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#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.

#PratchatNALC Notes and Errata

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These are the notes and errata for our bonus live episode “Twice as Alive“, revisiting #Pratchat1 and the 1993 Discworld novel Men at Arms.

  • The episode title is a reference to the teaser at the start of #Pratchat1, in which both guest Cal Wilson and Liz declared that they didn’t think of werewolves as undead, but rather “twice as alive”.
  • The Lost Con was intended “as an 8 hour taster for the non-virtual convention in Sydney next year” – the Australian Discworld convention, Nullus Anxietas 7a (NA7a). The Lost Con was free to all members of the 2022 convention, whether full or supporting, and ran from 4 PM to midnight on Saturday, July 3rd – the original weekend planned for NA7a, which was last year postponed from 2021 to 2022. The move was prudent – Sydney is currently experiencing a serious outbreak of the Delta strain of COVID-19 and has been in lockdown since 26 June, with several stages of local restrictions imposed before that. This is the first major lockdown experienced by Sydney since the nation-wide lockdown in early 2020. From your hosts in Melbourne – we really hope you can get out of it faster than we did last year. Our thoughts are with you all.
  • The theme of Nullus Anxietas 7a will be “Ankh-Morpork: Citie of One Thousand Surprises”. (The theme of NA7 was “Going Postal”.)
  • We discussed the vote for the first book preview episode in #Pratchat0, “And the Winner is…“, and in Liz’s blog post “Let’s Start From The Very Beginning (but not actually)“.
  • #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory“, was released on the 7Ath of November, 2017 – three years and eight months ago in real time, or 237 years ago in COVID time, at release of this podcast.
  • Members of The Lost Con Zoom chat were split over whose pronunciations they preferred. The folks from Discworld Monthly informed us that according to Stephen Briggs, there were definitely disagreements over pronunciation for the audiobooks. You can find his guides for some pronunciation in the front of some of his play adaptations; for example in Jingo he specifies that Angua’s name should be pronounced with a hard “g”, but either “Angwa” or “Ang-you-ah” is listed as acceptable.
  • One of the perils of not actually having time to re-read the book (or even re-listen to the entire previous episode) is that we forget little details. Like the fact that Carrot does indeed pick up the gonne, and after a brief look smashes it against a wall, destroying it. As he says when Vimes warns him not to touch it: “Why not? It’s only a device.” Of note: he leaves the broken bits in the clocktower of the Assassin’s Guild.
  • The western roleplaying videogame with the spittoons that Ben mentions is West of Loathing, a spin-off from the online game Kingdom of Loathing.
  • You can read more about the Yarra river in the episode notes for #Pratchat1.
  • Liz’s Detritus pun, which Ben didn’t pick up on at the time, was “inflammation of the d’être“, as in raison d’être, a French term meaning “reason to be”. It’s commonly used by English speakers as an alternate way of referring to something so important if gives them a reason to be alive. Note that in French it’s not really pronounced in such a way that makes the pun work, but English speakers often say it that way.
  • Detritus’ brain-cooling helmet makes later appearances in Jingo (where it breaks down trying to keep his brain cool in the desert) and The Truth, where he switches it on in order to think clearly about how to deal with William de Worde asking journalistic questions.
  • The two-player roleplaying game Ben is discussing is Tin Star Games’ Partners, released in digital form in 2021 following a successful Kickstarter campaign.
  • We discussed Feet of Clay in #Pratchat24, “Arsenic and Old Clays“, released in October 2019.
  • We discussed Jingo in #Pratchat27, “Leshp Miserablés“, released in January 2020.
  • Hitchcock and Scully are the two rusted-on detectives who serve in the 99th precinct of the New York Police Department on the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, portrayed by Dirk Blocker and Joel McKinnon Miller respectively. They are notoriously incompetent, unhealthy and lazy, concerned primarily with snacks and other food. Originally supporting characters, they became a staple of the show and feature in the opening credits as of season six, the second episode of which (titled “Hitchcock & Scully”) explored their backstory as hotshot detectives in the 1980s.
