June Mailbag

folks, we're back in our ongoing quest to catch up on Patron questions and so we've got 10 more to discuss for the month of June. we talk about what Medieval people smelled like, bi kings, Medieval footwear, gambling, animal welfare, and the King Asleep in the Mountain trope! it's so much fun, check it out!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
How are you, mate, I'm good. I'm good, just uh,
just hanging out. Heard that, Yeah, too much, got too
much to do, should do all this shit around the house.
Uh yeah, And summer is always weird because the kid
is in camps and I have to go get her

(00:20):
at various times and I'm a very big creature of
habit and uh yeah, it's it throws me off a bit,
but yeah, it's uh, it's cool. It's cool. Have you
have you heard anything or had any response on the series.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
I have heard people who were saying that they're stoked
about it. Yeah. I think that a lot of people
are in a position because of events. Shall we just
say that. Everyone's like, actually, it's a it's a good
chance to sit down and learn a little bit about
the Crusades. And I'm like, yeah, I didn't quite understand
how pressient we were being decided. I was like, you know, oh,

(01:03):
everybody likes the Crusades. Always good to know about this,
blah blah blah. You know, everyone knows the term crusade,
but they don't know shit about the Crusade, So yeah,
this will be smart, like that's where the smart money
is or whatever. I didn't quite realize that we would
be like this bogged down with a bunch of psychopaths essentially,

(01:23):
So you know there's that, there's that.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's something. Uh well, look I know
you have to uh go hear the sounds of silver.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
And yeah makes you want to feel like a teenager.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Luke and Daft Punk will be playing near your house.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I well, I hope that they played that because I
saw them last week. Obviously, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Be honest, I really don't like that song. I love
LCD sounds such that song drives me insane, so I
don't know why.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Anyway, go ahead, totally fine. You know, we all have
our one where we're like not really you.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Know, but not not not mine.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
But like I got almost my perfect playlist last week.
I think the major thing that was missing off of
it was get innocuous. But they played North American Scum,
which for you, just for me. But but it was
also funny because I was like, there's like a stolen
North American scum valor in the Brixton Academy right now.

(02:23):
I know you motherfuckers are not all North Americans. Stop it.
This is this belongs to me.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah only nor it would be really funny if he
was like only North Americans could say along and it's
like you and three other people.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Like, whoa, finally this is working out for me.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, but that was good.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
They played tonight, which is like my personal favorite, like
my personal number one. I played American Dream, which it
was very funny. You realize very quickly when you're a
giant LCD sound system nerd that apparently not everybody else
is the crowd did not know American Dream. Like the
crowd did not know, you know, Like there's certain things

(03:03):
that I was like, oh, I see, I see. But
like they played on Moving My Edge, which I hadn't
got to see before live and things of this nature.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
So that's a that's a big one.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah for sure. So I don't know what we're
gonna get tonight. It would be nice to get get inocuous,
but you know, we'll see, we'll see. At this point
in time, all of this is just a bonus. So
I'm gonna get zooted and booted. I'm gonna go down there.
I'm gonna be an old person, you.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Know, I'm a huge uh someone great New York. I
love you, but you're bringing me down. Both of those
we got to see so bad.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, we got both of those last week.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
I love drunk Girls. I think it's such a fun.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
I love drunk girls. I would love to fucking hear
drunk girls.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Oh the one you If you have time before you go,
you should listen to the drunk girls. They do on
uh whatever it is, the Last Goodbye or whatever, Live
the Longer. You should just listen to that because it's
like they do like they kind of like they change
like a little bit of it slightly. It's very fun.

(04:11):
And I was listening to it in the car a
couple of years ago, and I just wasn't thinking about
it because it's just like such a fun, peppy song.
I wasn't thinking about it. And then in the background,
I hear my daughter singing She's a drunk, and I'm like,

(04:33):
oh god, and started and my wife heard it. She's like,
do you realize she's singing a song called drunk. I
was like, yeah, it's fine, it's fine.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
It's called it's called popular culture. Baby.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
As long as you as long as she doesn't do
it in front of like t like you know, as
long as she doesn't do it in front of people
who you know.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
People be like, oh no, this kid whips.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
This fucking rules. She heard dad cool. Her dad has
has given her a disease where she's going to be
the only person under like sixty five at an LCD
sound System show in a few years, or or a
whole Steady show in a few years.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
She's going to tell you what. One thing that had
me really fucked up last week though, was like the
number of people who were there with their like, you know,
fifteen year old kids, and I was like, oh no, oh,
which it was very sweet. It was very sweet, but
there was a lot there's a lot of like dad's
taken their sons to the LCD sound System show, which
is sweet, but it's like, you know, for me, I

(05:34):
guess I was saying this last week. For me, they're
kind of like the band of my adulthood because like
They're the first album came out right after I had
graduated from undergrad and like moved to Australia, and Australian
being such like a dance music led culture at the time,
it was like the biggest fucking deal. So like they're

(05:57):
the band that I've kind of been following since I
became an actual fully fledged human being, and so now
that I'm like, no, like the there are fifteen year
olds here, I'm like no, no, like a fuck like
this came out when you're a baby. I hate this. No,
you know, it's awful, but uh yeah. But on the

(06:17):
other hand, it's like damn so like for them is
like sound of silver, like what Paul Simon's Graceland is
to me.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Probably probably yeah, oh all right, oh that's all right.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
You know, these kids today they don't know how good.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
They have it, No, they don't.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Well, right, yeah, but in which case we should probably
we should probably get to answer in some quistiums.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, yeah, we probably should. Yeah, good, good, Look at
the show of thanks.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
I'm gonna sweat everywhere, like if I managed to not
pass out, it will be a goddamn miracle. But once
more into the reach my friend.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yep, all right, let's do this. Hello, and welcome back

(07:38):
to We're Not So Different, a podcast about how we've
always been idiots. My name is Luke and I'm an
amateurs historian, and as always I am joined by doctor
Eleanor Yanniga, who is anything but Hey, folks, we are
back and it is time for you know, it's time

(08:00):
for our monthly mail bag, this time for June. As
y'all know, patrons who subscribe for just five dollars a
month can ask us questions we 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 just can't get enough of your two favorite co hosts,

(08:21):
we've got great news because we're everywhere right now. Obviously,
there's the limited series we did, Welcome to the Crusades,
the First Crusade that we did with the American Prestie Fellas.
It is an 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 purchase the remaining

(08:45):
nine episodes for just eight dollars at Welcome tooth Crusades
dot com If your heart so desires, The price will
go up to ten dollars in a couple of weeks,
so check that out. We're extremely proud of it and
it's well worth it. It is a dollar and pound
bargain or whatever. But we've also been promoting the series

(09:08):
all over. Recently, Eleanor and I appeared together on new
or very recent episodes of Western Kabuki, The Worst of
All Possible Worlds, ten k Posts, and Masters of Our Domain. Additionally,
you can hear Eleanor and Dry Davidson talking talking it
up on Chapo, and you can hear me talking about

(09:29):
and or in real world fascism on Delete your account
if you want to do that, so you know, check
all those out and it's fun. In the meantime, let's
open some mail. First up, we got a question from
our patron dog Spotter, who says, do we have any
understanding of what people smell like?

