Speaker 1: I'm just trying to get through today so I can
Speaker 1: go to a commie talk, my.
Speaker 2: Man comedy talk. Yeah, I was, I was a talking
Speaker 2: comedy talks.
Speaker 1: Sorry, that's right, that's right. I was talking to my
Speaker 1: homeboy Almar the other day and I was like, I think, fundamentally,
Speaker 1: at my core what makes me a communist and not
Speaker 1: an anarchist is that I like trains. I know, like,
Speaker 1: I think you kind of like, I kind of think
Speaker 1: that you need like a state apparatus for really good trains.
Speaker 1: And so I think that maybe I like arrived at
Speaker 1: the train part first and then the communism second. But
Speaker 1: I think that's okay. I think that's okay. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's anything wrong with that, you know.
Speaker 2: So, No, I yeah, I don't know. I like trains.
Speaker 2: I think they're fine. I don't have a special interest
Speaker 2: in them.
Speaker 1: Better.
Speaker 2: I think they're a lot fucking better than cars, you know,
Speaker 2: like my.
Speaker 1: T shirt saying I don't have a special interest in trains.
Speaker 2: Getting a lot of questions, Getting a lot of questions. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't know a single train type.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything like that.
Speaker 2: No, I think the one looks like a toblarone is funny.
Speaker 2: I think they're neat. I wish we had them more
Speaker 2: of them here.
Speaker 1: Train, you know, like I like when you see like
Speaker 1: a sixties train, I think that those are cool. I
Speaker 1: couldn't yeah, I couldn't name you. I can't name ship.
Speaker 1: I want to be so clear, like, uh but I
Speaker 1: just think it's good when there is a train. I
Speaker 1: guess I think that's That's what I'm like, coming down
Speaker 1: on the side of convenient transport. Yeah.
Speaker 2: These uh yeah, these these uh uh yeah, Like I
Speaker 2: I don't know, like people always talk about trains, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, I think they're cool. I like, I despise,
Speaker 2: like I hate driving, like it is a to me.
Speaker 2: I despise it. But uh like with trains, I'm just
Speaker 2: like they're cool. I mean, I'm glad you think they're neat.
Speaker 2: I just don't like that's just not my uh especially
Speaker 2: you know, everybody gets like one and I don't know,
Speaker 2: like I don't know what my super one is.
Speaker 1: Uh Like you don't, I don't.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not that it's got to be something else.
Speaker 1: I think I used mine on on medieval history. I
Speaker 1: think I think that's what I used to.
Speaker 2: Like. Yeah, I don't. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2: Oh no, uh no, folks, I know what I am.
Speaker 2: I know, I know what I am.
Speaker 1: I know who I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. Oh man, it's uh yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: I just feel like it's too choo, too choo. That's
Speaker 1: kind of it. That's the that's the level of a
Speaker 1: train interest I have.
Speaker 2: Is too too Yeah, exactly, that's it. Oh man? Are
Speaker 2: you is the is the talk on trains?
Speaker 1: Is that?
Speaker 2: What's okay?
Speaker 1: This is it's put on by our good friends over
Speaker 1: at Acid Communism.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that there's gonna be like possibly some dancing,
Speaker 1: possibly some political talk. So you know, I like to
Speaker 1: go see the other comedy podcasts in action, So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go do that should be fun, you know, i'd
Speaker 1: I'd like to do something nice. Everything is so dire
Speaker 1: over here that I mean, well yes post America where
Speaker 1: things are going fucking great that you know, I just
Speaker 1: want to go do something fun. So yeah, I like.
Speaker 1: I like a CFM a lot, so I think that
Speaker 1: like they put out good stuff. So I'll not go,
Speaker 1: you know, I will be taking a train to get there,
Speaker 1: but nice.
Speaker 2: You know. That's London, baby, baby, London that's the big
Speaker 2: Wait if they're the big app what are you guys,
Speaker 2: the big tea cup, that's the big tea cup, the
Speaker 2: big biscuit.
Speaker 1: Greatest city in the world.
Speaker 2: Baby, Then to go get a London classic London meat
Speaker 2: pie slice.
Speaker 1: There we go, yeah, yeah, weirdly, like we don't have
Speaker 1: We're one of the only kind of like places in
Speaker 1: England where we don't have like a specific I guess
Speaker 1: it's like yeah, I don't know, like jelly Deal's is
Speaker 1: kind of thing, but like you don't get him anymore.
Speaker 2: Oh god, well it's like.
Speaker 1: To that.
Speaker 2: Oh there you go. Man. Uh, not all English, not
Speaker 2: all English food is bad.
Speaker 1: That my dad fucking loves it. Like my dad comes
Speaker 1: over here and he's down fishmonger like by being like
Speaker 1: hook it up, and he's just like snarflin' like he's
Speaker 1: just going he goes to fucking town on the jelly gils.
Speaker 1: It's not even easy to find them anymore, but like
Speaker 1: Dad boots them out and just like goes in on it.
Speaker 2: So that's a classic gross Dad food. Like my dad
Speaker 2: those sardines and hot sauce you can get out of
Speaker 2: like a can. Oh all right, And they were oh god,
Speaker 2: they smelled terrible. My dad loved him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 2: I don't know what my gross dead food is gonna be?
Speaker 1: Got it? You gotta get one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, something, yeah, just something that, like everybody else is
Speaker 2: like disgusting. I'm like, oh, I love it, but like
Speaker 2: everything like that, I get, like, uh, licorice.
Speaker 1: I love licorice.
Speaker 2: So good. Fucking candle wax.
Speaker 1: Delicious, delicious candle wax. It solves your leaky guy for your.
Speaker 2: Lungs, It'll fix your right up. All right? Uh, you
Speaker 2: ready to you're ready to talk about to do some questions?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love a question.
Speaker 2: Ah yo. Hello, and welcome back to We're Not So
Speaker 2: Different podcast about how we've always been idiots. My name
Speaker 2: is Luke, and I go to figure out a weird
Speaker 2: dad food to hate, and that's doctor Eleanor. And she
Speaker 2: already likes licorice, so she's already got she's already got
Speaker 2: that going for today, folks. So we got questions you
Speaker 2: might wonder be wondering while we're doing another Q and
Speaker 2: A so soon after the last one. The answer is simple.
Speaker 2: I had to travel over the weekend. It didn't have
Speaker 2: time to write and research for a normal episode and
Speaker 2: we're still catching up. So here we go, folks. If
Speaker 2: you want to ask us questions like these, please do
Speaker 2: subscribe to the Patreon Patreon dot com slash w NSD pod.
Speaker 2: You get two bonus episodes a month. You get the
Speaker 2: ability to ask us questions like these, afree listening, access
Speaker 2: to the discord, all that sort of stuff. Check it out,
Speaker 2: sign up. It's really cool. We really appreciate it. And
Speaker 2: uh yeah, anyway, onto the questions from our patrons. First
Speaker 2: from dog Spotter, did medieval people have a joke food
Speaker 2: that everyone hated? Like how comedies from the eighties and
Speaker 2: nineties have cut fruitcake being used as a doorstopper instead
Speaker 2: of anyone in the house actually eating it.
Speaker 1: Yea, the closest I could like come up to with
Speaker 1: this when I was thinking about it was like all
Speaker 1: of the varying foods that you do for the purposes
Speaker 1: of display but that you don't actually eat. So like
Speaker 1: a thing for example, that like, uh, people like to
Speaker 1: point out here when they're like you weird British food.
Speaker 1: There's like this thing called stargazy pie, and it's like
Speaker 1: you have like lots of little fish heads poking out
Speaker 1: and that's like one of those right where it's like
Speaker 1: you kind of don't you don't, you kind of don't
Speaker 1: really eat it. It's like a centerpiece, right. Or you
Speaker 1: know like the old nursery rhyme where it's like four
Speaker 1: and twenty blackbirds are baked in a pie and it's
Speaker 1: like but they're alive, and then like the and then
Speaker 1: the blackbirds sing when you It's like things like that
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of stuff that you do very
Speaker 1: specifically for display, like roasting a peacock and then putting
Speaker 1: all its feather backs on, right, yeah. Or I've talked
Speaker 1: eight million times about the weird thing where you torture chicken,
Speaker 1: so like we don't have to go into it again.
Speaker 1: But like, uh wait I've.
Speaker 2: Talked is this different than for graw? Oh no, okay,
Speaker 2: you must not have a right because I would have
Speaker 2: remembered chicken fowk graw. Okay.
