The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - Bonus Pandemic Special - Hype And Dread

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, another bonus lockdown q&a! We take the time to chat, get a bit existential and answer a few listener questions. Morality! Ethics! Snacks!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail] to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Llamedos Holiday Camp on the ClacksThe Galactic Federation interviews Earth for membership - TwitterDescript | Create podcasts, videos, and transcriptsBlue Planet II, Series 1, The Deep - BBC OneMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I'll listen to it afterwards to see how much we've grown as people or shrunk as people. I mean, caved in on ourselves as people. Yeah, I've sort of been sucking myself into my own endless void, which is yeah, I didn't really think about that sentence before I said it. So have we got any Pratchety news to prattle on about? Oh, how have we not used prattle on about Pratchety yet? Because there's already there's already a Discworld podcast

called Pratchat. Yeah, but they don't use Prattle. I'm not sure if that's even an Australian term. Oh, yeah, very good point. Shout out to Pratchapod. Yeah, Pratchap. Yeah, Lamedos on the Clacks. I don't know how we're actually gonna be saying Lamedos when we get to that being introduced into Discworld in June, where we're first introduced to the country. But so Lamedos on the Clacks is an online Discworld

convention that is happening between March 5th and March the 7th this year. And their tickets are going on sale in a few days. So that's quite exciting. We may get involved. We may be on a panel. Yeah, we'll get that on that. Well, this episode, we're recording on Friday, and all the announcements are happening over the weekend. So by Monday, we'll have probably already tweeted about this. Yeah, exactly. But for those of you that don't follow us on Twitter, we'll link to the website in

the show notes. It's going to be a fun thing. All the proceeds are going to good causes. We even took vaguely attractive pictures of ourselves to Yes, we took headshots and everything. So that's quite exciting. I don't have any other Pratchati news. All right, cool. I'll note then. Yeah, let's make a podcast.

Hello, and welcome to the true shall make you fret podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is our special nonsense existentialist Q&A bonus lockdown pandemic extravaganza. Subtitle, who knew it would go on this long?

So we wanted to do a bonus episode this month because obviously dark side of the sun was a shorter discussion than normal. And we've brought back something we did way, way back many centuries ago in April. Yes, where we're going to interview each other with the help of a random question generator that Francine has carefully assembled to make a little bit existentialist. Yeah.

So when we did this back in April, we did it basically to test out recording on zoom for the first time because we had to switch to remote recording because of the lockdown. Yeah, we were like a couple of months. I haven't listened back to it. Have you? No, Charlie on Twitter, Charlie on Twitter mentioned it to us the other day. I guess they're listening to it for the first time and said it was quite sweet that we'd have to explain

that we were on zoom because people might not know what that was. Good grief. April 2nd, bonus Panda thanks special extra by default. That's a nice title. Yes, well done. I'm gonna listen to that after we've done I should have listened to it before we did this. I've taken a break from the Buffy mug today for we've got unicorn still got it in for the bingo card though. Oh yeah. I keep meaning to actually make that bingo card. Put that on the long list of podcast related

projects that'll never get done. Is that broken glass coming from your end? Oh, yeah, sorry, the bottle bins outside are being emptied right now. Oh, that's cool. We've got within earshot ones as well. So I genuinely couldn't tell. Excellent. It adds to the ambience of my dystopia luxe living. Yes. Okay, so should we crack on with some questions for us? All right. So what we're going to do if our darling listeners have forgotten the years and years ago last April process is we

click a button and it gives us a random question from a list I have carefully prepared and tried not to think much about so it's all off the top of our head. And there's a couple of listener questions sprinkled in there as well. Because this time we have listeners, which I think started really happening at the end of April. So yeah, I think so. Yeah, this terrible, terrible world of end has been great for our numbers, Joanna, bright side. So yeah, on that note, Joanna, what are

some things that connect us all? This is something I'm actually, this is a reason I'm very passionate about food. Because everyone eats, not everyone is quite as passionate about food and eating as I am. Because I will start thinking about what I'm going to make for lunch while I'm eating breakfast. And as soon as I finish lunch, I start actually, I've already planned exciting dinners for the next three days. I'm very much looking forward to it.

But food is this huge connection between everyone. It's a necessary thing, but it also carries with it so much history. So much of how people are from cultures that move their meal times around based on things like weather patterns and working days. And then the weird bits of fake history that show up in it, like ploughman's is always my favorite example of that, which is something served in a British pub and it's called a ploughman's and it's sort of this

hearty meal that a ploughman might have eaten. Working for a charcuterie. Yes. It's cheese and ham and pickles and bread. Very nice. It's lovely. But it was the concept of a ploughman's lunch was invented by the cheese marketing board in the 70s. There's a cheese board. There's a cheese board.

That's disappointing and pleasing. So yeah, food fascinates me as something that connects us all, especially the way, you know, recipes passed down from generations and tweaked and sent over to someone else who sent it back. Yeah, have you had a chance to listen to any of the delicious legacy podcast I was on about about the history of food?

No, I've started following them on Twitter as a reminder to listen to them. I've still only listened to the one the short history of an ancient Mesopotamian food. But I've got because it's one of those ones I kind of want to pay attention to. Here's a really nice voice. But the last one out was a short history of bread, which I thought you particularly like.

So I'll link that in the notes and send the link to you as well. Yeah, I think that'll be a good walking podcast. Yeah. Yeah, it's very chilled. So it's also a nice listen to what you're doing shit in the evening one. Yeah.

It's really hard to get too worked up about the history of food. I'm sure you could if you tried, but he doesn't. I accept the challenge. Good. Angry competitor podcast by the end of the week. I'm going to get really angry about the Zanya for no reason. Oh, Zanya. Sorry.

