The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 117: The Science of Discworld II Pt. 1 (Moulesmancy)

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “The Science of Discworld II - The Globe” Elements! Elephants! Manifested Magicks!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Good Omens season 2 titles sequence revealed – with lots of Easter eggs - Radio Times Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being A Witch - terrypratchett.comIf Books Could Kill: Apple Podcasts - Spotify - Stitcher Elephants learn from others - Elephant Voices Elvavrålet - Wikipedia NASA’s Curiosity Views First ‘Sun Rays’ on Mars - NASAPeter & Iona Opie - OpieArchiveRead Finnegans Wake - FinwakeThe Concise Lexicon of the Occult - Google Books How To Make The World Add Up - Tim Harford Indefinite and fictitious numbers - Wikipedia  List of humorous units of measurement - Wikipedia Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I'm in like a competitive month long, world-all thing and it's only two days, and I'm already obsessively tracking where I am in the rankings. I'm going to UK Games expo tomorrow. Oh, I know. It's a board game convention thing. It's running all weekend,

but I'm going for the day in Birmingham, which is it bad that like I love board games? I'm kind of more excited about the sandwiches. I'm bringing for the drive than I am that the board game convention. Like a sandwich. I'm not that keen on board games. So I'm on for the drive, then I am the the Borgang Convention. Like a sandwich. I'm not that keen on Borgang. So I'm on your side here.

Yeah. What kind of sandwich? I've really been fancying like one of those like really, really stuffed Italian-y, panini, things. So I've made some forcature and I've got like pesto and salami and ham and mozzarella and rocket and Sanro Tomatoes and it's going to be a... I'd have found this.

I'm sure the corn will also be fun, but like I'm really looking forward to eating that sandwich at 7 o'clock in the morning on a drive to Birmingham. I haven't watched this good omen's two title sequence. So let's have a look. I watched it and was like, oh, that's a cool title sequence, that looks cool. And then I saw the many Twitter threads breaking down every single detail

in the title sequence. And like, I'm worried we're just not going to be detailed enough when we cover good moments. So people have been doing frame by frame analyses. Are they? It's quite similar, isn't it? Yeah, there's just got different like background details and stuff from the last one. The music's the same or like, the versions of the same. Well, you'll be shocked now. I don't have any discourse from that one quick watch, but it is contributed to my excitement for Good Omen season two. Yeah, no, absolutely. I felt very happy hearing the music again

already. Like, is it radio times one where they picked up all of the e-strikes I linked to that? That's probably more sensible than linking to the unhinged Twitter threads, but also I just highly recommend Good Omen's Twissies. It's unhinged, I suppose it. Oh yeah, absolutely. So back in at the end of 2019, I got to go see Neil Gaiman, do this thing called playing in the dark at the barbequin. It was like with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and it was pieces he picked and readings around them and stuff.

And the orchestra played the Goodamans theme tune. And then David Tennant came out and read the bit where Zera fell and Crowley had drunk in the bookshop from Goodamans. And it was, it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And the other thing we've got on our little practically news, practically news is the cover reveal for Tithin Eikin's Guide to Being Witch, which I have seen. I'll get up again for a little. It's very pretty. I've linked it in

the show notes with some more information about it. I'm really excited for this. Yeah, me too, actually. And especially because I've been very interested in her as a character for the first time, like as an entity. We're in full, like Tiffany headspace right now. Should be good. Oh, they're going to have an audio book as well, I see. Nice. Good. Yeah. So we get two new Pratchett books in October because a strike of the pens coming out as well. That's correct. Yeah. Not technically is a new Pratchett books in October because a streak of the pen is coming out as well. That's correct, yeah. Not exactly. It actually isn't you Pratchett book. Yes.

Oh, right. Sorry, that one's the most effective. That's right, that's right. Yeah. Oh, very old, sorry, Pratchett book. I don't like coughing the other way, I'm not substituting in the mind. Well, in that case, do you want to get your coffee and then, uh, sorry. Wouldn't it usually take me this long to notice, you're clearly being very engaging. I'm like a shiny thing in a parakeet cage. Sorry, you're

the parakeet in that situation. That's fine. I identify with that today. In that case, would you like to get your coffee and then would you like to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast and a coffee. Hello and welcome to the true show Make You For Out of Pukkast, in which we're usually reading a re-capping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series on a Simon Chronological Order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Brantteen Carol. And we're slightly off root from the major canon as this is part one of our discussion of the science of disc 122, the globe. Mine a canon, just a little oom. You wouldn't use it to try and take down this banishar murder. No, absolutely. Well, no one spoilers before we

crack on. We are a spoiler like podcast. I'm having spoilers for the science of disc 122, but we are going to avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discord series past the Hat full of sky, the bit of the main cannon we're up to, and of course we are saving any and all discussion of the final Discord novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there, so you dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Hopefully not accidentally ending civilization as we do so. But you never know. If you're going to try and in civilization, use a bigger cannon. Cool back.

That's what your callbacks follow up. Sure. Can we have any of that? A couple of little bits. Narrus on Patreon, and I can't fully remember the context. I think we were just talking about crying and screaming. Okay. Yeah, that sounds right.

Suggested that we should scream and crying, crying out, you know, screaming, crying, perfect storm. I can make all the tables turn. Suggested that we bring it. And I have not looked up how to pronounce this. Elva Vrelat. Sorry now. Introducing that to our neighborhood. So this is Swedish for the 11th rule. It's a student tradition where students at universities and colleges at a certain time every night and student residential areas, normally 10 or 11 o'clock, open their windows, go out on to balconies or rooftops and scream to relieve stress. I've seen a video of that. As a few days were, it's the Delphi Raw in London, the Flockster Raw in Uppsala, the

Lapkar Cry after the Lapehead Lapkar Sp's big, burger, in Stockholm, the 10 cry, Tuesday scream or anxiety scream. And that sounds so much better than fucking clapping at eight o'clock on a Thursday. Yeah, um, I hope that non-students are allowed to join in. And we'll have to go a little road trip on there.

Oh, yeah. I think we should just start doing it. See, the problem we were talking about before with people calling the police, I think, should just start doing it. See the problem we were talking about before with people calling the police, I think, might still apply even if we scream in Swedish. Maybe I should do a Twitter campaign first. Yes, yeah. That's how the good Gsvar energies let's do that. Yeah, cool. Okay, so we're going to try and make that happen. And not really connected to anything, but space Alex, our friendly space friend on Reddit. Our friendly space friend. Our friendly space friend, because we were talking about the word

Cropuscular. There's been the first ever photography of Sunrays on Mars, curiosity, over got photos of Sunrays, also known as Cropuscularrays, hence the very tenuous links over linked to a thing in the show notes. So you can look at the pictures and that delights me. So yeah, not super relevant. I have a missive from Luxor on Tumblr. He got back to us when we were like, when did we start all the stupid bits? We do at the top of the box cast

and they have tracked it for us, hopefully. Amazing. And so I did leave in things like the helicopters and the law in class. That was in episode two. The first proper helicopter in law in class watch was in episode seven. That's why you'd gotten to me.

Episode five, I got mad about the journey. And by episode six, I was saying journey. But incredible. And there's something about Pagloib, which sounds familiar, but I don't remember it. So it's six I was saying journey. Incredible. And there's something about Pagloib, which sounds familiar, but I don't remember it. Oh yes, the Somerset Pagloibs. That's it. Excellent.

As opposed to the glob, which is what you do when you're trying to cut down on your ease, but talk about this book. Yes. I'm sorry, that was nothing. I was saying, do you want to introduce this book to us? This book is the sequel to the Science of Discourse. It was published in 2002, which is the same year as Nightwatch.

I don't know whether we should put like our general thoughts about the book up front or at the end or what. Yeah, yeah. We can start with general thoughts. Yeah. Ted didn't not join this one, mate. Yeah. So I'm enjoying this one a lot more than I did the first science of Discord book, and it surprises me that you're not.

