October Mailbag

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good evening, good evening, Hello the Vincent Press, and welcome
you are, Menagerie of Horror.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
I mean it's October, why not?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Woo youoooo.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's good spooky effeminine Americans who you thought were British
your entire life?

Speaker 3 (00:28):
I did, I did. I did think he was British
for a really long time.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Yeah, you know, but again, we need to bring back
the trans Atlantic accent.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
That's what it is.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
I've got no business with this accent. I should be
doing that. That's here for our boys and Blue or whatever.
Fucking no ass accent.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
That ship was yeah in the in the European theater. Yeah, yeah,
you're just announcing newsreels before movies.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I would you know, that would be great. You know
I could do that job. That's fine. Bring them back.
We must return, specifically, just so I can get a job.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Thanks the old the old war correspondent announcer. Hello, and
well yeah, and then they became.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
The movie time for the news at eight.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
And now they no longer exist. Yeah anyway, Yeah, how's
it going.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, it's all right, it's all right.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
I am giving myself untold psychic damage by reading this
new Dan Brown book m which just shows the lengths
I will go to for this podcast for the good people,
if we're not so different.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I like I like the idea. I like that. I
appreciate that you tell yourself that you wouldn't have hate
read this out of I would not.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
I've never read a Dan Brown book. I've never read
it down.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
You would not, well, I have, unfortunately read, Uh, what
was Angels and Demons?

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Which is you so that was the only one you read?
You didn't read? Oh yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
And I only read Angels of Demons because like so
many people were talking about it and I read through
it at the speed that I read through like a
Star Wars novel, which is say, very fast normally, and
and I was like, wow, this is.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
You can rip through about one hundred pages in like
an hour.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah this is not uh, this is not good. But
but yeah no I don't. I don't have any more
exposure to it. I believe I called it, uh books
for stupid people to make them feel like they're smart.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
That's exactly what I was about to say. I think
that it's it's like everything is so obvious, and you know,
it's that it's the fucking Garth MARENGI gift the you
know I know who use subtext and they're all cowards, Like.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Wait a minute, is it the Illuminati again, it's the Illuminatis. Yeah,
and like, uh.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
It's just I swear to you.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
In this one whole section is just read like Wikipedia,
where it's like where he's like, Prague was home to
such notable and I'm just like, shut up.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
But it's also like it's wild because they'll be all like, oh.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
They're like Prague is mysterious and magical and dark, and
I'm just like, fucking could you please stop exoticizing us
for five seconds?

Speaker 3 (03:28):
And he's like, absolutely not.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
And there was like this one paragraph where he's like
he goes from like the court of Rudolph the Second,
where like Rudolf the Second has this big alchemical.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Thing where he's like he was practicing in secret and
I'm like, no, he wasn't.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
It was quite in the open, but whatever, and he's
like and John Dee visited and it's like uh huh.
And then he's like and also Franz Kafka, I'm.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Like, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Are you talking about? Like a three under your gap and.

Speaker 4 (04:01):
Then like a guy wrote modern fiction, like what it
but we just all look like to him, I don't know,
like it's it's cofka.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
You know. The one thing I have to say about
this is that it's kafka esk.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, there you go. Oh, I mean, thank you.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
I shouldn't go too deeply into it because we needed
to save it for the actual app we're going to do.
But my lord, like I was like reading it around
the house and like like Justin was trying to write
and get actual work done, and he's got like his
headphones in and I kept just like yelling at the
book and he kept like taking it out and being
like what And I was like, no, I'm not talking
to you.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
I'm just angry.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
He's like, all right, okay, Well, if you could just
like make a hand gesture you actually need me, I'm like, okay,
m yeah, sog uh in many.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
The last line of the book will be Progue is
a city of contrast.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Oh, it's like a hundred percent one hundred percent, Like
I mean, like Homeboy just like went on vacation once
and I thought you could write about Progue and it's
so you know, insulting.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
I'll be honest. You know, vacation did once save the
city of Kyoto from being nuked.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
That is true.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
That's true. So yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
Okay, so like, okay, some vacations are I'm not like, obviously,
don't nuke progue if anyone who has a nuclear device
and who's listening, don't do that.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
But I just I don't know.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
I'm like, I just got my backup when everyone is
treating us like an unknowable and mysterious people, I guess
when we're like pretty fucking noble.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Actually yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
And also it's just gonna like this is gonna spark
a whole new wave of tourism of like the most
insufferable people on earth who think that they are like
unearthing mysteries.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
But yeah, yeah, I don't.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
Know, I've got I'm also just like in a bad
mood about progue things because I was like, for other work,
reading a book that's ostensibly vaguely academic that came out
and the person writing it got a bunch of the
medieval stuff just completely wrong because it was like a
twentieth century person and she was like, I can do

(06:29):
the medieval period, and it's like turns out no, nope,
so yeah, I'm just like, I'm having a bad time
with books about Prague right now.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
I uh no one suffered.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
That's that's it. It's a rough buddy, put yourself across.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Oh man, uh yeah that Uh I'm sorry to hear that,
I really am because uh man, No, there is absolutely
no chane of me of me picking that up. Oh god,
and uh let's uh let's do some.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Male Yeah, let's do some male. Hell.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, let's talk about that. We can talk about Dan
Brown next week. Yes, and uh whatever, his name is
doctor Robert something. I always want to call him Robert muldoon,
But that's the name of the game warden in Jurassic Park,
which would honestly be a lot funnier now that I
think about it, Like that would be more entertaining if

(07:29):
you just had this like random Australian guy with like
a big wide brim hat and he's chasing down people
but he's just tranking like cardinals or whatever. See, that's
way more ten seconds, and it's already more entertaining than now. Now.
If I could only sell I don't know, however many
copies that's sold, like thirty million or whatever, anyway, folks, Hello,

(08:21):
and welcome back to We're Not So Different, a podcast
about how we've always been idiots. Some of us are
bigger idiots about Prague than others. Folks. It is a
new month, and that means it's time for another brand
new mail bag of patron questions. Today we're going all

(08:42):
over the place. We've got modern day dark ages, parallels,
the demonology of Succubai, sumptuary laws, and China rain catchments,
and talk about feudalism and more. Enjoy and subscribe to
the Patreon if you want to answer hear us answer
questions like this five dollars a month Patreon, dot com, s,

(09:06):
w nsdpod, you get bonus episodes, You get this stuff.
It is a whole lot of fun. Anyway, let's get
onto it, astronaut pants. Ask. Many colleges and universities in
the US have formal opening ceremonies such as convocation and
senior investiture that they claim come from rights at Oxford.

(09:28):
How far back do these traditions go? And do we
know how similar they are to what most schools celebrate today?

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Yeah, so they go pretty fucking far back. And I'll
tell you one thing about Oxford. Those bitches keep track
of this shit. They love to They simply love to convoke,
you know, like I love to tell the story. But
one of my best mates, Antonia, was working at Oxford
for a really long time at Saint John's and I

(09:57):
used to go there and scam free dinner, like we
go to like High Tay and it was really awesome
because you could get like for free, like three courses,
and then if you got enough people together, you could
like request that they put on this thing called second
Dessert where you go into another room and then like
there's like berries and chocolate and port and saturnine and snuff.

