The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 14: Mort Pt.1 (Schrödinger’s Canapé)

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan-Young 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 “Mort”. A Possible Pandemic! A Horse! An Arrow! An Invoice!This episode brought to you by “Cabbage Companion”.Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail] to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:What is the difference between the words epidemic and pandemic? (Guardian)The life-and-death consequences of naming the coronavirus (Vox)Jayde Adams tour datesOnce More, With Feeling (IMDb)@Amusical (Twitter)Coincidance (YouTube)   Parks and Recreation - Memorial Ribbons Colours (YouTube)Tewkesbury Mop FairThe Showmen's Guild of Great BritainOmnibus Episode 27: London Bridge Is Down'London Bridge is down': the secret plan for the days after the Queen’s death (Guardian)Timelines: The events that shaped history (Goodreads)Glacial Erratic (Wiki)Wild garlic guide: where to find, how to cook it and recipe ideas (Countryfile)Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Oh, yeah, you know you did the angelic favourite things? I wrote a really bad demonic version. Oh, yay, yay, yay, yay. Are we doing this before we end? Yes. Okay, cool. Awesome. Good, because this is really bad and you can cut it. I mean, in theory I could cut it after we did the intro music as well.

I'm not sure what you think the editing process is. I don't know. I don't care to know. So, again, I'm going to point out I wrote this in less than five minutes on my lunch break while also editing a script. Okay, okay. Maggots and hellhounds and BLs are buzzing. Pissing off Gabriel with Armageddon coming. A demon in a bathtub, holy water he flings.

These are a few of my favourite things. Hooray! Yay, I like it. One of the benefits to being a poet is seeing how many extra syllables you can cram into a line and still pretend it scans. Yeah, poetry and hymns have that in common. Oh, fucking hymns. And weird stress. We'll just put an accent over that.

We'll put an accent, innit? Fuel. No, it's fuel. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, so COVID-19 19 how are you doing with that call i keep calling it corvid not covid because that's what my phone auto corrects it to yeah no it's just making me think that 19 crows are coming and that makes me really happy and then i remember that actually it's a global pandemic is it a pandemic yet or is it still an epidemic um I genuinely don't know the difference. So pan means everywhere. Epi means spreading.

I should note this. Why should I know this? Epi, epi, epi pen, epi curious. Epidermis. Epidermis. Outside? Hmm. Epi.

Answers on a postcard. Epi prefix. Answers, please. Postcard. If you're not all dead from covid 19 yep so what what kind of precautions are you taking to make sure you don't die of this global pandemic epidemic whatever demic well luckily i still have loads of tinned food stockpiled because of brexit my work might close down um and well as a chef you're already pretty good at washing hands i was

gonna say like i'm washing my hands every two minutes rather than every five my skin is super dry oh yeah no this is the problem at the same time that i've kind of learned how to deal with the cirrhosis that occasionally happens on my hand i've also learned that i need to be washing my hands a shit ton more especially as i'm a chronic face toucher ah yes the face touching the face touching i don't know how to stop it but it's finding the balance between not having my knuckles crack from dryness and not dying of whatever fluid is bat flu yeah why didn't that catch on bird flu did swine flu did bat flu it should much cooler bat flu well that's probably why it would become unbearable very quickly. Yeah, it really would. I meant to look into, I saw the headline of how COVID-19 was named and the kind of first paragraph sounded really interesting, going about how you needed to find words and syllables

that weren't indicative of any particular culture or not already used, it's various things. And I forgot to follow through on that. So I have that unsatisfying half fact. not already used it's various things um and I forgot to follow through on that so yeah I might have that unsatisfying half fact so you saw Jade Adams live I totally did I'm really sorry because I was going to try and not talk about Buffy this week I can't really talk about seeing Jade Adams without talking about Buffy well you already texted me saying that you'd accidentally started taking notes on Buffy instead of Mort accidentally in scare quotes there because

I think you are trying to stealthily change this podcast into a Buffy recap I'm not trying to change it into a Buffy recap I was just watching a Buffy episode while taking notes on Mort but because I was watching the episode before I listened to the recap must be so difficult to go through and without yeah without thinking like I started looking up an actor and writing down who he was and the name of his character i see yeah yeah and then realized that i was taking notes on the wrong bit of media that i was consuming which is what happens if you constantly consume five pieces of media at once yeah how do you how do you even like i i'm the same in that i usually have if i'm watching telly i usually have something on the go

but it'll be browsing reddit or something not constantly need to consume way too much media at once it's really bad but now i don't know how to stop like i can't just sit and learn my lines so i have to be doing something while i learn my lines which means i like read through scripts to learn them while i'm also making dinner or doing the washing up. Last Saturday, Ben had the Lost Boys round and I locked myself in the kitchen for two hours making this big elaborate tapas meal because it was the easiest way to work on learning my lines. Cool. It was actually really good food as well. I bet it was.

Oh, tapas sounds good. Well, I did like a big Spanish omelette. Well, yeah, no, I did a bunch of stuff. I fucking love Spanish omelette. Oh, I'm going to make that this weekend. I haven't made it for ages. This all started because I was craving a Spanish omelette. Okay, that'm going to make that this weekend. I haven't made it for ages. This all started because I was craving a Spanish omelette. Okay, that makes sense.

I'll do bits. I'm going to have a house full of boys and I don't want to get another takeaway. I did a roasted aubergine and rocket salad with some lemon and mint. I did some garlic prawns with parsley and chili and lemon again. What else did I do?

I did this amazing, like, butter beans cooked with really soft onions and anchovies. I could eat all of this. Anyway, that was what I did so I could learn my lines um it was really helpful i still don't know my lines anyway jade adams um buffy the vampire say has a musical episode one sport with feeling um i love it so much it's beautiful um which season is that season six okay uh jade adams i mentioned i think we were talking about last week she co-hosts this live show a musical with kiri pratchett mclean yes where they get comedians to come yeah i do

have bookmarked yes there is like an episode of on comedy central and there's a podcast as well but they don't have the songs on that that's just comedians talking about their favorite musicals so they co-host this live show they decided to do a special version of it where they reenacted the whole buffy musical episode excellent it was amazing so they uh like they didn't act out literally every scene like jade was in the corner reading from the script for a bunch of it um yeah so they had uh rose masafayo who's a really funny new zealand comedian as buffy but her costume was some stuff she already had lying around she dressed herself as buffet the vampire leia from that one sight gag in friends oh wow yeah which she dressed as for halloween a few years before so she already had the outfit

okay uh chris addison was giles which was amazing okay uh nish kumar as zander kerry pritchard mclean played anya and the the dance bit between there's like a whole dance break thing between the two of them is amazing ed gamble played spike with a really bad apples and pears cockney accent and a boris johnson wig what i'm really gutted about is they did two nights originally they put it on on this tuesday night it sold out so they added the monday i went on the monday the tuesday joss whedon turned up so if i had gone on the tuesday night i could have met joss whedon so yeah do you want to do you want to introduce us or whatever i guess like fine hi everyone hi i guess sorry i'm very tired let me give me a second to get enthusiastic i do love what i'm doing my fifth job this is not a job yeah no it's not no it's not even a

side hustle oh yeah by the way i hate that phrase what side hustle side hustle it makes me think of doing a really weird dance but like only on your left hand side like you're just doing this or the other hand it's like i like the what a coincidence video what wow you can really dance oh god wow you can really dance all right and on that note the side hustle thank you for listening to the true show Oh, God. Wow. You can really dance. Right. And on that note. Side hustle.

Thank you for listening to the true show. Make your breath. Oh, I scared her away. Okay. No, no, no. No. I'll introduce us. Cool.

Hi. Cool. Hi. Hi there. Hi. Is anyone there? Hello. Hello.

