The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 89: The Truth Pt.1 (Does Not Register As Human Noises)

Episode Date: July 11, 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 Truth”. Stop the press! Or don’t, that’s fine too. 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:#TheWeekInTory (posted 5 July) and #TheWeekinTory (posted 7 July) - Russ Jones on TwitterThe Children of Green Knowe - GoodReads Guild of Recappers & Podcasters  Pratchett talking about journalism during Iraq war - alt.fan.pratchett Wynkyn de Worde | English printer | BritannicaLibfix - Wikipedia Bojack Horseman - S6 - Enter Paige Sinclair and Maximillian Banks - YouTube Seattle Underground - WikipediaWhy Do We 'Bury the Lede?' - Merriam Webster Korean Movable Type - Resources and References The royal coat of arms that reigns o'er our front page | The Times  In Our Time - Seventeenth Century Print Culture - Radio 4Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

we ride at dawn. Well, not dawn, because if I'm having a coffee like now, I'm going to sleep late, and then I'll wake up late. So we ride at like, do you want to say like two o'clock? Because then we can have like a nice lunch. We can have a lunchy lunch, and then we'll ride. Okay. Yeah, I'll have to be a light lunch thing, I feel sick. Well, it's only like, if we have like a brunchy lunch, then there's time for it to go down. And then we ride. This is why people hate us. Not us particularly, but posh sounding leftists. Because we're trying to make brunch plans pre revolution. Yeah. I suppose the thing to talk about today, there's the politics that happened. Oh, a lot of that. We live in the UK. And that's had interesting politics this week. Twitter's been great.

Twitter has been great, hasn't it? Honestly, a little bit like the, the ever given in the Suez Canal, though, it stopped being fun as soon as he got unstuck from there. Yeah, for full context, and I'm trying to work out how rapidly, but not incorrectly, I can describe this. Boris Johnson, who like, I'm not even sure if he is our Prime Minister. Yeah, he's Prime Minister. No, he is still technically still Prime Minister. It's very shit. There was a vote of no confidence in him back a few weeks ago, which I remember because it was while I was in the States. And I was like, in a Denny's waiting for my pancakes flying frantically refreshing my phone to see if he'd been voted out.

Cute. And he didn't get voted out with the vote of no confidence. But then more stuff came to lie. I think the, the catalyst or the break the camel's back or whatever was that the Deputy Chief Whip has been groping lots of people and like still got promoted, basically. And so then lots of MPs started resigning in disgust. I think at one point, it was like ministers rather than MPs, so the people in the cabinet, yeah, which is a big deal because basically the important jobs were suddenly empty. And then like, at least one person who got hired in to replace one of the people who resigned then immediately turned around and was like, yeah, but you should get out of government though. And then I did resign.

And through all of it, he was insisting, I don't care how many of them resigned, I'm not going anywhere. Then he fired Michael Gove, which is just fucking funny. In a day where there were a record number of ministerial resignations, Michael Gove got sacked. And that really does sum up Michael Gove. Now it's been refreshed with a bunch of people I've never heard of, so. Yes. And Boris Johnson has now resigned, but said he's staying on until October. That's a normal thing to do. Yeah, yeah. He's staying on until the new leaders elected and that's going to be by October with the party conference. Yeah. Although I think if one more thing comes out, possibly they'll push him out before then, but then I don't know what happens

in the meantime. Well, Dominic Robbs, Deputy Prime Minister, so I'm assuming he's stepping in as the interim. Right, right. Oh yeah. So one of the batshit theories I read today, the non-batshit part is apparently he's got some big wedding party planned at Checkers, which is like the prime minister's countryside residence. And that's why part of the reason he wants to stay on until October. I don't know if that's like a motivation thing. One of the tweets underneath was saying that actually all the most right wing parts of the army support him and he's going to dig in at Checkers, refuse to cede and try and start a totalitarian dictatorship with the assistance of the most right wing parts of the army using Checkers as his base.

Cute. Who was the person making that conspiracy tweet? Did they sound like they were into that? Was it like a scared left wing? No, they sounded like scared. They said civil wars coming. It was very left-wing tin foil. Oh, last political thing. I'm going to link to a couple of Russ Jones's Twitter threads because they have been a delight for me in the last few months. Oh, the weekend Tory. I need to get his book. I keep pre-ordering his book here. He's pre-ordering books. What did I just order? I just ordered a book. He'd be interested enough for what it was already. Oh, did he order a book? Oh, the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes to go with my superstition one. Oh, amazing. Oh, in the meaning of Lith. Oh, awesome. Yes, I need to get a copy

because I know I don't have it in my old one. I am reading Children of Green Now at the moment by Lucy Boston, which is the book from like the 1950s. It's like a kind of mystery thing. I'm only like a few pages in at the moment. But podcast relevant, like 10 pages in or so, I guess, not far before where I've got to now. Someone's singing The Lily White Boys, which we talked about in Hogfather. So it's quite nice to just spot that out in the wild. Yeah, cool. Well spotted. It's amazing the kind of things you do spot that you never would have without... Pratchett. ...doing all this stuff. Yeah, without Pratchett first, and then without, like,

getting way too into Pratchett, like we have done the last couple of years. I don't know. I don't think it's unfair to say that, is it? This is a normal amount of being into Pratchett. If that were true, there would be hundreds of other podcasts, not merely dozens about it. Do you hear that? Ben from Pratchett has set up a Wikipedia. The Guild of Podcasters Wikipedia. We should link to that. Yeah, I will do. But yeah, he's counted, like, 30 of them or something. Bizarre. Yeah, they're not all active, though.

No, that's true. Some have sort of faded off the internet. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, guys. They went off the edge. Do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. I had nothing to segue into that one. I was going to say something about going off the edge. I was like, I think that was better. Right. We ready?

Yeah, sure. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. Stop the press. No, don't. I can't shout that. Just about to do the intro. I've always been a distance. I sabotage you. Hello and welcome to The True Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one, a stymine chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan.

And I'm Francine Carroll. And we are talking about the truth. We are. The 25th Discworld novel. I know the number because it says it on the cover. The quarter century. What's the 25th? What's the like dual or something that goes along with that? You know what I mean? I have no idea.

Yeah, okay. I do. I don't know what it is. 25th Discworld novel. We're here. We're excited. Before we crack on, spoilers, note on them. We are a spoiler light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book, The Truth, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we are saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel,

The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear listeners, can come on the journey with us. Remaining at all times, cult, county, scrutable, and floating below the height of the university's walls. That is for the best. So is that like all the university's walls? Because like below the height of... No, it's the university.

The university. Okay, because if below the height of the Tower of Art is still pretty high. Oh, I see. Now, I think we've probably better stick with the Bursar's rules. Okay, okay. If he's not allowed to. You know? All right.

We don't want to upset him. Yeah, okay. Have we got anything to follow up on? I feel like I should. Yeah. Hold on. High listeners. We like you.

High listeners. We do. We do. Did you... Have you got the emails and stuff? Do you want me to get those up? Oh, it's probably easier for me when I can't have the desktop. No, sorry.

I've got them in front of me. Well, in the meantime, dear listeners. No. The Scone of Stone final fucking update, because there's something about this subject where I just can't say anything accurate, apparently. I still managed to get it wrong last episode. It's already in Scotland. And it's going to move to Perth in 2024, not 2022.

And I did know that, so I don't know where I said 2022. And that's, I think, I think, I think all of the correction on the fucking Scone. We have a lovely email from listener Marie, who has been following us on Facebook and is now listening from the beginning of the podcast and is sharing fun bits and pieces that might interest us. Can't remember the episode, but we talked about cautionary tales. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hogfather would have been Hogfather.

Harry Graham's Ruthless Rhymes, we would enjoy an example. Little Billy, brand new sashes, fell into the fire, was burned to ashes. So now, although the night grows chilly, I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy. Oh, I say, that's very good, yes. That's a very roll, darling, isn't it? Yep. And I just finally pulled up the comment. It was as I suspected Craig, who corrected me on the Scone.

Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Craig. And I promise I won't talk about Scotland again for a while until my brain's working again. Also from Marie, just sort of tangentially related to dwarf folklore, when they visited the salt mines in Krakow, there's lots of salt statues of dwarves called carved by miners, including a few of evil spirits who believed to steal tools and cause caverns and bad air. Oh, cool.

So I really want to go to Krakow and visit some salt mines now. Ah, mischief salt gods. That's very cool. Oh, I'll be looking that up. Least related is a recommendation to read bits by an American humorist called Robert Benchley. Apparently he was part of Dorothy Parker's circle. And also grandfather of Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws. And we would like his humor very much.

