The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 76: Bromeliad Pt. 3 - Wings (e.g. Burning Down An Orphanage)

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, our Terrific Trilogies season continues with Part 3 of our recap of “The Bromeliad”, as we talk “Wings”. .-.-.mipmip.-.-!.-.-.mipmip.-.-!.-.-.mipmip.-.-!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:Underwater museum: how 'Paolo the fisherman' made the Med's strangest sight - GuardianConcorde - WikiDeath of a Dream: The crash of Air France flight 4590 - Admiral Cloudberg (Medium)The Green Planet - BBC OneCommensalism, Mutualism and Parasitism - Biology DictionaryThe Footsteps of Large Animals Fill Landscapes with Life - Good Nature TravelScientists observe mysterious cosmic web directly for first time - GuardianDan Quayle's quotes - Bauer CollegeMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com  

my eyeliner looks really dramatic because I did that thing where it kept going wrong and I had to keep adding more eyeliner to fix it but only on one side. So the other side like looks like normal eyeliner and then this is just like I'm going a little party by myself. And adding medicine for two days so I'm pretty sleepy. I will endeavour to bring joy and laughter and such. We just had a storm that was better than expected on a national level. That's because the wind hit later than it was expected to therefore missing the spring tide and not creating the fear tidal surge. So Shropshire is not underwater in short.

Which is nice for Shropshire. For Shropshire certainly. It doesn't flood very often here. Yeah. We haven't had too much to worry about. We were just out of the red warning zone by a few miles. Yeah, like my office was in the red warning zone. I'm assuming you didn't go into the office. I did not. I wasn't going to anyway. It's a Friday. I worked from home Friday. I possibly didn't work as efficiently as usual. I might do a bit of work later to make up for that because I was keeping one eye on the massive tree. There's a river right at the bottom of my

garden pretty much as you know. And on the other side of that there are these huge willows like one of our six-year-old things and over the last five years they've been coming down one by one and there's one that Jack Reckons won't hit the house but might hit the garden if it comes down no direction. Yeah. And I think might hit the house. And I was just kind of staring out the kitchen window at it. It wasn't very exciting here. I didn't see a single wheelie been rolling down the street or any such luck. I saw one rolling up the hill. Yeah. You saw one going on an adventure up a main road. It was very sweet. I say that. I saw also saw cars driving around it but I'm sure it was fine. I was thinking about running out and

like grabbing the bin but then I thought what am I going to do with that? I have to run into the road in this weather. I wouldn't see it dangerous anyway. I know that rooftiles and gutter and go flying all over this fucking road. Yeah. And then if I grab the bin what then? Then I'm in charge of a bin that's going to go flying off by let go of it. And if you're out the front of your house as well it's not like you can bring it into your house. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Or bring it around. I have a car park at the back of my house and then like a line of trees. So none of the trees really looked risky of coming down. I think a few branches may have gone. It means there's always a lot of dead leaves and branches out there. Oh that's nice dramatic swirling. It was very

fun to watch out the window until the wind started consistently picking up huge clumps at once and then just bringing them all to my front balcony which considering where house is made of plastic was terrifying noise that despite the fact it was happening throughout the day still made me jump every fucking time. Oh it was like hitting the wall. Yeah. It was like blowing up clowns of leaves and blowing them into my wall slash windows. It was fun but I spent all of yesterday playing PlayStation. I had a lovely day. Good. Anyway I say it better than I expected. Obviously three people died which is very sad. But it could have been worse. It could have been worse. I expected it to be worse. Yeah. I spent quite a lot of time writing about storms in their aftermath now. So

it's made me more paranoid. Oh look at this. Epstein ex-associate found dead in jail. That's a surprise. Shocking. Found hanged. Someone Epstein did my guess in France. I'm not sure we should use Epstein as a verb. Why not? I think it's great. Everyone knows what it means. Yeah true. Is there a more efficient word for murder and set up as suicide because they might say something about the powerful? There probably is. I just don't know what it is. Epstein's probably works. It just feels like it could be used either for that or for acquired a lot of young girls. Oh there is that. Yeah I suppose it's context specific. I was about to do our usual I hangled you hangled. I'm not going to do that with Epstein. That's not Conjugate Epstein. Conjugate, thank you.

That is not Conjugate Confligrate. Well maybe Confligrate. Who was at Francine? Harvey Epstein? Harvey Epstein, yes. Well then our soul Harvey Epstein and Jeffrey Weinstein. Yes, those two. As far as I know dead. No, one of them's alive. Dead, I think, yeah. Oh okay. I'm going Epstein. Fuck. We're functioning. I spent all of yesterday playing the new Horizon Forbidden West, which is very exciting for me. It's good, is it? It's very good. It's very pretty. They've leaned a bit harder into the platformer element, which I'm still 50-50 on whether or not I like, but they have also made the climbing ship feel a bit more natural. What does platformer element mean?

I mean a lot more of the focus in side quests and things is like jumping puzzles and figuring out how to climb from A to B. Oh no, not that into that, but I'm sure it's fine. Just before Shades of Grey's sequel is coming out, finally, finally, 12 years on something like that in August and I'm very excited. I've ordered two coffees, one for me, one for Becky because Becky never gave my first copy back and then I got her another one because she lost it and was sad and this will hopefully circumvent that process, but I'm very excited. I read Shades of Grey. It's the only just before they were read actually. I've not read the Thursday. Is it Thursday next? I've read a couple of Thursdays next. Alex was very into them. I think red side story,

that's what the new one's called. I wasn't as into them as I was this. I might try them again at some point. Yeah, but I read Shades of Grey. You and I were at download together and on the last day, it was raining and neither of us fancy going to see bands and getting cold, so we just sat on our tent and read all day and when we finished our respective books, we swapped and that's how I read Shades of Grey. I don't remember what I read, do you? No, I can't remember at all. It's like some fancy book or another, I think. It might have been Trudy Caravan. It was probably either Trudy Canavan or Patrick Rothfuss. Not Caravan, sorry. It wasn't Patrick Rothfuss. I didn't do Patrick Rothfuss until I was living with you.