Speaker 1: So like you get a chicken drunk step one, right,
Speaker 1: and then the chicken you get, you get you got
Speaker 1: a drink. You get a chicken drunk enough to pass out,
Speaker 1: and then and then you like pluck it and uh
Speaker 1: then you paint it so that it looks like it's
Speaker 1: been roasted, and then you put it out on the
Speaker 1: table and then it will like wake up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the banquet and everyone will go, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: that chicken is alive. Then you catch the chicken and
Speaker 1: cut its head off, take it back to the kitchen.
Speaker 1: In the kitchen, you then put like mercury and like
Speaker 1: some other things inside it, and you and then you
Speaker 1: roast it and then you bring it back out and
Speaker 1: like the air escaping with the mercury and other stuff
Speaker 1: makes it sound like it's going like.
Speaker 2: Like a live chicken. It becomes the sweetish shift is.
Speaker 1: So it's like basically having a chicken that you thought
Speaker 1: was dead be living twice. But all of these things
Speaker 1: I guess are kind of more like is it cake
Speaker 1: than they are? Is this like a joke food? You know?
Speaker 2: Do they eat the mercury chicken?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, thank god, it's.
Speaker 1: Just it's just for the purposes of like delighting rich people.
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you that man pranks in the old days,
Speaker 2: they took a whole lot more. That's that's so much
Speaker 2: buy in for something, so.
Speaker 1: Uh medium like yeah, yeah, I mean, like it's it
Speaker 1: is probable that there might have been some kind of
Speaker 1: like a joke food. I like, occasionally you see them
Speaker 1: joking about the foods of other cultures. Like you know,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll see Gentiles being weird about Jewish food. You'll
Speaker 1: see like, you know, Italians making fun of French people.
Speaker 1: I mean, I say Italians, but it's like probably like
Speaker 1: the Genoese making fun of like you know, the Piedmontese
Speaker 1: or some shit. You know, you think things of this nature.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like I couldn't really come up with the
Speaker 1: joke food, so I just, you know, came up with
Speaker 1: lots of other weird examples. So I hope that that's
Speaker 1: good enough for Dog's potter, know that I.
Speaker 2: Think those are good examples. Man. The drunken chicken thing.
Speaker 1: That's good, right, My god. When I say good, I
Speaker 1: mean horrifying. But you know, yeah, yeah, man, just get
Speaker 1: a chicken drunk.
Speaker 2: What a time? What a time to be alive? That
Speaker 2: can picuous consumption. Back in the day, like now you
Speaker 2: could just like ride around in a fancy car. Back
Speaker 2: then you had to be like, all right, here we go. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I want my servant to make a star gazy pie.
Speaker 2: And people are like, oh, that smells repulsive. But these
Speaker 2: people must be so rich, like man, what a yeah? Anyway, uh,
Speaker 2: dog Spotter, thank you very much for the question. It
Speaker 2: would be really funny if there was like some medieval
Speaker 2: texts that they were just talking about how much they
Speaker 2: hated fruit cake O this yeah, even we hate it?
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, eleanor do you want to read the next question?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Hold on, I fucking got my thing up. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was just my bench ass was coasted. Like Luke,
Speaker 1: you read everything. This is great stuff. Okay. Next question
Speaker 1: is from Horatio Hacks. Which Catholic clar order is the
Speaker 1: most like the Jedi order. This is such a good question. Woo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess I kind of went back and forth
Speaker 1: about this because I was sort of like, at first,
Speaker 1: I was gonna go the Jesuits because I feel like
Speaker 1: they're the most like mission based. But then again, but
Speaker 1: we have to reserve them to be the Stormtroopers, so
Speaker 1: it can't be it can't be that. So I am
Speaker 1: gonna go with the Franciscans because I think they're the best, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would so, like, I don't I think like it. Uh,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really fit in that well to any of
Speaker 2: the specific orders, like the contours with the Jedi do,
Speaker 2: but like it's basically like on the one hand, I
Speaker 2: do think it is kind of the Jesuits because they
Speaker 2: are the ones who go out and do this and
Speaker 2: for a time are like the they are they're not police,
Speaker 2: but they're they're kind of like, you know, they are
Speaker 2: like old West Sheriffs or whatever for like sectors of
Speaker 2: space and everything like that, and that is kind of
Speaker 2: like the Jesuits in like the New World and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. But but you know, there's also the thing
Speaker 2: with the Templars when they were removed from France by
Speaker 2: Philip King Philip the Fourth, and their removal is a
Speaker 2: lot like the actual contours of Order sixty six in
Speaker 2: the Star Wars because they were basically all attacked in
Speaker 2: one night and they tried to get them out and
Speaker 2: very few of them survived. One of their they're like
Speaker 2: grand Master or leader or whatever, ended up hiding somewhere
Speaker 2: for like seven or eight years. So it's like that.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's they don't really fit into any
Speaker 2: of the Catholic orders specifically, except for stuff like vague
Speaker 2: stuff like that, because there aren't a ton of Catholic
Speaker 2: orders that do like like Kung fu for like meditation purposes,
Speaker 2: like which is a big like thing for their mystique.
Speaker 2: Like it's clearly taken from you know, like the those
Speaker 2: sects of Buddhists and monks who you know, they they
Speaker 2: practice it for meditation, you know, and they would never
Speaker 2: use it except in defense of a child, you know,
Speaker 2: or something like that. It's uh, you know, so it's
Speaker 2: it's stuff like that. The Jesuits like hmmm, I'm trying
Speaker 2: to think like the friends the franch Ciscans, like because
Speaker 2: of the specific like they're not supposed to have money,
Speaker 2: they're not supposed to have belongings like for that aspect,
Speaker 2: it's like a it's like a hodge Like it's a
Speaker 2: hodgepodge of a lot. Like the selection criteria is almost
Speaker 2: kind of like how they do for like uh like
Speaker 2: janissaries something like that. Uh if you know, janissaries were
Speaker 2: chosen because they have you know, some connection to the
Speaker 2: forest instead of you know, being enslaved. But yeah, it's like, uh,
Speaker 2: it's just a lot of them, and I can't like
Speaker 2: I can't come down on one of them specifically because
Speaker 2: they are the Jesuits. But the Jesuits become like something
Speaker 2: like so so so much different later on, and like
Speaker 2: especially during the counter Reformation and stuff like they do
Speaker 2: become kind of the stormtroopers, as Illinois said. So I
Speaker 2: don't know, like if the Franciscans, uh uh, if they
Speaker 2: did martial arts as meditation and also like went out
Speaker 2: and did missions to protect people, then sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like because at first I was kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you could say somebody like you know, the Knights
Speaker 1: hospital Are or the Knights Templar, but I think they're bad.
Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, because I don't I don't like
Speaker 1: the Crusades stuff, so it's like, yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: trouble is all the bad stuff. Yeah right, so yeah,
Speaker 1: like I feel like the Franciscans are the most gentle
Speaker 1: of the orders, which is why I can come up
Speaker 1: with it. But you know, it's like if we're talking
Speaker 1: about the martial orders, you're you're kind of like looking
Speaker 1: at hospitalers and Templars and or you know, like even worse,
Speaker 1: like uh, you know, the Teutonic Knights or some ship
Speaker 1: which are like but they're they're all pure evil, so
Speaker 1: you can't really say them, I guess. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: tricky one. It's a really tricky one.
Speaker 2: I mean it's tricky and like it's also tricky because
Speaker 2: they don't like when you when you create these when
Speaker 2: you create these stories, you get like these like you
Speaker 2: just keep expanding it out and expanding it out in
Speaker 2: their aspects, like where the Jedi are like bad and
Speaker 2: they do bad things and they reinforce bad policies, but
Speaker 2: like it's not ever or it's almost never portrayed on
Speaker 2: the same level as like, you know, not the hospital
Speaker 2: Ers we're doing, or you know, the Templars or the
Speaker 2: Teutonic Knights where they just went and like took their
Speaker 2: own big splot of land out there and were like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is ours and what the fuck man,
Speaker 2: you jerks? Yeah, Horatio, I think they are if you
Speaker 2: if you follow my idea of Order sixty six being
Speaker 2: like removal of the Templars, I think they are like
Speaker 2: that from a historical standpoint. But then they're like the
Speaker 2: better aspects of all the other Catholic orders like kind
Speaker 2: of rolled into one and then with like some uh
Speaker 2: some Eastern meditative monk type stuff. So yeah, they're the
Speaker 2: friend Ciszowitz burn uh Templar whatever. They're a lot you
Speaker 2: know what they're a lot. They're they're the best Catholic
Speaker 2: order because they're the one that we can look at
Speaker 2: and go, yeah, but they're the Jedi. We like the Jedi,
Speaker 2: like like you, oh oh oh, the Jedi suck. Yeah,
Speaker 2: real big news, like I didn't live through the prequels, buddy,
Speaker 2: thanks a lot. Yeah anyway, Yeah, Horatio, thank you very
Speaker 2: much for the question, and a question that pertains to
Speaker 2: my specific uh special interest, uh Ville. The next one
Speaker 2: we out is from vill Vicious, who says I was
Speaker 2: looking up late medieval armies yesterday, the French CAMPAIGNI de
Speaker 2: ornand in specific a basic administrative unit the land had
Speaker 2: Asian said that Asian Darme was paid one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty livre probably probably livre tournois, which is about one
Speaker 2: sixth of the period English silver pound. His squire was
Speaker 2: paid sixty it'll be levoi leva, two archers forty eight
Speaker 2: livres each and two servants thirty six livres each. So
Speaker 2: my questions are, A, we're those salaries on top of
Speaker 2: room and board, and B what sort of lifestyle could
Speaker 2: one keep up with this income?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is on top of room and board,
Speaker 1: so you are usually putting these people up in various places,
Speaker 1: so there'll be a guardhouses things like that that they
Speaker 1: that they are staying in.
