Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not much just singing radioheads classic uh uh
Speaker 1: classic song Karma Police stuck in my head for like
Speaker 1: a Dog. Yeah. And it also reminded me because I
Speaker 1: haven't gone back and listened to Okay Computer recently, and
Speaker 1: I went back and I was like, huh, okay, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the first track is Airbag. It's a really
Speaker 1: good song if you never heard it. Uh, but uh it.
Speaker 1: One of the most I think literally ironic things that
Speaker 1: has ever happened to me was that when I I
Speaker 1: was just out of college and I was driving to
Speaker 1: meet my girlfriend now a wifeiler life.
Speaker 2: Guy this I for driving to see the woman he loves.
Speaker 1: Wow, what a fellas?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Gay toot, et cetera. And uh So I I like, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody in front of me, we're on I'm on a
Speaker 1: two lane road. Somebody in front of me like stops
Speaker 1: to turn into this like store. Immediately, just like hard,
Speaker 1: slams the brakes and causes, like I don't know, a
Speaker 1: six car pile up behind him because everybody's going too close.
Speaker 1: And I I hit. Uh, I slammed the brakes. I
Speaker 1: got hit from behind. I slammed into the people in
Speaker 1: front of me and my forehead hit the windshield. And
Speaker 1: the last thing that I heard from the car before
Speaker 1: before it died, because uh, the engine had been seriously
Speaker 1: damaged rip was uh uh and the lyric is in
Speaker 1: uh an airbag saved my life and and rite is
Speaker 1: that it like faded out, and I like, I was like, huh,
Speaker 1: well that was pretty funny, right, I was. I was fine,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeahale.
Speaker 2: I mean here right now, folks, He's here.
Speaker 1: Here, so I'm still here there go. Yeah anyway, yeah,
Speaker 1: what uh what what non karma police rated news is going?
Speaker 2: I mean I'm back on knife Crime Island. So okay,
Speaker 2: it's seventeen degrees Celsia's today, which is sixty two point
Speaker 2: six degrees. So the English are all losing their mind.
Speaker 2: I saw a shirtless man earlier today as I went
Speaker 2: for a walk. Yeah, so like that's what's going on here. Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, some people are just a little a little
Speaker 2: too hype that it is possibly spring, and you know,
Speaker 2: like I don't want to jump I don't want to
Speaker 2: jump the gun too early because the equinox is like
Speaker 2: not till this weekend, I think, and you never know,
Speaker 2: like false spring is crafty, right, so you can't just
Speaker 2: like go around getting your hopes up. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: like trying to readjust the time difference and things of
Speaker 2: this nature. But yeah, yeah, things are you know, everything's
Speaker 2: coming up Millhouse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, coming up, everything's coming up the money.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. That's right.
Speaker 1: You're nickname that everyone everyone says uses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's correct, that's correct, that's correct. I think that actually,
Speaker 2: I think on the whole the slang, the street slang
Speaker 2: name I have is doctor j which is fine with me.
Speaker 2: I think that's a pretty good one because I am
Speaker 2: much like Julia serving mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I call you, I call you doctor
Speaker 1: Yea because you know the J is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, goddamn right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, But then people might might confuse you with
Speaker 1: Kanye West, and it's like.
Speaker 2: Do you know I was such a fucking huge Kanye fan,
Speaker 2: which is like it's like I'm always like I try
Speaker 2: to be like, well, yeah, and then he died in
Speaker 2: that car accident. Is like the way that I try
Speaker 2: to do it, but it's still like too complex. I
Speaker 2: can't like listen to my beautiful, dark Twist and Fantasy anymore.
Speaker 1: Which is a shame because one of the best.
Speaker 2: Rap album one of the best albums of all time.
Speaker 1: Run Away one of the best rap songs of all time. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: just like insanely problematic, but like I mean, like, oh yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: fuck him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck him. It's like I mean, on the other
Speaker 2: hand too, like radioheadar or Zionists now, so it's like
Speaker 2: you know, Newhilo, sang Domes, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yep, yep.
Speaker 2: Nick Cave two.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like you know, and this is why, look,
Speaker 2: this is why Saint George Michael was the only good
Speaker 2: man to ever live, because you know, he was exactly
Speaker 2: the opposite of all this ship. It's like a he's dead,
Speaker 2: which we don't want b banger after banger hit after
Speaker 2: hat hit, see communism, right, write about everything all the
Speaker 2: time the end, you know, we shall never see another
Speaker 2: of his, Like.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to think.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I'm sure there are more unproblematic musicians, but
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, but I can't think of them right now.
Speaker 1: I can't think of them right now. That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's oh god, times are bleak. It's bleak out here. Homie.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Like I was just joking around yesterday. I was like,
Speaker 2: can you imagine like how bad shit is when I
Speaker 2: like I get back to like turf Island over here,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh gosh, I feel so much safer.
Speaker 2: You're like, good God, times are bleak in America.
Speaker 1: It is great.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmmm.
Speaker 1: I don't yeah, yeah, we can talk about it on
Speaker 1: the bonus.
Speaker 2: Now, we'll talk about it. We don't need to tell
Speaker 2: right now we should. I mean, we got a lot
Speaker 2: of questions to answer.
Speaker 1: I'm just like I like, bounce in between between, bounce
Speaker 1: in between. Uh like okay, this is cool, I mean
Speaker 1: not cool, but like okay, like like it will like
Speaker 1: these people are more ons, like they're doing this in
Speaker 1: the like absolute stupidest way possible that is going to
Speaker 1: blow up so badly, you know. But then it's just
Speaker 1: like every day it's just something like even stupid or
Speaker 1: you're like, oh fuck off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like some new horror every day for sure, And
Speaker 2: it's just like I gotta say, it's a it's a
Speaker 2: bit bleak. All my loved ones are really freaked out obviously,
Speaker 2: like yeah yeah, because it's like I know, I talk
Speaker 2: to you constantly. But it's like when you're it's different,
Speaker 2: like being in the company of Americans, because everyone will
Speaker 2: be like no, like we don't want to do it,
Speaker 2: I can't do it right, and then they'd be like
Speaker 2: ten minutes later and another thing. And it's just because
Speaker 2: it's just like constantly burning in the back of your
Speaker 2: mind and it's like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's I mean like it's it's wild. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, we'll talk about it on the bonus.
Speaker 1: There's just too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah we should, we got questions, answers, we should get
Speaker 2: into it. Let's just get into should thinking about problem.
Speaker 2: Uh you know, et.
Speaker 1: Cetera, Americana Americana or whatever. Studio estudios. There we go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start starting to learn Spanish for reasons. Oh yeah, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: here we go. Uh folks wait, fuck, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Usually I do the intro on muscle memory, but like
Speaker 1: it just blanked. Oh my god. All right, here we go.
Speaker 1: I'll try it again. Yeah, hello, and welcome back to
Speaker 1: We're Not So Different, a podcast where occasionally my muscle
Speaker 1: memory fails and I forget how I intro this show
Speaker 1: on the I don't know two hundred something something episode.
Speaker 2: Look, a lot of things are happening with a lot
Speaker 2: of people, A.
Speaker 1: Lot of things are happening. My mind clouded, my intentions
Speaker 1: somewhat pure, my whatever. You guys know the deal. I'm Luke,
Speaker 1: I do the I do the dumb guyshtick And that's
Speaker 1: Eleanor and she definitely does not. Yeah, folks, it's a
Speaker 1: mail call time and we have an admission to make.
Speaker 1: We're behind on our Patriot questions. All the normal causes
Speaker 1: are to blame, travel, compress schedules, interviews with amazing guests,
Speaker 1: things of this nature. But whenever you fear stalwart patron,
Speaker 1: I swear upon the nearest, the nearest holy relic in
Speaker 1: my vicinity that we're going to catch up and get
Speaker 1: this mountain of questions down to a reasonable number by
Speaker 1: doing a mail back episode a month for a while. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you good folks know the deal. Patriots get to submit
Speaker 1: questions that we answer on the show, and we're going
Speaker 1: to do that right now, and it will be a
Speaker 1: big pitch for the Patreon too. Hey, patreon dot com,
Speaker 1: slash wnstpod five bucks a month. It's cool and you
Speaker 1: will enjoy it all right here, we go. Let's let's
Speaker 1: do it. Gafsey, Gafsy, always with the good questions. One
Speaker 1: of the interesting elements of medieval European historiography is the
Speaker 1: sense of timelessness, with pictures of Jesus being nailed up
Speaker 1: by legionnaires in chain mail and romance as that feature
Speaker 1: aneas jousting. Was this understanding of the past being largely
Speaker 1: the same, or if you prefer, not so different as
Speaker 1: the present a feature of European historiography specifically, or is
Speaker 1: it a more general pre modern phenomenon.