I don't remember the books I read 11 years ago. I barely remember the books I read two days ago. Well, I don't ever remember you read this one at download if you're not doing too badly. I still not finished Fountainhead. Speaking of remembering books, we've read. Yeah, that's what we're here for. All right, let's make a podcast so I can go and get some medication. Let's make a podcast, Francine. Oh, wait. Hello. Wait, sorry, hold on. I've left my book in the other room again. So, speaking of remembering books, we've read. Let's make a podcast. I've remembered, you know. Speaking of remembering to bring the book to the podcast,

you know what they say, you can bring a book to a podcast, but you can't make it. Stay on topic for more than five minutes. Hello, and welcome to The Tree Shall Make You Fret, a podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is our final bit of discussion on the Bromeliad as we talk. Wings. Wings. Flying now. Time for fly. Time for flying. Note on spoilers. Before we get started, we are a spoiler light podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book Wings and the Bromeliad trilogy. But we will avoid spoiling any major

events, future or otherwise in the Discworld series for the sake of this. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Clinging uncomfortably to the back of a goose. I also fucked that up and forgot to mention that we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear journey, can come on the listener with us. Well, that's a sentence we just said. Trying to take the piss out of you and just double down, take the piss out of myself. Fantastic. That's me right. Let's go. Can only go up from here. No, it can't. Much like our known friends. Are we got anything to follow up on? I've got follow up. Have you got follow up? You go first, then, because I've got to get the webpage.

Cool. Listener Lily Vanilly, who's a lovely listener who sent us Agstones, that one. Oh, yeah. Our local friendly, not our local Hedgewich on Hawthorne Trees. Oh. Apparently, it will be out soon. When the Hawthorne leaves first come on the trees, they're a good snack. If you're out and your belly is rumbling, eating a small handful will kind of trick your senses into feeling like you've had food. They have a sharp dry creaminess about them that you could confuse with cheese if you haven't eaten for a while. Excellent, and it's good to know. Thank you, Lily, for the context. One Tumblr person who messages me, what do you call someone who you talk to? Correspondent. Correspondent. Our one Tumblr correspondent.

Oh, God. It's really a lot more apparent when I try and have a conversation, just how bad it is. Yeah. Told us about statues under the sea, because I was going on about how I like that idea. So Luxa says, have you heard of that one Italian guy who sank a bunch of marble statues off the coast of Tuscany to protect marine life? It keeps illegal trawlers from doing that, both because it's an art installation now that's to be protected and by literally making it impossible to trawl without getting the next caught up in a huge-ass statue. No, I had not heard of that. I was very pleased to, and Luxa even was kind enough to link it for us. So they did my research for me. Thank you. And yeah, it's really cool. And I will link to that in the show notes.

So thank you. Awesome. I'm going to statues. That's a new thing I know I like. Thank you, cool guy in Tuscany. You've got the excuse of not being medicated. I'm just like this. I'm sorry. I am contagiously incompetent. Onwards and upwards then. Yes, better had. What happened last time? Stuff. Previously on the Bramilliad. The gnomes are caught between a rock and a hard place as they deal with the dual dangers of winter and humankind. While a few intrepid optimists traipse off to fine Florida, the rest of the crew are left to cope with a religious uprising followed by a rapid religious down squashing and the humans herd of heavy machinery. After a brief train track

tangent and rabbit hole interlude, the new gnomish leaders take control of Jacob, whose monstrous jaws lead the charge into... Oh, bugger. Oh, never mind. Here comes a UFO. Beautiful. It's lucky these aren't for people who haven't read it. I don't make much of an effort to make them got brand-simile anymore. It's all right. I'm 90% sure the previously on things started as a bit. Anyway, so tell us what happened this time, Joanna. This time on wings. We rejoin masculine girder and angelo after that unceremonious disappearance from book two as they hide in an airport bin. The thing directs them to grandson Richard 39 and they sneak onto the Concorde as masculine attempts to explain satellites.

After a brief frog interlude, the gnomes hide on the plane and the floor becomes the wall during takeoff. An eventful flight, including angelo and the thing both attempting to take the rains with varying results, leads to the intrepid Truotrio taking refuge in grandson Richard 39's carry-on luggage. The plane lands in Florida and our ragtag crew of misplaced misfits tag along to Richard's hotel as the satellite launch draws near. As the frogs travel on, masculine and co steal a sandwich and take shade outside, T minus 18 miles and four hours away from the satellite launch. Out in the Floridian wilds, our heroes meet a new band of gnomes. They lack a common language but share a meal as the thing translates from the locals close to

gnomish linguistics. NASA appears to be a local deity creatively making clouds. These somewhat nomadic gnomes have met others before and girder and the gang realise they really aren't so alone in the world. With native support, they take flight on geese to the satellite launch site or as close as they can. Pion of the Floridian gnomes joins the group as they get close to the shuttle just in time and the thing transmits itself to the satellite draining its power in the process. Masculine takes off to the launch site to get the thing some handy electricity as the shuttle doesn't quite do what the humans want. Our homesick hero reveals himself to the humans and, boxed up and on display, the thing gets charged enough to wake. He explains that

the humans believe masculine is a recent visitor to the planet and as frogs watch the moon grow brighter, the thing breaks masculine out and the ship comes into land. Masculine introduces himself to grandson Richard 39 as the ship, having acquitted and acquired Angelo and the others on route, makes a wobbly landing. As grandson Richard 39 learns that his grandfather's gnomish stories might be slightly true, masculine makes it onto the ship. The humans attempt to contact the ship futilely and masculine finds himself surrounded by gnomesized furniture as this thing steers with Angelo's help. After a brief stop in South America for some fantastic little frogs, the ship follows a returning concord to the quarry arriving just in time to catch the

conflict and catch us up to the end of Diggers. The rest of gnomes make it onto the ship and as masculine plans to find them a world of their own, Gerda stays behind with a duplicated thing, ready to set out and spread the word to the world's gnomes. Yay. Yay. Good. Did you see any loincloth? I did not see any loincloths. Oh, never mind. Moving on then. No. No. Fuck you. Fuck you. There are multiple helicopters in this book. Go on. Tell us about the helicopters. I haven't bothered to write down literally every time a helicopter is mentioned. There's like three or four though. Yeah. But the main one I've noticed is that our gnomes actually get to travel on a helicopter. Our main characters are on a helicopter.

The bit is justified. Are they? Wait, when are they on a helicopter? They go on the helicopter with Richard to get to the hotel. Oh, of course they do. Yeah. They do. What sort of track is it thing, said Gerda? It is a helicopter. Yes, and there are helicopters near the NASA space, which is why the geese can't get closer. Yes. Gerda starts to ask what keeps it up and the thing explains science. Science, good. That's all right then. Yes, exactly so. This was fun though. I enjoyed this book. It was. I think I think I liked the last one better, but I did like this one. I think I like both equally, but that's because to me it feels like it is actually just one book. Yeah, that is true.

