July Mailbag

folks, we're back with more patron questions, this time for the month of July. we talk everything from which weapon we'd want in a Medieval battle, Hanseatic League piracy, Medieval Futurism, the connections between Lollards and Hussites, throat singing, and more!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before we get started, although I do believe i'd beer

(00:03):
remiss if I didn't say that. Possibly, for the first
time in my life, New York, I love you, but
you're not bringing me down.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
You're not bringing me down.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
This is the first time, the first and only time,
you have not brought me down. I hate hearing about
you all the time. I understand why we do. I
get it. Doesn't mean I want to hear it, but
in this case I do. Hilarious Zorehn Mom, Donnie. When
the New York City mayoral primary last night, he is

(00:36):
a Democratic Socialist self described a member and leader within
the DSA there and he won. He beat Andrew Cmo
last night in the primary. This is, you know, against
all of the media backing and everything like that. People

(00:59):
just didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Care socialist man. Maybe they look like a clown.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
They said, you're among billionaire mayors. Now, clown because he
lost to a Muslim. Uh in a in a in
a city that in a city that twenty four years
ago was under a terrorist atack with a Muslim, which
is really cool, Like, it's really fucking cool that, in

(01:29):
spite of media pressure, uh, every politician in the world
in this country and uh, you know, and and popular,
not popular, but in sentiment racist and xenophobic sentiment against Muslims.
They did this. And uh, I'm not going to say

(01:52):
I don't think anybody should be rose rosy eyed about
what this is because the history of.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Probably kill him, but socialist mayors.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Is not good. You either end up being a shill
and assimilated or the other thing, which is not great.
But uh, I do this is good, Like it's good.
The worst people in the world are mad about them,
about this, all of them.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Democratic leadership is pissed, Republicans pissed, Zionists pissed. Everybody that
you dislike on a daily basis is angry. Uh so, yeah,
it's nice to revel in that. Just take a minute,
breathe it in, breathe in the their annoyance. Shot and
fraud is good. People feel fantastic to just sometimes be like, yes,

(02:47):
go fuck yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
I have a cute I got a cute Zorn story.
So a friend of the show, Mattie Lubchansky was who
knows him, She was at this event like it was
like a trans for Zorin event in New York and
someone asked him like, oh, are you and your wife
monogamous and he said yes, and they all boot him.

(03:12):
I was like, it's a beautiful culture, beautiful.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
People, wonderful, it's good news. I can't believe I'm saying this.
Good job, DSA, that you did real good work here. Now,
if you guys could stop with the whole just let
us in, just let us be dollar store Democrats, it
would be really cool. But yeah, seriously, great job to
Democratic Socialists of America, great job to other people of

(03:39):
New York. Again, Zoran has issues that I think he
can work on on certain things, and he needs to
be pushed on those very hard, just like you push anyone.
But at the same time, Muslim so Muslim kid kid like.

(04:00):
In political terms, socialist won the mayor primary and that's awesome.
Also sucks, but he's gonna have to face Quomo again
because Cuomo runs his own party in New York, so
he is on the ballot, the general ballot regardless. So yeah,

(04:21):
I ain't never been a democracy, folks, not a real one.
But hey, you take the dubs or you can get him.
We did it. That's amazing. I don't think we have
time to get into the whole Iran thing. But yeah, Trump, Iran,
maybe ceasefire. Israel seems pissed. I don't know. Yesterday it

(04:44):
was a good day to be online. By the time
this comes out, this might be seeming outdated, but we
recorded this on the morning of June twenty fifth, so.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
They hadn't assassinated him yet, or the.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Afternoon nuclear European Yeah, or you know, if the things
in with Iran have it reheated. But yeah, good jobs oroon,
good job New York. Awesome, that's it. Awesome. Revel in
the worst people alive being mad about this. Oh, they're
so mad, they're reveling there insanity, revel in the fact

(05:19):
that they're like Zionist dog whistles, uh no longer really
seem to work on people, especially no one under like
forty five or fifty. But like, yeah, good job. Also
humorously shout out to white guys overwhelmingly voted in favor
of Zoron, Like.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
I mean, I love Dude's Rock Rock.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
I mean the Zoron's election should put a nail in
the coffin of like the way that people do identity
politics in polling, Like, oh, if we just get this group,
you cannot get a monolithic group of people. That's not
how it works, especially not in this country. It's too broad, diverse,
too weird does it work. So instead, you should just

(06:03):
have a good message and people will come to it.
People will and then be like, oh, well he didn't
reach out to working class people. I don't know. It
seemed like some working class people were pretty fine with him.
But yeah, it's.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
I think my favorite thing that I saw because he
like a homeboy obviously, like he's aimed at me, so
he was like in my face a lot, obviously. But
my favorite thing that I uh, a person that I
saw him with was motherfucking Stavvy. I was like, not
the Covid and Stavvy baby endorsement. I was like, come on, Starros,
get out here.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Like yeah, the endorsements of him, just like walking across
Manhattan are just so funny because people are just like, hey,
it's that guy. I've seen him, I know him, my light.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
You know, you're just like, wait, what Cynthia Nixon from
Sex and the City Miranda Shoot indorsed. You know, yeah,
like it's a baby, It's it's happening. You know.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Bernie and AOC took their sweet ass fucking time, but
you know you got there in the end, I guess
it's uh, folks, it's good news. For once, we got
good news, and we're gonna say no bad news at
the start here good news. Let's just get into it. Hello,

(07:48):
and welcome back to We're Not So Different podcast about
how we've always been idiots and sometimes maybe, just maybe
a good thing will happen. Folks, We're back with the
monthly mail bag for July. As we all know, patrons
who subscribe for just five dollars a month picture on
dot com slash wnsd podcast ask us questions that we

(08:11):
will answer on the show, and we're endeavoring to catch
up by doing these mailbag episodes every month until we do.
We're going to keep the intro pretty short and sweet
this time. But if you can't get enough of your
two favorite co hosts, we've got great news because we
are everywhere right now. Obviously, there's a limited there's the
limited podcast series Welcome to the Crusades, the First Crusade
that we did with the American Prestige Fellas. It's an

(08:31):
eleven episode deep dive into the First Crusade and you
can listen to the first two episodes for free on
the normal podcast feed, and then purchase the remaining nine
episodes for just ten dollars. Welcome to the Crusades dot com.
If the price has not yet gone up to ten
dollars and is still eight dollars when this episode releases,
well then huzzaf for you. Yeah, so check that out.

