The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 8: Equal Rites Pt.2 (Haitches Hon Heverything)

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan-Young and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 2 of our recap of “Equal Rites”.Moral Relativism! Nostalgia! Singing! Exposition! Euphamisism! Kitchens! Abolishing Gender! Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail] to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:The World of the Dark Crystal Her Dark MaterialsMorris MinorThe Winkers Song (Misprint), Ivor BiggunThe Worst Witch (IMDB)The King of Elfland's Daughter (Wiki)Hyacinth Bucket's Top 5 Putdowns | Keeping Up AppearancesRomani (TV Tropes)History of the Romani People; Origin (Wiki)UK Roma/Traveller Communities (Twitter)Racism against Gypsies (Huck) 'Rambling dinosaur' Marco Pierre White says women are too emotional to be chefs (Guardian)Education and Sex: The Medical Case against Higher Education for Women in England, 1870-1900, Joan N. Burstyn (JSTOR)The gender riots that rocked Cambridge University in the 1920s (Oxford University Press Blog)The Rising Tide: Women in CambridgeBreast-shaped hills 

Okay, quick pause while I take off my thermal vest. So the watch is going to be a TV show? Yeah, well we knew that. I didn't, well, I kind of... They announced it at the memorial. You were there. But it was literally a hint. Oh yeah, there was a lot.

Yeah. There was a lot that day. It was a very, yeah, it was like a tiny hint in the middle of a bunch of announcements because I think that came right after they said that the Wee Free Men is going to be a movie. That's it, that's what I was remembering. Yeah. And the Wee Free Men, the Henson Company is going to basically do the feagles so I'm really

excited for it. Cool. So like the experts that... My favourite. My favourite. I'm a bit more obsessed with how they work because you haven't seen The Dark Crystal, have you? I have not.

They've just brought out like a TV series based on the film. It's like a prequel series. But it's, it is all proper puppetry. There's not, not CGI. Obviously there's like CGI backgrounds and stuff and it's so good and it's so clever and we watched all the making of stuff and... My mum, when I was little, had one of these Dark Crystal, like a coffee table book kind of things.

Yeah. Big one with all the illustrations. And I had no idea what Dark Crystal was so I thought I'd stumbled upon some fucking arcane tome. Oh I mean. Just full of bullshit. And like, it was like, I loved it. I had a great time with that, but I've never watched the movie.

The movie terrified me as a child to the point where I was really, really scared to watch the show. Oh no. The Skeksis are terrifying. What are they? They're the villains and they're evil and they make this weird mmm noise. Oh that is... Yeah, they terrify me.

I'm so scared of them as a kid and they are, they're still really scary in the TV series. Okay. But... Scary as in, they're mainly scary because you've got the nostalgia of scare or will I be scared if I watch this? I don't think you will be, you will be uncomfortable, I don't think you'll be scared. Okay. Because the scariness partly comes from nostalgia, but also they are written to be horrifying.

Is it still nostalgia if it's negative? Just calling up a, evoking a past emotion. Yeah. Nostalgia doesn't have anything in it that specifically means positive, does it? It's not like... What's the one used as the opposite of phobia? Filia. Filia.

Yeah, it's not nosfilia. Algia. Algia. What else is Algia? Algy. No. Ponskum. No.

We're getting further, we're getting further away, we're getting way off what we were fucking talking about. So the watch. The watch. The TV show. Sorry. So you've probably read more about this than I have, because basically the first I heard of it was a Reddit thread where everyone was like, what the fuck is this casting?

Yeah, I've read about it on Facebook and Twitter where everyone's been like, what the fuck is this casting? Mm-hmm. But from two very different directions and I can completely see the point of one direction and not at all see the point of the other one. Okay. So at the time we're recording this, they haven't, I don't think they've announced the full cast, but they've announced quite a lot.

Yeah, this is a late November reference. So they've announced, I think they've announced most of the major characters. Yeah, I'll call up the list. So this includes we have a femme veterinary, which honestly I'm into. Yes, like that's fine, that's a good idea. The two aunties, these casting announcements, schools of thoughts, the one that's like the way they've done this, they're obviously massively changing the story from the watch books.

And this is really dull for our listeners. So I've read them for the first time and not got to the watch yet. Yeah. But yeah, that School of Thought, I'm kind of with you, I wish they would just straight up do all the stories as they happen in the book series. But with knowing this early, I can emotionally disconnect and accept that this is a TV series very loosely based on the books and in its own thing, it'll be quite good. So I don't read, but I can see why people are annoyed in that sense, because there's

things like Carrot's going to be the new guy in town and Angle is showing him round rather than the way around it is in the books and things like that. Right. The point of view can't see as people getting upset about the inclusivity, I'm guessing. Yeah, people who are complaining that there are people of color who've been cast. They've made one of the characters in a binary, which actually from the context of the books really works. And I'm really excited about how they do that.

Yeah. See, I think that's a smart update rather than a, yeah, why did you bother with that? However, they made Sibyl thin, which, yeah, I couldn't quite get the read on whether this was meant to be like a past version of her. Yeah, I don't know, because I think the timelines are all weird compared to how they go in the books because in this Sibyl is a young, thin vigilante. Right. Like if I see an updated cast list with a middle-aged Sibyl, then.

But even younger, she's not meant to be thin. And we don't get a lot of not-thin representation on screens who are like also aggressively competent. And I think the one where you could describe Sibyl is aggressively competent. Yeah. I mean, also Richard Dormer for Vines, right? Yeah, I think so. How old is he?

Like he's not young. He's not young. I'd say he's in his forties. Right. And the woman of Sibyl is in her twenties. Right. So if they just do that again, then fuck them forever. I'm just sick.

I'm just sick of that. I'm just sick of like no comment on the fact that literally every leading lady is in her twenties and every leading man is 40 and above like this. Yeah. On the one hand, like from a very feminist point of view, I hate it. As someone in her twenties attracted to old blokes, like I'm into it. But I like, yeah, no, I completely see your point and that does really annoy me as well. Yeah.

But also you're into older women and you are being... Oh, yeah. You're being denied that. Yeah. I want attractive older women. Yeah. I feel very precious about Pratchett stuff. Yeah.

I want to kind of sit there and remind myself these books will always exist and I will always be able to go back and reread these books that I really love. Yeah. And the TV series is going to be a... If this TV series was being announced, I think I said to you when we were talking. If this was just a new TV series being announced, had nothing to do with Discworld, I'd be so hyped for it because it sounds like a really good series. Yeah, it does sound great.

Yeah. There's a non-binary dwarf. There's vigilantes. That's it. And you're quite right to say like the books aren't going anywhere just because they're like, even if I don't like it, so fucking watch us, let people enjoy things Francine and there's just that little part of the brain that you hate that goes, this is my thing and I like it how it is.

It's really fun at the moment because the BBC has the new His Dark Materials TV series on and it has the new War of the Worlds TV series on. Oh. We should really get a TV license. Oh, yes. I only pay it because I really like a lot of the stuff the BBC makes. What's this Brit box thing we were promised? I think it's coming out early next year.

I know we're getting Disney Plus in March. Sorry, I've followed the TV news. No, that was a her as in I know I'm going to end up paying for that. Yeah. But it'll find it quite interesting. So I haven't read all of the His Dark Materials books yet, but I have read the first one and I'm actually in the process of rereading the first one because I'm sorry. That was a while ago.

Yeah. And I'm listening to quite a good podcast about it. Her Dark Materials. How do you recommend? Feminist Slant. Bit of a feminist slant. I've only listened to the first couple of episodes so far. I've only seen episodes in the TV series as well but they've got spoilers for all the

books so I haven't listened to those yet. Cool. I haven't read the new one of the prequel trilogy yet because I've got like five half finished books on my Kindle right now. Yeah. But so I'm finding it quite interesting because we watched one episode because they both come out on a Sunday night so we watch an episode of His Dark Materials then we watch an episode of War and the Wilds.

Yeah. And then we reread His Dark Materials and Ben is obsessed with War of the Worlds and knows the plot really well. Interesting. So we sit there for a whole episode of His Dark Materials of me saying oh they did that thing. Oh they did. And it's a really good adaptation.

