We're Not So Different

We're Not So Different

A mostly Medieval history podcast about how we've always been idiots patreon.com/wnsdpod welcometothecrusades.com

Episodes

November 19, 2025 84 mins
folks, this week we review 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle's 2025 film about the horrors of being British and, a sneaky Medievalist tale, although with a twist. we go in-depth about the Medieval aspects of the small community on Lindisfarne and why the film turns this bucolic nostalgia on its head. but there's more, including talk of zombie members, life finding a way, memento mori, and the horrific introduction of the Jimmy gang. we h...
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folks, we're back with another mailbag answering questions dutifully submitted by our amazing patrons. we do these every month to catch up on things and we're back to hit a broad range of topics including: ninjas, siege weapons, Leon Trotsky(?), dancing plagues, papal gifts, and the Peace of God. enjoy!
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November 6, 2025 64 mins
folks, it's time to talk about music. friend of the show, Dr Eleanor Chan, recently released a new book entitled Duet: An Artful History of Music. so we had her on the show to talk about the universal appeal of music, cave music, Hildegard of Bingen, bagpipes, and much more. enjoy and check out Dr. Chan's work at https://eleanorchan.com/
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October 31, 2025 84 mins
folks, it's spooky season again and we take a look at the revenant, a lesser-known monster today but one that positively terrified Medieval people. we take a look at a number of stories spanning across all of Northern Europe about dead bodies rising from the grave and causing mischief and horror in the physical world. they were so worried about this that they even did so-called deviant burials, where bodies were covered in heavy st...
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October 22, 2025 87 mins
folks, we're back after convalescing for a week and it's time to get rage-baited into reviewing a Dan Brown book. the latest entry in Brown's ongoing series about Robert Langdon is called The Secret of Secrets and it's set in Prague, so it's tailor-made to really annoy Dr. Eleanor. we review Brown's most recent bad Umberto Eco ripoff, talk about the Dan Brown mania of early-2000s America, bad history, and much more. enjoy!
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October 17, 2025 101 mins
folks, it's time to talk about dragons! we love them, we've always loved them, they are the best. we got a question from Ollie Cant about dragons and decided to answer it with a full episode. we talk about the earliest dragons, why humans all across the globe seem to create them in some form, the differences between Eastern and Western dragons, and then name some of our favorite folkloric dragons that you might not have heard that ...
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October 8, 2025 77 mins
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October 1, 2025 76 mins
folks, we decided to talk about Medieval assassinations, mostly as a way to talk about the Hashashshin, the Order of Assassins, that existed in Syria and Iran from 1090-1275. we talk about some ancient assassinations that had a large impact on the Middle Ages before turning to a number of Medieval cases such as Thomas Beckett, Wenceslaus I, Pope John X, and a bunch of Byzantine guys. then, finally, we turn to the Order of Assassins...
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September 24, 2025 74 mins
folks, we had a whole different episode planned for today but due to a series of extremely annoying technological problems and frustrating audio issues, we decided to switch topics and do a little catharsis. we talk about the new rapture predictions, which are supposed to happen on either September 23 or 24, why it's silly to predict the Second Coming, and why most people who have ever been involved in organized religion understand...
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September 17, 2025 63 mins
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&a...
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folks, we just released a new bonus episode for our First Crusade series with the boys from American Prestige and so we're releasing this episode for free to hopefully get more people interested in the 12-episode series we did, which you can find for just $10 at welcometothecrusades.com. this is the third episode, Cairo, which discusses the Muslim perspective on the First Crusade. if you haven't listened to the first two episodes w...
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September 4, 2025 86 mins
folks, we reach the end of our series on Medieval Scotland, in which war were declared. at long last, we finally meet Scotland proper, just in time for them to fight for their very lives. a succession crisis in the Kingdom of Alba gave way to English impositions, which forced the Scots to wage the First War of Scottish Independence to break from the tyrannical English yoke and then a Second War of Scottish Independence, which began...
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folks, we're back with part 2 of our series on Medieval Scotland wherein we encounter the Kingdom of Alba, which is what the English called Scotland back then. we don't know what they called themselves because they weren't too fond of writing, which is a big theme this time. we look at the rise and fall of Alba, the historical MacBeth, and the Normanization of Alba by the royal court against the wishes of basically everyone else be...
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August 21, 2025 60 mins
folks, we haven't ever focused on Scotland. much like the Roman Empire, we've been scared to do it thus far but now we surpass the Romans in every way by going into Scotland and figuring out what the hell was going on in there before, say, 1500 or so. we start a short series on Medieval Scotland by talking about how they got the Highlands, why the Romans put up two walls to keep them out, try to separate the Picts from the Gaels fr...
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August 15, 2025 93 mins
folks, we got a bit of a split episode today. we start with talking about the state of the world in the cold open before moving to a discussion about periodization and efforts to move away from western conceptions and why it's really hard to make broad, accurate periods sometimes. then, we turn to the world of modern Christianity and talk about all the baffling and insane things people are cooking up these days, why we're not so di...
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August 6, 2025 44 mins
folks, in our neverending struggle to defeat the overflowing mailbag of patron questions, we've started doing one mail episode a month and here we are for August. this time we answer questions about which Simpson family member corresponds to the Medieval humors, the tradition of smoking and curing meats, Medieval automatons, everyone's favorite biblical glup shitto Simon Magus, and what Medieval event we'd go back in time to watch!...
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July 30, 2025 77 mins
NSFW, just saying.

folks, some people might try to tell you that humans only started engaging in BDSM in the 1960s, like it's a very recent invention. but, we're here to tell you that's wrong as people have been engaging in such practices since before the advent of writing! so we go deep on the subject, talking about some ancient BDSM practices before talking about how it was done in the Middle Ages. we talk about Abelard and Helois...
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July 23, 2025 62 mins
the Book Club series is back and we're here to introduce you to the Italian peninsula in 1348 or, as they might have called it: the end of the fucking world. the Black Death hit the densely-populated boot like a nuke, killing millions in just a few months. why are we talking about something so depressing and that we've already covered extensively? well, frankly, that's the backdrop of The Decameron and how Boccaccio introduces it. ...
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July 16, 2025 73 mins
folks, we kinda got carried away talking about current events and, whoops, wouldn't you know it, we just decided to do a whole current events episode. we will dive back into the Middle Ages next time but this week we're more concerned with the contemporary politics of the failed states of America and England as the two old friends compete to see who can fuck up and kill the golden goose the fastest. while things are bleak, they are...
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July 10, 2025 86 mins
folks, our 2025 quest to visit places in the Medieval world we haven't tackle yet takes us to Bohemia. now, before you pillory me because we've spent so much time there already, we're going back to the old Bohemia, the Bohemia before it was famous as a center of religious heterodoxy and throwing guys out windows. the Bohemia back before it became a kingdom and got Daddy's Specialist Boy status from the Holy Roman Empire. that's rig...
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