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Roundworld

#Pratchat71 – It Belongs in a University

8 October 2023 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

Liz and Ben are blessed by two returning guests, the Rev Dr Avril Hannah-Jones and Dr Charlotte Pezaro, as they go on one last visit to Roundworld – this time as clerics, wizards and librarians clash over who should take ownership. It’s Terry Pratchett’s fourth and final collaboration with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, 2013’s The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day.

Ponder Stibbons has just activated Unseen University’s latest “Great Big Thing”, the culmination of six years’ research (and spending) into the frontiers of magical knowledge. It summons a side effect: improbably-named librarian Marjorie Daw, from the even less probable universe in a bottle, Roundworld. Marjorie decides to stick around when she discovers her entire universe is under threat: the Church of the Latter-Day Omnians, who believe the Disc is round, think Roundworld should be theirs. After surviving elves and Auditors, will it be lawyers and priests who decide Roundworld’s fate?

This time in the (really short!) fiction chapters, the wizards barely visit Roundworld at all; Ridcully spends most of his time talking to Marjorie, before the last few chapters detail the trial – sorry, hearing – of the century. In the non-fiction chapters, Jack and Ian do talk about science…but mostly about religion. Their big idea this time revolves around Gregory Benford’s ideas of human- and universe-centred thinking. As the fiction pits priests against wizards, you can probably see where this is going. We certainly could, and we’ll be blunt: we didn’t like it.

Is this really a book about science? How do the authors’ ideas of “religion” gel with yours – or even Pratchett’s previous books and writing on the subject? What did you think of Marjorie Daw? Do you want us to do a special episode with Avril about Scott Morrison’s book? And were we too harsh on this book? Join in the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat71 on social media.

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_71.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:14:44 — 62.2MB)

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Guest Rev Dr Avril Hannh-Jones (she/her) is a Minister in the Uniting Church. While she should be known for her tireless activism for marginalised communities, most people know her for the Church of the Latter Day Geek: an occasional service where science fiction and fantasy stories serve as parables, and cosplay is allowed in the pews. Avril previously appeared on Pratchat back in 2019 to discuss Small Gods in #Pratchat16. Avril posts weekly Reflections on her blog, Rev Doc Geek, tweets as @DocAvvers, and would love to see you at a Sunday service at North Balwyn Uniting Church.

Guest Dr Charlotte Pezaro (she/her) is an educator with a PhD in pedagogy and years of experience communicating science and technology, and shaping how it is taught in Australian schools. She last joined us in 2021 for #Pratchat41 to discuss Nation, which is both Charlotte’s and Pratchett’s favourite Pratchett book. You can find out more about Charlotte at charlottepezaro.com, or her education work at dialogic.com.au.

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

Next episode it’s time for another short story: this time a young adult one Pratchett wrote for Diana Wynn Jones in 1989, “Turntables of the Night”. It was originally published in the anthology Hidden Turnings, but you’ll most easily find it in Pratchett’s short fiction collection A Blink of the Screen. We’ll be discussing this tale of record collectors and DJs with superstar DJ and comedian, Andrew McClelland! Have a read and send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat72, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Avril Hannah-Jones, Ben McKenzie, Charlotte Pezaro, collaboration, Elizabeth Flux, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, Marjorie Daw, Mightily Oats, Mustrum Ridcully, Patrician, Ponder Stibbons, Rincewind, Roundworld, Science of Discworld, Unseen University, Wizards

#Pratchat59 – Charlie and the Whale Factory

8 September 2022 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

Scientist, writer and editor Dr Kat Day joins Liz and Ben on a timey-wimey to Roundworld, as the wizards once again try to save humanity in Terry Pratchett’s third collaboration with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen: 2005’s The Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch.

Roundworld – the impossibly non-magical universe in a bottle which runs on rules – has gone wrong again, and the wizards feel duty-bound to set it right. Humanity’s survival depends on the publication of a specific book, but something is trying very hard to make sure its author writes a different one…or gets eaten by a giant squid. With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, the wizards go to war – but who is their hidden enemy? And why is there one beardy fellow too many in the Great Hall?

In the (short) fiction chapters, the wizards must once again travel into Roundworld history, this time with a clear mission: to get Charles Darwin onto the Beagle so he can write The Origin of Species. In the science chapters, Jack and Ian have a focus – the importance of the theory of evolution – but they also feel free to use the time travel plot to explain infinity, DNA, the nature of science and history, and much more besides. They’ve learned to stay away from the cutting edge – but have they come entirely out of the “philosopause” they didn’t seem to know they were in last time?

Does the plot rely too much on prior knowledge of the Discworld? Is that really a problem, given the nature of the book? Did you follow the explanations of Minkowski spacetime and the different kinds of infinity, or were you happy coasting across the science chapters? Do they completely miss the point in that last non-fiction chapter – and does it really matter, when the end of the fiction part is so satisfying? Join in the conversation using the hashtag #Pratchat59 on social media!