Speaker 2: So for ex.
Speaker 1: Sample, you know you are going to be housed in
Speaker 1: somebody's uh house usually, I mean, and I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's gonna be like a great fucking accommodation, and you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna be like sleeping in the Great Hall with
Speaker 1: everybody else like me day. And then of course when
Speaker 1: you're like on campaign, then you're going to be put
Speaker 1: up in tents and things of this nature. So it
Speaker 1: is on top of room and board. Uh this is
Speaker 1: pretty good, uh, is the answer, Like you would be
Speaker 1: sending a lot of money home or like stacking at
Speaker 1: the very at the very least, and I mean, it's
Speaker 1: definitely a lot more than you would expect to make
Speaker 1: as your average peasant. A really fun tool that they
Speaker 1: have at the uh National Archives here is like a
Speaker 1: thing that allows you to look up prices of things
Speaker 1: in medieval England.
Speaker 2: And it.
Speaker 1: Obviously like we would be talking about English things here,
Speaker 1: not not a like a French. But so if you
Speaker 1: go there, and so I'm just putting in twelve seventy,
Speaker 1: which is what what the kind of starting year is
Speaker 1: so let's let's just show. Let's just show, right, And
Speaker 1: so we're saying, okay, so if leaves are about sixth
Speaker 1: of a pound, so sixty so that's like a tenth
Speaker 1: of a pound, so that's like ten shillings. So so
Speaker 1: that's kind of like around ten shillings. So it's like
Speaker 1: you can buy a fucking cow with that. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can buy like three stones worth of wool. No bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about fifty days of wages for guild tradesman.
Speaker 2: Huh, so that's not so bad. Yeah, you know what,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying interesting?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So it's a really fun thing to kind
Speaker 1: of like.
Speaker 2: Play with.
Speaker 1: If you go check it out, that's like the uh
Speaker 1: that is the National Archives Currency Converter, and it will
Speaker 1: kind of like tell you what what you get, which
Speaker 1: is fun. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The messing around with like numbers and stuff from
Speaker 2: the Middle Ages is fun. It's just like you have to, uh,
Speaker 2: you have to like take you have you have to
Speaker 2: It has to be done in like very broad strokes
Speaker 2: because if you're like, you know, this was exactly this
Speaker 2: much like currency calculations didn't really work that play.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I realized I was looking up what
Speaker 1: a uh a squire bikes there, so you yourself would
Speaker 1: make about uh, it's about twenty six horses. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: fifty seven cows. Ooh at me, it's about two thousand
Speaker 1: and days of wages for a skilled tradesman balling, falling.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that really that puts it in perspective, I think,
Speaker 1: which is very helpful.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, vil Vicious, thank you very much for the question.
Speaker 2: Next we got one from Devin, who says, is there
Speaker 2: actually a ship ton of mercury in Kinshi sh wang
Speaker 2: Di's mausoleum? If so, is there no way to excavate
Speaker 2: it safely? I understand mercury mercury is highly poisonous, but
Speaker 2: you think in twenty twenty five someone would thought of
Speaker 2: a way, would have thought of a way to successfully
Speaker 2: navigate the mausoleum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's so possibly, is the answer. So
Speaker 1: we have like done some, we've done some. We obviously
Speaker 1: not the Chinese Eleanor and I were over there.
Speaker 2: He tested the soil specifically to make sure, you know,
Speaker 2: we're like yep, smells like mercury, and then I rubbed
Speaker 2: it across my gums I was Yep, it's pure yep,
Speaker 2: there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So fundamentally, what what this comes from is that
Speaker 1: there is there the most detailed account from the time
Speaker 1: that we have says that mercury was used to simulate
Speaker 1: the hundred rivers in the inside because it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: they were doing like models of everything, right ah, and
Speaker 1: there does appear to be a ton of fucking mercury
Speaker 1: in the ground around there, and you know, basically what
Speaker 1: is going on in terms of debates about excavating. It's
Speaker 1: like on the on the plus side, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, dude, this is a seismic zee. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: like we kind of got to get in there and
Speaker 1: look at it. And also like the tourists will go
Speaker 1: fucking crazy, right, But then like other people say, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we don't really know what to do, and it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily just the mercury. Like the mercury is obviously
Speaker 1: an issue because, like I said, so kind of people
Speaker 1: think that if you open it up, then the mercury
Speaker 1: is going to volatize and then it'll kind of like
Speaker 1: leech into everything and it would suck. But fundamentally we
Speaker 1: that like that is one issue, but we could probably
Speaker 1: get around it. The thing is, it's just so fucking
Speaker 1: big and underground that we're not actually sure how to
Speaker 1: necessarily stabilize it as a structure yet. So the mercury
Speaker 1: part is an issue within it, but it isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: the number one thing. It's just the sheer scale of
Speaker 1: what the fuck we're looking at here, and we don't
Speaker 1: want to fuck it up. So we're kind of working
Speaker 1: on getting better at the stuff and coming up with something.
Speaker 1: And now, so the mercury is at play, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's that isn't like the number one thing. I do
Speaker 1: think that there is a lot of mercury there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there was a couple of years ago. I
Speaker 2: read an article. It was in archaeology, and it was
Speaker 2: about the tomb, and basically it said that there is
Speaker 2: a ton of mercury there. It is at some point
Speaker 2: like they did a bunch of soil samples around the
Speaker 2: area and then everywhere else, and most of the other
Speaker 2: places registered like a fairly normal mercury amount, which is
Speaker 2: like two hundred and five parts per billion or something
Speaker 2: like that. But the part near the mausoleum of Chin
Speaker 2: Chiwongdi is fourteen one hundred and forty parts per billion,
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of mercury there. It is likely
Speaker 2: that that mercury has leached into the ground into the soil,
Speaker 2: but it has not leached into the ground water below
Speaker 2: the mausoleum, because if it had, there would be a
Speaker 2: lot bigger problems with that. But essentially, through different forms
Speaker 2: of archaeology, different forms of technology, they've taken scans and everything,
Speaker 2: and basically there's a lot of mercury there. It's probably
Speaker 2: like if you're thinking about like that, it is like
Speaker 2: a giant replica across the whole thing of like a
Speaker 2: map of China, the one hundred rivers of China. Think
Speaker 2: about it more like a much smaller scale version, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe like that floor that they stand on in Game
Speaker 2: of Thrones that has like all the parts of Westeros
Speaker 2: on it, something like that. But like it's definitely there.
Speaker 2: There's definitely a ton of it, and they definitely don't
Speaker 2: want there are With regard to the mercury, I think
Speaker 2: there's two reasons why they don't want to do it.
Speaker 2: First is if there's any kind of subsidence while they're
Speaker 2: in there, it will go into the groundwater, and that
Speaker 2: would be that much mercury going into the groundwater would
Speaker 2: be catastrophic for plants, animals and people in the area.
Speaker 2: And there are a lot of people in the area.
