The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 22: Wyrd Sisters Pt.3 (I Am The Very Model Of A Metaphor From Thespia)

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan-Young and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 3 of our recap of “Wyrd Sisters”!Magic! Words! A Lot Of Coffee!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail] to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Charlie Brooker’s Antiviral WipeThe people who study the meaning of nonsense - BBC FutureA Bit of Fry & Laurie Concerning LanguageTom Lehrer - The Elements - LIVE FILM From Copenhagen in 1967Wakko's 50 State Capitols with Lyrics/SubtitlesThe Helicopter » Leonardo Da Vinci's InventionsGlobe TheatreShakespeare in lockdown: did he write King Lear in plague quarantine?As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII [All the world's a stage]The Wonderful Insults of Groucho MarxLaurel and Hardy Classic - Music BoxNotes from a Big Country - WikipediaTerry Pratchett made his own sword. By hand. Out of meteorites!Order of the Honeybee pin (Facebook - Discworld Emporium)Henry V | Act 3, Scene 1The Guilty Feminist - 34. Power with Jessica ReganFollowing the Action: Some Thoughts on Shakespeare and Politics - Isaac ButlerNeil Gaiman: 'Terry Pratchett isn't jolly. He's angry' SyllepsisThe Elements of EloquenceMacbeth SCENE I. A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron.The Plays of William Shakespeare. Volume the eleventhMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

It's not afternoon yet, which means I don't have to be a functioning human being yet. God, I can't believe we're recording in the morning. 25 to 12 now. I know, but it was the morning when we started. It's so early. It's mid-afternoon. We've got this thing about the sun. Too bright.

Oh, God, after I finish re-watching Gossip Girl, I might re-watch Gilmore Girls. You haven't sent me any pictures of good Gossip Girl outfits yet, Jo? Yeah, because I keep forgetting to pause and take a photo of my screen. Okay, I'm just going to have to watch it myself. Yes, dirt, dirt. I just have been having it on in the background somehow. I'm at the end of season two already. Have you watched Charlie Brooker's Viral Bike yet?

No, that's my little treat for tonight. I'm making mussels tonight. I bought, I cleaned them yesterday and put them in the freezer to cook today. Oh, you actually bought the ones that needed cleaning, wasn't it? Well, I bought, I couldn't get frozen ones, so I had to get fresh, which meant de-bearding and everything and purging, which is a bit gross, but it means my kitchen smelled like the ocean yesterday. I miss it.

I haven't been to the seaside for forever. No, yeah. No, it's one of those things where I love, I love that smell, but if it came after I'd just de-beared it a bunch of mussels, I would hate that smell. If that makes sense. I don't mind. I don't mind de-bearding mussels. There's something I'm better at doing about it.

No, you're not asleep at the time. What are you going to cook to my fares? Uh, I'm going to, it's going to be marinier-ish, but not. So there's going to be some pancetta, some leeks, white wine, cream, garlic, parsley, and lots of lovely bread. I can't be asked to make more anything, but I might make a similar sauce and do something else in it. Like, to be honest, as long as you can get fresh mussels, they were really cheap. It was like four quid for a kilo.

I'm sorry, next week when I have a bit more energy, maybe, like it's taking all of my willpower to do anything at the moment. Yeah. But they're really quick to cook. It's only like 10 minutes with a pan. Yeah, no, it's their prep for me, so I can't be asked to, but... Yeah, yeah, it's the cleaning and de-bearding and perching is the faff bit. Yeah, especially if my hands are shit.

Yeah, good point. Well, when we're allowed to socialise again, you can come over and eat mussels. I had one other small bit of follow-up, which is we were talking about nonsense words and how fun they are. Yes. And that took me down the tangential rabbit hole. Did you start a revolution? I did not, I'm sorry.

France ain't. Look, I'm two days late for recording. You expect me to have done a revolution this week? Well, we weren't recording. Just gave myself the mental image of your dog with like a little torch and pitchfork, and it's made me really happy. But you know how frying lorries seep into the kind of silly sounding words and... Yeah.

Normal words put in a weird order, but that still sound like language. Oh, yeah, like that one really good sketch that's like the interview sketch. This is from the BBC. I'll put the link in the show notes. It quotes him saying, Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers. He pauses to let his points sink in, then continues. One sentence, common words, but never before placed in that order, you see?

Hugh Laurie looks at the camera, opens his mouth as if to explain then decides against it. But kind of from there, it goes into something called the WUG test. Have you ever heard of that? No. So it was kind of to prove this idea that the structure of language is something we learned before we necessarily learned the language. So I don't know, when you were a kid, I used to, if I didn't know the word,

kind of feel in with a similar cadence, but not actual word noise in the middle of a sentence without stuttering kind of thing. But apparently that's quite normal for a lot of kids. And they tested it with this thing called the WUG test, because you can't really test it with words already exist in case they already did know it. But they would make up a nonsense word and see if the kid could like work out the plurals and the past tense and stuff. So fill in the missing word.

This man is spowing. He did the same thing yesterday. Yesterday he... Spowed. Correct. Well done, Joanna. So I thought that was interesting. The WUG test.

That is very cool. Anyway, do we make a podcast? Yeah, we're now an hour and a half after we intended to. So we should actually try and stick to a time frame today. Can we do a whole podcast in an hour and a half? We've already got our intro. We can, we can. We've done the intro.

Have we? We've got the intro. We've done all our tangential bullshit. If we just stick to Discworld for an hour and a half, we can do it. I believe in us. Okay, cool. I don't. Buffy believes in you.

Look at her weird blank stare. Buffy mug. I feel like, okay, one last tangent before I do the intro. We really need, we need to make, and if any of our listeners want to do this, I'm very into it, a make you frat bingo. For like, do by Friday mention, Buffy mentioned, tangent about bread. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to do that.

And I think I can. It may send me spiraling in self-hatred. You know, if any of our listeners want to do this. Viral in self-hatred. Tangent about bread. Tangent about linguistics. Yeah. Feminist rant.

Socialist rant. Joanna runs off to get bread out of the oven. Francine wanders off to make coffee. Prefacing a statement with this comes from a place of love, but... Sentence has more filler words than real words. Joe says so 18 times an hour. A needle-peeling thread. We get worried about spoilers that aren't really spoilers.

Like, I don't want to spoil anything, but there are more books after this one. Don't get mad at us. I don't want to spoil anything, but this character that is so far been in every book will probably be in the next one. Intro us, Joanna. We should make a podcast. Let's make a podcast. Hello, and welcome to the True Shall Make He Fract,

a podcast in which we're reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one at a time, in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan Young. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part three of our discussion of Weird Sisters. We are at the end of it. Or act three, should we say, Joanna? Act three, because we're being very theatrical, darling.

Yes, because this entire thing is one massive mash-up of theatre references, which is very much Joanna's bag. And even slightly mine. I was vaguely Cespian as a teenager. I thought it was just the way it was standing. You know, very funny food in Cespia. Note on spoilers. This is a spoiler-like podcast.

Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book were on Weird Sisters, but we will wait for the traffic to go past. It's an obnoxious one. Apologies for the poor audio quality, but I couldn't... There's a pandemic in these uncertain times, Joanna. In these unprecedented times. I just want to go back to precedented times, Francine. Yes, is there such a thing as a precedented time that we think about it?

Yes, like when something's happening that's like something that's already happened. But it's never quite, is it? It's like you can't step over the same river twice. If we're looking at global time... You can. That's what bridges are for, Francine. Bloody Metaphors. Never trusted them. Probably come from Cespia.

