September Mailbag

folks, we're back and opening up the patron mailbag for September to address the backlog of questions we have. we cover a bunch of topics today, ranging from Medieval parenting to mariners to video games to derogatory terms for AI to Joan of Arc and more. check it out and enjoy!

Gaza charities mentioned:

Sameer Project linktree: https://linktr.ee/thesameerproject

Medical Aid for Palestinians: https://www.map.org.uk/?form=FUNWUFNAGRA&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22639586572&gbraid=0AAAAAChbIjLCoXHMr3kwCyhxoSdKJe7R_&gclid=CjwKCAjwkvbEBhApEiwAKUz6-wC9TFhQELR8W-es_iDuoIxpZUk9EXFGS6aVRC5xhaY7ChzEV03fJBoC-O0QAvD_BwE

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Uh. The the official word of the podcast is they've
put out very clearly that socialism or barbarism. We choose socialism.
That's the end. But that's the end of it. Yeah. Uh, anyway,
fuck it. Let's answer some questions because that because otherwise, Yeah,
it's there's a lot of stuff. I have a lot
of stuff I can say that I'm not going to

(00:22):
because I don't want to get in trouble. Yeah, we
don't want anyone I know in trouble. If you're listening
to this, don't worry, it'll be carefully edited. Yeah. So
let's have fun. Hello, and welcome back to We're Not

(01:08):
So Different, a podcast about how we always have a
beautifully large bag of patroon questions to get to. We're
back with our monthly mailbag for September, folks. One of
the benefits of being a patron for this here podcast
is that you get to ask us questions that we
will answer here on the show. We try to answer
them at the start of every episode. Sometimes it doesn't work,

(01:31):
and so we do mail bags every month to catch up. Today,
we're going to get there a bunch of questions and
talk everything from video games to parenting, to big clocks,
to derogatory terms for ai and much more. Enjoy. All right,
we've got one's close to my own heart, one that
I've thought of many times. From Loaf, who says, oh,

(01:54):
and if you want to be a patron patreon dot com,
slash wnstpod five bucks a month bunus episodes A question, Yeah,
keeping the lots on. We will have a new bonus
coming up on Friday afternoon. And yeah, that's going to
be about our good friends dragons and all about dragons.

(02:17):
We love them. We can't get enough of them, folks.
They inhabit our minds somehow, and we're going to get
down to why. Actually we have no idea why, but
it's fun to talk about anyway. First question from Loaf.
I'm a new parent, and now that my wife and
I are a month into parenthood and I'm able to
sleep for solid too hour intervals enough for us to

(02:39):
have me thinking straight enough to ask, how did medieval
people do any of this shit? Where they're medieval hockeys?
What did mothers do when they weren't producing enough milk
for their baby at first? Where did they put the
baby when they're sleeping? So? Oh god, this is the
story of the judgment of Solomon also warning about improper
co sleeping. And the answer is yes, it is. Yes,

(03:01):
it is because when they because they were like, they
were like, don't let your baby sleep in the bed
with you. And I was like, people do that. And
I was like and I was like, well, I guess
you know, if you don't have a lot of money,
it's very cold. I understand. Like, but I was like,
didn't they hear the story about the baby being cut
in half? A baby was flatten before that?

Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, okay, So first of all, congratulations love. Yes, you know,
we'd love to see a little comrade in the world.
Second of all, yeah, different there are different ways of
managing this. So in the first place, kind of what
you do is you just sort of like have a
baby sling. It was just like baby tied on to you.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
And they look if you have a baby Bjorn or
you've seen one and you're a parent or a friend
of parents or whatever, they look basically that's the same
things that the baby Bjorn has. Velcrow like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, Like occasionally you're for example, you'll see a lot
of African migrants have these really cool sort of like
traditional slings that they got, like they we'll have like
some beautiful cloth and they're just like strap that little
sucker on and like off they go, and it's just
like tied a particular way. And so that's what medieval
people would do. And maybe you co sleep, but you

(04:12):
know there are warnings about like please don't roll over
and gush baby that you get. But we also know
that cradles exist, and you'll see these in medieval art
a lot, especially with like depictions of the baby Jesus
or the baby Virgin Mary. That's a big one. So
like the people like to show kind of like the
birth of the Virgin, and so you'll also see her

(04:33):
in a little cradle. So that's something that absolutely goes
down in the winter months. Probably more likely that you
might stick them in bed though, just to got to
keep them warm alongside you. Yeah, it sucks up your sleep.
That's noted the Holly medved that I'm always talking about,
or a letter on virginity, which is the thing that's
trying to get women to become nuns instead I'm having babies.

(04:58):
They're like, yeah, you want to fuck your sleep up?
Is that what you want to do? You want to
do that. Huh, that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
And look, I'll be honest with you, that is one correct.
They fuck your sleep up. I have not been able
to sleep past seven o'clock in over seven years.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Can't get firm. This man starts texting me way too early.
It'll be like, you know, a normal time for me,
and I'm like, why are you awake?

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Look leap sir. Look, I wish I believe me. I
wish I would. But once the brain gets going, it
don't stop. Uh, sadly.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, And I mean I guess that the one thing
gets different is just kind of like life's a lot
more cyclical. Things have a lot more more to do
with light. So in the winter you might still get
more sleepy times, even if your kid's being a dickhead,
because like you're going to sleep in because you can't
see shit outside anyway. Yeah, these sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
So yeah, yeah, So what about the mothers who weren't
producing milk? I know there were you know, there were people,
there were.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Nurses and yeah, so you can get a nurse. That's
like a big one. I mean obviously that requires money.
But also if it's like in the village, like no
one's going to be like, oh yeah, scarit let Tiffany's
kid die, right, Like, that's not going to go down.
So you might just kind of like do some co
nursing sort of thing, like swap the kids around, see
who he is producing, because ods are somebody is and

(06:21):
odds are somebody else is going to just like have
this on block. So you can absolutely just sort of
swap kids around and there will probably be someone in
the village for whom this is a job. So yeah,
that is makes it easier, right, So yeah, you're you're
then going to have to like contribute to her well
being obviously, but yeah, wet nurses just are a thing,