Which is something I'm going to talk about a lot more later on. But in the meantime, quote. She says, days comes, days go. Who needs to believe anything? She sees these things happen with her own eyes and these are things she knows happen. Belief is a wonderful thing for those who need it, she says, but she knows this place belongs to NASA because its name is on signs. Handy dandy. Good old shrub. I've got, I pointed to my mouth and they understood I was hungry. Ah, said the thing. Take me to your larder. Pardon? I will explain. I have told you that I monitor communications all the time. There is a joke. That is a humorous anecdote or story known to humans. It concerns a ship from another world landing on this planet and strange creatures

get out and say to a petrol pump, dustbin, slot machine or similar mechanical device, take me to your leader. Asmise, this is because they are unaware of the shape of humans. I've substituted the similar word larder referring to a place where food is stored. This is a humorous pun or play on words for hilarious effect. I fucking love the thing. Well done thing. I love the bit where it's like, I think it wants you to tell it. It's a good boy. It wants you to tell it. He's done well. Masculine. Masculine. Yes, let's talk about the characters. Let's talk about the characters. Masculine has a journey. He does go on a journey in this one, doesn't he?

He does. Physical, psychological, spiritual. Delete as appropriate. Unlike his moment of right near the beginning, they're in the airport bin and he finally realizes he really needs to ask, he asked the thing to help them find Richard. And it's just him realizing he does have to ask for help. And then immediately sort of getting defensive with a, I don't know, you might think you don't want to help me, but you're going to help me because otherwise I'll leave you and you won't get to talk to anyone. And then you'll think, maybe I should have helped him, except it's now and you're going to help me. Yes, I almost put that down and I quote just because the idea of blackmailing the little

box is so fantastic, but yeah, the little box. But I kind of always worry about what Masculine's going to do now. I know their plan is to find worlds for gnomes, but I think he's went from not knowing there's really anything bigger to the store, to the ship and all of the universe. And every time he's just been focused on getting to the bigger place and now he's here, is it a bit like, fuck, I feel like Masculine has an existential crisis right after this book. Yeah, maybe. Although I feel like the aim has always been to find somewhere that was like designed for gnomes and the ship is probably that. So we might be able to chill out for a little bit before his crisis. Probably the safest place to have an existential crisis in the

middle of space. Yeah, I feel like that's where I would go if I had a choice. But I have too many existential crises to be going to space for all of them. Hopefully everyone's gotten over their agoraphobia because space. Yeah, well, I mean, they're in the ship though, aren't they? That's true. That's true. They've got some walls, they've got a floor. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not having to look out over wide open fields. The thing, literally all my notes on the thing are just him having very cute moments, explaining stuff to Masculine in ways you can understand. Someone with the right name is here

and waiting in a special room to get on a big silver bird that flies in the sky to go to a place called Florida. Yeah, it's for something that's meant to be just a computer. It's a bit of a dick. I love how much emotion and mood Pratchett manages to put into this pretty much inanimate object. Yes. Especially when it gets really disdainful to the other computers because they're all a bit stupid compared to it. It just keeps going on about it. It's very mean. It managed to express disdain without actually having anything to express it with. Yeah. So it uses words quite well for that as well. It does. And I think it's quite sweet about when you sort of like, oh, but I wanted to land the

plane. Yes. Yes. Well, he's a bit like Angelo in that respect, isn't he? I was going to say that kind of takes us very neatly to Angelo, who is probably one of the ones with the most in common with the thing, because really, he does just want to have a go on the plane. He does just want to have a go on the plane. He's a bit annoying throughout, but he comes into his own at the end there. He does come into his own at the end there. But yes, he's kind of irksome, but so much what he's annoying about is his conflict with Gerda, which I'm going to talk about in a bigger way later. But yes, Gerda, I think it's incredibly sweet when they get onto the Concorde and he has this huge amount of nostalgia for carpet.

Yeah, I forgot which book it was for a second. And the carpet wasn't that big of a deal, I mean. Oh, yeah, compared to the carpet people. Yeah, yeah. It's a bigger deal. And there's also, I think I mentioned back when we were talking about the first one that I couldn't really remember anything about these books apart from one single moment. And that moment was Gerda cutting the hole in his sock. Oh, really? That's the bit you remembered. I like that. I don't know why that stuck in my brain.

He sees grandson Richard 39's Holy Socks and then immediately, well, not immediately, but then feels better by cutting a hole in his own sock. Reminds me of Regina George and everyone cutting. Oh, the holes are in the tank top. And everyone just happened to have really nicely coloured bras that fit them perfectly. Yeah, yeah. That's what you get when you go to Hollywood High School. What a decent bra fitting. Also, this was that time in the early 2000s that everyone's bra strap showed, so they probably were.

Oh, yeah, it was always like tank top and a mini skirt, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, like bright pink bra. As opposed to my late 2000s jeans and a nice top wardrobe. Yeah. Felt very sophisticated whenever I wore jeans and a nice top. I know. I always wanted to fend ourselves against Janet, not Gen X. They don't really bother with anything. Gen Z.

When they're like, oh, study 2011 fashion, look at the state of them. I wanted to fend myself, but honestly, no, it was a bad time for fashion. However, I do agree with the resurgence of Y2K fashion. Bits of it I approve of. I would not like to discuss how many skinny scarves I owned. They don't appear to have come back, luckily. Yeah. And the low-rise jeans thing was never really something I could relate to. I prefer low-rise jeans.

It took me a long time to get on board with any kind of high-waisted jeans. I'm not shaped for low-rise jeans. I didn't understand the new concept. It was quite a revelation when I did, but... Anyway. Anyway, what the fuck are we talking about? Gerda. Gerda, he has a very good crisis of faith.

I like actually getting to see that vulnerability in him when he's talking to the thing. And it's not even so much he doesn't know what to believe in. It's that he doesn't know why he should be believing in something. Like his belief in Arnold Brose back in the store was because that was obviously the way things were. And then obviously he's going through this existential thing because of all the changes he's been through and this journey he's been on. Yeah.

His spiritual journey. Spiritual journey. But he's... Yeah. I like his eventual kind of clicking into place that... What was the priest of the other tribe called? Top-not. Top-not, yeah.

That he and they were very similar people, basically. Yeah. He kind of realized that he's basically just met himself and it makes him a lot less combative. And then when he finally decides to do what they're doing, what he does that he wants to stay behind and find the other gnomes, it's like he finally has something to believe in that has a purpose. He's not believing in a higher power.