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Like?

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Did peasants smell like onion and garlic and farm animals
like myself? Or did they smell bad helly like I'm
gonna go ahead and get this out of the way.
I know it's smell crazy in there. Doctor Ali Lukes
can come on here and debate, or she wants it's
still smoke crazy. They're like, ellen, little please like the

(10:14):
bo it must have been.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
The persistent smell of farm animals, which like has its
own particular smell, both because they stay out like in
the sun all the time, and they just shit everywhere,
and I mean, you know, that's what they're supposed to do,
but it's smell like it does stink, And you didn't
have the you didn't have the irrigation and not irrigation,
I'm so, you didn't have the plumbing systems that we

(10:39):
have now, so there was more waste around. It wasn't necessary.
People weren't like standing in it, but it was still there,
you know.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, Like I'm gonna be so real with you. Basically,
until the mid twentieth century, everybody's stink like that's that.
That is a fact. I read a great history of cleanliness. God,
this must have been five years ago now, which is
really excellent kind of talking about how bathing habits used
to work. And like basically, before we got reliable indoor

(11:11):
plumbing for everyone, you had one bath a week and
you then kind of like washed in between, and that
was the normal way that things were done. Like that
just fundamentally is what things were like until we invented antiperspirant,
which is again a really recent thing. You know, people
smelled like bo until we invented a toothpaste that has

(11:34):
fluoride in it, which is again mid twentieth century, like
that shit didn't work. Like you could make your brusht
smell minty, but you can't stop your teeth from rotting
until you have fluoride in it. Now, Medieval people, obviously,
you know, they adhere to these same rules that everybody
sort of did before the nineteen fifties. They tend to
bathe once a week, maybe more if you're rich, Like
if you're rich, you might be going for it, and

(11:57):
in between you sort of like scrub down every day,
like you get in from the fields. You're gonna like
get a pail of water, you're gonna heat it up.
You're gonna like scrub your face, your armpits, your feet,
your ass, right, And they definitely like perfume their soaps
and things. We know this because we see recipes for them.
They also wear perfume. You know, they make perfume. We

(12:19):
kind of know a lot about that. It tends to
be kind of like floral in nature for men's stuff,
with a lot of bay leaves in it, things like this.
And you know, they also when they wash their soap
sometimes they put they put floral things in like their
laundry soap as well, so their clothes would probably smell
all right, but you know, it just does smell crazy

(12:41):
in there. That that is true, right, like until you
have I mean it's here in the UK. It's the
Victorians who invent like the super system, right and until then,
like London smelled like a toilet like that, that is
that is true, yeah right, and that is true of
basically every major city in the world. So medieval people

(13:06):
are exactly the same as everybody else in that respect.
There just does tend to be this situation where people
will act like medieval people were specifically or weirdly unclean,
which is not true. It's just that we are massively
clean now and we live in like a really great
time when it's easy to get a shower now, and.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
That's good because showers are good.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
I love it mate. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
It's like if just think about if you have at
some point, like you've just been dirty and you couldn't
clean up for a while, like you're doing a job,
you can't you can't get off the job for a
time or whatever. You just got to keep going. And

(13:54):
imagine just like how you kind of start to smell
like just a little like deodorant wears off your clone
or perfume is clearly gone by this point. You know,
your breaths probably smelling haggard because you're thirsty, you know,
and everything. You know, yea, that's how it is. Now
imagine that, but you couldn't you do that literally for

(14:17):
most of these people, they do that every day. Like
they are walking around, they are working the fields, they
are they are sewing, they are smithing, you know, all
of the medieval jobs. Unless you are a noble, you
are busting your ass and sweating every day. And the
nobles are probably just sweating every day. But because it's
gross in all those fucking clothes. But like that's going

(14:42):
to smell. We start to smell through all of our
like showers and cleanliness and deodorants and perfumes after a
few hours of work. Imagine that you wear. Imagine that
most of the people around you don't have access to
most of that stuff other than a basin of water,

(15:03):
and as Eleanor said, you know, like a real bath,
like in a you know, every once in a while,
or in the the creek or the lake or whatever it's.
You know, it's it's gonna smell. It's just uh, And
I'm glad the world doesn't smell like that any words.
Very good.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
It's a good thing. I've got one more point about this, though,
I guess which is which it gets brought up in
the Clean Body of this book that I read, which
is excellent because the guy who wrote it, he's Canadian,
and he'd like interviewed his granddad about like, you know,
how they did things sort of in like the nineteen
tens or something, and his granddad, you know, was saying, oh, yeah,

(15:43):
you know, like once a week bath blah blah blahlah blah,
and he's like, you know, we must have smelled really badly,
but we didn't notice. Yeah, right, So there is also
this thing where because that's normal to them, they probably
wouldn't have noticed it as much, like, you know, there
is such a thing as sent you know. It's like
how like you don't know what your house smells like,

(16:04):
but other people do. Right, So we would be like,
these are the stinkiest humans who ever lived, and they
would be like, what are you talking about? You know,
like I can't, I can't come up with this. Although occasionally,
hilariously you do get medieval people talking about which cities
stink in particular, apparently Avignon really raked.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
I love that they had. They had the arbitrary city
stuff like we do. I fucking love that. Like it
was like Philly and Pittsburgh like barking at each other
for these towns that both smelled like absolute shit. Like,
especially towns where there is a huge population density, it's

(16:48):
gonna smell awful during the summer. Imagine like the baking
southern Italian peninsula during the summer and you're in some
city state with like seventy eighty thousand other people. No,
like no real plumbing. I mean obviously they have, you know,

(17:09):
ways to bring in water and stuff like that, but
they don't have the same ways to get waste out
as we do. And just baking in it. Yeah, they
sink the high the high equilibrium trap of stench, and
that everything smelled so bad you just didn't notice. You're

(17:29):
just like, yeah, that's it.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
People would leave cities every summer. They would be like goodbye.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, imagine what they thought, like how bad the things
that that they thought smelled awful? How bad that would
be to us, Like how eye wateringly nausey.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Like we wouldn't be able to handle it?

