The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 19: The Long Cosmos Pt 2 (Depends on The Deer; Depends on The Fox)

Episode Date: September 27, 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, The Long Cosmos Part 2!Sharpie! Big Tree! Immortality!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:Fiddlers’ Green [John Conolly] (Roud 26370)Fiddler's Green - greydogtalesJourney to the Centre of the Earth - Wikipedia   Surviving in a poisoned land: Chernobyl's wildlife is different, but not in the ways you might think"I'm Glad" - a Vampire Song  (Hel Vy on Tiktok) Bathyscaphe Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I saw somebody sew a skirt and put buttonholes all over the skirt and open the buttonholes and then put eyes through, like little glass eyes. So just to let you know. I'll bear that in mind. Tell me about your fun Sunday. I'm going to that London. London, town. London to buy Heat magazine. No, I'm not buying Heat magazine.

No, I'm going to, it's the 40th anniversary of the Labyrinth coming out. and there's a special screening at the VNA with a Q&A with Brian Henson. Oh, what fun. So I'm very excited about that. Nice. If I can find that video again, I'll send it to you. But I just sent you that one about clouds.

I didn't want to spam you. You can always spam me. I know that now. I don't know what I was. It was early. I'll watch them at my leisure. Occasionally I try and not open TikTok, but yeah.

And obviously I don't have any notifications on for TikTok because... Oh God, yeah, that would be insane. Why would I? I don't for Instagram either, but more and more people have started messaging me on Instagram as like a primary form of communication.

Yeah, I do occasionally hop on Instagram and having not for like two weeks and realize that people have tried to be in touch. I also forget to ever post on Instagram. I am very bad at that. Oh, yeah, I suppose you've got to do a bit of self-promo, haven't you? I don't, but I really should.

Yeah. I should probably post the cake thing. Oh, yeah, I made a cake. You did. It was lovely. thank you. You're very welcome. I got to eat a good chunk of coffee and walnut cake, listeners, as did many of my colleagues, because Joanna baked a huge fucking cake for the bake-off thing. Remind me what you've called your series? The Not So Great Bake-Along, where I recreate all the technical challenges without a recipe and ask if this is fair.

Not my challenge, but like the technical challenge is the... Is this fair, I say, self-inflictedly? Yes, so I made a coffee and walnut cake and my partner can take it to work because his car was dead, so you were the recipient of quite a large. It wasn't that big. I mean, I feel like it was, but I don't make huge cakes often, ever. It was three sponges and it was nine inch sponges, so I've made bigger. Of course, yes. Everybody was delighted. Well, I'm glad I could provide, and I didn't have to try and eat an entire cake by myself, because it was a very good cake, but there is a limit to. how much cake I can consume in a short amount of time.

Yeah. There was a huge amount of coffee in it. Oh yeah, there was... See, I don't usually like coffee cake because, for the same reason, I don't like weak squash. Yeah. Like a tiny bit of flavour was worse than no flavour. Across the cake, it was two or three cups of coffee. Yeah.

I'm not actually trying to do the maths in my head. No, I wouldn't expect you to. We'll watch.e.exe stop working. And the listeners don't need to see me here at 404 in real time. They've seen enough of that. over the years. Letting all year computer references from our in-podcast video game designer. Narrative designer.

Narrative designer. Which means I don't actually have to do it too much of the fancy technical shit. Oh, all right, fine. I just write the pretty words and then give them to someone. I think this is a shame because I did enjoy the phase where you were learning how to do video games and made people shoot bullets from their eyes back into their own faces. Okay, but I didn't mean to do that. I still think it's the best thing you've ever done.

No, the best thing I'd ever done was when I had the corpse that kept shooting bullets out of its eyes while also flinging itself after the player because I hadn't got it to turn the tracking off after it died which when you were just running around the level being followed by a corpse

shooting bullets from its eyes Why are video game physics going wrong more funny than anything else on earth? What is it? I don't know but it's beautiful Anyway, did you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to The Truchampanky Frat, a podcast in which we were reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discord series, and now we're strolling through the corridors of speculative fiction.

I'm Joanna Hagan. I'm Francine Carroll. This is part two of our discussion of the long cosmos, going from Chapter 32 all the way to the end. Of the universe? Of the universe, potentially. Well, yeah. Ish. Of the arm of Sagittarius.

of the infinite skein. The skein. The skein. We pleased to have a knitting reference. Delighted. Wove it in, as it were. Delighted. Excellent.

As I was with that pun. Not one spoilers before we crack on. Sorry, we're a spoiler light podcast, but I guess heavy spoilers for the entire Long Earth series now. At this point, that's got to be the case. There's no way around it. We're at the end of the Long Earth series. And we'll try and avoid spoiling any.

major disc world stuff in case you dear listener are on the journey with us. Stepping north, cuddled into a troll for safety as we did ultimately stow away on this voyage. Very much so. I also, like, it's kind of a last Terry Pratchett book. Yeah, it kind of is, isn't it? I mean, we've got, I still think at some point we should do the Discworld Companion. Oh, yeah, there is still...

Although that's going to be a really unstructured if we don't keep an eye on ourselves. folklore of Discworld even we haven't done a hot but yeah this is the last Terry Pratchett novel isn't it yeah for sure we've got a whole wealth of supplemental material and also we've got plenty of revisits to do we'll never leave Terry Pratchett in the Discworld entirely because they will never leave Terry Pratchett alone

we will not let that poor man rest in this rail more than X um beggy met Amy Lee last night amazing but enough of that I'll tell you later I realise this is not the appropriate time to bring it up follow up you have to edit this

I don't know you're not going to I should but I won't please follow up thank you for this excellent comment obviously thank you for all of our lovely listeners who ever listen and comment but thank you for this particular wonderful lesson from a friend of the pod Sunder.

Fun fact, I didn't practice trying to pronounce this, and I regret this now. Hagstone is Hunogot in German. Is it indeed? Chicken's God. Chickens god. Oh. Why?

You know, if we started asking the Germans that, Frantzantzantz, this would be a very different... You're right. German etymology is a rabbit hole. We simply do not have time to go down. In this life or the next. Maybe the one after. Anyway, Francie, would you like to tell us what happened previously on the long cosmos?

Previously on the long cosmos. Joshua goes solo again, but his self-reliance meets a sudden end at the foot of a baby elephant. From Disaster Springs friendship, Asancho the troll, plus his troop, roughly bit kindly nursed the great valianti back to some semblance of health. Luckily for Joshua, his loved ones keep an eye on his habits, with the help of a spreadsheet, and his son Rod comes to find him. Nelson learns of a grandson, and a son, who he's never met, and travels to the traverser they call home. After a brief holiday with his newfound family, the ineffable beast that bears the community vanishes, leaving Nelson and his son yelling into the void, brackets, i.e. at Lob Sang.

Agnes calls it quits. The next visit the brick moon, and we meet some energetic young scientists who show a pleasing lack of deference to the blindingly bright bulbs in the Grange. Meanwhile, the underlying reason for most of the above echoes on. a message from the cosmos permeating the sentient minds across the long earth. Join us. Join us. Join us. Definitely not a cult. Not a cult, but join us.

Right, yes, that is what happened. Should I tell us what happened this time? Yeah, yeah, that sounds traditional. As I said, chapter 32, we're going all the way to the end of the book. Might even mention an acknowledgement. In this section. Joshua and Rodd settle into troll life until catastrophe strikes and Rod pays the price whisked away by a huge superstepping otter humanoid thing.

Yeah. Sancho and Joshua head out to find Rod taking a super step of their own to a beach that is all beaches, climbing the dunes to reach a colossal forest. Sancho carries Joshua up the wall of the giant tree, meeting more trolls above the clowns and rescuing Rod with a reaching wood missile before taking a break in the troll Congress. The pair step homewards and Joshua fulfills his promise to visit Helen in in Dayton Madison. At the grave unmarked to most, he meets Nelson and Lopsang's latest

ambulance unit in the trio head for West Five to follow Jan's trail. Everyone is converging at Apple Pie, the home of the in-process thinker, a continental computational, computational mass devoted to untangling the message of the Sagittarians. Maggie Kaufman arrives to take charge and takes a tour, meeting Devon Lee and Jan, now employed in matter printing. She's confronted with disparate elements, reunites with Ensigned Snowy, and dines with Douglas Black in flight over the thinker. until Marvin Lovelace interrupts. At the thinker Joshua and Lobzanger introduced around and taken on a drive

to witness a new installation, the last before the thinker takes over the building for itself. Ronald and Ruby, with a little nudging, come to a conclusion over Northwood's stepping, and Douglas Black into seeds, preventing the humble sabotage attempt that he had a hand in. After a brief quantum interlude,

we're back with the Uncle Arthur, our northward ship, ready to go. Maggie Kaufman leads the crew of Ragtag Misfits as they step into the Great Unknown. With Jan safely stowed away, Arthur crosses the stars and finds the traverses gathered on a distant earth-like planet stuffed with starfish and Martian monoliths. I've made this way too hard for myself. That's nice, though. I've enjoyed it. Nelson's family Traverser arrives, delivering an impatient Lucille and Troy, and Arthur returns southwards.

