Ep 300 - November Mailbag

0:02 You heard the lady. It's recording.

0:07 That's right. What's up? What's going on?

0:10 Oh, I'm jet-lagged as fuck, so buckle in. Let's see if I have an ability to talk. I just, you know, decided to be sort of awake from 2 a.m. till 8 a.m. Mm-hmm. So that was just pretty good. So I'm working off of four hours of sleep. I did the biphasic sleep thing. I'm the first person in the world since Samuel Pepys to do it.

0:40 So there you go. How'd that work out?

0:43 Well, you know, it was better than continuing to lay there, I guess. Whether or not what I wrote is intelligible is another question. But like, look, fuck, I'm in real, I'm in fuck it, we ball territory. Over here is what I would say about it. So, you know, we're just, we're doing our best and we're keeping it cute, you know? Yeah.

1:01 Two days ago, you were three hours behind me and now you're six, five or six hours. Five.

1:08 I think it's five again now. Yeah. Yeah. So listen, the world is a mysterious place. You know, air travel should be amazing, but they've turned it into something horrific. So that's, that's cool. But yeah, like we're, We're keeping it moving. We're keeping it cute. That's the thing. So if I yawn, like everybody, if I yawn, it's not because I'm not interested in doing this. It's that, um, I am, I have no idea what's going on. And also I'll probably, what happened yesterday, I was like, oh, I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm tired all morning. And then at like six at night, I was like, actually, I'm fine.

1:48 It's like, great. That's, that's just fucking perfect.

1:51 You know?

1:51 So we'll see what happens again today. You know?

1:54 Yep.

1:55 Yep.

1:56 Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Cool. Good stuff. Yeah. The election is almost over here in America. Thank God. I'm so fucking tired of hearing about it. I don't want to hear any more about it. The Dems are going to win in some kind of landslide, and everybody's going to be very briefly happy, and then... They're not going to do anything.

2:15 And then it's going to be... Yeah, they're not going to do anything, and then it's going to be the dog that caught the car. And the dog that caught the car is going, okay, I caught it. what is it like what's happening? And, and, uh, that's when it gets interesting. Cause this is like, this is just like, yeah. Okay.

2:35 Like I, I don't like, I don't even think it's going to be close. Um, then like the numbers here are so skewed and, um, I mean, they're going to get into power, but the thing is like, normally you would think if you get, if the, like, opposition so-called opposition party comes into power of some kind and then they don't do anything the people will typically be like okay we're going to go back to the other party but they don't like the other party and most of the people who are voting for the opposition party in this case don't like that party either like they are pissed so like that is that's the break that comes after this for for america at to me because like um i don't think that most people who most people

3:34 who are voting for the democrats right now do not believe in their heart of hearts that um that uh That the Dems are actually going to really do anything about this. Because they have it... Like, they have it said. Like, they have it said they're going to do stuff. They haven't made any promises to that effect or anything. And it's just like, you're the only opposition party we have because of this system. And, you know... I don't... I don't see... I don't see Americans swinging back towards Republicans. Like...

4:14 You might otherwise expect because they're breaking up like the Titanic already, you know, and so then the Dems do it and then we see what we got. I don't know. I'm just I'm I'll be glad when I don't have to hear about I don't want to hear Haley Stevens name anymore. I don't fucking care. I don't. I don't want to hear about these people. Get them out so I can... Get these assholes out so I can complain about the other assholes who are going to replace them. Like, I'm tired of this.

4:40 Get these motherfucking snakes off my motherfucking plane.

4:42 Yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, permission to lib out about this? No. There's no more living out. We're done. We've passed the living out stage. we are like, we, we gotta stop. Like, no, the second they get in. No, it's, it's like you turn, you turn it on them. And if they don't do it, then you burn them down too. Like, that's the thing.

5:06 Like you, like, if you can destroy a political party by ignoring it, then you can, in the absence of a third or a real alternative, you can create one by, uh, Just getting mad enough at the other two, you know. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.

5:29 Listen, I think that you're bang on about, like, what's going to happen. And I just, you know, like, don't get me wrong.

5:37 You know, I vote.

5:39 The major reason I do is that I'm a Washington state voter. And we have also a lot of initiatives. We have an initiative system. And so you really do kind of have to get involved in that, especially because we have so many fucking billionaires that they're constantly being like, I don't think I should ever have to pay taxes and you shouldn't be allowed to be mad at me.

6:00 And it's like, OK, I don't I'm not voting for that.

6:04 Right.

6:04 So it's like I have to spend a lot of time voting against that. Um, and we do occasionally have like better people on the left, you know, like we get socialists in and things like that. Um, so that's, that's, you know what I'm about, but like, listen, it's, it ain't my first fucking rodeo, right? It's a, it's, it takes a lot to get me excited about these sorts of things. So, you know, cautious, cautious. Like, and qualified optimism, as per usual, everybody get organized, you know, that's all I can say, as per, as per, you know, yeah.

6:42 Yeah, um, it's, uh, yeah, it's, um, yeah, I don't know, we'll see. We'll see.

6:53 We all deserve a break from the commercials, I'll tell you that. Gosh, I'll tell you what, it was my first, I said this last time, but, you know, it was my first election season at home since.

7:06 The year of our Lord, I.

7:10 Guess 2000, really, because I was away for the midterms. And I was gone by 2004 permanently. And I was like, wow, things have changed. Citizens United, really?

7:23 Wow.

7:24 Jesus.

7:26 So much stupider. It's so stupid. It's so much stupider than you can possibly imagine if you don't live here. But at the same time, it's like, you see this stuff and nobody... Nobody you know is like, oh, man, like, yeah, I need to see this or I'm changing my mind or anything like that. Like, it's not. And so you get this stuff. And like now, because like I have it so I can watch like live sports and stuff.

8:01 I have like over the air channels through like YouTube TV. And so, like, you just get, like, the local commercials from them. And so, like, you get, like, political commercials for, like, you know, I was watching a college football game and, you know, the University of Texas was playing. And so it was, like, commercials for, like, the Texas Senate and gubernatorial races. It's like, fuck off. It should be literally illegal for me to see this. If I see this, the FCC should be arresting someone at YouTube TV or the state of Texas or both.

8:43 Yeah, they should be kicking doors down.

8:46 I don't want to see this. I will vote for anyone who you can run one political ad per day per channel. that's it pick any it could be 30 seconds in length or something like that okay.

9:04 Now we're cooking all right yeah yeah.

9:06 That's it we do what you do man that's it it's gonna run one time it's not gonna run every commercial break like i do like i hate commercials but i would much rather see like some bullshit than you know like so and so is gonna let trans people do this so it's like.

9:24 Oh, no, the trans people.

9:25 Oh, wow.

9:28 Wow.

9:31 Can you imagine if somebody, you know, just decided for themselves how they, you know, how they should live? Can you imagine the... The.

9:46 Horror of that.

9:47 The horror that would ensue. Yeah. Anyway, let's do this. Um, hell yeah.

9:53 Yeah. Hello!

10:26 Welcome back to We're Not So Different, a podcast about how I need this to be over more than anything else. Hello, folks. It is episode 300, and it is the November mailbag. That's right. I'm introducing the episodes by number and title now. Why? I don't know. Fuck it. I just decided I wanted to.