(10:20):
And I was always doing the snuff and the people
are like, people don't usually do the stuff, and I
was like, I'm doing this stuff. So I'm doing I'm
snorting tobacco now.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
But the first, the first time I ever went, oh.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
God, yeah, Clary and I are like teasing Antoni and
we're like, oh, what are you gonna have to get
up and say grace and Latin? And Antonia goes, well, no,
usually one of the undergrads does that.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
And we're like that was supposed to be a joke, right,
I'm not here baby, yeah, and so.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
Like I mean by so the by the nature of
universities being what they are, which is, you know, large
institutions of learning, and Oxford having this sort of money
and prestige that it does, we have excellent records for
what their fucking problem is, right because these are people
who buy their very nature, write everything down and they

(11:14):
are essentially church institutions in the medieval period, so they're
keeping these things on record because they're like, this is
how you do it. So it's just like it's a
particular arm of the church, right that's doing these things
this way, and they're able to kind of like keep
these libraries for years upon years upon years upon years
upon years they've got unless they like sell particularized things
off to collectors when they run out of money, which

(11:35):
they don't.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Really do very often.

Speaker 4 (11:37):
Then they have these like great manuscript collections and that
sort of thing. So we actually have really good traces
of this. There's certain things, for example, like if you
join the Bodiley and Library, which you know, of course
I have, Like there are these traditions like when you
join the Bodiley and one of the things that you
have to do is swear an oath that you won't
light fires in the library.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Okay, yeah, I can see that.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
Yeah yeah, And it's like and which I And it's
funny because like I was like giggling while I did it,
and like the library and was being like so fucking
serious and I was like, okay, dude, like sorry.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
I'm bad.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Yeah, I'll stop enjoying this, I guess.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
But yeah, So we the point being that we have
really good records on this because that's what universities are like,
and if they're basing them off of the Oxford things, yeah,
that's that it's probably correct. And this is these are
things that you can go look up. You know, Oxford
Oxbridge in general is a special you know, they're they're

(12:35):
special little snow flakes and they they have this part
to go thing. But you know, you'll find similar stuff,
for example at Bologna, at the Sorbonne, at Queensboro in
uh Portugal, at Charles You know that we have really
really good.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Records on this stuff. So yeah, it's probably right, and
I think that's neat.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
Man.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
An oath did not light a fire in the library.
That is probably one of the few oaths you could
get me to like actually swear, I'll be like fine whatever.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
I was like, you know, fair enough.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, astronaut Pants, thank you for the question. Next,
Milesby says, I know it's repeatedly said the Dark Ages
refers to the lack of written materials rather than quote
decline of civilization in quote, but how does Eleanor view
this piece of news in Britain in comparison to the

(13:32):
post Roman Empire slash Early Middle Ages? And this is
a story about a library that had been closed in
Croydon and the people who have been brought in to
clear out the library did not take note of the

(13:56):
books or how bad it would look or something like that,
and they just dumped the in front of the library,
just out there, like to be thrown in the trash.
And of course the mayor maybe not mayor whatever it is,
it was, you know, horrified, and gave a statement and
everything like this is not just supposed to happen. These
books are supposed to be center round and everything. So yeah,

(14:19):
I think it's a good story there, Eleanor. Yeah, yeah,
it's not a good story, but it's a it depicts
the Dark Ages that actually happened.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
Yeah, and I mean this is something that one of
the reasons why we often have bad records of the
Middle Ages is exactly this shit happening, exactly this shit
happening right here, like over and over and over again.
So you have, for example, in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries in the Austro Hungarian Empire and Holy Roman Empire,

(14:55):
you have this consolidation of the libraries that is like
instituted as a modernization effort, where the Habsburgs are like, oh, yeah, well,
we need to like let's just put instead of having
like all of these monasteries with disparate libraries, let's like
just put them all together in one place.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
And they're going don't.

Speaker 4 (15:14):
Need that, don't need that, don't need that, and just
kind of like throwing out lots of books. So we
lost just so much medieval shit that way.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Right.

Speaker 4 (15:21):
Similarly, here, Henry, the eighths dissolution of the monasteries just
means that it's like a fucking like absolute bonfire of libraries.
You know, some of them go down to the university
and things like that, but a lot of them are
just like fucking lost because people are just like, yeah,
get this the fuck out of here?

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Who gives a shit, right, and especially if you are
not an expert.

Speaker 4 (15:46):
Right, like if you're just some guy who's told clear
this space out and you're like, yeah, whatever, books, I
don't give a.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Shit, like you've got no way of knowing, and like.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
This happens over and over and over again, like this
is just willful destruction of things, and like, you know,
don't get me wrong, like I don't care if like
a bunch of damn brown books get out, like whatever,
Like you know, nothing is lost, and you know we've
got copies on record at that, like you know, the

(16:16):
British Library.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
It'll be fine.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
But the point is that once these things start happening,
they happen even more. And we're living through a period
where in expert knowledge, especially of things like the humanities,
is being systemically degraded, and we are being told over

(16:38):
and over again by like our ruling elites that you
don't need to know about things like this. We're being
told that books have no function. You know, that AI
is going to do everything for us, which is just
like absolutely bizarre. And you know, I think that these
two things are linked, you know, like you don't need
a physical library, when you know the government is pumping
a bunch of money into AI, which will just like

(16:59):
think for you don't need to think, right And so
I think that this is a really good object lesson
because it teaches us how we get these dark ages
exactly exactly as you're saying. It shows us how, you know,
even now when we have the benefit of hindsight, we
have the benefit of knowing what happens when you start

(17:21):
treating libraries like this, when you start treating collections like this,
if you stop thinking that knowledge and its accumulation and
sharing is important, that stuff can get traction very very quickly,
and it's something that doesn't lead anywhere good.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
Let's just say that. So, I mean, I'm glad.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
That there's a furior about it. That's a good thing,
but it never should have fucking happened in the first place.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
And you know.

Speaker 4 (17:50):
Why the library is quite why the library is closing
in the first place is all down to the fact
that this government has stopped funding councils and is expecting
all local councils to be doing basically everything like they're
supposed to be finding the housing for everyone who lives there.
They're supposed to be like and doing rubbish collection, potholes, libraries, gyms,

(18:11):
you know, like every single fucking thing.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
And they have no goddamn money. So when it's.

