Speaker 1: How are you, mate, I'm good. I'm good, just uh,
Speaker 1: just hanging out. Heard that, Yeah, too much, got too
Speaker 1: much to do, should do all this shit around the house.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, And summer is always weird because the kid
Speaker 1: is in camps and I have to go get her
Speaker 1: at various times and I'm a very big creature of
Speaker 1: habit and uh yeah, it's it throws me off a bit,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's uh, it's cool. It's cool. Have you
Speaker 1: have you heard anything or had any response on the series.
Speaker 2: I have heard people who were saying that they're stoked
Speaker 2: about it. Yeah. I think that a lot of people
Speaker 2: are in a position because of events. Shall we just
Speaker 2: say that. Everyone's like, actually, it's a it's a good
Speaker 2: chance to sit down and learn a little bit about
Speaker 2: the Crusades. And I'm like, yeah, I didn't quite understand
Speaker 2: how pressient we were being decided. I was like, you know, oh,
Speaker 2: everybody likes the Crusades. Always good to know about this,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. You know, everyone knows the term crusade,
Speaker 2: but they don't know shit about the Crusade, So yeah,
Speaker 2: this will be smart, like that's where the smart money
Speaker 2: is or whatever. I didn't quite realize that we would
Speaker 2: be like this bogged down with a bunch of psychopaths essentially,
Speaker 2: So you know there's that, there's that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's something. Uh well, look I know
Speaker 1: you have to uh go hear the sounds of silver.
Speaker 2: And yeah makes you want to feel like a teenager.
Speaker 1: Luke and Daft Punk will be playing near your house.
Speaker 2: I well, I hope that they played that because I
Speaker 2: saw them last week. Obviously, you know.
Speaker 1: Be honest, I really don't like that song. I love
Speaker 1: LCD sounds such that song drives me insane, so I
Speaker 1: don't know why.
Speaker 2: Anyway, go ahead, totally fine. You know, we all have
Speaker 2: our one where we're like not really you.
Speaker 1: Know, but not not not mine.
Speaker 2: But like I got almost my perfect playlist last week.
Speaker 2: I think the major thing that was missing off of
Speaker 2: it was get innocuous. But they played North American Scum,
Speaker 2: which for you, just for me. But but it was
Speaker 2: also funny because I was like, there's like a stolen
Speaker 2: North American scum valor in the Brixton Academy right now.
Speaker 2: I know you motherfuckers are not all North Americans. Stop it.
Speaker 2: This is this belongs to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah only nor it would be really funny if he
Speaker 1: was like only North Americans could say along and it's
Speaker 1: like you and three other people.
Speaker 2: Like, whoa, finally this is working out for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that was good.
Speaker 2: They played tonight, which is like my personal favorite, like
Speaker 2: my personal number one. I played American Dream, which it
Speaker 2: was very funny. You realize very quickly when you're a
Speaker 2: giant LCD sound system nerd that apparently not everybody else
Speaker 2: is the crowd did not know American Dream. Like the
Speaker 2: crowd did not know, you know, Like there's certain things
Speaker 2: that I was like, oh, I see, I see. But
Speaker 2: like they played on Moving My Edge, which I hadn't
Speaker 2: got to see before live and things of this nature.
Speaker 1: So that's a that's a big one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah for sure. So I don't know what we're
Speaker 2: gonna get tonight. It would be nice to get get inocuous,
Speaker 2: but you know, we'll see, we'll see. At this point
Speaker 2: in time, all of this is just a bonus. So
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get zooted and booted. I'm gonna go down there.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be an old person, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I'm a huge uh someone great New York. I
Speaker 1: love you, but you're bringing me down. Both of those
Speaker 1: we got to see so bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got both of those last week.
Speaker 1: I love drunk Girls. I think it's such a fun.
Speaker 2: I love drunk girls. I would love to fucking hear
Speaker 2: drunk girls.
Speaker 1: Oh the one you If you have time before you go,
Speaker 1: you should listen to the drunk girls. They do on
Speaker 1: uh whatever it is, the Last Goodbye or whatever, Live
Speaker 1: the Longer. You should just listen to that because it's
Speaker 1: like they do like they kind of like they change
Speaker 1: like a little bit of it slightly. It's very fun.
Speaker 1: And I was listening to it in the car a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, and I just wasn't thinking about
Speaker 1: it because it's just like such a fun, peppy song.
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking about it. And then in the background,
Speaker 1: I hear my daughter singing She's a drunk, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh god, and started and my wife heard it. She's like,
Speaker 1: do you realize she's singing a song called drunk. I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, it's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 2: It's called it's called popular culture. Baby.
Speaker 1: As long as you as long as she doesn't do
Speaker 1: it in front of like t like you know, as
Speaker 1: long as she doesn't do it in front of people
Speaker 1: who you know.
Speaker 2: People be like, oh no, this kid whips.
Speaker 1: This fucking rules. She heard dad cool. Her dad has
Speaker 1: has given her a disease where she's going to be
Speaker 1: the only person under like sixty five at an LCD
Speaker 1: sound System show in a few years, or or a
Speaker 1: whole Steady show in a few years.
Speaker 2: She's going to tell you what. One thing that had
Speaker 2: me really fucked up last week though, was like the
Speaker 2: number of people who were there with their like, you know,
Speaker 2: fifteen year old kids, and I was like, oh no, oh,
Speaker 2: which it was very sweet. It was very sweet, but
Speaker 2: there was a lot there's a lot of like dad's
Speaker 2: taken their sons to the LCD sound System show, which
Speaker 2: is sweet, but it's like, you know, for me, I
Speaker 2: guess I was saying this last week. For me, they're
Speaker 2: kind of like the band of my adulthood because like
Speaker 2: They're the first album came out right after I had
Speaker 2: graduated from undergrad and like moved to Australia, and Australian
Speaker 2: being such like a dance music led culture at the time,
Speaker 2: it was like the biggest fucking deal. So like they're
Speaker 2: the band that I've kind of been following since I
Speaker 2: became an actual fully fledged human being, and so now
Speaker 2: that I'm like, no, like the there are fifteen year
Speaker 2: olds here, I'm like no, no, like a fuck like
Speaker 2: this came out when you're a baby. I hate this. No,
Speaker 2: you know, it's awful, but uh yeah. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, it's like damn so like for them is
Speaker 2: like sound of silver, like what Paul Simon's Graceland is
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Probably probably yeah, oh all right, oh that's all right.
Speaker 2: You know, these kids today they don't know how good.
Speaker 1: They have it, No, they don't.
Speaker 2: Well, right, yeah, but in which case we should probably
Speaker 2: we should probably get to answer in some quistiums.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we probably should. Yeah, good, good, Look at
Speaker 1: the show of thanks.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna sweat everywhere, like if I managed to not
Speaker 2: pass out, it will be a goddamn miracle. But once
Speaker 2: more into the reach my friend.
Speaker 1: Yep, all right, let's do this. Hello, and welcome back
Speaker 1: to We're Not So Different, a podcast about how we've
Speaker 1: always been idiots. My name is Luke and I'm an
Speaker 1: amateurs historian, and as always I am joined by doctor
Speaker 1: Eleanor Yanniga, who is anything but Hey, folks, we are
Speaker 1: back and it is time for you know, it's time
Speaker 1: for our monthly mail bag, this time for June. As
Speaker 1: y'all know, patrons who subscribe for just five dollars a
Speaker 1: month can ask us questions we will answer on the show,
Speaker 1: and we're endeavoring to catch up by doing these mailbag
Speaker 1: episodes every month until we do. We're going to keep
Speaker 1: the intro pretty short and sweet this time. But if
Speaker 1: you just can't get enough of your two favorite co hosts,
Speaker 1: we've got great news because we're everywhere right now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's the limited series we did, Welcome to the Crusades,
Speaker 1: the First Crusade that we did with the American Prestie Fellas.
