Yes, the Omnians. They’re a scathing critique of dogmatic hierarchical religions in general and Christianity or maybe more specifically Catholicism and the Spanish inquisition in particular. The zenith of their folly is depicted in Small Gods, where it’s revealed that not a single one among them except for one lowly initiate actually believes in their god anymore, having replaced him instead with blind obedience to their rituals and the bureaucracy of the church itself. The Discworld being what it is, their god is very much real but has been diminished to inhabiting the body of an ordinary tortoise and is unable to communicate with anyone except his sole remaining believer.
One of their ironclad declarations is that the Disc is spherical, a notion over which they are quite willing to torture people to death for questioning. Of course as we all know, the truth is the opposite. And yet, the turtle moves.
Much like how various strains of Christians now wear a cross, a literal execution device, the climax of the story explains why “modern” Omnians on the Disc are seen in the other books wearing little turtle pendants: Things culminate in the church leadership (or rather mostly their fantastically corrupt inquisition leader Vorbis) attempting to execute the only actual true believer of Om on a firebox shaped like a massive bronze turtle that’s a mockery of Great A’Tuin, the world turtle.
Teflon. Goddamned Teflon. Did your podcast mention Dr. Kenneth Berry? (No, not the nutrition quack. The other one.)
Dr. Roy J. Plunkett gets all the credit for the discovery of Teflon and it’s true that his name appears on the patent for the process for creating the actual material. As it was the dry powered precipitate wasn’t terribly useful as a consumer product and mostly only saw use being pressed into solid forms for making highly corrosion resistant gaskets and seals for e.g. nuclear equipment.
Dr. Kenneth Berry’s picture is not hanging in the hallways in DuPont’s offices. His name appears on no plaque. He’s not mentioned in the Wikipedia article about Teflon. When it comes to DuPont’s puff pieces and their official history, you’ll notice that in the gap between the accidental discovery of that weird slippery white powder and its advent as a consumer product there is inevitably some dismissive handwaving and use of the passive voice. Oh, “it was discovered that…” and “DuPont engineers determined that…”
They don’t mention that Dr. Kenneth Berry was the inventor of the solution form of Teflon. He figured out how to dissolve and suspend it in liquid, and by extension how to actually apply it to surfaces in a useful manner. He did not invent the pan, but he was instrumental in figuring out how it could be done. And it was Dr. Berry who ate the first fried egg cooked on a Teflon surface — not Marc Grégoire. It’s quite clear. Dr. Berry’s patent was applied for and granted in 1951. Grégoire’s, 1954.
DuPont doesn’t mention this because Dr. Berry also knew damn well what nasty chemicals DuPont was using to produce Teflon, and to some degree he knew where and how they were dumping them. He documented all of this he could, stored it in a bank deposit box, and wrote it into his will that these documents were to be released to the public when he died in 2008. In retaliation for this, DuPont memory holed him. He is persona non grata there, even in death.
I know this because he told me so. Dr. Berry lived in the town I grew up in. It’s not in whole thanks to him that we know the full story of the deeply evil things DuPont has done, but it is certainly in part. I was knee high to a grasshopper at the time so the significance of this was surely lost on me. I know, however, why my mother was so insistent that we never owned any Teflon pans.
Dr. Kenneth Berry: Lived, invented, developed a conscience, once shot my stuck kite out of a tree with his shotgun, tattled on DuPont, died.