  • The Ankh-Morpork Archives, Vol. 2 was published on the 29th of October, 2020, collecting material from the Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork City Watch Diary 1999, the Discworld Fools’ Guild Yearbook and Diary 2001, the Discworld (Reformed) Vampyres’ Diary 2003 and Lu-Tze’s Yearbook of Enlightenment 2008. Ben is right that the City Watch diary, published in September 1998, came out after Jingo (November 1997) and before The Fifth Elephant (November 1999).
  • We discussed The Fifth Elephant in #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King“, released in February 2021.
  • Asimov is one of Liz’s cats, who along with her other cat Huxley and Ben’s cat Kaos are collectively known as the “Pratcats”. Huxley and Kaos are relative newcomers, but Asimov has been around since the beginning; as well as hearing his bell jingling in the background of many episodes, he was featured as a guest on #Pratchat22, “The Cat in the Prat“.
  • The cult in Guards! Guards! are the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night (not to be mistaken for the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee). We discussed their similarity with incels and other “alt-right” groups in #Pratchat7A (see the next point).
  • We discussed Guards! Guards! in #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“, released in June 2018 and The Truth in #Pratchat42, “The Truth, the Printing Press and Every -ing“, released in April 2021. The other book in which there’s a plot to dispose Vetinari is Feet of Clay, which as mentioned above was discussed in #Pratchat24.
  • As per the excerpt from #Pratchat1, our original suggestion was that Vetinari become a vampire, but we have previously discussed the idea of a zombie Vetinari…though we’re not entirely sure when! Possibly it was in #Pratchat30, “Looking Widdershins“, which is also where we first discussed the possibility of Moist Von Lipwig being groomed as the next Patrician (as suggested by listener Luke Jimenez).
  • The “critical Black Mass” joke in The Light Fantastic, as discussed in #Pratchat44, “Cosmic Turtle Soup“, refers to a collection of “books that leak magic”.
  • Ben and Liz both discuss their Pratchett origin stories in #Pratchat9, “And the Winner is…“. Liz realised her first was not in fact The Fifth Elephant just after recording #Pratchat7A, as discussed near the start of #Pratchat9, “Upscalator to Heaven“.
  • We discussed the Johnny Maxwell books in 2020: Only You Can Save Mankind in #Pratchat28, “All Our Base Are Belong to You“, released in February; Johnny and the Dead in Pratchat34, “Only You Can Save Deadkind“, released in August; and Johnny and the Bomb in Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem“, released in November.
  • Early versions of “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” go back to as early as 1913, in press releases in various American magazines from a lobby group aligned with gun manufacturer Colt. These were designed to counter growing public concern about the availability of cheap mass-produced firearms, especially pistols, and the resulting escalation in deaths by shooting, which even back then were leading to calls for more regulation and control of guns. While earlier versions included things like “it’s not the gun, it’s the man behind the gun”, the current version is the most recognisable, and seems to have first arisen in the 1950s or 1960s. It’s nonsense, of course; no-one ever suggested that a gun could kill someone on its own. The point of the phrase is to make guns themselves seem neutral, neither good nor evil, but also to paint the perpetrators of gun deaths as obsessed murderers: killers who will use any means necessary, whether they have a gun or not. This ignores the fact that guns are deadlier than other weapons, and indeed the fact that guns even are weapons, i.e. devices designed only to harm living creatures. If you want to know more, the phrase is also the title of a very useful 2016 book on the subject: “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People” and Other Myths About Guns and Gun Control, by Dennis A. Henigan.
  • The gonne influences Vimes by telling him that All that you hate, all that is wrong, I can put right, and Vimes finds it difficult to resist. He also remembers it pulling its trigger by itself, dragging his finger along with it, and only ends up putting it down and not shooting the villain because Carrot orders him to attention.