Speaker 2: So you tend to see it in primadanity, But there
Speaker 2: are a couple of things happening here. So like in
Speaker 2: the first case, the deal with showing religious figures like
Speaker 2: Jesus in chain mail or like you know, showing the
Speaker 2: ancients in like modern clothing, et cetera, et cetera, has
Speaker 2: to do with this idea of Jesus still being present
Speaker 2: in the modern day. So he's just like you, He's
Speaker 2: just like me, right, So kind of like what that
Speaker 2: is doing is it's reinforcing the idea that this is
Speaker 2: as relevant now as it was when Jesus died, right,
Speaker 2: And this is kind of similar to the phenomena in
Speaker 2: medieval religious art of children being pictured as kind of
Speaker 2: like tiny adult. What that is is an art motif
Speaker 2: that is showing that children's souls have equal importance to
Speaker 2: adult souls. Right, So when you see pictures of Jesus
Speaker 2: and the Apostles, et cetera, etc. Who are dressed like
Speaker 2: medieval people, what they're saying is like, yeah, this could
Speaker 2: as easily happen now, right with India's jousting and things
Speaker 2: like that. What they're attempting to do is kind of
Speaker 2: show a similar thing, which is under line the noble
Speaker 2: nature of this person. So that's kind of like when
Speaker 2: you do a Shakespeare production in modern clothing. You know,
Speaker 2: like that, that's kind of like the same thing. So
Speaker 2: it's like what you're doing is you're just kind of
Speaker 2: like underscoring here is a social milieu from which he came.
Speaker 2: This is kind of what it means. And I mean
Speaker 2: you do kind of tend to see this up until modernity,
Speaker 2: right you hit the renaissances and suddenly they're like, no,
Speaker 2: I were, motherfucker's in a toga, which you know, not
Speaker 2: to say that. You know, medieval people don't also have
Speaker 2: their fair share of these people are wearing togas art
Speaker 2: because obviously they do, but there is much more of
Speaker 2: an emphasis than in art on realism quote unquote, and
Speaker 2: so you don't have the time to kind of play
Speaker 2: with motifs and things like that because everyone is much stupider.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: Tell them.
Speaker 2: I said, that's right. They're like, they don't have time
Speaker 2: to think about art. They have to be shown everything
Speaker 2: like a little baby. So yeah, yeah, basically hear that.
Speaker 1: You hear that, you medieval fucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you know, I like it's on site
Speaker 2: mich Gelangelo, which with your beautiful sculptures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh and yeah, I you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I I assume that everybody's done has done this. I mean,
Speaker 1: we still do this today. The amount of sincerity in
Speaker 1: it is debatable. But like you see like pictures of
Speaker 1: like Jesus like playing basketball, and like you know, like
Speaker 1: literally like I can see it in my head right now.
Speaker 1: It's like Jesus crossing over the devil, Like Devil's falling
Speaker 1: over and Jesus is like crossing him up, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've you know, I've seen that picture since you know,
Speaker 1: for like fifteen years now. It's you know, so we
Speaker 1: we do it too. It's just you know, we kind
Speaker 1: of may are able to wink and nod at it
Speaker 1: a little bit, whereas they're more like this illustrates X
Speaker 1: because you know, the thing, the things were a bit
Speaker 1: more didactic back then. You know, things represented big moral
Speaker 1: you know, concepts more, you know, even more so than
Speaker 1: like stuff does now, because we're not you know, we're
Speaker 1: just not telling the same We tell similar stories, we
Speaker 1: use similar tropes, we just don't tell them the same way.
Speaker 1: Uh as far as I could tell anybody, Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh also, Jesus looks cool in chain mail, Like
Speaker 1: what do you want? Like you know, like.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like I mean, chain like mail is cool.
Speaker 1: Look, I gotta I gotta say the the babies being
Speaker 1: pictured as adults and that being like for an actual
Speaker 1: purpose and not just like you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to draw a baby like that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a little more difficult or whatever. Like that is
Speaker 1: so funny to me because then I think about like
Speaker 1: the front facing horse, like the really famous like marginalia
Speaker 1: of the front basing horse where it just looks like insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like one of the Simpsons had on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you're just like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: and then it's like, yeah, well, some of it represents
Speaker 1: that baby souls are are of equal value to adult souls,
Speaker 1: and some of it represents that drawing a front facing
Speaker 1: horse is really fucking hard and it always has been.
Speaker 1: Yeah anyway, yeah, yeah, Evsie, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: the question. Next we come up to Jazz the Texican,
Speaker 1: who says, I'm visiting my mom and found my old
Speaker 1: much Love Stuff panda and it got me wondering what
Speaker 1: were medieval children's toys, Like, do we have any examples
Speaker 1: or descriptions of much loved dolls or wooden animals, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So we see these a lot in art, and we
Speaker 2: know in particular that one of the things that happens
Speaker 2: a lot is you get little carved wooden animals. And
Speaker 2: oftentimes we see little carved wooden animals that you can
Speaker 2: pull around that have wheels. That's really big. Also, you know,
Speaker 2: just like little carved animals to play with. Certainly there
Speaker 2: are dolls, and lots of references are made to dolls.
Speaker 2: They tend to just be made out of cloth. Mind like,
Speaker 2: you know, no one's using porcelain to make dolls at
Speaker 2: this point in time, so you know, dolls made out
Speaker 2: of cloth are big for girls. Less I can tell
Speaker 2: you less about like stuffed toys in terms of like
Speaker 2: Teddy Bears and things like that, that doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: be present so much. Those tend to be a little
Speaker 2: bit more wooden, I think as a general rule of thumb,
Speaker 2: whereas like dolls kind of get made out of toyst
Speaker 2: of cloth. But I can't rule it out. It's just
Speaker 2: that I've never seen depictions of it. And you know,
Speaker 2: obviously things that are made out of cloth were not
Speaker 2: going to have them anymore because they've all rotted by now.
Speaker 2: So it's very hard for us to still have cloth
Speaker 2: things from the era. So I cannot rule it out.
Speaker 2: It very well might have happened. We do know that
Speaker 2: animal toys are incredibly popular. There's also you know, all
Speaker 2: of the toys like balls obviously incredibly popular, stick and hoop,
Speaker 2: big thing. A fun thing to go look at is
Speaker 2: one of the Broygals. I forget if it's older or younger,
Speaker 2: has a painting called Games Children Play and it shows you, yeah,
Speaker 2: and it shows you all different things that they're playing
Speaker 2: with that you know, everyone's favorite being like poking like
Speaker 2: some cow dung with a stick, which is.
Speaker 1: A pot that is a time honored actively.
Speaker 2: Time honor game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, time honored activity. I definitely did that. I
Speaker 1: do have family that that had farms and stuff when
Speaker 1: I was younger, and yeah, poking, poking ship with a stick,
Speaker 1: you know, still funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah to the absolutely. But anyway, like granted this this
Speaker 2: is early modern, but we know that most of the
Speaker 2: things that are depicted there are uh like present in
Speaker 2: the medieval world as well, So you know, like flipping
Speaker 2: around on benches and treating up like jungle gyms, you know,
Speaker 2: think the same thing with barrels, playing tag. All that
Speaker 2: stuff kind of like happens. So I guess that there
Speaker 2: are also like wooden weapons, you know, like wooden swords
Speaker 2: and stuff like that we tend to see as well.
Speaker 2: That's a big deal. Yeah, you know, things of this
Speaker 2: nature kind of exactly what you would expect to see
Speaker 2: you will see, is the answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the games children play here, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean like this is you know, having kids and you know,
Speaker 1: going and picking kid up from preschool and then regular school.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, this is still the same stuff they do
Speaker 1: on the playground. You know, it looks like kids are
Speaker 1: playing tag, a little bit of tug of war, a
Speaker 1: couple of people kind of playing chicken on the backs
Speaker 1: of others. You know, you know, it's just normal kid like,
Speaker 1: you know, normal kids stuff. Also, I will say one
Speaker 1: thing that kids have always had is little action figures
Speaker 1: and dolls that have removable helmets, Like those date back
Speaker 1: like like four thousand years. Like, you know, kids have
Speaker 1: always loved a cool little accessory on their dolly or
Speaker 1: their action figure or whatever it is. They're like, look,
Speaker 1: the helmet comes off, the hair, the dress comes off.