(08:55):
We're extremely proud of it. But we've also been promoting
the series all over recently. Eleanor and I appear together
on new or very recent episodes of Western Kabuki, The
Worst of All Possible Worlds, ten k Post, and Masters
of Our Domain. Additionally, you can hear Eleanor and Derek
Davison talking it up on a recent Chapo Premium episode,
and you can hear me talking about and or in

(09:16):
real world fascism on Delete your account. Check that out after.
But in the meantime, let's open some male question from
Ali Kant. Did Vikings know how to do throat singing?
Or is this horrible chud do? Is this horrible chuds
doing revisionism again and appropriating it from Mongols? Well, I

(09:39):
will say before we start, I think we should we
should do definition of what throat singing is. Throats singing
is a very common practice across the world, like monks,
websh like Buddhist monks, certain Christian monks with their chanting
and and toning and stuff like that. It occurs in Japan. Uh,

(10:02):
the Inuit have a version of it in Canada, and
I yeah, I'm sure Vikings did do it, because it's
I mean, it's not every you know, like everybody can
like or not everybody, but most people can kind of
throat sing like you try to like inch down further
into your throat, you know, and you try to do that.
But like so, so I'm sure they did because it's

(10:24):
not uncommon, you know, Russia, China, Mongolia, you know, Italy.
The whole thing. The thing that makes Mongolian throat singing
different is that they do it in a specific way,
which yeah, they get you. You vibrate your vocal cords

(10:44):
in such a way that you create two tones. So
if you remember the movie Doune and they have the
throat singing throughout, uh, you know, in the beginning and
it keeps popping up throughout, that is a version of
Mongolian throat singing. And it's not just Mongolanes, it's Turkic
people's uh, Mongolic tribes, not just the Mongols themselves, and

(11:05):
even uh and even some other others in West Asia,
but or East Asia other but yeah, they vibrate their
vocal cords to make two different sounds. And that's why
it sounds so different and so remarkable because it because
it is because it's it's a different way than a
lot of other throat singing is done, which you know

(11:28):
is still great. You know, people love the Gregroy chants
and stuff like that, and that is oftentimes a version
of throat singing, but you know, yeah, the Mongols, uh,
they just do it really cool. And I don't know,
I'm sure, I'm sure there are people who teach themselves
because I you know, I've seen you know, I've seen
videos of random, random mass white people doing it.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
But oh yeah, my my my brother, who's a noted
quirked up white boy, taught himself to do it. So yeah,
shut shut out, shout out to Nate Yanaga. Yeah, homeboy
himself to do it because we were we were raised
by hippies, so and what like when you grow up
Badriyana just weird shit happens sometimes, so yeah, like Nate
can do it. It took him a long time to

(12:12):
figure it out, but he did figure it out. I
want to shout out one of my parents hippie ass
CDs that spawned all this. There's a really accomplished throat singer,
Kongar all On Dar who is a leading tuban throat singer,
and he's got an excellent album that is called Back

(12:32):
Tuva Future.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Fuck.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yes, absolutely, it's like very in the kind of like
deep forest vein of things. If you want to hear
like some fucking kick ass throat singing, but they're like
trying to make it modern. Check that shit out. It whips.
But like, I guess what I have to say about
this is yeah, like you're exactly right, Luke. They probably
did do some form of throat singing, but it didn't

(12:55):
sound like the Mongolian kind, right, It's most likely.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
I mean, if we have no record of it.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
We don't have a record of it.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
It's something you would think they would.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
It's so hard they didn't stop doing it. That's that's
this is my argument, because fucking the tuban version goes
so fucking hard, there's absolutely no way that shit's gonna
fall out of practice. And when you already have cultures
that do throat singing, which we certainly see from like
other monastic cultures, then they would probably pick it up.
So the stealing valor is the dual tone thing. That's

(13:28):
what that's what's.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yeah uh and yeah, Ellenor said it too. It's it
should be called tubin throat singing. I think mungol and
throat singing is too exclusionary to all of the number
of groups that do it. But yeah, it's really cool.
Go check it out. You can hear some on the
Dude soundtrack. You can, I mean go type in throat
singing in you know, Apple music or Wikipedia, and I

(13:51):
guarantee some of it will come up and you can
hear the lovely like two tone voices that they do.
It's it's really fantastic. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
The Future apparently has a four point seven star rating
out of five on Amazon, just saying in case you're
going to go check that shit out, but you can
also apparently check out the whole thing on YouTube. So yeah,
I don't know, get zouited blaze a fat one for
me brackets legally and check that shit out for sure.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, Ollie, thank you very much for the question. Next,
we got one from I would whack five hundred miles.
He says, I would love to hear about Baltic Sea
piracy that plagued Hanseiotic League traders, and yeah that eleanor
I'm given to believe that piracy was a problem on

(14:43):
the high seas for uh, I mean basically until until
very recently, and I mean it's still there, we just
don't really talk about.