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_59.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:20:18 — 64.6MB)

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Guest Dr Kat Day (she/her) is a chemist, a former teacher, a medical editor and a writer of both science and fiction. Kat became well known via her chemistry blog The Chronicle Flask, which is currently on hiatus; you can also find her fiction at the fiction phial. Kat is also an assistant editor for Pseudopod, the horror fiction anthology podcast from Escape Artists. Kat recommended the story “Celestial Shores” as a possible entry point for Pratchett fans, as well as “Let the Buyer Beware” from Pseudopod’s sister podcast for young adult speculative fiction, Cast of Wonders. Over on Twitter you can follow Kat at @chronicleflask, and Pseudopod at @pseudopod_org.

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

Next episode Pratchett turns sixty! As promised back in #Pratchat30, we’re doing another all-questions episode. This is your chance to send in questions about books you missed first time round, pitch your wild Discworld theories, and ask us pretty much anything you like that doesn’t fit into the usual book-focussed episode. We’d also love you to answer our questions: what are do you enjoy most about the show? What kind of episodes do you wish we’d do? Which of our opinions have you most disagreed with? And have you learned anything from us? (Ben sure has!) Send us your answers, and questions, using the hashtag #Pratchat60, or via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Oh, and in November, get ready for a double-header: not only are we reading Thud! with educator Matt Roden for #Pratchat61, but we’re cooking up a bonus crossover episode! Yes, we’re teaming up with Jo and Francine from The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret, another great Pratchett podcast, to discuss Where’s My Cow?, the hottest children’s book in Ankh-Morpork. We thought we’d let you know a little early, since it might be tricky to track down a copy…

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Ben McKenzie, collaboration, Dr Kat Day, Elizabeth Flux, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, Mustrum Ridcully, Ponder Stibbons, Rincewind, Roundworld, Science of Discworld, The Luggage, Unseen University, Wizards

#Pratchat71 Notes and Errata

8 October 2023 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 71, “It Belongs in a University”, discussing Terry Pratchett’s 2013 collaboration with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day, with guests Rev Dr Avril Hannah-Jones and Dr Charlotte Pezaro.

Iconographic Evidence

This is the video from the Waterstones event for the launch of the fourth book, with Terry talking about Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species.
This is the Eye of Magnus, the magical Great Big Thing from the videogame The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which Ben immediately thought of while reading the descriptions of Ponder Stibbons’ “Challenger Project”.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title echoes Indiana Jones’ famous (and very colonialist) line, “It belongs in a museum!” Thankfully the wizards didn’t steal Roundworld from anyone…but if you want to know how this sort of thinking affects people in the colonised countries, we’d recommend Marc Fennel’s podcast (and television series) Stuff the British Stole.
  • The term “philosopause” is referred to in The Science of Discworld II: The Globe, where Jack and Ian describe it as when “elderly scientists … stop doing science and take up not very good philosophy instead”. They didn’t coin the term; it dates back to at least 1996, and probably earlier.
  • Gregory Benford (1941-) is both an influential science fiction author and a physicist, but not a qualified theologian or philosopher. The first source footnoted in the book is the one for Benford’s idea of human- and universe-centred thinking, and it’s “a creature of double vision”, from Science Fiction and the Two Cultures: Essays on Bridging the Gap Between Science and the Humanities, edited by Gary Westfahl and George Slusser, McFarland Publishers 2009, pages 228-236.
  • The book review referred to by Liz is Timothy Snyder’s “Is the Human Impulse to Tell Stories Dangerous?”, a review of The Story Paradox by Jonathan Gottschall. The tweet that stuck in Liz’s mind was by Michael Chinigo.
  • Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge: how do we know what we know, and what qualifies a belief as knowledge?
  • Liz has talked about “hounding the germ man to death” before; you can hear her talk about Semmelweis in #Pratchat48 (about Thief of Time) and #Pratchat54 (Night Watch). As on those occasions, we recommend this episode of NPR’s Shortwavepodcast to get a good short version of his struggle to just get doctors to wash their hands in a time when no-one believed in germs.
  • L-Space is originally described as a distortion of space into “poly-fractal L-Space”. While the Librarian frequently travels through L-Space, it’s not presented as a “space” where things exist, but a way to travel through space and time. Books create L-Space.
  • Narrativia as a Discworld goddess pre-dates this book by a couple of years, Pratchett having named her – and commissioned a statue of her – in 2011, as detailed in this Guardian article. This does seem to be her first appearance in fiction, though the production company Narrativia, which holds the media licensing rights to his works, was formed in 2012.
  • Charlotte recommended Bill Bryson’s 2003 book A Short History of Nearly Everything, as well as Pratchett’s own Nation. Avril recommended Marilynne Robinson’s 2016 collection The Givenness of Things: Essays.