Speaker 1: You're just like, yes, yes, give me this, give me
Speaker 1: this pointless bullshit that I nonetheless love. Uh yeah, Jess,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for the question. Uh Next, we
Speaker 1: got one from Alikants, who says, would there be any
Speaker 1: chance of elaborating on the story of Saint George and
Speaker 1: his Palestinian roots and why British Gammons want to make
Speaker 1: Saint George's Day into another white right wing Christmas for themselves? Oli,
Speaker 1: I'll go ahead and answer. The second part is because
Speaker 1: they're British Gammons and they're ontologically evil eleanor please elaborate
Speaker 1: because I know nothing about the.
Speaker 2: First, Like, okay, that that is true. There absolutely evil.
Speaker 2: Now there's a non evil argument for it, which is
Speaker 2: that the English we are very specifically owed a couple
Speaker 2: more days off. I mean, we're not in the EU
Speaker 2: any longer, but there used to be this thing where
Speaker 2: it's like you're supposed to have a certain numbers of
Speaker 2: days off per year, and the English are specifically two
Speaker 2: days behind. Everyone else in the UK is one day behind.
Speaker 2: And why because they all get their national Saints days off.
Speaker 2: So Saint Patrick's Day is a day off in Northern Ireland,
Speaker 2: Saint David's Day is a day off in Wales, Saint
Speaker 2: Andrew's Day is a day off Inland Scotland. And we
Speaker 2: specifically don't have Saint George's Day off because we cannot
Speaker 2: be trusted because gammon sucks so much, and it's like
Speaker 2: so we we very specifically don't have it because those
Speaker 2: people can't fucking behave themselves. So yeah, we should have
Speaker 2: it off. Everyone else in the UK does, and most
Speaker 2: countries in Europe you get your local Saints Day off,
Speaker 2: so I you know, one presumes that in George they're
Speaker 2: getting Saint George's day off. You know, it's it's hardly
Speaker 2: revolutionary to have Saint George's the patri state of your country.
Speaker 2: But we just suck, so we're not allowed to and
Speaker 2: that and that's just that's just that on that now
Speaker 2: in terms of what you're talking about. So a fun
Speaker 2: fact about Saint George is that we think that this
Speaker 2: kind of trope of like somebody killing a dragon maybe
Speaker 2: even goes back into like the ancient Egyptian period. Uh So,
Speaker 2: for example, at the Temple of Edfu, which is like
Speaker 2: part of the Ptolemaic dynasty, there's a temple of Horus
Speaker 2: and there's all these depictions of him as a human,
Speaker 2: sometimes a human with the head of a falcon, and
Speaker 2: he is like harpooning Set, who was shown as a
Speaker 2: hippopotamus usually right. This then later on gets changed into
Speaker 2: him killing a crocodile. And so we found like in
Speaker 2: Tuta Common's tomb, like Set killing a crocodile as a human.
Speaker 2: And so then this is like everyone is like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 2: we got to have one of those, right, So you
Speaker 2: get Saint George, and uh, the legend here is that
Speaker 2: Saint George is essentially like Cappadocian, uh so, kind of
Speaker 2: like Greek Turkic of some description, but very specifically. His
Speaker 2: mother is regarded as having been Palestinian, uh so, very
Speaker 2: so there is kind of like a lap of an
Speaker 2: overlap there, and obviously, you know, like a lot of
Speaker 2: Palestinians are Christian, uh duh. So, Like the story here
Speaker 2: is that he was born in Palestine and then like
Speaker 2: he ends up becoming a Roman soldier like under Diocletian
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah, and that's why he gets martyred
Speaker 2: something something dragon. So my point here being that there
Speaker 2: is a deep urge in all of our souls to
Speaker 2: tell a story about someone killing a dragon or a
Speaker 2: crocodile or whatever. And one hundred percent, and our good friends,
Speaker 2: the Palestinians revere him because he's a local boy. He's
Speaker 2: got this this local thing going on. However, he's a
Speaker 2: Egyptian before that, you know. But he's also huge in
Speaker 2: the Orthodox Church, right, like that is incredibly important, and
Speaker 2: like you have lots of places in Palestine named after him,
Speaker 2: so like like it's he's a very important figure for
Speaker 2: Palestinians obviously, because everybody loves a local boy, right, so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm going to show my vulnerability here and
Speaker 1: admits something incredibly stupid about myself. Until, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a year or two ago, I thought that the Saint
Speaker 1: George that England uh used as a patron say, it
Speaker 1: was a different Saint George. Like it was like a.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because why the English.
Speaker 1: Person named George? Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, And I mean
Speaker 1: this is a really cool story. I was also going
Speaker 1: to say that this is one of the like this
Speaker 1: shit is cool, like it just lives up to the
Speaker 1: whole mystique thing. He was like a Roman officer, he
Speaker 1: got martyred, killed a dragon, you know, like from these
Speaker 1: like obscure kind of origins. Like, yeah, that's a really
Speaker 1: cool story. But yeah, until I really thought it was
Speaker 1: like you know some like early medieval you know, George
Speaker 1: gun was.
Speaker 2: Like okay, cool, you know, it's like he's one of
Speaker 2: these classic guys. Where wouldn't you want to claim him? Right?
Speaker 2: H So yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 1: Yep, that that is true. On the other hand, he
Speaker 1: does kill a dragon and there aren't a lot of
Speaker 1: them around. George kind of rude kind well yeah, uh no,
Speaker 1: that's cool. That's really cool and cool that he might
Speaker 1: actually have Palestinian roots. That's a really neat thing that
Speaker 1: I really didn't know about until like two years ago,
Speaker 1: which until then I thought George was just some English guy. Oops. Anyway,
Speaker 1: really can't thank you for the question. Next, we got
Speaker 1: one from a dog spotter. What were medieval pregnancy tropes?
Speaker 1: Was there a food craving that was tell in the
Speaker 1: same way as pickles or a stereotype in sitcoms? What
Speaker 1: was the typical pregnancy like in terms of what women
Speaker 1: were expected to do at various stages. Did they have
Speaker 1: an equivalent categorization to trimesters? And how would their workload
Speaker 1: change throughout pregnancy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we don't get to have the same kind
Speaker 2: of medieval tropes because like, talking about pregnancy is kind
Speaker 2: of like seen as untoward because you're talking about fucking,
Speaker 2: which I'm given to understand was actually like a prevalent
Speaker 2: in quite true, like even in the twentieth century in
Speaker 2: America where it was like whoa, Like if you refer
Speaker 2: to pregnancy, then you're like admitting that people are sexually active.
Speaker 2: Having said that, from a medical standpoint, we've got rather
Speaker 2: a lot And yes, they do definitely think in trimesters.
Speaker 2: And one of the big reasons we know about this is,
Speaker 2: you know, up until the first trimester, abortions are chill, right,
Speaker 2: so they're kind of like there's a kind of a
Speaker 2: lot of talking about that, and then after the first
Speaker 2: trimester they refer to the quickening, and the idea is
Speaker 2: that like the soul's kind of like a little bit
Speaker 2: more in there than otherwise would be. In terms of
Speaker 2: diet stuff, because it's like we're not hearing from people
Speaker 2: so much. We're hearing from physicians. What they tend to
Speaker 2: do is they tend to say that you should eat
Speaker 2: particular things that will be good for your humors. So
Speaker 2: like if you want to give birth to his son,
Speaker 2: you're supposed to eat like things that are going to
Speaker 2: increase your heat and things like that. So we tend
Speaker 2: to see more like diet strictures than we hear from
Speaker 2: people themselves in terms of like pregnancy itself and the
Speaker 2: experience of it. The letter on Virginity or I think
Speaker 2: it's holly mean fed or whatever in Middle English, it
Speaker 2: talks about how much pregnancy sucks and his shit and
Speaker 2: how you shouldn't get married and have kids and you
Speaker 2: should actually stay a woman who is dedicated to God.
Speaker 2: And now, to be fair, obviously this is a hostile witness,
Speaker 2: but it does talk about like how much pain you're
Speaker 2: going to be and how incredibly heavy it is, how
Speaker 2: you feel like you're gonna puke all the time, and
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah, and how difficult it is to
Speaker 2: undertake all of your work while you're doing this, which
Speaker 2: kind of is an indicator that you're still expected to
Speaker 2: do things for quite some time now. Obviously, as pregnancy
Speaker 2: kicks in, that's going to go down more and more
Speaker 2: in terms of just like your ability to be mobile.
