The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 99: The Amazing Maurice & His Educated Rodents Pt 1 (Butter Beans & Instant Oodles)

Episode Date: December 5, 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 Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents”. Podcasts! They chase the ethics and catch the Existentialism!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:[WoW]: How Blizzard's new lizard broke a 10 year old loot system, started an in-game genocide... - r/HobbyDrama [Literature] BBC's The Watch -  r/HobbyDrama Joanna's tattered copy of Amazing Maurice  David Wyatt Illustration Amazing Maurice & his Educated Rodents - Colin Smythe The Annotated Pratchett File v9.0 - The Amazing Maurice...The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Literature) - TV TropesThe Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents - Discworld & Terry Pratchett WikiThe Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents - Discworld WikiBook covers for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents - TTSMYF The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Maxfield Parrish - WESCOVER'Pied Piper' brings belated literary reward - The Guardian Crows take a look in the mirror - Scientific American Blog Network Great Hanoi Rat Massacre - WikipediaPerverse incentive - Wikipedia  Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

Hello, lovely listeners. Just before we begin, we do mention this right at the end of the episode, but just in case. Next episode is our 100th. So if you would like to send in any questions, there can be any kind of questions, Discworld related, podcast related, whatever, then we will answer them. Possibly at the start of the normal Amazing Morris episode next week, possibly released as a separate bonus thing, really depends on how many we get. Either way, very much looking forward to hearing from you and enjoy the show. I was less excited about the heated seats and more excited about the fact it's got leather seats and a CD player, player, player, player.

Oh, the hobby drama post was good, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. There's been a couple of good ones recently. So this was subreddit r slash hobby drama for new listeners. There was actually quite a good write up in there about the watch. I did see that. I haven't read it properly. Is it worth worth going through? Is it? Yeah, that one was an interesting read. You sent me that really good World of Warcraft one. Someone actually just wrote up the Bayonetta voice actor drama, which is nice to see it all condensed in one place because I was kind of watching that play out on Twitter. And

I was a bit worried that Jennifer Hale was going to turn out to be a decade. And of course, she hasn't Jennifer Hale's lovely. We love her. The World of Warcraft one, though, is possibly the most beautifully written Reddit storytelling I've ever seen. I'll link it in the show notes. Can you remember it well enough to summarize the gist of it? It is a saga about it's probably quite well known around any of our listeners that play World of Warcraft. There was an incredibly rare and difficult to get mount and an exploitable glitch in a new like expansion patch type thing made it incredibly easy to get this mount

and then but the glitch was fixed really quickly. And a lot of people were very upset about the fact that they missed the glitch and didn't get the rare mount. Yeah, it's written a by a World of Warcraft player, clearly, and B just written in like very, very beautiful creative writing style, I would say. Yeah, it's very beautiful prose. I also enjoyed the fact that the person writing it just pointed out the World of Warcraft is basically dressing up our little paper dolls on the internet. I'm very into that idea. Considering the amount of like, and this is not all well players, but the amount of irritating,

obsessive while players I used to hang around with now thinking of them as just playing silly little paper dolls makes me very happy. Well, my colleagues who I play Valhom words are also big World of Warcraft players and they keep trying to tell me, Oh, come on, come play, come play well with us. And I'm absolutely and I really mean this, never going to do that because I think I would really fucking like it. I'm not doing it for the same reason I've never tried cocaine. Yeah, no, I don't have the time or the money or the psyche to cope with it. I play Guild Wars two a little bit and that's like,

I will pick it up and then I will obsess very heavily over it for like 10 days and then I will put it down again and need to not play it. I feel like Valheim is going to become like that at the moment. I'm very addicted to it. Yeah, it's bad. I'm sleeping less than usual, which is quite I'm not sure if that's true. I'm not sure if that's true. I think I'm just spending more time downstairs on my laptop than upstairs staring at the ceiling. So that could be seen as an improvement. I'm definitely like, you know, there's kind of half asleep visions you get. Yeah, yeah, they're definitely quite often Valheim theme now. But again, improvement on like the InDesign or Excel based ones that I get when

I work to like, so. Yeah, I like not hallucinating spreadsheets personally. Speaking of has the book writing going. It really, really slowed down over the last few weeks, but I just got back in the momentum this week and have planned the next chapter and we'll start writing the next chapter on Monday because I was going to start it today and then realised I only had about an hour to work on it, which meant I'd write two pages and then get back to it on Monday and go, what the fuck is this? Yeah, speaking of the slowdown actually, I probably will mention briefly, we had a personal loss and that's why we've been a bit shit for the last few weeks. So sorry about that listeners. Thank you for bearing with us.

Nobody's been a dick about it and we really appreciate that. We have the best listeners. We do, we do. And we're all in the seas, he has to go out amazing discotheques because fuck me, we've got a run coming up, haven't we? Oh, it's such a good run. It's all going to get emotional. I know we said that last year, but this is even better. Speaking of amazing listeners though, also, if we turn up in your Spotify wrapped, please tag us because it delights me if we're one of your most listened to podcasts. My Spotify wrapped is weirder even than last year and I feel like they're just doing it now.

So people talk about how weird it is. I like that the Apple Music one doesn't do all the weird genre stuff and is just like, this is what you listen to the most this year, but it also feels like a personal attack to know what I've listened to the most this year. Yeah, see the Spotify frippery at least distracts me from the reality of what I've been listening to, which is better than last year. Oh, mine is Taylor Swift and the Rings of Power soundtrack. Oh, and my most listened to song is the post-modern jukebox cover of Titanium, which I know full well is on my things I like singing along too loudly playlist

and that I regularly sing along to it loudly and that's why it's there. That's it. My most repeated songs are definitely the ones that are in my car for basically controlled screaming therapy. Hell's coming with me. Very good song. That's on the top. Oh, we had the in-laws stay. That's what I did that wasn't either nerdy or depressing. Jack's aunt and uncle are fantastic, extremely eccentric, very knowledgeable about interesting things. His uncle was a journalist, not a practive fan, but I feel like would have gotten along with Terry practive very well in real life. I can say that same kind of utter disdain for poor journalism and anybody who's unethical. He especially is very into trees. He's like a local

tree expert and they like built this nature reserve in their garden. And that's all very cool. And we took Jack's dad and stepmom out to Ickworth Park and what was forecast to be a lovely clear day and what turned out to be a day of torrential rain. Lovely. And nobody drowned. Well, that's good. With a sheep all right. I saw some sheep in the distance standing under a tree, so I assume so. Good. What I didn't realize and should have done because it's obvious and Jack pointed out to me was, you know, how often do you go to Ickworth? Not as often as I used to, but still fairly often. Yeah. But do you remember the trees are kind of flat on the bottom? You know the paths that go through like the fields with like trees dotted around? Oh, yeah.

Slightly oaks. And they're kind of this and I don't know, I kind of subconsciously thought they'd been pruned. But no, Jack pointed out that's as high as sheep can reach. And they're like perfectly skirted. And there was this one tree that had a skirt like a 2-2 of mistletoe that have been pruned like that by the sheep. That's amazing. That's marvelous. That delights me. Yeah. Speaking of delights. Let's make a podcast. That's also a better segue than anything I could come up with. I was gonna say speaking of sheep. Do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Tree Shall Make He Fret, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, Wonner's Time in chronological

order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today, this is the first part of the amazing Morris and his educated rodents. All of them. The 28th Discworld novel. And the first sort of aimed at younger readers. Is it? It is. The first of the Discworld books. Note on spoilers before we crack on. Obviously, we are a spoiler light podcast. Heavy spoilers for the book, The Amazing Morris and his educated rodents. 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. Riding on the back of a stolen high women's horse.

Excellent. I should say I haven't even finished reading this book yet. So I'm definitely not going to accidentally spoil the end, although I won't be cross with you. But I didn't realise how little I remembered it. Truly, I didn't. I thought it was Saint Nick Moorpore. This one is like really thoroughly tattooed on my brain. Yeah, I read this. I don't think we've come at it, come at a book from such different levels of remembering it before. For patrons, at least, you can see the video. I'll post a picture of it. That is an accented book. I've just got it on my iPad, so that's not good. So section one is chapter one through five. I will have tweeted that by the time you're listening to this. Follow up. We have an email from Craig. We do have an email from Craig.

