The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 17: The Power of Belief (I Know Some Things About Horses)

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel have emerged from Discworld and are now exploring the worlds of speculative fiction. This week, we revisit a Very Important Theme: The Power of Belief. Gods! Stories! POWER!Find us on the internet:BlueSky: @makeyefretpod.bsky.socialInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretDiscord: https://discord.gg/29wMyuDHGP Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on BlueSky @2hatsjo and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Uffington White Horse - WikipediaThe legend of Wayland's Smithy - A Bit About Britain  "Arepo built a temple in his field . . ." - series of tumblr posts about a small god Reader's Guide to Terry Pratchett: Volume one 1962-1999 - Marc’s websiteMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

We're ready to play Uno and really, really get aggressive about it. I went and visited a practice destination. You went to see something rather large and chalk-based, didn't you? I did, and sadly for everybody, it was the white horse rather than the giant penis man. Sir and Abbott Giant. That's what I said. Yes, no, I went to see the Uffington White Horse on my birthday, which I wanted to go see the horse for a long time, obviously.

and that was very, very cool. Quite a lot of cool landscape bothering. Anyway, went up the Rican, and structure. Didn't you go to a barrow? Went to a barrow, Wayland Smitty, yeah. So it's like five minutes down the road from the Efton White Horse. It's a very significant, with a Catalyst part of the world, I suppose.

Don't enjoy driving around it, tell you that for free, but walking around it is gorgeous. Yeah, very pretty walks, small, windy, terrifying roads. Small windy, terrifying roads, full of men in white ven who know them very well and get crossed with you if you're not going 60. I'm sorry you had to suffer that.

But you saw a horse. I did. Some of it, parts of it. The thing is about this horse, as I think Jacqueline Simpson or Terry Pratchett pointed out in that Uffington white horse fit in the folklore of this world

is that you can't really see it unless you're quite high up. Therefore, you know, it must have been built for the gods or dirigible. Absolutely. One of those. Less exciting. So today, got my groceries this morning.

Fantastic. Great story. There is more to the story than just that. Oh, okay, sorry, carry on. I'll stop being supporters. So I ordered peppers, specifically like four loose peppers, and I got my email with the subs, and it said that they didn't have those, and they said I was getting a pack of peppers, and I thought, that's fine. I'm not emotional about that situation at all. And then the guy actually turned up, and they had replaced my four loose peppers

with four packs of peppers. So I have a lot of packs of peppers. But the best bit is you get a text telling you the name of the person, bring your order, and it was Peter. And so assuming he picked the delivery as well, Peter the Packer picked four packs of peppers. Yes. A plasticed peppers.

Peter the Packer picked four packs of plastic peppers. Well done. Good. New Tang Sister, based in reality, as all of the best ones are. As all of the best ones are. Red, all the best ones are. Red, all the final fit. Lough Flanelth.

Oh, I've deteriorated in six years. I used to be able to say that. Red, Lorry, Yellow, Lurys, Lough Flanelford. That's fantastic. I've been working on my diction for the audiobook. Do the listeners know what audiobook? Or should we just let them believe that it's an audio book of the podcast? The most pointless enterprise.

Literally the most pointless thing that could ever exist. Who have you hired to play me? Anne Hathaway. Oh, perfect. Thank you. I'm playing this up. expensive what is ultimately going to be a huge loss-making exercise. But sometimes you just have to. Yeah, exactly. It's worth it. I'm playing me, but I'm not doing a great job, so I might recast myself with Olivia Coleman.

Yeah, I love it. Let's make it really dramatic. Yeah, very intense. I think two of the actresses were the most beautifully expressive faces for this audio-only medium. Yes, perfect. No, listens, we are not making an audiobook of the podcast. Oh, yeah, in case that didn't tip you off. Yeah, just in case you were wondering. I can't remember if I've talked about this in any of the soft opens yet, actually. I am in a full cast audiobook. I am narrating the bureaucrats guide to heroism,

which is a very fun little book. It's a lit RPG, Western. Lit, sorry. It's a lit RPG. Kind of in it as a Kai story. It's very fun. Heroism? Heroism?

One of those. You're narrating. I don't actually have to say the title. I was like, are you in the ancient stone bothering group on Facebook? No, but I feel like I should be. Yeah, no, you definitely. All right, can you send me a thing for that?

Yes, certainly. Cool, that's quite retro, isn't it? Sending someone an invite to a Facebook group? Yeah. It feels like I've taken up my quill and which actually have done for you. I've got a small pile of envelopes from when we exchanged letters briefly.

Oh yeah, our lockdown letter writing I've got a pile of envelopes from you Yours are really pretty You did like interesting folds And painted them with watercolours Oh, did I? Well, do you But we all did lovely wax seals and such

We all did lovely, we got very wanky with it briefly Absolutely did, yeah Well, creating a fictional world of spycraft And also mountain and forest kingdoms Great, yeah Do I want to go back and read these Or is it going to be like reading teenage diaries? I'm choosing to...

Oh no, it's right, because they're from you and my way to read my own nonsense. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Am I going to have to bleep out his name? Well, I'm drawing attention to it now, so yes. All right, never mind. Burn the entire podcast down. We'll start again with the audio. It's fine. We've got another copy on the audio book. It's voiced by Anne Hathway and Olivia Coleman. Can you give you some character notes? It's just, none of this seems to make any sense. Do you not remember that month? I texted you and I was like, it's really weird. I just haven't stopped crying for five days.

Yeah. I'm not feeling any emotions with it. It's just my eyes are leaking. Yeah, no. Absolutely no emotions. My face is constantly wet. It's really weird. On the plus side.

Look at the 80 yards of pink chool I hand pleated. I mean, you certainly did. I definitely hand pleaded 80 yards of pink chule. On that note, Francine. Yes. I'm sorry, have you got something important to that. No, nothing useful. It's fabric-based.

That bodes well for the rest of the episode. On that note, Francine, would you like to make a podcast? I would love to make a podcast, let's see. Hello and welcome to The True Show Make You Fred, a podcast in which we were reading and recapping every book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and I was strolling down the corridors of speculative fiction. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today we are doing another theme revisit episode, and we're diving into the power of belief. Because we had to eventually, inevitably, inexorably.

Indubitably. Yes. Because Joanna's been driving us here for the last six years. Six and a half years. Six and a half years. Anyway, note on spoilers before we dive in. We are a spoiler-like podcast, but obviously we're going to be talking about a lot of books today. So there are potential spoilers. We will avoid mentioning any of the big story details in The Shepherd's Crown. But I would assume if you've got to this point with us, you've probably read most of the Discworld books already. Yeah. Yeah. I would say this is more spoiler-heavy than most. Again, no shepherd's crown, but yes, almost everything else. Yes. We're actually going to go through very rapid fire all of the Discwell books. Yeah, just spoiler after spoiler after spoil.

Just spoiler the major plot points. And then we'll start talking about the power of belief. Speaking of, Francine, what happened previously on the truth shall make he fret? Well, Joanna. And yeah, it's a fun theme that Terry Pratchett does a lot, is how powerful belief is. Because there's an interesting book that uses power of belief as a theme again. Segway. This idea of making gods and the power of belief.

And then the power of belief links into that, obviously. Power of belief slash faith in general for a fucking bullet point. The stuff about the power of belief that I really loved in this section. Power of belief, evil edition. Foreshadowing is cool. And, ooh, the power of belief. Power of belief. Power of belief. My favorite theme that Pratchez uses, it's power of belief.

