The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 57: Interesting Times Pt. 1 (Blanket Problematic Sticker)

Episode Date: July 12, 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 “Interesting Times”. Butterflies! Board Games! Bureaucracy!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Good Omens season 2 release date: Cast, trailer, plot - Radio TimesTTSMYF TumblrThe Watch - BBC iPlayerHere are the winners of the 2021 Locus Awards. - Literary HubYuan Shikai - WikipediaAdeline Yen Mah - GoodreadsThe Long Fuse (MSG origin myth) - This American Life transcriptThe Uncertainty Principle - Britannica.comChinese Imperial Examinations - WikipediaMandelbrot set - WikipediaMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Oh, I'll tell you what, there's nothing like a printed disaster to ruin a good mood. So Joanna, how are you? I'm alive. How are you? Pretty good, pretty good, pretty furious at the printer, but that's fading with every second, which is good. Excellent. My joints hurt quite a lot today because of ice-humed barometric pressure. I don't know. I somehow made my shoulder do a thing halfway through yoga and had to stop for ten minutes and ice my shoulder down before I could keep going.

Oh, I don't know what's happened. My shoulder blade has just started pinging. Interesting. And it's not on the shingles side. So I know it's not because I still keep getting random nerve pain on that side, which is great. Aren't we a pair? Yeah, I highly recommend waking up in the middle of the night because part of the right hand side of your body is suddenly decided to be on fire. Yeah, you're right, mate.

I'll stick with the arthritis. Anyway, I had a very nice morning reading the rest of the first part of this book. Excellent. Well, I did my growth reorder for the next couple of weeks, though, which means I've ordered bits for when you come around for your birthday. Oh, yeah, it's a week today. Fuck me. Yeah. Last week, my 20s.

Exciting. Yeah, I'm kind of I've moved past the crisis stage now. Calm acceptance. Yeah, calm, calm acceptance with, what is it? I imagine some kind of last fit of emotion on the Thursday, but. That's fine. Well, we can record on the Thursday if you want. That'll be great.

Oh, yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Have we had a podcast episode since the news about Good Omens 2 came out? No. No, no, because we had the bonus episode last week, which meant we just launched straight into the clowns. For listeners who don't yet support us on Patreon, we did a clown. Optimistic who don't yet. Yet support some Patreon.

We just did a clown the rabbit hole episode. I did a PowerPoint presentation on clowns and it was fun. It was. I enjoyed it very much, surprisingly. Very few eggs, if any at all. In fact, I think all the egg mentions were mine. Clearly, I've been scarred. I kept the eggs to a minimum for you, Francine.

So yeah, so we haven't been able to talk about this on the actual podcast, but there's going to be a Good Omens series 2. Series 2. In fact, I think I even put some notes about this in the software. Well, no, I put Good Omens 2, Electric Boogaloo. Two good two omens, Good Omens, The Two Towers. Yeah, so new series of Good Omens coming. We are excited.

Yeah, I'd say so. I was definitely when I heard the news. So yeah, let's say yes. I just don't hold on to emotions for very long. I was excited. I am looking forward to it. I like that universe. I enjoy all the actors.

I like Neil Gaiman as a writer, obviously. I from a fandom point of view, I'm not upset about it, because they're not going to be trying to retell a story I already know. And if it is bad, the book won't stop existing. Even that, to me, it doesn't affect how you'd see the first book to me, just because it is a different story. Like the whole, it doesn't get rid of the book, kind of applies to any adaptation, even if it's a straight adaptation.

But for this one, it's just, yeah, it's like if someone wrote a picture of Dorian Gray, too, or something, I'd be like, oh, interesting choice. I'll watch that. And it won't like upset me for Oscar Wilde's sake. I think part of the reason I've started pointing that out so much is because obviously we saw all the backlash and stuff around the watch, which is finally available to watch in the UK, and we are going to do episodes on it.

We saw it and we're part of it. Hang on, we were part of what? The backlash. Oh, yes. Well, yeah, we got very up in arms, especially after the Comic-Con panel. We haven't watched the actual show yet, but I think watching everyone gets so angry and upset about it. And I just thought there's just so many other places your energy could go.

I mean, genuinely, again, including me, like I got I got pretty like bristly, I think, largely just because of the sound I'm seeing and like the alcoholism thing. And then looking back, I'm like, oh, wow, I really don't care anymore. Like a week later, I didn't care anymore. So yeah, I think it was civil for me, but it was the same thing. I got really up in arms about it. And now it's a bit like, well, it does look like a TV show.

I'll enjoy because I like cyberpunk. I was so well made even. Oh, no, you mean the watch? Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. No, to me, yeah, no, probably not not really my thing. Like I don't like generally gravitate towards the cyberpunk TV stuff weirdly, because I enjoyed books and stuff. But I will I'm sure tolerate it.

We're probably we did say this at the end of our soul music bonus animated thing episode, but for listeners who didn't catch that, the plan is to do a bonus episode, sort of initial reaction to the watch series. Probably end of this month, maybe beginning of August. We might get out the exact schedule. But we are going to cover it properly, sort of episode by episode or whatever. Not literally an episode per episode, because there's eight of them and life is short. In January, because we don't want to move around the rest of the schedule for this year.

Yeah. And and we want to keep our mostly month off. Yeah. So basically, you will have you will have your reaction. Yes. So we've been quiet about it so far. We'll have to wait. Yes. You'll have your reaction, the deeper dive will wait. But yeah, I I don't know, mainly I'm going to be honest. I'm just a grace little fine girl who likes David Tenant and Michael Sheen. Yeah, I basically nice to each other on screen.

So yeah, I just I just want to see them hug. Yeah. Yeah. Be nice. And in the sort of less calm way, watching everyone get really hyped about it is so fun. Watching everyone get hyped and watching everyone have meltdowns. Yes. The Tumblr Twitter dramas. I was only half joking when I said I want an entire episode of us reading out these posts. We can just all read the most ridiculous tweets we can find and Tumblr posts.

Yes, absolutely. I'm enjoying Tumblr and I'm on it. I must say I didn't I joined Tumblr so late. It wasn't even funny in late December 2020. But now much prefer it to Twitter and even to Reddit half the time. So I think Tumblr hits the bad point of endless scrolling for me. As in, I can endlessly scroll on there for too long. Right. In a way, Reddit, it get I follow few

enough subreddits that it gets repetitive quickly. So I'll go off it and Twitter is just something I only ever let myself look at for like 10, 15 minutes at a time because it's Twitter. I get, oh, God, I don't know why I do it. I don't know. Just Twitter. I like our podcast, Twitter. All the interactions we have on there are lovely. Everyone's good. I'm allowed on that.

So I'm stuck on my Twitter where I see people talk about things on Terry Pratchett. Right. Yes. Politics are the reasons all of our interactions are so lovely on our Twitter is that I don't let you on there to yell at people. Well, so should we just crack on? Yeah, I think it's podcast. Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to the Two Shall Make He Fret, a podcast in which we are

reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. One at a time in Corological Order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part one of our discussion of interesting times. The times. They are interesting. Notes on spoilers before we get started. We're a spoiler like podcast.

Obviously, spoilers for the book were on interesting times, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we are 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 6,000 miles in a matter of seconds, swapping places with a heavy cannon. We don't know anything to follow up on, do we? We got quite a lot of cool feedback on the soul music stuff, some corrections,

some additions, some additional facts, some things like that. There were, in fact, so many that I've not tried to shove it in a round world thingy, but I might make a little Reddit thread or something of all the additional. Yes. And at some point, I will make a couple of playlists based on people's suggestions. I just never got around to it. Maybe that playlist. It's not the most. Cool. All right, sweet.

So this, this, this novel here. Introducing to this book. It is the 17th Discworld novel. It was published the 2nd of November, 1994, which is just six months after soul music. We are very much in Pratchett's prolific period. On an episode of BBC Two's late review, the poet Tom Paulen, and I'm quoting here from Mark Burrow's book, The Magic of Terry Pratchett, which, by the way, won a Locus Award.