A fancy new reaching wood twain offers a safe homeward journey. Lobzang reunites Nelson with his family, while Joshua introduces his new granddaughter to the silence. Now, do I know right at the top Because if I really am being thick, I'm going to cut this out But I'm not really sure I understand the point of the thinker No, me neither We'll get into it in a bit more detail I think basically

So you had the original telescope picked up the message join us Yes Then the next one, the big one picked up that there was a whole another message underneath join us. Yes. Here's how. Yes. The thinker was built to comprehend here's how.

Yeah. And I think then Ronald and Ruby interpreted what the thinker comprehended and with Indra got to the northward stepping bit. Got it. Okay, right, yeah. Basically, it's all quite quantum. It is quite quantum. I suppose part of the test as to whether we're ready to. to join them is the building of the thinker.

Yes. And the willingness to build the thinker. It's just that I feel like our rag tag bunch of misfits could have come to the conclusion without it. Especially as we kind of knew about northward stepping at this point. Yeah. Yeah. But okay. Yeah. Also, I guess there was a deep thought joke that just got out of hand. Yeah. Or like reference. Yeah. Because the thinker, I assume, the thinker is inspired by deep thought. Yeah, that hadn't occurred to me, but you're probably right. Yeah.

I mean, it's a planet-sized computer. designed to answer a question. Continental rather than planet-sized in this case. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, that also reminds me of something I might not be able to put in anywhere else. I thought the description of how one steps, some of the quantum description, reminded me a lot of how Douglas Adams describes how you fly.

Oh, yeah. Obviously, I didn't read, well, I kept my eyes closed while I read the quantum disruptions part, so I didn't learn anything about quantum physics. Oh, thank goodness. Listeners, in case you've forgotten, no one is allowed to teach me quantum physics or the rules of cricket. Right, sorry, helicopter and loincloth watch then. Let's get into the more serious topics, franzi.

Don't be silly. For helicopter, we've gone with the Samuel L Clemens, the reaching wood twain. Lovely. Named for Mark Twain's actual name. And for loincloth, I'm going with Troy and Lucille are described as all but naked. And I'm going to say loincloths are implied. Yeah, if you are all but.

Yeah, I feel like it's either them or the next to their weird, belty-pockety things. Yeah, I swear, just naturally because of society we live in, we decide that all but naked means probably a loincloth. But I suppose it could be like, I don't know, shin pad. It does specifically say that their feet are bare and their legs were coated with seawater and sand. So that implies not shin pads. It implies it, you're right, yes. So if we're all but naked and we're definitely bare-legged.

gloves it is. I'm also thinking of ease of manufacturing. Gloves are quite tricky, whereas a loincloth is quite simple. I mean, it's basically just a bit of fabric. You know what simpler than a loincloth? A scarf. Oh, that's true. They could be wearing scarf.

But you don't want to wear a scarf in the sea. I've always said that. I mean, what is a scarf, if not a neck loincloth? Now, we've been through this. This way madness lies. I'm just saying. Okay. All right, sorry.

Have you got a favorite quote? Have I got a favorite quote? You've got one. Yes. On the tree world, the description of the beach, a greyish ocean on which languid waves rolled, breaking almost elegantly at the shore with a rush of broken shells. I didn't think about how hard that sentence was to say, but it's a beautiful bit of description. It's lovely to read, yeah. It is lovely to read. What was your favourite quote? Similarly, nature-based and not much else.

Flowers were growing through cracks in the asphalt at his feet, despite the cold. That is lovely. I have quite a lot of just single sentences like that, just kind of drawing one's attention to the nature breaking through. There's lots of lovely flashes of green. Yeah, yeah. As in the colour green, not the family green. Although we have that too.

Yeah, yeah. Right, let's go into characters then. Should we start with our Joshua? Yeah. I'm going to immediately call out. Oh. No, when they're on the big trees and he's kind of wondering how they works, He sort of stops and thinks to himself.

He wasn't lopsang. Joshua's way was to experience, to cherish, not to analyze. And then he immediately analyzes. Yes. And works it out. Joshua has not done a lot of introspection. Yeah. Or maybe he has and just come to some very odd conclusions.

Yeah, Joshua is one of the most analytical people, I think. We've met in this long and complex universe. Yes. But yes, he's doing all right still. He does a lovely, My lost son, the Lark. Yeah. I thought the very sweet, the shouting for help into his radio to Lop sang to Sally Lindsay,

even to Sister Agnes, which was like a sort of call back to his reaction when he was injured as well. Yeah. That he sort of prays to these people he thinks of as gone or gods. Yeah. I also like Joshua just imagining what Sally would say in quite a lot of situations. Yeah. In a kind of, and the moment with the oysters kill Patrick and sort of raise it. Like a two absent friends moment.

Yeah. there is something, it's nice to have her still in the book in that way and that she's now a voice in Joshua's head. Yeah, yeah. Also I thought it was quite sweet. The trolls sort of trying to take care of him again after Rod has gone and also being grateful because he saved Matt. And in the night, Sancho would carefully drape the survival blanket over him.

And then he wakes up to these gifts of roots and meat and lengths of tree branch for crutches. I did enjoy him kind of berating his son for like striding in and a attacking the beast and trying to save the trolls. It was like, although I suppose that's what I would have done. I was like, you did it. Short term memory, Joshua. That's literally the previous scene. You did it first and then I came and helped.

But yeah, there is no part of either of their genetics that would allow them to not intervene in this circumstance, which is why they make good protagonists. They do make good protagonists. I'd love to spend a bit more time with Brod, actually. but obviously we can't. Yeah. This is the end.

It is nice to see him, see him off that, like, you know, we know that he gets on with Joshua now. We know he's got a... It's nice to see some of the healing between them. Yeah. Yeah. I do like when Sophia brings him, or when him and Rod and Sphere turn up as the Uncle Arthur's about to take off and she calls them out and you're as emotionally constipated as each other. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Imagine just meeting like the older version of your husband. my God. This makes sense now, doesn't it? The constant war she must have with herself to not say, you're just like your father.

Yeah, especially after meeting his father. And especially, as you know, he spends so long complaining about the same traits that he shows. I like the sort of moment of understanding where Josh was explaining his relationship to the silence a bit more to Rod. I think his mother in the troll caves. and Rod sort of says we did all try and understand, including mum. Yeah, and I think there is a moment as you get a little bit older where it becomes easier to kind of forgive your parents, your grandparents, their faults. Yeah, you sort of remember that you understand that they're human beings and you realize how flawed you are as an adult and it gives you a lot more empathy and forgiveness for them. Yeah.

I say how flawed one is as an adult that wasn't directed at you specifically. Oh, we didn't take it that way, but it could have been, and honestly, I wouldn't have argued with you. Same. Sancho? Sanjo. Sancho has a good time of it. I mean, legend for immediately knowing, oh, I know which steppy wormhole we go through now. Yeah, which he kept a bit quiet, isn't he? Well, I'm wondering how much of that is why trolls were sort of hanging out and gathered on that particular world in the first place, because it's not quite where Joshua was.

It's like a couple of earths away. Yeah. I think it's implied. Yeah. And I wonder if they were sort of there because Sancho is aware, like that's a step before the place where the troll clungress sort of is, that we know this world leads to that through the steppy wormhole. Yeah, the stepy wormhole, yeah. Did we mention last time where the name Sancho probably comes from? Oh, it was a reference to Robinson Crusoe, not Robinson Crusoe.

Don Quixote. Don Quixote. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if we actually mentioned that because we mentioned that he was thinking, oh, I can't do Robinson Crusoe. Yes. I had Robinson Crusoe. I can't remember if he explicitly said that it was from. I remember watching a really creepy cartoon version of John Keote when I was little. I've never read it or watched any versions of it, and I really ought to. I read it years ago, I was young teenager, I think. From what I remember, well, you'd like it anyway. You like most books and it's a good book, so.

Yeah, I might. I'm quite easily pleased, Frantzine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got a long list of classics I haven't read and really should. Oh, God, yeah. But that's for next month. This month, we're still talking about the Long Cosmos. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, in the Troll Congress, in these caves under the roots, which again, ferry called Huge Underground Lake and... Love it, yeah. New biome unlocked just for the second half of this book. Love that. Yes. Big tree land, two, in fact. Two biomes.

One land, two biomes. One land, two biomes. No waiting The tail of the trees No waiting To something no waiting Anyway, it's a thing Okay

A reference you've made That you don't get I love it I'm trying to It's probably an allegory Please carry on God no not an allegory That's what those things

With the daggers on their thumbs are Oh allegories Yeah yeah yeah we finally found them We didn't even notice God I can't remember what I was saying. They're in the caves and they're talking. It's not where they end up.

Sancho is very insistent. This is not us finishing out our lives in peace. That's not why we're down here. Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Not the Elephants, great yard. Yeah. But it's the Scout Congress.

It's librarians who have these jobs within the troll community coming from all over to sink. Yeah, to sink. And it sort of ties back into what I was talking about last week, this idea that stories are one of the only things that can be communicated across the long earth. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. And then when you think of like when they leave Sancho at the Supernova Earth, and like the troll equivalent of delivering, like, I don't know, having an aid drop is coming in and like fixing the stories.