And this also ties us back into the power of belief, which, you know, power of belief. And now we can use the power of belief however we want. Sorry, I really need to say power of belief there. Absolutely, that's good. That's fine. You know, I sometimes talk about the power of belief as a thing, not often, obviously, because... I barely heard you mention it. Power of belief. The power of belief.

Power of belief, but make it gloopy. How to thicken my power of belief? The power of belief, perhaps. Call that power of belief, it's not power of belief, that's a spoon. Mark off power of belief on your bingo card. We're going to talk about the power of belief, rotson. Yeah, well done, Joanna. Talking about the power of belief.

I'm going to use the power of belief. It's all power of belief. If you can think of anything new to say about it, I will be impressed. In case you didn't know, dear listeners, we quite like talking about the power of belief. We certainly do, don't we do, Anna? Yeah, it's definitely both of us equally. I love listening about the power of belief. I'll give you that. I'll give you that.

All right, we're going to split us up into a couple of sections that will massively blur and overact, interact with each other. Overact, interact, overlap. That too. And interlap. I'm sorry, dear listeners, it's very hot. It's very hot again. I know we've been saying that for the last few episodes, but in our defence,

it's been very hot since May. It's now August. It has been very hot since May. You think they'll be used to it. I've got several ice packs in a bag on my feet. That's where I'm at right now. Unfortunately, I have my feet on a blanket, not under a blanket, but there is a blanket present.

Otherwise, my fabric boxes make noise. Anyway, let's start with gods on the disc. Yeah, let's start at the top. Let's start at the top. Something I've wanted to do. for ages. Something we talked about a lot as we were going through was when I started pointing out these books that echo each other.

Yes. And you get like a book and then you get another book that seems like it's reworking that. Like the watch series is a good example. Pratchett kind of tries the same plot two or three times. Yes. But one of the big ones I pointed out way, way back many centuries ago, was pyramids to small gods and how pyramids functions as a kind of proto-small gods. And when it comes to the power of belief,

Oh, ho. Well, we've got gods. two more belief-filled books than these two. They are both very belief-y. Also, sidebar, I did this when we did our Power of Gender episode last year. That what we called it. I don't think that's what I'm calling it now. Retroactively, I've renamed it.

But when we were doing that one, I pointed out, oh, I forgot equal rights was, had the fun quote about being born halfway up a wall. Oh, yeah. So as I'm revisiting another early one, I wanted to peel out another, I forgot this was this. It's very fun. Oh, go on. from pyramids.

Your great-great-grandmother once declared she was king as a matter of political expediency, and I don't believe the edict has ever rescinded. But she was a woman, though. Dios looked shocked. Oh, no, sire. She is a man. She herself declared this. So just thanks, Pratchett.

Early on, trans-rights, at least when it comes to the pharaohs. Do you know that Mariannezzanette's mother was, I think it was her mother, was crowned king? Was she? Because there was no legal precedent to have a queen. Ah, I didn't know that. Admittedly, my understanding in Mary Antoinette's history does largely come from the Sophia Coppola movie. No better source, I imagine, not having seen it.

And I did go to the really of VNA exhibition and got really excited when I saw the costumes from the Sophia Coppola movie. Anyway, so yeah, pyramids. Pyramids. Which has a particular, very neat little set-up for small gods that I feel like must have stuck as a little thing in Pratchett's brain, which is when Tepic and Tracy have gone on to a thieb. He found Tracy sitting on the grass under a poplar tree feeding the tortoise.

He gave it a suspicious look in case it was a god trying it on. It didn't look like a god. If it was a god, it was putting on an incredibly good act. I'm just saying tortoises is there somewhere, didn't it? Yeah. But yeah, this idea of pyramids is proto-small-gods. It was really fun reading them back to back. And one of the things I picked up as well was

pyramids sets up this idea, it's not, it's belief adjacent, it's not strictly belief, but this idea of things being static and unchanging being very problematic. Yes. So you have these lines and pyramids, people never learn anything in this place, they just remember. And Dios as the proto-Vorbis and as this idea of things must not change, things must be as they are. And Dios is a really interesting character because he's not an antagonist, oh, he's an antagonist, but he's not a villain. Yes. I think, yeah, belief adjacent is maybe underselling it a bit because it is, it's rooted in, we believe this is the only way to do things, therefore it must not change.

Yeah. And it's also rooted in fear. You know, fear is belief according to several practice books or belief is rooted in fear. Yeah, no, I think definitely the static, unchanging belief is its own. It's definitely something there. And Dios describes this as well. at some point he says shielded for all time against the insults of change.

Yes, yes. And it is from Dios, it's belief. It is incredibly powerful belief. He's powering the whole thing because you eventually get this end of cycle where time flares off and he's sent back to the beginning and basically starts preaching the gods again

and getting everyone to believe and it is what keeps him in an end of cycle, although Jellybaby itself is eventually free of it. Yeah. And I mean, he's like hundreds of years old, isn't he? We find out at the end. Yeah, he's been there. He has been there since the beginning. Yeah, yeah.

And then he goes back and starts doing it again. Yeah, he is very much like a... Is it proto-Vorbis or is it? Yeah, it's like a... Vorbis is what happens if Dios goes very wrong. Yeah, there's shared DNA. Yeah. Dioz is obviously also playing on

a bit of the sinister Grand Vizier trope. I mean, so it's Vorbis. it's a trope that Pratchett really likes we get plenty of sinister grand viziers I mean there's wanted sorcery there's Can you be a grand vizier if you're in charge? Oh no I suppose because if you're a head priest You're still yeah you're a

Yeah it's technically not right Neither of them are technically right at the top I mean Dios is in charge but under the king theoretically It's the what's it eminence eminence Greece Eminence Greece yeah Yeah

Do you know what I have no idea what the actual term is. I've only got Nanny Ogg's word for this. Yeah, it's Eminens Greece. We don't need another term for it. It's fine. But yeah, no, absolutely. Is it in pyramids where the Epibians are walking around

not really believing in the gods, just knowing they're there? It's in both, actually. There's bits of it, we go into Afib in both. Escaping the dry, dusty place we normally are and ending up in Afib and meeting philosophers is a story, is something that happens in both books with Tepic and with brother. Right, okay, yeah, so I am probably mixing them in my head.

Yes, the more of the walking around not bothering to acknowledge the gods because they're there is small gods. Right. We're very busy with axioms for a good chunk of pyramids. Very busy with axioms. What have been a good episode title. Sorry, darling, I can't come out today. I'm very busy with my axioms.

They need pruning. Yeah, that becomes like a... a running thing in both of them, this idea that believing in something is unnecessary because it's right in front of you. And it's something we get in the witch books as well. There's jokes about the witches don't need to bother believing in gods because it's like believing in the postman.

I feel like it might be right from the very beginning, the whole the initial descriptions of Aunt Walpork. Am I right in the colour of magic or maybe like fantastic? We're talking about Angmoreporkian's not not being particularly religious people. You know, they're just, the gods are. Yeah. I mean, because the gods are such,

huge part of the story in colour of magic because they're playing dice. Of course, yeah. They're playing around with the face of the universe. Quite literally, they're playing D&D with Rincewin and Two Flower. Yeah. And I think that's used later on as well as another game and it's Lady Luck or Fate puts Rincewin back on the board in interesting times. Yes.