So what about you, Francine? What do you think is something that connects us? Well, your answer is the best answer probably because it's something everybody experiences and it literally connects us because we eat together because we, you know, the whole breaking bread thing. Another thing I'd say maybe because I was trying to think of how to

can't be inclusive with it because you say things like music, but deaf people experience music differently, for instance. So I think sunlight would be a good one because no matter how you experience it, there aren't very many people who don't get something out of standing in the sun for a bit and eventually in a lot of cases, including mine, that doesn't include sunburn. But until that point, it's very nice to get all of the, oh, do I mean endorphins to get endorphins from sunlight?

Good feels. Yeah, those to translate it into Twitter, which is now my language. I've had to have Joanna explain some emoji to me today. Good vibes only. Yeah. Sound vibes. I relate to that one hard right now because, you know, it's the middle of winter.

It's really cold. The sun is slowly coming back down. It's starting to rise before eight o'clock. Yes. Yeah. God, I used to work five minutes walk from my house, which meant I never got up while it was dark. Never.

Through most of the winter until obviously lockdown, I was getting up in the dark every day and it would still be dark when I was leaving the house to walk to work. Yeah. And then by the time I left work, it would be getting dark. That was a bit of a crap time. Didn't love that. Because you're in a, like, windowless kitchen as well, aren't you?

Yeah. Like, yeah, at least in my office, we have massive windows. Yeah. Not, not so much with the kitchen. Yeah. Oh, actually, another answer. Sorry, I'm, I'm cheating and doing two, but the obvious one we didn't think of considering the general nature of our guest stories.

Oh, yeah, narrative. Yes. Every culture has some form of storytelling and myth and pass down. I talked about this when we were doing a book. Good. Which is abroad? Yes. I talked about this during which is abroad.

Every culture has some story about why the sun rises and why it sets and why the seasons exist and little ways to explain everything. Yeah. Yes, it is. Yes. And that's another good one because it connects us because we tell them to each other and until quite recently, one would have to do so face to face, quite recently in the grand scheme of things.

I mean, not like last year that we finally invented cuneiform. I might just go and start shouting narratives off my balcony. I'm sure the fin men all love it. They might. Really depends what kind of narrative. Oh, good point. Yeah, maybe not. All right, cool.

You'll go press the button, press the button. What do you have to have in common with someone to connect to them? Connect with them. That's a good one. I mean, that connects to this through the connect. Oh, God. I think it can be either a shared interest or a shared experience. Yeah.

I think a shared experience is easier to start getting to know someone through, but a shared interest, you're more likely to keep talking to them for a long time. Yes. So say if we both went to the same school, we could chat about, oh, shared memories, all this and all that. And that would be easy. It might take a bit longer to stumble upon the fact that we both

liked Terry Pratchett books, but then from there, you've got a massive amount of bullshit to talk about as we've proven for the last year and a bit. Yeah. What do you reckon? Uh, I think sense of humor is a really big one. And I don't mean like, oh, must have good sense of humor. But I think if someone can find the same things as me funny. Yes.

And it doesn't have to be identical. And like the shared sense of humor I have with you is very different from the shared sense of humor I have with other friends. Yes. And that comes down to knowing people with different experiences and different interests. But I think that common ground of we will both laugh at the same thing. Yeah, definitely.

And then even the parts of humor you don't share with that person, you're not going to kind of look at them funny when they make a joke you don't quite get. You'll be like, what? This is, you know, this is a good test of if I'm going to enjoy a conversation with someone. If I joke about transcending my physical form and becoming one with the void and they back away slowly, we probably won't have much else in common.

Yes. Yeah. It is an odd icebreaker, but it does kind of weed them out quickly. I suppose. Yeah, it's a good way to test people. That and how they feel about the last Jedi. All right, I'll click again. Oh, I should say now, I should have said at the beginning, listeners, please

send us your answers to these questions because we would like to hear them and we can read some of them out as follow up and stick them up on the fridge, things like that. Yes. Do you have a purpose? Jesus. That is a horrible thing to ask a person. I know.

Do you know what? Another tangent. I had that book called Little Book of Thunks or something that I went through to try and pick out questions from. And in the end, they were all so ridiculous. I didn't use any of them. Excellent. I think I might have got a weird cut price version of the ones the guys on

Hello, Internet used years ago. But how do you know you have a head is probably still my favorite ominous one. But anyway, do you have a purpose, Joanna? Again, horrible. Quite frankly, no. Cool. And I don't mean that I don't have things.

I'm definitely not burdened with glorious poor boys. Deep down in there. You have to have seen the film Avengers Assemble and then seen the associated memes about a poor boys being dropped on Tom Hiddleston as Loki. Cool. Cool. All right. That's the whole universe.

I haven't gone down yet. Yeah. Good example of last time. I don't mean this in a depressing way. Obviously, I have things to do. I have a to-do list every day, which I willfully ignore. Yes. But in the grand scheme of I have a reason to be on this planet.

No, I don't believe really that anyone has any kind of divine purpose for existing. If I do something and it has a positive outcome, not just for me, them for others, that is great. I love it if I have made people smile, if I have made people laugh, if I have brought someone joy, I don't think I exist entirely for that reason. I don't think anyone exists specifically for a reason. I think we are absolutely the products of chaos and randomness. And that's a great thing.

Yes, I like that. I would agree with you, but add on that I think having a purpose or a sense of purpose can be really useful. And it's kind of up to you to choose it and evolve it or change it completely as your life changes. Oh, absolutely. I I have purposes that I have set myself. Yeah.

I have intentions. Yes. How I want my life to be and what I need to do to get it to that point. Yeah, the word purpose now looks like a proper nonsense word. We've said that too many times. But yeah. Yes. So we think that purpose is not ingrained, built in, doled out by some higher power,

but it is something you can choose, evolve and work with. Yes, absolutely. Use as a tool. Yes. OK, cool. Right. You go. Do the same.

