The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 43: Small Gods Pt. 1 (Extra Melons)

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “Small Gods”. Tortoise! Porpoise! Gods! 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:Small Gods -  Colin Smythe (Find reviews here)Words from the Master - L-SpaceList of Common Misconceptions - WikiStuds Terkel discusses "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat and Other Clinical Tales" with Oliver W. SacksNo One Expects the Spanish Inquisition! - YoutubeThe Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors - GoodreadsGnosticism - Wiki The Upside Down Tortoise Enigma - BBCMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

we are such functioning human beings. Yeah, look at us with functioning. I've got socks on, you've got socks on, we're having a happy day. I'm wearing a dispelled sock and a sock that says pretty shit at adulting. All right. Just just as a check in some where I'm at right now. Oh, maybe I was a little generous. Alright, play us in.

Thank you for a agreeing to record late and then be being nice about me delaying again. Well, I don't exactly have a lot of things happening in my life right now. Well, we're recording on a Thursday, which is most irregular because of your full schedule. My full schedule of a sofa turning up tomorrow. And my delivery, my four hour delivery slot is the four hours there

where we would normally fit recording in between 1030 and 230. Of course. And then yeah, sad I am going to watch all of the Lord of the Rings extended editions in one go. I wish you luck. I'm so excited you're enjoying the book. I am really enjoying the book. I haven't read it in so long. I don't think I'm going to finish it before Saturday.

God no, I'm still on the fellowship the ring. I know, but you read incredibly fast. I do if I did nothing else over the next couple, if I didn't do any sewing and I didn't really worry too much about cleaning the house, but I've got to I want as I'm taking the old sofa out of this room, I'm taking the opportunity to have a proper sweep and mop because I haven't done that since before Christmas. Yeah.

And I've got a bit of cooking to do and I've got some sewing. I'll probably have finished Fellowship of the Ring this Saturday. I was at Bombardill last night. That's the best one anyway. It is in my is my favourite of the books. The Two Towers is my favourite of the films. Yeah. Yeah, I think I agree. It's Basil of Helms Deep.

Yes. It's the one where Legolas is on a skateboard shield. Yeah, that was what inspired me at the age of, I want to say 11 or 12 to write a parody of Avalovine Skater, what he called Skater Elf. Can you recall any of it? I remember I replaced the rocking at MTV line with rocking at Helms Deep.

Nice. Yeah, good. Now I'm really excited. I've got loads of snacks. I'm going to make a couple of nice snacky bits. I'm going to make some sausage rolls and a quiche. I tried to watch all three of them back to back once when I was 14, 15, maybe, 15, and I did it with some friends and my boyfriend at the time.

And I tried that aftershock, that like cinnamon flavoured spirit for the first time. Yeah. So for me, it's forever just going to be associated with the smell of cinnamon and feeling very ill. Yeah, I did it in the first lockdown and tweeted along. I'm honestly just mainly impressed that's something you want to do.

I can't imagine self-imposing that kind of thing. I like the idea of sitting down and watching three movies back to back is horrendous to me, even though I would do it for the same amount of time with a TV show. Yeah, I think it's all psychological. I've been binging TV shows so much. It's probably why I'm going to tweet along as I watch because it is slightly diverting.

Yeah. And weirdly makes me pay attention more because I'm looking for little bits that I can tweet about. Yeah, well, that's what we're doing with the books, I guess. Yeah, exactly. So hopefully slightly more insightful than my, sorry to insult you in advance. Hopefully we're slightly more insightful than your live

tweeting is going to be. Considering my live tweeting will be, I'm going to say 70% well, no, 60% memes, 40% Aragon first. Yeah, that's pretty much my guess. What about Legolas first? I don't get that. I did when I was young and I first saw the films because he was very pretty, but now I'm older.

I think that's it, isn't it? It's this is the switch as you hit some point in your life, whether you go from fancy Orlando Bloom to fancy whatever older grizzled man is playing against him. I feel like it starts with a V. Vigo Mortensen. Thank you. Well, because I was thinking about the other films that

came out when I was around the age Lord of the Rings came out. That was a really weird way to say the other films that came out around the same time with the parts of the Caribbean movies, which I've seen several years before you came out. Yes, a couple years. So yeah, parts of the Caribbean. Obviously I started off fancying Orlando Bloom and not missing to myself a fancy Keira Knightley.

But those ones I've swung all the way around where I went from fancying Orlando Bloom to fancying Johnny Depp. Realising Johnny Depp is gross. Now I'm back to fancying Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley. Not that I'd actually ever watched the parts of the Caribbean films again. All right, Joanna, I think we've got quite a lot to talk about today, even though our bullet points are fairly scant. Because it's a big one.

I have a lot to say in the intro, even. It's a big intro for once. Awesome. Have you consulted or a client? Several books. Yes, I've consulted or a client. I've consulted the man himself. I've consulted several sources.

Excellent. And I've tried to condense it into not too much of a ramble, but we shall see. Oh, we're going to ramble. I've got thoughts. Speaking of, shall we make a podcast? Oh, let's make a podcast. Hello, and welcome to The True Shell Make Keep Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series

one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today is part one of our discussion of small gods. Yes, one of the big ones. God's a small God's big topics. Yeah. Fuck yes, tagline.

I feel like it works less as a tagline if you announce fuck yes, tagline immediately afterwards. All right, fine. Taglines have to be kind of approached in a looth manner, do they? Like it's not cool if you say it's cool or? Yeah, yeah. OK, right. Play hard to get with the taglines. Hits the taglines.

Very well, very well. Note on spoilers before we forge ahead. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book we're on, small gods. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series if you're reading along for the first time. And we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, the Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Across a burning desert on exactly nine to three camels.

Door carried by a vicious eagle. Yes. Eagle. Right, sorry, that's the one time I'm going to do it, I promise. So I don't think we've really got anything to follow up on. I think thank you for everyone who sent in their ideas and answers right off from our existential Q&A. Oh, did we have any?

We had a couple. I don't have them handy. More of a general thanks there. We'll do it next week. We'll read them out next week. Put them on a fridge. Francine, would you like to introduce us to the book, Small Gods? Yeah, sure. That sounds fun. So Small Gods is the 13th Discworld novel published in 1992 and critically acclaimed, unsurprisingly, I'd say it's probably his first classic.

It's quite funny reading the reviewers trying to summarize the book or trying to summarize why it's so good. I won't read them out because they're all a bit wordy, but I will link to Colin's my page, but it's it's basically the written equivalent of us going, I don't know, it's just a bit good, isn't it, except they have to make a word count. But yeah, I mean, it's funny. It's got the flashes of emotion and it's a lot of people's favorites.

And I can see why I've never thought of it as one of mine, but it's probably one of my favorites to read as in that analytical exercise. And it all came from a random idea or thought that Pratchett had, which is fun because it's it's one of the few ones that he is willing to admit. He can trace back that easily, I think. And Mark Burroughs in his book said, it's a brilliant example of how Pratchett could reverse engineer a plot

from a single idea using a combination of his imagination and decades of randomized research. And in his book, Slip of the Keyboard, in fact, Terry Pratchett kind of writes about it, which is great in an essay called Thought Progress for 2020 Magazine. All right, all right, let's do some research. What we need to know for the purposes of the next disqual plot is something about tortoises, got a vague idea that a talking tortoise is a central part of the action. Don't know why tortoises just surfaced from racial unconsciousness,

possibly prompted by own tortoises surfacing from hibernation. Paraphrasing now. Interesting footnote in tortoise book reminds us that the most famous tortoise in history must be the one that got dropped on the head of famous Greek philosopher. What's the bugger's name? Should have told Asklet. You told me how it's pronounced, Joanna, and I forgot it already.

Anyway, as Pratchett says later in the essay, I do pronounce Askletis anyway. Pronunciation dictionary in box, in loft, step ladder and garage, car needs a wash. Lunch. Solid morning's work, really. Which it's the first, I know, it's the I've skipped most of his procrastination here. It's the first essay in a slip of the keyboard and one of my favourites, because it's so. It's a targeted attack on my own work process, especially as mine does not end in EG small gods. So speaking as someone who is literally sewing an entire new wardrobe to put off going back to learning how to code, I'm right there with you.

And the other thing I found that I thought might be fun to put the intro was in L spaces, paid words from the master, which by the way, if none of you have bookmarked, you should. Someone asked him, do religious fanatics ever get mad at you for writing small gods? And perhaps it says, I may have posted something on these lines before, but a lot of male about small gods is split between one pagans who say that it really shafts the big beard in the sky religions, and two Christians who say that it's an incredibly pro Christian book. I suspect the latter is because brother displays tolerance, compassion, charity, steadfastness and faith. And these are now considered Christian virtues, brackets, i.e. virtues that modern

Christians feel they should have, which is good and kind of ties into some of our later points, I think. But I did think it interesting that the feedback from the book amongst readers is projecting whatever your belief system is onto it. Yep. And we'll get a lot of me doing that eventually. Oh, yes. Not that I have any deep feelings and thoughts about faith. No, certainly not. No.