#Pratchat1 Notes and Errata

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Theses are the show notes and errata for episode 1, “Boots Theory“, featuring guest Cal Wilson discussing the fifteenth Discworld novel, 1993‘s Men at Arms.

  • We did indeed have Cal back to discuss Sourcery! See #Pratchat3, “You’re a Wizzard, Rincewind“.
  • For more on our decision to start with Men at Arms, see #Pratchat0, “And the Winner is…“, and also Liz’s post, “Let’s Start From the Very Beginning (but not actually)“.
  • Men at Arms is indeed the fifteenth Discworld novel, and the second to feature the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Ben does now write these things down (and, indeed, has a very comprehensive spreadsheet).
  • What Ben meant about the copyright on “Discworld” is that this is the first book in which “Discworld” appears on the copyright page as a registered trademark. Intellectual property (or IP) law is a complex topic, and can differ greatly from region to region, but basically:
    • Copyright (denoted by ©) is the protection of original works from being copied or otherwise used without the creator’s permission. This mostly applies to literary, dramatic, musical or other artistic work (including visual art), lasts for a fixed period (70 years in Australia), and is automatically applied without a creator having to do anything. A creator can extend it to others, as Terry later did by assigning copyright to he and his wife Lyn, and then Dunmanifestin Limited. Copyright doesn’t protect ideas, only the specific expression of ideas, which is where some of the complexity comes in.
    • A trade mark (denoted by ™️ or ®) is a “sign” that shows a product was made by a certain person or company. The sign can be almost anything: a word, a specific colour or style of packaging, a logo, a design, even a sound. It’s an old concept, similar to the “maker’s mark” used by artisans that gets pointed out on on Antique Roadshow on silverware, jewellery, ceramics and so on. Anyone can start using the ™️ symbol, which suggests a common law trade mark, but the ® denotes a registered trademark which is more easily enforceable by law. These are managed by government agencies (e.g. IP Australia). Also worthy of note is that if you have a trade mark, you have to actively be using it, and you must defend it if someone else starts using it, or you will likely lose it.
  • You’ve probably heard of the Thames, but the Yarra is the common name for the river Birrarung or Biarrarung Marr, which flows through the heart of Melbourne, or Narrm. It runs for nearly 250 kilometres from the Yarra Ranges in inland Victoria to the ocean in Port Phillip Bay, though its course and nature has been changed extensively since European colonisation. It was previously nicknamed “the upside down river” due to the golden-brown muddy colouring it acquires by the time it flows through Melbourne. This is also the product of colonisation, as land clearing and mining have increased the erosion of surrounding fine clay into the water.
  • The negative reviewer of Pratchett’s work to which Ben refers was Northern Irish poet and literary critic Tom Paulin, who appeared on BBC2’s Late Review television program and derided Pratchett, writing him off as a populist: “… selling thousands of copies – a complete amateur – doesn’t even write in chapters – hasn’t a clue.” This seems to have been in around 1993 or 1994; Pratchett proudly reproduced the quote in the front many of his books, with the earliest example Ben can find being in the 1995 Corgi paperback of Interesting Times.
  • Terry Pratchett’s debut novel, The Carpet People, was first published in 1971, when Pratchett was 23 years old. However an earlier version of the story was serialised as some of his very first published fiction in the Bucks’ Free Press in 1965, when he was only 17! Most of the instalments of that version appear in the second collection of his early stories, Dragons at Crumbling Castle, published shortly after Pratchett’s death in 2015.
  • Clowns in our world can and do copyright their face makeup, and the egg gallery is based on the “Clown and Character Registry”, where many clowns actually did register to have their makeup painted on a goose egg and displayed, though we were unable to discover whether the UK or US registries still exist. We’re sorry again, clowns.
  • Ben uses commedia dell’arte more-or-less correctly.
  • 99% Invisible is a podcast all about design, hosted by Roman Mars. The episode about the invention of cellulose mentioned by Ben while discussing the Alchemist’s Guild is The Post-Billiards Age from May 2015. (This episode will get mentioned again in #Pratchat10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick“.)
  • There are indeed ghosts on the Discworld, appearing in several of the novels. We’ll be meeting some of them fairly soon, as one plays a major role in Wyrd Sisters. (See #Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches“.)
  • The final Discworld book is actually The Shepherd’s Crown; I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth-last, and the second-last to feature young witch Tiffany Aching. (We try to keep our spreadsheet handy in future episodes to avoid such basic mistakes.)
  • “Shoot” is used for arrows, as the term predates guns by many centuries.
  • CMOT Dibbler is pervasive once he arrives, but is not in The Colour of Magic. (See #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation“.) In fact he first shows up when the Watch does, in Guards! Guards! (See #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“.)
  • Not only are Lord Vetinari’s plans for the future unknown, but it has also never been revealed how he ascended to the position of Patrician in the first place.
  • We are aware that despite being asked “which Guild would you join“, we decided we would be wizards, witches or members of the Watch, none of which have an official guild (at least at the time of Men at Arms; see #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King“, for the creation of at least a temporary guild of Watchmen in The Fifth Elephant).

Eeek Club 2021

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Welcome to a new tradition: the Pratchat Eeek Club! Each year, on the Glorious 25th of May, we will release a bonus episode discussing 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?

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!

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.

#Pratchat27 – Leshp Miserablés

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In episode 27, Liz and Ben are joined by guest writer and psychologist-in-training Craig Hildebrand-Burke to discuss the depressingly relevant yet uplifting 1997 Discworld novel of war and prejudice, Jingo.

In the middle of the Circle Sea, halfway between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch, the ancient and slightly eldritch island of Leshp has risen from the waves. Of course both nations want to claim it as their own, what with the other nation being filthy foreign devils, and almost immediately the threat of war is in the wind. An attempt on the life of a visiting Klatchian prince kills peace talks before they can even begin, and the Patrician is deposed – leaving Sir Samuel Vimes, Lord Commander of the City Watch, with a crime to solve. Can bringing a murderer to justice stop a war?

