Author: Pratchat Imps

#Pratchat51 – Boffoing the Winter Slayer

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Welcome to the Year of the Lachrymating Leveret! Bestselling sci-fi and fantasy author Garth Nix joins Liz and Ben up in the Ramtops, where Tiffany Aching dances a forbidden dance and gets into more trouble in the thirty-fifth Discworld novel, 2006’s Wintersmith.

Two years after her first Witch Trial, Tiffany Aching is nearly a teenager and two months into her stint with her latest mentor – terrifying Miss Treason, the 113-year-old deaf and blind justice witch. In the dead of night Miss Treason takes her to witness the “dark dance”, but against the rules she is given, Tiffany does more than observe – after all, what good is a dance you can only watch? But Tiffany’s been noticed: the spirit of Winter himself has his eye on her now. There’s something different about Tiffany, too…but that might have to wait. The Nac Mac Feegle are back, there’s a witch’s cottage up for grabs, the boy she’s been writing went to a party with someone else, and if she can’t figure out how to fend off the Wintersmith, it might be an uncomfortably long Winter…

Published in one of Pratchett’s rare one-book years, Wintersmith advances Tiffany Aching into adolescence – and appropriately enough deals with themes of unwanted attention, uncontrollable urges, the perils of teenage and adult politics, and hordes of tiny blue men. Plus it’s full of favourite characters, both old and new.

Do you think Tiffany could have chosen not to enter the dance? Have the Feegles been to our world – and do they belong in this book, or has Tiffany outgrown them? What’s the most ridiculous thing someone has done to try and impress you? Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat51 on social media.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:10:14 — 60.0MB)

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Guest Garth Nix is a bestselling and award-winning Australian author, best known for his young adult fantasy series “The Old Kingdom”, which began with Sabriel in 1995. In November 2021 he published the prequel Terciel and Elinor, about the parents of the original novel’s protagonist. He’s also written dozens of other novels and short stories, including the Seventh Tower and Keys to the Kingdom series of novels, 2015’s Newt’s Emerald, 2017’s Frogkisser, and 2020’s The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, which recently won the Ditmar Award for best novel. You can find Garth on Twitter as @garthnix, and info about his books on his website at garthnix.com

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our website.

Next month we’re not reading a book or a short story; instead we’re getting in front of the television and checking out the somewhat divisive BBC America series The Watch, “based on characters created by Terry Pratchett”. Is it a bold new punk direction for the Disc, or a travesty born from years in development hell and too much distance from the source material? We’re going to find out! Send us your questions via the hashtag #Pratchat52, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

Oggswatch Feast 2021

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Ho ho ho, Merry Hogswatch! To celebrate the festive season, and our own fiftieth episode, we’ve brought together a bunch of guests of Hogswatch Past, Present and Future – including the hosts no fewer than three other Discworld podcasts – for a special feast of additional recipes from Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook. Be warned: this podcast contains bananana!

Got comments on our efforts – or want to share your own? Do you want us to do this again next year? Please, join the conversation using the hashtag #Oggswatch2021 on social media.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:08:40 — 92.2MB)

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Our guests this episode are:

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site; it might take a few days to fully appear, but we’ll be adding photos of many of the dishes cooked for this episode!

While our January episode is already in the can, in February we’ll be discussing BBC America’s series “based on characters created by Terry Pratchett” – The Watch! So have a watch yourself over the holidays, and send us questions by tagging us on social media and using the hashtag #Pratchat52, or by sending us an email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

#Pratchat50 – Salt Rat Arsenic Heat

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Happy fiftieth episode to us! We’re celebrating with the return of our very first guest, comedian and author Cal Wilson! Cal joins Liz and Ben in the kitchen to brave the recipes within the 1999 Discworld side project Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook, co-authored with Stephen Briggs and Tina Hannan, with illustrations by Paul Kidby.

After his latest books are forcibly withdrawn from sale, J H C Goatberger reluctantly decides to publish another manuscript sent to him by Nanny Ogg. He hires a few editors to “put in the spelling, grammar and punctuation” and has his wife vet it for anything objectionable enough to get the book banned. The result is Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook, a collection of Nanny’s own recipes, others she’s collected from around the Disc, and some of her wit, wisdom and advice – in particular when it comes to etiquette.