He's believing in gnomes. Yeah. It's the higher purpose, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. And in the ship, which is the closest he's got to a higher power, and that's more he needs to almost make it a religion for the rest of the gnomes to organize them and get them into one place so they can get on the ship eventually.

Yeah. That's nice. I like it. It's an interesting concept or an interesting conclusion that they came to anyway, that this isn't just our ship. This is... We have to go get all the other gnomes we've never heard of. That's a nice conclusion.

It is a nice conclusion. Yeah. Grandson Richard, the unexpected hero of our, I say unexpected, of course not. He is, of course, my hero, post-reformal, et cetera. Yeah. The protagonist, antagonist, romantic interest, et cetera. And the power behind the throne. I just really love when he finally speaks to Masculine and realizes that his grandfather

always talked about the little people in the walls of the shop. Yeah. It just happens to be the one person who's going to be most receptive to all of this. Yeah. And it's after the gnomes go through the whole book with this fear of being put in boxes and kept as pets to finally find someone who does know of them as just a story and does not put him in a box.

Yes, whereas the scientists who, in theory, smarter immediately do the whole inner tank. Inner tank. And then, yeah, we have top-notch shrub, pion and the Florida gnomes, which is what I'm naming my band. Vaguely problematic description, otherwise very cool little tribe. I like that they walk around like geese in little v-formations. I like that they picked up this habit from the geese and that do it properly. If I was gnomesized, I would not go near a fucking goose.

Well, they're nice if you bond with them early, aren't they, Sue? Oh, yeah, I suppose if you raise them from Goslings. Goslings? Yeah, Goslings. They do the imprinting thing. Oh, yeah, I suppose so. Shrubs got that granny morky old woman properly in charge thing. But I like more in this.

Yeah, no, I'm not sure it is the same thing. I think she's in charge. It's not just like, oh, she's in charge of top-notch. So, Mary, she seems to be the leader of the tribe, top-notch, just the priest. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it's a different dynamic, but it's still that thing of the woman in power. Yeah, I don't think it's the tribe really. It's just she's in charge of this.

But I like she's got the similar attitude of sort of, no, it's fine. I'm just, I'm right. Now, let's go on and get on with things. And then Pion, who I think is quite sweet. And I do enjoy as he's leaving them to go off with our gnomes. And someone's like, oh, you know, we don't want to do long goodbyes. It's like, yeah, I'm ready to go. What do you want?

Yeah, yeah. It's the distance thing, I assume, is just because they've got the geese. And they just don't consider like a season separation to be much of anything. Yeah, they're used to this traveling thing. Yeah, that's nice. And he's very smart, doesn't stop to argue with people, just runs when necessary. Yeah. And he's only 14 months old.

He's already been to Alaska. Well, quite. I wonder if he'll ever visit printed in Hong Kong. And Grima, briefly, we only get her rise at the end. We get her kind of reuniting with Masculine, catching him up. And I like Masculine's sort of realization of humans ought to thank us for getting here on time. Yeah, the internal power. She crackled with so much internal power that she was nearly throwing off sparks.

Yeah, I like that she's happy with the frogs. I like that. I'm glad she gets to see the frogs. And that she gets to think of it as one of the greatest things in the world. Yes, they have to be a little smart ass, don't they? It's like, well, probably not the greatest thing in the world. So come on, mate, just let it be. I like the women enjoy her fucking frogs.

Locations, Concord. Concord, yeah. I wanted to talk about it briefly, because context, context. My first note is that it says it's six hours. Concord was like three hours. That was the whole thing. Yeah, so it was a supersonic airliner. And it had a maximum speed over twice the speed of sound.

And it would make the London to New York run in three and a half hours rather than the usual six. Yeah, but I think it says it's six and a half. Yeah, why use Concord? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe they didn't on supersonic runs, I don't know. No, the point was that it always flew at that thing and then stopped being particularly successful, because people stopped being willing to pay that much for air travel eventually,

especially after 9-11 and after one blew up on a runway and killed everyone on it. Yes. There was a brief rabbit hole for me. And then I realized that we didn't need it. I did not write about all that before. No, I like obviously I was aware of Concord and that it was really fast. Yeah, I mean like the big flat crash and all that. No, no, I don't know how.

I guess you're not as into plane crashes as I am. Yeah, I spend less time on the disaster subreddits, not no time but less. I'm sad I never got to go on Concord. I got to go, not like fly on Concord, but I got to like have a look on one, because they had one on display, like a museum piece at Duxford. I think I don't know if they still do, but they did for a bit. It is weird. It's one of the few examples where I think we've definitely gone backwards in technology.

It's like we can do this and now we won't. I feel like a lot of it is to do with how expensive it is. I know it never fully recouped. It's like initial construction costs. There was a fleet of like not many of them. I think it was like 20 odd. So like an individual journey would pay for itself and make a profit, but they never made enough money to like get back all of the costs of creating them in the first place.

I see. Yeah, that makes sense. And then obviously, like I said, there's only so much people are willing to pay to fly. And it was like, I think it was something like 20% on top of like a first class flight. Oh, God, yeah. No, yeah. Yeah, that's a lot. But yeah, I like how they've got all droopy noses on the runway.

Yes. When they're taxiing around. So people can see over them. Cute. And then, yes, we go to Florida. Yes, we do. Which I enjoy the kind of introduction to Florida because it reads like a footnote. Like I think if this had been a different book, this would have been a footnote, which is, you know,

most inhabitants call it Florida. And then, well, they don't, they don't call it anything because they have six legs and bars or have eight legs or have four legs and bark or move or lion swamps pretending to be logs. Dogs, all of those are dogs. Yes, yes. I've known many a dog, lion, a swamp and pretend to be a log. Yep, Floridian mooing swamp dogs. Also a good band name.

Floridian mooing swamp dogs. Yeah, it's a, obviously we go to Florida because that's where NASA lives. But the Everglades is a fun place to visit. I like the, the realization was like, you didn't tell us about alligators. Like there's some real oversight. So there's like considering the thing, its entire existence revolves around these little gnomes staying alive. Yeah.

It was like, didn't bother telling you about alligators or to get out of the way of these jets or. Well, it's just, it's not quite thinking everything through. Yeah, understandable, I suppose. But like just the general survival of the little gnomes might be a good idea. But also, if you think about, if you mentioned alligators to say, Angela and Gerda, then you have to explain them and then you have to listen to an argument about them. It might just be more efficient not to mention the alligators.

That's true. That's true. Yeah. Speaking of alligators, ship. The ship, we finally get on the big gnomership that's been buried on the moon. Which is an excellent place for it to be. I like that as a little revelation. I enjoy that the ship has been hiding on the moon.

