folks, here is an unlocked bonus episode because a winter storm of the century in the American southeast made recording impossible this week. enjoy! the bonus is back for a new year and Luke and Eleanor have been thinking about things and stuff and it's time to ruminate on them. first, Eleanor talks about the way in which rationality and a loss of spirituality supposedly went hand-in-hand with the Enlightenment. it's really been grinding her gears and she's going to speak on it. then Luke answer...
Jan 24, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 203
folks, we all love trains. they're great for moving people and cargo and famously not as bad as cars but did you know that the first railways and trackways were built in the Classical and Medieval eras. that's right, despite what Victorian era propaganda would have you believe, the train didn't simply appear fully formed in the English mind in the 18th century where it was then bestowed upon the rest of humanity. it does in fact have a very long and often sordid history and that's why we've brou...
Jan 15, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 200
folks, so this is the new year? well, we could start with a new series or something but a lot of shit has happened the past few weeks and Eleanor and Luke haven't chatted in a while, so they take some time to catch-up on recent events, both hilarious and horrifying. then, to get back into the swing of Medieval things, we talk about an excellent new academic paper that sheds light on a truly bizarre Late Medieval witchcraft trial, which has all the hallmarks of the Early Modern witch trials but i...
Jan 09, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 200
folks, it's our final episode of 2024 and our 200th regular episode of the show and to celebrate, we've got the conclusion of our year-end mailbag episodes. we answer questions about how cathedrals were cleaned in the Middle Ages, favorite Star Wars ship, banishment, Medieval takeout, mountaineering, early Church politics, and more! enjoy and have a happy new year from us here at the show!
Dec 31, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 200
folks, it's no secret that 2024 has been a bit of a bummer, to say the least. however, it's not terribly healthy to always focus on the bad, so we decided to talk about some our favorite stuff we saw, did, read, and heard this year. Luke and Eleanor each chose four things and they go back and forth discussing them, riffing, you know how it goes. feel free to play along leave some of your own favorites from 2024 in the replies here. Everything for Everyone: https://www.commonnotions.org/everythin...
Dec 24, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 199
folks, it's the end of the year and that means we're having holiday fun and making merry but also that we're crunched for time, so we won't be starting any new series or anything like that. instead, we're diving back into the backlog of questions from our patrons for not one but two episodes here at the end of the year, though there will be an unlocked bonus episode for the week of Christmas stuck in between them. in part 1, we talk about our favorite dumb ways for noblemen to die, what elements...
Dec 18, 2024•58 min•Ep. 198
folks, we've made no secret that we love mysticism on the show. we've talked about it on various episodes and some of our faves were mystics including Hildegard, Marguerite Porete, St. Francis, and more. so we were naturally interested when philosopher Simon Critchley published a new book, entitled On Mysticism: The Experience of Ecstasy in October 2024, and he agreed to come on the show. we talk his new book, why the term "mysticism" is a misnomer but an indispensable one, what we can learn fro...
Dec 11, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 197
folks, Ridley Scott has just released another one of his patented, late-era slopfests and we couldn't be more ready. that's right, it's your Gladiator II review, wherein we are forced to admit that we sometimes really enjoy the slop. so we brought returning champion Patrick Wyman back on the show to use his Roman history expertise to break down this oddly-paced, mess of a film with an anemic plot that we all nevertheless enjoyed. turns out, some fun spectacle, nice visuals, and Denzel Washington...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 196
folks, we're back with more fun with part two of our review of the 2024 Hulu series, Shogun. last time we learned that a soulful white boy in a strange land can listen and learn and even find a nice, soulful Japanese girl who's just emo enough to fall for him. but this time, we learn that all of that was simply a ruse to draw us deeper into the Yoshii Toranaga show! Hiroyuki Sanada gives one of the best TV performances ever as the mastermind behind the reunification of Japan at the end of the tu...
Nov 27, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 195
folks, you asked and now you shall receive. we're here to review the 2024 Hulu series, Shogun, based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell. we talk about the first five episodes this time and then we'll talk about the second five on next week's show. but first we start with the historical basis, as is our wont, and tell you about how a series that takes place in the year 1600 is actually Medieval and also Feudal, with a capital-F. then we dive in headfirst and ask the question that has long plagued...