More notes to come soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Avril Hannah-Jones, Ben McKenzie, Charlotte Pezaro, collaboration, Elizabeth Flux, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, Marjorie Daw, Mightily Oats, Mustrum Ridcully, Patrician, Ponder Stibbons, Rincewind, Roundworld, Science of Discworld, Unseen University, Wizards

#Pratchat47 – A Finite Number of Shakespeares

8 September 2021 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

Science comedian and public health nerd Alanta Colley joins Liz and Ben on their second trip through Discworld into Roundworld. It’s Terry 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!

https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Pratchat_episode_47.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:11:42 — 60.7MB)

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Guest Alanta Colley (she/her) 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 help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Alanta Colley, Ben McKenzie, collaboration, Elizabeth Flux, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, Mustrum Ridcully, Ponder Stibbons, Rincewind, Roundworld, Science of Discworld, The Luggage, Unseen University, Wizards

Eeek Club 2021

25 May 2021 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

Welcome to a new tradition: the Pratchat Eeek Club! Each year, on the Glorious 25th of May, we will release a bonus episode discussing Terry Pratchett-related topics selected by our Eeek tier subscribers.

This year, the topics are:

  • How would Ankh-Morpork deal with COVID-19?
  • What would happen if Granny Weatherwax was head of Unseen University – or if Angua commanded the Watch?
  • Are golems alive? (For that matter, is fire alive?)
  • How has Pratchett and/or the Discworld informed our personal philosophies?
  • If Pratchett had kept writing the Discworld series, would it have evolved into science fiction?
https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Eeek_Club_2021.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:27 — 46.0MB)

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A big thank you to all our subscribers for making Pratchat possible, but especially to our Eeek Club contributors: Karl, Catherine, Soren, Jess and David, and Frank!

You’ll find detailed notes and errata for this episode on our website.

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book – or even choose a topic for next year’s Eeek Club? You can support Pratchat by subscribing 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.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Angua, Ankh-Morpork, Bonus Episode, Dorfl, Eeek Club, Granny Weatherwax, Nomes, Patrician, Reg Shoe, Roundworld, The Watch, Unseen University, Vetinari, Vimes

Eeek Club 2022

25 May 2022 by Pratchat Imps 1 Comment

It’s a second instalment of the Pratchat Eeek Club! Each year, on the Glorious 25th of May, we release a bonus episode discussing Terry Pratchett-related topics selected by our “Eeek” tier subscribers.

This year, the topics are:

  • What was good, fun and enjoyable about The Watch?
  • Is Vimes a Cynic, a Stoic, or an Epicurean?
  • What was Granny Weatherwax and Ridcully’s relationship like, and why didn’t it continue?
  • What pop culture would you have liked to have seen referenced in a Discworld novel?
  • What moments from the series hit you personally because of a personal experience?
  • If democracy came to Ankh-Morpork, what political parties would we see?
https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Eeek_Club_2022.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:58 — 47.0MB)

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A big thank you to all our subscribers for making Pratchat possible, but especially to our Eeek Club contributors: Graham, Frank, Cath (and Eddy), Steph, Jess and Ellie, Karl and Soren!

You’ll find detailed notes and errata for this episode on our website.

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book – or even choose a topic for next year’s Eeek Club? You can support Pratchat by subscribing 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.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Ankh-Morpork, Ben McKenzie, Bonus Episode, CMOT Dibbler, Eeek Club, Elizabeth Flux, Granny Weatherwax, Harry King, Moist von Lipwig, Mustrum Ridcully, Patrician, Reg Shoe, Roundworld, The Watch, Vetinari, Vimes

Eeek Club 2023

25 May 2023 by Pratchat Imps Leave a Comment

It’s a third instalment of the Pratchat Eeek Club! Each year, on the Glorious 25th of May, we release a bonus episode discussing Terry Pratchett-related topics selected by our “Eeek” tier subscribers.

This year, the topics are:

  • What are your ultimate actor castings for Discworld characters?
  • Is there a Discworld equivalent of podcasts?
  • What are your possible Discworld reading orders, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?
  • How would social media work on the Discworld?
  • Do women carry the physical and mental load of the Discworld?
  • Which Discworld characters would you love a “Where are they now” update for?
  • What would the Discworld be like if Terry were creating it today, and how would you help him?
https://media.blubrry.com/pratchat/pratchatpodcast.com/episodes/Eeek_Club_2023.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:16 — 36.6MB)

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A big thank you to all our subscribers for making Pratchat possible, but especially to our Eeek Club contributors: Frank, Jing, Graham, Karl, the Caths, Jess and Ellie, Nathan and the others who didn’t send in questions this year.

You’ll find detailed notes and errata for this episode on our website.

Want to make sure we get through every Pratchett book – or even choose a topic for next year’s Eeek Club? You can support Pratchat by subscribing 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.

Posted in: Podcast Tagged: Ankh-Morpork, Ben McKenzie, Bonus Episode, CMOT Dibbler, Eeek Club, Elizabeth Flux, Granny Weatherwax, Moist von Lipwig, Mustrum Ridcully, Patrician, Roundworld, Vetinari

#Pratchat60 Notes and Errata

8 October 2022 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 60, “Eyes Turnwise“, a special episode in which we answer listener questions.