I think we just clearly have slightly different brains when it comes to reading science. What is it you're not enjoying about it? The kind of science that's very rambling and repetitive and often quite poorly explained compared to the last one. So like the the So the themes they're trying to tie through, like the whole tribal versus barbarian, is referenced a lot before it's even explained. There's the builder human kit, which I think is pretty spring-pulling

without much gravity to. I feel like they've tried to tie everything together with, like, as you'd put it, like a grand over watching thesis thesis and they really missed the mark a bit on it and like. There's yeah. There's far away. There's just there's a lot of subjective stuff written as objective stuff and considering like in their own words, they said like there's a point which makes very firmly for this many other theories. Things happen all over the place and apparently in some confusion and afterwards mankind goes and chops it all up into stories and like they're very aware of this but I see them doing

it quite a lot throughout not in a very self-aware way and I yeah I've got a few examples I'm not sure how far we want to go into it. I go for for it. The one I really, the one that kind of set me off being annoyed and I was probably more critical after this point than I would have been, was when they were talking about like abusing children being like necessary for civilization. Because yeah, that did not, a lot of the stuff they wrote about tribal things and brutality as well felt like, maybe it's not racist racist but it's not like

well I feel like tribal wasn't being used in that way but it really wasn't explained what way they were using it and some of it later said the tribal seems to mean order and barbarian seems to mean chaos and there are these two kind of and I can see what they're getting at and I can see they know what they're talking about and I just don't think they conveyed it very well and like all the stuff about monotheism and polytheism and they're talking as if like this is what happens in monotheistic societies and this is what happened in polytheistic societies and they're very, none of it's very solid at all. I just feel like with the last book, even if I didn't grasp a lot of it, the bits I grasped, I felt like I was like solidly learning something. Whereas this, I feel like I'm having to be...

It feels like I'm reading a pop science book more so than the last one. And in that, I mean, I don't trust anything I'm reading. Yeah. And that's annoying and frustrating. And I'd rather just be reading fucking sapiens or something who did it well. I totally see that. I mean, I think for me, like, I struggled so much with the last book because it was like information overload and I think I was trying to glom on to almost too much of it. Whereas this, because it's all presented so theoretically, I feel like I can like, oh, I've sort of picked up some. It does feel a lot more pop sciencey, but I'm used to reading a lot of pop science and not necessarily good stuff. And I've only recently really started thinking about that a lot more critically.

Thank you, Michael Hobbs and your podcast if books could kill. Yeah, I'm wondering how much I would have hated this if I hadn't listened to that already and that worries me slightly. I mean, big recommendation for listeners though, listen to a book's could kill is a great podcast. It's very good to brush up on your critical thinking for sure. But yeah, it's just, did you not find a really fucking repetitive as well and not liking it? I did find it. I'm not going to lie. I probably did skim read some of the sciencey bits when I

did the set. So like I've talked on the podcast before, I usually read the whole book in the week off between podcasts and then I go through and do my post it read. This time I only read the whole book in the week off between podcasts and then I go through and do my post-it read. This time I only read the half that we're talking about today because even with it being not as information heavy as the first science of discord book is to love to take in, I just couldn't read it all and like the weekend I'd allowed it to do it. And I found myself skim reading the sciencey stuff when I was doing my second read on the basis that like, I'm not going to talk about everything in this. So I'm not going to try and take every single fact in. Yeah, it's, there's loads of stuff I define interesting and the, the Fracture bits, maybe I thought loud a few times, you know, me, I love a, love a wizard, love a rinse when, but

I think, yeah, for me, it also helped that like that I just talked so much about stories in human nature when we did Half of Sky. Like literally there is a paragraph in this that is my talking point from the last proper episode we did. So I think my brain was just very like, yeah, I want to read about stories and how humans do with stories. So I was thinking about it more in that like, like a femoral sense than I was thinking about it as like, I'm going to learn some science.

Yeah, but even that, did you not find it was a bit just? But yeah, I agree that it was like a really interesting subject put in a really dull way. I really think maybe I've just, I got so pissed off by a couple of points in it that I just started reading it with like a much mean eye than I would usually. Yeah, whereas I think I'm a lot nicer about it than I might have been because I'm so caught on the idea of narrative and creativity and how that develops and makes people that I was willing to probably overlook some of its flaws. Yeah, but did send me off on some really interesting rabbit holes and I enjoyed looking up a bunch of the stars and

I yeah, I don't know, it could have done with a really good at it. And I think it would have been a really good book. And I just think maybe it didn't get enough of that. Yeah. And obviously, they're both really like clever accomplished scientists. And I think maybe there seems there is a thing with accomplished well-rounded scientists that they tend to think they're a little more well-rounded than they are.

And when they're writing about specialises that aren't there's authoritatively, that can be a bit of a problem. Yeah, I don't know if that's the case here. And obviously, I'm not an expert, but yeah, I don't know. Also, obviously, it's 20 years out of date and there's a lot of language in it. You'd prefer not to be, but that's just what comes with reading any science book that's 20 years out of date or more. Yeah, not to like dismiss it out of hand, but that's just what comes with reading any science book that's 20 years out of day or more.

Yeah, not to like this, this out of hand, but it's just like a, we've covered this language before. I think the fact that this came out around the time of night watch, which means it's not far away from around the time of we free men. It's quite interesting. Like I think have it, especially with the bit of discord, which is covered, we're not, whereas the last one was around last consonant time, and we've moved quite far past the last consonant. This is catching up to where we are. Yeah. And I think having a bit of context for the books that Terry Pratchett wrote afterwards, I think I can maybe see some seeds here and because I'm thinking about it in that direction, I'm enjoying it more. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I wonder how you've filled about the

second half, because I'm assuming you haven't read the second half yet either. No, I haven't. No, it's a lot to read all on. So yeah. Well, let's talk about what happened in this one. I think we get a bit of more Shakespeare in the next half. So yeah, I'm looking forward to that literature. Fine, whatever. I'm seeing the main reason I was looking forward to this is Shakespeare. Everyone's fine. We had fictional depiction of Shakespeare. I know what I like in a way. It's fictional, the fact that you're a Shakespeare. I know what I like. Yes, this week, what do we have in this first section, which in case I haven't mentioned yet, goes up to chapter 16.

I'll probably have tweeted that by the time the set comes out. The trees are wizards and paintballs are flying. Suddenly the world gets cold. Rince we can get some message in a bottle, the wizards are on ram old and so are the elves. Ponder and the librarian put their heads together, but hex can't get the wizards out alive, the elves are singing. Ponder gives a presentation. The librarians not happy, but they're going to use El space to get to the faculty. Rinsewing's

forced to tag along as they plan to deal with the elves. Through El space they go and they land in a library. There's alchemical watsits and wizardly bits about and a high glam equation for a world without magic. A man in black enters but the librarian takes him out, heck speaks through a crystal ball and tells them to get out of Borsingham's house. Heck suggests that the librarian has a spanish shave and our ragged out trio of misplaced misfits find the faculty in a tavern. Rentswin suggests that the elves are just another extinction event, but the wizards want to fix things.

The wizards attempt to explain things, then new friend D. The elves arrived millions of years ago and the faculty plan to go back armed with iron. The librarian shows Rentswin some Shakespeare, curiously absent from this version of the round world, with hex in the librarian left behind, everyone, everything vanishes as they step into a circle. There was its charge on Elvish singing in a furious queen, from France, Rinsewin, but the luggage interrupts Rinsewin derives to tell Rinsewin to hold his breath. The circle appears, but these time looks a bit too savage. Rinsewin attempts conversation, but the people present have done nothing but eat

muscles for thousands of years. Ridcully lights up pipe and causes a stir, but the luggage and the librarian, who's randomly appeared, calm things down, hex speaks through the tree that fire came from. Stopping elves stop progress so the faculty return to stop themselves. Paradoxes won't be a problem because everything's uncertain.

The wizards interrupt themselves with secrets and doppelgangers gang up on each other when the magic circle arrives. Back safely in D's library, things are getting cold as a lady turns up. Very good, very nice. So helicopters and loincloths? I think magic circles are doing a lot of work as helicopters around and doing transport. Okay, yep, yep. That's fine. And the librarians fetching dress. Of course, there's a loincloth. Or a librarian.

Or a librarian. Got a relevant elephant all over the shop. We have. We have. We enjoy greatly the in the science bits they crammed in their own irrelevant elephant. Me too, although I did look at often it doesn't seem like many scientists actually buy that one. The one about elephants have it like ancestry being a bit more aquatic than we might have thought because the tissue between the lungs.