Clinging to Driftwood. I am the very model of a Metaphore from Cespia. Oh, now our next challenge is going to be doing some Bollocks Discworld thing along to that model. Yeah, all right. I'm getting somewhere with the elements song. I wanted to learn the capital song from Animaniacs, but then I met someone else who could already do it incredibly well,

considering he had a lisp and a very thick Boston accent. Right, so yeah. No Tom spoilers. That's where we were. Heavy spoilers for Weird Sisters, the book we're on. But we will avoid spoiling future events. Everybody dies. Francine.

Nothing to do with the books. Just in general, everybody dies. Yeah, sorry. That was an existential crisis, not a spoiler. Gary, like... Go on that, Mickey Fretbingo. Yeah. That means we need to update the board.

Oh, we made it to six. All right. I'll send you a picture of the six and of the zero. Yeah, thank you. God, I will finish this spoiler warning. I'll show that. Heavy spoilers for the book we're on. We will avoid spoiling future events in the Discworld series,

and we're saving any and all discussion of the final book, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. I like the idea of heavy spoilers being like a weather forecast. Like... Yes. Chance of showers of foreboding. Heavy spoilers this afternoon.

So... What happened previously on Weird Sister's Francine? Liquor, liquor, fire and flicker. Covens meet and witches bicker. Jingling fool and field of flowers. Woman greets and jester cowers. Banging pans and missing cats. Dungeons, daggers, autocrats.

Villains rant and spirits grumble. Wood awakens. Tunnels crumble. Crowds and castles. Aprons haunted. Ditches deep and doy ends daunted. The last straw on a camel's back sends cartwheels spinning down a truck. Roosters throttled.

Broomsticks high. True love falls from a gloomy sky. That's amazing. While in no way illustrating what actually happened. So hopefully you've all got good memories. You put so much effort into this that I have to do my summary afterwards, which is a lot more half-assed. Yeah, but it's also a lot longer and more detailed, so.

Oh, yeah. Tell us about Act 3, Joanna. Yes. Granny and Nanny have a nice cup of tea and agree that they need to look for Tom John. Granny says he'll be in Ankh Moor Pork, Ankh Moor Pork, because that's where everyone goes. So I was trying to do a New York, New York thing, but it doesn't scan. Strangely enough, the fall has to go to Ankh Moor Pork, Ankh Moor Pork.

Magra isn't best pleased. In Ankh Moor Pork, Ankh Moor Pork. Quell is... It'll stop now. Quell is suffering from writer's block as he watches Timbers rise on a new theatre, the disc. Tom John and Quell head out for an early morning quaff at the mended drum. An ill-judged racist remark plus an angry librarian equals a tavern brawl with much roistering and possibly a bit of rollicking.

Tom John breaks up the tavern brawl with a beautiful speech and one arm upraised in a declamatory fashion. Quell and Tom John's pub crawl is rudely interrupted as they rescue the fool who's come to Ankh Moor Pork from a licensed, if over-enthusiastic, mugging. And Tom John manages to turn a profit. The trio find themselves somewhat tipsy in a dwarf bar singing about gold, gold, gold, and I think gold. Late the same day, the fool has hired Quell and the gang to write and perform the play,

which is apparently the thing. Tom John dreams of witches round about a cauldron going. Quell starts writing aggressively and starts heading towards propaganda via Panto. Tom John, Quell and the lads set off for a summer tour to take them to Lenker with the witches looking on ish. On the road, Tom John's magic tongue finally fails him during a robbery. Luckily, the witches intervene... God damn it, Francine.

You put that in, you knew what you were doing. Luckily, the witches intervene from a distance with a handy milk jug. As the treat reaches Lenker, a trio of humble wood gatherers, lorks and mercy, helps them on their way. Magritte interrogates the fool about this damn play and uses her wiles to find out that it's tomorrow night, starts at 8, but meets in 7.30 for a sherry before hand of faith. As the witches arrive for the play, the fool whisks Magritte away to a tower. Felmut is in such a good mood, he demands the arrest of the witches.

Unfortunately, Quell's acts are so good that the guards arrest the wrong witches. In a second hilarious act of mistaken identity, the real witches find themselves on stage. The witches give the actors the real words and they perform the truth of the matter, showing the Duke stabbing King Verence with his own knife. The Duke loses his shit as Tom John is possessed by the ghost of King Verence and attempts to stab the fool and then himself. Hedology fails on the furious Duchess, but a thwack on the back of her head with a cauldron does wonders. The Duke insists he is dead, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Stepping off a bat foreman helps his case. Granny explains to the masses that Tom John is now King. Unfortunately, he doesn't quite agree. Magritte appears to have come to a conclusion about Tom John on the fool. After a little time jump, Nanny's a bit pissed after the big coronation that Magritte wasn't invited to, and Tom John and Huell are back to acting on the road. Magritte, Nanny and Granny discuss some fusion over the New King's parentage, and said New King heads to Magritte's cottage.

Did he ever, like, let's jump right to the end here because of my confusion. Did it ever get explained why he didn't invite Magritte to the coronation? No, I don't think so. It's left a little bit not ambiguous, but because of that time jump. Ooh, wait, hang on, what's Magritte doing? And then, ooh, who is the New King? But I'm assuming it's because you wanted to speak to her alone instead? I think it's just to throw in a last bit of narrative and romantic tension. Yeah, I guess so. I kind of like that he left it weird at the end. I like that he left it weird, and I like that the book gives you room to work it out for yourself

because that's quite fun. It's almost like he gave them privacy to sort that out. Like, no one wants to read that conversation, really, do they? No, and no one wants to write it. But also, like, making the fall of the King and just the little bits of foreshadowing that have been built up in the book and the whole thing about it. So we do sort of find out what happened to Tom John's mother in that we know she wasn't very good at counting.

Yes. We still don't find out, like, why she's dead. I quite like that the unintended baby was not the King's unintended baby. Yeah, it's a nice reversal of the trope. It's less about droid to senior or however in the fuck you say that. So yeah, so that was fun. No helicopters or loincloths? I thought you were going to put in a helicopter. Did I miss a helicopter?

Well, kind of, because Leonard of Querm gives the, or sells the wave machine to Hwell, because he couldn't make it fly. Oh, yeah, good point. I did tell you. And like Leonardo didn't, she was meant to have skipped some helicopter and other. That's why we ended up with the helicopter watching this. Because of Leonard of Querm, we'll get to him. So anyway, wave machine, possible helicopter? Potential helicopter.

But then really, isn't everything sort of a potential helicopter? No, it isn't. And that's a very dangerous attitude while you got kicked out of the Air Force. The favorite quotes. Favorite quotes, favorite quotes. I think mine's first. This is Hwell is sleeping and trying to think about what he's writing and making things in theatre. Hwell snored.

In his dreams, gods rose and fell, ships moved with cunning and art across canvassations, pictures jumped and ran together and became flickering images. Men flew on wires, flew without wires, great ships of illusion fought against one another in imaginary skies. Seas opened, ladies were sawn in half, a thousand special effects men giggled and jibbered. Through it all, he ran with his arms open in desperation, knowing none of this really existed or ever would exist, nor he really had with a few square yards of planking, some canvas,

and some paint on which to trap the beckoning images that invaded his head. Only in our dreams are we free, the rest of the time we need wages. Yeah, that's very uplifting and depressing, isn't it? I just, it's absolutely beautifully written. Like, it sounds like it's this stunning imagery and you actually look at it and he's just fantasizing about putting on really good plays, slash films. Yeah, I wonder if it calls back at all to when he was, you know, a novelist in his head, but still working PR for a nuclear power station during the day.