10:48 Look, we're flexing on 300. I think that's fair.

10:51 Yep.

10:52 Exactly.

10:52 We're allowed. Yeah. Last week... if you were, uh, if you, if you, if you looked at the feed, you saw that, uh, we had two episodes of welcome to the crusades go live. The first episode, episode one, Jerusalem and episode two, I believe it's a Mosul or possibly Aleppo. Um, but, uh, one of those two. And, um, we, uh, we, we released the first two from the second season. It's the second crusade. Um, It's the one nobody talks about, but is extreme, but is the most historiographically important somehow, which is saying something. And yeah, check it out. It's, I believe, 10 episodes. And then we're going to do some bonuses as well. We will. It's $ 15 for the season. Both the first and second season are $ 15 each. You can

11:51 get them both, I think, for like $ 25 total or something. And if you're a patron and... Oh, this episode will actually be out by the time... It'll be over. The bonus for patrons will be over by the time this is out because it's ending November 3rd at midnight. But anyway... Yeah, that's true. Still. But yeah, folks, check it out. It's a lot of fun. Welcome to thecrisades.com. And you can hear us talk about... You know, somehow they found a way to make a dumber crusade. You didn't think it was possible, but they did it. They did.

12:28 And listen, you know, this is the one that people gloss over because it is so stupid. But you actually need to dig down into this if you're going to understand the third crusade, which is the one that everybody wants to talk about. So, look, sometimes you got to do the unsexy crusade.

12:44 Richard the Lionheart wasn't even going to be. He wasn't going to be conceived without the second crusade. Literally, he's not going to be conceived. Whether you like him or not, or you're like me and you just find him humorously interesting. Like he, I mean, he was not going to be conceived like that. If the second crusade didn't go down and they were like, oh yeah, Eleanor slept with her.

13:09 Eleanor of Aquitaine slept with her uncle. That normal thing.

13:12 You know, normal thing. Europe.

13:13 Would have to do. Yeah.

13:15 She would definitely do. Look, I don't know. I've got like, everyone's dad is like nude red and bad in my comments on Instagram right now. Cause I did this Australian show stuff, the British stole and like about Richard, the Lionheart. And I'm just like telling the truth about him and people who have clearly never read anything about, about Richard Lionheart are very, very, very upset with me. Um, and it's interesting. Uh, like I'm not, I'm not, don't go, don't worry. I'm not engaging with any of it, but it's just kind of like one of these things where you're like, Jesus Christ, it's quite interesting. Like, um, like, although one of them very refreshingly just said, um, he knew the right way to deal with Muslims and that's

14:06 good enough for me. And, you know, part of me really wants to respond and be like, By offering to marry your sister to them?

14:13 By hiring them to kill the king of Jerusalem, which he did. Right, right.

14:17 It's like, which he did. And it's like, you people don't know anything, right? And you've got to, this is the thing.

14:24 The thing about Richard the Lionheart is not, the thing about Richard the Lionheart is all the people who talk about him. In the absence of that, he is an interesting character. historical figure like him in the third crusade is incredibly interesting like just the whole like everything going on around him but it's like um he didn't like he didn't treat the muslims any worse than he treated any like he he hated hated the crusader states far more than he ever did salad and like as far as anyone could tell like he despised the crusader states.

15:02 I think that people think that he's a big cartoon lion and or Sean Connery. So it's like, it's like, it's like very emotional out here.

15:14 Why are you Scottish all of a sudden, Richard? Yeah.

15:17 Like Richard, what's, what's going on? So yeah, it's a hell of a time to be alive.

15:22 What can I say?

15:23 So yeah.

15:23 Check it out. Welcome to the shades.com where we're not talking about. We're not talking about Richard and Saladin and Frederick Barbarossa just yet. You got to eat your vegetables.

15:37 You got to eat them.

15:38 You do. But your vegetables also come with delicious butter and seasonings like Eleanor of Aquitaine. And the crusaders going into northern Europe in like going to a city that had been converted to Christianity for 35 years. besieging it and have the bishop of the city come out and harangue the leaders of the northern crusade specifically because the the thing had been uh it'd been christian for so long and they were like why'd you come what the fuck are you doing well uh this definitely wasn't just a land grab.

16:18 Listen i mean the side quests of the second crusade are so good eleanor of aquitaine is so good there's, there's a lot to love. There's a lot to love. That's all I can say. That's all I can say.

16:28 Exactly. Yeah. Folks, spooky season is over and we're settling in for the winter after, uh, travel and Halloween fun. So we're doing, uh, the November mailbag to get back into the swing of things. You know, the deal. We take questions from our patrons and we answer them here at the beginning and at the beginning of most of our episodes. Um, If you want to ask us these questions, if you don't want to hear the ads that they put in here that I have no control over.

16:55 We don't control them.

16:58 We don't. Yeah. If you want access to the discord or to hear our bonus episodes, like the one we're going to do on Friday about why fascists have decided that the number one issue right now is proving George Lucas even more right than possible by going, Hey, Anakin Skywalker is a fascist. And George Lucas going, yep, that is what my movie said. That is correct. Yeah, that's the plot. That's the plot. Well done. Yeah, good job. Yay.

17:33 If you want to hear us talk about that, please subscribe. Patreon.com slash WNSTpod. It is $ 5 a month. And you'll really enjoy it, I guarantee. This time we answer questions about medieval spies. the consumption of water versus alcohol, Shakespeare not writing about 1066, medieval haircuts, pre-modern nouveau riche, pet peeves, and more. Enjoy. So first up, we got a couple of leftover ones from Halloween. We do in the episode.

18:06 We get a weeb for mountains equals a peekaboo, and that's peek with an A.

18:10 God damn it.

18:12 And this is a different– this is a third joke account. Yeah, but we all know that ghosts go, ooh, and zombies groan in a way that suggests brains. But how do skeletons go? Is it an ominous rattling of bones or a skeletoresque, yeah?

18:32 Oh, good question. Okay, so I read this really great– A book that was a history of horror comics called The Horror of the Horror a few years ago. Very, very good. Interestingly, there was like a whole moral panic about horror comics in the 60s in America, which is amusing. And in it, it says that like the function of skeletons within horror comics is that they are kind of inversions of humanity and they show the worst excesses of humans.

19:07 And so they often talk and it's interesting because we see this in kind of medieval things as well. So for example, with like the legend of the three living and the three dead where, you know, like three princes go on a hunt and then they run into three kind of like decaying corpses, which are kind of looking like skeletons. And they're all like, Oh, I used to be hot and now I look like this and I used to be with it. And now what I'm with is in it, you know, kind.

19:33 Of a thing.

19:34 Um, But they're doing that, right? And so a lot of times skeletons talk, but I think they also go clicky clack, click, clack, clack, click, clack.

19:45 I think they sound like xylophones. Like, you know, when a cartoon, when somebody's ribcage gets pulled out and they play it like a xylophone, that's what they sound like. So as they walk, they're like... Yeah. Oh, I like that.

19:59 Yeah, absolutely.

20:00 Or they're playing a bone flute, as we learned in the historically accurate Army of Darkness. So true.

20:06 So fucking true, mate. So fucking true.

