The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 96: The Last Hero Pt. 2 (Legacy is Best Served Cold)

Episode Date: October 24, 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 2 of our recap of “The Last Hero”. Heroes! Villains! Betrayal! Balloon!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:Joanna’s theatre piece in London (1 Dec and 3 Dec) - Theatre503 Can you Solve these 10 Medieval Riddles? - Medievalists.netOrthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton - Goodreads Gordian Knot - Wikipedia  And Alexander Wept - The Paris ReviewWho Invented Velcro? -  Live Science   Story of Aṣṭadiggajas The Two Cultures - Wikipedia About Edge.org  Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

My fringe has already grown out and had to become a side fringe. It's been like, I don't know, when did the queen die? It's been that long. We've had like an entire decade of politics in a week. Yeah, so I found some medieval riddles for you. Oh, because we were talking about the hobbit riddles. Maybe last episode, maybe the episode before. No, it was last episode. Cool. A vessel have I that is round as a pair, moist in the middle, surrounded with hair. And often it happens that water flows there.

Look, the only answer I can think of is dirty. So I'll give you a multiple choice. Yeah, okay. Is it lake, river, I or well? None of the ones I was thinking. Yeah, no, I know. That's why I gave you the multiple choice. You're not going to get it for the other ones unless you seem like you're about to say something wrong again. I'm going to go with I. Yes, it is I. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the podcast,

but I'm very bad at riddles. Oh, I thought you like riddles and stuff. I'm sorry. I like them. I'm just not good at them. I like a lot of things I'm bad at. I'll give you what I thought was easy on them. An eater lacking mouth and even more, yet trees and beasts to it a daily bread. Well fed, it thrives and shows a lively life, but give it water and you do it dead. Oh, yeah. No, I got no idea. Fire. Oh, that makes sense.

See, I feel like I'm putting you on the spot of it here. I feel like if you just read that in your own time, you know, yeah, no, part of it is I definitely get performance anxiety is it's the what's your favorite movie I have never seen a film in my life thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right. All right, one more because then if you get it right, I can just leave that one in the episode. What is the sister of the sun though made for the night?

The fire causes her tears to fall and when she is near dying, they cut off her head. Well, I was thinking moon, but maybe not that. Oh, I can't think of anything. What do you say on fire and then like drops fall. Candle. Yes. Yay. Yeah, no, I'm bad at this. No, no, that's cool. I like that.

Can you solve these 10 medieval riddles in the show? Excellent. So apart from horrible politics and not being able to afford food and riddles are hard. What's happening? What's going on? Well, the new Taylor Swift album came out. It is. I enjoy it. I've listened to it. I haven't listened to the like extended version with the extra songs yet, but I've listened to the main one a couple of times through and I like it.

I am going to throw in a fun content warning for listeners who struggle with eating issues to maybe not watch the video for anti hero. Okay. That does not have a great moment in it, which sucks because it is kind of one of the songs I like most on the album. Can you listen to the song without thinking of the video? I would rather have not seen the video, but I am not going to let it destroy my enjoyment of the song.

One more thing I want to tell you that has nothing to do with anything in the book. I found a random mystery book. And I call it mystery because neither I nor Jack remember getting hold of this. It's a reference book about the bog people, the Iron Age people preserved in bogs. But it's by somebody called P. V. Glob. Incredible. And I thought that was a fantastic bit of A, nominative determinism and B, just naming, general name. P. V. Glob.

From archaeological and scientific knowledge, Professor Glob builds up a fascinating picture of the lives of these Iron Age people. Honestly, I don't think we'll ever be able to talk Professor P. V. Glob. And I kind of want to try and get them on the podcast if they're still alive. That book does look quite old. Well, yeah, it was 60p when it came out. Maybe one of Glob's descendants, one of the little globs. Oh my God!

What? I just opened it to a random page and Faris Nevins has mentioned. Oh my God! But also, this introduction was written in 1964. So F5, probably. F5 for Professor P. V. Glob. We hardly knew you. This is incredibly disrespectful to a learned man who is dead.

Yeah, but he's got a really funny name. I mean, for all I know, he's a real dick. I'm not going to read it, but I'll read it. Francine, you need to read it and learn about the Bog people. I should learn about the Bog people. The problem is, though, when you're reading about even archaeological stuff, if it's a reference book that was written 60 years ago. Glob's Bogs.

Maybe he's got a descendant that has done something cool as well. We'll have to look into it. We'll look up the Glob family with the Somerset Globs. Okay, right. Do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, I do want to make a podcast. I actually remember something I was going to mention in the soft open, which I totally forgot about. It's through the magic of post-production.

I can probably make it sound like you remembered. That theatre piece I mentioned, I'm actually allowed to say what it is and where it's happening now. Oh, you wrote a theatre piece that was accepted. I wrote a five-minute monologue, which is going to be in Pass It On. It's a night of monologues, where it's a few nights and performances of monologues by women and minority genders, which is a weird umbrella to be under, but I'm going with it because it means my shirt gets performed. Is it a weird umbrella?

I kind of hate the non-binary and everything being shoved under the woman umbrella, but for the sake of who I am, I'm going with it. But yeah, it's going to be if you're London-based. It's at Theatre 503, and it'll be on Thursday the 1st of December at 7.30pm, and Saturday the 3rd of December at 2.30pm. Those are the ones that have my piece in. So, I mean, go and see all of the run, but if you want to go see something I wrote, then it will be there.

Very cool. Very good. Is there a link I can put in the show notes? I will find one and send it to you. Cool. Is it the same people who put on your piece last time in London? Yes. Nice. Because now I'm on their email list, so I sort of pulled out and used it as an excuse to write some fiction for the first time in ages. Right, podcastie, podcastie, podcast.

Hello and welcome to The Tree Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Brouchet's Discworld series, one as time in Cronlogic Lorda. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our discussion of The Last Hero. It is. The 27th Discworld Novel.

The second and final part. The second and final part. We were only doing two on this because we've learned our lessons with trying to do three episodes on a novella. If I had to pick one to do three on, it would have been this one instead of Eric, but, you know, you live and learn. Note on spoilers. We are a spoiler light podcast.

Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book The Last Hero, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we are saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld Novel, the Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Propelled ever downwards until suddenly it's up again. Excellent. I had too much to choose from there.

There's a lot of journey in this. A lot of journey. Follow up. Yes. Let's follow up on some things Francine. Yes, let's. So on the Reddit, user redreplicant. Posted a follow up on Magrat's Bad Take,

which I don't remember which episode that was in at all, but I do remember going on about Magrat's Bad Take about good people desiring justice and guilty desiring mercy. I think that might have been Lords and Ladies. Yeah, that sounds about right. Almost for it. But as pointed out here, it is almost directly ripped from old GK Chesterton. As so much is orthodoxy, if the user remembers correctly.

They say he's talking about fairytales and he says that the reason they have gruesome endings is because children being innocent desired justice. Adults being guilty desiring mercy or something along that line. It's a pretty terrible argument in orthodoxy too, but most of the book is. Chesterton's theology is fun to read, but it's incredibly short-sighted and illogical. Poor Chesterton. I mean, I agree, but poor Chesterton. Yes.

So I will be looking up that piece. Thank you for that. Wouldn't have occurred to me to look for it. Another bit of follow up. So our first episode on the colour of magic some time ago, we mentioned that on the blurb, they refer to the edge and it's in all caps on there. But we said in the episode that we don't think the edge is ever mentioned as a place again. It's called the rim.

And I think that we might have been right until right now. Yay. Where the edge is indeed a place. We stand corrected. Well, we sit corrected. Yes. I'm not going to record a podcast standing. No.

Oh, yeah. Maybe I'll try that one day. That seems like I might be energetic. Yeah. Not right now. I have to change the set up. But maybe if you have my stomach instead of my face for the recording. Maybe for a rabbit hole.