It's so difficult to imagine the sheer scale of it. I think I talked about it when it turns up at the end of diggers and kind of blots out the sun as well. Because it's fucking massive, but also it's fucking massive from the perspective of the gnomes who were having the sun blots out for them. Yeah. I was imagining just independence day, basically. Yeah. That's fair.

My favorite description, possibly of anything ever, not just of the ship, is it was as featureless as an egg. I can't do weird about eggs. I don't know why, but that's just one of the funniest sentences I've ever read. Yeah, it is. It's very effective too, isn't it? Although, I feel like that's the kind of thing, practically, we'll put a little footnote on and say, but of course, there's your bleached kind of egg that you find in the supermarket. If you find an egg in Nanny Ogg's backyard, it's speckled, covered in shit and feathers.

I'm just going to start describing more things with as an egg, not necessarily in a relevant way, as brave as an egg. Yes, yeah, like I do with a bee. Yes, I like that. Yes. And let people just try and work it out. Because the thing is, if you say as a, for most things, it sounds like it does fit. Yeah, people are just excited.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, as gullibly as an egg. As gullible as an egg, as slow as a concord. It would be as gullible as an orange, I suppose, wouldn't it? That's the traditional. A seven foot as an alligator. Exactly, same. And as happy as a bee. And as happy as a bee.

So yeah, I think those were the only major locations. Yeah, I think so. I don't think we need no in-depth discussion of the airport bin. Or the hotel room. Or the hotel room. Although the thing's interpretation of Grantham, Richard 39's performance of My Way. Yes. I assumed a shower curtain.

Yes, he's facing some sort of curtain. How long will the human be wetting himself? Showering. Yeah, I didn't, down for work, play on this one because it's not as much of a focus, but that was the private example. It was exactly the silly sort of funny that I needed in my brain this week. This was the good victory. The silly as an egg.

As conceptual as an egg. Little bits we liked. Little bits we liked. I have been watching Green Planet by David Attenborough's thingy, you know. Yeah. And the documentary does a bunch of time lapses and movement tracking time lapses. It's all very cool to show interaction of plants almost like in an animal way. And it just reminded me very much of the different time scales that you see,

names and humans, and in other project books like Mayflies and Counting Bines. Nice. And so I'm just recommending everyone go watch Green Planet and enjoy plants looking really creepy. I need to watch it. I do. High player is so bad at promoting its own stuff, it really is. I heard it's through fucking TikTok.

High player is just badly designed full stop. It's a piece of shit. So, frightened of heights, Joanna? It's a very silly moment early on where they're explaining that you can't be hanging on the outside of an airplane because the air is too thin. You get lots of air low down and not much when you go up. Why not so good? I don't know.

It's frightened of heights, I guess. Yeah. I wasn't sure if it was that like when the names realiser and a plane that is higher than the clouds. Yes. I love that moment too. And not long after that, we've got Masculine, his map from a pocket diary, which was in one of the other books in the name of faraway places, Africa, Australia, China, Equator, printed in Hong Kong, Iceland.

I just like the idea of everything written on a map being... A place. Absolutely. Being a place, yes. Key, the mysterious land of key, I'm sure. Full of symbols. Here are the telephone boxes in the OS map. I love OS maps.

I don't know why, they're so oddly satisfying. I love them. I've got one for our local area and I've got a Victoria, not a Victorian, quite a late, oh yeah, maybe Victoria, late 1800s version of the same map. Oh, of course, you can compare the two. Yeah. And then the other one I've got quite soon after that is when... Sorry.

Yes. Masculine has once thrown peanut away and we say, sorry, I mean, you shouldn't, it's wrong to waste good food. It's wicked, said Gerta, primly. Don't know about wicked, said Masculine, but it's stupid. I like the moral... Like Masculine just kind of gently pushing back against the moralizing of common sense. Yeah.

Which of course has got his talent and one he's going to have to use to get the names on board, literally. But in this case... Unnecessary in this situation. Yeah, yeah. It's not wicked to leave this behind, it is just not very clever. Overstoring governments, Trina. I thought we were doing that tomorrow, not so.

No, I think I had to pencil that in for Wednesday because I'm going to see my grandmother on Tuesday. That's right. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, it's when they're going to pass through immigration and customs and the things doing the sort of, you know, what have you ever been a member of a subversive organization? Yes. Wait, no.

Do we want to waver through the government? No, I don't think we do. Very clever to ask people when they arrive though, if someone was going to come here and do some subversive overthrow, everyone would be down on him like a pound of bricks as soon as he said yes. Now, I'm sure that there's a good reason, but no, I'm not sure there is. I expect there's a good reason that they have these questions, something like, even if they can't get you legally for being a member of whatever it is, the Communist Party, they can get you for lying about it.

Yes, something along those lines. I mostly like it because then later, you know, Angelo is saying, that's a good idea to ask because then, you know, you know, if something's coming in. But then later on... Doesn't occur, they might lie. They're discussing, should they send a message to the Concorde and say, like, don't worry, we haven't got lots of teeth and tentacles. And Angelo is saying, well, if I had teeth and tentacles all over the place,

that's the sort of message I would send, it's cunning. So, you know, he has thought about both sides of this by this point. He has, yes. Good old Angelo. He did mention his wife again to talk about how she liked dresses. So... Yeah, yeah, we're not doing well on the Angelo's wife front. I might clarify that I said wife front there.

And I'm not speculating about his underwear. Wife and space at front. Not his wife fronts. Oh, yeah. And the last one, I could have had literally any of the quotes from a scientific encyclopedia for the inquiring young man by Angelo. I love that. But my favorite is satellites.

They are in space and stay there by going so fast, they never stay in one place long enough to fall down. Televisions have bounced off them. They are part of science. Exactly. Speaking as someone who expoints to everything I don't understand and then says in capital, science. This was my favorite one.

Geese, a type of bird which is slower than E.G. Concord. Like me, I'm slower than E.G. Concord. I mean, he's not wrong. He's not wrong. Many things are slower than Concord. I like the idea of writing a whole encyclopedia or just cyclopedia maybe full of unhelpful comparisons like that. Like a microbe, a single celled organism smaller than E.G. the Empire State Building.

Sheep, a domesticated animal stupider than E.G. Isaac Newton. I'll tell you what. I've never had to rescue Isaac Newton from being tangled in bail time. I mean, you haven't had to do that with a sheep either. Look, we're married. Your husband, on the other hand. Legally, I also untangle those sheep. That's how marriage works.