So part one runs from where to where normal people edition of this book. Yeah, in the call geek paperback, we're running from the beginning to the end of page 118. The last line is there were lots of towns, they had to cut them up quite small. So we're getting up to when we hear about kumi. Okay, that's my lovely pretty version that you got me. Oh, yes, I did. I'm reading this one. I have another hardback edition as well, with Kirby illustration on the front. And I have no idea what edition that is, but it was bigger.

So I didn't read the compact. Yeah. One other thing I wanted to say while we're talking about the writing of the book, we mentioned back at sort of Reaper Man that we were moving into mid stage disc world from early disc world. And that was the game from book 10 to book 11, the first 10 books are out the way. Yeah. I think something quite common in mid stage disc world. So especially the books that we're going to cover this year are there's lots of revisiting characters, but there's also

lots of having another go at something he'd already done to see if he could do it better now he's a better writer, I'm obviously getting a motivation a bit there. Yeah. So Reaper Man sort of takes some of the ideas of Morton makes a much more intense and beautiful book out of it. Yeah. And also possibly, you know, a wizard subplot that didn't have anywhere else to go. Which is a broad, like we revisit the witch characters. And it's got those same themes of

belief and fairy tales and the idea of the wicked witch rather than who she is, but does it better and bigger and Yeah, does the dynamic between the three better as well. Yeah. And I was thinking about small gods because it's a weird stand out when it's a standalone story. It doesn't follow on from any other arcs. It's in a completely different different part of the world and arguably in a completely different part of the timeline. Yeah, I think someone worked this out. There are lots of courtboards and string walls around trying to figure out the actual time

under Desquadworks. And I think the general consensus is try not to think about it too much. Yeah, I'll write this down as follow up to forget for next week. Cool. I will not do it. Good. Good. Don't when I read Gormungast. But something I only noticed on this reading is that this is kind of he's taken some of the ideas of pyramids and done it. Yeah. So the philosophers of Phoebe and I guess the overall theme as well of gods.

The overall theme of God's belief. You've got brother is a much more interesting character than Tepic because Tepic was the sort of his cut and paste hero that he was. And we've moved on a bit from that cut and paste hero, hence revisiting existing characters rather than recasting that character. Yes. But you've got this idea of someone who believes a certain way and then deals with the belief of the old country and then goes to pops over to a fee to have his mind wide and then pops back. And yeah, there's something in the structure of pyramids that we've got parallels to here.

And I think that's quite a it's fun to see how sort of ideas from the first 10 get revisited in the next 10. Yeah, especially as we're not that many books ahead now. It's not like he's doing this 20 years on. No, exactly. And it's like he got into his stride and went, oh, I got all the hang of it now. All right, try again. It's fine. No one will notice.

I'm going to come back to this point with some of the other books we talk about this year, especially when we get to revisiting some of the City Watch characters. OK, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yes. When do we get to that? What's after this one? It's Lords and Ladies next. Oh, fun.

So and then, yeah, I will have a schedule for you. We're meant to do that before we start recording. Sure. I've got bullet points. Anyway. Right. Sorry, shall I summarize this section? Yeah, that's a good idea.

Yeah, I think we managed to make our intro longer than our soft opening. So is that good? Yes, I'm going to say yes, because it's relevant. It's just unexpected. OK, right, I'll let you go. OK, so part one of Small Gods. We start by learning how Wiggles eat tortoises and visit the history monks before meeting brother, our pious hero in the gardens.

Brother hears a mysterious voice and runs to Numrod, master of novices, as he fears demonic interference instead of its true origin. The great God Om, unfortunately, currently stuck as a tortoise. Vorbis, head of the Church's Exquisition, watches as Sashow, his ex-secretary, undergoes torture. The only information Vorbis receives from Sashow is that the turtle moves. A heresy, if ever I heard one. Brother, back in his garden, attempts to ignore the requests of the tortoise

as Om demands to be taken to a high priest. Vorbis doesn't have a meeting and definitely doesn't discuss the neighbouring nation of Afib with General Friot and Duna, the minutes-taker, who also both definitely weren't there. We learn that the Omnians do not believe in the turtle and accompanying elephants that the disc travels on, as it's agreed that a deputation must be sent to Afib. More secret meetings definitely don't happen,

as brother introduces his tortoise to Numrod, and Om learns that brother is the only person who can hear him. Om is unfortunately sent to the kitchens, there's good eating on a tortoise, and after brother rescues him in the nick of time, Om demonstrates his power with a tiny little smiting and sees what the church has become in his name. Vorbis comes across brother singing in the garden and leaves the great god Om trapped on his back.

The eagle searches for his lost dinner. Vorbis discovers brother's excellent memory and Sargent Simony is chosen. Luke C. rescues the trapped tortoise, who sets out to explore the grand citadel, witnessing torture and lamentation. Vorbis decides to bring brother to Afib. Brother collects the great god Om, interrupting the Cenobiarch in the process, and agrees to keep him close, general free at frets, until Vorbis brings him to an unpleasant end.

As a surprising amount of camels head in a desertish direction, brother joins Vorbis and the deputation as they head to the docks to set sail for Afib. What's a surprising amount of camels? Depends on the context. Right now, any amount of camels would be surprising. A single camel would surprise me at the moment, but that's just the time till we live in France. On the boat, brother discovers seasickness,

and Vorbis orders the harpooning of a poor poise. Om and brother chat, but Om conceals the truth, that he needs true believers to continue living, and brother might just be his only one. And finally, we learn about Kumi, his theories on gods and belief, and we learn of Kumi's gristly end. The harpooning of a poor poise sounds like an award-winning poem.

Ah yes, the poor poise was harpooned. I mean, don't try and do it off the top of your head, mate. I'm going to stop you right there. Nothing rhymes with poor poise. Okay, so helicopter and loincloth watch. Yeah, yeah. As well as the other things we're sort of keeping track of, as we work through the books.

Just getting longer and longer. And keeping track of a lot of things. So we don't open on the turtle. Of course not. Instead, we open on the eagle and the tortoise. You're heretic. I mean, of all the ways in which I'm a heretic for unseen, I think the turtle's fairly minor.

Yeah, all right. For keeping track of the years we're in, which doesn't actually help us with where we are in the timeline at all, it's the year of the notional serpent. Ah yes, I remember it well. At some point when Brothers in the Garden, it says that it's lesser spring, which I believe, unless I've missed some,

seems to be the first hint at the eight seasons that Pratchett mentioned in his first incredibly long footnote. Oh yeah, very true. Yeah, what else we got here? Ankh Moorpork is mentioned. So we've already had a book where we haven't been to Ankh Moorpork, which is abroad. But we still haven't had a book in which it hasn't even had a mention.

Okay, yeah. What's his chops when they're during his exploits? The general. General Friot. Fretful General Friot. And I'm quite glad he dies in the first section, just so I don't have to keep trying to say his name. Cruel but fair, yeah, okay.

Death is here, so we still haven't had a book. You wait till we get to a feeb. Yeah, death is here. Is this the first time we see the concept of this, the desert you walk and whatever you believe is at the end? I think so, yeah. Yeah, it's quite well done, isn't it? It is.

I mean, it's done here because they live near the desert, I'm assuming, so it is part of, the desert is part of their faith. It's part of omnionism. Yes, and then he keeps it. Yeah, the long black sands of death sort of continue to linger in later books, which is a nice touch. Yeah, because death does say it's what you believe will end up happening, because that's a comfort to General Friot.

Oh, and there's a pointless albatross, which I'm calling a wild card for helicopter and loincloth watch, so it's both a helicopter and a loincloth. Oh, sorry. I made a, yeah, I did make a note of the albatross, which flies to the rim and hub. I know you were saying rim like that because they don't know if you didn't. Oh no, shit, no, no, don't make it worse.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make it dirty. It's just who I am, it's a person. Yeah, no, I admit that's my fault. Okay, fine. Right, moving swiftly on quotes. Yes, let's. Yours is first and more profound, I think, so. Yeah, I don't actually have yours marked in my plan.

Oh, possibly I changed my mind near the end. Okay, great. Yeah, mine's quite early on. Fear is strange soil. Mainly, it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

The potatoes of defiance. See, his non-poetic metaphor strikes again. He does, I just love the idea of a defiant potato, because I feel it summers me up quite well. They are a defiant little tuber, aren't they? They are. I've considered trying to grow them. You can do it in carrier bags.

They aren't very easy to grow. It's easier if you have a garden, because you just fucking chuck potatoes anywhere and you'll have potatoes eventually. Yes, I can't really do that on a balcony. No, that probably won't work, no. Oh, quick update that's got nothing to do with small gods, but as we're, this is coming out at the beginning of February

and it's all very miserable outside, that all of my pots of daffodils and tulips have now got little sprouts popping up. So spring is on its way. Excellent. Spring will spring. It better do. It's so fucking wet.