Welcome. Welcome. Okay. I got this. I got this. God, you're going to make me nearly actually finish my coffee. Haven't finished a cup of coffee in years. Right. Hello and welcome to The Truth Shall Make You Fret, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one at a time, in chronological order. More or less. Ish. I'm Joanna Hagen hagan young and i'm francine carroll and today we are on this is the we're back on the disc and today we are back on the disc after a little ineffable holiday uh and we are talking about mort the fourth disc world novel

part one which yeah but we're working off completely different page numbers are we yeah i was trying to look at your stuff and they didn't match mine at all what's going on like that's where i put the break yeah okay right we'll work that out afterwards but yeah we're working off different page numbers sorry so depending on which corky paperback edition you have but we're working our way up to page 75 or 89 um but basically when you get to the jelly deals stop yes or keep going or keep going i'm not your mother do it your life for some reason you can read the whole thing at once and then do the podcasts as joanna does or you can read right up to the bit you have to and then go off and do other things like i do i mean i kind of did both that's why i don't sleep so yeah note on spoilers

uh we are a spoiler light podcast obviously major spoilers for the book we're on. But we will avoid spoiling any major events in future Discworld books. And we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld book, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So if you haven't read it yet, you can come on the journey with us. Oh, I meant to put that spreadsheet together so we could work out what's happening when. We can do that another time. That's fine. yeah not now sorry should we all right listeners let's break out excel okay but like a bit of me would enjoy that i love i know i know but it's difficult to narrate i would make it oh joanna's clicking on column b i see conditional formatings come into play.

We're turning every nth column, brackets even, a slightly paler shade of blue. Obviously. Obviously, to make it readable. Yes. I can't think where we're going to make a pivot table fit, but we'll make it fit. We can definitely. It's been ages since I've had to do anything complicated on Excel. Nice.

Like, I know what it sounds like. We're both in a slightly foul mood after being attacked by this microphone psychically attacked i mean i mean i've also already had a really bad day and also auditorially audit audit auditory much attacking in the ears it's fine you're the one who has to edit this i know that's why i'm looking more hysterical than you at this point which is not usually the case i've just reached critical mass hysterical and given up on everything oh you kind of plateaued you've reached the plateau of hysteria yes in which we sit down giggle to ourselves gently and try to forget the world's woes as we move on to the summary yes should i tell you what actually happened in there in this please do please do or at least try i'll do my best oh look look up epi prefix that seems like such a long time ago

it was a long time ago cool right how long have we been fucking oh just so long it's nearly nine o'clock jesus right well we better make a podcast then um so we open on death in his hourglass room looking down on a young boy running this is mort mort's father is watching his gangly ridiculous son fail at scaring birds because he's been distracted by a rock i feel like you're saying this in a more spiteful tone than you would have done an hour ago i just love the thought of him being all knees mort's father makes the choice to take his son to a hiring fair and get him apprenticed out because he has nothing else to do with the gangly fucker. Death arrives stylishly at the hiring fair.

Well, he trips over and says bugger. In a stylish manner. Well, yes. Mort, being the last one standing, gets hired by Death, and after receiving a bit of fatherly advice, Death and Mort head to Ankh-Morpork for a quick quick bite to eat death goes through a lovely little makeover montage and then we i did picture that as a full montage at my head what uh what song was in the background uh i was thinking like something really ironic considering it's night and i'm all pork and he's

just been apprenticed out to death so like beautiful day by the levelers it's not like don't fear the reaper i was thinking oh yeah but it would have to be like friendly death yeah it'd have to be like a happy ukulele cover of don't fear the reaper uh can you work on that please yeah i know how to play it do you it's pretty easy oh i don't have a ukulele all right next week let's try and remember the ukulele okay i'm not actually making any promises anyway uh makeover montage then we go to death's house uh mort spends a little bit of time up to his knees in horseshit oh my god queer eye but death's house oh my god could you imagine jonathan van ness polishing death's skull because i can and i love it me too and tan france trying to get him to do a french

tuck on his black robes caromo just stares deeply into his soul and then oh my god death would cry oh my god oh death really needs the queer eye guys oh my god death we'll find this out later in the episode okay in the in the book rather not this one probably we'll find this out with every book with death okay okay so sorry next week next week let's try and do like a little queer eye sequence okay. Okay, fine. Okay, cool. Death spends up, no, Mort spends some time up to his knees in horse shit before joining Death on his rounds. Death and Mort pop to a party to kill a king and Mort

peeks at a princess. Oh, nice alliteration. And we have a lovely little time passes, another montage. Mort eats, reads, sleeps, probably cleans up more horse shit, and joins in for the duty on a regular basis. Eventually, Mort requests an afternoon off, gets dropped an egg more book, almost get robbed,

and discovers the ability to walk through walls. Get eff it. While death gets a bit wistful, Mort interrupts a Klatchian family dinner and masquerades as a demon, gets sold the patrician's prized horse, makes it to Stolat, chickens out of actually speaking to the princess, and instead asks Cutwell the wizard to help him figure out this embarrassing walking through walls problem we've all been there

um and then death arrives to offer him a jelly deal as we reach sunset and we'll find out yeah death wants him to do the duty for a night um did you somehow spot helicopters or loincloths anyway not in this section no well we're still coming down off the high from the last episode where we did spot two helicopters, although no loincloths for quite some time now, Joanna. No, but David Tennant in a singlet and knee socks. Look, Jo. Look.

Not even slightly relevant to what we're talking about. I've run out of ice cubes. Just David Tennant in a singlet and knee socks. This is the equivalent of us downing that whole bottle of tincture. Like at the very end of this section. Did you notice the tincture that Cutwell downs at the very end of this section? Granny Weatherwax made it. Yeah, I did.

Because I guess Nanny Og hasn't been invented yet. I can't wait to meet Nanny Og. Sorry, that's a different book. So quotes. Quotes, quotes, quotes. Shall I go first? Yes. Cool.

Mort looked down at his father's face. He wanted to say a lot of things. He wanted to say how much he loved him, how worried he was. He wanted to ask his father what his father really thought he'd just seen and heard. He wanted to say that he felt as though he stepped on a molehill and found that it was really a volcano. And he wanted to ask what nuptials meant. What he actually said was, Yes, thank you. I'd'd better be going i'll try and write you a letter pretty profound one i like it i like it's just it's really sweet because it is that father and son moment where there is like so much that hasn't quite passed between them and between a

father and son that think in such different directions which is why mort's father is having him apprenticed out because he doesn't know what to do with this boy that wants to read everything and is very clever and very curious about how the universe is put together in a very frightening way what they need to do is grow things yes and so mort has this moment of i don't really know what's happening now and I know he doesn't understand what's happening now because he thinks I've gone to be apprenticed off to an undertaker yeah and there's this moment where you could reach across the void and you don't you say yeah thanks sorry I'll write you later and I just thought it was a very sweet and very beautifully written moment yes I think we've all

been there with certain people uh so I picked something way less profound although i nearly picked a profound one i'm glad i didn't know the sound roared around them a vast gray waterfall of noise it came from the shelves where stretching away into the infinite distance row upon row of hourglasses poured away the sands of mortal time it was a heavy sound a dull sound a sound that poured like sullen custard over the bright roly-poly pudding of the soul i just thought i planned straight back into the non-poetic metaphor oh yeah excellent and another food related one just as all the weird sky tagliatelle tagliatelle was last week oh god i forgot about the tagliatelle but the bright roly-poly pudding of the soul is how I shall forever think of my soul in future. Warm, squishy, bright, covered in sullen custard.

I shan't, because if I had to choose between a roly-poly and custard, I'd go for the custard. I fucking hate jam roly-polies. Do you? I used to have to make them occasionally, and I find it very stressful, and you always end up with sugar buns. Oh, suet.

Suet is quite a stressful material to work with. It's the burning jam. So obviously characters that we hang out with in this book. Yeah, yeah. Death being one of the big ones. One of them. And this is not just me sneaking an extra quote in, but I like this because it reminded me of when we meet him in,

I can't remember now if it's Color of Magic or Equal Rights, but I remember it was one of your favorite quotes was that swish went the stone and the mayfly and death yeah yeah yeah so where he's introduced here death clicks across the black and white tiled floor on toes of bone it had that same really nice rhythm to it that's why I snuck it in there that sounds not only is that a lovely sounding sentence but doesn't that sound like a satisfying noise to listen to? Yes, I do like the clicky noise. But yeah, it's quite interesting to hang out with Death in this book because obviously we talked about the death in the first two not really being our death that we care about. And while it was kind of stuttering along there, it's like he's now sprung fully formed.