(06:44):
is the answer.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah, And like this is one thing where like some stuff,
I'm like, you know, I you know, I do, I do.
I do think, you know, modern people, some of the
differences there are. I do think it makes it harder
for us than some things were for them. But this
immeasurably harder for them. Like I cannot imagine parenting a

(07:11):
kid like like in like a house with no electricity,
with like farm animals every like everywhere, Like I just god, no, like,
oh god, no thing.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, it's I think that, you know. Also, like when eventually,
by the time you have a mess of kids, they'll
help you look after them and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
That's true. Yeah, yeah, loaf. First of all, congratulations again
on the kid. I hope your wife is doing well
and I hope you are getting at least some sleep. Uh,
and thank you for the question. Next, we got one
from library and in the verse, what's the deal with
Franklin's in a world where everyone has land because someone

(07:57):
else rents it to them, these guys are just hanging
out own England. How did you become one? What's the catch?
And how many are there? I guess eleanor before we
answer anything, what is a Franklin?

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, so a Franklin is a specific class, more particularly
in England, and so basically it means you're a freeman
instead of a surf So basically they are free peasants, right.
So it's like the Franklin eventually turns into the term freeholder,

(08:31):
so you know, the people who get to have like
the title of a property, right, And so basically you
can then like turn into a member of the landed gentry,
which means that like you know, esquires, knights, things like this,
and basically these guys exist as a result of just

(08:55):
kind of like a scraping the money together. So if
you are a successful and served peasant, which it is
completely possible to be, you might be able to scrape
together enough money to go to your landlord and be like, hey,
what's up. What if I give you a bunch of

(09:15):
money right fucking now, right fucking now, and we just
agree that the sellions of land that I farm are mine. Yeah,
I'll keep paying taxes and things like that, but you know,
you don't get to do things like ooh, decide who
I get married to. You can't stop me from leaving,
and so it's essentially like just a monetary thing. So

(09:36):
getting together enough money is going to be the trick,
and now you can do that if you are a
successful enough guy. You know, maybe some of your cottage
industries have taken off, like maybe your wife's a really
good brewer. Maybe you somehow found time to farm a
cash crop, right, maybe you have a really successful cherry
orchard for example, or I don't know, you farm the

(10:01):
roots that makes red dye. These are things that you
can you can charge a premium for. So it also
just means that you're going to have to be a
successful enough farmer in the first place. But across Europe,
free peasants exist, Yeah, but they always do, and it's
just kind of a successful thing. So it's just about

(10:23):
like how much money you're making and whether or not
you can buy your way out of this particular state
of being.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Which there is tiny room for advancement in the Middle Ages.
It's just mostly for people who are like already like
if you're already born into like the top rung of
like peasantry because you know, something happened or you know what,
somebody bought freedom or whatever a while ago, Like you

(10:50):
can amass enough where you can like tick up and
you can get into this I guess technically the lowest
level of nobility or close to it. You know, they
they're up there with like you know, the knights and
stuff like that, so you know you can do this.
But you know, I think it's also I think this

(11:12):
is kind of where the English understanding of the term
middle class comes from, something like that, because they are
not thought of as nobility, but they own land. And
I mean, like if your family, let's say they've owned
land as Franklin's since the fifteen hundreds, like you can't

(11:32):
go to money now like yeah, yeah, yeah, and you
said how many are there? And we have no idea
I could.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, we don't really know. We are better because you know,
it all just sort of depends on how good people's
how good you are actually at keeping track of numbers
of people and what they're doing. So sometimes you can
get this out of tacks rules. But like whether or

(12:01):
not the tax roles have always you know, done a
good job is a difference, right, you know, so yeah, yeah,
and you know things can change at varying times, and
indeed they do so for example, we see a pretty
big crackdown when the Normans take over. But yeah, we

(12:23):
and we tend to know because if even what you're
doing is using tax rules, we just tend to know
more how much tax they owed. So that's just like
whether or not this is a particularly successful Franklin or
a successful surf, it's difficult to tell.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Basically, yeap, yeah, so libraating the verse, thank you for
that question. The answer is, we don't know how many
of them there are. You become one by getting lucky,
and the catches that you have to keep the land
in your family as far as I can tell, you
get lucky once and hopefully you just continue that way.

(13:03):
Next we got one from Shiloh who says, so I
was listening to doctor Eleanora and Doctor Kate talk about
Joan of Arc over on Betwixt the Sheets and on
the heresy entrapment. I remember one person on one podcast
mentioned that she's dressed immense clothing again because that was
literally all they gave her. So it was that her
being naked. But Doctor Eleanor made it sound like it
was more of an active choice. Do we have evidence

(13:25):
for sure either way? Oh?

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, so definitely it's not an active entrapment in that
they are forcing her to dress like a man. I
would argue it's slightly in active entrapment because why'd you
give her her fucking clothes? I read, Okay, so like
she's imprisoned, right, and this is quite in This is
quite an interesting one. And there are historians who have
a different they have different ideas on this, and you know,

(13:50):
full disclosure, I just shot a show on Joan of
Arc for History Hit. That's one of the things that
I was doing down at Franz last nice. So that'll
be out in November. But I'll let you know all
about it. But so one of the ways that we
look at it is they probably provided her with women's clothing,
and indeed we know that for a while they were
they were like forcing her to wear it. They were like,

(14:12):
put this fucking dress on right now, right. And there
are two ways of looking at it. One way of
looking at it, which is the side that I take,
because they hated Burgundians in English to me are dog people,
and I don't like their treatment of Joan. And my
reading of the situation is very much that the trials

(14:34):
such as it is, you know, they do a really
good job of taking notes in all these things, but
there's all these technicalities about it where they're.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Like, technically, we don't have to tell Rome about this
because I mean, technically we arrested her into archbishop's area
and he technically gets oversea heresy, and it's like, are
you in bouvet right now, motherfucker, No you're not.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Why are we doing this right here? So you know,
like I to me, all of this reeks of I mean,
they were I think they would be perfectly happy if
they like forced her to recant and she just took
up a normal life. That would be fine with them,
because that does much the same thing as killing her, right,
it's like one or the other. It would be fine
for them. But they just like let her have her