So from Craig, he says, some time ago, Francine, you mentioned the quote, in ancient times cats were worshipped as gods. They have not forgotten this. This has been a bit of a long running thing. We'd always believed it to be Terry's work, but now believe it's attributed to him, but not necessarily by him. Nonsense said I. That was in Craig's voice. Of course, it's a said Terry quote. I've read it somewhere. Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what he's saying. He's Scottish. I'm not subjecting the listeners to this. Nonsense said I, and my best Scottish accent. Of course, it's a said Terry quote. I've read it somewhere and I went off to Speedread several

likely sources, pyramids, the unadulterated cat and so on, did some online research and found myself having to concede that you're indeed correct. However, you can buy this from Sandra Kidby. It's being a tea towel available on discord.com with the cats were worshipped as gods. Oh, really? Oh. Quote on it, attributed to Terry Pratchett. She's very nice and replies to sensible questions, so I dropped her an email asking where the quote came from so I could share it with you and say, it was him after all. However, she replied, there was some discussion with Terry's agent regarding this particular quote and it did appear to predate Terry. The discussion came up after

we'd used it on a tea towel. I will say, I fully understand the instinct to chase this down because I think I saw Mark Burroughs say that he had done the same and I went, nonsense! And Speedread all the likely, I didn't go so far as to emails under Kidby, so A plus work there, but I spent a whole morning looking for that fucking quote. So this has been a thing on the podcast. We've talked before about the fact we do not know where this quote comes from and obviously it's impossible to Google it because everything attributes it to Terry Pratchett. I got quite far back. I can't remember exactly how far I chased it back in the end, but it was pretty early. The thing is, I remember, I'm sure I remember

physically reading it in a book and I don't know if that's like some Mandela or in fact thing where I've just convinced myself of it, but I'm sort of determined that if I continue rereading every book I've ever owned, eventually it will find the origin of the quote. None of the books I dug up would have been ones you'd have read. Right, but yeah, thank you Craig for doing another level of sleuthing that we hadn't bothered with. Oh well. Have you got anything else to follow up on? Uh, briefly, you know, during, um, the truth, we mentioned dark light and auto shriek. No such thing as a fish is, I think, Patreon bonus today. I heard them say the words dark

lightning and oh ho ho, thought I in my best Scottish accent. And apparently dark lightning is gamma rays, something like that, that you can get during storms and they can hit aeroplanes and it's very rare, but when it does, it's a problem because it basically delivers like a lifetime's worth of radiation to the people in the plane. Wow. And I don't, I don't, I'm not saying this is where Patrick got it from, it's just very interesting. That is very cool, I like that. And obviously doesn't have the same effect as dark light in, on Discworld. And actually that's quite a coincidence because I think I listened to this after we had had a nonsense talk about auto shriek having special lenses to make vampires

show off or something. We were talking about a photographer whose job it is to photograph all of the fairy tale and fantasy creatures and we started describing him and then realised that we just invented auto shriek. Yeah, yeah. Right. I think we can still do it. We're making them like more modern, you know, we'll come back to that head come in another time. Is it head kind of when it's not based on anything? I think it's just random short fiction. It doesn't matter. Francine, please introduce it. I like to call it writing a book. Sorry, you want me to introduce the book? Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. Yeah. I figured we'd do the things we do in the podcast. It's a funny past day already. Yeah, fair, fair.

So Amazing Morris is the 28th, as you said, Discworld novel. It was published by Double Day, notably, in 2001. Now, the concept was first mentioned in Reaper Man, very briefly in 1991. But I think recently with Rob's book, we got a bit of an expansion on how that concept came to fruition. Joanna, you've reread the book more recently than me, did you? Yeah, let me just grab the relevant anecdote. I've been sitting with Terry in the evening after an event drinking beer in the Pied Piper Bar at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. So this was, I think, about a year and a half before the book received an award. Good grief.

There was a huge painting that hung behind the bar. It was by the American artist Maxville Parrish. It's the Pied Piper of Hamlin. And Terry's talking about the painting and the skies in the painting, which is apparently what you need to look at with Parrish. And then Terry suddenly said, you know, the whole thing was a scam, don't you? And he starts telling the story of a cat who lives on Discworld who was a con artist and had this rat-catching hustle that ran into difficulties. And he just unloads the entire story of amazing Morris like there in this bar in San Francisco. Incredible.

So it just percolated for a year and then came out when he saw a painting while having a beer. I guess, well, more than a year, like a decade. A decade, that's what I meant. But isn't that just amazing? It's incredible. The painting itself, by the way, the most famous and the original cover of this book was painted by David Wyatt, who I hadn't heard of before. It's a lovely cover. There's a bunch of covers, by the way. I'll post links in the show notes.

But the Paul Kidby cover for this book has definite notes of the Pied Piper of Hamilton. Hamilton, Hamlin of the painting. Have you seen the painting? No, I haven't. Hold on. Let me find a link for you. So the Paul Kidby cover is the one that has the cat in the front and the guy in red playing the flute and it's... That's right. Hold on. It's a very low res version, but it gets the point across.

The skies indeed are very important and I think Kidby definitely paid attention to that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. They're kind of hunched over Piper there and his hat and general costume and the way that the rats were arranged around Keith and around the Piper. So I think Paul Kidby definitely get pointed in this direction and did a fantastic job. He's got the echoes of the composition, even though there's obviously the book covers portrait and this is a very landscape painting. But yeah, I just thought that was really cool.

We move into kind of officially Paul Kidby as the cover illustrator from next year in January with the Night Watch. And I can't wait to talk about all of his classic art references. Very cool. Yeah. What do you reckon of the rest of these covers, by the way? Do you have a favorite? My favorite will always be the one that I have. The David Wyatt one.

Yeah, so it's the very dark background. There's this sort of fun stylized, slightly dodgy writing and one candle with the cat and the rats surrounding it. Yeah, and thought about who the artist was before. But David Wyatt's website actually, I'm going to send you a link in the thing and also put it in the show notes because it's just absolutely gorgeous fantasy art. And I think it's very your thing. This is the kind of style I know you really like.

Yeah, that's like kind of modernized Arthur Rackham. Yes. He's my favorite illustrator. Obviously, the Amazing Morris movie is coming out and I'm trying very hard to not form an opinion about it before I go and see it. But just the absolute brightness and colourfulness in the way everything about the movie looks compared to what is in my head Amazing Morris, which is very much this cover.

Because like I said, I've had this physical books since I was about 12, maybe, possibly younger. Yeah. I have formed some opinions on the visual style that I've seen so far. I'm willing to be one over, but I'm not a massive fan. It's the girl, Melissa in particular. Well, actually Morris himself has weird creepy human shark teeth, but whatever. But the girl, Melissa has the exact same face as every fucking like Pixar or Disney girl has

for the last 10 years or whatever it is. And it's just bizarre to me that weird button right down at the bottom of your face nose. Yeah, I'm not different faces now. No, I'm not a huge fan of that, to be honest. But again, I'll wait. But at the moment, the movie looks like it's the Mr. Bonsie version of the story. Yes, I'm sure it'll be very entertaining. But I suppose that it was never going to be as dark as the book.

Anyway, sorry. Before I get to sidetracked, I'm having opinions on things. It was very well received, obviously. Some of the reviews I thought was picking out. I've done this for the first time in a little while just because it was such a heavily reviewed book because it won awards and things. We've got Neil Gaiman for the weekend FT saying, were Terry not demonstrably a master craftsman already?

The amazing Morris might be considered his masterpiece. It demonstrates if there were any doubt that he is unquestionably a master. And a little later in the book, I know we'll talk about the idea of masterpieces again. So that's obviously because it's Neil Gaiman tied in with the plot. There's one that starts out a little more skeptical and obviously more skeptical than Neil Gaiman isn't hard when it comes to fractured. But it says, oh dear, the world divides between those who love Terry Pratchett and those who absolutely can't stand him.