Maybe so. Yeah. My desk is like standing desk high actually, so I could do that. Right. Any follow-up from you, Joanna? Did we have any emails, any tweets, any? Oh, Craig sent us. It's not really follow-up, but Craig sent us a very cool video of his huge project collection.

Well done, Craig. Nice. Thanks, Craig. Was that in our emails? That was in our emails. I'll have a look at that. No, I think that's everything we've got to follow-up on for now, or at least everything I can remember.

Nice. Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on The Last Hero? I would. I would, Joanna. I would. Previously on The Last Hero. Spake Cohen. More pork were through a lens on niscient.

Men of power scrutinized the hero's plans deficient. And so a mob of wizards and a gentle soul with dreams of flight planned carefully a vessel that would send them soaring through the night. To travel up, we must go down, came Leonard's slightly baffling pledge. To finish in the middle, we must start by falling oar the edge. That was incredible. That's what took up most of my prep time, not going to lie. I was about to ask, what were you meant to be doing when you wrote that, Francine?

No, that was amazing. You'll find out later when I try and do the obscure reference video. So what happened this time, Joanna? Well, unfortunately, I've not written this as a saga, which I now regret. You say, unfortunately, that would have been actual saga length. In this section of The Last Hero, the Horde continue to climb Cori Celasti until they come upon someone cooking in a cave. Veena the Ravenhair joins the party as it's revealed that the silver scrum

was summoned by secret scrolls. The gods watch on, irked by the clever minstrel. With only 12 hours to launch, the ragtag bunch of cellanaut misfits prepare for adventure, as rinsewind convinces the luggage not to come. Poor luggage. Veterinary gives a speech as the kite heads forwards with its piece of fractured omniscope. Dragons flame in the kite flies, heading down,

dropping the fish and defying gravity. Air begins to run low as the elephants loom. Anchmore pork, they have an orangutan. Physics has taken a holiday as the Horde strolls up the central spire of Celasti. After another ambush, the minstrel makes a macabre lyre and explains the story of Mazda to Cohen as they look upon the world. Ponder prognosticates and sends the other wizards away to whip up a plan. He redirects the kite towards the sun and they successfully, if bouncerly, land on the moon.

Moon dragons abound as they take in the view. They prepare for takeoff as moonrise approaches and rinsewind wonders how to stop Cohen as they prepare to fly down to the home of the gods. The horde are beholding, but they have no plan, until Harry suggests a deity deception. Meanwhile, the moon goes mad as the dragons fire wildly and only rinsewind remains upright as the kite heads down. The gods agree to take the horde seriously and Harry's betrayal is revealed. He's let go, but the minstrel stays on to see how it all ends.

The librarian takes over the tiller of the plummeting kite, as Cohen and the barbarians arrive at Dunn Manifesting. Fate challenges Cohen to a game and our octogenarian hero wins with a trick and death observes as the kite comes into land. The lady intercedes, the minstrel threatens Nuggan and Cohen threatens the gods, but the kite arrives just in time. Carrot confronts Cohen and a rest is in the air, but the agate and thunderclaves plungers being pressed.

In a last-ditch effort to save a world that might remember them, the horde take off down the mountain to detonate downhill. Surely no one could survive that. Learned's punished by the gods for taking wing and instructed to paint a temple, while Carrot's quiet anger earns boons for the rest. The minstrel struggles with Harry and he leaves rubies in the snow. Valkyrie's land, Venus threatens and the silver horde rise against their dubious mortality and take flight.

Mazda finds himself freed, death keeps quiet and the minstrel plays his song. Very nice. What a good book. What is a good book, isn't it? All right, that's the podcast on them. Yeah, thanks. Cool, right. No, helicopter and loincloth watch.

Go on, go on. What did you find? I think we saw Rincewind in a loincloth fairly. We did. Extensively and repeatedly. I have chosen for the loincloth a particular line that I enjoyed. So I'm now struggling to find because the page numbers in this book are invisible. Ah, the great cycle of nature can eat my loincloth.

Oh, fantastic. I missed that one. Said by Matt Hamish and I apologise to all of our Scottish listeners for that accent. Yeah, we do have at least a couple who'll tell you off for that, but that's fine. Very sorry specifically if you're listening, Al from Desert Island Discworld. Oh, follow up. From the skin. Just to properly underline this.

One of the deans who stole it from Westminster died recently. Ah, sorry, dude. R.I.P. So helicopter, obviously we've got the kite. Obviously. Which is, you know, flying about and normally that would do for a helicopter. Yeah, I mean, it's better than usual. Let's be honest.

But the illustration on the penultimate page of Leonard painting the small god ceiling with his special contraption he's made is based on one of Leonardo da Vinci's early helicopter designs. Sounds good. So we've got proper helicopter. You expect it to turn up in one of his sketches, but no, he made the fucking thing. Yes, what a delight. And you notice he has not put any weapons on it, which is nice.

Good for him. He doesn't have an airbrush. He does have an airbrush, and I'm sure that could be weaponized if needed. Not that anyone would. No, not that the governments would put a stop to that. Absolutely. A couple of other things we like to keep track on. We've got some fantastic elephant content.

If you've got anything irrelevant to add, Francine. I have, but it fits later, so we'll do our elephant elephant later. Fair enough. I'll accept that. A couple of million to one chances. Yeah, one or two. Yeah, you've got Ponda with his it's a million to one chance. So obviously it's going to work.

Followed by I'd say Cohen managing to cut the die. That's such a fucking cool moment. That is such a fucking cool moment. That's a good like that would work on screen moment as well. Yeah. I can't remember if it was like subconsciously in my head that that happened or whether like it was obvious enough that because there was a little cliff hang of it, wasn't there?

He's like looking at the die. Hmm. Which I've probably marked this about four different times in my notes for this episode, but I do like when Cohen looks at the minstrel and says, could be a naughty one. Remember I said that, lad? Yeah. Yeah. Remember I said it.

Oh, and death is here as well. We do get death quite late in the book for death to turn up. I was thinking about this the other day because, you know, obviously we keep track of how does death turn up in all the books. And he often turns up really early. There's quite often a death that kicks off some action somewhere. Yes. Not always.

No. When it's the uncertainty principle, saying whatever work though, it's more often near the end, isn't it? Yeah. Because obviously that's when all the weird shit's going on. Yeah. Like when Vi... Well, it wasn't near the end for Vimes, was it?

But it was there. No. It was in the climactic running through the snow. Yes. So quotes, quotes, quotes. You are first. Mine is a short one. But I think it's possibly one of the greatest sentences I've ever read.

Sorry. There we go. They landed. It's a short sentence, but contains a lot of incident. I love that line so much. It's very The Fleet's meat, isn't it? Yes. Oh, perfect.

The one I've got, I made a TikTok on this quote, actually. Not long ago, when the whole incongruable human spirit thing was going around, whatever it was called, indomitable human spirit. Yes. Which is, to paraphrase, I feel, said Blind Ayo, that if we had wanted people to fly, we would have given them wings. You gave me wings when you showed me birds, said Leonard of Quill. God, it's such a beautiful moment.

Mine is. Oh, just Leonard with the fucking birds throughout. Just look at the birds. Look at the birds. Oh, please look at the birds when they're going. Oh, fuck. Oh, he's wonderful, isn't he? Let's talk about, like, geniuses do like birds, don't they?

Yeah. It's a vibe. Not parrot. Unless they've got dog written on the side. Truly, the mark of a great man is owning a parrot-labelled dog. Yes. That's what I look for in a man. Mm-hmm.

Characters? Let's talk about the characters in the book. There's quite a lot of them, aren't there? We have the horde. Yes, we have the horde. Harry Dredd, who's obviously somewhat peripheral to the horde. But I do like how his character set up, because we've already seen him betray the gang in the last section.

Yeah. But then you get his bitterness in this, and the way he plays into their whole idea of the code when he's sort of saying, well, obviously, I can read and write. I have to, because it's part of the job. And this is right at the beginning of the section. Yeah, yeah. And then he's sulking over the fact he couldn't get proper sharks. Like, he's kind of a low rent villain.