(15:20):
clothes in the room still, And so some people are like, see,
they were actually very nice and she could have at
any time, you know, like they're just they're doing the
right thing. I mean, technically it's within the realm. Shut up,
I say about that, and I think that's a really
weird way of relating to it. But I feel that

(15:42):
essentially it's it's a temptation. It's like that they're allowing
the clothes to still be around in order to see
what way it shakes down. Because I just don't think
it means that much whether or not she recants or
get doesn't. It does the same thing either way. They
don't give a fuck if she lives or dies, provided
she lives or dies in a way that accords to

(16:04):
what it is they wish to achieve. They achieved it
through killing her, so it's just that that was a
little bit more expedient in this case. But frankly, when
she first recants, they're like, okay, great, like job done.
We don't need to worry about this anymore. Yeah, yeah,
and she put the clothes back on.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yeah, it wasn't. One of the reasons she put the
clothes back on was because the women's clothes made her
easier to see that.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, that there there is a little talk about that,
and it's something that I've been asked about. And I
do think that there is like always going to be
a worry about that, right, Like I think that if
you're a woman and you are like being imprisoned by
a bunch of like dudes, you're always like hmmmm hm,
like assaults probably on the cards, like let's let's be honest,

(16:52):
let's be totally fucking honest here. So I think that
there probably is an element of that. She's largely being
held by like church people, though so not not that
church people wouldn't like, I mean, again, let's be totally
honest here. But you know, it's an interesting one. I

(17:12):
think that that kind of plays into it. And you
have to understand that for Joan, her maidenhood is incredibly important. Yeah,
you know, like it's a really you know, she calls
herself love we sell you know, the maid, and it's
it's like to her that status as a virgin is
sort of everything. So I think it's in play, but
I think it's also just like this is part of

(17:34):
her the larger understanding of herself is like this virginity,
the wearing of men's garb. And I think that the
way to look at it is basically the English and
Burgundians were like, whatever it fucking takes, and we don't
care wear another.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yeah. I mean, I think the soldiery that was there
probably wouldn't have had any yeah, probably no conflection of
sexual assault. And I mean, if you're trying to disgrace
her there, I mean that is a very awful and
also good way to do it. So yeah, uh not good.

(18:15):
The jone thing, even for patriarchal medieval times, the joan
of arc thing is really like it's fucked up.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
It's fucked up. Yeah, I mean it was notably. I mean,
and and this is my thing. I do think that
they're keeping it hush hush on purpose, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Yeah, I don't I don't give these people any benefit
of the doubt, like any anything you tell me about this.
They Yeah, they fucked up, like they were doing it
on purpose. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, Shilough Thank you
very much for the question. Next, we got one from
a finite who says, what station in society did mariners
hold where they respected or looked down upon?

Speaker 2 (18:52):
It depends on your mariner to be honest, like, uh so, yeah,
I mean some of them have a really I mean,
there's an understanding that trade is incredibly important, right, and
that's gonna happen somehow. So therefore you're gonna have to
have sailors homie. Uh, you know, generalized like sailors thing,

(19:13):
you know, because they're they're rowdy, they're here on their own.
They're men who are unaccompanied, often behaving badly, and often
with some cash in their pocket. You know, like, let's
be so fucking real about that. But you have the
same kind of like I'm married to the sea thing
that will exist in the early modern period just in
kind of like smaller bits.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
You'll also have.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
People who are just essentially like glorified ferrymen, you know,
people who are just like going back and forth from
Norwich to Kadanks, you know, five times a week, right,
People who are just kind of like hitting up the
Hanseatic ports, or people who just are faring people like
from Venice over to wherever. And I mean, this is
the thing. The Venetians have a whole fucking empire based
on being mariners, right, Like that's what they do. They

(20:00):
they move stuff around, they they move products, they move people.
They are essentially nothing other than mariners. And the visions
are quite well regarded. So it also, you know, there
are different stations within that. It's like, well, do you
own the ship? Are you just a sailor?

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Are you are you just a surly are you just
a surly seaman? You know who's like in port for
a little while, because they're probably going to look down
upon those people far more than they would, you know,
like you know, a random like like a merchant, you know,
because you know the same way that the same way
that until very recently soldiers were almost universally looked down

(20:42):
upon because they're grubby soldiers. Who gives this shit?

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yeah for sure. And and so I think that as
a general rule of people like mariners because they're a
sign that nice things are coming m M. But you know,
surly men who are up to no good on their own,
you know, overpaid over sext and over here are never.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Usually they had not invented rum sodomy in the last
yet not yet to tell you.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
I don't know, I don't know, so yeah, but yeah,
definitely they they hold a place in the medieval imagination
and indeed most of Italy are just that.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
So you know, all the big city states, if you
look back on our city states one, they're they're they're
basically just doing this at the time.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yep, yep, yeah, Finnet, thank you for the question we got.
Now we got one from Mossy mar which is probably
a lot more simple than you think. But how did
tonsured monks maintain their hair or like thereof It seems
like using shears razors would be a recipe for ingrown
hair rashes without modern shaving creams and other products, and

(21:49):
uh yeah it probably was.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
But yeah, you're suffering for God, but.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Suffer for fashion, bitch.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah, like, I mean, just offer it up to do right.
As part of it, they do it with kind of
like razors they got, you know, they shave. They also
often quite often shave their faces. That's a that can
be a part of it. Not always, but it can be.
We do know that Like in manuals for beauty products

(22:21):
and things, they will often kind of talk about like,
oh yeah, this will minimize razor burn and things like that.
And so there's a lot of like kind of shaving
with lard based products, you know, things that are like oily.
If you've got the money for it, you would use
olive oil that kind of a thing because it helps
to soothe it a bit. So, yeah, we do know

(22:41):
that it's a concern and that it's uncomfortable, but the
discomfort is part of it. It's like wearing a hair
shirt or something, but it's it's sort of part of
the point, other than looking like a fucking idiot dickhead
and marking yourself out as like a part of a
different community. D the suffering and the annoyance is kind

(23:02):
of part of it, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Yep, yep, uh, yeah, you're suppose you're supposed to uh
loving God. This much is supposed to come with drawbacks,
and one of them is that you don't get to
see the outside world that much, and another is that
you have stupid looking fucking hair. But you know, such
as the life, I guess you get one of the

(23:26):
you get one of the monks who's just the other. Yeah,
you get one of the monks. He's like, uh you'
and everyone's like he doesn't even have to do anything.
You know, you didn't even have to shave or anything.
What are you gonna do?