Published alongside The Fifth Elephant (see #Pratchat40), Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook is one of several “in-universe artefact” books. It collects around fifty or so recipes – minus a dozen or so joke ones – devised by Hannan. Pratchett and Briggs round out the book with Nanny’s advice on matters of life, death, flowers and everything in between. Paul Kidby provides some great illustrations of various characters, dishes and other glimpses of Discworld life.

What do you think of books like this, that bring a bit of a fictional world into the real one? Which of Nanny’s recipes would you try? How do her observations match up with your own experiences of life, love and…um..toilet seats? Do you want a sausage-inna-Bunnings T-shirt? And are you ready to see pictures of our efforts? (Probably not…) Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat50 on social media.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:40:20 — 46.3MB)

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Guest Cal Wilson – one of Australia and New Zealand’s most beloved comedians – previously guested in #Pratchat1 and #Pratchat3, talking about Men at Arms and Sourcery, respectively. Since we saw her last she’s published two children’s books – George and the Great Bum Stampede and George and the Great Brain Swappery. Cal is no stranger to podcasts; she’s guested on dozens! Her upcoming children’s storytelling podcast is The Story Tailor (we’ll link to it when it’s out!), and she’s previously co-hosted Money Power Freedom (it does what it says on the tin) with journalist Santilla Chingaipe for the Victorian Women’s Trust. You can find Cal online as @calbo on Twitter, and as mentioned in our chat, on TikTok as @calbowilson. (Or just search for the hashtag #baristacats.)

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site – including some photos of our culinary efforts! (Viewer discretion is advised.)

December is a busy time for us! To further celebrate reaching fifty episodes, we’ve invited a bunch of great folks, including past guests, fellow Pratchett podcasters and more to cook a few more recipes for a special Hogswatch Feast episode! Watch out for it on Hogswatch day (i.e. December 25, Australian time).

We’re also recording our next episode very soon – December 17 in fact – and we’ll be discussing the next adventure for Tiffany Aching, 2006’s Wintersmith, with Australian fantasy author Garth Nix! So if you have questions, get them in “toot sweet”, as Nanny might say, using the hashtag #Pratchat51, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

#Pratchat49 – Once More, With Future

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Arts journalist, critic and broadcaster Richard Watts joins Liz and Ben on a trip sideways in time with reluctant wizard Mervin (with a V) in Pratchett’s 1995 short story “Once and Future“, originally published in the Arthurian collection Camelot.

As he stands on the beach waiting for the right hopeful king to come along, professional time traveler Mervin recounts his story of how he became stranded in a sideways version of medieval Britain. Here the stories of Arthurian myth are more or less real – though one notable figure is missing… With his knowledge of modern technology, a stash of emergency supplies and help from sharp local girl Nimue, he has a plan to fill the gaps in this other history…

Pratchett explores a new angle on the Matter of Britain, mixing sci-fi and engineering into a story about stories and “a world that’s not exactly memory and not exactly story”. Published in between Interesting Times and Maskerade, but stewing in his head for a decade before that, it features some of Pratchett’s most developed ideas about time travel, and was something he was proud and fond of. He even thought of turning his more extensive writings for it into a novel!

Did you enjoy Pratchett’s take on the practicalities of time travel? Would you have the skills to make it as a time traveler? Does it have the beginnings of a full-length novel? And what’s the best thing you’ve ever found in a charity shop? …we’re not sure where that one fits in either, but you asked so we answered! (Thanks Ryn.) Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat49 on social media.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:45:22 — 48.6MB)