Oh yeah, yeah. Basically, it's not really been discussed since 2002. And it was dismissed by a few scientists at the time. Maybe I'm wrong. But I think I'm probably on the side, but I like that. But it's a charming thought and I have to, you know, you can see elephants using their trunks of snorkels, and it is of course delightful. Snorkeling elephants would make a great band name. Yeah. But anyway, I did find an irrelevant element.

This is from the elephant voices website, the one we've talked about before, where people go in and put, it's like crowdsource from scientists, kind of thing. So this is about vocal learning. In 2005, elephants were added to the short list of mammals, which includes humans, some marine animals and bats that are capable of vocal learning.

In other words, are able to imitate sounds. They reported a young female African elephant, one of the Savo orphans, a female named Malika, who had learned to imitate the sounds of distant trucks and a captive male African elephant named Kalimero, who had been able to imitate the chirping sounds of the Asian elephants with whom he was raised. Oh, and some Asian elephants who could whistle by blowing air through their trunks. Yeah, so elephants can learn to imitate noises, which is cool and good. That is a delight. Right, quotes. Quotes.

Would you like to go first? Sure thing. The deeply magical and interminably ancient volumes in the library of UU strained to the fabric of L space like a baby elephant on a worn out trampoline leaving it so thin that the library with a potent and easy portal. Beautiful. I think that's a lovely similarly. How about you?

Mine is a single line from Hex. Once you know what the answer is, the process of calculation can be seriously reduced, which was a very stop and think moment for oh yeah, I mean, it's not wrong. Yep, yep. I do also, because it was only a line, I have a cheeky secondary quote, which was just a little bit from one of the science bits. Today's innocence of rigorous thinking, the new ages, which felt mean. Yeah. But as I've known, many of you haven't got weaver in my time.

I know, I know, but yeah, definitely on the side for these rants. I'm cherry picking the smugness I wish to align myself with, but at that one. Respect that. I'm cherry-ficking the smugness I wish to align myself with, but I don't know. I respect that. Oh, dear. Say, say, say, say, where are we starting with some characters? I thought we'd start with Rid Cully. Everyone's favourite.

Everyone's favourite. Shirtless, fighting wizard. Who doesn't love a shirtless fighting wizard? Well, if it was anyone but Rid Cully, I think he'd be less popular. Yeah, that's fair. So he's all about team spirit, hence the paintball game, which does just pratch it have a thing about offices doing paintball, because this is

I think he had about it and thought it was very, very stupid. I'm sure he never had to do office paintball and his one sort of proper was more than one proper office job. I doubt the box for you press was to paintball weekends. Maybe the nuclear power plant. Maybe. I know, I get the idea that he's like talked to people about these corporate retreats and has just got to be in his bonnet about as deep as they are. And I like that. I've never known anyone who has had to go to like corporate paintball. If we have any listeners who've had to do corporate paintball, please tell us any listeners who've had to do

corporate paintball, please tell us, I don't know what it's like. Or even like voluntary corporate paintball, I'd like to hear about just anything we've got to shoot your colleagues for the paintball. Yeah, I mean, I've done paintball, but it wasn't corporate. Or other retreats, I guess, I've never really been a big enough company for this to be a thing. Yeah, any kind of weird office retreat team building exercise you've had to do possibly with ballistics. Let us know. Yeah.

Send us now, Patras. Rid Kelly is alpha male I quite like as are. Yeah. Let's let's say we're seeing Rid Kelly from a new viewpoint. Going back to some of your previously trodden boards. We have the Arangatown librarian sees Ridcully as an alpha librarian and that's interesting. Yeah, that hierarchy does exist. I mean we know that like he's technically subordinate to Ridcully, but it's interesting that he actually does see it that way. I also very much enjoy Ridcully enjoying their Magicalist universe and just shouting the number eight in various configurations while Brink's

Wind hides under a table. Oh, no, also another beautiful turn of phrase from Pratchett. Rid Cully had the root health of the bear and only marginally better into personal skills. Wonderful. I'm not saying like my mental health is occasionally shaking but I literally watched like a three minute video of a bear eating a watermelon alia. It was amazing. Is that a sign of bad mental health? That seems like a normal and good thing to do. There were many of other things I could have done with those three minutes, Francine, that weren't watching a bear eat a watermelon. I think that if you're ever in the situation, what you've got the opportunity to watch a bear eat a watermelon

for three minutes and you think to yourself, there are better things I could do with these three minutes than you need to worry about your mental health, Joanna. You did the right thing, don't worry. I'd already been on TikTok for like 20 minutes, Francine. I already excused you, Dora. So I quite enjoyed the secrets for Idkull Kelly tells himself, which is that when you were a small, you had a one-aid toy rabbit called Mr. Big Pram, and you were six birthday,

you'll brother hit you on the head with a little boat, and when you were 12, to the words jolly lolly, ring a bell. I don't want to know. It's an ominous rhyming phrase, isn't it? It is. It is. Yeah. On the other end of the Wizardly Spectrum, we have Winswin. Yeah, yes. The two genders, Rid Cully and Winswin.

I think so, right? Yeah. The two wizard genders. Winswin, of seven titles. The Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography, Chair of Experimental Stupidity, Reader in Sludes Dynamics, Freck Work Teacher, Chair for the Public Misunderstanding of Magic, Professor of Virtual Anthropology and Lecturer in Approximate Accuracy. Now, do you think the line about

Freck Work is a reference I'm missing? If you are, I'm missing it too. I try. Yeah. Yeah. So listeners, this, this one, that the, the job title of fretwork was apparently the result of a curse some 1200 years ago by dying arch chancellor, which sounded very much like, may you always teach fretwork? I'm assuming fretwork is meant to sound like something. I can't work out what it's meant to sound like. Any of the answers on a bucket of cold, please. Yes. Transposed by Elbotros. Quite a strong Elbotros.

Yeah. Rinse when being rinse windish. I as always enjoy his ability to get the, get the get the essence of a new civilization he meets. Even if he finds him incredibly boring. We get Ponda offering to set up a hex code that will do all of Rentsman's work for him. So, wait, wait, wait, return. Yeah, it's all a bit close to our reality now, isn't it? I felt personally attacked. Oh yeah. I think he's

done. Yeah, as that rinse wind is, as he always is, just having a lovely, just rinse wind, I think is very, very amusingly getting us from danger to danger. And gets called a nodal paint, which love a bit of imitation, chewed out, insulting. Well, I don't think it's imitation. A nodal paint, a thing from a thing. I don't know. I can find it right away.

Nodal and paint are both slang words for head. Right. So he's a head context. It sounds like he's calling him a nod bed. Yeah, that works. I've seen a couple of fancy, I think, books, call someone's novel plates. And I don't know whether they picked up that word from here, but I don't think so. I just think it's not on any digitized books,

and I need to look through some old books to find it. And I didn't do that today because I thought that would be boring. Yeah, I respect that. So Ponder, who's never boring. Yeah, Ponder, he doesn't have time to be boring, he's very busy. We've only got three titles. Readable, they have responsibilities attached. Reader of invisible writings, head of inadvisably applied magic and prayer lecture, which is a thing from Oxford and Cambridge University. And it's the fellow who

gives out people's degrees during graduations or ceremonies, because Oxford and Cambridge need a special fucking word for that. Yeah, of course they do. Ponder is the kind of wizard it turns out who will write in their diary about being frightened of elves chasing through the woods. And I remember, as I was reading this exchange between him and Rentswind, actually, it's the same one where he then threatens to replace Rentswind's job with the line of code, that they had some similarly mismatched conversations in the last hero,

and I quite like the dynamic. Just very, very different wizards who nonetheless are stampled over That's a stampede trample, but yeah, red cully Bless ponder trying to do his PowerPoint though. Oh god I'm getting heckled I've got 12 more slides. I know what you're going to say I've done a flow chart. It's on fire

I've done a flow chart. It's on fire. I support I support ponders right to do a flow chart. Yeah, I also very much sympathize with Rinswind though. Yeah, no, as far. I also, it turns out to Rinswinds and I'd always thought of you as rather stupid. Yeah, unkind. Yeah, considering again, Rinceford going back to a previous run, Rincewin saved the last few times in the last hero. Quite a few. Was the ending person realised of youth? Was the ending on paying attention on a few occasions? So, you know, Ponder, why don't you fucking neck in? Rincewin is deservedly cowardly,

but he's not stupid. And then the librarian. Yes, always love a bit of extra librarian. They threaten with shaving so that people and telling people he's a spaniard. Well, they just threatened. They did, I think. Yeah, I put my address in a rough. Which I'm assuming is partly a reference to the whole heartly poor thing, which I must have talked about in the podcast before. the French monkey. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that sounds like a terrible any window that it's not. I don't think you want to hang the French monkey. Do you mean do I want to engage in such ridiculous homophobia that I end up accidentally killing an animal in a cruel way. I'm not homophobia, I'm sorry.

