We're Not So Different

folks, we start out book club series on Christopher Buehlman's 2012 Medievalist fantasy horror novel, Between Two Fires. we briefly introduce the author and the book and then jump right into the action. we talk plague, a magic kid, a broken man, a Dark Souls boss fight, a few miracles, and an angel named Sock. enjoy!

folks, we are back and diving into our monthly episode of patron mailbag questions. this time, we talk about grain storage, the university at Bologna, Medieval fiction writing, the Greek language, new D&D classes, and more. enjoy!

folks, today we talk about the Mediterranean Sea. you know it, you love it. we discuss how it just looks like a really cool place to set a fantasy series, where we would setup our fictional empire, why it was so conducive to civilization and empire formation, how it served as a conduit for trade, travel, cultural influence, religious syncretism, and more. oh, and how it's always so wine dark and primed for adventure.cover image: satellite view of the Mediterranean Sea surrounded by Europe, Asia, and Africa, taken from wikicommons

folks, we are back with another mailbag because we are behind on patron questions. this time, we talk about everything from donkeys to postal services, gendered work to seasoning pans, Hungary to myths and folklore, and even a whole block of questions about peasants running away to the cities and obtaining their freedom by staying for a year and a day. enjoy!cover image: frontispiece from Gustave Dore's illustrations of The Holy Bible showing people clinging to rocks during the biblical Flood, entitled "The Deluge"

folks, the World Cup is once again upon us in all of its glory and terror. so we take a look back at sports in the Middle Ages. we talk Medieval football, crossbow competitions, jousts and melees, chariot racing, the Mesoamerican ballgame, and more. we also talk about how sports has always been at the intersection of politics, culture, religion, and communal life for both the regular folks and the elites. also, we've always loved gamblingcover image: drawing made by Christoph Weiditz in 1528 showing Aztec Ullamalitzil players performing for Charles V of Spain

folks, we're back and diving into the patron mailbag once again. this time, we answer questions about a host of topics, including: height differences, Aurora Borealis, best Medieval turlet, Traditional Chinese Medicine, battlefield name changes, othering, and spectacular Medieval wizard battles! check it out!cover image is of Aurora Borealis, taken from space.com

folks, back in January, we brought on Logan Weimer to talk about the unfolding situation in Minneapolis but she was originally supposed to come on the show to talk about her deep interest in the life, death, and afterlife of Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford, lady in waiting to four of Henry VIII's wives and sister-in-law to Anne Boleyn. we cover a whole range of topics, including coerced testimony, the use of "madness" as a tool for silencing unwanted voices, executions for "madness", and the poor treatment Jane has suffered in both scholarly and popular history until very recently.

folks, this is a long one. Luke talks about his Roman Empire: the Chicxulub Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. it's a scripted episode (don't get used to it) chronicling 3 separate stories: the asteroid impact and its aftermath that killed the dinosaurs, the lives of some of those dinosaurs 66 million years ago, and the modern story of how the asteroid impact hypothesis became scientific consensus.a list of sources appears at the end of the episode, go get mad at them if you don't like the way the narrative is presented

folks, we finish up our series on Premodern Iran by looking at Greater Iran from the arrival of the Mongols in 1219 until the fall of the Timurid Empire and the Rise of the Safavids in 1501. we talk internal Mongol civil wars, the Ilkhanate, the Timurid Renaissance, the strains of apocalyptic thought amongst the peasantry, the Iranian Golden Age, and the final vindication of a nearly 900 year old ideological project with the rise of a new ethnic Iranian empire. we hope you enjoyed the series!cover image: the Ulugh Beg Astronomical Observatory and madrasa in Samarkand, Uzbekistan (built in the time of Timur)

folks, we are back with part 3 of our series on Premodern Iran. this time, we get into the long, dark years for Iran and its peoples between the Muslim conquest and the Mongol invasions (651-1221 CE). we talk about how the idea of Iran survived even when the Persian language and Zoroastrianism were both suppressed, how the concept of Iranian identity formed into a real ideological project, why we lack sources, national epics and histories, the language of dissent, and the final grim fate of Zoroastrianism.cover image is recent photo of the Yazd Tower of Silence, which is no longer in use and now serves as a museum.