Speaker 1 (17:47):
No, No, not at all. They as as our modern
weed would destroy these people and their medieval stench. Absolutely
not not your your nose hair are just rotting off anyway, Yeah, completely,
dog spotter, thank you for the question. Next, we got
one from T. Delfos, and basically what he's asking is like,

(18:13):
we talk about we're not so different, but then we
talk about the way the things that did change. So
from like the medieval period, from like fourteen hundred to
about sixteen hundred, what were the noticeable changes that these
people in Europe would have seen, like you know, whether
it be in London or Prague or just some villain,

(18:37):
you know, what would be the differences they would see?
I guess, I mean, and obviously one of them would
be the Reformation stuff.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
But yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously yeah, so yeah, Reformation stuff
is kind of like obviously that's the obvious one, but
it's got all sorts of knock on effects. So for example,
you see a real rise in misogyny in this period,
so you know what, yeah, all right, right, so so

(19:04):
you know things like, for example, the invention of the
witch panics, you get that, you get that one, real,
real fucking hard right, So suddenly there's a lot more
kind of like swing on your neighbors and like routing
them out to the ecclesiastical court or to the well, sorry,
not the ecclesiastical court, you know, to the witch Finder
General or like the actual fucking court here in England,

(19:27):
which is which is fun, which is cute. So you know,
like a lot more chance of like getting killed for
being a witch, which is not really a medieval thing
at all whatsoever. One of the big things that you
see is a big influx of people to the cities
is a result of enclosure. So as people are kind
of like booted off of the land out in the countryside.

(19:48):
When the nobility consolidates power over the countryside, you have
more and more people move into towns because there's kind
of nowhere else to go, right, So a big explosion
of population within the cities. And also as a result
kind of a change in labor practices, so you know,
more people doing jobs like being builders and things like that,

(20:11):
unless just being dedicated peasants. You do see like influxes
of new foods, so it's like homest want potato and tomato,
you know, so the food gets better. I would say,
I mean simply love cane sugar, simply love tomatoes, et cetera,
et cetera. So to an extent, there are also some

(20:34):
pluses in terms of what foods are being grown, and like,
you know, potatoes are a really big deal for Europeans
because they pack a whole lot of nutrition for not
a whole lot of work. Like, I don't know if
you've ever grow potatoes. I grow potatoes, even though I'm
not the world's biggest potato pan but I grow potatoes
because they're fucking easy, Like you just dump them in
a bag and it's like all right, done, but you know,

(20:55):
and you can have potato. So really way of getting
more nutrition that's brilliant. Everybody loves that. In terms of
things like culture, we do see kind of like a
big explosion of theata, right, so you know, like you
would go see mystery plays, and you would go see like,

(21:18):
you know, silly little japes, you know, like incredibly body
plays that are kind of like put on in the
local marketplace. But you know, you wouldn't really have like
a theata to go see Shakespeare in And then you
begin to have that and that that's around. There are
also a lot more wars of religion. Obviously, a lot

(21:38):
more kind of like killing each other back and forth
for being Christian or Protestant rather, a lot of that
going down, but also a general kind of outward looking.
I mean, this is the rise of colonialism, right, so,
I mean you might be looking at leaving Europe and
going somewhere else entirely. So there are all these fucking
things that really change in terms of what the status

(22:02):
quo is. You know, the introduction of cotton clothing, that's
a really big one. So and indeed the factory system
begins at this point in time, so I mean, yeah,
like in terms of there's this kind of tendency to
think like, well, I mean, I guess we're talking fourteen
hundred to sixteen hundred, so early. You know, we're being
very like early modern about it. But there's a kind

(22:22):
of tendency to think, oh, yeah, and then the Enlightenment
happened and people start being religious, absolutely fucking not right.
You know, people are still like religious fanatics. It's very
very weird.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
You know. The earliest you can state that people start that,
like people begin to start being I guess noticeably less
religious than they were in the Middle Ages is like
the very earliest you could do that is the end
of the Thirty Years War, and even then it's still

(22:51):
it's still a little while before the philosophical groundwork for
that comes into being really but yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, yeah, But you know, it's interesting because a lot
of the stuff that we consider to be like cultural
or or traditional, it's actually kind of like formed around
this time. So you know, like sitting around and saying
chow while drinking coffee, like that's invented at this point
in time, right, you know, because there was no there
was no coffee. You know, English people didn't have tea

(23:19):
until this point in time, and that and this is
when you get it, you know, consumer goods becoming more
of a thing, and just like the construction of consumerism
and the construction of like the bourgeoisie as a political
group certainly happens at this point in time. So you know,
people having like porcelain from China becomes more common at

(23:42):
this point in time, and like a you know, a
real a real thing that they want. Also, you know,
it's not that it doesn't exist in Europe before this,
it's just that like only like kings have it, you know,
So now it's kind of like there's a lot more
of it, you know, the introduction of opium. How about
us coming in and coming in and like people being like, well,

(24:04):
you know, like suddenly there were a lot more consequences. Yeah. Yeah,
the French disease as well, which is very funny, but like, yeah,
all sorts of things like this. It's all the kind
of like weird little cultural things that we really tend
to think have always been they start kicking off around now.