Speaker 2 (14:52):
Yeah, like yoho ho bitch okay, like first of all,
shot that down, but yeah, a really big problem both
in the and also in the Black Sea. Huge problems
with piracy in the Black Sea because they're such incredibly
important trade routes and really good stuff is going through there.
So yeah, we we know a lot. And it's also

(15:13):
one of these things that's really difficult because in the
Baltic Sea, what we we know about it can get
very confused because there is a tendency, especially in the
medieval period, whenever someone wrongs you, if you're in the
Baltic area, for them to be like Estonians, you know,
or like whatever, because they're like they're going to go
find the non Christians and they're gonna blame them, right,

(15:34):
and you know, ordinarily, if you're in the Nordic countries,
they're going to be like, oh, yeah, i'll tell you
what this is. Like, it's going to be the fault
of like, oh gosh, their name is excusing me right now,
you know, hurting reindeer, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Oh, but that's from the Avatar movies. Sorry, No, they
are the They are beautiful nomadic.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
People, beautiful nomadic people who we should.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Be left alone.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Leave them, leave them alone, leave them alone.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
They don't want to be bothered. If they do, they'll come,
let you know.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
So if something bad happens on land, they're often like Sami,
although still there is also some blaming Sammi for like
shipwrecks and things like that, because they say that they're that,
like they like can do wind magic and things like this.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Oh that's great, yeah, normal.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
But so they'll be all like Latvians or you know, Estodians, right,
because they'll be like, it's those damn pagans or whatever,
and probably it's just some guys, you know, But to
a certain extent, they dressed it up like that because
the idea is, you know, Christian on Christian violence is bad,
so in which case it's got to be like it's
got to be some like pagans air quotes who are

(16:52):
down doing this shit. So we do see rather a
lot of it, and it does fuck with the Hansa
And one of the things that the Hansa Ports was
kind of supposed to be doing in theories sort of
having patrol boats a little bit, like I mean, one
of the things that you should kind of be doing
is contributing to like policing as it were, the seas.
But sea's big, so kind of difficult to do that.

(17:16):
Very occasionally pirates get caught, not very often you will
be killed, Like I can't stress that enough, but yeah,
it's it's incredibly common. You've got to you know, as
it's as common as it was like you know in
the seventeenth century, eighteenth century. You know, it's just that
the seas are big places and it's very hard to police.
Even now, it's very difficult for us to police piracy.

(17:39):
So which is why you get danger pay if you
go through the Red Sea. And so if it's like
if you're if you're doing like the Gulf of Aiden
kind of run and that sort of a thing on ships,
you get extra pay, which I know because I worked
for a while in like an adjacent to the shipping
business because my life is weird. But yeah, so you
get that in if you do that.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Run yeah, And I mean, like, if you've ever seen
a map of Europe and the way that the ways
that that the Hanseatic League traveled, uh, you will know
that you know the part of Denmark where you go
north of Germany, north of Hamburg, and you know that

(18:22):
little bit that juts out towards Scandinavia, and if you
go around that to the east, there are a lot
of little islands and stuff, and that place is just
pirate fucking city. Like you can lie in wait behind
any number of inlets and coves and and you can
you can take people from the land.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
In some cases, these motherfuckers got fjords. These motherfuckers got fjords.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Like it's there there anywhere, any any place that you
could possibly do it, both in the sea, and I
mean then the the rivers that they took as well,
they took you know, they did rivery trading down into
Germany and and uh in Poland and of course down
to Novogrod in Russia. And you know, yeah, it's there's

(19:11):
a lot of it. There's a lot of piracy, and
it's not really like the Golden age of piracy yet
that would happen, uh mostly after the uh the Hansiatic
League was was done and also be in like the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean. But yeah, like you got a cog.

(19:33):
The cogs are good ships. They're sturdy as hell. They
can take a beating. But like if you it doesn't
even it doesn't matter if you have you know, like
a lookout ship or anything like if the prevailing winds
are pushing you in one direction and you know, or
they they ground you or something. I mean, good fucking luck.
You better hope you're somewhere where people care. Yeah, so

(19:58):
I would wack five hundred miles. Thank you very much
for the question. Always love to talk the Hanseatic League
and their goofy wool trade. Question. Next question from dog God,
how often did kings actually wear their crowns? Medieval art
always shows kings with crowns regardless of what they're doing.

(20:19):
But Eleanor's sorry about William the First wearing his crown
in the Ruins of York as a display of dominance
made it sound like it wasn't a normal practice.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Yeah, that's right. So they're very expensive, Yes, you know,
so it is not far off of now where you know,
like here, the king will bring out the crown if
it's like a big ceremonial occasion, like if he's meeting
other heads of state, if he's got like a big
religious thing happening. That's when you do it. You don't

(20:51):
ordinarily like you're not wearing a crown to a party,
like you're not wearing it like and you're certainly not
going to like travel in it because you know what
happens if you get jump or something like that. It
can be really difficult. So for example, uh, when Charles
the fourth, just to make it all about progue, as
per usual, when Charles the fourth takes the Czech crown,

(21:14):
he remakes the Czech crown to look like they thought
the crown of Saint Ventislaus had looked, and then or
and then he gets himself crowned with it, you know,
a big thing. Look, oh look at me, I'm just
like Saint Pislaus. And then he has the crown stay
on the bust of Saint Ventislaus in Prague Cathedral, and

(21:38):
so basically it's doing what he wants it to do.
They're like, that is the crown ordinarily it stays with Ventroslas,
so like it creates like this religious connection between between
the crown and him and Saint Ventislaus, so you know,
very important, but a myth making there and so yeah,
that's the that is the kind of thing. Now. The
reason we see crowns on kings and art is so
that you can identify them. Yeah, it's like, you know,