Jingo sees the Watch swell in size, gives a great deal of airtime to the Patrician, and also shines the spotlight on the Disc’s greatest inventor, Leonard of Quirm! And of course we spend more time in Klatch, now inspired more by Lawrence of Arabia than Arabian Nights. It’s a story of nationalism, racism and war – both of the regular kind, and between the classes. Jingo was not only still relevant when we recorded this, but has suddenly and awfully become more relevant since. Can Pratchett help us do away with ideas of Us and Them? Can he flesh out the previously cartoony city/nation/continent of Klatch? And how great are submarines? Use the hashtag #Pratchat27 on social media to join the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:29 — 57.8MB)

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Guest Craig Hildebrand-Burke is a writer who has recently completed a psychology degree. He’s written fiction, non-fiction, reviews and commentary for publications including Tincture, Writers Bloc, ACMI and SBS News. You can find him on Twitter as @_CraigHB.

Next month we leave the Discworld and head into outer space – and inside a computer – in 1992’s Only You Can Save Mankind, the first of the Johnny Maxwell books for middle grade readers. We’ll be recording in late January, so get your questions in via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat28.

You’ll find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

We recorded before the current Australian bushfires reached their peak, and so barely mentioned them in the episode; if you’d like to help the firefighters, wildlife workers or those affected by the fires, this JJJ article has some good places to start.

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.

#Pratchat24 – Arsenic and Old Clays

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In episode 24, meteorologist Nate Byrne joins Elizabeth and Ben for a Discworld tale of murder, golems and nobility in 1996’s Feet of Clay.

Two old men have been murdered in Ankh-Morpork, but they’re not the worst of Commander Vimes’ woes. His best Sergeant is six weeks from retirement; his worst Corporal might be the Earl of Ankh; his newest recruit is an alchemist with some pretty strange ideas for a dwarf; and someone has poisoned the Patrician, though he’s damned if he can figure out how. And somehow, the golems are involved…

Content note: this episode contains brief discussion of (fictional) suicide. If you or anyone you know needs help, use the Wikipedia list of crisis lines to find one local to you.

Following on from Men at Arms (from way back in episode one!), Feet of Clay evolves the Watch – and its leader – even further, and introduces some of Pratchett’s most memorable supporting characters: Cheery Littlebottom, Wee Mad Arthur and Dorfl the golem. It gets a bit deep on questions of artificial life, gender expression and identity, and is a heck of a mystery novel to boot. Did you figure out “whatdunnit”? Who’s your favourite new character? And what do you think the Pratchat coat of arms and motto should be? Use the hashtag #Pratchat24 on social media to join the conversation and let us know what you think!

PS – we recorded this just before the casting announcements for The Watch television series, so don’t be disappointed when they don’t come up! We’ll find a place to discuss them in the near future.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:14:58 — 62.2MB)

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Guest Nate Byrne is a meteorologist, weather presenter and science communicator. He presents the weather for ABC News Breakfast, which means he gets up very early and had been awake for around 14 hours when we recorded this episode, making his jokes and insights even more impressive! You can find Nate’s writing for the ABC here, and follow him on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

You’ll find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Next month we’re joined by author Claire G Coleman as we head back to the early days of Discworld with Equal Rites. Plus our subscriber-only bonus podcast, Ook Club, has launched! You can subscribe for as little as $2 a month to check it out. You’ll find all the details on our Support Us page.

#Pratchat42 – Truth, the Printing Press and Every -ing

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Author, editor and journalist Stephanie Convery returns to Pratchat as newspapers and conspiracy hit Ankh-Morpork in the same week! It’s The Truth, the 25th Discworld novel, first published in 2000.

William de Worde has made a reasonable living writing a monthly newsletter for notables, keeping them informed of goings on in Ankh-Morpork. But when he’s nearly run over by Gunilla Goodmountain’s new movable type printing press, he soon begins producing a different kind of “paper of news” – one that anyone can buy on the street, full of the important stories of the day. Before long “the Ankh-Morpork Times” – soon employing writer Sacharissa Cripslock and vampire iconographer Otto von Chriek – is a hit…and has ruffled a few feathers. But William has a powerful drive to spread the news, only intensified when Lord Vetinari is found unconscious next to a horse loaded with money after supposedly having stabbed his clerk. The Patrician being arrested for attempted murder and embezzlement is big news, of course – but is it the truth?

Pratchett cut his teeth as a writer as a journalist, and had for many years used his work as inspiration – but nowhere as directly as in the 25th Discworld novel, which introduces the Disc’s first newspaper journalists, William de Worde. Apart from William, the novel also brings us the Times’ staff, most notably Sacharissa and Otto, who pop up in many future books, and the unforgettable “New Firm” of Mr Pin and Mr Tulip – plus the triumphant return of Gaspode! The books also draws on sources as broad as Shakespeare, the history of printing, Watergate and Pulp Fiction for inspiration, references and jokes, while still packing in themes as serious as public interest, prejudice, class privilege and…well…the truth.