(24:25):
So you know, anything that whenever you think about like
Italian food, well actually a lot of that was invented
in the nineteen seventies. But you know when you're like, oh, yeah,
they like pasta with the red sauce, it's like not
until this point, babe.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
So yeah, yeah, this is the first time anyone in
England had ever said po tatoo tato, mash them, stick
them in a stew. Yeah. A couple of other things
that are just going to be really uh like would
be more noticeable. If you like time travel from from
fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred, it's going to be noticeably colder,

(24:58):
especially northern European states, Like I mean even down in
it was colder everywhere, but it was much more noticeable
like in your England, Scandinavia, Northern Germany kind of areas,
and then obviously into eastern Europe and Russia. That's one

(25:19):
thing monetization is going to shock you if you because
with the influx of gold and silver from the New World,
as Spain extracted those resources and brought them over, Europe's
economy became monetized. It wasn't overnight, but by sixteen hundred

(25:44):
it had been happening for over a century. And you
know there, I mean, obviously a lot of people were
still using barter and trading kind and stuff like that,
but this is like, this is a huge thing. And
then I guess the last thing would be like there
are little signs of industrialization. They are industry like. We're

(26:09):
starting to see like as the lands get transferred between
from the state or from the church to private landowners
during the wars of religion, especially in England and Germany,
you know, the piece of Augsburg and all that happens
in fifteen fifty five. When that starts happening, you start

(26:30):
to see like the land being put to this very
specific corporate use that we will later you know, we
will now see as the first shoots of industrialization and
a lot of stuff's going to be enclosed a lot
more like than it had been in fourteen hundred. So yeah,
it's there's little stuff and then there's big stuff. You're like,

(26:52):
are all these leaflets everywhere? What the fuck is the leaflet? Yeah?
We make these like every paper.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
I guess, like a paper paper.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
In Europe is a big thing. China's like we've had
that for like, okay, whatever, well done. Yeah, thanks guys,
uh T del fos, thank you for the question. Next
week got a fun one from fouked Base. Who is
your favorite medieval bisexual ruler?

Speaker 2 (27:21):
Gosh, you know there's so many in to juice from
uh you know, like, I think the obvious answer here
is h Richard the lion Heart, But I don't actually
like him, you know, I think he's a prick. But
I mean, can I say that he isn't a bikon? No, No,
I can't say that. My homie loved the d I
mean it's gonna be, it's gonna be temagen in its kan.

(27:45):
I wish, I wish I could do like the Mongolian
throat singing, because if I could, I would do it
right now, just like hell yeah, my boy was going
to town on the d he's he was.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
He was doing some throat singing.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, Like I mean he's a type of dome destroy
your city, uh and lay it to waste, you know,
et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, he's he's a real
good one for for obvious reasons. I think my best
to ever do it most likely, you know.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah, I mean I would never go against a friend
of the show, Timmy Jin. But I would also say
that William Rufus, I've always loved him. I always just
wanted them to call him Rufus the first He's fun
was he Do we know if he was by sexual

(28:37):
or is he just straight up gay?

Speaker 2 (28:39):
I mean, well, the thing is, it's always hard with
all these guys because a lot of them like lie
back and think of England, right, so they can't queer. Okay,
like we can one hundred percent say that they're queer, right.
I mean, so the thing is like, for example, I
have an easy time calling Richard Lionheart bye because he's
fucking dudes. Also like he's got illegitimate children. Yeah, and

(29:02):
so it's like that that is not a situation in
which he's like oh yeah, like for the crown, right, It's.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Like I'm not doing these bastards for the crown. Yeah,
Eleanor is like you fucking.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Terrible wastereul sons.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Why couldn't you be more like John? And John's like
I suck mom anyway? Yeah, uh yeah, fruit based Uh
it's Timmy j. We we love it, we know and
we love you.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Know what's up? You absolutely knew what we would say.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, yeah, we played a type next we got one
from Gaffzie. In chivalric romances, medieval authors love to talk
about legendary swords such as Excalibur, Durandal, and Fusberta. Are
there any examples of actual swords which receive the same
and got names that were handed down to us either

(29:54):
because of their quality or by their association with famous warriors?
And there are some not uh that there aren't as
many as you would think, given its prevalence in fiction,
because every fantasy story that has swords in it, the
swords have names, every RPG, every video game, all that,

(30:15):
you know, all that stuff. So yeah, I'm a big
fan of Uh fuck, I lost it? Where is it?
Where's el Seed's sword? Oh? Tizona? El Seed? Uh had
his own personal sword and you can go see it
in the Museum of Burgos.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, I really just to eat by pudding. But like
it's it's it's fine storm.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Yeah. Uh what else what else we got there? Are there?
There is a a fragment, an alleged fragment of Durandal,
the sword wielded by Roland uh in France. And I
always think that's funny because it's just like, you know,

(31:03):
it was like sure the shards of like the shards
of Narsil over here, like okay, man cool.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, sure, absolutely, like a thing that definitely happened, right,
very much.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, it's all these.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Things where I think a lot of people did name
their swords, but a lot of the time it just
doesn't survive to us, Like I think, you know much
in the way that like we don't fucking know what
people's wives names are. Yeah, sometimes you know, like a
level one their fucking swords, right.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
And Japan, I mean Japan does have a lot of those.
That is definitely uh something that we have. Uh. And
I mean they you know, range everything. Uh, I can't.
I'm not even gonna pronounce all these they date. I'm
not going to try to they date back you know,
to the sixth seventh century some of them, and they

(31:50):
are you know, Katana's personal swords, chateaus, things of that nature,
and uh hotel room are which is firefly, uh Cogarasu Maru,
which is little crow kotetsu. It's like there, there are

(32:10):
a lot of them. It's just like they don't they
don't have the same presence in reality that they do
in fiction, which does suck. I agree, like it does
suck because like every like every weapon that gets made
should have some stupid fucking like name like this I
don't even like oh yeah right now, like yeah, like

(32:32):
some dagger you've got it like a mal kiosk and
you're like it is the dagger of truth and you're like, okay, whatever,
I should.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
Really name my sword. I guess I have a sword
and I just don't have a name.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
So you it doesn't have a Yeah, I get on that.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
I gotta say, you know, before before fucking Kiras star
War takes it away from me, like this motherfucker like
has a passed a law to outlaw quote unquote samurai swords,
where I'm like, serve, does that even me?

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Right?

Speaker 2 (32:59):
And like now talking yeah and my sword is Chinese.
I've got a scholar's sword, and it's like, yeah, my
dad got it for me when I got my PhD.
Thank you. Uh and uh. I'm like, so do you
mean me because I'm like, because well, look, this is
a Chinese sword. There's no such thing as this samarai
in China being a little bit racist kres starmer and

(33:19):
I know you like doing that, but like, hands off
my sword, right, So I should come up with a
name for it so that if they take it from me,
I can like bemoan it and bewail it. Yeah, it'd
be really good. No, yeah, weed, we knew? Well, okay,
like right in with what I should name my sword?