I'm cold. I'm wearing so many layers. Yeah, so mine is. Sorry, you're quick. Yeah. Mine's a small one from when they're on the shift already, so near the end of the section. The sea, the waves, murmured brother,

leaning over the edge here, trying to not be sick anymore. Poor brother. The sailor spat thoughtfully. I, he said, they got to be that shape, sea, so as to fit into the sky. That just made me go, huh. So should we talk about characters? Yes, let's.

There aren't that many, but they are all quite interesting. I've tried not to mention literally every character that's introduced because it's the first section of the book, and quite a lot of people are introduced. But the most important ones, we'll start with brother, are hero. Yes, you said that quite skeptically. I feel like we've actually got a hero for once.

He is, but he's not very heroic in this section. He's not a classic hero. Like I said, when I was talking about this being a, as Pratchett's starting to get a bit more diverse in what the characters he's writing, he's either revisiting characters or building new ones. He's not doing the sort of recasting thing of Tepik and Mort. You get characters like brother, who is not a classic hero. Yeah, whereas.

He's better though, isn't he? He's not like better as in a better written character, although I think he is. He's just a better person. Yes. He's got his very. Possibly because he doesn't have the imagination to be otherwise. Yeah, I really like the line of brothers, the sort of brothers logic that often gets him extra melon duty.

Yes. Which is when he's sort of saying, when I'm saying, well, why don't you believe I'm a god? I mean, how many talking tortoises do you know? And he's like, oh, maybe all tortoises talk and just none of them had anything to say to me before. I don't know. Yes.

I think it's very important that we call it what it is, extra melons, capitalized, not extra melon duty. Because that made me laugh for quite a long time. I know you text me. It's the kind of thing that got us extra melons. It's like where I had to do extra drama because I got kicked out of art. Oh, I just had free periods when I got kicked out of a DCSE. Oh, nice.

Yeah. Yours was quite near the end then, or? No, it was halfway through the year. Good stuff. Because I was doing statistics, I'd have an extra one anyway, and that was a lunchtime class. So I just went to the computer screen. Get you over, achiever.

What did you get kicked out of? Design technology food. I decided I didn't want to be taking it anymore, but they wouldn't let me drop it. So I intentionally failed the recent exam for mocks. But I wasn't taking art, but I found out what the brief was from my friend who was taking art. Drew all over the exam paper based on the art brief

and asked if he could be submitted to the teacher afterwards just to see what grade I could have got. What'd you get? B. Oh, pretty good. Yeah. Fuck me. Oh, don't do it.

Have you never told me that story before? This is totally irrelevant. Right, we're talking about a brother. Well, no, it's not. It's a potato of defiance, that little anecdote. I am a very, very defiant potato. Brothers grandmother. I've sort of folded this in to talking about him,

but she's a little different. Oh, I see, I see. So you've not listed all the characters. You've just put your own private secret bullet points in another document entirely, so I don't object before you start. All right, I see. You know I have a separate notes document.

I know, but you're now using it for subterfuge. It's very on-scene with the book. I like it. Carry on. No, I just, I like this idea of brothers grandmother. You know, she's a woman. If she was a man, she'd be running the church right now. And as it is, she very aggressively organizes things

like cleaning rotors. Yes. Yeah. In a book that... She's the desert version of Mrs. Cake. Yes. In a book that is unfortunately definitely not going to pass the Bec Del Test.

It's nice to know there is some sort of strong female character lurking in the background somewhere. Even if it's a dead evil one. Yeah. Yeah. We haven't finished this read through yet, because surprise, surprise, I haven't. Did we find out what happened to his parents?

No. Okay, yeah, no. I didn't think so. I didn't think... This is one of those ones I didn't feel like I needed to read all the way through because I've read it so many times. Now I'm like, it's possible. I forgot an explanatory paragraph here,

but I didn't think so. Yeah. No, I don't think we ever hear about his parents. He just was raised by his grandmother. Yep. Possibly they ran away before he was born. Ella Rintzwind. Ella.

I would say like the description of his thought process. Most people think automatically, thought dancing through their brains like static electricity across the cloud. Whereas brother had to construct thoughts a bit at a time, like someone building a wall. He has definitely written as someone who thinks very differently to other people.

Yeah, the incredible memory is very interesting. I don't know if I ever made you read any Oliver Sacks, but Oliver Sacks has some interesting stories about people with this kind of memory. Yeah, the term photographic memory is a bit misleading because it is more like, as Pratchett's describing here, he's done it very well, which is just everything goes in and they don't know how

to get rid of it. And to the point where, as with brother, they find it as much of a disability as a gift. Yeah. The term is generally, the correct term is idetic memory. Idetic. Yeah. This was in, you sent me,

and I'm going to link to this in the show, and it's actually just because it was really cool. I sent you something I didn't read. No, you sent me that Wikipedia list of common misconceptions and one of them is on photographic memory. And so there's no such thing as a photographic memory as in people have recollection that is that realistic, but there is such thing as an idetic memory,

which is effectively what you're describing. Everything just stays in there. Cool. Which is a very good list there, by the way. I'll try and link that in the show notes, if I remember. Oh, well, definitely. Along with something by Oliver Sacks. Yeah.

It's a handy list of things that when people say something in the pub, you can come out with it. Well, actually. Yeah, you'll be the hit of the town. God, we're lucky we found each other. I love you so much. Oh, God, we would have been lost if we tried to do this with anyone else.

Right. Oh, yeah. So one other bit of Brother's character that I really like is his seasickness. Well, I don't like his seasickness, but he works out where he is by where he's been. He has this thread of memory sort of wired to his feet, and part of the reason he feels so at sea is he's disconnected.

He's traveling in a way he's never traveled before, and that makes him feel very adrift. I think it's quite telling, obviously, spoilers for the rest of the book, that he does not make it back to Omnia by sea. Oh, yeah. That's a good point. Yeah, nice bit of not quite foreshadowing, but connection. Yeah.

So he's a thread flapping loose here, I think is how it's described. Yeah. Yeah. It reminded me of the bit in Avatar where the Earthbender girl, Toph, thank you, is on sound. Oh, and she sort of sees with her feet when she's on sound. She can't see properly. Yeah, that's quite a good example.

Get you referencing Avatar. I know. I still haven't watched it anymore. I'm so fragile right now. That's fair. I'll allow that. What do we have? We have Omnia.

I'm so fragile. I can't watch the children's cartoon you sent me. God damn it. But I'll quite happily sit here and discuss the nature of faith. That's fine. Excellent. Yeah, that's not going to get intense at all. So speaking of faith, the great God Om currently stuck in the form of a tortoise.

Bracket's tortoise, yeah. Bracket's derogatory. Did you holy horns that they keep doing? Is that just this good visual content here? The actual reference I looked at this in annotated Pratchett is to do with a prophet's appearance in the Old Testament. Oh, Moses. Yeah, Moses.

And some of the ways it was described, how it's been translated, is it could be horns or rays of light or... Okay, cool. Yeah, so in this case, it's because he appeared as a bull, but that's why holy horns are there. Ah, cool. So do you reckon it's just like... Here, listeners, I am holding my two middle fingers with my thumb,

index finger pointing the other two out, and rocking it backwards and forwards in a unfortunate... Yes, like one word is a heavy metal concert. Yes, devil horns, I believe they call it. I think it's actually called throwing the horns. Throwing one's horns. Yes, yes. I've done this at...

You've thrown your horns. I've thrown horns at a rock gig. Oh, gosh. I don't think I ever managed to do that without feeling like a twat. I did all the headbanging and the washing, but like the rock symbol, I think it always felt forced to me. Oh, it always felt forced, but like in the ways in which I made myself feel like a twat at Download Festival, I feel like this is quite minor.

Yeah, yeah. And may have got you in with the great Godom, who you can now tell me about without further interruption. One of the... Obviously, this goes into the whole central theme of the book, or at least the central plot device, which is he needs to be believed in to manifest properly, and because he's not believed in properly, he's kind of stuck as a tortoise. Yeah.

One of his moments that I thought was... Oh, no, I'm not going to say interesting, but... I guess so far it's called my point, interesting. I wouldn't say anything I say is actually interesting. He's horrified by the actions of his followers, and the actions done in his name, when he witnesses torture and sees the place of lamentation. And as he's been kicked round the Palace of Lamentation,

he's sort of trying to grant prayers as he goes, and he can't, because he's got no power in his sense at all. Yeah, but only to make him stop. True. And I think Brother pointed out a bit later that Om was only horrified at the idea of what was it, being mean to tortoises, because he was one. But he's horrified by the torture taking place,

and the fact that people are being inquisited and exquisited. Yes. Which I didn't expect. Oh. I promise that's the one time I'm going to make the joke. Okay, good. I do not promise that. Not even slightly.

