Oh, your breath smells rose. No disrespect. You've been eating ratfish.

Do you need ratfish?

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have blocked that podcast out and started listening.

I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

My name is Ed Baxter and I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this. That's the plan.

Hey! How you doing podcasts? Added Baxter here. Thank you so much for joining me once again.

I hope you've been okay. I haven't been too bad. I'll probably ramble a little bit about what I've been up to,

not that it's especially interesting. At the end of this podcast.

Rosie! If you're tuning in for the first time, welcome. Thanks for giving this a go.

Rosie is my dog friend, half-whip it, half-poodle. She is black in colour, but she has a lot of white hair now as well.

In fact, her hair is changing in roughly the same areas and at the same speed as mine, which is very sympathetic of her.

I can't see her right now, but she's up ahead. Having a lovely evening walk. It's a Friday and the sun is beginning to go down out here in the East Angleon countryside.

And it's the beginning of October 2019.

So look, I want to tell you about podcast number 102, which features a rambly conversation with British writer Sir Philip Paulman.

I got the opportunity to talk to Philip because his latest book, The Secret Commonwealth, the Book of Dust, Volume 2 has just been published.

It's the second of a planned trilogy that continues the story of Lyra Belacqua and her demon, Pantelheimon.

Characters that Philip Paulman introduced to the world in his book Northern Lights, published in 1995.

That was the first of a trilogy that he called His Dark Materials, which has recently been adapted for TV by HBO and the BBC.

That begins airing this November 2019. There was a film, a few years back called The Golden Compass.

That was supposed to be the beginning of a trilogy of films as well, but everyone just agreed to leave it at that.

Anyway, I would imagine that if you're listening to this, you're familiar with his Dark Materials and the Book of Dust and the stories therein.

But just in case you're not, it is an epic fantasy story, which begins in a universe that's like a weird sort of vaguely Victorian version of our own,

...