Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to We're Not So Different, a
Speaker 1: podcast about how I've always been idiots. My name is Luke,
Speaker 1: and as always I am joined by doctor Eleanor. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we are here today. We've entered a strange new world,
Speaker 1: and we also.
Speaker 2: Have a guest.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we have a couple of questions from patrons
Speaker 1: that we'll get to later on during the interview.
Speaker 2: So yeah, let's get to it, folks.
Speaker 1: It's very rare that we cover a topic on this
Speaker 1: show for which there is no real medieval analog.
Speaker 2: We hear it.
Speaker 1: We're Not So Different Incorporated pride ourselves on finding the
Speaker 1: connections to the paths, both major and minor, and extrapolating
Speaker 1: them to our current day. But in this case, we
Speaker 1: just can't do it. There was no medieval version of
Speaker 1: wide public opinion polling outside of the peasant showing up
Speaker 1: with torches and pitchforks.
Speaker 2: And while we do.
Speaker 1: Appreciate those outbursts of justifiable anger, they lack the sample
Speaker 1: size and rigor we expect from good polling. No one
Speaker 1: ever stopped to ask these angry peasants about their demographic
Speaker 1: factors so we could get appropriate cross tabs. For God's sakes.
Speaker 1: Opinion polling was a much later in vision that came
Speaker 1: about after the expansion of the franchise and the rise
Speaker 1: of the post French Revolution liberal world order, and it
Speaker 1: very rarely directly concerns the Middle Ages, let alone specifically
Speaker 1: catering to them. Thus, in the more than two hundred
Speaker 1: episodes we've done, we never really had a cause to
Speaker 1: talk about opinion polling of any kind until now. In
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty five, the British market research group YouGov
Speaker 1: performed an opinion poll focusing on American views of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, and the results were pleasantly surprising a listener,
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking, your old co host Luke
Speaker 1: is being a bit too hyperbolic again, but I'm really not.
Speaker 1: The Dark Age is myth that has long haunted medieval
Speaker 1: studies and conceptions, is now below fifty percent in America,
Speaker 1: which might luck not sound like much, but it's a vast,
Speaker 1: vast improvement from a decade ago. At least Anecdotally speaking,
Speaker 1: thirty percent find the Middle Ages interesting, while only fifteen
Speaker 1: percent described it as backwards, which is great.
Speaker 2: And in something of a coup.
Speaker 1: More Americans think about the Middle Ages on a weekly
Speaker 1: basis than think about the Roman Empire on the weekly
Speaker 1: basis suck at antiquity. Now, of course, there are some
Speaker 1: define areas improvement, especially that thirty two percent of a
Speaker 1: positive view of the Crusades and Saladin's criminally low favorability,
Speaker 1: but overall, thumbs up. Why am I telling you all
Speaker 1: this Why because we have a guest here to talk
Speaker 1: about these results with us. David Montgomery is a senior
Speaker 1: data journalist with you gov, and he also runs an
Speaker 1: interesting and informative podcast, The Siekla, which covers French history
Speaker 1: from the fall of Napoleon to World War One.
Speaker 2: David wrote the article.
Speaker 1: Summarizing these poll results on American views of the Middle
Speaker 1: Ages and has a lot to share about them. So
Speaker 1: we're glad he's joined us. First up, David, how the
Speaker 1: hell are you?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm getting the opportunity to talk about both history
Speaker 3: and polling, so I think it's a pretty good morning
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, real quick before we start, Well, actually two things. One,
Speaker 1: Eleanor has been delayed, so actually it's just being David
Speaker 1: for the moment. Eleanor will be along shortly. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you're just hanging out on boys chat for the moment. Actually,
Speaker 1: I probably shouldn't have said that without asking first. I'll
Speaker 1: probably edit that part out anyway. I'm sorry about that
Speaker 1: if I assume something incorrectly regardless. Okay, real quick, before
Speaker 1: we start, here's a friendly note to listeners. We're going
Speaker 1: to start out with a quick discussion of the poll methodology,
Speaker 1: so those of you who aren't terribly familiar with how
Speaker 1: poles are conducted can get a better sense for the process. Also,
Speaker 1: for those of you who are hostile to numbers in math,
Speaker 1: there will be some talk of that during the show,
Speaker 1: but we will contextualize them, we swear. Also a post
Speaker 1: links to the articles in the show notes, so you
Speaker 1: could check out the full thing and the poll and
Speaker 1: graphics we mentioned. Just don't do it while you're driving, please,
Speaker 1: for the love of God. Anyway, David, we had two patrons,
Speaker 1: Shiloh and Evelyn, who requested more info on how this
Speaker 1: poll was conducted. So what was the sample size and
Speaker 1: how were the possible participants selected?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this was a poll of two and thirty
Speaker 3: US adult citizens conducted this past month. Sorry, it was
Speaker 3: conducted in February. I've written that published this past month
Speaker 3: after a unplanned introduction from a after an unplanned delay
Speaker 3: from printal leave when a baby decided to come a
Speaker 3: few weeks early.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Like just to just start at really basics. I mean,
Speaker 3: you reader are probably familiar with the idea of you
Speaker 3: can just conduct a poll on your social media site
Speaker 3: or stand at the street corner ask people questions, and
Speaker 3: that's great, but that will only be representative of the
Speaker 3: people you talk to, the people who respond to the poll.
Speaker 3: What YOUGA does and as well as many of our competitors,
Speaker 3: is a scientific polling. And the key insight there, nearly
Speaker 3: a century old now is that instead of just talking
Speaker 3: to walking up to people and talking to them, if
Speaker 3: you contact people in some form of randomness, you can
Speaker 3: get a sample that you talk to that is representative
Speaker 3: of the broader population more or less. And pollsters have
Speaker 3: spent the past century trying to refine techniques to account
Speaker 3: for sources of error and get more and more accurate.
Speaker 3: But polls have been able to regularly test themselves against
Speaker 3: provable things like election results and things like that, and
Speaker 3: in general the methodology is fairly reliable. Certainly the best
Speaker 3: we have right now, The most standard way is pure randomization.
Speaker 3: You might randomly dial numbers from the phone book, or
Speaker 3: get a full list of say every voter in the
Speaker 3: country and dial random numbers from that. You GOV is
Speaker 3: slightly different, and I won't go into the technical details,
Speaker 3: but you have basically has a panel of many, many
Speaker 3: people who've signed up to take polls, and then we
Speaker 3: randomly select from them. And I am assured by people
Speaker 3: smarter than me that the math works out, and we
Speaker 3: have a pretty good track record with elections and other
Speaker 3: things like that. But because this is a scientific poll,
Speaker 3: this is representative of the US adult citizen population and
Speaker 3: not just of the people who happen to take the pole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so you know, just for people who you
Speaker 1: know might have a question about it. How is a
Speaker 1: sample size of twenty two hundred and thirty people representative
Speaker 1: of a country of three hundred and fifty million.
Speaker 4: Again, this is the math.
Speaker 3: Year gets pretty complicated, and I I'll go into that
Speaker 3: for anyone, but two hundred people is actually more than
Speaker 3: you need to be representative of the roughly two hundred
Speaker 3: and sixty million US adult citizens in the in the country.
Speaker 3: You know, if all you care about is the top
Speaker 3: line results, you can get by with a national poll
Speaker 3: of maybe eight hundred people and still be reasonably accurate.
Speaker 3: The bigger sample size is mostly they do two things. One,
Speaker 3: they get you smaller margin of error, so you can
Speaker 3: be have more precision and confidence that you're your answers
Speaker 3: are the actually reflective of the population. And the other
Speaker 3: thing that lets you do is slice and dice your
Speaker 3: numbers what are called cross tabs, So rather than just
Speaker 3: looking at, you know, the percent of people who agree
Speaker 3: with the question, you can look at the percent of
Speaker 3: men and women who agree with the question, or the
Speaker 3: percent of people eighteen to twenty nine and thirty to
Speaker 3: thirty four, various different demographic slices that are often we're
Speaker 3: the most interesting parts of a poll. Lie, and well,
Speaker 3: I'll be sharing some of those as we get on
Speaker 3: into this discussion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you very much for that. Yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: want the math here, but just so people know that
Speaker 1: a sample size of that number is still representative for
Speaker 1: a big country.