So we'll check back in with Om as we go through, obviously. Is that in the common misconceptions list somewhere, because everyone did expect the Spanish Inquisition, because they made appointments? I mean, no, because... I feel like that's something I heard. That's just the joke of the sketch, is that no one expects it, because of course everyone expected it.

I know, but I feel like it's gone so into common parlance now. No, I think most people know it's from a sketch. Okay, okay. And now I get to look it up so I can link to it in the show notes, which pleases me. Yeah, good. Right. That chief weapon.

Fear and Sprite. Right, sorry. Stop. We cannot be people who quote, Monty Python at length. We cannot. I am already someone who quotes Monty Python at length, but somehow you're still friends with me.

This is true. Brother Numrod. Numrod? Numrod, I think. Sounds enough like Nimrod, and is apparently, obviously, according to the annotator, Pratchett, I didn't get it a joke, because penis. You know, you don't get a lot of dick jokes in Pratchett.

You don't, and so I will happily allow this one, especially as I didn't notice until someone else pointed out. But this is a brilliant example of how Pratchett can create such a whole character in the short paragraph. Nervous habit of squinting, repeating the last few words they said practically as they said them, touching things all the time as if he was afraid the universe would disappear if he didn't heap hold of it, and so many nervous ticks that they had to queue.

I know. He's like a weirdly wholesome character, like he's all patting brother on the shoulder and trying to be like a really decent supervisor, especially compared to brother's grandmother. He must be like the nicest dude in the world. Yeah. Obviously, he beats him a bit, but apparently, that's just... Brother doesn't really mind.

He sort of just says ow to show willing. Yeah. But yes, I think he's quite a sweet character. And then again... Clearly needs a shag, but... Well, yes. I feel like that would solve a lot of problems in the Omnion Church. Melons that explains it.

Melons and cucumbers, good thought. And sit down. And then another excellent completely sum up a character in a couple of short paragraphs is when we meet Vorbis. Yeah. I have so much to say on Vorbis that I've decided to save it for another episode, probably next episode. Yeah, I think we've got a lot more to say as we get into the...

Yeah, I think we have a lot of general sematic stuff to go over this time. And I have so many opinions on Vorbis, I think we'll save it for a big branch. Yeah, I just want to talk about his introduction here, which is this terrifying dark eyes. I like that it does this sort of countdown of the things people notice about him. The third thing. Yeah, I've got Vorbis countdown run down here. He's very tall and very thin.

His dark eyes and being completely bald. And he just gave everyone the feeling that his personal space radiated several meters from his body. Yeah. Which is... He's there. I think we can all aspire to. Yep, one day.

But I also want to talk about, you know, I mentioned earlier these parallels with early books and how this feels slightly like a reworking of pyramids. And there's something in Vorbis and his counterpart in pyramids, Dios. Yes. There's the similar... It's the eminence grease. The grey... What was it?

Mist? Something like that? The exact translation? Eminence... I don't know what eminence is, but yes. Well, it's something to do with ruler, like your eminence. Yeah, but I think the... The phrase eminence grease comes from like a literal translation of something.

It's like presence rather than... Yeah, something like that. We can wait two seconds. I can consult Annotated Cratchit because I believe it was mentioned. But yeah, now I just... I think it's quite interesting that he's got this same vibe as Dios. He's serving very much the same role in this story, but much more sinister. It does translate as grey eminence as in shadowy power.

Yeah, what does eminence mean? Eminence literally translates as eminence. It means power. I think it's another word for power. Jute project. Here we go. Yeah, like originally. Yeah, I think that's fine.

I'm going backwards too far. Francine, stop doing etymology while I'm trying to... But yeah, it's verbis and Dios, definite parallels. But with different motivations. And verbis, yeah. Yeah, because Dios almost has the... No, because Dios doesn't have the belief as such, as he is. The belief in the structure, much as verbis does.

But Dios' motivation, although he's something of a villain, is mostly to keep things going the way they are, because he thinks that is the best for everyone. Dios is a classic conservative. Yeah. He is, yeah. I would say verbis' motivation is less clear, but definitely more sinister. Yeah, yeah. And then who else do we have?

We have Simony, Simony. We have Simony, the little sergeant. I just want to mention him here, because he's going to be a big player as we go through. He's obviously not quite there yet. Yes, right now he's just one of the heretics. Heretics, heretics. Heretics. One of the heretics.

And he's been volunteered to come along on this holy mission to a feeb. Yes. And... He's already a little under suspicion by all this for having thoughts. How dare he? Heresy. And then we have Luzi. I'm struggling with how to say that.

I'm assuming the actual name is a play on Laozi, who is an ancient Chinese philosopher. Taoist dude, yeah. Yeah. Taoist dude, that's probably offensive. Which is, I think it's pronounced Daoist. Is it? I think so. My reading on ancient Eastern philosophy took place quite a few years ago now.

Yes. And the history monks in general, and their whole thing is that for history to take place, it must be observed. Which I like because I'm very fascinated by history as it is taught. Always coming with the caveative. But we don't really know. Yes, yeah. I think that's one of the main reasons.

One of the main reasons. One of the reasons that I could never pick up my historian because I don't like the caveat. But we don't really know. I would spend forever trying to erase the caveat from something incredibly petty in my entire career would be that. Yeah, the little line, history has to be observed. Otherwise, it's not history.

It's just things happening one after the other. Yeah. And the history monks idea is sort of, they are there to observe and to keep things on track. Yeah. Luzi on his way over to Omnia has to stop and watch a couple of battles to make sure that they happen. Yeah. But I think it's quite interesting to watch him as we go through.

Because he does occasionally perform very small actions. And I've never really paid attention to his part in the story reading this before. Well, he puts Om back up the right way, doesn't he? Exactly. What's all this with him giving brother the mountain for a second? That seemed like it was significant. I don't know. There is something to the Bonsai Mountains things.

And that is something from an early philosophy that I don't know enough about. Cool. There's more to it than just a joke about mountains instead of bonsai trees. I believe. I could be completely wrong. Okay. But I don't know. So that and your homework to not do.

I think, arguably, and I'm kind of projecting a motivation onto the character here, it's to give brother some perspective. Okay. Look at this whole very real thing that is so small you can hold in your hands. Yeah. Think about all the other things. Is it a mirror of brother? It's more think about all the other huge things in the world that you haven't yet held in your

hands that you haven't seen or experienced and know about yet. Think about how much bigger the world is than you believe it to be. Okay. But I could be projecting that motivation somewhat. Okay. No, I like it. I like it. It's good.

That would make a passable essay. Yeah. I likely see some people don't seem to feel that way. I've seen comments that he's like a boring character. Disagree. I mean, is this the first time we've met him? He is the mischief. He's the trickster God in my opinion of this book.

He has got this trickster God vibe. That's what I mean about looking at his little actions and how they affect the course of history considering he's not really supposed to. I don't think it's the first time we've seen him, but I can't. Top of my head. Totally where we've seen him before. We've definitely met the history monks before. We met those in Malt.

Yeah. I think Lutzi might have been amongst them in a slightly different format. But yes, my old spoiler that will come across the whole Lutzi history monk concept again. Um, he asked me, oh yeah. Dibblah. Dibblah. Dibblah. I tried to pronounce that aloud a couple of times.

Didn't happen. I didn't practice it. Dibblah. He's Dibblah, isn't he? He's cut me a hand off Dibblah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

And I like that the universe is on a stick. I like that the universe is shaped in such a way where a version of Dibblah will turn up anywhere at any point. Of course. He must. He must. For who else will glue your door together with a date on a stick? Oh, I really fancy dates.

I like dates. No, too sickly. It's like marzipan. It's like the marzipan of the fruit world. I can't eat more than, you know, one without wanting to have a bit of a lie down, but... All right, brother Nimrod. And then I sort of put this in characters. I don't really know where to put it, but the idea of the heretical turtle movement.

Yeah, yeah. And I like the sort of thing about tentative conspirators who don't know how to speak to each other because if they don't know if the other person's in on it. Yes. Yeah. And this very awkward conversation between Friot and Druna, who, where Friot has this very long internal monologue where he wants to scream, God, this fucking holy war is a ridiculous idea.

But he doesn't know if Druna's in on it or not, because he doesn't know who else is in the revolutionary cell. It reminded me a little bit of when we were talking about the Illuminati and kind of how nobody knew each other's name because that was important. Yeah. Except, obviously, this time they're the good guys, not the dragon summoners. Very much so. Yeah, I didn't go too deep into the whole secret society thing,

because we did do that back in guards, guards. Yeah, I think it'll be worth revisiting briefly next week. It will be. For once, I've actually got a list of the topics I want to cover next week already written down. Handy. And then Kumi, who obviously we don't actually meet, but we hear about Kumi's theory. Of common sense.