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Guest Richard Watts is indeed a titan of the Melbourne arts community. He’s best known as a journalist for ArtsHub, where he is the National Performing Arts Editor, and as the host of SmartArts, 3RRR’s long-running weekly arts programme. As well as being named a living legend of the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2019, Richard’s contributions to the arts were further recognised in 2021 when he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards’ Facilitator’s Prize and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards. He’s also written for roleplaying games including Call of Cthulhu, Elric!, Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Wraith: The Oblivion. You can find Richard online as @richardthewatts on Twitter.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode is our fiftieth – and to celebrate, we’re cracking open Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook! This is Pratchett’s 1999 collaboration with Stephen Briggs and Tina Hannan, the latter of whom is responsible for the actual recipes inside – some of which we’ll be trying out with our very special returning guest, comedian and author Cal Wilson! We’re also hoping to cook up something a little extra to send your way around Hogswatch as well… For now though, send us your questions – about the book, the recipes, Nanny’s etiquette advice or even just doing a Pratchett podcast for over four years. Use the hashtag #Pratchat50, or send us an email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

#Pratchat48 – Lu-Tze in the Sky with Lobsang

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Freelance writer and journalist Ben Riley joins Liz and Ben for a magical history tour as Susan Sto Helit teams up with a couple of monks to stop time…er…stopping in the twenty-sixth Discworld novel: 2001’s Thief of Time.

In Ankh-Morpork, a mystery woman tasks the odd but talented Jeremy Clockson to build a clock so accurate it can measure the tick of the Universe. In mountain monastery of Oi Dong, Lu-Tze, sweeper of the History Monks, gains a new apprentice: the unmotivated but gifted Newgate “Lobsang” Ludd. And in his domain, Death senses that the Auditors of Reality, grey entities who count every atom, are once again seeking to curb the chaos of life. He recruits his granddaughter Susan to help find the son of Time. If they can’t, he’ll have to get the old band back together and ride out for the end of the world – at precisely one o’clock, this Wednesday…

Pratchett brings back a string of old favourites for this action-packed romp through…well, not quite through time, but it’s certainly “about” time. It’s the last book to properly star Susan Sto Helit, and for that matter Death; it brings back Lu-Tze, the sweeper who nudged Brutha in the right direction back in Small Gods; and Nanny Ogg is here too, in her first major appearance since the last Witches book, Carpe Jugulum. Oh, and there’s a main character named Lobsang, and we know all about that name…

Is this what you were hoping for in a third outing for Susan? How do you feel about the fate(s) of Lobsang and Jeremy? Where do you land on having an in-universe excuse for continuity errors in Discworld? And are the monkish wisdom jokes okay because they’re based more on kung fu movie tropes than actual Tibetan culture, or is it still a bit on the nose? Join the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat48 on social media!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:27:34 — 67.9MB)

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Guest Benjamin Riley (not to be confused with Spider-Man clone Ben Reilly) is an award-winning freelance writer and journalist. He’s written for Junkee, SBS Online, PopMatters, Overland, the Star Observer and many other publications. Ben also works in AIDS research and in HIV and sexual health policy, organises queer community events, and co-hosted and produced the queer political podcast Queers with Simon Copland from 2015 to 2019. (You can still find old episodes in most podcast directories and via the Queers acast page.) For more on what Ben’s up to, follow him at @bencriley on Twitter or hit up his website at benjaminriley.com.au.

In other Ben news, the videogame Table of Tales: The Crooked Crown, written by a certain Ben McKenzie, is now available on Steam!

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode we take another little breather – it’s been a long lockdown here in Melbourne, folks – to read a Pratchett short story: his take on Arthurian myth, Once and Future! It was originally published in 1995 in the collection Camelot, but like most of his short fiction you can find it in A Blink of the Screen. Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat49, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

And yes, we are planning something a little different and special for our fiftieth episode in December – watch our website and social media for news on that soon!

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

#Pratchat47 – A Finite Number of Shakespeares

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Science comedian and public health nerd Alanta Colley joins Liz and Ben on their second trip through Discworld into Roundworld, as they join Rincewind and the wizards of Unseen University in Pratchett’s second collaboration with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen: 2002’s The Science of Discworld II: The Globe.