Like this is Death now through the whole book. This is the Discworld Death. He's here. It's like Terry Pratchett was like, ah, here he is. Yeah. And he's such a fully formed like this is death now through the whole book this is the discworld death he's here it's like terry pratchett was like ah here he is yeah and he's such a fully formed character and like obviously i don't think it's a spoiler to say we come back to him again we talked about the fact that he's got a whole story arc death is of course eternal well also that yeah it's not like he's gonna get killed off we'll get to that right uh next up we meet mort um who is just great he's a really good character yeah i remembered not liking this book much really yeah and i think i've mixed it up in my head with eric oh i could see that like pasted eric into some of mort's things because

mort hasn't annoyed me at all during the first part of this book i mean like he like, he's a bit of a dickhead teenager, but you know dickhead teenagers. Yeah, no, that's why I work with dickhead teenagers. Yeah, we were them. Oh, God, yeah. Maybe that's why I didn't used to like it as much. Maybe he was a bit too familiar. I like the changes he goes through in the book because it's quite an interesting... It's not like a metaphor, but, you know,

he goes through his own very personal brand of puberty hell here. here yeah and he's already got less elbows by the end of this section yeah and some of it i think has been taken out of his environment and into an environment where he can grow into himself he always had that ability to stand with less elbow and knees up to his eyeballs but now he's been given responsibility and literal space to grow like he's yeah he's cavernous yeah it's like he's like um like clenched root ball repotted yeah god get me with the metaphor today but i do um something i found interesting is that you know death picks mort before mort grows into himself death kind of decides on more from watching over him yeah now some of the potential yeah some of this is obviously

death exists outside time and in theory you could know how everything was going to go but i don't really think it's that because i don't like thinking about time travel no that hurts my brain yeah um but i think some of it is that because of the more way because of the way mort thinks he has this potential in him yeah because he wants to know how to take the universe apart and put it back together again it gives him the potential to be open mind enough to apprentice for the grim reaper yeah so i just i thought that was cool yeah absolutely i also like it that we've got a protagonist and he's an awkward gangly teenage protagonist in a comedy book that's not just useless yeah like he's funny but he's not just being played for laughs he's got depth to him yeah like rinse when i arguably starts off as being a bit useless and

and he's more comedy than anything else i would say i would say rinse when never gains the depth that mort has yeah and mort gets mort gets this in one book he gets to become this whole fully fledged human being yeah and from a teenager yeah i like the the kind of way pratchett demonstrates his personality by saying that basically he's the type of person who has to think about how to scare birds away yeah like i think that sums up so much in like a single sentence yeah yeah uh so yeah we've got mort's father lezik which i don't really think i have anything else interesting to say about him oh he's just pretty normal disqualified father yeah um who else do we have? Isabel is next. Isabel. Yeah, I don't know how to feel about Isabel. I think.

I'm going to check back in on these characters as we do part two and three as well, because obviously they grow so much. Yeah, I mean, so far I've not loved some of the description like i feel like pratchett kind of plays up the i need to describe how unattractive all these women are part like yeah both for kelly and isabel yeah it's something pratchett doesn't oh no he does really well in native books but it is weird here where size is such a focus yeah he sort of points out that kelly's too skinny but within pages is talking about the fact that isabel has a slight suggestion of too many chocolates yeah yeah exactly um what i did like was the description of how uh some hair streams naturally and some hair just hasn't got it kind of thing yeah speaking of someone who does not have naturally streaming hair. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, she's a bit one dimensional right now.

She's just the bitch. Yeah. And again, she gets to go through a whole good growth thing in the book. Yeah. But I like looking at how Pratchett writes women because it develops so much. But where obviously we just did Equal Rights before we did Good Omens. Yeah. And Equal Rights had esk as such a fully

formed obviously she's not a teenager she's a very young girl yeah um but it was so insightful as to what it is to be that age girl and i feel like he doesn't quite hit the mark as well with isabel which is because she's a harder character to write because 16 year old girls are terrifying and unknowable yeah and all very different yeah like i think there's something similar about a lot of little kids that but i think rather than trying he sort of slips back into well this is what i need her to be for the story which is i need her to be grumpy with more now and i need her to be aggressively like he writes aggressively competent women very well isabelle and kay um yeah um and i literally haven't read to the end of this book

for quite some time so when we check back in with her i may be yeah that's happier with her character development like i said her her arc is interesting but i still think she could be a bit of a deeper character uh and then right after isabelle we we meet albert but i like albert i like grumpy or bernie with a chip pan full of fat that's been there for a year did we get his backstory in this book yeah we get a whole bunch of it yeah so yeah so we will by the end of the book have albert's full backstory but i like the hint at it i love a good bit of foreshadowing but mort's um waiting for death to get himself sorted and albert's there and mort's kind of speculating on their relationship because albert didn't doesn't really seem like a servant he seems to sort of yeah he's very irreverent and yeah um but when sorry there's

a really good line about it so he's sort of thinking about the fact that him and albert have a content to just get on with each other now um and everything's been said to morse it was rather like going for a walk after a really bad thunderstorm everything was quite fresh nothing was particularly unpleasant but there was the sense of vast energies just expended yeah absolutely i loved that but it was um i don't know how he thinks of all these fucking things he's really good writer isn't he yeah no it was quite good but yeah so i i really liked that hint of because obviously then we get the backstory between albert and death and why they have the relationship that they have yeah although i think

we never get the explicit like flashbacks to the blow up that must have happened like the huge arguments that you know i think as the books go on we'll get more it gets fleshed out a little yeah but i think always there's that kind of abstraction around it which i think is good because you're never going to really be able to write that thunderstorm no you can't and yeah but i like it starts there yeah and it that's what sparks mort's curiosity yeah and you can see that affecting his decisions later in the book where he starts trying to find albert's backstory and it's because he needs albert's help with something but it's almost like oh everything that's going on is an excuse because i've just been curious about this it's been bugging me for

a while yeah absolutely that's definitely happening like a pearl forming around a piece of grit which will be an amazing foreshadowing metaphor for yeah yeah okay uh where are we binky binky binky literally there's like nothing interesting i can say i just love this fucking horse binky is like extra horse yeah like he's so so good at being a horse i wonder do they ever say where he gets binky no he just exists um he's not created by death is he no no because they must have like some fantastic horse breeder somewhere yeah like in the middle of nowhere probably somewhere on the cabbage plains or death like adopted binky a bit like isabel and has raised him from a foal oh oh oh montage they're feeding a little foal from a bottle oh my god could you imagine like death in a tiny little foal and

binky learning to okay right now we've got to stop a little happy don't call me oh i'm yeah i'm definitely gonna cry at this movie when we make it okay when are we when are we doing this oh i don't know uh when we've got a bit more free time, possibly, and a budget and the talent and expertise. Next decade, 2030. Yeah, okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, cool, cool. I'll put it in the diary. Okay, so less cute character that we meet.

This is not a lovely horse. This is the Duke of Stohelit. Not a lovely horse, but all right for a king. No, wait, no, the other one. Boo. Yeah, no, the Duke who likes to poison people. Yeah, sorry sorry my bad bit of a dick we've not got the king down here well we don't really spend a lot of time with

him i mean we show up he dies he's not even really named but he's got a nice beard and the kind of face you'd buy a horse off of well so one of the things i was gonna say about the king and about the duke actually is that their relationship is very similar to another King-Duke relationship, like two, three books from now. Weird Sisters. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like, no major spoilers. They're just very similar characters to another couple of characters we'll get in a couple of books.

This is kind of like the non-troublesome version of the Grand Vizier stereotype, isn't it? Grand Vizier. Grand Vizier stereotype. Yeah, the Wickedizier stereotype, isn't it? Grand Vizier? Grand Vizier stereotype? Yeah, the wicked duke. Yeah, yeah. Who's, where is the good king? I mean, good is probably a strong term for the king. It's like the blurred history of the, oh fuck me,

Richard the Lionheart and his brother. Do you mean Richard the Lionheart or do you mean Richard the Third? I mean Richard who did the Crusades. Oh, okay, I know that one. And is in Robin Hood as a lion. Oh, okay, yeah, I know that one.

Yeah. Sorry, I was thinking evil Richard III. No, no, no, good Richard. Yes. And his evil brother, but possibly, you know, it wasn't that black and white, obviously. Never is, never was. God, history's weird. Love history.

But yeah, that fell into that story template quite nicely. Yeah. So you have this noble bearded king and then the skinny, suspicious, goatee. The lizard smile. He said he had a lizard smile. I like that. Yes. Lizard smile and likes killing people.

Which is, there's no justice. We all know a duke like that. Do we? Yeah. Yeah. The king gets the sword I like that the king's quite good natured about being killed though

I guess if you live in that kind of kingdom you've just kind of come to terms with it oh well good on him I suppose crossbow eh nice and clean can't eat enough antidotes to get rid of a crossbow can you I should have seen it coming.