Speaker 2: And second they the thing that was written about it
Speaker 2: by Simichian. It also mentions there being a lot of
Speaker 2: booby traps, and there were booby traps in old Imperial tombs,
Speaker 2: so there's that stuff. But they also don't know like
Speaker 2: when mercury is exposed to air, to oxygen, it can react,
Speaker 2: and so it could, like the mercury that's been in
Speaker 2: there for so long, like if they expose it to
Speaker 2: oxygen and everything, it could like aerosolize and like turn
Speaker 2: into a chemical weapon and kill them and a lot
Speaker 2: of other people and you know, plants and animals. So yeah,
Speaker 2: probably not a good idea. Hopefully an earthquake never touches it,
Speaker 2: it never gets severely flooded or anything. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: still there from like the place that it was originally
Speaker 2: built to where it is now. It's like one of
Speaker 2: the tallest structures ever built by humans, but now you
Speaker 2: barely see the top of it above the ground because
Speaker 2: of all the stuff that's gone up around it, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's cool. I man, there's so much cool straight
Speaker 2: in China. We all need new friends because it's insane.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, Devin, thank you very much for the question.
Speaker 2: Next one, we got this from MG in your Face
Speaker 2: and this is what I've thought about as well. On
Speaker 2: a typical day of farming, how many people might a
Speaker 2: person interact with and how much of their time was
Speaker 2: spent socializing.
Speaker 1: So a good way of thinking about this is that
Speaker 1: farms at the time are not like farms now. You know,
Speaker 1: like farms now, you're like, I own all of this land,
Speaker 1: and like you might not interact with very many people
Speaker 1: at all, other than you know, people who are in
Speaker 1: your employee for example, because it's like if you if
Speaker 1: you own several acres, But that's not what's going on
Speaker 1: on medieval farms. What's going on is that you go
Speaker 1: over to where like the fields are, and everyone's got
Speaker 1: their own cellyon, you know, and the celians are oftentimes
Speaker 1: just like strips, so you're like real close to Jeff's strip,
Speaker 1: you know, like maybe you have like three or four
Speaker 1: or whatever, but they're they're usually pretty narrow and long
Speaker 1: because it's just sort of like the way the way
Speaker 1: that things are done, so like your field is like
Speaker 1: directly next to somebody else's field, and you might just
Speaker 1: be like chat and shit all day long, to be honest,
Speaker 1: so it's like you're gonna be out there with you know,
Speaker 1: your family members who are kind of like out there
Speaker 1: working your land, and then like next door it's gonna
Speaker 1: be Jeff, and then you know, like there's Jeff and Diane,
Speaker 1: you know, getting to getting it, and so it just
Speaker 1: kind of like keeps going in this way. So to
Speaker 1: be honest, you're living real cheek by gel with other
Speaker 1: people despite the fact that you are in the countryside.
Speaker 1: So if you're in the field, that's who you're going
Speaker 1: to see. Now if you're kind of like back at
Speaker 1: home and your living quarters kind of depends on the
Speaker 1: side of the farm. Because if you're rich, which you
Speaker 1: know some of these people are, you're going to have
Speaker 1: people like dairy maids, and you're going to have like
Speaker 1: helpers within the house. You're going to have like shepherds
Speaker 1: that you oversee people like that and you'll see them
Speaker 1: as they come and go. See you could have a
Speaker 1: staff of a not insignificant number of people. If you
Speaker 1: are poor which about half of peasants are less so obviously,
Speaker 1: but the thing is, you might be working the rich
Speaker 1: peasants land. So say you're like one of the one
Speaker 1: of the dairy maids. It's like you help your parents
Speaker 1: out in the morning and then you go over there
Speaker 1: and then you come back. So you know, you still
Speaker 1: see a fair number of people, is the answer. It's
Speaker 1: not particularly solitary. There are a lot of people around
Speaker 1: doing exactly the same thing as you, and you're kind
Speaker 1: of moving back and forth. So it's just a really
Speaker 1: different way of looking at farming because now, as a
Speaker 1: result of enclosure and the way that farms work, it's
Speaker 1: just totally fucking different, right, But at the time, this
Speaker 1: is like a really intensely social yeah sort of life.
Speaker 2: I guess that's good for them and that that is awesome,
Speaker 2: because every time I think about it, I just think
Speaker 2: these people just like completely surrounded by just their family, Like,
Speaker 2: oh god, that's got to be terrible at all times.
Speaker 2: But uh, you know, no, you had other people there.
Speaker 2: You could be like, wow, I wish my family was
Speaker 2: just here. I imagine like you like you live next
Speaker 2: to just like the most annoying family.
Speaker 1: Oh god, oh God. Yeah, if you've got bad neighbors,
Speaker 1: it's no good. Like I mean, think about harvest time
Speaker 1: when everyone is helping everyone. You just feel like Jesus
Speaker 1: fucking great, it would be the worst.
Speaker 2: Oh God, yeap h m in your face. Thank you
Speaker 2: very much for the question. Next, we got one from
Speaker 2: Rita Patina, who says, do we know if medieval cities
Speaker 2: had too many pigeons or is that a modern age thing?
Speaker 2: I just walked downstairs that are constantly covered in pigeon
Speaker 2: poop and was wondering about the longevity of the stones.
Speaker 1: Well, so the answer is that, yes, medieval cities have hellipigeons,
Speaker 1: but they are all pets. That's why we have pigeons
Speaker 1: now awful.
Speaker 2: So they are They're awful. What is wrong with you medieval.
Speaker 1: I've completely I've completely changed my mind on pigeons recently
Speaker 1: because of medieval people. And the reason why pigeons are
Speaker 1: in cities is they were beloved sky puppies, and medieval
Speaker 1: people were like, hell, yeah, you could really get some
Speaker 1: pigeons in here, and they would bring them in. So,
Speaker 1: you know, you see this all the time. If you
Speaker 1: see kind of like older architecture, like a medieval architecture
Speaker 1: or even early modern architecture, and they would kind of
Speaker 1: like build pigeon houses into the sides of their houses
Speaker 1: so that you would like have a kind of thing
Speaker 1: up top with lots of little you know, like you
Speaker 1: would miss out a couple of bricks so that there's
Speaker 1: like kind of a little pattern so the pigeons can
Speaker 1: go up there and roost. And they just like pigeons
Speaker 1: man like, they think they're neat, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: parrots for them. And that is kind of how rock
Speaker 1: doves came into cities initially. Was it's like intentional. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you would have a lot of pigeons, but they are
Speaker 1: less faeral, I mean. And and that's the thing about
Speaker 1: rock doves in cities is they're all feral technically, like
Speaker 1: these these are meant to be pets. That's that's what
Speaker 1: they're meant to do. And so here in the UK,
Speaker 1: we you know, we have several kinds of pigeons, so
Speaker 1: we got rock doves. You know, rock doves are out
Speaker 1: there doing they thing. We also have wood pigeons for
Speaker 1: much larger and they're more like you're eating pigeon, so
Speaker 1: they're they're bigger they got wood pigeons. They got a
Speaker 1: green head, and they.
Speaker 2: Got a little they got a little whoah yeah, ok.
Speaker 1: Yeah, white collar around their neck and they're they're like
Speaker 1: plump little guys and they're super cute. But you know
Speaker 1: they were forests, right, and so they're not they're not
Speaker 1: the pet type. They're the type that's kind of like
Speaker 1: a chilling chillen. Yeah, And I don't know. I met
Speaker 1: this racing pigeon when I was at Scarborough Castle last
Speaker 1: Easter and she was so cute and she was like
Speaker 1: she should have just gone home, but she was like, hey, homie,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? And she just kind of kept
Speaker 1: like following me around the castle and like hopping up
Speaker 1: the stairs after me and then like landing on my shoulder.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, you need to go home, honey,
Speaker 1: Like you're racing right now, go like your owner is
Speaker 1: waiting for you.
Speaker 2: And she's like, oh no, I thought we would check
Speaker 2: out the castle, homie, let's hang out.
Speaker 1: But I was like, I'm afraid.
Speaker 2: I fuck.
Speaker 1: I love pigeons.
Speaker 2: Now You're like, you're like, this is great, and then
Speaker 2: you got all those diseases terrible.
Speaker 1: Oh well, they're definitely not Rock does like the racing pigeons.
Speaker 1: Like when when she took off, I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, she's so fast. I was like, but they are,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of When I was over
Speaker 1: in Malaysia New Year's I saw like some wild ass pigeons.
Speaker 1: I saw like these like a great Victorian crusted pigeons,
Speaker 1: and they're like the size of a small dog, Like
Speaker 1: they're huge, dude. Yeah, and that's a that's a great
Speaker 1: kind of pigeon. Shout out to like that's a great pigeon.
Speaker 1: Now that's a pigeon. Yes, I'm like, beautiful pigeon.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like this has been pigeon chat with Eleanor.
Speaker 1: I like those big old pigeons, big old jungle pigeon.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, show me that ship. That's great. But they're
Speaker 1: actually very intelligent and it's not their fault. It's there all.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's their fault, just like I don't
Speaker 2: think it's the rats fault. It's not the rats fault
Speaker 2: that they carry disease around with them all the time.
