whoever the official. Yeah, but there is no official, nothing that did you do just enough to like I just kind of assumed like off camera. Maybe there's three wizards that just like write down a number and then yeah, that one's bigger. Okay. I guess it's Grindelwald, but do they know what numbers are bigger because they haven't had mass class? Yeah. Don't know. Is that why Lallie? Just literally all erasmantic teachers is how to do this one specific spell to vote. But yeah, that's why I have the weird feeling that the the wizard came out with this election at some point in their history mimicking the moguls, but without yeah, without understanding what vote voting issue works, how it works, and they say, oh yeah, they are, it looks like the people choose it's cool. We will do that, but they don't understand like they can't hit the wizarding world. I'm not sure. No, I'm sure it didn't, but uh, some muggle, some muggle born somewhere brought up Voltaire at some point. They're like, oh, okay, but yeah, and some muggle born say, yeah, we should, maybe we should vote for leaders now and not use uh, a medical creature, a rare medical creature. Yeah. And let's go into that only shows up like one every century or so. Yeah. Yeah. And imagine the. And only they're like, not just a, yeah, not just a standard leader, but like an exceptional one. It's like pretty clear, like a historic, not like a placeholder leader or just like a normal, no, like the big ones that go in the history books that people remember. Like, you can't count on that for your day to day running of a government. No. Yeah. And I can imagine the muggle born trying to explain how voting works and, yeah, we have to count the votes. And as soon as he say counting something that we don't know, it's completely, we just threw all loans into the air and it should be enough. We just make a house self do that for us. We could, could you imagine like wizards at, you know, a ballot booth trying to like fill out something? I can't. I can't. Especially like a modern one where it's like a type screen and they're just like, I don't end to. Yeah. Like, I think I have a new theory for what happened in Florida in the year 2000. Like, I assume if they did something like that, their wand is like their identification, you know, it like, again, it had to me. It's got to be some kind of magical like enchantment that identifies what your vote is or something that that's, I can't, they clearly weren't like looking up in the sky going like, okay, I can't like one, two, three, four, five, six, and then it's going to all of it. Like, they clearly weren't doing that. So there had to be some kind of like, some kind of magical means of knowing what the votes are that I guess we don't have to see and just sort of just trust me, dude. It happened. All right. Do you think maybe they just look into everybody's heart and they're like, Oh, your heart really likes Santos. Okay. That's a vote for Santos. That's a lot of shillings to get that job done. That's. Yeah. That's not how, man, that's not how I vote for people. Let me tell you, in my entire adult life, in a general election, I have not voted for someone I love with all my heart. 100%. Actually, when we are recording, it's voting day to tomorrow in France, so yay. Yay. Oh, thank you. Good luck. Thank you. So we've determined that we don't know how they do it, but Chris's idea is probably the best we're going to get. Yeah. Sure. That's me during the movie like, I don't know, maybe that's how it works. Sure. Well, keep that in your back pocket. When we reconstruct the election at the end, at the end of the discussion and like make it make sense, we'll implement that. Right. So the candidates. We have three candidates. First, we're going to talk about Santos. According to the German newspaper that is, again, I believe this isn't a mealema exhibit and I will link this in the show notes so y'all can see it. She is the Brazilian minister for magic, which makes me wonder, like, is it normally a position that's held by a minister for magic, considering that I guess not because Grindelwald has not in Dumbledore, is it? No. Yeah. But it seems like at least in this election and the previous administration, Vogel, he's the German minister for magic. And then the other two candidates for it that are not criminals are the minister for magic of their respective countries. Now, I think it's more like what happens in, in our world, like in election, you have some candidates who are already elected politicians and other or not and who are new, you come around to the political office, so yeah, it's, I guess it's, yeah, we have the same here. I was wondering if maybe each country can only submit one candidate, like how they do with the Pope and stuff, so then it would make sense if Brazil wanted to submit a candidate that they would submit their minister of magic, right, because theoretically that's the best leader of their country to submit. Or at least the one that has like a political coalition behind them, because that's how they got the job in the first place, so presumably they'd use those same connections, be they a popular support or a click of, you know, connected rich people. So then like, do we think, do we think it's like the World Cup where each person, like there's groups of candidates where, and each of them have to face off against each other until we finally get down to the last two, which in this case is Santos and Dow. I mean, I know there's some primary systems in some states here that have a runoff effectively, if nobody gets a majority, which is 50% plus one of the votes, then whoever the top two vote getters go, go off to face each other and another runoff. I know that's also how the action works here. Yeah, for the French presidential election, they do it too. And even now we are in the legislative election. We had, I don't know, maybe 15 candidates in the first round. And now we have two in the second round. Okay. So I mean, that this may be a runoff election, but then they added a third, which is even sketchier, which I guess you could then throw back to the corruption thing, right? He's the current head. So he's, if he's like, well, this candidate is eligible, like, I mean, clearly they don't seem to have any kind of like a written constitution for, yeah, like, I mean, it's more of a collection of precedents and like previous, but like, that can be changed. And probably I guess whoever's in charge now, very stable system. Super. Well, Chris, you had some insight about what was going on in Brazil during that time that might give us some insight into why Santos might be coming from? Well, the way she's presented in the movie, I know we might get into this a bit more later, but she does seem to just generally be presented. And again, we don't really see any of their platforms, or so we don't confirm this, but she seems to be presented as generally like a left of center kind of generically progressive candidate, which was really interesting for me because depending on if it's 28 or 32, and I think we are all leaning towards it is 32. In 1928 in Brazil, they were in the last years of the first Brazilian Republic, which was established in the 1880s after the Brazilian Empire fell apart. It became a Republic, but that Republic was generally dominated by wealthy, by this point coffee and dairy interests that were essentially in charge of two of Brazil's states in the southeast. And they kind of went back and