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 t…

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 concept…

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 e…

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 …

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…

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 reb…

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…

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 Englis…

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 thems…

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 …

folks, it's time for another mailbag episode to answer some of our backlog of patron questions! in fact, this is the first of two mailbags we're doing in a row, so there's more to look forward to next week. this time, we answer questions on investigating forged Medieval documents, Medieval views on allergies, whether an ironing board would make a g…

folks, we're back and this time, we're going to the Early Modern period to discuss the Galileo Affair. an odd, 23-year-long saga that saw the Catholic Church and Galileo Galilee go head-to-head over heliocentrism in the early 1600s. this is the moment when the modern views of religion and science as implacable enemies and the Church as this pervasi…

folks, we're back and we're talking once again doing another entry in our occasional series on large adult fail sons of the Middle Ages. Last time, we discussed Charlemagne, one of the most important rulers of all-time, his legacy, and his Carolingian Empire. however, the Carolingian Empire would only survive its founder by about 80 years thanks to…

folks, we're back and it's high time we talked about good ol' Karl the Great. no, not Marx, the Medieval Karl the Great, Charlemagne. though he's one of the most important figures in world history, we haven't ever done an episode dedicated to him, so we decided to remedy that. we talk about his early life, his rise to power, his military victories,…

folks, we're back and we've got Paul Bavill, co-host of the History Rage podcast, to talk with us about dueling, trials by combat, honor, and demands for satisfaction. we discuss why duels and trials by combat were actually fought, what the difference is between honor and reputation, and even some of the most interesting duels in history. check it …

folks, we're back and it's time to talk about saints. tho we have often touched on the lives of various saints, we've never really talked through the whole process of canonization and how it changed quite drastically during the Middle Ages as the Catholic Church began to consolidate and centralize its power in Europe. we also talk about the types o…

folks, you've been asking when we're doing a review of Ridley Scott's 2023 film, Napoleon, and it's finally here but with a twist! instead of just doing an entire review episode for a movie that came out a few months ago and isn't even Medieval, we decided to make it a bit more on brand. so we spend the first half talking about Scott's frankly baff…

folks, we're always thinking about falling civilizations, aren't we? whether it's the old civilizations that fell long ago or fretting over when our current empires will fall, it's often on our minds. and that's why we brought on Dr. Paul M.M. Cooper, host of the Fall of Civilizations podcast and the author of the recently-released book, Fall of Ci…

folks, we're closing out our series on Weird Medieval shit with a few quick hitters of weirdness that we haven't gotten to yet. so we bounce around to a few of them before ending it where the Middle Ages probably ended: the Fall of Constantinople. we talk about Joan of Arc, our beloved Holy Roman Empire, Angkor Wat, the rise of Islam as a world rel…

folks, we're back with part 6 of our series on Weird Medieval shit and we start out in the Americas where the late Medieval Incan Empire was the most land of contrasts empire in all of history in order to survive across three separate biomes: the western slopes of the Andes Mountains, the Atacama Desert, and the Pacific Ocean. then we head back to …

folks, we're back with more weird, interesting, neat, and wild shit from the Middle Ages. this time, we explore the numerous Medieval inventions of Imperial China such as the compass, gunpowder, printing, and much more. we discuss why Imperial China was able to foster such innovation and why it fell off in the 15th century. then we briefly discuss …

folks, we're back on our weird Medieval shit with part 4 in our series. this time, we focus on the amazing fact that Medieval Norse and Polynesian peoples crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to reach the Americas hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus was even born and how modern science has confirmed these events that were once tho…

as we said on the last episode, there's no new show this week due to travel and timing and all that, so we're unlocking a bonus episode from the Patreon for all listeners. if you're interested, this is the perfect excuse to subscribe at patreon.com/wnsdpod. normally we don't do episodes based on a short series of tweets but sometimes you find a guy…

folks, we couldn't do a series on weird Medieval shit without talking about our favorite weird Medieval little guys who show up in marginalia of illuminated manuscripts from the era. and to do so, we brought on Olivia Swarthout, aka at Weird Medieval on twitter, to help us out. we discuss why humans love to think up and draw weird little guys, what…

we're back with the second episode of our Weird Medieval series and this time we're talking about space. in recorded history, only eight possible supernovae within the Milky Way have ever been witnessed by direct observation, and three of them occurred during the Middle Ages. we talk about those supernovae, what made them special, and how one was f…