Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today, we are
coming to you during the strike, and so I am not going to be
covering anything that's made or has been made by these Struck studios. But it
turns out there's actually a whole bunch of other great media out there that we
geeks love and want to talk about. Today we're talking about Discworld, the
Terry Pratchett for a series of books that I believe goes to forty four novels
that is very it's kind of hard to describe, and that's why we're doing
a whole podcast about it. We're actually talking going to do multiple podcasts about
Discworld, and today we're kind of do an introduction to Discworld and focus on
the night Watch series of books. Whether you've read these or have no idea
what I'm talking about, I think it's gonna be a lot here for you
to enjoy. Don't worry about it all that more. With myself and Rob
McKenzie. Right after this commercial break that I really hope is not from any
of the Struck companies, Welcome back. This is Matthew, your host.
I'm joined by frequent guests on both this and the Star Wars podcast Rob Mackenzie,
who is waving, which you can't see because this is radio. But
Rob, how are you doing? And what is Discworld doing? Pretty well?
Discworld is it's a series of fantasy satire novels that which sounds like not
a big deal. But Terry Pratchett is one of a very small number of
people who has been knighted just for being a writer. He's until he passed
away, he was the greatest living fantasy author. You said forty four.
There's some disputing that there's forty one main Discworld books, but there's also a
bunch of subsidiary I've got the streets of Discworld upstairs. I've got a handful
of other random ones that have been board games and movies and a television show
and Amazon show that we don't talk about because it's atrocious. Do not watch
watch on Amazon. It's the worst. But the series covers a humongous scope
of stuff. Terry Pratchett wanted to just have kind of a play space for
being able to put whatever fantasy stuff he wanted in a big junk drawer,
and so he stole the concept of the Discworld from History of a Flat Earth
character in the back of elephants on the back of a giant turtle, and
then he decided that continuity was for suckers, and so like, the timelines
literally do not work in his books, is actually impossible for the time to
all work out. And then because he was so tired of people telling him,
well, you broke your own continuity and the timelines don't work out,
he wrote the History Monks into Discworld, and the fact that history was shattered,
the monks put it back together in order to cover up for the fact
that time doesn't make any like continuity doesn't make any sense, because he just
didn't want to deal with people. And I think that's important, especially as
we're doing introduction, because that's not that's why we're not starting with Discworld Book
one, because it really isn't such a thing. The Color of Magic was
the first Discworld book published. But as you said, it is it is
very accessible in that if you jump in in the middle of a series,
you might have a little bit of difficulty, but even then it's pretty simple.
Yeah, but most of the series are they're intertwined, and that they're
constantly making references to things. So the more you know, the more you
know, but they're all kind of standalone in some ways. As I watch
like the MCU and DC and Star Wars try to do these interconnected universes or
multi universes, I think Terry Pratchett in some way is a pretty good one
to look for, in part because, as you said, they're not trying
to do continuity and slightest and in a lot of way for those who've heard
me rant about time travel, that's one thing I really like because they're not
trying to make it all make logical sense. That's kind of the point,
right, Well, in the world has its own kind of internal logic to
it. But he's willing to He's willing to write con whatever any different at
different time. He's willing to make things like disappear that he wrote about that
he lineed him into a book and then they just don't come up and they
get moved to somewhere else. He refused to draw a map for a long
time. He refused to have a map, like that's the classic thing in
a fantasy book. He opened up and there's a map inside the front cover,
right, and he just wouldn't do it. He would have like drawings
of the discworld, and he'd talk about the geography, but he was like,
look, and that's going to restrict me. And also he's like he
would have drawn the discworld with the line you can't map in imagination, and
then people got deeply into it and we're like, but we really want to
know kind of where all these things are geographically relative to each other. And
so then he finally gave up and made a map, which so one of
the things that a Babylon five was commented was like, they never gave speeds
for the movement of ships, right, because then that would lock them in
to to whatever. But the trade off in some things is if you explicitly
map things out, that gives you ideas for for a continuity for stories,
right, because if you know that these countries are neighbors, then you can
have interactions with them as neighbors. And that does lock you in, but
that's fine. That gives you a point of continuous tension right up. And
so yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think
that's one of things that's really appealing about the books, especially because and granted,
as we've discussed before, I am not as big a fantasy person as
you and some others who are in our friend group and have been on this
podcast. And there are some fantasy works, especially some of the stuff by
Grandon Sanderson, that I find very inaccessible because it's completely about a world for
which I have no reference points. Yes, and one of the things that
I really love about disc World, I think this is part of what puts
it into the sort of parody, satire, humorousness of it is that on
the one hand, this this this seems to be a kind of medieval world,
and that you know that it is about like Truncheans, who are the
very early days of gunpowder in terms of like, you know, whether guns
do or don't exist, and that is a hotline. Actually have one of
the night Watch books. You know, people want a king, there are
dragons, and it's a lot of the things that are signposts of the medieval
world, the fantasy adventure world, and you know, there's no electricity for
the most part. Things like that, there's magic and get into that world.
Then he puts an awful lot of modernness, you know. And so
for example, every time there is a big public gathering in the streets of
ka Moore Park, which is one of the big cities and where most of
the stories, at least a lot of the stories that I've dealt with take
place. You'll have a guy basically who's you know, a modern day vendor,
like you know, walking around with his cart selling stuff. And that's
probably not the best examp books. I think you did have those for a
couple hundred years ago. But like there's just you know, there are the
equivalent of organizers, you know, the if you think about like early BlackBerry
type things that are just they have a devil, a little demon inside them
instead of like electronics, and there's all kinds of stuff like that in terms
of the way they get paid and things like that. They're basically using magic
or fantasy to put the things that are in our own world back into the
medieval world. Well yeah, and what he's doing is he's using he's using
the fantasy setting to provide some like distance in your head, right of like
what of the stuff that you do that that seems absolutely normal to you,
what happens when you transpose it into a world where people will behave like people,
right, they did make self interested decisions, they do the things that
they do, and you transpose in something like like the world getting smaller.
Right. The one of the big themes in later watch books is and in
specifically in making money or not making money going postal, which is the first
voice the pickbook is the Clacks system, which is a real thing from from
the United Kingdom. Before telegraphs, before electricity, they had sendapore towers that
they used to send information around and they he uses that as a the world
is getting smaller, right. Electronic communications may make us able to send send
information back and forth from here to Hawaii, to China, to Africa to
anywhere instantly, I can I can send and I can send an email like
I did today at work. I communicated with somebody from my company's home base
in Germany right, multiple times, instantly, zero hesitation, where sending a
message to Germany, you know, in the year sixteen hundred would take weeks
right at the minimum. And so you have this this tightening of the world
and the world getting smaller and broader, and you're getting to see and touch
more people and the so it's harder for for bad things or good things or
anything that is far away to feel far away, right, And so the
books, the books will struggle with that kind of perspective of like why why
does it matter to us like on a day to day basis what's happening in
Europe right, right? But nowadays it matters a lot, right if if
you know there's some some crazy dictator who starts a war in the middle of
Europe, well that that impacts the whole world for as long as that war
is going on from and from then on out right. Definitely. Yeah,
it's a really fun thing that the books do in terms of using kind of
pseudo technology and stuff to make it accessible, but also still put it pretty
far back in the past. And so I think a lot of people,
especially if you pick up a book you read some of the passages, a
lot of it is is humor, and a lot of it I think cappear
still is the wrong word, but I think, you know, kind of
not. I think it's a good word, you know that. I think
it is often perceived to be like, oh, someone is just having fun
with this universe. They're making things up. These are good for like a
summer read or you know, getting yourself to laugh a little bit, and
they are they're they're light books, like very much though, very much.
Yeah, there's no there there there's no more. I don't think you're ever
going to cry over you know what happens to a character or I feel like
deep emotional moved moved. I disagree, but but okay, well they're lat
in terms of like they're short, the writing is easily accessible, and the
characters and everything feels engaging. Is oupposed to like some doorstop fantasy novel,
like we've talked about the past, right right, Okay, so that's that's
a bad example, but yeah, but yeah. The point I'm gathering too,
though, is that so the first question might be why are we talking
about it on a podcast called Superhero Ethics? And I know the answer,
but I want to throw this to you to those who think, like these
books are fluff, but that's kind of all they are. What's your response?
Terry Pratchett wrestled, wrestled with the things that make us human, and
he would passed these things through a lens of fantasy and a lens of satire.