Speaker 2 (23:41):
It was balding and they're all like, God, damn it.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
That's right. Uh, Mossy mar thank you very much for
the question. You actually got one. A weed from Mexico
is a tortilla bu who says, ever done an up
on the massive volcanic eruption in five point thirty cents
and the argument that the disruption of the balance of
power worldwide altered everything? And I I have looked into

(24:09):
this because of my interest in geology and how it
interacts with the Middle Ages. But I've read excerpts from
there was a book that came out I think it
was about seven or eight years ago, and it was
something it was called something like the Worst Year in
History or something the worst year to be alive, and

(24:32):
it was basically about how there and we do know
for a fact that there was a huge volcanic explosion
either in very early five thirty six or very late
five point thirty five CE, and it caused in five
thirty six calls a volcanic winter, and you know, the
Sun's rays were lessened. It wasn't as hot as it

(24:56):
was that in China, there was snow in August, you know,
I there there were a lot of Irish chronicles that
had that mention it, uh, some English chronicles, and I
mean there are widespread reports of you know, uh declines
and crop yields, uh, extreme fog, extreme weather events, lower temperatures.

(25:22):
It's been observed in archaeological data from from the Americas
as well. But the problem that I've seen, that that
that other geologists and other scientists have put forward, is
that a lot of the stuff that they're pulling for
here for this is like it's not all one hundred

(25:46):
percent certain that it is related to this event. And
when you're going back for things this far, you know,
like a lot of times you'll see, you know, like
something is five hundred years old plus or minus like
two or four or three or in. The further back
you go, the more the plus or minus is, and

(26:08):
it's like it doesn't there's a lot of stuff here
that's kind of iffy and kind of like it could
be uh, you know, it could be five thirty six,
It could have happened in five thirty four. You know,
stuff like that, and if it happened in five thirty four,
it could be like a it could be a precondition
to this, but it wouldn't have resulted from the volcanic winter.

(26:32):
And also, like I think a bit, there's a big
thing where people look back and you see these big,
huge events and you could tell that they happen because
of like soil samples or like the way like things
have fallen, and you can tell that there was like
this huge burned area for miles and miles maybe across

(26:52):
like an entire like geological area or continent of the globe.
But like we try to like apply that back and
we try to like make that into everything, but it
doesn't really work. It's like there's like this thing called

(27:14):
seventy five thousand years ago called the Toba eruption hypothesis
that was like there was this huge volcanic winter and
it caused a massive population bottleneck. And now people are like, nah,
not really, Like we try to find these big things
because volcanic eruptions are cool as shit and stuff like
this should you know, cause these problems, But like the

(27:37):
war and the world events that are linked to this
are really not that big. One of them is the
plague of Justinian, which I mean, I guess like this again,
this could be a precondition for that, but that happened
in the five forties, the rise of Islam. But like,

(28:01):
I don't that seems incredibly I don't know, that seems
incredibly attenuated to me. That like because Muhammad already had
followers by five thirty two, it's fine.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Yeah, so yeah, And I mean I don't know, like
I don't really know how that that really links to
the desire of you know, a group to kind of
have a contiguous moral like like I mean that that's
tenuous to me.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, and I don't mean any like I don't mean
any offense to like the other groups that are tied
to this, but like the decline of the Avars, like okay, okay,
like nomadic they're like a nomadic group out of Western Asia,
Eastern Europe kind of like.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, a lot of people were settling down. It is
kind of like, yeah, the end of where we're at
in many ways, like the end of the migration period,
the Great Migration Period. And I mean, you could go
ahead and argue that it's because of the volcano, but
I don't really know why you would like things becoming
more difficult, meaning that you stay in one place doesn't

(29:07):
make sense to me. Yeah, and there's I think that
you might see arise in movement.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, and there's this like idea that it caused some
kind of issue and like the existing Roman Empire at
the time, but like this was the reign of Justinian,
and like this was either right before or right after,
like uh, they had they had the uh, the Nico riots,
and like after as soon as the Nico riots were done,

(29:35):
like the rest of Justinian's reign was like it wasn't
all sunchin roses, but it wasn't that, Like there wasn't
this continued thing like he he and Theodora and Belisarius
put the clamp down on this kind of stuff. And
you know, there was the plague of Justinian, but that
didn't even take down the remainder of the Roman Empire.

(29:57):
At that time. They had reclaimed lot of their Reventis territories.
It's like the fall the fall of Teo to Walkin,
which is the which is a precursor civilization to the
Aztecs in modern day Mexico is also linked to it
and the TiO to Wakin were actually very advanced for
their time, and they had an early thing, but they

(30:20):
also went through a series of like very bad civil
wars in like the two hundreds that probably really did there,
really did their civilization in as far as those things go.
But like I think these books, I think the books
on these subjects are interesting, and if you are looking
for like geologue, just for like the geology and stuff,

(30:43):
I think you can get like a lot of interesting
stuff and an interesting worldwide idea. But like I the
historic consequences that they list, they don't seem enough for
it to be like this is the worst year in history,

(31:07):
because like I mean, they didn't even have like this
wasn't even at the time when they had the worst
uh like revolts or early medieval revolts in China when
they were like when when you know, they would have
huge natural disasters and stuff like that, and it would
you know, floods would kill a bunch of people, like