I was gonna say that both. They probably were homophobic, but I don't think they were being homophobic to the monkey francing. Listen to Anna, it's Pride Month. No one be homophobic to any French monkeys while they're in Hartley pool. That's what the Stonewall was all about. Happy Pride kids, hex, gay icon. Yeah, I like his new eyeball. Yeah, 100% with fine tubing. Okay, so hex gets an actual voice because we've got the crystal balls and stuff. What do you

imagine, like, hex sounds like, like, who would you cast? Oh, good question. I wasn't really imagining any type of voice. Nowadays, I suppose I'd give him series boys. Yeah, I can kind of see that. Or, you know, going red dwarf. Yeah, that did occur to me as well. I don't know. But if we went how from from 2000 one of space Odyssey.

Oh, that would be good actually, yeah, because that's quite nice, softly spoken. I feel like the soft spoken bit is, it's more fun, it's more ominous. Yeah. Or like maybe like a kind of star was he droid thing like Alan Tudyk doing. Okay, I'm going to lose you there. But yeah, see three PO. Oh, yeah, no, I know that one.

Yeah, yeah. Not the beat beat one. Not the beat beat one, the shining tool one. Did they hate each other in real life? I had they did. I don't think so. Okay. Good.

Because that would be awkward for them. I can't remember who was in RTT. Wasn't it worth? No, where it Davis was one of the e-woks? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, not a Star Wars podcast. No, I love the library and like sniffing at books

to get the feel of them, love that for him. I do highly support the library and book sniffing. The fact that he swears a lot as he's screaming, we're learning a little bit more about a rangatown language. Yes. I want to talk about some of our round world people. John D is one that's always fascinated me a little bit.

Yeah, I don't know. I must have read about it before because there's no way he hasn't turned up and stuff like Bill Bryson's there. But I don't really remember I'm not I must have read about it before because there's no way he hasn't turned up and stuff like Bill Bryson's but I didn't really remember him until it looked him up today. The first bit I read about John D was in, I know you talked about horrible histories, Terry Dairy before, but he also did a little six book series that was like all set in Tudor times and it was about like one family in a northern village who had a man of house and they went off and met Shakespeare and eventually the Queen and all. And John D's in that and quite an interesting character. So it was when I first heard of him. But yeah, so he was a quarter-strologist who married Tudor,

got imprisoned for being a magician and reading nasty horoscopes, got let out and then became a astrologer for Queen Elizabeth I, sadly eventually died in poverty after James took the throne, because you know, I swear to God, like, fucking 90% of the scientists you read about and again that Bill Brison, the brief the library I've been found him. Yes, I'm a big book collector. That's a good thing to find. I mean, it did not like. Yes, hence why they're a lot like in the book. Yeah. He also worked in mathematical navigation and laid the groundwork for a lot of English exploratory voyages. Yeah, I think I'm colonizing. Yes, yeah, no, obviously not great, but quite cool that he did a lot of navigational stuff. Yeah, it's one of those difficult areas of history where you hate the result of the process. So we worked with a scrier who was definitely a fraud. This guy Edward Kelly, who helped him communicate with angels.

And they signed this angelic magic system based on their communications with the angels. No one point the angels dictated that they should wife swap for an evening. And they did, according to these diaries, even ponder clearly have similarly unwise diary habits. He even ponder clearly, I'm similarly unwise. Diary habits. Clearly. Oh, mate, that's terrible. I just had his glyph up as my interesting little extra bit. And I can't really talk about that in audio format.

Yeah, he's like, have you got that? Is he made his own little harry glyphic? Oh, I didn't find that one, though. Monas harry glyphia. Harry glyphica. That is his book about it, apparently. Yeah, that's nice. It also, it's theorized, and obviously,

there's no way to really prove this that he inspired the character of Prospero and the Tempest and also Dr. Faustus in Marlos play. But yeah, you can read about him. He's a very interesting bloke if clearly a bit gullible in specific areas like when it comes to angels.

Please talk about Shakespeare. Shakespeare, this is me just cramming in next to a little bit. I like it really, but I want to talk about the Shakespeare quote. They're using it in the actual context for it. So do you mind if I read a bit of Shakespeare? No, please do. This is from Hamlet. I have a plate, but wherefore, I know not lost all my birth for gone all customer exercises.

And indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly framed the Earth seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy the Earth, look you this bra, overhanging firmament, this majestic roof, fretted with golden fire. Why it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, inform a moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Mandalite's not me, no more women neither. The way you're smiling, you seem to say so.

He's depressed as fuck. His point is, like, yeah, I know theoretically all this stuff is beautiful, but like, I saw kind of shit and I don't like it. Ah, that is yeah. See for depression. It reads like totally different when you read it in the context to how it's referenced in the book. Yeah. Um, do we know why why why he he's obviously you know? Why have it suppressed? Yeah, at this point is this after the... The murder? I can't remember. This is in a conversation with Rays and Cranson Guildenstern. So this is before all of the murders, but it is after his uncle killed his dad and then married his mum.

So... Okay, got it. Like that's kind of the whole vibe of Hamler is like he's depressed. Yes. Yes. But the, yeah, the suicidal bit with the TV or not to be right. Yeah, yeah. That is a question. I don't think it's like, forget that. Yeah, they think of it as this like noble Shakespeare speech.

Just like, no, he wants to die. Yeah. The, the Tappy we both think is that does it very well. Andrew Scott. Yeah. Yeah, his version of it is if you watch the full play it was national theatre live a caravan if it's still like on YouTube or something it's amazing. The David Tennant version's really good as well you can get that one on DVD that was a raw Shakespeare company one. Connected. What's the chops from Flea Bag? It's going to be doing some national theatre thing that's showing at the Siddharth scene.

I think the re-screening Fleabag, like the original, because it was originally like an hour-long monologue. Oh, is that what it is? Okay. Cool, cool, cool. So it's the, I've got the script for it somewhere. It's good now for it. Yeah, it started as an hour-long monologue before it was a tv show. Which I've seen it before. I didn't see it in cinema. I watched it on National with it alive. It's good. It's really weird watching it. Like I think when I saw them do it on National with it alive, it was they did a whole bunch of things during lockdown. They put stuff out for free. Oh yeah. I had just finished watching the second series. So it's a very weird context watching that. Like when you've just seen it, I'm kind of curious to see what it's like. If you watch it, when you haven't recently watched the show. Yeah.

Who's Peter and I on a ropey? Well do you have handy your copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Nestery rhymes? Is it within reach? Yes. Does it have on it the names of the people who originally wrote it? Oh, yes As mentioned in this book they went around like doing tons of research collecting Children's songs and games all over the world and finding out like trying to find the origins of them and how they grew Which I just think is really cool. Obviously, we've talked about the Ops for Dictionary of Nestery Rhymes as being a really great thing to look out for Nestery Rhyme Origins. They've written a few other books on the topic as well, Children's Games

and Stories, Fairy Tales, all collected from researching with children. And if you go to, I've linked in the show notes, the OPR archive, you can actually look at, basically, you kind of want to have an idea of what you're looking for, but you can search by things like date and you can search by location, and you can find pretty much everything they collected. I say, if you want to find for them, if you want to lose an afternoon, I would look at you. OP archive. But yeah, that here rose to me now. Excellent. Although I don't think even they found the origins of that weird hand clapping rhyme about it as present.

