Succession's Roys vs. Real-Life Murdochs

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

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I'm a produced writer of film and
television and now a podcast producer. And

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despite having every streaming service, I
never know what to watch. So anytime

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I watch something good, I talk
about it on the show. This way,

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you'll never have the same problem I
do. I watched this tonight.

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There's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. Today on the show,

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we're doing successions, Roy's versus the
real life Murdocks. So this is

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something I've always been interested in.
I'm a big fan of succession. I

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wanted to do an episode about succession, but I didn't want to just,

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you know, do a run of
the mill episode of succession, right.

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I always want to give you something
here that maybe you're not getting from every

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other podcast. So I was always
curious because you know, you hear a

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lot about the parallels between the real
life Murdoch's and the Roys and Succession,

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and so I just did kind of
a deep dive and researched it, and

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I wanted to present to you if
it's something you were ever curious about,

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the incredible amount of similarities between the
Murdoch family and the Roys on succession,

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so in real life, and this
is I drew a lot from a couple

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of articles people and Vanity Fair did
on this. When asked who would be

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next to succeed him, Rupert said, let the chips fall where they will.

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It's a very Logan Roy sentiment.
Much like Logan Roy. Vanity Fair

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reported that Murdoch has basically almost died
a bunch of times in recent years.

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And by the way, obviously this
is going to have spoilers, so if

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you're not, you know, reasonably
caught up on succession, you should get

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out of here. So quote QUOVID
was only the most recent medical emergency that

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sent Murdock to the hospital. In
recent years, Murdoch has suffered a broken

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back, seizures, two bouts of
pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn

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Achilles tendon. Many of these episodes
went unreported in the press, which was

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just how Murdoch liked it. Murdoch
assiduously avoids any discussion of a future in

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which he isn't in command of his
media empire, and then they're quoting him.

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I'm now convinced of my own immortality, he famously declared after beating prostate

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cancer in nineteen eighty nine at the
age of sixty nine. He reminds people

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that his mother, Dame Elizabeth,
lived until one hundred and three. But

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unlike the politicians, Murdoch has bullied
into submission with his tabloids. Human biology

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is immovable. There's been a joke. This is someone. A source close

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to Murdoch said, there's been a
joke in the family for a long time.

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But forty maybe the new thirty.
But eighty is eighty. On March

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eleventh, he turned ninety two.
This is another quote from Vanity Fair.

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He long wanted one of his three
children from his second wife, Anna Elizabeth,

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who's so it's three kids. It's
he has Anna Elizabeth who's fifty four,

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Lachlan who's fifty one, and James's
fifty to take over the company one

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day. So two boys, one
girl, just like succession. Murdoch believed

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a Darwinian struggle would produce the most
capable air a person closes his family is

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quoted as saying he pitted his kids
against each other their entire lives. It's

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sad again from many Fair. Elizabeth
was by many accounts the sharpest, but

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she is a woman, and Murdock
subscribed to old fashioned primogeniture. So that's

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another interesting notion, especially considering the
current season of the show. It does

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feel like there's been kind of rumblings
of that throughout right, that HIV is

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sort of, you know, at
an unfair disadvantage just by virtue being female,

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because of the misogyny of sort of
the world that she's in. Another

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quote, Lachlan's future will be decided
by his siblings, all of whom sitting

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on the board of the trust that
controls the company through special class of stock.

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According to sources briefed on the trust's
governance, Murdoch has four votes,

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while Elizabeth Laughlin James and Prudence Murdock
Starter from his first marriage, each have

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one. Murdock's daughter's Chloe and Grace
from his third marriage to Wendy Dang,

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have a financial state but no voting
rights. After Murdoch's death, his votes

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will be distributed equally among the four
eldest children, the source said. Quote,

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the question is when Rupert dies,
how are the kids aligned? Set

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a former set, a former News
Corp. Executive. So again, just

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like in succession, right, this
idea of like the different kids have votes,

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and like, if they could all
work together, they could be in

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control. But how are they going
to work together? Murdoch obviously controls Fox

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News, which and this is vanity
fair folk, but it's also just like

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obvious if you watched Salvidion, Fox
News became de facto, de facto state

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TV. It was a continuation of
Murdock's time tested strategy of forging alliances with

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politicians across the ideological spectrum as long
as they advanced his interests. This is

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a big thing in the current season. There's even a scene when a couple