And fixing the song, yeah. Yeah. And Josh respecting this is Sancho's job. And so he brings him to the thinker because it was a seemed only right that the troll should be here to add this new miracle to his voluminous memory store on behalf of the troll nation. Yes. Not that there aren't trolls there already, but it's bringing a librarian there specifically to do his job, which is to witness and observe and carry it into the song. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you know, something I think they've handled well with the trolls and the troll called the little translator thing. Is they didn't use it as like a, what's the word for it when you've got a little item? It's like, oh, that fixed my. Babelfish. Like the babelfish. Yeah. Babelfish, sorry. Yeah.

Because, yeah, like, they still have difficulty understanding each other because, they are different species, they communicate differently, like, even if they can get, like, the same words out. It doesn't necessarily mean the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have so much different cultural context underneath it. Which, for something that is so deeply rooted in the non-real, I am going to say, it's quite realistic.

Yeah. And the fact that it's not done as, like, an intelligence thing either. It's not like, this is because I'm talking to an animal. Yeah. Some more basic understanding. It's like, no, this understanding is just as rich and complex. It's just. Yeah.

And quite clearly, Josh is being the idiot. in a lot of the cases. Yes, in so many of the cases. You did say there was not a lot of, I would say, self-flagellation after burning down a good portion of the forest. I know it was necessary in his case, but I would still be beating myself up a little bit when I thought about everything that had died.

I think they're thinking about the life cycle of it and the fact that they're kind of built for this to happen every now and then. Yeah. And it does sound like a lot of the, yeah, a lot of the life actually, They just kind of flew out on these life rafts. Yeah, the parachute seedlings. Yeah, let's choose to believe that nothing burnt to death.

I mean, a few beetles, but... They probably deserved it. Yeah. Sin-filled. What people are. We have made a multiverse enemy in the god of evolution today, Joanna. And I just want to note that now, because when bad things start happening to us, that's probably why.

all right. I'll worry about that later. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, we've got to get the episode done first. Nelson, I'll be quick on, because he's quite underused in this half. He just spends most of it fretting at a distance while Lobzang and Joshua crack on. Freting at a distance would have been a great title for when we had to go remote on this. Except, unfortunately, it did turn out to be permanent.

If we ever did, like, an episode where I was in a different country or something. Yes, then we can call it pressing at a distance. Yeah, nice. Noted. and I'll try and organically work that into the conversation when we record while you're abroad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. I do like the Lucille reaction when Joshua and Lob sang find her of just like, you took your time.

Yeah. You guys were fucking magic. And I think it's a bit of a pissy. We don't get a bit more of Nelson and a bit, I know there's a lot happening. And I'll talk more about the end of the book later. but tying that more to Josh's relationship to his grandchild and maybe just Joshua and Nelson having a longer conversation about what it means to become a grandparent.

Yeah, I think that's definitely one of the scenes that would have been explored if there was more time. Yeah. Like in the writing process. It felt like it was sort of the bones of it were there and then there was never time to put any meat on them. Yes. And then Lobzang.

Yeah, who pops up pretty late in the day. He does pop up quite late in the day. I suppose because we spend a lot of the time with Joshua rescuing Rod before we can get back into that side of the story. Yeah. I do like that Joshua is once again a little bit begrudging with him. It's good to see you again, Joshua said, grudgingly. Yeah.

You're right, mate. In spite of everything, consider that a standard caveat. Blanket, in spite of everything, greeting. Hi. I also very much like the moment with Lob Sang and Jan, where they have the conversation of are you really human or not? It's like, well, break me down and not find a single particle of life or mind, which feels very intentional callback to the Hogfather.

Definitely. But then I could do the same to you. And Jan's like, all right, yeah, fair enough. Yeah, good answer. Bye-bye. Yeah, big, big fan of this, sorry, 11-year-old, nearly said 10-year-old. Yeah. Big fan of this 11-year-old, little bit concerned at the state of the state of the

nun's mental health after he stowed away. I am worried about Sister Colleen. I imagine she has been found by one of Lobzang's friendly nuns. Yes. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. I hope she's been given a cup of tea with a good shot of whiskey in it. As is the nunly way. And then as well as these lovely moments in memoriam of Sally,

we have the in memoriam of Agnes moment where Lobzangamitsi sort of kept a bit of her programming in him. And isn't that really lovely actually? Yeah. To the point where he's like, I take her on motorbike rides. That I thought was very sweet. And Joshua sort of says, she's in me. I didn't need some kind of artificial download to achieve that. And Lob Sang looks at him.

Well, then I envy you. Yeah. That was a very sweet, very human thing. I'm sure. In the moment, it sounded a little bit like slightly tense almost. But I can imagine that Lob Sang would have then thought, well, I've done the human thing. Yeah. Yeah.

The first, when Lobang first admits to it, you can almost see him feeling a bit of guilt over it as if he's kept her alive when she didn't want to be. And I think it's Joshua saying that that helps Lob Sang realize, like, no, this is keeping someone in your memory. Yeah. Yeah, he said, I'm not kept her in like a type of bottle. I've like, yeah. Just tried to integrate her and that. It's like, yeah, like remembering someone in love. Yeah. Continuing to speak their name. And also I do like that Joshua clocks that that bit of Agnes is in Lobang at a thing about thunder and evil. and the Batset of Hell moment.

I thought Lobzang, going kind of into the next one, Lobzang and Douglas Black, and Lobzang's discomfort around Douglas Black is very interesting. Again, I feel like that would have been further explored, if given the opportunity. Yeah, I felt like this was a bit, we did want to bring Douglas Black one last time, and there was definitely room to look at that a bit more.

It gave me echoes, oddly enough, of feet of clay, the golems who bought themselves. Yeah. And the fact that Lobzang has been trying to buy himself back and has not quite been able to, despite I did like the shout out to Salina Jones, who is still very much loyal to Lobzang and trying to help him. Yeah. But yeah, the discomfort around it and the constant distrust as a result of it, Lob Sang constantly saying, yeah, he's up to something because it's Douglas Black. Yeah. And he's been an interesting character because he's never actually been a villain, but he's always been on the cusp of villainy.

Yeah. And as far as we know doing actual villainy, in fact, you've had to have. have to imagine he is because of the business. Oh, he's definitely doing evil things. He's a billionaire, but we don't actually witness him doing straight up evil. Yeah, so he can enjoy his presence because it's entertaining. Yeah. Also, I found it quite funny. He explains Caracall, which was his Shangri-Rulah, and he left and it all didn't work out. The reason the world had the lower gravity and things was because of potential radioactive stuff and that meant no one would go there. That felt a bit like a correction after some kind of 70s MIT student moment. I remember last

week I was talking about the MIT students shouting, the ring world is unstable. Yeah. I feel like after the stuff with Douglas Black being left on Caracall, maybe someone had written to Terry Pratchett or Stephen Baxter saying, well, actually, if that world was like that, it would have to be for something like this and therefore. And so bringing him back and throwing in that explanation was a little bit, all right, yeah, fine. Oh, maybe.

I was just thinking they'd come up with a decent scientific explanation because they wanted Douglas Back back. But also, you're right, there's nothing to have stopped them just bringing him back for a holiday. Yeah. It could be either. Yeah, and it's fun that his project didn't work because with all the money in the world, you can't get over bad science reporting. Yep. Moral loves the story, I expect. And also, let's maybe not pursue living until you're 150. I do find it interesting, actually. So, Lobstein was able to bring Agnes back effectively. Douglas Back is effectively trying to pursue immortality. He could be brought

back in the way Agnes was? Yeah, I wonder if there's some kind of, maybe not even religious, but the kind of spiritual thing where he feels like his, there's a lot of people who believe that even things like if we ever invented a teleporter, what appeared at the other side wouldn't technically be you. Yes, and what would that do to your soul? Yeah. Interesting.

Best not ask Lob sang about it too much. I'm sure he doesn't like it. Yeah, that's very true. Anyway, then Maggie. Yep. Nice to have her back in a decent role. I really like Maggie. And something I was thinking about in this is there's a moment quite early in this section

after she's been going on this tour. It's before she goes over to Douglas Black's fancy ship for dinner. And all she wanted was to retire to her cabin on the Duke and drink some single malt and chew over her impressions so far with Joe McKenzie, or failing that since Mac was long dead with a compatible soul like Jane Sheridan. Yeah. And RIP Mac, obviously. Yeah, I forgot about that until then.

But there's something about how her character does feel a little bit lonely because Mac was the closest thing she sort of had to an equal when we see her on her big journey before. And she doesn't really have an equal by her side and stuff, but she's someone who, instead of being lonely, forms connections and warmth. So she's got this kind of fondness for Joshua and Lobzang, to people who are absolute nightmares.

Yeah. But she knows them, and they have, They have orbited each other for such a long time that there's a friendship there when she likes it or not. And they share core values. And they do share core values. Jane Sheridan, who she has sort of gone, all right, yes, this is a good egg, and therefore I'm happy to have her around. And we know Jane Sheridan's a good egg because she's got a pen handy at an important moment. Yes.