But fantasy and satire have always historically been a way to address big problem
by abstracting them, right, YEA satire the like great satire authors of the
past, would set things in weird or strange places to make commentary on the
things of their day. If you look at like you know, famous satirists
of the past, Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, they wrote fantasy pieces, right
Candid a visit from Sirius, from Voltaire, Like almost anything about Jonathan Swift,
they were They were pieces that were set outside of what was normal in
order to in order to provide a different lens on issues that we're going on.
And Terry Pratchett does this specifically. He wants to talk about economics.
He wants to talk about slavery. He wants to talk about the rights of
people. He wants to talk about the experiences of those who have different views.
He wants to talk about issues about being trans about being about having problems
fitting into other societies or those societies letting you fit into them. He wants
to talk about slavery. He wants to talk about everything. And he'll take
a book and he will. He will be very bald faced about what he's
doing in a given book, right, he will be. He will.
He's like, I'm coming at you with a hammer. We're we're going to
talk about slavery this book Feet of Clay. Let's go right and but at
the same time, like you said, it's funny the the in Men at
Arms, which is fundamentally a book about and we want to specifically talk about
guards books. So we're talking about like the second and third Guards books,
Men at Arms and Feet of Clay, and then probably Jingo to the fourth
one. In Men at Arms, there's a very early on there's a very
very funny exchange with Vimes and Carrot where Vimes Vimes mentions, you know,
the king's the head hancho, and and Carrot goes or the queen. He
goes, okay, fine, yeah, haunch Arena and he goes, no,
no, no, no, no no. I think I think would
be han cessa like thinks through all the different like like versions of like female.
He's like, no, that would be a young girl, like it's
haunt Arena. And so it like if I's just like if i'ms just like
everybody does this in on More Pork and I don't understand why, and it
makes like what is wrong with the people in the city. No. Vimes
has lived in the city his whole life and he's never left it. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, I think it's one of the best things that he
writes into the books. Is he kind of makes this joke through the eyes
of Vimes, who's the leader of the night Watch and then of the City
Guard by the as things move on, and that's a whole, very confusing
thing. I'm gonna paint with broad strokes here, but he's a point of
view character for a lot of the books, and he makes this comment about
how he's always annoyed by the fact that the people of the city seem genetically
disposite, disposed in his words, to go off on tangents, which allows
the author to go off on chances all the time. Yeah, I will
get to the night Watch, but I just want to focus one of this
kind of overall thing because I think it is you know, the whole idea
of this podcast is to take is to look at the way that the stories
that yeah, often appear as less serious, you know, superheroes and comic
books and all these kind of things. And I think that idea that they're
less serious is in and of itself deeply flawed, but that often they have,
sometimes intentionally sometimes unintentionally, very deep social meaning and very deep social commentary.
Yes, and Pratchett, I think, is one who is very explicitly
trying to make that commentary, and as you said, like like one thing
I want to say, but it's hidden under all the comedy and fluff.
It's not. It's not hidden at all. It's very unsubtle at times,
but it is so wrapped up in comedy and humor that I feel like that
the kind of person is like, oh, I don't want politics in my
world is going to very happily read them, yes, and probably internalize some
of the messages. I mean in terms of like finding that subtle line of
teaching people about social justice without letting them know you're teaching them. I think
Pratchett's one of the best of all times. He's he's very, very good.
He's actually so subtle at it that there are a number of people who
have tried to co opt his works as things that he explicitly didn't stand for,
and like his daughter Ran Pratchett has had to come in and be like,
are you insane? Like there are people who are like Terry Pratchett be
against trans rights, and she's like, have you have you read Monstrous Regiment?
Have you have you like, have you interacted with any of the characters
in the Guards books like he's he had, so he'll he'll be imperfect.
Is the other thing is because he wrote books. The first books published in
nineteen eighty three, and he published them all the way up through twenty eighteen,
I think. And so the thing is that some of his some of
his views shifted over time, right, but he always tried and so that
you always have a dialogue and people would come back and be like, I
don't like the stuff that you did in this book, or the way that
you phrase things, of the way that you address stuff, and he go,
okay, I'll be better, and then his next book would sometimes he
would come back and explicitly hammer something that he had touched an earlier book.
I think that actually a monstrous regiment, which is like which is the thirty
first book goes back and rehits trans issues in a way that he tried to
touch in Men at Arms much much more aggressively indirectly, and that book is
wild. A monstrous regiment is there are very few people who present is the
gender that they were born as in that book and it's very it's very interesting.
It's about a bunch of women that sign up to go to war,
like they you know, recruiter comes to town and they all fake being men
to sign up into this regiment. Yeah, and the sergeant leads them through
everything and how how spoiler do we want to be because this book some spoilers
to find the sergeant leads them through war and figures everything out, and the
protagonists the viewpoint character for the whole book, somebody you know, figures everything
out and throws a bundle of socks over the over the um the bathroom stall
is like, you should pack with these, right, because people are going
to look and see that you don't got anything down there, and so um
the character does this, and then they gradually figure out that every almost every
person in the regiment except for the lieutenant is is uh, you know,
born female, right, and they the sergeant, they find out much later,
also is born female and has been presenting as a mail for so long
that everyone including them considers them a male. And then but they have like
but this it's it's an interesting point of like who how do people want to
present themselves? Right? And it is a whole book of that of like
they they do this big scene where they um the sergeant like points out all
of the officers when they finally meet all the officers, the big general staff.
It's like these people stay in the room, those people go out,
and everybody's like, why are you dividing up these people entirely randomly and arbitrary
And they close the door, and the Sergeant's like, all right, all
y'all are ones that I sussed out as like as fake, like as presenting
male but having been bored female, every single one of you. There's half
of the general staff like what they like, you can't you can't put these
these you can't call these soldiers women. And then like you're the ones prosecuting
this because they were two out as being they want to be. They want
to present his women in addition to into addition who have been born a women.
So it's like it's a it's a great like he wants to address this
issue better because like it's it runs underneath all of these And then people are
like, oh, there's no politics this, and I'm like he's angry.
He's actively angry that people are being culs to people from being trans and wanting
to choose their own gender presentation no matter what it is, no matter how
they started, How did you miss this Noah, I think that's so true.
I would probably describe it as that they were signed female at birth by
the book itself. But yeah, and that um. And even to go
to the Men in Arms book that you mentioned, that's the one that's written
much earlier. And in that one, it's not as much that it's specifically
about a character who I think we would today say is trans. But one
of the main characters is a dwarf. Yep, and the dwarf has a
long beard, and so to everyone else, they just assume this dwarf is
male, and it was revealed Dwarves point. Yeah, the Dwarves actually don't
have any public gender presentation except mail for every Dwarf, even within their society.
Yeah, but it and the I don't way too lost in the weeds
of the details of it, But what it gets you to is an idea
of that the way we humans perceive gender. And I would say, actually,
you know, euro a man, Americans perceived gender because a lot of
other cultures are very different. The dwarf doesn't fit and the dwarf culture has
a fundamtically different understanding of gender, and and I thought that was it was
you know, I think he was definitely pushing the bounds at the time.
He was doing it as a cisgender person in the eighties or nineties, And
to me, his reaction when when some people did push back is the best
I think you can imagine where he'd be like, oh okay, that's awesome,
tell me more. He didn't get defensive as far as I understand from
and this is from lots of like great interviews with activists who would talk to
him. You know, he would just be like, oh, okay,
I want to learn more, and then I want to put that into my
books. Yes, And here, I think is where the lack of a
locked in Here's where I think the lack of a locked in continuity really helps
him, because I think one of the things that we're seeing with Marvel and
with Star Wars and a DC and with some of these other properties is that
they are locked into some degree of continuity, and they're often trying to make
modern versions of characters that were written almost entirely by cis head white men in
the forties, fifties, sixty seventies. May we're Jewish and then often gives
it so much different perspective. But you know, and like I think some
of them have wrestled with that really well. For example, the you know,
I don't want to mention I was going to mention a particular TV show
but part of the strike and I don't want to get into those, so
I'm not going to mention it. But I think some of them have been
done well, some of them haven't. But the point being that they're wrestling
with it in a way that Terry Pratchett is just like, I don't need
a wrestling with it because I can just change it, you know, right
well, And part of that is actually because Terry Pratchett has never let anybody
else write in disc World, right, there's nobody else Neil Gaman. Neil
Gaman and Terry Pratett were very very good friends. They collaborating together on Good
Omens, which is one of the best pieces of fantasy typewriting in this space.