Nov 20, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 194
folks, you know we love great folklore, traveling, and delightful accents and we've combined all three today as we talk to Welsh author, writer, and activist, Russ Williams. Russ has recently released his first traditionally-published novel, entitled What the Folk?, in Great Britain (forthcoming in the United States). It's a travelog wherein Russ visits the locations from dozens of old Welsh stories to see what they're like, how they informed the stories, and what pieces remain for us today. Rus...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 193
folks, we're back with another mailbag episode. our patrons have written questions and now we're going to answer them. we discuss a wide range of topics from wedding rings to mylings to the Charter of the Forest to why Medieval European empires couldn't really expand out like Asian and African empires and more! but first, we talk about the US election for about 15 mins, so skip right ahead if you don't want to hear that. then we talk about breaking news as a full accounting of the land and prope...
Nov 08, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 192
folks, it's spooky season and we've reached back into the Middle Ages to find twelve ghost stories to celebrate. actually, these twelve were already compiled together and are known as the Byland Abbey ghost stories, which is where the manuscript containing these stories was initially discovered. these stories, all written around the year 1400 give us a great view into how Medieval people told scary stories. spoiler: there's obviously a whole lot of Christianity but there's also some truly metal ...
Oct 31, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 191
folks, it's time to talk about Opus Dei, the shadowy "church within a church" of the Catholic Church. why are we talking about Opus Dei? well, mostly because it's been in the news and we were chatting about it via text and decided to do an episode about it. so we talk about the brief history of Opus Dei, some of the controversies surrounding the organization, how it differs from other clerical and monastic orders within the Church hierarchy, why the popes are so friendly with it, and more. then ...
Oct 24, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 190
folks, we're back with part two of our miniseries on the life and travels of Ibn Battuta, the most well-traveled man of the Middle Ages, and Derek Davison is back to help us out. this time, we look at the final two big journeys of Ibn Battuta's life that take him from Turkey to India to China and back over a 15-year span and then a much shorter one from Tangiers up to Al-Andalus and then down through West Africa to Mali and back home again over 5 years. we also talk about the spread of Islam in ...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 189
folks, we're talking Medieval travelers today and that means we're talking about the man, the myth, the legend: Ibn Battuta. Even if he doesn't have quite the same western name recognition as Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta traveled much more extensively, taking three huge journeys that took him through Africa, Europe, and Asia. He walked the Silk Road and touched the Rock of Gibraltar, he was the Medieval traveler extraordinaire. but to properly do Ibn Battuta justice, we needed a guest who could speak...
Oct 09, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 188
folks, after a brief weather delay, we're here to close out our Day in the Life series with a grab bag of Medieval jobs we haven't gotten to thus far. this time, we jump around between five different topics suggested by our patrons: how were the famous English archers trained? what did ladies-in-waiting wait on all the damn time? what backbreaking chores did household servants do? how bad was life for a Medieval sailor? and what was life like for the construction worker shaping the monumental st...
Oct 02, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 187
In this introduction, we bring you up to speed on the background you need before we get into the book itself next time. We start with a question that is simple in theory but not in practice: what genre is this book? Could be murder-mystery, could be postmodernist ruminations on the nature of academia, who's to say? Next, we talk about that author Umberto Eco and the frankly insane number of things he was trying to get across in the book. Then we discuss what you need to know about liturgical hou...
Sep 25, 2024•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 186
so far in our Day in the Life series, we've covered peasant farmers, knights, merchants, and royalty, which means that the only major group in Medieval Europe we've yet to cover is the clergy. but the clergy wasn't just stuffy archbishops in their giant cathedrals, the humble parish priest provided spiritual comfort as well as social services and material aid to his parishioners while the monks and nuns of the holy orders were working away in their abbeys and convents. this episode, we take a lo...
Sep 20, 2024•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 185
folks, we're back and continuing our Day in the Life series and this time we're talking about those fat cat royals in their palaces. sure, their positions could only exist based off the exploitation and suffering of like 98% of the populace but still, what the hell did they do all day? What did it mean to hold court? How were early Medieval courts different from their later counterparts and when did that start to change? What were things like at the court of Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV? Join ...