We've had that one. Kind of as quick. Should we be trying to contact extraterrestrial life? Oh, fuck, I was hoping I wouldn't have to answer that first. So that's a whole debate about whether. If anyone hears this, could it possibly be a good thing? I think. On the whole.

Probably yes. And that's largely because I don't have a huge amount of faith in our ability to perpetuate our species for. Much, much longer. And again, I don't mean that in a like rural doomed nihilist way. I mean. I the way the world's currently set up, I can't see how we. Move to things like.

Interstellar travel, things like that we'd need to be able to do to leave the Earth one day. And. I think some kind of extraterrestrial intervention or advice, if it is force coming, could help us with that kind of thing. So you're taking very much the optimistic viewpoint there. I. Personally, I would love us to correct extraterrestrial life and the concept of extraterrestrial life. The concept fascinates me, but realistically, looking at the fact that humanity is a bit

trash, I'm not entirely sure our influence on the rest of the universe would be a good thing. Oh, right. So you're thinking about it that way around. I was about to say, like, because I'm trying not to judge extraterrestrials on how trash we are, because like last week, we were talking about all the different kinds of life and why. Like we wouldn't. It wouldn't necessarily have to be the kind of life form who would use us as. I mean, but then again, like the main.

Thrust of the argument against ever contacting other worlds is if a much higher intelligence comes across as they're quite likely to just see us as ants, and we don't think much about an ant hill as we dig into it to use for the soil for something. Yeah. Whereas I'm looking at the humans, a trash, we should be released on the rest of the universe. Yeah, interesting. I haven't really heard that bit that way around. Yeah.

Hmm. But then maybe contacting extraterrestrial life and realising how small we are in the grand scheme of things would be a net benefit for humans. Yeah, might be a bit humbling. Have you seen the viral video on Twitter by Vinnie, someone or other, about the intergalactic federation interviewing us? No, I haven't seen that one. OK, I'll say anything in the notes. It's very funny.

Do you care about leaving a legacy? No, not really. Yeah. Why? I like seeing the impact I've left on the world and the physical things I've done now. Like I enjoy when people have read my writing or shared it or enjoyed something I've made. But beyond me, absolutely not, once I'm not there to enjoy the fact that that is happening in some way, I don't really care because I won't be able to experience it in any way, shape or form.

Yeah. And part of this is I don't plan on having children or anything, so there's no one else after me. Yes. I like the idea of leaving something that could benefit others. It wouldn't bother me if people knew it was me or not, so I don't think it would be a legacy. Yeah, I like the idea of leaving the world a better place than I found it. Yeah. Yeah.

But I don't care about it being my legacy, I just think I would like the world to be better than I found it. Yeah, it probably comes down a bit to semantics, doesn't it? Yeah, how do you define a legacy? Yeah. It's something you never get to see. If I could be asked to reach cross and get my dictionary, but it's so far. No, I'm just glad I gave myself the opportunity to shoehorn in a Hamilton reference. Oh, sorry, I wasn't even listening.

All right, that was easy. My turn. What do you think comes after we die? Are you happy with that? Nothing and no. Oh, see, I'm nothing and yes. Oh. I like the idea of ending.

I think we've gone into this multiple times. The idea of my consciousness no longer existing fills me with the kind of clammy dread. Whereas you quite like the idea of arrest, I guess. I just want a night off. I'm very much on the belief of there isn't anything after this. This is all we have. Yeah. And I could be wrong.

I might burn in the fires of hell for all eternity. Nice and warm. Yeah. Right now, that sounds quite appealing. Again, my flat is very cold. I see your whole thing about living forever and don't get me wrong. If I can guarantee that it wouldn't monkeys poor in some way, I would be right there with you. And I have already committed to living forever with you.

Yeah, as long as it's fun. Yeah. But I am quite happy that this is all I have. Yeah. And that makes me embrace what I have a lot more. Obviously, I've been through periods of terrible mental health in my life and actually losing faith and therefore losing faith in the concept of an afterlife improved my health somewhat when I was younger because it made me very willing to embrace the years I do have.

Yeah. Without constantly worrying about some ultimate judgment at the end. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of cling to the idea. I don't believe it, but I remind myself that it might be because I like the idea of being reunited with people one day.

But I kind of keep that as a back of the head thing in the same way that I do. One day I might fall through a wardrobe into a fun fantasy parallel universe. You never know. I mean, you do know, but you never know. But you never know. I mean, I check the back of my wardrobe regularly just in case, but not too thoroughly because it's not very well assembled and could collapse. Yes.

There is a theme to things in my flat. Oh, no. Where does the sofa go after I die? Oh, I'll add that to the pandemic short stories list. Okay, your turn. Okay. When does a human with cybernetic enhancement become not human? Oh, fun.

I mean, this is the, how do you define humanity? Yeah. Is it? Which again, we went into a little bit last week. This is something that definitely comes off the back of dark side of the sun. I think physically a human body is human. Yeah. I think if there is no human body left, but I think you can expand the definition of human

to be an independent free thinking consciousness. Yes. And I think maybe you wouldn't call it human, but it is the equivalent of humanity still. What if it was a consciousness that originated in a human body? So it was a consciousness, say our consciousness that ended up in a different body. Would that still be a human consciousness, but not a human as an entity? Again, I think it's more of a semantic argument than a philosophical one. Yeah.

I think it would still. Hey man, we like taxonomy. I think it would still be humanity. But of a different form. Yeah. So we'd be looking at a classing it in the same way that in the dark side of the sun, you'd say anyone with the equivalent sentence intelligence, it looks like they were doing, didn't it?

Yeah. Yes. What about you? Where are you on this? I think that if the consciousness is preserved, it would be human. But it's hard to say how much a human mind could be changed by. So I guess the brain, I would say at the moment, because we don't know how much a human mind would be changed by being taken out of that environment.