Speaker 1: It is an eleven episode deep dive into the first Crusade,
Speaker 1: and you can listen to the first two episodes for
Speaker 1: free on the normal podcast feed and purchase the remaining
Speaker 1: nine episodes for just eight dollars at Welcome tooth Crusades
Speaker 1: dot com If your heart so desires, The price will
Speaker 1: go up to ten dollars in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: so check that out. We're extremely proud of it and
Speaker 1: it's well worth it. It is a dollar and pound
Speaker 1: bargain or whatever. But we've also been promoting the series
Speaker 1: all over. Recently, Eleanor and I appeared together on new
Speaker 1: or very recent episodes of Western Kabuki, The Worst of
Speaker 1: All Possible Worlds, ten k Posts, and Masters of Our Domain. Additionally,
Speaker 1: you can hear Eleanor and Dry Davidson talking talking it
Speaker 1: up on Chapo, and you can hear me talking about
Speaker 1: and or in real world fascism on Delete your account
Speaker 1: if you want to do that, so you know, check
Speaker 1: all those out and it's fun. In the meantime, let's
Speaker 1: open some mail. First up, we got a question from
Speaker 1: our patron dog Spotter, who says, do we have any
Speaker 1: understanding of what people smell like?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Did peasants smell like onion and garlic and farm animals
Speaker 1: like myself? Or did they smell bad helly like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and get this out of the way.
Speaker 1: I know it's smell crazy in there. Doctor Ali Lukes
Speaker 1: can come on here and debate, or she wants it's
Speaker 1: still smoke crazy. They're like, ellen, little please like the
Speaker 1: bo it must have been.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: The persistent smell of farm animals, which like has its
Speaker 1: own particular smell, both because they stay out like in
Speaker 1: the sun all the time, and they just shit everywhere,
Speaker 1: and I mean, you know, that's what they're supposed to do,
Speaker 1: but it's smell like it does stink, And you didn't
Speaker 1: have the you didn't have the irrigation and not irrigation,
Speaker 1: I'm so, you didn't have the plumbing systems that we
Speaker 1: have now, so there was more waste around. It wasn't necessary.
Speaker 1: People weren't like standing in it, but it was still there,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I'm gonna be so real with you. Basically,
Speaker 2: until the mid twentieth century, everybody's stink like that's that.
Speaker 2: That is a fact. I read a great history of cleanliness. God,
Speaker 2: this must have been five years ago now, which is
Speaker 2: really excellent kind of talking about how bathing habits used
Speaker 2: to work. And like basically, before we got reliable indoor
Speaker 2: plumbing for everyone, you had one bath a week and
Speaker 2: you then kind of like washed in between, and that
Speaker 2: was the normal way that things were done. Like that
Speaker 2: just fundamentally is what things were like until we invented antiperspirant,
Speaker 2: which is again a really recent thing. You know, people
Speaker 2: smelled like bo until we invented a toothpaste that has
Speaker 2: fluoride in it, which is again mid twentieth century, like
Speaker 2: that shit didn't work. Like you could make your brusht
Speaker 2: smell minty, but you can't stop your teeth from rotting
Speaker 2: until you have fluoride in it. Now, Medieval people, obviously,
Speaker 2: you know, they adhere to these same rules that everybody
Speaker 2: sort of did before the nineteen fifties. They tend to
Speaker 2: bathe once a week, maybe more if you're rich, Like
Speaker 2: if you're rich, you might be going for it, and
Speaker 2: in between you sort of like scrub down every day,
Speaker 2: like you get in from the fields. You're gonna like
Speaker 2: get a pail of water, you're gonna heat it up.
Speaker 2: You're gonna like scrub your face, your armpits, your feet,
Speaker 2: your ass, right, And they definitely like perfume their soaps
Speaker 2: and things. We know this because we see recipes for them.
Speaker 2: They also wear perfume. You know, they make perfume. We
Speaker 2: kind of know a lot about that. It tends to
Speaker 2: be kind of like floral in nature for men's stuff,
Speaker 2: with a lot of bay leaves in it, things like this.
Speaker 2: And you know, they also when they wash their soap
Speaker 2: sometimes they put they put floral things in like their
Speaker 2: laundry soap as well, so their clothes would probably smell
Speaker 2: all right, but you know, it just does smell crazy
Speaker 2: in there. That that is true, right, like until you
Speaker 2: have I mean it's here in the UK. It's the
Speaker 2: Victorians who invent like the super system, right and until then,
Speaker 2: like London smelled like a toilet like that, that is
Speaker 2: that is true, yeah right, and that is true of
Speaker 2: basically every major city in the world. So medieval people
Speaker 2: are exactly the same as everybody else in that respect.
Speaker 2: There just does tend to be this situation where people
Speaker 2: will act like medieval people were specifically or weirdly unclean,
Speaker 2: which is not true. It's just that we are massively
Speaker 2: clean now and we live in like a really great
Speaker 2: time when it's easy to get a shower now, and.
Speaker 1: That's good because showers are good.
Speaker 2: I love it mate. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like if just think about if you have at
Speaker 1: some point, like you've just been dirty and you couldn't
Speaker 1: clean up for a while, like you're doing a job,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't get off the job for a
Speaker 1: time or whatever. You just got to keep going. And
Speaker 1: imagine just like how you kind of start to smell
Speaker 1: like just a little like deodorant wears off your clone
Speaker 1: or perfume is clearly gone by this point. You know,
Speaker 1: your breaths probably smelling haggard because you're thirsty, you know,
Speaker 1: and everything. You know, yea, that's how it is. Now
Speaker 1: imagine that, but you couldn't you do that literally for
Speaker 1: most of these people, they do that every day. Like
Speaker 1: they are walking around, they are working the fields, they
Speaker 1: are they are sewing, they are smithing, you know, all
Speaker 1: of the medieval jobs. Unless you are a noble, you
Speaker 1: are busting your ass and sweating every day. And the
Speaker 1: nobles are probably just sweating every day. But because it's
Speaker 1: gross in all those fucking clothes. But like that's going
Speaker 1: to smell. We start to smell through all of our
Speaker 1: like showers and cleanliness and deodorants and perfumes after a
Speaker 1: few hours of work. Imagine that you wear. Imagine that
Speaker 1: most of the people around you don't have access to
Speaker 1: most of that stuff other than a basin of water,
Speaker 1: and as Eleanor said, you know, like a real bath,
Speaker 1: like in a you know, every once in a while,
Speaker 1: or in the the creek or the lake or whatever it's.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's gonna smell. It's just uh, And
Speaker 1: I'm glad the world doesn't smell like that any words.
Speaker 1: Very good.
Speaker 2: It's a good thing. I've got one more point about this, though,
Speaker 2: I guess which is which it gets brought up in
Speaker 2: the Clean Body of this book that I read, which
Speaker 2: is excellent because the guy who wrote it, he's Canadian,
Speaker 2: and he'd like interviewed his granddad about like, you know,
Speaker 2: how they did things sort of in like the nineteen
Speaker 2: tens or something, and his granddad, you know, was saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, like once a week bath blah blah blahlah blah,
Speaker 2: and he's like, you know, we must have smelled really badly,
Speaker 2: but we didn't notice. Yeah, right, So there is also
Speaker 2: this thing where because that's normal to them, they probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't have noticed it as much, like, you know, there
Speaker 2: is such a thing as sent you know. It's like
Speaker 2: how like you don't know what your house smells like,
Speaker 2: but other people do. Right, So we would be like,
Speaker 2: these are the stinkiest humans who ever lived, and they
Speaker 2: would be like, what are you talking about? You know,
Speaker 2: like I can't, I can't come up with this. Although occasionally,
Speaker 2: hilariously you do get medieval people talking about which cities
Speaker 2: stink in particular, apparently Avignon really raked.