Oh, well, where now? Where are we off to? And we don't know. No. Well, we wouldn't know anyway, but the Black Desert, which we will meet later on in other books, has not yet existed. So this guy kind of winks out of existence. But the general afterlife theory is a bit kind of whatever someone fancies to a certain extent. Yeah, whatever someone believes, certainly.

Yes, we will talk about the power of belief because it's my favorite pratchett theme so we kind of meet kelly princess slash queen but she's not named in this section and she doesn't really do anything interesting apart from there is very good angry clowns yeah there's a really good line about her um not the bit where she's described um i like that mort caesar and it's like this kind of implied romance love at first sight but in a very teenager-y just like yeah no straight to the groin yeah and the stomach yeah do you remember that kind of teenage crush where it just literally hurt your stomach yeah that you'd just be in pain constantly what the hell well you look

at the msm messenger away message yeah god i don't miss it oh the little heart flutter when they come online you're like okay okay okay how do i make the most of me without talking to them first right i'm gonna change my screen name lyrics yeah yeah okay so i've got to do like i've got to seem deep but like not emo like quite cool but deep okay right um yeah no talking about princess kelly queen kelly she was uh two older women were endeavoring to comfort the princess but she was striding ahead of them so that they bounced along behind her like a couple of fussy balloons um and then you know death approves of her because death likes style yeah i like that

little it's already a queen yes i like the little nusses about death the little things he appreciates um the sort of little flares and he likes a bit of a style and a bit of a coat swish yeah some cats yeah he has a certain certain streak of practice in there, isn't there? Oh, definitely. But there's also the way he's kind of rebuilt from the ground up as a character in this book without any big descriptive moments. It's all little things. Yeah, it's all definitely show, don't tell.

Yes, and this is a really good example of show, don't tell. Yeah. It's done in lots of little bits over an entire book. Yes, which is how you're meant to do it, not giant exposition dumps. As you know, Bob, we also meet Cartwell. Cartwell, the useless wizard of book four. Yes. Igneous Cartwell, holder of the eight keys,

traveller in the dungeon dimension, supreme mage of, excuse me, are you really? Working on a thing called advertising. Ah, advertising. Speaking of advertising, Francine. Do you love cabbage but crave a bit more variety? advertising. Ah, advertising. Speaking of advertising, Francine. Do you love cabbage but crave a bit more variety? Cabbage Companion is a weekly cabbage discovery delivered right to your doorstep. Now, regular listeners of the show will know that I'm not exactly adventurous with my brassica consumption, but Cabbage Companion has made trying new cabbage

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three cabbages thanks to cabbage companion for sponsoring the truth shall make you fret and all the cabbage friendly podcasts i won't say a bunch about cut well here because we don't really hang out with him much until we get on to part two and three no but i think it is a really nice introduction i think it sums up everything you need to know about him yeah the fact that he's very easily distracted he doesn't have a beard and unusually he's good it establishes his very well. And his desire to have gravitas even through his youth. Yes. His lack of actual qualifications.

Bless him. He's a very sweet wizard. I do have a bit of a soft spot for him. Yes, I like him a lot. He's just trying to make his way in the world. He's that fun thing because he's kind of written to be in his early 20s. He's almost just graduated. He's that fun thing because he's kind of written to be in like his early 20s.

Like he's almost just graduated. But because Mort's a teenager, you know how people in their early 20s have that epic superiority. Absolutely. Yeah. He's very smug about, oh, you like a girl. That like, he's not going to be great. Yeah, he's a wizard. He's a wizard. Like they have their own issues with women.

God, wizards have a lot of issues with women. All right. So we'll come back to Cutwell properly next episode then. Yeah. So you've added a new little section called locations, which I like because we're now coming to the age of repeating locations. Well, that was kind of why I added it. I mean, I could say something horribly wanky about,

oh, I'm more poor. The city is a character in herself, but I don't hate myself. So I'm not going to do that. That's a really good idea not to do that. Well cool i didn't note a couple of pages down but there was just little i like we're kind of hanging around the ram tops and the idea that it's an area of wild magic everywhere yeah because and yeah part of the reason we're doing the locations thing is there are spaces that the books come back to i think this is a really good discworld book for seeing what the whole series is going to become it's definitely it is definitely the the starting block isn't it of yeah like equal rights is kind of

builds on it so much because it's the first one that's not about rinse wind yeah but it's still the wizards and ank more pork and the university this gets away from ank more pork for a bit it gets away from the university um it lets the whole world expand and breathe and it's almost the bit like you can see him going oh wait hang on i can do loads with this yeah yeah i don't need just that one city and he does build some of the backdrops that are gonna come up yeah and it really is it's very important isn't it like going going forward um which part of the world each story set in because it really makes a difference whether you're in the ram tops or rank more pork not just obviously because you're in a village or

a city but how the magic is going to work um yeah because what you're going to get murdered for yeah what kind of animal is likely to eat you i also like the the town sheep ridge that we go to where the hiring fair is. Yeah. Another one of those weird small towns that's like an inn and a well and is really similar to Badass. Yeah. Slightly bigger, perhaps. Possibly slightly more hospital.

It's got an actual square. Well, yes. But that idea of these towns almost springing up out of embarrassment so there's not a big empty space on a map yeah yeah which i think is a quote from a later book uh yeah i was on my way back from telford day before yesterday and making notes of some of my favorite place names along the way and it did remind me very much of pratchett let me just bring bring up my little list. So I've got my phone here, which I probably shouldn't have, but there you go. Because I was a passenger, so I was just looking at the sat-nav.

So we've got Mucklestone, Loggerheads, Much Wenlock, Western Under Lizard, Little Ness, Felton Butler. What have we got here? Acton Trussell, Scropton, hanging houghton oh wait no now i want to make this a regular feature on the podcast longer snail well cold ashby doesn't all that sound very stow planes i feel like i want to make this a regular thing on the podcast where every week we read out like three real ones and one made up one oh and see if you can guess have to guess which one is made up oh that sounds really fun yeah let's try and remember to do that next week okay cool okay we won't do

it now we will do it because i'd have to make one up from there that would be pretty obvious as i stuttered my way through the last one okay so we spend some more time in ant more pork and we get a bit of ant more pork outside of the we don't go to the university at all it's the first one where we don't go to the university we do hang out with a wizard and he mentions it, but we don't spend any time there. Have you got the very unpoetic metaphor? I've got the amazing. Can I read it out?

Yeah, please do. Awesome. Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colourful as a bru bruise and as full of activity industry bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound beautiful i don't think any description of a city could be better

certainly it would be hard push to be more graphic definitely not but it's great i like spending time in antmoor pork outside of the university we get to sort of go for a curry and see how some normal people live in the clothes shops and then you sound like you're explaining a tour guide your tour you went on all right fair enough i could murder a curry right now, to be fair. Yeah, I could as well. Not just in a clever, I'm death saying this line. I'm wondering what I've got in the cupboards I can knock off a curry out of. I'll probably do a quick dull. Oh, I've got lentils and spice mixes.

I've got lentils and spice mixes and coconut. Nice. Oh my, sorry. So the big location, again, we've been here before but death's domain yes yeah which reminded me of um parks and rec the bit where tommy is laughing at leslie for not being ben or someone for not being able to tell the difference between the different shades of black yeah it's midnight and raven and whatever i was like yes you need to be the interior designer in dust domain oh my god okay but again we're talking about the queer right thing and could Yeah. Midnight and Raven and whatever. I was like, yes, you need to be the interior designer in Death's Domain.

Oh, my God. Okay. But again, we're talking about the queer eye thing. And could you imagine Bobby in Death's House, like, just trying to get him to do little splashes of colour? Yeah. What about, like, here? No.

Okay. But perhaps we could, like, a really deep aubergine alongside these black... No. What about... Okay. So we get that you like the skull and crossbones thing, but it's a little teenager-y. So what we've done is we kind of take them out and we've just put like a couple of big ones here and a kind of stylized bust you know it's like a grown-up version no

but yeah that's domain excellent uh i'm glad we get to hang out in it i like that this is like a consistent thing i don't think it's a big spoiler to say that like we come here again and it is always kind of everything is black and there's skull and crossbones everywhere yeah and death creates it and more is kind of had a has a confusing moment of death made this and then you get to just think about death trying to make yeah and he can't he can copy because he doesn't have the imagination to create yeah which is another really nice little foreshadowing moment where that's explained and that becomes something that hooks on with Mort and why Mort should not become the Grim Reaper. It's that memory of being human and being able to create.

