Tales From the Drum
| Tales From the Drum | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Presentation | |
| Hosted by | The Medieval Gnome |
| Production | |
| Audio format | mp3 |
| No. of seasons | 10 |
| No. of episodes | 206 (so far) |
| Publication | |
| Original release | 19 April 2019 – present |
| Provider | Medieval Gnome Productions |
| Related shows | The GEM Show |
| Website | https://mindkindle.net |
Publisher Description
On the first, second, and third Friday of every month, it’s Tales From the Drum — the Mended Drum, that is. We also bring you three-minute long mini-episodes, cleverly entitled Pratchips (like potato chips, see?) every Monday-Thursday. All of these are (usually) about the places, spaces, races, and other words that end in aces of the Discworld, that pizza-shaped place (but no anchovies) that rides through space on the backs of the massive elephants Tubul, Berilia, Jerakeen and Great T’Phon, which themselves stand atop the 10,000 mile-long world Turtle, A’Tuin. (According to the dwarfs, there was once a Fifth Elephant, which slipped of A’Tuin’s carapace and crashed into the Disc. But the dwarfs can be funny that way.) Obviously, a place such as this could exist only every normal curve must have its outliers, where the fabric of reality is thin, and magic is an everyday—well, reality. Of course, it was actually the late Sir Terry Pratchett, OBE, who created the Discworld. He chronicled those places, spaces, etc. in 41 Discworld novels. In 500 years, he will probably be the only 20th-century author who is still being read. Seriously. He was that good. He was also incredibly prolific. In a span of 32 years, he wrote 70 books. They’ve sold northward of 50 million copies, last I saw. He was knighted in 2008 by Queen Elizabeth II. Sir Terry passed away in 2015 from a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. GNU Terry Pratchett. If you don’t understand that, you can find out about it in Going Postal. Also, il miglior fabbro. That’s from T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” But you knew that. Thanks for listening — and mind how you go! GNU Terry Pratchett
Further Information
Format
- Major episodes are just under 20 minutes long, though occasional a much longer one is produced.
- The podcast is released in seasons of ten major episodes, collected under a relatively loose theme.
- Most seasons have at least one bonus episode, usually featuring Randy talking about non-Discworld subjects.
- Two series of mini-episodes also pop up in the podcast feed:
- The Portal's Pratchett Passages, or P^3 for short, are readings from Discworld books. Episodes vary from 14 to 36 minutes long. (We don't know if these constitute a breach of copyright, but we'd err on the side of yes. Don't try this at home, kids.)
- Pratchips are mini-episodes, usually under 3 minutes long, describing very specific bits of Discworld lore, like a single creature, character or location.
Seasons and Mini-series
| #[1] | Title | Start date | End date | Episodes | Bonus Episodes | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Discworld Portal | 2019-04-19 | 2019-06-21 | 10 | 1 | An introduction to the Discworld |
| 2 | The Discworld Portal | 2019-06-29 | 2019-08-30 | 10 | 1 | Belief and the metaphysics of the Discworld |
| 3 | The Discworld Portal | 2019-09-13 | 2019-11-16 | 10 | 1 | Witches and Wizards |
| 4 | The Discworld Portal | 2020-12-06 | 2020-02-07 | 10 | 1 | Societies, cultures and education systems of the Disc |
| 5 | The Discworld Portal | 2020-03-06 | 2020-05-08 | 10 | 1 | Villains of the Discworld |
| - | The Portal's Pratchett Passages | 2020-04-05 | 2020-08-06 | 10 | - | Readings from Discworld books |
| 6 | The Discworld Portal | 2020-06-05 | 2020-08-07 | 10 | 1 | Characters (often drawing from L-Space wiki content) |
| 7 | Ponder's Wizardly Portal[2] | 2020-09-11 | 2020-12-09 | 10 | 2 | No specific theme |
| 8 | The Witches and Wizards Portal | 2020-12-25 | 2021-02-26 | 10 | 1 | No specific theme |
| 9 | The Witches and Wizards Portal | 2021-03-19 | 2021-06-18 | 10 | 1 | Alphabet Soup (a Discworld A-Z) |
| 10 | The Witches and Wizards Portal | 2021-07-02 | 2021-10-01 | 10 | 1 | Granny and Nanny |
| - | Pratchips | 2021-07-06 | 2021-11-11[3] | 76 | - | ~3 minute snippets of Discworld lore |
| 11 | Tales From the Drum | 2021-10-15 | 2021-11-20[4] | 4 | - | No specific theme |
Trivia
- Originally known as The Discworld Portal until September 2020. It was briefly The Mystery Portal, then Ponder's Wizardly Portal, before settling on The Witches and Wizards Portal for a few seasons. In October 2021, at the start of season 11, it changed name to Tales From the Drum.[5]
- Host Randy has two tortoiseshell cats, or "torties", named Holly and Ivy; the mindkindle.net website has no fewer than three pages dedicated to them, including plenty of photos. (You're welcome.)