Yeah. It's really rushed. Like the first couple of episodes speed through the stuff that happens in the books but we hit episode three and it's kind of slowing down and breathing out and then we watched an episode of War of the Worlds which I'm really enjoying and Ben hates because he's like why have they done that though? That's not how it was in the thing when there's in the show and the musical and in the book and in the opera but I haven't listened to that in forever or I haven't read the book

in forever and I don't think they're really sticking to either that greatly so I'm just enjoying this as quite a good TV show that has got that guy that was in Once Upon a Time and that other thing, Trainspine. But yeah it's quite fun how differently you watch things if you've read the source material, if you've got a relationship to the source material. And I've gotten better and better at accepting that this will be different from the source material and this is why and trying to appreciate something because they're such different mediums and if I thought about how I'd say adapt a bunch of books I'd do it very differently from

someone else. Yeah. Right I'm going to get us a coffee and then we should do a podcast or something right? You want to make a podcast? Yeah. Let's make a podcast. Coffee first though. Hello and welcome to the Truth Shall Make You Fret podcast in which we're reading and

recapping every book from Toe Pratchett's Discworld series in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan Young. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our little chat about Equal Rights, the third book in the Discworld series. Yes and Equal Rights is the first, we could say in the Canon Discworld is that fair? Yeah I think we're beyond introducing the Discworld and now we're actually on to the Canon of.

Yeah. So part two that we're discussing is page 92 to page 195 in the Corby paperback edition as it starts with and so it was that a week later Granny locked the cottage door and hung the key on its nail in the privy. It's the lucky place to start. Because we're setting off to the university going to Hogwarts in it and it ends with me being incapable of turning pages. Because of all the post-it notes.

There are so many post-it notes. It ends with you won't have to bother with lessons. You can go all over the place. Now I'm going to notice you. You'll be invisible really. And well you can really clean up. But of course after all that laughing you won't be interested will you? And then three of the last two.

Patronising Granny. I'll say Granny. Francine do you want to talk about what happened previously on Equal Rights? Yes, previously on Equal Rights. A wizard on his last legs climbs the ramp tops to bequeath his staff to the seventh son of the seventh son. But nobody listens to the midwife and a bouncing baby girl is given a new destiny. Said child spends seven uneventful years in a village watched over by a violent hunk of

wood before an incident involving a not dead witch and a pack of wolves propels her into an apprenticeship. She nearly gets lost in an eagle's brain before her mistress realises that the wizard's power within needs channeling, preferably not into her nice cast iron fireplace. Which a little girl set off without more pork and the musty mysteries of a men's only magic university. Amazing. Thank you.

I forgot to do that on spoilers. I'm going to do that on spoilers. Oh yeah do that. Note it. Note it. Disclame it. Disclaimer. Some spoilers.

No so this is a spoiler light podcast. Major spoilers for the book we're currently discussing. Equal Rights right up to the end. But we'll do our best to avoid spoiling any future events in the next books. And we are going to hold off any and all discussion of the final book The Shepherd's Crown until we get there. We've been so good on that. I haven't even needed to bleep anything about it.

I've come close. There were a couple of notes on this episode that then had to be cut. Yeah. Oh. Cut before they were even alive. Basically we're going to end up talking about this book a lot again. Yes. Yes we are.

But we're not there yet. We are not. Do you have any follow up? Not really. Did you do any of your homework? No obviously I didn't do any of my homework. Front scene. I just reminded myself of what the homework was that I didn't do.

Does that help? Yeah that counts. Okay cool. Yeah. No I don't have anything major to follow up on from last week's episode. In that case do you want to summarise the book ahead or the second head? So in this section it's journey time. Hooray.

We're going on a journey. Literal journey. Literally going on a journey. That's what we're doing. We're supposed to be heading to the unseen university but Granny doesn't know where that is so we head to the nearby town of Ohulan Katash. Very nice. I have no idea if I'm saying that right.

Because it's not real. Granny's mate tells them Hogwarts or the university is in fact in Moorpork 500 miles away. Esk gets herself lost in this funky little town because she wants to. Pops of the pub almost gets kidnapped before falling asleep on a barge and goes off sailing with the zoons. Granny uses a crystal ball to find where Esk has gone and sees that the staff is distilling magic into Esk.

Oh no. Not my sort of distillery. And Granny decides she's going to go and find Esk on foot. Good old Granny. Esk decides the zoons are going to start asking questions about the staff and things so she buggers off from them, joins a caravan headed for Ank Moorpork. Hooray. She meets Simon and the wizard Treetal.

Granny falls into a bear trap with a bear, beats the bear up because she's Granny. Dwarves come and get her out and fix up her broomstick. Treetal, the wizard, is a bit of a dick so Esk storms off from the caravan. Esk storms off a lot. Yeah. She doesn't like to storm. She doesn't like to work out in her favour. Yeah.

She falls asleep in the forest, has a very weird dream when everything catches fire around her a bit. Granny finds her, they fly to Ank Moorpork together with a magically augmented broomstick because Esk is fun. They take up residence in the shades of Ank Moorpork. Hooray. Terrible pun about a fence in there. Terrible puns about fences.

After a brief intro to the concept of sorcery, wonder if we'll come back to that. Esk enters the university with the wizard Treetal, who she's bumped back into, while Granny enters around the back way and meets the housekeeper. Esk gets laughed out of the university after having a few performance issues and being unable to do any magic. But Granny tells her that she's found another way into the university. Ooh. Ooh.

Ooh. Ooh. Like, it is explicitly explained to us before that point. I just want to add a little bit of mystery. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You can, ooh, wait. Like, I will not.

Ooh. I'll stop now. Too many ooze. So quick check-in on helicopter and loincloth watch. Did you spot any? No loincloths. No helicopters, but we did get proper flying broomsticks, which I feel makes sense. These look proper.

I mean, it's a broomstick and it flies. I think Pratchett compared it to the equivalent of a split window Morris Minor. Right. It's a start. Well, it does start eventually. Yes. With some jogging. I was thinking more Robin Reliant.

Yeah. But yeah, it's a, but yeah. Okay. So no helicopters. No. And also we learn that riding side saddle on it. Not a great idea. Yeah.

Which disappoints me because I always thought if I was a witch, I'd ride my broomstick side saddle. Goodness sake, why? No, it looks fun. I like going on. Have you ever ridden a horse side saddle? No, but I've ridden carousel side saddle. Oh, we have done that.

That was quite fun. Because I'm quite often in a corset and a floor length skirt when I'm going on a carousel. Well, yes, of course. But when you're on a broomstick, I just think it'd be fun. All right. Well, I don't want to. On your head, be it. There's no way to say this.

That doesn't sound slightly rude, but I don't want a big uncomfortable stick that's going to give me splinters going up between my legs. That's why you wear all the petticoats. I mean, if I was in trousers, then I'd quite happily ride the broomstick normally. But in a skirts and petticoats, side saddle is easier. All right. It's very difficult to straddle things while wearing petticoats. I'm going to.

Yeah. I'm sure I wouldn't know about that. No, it's very right. You wear petticoats, isn't it? So going to the actual book, I think would better. So should we go on to our first proper recap section, which is favourite quotes? Yeah, favourite quotes. My favourite quote is a short one and I've been good in any picked one because I've snuck

all the other quotes I like into other parts of my past. Yeah, I did. I did notice. I will give us a rigorous structure and then find every possible way I can to ignore it. Yes. If you ignore the rules, people will half the time quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you. Very true.

It is very true and I really like it. A, because it's true, but also because the people who stick to that the most aren't always good people. A lot of the people going, oh, those rules just don't apply to me, tend to be on a higher economic end of the spectrum and I think it would do well for the rest of the world to remember that sometimes. Yeah, I mean, it's a useful but probably not the lesson you want your kid to learn but the lesson I learn at school.

So if I just do what I want, basically, things will probably be fine. Yeah. I'm not going to say I serve me well all the time, but I think there are times where it's really important to remember that like, obviously, this theatre and the industry around it are very, there's lots of barriers and there's lots of ladders and it's a lot easier to be part of the industry if you are wealthy and white and male and connected and it's very easy as an outsider looking in on it to go, oh, well, it's not really a space for me, is it?

