The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 86: The Fifth Elephant Pt. 1 (Orange You Glad I’m Not an Assassin)

Episode Date: June 13, 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 Fifth Elephant”. Scones! Stones! Contraceptives!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: Lessons from Las Vegas - 99% InvisibleEeek Club 2022 - Pratchat Millennium hand and shrimp annotation - Annotated Pratchett File (Lords and Ladies)Tetris used to prevent post-traumatic stress symptoms - Department of Psychiatry Pratchett leaving newsgroup - alt.fan.pratchett (now Google Groups)Blue John (Mineral) - WikipediaList of Cornish Dialect words - WikipediaHow Condoms are Made - Youtube Enigma History - Crypto Museum The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage - GoodreadsThe Jam - The Eton Rifles - YouTubeMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Apologies listeners for how I sound, but apparently long-haul flights fuck me up. And like a week in Vegas. Yeah, and the week in Vegas was fun. I had a very nice time. Tell us about it. I mean, I saw you last night, but we didn't really talk about anything. Yeah, it was super fun. I turned 30 yesterday. Front scene threw me a lovely party and I'm wearing the lovely crown she got me. It's very regal. I feel very regal. Also, this is actually quite good. This is the first hat that's been quite comfortable with my headphones.

Good. And I want to hear about Vegas. Did you win many money? No, I probably came out at a loss, but not by much. And also, whenever you're sitting in gaming in the casinos, they come around and bring you drinks. Could it keep you there? Yeah. But it meant so basically the money I lost is money I would have spent on drinks anyway, because drinks are crazy expensive. Yeah. It's like the first night I was there. So I've landed in Vegas at like six o'clock in the evening. And my friend had already been there most of the day and she booked us a table for dinner.

So I got to the hotel shower to be over for dinner. She was like, oh, let's go and walk around. You can see the strip. It'll be fun. I was like, yep, I've been awake for 24 hours at this point. So this is the best thing I can do. So we kept walking around and I was like, I am not sure how I'm upright. I'm going to keep going, but I'm not sure how I'm upright. Hell of a place to start getting like sleep deprivation, derealisation. Well, my plan was like the longer I stay awake, the more likely I'm asleep and then get onto like a regular sleeping schedule while I'm here. Yeah, we ended up in the Paris, which is one of the big French themed casino. There's like a whole Eiffel Tower thing,

which I was mostly excited because you end up in a ruin of this casino in a horizon for a bit in West. Sorry, in my old spoiler, but it was like shot for shot. It's perfectly mapped onto it. So I was mostly excited for that. Very cool. I was hoping there'd be a big machine there wasn't. But yeah, so she went and sat down at the bar and the bars all have these like video poker, blackjack machines you can play. On the bar? Yeah, like they're incorporated into the bar. Oh, no, like these horrible advert ones they've done in some American airports now. But yeah. Oh, wow. So she ordered a drink and put some money in it. And then I ordered a drink and the guy was like, look, it's up to you. The martini you've ordered is $18 or you can stick

$20 in the machine. Like it's up to you whether you want to pay for it or just play some blackjack. So I won like $50 and got a martini profitable martini. Yeah, I mean, I can see how that would set one off onto two addictions at once. I like it. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I am aware of my limits and stuff. That's why I said one instead of you because I know you are reasonably good when it comes to not getting addicted to everything. Yeah, it was super fun. We saw some really fun shows. I ate a lot of food. There was many sushi, a lot of sushi. You did some fun little touristy things. We went to Margaritaville. That was fun. Margarita wasn't very good. I didn't use fresh lime. I went to Mad Apple, which is the new Cirque de Soleil show. It was literally like their

fifth show and it was all New York themed and it was very fun. All the cocktails came in like little hip flask glass bottles with a brown paper bag. I love how they, I'm not even being sarcastic. I really love the kind of tack that Vega seems to manage to attach to historical stuff. It really impresses me. It's amazing. It's so fun. I think probably the wankiest hips to place I went to. We went to this show called OPM at the Cosmopolitan. The Cosmopolitan was like a super bougie casino. The actual show was really fun. It was like a silly sci-fi. We're all off to Planet Uranus, but it was like acrobats and jugglers. That was the one with the girl dancing with a giant balloon and then she was in the balloon and lots of dick jokes as well. It was super fun,

but it was kind of like the performers had also come into the restaurant and the bar. I think the camera, if I sent you or tweeted a picture, they had like a nerdy cocktail menu, so I had like a Yuzu the Force. There was a pangalactic gargle blaster. I know that one. Yes. The cocktail I had had like a little light up thing, so it glowed bright green. That was really exciting for me. It's a picture about on Twitter. Yes. But did you play Blackjack? I did. I sat down like once at a table that had like a cheap like five dollar buy-in

and immediately lost my money and then went back to just playing the little machines and stuff. But you got to try it and that's the main thing. I got to try it. I didn't get a picture because you're not really supposed to take pictures around the tables. I walked a lot. Courtney, lovely listener Courtney, did send me an email warning me that what seems like three city blocks will actually somehow be 500 miles. She was right. Everything is weird. It's impossible to have a sense of space. Everything looks like it's just down the road and then it takes you an hour to walk there. Right, because everything's built at weird scales.

Yeah, built at weird scales like the streets don't go in a straight line because suddenly it goes off in a weird U-thing and then you take an escalator. I didn't send you this because you just got back from Vegas, but I listened to an episode of 99% invisible about the architecture of Vegas. It's very interesting. It's very weird. I genuinely couldn't work out which direction the hotel was facing in and ended up looking at stuff on Google Maps, aerial views to try and work out where I was in relation to everything else. I could have sworn certain casinos were right next to each other and then I swear I crossed the road to get to one that I hadn't had to the day before.

Like I think the buildings move. Yeah. Also Ceasar's Palace. That seems right. Fucking giant. Yes, I'm sure. That's the famous one, isn't it? That was the one that I had like a fun little touristy moment when we were passing the taxi coming from the airport. The montage moment. I did have my fun little montage moment coming down the street, but yeah, it was a super fun trip. I'm not sure I'd do it for seven days again because I was very, very tired by the end of it. Not to worry then because we are now grounded back in the disc world,

which is far less ridiculous and on a normal scale. I'm very excited. It's been a couple of weeks. I'd forgotten how to do things like read and open zoom. Well, we haven't done disc world since April. I've missed it. I mean, Johnny, the Johnny Maxwell books were fun, but I've missed the disc. Me too. Although this part of the book has been very frustrating because as I said to you earlier, I've got about three start of the talking points that would fit better later on. So that's fine. Listen, you'll have to bet with me as I go through like three half points and then come back to them in another week. We could pretend it's on purpose, couldn't we?

We could pretend it's like a not a cliffhanger, but you know, a hook. Yeah. Again, I said that listeners. You know, you could edit this out, right? Yeah, but you know, radical honesty. I like it. I like it. I can only ask politely that people forget what I've said. Beautiful. Like I don't edit my stupid shower all the time. I usually ask you not to edit my stupid shower. I like having a record. Leave it in when it's funny. When it's both of us just going, oh, for 30 seconds, I try and cut that down a bit. That's fair. There's only so much of me blindly staring in confusion that the listeners need to hear. I can put together like a 30 minute montage of

us just looking panicked at our notes or the screen. I know I put this in a note. I know I did. Right. Do you want to make a podcast then? Yes, I do. I want to make a podcast. Let's make a podcast. Yes, let's do that. We can do it. We can remember. We know how to make a podcast. We've written some of it down. Some of it. Hello and welcome to The Tree Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one of Stymie and Gwana Lodzka-Loda. I'm Joanna Hagen. I'm Francine Carroll. We are talking about the fifth elephant. There's something. I've lost track of one number.

24th. Wow, we're 24 books in. I know. We haven't officially released Episode 100 yet, but we have passed like 100 episodes released now, if you include all our bonuses, which is quite exciting. We've hit over 100,000 downloads altogether, which is also nice. I don't know, because generally, I've heard a couple of proper podcasters say this. The industry is very opaque about how many listeners everyone has, so I don't know whether we're doing okay or really badly by just hitting 100,000, but I like round numbers. Thank you for everyone who has downloaded and listened to us. We love you to pieces. Spoilers. Note on spoilers, before we crack on, we are a spoiler-like podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the

Book of the Fifth Elephant, although probably not for the last two-thirds of it, because I read it like two weeks ago, and I'm not percent sure Francine hasn't read those yet. But I have read this a lot. Same. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series, and we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you dear listener can come on the journey with us. Writing whichever card you choose, class solidarity or a good game of cards? The two genders. Gender of the day is a good game of cards. I'm so glad you introduced that phrase into my lexicon. Whenever I list two things,

I can't help it now, and it always makes me laugh. It brings me joy. Sorry. Follow-up. We have things to follow up on. We do. We have a couple. Hold on. Let me read my notes. So, Millennium Hand and Trimp, Joanna. Yes, we keep forgetting that we know the origin of that. I had completely forgotten, because I was going to bring it up as a, hey, I finally found this out, because Pratchat mentioned it, but you already knew it and had just been reminded by a helpful user. Oh, yes. John Clark, who pointed us in the direction of an annotation in El's face, so we must have read it,

which, as John helped me summarized, someone may have already pointed this out, but Millennium Hand and Trimp was spat out by a program slash toy Pratchat used that combined snippets from various text sources. Millennium Hand from the lyrics of Particle Man and something, Hand and Trimp from a Chinese menu. I think it was Lords and Ladies. Yes, that sounds right, yeah. But this shows how good we are at retaining information. In fairness, there is a lot of information. There is. I have learned a lot doing this podcast and I've forgotten 60% of it.