Locus Award, thank you. A Locus Award for best nonfiction the other day. Congratulations, Mark. Gave a withering summation of 1994's Interesting Times, pronouncing Pratchett to be an absolute amateur who doesn't even write in chapters, which I read out just to counteract my findings of the reviews. Mark clearly looked a bit harder than I did, because I could only find positive ones. If you have a look on Colin Smyth's one, Colin Smyth's page,

I think he only really does the positive ones, but I couldn't even find any outside of that. Most include a line kind of similar in tone to even a Martian who's scanned the best soloists would have no doubt about the identity of Britain's leading novelist. So I think we can safely say we're like firmly in discworld mania by this point, by 1994. Unrelated-ish, something I found while I was digging through alt.found.pratchett for stuff we'll talk about later, with some posts about when the paperbacks from Interesting Times were turning up in various country shops, and like seeing Pratchett reply to these

because he was finding out from these posts about Interesting Times arriving in South Africa, and he was replying happily to find out it was only by the end of November, so things had clearly improved there, and asking while he was there if any had turned up in Australia, just charmingly pre-constant global communication that you'd ask some random fans on. If your book's turned up in their country, that brings me some joy actually, I quite like that. There are very few Pratchett replies that aren't incredibly grumpy, so it was quite nice seeing him very happy. I don't think you'd have given Pratchett the key to our Twitter either, put it that way. There's one of the things I like about Pratchett. I'm very much sympathised with his social media usage.

It's really, really one of the things I do like about him. I can never be that sort of person because combined with hating everyone, I also have a pathological need to be liked. Yeah, great combo that. It's exhausting. I'm very tired. Note on the title, the first page of the book says, there is a curse. They say, may you live in Interesting Times. We've been making the joke about living in Interesting Times on the podcast for a while now, because we've been living in Interesting Times. We still very much are. So interesting and so boring at the same time.

But we are both semi-vaccinated now. Semi-vaccinated. The best kind. No, fully. Fully is the best kind. We would like to be vaccinated soon. I'd love to know because I've heard of this, not just from this book. I've heard lots of people say, oh yeah, this is a Chinese curse. Apparently that's apocryphal. There's no evidence of it being an old Chinese curse. There is a similar sentiment in a Chinese short story from the mid-1600s in a particular line. I think the sentiment has existed much longer than that, to be perfectly honest. The actual line, may you live in Interesting Times written down, I think is attributed to

somewhere in the 1800s and not Chinese. So yeah, very much apocryphal. But everyone always talks about it as if it's an ancient Chinese curse. Now, I wonder if that apocryphal stuff came about before or post-practice. It doesn't say there is a Chinese curse. It just says there is a curse. But it does tie it in with this book. Yeah. And so I wonder if it's strengthened the myth or whatever. Not intentionally, obviously. I think it absolutely might have done. Anyway, shall I tell us what happened in part one of Interesting Times? Up to page 113 in your UK call-you-paperback edition.

I need to update the website. Thank you for the reminder. So we open on the gods sitting down to a game. Fate and the Lady agree to a game of mighty empires taking place on the Countway Continent. A quantum weather bus fly flaps its wings as a man relaxes in a lagoon. Fetanari and Ridcully meet for a drink and the patrician doesn't inform the arch chancellor of a letter on an albatross requesting a great wizard. The pitter-patter of tiny feet heralds an unexpected end for an unsuspecting shark and rinseman sizing his lagoon at the luggage's choice of supper.

Ridcully rounds up the university faculty as they discuss the need for a great, if misspelled, wizard. And the librarian presents Rincewind's hat. The faculty explained Rincewind to Ridcully. The great wizard in question is approached by some strong single women who may or may not offer root vegetables. Unfortunately, he's immediately transported straight back to Angkorporg. On arriving home, a confused Rincewind runs through the city and after a brief lesson for the Thebes Guild, Ridcully threatens Rincewind into a trip to the Agatean Empire. Meanwhile, on the Councilweight Continent, soon to be Emperor Lord Hong,

Fleiser Kite receives a message and folds a book into Chrysanthemums. Ponderstibbons ponders Hex, his magical feat of engineering, as he calculates transporting Rincewind to the Continent. The luggage arrives and assists Rincewind in packing, as in the Empire the Red Army meets. Rincewind arrives on the Councilweight Continent and a canine firework arrives at the university in his place. Soldiers surround the great wizard himself and just as he's recognized, a familiar barbarian interrupts. Coen saves Rincewind and frees the rest of the soldiers' prisoners. We learn that Hung Hung, the capital city of the Agatean Empire, is under a very polite

siege. Hong observes the tea ceremony, plots a few moves ahead and forges a sword as a messenger informs him that the wizard has arrived. Coen and Rincewind travel to Coen's hideout and Rincewind is introduced to the Silver Horde, a ragtag bunch of octogenarian barbarians working with Coen to steal something from Hung Hung. Hong obsesses over Angkorporg as the other ruling families, profess loyalties and claim to have oppressed the dangerous rebels and rumors of revolution. Predictably, Rincewind runs away again and is unfortunately interceptive. Strangely, a single guard speaks perfect Morphean but Rincewind runs once more. He finally makes it to an inn at the crossroads that definitely doesn't serve rebels. Finally, he reads this book that has

the revolution all riled up and realizes it seems to be the writings of an old friend. Very well with the Rs in the alliteration hitter. Yeah, I've got a bit carried away with the Rs. That's good, I like it. Unfortunately, before he can do much with this information, unconsciousness beckons. That's so often it does. I could have waited half a sentence to interrupt you. I'm very sorry. It wouldn't be a summary without an interruption. Honestly, I'm mostly proud of a ragtag bunch of octogenarian barbarians. That was very nice, yes. I think I was still on mute at that point, unfortunately. I just want everyone to really know how clever I am. All of the best jokes require pointing out afterwards. That's what I always say.

So, Helicopter and loincloth watch. I'm going to go with traveling 6,000 miles in a second and being replaced with a canine firework as the helicopter of the episode. I think that's how they work. Yeah, that's exactly how helicopters work. Always have a firework shaped like a dog. But it's a cannon, technically. It's holding a firework. Technically, it's actually Frankenstein's monster. Technically, it's actually made with quints. And that's where the word marmalade comes from. Sorry, we have got a loincloth. Yes, we do. We do. Because Cohen's back, even if it's not necessary on account of the facial hair. Yes, it's wearing nothing except

a leather loincloth and a grubby beard so long that the loincloth wasn't really necessary. We've got two loincloths in a sentence. Beautiful. For the other bits that we're sort of keeping track of, we still haven't had a book that hasn't been to or mentioned any more book. We don't quite open on the turtle. But we do get a turtle within the opening pages. Yes. Kind of, I guess it makes sense to zoom out back on the turtle for this one because it, the geography matters more than in a lot of the books. The geography does matter and we get more geography later on. And also, I like opening with facing the lady. I'll talk about them. Oh, do you know what? It just sounds fucking unbearable playing board games that

long. I know that's the point. But all the, oh, you don't play with the rules. I'm going to throw the dice. We can't see them. My players aren't on the board yet. It's like fucking Calvin ball or something. Yeah. Oh my God. Get over yourself. Get the little leaflet with the rules out. That's what they're for. It's hard enough playing board games where like the rules are understood. I went to a board games thing the other day and we ended up choosing to play a ridiculously huge complicated one while having the England game on in the background. I was every move required five moves. I had workers and an airship. Did you remember that it was all about the cones? There were cones. They weren't cone shaped. It was very cones of Dunshire. It was a good game.

It gave me some ideas for the one I'm designing that every time I work on it, it gets more and more cones of Dunshire. Okay. I trust you to explain the rules to me, but it's all right. You won't be my first beta tester. If you want to idiot proof it, that might be the correct way to go. I'm going to run it by booking nerds first because they'll be good at suggesting ideas. Anyway, this is not relevant. You're not relevant. I'm sorry. That's not some kind. You're very relevant all the time. Thank you, Francine. Thank you. Anyway, on the not quite opening on the turtle, when we do get the turtle opening, we get this is the disc well, which goes through space on the back of a giant turtle.