Speaker 2: So like towards the end of pregnancy, it is understood
Speaker 2: that you're just going to be like everyone's kind of
Speaker 2: keeping an eye on you to make sure that you know,
Speaker 2: you don't like go into labor at any moment, and
Speaker 2: and also like it's going to be very difficult just
Speaker 2: to bend down to milk the cows. Yeah, so there
Speaker 2: is there is a very much that you can do,
Speaker 2: so you know, they're much more matter of fact about
Speaker 2: what is possible, yeah, as a result of pregnancy, But
Speaker 2: they're also much more matter of fact about like the
Speaker 2: fact that so much work needs to get done that
Speaker 2: you still need to like do it up until it's
Speaker 2: no longer possible. So it tends to be kind of
Speaker 2: much more inbuilt in that way in terms of about
Speaker 2: after care. If you're rich, you might have what they
Speaker 2: call confinement, so you might like hang out in a
Speaker 2: dark room that is overheated for quite some time to
Speaker 2: try to like keep you safe or whatever. That tends
Speaker 2: to ramp up in the in the early modern period,
Speaker 2: but there is rather a lot of like laying around,
Speaker 2: and we see cute pictures of this, like oftentimes if
Speaker 2: it's like the Virgin Mary in Jesus, where it's like
Speaker 2: he's all swaddled up and she's just laying in bed
Speaker 2: like Jesus fucking Christ. Right, So you know, it is
Speaker 2: expected that you're going to have a week or so
Speaker 2: just kind of like laying around, you know, and like
Speaker 2: if there are any complications, then that's gonna like delay it.
Speaker 2: And there is an understanding that there are going to
Speaker 2: be complications as well. But you know, most of us
Speaker 2: live next door to our families or in the same villages,
Speaker 2: so what happens then is just like the whole extended
Speaker 2: family swings into action to help you out right, and that.
Speaker 1: It turned around and in very slow motions say share
Speaker 1: the load.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If it's anything like when my wife was pregnant,
Speaker 1: it involved the dad's going out to get two different
Speaker 1: kinds of takeout food in one night. Uh. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were running out to the local taco
Speaker 1: bell to pick up some some some helicos and you know,
Speaker 1: then they had to run by, I don't know whatever,
Speaker 1: a cheeky Nando's or whatever you guys call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we yeah, gotta have that cheeky Nandos
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know what that is. I think I've
Speaker 1: said that before. Nando's here is like a Cuban restaurant.
Speaker 2: Well that's interesting. Yeah, okay, you know I'm listening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh it's good. Uh yeah, Doc Spotter, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for the question.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Next up, we got one from Horatio hex who says,
Speaker 1: did medieval physicians understand leprosy as the disease we know
Speaker 1: today or is it a general term for a lot
Speaker 1: of extreme skin diseases.
Speaker 2: So for the most part it just refers to straight
Speaker 2: up leprosy okay, because there's a lot of that about it.
Speaker 1: It's not like hell. For a long time, they referred
Speaker 1: to any like virulent disease that killed a number of
Speaker 1: people as plague. They were like plague struck up and
Speaker 1: You're like, you mean bubonic. It's like they're like, no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe, yeah. There were some people who were non historians.
Speaker 2: They can't stress this enough, like I've had this positive
Speaker 2: to me where they're like, oh, well, could it have
Speaker 2: just been syphilis? And I'm like no, because we know
Speaker 2: from like the record like when syphil its appears and
Speaker 2: like absolutely not. But having said that, yeah, if you
Speaker 2: have an incredibly rare virulent skin disease, you're probably gonna
Speaker 2: get called a leper, right, you know, like because there
Speaker 2: there's only so many words to go around, you know.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like how now people aren't necessarily clear
Speaker 2: sometimes on whether you've got like eczema or yeah, what's
Speaker 2: the other.
Speaker 1: One, alopecia?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know that's the one, you know, the one
Speaker 2: the skin you know what I mean, psoriasis? Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the one. Yes. So it can be like confusing because
Speaker 2: it's just like I don't know, skin's being weird, like
Speaker 2: autoimmune issue, right, So it's difficult for non experts. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's probably true that some people just got kind of
Speaker 2: like lumped in as leopards. Absolutely the case, but for
Speaker 2: the most part it does refer to leprosy, which is
Speaker 2: pretty endemic you know worldwide at the time, we had
Speaker 2: real problems with leprosy. It's wild you know.
Speaker 1: Let me let me ask a follow up question, do
Speaker 1: we know, like how did leprosy fit into the humor's
Speaker 1: system of the Galian the Galen system of understanding, Like
Speaker 1: how did that? How did that finish?
Speaker 2: I think that I think that it's I think with
Speaker 2: leprosy it's kind of meant to be cold and wet.
Speaker 2: I think it has something to do with black bile.
Speaker 2: Off the top of my head, So.
Speaker 1: That does sound like the worst one, so I can
Speaker 1: see you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's what it's supposed to be. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, they're always talking about how garrulous
Speaker 2: people are. Yeah, yeah, lepers, Yeah, lepers are, Like there's
Speaker 2: a whole moral philosophy of lepers being like having like
Speaker 2: brought the disease on themselves. It's kind of like the
Speaker 2: way that we would talk about like victims of HIV
Speaker 2: when it first came out, it's like, well, you shouldn't
Speaker 2: have been such a dirty slut. It's same thing, like
Speaker 2: it seemed kind of as vaguely STI like, and usually
Speaker 2: there's all these ideas that lepers kind of like are
Speaker 2: particularly quarrelsome and slutty and gluttness, which I think is
Speaker 2: just kind of like the Agel thing of like telling
Speaker 2: stories about people who are begging in order to get
Speaker 2: yourself out of like giving the money. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It seems. Yeah, that's that's wild even for even for
Speaker 1: like even for pre modern understanding of like medicine, like
Speaker 1: that's still like a bit much like they talk a
Speaker 1: lot like okay, God, like oh they're like how how
Speaker 1: were they fat? And now like their lepers and they're
Speaker 1: like thin, and you know, it's fine. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I'm I don't know why I'm trying this case
Speaker 1: in my head. Horatio X, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: the question. Next, I would whack five hundred moles says
Speaker 1: if you were a courtier, could you just quit, like
Speaker 1: say fuck all that jazz, I'm off to my estate
Speaker 1: in Schwine sarsh Schwine Sarsdorfurstorf, Yeah, which I'm sure was
Speaker 1: put in there to try and trip me up. I
Speaker 1: don't care. It's German. I speak English, my language. The
Speaker 1: language you hear me butcher all the time. It's base
Speaker 1: on you Germany, so watching it. I learned it from
Speaker 1: watching you Germany. Uh. Anyway, God, yeah.
Speaker 2: Good question. A sort of is the answer. I mean, technically,
Speaker 2: technically you need permission from the king to leave, right Uh.
Speaker 2: In practice, uh, probably if you just say, hey, can
Speaker 2: I go, he'll go. Yeah, Like, unless you are so
Speaker 2: indispensable at court that you like absolutely cannot be spared.
Speaker 2: So like, but there there are sometimes people like flouncing
Speaker 2: out in the middle of the night because like the
Speaker 2: king got mad at them, or they got mad at
Speaker 2: the king. And that's usually okay. When you see people
Speaker 2: kind of go back to the court, though it's usually
Speaker 2: less about the king calling them there, although certainly that happens,
Speaker 2: and kind of like more about fit people's families being like,
Speaker 2: you get back in there. How are we supposed to
Speaker 2: like social climb if you don't fucking like get in
Speaker 2: at court? Right, So, I.
Speaker 1: Don't care if that guy was making eyes at you,
Speaker 1: You get back in there and just stand there.
Speaker 2: So like the pressure tends to come more from like
Speaker 2: noble families themselves and less from the royal slant of things,
Speaker 2: like the whole royal things, and like the pressure to
Speaker 2: be at court as much more for like Louis the
Speaker 2: fourteenth thing, right, which is like very modern. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: most people aren't at court most of the time, but
Speaker 2: you know, certain huge landoverers will be obviously, and certainly
Speaker 2: you send your kids in order to try to like
Speaker 2: make good marriages and good negotiations and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: But like quite often if you have a larger estate
Speaker 2: and you're married in things, you're gonna be back there
Speaker 2: and then you send your kids in to do the
Speaker 2: wheeling and dealing and then you just kind of like
Speaker 2: come in once in a while. But yeah, you can,
Speaker 2: you absolutely can sort of quit, but you've got to
Speaker 2: make sure that you do it in a way that
Speaker 2: doesn't offend the king.