Welcome to the Crusades: The Second Crusade coming Summer 2026this is just a special bonus episode we recorded with Danny and Derek from American Prestige. there will be a regular weekly episode out, the third part of our series on Premodern Iran, the week of May 11. in order to celebrate Mother's Day and the announcement that Welcome to the Crusade is coming back to do the Second Crusade this summer, we got together with American Prestige to talk about Eleanor of Aquitaine. we cover her eventful life, her time on crusade, her awful husbands and sons, her wonderful daughters, her legacy, and more.

folks, we continue the series on Premodern Iran by picking up with the Sasanid Empire, which swept the Arsacid dynasty away in the 3rd century. we discuss the waxing and waning fortunes of the Sasanids, their wars with Rome, the great heights of Khosrow I, and the long legacy they would leave in their wake after being destroyed by the Arab-Muslim conquest of Iran. we then talk about exactly how and why the Arabs were able to take one of the world's great empires down so quickly, why no formal response was ever mustered, and how the national consciousness of Iran developed under the Sasanids was preserved under the early rule of the Caliphates.cover image is of an extant Zoroastrian Fire Temple in Yazd (taken from Wikimedia commons)

folks, given recent events and the region's general importance throughout history, we decided to do a short series on Premodern Iran. we start way back during the Ancient era, all the way back in the Bronze Age with the Elamites, then follow the progression of civilizations on the Iranian Plateau. we talk the Achaemenid foundations, Cyrus and Darius, Alexander the Great, Central Asian horse nomads, Zoroastrianism, and more!cover photo: engraved wall relief of a winged bull dating to the Achaemenid period, found in excavated ruins of Susa

folks, we are back with another mailbag episode to try and cutdown on the backlog of patron questions. this time, we discuss hamster-style situations, Medieval skyscrapers in Bologna, hangover cures, the Gregorian chant, the Medieval birds and the bees, state monopolies of violence, and more!cover image: conception of what Medieval Bologna may have looked like with numerous towers shooting into the sky, engraving by Tony Pecoraro, 1958. (taken from Wikimedia Commons)

folks, it's once again time to dive into the mailbag of patron questions. this time, we answer queries about the recent fight between Trump and Pope Leo, menopause, fried chicken, books bound in human skin, historical misconceptions based on a single erroneous account, the Pope being weak on crime, and much more.image: Antichrist seated on the back of Leviathan from the Liber Floridus encyclopedia (c. 1120), taken from Wikipedia Commons

folks, we come to the final episode of our series on Medieval Land Management by discussing famine, the very thing that all these land management practices are trying to guard against. we talk famines, how and why they happen, famine evidence across the world, the Little Ice Age, the Great Famine of 1315-17, and, thankfully, the peasant revolts that often follow in the wake of famines. enjoy!

folks, this is a free preview for the limited series Dr Eleanor recorded with friend of the show Phoebe Roy (Masters of Our Domain, etc.) about season 1 of the Wolf Hall TV show. if you like this episode, you can access all 7 episodes of the limited series for just $15 at: https://www.patreon.com/collection/2087866enjoy!

folks, in our 8th and penultimate episode on Medieval Land Management, we finally turn to our fellow creatures, specifically those we've domesticated. we talk about the various types of livestock, their distribution around the world before colonization, the different styles of management required, the sheep of the Petro State for Wool, urban hog management, Mongol bands of horses, and the Inca (as a special treat for Luke)

folks, there's more water to be discussed because, surprisingly, we kinda use water for everything. we discuss Medieval fishing, including stock ponds, salt harvesting, why you can't get good salt from all the oceans despite them all containing saltwater, why it was faster to travel via water than overland, and more!

folks, we're back with part 6 of the Medieval Land Management series and we're talking about how they dealt with water. first, we talk about Mesopotamian ghosts for a bit then get into Medieval aquaculture, including irrigation, wells, catchment in arid places, how water built civilization, and why rich people ruin everything.

folks, we're back to our series on Medieval Land Management with part 5 on forestry. we talk the Medieval obsession with beavers, coppicing, more coppicing, the staggering amount of land dedicated to producing firewood/charcoal in Eurasia, fire maintenance, controlled forest burnings, and an intensive study on forest management in Moravia. enjoy!

folks, we had take a short break from our Medieval Land Management series due to some scheduling complications (don't worry, it will continue next week) and so we did a mailbag instead. we usually do at least one mailbag episode a month to catch up on the mountain of questions we have from patrons. if you want to ask us questions, please subscribe for just $5 a month. this time, we cover everything from cobblestone streets to cadaver synods to the Florentine Vice to Gilles de Rais, Medieval beach trips, performative masculinity maxxing, and more.