Most worlds do at some time in their perception. It's a cosmological view. The human brain seems pre-programmed to take. There's a couple of little lines just in that section where Pratchett's obviously acknowledging the things people have brought up. He's admitted there that the turtle where does love go? Yes. Why the killjoy nerds? Why the elephants aren't suffering from horrific friction burns? What sounds as yellow? Lesson only stops fables. Yes. The elephant's friction burns. And what's the other thing? Oh, yeah, we're keeping track of whether or not the librarian gets explained and he doesn't. I only really bring this up a because I like the they're discussing the dominant males and looking for Ridcully's large cheek pants. I reckon that was something

else that kept getting brought up. And B, he kept Rincewind's hat. Oh, yes. He loved his Rincewind. Well, do you recall in the sorcery was like Rincewind was like digging through the library to find him? They do love each other. I know. It makes me very happy. I wish we got more like, I just want like a little buddy novella. There's just the library and Rincewind hanging out. Yeah, this is the kind of thing that fluff and fiction was made for, wasn't it? It was like, all right, you're clearly never going to let your characters be happy. Let me just quickly just a chapter there. Yes, that's Helicopter Longcloth, watching all the things I'm keeping track of quotes. I believe you're performing. I am. Yes. This is one of the ones that's kind of,

I think, is one of those little hook things that like a few people, a lot of people over the years have quoted, but is also one of my favourites. The expression of one who knows that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. Ah, I like that line. Yes. It is a, I think possibly a metaphor that he's brought, that he uses in more than one book, but it has the first time I think I find you out. Yeah, I think it's come up a couple of times. Yeah. Anyway, my favourite, yours? I have lots of like very good poetic bits of prose marked, and then I did this one instead, because I literally couldn't stop laughing and just remembering it and giggling to myself.

This is off the wall, I know, said the bursar brightly. What is, said the lecturer in recent ruins, a hook for hanging pictures on. At that time again, is it? It's when they're all discussing the different ways to get rinse wind, and it seems like he's going to get rinse wind across the world, and it seems like he's going to make a suggestion. All at once again. Sculling in the pools at the other side of insanity. In the valley of the dried frog pills. Fun little valley of the doll's reference. Once again, the wizard's dialogue during the Lord's work. It's quite sweet as well that Rid Cully is kind of looking out for the bursar like time to take

your pills, old chap. Yeah, I think we're really, I keep sort of saying, we're getting more into, we're getting more into, but we very much settled into the dynamic of the wizards, and it brings me a lot of joy. Definitely. You get to, well, we'll get to characters. Now, in fact. Yes, characters. What a segue. Yes, we'll get there. Listen, there's shit with that. It's a bit like rinse wind going to the continent. We'll get there in a shit, I'm here. We must have gotten a helicopter landing with a great deal of ceremony in characters. With fate, the lady and the gods. Irritating as always. Yep. Dick heads, the sorts of a fan. I like in the gods playing board games moment, we get the IQs, the high priest of the green

raven, the library with double-handed acts. Never not giggle at a cluedo hint reference. Yeah. Anything to say about them, really? They are as they have been. They are as they have been. They're here. I like their unchangingness, and I like the, I'm going to talk more about callbacks to the early rinse wind and two flower adventures, but I like the callback here of when it's rinse wind and two flower, we get this same framing device that we had in Color of Magic. Lady just won't leave him alone. Cool. Then we have the quantum weather butterfly.

Yeah. It's not really a character, but it's flapping about with its infinite wings. Yes. Here we look at the idea of the more ragged something is, the greater its length. It's not length, is it? Is it length? The length of the edges. Yeah, the measurement. So it's the whole thing about if you measure Norway by the fjords, it becomes like the biggest coastline in the world by quite a long time, quite a long way, but they measure in a sensible way. Obviously, it's not. To me, ages do those fiddly bits around the fjords. But I just like that we've taken the idea of a butterfly flaps its wings and there's a storm

on the other side of the world and gone, well, yes, it's a pole flight that so it can cause a tiny tornado when a bird tries to eat it. Yes, and the accidentally hurricanes. I may be an indistinguished yellow color, but in a fortnight's time, a thousand miles away, freak gales cause road chaos. If you know what I mean. Oh, a butterfly can't wink. How would it do it? Wiggle a little wiggle. Wiggle one of its antenna. Good. Yes. Well done. Butterflies have antenna? Yes. Excellent. I say confidently. Yes. No, I think they do. Yeah. We go to veterinary who has a bit more of a speaking role. Yes. We have veterinary red color and the pointless. We've got an albatross.

Absolutely. Yes. It's the first time in quite a long time we've had an albatross. Yes. For those listeners who didn't listen to the very first few episodes of the podcast. Understandable, forgivable, still. You should. This is why albatrosses became a running thing because of the color of magic and apparently them being very popular method of communication between the Councilway Consonant and Ankh Morpuk. Yeah. The only ones that can go that far, I suppose. Yeah. That makes sense. It's specifically a pointless albatross and I feel quite bad for it. Yeah. Well, it doesn't know. Does it? Probably. I hope. No. Probably.

No. It's mostly focused on fish. Yeah. Yeah. It's your albatross. Sorry. It had to be done once. Did you hear about Amazon Prime trying to sue some little fishmongers for using the phrase prime day fish? Like prime day fish is like the phrase you use for the prime catch of the day. Yeah. And after being pointed out, like Amazon did. Backline. We straw that, but goodness me. Anyway, sorry. Fish, albatross, veterinary. Veterinary. Veterinary. I like the interplay between veterinary and Rick Cully. Yes.

We're getting, again, with the relationship sort of settling into their grooves and their very polite method of respecting each other. The cold small talk I rather enjoyed. Yes. The weather I see has turned out nice again. I thought yesterday was particularly fine, certainly. I also like just one sentence to sum up Lord Veterinary sitting in the palace gardens, watching the butterflies with an expression of mild annoyance. Something very slightly offensive about the way they just fluttered around enjoying themselves in an unprofitable manner. Definitely the same vibes as like music has ruined when you play it.

Yeah. So, yeah, I enjoy, I enjoy the conversation between them. I like that they have this very cold respect for each other because veterinarians climb on the floor under diplomatic embarrassments. Exactly. But that veterinary is still very closely used as patients when he's trying to explain that the albatross isn't really there. It's very hard to explain things to Rick Cully. I quite enjoyed Ponda trying to explain the directional spinny things, just watching somebody being very bad at explaining it, someone being very bad at understanding is always fine.

Rick Cully, again, we've said this every time he turns up in a book, but the best bit of Rick Cully is his method of understanding things, which is to not. Yes, absolutely. Not much is important. In fact, that's taken me to exactly one of those moments on Ponda, so Ponda Stevens, who now we're at this point has really become one of my favorite characters. He is a wonderful foil. He's, he's, him and Rick Cully are such a fun little play, much more than the Dean who was sort slightly becoming the butt of the joke.

Yeah. But again, in a funny, having them all there, I think is good. Oh, having them all there is good. It's just the Rick Cully-Ponda relationship is one of the favorites now. Yeah, definitely. And yes, he knew that Rick Cully would feel it necessary to add a comment at this point in order to demonstrate that he'd grasped something. My mother could move like lightning when. Just going to keep going.

And obviously with Ponda Stevens comes Hex. Yes, Hex, the magnificently complicated, convoluted, inking machine. Kind of computer. Yeah. Hex is really fun because, so we saw the beginnings of Hex, but I think this is the first time Hex is named as such. Yeah.

But we saw the beginnings of it in the last book and Ponda beginning to build it. But there's lots of fun references to early computing. And Pratchett was a massive computer nerd. So Hex is obviously have Hex a decimal code, which is lots of things based on. Yeah. I don't understand it. I don't want to. I like the idea of an eternal domain error instead of internal domain error.

Out of cheese error, which is one that comes up now quite a lot in the fandom as a shorthand for confusion. Yeah, redo from start is my more, is my preferred one. I like out of cheese error. So it hits too close to home for me. I don't like running out of cheese. I don't run out of cheese. I simply don't fancy.

I simply do not run out of cheese. And it's not a problem, actually. So yeah, the magical side of Hex, I'll talk about more later, but I do like this. The bits that accumulate, especially the aquarium, which has got this very screen saver vibe. The thing about, but if you take the mouse out for some reason, it stops working. Reminded me of what you were telling me about game code the other day. Oh, yeah, the weird things that end up getting put into game code. And you don't know why.

But once it ends up there, if you take it out, it breaks. Like one of my favorite ones is somewhere in Dragon Age Inquisition. There's a hidden top hat and they put it ended up there as a joke. And it's in a thing you never see. But if they take the top out, it stops working. And there's another one from Dragon Age two where something about how a conversation had to be framed between two characters meant that outside of the frame, they're in their underwear. And one of them's on a box.