This book may change the minds of a lot of people in the latter category. It did mine. And then she goes into describing quite a lot of the plot in glowing terms. Ends by saying, so now I'm going to have to eat all previous dismissals of Terry Pratchett and go and try him again. Mary Medicott in the school librarian. Marvelous. And finally, a little review I thought you'd like.

But the book offers a rye extended meditation on the motifs and foibles of fairy tales and children's fantasies. Just as the last hero tackled sword and sorcery. That's Farron Miller in Locust. Excellent. Now the book itself became a New York Times bestseller, which was quite a big deal to Pratchett's American publishers. Not that much of a big deal to Pratchett, it seemed, or certainly not out loud.

Actually, the whole story of how it became published in America is quite fun and entertaining. So I would say go and read Rob's book, everybody. It's very good. Yeah, that particularly is a lovely story. And I think probably most notably, certainly in Britain, it won the Carnegie Medal. And that was Pratchett's first mainstream literary award. His acceptance speech is in a slip of the keyboard. And it's rather good and ties back into the US, actually.

A part of it says it was interesting to see how Morris was reviewed here and in the US. Over there, where I've only recently made much of an impression, reviews tended to be quite serious and detailed, with, as Morris himself would have put it, long words like corrugated iron. Over here, while being very nice, they tended towards the another wacky, zany book by a comic author, Terry Pratchett. Actually, having read a few choice reviews picked out by Colin Smythe, to be fair,

I think possibly Pratchett waited the zany ones a little in his mind because they annoyed him so much. But in fact, Morris has no whack and very little zane. It's quite a serious book. Only the scenery is funny. The problem is that we think the opposite of funny is serious. It is not. In fact, as GK Chesterton pointed out, the opposite of funny is not funny. And the opposite of serious is not serious. Which is just, again, one of the motifs we love returning to the opposite of this is not that, actually, it's this. But that was wonderful. I thought this, as I say, is printed in its

entirety. The intro makes very brief reference to a little prank he played at the end of this speech, though. And I think, again, you have a more complete version of that. So if I could ask you to intervene. Yeah, so Pratchett did have a bit of a thing about being put up for awards. He didn't want to go up for award unless he knew he was going to win. He didn't enjoy the disappointment, as it were. So he knew he'd won the Carnegie Award before the actual ceremony itself. And it's a medal, accepting the medal for the Amazing Morris. And then promptly peeling off its gold casing and biting a lump out of it to the confusion of the assembled worthies. So because he'd had a monthly plot, he went, they got a chocolate coin of the right size and heft

and did a little cheeky sleight of hand moment so that he could take a bite out of his award. I think that is a wonderful way of cutting into the seriousness of the occasion. Absolutely, especially as it's an award for children's literature. Right near the end of the speech is a line which is writing for children is harder than writing for adults if you're doing it right. Which I think will return to a couple of times. The very first line of this book, which is rats, it teased the dogs and bit the cats, is an illusion. A-L-L, not an allegory, to Robert Browning's version of the Pied Piper of Hamilton, which is in rhyme.

Hamelin. Hamelin, fuck! I'm honestly not doing it on purpose. Every time you say Pied Piper of Hamilton, I'm imagining like some called awful rap hip hop version of this book. God awful. Hamilton's great. You made me watch it. No, I like Hamilton, but I feel like a hip hop version of this book would not be good. Yeah, okay. But that's going to be a fun exercise for us one day, doing a rap version of a little bit of the Pied Piper of Hamilton.

Anyway, rats. They fought the dogs and killed the cats and bit the babies in the cradles and ate the cheeses out the bats, and licked the soup from the cook's own ladles, split open the kegs of salted sprouts, made nests inside men's Sunday hats, and even spoiled the women's chats by drowning their speaking with shrieking and squeaking in 50 different sharps and flats. God, I love Robert Browning. The things he does with the rhyme scheme. Could you summarize part one for us, please? I can. I can. So, in part one.

In chapter one, Mr Bunzie is not full of lattices. This is a story about rats and people in stories and begins on a male coach from the planes. The drivers approaching Uberwald and hearing voices while the stupid-looking kid, the rats and Morris, discuss pipe schemes and government money. A highwayman stops them and the rats stop him and bad blint beckons, but the rats want to move on. It's the last time for the scam and it's going to be a big one. In chapter two, Mr Bunzie loves food more than friends. I respect that. It's morning in a rich-looking town with poor-looking people.

Food's being rationed at the rat house and something's afoot with the rat catches. A girl approaches full of stories and speculation and she catches Morris chatting. In chapter three, Ratty Rupert warns against the dark wood. The rats are setting up in the cellars. A candle's lit and Hammond pork's unhappy. There's no kikis about and while dangerous beans ponders the nature of ratness, dark tan assembles the platoons. Chapter four, Mr Bunzie wouldn't like to miss a mealtime. Keith and Morris are in malicious kitchen, despite her being the mayor's daughter.

Wild magical theories abound before sardines interrupts with a dance. He's stuck in a trap behind the dresser and as crockery falls, malicious susses out the schemes. The rat catchers are carrying fake tails and someone's approaching as Keith and Morris head for the hayloft. In chapter five, isn't Ratty Rupert brave? Dark tan dangles over a trap and nourishing takes a nuke to her confidence. There's poisons aplenty in a strange trap that's been triggered. Meanwhile in the hayloft, Morris hunts politely and they're screaming in the distance. Militia enters with a not-so-secret knock and plans to investigate the rat catcher's sheds.

As dark tan feels fear spreading amidst new traps, poisons and a live one, he makes a declaration. This is war. Hell of a fucking ending to this section, isn't it? Yeah. It is a dark book. He's not wrong. It is very dark. I'll talk more when we get closer to the end of the whole book about... You can have an overarching thesis. I might have an overarching thesis, which is that this is a great kids' book that I would probably

not give to a lot of children. Oh, poffy cock. All children should be likely traumatised by literature. I fully believe that. Oh, I mean, I support likely traumatising children. It's just the ones I know are all wimps. I need to know some. That's why they need traumatising tough enough. I'm no parent and I don't have a buck to that sentence. Did you see any helicopters? Any loinclothery? I'm dubbing dark tan's tool belt as the loincloth of the day.

Oh, that's quite good. Yeah. And for helicopters, we have, after the dresser falls, one miraculously whole plate spinning round and round. Oh, back with our lovely plate trope. All right, nice. Good. I'll accept that as I like the trope. We do like the miraculous plate trope. Other things we're keeping an eye on. We haven't seen death yet, but we have seen reference to part of death, technically,

because he never took the bone wrap back into himself. Yeah. I dumped this later in the plan, but I might as well say this now. My batshit bone wrap head cannon, and this is just a head cannon. Batshit bone wrap head cannon. We can't use the word shit in the title, can we? No. The Grimsqueaker is able to hang on at the end of Reaper Man when all the other spare deaths disappear, because it would specifically be needed for the intelligent rats

and some thief of time fuckery just when it came into existence and stuck around before it was needed for decades worth of books. Especially it was, was it Reaper Man? Yeah. So it all ties together. Exactly. We've played the thing wide open, well done. Well done.

Do you have a favorite quote? I do have a favorite quote. Also, we should mention that Discworld is introduced, but completely separately. Yes. In an introductory bit, which I guess makes sense because it's for kids. So yeah. They've probably not read the hack.

Oh yeah. So this is, so I read this as a kid before. The only other Discworld I've read is my uncle when I was like eight, gave me the first few Discworld books and I couldn't get into them because Color of Magic's not a great place to start for an eight-year-old who doesn't understand what's being parodied. But he, because he gave me those, he got into his head that I love Terry Pratchett and kept buying me Discworld books, which I just didn't read until this one. And it didn't say Discworld on it anywhere.

So I didn't realize it was a Discworld book. I read the whole thing. I didn't realize until like years later that this was a Discworld book. I think that's perfectly possible. Yeah. Yeah. Like I just thought Stola and Pseudophilus because they're those places I mentioned. Just kept skipping out of the intro.