Speaker 2: But I don't want but I don't want them near me,
Speaker 2: just like I don't want the pigeons do me. But
Speaker 2: they're cool. I'm happy, and I don't want them to die.
Speaker 2: I just don't, you know, like spiders, I want them anywhere.
Speaker 2: Knew men feel it, look away from me, feel it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I mean, like shut shut out pigeons. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you would see a lot of them.
Speaker 2: It's not that I see a ton of pigeons down here.
Speaker 2: Uh No, not a ton. We get. We get a
Speaker 2: lot of birds in the backyard. Got a woodpecker who
Speaker 2: likes to peck on our fence, which I think is funny.
Speaker 2: Shout out because it's like because it's like I found
Speaker 2: out that the pecking is actually a form of marking territory.
Speaker 2: And uh, I'm like, who are you marking this from?
Speaker 2: You're the only woodpecker here, man, That's.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right.
Speaker 2: He's like, I am to keep it that way, motherfucker.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, get it. They get a lot of
Speaker 2: fun birds in the backyard, just no pigeons. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I got nothing against pigeons specifically. I just don't want
Speaker 2: all that disease. Uh As for stone, uh, it can stand.
Speaker 2: It can stand up to many, many, many hundreds of
Speaker 2: years of bird ship thousands of years. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2: They don't. I don't think bird shit really does that
Speaker 2: eats a weight stone or anything. I don't. I'm sure
Speaker 2: there probably is some that if you leave it there
Speaker 2: for long enough, it's so acidic that it would harm it.
Speaker 2: But like, again, how long you have to leave Like
Speaker 2: how long do you have to leave it there? And
Speaker 2: it's not going to get moved by just it being
Speaker 2: jostled around or rain or wind or you know what well.
Speaker 1: I mean, like if you go to any of the
Speaker 1: former Venetian colonies here, like the Venetians really liked pigeons
Speaker 1: and so like you see all these like elaborate pigeon
Speaker 1: houses they build and they're made out of stone, and
Speaker 1: they're still there like some hundred years later, and I
Speaker 1: don't think you're probably not going to come up with
Speaker 1: a larger collection of pigeon shit anywhere, and like they're
Speaker 1: still taken over.
Speaker 2: So yeah, if I know one thing about Italy, it's
Speaker 2: that there's a whole fuck load of pigeons there and
Speaker 2: they like to fly around in huge in huge flocks
Speaker 2: when people start shooting guns at each other. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: there you go. That's my contribution. Uh Riita, thank you
Speaker 2: very much for the question. Next week got one from A. T. Delphos.
Speaker 2: His question is basically about publication dates for medieval works.
Speaker 2: So like you know, Wikipedia says the publication date for
Speaker 2: the Divine Comedy is thirteen twenty one, but what does
Speaker 2: that mean? Like you couldn't buy it printed from the
Speaker 2: printed to the store from a publishing house, Like what
Speaker 2: could you do? How did it spread? And like basically
Speaker 2: summing up the question in this period when like long
Speaker 2: works that are not done by members of the church,
Speaker 2: non official authors, how do they come into existence before
Speaker 2: the movable type area era? How are they copied and
Speaker 2: turned into new objects that are disseminated.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, great question and the answer is that you
Speaker 1: usually kind of pay for it of it. So like
Speaker 1: a great example of this is a Christina Paisson, and
Speaker 1: Christina Paisson very specifically for her stuff like the Book
Speaker 1: of the City of Ladies and things like that, she
Speaker 1: controlled the manuscript like house, so like she had a scriptoria, right,
Speaker 1: so you can have you can have scriptoria that are secular.
Speaker 1: It's just that we see a lot of scriptoria that
Speaker 1: are monastic in character. And as the period uh goes on,
Speaker 1: we see more and more professional scriptoria so increasingly, like
Speaker 1: when you think of like the really really richly decorated manuscripts,
Speaker 1: that are the ones that are kind of popping into
Speaker 1: your head when you think about it's so yeah, like
Speaker 1: a Christina Paisan text or like the trey Reshiers of
Speaker 1: the Duke Debouts. Right, these were made by professionals, not monks.
Speaker 1: So these are made by people who are ours, who
Speaker 1: are making a living, right, And now those are like
Speaker 1: way way luxury things, right, But if your Dante, what
Speaker 1: you would do is you would basically like go to
Speaker 1: those people and you could say, yeah, like I am
Speaker 1: paying X amount to have this many copies made and
Speaker 1: then those get out, okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now if you then see a copy of it and
Speaker 1: read it, or like you've heard some of it, and
Speaker 1: you say, I would like my own copy of Dante's Inferno,
Speaker 1: you can then either go back to that house or
Speaker 1: you can copy it out yourself if you are literate.
Speaker 1: And that is really fucking common. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the time people who have less money, if they can write,
Speaker 1: will just go ahead and write their own copy, Like
Speaker 1: they'll just sit there and copy it out and like
Speaker 1: for them, this is also a way of reading it
Speaker 1: at the same time, and then you have your own
Speaker 1: copy and like badabing bada boom, you're done for other things.
Speaker 1: So I think that I may have mentioned this in
Speaker 1: passing before, but there's this thing called the Peakia system
Speaker 1: pay p E C C I A the Pigea system,
Speaker 1: and the Pigea system is the way that people would
Speaker 1: get texts and things if they are working in particular
Speaker 1: crafts that require them. So say you're like a university
Speaker 1: student and you've got to like have a bunch of
Speaker 1: fucking Aristotle. There are shops that you could go to
Speaker 1: that would like lend you the little bit that you need,
Speaker 1: and then you would just go home and like copy
Speaker 1: it out as quickly as you couldn't go you'd go
Speaker 1: back and return it. So it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: lending library that you pay for whilst you make your
Speaker 1: own copy. And this is super common for people like
Speaker 1: physicians who like, you know, if one of their friends
Speaker 1: has a particular thing, you might copy it off of
Speaker 1: that or you might rent it from different places. So
Speaker 1: you know, aspiring people who run like a Pigea shop
Speaker 1: or whatever, then they might have a copy of the
Speaker 1: Inferno or for Bocaccio. You might be like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: I've got day one right here, right, and you can
Speaker 1: rent day one and then copy it yourself. So that's
Speaker 1: how those things get seminated. So it's usually kind of
Speaker 1: a trickle down effect. So there's gonna be people right
Speaker 1: up the top who are able to control production of
Speaker 1: many scripts, and then there's gonna be kind of smaller
Speaker 1: fish down the other end, who you know, maybe they'll
Speaker 1: hire someone to copy it, or they'll copy it themselves,
Speaker 1: things like this, So there's all sorts of ways. And indeed,
Speaker 1: one of the things that bothers medievalists is that actually
Speaker 1: a little bit too much is made of the printing
Speaker 1: press sometimes because what the printing the people's kind of
Speaker 1: misunderstand like what the printing press does. It's not that
Speaker 1: the printing press necessarily allows for more things to be disseminated,
Speaker 1: because shit is disseminating all the time. In the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: we get copies of stuff all over the place, like
Speaker 1: it's moving around. It allows for singular author control, yeah,
Speaker 1: more specifically, so it'll allows for more control about like
Speaker 1: one specific message, which is why it's so specifically good
Speaker 1: for propaganda, which is why it does so well for
Speaker 1: Martin Luther because he's like, I've got this vision and
Speaker 1: I want to say peasants are evil, right, and then
Speaker 1: he can and then he can do that. So actually,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, you know, one of the ways
Speaker 1: of looking at the printing press that medievalist like, I'm
Speaker 1: hardly the first to say that this is just kind
Speaker 1: of like a common as dirt conception. The printing press
Speaker 1: is actually like deeply conservative because what it does is
Speaker 1: it allows you to just say, no, this is the
Speaker 1: one way of doing it, whereas the medieval ways of
Speaker 1: doing things are much more fluid and they allow for
Speaker 1: individuals to be more involved with the productions of the
Speaker 1: things that they are reading. So, yeah, publication is like
Speaker 1: a really weird way of putting it. You're you're absolutely
Speaker 1: bang on here, Delphos. It's like basically they're they're like
Speaker 1: there's no such thing. Like you're not like releasing it
Speaker 1: to fanfare, Like they're like, no one there are like
Speaker 1: publishers who are like throwing you a fucking party, right,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's what's going down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I uh yeah, it's I'm shocked that
Speaker 2: a that a revolutionary piece of information technology was at
Speaker 2: once both conservative and also gave us is one of
Speaker 2: the only reasons we have access to the many number
Speaker 2: of ideas and things that we have today, so they
Speaker 2: could spread like that. So yeah, I wonder if that's
Speaker 2: ever gonna happen again, like with say the internet or
Speaker 2: the telephone. Anyway. Yeah, with like any publication date before
Speaker 2: the printing press, that publication date is like, eh, it
Speaker 2: kind of came out around here, maybe the first copy
Speaker 2: went out. Like a big thing about Baccaccio that he
Speaker 2: one of the things that he was known for during
Speaker 2: his life was that he like he resuscitated did like
Speaker 2: the the Dante copies going around and and like had
Speaker 2: a bunch of new ones done and published and printed
Speaker 2: out and everything, and uh, you know kept that from
Speaker 2: going away. Not that it would have like gone away
Speaker 2: forever necessarily, but he was credited with that during his life.