And the game makers don't really know why, but it was the only way to make that angle work. And what was the one you told me about Fallout? Oh, in Fallout, I think it's Fallout 3, not Fallout 3. Yes, Fallout 3 with the trains. The trains are HAT. And Washington DC. Yes, yes, that's right. The train is in fact a HAT being worn by an NPC running very quickly from place to place.

Because that was the easiest way to do it. It's like we already have the resources to put in an NPC and a very large HAT shape like a train and make them run very fast. And that's a lot easier than bulking this up with more bollocks. Yeah, I'm so glad I'm trying to go into this industry. Everything. Yeah, no, I like what you're hearing about. I just put a top hat and everything.

It seems to work. Ask the duck why. All right, so Lord Hong. Yes, he is one of Patrick's kind of favourite bureaucratic villain things, but a lot more refined. Yes, very refined, very good at everything because he's somewhat decided to be. I should say Lord Hong is the head of the five ruling families, the Hongs, Tangs, two others, and the McSweeney's.

The name Hong, by the way, I assume, I think, comes from after Imperial China ended early 1900s. President, oh, God, I wish I'd looked this up. Yuan, Yuan Shike. Yuan Shike, something like that, was a very short-lived president. He was trying to reinstate monarchy in China with himself as the Hongxian emperor. And so I assume that's where Hong's from because he is in the correct point to be ending the dynastic thing, becoming emperor and all that.

So Hong is currently the Grand Vizier and trying to maneuver himself into the position of the next emperor. Yeah, whereas this dude was a statesman in general, so similarly positioned. Yeah, and was possibly behind the killing of the emperor. Yeah, we have talked about... I just mean it's a lot. Way, way back in the land of the colour of magic, I talked a bit about the Grand Vizier trope being inherently problematic, so I won't go on the full run again. I mean, admittedly here, it's a Grand Vizier.

In fact, I talked about it in sorcery as well. Rincewind attracts Grand Viziers to him, apparently. He does, he does, that's his natural enemy. Partly to do with where this part of the book is set, and we'll talk about the setting. We'll talk about it. That sounds threatening, doesn't it? We'll get there, we'll talk about it later. Oh god, that's an awful anxiety inducing sentence.

You're not in trouble, listeners, it's fine. Everything's fine, we'll just talk about it later in a nice way. Everything is going to be alright, I promise. Right, God, what was I on about? Too Fire Herb. I have no idea, sorry. Yes. Too Fire Herb is the, it's revealed, he's the sort of counter-revolutionary

in that he is, I can't remember the word, I want, Lord Hong has got Too Fire Herb as something of a spy among the revolutionaries. Double agent? Yes, thank you, that's what I meant. Double agent, but not too bright. Yes, so he's kind of, at this point, the useful Maupokian speaking. Yes. Adducing Rincewind into the world of the Red Army.

Yes, we'll meet the Red Army properly in the next section. And then we have a visit from an old favourite, Cohen the Barbarian is back. Good old Cohen, still doing well. What happened to Beth? Did we find out later in this book? I feel like we do. No, I don't think we do. I think just, you know, they drifted apart.

Yeah, I'm sure they still have respect for each other as much as they ever did. We don't really hear from Koenina again either. No, well hopefully she's gone off to live her best life. Hairdressing with Nigel. Yep. Let's not go back there. God, let us not go back to Sorcery. And the rest of the rest of them.

And the rest of the Silver Horde, my favourite of which is Teach. Ronald Savalloy. Yes. Partly because I like the idea of the very polite geography teacher wandering around with this crowd of barbarians trying to civilise them. I like him very much. The Silver Horde, by the way, is a reference to the Golden Horde, which was one of the states that came after the Mongol Empire.

Excellent. It was ruled by some of Genghis Khan's descendants. Oh, they're tiny horses. So yes, we're compressing quite a lot of centuries into these references. We have put quite a lot into the... Well, we haven't. Quite a lot has gone into the blender here. And then, yeah, so the rest of the Horde seem

right now not very fleshed out. Obviously, we will meet them again. It's quite less not supposed. Yeah, we've got old Vincent, who... This is the one criticism I've got of the hordeness is, you know, the Cohen's joke of, oh, I keep telling him it's raped the women and set fire to the houses. And obviously, none of these are actually rapist

because they're all probably not really capable. But also, like, we could have just left the rape jokes out. Yeah, yeah. No, I've got my notice rape joke. Still not funny. Yeah. I get... Even when it's Pratchett, who knew?

I get the trope they're going for, but also you could have just not done the thing. Yeah, the whole let-an-all-mandering thing, aren't you? Yeah, especially with Cohen, because we've seen Cohen actually be very good and respectful to women in the past. Yeah, yes, I get the joke. It's just not good.

Yeah, it's just not funny. And then we don't actually see him but... Two-flower. Oh, but his introduction is beautiful. Beautifully-wired, right? Hold on. Where is it? One turn.

It was a picture focused itself on Rincewind's memory. Is that the bit you mean? Yeah, it was of a happy, smiling little man with huge spectacles and a trusting, innocent approach to life which brought terror and destruction everywhere he wandered. Two-flower had been quite unable to believe that the world was a bad place,

and that was largely because, to him, it wasn't. It saved it all up for Rincewind. It's a beautiful little introduction way before we... Well, not way before, but before we actually get to meet him again. And then we learn he is the author of this book, what we do on my holidays, which has started a revolution of sorts, because... Yeah, which, by the way, I'm going to look into

more of the kind of one books that changed everything, things. I'm sure it's happened a few times during history, but I didn't have time for this episode, so we'll do it next episode. Yeah, but some of the things I kind of enjoy about that... I'm just going to squeeze this in here, but this book existing.

A is that enough people in the oppressed class know how to read and write to be able to read this book, because this is a culture based on these competitive written examinations. And I think that has some basis in, obviously, actual history, and we're going to talk about history later. Yeah, I've got some bits on that. But it is also good writing.

Yes. Because otherwise, that would be a really obvious logical whole. Yeah. But also, you know, this book is this idea of the grass is greener. That's where the revolution is happening, is, oh, there's a place where I don't have to be quite as oppressed, but it's also this grass is greener thing for Lord Hong and his obsession with Lord Hong.

He wants to go there having read this book as well. I mean, grass is greener, is the point, I think, for the peasants, but... Well, yeah. Yeah, for Lord Hong, maybe not, yeah. It's not for Lord Hong, but he still kind of creates this idealized version of Lord Hong in his head. Yeah, for sure.

Well, he can't wait to be one of them. I was a very compelling writer, what can we say? But I'd like the... Urinating dog, urinated jog, complicated pictogram. Is that problematic? Oh, man. Yeah. I feel like we can probably put a blanket problematic sticker

over quite a lot in this book. Okay. I did find complicated pictogram quite funny. As a stand-in for the kind of random punctuation symbols, you get stand-in for a swear word here. Oh, yeah. No, that I found quite funny. What was your...

In reference to Dibbler, complicated pictogram involving Razor? Yes. Because it took me a second. Yeah. Anyway, so that's characters onto locations, and the only reason I bring this up, again, the Palace Gardens, as we've already discussed,

designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. Yeah. But I really like that now Pratchett's established that they were designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. He can come up with a couple of really stupid things about them every time. One of the books goes there. In this case, it's the chiming sundial frequently exploded.

The crazy paving had committed suicide, and the cast iron and garden furniture was known to have melted on three occasions. Which does suggest somebody recast it. And the giant beehive. Yes. I also like the description of Bloody Stupid Johnson as renowned or at least notorious.

I want to be renowned or at least notorious. Another one for a business card. So I like the idea of the 10-foot bees he somehow had in mind. You never know. You never know. If there was ever a world for 10-foot bees, it would be the disc world. Indeed.

And hopefully not our world. Yes. And another not really location but funny. Room 3B in the university. Where all the lectures apparently take place, and everywhere. If you're napping, you're in Room 3B. Yes.

I like it as well, because it's a good writing thing. Because Patrick occasionally will sort of rise himself into corners that you can see he doesn't want to be into. So like the university is a really good example. Where it starts off as a teaching university. Like if you look back at equal rights and even sorcery, there are students, it is full of students, being taught and going to lectures.

Simon is teaching lectures and being taught there is a very important thing for Esk as well. And obviously Patrick's gone to this point and realized he's got this really good faculty to write about. And the students are quite funny for things like the high-energy magic building and hanging out with Ponder. But he doesn't want to write the school structure.