Speaker 1: I love that they had. They had the arbitrary city
Speaker 1: stuff like we do. I fucking love that. Like it
Speaker 1: was like Philly and Pittsburgh like barking at each other
Speaker 1: for these towns that both smelled like absolute shit. Like,
Speaker 1: especially towns where there is a huge population density, it's
Speaker 1: gonna smell awful during the summer. Imagine like the baking
Speaker 1: southern Italian peninsula during the summer and you're in some
Speaker 1: city state with like seventy eighty thousand other people. No,
Speaker 1: like no real plumbing. I mean obviously they have, you know,
Speaker 1: ways to bring in water and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: they don't have the same ways to get waste out
Speaker 1: as we do. And just baking in it. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: sink the high the high equilibrium trap of stench, and
Speaker 1: that everything smelled so bad you just didn't notice. You're
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2: People would leave cities every summer. They would be like goodbye.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine what they thought, like how bad the things
Speaker 1: that that they thought smelled awful? How bad that would
Speaker 1: be to us, Like how eye wateringly nausey.
Speaker 2: Like we wouldn't be able to handle it?
Speaker 1: No, No, not at all. They as as our modern
Speaker 1: weed would destroy these people and their medieval stench. Absolutely
Speaker 1: not not your your nose hair are just rotting off anyway, Yeah, completely,
Speaker 1: dog spotter, thank you for the question. Next, we got
Speaker 1: one from T. Delfos, and basically what he's asking is like,
Speaker 1: we talk about we're not so different, but then we
Speaker 1: talk about the way the things that did change. So
Speaker 1: from like the medieval period, from like fourteen hundred to
Speaker 1: about sixteen hundred, what were the noticeable changes that these
Speaker 1: people in Europe would have seen, like you know, whether
Speaker 1: it be in London or Prague or just some villain,
Speaker 1: you know, what would be the differences they would see?
Speaker 1: I guess, I mean, and obviously one of them would
Speaker 1: be the Reformation stuff.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously yeah, so yeah, Reformation stuff
Speaker 2: is kind of like obviously that's the obvious one, but
Speaker 2: it's got all sorts of knock on effects. So for example,
Speaker 2: you see a real rise in misogyny in this period,
Speaker 2: so you know what, yeah, all right, right, so so
Speaker 2: you know things like, for example, the invention of the
Speaker 2: witch panics, you get that, you get that one, real,
Speaker 2: real fucking hard right, So suddenly there's a lot more
Speaker 2: kind of like swing on your neighbors and like routing
Speaker 2: them out to the ecclesiastical court or to the well, sorry,
Speaker 2: not the ecclesiastical court, you know, to the witch Finder
Speaker 2: General or like the actual fucking court here in England,
Speaker 2: which is which is fun, which is cute. So you know,
Speaker 2: like a lot more chance of like getting killed for
Speaker 2: being a witch, which is not really a medieval thing
Speaker 2: at all whatsoever. One of the big things that you
Speaker 2: see is a big influx of people to the cities
Speaker 2: is a result of enclosure. So as people are kind
Speaker 2: of like booted off of the land out in the countryside.
Speaker 2: When the nobility consolidates power over the countryside, you have
Speaker 2: more and more people move into towns because there's kind
Speaker 2: of nowhere else to go, right, So a big explosion
Speaker 2: of population within the cities. And also as a result
Speaker 2: kind of a change in labor practices, so you know,
Speaker 2: more people doing jobs like being builders and things like that,
Speaker 2: unless just being dedicated peasants. You do see like influxes
Speaker 2: of new foods, so it's like homest want potato and tomato,
Speaker 2: you know, so the food gets better. I would say,
Speaker 2: I mean simply love cane sugar, simply love tomatoes, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So to an extent, there are also some
Speaker 2: pluses in terms of what foods are being grown, and like,
Speaker 2: you know, potatoes are a really big deal for Europeans
Speaker 2: because they pack a whole lot of nutrition for not
Speaker 2: a whole lot of work. Like, I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've ever grow potatoes. I grow potatoes, even though I'm
Speaker 2: not the world's biggest potato pan but I grow potatoes
Speaker 2: because they're fucking easy, Like you just dump them in
Speaker 2: a bag and it's like all right, done, but you know,
Speaker 2: and you can have potato. So really way of getting
Speaker 2: more nutrition that's brilliant. Everybody loves that. In terms of
Speaker 2: things like culture, we do see kind of like a
Speaker 2: big explosion of theata, right, so you know, like you
Speaker 2: would go see mystery plays, and you would go see like,
Speaker 2: you know, silly little japes, you know, like incredibly body
Speaker 2: plays that are kind of like put on in the
Speaker 2: local marketplace. But you know, you wouldn't really have like
Speaker 2: a theata to go see Shakespeare in And then you
Speaker 2: begin to have that and that that's around. There are
Speaker 2: also a lot more wars of religion. Obviously, a lot
Speaker 2: more kind of like killing each other back and forth
Speaker 2: for being Christian or Protestant rather, a lot of that
Speaker 2: going down, but also a general kind of outward looking.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the rise of colonialism, right, so,
Speaker 2: I mean you might be looking at leaving Europe and
Speaker 2: going somewhere else entirely. So there are all these fucking
Speaker 2: things that really change in terms of what the status
Speaker 2: quo is. You know, the introduction of cotton clothing, that's
Speaker 2: a really big one. So and indeed the factory system
Speaker 2: begins at this point in time, so I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: like in terms of there's this kind of tendency to
Speaker 2: think like, well, I mean, I guess we're talking fourteen
Speaker 2: hundred to sixteen hundred, so early. You know, we're being
Speaker 2: very like early modern about it. But there's a kind
Speaker 2: of tendency to think, oh, yeah, and then the Enlightenment
Speaker 2: happened and people start being religious, absolutely fucking not right.
Speaker 2: You know, people are still like religious fanatics. It's very
Speaker 2: very weird.
Speaker 1: You know. The earliest you can state that people start that,
Speaker 1: like people begin to start being I guess noticeably less
Speaker 1: religious than they were in the Middle Ages is like
Speaker 1: the very earliest you could do that is the end
Speaker 1: of the Thirty Years War, and even then it's still
Speaker 1: it's still a little while before the philosophical groundwork for
Speaker 1: that comes into being really but yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, But you know, it's interesting because a lot
Speaker 2: of the stuff that we consider to be like cultural
Speaker 2: or or traditional, it's actually kind of like formed around
Speaker 2: this time. So you know, like sitting around and saying
Speaker 2: chow while drinking coffee, like that's invented at this point
Speaker 2: in time, right, you know, because there was no there
Speaker 2: was no coffee. You know, English people didn't have tea
Speaker 2: until this point in time, and that and this is
Speaker 2: when you get it, you know, consumer goods becoming more
Speaker 2: of a thing, and just like the construction of consumerism
Speaker 2: and the construction of like the bourgeoisie as a political
Speaker 2: group certainly happens at this point in time. So you know,
Speaker 2: people having like porcelain from China becomes more common at
Speaker 2: this point in time, and like a you know, a
Speaker 2: real a real thing that they want. Also, you know,
Speaker 2: it's not that it doesn't exist in Europe before this,
Speaker 2: it's just that like only like kings have it, you know,
Speaker 2: So now it's kind of like there's a lot more
Speaker 2: of it, you know, the introduction of opium. How about
Speaker 2: us coming in and coming in and like people being like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, like suddenly there were a lot more consequences. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the French disease as well, which is very funny, but like, yeah,
Speaker 2: all sorts of things like this. It's all the kind
Speaker 2: of like weird little cultural things that we really tend
Speaker 2: to think have always been they start kicking off around now.