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Oh man, uh Yan you call it y.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
That's Yan.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, yeah, guessie. Thank you for the question. We got
one now from MG in your face. I watched Medieval
last night and I will.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
Read Oh, I'm so sorry, but.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
I think you didn't discuss why is Yanziska a national
hero when the Czech Republic remained largely Catholic in the
grand scheme of history? Was he not ultimately on the
losing side. It may be that they won enough, or
is it that he was an individual was badass, and
it doesn't matter that the Hissites didn't, you know, fully
win well.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
I mean, the way that checks relate to this is
a yes, he is incredibly bad ass, but b the
Recatholization of the Czech Lands is understood quite rightly, I
would argue, as a result of the counter Reformation, it
was incredibly an extraordinarily violent and bloody and done against
the will of check people. This is the Habspertska like

(34:46):
all over, like just like coming in here and violently,
violently oppressing people. And so you know, it is one
hundred percent brought back at the bare of a gun.
And you know, you have to also understand that a
lot of this comes out of the nord Leo Borgeni,

(35:07):
which is the nineteenth century drive to define checknus. You know,
this idea to say, okay, like this is this is
why we are a nation, This is why we deserve
to have an identity apart from the Austro Hungarian Empire.
And very much so. Thinkers at this time imagine the

(35:31):
conception of Checknis and check identity and check religion as
being expressly tied to hosteitism, and among this Catholicism is
seen as an incursion very specifically from German speaking oppressors.
So this certainly exists from the nineteenth century onwards. It

(35:53):
is also very much the understanding under communism. And now
most Czech people are not religious, you know, it's one
of the most religious countries in the world, and so
they just like, you just go, this is a fucking badass,
you know. And so it's very much tied to not
even necessarily the fight for hosteitism, but they fight for

(36:13):
a form of cultural identity that is not forced upon
them by German speaking outsiders. So for them, like and
they say this very expressly, they're like, what is it homage.
Magerk wrote a speech when he was talking about Jon
huss at a conference in Switzerland, and he says, I

(36:34):
can't believe I can quote this off the top of
my head. Every Czech who is aware of his nation
needs to either decide for the concept of Checknis and
Housietism or Catholicism and German nah, right, Like this is
like one hundred percent something that they say out loud.
So it's really easy when you understand it that way, right.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think I think he can
look at it as like it's just a it's a
fully like it's a state trying to embrace a national
hero for a state that was I mean it was,
it was very independent, it was very powerful, but after

(37:18):
the Reformation, it was annihilated by by the Ferinance. I
heard them so much like they they destroy it. Like
the thing like when people talk about re christianizing something
or going back or whatever, the only way to do
that is like this, which is tantamount to like localize genoside,

(37:40):
like you know, close enough to it if you're calling
all of these people the same, the same thing, and
it's that that's what you have to do. And it
breeds this internal like desire to have national heroes, which
all nations that are conquered from without have, all of
them do. And it marries it with the fact that

(38:05):
after a certain number of years they came to saw
this German incursion as oppression and just divorced themselves from
that religion to this degree. And so now when they
look back on these people, they have to kind of

(38:25):
like this, they they have to pick and choose. And
this is a very confusing time because it was Catholic
and then it was Huside and then it was decidedly
Catholic again and now it's I guess agnostic to a degree.
And when you have to go when you're trying to
find a national hero in a nation that's still that

(38:48):
you know, it was part of Yugoslavia, it was part
of the USSR. You know, when you're still trying to
define yourself at this point, you have to reach back
and you have to find wherever you can find. And
you got this badass and even though he died and
the husides got crushed, like, he's still a freedom fighter.
Like yeah, I mean in in their sense, he's a
freedom fighter, so you know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, And like you know, it's incredibly important to text.
So for example, if you go to the tinskram in
Prague now the Tin Cathedral, which is on Old Town Square,
up on the very top of it, they have a chalice.
They've got like the symbol of the Utriquists up top,
and they have it up there because when the Hobsprokes

(39:32):
took back over, they took that down and put up
I think it was an image of the Virgin Mary
or something. And this went back and forth and back
and forth, over and over again. And it's very pointedly
back up there again, because they are talking about, like,
you know, the story about what this unique Czech religion is,
and it's very powerful. It's right across from a location

(39:53):
where a bunch of the initial Whosite rebels were executed,
and that is denoted by having a series of crosses
that are in the cobblestones there. So you know, you've
got to really understand this as a story that checks
tell about themselves and the way that they think of

(40:13):
themselves and their desire essentially to be autonomous, so you know,
and who the fuck wants to be told what's of
worship by a fucking habsburg. You know, it's a ridiculous
It's a ridiculous notion.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh yeah, that's uh yeah
injun your face. Thank you very much for the question.
Next with one question, Kelly, I'm curious about medieval footwear.
Maybe it was covered already, but I've been but I've
been on a barefoot shoe journey and it's got me
wondering what kind of shoes people have been wearing for?

(40:50):
How long? Was arch support a thing? Were shoes made
to the individual's foot size and shape? Are there any
crucial footwear factoids we'd find fascinating.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
Well, I mean, so most peasants are kind of walking
around in clogs a lot a lot of those time
is the answer. So you kind of have like soft
shoes that are just sort of made out of leather
or something like that, and then when you go out
to the field or whatever, you just jam those into
your clog and then and then you kind of go
from there. Uh, you probably have a nice pair of

(41:24):
shoes for wearing to church or something like that, you
know that has more of a reinforced leather base. And
we definitely know that people are into shoes right, especially
in the later medieval period, there is rather a lot
of talking about how pointy shoes are sexy, and everybody
likes pointy shoes, and you know, like the point here

(41:45):
it is, the fancy er it is, and they'll have
these incredibly long points that go for ages and ages
and ages, and the church is like, these shoes are
too sexy. Someone's gotta someone's got to put a stop
to it. Which is very very funny, but all so
like if you go see, there's a great painting you
can look up called Delay Benzalba. This is also in