Speaker 2: So it's one of those things where you know, you
Speaker 2: send it out and you get that and uh, sometimes,
Speaker 2: like with Boccaccio, you parts of it would get published
Speaker 2: long before other parts of it did, So you might
Speaker 2: have you know, days one and two, but you know,
Speaker 2: might not get the rest of it for a while.
Speaker 2: Because either he's taken a long time to finish.
Speaker 1: It or.
Speaker 2: Nobody's printed it in your language or anything like that.
Speaker 2: And like this is something that wasn't uncommon Like at
Speaker 2: the time scientific papers were passed around like this, and
Speaker 2: if you, if you wrote a scientific paper, like you
Speaker 2: wouldn't necessarily like have like a church scribe like rewrite
Speaker 2: it for you and like send it to everyone. They
Speaker 2: might do that, but like you would like send it
Speaker 2: to a guy at another monastery and he's looking at
Speaker 2: it comparing it with these things, it's like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: got to rewrite this in you know, whatever language so people,
Speaker 2: you know, so it can understand it. And yeah, so
Speaker 2: it was a collaborative effort that has long since been streamlined,
Speaker 2: which is bad. But the streamlining also means we get
Speaker 2: more information, which is good, but the information is bad bad.
Speaker 2: Can I go now anyway? Yeah, yeah, thank you very
Speaker 2: much for the question, and a good point. When we
Speaker 2: talk about publication dates for these things, they are fuzzy
Speaker 2: at best, and a lot of times a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff used to get published posthumously because they were like, well,
Speaker 2: I found Bocaccio's notes. What if we just through all
Speaker 2: this stuff out there too, like, yeah, cool.
Speaker 1: That's fine, why not sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sure yeah uh.
Speaker 2: I nextly got one hipster wizard says I would love
Speaker 2: to get my super Catholic late grandmother canonized, but her
Speaker 2: remains have been a bit lax on the whole miracle front.
Speaker 2: What sort of prime what would be some prime miracles
Speaker 2: for it would be saint to perform posthumously.
Speaker 1: Well, if your grandmother was racist, she could get her
Speaker 1: ghost to like chase some monks of the of the
Speaker 1: wrong nationality out. That'd be ye, that's number one.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you could still get that. Like imagine
Speaker 2: going to the pope now, like going to Pope Francis
Speaker 2: like twenty three and being like, I want to make
Speaker 2: this woman. I want to make my grandmother saint and
Speaker 2: they're like why and it's like because she's Serbian and
Speaker 2: she yelled at you know, the croats or whatever. And
Speaker 2: he's like, I got serbians and croats doing that over
Speaker 2: there right now? Why is this news?
Speaker 1: Like come on, like, what's going on? What's going on?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, and so yeah, obviously, look we can't
Speaker 1: all be spotty broke up, shout out, but like the
Speaker 1: basic baseline miracles are healing usually, so big ones that
Speaker 1: you will see all the time are like a curing blindness,
Speaker 1: curing any kind of mobility issue. That's a real big one.
Speaker 1: Sickness of any description, leprosy, Like if you could get
Speaker 1: some leprosy curing, that would that would be pretty good
Speaker 1: for bonus points. It would be helpful if your grandmother
Speaker 1: would show up in that person's dream, tell them that
Speaker 1: they should go on pilgrimage to her body, and then
Speaker 1: cure them when they get there. That's a big one.
Speaker 1: Another big one is manumission, So finding some enslaved people
Speaker 1: and freeing them, like letting them out.
Speaker 2: I'm buying slaves, but only so I can free them.
Speaker 2: I just want to be a Catholic saint tapping that
Speaker 2: into Google how to buy slaves. No, not like that,
Speaker 2: not like that, not like that.
Speaker 1: So I mean, uh, if Granny could show up like
Speaker 1: over in like the Emirates or something, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like maybe granted Granny can free the very many prisoners
Speaker 1: in America who are the force to fight wildfires for
Speaker 1: no remuneration, for example, that would do it. That would
Speaker 1: do it really really well. Like those are the major
Speaker 1: posthumous miracles although like you get the occasional wild saints,
Speaker 1: you know, like like Saper Copious or there's like some
Speaker 1: flat and very famously in like the French cannon. Like
Speaker 1: she just like she'll do all kind of weird shit,
Speaker 1: like she'll rip your eyeball out if you don't leave
Speaker 1: her enough candle wax. Like she know, she's like she will,
Speaker 1: she will threaten you. She's a little bit more of
Speaker 1: a monster than the saint. But everybody's like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love this. This is really really good. So like
Speaker 1: I mean, who's to say what is good or bad
Speaker 1: on that particular front.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like.
Speaker 1: Many people, you know, they'll they'll take a threat looking
Speaker 1: at things.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I like, I think Saint Teresa's uh miracles for example,
Speaker 1: or like formerly Mother teresas they've all been healing, I think,
Speaker 1: or shit, yeah, well look look like the placebo effect.
Speaker 2: Is not not do it not not getting on the
Speaker 2: Mother Teresa hobby horse here hipster wizard. I think basically
Speaker 2: what we're arriving at here is you need to like
Speaker 2: spruce up the burial place a little bit, make it
Speaker 2: look kind of pilgrimage, and uh you know, get uh
Speaker 2: really get some people to be like, hey, is my grandmother?
Speaker 2: Has she shown up in your dreams? Maybe? Uh, fix
Speaker 2: your broken ankle?
Speaker 1: Look, start some stories. I think that that's the best
Speaker 1: thing that you can do, is start telling stories and
Speaker 1: then get the pilgrims to come and then it'll just happen.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, it takes money to make money.
Speaker 1: It takes miracles to make miracles. Like I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 1: what haven't you had a dream with your grandma in
Speaker 1: and then what happened? Yeah, that's right in right in
Speaker 1: with any miracles that your grandmother may.
Speaker 2: Have had, may have performed. Yeah, it will help you out.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Maybe uh, maybe she could perform a miracle and appear
Speaker 2: at the conclave to all of the assembled cardinals and they.
Speaker 1: Can pick someone who doesn't suck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pick someone who doesn't suck. Yeah, that Tagle guy apparently,
Speaker 2: uh Tagle, who's one of the big names to be
Speaker 2: to be the next pope. Possibly like didn't originally want
Speaker 2: to be a priest. He wanted to be a doctor,
Speaker 2: but he ended up becoming a priest because he was
Speaker 2: essentially kidnapped and forced.
Speaker 1: To stay in it for a classics and because like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, I'm here now I might as well anyway,
Speaker 2: Hipster Wizard, thank you very much for the question. We
Speaker 2: got a couple more, one from Gaffzie. How much overlap
Speaker 2: was there between Jewish, Islamic and Christian mystical traditions in
Speaker 2: the medieval world. Were overlaps considered particularly suspected one tradition
Speaker 2: or another? There was a lot of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and so one of the big things is geometry.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So, like geometry as a mystical practice and
Speaker 1: tradition is a huge for all of the people of
Speaker 1: the book.
Speaker 2: At the time.
Speaker 1: There is reason why you learn it as part of
Speaker 1: the quadrivium. It is considered like absolutely necessary for kind
Speaker 1: of like understanding how the cosmos works. So geometry has
Speaker 1: like some special way of kind of like unlocking the
Speaker 1: order of the universe and understanding the way that God works.
Speaker 1: Is a really really specific thing and very cool. There's
Speaker 1: a great book about it called Sacred Geometry, which you
Speaker 1: could pick up and read, which I like. Similarly, like
Speaker 1: a mystical are approaches to alchemy, for example, which are
Speaker 1: shared across all of the people of the book. Everybody
Speaker 1: loves a bit of alchemy, don't they and you know
Speaker 1: that's it's essentially mystical chemistry, isn't it. And I say
Speaker 1: mystical here because you know, they're not really looking to
Speaker 1: make gold. I mean some people are. What they're what
Speaker 1: they're looking to do is make like the elixir of life.