forth with who was president at the time, but the state of São Paulo where the coffee interests were in charge kind of broke the tradition and rigged the election to get their guy in charge in 1929, but they never got seated because a military coup happened in Brazil in 1930. And by 1932, we had Jatulio Vargas in charge of an emergency government that would be in power until 1945, that by then it was essentially by 32 Brazil was a military hunter that was sort of dancing on the line between being allied with the United States, but also kind of friendly with Nazi Germany to try and play the two off each other and get the best deal for itself until about halfway through World War II when they joined the Allies and went all in with the United States because they kind of saw the writing on the wall that Germany was probably going to lose this war, but still kind of a not quite fascist, but definitely military dictatorship that was open to playing footsie with fascists at this time, but also didn't want to upset the United States either. So sort of just kind of writing that middle line between the two, so seeing this kind of generally progressive liberal candidate in the wizarding world of Brazil, it just kind of always makes me wonder how much does the wizarding government of a country in line with what the Muggle government of that country is doing at the time, because she's very different than what would have been allowed in Brazil at the time. Yeah, I was just thinking that maybe in some countries the wizarding world reacts to the, I mean, if the two communities are separated and maybe they elected Santos because the Muggle Brazil was falling into a military dictatorship so maybe more reaction that they were able to kind of hold on to a to an elected form of government and presumably because they are not tied up inside the same like economic structure necessarily that Muggle Brazil would be presumably Brazil's politics in the wizarding world are not just a bunch of coffee planters and dairymen that just own the government. We really need to know more about wizarding Brazil because it's such a huge country that it could and we know they have a big wizarding school. So maybe they have a very, very different way of living together between the Muggles and the wizards. Maybe not secret gated like in the US but maybe just I don't know neighbors, they have enough space to I don't know. Real life Brazil has such a complicated history especially around this time that it's like it could be so many different things like it, it's really hard to know, especially with the tiny little window we get her slogan is leadership progress and magic which does lead into what Chris is saying that she's kind of presented as a progressive left to send her candidates and it's a shame that we don't have a speech. Does she literally even have a line of view, like just a few reactions here and there it seems. Yeah, she's just said to Grindelwald that his followers are loud something like that. Oh yeah, oh boy, oh God, she's a Democrat, isn't she? They're just so uncivil and they don't follow the rules. No, I think it was more because if I remember the scene it was like I don't remember if it was Grindelwald or Santos who spoke first, maybe it was Grindelwald who said to Santos, oh yeah, we know that you have a lot of supporters and Santos said, oh yeah, so I don't remember, maybe somebody who watched the least, do you remember what this means exactly between them? Yeah, the reaction again, I just keep coming back to Vogel saying, oh, look at how many supporters Grindelwald has. We better run him in the elections so he'll lose. Yeah, they don't teach logic classes in the Wizarding World either it seems. Political science is not offered at any Wizarding school apparently. Well, that's clear just based on the entirety of the franchise. Why do we think Grindelwald tried to have her assassinated? I have a lot of theories. The biggest theory is he wants to use it as a political maneuver, right? He can point the blame at the Chinese minister of magic that's also running and then they both look bad, right, because one's dead and the other one is kind of queues of killing her, right? So then he comes out looking like the best candidate still. Oh, sneaky. You know, like playing 40 chess, but also taking out the competition as a coward's game, let's be real. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was more like, yeah, he knows that she, she's the favorite and maybe she has good chance to win if he's planned with the shooting doesn't work. And so, yeah, he wants to eliminate the competition, but yeah, it's a strange move to me because it seems like it's almost in contradiction to his main plan with the chillin to win through the ballot box, but also to try and assassinate her because then you make her a martyr. So yeah, but martyrs can't win elections. Yeah. But there's, there's someone else then there's got to be someone else in her like movement or whatever who can then take up that mantle and say, uh, do it for her unless he was going to be that person, right, if he has her assassinated blames it on the other candidate and then says, I'm going to now modify my platform to try to encapsulate what she was running on to try to gain her vote or her supporters vote, rather, at least peel off, peel off enough of her supporters to get a majority. Yeah. That's what have been a great plot. I mean, he's not an unintelligent individual, right, he clearly knows what he's doing and I think there's a variety of things that could explain why he wanted to, you know, to do an assassination attempt. Yeah, but if it was his plan, we should have it on the on screen and in some scene. We don't have anything and I love your ideas. I really, I really think it's a great, great ideas, but yeah, it makes me even more frustrated that it's not a flaw in them. It would be nice if we didn't have to try and figure it out after the fact. Yeah. Another 30 minutes of screen time to add in some of this to give a more balanced picture might have really helped, but that's too much effort on their part. Maybe. I don't know. But why he picked like the most Frankenstein-looking guy, like the most, like the most, hello, I'm an assassin. I can't possibly, like I realize it's a movie, but that dude came right out of the central casting for like, I'm an assassin. Ooh. Another idea. What if he wanted to be the one to thwart the assassination attempt? Because then he looks like this great candidate, like look, I could have, you know, let that happen, but I didn't. I saved the other candidate. Right. There's a lot of ways that it could have worked in his favor ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The idea is just keep coming. Yeah. But yeah, but I still like the fact that he used Jacob because as soon as he knew that Jacob in his vision that Jacob would be there, he managed to anyway turn what happened in the dinner to his advantage because he just turned the attempt assassination that he was trying to do. He turned the temptation against himself from a mogul, and it was just a perfect thing for his campaigns. That does play into the Hitler comparison because framing Jacob as a attempted assassin does very much mirror kind of the Reichstag fire that the Nazis used as an excuse to pass the enabling act, which was what officially gave Hitler the power to rule by decree and suspend the elected legislature in Germany indefinitely because the