The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 77: The Last Continent Pt. 1 (A Ridcully Stan Podcast)

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

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 “The Last Continent”. Island discovery! Suspected skulduggery! Helpful shrubbery!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:A beginners guide to Esperanto -The GuardianThe Last Continent - Colin SmytheDid scientists really quantum entangle tardigrades? - Cosmos MagazineBlack Crow - Culture VictoriaCreation Stories - Taungurung Land & Waters CouncilDiscworld Podcasts - Read-through index - L-Space WikiSpeed - RadiolabFrancine reviewing Medieval depictions of elephantsBurke and Wills - National Museum of AustraliaBurke and Wills' fatal error - Bush TelegraphJam Fakers - bizarrevictoria (LiveJournal)---Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

It's like a fascinator. It's fascinating. That's what I was going for. What did we talk about on Saturday? I've forgotten that everything that's happened has both followed us for the last month. I have just been talking about code a lot, like to the point where I worry, I feel obnoxious, but up to the amount of time I've been spending studying over the last couple of weeks, and my brain is like, just C++ now. That's cool. I mean, if you're going to talk about it with anyone,

talking about it with me and Sterling is probably good because he knows what you're on about, and I'm perfectly happy tuning out and just listening to the bits that I understand. Things do stuff. They do. I hear the boxes they associate. Associated containers, maps, it's really frustrating. Diplomacy, is it? Yeah, pretty much, with key value pairs. I was really confused about what these map things were for ages until you said the phrase

key value pairs, and it's like, oh, they're those things from JavaScript. I know exactly what these are. Oh, noise. And now I know what's next. They're basically terra incognita map things. Yeah, cool. Yeah, totally exactly the same. Excellent. Glad to hear it.

This would have been a fun chance to, and maybe I will next week or the week after, look at some of the old maps where people were just guessing at what was there. On the map thing, Zinkster on our subreddit has contributed a couple of useful bits of info, and one of them is that Australia was actually thought to be just the northern extremity of an actual counterweight continent, Terra Australis incognita. Damn it, I should have looked into this. Yeah, must only exist to counterweight the mass of the northern continent, and it was originally named New Holland Dutch.

And then it became apparently wasn't actually part of a bigger Southern land mass even before they found Antarctica. And then the British somehow got the naming rights as Helsinki State put it. We can fill in the gap with colonialism. I think at least at one point, one of the guys went along like renaming everything, the Dutch had just named, like in quite an amusing manner. Is it literally like the Dutch would put down a flag saying like this is New Holland now, and then this guy would sort of sneak along and take the flag and put a different flag.

Exactly. I was looking into Esperanto last night, which has nothing to do with anything, but is soft open material potentially. Potentially. Esperanto, that's that weird like kind of hybrid language, right? It is, yeah. Jack was very into it years and years ago. It's kind of, it's a language that was made up to be the, there was no, there must be a better term than lingua franca, but of Europe.

And it is surprisingly, well, not surprisingly, I suppose, easy to pronounce, to read bits of, because in the same way that it's quite easy to pick up bits of Romance language, bits of Germanic, just similar. We've all got quite a lot of shared synonyms that then translate slightly. There are words you can easily pick out and remember. And yeah, it was, it's a designed language. Designed to allow people to communicate more easily. Because Europe, potentially the world, I didn't look very much into the history of it.

I was just mainly doing Google translate sentences to annoy Jack's like, as he was trying to fall asleep. Seems like a reasonable use of time. Like the bedpugs by kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. But in the process, I was like, I quite like this language. This will be an utter waste of time to learn.

And I kind of want to. Yeah, because it didn't really catch on, did it? And I don't understand why not? Because we, maybe it will now, we're quite so hated. Because everyone's kind of just speaks English or a variation of English. There's kind of some EU unwritten accepted pronunciations and grammar rules of English that are used in Brussels and things, which is quite an interesting thing in itself. But it does seem a bit odd for them to continue accepting the use of English

when we have disgraced ourselves quite so thoroughly on the European stage. But not us personally. I feel like we need to clarify English. And I think it was you and I that got us kicked out here. I keep these things from you. If you shall make you frat, it's the reason Europe hates us. Oh my God, I haven't looked at the news today, have you? No, I did look briefly because I had not, because the news has been so taken up with

everything in Ukraine, understandably. I hadn't heard about their flooding in Australia, which is kind of horrifically ironic considering we're doing a book about how Australia has no water, that there is a lot of horrific flooding on the East Coast right now, especially sort of New South Wales type area. Oh shit. Sorry, Australia. So, sorry. Yeah, literally when you click on the BBC, it's all Russia, so I hadn't.

I think I only saw because Sam C and us, I've read it, sent us some greetings from the land of Forex, including large buildings marked with XXXXX. Oh really? Oh yeah, I see it now. Now the flooding has subsided and it was like, oh, were you under water? Yeah, no, your video country was under water. Yes, that is bad. I heard that Shane Warn died and I didn't hear that, like there was massive flooding.

Who's Shane Warn? Cricketer. Oh yeah, Australia. Like very famous, like the only Cricketer whose name I could tell you, honestly. I hadn't heard of him in a while. He dated Liz Halley for a long time and I'm going to be honest, I think that's why I know who he is. Yeah, that's fair. Not because of his patented leg spin technique, I feel like.

You could say absolutely anything, tell me it's a cricket term and I would believe you. Yeah, but other people listen to these conversations now. Oh yeah. And please remember listeners that we keep cricket in the same category as physics, do not explain it to me. Exactly so. I'm not against cricket, I just don't want to understand cricket because that would ruin Francine and I's method of enjoying cricket matches when we're forced to watch them,

which is to narrate a tea party with a young confused raptor in the background. Yeah, that was the only way to do it. It is basically a screensaver, as far as I'm concerned. But boy, raptor had a lovely cup of tea. I saw some nice TikTok nostalgia videos. I think TikTok's definitely got my number now as vaguely Wistful90s could, showing some of like the Windows 98 screensavers. I was like, I can't believe I'm sitting here watching Windows 98 screensavers and enjoying it.

I feel like TikTok, the algorithm is still kind of figuring out what to do with me. Like it's finally stopped trying to show me like kink talk related videos. I'm not sure why it kept showing me kink talk. I don't know if it was because I was pausing on some because the music was good. But now it just keeps showing me food videos, which I hate so much. I don't like the TikTok food videos because all the cooking's bad. I've got some of it. I tried to be very picky with food videos I sent you.

Because you're quite right, most of them do seem like I can hear you when I'm watching them going, what the fuck are you doing? Like those ridiculous cocktails and like coffees and things, where the whole point is to like make a pretty video out of it. And I'm like, I don't think that would taste good. No, exactly. It's not quite as bad as like the really, really bad. This has been done to generate clicks and nothing else.

Food videos like the bacon break or whatever kind of genre or the weird. I have a countertop covered in like nacho cheese that I'm crumbling everything into and mixing up with my bare hands videos. That feels like it's like borderline a weird fetish thing. Yeah, gotta be. And on that note, do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's let's let's not go further down that path.