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of characters are talking and they talk
about how it's like basically the version of

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Fox News on Succession. They're literally
just doing like campaign notes for a presidential

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candidate. And then obviously also in
Succession, like mergers are a big deal,

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and you know, merging these big
companies, and then in the current

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season a merger where the idea of
Fox News being kind of carved out of

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the deal. So this is when
they tried to basically so Disney and the

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Disney CEO Biby Iger, he meets
the super Murdock. This is two days

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before the Charlottill rally. Quote Murdoch
hosted Disney CEO Bob Iger for a glass

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of wine and his twenty eight point
eight million bell Air vineyard Moraga, one

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of the only vineyards in Los Angeles. As the two moguls discussed the rapidly

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shifting media landscape, Tiger floated that
Disney would be interested in buying twenty first

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century Fox, Murdock's movie studio and
entertainment assets. Murdock would have finally dismissed

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the overture in the past, he
was, after all, a pirate who

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conquered media companies, not dispensed with
them. But in the streaming age legacy

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Hollywood players like Murdoch and Iger lacked
the scale to compete with tchech giants like

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Apple, Amazon, and Netflix.
The logic of selling twenty first century Fox

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to Disney made a lot of sense. Plus Murdoch we get to keep Fox

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News and his beloved newspapers, the
source of his political influence. Disney certainly

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wanted no part of those, so
again, very similar. I mean,

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even in the most recent episode,
there's a part when Jerry basically says Tech

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is coming right like they are fossils, they're dinosaurs their time, He's going

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they have to sell. There's a
quote here that is very reminiscent of the

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character of Kendall. Lachlan's whole self
image was that he was going to be

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the next Rupert, a person close
to him said. According to three sources,

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he suffered a panic attack about the
merger and was briefly treated in an

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La area hospital, but a person
close to Lachland denied this. James took

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his walk away money and launched a
media fund called Loopa Systems and investing in

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liberal leaning companies like Vice and Tribeca
Enterprises. Lupa is Italian for she wolf,

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as in the one that raised brothers
Romulus and Remus, the founders of

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Rome before Romulus murdered Remus. So
yeah, I mean, if you're the

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writer's succession, you see the name
Romulus, Romulus and Remus, you know,

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like just there's no way that that's
not from that. Like I would

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bet all the money in the world
that they took that idea of having Roman's

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name, you know, they you'll
sometimes hear Brian Cox's calling Romulus right coming

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from that. Now again, like
I said at the beginning, if you

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haven't caught up on succession, you
probably should get out of here. This

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is very reminiscent of the way that
Logan Roy ultimately dies. So quote in

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the state room aboard Sarissa, which
I believe it's his boat, when she

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bolted awake at the sound of Murdoch
moaning and agony. This is talking about

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one of Logan's wives, Jerry Hall. She later told friends that she found

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her eighty six year old husband in
extruciating paying the cabin floor. He said

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he fell down a step trying to
get to the bathroom and couldn't get up.

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Hall alerted the captain and so he
ultimately survived. Right, But that's

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very reminiscent of the way that Logan
Roy dies in a succession. Also,

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the sort of brutal pretty much will
fire anybody if it benefits the company.

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Also is based very much up Murdock
quote. Murdock looked for other measures to

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modify Trump's audience. This is after
Fox News got a lot of heat for

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being the first to declare that Biden
had won Arizona on November twentieth. Murdock

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suggested to Scott that Fox Fire,
it's Washington managing editor Bill Salmon, who's

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a senior executive on the decision desk. They made the Arizona call Murdoch.

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They have this quote from Murdoch.
It was in court filings. Maybe best

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to let Bill go right away,
which would be a big message with Trump

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people. Samon ultimately retired in January
twenty twenty one. The same month Fox

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letco of Chris Stirewalt, another decision
desk member. According to court documents,

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Murdoch even discussed buying the rights of
The Apprentice very much as Shiv in this

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season talks about getting rid of the
ATN News because the toxic asset. She

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uses those that term right. This
is again from Vanity Fair. James would

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opt to sell Fox News to a
private equity firm just so he could get

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be rid of a toxic asset and
if there was any doubt that the show

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is clearly cribbing from the real life
Murdock's. According to another source, Lachlan

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told Rupert that James was leaking stories
to the writers of Succession hbos acclaimed drama

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about a Murdoch like media dynasty.
A person close to the Lachlan A person