While on a team-building exercise in the woods near Unseen University, Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully and his faculty are accidentally swept along when something makes its way through the Discworld into Roundworld. That something turns out to be elves – nasty, parasitic lifeforms who feast on the imagination and emotions of others. Roundworld – the universe in a bottle created by the wizards’ experiments, which somehow runs without any magic – has been altered by their presence. Now the wizards – including Rincewind, the long-suffering Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography – have to find a way to get rid of them without dooming the local human population in the process…

Having entirely missed humankind in The Science of Discworld, the wizards are back for another go! And so are science writers Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen – but this time, they don’t want to explain cosmology, basic physics and the history of the Earth, but instead sell you on the idea that storytelling is the essential ingredient that makes humans…human.

Are we really Pans narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee, rather than Homo sapiens, the “wise man”? Is it wise to write a popular science book with an author who will guarantee the book will be read again twenty years later – and to include some “cutting edge” science, no less? What do a debunked psychological experiment, the term “overcommitment”, and filthy explanations of fairytales have to do with it? And who’s this shrewd and world-wise street wizard named Rincewind, and can we have some more of his adventures please? Let us know what you think using the hashtag #Pratchat47 on social media, and join in the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:11:42 — 60.6MB)

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Guest Alanta Colley is a comedian, science communicator and storyteller whose solo shows include Parasites Lost (about parasites), Days of Our Hives (about beekeeping) and The Origin of Faeces (you can probably work that one out yourself). She also wrote and performed the “comedy experiment” You Chose Poorly with our own Ben McKenzie. Since 2017 Alanta has also been the host and producer of Sci Fight, a series of comedy science debates; both Ben and Liz have been guest speakers, along with previous Pratchat guests Anna Ahveninen (#Pratchat35) and Nicholas J Johnson (#Pratchat38). You can hear Ben and Anna’s last appearance on Sci Fight in this episode of the Climactic podcast, or see the first online debate for Melbourne Science Gallery on YouTube here. Visit scifight.com.au to sign up to the mailing list, and you can find Alanta as @lannyopolis on Twitter and Instagram, via Facebook or at alantacolley.com.

You can find out more about what Liz has been writing by following her as @ElizabethFlux on Twitter or Instagram.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode we read one of the few precious Discworld novels left to us, though luckily we got a little preview this time around; yes, we’re joining up with Susan, Death and the history monks for the very timely Thief of Time, which we’ll be discussing with journalist Ben Riley! Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat48, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

#Pratchat46 – The Helen Green Preservation Society

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Writer and editor Deanne Sheldon-Collins joins Liz and Ben as they return to the infinite worlds of the Long Earth to discuss Pratchett’s second collaboration with Stephen Baxter: 2013’s The Long War.

It’s now ten years since anti-stepping extremists nuked natural stepper and explorer Joshua Valienté’s home town of Madison on the original “Datum” Earth. Joshua has since settled down with pioneer Helen Green and become mayor of Hell-Knows-Where, a thriving town established more than a million steps West of the Datum. But Sally Linsay, fellow far stepper, soon arrives to ask Joshua for help. Trouble is brewing in the Long Earth: humanity’s relationship with the species they call “trolls” is deteriorating. Tensions are rising between the American government and the far-flung colonies in its “footprint” on other worlds. And on another world barely visited by humans, other species make plans to push the humans back where they came from…

The multi-threaded cosy travelogue continues in (probably) Pratchett’s second-longest novel. More Earths, more characters, and more non-humans! A sense of potential disaster looms in every other chapter, while the characters and narrative ponder humanity’s relationship with Earth, and the ways in which society might respond to twenty-five years of unlimited resources and living room.