Is it weird seeing Vimes as a secondary character through the eyes of a journalist? Do you wish the staff of the Times had more books of their own? Where do you come down on the debate over public interest vs “of interest to the public”? Share your truth with us via the hashtag #Pratchat42 on social media, and join the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:29:47 — 69.0MB)

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Guest Stephanie Convery is a freelance writer and Deputy Culture Editor for Guardian Australia. Since she was last a guest on this podcast (discussing Mort way back in #Pratchat2, “Murdering a Curry“), Stephanie has published her first book: After the Count, a critically acclaimed “history and interrogation of boxing as art and a cultural examination of sport”, framed around the death of boxer Davey Browne following a knockout in the ring. You can check out Stephanie’s work at Guardian Australia, or follow her on Twitter at @gingerandhoney.

We’re planning to be part of the line-up for the Australian Discworld Convention’s online event, The Lost Con, on Saturday 3rd July, 2021. More details on that soon! We’d also love to know if you want us to do an episode about The Watch television series, and whether you’d support Ben making a similar podcast about the works of Douglas Adams.

Next time we’re jumping ahead into the future as we continue to spread out Tiffany Aching’s story: yes, it’s time to grab A Hat Full of Sky! We’ll be joined by writer and poet, Sally Evans. Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat43, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

You’ll find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

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.

This month (April 2021) you can also help raise money for Meals on Wheels in the US as part of the #Reviews4Good initiative! We’ll respond and double the donation, too. Just review the show (or an episode) on Podchaser.

#Pratchat40 – The King and the Hole of the King

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Comedian Richard McKenzie returns to get a bit gothic as he, Liz and Ben head to Überwald to discuss The Fifth Elephant in the room…by which we mean the twenty-fourth Discworld novel, published in 1999.

As Ankh-Morpork and its neighbours embrace modern semaphore technology, trouble is brewing among the dwarfs. A new Low King is soon to be crowned in Überwald – and not everyone is happy with the choice. The Patrician selects just the right “diplomat” for the job: the Duke of Ankh, Sir Samuel Vimes. He reluctantly agrees to face vampires, werewolves, Igors and dwarf politics in a place where his Watch badge holds no sway. He’s not going alone – though Sergeant Detritus (a troll) and Corporal Cheery Littlebottom (the first openly female dwarf) are not likely to be popular with the traditional dwarfs of Überwald. Luckily he also has diplomatic attaché Inigo Skimmer, and his strongest ally: his wife, the Lady Sybil Ramkin…

After exploring one vampire family from Überwald in Carpe Jugulum, Pratchett takes Sam Vimes out of his comfort zone and into the lands of the fabled fifth elephant, while making far fewer references to the Luc Besson film than you’d expect. With Carrot and Angua off on a B-plot, and Colon, Nobby and the rest of the Watch left behind in the C-plot, it’s also a chance for background characters Detritus, Cheery and Lady Sybil to shine. The novel also expands on the culture of vampires, werewolves, Igors and especially dwarfs, building the foundations for many future novels.

It’s a great read for a Discworld fan – but would The Fifth Elephant make a confusing introduction to the series? Was this Sybil’s finest hour, or were you left wanting more of her? Does a beloved character do a murder? If so, is it okay? And did Carrot really need to be there, or was he just a Gaspode enabling device? Tell us by using the hashtag #Pratchat40 on social media to join the conversation!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:29:06 — 68.7MB)

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Returning guest Richard McKenzie is hopefully back to hosting trivia twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, at the Cornish Arms on Sydney Road in Brunswick, Melbourne. He and Ben devised the Dungeons & Dragons themed impro comedy show Dungeon Crawl, which now usually appears at Melbourne games expo PAX Aus. He also appears in the lineup of ensemble comedy shows The Anarchist Guild Social Committee and Secondhand Cinema Club.

A a quick reminder that you can order Collisions, the short story anthology from Liminal Magazine, from your local bookshop! It includes Liz’s story “The Voyeur” and fifteen others. The link also has some online sources if you need ’em.

Next time we’re reading something very different: Pratchett’s standalone, non-Discworld young adult novel from 2008, Nation! We’ll be joined by educator Charlotte Pezaro. Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat41, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

You’ll find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

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.

#Pratchat7A Notes and Errata

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These are the show notes and errata for episode 7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“, featuring guest Aimee Nichols, discussing the 1989 Discworld novel Guards! Guards!