Speaker 4 (18:16):
Between like are we going to get people housing or
are we going to house these books? Unfortunately a lot
of the time it's like the books that are going
to go. But the two things are inextricably bound. I
would say, you know, like a society that values its
people also values the knowledge that benefits them, and uh,
something's got to.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Give in this country. Joined the Green Party, everybody, thank you.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yeah, I was the other day. I was actually thinking
about this exact thing because I I had like found
like a box that had some like some like books
and stuff from like I don't know, like a few
years ago that had just gotten put away in a corner,

(19:00):
and so I got it out and I pulled you know,
I pulled the stuff out. It was a couple of books,
and you know, I dusted them off a little, put
them on the shelf, and uh, there was also like
a couple of receipts in the bottom of it, just
like you know, grocery store receipts, normal stuff, you know,
And I was after I went wow, things were a
lot cheaper back then. I uh uh I I'm not

(19:27):
trying to say I I saw. I looked at it,
and I thought, you know, this is one of those
things that like if I had forgotten about that box,
you know, or something like that, and uh, you know,
it's one of those things like you know that you
that you hear about like a fine you know, like

(19:47):
so someone in a thousand years some archaeologists is like
dinging around here or whatever, and uh and comes across,
you know, this box that haven't been preserved because stuff
didn't fall on it or you know, something like that,
and like, you know, it's like and I was, like,
that's exactly like what we have for these people. Yeah,

(20:08):
I mean, of course there's a lot of stuff that's
saved and everything like that, like the master works or
you know, like these nice like bound histories and periodicals
and stuff that that that we do have records of.
But like the other stuff we have, you know, like
when you go through like a collection of something, it'll
be like, you know, like just the everyday like nick

(20:33):
knacks that that like you keep in your pocket, you know,
like here's a key, here's a button here, you know,
like and we only found this stuff because it was
in this woman's pocket on this day and she fell
into a peat boger, you know, something like that. And
I just think about like that stuff, and then like
reading this article, I was just I was just like

(20:55):
god damn, Like they're doing the same thing and I'm not, like,
you know, I'm not here to ding on these workers
who were probably told, you know, do this as fast
as possible, and you know where you lose your job
or whatever. But it's one of those things where it's

(21:15):
like the books themselves, like the actual physical books do
not matter, like not really, like when people are like
precious about like the physical form of book, I'm like, okay, fine,
But like the thing about the written word is that
like when it survives, like what survives is like just

(21:43):
a small segment of the actual history. Like even in
places like medieval or ancient China where they had insane
record keeping and stuff like that, we still have spotty
records because that stuff gets lost over time. It was
written on, it was written on very degradable surfaces. You know.
It's just like what survives is at random. And so

(22:07):
like we have all this access right now to all
this information and it's amazing, but like you know, we
have to do we have to make conscious efforts to
like keep that and like keep records of it and stuff.
And I mean that means not like you know, it
means you know, reading books, interacting with books and stuff
like that, but also you know, like keeping files on it.

(22:28):
And if you have you know, like a you know,
storage drives and stuff like that, you know that that
stuff is is good because you know, I mean, anything
could happen that could cause like huge loss of this stuff.
But I mean even from natural disasters to man made
ones to you know, I mean anything, so like, yeah, this,
I mean, I think this is a perfect example of

(22:50):
how you get a dark age, Like if you lose
enough stuff like this in a thousand years.

Speaker 4 (22:58):
Yeah, it's just cumulative over time. You know, these things
don't happen all at once. It's death by a thousand cuts, right,
It's a cultural thing that happens slowly over time.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, it's a yeah, it's yeah. We we all live
in the cycles of life or whatever. And I find
that both comforting and also terrifying because I don't even
if I don't like a lot of what's on the

(23:31):
Internet or the way that people use it or whatever.
I really don't think we should lose that because having
access to this repository of information in such a way,
and that it's in a lot of cases is relatively
unedited coming to us in terms of you know, a
lot of videos that we've seen and stuff like that. Like,
I think it is keeping that is like a one

(23:54):
of the more worthwhile human endeavors there is, because we
have accounts of that. And when you have accounts like
that that can be spread around, it's a lot harder
to fall for propaganda, which is what we're seeing right now. Yep, absolutely, yep,
uh yeah, So Miles By, thank you very much for
the question. Next, we got one from Zibin who says

(24:14):
a question for Eleanor about the Kramer slash Summer's understanding
of succubus. If a demon can only steal semen from
a human man and use this to impregnate, does the
semen get some of the demon's DNA in the process?
Is demon ness transferred to the child? Because that doesn't
really solve the only God can create problem. And if

(24:35):
they don't pass their demon qualities, aren't they just shuffling
jigs around creating paternity confusions. Just jizz couriers, eleanor.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, so they are just his careers. Thank you for that.
I'll be in the future. Love this. You know that
they you they are just jizz couriers.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
But the understanding of the reason why this is bad
is that they're like jiz currying.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
To decease to deceive.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Right.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
So one of the things that Kramer's really worried about,
like while he's beaten off, is that like innocent men,
just normal men, normal men, innocent men, uh are their
Jesus is going to get stolen and women are going
to get knocked up with it, and then people are
going to be all, like, why do you knock that
woman up?

Speaker 3 (25:22):
And they'll be like I didn't.

Speaker 4 (25:23):
And so like the uh suckubisses and incubusses are are
causing confusion with this. The other thing is that they're
gonna take it and then they're gonna knock the witches.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Up with it at the unholy.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
Sabbot slash witch orgies that they have, and then the
witches are going to then give birth to these kids,
suck the poor normal men slash innocent men into it,
and then they will raise the babies to be witches.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
So, uh, it's it's a secifica. They say it's nurture.
You know that they don't think that it's a nature issue.

Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's a nurture issue.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
So, yeah, is the spawn born of this? Is it
a demon or is it a human?

Speaker 3 (26:13):
A human?

Speaker 4 (26:13):
It's a human and you know, indeed we see this
kind of going on in general with also Antichrist discourse.
So you know, the the major ways that we think
that Antichrist is going to be born into the world
is either by an evil monk and nun who are shagging,

(26:37):
or like a sex worker, and you know, like whoever.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
They're varying degrees of it.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
But the baby would be a normal baby. But it
is then basically inhabited by an evil spirit that the
devil sends. So the devil still can't because the devil
can't create, right, so that's not possible, but the devil
can possess, so you can.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Do it via possession instead.

Speaker 4 (27:06):
So they don't need the nature necessarily in order for
evil to occur, Like it doesn't need to.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Be physical, you know, like a conception of DNA.

Speaker 4 (27:16):
They simply don't care that much about because you know,
they're medieval people, so it's much more about action, right,
and the action is going to be a result of
nurture or indeed, in some cases just whole scale possession,
So they don't you don't need their body to be weird.
It'll just you know, and then like maybe your body

(27:37):
will start looking weird because you're so evil, because you
know how beauty standards work.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
But yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Love it when fantasy novels have a well defined magic system.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
I love that.

Speaker 4 (27:51):
It's just yeah, it's very well defined. Like I mean,
the devil just can't do it. The devil has not
got the juice, so that's it, you know.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, yep, oh, Zeven, thank you very much for the question. Next,
we got one from dog spot er. Do we have
any info on height slash weight for the types of
people who were trained to fight in the Middle Ages,
How did averages compare to someone within a standard deviation
of today's average.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
Yeah, we don't have that great records about it. We
do know that, like at least in English contexts, when
people are like, oh my gosh, Henry Longshanks and it's
like Homeboy was like six feet tall and you're like okay.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Pretty good.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
But you know, we have dietary issues obviously that we
no longer suffer from, so we are now able to
be much taller. And also, you know, standards of measurement
are really you know, varying.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Across time.