Speaker 2: And I will post some.
Speaker 1: Links to how sample sizes can be calculated if you
Speaker 1: want to, if listeners want to look more into that.
Speaker 2: It is a lot of math, though, So just saying this.
Speaker 3: Poll had a margin of error of plus or minus
Speaker 3: three percentage points on the top line numbers, which.
Speaker 4: Is it's pretty good for poles.
Speaker 3: A lot of a lot of the big national ones
Speaker 3: you see might have plus or minus five percent if
Speaker 3: they're using a smaller sample.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So how are these questions and possible responses formulated?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 4: Mostly I wrote the poll.
Speaker 3: I had some input from the historian U Matt Gabriel,
Speaker 3: co author of the recent book The Bright Ages, which
Speaker 3: some of you may have heard of about sort of
Speaker 3: a polemic defending the idea of defending the Middle Ages
Speaker 3: and opposing the idea of the Dark Ages, another topic
Speaker 3: we'll we'll talk about shortly.
Speaker 2: And all.
Speaker 3: You know, I'd run a separate poll about people's conceptions
Speaker 3: of the Roman Empire last year. So in many cases
Speaker 3: I was simply mirroring the structure of that, which sort
Speaker 3: of made it simpler. But you know, there are a
Speaker 3: couple of questions I wanted to get at the Dark
Speaker 3: Ages question there, you know, I asked about a selection
Speaker 3: of medieval people to see how many people had heard
Speaker 3: of and whether they had positive or negative opinions of them.
Speaker 3: I asked about some concepts like how many people have
Speaker 3: a positive opinion of castles. We'll get into that as well.
Speaker 3: And then you just tried to, you know, get it
Speaker 3: in a range of things. I ask people how much
Speaker 3: they thought they knew about the Middle Ages, which then
Speaker 3: let us split up the responses by people who thought
Speaker 3: they knew a lot, and people who thought they knew
Speaker 3: a little, and people who thought they knew nothing at all.
Speaker 3: And yeah, And finally did an experiment where I gave
Speaker 3: people a list of years and events and asked them
Speaker 3: is this medieval?
Speaker 2: I like that? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Rather than just saying, like, hey, which is close to
Speaker 3: your opinion? Did the Middle Ages end in fourteen fifty
Speaker 3: three or sixteen hundred or which people have no context for,
Speaker 3: I tried to do sort of build a more organic sample.
Speaker 3: Like you know, some people think the Middle Ages go
Speaker 3: back all the way to the Roman most people don't.
Speaker 3: Some people think they go all the way forward to
Speaker 3: the French Revolution, but most people don't. But pretty much
Speaker 3: everyone says that, like you know, fourteen hundred is medieval,
Speaker 3: and so you can sort of get a probabilistic representation
Speaker 3: of how that works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, lastly, you were talking about knowledge
Speaker 1: of the Middle Ages and stuff, So how would you
Speaker 1: write your own knowledge of the Middle Ages. Is it
Speaker 1: something you studied or is it an interest or you know,
Speaker 1: how would you write that for yourself?
Speaker 3: I'd say I'm a competent amateur in terms of my
Speaker 3: knowledge of the Middle Ages, nice probably, which the term
Speaker 3: means that I probably know more about it than anyone
Speaker 3: I meet on the street and a daily basis, but
Speaker 3: also less than any specialist that I meet on a
Speaker 3: daily basis.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got.
Speaker 3: Into I've been into it interests in the Middle Ages
Speaker 3: I was a kid. Obviously, Fantasy novels a big jumping
Speaker 3: off point for I think interest in the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3: David mcaulay's book Castle that illustrated sort of the history
Speaker 3: of the construction and Cejmcastle was a uh help radicalize
Speaker 3: me on this topic. Uh uh you know, I've tried
Speaker 3: to read interesting pop history books about the topic as
Speaker 3: the years have gone by, Like I read The Distant
Speaker 3: Mirror in high school and uh generally kept reading that
Speaker 3: and then podcasts of course excellent source of information. Blogs
Speaker 3: like the historian Brett Devereaux a few other places have
Speaker 3: been sort of helped build a general baseline knowledge of
Speaker 3: the Middle Ages. That is, as I said, more than
Speaker 3: the average lay person, but less than the average specialist.
Speaker 1: Sounds good. Yeah, well, thank you again for coming on
Speaker 1: this show. So you know what, uh what what were
Speaker 1: some of the big surprises in this that that you
Speaker 1: saw when you had it? So I guess if I
Speaker 1: if I was going to describe kind of what we
Speaker 1: see here for people who haven't already looked at.
Speaker 2: It, they.
Speaker 1: Basically there there are people who still call it dark,
Speaker 1: you know, the Dark Ages, and you know that seems
Speaker 1: to be about forty eight percent.
Speaker 2: But like.
Speaker 1: You know, when when they're at Americans are asked to
Speaker 1: describe the Middle Ages, uh, the first word is violent,
Speaker 1: which was which which was fifty four percent, which you
Speaker 1: know I can't argue with that. Dark came in at
Speaker 1: forty eight percent, which is not what we want to see.
Speaker 1: But religious is forty one percent dirty you know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of connotations to that, but you know, poor,
Speaker 1: But then interesting is it thirty percent? So like you
Speaker 1: you kind of get a mix of it, but it
Speaker 1: is I do think very heartening that.
Speaker 2: The question.
Speaker 1: Which is closer to your understanding of the European Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: First it was a dark gage that things were objectively
Speaker 1: worse in this period than what came before or after,
Speaker 1: or it was complicated, messy period, neither better nor worse
Speaker 1: than any other. Obviously, listeners know how we hear, we
Speaker 1: know it's a different feel. But actually fifty two of
Speaker 1: Americans said that it was complicated, as compared to forty
Speaker 1: eight percent saying it's a dark age, And that to
Speaker 1: me is a big deal. So like, what? What are
Speaker 1: these responses? Kind of surprised you either good or bad?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I have an asset pole in the past,
Speaker 3: so I can't speak to how views are changing on
Speaker 3: this topic.
Speaker 4: This was a closer split.
Speaker 3: On that second question, of which come closer to understanding
Speaker 3: than I was expecting. I probably would expected more people
Speaker 3: saying that it was a dark age than did that, certainly,
Speaker 3: and even split was was very interesting. There's some when
Speaker 3: you dive into it, there's some interesting breakdowns. For example,
Speaker 3: younger people were more like to say that it was
Speaker 3: a complicated, messy period, and older people were more likely
Speaker 3: to call the Middle Ages the dark age. And I
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, it's always hard to tell them.
Speaker 3: Polling like does it is this a lifestyle or effect?
Speaker 3: Is this to like older people just by being old,
Speaker 3: you're more likely to think of something. Or is this
Speaker 3: maybe more of a structural effect that the education system
Speaker 3: fifty years ago taught one thing, in the education today
Speaker 3: teaches something new that makes sense.
Speaker 4: But I can't prove.
Speaker 3: Anything one way or the other about why this is happening.
Speaker 3: Also not super surprising, but the more someone thought they
Speaker 3: knew about the Middle Ages, the more likely they were
Speaker 3: to call it a complicated, messy period rather than a
Speaker 3: dark age, which I mean make sense that if you
Speaker 3: care enough about the Middle Ages to learn about it,
Speaker 3: I think it's it's likely that something about the period
Speaker 3: interests you, and you're maybe less likely to view it
Speaker 3: with pejorative approaches. Certainly there could be exceptions, I suppose,
Speaker 3: But and then you also mentioned other question I have
Speaker 3: where I sort of gave this long list of adjectives
Speaker 3: and asked people to say, pick as many as you
Speaker 3: think describe the Middle Ages to you. And I think
Speaker 3: unsurprising that, as you said, the top adjectives were tended
Speaker 3: to be pretty negative, violent, dark, dirty, poor, Depending on
Speaker 3: how you your view on faith, religious could be seen
Speaker 3: as neutral or positive or negative. We had there are
Speaker 3: other options on there that were chosen interesting. Thirty percent
Speaker 3: of people describe the Middle Ages as interesting, love to
Speaker 3: see it, thirteen percent said heroic, ten percent said innovative,
Speaker 3: ten percent said romantic.