Iconographic Evidence

Watch out for some photos here soon!

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title echoes that of #Pratchat30, but this time we’re looking the Discworld equivalent of forwards rather than exclusively backwards.
  • We discussed Small Gods in #Pratchat16, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Vorbis“, with the Reverend Doctor Avril Hannah-Jones.
  • Steve’s questions aren’t just about Small Gods, but specifically the sequences in that book where Brutha is in Ephebe and learns about the Ephebian gods. They occur around 40% into the book.
  • The Hide Park line up devised by Glitch1958 includes the ones we mentioned in the episode: English Patella Throwing Weapons; Newly Arrived Wood Pond; Tropical Penguins; Pay ‘n’ Park; Unnerved Nana; and The Quite Warm Spicy Vegetables. Glitch also added Twinkle-Up; In Bus Queue; Open square bracket, Insert new monarch here, close square bracket; Nanny Ogg’s Bananananananarama; Flu-Theater; Irritated with the motor; and No way, sis!
  • On that last note: the Oasis cover band No Way Sis do exist, but they’re Glaswegian. The Australian one is Noasis.
  • The quotation “He could think in italics. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance.” is from Men at Arms, about Edward d’Eath. You’ll find it quite near the start, just before Carrot’s finishes his letter home. We the book in #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory“.
  • Chaz’s question is a reference to “The Queue” – that is, the queue to see Queen Elizabeth’s body while it lay in state at Westminster Hall. For five days leading up to her funeral on 19 September 2022, 250,000 people lined up for as much as 24 hours over a distance of up to sixteen kilometres. Lots of people live-tweeted the Queue’s status, including the dedicated account @QE2Queue. Liz mentioned the TikTok musical, which was the creation of English actor Rob Madge. You can find it on TikTok here:
@rob_madge_

♬ original sound – Rob Madge
  • Many of the conspiracy theories around the Queen’s death originate from QAnon, and include things like her body not being in the coffin, that Queen Elizabeth II had been already dead for months or years, or even Princess Diana secretly being alive, and coming out of hiding to become the next Queen.
  • We discussed the idea of “lockdown in Ankh-Morpork” in Eeek Club 2021, our special bonus episode in which topics are chosen by subscribers, for the Glorious 25th of May. We also answered some similar questions in our previous all questions episode, #Pratchat30, “Looking Widdershins“.
  • You can find links to The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret’s headcanon threads in the episode notes for Eeek Club 2021. If they do one for the Patrician’s queue we’ll link to it here.
  • We discussed The Science of Discworld II just over a year ago in #Pratchat47, “A Finite Number of Shakespeares“.
  • So far three podcasts have discussed all 41 Discworld novels – Radio Morpork, The Death of Podcasts and Wyrd Sisters. You can find links to all their episodes, and many more besides, at Ben’s side project, The Guild of Recappers & Podcasters.
  • Here’s the Reddit thread of favourite Pratchett footnotes mentioned by Liz, from the subreddit r/Discworld.
  • We mention the following footnotes while answering Manning’s question:
    • The gold/Glod typo footnote appears in Witches Abroad:
      Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy seraph of Al-Ybi was once cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Ybi are renowned for being unusually short and bad-tempered.
    • The Amazing Maurice does indeed appear in Reaper Man, but not in a footnote; the Dean complains about being taken in by Maurice’s scam, which had also worked in Quirm and Stopped Lat.
    • The Light Fantastic footnote about the magic shop:
      No one knows why, but all the most truly mysterious and magical items are bought from shops that appear and, after a trading life even briefer than a double-glazing company, vanish like smoke. There have been various attempts to explain this, all of which don’t fully account for the observed facts. These shops turn up anywhere in the universe, and their immediate non-existence in any particular city can normally be deduced from crowds of people wandering the streets clutching defunct magical items, ornate guarantee cards, and looking very suspiciously at brick walls.
    • The definition of the Thaum first appears in The Light Fantastic, and is later recapped in The Science of Discworld III. Here’s the original version:
      A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls.
  • We’ve discussed the Long Earth books in the following episodes:
    • The Long Earth in #Pratchat31, “It’s Just a Step to the West“
    • The Long War in #Pratchat46, “The Helen Green Preservation Society“
    • The Long Mars in #Pratchat57, “Get Your Dad to Mars!“
    • We also discussed the precursor short story “The High Meggas” in #Pratchat57West5, “Daniel Superbaboon“.
  • We discussed Eric in #Pratchat7, “All the Fingle Ladies“.
  • We discussed Interesting Times in #Pratchat21, “Memoirs of Agatea“.
  • We’ve previously discussed Pratchett’s children’s books:
    • The Bromeliad books Truckers (#Pratchat9), Diggers (#Pratchat13) and Wings (#Pratchat20).
    • The Johnny Maxwell books Only You Can Save Mankind (#Pratchat28), Johnny and the Dead (#Pratchat34) and Johnny and the Bomb (#Pratchat37).
    • Dodger in #Pratchat6, “A Load of Old Tosh“
    • Nation in #Pratchat41, “The Adventures of Crab Boy and Trouser Girl“
    • We haven’t yet given The Carpet People the full Pratchat treatment, but we did talk about the differences between the original and re-written versions in a video discussion for Nullus Anxietas.
  • Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials (not Science Fiction, as Ben misremembers) and Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy are the work of American writer and artist Wayne Barlowe, who also works as a concept artist and creature designer in film and television on works including Galaxy Quest, Pacific Rim, Avatar and Aquaman.