Yes, if we hadn't been convinced before. I like that, like, quietly, astonishingly competent kind of vibe from a character. That's one of my favourite fictional character vibes. is and Pratchett did it so well and so repeatedly. Yeah. And almost always with women. Oh yeah. And so at exactly the right moment, just busting at a pen and, oh yeah, obviously I'll write

the name on the ship quickly. I do always have a Sharpie. So I'm pleased to say in the extremely unlikely event I was chosen to go on a space shuttle, despite my incredible unhappiness at this event, I would be able to write on the ship. Help, help. I'm so claustrophobic. I don't know what I'm doing. Why am I here?

the uncle Arthur I uh as a writer there is always a pen in my vicinity I do not generally know where that pennies I mean in my current

It will make itself available as a when much like a witch with the making washing fowls. Yeah oh yeah that too anyway yes

so Maggie and I was delighted to see Snowy back in that little bit as well yeah very brief But yeah, holding a wrench. Because he was the engineer,

wasn't he? Yes. And Ed Cutler. I'm glad Josh didn't have to bump into him. Yeah. He's had a hard day. I will say, I was reading the description for Snowy as he walked up,

and it's described as very wolf-like, and then it's like a massive wolf that suddenly stands up on its hind legs. Which is fine, except unfortunately, the way I do visualise them is because they're called beagles, I am just visualising a tall beagle standing on its hind legs

with the floppy ears. I love beagles so much. They're so sweet. They're my face. But it's sort of less, oh God, this was really terrifying to be around when you are picturing them as literal beagles with the black and tan and the floppy ears. Yes, although I imagine a person-sized beagle would be. I mean, it would still be quite scary. It would be very cute.

But those fuckers are clever. That's true. But. Well, not in all senses, but they're very good at getting into stuff if you give one a wrench. I'm just saying a humanoid wolf is a lot more intimidating than a humanoid beagle, and I think it is down to the flippiness of the ears. Ed Cutler, also, just briefly. Realistically, still around.

Yeah, it does feel realistic. Still hate him. Very glad he is not actually really actively in charge of things because Maggie's here. Yeah. And I do like the line, nothing Ed Cutler ever attained or did was going to impress Maggie. I like that, again, I'm going to say quite realistically. the kind of person who's like that bud does get to stick around must have aged into some semblance of I'm not good at these things so I'm going to call somebody else.

Yeah, well that's exactly what he does, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's, I'm going to say, the one redeeming feature of Ed Cutler is he clearly now knows when he's at his limit of ability. Yes. And he's going to call another admiral who is just, unfortunately, for him, better. Yeah. And then the next, I don't have a lot of thoughts that we didn't say last week. I don't generally just have a lot of thoughts, but on another topic, yeah. But I think Indra is quite great. And I remember you pointing out last week, Ronald and Ruby being sort of somewhat of the most advanced of the next and they make jokes and put people at ease. And then you see this with Indra as well, if you think of her as a particularly advanced next. And she walks beside Joshua and keeps an eye on him. And it's quite sweet. And then after the ships returned and Maggie says, we'll go up for a decent Navy meal.

And Indra says, I would indeed like to experience a decent Navy meal. Yes. Oh, a joke. A joke. A applause. I think there's something quite interesting happening there with the, as the next develop, you hit a point of the most advanced next to the ones who are the most human. Yeah.

Like they had to kind of spike and come a little bit back into the last frontier of intelligence being like warmth and empathy and caring. Yeah. Yeah. And with that comes jokes. With that comes jokes. What do we think of Marvin Lovelace suddenly being a terrorist? Yeah, the switch seems a little bit unerned here. Yeah. A cult developing around Stan's ideas, yes, that bit I get, and that was predicted in the last book. But this idea of, and even saying, like, and some of these people are really perversing it,

be humble in the face of the universe, is translated as be humble before me and do good, as long as the good is what I say it is. Like, that is believable. But the switch straight into terrorism and to Marvin being a little bit kind of almost mustache twaddingly. Yeah, I feel like I'd have just put a new character in. Yeah, I don't think it needed to be Marvin

because Marvin was actually quite reasonable in the other books. It's a bit of anti-union propaganda going on here. I don't think it was intended as that. No, I know. It was just they had a handy dissident group already. Yeah. I think the actual explanation for why they've tried to sabotage the project is they thought the thinker would be smarter than them and they didn't want that. They want to be the smartest forever.

They're bored and surrounded by worlds full of stupid people and they're bored ordering stupid people around and manipulating them. So they want to smash things up for fun. None of that feels or built up to or connected to what we've seen. even like there's no way to pervert Stan but the sermon on the space elevator or whatever it was there's no way to pervert what Stanberg was saying into that no I think you could have had a dissident group of the next doing this and had it not be Marvin Lovelace and not be I think you could have had the humble as a perversion of what Stan was teaching and you could have had a group of next so dissident that they did this and I don't think they should have been the same groups

No, no. Or if they were a little bit more explanation of how they did the perversion of the sermon. Like, I can kind of get it like you've got to be humble, therefore you shouldn't be building God, essentially. Do you know what I mean? But I feel like that's got to take a couple generations of misinterpretation. Yeah, this has all happened very quickly. Never mind, no. Also, I think we let Douglas Blackoff quite easily a couple of characters ago thinking about it,

considering he was all part of that. Yeah. No, I did kind of get a bit distracted by that. But yeah. That was just him wanting to have a bit of control and have his hand on the kill switch. Yeah. Which... It makes logical sense, but you've done... It does make logical sense. I remember the... Yeah, he is.

Openly, maybe a little bit more evil than we said. That is true. But again, we just didn't really spend enough time with it because it just goes nowhere after that. And it's like, anyway, that's crack on the news. Anyway, off we go. Three months. later, we built a ship. It is very rushed. And then, yeah, lastly, we already mentioned Jan, being great, stowing away.

And when Maggie sort of says, well, if you were in trouble for stowing away, would it be worth it? And he's like, well, hell, yeah. Obviously. Right now, practice that answer again, like you're talking to a nun from Joshua. Even I still think the nuns have superpowers. But then Maggie's comment of, all right, but also, like, I will recruit that kid. Yeah. Yeah.

You get in touch in seven to eight years, child. And then locations. We've already talked about them a lot. But the big tree world is so cool. Yeah, it is. There's no getting around that. Really hard to visualise. I am bad at visualising the absolutely massive scale of things.

I think it's easier if you remember, you wouldn't be able to see it all at once anyway. Yes, that's true. You can visualize what these creatures are seeing, I reckon. Like the wall of bark, an ending wall of bark before you. A perspective shift. Shift walking up to it, it's quite cool. Yes. Like, how the fuck is this walk taking this long?

Oh, it's that big. Oh, my God. Describe like skyscrapers, dated Madison rendered in wood. Calling them the mighty Idrisals. Yeah. I remember, I can't remember if we said it out loud, but I remember when we briefly flashed through.

the giant tree worlds saying at least to myself, oh, I wish we spent time there. Giant trees, always awesome. Yeah. It's nice that we did. And I feel like this is, you know, it's in the introduction that this is one of the big passages that he spent a lot of time working with Pratchel and I feel like you can see that there. This is one great last, wouldn't it be cool if? Yeah, I mean, Terry Pratcher is a man who's thought very deeply about how big trees would work. We can see that in several works. A is nice in the acknowledgements as well.

Ian Stewart gets a shout out. He consulted on some of the science of this. I'm not going to pretend I completely understood all of the science of it. It was certainly plausible enough that I was happy to go along with it. Oh, very much so. And I am delighted by it. And this idea of forests as living things, like a step away from the collectives like troll bands, this huge,

massive life cycle. Yeah. Again, I feel like with a little more time, they would have introduced mycelium network to make us weep with happiness, but, uh,

tragically. Alas, it was not to be. No. Although we were seeing some weird blobby stuff on some of those planets we stepped through on the northward journey, so I think it's there. It's there.

It's there. It's ready. It's ready to all be connected. And then on huge scales, obviously we've also got Apple Pie, the thinker. yes you've got brackets for fuck's sake here just for the silly name ah right yes yes yes

like raspberry pie yeah but it's apple but it's apple yeah it's on the pie world yeah it's good it's good

it's good so good I do love this little bit of description many of the components especially the big ones had an oddly organic look not like regular engineering at all with sweeps and curves and blisters like spray painted seaweed

on a huge scale And this is another big scale thing, just like with the trees. Yeah. Like trying to imagine how impossible it is to see this computer while you're in the middle of it in this little naval footprint in the little Cincinnati and zooming out and out and out and seeing it taking over the continent. Yeah.

I love there's a kind of sci-fi static tech that gets so advanced, it starts looking organic again. Yes. Because you think about it's some of the best technology. We in reality have created, let's say, we the species that's created is based on observation of the natural world, doesn't it? So kind of. Yeah, very much.