But again, we don't know how much would be changed by be taken out of its meat space. I think you'd have a different relationship to the world around you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But just like your general cyberpunk enhancements, I think that's all still human. Yeah. Lobster claw, spatula, bombs, throwback.

Throwback to our original interview. Okay. Oh, this one's a listener question. And I'm just going to double check who it's from if that's all right. Oh, sure. Sorry. I should have left it in. That's fine.

I've got them handy. If I go to the right place. Oh, this is from Karin. I'm really sorry if I've got your name wrong on Twitter. He said, if you could only have one Discworld sub-series as in watch, which is Tiffany, etc. Which one would it be and why? And so he heads up for our first time readers that this answer might get a little spoilery.

We'll try and keep it to a minimum. Yeah, should be all right. I think it would be the watch because I think that's the most cohesive arc. I think it's the one with the proportion of strongest books and with the most kind of lessons weaved in amongst the funny bits. And it kind of starts after he's hit his stride. That's fair. Okay, I'm going to say watch you.

I think for me, I'm really, really torn between the watch and the witches because the witches are thematically some of my favorites and they interrogate morality in a different way to the watch books. They're a lot more about one person's single intention as opposed to the watch, which is more of a, so the witches are about dealing with an individual, whereas I'd say the watch is closest to crowd control, although it does all come down to individual humans. Yes. But I think the morality that's being discussed in the watch books is more about swaths of

people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like sociology versus psychology kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I'd be very torn between them, but I think the watch just has the edge. Okay.

Because the witches sort of reaffirmed things. I think I really already sort of thought and knew about myself, whereas the watch gave me more questions about how I interact with the world around me. And it contains two of my very favorites, I mean, Night Watch and Monstrous Regimen. I'm including Monstrous Regimen in the watch arc. Okay. Cheating, but okay. Yeah, I know.

I can't lose that book. I love it too much. Okay. Okay, your turn. Cool. So you've changed a lot in the last, say, 10 years, as we mentioned earlier when we were talking casually. Is the core you still the same you as it was when you were like 18 or 19?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You still recognize yourself and would say you're definitely the same person. Yeah, as we were kind of jokingly chatting about it earlier, I am a very different person to who I was 10 years ago. I have different wants and needs. I live a very different life.

I am a lot more capable because of course I am. I am a lot more capable because of my age as opposed to 18. But fundamentally, I still have the same first 18 years of my life really informing who I am as a person. Yeah. And the first 18 years of my life were quite frankly ridiculous. As have been the last 10 years actually, my life might just be a bit ridiculous Francine. Yeah.

Yeah. I still have the same face, which is great. Yeah. Slightly drier skin maybe. Okay. So what about when you were like 10? Oh no, I was a dick when I was 10. So like you wouldn't be able to empathize with yourself so much there?

I think with hindsight, I'd be able to have the empathy because I understand where I had to, where I was at 10 mentally and emotionally and how I got from there to where I am now. Yeah. So the hindsight would allow me to empathize. Yes. But also obviously, child to adult is a, I mean, well, child to 18 is a huge amount of growth. 18 to 28 is coming into adulthood and I didn't really expect the level of change I actually

experienced, which is stupid and naive of me. Yeah. Well, everyone does, don't they? When you're 18, 19, 20, you kind of feel finished almost. And then you go through your 20s. Yeah. I mean, you do when you're 14, don't you? Like, at this point, it's only experience that tells me I'm going to change a lot in

the next 10 years. Yeah. I thought I knew everything at 14. Yeah. Maybe we did and we just forgot. Entirely possible. I then drank a lot from 15 to 18. That was about when everything started going downhill.

So what about you then? I don't know. I'm less sure about it because I kind of went through a spiraling period starting at about 18 or really starting at about 18. And I've said before, I'm not sure if it was on the podcast or not, that I find it easier to relate to myself at 17 than I do to myself at 23, for instance. I can understand that. I think I lost myself a lot and I'm now coming back to it and I'm not sure whether or I'm

now come back to it, I'd say. I'm pretty solidly okay with most of myself now. But I'm not sure. Probably not by 19. So 10 years ago, I'm not sure I could solidly relate. And then going back to when I was 10 or 11, again, I could empathize very much and especially now with context, knowing some of why I probably felt like I did and stuff. But I kind of made a concerted decision to change my personality when I left middle school

and went to upper school and I think I did a pretty solid job of it. And so now I do find it quite hard to relate to 10-year-old me. I don't think I've ever solidly really changed my personality, but I think it has taken me this long to grow into my personality. For someone who jokes about having no emotions, I'm quite an emotional person and obviously that was a lot more at the forefront when I was 10 and when I was 18. But I think also in my case, our spirals happened differently and I was starting to climb out of it by the time I was 18 or 19.

I still made some terrible life choices, but in a seemingly practical direction. It wasn't so wheeling chaotically towards doom. Yes. Yes. Just a fork in the road kind of thing. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah.

Right. I'll have to ask again in 10 years, make a note. I will forget. Just like I haven't read Gorman-Gast yet. Yes, well. We've got Jeffrey Michael on Twitter has asked if you were a world leader in what small petty way would you abuse your power? And I just want to give in Jeffrey's examples.

It's great. Okay. I would make all utensils and tools to be made for left-handers and righties would be required to use them. Oh, you bastard. You sinister old bastard. I am just about ambidextrous enough to be able to cope with that having broken my right arm so many times I've had to get good with my left.

Yeah. I mean, I'd be fine eating with my left hand because, you know, you get the hang of it, but scissors. No. Nope. So yeah. So in what small petty way would you abuse your power, Francine? All right.

I would require everybody to switch over to my body clock as default, which is sleep at 2am, wake up at 10am. Perfect. So the whole early morning people being the default is frankly disgusting. Yeah, that's fair. I'm through with it and I'm running on that platform in 2024. How about you? Mandatory, hospitality, national service slash retail.