Reichstag, the parliamentary building in Germany is burned down. It's alleged to have been done by a communist plot. The Nazis as the far right are able to say, oh man, we need to enact extraordinary powers while this emergency is to crack down on these dangerous left wing subversives. Don't worry, we're totally not going to abuse this power, but you need to give us this dictatorial power now, which we will totally promise to give back once the emergency is over. We'll let you know when the emergency is over. Yeah, that's, yeah, this probably what Grindelwald would do very quickly if he was elected. Look at this dangerous muggle, look how violent they are, we need to do something about it. Well, right, and kind of like then going into that last point we have about Santos. He started, he kind of started to do that, right? By having Jacob brought forward and discussing all of it, having the Christianity put on him. But then, you know, our new head of the ICW, she frees him from it, right? So, yeah, like, if you read the Harry Potter wiki, they're like, and she hearts muggles because she saves Jacob from the Crucianis, that's a shum, but I guess like, I don't think that she hates muggles or anything, but we don't, we don't know her position on muggles, but we do know that, hey, the Crucianis curse is bad. Don't do that. Yeah, I feel like we know her position on that and slash just like torturing people for fun. At least torturing in public, my goodness. Yeah, yeah, I mean, she's not for it. The first to move, so that, that's, that's a point for her because nobody moved. She acted, nobody else really did. Yeah. Even youth. So, come on. Yeah, come on, man. That's your homey. What are you doing? Okay, so that's Santos now moving on to Dow. I, he, I don't think he actually has any lines at anything during the move. He does not appear to know. So this is all conjecture. Um, again, same newspaper says that he's the Chinese minister for magic and well, Chris, go ahead. I mean, you did some research into China as well. I sure did, who boy, uh, Brazil was interesting in this time period. Who boy was China ever to, um, 1928, uh, specifically in December, I think it was of 1928 was given as the official date for Chinese reunification because, uh, okay, quick, quick crash course, 1912, uh, the Qing dynasty, the last dynasty of imperial China falls and the Chinese republic is declared by Sun Yat Sen. Um, and he immediately has a hard time keeping the country together because a whole bunch of different military officers all just kind of get their troops and grab a province or two and declare themselves, uh, they, the warlord era basically begins and China is just immediately fractured between a bunch of just regional warlords and whatever guy is able to get enough money and men with guns to control a specific part of the country, uh, that's who's in charge in your local area. The national government is effectively powerless and not really in charge of anything. Um, over the course of the next few decades and including during World War One, there are a bunch of different factions, some of them control, control Beijing at different times, warlords fighting each other along with the forces of what's technically supposed to be the official government, the Republic of China, which can only control like a little part of the south of the country. Uh, Sun Yat Sen dies, there's fighting inside of his party for who succeeds him, a left wing and a right wing faction split, uh, eventually some of the left wing faction become the Communist Party of China and the right wing faction is led by Chiang Kai Shek. He eventually is able to get enough people together and he's able to get some aid from the Soviet Union to help him, uh, to launch an expedition to the north. They defeat the last of the major warlord factions and that was in 1928 that this was happening. So China is just driven by war throughout the, uh, the teens and the 20s. Um, and even though nominally there is a unified government of China again, uh, there are still foreign troops all over the country, especially the Japanese who effectively are still kind of in control of Manchuria, which is in the north east. It's the part of China between Mongolia, Russia, and Korea, um, and the Japanese effectively control that area because they've been backing their own favorite warlord faction up there. And the national government never is really able to dislodge them, uh, they have a few skirmishes and clashes with Japanese troops in other Chinese cities as well. Uh, and then in 1932, we have, uh, the January 28th incident, which was a major clash between the Japanese army and the Chinese army in the city of Chiang Kai, uh, it leads as well as the Japanese formally declaring Manchuria's independent, uh, and they declare their puppet state of Manchukuo. Uh, I added the question, does Manchukuo have its own minister of magic? Is it recognized by wizards as a real country? Because a whole lot of Muggle countries did not recognize it as a real country. Uh, yeah. That's a big question of frontier in the different frontier in the wizarding world and, uh, the Muggle world. Yeah. Yeah. The, like, the relations between wizarding China and wizarding Japan would be really interesting for me to know here because the Japanese at this time were very much encroaching on China. And the second Sino-Japanese war was about to start, which would eventually blend into being part of World War II. World War II essentially started several years earlier in China than the rest of the world. So that's a, that's a complicated situation that, uh, Dao isn't charge of there. He's, he is not got an easy time. Yeah. And again, we have no idea if the wizarding world, how the wizarding world works in China. And, uh, because, and what is wizarding China? Like you said, the, the, the, the frontier and the, the part that is, uh, united is, that's complicated. So, yeah. This was also a time when, um, when the Republic of China was declared, that's also when both Tibet and Mongolia, uh, split off and declared their independence. Yeah. Which the Republic of China government never recognized either country. They did stop trying to reconquer Mongolia because by the 1920s, Mongolia had a communist government that was backed by the Soviet Union and China was not going to be able to do anything about that. But they still never officially recognized the people's Republic of Mongolia. They just kind of grumbled about how no, no, that's ours. You should give it back, but we'll talk about it later. And that's, that gives it even the choice of Bhutan to, to, because it's the safest choice to go to Bhutan. Remarkably stable considering what was going on in the region at this time. Yeah. Just lucky for them Bhutan was too poor for anyone to be messing with right now. Oh, what a mess. What a mess. What a mess. So making things further messy, Dow actually appears in Flemelle's book in, okay, I was, he's not in his chair, but it's the same book that he uses when he talks to Lollie in the first place and the second one, but Dow is appears in the book. So is he part of the original order of the Felix? Like, was he planted there by Dumbledore to keep an eye on things? Like, what the heck is happening here? He would certainly not be alone in China as being an agent of a foreign government. Yeah. Also. The Soviets had them, the Japanese had them, the British, the Americans, they all had them. So I don't like the idea that he was planted for, by Dumbledore because I prefer to consider him like, I mean, he's a ministry, he's the ministry of a huge country. So I mean, that's more, I mean, and we don't really know if Dumbledore is really leading this Felix group. So they are not, I mean, I don't think we can say from movie 2 that between Flemelle, Lollie or Dumbledore, there is someone more leading the group than the other. That's true. And we don't, it's not unquestionably Dumbledore's group like it is in Harry's time. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but at the same time, I think everyone, I mean, if Dumbledore has a relationship, I mean, they know each other, that's a huge, something huge that he's left from the movie because, yeah, that's a, I mean, if the point of this Felix group is to fight against Grindelwald, Tao should be one of the guys trying to convince Dumbledore to move against him. So, I mean, I can't believe that they left that out of the. I know, it's like, and it's such a, it is a huge thing, but there's zero reference to it. Like the only reason I know is because it mentions it again on the Harry Potter wiki, and there's like half a screenshot of his page, but you think that they want to mention that because they do make such a point of vogal being in Grindelwald's pocket, so I feel like there should be more noise made about the fact that Tao is working on with our guys. If he's a plant, he really didn't do anything, right? I mean, his character wasn't really utilized effectively if he was indeed a plant, and they're supposed to be like, you know, he's supposed to be helping defeat or prevent Grindelwald from taking off his, he really didn't do a lot, you know? Yeah, the only thing I could think is that maybe him being in the book isn't about him being a member, but more just being generally sympathetic to them, but not necessarily involved. Maybe. Like, if they come to him and ask him for something, he might do, he's not opposed to helping them if it serves his interests, but not that he's going to stick his neck out for them. Yeah, and the fact that the shilling is not going to him, it means it must mean something. It's maybe he's a great character and maybe it's, well, we need more, but he's not impeachably perfect, which kind of makes him believable since he is a politician. Yeah. Like, we also don't really know the nature of the wizarding community in China at this time either. It may not be in his best interest to look super aligned with Dumbledore, right? That's true. Yeah. Like, again, we don't know how much the turmoil of the Muggle world spills over into the wizarding world in different countries, but I do have to imagine it can't be, the influence can't be nothing like with how chaotic China was during this time, like, so maybe that does mean he doesn't want to necessarily rock the boat too much, like maybe his position in China isn't super rock solid, like it might be in other countries. Yeah. But how cool it would be to have him back in, like, in a, in a future movie, like nobody, and just the people who, who noticed the little thing, the little mention in the, in a book in movie two, and will be, oh, yeah, of course, we will have him back in, in Dumbledore's side, because he was there all along, and the other was, what, but he did, he did nothing in the scene. He did nothing in the scene. You're seeing it better. See here. So his mono, so some crazy person on, and thank you to the crazy person, I don't need to call you crazy, that's insulting, the very dedicated person on the Harry Potter wiki, he's literated and then translated, Dow's campaign banner from the trailer. And the bit that's of interest to us here is resolutely support Lou Dow's election as the president of the International Magic Association. Cool. So I vote for Dow. Yeah. I RCW discussion. I think it was that episode I don't remember, but Jeff said it made him sound like it's more traditional conservative candidate, like, yeah, from the very little that we know about him. And I'll tend to agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I kind of saw him as the, I mean, especially since it's him and Santos in the, the final. I just kind of given the movies, the movie's politics overall that he would be the kind of generically, like, right of center standard conservative ish candidate. Maybe this is a false comparison, but he gave me big Romney vibes when I watched the film. I could see it. Yeah. You know, like he's associating with that side, but he's not really, you know, he has a toe dipped in there, but he's not completely, you know, he wouldn't label himself that probably. He cares very much about being seen as center, right, not far, right. Regardless of what the policies really are. He's polite. Yes, considering we don't hear him speak probably so. Yeah. Sure. He could project anything we want to to him. It's great. Really? Yeah. Yeah. It was projecting like somebody a bit great, like somebody with a, a dark past and he tried to do the, to do good, but he still don't know exactly how and he did bad things to get to power, but now he tried to do better, but yeah, center, vaguely center, right, to cento says vaguely center left is kind of what I got. Yeah. Yeah. And then the last candidate we have, of course, is Grindelwald and my two bullet points for him were German, I'm sorry, three bullet points, German criminal pardoned by Vogel. Yeah. And I had loud supporters. I added that he wants other people to do most of the dirty work for him, right, because he wants to still come off as the, as a candidate that's like worthy. I feel like right, he wants people to elect him. He doesn't want to come off as the, I'm doing all these assassination attempts and I'm killing this magical creature to have it, you know, bend to my will. I also feel like that goes with his look change and, you know, other than the actor change there of course. I feel like his look in this film compared to his looking crimes of Grindelwald just comes across as a lot more polished, a lot more relatable and I feel like, yeah, like I feel like that's intentional, you know, on his part to look the part, you know, yeah, but the weird thing is the most, uh, model look of all of the support, even Vogel has more wizarding to him, and I mean, apart from the, the more traditional costume vibes from the brazilian and China, both of them of the other candidates has a wizarding turn in her, in their costumes, but no, not, uh, not him, but I, I mean, the reason is because Mazmi Gusson went to the shooting so, so, so late that they didn't have the time to, to make it, just put him in a suit, he'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he looked good in it. So, he looked great. But yeah, you're right. It is weird that he's basically just traipsing around him. Is it, wait, is it Brooks Brothers, whether Nazi Taylor's, or is it, no, it's Hugo Boss. Uh, no, it was Hugo Boss. Yeah, he's basically traipsing around the Hugo Boss suit. Yeah. Um, and when he's so anti-moggle, it is a little bit weird. But at the same time, it's, it's not because it's a, like, I, you can't see me as the ultimate uh, mogul hater when you see that I'm dressed like a mogul. Not true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like that, the thing is that the thing about the note about him wanting others to do the dirty work while he goes on the legal path, that is very much in line with how a lot of far-right movements operate. They will have a coordination between the street level operators and then the uh, respectable suit and tie crowd. Um, they, they do coordinate, but they keep that coordination kind of at arm's length so that the respectable official politicians can then deny whenever the street crowd goes too far or frightens the public, they can say, no, no, no, we, we of course completely disavow any such tactics. We would never do something like that while then kind of quietly winking and dog whistling to the, uh, to the street level supporters that say, hey, we, uh, we get it. We're on your side. Yeah. Stand back and stand by. I was expecting more of that in this movie, too, and we didn't get that, uh, uh, very clearly because the, uh, we, from Grindelwald's side, we only see his clothes circle. We don't, we never are really with the, the street crowd and, uh, it's just a crowd. We never see what they are doing. We don't see his essay. Whenever we do see chaos, being chaos, it's always vendor. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's, uh, it's, she's, he's closed circle. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't necessarily have his, like, mass movement, um, really visible in the film aside from the time they all get really excited about him being in the limo. Yeah, but it's saying that they are really pictured like a crowd. They don't not predict us individual doing things, bad or good things. They're not, I mean, they're not marching around in brown shirts beating up the other candidate supporters. Right. Vinda is burning the, yeah, we see, we see one, essentially we see one, uh, sturm out there as opposed to a unit of them. Yeah. I guess if you're a wizard, you can kind of accomplish, uh, yeah, you know, Vinda is a, you need to try that stuff, although theoretically, you're doing it to a crowd of people who also have magic. So maybe you should have backup if you're going to pull that. All right, so now we are going into the fanfic part of today's episode. So now I'm going to present a creative reading of one of my fanfics that's in all of our part. And I was kidding. I was like, I signed up for that. That'll be the hatred on, um, so we are going to do our best to recreate or create this election in a way, wait, I don't know if I want to say necessarily the way we wish it had been presented in the movie because we'll be here for literally five hours, then Marjorie will fall asleep on her couch, because it's only like two in the morning, but we're going to create platforms for the candidates, we're going to probably just grab Chris's election system that he put together for earlier in the episode because why not? That's good. I like it. And then we're also going to figure out what the head of the International Competition of Wiz actually does. And then our final point is going to be, do we think even with just a regular selection, do we think that Santos would still win even if the baby giraffe said like was not there? Hmm. Okay. So what does the head do? Yes. So first things first. What is the head of the International Confederation of Wizards? So like I said, I think that's the main person in charge of the status of secrecy. So their job is to make sure that all of the different government in the Wizarding World are respecting that and when they are doing international things, it's the head of the Confederation that he's making sure that it's still. I mean, for me, it's just a secret keeper which is a tickworm. And in charge of I guess it would start presumably, if we're thinking about maybe the history of the office here, it would start with the International Statute of Secrecy and then kind of grow into anywhere that requires cooperation amongst different Wizarding Governments. Yeah. Like I'm kind of picturing almost an sort of like an EU level system closer to that than to the United Nations because it seems like if you're going to have a position that needs to enforce that sort of thing, then you would need to have some. You need to have more power than like the United Nations currently has, which is asking very nicely that countries not do something and then mostly countries just saying, "No, I'm going to do what I want." Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree with all that. I think that's a really good description. No, I think comparing it to the EU more than the UN does make sense because what we do know of the International Confederation of Wizards is that they can pass sanctions and stuff like that because that's what happened in the 17 or 17 or 1800s whenever Rappaport's law was passed in the U.S. It was in response to a sanction passed by the International Confederation of Wizards after Dorcas 12 trees told what's his face bare-bone about the Wizarding Society. Yeah. All right. So then Santos, what is. So right now she's vaguely left of center. She leadership progress magic. Obviously we're not going to build like a whole campaign for her whole, but like what do we think the basic tenets of her platform coming from Brazil at the time or being a reaction against what we know was going on in Brazil at the time? What do we think like. Let's give her three basic tenets of her platform. Like do we think she stands for women's rights or like magical rights or better quidditch, standard school's quidditch programs, cold rain bottoms, like what do we think she stands for? She's giving me a unity vibe if that makes sense. I'm not sure what on what level necessarily, but the what was her one again, let me double check the leadership progress magic feels very much like some type of unification to me, but since we don't know a ton about what's going on in the magical world outside of the little bubble, of course I don't know what unification could be happening. So to get into like what I think would be going on at this time, like something I've kind of noticed in all of these movies that's interesting about the way they approach just initially the 20s and now we're getting into the 30s we assume is so in the muggle world like the 1920s where this are generally remembered as this kind of like hedonistic euphoric time when everything that like there was all these new social movements and technology and culture just rapidly changed and all of that come straight out of the aftermath of World War I because World War I was this apocalyptic catastrophic event that just completely annihilated the old world order like the the last kind of vestiges of like the feudal world order in Europe especially were just destroyed completely by World War I. I mean we had four dynasties that had been on their respective thrones for centuries were just gone at the end of this and we've got all these new countries we've got a new like everything was new and a lot of people at the time were feeling like we have to build this new world so that we never do that again because the like especially in America it's very easy we kind of don't really think about World War I as much here as I know it looms larger in like Europe or in Canada but for so many people like that war it cannot happen again yeah it explains and so much of the era that whole like 20s ethos very much was like eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we're all going to die in some pointless war and so that like to me I feel like a progressive vision in that kind of time would be something along the lines of I mean something almost more like kind of Wilsonian almost which I mean a lot problems with Woodrow Wilson