Frithcast Episode 18 - In The Beginning

Episode 18 – The Beginning

Things we talk about in this episode:

 

Opening Music:

'Ancient Whispers I' by P C III, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence.

[http://freemusicarchive.org/music/P_C_III/Ad_Astra_Vol_1/03_Ancient_Whispers_I]

Closing Music:

'Round II - The Ancients' by Learning Music, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence

[http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Learning_Music/An_End_Like_This/32_Round_II_-_The_Ancients]

Background fire ambience by inchadney from freesound.org

 

• “I can clearly not drink the wine in front of me...” Quote from The Princess Bride (1987)

• Suzanne’s favourite film is…

• A random discussion on the best swordfights on film:

• The Lord of the Rings (film trilogy: 2001, 2002, and 2003)

• The Last Kingdom (ahem, I actually meant Kingdom of Heaven (2005). My bad.)

• The Princess Bride (1987)

• Lightsaber fights in Star Wars – Obi Wan and Vader, Yoda and Dooku, Darth Maul...

• The Art of the Saber (2002) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMXpokrfblM

• “I know something you don’t know, I am not left-handed” - Quote from The Princess Bride (1987)

• Suzanne and Kate sing the theme tune

• Nine is a significant number

• ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ – GRR Martin’s book series on which is based the TV series ‘Game of Thrones’.

• ‘Ring of Fire’ - song written by Jonny Cash in 1963

• In the Beginning – the creation of the worlds – paraphrased from Snorri Sturlson’s Prose Edda.

• The concept of Wyrd

• Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett – there’s a whole thesis analysis available here: https://is.muni.cz/th/175303/ff_b/Bachelor_Thesis_Eva_Homolkova_Final_Version.pdf

• Shakespeare’s Macbeth – the Thane of Cawdor

• The Three Norns of Norse cosmology parallel with the Fata or Parcae of Roman cosmology and the Moirae of Greek cosmology. http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-europe/three-fates-destiny-s-deities-ancient-greece-and-rome-003039

• The Stygian Witches from Greek mythology. Also known as the Graeae Sisters or the Crone Sisters. http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Graiai.html

• Karma and Nirvana

• Fate is a Feynman diagram… (now we come to look at it, it’s closer to a Minkowski diagram https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/special-relativity/minkowski-spacetime-2016-01-18T22:56:14.718Z/v/introduction-to-special-relativity-and-minkowski-spacetime-diagrams )

• “Fear profits man nothing.” Quote from The Thirteenth Warrior (1999)

• A question of fear and courage

• “Better it is to have a stout heart always...” – The Histories by Heroditus. Book 7, chapter 50.

• ‘A man will often meet his fate when he is trying to run from it’ – Galadriel from Lord of the Rings (The Fellowship of the Ring ch7), see also Jean de la Fontaine (Book VIII (1678–1679), fable 16 (The Horoscope)) and Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda (2008)

• Pre-destiny versus self determination

• “Wibbly wobbily timey wimey” – Doctor Who (especially when played by David Tennant)

• The Block Time Theory – also know as The Block Universe Theory of Time or The Growing Block View) https://plus.maths.org/content/what-block-time

• The Worm Theory of Identity – Perdurantism, as a subset of Four Dimensionalism, also known as the Space Time Worm, or The Worm View. The understanding that a persisting individual is the sum of all it’s parts through time.

• It keys into the philosophical conundrum of the Ship of Theseus: if you replace parts of a ship through time, is it still the same ship at the end? https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/wi-phi/wiphi-metaphysics-epistemology/wiphi-metaphysics/v/ship-of-theseus

• Kate learned everything from QI and Cracked.com…