Yes. You get half of the untangling sheep. Yes. If we divorce, I get half of the rescued sheep even though they don't belong to him. I get half of the karma. For rescuing sheep? Yeah. How much good karma do you get for rescuing sheep?

I mean, I feel like... Oh, a bit. More than E.G. setting fire to an orphanage. This is already my new favourite podcast bit. All right. Let's go to talking points. Do you want to talk about frogs, Francine? Yeah, briefly, and then a bunch of other crap too.

So they, for me, they add the whole kind of theme. The flower frog ecosystem. Yes. I'm devastated to tell you that there aren't any frogs that spend their entire lives living in a flower. They do do all of their development in the flower, but they tend to move out of their tiny little pool after they've grown into frogs. There are some who live just around the same plants the whole time. Yeah.

But there'll be like a few that they go between. Because obviously like breeding and that wouldn't work very well without that. You get all in bread and that. However. Literally the gene pool. Yes. I was reading about the difference between common, solistic and mutualistic relationships, which they were trying to work out,

they being scientists, whether they're frogs in the Bromeliads or this or that. And so common solistic is when it benefits, say in this case, the frogs to live in the plant, it doesn't really benefit the plant, but it doesn't hurt the plant. But they think it might be mutualistic because when like a tadpole dies or when there's excrement or whatever, it adds nutrients to the flower. To the plant. So that might be quite cool. There's a few different types of frogs that live around these plants.

The golden frogs are the prettiest they want to talk about in here. There's also some other cool plant, frogs that live in plants. There aren't many cool plants that live in frogs. And there's a fungus that lives in a frog that we don't like at all. But the Bornean cornorus frog, maximum 19 millimeters, lives in picture plants. You know, there's like. Yeah. Canivorous ones.

Yeah. So I guess they're just like, they don't. Eat the frogs. Yeah. Somehow. But they were very cool. Say 19 millimeters though. It's the smallest one in South America, I think.

But there's a small one somewhere else. And anyway, so just microclimate, not microclimate. Microhabitats. I really like microhabitats. They're very cool things. I mean, obviously, Bromeliads, a very cool example. But also like just the underside of a log and that stuff you did school. Like the lichen is one of those things that scientists always go around.

It's like, oh, there's a 10 new species of lichen on this one underside of a rock. Because this rock has a slightly different pH than the moorland surrounding it, which is very cool. And then one that I particularly enjoyed was, I've definitely talked about before on the podcast, the elephant footprints. Researchers in Uganda, I think the study that blew up in loads of news stories, was they found that elephant footprints fill up with water. And then they play an ecological role.

So they become microhabitats for like at least 60 odd different microinvertebrates, beetles, mayflies, tadpoles. And then, yeah, it's very cool. But then what I haven't talked about, another more recent study found that frogs in Myanmar depend on elephants, Asian elephants. Their flooded tracks become amphibian pathways, predator-free, breeding grounds and condos. Yeah, I think it's cool.

And then going all of it metaphorical, because otherwise I'd just be listing facts about animals. Microhabitats. Yeah. I was thinking about the people, the bromeliads, which should lead into to what you were thinking about them, I think. I don't know, it's like the kind of time perception as well. So on the time scale of the universe, are we still in that instant of the little frog

just looking over the edge of the paddle for the first time? Because it's only quite recently, I'd say 50s is when we discovered super clusters, or first theorized them. And then 80s, I think, was when we started looking bigger than super clusters. And I was reading recently about galaxy filaments, which are the largest known structures in the universe. And they're these massive thread-like formations with void in between. And they can reach 80 megaparsecs, which is 160 to 260 million light-years,

which is quite cool. But yeah, it's just this one paragraph from a random astrophysics wiki page, the organization of structure arguably begins at the stellar level, by most cosmologists rarely address astrophysics on that scale. Stars are organized into galaxies, which in turn form galaxy groups, galaxy clusters, super clusters, sheets, walls, and filaments, which are separated by immense voids, creating a vast foam-like structure sometimes called the cosmic web. Wow.

And I'm like, oh, fuck, little frog, little frog on the petals. Picking over the edge. This is like, I think astrophysics is just generally, genuinely this moment in time of the humans going, cool. Oh, no. But oh, yes. Yeah, exactly. One day we'll have like a proper language.

But for now, we're just going, meet, meet. Meet, meet. Oh, no. Meet, meet. Yes. Anyway, I enjoyed reading about tiny little environments and then massive fuck-off environments. Excellent.

Well, there's definitely an existential crisis in there somewhere. Yep. I'm a bit tired for an existential crisis, if we can have one just before we overthrow the government. Okay, yes. So like Wednesday morning existential crisis, Wednesday afternoon overthrow the government. Do you want to get like coffee on Thursday?

Yes. Yeah, I think we'll need one. Yeah, nice. Yeah. Okay, cool. But yeah, the Frogs is a writing device. So I have, I talked a bit last week about the fact that diggers feels like it's kind of a subplot to wings.

And it feels like originally it was all one book. And I've kind of got arguments on both sides for whether I think it would work better if it was all in one book or whether it works better divided. Catching up, one book catching up to the events, the other is a thing I kind of like, but I diggers feel so B-plotty to me that a lot of it has parallels. But one reason I think this works better is its own book, because it obviously gets to spread out, has more time to read. And it means you can have the Frogs as this kind of

sub-device slash B-plot. And it works so well because they parallel as they go along. You have like early on, you have the Frogs taking their first steps over the edge of the branch as the gnomes are at the airport. And getting to the edge of the branch, I'm going, mip, mip. Just as the gnomes take flight, I really love it as a writing device of taking this huge thing the gnomes are doing, but scaling it right down into the Frogs, leaving their micro habitat

and peeking over the edge for the first time, as the gnomes peek over the edge of the galaxy for the first time. Exactly what you were saying, but I love how it parallels in this book. Yeah, it's really nicely done. And that kind of takes me into all the main stuff I wanted to talk about, which is the gnomes dealing with their level of importance in the world. Again, not to go too existential, but like starting with the Angelo and Gerda conflict as it goes along, kind of not wanting to think about

whether Arnold Bros were just humans and the store was made for humans. And fighting about it, Angelo wanting Arnold Bros to exist just so he can be more resolute in not believing in him in the way that most stubborn atheists on the disc world would do. And getting close, as they keep fighting about it, really fighting about what matters, what they're doing, why they're here, just to keep it nice and light and happy to talk about. And as they're talking about, this is much later on.