Yes, let's make a podcast and not talk about food fetishes. Excellent. Okay. Well, there's probably a fetish somewhere and like picking up a rock and finding a decent sandwich underneath. Or am I just peckish? It might be that. Hello and welcome to the true shall make you fret a podcast in which we are reading and

recapping every book from Terry Fretcher's Discworld series one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And we are talking about the last continent. Yay. One of the best. Exciting. Yes.

Not on spoilers before we crack on. We are a spoiler light podcast. Obviously heavy spoilers for the book for the last continent. 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. You don't have a choice because I accidentally took out a bit of word that was propping up

the window. We're on this journey now. A listener emailed us to ask about what's the deal with towel wasps. Oh, yeah. The deal is they were mentioned in Hogfather. And I think I said I would rather die than face them, something like that. Yeah, no. I don't want to talk to towel wasps.

Talk to towel wasps. Talk about towel wasps. I think they were brought up as one of the potential gremlins brought on by the magic flushing around. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, that sounds right. We have had some other emails as well from listeners who are going back, listening from the beginning and are only up to say sort of Eric or so.

So hi for when you finally get here. Welcome. Yes. And we've had a few Reddit comments, emails and that talking about some of the older episodes. And I can only apologize listeners if you ask or comment on something specific. I said, or Joe said, because I cannot, I don't know what I said. I don't know what I said that long ago. I can't.

I can vaguely remember the gist of some of the conversations, but honestly, that's pushing it. I found I went back through some old notes and like written notes and FSA plans because I wanted to check some details of things for this book from where it references previous books. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I have references to things I have talked about. I still don't know. I really don't know. I think I stand a bit more chance than you just because I edit the bloody things.

But yeah, I'm not going to lie. I listened to the episode before it comes out. But as soon as I've done that, like as soon as I hit like publish episode, leaves my brain gone. Apologies that this episode is coming a day or two late listeners. But yeah, that should be my apology, I must say. That's I'm off this week and that means it's late because usually we record on a Friday night and I had to work very late because nobody else does my job when I'm away.

So yeah, deadlines and we wanted to go and see each other in person on Saturday, which was a delight. Even if the coffee place you went to had incredibly low sofas and we all got stuck. That was an interesting choice of furniture. I don't think anybody I mean, we're all around 30. I'm not sure many people in another 10 years say like that's a very age specific seating area. It was I'm not exaggerating that much listeners. My knees were nearly up to my shoulders.

You have got a lot of limb. I do have a lot of limb, but even so. My knees were nearly up to my shoulders and I'm not quite as limmy as you. It is probably the most hipster coffee place in town, though. So I'm going to be gone. What vegan? They have a like a bike in the front window, like an old, old style bike. So that makes it hipster.

In the toilet, they have the lyrics to what's it called? The hip hop history hipity? Don't stop. I know. Of a hip hop and hip to the hip hip hop. You don't stop the rock into the bang bang bang bang. You get that song. The boogie to the rhythm of the Boogie that be by sugarhill gang.

Yeah. Anyway, that's that's like a vinyl thing on vinyl sticker. On the wall. It also has that thing I really hate whether. I love that the toilet's a gender neutral, but I hate where it's like whatever just use the toilet. Just wash your hands. and there's like the different human stick figures for like male and female and a half male,

half female one and then like a dinosaur and an alien and I hate that so much. Which one are you? What's your gender? Oh if you don't fit into it, I wear half a skirt or is it you're a reptile? Oh you don't fit into a gender, well you're not human. Yeah I get what they're trying to go for there. It hits the mark a little bit when you try and think of non-binary people as people. Yeah I respect the attempt, I do not respect the execution. But yeah anyway gender also they do why are we reviewing this place's toilet but they do have like actual towels like little towels instead of anything else which I do prefer. Yeah okay anyway god I'm not going to name this place but I hope you enjoyed that detailed review

of its bathroom lessons. Should we talk about the book The Last Continent? Yeah we probably better yeah do you know what I told you on it before we started. Let's see if we can do this in one take because I have to turn it around this evening and try and put it out at midnight and it's been entirely my fault that that's not happened so. Would you like to introduce us to the book The Last Continent? That is usually what I do isn't it yeah. So The Last Continent is the 22nd novel in the Discworld series. It was published in May 1998 and it held the number one position in British Hard Black Fiction bestseller lists for 12 full weeks. Jesus yeah. One small extract from one of the reviews I rather liked was a rinse wind novel is basically a grand

chase scene and that was from Francis Spufford anything standard and I like that both for the sentiment and the review's name. One other thing the book A Slip of the Keyboard which is a collection of Pratchett's nonfiction essays has a whole bit that he wrote for SFX in June 98 so the next months where he did a tour of Australia for book tour. I saw just a small paragraph out of that. I did my first Australian tour in 1990. It was a bit of an eye opener. They talk about the UK and Commonwealth rights and the contracts and the author says yeah yeah and signs and then you go out there and there's all these real people. Let's see what were the highlights on that tour. Oh yes going into a bookshop in some tiny place called Two Womba and finding a huge crowd of people and on the signing

table was a Vegemite sandwich and a cup of Milo cornerstones of the Australian experience. One of the others is a Chunder which I didn't have. Anyway the whole thing is good and as usual I would recommend A Slip of the Keyboard to anyone who hasn't had it and a little reread of that chapter for anyone who already has it on their shelf. It's a good book. I know this is one of your favourites. Yes. It is definitely my favourite of the Rincewind books and I've been really looking forward to talking about it because I've only actually read it a couple of times. This I'm going to say is probably my most reread one. It's definitely not for me. I think it's also one of the last ones I read

before when I was reading them all before I started reading them as they came out because the person I was hanging out with, I was consistently borrowing them from. I wasn't allowed to touch his copy of the last continent because it was a very nice hardback signed by Terry Bradshaw. That's fair. That's fair. I was just not allowed near it. That seems reasonable. Which was very sweet. But yeah, no, it's good. I really enjoyed it. It's fun because I'm sure there are a million more references to Australian stuff that are massively going over my head. Yeah, I'm looking forward. I might break my rule and listen to Pratchas. Pratchas. Have they done an episode on this one yet? I'm actually not sure if they

have or not. For context, this is obviously the book is set in North Australia. Pratcha are our Australian equivalent, the very good Australian Discworld Recap podcast. We did actually speak to them back in December. We did a little bonus guest spot for them. If you're a patron, you might have heard some of that conversation. We put it out for our patrons. But one of the things we did chat to them about, obviously, they said, do you want to ask us anything, was how do you feel about the last continent? So their perspective, which is obviously not all of Australia's perspective, is it is amazing how much it got referenced. It's not like

cliche shit. English people know about Australia, but weird obscure Australian shit. Anyway, should I tell us what happened in this first section? Yeah, no, that seems like a plan here. First section I did tweet before this came out. It's going up to page 139 in the Corby paperback, and happens as follows. As the unseen university attempts a decent night's kip, the bloodlose conduct allowed tradition, and the librarian shifts with the morphic flu. Ridcully is being proactive thanks to Ponder's discoveries in the land of invisible writings, but the books are protesting as the librarian pales. Magic won't fix him with his name unavailable,

but unfortunately the only wizard with such arcane knowledge is Rincewind, currently missing in XXXX after his agatean adventure. We joined Rincewind, grubbing around for dinner in a heart and unfriendly country, while far off an underground, the luggage bursts forth. Rincewind wakes to being watched by a mysterious stranger who disappears before a disembodied voice sings the wizard into the shape of a talented food finder. In another desert, the man sends a trickster to aid the hapless hero. Rincewind, finding sandwiches under rocks, realises someone wants him alive, and a kangaroo stops to chat before being rudely interrupted by Rincewind falling down a hole.