It's obviously this is pretty Harry Potter, but he doesn't want to Hogwarts. Yeah, yeah. So he kind of writes himself out of the corner with Room 3B. Yes. Nobody really does lessons. There are books. There are books around.

I look up to the books, but don't because the library. Even as late as moving pictures, it's still a very structured university. Because we see Victor with Ponder going through their final exams. Yeah, I've seen the exams and that still exists because there are still references to them here with Rincewind doing particularly poorly. I assume it's basically a self-taught university.

You have to do your exams, but you know. Well, also Rincewind was doing exams and things way, way back in the day. Oh, that's true. Obviously pre-Ridiculia, because Ridiculia only came after Sorcery. Yeah, because along the same line, you've got Ridiculia's study and Rincewind remembering the old, old chancellors of your writing.

Green, gloop and stuffed alligators. Yeah, I mostly mean of the like fantastic part of your. It feels like a very long time ago. It was a long time ago. We've got to remember we lost a year there. God, yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. Yeah.

We'll get it back. Well, then. Oh, good. Oh, I've had a word. Excellent. Our big location of the book. And obviously not newly introduced because we met Two Flower before,

but the Count's Way continent is the first time we've been there. Been there. Yeah. I like that the geography of where it sits is established. We know it's sort of the other side of the disc, but we know we've got this idea of it breaking around into these little islands.

Yeah, that little comma shaped continent. And then, yeah. Any up in Bang Bang Dook and coming around to the very mythic continent, only known as X, X, X, X. Yeah, I'm guessing at this point was the first time you could actually draw a map of the disc world with any. Yes. Like, what do I mean?

Is it still a map if it's a world map? Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Like an Atlas kind of thing. Yeah. Because I have got the disc world at us with the big map and I still need to find somewhere in my flat

to put the map up. So I can go back to putting post-its all over it when we do a book. Yeah, I still want my cork board and string. I really want the cork board and string, but I don't want to do that to my map. No, no, I wouldn't do it on the map. I just want to put random pictures

and make stupid connections to things at 2 a.m. I should have put you that for the birthday. Anyway. It's easier. Still might if I don't, but it's your present time. So yes, we've got the geography. We have the established that it's a tyrannical government. A tautology.

That is exactly. Dean is a libertarian. Exactly. The kind of joker dick that we make on Twitter and that is. From a chandelier. From a chandelier. In dickheads, in chandeliers, all over the shop. We've got the.

It's a length. The language of the OTA empire is one where it's very easy to say something wrong based on intonation, which is very true of both the Chinese and Japanese languages. I'm fascinated by and frustrated by the fact I will never understand the idea of puns in kind of intonation. Based intonation based language. You know what I mean?

What more of a once work cadence matters more. Where sentences really do make a huge difference. Yeah. And the language itself, I really like sort of home with his glasses, greener ideals of going like. It's a written language of 7000 letters. It takes all day to write a 13 syllable poem and that's fine and beautiful and no one has ever done him.

But I make more for their 26 unexpressive ugly crude letters and produced poems in place that left white hot trails across the soul. Absolutely. It is one of the things I must say about. This is going to sound like a piece of nationalist bullshit, but it's not. One of the things about the English language that's very good is although it's an ugly mismatch and it is.

Because of that, it's ended up with a lot of synonyms, which makes it particularly good for a certain type of prose and poetry. Yeah. Whereas again, other language is better for other prose, poetry is whatever. But yeah, just the fact we've got so many ways to say things makes it, a, a complete nonsense, but be pretty good for those of us who profit from nonsense. I do feel very sorry for people who've learned English as a second language

because it is. And yet they all do so well. It's so unstructured. Chinese is a language, especially as a written language, is really fascinating. And if you remember the writer Adelaide Yanma, her Chinese Cinderella was really popular. Yes, that was one of my favorite books at all. Did you ever read any of her other books?

I didn't because I feel like they're going to be very upsetting. They are. I'm not going to lie. So Chinese Cinderella was a shortened. It was already so traumatized by that one. It was a shortened and more child or at least young adult friendly version of her autobiography. Her full autobiography, Falling Leaves, is got a happier outcome. Okay.

And it is, but it is also has also got a lot of its own upsetting moments. But she also has a really lovely book called Watching the Tree, which is about interpreting East Asian philosophy from a Western perspective. Okay. Maybe I'll start out with that one. Yeah. And there's a really, really interesting section on language where she sort of reminisces about studying calligraphy with her grandfather and looking at why the letters and the characters are structured the way they are. And you see these smaller characters incorporated into the larger ones.

Things like one that means to buy a slash sell being kind of a rectangle with these bisecting lines because it represents these old these strings of shells that we use. But then seeing that small symbol, how many other characters it's incorporated into. That sounds exactly the kind of thing I would like to read. So yeah, that's going on my definitely to read list. Yes. And it will be our recommendation of the week listeners, even though I have not read it. I think so.

I understand. It's we've also got a reference to The Art of War originally. Yeah. Sun Tzu. There's a line and I can't remember the line now where the Argentine Empire is referred to as the Orient spelled for the native. Ha Ha Gold. Yes. Ha Ha Gold.

The actual word Oriental is problematic in many reasons and it depends exactly how it's problematic. It depends on exactly where you are. Yeah. It's one of those ones where I know there are associations based in Asia with Oriental in the name. Yep. I also know it's been used as a slur a lot in America and I just avoid it. Because I do not know enough. The word Oriental is in using a map comes from exactly the same route.

Yeah. I mean, literally it means east. Yeah. Speaking of problematic things, obviously the way that food in the Hemsway continent is discussed has definitely got its own problematic thing. Rincewinds familiar with hung hung ease takeaways from the few refugees have made it to make more pork. And the food is described as dish of glistening brown stuff, dish of glistening crunchy orange stuff and dish of soft white lumps.

Yeah. See, I'm going to, I hate this kind of thing because it makes me sound like I'm trying to be like an apologist for the shit stuff, but you can see the joke. It's not like an anti Eastern joke. It's a anti, this is what we end up eating instead because of our shit taste buds joke. Oh, yeah. No, I wasn't pointing out was in that is a racist joke. It's more of a, this is a common problem where people don't want to try the actual food of a

culture. So you have these Westernized versions and then the other arguments about authenticity. Yeah. Yeah. And especially with Chinese food in England and America, you then have the horrific discussion of MSG, which is literally just racism. Come on guys. Yeah. It's just racism that MSG is no more bad for you than any other kind of salt.

But because it was used in Chinese cooking, it was declared as bad. Not quite that. There is some very specific roots to how that became misinformation. Which I again can link to, but was definitely perpetuated through that. Yeah. Sorry. That was a massive oversimplification simplification. Yeah.

It came from a false, almost joke letter originally. And I can't remember enough of the details to keep on about it without being inaccurate, but again, I will link to MSG. Oh my God, we're going to have a lot barely related links, aren't we? We'll try and organise them somehow into related and we went on a tangent. Yeah. Which is so unlike us. Yeah, what?

Never tangents on this podcast. Yeah, but that was the area, so I'm going to point that out. I don't really have anything else to say about the Councilman continent now. We'll talk about the history. Yeah. History. History. We'll talk about the history.

I quite like that it's just a new kind of geography for the discworld and that you've got the steps and all of that bit is quite obviously quite fun to play with for him. And it is nice seeing the world more fleshed out outside of the Eurocentric bit of continent we've been on. Some bits we liked. I think like is a strong word, but my purple post-it moment of the week is the women that approached Rentswind on his island. Yes, I thought maybe I've got my shorthand for things like that is Pee-Pee on the side now,

so that is definitely under Pee-Pee. That and the turns out rape jokes aren't funny. No, I guess. Which is when the reason I put it under liked is I do as much as we are very, very aware of Pratchett's type being tall, tan and blonde. But I do like that it's at least acknowledged here. You may be wondering why we are all blonde and white-skinned when everyone else on the islands around here is dark.

It just seems to be one of those genetic things. Yeah, take them as our B-movies basically. Yeah, but I do like it's we've come a long way as we look back on where we started like fantastic colour of magic to hear that at least we've gone from it's not parody, if you're just doing the thing to at least acknowledging what the thing is. Yes, yeah, that's better. Yeah, I still had a slight expression on my face really that bit, but it is also funny because Rentswind's into the idea of potatoes, not the women.