Does this still feel like Pratchett to you? What did you think of the women in the novel – especially Joshua’s “young wife” Helen? Did you enjoy the various side treks to weird worlds with strange creatures, or did they just leave you wanting more time with the trolls, kobolds, elves and weirder denizens of the Long Earth? And, perhaps most importantly: will you stick with the series and see where it’s going next? Use the hashtag #Pratchat46 on social media to join the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:29:23 — 68.7MB)

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Guest Deanne Sheldon-Collins is an editor and writer who’s been an active part of Australia’s speculative fiction scene for a decade or so. Deanne has worked for Aurealis magazine, Writer’s Victoria, the National Young Writer’s Festival and Speculate, the Victorian Speculative Fiction Writers Festival, where she has been co-director with previous guest Joel Martin since 2019. While Deanne’s current work isn’t really publicly available, she’d like you to know that you can find out more about Speculate – including the recently announced Speculate Prize – by following the festival on Twitter at @SpecFicVic, or joining their mailing list via specfic.com.au.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode it’s time to restart the experiment as we shake up the globe that is the wizards of Unseen University’s Roundworld experiment! Prepare to mix science and magic in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, which we’ll be discussing with science comedian, Alanta Colley! Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat47, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

#PratchatNALC – Twice as Alive

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With the ei- the twice-fourth Australian Discworld Convention postponed until next year, Liz and Ben fired up their crystal balls to project themselves live for the one-day online event, Nullus Anxietas: The Lost Con! In this special one-hour mini-episode, we revisit the very first book discussed on the podcast: the fifteenth Discworld novel, 1993’s Men at Arms!

You can of course listen to #Pratchat1 again if you like, though we’ve included a few important excerpts in this revisit episode. As well as discussing the book in the light of everything we’ve read (and everything that’s happened) since, we reminisce about figuring out how the podcast would work, and answer some questions posed by the live online audience. Has your opinion of Carrot/Angua changed over time? Is Cuddy’s death still too upsetting to think about? What other names and Discworld-specific words are we pronouncing wrong? We’d love to know…except maybe that last one! Use the hashtag #PratchatNALC on social media to join the conversation.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:13 — 26.1MB)

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Intrigued by the idea of a Discworld fan convention? You should be! Old-school fan conventions are few and far between, and we’d love you to support one of the few left in Australia. Find out more about Nullus Anxietas, the Australian Discworld Convention, and get your early bird membership (attending or supporting) to Nullus Anxietas 7A, at ausdwcon.org. You can also follow the convention on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

You can find the full show notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Huge thanks to everyone who attended the convention, those who listened to us live and asked questions, and to the other panelists – there were some amazing discussions and great fun to be had by all! Especially big thanks once again to the massive team of hard-working volunteers and committee members at Nullus Anxietas, especially the “Man with the Vote”, Steve Lewis, and question wrangler Danny Sag. We’ll see you all – in person we hope – for for the rescheduled Nullus Anxietas 7A in 2022!

This is the closest thing we’ve done to a live show since our appearance at the last Nullus Anxietas convention, but the online format seemed to work pretty well. We’ll look into the possibility of doing our more online live events in future – let us know if that’s something you’d like to see!

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

#Pratchat45 – Hogswatch in Grune

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Surprise! In the great Australian tradition of Christmas in July, Liz and Ben are joined by writer and literary horror fan Penelope Love to discuss Pratchett’s short story “Twenty Pence, With Envelope and Seasonal Greeting”, first published on the 16th of December, 1987.

It’s Christmas Eve, 1843, and the driver of a missing Mail Coach is discovered lying in the snow in Wiltshire. A local doctor determines he is scared out of his wits, but nonetheless records the coachman’s horrifying tale of passing through a weird rectangular portal. He and his passengers strayed from the world we know into others filled with nightmares: strangely glittering snow, terrifyingly flat London streets, monstrous giant animals and nonsensical language…

Written in the style of Victorian horror fiction from authors like M R James, H P Lovecraft and A C Doyle*, with a side order of Dickens, this story was inspired when Pratchett glanced at his shelf full of Christmas cards. Despite the ridiculous premise, he plays it totally straight, with phrases that could have come straight from The Call of Cthulhu and other works of the era he’s emulating.