At the bottom of the waterhole, Rincewind sees ancient paintings that weren't there last week, and learns that he's set the last continent out of sync. He sees a strange box with a lot of dear little legs in the cave paintings, and the ruin forms him that he's in charge of bringing back the rain. Predictably, Rincewind runs. On the road, Rincewind befriends a mad dwarf and joins in a fun little chase fight in salvage mission, before learning that mad doesn't believe in the rain. Meanwhile, the university faculty head to the professor of cruel and egregious geography studied to see if they can find the forsaken continent, and instead discover a tropical island just outside his window. The wizards head through to provide the currently book-shaped

librarian with some fresh sea air. On the beach, the wizards absolutely do not take a holiday, as they learn they're on a tiny island near the rim. Mrs. Whitlow arrives with refreshments, and unfortunately closes the way behind her, leaving them stranded. Our ragtag bunch of marooned misfits make plans, and as dinnertime approaches, they discover the island has provided exceedingly well, growing many of their home comforts, and one mysterious pair of empty boots. The librarian realizes there's only one of everything, and Ponder awkwardly explains the conundrum as they argue over evolution. At least until a large reptile attacks, speedily evolves into chicken, and becomes a fine main course.

Good stuff. Yes, they have done an episode. I remembered that they've also put together the index of what fracture podcasts have done what episode. Yes, which I've now just checked, and they covered it in 2020. Oh, cool. I'll link to that whole index, actually, because I'm not sure I have done before, and it's useful, so I'll put that in a show notes, and you can have a look and find out who's better at explaining the episodes. Don't tell us, though. We'll be sad. Yeah, never criticize us, but we can hear it. Criticize us as much as you like. Just don't tell us. I'm very sensitive. I don't mind the odd criticism. Fine. You can listen to it, then. I don't want to. Well, no, that's it. That's it. Yeah, that's

I take them. I take the phone line. God, imagine if we had a phone line that we can call. No, absolutely not. Do you remember those? Do you remember those? Do you remember the red phone thing that they did, like the secure line from the Cold War? Oh, yeah. Do you remember them? Have you seen those in movies? Yeah, like one of those? Yeah. Remember when we were prime minister during the Cold War? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That was a really fun time for all of us. Jesus. Okay, helicopter and loincloth watch. I'm not going to lie. I gave up on helicopters a little bit for this section, just for this section. That seems fair. I feel like there's a nice bit of implication of loincloth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll go for that, but all in all, not a very

loincloth helicopter heavy one. No. Other bits we keep track of, though. Obviously, we've got death here. We have a turtle opening. We haven't had one of those for a few weeks. Yeah. And the librarian is very much explained, but we will get to him. Yes. One other callback is that Arch Chancellor Weatherwax is again mentioned. Oh, yes, yes. Along with another Arch Chancellor Beaudley or something like that. I don't remember seeing before, but interesting to see the history being built up. Quotes. Quotes. Mine's first, isn't it? It is Rince Windewoke with a scream to get it over with. I actually had one of my favorite lines. I love it so much.

Yes. That's one of the ones that sticks in my head always. Yours, I assume, is a little more profound. No, not really. The boundless silence made an eloquent statement about the universe's views on clean underwear. Oh, I thought you'd, the bullet point said, boundless silence listeners. So I thought it was like one of the descriptions of the parallel universe would, you know, get into some of the really beautiful descriptions later on in the book, but that line made me laugh more than it probably should have done. I'm very mature. Good. I'm glad that's nice for you. What are you talking about the characters? Yes, Lex, who's first? Riddgully. Riddgully, the best. The best. Bad taste, that man.

Bad taste. Again, one of my favorite lines for anything of it. Very ridiculous and simple. Just ending all sentences with that man. Big fan. I don't know if listeners have noticed that we're a bit of a Riddgully Stan podcast. Yeah, I think we should have just gone with that from the start, to be honest, yeah. Yeah, just do it. That's a theme. It might have been hard with most of the books, but. Riddgully and Lady Sybil Framkin. Yeah, that pretty much is all we need to talk about, isn't it? He's been managing. He has. He's managing, bless him, with the help of Ponda. I enjoyed a couple of Riddgully's nearly phrases. I'm not sure if footling around is anything I've heard before, rather than footling around, but I like it. It's a delight. What's that got to do

with the price of feet? That's good. And at it like knives. A fantastic man is Riddgully. He is. I like that this other senior wizards have now learned how to manipulate him enough that they could at least go, you want to stay on the island? That's encouraged Riddgully to murder all of the fish. Yeah. Oh, well. And then who do we have next? We have Fonda Stibbins. Who is adorable, as always. The reader of invisible writings. Yeah. Being ground down by the relentless other faculty members. I like that. This book is one with a lot of callbacks compared to others. Again, it's really like the series has settled into rhythm, and now it knows what it can relate back to, especially with Prince Winberg's, because they

were the beginning, and it acknowledges like that in the beginning, the university was written. In the beginning, the university was written. You know, the sort of promotion by Deadman Shoes, it was a very cutthroat place, and it's grown into the younger wizards don't really care about killing the wizards above because they want to play in a high energy magic building and go hurrah, and it's all settled into a much more. Yeah. I was like, they put it, we were going through one of those periods of what the more to you. Beautiful. And why my little ready color Ponda moment of choice is the, it was a trivial era in by locational down, down detergent that anyone can make. But you made it as I recall, said Britt Kelly,

whose memory could spring nasty surprises like that. Oh, fun. He's trying his best. I like how much he cares about what's going to happen, and how things have happened. It's when he's thinking about archaeological stuff and looking at old paleo skeletons. And he's, he'd point out to people that fish were amazingly fish-shaped, and they'd look at him like, as if he'd gone mad. Yeah, it's one of those discworld moments where they're like skirting on the edge of round worlds, known science. And it's like, just missing some of the jigsaw pieces. Like he was talking at one point about the most coherent theory of evolution it had from his nurse was like monkeys being bad little boys