Yes. It's nice that none of them hold it against him, but he still clearly holds it against himself somewhat, doesn't he? He does. And then when he does betray them, he's just so touched by the fact that they accept it as something that, of course, he had to do. Obviously, betrayed us, Harry. It's part of the story.

They're just making a story, aren't they? So being betrayed isn't a bad thing. It's part of the story. Yeah. And I love, it's right at the top of the page, when Boy Willie says, we like someone who sticks to his siege catapults. And it's just this very sweet moment of him sort of shuffling his feet and saying, thank you.

I'm really glad you understand, lads. Yeah. Interesting. He does not follow them at the end as well. No, he does not. He gets found by the minstrel in the snow and sort of dragged along. Oh, yeah. And we'll get to the minstrel.

I love the minstrel. Yeah. The horde in general, then, I mean, the ending. What an ending. What an ending. I think he did it perfectly in that they are dead. They're covered with snow. The hilt is sticking up, but at the same time,

they overtake Rincewind on horseback. And Rincewind can see supernatural stuff more than other people, maybe. But they get to do whatever you want to imagine them doing on these other planets. But at the same time, it's not forced. In the same way that I was saying in the thief of time, like I thought the way that Pratchett was doing, it was like that will come on thing. And if he had them survive this, it almost would have been that.

But yeah. I think it's very good. It's also good for kind of putting them in a box that you can open if you really have to. Like they've been taken out of the action as far as the discworld goes, which works because it wouldn't make sense for Cohen to just be sitting there in the Agathean Empire the whole time. And this is a nice way of putting Cohen away. Yes.

But like also, if you really need to get him out again, like. Oh, I think, I don't think he ever would have. No, I don't. I think this is too nice an ending. It's too good an ending, but it's just lacking permanence enough. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it lets people write their own internal fan fiction.

I don't know if anyone's written extensive actual fan fiction of Cohen taking over other worlds. I suppose we could search for it. I'm not going to search for fan fiction to do with Cohen the Barbarian. Oh, yeah. God, people are worst. Cohen gets a good moment actually when, again, it's right at the beginning of the section, but when Vina turns up,

and he's kind of making sure all of the hoarder treating her respectfully. And it's obviously, it's another tropes subverting thing of normally, you know, you get all these old men around a handsome woman, and they're going to start rubbing their thighs and going. And obviously, you know, Cohen said his fair share of girlfriends and wives, etc. And that's the history as tortoise. Yeah. But I like how he talked about them even.

He's like, oh, I've got lots of sons and daughters all born to good, strong women. Yeah. Yeah. Quite right. I support feminist Cohen. No, not quite feminist. Also, just quickly before we move on from the hoard, when they're all getting ready to go in as gods,

and you've got Cohen with his fish head and God of Being Sick, I just thought it was really reminiscent of Good Omens, my favorite bit from Good Omens, which didn't make it into the show, which is the alternative bikers of the apocalypse. Oh, yeah. Like things not working properly even after you've thumped them. I did like as well that the hoard got a little bit of like clear head time, like they all clearly livened up a bit and became a little less senile

because they were on this magic mountain or whatever, and Hamish got to have some words and... Yeah, I like the way they all go. Yeah, it was a nice little luster of it. But yes, I like that the God of Things line around. It gets paid off when they meet the rest of the gods. And how are things? Yep, still line around.

Yep, what was it, the strange mathematics of heroes or whatever? Yes. The heroism I thought was very well executed. I liked that all of them just knew what to do. Like there was no argument about running off the edge of the mountain. There was no like, oh, we have to do this or that. It was like, well, no, obviously this is next. And then they're all coming to the realization at the same time.

I was like, oh, Captain Carrot might be a hero. Oh, fuck. All right, hold on. Subtract, watchman, wage, add, possible, king. All right, no, we're not going to fight you. Yeah, they're kind of standing around there and they all realize at once that it's another almost like a million to one chance moment where they're like, hang on,

he's facing off against us by himself. And he's got a sword that doesn't have any runes on it. Yeah, oh, this is a new level of heroism, but we still understand it because it's again, it's a practice thing. The story is always recognizable. It's that thing I was saying a couple of weeks ago about things being the right shape

and then you can put whatever you want in them. The story stays story shaped even if the content changes. But this book is so wonderful because it is an exploration of the story shape. And it brings me a lot of joy. I like stories. Who knew? Who would have guessed that?

I learned something new about you every day. So the minstrel. Yes. By the way, I really want a minstrel sweet now. Do they still sell these? What, minstrels like the chocolates? Yeah. Okay, good.

I might get some of those. I love the minstrel. I'll try and remember. Oh, no, I want one. Yeah, right. But anyway, he gets hot. It was my note on the minstrel. Yeah, yeah, he kind of does, doesn't he?

According to annotated Pratchett, that painting of him at the end with his lyre singing and he looks a bit barbarian is based on a famous painting of Orpheus, but I couldn't find much one either. Anyway, the minstrel is very cool. And yes, gets a bit Orpheus in the end. I hope he doesn't end up with a girlfriend

because I'm sure that won't end well. No, he's the, oh gosh, the singer gets forgotten. Just that whole bit is so good. He's like, oh, it doesn't matter who I am. I'm just the singer. Yeah, it's so sweet. But also I like that he's built, like, because even towards the end of the last section,

he was still a bit sad and bedraggled and not fully into this and mostly thinking about the rubies. And I think it comes when they start, you know, physics takes holiday and they're climbing Cori Celesti. Yeah. And he's just like, no, I'm all right with this. Oh, I know what's going on. Lot of hills.

Yeah, a lot of hills at home. This is fine. Sweet. That's just like the nice character shift moment for him. We sort of realize this is all right with that. And then now he can get really into the action. Yeah. I think Rince Wincent several times over the books

that Cohen's got this weird charisma that just drags people into the story with him. And I think it took a little while to hold the minstrel. But then once it had, like, the minstrel got the idea of the story as well. He's like, no, I need to be here to watch this bit because the gods won't let me die because this and the other, that's the shape of the story.

And Cohen's like, oh, yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. There is a bit in the first section of this book when, I think it's when Rince was talking to Vesenari and he's trying to explain that Cohen's contagious. Yes, that's it, yeah. And that was that kind of thing. You go along with it.

Yeah. And he spills the rubies on the ground at the end. It's so beautiful. Yeah, of course. Because of course, the singer doesn't get rich off of this. Again, it doesn't fit the story. It doesn't fit how somehow we all know the story goes. Including the singer.

He knows that he is there to tell the story, not to be part of the story as it were. And he gets that moment where, you know, Cohen has obviously taken pity on him and asked Harry to take him back when after Harry's betrayed them. And the minstrel's like, no, because this isn't going to end in a way I can make up.

So I need to see what's actually going to happen. Not when I look at Mr. Cohen there in his fish hat. Yeah, please don't make me write the end of this. On this idea of people have dressed up like this, they really want the world to know what's going to happen next. Well, well done, Hot Minstrel. You wrote a good song by the sound of it. Yep.

And apparently was somewhat classically educated based on him bringing up Carolinus. Carolinus, otherwise known as Alexander. Alexander the Great, which, you know, I feel like it's you've got really good PR if you manage to get yourself known as the Great. I want to be known as the Great. All right, he did do a lot of, you know,

he was quite problematic, obviously. Oh, no, I was going to say, I was going to say, like, he was like, he did have one of the best PR teams, didn't he? He brought a PR team with him. Yeah, he did. On his adventures. Yeah, like, they're been some of the greats I don't know had as much PR as Alexander did.

But yeah, that's fair. Yeah. He's, yeah, the story about obviously the not who's actual name I now can't remember because Sortie and it's just what I'm going to call it in my head from now find whatever. The Gordian knot. The Gordian knot.