  • The episode title is a pun on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon. The book’s title is in turn a quote from the 1892 Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”, referring to one of Holmes’ unseen adventures.
  • Get Smart was a sitcom created by Mel Brooks in 1965, starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86. Smart and the other main characters worked for spy agency CONTROL, thwarting various ridiculous villains – especially members of the rival agency of evil spies, KAOS. Despite being highly trained in espionage and combat, Max frequently exasperated his professional and romantic partner Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) and their boss the Chief of CONTROL (Edward Platt). One of the classic sitcoms of the ’60s, it contributed many famous catchphrases to popular culture in its original run of five seasons, which ended in 1970. It’s since been repeated many times, and spawned two film sequels, The Nude Bomb (1980) and Get Smart Again (1989); a short-lived revival/sequel series in 1995; and a surprisingly good film remake in 2008 starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway.
  • Monty Python’s Argument Clinic sketch is…well, if you haven’t seen it, you should just watch it.
  • “Incels” are so-called “involuntary celibates” – an online community of men who believe they have been unfairly denied sex by women. Jia Tolentino’s piece “The Rage of the Incels” for The New Yorker is a good introduction, but go gently – it’s unpleasant territory.
  • “Thatcherism” is descriptive of the politics of the Conservative party of the United Kingdom, particularly under party leader and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, from 1975 to 1990. They were a marked change from the period of the “post-War consensus”, in which the two major parties broadly agreed on things like state regulation and ownership of industries. Thatcher changed all that: she and her allies believed in much more economically-motivated conservatism, Victorian-style “family values” and British nationalism. Their beliefs under her Prime Ministership have left a huge mark on politics in the UK and around the world (not least in Australia).
  • In case you’re one of the sixteen people who didn’t see James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar, the Na’vi are 10-foot tall blue cat people from the planet Pandora. Like many other species on their planet, including the dragon-like Banshees, the Na’vi have a long braid-like organ on the back of their head which connects to their brain. They are able to link these to other creatures to form a neural bond which…well, it’s not really explained what it does exactly, but it seems like mind control: the animals have to be forced to do it the first time, after which they become compliant, which is gross. It’s also established that connecting braids is a significant part of how the Na’vi conduct, erm, the kind of thing that happens at Mrs Palm’s, so make of that what you will.
  • Anne McCaffrey’s beloved book series, Dragonriders of Pern, is another alien-dragons-with-riders story, but on Pern the riders form a psychic bond with their dragons at the time of hatching, and the bond goes both ways. The first of the 23 novels in the series – some written or co-written by McCaffrey’s son Tom – is Dragonflight.
  • Lord of the Flies is William Golding’s 1954 novel about a group of schoolboys who must fend for themselves on a remote island after a plane crash. They initially form a functional society but eventually fall into tribalism and a violent struggle for power, and “Piggy”, the nerd of the book – whose glasses were the boys’ primary means of lighting fires – is murdered by one of the other boys, crushed to death under a large stone. It’s considered a classic, but Ben hated it so much in high school that he wrote a limerick about it. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was such a fan that she read it multiple times and started the (now-dormant) group “I studied Lord of the Flies In High School – and loved every minute” in the heady early days of Facebook.
  • Whizzer and Chips was one of the many anthology comics magazines popular in the UK until the 1990s. Such comics were full of one or two page strips featuring a variety of recurring characters. Whizzer and Chips employed the gimmick of being two separate comics – Whizzer and Chips – published together. The characters (mostly kids) in each comic formed a gang, and there was a rivalry between the two. (Ben considered himself a Whizz-Kid, but liked most of the strips in both.) Big Comic was a similar comic magazine that reprinted strips from other smaller comics.
  • “The Trio” were the major antagonists in the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, comprising long-time supporting character Jonathan, Warren who had appeared in the previous season, and new character Andrew (though actor Tom Lenk had appeared earlier in a separate role as a background vampire henchman). Each was a geek with a different area of expertise in magic or technology; they decided to join forces and take over Sunnydale. Warren was the properly evil one Liz mentions, who dominated and manipulated the other two.
  • In the Channel 4 sit-com Black Books, Dylan Moran played misanthropic drunkard Bernard Black, owner of the eponymous bookshop. In the first episode, Bernard offers the optimistic but anxious accountant Manny (Bill Bailey) a job and a place to live above the shop, but he has forgotten this by the next morning. Thankfully for comedy audiences everywhere, Bernard’s friend Fran (Tamsin Grieg) forces him to let Manny stay, giving us one of the great odd couples of modern television.
  • “To Protect and Serve” was originally the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department. Its popularity from appearing in Hollywood productions has led it to be adopted by many other police departments around the world.
  • Nobby doesn’t actually appear in the Going Postal telemovie – Aimee and Ben are remembering Nicholas Tennant, who played him in Hogfather, where Constables Nobbs and Visit appear in the toy shop where Death is playing Hogfather. He really does look perfect! (It’s not easy to find screen grabs, but we found a good one in this Czech film review.) Nicholas Tennant went on to appear in The Colour of Magic as the Librarian (both pre- and post-transformation).