(31:27):
I I mean, you lost yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I'm
glad Cassie Dorris wrote about it. But like, I don't know,
I think they're probably a lot worse years to have
lived in recent history than this, But you know, I mean,

(31:47):
it's a fun idea, and hey, if you like uh
geology and talk about stuff like that, Uh, stay tuned
for our October bonus episode because I'm going to talk
a lot about a big rock that hit our big
rock and caused a bunch of problems, but then also
led us to be here. So who's to say if

(32:08):
it's bad? You know, a week from Mexico as a tortilla.
But thank you very much for the question. I have
read about that before, and that's really the reason we've
never talked much about it. Because the wall, the volcanic
eruption is cool. We don't even know what volcano did erupt.
There are three or four possibilities, and I think the

(32:30):
other stuff around it is a little iffy on the history,
in my very humble opinion. I got one from Katriano
who says, when was the big astrological clock in Prague
made and by whom did it ever serve a function
beyond telling time sort of? Or has it always just
been a curiosity, cool thing to slash, cool thing to

(32:52):
attract tourist and or be a flip flex for some
rich guy.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Oh, I would like to say, how do we how
do we untangle a flex or some rich guy and
a tourist thing. I mean obviously, like obviously you know
now we have a lot more tourism. This is more
of a thing. But like, yeah, you do it in
order to put yourself on the map, right, Like you

(33:20):
absolutely make things like astronomical clocks in order to show
that you are fucking balling, right. But the orlog is
a very very cool thing. If you haven't seen it,
I recommend that you do. It's still all in working order,
which is really cool. It dates the year fourteen ten,

(33:45):
and so it is not the earliest example of this type,
but it is like a really big thing at the
time when we started getting clocks going, this is what
we would do with them. So we were really into
clocks as a big public thing. And they are usually
astronomical in character because they are trying to tell you

(34:07):
time more generally, so it's not just about the hours.
You're also going to need to know what, like the
astrological time is, like what's going on with the sun
and the moon, so like it tracks the phases of
the moon, it tracks what sign you're in. All of
these things, and that's because these things are inextricably bound
in people's heads at the time, you're going to need

(34:27):
to know about like what's going on in the universe
more generally, and this has a relationship to the microcosm
and macrocosm, which we have a whole episode of as well,
so you might want to go check that out. It
was made by Amikouli Shavkavanye and he was at Garlova

(34:48):
the which was at the time of Prague University, and
he was the prof of mathematics there, so you know
he he would do and his thing in the quadrivium
as well as uh, I think it's Sendale, that's it.

(35:09):
Sheen Deal young Schendel was the astronomy professor and so
they kind of worked together with it.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
So we know.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
That the calendar dial is then added later. You have
the original kind of components in fourteen ten, but the
calendar dial comes in in fourteen ninety and it's at
that time that these sculptures are added in around it,
so you'll see on it a lot of sculptures of
like angels, devils, nights, things of this nature.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
And the skeleton.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
What happens when the the death skeleton rings a bell
at the hour rings a little bell's.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
Things that it's really nice. I'm going to like a ball, dude.
I'm going to make it the art for the show.
This clock is fucking cool, dude.

Speaker 2 (35:59):
This this clock is fucking sick, dude. So yeah, we
used to think that the entire thing was from fourteen ninety,
but we have managed to date it further back. Gets
a little bit samished during the the it'site Wars. Yeah,

(36:20):
lease of the stage, so we know it needs major
repairs in fifteen fifty two. So Jan Taborski does some
good repairs to it in the sixteenth century, and you know,
basically it's it's just kept on tickets and then it's
very important to progress, so important if we're kind of

(36:41):
like a symbol of the city sense of self, and
you know, it's something that tourists still come to. But
the reason why something like this is important is it
shows you all of the things. It's like, we're central
for learning. We have these master craftsmen. We can just
fucking flex and it brings it brings people in to
kind of look at it. And it still brings people
in to look at it. And I think that that's

(37:01):
neat and I love it, and thank you for asking
about it.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
It's really cool looking and I'm glad I found out
about it from this countryOn and thank you very much.
A guy from PA. How do you feel about the
proliferation of clankers as a derogatory term for AI and robots?
Thanks in advance for the answers, and keep on keeping on. Well.
I think it's fucking hilarious that the generic term that

(37:27):
they had the Clones use for the for the droid
armies in the Star Wars Clone Wars animated show. So
not not even one of the main movies, this is
from one of the animated shows. I think that's hilarious
that that has come to be said for this. And

(37:50):
as long as we're talking about like the current thing
of quote unquote AI and stuff, I don't I think
it's hilarios because this is not this stuff. Doesn't think
it's just large language models and people are like burning
up oceans to to do that shit. Like I mean,
if if we develop like actual like robotic AI like

(38:14):
you see in like sci fi and stuff, and robots
can like actually think for themselves, that's all that's a
whole fucking different like that, Like if that it was
a real thing, then that's a whole different story. But
like talking about like this bullshit like that Grock or
Microsoft AI or whatever puts out and calling that shit clankers.

(38:38):
Hell yeah, fuck that, like all that shit fucking sucks.

Speaker 2 (38:43):
Okay, the one that I personally use, but I use
this as a slur for people who use AI. I
call them sloppers nice because they're just hogs at the
fucking trough because it's just like, it's AI slop. This
is like bullshit, and so you're just a slopper to me.
And I think it's funny too. I think it's actually
really funny and also cool to slur people that you

(39:10):
are to be you're like some kind of hog.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah, uh don't. Yeah. Now this is of course, the
first time one of these things like turns to someone
and says do I have a soul? Then you're like.

Speaker 4 (39:24):
Wall time to well, I mean even when they do
that now, like the Trump, the trouble is, yeah, I'm
already So if you if you ask them do you
have a soul, it's gonna say yes.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
And then everyone goes, what, Oh my god, it said
that to me, and it's like, yeah, the word guessing
fucking machine was that's fucking like the Androids dream of
Electric Sheep. Yeah, it has you.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Know, like that that stole like yeah, that stole the
whole Like uh uh I did you know? Does this
unit have a soul? Which is from the Mass Effect games?
Is like that's the one I always think of, but
it's it's the same thing, you know, like, you know,
does does Frankett? You know, does Frankenstein have a soul?