Yeah, I guess so because I was reading it when I was quite young. Yeah, it's part of the pre-book, why would you bother? But yeah, anyway, sorry. Yes, I do have a favorite quote indeed. The strawberry yogurt is probably not important. Would your life have been different if it had been banana flavored? Who can say? Just like a little tangent during Malaysia's rant about, you know,

how this fits in the story and that doesn't. I just love that as a little side note. It's very much how I can imagine myself ranting about something. So no, I'm very glad you got that in. That's one of my favorite bits. I hope you went for something slightly more sensible. Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies, it's just a word. And we get our first death of the book, like a couple pages after that line.

So again, this is quite fun in how dark it is. Yeah. And Pratchett doing his usual very good thing of not just skimming over death. No. I'm trying to think of the word not humanizing because they're not human, but humanizing each person who dies. Personifying. Personifying.

Yeah, yeah. Individualizing. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh. Cool characters. Cool characters. I put a little challenge for us here.

I said, go to the cupboard, find your rat name. And did you do so? I did. I know it's sort of half taken, but I went with butter beans. Oh, nice. I like that. Yeah. I think it suits me.

I've gone for instant oodles. I've decided the end had faded too much. Perfect. Listeners, write in with your rat names, please. Yes, please tell us your rat names. Every time I had to batch cook noodles in my last chef job, I would say oodles and oodles of noodles. And it became incredibly delightful to me.

And I still say it quietly to myself whenever I cook noodles. Oodles and oodles and oodles. Just quickly before we go into all the characters, just the rat names in general are great. There's a little just a bunch listed off in one go. It's dangerous bees, beans, doughnut enter, dark tan, ham and pork, big savings, toxic. Beautiful.

It's a delight. It is. I feel like he had a lot of fun doing the rat names. Do you think he was standing at the door of a cupboard? Yeah, probably. I wonder how dangerous beans ended up, though. Why was it dangerous? Yeah, I felt like there was a dangerous sign and a beans thing,

and he opted to put the two together. Oh, he's a big fan. But what's great is that these names are all really silly if you think about them for more than a second, but the book is so absorbing, you completely forget that dangerous beans is ridiculous. Sardines and peaches. I guess in the same way that you kind of like with fantasy,

but like real like sword and sorcery fantasy books with apostrophes in the middle of the names, even the annoying ones, you can kind of eventually figure out, can't you? Yeah, you kind of stop skipping over it. But you think maybe this will be harder because they are recognizable words. Or like in the less wanky fantasy, but things like Robin Hobb,

like we adapted to the fact that Burrick is a completely normal name that a hot guy has very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Anyway. All right. Morris.

So Morris, he is, we didn't talk about it in the end, but he is, I think, the essence of an unadulterated cat. Yes. He is the boot-faced cat, I would say, a fractured book with all covered in scars and clearly been. I think he's perhaps a more genteel grubo. Yes. He's street wise.

There's a nice bit where the book's sort of going into him becoming intelligent and who he is is that he's now got the same level intelligence as the rats, but he's also smart and they're dumb. He's got these swaggering fluffed-out tail street smarts. Oh, Joanna, I desperately want to read a conversation between him and grubo. So much. I also, like, I can't help but look at all of the characters in this without seeing if I can pick parallels to other Discworld characters.

Oh, sure. Yeah. Because the whole book is like completely separate, kind of, from all the Discworld canon we've had so far. So it's nice to kind of look for those. I feel like Morris is actually more of a prototype for a certain damp false moustache we'll meet in a few books. Oh, yeah, sure, sure.

There's definitely some shared DNA there. Damped false moustache sounds like a really bad, like, beard, like a guy. This is my beard, but he's really bad at it. I think it's the sequence. Hi. No, but I love Morris. Yes. There's a trope called Carnival Confusion that I came across while I was looking

up how to describe his kind of ethical quandary and becoming intelligent. Because I thought it was quite sweet that he's got, he's retained some of the nastiness of cats. And like, he's very, he's naturally very manipulative. That's just what he is. I mean, throughout the book, the motif. So it's like, oh, you can trust a cat to be a cat. Cat's a cat.

Cat's going to cat. Whatever. But in this case, really not because, well, A, he makes very sure he's not going to kill anything that can talk. And B, he instantly despatches it. And I must say, that is one of the most distasteful things about cats is when if you ever watch them try and kill something. And they're playing with it.

Yeah. And it's, yeah. It's very unpleasant. I've spent quite a lot of time on TV tropes today. It's been a while since I went on a prof TV tropes rabbit hole. There's a whole page from eating Morris and there's some really good ones linked. But carnival confusion starts with, there's an unspoken awkward issue in fiction involving talking animals.

And it's not unspoken here, which is fun. But a lion is a carnivore. It's teeth and intestinal tract are geared to eat meat. But what if the lion is as much of a person as Mr. Antelope? And it's a shower thought for me. You know, the kind of, you're standing there going, but what? And you stand under the running water. And literally the lion king has come up in my head.

I was about to say. Yeah. Like, there's an easy answer to that. You must eat those fuckers. Yeah. Yes. But that's fine because the antelope eats the grass and they, the antelope, and eventually they die and return to the grass and so the cycle of life continues.

Right. But it would be awkward if you had to have a scene where the antelope was screaming for its life as Simba pinned it, Alan. Well, no, the antelope just totally get the circle of life. That's why they're all trumpeting for the light. No, that doesn't work. Also, I am aware that antelopes don't trumpet. Do you want us had antelopes and elephants mixed up this entire time?

It's amazing. She's been so accepting of all my elephant facts. Yeah. I was starting to wonder about some of them, especially the ones involving trunks. I thought like antelopes just always carry a little trunk. God, sorry, we've gone off topic again. But yes, no, I like this carnivore confusion. Or I don't like this carnivore confusion trope, but I like that it's not ignored here.

Yeah, yeah. And it's an interesting line to draw. And I think the right line to draw as well, obviously, because it's very hard to sympathize with a character who is actively dispatching rational, intelligent speaking human beings. There's a couple of just good Morris moments as well. One of my favorite quotes is when they're arguing about what to do with all the highwaymen stuff. And he's sort of saying, oh, can we at least take the horse?

And the quote is acting like the night wouldn't be properly finished until they stole something. Yes. Like he's been a street smart cat all his life, but now he's developed intelligence. He's got very into this particular aspect of intelligence very quickly. Yeah. Understandable, I think. Although very mean, tricking his friends with the silver and the gold moons. Well, what do the rats need money for?

Coconuts. Oh, yes. Now, you get coconuts. Oh, islands. Yeah, boats, boats. Boats. Thank you. Very rassy places, boats.

They are. We've also got Keith, otherwise known as Stupid Looking Kid, Forever in My Heart, that is his name. So, again, I have read this book a million times. It's burned on my brain. And if you put a gun to my head, I would have told you his name was Kevin. Yeah. That's an obvious replacement in your head, though, with the Kevin's being Pratchett fans. Very much so.

Well, I think also I'm just very averse to that. I've once not gotten on with the Keith, and so now I'm so averse to the name, I've just rewritten it as other names in everything ever. Understandable. And we know a couple of Kevin's we like, so. Yeah. Now, I'm a fan of Kevin's over Keith's. No offence to any listeners called Keith.

No, you're all fine. Unless you're that Keith, you know who you are. But it's like you wouldn't name your kid after an ex-girlfriend, kind of thing, you know. Exactly. He's another foundling. Yes. We've got so many of these dropped on Guild's doorsteps. What do you think about Keith?

I like this quiet cleverness, especially with Morris trying to manipulate him. And it's like with the coconut thing, every so often the kid would come out with something that suggested he'd been listening all along and that made him hard to steer. But I also love Melissa's disappointment at finding out his name. Like that doesn't hint of mystery or promise, it just hints of Keith. Oh, yes. But she's flexible.

Because at least he's been left on a doorstep of some musicians. Yes. We've heard the Guild of Musicians before, as well, obviously, in there. Yeah, they're a lot nicer here, taking in a foundling and teaching him to play things, as opposed to soul music, where they were threatening to stomp on people. Yeah, I suppose that works, doesn't it? If you decide that this is one of our own, it's going to bring in money for the Guild kind of thing.