Speaker 2: So you know, anything that whenever you think about like
Speaker 2: Italian food, well actually a lot of that was invented
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies. But you know when you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: they like pasta with the red sauce, it's like not
Speaker 2: until this point, babe.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, this is the first time anyone in
Speaker 1: England had ever said po tatoo tato, mash them, stick
Speaker 1: them in a stew. Yeah. A couple of other things
Speaker 1: that are just going to be really uh like would
Speaker 1: be more noticeable. If you like time travel from from
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred, it's going to be noticeably colder,
Speaker 1: especially northern European states, Like I mean even down in
Speaker 1: it was colder everywhere, but it was much more noticeable
Speaker 1: like in your England, Scandinavia, Northern Germany kind of areas,
Speaker 1: and then obviously into eastern Europe and Russia. That's one
Speaker 1: thing monetization is going to shock you if you because
Speaker 1: with the influx of gold and silver from the New World,
Speaker 1: as Spain extracted those resources and brought them over, Europe's
Speaker 1: economy became monetized. It wasn't overnight, but by sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: it had been happening for over a century. And you
Speaker 1: know there, I mean, obviously a lot of people were
Speaker 1: still using barter and trading kind and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: but this is like, this is a huge thing. And
Speaker 1: then I guess the last thing would be like there
Speaker 1: are little signs of industrialization. They are industry like. We're
Speaker 1: starting to see like as the lands get transferred between
Speaker 1: from the state or from the church to private landowners
Speaker 1: during the wars of religion, especially in England and Germany,
Speaker 1: you know, the piece of Augsburg and all that happens
Speaker 1: in fifteen fifty five. When that starts happening, you start
Speaker 1: to see like the land being put to this very
Speaker 1: specific corporate use that we will later you know, we
Speaker 1: will now see as the first shoots of industrialization and
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff's going to be enclosed a lot
Speaker 1: more like than it had been in fourteen hundred. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there's little stuff and then there's big stuff. You're like,
Speaker 1: are all these leaflets everywhere? What the fuck is the leaflet? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We make these like every paper.
Speaker 2: I guess, like a paper paper.
Speaker 1: In Europe is a big thing. China's like we've had
Speaker 1: that for like, okay, whatever, well done. Yeah, thanks guys,
Speaker 1: uh T del fos, thank you for the question. Next
Speaker 1: week got a fun one from fouked Base. Who is
Speaker 1: your favorite medieval bisexual ruler?
Speaker 2: Gosh, you know there's so many in to juice from
Speaker 2: uh you know, like, I think the obvious answer here
Speaker 2: is h Richard the lion Heart, But I don't actually
Speaker 2: like him, you know, I think he's a prick. But
Speaker 2: I mean, can I say that he isn't a bikon? No, No,
Speaker 2: I can't say that. My homie loved the d I
Speaker 2: mean it's gonna be, it's gonna be temagen in its kan.
Speaker 2: I wish, I wish I could do like the Mongolian
Speaker 2: throat singing, because if I could, I would do it
Speaker 2: right now, just like hell yeah, my boy was going
Speaker 2: to town on the d he's he was.
Speaker 1: He was doing some throat singing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I mean he's a type of dome destroy
Speaker 2: your city, uh and lay it to waste, you know,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, he's he's a real
Speaker 2: good one for for obvious reasons. I think my best
Speaker 2: to ever do it most likely, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I would never go against a friend
Speaker 1: of the show, Timmy Jin. But I would also say
Speaker 1: that William Rufus, I've always loved him. I always just
Speaker 1: wanted them to call him Rufus the first He's fun
Speaker 1: was he Do we know if he was by sexual
Speaker 1: or is he just straight up gay?
Speaker 2: I mean, well, the thing is, it's always hard with
Speaker 2: all these guys because a lot of them like lie
Speaker 2: back and think of England, right, so they can't queer. Okay,
Speaker 2: like we can one hundred percent say that they're queer, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, so the thing is like, for example, I
Speaker 2: have an easy time calling Richard Lionheart bye because he's
Speaker 2: fucking dudes. Also like he's got illegitimate children. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: so it's like that that is not a situation in
Speaker 2: which he's like oh yeah, like for the crown, right, It's.
Speaker 1: Like I'm not doing these bastards for the crown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Eleanor is like you fucking.
Speaker 2: Terrible wastereul sons.
Speaker 1: Why couldn't you be more like John? And John's like
Speaker 1: I suck mom anyway? Yeah, uh yeah, fruit based Uh
Speaker 1: it's Timmy j. We we love it, we know and
Speaker 1: we love you.
Speaker 2: Know what's up? You absolutely knew what we would say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we played a type next we got one
Speaker 1: from Gaffzie. In chivalric romances, medieval authors love to talk
Speaker 1: about legendary swords such as Excalibur, Durandal, and Fusberta. Are
Speaker 1: there any examples of actual swords which receive the same
Speaker 1: and got names that were handed down to us either
Speaker 1: because of their quality or by their association with famous warriors?
Speaker 1: And there are some not uh that there aren't as
Speaker 1: many as you would think, given its prevalence in fiction,
Speaker 1: because every fantasy story that has swords in it, the
Speaker 1: swords have names, every RPG, every video game, all that,
Speaker 1: you know, all that stuff. So yeah, I'm a big
Speaker 1: fan of Uh fuck, I lost it? Where is it?
Speaker 1: Where's el Seed's sword? Oh? Tizona? El Seed? Uh had
Speaker 1: his own personal sword and you can go see it
Speaker 1: in the Museum of Burgos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really just to eat by pudding. But like
Speaker 2: it's it's it's fine storm.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh what else what else we got there? Are there?
Speaker 1: There is a a fragment, an alleged fragment of Durandal,
Speaker 1: the sword wielded by Roland uh in France. And I
Speaker 1: always think that's funny because it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like sure the shards of like the shards
Speaker 1: of Narsil over here, like okay, man cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, absolutely, like a thing that definitely happened, right,
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all these.
Speaker 2: Things where I think a lot of people did name
Speaker 2: their swords, but a lot of the time it just
Speaker 2: doesn't survive to us, Like I think, you know much
Speaker 2: in the way that like we don't fucking know what
Speaker 2: people's wives names are. Yeah, sometimes you know, like a
Speaker 2: level one their fucking swords, right.
Speaker 1: And Japan, I mean Japan does have a lot of those.
Speaker 1: That is definitely uh something that we have. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I mean they you know, range everything. Uh, I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna pronounce all these they date. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to try to they date back you know,
Speaker 1: to the sixth seventh century some of them, and they
Speaker 1: are you know, Katana's personal swords, chateaus, things of that nature,
Speaker 1: and uh hotel room are which is firefly, uh Cogarasu Maru,
Speaker 1: which is little crow kotetsu. It's like there, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of them. It's just like they don't they
Speaker 1: don't have the same presence in reality that they do
Speaker 1: in fiction, which does suck. I agree, like it does
Speaker 1: suck because like every like every weapon that gets made
Speaker 1: should have some stupid fucking like name like this I
Speaker 1: don't even like oh yeah right now, like yeah, like
Speaker 1: some dagger you've got it like a mal kiosk and
Speaker 1: you're like it is the dagger of truth and you're like, okay, whatever,
Speaker 1: I should.
Speaker 2: Really name my sword. I guess I have a sword
Speaker 2: and I just don't have a name.
Speaker 1: So you it doesn't have a Yeah, I get on that.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, you know, before before fucking Kiras star
Speaker 2: War takes it away from me, like this motherfucker like
Speaker 2: has a passed a law to outlaw quote unquote samurai swords,
Speaker 2: where I'm like, serve, does that even me?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And like now talking yeah and my sword is Chinese.
Speaker 2: I've got a scholar's sword, and it's like, yeah, my
Speaker 2: dad got it for me when I got my PhD.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Uh and uh. I'm like, so do you
Speaker 2: mean me because I'm like, because well, look, this is
Speaker 2: a Chinese sword. There's no such thing as this samarai
Speaker 2: in China being a little bit racist kres starmer and
Speaker 2: I know you like doing that, but like, hands off
Speaker 2: my sword, right, So I should come up with a
Speaker 2: name for it so that if they take it from me,
Speaker 2: I can like bemoan it and bewail it. Yeah, it'd
Speaker 2: be really good. No, yeah, weed, we knew? Well, okay,
Speaker 2: like right in with what I should name my sword?
Speaker 1: Oh man, uh Yan you call it y.
Speaker 2: That's Yan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, guessie. Thank you for the question. We got
Speaker 1: one now from MG in your face. I watched Medieval
Speaker 1: last night and I will.