And Terry Pratet wouldn't let Neil Gaman touch disc World and game it doesn't
want to touch dis World, right, And so the the there's no shared
universe problem which is a problem in these big properties, which is they're so
big that one author, one person can't manage the ball, right and so
like you have the like you don't have a single unified creative vision, and
you don't have one person who can go back and say, well, I
want to go when rewrite my own history, and I want to retcn whatever,
and I like, I don't feel the beholden to anybody else, right,
and so and we fight against people like that on these big shared property
Star Wars. As soon as it turned into a big shared property, you
know, in the nineties, when the when the EU came in, you
know, the expanded universe we had that, it didn't it fundamentally didn't matter
to George Lucas. Now we can we can say whatever we want about George
Lucas as a creator. But he also he felt like Star Wars. Star
Wars was his creation to do whatever he wanted it in the same way.
But then once it too big for him, once there were other properties,
like it's a shared universe, and it's really hard to let other people play
in the sandbox when they might have a different different view on things. They
might not handle things in the same way. They handle things as sensitively,
or they might handle things more sensitively and blow you away right right, So
they want and to play in a shared universe sandbox. You need a lot
more structure, right, You need a guidebook for exactly how this character behaves,
because as soon as you hand that character off to somebody else, you
want them to be consistent in the next property, right, Right. And
I think that's a good point. I think that's part of why in a
lot of the fandoms now we have people fighting with wildly different visions of what
we think the original author intended or meant. And I surely don't think that
all all of those views are equal by any means. But that's the topic
you've heard me talk about at great length in the past. And so getting
back to Pratchett. Getting back Pratchett, let's talk more about like some of
the specific issues that he does want to talk about in these books. And
I think there are some books that are very specifically like where one individual book
or a series of books is about a particular thing. For example, he
wrote one book that we're going to talk about a bit that is very much
a anti war book that I believe was written or came out around the time
of the original Desert Storm and very much kind of a protest about that.
I'm not sure, if that's exactly true, it might be you know,
earlier and like in regarding Falklands or something like that, I might publish ninety
seven. So okay. So yeah, So it was after the original Golf
Gulf War, but while both Britain and the United States still we're continuing,
you know, warfare, and there was still a lot of it's called jingo
and there was a lot of jingoism coming out of both England and the United
States. And we'll get to that. But there were I think some real
overarching themes to uh, Terry Pratchett's work in Discworld, and I think one
of them is best exemplified by something you've been telling me about Grandma's definition of
sin. You talk a little bit about that, Yeah, Granny weather Wax
is. I would argue that Granny weather Wax is Terry Pratchett's favorite character.
She's angry, which is the description that I best herd to describe Terry Pratchett.
He is righteously angry all the time, and that's the way that she
operates, and she defines sin. There's a section in Carpet Jokulam where she
says, and that's what your holy men discuss is it in the priests that
she's talking to. Do says not. Usually, there's a very interesting debate
raging at the moment on the nature of sin, for example, And she
says, and what do they think against it? Are they? He goes,
It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue.
There's so many shades of gray. She goes, nope, pardon,
there's no grace, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know
that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things,
including yourself. That's what sin is. He says, it's a lot
more complicated than that. No, it ain't. When people say things are
a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't
like the truth people as things, and that's where it starts. Oh,
I'm sure there are worse crimes, but they starts with thinking about people as
things. Yeah. And I love that because it is it is such a
simple, easy explanation of a school of ethical thought that goes back you know,
I mean I think there are Greek, you know, I believe there
are far earlier like maybe Greek or Roman or other philosophers who have come up
simple similar ideas to me, though, what it rings closest to is Martin
Buber, who is a Jewish theologian German in the nineteenth century who wrote,
I Thou versus I it, and the idea being that like a good relationship
is when I see you as thou as the other and other person that I
relate to, versus that when I start seeing other people as it as things.
You know, this is the person who sells me my grocery. Is
all I know is the way that they interact comes into my life. He
wrote, you know, an entire book on this, and many many books
on it, and people have written, you know, librarries about these theological
ideas and philosophical ideas and Grandma weather works h Granny other Wackwax. Granny Weatherwax
comes up with the whole idea and just a few sentences create people as people,
not as things. Yes, And that's that's kind of the big arc
of all of the night Watch books, because the one of the things about
the night Watch books is they are they're about Vimes running a growing police force,
right, and they're growing because more pork has opened its doors to the
people's of the world. Lord Vinari has decided that anybody can move to on
More Pork. He's not going to discriminate. They have money. He likes
money, right, And what that means is that everyone does moved on Moore
Pork. Dwarves and trolls hate each other. They there are gnomes which are
very tiny. There are gargoyles, which are which are kind of a species
of troll that live in the on the tops of buildings. There's vampires and
werewolves and ghouls and banshees that all move to onc More Pork. And one
of the one of the big things is, well, if you have a
civic group that is public facing, you got to hire people like we would
call them diversity hires or affirmative action hires now. But in reality, like
the night Watch is just this big melting pot of all these different people,
right, and they have to struggle over and over again with what is their
definition of a person? Right, And they start by folding in trolls and
dwarfs and a werewolf. Right. A troll, dwarf and a werewolf are
the diversity hires at the very minimal night Watch and by the end they're running
into so they've hired a golem. Well, golems aren't alive, are they?
And then later on they have to deal with the fact that there are
goblins that everyone hates, an orcs that everyone hates. What about the villain
races? Right, you can deal with dwarves, like if you're in a
fantasy setting, everybody wants to play a dwarf. But like the all these
these evil species, right are they? Are they people too? And of
course through the course of the books it turns out like an undead zombie winds
up joining in. Oh yeah, yeah, there are vampires that you know
play a part in the city and yeah, well they do hire a vampire
to the watch eventually, even though Vimes hates it. He hates it to
death. Yeah he's so, he's so against it, But finally enough pressure
gets put on him where he's like, fine, will probationarily hire this vampire
when they do something, when they do anything to screw up, I will
kick them out so they can't make any mistakes. Which is a very very
much a thing for diversity hiring in workplaces. You have to be better,
right, women have to be significantly better than men in a lot of hiring
situations and that's deeply unfair. Yeah, and yeah, I want to touch
more on that in a minute, but I wanted to pull back first to
this idea of teaching people treating people as things, because he, like Boobery,
he definitely means like when you actually see other sentient beings and you don't
see them as people, But he also means it in a much more expansive
way like boober does, and like you know, others of the school of
thought where part of the idea. It's also talking about, you know,
if you see people, if you see like lower classes as just there to
you know, die for you, or to buy your stuff, or to
you know, somehow advance your agenda because you see them as lesser than you
are. It's basically the idea of if you see a person only through the
lens of how they are valuable to you, that's when you've crossed this line
into seeing them as a thing instead of seeing there they're full I want to
see humanity. But that's the whole point. It's not just humans their full
personhood, they're full sentiencest or whatever it is. Yeah, and so there's
there's a bit in feet of clay, where um, the whole book is
kicked off by deaths of some fairly unregarded people, right, and it's a
it's a it's an old priest that nobody really cares about, and a guy
that runs a museum for dwarf bread. And then later on they discover that
two more people died as a consequence of of some poisoning from the same source,
and they these people are just like, she's a she takes in mending
and does seemstress mending, and it's her grandkid died as a result. And
then then goes he tells one of the villains. He's like, these people
died, and he goes, well, were they important? And here it
goes, you know, I almost felt sorry for you up to that point.
I really like you got dragged into the situation, you didn't have total
control over. It kind of ran you over, and I almost felt sorry
for you. Yeah, and he goes, I'm glad that Commander Vimes didn't
get to hear this, because like, Vimes will not stand for that,
and that's his his overriding thing is he Vimes is a very weird, a
very weird aspect because he's basically the avatar of law. Right. He wants
law and order, but not law and order in the sense that most,
like most laws, are shaped by society by people with power. He hates
people with power. I would even say that he's an avatar of justice rather
than law, and that he sees the law often as things that are created
by people in power, and that when the people in power want him.