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Ben McKenzie, collaboration, Dr Kat Day, Elizabeth Flux, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, Mustrum Ridcully, Ponder Stibbons, Rincewind, Roundworld, Science of Discworld, The Luggage, Unseen University, Wizards

#EeekClub2021 Notes and Errata

25 May 2021 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for the bonus episode Eeek Club 2021, answering questions from our Eeek tier subscribers.

  • In Ankh-Morpork, the “Glorious 25th of May” is the date of the “Glorious Revolution”, commemorated only by a small number of people who were there. They wear lilac in memory of those who died. It is covered in much detail in Night Watch, which we’ll be reading for our December 2021 episode. On Roundworld, Pratchett fans have adopted the date as a celebration of Discworld and Terry Pratchett, often wearing lilac (the flower or the colour), and sometimes raising money for Alzheimer’s research. May 25th is also Towel Day, a celebration of Douglas Adams, which began two weeks after his death in 2001, and “Geek Pride Day”, which was started in Spain in 2006. That the Ankh-Morpork revolution shares a date with the former may not be a coincidence, since Night Watch was published in 2002.
  • We did indeed start offering subscriptions in January 2019; we announced them in #Pratchat15, “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Nice and Accurate)“.
  • Our big open slather questions episode was #Pratchat30, “Looking Widdershins“, released on the 8th of April, 2020.
  • James Spader provides the voice of robot protector-turned-exterminator Ultron in the 2015 Marvel superhero film, Avengers: Age of Ultron.
  • The lockdown-related Discworld questions in #Pratchat30 begin around 1 hour, 5 minutes and 41 seconds in.
  • The first lockdown in Melbourne – and the rest of Australia – began on March 29, 2020. Melbourne had subsequent lockdowns from July 9 to October 26 2020, February 12 to 17 2021, and from May 27 until – at the time of last update – at least June 10, 2021.
  • Dragon King of Arms appears in Feet of Clay, which we discussed in #Pratchat24, “Arsenic and Old Clays“.
  • We also discussed the difference between vaccination and variolation in the notes for #Pratchat43, “Big Wee Hag: Far Fra’ Home“.
  • Ben says The Truth, but means The Times, as in The Ankh-Morpork Times, the first newspaper on the Discworld. It features in the novel The Truth, which we discussed in #Pratchat42, “Truth, the Printing Press and Every -ing“.
  • The Sto Plains – which occupy the area directly hubwards of Ankh-Morpork, on the opposite side to the Circle Sea – include many city-states, like the kingdom of Sto Lat (ruled by Queen Keli), the Duchy of Sto Helit (as in Duchess Susan Sto Helit), and the protectorate of Sto Kerrig. Sto Lat is probably closest, only about 20 miles from the Hubwards Gate of Ankh-Morpork. Their populations aren’t known, but it seems likely the plains’ residents don’t outnumber the million people who live in Ankh-Morpork. The various kingdoms and smaller towns and cities of the plains are all independent of the city, but most of them use Ankh-Morpork dollars as their currency, and certainly look to Ankh for guidance in matters of culture, technology and commerce.
  • The Trans-Tasman Bubble is the quarantine-free travel arrangement between Australia and New Zealand, countries with similarly low COVID-19 cases, separated by the Tasman Sea. It was announced as a possibility early on in the pandemic, but officially took affect on April 19, 2021. The day this episode was released (May 25, 2021), new cases were announced in Melbourne, leading to the reinstatement of some restrictions and a 72-hour pause on the bubble for travel from Melbourne.
  • “Young Igor” is our affectionate name for the Igor who joins the Ankh-Morpork City Watch in The Fifth Elephant; he is the nephew of the Igor who worked for the Morporkian embassy in Überwald. We last saw him in The Truth, where he was tending to the wounds suffered by the Patrician and his clerk, Drumknott.
  • Rincewind’s age isn’t definite, but a good guess is that he was 32 during the events of The Colour of Magic, and 57 by the time of The Last Hero, so Ben is probably right about him “pushing 60”.
  • Melbourne’s second lockdown lasted 112 days, from July 7 to October 28, 2020. During most of that time, residents were only allowed to leave their homes under very limited conditions, and restricted in how far they could travel from home. It’s probably stretching it a bit to say these were some of the harshest lockdown conditions in the world, but it was reported that way at the time.
  • Liz’s comment about “trips to Aspen” refers to multiple incidents from March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, when wealthy Australians returning from a skiing holiday in Apsen, Colorado tested positive for the virus but did not self-isolate, causing a cluster of new cases.
  • Though he does walk with a cane, the Patrician is not as old as he seems; clues from various books (primarily Night Watch) place him as somewhere between 50 and 55, but it seems the assassination attempts of Men at Arms, Feet of Clay and The Truth have taken their toll and he’s not as strong as he used to be. Or at least, that’s what he’d like his opponents to think…