Speaker 2: Read Oh, I'm so sorry, but.
Speaker 1: I think you didn't discuss why is Yanziska a national
Speaker 1: hero when the Czech Republic remained largely Catholic in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of history? Was he not ultimately on the
Speaker 1: losing side. It may be that they won enough, or
Speaker 1: is it that he was an individual was badass, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter that the Hissites didn't, you know, fully
Speaker 1: win well.
Speaker 2: I mean, the way that checks relate to this is
Speaker 2: a yes, he is incredibly bad ass, but b the
Speaker 2: Recatholization of the Czech Lands is understood quite rightly, I
Speaker 2: would argue, as a result of the counter Reformation, it
Speaker 2: was incredibly an extraordinarily violent and bloody and done against
Speaker 2: the will of check people. This is the Habspertska like
Speaker 2: all over, like just like coming in here and violently,
Speaker 2: violently oppressing people. And so you know, it is one
Speaker 2: hundred percent brought back at the bare of a gun.
Speaker 2: And you know, you have to also understand that a
Speaker 2: lot of this comes out of the nord Leo Borgeni,
Speaker 2: which is the nineteenth century drive to define checknus. You know,
Speaker 2: this idea to say, okay, like this is this is
Speaker 2: why we are a nation, This is why we deserve
Speaker 2: to have an identity apart from the Austro Hungarian Empire.
Speaker 2: And very much so. Thinkers at this time imagine the
Speaker 2: conception of Checknis and check identity and check religion as
Speaker 2: being expressly tied to hosteitism, and among this Catholicism is
Speaker 2: seen as an incursion very specifically from German speaking oppressors.
Speaker 2: So this certainly exists from the nineteenth century onwards. It
Speaker 2: is also very much the understanding under communism. And now
Speaker 2: most Czech people are not religious, you know, it's one
Speaker 2: of the most religious countries in the world, and so
Speaker 2: they just like, you just go, this is a fucking badass,
Speaker 2: you know. And so it's very much tied to not
Speaker 2: even necessarily the fight for hosteitism, but they fight for
Speaker 2: a form of cultural identity that is not forced upon
Speaker 2: them by German speaking outsiders. So for them, like and
Speaker 2: they say this very expressly, they're like, what is it homage.
Speaker 2: Magerk wrote a speech when he was talking about Jon
Speaker 2: huss at a conference in Switzerland, and he says, I
Speaker 2: can't believe I can quote this off the top of
Speaker 2: my head. Every Czech who is aware of his nation
Speaker 2: needs to either decide for the concept of Checknis and
Speaker 2: Housietism or Catholicism and German nah, right, Like this is
Speaker 2: like one hundred percent something that they say out loud.
Speaker 2: So it's really easy when you understand it that way, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think I think he can
Speaker 1: look at it as like it's just a it's a
Speaker 1: fully like it's a state trying to embrace a national
Speaker 1: hero for a state that was I mean it was,
Speaker 1: it was very independent, it was very powerful, but after
Speaker 1: the Reformation, it was annihilated by by the Ferinance. I
Speaker 1: heard them so much like they they destroy it. Like
Speaker 1: the thing like when people talk about re christianizing something
Speaker 1: or going back or whatever, the only way to do
Speaker 1: that is like this, which is tantamount to like localize genoside,
Speaker 1: like you know, close enough to it if you're calling
Speaker 1: all of these people the same, the same thing, and
Speaker 1: it's that that's what you have to do. And it
Speaker 1: breeds this internal like desire to have national heroes, which
Speaker 1: all nations that are conquered from without have, all of
Speaker 1: them do. And it marries it with the fact that
Speaker 1: after a certain number of years they came to saw
Speaker 1: this German incursion as oppression and just divorced themselves from
Speaker 1: that religion to this degree. And so now when they
Speaker 1: look back on these people, they have to kind of
Speaker 1: like this, they they have to pick and choose. And
Speaker 1: this is a very confusing time because it was Catholic
Speaker 1: and then it was Huside and then it was decidedly
Speaker 1: Catholic again and now it's I guess agnostic to a degree.
Speaker 1: And when you have to go when you're trying to
Speaker 1: find a national hero in a nation that's still that
Speaker 1: you know, it was part of Yugoslavia, it was part
Speaker 1: of the USSR. You know, when you're still trying to
Speaker 1: define yourself at this point, you have to reach back
Speaker 1: and you have to find wherever you can find. And
Speaker 1: you got this badass and even though he died and
Speaker 1: the husides got crushed, like, he's still a freedom fighter.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I mean in in their sense, he's a
Speaker 1: freedom fighter, so you know, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you know, it's incredibly important to text.
Speaker 2: So for example, if you go to the tinskram in
Speaker 2: Prague now the Tin Cathedral, which is on Old Town Square,
Speaker 2: up on the very top of it, they have a chalice.
Speaker 2: They've got like the symbol of the Utriquists up top,
Speaker 2: and they have it up there because when the Hobsprokes
Speaker 2: took back over, they took that down and put up
Speaker 2: I think it was an image of the Virgin Mary
Speaker 2: or something. And this went back and forth and back
Speaker 2: and forth, over and over again. And it's very pointedly
Speaker 2: back up there again, because they are talking about, like,
Speaker 2: you know, the story about what this unique Czech religion is,
Speaker 2: and it's very powerful. It's right across from a location
Speaker 2: where a bunch of the initial Whosite rebels were executed,
Speaker 2: and that is denoted by having a series of crosses
Speaker 2: that are in the cobblestones there. So you know, you've
Speaker 2: got to really understand this as a story that checks
Speaker 2: tell about themselves and the way that they think of
Speaker 2: themselves and their desire essentially to be autonomous, so you know,
Speaker 2: and who the fuck wants to be told what's of
Speaker 2: worship by a fucking habsburg. You know, it's a ridiculous
Speaker 2: It's a ridiculous notion.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh yeah, that's uh yeah
Speaker 1: injun your face. Thank you very much for the question.
Speaker 1: Next with one question, Kelly, I'm curious about medieval footwear.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was covered already, but I've been but I've
Speaker 1: been on a barefoot shoe journey and it's got me
Speaker 1: wondering what kind of shoes people have been wearing for?
Speaker 1: How long? Was arch support a thing? Were shoes made
Speaker 1: to the individual's foot size and shape? Are there any
Speaker 1: crucial footwear factoids we'd find fascinating.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, so most peasants are kind of walking
Speaker 2: around in clogs a lot a lot of those time
Speaker 2: is the answer. So you kind of have like soft
Speaker 2: shoes that are just sort of made out of leather
Speaker 2: or something like that, and then when you go out
Speaker 2: to the field or whatever, you just jam those into
Speaker 2: your clog and then and then you kind of go
Speaker 2: from there. Uh, you probably have a nice pair of
Speaker 2: shoes for wearing to church or something like that, you
Speaker 2: know that has more of a reinforced leather base. And
Speaker 2: we definitely know that people are into shoes right, especially
Speaker 2: in the later medieval period, there is rather a lot
Speaker 2: of talking about how pointy shoes are sexy, and everybody
Speaker 2: likes pointy shoes, and you know, like the point here
Speaker 2: it is, the fancy er it is, and they'll have
Speaker 2: these incredibly long points that go for ages and ages
Speaker 2: and ages, and the church is like, these shoes are
Speaker 2: too sexy. Someone's gotta someone's got to put a stop
Speaker 2: to it. Which is very very funny, but all so
Speaker 2: like if you go see, there's a great painting you
Speaker 2: can look up called Delay Benzalba. This is also in
Speaker 2: my book, and it's a picture of a naked sexy
Speaker 2: witch casting love spells and she's wearing the cutest pair
Speaker 2: of kitten heels that I would absolutely fucking love to
Speaker 2: have that that got little. They're kind of like pink
Speaker 2: with like pointsy toes and a little little heel on
Speaker 2: the back of their like mules. So there's like a
Speaker 2: little slip on action. So we definitely see that. The
Speaker 2: best way that you can get information about them is
Speaker 2: by going to look at actual medieval images of clothing
Speaker 2: and just like have a look at people's shoes. So
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, you do tend to have them made
Speaker 2: for you. You know, a cobbler will measure your foot up
Speaker 2: and like cobble away. But art support I think less,
Speaker 2: so at least in examples that I've seen. But it's
Speaker 2: also difficult to say. You know, maybe they do put
Speaker 2: things in, but yeah, you know, it tends to be
Speaker 2: kind of leather souls that are re enforced. But then
Speaker 2: you wear clogs when you're doing dirty work.