but his idea was for an international order to try and avoid war but I could see a Santos maybe being kind of that kind of maybe even an FDR-ish kind of figure again I'm just going to be pulling it American politics into all of this of course but kind of a like you know things are times are hard right now but if we cooperate and we work together then we can and we look forward to new ways of doing things we can come out of this we can't fall back into the old patterns of the past that got us here like would be just kind of a general outline of what I think it would be yeah you agree I think the the fact that there is I think yeah the progress leadership and magic it's like okay we have things to fix and to fix it we have to fix it together and to like you said unity unity is very I feel that too and so there is a yeah I see yeah I see her as a pacifist too probably yeah like you say that's yes so that's and and for if we think about the link with the status secrecy I think if they if this if they are in charge of how we should live with the mogul I think she she should have some some really like we need to find a way to live with them and to respect them but at the same times to to protect the security of everyone and I think that's yeah like the the muggle world would have changed like even if the wizarding world was somehow insulated from world war one and again that's that's such a big event because we know that new was working with dragons right okay so there was some kind of wizarding and we don't know again we don't know the extent of it sure like it that okay so then clearly they would see firsthand just how radical especially by 1930 the changes were to the wizard to the muggle world because you know and and with all of this especially new technology and social change it might get harder and harder to keep the secret like I have to imagine as muggle technology advances just that's a constant problem for the statute of secrecy is finding new ways to like you know in the in the 60s oh no they've got satellites in space we got to make sure they can't see that like oh no everyone has a camera in their pocket how are we going to keep you know a wizard from showing up on YouTube yeah totally see Santos yeah thinking of we should as a wizarding society we should accompany the progress of muggle society and we should we should yeah don't think of of the two societies separate but as to part of the same world I don't know something like that yeah and if if if the if we want the world to to be to be a good place to live in the future we should we have to understand them at the very least yeah so yeah I mean we are projecting our own of course that's what this is because Santos wins so we and Santos it chose by it wasn't by the shilling so yeah she should have a good so we know at least that she's objectively good because the magic creature that knows if you're objectively good or bad said so yeah exactly all right so now um right now we've got him kind pegged as center right uh we know he wears a dapper suit we know that he's the Chinese minister for magic we know that he's in a book again like three kind of tenets of his campaign do we think that he's big on like culture reform or do we think that maybe he's like hard on crime does he know the drugs like what do we think I don't know why but I see the fact that he's involved in the in the phoenix uh I don't know uh thing the phoenix group that's the underground network the phoenix network yet uh I think he might be afraid of the war coming and so maybe he's more like we should be prepared and and but more not like Grindelwald like we should initiate the world but more like get them before they get us yeah maybe a bit like what was going in Britain in Great Britain and in in in France at the time like we see what's coming uh east but we don't we we try and avoid it if we can we wait yeah yeah we should avoid it if we can but but now maybe he's more involved so he's more like it will come the world will come but we should be ready and we should yeah do everything we can to make it less uh tragedy like uh as the last war so any and like you said from the china perspective he knows what war is so yeah that war you know uh six months ago war is not cool so it's bad if we can if we can prevent the wizarding world to go into war that's the truth it could yeah I I kind of got you know just if we're if we're looking at him as as a contrast to Santos like I said and again it's on the thinnest of evidence I did get a general vibe of him being a somewhat more conservative approach to things and so to me where I guess I see Santos possibly being if she's that um if she's that like we should not necessarily directly intervene in but keep up with the muggle world and understand them to better protect our secrecy and to try and maybe even guide them away from a destructive path then you know I'd see now maybe being a little more isolationist in that like a you know we should try to minimize our interaction with that dangerous muggle world and we should yeah pull back and hue to our our old our old ways they've served us for so long we should uh we should go back to them we should not uh like this this new world is dangerous and chaotic and unpredictable and if we're trying to go on some new path who knows where that could lead we should stick to our traditions and if we all kind of hold together maybe those then those can protect us yeah like that would be my idea of what a conservative wizard would be like versus a progressive wizard sounds good all right so then Grindelwald uh I mean we know so I mean I feel like his platform is I want to burn muggles and kiss Dumbledore so anyone got anything to add to that I mean I before my second rewatch of this latest movie I know we rewatched crimes of Grindelwald yeah because it had been so long since I'd seen it and I admittedly kind of forgotten what happened in that movie uh before watching um secrets of Dumbledore the the first time but I do really remember his speech in the crypt where he did show like the vision of the future of what's coming and he shows like a concentration camp and an atomic bomb of like look at the path the muggles are going to put us on look at how dangerous they are we have to stop them um and he's he's clearly very different by now um not just because he got a new face in everything but he he's like fascism is usually rooted in some kind of like idealized vision of the past and a grievance of your group against some other group that like we are strong we are destined to rule the world um but this inferior other is getting in our way and we have to put them in their proper place or potentially eliminate them so that we can take our destined place as masters of the world and then everything will be right because everything will be the way it's supposed to be with us at the top and those people down in the bottom where they belong like and I that does seem to be generally Grinderwald's view although he how willing and how open he is how explicit he's willing to be about that kind of varies from movie to movie it seems um but he when it did look like he won the election I was like dang he just went right to all right war against the entire muggle world let's go right now just zero to 60 immediately yeah like he went he really does go in Grindelwald from saying okay Vindo we don't say the quiet part loud too in secret to double door going I'm to say the loud part real loud yeah