Speaker 1: You know, they're they're they're they're singing the Philosopher's Stone,
Speaker 1: so like that that's that's what they're they're doing over there.
Speaker 1: The thing people kind of get down on is usually
Speaker 1: they usually indulge in some light anti Semitism and get
Speaker 1: like all worked up about like Cabbala and like the
Speaker 1: name of God, like.
Speaker 2: The same fucking numerology you're all doing, you weirdos, you're
Speaker 2: all doing numerology. Yeah, yeah, differently.
Speaker 1: Completely, So you know, like basically, if there's an opportunity
Speaker 1: for Christians to be anti Semitic, they're gonna, like they're
Speaker 1: gonna get down on it. Weirdly with this stuff from
Speaker 1: the Christian perspective, they're like, oh yeah, hell yeah, Like
Speaker 1: Muslims have this shit on lock, and then they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's that Jewish person doing? Like it's just like okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't I don't know, like I think
Speaker 1: that It just kind of like has to do with
Speaker 1: the way that knowledge circulates a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's from this that we get traditions
Speaker 1: like you know, the legend of the golum and things
Speaker 1: like that, you know, like all that good stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you also, as you mentioned numerology, everybody's doing numerology and
Speaker 1: they're doing it big. They absolutely love to do some numerology.
Speaker 1: That's very fun. Yeah like that. So basically a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that involves maths is like huge overlap. Like
Speaker 1: maths and sciences are kind of like considered the sacred,
Speaker 1: and I think that maybe if we continue to look
Speaker 1: at them that way, I'd find them more interesting. But
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, do you like geometry. I like geometry.
Speaker 1: I could get down on trigonometry. I think that's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, astrology was big. They were all doing urology. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: including theological charts like what we would call real astrology,
Speaker 2: which is astronomy, and also you know astrological charts and
Speaker 2: signs and things, because those were, uh that was part
Speaker 2: of science back then. We've talked about it many times.
Speaker 2: But yeah, oh I guess that like.
Speaker 1: Also within this uh we we kind of have to
Speaker 1: consider things like music is a little bit considered.
Speaker 2: As well.
Speaker 1: So you know, like when when people came up with polyphony,
Speaker 1: they were like, holy ship, this is a fucking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like multiple people and instruments going at once in
Speaker 2: tune and harmony. Amazing, look at what we've done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they all kind of do different things.
Speaker 1: Like the people I love to have like a little
Speaker 1: chart where they try to figure out if you're going
Speaker 1: to live or die if you're sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know like that. Oh yeah, the pe charts
Speaker 2: they love the arts.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and like everybody's doing that. Everyone's really into it.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of like you can get told off
Speaker 1: for doing that, but everybody's doing it, so you know,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Like if they're you know, looking down on
Speaker 2: one another for these traditions, like I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: y'all are just uh, you're just jealous, like you're you're
Speaker 2: seeing you're seeing things in in the other, in your
Speaker 2: other like similar religions that like you don't really like
Speaker 2: in your own thing, and you know, are like, oh
Speaker 2: they don't they do that. It's like, yeah, of course
Speaker 2: they do numerology because you do too. It's just they
Speaker 2: don't they consider three or seven to be the number
Speaker 2: instead of eight or nine or whatever. I don't remember
Speaker 2: the numerology shit, I've for long forgotten that stuff. Whatever,
Speaker 2: your angel numbers are fine with me, yeah, ga see.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for the question. Last one we
Speaker 2: got is from Finnett, who says, hey, awesome people. Hey,
Speaker 2: I recently saw the film Warfare in theaters, and I
Speaker 2: thought the approach to filmmaking was really interesting and got
Speaker 2: me thinking about historical interpretation in film and other media
Speaker 2: in general. They took an almost forensic or anthropological approach
Speaker 2: to the film, writing, writing the script, and structuring scenes
Speaker 2: purely off of memories of participants in the real incident.
Speaker 2: They still had to make creative choices when evidence conflicted
Speaker 2: or there was a gap in the memory, but overall,
Speaker 2: they tried to create a work of fiction that was
Speaker 2: as much like your reality as they could make it.
Speaker 2: My question is is there any value in this kind
Speaker 2: of quote forensic fiction in quote in a historical film
Speaker 2: or novel. Do you think you could provide inside or
Speaker 2: understanding or cultivate audience interest in a way that a
Speaker 2: more traditional film or non fiction history book could not. Generally,
Speaker 2: when you're engaging in with a history inspired work, how
Speaker 2: do you assess whether a work is adding value to
Speaker 2: cultural understanding versus causing harm or misleading public perception? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and bonus, just for fun, if you could make a
Speaker 2: movie about anything in medieval history, what would you choose?
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is a very interesting question. And I
Speaker 1: guess that where the value in this lies is currently
Speaker 1: at this moment, we are we are very interested in
Speaker 1: the concept of true whatever, right, So, like, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to interview people and get their particular take
Speaker 1: on something that happened to them is valuable because we
Speaker 1: like to hear it from the horse's mouth, don't. But
Speaker 1: you've hit on the issue here, which is that you're
Speaker 1: eventually going to get into a Roschamon situation, right, which
Speaker 1: is that like people are going to remember things differently.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about this, like I had to
Speaker 1: do a thing for work the other day where I
Speaker 1: was like talking about powder monkeys, you know, and and
Speaker 1: there's this there's this one favorite famous powder monkey who
Speaker 1: lived through the Battle of Trafalgar called Robert Sands, and
Speaker 1: he wrote down his own recollection of what had happened
Speaker 1: on that particular day, and he survived like in absolutely
Speaker 1: batshit conditions, and he like writes this recollection. But the recollection,
Speaker 1: when you read it, is very obviously also influenced by
Speaker 1: recorded and reported incidents of the day. So like what
Speaker 1: other people had said about how the ships were spaced,
Speaker 1: he's like writing down in this so saying like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the ships were this, they were spaced in this way,
Speaker 1: or like he was using phrases that had come from
Speaker 1: reports in newspapers about that date. Now that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that he wasn't there, and he was able to supply
Speaker 1: really interesting testimony about what had happened to him, because
Speaker 1: like the there's this thing in ships, you know, when
Speaker 1: when the seas were battlefields, et cetera, where like ships
Speaker 1: would have a thing that was called a fear not,
Speaker 1: and it's like basically you would keep a screen to
Speaker 1: the powder room soaking wet all the time so that
Speaker 1: it wouldn't catch fire in the whole fucking thing would
Speaker 1: blow up. Right in this case, the fear knot itself
Speaker 1: caught fire and like home, I got out of the
Speaker 1: powder room like just before the whole fucking thing blew
Speaker 1: and like several people were burnt to death in like
Speaker 1: the worst possible fucking circumstances. Right, So these are important
Speaker 1: bits of information that we get out of it, but
Speaker 1: fundamentally his memory is also tainted because he's he's absorbed
Speaker 1: these things. So it's like kind of the best way
Speaker 1: that you could have like an absolutely forensic report off
Speaker 1: of someone would be like, right when they're done, be like, hey,
Speaker 1: what the fuck just happened, and start writing it down.
Speaker 1: Then anytime you've got a gap, that gap is going
Speaker 1: to get filled in and things are going to kind
Speaker 1: of happen out of time. It's not just necessarily that
Speaker 1: you're you're going to forget things. That is that is
Speaker 1: an issue, of course, but it's also that you're going
Speaker 1: to add things, You're going to embellish, your brain is
Speaker 1: going to start doing other things. Do I think that
Speaker 1: there's a value in this, abs fucking lutely because I
Speaker 1: think that there's always a value in eyewitness testimony and
Speaker 1: also getting this information from people. So even though so
Speaker 1: for example, I'm talking about poor Robert Stands account, but
Speaker 1: actually I think that that is useful information anyway, because
Speaker 1: what it ends up telling us is what is media
Speaker 1: like in that day? What is the consumption of the
Speaker 1: average person. Here's a dude who lived through it, and
Speaker 1: he's still really consuming the media, which kind of shows
Speaker 1: that this is for him kind of like the story
Speaker 1: of his life, right, Like, this is that he's been
Speaker 1: He's been telling this fucking story down the pub for
Speaker 1: free drinks for the rest of his goddam life, right
Speaker 1: Like he was like seventeen at the time and he's
Speaker 1: been dining out on it ever since, right, And so
Speaker 1: that tells us a lot about culture and how he thinks.