folks, in our 4th episode on Medieval Land Management, we talk about more types of farming. this time, moving to Asia and the Americas to talk the 2 other great Medieval staple crops: rice and maize. we begin in China where rice was domesticated and turned from a dry and crop into a semi-aquatic one about 6,000 years ago. we talk about the spread of rice, how rice paddies work, and how the Song Dynasty used Champa rice to experience a population boom. then we turn to the Americas to talk about maize, its domestication from tiosente, the Three Sisters agricultural program and the milpa system.

folks, in the third episode in our series on Medieval Land Management, we talk about how Medieval farming recovered in Italy after the fall of Western Rome, how migrants from both East and West influenced Central European land management and agricultural practices, and why all of these Medieval European farming innovations owe a whole lot more to the Islamic world and specifically the Arab Agricultural Revolution than most would care to admit. also talk of settlement hierarchies and why nomadic peoples eventually adopt sedentism in almost every case.

folks, it's time to talk about Medieval farming. you've asked us to go in-depth on how it worked and that's what we're doing in this series. we talk about the yearly cycle in the forms of the Labors of the Months, how global climate shifts changed life for Medieval farmers, their understanding of ecological sustainability, and more about manure than you ever wanted to know. enjoy!

folks, we start our series on Medieval land management with a brief introduction because "land management" means a lot of things and we needed to define what we're doing. we also had to talk about the Neolithic Revolution, the smaller scale of the Medieval world, and a helpful framework from French Marxist Fernand Braudel.

www.standwithminnesota.comfolks, we invited Logan Weimer onto the show to talk about patriarchal violence against Jane Boleyn but ended up talking about the fascist occupation of Minneapolis by the federal government. Logan, who is a resident of Minneapolis, gives us a firsthand account of the feeling on the streets, the horrors they've faced, and the way people have come together to protect each other. it's a lot but we thought it was important to provide this perspective on the issue. we will start the series on Medieval land management next week.despite Luke introducing Logan as an attorney, she is not currently licensed or practicing and did not hold herself out as one, that was a factual error Luke made casually as an introductio

folks, Greenland is in the news for fairly stupid, very American reasons, so we decided to take a look back at Greenland during the Middle Ages. how did the Norse setup a colony on Greenland and keep it going in relatively European style for so long? what were their interactions like with the indigenous American groups? what were their lives like? and what happened to cause the end of the Greenlandic Norse settlements by about 1450?

folks, it's January and time for another dive into the Patron mailbag. if you would like to ask questions like these, you can subscribe for just $5 a month at patreon.com/wnsdpod. today, we talk about Medieval understandings of the Roman Republic, confirmations, Medieval Home Alone, Glup Shittos, and a counterfactual about friends of the show, the Mongols and the Theodosian Walls.

folks, happy 2026! we're back and we'd love to talk about the Middle Ages but current events have overtaken us and we are forced to talk about the dying empire that is America. we chat about the illegal and baffling kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and his wife, the ramifications of the event on global politics, the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, and the coming domestic fallout. sorry to start on a bummer but we'll be back to the Middle Ages next time!

we're unlocking this bonus episode because it's the week of New Year, it was originally published in early 2024. if you like it, why not subscribe at patreon.com/wnsdpod. in this episode, we actually talk about a way in which we're very very fucking different from the people of the past, not just those in the Middle Ages, but even our own parents and grandparents: Irony. obviously, dramatic and rhetorical irony have been around since storytelling began but a fully-involved ironic outlook on life is very recent, coming about around the 1800s and irony as a totalizing ethos that permeates all levels of culture and society is so new that it probably didn't start until 1965, at least according to Umberto Eco, and has only gotten more mainstream since then. we want to explore Eco's ideas on enjoyment, postmodernism, irony, and post-irony and look at a way in which we're so different from our forebears that we may as well inhabit two different worlds. so we talk about Eco's story of when irony entered the mainstream in 1965 and then explore what that means for us today and why it might explain both the great generational divide between people born before and after 1978 as well as the reasons our parents wouldn't let us watch the Simpsons. enjoy!

folks, it's time to talk about some fun, important, and symbolic dates from the Middle Ages. we discuss what days of the year they found significant, their attempts at numerology, the fact that the Anno Domini calendar system is off by a few years, and then talk about some of our favorite Medieval dates and what they mean. enjoy and happy holidays!

folks, we're back with another installment of our patron mailbag episodes. we get a lot of great questions from our patrons and so dive in every month to do some catching up. this time, we talk Medieval parades, 9/11 conspiracies, Medieval views on animal and plant extinction, an alternate history, and what TV shows would Medieval people like. enjoy and have a happy holiday!