Yes. So this is the religious philosopher Kumi of Smale, in his book Ego Video Liba Deorum. Good. Actually, I think I was going to mention that at some point, but I do like when Pratchett does cod Latin because it's always very silly. And in that one, it says in the book, it translates roughly as God's Spotter's Guide,

but the Ego video is I spy. Did you ever have any of the I spy books when you were a kid? No, what's an I spy book? It was like a little ring bound book. You'd get it in like a bookshop, but it would have things like birds or something. And if you managed to fill enough in, you could send it off and you'd get a sticker. I did see those.

Or a bash. I never had them, but now you've said it. I can see them in my head. Yes. No, I did not have those. I'm sure I just didn't have the attention span on mom knew that. I don't think I ever managed to fill one all the way in, but I definitely had a couple flowers or something.

Anyway, yeah, sorry. Side note, cod Latin and Latin and dog Latin mean the same thing, don't they? I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. I'm using cod as short for comedy in this context. Oh, OK, right. OK, that makes sense as to why I see it written down as dog Latin sometimes

and as cod Latin in other places. Yeah. That'll be why, because it'll be depending on context. OK, context. So Kumi's idea is that it's the idea, essential idea of the book, which is that gods exist because of belief. Rather than we believe in gods because they exist. Which is something we have seen in several books so far.

And I think this is the time where practice finally gets to scratch that itch of an idea. Yeah. And so it confirms it has the truth of the disc. Yeah. I like that in this sort of two page section where we're introduced to Kumi and his theory, the universe is such a mess.

It's obvious the supreme being hadn't in fact made it because he would have done a better job of it. Yes. So the existence of a badly put together watch proof, the existence of a blind watchmaker, which is a play on the intelligent design theory, which is creation isn't by another name. Yes.

The idea that because the universe is so intricate, it must have been made by someone. Yes. So this is a fun subversion of that. It is, yes. What was it that Charles Darwin always pointed to was proof of possible creation. So the human sum, I think, the sum.

Is it the sum or is it the eyeball? Both of them are used in this argument, but I feel like Darwin said something about the sum. Yeah. Cool. But yeah, Gnostics. Gnostics. Gnostics and Gnostic heresy is a real thing.

It was a movement in a time period. Good. Yes. Okay. Gnostic heresy, you say. Gnostic heresy. And it's basically the idea of personal faith over religious orthodoxy,

that what mattered was your personal faith, belief and relationship to God over the rituals and trappings of an organized church. Interesting. Okay. And obviously that's heresy, according to the organized churches, who want everyone to come and

inhale the incense. Yeah. Is that the medieval version of drinking the Kool-Aid? Yes. Inhaling the incense. Not that I have thoughts on Catholics. Speaking of Catholics. Omnia.

Not very well disguised reference. Omnia. I think it's lots of organized religion. It's not just Catholics, but I am quite glad. That's mainly Catholics. It's quite Catholic. Yeah. I am quite glad that he has put a

very organized, not very good religion in a hot, deserty place and hasn't done it in a way that could be kind of gross. It is far enough away from any existing religion. It plays as much on early Old Testament type belief as anything else. Yeah. I mean, to me, it's a bit crusady.

It's a bit crusady. Time period. Yeah. So. It takes elements from everywhere. It doesn't try and lampoon one specific religion. Yeah. And that's something I quite like about it.

Yeah. But it's quite easy to do because all of the religions that's lampooning have almost everything in common, which is, of course, the tragedy of religious wars. Yes. So, the Citadel in Omnia, which just for some placement of where we are,

occupied the whole of the heart of the city of Comm in the lands between the deserts of Clatch and the plains and jungles of Hawanderland. And it is very, very big, effectively. There's one Snowbiark, six arch priests, and then it trickles down into a huge complex religious organization. Yes.

Which, like a cross between a pyramid and a termite mound. Yeah. There's something of the Vatican to it. Yes. Yes. Although we haven't seen the big opulent in the chambers yet. No, but it is implied. It's mentioned that there are people

who have furniture made of gold, which is a terrible thing to make furniture of. Yes. Vatican implied. And then the place of Lamentation, which is where ordinary people can go to pray if they're a bit skint. Yeah.

And it's just a whole sort of square of people asking God for stuff. Yeah. Are there any obvious parallels there? Quite possibly. Okay. I don't know what to though. Cool. I'm going to stop.

I'm going to start giving you warnings before I ask you religious questions. Yeah. We're relying on me remembering stuff, which today of all days probably isn't going to happen. Today of all days. Today of, it's a Thursday. You know I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

So where else do we go? Well, we don't quite go anywhere else, but we're on our way. But it's mentioned, again, sort of placement, and I really wanted to get the map out and look at where this all takes place on the map, but I still don't really have anywhere to pin it up. And if I lay it out on my dining room table, then I can't also be cussing fabric and things.

Yes. Just what my dining room table is currently for. Yeah, yes. But we've obviously got the idea of Afib gel and sort. Yes. Which is all very close to where we are. Yeah. We know those three are in a row.

We know that gel sits between Afib and sort, because when the kingdom briefly disappeared in pyramids, that nearly put Afib in sort to war. Yes. And we've also mentioned the deserts of Clatch, the jungles for Wonderland. Yeah. So we have, we're quite well placed.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The disc itself is really starting to take shape now. Yeah. That was sort of where I was getting to with that. There's more of a sense of geography than I think we've had in some of the earlier books. We started getting it last time with the witches traveling from Lanka to Genua,

but even that... Yes. This is bringing in locations from various other books and placing them all together. I can see why he's done that here, because this is the first kind of international relations book as well, isn't it? One.

Yes. So if it kind of matters where everyone is for once. Yeah. And we'll hopefully get some more of that in future books. Yes. And please, bye. Hopefully, as if you haven't read them all several times. Eventually, I'll get the map out properly

and get the cork and the string out. So, little bits we liked. And you started with curses. So you like the curses. Curses. Curses. Curses, Joanna. Yeah.

I just... The whole bit of... Oh, being a petulant tortoise in the garden was very well written and funny. A petulant tortoise is such a good phrase. Yeah. That sounds like a good way to cast someone away, actually, while we're on curses.

Be gone with you, you petulant tortoise. I know. Like, just the whole bit. The great Godron waxed wroth or at least made a spirited attempt. There was a limit to the amount of wroth that can be waxed one inch from the ground, but he was right up against it.

But yeah, and like tiny little tortoise cursing things like smite you with thunderbolts, writhe on the spikes of damnation. What else have we got? Your sexual organs to sprout wings and fly away. So on throughout. Much of the book. Do you wonder if you could think of any

curses that you would like to shout impotently at your enemies? Well, I did prepare a few ahead of time as you instructed me to. Thank you. Here's one I made earlier. Go on. I went slightly more modern for some of them,

but may your left elbow always be slightly itchy. Nice. Because itchy elbows are the worst. May your feet run in opposite directions. Oh, I like that. Seagulls to always peck at your chips. I'm going for a modern Prometheus there instead of his liver pecked out every day.

He just goes to the beach, buys chips and seagulls steal them every day. Oh, sad. May your pantry be full of ancient packet mixes. Oh, I like that. God, we're so hungry. Your shower to turn inexplicably freezing when you still need to rinse out your conditioner.

May your teeth turn flaccid. No. I've got nothing that can't. Good, because that was my last one. I mean, the conditioner one was mine, but flaccid teeth is the most horrible thought I think I've ever experienced. I can't even remember.

Like, it must have been on Reddit somewhere that someone came up with that idea and it's never left my head. It sounds like a tumbler. I think it's very sad and angry. Oh, yeah, it's probably tumbler that I saw on Reddit because that's how I internet. That is how I roll.

Well, I've got a tumbler now, but it's still easier. A lot of the time to make Reddit is pick out the best bits for me. Tumbler is very huge and unwieldy and I don't have the kind of teenage intuition for it that you probably grew up with. I didn't do tumbler a lot as a teenager. I did think about making a tumbler for the podcast

and then realized that that would just eat up a lot of my internet time. There's a big disqueld tumbler presence. I've looked. There's even a small disqueld TikTok presence, which I've been. Thinking about it. We're not making a podcast TikTok, Francine.

Why not? I can't make a podcast TikTok. I can. You can't stop me. You won't know. I'll find out. Booktok, it's a thing. We could get more listeners.

Okay, fine. That's yours. All right, thanks. I mean, I probably won't do it, but I want the option. I know. I feel I declared we aren't making a podcast TikTok on an earlier episode,

so now I'm arbitrarily choosing it as a hill to die on. Okay. Well, you can keep dying on the hill as I run the podcast TikTok. Yeah, right, that's fine. No, because you'll start sending me little things like, oh, I want to do a TikTok. Can you quickly do it?

And I will, because... I know, I know. But you can keep saying that you're not doing it, but it's a religious double thing kind of thing. It's fine. We can make it work. Excellent. Nice way to segue us back into fagely being on topic.