And so it's quite good to sort of go, actually, if I completely ignore those rules and barge in, everyone will just sort of have to work around me and not just me, but a lot of people getting into theatre now and it's a nice thing that's sort of the way the barriers come down is by people blithely walking and ignoring them. Yeah, now take that attitude and apply it to the conversation we were having the other day where you said you weren't qualified for those jobs. Ah, good point. Yes, that is exactly what I mean when it comes to just ignoring the required qualifications

and things and saying, yeah, but I can do this anyway, so, I mean, no, if you're like going to practice surgery. Yeah. No, I can get why- The fucking marketing. I can get why a degree is required for, you know, being a doctor, building bridges, things like that. Yeah.

But yeah, the amount of jobs that a degree required, the degree can be in literally anything. Yeah, exactly. If you have a degree and applied physics and that'd be enough for a marketing job. Yeah. So, not having a degree but having a marketing experience. Probably a good thing. Yeah, but also, like Bill Hicks said, everyone who works in marketing said kill themselves, so I feel like I shouldn't go into it.

I mean. Yeah, he's dead now. Yeah, that does haunt me sometimes when I have to kind of sell myself slightly and write some marketing stuff, but, you know, I didn't- I didn't choose to be born into a capitalist society. Exactly. I do have to find a way to function within it until we can destroy the entire system and start again from scratch, which at this point is going to take some full apocalyptic

event. Yes. But as we've already discussed, you know, you and I've got our apocalypse plans pretty much sorted. Yeah, no, that's all zipped up. I don't think we need to worry about that now. I mean, we could do things like organize the shelter we talked about, but that seems like a lot of effort.

Stop parts on tinned food. Yeah. Let's just have a vague plan in the back of our head, shall we? Yeah. Yeah, I'll do like an Amazon shop or something. Good shit. Sorry. Wait, that was off topic, wasn't it?

Yeah. So I like that idea of, um, blightly ignoring some barriers, and I think more people would do well to remember they can. And also just on a personal level, like I have friends who are super charismatic and very good at going, I know this is technically the rule, but could you? Yes. That I always feel, I think because I'm British, a huge amount of secondhand embarrassment while they do it and then find myself suddenly sat at a very nice table in a fancy cocktail

bar being given free drinks and sort of go, Oh, maybe I should be less British about this. And yeah, but also I would, I would never do it. I, I find myself more able to do stuff like that as I get older. And I am optimistic about it as my mum is really good at that stuff. And I see myself developing personally very similarly to my mum. So I mean, I have to say the people I see doing this where I respect them or at least I'm sort of in awe of them doing it for being this sort of charismatic are the ones who do it in a way where they are very, very lovely to everyone concerned.

Well, that's exactly like, there is no point going in and just being a dick about everything. Like why sometimes it does work, you know, it sometimes it does work. But when it does, it's not going to work half as well as doing it the nice way. And, you know, you can just, I don't know, I feel like I shouldn't have to justify not being a dick, but I feel I do a lot of the time. There is a difference between blithely ignoring the rules, but going in and being so lovely and charming that they are rewritten around you and you end up having a lovely time going in blithely, ignoring the rules and being a dick and making life a lot harder for everyone

around you and making them miserable so you can get what you want. I was talking to a mutual friend of ours on Saturday, and he said to me that he didn't realise until recently that you could use niceness as a weapon. Oh, I was like, really? You didn't know that? He was like, yeah, no, I guess it was just the way I brought up. But like, because I said to him, basically, I was going to see someone that night. I wasn't particularly keen on seeing and I just said, I'm going to be so fucking nice

to everybody. And he was like, yeah, I never really understood that until recently, but it does work. You can just be aggressively kind and thoughtful. I'm not very good at it because I am, just by nature, kind of a dick. It's the channel that. No, no, this is something I've, to an extent, come to accept about myself and not in a way where, because I know that I'm a bit of a dick, I then feel like I have cut bunch, do whatever I want, I still try and be nice whenever.

But I know deep down I am just a bit of a bastard. So if I, so I'm more likely to weaponise niceness than be nice for the sake of being nice. It's not entirely true. I do try and make people happy. I'm just awful at it. Well, I think intent and consequence, you can get involved with philosophical argument about which is more important, can't you? But I tend to fall on the side of the latter.

I tend to fall on the side of the latter, but I don't think you can ignore intent. No, no, not within yourself. Um, that's why there's, I'm very much on the thing of there's no so, there are no black and white moral issues. Yeah, as much as I would like there to be. As much as I would love everyone and for everyone to agree with me on what those black and white moral issues were. Yeah, I mean, is that so much to ask?

Yeah, I would just like everyone to agree with me about everything all the time. Sorry, okay, so your favourite quote, Francine. Well, unfortunately, I didn't agree with you on which one, of course. But mine's slightly more whimsical and a bit longer. Whimsy. Oh, I know. So we're talking about, I think you've picked something similar for your favourite quote in the past.

We're just talking about the sunlight on the desk. Oh, yeah. Particular and peculiar physical qualities. So Pratchett is describing how it's not a sudden, it kind of dawn sloshes gently across the sleeping landscape, but the couple of paragraphs I liked were, an observer on some suitable high point. Let's say, for the sake of argument, a wisp of serostratus on the edge of space would remark on how lovingly the light spreads across the land,

how it leaps forward on the plains and slows down when it encounters high ground, how beautifully it... Well, actually, there are some kinds of observers who, placed with all this beauty, will whine that you can't have heavy light and certainly wouldn't be able to see it, even if you could, to which one can only reply. So how come you're standing on a cloud? It is a very beautiful two paragraphs poking fun at people who can't just enjoy things and let other people enjoy things.

I do like the... But so how come you're standing on a cloud? Yeah, it's just that last little one. And the kind of related note, the suspension of disbelief we can all give ourselves that is then sometimes shattered by... I was like, yeah, no, I can quite happily accept that we're in this weird fantasy universe with trolls and on the disc and everything. But this particular point of physics, I am prepared to argue about.

While standing on a cloud? Yes. I like the way Pratchett sort of pokes fun at him or his world. And he sort of nods and... It's almost like getting in the... Yes, I know it's silly before anyone else can get in with a... But that's ridiculous. Yes.

Yes, that's the point. We can all agree that this is ridiculous. That's what we're doing. So I just like that one. That's not much deeper meaning behind one. No philosophy. We're not going to get into moral relativism. No, not today Joanna.

I was arguing about objectivism with somebody the other day. Oh, you don't need that in your life. No. So yeah, new characters with me. Let's not do moral relativism or objectivism. Mostly because I'm not entirely 100% sure that I know enough about either to convincingly have a conversation about them. Well, no, I don't.

Which is why the argument was so stressful. I can normally... Between the year and a half of A-level ethics and watching The Good Place a lot, I reckon I could bollocks my way through a conversation about it. Now that's a highly qualified young lady. Yes, watching The Good Place is difficult because it is a bit like... I know enough of studying ethics to know that these are very funny things that are happening,

but I couldn't tell you why. So I'm just going to very pointedly laugh when other people aren't laughing because, aha, I know the extra joke. Even though 90% of the time I watch it alone. You're the best. Just want people to think I'm clever. Oh, you are, darling. Now, very cleverly introduce these characters for us, will you?

Patronising Cal. Yeah. Will you meet Hilda Goatfinder? Uh-huh. She's lovely. She's a... Well, I say city witch. A Hulan Kutash isn't really a city.

A small town, which... To Granny Weatherwax is a big city. Yes. Because she's a country witch. I just like... We don't really see her again, I don't think. I don't believe so. Spoilers.

She... Yeah, she goes off to hang out with Zephyr, the god of like breezes. Yes. But I like that Prattia goes, okay, I have this basic concept of this is what a witch is, this is what a witch means in this world I have created. Now let's introduce another one and see what's different about her based on where she lives.

Yeah, literally a few miles down the road. Yeah. And I think the fact that he's extending out his witch template that early. And it's particularly cool in the context of a book about feminism. Which is, yes, these are these defined gender roles within this society. If you look within this defined gender role, oh, hey, they're individual people.

Yeah. And she's just an interesting character. I like a lot of how she works and what she says. And I will end up talking about her a bit more, but I do like her sort of acknowledging the head-ology of what she's doing. But in no direct words and esk walking in and getting like, yep, head-ology. Know what that is now?