And it was the same thing with really like the design of the brick moon last week, and it feeling honeycombed and all very rounded. And then these facets of this diamond cliffs, complex textures, and captured sunlight merging as a cool blue glow. I feel like I get such a migraine on this earth. Oh yeah, I mean, I don't want to be there. Constant blue light. I mean, I was thinking about

Dr. Who has the planet, the diamond planet midnight, which is one of the very, very best episodes of Doctor Who. Yeah, I'll give you that. And yeah, I was just like how cool it is, how big and vast. Yeah. Again, another sadly unexplored avenue of more about what this replicator tech means for humanity, because that is fucking huge. I mean, that's, you know, on the effects that'll have on this generation.

surely on a par with the fact that we've now got into stellar communication. Yeah. There's also this, like we just saw what happens when Replicated Tech goes really, really wrong in the previous book. And now we've got this computer that's building itself. I keep feeling like I'm spotting like foreshadowing and then it's not. Like the, um, the, the, the otter freak like, uh, luring in Matt with, with a semblance of a troll song. I'm like, oh my God, is this like a parallel slash foreshadowing of what the aliens are doing? Nope, no, okay.

I feel like there's... Just seems like it would be. I think the problem is, is because the long earth is so infinite, and now we have the infinite scheme, there's almost so much more that could have been done with this world that we'll always see. I wish they'd done more of that. I wish we'd explore that.

I wish we'd explore the afterfakes of that. I suppose that is a nice thing about having an imagination, we can sit here and contemplate the red string that we are pinning to the cork board of our mind. And then quickly, obviously, we should talk about datum and the visit back there that Josh takes, because this is a much smaller scale. Yes. But going back to this kind of ruined world, local home brew beer and recycled Coke fossils, and my brain went fall out straight away.

Yeah, yeah. That's very much in the imagery. I like that we also sort of like that. through the documentaries Josh is watching and that being one of the main bits of entertainment now that's a nice way

to exposition that is a nice way to exhibition exhibition exposition and we learn that Valhalla's kind of falling down now and boarded up and going dark and Joshua gets a moment of like oh I think of like the effort that is we fought so hard for that

you know much loved father-in-law put into it yes but people are trickling away because they don't need to be gathered in this big one large space anymore. And even though it was such a long earth construction, turns out people just... Don't need to be there.

They're on into it, yeah. We're really interesting as a concept, actually, if you think. Like, the underlying theory there is that humanity doesn't tend toward density if given a choice. And I suppose that might be true. I mean, there's that whole thing, isn't there, the archaeological record showing that once Britain reached a certain density of people, then the amount of remains found that died of violent death at the hands of others

rocketed. Yeah. It's as soon as we started infringing on other people's resources, basically. So I suppose if we were going way back to the chance to have a lower density and thus surely lower violence. People probably would spread out a bit. But then you say, I don't know, it makes sense for the trolls because they've got the troll court, the long call, whatever, the song, you know,

I'll go into this a bit more when we get to the end of the episode. Oh, right, cool. Cool. Cool. Sorry. We'll get there. We'll talk about it. Remind me to circle back to this point. Okay. Because my brain's going places. Going places. Oh, and also, as you pointed out, the flashes of green coming through is really lovely.

These plants clawing up through, like, weeds breaking through abandoned driveways and flowers. Oh, and lastly, there's just a cool moment where the asphalt had melted and solidified in a frozen wave. That's just a cool moment. Yeah, I love that. That's great. I quite like the mixture as well. Again, it's quite fallouty, the mixture of like this new tech that even if it's a little underwhelming, the like milk car electric cars with the very steampunk petrol converted.

Yeah, the wood burning things. Yeah, wood burning cars. I do like that. Ultimately, everything is a steam engine and we know that. And, well, yes, at its heart, most things are steam engines. I also like the idea of as the wildlife has changed. as the winter, the latitudes have shifted lower and such. The idea that people might end up with sort of moose-drawn buggies and things.

I've decided that's where the logical conclusion. Yeah, moose-drawn buggies, I think so. I don't know how successful anyone's ever been in taming a moose, but... I can tame a moose. Surely it's fine. Yeah, you could tame a moose. Obviously, I could tame the one person who was capable of it. Oh, yeah, that's true.

I don't want my whole job to be like moose-taming all the time. Exactly. You've got other things to do. Exactly. You can become too competent you just end up with everybody else's work. Let's take a break. Little bits we liked. What kind of little bits did we like? Fiddler's Green.

Oh, yes. This is kind of putting a pin in a future research rabbit hole. So Josh and Rod references this. He talks about the, I think the troll cave they're talking about is this fiddler's green. and Josh says oh like Paris to the Caribbean which by the way just sidebar

that a couple of more modern references which I'm just really not used to seeing and by more modern I mean just post 2005 I guess yeah I'm just not used to that from Pratchett books I'm out of the habit yeah no you're right

so Rod explains Fiddler's Green an old sailors legend and there are enough old sailors serving on the Valhalla run twains in my day Fiddler's green where the rum and tobacco never run out and the fiddlers never stopped playing

so I was looking for the origin of this Fiddler's Green myth. And what I found is it's from early 19th century is where we start seeing references to Fiddlers Green. And the kind of theorising is that it's you know, like an Elysian Fields kind of idea. But I couldn't find a first,

this is where someone first said Fiddler's Green. Okay. So if you think that Wikipedia page, it will show you like some things that are more negative about it but generally positive is this idea of like a Sailors of Alhalla. negative things about it. Yeah, I didn't want to put it all in because it would just be me regurgitating a Wikipedia page.

Okay, yeah, I'll let you do your own research rabbit hole before I ask too many questions. Because it would be kind of a haven of debauchery considering who goes there or the idea that it's more of a purgatory, like you're almost cursed to dance forever. And because they're like pirates. Yeah. Yeah.

The idea is generally that you finally get to be on land with ample amounts of your tobacco and rum and dancing forever. And I think the dancing forever was the idea of it being purgatory-ish and kind of cursed. Because, ah, you can have as much as you want, but isn't it horrible if you have? One man's Valhalla is another man's sticky nightclub. Exactly. But I did find one of the earlier places where Fiddler's Green is referenced is a book called Snarlio or the dog fiend by Frederick Marriott.

Narlio. Snarly Yao, but all one word. Okay. Or the dog fiend by Frederick Marriott. and there's a scene where a bunch of sailors are sort of singing songs together, and one of them sings the song of Fiddler's Green, which I won't read out all of, because it is like a full song in the book. At some point I'm going to go back and actually read this whole book.

Yeah, yeah. But just a little bit of it. Says the Parsons, I hear, you've married three wives. Now, do you not know, that's a sin? You sailors, you lead such very bad lives, St. Peter to heaven will now let you in. Parsons says I, in each port I've but one, and never had more wherever I've been.

Below, I'm obliged to be chased as a nun, but I'm promised a dozen at Fiddler's Green. Fiddler's Green, where seamen true, where here they've done their duty, the bowl of grog shall still renew and pledge to love and beauty. Wow. So anyway, yeah, I didn't find the origin of Fiddler's Green other than early 19th century, but there's definitely a pin to go back and search out the origins of Fiddler's Green. Yeah.

What did you like, Francine? Well, I can segue for once. Reference. Because my point is some references I got. And did you notice one of the characters called Philida Green? I did notice a character called Philida Green. Which surely there connects. Fiddler Green.

Oh, I didn't even think of it like that. I was distracted by the potentially related to Helen. But yes, that has got to be. Yeah. Philida means green as well, by the way. It means like foliage. So Philida Green's name is literally green green green. Growing green.

Excellent. Made slightly more dignified by what I think is a connection. but ultimately quite a funny name. And then, I'll be honest, I've not got a huge amount of these. But the other one, basically, I've put down references here because it's almost all movie references and Star Trek references, which I don't get. So when I've spotted one, I've got, Victory.

There's one you mentioned earlier, Clemens being Mark Twain's original surname. I'm not sure why he changed his name, actually. I could have looked into that, couldn't I? Yeah, Samuel L. Clemens is quite a nice name. Sam L. Maybe Samuel L just didn't have the cool ring to it before Samuel L Jackson made it thus. Oh, yeah. We've never known a world in which that wasn't a cool name, but maybe it wasn't.

Maybe it wasn't. Samuel L. I like Clemens, though. I do like Clemens. Clemens is nice, isn't it? Anyway, the other one I got was, right, yes. So back to the cavern of the librarians briefly. Yes.

and Rod gets to do a little bit of vandalism. Actually, I'm not sure. He was carving and he didn't have a Sharpie, so one of the most confident men we've met, but really carry a sharpy rod. I suppose the carving would last longer, and if that's what he was going for. I suppose so,

but ultimately he's just making a pop culture reference, which is Arnie Sacknusium. Sacknissum. Shit, I didn't try and say that beforehand, did I? You know when you've read something a few times, and just in your head, I guess you kind of subconsciously imagine you can say it out loud.

Yep. But anyway, that's reference to the journey of the centre of the earth. Jules Verne. Jules Byrne. Because that is the name of the Icelandic alchemist who leaves a clue in Brunic script for our protagonists who end up going into the centre of the earth. I've also not read that one, actually. I really should. I was thinking, did I read it at school?

I think maybe I just read it at that age. Yeah. But it's been so long I feel like I may as well put that in that I didn't read it box. Yeah. I think I've got like a Jules Verne anthology somewhere, so I must have a physical, which must have that. You'd think. Be mad to leave it out. Hell of a choice.

Any other references? Oh, no, not that I couldn't. Not that I felt like going into all the other ones were ones I had to look at up because they were movie references. I had to look up a few movie references, including that was what I was thinking of, the modern ones was, there was a take that, Colonel Quorich, when Joshua was doing the reaching wood missile from the original Avatar movie. Oh, I never saw that, yeah.