Thank you. Which, as I mentioned before we started recording properly, reminds me of a song called Malcolm solves his problems with the chainsaw. Yes. Which I will link in the show notes. And he never has the same problem twice. I do like all the stuff around the Sortie and knot

because it is kind of been mentioned before. On the world's to conquer, just the actual quote and Alexander wet because there were no more worlds to conquer. Yes. I've linked in the show notes to a really interesting article from the Paris Review and where that's from that points out like possibly it being so well known in pop culture comes from it being said by Hans Gruber in Die Hard.

But as far as the quote itself goes, the earliest references to a quote along those lines come from the 17th century. Okay. Bear in mind that Alexander the Great was around in what like 300 BC? And the origins seem to be translations of Plutarch's essays into English, which were done around the 16th century. And even those Plutarch translations, they were being translated from Greek to French to English.

Because there weren't many English translators, you knew the Greek well enough to actually do it. And it seems like the vibe was actually very different. It wasn't that there were no more worlds to conquer. It's that there were worlds to conquer and he wasn't there to do it. Which I think pastes more accurately onto this, doesn't it? Absolutely. Yeah.

So I imagine practice thinking of the original vibe here because Kevin is looking at all the worlds. What do I get? 100 poxy fucking years. Look at all that. But yeah. Give me a flying horse. As a fun little push glasses up nose well actually moment. And then along with educating Cohen on Carolina,

so he also educates him on what actually happened to Mazda, which I think it's an interesting thing that Cohen knows that a guy stole fire from the gods, but didn't know how he had been punished. Yeah, that did scan a bit odd to me. I don't think it's bad. I think it's a shift in his motivation. Like he's going to return fire to the gods either way.

But before he was just doing it because he was pissed off at everything. And it was a cool thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas now he is specifically also pissed off about what they did to that one guy. Yeah. And so they sort of out.

Oh yeah, they free him at the end and he's there with a sword as the Eagles approaching. Noted in the illustration that he has, God eyes. Speaking of the gods, we get this fantastic double page illustration of all of them. And then yeah, we get more details on the other side. Eureka, goddess of saunas, snow and theatrical performances for fewer than 120 people.

Fantastic. Libertina, goddess of the sea, apple pie, certain types of ice cream and short lengths of string. Of course. And Nuggan, local god, also in charge of paper clips, correct things in the right place in small desk stationary sets and unnecessary paperwork. Yeah.

Nice to see the birth of a concept. It is. And as he's the god of unnecessary paperwork, we might pop a pin in him for later. Wow. Minstrel's not a fan though. Well, would you be if somebody told you you couldn't eat garlic? Oh, no.

I would be straight up Corus Lesti with the Agathe and Thunderclay mate. So to speak. You heard about her. She went straight up Corus Lesti with the Agathe and Thunderclay. If you know what I mean. As the actress said to the bishop. Right. Rincewind.

Rincewind. Rincewinds around. Appearing as the Vitruvian man, which is nice for him. He's pretty useful. I think people always underestimate Rincewind, but he's just standing there sulking. Then he's like, so we're going to go into the circumference then. Yeah.

Come on, guys. Talk to me. I've done all this before. Does nobody know my? No. All right. Fine. We'll just go into the fucking fence then.

None of you guys are a colour of magic. None of you. Come on. I know it doesn't exist in this universe, but neither do most of you. We were talking last week about seeing like Rincewind and Kara interact with each other. And I think they get a really great moment here where Rincewind's basically trying to explain running away as a religion.

Yes. And the carrot side, you're just a coward really, aren't you? Which I think is just a really interesting carrot has no time for him. Yes. But Rincewind doesn't really give a shit. It's like, yes, I am. Yeah.

He said something like, I'll take someone to be bloody brave to be a coward, actually. Actually, it does have a ring of truth to it, doesn't it? Because I feel like I would just freeze up and die in most of these situations. I would be too scared to run away. Also, quite frankly, too unfit to run away. Yeah. And probably not wearing sensible shoes. But again, I can't.

Honestly, I've got no patience for Kara in this one because, you know what I mean? I will defend Rincewind to the help. And Kara, you've just not had it. All right. No, the thing is, I'm stuttering here. But this is what happens when you get two threads of the desk world tied together in a slightly odd way because the scales of danger is a thing again.

Yeah. Rincewind is constantly in the kind of peril that would make the climax of any watch book. And it's actually far beyond what is realistic for the climax of any watch book. And so, if you try and look at them in the same room, it's a bit odd because Kara is all dismissive of Rincewind. But Rincewind has been through and survived shit that would crush Kara. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I like to see Kara survive the dungeon. I mean, Kara would survive the dungeon dimensions with a half brick in a sock. But he would survive it because he's a hero, whereas Rince would survive it despite not being a hero. Yeah, yeah. And that's, I think, what makes the characters clash. Yeah. Oh, and he asked for a balloon.

Oh, and he got a balloon. I fucking can't think. I know. I know. Oh, there's a big girl with a penrace, it's her birthday. I love how much you love Rincewind. He's never going to be a favorite character for me. I will say on the threads of disk world coming together, though, it's not always bad.

I said it was slightly odd. Oh, yeah. But I agree that I think this is one of those interactions where it doesn't really work. Yeah, I think it's fun and worth doing, but I think it makes sense as to why Rincewind doesn't have any time for Kara's opinion of him, frankly. Yes. Absolutely. Especially if we remember that Rincewind came up in the kind of wizarding

that was all about dead men's shoes. And he came up in the kind of Ant Warfork that was burning down three times a week. Exactly. And obviously we've talked about, you know, three-fifth time handle explains why the timelines don't make sense. That's Rincewind just fucking rocketing all over the place. Yeah. Kara obviously came once the wizards had settled down a bit, I'd say.

Yeah. So I don't think Kara quite appreciates what Rincewind went through just in his normal day-to-day life. So speaking of Rincewind, where's his luggage? So the luggage gets taken out of the action pretty early in this section with Rincewind very calmly explaining, you can't come with us. Rincewind undieses the Mackiner. Yeah.

Hey, hey, fuck you, undieses your Mackiner. Which is kind of like a micro version of the macro version of the Silver Horde, and especially Cohen. A micro version of the macro version. Macro version. Oh, what? I'm not trying to take the piss, I just don't know what you're saying. It's a mini version of what Pratchett is doing for the disc world

by taking the Silver Horde and especially Cohen out of the action by sending them off on flying wings to explore new worlds. Yes, yes. Except in this case, he's just being left on a boat. Yes. And then of course, you get the slight moment of thinking, oh, is it the luggage that's aboard, which is why it weighs more. I kind of wish it was the luggage with the librarian inside.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Russian doll of stowaways. Because I like, just because I like to imagine the luggage like getting left behind at Corrie Celeste for a bit and just running around biting God's ankles until they have to throw him off the mountain. And then yeah. So yeah, the actual stowaway was the librarian. It was the librarian.

Anke Moorpork, we have an orangutan. But yeah, the stowaway and like bringing the weight over and that's a problem is a bit of a trope as well, isn't it? So that's a nice little. That's a nice little story trope. And of course, I like that as much as we've undressed the Makina with the luggage, you've then got the librarian who is very good at anything that involves handles. That sounds a bit wrong, but I mean, he can steer.

Oh, yeah. No, because of course, he's a natural pilot. Yes. Just like he's a natural organ player. Exactly. What a delight the librarian is. And then who do we have? Oh, Veteran Ari.

Yes, Veteran Ari, who is like super sociopathic in this one. He is great. You mentioned earlier one of his good moments of Leonard saying, oh, you know, the government would stop things before it goes too far. The smile on Lord Veteran Ari's face was one that probably even of Leonard of Querm, with all his genius, would never be able to capture on canvas years. But yeah, no, Veteran Ari proper showing himself off as a technophobe.