when coming when called and such like that, which is a kind of call to a, do an earlier version of the theory of evolution, I think. Yeah. I've forgotten what it's called now, but the, you know, the idea that drafts got long next because they were structuring to rich trees. But yeah, it's fun. It's very sweet. I love when he's arguing about revolution, not revolution, with red color and sort of red colors feels like he's trumped in visible. Lemmings didn't grow wings. Yep. Well, they should have. Yeah. Yeah. Best time for it. When you're plundering, plunging towards the ground, the rapid, rapid face. Who's next? The librarian. So the librarian is sick with morphic flu. I got a freewheeling

temporal gland, Joanna. It's not looking good. This book is one of those weird ones, but like actually not a ton happens. If you know, like lots of little things happen, but it's not like this big, like compared to like some of the watch books where it's like plop, plop, plop, plop. Yes. Yeah. A lot of it is situational humor. Which makes me forget that the entire conceit of the book is that they're trying to find Rinswin to find the librarian's name to make him better because he's got the morphic flu. Yes. Yes. It is quite easy to forget that. Rinswin's got a quest or something. These guys were literally, they were trying to, it's very relatable, isn't it? They were trying to find out one little bit of information and then escalated. Now they're

stuck on a desert island trying to fireballs at a dinosaur. Who hasn't done that? So I thought I was being really clever because they were talking about trying to find his real name. And I was like, oh, well, they just need to go and read the light. Fantastic. It's definitely in there. It's fucking not. Yeah. No, I think at the time we said it wasn't. I remember at some point on the podcast talking about finding out the librarian's real name and it was in something. So I went through, I couldn't find the actual episode plans from when we did Light Fantastics. I'm not even sure we had episode plans back then. If we did, it might have just been scribbled in the notebook.

Exactly. It definitely wasn't in the drive. I looked back through the notebook I was using and my notes have gotten a lot neater in the last couple of years. Oh, well then. I'll be able to research you've been doing and the studying. Yes. So we don't find out his name in Light Fantastics. We do have the moment where he becomes the orangutan. Yeah, I remember him being described. The octavo shoots off a big beam of magic. It goes through the library. Several of the wizards later swore that the small sad orangutan sat in the middle of it all looked very much like the head librarian. But we do know his actual name. It's Horace Warblehat.

Is that so? Goodness. I can see why he hasn't publicized that. It's never said in the books. It was confirmed in Art of Discworld, but I believe we knew it because it came up in the film. Right. He's referred to as Warblehat before he becomes an orangutan. Right. Yeah, that explains why I just forgot it. You did blank most of that film, that for your memory I see as we finished it. But yeah, so what the wizards should have done is just gone through all of my notes and eventually googled it and then they would have found out his real name.

Hmm. Well, I'm well done. Is that why you were looking through all the old shape plans and you were saying that you didn't remember? Yes. I said, yeah, okay. Nice. Good. And then the general wizarding faculty I wanted to talk about because there's just some very good names. The Professor of Recondite Architecture and Origami Map Folding. Recondite. Little known or esoteric. I had to google that one as well. Very good. We have, I've already mentioned, the egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography. I want to cut. I meant to do this. I want to come up with some more cool Professor names.

We'll try and do that for next week. We definitely did. The Lecturing Creative Uncertainty. Who's the one who's got the in-out slider shows in both ways. Oh, which briefly reminds me, not relevant to this, but they've come incredibly close to managing to do quantum entanglement with tardigrades. I'll see if I can find some. I know what a tardigrade is. I don't know what the rest of that is. Quantum entanglement is basically like seeking to make a tardigrade be in two places at once. It is very close to doing that. It's very close to a huge scientific breakthrough in an understanding of quantum physics. Therefore, I don't really want to learn about

what. I just like the sentence, quantum entanglement of tardigrades. We have the senior wrangler who is very creatively afraid. That makes me laugh so much every day. Tigers and gorillaphants. Tigers and gorillas and elephants and pineapples. Pineapples? Oh, yes. I have an irrelevant elephant. I have an irrelevant elephant. They do. I do. And the irrelevant elephant is that everybody should go and look at medieval depictions of elephants. And I will link some in the show notes, because the medieval depictions of elephants are

varied, almost always incredibly inaccurate and hilarious, because most of the people drawing them have never seen one, and we're going off whatever animal was nearby in some vague descriptions. There are some that were clearly modelled on boars, some that were clearly modelled on dogs. I saw you reviewing some on TikTok, and it brought me joy. Yeah, I've got two videos now reviewing medieval depictions of elephants. I fell down this rabbit hole during our own life. No way. No shit. Yeah, no. It's not like me. It's getting way too into something obscure,

especially if it involves elephants. Anyway, sorry. What were we talking about? Senior wrangler? Listeners, look up medieval elephants, stay away from pineapples. And prawns, apparently incredibly dangerous, especially if they are in a crate. Yes. Stay away from crates, everybody. Got that? Good. Good. And then, of course, the bursar. Bursar. Bursar. Poor bursar. He was trying. Poor bursar. That was exactly the phrase you just said.

You're thinking, what kind of bird stops flying around for a quick smoke? A puffin, said the bursar. Glad to see it's still with us, Bursar, said Ray Cully. And I like when he just occasionally comes out with exactly the right thing at the right time. Yeah, I thought you were going to go to the page where he'd just kind of wandered through the window on his own to start with. I just loved the image of him just happily standing in the sea for a minute with his trawler legs rolled up, like, oh, this is nice. Well, I'm glad he got a nice little trip to the seaside, even if he got trapped there. Yes, yes. And then here we have Mrs. Whitlow.

He'd been tripped on the beach. Whose fault is that? I'm not going to blame Mrs. Whitlow. The sign was very unclear. Barely read it. I couldn't make out the lettering myself. Could have happened to any of us. Yep. But I didn't do it. Mrs. Whitlow is the housekeeper, and she is currently being very well looked after by seven faculty members because she's accidentally stranded on an island. But she is incredibly polite and wouldn't want to be offended. I'm easily offended, so I'm going to quickly throw in a purple post-it note for the

HW gene, HW chromosome. Feminist researchers have isolated this as the one which allows people to see the washing up in the sinks before life forms growing there have actually invented the wheel. Or slewed. Yes, I just like the idea of this chromosome with HW, which clearly sounds of something like housewife. I was going housework. Yeah, that might make more sense. Maybe I don't need to be feminously angry about this, but I'm going to you anyway. That's my choice as a woman. Well, that's fine. And it has also given me a reminder that we are well back in footnotes, aren't we? There are so many footnotes in this one. I love it. I had to resist the urge just for every footnote in my little bits we liked. Yeah, let's just assume everybody

that all the footnotes are there. Go back and reread them. We're big fans. But I love Mrs. Whitlow's decision to not decision her ability to be perfectly formal at all times. Yeah. Even if she made sandwiches. I was trying to picture that. Yeah, I know I can get it. You break off a little bit at a time and eat it. That's how you probably eat a banana in etiquette-wise. I've not read a lot of etiquette books about bananas, I have to say. The general rule is you don't just take a bite out of something you're holding. If you're using your hands, you break off a small piece and eat it a bit at a time. Yeah, I know that's the deal with bread and fancy restaurants.