And so I'm sure that Terry Pratchett read his work, especially since a collection of essays was printed in the 70s for journalists. Yes. Okay, that sounds good. The editor suggested if any journalists were short of ideas from our school, they should read these. I recommend stop those hiccups. East, West, home is best. And how to get things done.

So that's a little pop it in the various books we keep buying because of this podcast thing. My shelves. They are full. God, they're so full. I need to reorganize my book cases. I need to reorganize this room. Okay, let's talk about the book, The Truth.

Francine, do you want to introduce us to it? Yeah, I've tried to stay brief on this intro because I know we've got a lot. So this is the 25th disqual level, as we've said. It is the name of our thing is in this thing somewhere. Yes, somewhere. We've already come very close to it in section one. We'll come pretty later on. Yeah, but yeah, it was released in November 2000.

So we've been kicking. We've been dragged kicking and screaming or led gently by the hand into the new millennium now. A delight. The title, of course, comes from the Bible quote. John 832. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you fret free, free, make you free, fret, something like that. Something like that.

I have a little blurb. Tantental question. Where do you stand on the subject of dust jackets? If I just had to hunt through for this one. If I'm reading a hardback with a dust jacket, I will take it off the book while I'm reading it because they annoy me. Same. I'm now getting to the point where for my most red hardbacks,

so like a slip of the keyboard. Yeah. I think I'm just going to get a folder and put all the dust jackets in them because I don't see the point of them. But yeah. I don't have a ton of hardbacks that I read often to be fair. Anyway, that's a blurb. William DeWood is the accidental editor of the Discworld's first newspaper.

Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist's life. People who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography. Some more people who want him dead in a different way. And worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes. William just wants to get at the truth. Unfortunately, everyone else wants to get at William. And it's only the third edition. Goodness.

So the kind of, I guess, slight background to this is that Pratchett himself, obviously, was a journalist for quite a while. Lots about that in Mark Burris' books that we keep going on about, Magic of Terry Pratchett. In fact, I learned a lot about that subject in that book that I didn't know. He cared about journalism a lot. And now I think you can see that throughout this book. You can also see, even in the forums, I'll link to a thread where he's getting very passionate about the reporting on the war in Iraq in 2003, linking back to one of our past conversations.

But yeah, I'll leave it there because there's a lot you can say about Pratchett in journalism. Maybe we'll do that as a bonus one day. Yeah. Right. Shall I tell us what happened? I'll try and do some books. Yeah. This section is running from page one to page 100.5 in the Corgi Paperback edition.

Hopefully by the time this episode comes out, I will have tweeted that or something. The Dwarves can turn lead into gold. So the rumor goes, William DeWerd writes down the rumor as Colin and Nobs watched the city gates and chatted some boaters. And the press can't be stopped as it breaks free from its dwarfish owners, runs down the frozen street and knocks out our rink-stained hero. Mr. Pinna, Mr. Tulip, Boat of Out and a Mess, his foul old Ron and gas boat watch on. William wakes to a printing demonstration and receives some amazingly efficient copies of

his Ankh Maupork newsletter. Meanwhile, a coach arrives to a meeting. Someone is the spitting image of someone. At the university, the Bursa mustn't, before setting out to see what these cheap printing rates were all about. William takes notes as the dwarves discuss rates with the future-facing wizard, while Hewnon Redcully visits veterinary to complain. An elderly smelly dog sleeps under the table as veterinary explains moving with the times

and sets out to visit the printing press. Pinna and Tulip chat to Charlie, while veterinary holds William responsible for the dwarves' endeavours. The nefarious new firm watch veterinary and are watched in turn by our favourite four-legged friend. William finds news and the dwarves shape the print until the newspaper takes shape and foul old Ron with gas boat assistance negotiates paper selling. Mr. Slant, the legal revenant, absolutely does not meet Pinna and Tulip and discuss Blackmail

before Tulip does a bit of connoisseuring. Meanwhile, at the printer's sheds, enters Sakurisa. Furious over her father's lost, engraving income, she's ready to give William a piece of her mind and ends up taking on a reporter job and being sent out to seek news. In a musty ballroom, anonymous chairs tell Pinna and Tulip that no harm is to come to veterinary. He's just to be ousted, while Ron sells papers at the palace and veterinary takes meetings.

Sakurisa brings news and Mr. Wintler brings a humorous vegetable. The dwarves find space in the cellar and William is summoned to veterinary to learn the difference between man bites dog and dog bites man. Events fill the paper as Pinna and Tulip seek insurance and William takes meetings and thinks about pictures. Charlie works on his astute and early in the morning veterinary reads the paper as the door opens. Silently, papers sell like hot off the press cakes and William hires Otto the iconographer

and looks at letters. But wait, something's happened at the palace. Veterinary has murdered someone. Brackets, allegedly. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't edit it down, so I decided to be more enthusiastic about it and I hope you wouldn't notice.

Oh, I noticed. I noticed. But as I told you, I will be noticing this time because it's got on my sub-editor. You've got sub-editor brain for this episode. Sense is tingling. Yeah. However, this is in the style of an old newsletter because we're now moving into the press.

Moving in and it was perfect. Say well then. Speaking of moving into the press, helicopter and loincloth watch and the runaway press is the helicopter. Absolutely. Don't think about it too much on loincloths. Brezik the leatherclad barbarian. I feel like there's an implication of loincloth.

I mean, it was Frun and Cohen that introduced this spot and inspired it. Yeah, I should say so. Yeah, that's loincloth. My small adjacent thing. I always go on about the weather, so I'm just going to put that in here. I know I've mentioned it a lot, but I really do appreciate it. In this case, it's the winter, the deep winter, and it's always just this universally relatable background that he sticks into this fantastical city.

So it just grounds you in it because you know how a heatwave or a cold snapple, thick fog feels and it does make everything feel different. And I just think it's a really good way that he keeps integrating us into the story. And I noticed it again here. It's a good moment. Other little bits we like to keep track of as for where we are in the timeline, we're about to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the century as the fruit bat. Good, good.

I am kicking. I am screaming. We have yet another reference to Mr. Hong and the three jolly luck takeaway fish bar on Dagon Street. Yep. RIP, Mr. Hong. Poor Mr. Hong. But I'd like to think we keep his memory alive.

We all do. It terrified, terrified memory. Do you want to go first on quotes? Yeah. Say a nice bad taste of quote here. This is when Watts's chops is standing on the ledge. We find out what's his chops actually is in a bit, but I can't remember. What else? A crank.

There we go. Steeplejack. That's right. Ex-steeplejack. Far below the crowd were trying to be helpful. It was not in the robust dank mawport nature to dissuade anybody in this position. It was a free city, after all. So was the advice.

Much better to try the thieves guild, a man yelled. Six floors and then you're on good solid cobbles. Crack your skulls first go. There's proper flagstones around the palace. Advised the man next to him. Well, certainly said his immediate neighbour. But the protritional kill him if he tries to jump from up there, am I right? Well, well, it's a matter of style, isn't it?

Tower of Arts, good. Said a woman, confidently. Nine hundred feet almost, and you get a good view. Granted, granted. But you also get a long time to think about things. On the way down, I mean. Don't have a good time for introspection in my view. I just love the little ank mawpork aside.

Almost Monty Python. I was about to say that bit reads a bit more. I think that might have just been my voices. I love that moment. That made me laugh a lot. It may be in portaste, but it's very funny. Anyway, he wasn't trying to commit suicide, really, so that's fine. Mine is from slightly later on, when Osso takes a photo with his dark light from the

booba-waldian deep cave land eels, whatever they're called. Yep, with his obscureograph. Obscurograph, thank you. That's the word. There was a soft, noiseless implosion. A very brief sensation of the world being screwed up, small, frozen, smashed into tiny little sharp pins and hammered through every cell of William's body. And the footnote, in many ways, William DeWyrd had quite a graphic imagination.

Didn't he? I love that Terry Bratchett writes this really fantastic bit of description, and then kind of blames it on the character. I also like the kind of implication that while William DeWyrd is feeling this occult nonsense, he's managing to perfectly describe it in real time. Beautiful, beautiful. Speaking of William DeWyrd, of character, yes, well done. The same segue, simultaneous segue, the name of our terrible band.

Excellent. Yeah, starting with William and his initial job writing to various dignitaries, some of which we've heard of. Can I do the reference first? Yeah, of William DeWyrd. Winking DeWyrd is who it'll be talking about. A printer and a publisher in London worked at William Caxton's Press, which was the first in England, took control when Caxton died in 1491,

in 1500 or 15001, moved from Westminster to Fleet Street. And the rest, as they say, is fairly well-recorded history. Marvelous. Yes, that's too good a name not to use, isn't it? That's a perfect name. I didn't know it was a reference either. I didn't look that one up. I just assumed it was a...