folks, it's episode 250 and since we love our big, round numbers, we take the time to celebrate. we look back at the show, talk our favorite segments, series, bits, and more. thanks so much for listening to 250 episodes, we're excited to do 250 more in the future!

folks, today we talk about a couple of real big Medieval blunders. Incredibly stupid, shortsighted, and ill-fated decisions that resulted in outsized disasters that changed the course of history. first, Eleanor discusses the White Ship Disaster, which finally answers the age-old question: is it smart to be the heir to the throne, get stinking drunk, have the crew get stinking drunk and then race boats across the English Channel at night? turns out, it's not smart at all and this decision would lead to the English Anarchy. then, Luke looks at one of the biggest blunders in history: the decision by Khwarazamshah Mohammad of the Khwarazmian Empire to execute traders and ambassadors from Genghis Khan and go to war with the Mongol Empire. what are a bunch of steppe archers going to do, adopt siege weapons and become the most powerful fighting force the planet has ever seen? yeah, right! enjoy!

folks, Luke just returned from a vacation to Disney and is here to give us a firsthand update on how the normies are doing and whether they're ready for the return of woke or not. then we catch up on some news of the past week or so, focusing on the continuing decline of the Labour govt in England, the new Epstein files info, the total breakdown of the American Empire, what's going on with the AI economy, and much more. enjoy!

folks, this week we review 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle's 2025 film about the horrors of being British and, a sneaky Medievalist tale, although with a twist. we go in-depth about the Medieval aspects of the small community on Lindisfarne and why the film turns this bucolic nostalgia on its head. but there's more, including talk of zombie members, life finding a way, memento mori, and the horrific introduction of the Jimmy gang. we had a lot of fun with this one and it's a truly thought-provoking film, enjoy!

folks, we're back with another mailbag answering questions dutifully submitted by our amazing patrons. we do these every month to catch up on things and we're back to hit a broad range of topics including: ninjas, siege weapons, Leon Trotsky(?), dancing plagues, papal gifts, and the Peace of God. enjoy!

folks, it's time to talk about music. friend of the show, Dr Eleanor Chan, recently released a new book entitled Duet: An Artful History of Music. so we had her on the show to talk about the universal appeal of music, cave music, Hildegard of Bingen, bagpipes, and much more. enjoy and check out Dr. Chan's work at https://eleanorchan.com/

folks, it's spooky season again and we take a look at the revenant, a lesser-known monster today but one that positively terrified Medieval people. we take a look at a number of stories spanning across all of Northern Europe about dead bodies rising from the grave and causing mischief and horror in the physical world. they were so worried about this that they even did so-called deviant burials, where bodies were covered in heavy stones or with bricks shoved in the mouth, to prevent them from coming back as revenant dead. we talk all about these guys, why the stories were so prevalent, how it connects to stories of vampires and zombies, archaeological evidence of deviant burials, and more.

folks, we're back after convalescing for a week and it's time to get rage-baited into reviewing a Dan Brown book. the latest entry in Brown's ongoing series about Robert Langdon is called The Secret of Secrets and it's set in Prague, so it's tailor-made to really annoy Dr. Eleanor. we review Brown's most recent bad Umberto Eco ripoff, talk about the Dan Brown mania of early-2000s America, bad history, and much more. enjoy!

folks, it's time to talk about dragons! we love them, we've always loved them, they are the best. we got a question from Ollie Cant about dragons and decided to answer it with a full episode. we talk about the earliest dragons, why humans all across the globe seem to create them in some form, the differences between Eastern and Western dragons, and then name some of our favorite folkloric dragons that you might not have heard that much about. we had a ton of fun with this!

folks, we decided to talk about Medieval assassinations, mostly as a way to talk about the Hashashshin, the Order of Assassins, that existed in Syria and Iran from 1090-1275. we talk about some ancient assassinations that had a large impact on the Middle Ages before turning to a number of Medieval cases such as Thomas Beckett, Wenceslaus I, Pope John X, and a bunch of Byzantine guys. then, finally, we turn to the Order of Assassins and discuss their formation, their many targets, that time they killed Conrad of Montferrat for Richard the Lionheart, and then their demise at the hands of the Mongol Empire. enjoy!

folks, we had a whole different episode planned for today but due to a series of extremely annoying technological problems and frustrating audio issues, we decided to switch topics and do a little catharsis. we talk about the new rapture predictions, which are supposed to happen on either September 23 or 24, why it's silly to predict the Second Coming, and why most people who have ever been involved in organized religion understand that while a few decide to try it out anyway. so we get some good laughs in at their expense and talk about how Medieval folk would've thought about this. enjoy!