Speaker 1: That's all medieval quiet quitting.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a throwback to something that you know, it
Speaker 1: was like last year, so it might have well it
Speaker 1: might as well have happened in the sixties anyway, I
Speaker 1: would wake fi one hundred miles. Thank you very much
Speaker 1: for the question. Enjoy your estate in Schweinsharstorf anyway. Next up,
Speaker 1: I got one from Rolf who says the Galileo episode
Speaker 1: maybe look up the Catholic Church's stance on abortion, and
Speaker 1: Wikipedia says Pope sixties banned all abortions as homicide in
Speaker 1: fifteen eighty eight, but the bull was rescinded by his successor,
Speaker 1: Pope Gregory in fifteen ninety one, and they returned to
Speaker 1: the rule that abortion before forty days was not homicide,
Speaker 1: which lasted until eighteen sixty nine. What was up with
Speaker 1: that and why did Gregory step back from the madness?
Speaker 2: Well, Gregory was just like a real one, is the answer.
Speaker 2: So the answers that, like the majority of the medieval period,
Speaker 2: you're kind of like the first trimester is fine, Like
Speaker 2: forty days is like don't even worry about it, like
Speaker 2: you don't even you need to like not you need
Speaker 2: to chill out, like who is a wor ay even pregnant,
Speaker 2: you know, question mark. But it extends through the first trimester,
Speaker 2: which is all the stuff that is kind of like
Speaker 2: it's easier on the woman in question to have an abortion.
Speaker 2: Then right, it's going to be like less of a
Speaker 2: huge medical issue for you to do that, And the
Speaker 2: major ways that you do that is with abort efficiency,
Speaker 2: so you just like ingest a lot of Penny Royal
Speaker 2: and Tansy is the major way else.
Speaker 1: We can do it. I can't do it monotone enough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not making fun of him at all. I love
Speaker 1: love Nirvana, but yeah, actually to a real one for
Speaker 1: maybe the first time I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, right, to a real one, Thank you, Kurt.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, so basically this is kind of the
Speaker 2: way that it is now. Pope Gregory walking this shit
Speaker 2: back probably has rather a lot to do with him
Speaker 2: being sensible and trying to align with the more traditional
Speaker 2: medieval view of things, because the reason that the medieval
Speaker 2: Church is pretty okay with abortion is they're like, otherwise
Speaker 2: there's going to be fucking infanticide. Yeah, And the medieval
Speaker 2: church is really clear that a fetus is not the
Speaker 2: same fucking thing as a baby, right, and they're like,
Speaker 2: and in fact, to side is really high like in
Speaker 2: basically through up through. It obviously gets a lot worse
Speaker 2: in the early modern period because it's like when you're
Speaker 2: forced at birth and it's like, yeah, well we'll just
Speaker 2: kill this baby now, I guess. And so it's really
Speaker 2: really sad. So you know, this is in keeping with
Speaker 2: the general thing of everything getting worse in the early
Speaker 2: modern period, because the early modern period is fucking worse
Speaker 2: and that just is the case. And so Gregory, I think,
Speaker 2: was just trying to be like, yo, I'm really not
Speaker 2: trying to have all these baby that's on my hands.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so one hundred percent like that. Like it's still
Speaker 2: though a stricture that is worse than the medieval standpoint, right,
Speaker 2: Like the forty days is still not particularly great. Like
Speaker 2: it's kind of difficult to even tell if you're pregnant
Speaker 2: within that space of time.
Speaker 1: So uh five and a half weeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like that's nothing, right, Like, so yeah, it's
Speaker 2: kind of like one of those And yeah, and this
Speaker 2: is also important because you're like, oh, yeah, so that
Speaker 2: lasts until eighteen sixty nine and they're like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: the whole thing is bad, right, you know, and it's
Speaker 2: just like Jesus Christ. So this is an important thing
Speaker 2: to keep an eye on because it just kind of
Speaker 2: proves that things don't always get better. Sometimes they get
Speaker 2: much worse, right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I also think this is an example
Speaker 1: of a point where this was not an issue that
Speaker 1: was so ideologically salient to the Church and to the
Speaker 1: greater population of Europe that that they had to worry
Speaker 1: about it or like come down on it because they
Speaker 1: because I mean, basically what they do with the with
Speaker 1: medieval abortions is that they create a legal fiction of
Speaker 1: the first trimester in order to alleviate a much worse
Speaker 1: and much frankly more society societally destabilizing problem, which is
Speaker 1: the deaths of you know, dozens hundreds of infants, you know,
Speaker 1: every few weeks, a few you know, a few months,
Speaker 1: and that's just like good God, your society would crumble,
Speaker 1: and you know, so, so they did that. But then
Speaker 1: as it became an ideological backbone of you know, the
Speaker 1: Christian population, the Church and the Protestant churches as well,
Speaker 1: they move in that direction and they gobble it up
Speaker 1: and it becomes a it becomes becomes a huge thing
Speaker 1: that everybody has to that that is now like a
Speaker 1: huge talking point instead of something where like, look, we
Speaker 1: don't really you know, they if you could be if
Speaker 1: you could administer true serum to the pope or what
Speaker 1: medieval pope. He'd be like, Look, we really don't like
Speaker 1: abortion at all, but you know this is necessary to
Speaker 1: prevent chaos, these stables, you know, like it just to
Speaker 1: prevent like a horror, like an even greater real, you know,
Speaker 1: manifest horror. Yeah, anyway, a great question, Ralph, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Next we got one from Loaf, who says,
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by the idea of language comprehension in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. I've seen complex maps of languages or dialects
Speaker 1: spoken in continental European countries like France and Spain, and
Speaker 1: I'm given to understanding. I'm given to understand that for
Speaker 1: a long period, the English ruling class spoke a different
Speaker 1: language from the people they ruled. And China little has
Speaker 1: U has official languages because of how many languages were
Speaker 1: spoken in the empire. This makes me wonder how communication
Speaker 1: worked across the kingdoms. Did most kingdoms such empires have
Speaker 1: a state language? Are the various regional languages similar enough
Speaker 1: that people got by or was it common for people
Speaker 1: to have at least some level of understanding of multiple
Speaker 1: languages to get along with their neighbors.
Speaker 2: Latin, that's the answer Latin.
Speaker 1: And if you're in Western Europe, French French. Actually, actually
Speaker 1: in a lot of Europe, but especially Western Europe, French.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like French is what you speak at court
Speaker 2: a lot of the time. So like when the English
Speaker 2: you know, when when the English aristocracy doesn't speak English,
Speaker 2: they're speaking French. Oftentimes a lot of people speak French.
Speaker 2: So it's very common for people from the German Lens
Speaker 2: to speak French as well. But as a general rule
Speaker 2: of thumb, like laws are promulgated in Latin, and courts
Speaker 2: will communicate to each other in Latin. If anything is
Speaker 2: written down, it's done in Latin. And as a result,
Speaker 2: everyone's got really fucking good Latin if they're literate, and
Speaker 2: so it's super super common if you get engaged, if
Speaker 2: you are English and you marry someone from Spain, you
Speaker 2: will speak Latin to each other until you know you
Speaker 2: one or the other, like learn the language. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: that's the this is sorted out through Latin because hu
Speaker 2: that's just how it works. And you could show up
Speaker 2: in any place in medieval Europe and be like, hey,
Speaker 2: what's up, I got Latin and everyone will be like, oh, yeah, word,
Speaker 2: that's fine. Right, So there is it's one of the
Speaker 2: real shames of us, like losing Latin as something where
Speaker 2: because this was a language that was like nobody's and
Speaker 2: so therefore it was everybody's. It was just an official language,
Speaker 2: and it was everybody's official language. And that's how it worked.
Speaker 2: I mean, like other than obviously Constantinople, where they're doing
Speaker 2: everything in Greek and that's very nice for them. But basically,
Speaker 2: when in doubt, you just switched to Latin and that
Speaker 2: would be fine. And this ends up being important to
Speaker 2: because like certain things like you know, you're probably mutually
Speaker 2: intelligible in I don't know, Milan in Florence, but you
Speaker 2: are certainly fucking not mutually intelligble if you are in
Speaker 2: Milan and Naples, right, Like that is not like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you look up a linguistic map of Italy
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages, it is frankly insane. And they
Speaker 1: are so they are so divergent that that some linguists
Speaker 1: have have have considered classifying them as like separate like
Speaker 1: languages like they like they just and those and like
Speaker 1: in certain places it gets homogenized a little earlier, like
Speaker 1: in France because it's such like a the language is
Speaker 1: so pervai all over that area, it does, and like
Speaker 1: Spanish becomes its own thing. But like in Italy because
Speaker 1: there's no unification, because they're so like and there's this
Speaker 1: like tension and even hatred between just like cities next
Speaker 1: door to each other. It's like, you know, I think
Speaker 1: even like the dialects the Southern Italians and Northern Italians
Speaker 1: speak today are kind of different. They're not different different,
Speaker 1: but they're kind of like they have they have different
Speaker 1: they have differences in how they're done, and it's like
Speaker 1: it took forever for like that stuff to homogenize into
Speaker 1: like a language that.