Speaker 1: I have flat feet. Uh, this sounds terrible, Like my
Speaker 1: feet would be like I wouldn't be able to walk,
Speaker 1: Like this is not getting drafted, Okay, not only am
Speaker 1: I not getting drafted like I was, like they were
Speaker 1: like sticking me in front of the gate in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages and being like, give this man with mangled
Speaker 1: feet change like like ten minutes in a clog, like
Speaker 1: you might as well take you might as well take
Speaker 1: a fucking hammer to my feet, like Jesus H Kelly.
Speaker 1: Thank you for the question. Question from the final valve,
Speaker 1: which is a good name. Uh I'm I'm kind of
Speaker 1: wondering about how people in the medieval era thought about
Speaker 1: animals and what we now call animal welfare. Did they
Speaker 1: think of animals as having souls or personalities at least
Speaker 1: some people must have with stories of like saying for it.
Speaker 1: Did people have pets beside the obvious cats and dogs?
Speaker 1: Is there a concept of animal abuse or mistreating animals
Speaker 1: or were they usually seen as a tool that needs
Speaker 1: to eat and sleep? Thank you.
Speaker 2: It really depends on who you're asking about. One of
Speaker 2: my favorite facts though, is that a very very popular
Speaker 2: pet in the medieval period is squirrels. Yes, yeah, so
Speaker 2: they have those little you know, the acutie little red
Speaker 2: European squirrels. People would have squirrels as pets, really really
Speaker 2: commonly a huge huge thing. They definitely also have cats
Speaker 2: and dogs, and when if you are a very fancy person,
Speaker 2: you might have like parrots that have been imported or
Speaker 2: monkeys that have been imported. Are those are like big
Speaker 2: high ticket items and we certainly see rather a lot
Speaker 2: of that. And people also keep birds really regularly, not
Speaker 2: even necessarily like what we would consider to be exotic birds,
Speaker 2: but all sorts. Like it's very common, for example, for
Speaker 2: people to keep nightingales because they sing nicely, so like
Speaker 2: essentially having p sogbirds is a really big thing. There
Speaker 2: is some concept of animal welfare. Yeah, Like I've actually
Speaker 2: written about this over at my blog in the past,
Speaker 2: which was probably an article I wrote about the bull
Speaker 2: Semen explosion which happened several years back, and basically I
Speaker 2: was like, I got to write a blog and my
Speaker 2: friend as a dare, was like, you should write about
Speaker 2: the bull Semen explosion. I was like, guess what bitch.
Speaker 1: Die?
Speaker 2: And about a way to do it? So, yeah, there
Speaker 2: is kind of a concept of what the bare minimum
Speaker 2: is for treating animals in a particular way. Now grinded,
Speaker 2: I mean, they're eating them all the time, but you know,
Speaker 2: the animals are important to them because it's kind of
Speaker 2: like a form of livelihood. So you need to treat
Speaker 2: your livestock really well. And fundamentally, most people have a cow,
Speaker 2: and you want to keep your cow in the best
Speaker 2: possible condition because you're gonna want it to keep giving
Speaker 2: you milk for as long as you possibly can. Right,
Speaker 2: So these guys are pretty pampered. I mean a lot
Speaker 2: of time they live in your house with you during
Speaker 2: the winter. You know that that is a whole thing.
Speaker 2: But then on the other hand, there'll be stuff like
Speaker 2: you know, people have kind of like trained bears. There's
Speaker 2: rather a lot of dancing bears, and I shuddered to
Speaker 2: think how those poor guys were treated, you know, like
Speaker 2: they've always got like a little chain around their neck.
Speaker 2: And then when you get into the early modern period,
Speaker 2: there is like rather a lot of like torturing animals
Speaker 2: for fun.
Speaker 1: So here the name of science, Like here.
Speaker 2: In London, right next to where the Globe Theater was,
Speaker 2: there is a specific theater for bull baiting and another
Speaker 2: one for bear baiting, where they're like, yeah, just poking
Speaker 2: this bull, setting a bunch of dogs on him, poking
Speaker 2: this bear, setting a bunch of dogs on him, and
Speaker 2: then you'd go and like watch a bear get torn
Speaker 2: apart by dogs, because you know, after the Renaissance everything
Speaker 2: got so much better. So yeah, so there is there
Speaker 2: is horrifying stuff like that. But yeah, and certainly we
Speaker 2: do see that there is some consideration on the part
Speaker 2: of ordinary people of like that animals have souls. The
Speaker 2: Church is really down on this. The Church doesn't like it,
Speaker 2: jerks and they don't. They don't like to think of
Speaker 2: animals as having souls. And you know, the idea here
Speaker 2: is that man who has been given to minion over
Speaker 2: animals by God in the garden of Eden, and so
Speaker 2: you know you're supposed to kind of think about it
Speaker 2: that way. No, like your dog is not gonna see
Speaker 2: you in heaven or whatever, which I believe is still
Speaker 2: kind of like the line from Christians is that animals
Speaker 2: don't have souls. But yeah, people still love animals, and
Speaker 2: you know, as we can see with Queen Ford, the
Speaker 2: way that people relate to them is really different to
Speaker 2: how Yeah, the governing bodies tell you too, I.
Speaker 1: Suppose, yeah, yeah, the church is teaching on animals not
Speaker 1: having souls as stupid. I don't believe in heaven, but
Speaker 1: it's still stupid. That's funny. Why wouldn't It's fine? I
Speaker 1: don't care.
Speaker 2: I have a little hedgehogs pet. That's another one. I
Speaker 2: forgot about that hedgehog pet. Oh adorable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk the final vowel. Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: the question. Next we got one from Dummy thick Ner
Speaker 1: ad din U versus.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: Hello. So the epidemic of sports betting in the US
Speaker 1: made me wonder about medieval gambling. I know soldiers did it,
Speaker 1: and playing cards developed towards the end of the period,
Speaker 1: but how socially acceptable was it broadly, how pervasive was it?
Speaker 1: What form did it usually take?
Speaker 2: It's oh, it's prices.
Speaker 1: I got bad news. So if you're the kind of
Speaker 1: person now you watch like sports or something and you're like,
Speaker 1: I'm tired of these fucking commercials about sports gambling apps
Speaker 1: and everything like that, I think most people are. I
Speaker 1: think I think most people really hate that, and for
Speaker 1: good reason. But now, imagine if you didn't have ten
Speaker 1: different sporting game, you didn't have ten different games a
Speaker 1: night that you could watch on various streaming services and
Speaker 1: everything like that. Imagine instead that, and you also don't
Speaker 1: have like mass popular culture like recycling stuff into your
Speaker 1: into you all the time. You're not getting like new
Speaker 1: uh new novels aren't coming into the town every day
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, they that's not how
Speaker 1: it works. Now, imagine how pervasive the gambling must have
Speaker 1: been for like the one of the few activity the
Speaker 1: few like big activities that they actually had. If you're
Speaker 1: going to a hippodrome to watch uh, to to watch
Speaker 1: the races, to watch the watch anything. Uh, if you're
Speaker 1: going to the tilts to watch a joust or a melee,
Speaker 1: everyone there is gambling on everything. They were taking odds,
Speaker 1: they were taking bets. They they there were bookies, there
Speaker 1: were sharks. It's I mean, it's the same practice. So
Speaker 1: it would have been insanely pervasive, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I completely agree about the way that the way
Speaker 1: that uh sports gambling has taken over TV and how
Speaker 1: awful it is, But I mean, yeah, it was somehow
Speaker 1: more pervasive back then somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's it's really interesting because it's something I really
Speaker 2: noticed when I go back to the States now, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is new, right, you know, because because when I
Speaker 2: was a kid growing up, we didn't we didn't have
Speaker 2: things like that, and so it's like, definitely is something
Speaker 2: that I notice as a cultural change. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean you're you're exactly right, Luke, all kinds of betting
Speaker 2: on whatever the fuck, like, including by the time you
Speaker 2: get the tutor period, whether whether or not the bear
Speaker 2: is going to survive or the dogs aren't right. Uh.