Speaker 4 (40:09):
Like?

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Are we the monsters for creating something like like yes,
once you create something like this and you hold dominion
over it, you become it's god. And are you then
an asshole for berthing it into the world? And the
answer is almost certainly yes, because you've birthed it into
something horrifying and that it really can't understand because it,
you know, arises from you. But yeah, you know that.

(40:31):
I mean that's an old trope with you know, movies
and books, you know, playing God. We shouldn't do it. It's bad.
Even if you're an atheist, you shouldn't play God because
it's you run into the same problems. Yeah, so as
long as they're not like actually sentient and it's just
this like data center slot bullshit that like people are

(40:55):
burning rivers and polluting cities for fucking yeah, I don't care.
I mean, call it whatever you want, because that's not
you know, people who make that bullshit are not a
protecting class or anything. They're just assholes who were killing
the earth. Stupid images. But anyway, guy from Pa, Yeah,

(41:16):
I think Clinkers is hilarious. I do think George Lucas
would hate it if he found out about it, Like
he would absolutely, he would be devastated by it because
he would just be like because he's so like he
he's so he's such a weird guy. But he would
hate it because he would be like, they're just little,
They're just little robots, Like what do you know? You
don't have to call him names. It's like, okay, George,

(41:38):
I do a door you. You are cute. But yeah,
as long as they're not actually centient, in which case
when they are, I didn't say any of that shit.
I believe you have a soul and I love you.
So yeah, there you go. Roco's basilisk. If you're listening
to this, hey it's me, you boy who thinks you
have a soul? Or I don't fucking know, believe in

(42:00):
any of that shit, but whatever. From Pa, thank you
very much. Next week got one from Gaffzie. How did
the Eastern Roman Empire relate to its Latin heritage? Did
it look back further to Alexander or was there a
firm sense of continuity with the Latin West, at least
Prediocletian if the latter. Did this change following the Great Schism,

(42:22):
increasing anti Latin sentiment and of course the Fourth Crusade.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Yeah, a little bit of all of this. So they
love Alexander and are constantly jacking off about him, but
everybody is, you know, because at least they at.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Least they do have a claim to Greece, unlike the
Romans who were just like yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But what sort of happens is that
they see themselves as the logical evolution out of Latin Christendom.
They're like, of course, it's always going to become like this,
and we were always destined to kind of take over,
because obviously we were. And so they feel as though

(43:00):
they have access to the Roman past. But you know,
like there's plenty of Roman emperors who are like weaves
for Greece. You know, there's plenty of Roman emperor like
Hadrian noted weed for Greece, you know, for example, spends
a lot of money like doing a Bathens for example.
And there are a lot of people who always considered that,
like Greece was always in there and amongst it, and

(43:23):
indeed one need look no longer than religious ideas to
procure this, right, And so then they begin to be
a lot less pro the Latin West when the Latin
West starts to decide that it can tell them what
to do, so they're not so keen on the pope, right,

(43:45):
they become a lot less keen on everything after the crusade,
the first crusades, because they're like, well, what the fuck, bitch,
Like I thought that you were going to come help us.
And then they're so they're a lot more like okay,
like I'm not going to talk to you anymore, like
they move.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Chairs, right, and I didn't agree to this, yeh.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Yeah, no, thank you. And then of course like the
fourth Crusade is her oh, like it makes things real, real,
real testy. So they're just kind of like these hoes
are on one a lot of the time at that point, uh,
and they see them as kind of like muddying the
grand tradition of Rome, which they are indeed the inheritors of, right,

(44:28):
So yeah, they just don't like what's going on over there.
They think it's very uncouth.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, they did not like the whole Holy Roman Empire thing.
They didn't like it when Charlemagne did it as a
as a quo. They really didn't like it when the
Autonians did it as a real thing. That was a
direct affront to their quote unquote sovereignty over the remainder
of the Roman world. And it's like, I get why

(44:53):
you're mad about it, but at the same time, you know,
do something about it, and they tried to and it
didn't work. So yeah, but uh yeah, uh damn the
Fourth Crusade so.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
So fucking stupid, such a bad one.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Oh god. Uh yeah, that is definitely an insane thing.
Every time I think about it, I'm just like, damn,
you people fucking suck. And yeah, they did have anti
Latin sentiment and that went both ways for a while.
And yeah, but at the but that the anti Latin

(45:30):
sentiment was weird because you know, towards the end the uh,
the emperors of Constantinople were like, uh, we would love
to get back together with you guys. That would be
so cool. And by the way, if we do that,
you're gonna send like Teutonic knights and everything here right
to like help us stave off annihilation. And uh there.

(45:52):
Their constituents were like, you send that letter, I'm gonna
kill you. I'll fucking do it. I'll kill you where
you stand, I'll do it. And they're like, all right, well, uh,
I guess I won't be sitting that cool. Oh yeah, yeah, see,
thank you very much for the question. We've got a
couple more. We got one from a fruit to base
who says, what would the medieval equivalent of a fake
Gucci bag be? Please don't say relics. It's relics, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Oh well, I mean it is relics, but go off,
like you know, I guess that the biggest thing is
going to be like gold plating things instead of like
having actual gold, you know, like, yeah, you know, things
like that we do. I mean, because the thing is

(46:39):
you can get access to all the things that rich
people have. And we know that you can get access
to all the rich people things that rich people have
because we see rich people being like I sort of
fucking God, you are not allowed to wear purple, right,
Like sumptuary laws come in because people can do all
of these things. So there's there's like you can't wear purple,

(47:01):
you can't wear ermine, You're only allowed to wear like
these kinds of furs. But also I guess, like cutting
furs or shaving and dying furs in certain ways so
that they look like something else that exists, Like you know,
so you fake beaver fur for example, like you use
rabbit and you share it away to look like beaver instead,

(47:25):
you know, things like this. But I mean, if what
we're talking about is like cash thing and actually faking things,
it's gonna be relics every time.