I did, but I don't remember it. I don't remember enjoying it, and so I've never watched it since. I mean, this was like 2009. Yeah. The fiddler's green in the Pirates of Caribbean. Is that from this song? It's... It's been so long since...

Right? Maybe? I've got a version of that on my playlist summer. It's been so long since I watched any of the Pirates of Caribbean movies and I don't really remember a lot of them. I remember some very specific scenes and almost all of them involve Kira Knightley doing things. She had some collarbones since I remember those. Yeah.

And then I don't really remember anything else from those films. Why would he? No. I remember really... Oh, yeah, Calypsoe. Because I do remember, like, I've got a fond nostalgia for them, but I can't re-watch them now because I didn't realise when I loved them at the time, just how awful Johnny Depp was and now I can't watch things with him in.

Yeah, I was young enough at the time to also fancy Orlando, I believe. Oh, yeah, very much so. That was the big one for me. Didn't fancy him in Lord of the Rings, but I did fancy him in Pirates the Caribbean. Yeah. Anyway, listeners. I'm clearly not a gentleman. I don't prefer blondes. Listeners, what did you fancy Orlando Bloom in?

That's genuinely what I was about to ask. Answers either. And this will tell us your answer, actually. Message in a bottle. Yep. Or how do else? I'm carved into Lember's bread. I don't fucking know, right? What else did you like, Francine? Not lembers, bread. So further on datum rewilding.

So we're talking about our general like of green pushing through concrete. Frankly, can't get enough of it. Neither is count. That's the best kind of sci-fi aesthetic. Suck it. Sorry, everybody. That was a bit aggressive for no reason at all. I've had a lot of caffeine today.

That's my third Pepsi Max. It's just not as good as Diet Coke. So, but the green was sprouting everywhere it could, pushing through layers of cracked concrete and asphalt, despite the radiation, despite the climate life going on. And so my quote was kind of that as well. Obviously, the idea of dandelions pushing through concrete is always lovely. I really liked how they lent into the thousands of years of human interference with the landscape

meant that even when it was abandoned again, you could just immediately tell you went in and now it's weird. It's weird because people have been fucking with it for so long. and that's now alien to Josh, which is cool. I like how in the centre of Madison, you've got this kind of combination of the two cataclysmic events that kind of makes this like fusion kind of sci-fi thing, don't you? So as you said, like the wave of asphalt, really cool, really cool visualisation. But then you've got the wolves howling.

It made me think of like Chernobyl, Chernobyl, and how nature has kind of, got this like really interesting mini ecosystem around there probably not so much anymore um but because it was it was largely untouched for so long yeah yeah exactly and then it started me thinking because wolves were mentioned and like um like you were saying like the the the wildlife kind of migrating and all this stuff i was like what happens if you remove humans from the british isles like which species become dominant or not even dominant like what what happens to this? Because we took wolves away and you have to imagine, they don't find their way back easily. No, I mean, because this is removed as in from this British Islands,

because obviously we see the long earths where there were no humans and we see that there are still big predators and things there. But if we just, this, this earth were on here. And there's a disaster and we're gone. Yeah. Nature reclaims it and animals reclaim it. Yeah, so we've not got bears or wolves on the British Islands anymore. We haven't got that predator. So I wonder if it, I wonder if we just end up, because we, what we've got, a deer, we've got that part of the ecosystem. But we don't have anything to keep in check. The deer don't really have any big predators. Yeah, it's really odd. So I guess, you know,

we get this massive plague of deer for a while and they start to, a bunch of them starve to death. Maybe we get the big life cycles for Lemmings do. Yeah. Badgers probably have an easier time of it. Yeah, badgers do probably have an easier time of it. Maybe hedgehog has evolved to be a bit more vicious. that's it I was trying to think on a scale of like evolution eventually one of the species ends up coming out on top doesn't it but like just

just in like the shortest term the next few hundred years I wonder what yeah I wonder what you get in the way of of any predators I mean I guess it depends on whether things get out of zoos and kind of rewild themselves oh that's a good point I didn't think about that yeah especially because there are also some rewilding projects

now like there are efforts in with like basically still contained because it's within like massive nature reserves and stuff but like be being brought back into the ecosystem is happening now. Look up videos of that because there are babies and it's really cute. Keystone species. We love a keystone species, especially when it doesn't eat us. Yes, adorable. It's the problem with wolves. It is the problem with wolves.

I mean, from an ecological perspective, I'd love to see what happens if you reintroduced wolves. But ultimately, they've just got to eat one person. You've got a huge PR issue. Well, that's the problem, yeah, with rewilding and bringing back something like wolves is that we are just not used to having predators. Like you see a big difference in Americans and one of the valid reasons to have firearms in America is there are a lot of things that can eat us. We are taught how to camp and hike and trail responsibly because there are a lot of things that can eat us. Whereas humans don't really have predators in the UK. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would not want to say piss off a cow. I am very calm, quiet and respectful when walking through a field.

Yeah, but it's different than being hunted. but it is very different from a bear or a wolf. Although ultimately it would be terrifying in the moment, the concept of being hunted by a cow is amusing and there's no way around that. No, it is very funny, that's true. But yeah, humans don't have predators the way they do in the US and so it makes people treat things very differently. I mean, there are sort of the wild cats and things up in Scotland.

I imagine they probably start migrating down and there's more of them. I'm also now imagining domesticated cats getting out, teaming up with the wildcats. Oh shit. Domesticated dogs. Domesticated dogs, they're probably going wild. I'll tell you what, yeah, this question only makes sense if you get rid of the pets. Yeah. Because we got wild dogs otherwise, aren't we?

We just got wolves 2.0. Yeah. All right, that'll answer that. And I hadn't thought about Safari Parks either. Yeah, that's true. So it's still going to be interesting, but it's going to be less of a bit of deer-dominated society than I was imagining. Yeah, I feel like if things are getting out of the, well, the zoo's Safari parks and we think about the domesticated ones. Otherwise, like, yeah, the biggest brand is

foxes. Yeah. And I can't imagine a fox bringing down a deer. Not without cooperation. It depends on the fox. Depends on the deer, I suppose. Always done. And I've always, and I've always said. And that's what ESOP said. Did you have any more points? No, but thank you for coming on that journey with me. I enjoyed it. That was a lovely journey. Thank you. Do you have any more a little bit? You do, don't you? Oh, yeah, this last quantum ramble. And to be very clear, I'm not talking about the quantum ramble.

I'm not actually talking about the quantum in any way, shape or form. Because I can't. For a quantum ramble, does one need seven league boots? I feel like, yeah. I've got them. You just can't see them under the desk. No, it's specifically about the little quantum ramble we get one last Melania chapter. And he's this sort of fictionalized scientist, he, Louis Lindsay's.

Hmm? Elm, no. No, no. He's the one who hates Melania. Are we on Jakasta? Oh, no, it is, oh. Yes, we're on to Kastas. No, I misread the title.

But he does go on about Melania a lot. But he does go on about that. But no, I just like this as a fun that we get one of these last interludes even if I'm allowed to close my eyes while reading it. The actual title, make sure you get this down correctly for once in your life, Jakaster, the authorised biography of Professor Witton by Constance Melania. Especially by now. Yeah. We don't.

We know that Jacaster's no longer working to him. I didn't even clock that Melania had written it. Yeah. Or Constance Melania, say probably like Melania's daughter or something. Yeah, yeah. There's also, I quite like the detail of the publisher being Valhalla Trans World Harper. Oh, yeah. My idea that Valhalla, at this point, because this is 2016,

that the book is apparently published, so it's slightly earlier than when this is happening. But Valhalla being the High Megas Industrial Center, despite being not a farm. place. So that's where publishing is at this end of the megas. Now, Durano, if you consider the logistics of publishing in the long... Yes, well, Johnny Shakespeare did, and look where that got us. Well, exactly. That's why we don't think about publishing in the long earth. And I've always said that too, Fronstein. Depends on the deer, depends on the fox, depends on the publisher. The deer, the fox and Johnny Shakespeare. But then within the actual rant of this and talking about quantum states we have the nice things like, one has you here in this room, another has you

on the moon, another has you down the corridor making me a better cup of tea than the last dose of tar you inflicted on me. It started to sound like a good night moon thing there, didn't it? Yeah. I'm just like the idea of keeping in the bitter rants about bad cups of tea. So despite refusing to comprehend a word of it, I was delighted to have this last little quantum interlude. And I will say, as with all well-written descriptions of science beyond my can, I feel like I understand it in the moment and then blessedly forget it the very next. I definitely could not explain it to anyone else. I'm smeared across seven dimensions and you know what, that's fine. Yeah, I've just kind of accepted it now. It's nice to think about

in a way, just if anything goes wrong enough and I click my red heels together. And I can smear across a difference. Say there's no place like Quantum. I'll be safe. I think that's, I think that's what he was saying. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Yeah, there's also the fact that it's explaining Quantum at the same time as explaining a fictional scientific concept. So it's probably best we didn't completely remember it. Yeah, it's probably for the best. Big stuff then. Do you want to start us off with some aging characters. Yeah. So one of...