  • The Dungeons & Dragons image Ben is thinking of is the cover of the original 1978 Players Handbook (they left the apostrophe out on purpose), painted by David A. Trampier, who passed away in 2014. This article at The Dice Are A Lie talks about his life and the illustration in question.
  • Rowan Atkinson played the mostly silent, oddly child-like weirdo Mr Bean on television in Mr. Bean between 1990 and 1995, and Mr. Bean: The Animated Series from 2002 to 2004 and 2015 to 2019. He also stars in the feature films Bean (1997) and Mr. Bean’s Holiday (2007). Mr Bean’s adventures in renovation can be seen in the “Painting His House” clip on the official Mr Bean YouTube channel. (The feasibility of his method of painting was investigated in the Mythbusters episode “Mind Control” in 2006.)
  • Guards! Guards! is indeed the first appearance of Ankh-Morpork’s finest Arthur Daley-esque dodgy entrepreneur, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, referred to by Vimes as just “Throat”.
  • “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” is the main refrain from the song “Maria”, one of many well-known songs from the hit stage and screen musical The Sound of Music. It’s sung by a convent of Austrian nuns about the protagonist Maria, a younger wannabe nun whose frivolous ways lead them to send her away to be a governess, giving her time to decide if the convent is really where she wants to be. (Spoiler alert: it’s not.) The whole thing is based on the memoir of the real-life Maria von Trapp, The Story of the von Trapp Family Singers.
  • The origin and debunking of the “bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly” story are explained well by Australian science writer Dr Karl Kruszelnicki in this “Greatest Moments in Science” piece.
  • The Golden State Killer is a serial killer, rapist and burglar who committed the bulk of his crimes in the ’70s and ’80s. In the wake of Michelle McNamara’s true crime book I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, the case received renewed interest. The killer was finally apprehended when police used a free public ancestry website to compare an old DNA sample to the site’s catalogue, narrowing down the pool of suspects to a single lineage.
  • Aimee is correct: this is also Detritus the troll’s first appearance. Lots of good first-time cameos in this book!
  • Vimes’s “Dirty Harry moment” mirrors the monologue from the original 1971 film in which Inspector Harry Callahan tells a bank robber he’s lost track of how many bullets he’s fired, and claims his .44 Magnum is “the most powerful handgun in the world, and could blow your head clean off”. The full dialogue is on the Wikipedia page for the film. As noted in the APF, the dragon’s name, Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, ends with two “fours”, echoing the gun Callahan has in the movie. He’s a clever one that Pratchett. (“Go ahead, make my day, punk” is from Sudden Impact, the third Dirty Harry sequel after Magnum Force and The Enforcer.)
  • The reference to 1942’s Casablanca – a classic war-time romance, whatever Liz might say – comes about 30 pages earlier, when Vimes thinks “Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into … it’s flown into mine…”. This echoes the words of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick, who runs an American-style cafe in Casablanca, Morocco, just before the United States entered World War II. After his ex-girlfriend Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) appears in his cafe with her husband, a Czech resistance leader wanted by the Nazis, Rick says: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
  • Liz’s suggestion for a new Sunshine Sanctuary references the 2001 comedy film Zoolander, in which “really, really good looking” but not very smart supermodel Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) wants to create the “Derek Zoolander Centre for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too”. He’s later shown a model of the proposed school, which he rejects; you can watch that scene here.
  • Best in Show (2001) was the second of Christopher Guest’s largely improvised mockumentary films, following Waiting for Guffman. It features Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch and many of Guest’s other frequent collaborators as the administrators and competitors in a dog show in Philadelphia.
  • Danny the Pekingese – or more formally, “Yakee A Dangerous Liaison” – was the “Best in Show” winner at the 2003 Crufts, the most prestigious dog show in the UK. He was also featured in the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed, produced by Passionate Productions, which investigated the health and care issues faces by pedigree animals, and highlighted the possibility of him overheating as one of many issues faces by his breed.
  • Pugs are believed to have been bred in China, and first introduced into Europe in the 16th century. Thanks to a few famous personages of the day having their portraits painted with their pugs you can indeed see how different they looked back then; a good example is the self-portrait of artist William Hogarth and his pug, Trump. (Trump appears in many of Hogarth’s paintings, and has his own Wikipedia article.)
  • Sorry Ben, but a “slug horn” is not a real thing. While Professor Horace Slughorn is the replacement Potions Master coaxed out of retirement and back to Hogwarts by Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when he refers to a “slug horn” Pratchett is referencing Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, which features the lines “I saw them and I knew them all. And yet / Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set”.
  • Aliens from the same species as E.T., the alien protagonist of the Spielberg film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, appear in the galactic senate in George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. This was to fulfil a promise Lucas made to Spielberg after Star Wars toys, including a child wearing a Halloween Yoda mask, were featured in E.T.
