We're Not So Different WNSD Pod

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 happenings involving dancing. the first, the Bal des Ardents sees the king of France and five nobles perform a dance number for the court only to have an accidental fire break out and kill the nobles, the king's brother, and nearly the king himself. then we finish up with the dancing mania that occasionally swept Central and Western Europe over a 900-year period where spontaneous groups of people would just dance... like for hours and travel many miles while doing it and one monk danced so hard he died in one incident. you get the idea, it's weird.

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 of 1405-1433 and the meteoric rise of the Mongol Empire, which went from disunited steppe horse archers to the rulers of the largest contiguous land empire in world history in just under 100 years. check it out

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 outright fabrications. these are truly some of the greatest accomplishments in human history and they happened in the Middle Ages. then, we talk about the amazing story of Mansa Musa, a Medieval emperor of the Malian Empire and one of the richest men to ever live, who went on Hajj to Mecca, gave away so much gold that he cratered the gold markets on 3 continents, but had his generosity repaid and got home safely despite losing all his money on the trip.

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 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 female anatomy. it's a lot of fun, we promise!

here's a link to Eleanor's blog post on the subject: https://going-medieval.com/2024/03/05/on-womens-anatomy-and-the-power-of-paying-attention/#more-6448

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're still so fascinating to us today. then, in the last half of the episode, we each do a tier list, ranking 25 weird little guys from Medieval marginalia, it's a whole lot of fun! enjoy! there is some slight reverb on the tracks occasionally but we have done our best to edit as much out as possible.

if you want to do your own tier list of these weird Medieval guys, then you can do so at this link: https://tiermaker.com/create/rank-the-weird-medieval-guys-16945815

if you want to see the tier we each made, you can find them posted on our twitter account: https://x.com/wnsdpod/status/1773369399665144155?s=20

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 finally confirmed as a supernova just three years ago! then we turn to the Roman Catholic Church and remark on how weird it is that the Church not only stayed united but that it became hegemonic over an entire continent and intertwined with existing governments to help prop it all up. even weirder still is the fact that this hegemony lasted for hundreds of years and couldn't lasted even longer if they could've just stopped with the indulgences. also, the Hussites, because they're weird too. check it out!