folks, what you'll hear today are two episodes from a brand new, limited edition podcast series that we did with Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison from American Prestige called Welcome to the Crusades: The First Crusade. it's a ten-episode deep dive into the famous and infamous First Crusade, undertaken by Catholic Europe at the instigation of the Byzantines in 1095 to retake Anatolia and Jerusalem. given it is one of the most fascinating and important events in human history, we thought it would be perfect to discuss, especially given its continuing contemporary relevance with Christian Nationalists in power across the globe. Episode 1: Rome details the background and lead up to the preaching of the First Crusade. Further, episode 2: Taranto, will show up in your podcast feed shortly after this one, so you can get a feel for the whole series. if you enjoy them, and we know you will, you can unlock the final 8 episodes, plus a bonus reading list mini-episode for just $8. after two weeks, the price will go up to $10 but we think it's worth it regardless, clocking in at well over 10 hours of history on the First Crusade. if you're interested in listening to the whole series, please visit https://americanprestige.supportingcast.fm/welcome-to-the-crusades-the-first-crusade

folks, what you'll hear today are two episodes from a brand new, limited edition podcast series that we did with Daniel Bessner and Derek Davison from American Prestige called Welcome to the Crusades: The First Crusade. it's a ten-episode deep dive into the famous and infamous First Crusade, undertaken by Catholic Europe at the instigation of the Byzantines in 1095 to retake Anatolia and Jerusalem. given it is one of the most fascinating and important events in human history, we thought it would be perfect to discuss, especially given its continuing contemporary relevance with Christian Nationalists in power across the globe. Episode 1: Rome details the background and lead up to the preaching of the First Crusade. Further, episode 2: Taranto, will show up in your podcast feed shortly after this one, so you can get a feel for the whole series. if you enjoy them, and we know you will, you can unlock the final 8 episodes, plus a bonus reading list mini-episode for just $8. after two weeks, the price will go up to $10 but we think it's worth it regardless, clocking in at well over 10 hours of history on the First Crusade. if you're interested in listening to the whole series, please visit https://americanprestige.supportingcast.fm/welcome-to-the-crusades-the-first-crusade

folks, we have once again stumbled upon some hilariously-insane social media posts and have decided to relate them back to the Middle Ages. the main gist is this: a twitter user posted about how the Catholic Virgin Mary was an unaging smokeshow and objectively the most beautiful woman to ever live as compared to that ugly hag Protestant Virgin Mary, who is apparently a totally separate individual. She then decided to do some clarifications and here we are. since this view is quite similar to that of typical European Medieval beauty standards, we decided to make fun of these posts and then talk about why Medieval people were so weird and contradictory like this.

https://x.com/BreeSolstad/status/1909651875856875800
https://x.com/BreeSolstad/status/1909986247843741924

in this episode, we start an intermittently recurring series where we explore the lives and times of two famous Medieval women. and while these will usually be about women who lived and rose to prominence during the Middle Ages, we kinda had to start with two women from an earlier era who were nonetheless extremely important: Mary, the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. we talk about who they were, what made them famous, how Medieval people understood them, and the confusion associated with being a female role model in a patriarchal society. Because while they may have died 500 years before the Middle Ages began, the two Mary's were easily the most influential women to Medieval Christians.


here's a link to the Golden Legend or Mary Magdalene that Eleanor mentioned: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/goldenlegend/goldenlegend-volume4.asp

we are back and we're talking Medieval mining. we often discuss the elaborate jewels and metals used for ostentatious royal displays and the iron weapons shaped by blacksmiths for war but how does all that metal get out of the ground? who's doing the work to dig it out? what mining technology and methods were present during the Middle Ages? what does the Roman Empire have to do with all this? we will discuss all that plus look at some of the big centers of Medieval mining across Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia.


below are links to recent archaeological finds that Eleanor mentioned in the answer to this week's question:

shipwreck: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-64151535

unusually shiny sword: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bronze-age-sword-germany-180982399/

warrior women: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tomb-containing-three-generations-amazon-warrior-women-unearthed-russia-180973877/

it's time for another mailbag episode from our backlog of questions from our patrons. since we usually answer one question an episode, we can't possibly get to all the questions, so we do these mailbags from time-to-time. in this one, we cover a wide range of topics from the Brother Cadfael mystery series to church debate structure to Medieval Switzerland to hair removal practices and even pirates. check it out!

we are back and this time we're doing a deep dive into Medieval wool production and how it undergirded the economies of much of Europe and turned places like England, Flanders, and the cities of the Hanseatic League into petro states for wool. we look at how it was produced, what it meant, why something so simple could come to predominate the continental economy and more!

