We're Not So Different

folks, we've started a new series and this one is all about Weird Medieval shit. the Middle Ages were an incredibly fascinating time and we want to celebrate and emphasize that by looking at the events, people, and things that make you go, "damn that's wild." we're going to cover stuff from all across the entire one-thousand-year Medieval era and on every continent save Antarctica. in this first part, we take a look at the following three events: that time Justinian I sent two monks to China to steal the secrets of silk for the Byzantines, the Erfurt Latrine Disaster that killed sixty nobles in a lake of shit, and the Fourth Crusade that permanently split Christendom forever.

we finish up our intermittent series on proto-nationalism and nationalism by discussing the modern concept of tradwives, or women who endorse a so-called traditionalist perspective and aesthetic online, either out of pure belief or as a grift. and to do so, we interview Dr. Lauren Hill Griffin, a religious studies, nationalism, technology, and politics professor at Louisiana State University. we discuss whether the tradwife "movement" is authentic or just a cash grab, how it ties into broader religious and white nationalist movements, the continuing breakdown of religious ideals in the modern world, and speaking in tongues at the gym. enjoy!

we have had a lot of great interviews lately and that means we haven't had much time to answer the backlog of patron questions we have, so we decided to do a mailbag. we answer questions ranging from Robin Hood's death to Silk Road safety to experimental archaeology to a counterfactual about capitalism and the Reformation and much more. enjoy!

Author and blogger Cory Doctorow discusses 'enshittification' and why the modern world seems to be deteriorating. They compare modern times to the Middle Ages and explore the impact of technology on society. They also touch on bad French translations and the evolution of social media platforms.

this time, Luke and Eleanor welcome special guest November, co-host of the Trashfuture, Well There's Your Problem, and Kill James Bond podcasts to the show to talk about the German Peasants War, which turns 500 this year. we talk about the attempted radical Reformation, the magisterial reaction, Martin Luther's horrified response, and why the lords and nobles can partake in extreme forms of violence and war crimes while their peasant underlings are forbidden from doing so. check it out

this week, we're continuing our series on proto-nationalism and nationalism by talking to Dr. Rachel Moss about the ways nostalgia is used for evil and, specifically, how false nostalgia for a Middle Ages that didn't exist fuels modern nationalism. we talk about how rose-tinted glasses are used to paint a false picture of the Medieval era, how the same feelings of both good and bad nostalgia similarly affected Medieval people, and modern reactionaries who are really just looking for a new liege lord to oppress them. check it out!Dr. Rachel Moss is a Sr Lecturer in History at the University of Northampton. Rachel is a Medievalist specializing in Late Medieval English history and literature as well as social and economic history of the Middle Ages, and is holding an upcoming workshop on politicizing nostalgia this summer.

This week, we welcome Dr. Bradley Onishi, co-host of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, onto the show as part of our series on proto-nationalism in the Middle Ages. As we promised earlier this month, we had some guests lined up to discuss other aspects of proto-nationalism and nationalism with us and this is the first of those interviews. Brad joins us to discuss the problem of Christian nationalism, which is on the rise in the world right now but has its roots in the Middle Ages. We discuss how the past instances of Christian nationalism are fueling what we see today, the modern contradictions that have arisen within that movement, and much more.check it out and also check out Brad's podcast, Straight White American Jesus, and his 2023 book, Preparing for War: The Extremist History of Christian Nationalism–and What Comes Next

this time, we return to our occasional series on Medieval women, where we look at the lives and times of ladies who were able to rise to positions of power and esteem despite the extremely patriarchal nature of the Middle Ages. we have previously done these for the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene and for Hildegard of Bingen and Eleanor of Aquitaine. but now we turn to the Mediterranean and the Early Middle Ages to find our two remarkable women: Byzantine Empress Theodora and Lombardi Queen Theodelinda. Theodora rose from humble origins to become the wife and confidant of one of Constantinople's greatest rulers, Justinian I, and was integral in saving his regime during the Nika Riots. Then there's Theodelinda, who is less famous than Theodora but was still impressive all the same. Theodelinda was queen and ruler of the Lombards for 35 years, ruling on her without a king for part of that and, legend has it, was allowed to choose her own husband after her first husband died, something that almost never happens. So let's find our what else made these women so special!

150th episode wooooo! this time, we continue our miniseries on what we're calling Proto-nationalism in the Middle Ages by talking about two very big materialist reasons why they couldn't really have nationalism back then: malleable borders and dynastic rulership. Medieval borders were porous, light-enforced at best, and changed overnight based on the confusing, overlapping rights that various rulers had over a plot of land. rulership, meanwhile, was personalized and heavily influenced by dynastic concerns and marriage alliances, meaning it could change at the drop of a hat based on a marriage going bad or a third son dying early and passing the land in question to a completely different family. these factors were so limiting that they essentially made nationalism, as we know it today, an impossibility in the Middle Ages. though we do address the special case of Medieval China here too.

nationalism is, unfortunately, once again on the rise in the modern day and while you might think that it has very little to do with the Middle Ages, you'd be wrong. because while the nationalism we see today didn't exist in the same form back then, the roots of it began to take hold even back then in the form of religious discrimination and of othering people who look or act differently. further, the nationalism that we experience today popped up in the 19th century and its loudest proponents popularized it by pointing to a very skewed, totally ahistorical version of Medieval history in order to reinforce modern ideas of racism and racial purity. so let's talk about it and see what we can do to combat it.