Yeah. In that way, the only like a balshy nine-year-old can. Yeah, absolutely. And esk's weird mix of intelligence and naivety does a lot of very good comedy things in this section of the book. And we meet the zoons who I just really like as a concept for being this sort of nomadic traveling. The nomadic and they travel on barges,

which reminded me of the Egyptians in his dark materials. Yes. But just because I'm rereading Northern Lights right now. Yeah, yeah. And they are traveling folk on a barge. Yes. But I really like the idea of this tribe that don't do lying. Yeah.

In such a way that it highlights everyone else's lying and embarrasses them. Yeah. And the way is just they are all very much, they have to be honest and direct about everything. This quote, the zoons have never heard about euphemism and wouldn't know what to do with it if they had one, except that they would certainly have called it a nice way of saying something nasty. Yeah.

And the fact that they've developed liars who can exist so that they can exist as a trading race. Um, that was the quote about it. I really like this is me cheating and having multiple nights. Most multiple quotes even. The liar holds a position of considerable eminence. He represents his tribe in all his dealings with the outside world, which the average zoom long ago gave up trying to understand.

Zoom tribes are very proud of their liars. Other races get very annoyed about all this. They feel that the zoons ought to have adopted more suitable titles like diplomat or public relations officer. They feel they're rather poking fun at the whole thing. Yeah, it is beautiful. The general concept of somebody prizing a characteristic that you don't like to acknowledge within yourself

to such an extent that it kind of embarrasses you. I just, I really like that concept. I'm trying to think of a parallel. You say your thing while I'm having a think, sorry. Well, no, I just like, I like that this is a thing, Terry Pratchett does where he goes, what if I take this thing, this idea, this exists, and I take out one fundamental part of being human?

What does that make these people? So he's taken this group of people and gone, if I take away that one fundamental thing, which is the idea of lying in any kind of dishonesty, how does that make this race of people tick? And I think he, and it's, it's like a thought experiment. And it's not a huge thing. You know, the zoons don't become this major thing across the disc world.

No, but they do have to adapt and... Yeah, but they don't come up a lot in books. He just throws in this little thought experiment based on a tribe of people and then Wonders often does the whole other book. Yeah. And I like that he makes the time to throw those in rather than it just, here is a nomadic tribe of people and she's traveling on their barges now.

Yeah, no, that's right. That is a really good point, actually. It's the every little bit of the journey. I can't, I really wish I could just say that fucking word normally again now. You've ruined me, Joe. Sorry. And it is just peppered with these, these little details that just make the whole thing just really enjoyable to read.

Yes, that's why this is, this is, this is why I love Pratchett, is because we have these really nice moments of he couldn't leave a blank space where there could have been another joke in there. Yeah, yeah. So we have the zoons. Did you have any other zoom thoughts? No, tangentially related. I just really like the idea of sparkles.

Yes. Is that what they were called? Sparkle. Sparkles. Yeah, the sparkles. The Comedian stones. Yeah. Again, something that doesn't really come up again,

but just a really nice concept while they were there. Yes, I like the little existence. We also meet Simon and the wizard Tritle. Yes, who, why? I really want to know why Simon stutters because of hay fever. I don't think he does. I think it's like a, it's kind of a, just, it's pointing out that they know fuck all about stuttering.

Yeah. Just, just basically, I think it's, I'm possibly looking a bit deep into this, but I kind of read it as a, and this is kind of an obvious limit to their wisdom. Like they may be the all-knowing wizards of whatever, but they're like this speech impediment that we get in this world, you know, a little bit about. It's like, oh, hay fever, probably. Yeah, okay.

Must be allergic to pollen. That's why he's stuttering. Yeah, no, I hadn't thought about it like that, and I like that. But yes, I quite like Simon. He's a sweet kid who seems very intelligent. We hang out with him a lot more in the final third of the book. I don't like Tritle. I'm not surprised.

Tritle's a dick. I'm not sure we're meant to. Well, yes, all right, fine. But he is a dick, yeah. He's like a... Yeah, he's drumbella if drumbella was still alive. But I think this is the point is, is that the wizards are just like this and we have to deal with it.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's at some point in there, it's said that it's never really occurred to him to be unkind to children. And he's not like a bad person. He's just, you know, the kind of low level bigger that you're expecting in these situations. It's just, ah, yeah, yeah. A lot of my notes around things that Tritle does throughout the book are just... I've just turned to one of these notes here and it just says, ah, I'm going to punch this wizard.

Oh, excellent, yes, yeah. Yeah, cool. I've used a lot of strange combinations of vowels and r's to write how I feel about Tritle. Which quite was it that made you... That's... I'll get onto it a little bit more in a bit, but it involves him talking about the difference between witchcraft and wizardry. It's very similar to how I felt about Drum the Tree in the last section of the book, all right.

We also get introduced to the concept of nolls. Briefly. Very briefly, in that they attack this traveling caravan and the wizard deals with them. But I was kind of curious, so I looked them up. So noll without the G in middle English means a stupid or drunk person. And they're first mentioned in Lord Danceny's writing on the Fey. How long ago is that? 1800s, I want to say.

I've got some Lord Danceny stuff. There's a really beautiful book, and I can't remember what it's called now, which is going to bug me. They sort of, these gross things that lurk at the edge of forests. Now they were introduced into Dungeon and Dragons, the concept of nolls with a G. And were originally human troll hybrids. This is in the 1974 version of D&D. In advanced D&D in 1977, they were human hyena hybrids.

But in the Discord, they're not really described in this bit, but from... Kind of stone troll, isn't it? No, it doesn't even say that they're stone. It just says, oh yeah, a variety of stone goblin. But every other time they're mentioned in the Discord after this, they're these street cleaner things. So you very kindly found it for me, the Discord companion. And in the Discord companion, they're described as a softer skin variety of troll,

but without the latter's intelligence and noble disposition. A few are now moving into Anchmore Park. They're scavengers, both as a means of eating, and also for more complex, hard to understand reasons. They'll make careful collections of old spoons or dead seagulls, which appear to be extremely significant to both themselves and other nolls. It is believed that the huge fetid heaps carried on the bent backs of nolls are not in fact some kind of carapace, but are their worldly goods.

It sounds like a kind of proto-goblin, looking ahead. Looking very far ahead, yeah. But that's not even the nolls we get here, so I think you pulled out a random fantasy term for something that could attack a caravan. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, total reckon. Yep.

But it was a gophonic excuse for me to look up where the word comes from, so now I'm glad I've learned some middle English, a bit of Lord Dunstiny, and some stuff about D&D, which I've still never played. Yeah, we should get you on that one day. You'll hate it. We will. I might like it, it makes stuff, I'm gonna make it stuff up.

Well, I think you'd be a very good dungeon master. I don't think you would like to seed enough control to be a player. Oh yeah, good point. I would if I provided I could play as someone who was a dick. Like if I could intentionally just not do what the dungeon master wanted all of the time. Okay, no one wants to play with you. Yeah, no. This is why I will probably never play D&D.

I genuinely think you should do the dungeon master thing at some point, though, that would be quite fun, because it's like a one-off activity for me and you, and I know we've probably draft someone else in. Oh, I said just be you telling me what to do for an hour. I'm into that. That doesn't sound like D&D though, that sounds like something else with a different acronym.

Moving swiftly on. Can we? To Mrs. Parm. Gather your petty goats. Oh yes, that was a good segue. Segway. Mrs. Parm and her five lovely daughters. Thank you for having me, being oh so kind.

I was never gonna get to Mrs. Parm and not sing over Biggin. We'll put that in the show notes rather than a extrapolate, shall we? I was gonna sing the whole thing. But I thought this was quite cool, because obviously we talked about the Horpitz when we were talking about... Sorry, I just love the cat. Obviously, when we were talking about the Horpitz... You know, when we were talking about, in the very first episode,

when we were talking about the colour of magic, we talked about Antmoorpork's Horpitz and how that never comes up again, and the system becomes this sort of seamstresses, and this is the first hints in that there is a lovely woman called Mrs. Parm, who's a very respectable lady, and people come to visit them all night long. She lives with all these young ladies who are apparently her relatives.

So this is when Granny and Eska stay near a brothel. Yeah. Okay, anyway, moving on from one king. God, this... I may have to mark this one as explicit material. I like the one with the turtle sex noises. Yeah, no, that's good clean turtle sex fun, that one. Did you just say good clean turtle sex fun?

No, I didn't move on. Mrs. Whitlow. Mrs. Whitlow, the housekeeper. She's actually a recurring character, the first of all these are actually, isn't it? No, Mrs. Parm as well. But Mrs. Whitlow is a... This is our first introduction to a major side character, if there is such a thing.