So we finally come to the end of our series on the Wars of the Roses and technically the Hundred Years War too. We conclude both by discussing the Treaty of Picquigny, which ended the Hundred Years Wars after 138 years, then we move onto the death of Edward IV, the villainy of Richard III, Henry Tudor, Bosworth Field, and finally, the red and white Tudor rose to rule them all

better late than never, huh? we're back with part 4 of our series on The Wars of the Roses and this time it's the Yorkists turn to take full control and dash all their external enemies: Warwick the Kingmaker is killed, the Lancastrian royal line is extinguished, and they even broker a treaty with France to formally end the Hundred Years War. now if Edward could just get along with his brothers...

oh and sorry about the audio

we're back with more wars and more roses. this time, the Yorkists finally take control of the conflict, depose the old king, and assume full regal power over the realm. they win some battles, the old king gets passed around like a royal hot potato, and Edward York finally makes good on his dad's play for the throne. of course, the Yorkists squander it due to petty infighting, broken marriage pacts, and power politics, but it's fun while it lasts, right?

we're back continuing the series on the Wars of the Roses and this time we take a look at the early years. we've got the seesaw battle between Lancastrians and Yorkists, the last flourishes of English chivalry, King Henry VI is captured repeatedly, two battles that last less than thirty minutes each, and we get everyone's favorite pitiful attempt to reinforce the status quo: Loveday. check it out!

we pick up right where we left off in our Hundred Years War series as we introduce the Wars of the Roses, the dynastic conflict that paved the way for England to become the globe-bestriding colossus we know and hate. we talk all about the Plantagenets, the Lancastrians, the Yorkists, and even a couple of Tudors. it's a lot of convoluted back stories and weird family trees but we have a lot of fun with it, so check it out!

we're back with the final episode of our series on the Hundred Years War. we talk about the English dominance in the early stages of the Lancastrian period, including the crushing victory at Agincourt and taking over huge swaths of French territory, even Paris itself. but then we see the emergence of Joan of Arc and one of the most unlikely events in history: a teenage peasant girl helps lead the French army to martial victories and gets a new French king crowned. despite her early, horrible death, this helped the French turn things around and eventually win the Hundred Years War.

yet, this in turn leads directly to the Wars of the Roses, which sets the stage for England to become the globe-bestriding colossus we know and despise today, which we will go over next time.

folks, we're back with another installment of our occasional Medieval women series where we look back at two influential women from the Middle Ages. today, we look at two who couldn't be more different in most respects: the Byzantine princess and historian, Anna Komnene, and the English anchoress, mystic, and visionary, Julian of Norwich. we talk about what made each of them influential and how they made their marks in male-dominated fields of history, politics, and religion. check it out!

we're back and the Hundred Years War continues on, kinda. following the Truce at Leulinghem, there is a 26-year-long peace between England and France though it wasn't because their differences had been resolved, they just couldn't continue fighting each other at the time due to domestic troubles. in England, Richard II's incompetence and John of Gaunt's death lead to a coup that put Henry Bollingbroke and the Lancastrians on the throne. meanwhile, France has a mad king who can't broker peace between his feuding relatives and so the land breaks out into civil war. don't worry though, England and France will finally get back to real fighting and resolve all this next time.

we're back! well, the English had their fun and won some big victories and even took a ton of French land in the Treaty of Bretigny but then everything went pear-shaped for the English. they backed the wrong sides in proxy wars, pissed off the French nobles who sided with them, and lost a series of battles when the war resumed. Then both Edwards died and the hits just kept on coming.

we're back with another installment of our series on the Hundred Years War. this time, Luke and Eleanor discuss how the English from their backwater sheepfold were able to get huge wins during the early part of the war and how they somehow still managed to field armies large enough to do battle within five years of the Black Death.

we're back with more Hundred Years War action! Luke and Eleanor do a bit more introduction for the conflict, including longbow chat, then talk about the very early years of the war and how the English navy got its first big win in history. also there's even more insanely-Medieval proxy wars!

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor finally begin a series on the Hundred Years War between France and England but before we can get into the war itself, there's a lot to be introduced. we breakdown the numerous, long-standing issues that led to war such as: multiple French dynastic crises, the overlapping nature of Medieval land holdings, the compounding crisis of the 14th century, the confusing claims that the English had to the French throne, and much more Game of Thrones-esque nonsense. enjoy!

