This time, we join Lyra as she’s thrown into a cell in the polished-turd Palace of Iofur Raknison: King of the Armoured Bears. She meets her new cell mate, Jotham Santelia (best described as the wrong side of eccentric) and Lyra carefully dupes him into giving her information about their host, so she can start to form a plan to get out of this panserbjorne-ish pickle.

Join us as this week, as we discuss exactly what Professor Trelawney really does, gush over new armoured bear theories and get into an impression competition. Why are you surprised?

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You can see a full version of Amy’s artwork for our episodes and our quotes for the week here.

You can learn more about Qulliqs (seal blubber lamps) here or here.

This is the essay on the question ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ that we discuss this episode.

What does the Palmerian Professor do? This and this provide some context for our theories.

You can find out more about gamma rays and gamma ray astrology here and here.

Here is the extra information from listener and friend-of-the-podcast Maddy on Electrosurgery! (First mentioned in our episode on The Silver Guillotine):

”Thought I’d chip in a bit after your mention of electrosurgery (aka diathermy) in this weeks episode. It’s not just for cardiac surgeons - is lowly obstetrician gynaecologists use it too! I use it pretty much every time I do a c-section (the nurses know now and routinely open it if they know it’s me operating) and we have a few really clever ways to use it in gynaecology.

”The principle is an electric current is generated in a electrode, and this causes heat in the tissue of the body to create an action of cutting, coagulation, or both! We have two main ways of using it - monopolar and bipolar. Monopolar is where a current is passed from the electrode, through the patient’s body, and then back out via a plate (usually on their leg) to the machine again. Bipolar is where the current is passed between two electrodes so doesn’t need to travel as far. It means we can use bipolar like scissors, so we can cut something that would bleed, but it doesn’t because it’s “sealed” at the same time. We can use this same technique during keyhole surgery too. We can control bleeding in emergency surgery quickly and patients don’t need open surgery so it’s less invasive and recovery is quicker. I commonly use it during a c-section for fine detail haemostasis. We often find during this type of surgery there are multiple points which “ooze”. You don’t want to leave them in case they get bigger and the woman has internal bleeding, but they’re too small to put stitches in. Diathermy solves this as you can target small areas.

”Regarding the smell, it’s very distinctive. When our patients are awake (normally the case for a c-section) they often ask what the burning smell is. I don’t think it’s unpleasant, the best comparison I can make is a BBQ...!I’d never clocked the reference to it in HDM - not sure how I feel using the same kit as the gobblers!”

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Music by: Jaymen Persaud

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