No, not as a technophobe, as a, what do you call it, trolley problem. Oh, yeah. Utilitarian weirdo. Suggesting they just throw the orangutan out of the ship. Yeah, which I think actually is a little out of character for Veteran Ari. Not that I don't think he'd do it, but I think he understands people well enough to know that Rincewind doesn't go to throw the librarian out of a ship, for instance. Yeah, which is where you get some really good in character moments as well.

Like when Rincewind's trying to un-volunteer and Veteran Ari kind of catch 22s him. Yeah. Would you throw an orangutan out of a spaceship, save the world, Joanna? No. Even if it meant we'd all die. Yeah, I'm not throwing an orangutan out a window. I agree. I agree, but we're wrong.

Have you seen the size of those fuckers? No, I don't mean practically. Yeah, like I physically could not throw an orangutan out a window. That, no, that's cheating. You can't cheat you out of the trolley problem by claiming lack of upper body strength. I can and I will. But yeah, he does have some moments of, it was what we were talking about last week, accepting that he doesn't need to know everything.

And he sort of doesn't delight in the technical, but it does mean he struggles a bit when doing an inspirational speech. I congratulate you on being the first people to leave the disc with the resolute intention of returning to it. Yes. Good speech, well done Veteran Ari. Good. And then Ponda gets like a couple of good interactions with Veteran Ari.

You get the moment where the ship is crashing and Rincewind doesn't know what to do. And then he says something about Prince Haram's Tiller and Veteran Ari says, grab that one. And Ponda's like, you don't understand the technology. Why are you telling him to grab that one? I was like, because I've read the classics and I know it's an autopilot. And you can also obviously read Leonard's backwards handwriting and tell him not to hit the abort lever.

Yes. Yeah, just a little bit of creative thinking, counteracting Ponda's very logical thinking and Ponda learning to think around corners. Doing a Veteran Ari, sending away the committee, keeping people out the way. Kara, we already talked about how the code kind of interacts with him. But I think there's a really good moment just a few pages later. And I kind of mentioned this in the summary, his quiet anger. Yes.

We don't see Kara angry often. He is so controlled that we don't even really have the books often acknowledging that he's angry. And when he is, he does something. You don't sort of see him reacting before he does anything. Captain Carrot had gone quiet with anger as the sky does just before a thunderstorm. Very good. Leonard is a character, I think we've talked about in conjunction with all the other characters

as we've gone. At least he gets a happy ending. Yes. He gets a delightful ending. He has great fun hunting the ceiling. But it only takes him three weeks and that makes me sad because he seemed to be really looking forward to the 10 years of it. Yeah, but I reckon he'd probably then be going back in for the rest of the decade,

perfecting it and adding little details and neatening it up. Oh, that's true. It's such a delight in this. But everything delights him and is wonderful and it's huge and fascinating. Yeah. Oh, where are my tapes? His willingness to accept things exactly as they are and then want to find out more about them and his complete unwillingness to accept things like, say, raining down fire on people.

Yes. And then locations. Cory Celesti. Yeah, Cory Celesti and kind of Dunn Manifestum, which we talked about the big, beautiful illustration of it. It really felt like the bit where they're climbing Cory Celesti where physics is all weird and they're stopping and beholding and doing what they're doing felt reminiscent of the gnarly ground bit from Carpe Juggulum to me.

Yeah. It's that same like, oh, what happens if we twist this and how does it change your perspective? And then, yeah, we get Kroll and the reference to the circumference, which is just a really nice callback. And they're calling it that bunch of pirates, which is nice. Yes. Recognized for the buses they are. Rincewind not as nervous as he might be to be near Kroll, interestingly.

I suppose he's back in a fucking fish going over the edge of the fucking world again, but there's not much callback to it. This is very much a standalone. There's not a lot of reference, like obvious reference back. Yeah, there's lots of callbacks, but at no point does the character say, oh, yeah, so I was here before, apart from Rincewind obviously having the knowledge of the circumference that they were going to have to circumvent the circumference. I'm so sorry.

That's quite all right. That's quite all right. And then speaking of the fish, we have a ship. We have a beautiful ship with this incredible design inside and out, which I read in Annotated Pratchett that Paul Kidby did this kind of rough design, and then they made a model for him to then use to draw, which is fantastic. Very good. Like the page would just all the diagrams.

It's so beautifully detailed and all the notes about how it works and everything. It's all my steampunk in the way that it's very sci-fi and very old-fashioned. Yes. But it's like one before steampunks. We're not at steampower yet. Whittlepunk. We're calling it Whittlepunk and I like that. Yes, I'm with you.

I enjoy Whittlepunk. I also just will never stop laughing at the phrase salmon of thunder. Salmon of thunder. Let's see what's funny about that. There's a noble name for a beastie. That's my new drag name. Salmon of thunder. Salmon of thunder.

Because yes, swim upstream. No, I don't know. I'm sorry. You've noted the edge. I've noted the edge is a destination because you fall over the fucking edge and there's stuff there, Joanna. There's countries and the falls. There's people.

There's people living there. There's houses. There's animals. There's so many birds. I love that this is just briefly mentioned as a whole ecosystem where we can't explore because you're just falling past it. But there are people there and carrots. It's like, oh, yeah, no, I guess because it's been shipwrecks.

And what an idea. There are civilizations built of shipwrecks that came over the edge and got fucking, I don't know, maybe they've gotten that as well to save people or whatever. Yeah, possibly. I like it. It's good. No, it is a really, really delightful idea. And then we go to the fucking moon because of course we go to the fucking moon.

Yeah. With the silver, not greenery, silvery. The silvery. Obviously the moon landing parallels. There's a joke about we're doing small steps, not giant leaps. Yeah. Patching up the library. Carrot saying, I've taken the liberty of asking Rince Wynne to take a picture of me

planting the flag of Inkmoor Bork and claiming the moon on behalf of all nations of the disk. Something ate it. Yes. Which is one of the moon dragons. Which I suppose there's a joke about the ship getting over provisioned, and that might explain it. But did Carrot just have the flag with him? Like just in case there was somewhere to plant it?

Yeah, probably. In one of the pictures, Rince Wynne's holding it. It's only a little flag. A little miniature flag. Oh yeah, I was picturing a big one. But yes, probably a little miniature one. I wonder if Stanley Kubrick directed this moon landing. Yeah, probably so.

I didn't see a shadow. Wynne's in the wrong place. You can hear the studio. The solar panel leaves are a very cool idea. Yes, very much so. And the designs of the moon dragons. Yeah, lovely stuff, lovely stuff. And alongside that, a little reference to Errol.

Oh yeah, it was a throwback. It was a throwback, and that's why he flamed backwards. Turns out, swamp dragons just ended up in the wrong bit. Bless them, they tried. Ah, they did pretty well considering they were made for moon. And yeah, that just that beautiful moment where the image of them on the moon looking at the disk. Yes. And the eyes the size of oceans.

Yeah. That's just too much universe all at once. Wynne's getting that vast agoraphobia that you get with an existential crisis. Yeah. But it's it's specifically loving it. It's almost specifically the elephant and the disk. Like the universe is too big to imagine. But the elephants like right there and it's really fucking big.

Yeah, absolutely big. Well, yeah, do you think about it? Wynne's seen the world. Decreated, hasn't he? Yeah, absolutely. I guess he's just never seen the eye go past in like that before. I guess it's like how a huge statue is more intimidating than a mountain somehow, isn't it? Yes, because you're sort of there and you can see a huge statue,

whereas a mountain is too big to take in as a visual. Yeah. It's a beautiful moment. I like it. So much elephant. A lot of elephant. So completely forgot to mention this during the episode, but I really like the irrelevant elephant bit.