That's what I thought. Right, what's next? Vistage to your virtues. One of the little things we like. Vistage to your virtues. Apparently, you were fine. Oh, you've got the old version of this plan. Have you printed it out or something?

No, I'm just... And I just not save it. No, I'm running it off my phone. Oh, fun. Yeah, I made some changes. But vestigial virgins, I did take out, but it's good anyway, so let's leave it. Yeah, that's just funny.

Just as a funny phrase. The bit I replaced it. Oh, actually, I didn't even replace it with anything in the end. I just took it out because I thought it was too silly. Oh, my episode plan just refreshed itself, so... It's gone now. You deleted the vestigial virgins. We are very professional.

I didn't mean to delete the vestigial virgins. Poor virgins. Which, in case anyone didn't get that very obvious joke references. And to reference to the vestal virgins. The vestal virgins, but vestigial, because they're... Useless leftover. That sounds a bit mean, doesn't it,

when I put it that way? Useless leftover virgins. I... Useless leftover virginity, let's call it. Not virgin as themselves. A reminder to all of our listeners, of course, that virginity is a social construct. I did nearly put something in about vestigial virgins myself,

but it was just going to be me finding an excuse to talk about vestal virgins, because I've been researching them for a play recently, and then I realized we don't need that rabbit hole. Oh. This is why we need to launch a Patreon, so I can just do... We can do bonus episodes,

where we just talk about all the bollocks we ended up researching and then cutting out. I mean, I can do it. Do you want me to set it up? I'll talk to you about it when we're not... Okay, right, yeah, let's do some admin later. Apologies for the brief up in breaklessness. The Inquisitor's Room.

I was about to say we'd lift up the veil, for everybody who never had a veil. There's no fourth wall. There. Unlike in a dungeon... Oh, segue. In the little room the Inquisitors have, where they stop for coffee, twice a day.

And they've got all their mugs grouped around the kettle on the heath of the central furnace, which also heats the irons and the knives. And all the mugs have got silly things, like a present from the Holy Grotto of Osary, or to the world's greatest daddy, which is a very... I haven't worked in an office for a very long time,

but almost everywhere I've worked I've had a mug. I don't have one where I am now. I don't use a mug in the kitchen. Oh, actually, no, that's not true. I take a travel coffee cup to work and have them put my coffee in that. Oh, yeah, that makes more sense. Not breakable.

Yes. I do. I have a big mug at work, which obviously I'm used to some time. Yeah. I still remember almost all of my work mugs. My first one said make love, not war on it, because I was a dirty hippie.

Make tea, not war, something like that. That makes more sense. I generally, I'm not a big fan of novelty mugs, mostly because people seem to give them to me when they can't think of another gift. Apart from the ridiculous unicorn mug I'm using today, which I do quite like, one of my two unicorn mugs. Mine's a mermaid.

Mine says mermaid martini on it. Excellent. I fucking love mugs. That one, the one you're using, would infuriate me. I would never use that. That's... It's got a massive unicorn as a handle, listeners, and I would hurt myself badly.

It's got a sharp bit on it, which you point towards your faces you drink. I mean, it just seems to be an obvious design flaw. There's not many things you need in a mug. It needs to hold the liquid, and it ideally needs to not stab you in the face, and it's fallen down on one of those two requirements. Yes, but it does hold the liquid.

Good. I'm just trying to mix things up a bit. Okay. But yeah, I'm often given novelty mugs, and I had a purge when I moved, but the cupboard is slowly filling up again. I think probably the mug I've been given that was the worst taste was having been long lamenting,

missing having any kind of social life or being able to go on a night out. I was given a little hot chocolate gift set for Christmas that involved a fuzzy pink hot water bottle and a mug that says, night's in or the new night's out. Nice. I don't agree with that.

Annoyingly, I am regularly using the mug because it holds the perfect amount of hot chocolate. Oh, well. And I've got very... See, I get you that to annoy you, which would make it okay. Exactly. See, if someone had bought me that gift ironically, I'd greatly appreciate it,

but it was given to me in all seriousness alongside a box of Cadbury's milk tray. Yep. Yes, that's someone who doesn't know me very well. Do you not like milk tray? I don't really like milk chocolate. Oh, no, of course you don't. I did know that.

I fucking love milk tray. Right. What are we? Opulent severity, Joanna. No, no, I was still talking about the inquisitors room. Oh, I'm sorry. I like the point he's trying to make, which is that evil acts are not necessarily done by evil people,

but by very ordinary people. Well, this goes rather into our existential question as to are there good or bad people? Do I feel like if there are, then these are them, even if they have best daddy in the world mugs? Yes. But it's this idea that evil is something that very much resides in very, very normal people.

I think if I find the actual line, there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes into work every day and has a job to do. Yes, which is, of course, the terrifying thing about humanity. Yes. So I thought we'd have a brief existential crisis

in the middle of little bits we liked, and then, yeah, opulent severity. Look at the chalkboard. Please, we put that back to zero a long time ago. No. You've got to stay at zero until next Christmas. Okay. I like that.

We'll have a non-existential crisis celebration every year. Yes, once a year at the end of December, I might not doubt my existence. The ceremonial changing of the chalkboard. This is, the opulence ofarity thing is where Brother is taken in to meet Vorbis, and he's put in this room, and he's sort of got to memorize things.

But Vorbis' room is described as severe as anything in the novices' quarters, but it had perhaps a more opulent severity. It wasn't the forespareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent. Yes. I think we've talked about before the different kinds of aestheticism or minimalism, yeah.

And I don't like rich minimalism. No. Although I think this is a different thing again. This is more like the religious minimalism. Yes. Miniminism. What I want. Do-do-do-do-do.

Miniminism. But. Do-do-do-do-do. Mo-mo-minism. It's funny because he's evil. Oh, fuck me. Yes. Yes.

I think it's slightly different from the doing it for aesthetics. The aesthetic aesthetic. Yeah. As-s-sketic. As-s-... Ah, fuck. As-sketic. I think pronounced identically.

As-sketic. No, one's got C, one's got T. As-sketic. I know, but I was in trouble with silency. As-sketic. That's called missiant. A-stetic. As-sketic.

I think it's ascetic. Okay, ascetic and aesthetic. Yeah. Okay. The point is, this is not wealthy minimalism. This is, as it says, it's a purity of purpose. Yeah. That means he doesn't need the earthly things.

It is a monk cell, not a... Instagram influences living room. Yeah. Sorry, I'm just trying to imagine for this as an Instagram influencer now. Yeah, there's an awful lot of discourse with a capital D about Is it classes to be minimalist? Yeah, yeah. I think we've had slight, I said, when I say slight disagreements, it sounds like we've argued, I think we've literally disagreed on this before. We've had different opinions on it. Yes. Yeah. And but I think largely we come to the same place, which is gulleting. Reality dampeners. Yeah, what? There's a line, it's an intelligent line of inquiry. What? What do you want about? This is when brother

interrupts the procession of the senoviac. Yeah, sure. That's how I'm going to say it. I'm pretty sure it is Seno, because it's like 100 or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a popular fact that nine tenths of the brain is not used, like most popular facts, it is wrong. In fact, that came up in the Common Misconceptions wiki list. I mean, go look at us connecting things, connections all over the place, we really need a call. This idea of reality dampeners is that the human brain sort of blurs everything around the edges, so we're not constantly distracted by it. And it's a really lovely way to look at things in my opinion, that if we actually really constantly

looked at the world, we'd just constantly be going, wow, this is brilliant. Because if you really think about it, it is all quite impressive. Yeah, interestingly, when I first started on my medication, and sometimes now when it's particularly working well, it almost works too well in the that I walk around like I've put glasses on for the first time, and seeing everything and it feels a little like a good version of Canard. It improves your focus, doesn't it? So yes, and sometimes in too many directions at once, especially if I'm outdoors. So yes, the reality dampeners I can appreciate, because although mine work too well sometimes when they're not there at all, it is a little unnerving. But I just enjoy the idea of the human brain as

mostly sort of trying to make itself stick in one direction and stop getting distracted. Wow, isn't this all great? Yeah. I'm picturing the outside of my window to think about, wow, isn't that all great? And as I'm looking over a bin shed, yeah, it's not quite the prettiest view for that example. No, no, but there's some trees. Yeah. You're sitting, you can't see the bins, can you? No, from where I am right now, I can just see some trees. Oh, and sun. Very nice. My curtains shut for noise reasons, but so yeah, reality dampeners, that was my last little bit that I enjoyed. Cool. So from little bits we liked to massive big talking points, yeah, I mean, you got to say about the power of belief slash faith in general for a fucking bullet

point. Not much at all. I've made no secret the fact that one of my favourite Pratchett discworld themes is the power of belief. That has been a bullet point in talking points in almost every episode I think we've recorded. Possibly. Yeah, I could go back through the show notes and do a tally. Should we make a graph? Oh, God, yes. Nothing gets front scene going, like the idea of a well manicured spreadsheet. Put power of belief. So hurtful and so accurate, carry on. And I think this is, like we were saying earlier, this is the book where he gets to scratch the itch of what is it for gods to be believed in. And in the process, rip apart the nature of faith and organised religion versus belief, which is what the Gnostic heresy of,

obviously Kumi in this case, but the actual Gnostic heresy is all about personal belief and faith such as brothers against the wider spectrum of organised religion. And I want to kick off this conversation with an email from a listener. Oh, new thing. We've had, we've had mail. We've had mail. We've had mail. Yes, even I've read this one. We have. This came via Albatross into our inbox. This is an email from Peter, who calls us doyens of podcasters, by the way, which I like. Very into that. I'm not entirely sure where doyens from, nor am I going to look it up just in case I don't like it so much anymore, because I very much like it at the moment.