20:08 Yes. Yes.

20:10 Yeah, absolutely.

20:11 I'm thinking of Marge. That mouse pulled that cat's ribcage out and played it like a xylophone. And the next moment, the cat was breathing comfortably. And the itchy, scratching guy goes, yeah, just like in real life, and then runs off. Oh, man. A Weep for Mountains equals a peekaboo. Thank you very much for the question. Next, we've got one from Shy, who says, Eleanor, could you please tell us your humoral theory alignment chart? For the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So, folks, Eleanor, this is the Four Horsemen, Pestilence, Famine, or is it War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death.

20:54 And Death, yeah.

20:56 What do we got?

20:58 This is a really good question. I think that we have to assume that Pestilence essentially is Bubonic Plague, right? Right? So in that case, it is going to be cold and dry, which is what the bubonic plague is seen as. And I'm going to also, with famine, we're going to think about the Great Famine, and that's going to make it cold and wet, right? Because that's what sparks the Great Famine off is the terrible weather, right? So we're going to have to say that. And then I think that we are going to say war is then going to– it's got to be hot, right? I think it's got to be hot. I think it's hot and wet because it's emotional, right? War is super emotional, I think.

22:02 Whereas death is hot and dry because it just sort of like is hot.

22:08 Right?

22:08 Like it's the thing that acts. It's this thing that is going to like happen.

22:11 To all of us.

22:12 So yeah, I think that's what we got to go with here. But God, I love this fucking question.

22:18 And that means famine is cold and dry. Yeah, cold and wet. Cold and wet. Cold and wet.

22:24 Cold and wet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there you go. Famine, cold and wet, like the great famine, pestilence, cold and dry, like bubonic plague, war, hot and wet because it's emotional but acting, and death, hot and dry because it's simply a fact but it's an action that we're all involved in.

22:46 Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I like it. I like it, yeah.

22:49 Yeah, yeah, there we go. I love.

22:53 This. Yeah, that's a good one. I was thinking like, you know, Yeah, you got, like, the hot ones are the question because, like, you can see all of them being cold.

23:03 Cold, yeah.

23:04 But, yeah, the hot ones are the thing. Also, yeah, war is hot because, you know, explodey, explodey, explodey.

23:13 Explodey, explodey, that is true.

23:15 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Really good point. Shai, thank you very much for the question. Next we got one from ThisSwan who says... Forgive me if it's outside your remit. I don't really know what is outside our remit, to be honest.

23:30 But I've often wondered why.

23:32 Shakespeare never wrote about 1066. Was it thought too politically sensitive? The absence of a play set in the year of the comet has always struck me as a little curious, especially since Shakespeare is known to have played on his own name as William the Conqueror. And while the conquering bastard himself may not make the most appealing protagonist, the fall of Harold Godwinson seems like it could have been a powerful tragedy. So, like, why?

23:58 That's a good question. Yeah, I mean, like, obviously, like, I'm just guessing over here, right? I do think that there is an extent to which it is incredibly politically sensitive to You know, I think I have, after speaking recently to some Shakespeare scholars, changed my mind a little bit on the whole all Shakespeare was ever trying to do was, like, suck the dick of Tudors. And, you know, he does do things that actually are kind of, like, politically sensitive. But I think that Kind of pointing out that England had been ruled by French people for a really long time is a difficult one. And also I think a thing that is really important to point out that people have a difficult time getting their heads around

24:52 today is the romanticism about pre-Norman England simply just did not exist yet. at that point in time, right? Like, that's a very modern conceit, this idea that like the pre-Norman England are like, that's real English people TM, right? And I think that like, if you're living closer in time to it, you're a lot more cognizant of the fact, for example, that it's like, well, like what, like being English is a new idea, right? It's a new conceit, right?

25:27 Like they'd barely been English for like two seconds. Like you may as well also like do one about the great, right?

25:34 Yeah.

25:34 If you're going to do that, which would actually be a really fucking, that'd be a barnstormer to be fair.

25:39 Yeah, true.

25:39 You got portrayal, you got remarriage, you got it all in there, right? Like that's really good. So I think that they just kind of don't care about it in the same way that we do because They're living closer to it. So it doesn't seem to be this error defining thing to them in the same way it is to us. And also, if you do point it out, you are kind of pointing out that like the entire nobility stole that shit.

26:09 Right.

26:09 So it's it's it's not just like a matter of rubbing the tutors the wrong way. It's a matter of rubbing every single member of the nobility.

26:17 The wrong way.

26:18 And I don't think they want to do that. Right. it's still too much of a slight, I think.

26:24 Yeah.

26:26 Yeah.

26:26 I think, I think, you know, the things that we prize and the things that they prize are often different. Their idea of historiography is vastly and just exponentially different than ours is for, for all the reasons that we've talked about so many times on the show, but like, The thing with 1066 is there's always been this contradiction at the heart of it, which is that if you make that year into this big line in the sand type thing, you are implicitly saying that England really only became a country after French people civilized it. I mean, like, for better or worse, you could get mad at me But I'm not saying the French civilized it. I'm saying that if that is your line in the sand, then you are implicitly saying that we were not a real

27:26 country until the French came in and bonked us on the head and said– and raised us up to, you know, whatever. And so I think you have that. But also, like, who is Shakespeare going to make into the– the valiant party there because, because William the Conqueror looks like he took the, like he took the lion's share of the initiative.

28:01 He's the one who like really did this stuff. Um, Harold Gobinson does have the battle, uh, where he, uh, his army defeated and killed, um, uh, Hadrata and, the other Harold. Um, but, uh, He, but he's not like a, he doesn't seem like, he doesn't cry out through history as like a tragic figure. He's just, he's a guy that lost. And I mean, I understand that now we feel differently about that, but that is also because like, whenever like modern historiography became a thing, like England was trying to like work out its own, like history, like a, like a, like a kid who goes to a new place and like has a fresh start. Like once you become a global hegemonic empire, you can kind of be like, Oh, this is our official narrative and everything like that. And

29:02 so like Shakespeare is, is more on the end of the, just before it became like the colonial superpower, um, that, that it did. And so, I mean, my guess would be that they just viewed it differently. Like to him, to them, 1066 would be like, that's just like a, you know, be like, okay. Yeah. 1987. Okay. Like what happened?

29:27 You know what, like, is that your special? Well, it might be special to me or us or whatever, but to them, I mean, maybe not. I just, I feel that, also like there's that whole thing where like England was like oh the last time we were invaded was like 1066 which is one of just the most laughably false thing that's.

29:49 Ever that's just a really poor understanding of the hundred years war but okay a.

29:53 Really poor understanding of the hundred years war and I mean like I just, I mean, how often the French just fucked around and like, and did in runs around you to like mess with, you know, to go parlay with the Scottish and fuck you over. Like, um, yeah, it's, uh, so, so I think like 1066 was created as like a bright line more for us. I mean, like, they might've, they might've viewed William the Conqueror as like a, as like a heroic guy. Like he, he brought order to, he brought order to the chaos that was these stupid, uh, feuding backwater white assholes, you know, these Vikings or whatever, the Vikings who hadn't been civilized by the French yet.

30:38 So the French could then civilize, uh, the, the English.

30:41 Yeah.