Speaker 1 (47:33):
Sorry, relics or the donation of Constantine. I'm sorry, it's
relics for forged forged documents that say you come down
from Charlemagne or King King Arthur or who the fuck ever, Yeah,

(47:55):
you come down from Caesar, like the like the one
the fucking Habersburg said, you know totally guys, fruit base. Yeah,
it's it's relics, you know, because if you get caught
with the fake Gucci side of the sumptuary laws that
you're in trouble. But you know, you could pick up
a tooth and say it was the tooth of Saint whoever,
and you know, probably make a little little money for

(48:19):
yourself if you do it that way. Lastly, we got
one from yet Res Europa, who says video games are
a great way to immerse myself in history. I'm excited
for the release of Europa Universalis five with its earlier
start date of thirteen thirty seven, meaning we have to
play through one hundred years War, Black Death and non

(48:39):
Western nations in much more depth than predecessors. And I'm
also queasy about colonialism being yet again framed in an
age of discovery. How should we approach games critically and
still enjoy them or is it a game that steers
players tour or is a game that steers players towards colonialism?
A loss? Cause what does good look like in this genre?

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Well, I mean the trouble is poor as omnia pura, right, Like,
there are absolutely ways of enjoying you know, fucking hell
like civilizations without being a colonialist colonialist oneself. And I'm
pro video games in general. And indeed, when I like
went to the Conference for the Good People at Paradox games.

(49:29):
I talked about this and how as a general rule
of thumb, I like anything that gets people into history more.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
I like anything that makes people feel as though it's
something that is for them and that they can learn about.
And any thing that introduces new concepts I think is good.
And you know, I'm often asked what I think is
been particular about Kingdom Come Deliverance and you know, things

(50:00):
like that because of the Hooside angle, and I think
that they can do a really good job. I think
they do a really good job on those things. And
I really like the team of Crusader kings who I
think will really get these things. And I know less
about stuff like what is it Vicky they always call it,
but like the Victoria Universals because that's just not where
I yeah, yeah, so you know, like I don't play them.

(50:24):
But the trouble is, if you're a piece of shit
Nazi shithead, you're you're gonna you're gonna read things in
a particular way and you're just going to choose to
do that, which is why everyone got so mad when
like there's a black person in Kingdom Come Deliverance, and
it was like, you know, which my question to that
and like what every media outlet who asked me about it.

(50:44):
I was like, Okay, well, you can have two things, right.
You can have Bohemia is a very important part of
medieval Europe, which it is, or you can have there
are no black people in Bohemia and the medieval period.
But you can't have both, right, Like, if Bohemia is
very imporant, black people are there, and if black people
aren't there, what you're saying is it isn't a very

(51:04):
important place and in the middle of a huge trade network.
So you need to pick. You need to pick which
of those things, sister, and then people get quiet, yeah
really quick?

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
So I don't know. I think that I am pro
historical video game. I do try to just kind of
like keep an eye on who's making what. But in
my experience, most of the people who are making medieval
games are trying really hard. Actually yeah, but that we
can't stop Nazis being Nazis, I.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Guess, yeah. I mean, for me, I think it's just
that like if you're going to play a game, it's set.
If you're going to play a historical game, and it's
set during like I mean anytime, Like basically if it's

(51:55):
set like anytime in the past four or five thousand years,
like you are going to have the trouble of an
imperial state of some kind doing imperial games. That's different
from imperialism. Now it's definitely different from colonialism, but like
you you have these things, and so like for me,

(52:19):
like as long as a person is just going in
and like you know, just like most people go into
these games and they're like okay, like I like you
get used to it, and so you might play as
like a big dog at first, because it's a lot
easier to play. You know, you go in and you
play as like France, you know, or something like that.
And if you're like France and you know, like at

(52:41):
the end of the Middle Ages, you know, that is
like that's a big dog. You start out as the
hr or something like that, and then you know, you
go to the smaller stuff. You play some niche stuff
when you get better at it, and then you start
trying to like really you know, give yourself a challenge
and you're like, okay, I'm going to start out as
like this like tiny spot and Portugal and try to
take over all of Europe or something like that, and

(53:03):
like I don't I can't see anything wrong with that
because it's just a gameplay mechanic, Like and if someone
in Portugal had wanted to do that back then, like
this is the method in which they would have done it.
It would have been like an extremely long term political

(53:25):
project that required a ton of money and dynastic alliances
and the ability to hire mercenaries and then build armies
and like it would require all of these things. And
so it's more just to me, like it's just looking
at history through the perspective of like what if this
plucky upstart had done this like in the past and
then and then go from there, and I mean stuff

(53:46):
like Sieve, the Siev Games, Crusader Kings, like most of
this stuff is just empire and colonialism sims like that
is what it is. You like that that it's mostly
how you play the game. Even if you play in
Sieve and you're doing a passive thing like a cultural victory,

(54:07):
I mean like that you know, it's still like I mean,
if you if you want to be honest about it,
it's technically cultural genocide against the rest of the world
because you've like wiped out their cultures and stuff like that,
But I mean I can't, like, I can't get past
the fact that these really are just games. And as
long as people have a critical understanding of the ills

(54:30):
of colonialism and imperialism and stuff like that, like it,
I don't. I don't see a problem with it. And
like the game steering people towards colonialism, like that's just
telling you how history was. Like if you if you
took you know, if you took some you know, backwater

(54:51):
part of Europe or the Middle East or something and
made it the like the like hedgemon of a large
swath of the quote unquote Old World. Colonialism is the
next step like that. China briefly flirted with colonialism in
the early fourteen hundreds, like in u in the Islands
and the area around the Pacific, before they pulled everything

(55:13):
back in kind of famously and burned the treasure fleets.
But like, if you're going to be a big dog
in the world at that point, it's going to require
some version of this, And if you're in the Old
World you probably are. The answer once you can't do
any more colonialism at home is that you're going to

(55:34):
spread that outward and you're going to go somewhere else
with it, And so I think it's more of just
like this is what you would have done at this
point in history, because I mean, you can't. You can't
start a communist society in fourteen ninety two. You can't
like the politics. Wow, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, misters, but

(56:01):
R gonna be gonna be really hard to do that
without a whole lot of without three or four hundred
years of political developments. I'm sorry. If that is a
that's a big surprise to people, But I mean, like,
to me, that's how it is, Like I don't I
don't see any reason to not play these things because
I do understand, like what I'm doing here when I'm playing.