One of the constantentions of the book is that he very rarely is willing to
be the enforcer of the government, and to the point where the patrician,
who's the person who rules the city, and he's a great character and himself
he has learned that the best way to get Vimes to do something is to
order him not to do it. Oh, yes, which has become a
wonderful ongoing theme throughout the books. Yeah, he tells Vimes, you,
you know, you always used to have an anti authoritarian streak, and it's
very interest that you've kept that despite becoming an authority. It's very zen of
view, and the Vimes goes, sir, not a question, like I
acknowledge what you're saying. Yeah, And I think that's a great way to
jump into let's start talking about the night Watch books themselves, because they're very
interesting set of books, and as you said there, they grow expansive as
the books go on, in part because the group that they're about because expansive
because it's originally about the night Watch. Who are you know, the people
who literally are just supposed to like walk around the city and ring their bell
and say all is well, or ring their bell if as a problem,
and they're mostly ignored. Yes, they're they're the dregs right exactly. And
one of the things that kind of and Vines is left and can control when
his higher up, the merchant who trained him and he really sees as a
mentor and almost a father figure, dies and no one goes to the funeral
except other guards, and he kind of like gets it in his mind that
he should start thinking more about what matters and that the guards can do things,
and winds up surprising the city when all of a sudden they're actually trying
to like solve crimes and prevent bad things from happening and punish when when you
know, figure out what happened when bad things did happen, and the city
kind of doesn't know what to do with him because they're not used to someone
actually caring, especially if it's the rich and powerful who do bad things.
Right, and Vetinari, the Patrician is set up the city so that the
watch is an appendix. It's like it's going to get stepped stood down at
the end of men at arms because it doesn't do anything the way that you
prevent crime. Vetinari says that if we're going to have crime, and we
will, it should be organized. Yeah. Yeah, there's a thieves Guild,
right, And so what the Thieves Guild have is a license given by
the city, given by the government that they pay for to that allows them
to steal from people. And what they do is they say, well,
it's a lot of work to go and steal from people, though, so
they go to businesses and they go, here's the deal. You buy a
license from us, You buy a thieves Guild protection from us, and you
put it up as a sign, and then we don't steal from you.
You pay up with the Thieves Guild every year and there will be no licensed
thievery. If there's unlicensed thievery, give us a call and we have a
We take a very dim view of scabs, right and by a very dim
view. They are. They are brutally lethal at at removing games. And
so if theft isn't something the Watch cares about, right, the answer is
you turn them over to the thieves skilled and let them sort it out.
You know what, You don't really have street crime when when you have people
that enforce it. They've created a watch incidentally via basically an insurance structure,
and so the Watch is basically there for murders and to keep the peace,
which is a very nebulous term, right, And yeah, I mean when
he when he trudges trying to get the Watch to do more, the first
people has to givence is the other watch people, and and and then it
kind of mushrooms and he takes over the day Watch first. There's a rivalry
there. They're just the Watch in general now and more and more guards come
in, and that's a good place to start. What I think is kind
of one of the most interesting questions about the night Watch is and again here
these are books that start getting written in the nineteen eighties. I think a
lot of the night Watch books specifically are written in the nineties and early two
thousands. And he dies in as you said, the late twenty teens.
BLM was I think just getting started at the time he passes away. A
cab was not a phrase that was being used, but is being used obviously
much more today. Although certainly, you know, concerns about police brutality we're
a thing in most of his books. Here's the way I would I think
that some people today would be like, oh, I don't want to read
any books about police because of a cab. And I think that's a very
fair perspective, and I'm not trying to push anyone out of it. I
would say, though, were these books, there's two things going on.
I'm curious if you would agree. One is that you know that I think
one of the big problems that many of us would have with police is that
I think the distillation of it is that the police are there to enforce not
justice, but the law, and the law is handed down through these oligarchical
you know, the rich are basically in control kind of clical systems that most
of us live under to one, you know, just with varying amounts of
how express the oppressive it is. But you know, I think even in
this country we see that all the time with the police there's an extent to
which in the night Watch world that's not the case they want it to be,
and he is, let me just say both of these things, and
then yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, I'm just letting you know that
I have stuff. Ye, yeah, for sure. And I think that
it certainly is to some extent, and that over the course the books,
Vines is trying to get out from under that idea and make it into something
very different, because it's not police as it is in our world, it's
the Watch. But the second part of it is that I think that if
Pratchett had lived another ten years and people had gone to him and said,
hey, you know, we're thinking a lot more about police brutality, and
we're thinking a lot more about the idea that police fundamentally as an institution are
problematic and all the ideas of ACAB. I think Pratchett would have responded and
exactly the way he did with the other stuff, and been like, yeah,
you're probably right. Let me let me see how I can write this
in different ways or be more aware of that or whatever it is. Yeah,
I agree, but you also have to take it from the respective of
Terry Pratchett is from the UK. He's a British or and so he is
going to write about the way that policing is handled in Britain. And they
actually have a thing appeals principles of policing, policing by consent. Most of
them don't carry guns, and the policing is there. They've set up the
set of principles. Peel set up the set of principles of like, police
are there to serve the people, right, the public, they keep the
peace. And so when you compare the way that policing has done in the
UK to the way it's in the United States, it's very different. We
have a militarized police system and they oftentimes will treat they will oftentimes treat the
public is their enemies, right, And I think that that having an aspirational
group how police, how you want it to be as good, right,
because that forces people to confront how they're different, like you could call it
in the United States, Like there are very funny police shows, right Brooklyn
Brooklyn nine nine is a show that is about a fictional police department, and
it is very funny, right, but it is fundamentally about a different thing
than the watch. Because American policing is very different than British police, right,
and so yeah, he probably would have had a book where he has
police from a different place that behave very differently towards their people and like compare
and contrast it and say, look, yes, I agree the cops there
are bastards, right, like you should probably you should probably be better.
And to be clear, I do think it's worth pointing out there is quite
a lot of police brutality and racism in the British policing system. It is
very different, I think, in much less ways and unlike here where policing
was literally borne out of slave catching. Yes, like England has a very
different history of it. Yes, So I just want to be careful that
we're not romanticized in the UK. Believe I'm not. I'm not. I'm
just drawing the lens that, like his view, policing is based on a
completely different philosophy of policing in the United States, policing, like you're saying,
they came came from entirely different starts and places, and they they've they're
converging a little bit, but not like I think that just the just the
arming of police, that difference alone, right, that like seven. Only
seven percent of officers in Britain even carry a weapon or carry a gun.
They might carry a truncheon or a night stick or pepper sprayer or whatever,
but ninety three percent of them don't carry any kind of lethal weapon on them.
And so when you when you look at it from that lens of like
he's looking at polices, they aren't an armed, militarized force like that changes
the game, right, even even if the police there are senses, right,
they're gone, you don't have to be afraid for your life. You're
just gonna be afraid that they're going to believe friendly podcast. I'm sorry,
it's okay. We'll just have a lot of beeps right there. But that's
fine. Yeah, no, I don't. I think you're right though,
and I think that's an important thing. And I think, you know,
because I think I think it's important understand that he starts from a different place
and like even something by nine, I think I think there's an argument to
be made that it is still presenting the idea that American police could be made
better when I think a lot of us are on the side of it kind
of has to be torn down and started over. I think you make good
points that in England it is a fairly different thing, and also that's being
read right way back in history and yet to me. To me, I
think i'd start with a place of it comes from a very different place,
but also that the I want to be very careful. It's not to say
that like, oh, we all just discovered racism in the police when Black
Lives Matter got started, is obviously incorrect. I think it's when a lot
more white people started to pay attention to it. But there's been racism and
policing, as we said, since police started. But I do think that
as poor people approached Pratchett, he would have definitely put that more into his
books. Yeah, he certainly would have. Well, so let's talk more
about some of the specific characters, because I think that's also where we start
to really get into some of the points that he's making through these characters and
through these stories. And let's talk about Vimes and Carrott as the two kind
of because I think they present a very interesting dichotomy between the two of them,
and each one of them has a lot of rhetorical power in the way
that Terry Pratchett uses them to to make points. So tell us about about
Vimes and about Karrott. Yes, so Vimes is, and especially in the
first few Watch books, he's a pastiche of the hero cops. Right.
He is dirty, Harry he is. He's a tough, you know,
no nonsense, street brawling thug with a heart of gold. That is,
that is fine with breaking the rules to do the right thing, which is
from from a structural perspective. This is getting into police problems, right,
because this is saying that the rules bind the police officers and you shouldn't follow
them if you're you know, in hot pursuit, and that gives them a
lot of license to do whatever. So that like, but that's what he
does. Carrot, on the other hand, is newcomer to the city and
he's idealistic. He is a simple person, but that doesn't mean stupid.