It would be very difficult for them to imagine. No. And then quick location, L space slash face space. Yeah, so I've learnt a lot about face space. See, I enjoyed that, but that was great. I really like the face face stuff because L space is really great for explaining what face space is. I think they did really get, yeah, I think they did a really good job of explaining face

space when I tried to teach myself that when we first talked about L space, and I didn't get it at all really as I think was blinding the obvious when I tried to explain it on the podcast. And I finally got, I think I finally got a grasp on it. So they did a great job with that. Yeah. I should have put that at the front as well, compliment sandwich or whatever. But it'd been a big sandwich for still. I don't have a lot of incredible like thoughtful things to say about else space and face space. I just enjoy seeing else space from the inside because we don't get to do that often in the books. There is never enough books, never enough shell space.

Oh, do you know what I did? I meant to go further, was share some of the quotes from the book, they all seemed like motivational posters to me from Kindle if you highlight something you can share it as an image. Yeah, send you a couple. I think I might like make them into more Detailed motivational posters like there is never enough bookshelf space and like never opens up in some nebula, you know, yeah Brains and much easier to pull apart than get a Yeah, like, you can do it. Okay, a little bit we liked. Yeah. Do you want to kick us off? Yeah, sure. So, qualia, what was it, Kuala? I think was the singular? Yeah, for this one. Is this study? I'm still going to pronounce it quail. Yeah, it's fine. In the study of consciousness, there is a technical term for perception feels like a segment that our minds paint onto their model of the universe in a weight in the ways

that an artist adds pigment to a portrait. And I'd never really added this before, but I find it quite interesting. So it's an interest, instances of subjective experience. So the redness of red is a very commonly cited one. As a Wikipedia puts it, it's what it is like to taste the specific, a specific apple. This particular apple now, which I just really like as a centenial. Yeah. So it's such qualia paint the world and vivid colors said that we can respond more quickly to it, and in particular respond to signs of danger, food, possible sexual partners, etc. Which, yeah, it's how they're brought up in the book,

but it's just a really interesting concept, but like obviously we've all had the stuff around it, but I've never heard of this term in particular. So yes, how about you, Joanna, you've got something equally non-understandable I would say yeah speaking of a lack of context There's a joke in it about all the potential books and how you'd have to take out the books in a L space When you're trying to figure out the number of potential books that are just nonsense school and say things like cabbage patronomic Forgotten prohibit hostile quintessence. Yeah

And there's a footnote saying some joysy and scholars would be quite offended because Finnegan's wake would be taken out. I've never really tried to read Finnegan's wake. I'd heard of it as this famous impossible to read text. Yeah. I did find a website, I've linked to in the show notes that has the full text with a shit ton of annotations. Oh, okay. They don't help. Like they don't make it make sense, but it does tell me what a lot of the words mean. Okay. So I'm going to see if I can read an expert except for Finnegan's Wag. What if she be in flags or flitters, Ricky Rags or Sunday Ecosis with a mint of mines or beggar or pinnewate?

Arra, sure. We all love little Annie Ruiny. Or we mean say love little Annie Reney. When under her brello, mid-piddle, mid-puddle, she ninigos ninigos nancing by, yo, brontalon slaps, yo snores. Upon Ben Heather and Seaple eyes out too, the chronic head on him, castor of his reasons, Pierre Yathner and Yondermist Booth, his clay feet sworted in Yerda grass, stick up stark where he last fell on him, by the of the magazine ball where I'm magazine all with her sister and Shaw. That's like a mix between canterry tails and TikTok.

With a bit of Irish truning, it's a good measure. Also saying someone's nunching past sounds like a hate crime. Right, but Ninny goes nannigose. Not love that. That's not a hate crime if I say it, Francine. It's Pride Month. I think I can't read that book, but thank you. I do highly recommend looking at the annotated version, just because some of the context. Again, it doesn't really add context, but it's a fun, hey, look at all these cool dialects and where they came from.

Like, there's a random sentence, long Japanese words made up of eight different Japanese concepts in one bit. I've got a drop of the link in the show. It's I will do. And then something else I like it's not a late motif, but the paragraph that gets used to introduce the elves over and over again. Which I should have found the page for because it's because really thin pages with tiny page numbers. because it's because really thin pages with tiny page numbers. And he's the night, magic moved on silent feet. One horizon was read with the setting sun as well,

went around a central star. The elves did not know this if they had it, would not have bothered them. And it's the same bit that gets used at the beginning of all these chapters where they come from elves. And there's something of a like late motif to it, like this is the elf music, especially because it ends with they began to sing. Yes, although the book opens with that almost with that line, doesn't it might magic move on silent state? Yeah, that's why it's used repeatedly through the press.

Yeah, yeah. It's just that that one was a very different mood to the next times it was used. Yes. Yeah, it's good. And it brings me joy. Good. I'm glad.

What else brings you, Jojo? Fairy tales. Ah, yes, I thought so. And we're going to cram an entire talking point in. No. I love the reference to magical animals in fairy tales and how that differs across cultures, which is something back when we were talking about mischief.

I marked a couple of different pages for it, so not the bit with the magic animals, but it talks about the sly fox and in other cultures, the fox is brave. And the owl being wise and maybe angry in other cultures, just as like examples. And it was something I noticed when I was researching the origins of the person Bootsmith, which was for a rabbit hole and I found there's lots of different versions, but that's a different animal in different countries. So it's a jacquel and Indonesia, it's a monkey in some places, it was a monkey in the Philippines, I think. I remember you say, yeah. But then it also, I mentioned it literally does a whole bit that was basically my talking point last week or a couple of weeks ago, the last half of the sky episode.

Discworld, although technically a world run on fairytale rules, derives much of its power and success from the fact that they are consistently challenged and subverted most often by the which Granny Weather Works, who cynically uses them, modifies them as she sees fit. In a sense, she's always trying to soar off the branch she's sitting on. Yeah, I think the reason I didn't get more annoyed at the sciencey bits is some of the stuff they say about stories. It's really beautiful. They talk about how we acquire language through stories, about how stories mold sort of our expectations of where we're going. Yeah, um, the granny's bit are quite like to see and her stories derive their power from the fact that we've been programmed from an early age to believe in the monsters that she's battling.

Yeah, that's the fact that Pratchett doesn't have to sit down and explain to us why this, that and the other is scary because he's building off of the foot hills of muscle shells of narrative structure. Oh no that didn't go well I'm sorry. What would you call a divination by muscle shell? Moloske mancy? Half it. Moulon mancy. That rolls off the tongue a little better doesn't it? I love Moulmancy with some really good fresh bread on the side. Absolutely, but you really need to get up at the coast. Don't, I've been craving Moulmerenier and it's really hard to get fresh mussels. I know, it is such a first world problem.

I know, whenever I'm in Jersey, I try and get it. Anyway, yeah, divination. Anyway, yeah, divination. Oh yeah, that wasn't complete non-Zachrisa. Oh, it was, but it was for a reason. So the concise lexicon of the occult lists 93 methods of definition from error-mancy, divination by the shapes of clouds,

to xyle-mancy, divination by the shapes of twigs. And indeed it does. I borrowed the book from the open library for an hour and had a little flagged through those. They were very interesting. However, I had one I could peruse a little more easily, which is my Oxford dictionary of superstitions. And it unsurprisingly has its own exhaustive or of certain extensive list of divinations, many but one that I'll go into salt herring as a form of divination. Right. Yep. 1861 from CC Robinson's dialect of leads.

Take as many herrings as there are persons, brackets servants generally perform these feats in company. Throw them into the fire and roast them very dry and then eat them, skin, bones and all. And all go up backwards way to bed. And the man who is to be the sweet tart of anyone will bring the one water in her dreams. And there's a couple, yeah, I know. There's a couple of other references

from other works, similar time period, saying that yeah, eating a roasted herring it would bring you divination dreams, which I'd rather like. I was told, I don't know how widespread this superstition is, if you can peel all of the peel off an apple in one go and throw it over your shoulder and it will show you the initial. Yeah, which everybody's teacher has been had a name beginning with us. Or spaghetti. Spaghetti with that one. I shall be marrying Tangle. It very rarely looked like a letter. I thought you just threw spaghetti to make sure it was cooked.