Speaker 2: They could contact because fake it's not.
Speaker 1: Unified Italy is fake, just like unified Germany. Get that
Speaker 1: ship out, nobody can go back to speaking you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever the six hundred versions of Germany,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean just kind of like answering the last
Speaker 2: part of this question. Though it is super common for
Speaker 2: people to speak like five things, it is like completely normal,
Speaker 2: I mean much in the way that many Europeans do
Speaker 2: speak like five things now similar at the time. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like, you know, much is made of it.
Speaker 2: Happening when people are royals, because they're like, wow, this
Speaker 2: royal isn't a shithead. But like, you know, merchants speak
Speaker 2: multiple things all the goddamn time, Like people who travel
Speaker 2: a lot speak multiple goddamn things, and so yeah, it's
Speaker 2: not that it's not that confusing, but it's likely that
Speaker 2: you're gonna be mutually intelligible to neighbors. But you know,
Speaker 2: famously there are outliers, so that like my good friends,
Speaker 2: the checks where like fuck you.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not speak why fuck.
Speaker 2: You get out of here.
Speaker 1: That's why I like pronouncing jas as.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, liv thank you very much for the question. Next,
Speaker 1: we have one from may Day who says, what do
Speaker 1: you think the Holy Roman Empire would have been like
Speaker 1: if it had a sustained period of Italian domination? I
Speaker 1: also have opinions, eleanor thoughts.
Speaker 2: Depends on the Italians, doesn't it, Yes.
Speaker 1: You know, like what are we taught? Like okay, let's okay,
Speaker 1: let's just do the parameters here. Let's say they have
Speaker 1: full They have full control for at least I don't know,
Speaker 1: fifty years over basically all of Italy except the papal states.
Speaker 1: But I mean they would still have more leverage over
Speaker 1: them at that point because of you know, total land
Speaker 1: domination around them. So like, I I don't think it
Speaker 1: would end well for them because.
Speaker 2: I think it would have been more garrulous. Let's just
Speaker 2: say that. I think that we would see. I think
Speaker 2: that they're would be more infighting because the Italians love
Speaker 2: to infight, so like the Germans are fairly alright at well,
Speaker 2: like keeping a little bit more tighter lid on things,
Speaker 2: like there's a lot less going to war with each other.
Speaker 1: And especially as the HR goes on, they really buy
Speaker 1: into the whole like, okay, we are going to like
Speaker 1: do our uh, we're gonna do our differences through the
Speaker 1: through the emperor, through you know, through our legislative bodies
Speaker 1: and things like that. But obviously they still fought and
Speaker 1: everything like that. But it was oh yeah different and
Speaker 1: it's way different than how it was in Italy, where
Speaker 1: like you know, we talk about vendettas now and you're
Speaker 1: like that can't be a real thing. Like it wasn't
Speaker 1: families killing families. It was absolutely families killing absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: five hundred year old slights or murders or two kids
Speaker 1: from families eloping, like it's just like I'm I'm not.
Speaker 1: It's it's not that there's anything wrong with Italians, but
Speaker 1: like all of those states are set up to hate
Speaker 1: each other. They they didn't like each other for the
Speaker 1: longest time. There was not a unifying force in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways because of the geography of Italy, because
Speaker 1: of the Appennines running up the spine of it and
Speaker 1: cutting off parts of it in the land in the
Speaker 1: south being so different from the land in the north.
Speaker 1: But like, I don't know, I think I think, I
Speaker 1: honestly think it might could have destabilized the HRE far
Speaker 1: earlier because when they're when part of the hr went
Speaker 1: to war with itself, it would usually go through like
Speaker 1: it would usually have some like serious issues that it
Speaker 1: had to work out, and it would destabilize the you know,
Speaker 1: the emperors, and I mean the Thirty Years War is
Speaker 1: the perfect culmination of that. It's just, you know, it
Speaker 1: completely destabilizes the emperor, the position of emperor permanently, and
Speaker 1: stuff like that had happened before, and it was just
Speaker 1: you know, if you got Italy and they fight, you
Speaker 1: know what do you.
Speaker 2: They love to fight, and like it's a problem for
Speaker 2: Holy Roman emperors in the first instance, I think that
Speaker 2: possibly if there was like more Italian rule you would
Speaker 2: see like earlier fracturing, that that could be quite possible,
Speaker 2: because because it's one thing for like the Lombards to say, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: like we're in this like nebulous, holy Roman emperor, that's okay.
Speaker 2: But if you tell the Milanese that the Florentines rule them,
Speaker 2: all hell is going to break loose, like baby, they
Speaker 2: are not going to take that well at all. And
Speaker 2: so it's just kind of like there are such deep
Speaker 2: seated issues between the city states that if you, I think,
Speaker 2: if you put one of them in control, like I mean,
Speaker 2: God forbid, what if like the Venetians get control, like
Speaker 2: all hell will break?
Speaker 1: Everybody hates this, Yeah, the Genuines almost everyone hates them
Speaker 1: the floor the Florentines like like some of these like
Speaker 1: everyone some of the some of these city states were
Speaker 1: so looked down upon that like they didn't even they
Speaker 1: weren't even considered like the same like species almost like
Speaker 1: they like they were like the wild they think about
Speaker 1: like if you've ever read Dante or if you're a
Speaker 1: Patroon and you listen to our Inferno series, they just
Speaker 1: think about like he's talking about like a guy from
Speaker 1: like Pisa as some sort of like uh subverbal sub
Speaker 1: mental like freak they keep in a basement, and it's
Speaker 1: like these towns are fifty miles apart, like you like
Speaker 1: you're all descended from the same like weird mix up
Speaker 1: of like uh Byzantine Greeks, uh Islamic nations, Normans and
Speaker 1: you know Native Latins. Like I don't know, how, how
Speaker 1: how are you so much better than someone from another
Speaker 1: city state that may or may not be doing better
Speaker 1: at that very moment, I.
Speaker 2: Mean like quite so. And it's like at times when
Speaker 2: we see like you know, Italians tried to say, hey,
Speaker 2: we should really be in charge, it's usually the Romans.
Speaker 2: It was like Petrarch writing to Charles the fourth and
Speaker 2: being like, hey, I really think like Rome should be
Speaker 2: in charge. And it's like, aren't you guys in a
Speaker 2: civil war right now? Like didn't you just like have
Speaker 2: a fake like heptarchy And then like you know, like
Speaker 2: they're like, sorry, the triarchy not heptarchy, like you know,
Speaker 2: so those kind of overtures don't make a whole lot
Speaker 2: of sense when you also consider the history of Rome
Speaker 2: and like how it's like basically like the Orsinis, like
Speaker 2: trying to throttle like everybody. I's so, you know, there's
Speaker 2: so much noble infighting that I just think it would
Speaker 2: be well, it would be interesting. Oh yeah, But I
Speaker 2: just think that those hoes don't like each other, so
Speaker 2: I don't think that they should be in control of
Speaker 2: an empire. That's all I mean, like a granted death
Speaker 2: to all empires, you know, munda sen as cesarebus is
Speaker 2: all I have to say about it.
Speaker 1: But you know, yeah, yeah, empire's Delinda s yeah, uh
Speaker 1: may Day, Thank you for the question. Next, we got
Speaker 1: one from fruked Base, who says I was reading about
Speaker 1: the American pastor who got his flock to invest in
Speaker 1: crypto and was wondering, what's your favorite medieval scam and
Speaker 1: we're their infamous medieval scammers.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean I think all of
Speaker 2: my medieval scams favorites are just kind of like how
Speaker 2: there's like seven heads of John the Baptist, That's what
Speaker 2: I like. That's like my favor.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of the Vikings using narwal tusks
Speaker 1: as unicorn horns and and and grinding them up into
Speaker 1: dusk and selling it his unicorn dust and people on
Speaker 1: the mainland eight that shit up. That's a good scam.