Sonder again, actually. One of our listeners said in the discord that it does kind of feel like watching Joshua decaying as much as it does ageing. Yeah. Which is interesting. I'm not sure I agree, or rather, I do agree, but I do agree, but it's kind of both,

because that's kind of what aging is. Yeah. And like it is mentioned that Joshua is significantly less healthy than a lot of other people his age who he's bumping into. And that makes sense because he's not taken good care of himself. And he keeps getting put in situations where he has his legs bombed by an elephant, his hand bitten off by a wolf, that kind of thing. Yeah, there is that. Also, I do think there's an element to him kind of not really growing or changing very much. Mentally, yes.

And that's why it doesn't feel as much like he's aging. because we're not seeing him learn. That's good point. He was. I feel like an old soul from the very beginning. Maybe his body's just caught up with it. That's true. It's like my husband's always said.

He was kind of born a middle-aged man and now he's finally there. He's like, oh, there we go. This is nice. This is what I was after. He said, sorry, he's now taking pleasure in the fact that occasion there'll be like teenagers working on the farm or whatever. And he's like the old. old man now. He started walking around with his hands behind his back in that pose and

like saying old man things. He was like, Jackie, you're on just 41 still, remember? You'll save some of the drama for later on, Locks of Mercy and all that. Anyway. God, I can't wait to be old. I know. Just for that stuff. But yeah, generally, speaking of Luxem Percy, I like how it's handled in that it's kind of ever-present. But because those sorts of aches are, he keeps going on about, you know, is leg and his leg and his, hand and all of them do. But, you know, that is there. And it is written by two men. I actually don't know how old Stephen Baxter is, but one has to imagine not 21 when he wrote this. And we know Terry Pratchett was getting older and ill. And so that's very ever-present. And it's written

very realistically. And it makes sense. And I like that it's kind of, it's tied in with like good feeling towards the next generation. Maggie is noting that the youngsters in their 20s and early 30s are down playing on the training deck. And they're very benevolent. And I like that we've been allowed to stay with this bunch of protagonists, even if we do veer occasionally into this perspective of the youngsters. Yeah.

I like that we're allowed to age with them. Yeah. Yeah. Lob Sang, interestingly, he seems, obviously he always seems uncanny, but he seems uncanny next to Joshua and Nelson when they all meet up again, in a more pronounced way, because Joshua and Nelson are now ageing. Yes. And Lob Sang, although he's got like a couple of lines on his face for show, basically, is obviously not.

No, and also Lobang has very recently been a child. Yes. That was the place he put himself in the simulation. Yeah. And so there's an element of Lobzang doesn't grow old and change in the same way, and almost seems younger and more naive as a result. Yeah. It would be interesting, again, mourning the time they didn't have to expand on some of this.

I would love to hear about Lobzang's feelings towards Joshua aging. Yeah. Obviously, he kind of came to terms with the fact that he lost Agnes. Not really. He brought her back again. He kind of came to terms of the second time around. But Joshua's different, isn't he? Yeah.

Joshua was never a mentor figure to Lobzang. No, they were equals. They were young men together. Yeah, they were as close to equals as Josh, as Lobzang felt he could have. It's a vampire dilemma, isn't it? Yeah. The immortal dilemma generally. Oh, there's a really good song by an indie artist on TikTok that I'll send you.

Which is just the most haunting. She's got a whole, they've got a whole album of vampire songs. and there's one particular one that really haunts me. They've got a really haunting voice anyway, but it's about how bitter the air tastes now and how industrialised everything is and how they're afraid of the sunlight and how they're glad that this person they love and miss so much

never had to see it. Oh. Yeah, it's... Yeah, I'll send you the link. Cool. It's really, really good. I'll put it in the notes, in fact. Anyway, sorry, what was I saying?

I've gone into vampire melancholy. point of speculation actually obviously we can never know but Joshua if Lobzang offered him an option to live on Allah Agnes which way do you think Joshua would go because I think there's a good argument for either side of it I think no I think no or yes and regrets yeah but I think the fact that this new way of travel this new scheme has just opened up and that curiosity combined with the birth of of his grandchild and the idea of being there. Yeah. I can imagine a storyline in which he does.

He regrets it and Rod hates that he's done it. Yeah. I don't, I, like, I think the best thing... Of course, I'm glad to see you, Dad, but this is weird, unnatural and you're freaking out my kid. Yeah. I think the best thing would be for Joshua to not do it, but I could see Joshua's reasons for potentially wanting to. Yeah. And then, of course, he gets to go on the ultimate sequester.

They load him into a satellite and send him off. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I like also just in ways they've handled kind of that the aging characters, they had no magic fix for Joshua's leg. No. It was broken.

It took like a realistically long amount of time before he could do anything. And then throughout this until he's had like a lengthy hospital's day and he still needs a stick. That's right. He is realistically helpless after losing his crutches. months after the accident. He's very reliant on, again, like the lack of a babblefish. Like, they are, despite quite a lot of the book being Deiasex Machina, they are refusing to Deiasex Machina things for Joshua.

Poor Joshua, but I do like that. Deserves it, frackets, affectionate. I do also like the one quote from, I think it was Maggie. What a bunch of oddballs we all are. and all as old as Methusler. Dramatic from people in their 60s, but she'll. But that was the thing I like with Maggie as well. You know, she's outlived a couple of close friends,

and that hasn't made her bitter or isolated. She is reaching out for these new connections. Yeah. And she has aged with it as well. I also like the constant, no, it's Admiral. It's Admiral. Okay, now it's Captain. Yeah, well, now we're on a ship again.

Keep up, keep up. Oh. Okay. Yeah, it's where you get a series where you get to kind of, age with the protagonist like that and see them through that much of their life. Yeah. Yeah. And it is reassuringly realistic as in, I don't know, it probably infuriates anybody much older than us to hear.

But I feel like now we are in our mid-30s. There are certain parts of the aging process we can no longer ignore. Yep. And, you know, I think quite a big part of this time of our life is coming to terms of that. Yep, very much. And all refusing to. But I think we've both decided not to do that part. And I like reading and listening, I like reading stuff by and listening to people 20, 30 years older than us who are still cool and intelligent and capable and comfortable and their skin and such.

Yeah. Thank you, Maggie. I will probably never be an admiral, but that's fine. But that is fine. But I will always have a Sharpie. Good. right so I have quite a lot of disparate thoughts I have a lot of thoughts traveling a long way to get home and this book has a weird ending it's it trails off a little bit and we've talked about a lot of things we wish we'd had a bit more time for I do like that as an ending more than you know a catastrophe in the last three chapters yeah which is out the first few ended

yeah but it did get to a point where there was nowhere more for this book to go Yes. But what we do get is a very big picture idea of the long... And what I've liked about all of these books is that there is a bit of a story, but most of it is just going, wouldn't it be cool if, and kind of exploring around a little bit. We go right back to the first book. That was what I loved about it is all these little vignettes of other characters.

Pure speculative fiction, yeah. Exactly. It's great fun. So this isn't the most satisfying conclusion that like a five-book series could have. But as a last journey into this world, I like it. And I feel like it's very hopeful. Yes. And the thing I kept coming back to over and over again was the idea we were talking about with Valhalla, with concentration of humanity and people spreading out and not needing to be gathered even in this new version of a city, going out into wider and wider spaces and smaller, smaller worlds.

And I think what this book does in a lovely way is starts bringing everyone back together again. And I don't just mean our main protagonists, but suddenly you have this unifying thing in the thinker, you have this unifying thing of, on another journey to go on in a different direction. The community aspect of building that think is really cool, actually. There is something undeniably satisfying about working on a group project like that. Yeah. And we get this, we get nice moments of talking about hopefulness and about what the long earth, and I'm talking about humanity, but also sapiens in general.

And that is a big idea of this book, is that it's not just about humanity. It is about all the sapiens. It's about the trolls and the beagles and everyone who, here's the call. Yeah, it keeps reminding us of that every time we're in danger of forgetting, I think. Yeah, I think it does a really good job with that. But so really early, like in the first chapter in this section, Reberts is taking Jan on that journey and they stop at Earth 3, 145,

one of the early pie worlds, which has been damaged by a supernova. And she says, this is about the worst damage this universe can inflict, an extinction event that can span thousands of years. And then she talks about the fact, but this is going to recover. and because it's the long earth, it's going to recover faster because people will come back here. And that's what we see by the end of the book with Sancho being dropped off there. People will come back and fix the song that's being sung wrong and bring seeds. I get a little bit emotional thinking about the song being fixed.

Me too. It's wonderful. In a lovely way. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, definitely. And the Reverta talks about like the joy of the thinker being built. For all the horrors of things like supernovas, the universe is filled with love. life. Yeah. And then says it must be, which is quite sad and hopeful. And I like those moments of more like the human side of Roberta and how much her journey

informs her. Did you notice when, oh, who was it that was explaining the supernova to Jan? It was Roberta, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. The way she described the supernova, I hadn't really thought about it until she was talking about it, but it sounded like the kind of horror that Pratchett likes to talk about, which is the cold clinical.