So I'm going to include it anyway. As we had such a wonderful view of the great world elephants holding up the disk, I thought I'd have a look into one of the mythologies that Pratchit drew from. And this is from the Puranic Encyclopedia, which is like a chronology of Hindu history. There are four Digahas, elephants of the universe, who bear the earth standing below in the netherworld. It is stated that the sons of Sagara,

who went into the netherland in search of the lost horse of his father, saw these elephants. As they went to the east, they saw the huge elephant Virupaksa, holding the earth on its head. It is said that an earthquake occurs when, for a change, it shakes its head. Going to the left of it, they saw the elephant Mahapadmasama, holding the earth on its head on the south. Going again to the left of it, they saw Sumanasa,

holding the earth on its head on the west. And going to the left of it on the north, they saw Badra, holding the earth on its head. Little bits we liked. As we know, I always like it when there's a mockery of video games slash reference to video games in these books. So when Veena's... Really, really, sorry.

The person co-hosting a Discworld podcast. Might be a fucking nerd. Sorry, carry on. Francine the cool. Yeah, no. I only make references to normal, non-obscure, cool things. You would never reference anything obscure. Video games.

Veena talking about all her life. I've gone adventuring with old maps found in old tombs and never worried about where they came from. It's one of those things you never think about, who leaves all the weapons and keys and medicine kits lying around in the unexplored dungeons. Oh, no. I wonder if they have those moments as well,

where you suddenly find this massive cache of healing potions. You're like, oh, no, what's coming up now? Oh, shit. About to fight a boss. They definitely do. That must happen. Do you think the boss battle music kept starting but then fading off again

during all of those interactions with the gods? I definitely do. Yes, that happened. Awesome. And then started properly when Carrot came in. Yes. Twist. Engineering, though.

Engineering, yeah. So, like you were talking about the ship and the beautiful model that they made and things. There's lots of, as I'm sure everybody knows, examples of cool nature things being used in engineering and in mechanics and that. And I would like you, listeners, to write in with your favorite ones to me

rather than me listing loads and loads. I just picked a couple. Obviously, Velcro was mentioned in the first one in this book. That was an actual thing. George de Mistrell, Swiss engineer and amateur mountaineer. Went hiking in the woods, came back, but as all clung to him, made Velcro. I do also like that you have the running joke of Rince

was saying, yeah, can you get the frying pan off me, though? Well, it didn't. It didn't float off, did it? And then, like the other example, because it birds in aerodynamics again, was Nakatsu was tasked with baking Dupin's bullet-trained quieter and made it more aerodynamic

by looking at the design of a kingfisher's beak and applying it thus. Ah, beautiful. Yeah. It's a bit that made me think of it was Leonard's note. I recall my great pleasure upon seeing a fish eagles stoop upon a salmon in the lake and then upon rising again,

turned the salmon in its talons so that the head of the salmon was facing forward. For it demonstrates that air and water are in their currents and pressures, both fluids of a kind, which cause the denizens to develop certain similarities of form. The better to navigate these fluids.

Beautiful. Which is an extremely wordy way of saying it, that you can see it in your eye and eye. And gosh, she loves birds. Gosh, she does, doesn't he? He does. I just hit the keyboard with my book as well and opened the windows menu.

So that's new. God, I'm going to be glad to get back to the Kindle. As much as I love the beautiful artwork and stuff. It's sufficiently troubling syllable. What's the next bit that I liked? Which is um. Um, said Leonard, which was a sufficiently troubling syllable

to make the others turn around and look at him. Which I particularly enjoyed. And then the other similar, it's the kind of nice understated danger of it. Yes. Not a happy thing to say. Where Leonard worked out that perhaps he shouldn't explain the physics of space travel

to these people who were not enjoying the idea of the physics of space travel. And then yeah, they landed your, your favorite sentence in there. Just again, beautiful. Just lovely understated peril in this, I would say. Excellent. Yes. We've got this beautiful page of illustrations

of celestial beings. We have the star voyaging dragon. It looks like a whale. It looks like a big whale. And then you have the little dragons that cling to the big dragon. Little parrots, not parasite, because that means symbiotes.

Little symbiotes. Little symbiotes. And the fact that the star voyaging dragon has vestigial wings is such a nice detail. Like, like whales have vestigial, whatever. And then you also have the, during the flight of the great bird, they whispered a solar dung beetle.

That's forming small planets, similar to solar dung beetle of jellababy and mythology. Which is nice, because then there's, there's kind of little maybe reference to the fact that everyone thinks ancient Egypt was talking to aliens and that, that was maybe ancient jelly baby, you got the God ideas from the,

from these dung beetles, which they couldn't have seen, or could they join me today for tin foil hat? Well, I did see them eventually, and that was when everything manifested. Oh, God, me too. Sorry. Thank you.

We're seeing each other tomorrow. It's trying, one of us must remember to buy foil. And give half the role to the other person. No wonder our conspiracy theories have lacked luster today. Oh yeah. And you've also got the imaginary whole borough.

Poss imaginary. Poss imaginary. You've got the great note, if such a creature invades the ship, vital crews split up in order to search for it. Again, another movie reference I get without. Without really knowing the movie. But I love that you've got this whole page,

and these great, I mean, the imaginary whole borough illustration is fantastic. It's just a squid with a big drill. Yep. And I respect it. I really do. Especially having to take squid apart a few times when I've wanted to cook it and got whole ones.

I like that Leonard didn't draw it in as much detail as the things he actually saw in a sketch from life. Yes. This is like passing fancy of his. It's like, oh, but it should exist, didn't it? So let's pass imaginary. But again, this confidence that he doesn't really need to have is like,

oh, I'm always right. So I suppose it might be imaginary, but let's just draw it in the reference book. But yeah, all the extra little jokes around gripping tentacles, brackets for gripping. And then you have this beautiful note in the middle of the page. Oh, what cosmos that has such creatures in it?

Yeah. Oh, what cosmos. Speaking of one of my favorite visual bits is the double page spread, where they're all standing on the moon, looking at grace to him, go past, and Prince Wins holding the librarian's hand. So sweet.

Oh, my strings. Rince Wins, the librarian, and the luggage is my favorite trio, I think. Oh, two of them are so violent. They really are. And you've got some illustrations to point out as well. There's this fun illustration as foreshadowing moment. It's not a big plot one,

but there's this beautiful double page spread of Cohen flipping off the gods. And it's obviously reminiscent of the God and Adam and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Oh, yeah. It's implied to be that. And obviously, you've got all the gods kind of being rioters in the background.

You've got Nugger looking sulky at the view. But then, obviously, a few pages later, Leonard of Querm is told he's got to go and paint the small god's ceiling. So I'm choosing to think of this as an early draft that he was asked not to paint. Yes. Yeah, sure.

Because maybe we don't want a big swearing barbarian in the middle of the ceiling. There's no accounting for text, is there? But it's also, it's nicely Cohen giving the finger, because I think something we've talked about before is that there's very, very little swearing in the Discworld books. Yes.

Yes, it's always heavily implied with Cohen. There's bloodies and that thrown about, but it's really stopped before it happened. Yeah. Yes. So it's nice to get a full middle finger to the gods, as it were. Oh, God.

Well, it took a full middle finger to the gods, if you know what I mean. As the actress said to the bishop, and the bishop was appalled. Halfway up Corey Celesti with a tub of agate and thunder clay, and I took a full middle finger to the gods. That sounds like quite a good weekend, actually. Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

All right, Brian Singh, can we talk about the arts and the sciences and the practicalities, please? Yeah, I guess, yeah. No, yes, absolutely we can. So you mentioned earlier Prince Hiram's Tiller, which was nice bridging moment between the arts and the scientists of these two, which is the veterinarians showing the benefits

of a classics education, and ponders showing the benefits of, as we now call it, STEM focused education. Yes. And the illustration that you really need, both of them working together to get anything done. And I imagine, I can't imagine he wasn't. Pratchett was familiar with the two cultures,

which is the first part of a lecture. Well, it was originally the first part of a lecture by scientist and novelist C.P. Snow, British chap. And that later became a book and has formed many essays and books and discussions and discourse over the years. First released in 1959. The idea is that the humanities and the sciences had become split into two cultures,

especially within Britain, and he was drawing comparisons with America, because in Britain we had this old fashioned education system that split the two up far too early. And so people would never see inside of a laboratory since they were 14 were in positions of power, kind of thing. And that this was a huge detriment to society. And he spoke about highly educated people

who, when they were asked simple questions about physics, like what's mass, what's acceleration, would not only be ignorant on the subject, but kind of actively hostile towards whoever brought it up because it was highlighting their ignorance. Right. And the oft quoted, well, a short bit of the oft quoted bit is, so the great edifice of modern physics goes up

and the majority of the cleverest people in the Western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. And we've discussed this before, actually, because we kind of joke about being shit on science or shit on physics, but we're both kind of interested in it really. Don't doubt us.