And it's the idea of putting him in as he's like an agent of chaos in that book. But there's stuff with the gods in turning up in Aphib, because you get like them physically turning up in a feed when too many of the philosophers have got shouty in small gods and there's a really great running joke about the goddess of wisdom being represented by a penguin because it was supposed to be an owl but the carver didn't know what owls look like so he carved a penguin and now forever the goddess of wisdom I've got the the line here something one bad sculptor who had only ever had an owl described to him makes a mess of a statue belief steps in next thing you know the goddess of

wisdom is lumbered with a bird that wears evening dress the whole time and smells of fish. Oh, that must have been before I developed my fascination with medieval manuscript animals. Please. Otherwise, I'd remember it more clearly. Yeah, please draw me a medieval manuscript penguin front scene. Certainly. Thank you. I'll try and make it wise. As wise as you can make a penguin as you can make a penguin. Penguins get a bit of short shrift to be fair in that running joke. And I don't think they're unwise. No, I mean, it's the look of the thing, really. Owls aren't particularly clever birds. Oh, that's true. So I think it's the aesthetic, the people Do you think they're aesthetically unwise?

Yes. In the book. Think of Pingu. Okay, yes. I know, but it's an exaggerated version of. Yes, no, you're very right. I don't think they're the most aesthetically unwise bird. No, no, that's a baby pigeon.

That's true. I was thinking Seagull, but similar energy. Seagull can at least look quite noble, if static. You don't see them static very often, do you? No, you don't, no. If you see one moving towards you slowly, then you're not really thinking about how noble it looks, you're thinking about what's going to happen to the chips.

I'll tell you what could turn into a god very easily. Shoebill. Oh yeah, Shoebill. That look and that noise. Yeah. I'm immediately starting a cult around that. Well, let's do that after we've recorded an episode about the power of belief on the disc world. Oh, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. But yeah, so gods is an explanation for stuff that just happens. Yeah. And then it becoming, the way it gets literally paid off in pyramids is great. So Tepic knows that his father makes the sun come up and the river flood, because that's what Pharaoh's do. do. But does he just do it in the valley or everywhere in the world? And then when the gods

start properly manifesting in pyramids when a pyramid falls over, it got very weird at the end of that book. You then have... It did, yeah. You have four or five different myths about what makes the sun come up, fighting it out over the sun in the sky. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't matter how many contradictions you've got really until they're all there at once. Very much, though. Then it's probably... And this becomes something in Hogfather as well. well, you have this idea of this has to happen every year and the sun will not come up if it doesn't happen. And death obviously plays with the words in the end. He's like a mere flaming ball of gas would have illuminated the land.

And the difference between that and the sun coming up is quite an impressive idea. Yeah, it is, yeah. It's the whole what it means to be human thing, isn't it? It's giving identity to the cold chemical reactions. when I say cold, I mean unfathomably hot in this case, obviously. Yeah, and I've talked a lot about before going into like broader mythology, that something I love is the idea of all these stories that exist to provide reasons for things that we know happen. So seasonal myths, the idea of the season, spring and summer and autumn happening,

because Demeter's sulking over Persephone going off to the underworld for a bit. Well, somebody did the right Morris dance at the right time. Exactly. and there's myths like that all around the world and I think it's a lovely beautiful human thing that we tell each other stories about it and the fact that the stories aren't true in the like strictly scientific sense

doesn't mean it's not wonders that they exist and... Yeah, yeah. It is true that people believe this and that in itself is interesting and cool and powerful enough. Yeah, and I... Briefly popping off the disc

because you've got to pay a visit to Nation. Yep. There's quite a lot of gods in the show. Getting our Kelenot capsule and... And pop over to Nation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is in itself, you know, again, ties into the idea of we have stories, but the science behind them.

So the idea of the beer song in Nation, it works because you need to spit, and then you need to let the enzymes work for a certain amount of time, and that song is that amount of time. Yeah. And that science might have been forgotten, but it still works because we still have the story and because we still believe in the story.

and then you get these great moments of our main character, you know, freaking out about what the gods do or don't mean. And he's called out for it. Someone says, well, you shout and stamp and yell that there are no gods, but then you shake your fist at the sky and revile them for not existing. And you need them to exist, so the flames of your denial will warm you in your self-righteousness. Yeah. There's pulling his axe out of the tree as well.

That's the... Yes. There are like a headology bit of it all, isn't it? Yeah. It's what happens when. that handy story gets mixed up with unfortunate physics. My favourite type of physics. I like another kind of Discworld, Round World crossover.

I know a lot of that is Round World Discworld Crossover, but one that feels more real to me is Unseen Academicals and the Power of Belief making the Football game magical. In that real, like, possibly because it's a more modern-day equivalent for people, for those amongst us who didn't go to, mega churches or something. It's the only time where you see thousands of people really, really believing the same thing at the same time.

Which sidebar, I may have contributed to England not winning the World Cup. Oh, for goodness sake, well, I went to see my chemical romance at Wembley Stadium and this was, I think, the week before the semi-final that we had got to. And they played the song Ghost of You, which has the chorus never coming home. So I was part of many, many thousands of people in Wembley. Stadium, the home of British football shouting never coming home over and over again. Yeah. Hext it.

Might have hexed the England football team. But if we have, now no hexes are possible. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as they say, like, all that, even unfortunate ends the science experiments teach us something. Exactly. So we're going to work on.

It was incredibly scientific. Anyway, sorry, yes. But the football example is a really good one, this idea of that power of everyone chanting and having faith in something together. Yeah. And I feel like another kind of more rooted in reality one is in Monstrous Regiment where the Duchess is deified. Yeah.

So many people believe in her and pray to her that she has the power. And, you know, it's like the religious placebo, which you could argue all religion is, but it's a more grounded one. It's your theological equivalent of the coloured water that grinder gives out rather than anything grand. So I did, it's this. Now I feel like I've said that. I can't really try and reduce saints to that same thing.

But do you know what I mean? It's taking something more close to home and asking them instead of asking something so grand. Yeah, it's the idea of it becomes more believable because it's closer to home because there's a human element to it. I mean, the idea within like the Catholic faith of playing to saints is that you're praying for intercession. So rather than directly going to God, you're asking the saint to intercede on your behalf and you try and pray to. You have a word. Yeah. If you've got a minute, if you don't mind.

And you're praying to specific saints. Yeah. So I think then the idea is, let's be fair, it's been a while since I was Catholic. So we might be a bit loose on some of the theology is that, say, Christopher, patron saint of travel, can take a bunch of travel requests at once and then kind of go do it in a job lot. So I guess it makes it more efficient. But it is that idea of intercession. It's praying for something closer. It's playing to something human and therefore has some element of fallibility.

And so if you are demonstrating some fallibility and what you're praying for, it's more forgivable. Yeah. Yeah. In this case, the humanity of the person they are praying for and deifying is such that it just hurts her because she can't help. Yes. And there's probably some reasonably on the nose comparison to be made between that and the people we've deified as humanity in real life who can't do much about most of what we ask of them. Yes. But that will get really depressing. Yes, no, let's carry on to other less depressing things like death. Death. Which actually, to be fair, in this series of books, not always depressing.

Ritherman had one of my favorite quotes about the power of belief. Yeah. And I always forget because the bit you think of, well, obviously you think of the death of rats and all that stuff, do come out of Reithman. But when you think of, oh, yeah, the power of stuff making stuff out of other stuff, It's like the excess life force flossing around in Reaper Man. You get the snow globes and shopping malls. The snow globes and shopping malls. Terrible sequel to handbags and glad rags.

Dear windle poons. Snow globes, shopping malls and dear windle poons. Shit memoir. Anyway, oh my God, sorry. I'm making everything into a title for something that should never be. People get exactly the wrong idea about belief. They think it works back to front. they think the sequence is first object then belief.