  • The Bubonic plague is a disease caused by infection of the lymphatic system with the bacteria Yersinia pestis. Usually a human is infected by a flea bite; several flea species can carry the bacteria, and spread among human populations via rats. The plague is responsible for three major pandemics: the plague of Justinian in the 6th century, which killed around 25 million people; the Black Death of the 14th century, which may have killed as many as 200 million people in Europe – about a third of the population; and the plague of the mid-19th century, which caused the deaths of around 15 million people in mainland Asia. (For comparison, as of May 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has officially caused 3.6 million deaths, though the estimated total death toll is 7.7 million.) Untreated, Bubonic plague is very deadly, killing half or more of those infected. Thankfully it can be treated effectively with antibiotics, reducing its mortality rate to 15% or much lower. These days cases are very rare, though the disease has not been entirely eradicated.
  • Here are some links to the very excellent The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret head canon Twitter threads:
    • The original Discworld lockdown thread: https://twitter.com/MakeYeFretPod/status/1247840167819456515
    • Mental health tips: https://twitter.com/MakeYeFretPod/status/1260514179779383297
    • Kinds of masks: https://twitter.com/MakeYeFretPod/status/1303711942234836992
    • Stockpiling habits: https://twitter.com/MakeYeFretPod/status/1250387201986383872
    • Quarantine hobbies: https://twitter.com/MakeYeFretPod/status/1252918448793018371
    • Ankh-Morpork businesses during lockdown: https://twitter.com/MakeYeFretPod/status/1255429705458688000
    • Post-Lockdown activities: https://twitter.com/MakeYeFretPod/status/1257993303527735297
    • Lockdown 2: https://twitter.com/MakeYeFretPod/status/1326545920415051783
  • Aunty Donna are an absurdist sketch comedy group based in Melbourne and formed in 2011. Their latest work is the Netflix series Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun. You can find out more about them at auntydonna.com.
  • Equal Rites is the third Discworld novel, and the first to feature Granny Weatherwax. It tells the story of Eskarina Smith, a girl based in (large) part on Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna, who becomes the Disc’s first female wizard. We discussed it in #Pratchat25, “Eskist Attitudes“. The subject of the gender split in magical society comes back in the later Tiffany Aching books.
  • Ben mentions VCAL, which is the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning. This is a more practical alternative to the standard Victoria Certificate of Education (VCE), a qualification which is more likely to lead to a university degree; VCAL is instead intended to prepare students for an apprenticeship, TAFE course or similar directly vocational training.
  • Most of the captains depicted in the numerous Star Trek television series go on “away missions“, i.e. missions in which they leave their ship (or equivalent). This is especially true of Captain James T Kirk of the original Star Trek, though it’s hinted that this practice is frowned upon by the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Picard’s first officer, Riker, leads most away missions. Mind you, Picard’s contemporary captains Janeway (Star Trek: Voyager) and Sisko (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) go on plenty of missions too…
  • Speaking of Star Trek, the episode Ben is thinking of is indeed called “The Measure of a Man“. It’s the ninth episode of season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation, originally broadcast in February 1989. It’s frequently cited as one of the show’s early greats, even if the legal proceedings are a bit suspect. The book The Metaphysics of Star Trek, which uses Star Trek scenarios to illustrate various metaphysical concepts, was later republished as Is Data Human?, as one of the chapters of the book deals with the issue of “personhood”.
  • We discussed The Science of Discworld back in #Pratchat35, “Great Balls of Physics“.
  • Final Death is the term used in the roleplaying game Vampire: The Masquerade (and its cousin, Vampire: The Requiem) for the ultimate destruction of a vampire, who is already undead. They are not nearly as impossible to kill as the vampires of the Discworld; see for example our discussion of Carpe Jugulum in #Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires“.
  • The Sesame Street song about being alive – or at least the one Ben is thinking of – is “You’re Alive“, first broadcast in 1980. It’s not quite how Ben remembered it, but Sesame Street has tackled the topic several times, always using the measures of eating, breathing and growing.
  • Alan Alda, best known for his years playing trauma surgeon Hawkeye Pierce in the Korean War sitcom M*A*S*H, established the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science in 2009. The Flame Challenge launched in 2012, with the aim of answering the question “What is flame?” in a way that an 11-year-old could understand, as judged by actual 11-year-olds – all because Alda himself received an uninspiring answer from his sixth grade teacher when he was eleven. The winner was announced at the World Science Festival, and the competition was successful enough to inspire several more over the next few years. Each answered a new question picked by 11-year-olds, including “What is time?” and “What is colour?” Sadly the websites for the challenge and the Alan Alda Center no longer exist, but you can find the winners on YouTube with a bit of effort.