Yeah, I think it must do. It's that thing that exists in theatre and anything creative, where, yeah, in your dreams you are a novelist, writing, and sometimes that comes true, but people got to eat. Got to eat, got to eat. Got to eat to live, got to live to something. Got to eat to live, got to still to eat, tell you all about it when I got the time. Mind you, sorry.

I did a dance routine to that back when we had like a really intense drama, dance teacher of that. It was like one of these Saturday theatre clubs for TV. Is it like stagecoach or? Yeah, it was like stagecoach's rival, like the shitty rival. I literally never did any of those things. Like, I did school plays, but I didn't do stagecoach or BYT or SYPT, which are like two of the big local ones.

Yeah, probably not. I've loved it. Like, when I was in my big outgoing phase, you were in your broody phase. So. Yeah, like my partner did them all and he absolutely loved them. Yeah. It never really appealed to me. Quote, your favourite quote, Francine. Page 211.

Yeah. Thank you. Someone shook a sheet of tin, tongue twister, shook a sheet of tin and broke the spell. Quell rolled his eyes. He'd grown up in the mountains where thunderstorms stalked from peak to peak on legs of lightning. Like, there's more of it, but just that line. That's it. I love that line.

Thunderstorms stalked from peak to peak on legs of lightning. What a fucking metaphor. Ooh, right? That is amazing. I think not that bad. Like, you can just see it and it's so dramatic and awesome and I love it. Like, I really hope he wrote that and then went, ooh, yeah.

Well done, me. Yeah, I really hope he pat himself on the back for that. Yeah. Good man. Well done, Prud. Yeah. It's making me think of, like, Greek gods and Zeus stirring his thunderbolts and this idea of, like... Yeah, like the titans or Anthropophys, weather and, yeah.

Stalker. Fucking, yeah, it's really good. That whole page is also great because just before that we have the bit where Quell is, like, trying to really buck up the witches and he's like, what kind of hags are you? We're black and midnight hags. What kind of black and midnight hags? Evil, scheming, secret.

What are you? We're scheming evil, secret, black and midnight hags. And then the imaginary Sikhar and we're doing this for Corporal Warkowski and his little dog. Which movie is this from? Oh, God, I don't know. Where's my... So, obviously... Got a nice little cast here.

Yeah, we don't really have any new major characters because it's the last side of the book, but we do see the librarian. Yep, and as you, I think, correctly noted, he again has a... Remains hench. Remains hench and has a little explanatory footnote, and I think you're right in that that's probably the case every time he pops up. Every time he pops up in a non-Wizard's book, I don't think he gets explained every Wizard's book, but I could be wrong.

We'll find out. Yeah, we'll keep an eye for this as we go along. So yeah, nice to see the librarian and watch... I'm glad he's hanging out in the pub. He's got a life outside the library. Yeah. Especially considering at the moment he doesn't have an assistant, because as far as we know, Rincewind is still in the Dungeon Dimensions

within the Canon. So you already mentioned Leonard of Quirm, who is a daft old chap in the street of cunning artificers. Am I saying artificer, right? Is it artificer or artificer? Artificer. That's what I thought. But my brain always wants to say artificer.

Yeah, no, I'm pretty sure it's artificer. Which I don't think is right. Yeah. Um, I think this is the first mention of him we get. Didn't you say that the helicopter thing already came up? Leonardo da Vinci and helicopters came up in Good Omens. Oh, that's right. So yeah, of course.

Yeah, in that case, I think you're right. Yes, it was Good Omens I was thinking of. Yeah, so Leonard of Quirm is like a sort of Leonardo da Vinci piste, a mild spoiler that he's like a fun background character we'll see again. Yeah, yeah. There's like one or two books like you even get in as a... You get to hang out with him. Yeah, he's cool.

He's a cool character. One of those books is definitely one of my absolute favorites, but weirdly not one I've reread much. So I'm really hooked for that. Yeah. Yeah, same. Love Gingo. But then I...

It's got like an all-star cast. Anyway, that's a future book though. That's some time away. Like next year, I think. We're just like floating through time today. That's... We have achieved whatever the opposite of Zen is. Yeah, I am completely Nez.

I'm so sad I don't have my Fez anymore. I'm living in every time, but the now. Nez. That's quite fracturedy as a concept. I think we should cling to that. What, Nez? The opposite of Zen? Yeah.

The state in which we record all podcasts. Yes, we'll do a Nez watch. That can be the free square on the Makey Frat pod. Yeah. Yes, Van Der Fransen absolutely refused to settle into what they meant to be doing. Instead, reminiscing, hoping about the future and talking about the bread they'll eat

while after this is all over. God, I can't wait for bread and cinnamon rolls. The storm! Anyway. The storm, I'm... Yeah, I know I didn't need to point him out again. I know we've met more already. We're so proud of him.

But I love the storm and he gets his big break. He's spent ages learning his craft. I think he has the most character development. You're right. You should have brought him back in. That's good. Yeah. He studied the great storms of the past,

honed his art to perfection, and now, tonight, with what it could see, was clearly an appreciative audience waiting for it. It was going to take them by, well, tempest. Other jokes, big play. I also loved the moment where Hwell kind of shouts to the gods and then gets his thunder. I know.

I'm so happy for Hwell. That's very narrative. Oh, it is. We will talk about narrative causality. We will get to that. The wonderful thing is, because Pratchett is so self-aware and meta about it, he can do all these ridiculous,

like, when he shouts for thunder, he gets thunder, because I know what I'm doing, and I'm going to point it out. Yeah. And he can, and it doesn't come across as trite or stupid. Very self-aware and fun. Yeah, that's it.

Yeah. It's, you can tell Pratchett is having fun writing that, and we're having fun reading it, and Hwell's having fun despite himself with the thunderstorm turning up. The storm's having a great time. Yeah. Everyone's having fun, isn't it?

Nice. It is nice and fun. Speaking of nice fun, death tap dancing. Oh, right. Okay. So death turns up and hangs around backstage and helps the guy with his lines, and he's just alone in this dressing room,

and there are a couple of really beautiful lines in this passage. This is on page 225. Read them to me. There was something here he thought that nearly belonged to the gods. Humans have built a world inside the world which reflected it in pretty much the same way

as a drop of water reflects the landscape, and yet inside this little world, they had taken pains to put all the things you might think they would want to escape from, hatred, fear, tyranny, and so forth. Death was intrigued. They thought they wanted to be taken out of themselves, and every art humans dreamed up took them further in.

He was fascinated. And... It's very good. Yeah, we've gone in and out, and we will keep going into this whole idea of theatre as a mirror and the power of it and the magic of it. But to do that with just...

It's really nice to see that from death because death is outside humanity within these books. Yeah, it's the outside observer. He almost... He fills in the role of the alien from outside trope, doesn't he? Yeah. But it's in a very knowledgeable way.

A lot of the really lovely books that kind of feature death heavily involve death trying out some aspect of humanity. Like, in more, he tries, you know, having a job and being a person, and there's some other really lovely stuff he does. Yeah. Where he tries to sort of be a bit more human

and doesn't quite get it. Yeah, it is. It is, yeah, it is kind of beautiful because you get to see it from a... You get to see the beautiful parts of humanity from an outside perspective. And also some of the shit ones. But he never lingers on those as much.