(22:00):
it's the equivalent of just like having a little thing
that has their name on it, like for people who
can't speak. Right, It's like if you see a crown
on someone in a painting, then you know that they're
a king, right, And so they're not really wearing them around.
Like if you met another king, you'd probably wear one
mm hm, you know you'd be like, well, like you know,
but if you're meeting them in battle, no, because you

(22:21):
don't want to like lose the crown. What like what
happens if you know, all these things come together. But
if you're like having some bing wetting and everybody's there,
everyone's gonna like flex their crowns. It's like like that
sort of thing. But they are for special occasions, is
what they're for. Yeah, And they're uncomfortable, they're heavy.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Dude, you know, God, Yeah, heavy is the head that
where's a crown is a literal thing. Metal is not inexpensive.
So unless you're doing the late Byzantine crown where they
made it out of leather and beaded glass because the
Venetians took it all, it's heavy. They're very heavy. H yeah,

(22:59):
and that's really cool. Uh fucking crowns are great. Oh yeah,
dog God, thank you very much for the question. Next,
we got one from Mattera Sesino, who says, I know
mass was definitely on Sundays and specific holy days, but
would there be mass every day that people weren't generally
expected to attend? I do mean in a local parish church.

(23:20):
I'm not bothered about what occurred in a monastery.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, Like it just depends on whether or not your
priest is good. There should yeah, there should be mass
every day. There should be a mass everage. And indeed,
in most most churches there is mass every day, irregardless
of like what's going on, people just usually don't attend it.
And so for example, the church that was attached to
the Catholic school that I went to growing up, which

(23:45):
is like near my parents' house, it has recently been
downgraded to a chapel. Yeah, because they don't have they
don't have enough Catholics anymore in the hood and so
and that basically means I think that they just have
Mass on Sundays now, So it's like they don't have
a priest that lives there, and like a priest comes
in every Sunday and we'll do a Sunday Mass. But

(24:07):
a church is going to have two on Sunday, usually
one on Saturday, like one every day of the week,
and like one at five o'clock on Saturday. Is kind
of like the usual way of doing things. You might
have a really shit priest though, and this is this
is super super common, like it's very common, and it's
something that gets complained about all the time in reform literature,

(24:28):
is that people will be given a prebend, like you know,
you're given a really rich church and which gets you
a good income, and then you live in the city
and you never fucking go there, and so then those
people are basically left without a priest. And that's something
that people complain about all the time. So in theory, yeah,
once a day maybe if you go to really big
parish church, like it doesn't have to just be like, uh,

(24:51):
this isn't just cathedrals. But you know, often big parish churches,
for example, the ones that will have smaller altars around
the side, priests will be saying multiple masses day there
because they're gonna be going around to each of the
little altars and doing a mass because the families leave
money for that for perpetual masses. When perpetual masses are
set for the soul, then that means that like once

(25:11):
a day they're gonna get a mass at like the
tiny little altar. And now it's gonna be really fast
because there isn't gonna be people that are taking communion
or whatever. They're just gonna be like no no, no,
no no no no no Jesus wept no no no yeah, wow, damn,
Like that's crazy, Like they're probably not gonna do a sermon,
but they'll do the mass, right, And then that is
kind of like for the expation of souls. So it
could be in larger parishes if they're rich enough, you

(25:33):
could be having like ten masses a day in theory
at which people can join in if they want. Like,
if you want to go to that mass, you absolutely
can as a regular person. But also, you know, regular
people are killing the fields and shit could be on
the tilling game. But you know, if you're older, like
say you're seventy years old, like you're not gonna be
tilling every day, and like grandma might go to mass

(25:54):
every day. So it's just kind of like a different
way of doing things.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yep. Yeah, just guy out there just like saying mass
like like one hundred times a day. He's just so tired.
He's like, you guys know how it goes. Why don't

(26:17):
you come up here and talk about it. Yeah, Matta Rossino,
thank you very much for the question. Uh. Next, we've
got one from MG in your face. So it's been
documented that I'm a Renfair fan, but there are but
there are consom festivals that are more focused on sci fi. Lastly,
possible future. We all know medieval people had had that

(26:38):
reverence for the Classics, But was there ever a imagine
the year two thousand ball in Italy whatever? And I
don't know for sure, but I am willing to bet
if you could somehow go back and pull every Christian
in Europe at the time that something on the order

(26:59):
of ninety plus percent of them would not believe that
the world would still be here at the year two thousand. Yeah, yeah,
I mean that they thought the Lord was coming back
every other week, like like he's just he's coming back soon. Guys.
It's like in the world's still gonna be here in
eight hundred years. I don't know about that.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Yeah, Like when they do futurism, it's usually talking about
the apocalypse, and they're like they're like, because that's going
to happen in the future, right, It's definitely, it's definitely
gonna happen. I mean, so, yeah, they kind of one
thing that they often talk about, Like if they're talking
about the future, it's usually about like a continuing decline
of morals or alternatively, you occasionally get people looking forward

(27:41):
to the thousand year Reign of Peace or ten thousand
year Reign of Peace, which will happen when the Last
World Emperor takes back over after the defeat of Anti
Christ maybe, right, because like some people some people think
that like he's like an optional extra, like the Last
World Emperor, like he's.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
A guy, he's here, yeah, and Elias and yeah, you know,
and and.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Because yeah episode exactly exactly, okay, right, because like, you're
not gonna lie this. They're going to come back. Anti
Christ is gonna get so mad about that, and he
is going to kill them, and then he is going
to leave their bodies out to decompose for three days.
And then he's going to try to prove a point

(28:29):
by ascending bodily into heaven on the Mount of Olives,
just to prove that Christ isn't special. And then he's
gonna be struck down by the spirit of Christ's mouth
and die. And then and then the last world Emperor
is going to come back and be like, see, you
were worshiping Anti Christ, but actually I'm the good guy.
And then you're gonna get a ten thousand year reign
of peace. And people will talk about how like that's

(28:50):
gonna fucking whip and they can't wait for the ten
thousand year reign of peace. But not everybody necessarily like
takes the track that that is going to happen, ye,
But yeah they don't. It's just like their idea of
the future is really different. Because you know, one thing
that you've got to understand about us is we're like
technology pilled, right, Like the way that we think about
everything in our culture is that there are going to
be other technologies which are going to allow you to

(29:12):
do X, y Z, And sometimes you get things that
like that. You know, like people will talk about flying
machines for example, like that's something they're like, wow, what
if we could figure that out?