Unfeeling. Unfeeling horror. The giant accidentally stepping on you. Yeah. Yeah. The cosmic. Yeah. Cosmic. Yeah.

It's not. Yeah. Literally. Okay. Yeah. There was a phrase for that. Yeah. Got it. We like that.

And then, of course, you have the other side of it. You have the protesters coming to the thinker. They want to stop it for all sorts of reasons from the next who don't want anything to be cleverer than them. To the people afraid that this is some image of God being built and it shouldn't be, which is the next attitude from another angle, almost. It's a shame that they didn't have one of these disparate groups having what I think would be the rational opposition, which is, this is going to kill us all. Yeah.

They kind of made both of the other groups sound silly. Yeah, I wish they'd done a bit more of the replicated technology is really dangerous. We saw it eat another world. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what the moral of that story was meant to be, if not that. but yeah so yes that was a horrific thing

that happened anyway let's build the tall meant nexus not to read Shakespeare that was a moral of that story was it yes

now come and play with the replicators children and we learn little things like there's the long unity which is like this long earth offshoot of the UN

which is trying to create connectivity and then going round the tour of the gap space and we see Devon Lee who I'm glad are very there with us on the journey and with us on the journey and Uncle Arthur as well.

But we see these other people who are working on it who are so excited to be there who have come from the space elevators and factories where workers dried up because they want to be doing something. Yeah. And the idea of the space elevator is never really coming to fruition, but the hope that must have been there when people got started on that project. Isn't it interesting that Lindsay's legacy, Willis Lindsay's legacy, was not at all what he thought it would be.

but it's still really worthwhile because it gives like the Aboriginal people a new Yeah of course multiverse Oh yeah I didn't even get into the whole idea of Australia the fact that you know we were there already Yeah before you lot discovered it we're suited to it oh hey guess what guys we can step into the next world oh really fucking guys Who are these guys? I fucking found it bollocks fuck but the idea of them going to Mars and kind of always being suited to it and said we'll probably spend another 400 centuries singing our way across all of that

and then we'll figure out what to do next. Yeah. And something in the idea of carrying things through songs and way back in the last continent, the last continent, the long cosmos. Yeah. But we talked about the idea of the dreaming and this way of holding on to stories and long, long history. The insane oral tradition of Aboriginal people.

Yeah. And how's... Like tens of thousands of years insane. And how close that is, the trolls, the idea of the long call? Yeah, yeah. It's very much the same thing. Joshua talks about the fact that human history is a footnote compared to the history in the long call. Yeah. And then again, you've got the average people on the side going,

nearly all human history. If you don't mind, except they're not talking like that. Yeah. The troll call, by the way, sorry, I am pretty... The long call, sorry, saying vague. on topic of coming back to the beginning. Talis and packing up your troubles. Yes.

Lovely bits to end up in there. It made me really happy to see Thomas Tallis in there. That was such a big one for Pratchett. And then pack up your troubles being in like the first book. Yeah, yeah. The chap who thought he was staying with the French or the Russians. Yes. The World War I chap.

Yeah. And so yeah. And then you have all these ideas of the difference it makes for Sapien people to be living and working together, you know, Rod raising his family around trolls and Joshua points out, oh yeah, you're learning what it is to be sapient in this very complex universe. Yeah. And the invitation being on such a grand scale and Sancho hearing it just as much as anyone else does, of it making its way into the long call and the traverses hearing it.

Yeah. And there was something glorious about it all. This is when they're getting on the Uncle Arthur, as if the ship was to be powered, not by any kind of technology, but a surge of shared enthusiasm. Yeah. And Sancho arriving and being like, oh, home. Yeah. We found the next. This is where we meant to be. And the idea of the long earth slash, I guess, long universe being constructed by sapiens, almost. Yes.

And we won't again go into the quantum of it all because it hurt my brain. I did. I almost didn't love that as much as I thought I might because, although it's very power of belief. Yes. I think it's because the part of my brain that the long earth tickle so much is just the pure exploration of it all. Yeah. Oh, we haven't seen that be it. And it still is. Of course it still is. But it's like, oh, but for imagining it at the same time, is that as cool. Yeah, this is the answer. I don't know why I did. I think it's not so much it was, it's imagined into existence almost as you have to be imagined to comprehend its existence.

Yeah. We're sort of where it landed with it. And Sancho gives the nice explanation when they're talking about. about why the long earth exists of room, room to run away from River Singerbeast, room for the long call, room to think, and room for more cubs. Yeah. And that is, it's all just, I mean, not just, but it's all room to think. Yeah. Very bad necessities.

Yeah. The long earth having nurtured sapiens is now using that sapiens to dream its way to infinity. Oh. And yeah, home, this is the, right, at the end, as they're there, and Josh and Sanchez were talking about it, as you said, home. Not the place you were born into, but the place that gathered you in. And that's just what the home was for Josh at the beginning. Oh shit.

It wasn't the place. It was the place that gathered him in. Oh. And so I do think as much as this, the long earth kind of trails off, I think this is a wonderful place to trail off to a place of potential and open and finding home very, very far away and spreading out very far to come back together. Yeah. And here's where I'm going to do the

most controversial thing I've ever done on this podcast. No, it's not that controversial. I'm going to disagree with Mark Burrows, though. Right? Sorry, we can all clutch up ours for a minute. No, because obviously a lot of people don't want to read The Shepherd's Crown. They want there to always be a Pratchy book,

and I've heard Mark make the argument that if you're going to leave one unread, you should leave the Long Cosmos, because that way you get to read the Shepherd's Crown, and he's described this one as more miscible. Yeah. And I'm not saying this book is as good or, better than the Shepherd's Crown because like it's not such a really good book and you should

read it if you haven't but you should also read this and I don't think this is a lesser book for maybe having a bit less Terry Pratchett in than we would like because it still comes to such a wonderful place. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Wasn't that Terry Pratchett good? Wasn't he good? Francine, have you got an obscure reference video for me? I have. I always feel bad doing these after you've done such a good thesis, but yes, I do. Please don't. I love your obscure reference, but yes. I suppose it's a bit pratchit to have another ending after the ending, isn't it?

So the Bathyscafe, which may be how it's pronounced. Sure. They mention it as a kind of potential design for the chip they end up with, but they end up with more of a space shuttle. Yeah, Apollo inspired. Yeah. When I read that, I thought, oh, we can, we can talk about that thing we've talked about before. But that was a Bathy sphere I was thinking about, you know, that, that sphere.

Yeah. Literally took me a second to think the word sphere when I just said it. Fantastic. It's kind of lowered down so they could look at the deep sea. Yes. And finally, there was another, not, I'm not going to say similar, but clearly it came from the same idea. Bathy means deep. It was a deep sea submersible, but rather than dip down with a cable from the surface, it's suspended below a float, which is filled with gasoline.

Oh. And that's because obviously it's buoyant and it's pretty much non-compressible. Right. It's a liquid. And so that means, bear with me. that means you can make it lighter because the pressure more or less equalizes. Right. I think.

But anyway, the bathysphere looks really cool. There's one called the Trieste from the 50s, which I'll post a picture of that, which I just think looks really, really, really cool as I think. There is something about bathyspheres and bathyscafes. I'm not sure if we're saying that, right. It just always feels like very cool vintage sci-fi immediately. Yeah. I don't know what it is.

It's just something about the image. It is cool. The idea of exploration. I think it's because early portrayals of space travel looked like what deep sea travel ended up. Yeah, that's true. That's what you could envision, wasn't it? Yeah. I reckon.

Oh, I want to go in the ocean. Sorry. Now. We should probably finish the episode before I go down to the Marianas Trench. Oh, speaking of, that thing did actually go to the Marianas Trench. Cool. That thing I just showed you a picture. Sorry, that's probably the coolest thing about it.

I should have said that. That cool sound of sarcastic. It wasn't. I know. I know it wasn't sarcastic. You're never sarcastic about Marianna's trench. That is very true. That's what they say about me.

Right. I think that's everything we're going to say about the Long Cosmos, which we did mention in this episode once or twice. We will be back in October for another TTSMYF does the classics, which is going to be a Halloween special again, sort of ended up that way. We're going to be talking about Northanger Abbey. Yes, that's very excited for it. The architecture. It's gothic. It's going to get got got Gothic.

This has been years in the making. Yeah, it is honestly astonishing. we've not talked about this book before considering. I mean, I think you have. Oh yeah, that's a good point. I definitely have. But we're going to talk about just that book and not that book when I should have been talking about a different book.

That's right. So keep an eye out for that around Halloween. And no idea what we're doing for the rest of the year. We'll find out. Until then, of course, dear listeners, you can join our Discord. There's a link down below. You can follow us on Instagram at the Trusham Make You Frette on Blue Sky at Mickey Frette. On Facebook at the Trusham-M-EF.

Join us, our slash TTSMYF. Email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks and messages in Bostles. the true show make you fret pod at gmail.com and if you want to support us financially you can go to patreon.com forward slash the truchampakey fret for extended episodes and occasional love and nonsense. And until next time, dear listener, on the plane, nothing remained but the grass and the sky.

We do actually drink an ungodly amount of diet coke. I'd say ungodly. I think any amount is ungodly. Diet Coke is not in the Bible.