the quiet part real loud and I guess you're all cool with it all right awesome let's go yeah but again if four years if we have four years between the two it's it's enough time for him to to make the the extreme his extreme view more and more accepted uh-huh and uh and more even more when when the the wizard would see how the the muggle world is uh turning to the entire world's economy exploded three years ago and uh we've seen what's and that is like economic deprivation makes a lot of people more amenable to the kind of ideas that fascism can push through because you know the fascists the the thing they are good at is identifying a problem they're very good at saying your life sucks and everything's really bad the thing they are then wrong about is who's it fault who's the reason behind that because they kind of steer people away from you know capitalism to uh the Jews or whatever in this case the muggles like that it's not the actual source of their problems they'll they're they're more able to just say get behind me follow me and we'll go get those people who hurt you because trust me they're the ones who hurt you don't look over here at the the other power structures that are actually going on I have an answer listen to me I've got it now come to atrocities with me yeah and at the same times making every every wizard thing I mean like yeah I have powers that the muggles don't have so why because that's exactly how he seduced Dumbledore at the first yeah when they were a teenager because Dumbledore was yeah I'm powerful I I'm smart and uh why shouldn't I rule the world with another wizard very smart and very powerful too why are we hiding from them yeah so sure they have numbers but we have magic for use of hearing that I think it makes uh the the supporters more loud and more unapologetic unapologetic you know the word yeah of coming of coming of war because uh yeah it's been waiting so again especially with how bad things are going in the world in the early 1930s like the the great depression has hit everywhere and life is getting hard and rough and that's exactly the kind of conditions a demagogue can you know rally people together to follow him I'll tear down this rotten corrupt world and I've got a glorious vision of the future and well we'll just gonna have to break a few eggs to make my omelette eggs being you know people and I can imagine Grenoval making other rally like he did in France in Paris so the vision that he can I mean he don't have the hookah now so maybe he can't show them like he did he did in Paris he's got to rely on his oratory instead of visual aids but yeah time for the propaganda to to be effective yeah right so moving on uh voting system so like I mean we think they vote by secret ballot do they shoot colored smoke into the air do they just like whisper the name of the candidate into a magical shell and then somebody makes a note of it another room like like okay so what I said earlier was what my best guess at what was going on in the movie if we're are we talking more about what I think would be a good way to do it you know I can add or or what would make a good movie because I think those are two different things honestly because what I I want paper ballots I want a record I want you know proof I don't want someone to just have to take the word of an official like yeah uh it was this number trust me bro but a bunch of people writing down their choice and that like that might not necessarily be as visually interesting in a movie as colored flat you know colored one bursts is admittedly yes a much better visual and more exciting thing to watch you can turn it you can turn the ballot system to a magical striking visually one if I don't know if in front of every every wizard there is a sort of uh ball of light appearing and they had to pull something to pull something in it and it it brings all of the votes in in a magical place when they are all sorted and in a very in very beautiful light ball of light of different colors that it could be pretty like it like and that actually makes more sense for transparency too if everyone sees the size of the different candidates like balls of votes or whatever appearing in real-time in front of everyone like that that I mean especially in the first round of voting it seemed like uh Grindelwald just ran away with it so him having one that's like three times the size of the other two candidates would be kind of indisputable that sort of thing like that I like that a lot how exciting would be that like because we can see that they have a sort of streaming of the election around the world so if they instead of this view of the candidates they have this view of this magical room and when they put the the I don't know the light in their magical ballots it adds to the different to different I don't know ball of light of the different color of the candidates and as when everyone votes the different ball go bigger and bigger and uh you can see visually that uh the in in real-time the evolution of the votes that could be yeah pretty exciting you could that sounds really cool you could even have like a literal number appearing on the ball if it was ever close that kind of thing too like it yeah that I really like that it's it's something visually interesting but also makes sense from just a logistical standpoint and a system people would trust yeah because I to go back to the wants shooting things uh everyone in the wizarding world in the world doesn't use a wand so yeah you should not imply you you should not need a long to vote yes true amen so all right so we've created the candidates we've figured out sort of what the head of the international Federation of Wizard does we've put together a very cool voting system at the end of it all do we think that um so I mean do we think that Santos still wins do we think Grindelwald wins do we think that maybe the chillin we still need the chillin to determine a victor no I love the shooting but no no I don't think it's such a massive thumb on the scale right before the election that that yeah like okay you can vote but the magic creature who tells everyone who the best is says it's this one but I guess you could vote for someone else if you're dumb yeah but at the same time yeah considering the what happened in the weird world maybe it would be good to have a shielding sometimes no but no I'm for democracy so no no shielding but uh I hope Santos win without a shielding but I don't trust people yeah I mean before Grindelwald is involved where he's officially candidate the ECS does say that Santos is the favorite yeah she does seem to be in the lead poor poor Dow always seems destined to come in third so yeah like we would hope that Santos I would hope that she would take it because I like out of the out of the three platforms I like hers I like her platform the best mm-hmm I guess it comes down to is the wizarding world as a whole in a state more like the US which elected FDR in this year or is it more in a state like Germany where Hitler got kind of installed into power uh this year like where where do we think yeah what how how bad are things in the wizarding world as a whole uh I guess the question it does seem like the like in this in this system they do have like a functioning democracy in this system we've come up with so I think that does bowed better for Santos than for Grindelwald mm-hmm again assuming no funny business which Vogel is clearly pulling but in our system it