Speaker 4: That was lower than I.
Speaker 3: Expected, given sort of the the views of castles and
Speaker 3: knights and chivalry and all that. Only five percent said
Speaker 3: they were boring. Yeah, and only three percent said they
Speaker 3: were bright, So.
Speaker 2: Uh, well, we got to get number.
Speaker 3: But yeah, David Perry and Matt Gabriel have some work
Speaker 3: to do the their but clearly not resonating fully yet.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean getting people to recognize that it's
Speaker 1: bright is going to take a lot longer, I think.
Speaker 1: But you know, violent, I mean I do necessarily think
Speaker 1: it's more violent than any other era, especially not now,
Speaker 1: given you know, how the percentages of people, the number
Speaker 1: of people killed in you know, the last few centuries
Speaker 1: and all that sort of stuff. But I can't really
Speaker 1: say that it wasn't violent. It was definitely religious, and
Speaker 1: I mean it was dirty compared to what we have
Speaker 1: now and you know, poor. But I think interesting at
Speaker 1: thirty percent is really good and it and back only
Speaker 1: fifteen percent on backwards, which is you know, as we
Speaker 1: get the thing down, like if if we eleanor Eleanor
Speaker 1: speaks about this a lot, but like it is technically
Speaker 1: a dark age in the sense that we have fewer records.
Speaker 1: So like if some of the people who mean a
Speaker 1: dark age are talking about it in that respect, you know,
Speaker 1: then that's not necessarily wrong. It's it's going to be
Speaker 1: hard to like find that in any kind of polling
Speaker 1: because that's a very granular question. But the fact that
Speaker 1: only fit that forty eight percent suggested dark well, only
Speaker 1: fifteen percent suggested backwards, and then only five percent say
Speaker 1: boring is very is a very good conclusion to me,
Speaker 1: at least from like our perspective of trying to uh
Speaker 1: get gen up more interest in the Middle Agesn't just
Speaker 1: you know, a proper understanding of history more generally, So
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, we.
Speaker 2: See, we see a lot of that here. I was.
Speaker 1: I got to say, I was kind of when you
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, favorable views of these concepts. You know,
Speaker 1: you had castles and chivalry and monasteries, and then the
Speaker 1: Gregorian chant only got thirty six percent favorability, and I
Speaker 1: was like.
Speaker 3: A lot a lot of people have commented that probably
Speaker 3: would have been hired to ask us in the late nineties.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you asked this when the video game Halo came
Speaker 1: out and everybody and that that bad boys like eighty
Speaker 1: seven percent. They're like, yeah, I love playing that game
Speaker 1: with my friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh so.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I mean for this question, I sort of tried
Speaker 3: to pick a range of topics, some that I thought
Speaker 3: most people would like, like castles and chivalry both have
Speaker 3: sort of fairly positive connotations. Seventy five percent of Americans
Speaker 3: have a favorable view of castles. Yeah, which don't I
Speaker 3: assume those those are step archers.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, the remnants of the Mongols and the Seljic Turks,
Speaker 1: or at the gates baying ah, what is wrong with you?
Speaker 4: Very unfavorable, very unfavorable.
Speaker 1: They're just slamming. Yeah, they're slamming the Uh this is
Speaker 1: a button there.
Speaker 3: I will pause to make a point here that, you know,
Speaker 3: as we talk about some of these favorable and unfavorable ratings,
Speaker 3: I think a common move that a lot of people
Speaker 3: make when interpreting polls, especially polls of you know, maybe
Speaker 3: less salient topics like the Middle Ages that are maybe
Speaker 3: not central to most people's daily lives Present Company accepted
Speaker 3: as they look at a number like, you know, seven
Speaker 3: percent of people of an unfavorable opinion of Castle's or
Speaker 3: nine percent of people have say they have a favorable
Speaker 3: opinion of the Black Plague. And you know, I'm sure
Speaker 3: some of those people may be long Duray historians, like
Speaker 3: the fact that it contributed to a rising standards of
Speaker 3: living and things like that.
Speaker 5: But.
Speaker 3: More in polling, Polling is not quite as precise as
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people would like it to be,
Speaker 3: especially sort of these extremes, and there's a tendency to
Speaker 3: get higher numbers of these really rare views in a poll,
Speaker 3: then you'd ordinarily get compared to like if you're pulling
Speaker 3: something that everybody thinks about, like you know, what's your
Speaker 3: do you like or just like the.
Speaker 4: President or something like that.
Speaker 3: So I think if you see like nine percent of
Speaker 3: people have a favorite opinion of the Black Plague, the
Speaker 3: right answer response is not to say why is that
Speaker 3: number not lower? It's to say, oh, that's a really
Speaker 3: low number. That's lower than anything else in the survey.
Speaker 3: This is the least popular topic. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: one thing I didn't do was I did not like
Speaker 3: test how much people knew about these topics. I didn't say, like,
Speaker 3: you know, you said you had a favorale opinion of
Speaker 3: one hundred years War? Can you describe what the one
Speaker 3: hundred Year's War is? Just to prove I didn't do
Speaker 3: any of that. I'm testing vibes, impressions. Yeah, yeah, broad
Speaker 3: broad feelings, and I'm sure some people don't have deep knowledges.
Speaker 3: We're like, oh, war, that sounds bad. I have an
Speaker 3: unfavorable opinion of the one hundred Years War.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: You know, monasteries and vikings.
Speaker 3: Both had were more favorable than unfavorable, despite the fact
Speaker 3: that monasteries and vikings traditionally historical enemies. Yeah, it is
Speaker 3: funny how both at the same time.
Speaker 1: It is funny how we just kind of dissolve a
Speaker 1: lot of the time, just dissolves all those barriers between things,
Speaker 1: and now we're like, vikings are cool. I like vikings.
Speaker 1: Monasteries are pretty I like one. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, you know, it's like, you know, the
Speaker 1: the the the sacking of Linda's farm is Linda's farm
Speaker 1: is completely lost on the people of today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess a question that I might should have asked
Speaker 1: at the beginning. So you've done a lot of you
Speaker 1: you you you do polling uh for a living, and
Speaker 1: you've seen a lot of these, you've been involved with them,
Speaker 1: like and the American populace has let's just say, ah
Speaker 1: reputation for being uh difficult to uh get like a
Speaker 1: just to pull out of because you'll be like, you know,
Speaker 1: should we should we ship everyone who doesn't like the
Speaker 1: TV show Reacher off to an island where they fight
Speaker 1: each other for our amusement? And like sixty percent of
Speaker 1: Americans will be like yes, And then you'll be like,
Speaker 1: should we institute communism across the world tomorrow? And sixty
Speaker 1: percent will be like yes? And you're like, okay, So,
Speaker 1: but like, as someone who does this, what is your
Speaker 1: you know, what is your view of like how opinion polling,
Speaker 1: like how Americans do with opinion polling, and why we
Speaker 1: kind of end.
Speaker 2: Up with those really uh let's say odd results.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it goes back to what I was saying earlier
Speaker 3: that a lot of times people aren't are giving answers
Speaker 3: that reflect a gut judgment rather than a deeply considered analysis.
Speaker 3: A phrase that gels used a lot for some different circumstances,
Speaker 3: but I think it's applicable here as well. I think
Speaker 3: it's important to take polling, especially of topics like the
Speaker 3: Middle Ages, seriously but not literally. That you know, is
Speaker 3: it the case that exactly sixty one percent of Americans
Speaker 3: have a very firm considered approval of positive opinion of
Speaker 3: Gothic architecture. No, Like that's not that that number is
Speaker 3: not precise and like super scientific, but like this poll
Speaker 3: does give us a sense. Yeah, people have a like
Speaker 3: Gothic architecture more than they like the Inquisition. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: the good has much more negative vibes than the other. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can get lots of really detailed and helpful information
Speaker 3: out of it, as long as you don't get too
Speaker 3: fixed on precise details. Yeah, and as long as you
Speaker 3: sort of approach this with sort of this let loose mindset,
Speaker 3: taking it seriously but not literally. I think there's a
Speaker 3: lot of really interesting things you can learn about, you know,
Speaker 3: the impressions that people have in their mind. Uh, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, people encounter the medieval things or vaguely pseudo
Speaker 3: medieval things, not a fair amount when TV shows, in movies, books, Uh,
Speaker 3: that you know you have like artists and uh uh,
Speaker 3: musicians will like adopt the imagery of nights or castles
Speaker 3: for music videos. Like this, stuff's all over and people
Speaker 3: have a vague sense of what they think about it.