It's definitely used to refer to granny weatherwax at some point. So I'm taking it. I want to talk to you about small gods and how long story short it helped rescue me from religious extremism. I started reading Discworld books when I was about 15, liked them very much, and unrelatedly became a Christian when I was about 18. A friend invited me to their church and I signed up very easily to the idea of there being a God who loved me. Unfortunately, and I don't know if it's because religion wasn't really talked about when I was growing up. So I had no resilience to nonsense, but I went all in. God loved me and the nice people introduced me to him could surely be trusted. So I should accept

everything else they say without question. The world was created 6,000 years ago and six days, of course. Maybe the dinosaur bones really were a joke the paleontologists haven't got to yet. Breeding pairs of every species on earth fitting on a single boat? Absolutely. The God who apparently designed the human body to have an erogenous zone inside the anus being absolutely beside himself if anyone takes advantage of that fact? Sure. It took about 10 years for a sense of reality to reassert itself. Hang on, how did the sloths get to the Ark? But going through those 10 years... I like that as being the seed of like, wait a minute! But going through those 10 years, one of the things that prevented me turning into a completely

intolerant lunatic and earning my fifth exclamation mark was the small quiet voice at the back of my brain of a cynical one-eyed tortoise. And when, with a mounting sense of horror and disgust, I shook off 90% of what I'd been taught and senselessly swallowed in church, brother's journey helped me know it wasn't the end of the world. I eventually escaped the black hole that my church had become after being kicked out of a bunch of ministries for saying seditious things like homosexuality is fine and maybe we can't take it face value everything said by a book that advocates quite so cheerfully for genocide. I'm now hanging out at churches that have spent the lockdown feeding the poor rather than ladling out guilt. But small gods helped.

Every religious person should have a one-eyed tortoise next to them saying stuff like, I bet he did, or ever heard of giant ground sloths kid? What kind of multi-generational journey through Mexico, North America, and the frozen Russian tundra would they have had to make to get to the boarding ramp in time, do you think? Final call! So thank you, small gods, and thank you, Terry Bradshaw, you wonderful man. And I love this email, and I'm also, this isn't relevant to the discussion of faith, but I quite like that Pete ended it with, thank you for giving me a few times a month a podcast experience that goes like this. Francine, I really like Terry Pratchett. Joanna, I really like Terry Pratchett. Me at home, I also really

like Terry Pratchett. I've screen-shotted that bit of the email and I have that on my phone because I love it so much. I just may be really happy. So thank you for that email, Peter, that's an amazing story. Yeah, Joanna's the one who replied to the email, and I will say to Peter, I do hope you are a writer of something other than emails because you're very good at it. Yes, well, you laugh a lot. Yeah, that seems like an essay you could get published somewhere slightly more prestigious than here. We're incredibly prestigious. I know, that's why it's such a brilliant compliment. I'm not self-deprecating, I'm incredibly narcissistic and generous with praise at the same time. So on to religion. So on to religion. That journey of pieces is something I've seen

reflected in a lot of ways, in so many ways. It's your fault you introduced this. And I've mentioned on the podcast before I've got my own complicated relationship with face. Yeah, I might have come out once or twice. Yeah, a little bit. In that I had it and I don't anymore. And that was a whole thing for me that you and I have talked a bit before. Obviously, in my case, I identify more as an atheist, you're more in the agnostic realm. Yeah, in as much as I don't believe there is a God, but I just hedging your bets just in case. More or less, yeah, I'm a practical person in this particular realm. Help me, Joe, stop me talking. We got into this a bit in our existential interview episode, we brought out as a bonus

last month. So if you haven't listened to that, we talk a bit more about it. But it means we come at our lack of belief from different directions in that mind comes from having and then choosing not to have. I think yours is a lot more deep, deep as quite a rubbish word for it, but you know what I mean, personal. I've had to go through a lot to get to that point. Yes, whereas it doesn't bother me particularly to think of faith, it doesn't include a lot of soul searching when I come to this subject. I tried it, I didn't do very well at it, I left. I wouldn't say it bothers me, but I can definitely say that there was a sort of loss there. I can definitely feel something, not having something anymore that I did once have and occasionally miss it, especially when I'm

going through grief, which is something I've had to do. There are a few moments and I was like, oh, I wish I had this kind of thing I could turn to that would make me feel better. Do you then, as someone who has had faith, understand the kind of distinction that's being made in this book between brother's faith and everybody else's faith in quotation marks? Because it's not something I can really relate to. I do, in that I've seen versions of this happen. I've known people, not quite like brother, but I have known people who have known their religion very well and believed in it very thoroughly and have taken that and used it to do the best they can. And then I have known people

who are on the farthest end of the spectrum who have sort of forgotten about the basic goodness and focused on the somewhat ridiculous detail. Yes, kind of ridiculous detail that does felt worse. Yes, or tries to oppress entire swathes of the population. The way faiths can treat queer people is often something I come back to. Yes, because that was definitely a bit of a motivator for me suddenly going, oh, yeah, you know what, I'm going to yeet myself out of the Catholic Church. It wasn't the sloth. No, but now that I think about it, if I thought about the giant landsloths earlier, that would have taken me from agnostic to full on atheists, actually, I'll tell you what. But there's little moments that play with that dichotomy as we go through the book.

There's a moment with Freit, General Freit, when he's praying and he can't remember the last time he's prayed, but he's prayed as in saying the prayers you have to say at certain times of day. Yeah. But he hasn't prayed as in he has actually wanted that moment of prayer and bringing something back to the God. And those are two very different things. Yes. And oddly, I think I've only ever done the second, because I was never, no, obviously, I've prayed in church at the right points or whatever, but because I was never encouraged to do a daily before bed prayer kind of thing. The only times I have prayed have been in desperate hope, I think, that it was a thing. Yeah, I never did the sort of daily

vespers or anything, but I'd have the, because I went to a Catholic school, you know, we'd say the morning prayers and the end of day prayers and the 15 Hail Marys in a minute, because we've got to get through the rosary before the bell goes. Catholic school is weird. Oh, my God, that's a really good example of the stupidness of it all, isn't it? The moment of contemplation that a Hail Marys meant to be being rushed through as quickly as possible so we can do it before the bell. Yeah. But I've had those moments of prayer, prayer as well. And again, that's something I've, I've found myself missing going through grief you know, post faith life is not having that as an option. Obviously, I have meditation and

yoga and the things I do instead. And there's some overlap in the action and intent. Yeah. But there's something about feeling you've got that direct line and your intent is going somewhere, as opposed to just sort of letting it seep out around you and hoping it lands somewhere handy. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Or turning it inwards eventually is the idea, isn't it? And you have one of my favourite lines in this actually, and I didn't make it a quote, because it's just one line is, the gods have no one to pray to. And these are the moments where Om's panicking and realising how close he is to losing his only believer. Yeah. And again, the whole big thing of the book, the only person who can hear Om is brother,

because brother is the only person who really believes in him as opposed to believing in the church. Yeah. It's the difference to believing in God and believing in the Pope. Yeah, I think it definitely highlights the, the two ways street of the faith system in the disc world as well, doesn't it? Yeah, the gods need belief as much as people need gods. Yeah. And then you have these other kinds of faith and belief. You have brothers, slow loss of faith in the church, as opposed to loss of faith in Om, that starts just building in this section, as Om starts making him question things and saying, you know, do you really think the inquisition is doing the right thing? Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think

it works that brother has been described as such a simple character, because with anyone else, it wouldn't be believable that they've never crossed their minds before. Yeah. And so somebody has to put the spark into brother's mind for it to start going, but then But then once it goes, he's actually an incredibly creative thinker and it does go. Yeah. And that's his way of thinking where he builds things a brick at a time as opposed to letting all the thoughts go at once. Yeah. Yeah. But there's the other idea of, and Simony, who I mentioned, wanting to kill Vaubus and knowing it has to be done in Omnia where everyone can see it, so everyone believes in it. Because it's not just about getting rid of that one man, because if

you did just get rid of that one man, someone else similar would spring up in his place, because this church has existed for so long. It has to be a symbolic thing. It has to be a symbolic thing and create a different type of belief in the people who see it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something I'm going to keep interrogating with, particularly the Simony character, but the idea of the Tesla movement in general as it goes on. Yes. Of how they're trying to build it up as a, in the same way that they've been brought up in it almost. Yeah. And it's something you see a lot with the kind of atheists that are dickheads and quite often on the internet. I'm not naming Richard Dawkins, but... Yes, you are.