30:41 It's, um, Yeah.

30:43 And I mean, I think that like you're you're you're totally correct there. And also it's sort of like, you know, with this, I think that they also probably. Listen, let's be so real. Harold Godwinson's claim to the throne is so fucking tenuous. And, you know, it's tenuous because the way he was moving.

31:05 Right.

31:05 Like, you know, it's tenuous because he's like, yeah, the king, I was crowned right now. Just lose right after he fucking died. Like, yeah, we got to keep it. And it's like, what are these things? Do you really want to bring this in for discussion? Like, do you really want to like start talking about like how scrappy it was and how weird this, I mean, the system was weird under those guys. Right. Like they're, they're an interesting bunch, but like, you know, I, if you, if you look at it, they're you're not going to see yourself reflected in them right i think so it's and like who's going to buy this right like shakespeare's in the it's in the process of selling plays right like who wants that that's esoteric.

31:43 Yeah there's no there's no henry like there's there's no like heroic like speech that you like that you could you know you could put into the mouth of was it henry the second henry the fifth whatever it is the you know the i think it is yeah the big speech yeah um Like, you can't do that. It doesn't have the tragedy of Macbeth where you have, like, this intricate, layered... Just breakdown of everything and, like... And moving from, like, a medieval where you supposedly more modernize back into, like, a tribal aspect because of, like, the sins of, like, you know, a couple people being stupid and pursuing power. It's just like... I mean.

32:29 Some of the people who, some of the, the people who vied for the English throne were pardoned. Edgar Aetheling lived until he, he, he played a minor role in the first crusade, which was 30 years later. Like it's, you know, like it wasn't, it wasn't, uh, William brought a lot of people over to his side after the fact, because he had to, um, um, Because you can't administer the realm if you just bring over 8,000 people. The land is too big for that. Yeah, so probably just too politically sensitive. Also doesn't have the interesting hooks that he was probably looking for. I mean, also, to be honest, I don't even know what their understanding of it would be as a historical event. at that time because we

33:29 don't have a ton of stuff that's like looking back on that specifically that i know of so.

33:34 Yeah yeah i think that like also probably there's a different understanding of like invasion and what it means like yeah.

33:42 Yeah definitely uh this one thank you very much for the question really interesting question yeah yeah actually yeah definitely Next we have one from Pearl River Flow who says, I always think of spies as being modern, related to strong states and financialization. But what was the state of spycraft in the medieval era? Were the HRE and Byzantium fielding professional spies? Are we seeing codes, people sneaking out battle plans, leaking bad information, assassinating and sabotaging? Are there specialists to do this or is it more opportunistic?

34:13 We just don't know that much about this, unfortunately. It's a really cool one. We tend to hear about it most like spy craft or people turning tail and that sort of a thing in the specific context of the Crusades. Right. Like that's, that's how you take Damascus, right? Is this like someone turning info over to you? That kind of a thing. Um, occasionally we do see it. So, uh, Charles the fourth and his autobiography has some references to kind of like, um, sneaking people into places and then having them, um, kind of like open up the fortress for them and that sort of thing. So it tends to be like less, Oh, here's some high level state secrets because it's like, they're not doing like, you know,

34:58 propaganda doesn't exist in the same way.

35:01 At the time. Right.

35:02 So it's not like, Oh, we've got to get this spy craft so that we understand like what their, you know, their, their infrastructure is doing or what their plans or whatever. It's like, it's just battle, right?

35:14 It's just battle.

35:15 And can you get inside or can you not? And that usually is less the specialist spies that you kind of keep on hand. And it's a little bit more like, who can you turn?

35:26 Right.

35:28 So there must be someone whose job it is to turn people.

35:31 I'm sure.

35:32 But by its very nature, because spy craft is secretive. And then because of source survival, it's something that is really difficult for us to know about. Right. Because, you know, they're trying, they're intentionally trying to keep it down and it's, a thousand years ago right so it's just really really fucking difficult to know about is the unfortunate thing so there must have been something happening because we do see these people who turn so who turned them right uh but we just can't have good records of it because of how the process works and how source survival works so that's sad.

36:07 Yeah it was also viewed yeah it was also viewed completely differently uh than we view spies now we view spies as integral and necessary and We might not like some of the stuff that, yeah, stuff like that. But to them, being a spy was like, that was like a damnable profession. Like that an honorable person would not, you know, like the presentation of like the creepy spy, the like Littlefinger-esque, the scheming vizier, like. That does come about from like history to a degree. Of course, it's infused with like pop culture and everything. But like that guy, the like scheming guy, Grima Wormtongue whispering in someone's ear is definitely like a historical character. It's just that like they don't really get written about. Or if someone is

37:03 written about like that, it's like, okay. how much of this is real and how much are you guys just turning this guy into like a sin eater for like everything that had happened? Um, now in Arabia, it was a little different, uh, because.

37:19 They'll spy on you.

37:20 Yeah. Yeah. Well, they, they did. And there was also, um, the first, uh, written description of, uh, crypt analysis and, frequency analysis and stuff like that was from 800 and it was written by Al Kendi, who is a mathematician. And he wrote a book called On Deciphering Cryptographic Messages. And it is postulated that the reason that this was a bigger thing there was because a lot of the Mesopotamian and Levantine early civilizations were had used code cylinders and ciphers to do things like the Assyrians did. And the Greeks had scytales, which were like these things where like a piece of leather was wrapped around a stick and there were different letters on it and you could peel it off a number of times to see, okay,

38:21 if it says I should peel it off 15 times, then the first letter is A and then I can figure out all this stuff. And so it's, It's thought that, like, one of the reasons that it's more acceptable or at least more written about in the Arab world was because they just had a lot of examples of it. And if you've got, like, a lot of, like, Assyrian ciphers laying around that you're trying to figure out, like, and that's, like, something that people in your area see, somebody's probably going to be like, okay, you know, like, if that was something you saw in, like, germany or something there would probably be like a lot of surviving stuff from the hre that's like okay like what is this weird uh cylinder with weird lettering written on it that i found

39:06 in the ground mean so yeah yeah regardless yeah it's not uh it's not a very um scientific profession at the time it's viewed as uh It's viewed as something that you don't want to do. And for honor-bound cultures, spying is. Yeah that's nefarious that's that's that's unseemly yeah.

39:34 We do have a an honor culture here you know just fundamentally so.

39:39 Every culture on earth at this time was an honor culture to one degree or another like they didn't all operate in the same way but like if your honor was sullied, you were typically viewed as a lesser person unless you had some extreme mitigation for it. Um, yeah. So yeah, um, not professional. However, we know they existed.

40:01 Of course. Uh, my favorite example is, uh, Justinian sending out the monk spies to, uh, steal the secrets of silk, uh, which is just one of the coolest stories ever, but also, um, So, like, they had them, but, yeah, it was definitely not, you know, no, oh, what's his name? The guy that writes all the spy novels. Fuck.

40:26 Ian Fleming.

40:27 No, well, not him. I was talking about, like, Bridge of Spies and stuff like that.

40:31 Oh, that guy, yeah, okay, yeah.