Do not explain physics or cricket to me. I'm not interested in cricket. So the idea, obviously, is somebody who's very good at both or an organization that's very good at both. So there's a kind of cooperation between these two types of person and hopefully evolving into more of a Renaissance man type thing, like a Leonard of Querm.

Now, the third culture, and I don't know when this was formed because I didn't have time to look into it properly because I was writing a stupid fucking saga, is a growing movement towards the reintegration of literary and scientific thinking. And it's called the third culture as a nod, obviously, towards C.P. Snow.

It is championed by the Edge Foundation. What? The Edge? A surprise. Come on, yeah, thank you. Sorry, it took me a second to... The Edge Foundation, Francine. Thank you.

I'll edit that here seamlessly. But yeah, yeah, so fucking cool. And yeah, it's a whole thing. The Edge Foundation champions the third culture. There's all publications about it. There's meetings. I'll link to a bunch of stuff, and I'm going to look into it properly myself

a bit more in detail. And I love the idea. I do think a kind of well-rounded knowledge is necessary. And I think Patrick's talked about it before, these kind of osmosis learning through just reading everything. Now, I think you're very like that. You vary arts and lit,

but then you're also very programming in maths. I think you're turning into a Renaissance human. I'm working on it. Well, no, this is... So when I was growing up, we were always taught that... And well, we weren't taught as proper school lessons, but I think it was kind of accepted as a fact

when I was growing up that people were either right-brained or left-brained. And if you were right-brained, you were arty. And if you were left-brained, you were good at science. Yeah. And the thing is, I wanted to be arty. I was never good at visual art, and then I had a horrible bully of an art teacher

that put me off it for life. But I was very into literature. I was very into reading. I was like, literature. I was in middle school. I was very into fucking animal art and the hobbit. Yeah, no, I love animal art. I was so disappointed when I found out Lucy Daniels

was like ghost writers. But I was really good at maths. Like that was where I got all my highest grades. In fact, that was where I got my highest grades, like in the last set of actual exams I did, which is obviously quite a while ago, and not the full set of exams one should do. And I was very confused because I was like,

well, maybe I'm not right-brained or left-brained, or maybe I shouldn't be trying to pursue this because I'm obviously right-brained, or I shouldn't pursue this because I'm obviously left-brained. Yeah, you can be good at lots of things. And if you're good at maths, then you get at the technical side of some artistic stuff. Like I couldn't sew if I wasn't good at maths.

Yeah. Yeah, that's why I can't fucking sew. You've got to work out how shapes go together. Yeah, no, I've got one of those brains. Like I can't imagine 3D shapes very well. So literally, it's just sewing specifically. It's particularly hard for me. But yeah, I feel like the pendulum's almost swung the other way now in popular culture.

So CP Snow was very young about how the arts was considered the good one. People just weren't that interested in learning the arts. But I think now, because the money has been with STEM for a while, there is this kind of... Certainly, if you're like going red, it also might, which I know is not a good reflection of society. But, you know, it's a reflection of some part of society, a fairly prominent part of it.

And it's like, if you do anything but STEM or trash, whatever, what's the point of doing anything but logical? What's it? And it's spawned this whole kind of facts, not feelings. And I use logic, not emotion. And it's like, well, actually, you just can't have one without the other. So I think we've ranted about it like... Yes.

Maybe a couple of years ago now, to be honest. That sounds like one of the rants I'd have squeezed in early. That's one of the err rants. You are. And also er, let's be honest. But yeah, so I just thought it was really nicely explored in this, in a very funny way. And I like to imagine that Pratchett was a...

Well, I'm sure Pratchett was aware of the kind of discourse around it. And I'm going to have to find out whether the Edge Foundation was a thing by the time this was. But if it was, I'm taking it as an annotation, even if it's not a direct reference. Perfect. So you've kind of gone for something I can't properly segue into from this. You've written, what is legacy?

Well, I think that's what this book is exploring in a really fascinating way. And we've talked a lot today about the fact that, you know, it's beautifully story-shaped and it plays with the shape of a story and how everything is meant to happen. But obviously, this motivation of the Horde is not just to die. And I think a lot of the motivation in the first half, and we've talked about it, and we touched on it last week, is this idea of we are furious that they have let us grow old.

Yeah. And that's been a thing with Cohen, like right from when we first meet him, when he says he's a legend in his own lifetime. Yes. Yeah. And he lets Rincewind have that moment of, my grandfather took my grand, ah, ah, ah. He was like, yep.

That's me. And it comes into this and to this, right, if we're going to go, we're going to go memorably. And that final reveal of what it is to kill the gods and the gods saying, a massive explosion is not going to kill us. We're gods. And Cohen's saying, yeah. But if people see a massive explosion where you live,

how many of them are still going to believe in you? Yeah, absolutely. We snuck in a bit. We're snuck in a bit, parablating all the... Yeah. Yeah. And obviously, that's the thing that Pratchett goes into over and over again, is that especially, like, go back to small gods and how

powerful a god is, is based on how believed in he is. And they would lose all of that belief. And obviously, you know, Cohen is stopped and he realizes it's going to destroy the world. And what's the point of the world ending? Because that means no one's going to remember them. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Rincewin knew the handle for Cohen, interestingly. Absolutely. But we're not... I think he would have struggled to grasp that handle without the minstrel. Yes, that's true. Yeah. Because the minstrel's the one there. Like, Cohen can't rely on Rincewin to go and tell this story.

No. Because it would come in sort of snatch garbles while he's running. Yes. He can't rely on Carrot to tell the story. And it would start with... Stop fucking idiot, Cohen! Carrot can't tell the story because it would be appallingly... That punctuated Cohen.

That punctuated Cohen. Please imagine the entirety of the last hero written as one of Carrot's letters to his parents. I want to go in and add commas. But yeah, there's so many beautiful things, these memories of how things are written down. There's the little joke about the tapestry where this battle took four weeks because someone was doing a tapestry of it as they were going along. Oh, and thingy the legitimate, which is another repeating joke, I think from one of the witches books, where one of them's called legitimate, whatever, or...

Yes, because the parents were very proud. Which goes along with the people like Bestiality Carver and things. But yeah, they're talking about how things are written down. And that's what really matters. And it's in a great moment where Veena is embroidering, forget me nots around, burn this house. I need to get back into embroidery so I can make that specific piece. Well, I was going to say, if I have the time,

which of those pieces would you prefer as a present on there? Is it burn this house or is it eat cold steel pig dog? Oh, it'd probably be eat cold steel pig dog, actually. If you could do some little floral swords. Yeah, yeah, keep, yeah. And I'll make you a burn this house one. Oh, there we go. And yeah, it was when we were talking earlier,

we were talking about Cowan remembering. He's got lots of kids born to find strong women. And he's saying it's not about historians, because the Minstrelstrand convinced him, oh, don't let me tell you the Carolina story. But historians could tell you a lot more. And he's like, no, well, it doesn't matter what historians remember. It's what people remember.

Oh, we've talked so much about fucking folk ballads and all that stuff as well. Exactly. Or a story. Yeah. Ah, he wants to be in popular culture. Yeah, he does. He wants to be famous in pop culture. It's all storytelling.