In a moment of huge frustration, trying to find out when another podcast had talked about something that I was trying to look up for this episode, I very briefly thought to myself about making a reference spreadsheet about the topics we covered and then, I got very tired thinking about it, so I'll wait until I'm meant to be sleeping. Yeah, cool. Not everything needs a spreadsheet. No, but referencing stuff is helpful. No, okay, fine. That is actually a sensible use of a spreadsheet. I'll allow it. We also got a lovely listener email from Elizabeth who said a positive thing

about video games, possibly for follow-up, and I love it when listeners send us emails and tell us where we can put them in the episode. Yes, I can see Joe's face. She's grateful. Tetris has been used to help prevent post-traumatic stress symptoms. As well as with the psychologist and the EMDR practitioner, so she's been following the research. It's a helpful start to processing before someone starts doing something like EMDR, and the key is to play Tetris in the six hours following the event when the memory is still unstable, apparently. There's a link with a lot more information that I'll put in the show notes. Yeah, I think it's like it gives you something very clear to cling on to.

But yeah, that's really a nice bit of positivity in video games. I love that. I have two posts in our subreddit that I just wanted to mention. William Teagout and PSPD have both posted their festival fits. If you go on the subreddit, PSPD has posted his distinctly Oggian feet and legs with many layers, which is quite cool. Also New Rocks, which we were just talking about a few weeks ago. He did also tweet us a very good picture of the mudcoated New Rocks, and I have a lot of respect for them. And William Teagout has pasted a battle list with Born to Rune. And Fabricati DM, PBNC. That brought me a lot of joy. Nice. I've been getting pictures from Becky for downloads, so I'm feeling slightly jealous, but

at the same time, aware of the fact I wouldn't cope terribly well at a festival these days. My friend and I did actually talk about going before I decided on the Vegas trip, because I couldn't have done the Vegas trip, come back and gone straight to download, like I would have fucking died. Or discovered a new post exhaustion state and then died when you go back. I feel like I could have possibly transcended to a higher level of being. That might be what helps me eventually become an orb. Yes. But it probably wasn't worth the risk. I would like to go again at some point though. I do sort of miss it. Do you want to introduce us to the book, The Fifth Elephant? Absolutely. So The Fifth Elephant, The Fifth Elephant is,

as we said, the 24th Discworld novel. It was released in November 1999. It is the fifth in the watch series. So the blurb is Sam Vimes is a man on the run. Yesterday he was a Duke, a chief of police and the ambassador to the mysterious, fat, rich country of Ubald. Now he has nothing but his native wit in the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya. Don't ask. It's snowing. It's freezing. And if he can't make it through the forest of civilization, there's going to be a terrible war. But there are monsters on his trail. They're bright. They're fast. They're werewolves. And they're catching up. I don't know why I said that with such a weird cadence, possibly because I'm reading it for the first time. I enjoyed it.

The downside of ebooks. Do you know what the blurb might be like in the metadata somewhere of the ebook? I'm being bothered. Right. Anyway, the only other thing I have to say about the release of it is the thread in the alt.fan.project group in February 1999 inadvertently hit on a minor plot point in the book. So the suggestion that Sibyl might be pregnant. Yeah. And Pratchett wrote quite a long comment saying, don't take this the wrong way. This isn't meant in any negative way. But this has kind of been the straw that broke the camel's back. I have to leave the group because it looks like I'm copying ideas. Yeah. This is in the draft of the next book. You're talking

about it. I can't be here in case people accuse me of stealing ideas. He did come back. I'm not sure. I haven't found the thread in which he did and whether he ever explained it or what. But I'm including this as a point because there's a very interesting discussion of Neteket and that underneath. And it's from 1999. So it's all just quite cool. So I'll link to it. Oh, that's enjoyable. I like that. I know we've talked in a bit more lengths about Pratchett, not wanting to hang around the internet too much after a while because of the worries about that. But yeah, it's the first time I've found that one. Do you remember reading this one for the first time?

No. No. This was back in my childhood read-throughs. Yeah. This is actually, I think, one of the earliest disc ones I read. This is definitely the first one of the watchbooks I read because my copy, I'm going to hold this up for the ones who are watching the video, is kind of trashed. Somewhat foxed, slightly badgered. A bit badgered around the ears. So I actually stole this. Good. Our sort of ex-friend I used to live with, that was his. And I was just getting into Discworld. I think I'd read soul music and maybe like two or three others. And that one was on the shelf. So I picked it up and read it. And I hadn't read

any of the other watchbooks. It was a while before I did. So I had no context for a lot of what was happening. But that made it kind of fun. And because it was one of the first ones I read, I really love it. So I've reread it so many times over the years. That now my copy is falling apart. I like that. And it brings me a lot of joy. It is also just a very good book. Oh, it's so good. Quite from the nostalgia stuff. And I agree. There's a lot, again, a lot of passages in here that just like a part of my unfiled, Pratchett folder in my head. I just know that's something he said somewhere. A bit like Carpe Giaculum. You forget so many good lines actually came

from this book. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So what comes next? You summarise it. I'm going to attempt to summarise it. It says, are you sure you don't want me to read this? No, I'll give it a go. I've edited. Okay. This is what it takes to force you to edit things. The fact that I can't spears. A man is running through the snow and something on a cart is coming to Ink Moorpork. In the glorious city itself, the fool's guild is a flame. An innocent bystander's whistle around a just missed riot as the city dwarfs start getting political. Veterinary informs Sam Vines of the city watch that a new low king of the dwarfs is due to be crowned an overworld, and the Duke Vines of Ink Moorpork is expected to attend as ambassador. Anguars interrupted by

the scent of something. Carrot takes vines to the dwarf bread museum to visit the famous replica scone of stone and learn a bit of dwarfish history. As civil plans and packs, Vines is tragically prevented from helping, and he hears news of a break-in. The scone's gone, and there's a sulfurous scent in the air. As Ubaldian werewolves plot and with Anguar missing, Vines meets Inigo, the clerk who will be assisting him. And on our last visit to the yard, he learns that Wallace Sonke, the rubber manufacturer, has met a grisly end. The coaches ride out, Reg investigates Sonke and finds a smell of sulfur and sounds of a special job, and Carrot gets a note. He immediately goes to veterinarian attempts to resign before agreeing to a holiday, and with Kolen left in charge and

gasp out the wanderdog in tow, he sets out to track Anguar down. Kolen reels at his new promotion and takes charge of the sugar lumps. As the Sonke investigation turns up a scone mould, an evidence shows deep down dwarves speeding away from the scene of the robbery. As Vines travels, he collapses back and forth with the watch, getting info on Inigo, and learning that the missing scone's been found. As he approaches Willanus Pass, he finds a weapon. Meanwhile, Carrot interrupts a wolf bait and interrogates Ragtag misfit arsehole, learning that Anguar's travelling with a pack. He sleeps in the snow and finds himself surrounded as Anguar claims him. That was a very good last stand, brackets, part five for Gaspode, I thought.