Yeah. The way the whole book talks about imagination and belief is just... As far as a good book. Yeah, it is a good book. I'm really pleased I'm liking it more than I thought i would i it's such a weird one for me like i was i'm not gonna ever say anything negative about it because i get rocks thrown at my head but i don't remember this being one of my favorites but i because i know it's a favorite of so many friends of mine and i know it's one so many people recommend starting with is it have i missed something i'm reading it this know it's one so many people recommend starting with. Is it? Have I missed something? I'm reading it this time.

It's like, oh, wait, now I'm looking for the depth in it. It is all there. I've just skimmed over it before. And especially if you imagine it as your first foray into the disc world. Oh, then it's a great book. Yeah. And it really is a good introduction to a lot of it. Okay, so little things we liked.

Yeah. It's very sweet that there's a really silly, I don't know if your copy has this, but mine, the author bio, is very funny. No, mine doesn't. You go. Okay. Terry Pratchett is on average a sort of youngish middle-aged. He lives in Somerset with his wife and daughter, and long ago chose journalism as a career

because it was indoor work with no heavy lifting. Beyond that, he positively refuses to be drawn. People never read these biographies anyway do they they want to get on with the book not wade through masses of prose designed to suggest that the author is really a very interesting person so look okay he wrote these other books um blah blah the last three were also about the disc world and actually a lot of people quite like them see i don't know they've edited it way down for this later edition which is uh Terry Pratchett's one of the most popular authors writing today he lives behind a keyboard in Wiltshire and says he doesn't want to get a life because it feels as though he's trying to lead three already he was appointed to Nobby in 1998 Mort is the fourth novel in his phenomenally successful Discworld series so they've done they've

done what he was complaining about there I think they should have stuck to him rambling for two paragraphs, frankly. Which makes me think this is a really, like, obviously this is a very early release. That made me laugh. And also I thought it was very sweet that it's dedicated to Rihanna, his daughter. Yeah. Because also just Rihanna. It was just a little in at the side. Yeah.

And is now, like, the coolest. She is so cool. And she writes on cool games. She's cool. She's so cool. She's really cool. I want to be friends with her. crush yeah platonic crush we come back to talking about reannuals oh that's pretty early yeah yeah yeah so mort's family grow reannuals which are wines

that come up after before you've planted them uh which were i think it was like the first book tethys they've got some like reannual wine or something yeah yeah so i think it was like the first book tethys they've got some like reannual wine or something yeah yeah so i think it's cool that they come up again and it's just a little like detail he put into the world and he's remembered it and used it again yeah and he brings up like similar things in the future it's got just clearly something that tickles him because it's not very important to anything no um it's just a little idea he likes uh what was your up sorry i've given up on segues i'm so tired sorry uh yeah so i liked it not long after he's got there he's clearing out the stables from muck and it's kind of reminiscent of a bit of a trope where you get the apprentice to do some

boring menial task and it teaches them a lesson about the importance of hard work or vision or... oh, fuck me, like he says a few of them, doesn't he? And why do you think I directed you to the stables? Think carefully now. Mort hesitated. He had been thinking carefully in between counting wheelbarrows. He'd wondered if it had been to coordinate his hand nigh or teach him the habit of obedience or bring home to him the importance on the human scale of small tasks or to make him realize that even great men must start at the bottom and that's all reminiscent of um like those martial arts movies what's called the karate kid i think had one of those and it's

just a trope it happens in a lot of things but none of those exclamations seemed exactly right i think he began yes well i think it was because you were up to your knees in horse shit to tell you the truth absolutely correct snap desk i love more practicality in that yeah it's just the practical and it's occam's razor it's i mean if you want to get wanky about something that's tried if you want to get wanky about something that's tried very hard not to be wanky, you could say it's a lesson about how you should probably just look at something straight on

instead of trying to fucking wind your way around it in a clever way. Yeah. Which this brings me to a point I was going to make later, but when he's actually doing the horseshit thing, he's talking about this sort sort of thing of okay i've done a quarter let's call it a third so that'll be five eighths which is more wheelbarrow loads um it doesn't prove anything much except that the awesome splendor of the universe is much easier to

deal with if you think of it as a series of small chunks yeah so despite that there is a lesson in there yeah and it's something i find i have to do a lot of really like tiny dull repetitive jobs yeah like if you ice five cakes your brain will switch off if you have to portion three kilos of cooked rice down into six ounce bags your brain will shut right down like this is a huge part of what my job is and god your brain does really good things though yeah yeah like you start figuring out okay so five bags of rice was that much out of this massive tray of rice therefore there's that much and you start trying to extrapolate like how much it'll take um and that's how you start learning things like okay x amount of buttercream will cover x area cake yeah and that's how you get chefs like

you who can just make the right amount of buttercream without like measuring out every tiny bit yeah but it also means you get chefs who can do an entire lunch service while also planning exactly how the prep is going to run for the rest of the afternoon what order you're going to do it and when you're going to take a break and what how much pepsi do you need to order from mid food uh-huh cool um this is why i have to have the TV on while reading a book and also, yeah. Oh, I see. Multiple inputs. Yeah, you've just, you've over-trained your brain.

Yes. Like there's athletes who can't settle down until they've gone for a run. Yeah, a bit like that. This makes me sound like I'm talking about myself like I'm a really intelligent wanker. I'm not really that intelligent. My brain just does a bunch. I mean, I am very. She is intelligent.

I'm also very intelligent, but not because of this. This just means my brain is like a bunch i mean i am very intelligent i'm also very intelligent but not because of this this just means my brain is like does stuff it's not smooth i don't have a smooth brain i don't think a smooth brain is a sign of intelligence joe no i know it was something stupid god i think that was fucking due by friday we're a bit philosophical though we're talking about meditation i want to talk about philosophy and volavance philosophy and volavance i just wanted to say the word my favorite my favorite a level i've been better than philosophy and ethics it's when they're at the party um you know the murder party murder party popped into a party to kill a king um i like it when death is just frustrated about something

incredibly mundane that humans do yeah because he has watched all of human existence like he can and he is so eternal yeah but fucking why like you have such limited time and then this is great dying of the plague and you're looking at the salmon and the is why are you mincing these things up and putting them in little the salmon and the is why are you mincing these things up and putting them in little pastry cases and again talking about dull repetitive kitchen jobs i have a buffet coming up i have i'm gonna have to make like 50 fucking blinis oh i'm sorry and i fucking hate making blinis i really want something in puff pastry right now they do uh so i always keep some emergency puff pastry in my freezer oh you're so smart i'm a genius also like it's not that hard to make if you've got flour and butter come the pandemic caused apocalypse i'm coming to

your house i'll bring cans of beans or whatever but pastry please yeah no that's cool also like i've always got flour and yeast and i'm getting a lot better at making bread yeah me too oh we'll do some bread oh that'd be nice oh we'll have an apocalypse and we'll do some bread we'll make some bread and we'll like have some dips yeah we'll just like i've got chickpeas we can make doll oh it'll be really nice we'll do just a little apocalypse yeah lots of things darling lots of things lots of little bits and then we'll die yeah well fed okay cool sorry um like with the coronavirus we really do have to nail these plans down, even if it's live on the mic. So yeah, so I just I love death's philosophy around like putting a cherry in a drink, making vol-au-vent.