Everyone has to do a year, waitressing, bar work, working in a shop, and also mandatory empathy retraining once every five years so that they remember that the people serving and cooking for them are human beings and not to be dicks to them. Yeah. Don't go back in their box at the end of the day. Yeah. God, people really were twats weren't they? Yeah.

I love that my job no longer requires dealing with the general public. Yeah. Well, it does, but there's a proxy. Yes. Yeah. You're one behind. Fucking. Yeah.

I did not enjoy waitressing at all. I didn't mind bar work as much as it wasn't amazing for like people treating you like a human person. I always quite enjoyed bar work. In fact, I didn't even mind waitressing that much in some of the jobs I had, but I worked in quite relaxed and fun spaces. Retail was the worst for me. I never did retail.

I did. Well, I did retail for a couple of Christmas jobs for nothing serious. Working as like in a cafe as a waitress was fine because again, yeah, it was quite casual. People aren't expecting the world from you and you get the odd twat that you do everywhere, but working at hotels and things was awful. And I hated it and everyone was horrible. And I used to try not to cry so much. Poor 18 year old me boohoo.

I never really had to do the formal like hotel or fancy restaurant waitressing. It was more pub and cafe stuff for me. And yeah, that was fun. But retail was the worst. I worked in the shop for three months over Christmas. The same six songs playing on repeat. I was standing at the doorway to the fitting room and because of the counter I worked at in the shop, it was the first counter you'd come to as you went in, which meant we had

a rule of we couldn't process refunds on that counter because if we did, everyone would walk in and come straight to us. And the amount of times I spent arguing with someone who just waited half an hour at the queue to find out I wouldn't process their refund. That's a particularly shitty shop to work in as well. Like for non UK listeners, Marx and Spencer's big, generally multi-story shop with like clothes and food and yeah. I can imagine working in like a little shop would be okay.

Yeah. Where you can only practically deal with a couple of people at a time and. Yeah, big corporate nonsense, not for me. Right, your turn. All right. Is there such a thing as a good person or a bad person? Oh, morality. This is fun.

Yeah. A bit of morality on a Friday afternoon. Some of this, I think, comes down to how you define positive or negative ethics. Is it about intention or the greatest good for the greatest number of people? Okay. And I don't have an answer to that. Obviously. Okay.

Why do we have you on this show? Oh, that's it. You planned the entire thing. Got it. Yeah. I planned really hard on this one. Ask Kant. It was a real pissant.

But I think that then ties into is there such a thing as a truly good or truly bad person? I think there are people who have better intentions than others, but I think so much that is factors like environment, especially now with social media being so prevalent. It is generally about which spaces you are in and where you are in rhetoric back to yourself. Yeah. Because you could argue some of the most evil people ever have thought they had particularly good intentions. Yes.

You're never the villain of your own story. Unless you're a crazy ex-girlfriend. Yes. That was a funny song. So no, I don't think there is such a thing as inherently good or inherently bad because an inherently good or an inherently bad person because I think there is no such thing as inherently positive or negative morality. I think it's just too much of a gray area.

Personality doesn't evolve in a vacuum. No. Yeah. What about you? I think I agree. I think the intention matters, but I don't know. Some things like spite, it's hard to relate to where spite against a certain group comes from, for instance, but it's probably dangerous to try and elevate yourself above and say,

well, I could never have fallen into that trap given exactly the circumstances. Or some people are more inclined towards believing things than others and some people are more naturally inclined to just do more good things. Yes. Possibly people with higher energy levels. But yeah, I think it's nurture versus nature as well, isn't it? No, I don't think there's such a thing as an inherently good or bad person. I don't think anybody is irredeemable, probably.

I do. I don't think anybody is... I do. That's a bit... Yeah. Yeah. But like if we even outcross the... That's more of a sanctuary.

Yeah. I don't think anyone's irredeemable and I don't think anybody is above falling into traps that would make them bad or make them do bad things. That'll be nice. Yeah. Do you think the ends or the means is more important? Oh, and you put in brackets for this question, the journey. Yes.

I love that I finally sold you on the journey. Well, I can keep arguing forever. You were clearly not going to bend on that one. Ah, fucking depends on it. Usually the ends, but I think when asking this question of themselves, people sometimes forget about the ends they are causing within the means. Right. And so if your end goal is to say save a village, but the means include destroying another village,

then... You're done fucked up. You're done fucked up because the ends have already happened elsewhere. Does that make sense? Am I making sense? Yeah. Just about ish for a given value of sense. Yeah, you need to take your blinkers off basically when you're trying to achieve something.

I'm very much the means over the ends. Okay. Because unintended consequences are such a thing. Okay. So say just to apply it to a small part of my life that doesn't have a huge moral bearing, but say I... That's a good idea. Intend to make a dress and it goes slightly wrong and I end up with a completely different

dress to the one I had in my head when I was designing it. Sure. The end is still a dress, but the means completely changed the outcome. And then if you say apply that to a bigger decision, say saving a village, if everything you do has an ultimately negative impact throughout your means, then I wouldn't say the end is justifiable. So yeah, so similar to yours. But again, it all adds up, doesn't it?

Because if the negative impacts you're having along the way are we flooded a few termite mounds, then generally people would accept that the ends did justify the means. Yeah. I'm thinking very much about one avatar episode I watched, by the way. Ooh, which one? The one where what's it with the village? I don't want to spoil an avatar for anyone. I mean, the show's...

With the village, he lives in trees and then... Jet. So I didn't know his name. That was part of not wanting to spoil my life. Have you watched any more avatars? No, it upset me so much last time. Okay. Look, when they find the cow, tell me when they find the cow and I'll watch it again.

He's a sky bison and you need to watch the rest of the series you're on. I mean, like, so it all all makes sense, I promise. It's worth watching. The ends justify the means in this case, do they? Yes. The end of avatar justifies the means of watching avatar. Yeah. A legend of Korra.