In fact, it works the other way. Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiraling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggest that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. Perfect. And then it talks about how humans created death with a capital D. Yes. Not death like you stop living, but the personality.

of death, the psychopompom, the thing that makes it a little... Anthropomorphic personification. Thank you. Little toe hot to try and say that. And then you think about the actual, like a real overlap onto Roundworld actually, because within Discworld, death was brought into being by belief. And in Round World, weren't there many thousands of people who have written to practical practice the state about how the idea of death, the disc world,

while death has made the past, their loved ones for their own impending, that in some cases feel more bearable. Yeah, and so it has become something of a focus of belief for us as well. Yeah. And again, it's one of those things where the story matters, even if you really logically know that a skeletal man with a siph is not going to come for you at your final moments. I logically know nothing.

Oh, yeah, no, logically, I'm empty. No thought said empty. there's still comfort in the belief of it there's still comfort in the story it's a weird thing and a ridiculous thing but this idea that somehow through basically British Facebook

Paddington is now a fucking psychopomp Incredible stuff really isn't it the things we've turned our focus on in this age of the dead empire Paddington I mean it's better for everybody else than we do that It is better for everyone else. I'm not sure Paddington should be a psychopomp.

I'm not sure that's what he's best. Not what he's for. I suppose not. I quite like the slightly terrifying interpretations of it that I've seen. Well, they've just turned in very slightly sinister as a psychopomp. I think he could evolve. If you think of the British tradition of, is it British or Germanic of not saying the name of a bear? And you follow that to its conclusion.

Yes, the logical thing is for Paddington to be the Grim Reaper. I said that with enough confidence that I thought you might like to skim over it with me. But then I think listeners won't know. I think I ruined it by looking immediately guilty. Sadly, your face upset that one front scene. It so often does. There's a lot of interesting stuff as well about the idea of gods and humans ending up in like a symbiotic relationship. So you have, again, as early as Pyram is,

he didn't have anything against belief. People needed to believe in gods because it was so hard to believe in people. The gods were necessary. I also needed to get out of the way. This was very much, Dios. Have you read that, you might have even quoted it when we did support gods for all I know, read that lovely Tumblr, well, series of Tumblr posts about the Kien. Yeah, we'll repost it, we must have talked about it before,

I'll repost it and sing, but it's very, I would be surprised. if not inspired by small gods in some way, if not by the echoes of it through other. Yeah. I think it must be directly inspired because the idea of this small can of stones, which is where Om starts. It's one shepherd and a small can of stones.

And the shepherd doesn't last very long, but long enough. And by that point, there's lots of believers, and it spreads. Yeah. And then obviously we have the really important conversation from Hogfather as well, that I think is where Pratchett takes this idea

of belief and anthropomorphic personifications and gods and then crystallizes it so fucking neatly he could have never touched it again and then he still keeps touching it because he's just really good prodding. What do you think the power of belief feels like upon prodding? Slightly spongy. Yeah. Anyway, I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need fantasies to make life bearable.

There's no humans need fantasy to be. human to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. And this becomes us learning to believe the little lies so we can believe in justice, mercy, duty, that kind of thing. It is, and that bit in particular is echoed throughout Discworld, isn't it? I mean, in a very direct sense, we'll talk more about Tiffany later, but when she first defeats the Queen of the Fairies, she has momentarily this power that transcends human, the dreams that

coat human awareness, I suppose. And she says like the punishment is having to give this power back but at the same time that is the gift because, oh my God, you can't deal with this for very long. And then on a kind of lower level, Vimes and his canard. Yes. His natural two steps below sobriety.

That forces him to see far too much reality. Yeah. You need a bit more cushioning on him. Yeah, needs a little. helpful edge. Interestingly, I wouldn't say that Carrot, who has some very opposite personality traits, or certainly very different, maybe complementary contrast would be a better way of putting it. I wouldn't say is less clearly sighted.

It's just that he sees the same things, and sees the beauty in it more, I suppose. Yeah, I think he's very good at seeing everything as it truly is. He just doesn't see that as a bad thing. Yeah. Again, carrot's such a tricky one because we are so rarely in his head. Yes. We're almost always external observers with carrot. Once we get past men at arms, obviously.

We're in his peer a little bit with Angua. But yeah, we are quite often external to him. So we don't really know how he's seeing these things. We can think about carrot all day. I definitely could. Think about Vimes all day. We definitely, well, especially, oh, pack my bracelets downstairs because I can't have it on because it rattles.

Joanna got me a fantastic birthday present, which is one of those initialism bracelets so that you can, you know, meditate upon it and make better decisions with your life. And that's something she's correctly identified I need. But it spells out the full title of Sir Samuel Vimes, etc., etc., a blackboard monitor. And then in gold lettering, the fancy part of it has the initials of

standing on top of a train ripping a shirt off. It's ripping a shirt off on top of a train. Ripping a shirt off on top of a train. I thought of all the things you might need to meditate on a regular basis. It was Commander Sir Samuel Vimes ripping his shirt off on top of a train. And, you know, frankly, I think I'm a better person for it just in these last two weeks. Very much. I'm so proud of that. It's the dumbest thing I've ever made. Speaking of ripping our shirts off on top of a train, we've derailed the conversation, Francie. Oh, fantastic.

I wonder where the fuck you were going with that. I thought you were just going to say, speaking of ripping our shirts up on top of a train, I need a cigarette. Gods. Gods, Joanna. I've got one that kind of bridges the two sections here. Yeah.

So we're going to talk about the power of story. Yes. In a minute. And largely in the context of our witches. Yes. I think the one that the book that kind of bridges The two concepts of believing something brings it into reality, reality, and which is believing things in a way that kind of makes it real.

It's lords and ladies, which I always forget about when we're thinking about the power of belief, even though it was quite explicitly talked about. So a quote from there, most gods are created and sustained by belief and hope. Hunters danced in animals' skins and created gods of the chase who tended to be harcy and boisterous with the tact of a tidal wave. But they are not the only gods of hunting. The prey has an occult voice too, the blood pounds and the hound bay.

That's talking about her and the hunted, obviously. Yes. And then as the kind of perilous situation in which we find ourselves becomes more apparent, as we talk about circle time and how the veil between worlds is thinned and become all flimsy, it's got moss eaten, you know, how veils get.

How veils do get. How veils get. I don't think they've put up the metaphysical moss balls. Well, that's what the stone circles are, surely. But unfortunately, people still believe in the lords and ladies, in the fair folk, in, in fact, the elves. And that is what the elves want. What they like to get from us is our fear. What they want from us, most of all, is our belief.

If you call them, they will come. You'll give them a channel if you call them here at Circle Time when the world's thin enough to hear. The power in the dancers, the Stone Circle is weak enough now as it is. And I'm not having the Lords and Ladies back. And Lords and Ladies, of course, is the book where, science and fantasy. Yes, this is where we get the witches and the wizards getting brought in together. Yeah, I say science and fantasy bash heads, like the wizards are not fantasy at all.

But the science and folklore. Yes, the academic approach versus the fantastical approach. Yes. And so we also get the wizards trying to explain this sort of thing, I would say, slightly less poetically. Then the librarian hit me, said Ponder simply. Why? best if he tells it in his own words, said Ponder. Ook, ook, eke! Ook! Ook!