And he talks about how humans have only got a few years in this world. They spend them all making things complicated for themselves. Yeah. And if there was anything that fucking sum that up, it's a fucking chicken and mushroom vol-au-vent. themselves yeah and if there was anything that fucking sum that up it's a fucking chicken and mushroom voluvant do you ever get those moments just sit where that kind of hits you when you've been stressing about something big in your life as it is but so small in your life as a whole and so small when you look outside your own life one of the things i do when i'm trying to gain perspective is think about how i would explain it to someone 500 years ago like because one of my jobs is doing social media stuff which i don't know if you've noticed i've been really lax with the podcast because i've been

busy well i haven't noticed because i'm even more laxer okay even more laxer hi guys if you tweet us we are there we're just tired we're not there i am there are you i still have the app okay no i do still check stuff i've not been that bad i just haven't tweeted anything that's fine just leave like a stick a note under the door or the twitter equivalent and we'll get to it we will um if the post piles up too much do you do you think the milkman will call somebody i hope so before we start to smell fingers crossed right sorry moving on from our metaphorical deaths which how can we oh yeah apocalypse the point is so like one of my wasn't even the apocalypse we were just talking about volavonts

i simultaneously hate volavonts and really want a fucking volavont right now i love hate pays for a relationship. Schrodinger's canapé. Yeah, so when I'm stressed and my job is making me miserable, I think about how I would explain it to someone 500 years ago. So one of my jobs is social media. And I just think if I try to explain to someone in the Tudor era that I'm really, really stressed because i put an

arrow in the wrong place on a newsletter and like it's not life or death or i forgot to email off an invoice like you do you know when you get a task i literally have forgotten to do that yeah no sorry i'm breaking down my hand that's cool i need to do that no i have forgotten to do one and it's now five days late which like is fine whenever i send it the dude will just pay me it's a very chilled relationship yeah but i've built it up into my brain now with something i can't do oh no do you want me to do it for you no it's fine i'll do it i will do it okay i'll text you later when i do mine i have a morning tomorrow for little admin jobs okay like a lab min morning oh it's not nearly as fun as little plates well no but it's less washing up another thing i do

was like not so much like jobs I haven't done or whatever, but if something's happened and it feels really bad, and, like, you're, like, obsessing over it and overthinking of it, and you know you are, I try and imagine, like, in five years, is this even a pub story? Oh, that's a good one, actually. And if it is, then make a pub story, and that's fun. And if it isn't, like, okay, this isn't even worth a fucking pub story never mind yeah i because i will obsess over tiny things that happened five years ago yeah but in five years would it make a

good pub story is a really good benchmark for should i obsess over it which is cool now i can write off like five things that have been lurking in my brain and then of course there's always the just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and sorry yeah let's talk about death getting grumpy yeah i i just thought it was quite funny that death is all grumpy about wanting an afternoon off like i'm gonna be reasonable and give him an afternoon off but i don't see why he needs an afternoon off have i not looked after him doesn't he have clothes i mean fine fine go and have an afternoon off it's like super passive aggressive partner kind of stuff in your own time too is there anything else i may be able to assist you with before you leave

for this debauch throughout all the books death's voice is all always very tombstones and i can only really hear it yeah and then saying like and in your own time too he added sourly and just trying to imagine this clanging sonorous voice being sour about somebody leaving like if you have lips you'd sort of pout a little bit yeah yeah oh pouty death oh that was funny and then uh a little later when we met the robbers oh yes no it's a like it's a a proto uh what's it pin and tulip pin and tulip um but people who don't quite swear but they pronounce effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes as Patrick puts it well me he said. Ing wizard.

I hate ing wizards. You shouldn't them them. Yeah, so those are my little bits that I rather like, and I don't have anything more to say about them. I dislike them. They're little bits. What are you going to do about it? Fight me.

Sorry. Talking points. Talking points. I mean, we were talking about hiring fairs. Yes. Which are a cool thing thing they're a cool thing so this comes up right at the beginning of the books this is how death hires mort hiring fair um and this has its roots in reality uh probably across other parts of the world but england is the bit I was able to look into. Yeah.

They were introduced by Edward III as part of regulating the labour market after the Black Death, which killed like 30 to 40% of the population. Ah. Which fucks your labour market a bit, turns out. Turns out. They're also called mop fairs because several different possible reasons but i quite like the idea that the little talismans uh or tassels as they're also known so the bit of wool or the uh bit of straw that kind of described the different uh trades as having them

were called either tassels or mops oh hence mop furs yeah or possibly it's because non-skilled servants would carry a mop head instead of anything else yeah fair enough to like say like i can clean i come up yeah i can do something but i like the idea of these little tassels called mops yeah uh and uh what i didn't know at all was uh some british hold them. Really? But not really. They're kind of themed funfairs. Oh, right. It's like Tewksbury holds one, which is a funfair, which is organised by the Showman's Guild of Great Britain,

which I'd never heard of and don't have time to look in properly right now, but it kind of sounds like a union for like travelling showmen. Oh, that's really cool. Which looks fucking amazing. So we need to look into that. Yeah, we definitely do. So, yeah, I basically thought I was charmed by the idea of a hiring fair and looked it up and was pleased to find that Pratchett had pretty much

faithfully based this off something pretty cool in our past. One of the things I thought was interesting is the list of occupations. Masons, farriers, assassins, mercers, coopers, hoodwinkers and ploughmen. Hoodwinkers, what's a hoodwwinker i didn't look hoodwinker up i assumed hoodwinker was probably something to do with birds because that's where the word hoodwink comes from so yeah so hoodwinkers i didn't look up it was mercers and coopers that i hadn't heard as occupations at all mercers were cloth merchants and coopers uh worked repairing barrels i didn't i was um because i had a bunch of uh editing on a script i didn't check out the full etymology of both yeah is that so like a hen coop i wonder if a hen coop's like a hen barrel or whether like a barrel

is like a beer coop they both got latin origins was as far as i got and then i realized i was going down a rabbit hole and i stopped and then i realized i was going down a rabbit hole and i stopped right because i was only on page 15 of the book yes we're learning we're learning as always readers on an albatross to our castle full of snacks which we haven't got yet guys i'm so hungry readers i'm so hungry and not in a castle i'm so not in a castle actually one of our lovely listeners on twitter did link us to a really nice looking castle that I feel like we should just go and see if we can record an episode in. Oh, what's the budget?

Oh, wait, we can't have the castle. I thought it was like one of those French chateaux that come up occasionally for three francs. You know what I mean? Yeah, right. France, we're not buying. Place in the country. Here, this is slightly outside your budget.

You know what I mean. Yeah, right. Place in the country. Here, this is slightly outside your budget. Massive Scottish castle for a weirdly low price because the wall's falling off. Bit of a fixer-upper. Also, it's haunted. And haunted.

But look at all the room for snacks. And if you go with this mortgage deal, then they do throw in an exorcism with the valuation. Oh, yeah, so talking about the whole series kind of this is where it starts really coming into its own and it's building blocks of their footnotes are another big one oh yeah we start getting more and more footnotes throughout the book and they're all really silly interesting world building facty footnotes which are my favorite kind read me one um we've talked before about how light's described and it's slow and it's

slushy always gets a lovely description. I tried to keep one out of this episode. Practically anything can go faster than disk light, which is lazy and tame, unlike ordinary light. The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Leighton Weedle. He reasoned like this. You can't have more than one king. And tradition demands that there is no gap between kings. So when a king dies, the succession must therefore pass the hair instantaneously presumably he said there must be some elementary particles

kingons or possibly quions that do this job but of course succession sometimes fails if in mid-flight they strike an antiparticle or republican his ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal were never fully expounded because at that point the bar closed. It just gets steeper and steeper and steeper until like. It almost feels like a test of like I'm going to see how long someone sticks with. Because people don't always read footnotes. There are people that don't read footnotes. What?

I don't know how much. I think Pratchett like the Discord books are well known enough for the footnotes that i don't know how much i think pratchett like the discord books are well known enough for the footnotes that people read them but there are people who just in books like like don't read footnotes what if you miss something it's like um have you ever actually read the princess bride no okay it's amazing but is it genuinely like i know the film is so hyped but the book is really good the reason the book is so good is you know in the film it uses like a framing device of an old dude reading a book to a kid so the idea in the book is that someone had this book read to him as a kid by his father yeah sought out a copy of it like

the person writing william goldman sought out a copy of it and found that actually it's incredibly long and dull and dry and about history and his father was truncating it and just putting the story so the release book is just full of all these oh i cut this bit it's really dull all of these interjections um and it's really funny it makes it a much better cleverer book i mean it's by william goldman who's like an amazing screenwriter as well and yeah and obviously he made all this stuff up like he just wrote the whole thing it's not truncated from a actual old history yeah okay that does sound good i might try and read that then but i had someone who i lent it he made all this stuff up. Like he just wrote the whole thing. It's not truncated from a actual old history book. Yeah, yeah. Okay, that does sound good.

I might try and read that then. But I had someone who I lent it to and she skipped all the bits and italics. And I was like, but they're why it's good. I don't love The Princess Bride. I mean, okay, the movie's great, whatever. Dread Pirate Roberts is hot.