Yeah. So you assume that Keith is, in fact, a licensed Guild musician? I guess so, and has been since he was six. Yeah, congrats, Keith. Well done. He's obviously very good at it. And he's got this... He's almost...

He's got echoes, hasn't he, of what's it to buddy? What's it to buddy? Yeah, I think that was his name. You know, Elvis. MP Selen. Oh, yeah, that's more sensible than mine. Sorry. But he's got echoes of it in that the music clearly lives in him,

but not in the same possessed way, just in a more inspired Leonardo de Quermway. Yeah, like, it's just there, it's a part of him, and he can't not do it. But I like this kind of quiet, intelligent background character, A, because you can feel him almost... You can feel that he's going to snap at some point. Yeah, yeah. And I like Keith and Militia against each other, because they seem to bring out kind of the best and worst.

Yes. And that they're nicely playing off each other in a way that could fall into the, like, Morton, Isabelle trope, you know, the sort of biting us each other, and they end up together at the end, which I loved in Mort, but I'm glad is not quite the same vibe here. It's one of those, like, neat little, not even a puzzle really, but you feel a little cleverer for spotting that this one's clever before the protagonist does. He's a fun character.

And then rats. We've got the rats. Many rats. Many, many rats. Dangerous beans. Dangerous beans. He's dangerous. He's beans.

He is, I think, a good example of the kind of blind profit trope, and that's profit is in seer, which is seer is in future seer. Well, all of these words sound like other words. That appears in many a fantasy novel and other novels as well. I would say he also has some parallels with the whites in carpet people. I know they're not blind, but I've got the albino kind of look to them. I mean, it's another trope and also in real life as well as in books. This is our imitating life that albino animals and albino people with albinism are

seen as magical in some way or... Yeah. It's not necessarily a good thing. Not always a good thing, though. As always, bit of a mixed bag with any animal that looks a bit different. Yeah. And any person that looks a bit different.

I also think dangerous beans makes quite a nice parallel to Keith, because they're both the kind of quiet, intelligent one in the corner. Yeah. Although dangerous beans is listened to. He's more eloquent with it, perhaps. Yeah. But I think they've got quite a lot in common. Yeah.

And then peaches. Natural sergeant, I would say. Peaches. Natural sergeant. I like her let's get organized moment in the way she inadvertently presents a leadership challenge to Hammond pork and then immediately goes, right, what shall we do? How shall we get organized?

That's a very nice way of rephrasing a question to like a control freak. It's never a, shall we do this? How do you think we should achieve this, but in this particular way? So they feel like they made the decisions. I like that she's also got like just a little bit more grit than dangerous beans and kind of allows the two of them to work together like right early on when they're talking about whether they should give up the scheme and things and she sort of has this she doesn't like stealing and she's trying to say they shouldn't take the coach

because it's ethically wrong. And when Morris isn't going for that, she goes for the people would ask too many questions tack. Yeah. Like she is willing to go a lot of different routes to get the end result she wants. Yeah. Whereas dangerous beans is very much more I will focus on the good in someone. Yes.

Yeah. Interesting how intelligence evolving in lots of directions by now. Yeah. We've also got dark town. I love dark town. I love him as a character. And this is another one where when I was remembering the book, because this is probably the longest I've gone without rereading it because I haven't been rereading books for

since we've been doing the podcast. I mean rereading the ones I normally would reread every year. So I thought I was remembering dark town as being very vines and he's not, at least not in this section. He's got this like war movie stereotype thing. Apparently he's very clearly Sean Connerish, but I'm not oh fair enough for Sean Connery to make that parallel. I was very much thinking war movies.

So I guess hunt for red October. But yeah, he's the fan but fair archetype, isn't he? Yeah. Very much so. Like he's a good commander. Yeah. You've got to be tough to teach him properly kind of thing. Yeah.

And he's got this great this like, like I said, this army style. You can picture this in a certain kind of movie like the call and response. What does the second mouse get? What does the first mouse get? Yeah. And then. Oh, sorry. Well, no, it just, it brings us to one of the probably darkest moments in the section,

which is realizing the rat he shouted at earlier. And you know, you were a widdler. You were born to be a widdler. Is the rat in the trap that's dead? Yep. Nothing has a moment of maybe regret, maybe just on me. And then I think it's self assured enough to pull it together and go, no, you know, just see that now.

That doesn't mean I didn't do the right thing earlier. Yeah. Yeah. You can't plan for everyone. You yell out to be dead later. And right, right at the end, you also get to see how ruthless, and I don't mean that in a cruel way, he can be to, to do the right thing. Yeah.

When he orders them to put the dying rat in the trap. Yeah. And it's sort of this, I know this idea sounds horrific, but right now it is still the kindest thing that can be done. Yeah. Yeah. And then who else have we got? Hammond pork.

Hammond pork. He's facing this kind of weird leadership battle because this transition, the rats have gone to where they've become intelligent. It's happened while he's very old. And like he's too old to change, so it says, and he has this reaction of, oh, you've been thinking, there's far too much thinking, we didn't do any of this thinking back in my day. Yeah.

I think it would be hard for any rat who was, who grew up pre-transition to remain leader afterwards. And the fact he still is, I think, shows that he's not maybe as bad as he thinks he is. Quite possibly. And I think it's also the rats are intelligent enough to realise that nothing good can be achieved for the whole of them by challenging his leadership. So instead, they kind of just work around his leadership by doing the things Peaches does and the things Darktown does.

Yeah. They're maybe not doing as good a job as they think they are in convincing him. Yes, very much so. But yeah, it's sad. It is sad. It reads very sad. I think he did a good job there of like, although it's in, just going to keep drawing parallels to other practice kids books.

He reminds me of the old gnome and diggers. Oh, the one who just, he cannot cope with the way things have changed, and he wants to go back to how it all was. Yeah. And he's being a dick about it, but like, you really feel for him. Yeah. And moving on from the rats, we have the rat catchers. I really want to clarify, this is a joke where I put in the notes,

comedy, villain, duo, clearly stolen from Neil Gaiman. Yeah, no, I guess that, yeah. Because lots of people said that Pin and Tulip was stolen from Creep and Vandemar. Neil Gaiman was the first person ever to write a comedy villain duo. Didn't you know that? Convergent evolution in comedy villain duos. My new essay. Isn't that when everything evolves into crabs?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all comedy, all comedy villain duos eventually become crabs. It's just, they're such like, blatant villains. I think like, you know, if you talk about this as a kid's book, that's kind of parodying kids adventure stories, as much as it's parodying like fairy tales. Then I think they're one of the best ones where he's just very much doing it. Like this leaning in close, pockmarked face.

Your legs will explode if you don't be careful, young lad. It's very, it's like a horrible histories type of gruesomey, you know. Yeah, I can imagine like very specific horrible histories actors doing this bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, Melissa, who's one of my favorite characters. Yeah, she reminds me of Kirsty and Johnny and the everythings. Oh, yeah, no, I can see that. But just mainly the first description of her,

which looked like kind of person to be asking questions and continue asking questions. And yeah, I think she becomes less like Kirsty, even as the first section wears on for that first impression I got was, that's singing magic from what's it? I love how she's comes in, but she doesn't really ask questions. She starts with a question, then immediately starts delivering her own answers. Yes, yes. She walks up and she's come up with this whole thing about a cauldron dribbling over

and that's why Keith had to run away. And he's possibly going to sell his cat. And then again, when she realizes Morris can talk and of course, he was a witch's cat and belonged to a witch named Cresselda with warts. And it's wonderful because the characters are just standing there, like slightly alarmed, but realizing she's talking herself into helping them. So it's okay. Morris, she's like, yeah, no, that sounds right.

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah, no, definitely. Mm hmm. Lost my boots. There's the bit where she like just her lips start moving. This is after she's figured the schema and Morris is like, she's making a fucking story out of it.