Cough, Julia, over the vendor, said the Versa. I didn't understand what the librarian said, said Magrard. We were all present at an interdimensional rip, said Ponder, caused by belief. The play was the last little thing that opened it up. So, yeah, here we get belief as very much like a power. A little power. A force, yeah, yeah, yeah. Something that you could measure.

scientifically in this case to try and, you know, jam that door properly open and get the elves through. And the belief in the lords and ladies, that all comes from this idea of the power of stories because they're relying on the stories being told and forgetting this idea of elves are terrific, they begat terror. Yes. And people remember the terrific and not the terror. Yeah.

I love the thing about the names as well, like to call something by its name. And I mentioned earlier actually with the bears of my. I think you told me about that originally years and years ago, probably on the podcast, about how, yeah, the word for bear isn't the word that used to be bear because... It was dangerous to name a bear in case a bear turned up. Yeah. And like if you have somebody's true name, you have some kind of power over them, Rumpelstiltskin, whatever Rome's secret name was.

So yeah, and as you say, like the story is... And here we have the story almost as its own physical thing, don't we? It is in the play. Yes. The play's the thing. The play is the thing. And that goes back in, so Pratchett uses this power of stories and belief and intertwines them all the way like right back at the beginning as we said. But in Weird Sisters, the play is very much the thing.

And that is this idea of we can make people understand things about the Duke. We couldn't another way by putting this layer of the play onto it. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's less borrowed from Abeth, that's borrowed from Hamlet, the idea of I can prove my uncle's guilt by showing what happened within this play within a play that I. I'm putting on. Yeah. And later on we modernise it, don't we? In the truth and things.

Yeah. The power that comes from the respect of the printed word very quickly. It says, well, that story is in this, so it must be true in this, the tabloid version of the, whatever they've called it, you know. Not Ant Warpork items, but the other one, the sun. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think it's something like the explorer or inquirer. But yeah, and the idea of stories in the truth as a book is so important because it is we have a

responsibility to tell the truth because we are going to be believed. Yeah. And that's this very human version. You know, I talked about the symbiotic relationship between humans and gods, but this is human on human. And so the humans that are in a godlike position in this scenario, so William DeWood and Saccharissa Cripsarck, they are the ones looking at it and going, yeah, we have this extra responsibility because we know we are going to be believed in. Yeah. And then you get this very ominous feeling of the press as well as this hungry thing that has to be fed. Yes.

Yeah, we overlap between the... the real self-fulfilling prophecyness of it all of roundworld and then the anthropomorphic persona. Is it anthropomorphic or a beast? I wish I knew a little more classics. Classical languages so I could do an animal version of anthropomorphic, but you know what I mean. I think it's still anthropomorphising in that it's applying sentience to something non-sentient. I think we can use anthropomorphic in this. We'd better because we don't know anything. Yeah, I think we're going to use anthropomorphic and listeners, you'll just have to deal with it. Or answers on a tabloid newspaper in the post, please.

Except please don't buy a tabloid to do it. No, no, print your own. Yeah, print your own. In the headline, piffy, please. Pithy headlines only in our Albatross delivered postcards. I was what I say, Pothcards. Pothcards. Post cards.

Delivered by Albatross, not by Twain. But this idea of knowing the shape of the story being so important in Pratchett, there's quite a meta thing happening as well. I'm going to go briefly meta. There is always, to be fair. I will verge into the meta. I will verge into the meta because Pratchett, a disc world especially, relies on the reader knowing the shape of stories. Yeah. It's this idea we've talked about a lot with parody, the idea of the bucket.

If the bucket is the right shaped, you can put whatever you want in it. Yeah. So, colour of magic and light fantastic are shaped like schlocky, 70s. fantasy. And the readers originally, when those books came out, were reading that and going, I know that. So I know all the silly stuff you're putting in. I can see what you're making fun of. As this is what Pratchett does. Pratchett goes, right, you know this story. But ha, do you know the story? And so he uses Macbeth. He uses Shakespeare. He eventually, he uses Phantom of the Opera. But then he also, he uses the story of, you know that the guy with the crown-shaped birthmark and the sword must be king.

yeah and he might be but yeah but i'm not going to do that yeah and that's part of the comedy and the joy of it is pulling that rug out from you so pratchett himself really respects this idea of knowing the shape of a story perfectly and then he puts this into the books with this power of knowing the shape of stories yeah so you have witches abroad is obviously the really obvious one for this and this is the big one because it's all the fairy tales and um lily weather wax doing all of her fairy tale things and you get this line very early people think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around. Stories exist independently. And if you know that, the knowledge is power. It's like the idea of a story as a Trojan horse.

Yes. This is story slash horse. Bring it inside city gate slash brain. That mixed up my directions here. And out come the Trojans. Ideas. Slash ideas. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. No, I think that makes sense. If only I'd set it more coherently. Listeners. Mix the words up. Spin them back out again. You'll get the idea. You'll get the vague idea. And you have Granny who is so furiously pushing against the idea of story throughout which is abroad in much the same way, the idea of the atheist slash the people who just don't really care about the gods. Yeah. And she says, you know, if you get to involve with stories, you get confused. They send you weird in the head. I don't like stories. They're not real.

and I don't like things that aren't real. Yes. And that's Granny's sheer stubbornness in the face of narrative causality, what Pratchett eventually calls narrativium. That comes up later later as well, isn't it? In one of the Tiffany ones it is, I think it's Haver. In Hatful of Sky? Yeah, well, two bits of this actually,

because Tiffany gives the Haver story so it, then he can die. And then Granny barges in through the metaphorical, not quite metaphorical door to drag Tiffany back. Like, I don't get the fuck what the rules are or what's meant to happen after you die or what the story is, basically. You're not staying here. Actually, I've got that hive moment. And can I read a little bit? It's so useful.

Yeah, please do. Here is a story to believe. Once we were blobs in the sea and then fishes and then lizards and rats and their monkeys and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin. This hand once had claws. And in my human mouth, I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and chiseled teeth of a rabbit and the grindy. teeth of a cow. Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in. When we're frightened, the hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history. Everything we've

ever been on our way to becoming us, we still are. Would you like the rest of the story? Poor. And then Granny, despite being Granny and stubborn in the face of Narotivium, says right at the end of the book, it's all stories. The sun coming up every day is a story. Now, Narotivium is a word. that we haven't used in this section yet? No, we, I'm trying to remember, was it science of disc world that first put the name narrativeium on it? I think it might have been. I think you're right.

I think I'm right. This idea of disworld runs. We are right, ish. The idea of narrative causality is introduced way earlier, but the idea of narrativium being a force, and it being named that as I think brought in science of disc world.

And naming something of course gives it more power. And naming gives it more power. And the joy that's joy of the first science

of disc world is the confusion, the defamiliarisation looking at the round world and this idea what does it do without narrativeium?

Yeah. How does it work? Not a lot. But jumping quickly back into Granny and which support and playing with stories, she stubbornly wants

no truck with this. This is not her thing. She will stop it at any cost and stop Lily and everything. But when they run out of money on the riverboat, she puts herself in the story in the way only granny can,

knowing how stories work is almost all the battle when an obvious innocence sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says, how do you play this game then? Someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out. I'd take too long about it. Anyway, yeah. And then obviously you have militia using stories in Amazing Morris, and it's this really fun idea that she is looked down on by a lot of

of people. But also her belief in stories does work. Yeah. But she is, she drives everything narratively by knowing the shape of the story and knowing how things should go. While the rats are dealing with their own understanding of story and the difference between story and real, as they kind of come to terms with what Mr. Bunsey really is, militia gets to play on this. And she turns up, you know, when they're playing off their big plan at the end and the stupid looking kid walks up and challenges the shiny rat piper. And militia's like, oh, we all know what happens when a mysterious orphan turns up and challenges someone.