Yeah. So I think I might be approaching this question sideways. So I think if the ends outweigh the means, then yes, often they do... Have justified. Care. They do matter more. Yeah. But I think there's a lot of gray area and you can be easily swayed into thinking it's

more one way than it is because of what you want to see. And it also comes back to that other argument I was talking about with intention versus impact. Yes. The end is your intention in this situation. The means are your overall impact because everything you do will have an outcome. I'm not sure that's quite right. I think the end is very much your impact as well.

Oh, yeah. No, I'm not saying the end isn't your impact, but the end is more of your intention. Potentially. I don't know. I'm not sure that makes sense. Nothing, I say, really makes sense for answering that speaker. No, that's true. I really shouldn't be throwing stones in this incredibly fragile glass house right now.

Your turn. Ask me a question. All right. Have you noticed that... Listen to this, that we're just running away when we get slightly too confused about the next essential philosophical question. Oh, look a button. I'll tell you what.

I keep getting ones we've had before, so read me out another listener one. Let me come back to the listener questions. What else do we have? Another fun one from Geoffrey Michael, actually. We'll do both of his. How long does it take to record a podcast episode? Is there a lot that gets cut out or is it mostly one complete conversation? Where are these ones?

I didn't pick them up on the feed. They're in the notifications. What was he replying for? That was as a reply to his own questions. Oh, right. No, that's probably me. Sorry, I forgot the question again. How long does it take to record a podcast episode?

Quite a long time, can you tell? Or is it mostly one complete conversation? Well, it varies. So, originally, it took us a very long time. Yes. And some of that, I think, was the fact that I wasn't really sympathetic to how much time editing took you. I should have insisted you looked over my shoulder for one of them.

But then that wouldn't have been fair because obviously it takes me a lot less time now than it did just because I got used to doing it. But also, we've adjusted how we record. So, originally, I would come at this with my process. I have, for most things, like, say, writing a first draft where I would throw a lot of shit at the wall and you would cut it down to what had stuck. Yeah. And then you actually pointed out to me how long and arduous that process was and we

have adjusted. So now we plan a lot more in advance. And I'd say we usually chat for a bit before we get to the part of a soft open that a listener is. And that's because this is also us catching up with each other over coffee. Yeah. Yeah, this did replace our weekly coffee dates. Yes.

I miss those. But once we're sort of into the main episode, there is very little that gets cut. We cut out our coffee breaks. But we try and do it in a roughly single take. Yeah. Sometimes there are unavoidable things. Yeah, like. For a sort of an hour and 15 minute episode, which I'd say is our average-ish length.

Yeah, that would actually. Hour and 15 to hour and a half. We probably record for two, two and a half hours. Yeah, normally if we go over two hours is because there's a whole tongue at the beginning. I'm going to cut out like probably today because we spent a long time talking about nothing while we were waking up. Like literally nothing. It's incredible that words were coming out of our mouths.

It was really quite fascinating. Yeah. I'll fill in the answer a little by saying it got a lot easier to edit once I switched from audacity to descript, which is an app I heard about on one of Merlin Man's podcast, probably back to work, which allows you to edit by selecting words that it's generated through an automatic transcript. And that transcript isn't massively accurate, which is why I haven't released any transcripts yet, although I will get to it.

But it is enough that I can easily see where I should skip to and it automatically selects the, I forgot all the names for it, the frame, the audio equivalent of a frame, where it doesn't do that weird clipping thing with the change of volume. And that used to take me a very long time on audacity partly because I didn't know there was a shortcut to skip to it, which I don't know, which is very annoying in retrospect. But yeah, occasionally, I will cut out a bit that I thought was too personal, yeah, believe it or not, or too identifying, I should say, or too boring. Yeah, I'm a chronic oversharer, so there are occasionally bits of me talking about my

life that we do cut. I'd say probably 90% of what you hear is what we've said. There'll be odd bits of conversation. And there are times where we start to go down tangents. And yeah, we're better at editing before we start recording now. Yes. At the beginning as well, I used to spend a lot of time cutting out our stutters and our arms and ours.

And partly we've got a little bit better at those. And partly I've stopped caring as much. So hopefully none of you care much either, because that was very time consuming. Yeah, I think everyone's just accepted a bit of football fries going to happen, especially in an episode like this, because we are thinking as we go. Yes, yeah. So yes, that is the too long answer to your question, which I'm not going to be editing down in the spirit of it.

That's a little peek behind the curtain. Next listener question from Mr. PD on Twitter. If you had the opportunity to travel through dimensions and experience other worlds and other realities, but it was only one way, and the only way to come home was by accidentally going full circle, would you do it? I don't know how big the circle is. Well, I think that's the point you sort of don't know when you. Yeah.

God, that's hard. I mean, yes, probably yes. But I would be very torn because I like my husband a lot. Love, one could say. I love my husband a lot. Probably not overstating it. I want to be overly effusive on the podcast, but I think it's okay to admit that you love your husband, Francine, like no offense, but at the wedding, I kind of picked up on the

hint that you might sort of fancy him a little bit. But yeah, if I could take him with me, yes, definitely. Oh, my little dog as well. If I can take Jack and Dia with me, yes, definitely. Otherwise, fuck, probably depends on where I am in my life. I'm getting towards the end of it. Yes. I'm like now.

Oh, I've got like another 40 years guaranteed ish happy days. So I don't know. Speaking of someone who isn't hugely tied down, I do have friends that I'm close to and I care about. And obviously I have a small amount of family left who I am close to and who I care about. I think I absolutely would. Yeah. Because I would like to see more of the multiverse.

But at the same time, I do really like sitting down and being quite comfortable and I know I can do that in my flat. So I'm like 85%. A little rinse wind on one shoulder. Yeah. Tiffany on the other baby. Rinse wind on the shoulder saying, but potatoes. Potatoes.