Speaker 2: But then also I guess that the di y one
Speaker 2: is they played dice a lot. Yes, they're like constantly,
Speaker 2: like they're constantly playing dice. And it's a big complaint
Speaker 2: that moralists have. So so you know, when they complain
Speaker 2: about brothels, they're also complaining that people are like in
Speaker 2: the brothels gambling with dice or if they're complaining about
Speaker 2: it particularly rowdy tavern, in the tavern, there's gambling with dice.
Speaker 2: If a woman is like being called suspect, it's because
Speaker 2: she also goes to the tavern and gambles with dice.
Speaker 2: It's just over and over and over again, the gambling
Speaker 2: with dice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with the dice. Yeah, I mean they love it.
Speaker 2: They love it.
Speaker 1: How yeah, whatever, It's very hard to imagine, but like,
Speaker 1: gambling is one of the few pastime activities these people
Speaker 1: can have in their free time, because it doesn't require
Speaker 1: anything but a stupid game of chance and some coin
Speaker 1: or something people value. And you know, you can do
Speaker 1: that at the pub. You can do that down at
Speaker 1: the pub. You can do that like with some people
Speaker 1: you know on the big farm that your master owns
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, it's just a thing you can do,
Speaker 1: like fucking that drinking. Uh m hmm. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Surviving like the gambler or the gambling demon has always
Speaker 2: been with us, you know, whether or not he's ensnared
Speaker 2: your mother. That's that's just true.
Speaker 1: The man, that whole thing is just the whole thing
Speaker 1: from him going like I'm not a state, I'm a
Speaker 1: monster to him, like the gambling running in there and
Speaker 1: the like as.
Speaker 2: A boogeyman or Boogieyman, classic app what an app incredible Yeah,
Speaker 2: shout out, shout out.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh. Anyway, Uh, my opinion on any vice is
Speaker 1: that it should remain legal because puritanical banning of things
Speaker 1: it sucks and is evil. But society should have safeguards
Speaker 1: in place to help people so they don't fall into
Speaker 1: these problems, uh, like like we're falling into right now,
Speaker 1: like gambling addictions. So if they want to out off
Speaker 1: gambling apps, fine by me, yeah, even though yeah, otherwise
Speaker 1: I'm not on board with full banning. I don't do
Speaker 1: that teetotal or bullshit.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, I'm the same. I think it's bad, but
Speaker 2: like if you ban it, it's still gonna happen. And
Speaker 2: you know, there's also Simpsons episode about that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you out gambling. And I think gambling is fun,
Speaker 1: and I don't do it much because I know that,
Speaker 1: like I don't have enough money to like to do it,
Speaker 1: and I don't you know, I don't want to ruin
Speaker 1: like finances or anything, but like you can't. It can't
Speaker 1: just be like this at a time when like all
Speaker 1: of the social and communal safeguards we have are just
Speaker 1: fucking ground into dust. Anyway, Uh, dummy thick Ner, I did.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for the question. We got one
Speaker 1: from Fluffy. Got a couple more thinking about shifting baseline syndrome.
Speaker 1: I am wondering what we nevil accounts there are that
Speaker 1: can give us an idea of the abundance of wildlife
Speaker 1: in the medieval era, like how teeming with life or
Speaker 1: the oceans did the countryside have more wildlife? And real
Speaker 1: quick shifting baseline is like it's how a system is
Speaker 1: measured against previous reference points. And the problem with measuring
Speaker 1: wildlife against previous reference points is that wildlife has dropped
Speaker 1: off so dramatically since industrialization really started going full steam
Speaker 1: ahead in the seventeen hundreds that I mean like we're
Speaker 1: like we've lost seventy eighty percent of the wildlife. Not
Speaker 1: this not of the total species, but just of the
Speaker 1: amount of wildlife that we had. And that's before you
Speaker 1: even get into stuff like all the trees and everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, England used to be lush with forests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we used to be forested. And I think
Speaker 2: that this is another thing to kind of keep in
Speaker 2: mind here is it's not just animals, because yeah, the
Speaker 2: population of animals drops incredibly abruptly, but it's also plants
Speaker 2: because before you have monocultures, right, you know, and industrialized farming,
Speaker 2: that's like all we have is just like a bunch
Speaker 2: of sugar beats. Like you know, you'll go to parts
Speaker 2: of here, you know, I'll go up to like Hampshire
Speaker 2: or something, and I'll go on a walk and it's
Speaker 2: just fields and fields and fields and fields and fields
Speaker 2: and sugar beets and the like. That's it, you know,
Speaker 2: And so when you don't have that, then you have
Speaker 2: like a greater abundance of things that you know, so
Speaker 2: for example, just having like fallow fields that are gonna
Speaker 2: grab whatever wildlife is. That's a really big thing. And
Speaker 2: also things like, for example, regularly mowing, you know, like
Speaker 2: how we we mow lawns and things all the time.
Speaker 2: It's like here, there's kind of like a movement away
Speaker 2: from that. In especially May. There's this thing that they
Speaker 2: call it no mo May where they're like, don't please,
Speaker 2: don't like mow your lawn in May because because it's
Speaker 2: really bad for the environment, and there's like a lot
Speaker 2: of pollinators and things that require all the plants that
Speaker 2: would grow. And if you don't mow your lawn all
Speaker 2: the time, turns out it's full of fucking flowers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it's just like but if you do it all
Speaker 2: the time, then they never they never develop, right, And
Speaker 2: so that that privileges grass, which is terrible for the environment.
Speaker 2: And you know, there are all these kinds of knock
Speaker 2: on effects in terms of I think one of the
Speaker 2: ones that people don't think about a lot, it's just
Speaker 2: bugs there are a lot more bugs, little insect guys
Speaker 2: hanging out like doing doing various things. But yeah, way, way,
Speaker 2: way more birds. You know, basically you could go to
Speaker 2: any river and get fish out of it or eels,
Speaker 2: eels being a really big one to eat here. It's
Speaker 2: you probably wouldn't find like bears in every forest. Like
Speaker 2: that's probably going too far, but there are going to
Speaker 2: be a lot of deer or a lot of things
Speaker 2: of this nature.
Speaker 1: But just imagine like the like doing like medieval like
Speaker 1: uh like death statistics and you know, like okay, you
Speaker 1: know this week or you know this year, ten people
Speaker 1: were killed by stabbing in London and you know, seventeen
Speaker 1: people died of pneumonia or whatever, and oh my god,
Speaker 1: ten thousand people died of bear deaths just wandering the
Speaker 1: edge of the forest because there's so many fucking bears.
Speaker 2: Like oh yeah, you know, you know people used to
Speaker 2: hut wild boar all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, wild board, they used to roam England,
Speaker 1: they used to they fucking roamed Germany. They were a
Speaker 1: menace in Germany literally, yeah yeah, And that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: they should have been killed off, but.
Speaker 2: They still are. I think we've all seen the picture
Speaker 2: of the naked German. Yeah whose got stolen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was sure, and that the other day that
Speaker 1: was great.