Speaker 1 (29:22):
You know, some of them you've been tried to do it.
There's a guy that tried the original parachute who jumped
off of a tall building in Italy and it doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
But you know, yeah, you know, people are trying things,
you know, so but also they just kind of don't.
They don't think about society and technological terms, whereas we do.
You know, for us, progress is necessarily linked directly to tech,
whereas for them it's much more religious in nature. So
for them, advancing any kind of discussion about history is

(29:55):
going to be about religion. It isn't going to be
about technology. So it's it's a different way of looking
at things.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, I mean, conceptualizing the far future is like the
way that we do. It appears to be a very
recent phenomenon outside of apocalyptic literature now, you know, like
most biblical stories about the end times, I mean they
are like in the future, X will happen, and you know,

(30:22):
in some of them it's gonna be a long time
from now, and some of them it's coming. You know,
two days could come at any time. But like that,
outside of that, futurism is not like a thing until now,
maybe the seventeenth century. I mean, maybe there's a couple

(30:43):
earlier ones that I'm that I'm not thinking of, but like,
you know, we didn't get we didn't get sci fi
until Mary Shelley and then we did, I mean, you know,
something like that. And we didn't get you know, fantasy
as we understand until like the middle eighteen hundre. So
you know, it's, uh, it's a new thing. I don't

(31:05):
I guarantee you most of those people would have been like,
the world's not gonna be here at the year two thousand.
That's insane, Like God's coming out like he told us,
you know, like and especially the early Christians, they thought
that shit was happening like the next day.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, I think that they would be really sad.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yes, actually, oh God, yes they.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Would be like, oh man, I thought that we would
be done with us by now. So I think that
they would be kind of sad about the whole.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
Yeah, we'd be done with the shitty mortal coil. Yeah
if junior face, thank you very much for the question.
Next we got one from Quixotic, which is our Passages
of Arms real or a Victoria Victorian invention? If they
were real? Why? And yeah, pasta to arms? I think

(31:51):
they were real. They appear to have been real. And
if you're wondering what a pasta arm is, if you
remember Monty Python and the Holy Grail and black Knight
who's blocking the bridge until he demands satisfaction of his honor.
That's a very extreme version of a past to arms.
It was basically, I would stand in front of a bridge,
would be like, if you are a knight and you

(32:12):
want to pass this, you have to fight me or
or lose your honor. And you know, yeah, and why
well eleanor Yeah, that's real. Why did a bunch of
fucking meattheads challenge each other to cross bridges like this?
Like common bridge trolls?

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Okay, Yeah, So this begins in the fourteenth century, like
all good things, and so it's big in the fourteenth century,
it's big in the fifteenth century. And the way that
we think about it is that we think what they
were attempting to do is differentiate themselves like nobles, in particular,
differentiating themselves from a common military right, because what happens

(32:56):
also in the fourteenth and fifteenth century is increasingly people
start killing each other during war. So you know, the
Hundred Years War really kind of changes things. You know,
as I always say up because to that point, it's
kind of like rich guy tag you have a war
where you attempt to kidnap people, but then in the
fourteenth century they start trying to kill people and everyone's like, oh,
I don't know, I was supposed to do that, right,

(33:18):
So at that point in time you also kind of
have the conceptions of tournaments and things like that really change. So,
for example, it's during this period that we see move
away from the melee being the major kind of tournament
to jousting being the major kind of tournament. So what
they're trying to do is be like, I'm not like

(33:39):
you people, right, Like we are this the very specialized
kind of nobility, and this is what we do. So
like we're not down there in the muck with you people,
and we don't really want to like kill people, but
we want to engage in this worthy sort of combat,

(34:00):
and so you know, it absolutely happened. We've got tons
and tons of records for this.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, like thousands, actual thousands of records of this happened.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
And so it's like one of these things where much
in the way that the tournaments initially with melee is
what you would do is you would like nail a
thing on a door and be like, come at me, bitch,
Like on this day, I'll be taking all comers. It
was like that. So you know, this is considered like
a game essentially. It's a it's a form of incredibly
stylized combat. But you know, you may as well be

(34:32):
watching American gladiators essentially.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Yep. Yeah, it's it happens all over Western Europe, France, Spain,
the Lowlands up north, it's you know, it's all over there.
And like these are so widespread that there were strategies
for dealing with them, like strategy ideas or even booklets

(34:59):
about you know, this is how you deal with this,
is how you get around this, and stuff like that,
and yeah, you can there there are a couple I
can't a couple of articles. I can't read either of
them because I don't speak Spanish or French, but one
of them by Udell Blanc lestrettagis de la peru Don's
Les des vortissement che cheval risk Sorry ninety seven and

(35:26):
then uh Pedro Rodriguez Delina from nineteen thirty, a critical
annotated edition of El Paso on Russo de suero de Quinones. Yeah,
so those have a lot in there if you want
to check those out and can read those languages. But yeah,
they're very real. They are a kind of cool legacy