folks, we're back and opening up the patron mailbag for September to address the backlog of questions we have. we cover a bunch of topics today, ranging from Medieval parenting to mariners to video games to derogatory terms for AI to Joan of Arc and more. check it out and enjoy!Gaza charities mentioned:Sameer Project linktree: https://linktr.ee/thesameerprojectMedical Aid for Palestinians: https://www.map.org.uk/?form=FUNWUFNAGRA&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22639586572&gbraid=0AAAAAChbIjLCoXHMr3kwCyhxoSdKJe7R_&gclid=CjwKCAjwkvbEBhApEiwAKUz6-wC9TFhQELR8W-es_iDuoIxpZUk9EXFGS6aVRC5xhaY7ChzEV03fJBoC-O0QAvD_BwE

folks, we just released a new bonus episode for our First Crusade series with the boys from American Prestige and so we're releasing this episode for free to hopefully get more people interested in the 12-episode series we did, which you can find for just $10 at welcometothecrusades.com. this is the third episode, Cairo, which discusses the Muslim perspective on the First Crusade. if you haven't listened to the first two episodes we released on the regular feed back in June on Rome and Taranto, you should check those out and then come back to this one. anyway, it's a great series so check out the whole thing if you haven't!

folks, we reach the end of our series on Medieval Scotland, in which war were declared. at long last, we finally meet Scotland proper, just in time for them to fight for their very lives. a succession crisis in the Kingdom of Alba gave way to English impositions, which forced the Scots to wage the First War of Scottish Independence to break from the tyrannical English yoke and then a Second War of Scottish Independence, which began a short time later and then became a theater of the Hundred Years War. By 1358, Scotland had its independence, which it would retain through the end of the Middle Ages, proudly defiant against the hated English. sadly, however, the Early Modern Period and the House of Stuart would really fuck them over when it came to independence.Gaza charities mentioned:Sameer Project linktree: https://linktr.ee/thesameerprojectMedical Aid for Palestinians: https://www.map.org.uk/?form=FUNWUFNAGRA&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22639586572&gbraid=0AAAAAChbIjLCoXHMr3kwCyhxoSdKJe7R_&gclid=CjwKCAjwkvbEBhApEiwAKUz6-wC9TFhQELR8W-es_iDuoIxpZUk9EXFGS6aVRC5xhaY7ChzEV03fJBoC-O0QAvD_BwE

folks, we're back with part 2 of our series on Medieval Scotland wherein we encounter the Kingdom of Alba, which is what the English called Scotland back then. we don't know what they called themselves because they weren't too fond of writing, which is a big theme this time. we look at the rise and fall of Alba, the historical MacBeth, and the Normanization of Alba by the royal court against the wishes of basically everyone else below them. and hooboy, are they going to have good reason to hate the Anglo-Normans after this whole fiasco.Gaza charities mentioned:Sameer Project linktree: https://linktr.ee/thesameerprojectMedical Aid for Palestinians: https://www.map.org.uk/?form=FUNWUFNAGRA&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22639586572&gbraid=0AAAAAChbIjLCoXHMr3kwCyhxoSdKJe7R_&gclid=CjwKCAjwkvbEBhApEiwAKUz6-wC9TFhQELR8W-es_iDuoIxpZUk9EXFGS6aVRC5xhaY7ChzEV03fJBoC-O0QAvD_BwE

folks, we haven't ever focused on Scotland. much like the Roman Empire, we've been scared to do it thus far but now we surpass the Romans in every way by going into Scotland and figuring out what the hell was going on in there before, say, 1500 or so. we start a short series on Medieval Scotland by talking about how they got the Highlands, why the Romans put up two walls to keep them out, try to separate the Picts from the Gaels from the Brittonic, and take you up to the founding of the Kingdom of Alba in 900 CE. annoying technical difficulties be damned.Gaza charities mentioned:Sameer Project linktree: https://linktr.ee/thesameerprojectMedical Aid for Palestinians: https://www.map.org.uk/?form=FUNWUFNAGRA&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22639586572&gbraid=0AAAAAChbIjLCoXHMr3kwCyhxoSdKJe7R_&gclid=CjwKCAjwkvbEBhApEiwAKUz6-wC9TFhQELR8W-es_iDuoIxpZUk9EXFGS6aVRC5xhaY7ChzEV03fJBoC-O0QAvD_BwE