No, the apple peel looked like we had to peel a lot of apples in one job. So we did this a lot. So it was an adult. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We didn't genuinely believe it here. I'm curious. But it was quite funny. I'm just imagining a kitchen full of people throwing apple peels around. I know you all. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. Kids, don't throw apple peels. The least harmful thing you would have done. don't throw out full bills. The least harmful thing you would have done. Maybe don't throw knives either. Yeah. And also actually, do you know what, well, we're on man sees. Yeah. And that sounds like my phone big. I don't know why, but it does. It does. I'm very sorry. Well, we're on divination. I thought there's a lot of like dismissive stuff

about astrology and that's through the book, which I find funny because also. But it just made me think of the resurgence of astrology and like tarot as well on TikTok. And how odd that is. I don't find it odd. I think it links back into that whole thing of, I know it's not just girls, of, I know it's not just

girls, but, and I know it's not just teenagers, but I find a lot of it links back into that teenage witchy face thing that I've talked about before. I don't know, man. It seems a lot more widespread and annoying. Like, there are people are age, it's like the first question anyone's asked on TikTok is a thing. Like, can I again, this thing? No, it's not even what's your sign anymore. It's what's your big free. What does that mean? I don't care to find out. No, I don't want to know. It's been a thing in like a certain flavor of queer culture for a while as well. And by that, I mean, I don't know, Twitter guys. That sounds really much more derisive than I mean. But lots of queer people talk about how like important astrology is them. And again, I think with queer women, some of it

comes from that just like, oh, I'm lesbian, I might as well be a witch. Vibe, but there is also just a weird thing like when I was on dating apps, if I ever spoke to someone who was female, I would I would genuinely get asked like my sign. It's got a hint of the phonology around it that I don't like. Yeah. Like I think it's fine to like be silly and look at your horoscopes in a newspaper.

I think actually deciding like whether or not you're gonna date someone based on the month they were born is kind of fucking weird. Yeah, also it's just I'm sorry, it is just annoying. And I know there's this fucking pushback of, oh it's just because teenage girls like, and you don't start the, no, no, come on. You know, I'm on team teenage girl generally for interesting, weird, feral crap, but this

in particular is too much now. And I can't wait for the next weird occult trend. That's fine. I'm just bored of this one. I think that's the problem. Can everybody start drawing magic circles and seeing what happens instead? Yeah, let's do that. It's more fun.

And I mean, if the salt industry are much needed, please. 100%. I mean, obviously, I agree with you on all of this, but that's just because I'm a Germanife. Side note, we do enjoy writing really annoying horoscopes sometimes. Like, what do we do? I think our favorite one for a while was trying to write one that people would just hate to have, not even just like the weird cult kind of, oh, and you'll meet a horrible stranger, whatever, like the the flipping of the tropes,

but we like just doing one that just called you dull in a really backhanded way. Yeah. I'll see if I can dig them out. You will eat a yogurt for lunch and chat to your co-worker about it for 10 minutes. Okay, let's talk about the biggest stuff. Because we've got Mworldly Off track again, so to be completely on track, why 2k? off track again, so to be completely on track, why 2k? Why 2k? This is like genuinely a little bit of a special interest of mine, and it was largely came about like I started being kind of obsessed with this because of a fucking tumbler post, which was like someone just said like, oh, how remember how we were all so scared the world was going to end in the

millennium, and then it just didn't, and then someone commented with a real long explanation of, no, it didn't because we did a shit ton of work, dude. What was there a, you're wrong about F-Sate about this. I think they, I don't know if they've done one, if they did it was like, I definitely decided to end that spot cast about this before and you're right, it's interesting at the spot. Yeah, it's really fascinating. So the book very briefly explains it.

Remember Y2K, the prophecy that planes would fall out of the sky, as soon after the 80,000 dawned and your toast wouldn't work, that prophecy cost the world several billion dollars in work to a further problem. And it didn't happen. Was it a waste of time? No, because people took precautions. And this is something I think is really interesting.

A correct prediction, but the crisis was averted. It's less impressive, because it doesn't fit the story. Like a more amusing story is that we were all worried for nothing. So just a brief explanation of what the actual world ending thing that was going to happen when the new millennium happened. And this is some of us from a reporter congress in 1998. The potential problem known as the 80,000 problem is simple. In the 1960s, when large computers had a little storage space, programmers saved computer memory by using two digits instead of four digits to represent the calendar year. So in 1966, became 66.

This method functions until computers confront the 80,000, which will apply as 00. So computers won't know if 00 means the the year 1900 or the year 2000. If computers and microchips around the globe are unable to recognize this data, they could generate corrupted data, they could malfunction or even fully shut down. So for federal computers, because this was a report to the US Congress, this could affect social security and veterans benefit payments, even missile maintenance systems, aviation administration, hence the fear that planes could come out of the sky, the IRS. There are at least 7,000 mission critical computer systems in the executive branch of the federal government. And it is clear now that a lot of them simply won't be prepared for January

1st 2000. Problems not just with software, but with embedded microchips, these chips serve as the brains of devices from elevators to security systems to automated manufacturing equipment. There might be as many as 25 billion microchips in use around the world, 7 billion were shipped across the globe just in 1997. And it's estimated that between 2 and 5% of all microchips have this date problem. And I really like this clarification. This sounds like a tiny fraction, but it is a tiny fraction of a huge number. So yeah, there were huge amounts of warnings. The US created the Y2K Readiness Act. And it wasn't obviously just in the US. It was worldwide. There were

task forces around the world. There was a global network of people working together. And this I love, there was a, I haven't written down the acronym, it's a really silly acronym, but there was an international Y2K preparedness group came together to stop all the shit from going wrong. And a few things still did, I won't talk about the one UK specific one that they list on Wikipedia because it's depressing as fuck, a bunch of stuff still went wrong in the states, but nothing major happened, planes didn't fall out of the sky. Buildings didn't collapse. Most things still kept running. There was some minor difficulties in engineering. I suppose that's the thing.

The way those things were never going to happen was the thing, wasn't it? And that's also why it's so easy to paint it as overblown because you take the most preposterous exaggerations and therefore gloss over some of the really bad shit that could have happened. Yeah, and some bad shit still didn't happen. There were some fuck ups with medical records that caused a lot of problems, but the problem was because it was, I don't think fear monger does

the right well, but because it was rightfully built up as it was built up as this is a problem that will need solving before this date. And it ran away in the media into we're all going to die. And so then we got the Y2K scare. Yes. And that was taken advantage of by survivalist cults, doomsday preppers, people who panic about the end of the world. The perceived risk were used by a lot of, especially in America, fundamentalist Christians, I think the mega churches that tied the lot, they started making a lot more money out of their followers. A couple of the Doomsday cults, quite a lot of the preppers as well, when...

Yeah, yeah, they were huge, huge increases in gun sales, surplus stores, which is where a lot of the like Doomsday preppers and stuff get a lot of their supplies, sporting goods, like survivalists, of the like doomsday preppers and stuff get a lot of their supplies, sporting goes like survivalists, huge increases in sales across 1999. So the story ran away in two different directions. It ran away into, oh, it was so silly to be worried nothing happened and it ran away into, hey, the world's going to end and how can we use this to take advantage of people? Like, it's one thing to say, oh, God, it was so silly of the survivalist to go spend all that money at surplus stores. Gunsails have fucking well-dending, why do gun shops have Y2K well-dending sales? So did the surplus stores. So did these sports outlets. Like,

they took advantage of the panic. And I think it's really fascinating that this thing didn't go horribly wrong because hundreds and hundreds of people came and worked together. Like, again, you're very rare is that kind of global coming together to fix a problem, because it was going to be a global problem. I mean, it's been kind of repeated for the COVID thing, that's meant. Yeah. Obviously, it still went pretty far, you know, a lot of bad shit happened, but that the international response and the willingness of most of people in the world to, you know, stand all for it, where I'm asked, whatever made it so much better than it could have been, but from now on I think the narrative is going to become more and more. We hugely have reacted,

nothing happened, and I mean, it fucking did. And we forgot a lot of that already. But it would be a lot of bad as we said it could be because we did what we said we needed to. Yeah. So I think where this book is like looking at stories, I think the white okay, white UK panic is just such a good example because people constructed stories around it. So only in the book they talk about this like free will versus the inevitability of natural law stuff. We expect things to happen, prescribe natural law to it and call it truth that we've made out of a story. Which I think fits really neatly with the criticism of the book. They try too hard to make science into a story. But I really like the example they use in that book, which is because

the village fair is happening, we expect it to rain. And I think we've all gone into a bank holiday, like really hoping it's going to be nice and sunny, but oh, it's a bank holiday, so it's going to truck it down. What was it? It paraphrasing, they said something like we expect the universe to kind of act with mild malevolence, but hope it will be nice. And I think that's scientists expected to be neutrals. Like, okay, guys. You're about to buy us.