Speaker 2: Image for the show, just put that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know, I think it's hard for us
Speaker 1: to imagine because it's so different. But like a count
Speaker 1: historical accounts of like even the Vikings just going when
Speaker 1: they got to like Canada, when they went to Vinland,
Speaker 1: like they like they were they they were talking about
Speaker 1: how the lands were so teeming with wildlife and the
Speaker 1: oceans were so teeming with fish that they could have
Speaker 1: walked from their boats onto the land by stepping on fish.
Speaker 1: Like it's just like we don't have any we don't
Speaker 1: have any concept of it, and there's really no way
Speaker 1: to give a concept of it because like where like
Speaker 1: where would all those animals go, How would they feed?
Speaker 1: Where would they live? Like we don't have enough warrens
Speaker 1: and forests and rainforests and glacier Like we don't have
Speaker 1: enough natural habitats that exist for these things anymore. And
Speaker 1: it's we just live in a different world and like
Speaker 1: this is one of the things where like you know,
Speaker 1: we need to go back because we're killing all species.
Speaker 1: Like I don't like bugs, but there are far fewer
Speaker 1: bugs in Florida than they used to be, and that's
Speaker 1: not good. Like it's just not.
Speaker 2: Bugs are necessary for keeping things together except mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: If you if you try to be like THEO.
Speaker 2: Don't fuck you, don't give a shit.
Speaker 1: Eradicate them all the world as a fuck one billion
Speaker 1: dead mosquitoes, and it still wouldn't put a fucking dentt
Speaker 1: in there. Now. I'm trying to wipe We've been trying
Speaker 1: to wipe those fucking things out for three hundred thousand years,
Speaker 1: and we are not one step closer. We are even
Speaker 1: with the Adam Baum. Yeah, last one for today, question
Speaker 1: from may Day. Was there any connection between the claim
Speaker 1: King Arthur would return in Britain's hour of need and
Speaker 1: the myth of Constantine the eleventh didn't die, but we'll
Speaker 1: return to restore or yeah, to restore Christendom to Constantine city.
Speaker 1: Woo king in the mountain, let's fucking go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yo, there are so many of these, just so
Speaker 2: you know, we got there's a version of this where
Speaker 2: Frederick Barbarossa yep is in a mountain and he's going
Speaker 2: to return, obviously with the Czechs. Saint Frentislaus is in
Speaker 2: a mountain and he's going to return. Although I'll tell
Speaker 2: you what, the Chech's greatest hour of need I think
Speaker 2: has come and gone several times. When the Nazis took over,
Speaker 2: it would have been then, But what about.
Speaker 1: What about when when the Habsburgs were like just slaughtering, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just want wine with the with the.
Speaker 2: No no wine for plebs. Yeah, so I would have
Speaker 2: thought that homeboy would have come back. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: just an incredibly prevalent European myth. Everybody's got their own
Speaker 2: guy that is waiting in a mountain and is going
Speaker 2: to come back. And we just tend to know more
Speaker 2: about King Arthur because we're all here speaking English, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's the one as a result of what happens
Speaker 2: as a result of colonialism and imperialism. You know, you
Speaker 2: got you get King Arthur. But yeah, like people have
Speaker 2: this just as it's it's a fun story they like
Speaker 2: to tell themselves, and it all kind of depends on
Speaker 2: who you ask. So like the Nazis like to the
Speaker 2: Barbarossa one right, so that they would bring that up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like I'm not going to go through
Speaker 1: all of them, because there are a ton. But like
Speaker 1: you can look at Wikipedia and search for King of
Speaker 1: sleep in the Mountain and just see how many of
Speaker 1: them there are. They are from every state, every culture,
Speaker 1: most world relig most, if not all, world religions. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's the idea that King David's going to come back
Speaker 1: and save the Jews. There's the idea that who was
Speaker 1: it John the evangelist is going to come back, that
Speaker 1: whole golden legend thing. Yeah, yeah, I mean, but but
Speaker 1: I will point out two of these because they are funny.
Speaker 1: One you mentioned Constantini eleventh, who is the least like
Speaker 1: all of these other people are. Many of them are
Speaker 1: like are like, uh, powerful rulers who maybe were cut
Speaker 1: down too early by you know, the happenstances of life
Speaker 1: or whatever. And uh. But then you get Constantini eleventh,
Speaker 1: who's just this guy who's like the Imperial Crown has
Speaker 1: devolved down to this shithead. He's a pale imitation of everything.
Speaker 1: He can't get any friends in, he can't stop this.
Speaker 1: He's just kind of hapless. He either commits suicide or
Speaker 1: dies in the fighting. Like it's just it's so funny
Speaker 1: to make that your guy when you've got You've got Justinian,
Speaker 1: You've got basled a second, you've got you.
Speaker 2: At constant.
Speaker 1: In the first Alexia, she got all these guys. Nope,
Speaker 1: constantin the eleventh. And then of course Genghis Khan and
Speaker 1: his is So he's sleeping in the Sacred Mountain where
Speaker 1: he legend says he is buried and he's gonna come back.
Speaker 1: But the reason I find this one so interesting is
Speaker 1: is two things. Number One, there are still people there
Speaker 1: who believe it, like or there were like in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, like part of the like quasi nomadic
Speaker 1: tribes that still live there who definitely believe it. But
Speaker 1: also there's still basically a Mongolian gag order on talking
Speaker 1: to outsiders about where Ginghis Khan is buried.
Speaker 2: Fucking yeah, that's so fucking cool.
Speaker 1: It really is, like that they just keep it there,
Speaker 1: like even if they don't actually believe he's coming back,
Speaker 1: it's really cool that they're just like, no, you're not
Speaker 1: you're not.
Speaker 2: Gonna it's not for you.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna fuck with Timmys and stuff, you assholes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: I absolutely love that. You know, if it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: we're not so different if we didn't repeatedly talk about
Speaker 2: how temaging whips.
Speaker 1: You know, I love a key can sleep in the mountain.
Speaker 1: And I would note here that this is just really funny.
Speaker 1: But the fact that Walt Disney has been quite supposedly
Speaker 1: crgenically frozen and hidden at Disney Disneyland is cited as
Speaker 1: an example of this. And I don't know who put
Speaker 1: that in here, but.
Speaker 2: That's really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are an amazing Wikipedia, Like I.
Speaker 2: Mean, shout out to Wikipedia. We love the work they do.
Speaker 2: What can I say?
Speaker 1: I love it? Oh man, that's great. Yeah, folks, that's
Speaker 1: going to do it for us today. We we would
Speaker 1: be back next time with the mailbag for July. Actually
Speaker 1: is coming next week because we're both traveling on on
Speaker 1: hiatus for a bit. And yeah, and we'll be back
Speaker 1: this Friday with our book Club series episode on the Cameron.
Speaker 1: I believe it is day four, So yeah, look forward
Speaker 1: to that. Patrons, uh Patreon dot com, slash w nsdpod
Speaker 1: it's five dollars a month, sign up. It'll be great,
Speaker 1: eleanor you got anything else jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's we're here, there and everywhere, aren't
Speaker 2: we at the top of the show. You already said
Speaker 2: all the places you can find us. I think, yeah
Speaker 2: that we can keep you real busy this month. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you you can listen.
Speaker 1: You can listen to a lot of us, you know,
Speaker 1: check that out. Check out the new series Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Crusades dot Com. It's it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Oh, I guess I want one one small request. I guess,
Speaker 2: like over over at by work podcast Gone Medieval. I
Speaker 2: did a whole episode on the host site wars and
Speaker 2: I want to and I want to prove to them
Speaker 2: that people like hoistsite things. So if you could go
Speaker 2: give that a lesson, listen to it and like pump
Speaker 2: those numbers up, that'd be great. And also I had
Speaker 2: to write like eight thousand words for it, so please
Speaker 2: reward my work. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and listen to Gone Medieval. It's fun. You would
Speaker 1: like it. Yeah, you guys know where to find us.
Speaker 1: Eleanor is at Going Medieval in the socials. I'm at
Speaker 1: Luca's amazing on the socials. You guys know the deal.
Speaker 1: We're getting out of here, everybody. Thank you all so
Speaker 1: much for listening, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: Hi,