Speaker 4 (28:50):
You know, like all you got to do is consider
the fact that English people still are talking about how
much they weigh in stones.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
So it's it's really it's really difficult.

Speaker 5 (29:05):
You know.

Speaker 4 (29:07):
It's like the one thing I really I cannot get
my head around stones. I still can't remember what it is.
I feel like it's fourteen pounds or something like. It's
like some weird measurement.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
No, I will not look I refuse to look it up.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
But also, like, especially if people here are dieting, like
the number one way they refer they relate to weight
losses talking about stones, They're like, oh, yeah, I've lost
a stone, I've lost half a stone.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
I'm like, bitch, I don't know what that means.

Speaker 4 (29:31):
But okay, so yeah, Unfortunately, we just don't have great
records on this. Like also because we don't have like
a state that would take.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
Records like this.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
You know, there isn't there isn't an interest in statistics
in this the same way, and like unless it's like
for the purposes of taxation, Like you know, no one
really gives a shit about like writing down like how
tall you know, tom Son of the Smith was.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
They just say that boy big.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
Yeah, and then you know, and if they're really big
and they're noble and notable, they'll write about it. But
you know, most everybody is just going to be ignored.
You can kind of sometimes get an idea by looking
at armor.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
But again here we have the fact that.

Speaker 4 (30:18):
Like armor is usually worn by rich people, so it's
really only going to tell you about rich people.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
It's not got to talk tell you about like ordinary
folks unfortunate.

Speaker 4 (30:28):
We can kind of do it, but we can sort
of do it now by looking at skeletons, but yeah,
I'm not really then we would need to know that
the skeleton belonged to a warrior, right, So, and we
don't really have a way of doing that unless we
know that the skeleton is like fucked up and like
there's obvious like damage in varying places.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Right.

Speaker 4 (30:50):
But the basically there are all these things which make
it difficult to get a read on it, which is
why I don't have an answer to this unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean the I think the I
think the difference between like the Middle Ages and now,
like in terms of high I think I've seen it
as like it's like two ish inches, Like we're like
two ish inch dollars inches dollar on average. But like, yeah,

(31:16):
they didn't they didn't care about height like that. I
do think in the early in the early modern period
and especially about the Napoleonic period, that was something that
people were starting to care about. And I think you
could kind of find that, uh you know, like heights
and stuff like that for certain things. Uh but yeah,
not not necessarily. Yeah, uh excuse me, dog spotter, Thank

(31:40):
you very much for the question.

Speaker 5 (31:41):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Next, we got one from Luca j. H who says,
obviously silk was very It was a very expensive luxury
good in Europe, and I presume was further restrained by
various sumptuary laws even after Europe got domestic production. But
what about China. I know court officials in various dynasties
had specific colors and symbols to wear depending on their rank,
but were there other laws on who could wear silk

(32:06):
like in Europe? Was it less expensive more common outside
of the wealthy, wealthy elite, because silk was native and
I did some research on this, so basically, basically they
did have sumptuary laws, and earlier on in the Medieval

(32:29):
period it seems like they were more strictly enforced, but
by the later but by the by the late Middle Ages,
and even in I mean even you know, like the
tenth century, they didn't enforce them as strictly. And by

(32:52):
the end of the Middle Ages, they're like, even if
they had the laws, they weren't enforced because every level
of like even down to smaller towns would have would
typically have some kind of a silk industry, assuming it
was like within the proper like you know, bands for
you know, the right weather and stuff like that. So yeah,

(33:15):
and I think like there is there's like a confusion
teaching on this, and it's very much about you know, well, quote,
let clothing be regulated according to gradiations in rank in life.
Let there be distinctions in regard to carriages and official caps,
clothing and positions, stipend and salaries and fields and dwellings.

(33:37):
And that let no one, even if worthy an honored
dare wear clothing that does not befit his rank. So
you have that confusion teaching, and but it wasn't strictly.
It became much less strictly enforced over time, and and

(33:59):
so like even in the sixteenth century they would say,
you know the dynasy this was during the ming Uh.
The dynasty has clear regulations for the dress and ornaments
of women from official families. As times changed and customs
became more lavish, people all set the resolve on venerating
riches and excesses, and as they no longer knew they

(34:22):
were there were explicit prohibitions, instead went about trampling on them. Nowadays,
men dress in brocade and embroidered silks, and women ornament
themselves in gold and pearls. So this person, you know,
is complaining about the This is a court official complaining
about the degradation of the insignificance of these silks and

(34:43):
stuff like that, because people have you know, whatever whatever
laws were in effect, they didn't care essentially and there
so there there are other quotes that show the this
was you know this this people just went about in

(35:05):
whatever they wanted to and as long as it didn't
offend someone specifically like you, you were pretty good the
men could dress and could dress in silks, and and
a lot of times if they didn't have a lot
of money, they would just use the silks from the
local industries and they would, UH they would, and I

(35:29):
mean women were dressed in silks as well, And there
are gradiations in silk. And there were certain colors that
were associated with either the UH imperial the imperial house
that was ruling, but also UH like certain types of
silk could only be worn by individual like UH in

(35:50):
their UH, their their bureaucracy. Basically there were different gradients
and some the highest officials got to wear I believe
red and then green and then blue, or blue and
green or reverse one of the two. And basically the

(36:12):
basically like, as long as you didn't infringe on that,
you know, you weren't trying to like appear to dress like,
you know, an official or something like that, you could
you could pretty much get away with it. And there's
this quote that comes from this is actually from the
late sixteenth century, but it talks about how at least
since the Song dynasty, which was the late tenth century

(36:34):
to the late thirteenth century, people have been just like
going even even commoners have been going out of their
way to buy silk and in the style that became
famous during the song period, which is called a song brocade.
And it's quote now the youth from our town considers silk,

(36:55):
gauze and pattern fabrics worth nothing, seeking the expensive and
elegant wou silk and song brocade, cloud patterned thin satin
and fabrics woven with camel wool imported from far away
to dress themselves. And it goes on about like how
they wear all these these these extravagant colors, and uh,

(37:15):
you know this is a yeah, yeah, this is a
mockery of of you know, everything, and and uh blah
blah blah. And there there's another quote about how basically, uh,
if you go, it basically depends on where you go
as to how strictly they enforce it. But like even

(37:39):
in places that do enforce it, it's kind of like,
you know, don't wear that color of silk. You you know,
you you go back, you know, you go back to uh,
you go back to wearing a slightly less desirable kind
of silk instead of you know, wearing the absolute fanciest
because you have fit did some some No, let me just.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Tell you what China. China's built different.