  • We’ve previously talked about Beauty and the Beast villain Gaston and his fate, perhaps most significantly in #Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You“.
  • The Beast’s age can be worked out from two bits of evidence. First, the enchanted rose, which will only bloom “until his 21st year”; this implies he is aging during his curse, and the rose is wilting during the events of the film. Second, Lumiere – the maître d’ of the house, transformed into a candelabra – says that they’ve been waiting for “ten years” since being cursed. Why the curse affected the servants is not clear, but muddying the waters is the portrait Belle finds of the Beast, in which he looks exactly like his 21-year-old self. Regardless of the Beast’s true age, Chip’s birth remains a mystery.
  • The original Beauty and the Beast was written in 1740 by Parisian novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Her version is long, detailed and contains and many characters, including Belle being one of twelve children. Most later retellings are based on a greatly pared back version rewritten by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and first published in 1756. These originals draw on the story of Cupid and Psyche, and do not include an equivalent of Gaston, who was added in some later versions. Assuming the Disney version happens around the time the oldest stories were written, Liz is right that they would have lived to see the French Revolution in 1789.
  • Anti-racism is is active opposition to racism, and can take many forms. While the idea has gained more visibility in recent years, with books like Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be Anti-Racist and renewed momentum behind the #BlackLivesMatter movement, it’s certainly not a new idea.
  • The Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness appears in Men at Arms, which we discussed in #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory“. We revisited Men at Arms in #PratchatNALC, “Twice as Alive“, a live appearance at The Lost Con online event run by the Australian Discworld Convention.
  • Diggers is the second of the three books of the Bromeliad, Pratchett’s trilogy about the diminutive Nomes. We covered Truckers in #Pratchat9, “Upscalator to Heaven“, Diggers in #Pratchat13, “Don’t Quarry Be Happy” and Wings in #Pratchat20, “The Thing Beneath My Wings“.
  • We discussed The Long Earth and (briefly) The High Meggas in #Pratchat31, “It’s Just a Step to the Left.”
  • Thanks to listener Steve Leahy, who reminded us that there is at least one alien on the Discworld: Tethys, the sea troll, who crash-landed there after falling off his own watery world of Bathys. He appears in The Colour of Magic, which we discussed in #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation.” (We discuss the sequel, The Light Fantastic, in #Pratchat44, “Cosmic Turtle Soup“.)
  • “Literary fiction” is basically a synonym for “high brow”, “serious literature” or “worthy of awards”, and is used to distinguish supposedly more sophisticated and “important” writing from so-called “genre fiction”. As we discuss, it can get in the bin.
  • Ben finally found a source for the story of the student with the Terry Pratchett book who was dismissed by a lecturer, only to turn things around by revealing they’d written a thesis on his work. It was related on Tumblr by the user thebibliosphere in a comment on this post about “people I still want to stab more than a decade later”. We’ve embedded that exchange below.
https://fistinginferno.tumblr.com/post/187226941007/people-i-still-want-to-stab-over-a-decade-later
  • The “sort of neolithic spaceship” Potent Voyager was dropped off the Rim in Krull in The Colour of Magic; it is already falling, with Twoflower inside, when we encounter it at the start of The Light Fantastic.
  • Mutter’s Spiral is not a real world name for the the Milky Way; it’s the name given to it by the Time Lords in Doctor Who, as mentioned in the 1976 story The Deadly Assassin (yes, they really named it that). You are right to infer this means Ben has spent too much time thinking about Doctor Who.
  • We previously mentioned The Homeward Bounders by Diana Wynne Jones in our discussion of The Long Earth in the afore-mentioned #Pratchat31, “It’s Just a Step to the Left.”
  • Ben still maintains a list of Discworld podcasts on Podchaser, but has since grown this into the wiki side-project The Guild of Recappers & Podcasters. The podcasts he mentions at the end of this episode are:
    • The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret (Patreon here)
    • Radio Morpork
    • Desert Island Discworld (Patreon here)
    • Who Watches the Watch (Patreon here)
    • Unseen Academicals (Patreon here)
Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Angua, Ankh-Morpork, Bonus Episode, Dorfl, Eeek Club, Granny Weatherwax, Nomes, Patrician, Reg Shoe, Roundworld, The Watch, Unseen University, Vetinari, Vimes