Potatoes. Sorry. I'm really hungry. Potatoes. I managed to eat before we started today. Well done me. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

It's the answer. Oh, I'm assuming this is like a once owned the opportunity. How pissed off would you be if you turned it down and then like the next... I'd turn it down the next day Jack fell out of a tree or something. Well, fuck. I should have just gone. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that's the main thing that would get me going is the FOMO. The fear of missing out. Yeah. Right. Like FOMO has a massive effect on me. I'm not going to lie. Joanna, you traveled through dimensions, experienced other worlds and realities in an unknown journey through truly unmapped territories.

Why did you do it? FOMO. Oh, I love internet shorthand. It helps me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are so many things that if I could reply to people in person with the upside down smiley face emoji, it would cut the conversation well short.

I've tried just tilting my head. It's the only reason I'm doing yoga in the hope that I can one day do a handstand and stop having to explain to people that I mean, let's put a brave face on this, but everything's on fire. I feel like that covers it pretty well. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Therapies here. Let's leave immediately. Yeah. Let's do the other listener question I've got in front of me. Which book are you most looking forward to covering that you haven't yet? Now, we did ask this last time, but let's see if it's changed because we've covered a few more. Yes.

I don't remember what my answer was last time. I think last time you said The Amazing Boris. Oh, yeah. I am still really hyped for both The Amazing Boris and Soul Music. They're two of my favourites, but they are favourites due to nostalgia. So now I'm approaching them with a mix of hype and dread because... Hypedread. Hypedread.

Drip. Head. No. Hyped. Hyped. No. No. That's already a word.

Fuck. All right. We'll work up that. We'll get back to it. Yeah. So those are now a bit of hype and dread because I love them so much. What if, A, I love them too much to have a nuanced conversation about them. And I think it helps that they're not your favourites because you can bring...

Critical analysis. Yeah. I don't have a say to get bit. Yeah. Me sat here going, oh, I really like this. I think probably now it is Monstrous Regiment because it's, again, one of my favourites. I think it's a fantastic book, but I think there is a lot to discuss, especially around gender.

Hmm. And I think that's going to be... Bit draining. No. I think it's going to be a positive thing. Okay. What about you? Hmm.

And again, we're trying to have this conversation in a non-spoilery way. So I can't really talk about why I'm so much looking forward to these books. So I think last time I said Amazing Morris because it's one I've only read the ones. So I am still looking forward to that. I think this will change every week in the same way that my favourite five would change, but I'm going to be a proper twat and say I'm quite looking forward to when we do a bonus on, like, the long earth. Yeah.

Just for the chance to mix that sci-fi in there. It's not really... If I'm going to say Discworld, though, I think, I think that Thud has the most interesting tendons for me to go down off the top of my head. Thud does have some very good tendons. Yeah. And I'm not going to go into any of that because it's all spoilery, but yeah. Yeah.

I think non-Discworld, I'm really, really excited to talk about Nation. Oh, yeah. I mean, Nation, I'm really excited to reread and talk about with you, but it's a little bit fraught. It is. I think it's going to be a difficult discussion, but I think it's going to be a good discussion. Yeah. Yeah. Spoilers, colonialism is bad.

Yeah. Even parallel universe colonialism. Actually, I'm also really excited for next month and small gods because it is a very, very good one, but it has never been one that's, like, featured heavily in my top five or top 10 list. I've only read it a couple of times and I didn't enjoy it the first time I read it. It's a lot of people's top one, isn't it, small gods? Yeah.

So we're going to have to really make it good, do it justice. And I think there's a lot of opportunity for that. I think it goes along both of our strengths. So I think, yeah, there'll be some good episodes. So yeah, that should be good. I think I'm not mentioning that as long as I'm hyped for because, like, we're just about to do it. Say whatever.

I haven't actually. I've not got time to hype. I've only got time to dread. Dread is just kind of a constant background hum now. No time to get hyped up. Time for dread. I'm late. I'm late.

I'm late. Oh, I didn't make it fit the meter. What are we talking about? Oh, which book? Yeah. Okay. We did that. Cool.

That's all of our listener questions. All right. Let's finish up with one more existential. Both click through and find ones we haven't done before. Okay. All right. All right. All right.

Oh, no. Have we done them all? No. I've got one we haven't done. Okay. You go. What one piece of advice would you give others? Oh, fuck.

I put that in. Why didn't I? I've got too much integrity, Joanna. Do you know what it is? I haven't even been thinking about it subconsciously. That's my problem. Everyone says it. France seen too much integrity, Carol.

Yes, that is. Stalling here. Stalling here. Fuck. France seen really good at improv, Carol. That's what they call me. Wow. You're not even bothering looking skeptical anymore.

Okay. Oh, do you have one loaded? Kind of. Okay. You do first. This sounds so fucking wonky. Okay. Honestly.

Just fucking breathe and calm down a little bit. All right. Fuck you. I don't mean just you specifically, but I mean everyone. And I don't just mean during the pandemic, but in general, the world is a very stressful place. And we are basically strange little monkeys with lizard-based adrenaline glands. It's very easy to panic and become overwhelmed.

And I'm saying this is someone who regularly panics and becomes overwhelmed. And the way that mostly manifests in me is that I then sit catatonic and can't do anything for three days. The email was fine. Was it not? The email was fine. I got like a three-line response right away. So I panicked yesterday about emailing someone about something legal and making sure that

email made me seem like a real human. And I tried to yell nobody cares in a caring way. Fire text. But honestly, the amount of things that people stress over and bring it back to food, cooking, will stress and say, but I'm not good at cooking and I don't know how to do this. And it's like, God, just calm the fuck down. It doesn't matter if you get everything ready at the same time because you can keep half of it warm in the oven while you do the rest.