(35:46):
of you know, the Chevalric tradition. And also, I mean
meat heads with CT you're gonna make up dumb games.
It's not like we've ever stopped doing that, no kidding.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah. Next, we got one question from Pearl River. I
swear there was an episode where you discuss pipes like
sewage pipes, not smoking pipes. I'm asking because I recently
dug up a nearly two hundred year old wooden pipe,
and now I'm wondering what medieval people use for pipes.
I'm assuming bricks, but also they didn't have many things
that needed piping, so you know, pipe layers back them

(36:17):
are probably not as busy.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Yeah, so they often use wood, is the answer to this. So,
for example, if you've got a bath house or something
where there is piped water, a lot of the time
it's going to be wooden. You can use brick, yes,
in certain circumstances, especially in places where they're basically keeping
the Roman the systems going that that is often what
gets used and so as a result, we don't have

(36:41):
a lot of evidence for it because it decays. So
what we generally have instead is kind of like the
impression for where we can we can find where their
pipes have rotted. But you know, it's a fairly good system.
You know, it works pretty well. I mean, yeah, you
got to replace her or whatever, but you know a
lot of times that is fundamentally a private the thing

(37:03):
that you're doing there isn't going to be in most
places a kind of municipal system for piping. So it's
going to be just like whatever it is you want
to do. So as a rich enough person to do this,
you know, like you can just replace wood whenever you
need to replace what That'll be fine. But yeah, it would,
is the answer.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, yeah, they they did that. There were some metal pipes,
but that was in the richest, the richest places.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Of Venice like this.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Capital cities, you know, throne rooms things like that, if
you ever hear and maybe one day we'll talk about them.
About medieval automatons, which were like things that were animated
by like gust of wind and stuff like that, and
they use those, and I mean there were like for

(37:56):
a while, the Byzantine throne had like a weird like
perk cussive system under it where they could raise the
thrown up by piping in hot wind into like a
bellows and it would push it up so the so
the emperor and empress would seem like they were on
an even higher keelan than they normally were. And like yeah,
so uh yeah, it mostly gonna be wood brick, yeah,

(38:22):
unless you're really rich in which and then you could
like you have your yeah yeah, pipe fitter doing whatever.
But yeah, Pearl River, thank you for the question. Uh yeah,
medieval pipes not man, there's gonna be a lot of
ship getting in your water if it's going through brick.
That's just picking up so much, so much small debris,

(38:45):
which is incidentally why the oceans are salty, Like they
pick up minor, minor bits of salt and deposit it. Yeah,
from the Rocks. So anyway, Uh, next we got one
from may Day. Can you speak on the lulla al
slash hoodsite connection, eleanor why was Yan who's so enamored

(39:08):
of one mister John Wickliffe. Ah?

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Yeah, So it's that they have places in which they differentiate.
But it is absolutely true that there's this huge connection
and it is all fostered by the marriage of Anne
of Bohemia over here to Richard. So basically it creates
more back and forth in between the Czechs and England
than had happened previously, because it was just like, why

(39:33):
would we talk to English people?

Speaker 1 (39:37):
English people? Why would we talk to Czech people?

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yeah, Like it's like, you know, the wolve's coming over
here anyway, I don't like. I mean like English people
will one hundred percent take the silver from Bohemia. Check
people will one hundred percent take the wool from England.
But like, other than that, no one really cares. But
one of the big things that they get the English
get along with Anne because Anne doesn't have to provide
a dowry because it's such a down grade to marry

(40:00):
an English king. They but they do get unfettered access
to trade in Bohemia. So you have a lot more
English traders that begin to make the journey all the
way to Bohemia, and they bring with them ideas in
the way that one always does. And the law Lords
are rather the big thing at the time, aren't they.

(40:22):
So you know, the law Lords, for those who don't know,
are led by John Wycliffe who is up at Oxford,
and he's got a lot of problems with you people,
you know, standard standard fucking I hate the church pope
as a fuck kill them all, you know. Fourteen thirteen.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, not bad.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
He's got some interesting ideas. So for example, he doesn't
believe in transubstantiation, that's right. He believes in consubstantiation. So
he thinks that the host and wine contain both the
body and blood at the the book, like they contained
that and their essential breadness at the same time.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
It's symbolic, it's actual, like it's not the actual the
priest isn't you know?

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yeah, blood well kind of a little bit. It's like
it can take on both natures at the same time.
It's really.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
His his was that detail? Okay? Cool?

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Yeah, it's like so it does both. It's really weird.
He's he's like, maybe we should do some more things
in English. There is we now believe he didn't actually
translate the Bible into English. We think other people did
and they called it and yeah, exactly all you do.
And you know, he's constantly stepping on toes because you know,
he's doing the normal ship, which is like church shouldn't

(41:45):
have money, et cetera. And you know, like he's really
into ordinary people having uh, having more opportunities to take community. Okay,
so he does not. He manages to die before getting
declared a heretic, although he gets like pulled in front
of the church a lot. He's kind of like a

(42:06):
millic in that description where it's like he's always pissing
people off, but they never quite get him right. And
much like Milach as well, like they kill a couple
of his boys and like eventually La Larderie it like
becomes a heresy, but by then it's already got to
Prague and it's really big in the university and these
little bitches are nerding out, and in particular on who's

(42:29):
is nerding out and he's the head of the theology
faculty and he really likes this shit, and they're like
you need to burn all of this's you need to
burn all of white Cliff's teachings. And he's like, okay, yeah,
but I translated these ones, so it's not the same thing, right,
you know, like this is my this is my translation,
so I don't know what the fuck you're talking about,
like you know, and he'll do shit like that, and