Speaker 3: Uh And I what I was trying to do is
Speaker 3: sort of measure that in as many different ways as
Speaker 3: I could, try to build sort of a holistic picture
Speaker 3: from a bunch of different questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and I mean I think I think you
Speaker 1: did a really good job of that. Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: and we can I think we can glean from this
Speaker 1: that like education about the Middle Ages, like in schools
Speaker 1: and stuff is is better than it, especially better than
Speaker 1: when I was in school, which you know was like uh,
Speaker 1: you know around the around the turn of the last century,
Speaker 1: literally but like we barely talked about the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: at all. When I was in you know, middle and
Speaker 1: high school. It was like kind of mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: the term Dark Ages was definitely thrown around and everything.
Speaker 2: But now, like.
Speaker 1: Most of the people in this study still learned about
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages from school, you know, the.
Speaker 4: The at least something about the Middle Ages, Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, sorry, yeah, school school is a vague term.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, we did get some open ends where we
Speaker 3: have to beep, like what do you mean by this?
Speaker 3: Some people were saying, like I took a class in college.
Speaker 3: Other people might be thinking like, oh, yeah, we uh
Speaker 3: uh spent a day talking about castles in fourth grade.
Speaker 2: Uh like better than what I got.
Speaker 4: The word school can incorporate all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why I'm glad you're here to talk
Speaker 1: about it, because I, uh, you know, I to you know,
Speaker 1: I just kind of ramble and uh, you know, the hyperbole.
Speaker 2: Comes out and there we are.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you get you get enthusiasts.
Speaker 2: You know, with learning from school.
Speaker 1: Non fiction books and articles and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: you know, you that whether they learned about castles in
Speaker 1: the fourth grade or took a class on it in
Speaker 1: college and stuff like that, Like the fact that a
Speaker 1: lot of these people seem to have heard about it
Speaker 1: in school and then a majority or you know, a
Speaker 1: slight majority of them, you know, have kind of turned
Speaker 1: off to the Dark Ages myth to some extent I
Speaker 1: think is a very positive indicator about at least the
Speaker 1: state of recent EDU history education efforts to that degree,
Speaker 1: and also stuff like the Inquisition having a very low
Speaker 1: favorability and honestly, I can't believe I'm saying this, but
Speaker 1: the Crusades only having thirty two percent, given how like
Speaker 1: loud and vitriolic, the online like push for that like
Speaker 1: deis vult kind of idea is you know, I don't
Speaker 1: that seems that would seem to me at least to
Speaker 1: be a good indicator that that some of these things
Speaker 1: are getting taught the right way, at least for some people.
Speaker 3: Well, one thing I think is about having done opinion
Speaker 3: polling is a better context of some of these online movements.
Speaker 3: Like you you mentioned there's about two hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: million US adult citizens more or less in the country.
Speaker 3: And what that means is if you get two and
Speaker 3: a half million people who believe something, which is an
Speaker 3: objectively huge number.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's one percent of the population.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is you cannot register that a group of
Speaker 3: that size on a national opinion poll. You get ten
Speaker 3: million people, you're still inside the margin of error of
Speaker 3: most opinion polls. So you can have movements of all
Speaker 3: stripes across the political spectrum that are genuinely huge or
Speaker 3: even non political, like you know, interest in a particular topic.
Speaker 3: You can have movements that are genuine, genuinely huge that
Speaker 3: at the same time are not meaningful shares of the
Speaker 3: entire US adult population.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So like a lot and a lot of.
Speaker 3: The stuff that's online a small community feels very intensely
Speaker 3: about just does not penetrate out to the broader the
Speaker 3: broader population, or at least not in detail. Maybe little
Speaker 3: bits of information, uh.
Speaker 4: Carry through, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that's that's part of why I'm doing this,
Speaker 3: Like this try to measure, like, you know, what are
Speaker 3: what are the ideas that have penetrated to the broader population,
Speaker 3: and what ones are still mostly limited to this small
Speaker 3: group or relatively small group of people with very intense
Speaker 3: opinions on one side.
Speaker 2: Or the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and another thing I think that you can if
Speaker 1: you look at it. So there is a chart at
Speaker 1: the very end of this that's very interesting, which vince
Speaker 1: do Americans say were and we're not during the Middle Ages?
Speaker 1: And you know, some of these are kind of funny.
Speaker 1: Julius Sasser sass or good gracious Julius Caesar is assassinated,
Speaker 1: which is forty four pc. Obviously not during the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: but nineteen percent said it was so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we got it.
Speaker 3: Gotta work on back what I said before. I take
Speaker 3: this seriously but not literally. Yeah, yeah, you know, by
Speaker 3: more than two to one margin, Americans said Julius Caesar
Speaker 3: is not medieval, and I think that's the big take.
Speaker 3: You know, obviously some people, if it can be hard
Speaker 3: to imagine. I think for people who think about history
Speaker 3: as much as we do, and I think most of
Speaker 3: your listeners do. To get into the mindset of someone
Speaker 3: whose idea of Julius Caesar is just someone who lived
Speaker 3: a long time ago and there were swords and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you're exactly right. Yeah, time compresses that he
Speaker 1: Julius Caesar like to a lot of people, like he
Speaker 1: lived a long time ago. Uh, there was a Rome
Speaker 1: still around during the Middle Ages, so sure Middle Ages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, sure, like a guy who you know,
Speaker 1: just goes to his job and isn't the stereotypical thinking
Speaker 1: about the Roman Empire all the time.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3: So I assumed that, like you know, that most people
Speaker 3: would say Julius Caesar's death was not medieval. But I
Speaker 3: put in another question. Christianity becomes the official religion of
Speaker 3: the Roman Empire because that's still very Roman, very antique.
Speaker 3: But Christianity is something I think people associate the Middle
Speaker 3: Ages and not with the Roman Empire, even though obviously
Speaker 3: the the the details are much more complicated there. And
Speaker 3: that was split basically people were sort of I mean,
Speaker 3: lots of people didn't have opinions in each of these,
Speaker 3: I should clarify, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I only broke out
Speaker 3: sort of the people who had a view here, but
Speaker 3: those who did have a view were basically evenly divided
Speaker 3: about whether the three a ce adoption of Christianity is
Speaker 3: the official version of the Roman Empire was medieval or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And something I did find interesting in this is
Speaker 1: that the higher percentage for not during the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: so it's Julius Caesar's assassination, Christianity becomes the official religion
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire, the Visigoth sach Rome, So those
Speaker 1: three are all say a higher percentage say it's not
Speaker 1: during the Middle Ages, which we would all agree with here.
Speaker 1: But when you get to four seventy six, the last
Speaker 1: Western Roman emperor is deposed, which you know is the
Speaker 1: typical starting date for the Middle Ages, and the moment
Speaker 1: we kind of use here on the show that's the
Speaker 1: first time you have more people say a higher percentage
Speaker 1: saying it is during the Middle Ages, then it's not.
Speaker 1: And if you go down to the very bottom, the
Speaker 1: last thing that they have here where a higher percentage,
Speaker 1: well except for one, but we can talk about that
Speaker 1: in the last one they have here is the Gutenberg Bible.
Speaker 1: The Gutenberg Bible is printed on a printing press in
Speaker 1: fourteen fifty five. Higher percentage, say, thirty percent say it
Speaker 1: was during the Middle Ages, which you know is really
Speaker 1: close to that fourteen fifty three fall of Constantinople thing.