And Angelo explaining that heat comes from the sun as well as light. And it's this big ball of fire in the sky and Gerda's sort of like, what's keeping it up there? He says, nothing, it's just sort of there. And he's like, is this generally known? Is it a book? I call that irresponsible, anyone could read that. That's the sort of thing that could really upset people. It is, it did. As you know, it's called the galaxy or something.

Personally, I'm against it. The Glaxie. The Glaxie. But he says, you want to drive things fast. I want to make sense of them. You want to know that there are thousands of suns. I want to know why there are thousands of suns. And it's this finding their place in a big world.

It's a beautiful thing to read in this, especially if you think about this as this parallel to Diggers and think about one running as a B-plot of the other. That's exactly what they're doing in Diggers is trying to fight for their place in the world. And find themselves really lost and frustrated that they can't keep it. Even that tiny little corner, yeah. Exactly. And I'm masculine, trying to work out how old grandson Richard 39 is. And thinking about the fact he must be as old as the world.

Yeah, that sounds right. And what that must be like. Because the lacking perspective, it's that de-familiarization thing on the bigger, I don't know, existential level. So we've got lots of folies. There's many pages where things back up. I don't even really have an argument. Muscle and feeling frustrated because he feels like they're just kind of rats or mice.

Yeah. Yeah. That they were effectively just another non-essential thing to the store, and it wasn't built for them. Although we never really believed in the store the same way they did, there's a difference between not really believing it and really being confronted with the fact that your mind are not important. It's what we were talking about last week, that kind of fear of...

Yeah. And well, Grima goes ballistic about it. Masculine just kind of gets this grim, all right, we better go find somewhere else then, haven't we? I think the difference between the... Masculine's got more of the context from the thing. He really does know that they're going to find somewhere else, whereas Grima is kind of stuck with, okay, but where the fuck can I go?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's very much cornered. And as a kind of sitting next door to this thing, when Granta Richard gets picked up at the airport and the thing's translating, all the rest of it was just the things humans say to each other to make sure that they're still alive. Oh, it was such a nice quote, wasn't it? Yeah.

Things like, how are you and have a nice day? And what do you think of this weather then? Which I was really strongly reminded of yesterday, because yesterday was obviously the worst day of the storm, and the casual UK subreddit was just lots of people posting. Bit windy in it. Yeah, flowy out. Look, I've got a new bin.

I've got two rambolines. I think there's something specific in A. Britain has this weird thing where there's loads of tiny microclimates, but if a weather event happens, it happens across the whole country because the country's so small, which means you can kind of see everyone having the same silly chat about the weather, and it is those noises we make to each other to sort of go, we're still alive and we're in this together.

Well, it's one of the reasons I do still love the internet. It's just, you know, pandemic as well on a much larger scale, wasn't it, with just all of the silly little jokes and the being genuinely sad and angry, and just, you know, all the tweets and Reddit posts, and who else is making bread then? And God is weird how we're all peering around each other on pavements, isn't it? And how everybody said hello to each other in the street during lockdown.

Because it was a bit like, obviously less happy, but being on the streets during the lockdown was a lot like when it's Christmas Day and it's really empty. So of course you acknowledge someone because it's the only other person. Yeah. Hi, still alive. There's also a lot of bullshit on the internet around the pandemic, but there's little things where we were nice to each other.

Yeah, yeah. Just reading like a little bulletin board. Yeah, but yeah, I'm sorry, back on this though. The other reason I think that these books kind of work better, almost as one book, is the equivalence to the fairy fear in this. Okay. You know, grima. Tell me about fairy fear.

Well, it's that consistent fear grima has through diggers, this fear of being turned into a flower fairy, being put in a stupid outfit. Right. I thought we were going to go about humans being scared of fairies again back in the lords and ladies context. No, I mean, this is gnomes being scared of being fairies. Yes.

Yes. Hopefully at some point we'll get to talk about creepy fey and stuff again, because you know, I love a creepy fairy. Shoe hornet in somewhere. That's fine. Oh, absolutely. When they're getting out of the hotel room, when Richard's kind of confronted with them,

a masculine stops for a second and he's like, I could stay. It's the time it's pausing and it's one of those points in history. Anything I could stay, I could explain, I could ask for help. But he might trap us and we'll be put in a cage and be prodded and they won't understand. They didn't want to hurt us. They just didn't understand what we were

and we haven't got time to let them find out. And it's this massive realization if we are in their world, they are not in ours. Yeah. Yeah. And if we get trapped, there's just nothing we can do. Yeah. And that is like a point of no return

if we have to get to that point. And he justifies it to Gerda a few pages later of, you know, he'd have given us a proper meal and taken us home in a shoebox or carried us around in his pocket. And of course, eventually masculine does take all of those risks. He lets himself be captured because he needs the thing and climbs into a pocket.

And he climbs into a pocket and he does speak to Richard and has Richard translate and he's not kept. But that's because by that point he has the confidence of like either the ships, if the ship's coming, the ship's coming and I will get on the ship. On the first episode, by the way, I remember saying that I was going to slow down some audio to see what humans sounded like.

And I did do that and it's just really annoying and I'm not going to put that in the podcast. But if anyone wants to, just let your own voice down by 10 times. Sorry, carry on. Don't listen to our voices slow down 10 times. They're annoying enough as we are. All right, speak to yourself. I'm mostly mine.

I have to edit my own voice all the time. I'm so used to it now. I'm more used to it now. I listen to the podcast every week when we're about to release it. I still don't get people who listen to podcasts on like 1.5 speed. I know there are people that do and I hate it.

I've done it for like tutorial videos. When I did that, did about a month course, the same one you did. I did a lot of that 1.5. Instructional videos are often quite slow. And my brain won't work that it just wanders off if it's not. Well, it's probably why I like hyper pop. Yeah, that's fair. But my last point on this, you know,

as Masculine only is willing to reveal himself to humans, and, you know, he comes to this massive conclusion of, okay, we really are in their world. We have to find something else because we cannot have a world here. Yes. There's a great line about humans believing that they're the most important people.

They think they're the most important creatures on the planet. The planet. On the carrot. On the planet, sorry. I'm right at where the most important creatures on the carrot. Well, it's something that's smaller than the universe, E.G., a carrot, yeah. Oh.

I'm sorry. I'm going to take a small interruption because I didn't say when you said, you don't have an annoying voice, Joe, it's fine. I edit your voice all the time. So, it does seem... Thank you. Yeah, I forgot to argue against you because I got stuck.