Speaker 2: I've got a good early modern scam though, that I
Speaker 2: want to shout out, which is that so the Enlightenment
Speaker 2: as well, right, But in the seventeenth century in the
Speaker 2: German Lands, like talking about ghosts for the most part
Speaker 2: is kind of like outlawed because the Protestants are trying
Speaker 2: like there is this like no ghost thing, but there's
Speaker 2: this prevalent belief that ghosts can lead you to treasure,
Speaker 2: and you can apply for a treasure hunting license to
Speaker 2: go dig things up. And it's the German Lands, so
Speaker 2: obviously you have to apply for a treasure hunting license.
Speaker 2: But if you go in and you say, oh, I'm
Speaker 2: doing this because ghosts told me where to dig, They're
Speaker 2: not going to give it to you because you're not allowed.
Speaker 2: But people were going around being like, oh, I'm a
Speaker 2: medium and I'm in contact with a ghost and like
Speaker 2: he'll tell you where, He'll tell you where to dig
Speaker 2: for treasure if you give me money. And I think
Speaker 2: that's a really good scam. I think that.
Speaker 1: Is that's as good as hell scam. I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep it short and sweet, But I'm going to let
Speaker 1: my Reddit atheist flag fly and say, the biggest medieval scam,
Speaker 1: that's right, folks, was fucking indulgences. Was it worth it?
Speaker 1: Was it worth it to blow the whole thing up
Speaker 1: so you could build an ugly building and go into
Speaker 1: debt to the fuggers? Was it? Did we win?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is an American Protestant pastor getting his flock to invest
Speaker 1: in crypto directly downstream of the Catholic Church selling indulgences?
Speaker 1: Yes it is anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, but they would also they would also tell
Speaker 2: you that it was different somehow, which is bonkers.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, no, I'm sorry. Like, yeah, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: I'm fine with us trashing the Protestants as most as
Speaker 1: much as possible. But like if if your issue is
Speaker 1: is Christian churches being too money, I got bad news
Speaker 1: about you for where that started because it was it
Speaker 1: wasn't in America in seventeen eighty or whatever, I'll.
Speaker 2: Tell you at the very late medieval church really is
Speaker 2: is a fuck kill them all, kill them all fourteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight. You know this, many dead Catholics, et cetera.
Speaker 2: You know you know how I feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, all right, we got a couple more. First
Speaker 1: of one from Evelyn. I've been reading Kropotkin's Mutual Aid
Speaker 1: A Factor of Evolution, and he has a lot of
Speaker 1: positive things to say about the medieval European city. He
Speaker 1: seems to think it was a major side of cooperation
Speaker 1: and mutual aid that managed to carve out a surprising
Speaker 1: degree of freedom and prosperity for its members from the
Speaker 1: men from the manorial morass of the countryside. I'd be
Speaker 1: curious to know what you think of his claims. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've read it, but if you'd like,
Speaker 1: I can try to summarize these claims for ease of analysis.
Speaker 1: I don't want to drown y'all in even more work.
Speaker 1: So eleanor what do you think about about the claims
Speaker 1: about the medieval city?
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so in the first place, shout out kr Popkin.
Speaker 2: I fucking love her Popkin.
Speaker 1: Conquest of bread, motherfucker. Every time I eat a piece
Speaker 1: of bread, I'm like, damn, he was right about this.
Speaker 2: My dad in the nineties made a little bumper sticker,
Speaker 2: you know, when people were doing the Darwin fish or
Speaker 2: he made one that was like her popkin and it
Speaker 2: was all spelled out. There was like a K and
Speaker 2: an R and an O n ap and they were
Speaker 2: all different little fish. And I thought that and anyway,
Speaker 2: that that explains a lot about me. So yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I think that he's He's largely right, and that I
Speaker 2: think probably this. Oh things are just like coming together
Speaker 2: in my head and I'm like, oh, and it's like,
Speaker 2: maybe this explains how I ended up being a medieval
Speaker 2: historian who specialized in the cities. Is like early exposure
Speaker 2: to kerpopkin. It's like Eleanor figures out herself live on
Speaker 2: the like call the therapist. But anyway, yeah, I do
Speaker 2: think that that it is true. And one of the
Speaker 2: big things that they're able to do in cities together
Speaker 2: is kind of like advocate for more autonomy. They're able
Speaker 2: to kind of like club together. Obviously, they are downsides
Speaker 2: to the medieval city, you know, like turf wars and
Speaker 2: noble families and blah blah blah. But certainly it's true
Speaker 2: that you have like a lot of mutual aid groups,
Speaker 2: like having a dense snare network of parishes allows you
Speaker 2: to take more direct control over poverty in your areas.
Speaker 2: They are big sites of places also where the wealthy
Speaker 2: like to invest because they like to be seen to
Speaker 2: be investing, So you have like a lot of work there.
Speaker 2: You know, you can definitely say that there are there
Speaker 2: are always kind of programs going on, both at a
Speaker 2: civic level and also at a religious level that aim
Speaker 2: to alleviate poverty. And I think that it's it's absolutely true.
Speaker 2: And I do think that it is specifically because you know,
Speaker 2: people have more freedom in cities, so you you muddle together,
Speaker 2: and you know that that's how you become a free
Speaker 2: person is by living in a city, whereas when you're
Speaker 2: unfree and in the countryside, these things are available to you.
Speaker 2: So I think that he's really onto something. I think
Speaker 2: he was cooking. And in this house, we love for Hopkins, So.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I think, why the fuck did my printers?
Speaker 1: If if, if, if my printer noise shows up on this,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I have no idea where the fuck it
Speaker 1: just turned on.
Speaker 2: A printer? Okay?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh oh wow?
Speaker 2: So are you the friend who has a printer?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, the friend who has a printer? The
Speaker 1: thirty dollars bad boy from Target. Everybody loves that. Whoa yeah,
Speaker 1: uh you can tell it's a great printer because it
Speaker 1: keeps fucking turning on randomly anyway. Yeah, Uh no, I
Speaker 1: think I think the medieval cities get a little bit
Speaker 1: of a bad rap in some of this, just because
Speaker 1: you know, like they weren't you know, they weren't plowing
Speaker 1: the fields and stuff, whereas most of the people outside,
Speaker 1: almost all the people outside the cities were. And it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: that is true. They did they they did have to,
Speaker 1: you know, be fed by these things from usually outside
Speaker 1: the city or something like that. But you know, people
Speaker 1: outside the cities also took in the goods that they
Speaker 1: made that were necessary for uh, you know, keeping things going.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think, uh, I think, I think
Speaker 1: there's a lot to be said uh for the medieval city,
Speaker 1: the medieval way of life in general. They both I
Speaker 1: think the city and country life both have uh far
Speaker 1: more communal aspects than we have. And you know, good
Speaker 1: for them, uh, because that's cool, absolutely, Evelyn, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for the question. Last one we got is
Speaker 1: from K. R. Wilson, who says, question, given the pods
Speaker 1: general presumption that monarchs are bad, who would you say
Speaker 1: are some of the least worst and before we go
Speaker 1: on eleanor I would like to ask, like, if you're
Speaker 1: thinking about like, you know, not as a moral judgment,
Speaker 1: but just like what makes a good ruler, Like if
Speaker 1: you're going to call one of them, you know, good
Speaker 1: or at least not you know, just abysmal dog shit?
Speaker 1: What what are the qualities that you're looking for?
Speaker 2: I mean, you are you? You already know who I'm
Speaker 2: going to say, I do, And it's it's because I
Speaker 2: want to I want to see fucking charity work, right, like,
Speaker 2: like point blank, I want to see you interacting with
Speaker 2: your kingdom and actively seeking to ameliorate the problems of
Speaker 2: normal people. And now, granted we don't always agree on
Speaker 2: what the problems of moral people are. A lot of
Speaker 2: the time they're like, yeah, these guys need a monastery,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, I don't.
