patrons, here's your ad-free regular episode for the week. we answered a question by Gafsey in this one.
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 pervasive group of thought police are truly...
2024-06-19 11:57:54 +0000 UTC
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patrons, this is the ad-free version of this week's regular episode. we answered questions from Estrogenic Memory and Rita Patina.
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 the attem...
2024-06-13 13:21:10 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is your first bonus episode for the month of June 2024.
In the second episode in our book club series on Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, we get into the book itself... after the foreword and preface, of course. The foreword sees Eco build a literary conceit in which he can separate Eco, the real human writer, from the author of the book itself. Then, the preface moves into the voice of our protagonist-narrator, Adso of Melk, who gives a rundown of the historical conte...
2024-06-07 13:33:54 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here's your ad-free version of this week's regular episode, we answered questions from white trash historian and archbishop absalom's ample ass.
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 milita...
2024-06-06 12:05:07 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is your ad-free version of this week's regular episode. it's an interview so no question this time.
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 out and check out Paul's wo...
2024-05-31 11:22:56 +0000 UTC
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patrons, thank you so much for subscribing, here's your second bonus episode for May 2024. this time, we decided to take a look at some Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg news that has come up in the past month. first, and more seriously, we look at a study of how Holy Roman Emperors governed from the road through a practice known as itinerant rule and it can be used to trace the rise and decline of the power of the imperial office. then, we move onto the real fun: an article about the recent Hab...
2024-05-24 13:17:27 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is the ad-free version of this week's regular episode. this time, we answered questions from Bavarian Bard and Feckless Exxer
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 of...
2024-05-23 13:43:03 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here's the ad-free version of this week's episode. no question since it's an interview.
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 baffling film and then spend the second...
2024-05-15 14:08:47 +0000 UTC
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Amazing patrons, here is your first bonus episode of May 2024 and the first episode in our new book club series that you voted for: Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. 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? Ne...
2024-05-10 18:38:45 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is your ad-free version of this week's regular episode, there's no question since it's an interview.
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 Civilizations: Stories o...
2024-05-08 11:47:40 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here's your ad-free version of this week's regular episode. we answer a question from Archbishop Absalom's Ample Ass
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 religion, and, fin...
2024-05-03 13:32:20 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is your second bonus episode for the month of April. if you're looking for our new book club series on The Name of the Rose, we will be starting that next month with the introduction.
folks, we got a question from longtime patron Ollie Cant who asked us about various portrayals of European Medievalism in Modern Japanese fantasy art such as manga, anime, and video games. And this got us thinking a lot because, in addition to sounding like the name of a very pretent...
2024-04-26 18:56:58 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here's your ad-free version of this week's episode. we answer a question from White Trash Historian.
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 Europe for two utterly bizarre ...
2024-04-24 12:00:09 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here's your ad-free version of this week's regular episode, we answer a question from Gaffsey.
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 the fascinating Ming Treasure Voyages...
2024-04-18 12:44:28 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here's your first bonus episode for April 2024.
folks, Dune: Part 2 is out and you know we had to do a review of everyone's favorite Holy Roman Empire in space! back in November 2021, we reviewed Part 1 with a lot of background lore and details, and you should go check it out if you want a quick refresher. but all that won't work for Part 2, which is a fast-paced action sci-fi film that shows the full collapse of this late-stage space HRE in the face of a young Napoleon who emb...
2024-04-12 11:58:49 +0000 UTC
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lovely patrons, here is your ad-free version of this week's regular episode, we answer a question from Ollie Cant in this one.
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 thought to be out...
2024-04-10 11:43:52 +0000 UTC
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hey patrons, here's your ad-free version of this week's episode. it's just Bonus Episode 59 with a new intro but we always post them here too, for the sake of completeness.
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 twe...
2024-04-03 14:39:11 +0000 UTC
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hello, patrons, here's your second bonus episode for the month of March, it's our final entry in our TV Club series on Andor season one. also, please note that there were technical issues with the original recording and so the episode had to be re-recorded with just Luke hosting as Eleanor is currently out of town. sorry about that but it couldn't be helped this time.
in our fifth and final episode on Andor, Cassian's journey comes full circle as he escapes the Empire,...
2024-03-29 18:11:03 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is your ad-free version of this week's regular episode. new bonus episode will be out Friday morning.
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 it means, and why they'r...
2024-03-28 15:13:44 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here's your ad-free version of this week's regular episode, we answer a question from Gafsey.
note: earlier this week, we enable the community chat feature that can be accessed via the Patreon phone app. this was done to let everyone know the episode this week would be delayed. feel free to use the chat to talk about whatever, we will mostly use it for announcements that don't need to be full-on posts. the Discord is also still going strong if you're looking for more chat!
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2024-03-22 18:56:25 +0000 UTC
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hello patrons, this is your ad-free version of this week's regular episode.
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 ...
2024-03-13 13:00:11 +0000 UTC
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here is your first bonus episode for the month of March and, hooboy, it's a doozy! normally we don't do episodes based on a short series of tweets but sometimes you find a guy who believes that the clitoris was invented by feminists in the 1960's and that no one before that time ever went down on a woman and you just have to do a bonus episode. so, we riff on these awful tweets, talk about why they're obviously wrong, and then get into ideas about Medieval gynecology and their views on the fe...
2024-03-08 14:44:58 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is your ad-free version of this week's regular episode.
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 tr...
2024-03-08 14:37:34 +0000 UTC
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lovely, patrons, here is your second bonus episode for the month of February (yes it's coming to you on March 1 but we can't help that they made February short when they did the calendars). it's the fourth and penultimate episode on Star Wars: Andor, covering episodes 7-10 of the show, which includes a standalone episode and the prison arc. this time around, Cassian Andor tries once again to flee to a place where the Empire can't reach him but ends up arrested on flimsy charges and s...
2024-03-01 14:39:24 +0000 UTC
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patrons! this is your ad-free version of this week's regular episode. it's a mailbag so we answer questions from a lot of patrons, including: white trash historian, Ollie Cant, Arc Arcturus, banned user, Archibald Absalon's Ample Ass, Kristin, Horatio Hex, Madeline, and Benjamin Cisko.
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 Robi...
2024-02-28 15:28:58 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here's your ad-free version of this week's episode. no question this time since it's an interview.
folks, things are getting worse everywhere but especially on the internet and so we decided to go to an expert to discuss how modern things are getting shittier all the time: author, blogger, and creator of the neologism "enshittification" joins the show to talk about why the modern world seems to be getting worse with every passing day, whether people in the Middle Ages felt the ...
2024-02-21 13:50:11 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is your first bonus episode for February 2024 in which we complain about the awful liberal leaders of our respective countries. first, Eleanor tells us all about the many issues with Labour leader Keir Starmer, who will likely be the next PM whenever that election eventually happens. then Luke talks about the many, many glaring issues of Joe Biden, using the last two weeks as a microcosm for his problems, that should doom his candidacy but may not given how awful Republicans are...
2024-02-16 14:33:06 +0000 UTC
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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. c...
2024-02-15 12:52:10 +0000 UTC
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Patrons, as we're getting close to finishing up our series on Star Wars: Andor, the time has come for us to pick the book we will use for our next book club series. However, we simply can't do it alone, so we're asking you to vote on which book we will cover next: Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron or Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. That's right, it's Italian (Florentine) on Italian (Mo...
2024-02-08 21:34:41 +0000 UTC
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patrons, here is your ad-free version of this week's regular episode. it's an interview, so there's no question answered this week. also, the patron poll mentioned at the beginning of the show will be posted later today
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 ta...
2024-02-08 15:05:19 +0000 UTC
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