No, death is a very lovely... I mean, we've talked about how lovely death is, and he is a very sweet character who wants to believe the best of humanity around him as much as he claims to not have any emotional investment. And he tap dances. Yeah, and freezes and forgets his life. Yes.

Because, like, no matter how confident you are, if you are not used to being seen by a large group of people, it is terrifying. See me freezing up and forgetting my lines. I never have. I've done it once, which was a poetry gig, and I planned on doing it without them written down, and then I completely froze

and just could not remember what line came next and had to pick up my phone and do it from that, which was embarrassing. But the poem was about stage fright, so it kind of worked. Hey. I just pretended it was part of the performance. Noice.

So, yeah, the Duchess on the other... Oh, this is one of my favourites. Almost on the other end of the spectrum from death, weirdly, isn't it? It's a... Yeah, she could not give a fuck about humanity. Yeah. And it has very little herself. Where instead it's like an optimistic nihilist.

The Duchess is like a narcissistic misanthrope, isn't she? She's a really odd character. This is one of my favourite character beats in this book, though. It was one of my favourite character beats, perhaps it ever does, is this idea of Granny doing headology and making her confront herself and her response to just being,

yeah, fuck it, and what? Yeah. Yeah. It's very... Like, first of all, you get horrified by, like, horrified and like... Impressed by Granny's, you know, the worst she can do kind of thing. And it's like, oh, yeah, that's a really good idea. It's like that whole concept of hell being, you know,

having to watch your life over from an outside perspective or whatever. And, yeah, then you get like a paragraph of that, and then you realise, oh, no shit, she is like super-duper evil. Yeah. I think it's a really great way of writing a villain, because it could end there. It could end up with her suddenly awful and remorseful for everything she's done, but just going,

no, she is just that much of an asshole. She is already completely self-aware and confident in her willingness to kill and set fire to herself. It's a really interesting exercise in villain writing. She had the moment of horror, though, didn't she? She had this... Her lips drew back in a rictus of terror. Her eyes looked beyond, and she makes a little whimpering noise.

Yeah, so, like, I wonder if, like, she... I don't know. She's like... I think she does have that moment where the walls... Because Granny sort of says, I've knocked down the walls she's built around herself. I think she has a moment of it, and the sheer hatred of someone getting into her head

just makes those walls come up stronger and stronger and stronger. Yeah, yeah. See, like, she just rebuilt as they came down, kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. It's really fascinating to me, and going back to my unified theory of Nanny being stronger than Granny... What Granny does doesn't work.

Nanny hits her over the head with a cauldron and knocks her out. Now, is it that Granny... Is it that Nanny is stronger than Granny, or do you think that Nanny is simply wilyer? My argument is that Nanny is the more powerful witch, and I'm not just talking about magical power, I'm talking about getting shit done. Because, you know, we've talked about this theme

that comes up really regularly in the witches' books and the wizards of... Sometimes the best magic is knowing when not to use magic. Granny goes straight for the Hedology and trying to break the Duchess down. Nanny doesn't bother with magic, picks up a cauldron and hits her over the head with it. But to be fair, only after she's seen

that Granny's worst hasn't worked. True. But Nanny's actions still work where Granny's don't. Yes. It will be interesting to look at... I'm just mentally flicking through the climaxes of all the witches' books in my head. Yeah, it will be interesting to look at again through that lens.

Yeah. I think you're probably going to be right that Nanny ends up... Possibly influential might be the word. Yeah. I think powerful covers what I mean about using magic and not using magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not something to prove or disprove, it's just a fun lens to look at the witches' books.

No, absolutely, yeah. I like... When you were saying last week, you brought it up after the Cartwheel incident. Cartwheel? When Granny loses her shit and makes all the wheels fall off the cart. Sorry, I was like, who was doing the Cartwheel incident?

You know, God, Joe, can't I just vaguely put words together? And you know what I mean? I mean, usually, yes, which is why I value so much. Yes, Granny is so powerful that in her Furia Cartwheel falls off. Nanny is so powerful she can calm Granny the fuck down by slapping her. Yeah, and it's almost like... I wonder if Nanny doesn't have a kind of hidden reserve

of that magical power that she doesn't use because she's able to slap Granny during that kind of... Like, I almost imagine a normal person going to slap Granny during that kind of episode and their hands fall off. Or turn into frogs. Yeah, no, frog hands. Like, frog hands or frogs' forehands? I'm not sure which is what.

I was thinking frogs' forehands are like the back of the frog attaches to your wrist and then instead of fingers, there's like four little legs and tongue. Because having frog hands will probably be okay because, like, they can climb... Like, tree frog hands would be pretty useful if not very attractive. I haven't put much thought into how attractive my hands are because I'm a chef and they're covered in burn scars.

I mean, yeah, but they are not amphibious. Yeah, that is the best thing I can say about this office that I'm not amphibious. Oh, really, it's one of my main weaknesses. And the pork. What do you have to say about that, Joanna? There's a little reference to this and we will... Don't tweet us.

We know this is based on a real thing. And I know in a later book that there is even a note about this being based on a real thing. But this is the first instance of pointing out that in Angkor Pork, you just build more stories onto your house as the city floods. What is it? Is it London it's based on or Amsterdam or...?

There's a few different cities. When we get to the book, our podcast is named after. It's a whole plot point. And there is like a big note explaining that this is based on this particular city that did it in this year and stuff. Okay, cool. So I thought it'd be fun to point out here and keep an eye on it because it would be fun when it comes up as a plot point.

Yeah. But we are aware it's based on a real thing. The reason I wanted to talk about Angkor Pork is I kind of remembered that there were lots of books that just don't take place in Angkor Pork and you never visit there, but we're on book six and so far every book we have ended up in Angkor Pork. Oh, yeah.

So I'm just a little thing I'm going to keep an eye on because I know the next couple of books we end up in Angkor Pork as well. I want to see which is the first book where we don't visit the city at all because I know there is at least one. It's going to be a standalone, isn't it? There's definitely at least one standalone that doesn't.

There's at least one which is... There's a few which is ones that don't. Yeah. So yeah, that was just a fun little thing we'll keep an eye out for which is the first book that doesn't visit Angkor Pork at all. Which is lovely. It is. I can understand why he comes back to it again and again

because it's something that must just be such good fun to write that location. Well, yeah. I mean, the whole locations as characters, the city is like very much a main character of the books and it's such a fascinating city. And you can tell he's having fun. Like there's more explanation of the guild system and veterinary.

He's having fun world building there. Yeah. Well, we're talking about it actually. Do you want to talk about the guild system now? Because I think this is probably a good point for it. Yeah, this is relevant. So the fool gets robbed but they are trying to help him out because everyone does get robbed a certain amount.

And there is a really long footnote that explains the guild system. Envyable system of licensed criminals. They match to the current patrician Lord Veterinary. Yo, love him. The reason the only way to police the city of a million inhabitants was to recognise the various gang and robber guilds, give them professional status, invite the leaders to large dinners, allow an acceptable level of street crime

and then make the guild leaders responsible for enforcing it on pain of being stripped of their new civic honours along with large areas of their skins. So this is kind of pre-Ankmoreport policing, which is something to note for a couple of weeks time. Criminals are the police force. And I think it's a fun, clever bit of worldbuilding. It's really exciting to see it

because it's slowly built up over the last few books. Like, we've had the Assassin's Guild have come up and I think we've had some talk of guilds of thieves before as well. And obviously the merchants and commerce guild kind of gets invented in the colour of magic. So yeah, some more fun guilds to meet. We'll eventually get to hang out with the beggars guild and the seamstresses. And then the mended drum was the other kind of location

within the location, wasn't it? Yes, the mended drum, I just wanted to point up because obviously sometimes it's mended, sometimes it's broken, sometimes it's just the drum. It's always nice to keep an eye out in the books and see what state the pub is in. Yeah, currently mended. Possibly broken by the end of this.