And I think that's what happened with the Y2K thing. It was kind of thought of as this overwhelming universal potential malevolence as opposed to like, no, this is a real problem that can be fixed and we're going to fix it. Yeah, I think it was easy to run away in that direction with the story because, you know, 2000, this is a real problem that can be fixed and we're going to fix it. Yeah, I think it was easy to run away in that direction with the story because, you know, 2000, this is the start of the real digital age, right? We're, we're, we're realizing as a society as a world that this is a completely world, world changing technology, set of technologies, you know.

Yeah. And a lot of, obviously, this is a bit different, since ground is somewhat in reality. Yeah. But a lot of these kind of big, like societal scares come from new technologies. Oh, they do. And I think with the technology that built up before YTK, it was very like boiling a frog. Like like I don't think people have thought about

How much technology it become an essential part of day-to-day life until they face that Everything could go wrong at exactly the same time. Yeah, and by technology like specifically We mean like micro driven Computing technology Okay, yeah, cuz um, I don't know similar must have happened with the last generations. Yeah, and we've talked before about the panic so it's not quite steam power. Yeah, yeah. It's always fun. I remember the Millennium Bug stuff specifically really clearly because my dad bought an IT at the time. So obviously it was all over

the news. This Millennium Bug was was coming and going to destroy us all. And I remember, Daddy, is the world going to end in New Year's? And he was like, like, no, but really busy at work right now. And I really hope they don't call me in on New Year's day because I do mom said she drives to the pie. My team memories of it are Harry Boe did a Millennium Bug special edition suite speaking of corporate. I think our preparedness as a household was limited to like unplugging the computer like

there was going to be a storm. Well, that's the thing. It was just weird like miscommunication in media. So like I think generally what people knew was that some bug was coming and your computer might, I don't know, turn into a chainsaw wielding robot. Like the actual problem wasn't very well. I don't know. I feel like I'm throwing my mom under the bus. Yeah, she's pretty technologically savvy. I think she was just like, I don't want it like automatically updating or something. I don't think your mom was like, a computer was going to turn into a chainsaw wielding robot.

I just mean that like, I don't think the media was particularly clear, like, to the lemon about what the actual risk was. I know. And I think that's what the pandemic created. Yeah. Agreed. It is a very cool subject, actually. I like it. I thought you've taken that light and expanded on it because it's an agency sense I thought about that an age of that. It is. And just quickly jumping back into a couple of things from the book before we go to yours, I do like the idea where they talk about humans and how they decide what is a story. Like a literate human can look and decide whether like these words and letters,

but together make a story. And we can't transfer that ability to a computer. Now we can. Yeah, this is definitely written 20 years ago. There's a few bits that I've just noted chat GPD. Like, see, a computer can do a billion sums and think the keystroke and get them all right, but it couldn't pretend to be a cowardly wizard if one walked up to it and thumped it on the memory cache. That it can now. I don't think I meant to do that before we started.

You're going to try and like live make Chagy PT roleplay runes win. Yeah, fuck it. Why not? Let's do it. You have to edit this. Just find a more already logged in. Please, I always say please, and thank you. Please pretend to be rinsed when and to be Rincewend, be cut from the swells. If your laptop runs away. Oh, bugger, it seems you've stumbled upon none other than Rincewend himself, the infamous and incredibly unlucky wizard from the swells. Although I must admit, I'm not the real Rincewend.

I'll do my best to channel his spirit. So what can I do for you or rather, what misadventure have you got me into this? I got it, my bad at this. Okay, look out. Peril. I'm bad at it too. Tell me something else while I'm thinking. The other bit from the book that I thought tied in, interestingly, into the YTK thing is when they talk about the humility and knowledge of the Renaissance period. It was critical about its own explanations. There was a willingness

not to make assumptions just because we think we know this does not mean we definitely know everything. And I think that taking that idea of knowledge into something like what you think you know about YTK, we talk a lot about critical thinking. I haven't learned critical thinking entirely from podcasts, but like some of them have really helped. Michael Hubs, I think, has been a very good influence on me. And Sarah Marshall. Yeah, yeah. Basically, the You're wrong about extended podcast. Which the other content You're wrong about is what it sounds but it's really fascinating, it's a deeper dive into stories you may most know from pop culture. I'd also recommend Tim Harford's book. He does like more or less I'm ready for and the Cushionytales podcast

video's book which name I forgot but I linked it, talks a lot about when you're reading a new story, how does it make you feel? Latch on to that. To has it done that on purpose, is this statistic being presented in a way to make you feel this or that way? All right, now look closer at it. Kind of thing. Yeah, that's quite interesting. That's cool.

That sounds really good. I think we should all be a bit more critical. Great. I've got a response from Rentsend. Yeah, amazing. Parallel, you say, oh, that's just great. My life seems to attract Peril, like a magnet attracts iron filings. What formed is this particular danger take? Is it a rampaging monster, a horde of angry wizards, or perhaps just very determined

librarian doing like me? Or, no, I must say I'm not particularly thrilled about it. But never mind, I suppose, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that when you're Rentswind, you just have to face these things head on. No, no, or at least dumbbell and scream your way through them, thoughts of land, or rather what's the panic inducing catastrophe that we need to escape from. It's tried, but it's done a bad job. So, okay, no. If you just hand do it, they can't do it well. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, child, I don't know how to segue into your talk in front scene. I'm sorry. Child magic. Quite alright. Quite alright. Yeah. I thought the definition of the three types of magic was interesting. So magic means three things, so to speak. All apparently quite

different. Meaning one is something to be wandered at., ranges from cartrix to amoebas to the rings of sun. Meaning two is a verbal instruction, is turning a verbal instruction, a spell, inventory action, by a cult or arcane means, turning a person wouldn't be a frog, or vice versa, or a gin building a castle for his master. The third meaning is the one we use, the technical magic of turning a light switch on and getting light without even having to say fiat lux. The third type of magic they talk about in quite a lot of depth because it's like part of human development, they say. So parents and carers are always transmuting the child's express desires into actions and

objects. So kid asks for food, kid gets food, way infinite wishes, is the kind of thing. And then we kind of surround these simple verbal requests, they say, with magical rituals. So we've got the magic words, please, and thank you. And then you kind of build on that with things like center clause, being magic and giving you presents

if you could, that kind of stuff. S know there's another weird TikTok thing, the manifesting seems to have come back. I think we can get rid of that trend if we show them all-know-all Edmonds. That was literally the reason I stopped listening to that Scruft's podcast. They kept talking about having a whiteboard and writing what you wanted on the whiteboard and that would make it happen. And it was like, dude, you're like fucking millionaires who are one of the most successful seconds. Like maybe, maybe it's not because you wrote it on a white board that you're getting it. Maybe, maybe. I mean, on the other hand, have we tried?

I don't have a white board and nor do I have an elderly rich husband close to death. Maybe that's not going to work for us. Oh, snow limits. Sorry, I've been vertigles. No, you're fine, but I also quite liked the way they, they, they, although I'm not really, again, I'm not really sure they've got the distinction between the second and the third types of magic really separated out, but they talk about anyway our human idea of developed idea of magic being things like coming home in the car and clicking the garage outfit, clicking the infrared remote to open a lot of the car, basically remote controls they seem to have

a thing with. This looks really is 20 years old. Yeah, now I guess you'd say bleep-sees, whatever. Which, wow, that would have sound outdated not that long ago. Bleach-sees really made a comeback, didn't it? But they said, unlike our Victoria forebars, we like to hide machinery and pretend it's not there. And I think there is a certain joy and convincing, not really convincing us up the pretending to yourself, you're doing little magic bits, like automating stuff, I fucking love automating stuff, even if it's not

very important, I just think it's fun. And yeah, it's hiding the machinery and or whatever. Although I think there's maybe a little bit more of a, we like to see the machinery again, sometimes now, because it's a, you know, it's a fashion thing as much as anything else. Yeah. What I did find a little jarring was in that same section, it was the child's magic, it's been appropriated by more and more adults through technology and the legitimate kind, the wonder of nature magic has lost out, which was kind of a jarring value judgment. Yeah, at the end of what I thought was quite interesting. Yeah, the work legitimate is doing heavy lifting though. Yeah, especially in a book full of like science.