Yeah, he's gotten slightly confused at that point. And also I really respect just really wanting potatoes because that is me all of the time. I like that he ended up as well with this lingering confusion about sex and potatoes. Yeah, it seems to have somehow scarred him. Inextricably linked. What else do they have? Oh, I really like the Thieves Guild lessons moment when Rentswind is going to drink more pork. And just Mr Bogus is trying to teach his young charges how to properly rob someone.

And I like how polite he is during it. Yes, while also repeatedly punching him. What you did was sorry to impose against that. This won't take a minute. What you did was this. Speaking of Rentswind being put upon actually one of the little bits I did like was him being explained to what exactly he's going to do for his good service to magic so that he doesn't get nailed upside down to whatever, which was, well, find the answer to some very

ancient and important question. What the hell is that thing with all the legs? He said, I think I know that one. Just one of your lovely little comic timing moments with this. I also liked how Rick Cully got on with the luggage, actually. I think there's a healthy mutual respect there. Yeah, I should probably not talk about Rick Cully as much as I do in every episode. But God, I love him.

I love Rick Cully so much. He sharks, you say. Again, this is a healthy respect of sort of, you know, Rick Cully likes hunting, and he can see the luggage as a fellow hunter. But I think you can also see at the back of his mind going, could I mount that? Yeah. And the luggage in response to thinking, could I eat that? Mount, we should say here, means riding, not mounting.

No, no, I meant mount as an up on the wall like a hunter's trophy. Like if you killed it, yes. Oh, right. Yeah, no, see, there are three ways you can take that sentence. And the first way I took it, I decided it was not the way you meant it. Well, I feel like the second way you suggest it meant is sort of linked to the first way in some way. Yes.

Isn't language difficult, as we've said. But enough about shagging. Let's talk about the uncertainty principle. Oh, gosh, yes. Let's not get those two mixed up for goodness sake. What is the uncertainty principle, Joanna? Our favourite part of the podcast, Joanna, tries to understand physics. Please don't help her.

I cannot. No, that was more for the listeners. The uncertainty principle was named such by Werner Heisenberg, Werner Heisenberg in 1927, and states that the velocity and position of an object cannot be meaningfully measured at the same time. OK. And this is mostly on the subatomic level to... Quantum.

We're back in quantum. We're back in quantum. Most of what I understand about subatomics is from the Ant-Man films. So this goes really well in my understandings of physics. I've never even watched them. I'll link to a decent explanation of it in the show notes. I remember enjoying subatomic stuff quite a lot actually in school, but obviously I never really got past the DCSE level.

Right, yeah. The principle is, and again, this is more of a subatomic level, but to measure something's position, you can't really do it meaningfully and measure the velocity at the same time, because in measuring the position, you affect the velocity and vice versa. Yes. That is the basics of the uncertainty principle. Yes, you can't tell how fast it's going and where it is at the same time.

Yes, quantum. Obviously, within the disc world, it's named after the wizard Heisenberg, and not after the more famous Heisenberg, who is renowned for inventing what is possibly the finest lager in the world for international and younger listeners. That is a reference to Carlsberg in the UK. Possibly the best lager in the world. According to their advertising.

It's fine. It's fine. We used to drink it in an afternoon. Please don't get back to me all night. I don't care. It was fine. As someone who likes good beer as well, I'm still not against occasionally just drinking a pint of very cheap lager.

For the same reason, I will quite often slave over a pasta sauce to make it absolutely perfect. But for lunch today, I did have a pasta and sauce out of a packet. Yes. It was fine. This is that sort of fine. Yeah. It is the Kraft mac and cheese to a delicious homemade béchamel

baked perfectly with bacon bits and truffle-infused breadcrumbs. What the fuck? Sorry, I've been thinking about... How do you even fuse a breadcrumb? Carefully. OK. How do you defuse a breadcrumb? Very carefully.

How do you defuse a breadcrumb? Meticulously. On that note. Ah, you're on fire. Shipped again. Oh, we're a delight. Oh, we are. Be more of a delight.

Tell me about Colvax's previous Rincewind books in our Talking Points section. I just think this is fun. I'm not even trying for Zagwice J. I'm sorry. That's fine. We're in Talking Points now. I just keep bringing this up through this mid-stage disc world of how the books inherit from their predecessors and in some cases are reworkings.

I think this is one of the best examples where he is aware he has this huge history. He is aware the disc world has changed a lot since we last saw Rincewind, especially Rincewind and Toothlough. It really ignores the events of Eric quite a lot, and I'm OK with that because I didn't enjoy Eric. I don't remember the events of Eric either, so I don't play in toro practice for forgetting them. I know it's the foused one.

Yeah, yeah. But I can't. I assume Rincewind ended up in the middle of the sea. Yeah. Oh, the world, the beginning of the world and the end of the world. And I think that comes later, the end of the world, certainly. Yeah, but he was there for it. Yeah, yeah, he saw everything.

Anyway, that was... Has it been on the island for six months or something? And clearly there's some time spaceship going on here because all of the between sorcery and... I won't know because he was back working in the library for a bit afterwards, wasn't he? OK, yeah, no, it does not matter. Yeah.

The point is you're trying to make is that we can avoid all of this bullshit I'm trying to do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because I don't entirely remember how he did that. It's a demonstration of that bullshit to help you make your point. So I like that it is aware of its own history and very gently explains it so that it's funny for new readers as well, who may not have read The Colour of Magic and Light, fantastic. So a lot of people haven't by the time they get to interesting times

because people often recommend skipping them when you read Discworld for the first time. Well, practice said in this kind of time period as well, the kind of early 90s, a lot of Discworld readers just started with whatever turned up in the shops and that seemed to work. Yeah. So clearly he's playing to that. And I think it's really well written how it acknowledges its history. Like we talked about opening with Fate and the Lady.

You don't need to have read The Light, fantastic to get that callback. But if you have not the Colour of Magic given, then if you have read it, it's a nice callback. Yeah, he kind of re-explains it enough. But yeah, you don't really need to know. It's just it's the gods. Rid Cully's interactions with Rince Wendegrae. It remembers that Rid Cully was not around during the events of Sorcery. And so he gets explained to him in a way where it's a handy bit of exposition for the reader.

But it doesn't bother explaining the whole book because no one really needs to remember the whole plot of Sorcery. Yeah. Well, at the same time, kind of also telling us that some of the faculty were around and a little bit embarrassed about that fact. Because they all acted a little bit silly. Well, you know, Sorcery goes to your head. It does.

And then we also, I kind of mentioned this already, but seeing this change in what the university has become, you know, bring through being accounting for not really bothering with the students anymore. Yeah. Or the schools. And not murdering each other. And not murdering each other. And I think that's done very well with Rince Wendegrae remembering what Rid Cully's study

used to look like before Rid Cully was the Arch Chancellor. Yeah, definitely. And that's what I talked about. When Rid Cully was first introduced, part of the reason you bring in this character is to stop always having this wizard subplot of fighting over who becomes the Arch Chancellor. You put Rid Cully in. Yeah, that's funny in one book. Yeah.

But you put Rid Cully in and that's done with. Yeah. Somehow the much more boring regime of Rid Cully is much funnier over an extended period. Yes. Because Rid Cully is one of the very best discworld characters. Oh, yes. Well done, that. Fuck me.

I can't wait for that book. But I also like that you acknowledge the changes in the world through Coen's eyes. You know, the world's pratchett has risen and shifted so much because it started as a filmy 70s parody, 70s fantasy parody. And obviously now the world he's writing in is very different, especially the world of the Ram Tops and the world. Yeah, progress is progressing quite quickly. And it acknowledges the progress with Coen saying, well, there's no future in barbarianing

anymore because Coen as a character doesn't fit anymore because it's no longer 70s fantasy parody. Yeah. And he acknowledged that, you know, back in the Ram Tops, there's fences everywhere and if you kill a dragon, people complain. Someone said my teeth were offensive to trolls because he's also brought the troll characters in to be much more three dimensional than the kind of Lord of the Rings parody, the Hobbit parody we had. He's done a good job of kind of very briefly making him into the un-PC old man with a

mysy a troll with a necklace of human skulls. I just tell him good luck. It works. It works. It really does. And it makes it keeps Coen likable. Yeah. While acknowledging that he doesn't really fit the way he did when he was in the life.

