Tales From the Drum
| Tales From the Drum | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Presentation | |
| Hosted by | The Medieval Gnome |
| Production | |
| Audio format | mp3 |
| No. of seasons | 11 |
| No. of episodes | 206 |
| Publication | |
| Original release | 19 April 2019 – 20 November 2021 |
| 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
- Typical episodes are just under 20 minutes long.
- The podcast is released in seasons of ten episodes, collected under a relatively loose theme, which not all episodes stick to.
- Most seasons have at least one bonus episode, usually featuring Randy talking about non-Discworld subjects or commenting on a previous episode. After season three these were meant to be for Patreon subscribers only.
- Two series of mini-episodes also pop up in the same 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.[1]
- Pratchips are mini-episodes, usually under 3 minutes long, describing very specific bits of Discworld lore, like a single creature, character or location.
Trivia
- Has gone by many names. See the season information table below for more information, but in summary: it was originally 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.[2]
- 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
Seasons and Mini-series
This podcast is divided into more seasons than most, often with a theme. This table summarises information on each season.
| #[3] | 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[4] | 2 | 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[5] | 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[6] | 76 | - | ~3 minute snippets of Discworld lore |
| 11 | Tales From the Drum | 2021-10-15 | 2021-11-20[7] | 4 | - | No specific theme |
Episode List
The table below indexes episodes of the main podcast. They are listed by default in release order, and use the podcast's own numbering scheme.
| # | S[8] | E[9] | Episode Title | Date | Book/Subject | Guest(s) | Episode link[10] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 23 | 3 | 1 | "Witches 11, Wizards 9" | 2019-09-13 | Witches and Wizards | None | N/A |
| 24 | 3 | -[4] | "This Just In, Sports Fans" | 2019-09-15 | An update on the scores (number of books) from the previous episode | None | N/A |
| 25 | 3 | 2[4] | "A Little Touch of Granny in the Night" | 2019-09-20 | Granny Weatherwax | None | N/A |
| 26 | 3 | 3 | "When shall we.... two meet again?" | 2019-09-27 | Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg | None | N/A |
| 27 | 3 | 4 | "I was Aching this morning, and I'll still be Aching tonight" | 2019-10-06 | Tiffany Aching | None | N/A |
| 28 | 3 | 5[4] | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown | None | N/A |
| 29 | 3 | 6 | "Veni, Vimesy, Vetinari" | 2019-10-11 | The relationship between Sam Vimes and Vetinari (listener request) | None | N/A |
| 30 | 3 | 7 | "Rincewind and Ridcully: Alpha and Omega (sort of)" | 2019-10-19 | Rincewind and Mustrum Ridcully | None | N/A |
| 31 | 3 | 8 | "The Likeability Fallibility" | 2019-10-25 | The change in Terry's handling of the wizards | None | N/A |
| 32 | 3 | -[4] | "Boo!" | 2019-10-28 | Dr. Terry Armstrong, Tolkien and Pratchett, bloopers | None | N/A |
| 33 | 3 | 9[4] | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown | None | N/A |
| 34 | 3 | 10 | "Pondering Ridcully" | 2019-11-01 | Ponder Stibbons and Mustrum Ridcully | None | N/A |
| 35 | 3 | 11 | "That's an Order!" | 2019-11-08 | The evolution of wizardry | None | N/A |
| 36 | 3 | 12 | "The Ego of Wizards and the Pride of Witches" | 2019-11-16 | As per title, also future of the podcast | None | N/A |
Many more to be added.
Footnotes
- ↑ The P^3 episodes potentially constituted a breach of copyright, as they present parts of the work without commentary or review. We're not experts, though.
- ↑ 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, if part of the main podcast.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 In season three, "This Just In, Sports Fans" is marked as a bonus episode, but also as episode 2, despite being a four minute addendum; "A Little Touch of Granny in the Night" is marked as a full episode, but has no number. We've interpreted this as a mistake, and marked the former episode as a bonus one. Similarly "Boo!" is marked as a bonus episode, but also given episode number nine. There are no episodes numbered five or nine, but the description of episode ten refers to there being twelve episodes, including the two bonus ones. So we have guessed that episodes five and nine are missing, but did exist. Note that the only noticeable gap in releases occurs between episodes three and four, but it's all so hard to tell with only the cached RSS feed data to go on.
- ↑ Was known for one episode by the placeholder name "The Mystery Portal".
- ↑ Date of last published Pratchips episode
- ↑ Date of last published podcast episode
- ↑ The season number for this episode
- ↑ The episode number within the season
- ↑ Episodes are no longer available, except for a small number that were re-published to YouTube.