It's like the wonder of what human beings can do, surely can tie into the first. Yeah, like I think I don't think I mean, obviously on a fucking deep spiritual level, whatever, the fact that I can keep listening to the same podcast on my headphones, as I was in the car, like with barely a pause. Obviously it's not quite the same as staring up in a Milky Way, but I do think it's like, you get that little moment of, wow, we did something cool. I wondered if you had any, any favorite bits of child magic, or indeed of nature magic. I just thought we could have a moment of joy of things we find a bit magical.

I don't know. I find so many things a bit magical. Like every time we get a new phone, all I've got to do to set it up is hold it near the old one. I'm always really like, I'm at both ends of the spectrum with like being one of those people who could automate your entire house. Like on the one hand, I love the idea of it. And it's so cool that you can just say things and like do stuff and music does stuff. And then at the same time like oh dear god what's spying on me where. Yeah I love the idea but the reality we live in has not me from doing it because I don't want my home to be hooked up to Amazon. Yeah. Want a smart toaster I want a really fucking stupid toast I don't want a toaster. Also I do live with the kind of person who would have gone and burned down the like the spinning gennies.

I think for honestly me, the point where I look at something and go, oh my God, it's fucking witchcraft is I make bread once a week. Oh, that's a lovely intersection of the nature and the tech. Exactly. And I mostly, I'm using a digital scale to make sourdough bread from the recipe for the starter. I got off a blog, but the main recipe for the bread just comes out of my brain. And I just mix a bunch of gloop together. And then there's bread the next day.

That will never stop being magical to me. Yeah. And that's so many different types of magic actually, isn't it? Because yeah, you're using like the tech magic we've been talking about. But also, there's the culture, the fact that human kind has had this little bit of chemistry that we passed on for millennia. Yeah, and we figured out how to do it, and now it fucking works. Basically anything with baking, like making pastry and the layers of the puff pastry puff up, because all the

butter you've rolled into it, I made shoe pastry last weekend for a pastry and recipe, and like you basically make a cheese sauce and somehow you've got chocolate or clairs. Is it that easy? I'll finally try it. I'm not gonna lie, it's basically like making a big ruin and putting some eggs in it. Love that, love that for us.

What about you? So the place that you've seen from almost the past from the sprang to mine for the technology side of things, I guess. I'm still baffled and appalled and in awe of the whole crystalist thing, you know. Yeah, butterflies being melt, well, cash bill is melting themselves and then reconstituting as butterflies is a little unsettling in a very cool way. Yeah. I think that's one of the closest things to actual magic we've got. I do keep reading little bits of extra that I didn't know before.

Like the fact that there's tiny little fragments of each of the main organs. There is a bit more of a nucleus to kind of reconstitute you around than I thought, but even so, fuck. I try not to think about that. Yeah, you know, fucking birds being able to navigate fire magnet. Fucking magnets. How do they work? Ask Ponder.

Ask the same clam pot. Do you know what? Everyone made fun of the fucking insane clam pot. If you're having that in the lyric, I don't know how fucking magnets work. And I've read about it several times that I still couldn't tell you. I've read a lot of that magnets couldn't tell you if you paid.

Yeah, so you have magnets. I can't expect that magnet. Query on the buzzer fly thing, like I am the least superstitious. Yeah, and you have both of us silly magpies. Well, that's not superstition, that's good manners. Oh my god, it's saying please and thank you to chat, efty, the new solution. I just transferred that in stone. And other questions that you won't hear anywhere else and you're probably grateful for it.

Though I'm like, I'm the least superstitious most cynical, dead inside person that you could possibly know unless I'm excited about bread. But when I went to the shops the other weekend for a few gardening bits, I spontaneously bought a gooseberry bush. And when I had it on the table and it was sunny and I was getting ready to plant the gooseberry bush, a tiny little blue butterfly came and flitted about the leaves of my gooseberry bush in the sun. And I thought, I'm going to take that as good omen. Yeah, absolutely.

There's absolutely no reason to whatsoever. It was a spontaneous butterfly. Well, you could say that the butterfly showed some form of approval towards your plant, showing it must have been a non-cursed plant. Again, I don't think we can apply some scientific yoga. Before a sign of butterfly. That was another of the man's teeth. I don't think we can apply some scientific yoga. Before I say no, that's a lot of fun. That was another of the man's. Butterflies rarely make value judgments.

Not never. Not really. Rarely. Did you know that Alfito man's is the art and practice of using divination to identify guilty party by using a leaf of barley? Well, I didn't, I know that now. Yeah, that was another one for me.

Are you just going to kick? Are you going to man see us all the way to an obscure reference finial? No, that was the last one I had a screen shot of. I just forgot to read it out and it's a perfect place. Yeah, it's a scary reference finial. Um, so um, tea, um, tea, the births are of the unseen university. The only was it insane enough to understand imaginary numbers. Would doubtless tell us that there is no question. It's it being narrative, I think, is the empty-unf-element.

At element, that is the empty-unf-element. I just like elephants better. That's fair. I just wanted to talk about elephants. But elephants are, of course, made up of elements. That's true, the element of elephant. Science bitch. Anyway, sorry.

Umpti, as I'm word. I was like, I think I'm from anyway. The first reference, like they come from the early 1900s, and they come from Morse code. Oh, it was originally Morse code slang for dash influenced by association with numerals such as 2030 etc. And now obviously it just means like an indeterminant number often means either like a big number that you can't be both in saying or like a number it doesn't really matter you just say I don't know I'm pm.

a big number that you can't be bothered saying, well, like, a number, it doesn't really matter, you just say, I don't want pmps. Because we had up to, then the, in the first science of discord, because well, again, I can, I can remember whether it was like in a starring role, but there's a few, there's ones in like a different language as well, which is quite cool. So in French, 36 and 36,000s are occasionally used as a send-in for very many. Right. In Thai, Roy paid, maybe, means both 108 and miscellaneous, various, flintful. So like in a lot of languages like a specific number, the short-hand one. Also means like, any old Bullocks. Yes. That's great. So does that mean umpti as like a slang term for any old number post date's umpti dumpedy?

Because I always assumed it, like, as it rhymes. Maybe it must be, yeah, cause it's, yeah, here it is. First attested in 1905 in the Expression Umpti 7. Ah, I'm flying that's a multiple of 10. Um, so yeah, um, um, I think may have been the verbalization of a dash and then when things are

umpteen, um, tea, uh, um, in Norwegian, autumn is used in a similar way. So that plays on the numbers treten, thirteen, two, nitten, nineteen, but often signifying a much larger number. So yeah, I don't know. It's really cool. There's a whole list of like indefinite and fictitious numbers in various languages, which I'll link to and you'll enjoy as well. You'll link do as well. I always say it like it's an order, but you know, it's just I know you know what I would do it. There's also a list of humorous units of measurement, which we don't have time to go to. No, but I'm going to make all of those my drag names, though.

I think that's probably everything we should say about part one of the science of Discord which we don't have to go to. No, but I'm going to make all of those my drag names though. I think that's probably everything we should say about part one of the science of Discord 2, the Globe, the Pagloib. Refused to say a sexual title now. We will be back around this time next week with part two of the science of Discord 2, the Globe, which I said I wasn't going to say it and then I said it, which is going to start in chapter then I said it, which is going to start in chapter 17 and go all the way to the end.

I feel like you're going to enjoy the second half more I do as well, actually, especially now. I've kind of got it off my chest. I can just read it having said my piece now. Until next time, dear listener, you can follow some Instagram at the Trisha Mickey Fratt on Twitter at Mickey Fratt, but on Instagram at the Trisha Mickey Fratt on Twitter at Mickey Fratt. On Facebook, at the Trisha Mickey Fratt, join our subreddit community, our slash TTSMYF, email us your thoughts, queries, castles and snacks. The Trisha Mickey Fratt.

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