Speaker 5 (38:05):
But yeah, yeah, it's you know, there there are a
few there are a few different quotes of these, a
lot of them from civil servants complaining about you know.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Uh, this is from a guy named uh Luji in
uh the mid sixteenth centuries. Nowadays, the majority of revenue
comes from the region of wu in Ua, and the
luxury life in this region is the most prominent. In
Sujao and hang Zhu, there are numerous people who don't
till but eat good food, and people who don't weave
but wear patterned silk. This is because people love pursuing

(38:40):
luxury and prefer commercial activities. Uh yeah, yeah, word, yeah,
you're describing the consumption lifestyle there. Basically, they did have
sumptuary laws. They from what I can tell, they were
not terribly enforced along the way. And uh yeah it

(39:06):
and I mean there's also uh this painting of the
city of nanjing Uh in the very late Middle Ages,
and it is very long painting. It's it goes It's
like all this thing is just centimeters. Yeah, so however

(39:29):
long that is, my American brain doesn't know. But and
and it has like different sections of the city and
there's like there's like a commercial district, and the commercial
district has you know, like a like a silk like
a silk place, and then it has like other places
that are kind of less well to do but also
sell clothing. So like this was it was something that

(39:53):
was common and it went on fairly regularly. And I
actually found this from yeah, of course university course reading
list on Uh, I guess the silk trade and silk industry.
It doesn't even have a name on it. So whoever

(40:15):
put this together and included copious notes and references, Uh,
thank you. I appreciate that. I don't know who you are,
but thanks. Yeah. Anyway, Luca JH. They love their silk, Uh,
sumptuary laws couldn't keep them down.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
I suppose ye love me silk's me yeah, hell.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, thank you very much for the question. May Day
says Uh. In a recent episode of Lions lit by
Donkeys and Nate had a running gag referring to Italian
city states by the particular cuisine the most popular for
how long standing are these status items as high value
luxury foods? Like with nobles in the business Empire brag

(41:00):
about their expensive imported modin and balsamic vinegar. Would a
German sausage gourmand to be eating imported Bolognis sausages?

Speaker 4 (41:13):
Well, Shout out lions legged by donkeys, shout out nate
front of.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
The pod, et cetera.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
So most food traditions from the Middle Ages are no
longer accident. You know, Italians will kill you if you
point this out. But most things that are considered traditional
were brought into the Italian lexicon in the twentieth century.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
You just have to do like very basic historical research
on it. They will try to kill you if you
bring it up.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Though.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
There's this like one Marxist food historian and in Italy
who writes about this and everybody hates him. But like, yeah,
we just don't have recipes on the books for you know,
Tordolini before you know, like eighteen ninety or whatever. So
like they're not they're not particularly fucking old.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
You needed the tomato, you needed, you need that in exchange.

Speaker 4 (41:59):
Like yeah, now having said that, uh, the thing the
thing you flex the most about is wine, like wine
number one. Hell yeah, bringing in wine, that's definitely definitely
a thing and everyone is into that. So like flexing
about where your wines come from and having that wine

(42:20):
that's going to do your thing. Spice is similar, so
spiced whatever is definitely a good thing. Occasionally cheeses people
will get they'll be getting down talking about like whatever
interesting cheese that they've got, and that kind of can
move back and forth.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
And we do have some things.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
For particular dried sausages, yes, because those can be traded.
But you know, we've got to understand that because travel
is simply slower, there's a lot of food that can't
really be moved back and forth, you know. Yeah, so
it's hard.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
You gotta you gotta like a hard packet and salt
if you're going to get it anywhere. Like you know, yeah,
so it was hard to get fish from the coast
because even if you pack it in salt, if it
like gets messed up at all, it's just gonna go bad.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Oh yeah, fucking you know.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
Oranges, that's a huge flex, enormous flex on oranges. They
often come from Spain, very particularly when they move around dates.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
That's a flex.

Speaker 4 (43:29):
Pineapples, Yeah, if you can get one, you know, things
like this, you know, fruits, fruits that travel yep, that's
that's the thing. But Yeah, it's because they don't have
preservatives and food and travel is slower.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
It's just a lot of it can't fucking happen. That's that,
you know.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
Yep, Mayde, thank you very much for the question. Uh. Next,
we got one from Ali Can't, who says I was
told as a kid that houses in Arabic slash Central
Asian Asian regions were designed so that water collected on
their roofs on the rare occasions that it rained. Is
there any truth to that or is it just more orientalism?

(44:04):
And I also look this one up and I found
a really good article about this. It is the articles
called Ancient water harvesting Methods in the dry Lands of
the Mediterranean and Western Asia. And ancient here is being
used to just mean anything pre modern. But you know,

(44:25):
we'll forgive them for that.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
And basically the the answer is, yeah, they they did it.
They have been doing this since, I mean since civilization existed.
The for like rain catchment on roofs, the roof would
be built slightly slanted and on the on the end

(44:49):
that was slanted down, there would be a pipe that
went down and there would be a catching device like
a bowl or you know, a jug or something like
that where they would catch it and that was typically
used for the personal water for the families in places
you know that were that were really dry. You know,

(45:11):
you would have different methods like they they would have
to do like extreme methods too to get this done, uh,
just to get water in uh to where they're doing.
And and that would include things like uh they would
have hillside conduits, they would have little round things called

(45:31):
hafirs which like were slightly mounted earth that would catch
water in it. They would have terracing rooftop harvesting, and
then they would have they would have something called uh niagaram,
which was a system of catching rain just in like

(45:52):
various I think I think it's in like various uh
not tarps, but like kind of like it seems like
something like that. Like they had a lot of methods
for this, but one of them, one of the main
ones was rooftops and it would be used by everyone

(46:13):
because you need water to live and a lot of
places in southeastern Europe and uh into this step all
the way across way into Asia are insanely drive of course,
including the Middle East and Levant and North Africa. So yeah,
they were using this Ancient Indian Ancient Indian cultures used them,

(46:36):
including the Indus Valley civilization. So that's going back to
like fucking like twenty six hundred BCE. UH, Sumerian and
Mesopotamian cultures, Egyptian cultures, Syrians, Greeks, Romans. Greeks and Romans
have their had their impluviums, which you know were roof

(46:59):
catchment systems, and uh, basically anywhere over there that would
have the giant cisterns that we've talked about from time
to time, like the ones they had in the Byzantine
Empire in Constantinople, the ones they had in you know,
over in parts of China, and in uh the Camere
Empire over in the Ink or what in ancor tom. Yeah,

(47:24):
so like anywhere that they have stuff like that, they're
going to have a roof rain catchment as far as
I can tell. And yeah, that's uh that article, where
the hell did that? I forget where it was from,
but yeah, they basically if it's Orientalism, uh, I don't know,

(47:44):
but it's they did it for a long time. Yeah,
and that's how they.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
Yeah, although I think it's it is good to be
cautious about these things I want oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
but like yeah, it turns out that shit just works,
so that's cool.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah, And that was from articles in the Journal of
Ancient Studies. It was written by Brian Becker's Jonas and
Burking and we get to shoot. Yeah, so that was
that was pretty cool and a little fun to learn about.
But yeah, Ali, thanks for the question. And as the