Speaker 1: So I think it's interesting that they basically come down
Speaker 1: on the exact same scale as we do about what
Speaker 1: the movies A.
Speaker 3: Very legible Yeah, that maps really legibly onto popular like
Speaker 3: a more scholarly understanding what might be considered the Middle Ages,
Speaker 3: and within that, like you've had sort of a it
Speaker 3: also split where the sort of stuff from the fifth
Speaker 3: to the tenth century people were more likely to say
Speaker 3: it was medieval than wasn't, But there are lots of
Speaker 3: people who didn't know, and that the numbers were smaller
Speaker 3: for things like the Battle of Tours, Muslim armies conquering
Speaker 3: Palestine from the Byzantines, Alfred the Great. But once you
Speaker 3: got past the tenth century, sort of the tenth the
Speaker 3: fifteenth century period, you got very high shares of people
Speaker 3: saying like this, This resonated almost universally as a medieval
Speaker 3: to people. Things like the Magna Carta, Notre Dame Cathedral,
Speaker 3: the knights Templar, the Black Plague, the as in court.
Speaker 3: Those are things that there's very little disagreement.
Speaker 4: About. And I forget that reflects on.
Speaker 3: You've got sort of this thousand year period that is
Speaker 3: often seen as medieval, and then it seems like a
Speaker 3: subset of people are focusing more in the Middle and
Speaker 3: High Middle Ages, the sort of the set the back
Speaker 3: half of that, and are hiving off that first half
Speaker 3: of that as something else. Whether they view that, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I can't speak with precision about what they
Speaker 3: Whether people view that as late antiquity or the Dark Ages,
Speaker 3: like as Darkated as a separate concept from the Middle Ages,
Speaker 3: or something that came before. Really, people are less confident
Speaker 3: about that earlier period as being medieval than they are
Speaker 3: about that later period.
Speaker 5: I mean, they're just like me, for real, I'm like,
Speaker 5: you know, my specialism's kicking at like the eleventh century,
Speaker 5: like like let's go absolutely. But having said that, I
Speaker 5: also kind of get it because when are you presented
Speaker 5: literally with anything before then, right, you know, like I
Speaker 5: do think that people can be like, oh yeah, like
Speaker 5: a Magna carta twelve fifteen, right, like Lisa sings that
Speaker 5: song in the Simpsons at like at twelve fifteen and
Speaker 5: runny me dud uh dude uh, et cetera. Like you know,
Speaker 5: so these are things where people can go, oh yeah,
Speaker 5: like I kind of understand those dates, but you know,
Speaker 5: maybe you can do some phantom time theory there. Maybe
Speaker 5: they all just believe like this couple centuries just didn't
Speaker 5: exist or something like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it makes a lot of things
Speaker 3: simpler as long as you don't pay attention to any
Speaker 3: of the things.
Speaker 4: That makes way more complicated.
Speaker 5: But yeah, you know, I'm ovo Sayer spinning in his grave,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. But I mean I do kind
Speaker 5: of get it because if people are presented with any
Speaker 5: kind of medieval history at all, it's usually like those
Speaker 5: big headlines like I don't know, the Norman conquest or
Speaker 5: something like I think if you said ten sixty sixty people.
Speaker 5: They'd go, oh, yeah, word like that, that that's definitely medieval.
Speaker 5: But I don't know if they could really pin on
Speaker 5: a graph where it is. And yeah, to be fair,
Speaker 5: I guess that they do, is what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I also asked about I give them people years
Speaker 3: in said like, it's nine hundred eighty medieval.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Sixteen hundred eighty medieval. And it was more or less
Speaker 3: the same picture as the event question, you know, like
Speaker 3: you know you have with every single year from one
Speaker 3: hundred to seventeen hundred, you have some people saying yes
Speaker 3: and some people saying no. But I've tried, and I
Speaker 3: said before, I was trying to capture sort of probabilistic
Speaker 3: uh look at like you know, when do the when
Speaker 3: do the mass of people say no? When do the
Speaker 3: mass of people say yes? The preponderance of people, And
Speaker 3: again you had this sort of consensus that eleven hundred,
Speaker 3: fourteen hundred and fifteen hundred lots of people said yes,
Speaker 3: that's medieval, and then more dispute about seven hundred, eight hundred,
Speaker 3: nine hundred whether that was medieval or not, and then
Speaker 3: it really dropping off at the ends as you get
Speaker 3: both back into the Romans, and the head into the
Speaker 3: Renaissance for early modern periods.
Speaker 5: See this is where I'm disagreeing with them though, because
Speaker 5: I don't think the fifteen hundreds are medieval. I'm like,
Speaker 5: I'm like, absolutely not. Get out of here. We've invented
Speaker 5: whose sites, We've begun the Colombian Exchange, like Martin Luther
Speaker 5: is here ruining everything that is the modern period.
Speaker 4: No, to me, clearly this is fifteen hundred, not the
Speaker 4: fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 5: Okay, right, okay, fine, fine, By sixteen hundred things had
Speaker 5: dropped off.
Speaker 3: Oh I well, I will say that it was very
Speaker 3: interesting at the events. More or less things moved in
Speaker 3: order that like, especially like as you went from the
Speaker 3: Black Plague to Agincourt to the Gutenberg Bible to Columbus
Speaker 3: to Martin Luther, generally saw the sharf saying this is
Speaker 3: medieval going down. But there was one big exception, which
Speaker 3: was hen the know link his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Speaker 5: That is the most modern thing that there is.
Speaker 4: That is like I knew.
Speaker 3: That happened chronologically, Like Martin Luther the ninety five Theats
Speaker 3: was before that, and Shakespeare writing Hamlet was after that,
Speaker 3: and both of those had people more likely to say
Speaker 3: that wasn't medieval. But in between Henry the Eighth, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: that was medieval. I can't speak with more knowledge about
Speaker 3: what led people to to say that, but it was.
Speaker 4: That's exactly the kind of.
Speaker 3: Weird result that I was hoping i'd get at least
Speaker 3: some of U when giving people this song.
Speaker 1: Lest I read this whole thing, and I knew the one.
Speaker 2: Thing you were gonna get you were.
Speaker 1: Going to be really annoying about. I knew it the
Speaker 1: second I saw it.
Speaker 2: I was like, Ellen was gonna be so mad.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, go ahead, you were gonna have modern one.
Speaker 5: Thing you can do, right. The entire, the entire fucking
Speaker 5: point is that like if you if you say, I
Speaker 5: don't have to be Catholic anymore so that I can
Speaker 5: have sex with someone other than my wife, like that
Speaker 5: is that is the most modern possible thing. Literally, he
Speaker 5: invents a special kind of Protestant to do that, And
Speaker 5: it's like, it's wild because it's like, so when Martin
Speaker 5: Luther invented Protestantism, that's modern, everyone goes yeah, And then
Speaker 5: I'm like, and then when Henry the Eighth, the Special
Speaker 5: divorced Protestantism that and they're like, oh, that's medieval, Like
Speaker 5: how does that work? I just need you, I need
Speaker 5: you to call like square this circle for me, Bay,
Speaker 5: because I can't fucking do it.
Speaker 3: I cannot provide you any more specificity about what lay
Speaker 3: behind that. My only guess is that may have something
Speaker 3: to do with like what people have know a lot
Speaker 3: about yea, and like maybe people who maybe have been
Speaker 3: on the sidelines for some of the earlier questions, like
Speaker 3: who maybe don't have it, people who aren't Lutherans and
Speaker 3: don't have a strong opinion about Martin Luther or something
Speaker 3: like that. I think, Oh, Henry the Eighth, I know
Speaker 3: that I'm gonna I'm gonna vote on this one.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess there are knights and stuff, like
Speaker 5: I guess that the dude did Yeah, yeah, he really
Speaker 5: did joust a lot for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean we we had we earlier, just before you
Speaker 1: were to hop on. We were talking about the nineteen
Speaker 1: percent who said Julius Caesar's assassination was the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: and you know kind of conjection.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just kind of like you know, time distance,
Speaker 1: and like Henry the Eighth, I.
Speaker 4: Don't really know.