But I deeply love The Princess Bride as a book because it's so... You had too many sexual awakenings for one girl i'm not going to continue this thread any longer well i had to do it for all of the genders i've decided to give up on there's so many and yet also none shreding his gender right the monarchy thing yeah i just listened to quite an interesting episode of the Omnibus, which is a podcast, I guess. I'm not going to recommend to you

because you just get angry now, but it's really good. It's got John Roderick. So many podcasts, Francine. But they did an episode on London Bridge Has Fallen. Do you know what that means? It is the media code for when the Queen dies. Yes.

So basically, they just went through all the things that will happen when the queen dies i read a guardian long read on that oh did you oh cool yeah yeah it's fascinating yeah it is like prince charles or then king charles immediately will have to like the day after his mum dies go out and do a million meet and greets and yeah yeah it's shake hands and god it's ridiculous monarchy is weird yeah weird yeah for a proper lefty i'm not as republican as i should be just because i find it so fucking interesting i find it weirdly fascinating i love i love arcane and archaic and stupid rules yeah as long as they don't apply to me yeah sorry tangents less tangent this is a depressing one actually oh um oh yeah no oh do we have to just just let's go

quickly death notices someone basically throwing a bag of cats in the river and he goes to the bag and and he sends the kittens very gently off to their rest and it's very sad it's so early in the book it's page 27 in my copy the amount that does to humanize this anthropomorphic personification. Yeah. Who is meant to be emotionless. Who constantly says no there's no justice. It's just me. And give him a moment of getting very angry at something needlessly cruel.

Yeah. I think is a really really wonderful way to build this character. Who is meant to not care. And who does really find himself caring quite often. And it's very human in more than one way because I think a lot of us, and I've heard it said this is a particular phenomenon in England, but I think worldwide it's quite difficult to maintain a base level of empathy for all the horrible things that are happening in the world because there's just so much yeah exactly and yet when you hear about one case of animal cruelty or something that's what makes you break down and cry and it's like

the representation of the horrible yeah cruelty and what humans are capable of on innocence that goes on all over the place and it is just it's distilled when it's a an animal who can't understand what's going on what yeah like yeah and i think yeah so i hate this bit of the book and it's very good i hate it but it is very good and i like that death has this ongoing relationship with cats yeah Yeah. Cats can see him. Yeah. And generally they're very nice about it. And there's a very respectful relationship between death and cats. Yeah. Yeah. Mutual respect going on.

Yes. It's very politely nodding to each other in a way where it doesn't horrifically anthropomorphize the cats. Yeah. Cats are cats. Yeah. They're not cute. And Pratchett writes cats very well. Yeah. And I can't wait to get to the not cute. Pratchett writes cats very well.

And I can't wait to get to the one book where Pratchett really writes cats well. I've got to stop talking about... Which is what? No, Amazing Morris. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I Believe You. And I believe lots of interesting things. Because it's an interesting book that uses power of belief as a theme again.

Segway! Oh, nice. I thought you were going to go that neil gaiman monologue there i believe in i can believe in things that are true and things that aren't true and i can believe in things where nobody knows if they're true or not listen i can believe in elvis and the easter bunny and santa and i can believe in a horse at the top of a tower i used to be able to do the whole speech but i think it's got finally strolled out of my brain. I might relearn it. Uh-huh. Tell me about the thing you like.

Oh, yeah. Horse in a Tower. It's just this fun little conversation. This is when they're in their... They've gone to the party to kill the king. Or not kill the king, but supervise his death, I suppose. Supervise. I like that. And Mort's asking, like, won't people notice there's a death on top of the castle

it's like and people don't want to see it because of course it couldn't be a horse at the top of the tower so why would you see a horse at the top of the tower exactly yeah and i like like we've talked so much about pratchett playing with the theme of belief and it comes back again and again in so many books but what he does with it here where the things that theoretically aren't real become so much more solid and real. Yeah. Like, realer than reality. Which is more of a theme as we get on to part two and three of the book. Sorry, swords.

Kings get the sword. That is the royal prerogative, not scythe, as Death mentions while getting his sword out to kill the king. Also, there's a bunch of history around this, isn't there? Europe. Executions, and who gets an axe and who gets a sword out to kill the king. Also, there's a bunch of history around this, isn't there? Europe. Executions and who gets an axe and who gets a sword. Yeah, so it differs by country and time period and all of that, obviously.

Hello. The one that came up most obviously when I was researching it was France. Yeah. Before the invention of the guillotine, members of nobility were executed via axe or sword right which in theory was better than the commoners death of hanging yeah uh in reality if you were hanged well with a big drop you could die instantly and if you were executed

with a sharp thing that wasn't sharp enough it could be extremely painful and take several chops as uh mary queen scott yeah that she was three chops wasn't she uh amberlynn was executed by a sword which was a out of character um dignity like yeah granting of dignity by a husband which i suppose we should put in perspective was while he was having a kill so but wasn't that also something to do with uh you had to be like a king or queen for a sword uh but if you were just royal it had to be an axe so anne got the sword because she had been crowned as queen as well as marrying henry the eighth i couldn't find anything along those lines okay maybe i had massively misremembering. No, because you're not because I've heard that before. Yeah.

And I'm not sure if possibly that's just more obscure knowledge than the level I got to or whether it's a nice narrative that got repeated or what. Yeah, it might just be a fallacy. I'm not quite sure. We should probably put that in homework or can someone else do that for me, please? Yeah, historians

listening to the podcast, thanks. Yeah, so amblin got beheaded with a sword um but in in france anyway uh after the latest revolution i think um having only one method of civil execution was seen as like um an expression of equality among citizens so everyone got the guillotine from there until 1981 which is the same year the first star wars movie came out great no no way to ruin my fact for star wars okay no no which was when the death sentence was finally outlawed in france no i only because i remember like it's one of those weird things like time compression time period like the last public execution by guillotine was the same year as star wars coming out yeah that is pretty weird actually yeah it's the same thing like oh what was it like queen cleopatra lived closer to now than when the pyramids were built yeah yeah um woolly mammoths are in there

hugo and theresa some friends of ours own a fantastic book which i really want to get either a copy of that or a copy of something similar which is like a i'm not sure even how to say it's like a lateral timeline kind of thing where you can like compare all these things all these different civilizations and their kind of timelines are lined up on top of each other so you can say like because you know like uh the fucking what is it incas were around at the same or aztecs whichever was closest was around at the same time that oxford university was being founded and yeah because there was a whole thing about um uh in one of the history podcasts i listened to something about mayan tribes still practicing

cannibalism into the 1800s and yeah uh what was one of the other cool ones i was oh yeah so i was that history podcast you're dead to me had a really interesting episode on neanderthals the other day oh with tim mitchin i've got that lined up yeah it's really good but one of the interesting things they talked about was the history of aboriginal culture and the fact that there's evidence that there are these song cycles still sung today that talk of geography being so different that they must be at least 15 000000 years old. Like this is the world's oldest civilization. With a continual verbal history. Colonialism fucked it. Yeah.

But potentially contemporary with Neanderthals still being a thing. Oh, that's mental. God, isn't time weird? If we ever do the Long Earth, which we really should at some point, the Trolls songs. Oh, yeah. And the different versions of humanity and anthropods we should talk about the long earth at some point because i'm still not sure how i feel about them as books i fucking love them so much um but that's very much to do with

my particular i love that kind of sci-fi and less to do with i love how this is written explicitly although i do but yeah i love them but i love them less for the writing anyway anyway yeah yeah tangent and that's all i have to say about executing people with salt okay how do you feel about compassion rather than pleasure because that's in the notes and i don't remember writing it oh that's me sorry yeah okay i forgot to put f it's fine i just wanted to make sure i hadn't like accidentally referenced buffy again well what reference to buffy would that have been jesus i don't know probably something to do with me wanting to bang giles sorry anyway so mort tries to save the king's life oh yeah because he does he's a nice boy yeah uh And when he's kind of getting a very gentle ticking off from death afterwards,

says, are you going to send me home? And death reached down and swung him up behind the saddle. Because you showed compassion? No. I might have done had you shown pleasure, but you must learn the compassion proper to your trade. Oh, yeah. But yeah, the idea that...