Possibly after the roistering and ronking. And then obviously we've got the discs, the theatre that's being built, which is obviously a play on the Globe Theatre, which we talked about last time we talked, which wasn't a podcast, because occasionally we talk and don't record ourselves. Although we did record it in case we talked about something usable.

That's just us now. But we didn't say, sorry listeners. The Globe is really fucking cool, genuinely. If you are listening and you're obviously, the theatre doesn't exist right now because of the plague. When has that happened before? Did it? Yeah, yeah, the Globe was closed for two years.

The theatre's closed for two years. Is it Black Death or the Great Plague? I always get the two mixed up. Yeah, I think I'm listening. Death was 1300, so Great Plague. Sorry, that's really interesting. 78 months between 16 at 03 and 16 at 13. More than 60% of the time.

Oh, there's a whole Guardian article about it. I'll send it to you. Oh, cool. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. Because we all need to read about that place. Good fact, Joanna. I never thought about that. Like, it's obvious now you say it. But, well, you know, it's not obvious now you say it,

because they didn't quite grok how stuff was spreading. But they kind of got an idea just of cause and effect, didn't they? Because when they cleaned money, it helped when they... Yeah. Well, people thought it was smells. Yeah, which, when you think about it, probably that misconception helped a lot, because...

Yeah, because for airborne diseases, if you're preventing against bad smells, you're going to end up eliminating some of airborne diseases. So, yeah, the problem was when they thought it was airborne stuff, when it was cholera. And... Yeah. But anyway, listeners, if you're in the UK,

once we are allowed to have theatre and gather in tight places again, because I do dream that one day that will happen again, if you can get to London, it is really worth going to see something at the Globe, because it's only a fiver to stand. So, so much of how he's describing the mechanisms they're going to build into the disk and everything, is stuff that is built into the Globe.

Yeah. Oh, it is? Okay, cool. Yeah, trapdoors and the way it's all painted. Like, it's restored from... It's obviously not quite all exactly as it was... Did it burn down? ...in many years ago.

It burned down and was rebuilt. Okay. So, it is mostly the original building, but obviously things have been done to it to maintain it. Yeah. And then there's lots of, like, supplementary buildings, so you can go and do, like, a whole tour and stuff. It's really fun.

If you're into that sort of thing and a bit of a nerd, which I am, but they also have... We should do that together, Wendy. Yeah. They also have, in the winter, and obviously they can't put shows on in the Globe, because it's completely exposed to the elements, and I have been to a production of King Lear at the Globe,

where a thunderstorm genuinely started during the thunderstorm bit. It was so cool. I mean, I got soaked, and so did the actors, but it was really fucking cool. Yeah, I bet they fucking... Well, I know, saying this is someone who didn't have to do it, I bet they fucking loved it, though.

Yeah, it was a bit hot. You get really into it. You can see they were, like, struggling to be heard over the noise, especially because that thunderstorm bit involves a very quiet, like, sad Lear moment. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was lucky.

I was, like, leaning on the stage, so I was okay. But they also had... There's these, like, trapdoors at the front of the stage that people can come in and out of, and they had all these people in, like, black leotards with crazy, spiky hair come leaping out of those trapdoors during the thunderstorm to kind of represent thunder,

which I was like... Oh, and they didn't have to. They still did it, and came and ran around the audience. I was stood right by one of those trapdoors, and they'd not noticed it was there, so when they came out, I proper screamed, like, girly, squeaky.

The reason I obviously talk about it, the disc takes me into the front. The reason the globe is called the globe, and therefore the disc is called the disc, is it's from, as you like it. The theatre version is all the disc is for the theatre, and all men and women are but players, except those who sell popcorn.

Like, unto the stages, the theatre is the world, where all persons strut as players. Sometimes they walk off. So I like the early workshop. We also shout out to Quiet Cows for this company. I actually do still do stuff with it when we're allowed to do theatre again, who have a very cute postcard set we sell,

and one of them does say, like, if all the world's a stage, who puts away the props? I don't know you so much. We have postcards. I think we have t-shirts now. I know that we have t-shirts for, like, members of the company, because I've got one that says inmate on the back.

So moving on from the disc to, like, all the clever theatre references, that's one of my favourites, obviously, the whole, all the disc is but a theatre, and the theatre being called the disc. Yeah, I noted a couple more, just because I liked them in particular. Do you know if on page 190, this is a question marky one?

Oh, yeah, I saw you had a question mark for this one. Or page 193. One of his thrown away drafts was first, which he's late. He said he would come. He said he would, but he hasn't. This is my last mute. I saved it for him, and he hasn't come.

Like, the weird, stilted pause. It's Wasting for Godot. Samuel Beckett. Oh, thank you. Oh, what do you mean? Yeah, it's meant to be a reference. God, I can't remember. It's been, I know it's a Wasting for Godot reference,

and it's a bit Beckettian style, but I don't know. Waiting for Godot. Okay. Yeah, but yeah, there's some other great ones. Falling Chandelier and a villain who wore a master confidant's disfigurement, which is Phantom of the Opera,

which will get more thoroughly lampooned later on, and I love that book so much. I thought I was such a good book. That's another one that I haven't read in ages and ages. I reread that one quite often, because it's like a nice jaunt. Yeah. It's very jolly.

Chotly jolly. What else we got? The hero being born in a handbag. Importance of being a... A handbag? God, I love that play. I would be very surprised if you didn't get an Oscar world reference.

We were both proper wankers about Oscar world. Oh, yeah. Still am. Still am. That was just a packed page. Page 159 had like a million references on. The square brackets business with bladder on stick. Honk.

That's one of the Marx brothers, right? My favorite one was the Groucho Marx one, which was the... This is my little study. He wrote, Hey, with a little study, you're going to go a long way. And I wish it started now. If you can't leave in a cab, then leave in a huff.

If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a half. Say, have you got a pencil or crayon? Just the idea of like that coming through into a disc, like I fucking love Groucho Marx. This is a main dainty mess. You got me into Stanley as such a fun bit as well. What was that? Two clowns, one fat one thin.

I thought that was meant to be like a Laurel and Hardy. That could be wrong. Yeah. One. Yeah. It was probably Laurel and Hardy, right? I was thinking of the two Ronis, but you're right. It'll be Laurel and Hardy.

Thank you. Yeah. I just, I really love this page of fucking, let's do bam, bam, bam, joke, joke, joke, a mile a minute references, because he's written this like very clever Shakespeare parody. And you can see he probably had a page of notes of all these other jokes he wanted to make.

Yeah. He went, fuck it, I can just put them all on a page and they'll be there. I like the idea of him actually going, oh, and unfolding them from his own waste paper basket. Like I've got a few extra pages here. I love that. It doesn't work if you do it throughout the whole book,

but getting a sudden moment of that machine gun, joke, joke, joke, delivery is such a great moment in a book that's quite clever and takes a lot of time and thinks about itself. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it was a clever little vehicle for it. Within his clever idea of like the slew of inspiration stuff. Yeah.