40:33 Carre, maybe. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Anyway, Paul Riverflow, thank you for the question. Next, we got one. from No Monarch But Norton, and this is something that does come up from time to time in Misconceptions. Tell me about water versus booze for daily consumption. So Eleanor, many people did not have large metal jugs to tote around water that they also used as forms of conspicuous consumption. So tell me, What is the misconception about water versus booze, you know, and then like what what do we know about like what they were drinking?

41:12 Yeah. So the misconception of water versus booze is that people are drinking booze instead of water because it's unsafe to drink water at the time. And so they're all they are all drinking beer because that way it is, you know, essentially pasteurized whether or not they know it. Right. And that is not the case. They're all drinking beer because they are working very, very, very hard and they're hungry.

41:40 And they have not no calories, but they don't have enough calories.

41:44 They don't have enough calories. Yeah. So it's like it's like having, you know, an energy drink or like a supplement drink on top of whatever else. And also they like it, you know, and they're drinking and they're drinking small beer. They're not drinking. heavy beer out there in the fields because, like, again, these people are plowing. Like, you can't get plowed and plow. You know what I'm saying?

42:06 Drinking a fucking 8.0 ABV Blue Ranger while you're plowing the field.

42:13 Hell yeah, brother.

42:14 You're, like, asleep 10 minutes later just sweating to death even though, like, it's, like, February. You're just like, God, why did I do this? It was too many calories. I'm so sorry.

42:25 Yeah, basically, you know, so it's like they got a lot of physical labor to do and they're just trying to supplement it in that way. And and like to an extent, this whole myth, I think, is part and parcel with this whole, oh, the medieval period is gross thing.

42:43 Which it was, but not for the reasons people talk about.

42:47 Yeah, like, listen, listen, I'm telling you, every single fucking thing pre-war was gross. Like, pre-World War II. Pre-World War II, everybody stunk. You know, like, the dentistry was bad, all of that. Like, the current and very clean world in which we live is a post-World War II conception world. Everybody was in it.

43:08 And we should hold onto it with the whitest knuckles possible. Just don't ever let it go.

43:15 I know, right? Like, that shit can slip at any moment, right? So it's like we got lots and lots and lots of examples of, you know, people being normal. Like, this whole thing where people are just throwing shit in the streets and, like, everything is gross, not real.

43:29 They buried it in pits.

43:31 Like, there's a whole profession, like the night soil carters, right?

43:36 Yeah. Everyone did something with it. They either put it on their crops or, which most places didn't do, but if you didn't have any manure, you could do that. You could dig pits and use it for that. Some pre-modern cultures burned it because if you don't have anything else you can burn, it doesn't smell good, but you can definitely do it. You can do it. And to be honest, in a lot of cases, like, burning it is better than like burying it in the ground and it's, you know, you bury it up above the groundwater and then, you know, I mean, they did get sick and they did have, I, from drinking water and they did have ideas about how, like, don't put dead bodies in the river.

44:23 Like don't, you know, they, they had ideas about that. Um, but, uh, It's not.

44:30 Like the levels of cholera that you see even like with Victorians and stuff as well, because fundamentally there aren't as many people. So it's just it's not quite so bad as that. I'm not saying it's good. I'm not saying like drink the well water in London like I personally wouldn't. But, you know, it's. it's like it's just not quite as bad as we think and yeah people just they like they like this you know i for whatever reason people really want to feel you know kind of superior to medieval people i think and this is like a way of doing it but i mean to be fair they do be drinking booze you know yeah.

45:12 I mean and i think some of it a little bit of it could be like you know some societal effort to try and avoid dysentery because one of the easiest way to get dysentery is through drinking tainted water. And the thing about, about pre-World War II dysentery is it was fucking killer. 50 to 80, 50 to 80% mortality.

45:36 Like it's not, it's real bad. Yeah. So it could be stuff like that. But regardless, they didn't, Um, you know, they, they drink what they had to drink, but I mean, like when we did the, uh, the series on, um, medieval land management, we talked about calories and intake from, from wheat and maize and rice as like the three big things across the planet. Like, um, you know, for a lot of the, a lot of history, that intake was fairly low. And the only way to, the only way to supplement that, like with it in a way that like, doesn't like, there aren't enough cows for everybody to have like steak and stuff like that. So like, but you can, somebody in your village can definitely brew low, you know, low ABV booze and you could drink that

46:41 and it'll have, you know, 90 to 110 calories in it, even for like a little bit of it. And that's, and that's really good. If, if you're, if your daily calorie intake is like bordering on not having enough to keep your weight up a hundred calories in like a small pop is a real good way to do it. Yeah. Anyway, uh, no monarch, but Norton, thank you very much for the question.

47:06 Next we got one from left car who says Eleanor has talked about at talked about how the church was often a viable career path for second sons of nobles. How typical was it for commoners to join the clergy? What sort of background would a common member of the clergy have? Did they ever get up in the hierarchy?

47:26 And was literacy an essential job requirement for the local priest?

47:30 So you could be a commoner and join the church if your family has money, is the answer. And that's possible. There's lots of peasants who are rich. And if you are a peasant who is from sort of the 25% of peasants who are wealthy, um, or indeed like even, you know, what we might call middle class, you can absolutely like send your kid off to join the clergy, especially if you've got a whole fuck ton.

47:58 Of kids, right? You can kind.

48:00 Of like feel free. It's just sort of like, if you've got enough kids around the joint, you don't need to worry too much about like making sure that they make good marriages, things like this. So, You know, we definitely see that. And like, indeed, you know, we see a lot of the time, even with people who are from the higher echelons of society, like, you know, Hildegard of Bingen, it's like lower nobility. Lower nobility is super common at joining the clergy as well. Because it's just sort of like, oh, well, if you've got like 13 fucking kids, you got to put them somewhere, right?

48:35 Kind of a deal.

48:35 And the same can be true of the wealthier peasants. Now, yes, it is true. that literacy is going to be essential, although we do see complaints throughout the Middle Ages of people being like, my priest can't fucking read, dog. Look at my priest, dog.

48:49 I'm going to hell.

48:50 Like, there is like a lot of worry on the part of a lot of people about whether or not their local priests are actually equipped to do what they need to do. That's an ongoing and quite pressing concern. And that's usually indicative of that you've got clergy members who are from, you know, ordinary families, right? Because it's just like they didn't get kind of a good enough education.

49:20 But the thing is, in theory, you could start your kid off in education provided you send them down to the church for your local priest to educate, which is one of the big functions of churches as a general rule of thumb is that they are, you know, places of education as much as anything else. Um, so, but then again, like if you're in the, like, it's one thing if you live in like long or something like that, and you can send your kid to the cathedral school. Great.

49:49 You know, if you live in a village in Northumbria, like Northumberland, I guess that it's like, it's just not going to be the same level, my man, you know? So these, and these things matter, right? Like these, these considerations are definitely in play. Um, and it's hard, you know, if you want to join a monastery or nunnery, you've got to come as an oblate with also a gift for them. You know, sometimes people just like leave their unwanted kids on the doorstep and the monks and nuns will kind of take care of them, but they're more likely to sort of try to pass them on if they're babies, because like they ain't got like wet nurses around the joint or anything like that. Uh, But the point is, yeah, you can join if you're a commoner,

50:32 but it's always going to take money. And if you are coming from a dirt, poor ass, rural family, no. They're just not taking you. Like, that's just not the game.

50:42 Unless you get left on the steps, yeah. Yeah, unless you get left on the steps. If you get left on the steps, yeah.

50:48 Left on the steps at like five, yeah, they'll probably take you. They'll probably take you, to be honest.

50:54 Left on the steps at, like, 17. They're like, all right, now.

50:58 Yeah, let's go. What are we doing here? No, go get a job. You know, like, so.

51:03 Get out. Go get some help. Yeah.

51:06 Absolutely.

51:07 Absolutely.

51:08 So, you know, it varies is the point. But, yeah, it's possible. But it's possible with provisos.

51:18 Yeah.

51:18 Yeah.

51:20 Yeah. Lefkar, thank you very much for the question. Next, we got one from Ali Kant. How do medieval people cut their hair and generally maintain their hair? I'm going to be both amazed and annoyed at myself if it turns out scissors are an ancient invention and not something from a couple of hundred years ago, as I've always assumed.

51:36 Good news, Ali. You don't need to be annoyed at yourself, but scissors are a very old invention. And shears are even older.

51:44 Yeah, like, you know, they are out here shearing sheep. and you know they will do the same thing and you can go to the barber to get your hair cut you know they'll do you know the surgeries but they also will do your hair and there is kind of like a bit less cutting you know like women don't really cut their hair very often for example because it's like why would you you're just shoving it up in like a bun anyway and like.

52:10 You're gonna sweat your ass off anyway yeah.

52:13 So yeah it kind of does not matter Some men are getting their hair cut more often and literally you'll go to the barber or like I think it's quite common for families to just fucking do it.

52:24 Right.

52:25 Like in that way that it is now. Right. Like there's no. nothing particularly weird about that. Um, and so, uh, yeah, like these are the things that we tend to, to see happen. So it's probably going to be in the home if you are, uh, broke.

52:45 Right.

52:46 Um, and, uh, then I think that otherwise, you know, you're kind of, you're kind of looking at, um, going to a barber if you're in a big city where they sure do live fine, you know? Yeah.

52:59 Yep. It's, uh, yeah, they, they were shearing sheep.

53:05 MF would be shearing.

53:06 In the ancient period, definitely. I mean, so yeah, by the middle of, and then like when you start having the big, uh, wool industries that crop up in Western Europe, uh, they're all shearing all the time. You cannot pluck, uh, or comb wool that fast to, to produce that much. Um, you got, you definitely got to shear it.

53:32 Um, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

53:34 And of course you could also, um, I mean, you can cut hair and you could trim your beard and stuff with like a very sharp knife or a razor. Um, but yeah.

53:45 Yeah. They have razors too. Yeah. Like, um, they, they do be shaven, you know, and that's the other thing is like, I guess, you know, the, probably the biggest group of people who are maintaining haircuts are actually monks.

53:55 Tonsure.

53:56 And clergy, yeah, because they're tonsured to shit, right?

53:59 Yeah. A.

54:00 And B, they also shave their beards.

54:03 Yes.

54:04 Usually, which is kind of like a sign of the fact that they're not participating in the world.

54:09 Yeah.

54:10 Yeah, so they are the number one group who are kind of like getting to it. And that probably means that you've got like a brother who's doing it in the monastery. But also, they're literally like, just fuck my shit up, fam.

54:20 Mm-hmm.

54:22 And so like a quite intentionally, it's like, they're trying to look like shit. That's the point of all of that. So yeah.

54:29 Yeah. Yep. Um, yeah, that, uh, that is, uh, that's what we got there. Thank you very much for the question, Ali. Uh, next we got one from dog God. Uh, what niche historical reference would you dress up as for gay Halloween party? And if you don't know, this comes from the, uh.

54:51 I love gay Halloween.

54:54 Dog, I hate going to gay Halloween. What do you mean you dressed up as Haley Stevens' honeypot husband who is balding and looks like a guy who worked on the Baltimore docks for 40 years? Or something like that. Eleanor, what niche historical reference are you dressing up for gay Halloween?

55:16 Every year I threaten to be on a hoist while he's being burnt at the stake. with his little bishop spider that is covered in devils.

55:25 Yeah, I know. You could be like a goose on fire kind of thing. Yeah.

55:31 Oh, that would be really cool. Yeah, like take it to that extent. I really like that. Couple's costume idea, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Saladin. Yeah. Oh, man.

55:46 What do you mean? I hate gay Halloween. What do you mean you're Saladin's magic carpet from the penultimate story in the Decameron? What the fuck is your problem, dog? I don't know. Going as the air fort latrine disaster, just dressing up as a noble and covering yourself in shit.

56:10 Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, I... it's good stuff that's good stuff that's a crowd pleaser you know.

56:23 That is that's uh like everybody's gonna get a you know a warm chuckle and like uh you know a sensible getting a sensible chuckle out of that one yeah uh dog god thank you for the question we got a couple more uh next one is from west bank robbery was there any pre-modern new money or nouveau riche And I say yes, but not typically in the ways that we would think of. Not how modern nouveau riche is. Eleanor, what do you got?

57:01 Yeah, it's the bourgeoisie. It's the bourgeoisie, my friend. That's who it is.

57:06 The rise of the Italian merchant bankers and all that. And the Hanseatic League, for that matter.

57:13 Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you listen... you're going to find the nouveau riche in Venice, right? You're going to find them in, in fucking like, um, bloody hell in like, uh, Bishop's Lynn and places like that, you know, like that's, that's where you find them. You, you find these traders and the traders are really very specifically able to make rather a lot of money. And, you know, they often can sort of climb the ranks of, in that they like can, for example, um, lend money to court, which is a very popular pastime. Um, they can, um, really work with, um, you know, kind of like local statesmen and things like that. And you also get a sense that they do sort of, um, at least at some times, um, intermarry or have sex. Like if you read, for example, uh,

58:12 the art of courtly love, which I'm always banging on at you all about, um, one of the groups that you can seduce as a nobleman that they're like, oh yeah, hell yeah, these, these women are seducible is a middle-class women. And they mean middle-class in the way that British people mean middle-class, which is to say rich people.

58:30 Right.

58:31 Um, so it's like, yeah, these are, these are people in that like you know they have money and you can sort of play these games with them but what is also made very clear in that is they're like um it's easier to bang middle-class women because they're super susceptible to flattery if you are a member of the nobility so um and they're like she's probably not going to take you seriously if you're too high up because like that will that's going to be suspicious like why are you talking to me kind of a thing. Um, and so like, it's sort of better if you're members of the lower nobility for that one, but they're just going to be so happy that you're talking to them because of this social position that you have. So the

59:16 answer is, yeah, you can have a lot of money, but you're not, you're not underlined, not a member of the nobility. Right. And so that's, that's the differentiation is that money isn't enough at all. in order to get you to climb.