I mean, that means we're going to be all right, but Jesus. I like her. I think something that doesn't get talked about in general, like with this book is that a lot of the books that aren't witch's books don't have lots of female characters. And this has some of the best female project characters. Like not in the, I think, militia is incredibly ethically rice or anything, but she's one of the most fun to read.

You don't need to be ethically right to be a good character. Yes, I know. I know you know that. That I'm saying that as a general service. As a general, what's it? And then you've got Peaches, who is fun to watch because she's just incredibly quietly intelligent in a different way to Keith or that. She's sort of that ambitious, not ambitious.

I'd say ambitious. Well, yeah, ambitious, but practical, that aggressively competent, very comfortable in the position is, I guess, sort of a number two, because she's sort of running around being dangerous beings as assistant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm rewatching the Korra, the Avatar, last airbender sequel at the moment.

So I'm going to say she's Julie and about three of our listeners will understand what I mean. Okay. But yes, it's live and nourishing as well, who I didn't put in the list, but I love nourishing. Nourishing is a great character. Yeah, you get several very distinct, interesting female characters, which is nice. Especially as they're rats.

Yes. Locations. Locations. We are in the town of Bad Blintz. Bath Pancake, yes. Bath Pancake, yep. So Bad, of course, in, does mean Bath in German place names and means the place is an officially acknowledged spa town.

Okay. And I found that in looking this up, I found that there is a German town called Bad Kissingen. What does Kissingen mean? There's a very long etymology for Kissingen, but I like to imagine that it's just a spa where you're not allowed to snog anyone. But just quickly on some of the places in Bad Blintz, the Rat House. Again.

I thought that sounds familiar. So I did dig out the email from last year to clarify, because I think we were talking about, it was a watch book, so it was, we were talking about the rats chamber. Yeah, it's come up twice before in different books. Yes. Yeah. So quickly from Francesca, rat is equivalent to the English Council,

related from the verb Beraten, which means to advise and to counsel, and every town has a rat house, a town hall. Although in this case, actually, it has yet another meaning, which ties into the Pied Piper of Hamilton, which I'm never going to stop calling Hamilton. In fact, ties into the Pied Piper of Hamilton, which we'll talk about in more depth in a different episode. But it, watch out listeners, because it has a secret third meaning,

or a secret second meaning, I guess, because we've not really, yeah. The Sellers. Oh, I just like this is like, it's become another consistent discord theme that started with like the truth. There's a whole explanation of why there are all these interconnected sellers under Mooreport that references a real thing that happened in like Seattle or something. Yeah. Yeah.

And now it's just like, yeah, it's convenient for the rats to have a whole underground network to run around in. So it's not town, there's a lot of sellers. Yeah. And it's true. I respect it. We live in a town that's similar. Yes, there are many sellers in our town.

And you could with a sufficient mallet and planning permission find your way from one end to the other, I expect. Yes, however, between the various flood plains and the fact that everything in this town is ancient, I probably wouldn't want to risk it. You'll definitely get wet. Yeah. Some buildings might collapse, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

You'll get wet and maybe a bit crushed. Fine. I'm definitely arrested. So. Do you want to go do some tunneling? Yeah, okay. Right, dig a quick tunnel. We'll swap places and then get back to part two.

A little bit of the night. What do we like? What do you like? What do you like? I like the fact that they're using a changeling as a rather positive word for themselves. When, of course, on Round World, in Round World mythology folklore, a changeling is traditionally a fairy or an elf that's been left in place of a human,

because the fey, the otherworldly people have kidnapped the real child and left a baby fey in return. Yeah, and then that is a changeling. And here, it just means evolved rats or changed rats. I suppose it's not evolution really, is it? Yes. Yeah. The next bit I liked is on the same page, because while talking about changelings,

we also get to learn about this new written language that Peaches is coming up with. I greatly enjoyed this. Which I've termed ratty semiotics for the time being. Because I really love the term semiotics, even if I'm pronouncing wrong semiotics, whatever. I think it's semiotics. The annotated practice file pointed out, and I didn't go down this rabbit hole, because I did not have time, the thick line where she'd pressed heavily had to mean no, and that was over the top of the illustration.

And annotated practice file says, I have no idea if this is what Terry had in mind, but in formal logic, one of the possible ways to indicate the negation of a proposition, P, i.e. turn it into the opposite statement, not P, is indeed to write P with a horizontal bar on top of it. And there's a couple of places this is mentioned, and all of them say, oh, I'm not sure if practice meant this or that. I would be surprised if practice didn't mean this. I think that's exactly the kind of thing that practice would look into or know anyway. And if I'm going to write a very brief little written language, I'm absolutely going for these.

My first thought, because I read that note in annotated practice, so I started thinking of code. We use an exclamation point as the negation operator for Booleans. And I assume it's very much the same thing. Yeah, yeah, that's how I'd instinctively do it now if I were like comedy semiotics. But yeah, so I think we should look into formal logic when we have time one day. And yeah, yeah, not really good at informal logic, but maybe we'll be better at formal logic or a nice suit.

Yeah, exactly. Well, I talk absolute bollocks. Beautiful. And just kind of related to that, I like the idea of coming up with a map for the first time. Yeah, which is also mentioned, the idea that the paper remembers. This is a little later in the book, but it's Darktown, isn't it? Who's come up with the first map? Yeah, he's got into this drawing, the tunnels out on the ground and directing people.

And he loves this idea that you write things down and the paper remembers. And then he goes into Dangerous Beans, has the map in his head for all of them. Yeah. And I wondered when the first map in Round 12 was drawn. And I don't know. Yeah, I thought about looking at cartography history and then realized there are only so many minutes in a podcast, only so many hours in a day, only so many minutes in a podcast. But no, this links a bit into my bigger talking point later,

but it's de-familiarization again. When you have a new society rapidly developing, you get to look at these things through a new lens, like maps. Paper remembering, I just thought was lovely. That is beautiful. Speaking of paper remembering, writing stories down is about segue. Do I know Sister's Groom? Oh, this just made me laugh that Militia is only her grandmother and great aunt were Agonizer

and Avicera Grim. Avicera, beautiful name for a girl. Beautiful name for a girl. Which I think we've had a reference to Grim Sisters somewhere in the Discworld before. I can tell you where off the top of my head. But I do also like that the idea in this book is the Grim Sisters wrote these very full of blood and bone fairy tales. And obviously the Round World equivalent is that the Brothers Grim have that reputation,

but actually they were just on a weird nationalistic folklore collecting project. Yeah, the Grim Fairy tales have been mentioned, but not the Grim Sisters, I believe, and I can't remember where either. But I remember speaking with you about the navigation of that last M was enough to underline the joke. Yes. Because ain't they Grim? Ain't they Grim? I wonder what the etymology of the surname Grim with two M's is?

German. Ah, yes, that explains everything. It's German. We have to go back to bad kissing and apologies to our German listeners. No, well, it's fascination, isn't it? I love German etymology stuff. I'm just glad we have at least one German listener to steer us gently away from nonsense. And the other bit I liked was another militia bit, actually, and it's kind of two bits together.

But what she's talking about, it starts with the secret knock, and then she's having to explain to them while she's secretly knocking what a secret knock is. And then, you know, she's worked out that we can go and crack into the shed and solve the mystery of the bootlace tales. But it would be more satisfying if there were four children and a dog, which is the right number for an adventure. That's true. And I like the idea of having this story obsessed that's also,

like, it can be really fun with these kind of fantasy parody things for the characters to be somewhat aware they're in a story and then it needs to be story shaped, like which is abroad. Whereas this is not that. This is someone who is sure she is in a story and then has to confront all the things that aren't. But actually, she is in a story, so it's very meta. There's another bit in TV tropes, actually. Wrong genre savvy is the term for it, apparently. Brilliant.

Which I hadn't noticed until I found the link that you picked up on anyway, the introduction to speaking. Sometimes you can take genre savvy too far and wind up having as much genre blindness as the poor idiots who split up in a haunted house where one of you is a murderer. Excellent. I'm not sure she's quite that bad, but she's getting there. It's almost an anti-Susan. Yes.