Speaker 1: That anything presents him as medieval. But I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like I wonder if both.
Speaker 5: These things, though, are a function of seeing the Middle
Speaker 5: Ages as uniquely violent, you know, which is the thing
Speaker 5: that people do so like not necessarily like Henry the
Speaker 5: Eighth's divorced from Catherine of Arragon, but then everyone goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: Henry the Eighth, isn't that the guy who killed a
Speaker 5: couple of wives?
Speaker 3: Like a he's also a king? I think I think
Speaker 3: we can't get past made associate kings.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's even though obviously the institution of monarchy still around
Speaker 3: today and was in full force and throughout the early
Speaker 3: modern period in nineteenth century. But that made just me
Speaker 3: that nothing more than that that people have this rough association.
Speaker 4: Oh he's a king, that's medieval.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess, like, with with all due respect
Speaker 5: to our fellow countrymen, I suppose that also, you know,
Speaker 5: saying that Julius Caesar's assassination is medieval, Well I was
Speaker 5: about to say, well, you know, if what you if
Speaker 5: what starts the medieval period is the fall of Rome,
Speaker 5: maybe they think Julius is Caesar. Do Caesarious assassination is
Speaker 5: the fall of Rome. But then I'm like, I bet
Speaker 5: they don't know that, So.
Speaker 3: I think I don't think it's anything more than this
Speaker 3: was a long time ago and they use swords and
Speaker 3: daggers for some people.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah.
Speaker 5: See, I'm kind of like though to a certain extent,
Speaker 5: I guess because of what I have to do for
Speaker 5: my own work, I'm kind of like a like long
Speaker 5: deray medieval person where it's like I'm kind of like,
Speaker 5: I will take the Lake late antique period. I think
Speaker 5: that belongs to me. Like I think I've got I
Speaker 5: have to spend all of this time like reading Jerome
Speaker 5: and Saint Augustine, So like, I know, I know technically
Speaker 5: it's late antique, but also is it I think?
Speaker 3: I mean, again, this is this is not coming from
Speaker 3: the pole. I'm just speaking purely for myself here. But
Speaker 3: to the degree that these impressions are formed sort of
Speaker 3: absorbed by asthmosis through pop culture, I think it's worth
Speaker 3: noting that there is sort of, at least how they're presented.
Speaker 3: There's a qualitatively different esthetic for the sort of five
Speaker 3: hundred to one thousand period of like the Last Kingdom,
Speaker 3: you know, Harry Guys and with shield forming shield walls,
Speaker 3: et cetera, versus like knights and castles of the high
Speaker 3: Medieval and then like you know, roughy, roughy collars and
Speaker 3: muskets for the on the on the other end, like
Speaker 3: obviously the real history is much more of a smooth
Speaker 3: continuum and there's lots of continuity and lots more gradations
Speaker 3: than people non specialists understand in there. But I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't think people are necessarily wrong to
Speaker 3: see that, like, at least in terms of the aesthetics,
Speaker 3: that there are some similarities in some of these broad
Speaker 3: periods that have more in common than they have separate,
Speaker 3: at least when you're looking at the looks as opposed
Speaker 3: to things like your social structure and things like that.
Speaker 5: You know, I think I think you're bang on there,
Speaker 5: because like I think a really big way that people,
Speaker 5: especially in America might relate to the medieval period is
Speaker 5: like say you go on holiday to New York and
Speaker 5: you go to the met right, and you'll go see
Speaker 5: the arms and armory. Or if you're at the Art
Speaker 5: Institute in Chicago, you can go see the arms in
Speaker 5: armory exhibit, and half the armor in there is early modern. Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: you know, like you're you're gonna see armor that is
Speaker 5: from the seventeenth century, that is from the sixteenth century.
Speaker 3: And it's just like, how many of the castles of
Speaker 3: people recognize were actually built in my period, the nineteenth century.
Speaker 5: Exactly, Like an initial swen is probably like the most
Speaker 5: recognizable castle in the world, and people tend to just say, oh, well,
Speaker 5: it's a castle, so therefore it's been evil. And I
Speaker 5: get it. I absolutely feel that, but I think that
Speaker 5: that is kind of part of where we go straight.
Speaker 5: So like, say, you're you see a really boss ass
Speaker 5: suit of armor, and the really boss ones are early modern.
Speaker 5: Let's be let's be honest and real. Like when you
Speaker 5: see like the really cool pageant stuff that's got all
Speaker 5: the inlaying and you see a label there that says,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, like fifteen eighty two, you're just gonna go
Speaker 5: hell yeah. You know, dudes will just see a suit
Speaker 5: of armor and say hell yeah. And I think that's true.
Speaker 2: I do it all the time.
Speaker 4: I do for sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, and if you're not a special like you
Speaker 3: know Game of Thrones for example, I think a lot
Speaker 3: of people touched on that went heavy in on the
Speaker 3: medieval esthetics, but if you pay atten, if you're have
Speaker 3: read books about this period, you pay attention, Like it's
Speaker 3: a lot of what you're seeing is very early modern
Speaker 3: in terms of the social organization that's being portrayed. The
Speaker 3: kings that live stay mostly in one spot rather than
Speaker 3: traveling parapateetically around their kingdom. Soldiers wearing matching uniforms and
Speaker 3: with matching equipment, like all that stuff, except for the
Speaker 3: absence of guns. Codes early modern. But if you don't,
Speaker 3: if you're not an expert, what you see codes is
Speaker 3: high medieval instead.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and to be fair, like that's good stuff, right,
Speaker 5: I do think that there isn't necessarily a problem with that,
Speaker 5: and like, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm also thinking
Speaker 5: that probably the other big American touchstone, like obviously you've
Speaker 5: got Disney movies, which, again those are early modern, but
Speaker 5: people think, you know, like the aesthetics are early modern,
Speaker 5: but people think it's medieval.
Speaker 4: That's fine, that's cool.
Speaker 5: And also like let us not forget medieval times.
Speaker 2: Right, that's true, Like.
Speaker 5: I try to never get medieval times, and like that
Speaker 5: is kind of positing the medieval period as like jousting
Speaker 5: question mark, And there's a lot of jousting in the
Speaker 5: early modern period.
Speaker 1: So that's fine, Yeah, yeah, I mean, just go ahead, David.
Speaker 3: Speaking more broadly again, and this is my personal opinion
Speaker 3: and not speaking on behalf of the poll that I
Speaker 3: conducted for you, gov. As we sort of wrap up here,
Speaker 3: I think sort of saving this. One of the things
Speaker 3: that I've always been struck by is the way in
Speaker 3: which the medieval period is a mirror for people for
Speaker 3: the for the present, whether people are writing, are Italians
Speaker 3: writing in the fourteenth century, or Frenchmen in the eighteenth
Speaker 3: the nineteenth century, or people today who were worried about politics.
Speaker 3: This idea of the medieval is this this other period,
Speaker 3: capital o other that is has everything they dislike about
Speaker 3: what's going on right now. Is as for the better
Speaker 3: part of a millennium and a powerful tool in rhetoric.
Speaker 3: And you know my podcast the Cyacklists covering nineteenth century France,
Speaker 3: and a lot of the liberals there are launching these
Speaker 3: big polemics against the Middle Ages because their enemies are
Speaker 3: the traditionalist Catholics of the nineteenth century, and they're trying
Speaker 3: to tie their enemies to this distant pass to paint
Speaker 3: them as backwards and and all that, and so you
Speaker 3: know historians like Michel who are doing a lot to
Speaker 3: shape the understanding of the Middle Ages in a way
Speaker 3: that has echoed down a lot to the to the present,
Speaker 3: even though they were writing in not just history but
Speaker 3: also with an eye on the politics of their time.
Speaker 3: I think you can sort of see that happening today
Speaker 3: as well, when people accuse their political enemies of trying
Speaker 3: to bring back the Medieval Ages, bring back the Dark Ages. Yes,
Speaker 3: people are commenting somewhat on an understanding of history, but
Speaker 3: there is an understanding of history that is interpreted through
Speaker 3: their critique of what's happening right now.