Yeah, it's a generally blanket approach. However, in reality, obviously, eat your banana however the fuck you want to eat your banana. We won't be offended. This is all nonsense. It's just interesting nonsense. It was unthinkable to think of Mrs. Whitlow as having knees. I also just love the fact that the senior Anglophellen lovers are often seeing the dressmakers dummy. You can imagine it. It's the kind of thing that a teenager who's never had any experience with anything is just the one thing that triggers that. A body. Goodness, that means there's knees. Maybe.

And then we have Renswin. Renswin, yay. The antihero of our story. Well, he's not an antihero. He's the opposite of a hero. Counterhero? What was it? How did they put it? Coward with a thousand retreating backs. I can't. Something along the hero with a thousand retreating backs. Many cultures had a legend of an undying hero who would one day rise again. So perhaps the balance of nature called for one who wouldn't. That's it. Somehow balanced by the eternal coward.

I also enjoy the description of his hourglass. His lifetime. Looked like something created by a glassblower who'd had the hiccups in a time machine. Do you remember, and this was prompted in my memory a few days ago by something completely different, that game with all the tubes that fit together in the marbles. Marble Iran, I think it was called. Yeah. That was fun. So that's what Renswin's lifetime looks like. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm imagining that, but combined with Mousetrap. Yeah, for sure. It's got to have some bits that don't really work and go springing off into oblivion.

Exactly. Yeah, maybe it's just kaplunk. Kaplunk. Poor Renswin. But yeah, he's having a rough time of it, bless him. But it's nice to see him again. Again, as I said, this is definitely my favorite of the Renswin books. And I think this is the one where I like Renswin's Renswindliness the most. What's changed? Or were you just used to him? I think it's a combination of I'm used to him. You've definitely sold me on him a bit. And I think it works because it's like him and a wizard subplot. Whereas I think interesting times didn't really, like the wizards were only in the beginning

of the end. It didn't really have much of a subplot. Yeah. Yeah, they were like scenes away, weren't they, rather than running through. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I know Eric was just weird, but there was a callback to Eric. With the sandwich. With the sandwich. Yeah. He met the creator and Renswin refrained, decided to refrain from mentioning he dropped a sandwich into a rock pool at the time. People didn't like to hear they may have evolved from somebody's lunch. Which follows up with the kangaroo asking, are you coming the Royal Prawn?

Which I'm not sure how common an Australian expression that actually is, but I really enjoyed and I'm going to start using it. That's right. Yeah, I do. Are you coming the Royal Prawn, mate? I listened to a good part of this on audiobook, Nigel Plainer, and he does a very good scrappy. Oh, that's good. I like the Nigel. Is he called scrappy? Yes. Yeah. It's, in fact, coming up to talking about him, but it's a reference to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Yes.

Michelle, I did occasionally watch, I don't know why it was airing in the UK, but it was on sometimes. I watched it sometimes as well, yeah. I feel like it was like on CBBC or something. Yeah. Filled in some of the, did you know that, so you can't really train the kangaroos to do things like open doors. Yeah. So what they do in those scenes was use a kangaroo's paw and like on a stick. Dismembered kangaroo. Yeah. Yeah. What the fuck?

I know. In Australia, you can buy bits of kangaroo like that quite easily as souvenirs and things. That's really weird. Yeah. One thing that I found in, by the way, this is like for tourists, I should say. Yeah. Normal Australians who I see don't walk around with purses made of kangaroo testicles, which is one of the things you'll see everywhere in the church. Cool. Yeah. Cool. I think I'm going to stick to more fondly remembering other Australian shows from my childhood. Then, and by that, I mean, I've got the song from round the twist stuck in my fucking head again.

Spring things have happened. Are you going round the twist? Yeah. No, not going to lie, Australia. Pretty good kids, Dee Dee. But stop. I also enjoy neighbors for quite some years. Oh, I love neighbors. Apparently, neighbors is ending. Yeah. I heard that. I don't really want to think about it. I don't like that. No. No. I don't like that as a concept. Anyway. Sorry. So yes, that's the kangaroo. And we also have the old man and the trickster

and the trickster is the kangaroo. Yes. And the old man. The old man being the goat. Yeah. He's carrying the universe and the sun. Guy with a sack. He knows that guy. Guy with a sack carrying the universe. Is that natural something? I feel like that is like an old folkloric slash philosophical thing. And the trickster appears as a black and white bird before becoming the kangaroo.

Yes. Being a magpies in Australia, by the way, very different stars. We got to talking about that with the ghost from Pratchat. And that's right. But yeah. So in some Aboriginal mythology, the trickster character is crow. Sometimes magpie. Everyone has a trickster god, as Pratchat noted. I look in my trickster god book and the crow wasn't in there, sadly. Oh, that's a shame. Yeah. But I'll link to a couple of the stories.

And then the last character I have is Mad the Dwarf. Short-tempered. Short-tempered. Don't call him short. Riding some kind of huge augmented cart chased by other huge augmented carts fighting over hay, which is an incredibly rare resource in a place that's also very dry and has no water. So I first read this a very long time before I knew of the existence of Mad Max. I was going to make a joke about it being a reference to a different Australian film.

Fuck, I'm sorry. No, I'll cut it out. You do it. You say it. No, now I can't think of an Australian film on panicking. Sorry. But yeah, okay, no. So it's a Mad Max reference, which to be fair, I've never actually seen any of them. Oh, no, that's not true. I haven't seen any of the original Mad Max movies with Mel Gibson.

I did watch Fury Road. How was it? It was, you know, these films are like really good, but you don't feel like you ever need to watch it again. Yeah. Like it was amazing and it was in cinema and it was big spectacle and it was really cool. And then it's like, okay, I've seen that and now I can move on with my life. That's cool.

But yes, this is a Mad Max-y. Everything's got metal stuck all over it. There's some mental car chase and someone's got mother carved into their sharpened teeth. And yeah, it's all very over the top. I'm pretty sure the reference went totally over my head the first time I read it as well. Yeah, absolutely. But it's enjoyable. Well, I don't know if it is enjoyable.

We have that understanding. There's another classic Australian movie that's definitely being referenced in closer to the end of the book, though. So I'm going to recommend that listeners go watch Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or Rewatch because it's also a fucking delight. I haven't watched that for years. No, me neither. I'm definitely going to rewatch it before we get to the end of the book, though.

And it's got Hugo weaving in. Whoa, locations. Where are we? We are in X, X, X, X, as we've talked about. It's definitely not Australia. X, X, X, X, that's right, sir. That was a very woodhouse line. That was, as Priscilla puts it in the little foreword,

this is not a book about Australia. It's about somewhere entirely different, which just happens to be here and there, a bit Australian. Yeah, definitely not incredibly pointed references, more so than to any other country, I feel like, again, we're missing quite a lot of references. He manages to kind of do this country parody thing very well. But yes, it's exciting. It's very sad.