She's a sort of recurring background character, because she works at the Unseen University, and obviously we spend quite a lot of time there. And yes, I enjoy her company. Yeah, and she's promoted to proper side character in The Last Continent, which is one of my favourites. She's got a special place in my heart. But I like how she's written here,

and in fact, this kind of brings us on to little bits we liked. You liked her posh accent, didn't you? Oh, it did, yeah, hold on. The way it's written. Yeah, it's... Again, I'm not sure if this is one of those things. I think there are some things it must be difficult to appreciate in the same way if you aren't British,

and that sounds so patronising to our international... This is such a British thing of someone who's kind of... Especially coming from... Like, my Northern Salomon family has kind of working class done good, become middle class. This way of... The weird, weird British class system being what it is, and so someone trying to give themselves this big class boost,

because I am at the top of all of these underlings, because she's the head housekeeper. She is pretty much the second most powerful person at the university, most powerful being the Chancellor. Yeah. And it's, yeah. Anyone who wants an insight into this kind of concept, and especially around this kind of time,

that Pratchett was writing actually, what's that show called? Was Mrs. Bouquet, or Bucket, in it? Oh, God, I can't... Keeping Up Appearances? Yes. Yes, Keeping Up Appearances. I'll...

I'm sure there's someone on YouTube. I'll link it in the show notes, because it's some... Hyacinth book. Hyacinth bouquet, darling. Not bucket. But yeah, it's basically the huge class thing in the UK, and it's just this very recognisable... She stood up and beamed at Granny,

and with an almost perceptible click, wound at her voice up several social classes. Yes. Pray, excuse us, she said. You find us whole at sixes and sevens, it being washing day and everything. Is this a courtesy call, or may I make so bold as to ask? She lowered her voice.

Is there a message from the hadasade? It is such a perf... It's... The way it's written is so perfectly what that voice is, what that accent is. Yes, and the H is everywhere, because everybody knows that you shouldn't drop your H's, because that is a common thing to do,

and so they've added H's on everything. Of course, we're all at sixes and sevens. Yes, and if you want to look at your upper middle class snobs, they will always go on about how common people say H as H. Yes, and it's H. Yes, and you don't need to talk to those people, because... Oh God, no, never. It's just...

Foss is one query. So yeah, so class system and voice is always really quite fun. Yeah, that's actually way deeper than I expected, just from that fun little bit, so well done, us. Taking the fun out of everything. It's well written as well, like the way he manages to describe that voice by just adding a few extra H's, and it makes me happy.

It's very clever. Yeah, the amount he can describe without description. Show me, don't tell me. Yes. Oh, show, don't tell, that's the thing. Sometimes I think, sometimes it's just tell, honestly. Yeah, sometimes do tell. There is nothing wrong with a bit of exposition.

Yeah, the next little bit I liked. Similarly to your favorite quote, actually, if you're ignoring the rules thing, this is more of the kind of sister to that, which is they're not being aware of the rules, or not being aware that these things can't be done, is quite often a really good route towards... Getting them done anyway.

Getting them done, discovering new ways of doing things. It's like how quite often you'll get a discovery in a field by somebody who wasn't brought up within the establishment, because they genuinely can think outside the box. It's very difficult to think outside the box once you're in it. Like an everyday example would be doing a crossword or something, for instance, or trying to answer a trivia clue.

And once you have an idea in your head, even if it's not correct, you can't think of anything else. Yeah. So I was like, I have six letters down, Zebra. Zebra's not six letters. Can't think of anything but Zebra now. That's it, I'm done for the day. I'm going to have to come back to this tomorrow.

But yeah, so this is when Esk manages to pull the staff to her by dissolving in one place and reappearing where she is, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So basically just casually changes the fabric of reality. Because she doesn't know if she can't change the fabric of reality. Yeah. And it goes back to... You were talking last week about granny knowing things

and not telling Esk becomes a big plot machine in this. Like that is often what is moving the plot forward. Is Esk not knowing something that someone really could have told her at some point? Yes. Obviously she hasn't met the wizard who could have been someone who pointed this out to her at some point. Yeah. But and again, Simon knew we meet with Treetal as another example of this.

He wasn't taught by anyone. That's mentioned quite explicitly when he gets to the university. And he's like this incredible genius. He was massively thinking outside the box and dazzles people with his ideas. Yeah. And I would imagine largely because he wasn't told things had to be this way. Yeah. But yeah, this is kind of interesting.

Because this brings us to you saying that Esk has like the journalistic instincts. Oh, yeah. No, just which is something. But there's something you've got the background in. Despite not having a degree, Francine. What the hell? Oh, I know. I did the pretty primitive method of leaving school at 16 and then just going and working on a magazine.

Shocking. That the yeah, just basically she's saying Esk wandering unregarded amidst the bustle learned all of the background exposition by by the simple method of finding someone who looked important and tugging on the hem of his coat and in a slightly less intrusive way. That is exactly how one does research when it involves people. It is you find yourself in a new situation and you go, hmm, someone around here will know what they're on about. Hello sir.

What are you on about? Yes. And literally it is quite often that simple. It looks like just just in this bit of the book, it is useful as advice to very simply explain the exposition. So he's, you know, gone on about where Zemf is the town she's in is, like why things are happening and people are going off to rank more pork and she knows this because she was eavesdropping casually.

It's like rather than having to do the whole, as you know, Bob, and just convoluted ways of adding exposition, you can just tell not sure as you were saying. Yes. This is what I meant by tell instead of show. Like show don't tell is great advice, but it's also terrible. Like sometimes you just need to be expositional and there are better ways than as you know, Bob. Yeah.

As you know, Bob is the worst, worst version of show don't tell. Yes, so bad. I guess I almost wish I'd never become aware of it because it does ruin so much TV now. Yeah, I find it's more of a problem with TV or that I notice it in writing as well. Like in books, I mean. Yeah, yeah. I think possibly because I'm fussier than I used to be with what I read. But I like picking up on how exposition works and things I'm watching.

Like His Dark Materials is a good example of the new TV show of that has the whole thing of demons which stay with you from that just exist and it's almost like an external part of your soul. And yeah, I was wondering how they would get explained on the TV series. Because I've seen the book, there is room to write down exactly what they are. Yeah. And he's like a more of a direct narrator than a lot. So they and in the TV series, they're just kind of there and then there are offhand bits of

conversation like the kids are playing in the crypts at this university. So one kid says to another something about so your demons stay with you until you die. So are those all of the demons in the crypts? Yeah. And then there's another bit where you see someone saying this is what my demon has permanently decided to be when I've turned this age. And so it explains what they do and how they work in the TV series without any as you know, bobbing.

Yeah. So it's just quite explicit with it. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. And obviously, I mean, I would assume 90% of people reading the series are already reading the series, watching the series, have some familiarity with the books and the concept already.

Yeah. Yeah. But I thought it was a good way to do the exposition. Explain new things to children. It's a really good exposition technique actually, isn't it? If you've got a kid in there. Or just children having a conversation. Yeah.

Yeah. Huh. Oh, that's one to file away mentally. Yeah. But we were talking about when she goes up to this guy running the caravan and grabs his coat. And there was a thing here I noticed that really made me laugh because it's something Terry Pratchett like points out a lot. And he's talking about this guy who's running the caravan talks about not like in the zooms.

No one trusts them very much, even though they're very honest. He says, you know what they say? Never trust an honest man. An esk because she's naive. Yeah. It's just like, who says that? It's just like, they do. People.

And Terry Pratchett is really good at the pointing out the ridiculousness of the man in the street. Yes, I reckon. They all say that. Stands to reason. Stands to reason. Why may down the pub told me the truth? Which is see where the podcast gets its name, but we're not there because it's picked 25 when we're on book three.

Properly goes into that heart. And of everyone assuming, you know, they and their special people and they have done this and eventually someone's like, now it's just me. It's just people. I am they. But I like that he uses ask being very intelligently naive. Like her mix of intelligence and naivety.

And curiosity. And curiosity gets her very far and also just allows him to really, really poke at things with a stick. Yes. Because if you could have left that at her not addressing it at all and him just saying, you know what they say, never trust an honest man. And be like, oh, that's all I need to know about that character. Yes.