Fantastic. And and the last sort of callback to those first two books that I really enjoy is Rincewin recalls introducing a lot of actually an empire devices to a more pork. And these are all things that two flowerhands and it's a way of bringing round world things into this fantasy world in the color of magic. But now they are just part of the background. Things like clocks worked by demons and boxes that painted pictures and glasses. Even if they're mostly there to make a pun.

The it kind of it kind of works in the parallel as well with the whole like inventions bit because all of the inventions were magic based. Yeah. And here you can see Lord Hong like not enjoying magic anymore. So it kind of. Yes, magic's uncivilized. Yeah. That's another way of showing how much it's changed here as well.

Even though we haven't been here before. The innovation is now in a very different direction. Yeah. Speaking of magic. What about magic versus engineering? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That was a good segue.

Oh, I'm doing the thing again where I talk about the thing and now it's not good anymore. I feel like that's 90 percent of our podcast. I mean, the books. The books are still good. We're just making everything worse. I mean, we did start this podcast and then the world went to shit. So we did. That did happen.

Anyway, tell me about magic versus engineering. The line from the dean is that's not magic. It's engineering. Yeah. In reference to using hex in place of. A spell. Yeah. Yeah.

Just get on a spell and see if he gets made against the side of a mountain. Um, where am I? But the line I really like magic isn't like maths. It follows common sense rather than logic. Um, yeah. And nor is it like cookery. No casserole requires moon beans. No souffle ever demanded to be mixed by a virgin.

Side note that cookery is entirely not. Sometimes a little bit like that. Cookery is often like that. You have to fucking sense the exact amount of humidity in the air. If you want to even look sideways at a meringue, don't start me on macarons. Anything with egg whites. I will not start your macarons.

Don't worry. Yes. I've never yet successfully created a meringue. I must admit. Um, I make quite tasty ones, but they never, there's. Aesthetic upright as they ought to be here. There's various methods. I won't go into meringue making.

It's because I run out of time here. Yeah. Egg whites man. The bastards. But what I love about cooking is you go from. Learning the basics and then especially with baking is it becomes very much. Oh yeah, it's science. And you've got to really be really precise and exact.

You absolutely end up coming out the other side of that and just throwing things together. We've talked before, haven't we, about most disciplines. You end up, you have to learn the rules and then break them. You can't just go in straight. Yeah. Not knowing the rules of. So yes, let's use baking.

Cause I can't think of the examples we've used before yet. You can't just guess at a cake. You have to know what you should do. And then know that doing something else actually might be better. Yeah. Or in my case, just when I was learning to make sourdough, I followed things to the letter and was very careful about the water and the flour down to the millimetre.

And. Yeah, did I ever tell you about the time I really did try and guess a cake? When me and Becky were young teenagers, possibly before, it's like 11 or 12, maybe. Yeah. I think 12. We wanted cake. We had no cake.

We had an idea of what went into a cake. And I think we ended up putting eggs, flour, not self-raising flour. Like some water, maybe, maybe some oil. And a bowl, mixing it all up and trying to microwave it. Did you put sugar in it? Yes, sugar. Sugar was in there. Anyway, it was gross.

Yeah, obviously. The other problem with learning how to make things like cake and bread and a lot of the quicker things as well is once you know how to do them, especially if you're the sort of person who keeps their cupboards well-stopped, you can kind of always have them. And that's not always a good thing. Oh. Yeah, for me, the effort level does outweigh the...

I'm very into immediate gratification, basically. So if I want a cake and I can't immediately have a cake, I'm like, oh, well, I guess I won't have a cake. And that does include the barrier of actually cooking one usually. Usually. Whereas I will... Sometimes I spend an afternoon cooking something I really want, but... It will occur to me at, say, four o'clock of an afternoon

that I really fancy a Yorkshire pudding. And then by the end of that day, I will have eaten a very large Yorkshire pudding. Yeah. Yeah, I think the additional bit on your end as well, as you know, it will turn out well. Or as I know, have to make a bread or a cake. Yeah. But it'll be fine.

It won't be much better than what I could buy at the shop, whereas you will come out with fucking gourmet Yorkshire pudding with truffle-diffused breadcrumbs. I would clarify that I never cook with truffle because it's fucking disgusting. It is. And I'm not sure if I did think that before I had that truffle occur 10 years ago or whatever it was in the nutshell. Do you remember that night?

Oh, God, that was horrible. It was. It was absolutely disgusting. It smelled like sour milk. I don't understand what that... Oh, my God. There is a time and a place. I can still taste it 10 years ago.

There's a time and a place, but it really doesn't need to be in everything. It was... For me, it was when I had to make 100 truffle-cream cheese sandwiches in the afternoon for a wedding I was catering, and I had to immediately follow that up with shucking over 100 oysters in under an hour, which averaged out more than one oyster a minute, and I'd never shucked an oyster before.

My hands hurt. Anyway, I should not have allowed us to talk about food. I forgot where we are. Oh, magic versus engineering. I like this because it's jumping on from the theme of witches versus wizards magic and the different styles that we've had before. So with witches, you have this scientific approach to witchcraft that, say, Margaret has.

She's a research witch, as was Goodie before her. This idea of, okay, well, there's all of these different spells that do this thing, and which version of this plant works the best, and then you have... Oh, sorry. And then you have Granny Weatherworks who knows it doesn't matter. And again, it's the common sense versus logic ones. And in this case, you have Hex who has been built to try and distill magic down to its essence and work out what the common factor the ur spell is in all of these spells.

Yeah, the idea of the logical rules of magic. Which doesn't work on the disc world because there is no logic. I think Pond is basically a better vessel for this idea that Pratchett played was Rincewind with the, oh, we wish that, you know, all of this was logical instead of magical. Everything could just be a bit better organized. You've got the brown world's brain in the disc world. Yeah. But yeah, with the whole, like, him wishing the camera had been something to do with chemicals

and glass or whatever. But yeah, Stevens makes more sense to have this as a prolonged. Yeah. And Stevens also makes more sense to have this as a prolonged because he's never quite taken seriously enough. No. And it's something I enjoy about his character is that he doesn't push to be taken more seriously. He just very calmly gets on with it and has that push and pull with the wizards of. Yeah.

Okay, but this is going to work. So I can. Yeah. In this case, he will die if we don't do it my way. So can we just try it? Yeah. And similarly with the witches, I imagine like, as Pratchett said, like, and that's why Granny Weatherwax is a better witch and Magrat is a better doctor.

Yeah. And here it is. And that's why I'm sure Ridicully is much better at certain parts of wizardry and Ponder is better at making sure someone isn't smeared across 11 dimensions. Yeah. Ponder would make a terrible arch chancellor. Yes. Ridicully would make a terrible wizard. Well, research wizard.

Research wizard. Yeah. But I like that Ponder in creating hex and trying to impose this logic on the world has created something not entirely logical. Yeah. Because it's suffered from a specialised case of formative causation, which is the risk in the unseen university because the universe is so thin there. Yeah.

And it's the same reason the books have a mind of their own and things from other realities break through and things become logical in a way you wouldn't expect them to. If you try and do something, it might just happen and that can be a problem. And this means hex is sort of accumulated. And as I was talking about earlier, it's become this huge complicated thing that answers the question, why with because. Yeah. And side note, Ponder is a kind of almost onomatopoeia is quite nice, isn't it?

Yes. Like it's an obvious name play. So I never bothered mentioning it, but just the fact that Ponder is a very good Aulish name at the same time as meaning to Ponder is good. Yes. So yes, that's my magic. It's magic versus engineering tangent. Very nice, very nice.

Ha, tangent engineering geometry. No, I don't know how to carry on too long. Anyway, historical parallels. Parallels are in geometry. Yes. Back in more of our wheelhouse, that is not STEM. Well, not my wheelhouse. Anyway, you're getting more and more into STEM as we get on with life, aren't we?

Yes. Anyway, so this is the thorny bit because. As we briefly mentioned. As we've briefly mentioned, the entire idea of kind of compressing like a millennia's worth of a continent's history into a parody book is always going to be pretty thorny. I would like to take the book as a whole when we discuss that properly, and I would like to have a proper conversation about it in the third part of this book,

rather than trying to fracture it into three parts. So what I'll say for now is that, as Prachi did say himself, I always saw the Empire as a kind of China that had conquered a kind of Japan and absorbed some aspects of the culture, which is what I found in one of the forums. Anyway, for this section, though, I'll just have a look at some obvious references slash parallels because it is interesting. And I think it's well done in certain ways. Imperial China is obviously the big well we are drawing from here,

although there are some influences from other Asian countries. It is such a long and complicated history that we really can't go into it to detail. I mean, Imperial China went from 221 BC to 1912 AD. So probably, as far as I can see, the relevant periods would be the Tang dynasty, which was 618 to 907 AD, which kind of unified China. In this kind of way that we're seeing here. And then the five dynasties and ten kingdoms period came just after that for about 70 years, where five states like in quick succession took over the central part of China.