I love Gaspode's brave last stand. Oh, they're sweet, boy. Yeah, so did you find any helicopters? I'm going to go with Klax messages flying all about the place, good helicopter equivalent, and the Baron's dressing gown is doing loincloth duty for the day. And I'll say that the lack of loincloth and wolves, it's going to be wolf, isn't it? If we're just calling wolf, it's a bit too ominous. Yeah, I'm going to apologise to the listeners now for all of the terrible accents that will happen. Yes, I was about to say I don't apologise, but actually they are going to be terrible, so yes, I do for once. I did my initial thing where I just read the whole book without taking any notes

on the plane to Vegas. Yeah, your usual thing where you read on the plane to Vegas, yeah. Yep. Well, no, the usual thing where I read the whole book, but I did it on the plane to Vegas, which when I was having to just very quietly whisper everything that happened with the Glomitrasas of Uncle Vanya. I just quietly giggled to myself to not disturb the sleeping stag do next to me. Oh, they were a very sweet stag do sleeping stags lie and other stuff we keep track of is not quite a turtle opening, but it is kind of an opening on the on the disc as it is. It's a it's an opening on the cosmic scale. Yes, they say that the world is flat and supported on the back of four elephants who themselves stand on the back of a giant turtle. And they say that

the fifth elephant came screaming and trumpeting through the atmosphere of the young world all those years ago and landed hard enough to split continents and raise mountains. They do say that. And this is the titular fifth elephant. It also serves as patchy and missed. But yeah, so we have a fifth elephant. If you want to give us an irrelevant elephant. Elephants, as we've talked about before, have fantastic sense of smell. They can identify other elephants urine by smell. I thought this kind of tied in with the wolf theme as well, which isn't like unknown amongst mammals, but they can they can keep track of where their herd mates are when on the march. And they like nowhere to expect them. And so scientists have

really confused elephants by taking urine from one of the elephants near the back of like a train of elephants, like a walking train, not a train with elephants on like rushing to the front and putting the urine there. And then like the elephant at the front gets really confused. I was like, but Dave is meant to be is meant to be near the back. What's happened here? Yeah, I quite like that. Yep. Elephants get some real fun experiments. I enjoy that. I'm starting to lose track of which ones I've talked about. I knew that one wasn't one of them, but I should see this is why I need to cross referencing the very least to write down the track of your elephant facts. Awesome. OK, quotes. Also, it's just occurred to me. I should have done this at the top of the episode,

but we're starting at the beginning, obviously. Good. And we're going to page 161 in the corgi paperback, ending on the line, mine, ground the wolf. It was Angwer. Right, quotes. Quotes. Vines in overworld will be more amusing than an amorous armadillo in a bowling alley. Very good. I'll get profound at some point, but an amorous armadillo in a bowling alley is one of my favorite sentences I've ever read. It is both alliterative and amusing. Yes. Mine is going back to the cosmic scale of things, actually. I just like how it was described in this bit. He knew the legend, of course. There had once been five elephants, not four, standing on the back of greater toon, but one had lost its footing or been shaken loose and had drifted off into a curved orbit before

eventually crashing down a billion tons of enraged pachyderm with a force that had rocked the entire world and split it up into the continents people knew today and then slightly further on. In the case of the trolls who were believed to be the first species in the world, maybe they'd been there and seen the elephant trumpeting across the sky. It gives me the same, like, oh, frisson, as when I read about the mass extinctions of the dinosaurs in that cool dinosaur book I recommended and forgot the name of. Let's talk Carrot to then. I thought we'd start with our boy Carrot. Oh, he's come into his own. Yeah, so it's nice to see Carrot having his heroic moment here, even if his heroic moment is mostly passing out in the snow.

That's a little unkind, because I'm sure he had some actual heroic moments that will come to me momentarily. He got to have his very cool moment pulling the wolf out. I was just, like, frontally rewinding in my head, like, the videotape going with Carrot riding backwards across the landscape. And he did pick up the chickens. He did get the chickens. There's, I haven't got the page marked out, but there's a really good description of there's something about the way he says that's just the air leaving the body that implied he'd heard that last gasp of air leaving hundreds of bodies. It's, oh, we've talked before about the kind of, is he really, like, as nice and simple as he looks? And I think this is a

confirmation that it isn't in this book. It talks, you know, it talks a lot about how that smile of his is just terrifying. And I think, tell me if I'm wrong, that, because Vime's at one point is thinking in quite clear terms about Carrot being, like, the obvious, it seemed to Vime's that everyone knew that Carrot was the true heir to the redundant throne of the city, and I think that's something that was hinted at but not said in as plain tones as that before, wasn't it? Like, Vime's believed that. I might be wrong. I think we've seen Vettinari as much as full on acknowledge it. I think Vime's has been aware of it, but I don't know if we've seen it acknowledged from Vime's point of view. So there's just, there's a nice, like, simplified version of

the bigger picture of Carrot not being as sweet and happy as he seems really early on when the full skill is burning. And he says, if we let it burn, it'd be a blow for entertainment in this city. And Vime's just sort of thinking, that sounds innocent, but you really could hear that as quite sarcastic. Yes. Yes. I, hmm. You just don't know with him, do you? Like, I like his indents and I like that he's, he's going out of Angkorporg and doing something that's arguably selfish. Yeah. I think this shows the real human side to him, doesn't it? Because he's leaving the watch in a hell of a state and he must know that. Yeah. I really like his simple resignation. I shall not be coming back, Fred. I am resigning. Yep. Later. Yeah. And like, and

a little bit about like, when, when Gasford realizes there's a very male, I don't know how to say this in human terms, but he's, he's really very male wolf with her. And he's like, so we're getting on the horse now. It's quite sweet. It may be a little bit sort of cliche-ish, but it's quite sweet that it is Angkor that brings out that really human side where he's got more than just his duty to him. I'd say that's cliche-ish for a reason though, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. The whole, not a crime of fashion thing, but you know, same like a, you know, acting completely out of character because of love. Yes. Yes. I also noted that he is anti-contraception and pro-collex. So I'm just keeping my little

characters a, an enigma wrapped in a tall ginger body. Yeah. So he's, he's, he's against progress in some ways and pro-progress in other ways. Yeah. Are they giving certain characters the perspectives on contraception is definitely interesting. But also, like, I mean, Angkor had been sleeping together for a while. How anti-contraception is he? She probably keeps track of things, you know? Yeah. I would definitely be insisting though, like, if you don't want to have a, as I think she says, like a puppies or something. Oh no. Anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway. Is that, is that all our carrot for now? Yes. Let's move on to Gaspo the wonder dog.

Yay, Gaspo. It always makes me so happy when he's in a book. Yeah. The, the, the displaying such moves as faithful companion watching carefully, faithful companion curled up with nose pressed against bum. Writing harassing letters to veterinary as well. Got a lot of respect for that. Coming in drool. I get how he manages to write it. How does he deliver it? Like, who is willing to take that from a dog and get it as far as veterinary's desk? Somebody walking past his voice in the back of their head going, oh, look, someone's dropped a letter off the floor on the floor. I'll be a good citizen and put that in the postbox. That could entirely work. And how about a steak for the little doggy?

I felt bad for the lone wolf that Gaspo tricked a bit at the end there. I'm sure that was for the best. Convincing him to run away and not accept any chicken. Yes. Well, then the bit about like hearing the lonely howl in the background at the end, mainly sad. That was very sweet. But I'm sure that giving him chicken would have been a bad call because you don't want him following you really. No. And his kind of decision of whether to try and go and unite with the wolves that seem to be surrounding or whether he's going to defend his master. I love the thought of him trying. But yeah, so he's jumping up and down and going, mine, mine. Very cute. And then we have Nobby. We do. We do. Who is trying out a fun new drag career.

He's getting more into it, isn't he? We've had a few hints throughout the book. It's one of those things that could get a bit irally of her, her man in a dress. But I think Nobby is so sweet and earnest about it. Yeah, because he has moments of like, you know, while he's saying it, he's saying like, well, no, I didn't want to assume that you would be the one acting as the decoyer. He's really quite progressive as Nobby. Very progressive. And I like that he's put his scent on for very similitude. Yes, but left the helmet on for the traffic stops. Of course. But the conversation with that, well, you know what people call men who wear wigs and gowns,

don't you? Yes, Miss, you do. Yes, lawyers. That's right. I have a lot of respect for that. Although that does suggest to me that that zombie lawyer wears Mr Slant, wears a bonnet. We're going to roam in town, in town, in court, which makes me scared. I'm now picturing a zombie in a floral bonnet. It's amusing me. We're going to get letters from Redshift if we don't move on. Nothing wrong with a floral bonnet. Colin, Colin. Oh, man. Oh, Colin. Oh, dear. Going to get better. Oh, yeah, it went downhill so quickly. Less surprisingly, also quite anticondombed. Yeah. Yeah, Colin's kind of small-minded,

brit standing, I'd say. And just completely incapable of handling any kind of power that isn't sergeant-based. Yeah. Sergeant-based power, of course, being the new renewable. But yeah, just, you get moments of like real empathy for him when he's talking about drowning in the paperwork. He doesn't understand face to such a dick. Like just being bigoted towards the dwarves and the trolls in the room and not noticing and like, oh, man. However, the accusation of ear lobing is one of my favorite things about this book. Absolutely. That now is like, he found it difficult to talk to Frederick Colin. He dealt on a daily basis with people he treated conversation as a complex game.

And with Colin, he had to keep on adjusting his mind in case he ever shot. Which is interesting because like, Vimes is always described as quite a simple guy, really. But it's clearly three levels ahead of Sergeant Colin when it comes to just being able to read subtext or text. Poor old Colin. I'm sure it'll be fine. Everything will be fine. Speaking of Vimes. How did, sorry, how did the watch end up in this position, though, that they were two, two? Is Angra Sergeant by now, or is she? I don't think she's a captain. Carrots the captain. Okay. So at most three, probably two officers of duty away from this happening. Yeah. That is an increase. Like it's meant to be quite a well managed watch now.