Speaker 5: I couldn't agree more. And you know, I face this
Speaker 5: all the time in my own historiography that I have
Speaker 5: to work with with check people from the nineteenth century,
Speaker 5: because like during the the world in the abdor Jenny,
Speaker 5: when they're like really trying to advocate for the idea
Speaker 5: of well Czechoslovakian this at the time, God bless them,
Speaker 5: you know, like and they're saying like this is kind
Speaker 5: of like unique and different and special, and so they
Speaker 5: associate Catholicism and medievalisms with Germans and imperialism in this
Speaker 5: bad way, and it becomes incredibly funny when you get
Speaker 5: them to Charles the Fourth because they love Charles the
Speaker 5: Fourth and they and they want Charles the Fourth, but
Speaker 5: they're like, oh, but he was a Catholic. Oh god,
Speaker 5: oh no, what.
Speaker 1: Do we do?
Speaker 5: You know, Whereas they have this ongoing obsession with trying
Speaker 5: to pick out the figures that they like and saying, oh,
Speaker 5: this guy's a kind of Hoosite and it's like, honey,
Speaker 5: he lived like two hundred years before the Hosites, and
Speaker 5: they're like, mmm, he was a Hoosite, Like all right,
Speaker 5: and like, to be fair to them, there are rather
Speaker 5: a lot of Czech medieval figures that you can find
Speaker 5: who hate Germans, so like it's kind of like, okay,
Speaker 5: like knock yourself out. But I am constantly having to
Speaker 5: control for that just within my own scholarship, so I'm
Speaker 5: kind of familiar with it. And I guess that, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe to like end us on kind of a more
Speaker 5: positive note, I suppose one of the things I was
Speaker 5: really happy to see was actually young people are really
Speaker 5: good at identifying the Middle Ages. I was like, we
Speaker 5: did it, fam, We've done it. Like younger people kind
Speaker 5: of have their dates really right and so I do
Speaker 5: kind of think maybe pedagogy is changing around this. I mean,
Speaker 5: what is your takeaway from that?
Speaker 3: I mean I didn't don't deeply enough to get an
Speaker 3: understanding of exactly what was going on here. So like,
Speaker 3: whether like education in schools, the way that the Middle
Speaker 3: Ages are mentioned has changed from the nineteen sixties to today,
Speaker 3: or whether you know, the Internet and movies have given
Speaker 3: people a more layered and nuanced understanding, or it's made
Speaker 3: it easier for people who have a vague interest to
Speaker 3: learn more about it, or just the explosion of fantasy
Speaker 3: as a genre over the past fifty years. There could
Speaker 3: be I can't say from this poll what is causing it,
Speaker 3: but it was certainly very striking that there seems to
Speaker 3: be more negative views about the Middle Ages from older
Speaker 3: Americans than from younger Americans.
Speaker 5: I'm like, I think my booty shorts did it. You
Speaker 5: guys like I've done it. I've changed hearts and minds.
Speaker 1: It's fine, your ass has changed heart to minds. It's
Speaker 1: so true.
Speaker 5: It's so true.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's genuinely good though, That's genuinely a good thing.
Speaker 5: And I do think that it is interesting, and I
Speaker 5: honestly don't care what it is. I don't care how
Speaker 5: it is that younger people have a better understanding. But
Speaker 5: I'm just kind of glad that we've all got here.
Speaker 5: And I mean, certainly, I will probably never stop beefing
Speaker 5: with people online for using the term dark ages at all,
Speaker 5: let alone incorrectly. Like you know, the number of times
Speaker 5: I've had people say to me, oh, the Black Death
Speaker 5: sounds pretty dark to me, and I'm like, dude, you're
Speaker 5: off by like eight hundred years, but absolutely go off,
Speaker 5: you know, like it's a definitely you know, I think
Speaker 5: it's a change in the right direction. I guess overall,
Speaker 5: what I felt about the survey was that there's still
Speaker 5: a lot of work to be done, but we were
Speaker 5: heading in the right direction. So I was actually really heartened.
Speaker 5: I was really expecting to be more angry than I was.
Speaker 1: So I was like, well, we got we got to
Speaker 1: inflict more damage on this crusade, on this thirty favorable
Speaker 1: of the Crusades, unless unless a lot of those people
Speaker 1: are like, yeah, the Muslims won the Crusades in the end,
Speaker 1: so they were good, and we're like, okay, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess you got us there. Uh you know I.
Speaker 5: Want to bring down Richard Lionheart's favorability rating. I'm gonna
Speaker 5: tank that ship. I'm just gonna spend all of like
Speaker 5: we need to really spend some time I think for
Speaker 5: a while talking about how queer he was, like we
Speaker 5: need we need to we need to focus on the
Speaker 5: dick sucking, and it'll tank his favorability for the wrong reasons.
Speaker 5: But as long as people don't like him, I kind.
Speaker 4: Of don't care.
Speaker 3: From a polling methodology standpoint. I think one reason, a
Speaker 3: couple of reasons Richard the Lion are such a high
Speaker 3: favor ability. One, he's just gotten very good press over
Speaker 3: the years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just Robinhood.
Speaker 4: It's just it is just Disney specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's often sort of a heroic figure in
Speaker 3: the robin Hood. But the other part of is just
Speaker 3: he's got a really good epithet if you don't know
Speaker 3: a lot about the period and you're sort of going
Speaker 3: on vibes, like I think, if I had asked about
Speaker 3: Richard the first you would have much lower favorability than
Speaker 3: asking about Richard the Lionheart, because Lionheart sounds cool. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's what as I was saying, earlier, like pulling
Speaker 3: like this, especially about a topic that's not of deep
Speaker 3: relevance to most people's day to day lives. You need
Speaker 3: to take it seriously but not literally, like understand that
Speaker 3: there are all these little nuances and wording that can
Speaker 3: lead people to, you know, give more favorable ratings to
Speaker 3: someone with a cool name like Lionheart and more negative
Speaker 3: ratings to something with a violent name like the One
Speaker 3: Hundred Years War without really having a deep understanding of
Speaker 3: what's going on there. But all that said, there's still
Speaker 3: really valid information you can take away as long as
Speaker 3: you understand that some of these numbers can be a
Speaker 3: little bit fuzzy, and it's more it's the it's the
Speaker 3: relative rate comparisons of these numbers to each other that
Speaker 3: you can sort of derive a broader, holistic picture from.
Speaker 5: I thought it was really funny how there were people
Speaker 5: who negatively rated Hildegard van Bingen. You could just say,
Speaker 5: you don't have an opinion, guys, like I mean, like,
Speaker 5: why are you mad right now?
Speaker 3: You're people don't like Germans. I don't know, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like I was kind of I didn't delve into it,
Speaker 3: and you know, there's there's a termin polling called lizard
Speaker 3: Man's constant, basically observation that you can ask people to
Speaker 3: shape shifting lizards because you really control of the world,
Speaker 3: and four or five percent will say yes, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: And most of those four or five percent probably don't
Speaker 3: deeply believe that lizard people are running the world.
Speaker 4: Some do.
Speaker 3: There are certainly some people who do believe that, but
Speaker 3: other people, uh, you know, maybe they misride the question,
Speaker 3: or they were in a hurry, or they just guessed randomly.
Speaker 3: And in the big picture, a lot of these sort
Speaker 3: of stuff that's sort of stuff sort of balances out. Uh,
Speaker 3: but on the extremes of really rare views, like opinions
Speaker 3: of Hildegard of Bingen, uh bless her heart, not a
Speaker 3: very well known person in the US today, Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: you're you're gonna get extreme figures like people with the
Speaker 3: negative opinion of Hilligard of Bingen higher than maybe you
Speaker 3: would if you did a more focused if you'd like
Speaker 3: read a paragraph description of her life and ask people
Speaker 3: if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of her
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like I'm wondering if it's just kind of like
Speaker 5: I was like, maybe there's some kind of like trad
Speaker 5: cath out there, like I broke out, for example, favored
Speaker 5: village of Thomas Aquinas by people's religion and Catholics much
Speaker 5: higher as to expect views.