It's like being the third and youngest son of a king. He can't help but win. I like being an old monk. And the rest of the crowd sort of looks at her and goes, sure. I mean, that's not what we see happen. Because they've not read as many stories. It's a million to one chance. Which means it'll happen nine times out of ten.

And then you get the great ending in that book, which is, the mayor of Bad Blinz with Dark Tan, the rat, the Bimes Rat. And the mayor says, stories are just stories. Life has complicated enough cities and we have to plan for the real world. There's no room for the fantastic.

And man and rat talked as the long light faded into evening. Which is just one of those really perfect punchlines. It's like, no, we can't do fantastic stuff, talking rat, wearing useful belts. practically wearing useful belts is a very practical talking red but yeah I mean you could very tediously these days call it pattern recognition

couldn't you for the knowing the shape of the story but I much prefer knowing the shape of the stories yeah a narrative of narrative causality and using because that is the thing Pratchett uses the power of people knowing the shape of stories and people believing in stories Yeah. As a writer, that's what he uses to make himself such a powerful writer, effectively. And then he puts these characters in his books over and over again that do the same thing.

They know the shape of the stories they believe in them, and that gives them a certain level of power, because they understand where to believe and where to stop believing. Why do we think we overlap from, or we find the line somewhere between stories as kind of an organic force in the universe? that are to be, you know, acknowledged and lived with and recognised, and the stories which are forced, e.g., by Lily Weatherwax, which then become pretty clearly evil in Pratchett's reckoning. I think it all goes back to that idea I was talking about before of, we will always have stories for why things happen.

Like, we will always have stories for why the sun come up. That's beloved. This is how the leopard got his spots. Oh, I love the joke. I just say stories so much. But yeah, stories exist to do a certain amount of explaining why, and they're flapping around in the universe doing that. When you start harnessing that power and using it, such as Lily Weatherwax does, stories stop existing to provide answers and become a weapon because she is manipulating everybody's belief. That's true. And yet, it's framed very differently in, I mean, to be fair, Lily is obviously a bit of an edge case, but it's framed

very differently in the last hero when the bard has come along to write and eventually become part of a story. Because the bard does not, yeah, the bard does not drive the story. The bard is there to collect it. He's the one making sure that someone heard the tree falling in the forest. Yeah, he tend. But he does tend the story, doesn't he? He tends the story. That's different from forcing it. Yeah. Yeah. I think some kind of animal husbandry metaphor I could make if I knew a little bit more about horses. Quite possibly, but I think it's for the best, Francie, and that you and I keep our knowledge of horses where it is limited.

I know some things about horses. I know, but you included yourself in that, so I just... You're objecting to your own fucking insult here, do I? I know. It's very hot, Francie. It's very hot, right? And goodness, we don't have any horses to go and muck out this evening. That's very true.

So obviously, we've talked to belief, we've talked story. talking which is the logical place to go here is, of course, Bofo. Bofo, let's go shopping. Bofo, when I say it like that, it sounds very woodhouse, doesn't it? Bofo, a little chat. Oh, Bofo. Oh, I haven't seen you in months. That is.

I've been all been married for everything. Anyway, Bofo is in this universe, in this world, a shop in Ackmorepork, and it becomes shorthand for a particular type of what was previously in the which is arcs called headology, or per psychology. Or per psychology. Bofo is a, I feel like it's not just an ex- It's an offshoot. Yeah, it's a sub-pategory.

Yeah, yeah. But we start, I start with Bofo because it's more fun word to say. It is very fun to say. Bofo in this, in this instance, is, it's like, it's a disguise, it's telling a story about yourself still. Yeah. But it comes with exceptional. accessories. The particular introduction we get to Bofo is in Wintersmith and this is when Tiffany

is apprenticed to Miss Treason and her ominous loom. Her ominous loom, which is a very ominous loom. When Doanna started getting really obsessed with the idea of a loom room. I was into it before that, to be fair. I mean, to transition from stories to Bopho, actually, I love mistreason talking about stories about herself. And did you hear that I walk around at night in the dark time of the year and reward those who have been good citizens with a purse of silver, but if they have been bad, I slish open their bellies with my thumbnail like this. Tiffany leaped backwards as a wrinkled hand twisted her around and mistreason's yellow thumbnail sighs past her stomach. The old woman looked terrifying. No, no, I haven't heard that one, she gasped, pressing up against the sink.

What? Oh, and it was a wonderful story. It was real historical antecedence. I say that. I say that. I know about those stories. I made them up myself. You made up stories about yourself, of course, why not? I couldn't lead something as important as that to amateurs. And we either have done or will, depending on which order I edit these episodes, talk to an old friend of the podcast, old friend of the podcast, Mark Burroughs, who liked to talk about stories, about stories, about stories. Yes. We get many layers deep and pointed out in his book, The Magic character Harry Pratchett, that Terry Pratchett rather liked, not made. making up stories about himself, but certainly polishing them into a better story shape.

Yes. And why leave it to amateurs, indeed? No, he never let the truth get in the way of a good anecdote. And Rob, of course, has this little device in his biography of Terry Pratchett of Too Good to Check. Exactly. And I think mistreasoned almost her entire life. Has lived under the idea of Too Good to Check. Unless you are a witch.

Yeah. And she explains very simply, is show people what they want to see and show them what they think should be there. I've got a reputation. And that subplot of Wintersmith hinges on Anna Grammar taking mysteries and cottage. Yeah. And not knowing how to, not getting the idea of Bofo. She's like, oh, people will be so glad that horrible wicked witch has gone. And it doesn't work because Anna Gramer is not what those people are primed to believe in

and not the story they want to be told. Yeah. And Anna Gramer succeeds when she is introduced to the Bofo catalogue. It goes a little overboard. I respect it. I do. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And there's a really great line really late in the book.

I've forgotten to write down. Who said it now? Bofo is how humans change the world by fooling themselves. Absolutely. And that's all tied into Tiffany's invisible hat, the hat given to her by Granny Weatherworks. Absolutely. I mean, you know, brief hat interlude, actually. When we talk about the power of belief, we've talked at surprising length, I would say, about hats throughout the podcast's history,

which are a type of headology in two senses, I suppose. I'm so sorry. The witch's hat, of course, and then the metaphorical looks his hat. The hostmaster's hat? The Horrible Archangel's hat? Yeah, I mean, Wizard hats in general. Wizard hats in general. Ridge Cully's hat, of course, with the little drawer.

You say the horrible Arch Chancellor's hat, but there's also the really good Arch Chancellor's hat. Yes. The one that Arch Chancellor on top. Yes. The Arch Chancellor's hat of our dreams. Rid Cully, possibly the least inappropriate crush we have on all of the dismal characters. It's like it's between him and... Yeah, well, Rick Culley never ripped his shirt off on top of a train.

Frankly, he would have made every woman in the entire vicinity faint. And he knows, as Granny Weatherwax does, he knows when not to use his power. And speak holes that. I wish I could have segwayed that properly. I nearly got it there. Yeah, actually, quickly skipping back to headology, which is introduced right at the start of the witches. I mean, it's equal rights. We have esk. We have esk learning about the placebo effect, basically, which is an incredibly powerful example of the power of belief.