That doesn't sound well managed to me if your third in command is Fred Colin. The logic might be that he's the most experienced. Yeah. But come on. It's such a dangerous job. These people have been known to just hop on a boat and fuck off to clutch when something's going on. After that, someone would have put in a chain of command that did not include Fred Colin. Surely. I just don't like to see the admin fall through the cracks like this, Joanna. Especially not burning the wage, Chitty. Should I make Red Shoe? Red Shoe should have been put in charge. Red Shoe at least is conscientious about his job. I just saw his name in the list, and that was the first one that came to me. Yeah. I mean, any of the people in this list

would have been better. Yes. Lance Constable Blue John, that's for him in charge. Well, he's been promoted. I did like the usual kind of nods towards anyone but a sergeant being useless apart from Vimes and Carrots who are honorary sergeants. Yes. But okay. So Vimes, who I actually don't have a turn on for this section, to be honest, he doesn't get as much to do until we get slightly later on. Yeah. Some of the class consciousness stuff is good, but I think that'll fit into when we talk about like the diplomacy and stuff. The class consciousness specifically with Skimmer is quite good because he sort of remembers this. Was it too poor to paint too proud to whitewash attitude? Yes. Yeah. Which is interesting when

he put it into a social setting like that. I think that fit quite well. I liked. Well, no, I didn't like this. I'm confused. He was using a knife to peel an orange. Yeah. Just I wanted to put that out there. Listeners, do you use a knife to peel an orange? Do you not just fucking peel it? And to segue between Vimes and Civil. I really enjoyed the description that Civil had of Vimes, which was not a gentleman, thank goodness, but a gentleman. Oh, that is a lovely one. It was also his sort of grumbling about, he knows I don't like being married to a duchess. Yes. I love being married to Civil. No, no, yes, no, don't give me wrong. Civil's great. Great gal. It's the duchess bit. So speaking of the duchess. Civil, lady, duching.

Lady civil motherfucking Rampkin Vimes. Yep. I'm not sure if she did double barrel, but I'm going to double barrel her. Lady civil fucking Vimes, brackets, Ney Rampkin. It is nice having her back because she actually gets something to do in this book. There's feet of clay and jingo. She was a little bit just sort of there to say yes dear, a little bit, cook some dinners and knit a dodgy scarf. Yeah. Yeah. She gets a bit more to do. She gets to run around and be a person. And I think you get a bit more realistic in a monologue from her about like how shit it must be to be married to Sam Vimes a lot of the time. Yeah, there's a really sweet, like kind of sad moment where she's looking through the photo

album, she's looking at the pictures from her wedding. She sort of gets a bit sad hearing about that. She's thinking about the job and she doesn't really know what she does. Yeah. She sort of hears from the laundry girls about the bloodstains. And so Civil Rampkin had been brought up to be thrifty, thoughtful, gentle and an outdoor sort of way and think kindly of people. She looked at the pictures again in the silence of the house. Then she blew her nose loudly and went off to do the packing and other sensible things. Yeah. I thought that was a really, really sweet, sad moment. It was. I think, yeah, it was really, yeah. I'm glad he put that in because I was thinking in some of the other

books like, fuck, she's so patient about that. Yeah. Especially when he just fucks off to clatch. Yeah. Just randomly. I think we did mention it, didn't we? Yeah. Come on, Vimes. Send a note. Yeah. Like send a runner. Yeah. And we're getting the whole trope from a sitcom. I hate, but I don't mind it so much. It's just a line every now and then in this one where she's about to say something, but someone comes in the door. She's talking about being to see Mrs. Content. And I wonder what that could be. We've already revealed what that would be. I do like there's sometimes where sort of Vimes talks about her and things that in other books or with other relationships in these books, I could be annoyed by her finding sexist, but because

it's Vimes and Civil, I just think it's quite sweet. It's as they're getting ready to leave. And he says, oh, Sibyl's just re-grouting the bathroom, learning Ancient Clatchy and are doing all those other little last minute things women always do. I would be offended if it weren't me. Yeah. No, I mean, I also found it really relatable. Sorry, I'm late for work today. I was learning Ancient Clatchy and you were what? Traffic. It was traffic. There's also, this has one of those lines I forget is from this book, which is couples are always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that it's only the other one that snores. That's one of the much quoted ones, isn't it? For a reason. Oh, yes.

Sherry, Sherry. How's she saying it? Sherry? Sherry. Sherry Littlebottom. Sherry Littlebottom. She's back. She's back. She's wearing a kind of a skirt. Look at us with multiple female characters having agency. Oh, have they talked to each other yet? No. Look, we have the witches books for passing the Bechtel test front scene. I think we pass it later. It's fine. It's fine. To be fair, there's enough dwarfs in this book that we probably have passed the Bechtel test. We just don't know. Oh, no, that's an easy out. You can't prove I didn't pass it. But yes, it brings me joy. Sherry is getting to her. We definitely do pass it later on. Yes. No, I remember the scene. Yes. She's slowly working towards liberation.

She's got the skirt. More and more women are coming out. She seems very happy and confident in her skin, which I really like. Yeah, she's less nervous than I would be certainly about going back to the old country. She's obviously nervous, but not. Obviously listeners expect many, many more feelings and thoughts about gender as we get through the book. Yeah, this is a part two bookmark of it. Yeah, there's a part two or part three bookmark. We're warming up to me talking about gender a lot because, you know, for someone who doesn't like it, I do talk about it a lot. You recognise other people's enjoyment of it? Yes. And then in a go. In a guess given. And the orange test. The orange test.

What a test. It's not explained in this part, is it? It's explained in the next part. And it's explained like near the beginning of the next part, I think, because I couldn't remember exactly how the orange test worked. I think it's a mystery with the fact that he didn't catch it or flinch. Yes, he saw he recognised it as not a threat and didn't bother ducking or flinching. Yes. But Schema took a step backwards, mildly appalled at the upper class's habit of fruit hurling. I like that implies Vines uses this as a test, but actually all the upper classes just randomly throw fruit at funnels. Oh, hey Joanna. What? Knock, knock. Who's there? Orange. Orange you? Orange you glad I'm not an assassin? Yes, Francie. I'm very glad you're not an assassin.

I don't know. He's got a knife. He does. He's got a knife in a briefcase. His briefcase has a knife. Call that a knife. That's not a knife. That's a briefcase. But yeah, he will again feature more heavily in the next one. He's got some fairly unflattering descriptions of him, bless him. Yeah, poor thing. His over-large head gave him the appearance of a lolly nearing the last suck. So mean. Carrying his bowler hat the way a soldier carries a helmet is quite sweet, though. He's another one that also feels like there's another character we'll meet in a later watchbook that feels like a kind of redo of him. Yes. And then, Reggie, our darling. Our darling, Reg. He only gets one little moment, but I just, I love, he introduced himself,

Reggie, homicide. And they're like, oh, you hear about the murder. He was like, no, actually, I'm a zombie. I just wanted to explain. But also coincidentally, yes, we out here about the murder. As you mentioned it, I did like his patience with the questioning. I feel like he'd make a good computer programmer, just wording things until they are unambiguous. And partnered by Buggy Swires, the is short and Scottish and angry, which we've now met the neck, neck, fecal. But there still appears to be a difference between gnomes and neck, neck, fecal. They're just both very short and very Scottish and angry. Yeah. And the similar jokes are that, oh, we got stood on. Is he all right? Oh, yeah. Well,

he'll be out of hospital soon. But Buggy Swires is. And there's the joke about, you know, those big boys are bloody good value for a penny. There's no way he was going to ask. Oh, I use it as a Macintosh. Hey, no, exactly what he said. We haven't got him in here, have we? But Constable visit. Oh, yeah. I just wanted to mention briefly, because the sweet bit with the pigeons, I just, I liked. He's preaching to the pigeons. Yeah. Ah, Zebra Diner. He said lifting her up and removing the message capsule. Well done. This is from Constable. She knew she'll have some corn provided locally by a desire for women and some seed merchants, but ultimately by the grace of them. Very St. Francis, very. Yes. Just, I don't know. I'm glad he's found his niche. I'm sure

there was like, he's been pigeonholed and he likes it. Amazing. I'm sure there was like a very specific St. Francis preaching to birds parable. I'm sure you're correct, but I don't know what it is. No, for nice. And then, oh, yeah. So Lance Constable Blue John. The only reason I actually put him in is his name, because I've seen all the trolls are named after different types of rock. But I thought the fact that Blue John was interest was one of the kinds is quite interesting, because Blue John is only mined in like one kind of mile stretch in the Peak District. That's like the only place you can find it. You told me it was a type of rock. I don't think you've told me that bit before. Yeah. So there's two mines now, but they're both in that place, because