Is the line that they use. He moves in straight lines when everyone else
moves in circles, and he is the like. They make a big deal
about it in several books. He is the uncrowned king of Untamore. Pork
righte and his girlfriend Angua makes the point she's a werewolf and she can see
it that he moves through the city like a tiger moves through the jungle,
right, he wears it like a skin. And it's his natural environment that
he had this charismatic talent that he's he was raised by dwarves as a as
an orphan, and so he comes to the city and he has in a
dwarf mine. You only meet a hundred people in your whole life, right,
all the people living in this mine, all the dwarfs there in the
city, you'll meet a million. And he has this this charismatic talent that
expands out to fill the whole city. He knows everybody, and everybody likes
him, and nobody likes Mimes. But Vimes is in charge, Vimes is
the commander. Vimes his Carrot's boss. Yeah, and Carrot is very clear
about that, like that he's got a boss, and that if his boss
tells him no, well that's it. That's the that's the line, that's
the end. Right. And because because Karrot, I think, I think
one thing that's really important in him, he starts out very much the avatar
of law because yeah, but not because he not not because he thinks the
nobles are right and have this divine right to set the law it's because he's
never thought about it, and he just thinks the law is good. And
so on his first day and his first day as a member of the Watch,
he goes and tries to arrest the entire thieves guild and has to kind
of learn that's not how it works. But he translates into this very interesting
character. I don't want to talk about a couple of aspects of him,
And the first thing is I think he often gets to be the avatar for
the audience about this idea of expanding our nature of people, because he is
fundamentally goodhearted, but he's fundamentally learned the prejudices of the people who grew up
with, not because they're like particularly hateful people, but just because they live
in a mind and they don't know much about other people. And so in
an interesting scene early in the book that Angua, his eventual girlfriend, is
introduced. She is a. Again. I love that you use the term
diversity higher, because I think that's kind of he's kind of He's not making
fun of affirmative action by naps. He's making fun of the people who think
affirmative action is just diverse hires, when actually it's people who have different skill
sets and different perspectives that are needed. But in that book they keep saying
that Angua is a diversity higher because and they start the word with a W
and then it gets cut off. Yes, And so the joke is that
everyone thinks she's a hier because she's a woman. And there's some question as
too, did they actually know she was a diversity hire because she was a
warewolf or what it is it's spelled out. Vins knows, but Carrot doesn't,
right, and most of the crew doesn't, and so he doesn't know
she's a wearewolf. He finds out that she's staying in a place that it's
full of the folks who are genuinely not liked, like werewolves and zombies and
vampires and things like this, and he's very worried for her. And you
see her like having been kind of into this guy, maybe wanting to flirt
with him, but then really kind of like souring on him when she sees
he has these prejudices, except like he is the perfect example of the person
who, when presented with new information, will immediately drop his his prejudgments,
which prejudices. That's where the word comes from. Prejudging. Yea and me
go ahead, I was gonna say, But he still snap reacts until he's
until he's rewired himself. When he first finds out when she first changes in
the moonlight, he turns around and sees that she's a werewolf, and he
draws a sword because he thinks she's the doors closed, she's been in the
room with him, she's the only person there, and so like. But
he goes, oh, it's a wolf. I should be I should fight,
I should be afraid, And she used to rewire himself, but he
does by the end of that book. Yeah, And I think that's what
makes and I think it seems very intentional to me that Carrot is the avatar
for those things, because part of what they're saying is that even the best
of us, even the most morally pure, utterly innocent, can still have
these prejudgments. And he's so he and I think the whole point is that
Carrot isn't like it's saying that, like, it's okay that Carrot has that
first reaction. It's not great, and it's better if you don't. But
to have that reaction at first makes sense given how Carrot is raised. The
question then becomes when you're presented with the evidence, what do you do?
Because I think that's the thing that's so frustrating and has been through our history
is when you start with preconceived notions about another gender, or another race,
or another religion or another you know, a gender identity or any of these
things. Are you able to say, oh, well, actually, I
met this person and they're kind of awesome, so maybe my views about the
group that they're from I should change. Or are you going to say,
oh, well, now that I know this about that person, everything I
experienced about them must be wrong, or oh well, they are one of
the good ones, so they're okay, but everyone else in their group is
still bad. Yeah. And it's a fin hastic allegory about like the fundamental
basis of prejudice, and it really is I think one of the best books
series of books. I think all of this World is about what we do
when we confront something that's different, and how do I get past are innate,
you know, desire to judge the different as bad or as dangerous or
right, and that judging the different is bad and dangerous. Angula, who's
a werewolf, deals with all the time because so the Watch members know about
this. So like when when feet of Clay comes around and she has to
deal with the fact that everyone carries a little bit of silver on them,
Yeah, except for Carrot. Carrot has decided she's safe, and so she's
safe, Like he couldn't, Like, he's probably the one person who probably
could successfully fight her because he's like a shoot, pull her punches and be
he's tough as hell. So if he had silver, he would, he
would, he would actually be a real threat. And the everybody else,
even even people who are her best friends, who like her and work with
her every day, carry a little bit of silver just you know, just
in case on them, which is and everybody's just a tiny little bit fearful
of her, and she senses this all the time, and it is this
wild like allegory for racial tension that like you wouldn't realize if you aren't thinking
about it that way, right, It's just like, oh, yeah,
of course people are going to be tense. She can turn into a wolf
and arrow at your jugular vein, right, Like of course you're going to
be a little bit afraid. It's like, yeah, but anybody could do
that, Like so like anybody could could hurt or kill you. Why are
you so so picky about it being a werewolf? Right, Yeah, I
think it's that second point, especially because when when people look at like a
werewolf or a zombie or like the X Men as a metaphor for something like
racism or anti religious biased or any of the link, it always falls apart
a little bit because the fundamental thing is that like, no one race is
actually different in terms of like there are in or their propensity to violence than
any other part of humanity. Yeah, where wolves are x men, like
you know, like an X men does have the ability to melt me with
his laser eyes or something like that. So it's not a perfect analogy,
but as you said, I think that they go part of what he goes
to is a werewolf looks scary, but the reality is that any person can
attack you with a weapon on any kind or anything like that. Yeah,
where wolves just happen to have their weapons in their mouth. Yes, and
it is Yeah in the United States, like we have more guns than people
here, right, so like statistically you will meet people with guns over the
course of the day if you go out in public. Just the nature of
the United States, right, And are you going to say that you know,
these people are inherently scary or dangerous just because they happen to have access
to a lethal weapon. I don't think that's necessarily true. I think that
I'm concerned that the lethal weapons out there, but like I think that this
is a lesson that like I probably would like to hurt more. Yeah,
I would actually argue that it is like not only just my gut feeling,
but I believe the statistics do demonstrate that, you know, because we all
have those moments of I wish I could hit someone right now, but if
you don't have a gun with you, it passes. If you have a
gun, you often use it. But right, that's a whole debate,
not to get into it, but but the thing is that you shouldn't be
You shouldn't just be automatically always afraid of people. I think would be my
my line. Because in the United States, it's possible they might have a
gun. Concealed carry is legal many places, right, and so they like
they could just have a gun, and so but you shouldn't by default be
afraid of them. Like I would like fewer guns in the streets. That's
a whole different thing. I think that cops shouldn't have guns. I think
that we should have fewer guns. But the gun isn't the thing that I
had that the gun. The gun is a tool. It's just a powerful
tool. Her jaws are a powerful tool. She has them all the time,
right. The person behind it is what's is the thing that's important.
I believe it's Terry Pratchett's point. Yeah, I think I should disagree with
you on the gun part, but I definitely get your main point. I
think that's that's that's the more important thing there. And just to continue with
Carrot, I think the other thing that he does that is so interesting,
and again it's kind of Pretchett pushing on the way. The way again that
we can fall into these mental boxes is he's the perfect example of the character
who you know, when everyone knows, oh, no one would ever try
this hairbrained solution to something because we're all too smart to do that. He's
not too smart to do that, which in any ways often means he's the
smartest there because he's willing to. He is not even that he's not too
smart, it's that he has never gone through the thinking that says oh,
why would you do this? And so, plus he has such a magnetic
effect on people that there are times when he goes into a huge mob or
two mobs that are about to have a street riot and just tells them to
go home and be better, and they all do because they all just they
don't even understand why, but they all want to listen to him. Yeah,
they're like, well he's earnest about it, right. They have this
discus I should have where like Nabby and Colin, who are the comic relief
guards, are like, so we could go out there they're about to start
a riot. What would Captain what would Carrot do? And they're like,
well, he'd go out there and tell him to shut up and be better
people like you're saying and they're like, what did that happened to us?