The works on round. I mean, the placebo effect works if you know it's a placebo. You can be given a sugar pill and say, this is a sugar pill, but it's going to work as a placebo effect and kind of stop your headache. and it'll still work there than nothing. That's insane. We are so primed to believe things and make them work. And then so you see, and then we talk about, you know, the actual placebo effects, the coloured water and everything.

But we also get kind of an early iteration of how this costume works. So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you're a witch and that's why your magic works, said us. Yeah, that's right. So granny, it's called headology. And then, yeah, if you give someone a book, bottle of red dollop for their wind, it might work, but if you want it to work for sure, then you let their mind make it work for them. Tell them it's moonbeams, bottled in fairy

wine or something. Mumble over it a bit. It's the same with cursing. And of course, Granny famously can make somebody think they are a frog for several days. Which is much more energy efficient than actually turning someone into a frog. Exactly. And Granny is nothing if not energy efficient. That's what we always say. As when pieces become a veil. Everyone's naked under their clothes. I'm not. I've got three vests on. Ah yes, the triple vest defence. Classic. Winter Smith is such an interesting one for this as well, jumping back to Tiffany.

Because the whole idea of Wintersmith is Tiffany forces herself into a story she wasn't meant to be in. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. And she's then facing the consequences of that. She knows stories are important, but she's also a teenager and impetuous, and I do not blame her at all for her actions, because I laugh her and she can do no wrong. And she didn't know that many consequences would happen. No, I don't think anyone could have imagined that level of consequences.

Worse it's going to happen is you fuck the dance up, surely. But what's fascinating is... We've all had those nights. You wake up the next day and those fucking fly. appearing behind you and there's a cornucopia on the kitchen table. You're like, where do I get that from? It's next to the traffic cone. Oh, traffic cone cornucopia as a concept.

Can we come back to that? Yeah, love this. Yes. We don't have time to build on it right now, but okay. No, cool. I'm naming my memoir, that though. Thank you. Cool. Anyway, yeah, no, Tiffany, when she does find herself in the story, what's interesting is she knows she shouldn't be there.

She knows that this is going to have far-reaching consequences. But because Tiffany is our teenage character, and she is such a well-written teenage character. Oh, God, yeah. She enjoys it a little bit. Like, she likes being, that idea of, um, it was cool, and that was a hot little thought. That was the line that really stuck with me.

And that's the big lesson she has to learn is how to separate herself from the story. Because the temptation is there and it's so present. And as a witch, she has to be separate from the story. And that's something she processes in, I shall wear midnight. That's such a big part of it, accepting what her role in the story is as the witch. So she's asked right at the beginning with the scouring affair, have you got passionate parts? Witches don't have passionate parts.

This idea of her kind of having to deal with the fact that Roland is now engaged because she is not the pretty blonde one in the story. she has the picture book, of course, and she is the witch. And then meeting Letitia, who is the picture book, perfect, eventual end to Roland's story, only to realise that Leticia is also very much a witch. Come and look at my watercolours in hexes. Watercolours, Francine. I went back through a couple of old episode plans and my old notes for doing this episode,

and the Wintersmith. Just watercolours in capital letters all over the place. The horror of the watercolours. I know. I didn't realize I was being quite so slatantly by showing you my watercolors. I can't believe you showed me your watercolors fraud. If showing someone's watercolours is a bit forward, what happens now I've moved on to oil painting?

I think you need to have a word with Nannyok. It's fine. I put an urn in. Oh, it's all right if there's an urn. Oh, thank goodness. Yeah, sick and earning. Oh my goodness. Hang on. Going back two or three steps, talking about the witches having to be on the edge of the story.

I noticed while I was looking back at stuff for this, that in, I think it was We Freeman, the first one in the Tiffany stories. It was, we look to the edges, and this is Granny Weatherwax explaining witching to Tiffany. There's a lot of edges more than people know. between life and death, we watch them, we guard the sum of things. And then later on, I think in I Shall Wear Midnight, we talk about how you can find witches in the centre of things, like as the pivot point in the story kind of goes around them. Which, if I knew more about geometry or horse husbandry,

I might be able to make a point about shapes. It's the history of SBA and our Wikipedia page all over again. Oh, it's not because I'm not opening geometry. There is something about this idea of an edge also being, well, a vertices is two edges coming together and that can become a pivot point. This idea of by being in the centre, you are still somewhat separated from all of it. Yes. Yeah, you are the eye of the storm. You're not part of the movement.

Exactly. You are the things people move around. You are not one of the people moving around. And that doesn't mean you're causing it. It means you found the still spot to stand where you can watch what's going on. Yeah, which is important, which is need to do that. Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. And, you know, a huge part of the Tiffany aching arc is how learning to do that

and kind of making that sacrifice, isn't it? Like making the decision to make that sacrifice that you can't be part of the story. You can't be the normal teenage girl or the normal young woman that you've always got to be on the edge. Yeah, and choosing that in a way has, you know, its own power. You're accepting that role in the story. And then you have witches like Nanny Ogg, arguably the most powerful one, because she is the one who very rarely uses power in the same way. But Nanny Ogg is never on the edge of things.

She puts herself in the centre. And there's this great moment in I Shall Weir Midnight at the Baron's Funeral, where Nanny comes in and she gets up on a table and she starts singing, and she has the room singing, and the room dancing and the room celebrating the Baron's life. And Tiffany looks at her and goes, that's the sort of magic I should have been learning. I was learning to be powerful,

but what I should have studied was people. Yeah, Nanny seems like, it's still in the centre of the storm, isn't it? But she's the witch that's kind of twirling it around her rather than standing there in the stillness. Yeah. Yeah. Nanny understands the witch's role in the story.

And she understands her, role in the story she plays the, oh, larks, dearie me, my old feet, etc. As much as she ever needs to. More convincingly than Granny. Lourks, dearie me, my old feet, stumps, stumps. Haughting it over her back. Oh, poor me, old woman. But she understands the story she tells by being.

She knows that she is black-hatted and she would not be seen without her witch's hat. But she also knows to wear the red. No, she has the red shoes. Ah, sorry, my bad. Yeah, carry on. The joy of rereading, which is abroad for this episode, is being reminded of the time I filmed myself lying in bed, wearing red boots, eating sausage for this podcast.

Where did we post that? I must have it saved somewhere. It was so long ago. It might be on my old computer, but we must have posted it. I'm pretty sure it's still on my phone somewhere. Yeah. All right, dear listeners, if I can find it. If it was on my old computer,

now on that drive, I backed up everything. Yeah. Okay, good Anyway, and the chalk Like the chalk Yeah, whatever Believing in the land Oh yeah

Quite relevant Considering you've just been to see quite a large chalk horse Yeah, it was great Very It's a shame you don't know more about Horse husbandry really You could have appreciated it on a whole other level The power of belief in this sense

Kind of goes two ways Because Tiffany draws power From the land beneath her feet And I feel like there has to be a certain amount of her belief in the land and the land believing in her, because the land is very much anthropomorphised in the Tiffany arc. As we found out, it was possible with Granny Weatherwax. Again, right at the beginning, in weird sisters, where she...

Well, in equal rights, she discovers the sentient building idea. She borrows the university. She does borrow the university, and she takes its bigger... But yeah, in weird sisters, it's the land, it's Lanker. Yes. and she works out her to, oh, she works out that it must have that consciousness to, and it's borrowing adjacent, she doesn't try and borrow it, luckily.