- As of mid-2022, the podcast seems to have vanished; mindekindle.net is still there, but the show has disappeared from its podcast host Buzzsprout, and the Facebook, Patreon and Discord communities all seem to be deactivated or deleted. Only the YouTube channel remains, but it only has four of the full episodes and half a dozen compilations of the short "Pratchips" ones. For now we must regrettably list the show as unavailable!
Hosts
- The Medieval Gnome (Randy Paulin) - host, editor and producer of all episodes
Episodes
The table below indexes episodes of this podcast. They are listed by default in release order, and use the podcast's own numbering scheme.
| # | S[6] | E[7] | Episode Title | Date | Book/Subject | Guest(s) | Episode link[8] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 1 | "Welcome to Ankh-Morpork" | 2019-04-19 | Introduction | None | N/A |
| 2 | 1 | 2 | "Characters" | 2019-04-30 | Mustrum Ridcully; the Bursar; the Librarian; Sam Vimes | None | N/A |
| 3 | 1 | 3 | "Mrs Whitlow" | 2019-05-08 | Mrs Whitlow | None | N/A |
| 4 | 1 | 4 | "Monsters! Monsters!" | 2019-05-11 | Monsters of the Discworld | None | N/A |
| 5 | 1 | 5 | "Big Pictures" | 2019-05-16 | The Discworld, The Colour of Magic | None | N/A |
| 6 | 1 | 6 | "The Thickness of a Dream" | 2019-05-24 | Reading order; Nanny Ogg; Granny Weatherwax; various Discworld sub-series | None | N/A |
| 7 | 1 | 7 | "This Mortal Coil" | 2019-06-02 | Death; The Colour of Magic | None | N/A |
| 8 | 1 | 8 | "All in the Family" | 2019-06-08 | Death; Susan; Mort | None | N/A |
| 9 | 1 | 9 | "Love and Death (with apologies to Woody Allen)" | 2019-06-15 | Death; Mort | None | N/A |
| 10 | 1 | 10 | ""You're just a piece of cheese."" | 2019-06-21 | Death of Rats; Susan | None | N/A |
| 11 | 1 | - | "Not the Discworld, exactly" | 2019-06-21 | Behind the scenes bonus episode | None | N/A |
| 12 | 2 | 1 | "Discworld, The" | 2019-06-29 | Geography and natural history of the Discworld | None | N/A |
| 13 | 2 | 2 | "It only encourages 'em" | 2019-07-06 | Belief on the Discworld, especially about elves | None | N/A |
| 14 | 2 | 3 | "Oh Brutha" | 2019-07-12 | The Great God Om and his prophets and priests | None | N/A |
| 15 | 2 | 4 | "The Turtle Moves" | 2019-07-20 | More on Om and Omnianism | None | N/A |
| 16 | 2 | 5 | "Really Unbelievable" | 2019-07-26 | Nuggan and other beliefs of the Discworld | None | N/A |
| 17 | 2 | 6 | "It's a Living/It's a Live!" | 2019-08-02 | "Life force" on the Disc | None | N/A |
| 18 | 2 | 7 | "Birdwalking" | 2019-08-09 | Variety of topics, inc. goblins and narrative causality | None | N/A |
| 19 | 2 | 8 | "Narratively Speaking" | 2019-08-16 | Narrative causality | None | N/A |
| 20 | 2 | 9 | "Genius, by Jingo!" | 2019-08-23 | Plot, character and theme in Jingo | None | N/A |
| 21 | 2 | - | "Not the Discworld, exactly II (also?)" | 2019-08-23 | The host and his cats | None | N/A |
| 22 | 2 | 10 | "So Long and Thanks for all the...Quantum?" | 2019-08-30 | Quantum and the trousers of time in Jingo | None | N/A |
Many more to be added.
Footnotes
- ↑ The season number, if part of the main podcast.
- ↑ Was known for one episode by the placeholder name "The Mystery Portal".
- ↑ Date of last published Pratchips episode
- ↑ Date of last published podcast episode
- ↑ This blog post and comments in episode notes for seasons 10 and 11 suggest the changes were at least partly motivated by copyright concerns, though changing from "The Wizards and Witches Portal" a move to find something Discworld fans would recognise.
- ↑ The season number for this episode
- ↑ The episode number within the season
- ↑ Public official posts for each episode do not appear to be available outside of the RSS feed; we could link to Podchaser pages for each episode instead?