(42:50):
it eventually becomes synonymous with in the university. They're like
four schools in the university, which is like the basically
they're divided in between the nations quote unquote that are
supposed to be there. It's like the Germans, the Czechs,
the Italians, and the polls and the checks are like

(43:12):
we love this shit. We're all like lollards now and
everyone else is like what and they're like, oh, also
we hate you. Get the fuck out of here. And
they basically like drive everybody off because they're they're like
specifically intolology. And so this is kind of what gets
in trouble. It's his refusal to denounce Wycliffe. It's really
the thing that gets him brought, for example, before the

(43:34):
Council of Basel. So yeah, it's it's all incredibly interlinked.
Host takes a lot of why Cliff's ideas and expands
on them. So he's the one who's really like all
about like the people should get to have bread and wine.
He actually does translate the Bible into check. He does
a lot more talking about vernacular stuff than Why Cliff did,

(43:55):
although why Cliffe does some. But so they don't agree
on every single thing. But like hussies himself as an
extension of Wycliffe and going a little bit further. So, Yeah, basically,
if your name was John at the time, odds are
he might he might end up being he might end
up being a heretic.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
But yeah, it's it's Yan Yan, It's wide open. What's
the French version.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
Or Jean Jean, Yeah, Jehan Sean.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I don't have much more. Just
two things. First, very funny that uh jan Hoo's did
get he he did go to a woke university and
it turned him woke.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
And did it did?

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yeah, And then this was reciprocated later when some of
the earliest Germanic and Slavic reformers were kicked out of
the Holy Roman Empire and one of the places they
went was dear old England, And yeah, that's how you
get Puritans and the Church of England and all that

(45:03):
jazz yep may day. Thank you very much for the question. Next,
we got one from Philip. What type of weapon would
you prefer if you were going into a battle as
a levee melee sword for hire? Is a levee slash
melee slash sword for hire? Okay?

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Uh melee? Okay, So Levy, the.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Longest halbird you've got, I want the longest halberd. I
want that thing to be so long. I'm like tipping
over that.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I like a spear, don't I.
I'm like, you stay over there, Yeah, you go, just
stay away from me a poke poke. Yeah, I think
that the spears is quite good. But I would just
not to say a lands I want a spear.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
Yeah, all right, I mean, and if I if I've
got one, like I mean, if I just have to
have something like to look cool, give me his way, Hander,
give me that thing. Oh yeah, like fucking cool?

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Is it's about flexing that?

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Yeah, if I'm if I'm not there to look good,
if I if I need to show up in armor
and and look like a g I need this way Hander, Okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Started laughing drinking water and I was like, I'm gonna mute,
but I was like, also, don't spit water all.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
So you were choking. Oh my god. I was so worried.
I was like, holy shit, you can't talk. And then
as you're muted, and I was like, oh, okay, well.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Then like this biture, just try out.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
Hold up this m f spitting. Yeah, it's uh, give
me this way hander. Like it's really unfortunate that, like
the big fantasy swords don't really exist because they seem
so cool. But like, yeah, give me, give me this
way hand er. I'm gonna go out. I'm gonna die anyway.
If I'm gonna die, I might as well have like

(46:53):
a cool looking sword with a weird like thing in
the middle of the blade. Yeah, just give it to me. Yeah,
or or if I'm trying to be or if I'm
trying to be saved, I want the longest pole arm
slash halberd slash spear that you got, and I want
to be far away from people. But yeah, in.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
The melee though, Yeah, in the melee, I think in
the melee you have to you would need a short
like even the zueight hander would probably be too long
for the melee. If you, yeah, you want to be
able to get close to motherfuckerss.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
I think you like an axe, maybe a mace, like
an actual mace, actually the metal the metal handle with
the all on the end of it. Yeah, like an
actual mace that like that would be insane because like,
if you make contact with that, you're breaking someone's bones

(47:44):
at the bare minimum.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
Even if you can ring the bell real good at
the thing, if.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
You hit all armor, they're still good. Like if you
hit someone like in the back, the lower lower in
their back or whatever, they're gonna be pissing blood for
like three weeks because you just fuck bruise their kidneys
to S.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah, I think that's the way to go. Yeah, I
think that is. And in the melee, there's gonna be
a lot less room for like fluidity, so you just
want to be like bish bash I think.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Yeah, give me, give me, give me the shield, hold
up the shield, put it down, bank shield, bank, et cetera. Yeah, Philip,
thank you very much for the question. As you can tell,
I would be no good in a fight because I'm
a giant bitch, but uh I would try. They would
kill me. But I would try anyway we got. Last
one we got today is from Jia Hi Luke and

(48:32):
doctor Eleanor. Your podcast is give me a greater appreciation
for the difference between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern.
I started to notice when I'm when supposed medieval fantasy
series is actually early modern, like those Wheel of Time
motherfuckers having printing presses, oil lamps, and spring driven clocks.
Are there any fantasies they stand out as being particularly

(48:53):
medieval or not medieval, early modern, et cetera. I have heard,
I'll give you I'll give you a serious answer, Firse.
I've heard that the Malazon series, the Book of Malason
series is number one, very good and also has a
lot of very realistic medieval style combat. Now, I mean,

(49:17):
clearly it's going to have fantasy elements draped over if
there's going to be magic and stuff. But he's very
big into sieges, very big into like digging, tunneling under
walls to collapse them, you know, all stuff that happened
in the Middle Ages. So I've heard that is good. Elenor,