Sep 11, 2024•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 184
folks, we're back and continuing our run of answering patron episode requests and our Day in the Life series by talking about what a normal day was like for a Medieval merchant. how was city life different from living on a farm? what was it like to live on a continent where most people made transactions on the barter system but also use coins for trade? what was Medieval currency like and how did Medieval currency exchanges occur without set standards? what was travel like in the Middle Ages? an...
Sep 05, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 183
folks, after consulting our very own sacred chickens, we decided to turn a few of these patron episode requests into a short series, focusing on a Day in the Life of various medieval European people. Last week was the peasant farmer, and this time, it's the High and Late Medieval tournament knight. we discuss the differences between earlier conceptions of knights, the whole chivalry thing, jousting as a social phenomenon, and what it's like to be knight tilting on the jousts. because if there's ...
Aug 30, 2024•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 182
folks, throughout the history of the show, we've gotten a ton of questions that we answer at the beginning of almost every episode but we also get episode requests on broader topics. since we have something of a backlog of these, we figured we would start to address them and so we answer a request from our patron Dogspotter, who asked us to do an episode about what life was like down on the farm for the peasant and what kind of animals they had around. so we decided to take you through an exhaus...
Aug 21, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 181
folks, we're back with the 6th and final episode in our series on the Norman Conquest and English Anarchy. we close our the Anarchy in style by talking about the strange course of the conflict, Empress Matilda's high point of power in England, London's rejection of the Empress, the stalemate that followed, the eventual rise of Matilda's son, Henry FitzEmpress, and the eventual collapse of Stephen's rule as the nobles refused to crown his son king and instead opted for Henry. turns out, even if t...
Aug 14, 2024•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 180
folks, it's part 5 of our series on the Norman Conquest and English Anarchy and we're finally getting to the Anarchy part. We talk about the state of England in 1135 at the time of Henry I's death, what kind of anarchy we mean here, the main players and their claims to the throne, early political jockeying, and then the formal outbreak of civil war in 1138. Of course, we also make a few comparisons to House of the Dragon since George RR Martin used the English Anarchy as his rough template for t...
Aug 08, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 179
folks, we're back with part four of our series on the Norman Conquest and English Anarchy. this time, the best laid succession plans of mice and men go awry. Despite a decade of relative peace toward the end of his reign and dying with three male heirs in line, William the Conqueror's sons immediately begin quarreling with the help of some more rebellious barons. William Rufus wins the right to the English throne, defeating his older brother, Robert Curthose, for the prize before reconciling wit...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 178
folks, we're back with part three of our series on the Norman Conquest and English Anarchy where we finish up the rest of 1066 and see William the Conqueror crowned. then we turn to William's rule of England, which was mostly absenteeism except when he was responding to the numerous but sporadic and disconnected rebellions with extreme force. we'll see all the rebellions fail, even the Revolt of the Earls, and watch as the Norman yoke fully descends on England once and for all. finally, William ...
Jul 26, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 177
note: yes, there is echo on Eleanor's audio because she is travelling and the only place where she could record had tall ceilings and thus an echo. this also caused some weird feedback on Luke's track too. we have done our best to minimize it, so please just bear with us. folks, we're back with part 2 of our series on the Norman Conquest and English Anarchy. last time, we introduced you to pre-Norman England and the Norman themselves as we worked our way up to 1066 CE. but now it's time for conq...
Jul 17, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 176
folks, we're back with a new series, this one covering the Norman Conquest of England and then the Anarchy that followed about seventy years later. we were originally just going to do the Anarchy but decided to do the Conquest as well because it's kind of a big deal. this episode serves as an introduction to pre-Norman England and the Normans themselves. we talk about prehistoric England, Roman Britain, the Heptarchy, Christianization of the island, Viking invasions, and more. then we turn to di...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 175
folks, we're back with another patron mailbag episode, as promised. in this one, we answer a bunch of questions ranging from the justifications for predestination, usage of the term "Anglo-Saxon," the culture shock of being a Chinese visitor in Medieval Europe, historical murder rates, and whether Neo-Feudalism is actually a thing or not. check it out, it's a lot of fun and if you want to submit your own, just sign up. audio note: if you hear a slight buzzing behind Eleanor's audio, that is beca...
Jul 03, 2024•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 174