(42:06):
my book, and it's a picture of a naked sexy
witch casting love spells and she's wearing the cutest pair
of kitten heels that I would absolutely fucking love to
have that that got little. They're kind of like pink
with like pointsy toes and a little little heel on
the back of their like mules. So there's like a
little slip on action. So we definitely see that. The

(42:29):
best way that you can get information about them is
by going to look at actual medieval images of clothing
and just like have a look at people's shoes. So
I mean, yeah, you do tend to have them made
for you. You know, a cobbler will measure your foot up
and like cobble away. But art support I think less,
so at least in examples that I've seen. But it's

(42:51):
also difficult to say. You know, maybe they do put
things in, but yeah, you know, it tends to be
kind of leather souls that are re enforced. But then
you wear clogs when you're doing dirty work.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
I have flat feet. Uh, this sounds terrible, Like my
feet would be like I wouldn't be able to walk,
Like this is not getting drafted, Okay, not only am
I not getting drafted like I was, like they were
like sticking me in front of the gate in the
Middle Ages and being like, give this man with mangled

(43:29):
feet change like like ten minutes in a clog, like
you might as well take you might as well take
a fucking hammer to my feet, like Jesus H Kelly.
Thank you for the question. Question from the final valve,
which is a good name. Uh I'm I'm kind of
wondering about how people in the medieval era thought about

(43:50):
animals and what we now call animal welfare. Did they
think of animals as having souls or personalities at least
some people must have with stories of like saying for it.
Did people have pets beside the obvious cats and dogs?
Is there a concept of animal abuse or mistreating animals
or were they usually seen as a tool that needs
to eat and sleep? Thank you.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
It really depends on who you're asking about. One of
my favorite facts though, is that a very very popular
pet in the medieval period is squirrels. Yes, yeah, so
they have those little you know, the acutie little red
European squirrels. People would have squirrels as pets, really really
commonly a huge huge thing. They definitely also have cats
and dogs, and when if you are a very fancy person,

(44:33):
you might have like parrots that have been imported or
monkeys that have been imported. Are those are like big
high ticket items and we certainly see rather a lot
of that. And people also keep birds really regularly, not
even necessarily like what we would consider to be exotic birds,
but all sorts. Like it's very common, for example, for

(44:55):
people to keep nightingales because they sing nicely, so like
essentially having p sogbirds is a really big thing. There
is some concept of animal welfare. Yeah, Like I've actually
written about this over at my blog in the past,
which was probably an article I wrote about the bull
Semen explosion which happened several years back, and basically I

(45:19):
was like, I got to write a blog and my
friend as a dare, was like, you should write about
the bull Semen explosion. I was like, guess what bitch.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Die?

Speaker 2 (45:26):
And about a way to do it? So, yeah, there
is kind of a concept of what the bare minimum
is for treating animals in a particular way. Now grinded,
I mean, they're eating them all the time, but you know,
the animals are important to them because it's kind of
like a form of livelihood. So you need to treat
your livestock really well. And fundamentally, most people have a cow,

(45:48):
and you want to keep your cow in the best
possible condition because you're gonna want it to keep giving
you milk for as long as you possibly can. Right,
So these guys are pretty pampered. I mean a lot
of time they live in your house with you during
the winter. You know that that is a whole thing.
But then on the other hand, there'll be stuff like
you know, people have kind of like trained bears. There's
rather a lot of dancing bears, and I shuddered to

(46:08):
think how those poor guys were treated, you know, like
they've always got like a little chain around their neck.
And then when you get into the early modern period,
there is like rather a lot of like torturing animals
for fun.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
So here the name of science, Like here.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
In London, right next to where the Globe Theater was,
there is a specific theater for bull baiting and another
one for bear baiting, where they're like, yeah, just poking
this bull, setting a bunch of dogs on him, poking
this bear, setting a bunch of dogs on him, and
then you'd go and like watch a bear get torn
apart by dogs, because you know, after the Renaissance everything
got so much better. So yeah, so there is there

(46:50):
is horrifying stuff like that. But yeah, and certainly we
do see that there is some consideration on the part
of ordinary people of like that animals have souls. The
Church is really down on this. The Church doesn't like it,
jerks and they don't. They don't like to think of

(47:10):
animals as having souls. And you know, the idea here
is that man who has been given to minion over
animals by God in the garden of Eden, and so
you know you're supposed to kind of think about it
that way. No, like your dog is not gonna see
you in heaven or whatever, which I believe is still
kind of like the line from Christians is that animals
don't have souls. But yeah, people still love animals, and

(47:35):
you know, as we can see with Queen Ford, the
way that people relate to them is really different to
how Yeah, the governing bodies tell you too, I.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Suppose, yeah, yeah, the church is teaching on animals not
having souls as stupid. I don't believe in heaven, but
it's still stupid. That's funny. Why wouldn't It's fine? I
don't care.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
I have a little hedgehogs pet. That's another one. I
forgot about that hedgehog pet. Oh adorable.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, talk the final vowel. Thank you very much for
the question. Next we got one from Dummy thick Ner
ad din U versus.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Hello. So the epidemic of sports betting in the US
made me wonder about medieval gambling. I know soldiers did it,
and playing cards developed towards the end of the period,
but how socially acceptable was it broadly, how pervasive was it?
What form did it usually take?

Speaker 2 (48:33):
It's oh, it's prices.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
I got bad news. So if you're the kind of
person now you watch like sports or something and you're like,
I'm tired of these fucking commercials about sports gambling apps
and everything like that, I think most people are. I
think I think most people really hate that, and for
good reason. But now, imagine if you didn't have ten

(48:56):
different sporting game, you didn't have ten different games a
night that you could watch on various streaming services and
everything like that. Imagine instead that, and you also don't
have like mass popular culture like recycling stuff into your
into you all the time. You're not getting like new

(49:18):
uh new novels aren't coming into the town every day
or something like that. You know, they that's not how
it works. Now, imagine how pervasive the gambling must have
been for like the one of the few activity the
few like big activities that they actually had. If you're
going to a hippodrome to watch uh, to to watch

(49:41):
the races, to watch the watch anything. Uh, if you're
going to the tilts to watch a joust or a melee,
everyone there is gambling on everything. They were taking odds,
they were taking bets. They they there were bookies, there
were sharks. It's I mean, it's the same practice. So