Speaker 3: Of Moses my monodies much higher among Jewish respondents. So
Speaker 3: the margin of air much larger there because the group
Speaker 3: of smaller, Like some of this stuff did play a
Speaker 3: role like other routes, like you know where people have
Speaker 3: learned about Thomas Aquinas well, for a lot of people,
Speaker 3: it's through church if if you're a Catholic. Uh, so,
Speaker 3: like there are lots of these other various INDs that
Speaker 3: sort of can explain some of these findings that you know,
Speaker 3: you can't get into every single nitty gritty in the poll,
Speaker 3: but uh.
Speaker 4: There's there's lots of these little nuggets in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I suppose that I'm like really partial to our
Speaker 5: man Thomas Quinas me as medieval as obviously I am,
Speaker 5: but I would I would say that you're also like
Speaker 5: so for example, as someone who attended Catholic undergrad like,
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what they make you do aquinas As
Speaker 5: in your philosophy classes, Like you gon't be reading some
Speaker 5: acquitas and whether or not you come out with a
Speaker 5: positive favorability of him as a result of that is,
Speaker 5: you know, up to God, I suppose, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: for sure.
Speaker 1: Well we gotta we gotta took the methodology. We got
Speaker 1: to check the numbers on this poll, because I don't
Speaker 1: know that having eight percent, the eight percent unfavorable view
Speaker 1: of Joan of Arc, having eight percent of hardcore English
Speaker 1: nationalists who are still as with the Pale of Calais
Speaker 1: is a bit much in your poll, David, I gotta say.
Speaker 5: Maybe they're Burgundians. And I was like, I'm like, I like,
Speaker 5: how But so, for example, I do think it's correct
Speaker 5: to have a negative view of the hundred Years War
Speaker 5: h right, Like I am like one hundred percent. I
Speaker 5: think that was bad and it shouldn't have happened, and
Speaker 5: it was stupid, right like the on the whole, complete
Speaker 5: waste of life and resources and you know anything else.
Speaker 5: But in order to have that, you then also have
Speaker 5: to have a positive view of Jon of Arc, I feel, right.
Speaker 5: So I'm like, maybe there's someone who's like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 5: I love the hundred Years of War and also I
Speaker 5: hate Jon of Arc, and maybe they're just like really big,
Speaker 5: you know, Plantagenet fans or something.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: One thing to keep in mind, Atheists twice as likely
Speaker 3: to have a negative opinion of Joan of Arc as
Speaker 3: Protestants and Catholics.
Speaker 5: Oh they strike it.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm an ath I think agnostics had loved Joan
Speaker 3: of Arc. It's the only people who said they were atheists.
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, we can't count. We can't count agnostics.
Speaker 1: The cowards atheist we can't love.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe there is more of like a
Speaker 1: bad opinion of her amongst some atheists. I'm just like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think she's neat, Like it's cool
Speaker 1: that a that a that a girl got to do
Speaker 1: that like go to the King of France and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're being dumb and that it's.
Speaker 5: Illegal for girls to have hallucinations about oh Saint Michael.
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, oh yeah, real mature guys. But I do
Speaker 1: I do think we have to we have to positively
Speaker 1: say that, uh salad. And even at the eighteen percent
Speaker 1: favorability still has a higher favorability than unfavorable. Suck it, uh,
Speaker 1: you Christian nationalist freaks.
Speaker 5: I mean, and that actually like made me laugh because
Speaker 5: I just was thinking about how much medieval Europeans fucking
Speaker 5: love Saladin, and I was like, they would be so
Speaker 5: pissed about this.
Speaker 3: I mean, this may just reflect people's views on his
Speaker 3: particular boss in the Civilization game series.
Speaker 2: That is true.
Speaker 1: Really he was. Really, he's a really good one. In
Speaker 1: Siev's six, it was a it was a scientific sieve.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, it was good stuff.
Speaker 5: Surely you could do. And I haven't whoa like, I'm
Speaker 5: just I'm letting it show. I haven't played a Crusader
Speaker 5: Kings where I like, do they like start as the levant?
Speaker 5: Maybe I should do. That's just so that I could
Speaker 5: be salad in one time.
Speaker 4: That'd be fun.
Speaker 5: I'd like Norman's have appeared and I'll be like, god,
Speaker 5: damn it, they're like ants.
Speaker 1: You know, how did they keep doing this? How do
Speaker 1: they keep getting here? Yeah? You know, Other than that, Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm tired of people ragging. I'm tired of I'm tired
Speaker 1: of the nine percent who have a favorable favorable view
Speaker 1: of the Black Plague being shamed, like you guys trying,
Speaker 1: you guys try living near Europe. Okay, Like, come on,
Speaker 1: nobody wants that and I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I do assume it's like Dave was saying earlier, it's
Speaker 1: probably people who have taken to the idea that the
Speaker 1: Black Plague caused like a greater you know, greater social
Speaker 1: mobility and advances in that later on, is my guess
Speaker 1: at that. Either that or again there's like nine percent
Speaker 1: who are like, uh, you know, step archers and they're like,
Speaker 1: fuck it, fuck you, Yeah, it was good, you got it. Well.
Speaker 5: I think that it's an interesting one because I am
Speaker 5: obsessed with the Black Death, but I think you should
Speaker 5: have a bad view of it. Oh yeah, where we're
Speaker 5: not going to get and also we're not going to
Speaker 5: get into.
Speaker 4: People dying is generally bad.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know I've talked about it before. We
Speaker 5: don't have to do it again. I don't necessarily like
Speaker 5: the whole Oh it improves wages, yeah, because I'm like
Speaker 5: only kinda like that's.
Speaker 2: A real doubt.
Speaker 1: That's a way downstream consequence from like I don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: like I can't even remember how many it was, like
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty million people dying.
Speaker 5: Like I'd rather the lower wages, but you know, hey,
Speaker 5: who am I Ah, but David, I know that we
Speaker 5: got to let you go. So is there any concluding
Speaker 5: thought you want us to all have about this excellent survey?
Speaker 5: Which also, I just got to thank you for your
Speaker 5: service as medievalist because it's kept us all busy in
Speaker 5: thinking and people talking about this so like you're braver
Speaker 5: than the troops. Thank you so much. But anything else
Speaker 5: you want us to think.
Speaker 3: About, Yeah, I'll just put on two different hats for
Speaker 3: a second. You know, this is latest in the series
Speaker 3: of sort of polls I've done about understanding that history.
Speaker 3: I did one of the Roman Empire last year. I
Speaker 3: will surely browbeat my bosses and letting me do more
Speaker 3: in the future. And if you want to be the
Speaker 3: kind of person who gets to answer questions on a
Speaker 3: poll about history, you can go to today at ugov
Speaker 3: dot com and you can sew up to join our panel.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: I can't guarantee which poles you'll get, but uh you
Speaker 3: do earn points you can catch in for gift cards
Speaker 3: by uh filling out poles. So my I bossitive to
Speaker 3: appreciate me uh pointing out that opportunity at today dot
Speaker 3: you dot com. And also, you know, if people want
Speaker 3: to learn a little bit about what happens after your podcast. Uh,
Speaker 3: you should check out the Ciecla, which is my history
Speaker 3: podcast about narrative history about France after Napoleon, uh, which
Speaker 3: uh which you know, route views of the Middle Ages
Speaker 3: are a really important lingering thing in the nineteenth century
Speaker 3: and uh you can find that probably in the show
Speaker 3: notes and at the CICHLA dot com that's t h
Speaker 3: E s I E c l E dot com.
Speaker 5: Well, fantastic, David. We'll have to find a way to
Speaker 5: somehow shoehorn ourselves onto your podcast someday. I don't know
Speaker 5: how we're gonna do it, but you know we will.
Speaker 3: I've been talking about uh, Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de
Speaker 3: Pariva pretty soon.
Speaker 5: So oh oh yeah, okay, like what's up, what's up?
Speaker 5: We're into it. Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, Well, thank you so much for having
Speaker 4: me on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, David, an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you for coming on, David. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: guys know where to find me and eleanor check out
Speaker 1: the social media. We'll update you on any of the
Speaker 1: stuff we've been doing. But yeah, David, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. Thank you everyone, so much for listening,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 4: Bye.