There's definitely a hint of anti-Susan to militia. And now I sort of just want Susan to sit her down and have a stern word with her. Yes. But then Susan, I think, also had reverse genre savvy, didn't she? Because she was convinced that the other silly things weren't going to happen, whereas she's the granddaughter of death, literally. Yeah, that's the joy of Susan. But I like, especially with young Susan, she's got a hint of maybe a romantic side.

She can get a bit whisked away with things like when you have teenage Susan making her death outfit and adding a bit more lace and a bit of corsage, which is what a 16-year-old would do if tasked with looking like the grim reaper but having total control over it. Isabel would be proud. Yeah. Anyway. Let's go on to the biggest stuff then. Do you want to talk about rats?

Yeah, I always want to talk about rats, but I won't do it too much. But rats are so cool though. I love rats. I know rats are very cool. I think everyone probably knows by now rats are remarkably intelligent. I think it's a really cool animal to have picked up on. This book, I think it'll be in the next section that I do a little bit on rat superstitions. Yeah, and like rats and folklore and that.

Some of the things that the rats have kind of developed as passive awareness kind of make sense with the kind of intelligence they already have. They're very cooperative animals. I don't know whether they have the kind of leader that you take out when they get too weak kind of thing. Actually, I don't know if that's something within the social structure of rats, but there have been experiments to prove that rats will cooperate with other rats, will help them get more food.

Not only that, this is quite cool that I read that I've never heard before, but that they can tell that another rat is being cooperative without seeing it because they can like smell the cooperativeness coming off them. It's like they'll be a rat helping another rat in a room that the third rat can't see, but they can smell that their rat's being helpful and will be more willing to help that rat later on. Because they know there's cooperation happening. That's cool, isn't it?

I love that. It's also lovely just to have clever rodents as good things in novels, and I know we do see that anyway, but clever rats especially, maybe not so much. Well, yeah, if you think like red wool, like the rats are the villains. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And even in things like Nadia or all the other talking animals, mainly a good, you know, the brave thing is a mouse, not a rat. Yes.

Because you have to be the meek coming up to be the brave, not the cunning. Yes. Which I think is silly. The thing about like rats being able to tell cooperation through ways we'd never even thought of before, I thought kind of linked in nicely to Maurice's self-awareness moment when he looked in a mirror and became self-aware. Oh, that's me. A puddle, I guess, yeah.

Yeah. Exactly, so. And so I know you'll have heard of this, but the mirror test, which is sometimes known as the mark test or the mirror self-recognition test, MSR test. In the classic MSR test, an animal is given a red mark on its forehead and it's given the red mark, I think, while it's under anesthesia, so that it doesn't like just touch its head automatically because something's happened to that spot on its head. Yeah, yeah.

Just a weird little link, but the character anesthesia in Neverwhere is one of the rat speakers. Oh, sweet, good. Love it. Sorry. No, no, you're getting lovely name for a girl. A visceral and anesthesia. What a pair. I could just feel at least one of our listeners getting ready to point that out to us,

so I wanted to throw it in there. You channeled them from the future. I love it. So when the animal covers from the anesthetic, it's put in front of a mirror, and if it touches its forehead, like going upside on my forehead, then the idea would be that it exhibits some self-awareness. It's been criticized for a few reasons. It could result in some false positive findings.

There are control measures for this, but for instance, if an animal can sense it on its head in some way, we haven't quite understood like if it can smell better than we thought or feel it. But a lot of controversy comes from the possibility of false negative findings and using the test to say comprehensively that this or that animal doesn't have self-awareness as just silly. So dogs recognize their own scent, for instance, is very different from other scents, which you could see as a form of self-awareness. But of course, they do fail the traditional visual mirror test.

That's just not how they view the world. No. Another problem is that a lot of animals respond very aggressively to the sudden appearance of another of their species. So perhaps if given time and a bit of explanation, they would not react like that. But there's some theories that this is why gorillas in particular and some monkeys fail the MSR test. Because their first response isn't the attack response effectively. Exactly, yeah.

So most of the animals that pass the ones you think. So in 2008, researchers applied a small red-yellow or black sticker to the throat of five magpies and they were given a mirror and it didn't alarm them, but they did scratch at the throats and the ones with black stickers didn't, which suggests that... It was a visual reaction. So that was quite interesting. Anyway, yeah. And just wrapping up with a fairly connected tip that I'm not sure I could put anywhere else,

but about rats. Rats apparently are indeed disinclined to gorge on an unknown food. So second rat, you want to be the second rat. And that might be connected to the fact that they can't vomit, which I didn't know. Poor rats. So they sample food and wait to see if it makes them or someone they're watching sick before they go down on it, which is why a lot of rat poisons have to be like multi-dose. Oh, right.

Yeah, like a building up thing. That's very cool. That is very cool. I am excited about the intelligence of rats. Yeah, I love rats. I think they're very good. I was... Dia saved me from a rat the other day though, my little terrier.

Ran in front of me while I was in the garden at night and because I was a bit surprised, I went, and Dia came running to my rescue and chased it behind the shed and then got very sad when she couldn't get at it, but she never caught a rat as far as I know. So good little terrier she is. She tries. She does try. She's a good puppy. So what do you reckon about important ethical issues and stuff, I guess, where?

Thank you for that. Yeah, there's no way to really segue into this. Broadly, I want to talk about ethics and dreams and speed-running society, but broadly, it's the thing. I like that Derry Bradshaw does a lot called de-familiarization, which I will always remember the word now. Well, no, because there's another word that you've forgotten. Yeah, I know.

That's gone. I'm sorry. I'm pretty sure Sonda Vogel told us that word, so I'm sorry, Sonda. Several times, yeah. But it's creating completely new personalities and it creates this really unique set of ethical and existential dilemmas because this intelligence has developed so rapidly in a society, so completely alien from our own, but so interconnected with our own. Like just as a thought experiment, it's great.

As a thought experiment within a very cool dark children's book, it's also great because some of the stuff that maybe doesn't make logical sense, like how do they know to speak English? You just kind of don't need to worry about? Yeah, well, especially as I think there are hints that they're not speaking English, maybe. Well, they have their own rat language as well, but they're definitely all able to communicate with each other and the humans. Yeah, oh, that's true.

Yeah, are they all speaking? Yeah. Whatever the language is. Yeah, yeah. But they have sort of rat swear words and rat language and things. So you have the ethical stuff. How's this the cat? Merelp, which means biscuits, which is a running joke.

I used to say to Kate, actually, every time I spoke to her, I'd say, you know, tell Mia, her cat, tell her I said Merelp. She'll know what I mean. Oh, so I see. I did hear you say that to Kate once or twice. I just thought you're making a cat noise. Mia does make that exact noise a lot. She's a very sweet cat.

I like practice. Sorry, I like practice of animal noise descriptions quite largely. Twit, twit. Yes. Said the Robin. Twit. Twit. So you have the ethical stuff.

Like I mentioned earlier, and Peach is talking about what isn't isn't right, talking about the scheme they do. And we have decided it's not morally right. Yeah. And there's something about Peach is not said that there's a little thing if I having sort of a little bit of a cough and a hem. And that hem carrying a loss of weight, but it doesn't. She's another character that can speak in capital letters that aren't there.

Yeah. Like the not morally right feels capitalized. It does feel capitalized. Yes. And you have alongside that Morris using the dreams to manipulate people and my struggles with it with Keith, but it works. You know, he's was at home for the island of the rats and then realizes he's been a dick and goes,

but half your dream, you need a little dream. Yes. Is that him realizing he's been a dick? Or is that him realizing he doesn't want to destroy his tool? Yeah, it's the latter. It's definitely the latter, especially at this beginning part of the book. Obviously, Morris gets to have character growth. Good for him.

Good for him. But alongside it, you have this consistent theme of shadow and light as they've learned to use the candles. Yeah. And so you have dangerous beings having this very like profit moment of saying, learning to face the shadows outside helps us face the shadows inside. Yeah. Because they've learned what the difference between light and shadow

are for the first time. And obviously, they're learning this from a semi-blind rat. Yeah. And they didn't see the shadows until they saw the light. That's the... And now they know the shadows are there even when the light's gone. It's deep, isn't it? Kind of ignorance is...