  • Torchwood: Children of Earth was a special five-day television event in which the members of the alien-hunting Torchwood Institute – an adult and previously very camp spin-off from Doctor Who – were plunged into a serious battle with factions of their own government over the response to alien invaders. It’s by far the best season of the show and completely different in tone, so you could probably get away with watching it in isolation if you’re prepared to do a little googling about the main characters’ backstories.
  • Sergeant Colon’s chant echoes the classic unionist refrain “The workers, united, will never be defeated”, which may have been inspired by “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”, a piano composition by American composer Frederic Rzewski, which itself was based on songs sung by the people of Chile in the early days of their struggle against the oppressive regime of Augusto Pinochet.
  • In Luc Besson’s film The Fifth Element, Leeloo is a newly-created adult human, made by aliens as an “ultimate weapon” in the fight against ultimate evil – but she has no knowledge of humanity, and learning of their history of violence nearly causes her to give in in despair. (She’s also a prominent example of the “born sexy yesterday” stereotype.)
  • Rape Culture is a term that has been around since the ’70s to describe the normalisation of behaviours that both blame victims and downplay the severity of sexual assault. It’s impossible to explain succinctly, and many good articles have been written on the topic, including this one on the Huffington Post and this from Vox. It is worth mentioning, especially given the context of us including this in the show notes, many of the articles we went through while looking for resources specifically frame it in the context of women in relationship to men – e.g. “A Primer For Fathers”. Well intentioned, yes, but still a shame that a personal connection is seen as necessary in order to start viewing women as people.
  • We were going to explain Liz’s Orient Express reference, but it gives away the ending to a murder mystery, so we’re going to go without spoilers. You can read or watch Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express to find out!
  • Kanban is a scheduling system originally designed for manufacturing, invented for Toyota in Japan in the 1940s. Today it’s mostly used for “agile” or “just-in-time” development of software – terms we hope you never need to understand, so we won’t attempt to describe them. Kanban isn’t generally used for plotting novels, but if you look it up and try, let us know how you go!
  • Scrivener is writing software for complex long works, sometimes used by screenwriters and often by PhD candidates. Ben’s limited experience with it has taught him an important lesson he wishes to pass on: do not use it in conjunction with Dropbox, because the two do not play well together.
  • Anoia, “Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers”, is a deity mentioned in the later Discworld novels Going Postal, Making Money and Wintersmith, as well as The Compleat Ankh-Morpork.
  • Maid Marian and Her Merry Men is, as you might guess from the title, a non-traditional retelling of the legend of Robin Hood created by Tony Robinson in which Marian is the real hero. Robin is a cowardly tailor from Kensington who accidentally ends up the public face of Marian’s “vicious band of freedom fighters”, which also features Barrington the Rasta (played by Red Dwarf’s Danny John-Jules), the not-at-all-ironically named Little Ron, and enormous dimwit Rabies. It ran for four series between 1989 and 1994.
  • Tony Robinson’s storytelling series were Tales from Fat Tulip’s Garden and its sequel Fat Tulip Too, Odysseus: The Greatest Hero of Them All (which covered The Iliad and The Odyssey) and Blood and Honey (covering a variety of stories from the Old Testament). His Pratchett audio books – which include every Discworld novel, as well as the Bromeliad trilogy, the Johnny Maxwell books, The Carpet People, Dodger and, well, most of them – are all abridged versions.
  • The unabridged Discworld audiobooks were originally read by Nigel Planer (of The Young Ones fame) until long-time Pratchett collaborator Stephen Briggs took over from The Fifth Elephant. Briggs also read Eric (which hadn’t been part of Planer’s earlier series), while the unabridged Equal Rites and Wyrd Sisters are read by actor Celia Imrie, best known for her comedy work with Victoria Wood and for roles in Bridget Jones’ Diary, Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Unabridged versions of non-Discworld Pratchetts are often read by Briggs, but some have had other narrators, like the Johnny Maxwell series read by Richard Mitchley, and The Long Earth books read by Michael Fenton Stevens.

 

#EeekClub2021 Notes and Errata

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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:
  • 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 various 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 its hinted that this practice is frowned upon by the time of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Picard’s first officer, River, leads most of the away missions. Captains Janeway and Sisko go on plenty of missions too, though…
  • 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, for new questions 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 wilt during the events of the film. Second, Lumiere – the maître d’ of the house, transformed into a candelabra – who 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 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 plan to revisit Men at Arms in our upcoming live appearance at The Lost Con; watch out for details in our next episode!
  • Diggers is the second of the three books of the Bromeliad, Pratchett’s books about the diminutive alien 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 pointed out 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’re discussing the sequel, The Light Fantastic, next episode.)
  • “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 tried and failed to find 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. If you know where to find it, please let us know!
  • 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 maintains a list of Discworld podcasts on Podchaser. The ones he mentioned at the end of this episode are: