Weird Medieval Guys

Well, we finally made it: The Definitive Podcast (jodcast?) on medieval Jewish culture.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews were scattered across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Despite often-brutal repression, many Jews thrived, creating new communities, cultural expressions, and even languages. Despite marginalisation, Jewish women were also key to this evolution, enthusiastically contributing to spiritual ...

Taggart voice There's been a murder!

Medieval life was full of murders! People were getting knifed all the time mate. But who was responsible for sorting the guilty from the innocent? What do God and intimate social knowledge have to do with it? And is this all a thinly-veiled excuse for Aran to do his incredible Poirot impression?

For more information, see the University of Cambridge's Medieval Murder Maps:

https://medievalmurderm...

We've got a lovely two-parter lined up for you guys and it's all about the history of the English language during the Middle Ages! Join us as we follow English from its humble origins as a collection of Germanic dialects spoken by a bunch of illiterate, trousers-wearing mudmen from in 400AD to a real language spoken by relatively normal people who have things like books and kings and their own country, a quirky little place called ...

Yarrrrrrrr!!!!!! Where's me BOOTY?!

We all love stories about pirates, whether they're plundering Treasure Islands, fighting an octopus man, or stealing Tom Hanks' job. But did you know that the Middle Ages had pirates? They did! And they were just as swashbuckling, mercenary and unhinged as their later successors.

Set sail with Olivia and Aran on the good ship Podcasting, as they set out to find the secret of medieval piracy! Alon...

Gather round, rockhounds! It's time to journey even further into the past than usual by taking a look at fossils through medieval eyes. Did dragon myths come from dinosaur bones? Did cyclops myths come from elephant bones? Can rocks be Jewish? All these questions and more, answered.....

For more on some of what we discuss, check out:

• Lapis Judaicus or the Jews' stone: The folklore of fossil echinoid spines by Christopher Duffin ...

Happy New Year to all our Weird Medieval Guys podcast listeners and welcome back to our annual Q&A session! We solicited questions about history and the podcast from our Discord community and answered as many as we could for you. Listen on to hear about why we do silly voices, whether medieval people played drinking games, and more!

Join our Discord server to be part of a wonderful community of weird medieval enthusiasts and for...

The days have been getting shorter, the nights longer and the wind bitter-er. Even as the winter solstice draws near, the coming months of cold and darkness make spring seem still an eternity away. Making it through winter is never easy, so how did people in the Middle Ages get by? Join Olivia and Aran as they look into how people not only survived but thrived the whole medieval winter through.

For more on some of what we discuss, c...

This week, we're getting in our medieval spaceship and travelling through the medieval cosmos to find out just what medieval people thought about all of that space. We'll discuss some correct ideas they had, plenty of incorrect ones, and also how to use medieval astrology to make sure your medieval horse is in peak physical condition.

For more on some of what we discuss, check out:

• The Stars and Human Sexuality: Some Medieval Sci...

Here's a rhetorical question: do you love your pet? Of course you do, but did you know that medieval people did too? The only difference is, these pets had jobs!

In this episode, Olivia and Aran delve into the wacky world of medieval cats and dogs, to explore what contemporary people wrote about them. Spoiler alert: they thought they were cool little guys.

Also discussed: the official WMG dogs Bonnie and Bizzy; whether medieval hu...

Oh my god the Weird Medieval Guys Podcast™ has gone cottagecore!

You know what clothes are, you love wearing clothes. But someone has to make them, and in the Middle Ages, they didn't have industrial-scale fast fashion sweatshops. So who made them then? Well, sit back and enjoy as Olivia spins a yarn about the medieval textile industry. It's got everything you want in a Weird Medieval Guys Podcast™ episode: gender! industrial relati...

Infernal covenants, black sabbaths and missing infants; dark deeds are afoot in the forests of medieval Europe... or are they?

It's a Halloween Spooktacular! When the Devil transforms Joe Mason into an angry amphibian, Olivia and Aran must venture deep into the woods* to find a witch who can restore his humanity. But first, they have to figure out what medieval people actually believed about witches. Spoiler alert: it's not what yo...

Olivia and Aran are back with another zinger as they begin to start to somewhat unpack some of the absolutely insane customs and beliefs that made up the Norse pagan world view!

Check out Snorri Sturlson's Prose Edda here:https://sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/index.htm

And join the official WMG discord here: https://discord.gg/ZwHz5JDKky

The music used in this episode is from Ísmús, an online Icelandic song and culture archive. The intro s...

In the mid-12th century, a mysterious letter was circulating the courts of Christian Europe. Its supposed author was Prester John, a powerful, immortal Christian king who purported to rule a fantastical empire in India.

Prester John was never real. But who wrote the letter and why? And why did Europeans spend centuries searching for him despite abundant evidence that the whole story was nonsense?

To answer these questions, Olivia and...

As we continue our series on the Hundred Years' War, Armagnac cause has never seemed so hopeless. An Englishman sits on the French throne, the Scottish army has been crushed, and now the Armagnac stronghold of Orléans is about to fall.

That is, until the emergence of the most unlikely hero: a charismatic peasant girl, who claims to speak to angels.

In this episode, we chart the rise of Joan of Arc, from a normal working-class life ...

Our series on the Hundred Years' War continues with a deep dive into the events of the conflict and the consequences of a century of violence and death across Europe. Join Olivia and Aran as they discuss how the Black Death, rapid military and social developments, and a million succession crises almost brought France to the brink of defeat by the English. Until, somewhere in northeastern France, in a sleepy village called Domrémy, ...

A new, three-part epic kicks off in this episode of Weird Medieval Guys, covering the Hundred Years War, the apocalyptic conflict which forged the modern nations of England, France and Scotland.

In this episode, Olivia and Aran chart the prelude to the conflict: the Scottish Wars of Independence. After the unexpected, heirless death of King Alexander III, Scotland is plunged into a crisis that threatens to turn into a full-scale ci...