But ask questioning him on it. Ask going, yeah, but who's they? They don't sound very clever or something. Yeah, yeah. So I thought that was clever. And I like I'm going to end up putting that out every time. Terrified. It doesn't because it makes me happy.

Yeah, it is good. I it's you vocalize that very well. I struggle to explain to people why I like that. Yeah. Because I've met them and they're all I have bigger points to make. Do you know in this book, I am shocked. Shall we have a little pause? Yeah, let's let's get a coffee.

It's a very feminist book. Yes. He talks about the difference between men and women and witches and wizards a lot. And within that, he puts in all these tiny moments of feminist, not necessarily feminism, at least acknowledging that the patriarchy sucks. But one of the other smaller ones he does is when we're talking to Hilda Goatfinder. And it was following on from a point last week when we were talking about what Granny does. And S asks, and she says, I don't recognize any of these patients.

What do they give to people? And Hilda says, freedom. And she's talking, obviously, very specifically about the contraceptive ones. And I just like that in a small line, and it's not a huge deal, Terry Pratchett very much acknowledges that that's what these things represent to people, is freedom. Yeah. Yeah.

We could have gone off a whole recent rabbit hole of like the introduction of female contraceptives. Yeah, I nearly did. And I thought I don't need because it's a small moment in the book. Yeah. And it is a very simple point, although it has a huge history behind it. The point is when women can control whether or not they get pregnant or whether or not they remain pregnant, then they can be free in a way that they were denied for centuries. Yeah.

Oh, they found plays of. Yes. Because obviously versions of contraception existed at least far back as the ancient Egyptians. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, really, we only have to bother with this shit because our stupid evolution went down a weird track where we can't just turn it off if we're not using it. Yeah, exactly. Which like a bunch of animals can.

Yeah. I'm so annoyed about that. I know. There should be. I mean. Right. Okay. Just putting the womb on standby for 20 years.

Yeah. Or in our case, full shutdown. I'm just saying it should be an opt-in, not an opt-out. Yeah. Because. Like organ donation. Yeah. No, wait.

No, the other way. Because parenting raising a kid is a big, big, big undertaking that. Right. Literally directly affects many, many other human lives. And that should not be something that you cannot control whether or not you're going to do. Yeah. Very much be an opt-in. So.

Yeah. And I've always found it weird that like you have to explain to people why you don't want children instead of the other way around. It's like, oh, you don't want kids? How come? It's like, well, I mean, do you want to explain why I should? Because it seems like a terrible idea all around looking at it on paper. Yeah.

I do not want to be responsible at that level for another human life. Out of my body. Out of my autonomy. Out of my freedom forever. Out of my purse. That poor kid having to have this as a mother. Like. Dramatically gesturing it herself there.

Yeah. See it. So I like that the very quick and easy acknowledgement that contraception equals freedom. And that he doesn't go into a huge diet. No one goes into a huge diet tribe about it. Yeah. It's just accepted. Yeah.

Because. And the small quiet moments of feminism within this big book with a lot of feminist themes make me very happy. Yeah. And it is quite a realistic depiction of how these conversations will happen between women. Yes. Acknowledges that all because this is sort of from Esk's point of view. While the two women exchange gossip in a kind of feminine code full of eye contact

and unspoken adjectives. And this is sort of from Esk's point of view while she's poking around at the phones. And she's nine and so there are things she doesn't know yet. And later on in this section granny acknowledges that Esk sort of has a bit of a blind spot of she knows how baby goats are made and she but she seems to be missing that final leap. Yeah. Of how it relates to her. I was very similar I must say.

I did not do the whole sex ed thing until. Pretty much until we were doing the sex ed thing in school. Some of it I got I picked up from white magazines. Well I had an older sister. Ah yes. So obviously my mum had to explain stuff to me. So I knew why she was like screaming and crying once a month. Yes I got all that explained to me.

Like I got the period explained to me. And like I mum taught me the anatomically correct names for all of my lady bits. I'm now going to say in a ridiculous call back to my own prudery. To me that I love weird prude names for it. Tuppence is one that I love. I've never been able to beat Tuppence. Poof is quite good. Garden of heavenly delights.

Yeah quite quite long winded but. Oh yeah no there's some brilliant ridiculous ones out there. Please do send us your favourite ephemedoms for volvers. All right again it's fine I don't check the emails. God sorry how do we get on so early? If you arrange them in a spreadsheet with like. Yeah I want to look at like age ranges and location especially within the UK. Oh my god Joe we don't have time for this project.

Stop I can see it. I can see it ahead of us and we don't have the time or the maturity to deal with it. Pie shots France. He's not pie shots. Okay I'm not going to make a pie shot of ephemisms for lady bits based on age or region. Yeah sorry we've completely gone off. I'm sorry I can't even remember what it was. Oh yeah like the woman they kind of had unspoken adjectives and that and I remember

being aware of that as well. Yeah when you if you were around older like for me it was being around my teenage sister and her friends when I wasn't a teenager yet and so you get it from that perspective and also if your mum has friends around and you're being aware that these are older feminine conversations but you don't understand them yet. Yeah like my mum and her friends were a lot of the time single women in their 40s and I was hearing that which is as we now know fucking hella sexual conversations a lot of the time but because there were children around it was a lot of looks.

And I was like I'm aware that there are a lot of parts of the conversation I'm not getting and I'm a bit cross about it but I don't really want to press. But especially in this context the conversation is Granny and Hilda talking about the fact that Hilda doesn't get shut down because the wives of the town want her there yes and because she knows who buys what. Yes. Buckaroo drops being one of them. And so I like yeah as well as this idea of contraception being with freedom the larger

thing of everyone needs this but everyone is also very prudish and would like to to pull their cardigan close and be shocked that it exists at least publicly. Yeah like obviously Buckaroo drops being the equivalent of Viagra which even that I would say it is a lot easier to discuss contraception openly for us than it would be for a man to discuss having to take what do you call them performance enhancers. Yeah performance enhancers sounds like a steroid. It does I don't actually I don't know the actual word for it though like prophylactic impotence drugs.

Yeah impotence drugs yeah like I feel like yeah I feel like we've managed to steam ahead. We've managed to steam ahead and there's a lot less stigma and there is still a lot of stigma around that. But talking about the stigma attached and how there's a lot of stigma still attached to what menus people quite often point at that stigma and say but hey men are stigmatized too so this is not just about feminism it's like no that's still very much a feminist issue because associating a particular kind of masculinity with potence or impotence is very much a patriarchal issue.

Yeah it turns out that having a really rigid narrow definition of what acceptable masculinity is is also bad for men who knew. Yeah right right. Restrictive gender roles help no one abolish gender. Tagline. Anywho. To move on to a slightly more. Yeah there is you know granny's figuring out that she can't see her and Hilda says

gypsies always come here for the hair fair they might have taken her. And this is a whole deep issue. This is a whole deep issue that I'm gonna start off by saying I'm not really qualified to talk about because I'm not Romani so if me talking about this is something someone finds interesting I would really recommend doing some more research on it. So quickly first example just to explain the Romani diaspora and I'm quoting I'm actually on TV tropes. Oh really?

Yeah it has quite a good because I originally when I they said this thing about gypsies people taking people I wanted to go into the trope of it all and how that plays into this negative I mean the word is a racial slatter and it's a very negative stereotype. It refers to two groups of people really you have the Romani diaspora you also have Irish travellers which are a whole other thing that I'm not going to go into. Because I think most people are aware of it from the Romani perspective which is still a travelling community. Yes.

The only real thing in common between Irish travellers and the Romani is that they both get that word and neither should. The Romani diaspora is a collection of ethnic groups found throughout Europe, the Americas and the Middle East. They originally emigrated from India but were mistaken for Egyptians by medieval Europeans which is how the term gypsy originated. It's actually I can remember hearing it a long time ago. Yeah I do need to look at more sources for that but this is obviously from the research

I had time to do. Yeah. And yeah the whole bright outfits and wagons part of the trope is Eastern European. So the obvious thing that kind of pops into people's mind for the stereotype is like Esmeralda from the Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame. Yeah. However you pronounce it in Disney. But yeah it wasn't until quite recently that I realised Gypsy wasn't an okay term.