(50:02):
it would have been insanely pervasive, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
And I completely agree about the way that the way
that uh sports gambling has taken over TV and how
awful it is, But I mean, yeah, it was somehow
more pervasive back then somehow.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yeah. It's it's really interesting because it's something I really
noticed when I go back to the States now, I'm like, oh,
this is new, right, you know, because because when I
was a kid growing up, we didn't we didn't have
things like that, and so it's like, definitely is something
that I notice as a cultural change. But yeah, I
mean you're you're exactly right, Luke, all kinds of betting

(50:40):
on whatever the fuck, like, including by the time you
get the tutor period, whether whether or not the bear
is going to survive or the dogs aren't right. Uh.
But then also I guess that the di y one
is they played dice a lot. Yes, they're like constantly,
like they're constantly playing dice. And it's a big complaint
that moralists have. So so you know, when they complain

(51:01):
about brothels, they're also complaining that people are like in
the brothels gambling with dice or if they're complaining about
it particularly rowdy tavern, in the tavern, there's gambling with dice.
If a woman is like being called suspect, it's because
she also goes to the tavern and gambles with dice.
It's just over and over and over again, the gambling
with dice.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
Yeah, with the dice. Yeah, I mean they love it.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
They love it.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
How yeah, whatever, It's very hard to imagine, but like,
gambling is one of the few pastime activities these people
can have in their free time, because it doesn't require
anything but a stupid game of chance and some coin

(51:45):
or something people value. And you know, you can do
that at the pub. You can do that down at
the pub. You can do that like with some people
you know on the big farm that your master owns
or whatever. You know, it's just a thing you can do,
like fucking that drinking. Uh m hmm. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Surviving like the gambler or the gambling demon has always
been with us, you know, whether or not he's ensnared
your mother. That's that's just true.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
The man, that whole thing is just the whole thing
from him going like I'm not a state, I'm a
monster to him, like the gambling running in there and
the like as.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
A boogeyman or Boogieyman, classic app what an app incredible Yeah,
shout out, shout out.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Yeah. Uh. Anyway, Uh, my opinion on any vice is
that it should remain legal because puritanical banning of things
it sucks and is evil. But society should have safeguards
in place to help people so they don't fall into
these problems, uh, like like we're falling into right now,
like gambling addictions. So if they want to out off

(53:11):
gambling apps, fine by me, yeah, even though yeah, otherwise
I'm not on board with full banning. I don't do
that teetotal or bullshit.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Yeah exactly, I'm the same. I think it's bad, but
like if you ban it, it's still gonna happen. And
you know, there's also Simpsons episode about that.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
So yeah, you out gambling. And I think gambling is fun,
and I don't do it much because I know that,
like I don't have enough money to like to do it,
and I don't you know, I don't want to ruin
like finances or anything, but like you can't. It can't
just be like this at a time when like all
of the social and communal safeguards we have are just

(53:51):
fucking ground into dust. Anyway, Uh, dummy thick Ner, I did.
Thank you very much for the question. We got one
from Fluffy. Got a couple more thinking about shifting baseline syndrome.
I am wondering what we nevil accounts there are that
can give us an idea of the abundance of wildlife
in the medieval era, like how teeming with life or

(54:13):
the oceans did the countryside have more wildlife? And real
quick shifting baseline is like it's how a system is
measured against previous reference points. And the problem with measuring
wildlife against previous reference points is that wildlife has dropped
off so dramatically since industrialization really started going full steam

(54:36):
ahead in the seventeen hundreds that I mean like we're
like we've lost seventy eighty percent of the wildlife. Not
this not of the total species, but just of the
amount of wildlife that we had. And that's before you
even get into stuff like all the trees and everything.
I mean, England used to be lush with forests.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Yeah, yeah, we used to be forested. And I think
that this is another thing to kind of keep in
mind here is it's not just animals, because yeah, the
population of animals drops incredibly abruptly, but it's also plants
because before you have monocultures, right, you know, and industrialized farming,
that's like all we have is just like a bunch
of sugar beats. Like you know, you'll go to parts

(55:20):
of here, you know, I'll go up to like Hampshire
or something, and I'll go on a walk and it's
just fields and fields and fields and fields and fields
and sugar beets and the like. That's it, you know,
And so when you don't have that, then you have
like a greater abundance of things that you know, so
for example, just having like fallow fields that are gonna
grab whatever wildlife is. That's a really big thing. And

(55:43):
also things like, for example, regularly mowing, you know, like
how we we mow lawns and things all the time.
It's like here, there's kind of like a movement away
from that. In especially May. There's this thing that they
call it no mo May where they're like, don't please,
don't like mow your lawn in May because because it's
really bad for the environment, and there's like a lot

(56:03):
of pollinators and things that require all the plants that
would grow. And if you don't mow your lawn all
the time, turns out it's full of fucking flowers. Yeah,
And it's just like but if you do it all
the time, then they never they never develop, right, And
so that that privileges grass, which is terrible for the environment.
And you know, there are all these kinds of knock

(56:26):
on effects in terms of I think one of the
ones that people don't think about a lot, it's just
bugs there are a lot more bugs, little insect guys
hanging out like doing doing various things. But yeah, way, way,
way more birds. You know, basically you could go to
any river and get fish out of it or eels,
eels being a really big one to eat here. It's

(56:50):
you probably wouldn't find like bears in every forest. Like
that's probably going too far, but there are going to
be a lot of deer or a lot of things
of this nature.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
But just imagine like the like doing like medieval like
uh like death statistics and you know, like okay, you
know this week or you know this year, ten people
were killed by stabbing in London and you know, seventeen
people died of pneumonia or whatever, and oh my god,

(57:19):
ten thousand people died of bear deaths just wandering the
edge of the forest because there's so many fucking bears.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
Like oh yeah, you know, you know people used to
hut wild boar all the time.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Yeah, you know, wild board, they used to roam England,
they used to they fucking roamed Germany. They were a
menace in Germany literally, yeah yeah, And that doesn't mean
they should have been killed off, but.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
They still are. I think we've all seen the picture
of the naked German. Yeah whose got stolen?