(48:20):
learner said, it's good to be on the lookout for orientalisms. Yeah,
but this is a case where we can look at
them and be like, damn, you guys really did know
how to do this. Also, I should, of course mention
Indigenous Americans had this. The people who lived in the
Andes and in Peru, even before the INCA became like
an incorporated entity, they used incredible like terraforming and terracing

(48:46):
methods to get water because it's so dry there, irrigation methods,
things like that, and they of course they have water
catchment in you know, Native American societies from you know,
the coast of Chile all the way up to you know,
Canada and Alaska. So yeah, this is a very widely

(49:07):
practiced thing as far as I can tell you. Yeah,
So Thank you very much for the question. We got
a couple more first one from Gaffsei who says you
sometimes hear how rulers quote unquote settled outside peoples such
as Saxon's in Transylvania for specific purposes like increasing the
productivity of agriculture or trade in the area. What would

(49:28):
this have looked like on the ground level, both in
terms of gathering the people from the outside and once
they were in the kingdom settling them.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
So they tend to send out messengers to wherever it
is that they are attempting to attract people from.

Speaker 3 (49:43):
So we see this.

Speaker 4 (49:44):
A lot of the time with Burgers for example. Also
like throughout Slovakia or in like mining regions in particular,
we see a lot of Germans get brought in for
a mining expertise across Central Europe. So that's a big
way that people are brought in. And what will happen
is kings will basically like send messengers over and be

(50:05):
like here you hear you motherfucks who.

Speaker 3 (50:08):
Wants a job? And so usually what you get offered
or like a they'll be like bye, the bye. Have
some minds, opening needs some guys.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
To work it and they'll be like favorable taxation rates,
usually breaks for building houses, things like that, subsidized subsidized
materials for housebuilding, or you know, sometimes if you show up,
kind of like cash incentives to kind of get you

(50:40):
on your feet, and what it looks like on the
ground when you get there is usually these people are
going to be settled in towns or cities.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
It's very rare.

Speaker 4 (50:51):
That they are settled more in the countryside in particular.
You know, they're usually brought in very specifically for the
purposes of economic activity, for the purposes of you know,
working on the minds, for the purposes of like doing
some thing right.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
Otherwise like who really wants them.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
We also see this with Jewish people, so like Jewish
people will get brought in, you know, for example, very
famously in England after the conquest to be like oh
Jesus Christ, we need some commerce. Somebody's got to lend
some money. So again you will be offered a very
favorable taxation rates. Oftentimes in all cases you will have

(51:29):
direct access to like royal or noble or whatever courts,
you know, so you don't need to worry about kind
of like the rinky dink stuff. If you are a
Jewish or if you are a Burger, you go straight
to the king with your issues, which is a pretty
good deal, but it does mean that you are basically

(51:53):
told that you have to live in particular locations. Obviously
on the ground there, there's usually some light friction at
the very least with whoever is already there, you know,
who don't love that people are getting perks to be there,
And so we often see settlement pat turns that will

(52:15):
emphasize you know, linguistic affiliations and these sorts of things.
But you know, as a general rule of some of
these things are just kind of like announced loudly yeah
in very places. So it means you've got to hire
people to go yell yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
And I mean this is of course an inherently violent
practice because oh yeah, because the people being moved, you know,
even if you're getting incentivized for it, you know, do
you really want to move? You know, you're being you're
being in some way compelled by market forces at that point.
And those groups are extremely vulnerable to othering when things

(53:01):
go bad, you know, outsider blame for crop failures, blame
for this, blame for that. And I mean, of course
the Jews were blamed for any and everything. So yeah,
it's it's something that happened, and I mean they would integrate,
but it's also you know, there are a lot of
repercussions for that that aren't immediately let's say that aren't

(53:31):
immediately that they don't immediately show themselves, but end up
causing extreme problems down the road. So yeah, Gaffsie, thank
you very much for the question. Lastly, we got one
from Colin Keith who says, I feel it feels like
every time I hear Eleanor and other medievalists explain it,

(53:53):
it boils down to quote, well, it was a rare
It was rare for a polity to have a neat
and tidy pyramid like a textbook end quote. But couldn't
the same be said of capitalism, which we currently which
we most certainly live under. Many firms don't have a
neat and tidy corporate structure or shareholders. We have sole proprietors, partnerships,

(54:15):
co ops, family owned businesses, et cetera. How is it
the case that exceptions and multiple variations don't change the
fact that we live under capitalism. How does the existence
of the church, free cities aloidal fiefs, elected monarchies, and
wealthy peasants negate feudalism. Aside from medieval cities. It seems
like almost everywhere in medieval Europe, money, labor, goods, and

(54:37):
military service flowed up and protection flowed down. I've been
taught that this is the essence of feudalism. What am
I missing here? What essential elements were generally missing in
medieval Europe? That makes it so that feudalism largely didn't
exist in Europe.

Speaker 4 (54:52):
Okay, so I guess one of the things that is
differing here to point out is that you're right, there's
all kinds of different ways of corporate entities existing under capitalism.
But feudalism, the way that we're thinking about it is not,
in particular just an economic model.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
It's a model of governance. And that's the difference, right.

Speaker 4 (55:14):
So the difference is that, yes, it is sometimes used
to talk about an economic model, but really what it's
doing is saying that that economic model is based on
this theoretical mode of governance, not that governance happens as
a result of the economic model. Now, of course that

(55:35):
makes sense. It makes sense to kind of think of
things that way around because of you know, the horrors
that we currently live in under capitalism, because capitalism isn't
necessarily our mode of governance, but it is obviously, you know,
so obviously we see this both in the States and
you know, the United Kingdoms.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
The two places where this podcast is.

Speaker 4 (55:58):
Based, where in our governments essentially exists to do the
bidding of corporations.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
So that's cool.

Speaker 4 (56:09):
Uh, It's different with the theory of feudalism because what
happens is that you know, kings exist, the papacy exists,
and the economic model exists in order to further enrich
them as a part of it.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
And now that is true under capitalism.

Speaker 4 (56:27):
Like all right, obviously, like you know, you can see
Trump getting all kinds of fucking crazy rich as a
result of being president. But that's it's not the same, right,
there are people with more money than he has who
are kind of like outside of that.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Of the you know, like all the billionaires are not
in governments, right.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
And he clearly has to listen to them, otherwise we've
gone to a full tariff system and crash the world
economy like four months ago or whatever. So like yeah, there, there, there,
there are these exterior pull factors on that. That mean
he is not like supreme overlord, yeah as they as
as medieval rulers were so.

Speaker 3 (57:09):
And that's the difference, right, is that like when you.