Speaker 1: Maybe not another one, maybe not another.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, like you know, monasteries are
Speaker 2: very important as repositories of information, and you know, like
Speaker 2: the French Crown's massive endowments to Clooney are part of
Speaker 2: the reason we have really good documents now, so I
Speaker 2: still do think that's good, but I want to see
Speaker 2: donations to charity. I want to see and trying to
Speaker 2: keep war down. I really want to see people like
Speaker 2: attempting to stay the fuck out of war. I want
Speaker 2: to see building projects that benefit regular people. Are you
Speaker 2: building bridges? Are you maintaining the roads? Do you maintain
Speaker 2: watches on the roads. That's a really big one. And
Speaker 2: also I want to know if you go fuck bad
Speaker 2: members of the nobility up, like if people are mistreating
Speaker 2: their their small folk, do you get involved or do
Speaker 2: you let it slide? And you know, my boy Charles
Speaker 2: the Fourth has all this shit off. You know, he's
Speaker 2: got it on Lock Lukee, right. So yeah, that's why
Speaker 2: that's why I like him is because you know, obviously
Speaker 2: like abolish abolish all Emperor's slash kings obviously, but if
Speaker 2: you're gonna do it, you could at least just be
Speaker 2: dumping a lot of money into your community, is all
Speaker 2: I'm saying. I want to see you establish a hospital, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I want I want to see you do
Speaker 2: things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think that, uh for me, I
Speaker 1: think that like being a you know, like there there
Speaker 1: are some who I think, like Ohias, timmyjen Gingis Khan
Speaker 1: Uh an example, committed atrocities so many atrocities, sexual violence
Speaker 1: of probably it or I'm sorry, definitely not as bad
Speaker 1: as it you know, has been blown up in the past.
Speaker 1: But there like just just crazy stuff. But like for
Speaker 1: his people and what he did and everything like that,
Speaker 1: like he too, like the Mongolian people, he is just
Speaker 1: like the perfect ruler. He's got this huge lantern. They
Speaker 1: set up these like administrative things. They finally like clear
Speaker 1: a path through like central e the Central Corridor of Asia,
Speaker 1: like to you know, it's not just a bunch of
Speaker 1: feuding tribes anymore for the first time and I mean
Speaker 1: maybe ever, but a long time, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: just you know, you get stuff like that. So and
Speaker 1: I mean I think that you know, there are people
Speaker 1: who do like a lot for their realm, who you know,
Speaker 1: who do things like you know, they stabilize stuff, like
Speaker 1: you know, Charlemagne being you know, another example of a
Speaker 1: guy who is just like he does a lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: I of course don't agree with a lot of it,
Speaker 1: and I think some of it is you know, stupid,
Speaker 1: and his sons were all morons, but like you know,
Speaker 1: for what he did, what he did during his life,
Speaker 1: you know, building up literacy and education, programs and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, is like those things are good. So I
Speaker 1: mean I think it really just depends on stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So I mean I would but like, yeah, like most
Speaker 1: of these people aren't doing a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 1: They might do some of it here and there, and
Speaker 1: it might be balanced out, you know with like all right,
Speaker 1: I mean it is going to be balanced out with
Speaker 1: like the horrors that they did, because you know, Charles
Speaker 1: the fourth to gingis Khan to you know, whoever the
Speaker 1: worst medieval ruler possibly is. They're all, you know, that
Speaker 1: whole thing's going to be built on a mountain of
Speaker 1: skulls to some degree. So you know, it's like it encompasses,
Speaker 1: you know, horrors beyond our imagination. But you know there
Speaker 1: are a lot of them who are you know, very
Speaker 1: good competent. We talked to just any of the first
Speaker 1: just forty years of rule, just stabilize the whole thing.
Speaker 1: He and Belisarius and Theodora, and you know, they just
Speaker 1: they kind of set the they set the Byzantines up
Speaker 1: for for a long time. And you know, Basil the second,
Speaker 1: just the quintessential one of the quintidential medieval rulers did
Speaker 1: so much I mean, he fucking massacred the Bulgars, like
Speaker 1: killing women and children and stuff like that. But like
Speaker 1: for Constantinople, he did like, you know, incredible things. So
Speaker 1: I think you just kind of got to kind of
Speaker 1: balance that, and in the end, I just go with
Speaker 1: the ones that I think are the most interesting and
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, they're morally reprehensible, but I think they're neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah what if we just thought they were cool? You know? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's like even when you have so I mean,
Speaker 2: like this is a count, it's not a king. But
Speaker 2: even when you have people like Charles Lebon, who it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, you know, he's Count of Flanders.
Speaker 2: You know, he's a candidate for Holy Roman Emperor and
Speaker 2: he's like, no, I don't I don't want that, and like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a big famine that strikes Flanders, and
Speaker 2: so he like plants a bunch of like legumes on
Speaker 2: his own land, get gets gives them out to the poor,
Speaker 2: like taxes the rich more and says like we can't
Speaker 2: let poor people die of starvation, like distributes like bread
Speaker 2: to the poor, blah blah blah. Like that's all great, right,
Speaker 2: So like attempts to specifically stop his people dying of starvation.
Speaker 2: We love it. He's also a massive fucking anti Semite
Speaker 2: who expelled all of the Jewish people from his land.
Speaker 2: So it's like, you know, it's really wild how like
Speaker 2: people can be so good on one hand and so
Speaker 2: bad on the other, and like, yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 2: they're a really different bunch of people. We're gonna say that,
Speaker 2: and so you have to just you just have to
Speaker 2: kind of be critical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you just I mean, like the least worse
Speaker 1: the subjective, both from your own personal opinion and like
Speaker 1: what viewpoint you're talking about, Like the one who did
Speaker 1: the least damage overall is going to be the one
Speaker 1: who ruled for the least amount of time. So whoever
Speaker 1: was there for exactly one second and die after their coronation,
Speaker 1: Like you know, like I mean that that, like if
Speaker 1: you're looking at it from just a moral bent, like
Speaker 1: that is just the truth. Because like these systems, as
Speaker 1: bad as things are right now, these systems were like
Speaker 1: even more oppressive to more people, you know, and just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, or you can't be good. I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the overall system. Like there are the medieval life
Speaker 1: that that are appealing in some ways, but like, yeah, it,
Speaker 1: you know, you just you just got to kind of
Speaker 1: keep pick the ones you think are neat and then
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, they did some bad stuff. I don't
Speaker 1: know what to tell you. I'm not uh you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not here to count up to like
Speaker 1: do do you know the victims of communism? Body count on?
Speaker 1: Uh on all these guys. It's like, yeah, they did
Speaker 1: some evil stuff. Let's see, let's see what else they did,
Speaker 1: you know exactly? You know Timure, uh he had he
Speaker 1: had a mountain of skulls. But you know what, like
Speaker 1: was it a nice mountain? I don't know, we don't know. Oh,
Speaker 1: everybody's like, oh the mountainous schools is so bad?
Speaker 2: Is it? O?
Speaker 1: Man have hobbies they hate, how easily that they hate,
Speaker 1: How how little it takes for us to have I'm sorry, No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just got to pick the ones that you think
Speaker 1: are kind of cool. Charles the Fourth is a really
Speaker 1: great example because he did a lot of good stuff
Speaker 1: and they're they're definitely there are definitely more than that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, kr, thank you very much for the question.
Speaker 1: Thank you to all our patrons, who submitted these. Uh.
Speaker 1: Probably next week we're gonna do another mail bag just
Speaker 1: to keep catching up a little bit. Another mailbag episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, we've got some other stuff in the
Speaker 1: pipeline and also, uh, we'll have a bonus episode. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm well, it's probably probably not released
Speaker 1: today on Thursday, so probably coming out tomorrow. Two episodes and.
Speaker 2: We are welcome.
Speaker 1: You're welcome everyone, Yeah, thank you all for listening. Or
Speaker 1: I'm sorry ellenor what's going on with you?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, fucking damn. I don't know anymore. Gee. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can check out me on socials at Going Medieval.
Speaker 2: You can always pick up my book The Once in
Speaker 2: Future Sex if you haven't yet. I recorded a podcast
Speaker 2: called Monster Talk last week, but I don't know when
Speaker 2: it's out, but it'll be you know, I was talking
Speaker 2: about monsters because you know, I like to do that shit.
Speaker 2: Not sure when it's out, but if you listen to them,
Speaker 2: check it out. Yeah. That's that's basically what's going down
Speaker 2: at the minute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can find me at the usual place. Luke
Speaker 1: is amazing. Uh, trying to cross post more on both sites.
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever.
Speaker 2: Look on the one hand, you can yelled at by Nazis,
Speaker 2: but on the other hand you can get yelled at
Speaker 2: by the most humorless liberals in the entire world.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yep, actual Nazis versus social Nazis. Pick
Speaker 1: your poison. Ah yeah, you can find me. Luca's amazing
Speaker 1: at the places and you can find me. I'll show
Speaker 1: people's history of the Republic if you want to hear
Speaker 1: me yap about Star Wars. Anyway, thank you all very
Speaker 1: much for listening. We'll see you next time. Bye. All right,
Speaker 1: you want to take like