They're like, well, we'd find our heads and the like it's separate from
our bodies and the gutter. They're not going to stand for this crap.
And so yeah, because the world is simple to him, right, we
could just be better people. You can make this choice, he says,
why wouldn't you make this choice to be a better person? And they're like,
I, because this you know, ethnic group is my enemy. This
other we're against the species Trolls and dwarves have always fought. And he's like,
yeah, but you don't have to, Like, this is a choice
to choose better, choose different, And like I said, he moves in
straight lines. Where everybody else thinks in a like they want to get to
this point and they have to go through something else to get there. He
just goes directly to the point. Yeah, And it's he and Vimes are
the They both will accept largely anyone into the Watch, and they accept people
as people for very different reasons. Right, he believes in people. Carrot
is idealistic. He believes in people. He believes that you can choose better,
you can choose to be good. Vimes is a misanthrope. He believes
that everybody is terrible. Right, and so when when he gets like they're
like, well why are you what's the quote? U? There were Vimes
closed his eyes and thought about cigar smoke and flowing drink and laconic voices.
There were people who'd steal money from people, fair enough, that was just
theft. But there were people who, with one easy word, would steal
the humanity from people. That was something else. The point was, well,
he didn't like dwarfs controls, but he didn't like anyone very much.
The point was that he moved in their company every day, and he had
a to dislike them. The point was that no fat idiot had the right
to say things like that because somebody had literally just dismissed the humanity of all
the dwarves and trolls that he worked with. It called them technically the same
things that Vimes calls them. But Vimes will tell that to them to their
face and then work with them. Right. This person won't even go go
near them. He's a noble person, just dismissing them out of hand.
Yeah, And I think it's part of why Vibes and Carrot work so well
together and why they have so much respect for each other, you know,
and why Carrot will always listen to Vibes even though Vimes is his polar opposite.
And Vimes learned that he can use Carrot for things that he could never
do or no one else in the Watch can do. And one thing I
think that I love most about Carrot, and it plays very much into what
you're saying there about stealing the humanity is it because Carrot always sees the humanity
and others that the personhood and others. You know, one of the things
that happens is he gives people a chance to do better. Yeah, and
you know in in shows that are about you know, cops and cremins or
people who are doing bad things. You know, it's almost a trope now,
but I think there's some great examples to it. Loki is a great
example. But also, you know, in the Wire you get this,
a lot of people sort of say, well, you all expected me to
be a villain, so I am a villainy And I think that's kind of
That's the thing that Carrott subverts is when Carrott goes to you know, a
bunch of the kind of street kids who are in gangs, aren't going to
get into a big fight, and says, let's play soccer instead football in
their world instead. You know, it is obvious, it is satire.
It is not meant to be. This is a real thing that could happen,
but it is an allegory for what does happen in in soccer leagues like
that, or you know, sports leagues or anything where you say, hey,
look the whole rest of the world looks at you as a street kid
who's never going to be anything but a criminal and a menace. What if
I look at you as someone who could be academic, who could be an
athlete? You know what if I don't look at you through that lens and
help you not to look at yourself through it? And that's that's what Carrott
does again and again and again. Yeah, and that's his that's it.
Like the whole arc of Feed of Clay. Feet of Clay's about our golems
tools or are they people? Right? Yeah? And Cat sees exactly that.
He sees the golems as people where nobody else does. Let's talk about
because again this is this is all I gone on for a while, and
um, we've referenced some of the books. Let's talk about two of the
specific books as we kind of wrap up Jingo and Feet of Clay. Let's
talk about Fee of Clay first. What's that give the like thirty second version
of the plot of Fee Feet of Clay and what it's what it is trying
to say the the a group of golems want to be free, they want
that when they say what they want, they want respite, they want the
ability to not be a hammer sometimes, and so they're treated as tools,
and everyone treats them as tools they want and jets back up here. Yeah,
the golems are um, there are no Jews in this world. Yes,
but it's very much the Jewish myth. Yes, the go of clay
that has been fashioned and then magic scrolls have been put into the head of
the golem, which activated. But it is basically a robot, but a
sentient one, yes, and one that as we learned. Yeah, and
that's kind of the point, is that it is sentient in a way that
its owners and masters don't want to think of it as such. Yes,
And golems must have a master is one of the rules. And their kem
in the in the words that are placed in their head to activate them.
And so they make a master golem they and the master golem starts going mad
and they have to figure the watch us to figure this out and figure out
exactly what's going on with a big complicated plot against the Patrician and all this.
But the big payoff is Carrot buys Dorfel, the golem from someone,
takes the receipt and places it in Dorfel's head, and the receipt says,
the bearer of this owns this golem. He takes it and places it with
the chem in Dorfel's head, and now Dorfel is free. He owns himself.
The bearer of this receipt owns this golem. And the question that they
ask over and over is is the golem a tool or is it a person?
And they say that golm killed someone, and they say that that golem
cannot be a tool. Tools are not responsible for how they're used. If
you hit someone with the head and the hammer in the head with a hammer,
the hammer is not put on trial. If you order a golem to
kill someone, the golem should not be destroyed for that human, because the
Golm can't choose not to do it. And they point this out over and
over that the golems are being they have a double standard. They look like
people, so they're treated like people except when it's convenient to not treat them
like people, right, and so it's a book about treating someone like like
Vetnari says near the end, you must destroy the golem doorfall that you know
is looking at joining the watch, and Vims goes absolutely not, and Fetner
goes, I believe that I gave you an order, and Vimes goes he
thinks he's alive, and that's good enough for me. Yeah. And it
is such a just like encapsulation of the they think this whatever, thinks they're
alive, they think they're a person. Therefore we have to treat them as
such, because we have to trust the internal experiences of people. And this
is I think the brilliance of what he's doing in the Discworld novels is this
is very clearly a commentary on actual human slavery. It's very clearly a commentary
on wage slavery and the idea of like, you know, the factory owner
who sees the people who work for them as just you know, machines.
And I think that's you know, look at the strike that's happening right now,
both with you know, the the actors, the writers, but also
the Starbucks, the Amazon strikes, all of those things. Yep. It's
also a commentary on science fiction. You know, Yes, the golem is
data being put on trial or does he is he owned by the Federation,
does he own himself? It is every robotic store that you and I have
talked about frequently, does AI have its own sentience, and thus does it
exist as a person in a society or is it just a tool? Yeah?
And then the golems show up later because Dorfel makes the point near the
end of the book. He's like, you'll hire me as a watchman?
And Vimes goes, really, and Dorfel goes, and you will pay me
twice as much as anyone else. I don't sleep, I don't rest.
I'm a bark at double the price. And if Vimes goes, well,
what do you want to do with money? Like you don't own clothes?
Like what do you do? Like if you're going to work all the time,
what you're gonna do with the money? He goes, I will save
up, and I will buy the golm clutes from the pickle factory. And
then he and I will save up, and Vimes goes really, and the
line later the Golem Trust, which is the limited liability corporation the golems make
to buy golems. Their motto is by our own hand or buy no hand.
Yeah, right, which is also like, if you've ever ever heard
the terms white saviorism or anything like that, the idea that like it,
you know, those of us who are in overclasses can help the people who
are fighting oppression, you know, I mean all of us, I think
are oppression in some ways. But like looking at something, you know,
for example, the white person, I can help the fight against racism,
but it's going to be need to be led by people of color, and
I need to listen to them what they're taking to do. And it's just
such a that by our hand alone. I mean that that's been quoted by
all sorts of movements through our history. Yes, you know, saying like
we don't want to be saved by someone else. We need to do the
work ourselves, and we want you to help and get the hell out of
the way we want you know, we have to be or you can't empower
you. No one can empower someone else, you know. Yes, Like
you can't actually give somebody freedom. All you can do is take it away,
right, right, And so you can you can say, you know,
we talk about freeing the slaves, Yes, like they were they we're
freed, but in reality they there's there's a way to phrase this, right,
because their freedom is inherent in what they are. Right. Yeah,
I think I think the ideas that like I can't give someone freedom I can
just stop taking away their freedom, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's a good way to yeah. Um, and then and then you know,
and then we can do a hell of a lot to help them as
they move right, yeah, but yeah, yeah yeah. Um. So
that's feet of Clay. Let's talk about Jingo for a bit, and we're
going to finish up with something that a lot of people who know disc world
in the night Watch are probably wondering why in the world we haven't talked about
the vibes economic theory of Boots. But let's talk about Jingo for a bit,
because Jingo is one of my favorite of the night Watch books. And
it's interesting because it's I wonder where it fell in and not not to get
us under the tangent of it, but it's the first time that I wanted
to look at a map and and when googling for maps and was frustrated because
you said there aren't that many, Um, because I want to know where
on More Park was in regard to this other country called Clatch and because they
wind up having almost a war with it. And the book is all about
this, and it is very clearly a commentary on the war that is happening
at that point in Iraq and the generalized wars in the Middle East and the
overall attitude of white people towards Arabs and Muslims, and not that those two
things are the same, but it's about Islamophobia. It's about Arab you know,
arabo phobia. It's about the fear of difference. And it's about fighting
a war over a resource. Right, So Jingo the there's a circle ce
on more Porkas on one side, Clatches on the other side, and it's
a c that they that separates them, and an island raises up in the
middle, and then everybody decides to fight over it. It's the plot of
the book is basically everybody goes mad for the millitary. But Atimore Pork doesn't
have a military. They're an economic superpower. They're not a military superpower or
they're superpower. There's economic power they and so they have private regiment raising and
then private regiments go off to Clatch to try to wage war against them,
and the book has simultaneously a great ending and like so he arrests both armies.