I'm moving into a completely different direction-ish. Well, it's still Dwarves, actually. Speaking of Dwarves, expat pride in... Oh no, this one's gone out. Page 169. Well-heard investigation. If you dwarfed bars last time, he'd been in Antmoor Fork

and he didn't like it because his fellow expatriates who at home were just like normal dwarves, whatever, as soon as they went to Antmoor Fork, started being the stereotypical dwarves and wore chain mail underwear, got around with acts in their belts and called themselves names like Tink and Rumble Guts. Tink and Rumble Guts is possibly one of my favourite

two sets of syllables. Absolutely. And that's a phenomenon that I've noted from experience and from various data points. I used to work for a company that did a lot with expats. We used to write guides for people who wanted to move to other countries. And it's very much a thing that British people who move abroad quite often become very British

and Ditto, French, Australians, whatever. It made me remember vaguely something I'd read ages ago and dad remembered where it was for me happily. It's in a Bill Bryson book, notes from a big country. Chronicles, an island called Ocracoke. Ocracoke, Ocracoke, I don't know, off the coast of North Carolina. And the locals had a very odd, or have possibly,

still this was written quite a long time ago, quite an odd dialect and quite an odd accent and is almost possibly preserved from Shakespearean times in England. But it's very unique because islanders quite often keep dialect for a lot longer than mainlanders, for obvious reasons. But the really interesting thing for me

was that people who had grown up in the 50s and 60s had more pronounced accents than their parents had had. And that's been put down to the fact that a lot of tourists and new residents from other parts of the States started moving to the island and so they started playing up their national identity as a way to separate themselves. There's like true islanders or whatever.

Ocracokeans. Yeah. And people who apparently like move away from a place and then come back quite lightly to have a stronger dialect as well. That's interesting. Yeah. So, Noising People is a very weird British tradition,

but one that we very much still do. And... Yeah, I feel like people don't care as much anymore, they, right? Yeah, it's just kind of a thing that happens. But there's a line with page 188 where they're looking out for Tom John making his way from Ink Maulpork. And Magra is obviously being a bit wistful

and talking about magic swords. You've got to have one. You could make him one, she added wistfully, out of Thunderbolt Iron. I've got a spell for that. You take some Thunderbolt Iron, she said uncertainly. And then you make a sword out of it. It's like that draw an owl meme.

Draw a fucking owl. Two circles, then draw an owl. But this is obviously an idea that stuck. So this is in 1988, and Terry Pratchett was knighted in 2009 for services to literature. Yeah, when I say we don't care about knighthoods, obviously we care about that specific knighthood

and no others. But he was obviously quite hyped by the idea of knighthood. What he reportedly saying on the occasion, you can't ask a fantasy writer not to want a knighthood. For two pins, I get myself a horse and a sword. So he had the station of knight bachelor. The following year, found 175 pounds of iron ore near his home and added to it several chunks of meteorite,

which is Thunderbolt Iron, and had himself a sword forge. Like he made most of it himself and then had a blacksmith help turn it into a sword. So he had a sword of Thunderbolt Iron that he out of all that he dug up himself and had it made. He did help with the forging process as well, didn't he? He hammered it himself.

I'll link to the full article on the sword because it's really cool. But yeah, he had this sword made because Rihanna, his daughter inherited it. We saw that at the memorial. Yeah, he was really cool like that. Like he made a random intricate be out of gold, didn't he?

And like he melted it down and did it again. Yeah, the like Bernard Pearson, the cunning artificer and Rob Wilkins and everyone kind of received the order of the honey bee as part of... That's it, yeah. Which was such a lovely part of the memorial. I still haven't listened to Bernard Pearson's podcasts

because I'm saving them for rainy day, but I feel like we've had so many. We've just had six weeks for rainy days when I've listened to it. I'm really behind on all my podcasts. I've listened to one of them and it's really lovely. It's just, it's nice to listen to in reminisce. Like it's the sort of podcast I would literally listen to

when it's raining outside and I've got like a nice cup of tea and it feels like I'm having a nice chat with someone. So I wanted to point out the Thunderbolt iron sword there because obviously this idea stuck with Terry Pratchett for 22 years until he made himself one and that's fucking cool. Yes, it is.

And I'm really happy for him. Speaking of things that don't go anywhere, Francine Rhodes. They don't have to, you see. This is unlike all of the rest of our ones this week, let's be honest. This is actually just a little bit I quite liked. I don't have much to say about.

I don't know why we bother separating talking points anymore. They're lost trying to find the anchor and say, it was a nice day and there's the road meandered through clumps of hemlock and pine outposts of the forest. It was pleasant enough to let the mules go at their own pace. The road, well felt, had to go somewhere. This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don't necessarily have to go anywhere.

They just have to have somewhere to start. I like it because I've myself quite happily gotten lost in forests before because we live in England and getting lost in a forest is never going to be a permanent state of affairs. Yes, we don't have wolves and bears and things. Eventually I will just hit a road. Also because I feel like they're mixing up with rivers in the head.

A river will go somewhere. You follow the river, you end up somewhere. I think that instinctive bit of navigation kind of stuck with humans when it came to roads and as probably as Patrick quite rightly said, been the death of many people. Because roads don't have to go anywhere. Middly also made me think a little bit

of roadrunner and coyote cartoons. Roads suddenly stop unless there's a handy tunnel painted on it. The fool and magrat we talked about last week and you had a very good genuine feminist point about the fucking stupidity of the hard to get and how it's crap for men and women. But I like the some resolution to their romance and I pointed out there was a very sweet bit

and I wanted to point it up here which is when the witches turn up to see the play and the fool wants to whisk magrat away to a tower to watch it, just the two of them. And he's made sure there's a system of water in a fireplace in case she wants to wash her hair. That is just beautiful, isn't it? Like, I'm not sure if it's a deliberate misunderstanding

or like a very gentle rib. I think it's a gentle rib and I genuinely think if magrat turned around and said, now, mate, fuck off, I just don't want to, he would have left it. But it's kind of a, okay, you keep making this excuse. I'm going to make it so you can't make that excuse and see if you still don't want to.

Yeah. Oh, and it might be because I'm slightly hormonal, but the bit where he's left hanging onto the necklace that is a bit tacky, but he knows she'll love it and he spent too much money on it. And he made me cry. Yeah, no, it was, that bit was very sweet and very sad. Yeah.

We'll come back to the magrat and the fool's relationship in later books. Yay. Going on to the more serious stuff though, the racism towards the wolf's bit was really interesting. It was, and it's particularly interesting and something I feel I should probably go out with a bit more delicacy than I might,

because in round world, people with dwarfism are also discriminated against. So in disc worlds, instead of racism, although racism as we know it comes up later, it's mainly speciesism. I think it's like mentioned in a joke in the first couple of books, isn't it? Like you're not going to have a go at someone

for your next door neighbor has green skin or something. Yeah. I actually think Terry Pratchett, considering this is white dude writing in the late 80s and I think he does quote well at representing microaggressions. And macroaggressions. And it gets to macroaggressions,

but the idea of like, there is so much a person who is regularly discriminated against just his and shouldn't have to be thick skinned about, but is consistently thick skinned about. There's a moment, I can't remember if it's in this section or the last section, where Tom John Callswell, Law Norman. Is this section, yeah.

Yeah. And that's an insulting term for like, that's a speciesist. It's a racist term within this universe. Yeah. And he's like, oh, sorry, it's just my dad calls you that. And it's like, yeah, your dad's known me a really fucking long time and has like earned the right to use that in a friendly way.

You have not. Yeah. And I think, well, while it obviously upsets and angers him can see exactly what's happened and uses it as a gentle teaching moment rather than. Yeah. And so from that, and you can kind of infer that Tom John will not make that mistake again.

Yeah. It's it's a teaching moment and he learns, but there's there's another moment on the page you pointed up where Tom John goes to stand up for well, but well nudged him sharply in the knee, put up with it, put up with it, slip out as soon as possible. It was the only way. And that's horrible, but it is how some people think.

Yeah. And you can imagine very clearly the sudden gut swoop when you realize that dude is going to start something. Yeah. And the kind of quick analysis of do we have to leave now? Can we put up with it till it will he shut up and then the eventual him hitting him? However, luckily in this case, the bigot accidentally bigoted

against the orangutan at the same time. Just got something you fucking knew. But it is it's a well written. Yeah. Depiction of microaggressions turning into macroaggressions. Yeah. I like that he doesn't shy away from it. And he builds it into the world in a really realistic way.

And it gets really interrogated in later books. What do you think about later on in this book when it is the fool being a prick? I think it was. I like making casual racist jokes in the dwarf pub. I think it's exactly what a character like that would do because he doesn't know any better. I'm not saying that excuses it, but he is.

He literally doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. He is probably never ever hung out with the dwarf before. Well, because he lived either in a remote mountain country or in the Falls Guild where they weren't allowed to go out and socialized. Yeah. It looks like a really misjudged attempt at banter.

Yeah. It looks exactly like what someone who is socially awkward and does not know that they are being racist would do. I like to imagine that the day afterwards with hangover well had a quiet word and a shell like about, you're lucky we were with you. And next time, perhaps not. It's like a drunk dude noticing queer people in the pub

and being like, you know, you know, I'm all right with your soul. Yeah, exactly. That is just like that. Yeah. Yeah. And then going a little too far with the familiarity and they're like, we're going to let it go this time. But somebody probably wants to have a word with him tomorrow

and Casey goes into another pub. Speaking of good writing and the power of words, the power of words. But from a capitalized. Yeah. Well, it was a point. The power of words. The power of words.

A force from cheese cares. All right. No, I'm hungry. Me too. I haven't eaten yet today. God, we should not record when I'm hungry, Francine. So we talked about this last week when we were talking about propaganda, but I wanted to look at it from a different angle,

which is the power of theater. Yeah. Go. Okay. Because it's cool. There's this great scene where it's a few pages after the whole dwarf racism thing where Tom John is giving this speech to try and calm the pub down. Yeah.

After the brawl has properly broken out. Yeah. And he's saying he wrote this page when they need another five minutes in Actory of the King of Ankh and Vittorio requested something with a bit of spirit in it, a bit of zip and sizzle, something to summon up the blood and put a bit of backbone in our friends in the haybony seats, and just long enough to change the set. Yeah.

And Huel is sort of embarrassed by the play, and he thinks that this is not something anyone would have actually said, but he tried to write something with a drink of brandy to a dying man, no logic, no explanation, the words that reach right down through a tire man's brain and pull him to his feet by those testicles. And I think in the back of Terry Bradford's mind is probably the... Brave heart.

No, I was thinking Henry V. Yeah. Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Once more or close up the walls with our English dead. There is naught becomes a man so much as... I don't know, stabbing. What was that? Sorry, what's the practice line?

I'm just trying to line it up to there because I'm sure he... Brothers and yet may I call all men brother for on this night. So it may not, that may not be the speech he's referencing. It might be something else, but from the description of it being a king and then going into battle, I thought it was very much once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more. It's going to be Henry V or Julius Caesar, one of the two answers on postcard. There was a great bit on Guilty Feminist and this is now run as a regular thing,

where they did like a feminist version of that speech and they were talking about how like, it really helps you learn how to public speak. If you do these big manly speeches, it helps you, you know, figure out how to stand and because you can't sort of... I've just sort of got this idea of maybe we could once more go onto the breach, like you have to. Deborah Francis White does like a great feminist version of it and Jessica Regan

runs this big speeches workshop where she gets women to come in and perform these masculine speeches as a way to help them with public speaking and... Do you remember which episode that was? God, it's an old one. I know it's in the Guilty Feminist book. I will find it if I want to listen to it and then I'll link it in the show notes. Yeah, I think she's done it on the show a couple of times. It's great. And so I really liked that and basically everything about writing and the power of theatre said jump into people's minds and the magic of it and the way like,

no king would have actually said once more onto the breach, dear friends, once more we would have probably just said get them lads. But there's this great line. Granny subsided into one accustomed troubled silence and tried to listen to the prologue. The theatre worried her, had a magic of its own, one that didn't belong to her and one that wasn't in her control. It changed the world and said things were otherwise than they were and it was worse than that.

It was magic that didn't belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people who didn't know the rules and they altered the world because it sounded better. Links us back to the whole propaganda conversation of last week. We talked about Shakespeare and it may not be true at all that he was born and died on St George's Day but it sounds great. And so now it's true. That's the accepted history.

The paintings last week, there's a bit in the propaganda thing of no one knows if this king was actually good but history says he was good so he will now be good forever. Boudic's whole revolution is more fiction than fact because in the Roman times history was a form of entertainment, not just academia. But yeah, this whole idea of Shakespeare writing King Lear during a plague, I'm sure is actually much more complicated than just Shakespeare writing King Lear during a plague. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there was a cool bit on the speech. This is from a medium article which is taken from a speech that was given by God, I haven't written his fucking name down of course. I will link to the medium piece in the show notes. This guy used to host the Shakespeare podcast for Slate.com. Oh yeah, yeah. And he's talking about that Henry V speech, the St. Christmas Day speech. How seldom any moment in the Shakespeare play is really self-contained.

King Henry V's Christmas Day speech. It's a stirring piece of inspirational rhetoric. You can close your eyes and see Kenneth Branagh or Olivier rousing the troops with it. But following the action of the Henry add in which Henry learns how to perform as a king and weaponize language and ideas of honor in Henry IV pot one. And is then explicitly instructed by his dying father to gin up a foreign war in order to secure his power in Henry IV pot two. It's hard to see the speech as anything but an act of propaganda.

Yeah, yeah. And that's the interesting thing with all of Shakespeare's history plays is I mean, it was propaganda at the time. You know, he wrote Macbeth because King James was the new king. Kim James was terrified of the supernatural and witches. So he wrote, he's trying to stay in with the king because he was well in with the queen. He's trying to write something where witches are evil and they make bad stuff happen. Oh, okay.

So this is like a more true to round well reference than I thought it was as a book. It's a. Yeah, yeah. He was actually trying to paint which is being mirrored as well. Yeah. I like looking at the shifting dynamics between the witches because I'm back to my unified theory. Granny very much holds herself apart. And, you know, she's the one who sort of initiates this argument of we don't really need a coven

whereas Magra has really tried to form this coven partly because she's the youngest and she wants guidance. Yeah. And they do remain a coven of three regardless. They sort of can't not as much as they don't want outside help. They can't not really look after each other and look out for each other because you propagandise against one which you propagandise against them all. Yeah.

Enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yeah. But after a coven meeting, Granny leaves and Magra sort of hangs around and it's Nanny. She wants to talk to. I think Nanny's definitely more. She's the one you'd go to for advice and she's the approachable one. Yeah. And it's like, I'm a bit worried about Granny.