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Yeah, I was sure, and that the other day that
was great.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Image for the show, just put that.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, it's you know, I think it's hard for us
to imagine because it's so different. But like a count
historical accounts of like even the Vikings just going when
they got to like Canada, when they went to Vinland,
like they like they were they they were talking about

(58:16):
how the lands were so teeming with wildlife and the
oceans were so teeming with fish that they could have
walked from their boats onto the land by stepping on fish.
Like it's just like we don't have any we don't
have any concept of it, and there's really no way

(58:36):
to give a concept of it because like where like
where would all those animals go, How would they feed?
Where would they live? Like we don't have enough warrens
and forests and rainforests and glacier Like we don't have
enough natural habitats that exist for these things anymore. And

(58:58):
it's we just live in a different world and like
this is one of the things where like you know,
we need to go back because we're killing all species.
Like I don't like bugs, but there are far fewer
bugs in Florida than they used to be, and that's
not good. Like it's just not.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Bugs are necessary for keeping things together except mosquitoes.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
If you if you try to be like THEO.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
Don't fuck you, don't give a shit.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Eradicate them all the world as a fuck one billion
dead mosquitoes, and it still wouldn't put a fucking dentt
in there. Now. I'm trying to wipe We've been trying
to wipe those fucking things out for three hundred thousand years,
and we are not one step closer. We are even
with the Adam Baum. Yeah, last one for today, question

(59:47):
from may Day. Was there any connection between the claim
King Arthur would return in Britain's hour of need and
the myth of Constantine the eleventh didn't die, but we'll
return to restore or yeah, to restore Christendom to Constantine city.
Woo king in the mountain, let's fucking go.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Yeah, Yo, there are so many of these, just so
you know, we got there's a version of this where
Frederick Barbarossa yep is in a mountain and he's going
to return, obviously with the Czechs. Saint Frentislaus is in
a mountain and he's going to return. Although I'll tell
you what, the Chech's greatest hour of need I think
has come and gone several times. When the Nazis took over,

(01:00:26):
it would have been then, But what about.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
What about when when the Habsburgs were like just slaughtering, like, yeah,
I just want wine with the with the.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
No no wine for plebs. Yeah, so I would have
thought that homeboy would have come back. So yeah, it's
just an incredibly prevalent European myth. Everybody's got their own
guy that is waiting in a mountain and is going
to come back. And we just tend to know more
about King Arthur because we're all here speaking English, right,
Like that's the one as a result of what happens

(01:01:02):
as a result of colonialism and imperialism. You know, you
got you get King Arthur. But yeah, like people have
this just as it's it's a fun story they like
to tell themselves, and it all kind of depends on
who you ask. So like the Nazis like to the
Barbarossa one right, so that they would bring that up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Yeah, I mean, like I'm not going to go through
all of them, because there are a ton. But like
you can look at Wikipedia and search for King of
sleep in the Mountain and just see how many of
them there are. They are from every state, every culture,
most world relig most, if not all, world religions. Of course,

(01:01:47):
there's the idea that King David's going to come back
and save the Jews. There's the idea that who was
it John the evangelist is going to come back, that
whole golden legend thing. Yeah, yeah, I mean, but but
I will point out two of these because they are funny.
One you mentioned Constantini eleventh, who is the least like

(01:02:12):
all of these other people are. Many of them are
like are like, uh, powerful rulers who maybe were cut
down too early by you know, the happenstances of life
or whatever. And uh. But then you get Constantini eleventh,
who's just this guy who's like the Imperial Crown has
devolved down to this shithead. He's a pale imitation of everything.

(01:02:36):
He can't get any friends in, he can't stop this.
He's just kind of hapless. He either commits suicide or
dies in the fighting. Like it's just it's so funny
to make that your guy when you've got You've got Justinian,
You've got basled a second, you've got you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
At constant.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
In the first Alexia, she got all these guys. Nope,
constantin the eleventh. And then of course Genghis Khan and
his is So he's sleeping in the Sacred Mountain where
he legend says he is buried and he's gonna come back.
But the reason I find this one so interesting is

(01:03:22):
is two things. Number One, there are still people there
who believe it, like or there were like in the
seventies and eighties, like part of the like quasi nomadic
tribes that still live there who definitely believe it. But
also there's still basically a Mongolian gag order on talking
to outsiders about where Ginghis Khan is buried.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Fucking yeah, that's so fucking cool.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
It really is, like that they just keep it there,
like even if they don't actually believe he's coming back,
it's really cool that they're just like, no, you're not
you're not.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Gonna it's not for you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
You're not gonna fuck with Timmys and stuff, you assholes. Yeah,
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
I absolutely love that. You know, if it wouldn't be
we're not so different if we didn't repeatedly talk about
how temaging whips.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
You know, I love a key can sleep in the mountain.
And I would note here that this is just really funny.
But the fact that Walt Disney has been quite supposedly
crgenically frozen and hidden at Disney Disneyland is cited as
an example of this. And I don't know who put

(01:04:31):
that in here, but.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
That's really good.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Yeah, you are an amazing Wikipedia, Like I.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
Mean, shout out to Wikipedia. We love the work they do.
What can I say?

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
I love it? Oh man, that's great. Yeah, folks, that's
going to do it for us today. We we would
be back next time with the mailbag for July. Actually
is coming next week because we're both traveling on on
hiatus for a bit. And yeah, and we'll be back

(01:05:02):
this Friday with our book Club series episode on the Cameron.
I believe it is day four, So yeah, look forward
to that. Patrons, uh Patreon dot com, slash w nsdpod
it's five dollars a month, sign up. It'll be great,
eleanor you got anything else jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Yeah, I mean, there's we're here, there and everywhere, aren't
we at the top of the show. You already said
all the places you can find us. I think, yeah
that we can keep you real busy this month. So yeah,
you you can listen.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
You can listen to a lot of us, you know,
check that out. Check out the new series Welcome to
the Crusades dot Com. It's it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
Oh, I guess I want one one small request. I guess,
like over over at by work podcast Gone Medieval. I
did a whole episode on the host site wars and
I want to and I want to prove to them
that people like hoistsite things. So if you could go
give that a lesson, listen to it and like pump
those numbers up, that'd be great. And also I had
to write like eight thousand words for it, so please

(01:06:06):
reward my work. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
Yeah, and listen to Gone Medieval. It's fun. You would
like it. Yeah, you guys know where to find us.
Eleanor is at Going Medieval in the socials. I'm at
Luca's amazing on the socials. You guys know the deal.
We're getting out of here, everybody. Thank you all so
much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
Hi,