He says, he says, it's got to be illegal to start a
war, and they they're like, it actually isn't and he goes, that's
no, that can't be true. Let's figure it out, like if a
war is wrong, it should be illegal. There should be a law bigger
than a country's law. Which is a definitely a commentary on how oversized powers
right in the world will be We'll just ignore the laws of everywhere else right,
which was actively happening at the time. There have the actions that were
taken at the time he wrote it, because it was when we were no
longer officially at war with Iraq, but we were bombing them from time to
time, and certainly things were happening in Palestine and other parts in the Middle
East, and the international community a lot of it was outraged, and there
were people saying like, oh, if only we could arrest Tony Blair and
Bill Clinton for international war crimes. And of course you can't do that.
You went there, they're too big for it, and yeah, this book
is very much a commentary on yeah. And it's very funny because historically that
wasn't a big deal. Like pre World War One, you started a war
and you took some territory and that was considered legit, and so it's a.
It's this weird like we're projecting our own Like if you look back,
the Crimean War was like that, like somebody wanted to take the Crimea and
they did and they kept it. What the hell I wanted to take Texas
in the Southwest, so we went to war. Yeah, exactly. These
were just things that happened internationally a pre twentieth century and so it's this like
projection of our philosophy on national borders into a fantasy world which is a reflection
of pre twentieth century technology. So it's just a it's just really really interesting
to think about it. And it's again interesting how how he does the allegories
because like, for example, the people from Clatch are very clearly meant to
be, like I said, representatives of Arab countries down to a lot of
like the insults that we like they all with turbans on their head, and
the ethnic slurs that the people they are are very I'm not gonna say them,
but a very similar the the you know about the thing they have on
their head. And there's some great again where Carrot or some of the other
character Carrot is doing it from place of innocence vibes are doing it from place
of actively wanting to mock people. But what Vibes will do is he will
pretend that and so they'll be like, oh, well, so what's wrong
with the people of Clatch Oh they do this thing. He'll be hmm,
don't we do this thing? Well, well no, no, no,
but it's different because this, well, but don't we do that? And
it's really showing just the incredible hypocrisy of all of this. Yeah. Um.
Similarly, one of thing, as you said, one of the things
that happens in the book is because the city doesn't have a military, they
go back to this ancient time idea where all of the noble houses have to
raise their own military, and Vimes is just a gas. Vimes is often
kind of the man outside because, like you said, he grew up in
the city. He should have all the same prejudices and ideas. He just
doesn't, and so he's watching with horrors. You know, the butler that
works for his wife, who's very rich connecually works for him. That's a
whole other set of stories. You know, He's like, well, I
want to go join the military. It's like why, It's well, they
all look so smart in their their pretty uniforms and things like this, and
it's just the red and way uniform for the gold frogging, right. Yeah,
it's it's all such beautiful satire of everything about militarism, about nationalism,
about jingoism. Quite literally, one thing I looked is it kind of made
me think about the origin of the word jingo and it's from I think it's
the Crimean War. I'm not sure it might be earlier, but a song
that was sung by people who had kind of like come, you know,
we're in one of those private armies. And the line of the song is
we don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do, we've got
the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too, And
so it's very much a like, look at how cool and awesome our country
is. We wouldn't want to fight, but of course if we do,
we'll win because we're best, which is the very definition of Jingoism. Yeah,
and they they it's definitely again from a British lens, right, from
a colonialism lens of you know, we're gonna show Johnny Clatchy and what for
we're gonna you know, he'll run at the side of the cold steel in
our hands. And then the question that gets asked is the Clatcheans are an
older empire, right, and they're also like they've been pacifying their own external
They're an actual empire, they've been militarily pacifying. They're they're different sections,
they're diverse, multi ethnic empire. They've been doing this for a long time.
What do you think that they're like, do you think that they're going
to be threatened by our you know, untrained regiments. What's your plan here?
Yeah, it's it's just beautifully done and it points out it's it's not
all I think it's easy in this kind of case to be like, oh
so I'm going to creak our side, critique our side, been making our
side bad, in their side good, and think No, there's as you
said, he rests both armies and the resource part of it is, as
you said, there are opposin ends of the Circle Sea. One of the
things that happens is that every thousand years or so, this island rises up
from out of the sea and it turns out that it's kind of an Atlantis.
It's sunk long ago, but it's under this bubble of gas that every
now and that expands it off that it rises up, and it's so all
of a sudden, both of these groups want this resource and they're claiming that
it belongs to them. It's very much supposed to be a stand in for
oil or the other resources people fight over, but in this case, again
the pair you have it, it's completely useless because we all know it's going
to sink back into the ocean pretty soon. But it doesn't matter. They
don't want to fight over it. Well, but and they don't necessarily know
that it's going to sink into the ocean. That's the other thing is that
Nari figures that out and he's like, ah, cool, we should let
them have it. We should get concessions from them, make a deal,
and then they pay us, we walk away, and then it goes into
the ocean and we win. Like that's his that's his grand plan, right,
And everybody has like, no, no, no, we can win
a war. And it's also about the waste of war because they're going to
waste more resources on this war than that island could ever give them. Yeah,
right, And it's like a lot of the time wars like that where
you burn more resources than you gain by conquering the people right very much.
So now there's one last thing I do want to talk about, and then
we're gonna have a Patreon section. But I want to say quickly, as
part of the strike, um and he's listening to me talk about It's more
on a most in Star Wars episode to put out with Riki Hashi about the
strike. But as part of the strike, one of the things I'm going
to do is that twenty five percent of what I take in from Patreon is
going to get donated to the fund that's being used to help the people on
strike and help all the other people who are affected. So if you ever
thought about joining the Patreon, this is a great time. I go into
more of it again on that Star Wars podcast. I will write about it
more and the Patreon, But if you want to think about it's a great
thing to do. But of course, if that's not where you are economically,
or if it's not something you're into, that's of course fine too.
But we will have a Patreon section where we're gonna talk more about some of
the other discworld things. But here let's finish up with I think what is
I think probably my favorite part of the in the satirical world, making a
very important point that libraries of economic economists have tried to write. But I
think Pratchett captures so perfectly, which is the Samuel Vimes theory of boots,
which is that basically it is expensive to be poor. Can you explain what
this means? Yeah, so the quote is the reason that the rich were
so rich, Vimes reasons was because they managed to spend less money. Take
boots. For example, he earned thirty eight dollars a month plus allowances.
A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair
of boots which were a sort of okay for a season or two and then
leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those
were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and he worn until the souls
were so thin that he could tell where he was where he wasn't on morepork
on a foggy night, by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing
that was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could
afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that still be keeping his feet dry
in ten years time, while a poor man who would only afford cheap boots
would have spent one hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still
have wet feet. Yeah. Yeah, there's a theory that makes so much
sense. It's the idea that when you don't have disposable income and you're spending
literally paycheck to paycheck, that means you can't afford better things. And so
I was going to say, not even that, just look at at the
cost of the same goods for a poor person or a rich person. If
you have money to start and you want to rent a place or own a
place, say that your place would have a thousand dollars a mortgage a month,
right that you want to rent just for a nice round made up number.
If I'm renting from somebody, they still pay that thousand dollars mortgage,
and then I pay them, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks on
top, call it twelve hundred dollars in order to rent the same space that
they're paying a thousand dollars a month for for mortgage. It costs me more
because I didn't have the money upfront for a down payment. On the house.