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor look at the Medieval human body as the microcosm and the idea that a structural similarity exists between it and the macrocosm that is the universe. this touches on subjects from philosophy, to religion, to astrology, and even alchemy, so check it out!


if you like our new show art, check out Jen who goes by @bowsnonk on twitter

in this one, Luke and Eleanor talk about how Medieval Christians viewed the cosmology and cosmogony of our universe. we discuss so many celestial spheres, how they retconned Aristotle's geocentric model to make it work with the Biblical universe, and why the Earth was the center of everything. enjoy!

we're talking maps, folks! Luke and Eleanor are here to talk all about humanity's long obsession with maps and cartography, the Medieval world maps known as Mappa Mundi, the stories they tell, and even where you might be able to find dragons or other scary sea monsters. enjoy!

Luke and Eleanor are back to finish up the miniseries on Medieval Religious Orders. This time, we get to the more famous Mendicant and Clerics Regular orders, the ones that most people have heard of like the Franciscans, Dominicans, Poor Clares, Jesuits, and more! Enjoy!

we should've covered Medieval religious orders in our heresy series but simply overlooked it by mistake, so we're going to do 2 quick episodes about them. in this episode, Luke and Eleanor talk through 2 of the 4 subcategories of Catholic religious orders from the Middle Ages: the Canons Regular and the Monastics. this includes the Norbertines, the Teutonic Order, the Benedictines, Cistercians, Trappist, and even former sex worker orders. check it out and we'll be back next time with part 2, which includes many of the more famous orders.


also, Luke's audio got garbled on this one, apologies for all that.

folks, we're back and it's time to talk about polling! specifically, a recent YouGov poll that asked Americans for their opinions on the European Middle Ages. and before you think the worst, the responses were quite heartening! the Dark Ages myth is now below 50% and seems to be far more popular with older generations and more Americans think about the Middle Ages on a weekly basis than they do about the Roman Empire. there's a lot more, which you can check out at the link below. but we good news is we got to ask David Montgomery, who conducted the poll, plenty of questions about what it means and what we should infer from the results. unfortunately, Dr. Eleanor had to join the recording partway through do to us working between multiple deadlines to get it done but Luke and David talk it through until then.

poll: https://today.yougov.com/entertainment/articles/51889-violent-dark-dirty-americans-middle-ages

David's podcast about French history after Napoleon to before WW1: www.thesiecle.com

in this episode, we wrap up our series on Medieval Hersies and the Reformation. we begin with a discussion of the Puritans: their initial persecution, fleeing for the New World, their meteoric rise and catastrophic fall during the English Civil Wars, and how they still govern our lives today even though they vanished after the 1740s. then we conclude the series by talking about what all of these heresies meant for the Medieval Catholic Church, our favorite heresies we discussed, and why the Counter-Reformation was always doomed to failure after 1517.

we're back! the series on Heresies and the Reformation continues as we discuss the separate, yet simultaneous Counter-Reformation efforts that followed the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Then we get to the Thirty Years War, a brutal conflict which had the side effect of killing public religion as a uniting concept and, really, killing God as it was understood up to that point. Then we answer a question about whether Protestants or Catholics caused Capitalism, someone is going to get blamed for this mess! enjoy!

in part 9 of our series on Heresies and the Reformation, Luke and Eleanor discuss backlashes against the Protestant movements across Europe. From the Church's first effort at countering the Reformation with the Council of Trent, to the HRE finally turning its sights on the protestants with the Schmalkaldic Wars and Peace of Augburg, to the brief reign of Mary Tudor in England, and the French wars of religion against the Huguenots. enjoy!

the heresy series continues, this time focusing on the disunified nature of the Reformation, the Munster Rebellion, the emergence of John Calvin and the Reform movement that became the Calvinist confession, and why Charles V didn't just turn his armies on the Protestants from the get-go to stamp them out entirely.

note: the sound is a little weird in the first 10 mins due to audacity changing settings, sorry about that.

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor continue their series on heresies and the Reformation by discussing the immediate aftermath of the 95 theses and how this reform movement splintered instantaneously. we then talk about how the magisterial and radical reformations got going simultaneously but the princes of the HRE and the nobles weren't going to let the radical version win.