And you can see it. Yeah. Granny's very much, Granny's closer to the supernatural. Yeah. She is, as it's kind of hinted at late in the book, like with the cackle, Granny is always closer to that line of being the fairy tale witch. Yeah. She's almost always got one foot out of the world.

Yeah. Yes. Whereas Nanny is very, very firmly in the world and sometimes sort of leans out of it. Yes. But it's very anchored. Yeah. And Magra is, yeah, not as anchored perhaps, but definitely not. Possibly just because she's not as powerful as Granny was.

Well, she's not as powerful yet. But it's fun watching the relationship shift and change as this book has gone on because we've gone from Magra very much being junior to being part of three. And it is a dynamic that shifts and shifts again throughout the witch's book. So it's more, I wanted to point out here because we'll come back to it when we do the next witch's book. Yeah. It is interesting.

I like Granny Wetherworks very, very much because she is this odd enigma. And I think you like Nanny Ogre the best, don't you? Because I like Nanny Ogre the best because I want to beat her when I grow up. I don't want to have lots of children or like that many husbands because that sounds exhausting. I want to be the fun, mad, slightly eccentric old lady holding a tank of throwing parties. Well, while we're talking about Granny and why we like her so much, we talk about Granny's anger because Granny's rage is one of the best things about her. And I think, like, we talked a bit about Terry Pratchett actually being a very angry man

and the piece Neil Gaiman wrote about that. Yeah. And he said quite often that Granny Wetherworks was the character he related to the most. Yeah, yeah. And you can definitely see that in this. And sorry, I'm funny there. Granny Wetherworks was often angry because she considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world's great creative forces,

but you had to learn how to control it. Didn't you let it trickle away? It meant you damned it carefully, led it developer working head, drown whole valleys of the mind. And just when the structure was about to collapse, open a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge. I love this. Which is how I learned how dams work.

I love this so much because it goes against the relentless positivity, zen culture of everything. And like, although rationally, I understand that holding on to your anger, whatever is probably bad for you, and eventually you'll die on it. I know, but isn't holding a grudge fun sometimes? It is fun. And frankly, I do think it's more effective a lot of the time. I'm not vocalising this very well, but I like Granny so much because she is the,

she's like the ant today to this. What I consider quite a vapoured embrace of all things positive to the detriment of like being able to harness negative emotion. Yeah, I would rather look at how you can take on anger, embrace it and do something productive with it than trying to say, let go anger because it doesn't serve you. Because you know what? A, sometimes it does and B, sometimes it's just really satisfying to have.

Lorks. Lorks, a mercy, etc. This is just such a fun thing that Pratchett does. You know, you're saying I like parody when it really knows the shape of what it's doing. Yeah, Pratchett's like parodying fairytale witches as much as he's parodying Shakespeare. And he knows how stories work well enough to parody them. So I like the very, and I think it's one of the ways it comes across best is the Apple celebrate we talked about this last week and then this where he's going,

oh yes, the women pretend to be humble wood gatherers so they can give mysterious directions. But we're seeing it from the witch's point of view. And I like, you know, they're all sort of like, fine, okay, do you want help across the river and do you want some lunch and oh, why are we having to do this story bullshit? Yeah, it's like, if we didn't all have to live in this narrative stream, we could just ask for directions and even give clear directions the whole way, but no. There's the lovely Magrits.

I'm just a humble wood gatherer at Lorks, collecting a few sticks and may have to directing lost travelers on the road to Lanka. Like she's just not into the fucking thing at all. Just helping out look a stick. Okay, that way. And then when they get, they finally get to Nanny and she's just sort of like, oh, here's directions and who else? Like, yeah, you forgot to say lorks.

Sorry, lorks. I vaguely looked into that, by the way, and lorks is like Lord. Yeah, I thought I figured it was Lord's a mercy, Lord a mercy. Which was probably part of like common people playing some time ago, but then was used in a really heavy-handed way to show that in Victorian literature. I do like that Nanny also goes, yeah, no, I'll have a lift, jumps in the car, smokes their tobacco. Thanks for the snack, meals.

Again, I just love Nanny. I feel like I'm possibly blinding myself. And the last thing, I can't even say this word, Francine. Well, I've not tried yet. Cilepsis, maybe? Sounds like sepsis. Yeah, well, you know me. I like my random rhetorical figures.

You do? Who are you calling a random rhetorical? Two hundred and four. Just a little line. She turned up in a green dress and a filthy temper. Oh. Yeah, that is called Cilepsis. That is when one word is used in two different ways within the same sentence.

Can be more than two, as the book I always reference, the elements of eloquence pointed out. He took this apocryphal tale from journalists where apparently one young journalist was told that his story needed to be massively shortened. And so he filed this report. A shocking affair occurred last night. Sir Edward Hopeless, as guest at Lady Panmore's ball,

complained of feeling ill, took a high ball his hat, he's coached his departure, no notice of his friends, a taxi, a pistol from his pocket, and finally his life. Nice chap. Regrets on all that. Amazing. So that's obviously a slightly long-winded version of it. But yeah, actually, that's a callback to the grout remarks thing as well.

The quote. Oh, you can leave in a half. Yeah, leave in a taxi or a half. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of my favorite bits of word play anyway. Cilepsis is what it's called. Do you have an obscure reference for me, Francine? The bit where they're like bickering over,

making the potion that's going to summon Tom John back to Lanka. And it's like, this is a tiger's children. A what? A children. Jason picked it up from foreign parts. I was like, what is a tiger's children? Because obviously they're trying to imply something dirty here. And they tell me...

Yeah, they're doing the witch's poem from Beth. But yeah. And anyway, in there is their ad to a tiger's children. I don't even know how to say it. Which is from the original Shakespeare one. Yes. And I was looking it up and I was confused because it looks like it comes from the word cauldron. But eventually I found an annotated plays of William Shakespeare volume that was published in 1801,

which went back to sources from the 15 and 1600s where old books of cookery, I found out that children, is entrails. So it is tiger's entrails we need in this, which I hope he didn't rank back from foreign parts and put in because they would be very smelly. It's in the public domain because it's 1801. So I'll link the book mainly for the amusement of everything's written with like the little F's, the S's and stuff like that. Yeah.

The F's, S's thing led to one of my absolute favorite moments in Vicar of Dibley, which I've been rewatching recently because it was on Netflix. He shall be thy sucker. Great. I think that's everything. So that's the end of Weird Sisters, which was fun. We will probably pop in. Excellent conclusion.

We liked it. It was good. We'll probably normally we'd have a week off, but we're in a pandemic. It's the 25th of May next week. And there happens to be an animated version of this book on YouTube. Right, it's on there. Yeah.

So we might be back next week wearing the lilac. And if you don't know what you're talking about, we are still going to try and mostly avoid spoilers. Don't worry. Yeah. But it's a reference to a little bit. Actually. And then the next book is Pyramids.

Yeah. I think so. We'll be back week after next at the beginning of June with Pyramids. In the meantime, dear listener, follow us on Instagram at The Tree Shall Make You Fract, on Twitter at Make You Fract pod, on Facebook at The Tree Shall Make You Fract. You can email us.

The Tree Shall Make You Fract pod at gmail.com. Please send us your thoughts, queries, castles and snacks. We like them. Please don't forget to rate and review us when you get your podcasts because it helps other people find us. And with that, dear listener, as the new day wound across the landscape, each one busy with her own thoughts,

each one of which alone, they went home. We are a witch alone, Joanna. Not forever. I'm a witch alone. Do you want me to come stand at the bottom of your garden and shout spells? No, that's weird.