one of them is also a showcase. So I went and had a look through the caves ages ago, which is the only reason I recognized it, Blue John Cavern. I've linked to a thing about the mineral. It's very pretty. Yeah. But I thought it's just such a rare thing found in such a small place. We obviously Peak District that it was interesting. It was used as a name. Yeah. I enjoyed that. So it's kind of, he's like purplish, blue, yellowish. Yeah. That's really cool. Also known as Derbyshire Sparrow. Ah, of course. Very nice. And I thought Arthur Conan Doyle had like a Sherlock home story that was something to do with it as well. Oh, maybe. Yeah. I don't know. He did. He did a lot of those stories, Joanna. He did do a lot of those stories. I'm not going to go and

find that one for you. And then another one I mentioned just for the name is Constable Ping. Yes. Who immediately clarifies it's a dialect word meaning water meadow. Yes. Annotated Pratchett says, according to Terry, Ping is in fact a Cornish dialect word meaning water meadow. I tried to do some Googling to find a source outside of Terry Pratchett and the forums and didn't find it. I found a couple of other like older PDF things. If you go, you've got to like go through a few pages on Google, which I'm seeing very rarely get off the first page of Google. I did find this Wikipedia list that I've linked, which is just a list of Cornish dialect words. I love Wikipedia lists. Did you, did I send you the list of lists of missing people?

Yes, you did. Fuck yes. I'm just going to read out a couple of random Cornish dialect words because it's fun. Calla Magina is a thornback. I don't know what a thornback is. No, I don't know. I just read that one out because I like the word. Yeah. Oh, a ray. It is a ray. It's a stingray. Clidgy. Sticky or muddy. Cool, cool. Smutsfacet. Scat is to hit or break. Wasson. What's going on? Withery Garden is specifically an area of coppist willows cultivated by fishermen for pot making. Very nice. Because you do need a specific word for that in certain parts of the world.

I guess you would. Yeah. So yeah, I'll link to that. Everyone go and learn some Cornish dialect words. I did also start going down the rabbit hole of the difference between Cornish dialect and the Cornish language. A lot of the Cornish dialect words come from the Cornish language, but Cornish dialect words are things that are still in use in Cornwall today. The Cornish language as a language isn't really spoken anymore. But there's enough recorded of it to be aware of it as a language. But it's quite sad that it's died out. And I think it's used as a cautionary tale by Irish and Welsh speakers is that this is why we need to keep speaking Gaelic and Welsh. Yeah, I think Cornish was probably one of the last holdouts of regional languages in England,

specifically. Definitely, yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then Vecinaria wanted to kind of shout out, I'm just talking about when he used to travel in overworld and apparently knew this lady. Listen, I just can't see my eyebrows, but they are wiggling. In those days, rich young men from Inkmoorpork used to go on what we called the Grand Sneer, visiting far flung countries in order to see at first hand how inferior they were. Referencing, of course, the Grand Tour that upper class chaps used to go on. And which is now referred to as a gupjar and injar gupjar. Yes, how language evolves. But yes, that was a nice little joke that brought me joy.

I noticed he put in an even less featured character. Oh, I just wanted to acknowledge the Aggie Hammer thief thing. I like that there's a specific name for it in like the dwarf culture. Yeah, we come to it later again, don't we? But the the mischief spirit, I do like that's great. And there's it's Vime's equivalence references it as similar to sweet Fanny Adams, which we won't go into the history of that again, because again, that was really depressing, wasn't it? Yeah, sorry about that. Well, now I looked I looked it up again because I forgot we'd done it already until I read it.

And I was like, oh, yeah, this is sad. Let's not do that. And then historical figure. We've got Brian Bloodaxe. Oh, that's a reference to something, isn't it? I forgot one. He is. Thank you, Annotated Pratchett. Thank you. So Brian Bloodaxe within the disc world was crowned on the scone of stone. Many years ago, I should probably be saying scone of stone, but I'm not going to. Oh, you mean snobby about it? It's not snobby, even at an expense of a rhyme. I feel like a bit of a I feel snobby when I say scone. I don't know.

I'm this is going to start an argument. All right, not unlike our cream cottage cream one. But I had I have definitely heard that scone is the is that the posh way of saying it? That's how the queen would say it. It's gone. But however, I think stereotypically posh southern as a scone. But then I've definitely had no people say scone. I think it might be one of those like every other town switches over like the name for a bread roll. Yeah. Anyway, I'm going to say scone of stone because it rhymes and nobody's got time for

stumbling over it every time. Yeah, that's fair. You just fly me a shin on it if nothing else. All right, Brian Bloodaxe. Sorry. So the two things. So you have Brian Boru, who was the most famous of the Irish High Kings, obviously low Kings being the dwarfish equivalent. But Brian Bloodaxe was the name of a platforms and ladders style computer game for the Sinclair Sinclair Spectrum Commodore 64 Amstrad CPC mid 1980s.

So I'm going to assume back on retro video games. I'm going to assume that's what was being referenced there. Very nice. A rare double reference that spans many centuries. Yeah. Also, I like that we've just got a random apostrophe back in. We haven't had a fantasy name with a random apostrophe for a while. Oh, yeah. We do like our apostrophes. And we have Lady Margot Lotta.

Speaking of things that stand many centuries, we do. And at least four pages of the Gothic equivalent of the twerp's period, whatever that's called. Yeah, I'm an ex-Degothic. Yeah. Big fan. Big fan. Of the Almanac-Degothic. Love it.

Yeah. It's a great four bed every night. Those vampire names. Gosh. So it's quite interesting that we've just had the book that focuses on vampires that we've now got her as kind of a side character that's. A fairly involved side character in this one. Yeah, yeah. I like it.

Yeah. She's a kind of a sane meddler. Yeah, she's she's more modern than like the old count from the last book who was comparatively a good guy. Yeah. But she is not a dickhead like the modern vampires of Carpe Giaculum. Yeah. And of course, she she taught Vettnara a lot of what he knows.

So she's got a. She's clearly. A mind of a thing of a good metaphor for me, Joanna. Steel. Mind of steel. No, that's not what I meant. A tricksy one, you know. Twist and turn.

Like a twisty journey thing. Yeah, yeah, we got that. She could think her way backwards through a corkscrew. There we go. Thank you, Joanna. There we go. And then places. We'll do people, places, and then we'll do things.

Fonk. Bionk. Sorry. Yes. And they have only so many syllables in the world. More box sounds like a particular piece of ladies underwear. No. Oh, sorry.

I'm now trying to find my bloody page. Would you like to wildly speculate about which piece of underwear? I'm going with a garter. Oh, yeah. Nice. I like that. I'm going to start calling my garters. Darling, your more pork's fallen down.

Goodness, my more pork. But bonk is where they're headed to be diplomats, right? That's where they're headed to be diplomats. It's within the underworld and you get kind of a nice description of the country structure. It's what you get before you get country. It's just fortified towns and fiefdoms with no real boundaries and lots of forests.

They've kind of just got a bit mushed together, which sounds like some of the horrible colonial shit that England did to the rest of the world. Oh, I mean, yes, it does. But my mind immediately went to what the Balkans looked like a few hundred years ago. Because do you remember a couple of days ago? I can't remember why.

We were reading about all the borders up there and as soon as you go back past a hundred years of history, I have no idea what the fuck's going on. Oh, that's because we were talking about the vampires. I did what I wanted to do for this episode was actually have the full Discworld map up behind me so we could kind of look at where they're traveling and what they're doing

and then I can move all this hanging up. We'll try and remember next time. But so way back in, I think it was probably colour and magic. Like when we were first, it may have been the first time we recorded the colour of magic and then we deleted that episode because it was awful and we did it. But definitely at one point we did it.

One day I'm going to see if I can salvage any of that because I expect it's quite amusing. We did attempt to have like, I've got a copy of the Big Map of Discworld from the Discworld Atlas. We tried to have that hanging up with post-its on it. We were trying to track Winswins' journey and it's quite interesting to see

because that early on a lot of the places that mentioned kind of don't come off again. And they just switched the name of something around and yeah. There's no clear sense of geography whereas now there is a really clear sense of geography. It's interesting to see how it's changed and where they're going. All right, we'll try and remember for next week. We'll attempt it.

I'll cover it in string and post it so I look properly insane. Yeah, if nothing else, if we fail to do it again, what we can do is draw our own silly little map and that will be fun. Yes. And try very hard not to get on the wrong side of copyright law. Well, yeah, there is that.

Sorry, it's fine if you're not profiting, right? Yeah, why not? Overworld in general, then. Yeah, we'll talk about that a bit more later but just I like hearing the kind of political side of it rather than just the Hammer Horror tropes side of it. That's quite cool. Just as... Yeah.