What character we are? I'm sorry. I'm so tired. A carrot bigger than human importance, E.G., the Empire State Building. Thank you. And then masculine sort of going, well, everyone knows, well, gnomes know

that gnomes are more important. And I think that's the spot where he suddenly relates to humans for a second. Yes. He was like, oh, fuck, we just are all caught in our own self-importance, aren't we? And I kind of like that. Yeah, it's like when Fractured points out that everybody's word for their own tribe is the people.

Yeah. The real people. It's a nice moral to the book that no one really got the hubris they needed. Yeah. Do I even mean hubris? Humility. Yeah, they had lots of hubris.

Yeah. Anyway, what did you put? Oh, yeah, what do you think their original planet is like? Yeah. So, I was thinking like, well, A, when they get back, I don't know how long it's going to take them to get there, but it's going to be nice to have a world that's on the scale for them,

but they're going to come across as fucking rubes. Yeah. Like, it's going to be really tricky. Because it's going to be so technologically advanced, it must have been if they were able to build this ship in the first place. Yeah. I mean, they're clearly quick at picking up these concepts

and things, and I guess maybe there'd be very gnome-oriented ways of teaching, but they'll have to be like primary school. Yeah, and then I was just wondering, like, on a general, there's like a smaller planet. I mean, it must have similar gravity, probably, wouldn't it? I was going to say, it must have a similar gravity and environment to Earth,

because that's what they survive in. Yeah. So, would it be like a planet the same size, but I feel like the flora and fauna might be smaller? Yes. Yeah, or they'd be like geographic. They'd treat them like geography, yeah. Yeah.

If they were bigger. But yeah, everything on a smaller scale, maybe it's a less oxygen-rich planet, slightly. I don't know. Imagine if they had little dogs. Oh, I hope they have little dogs. Yeah. Sorry, that's not really helpful.

I'm just now mentioning really tiny dogs. Oh, a little tiny desk dog. Yes, I was just, like, mildly thinking to myself. And they're all very... I'm not sure if it's just because they've been living in holes, and I think I'm thinking like masculine, when he gets told off by the thing, he's like, no, that's just primitive belief.

It's not reading it for everything. I was like wondering if maybe they have a different color, sky or something, but probably not if it's the same atmosphere, I guess. Boring. I feel like not everything would be exactly the same. And again, I'd be curious about how the technological advancement affects the state of the planet.

Like, is it all big, tiny, futuristic cities? That's true. Maybe they'll go back and find out everyone's white themselves. Yeah, true. They might have to just start again on a completely empty planet. The simple trilogy would be very depressing. I'm into it. Yes, that was just a general speculation.

That's a nice little speculation. Do you have an obscure reference for Neil? I do. It's Dan Creil. Creil. Creil. Have you heard of this guy? No.

Okay, so the reference is that when they're overhearing the humans talk about the spaceship, one of them says, the other humans around it are trying to explain what a planet is. Doesn't it know? Many humans don't. Mr. Vice President is one of them. And the annotated Pratchett file says, I don't think anybody in the Western world would not have caught this reference to Dan

Creil, but let's face it, in 20 years people will still be reading Pratchett and hopefully this APF, but who'll remember Mr. Vice President? Annotation update in 2008. It is a bit scary for me to realize, but as I write this update, no less than 15 of these 20 years have passed since I first wrote the above paragraph. And now it is, again, another 10, not 10. What am I trying to say here? 12.

No, 14. Fuck. 14 years. So, yes, the 20 years have come and gone. And yeah, I had no idea who that was, so I looked it up. And he is, was, is? No, I don't think he's dead. He was George Bush's Vice President, but the first one, HW.

George Bush Senior. Yeah. And, oh, God, I'm sorry. Where's my little quote? There's a long wiki page. There we go. So what makes it relevant, I think, as Dan Creil was like known for the gaffes, you know, like George Bush Jr. would eventually be known for that kind of thing.

Shortly after Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative, which included a crewed landing on Mars, crewed as in with a crew, not crewed, yeah. Land on the Mars and draw a giant dig. Kyle was asked his resource on sending humans to Mars. In his response, he made a series of scientifically incorrect statements. Mars is essentially in the same orbit as Earth. Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We've seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water.

If there is water, that means there was oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe. This is the 80s. This isn't like very Bradbury era. Yeah. That's, that's beautiful. Isn't it though? Yeah.

But I realized I had heard of him and had forgotten his name, and that the gaff that became like the issue for him later on was during an elementary school spelling bee where he altered 12-year-old student William Figueroa's correct spelling of potato, toothed potato with an E on the end, and then that like made national news. I mean, don't get me wrong. I will sometimes accidentally put an E on the end of potato, but I'm never confident about it. Exactly.

Yeah. It's the confidence to correct somebody else. Beautiful. Canals on Mars. Hey, I quite liked that. Yeah. The Amur State of Practical Fire was so confident that people would get it. And then we're like, oh, wait, no, 20 years, maybe not.

So I wonder, I wonder what everyone will have forgotten in 20 years about our current state. Hopefully everything. I hope to forget. Hopefully we will get like men in black. Collective amnesia. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Well, I think that's everything we can say about our terrific trilogies. I think it probably is, yes. Probably. That was better than expected. I mean, some of those sentences were pretty much understandable. A lot of yours were. Thank you. Thank you.

We definitely did say some sentences. Sorry, I was just double checking what book we were doing next. I'd say the podcast was more comprehensible than EG the Indus Valley writings that we haven't managed to decipher yet. And more cohesive than EG Sheep. Yes. Sorry, I don't know why I've now decided to just dunk on sheep for the rest of the podcast, but it's happening and I'm sticking to it.

That's fine. You know, they can't get you. Yeah, but they can't do stairs, can they? Glare at me angrily. All right. Out trust, Joe. Out trust, right. The rest from here.

Thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Two Shall Make You Fret. We are going to take a little week off and we will be back. We are talking next month about the last continent, the final one. So we'll be back on the 7th of March to talk about that in the meantime. Rincewind's coming back and we are going on a trip to a place. There are pies in it. There are pies. In the meantime, dear listener, you can follow us on Instagram,

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that you've ever met about us. Yes, people don't like you for it, but we might get more listeners. We might, but only say nice things about us because we're very sensitive. That's true. And in the meantime, dear listener, the ship curved up towards the stars and below the world stopped unrolling because it reached its edges and became a black disc against the sun. Names and frogs looked down on it and the sunlight caught it

and made it glow around the rim, sending rays up into the darkness so that it looked exactly like a flower. Definitely not dragging this out because I forgot to have the last page open. No, you're good. You're good. It's fine. Nobody's noticed.