59:32 Yeah. I would say, so you have the rise of the merchants, you have the rise of the bourgeoisie, you have the increasing wealth that most organized state religions grow for themselves over time, which becomes a problem in the later medieval period for a lot of different places. But a big one that... I don't really think is actually possible anymore, but it did happen a few times. We've talked about these times where there was a group and they had been kind of locked into a struggle with themselves for a very long time in a very small parcel of land. And then because of historical circumstances, they break out and they dominate a part of the globe for a little while. This happened with the Macedonians and

1:00:24 Greeks under Alexander the Great. It happened with the Arabs after they fought it out and then saw the light of Islam. It happened with the Mongols, and it happened with the Europeans with colonialism. But I think a good way to think about it is if we remember when we talked about the Arab conquest during the pre-modern Iran series, and we talked about how all of these tribes have been fighting against one another on the Arabian Peninsula for centuries.

1:01:00 And then when Constantinople and the Sassanids, when they dissolved the two buffer states that they had toward the northern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and all the tribes could actually really fight it out amongst themselves to see who was the most powerful, and then you had this burgeoning ecstatic religious movement that swept the region too. And so what you have is these people who have an incredible zeal.

1:01:33 They have great tactics. They are honed. They have battle-hardened soldiers who have been through hell and back and everything. But they don't have the best horses. They don't have the best equipment. And they are not incredibly... wealthy in terms of material goods that are valuable at the time. So, um, when they broke out, we, uh, we talk, you know, in, in 634 under, uh, Abu Bakr, um, when they get to Ctesiphon, they, they started fighting, uh, the, uh, both, both the Christians and, uh, the the Zoroastrians, and once they get to Ctesiphon in 637, they win this huge, unexpected battle against the Sassanid Empire, and we talked about how, because of the way that it was set up, basically a third of all of the wealth, the largest armory,

1:02:39 the largest stores of everything that the Sassanids had was in Ctesiphon. And so... when they got this, it's like they went from having like these, not shoddy, but not like the best arms, not like the best stuff in the world because they have been a tribal society to now they have the arms and know-how and knowledge of a 1000 year old, uh, uh, over a thousand years of Iranian and Macedonian imperial knowledge right there and they got it and they got all of the tax receipts from the wealthiest part of the empire which was between the Tigris and Euphrates like that's like if that's like a medieval knight like walking out like walking out of a cave you hand him a gun with infinite ammo and, uh, and give him like $ 10 billion worth of like Florence

1:03:42 or whatever, and tell him to go nuts. Like you, like that is something where you are, you, you, the level, the amount of new money that you have is X, but is, is literally exponential. It's like when those Greeks, when Alexander, his Greeks broke out and they made it all the way to India, uh, You're going to another place that has completely different goods and resources, and they were able to get gold and stuff like that in troves that they had never seen. And so when these guys come back, they're the wealthiest people in their homelands by factors of– they could buy– entire provinces that they had grown up in by like pawning, like some of the jewels that they had come into. Like we're talking

1:04:35 about just levels of wealth that have, you know, that, that had not been seen at that point. And that's what happened with the Macedonians. It's what happened with, uh, the Muslims is definitely what happened with, uh, the, um, with the Mongols, as we've talked about plenty of times. And then, of course, this is what happened with the Europeans because they fought themselves on that peninsula for so long and they finally broke out. And at the time, they had the technological advancement that no one could contain them. And, yeah, I mean, we're still living in the after effect of that. Like, we are, America is like the last, I mean, kind of is the last like nouveau riche thing ever. there is because we're just like the the butt end of

1:05:22 everything that europe was doing at that time anyway uh west west bank robbery um thank you for the question uh last one we got from the final val um really what grinds your gears do you have any A historical misconception pet peeve, either the it's plausible in theory but still wrong category or no, aliens did not build that kind, whatever gets your goat particularly hard.

1:05:51 So one that I'm kind of frustrated with at the moment is it's well-meaning. and this is why I'm a bit frustrated with it, okay, is that there'll be this thing when people talk about, they're like, oh, well, you know, people forget that the only reason the Renaissance happened is because the Arab world kept all of that knowledge alive, which is like this really weird and roundabout way of trying to congratulate the Arab world, you know, quite rightly, for like all the cool things that they were doing in the medieval period. But the thing about it that is stupid is, A, the Renaissance isn't real. So, like, jot that down. Like, there's no fucking such thing as the Renaissance, right? And it's like, actually, most of the

1:06:41 classical texts that were circulating at the time of the Renaissance were also circulating fucking the entire time during the medieval period. And fucking Charlemagne did that, right? So, like, calm down, calm down, right? Like, there's plenty of that. Secondly, the reason we have an influx of fucking texts into the early modern Europe is actually because of the collapse of Constantinople. And you could have just gone over there and asked them at any fucking moment. It's not actually about Arabic sources. We have constant and consistent influx of Arabic texts into Europe via the Iberian Peninsula throughout the medieval period. There isn't anything that they have that medieval Europeans don't have. Arguing that they do is actually a

1:07:27 kind of like weird sort of chauvinism that is saying that like these worlds are completely cut off from each other, which is a historic and not right. And it's like, I just think it does the entire thing a disservice. It's like, what are we doing here, dog? And it's like, I understand that people are trying to be complimentary.

1:07:43 Right.

1:07:44 I understand that they're trying to be like, yeah, the Arab world is cool. And it is. It fucking is. But it's not true. That either the Renaissance really did anything that is like some fucking great leap forward for humanity or that what happened with that particular influx of texts is that they were all coming from Arabic sources.

1:08:11 The Renaissance is a dog shit time to be alive there. You know, read, read Ada Palmer's excellent book on the myth of the Renaissance all about this. about how like i mean i guess if you really want to fucking uh like collapse roman christendom because they build fucking the the new saint peter's great like i don't particularly think that the vatican is good uh for example um if you really like to have the the particular um Oh, Jesus.

1:08:48 What's it called? Lifespan drop. Then sure. Like all of these things aren't real, right? Like all of them aren't real. I know you're trying to that be nice to arabic people and that's cool but what you're doing is feeding into this myth that europe and the and asia are completely separate from each other and that doesn't fucking help right it doesn't help if you propagate these myths that's all i'm saying yeah and also.

1:09:11 It's wrong they had a they had a um they had their own uh multiple revolutions they had a whole golden age like it's it's not i mean they you know they had a scientific um tons of scientific advancements but like it like um to me like i don't a lot of it like so a lot of the stuff that bothers the, that bothers Eleanor doesn't really bother me that much. And it's not because it's not important.

1:09:47 It's because this was not, this hasn't been my job and my life for nearly as long. And so like when people are like, you know, Oh, the like, when there's like a fuzzy thing about like, you know, like, like with the Renaissance, like I don't think the Renaissance is particularly important, but like, I'm also just like, I don't, I don't care because, because Renaissance is like used in like a colloquial, like, you know, a Renaissance man got, you know, kind of thing or like, this is the Renaissance of so-and-so, you know? But like just stuff that like, That trades on really tired ideas that, like, people in the past were so... Were, like, of such a vast different, like, quality and intellect or, like, stuff like that. Like, stuff

1:10:44 that turns... That seeks to turn them... Like, basically, like, the return stuff that seeks to, like, turn... medieval farmers into like these paragons of virtue who never said and did everything that the church said and everything that their liege lord said because they because they were good christians and they never disobeyed and they never did this and also like uh they only had one thought in their head and that was like i'm gonna make babies because i love i love god and it's like No, they were complicated, and they did all this awful shit, just like we do, and they did good shit, and they were, like... And, I mean, the differences between us are primarily technological and the fact that, like, now politics is the most important

1:11:35 thing in the world. And, I mean, it technically was then, too, but they didn't have any understanding of that on, like, a... On a real, like, fundamental individual level. And so it's, like, um... Just like stuff like talking about like how they– how, you know, like, oh, well, like they always did what their liege lord said. I mean like some of them did. Yeah, definitely.