Yep. Plus they're building an equity in a way that you're not exactly,
and so it costs more to it to be poor. It just there's
one hundred different ways, like the Boots thing of buying cheap repeatedly like yeah
to me. My favorite example is healthcare in this country, because if you
can afford good insurance, then yeah, there's an insurance cost, but a
if disaster strikes, you're covered. But more importantly, disasters a lot less
likely to strike because you can afford to go get regular checkups, you know.
Whereas if you're the sub person who is only going to the emergency room
when you're literally like you know, on death's door or something like that.
Yeah, often it's because you have, you know, a cancer in your
jaw that if you've been able to see a dentist regularly, would have been
prevented exactly any of the other kind of thing. There are so many things
where if you can pay more money up front, it's going to protect your
health, it's going to protect your house's connect your car, all these things
where the system has been set up that it is incredibly expensive to be poor,
which means that it's almost impossible to you know, oh, just save
enough to buy a house, or save enough to buy a new stute so
you can get a better job, or say you enough to go to school,
or any of these things. And this isn't to say that people don't
do that, because this this is a thing. People save up for these
things. But there's there's a there's a there's a barrier, there's a gradient.
It's harder to get out of it than it is to stay out of
it. Right, would be would be my other half? If you start
with if if you start somebody ahead, right, if they have enough money
for a downpayment on a house, they means that that two hundred dollars a
month they get to not just build equity, but bank up to do other
things. And then so at the end of that they both have the equity
they've built in the house and the money that they've saved from that intervening time,
and they might have to pay for big house repairs. But here's the
secret they had to do with it. Anyways, all the things that that
you have to do in these situations, the situations where you're buying repeatedly crappy
shoes, right instead of one really good pair of shoes that'll last you for
a longer time, like all of these choices that you that you have to
make make it. It's a trap, right, It's it's a steep gradient
to get out, but once you're out, it's really hard to slide back
down. It's one direction. Yeah, yeah. And I think one of
the other points to it is, and this is very clearly stated. Vimes
develops this theory because of the time he spends with the rich. And this
isn't part because, through a hilarious sequence of event, since he detailed in
one of the earliest novels, he winds up marrying Lady Sybil, who is
the richest woman in the city, and so he spends all this time with
the rich, and so part of what he's saying is this theory wouldn't have
occurred to him until he spent time with them. And part of where I
go with that is and again, what I'm about to say, I think
can be used in a very kind of disparaging, oh the poorer, stupid
way. That's not what I'm saying in the slightest, but I think it's
important to understand that if you have lived in a situation where no one in
your family for generations has been able to do these kind of things. Just
the idea of maybe I should save money to do something in the future is
ridiculous because it's just it's not something that anyone you know has ever been able
to do. So maybe the chance that you start to get a little bit
more wealth and you have the chance to do so, the idea of it
probably is hard to even imagine. Well, and oftentimes you have to pay
your way out of a problem. Right, You'll you'll have saved up some
amount of money. You know, you'll you'll manage to somehow through some miracle
of banked a thousand bucks that's sitting when you're poor. And then you know
your car breaks down and you have to pay for it. Well, that
wipes you out. And so the idea saving isn't. Saving isn't a thing
that lets you get out, right, because any time that you save up
money, it'll get wiped up by something. And you know it because you
can't save enough to get ahead. And so it's even enough to get ahead,
and you can't get you can't you don't have enough to get insurance against
those things that could go wrong, right, And so like, if you
if you have if you have a nest egg, if you have you know,
ten thousand dollars banked, you can write out all of these problems,
right, You can take a dip on the money and save back up to
your your banked amount. And I'm picking arbitrary, entirely numbers for all of
these, Like the numbers are different for different places, at different times,
for different people. I'm literally just picking nice round numbers because I know that
that's just easier to parse in your head. But and so like like it
sounds to some people that'd be like, ten thousand dollars is a whole lot
of money to have banked, And other people will be like, that's like,
that's nothing. Like I'll have a disaster that makes me buy a car,
and I'll be like right, But the line still holds that if you
are if you're stuck in the poverty trap, especially, it's very very difficult
to save your way out, to grind your way out, to buy your
way out. And it's a mentality too, because you think poor because like
you're planning, horizon is so short. If you had a thousand bucks in
your poor you'll buy yourself a bunch of good things now, because it won't
last anyways. It'll get wiped out in it, It'll get wiped out the
next time something happens regardless. Yeah, exactly. Again, that's not always
true, but it certainly can be true quite a lot. Yeah, And
I think, yeah, we're saying the same thing there, and I guess
I just kind of I would wrap up, but just be saying I think
that's again, it's what is so brilliant about these books, because you and
I took this one paragraph, like all this stuff we just said that's not
in the books. And you know, I'm someone who's like, I'm not
I don't think Pratchett means to be and I'm certainly not saying that the result
is to be anti academic. Like I think Pratchett isn't trying to say,
oh, all of economics is stupid because I'm going to make it so simple,
just like he's not saying all of moral thought isn't stupid because missnew what
Grandma said. But he's also saying that a lot of that stuff is very
inaccessible. And it's like you could read dust copy Tall, or you could
read two paragraphs from Vibes and at least get the basic idea. You know,
you could read Martin Buber, or you could read this one line from
Grandma Weathers or whatever and weather wax and and I just love that. I
love that he's able to take these incredibly complex ideas and make them much smaller
and make much simpler. Right. And he's using narrative as a hook because
that's something that like we think in terms of other people, right, that's
how that's kind of how people operate. And so if you don't have a
hook or a structure or a way to pass things through, it's really abstract.
And like there's definitely, like you say, a space for really intellectual
discussions about things where you are going to sit down and figure out the exact
like what is the curve where a renter and a and a buyer you know,
intersect, and what can you do with saving to get there and whatever,
and like what are the monetary theories that get you there? And you
can also just say it's kind of unfair and we should try to fix stuff,
like just here's the vibe, and he's trying to get you. He's
trying to hook you and get you to the vibe of like being angry that
it sucks to be poor, right, Yeah, And I think that's the
real thing, is that he's not trying to tell you how to fix it.
He's trying to get you angry about how things are. Yes, because
I think and I think that, and that's in many ways. Oh you
know, I didn't even thought about this, but here Vines and Carrot are
the two opposite ends of his spectrum. Because Vimes says, I think you're
all I see what you're all doing. I think you're all idiots, and
I think it's all terrible. Carrot says, I'm going to ignore or be
ignorant of everything you're doing because I think you should just be doing the right
thing. Yes, but both of them are fundamentally rejecting all the things that
everybody else just takes for granted. As well, we just go to war
because that's what we do. Well, we have these systems because that's what
we do. Both of them are fundamentally saying, I see the status quo
is wrong, yep. And that's the that's the thing with these books is
that they they reject the status quo. They want there to be change,
and they they think that sometimes you've got to get it and shake things up,
and sometimes you got to you gotta get your hands dirty and fixed stuff.
And it's they're do they're just it's just good. Yeah, they're just
good. And they say that you can make a difference. That's the other
thing that a narrative can can really hook you on, is that a person
can make a difference. Right. Sometimes stuff is big and complicated and hard.
The book Night Watch that there's a revolution and one person can't make a
difference except from one person absolutely can, right, And yeah, that's yeah,
that's the big theme. It's wonderful. All right. Well, as
I said, we'll talk more about discworld and kind of give some previews of
stuff we're going to talk about in the future in the patron section. Please
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That's an awesome thing to do as well. But for everybody else who was
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nice. Nice. Yeah, I'm still not quite sure where I should go
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But Masston, I think it's definitely one thing, and I may well head
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But one thing I'm discovering is I think about it, is there is a
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So I'll definitely be looking at some of that. You can sign up for
both those podcasts, but most importantly, give us feedback. What do you
love about Discworld? Have you never heard of it now but now you're intrigued.
Would love to hear your thoughts, either now or maybe you go back
and read one of these books and then give us feedback, love to hear
it, love to talk about it. We've got a feedback episode coming up
soon. That's gonna be in two weeks. And then I'm gonna, because
I've just gotten it, all of that back up, I'm gonna do a
feedback episode, and then I'm gonna get back into making sure that at least
every other episode we do feedback. I know I've been terrible about it.
I'm gonna make it, make it better. So I'm half myself Rob.
Thank you all so much for being a great audience. We have spoken