Well, I didn't. It came up in my research about the history of the printing press. Oh, marvelous. Cool. Family background. He's got an interesting family background. This is the nice, the books using the books. That was a great sentence in that he had this relationship with his father,

with his family. He was very comfortable in his second son role and got away with existing in the way he did at his school, Hugglestones, until his brother was died in the Clatchian War, which is... We've seen. We've seen the Clatchian War. And it's described here as an insignificant war over before it started, and the kind of war that both sides pretended hadn't really happened.

It's a good callback, because I think Pratchett made an effort there to humanise the people who'd just randomly died via Willikens, wasn't it? Who was saying, you know, this guy was... This guy had a sweetheart, and this guy used to sing songs for us every night. There's a nice relation back to it there. Hugglestones sounded very, you know, that horrible school that Prince Philip and Prince Charles went to. Oh, yeah.

I can't remember what it's called, but it does sound very that. Maybe stop sending kids to boarding school. Well, William turned out all right, but... And he's the best exam I can think of, a real life person. Yep. I like Lord Veteranary refers to him as Lord Deward, and he corrects him with it's Mr. And it certainly is, because his father's not dead.

Well, yeah. Veteranary knows that, I'm guessing, and is just making a little dig. But there's a nice... I feel like it's less about the fact that his father's alive, and it's more that he's very, I think not a lord, won't be a lord. Absolutely, yeah. But Veteranary forcing him to say that. And it's a fun counterpoint to Vine,

so I'm going to put a pin in that and come back to it. Pin. So, next episode? Next episode. I feel like we said we're going to spoil the book. Vimes will be here. Shock. Surely not.

Something a foot in Angkor Pork. Vimes won't have anything to do with that. But setting up his main sort of big character detail is this relationship to the truth being this unalterable fact that he has to tell the truth. He isn't creative about it, and it gives him really good motivation for this book. Yes.

Yeah, a very straightforward one. Yes. But one that he'll have to kind of think in a non-straightforward way about, which is cool. Speaking of not very straightforward, pin and tulip. Not even in this dimension. Poor Mr. Tulip.

Poor Mr. Tulip. I mean, kind of, I don't know. Violent murderer, but... Our favourite, Violent Murder of the Hour. So, I was all set. I think even before I did my first reread to talk about how I always think they share a lot of DNA with Mr. Krupa and Mr. Vandemar,

the old firm from Neverwhere. And then I looked at Annotated Pranchet, and I found a lot of people have drawn that comparison. The devil you say. And comparison to lots of other criminal duos. And so, I have this quote from Terry Pranchet. And I feel like he was quite annoyed by this at this point. Yeah.

Number one, the term the old firm certainly wasn't invented by Neil. I think it first turned up amongst bookies, but I've seen the Kray brothers refer to that way. Since the 60s, at least, the firm has tended to mean criminal gang, and indeed, the term turned up in Discworld long before Neverwhere. Two, fictional movies are full of pairs of bad guys that pretty much equate to pin and tulip. They go back along the way.

That's why I used them, and probably why Neil did too. You can have a trio of bad guys, but the dynamic is different. With two guys, one can always explain the plot to the other. Hmm. So, that's fair, but I still feel like they do share a lot of DNA with Creep and Vandemar. Like, I feel like it's more that, what's that word I used? The other, convergent evolution.

Yeah. I mean, they both shared a lot of creative energy. Yeah. Sent each other vibes, that kind of thing. Yeah. But I mean, he is right. They're so effective because we can see them, because we've seen them in a hundred things already.

Yeah, like it's obviously in slightly less in format. God, I love the inks. I was practicing to myself for you. What, dashing? Yes. I was just going to say dashing every time. Well, he's kind of dashing through the snow, except the snow is honks slab.

I've been practicing the pause. The pause is Joanna. Maybe we should make that the podcast. We're not going to make that the podcast, we're hurrying. No, no, we're not, no. My favourite ing moment is when they're going into the room full of mysterious chairs and the virginal. Yes.

It's not an ing harpsichord, it's an ing virginal, so-called because it was an instrument for ing young ladies. My words. It's not a harpsichord, was it? Oh, Mr Tulip. It is a beautiful character detail that he's incredibly into architecture and art and antiques. Yes.

I think that was where I kind of got the crew from Vandemar Collection because that's the whole thing with one of them where he collects antiques, but it's so he can eat them. Cute. God, I love that book. But I also love this book. Let's talk about this one. Yes, better do.

I feel like we'd be remiss as well if we don't acknowledge in the whole relationship to criminal duos thing the pulp fiction bit that they do with DiBla's hot dogs. I've never watched pulp fiction. You're going to have to enlighten me. Oh, when Mr Pin's saying, oh, do you know what they call a sausage in a bun and querm? They call it Le Sausage, Le Bun.

Le Bun. And then Tulip says, oh, they ought to call it a sausage, John's Le Derrière. And it's a bit in pulp fiction. They're in the car and they're like, they call a quarter pounder with cheese, a royale with cheese because they've got the metric system. It's a very famous scene from pulp fiction

where they talk about what they call a big mac in French. They call it Le Big Mac. Ah, super. Le Grand Mac. Yes, no. I'll be honest, I've only seen pulp fiction once and the only scenes I remember are that scene and the dance. Now I've seen the dance.

Yes, because we used to do it in the pub. And then Charlie. Oh, Charlie. I mean, Charlie does seem to be kind of dumb as a brick. A lot will be over by Friday though, won't it? And trying to negotiate for more money while basically being held hostage. Yeah, he's slightly the wrong flavour of stupid, unfortunately.

It's also, it's a nice mystery build up because we know we have someone who looks like someone. I don't think it's even explicitly said in this section that it's veterinary who he looks like. Oh, possibly not, no. But I mean, I feel like it's obvious enough that we can talk about that. Certainly by the end of the section, yeah.

But the veterinary has murdered someone, yeah, allegedly. But it's good writing, it's a good mystery writing. And then we have... Canella Good Mountain. Again, we have a name. Gutenberg. Yes, the Bible guy. Some of the other dwarves we also have.

Castlon. Castlon, sorry, Castlon, a font. With Bodney, which is Bodney, a font. Many fonts in this, many typesets. Gutenberg, by the way, fucking word press. I was then called the new not anymore, really. But UI, Gutenberg, it makes research. Just one step harder on Google, which I know is not much.

It's not much, really, but... Still, could you not WordPress? We've discussed this. Cheers, cheers, WordPress. We have Hewnan Ridkully. I didn't really need to put him in, but any Ridkully is a delight to me. Yeah, we have the original, the OG in there as well somewhere, don't we?

Yes, the OG is there as well. I was trying to keep characters down for unseen. Well, you can't keep mustram down. They haven't yet built a man that will keep old mustram down. Such a man cannot be built. Blind IEO, on the other hand, has had a bit of a cold, but he's up and about again now. He's got his own newsletter.

It is one of my favorite jokes in the whole book, with the whole omnions of learn to print the pamphlets, and very much spreading the good word. And he's like, have you got any good word to spread about your god? And he's like, he's doing all right. It's fine, lovely. And I was shoehorning the bear siren, because one of my favorite quotes from the whole book is,

and now I must fly, except they're not mustn't. Except I mustn't. That is also one of my favorites. Yeah, there's just a few of those just silly little quotes in here, and I love it very much. I like the idea that they finally kind of calmed the bursar down by getting him to hallucinate that he's sane, which is relatable. And there's only one one side effect, which is fine,

and he seems to enjoy it. Minor amounts of flying. And we have the group I've decided to dub the misbegot misfits, the residents under the bridge. Oh, sure, sure. Well, I think I'd originally kind of noted them as, you know, the beggars, but they don't really beg. No, they've all got very different techniques of extracting money.

I think misbegot misfits is good, yeah? Yeah, obviously. Yeah, the bridge bunch could be the other, but that's a bit pretty bunchish. I refuse to call things bunch. And if we try and go all earnest and call them the unhoused of Ancomore Fork, it all gets a bit much done. We sound like twats, yeah.

We do sound like twats quite a lot of the time anyway, so let's not add to it knowingly. So, yes, we've got Coffin Henry, Arnold Sideways, The Duck Man, Altogether Andrews, and all of their personalities. And Gaspo's! Gaspo, there's a new, there's a newbie in the group for these, these, these, these. And also, I noticed we've got some new Fowler Ron Doggerl,

and I forgot to look up whether this was from the original Source Materials, Scraplet, Thatch and Trouser, a Blew It the Grony Man. I enjoy it. Enjoyable, certainly. I don't, again, really not sure if it's original or whether he fed something else into the machine. I keep meaning to look this up in more depth. We'll get there one day. Yeah, yeah, we will.

Sure, we will. Sure, we will. I like the idea of Gaspo having his proud little barge ride back to Wengmoorpork, and as the barge pulled past the Mispagot, he just went, yeah, they'll do. And just hopped off and decided to go and be mates with them for a bit. Absolutely. And he's talking to Fowler Ron, like he understands the bug routes.

Yes. Which is cool. They've somehow got a common language between the talking dog and the random doggerl. Ah, there you go. And Sacherisa Cripslock. Is it Sacherisa? I've always pronounced it Sacherisa in my head, but now you say it.

That is clearly how it's pronounced, Fowler. So I'm basing that entirely off one of the TV adaptation of Good... Ah, try that again. The TV adaptation of Going Postal, there's a brief moment with a Sacherisa Cripslock, and it said like that there. No, I'm sure you're right. I don't know why I've said it Sacherisa in my head because Sacherisa is a surname. I've never seen S-A-C-H-B pronounced Sacherisa, so it was just...

But so I feel like her father is also implied here. I remember back in Masquerade that there was a Mr. Cripslock of the Engraver's Guild, and I said, ah, put it up in there. Put it up in there. Ah, you put it up in there. Put it up in there. You put it up in there. And now you've taken the pin out and he's escaped and fucked off with Tulip,

but now we can come back to Cripslock. Yes. Oh, God, did I make him? No, no. I left him pinned up in the opera house for too long. So we have Sacherisa William Cripslock. Was it William Cripslock? I can't remember the name of her father now.

No, I don't think it was William. Mr. Cripslock, which is a very fun word to keep saying. She is a character I greatly enjoy. I feel like her whole vibe with William is that very kind of screwball comedy thing I've talked about before. I really like, especially in the context of it being kind of journalistic and I can imagine them with transatlantic accents shouting across the newsroom to each other.

Oh, I fucking love the Bojack Horseman. Yeah, no, I'm basically imagining her. What's her name? I can't remember the character now. For listeners who haven't seen Bojack Horseman, there is a whole subplot involving someone with a very strong transatlantic accent who's a newspaper journalist running around finding a story. My one criticism when it comes to Sacherisa...

Sorry, I'll let you say it first. I'm not criticising Sacherisa, I'm criticising her description. I want to preface this with saying like, so William never really gets a physical description in this book. Like you can't do much to picture him. Huh, yeah. But Sacherisa, I don't mind the way she's described as, you know, she's got all these different features that make her very good looking.

She's got quite good medieval ears because it's funny. Yeah, it is funny. But then you get the line, she had a well-crafted supply of other features that never go out of fashion and are perfectly at home in any century. And this becomes like a running thing in the book, just the constant reference to her tits and it is a bit tiring. Yeah.

Now, don't get me wrong. We've come a long way from the blondes in the metal bikinis. Sorry, the tanned blondes in metal bikinis. I'm not even sure what colour Sacherisa's hair is. I'm just going to assume blonde and turt. No. No. Also, when she pops up briefly in Going Postal, she's played by Tamsin Gregg, who I love.

So I can't not picture her a little bit as Tamsin Gregg, even though she doesn't have particularly giant tits. But yes, it's an annoying reference that I don't like and there doesn't need to be a reference to her. There's at least one per section. Yeah. That was the only one I noticed in this one, but that doesn't mean there weren't more. There's definitely quite a few towards the end.

Yeah. Yeah. But I'm a big fan of her. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. She's great. She gets to hang a bit extremely quickly. She does. I also like that it's another side to that class thing we've been talking about, the kind of desperately aspirational

somewhere in the middle classes thing. She's so determined to be a proper, nice, respectable young lady. I love the phrase mannerisms instead of manners. Yes. That's such a good one. I made a note somewhere to look up properly, the early usage of both of those terms, because practice seems to be making a distinction

I wasn't entirely aware of. No, but I kind of... Manors is in more of a metaphysical, not metaphysical, you know what I mean? Yes. Nebulous concept. Manors is... There you go. I love the word nebulous. I love the word nebulous.

And then Otto. I love Otto. Otto has the oddest accent I've ever tried to read aloud. It's not like the last ones. It's not like the... Yeah, because in theory it's Super Waldian and we're reading it similarly to... Yeah. As a big country, I guess. It is a very big country.

I've got the map behind me and it's a good chunk of that. You're just going to leave that there now. Yeah. Let's give it a full start. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Because now we never have to try and remember again. It's still quite hard to find things if you don't already know vaguely where you're looking.

Do you have an Otto quite in front of you? I was just looking for the stuff about him coming in and... Oh, no, I have got one. I am a visit in the dark room. I am experimenting all the time. And I feel like... The ze, isn't it? Is the ze sound French?

I'm always thinking of ze light. Shout out to his Angkor Pork accent. Hello, my cheeky Coxbarrow mate. Old boy by Crikey. Absolutely. Which is how I'm going to start introducing myself. But I'm going to replace the podcast intro with that. By Crikey.

Absolutely. My cheeky Coxbarrow. You're going to go full Audrey Hepburn doing a bad Eliza Doolittle accent. Sorry. Did you just scream a little bit? That's the weird noise she makes. Yeah, no, I know.

But the autoducker on Zoom made that almost inaudible. Did it? Yeah, it did not register that as human noises. Does not register as human noises. Oh, no. I'll see if it turns up on Zencast. And I'll show you the difference when I edit. That's hilarious.

Oh, I'm going to put that on my Twitter bio. That's another one for your very long business card that I'm going to make for you on a day. Does not register as human noises. I was important to mention that also is a Black Ribboner. And I guess Lady Margalosa has taken part in creating something of a trend. Well, actually, she joined some already extant meetings, didn't she? Yeah, but I felt like she might have helped popularize.

For sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, you're right. She's the kind of vampire that other weirdo hobbyists would want to be. Yes, very much so. I do like that. Yeah, he's the tortured artist recovering. I'm just going to say alcoholics.

I don't know the term for bloodholic, recovering bloodsucker, I guess. Sounds a little bit derogatory. But I suppose murdering people is something to derog. Fuck. What's the what's the adjective there? Criticize. Yeah, I know. But like the derog.

Never mind. Let's carry on. Sorry. Anyway, big fan of also. Does not register as human noises. Derog. That's my name. Mrs. Arcanum.

Yes, speaking of fun names. That's a great name. Mrs. Eucrasia Arcanum. I love you, Eucrasia. Everyone who runs a boarding house in this city sounds absolutely mad and only a few of them are because this one seems incredibly sane. Mrs. Arcanum is very respectable. She is respectable where the capital are.

The lodging house is for very respectable working men. What's the saccharisor is unconsciously training to be? They will not. What is it? We shall not be safe in our beds. That was one of my faves. Just so straight-faced. There's something about these kind of...

See, we will not be safe in our beds. There we go. Sorry. These kind of stock responses to like extreme news articles and they're just being played really dead camp pan here as if they've got the script but don't know the inflections yet. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

And on the lodges, we've got Mr. Mackleduff, the president of Mealtimes and purchaser of the paper, which Mackleduff's great, isn't it? It's so interesting how Prouchett manages to write such an experience with these boarding houses. I've obviously never lived in one, but I very much feel like I have and I get it. Yeah, I feel like I know exactly what shape it is.

Yeah. Huh. And oh yeah, Mr. Fucking, Mr. Winling. Mr. Ing. Sorry. Mr. Ing. Winling. Where is it? What he needs is the mail.

William wondered why he always disliked people who said no offence meant. Maybe it was because they found it easier to say no offence meant than actually refrain from giving offence. Was that in this section? Yeah. My script right over it. Wow.

Oh, that's one of my favorite lines. It's such a specific type of person that we have all met. Goes along with brutally honest. Yeah. Oh, just asking in good faith, there was, you tweeted something about really bad. Oh yeah, just asking guys, yeah. Yeah.

Just asking. I mean this well. Here, after your long horrible story, I'm going to ask you something tangentially related and obviously controversial and ask you to take up more of your emotional time, more of your emotional energy and your precious time, explaining this to me, a man who will absolutely not take anything you say on board.

Yes, those. They're cousins of Mr. Winling. Yeah, yes they are. Good. And then briefly, our other new hires at the paper. We have Mr. Bendy. He's very much looking forward to writing lots of obituaries, including his own.

It's nice to see more zombies about. He's an archivist, I like him. Yeah. Yeah, zombies that aren't so slant. I suspect we've got Red Shoe, of course, but. Yes, I feel like Slant and Red Shoe are the two ends of the zombie spectrum. Yeah, zombie spectrum.

Yeah. Great man, love that. Yeah. You can have that one for free listeners. And Rocky, the Complaints Beheadings and Horse Whippings editor. Absolutely. What a name. In his nice suit.

Very happy for him. Absolutely. Is this the sports guy, I guess? Is there? Yeah, yeah. In parallel. Which is cool idea, because you do often see sports reporters dressed a lot better than their news reporter friends.

That's interesting. I've never really thought about sports reporters, if I'm totally honest. No offense to any sports reporters who might be listening to the true show, make you proud. Bill Bryson, who I will talk about either later or next episode, his father was a very well respected sports writer. And his tale of his father in life and times of the Thunderbolt Kid,

which is his autobiography, Bill Bryson's autobiography, actually made me interested in the art of sports writing, albeit briefly, albeit briefly, but genuinely. So it is, well, as anything, as writing technical manuals is, even if we're not very interested in that, an art that is very satisfying to watch well done. Yeah, I can understand that. But yeah, no, I still didn't.

Much care about the whipping. Oh, it's always whipping, isn't it? You always got to find some throwaway line to say, so you can join in and talk about the whippings at work. Otherwise, you look like a weirdo. Your ludicrous display from the executioner last night. Did you see that we're heading offside? Walked into the basket.

Oh, okay. And finally, we have the committee to unelect the patrician. Committee to unelect me, I agree. Yes, the very menace arms, is it? I got them mixed up last time. Menace and feet of clay, the shadowy... ...circle of people. Is it the same room, do we think?

Well, no, because we'll find out what room this is. Oh, do we? Okay, sorry. I haven't reread it yet. Ah, okay. I believe we'll find out what room this is. But I do, I love the description, this kind of shadowy circle of chairs

that are also carefully lit, so everyone can't see each other's faces. And this is another reference as well. This is a reference to the committee to re-elect the president, which Nixon obviously knew nothing about until it was proved that he did during the Watergate scandal. Which gives me a quick second to go on one of my favorite rants,

which I originally got from your husband, of the fact that Watergate was not a scandal about water, stop putting gate on things to call it a scandal. Fuck, fuck, Joanna. We'd learnt the word for that, and I've forgotten it again. Ah, the word for putting the wrong suffix on the... Gate, gate. Hold on.

I'm not letting this slip through our fingers again. How many listeners are like shouting at the podcast right now? Like, it's this, it's this. Libfix, it's a Libfix. It's called a Libfix. A Libfix is a, wow, a productive, bound morpheme affix, created by re-bracketing and back formation. Of course, why can't I remember that off the top of my head?

Re-bracketing and back formation, Francine. Another example is Walk-a-thon, which was coined in 1932 as a blend of walk and marathon. We have talked about this before, haven't we, because omat and stuff like that, but I don't know if we've talked about it on the podcast, or just in one of our absurd, nerdy conversations. This is going to become a problem the longer we do this show.

What's it called again? Libfix, Libfix. Oh, God, well, now we've got the fix gate. I'm going to shout that many times as possible, so that I can find it again one day. In fact, I'm just going to bookmark this page. Good effort. Well done, me.

You do that. Shall I move us forward? Yeah, yeah. Shall I move us forward to locations? Yeah, better. Obviously, we're a ninth moor pork. We've got some fun plays in the ninth moor pork. We've been to the bucket in Gleam Street before.

We've been to the bucket. The bucket in Gleam Street run by Mr. Cheese. Doesn't that sound nice until you start describing it? But I love the sound of him retiring at the sheds in the back, and they're full of these, like, decrepit rocking horses and things. There's something really terrifying, particularly about the mental image of half-built rocking horses. Well, do you know, I was a couple of weeks ago,

so before I started rereading this, walking past a similar complex of, like, sheds and little bits of land on the outskirts of our town. And one of them has, like, a call list number to rent a space, and I was thinking, oh, what's in there? Now, I know. Haunted rocking chairs. Haunted rocking horses.

Haunted rocking horses, sorry. Rocking chairs aren't scary, francing. No, but the word haunted rocking, actually, yes, they fucking are. Have you seen The Woman in Black? Oh, right, never mind. That stays in my dreams, yeah. Daniel Radcliffe is about to play Weird Al

in the new Weird Al biopic. I just want to say that. What? Yeah. I know that was happening. Oh, that makes me pleased. That delights me. I fucking love Weird Al.

I don't know if we've ever talked on this podcast about how much we love Weird Al, but we do really love Weird Al. We definitely have, because I definitely linked that article that I made you read. Oh, the really long, long one about Weird Al. God, I love Weird Al. Anyway.

Anyway. Shit, sorry. Thaumatological Park. Yes, sorry, carry on. Oh, I don't want to say it again. The Thaumatological Park. The Thaumatological Park. Cupboards of Unseen University.

It's this new built sort of flat roof buildings winning lots of awards from the Guild of Architects, but unfortunately built on the Unreal Estate with lots of leaky magic. Already, the grass was multicoloured and some of the trees are walked away. And I like that the, not directly from the university,

but as a result of the university, this parks opened up around it selling these like magic-adjacent things. Yeah. And you're very much like imagining some of those really sad retail parks, the sort of flat concrete ones, but with just enough glass that they're exciting.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was thinking like, obviously, this is before that, but I was thinking like Google Campus kind of stuff. But yeah, there's a bit of that to it as well, actually, isn't it? Yeah, I wonder what the, because we're in 2000, so we've got the start to .com boom.

I wonder what the really exciting complexes look like. Probably a bit like this. Is it the start of the .com boom? I think, I forgot where the years go. It's fine. .com bubble, 1990s. And in March 2001, we're still in it. Yes, we're still in it.

And of course, we've got a new disorganiser. And he doesn't have the delight of a disorganiser. Bingley-bingley, shout out. Bingley-bingley die. Anyway, Jesus, should we take a little break before we talk about it? I'm sorry, I'm very excited because I like this book a lot.

So am I. But I keep getting distracted and not talking about the book. We've talked about the book and book. Look, look, look. This is the set up part of the book. This is the first third of the book. Almost all of this is set up. And I think we're capturing the kind of manic energy of it as well.

It's fine. Okay. Do you want to take a quick break before we go on to the next bit? Yeah, no, I think we better. Yeah. Yeah. Should we talk about the little bits that we liked?

Oh, yeah. There's an author's note right at the beginning. Sometimes a fantasy author has to point out the strangeness of reality. The way Aunt Morpork deals with its flood problems is curiously similar to that adopted by the city of Seattle, Washington, towards the end of the 19th century.

And we get some context here with the cellars and bits of street being built on. It's kind of been referenced before. So I want to just cover it here because we're going to have so much to talk about in the next two sections. Yes. The Seattle Underground.

So after the great Seattle fire in 1889, one of the rules is that new construction all had to be masonry and streets ended up being built one to two stories higher. Okay. But building entrances weren't raised, so they're genuinely well, like people using ladders to cross the street, etc.

I'm not going to go fully into it. I've linked to the wiki that's got a lot more context. But you can go and tour it, like what's left of it now. There's a lot of the vestiges that were still there, like underground. Yeah. So now I want to, as well as going to Poland and Salt Caves,

I want to go to Seattle and tour the Seattle Underground. Wow, we've got a very own Atlas Obscura list coming together, haven't we? If we've got any Seattle listeners, like is it a thing? Is it cool? Yeah, tell us about it. I hope we have Seattle listeners.

I've always wanted to go to Seattle. I'd like to go to Seattle. We'll stop somewhere for a coffee and a chat if you exist. My favorite theme pops up again this time briefly. In Dibbler's brief career doing feng shui, he unfortunately convinces his customer that the dragon of unhappiness definitely exists and will fly up his bottom.

And then the dragon of unhappiness does indeed fly up, said customers bottom, really proving how important the power of belief is. Dibbler does really believe in his... He's such a good salesman. He has to believe as he says it. He's such a good salesman, he manifested the bottom loving dragon of unhappiness.

Good grief. Maybe I'll make that my new nickname on Zoom. Human interest. Yes, a couple of things on this. I love Sacheris' instinct to sound like a local or very niche newsletter. Her first attempts at writing sound, exactly like a camera leaflet,

a camera being the campaign for... It's the campaign for real ale. Oh, okay, right. So the first three as just campaign, got it. I suppose it works better than cruh. But I always enjoyed because they have regional branches. They go on beer tours and pub crawls and write it all up in these very familiar sounding passages.

And I love that kind of shit. I love it very much. It delights me. If you've ever watched... Have I got news for you? The kind of newsletter they feature in the back. That kind of style. But also, I like the concept of human interest stories.

That's a kind of deeper subject than we can go into in a little bit as we liked, really, but just see the difference between making a human interest story out of hard news, which is the old, if it bleeds, it leads rule. Yeah. And making news out of human interest is a fun distinction. It is fun.

And finally, because William was trying to get Saccuracy to focus on perhaps the lead of the story, which is the man running naked, it made me remember the burying the lead phrase, which is, you know, if you put the main bit of the story too far down, basically. Yeah. And it's spelled L-E-D-E.

I always forget that. I always imagine it like a few pictures you had, I was thinking burying the lead as in L-E-A-D, the leading thing of the story. Well, it is. That's what it means. It's just, it was apparently, and I don't know how solid this etymology is,

is apparently just spelled that way to avoid confusion in the newsroom because the two words, lead, L-E-A-D, and lead, L-E-A-D, are both used very often in a newsroom. And so it made more sense to have one of them spelled differently. I don't know whether that's true or not, but I quickly googled it before we started.

Nice. Because I, yeah, I thought it was possibly just a separate word altogether in which case I should have known what it was, but no, it's just... And speaking of words in etymology, I really like the whole tone that William and Otto, sorry, use when they're talking about the etymology of the word photographer because it's the same kind of,

hey, fun fact about etymology that we use, except it's, you know, is that another term for an iconographer would be photographer from the old word photos in lethation, which means to prance around like a pillock ordering everyone around as if you're in the place, said William. Ah, you know it, William Noddage.

He'd always wondered about that word. I just love the idea that the root Latin or lethation word is the horrendously specific one that you almost need to make up a technology to match. Which, oh, maybe the fates came up with some of the Greek root words and we have to, you know. Right, that's a rabbit hole. I don't have time to deep dive down.

Especially as I definitely just bullshitted that whole sentence. Yep, love it. Anyway, speaking of bullshit. Terms and conditions. They do apply. And would you please tell me about them? Listeners will already know that this is one of my favorite bits

of humor is a very rapidly read. It has been a while. I know we did this in, it was an early enough book that I remember we were recording at your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same for the first couple, yeah. Yeah. And it never fails to delight me.

Hence why I put it in a very silly little play. How far can you get in without breathing? I've been doing yoga. My lung capacity is getting better. This device is provided without warranty of any kind as to reliability, accuracy, existence, or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose. And BioWheel Kamek product specifically does not warrant guarantee

imply or make any representations as to its merchantability for any particular purpose and furthermore shall have no liability for or responsibility to you or any other person entity or deity with respect or any loss or damage whatsoever caused by this device or object. Very good. You're halfway. I'm going to work on the breath control a bit more

before I can do the whole thing in one breath. Yeah, in fairness, that's a long paragraph and it's half the size of the other point set wise. But incidentally, it's something you can only do that small because of the technologies of moveable... Sorry, no. But no, that was all I wanted to say about it. I love it.

Do you want to talk about the technologies of moveable typefrancine? Yeah, that's next, isn't it? Oh, we're fucking barreling through today, aren't we? Considering we started recording like two hours ago. We started recording like two hours ago. No, no, because we talk freighters before we start the actual recording.

Like my recording says an hour and a half. We're on track, I should say, rather than barreling through it just compared to last week. Do you want to tell me about moveable typefrancine? Yeah, I do. I do, I'm sorry. So just again, I'm kind of going to skim over a lot of this. I'm going to do a proper rabbit hole this month

on the history of the press because this is something I'm very into and I'm not going to make you all listen to that. But just some parallels with the book rather than the entire history. Gutenberg came up with the first proper printing press in the West. Yeah. That was around 1450.

However, however, it is European history that most of us know. And I should probably mention that as on Discworld where the Agathean Empire was ahead of the curve, here on Roundworld, East Asia got there a couple of centuries before us with the old moveable type. The world's first moveable type was porcelain and invented in China by the inventor B. Sheng

and around 1040. Nice. I know. Moveable type in Korea was also around in Japan, all sorts of places. In these places, it was somewhat held back from becoming as widespread as it did in Europe a couple of centuries later by the complexity of the alphabets.

Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. There was a simplified Korean alphabet that could have solved that problem, but there were some people who were not into that. And so it stopped before it started really. But I'll link some interesting articles on that.

And as I say, talk about it a bit more in the rabbit hole. But in reality, on Roundworld, there was quite a gap between the advent of the printing press and the first newspapers. Whereas in Discworld, it looks like it was about three seconds. It was a couple of hundred years here. So Gutenberg's press, as I say, started up around 1450. Gutenberg's press especially was good

because it was the strong but equal pressure that made it very legible. I think I'm going off my head here, but that he based it on a wine press that an acquaintance or a relative had. That's great for the listeners. Sorry, I just moved my arm down in a strong but equal pressure way.

Gutenberg was also credited with and certainly used the invention of an oil-based ink. And that kind of acts as more of a varnish than a traditional pigment ink. And that is how you can get some of these fine details and smaller type. So as well as the kind of engraving technologies, you've got this completely different type of ink,

which I didn't realize. Little fun fact, early presses sold unbound books quite commonly, which would allow buyers to bind and decorate it in their local style and have unique copies, which was a lot more fashionable. Nice. A lot more desirable, which was cool. Skipping across the ocean to England.

Another parallel is that in this book, we've got the Golden Gravers, obviously. In the UK, we had the Stationers Company, which was formed in 1403, which you may have noticed a little bit before, the old press, but got a Royal Charter in 1557, which made it the worshipful company of stationers and newspaper makers.

So a little throwback to the old worshipful guilds. Also, there is a worshipful company of scriveners. Oh, lovely. Which was nice. The history of newspapers, though. So as I say, we're a little bit further forward. The kind of predecessors to newspapers were focused more on European news.

So it was kind of keeping people up to date on what was going on on the continent. Because it kind of affected us quite a lot about whether we were going to get involved. And I think it was Franco-Spanish war, could be. But it also had repercussions for religion in general, because it was the Protestants versus the Catholics. That old chestnut.

But Alon and the continent also got their kind of act together with actual newspapers a bit before us. But on the 29th of November, 1641, the London publisher, John Thomas, released a small, I don't know, released a small corto pamphlet entitled The Head of Several Proceedings. It was a printed version of a weekly manuscript

that had been circulating in London for about a year. And so it kind of talked about proceedings in parliament, basically. It's quite dry in terms of content. It was nothing new. This is from a website, which I'll link to. Which is the history of print in general. But oh, sorry, I've lost myself there.

But in terms of form and social presence, it was a profound innovation. It cost perhaps a 12th and perhaps less of what the manuscript cost and was probably reproduced in greater numbers. So as you can see, it's a kind of similarly, ooh, moment as we have in Angwall force. It committed itself to serial publication

with clear dates and issue numbers and all of that stuff. So yeah, it was called a news book to start with, became a newspaper. I was also reading about some of the history of the times of London, which is just an interesting one. Again, I won't go into too much detail, but I like the fact that for the first three years of its life, it was called the Daily Universal Record.

Oh, lovely. Yeah. Also, in the late 1800s, but still the 1800s, we had a female editor of The Times on Sunday, 1894. Rachel Beer, I think her name was. Indian born, yeah. Also the editor of this Observer, which is all quite cool, I think.

That is all very cool and very fun. One more Times thing. Sorry, here's me scrolling up and down again. I meant to say this earlier. And they use the order of the garter coat of arms on The Times. Oh, right. And they did from the first issue, and it's kind of been on and off the front page since then,

which is like the Hanover coat of arms. Yeah. But it's the motto on there, because I thought, I'd try and find a tagline from a newspaper considering it had the true Chomiki for you, which means a lot of things and nothing at all, whatever, is Honi Soi-Ki-Mal-Ypens, which is middle French for shame on him who thinks evil of it,

which I thought was similarly meaningful and not at all meaningful. What a good line. Yeah. I want to start saying that more. A delight. A delight. And I think that's probably all I'd better say, otherwise I'm going to go into a whole different section of my notes.

So. So first of all, as I like doing with these kind of, especially Ankh-Maw Porky mystery books, I like looking at how much is set up in the first section and how much is kind of red herrings in the first section. So you've got this central theme being set up of the dwarf's turning lead into gold. Yeah.

Which they are doing. Just it turns out with a lot of hard work. Yes, it's the long way around. And having just done a loss of diplomacy in the books with the dwarfs, it's quite interesting to now see the attitude of the people who don't quite approve of the dwarfs in the city. Because they're doing things with gold, which is mostly confused the alchemists who have mostly just blown up gold.

One of the things I like is that obviously the idea of this book is movable type coming to Ankh-Maw Porky. It's very what happens when thing happens. A delight for me. But it's been established in past books, not future books, why movable type doesn't exist yet in Ankh-Maw Porky. Yeah. And it's all to do with these fears of what happens with the letters,

once they've been melted down and blah, blah, blah. And I like that the book kind of just answers all those fears here of why it's not come to Ankh-Maw Porky so far with Naby, all right? Yep. But now I was like, no, it's any time has come. There's this great kind of red herring of is this going to this book, you know, we've had with the other speculative fiction-ish books, the what if movies came to Ankh-Maw Porky?

What if rock music came to Ankh-Maw Porky? It's resulted in everything going a bit dungeon-dimension-sy. So you kind of got that brief red herring. Is that going to be what the book is? And you get Vettanari even coming to the printing press acknowledging it. It was like, remember the Hollywood thing and the music with rocks in thing? Yes. And then of course, Mr. Hong.

I like how Vettanari comes in and skewers the red herring, actually. Yes. This isn't actually a cult. It just looks like it. It's great. Because it is described in a similar kind of organic way that do you remember the trolleys and that were described in Reef-a-Man? Yeah, the way the press seems to be alive and growing and hungry and waiting to be fed.

Speaking of Vettanari, one of the fun kind of red herrings, especially for this section, and I know the book wasn't written to be divided up exactly where we have. It's just where it worked. Yeah. He's got this slight little character shift, almost. He's a bit friendlier. And in other books, we maybe haven't seen him do things like come down to the printing press and play the benevolent dictator close up.

Yeah. So it's this slightly... A bit more hands-on. And asking after William's family relationships. And how is your father? It's sad when families don't talk. I feel like that was a bit more of a, I know all about you digs and friendly. Oh, yeah.

There's definitely logic behind everything Vettanari's doing. But on like a surface that we can almost see, he's acting a bit out of character. And now he's apparently murdered. Well, he was acting funny. There's a bit of that in there. There's just enough to make you maybe suspect him. Yeah.

Because that drum not even seems a little off put off, doesn't he? I forgot to put drum not in characters, which I love drum not. It's one of my favorite B characters. Special equipment, sir. Well, I need special clothing, sir. You'll be unsurprised to know that Tumblr ships Vettanari and drum not. That doesn't surprise me. But also, no, superior employee.

And okay, no, that can actually kind of work. Never mind. He's a tyrant. I feel like you can't ship Vettanari with anybody if you're going to go all power dynamic on it. I'll ship him with Lady Margolotta. Oh, yeah. No, you're quite right.

Yeah. Carrie. Yeah. Someone I follow on Twitter has like a completely, no, there is no justification for this in the books, but I love this idea, headcanon, that drum not is a trans man. And I love that. So I'm adopting it too.

Also listeners, if you have any, this is not really proved anywhere in the book. I just really like the idea headcanons. Please send them to me because they always delight me. Yeah, for sure. We do people's yams, but we find them very fun. Yeah. But yeah, I'm sorry. I meant to say throwing back, I can't believe how fluently we can now talk about shipping,

considering I was listening to an old episode where you had to explain to me what a ship was. So it's not been that long since I know what that was. Sorry. Please carry on. We've all spent a lot of time on the internet since then. So there was nothing else to do for two years. Oh, no. But one thing I was thinking about with the Vettanari thing is,

is this kind of a hint of character shift? Or are we just used to seeing Vettanari talk to vimes? Oh, yeah. We see them through the eyes of vimes. Yeah. Who finds it hard to... ...scroot. Who finds it hard to scroot.

Please stop using scroot. Well, stop creaking your terror and I'll stop using scroot. Sorry, I didn't realize it was creaking again. We sit like this. I don't think it creaks as much. And the other setup is obviously Vettanari establishing this man bites dog versus dog bites man, which we'll put a pin in for later. Yep, pin in it, pin in it.

Oh, we sort of stopped putting pins in things. He is a murderer in this one. We're moving on to... Oh, no, we didn't spike it because that's it then. Yeah. Pop it in the diary. Pop it in the diary. And from the setup to the bigger picture,

this whole development of discord thing. And I was talking about this last month with the fifth elephant of, I love seeing the city change and grow. And obviously you get a really good thing of it here. I don't know, microcosm of it here with the newspaper coming into existence. Like you said, so rapidly it takes three seconds rather than a couple of centuries. Yeah, sorry. And the amazing developments happen both on the disc and then as a book series.

So on the disc, you have this great moment of Vettanari explaining things to Rid Cully as in Hugh Noembrey Cully, who is the perfect foil to this conversation because Vettanari is trying to explain this idea of sea commerce and information being currency and Rid Cully sort of stuck on. Especially if you flick the prawns from tower to tower. Oh, they are related. They are related. Oh, I meant to say on the setting of the plot bit actually, before we go too far.

I really liked how there were a couple of times that we switched perspective from like the A plot to almost the B plot like mid-page. So paid 44 on mine. I don't know what it is for yours. But you're watching a willy m'daward sees some people buying a hot dog or something. And then it goes into that thing with Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip buying the hot dog. Yeah. Oh, no, sorry.

I've got it the wrong way around. On 44, there's that astonishing. Astonishing said Lord Vettanari getting into his coach. I do hope he isn't ill. Two figures watched his departure from the rooftop opposite. And then it's Mr. Tulip and whatever. Yeah. And just like it makes sense.

It's not unconnected connection. But it's just you very rarely get that mid-page perspective flip without a paragraph, like without the little gap or anything. And yeah, then later on, yeah, it's Pin and Tulip buying a hot dog while William D'Ward is nearby. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Dibbler's the connection.

It was Dibbler all along. Anyway, also in Vettanari kind of explaining this amazing progress right now, there is a lovely moment where he does this sort of look out the window. Tell me what you see, Fogg. Sometimes the weather had no sense of narrative convenience. And then later on saying he liked the fog because you couldn't see the city. I wonder if it's a tincture of fog. Soup of the afternoon, tincture of the night.

What did we decide the morning was? Not sure we did. Soup of civilisation, pudding of civilisation. Yeah. Cheese course of cosmic horror. I think we skip breakfast because it's already quite a full day. Oh, God, yeah. Let's go back to bed for the metaphor.

Metaphorical bed. Oh, God, Joanna, help. Rescue me. So on the disc, and we're seeing this progress happen, and we get to see this newspaper take shape in real time. And obviously it's done rapidly to work because these books are always very quick and very fast paced. Look, I think the events of this happen over maybe a week or two.

Yeah. But it's so fun to read. It's so fun to read. So you have just starting with the Ankh-Morpuk times going from a misspelling of items, right? Keep it, put that in. And 30, in my copy anyway, less than 30 pages later, you've got veterinary saying,

that must be true drum not, it's in the paper. Which is very much reflecting the attitude. In a very ironic way. In an ironic way, but reflecting the attitude, it's become true so quickly. It's mackled up at the breakfast table. Mackled up at the breakfast table saying, well, there must be special people for doing this.

They wouldn't let just anyone write what they like stands to reason. Yeah. And you've gone from that to the, oh, don't you know, everything's true on the internet attitude within a day. You've got the credulity and the making fun of the credulity and record time. I feel like Pratchett is just screened through his own journalism career the first time he repages to get on with the fun stuff. Oh, his William DeWard shorthand, by the way, his own personal shorthand.

I meant to ask you, what did you think of the shorthand? Yeah, it could be. Well, I think Pratchett used proper shorthand, but I wonder if he started out using his own version. It was rapidly abbreviated shorthand. After I asked Mark Burrys next time we chat to him. Yes. And you get William kind of falling into this newspaper business.

He's wondering why he went up to the man that was threatening to jump and then he's like, oh, it is my business now. Yeah, no. And that made me think for a second, actually, because I like the phrase, it's not my business. Actually, maybe comes from it being like your business to know this is, you know, literally I make my money from this. Yeah.

And by towards the end of the section, we've physically seen the paper take shape. We see this printed version that's formatted on the page to look like the paper that starts with it is the coldest winter and living memory. And that is official. I loved it. I love it. I love it. I love it.

I love it. I love it. It's so obviously I love it because I love I love the whole world of it and this topic specifically, but I just love how much fun he's had with it. It is this is such a joy to read. Yeah. Quick shout out before I go on to the bigger picture. But before photography exists for the newspaper,

I enjoy the Mr. Josiah Wintler of 12B has a humorous vegetable that he will exhibit to all comers upon payment of a small sum. It is most droll. It is most droll. We haven't had much time to talk about humorous vegetables, but it's one of those constantly recurring jokes in the Pratchett fandom that doesn't really irk me because I just kind of enjoy that it's spun off into like subreddits purely for stupid vegetable pictures from Pratchett fans and things.

And again, with this like manic energy thing when William DiWard is like just really happy that it's not a penis and goes out about to him and his wonderfully nasal parsnip. The bit I wrote down there wonderfully nasal. So from a small picture of a parsnip to a large picture of a book series. Very good. So we've had like standalone books in the disc world before, but this is a this is a city book. It's not a continuation of an arc.

And you have William as this character. So we talked like that quote of Terry Pratchett's that was in Mark's book about the early sort of disc world boys being this cardboard cut out character, the victor, the tepid that that whole thing, the early carrot is only just a development from that. And then you go into like the stage of disc world. We've been working all through this kind of mid stage disc world of the 90s. We have these really well developed characters, but they've been developed over these long story arcs.

You know, we've had however many watch books we've had now I've lost count. Granny almost appeared fully formed for even she evolved somewhat. She's evolved and grown and settled into herself. And now you have this really developed, well developed rich character just play straight on the page without an arc to build them. It's a testament to how far the books have come. I feel like the word has echoes of the old cut out only in that he is a man of about that age starting new career.

He's intelligent, but has a couple of foibles that we can overlook. And he's not very good. He's he's a bit of a lay about whatever, but you know, but in a yeah, in a much more fleshed out way from the start. Yeah, you're right. There's bits of it there. The books kind of rhyme. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

Like the main plot of this book is once again a conspiracy to oust veterinary. Like you mentioned earlier, that was the plot of men at arms. All the other books, I think. All the watch books before. Incredibly small God somehow. Really weird because we never go. Eagle was planning. He wasn't even born yet.

Francine, I'm nearly done. Don't stop. I'm sorry. It's so hot. I know. I know. But please, please the eagle flailing. And as one of the things I noticed is as a book that's like a city book rather than

say a watch book, you get these hints. Maybe it's a watch book. Maybe it's a wizard's book early on with seeing Colin and Nobby gulling the bridge. And then you go to the wizards before you really settle into William as the main character. It's like almost a sense of as one of the as one of the not new shiny thing. Because we haven't really had like a standalone set in the city before there being wizards books or watch books. Yeah.

And like I said, you've got this housing that's a Nari plot, but I don't think it matters that it rhymes because it does it in a different way. Yeah. And it's sorry. Oh, no, no, no. Sorry. I was about to say I get we've now got the standalone in the city and that comes right after the city book on a field trip to the country side, which is quite cool.

Yes, the watch goes on holiday. It is interesting. And one thing I noticed that as this kind of standalone city book, obviously, William is the main character, but it's a bit more ensemble cast. Yeah. Yeah. We definitely we're not living inside his head in the same way that we did in brothers, for instance.

Yeah, yeah. And to jump on to your point about those perspective shifts, the narrator feels a lot more omniscient, whereas a lot of the other books have felt like it's that third person narration, like it's it's third person, but it's from someone's perspective. Yes. Which is why Carrot is so interesting because we don't get his perspective. Kind of skitter around the edges of that one.

And a lot of this is William's, but not all of it. And I noticed some good like omniscient lines like this is near the beginning. That really was where the trouble was going to start and there was going to be trouble. And it's it's the sense of the narrator knows more than than the reader. Yeah. But it's said in like, and you know, there's going to be trouble where it's like a knowing a side to the reader, isn't it Rosalina? You can hear you can hear it almost saying, yeah, dear reader.

And obviously, there's going to be trouble. You all know what a printing press does. Yeah, it feels a bit like the Arrested Development voiceover. Yes. I mean that was an episode of that just so I can start. I can get the voice back in my head. Yeah. And get the Ron Howard voice.

But yeah, so I really love how this is developed into a series that's so big, it can do these standalones comfortably, if that makes sense. Yeah. And the big characters from other books are cameos and and that works. Yeah. You're not desperate to see everything that's happening in. Well, no one's really desperate to see what's happening in Nobby's internal life. Let's be fair.

I think everybody's very desperate to stop him telling us. We would like to not know. Please, Nobby. Please. But yes, that's what delights me about this book. It feels like a almost like a new era of Discworld. Yeah, which works, doesn't it? 25th?

Yeah, 25th's a good time. It does almost in writing style as well, almost feels like another step. And not to say like it's vastly improved from the Fifth Elephant, because the Fifth Elephant's a fantastic book, but just things like the like the quip about the Bersar floating away, or like the Montab question, just things like that. The sharp quips are just just in there and not acknowledged in a very polished way. I meant to mention the Montab question right up top,

because it's not the first time we've been asked the Montab question. King Verence was wondering about it back in Carpe Jugulum. Yes. Yeah. I've kind of answered it. You can't see because of where my camera is, but I found Montab on the Discworld map. Oh, good.

I don't know if that answers the Montab question, but at least I know where it is. I think it's very fitting that we can't see it. Yep. Kind of. Do I know where it is? It's Rimwoods, southeast of Angkor-Morpore. I had to remember which way around south, east and south are there. Anyway.

God, stop me front scene. Have you got an obscure reference finial? But did you notice? Did you notice? There's actual finials in this book. Please, please enlighten us as to where the actual finials are. That's page 81 in one of your favorite bits. Page 81 in my copy.

I fought that at the start, but it's just an 18th century copy of the Inge Baroque style. They got the dimensions all wrong. Did you see the empilas in the hall? Inge 6th century Ephemium with 2nd Empire Degella Babian Inge Finials. Exactly. Anyway, sorry. Tell me your actual obscure reference. I was just trying to think, probably with Pratchett,

the odds are shorter than they might have been, but the odds of us trying to find the most obscure architectural word we could, and then it does turn up in another book in the series. But yeah, so obscure reference finial, I'm using as an excuse just to put in a couple of bullet points about type setting. And the excuse I'm using was from what page did I put there, 29? In the hard back, this is no good. I should stop saying page numbers.

I'm just confusing the thing. Where they're talking about the bigger trays with the different letters in, but the more common letters, things like that, which I didn't actually look into the most common letters in the English language. So that seemed kind of boring. Is E. Yes, yeah, but like in, like I said, because a surprising number of ends, I was wondering what the, yeah.

But E is the most, is it? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I feel like that's one of those facts that's like commonly known, but I don't know if it's a fact. You know what I mean? Yeah. What was that? There was a book that wrote it.

There's a very famous book that was, I think someone made a point of writing without any ease. It was also a brief thing in Gilmore Girls. Someone goes to a party and they all have to try and talk without using ease. Oh, they're such wankers. I love that show. Yeah. And one of Jack's favorite facts I thought I'd put in here,

which is that the capital letters were stored in a separate drawer or case that was located above the case that held all the other letters, which is why capital letters are called uppercase and capital is a lower case. Yes. And the other little tidbit I came across while I was listening to things about the history of printing press was that, you know, back in the day, variable spelling was more of a thing before it all got pinned down, like a rumor or a butterfly in a dictionary.

Yeah. Variable spelling was kind of used as a tool to justify text in the early days of printing. So like if you wanted to make the white space a little bit less at the end of this, you'd put an extra couple of ease in there and throw some vowels at it. Amazing. A delight. A delight. We didn't touch upon the peon or play on words with justified text, but

I'm sure everybody saw it and was adequately amused. I hope everyone had a lovely little turtle. Right. I think that's everything we should say about the first section of the truth. We can go on about it forever, but we have two more sections to fill, so we probably better not use up all the enthusiasm for the subject. So we will be back next Monday with part two, which is starting. Talking about journalism.

We're going to talk about journalism. Francine's going to talk about journalism. I don't know anything about journalism. You're going to listen to a podcast in preparation. Oh, I am. Yes. That's all my to-do list. We're going to...

Part two starts on page 146 in the corky paperback. After three asterisks with the line, it's sometimes seen to William that the whole population around Moorpork was simply a mob waiting to happen. Do you know mine doesn't have asterisks? Does it not? Oh, I'm sorry. I'll stop trying to guide by asterisk.

No, no. You also gave me the word, so it was easy enough to find. And we're going to end that section on page 301 in the corky paperback with, I'm going to see a man about a dog. Giddo. Giddo. Until next week, dear listener. You can follow us on Instagram at the true shall make ye fret

on Twitter at make ye fret pod. Go to our Facebook page at the true shall make ye fret. Join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f. Email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, and obscure typesetting knowledge if you have any. Oh, yes. The true shall make ye fret pod at gmail.com. If you'd like to support us financially,

go to patreon.com forward slash the true shall make ye fret and exchange your hard earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. And if you could rate and review us wherever you get your podcast, that would be absolutely lovely. It helps other people find us because of the cursed algorithms. Try and write a review in the style of an old newspaper article. Use the long S, if you wish. Bonus points for fracker or rumpus.

Five stars. Stars. Stars. And until next time, dear listener. Don't let us detain you. Stop the press. Extra, extra. Read all about it.

Newsies. I was going to say we didn't even mention newsies in that. You