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close to Lachlan denies. Laughlin told
Rupert this, so it's in dispute,

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but the fact that it's even discussion
is sort of funny. Ruper Murdock would

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ultimately divorce Terry Hall, and one
of the terms of the settlement, this

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is from Vanity Fair, was that
Hall couldn't give story ideas to the writers

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on the Succession. Now most recently
on Succession, you have a situation where

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Roman goes and he, you know, is getting more into the studio movie

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studio side of the company. In
real life, Lachlin became the executive chairman

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at twenty first Century Fox and the
chairman and CEO at Fox, and much

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like Kendall, is sort of embarrassingly
like awkwardly into rap music and you know,

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has wrapped in front of people at
events in the show, cringingly so.

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James Murdoch attended Harvard University before dropping
out to launch his own hip hop

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record label called Raucous Records. This
is per a book the label, but

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it's quoted in Vanity Fair. The
label counted most Deaf and eminem as some

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of its artists before being acquired by
a news corp in nineteen ninety eight.

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That's another really interesting part of this. If you look at the research,

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there's a lot of examples of like
his kids start companies and then news Corp.

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Eventually acquires those companies. Again very
similar to succession. We keep seeing

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where the kids try to start something
and then they just kind of give up

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on that to back of the fold. And then I thought, of all

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the stuff that I read, this
was the most telling quote from Vanity Fair.

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Credit to Gambriel Sherman, who wrote
this article. This is what he

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said. He said after interviewing dozens
of people for this story, I was

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struck by how sad all the Murdoch's
scene. Some Murdock profiles, like in

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his late career, are to Shakespeare's
King Lear. Murdoch is the aging monarch

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confronting his mortality. I think the
tale of King Widas is more accurate.

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Murdoch built a seventeen billion dollar fortune
out of a small newspaper company he inherited

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from his father. The only thing
that mattered was profit, but amassing that

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wealth acquired Murdoch to destroy virtually anything
he touched, the environment, women's rights,

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the Republican Party, truth, decency, even his own family. You

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know, it's almost like, regardless
of how one to one the stuff is

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from the Murdocks, which obviously a
lot of it is the sentiment is clearly

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there, right that the only thing
that mattered was off it. And that's

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one of the reasons that I think
it's fascinating now seeing the kids have grief,

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you know about their dad. He
was so he was so terrible to

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them. It's like this abusive relationship
in the show. And yeah, they

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all definitely seem sad. I think
that is very accurate to what Succession is

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doing. All these people are hyper
hyper rich, but I don't know that

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I would trade places with any of
them. So, yeah, it was

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just really interesting. You know,
you watch this stuff and Succession is so

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brilliant. It's so brilliantly written.
And I think the reason that you know,

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I initially didn't like it. It
took me like three tries to get

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into it. You have to kind
of give it four or five episodes and

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then at a certain point that it
just kind of takes you and when you

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just go with it, you're in
that world. And I think one of

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the reasons that it ultimately does work
emotionally is because you really feel for the

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kids, you know, you feel
how much they got messed up by their

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Dad, And I'm not saying that
in real life for Murdock is as bad

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as Logan Roy is on the show. But really you can see where they

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got the idea, and so it's
just fascinating that, you know, they

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were able to draw so much from
real life stuff. You know, again,

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it's I'm sure it's exaggerated for drama, but it is. It is

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so interesting that more than I thought
seems actually based in some sort of a

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reality. So that's succession, the
Roys versus the Murdocks. That's the show

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for today, A little bit of
a different show than usual. I'm casting

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about for what I'm going to talk
about next. I kind of this is

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like a mini I took a look
at Citadel, which obviously is a massive

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budget show on Amazon, and I
just I don't know if I'm going to

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do an episode that one. You
know, I would like to find something

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that I can speak really passionately about, and I don't know that I'm passionate

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about that. So I'm going to
be casting about for what I'm gonna do

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next. It'll be a surprise to
you, is it'll be a surprise to

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me. But we'll have obviously a
new episode on Friday, so look forward

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to that and as always, thank
you so much for listening. If you

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enjoy the show, you can always
reach out to me and hey, give

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me suggestions on what to cover next. You can reach me at Dan at

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voyagemedia dot com, betamore Dan on
Twitter, watch This Sun on Instagram,

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watch The Night podcast on TikTok,
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on Facebook. Until next time,
Bye bye,