Apparently, rain isn't a thing there. Rivers are just for running boats along, which, when he mentions having a gala in the big city, that really made me fucking laugh. It's really near the end of the sections. They approach the little town and Madd's explaining what a river is to rinse wind. Yes. I, safety tip listeners, safety tip, never hang out in one of those dry riverbeds in the desert, because you'll get yourself drowned if it rains.

But it was flood incredibly quickly. Well, that ruins my weekend plans. I was going to go hang out in a dry riverbed in the desert. Other places, other places. I would have briefly mentioned the hallway that the geography professor's study is in. The walls were stoned, but at some point they've been painted in that very special institutional green you get when an almost finished cup of coffee is less standing for a couple of weeks.

There was a smell of ancient dinners, and it really felt like a callback to equal rights. Do you remember that's the only time you really get any of the hallways described as being a bit schooly? Yeah, everything smells like cabbage. Yeah. So I just enjoyed that as a fun little callback. It's nice to know some of those hallways still exist in the university. I do like the Professor of Recognite, whatever's map that is relevant for the next few hours

and looks like a chrysanthemum. Wow, that's a word. I cannot say chrysanthemum in the act of exploding. Yeah, that's great. And then of course we've got the island. We do. We do have that. The small mysterious island where all the driftwood is natural.

We're not near shipping routes, and there's only one of everything. Yes. Which would have been a very good, dramatic line. Yes, sorry. Not said to the faculty. Yeah. The Bersar and I went for a walk along the beach, he said. Then can you guess where we ended up?

In Kiddling Street Querm, said Ridcully-Tartley. That's astonishing, Art Chancellor, because you know, in fact, we didn't. We wound up back here. I just love all of them are just completely incapable of understanding most of the pointed remarks from all of the rest of them. Yep, but they are all making the pointed remarks all the time. Unless they involve sheets. Unless they involve sheets.

It was just tomato sauce. You understand there's nothing wrong with eating some beans in bed. Yes. I cleaned the beans off. I don't understand why everyone's making such a fuss about a bit of tomato sauce. Dean, will you note? This question has nothing to do with sheets. Anyway, yeah, more about the island later, I think.

But for now, I do quite like the idea of a blue cheese thing. Yeah, or not whatever it was. Blue cheese nut. I like that. Well, I like blue cheese and walnuts, so I quite like the idea of it being like a walnut and blue cheese or just all ready and combined in one. It saves me a lot of preparation. The little bits we liked.

The little bits we liked. What's the best bit? Do you like the the ceremony of the keys, do you? The blood layers ceremony right at the beginning, which is I like the constant. These things are done for tradition and it's very silly, especially when in this case, it's the damn, I could have sworn I had them a moment ago. Carefully enunciating, enunciating each word with a sort of bulldog carefulness. Yes.

Ho, ho, ho. He said furiously. Here's the keys then. Much obliged, all safe and secure. Yeah, I get the idea that a lot of universities have these kind of ridiculous traditions still. Well, like Cambridge and Oxford probably have a lot of ridiculous things along this line. They must be.

Yeah, for sure. Is it blood-lower thing? You know, I keep meaning to Google it every time the blood layers come up. What do they describe? There's something across between a porter and a proctor. It is a village in Buckinghamshire. And after that, no, it just comes off as a discord thing. So there we go.

I think that was just a nice word that he noted down and used for this. That's fair. Heavy light. Yeah, I know obviously the heavy light of the disc world is noted all the time. But I, the other day, listened to one of RadioLibs re-released episodes called Speed, which would have been helpful a few weeks ago, actually, because it was talking about the perception of very slow, very fast kind of thing that we were talking about. But one of the things in there, there was a scientist, and I'm going entirely by memory here,

because I didn't make notes at the time. There's a scientist who had figured out a way to slow down atoms or molecules. I'm going to say atoms to the point where they were stationary. Yeah. And what that does is make the coldest thing in the universe. And then she decided that what she wanted to do with that was to shoot light in it, see what happened. Cool.

Yeah, I was vibing very much with the attitude of this scientist. She was like, they were like, oh, where did you do that? Why not? And what happens is the light slows right down and kind of blobs along. And then when it gets to the other end, again. That's really cool. That is really cool. I'll link the episode in the show notes, and I just wanted to tell you about that,

and that seemed to fit there. That's not even vaguely related. No, I love it. I love it. It's amazing. I did also like the idea that there are two types of light on this world, but you need one to see the other. It's clearly like wrapped it off-handedly, dismissing some scientists going.

You wouldn't be able to see the light without light. It's like, well, it doesn't matter if you can't see it. We're on the back of a tassel here, guys. Get some perspective. Speaking of perspective. No, not speaking of perspective. Yeah. Rid Cully's management style, having read how to dynamically manage people for dynamic

results in a caring, empowering, weighing, quite short-time dynamically. One of the most successful management books in the universe, by the looks of it. It goes back a little bit to Eric again, actually, just in the corporate nonsense section, but Rid Cully takes it, I would say, in a fun new direction. His mental approach to it could be visualized as a sort of business flowchart with, at the top, a circle entitled Me, and connected below it by a line, a large circle entitled Everyone Else. I would like to tell you that also, those organization flowcharts are called OrganiGrams,

which I think is a horrible name, and I learned that through my work the other month. I just inwardly cringed to the point where I nearly turned inside out reading Rid Cully's management in a finding it funny way, but because I've worked with many of those managers, God, I can't remember. That really bad manager we both had. Oh, yeah. I dubbed them Right Guys Managers. Right Guys. Right Guys?

Yes. Yeah. However, I will say that he also is demonstrated to have what are we consider a good management style, such as when he listens somewhat to the senior wrangler, and kind of not assuage his concerns exactly, but says, right, got that everybody, avoid traits. But clearly that's nonsense. And also, I like the motivational posters. The buck starts here. When you're up to your ass and alligators, today is the first day of the rest of your life.

I think we should also come up with some of those alongside our new professor names. Yes, new professor names. Listeners, please send us your best nonsense motivational posters. Motivational mutation, quote, kind of thing. Right. And then, what's the next one on this list? Sculptor glory. Sorry, I ordered these terribly, didn't I?

I've got Kindle and audiobook for this. So the page numbers make no sense compared to yours. I'm afraid. Yeah, I figured. Sculptor glory. I just rather liked the paleontology and archaeology and other Sculptor glory. We're not subjects in interested wizards. Sculptor glory here, I think having a double meaning being a puner play on words.

Sculptor glory, if you will. Yes, exactly. And I will. Yes, I enjoyed that anyway. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. I actually don't know. I probably should have looked as to where the Sculptor glories at etymology was interesting

in the slightest. Please tell me about your one on all. I'll have this on in the background. Oh, the beach reads. No, unknown origin. Sorry, that was easy. They've sat down, got comfortable on the beach on what is definitely not a holiday, and they're not enjoying themselves.

And the lectern recent runes was reading the principles of thermic propagation, but the sunlight, the cover now reads the omega conspiracy. And this is a footnote, one, but apparently this happens on the beach. You bring an opportunity book. You bring a book you always wanted the opportunity to read, and then it will turn into a book with a name containing at least one Greek word or letter, such as the gamma imperative, the delta season, the alpha project, the moo cow pie caper.