Speaker 4 (57:11):
Are a medieval ruler over here, the way that you
create you collect taxation is going to be completely different
in severe than it is in you know, London, right,
And there's going to be very differing economic constraints on
varying places that are much more localized. You have trade

(57:32):
networks that work in very different ways, and so we
just you can't talk about feudalism because people are trying
to use it as a form of governance and and
also a way of you know, and the economy just
doesn't work out too because there isn't really an economy, yeah,
per se.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
It's like there's commerce.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
That yeah, and there are mixed forms of business, but
they don't but there's not they it's it's not the same.
It's not the same economy. It's not the same, it's
not run the same. They don't they oftentimes don't have
real like bureaus of standards and measures. It's like, I
mean they lack even that basic economics.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
Oh god, yeah, like.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
You know, different places that you go are going to like, awigh,
things differently, You're going to have totally different currencies you
are going to you know, like everything differs place to
place in a much larger sense. So, you know, that's
part part of the problem that you have with attempting
to place these models on the past is that, you know,

(58:35):
it's just so modern to think that there could be
a model, right because we have staturnization. Now, we have
these really integrated state systems which work hand in glove
with the you know, with the capitalist system in order
to keep these particular things propped up. The medieval period's
just a lot fucking messier than that, right, Like, you

(58:56):
just can't have systems like that, even when you have,
for example, a very bureaucratized government state system like the church,
which is I think that are the closest thing that
we've got to like a real state in the modern sense.
In the medieval period, oh, there's nobody listening to them bitches,

(59:18):
Like I mean, you know, like kings will just beef
with popes all the time, They'll get excommunicated. They're like
I don't give a shit, you know, like it's like
it doesn't you don't have these same kind of chow
points that you have in the medieval world. And yeah,
it's so, it's not we don't like it as modern people.

(59:39):
As modern people, we want to think that there are systems.
As modern people, we want to think that we can
have grand narratives. And it's a lot of the time
why people, for example, prefer studying Roman history because you
could be like, ah, empire, look they've got laws, they're
doing these things, right, It's.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
Just a lot simpler.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
But it's why I like the medieval period because they're
contrary little bitches who are all doing different things and
it's a fucking mess.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah, exactly that. I mean, that's
exactly right. I think I think there are two things here.
I think the first one is that feudalism is a
originally is a term of art that is used to
that is used for a description of vaguely how medieval

(01:00:26):
society worked like in in like a in like an
ebb and flow sort of way, it worked like this
more and certain instances and less and others. But within feudalism,
I think there are three primary uh, there are three
primary systems working within the superstructure working within the larger superstructure,

(01:00:48):
and that is the pastoral system or the what we
what we call the manorial system, where you know, you
are a peasant or a s if you provide you know,
up to your landlord who or your lord who provides
you know, in theory protection and you know, doesn't let

(01:01:10):
you starve, et cetera, et cetera. And then you have
the marshal, which is, you know, the king gives x
land or rights down to his people in exchange for
them providing military service for him. Blah blah blah blah blah.
And I mean that happens occasionally in some places, like

(01:01:31):
the Normans fucking love to do that. Charlemagne did a
good bit of it, but like it's not like a
universal thing, and none of it is so neat and
tidy as I just described it, even in the places
that did it. And then the third thing is the
like the overlay of this thing that keeps the that

(01:01:54):
that keeps the system the way it is, and that
is the church and state existing in like a loose
melding together where they kind of where the church is
there basically to be like look, God said, you stay
in your lane, you you know, if you're a peasant,
you don't try to get above your station. You know,

(01:02:16):
if you're a noble, you know, whatever they would say,
and and and like that. And so you have these
three factors and the only and only two of those
are kind of even remotely universal. And then there are
plenty of exceptions to that, and that is manorialism and
the church, the church as the superstructure that reinforces like

(01:02:38):
the social bonds of this system, and in Europe, those
are those kind of did happen everywhere, but they happened
to varying degrees and in varying ways. And I'm sure
me and Eleanor can think of a bunch of exceptions.
I know I can right now to that. But so

(01:03:00):
like it's an inarticulate way of describing like a massive
system that worked on a continent, well, you know a
few continents and and over a thousand year period where

(01:03:22):
at the beginning you're going from the collapse of the
Roman Empire to the end where you started colonizing or
you know, I'm sorry, to the end where you're getting
close to start colonizing the quote unquote New World. And
it's like taking feudalism as like the pyramid. The problem

(01:03:44):
with the pyramid is it's trying to put a modern
homogeneous definition on a place that was by nature, by
its very nature heterogeneous. Because even if you were a
Norman lord and you have been given land by William
the Conqueror, and he had said you have to come

(01:04:05):
to my aid. If you do this, there are a
thousand other factors that are pulling at that that would
cause that could cause him not to go to the
aid or not to go a not to give aid
in certain circumstances and things like that, like real material
things that change that. Whereas like now we can say

(01:04:25):
we don't want to live, we don't you know that
there are exceptions to the market and everything like that.
But you have to work and make money to live
in this world now, like you have to. There is
basically no exception to that. Unless you are born into
wealth or you are extravagantly lucky for some other reason.
You have to do that. You have to sell your

(01:04:46):
services in the marketplace. There are so few people who
are owners who are on that level to where they are,
you know, the capitalists, the rest of us are down
here in some you know, mass of people, but we
all have to sell our goods in the market in
some way to get by. And the other thing I

(01:05:07):
think is that the Middle Ages are is a process
of building the modern world as we have it now
from the ancient world, where things were vastly different in
various numbers of ways. And that is going from you know,

(01:05:30):
these city states, these empires and things like that, until
you start like you start coming more towards like, Okay,
we are going to form an actual state, and it's
not going to be just based on who I know
or who my dad swore an oath to or something
like that, and we're going to have these things. And

(01:05:50):
once we form this state, we can do you know,
more complex economic schemes and things like that. And that
was a long law process that took well over one
thousand years to get to where we are now. But
the thing about where we live today is that most countries,
most states in the world made a voluntary or involuntary

(01:06:14):
choice to get into capitalism. America, the United Kingdom, uh
even even even China now like China made even though
they were coerced by like the world system of capitalism
to do it, they still marketized a bit, as you
know Vietnam did, and you know they did. They did

(01:06:34):
that because they had to to get by. But like
our governments have made a concerted effort too to adopt
this capitalist system and to follow its strictures. And at
first that was done kind of unknowingly, like by the
Dutch when they were just forming, like the East India

(01:06:57):
Company and all that stuff. And then as the English
took over, they did it unknowingly to a degree, and
then they figured it out and once they became conscious
of it, and that level of class consciousness appears, and
you start having people thinking about like that and thinking
about whoa wait a minute, we're in these world systems

(01:07:18):
and I don't like the way this capitalism thing is going.
Why is my country adopting this whole sale? Why did
they care so much about it? And when Europe took
over the world for better and worse, mostly worse, almost
certainly almost all worse. But when that happened, all of

(01:07:40):
the rest of the world was suborned into this system,
and suborn didto the system that we've been building over
time until now that that that the Dutch started, based
on all the trends from the Middle Ages, and the
very early modern period that they started unwittingly that the
British adopted kind of half knowingly, and then gained a