Yeah. And I feel like taking that advice. Yeah, it's only too long to work that out in particular, I must say. Yeah. It's such a wonderful thing to learn. And but take that energy into everything. Put some things in the oven to keep warm while you do the rest. That's my advice.

Yoga with Adrian. Yeah. Okay. So I've also been doing yoga for 14 days, two weeks now, two weeks straight. Yeah. So that has probably seeped into some of me. I'm trying to keep it at bay with skepticism, cynicism and a general hatred for the world. Okay.

I've got one. Okay. Okay. Mine is puzzle it out. I think it's important to feel accomplished. And that doesn't have to be massive things, but working out how to do something instead of throwing your hands up and saying, I can't do this is incredibly satisfying. So things like learning how to code and that are the obvious ways that you can get your

fair share of, ooh, let's work out how to do this. But yeah, just other things like cooking would be another good example. I like this kind of food. How do I make this food taste like that food? And little bits of DIY that are unlikely to kill you or cause major property damage. Like replacing a doorknob is something I did and it took me all fucking afternoon. It was really annoying, but God, I felt good once I'd finished. There's so much shit around now.

There's YouTube, there's tutorials everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. I think my little tip for finding more satisfaction if not happiness in your life is just to try and puzzle stuff out instead of giving up on it. Excellent. That's good advice. I like it.

Better in advance so I could word it better. Maybe I'll write a thing one day. I mean, my advice was literally calm the fuck down. So. Yeah. Yeah. Snappy. I mean, it worked.

Look at me. I'm no longer randomly giving myself nicknames. So that's good. When you have a minor existential crisis, have you got one more for me? Oh, here's a good one. What animal do you think we could learn the most from by experiencing the world through their senses? It might just be that they're coming up in my brain because we've mentioned that in

Hills a couple of times, but I think ants. Okay. Because they're tiny and obviously they don't have the neural pathways that humans do. Yeah. But they're directed like it's in built into their brains to do things in a certain way. Yeah. Completely regimented with absolutely no free will or free thought. So to be able to experience that would be the.

I think that would give such a appreciation for the openness of the human mind. That's interesting. Okay. You know, one of the smallest to one of the biggest. I was about to say the biggest. Then I realized there's quite a lot of animals that are actually quite a bit bigger than us. Yeah.

Sorry about that charismatic megafauna. I mean, obviously I won't say elephants, but that's not right. I think. Which is something sea based because we don't know enough about the sea. I don't know. I like yours is like a philosophical answer. Yeah. I think learning like scientifically more about the planet.

I would pick like a whale or something that does quite deep dives and long migration patterns. You know. Okay. Sorry. When you said the CEO was thinking like deep sea and I don't want to know. Yeah. See, I would say that. But like having seen that documentary.

No. Fuck me. That's weird. I think some things are best left a mystery. You know, you don't want to shine a neon light on the entirety of, I don't mean any fluorescent light on the entirety of existence. Leave some stuff soft around the edges. Yeah.

I will let the deep sea be one of those blurs because there's some messed up shit down there. Yeah. I kind of want to rewatch that documentary now. What was the documentary again? I think it was David Attenborough. I'll find it and link it. Cool. Yeah.

Okay. Well, that's a. That's a nice one to end up thinking of the deep sea and how we don't have to go down there. That's a nice, nice point to end. Yeah. I'm going to force me that deep into the ocean as far as I know. Do you know something I don't?

No. Cool. Yeah. I think that's a, that's our fun little bonus episode. Yeah. Round it up. It was nice to do this again. It was.

Hopefully we won't have to do it another 300 days or so. Yeah. Fingers crossed. We will be out of this lockdown at some point. Obviously in the meantime, while we're all locked down and suffering in various ways, listeners do reach out to us if you want sensible advice or not sensible advice. If you've got questions, if you need cooking tips. Yeah.

If you have your answers to the questions we've just gone through. Yeah. We requested to read them. We just like being talked to. We do. We do. And we're here if you need someone to talk to. So we're now onto our little break for the rest of the month and we will be back on the

first of February to talk about small gods. Oh God. Yeah. February is really satisfying this year. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because the first is a Monday and the last day is a Sunday. Oh nice.

Okay. Sweet. So yeah. We'll be back on the first of February to talk about small gods. Yeah. It's a big one. Ironically. Small gods.

Big book. You know what they say. No. God, I was hoping you did because I didn't have a clue. Oh, fuck me. Okay. Good. Good.

Play outro was then. Yes. Yes. Do that thing. You usually do. I'm going to say the things and the order with the communication methods and the leaving behind. Yeah.

I am just pulling. How was yoga today, by the way? It was good. There was one little chair pose, but it was like a two second one. Right. But it was a nice one. It was very, very slow, stretchy. Right.

Sorry. Thank you for listening to this special bonus episode of the true shall make you fret. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can follow us on Instagram at the true shall make you fret on Twitter at make you fret pod on Facebook at the true shall make you fret. You can join our subreddit r slash T T S M Y F. You can email us your thoughts, queries, questions, albatrosses and snacks, the true shall make you fret pod at gmail.com.

As we said, we'll be back on the first of February to talk about small gods. Also in the meantime, I might be live twisting all of the extended Lord of the Rings. So keep an eye out for that. Not through the podcast account. Not through the podcast account. Okay. Good. Right.

Put my foot down somewhere. If any of our listeners wants to join me on binging all of Lord of the Rings in one day, then I will announce what we're doing. Yeah. I'm still going to announce it on the podcast again. Yeah. That's fine. And in the meantime, dear listener, don't let us detain you.

Bum bum. The podcast at which we are usually reading and recapping every book by. All right. Good. You've forgotten his name. Good. No, it's because I usually say in the discord series. I'm sorry.

I'm so tired. All right. Please cut that. All right. All right. I will.