These days, of course, they are all by James Patterson. Or Dan Brown. I feel like the division more than those ones. Yeah, I feel like he has got some others. And I feel like they definitely fall into this category. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you there is a crime or trash,

trash crime, trash conspiracy thriller. And of course, there's the somewhat considered feminine equivalent in which a young woman would like to open a cafe and a handsome man exists. Yes. The shining example of not like genre, but as always put into that genre, and should always be read on holiday, in my opinion, is May Pinchie. Absolutely. And you can read that way you want, as in should always be read on holiday,

as in if you're on holiday, you should always read that. You should only read that on holiday. I have got a bit of a chiclet section on my bookshelves. I think chiclet is a horrible term. But you know what I mean, I like the books where a woman wants to open a bakery and there's a handsome man. That's terrible. I fucking love it.

Yeah. Yeah. But they're not always terrible. That's the thing. Every now and then you read one like this is beautiful literature. What the fuck? I see this author. Well, what the fuck is it's an easy way to make money if you're a very good author.

Yeah, good point. Or a competent one. I say easy, easy compared to a lot of genres. Yeah. I've also got a particular fondness for Leslie Pierce, who writes those books, but historical. But you know what? I'm very picky.

I don't like those. I don't like the historical ones. Don't I'll read them like going back to the fucking 60s or whatever. Not not but not if there is a wimple or a petticoat. I'm not really into it. I'll say these are slightly later. I know there is one about a woman who's transported to Australia for crimes. And there's one like set during the Crimean War.

But there's also some kind of 1940s going into 1960s, 1980s. Yeah, that's a bit better. Yeah, I know I can do that. Yeah, I'm just not into the medieval. No, there's a couple of the Tudor-y ones I quite like. I mean, at that point, it's not really quite the genre. But like the Philippa Gregory, like other balloon girl stuff, they're quite good. Anyway.

What? But I haven't been on a beach. I haven't read on a beach for a very long time. And last time I was reading on a beach, I was actually reading Vee Schwab. He's a very good fantasy type author. I was reading her Dark Shade of Magics, the first one in the trilogy. It's quite a good fantasy trilogy. Do you know what I'm going to be terrible here?

I don't love reading on the beach. Do you not? No, I would not prefer to be reading the Terrace of a nearby hotel bar, coffee shop, whatever. Where I can see and enjoy the sea. Yeah, because I don't like lying fully on my back and trying to get comfy. Yeah. And you can't sit up unless you've got like a like a deck chair, but they're uncomfortable for reasons.

Stabby slats. Anyway, yes, that made me giggle the beachries. But there was also, I think I already mentioned this, but Ponder being very upset that no one's reacting to his dramatic line with, by George, you know, you think he's right. Yes, there's some moments in life where you feel like people should definitely have acted a certain way. And they don't feel like a big musical sting.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, why is nobody paying attention to the narrative arc here? This is. So we've got a really good established narrative arc. Could you react to it in kind? Also, but yes, no, that's never going to happen with the wizards. And I'm amazed he still has hope.

I know it's quite sweet that he's not being fully beaten down into misery yet. No, it's good for him. I love Ponder. Ponder also contributes to my favorite running joke throughout this, this book, which is you don't get proper fill in nouns these days. Remember old nickname ancient wizard who died 50 years ago, who Ponder wouldn't possibly be able to remember. Now there was a chap who knew his fill in nouns.

That was very good. Yes. The current tally for the book stands at four. I will be keeping track of this as we go forward and providing an exhaustive list of names. Moving on to proper talking point. Yes. We have the same one. Because interesting like Dreamtime mythology fun things are mainly concentrated later on.

Something I did want to talk about actually meant to bring up earlier in locations though, as we've just mentioned, Dreamtime mythology. Sorry, get close up at the side of your head there with your book. Different book. Oh. I want to double check Rinswin's original arrival in Forex, which is at the end of Interesting Times. And that's also calling him kangaroo bloke.

No worries. One minute of kangaroo, next minute of bloke, because of course at the end of Interesting Times. Oh, that's right. There's a flattened kangaroo. Yes. There's a flattened kangaroo. And where he is described, they're discussing the dream.

Yes. And then Rinswin gets hit in the head with a boomerang. Yes, well done. Yes, I'd forgotten about that. Anyway, yes, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, no, sorry. But yes, we're sharing talking points for this episode.

Yeah. But yeah, so the vague overview being kind of like the savages versus civilization. It's not, it's a trope, but it's also just like a societal trope. Is that a thing? Yes. Which, yeah. Yeah. What's the word for that?

That's probably a word for that, isn't there? I'm too media-drenched at the moment. It's a thing people do. Yeah. Especially people, you know, the sort of people we have grown up and been around because we live in the UK. They're kind of highlighted here in the wizards' attitude. Yes.

And I do like that Pratchett is lampooning it so thoroughly. Especially when it comes down to British Cully telling them to build a boat and the wizards sort of assuming, well, if savages can do it, of course we can do it. Yes. Can't be that difficult if savages can do it. We just need to find a book on how to build boats. Yeah, it was, it sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole, but I'm not going to go into that much about early boat building techniques.

That's quite interesting. Old aboriginal techniques of using bark pulled from trees and engraved that was then superseded by dugout canoes in like the 1600s. Oh, cool. And then obviously the parallel, like Polynesian, what they called rigor boats, what do I mean? Oh. You know, the ones that have like two bits on them.

Yeah. I can't remember what they're called, but I know they're kind of making me. The ones that get really fast, like in Moana. Fuck. That's the most shit thing I've ever said. I'm sorry. I can't remember the proper name of everything, but Disney for this culture, I'm very sorry. Moana was actually pretty accurate.

They did. Good. I'm glad to hear it. Speak to a lot of people indigenous to those areas, and they only cast people indigenous to those areas. I did really enjoy that movie, so I'm glad to hear that. And I love the rock so much. It's a banging soundtrack.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's got the guy from Miami. Except you're welcome. And it's an easy lender, you know. The one who's in Flight of the Conchords. Jermaine Clement. Yeah, he's the crime.

Yeah. Anyway. Oh. Not the guy who you talked about. Not Figwit, the other guy. Jermaine. Not Brett. Yes.

Well, speaking of Jermaine points. God, I wish I had one to follow that line with. Autochthonous people is often underestimated to colonize as detriments. Oh, that is the main point, actually. Yeah, I know I do have one. Did I say Autochthonous? Autochthonous. Autochthonous, yeah.

Sorry, it's indigenous. It's another word for indigenous. A lot of people who turn up to colonize lands massively underestimate the people who already live there, which is incredibly stupid. So what I've got is a relevant anecdote to the book along a couple of lines. Along this idea of civilized people claiming they are so civilized, they must be more intelligent. They must not need help.