Ignorance is bliss. Absolutely. Kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah. And it goes into these things with dreams and what it is to be a rat. You know, dangerous beings ask what is a rat and Hammond pork has his claws, teeth, tail, run, bite. Yeah.

And dangerous beings responds with, now we can also say what is a rat and that means that we are more than that. Yeah. And that's a huge thing to come to for anyone ever. There's one, we were talking about this, looking in the mirror and going, oh, that's me. Yeah. And that goes alongside something else that I've forgotten the word for

where you sort of suddenly have that realization that everyone else around you is also having these incredibly deep, rich and alive. Yeah. And it's one of those realizations you have again and again as life goes on. Yeah. And it's not really on the train and just suddenly realize that everyone else in the carriage has as much going on in their head as you do in theory. No, not all NPCs.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you get these young rats sitting around the trap with the rat that's been killed and wondering what to do. Yeah. And it goes into this conversation about where does the dreaming part of you go when you die? Oh, yeah.

And that's also where the sort of running bit of the don't eat the green wobbly bit gets introduced. Yes. And they start talking about, you know, they've developed this idea of the bone rat and that was my whole batshit time traveling bone rat head cannon from earlier. If something manifests because it's believed in their belief in the bone rat manifest manifested the bone rat, but a bit early. Yeah, for sure.

Or at least gave the bone rat the power to cling on when all the other deaths disappeared. Yeah. I think he's managed to do the split between generations very well. Yeah. The younger set of rats he grew up with the changed brains. Like dangerous beans is entirely a product of this, isn't he? Yeah. He's one of the younger ones.

Yeah. And this kind of second generation that just have completely different hangups, like nourishing, not wanting to whittle in front of everybody. Yeah. You develop a completely different set of things to the older rats whose concern is like, all right, food, safety, women needing somewhere to have their give birth. Yeah. Yeah.

And the fact that, again, like the big overarching thesis is going to be talking about this as like ostensibly a children's story, but just acknowledging the sex lives of the rats within it. Yeah. And in a, I think a very well disguised way, and I don't mean a very heavily disguised way. I mean, in a, if you don't already know, that's going to mean nothing to you. Yeah. To the point where you're probably not even going to ask an adult about it,

or if you already know, it acknowledges that that's a part of life. Yes. Especially with peaches or who gets described by Hammond pork as young female who refuses to do rock with me. Yeah. The consent is the thing and the intelligent rat world. And that's good to know. Yeah.

Very much so. But what this all builds up into is them speed running society. Yeah. Because they've had to build it all so rapidly, especially if you think rats only live a few years. It's like we talked about with carpet people like. Yeah. Time is compressed.

And yeah. So I think there's a similar thing here. And because the speed running society, they're taking whatever wisdom and guidance they can get, which leads to Mr. Bonsie being the Bible or their Bible, their secret text. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The, yeah, the difference in the lifespan actually is quite interesting, isn't it? When you look at the rats, so I think four years, it's very impressive for a rat, isn't it?

You've got the cat who, let's say, a street cat with a very dangerous life. Let's give him 13 to be generous. Yeah. And then you've got Keith, who in theory. It's going to be a very normal human lifespan. Yeah. It's a very sad thing to think about, isn't it? It's, oh my gosh, have you ever read Roald Dahl's The Witches?

Of course. Yeah. I don't want to spoiler it because honestly, if you haven't read this, even though it's a kids' book, I would, look at us reading kids' book, I would recommend reading it, but the whole thing about lifespans is weirdly relevant. Yeah. So yeah, I think this is a fascinating thing I'll put together, this idea of, like I said, the de-familiarization or whatever, but it's the idea of building up a society very rapidly

with what you have at your disposal, which is Mr. Bonsie and a con artist cat and a stupid-looking kid with a pipe who's kind of happy to go along with whatever's happening. Yeah. And who was, like, partially taught to read by the rats? I guess there weren't a lot of reading lessons in the guild. Yeah. Well, yeah, you learn to read music maybe. Yeah.

I think it sounds like he doesn't need to. Well, I guess literacy is not, like, a huge thing, and like, more pork if we're still looking at this, a particular level of fantasy society. Yeah. I bet it's shooting up at the moment with the printing press going. But. Absolutely, yeah. Have you got an obscure reference for Neil for me, Francine?

Yeah, but I'm not convinced I haven't talked about this already, you know. I'm just kind of hoping at this point that I haven't. There's only so much information in the worldlessness. I know, I know. So the great Hanoi rat massacre. I know I said I wouldn't go too far into these things. Oh, I'm not really. But basically, when France was doing their colonization bit, they had French Indonesia,

Hanoi for a while. There was a big rat problem in the city. The French authorities offered the Vietnamese residents a small bound T2 collect rat tails. This happened in many places in time and geography. But in this one, yeah. This one's a particularly famous version of it. And one I am absolutely certain, which it was aware of to the point where I'm really sorry if I have talked about this before, listeners.

This sounds so familiar as I'm saying it. Basically, even though there were quite a lot of the residents doing all this work, turning in rat tails, the rat problem wasn't getting any better. And in fact, as far as they can tell, it was getting a bit worse. And at one point, French authorities noticed a few healthy rats running around with no tails. And it seemed to become apparent that a lot of these rat hunters were in fact amputating the tails of rats, which rats can survive quite well, if not happily, then successfully, and go forth and reproduce.

On top of that, there were some rats in inverted commas, hunters, who were bringing in rats from outside the city. And the final nail in the coffin for the entire scheme was when authorities discovered a few farms on the outskirts of the city. And they were rat farms. They were just farming rats for their tails and handing them in. So eventually, the authorities gave up on the whole idea. And Hanoi was left with the worst rat problem that it started with.

Excellent. I thought so. And this is known as the cobra effect, more popularly, I think, but the tail that that's based on, which is like the British Raj offering a similar reward for cobras and similar story, is possibly apocryphal, I think. And so, but this is very well documented. And so there's a couple of historians who say this should be called the rat effect, which I think is better.

But basically, the perverse incentive is the proper term for it. An incentive that has an undesirable or unforeseen result. So like fire insurance and antwarf work. Right, I see what you mean, yeah. So that's that's nice. I enjoyed that. Thank you. Right.

Well, I think that's everything we can probably say about section one. It's definitely not, but we should stop. But we should stop. Section two is going to go from here up to end of chapter nine. So section three will start at chapter 10. Until next week, dear listeners, you can. You can find us on Instagram at the True Shall Make You Frat on Twitter at Make You Frat Pod, on Facebook at the True Shall Make You Frat, join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f.

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Also, listeners, it's our 100th episode next week. We were going to do some kind of live stream for it, but we ran out of time to organise it. So listeners, please send in your questions. Depending on how many we get, will these record a little extra long follow-up section or we'll release them as a bonus episode, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, something like that? Yes, Q&As, comments, things we can talk about. Interrogates. Interrogate the podcast, ask us anything you like.

Can be podcast related, can be not podcast related. Yeah, you can ask about our headcanon theories. Joanna's batshit bone rat headcanon or whatever. Ask us questions. But yes, help us celebrate our 100th. I shall wear something silly on my head. You're not wearing a hat. Well, no, because it's been a year now.

Also, I was going to wear a Santa hat for all of this, and I forgot until after we start recording. Oh, that's cool, that's cool. Has it been a year? Have we done 12 months with hats? Yeah, but I kind of dropped the ball a bit last month as well. Oh, that's right. I had good intentions anyway.

You wear two hats next week, come on. We'll call it even. See if I can somehow get all of the hats I've worn this year balanced on my head. Perfect, 12 hats to go. Yeah, 12 hats to go. Until next time, dear listeners. Don't let us detain you.

I enjoyed that very much. It's nice to be podcasting with you again. I enjoyed that very much. That sounds very formal, but you know what I mean. Yes, ditto. Awesome. Have a lovely evening. Love, love, love, love.

Bye. Bye.