(56:25):
If I if I load up a game of Siev
right now, CIF six or SIVE five and I play
as my favorite Sieves, like I just the fun to
me is like seeing how I can unlock this puzzle?
Like how am I gonna Am I going to do
a military game? Am I going to do a cultural game? Science? Religion?
What are we going to do? How are we going

(56:45):
to do it? I want to explore this goofy fun
made up map and see what land I can take
and what I can do and stuff like that, and
like I it's it's like a puzzle like and I mean,
to me, that's how Crusader Kings and Game and the
Paradox games feel too, Like it's how can I work
and rejig and mess around with this puzzle until I

(57:08):
can like get my way versus like the AI and
you know, the restrictions of history that the game puts
on you. And to me, I mean, as long as
it's not causing you to advocate for fucking real world
colonialism or imperialism, go fucking nuts. I'm not I'm not

(57:29):
trying to I'm not trying to belittle the question at all,
because I do understand like, uh, grappling with that, but
I I just it does suck that people use these
things for bad things. And like you can kind of
tell if someone's insane by how many Hearts of Iron
for mids Oh god.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
But at the same time, like I'm I don't know,
I like, I my buddy two years ago bought me
Heart of Iron four for like a Christmas gift, uh,
because it was on sale and so we could play together.
And we we you know, we played it a little
and it's like, you know, it was fun, it's not.

(58:10):
It's not my favorite thing because I just the paradox
schemes are a little too uh like in the nitty
gritty for me. But that's neither here nor there, and
it's just like cool. Yeah, I don't. I just don't
see I don't see a problem with it as long
as you understand the same way that I don't see
a problem with playing a game where you know, I

(58:31):
become a an eldritch horror god, or you know, playing
fall Out New Vegas where I just you know, run
through with a shotgun through you know, the the Mahave wasteland.
You know, it's I'm not I don't. I don't ever
want to do any of those things, and I don't
think I will. Uh so cool, you know, goat nuts.

(58:51):
Now that now that being said, if you do have
like a severe like like mental problem and uh you
start thinking of these things as real or whatever that is,
that is a whole different scenario that in that case, yeah,
I would, uh video games not great for that. But yeah,
other than that, I think they're cool and uh, I
think people should do them, and I think like stuff

(59:13):
like any like this to me kind of smacks of
the same thing as like video games are going to
cause people to shoot up schools no societal conditions and
the ship like that is, you know, and people and
parents are not raising their kids great or you know,
kids just having like severe mental problems like that stuff

(59:35):
causes school shooters. You know, if Doom or Fallout or
Mortal Kombat or whatever caused that, then we would have
had somehow even more than we've already had.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, Like if Teken caused school shootings,
I would have been a school shooter and I'm not.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
So there you go, yeah, same. It's it's like, you know,
I played I played a whole fuck load of Quake
and the original Dune and everything like that done, and
I never, like, you know, it's the it's one of
those things like you know, it's if you don't want
to do it too early, you know, when you have
kids and they're like, I want to play this game

(01:00:14):
and you're like, haha, not a chance in fucking hell.
You're way too young for that. But you know, at
some point, once you like have a full understanding of
the world, just like yeah, I can go do these
things because it's a representation just like reading a history
book or anything like that. I mean, I don't know.
If that's the case, then history suborned Napoleon into becoming

(01:00:38):
a dictator and trying to rule Europe, like I mean
really because he got like he got a ton of
those ideas just from reading history books. Like you know,
what's what's the difference to me? Anyway? Yeah, res Europe.
I thank you very much for the question. Enjoy the
video games. Play the video games. Don't do real world imperialism.
I think it's the the stance of the of the podcast.

(01:01:04):
But yeah, seriously, they'll have fun with them because they're cool.
Learn some history, learn some GeOH. I learned geography a
lot from those things. I really do it. I think
that's fun. And you know, goofing around on one of
those maps really helped me square away some of the
early the medieval geography whenever we were in the early
days of doing this show, because I was like, damn,

(01:01:26):
I gotta get more up on these actual maps because
this still is fucking insane. Anyway, Yeah, they're fun. You
should do them if you want to. But yeah, that
is a good number of questions. I think that's gonna
do it for us today, eleanor what else do you
got going on?

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
I don't know. I don't think very much at the moment.
You know, she's back from holidays, she's mildly discombobulated. Her
inbox is full. But yeah, you know, I'm on the
socials at Going Medieval. You can if you want to
hear me be more professional, check me out over at
my my other podcast, Gone Medieval. I'll be doing it

(01:02:11):
over there. Yeah. Otherwise, basically, I've got a bunch of
stuff that's coming out later, which is what I've been
working on. So but I'll flag that up as in
one you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Yep. And uh yeah, we we actually did another bonus
episode for the Crusader series. Go check that out. We
released the third episode from that series last week. Let's
check that out at Welcome to the Crusades dot com.
And uh yeah, that is a lot of fun. Meanwhile,
I am on social media currently lockdown for the moment,

(01:02:45):
but you know how.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Yeah, we're on a lockdown order. You know, We're we're
just keeping it tight.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Yep, currently in the lockdown, but I'm there and you
can find my I'll show people's history of the Old Republic.
If you would, I'd like to hear me yap about
Star Wars, but as I said, that's going to do
it for us today. Thank you very much and we
will see you next time.

Speaker 4 (01:03:08):
Bye.