And then afterwards the Song dynasty reunited it. And then there's this kind of period that I think we're referencing here, in which the kind of Western portrayal of it for a long time seemed to be quite inaccurate in that it like a period of stagnation in China. And so that's obviously what we're playing on here with the bureaucracy and everything like that. It seems like a lot of what was accepted, because it came from so few sources, it really was a few Western, you know, hopping around, coming back, writing about it. Yeah.

Now we're able to fill in some of the gaps a bit better. It does seem like basically there was just a lot going on, we didn't know that. So that is quite interesting, I think, as the background here we're looking at. Fair enough. Period-ish. It was only small mention in this section of the book, but I think it's interesting enough and like wide-wrenching enough across the whole book to look into was the examinations.

So the idea of having examinations to join the civil service basically, as I suppose night's all operative is, was originally in the Tang dynasty to kind of weaken the hereditary aristocracy. Aristocracy. Aristocracy, thank you. And like allow the emperor to do more by having the power more centralized around him. Right. And eventually the kind of prominence of civil service did undermine the military power and

their kind of tradition to some pros and cons to that in the hundreds of years. But I was vaguely surprised to learn that there was indeed a poetry section in some of these during the Tang dynasty, a poetry section was added to the examinations, a cheap poem in the five character, 12 line regulated verse form. There's also something that has like its own books written about it called the eight legged essay, a very specific type of essay that apparently like negatively affected Chinese literature in the end because everyone ended up writing along these lines again. I'm not sure if that's one of the weird, we're not quite.

Yeah, yeah. So basically it had a lot of praise and cons. It did kind of unify the empire, which is what they were trying to do under certain cultural and literary and the idea of achievement by merit rather than by birth. Yeah, was kind of gave a bit more gave a bit more kind of it was like an argument in favor of what was still an imperial government. Right. It gave it a bit more power to the people, not really, but yay.

And that is a massive simplification of something very interesting that I'll like to some interesting articles about because I just like I just go on about it. It doesn't it won't be very good. Yeah. Yeah, the other one, the other obvious ones were like that. We've got the Red Army attacking the Winter Palace. We've got the Art of War. We've got, you know, the myriad references to it's interesting because it's a mismatch of

Asian history and communist history. So there's quite a lot of Soviet stuff here too. Doesn't say the Winter Palace is obviously got that reference, but apparently I read in the annotated Pratchett that there was also a similar thing with a summer palace in China. So that was actually a like historical reference as well as the annotated Pratchett. The Russian Revolution. Now we storm the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Less well known is that the summer palace of the Chinese Royal Family was indeed

just pillaged and destroyed by the British and the French during the Taiping Rebellion of 1860. I can Taiping Rebellion. That's something I looked into and I'm not going to talk about at length at least in this one. Good grief. Yeah. The actual quote from Terry here is I had storming the Winter Palace in mind because of the events of the Russian Revolution and more familiar to us. Then I came across the storming of the summer palace while reading up on Chinese torture.

Yeah. It took me some effort not to find some joke about the Taiping Rebellion, I have to say, and as for the Boxer Rising dot dot dot. I'm quite glad those jokes weren't shoehorned in. The what rising? Boxer. Oh, right. Yeah.

Yeah. You can leave that there. Yeah. The Taiping Rebellion is good grief. There was a lot of horrible things done. By everyone to everyone. I'm very glad there were no puns about it in the book. Okay.

This is something I think we will talk about at length in that should horrible things be joked about or not kind of thing. And that I kind of feel like yes in a lot of cases. And the but there were a lot of cases and it's so sensitive and a lot of oh gosh, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like it's okay to make jokes about the Mongol hordes. But then this one's a bit close to home and involves colonialism and.

Yeah. The one thing I'll say about this, obviously, we again, we'll have a bigger conversation once we've read the whole book. I mean, obviously, I've read the whole book on the making jokes about horrible things. It's it's lots of different factors. But I think say something like the Taiping Rebellion. I think a lot of people just aren't aware of the atrocities, especially the atrocities that the British and French and Europeans committed there.

So it feels weird to joke about it because a lot of people are going to read that and not be aware of the horrible, if that makes sense. Yeah. Although I feel like if you've heard of it at all to get the joke, you know, does that make sense? Well, yeah. But okay. So in the context of say this book, if you had made a joke about a Taiping Rebellion,

and I'm assuming something to do with typing, someone could have quite happily read it and funny Chinese name. Right. Okay. Yes. No, I see what you mean. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. No. Good. I'm not saying that's the only time we shouldn't joke about horrible things. There's lots of other reasons to not joke about horrible things. And then there is claim. And then if you think, yeah, no, fuck.

Okay. Yeah. No. Basically, this is difficult to talk about. And what I'm trying to do is add historical context to some of the references. Well, not being like harsh about horrible shit. And it's quite difficult in the context of a comedy book. Yeah.

So with that, have you got an obscure reference for New York Fog which runs in? I have. And it's about maths. Yay. Yeah. Hold on. So the butterfly, in fact, we're going full circle. Going back around to the butterfly.

So the butterfly, the weather butterfly, the quantum weather butterfly, that one. Yes. It's described as having a Mandelbrot pattern on it. I was like, huh, was that Googled? The Mandelbrot set is a fractal pattern. So it's generated by iteration, which means repeating the same thing over and over again. A fractal pattern is something that if you zoom in, it just repeats over and over and over and over. Yeah.

So it's like the stereotypical one is like the universe being the same shape as neurons. And you go in and in and in. And then that's this whole, ooh, universe is a fractal thing. And I'm not sure if that's anything. But like the thing generated by lightning strikes, what's that called? Something, something pattern. God, I'm doing well. Anyway, this one's called the Mandelbrot set.

And if you look at it, it is quite pretty. And to imagine it on the side of a butterfly is quite pleasing, especially if you think that as you zoomed in and in and in on this butterfly, it would keep repeating in the same way that its wings are infinitely lengthed while also being small. I like that you've included an example of a Mandelbrot pattern in the show notes, and we'll tweet it. But the first thing I thought when I saw it was Windows Media Player. Oh, fuck, yeah.

You know, those animations that would come up when you were listening to music, and you sit there and listen for hours. Beautiful strawberry milkshake. Yeah. Still on my head there. But I'm pretty sure they were Mandelbrot patterns lurking around in that, or at least some sort of fractal. Yeah, yeah, probably say.

Yeah. Oh, God, that's going to piss me off with the lightning pattern thing. Hold on, what's it called? It is called Lichtenberg figure. Ah, excellent. Thank you. Don't need whole music. I can Google that quick.

Amazing. All right. Well, I think that's everything we have said about the first part of Interesting Times. It is. That is a fact. We'll be back next week with part two, which starts on page 113 in the Corby paperback with, It was a fine morning.

The hideout echoed to the sounds of the Silver Horde getting up. And ends with me stuttering through another. And ends on page 224 in the Corby paperback with, and have summons said Cohen. All those buggers do think they know what the emperor looks like. 224, you say? 224. I planned ahead.

Well, then you. So we shall be back next week in the meantime. Dear listener, you can follow us on Instagram at the two-shallfakeyf. Two-shallfakeymet. I'm going to try that again. In the meantime, dear listener, I know you're going to keep the fuck up in, but. You can follow us on Instagram at the two-shallfakeyfret,

on Twitter at makeyfretpod, on Facebook at the two-shallfakeyfret. You can join our subreddit community, r slash ttsmyf. You can send us a pointless Albatross, the two-shallfakeyfretpod at gmail.com. And if you'd like to support us financially, you can go to patreon.com for slash the two-shallfakeyfret. And exchange a few pennies for some bonus nonsense.

Bonus nonsense. And some cents. And in the meantime, dear listener, don't let us detain you. Hey, oh god. I don't know how we're going to talk. Oh, I'm making myself so uncomfortable.