(01:08:02):
class consciousness of and then the rest of us gained
that as well, like in due time as we figured
out what was going on in political economies and socioeconomic
blah blah blah blah blah. So I would say that
the difference there is that the two governments that have
been ruling the world as the Hedgemonds for the past

(01:08:24):
fucking I don't know two hundred and fifty ish years
or even before that in England's case, have they adopted
this at some point willingly adopted it and said, yes,
we are going to adopt this system we reject. We're
not going to try and evolve it beyond this. We're
not going to try and do communist, socialist, any kind

(01:08:50):
of collectivist system that you can think of. They purposely
pushed that out and said, no, the market is God.
That is what replaced the social aspects of the church.
That's the market. And the Protestants and the Catholics went
along with them after the fact, said you know, we

(01:09:10):
make the rules. Our vision of God is what it is,
and you know, so we've recreated, we recreated the medieval superstructure.
We have you know, the military, the martial systems now
work differently, they're state based. The economic system and land
systems a complete fucking miss, it's completely different. But you

(01:09:33):
know we have that, and then you have the market
superstructure above us. That is, as we've been told, the
it's what determines who is good and evil. If you,
in the logic of capitalism, if you succeed in life,
it's because the market smiled upon you. And if you
failed in life, it's because you are of bad moral

(01:09:55):
character and God doesn't love you. And by God, they
mean the market.

Speaker 3 (01:09:58):
And yeah, leave me the line.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
I'm not I'm not I'm not making I'm not making
light of.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
This, but like I just think it's good, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Yes, no, no, no, what I'm talking to to Colin
who who gave us the question, I'm not making light
of what you're saying. I'm saying that feudalism is a
term that we in the modern period invented to describe
a thousand year period spanning the over three continents, and

(01:10:30):
then incorporating two others into three excuse me, three others
when you incorporate the rest of Oceana, Oceania and Australia
incorporated into this world system that they had been building
for well over a thousand years since even before the
Greeks and Romans and even before imperial China was around,
you know, going back to Mesopotamia and all that. It's like,

(01:10:54):
we invented that term as an inarticulate way to describe
a thousand year period. And the reason the pyramid doesn't
work is because the pyramid is something that we invented
so the modern mind could wrap their head around a
system where you have the Holy Roman Empire and it's
it's anywhere from like a few dozen to three hundred

(01:11:18):
statelets that have various degrees of of voting rights and
imperial rights and rights in the in the not the
lance rod, but you know, rights in the in their
tributary legislative type arenas. They had hard borders, some of

(01:11:42):
them with each other, despite the fact that they were
all in the Holy Roman Empire. They would have different currencies,
different extremely different languages and things like that. And even
now where we have countries that do have hard borders,
like you know, a dollar for at least for now
at least you know, I assumed tomorrow whenever we published this,

(01:12:04):
but at least as of October seventh, twenty twenty five,
that you can still spend the dollar around in most
places like you came with the yuan, increasingly with China.
So it's like the medieval world was never that that
homogeneous ever, yeah, anywhere even like and I mean I

(01:12:26):
think we both joke before that, like they did the Japanese,
the early modern Japanese did stumble upon an inadvertin form
where they had uh where they had created feudalism based
on like the like feudal practices of you know, the

(01:12:46):
shogun who would hand it down to his warlords underneath him,
and they would hand it down to their retainers and
so on and so forth. But like, I mean, even then,
that was just in early modern Japan that only lasted
for like it was less than two hundred years as
long as the shogunate system lasted into the early modern period,
and I mean it was still like, it's still vastly different.

(01:13:10):
There are still extreme exceptions to it because the world
was changing, and you know, once you get into the
early modern period, all of a sudden you can see
white people coming over the horizon, and yeah, that changes everything,
which I mean is the whole part of Shogun. They're dealing,
you know, they're dealing. Actually, no, Shogun is a good
example of that because they are dealing with being incorporated
into like a burgeoning capitalist system. Even though those colonizers

(01:13:36):
and evangelists for Christianity didn't understand that they were doing that.
They were just like, we don't wittingly understand that we
are creating whatever system comes after this, Like we know
that we are creating that, but we like on a
day to day basis, you can't say like this is

(01:13:57):
I'm doing this now to create you know, X, Y
and Z, and then it's definitely gonna happen. That's not
how time works, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:14:07):
Yeah, basically, I just don't think, Yeah, it's just not
a it's not a homogeneous system. It never was. And
you know, we use terms to just this goes back
to the thing we talked about with you know, the
era eras and and uh, you know, trying to trying
to come up with these these systems for everything, and
they do. And that's good because we need to be

(01:14:28):
able to describe uh times in history without going uh yeah,
that period from four to seventy six b uh for
seventy six CE to fourteen fifty three CE. You know,
in the in Europe or whatever, you just say the
Middle Ages because it's easier just say Middle Ages. It's cleaner. Yeah, yeah,

(01:14:50):
for sure. Anyway, Yeah, uh Colin, thank you for the
question that.

Speaker 3 (01:14:57):
Uh thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
Yeah, I mean, and I think it's I think it's
good to like elucidate this because you know, we don't
we don't we we don't elucidate feudalism near as much
as we did when the show started, but it's good
to do so every now and again. Uh so new
people or people who have forgotten. Uh you know, we
kind of level set everything there. So yeah, Colin, thank
you for the question, and everyone, uh thank you for

(01:15:23):
them that is going to do it for us today,
eleanor what is going on with you?

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
Ah? Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:15:30):
Look, if you are in the United Kingdom a week
from today at the time of recording uh on Sky History,
you will see that there's a show that's called The
Witches of Essex. For some unknown reason, it is chaired

(01:15:51):
by Ryland.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
You won't know who that is.

Speaker 4 (01:15:52):
Luke and doctor Alice Roberts lovely woman. Uh you know,
and it's about the Essex wishes. I am one of
the historians they've got in. Were you to watch it
and uh, you know on social media, be like damn
Ellen Orihonica is cool career.

Speaker 3 (01:16:14):
You know, you don't even have to watch it.

Speaker 4 (01:16:17):
But if you like saw things for it on social media,
if you're like damn sky History, we sure like that woman,
that'd be that'd be helpful for me.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
Otherwise I'm not really your voice online be like wow,
so great.

Speaker 3 (01:16:39):
You Otherwise not much. I'm trying. I'm trying to get
a blog post up this week. I know I haven't
done that for a while.

Speaker 4 (01:16:46):
I'm thinking about the overlap between AI and the GOLM.
But we'll see if I can get that written. But yeah,
mostly I'm just online yelling into the void.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Well there you go. Yeah, you can find me at
the normal stuff. Lucas amazing on the places you can
find Melchow People's History of the Old Republic. If you
want to hear me yap about Star Wars. Hello, But anyway,
that is going to do it for us today. Thank
you very much for listening, and we will see you
next time. Bye,