Yes, that theme and the theme of stumbling stupidly through the desert as rinse winners. So yes. So while we've got the wizards on quite a nice hospitable island, luckily for them, we also have rinse wind, who is luckily for him willing to listen to the locals. And it's also being helped by a supernatural being of some description. Yeah. So in the mid-1800s, much of Australia's interior was still unexplored by European colonists. Because of that, the government was keen for people to make certain journeys.

And from that stemmed the Burke and Wills expedition, which is very famous in Australia. They wanted to cross Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, which is about 2,000 miles. They set off in June of 1860. The leader, who was Robert O'Hara Burke, was a soldier, a police officer, and had no bushcraft skills. Excellent. Third in command, who became second in command quite quickly, because the original second in command quite wisely quit and went home, was William John Wills, who was a surveyor,

had a bit more experience, but still honestly not great. Yeah. These were not good people to be leading an expedition. They did have an Aboriginal guide for the first good chunk of the journey, which was lucky for them. Largely because of that, and largely because they decided to split the group quite early, leaving behind some of the tons of unnecessary stuff they brought, including an oak table and many casks of rum, which they thought would help the camels somehow. Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, that's fine. That totally tracks. Yeah. They made it by November, nearly like 1,500 miles all the way to Cooper Creek. That's kind of the edge of the lands that were explored by Europeans at that time. Burke was expected to wait there until autumn. This is Australia, remember? So I was reading this and got confused.

Autumn is like March. So this is height of summer they've ended up there. Exactly. But he decided to make a dashboard, the finish line, very quickly in mid-December, which was very stupid. Yeah, stupid as still. He left the guide behind, split the party again, left with just three other companions, one of whom died of dysentery four days before they reached their destination.

Largely again because of Burke's incompetence. He refused to believe that Greg caught dysentery, but beat him for trying to steal some extra food because he was dying of malnutrition. He's a proper twat. Yeah, I'm getting that vibe. So they did actually manage to make it to their destination, and the three of them started to return home. But Burke and Wills are thought to have died of starvation and berry berry,

which is a vitamin malnutrition. Several weeks after returning to their deserted supply camp at Cooper's Creek, it was deserted because they'd left some kind of well-hidden message, too well-hidden message. It's a whole comedy of errors that is just very... Twat-ish. Very twat-ish and annoying to read, especially as it ends into them dying. The Yandru Wanda, I'm probably pronouncing that wrong,

Average Nils tried to help these guys, like tried really hard to help them. There's this one type of fern called the Nandu fern, which is like an outback plant that grows in this stagnant water kind of thing. And it's an important food to the Indigenous people around there. But if it's not prepared carefully, we'll block the body's ability to absorb vitamin B, which causes berry berry, which is what they've died of. And so while they accepted this food from them,

Burke kind of refused to learn how to prepare it properly. Right. And massively contributed to his death. Yeah. He kind of deserved it. Yeah. He was also very hostile to the Aboriginal people's advances. And they were trying to give him fish and all of this.

And he eventually shot a pistol over their heads. There's a couple of different stories to exactly what went down there, as in whether he did it well, the other two were away from camp. Whatever it was, it was him who made the decision. He did that. Very stupid. Wills probably died alone telling the other two to go on without him. King eventually wandered off on his own as well.

And he survived because he tracked down the Aboriginal people, I assume, apologised and lived with them for months until the rest of the party came and found them. Yeah. And then Burke died of starvation, Manny Shrishnakam. Kind of happened to an icicle and iso. Yeah. Now Charlie King had spent time as a soldier in India and Afghanistan

and was really interested in other cultures. And that's possibly relevant here, whereas Burke had no interest experience with the local people, so they were just completely below him, even though they were clearly thriving in a place where he was starving to death, literally. Wow. The arrogance is beautiful.

Yeah, it is. And I like to think that the wizards would come around a bit quicker here. I mean, Rincewood is not this terrible. Rincewood already has a lot of this experience, doesn't he? He's good with languages. He's talked about, he's talked to everyone in every country, I think, by this point. Yeah.

But yeah, there's a whole book about the Burke and Wills thing, like, from this perspective, from, like, properly taking into account Aboriginal people's contribution to making any of it a success, which I will link to a review of it that also then links to the things. Cool. It's interesting. I liked one of the quotes from it,

which is, even in my infield work in the Western Desert, I've always been amazed at how the Aboriginal people know who's a couple of days away just by looking at the horizon and seeing plumes of dust or smoke. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, cool, right. Anyway. Yeah.

Do you have an obscure reference for me? Probably. That seems like something I would have done, doesn't it? You've written the word jam. Yeah, I did, didn't I? Yes, jam. Jam sandwiches. Jam, when Rincewood is kind of going off on one talking to the kangaroo,

he's eating a gooseberry sandwich and can kind of taste rhubarb and plum maybe, and he's like, you'd be amazed at how often they do that sort of thing, you know, stuff cheaper fruit in. I met this man in an Inwans. He worked for a jam maker in Angkorport, and he said they put in any old rubbish and some red dye, and I said, what about the raspberry pips? And he said they make them out of wood.

Wood? He said he's got a machine for stamping them out. He's very outraged about the jam. Yeah. This was a thing. What, wooden pips? Yep. Oh.

Yep, absolutely it was. So raspberry jam specifically was very difficult to make, and it is delicious, so there was a high demand. But then from that became a lot of jam fakers. This was in the days before there were very stringent laws about what you could and could not sell as food. Instead of raspberry syrup, they would use rhubarb or other fruits. They would add appropriate colouring.

In one particularly unconvincing recipe from this blog I'm using, they used sweet and turnip jam. Lovely. The writer doesn't think for a second anyone believed it was actually raspberry. But the industry itself was quite interesting because they made the wooden pips. They hired hundreds, if not thousands, workers

to manufacture these tiny pips. And they treated the workers horribly to the point where Demeline Pankhurst discovered the business and was so horrified by how the women were being treated that she founded her own jam factory selling real raspberry jam for much of each of these profits. Like it's a whole thing, there's a lot of jam drama. Wow.

Yeah. So jam fakers is a whole thing. And the saffron. And the saffron's little side, no, that was a whole thing. Yeah, but. Oh, that was great. Yeah, it's amazing. Well, I think that brings us to everything we have to say

on the first third of the last continent. That's two thirds to go though. This is exciting. So we'll be back next week, hopefully on time, with part two, which starts on page 140 in the Corby Paperback with the line, Archchancellor Ridcully glared at the skies if it was doing this to upset him personally.

Which it absolutely was. And I will find the excuse to read that line again when we record this episode. Please do. Yeah. And we're going to end on page 256 in the Corby Paperback with Gidey. He said, no worries, eh?

I must say I'm really glad to see you drongos and know two ways about it. Listeners will note I'm not attempting the accent because I feel like we've suffered enough. In the meantime. In the meantime. Dear listener, you can follow us on Instagram at the true shall make you fret on Twitter

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And in the meantime, dear listener, don't let us detain you. Well, what's happened there is I made my notes in two place and I copy paste half of them in the middle of the other half somehow. Oh, good effort.