And this is a place, not just a collection of... It's been like really fleshed out and built. Yeah. Whose flesh? Dun dun. Dun dun. Oh, speaking of that, Egor,

we forgot to mention Egor's having a little bit of well-building around them as well. It was quite cool. I like that Pratchett's kind of found this idea and is sticking with it. They're all called Egor now. Yes, all Egor's are Egor. So Lady Margolotta has an Egor.

He seems like a lovely Egor. And yeah, within Uberwold, Uberwold, Uberwold, the only little sub-location I've seen mentioning on this one was the Werewolf Manor just because I really liked just the little the little fun bit where he's like,

this one has chairs, but they don't look very lived in. There's a huge sofa that is ragged with use that's white earthenware bowls around the table and all of that. I was like, oh, that's a really fun exit. I was like, sit down, imagine a manor house that X species would live in.

And he's, yeah, I like to imagine he had fun with that. That's a really nice concept. And yeah, we'll talk more about the Baron and Seraphine and Wolfgang. Getting definite white supremacist vibes from Wolfgang. That's all I'm saying right now. Anyone mentions purity while doing press-ups, you know, that's a wrong one.

That's a bit of an artsy in it. It's a very specific red flag, but I stand by it. How often do you see people mentioning purity while doing push-ups? So I stopped going to the gym. No, that's slander. No, yes. All the fascists at the gym.

Oh, no. No, our local gym is fine. And I do like the idea of having a kind of etiquette rule of changing back into a human before you come in the house, dear. Yes. And the nice moment of his not explaining exactly what, but don't do that at the table.

Well, yes, I think we know exactly what. We're adjusting his clothes. Anyway, yeah. Little bits we liked. What did we like, Joanna? What did we like? We enjoyed the Ops trains. You like the Ops trains?

I like the Ops trains. A couple of the ones you put in as little bits you liked would have been mine, but you got your notes in the plan first. For once. Yeah, I just, the kind of zooming in, I guess, from the cosmic scale stuff, but I like how Francis sets the scene

with the kind of panning, the Ops train stretching across the landscape and like communicating in heliographs with like his mirrors, I guess, flashing. Oh, that could have been another scare reference for Neil, but flashing and communicating with each other. And like, it's all just very cool.

Just the whole scale of it across the landscapes that you're slowly getting to know and unfurling like a time machine. And I just liked that whole bit right at the beginning. I really love it. It was nearly my quote. They turned the landscape into an unrolled time machine on a clear day you could see last Tuesday.

Ah, there we go. Yes. Very good. That was one of my favorite moments. Yeah. Ah, anyway, I don't have much to say about that. Apart from, like... It's a very enjoyable bit of pricing.

Now I realize I should have looked more into heliographs. Geography. We'll talk about landscape. As a crime. As a crime. He wasn't strictly aware of it. He'd been planned. But he treated even geography

as if he was investigating a crime racket. Did you see who carved out the valley? Would you recognize that glacier if you saw it again? Which I enjoyed very much. Horseshoe lakes I've always thought were very suspicious. Oxbow lakes. Don't trust it. Thank you.

Sorry. Horseshoe lakes. I mean, it's similar, right? It's like a horseshoe. It's a horseshoe shape, isn't it? Yep, like... Isn't it? You sound really skeptical.

It's just my face. Oxbow lake. Yeah, it's like a U-shape. Okay, cool, cool, cool. And why didn't I get that when I just talked about oxes? Who knows? We'll never know. I'm just not very good at things.

But yeah, geography is a crime. I think geologists would probably enjoy that as well because the detectoring of the... And here is where the volcano erupted. The millimetre of ash tells us. Yeah. Geologists are kind of like... Geology, I suppose, isn't it?

Modern geography, but yeah. Yeah. But they're kind of like detectives. Why have I got so many in a row? Because I just shoved mine after yours. The enigma machine, though, that was the Leonard. I didn't put Leonard in characters because there wasn't much to say

that we wouldn't talk about here. Yeah, it's lovely to see Leonard again with his machines of mass destruction doodled in amongst everything else. But the enigma machine, I thought it was... Or I'm sorry. The engine for the neutralizing of information by the generation of my cosmic alphabets enigma.

Which doesn't exactly roll with the term. The kind of rotor cipher thing I find very interesting. I think it was a few episodes ago. I mentioned that I found a whole rabbit hole of cryptography that I didn't go down. I'm still... Yeah. You'll be pleased to hear.

But the description of the enigma machine that Leonard has built was quite cool. The number of the wheels were not round, but oval or heart-shaped and some other curious curves. When Leonard turned to handle the whole thing, moved with a complex oiliness, quite disquieting in something nearly mechanical. It's...

There's something ominous about it, though, I like. Yeah. But a rotor-based cipher machine, which is what the enigma devices were. The enigma's more like a brand than a machine. Yeah. It's kind of... You type in a letter.

I looked up how it works. I can't really know. You type in a letter. And a rotor takes that letter and outputs it. It is a different letter. And then it passes through all the rotors, bounces off like a reflector at the end and kind of passes back through in the other direction.

And that would make, on its own, quite easy to decipher cipher. But before or after encrypting each letter, the rotor's advanced positions, which changes the substitution. And that kind of mechanization of it made much more complex polyalphabetic ciphers. That was a nice phrase I liked, possible. And then from the Guardian,

explained it much better than I did, which was when the first rotor has turned around, turned through all 26 positions, the second rotor clicks around, when that's made around all the way. It's just the same, leading to more than 17,000 different combinations for the encryption process repeats itself.

Nice. Yeah. And yeah. And obviously as the Second World War progressed the enigma's got more complex, but so did the code breaking, and there's lots and lots of story behind that that we won't go into because...

Yes. Maybe I'll bring it up when we talk about the Flemishy. I like that he's also invented the very fast coffee machine. Yes. What would you call that? It's almost like a Spress coffee, isn't it? A Spress, yeah. Yeah, that's how I'd say that.

Express. Yes. I liked the Benares ducking behind the... They kind of moment of deduction from the duck. Ah, we appear to have achieved coffee, which is something I think I'll probably start saying to myself most mornings and having a little chuckle. Yeah, Leonard also,

I think we touched on this in Dingo, but invents a weapon of mass destruction, and then says, but of course, such a thing would make war impossible. Well, he tried. Yeah. That reminds me of something I'm going to talk about later. I'm just going to put a pin in that there.

Put a pin in mass destruction. Yes. Terrible idea. In mass destruction. Shit. What makes a dwarf a dwarf, Joanna? This could have easily been like a massive talking point where I went into a lot of things about culture

versus religion versus there. Diaspora. And I realised that I am not functioning enough today to talk about that intelligently, but I did want to at least put a pin in it here to talk about later. And this conversation between carrot and vines of carrot explaining,

no, I am absolutely a dwarf. I can do the right of Kazakra. I know the secrets of Herakna. I can hulk my Guraka correctly. I think he did a better job pronouncing that than vines did, and that's what matters. I've got a bit of a sore throat,

which kind of helps. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But this idea of this cultural diaspora and then trying to find a way to really identify with where you come from and who you are as a dwarf in Ancmoorpork, which I meant to mention in locations,

but it is now the biggest dwarf city outside of Overwald. Yeah. I always enjoy when it's brought up that London's one of the top five French cities. Yeah. But yeah, there's a bit about back home, he thought. Carrot didn't innocently talked about dwarves back home.

Dwarves far away. The mountains were back home, whether they were born there or not. And there's a lot of that when you read colonialist nonsense, which isn't the same, but stuff from generations of Europeans who colonized Australia or America or write about home as a place they'd never been.

Like the ties last a long time, and I'm sure it's the case with more traditional diaspora for communities rather than imperialist ones. I'm just not as familiar. No. But very cool, very nice. And I agree, we should talk about that on a day where we're not stumbling over basic sentences.

And then the other thing I liked was one that you could maybe look at it as sexist skin as well. If again, it isn't something that I know I definitely do, which was vimes parallel processing, learning to follow their own line of thought, while at the same time listening to what their wives say. A vital additional skill is being able to scan for the dialogue for telltale phrases.

I think it's... Oh, sorry. Sort of invited them for dinner, or like you can do it in blue really quite cheaply. It's a great observation, both of us do do that. It's possibly a bit like Boomer Humor saying it's all about wives instead of just whatever. Like whatever.

It's not something I have the energy to get on my high horse about, and I found it very funny, especially when... Because Sybil is very aware of it, knows that he's operating an autopilot, and she's impressed. He's managed to make a contribution despite that. And then doing the... Do you think she should take the alligator with us

and seeing if she could catch him? Oh, God, I'm fast, right? Bigger talking points. Yes, I did. Ha, I did it to you. I just tacked mine on the end. I want to talk about world building, and specifically about the world changing and developing.

Okay, good luck. And I'm going to talk about a big sip of my tea first. That wasn't... Again, listeners who can't see Joanna's face, that wasn't like a good luck. I don't believe she can do it, but a good luck because she looked very afraid, as she said it.

All right, so my general overarching point before I start pulling examples out of the book, something that kind of bugs me a bit in... Not even bugs me like it'll put me off a book, but it's something I definitely noticed in classic fantasy, high fantasy. So you're Tolkien, but also you're Game of Thrones, and Robin Hobb.

You have these amazing societies that have existed for millennia. Like they have history that goes back millennia. And no science or technology has ever really fucking developed. These fantasy worlds are often stagnant until the present point in which a book is written, because then there is a hero coming to effect change.

And even then that change rarely has big effects on things like technology or science developing, unless it's intrinsically tied to that world's magic. Yeah, and I mean, like something like Tolkien, it's even less, isn't it? Because the point is to try and stop the big change that someone else is trying to make. Yeah, yeah.

And if you think about Tolkien, like the... So the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, that's the third age, isn't it? Could be. I'm going to like... I'm quickly on the spot, Joanna. Listeners, we're not Tolkien scholars. And then you have the Second Age, which last few years...

Despite all many essays. And you have these gods and gods like creatures that have existed for millions of years, and at no point in that has someone come up with a better form of communication than a fucking bird. So you have these... They like the beacons. Yes, we'll communicate with Big Torch.

Big Torch. So you have a history that sets them in the present, but no development or change in technology, travel, medicine. And it's usually hand-waved away with, well, but there's magic instead. And it doesn't explain why no one's come up with a more efficient way to communicate than pigeons. Or a more efficient way to travel.

The TV tropes call it medieval stasis. Yes. Which I like as a... Yeah. And agree. Yeah, it does sometimes make you go, come on. Like, I think it was the Robin Hob books I was reading where I did hit a point of like,

if it's been that long, you must have had a fucking industrial revolution by now. And to be fair, I do think that I've seen Robin Hob address this somewhere, and I couldn't find the quote, but I remember there being a tweet or something. I wonder if my guess would be a justification for that, would be that the classes that are more powerful

are the ones that can do magic, and it being their best interest, not to allow the rest of the world to do sufficiently advanced science. Yes. But it's things like medicine, unless it's healing magic, never developing. Yeah, it's all willow bark.

It's very willow bark and humours. Yeah. The name of my third album. I thought you were going to say sex tape, but I was... No, that's humours and willow bark. Sorry. But yes, this is the joy of the Discworld books, especially getting to like this point in Discworld,

I think this is the book where you really start to see it, is you see like growth and change and new technologies, and how these tools affect the disc on like a micro and a macro scale. Yeah. And it's particularly impressive because Patrick has kind of excused the medieval status before by saying that veterinary keeps it that way because he doesn't want to see this after all the other technology.

Yeah. And you can see him here. Yeah, decide that actually never moving on. And you get the kind of what happens when thing happens, books, and sometimes those technologies stick around. Yes, I know it's speculative fiction. No, I love it more. I like it more this way.

I'm smiling because I'm pleased that the bit stuck. And you get some things where something new comes and sticks around and some things where it really doesn't. Like obviously soul music, the rock music was never going to last in. Yeah. But if it's like a magical intrusion in the world, it goes away, doesn't it? Like the movies in there.

Yeah. But this, you have new things coming and sticking around. You have the semaphore being one of the biggest drivers of change because it's being used to communicate across very far distances. Clack, clack. Clack, clack, clack. You've got Fred doing his little semaphore to get people over from the closest watch tower.

So it starts off in the book as a bit of a joke because he could have just blown his whistle. Yeah. But then later on, you see it properly, you know, finds communicating back to the watch while he's traveling. The fact that last week they managed to have, get a Klax message that someone was running away to rank more pork and caught him as soon as he got into the city.

Yeah. Trying to justify the Klax messages in hot pursuit. Yes. Yeah. And yeah. Just brilliantly, like concisely bringing up some of the issues that come with that kind of small world. Becoming a lot bigger.

The shrinking of the world, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because you then have to think about how it affects the law because it's not like there's only one big global law. No. That would work very badly, especially as it's not a globe.

Well, yeah. Trying to do anything global on the disk is awkward. In fact, move. That's the problem. Yes. That's the thing, Joanna. Yeah. The thing about the Klax, I love because it talks about

that the impacts that you are going to see on a, like I was about to say global, Disco level. Like it took many months for a ship to round Cape Terror. How much exactly would it trade a pay to know within a day when it had arrived? And that obviously was a huge thing when the telegraph came into being, which was like,

I know there were round world equivalents of the Klax that were technologically more in tune. But in terms of how much it affected the world, I mean, the telegraph was our equivalent. Yeah. That was the bigger kind of global communication thing. Yeah. Oh, I found on the forums, by the way, there's a book,

apparently by a chap called Tom Standage, which compared the telegraph and Victorian period with the internet now, which is 90s, which very Pratchett apparently, totally accidentally drew a lot of parallels with and they came out of very similar times, the two books. And Pratchett read the book later and then said, well, I recommend it to everybody.

But just to say, you know, didn't read this before I wrote this. Yeah. So yeah, I'll link to that in the notes. And it's even just the big roads developing as well. Like you're saying, you know, the big road heading up towards January has made a huge difference because now more people are coming to want more because they can get there.

Yeah. And the fact that nobody attacks the male coaches anymore. No. Which is, again, another big thing you read about when you see any part of the world developing in parts of history and the male is respected. We'll come back to that one day, I'm sure. For that.

Quite possibly. And the light I really liked about the classics was there was a line across the map, the progress of the semaphore towers. It was it was mathematically straight, a statement of intellect in the crowding darkness of miles and miles of bloody interval. Which, by the way, I don't know if you found in my head

and I don't know if it's just because I'm so familiar with Pratchett that it's seeped in. I mean, the miles and miles of bloody interval being a cartographer's joke, I feel like maybe has a parallel but I can't think of it. I feel like I don't know enough about cartography but I feel like there's probably some silly jokes about forests and areas that don't have anything to mark.

Yeah. But again, similarly, it might just be Pratchett. It's a joke I like so much, it's stuck in my head forever. Yeah, that was my main point is just I very much enjoy in this book, seeing a fantasy world that's not stagnant. Yeah. And like they even include some of the little technologies that pop up and won't pop up again.

Similarly to how they do on round worlds, like the little pneumatic tubes. I don't know how long that lasts on disc world. But here, the pneumatic tube communication stuff was like big in the 50s. And I don't know if any, I'm sure some places still use it but it's not so much anymore. But for a while, it was one of those exciting new technologies

that businesses tried to shoehorn into everything. It was one that ended up in Futurama as well, which is almost like a retrofuturism thing. Yeah, it is, isn't it? Yeah, Futurama, considering it started in the year 2000, it does feel like retrofuturism now. Yeah. And also stuff like the pneumatic tubes,

actually now you say it and some other bits, like feel like they were definitely taken from retrofuturism even at the time. Yeah, like some of it was really inspired by it. Yeah, the writers obviously very much into sci-fi, so that does make sense. Now I want to re-watch it all, so that's good. Anyway, yeah, so that was my point.

I really enjoyed that about this book. Yeah. And it's setting up to learn more about the clacks later, I think. Like you're making a big deal of them. Maybe. The kind of scene where Vettnara is like watching the clacks go clack, they're like, is he reading them?

If anyone could, I want to also be clear now that I don't 100% understand how things like semaphore and the clacks in the books works, and I'm okay with that. I think that's fine, isn't it? Yeah. So my talking point is pretty short and varied. It's just some round world parallels that I would like to revisit next week.

And I'll get a few fun bits in now. So let's start with the obvious, the Sonkees. The rubber Johnny, as they are known here, as I was reminded of last month. I thought I'd look into it because here it was called a rubber Wally, somebody said it, and it was Wallace Sonke. And I was like, surely, like, co-moms weren't invented by Johnny, were they?

But no, apparently it's from John Thomas, obviously, which means Tinas, which is from Lady Chatterley's Lover, which I didn't know. No, I didn't know. John Thomas, no, there you go. Apparently condoms are indeed useful for a range of things, other than prophylactic. As part of prep for D-Day landings,

allies collected samples of soil and sand in condoms to find out, like, the state of the train, and it's quite interesting. Which just kind of sets the scene for, they are generally quite good waterproof carrying devices. That's the point now. They could also, if you cut them up, keep bandages dry on the battlefield,

that kind of thing. They can be used as waterproof socks in a pinch, if you have to walk through floodwaters, for instance. In India, they're used in roads as part of waterproofing. They're like cut up, and apparently in India, only about 25% of condoms are used as condoms. They're used to so many other things. Yeah, this is no such thing as fish reeling off wax here.