seems like we've eliminated Vogel's funny business so in that case I think it might be a Santos versus Grindelwald uh kind of like who's who's there who's the the front the top two uh yeah yeah and I give an edge to Santos I agree with that considering how Grindelwald is being portrayed throughout the world at least as it seems from newspapers and stuff I feel like people that may not be as educated on the elections just from seeing oh Grindelwald has a ton of negative press that's probably a bad thing right when I consider how people vote sometimes well I mean also we right we consider like how how this sort of thing put the closest parallel to a system like what we've just discussed I can think of is maybe the most recent election for the president in France uh where it was Macron I mean Macron is not Santos no no he's absolutely not I know I am I am a hundred percent on board no he is definitely not he from my reading of it and I mean I don't know if this is my my reading of it watching it from from abroad seemed to be well he's not the fascist one yeah exactly so I guess I'll vote for not Le Pen exactly but I just thinking of what we we we went through in our election I would say Tau needs to to to to join Santos to be sure to be sure that she it's so weird that I guess if this in this analogy Tau the center right guy is playing kind of the melanchomp role who is the far left candidate that from from what I saw seems to be the well I'm not gonna endorse Macron but you shouldn't vote for Le Pen no but what happened with with with him is that all of because we it's not he's the leader of the left mm-hmm but there are several left parties yes all of the left parties were together at the election they will be uh Le Pen clearly and that's what happened in the legislative right now so fingers crossed and maybe maybe it's Macron tomorrow we don't know so yeah all right so yeah so that's that's yeah yeah it's like Santos would be split into into five candidates and they have no chance against now in Grindelwald yeah I mean that that's what made me think even at the beginning of all this maybe this was the this is the runoff election of some earlier process and then Grindelwald is just dropped in as a third choice in the middle of all that no no he just gets to skip the early rounds and goes straight to the end it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine Vogel is not an obvious creep no no he's he's doing a great job yeah but at the same time it it would means like in our I mean the far left represent a portion of the population so before Grindelwald was pardoned by by Vogel this portion of the population wasn't represented yeah so yeah I mean in that case also yeah in that case it then also feels kind of like how a whole lot like in 2016 a whole lot of people who just didn't vote in American elections came out to vote for Trump yeah like he like a lot of his support in addition to all of the Republicans including the ones who totally had a problem with it and just oh I don't know he's just so uncouth oh well I'll vote for him anyway in addition to that whole contingent there were a bunch of people who just not followed politics that said oh wow he's different okay I'll get on board with that yeah he says those things I think but don't say how loud I'll do it politics yeah aren't they fun oh boy everything's so cool right now yeah I think that about wraps it up that you know I'm so yeah I guess we landed on Santos probably wins we hope but question we will all vote for Santos yeah absolutely yes we're all such a voting for Santos so hopefully that'll be enough to sway the election she has our endorsement yes she's got I don't know I don't know if she's got the endorsement of all of speak bc but you know what I'm a producer I speak you know you're the latter like for this dictatorship that's right we support Santos okay so our podcast question of the episode is we created a magical voting system that is pretty cool but what does yours look like or how do you think wizards would vote otherwise we want to hear from you so drop us an owl because we miss ow yeah and oh you can yeah on any of our social media outlets or you can email us at
[email protected] and you can also leave a review on April podcast or rating on Spotify too and thanks Chris for this for coming yeah for coming for this episode and for all of your super deep historical knowledge that's what's super cool uh it was my minor in college Chris um do you have anything you'd like to plug or anywhere that if our listeners want to find out more hot takes about wizard politics or anything like that they can follow you on social well uh I've got my socials I can plug uh I'm at uh just at Chris leacy on twitter uh that's ch-r-i-s-l-y-s-y all one word uh I am also on instagram uh as leacy c-1-2 l-y-s-y-c-1-2 um you're you're not gonna find a ton of wizard stuff on there but if you follow me on instagram I do have a lot of cute dog pictures from my day job nice so you want you want to follow that they're they're my clients are adorable uh you can also check me out at chris leacy.com uh for my acting website uh if you want to see me in the Chicago theater world if especially if you're in the Chicago area uh you can come check me out at a date to be determined for the understudy performance for the cleanup at the Athenaeum Theater this October oh awesome very awesome thank you babe happy to help while you're over there following Chris on his platforms you can also contact and connect with speak beastie on twitter and instagram we are at speak beastie and you can find us on facebook at facebook.com/speakbeastie but we're also on tumblr that speak beastie podcast dot tumblr dot com if you want to support us and throw us a little love uh you can support us on patreon at patreon.com/speakbeastie uh we have cool stickers and there's some really fun patreon content coming i've heard i can't say that the sticker that we just got a preview for is dope it is very cool i'm so i'm super excited for everything to see it and i really need to work on my patreon content i feel like it's it's been ages that i love i have a lot to share but i just need to do it i can say that um in my future patreon content Chris will continue to feature in mind because it's the point of having a photogenic charismatic husband if you can't farm him for content and also there might be some patreon content coming up from me and maradel in the future we'll have to see you like hearing me because you know i'm i'm not really here that often there might be something with my voice coming up soon and there's still more of those fun desktop wallpapers wallpapers that i've designed so more of those might make an appearance you never know oh yeah those are amazing like that i love picking those out each month and figuring out who we're gonna they're so good thanks i had so much fun making them it was a free time thing and that that's where it went great well i think that wraps it up thanks for hanging out with us y'all uh i'm in i'm Liz i'm mojane and i'm Chris he's closed case closed (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - If you're the purchasing manager at a manufacturing plant, you know having a trusted partner makes all the difference. That's why hands down, you count on Granger for auto reordering. Call 1-800-Granger, click-granger.com, or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done.
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