But in 1987, people still sent Christmas cards. Does the story still work now, when we have to think a bit harder to recall the kinds of things printed on those ineffable pieces of cardboard? Can we be spooked and made to laugh at the same time? And does the old-school “horrors humankind was not meant to know” genre still make our blood run cold in this age of smartphones, satellite imagery and Google? Use the hashtag #Pratchat45 on social media to join the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:46 — 36.9MB)

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Guest Penelope Love is a writer best known for her short fiction, and her work on roleplaying games, most notably Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu, based on the works of H P Lovecraft. Penny is also part of the team at Campaign Coins, who make gorgeous metal coins and counters for use with roleplaying and other tabletop games. You can find Penny’s collections of comic fantasy stories about “The Three Dungeoneers” via the Campaign Coins website, and also look up Penny’s author page on Amazon to find many of Penny’s other works. Penny is on Twitter as @PennyLoveWrites, or you can follow @CampaignCoins for more on their projects.

As usual, you can find notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next episode, as previously advertised, we’re going West and/or East again as we head back into the Long Earth with The Long War – this time joined by writer and editor, Deanne Sheldon-Collins! Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat46, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book? You can support Pratchat for as little as $2 a month and get access to bonus stuff, including the exclusive supporter podcast Ook Club! Click here to find out more.

* With apologies to Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle.

A Short Announcement re: The Long War

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For the second time – and coincidentally for another of the books in The Long Earth series – we’ve made a change in our schedule! Our next book will still be The Long War, as announced in #Pratchat44, but we’re postponing that until August. Our forty-fifth episode, #Pratchat45, will instead discuss Pratchett’s 1987 short story, “Twenty Pence, With Envelope and Seasonal Greeting”. Listen or read on for more information; and we’ve included a short (silly) out-take from an old episode as a little thank you treat.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:08 — 2.8MB)

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Please get your questions in for the short story using the hashtag #Pratchat45, or for The Long War using the hashtag #Pratchat46. As usual you can send them via social media, or by email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Because Ben can’t help himself, here are a few brief episode notes:

  • The Long War is probably Pratchett’s second or third longest book. It’s 500 or 512 pages, depending on the edition – we don’t have a word count – but using the page count as a rough guide his longest novel is Unseen Academicals, which clocks in at 514 or 533 pages in its paperback editions. This is considerably longer than his earlier works, which are short by comparison to most fantasy novels. (You can find some amazingly detailed stats on the earlier Discworld books up to The Amazing Maurice on The L-Space Web; and yes, Ben is now very keen to try and complete this work for all of Pratchett’s novels. Stay tuned…)
  • Melbourne’s latest lockdown lasted two weeks, from May 28 to June 10, 2021. Many restrictions remain in place at the time of recording, including limits on the number of visitors to private homes.
  • You can get information about and tickets to The Lost Con, which is happening online on Saturday July 3rd, 2021, at the Australian Discworld Convention website.
  • The out-take is from #Pratchat12, “Brooms, Boats and Pumpkinmobiles“, featuring guest Jackie Tang and discussing Witches Abroad.
  • Echidna spines are not actually hair, but they are made of the same protein, keratin. We previously mentioned this in #Pratchat36, but there are two kinds of keratin: alpha-keratin, which is found in all vertebrates, and beta-keratin, found only in reptiles and birds. Echidna’s spines are made of a harder form of alpha-keratin, similar to the keratin in human fingernails – and surprisingly, using conditioner on your nails (and presumably echidna spines) supposedly makes them stronger and healthier, not smoother!
  • We previously discussed Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzerelli, the 50s greaser with a heart of gold from classic 1970s sitcom Happy Days, in #Pratchat10. (He’s the character who originally – and literally – “jumped the shark”.)
  • The social media network Vine, owned by Twitter, allowed users to post six-second looping videos. It operated from 2012 to 2016, when it was shut down for new uploads; the archive of old content remained until 2019 (though you can still see stills of videos if you follow a Vine link). You can find compilations of some of the best Vine videos on YouTube – please tweet us your favourites! (For contrast, TikTok launched in 2017, though it is the international version of the Chinese original, 抖音 (Douyin), which began operation in 2016.)
  • Ben is remembering Marutaro the Pygmy Hedgehog, who was indeed a Vine superstar in around 2014. They were one of two hedgehog finalists in the Animal category for the 8th Shorty Awards in 2015.

Thanks as always to all our listeners, and especially to our subscribers.