And I'm guessing that that's because people in the UK think it's not as bad because there's a worst slur that's commonly used in the UK that I'm not even going to say. Yeah no I won't say that one either but it but it comes from the word. Yeah. But also in earlier days obviously not now it was some British Romani did in fact encourage the term because it helped to be thought of as more foreign and mysterious in coming from Egypt. Oh sure. But I don't have sources for that and like I said.

Do you know it's still used in English law the word Gypsy? Yeah. And like we know that there's a lot of racial prejudice against. Oh huge amounts it's like the only okay version of racism in Europe at the moment. I swear like so uncomfortable. Yeah it is still very much considered acceptable ethnic targets which is. Yeah when I say okay by the way there's obviously huge fucking quotation marks on the side of that. We know it's not okay but it is still very much treated as okay.

Some of the negative stereotypes about Romani people come from gothic literature. It was like such a huge trope of these evil fortune telling. Yeah I guess they're an easy villain in that way. Yeah transient and mysterious. I do think Patrick Rothfuss tried quite hard to do something good with it in name of the wind by looking at some of the types and having a nomadic culture that did suffer from racism. Yeah.

But I think he wrote it in a very interesting way. Yeah. Like I'm not going to say he did well or he didn't because it's not really for me to say. Well no exactly we don't know enough about the culture first hand to. And I don't think Terry Pratchett was being racist by saying he were taken by Gypsies. It's just. It's what that woman probably would have said in that. It's what that woman probably would have said and like I said that awareness of it as a slur

and the whole trope around it and how it's a term that's actually really referring to a very real group of people who aren't so nomadic anymore but who do very much still suffer. And such a dispersed not dispersed isn't quite the right word but diverse. It's a diverse group within like just having that stereotype for Romani people. I don't know about them outside of Europe but I know that even within Europe there are just huge differences in culture because obviously they're fucking are. One of the crimes punishable by death in the 18th to 19th century was spending more than one month in the company of Gypsies.

Oh my god. What? In 2010 Paris came under fire from Amnesty International because they were attempting to port several hundred French Roma and they were pretty much put into camps. Like this is a very real thing that comes out today and I just wanted to bring it up. I wish Pratchett had had the time too because I feel like he would have explored the concept behind what happens to you if you try and live outside of this rigid definition of society and having traveling communities be a kind of example of that.

Well this is the thing is that he's obviously trying to kind of subvert a trope because he also talks about the leader of the zoons being dressed gypsy like and I'm using air quotes here because that's not a thing. I really hate that terms like gypsy skirts is still a thing. Yeah hate 2007. And people who still like put gypsy soul in the Twitter bio and by that they mean they did a year in Inja did that gap year in Inja I'm so sad seeing all the poor people. Those are the people who put the words gypsy soul in their Twitter bio and they're all big.

But he kind of tries to submit what is a trope by having esk taken by a group of nomadic people. Yeah except she put herself there. Except she put herself there and was not in danger and it was not a negative thing that was happening. Yeah they were probably the least dangerous people she met in the whole section. Yeah so yeah I wanted to point that up while we were on that because like I said I don't think Pratchett's been intentionally racist but I don't think he was aware of the context when he said no it might have been and I think that has been used so much in fantasy.

Yeah I'm not at all surprised he wouldn't be I wasn't until very recently and in fact again this is 1987 I would doubt that one percent of the British population could have told you. No it was not an okay thing. There are still populist long terms that come from the word gypsy that mean to be cheated. Yeah and off I mean when I'm just when you catch yourself saying something for the first time in years and you're like oh wait that's where that comes from and that is not okay. Yeah okay erasing that from my vocabulary yeah. But yeah because I know I'm not perfect and this is still very much a learning thing

but you know you learn together. Yes we learn together Joanna. But I would recommend doing more research if you get the time. I will yeah um moving on to something completely non-serious at all. Oh yeah men are terrible that was what I was going to talk about. It's time for a visit from the patriarchy duck. This is more because we talked about it last week and I was saying I wanted to punch Drumble at the tree because he was mansplaining and being ah.

And I'm glad you decided to spare your fist and not punch the tree because now we have a nice soft pliable wizard face. Yes I know they're written like this intentionally like it's not it's very very good writing. Yeah yeah. Because it sums this up perfectly but my note for page 150 is just I'm going to punch this wizard. Um and it comes into a bit of something you want me to talk about but it's just he's sort of saying that witchcraft is is sensible but witchcraft is very suitable for helping people

through life but women aren't sensible enough to become wizards. Yeah um witchcraft is for having babies and so forth but women are too excitable and hermetic requires clarity of thought and that's not where women's brains lie. Yeah actually that's a better place for for my point than the place I put it so. Yeah we can we can talk about both but I was gonna. You do your bit. My bit is literally that um very recently Marco Pierre White was who's a very famous male chef was talking about how he doesn't think women should work in the kitchen because

they're too excitable and they get too emotional. It like it's unlike noted Zen master Marco Pierre White. Yeah who is super chill all the time and a hack um but it made me what he says there specifically about women being too emotional for um high magic really really reminded me of the Marco Pierre White thing and a thing that happens with chefs and restaurants in general less now like I really think we are starting to move past it but it's so directly parallel to the witch wizard thing where witches are the ones that stay at home and they deliver the babies and they do these earthly magics while the wizards go off and do the high magic

and it's very much in the culinary world women are very women women are home cooks and pastry chefs and pastry chefs and women cook at home five nights a week planning and getting everything and trying to put nutritious like obviously this is very much a gender stereotype thing I'm not saying this is how the world actually should work all right you don't need to keep disclaimering it I'm just going to go ahead and assume you're not a twit thank you thank you whereas men go off into fancy restaurants and do things with foams and tweezers and micro herbs fucking micro herbs what the fuck is a micro herb oh don't talk to me about I won't okay I literally won't it's a wanky fine dining garnish all right micro how could you

don't have to google my great house I'm just gonna give myself a really eclectic evening and yeah it's just the way um and like I said kitchen world is moving past it I mean I'm a sous chef I get to make very good food you do I've seen it I've eaten it it's very nice thank you it is quite nice you're very welcome um but the yeah the way treetal talks about it I have dealt with male chefs who think like that and not just the big loud public famous ones like I have worked with so many people in the industry who think like that yeah so in one sense well done Terry Pratchett that is very very good writing well done Terry Pratchett good at the writing because obviously I'm just saying what I've experienced in the kitchen industry I can't

imagine it's not like that in thousands of other industries where something women do at home regularly that is a lot of work is very much taken for granted yeah while the male equivalent involves doing it very professionally and flashly childbirth and women are considered bad at it oh yeah midwife versus doctor yeah and until quite recently the and possibly even now not quite sure the kind of tendency of male uh obstetricians to go straight for the knife when a midwife would say no no yeah let's try yeah do this without cutting anything open yeah uh but the fact that it tends to be men drinking their own Kool-Aid a bit about it and say no no of course we're right of course women are too emotional for this yeah too emotionalism that comes up a lot which comes to what you

were talking about uh oh yeah so um what he was saying about childbirth in particular was what I found out while I was researching the kind of backlash against women in higher education which is kind of the theme of the book um I'd originally put it to bring up near the end of this section because when art chancellor cut angle suddenly turns from kind of being drocular about the idea of a woman becoming a wizard what a thought and s keeps pressing the point and then suddenly he does he's saying because they just don't okay or whatever it is I've probably found the actual fucking quote for that couldn't I yeah which I'm going to call out to a project saying no you can't he hissed there's no sibilants in that you can't hit it um uh oh

so but I can do wizard magic magic said esk cut angle bent down until his face was level with hers no you can't because you are not a wizard we're not wizards do I make myself clear it's just that snapping moment from when you're being patronized to when they see that you might actually be a threat and they get angry about it yeah because they can't defend it with logic um but anyway the broader point I was making was that I was looking up the arguments that men used to make about why women shouldn't have higher education and obviously there are millennia and an entire globe to cover so I just had a look at modern era Cambridge um I looked at a chapter in education and sex the medical case against higher education for women in England 1870 to 1900 published 1973

by Joan I've got my surname I'm very sorry but I will link it in show notes including fantastic quotes like the bone structure of their heads was less mature that's one of the reasons we couldn't do it but most of it unsurprisingly did center around those troublesome wombs um so basically medical practitioners would argue that although we could be the intellectual competitor if not equal to a man we could learn these things because evidence by this point had become fairly incontrovertible to the fact that women yes could learn mathematics and science and things if we did do that unfortunately we would be destroying our femininity uh not only in this kind of metaphorical sense but we would make ourselves