I haven't quite literally... Richard Dawkins is a dickhead. Yeah, he is. I did enjoy the God delusion when I first read it at the correct age to do so, which was 14. It's a good book for teenagers, but it's the people who take atheism to religious zeal, and in this case, it's not so much atheism, but it's the belief in the turtle. Yeah. And I'll get into this more when we get on to the next section, but it is something that happens where people take their thing, their belief, or lack thereof, and behave like evangelical Christians with it. And I remember back when I was in Catholic school, a teacher telling us that we had a natural right to evangelism, direct quote. Gosh. He was telling us that because he was leaving and we would have a new form tutor

the next year, and the new form tutor wasn't Catholic. Okay. What is evangelism like? As in trying to convert. Okay. Okay. That's what that is, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don't know the actual origins of the word. Yeah. No, I just, I just realised I had no idea what evangelist actually meant. Yeah. That's the type of Christian. Yeah. No. Bear in mind the woman who was talking about that he wanted us to convert. She didn't not believe in God, she was just a Protestant. So she wouldn't know the Hail Mary very well. Oh, God. Yeah. This was genuinely one of the teachers I had. He was also the one who would go on long homophobic rants. I wonder how much that's changed now. I have to say, I have a feeling

they'd be taken out by complaints these days. As much as I do complain about the Catholic school I went to, he was probably the worst of the bunch and not all of the teachers were that bad. Well, no, but not that bad. It's pretty low bar for someone who's meant to be shaping young minds. Well, yes, very true. I've just written out heresy about a million times, by the way, as we've been talking with pretty shapes of H's as practice. Love it. It's not often I share my thinking doodles with you, but I thought you might enjoy the page of heresy. I greatly enjoy your page of heresy, Francine. So, yes, I've sort of wandered around to my point, but this is more as we talk about the first section of small gods, the things I'm

going to keep looking at as we come back. Yes. The difference between the belief in God and the belief in the church, the idea of an anti-theist movement becoming almost a religion in its own right, in the worst possible way. Yeah. Cool. The only, yeah, the only things I have to add to that were the birth of religions I found quite interesting. Oh, yeah. It's something Neil Gaiman also wrote about in American Gods, I think. Oh, yeah. I mean, the central theme of this is very next to the central theme of American Gods. Yeah. Just the idea of, I just like the lost in the mists of time, creepy aspect of God springing up around a skull on a stick. I just like the mental shape of that. And it's something I would like to read more about.

And, yeah, the other thing was the fact that going on a holy war reminded me, of course, of the Crusades. Yeah. Reminded me, of course, of the Crusades. And I had one full time, I'd like to remember. And the just war theories, do you know about this? I know some of it, yeah. The idea of having is not so much with omnisum. Omnisum? Omnisum? Omnisum, omnisum. Yeah, something like that, which is kind of an unapologetically violent faith. But Christianity in theory should be reasonably hithidippy. She's going to listen to Jayman himself. I'm sorry. I prefer to Jesus as Jayman. I was trying to make you spit out your coffee, but I mistimed it. But yeah, so the Catholics have somewhat tied themselves in

knots over the years to excuse their holy wars. Yes. And it comes back down to that natural rights for evangelism thing. Yeah. The just war theories are pretty interesting because they all sound quite reasonable when you read them out and say things like, war can't be for the sake of violence, it has to be for a good and worthy cause. But then you see a little asterisk, and the asterisk leads to, which is whatever the Pope says is just and right. Yeah, guilty of being not Catholic is enough to get you killed. Yep. I recommend, by the way, on this subject, my recommendation of the week is the book, The Templars, The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors by Dan Jones.

Excellent. Which goes into a lot of detail about the Crusades and is incredibly depressing just for the sense of, oh, fuck, I could be reading a history of the last hundred years when you're reading a history of a thousand years ago. That's talking about relations in the Middle East. Yep. Things do repeat themselves. It's not even repeat themselves. It's just not fucking stopped. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's a thousand years. This argument's been going on. Yeah, I won't go any further into it than that because I'm sure that's nice. Don't start a land war in Asia. Don't start talking about Middle Eastern politics. Don't eat anything bigger than your head. My three rules. Yeah, I'll put a link to that. Yeah, I think we'll get into it a little bit

more next week. But the idea of holy wars is always a bit riley, humorous. Yeah, because it is justified in a violent piety. We're saving people from themselves. Yes. Oh, lamb of God, thy peaceful, gentle symbol. I slay these random people in your name because they happened to be living somewhere. They always lived, but they should have known that it was ours from 500 years. Yeah. You know how it goes, Joanna. I'm sure you went on your own crusades at Catholic school. We did. We used to have little crusades. Mini crusades next door. Of course, we were in the school next door. You all used to come over with your banners. And our lances. Yeah, we didn't have so much holy crusades as snowballs with rocks in being thrown across

the Klondike. Yeah, I must say, county upper school, atheist school did kick your ass at snowball fights. Yeah, no. To be fair, the problem with the Catholic schools can't win snowball fights. Hot take. So, Francine and I went to these two upper schools next to each other. I was at the Catholic one. She was at the atheist one. It's a very Romeo and Juliet story, except we didn't meet till the couple years afterwards. But there was sort of a path road thing down between the two schools, which was called the Klondike. Yeah. And whenever it snowed, Francine's school would invade our school field for the snowball fight. It was like a backwards crusade, I guess. Yeah. The reason that you always won is because our teachers would come out in

the field to try and stop the snowball fight. And then we'd sort of stop throwing them at each other and just all pelt the teachers. Yeah. Because it was very specifically Mr... So in a more real sense, everybody won. Yeah. Because our head teacher used to, he'd stand with his, he was quite a large man and he'd stand with his arms cast behind his back and he would rock back and forth constantly. So hitting him was quite a challenge. It was like hitting a pendulum. And then the deputy, it wasn't the deputy head, but it was, I think he was the head of history or something. And he was a very, very tall, lanky man. So he was quite fun because he'd sort of sway slightly in the breeze. So he made quite an interesting target.

Okay. Right. I'm going to cut off our reminiscing right now. Otherwise, we're going to go down anecdote Charlie and never come out again. Anecdotally. We're a deli. Do you have an obscure reference for me, Francine? Yeah. This is full of them, this book, isn't it? So I picked a short one because I correctly surmised we would go over time a little talking about faith. I have a runner up that I'll go before I do our actual obscure reference though. There's a reference made to the man in the iron

mask, which I won't go into because it's too interesting for me to try and stutter over in a minute. But look it up listeners, the man in the iron mask. Millrace. As in Millpond. As in Millfond. Yes. When Om says, may the water be as flat as a millrace. Little break in the text there. Millpond. I meant Millpond. So I had to go and look up what a millrace is. And a millrace, Foley, Foley, Foley, is a fast running water filled channel. That was a weird cadence. A fast running water filled channel diverted from a river or stream used to drive a millwheel. So you make the water all fast by narrowing the channel and make

it go, you know, millwheel go brrrrrrr. Sentences of abandon this. I'm blaming lockdown. So yeah, you don't want your voyage to be millrace. No, you'd rather it was Millpond. Yes. Which is comparatively rather plastic. So you can go surfing on a millstone as the prophet did. Yes. So many mills. I mean, it's like a little time. And on that note, I think that's everything we can say about the process. I don't think it is. I think we probably could have said a lot more about it instead of the random shit we did talk about. Thank you. Did you have anything else? No, no. No, I'm hungry. Let's go.

Okay. Thank you for listening to The True Shell Make-E-Fret. We'll be back next week with part two of Small Gods. I don't know where that begins and ends yet. Let you know. In the meantime, however, you can follow us on Instagram at The True Shell Make-E-Fret. You can follow us on Twitter at Make-E-Fret pod. Find us on Facebook at The True Shell Make-E-Fret. You can join our subreddit, r slash t t s m y f. You can email us your thoughts, queries, castles, albatrosses and snacks. The True Shell Make-E-Fret pod at gmail.com. Please rate and review us wherever you get this podcast because it does, unfortunately, do algorithms and help other people find it. More importantly, tell people. Tell people about us. Make them listen. Make them listen.

Please reveal. Go on. Evangelize. It's not a cult. And this is, we end up in a holy war against the Pratchat podcast. I don't think they know we exist. It's not a holy war against who watches the watch, they're nice. Excellent. And in the meantime, dear listener, don't let us detain you. He was a skater elf. She said see you later elf.