Compassion is not something to be punished, but enjoying... Enduring something is not the same as enjoying something. Feeling compassion doesn't mean you have to act in a reactionary way. It's a very stoic way of looking at things, which Death, I believe, embodies quite well, for lack of a better word. Death embodies quite well, and his relationship to compassion shifts throughout the book like we're talking about character growth but death goes through a whole arc in this oh yeah yeah um and even gets his own flashes of

villainy and for like i said for an emotionless anthropomorphic personification with no glands, he gets very emotional. Very glandular. What a glandular skeleton. Yeah, I don't really have a lot to say about that, but I figured it was a profound enough statement that it belonged in talking points rather than little bits. It is a beautiful thought. And also, you know, we were talking about Morton what makes him so special and why death picks him out and i think that's part of it yeah is that he you can see that the boy's got the capacity for compassion and not cruelty because obviously you know for again meant to be emotionless but not death is infuriated by cruelty you look at that moment with the kittens i suppose it's like a

it's like more more of the same as the volavon thing almost like why you have so little time why would you spend it drowning kittens and making volavons what's wrong with you why would you do it's just why because you know you can see throughout the book that death's kind of frustrated he can't have his human life yeah or he can't have a human life because he's this eternal immortal outside of the world being and you and you can see it with him getting frustrated at humans that they have these opportunities and this is what they freaking do with it. Yeah. Aren't we a terrible, terrible species? God, we're awful. Burn us all. Yay, COVID-19.

Sorry. We'll stop wishing for a plague now. I still want immortality. Yeah, no, okay, fine. You can have immortality and I will join you. I will make vol-a-vonts. Yay. Because we'll have all of time.

Pastry, pastry, pastry. All of time for you to finally teach me how to make puff pastry fuck I don't know if I've got the patience I barely have the patience to make puff pastry that's why I buy it okay cool

talking of food so this is more interrupting the Klatchian family's dinner and pretending to be a demon and they're sort of trying to work out like do we feed you do we like i'll be mistaken at for a demon i think rather than pretending to be one at first yes spawn of offal's loins i love the word loins so basically he appears for a wall in a magic-y fashion and the family in there think he's a demon yes and they really want to feed him and they're

you know dishing out their offerings and the husband then sells him the patrician's champion racehorse um but i think this is again we keep going back to this whole thing of this book being such a big building block for what the disc world becomes is building the other cultures around the disc yeah where like in the first two books especially whenever we visit anywhere outside of ink more pork it's kind of piss take generic fancy locations that don't come back again crack we i think we talked about klatch and how it's a sort of silly made-up thing we yeah go to krull and the great nef and yeah there's sort of a couple of things but this is like okay klatch is another country and it's close enough to have immigration with act more pork yeah

which um has echoes of the middle east and and a certain type of food and a certain type of culture a certain system of belief and this idea of wanting to return to the old country yeah and not having to um work as waiters for wicked masters yeah and then and obviously the there's the round world parallels to that yeah um but yeah and and there's a couple of other cultures we meet later on in the book that again set up for books down the line yeah like this stuff has huge payoffs later on but just the fact that he's thinking about it as a whole world and not just as a bunch of fantasy allegories you can like it's like the the engine stuttered for the first few books and now now the chainsaw's running yeah you can see it rolling yeah which is where like

maybe when we talk about sorcery i'll get a bit frustrated because i think it i feel like it goes back a bit. But that's not the book we're on. No, but I can see what you mean already by saying that. I think that was all I really had for this section. OK, cool. But yeah, I really enjoyed coming back to the book. I did. And I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

Genuinely am. Oh, it's a good one. Oh, it is a good one. Oh, it is a good one. So let's finish with an obscure reference. Have you got an obscure reference, Finial? I do. I do. Glacial erratics.

All right, let's go with a bad name. Glacial erratics. Glacial erratics. What are glacial erratics, Francine? Well, death says that Stolak Castle is on top of a rock left by a retreating glacier. On Round World, these are called glacial erratics, which is a fantastic name. Yeah. But obviously, as most of us know, I guess, the Ice Age covered a good portion of the world, which is now not ice, you know, ice.

good portion of the world which is now not ice in ice and as those glaciers came forward and then retreated they carved bits through the earth and they left bits of rock where they shouldn't be and that's why we like going generally confused the mammoths yes um and yeah one of those in this case would have been stolak castle and glaciers on Discworld are kind of driven by giants. And in this world, I've never seen a glacier driven. Maybe it's driven by giants as well. I think we've got ice giants. But yeah, there's a few famous ones. There's an erratic in Alberta, Canada, known as Big Rock, which claims to be the biggest, but isn't.

Inventive. Yep. That's why I mentioned it. Okay, so is the actual biggest one called Bigger Rock? No. Oh. The biggest one I could find note of is called Cooking Lake brackets number six Mega Block,

which is the name of my first indie album. Cool. There's another one in Germany that might be bigger, but the Mega Block one covers an area of at least four square miles. Jesus. So at first I was thinking perhaps this Stolat one was like overblown over the top because it's ice giant. But no, they weren't that big. But no, yeah, they could get that big.

Yeah. And also it's a fun chance to mention there's a nearby village to us which has a big boulder in the village green which is known as the that village name rock because we live in suffolk which is very flat and very non-rocky and so like a few hundred years ago these villagers found this what i imagine is a glacial attic i'm guessing and we're like wow that's a big rock and put it in the village green and like it's on the village sign and everything big stupid rocks big stupid rocks yeah uh suffolk fucking suffolk i get so sick of suffolk sometimes it is such a ridiculously flat county and i still haven't found a flint with a hole in it have you not no i've been walking around kicking flints for months now this lovely dog and i still haven't found my

my lucky flint with a hole in oh it'll be a happy day when i do it's nearly wild garlic season oh it is wild garlic season i'll tell you for that because the whole fucking footpath smells like garlic brilliant right going foraging yeah have you noticed have you actually seen no but i can smell it okay i can smell it if it'll be just in into the wood bit that i don't go into yeah okay cool um so back the back of mind of course school oh that whole bit yeah so like the very outskirts of it was in the bannatyne hotel that kind of bit yeah cool i might next time i've got a day off go for a walk sorry this is uh hardwood keith had a really good crop last year i haven't been up there for a

couple weeks there's like a little patch up the river uh my old running route um that but i don't know how much is still there um which bits good to eat you can kind of eat the whole thing if you're careful and wash it but i'm not going to give super advice on the podcast until i've checked because i didn't go pick any last year so it's been like two years since i've actually cooked okay i've got a whole like foraging book and yeah we should like learn how to forage properly this summer so that come the apocalypse we have pastry and vegetables yeah that's a good idea okay awesome right I think that's basically it yeah yeah I think why have I just written queer domain I don't know that wasn't I don't think that had anything to do

with what we were talking about so okay I've got no idea why i wrote down queer domain i think maybe it was a description of something and you liked the idea of it and that's your gay bar no queer i doing death domain oh yeah queer domain sorry dad love your sexting there we go i'm totally queer i domain that's better i'm totally gonna know what that means queer domain is a really good gay bar name right oh my god yeah let's open a gay bar post-apocalypse post-apocalypse gay bar yay right okay um outro please i'm so hungry and tired i'm so sorry francine i don't know why i'm apologizing it's not you it's that microphone it's that fucking microphone oh yeah okay right episode without apologizing invoice no you. No, you didn't.

I apologised less. Yeah, you did. You did apologise less. Invoice. Mic. Order. Right, I need to do those things before I go to sleep. Okay, great.

Right. Thank you for listening to The Truth Shall Make You Fret. You're welcome. Francine, you're not listening yet. You're looking at me. Sorry, should I address the outro to the dog's one ear that's on alert? Yeah. Thank you for listening to The Truth Shall Make You Fret. We'll be back next week with part two of a discussion on Mort,

which will take us from, in the original paperback, page 75 to page 179. So the section starts with by myself said Malt certainly I have every faith in you see I've been trying really hard to not quote death and ends with death saying I must be sickening for something so that'll be part two

in the meantime you can follow us on Instagram at thetreeshellmakeyefret you can find us on Twitter at makeyefretpod follow us on Facebook at thetreeshellmake make you fret or you can email us with your thoughts queries castle snacks and albatrosses uh the truth shall make you fret pod at gmail.com please remember to rate and review us because it helps other people find the podcast um okay cool so thank you very much social media might happen again one day. If it doesn't, maybe prod Joanna. Make sure she's okay.

I will, I will. I've just had a busy week. Right. Sorry. I'm trying enthusiasm. So tired. And with that. And with that, dear listeners.

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