(49:40):
I mean, I'm having trouble thinking of any that like
really are on point. But I also personally don't think
that's a big issue, but do you have I.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
Mean, the thing is like, actually annoyingly, the answer really
is this mother, you know, you know exactly what I'm
going to say, is our good friend Germ. Like the
Song of Ice and Fire books are like the closest
I I he does. He's got away with it.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
He does a good job. Like and I think if
you look at it, like whether you like George R. Martin,
whether you like House of the Dragon, Game of Thrones
or the A Song of Ice and Fire series or not,
I think if you look at that like it is
like that is how you should do fantasy. Now, to
be clear, there was a time when he was like,
this is the most historically accurate medieval fantasy series around,

(50:27):
which may technically be true, but you still shouldn't say
that because it gives and he has thankfully stopped doing
that a lot recently. But like, if you think about it,
like it incorporates a whole lot of medieval stuff, and
I mean obviously uses tropes like feudalism, or constantly talk
about and like they have the pyramidial feudal structure that

(50:50):
Eleanor likes to joke. You know that the pyramid has
king on top. They have that, but like it has
like realistic elements. It's really not moving into the early
modern too much. The Siage engines look pretty standard, you know,
trebuche uh you know, I mean, of course they have
you know, like the huge battering ram like grand type things.

(51:14):
But I mean, like that's not to me, that's not
an inaccuracy. That's artistic license. Like that's what makes it fantasy,
because if it's all just regular sie ginges and stuff,
I might as well just be reading about you know,
I might as well just be reading about Siege of Baghdad,
Siege Fantioc or whatever.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
I guess one that I really like a fantasy series
that I'm really into, which is ongoing, and I think
it kind of straddles nicely into getting into like the
more early modern. But again, you know, it's fantasy, so
it's all over the places. It's the it's a series
of graphic novels called Monstrous Well it fucking whips. It's

(51:54):
by Marshay Leu and Sna ta Keda, and you know,
absolutely fucking fantastic. You've got like there's a group called
the Arcanics and they're kind of like magic creatures, some
of them can pass for humans, some cat and then
there's like the Federation, which are like a bunch of
like uh you know, think about like the Benajazzaret, but

(52:17):
like even more evil kind of a thing. Very very fun.
There's like basically the protagonist arm is a monster that
will like eat people and it fucking whips. It's so
good man, Yeah, really good.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, if you want you talking about that. The Dune
series really is good about taking a lot of the
contours of the Middle Ages and the Holy Roman Empire
and putting them into space. There's obviously sci fi trappings
on top of that, but like a lot of that

(52:55):
series is about how like the Golden Path involve like
essentially cutting off hyperspace travel for three thousand years and
everybody is sent back into like a feudal lifestyle essentially
on the planet that they're on. When that happens, it's
very hard to get off. And Frank Herbert did a

(53:19):
great job of including stuff the the you know, the
the governing body that they have, the structure that they
have is very HR but also it's it's late medieval,
but it's also early modern HR because of course Paula
Trades is a Napoleon figure and he's going to take
them down at the Battle of Austerlitz in space the

(53:43):
Battle of Arakaslts, And yeah, you know it's I think
that one does a good job. I think when you're
doing these, when you're looking at stuff, I think it's
a good thing to just, you know, find one that
you like and pick the medieval and medieval some aspects
out of it that you do enjoy, and then just
you know, absorb the rest and let them wash over you.

(54:06):
Because like, no one's gonna do it exactly right, because
if you did, it's not fantasy, it's not sci fi.
It's not it's just a history book. And you know,
like when you when you start adding stuff on top
of it, and instead of having you know, a normal
battering ram, you have grand to the Ngrond and you

(54:30):
have dragons, like you know, I mean they they thought
medieval people thought a lot of them thought dragons were real.
Like the first time Eastern Europeans saw Mongolian fire based
weaponry like the fire lances and the exploding pots and
stuff that they had, uh, I mean they thought they had.

(54:51):
There were reports that they had trained dragons like that, like,
you know them a dragon being there is I mean
to the medieval mind, like, oh, they finally came back. Cool.
They were sleeping in whales or you know, in in
Ethiopia or wherever it is we mentally store all these things.
But yeah, I think that's cool. I think, uh, I

(55:12):
like it.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
I like it a lot.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
And uh, yeah, I think I think those are some
good options. I know there are a lot more, but.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Yeah, I just you know, yeah, those are like the
ones that.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Hre go with Dune. If you want to see the
Roman Empire in space, you can read the Foundation trilogy,
the original win by Isaac Asimov, which is fun. It's like, uh,
if the Roman empower was in space, but every thousand
years or so, they woke up space Linen for him
to tell them everything that they did wrong and why
they fucking suck and how they need to fix it,

(55:50):
and then they just put him back to sleep for
a while. It's actually pretty funny. But yeah, g yeah,
thank you very much for the question, and uh yeah,
that is going to do it for us today. Thank
you patrons for these questions, Thank you everyone for listening.
As we said at the top of the show. We
are all over the place. You could check us out.

(56:10):
But yeah, eleanor what do you got anything else going
on right now?

Speaker 2 (56:16):
I mean the main stuff is the main stuff at
the minute. I've got some things that I'll probably be
putting on the socials later in the month when it
comes out. So for example, the talk I gave to
get today for the checks will be online at some
point in time when I will share it. So the
best thing that you can do at the moment, if
you're wanting this bullshit is to follow me on the

(56:38):
socials at Going Medieval, except on Instagram, where I'm just
doctor eleanor Yaniga, which I never say. I'm trying to
get better at Instagram, but you know, yeah, so watch
that space because when things come out, I will usually
put them on there.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Lucas amazing on this stuff. If you
guys know that, you can find our own show, People's
Sisty of the Old Republic if you want to hear
me chat about us a very niche era in Star Wars. Otherwise,
that's gonna do it for us today. Thank you very
much for listening, and we will see you next time. Bye.