1:12:03 And some of them were like– and some of them were definitely like the sniveling smithers type, you know, like, oh, you forgot to give us more. You forgot to give us more work today, Bailiff. You know, like, what about our pop quiz teacher? Like, kind of stuff like that. But, I mean, they weren't all like that. And you could tell because, like, the Bailiff exists for a reason. If the serf never says no, there's not a real reason for the Bailiff to exist as, like, an enforcer. they might be a tabulator of like, okay, you gave X amount of whatever, but like, you know, you're not going to have, uh, someone, someone having to resort to the heavy hand if people are always doing exactly what they say.

1:12:53 So it's, I think it, um, I think it strips them of context. And I think to, uh, label them or anything like, um, in the medieval era as a, um, as something that is stuck in time and is frozen in amber and we have to go back to it is stupid because they were doing the same shit. Something I always think about is how the preamble to Augustus Caesar, the Augustus, his preamble to his new laws was talking about how kids these days suck and they don't listen to what we used to say, and they don't care about this, and everybody has too much sex, and everybody's doing everything the wrong way, and you're not doing it like the old Romans, blah, blah, blah. And then you have the Inferno, where Dante is talking about how kids

1:13:57 these days don't care about the Bible like they should, and they're having too much sex, and they're not thinking about my muse enough, and they're not doing this, and it's like, No, this is just an old thing. It's people who have a lot of money or old people or both like seeing something new and being like, as Eleanor said, I used to be with it, but now I don't know what it is and what I'm with isn't it and whatever the fuck the rest of that thing is. I can't remember it now.

1:14:28 And what is it seems weird and scary.

1:14:30 And it'll happen to you. And that is true. Every 25 years since the beginning of human... civilization that we can tell every 25 years is old people going it'll happen to you and everybody younger going whatever man and then i'm gonna be i'm gonna be cool forever i'm gonna be cool forever and then you grow up and you're not listening to um to the new uh loot tracks.

1:14:56 You're like the loot, that piece of trash. I go back, go back to the old singing. What? Oh, fuck the loot. Yeah.

1:15:04 Oh, Polly Fonny. Uh, you know, I can't, I can't imagine what the bitch should must've been like when Polly.

1:15:10 Fonny came out. Yeah. Oh, they like, they were, they were going in saying it's like, I think anything that, that denudes people in the past of agency and strips away their interiority, really sucks because the thing that is interesting about history is a, that we can look back and we can see what happened and maybe we could try to do better. And B is that even though me and, you know, some peasant in the past probably wouldn't be able to communicate with each other. Like realistically, even if they spoke old English and I was just speaking regular English now, like, we had the, we cared about the same things. We cared about our family. We cared about our friends. We cared about like where the,

1:16:00 where the, the food was going to come from. And like, you know, the things that were important to us, whether that's like going down to the pub or whether it's, you know, like reading books or whatever that is, those things are eternal in the human consciousness, as far as we can tell. And that doesn't, uh, that doesn't mean like we're special. It just means that, God damn it.

1:16:23 I stupid alarm on my phone. I'm sorry.

1:16:26 Um, no worries.

1:16:27 Uh, and that doesn't mean like, uh, we have like a special place in history. It means that like the people who lived through the black death, they dealt with it the same way that we do today. They cognitive, they did cognitive dissonance. They went into, to debauchery. They went into like extreme religious fundamentalism. They, they, decided that was the time to write a history of their people or of Europe or something like that. And, you know, people will be like, well, there's not going to be any, uh, historians in a hundred years. Yes, there will. Even if there's only a hundred people, at least one of them is going to be like turning through scraps that they found in the, in the nuke charred fallout wasteland is

1:17:11 going to be like, wait a minute in 2000, eight people did flash mobs and, and, and that'll become like their new, like dancing plague. Like why did they do flash mobs? We have no idea. It must've been some kind of mass psychosis, which I mean, yeah, pretty much.

1:17:29 A little bit, a little bit. Listen, I, I also, can I just do a quick bonus one and we don't have to get into it too.

1:17:36 Go for it.

1:17:36 The other one we, but we've talked about it before, but just to bring it up again, that the whole medieval peasants worked less than you think.

1:17:46 God, please no. Backbreaking. Do you know what happens if I don't want to make dinner tonight because I'm too tired from cleaning up around the house and doing other shit? I can go pick it up. I can call the pizza place. I can do that. That was not a thing. If you were too tired to make dinner that night, fuck you. Everybody's starving. You're all going to die. Your kid is not going to live to see tomorrow. You cannot do that anymore. At all. Did they have more...

1:18:15 feast days? Yes. Does that suck that we've regressed on that? Yes. Does that mean that they had easier lives? Fuck off and die.

1:18:24 It's not time off. You know how much work they're doing on that feast day? It just means that their landlord can't ask them to do more work because their landlord gets to tell them to work.

1:18:35 You have indoor plumbing. Pipes bring water to you. I mean, for most people. But like.

1:18:43 It's such a stupid return thing.

1:18:45 It is. It's so dumb. I don't want to work. I don't want to do back break. work even though i i want to be less alienated from my labor and everything i do not want to go back to pre-modern ways of doing basically anything except maybe how we structure communities of people and living closer to one another That's it. I don't want any of that. Like the past is the past. And I think we can learn from it and everything, but like the people who are like, we have to go back. I don't want to go back.

1:19:18 I don't like that. I like understanding history in 2026 and not having, you know, 1350s history where they tell me it's the earth is 6,000 years, you know, old and, you know, whatever like whatever the fuck they believed because like yeah that was the stone ages to them like who yeah yeah anyway absolutely anyway yeah um folks final vow thank you very much for the question folks that is going to do it for us today we hope you enjoyed it uh we um you know check out the patreon check out welcome to the crusades uh eleanor what else can they check out uh with you.

1:20:03 Oh great question oh yeah um i over the weekend did uh with our friend daniel bestner from american prestige um i was uh we did i did a little thing with him for his sub stack um about uh fucking ghosts so you can check that out we did a sub stack live um Also on my Patreon is the result of an article that we wrote about spectrophilia.

1:20:32 So you can check that out. I think otherwise it's just the usual business around here. So yeah, you know, check me on socials, DrEllenOrionaga on Instagram and Going Medieval on all other platforms.

1:20:52 There you go. Yeah, you can check me out, LucasAmazing.com. On social media, you can find my old show, People's History of the Old Republic, if you want to hear me yap about Star Wars. But that is going to do it for us today. Thank you all so much for listening, and we'll see you next time. Bye!

1:21:10 Oh, I actually have to press the button. What is going on with me today?

1:21:14 Do you know what?

1:21:15 I didn't even say keep it sloppy, which is ironic, because this is the sloppiest sign-off I've ever fucking done. I'm so jealous.

1:21:23 Anyway, let's stop. Ugh.