But she works it out by saying, oh, hang on, think slower, think bigger, the forest must have that, you know, the thousands of litres of sap being pumped through all the time. And then she looks out the window and there's, you know, the woodland animals, fucking animals of farthing wood, but with a more piercing glare in her garden. Yep. saying, get that fucking duke out. And, you know, in a badger way. And it's that understanding of her lamb

that allows her to do the sort of moving the kingdom through time effectively. Yes. Which I was thinking about to go back and reread like a bit of that. Oh yeah, that was like a weird plot point, wasn't it? What, when they moved the kingdom through time? Yeah. It's not a bit I remember about that. It's somehow not the most important part of the story

by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah. They just casually do like a more powerful bit of magic than you see almost anywhere else. Anyway, moving forward a little bit to Tiffany. Yes. She, in her very first book, We Free Men, she has to reckon with, it's a hell of a topic for a kid's book. And Tiffany in this is nine.

Yeah, eight or nine, she's young. Yeah. And it has to reckon with what is real, which, goodness me, I've not really tried that in a while. And so this doesn't feel real. Tiffany told herself, this feels like a dream. But she looked down at her blue dress and that was real. And she was real. She's was real. Somewhere not far away was a world of green turf under a blue sky. And that was real. And that's the anchor. And it's her world, her land. That's real. That's where the power's coming from.

And then there's a bit of a fits and start. So she starts to bring the power of the land. and she gets thunder and lightning. Thunder and lightning, yes, the dogs. This time in lightning, in kind of spirit, what do I mean, spiritual spectral form. Yes. They heard a thunderstorm and then behind her is the spirit of granny aching and somehow in that slightly silly shepherdess dress,

but she loves it. The China shepherdess, yeah. And that's not really relevant, I just love it. And then, but then the queen, didn't. beats her again. And Tiffany has to tap into more than just her experience of the chalk. She has to tap into the millions of years of history of the chalk. Like someone rising from the clouds of sleep, she felt the deep, deep time with the capital T below her. She sensed the breath of the downs and the distant roar of ancient, ancient seas trapped in millions of tiny shells. And

lots of lovely description. The wheels of stars in charge. years of space and time locked into place. She knew exactly where she was and who she was and what she was. And this feat of magic is talked about for books and books. All of the witches know her as the girl who harnessed the chalk. And of the girl who became a powerful witch despite being born on chalk, which is a notoriously shit witch rock. Yes. I think that's how it's been.

But as Growning Leatherbock points out, that's all. all you know, perspicacia tick, said the mistress weather wax. The bones of the hills is flint. It's hard and sharp and useful, king of stones. That's coming in a lot from a mountain witch. That is coming as a lot from a mountain witch. And Tiffany also,

she's a witch grown on the chalk, which is something of an anomaly, except it isn't because Granny Aking was a witch grown on the chalk. Yes, but she'd have never called herself that, which is interesting, isn't it? Because here we're talking about the stories we tell about ourselves. And Granny Aking never. told the story of being a witch, Granny Eaking only ever told the story of being Granny Eking.

Yes. And Granny Eaking's almost like a, like a demi-god or something, isn't she? Like the personification of the place. Yeah. After her death. Oh, God, no, there's a bit of word for that and I can't remember what it is now. Yeah, same. Like an avatar. An avatar, thank you. Avatar. Wow. The amount of times we've listened to various podcasts about that. And a little, well, quite a lot later, I suppose, in Isha Ware Midnight, this kind of theme is revisited in a more deliberate, and I would say nastier, almost way, a darker way, certainly, where Tiffany aching after defeating the cunning man, reached down into the ash and picked up a lump of flint still warm from the fire. The soil was full of it, the sharpest of stones, born in the chalk, and so in a way was Tiffany. she felt the heat of the whole field steadied herself and gripped the stone and channels it through and melts the flint in her hand.

Yeah. Weird fucking out. It's like it's kind of this combination of the magic the Granny Weatherwax has shown us in the past, in which is the poor actually, isn't it? Where she channels heat. We see a channel heat and paint a masquerade where she takes the sword cut and she waits until she's home to deal with it. Yes, and what is it?

You are the pivot point again, aren't you? What do they call it? There was some... It's something similar. You're the middle of the seesaw. Yes. Yeah, that word. There is an actual word for it, yeah.

We see that when she's teaching Tiffany how to take the pain away, like Tiffany, we then see Tiffany doing that for the barren. Conduette, yes. Yeah. And, but Tiffany's kind of, yeah, mixing these two types of power here. It's the real connection to the soil and being able to channel the heat from the land and her own anger, and melting a flint in her hand.

I mean, Jesus Christ. Yeah. And that's from, it is from belief. And I feel like the way that magic is described through Tiffany really gives kind of credence to the idea that it's belief that makes magic work. Because when we see her do magic well,

it comes through her visualizing it. Yeah. Being able to put in her, And mine's eye, like a mental metaphor. Yeah. In the same way, the Esk borrowed the eagle and saw the strands of everything and untangled it. And then later we see Granny Weatherwax untangling, Esk from the, from the eagle. And we get a lot of that from Tiffany's point of view.

A lot of the visual. And of course, the only example I can think of was in Tiffany. But I know I talked about it like. no that's absolutely a part of Tiffany's story and Tiffany's a story with Tiffany is a character with an inbuilt understanding of stories specifically that one storybook yeah oh my god yeah that one story book with the scary goblin and with the witch and with the pretty heroes and what's so interesting about Tiffany is because she comes with this inbuilt belief in stories she constantly has to have that belief challenged as she grows

and so it's not just about finding her own place in it it's accepting when the stories really stop being useful because the story of Letitia should have been she sort of cries a bit and does watercolours but then she's going to letitia ignores her own stories because the storybook version of Letitia should have run away from a screaming ghost but Leticia understands that no you give the ghost a teddy bear

or give the headless ghost a pumpkin. It's a very practically thing and it's something you picked up on a lot as we were going through the books, this underlying anger at the idea that you had to stick to a story. Yeah. It's part of treating people like things, isn't it really? Yeah, and to bring it back to Pratchett, obviously, as we mentioned, we just spoke to Mark about his latest book and Mark pointed out something very important, which is Terry Pratchett was told, as a very young child, this is your story.

You are one of the sheep, not the goats, and you won't amount to anything. You're one of the goats, not the sheep, sorry, and you won't amount to anything. And Terry Pratchett said, no, I don't want that to be my story. Not, shan't. Don't leave it to the amateurs. Yep. And then he went and became a master storyteller. And on that night, that Terry Pratchett. Good, right, Rennie. yeah we should make a podcast about him maybe another night it's hot and it's getting late yeah good point right

do we have anything else to say we didn't get a chance to say um no no nothing that I don't nothing that I think's not just going to lead us on a weaker tangent I think that's good we'll probably revisit this topic at some point I mean I'm not lying not going to lie on it would suggest

knowing us I'm not going to lie, we could entirely do an entire episode just on the liminal in Discworld. Well, I was thinking that actually, as I was making notes for this. You wouldn't do a liminal episode. The edges. The edges. Both physical and metaphorical. All right, well, let's not plan that now.

Let's get out of this one first. Right, dear listener, I think that's everything we're going to say about the power of belief in Discworld for now on this particular episode. Still expect more in future. we will be back in September with the Long Cosmos, the last book in the long earth cycle. Until then, of course, dear listeners, you can. Join our Discord, link down below.

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uncut video episodes of The True Shall Make You Frat. And until next time, dear listener, Don't let us detain you. It begins with an F. It begins as many things do. With an F. You've got such a narrator voice on at the moment. Everything you say sounds like it has weight to it.

I love it.