They can be used to polish leather and polish silk. In South Africa, apparently, they're rubbed on us for sick joints, dweez, pain. Right. Yeah. Okay. Finally, the relevant fact about condoms, I thought, going back to Swires, using it as a match.

Yeah. The French slang for condoms is capote anglès, which literally translated means English raincoat. Amazing. Yes. Oh, wait, hang on. But also, because the French call the English leotards, it's a roast beef raincoat.

Oh, oh no. Isn't that unfortunate? Somebody on one of the annotations, I don't remember now, said that Tonki was slang for condom as well, which I can only find in a 2006 entry into urban dictionary. And I feel like that's too far after this fact to be conclusive. Yeah. But we maybe won't look into that further.

Now I start saying we will. I did look up how condoms are made, because I don't know anything about making things with rubber or latex. And I wanted to know if they really are dipped, and there is a dippy thing, and they are. And I found a video of how condoms are made that I have linked to in the show notes,

because I found it quite interesting. What does the dippy thing look like? It looks like an inside out condom. Ah. But it's not really penis shaped, but you know what I mean? Yeah. Because it's got the bulb thing. Yeah.

These were, this is great. So it's like an American sexual health organization or something that have done this video. But the guy narrating it mentions that they're making like ribbed ones, and he says something like, these aren't your grandfather's condoms. Golly. Wait and try and make it relatable and make it much worse.

Weird as fucking brag I've ever seen in an instructional video. Yeah, you just made it so uncomfortable. Like, dude. The bit about women working in the factories, I found it interesting, and I meant to look into further and didn't. I didn't look at like historical condom making to be fair. I knew that. I felt like I should have done that, but never mind.

Maybe later. The whole thing about it smelling like cat's purse, I see Ms. Rubber specific rather than modern day latex-y business. Yeah. Is that sulfury smell? Yeah. Some other parallels I quite like while we're at it, and these are the ones I'm going to revisit

as they become more relevant in the story. But I thought because this cone of stone, you'll see why I get this mixed up so much, was stolen in this one. I talk about the time the stone of scone was stolen on Round World. And we'll talk about more about its relevance and things next week, I think. In 1950, the stone of scone. I've written it backwards.

I was reading it correctly. I've written it down backwards. Oh, damn it. The scone of stone. Stone of scone. Oh, no. A phone which were crowned Scottish monarchs, of all was taken from Perth in 1296 by Edward I.

And it was fitted underneath the throne at Westminster Abbey. Yeah. So like the throne is on the scone of stone. And so from then English and later on British monarchs were crowned on it. Yeah. Which obviously is a bit of a sore point for some Scottish nationalists, as you can imagine. In December 1950, four students from the University of Glasgow staged a heist. They were funded by Glasgow businessmen and they drove to London in two Ford Angliers,

which I thought was a sweet detail. And after a couple of false starts learning the Watchman's like schedules and all that stuff, it's very heisty. Succeeded in removing the stone on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, they had a break in two in the process. They nevertheless made off with the pieces and evading police. At one point, two of them got into a false clinch in a car to just throw one of them off. It's so trophy.

Like the story is very cliche. How was one of them made a movie of this? They have, I think they have. Yeah, it's called the Stone of Destiny. I haven't watched that. But I will link to a podcast that goes about into this. Yeah. That's because the whole story is fantastic.

But I'm just racing through it. They hid the pieces and went back to Scotland without them. Which was just as well, because once the alarm was raised, the border between Scotland and England was closed for the first time in 400 years. Fucking hell. Like this was seen as a big deal. Yeah. A fortnight later, when things have cooled off a bit, the group went back to the hiding places,

got the stone, took it back to Scotland and had it mended by a Mason reexpert, whatever. And then in April, 1951, it was Christmas Day, they nicked it, by the way. I'm telling this terribly, I'm sorry. No, you mentioned Christmas Day. Good fuck. Oh, god. The police received a message and the stone was found on the site of the high altar at Arboris Abbey, which is where in the 1300s Scotland asserted its nationhood.

Oh, right. And it was returned to Westminster Abbey in 1952. But no prosecution was made, even though they knew who the four students were, because it was such a delicate political matter that they decided it was not in the public interest, to keep staring at. Yeah, it was quite interesting. And I think I'll talk more about the whole, just like, why these things are important than the High Kings and the Low Kings.

We'll get into the history stuff next time. I just quite liked the heist story. I do like the heist story. And finally, some of the, like, uberwald parallels that I enjoyed. Well, we're kind of setting up for bigger talking points here. But the two-headed bat that Vime's referenced as being a bit too florid for his liking, which was the symbol of the unholy empire, is got to be the Holy Roman Empire's two-headed eagle,

which again, very florid in its own way. That just the general vibe of that whole area being that area of the world. A few hundred years ago, I felt was very strong. It reminded me of Dracula, which we've been reading piecemeal. The bit about nailing hats to their heads apparently has two roots in history, which I found amusing. Ivan the Terrible supposedly nailed some turbines to the heads of Turkish ambassadors. And the same story is told of Vlad the Impaler, who was our Dracula,

who was meant to have done the same to Venetian ambassadors and their skull caps. So it's a, what a fun. What a fun thing. Three line of ambassadorial history. The two-headed eagle, by the way, did survive, didn't it? I want to say Albania flag. Yeah, yeah. The coolest flag, I think.

Yeah, Albania. And yeah, so I'll ask you a reference for Neil. When he's talking about, well, he's thinking to himself about going to Evold Vime's, he's thinking, Antmole Port was lousy with diplomats. It was practically what the upper classes were for. And it was easy for them because halfs of foreign big wigs then meet to a old chums. They'd laid what towel tab with back at school and goes on like that somewhere. They all, they knew all the right nods and winks.

What chance did he got against a tie and a crest? And this wasn't on Anna's Day to Bratislava, but I did see it in the forums. And I think I saw it somewhere else as well. The tie and crest thing is a reference to the jam's Eaton Rifles song of 1980. And the song itself talks about kind of class differences, class warfare in a way. And so it's the old school tie being the symbol of, you know, the old boys' club. Yeah. All this stuff.

And Fratch in 2002 in the forums said to whoever asked the question, bingo, I'm surprised it hadn't got picked up before. Yeah. Nice. But I think it's because he seamlessly just put it in there, really. It was this whole bit of that class warfare. And I'll see you a primed for damn health. The jam.

The damn you wanted to put in a picture. They liked their rascal. Right. I think that is everything we are going to be able to say on the first part of the fifth. It is so much more to say than we just can. We will be back next week with part two, which starts on page 161 in the call you paper back with the coaches slow to a walk on a road that was rough with potholes under the unbroken snow and ends on page 303 with an exploding cloud of dwarves, debris, molten wax and tumbling,

flaring candles. Traumatic. Yeah. One last thing to listeners. I've just this minute noticed I did not press start recording on the Zencaster tab. And so you're going to get zoom audio, which is slightly lower quality, but generally fine. I've had to do this a couple of times before.

Sorry listeners. God damn it. Oh, do you know what? Do you know what though? We wrote our notes down and sat down to record. And I think that's better than we could have expected given our weeks. Again, day after my 30th birthday, I'm not entirely with it. You are wearing a crown.

I am wearing a crown. Thank you. So yeah, so we'll be back next week with whatever I just said. And hopefully slightly better working brains. And more caffeinated. In the meantime, there, dear listener, you can follow us on Instagram at the Trisha Minkifret on Twitter at MinkifretBod on Facebook at the Trisha Minkifret. Join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f.

Yes. And thank you to user accomplished peach for for three who it didn't get much traction, but posted about us in the Discworld subreddit. Just saying that they like the they found the Discworld podcast in search of something else and got addicted to it. And and that made me happy to see. That was a delight. Thank you. I saw it and was happy.

That pleased us. Yes. Email us your thoughts, queries, spooky gothic castles, snacks, werewolves, bats, two-headed eagles, et cetera. The Trisha Minkifret pod at gmail.com. If you want to support us financially and why would you go to patreon.com forward slash the Trisha Minkifret and you can exchange your hard earned pennies for some bonus nonsense. So bonus. So nonsense.

Also, please rate and review and all that jazz review listen to us because it helps other people find this. And also we just really like praise. Give us five stars. If it makes you happy, do it in the in the. Write it in an Uber, Valdian accent. That'll give you everybody. Please review us in your best Uber, Valdian accents.

There'll be a prize for my favorite. The prize. You've got to stop advertising. The prize will be me telling you that it was my favorite. That's true. And I'll possibly wear a second tiara. In the meantime, dear listener. Don't let us detain you.

I am so frustrated because I had so much research time and I just went off in those three different directions and ended up with nothing here and heavy editing. Sorry. No, Joanna, I've just said it was my fault. I don't know. I'm apologizing.