It's how the birds write it down, which is where the birds are making lots of notes. And he clearly was, because he does very well at the end. Yeah. And he puts it to music, which is key. Everyone remember stuff better put to music. And yeah, he doesn't write it as a saga in the end. When he plays it to Harry and Harry's like,

well, that's not a saga. You can hum the tune. You can sing it. He's like, that's the point. Everyone will remember that and sing it. He's done the first Saga Ballad. Yes. This is the song that will be sung.

And it's a transition from saga to ballad. And if I had allowed myself more time, I would have done some research into when sagas became ballads. But I feel like... Oh, I did a bit. And yeah, it is. It's one of those, you look at the iceberg for a second

and realize, oh, fuck, that's Antarctica. Never mind. We don't have time for this. So with the North sagas and ballads and Rima, we're done. I can't really afford to go buying academic papers, just for fun. It's all one big soup of legacy.

Yes. Infusing the tincture of memory. Uh-huh. Yeah. And the gazpacho of pop culture. Well, gazpacho is a type of soup. Shut up. I suppose pop culture is a type of legacy.

Pop culture is called legacy, made with tomatoes or cucumber. Legacy is best served cold with croutons. The minstrel learns his own lesson about legacy as well. He's been learning that he needs to deliver this legacy of the Silver Horde. He's been learning that it's important that he writes things down and shares the story.

That's why he's gone with them to Dunn Manifest in, even though they're worried about him. Yes. And then he wants to just fight Nuggan. Like he's on the verge of declaring fisticuffs. And it's Cohen that stops him and Cohen that says, you can destroy him with the lyre are much more than you can beat the shit out of a god.

Yeah. Even a puny god. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This isn't, come on. You could probably beat him up, but that's not how you fight.

That's not your role in this story. Yeah. If you want to destroy Nuggan, go and do it by singing songs about how pointless he is. Yeah. You get to decide how this is remembered, so. Yeah. You get to decide a lot of things about how things are remembered.

And you finally get their ending. And of course, we've already talked a lot about their ending. But it is this beautiful because it's entirely something they constructed for themselves. And then you get this last shot of this bag of rubies. Last shot. Last illustration. This bag of rubies in the snow with the swords sticking out

by the hills and the odd shield and cane. I meant to look up whether that flower like symbolize anything, some kind of purple mountain flower. Oh, no. I'm not talking about the one from the very last page. Oh, I'm sorry. I've done that a few pages before. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

When the minstrels kind of shoving Harry's face in the snow. Yes. But when they're hijacking the horses, I guess. I did, as I said before, I like how it's meant like snow was covering the shapes. Yeah. But we don't need to talk about that. That's not important anymore. Whatever the fuck those shapes were,

the whatever is the horde now is standing in front of us, nicking some valkyrie horses as they should. As they should. And poor valkyries all having to ride pillion to get home. Fuck, I just googled purple mountain flower and it's an ingredient in the skyroom. Good answer. No, good. And yeah, I don't normally talk about the final lines of the book much

because I like because we end the episode on it, but it's such an important final line here. No one remembers the singer. The song remains. And before that, this acknowledgement like that we, you don't notice that you never learn the minstrels name until it's pointed out that you don't know the minstrels name. Yeah.

Yeah. And it wouldn't add anything to learn it. And yeah. And I don't like being like massively introspective about Terry Pratchett himself because obviously we didn't know him as a person. And I feel like people can get kind of weird about that. But having just read. You know, Terry, shut up.

Oh, we meant to mention that once in a couple of weeks ago now, didn't we? Yeah. But having just talked about Rob's book a lot. Yeah. You do almost feel like there's this thing where Terry Pratchett, like his books could be his legacy and nothing else. He wasn't expected to be this person that went along with them. Yeah.

Because he created the persona with the hat and the cane and was Terry Pratchett author or Sir Terry Pratchett author when he was wearing those things. And when he took them off, he could stop and actually be himself. Yeah. And I feel like this is that thing where it's almost like, well, I am the singer. These are the song. Please focus on the song. So yeah, I think it's a beautiful book about what it means to be remembered

and what it is to be a part of a story. Yeah. We've talked about legacy in the past, I think, in the slightly different context in a do you care if you remember type thing. But I think in this one, it's not as important because the main characters do. And that is a fact. There's no debate about it. And it is important that they are remembered because they are heroes and heroes are remembered

and ballad and saga and song. That's the shape of the story. Doesn't matter. That is the shape of the story. So yeah, a lovely book. What a lovely book. Do you have an obscure reference for me? I do.

Excellent. I feel like if we hadn't decided to put this at the end, we might have been able to finish our episodes in more satisfactory manners, but it's done now. We're nearly 100 episodes in. We're not changing the structure now for unseen. I know, I know, I know. I'm just saying. So Mazda, who is the Prometheus of our story here.

I don't think we mentioned Prometheus yet, did we? But who is the Prometheus of our story? Yes. Stole fire from the gods. Lovely moment at the beginning, wasn't it? Where it whipped back up. That would have been a good scene. Ahuru Mazda is the creator, deity, and Zoroastrianism.

Oh, which is what I first assumed this was all about, like the reference was. But I gave a little Google just in case. Obviously, it's a calm manufacturer as well. However, however, Mazda was also a trademark name registered by General Electric in 1909 for incandescent light bulbs. They chose the name because it does mean light of wisdom in the Averston language. But these bulbs under the brand name Mazda were sold for decades afterwards,

including in Britain where they licensed the name and sold them under Thompson Houston. And I'm pretty sure that would have overlapped with Pratchett's awareness. And so I'm guessing that's why Mazda is Mazda. Brilliant. Love that. Excellent. Well, I think that's everything we can say about The Last Hero, without this being a three hour episode.

We will be taking our little week off as we do. Unless you're a patron in which case you'll finally hear Joanna's history of chocolate unless she gets another disease. If I don't get COVID patrons, you'll hear me next week talking about the history of chocolate. For regular non-patrions and listeners, we'll be back on the 7th of November. We're going to talk about the sea and little fishes in two episodes next month. And then we'll be chatting about the unadulterated cat. Of which there is a new edition appearing.

The new edition coming out this time with amazing Morris, which will be our December book. Speaking of, for those expecting to hear us in a bonus episode on Pratchett next month, that has been pushed and will now be coming out in December. We'll be talking about Where's My Cow? So listeners who are reading along with us for the first time, be aware there will probably be spoilers because it's further ahead in the canon. And if you want to get in any questions, tweet Pratchett with the hashtag Make Ye Chat.

Which I like because it sounds compulsory. It absolutely does. So you've all got to ask questions about Where's My Cow? And please don't just ask the question, Where's My Cow? I can't keep track of all of your cow's listeners' goodness. I like to read about bottle episodes, by the way. Sorry. It's just Twitter related, not anything else related.

Thank you. Yeah, speaking of Twitter, until we return in November, dear listener, you can find us on Instagram at the True Shall Make Ye Fright, on Twitter at Make Ye Fright Pod, Facebook at the True Shall Make Ye Fright. Join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f. Email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks and massive bags of rubies, the True Shall Make Ye Fright pod at gmail.com. If you want to support us financially, go to patreon.com forward slash True Shall Make Ye Fright.

And pledge one bag of rubies. Pledge one bag of rubies and you might get some bonus nonsense, as we said. I'll be playing catch up on the nonsense I didn't do during COVID. Here's some nonsense we made earlier. The recipe is going to be extra nonsense. Also, I keep forgetting to say, but please do rate and review us wherever you get your podcast. It helps other people find us because of the algorithms. Leave us a five star review in the form of a saga.

Yes, please do. That'll get people's attention. Please write us sagas. And until next time, dear listeners, no one remembers the singer. The song remains. Tomorrow, we are meeting at... 1.30.

In the meantime, I'm going to go and make some garlic fries. In the meantime, dear Joanna, you can contact me on our Signal group chat via Facebook or if you want on Instagram. Look, I basically only go on Instagram because you've DM'd me. Understandable. You can rate and review me. But don't. I'll see you tomorrow.

Five stars. See you later. Bye.