#Pratchat59 Notes and Errata

8 September 2022 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 59, “Charlie and the Whale Factory“, discussing Pratchett’s 2005 collaboration with Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, The Science of Discworld III: Darwin’s Watch.

Iconographic Evidence

Feast your eyes on this video of Kat’s extraordinary Pratchett shelf!

Since I was chatting to @PratchatPodcast about it yesterday, here’s my ridiculously long Terry Pratchett shelf 😄 pic.twitter.com/qVXigRlKk2

— Dr Kat Day 🏳‍🌈 🧪🐙 🇺🇦 (@chronicleflask) August 25, 2022

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title is of course inspired by Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which young Charlie Bucket manages to find a “golden ticket” admiring him to the magical factory of weird chocolatier Willy Wonka. We’re not entirely sure if Charlie Darwin would rather have encountered the oddities of Wonka’s factory, but he certainly didn’t seem to have enjoyed seeing the God of Evolution’s whale production line… The book was memorably filmed in 1971 as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with Gene Wilder playing the part of Wonka, though Dahl did not like it. It was a modest success at the time, but became a cult classic in the 1980s when it was frequently broadcast on television. A 2005 adaptation using the same title as the book was directed by Tim Burton and starred Johnny Depp as Wonka, but the less said about that the better.
  • We discussed The Science of Discworld II: The Globe in #Pratchat47, “A Finite Number of Shakespeares“, with guest Alanta Colley. We felt afterwards we hadn’t adequately expressed all of our feelings about it, so we discussed it a bit more in episode seven of our bonus subscriber only podcast, Ook Club, released in October 2021.
  • We’ve previously mentioned Richard Dawkins in #Pratchat29 and #Pratchat47. His early books on evolution are good, and The Blind Watchmaker, published in 1986, makes a great companion piece to Darwin’s Watch. But in the early 2000s he became more and more focused on being anti-religion, and in 2006, a year after The Science of Discworld III, he published The God Delusion, which argued that any belief in a god was delusional. It became his best selling work. He has continued to attract controversy over the years, thanks to his large audience and his perceived position (until fairly recently) as a representative for atheists, whether they want him or not. He’s made enough problematic statements that there’s an entire Wikipedia article titled “Views of Richard Dawkins“.
  • Redshift is an increase in the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, that occurs when observing objects which are moving away from us – making the light from very fast moving objects over large distances appear redder than it truly is. This is mostly observed with the light from distant stars as the universe expands. It can happen in the opposite direction too, with the wavelengths getting shorter, which is known as blueshift. Kat mentions Terry’s use of it in Thief of Time; she also mentioned that it appears in Thud! but we cut that as we didn’t want to spoil a book we’ll be covering very soon.
  • You can get a good overview of Monopoly‘s history as The Landlord’s Game via episode 189 of the 99% Invisible podcast, “The Landlord’s Game“. In recent years there’s been renewed interest in Elizabeth Magie’s original 1904 game, which tried to popularise Georgism, an alternate form of land tax. You can find out way more about it at landlords-game.com. Meanwhile, if you still think the modern game is fair, check out this monopolynerd.com blog post from 2012 which breaks down the probability of getting a full set of properties through luck (i.e. landing on them and buying them, without having to trade with other players), based on turn order.
  • I’m You, Dickhead is officially available for free here on YouTube. Note that it really lives up to the title; there’s swearing and the protagonist truly is a dickhead.
  • Bees and wasps (and ants) are members of the order Hymenoptera, a group of insects that includes more than 150,000 species. Spider wasps, the parasitic wasps which prey on spiders, are in the family Pompilidae; there are around 5,000 species of them, most of which specialise in specific kinds of spider.
  • The telephone is usually attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, who was the first American to be granted a patent for the device in February 1876. But even at the time this was controversial; rival inventor Elisha Gray also filed for a patent the same day, and Bell’s patent was suspended for three months so the matter could be settled – which it was, eventually, in Bell’s favour. But there are plenty of good reasons to think this wasn’t entirely fair or just… (Ben didn’t mean to conflate this dispute with the War of the Currents, but they two conflicts have a very similar vibe.)
  • Elizabeth Fulhame was a chemist lived in Edinburgh in the late 18th century, though some details of her life are lost to history. The book from which Kat quotes is An Essay On Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dying and Painting, wherein the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Hypotheses are Proved Erroneous, which she published in 1794. Catalysis, which she describes in the book, is the now commonplace practice of speeding up a reaction between two chemicals by using a third substance, a catalyst, which isn’t affected by the reaction.
  • Kat is remembering The Science of Doctor Who, which did indeed star Brian Cox and was broadcast on BBC Two in November 2013 as part of the programme’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations… Which means Ben has it one the Blu-Ray box set he has of all those anniversary specials!
  • We’ve previously mentioned the cellulose billiard balls way back in #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory” (about Men at Arms), and #Pratchat10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick“ (about Moving Pictures). The 99% Invisible episode about the invention of cellulose mentioned by Ben is The Post-Billiards Age from May 2015, which we also mentioned in both of those episodes.

More notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Ben McKenzie, collaboration, Dr Kat Day, Elizabeth Flux, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen, Mustrum Ridcully, Ponder Stibbons, Rincewind, Roundworld, Science of Discworld, The Luggage, Unseen University, Wizards
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