sterile by learning yes because if we overexerted ourselves during especially during puberty which is the very um formative formative time puberty being a bit later in general here so they were talking about more 15 years old to 12 years old because that's a whole thing that's happened um um then we could exit yeah we could break down mentally and uh make our periods stop and end up sterile um and because women had to learn in different ways apparently we uh as we know Joanna I can't learn anything while we're on our periods or we get far too stressed we will need to rest during the uh during the time of menstruation I mean I'm not gonna like someone's to give me a week off a month don't take it yeah but unfortunately this is a

slippery slope towards quotes such as since women could not take part in organized games necessary for men to counterbalance their mental exertion any women undertaking higher education would be in danger of breaking down mentally oh god yeah I mean I knew things were bad like I aware that there were very stupid attitudes towards women learning yeah and so you've just got this kind of thing that just kind of sounds almost funny looking back at it yeah and then you come to things like uh 20th October 1921 where there was a vote at Cambridge about whether women would be allowed um degrees like proper degrees but not membership of the Senate still uh or women being allowed titular degrees which is basically the certificate but no accompanying

rights right um and while this actually fell on the favor of misogyny and and um the vote came down on a honorary degree basically yeah um the protests that had been there against women being awarded degrees turned into riots and this is in you know 1921 so 20th century um 1400 or so men charged Newnham College which is uh the closest of the two women's colleges um the other being Gertin which was out of town yeah smashed down the gates caused hundreds of pounds and damages around the building um thankfully proctors managed to block the doorways and prevent them actually getting to the female students but I think we can fucking imagine yeah well that would have gone down like and yeah these these women were emotional yeah yeah women are too emotional

because anger isn't an emotion Joanna there's obviously a healthy masculine way of dealing with things like women are being allowed an education yeah how dare they know that this is a logical response yeah um and yeah they were under siege for 90 minutes wow and while there was a generally negative response from the public thank god because we had moved on somewhat by this time um somewhat somewhat the fucking entitleness entitlement of the students kind of talking back against this um yeah decrying of their horrible horrible behaviour yeah it's just infuriating I'll send you some stuff when you feel like being angered just basically paint themselves as the wounded parties and they have no choice but to do this kind of smash windows and break down doors

yeah god um yeah it's just it's like oh this is so funny you know women's brains overheating in that and then you look at it it's like oh this translated into real as as it was these stupid attitudes translated into violence against women yeah all of these I mean all of these attitudes are the basis of violence against women like there is a background of violence in wanting to keep women uneducated and chained to yeah heart and home and it goes back to what we talked about with the contraception and the freedom that allowed yeah meant that women could leave the house and do things other than giving birth yeah and obviously um although I'm focusing on the feminist side of it this will ties in with classist stuff as well because I mean

anyone but the elite weren't getting educations like there is one higher educations and and again the contraception allowed a lot more class movement yeah um and yeah I've just all ties in together and fuck these rich white dudes in 21 uh which is nearly 100 years ago now oh things that you've done so much yeah yeah um what is that if you yeah what a fucking yeah that was just a really depressing turn my kind of research took but when I was brought back to reality realizing what that's meant for women yeah it is very funny that men thought women's brains would overheat if we tried to learn things but at the same time that didn't translate to huge restrictions of course everything's fine now okay yeah should I well should I talk about

something happier or funnier then uh yes cool uh so we get a we only get one footnote this book I think um but it makes me happy they talk about the the thieves guild the guild of thieves cut versus housebreakers and allied trades we talked way back in color of magic about the guild system and that they slowly start introducing it yes yeah but we get a full explanation here and I'm going to read out the half page footnote a very respectable body which in fact represented the major law enforcement in the city the reason for this is as follows the guild was given an annual quota which represented a socially acceptable level of theft smuggings and assassinations and in return the sort of it in very definite and final ways the unofficial crime was not

only rapidly stamped out but knifed garotted dismembered and left around the city in the assortment of paper banks as well um and yeah I quite like it it's very entertaining that this is the basis of the guild system that yeah develops and grows and we get a we get an assassin's guild and an alchemist's guild and we get uh the seamstresses guild which yeah uh mrs palm runs yeah effectively yeah it's a practice basically as he does throughout the disc world making quite a point of so organized crime not that different from uh yeah start different is it no just saying but it's one of those things that's almost one of his throwaway thought experiments here and so when the zoons were like a throwaway thought experiment and it was fun

yeah and then he moved on with the book with this it's a throwaway sort of thought experiment that you can see stuck yeah and you can see where it's brain and evolved yeah and you can see where it goes and as we get into the books we get into more and more of the history of the guilds and how they're founded and how they work and I just find it all really fascinating that I love an ecosystem and I love a ridiculous ecosystem um oh fuck sorry circling back super quick um something right down about the women in higher education thing in cambridge at the moment uh until march 2020 there is an exhibition called the rising tide which is about women coming into higher education do you want to go oh yes definitely okay we are talking about that actually when we're

talking about her dealing with the uh with the wizards in the library before we get to this moment where he's awful and patronizing to her and this whole moment of that you can't be a wizard you can't when x arrives she has this moment of standing in this huge group of wizards in the university and I quite like the initial mental image because it feels very Hogwarts um but the whole sort of obviously at Hogwarts parents don't drop their kids up as I get the station but the idea of all these young students sort of milling around and the older professors coming in and clapping people on shoulders and it feels very I like neither of us went to a boarding school we're not that sort of posh no but I really wanted to because I read a lot of Eden Blyton books

yeah I really wanted to go to Mallory Towers and the way they talk about parents dropping children off and everyone around but also this boy's reality I would cry and cry and cry oh yeah but this very boys club feel yeah I imagine this is what Eden is like well we're grooming the next generation of Towers yeah anyone who's been to a thing let us know but I also like it because Esk starts wondering what a collective noun for a group of wizards is oh yes did you come up with any no well I like the ones that this suggests an order a conspiracy a circle but I was I was going to research it and then I remembered the conversation we had a couple of weeks about how collective nouns aren't real yeah but that's fine okay so what did you come up with well I thought

an argument of witches is one that's talked about later on I think some weird sisters so I thought maybe a squabble of wizards might be quite nice yes as a kind of parallel I also quite liked an inflation of wizards and an intransigence intransigence yeah it's like when someone's really stubbornly set in their opinion and won't come to an agreement or like whatever oh I like that and then transidents of wizards I like the thought of a tobacco pouch of wizards yes they are all constantly smoking raw meats yeah or pipes um I do like a squabble I like just the thought of squabble as a having got really annoyed at wizards for this entire book I'm going with a wank of wizards but I like the later wizards but I will end up liking some wizards later on

yeah um I'm trying to think of a good word for self-importance a puff of wizards yeah a puff yeah that's what I was trying to get at with inflation puff is better yeah let's go with a puff of wizards then that's our current collective noun cool all right I don't think I have anything else I want to rant about cool because we super do for me to wrap it up um do you have an obscure reference for me I do I'm calling it obscure reference bridge because it's about mountains the on the way to Ang Moorpork they go through the paps of Silla uh which peaked my interest ha peaked um and I looked into it turns out as one might expect paps does mean breasts um and is often used uh for mountains in Scotland and Ireland in particular oh right um e.g the paps of Anu

right um and I found this out through a very pleasing Wikipedia page called breast shaped hills marvelous yes um there's a Wikipedia page that's just breast shaped hills there is yes excellent I will link it for you so paps literally means breasts and lots of things are called the paps of yes because of boobs which you know adds another there were eight of them in this range and uh the guy who was navigating briefly one to two syllables and whether he would have liked her ah okay I that completely went over my head so thank you for looking that up I've got all right for one side in the one finding the dirty references yeah it's not just me uh so next week is the final part of our discussion of equal rights so we're going from uh page 196 in the

call me paperback which opens with pray have enough pray have another cup of tea mrs weatherwats so don't take me a second to get my marbles in my mouth until next time uh follow us on twitter at makey fret pod you can find us on facebook the truth shall make you fret you can email us the truth shall make you fret pod at gmail.com and uh please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts it helps other people find us and until next time don't let us detain you you after music what was our music again I know I know you found it all right cool