Speaker 1: So there's still a lot of value in that for
Speaker 1: me about whether or not film is useful and like
Speaker 1: whether or not I think that a history inspired work
Speaker 1: is good and adding to cultural understanding is usually like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, are you actually trying, right, because you know,
Speaker 1: there are things that happen all the time in terms
Speaker 1: of stuff coming out, and it's like every time I
Speaker 1: see a medieval movie and it's like darken dingy and
Speaker 1: everyone is filthy, I'm furious immediately, you know, because I'm
Speaker 1: just like, what fox it? Could we just like not
Speaker 1: try a little bit harder? Could you not? Like you
Speaker 1: sorry you can't find blue clothing? Is it really that
Speaker 1: fucking hard, Like it's that hard to paint a room red,
Speaker 1: like you do it all the time for everything else.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's you know, anytime you make
Speaker 1: a movie about the medieval period and you like imply
Speaker 1: people don't bathe, I'm gonna be fucking furious, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's that's bad. But I think that there is real
Speaker 1: value in having things like this where you're like, no, no,
Speaker 1: people said this, and so that can kind of help
Speaker 1: people to understand right here is here are what eyewitness
Speaker 1: accounts say. I don't need, as I said every time,
Speaker 1: I don't need every single historical movie to be one
Speaker 1: hundred percent accurate, but I do need, unfortunately, for people
Speaker 1: to have a better understanding of how film works.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Like, part of the issue that we have is because
Speaker 1: history education is so poor across society that people think
Speaker 1: when they're watching a movie that they're seeing history.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So it's like, it's not that I didn't enjoy a
Speaker 1: glad or two. I did, but like, I fucking worry
Speaker 1: that people might think that there are newspapers in Rome
Speaker 1: now and that isn't the fault of the filmmakers. That's
Speaker 1: actually the fault of our society for doing a poor
Speaker 1: job of history. And I think that actually it would
Speaker 1: just be fine if everyone could just be chilling out
Speaker 1: and enjoying a history movie. But it's just for fun.
Speaker 1: If I can make a movie about anything in medieval history,
Speaker 1: I think it would be fun to do kind of
Speaker 1: like I want to do kind of like a Cameron
Speaker 1: type situation that like shows what the what what people
Speaker 1: are doing while the Black Death is going on. I
Speaker 1: think it would be kind of be fun to have
Speaker 1: like a buddy kind of thing and be like, well,
Speaker 1: how are these guys surviving and the like going in
Speaker 1: on that. I think, you know, you could do a
Speaker 1: cub comedy around that, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, I don't like I mean, I think doing
Speaker 2: things by memory is I don't think there's anything necessarily
Speaker 2: wrong with it, But like, I think that prizing memory
Speaker 2: over anything else is a logical fallacy that we're walking
Speaker 2: into if we do this, because memory is not clear,
Speaker 2: like you know, there are always going to be things
Speaker 2: that change and color memory and perception and and so
Speaker 2: I don't think it's I think I think like relying
Speaker 2: on that is very difficult because like people remember stuff
Speaker 2: differently based on what happened and everything like that, and
Speaker 2: also like for something like warfare specifically where it's like
Speaker 2: people talking, like where it's like vets like talking about
Speaker 2: their their struggle or whatever, it's like, okay, fine, like whatever.
Speaker 2: I've seen plenty of like shooting cry movies before, but
Speaker 2: like what is like what is this adding? And if
Speaker 2: you're putting this in like Okay, you're very sad that
Speaker 2: you had to kill people and you and you did that,
Speaker 2: but like why like why are all these people getting shot?
Speaker 2: Why is that happening? What is this? And it's like
Speaker 2: with some I don't think you have to include all
Speaker 2: of that info on every story, but like if you're
Speaker 2: doing like a modern like if you're doing a modern
Speaker 2: story about a modern American war or just a war
Speaker 2: happening generally right now, like you probably need something like
Speaker 2: that other than it just being like yeah, look at
Speaker 2: these troops. They remembered some stuff and like it's like okay, cool.
Speaker 2: Like I've seen idiot meatheads like acting movies before. I
Speaker 2: don't you know, like what is the what is the
Speaker 2: benefit of this? And so like I think with that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, it's like yeah, sure, like it could
Speaker 2: be good, but like I don't want to see any
Speaker 2: I don't want to see the stuff when it's just
Speaker 2: like when it when it's just like Americans being like
Speaker 2: yeah we did this, Uh we were there? Why were
Speaker 2: you there? What? Like what why was why were you
Speaker 2: fighting for democracy there? Uh? Did you find the democracy
Speaker 2: in that person's house? Like was it in was it
Speaker 2: in that family? Hiding in the closet? Like I'm like,
Speaker 2: it's something like that. And as for like whether like
Speaker 2: the media like like where you draw the line, the
Speaker 2: line is personal. It's different for everyone. Eleanor said it earlier,
Speaker 2: like the thing about everything being drab or whatever really
Speaker 2: bothers her, And I completely understand that it doesn't bother
Speaker 2: me specifically, Like I notice it, but like I don't,
Speaker 2: like it's not something I get like upset about. But
Speaker 2: like the the thing about it is that society is
Speaker 2: supposed to equip us with the the skills to to
Speaker 2: understand art and put it in its proper context, and
Speaker 2: we don't do that. We've never done that, like like
Speaker 2: forget like, oh, we have this problem right now. It's
Speaker 2: been a problem since mass communication even before that, but
Speaker 2: especially since then, Like it's a huge problem. We don't
Speaker 2: teach people how to interpret this stuff, and so true
Speaker 2: just causes a lot of fucking problems. And so like
Speaker 2: when people, you know, and it's like let's watch Robin Hood,
Speaker 2: the one with Russell crow It's like this movie fucking sucks.
Speaker 2: We can laugh at it. There's some goofy stuff in it,
Speaker 2: but like you know, people who go into that should
Speaker 2: like should take away from it that like regardless of
Speaker 2: whether I liked the story or didn't like the story
Speaker 2: or thought it was fun, or I just like Russell
Speaker 2: Crowe or whatever, like you can you can look at
Speaker 2: that and be like, yeah, that shit obviously didn't happen
Speaker 2: like that like like fairly easily. And so that's something
Speaker 2: we have to do with society. Uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: that that's pretty much it. Like it's you know, as
Speaker 2: for like what historical thing I would do? Fuck, I
Speaker 2: don't even know, Like.
Speaker 1: I just I don't know, Like what about a peasants vote?
Speaker 1: What about like the Jackara?
Speaker 2: Well yeah you could yeah, like you could do that,
Speaker 2: like you could do you could do a peasants revote,
Speaker 2: you could do like.
Speaker 1: I'd like to do the hoose sites. But when it
Speaker 1: doesn't suck, like I don't, Yeah, I like not medieval.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you that the Hoosites would be The Hosites
Speaker 2: would be interesting, like like any of these like classless
Speaker 2: clash of like civilization type things like uh like yingis
Speaker 2: Khan going down to to China like sacking like Beijing
Speaker 2: and all that sort of Like yeah, like just like
Speaker 2: stuff like that. Like it would probably be about the Mongols.
Speaker 2: I just find them so fascinating. Just set up this
Speaker 2: like that, like can't like on on any historical timeline
Speaker 2: has like a shelf life of at most two hundred years.
Speaker 2: Like we're getting to the point where like you're gonna
Speaker 2: have gunpowder and everything and it's going to eliminate the
Speaker 2: advantage of step horse archers and there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 2: anyway that that would be for me. Finnett, thank you
Speaker 2: very much for the question. I think I think that's
Speaker 2: going to be all the questions we've got for today.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, patrons who submitted them. Thank you
Speaker 2: everyone for listening. If you like them, you know, sign
Speaker 2: up on the Patreon and check us out. Eleanor what
Speaker 2: do you got going on?
Speaker 1: I did write a blog post last week, so I
Speaker 1: ranted some more about that poll about about what my
Speaker 1: Americans know about medieval history. So you can go check
Speaker 1: that out if you haven't heard enough from me on
Speaker 1: the subject. Otherwise, you know your girls on the socials
Speaker 1: at going medieval. Uh you know, like that's what's up.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean, what can I say. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a rich and very tapestry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you can find me. Luca is amazing on
Speaker 2: the social media's and uh you find I will show
Speaker 2: people's sistery of the Old Republic if you want to
Speaker 2: hear me talking about Star Wars. So anyway, yeah, thank
Speaker 2: you all very much for listening, and we'll see you
Speaker 2: next time. Bye.