Luke and Eleanor are back to celebrate the 100th episode of We're Not So Different with a mailbag episode featuring many listener questions. we cover background info on the show, questions about the British crown, Luke's hyperfixations, and more! enjoy and thanks for 100 episodes!

we're back with part 6 of our series on Medieval heresies against the Catholic Church after our brief convalescence. this time, we start by briefly discussing the Spanish Inquisition before turning out eyes to the greatest heresy of them all: the Reformation. we talk about the historical circumstances, both secular and holy, that made it possible and introduce, at long last, Martin Luther, history's first poster.

hello friends, this week your two co-hosts are sick and rundown and just couldn't find time to record a new episode, so we're unlocking our most recent Patreon bonus episode, a review of A Knight's Tale. don't worry, we will be back next week with more heresies but it just wasn't in the cards this week, so enjoy the unlocked episode and subscribe to the patreon for more bonus content like this.

in our 5th episode on Medieval heresies, Luke and Eleanor finally get to some guys who we can actually call reformers. we start by talking about Wycliffe and his Bible, then move onto Joan of Arc's supposed heresies, and then, at long last, we get to talk about all the Czech religious leaders Eleanor loves so much: Jan Milic, Jan Hus, Jan Zizka, and more! enjoy!

happy 2023! we're back with part 4 of our series on heresies against the medieval church. this time we talk about Free Spirits, Beguines, and Templars before moving onto the Antipopes, the Avignon Papacy, and the Black Death breaking everyone's brains, as you might expect.

folks, it's time for us to catch up on some more patron questions with another mailbag! we cover a whole host of topics including our favorite mad king and scheming vizier combos, fascist representations of the Middle Ages, whether city life or country life was preferable, Medieval snow shoveling, manly crying, and much more! Enjoy and subscribe to the patreon to have your questions answered: patreon.com/wnsdpod

this week, we're taking a little break for Christmas and New Years so we're just reposting the holiday episode we recorded in 2021 for you to enjoy. it's about the origins of Christmas and its relationship to the pagan holiday, Saturnalia. enjoy!

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor continue their series on Medieval heresies against the Church by moving into the late 12th and early 13th centuries. We talk about Peter Abelard, Henricians, Cathars, whatever a Cagot is, and a bunch of political endeavors for land, money, or power dressed up as "crusades" against heretical Christians. enjoy!by way of reminder, no new episode next week because of the holidays.

In this episode, Luke and Eleanor continue their series on heresies by discussing the early Middle Ages. we talk about Iconoclasm and how it was received differently in the East and the West, the Bogomils, and then talk about the Great Schism that permanently broke the idea of a united Christendom. Also: somehow, the HRE returned

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor begin a series on the heresies and schisms that faced the Catholic Church throughout late Antiquity and the Middle Ages leading up to the Reformation and Counter-Reformations. the first episode focuses mostly on the very early heretics like Arius and Nestorius as well as the first 4 or so Ecumenical Councils

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor are joined by Matt Christman, co-host of Chapo Trap House, to discuss his new podcast series, Hell on Earth, which is about the Thirty Years War and the rise of Capitalism. we talk about what we can still learn from the war, how it informs our current material circumstances, how it created the circumstances that allow Capitalism to become predominant, and we of course spend a little bit of time naming some guys.

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor are joined by game designer Josh Sawyer to talk about his new video game, Pentiment. we discuss the late Medieval setting, the amazing soundtrack, and the inspirations that went into making the game. check it out!

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor go back to an old patron question and talk in-depth about various medieval systems of measurement. we discuss how they didn't really have concepts of minutes and seconds, how many gallons are in a hogshead, whether the foot was a measurement of the king's foot size and more!

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor begin by talking about the latest nonsense going on with Twitter with Elon Musk purchasing it and the discourse about verification and then use this as a jumping off point to discuss sources, source survival, and biases in medieval sources. it's a lot of fun, check it out

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor finish up their trio of spoooooky season episodes by discussing medeival conceptions of death and how they viewed the soul. we also discuss All Saints Day and All Souls Day and figure out what that's all about. enjoy!

Luke and Eleanor are back to discuss more spooooooky medieval occurrences. this time it's the real scary shit: monsters, demons, revenant dead, and other such vile creatures. We talk about Succubi, gremlins, whether Godzilla has a conscience, and more! enjoy!

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folks, we are behind on our patron questions and so we're making it up starting today. we answer questions on everything from Medieval children's toys, pregnancy tropes, what the HRE would've looked like with sustained hegemony over Italy, the least worst rulers, and more!

in celebration of this spoooooky season, Luke and Eleanor dig into the history of ghosts and spirits in Medieval life. what were they like? what did they do? and so on and so forth

Luke and Eleanor are back to finish up their short series on the Holy Roman Empire, this time focusing on the Thirty Years War and the demise of the HRE. we talk about its thoroughly medieval structure, why Catholicism couldn't unite to stamp out Protestantism, Gustavus Adolphus, and more!

in this episode, Luke and Eleanor continue their short series on the Holy Roman Empire with part 3, this time focusing on the Habsburgs and the Reformation. we talk about Charles V, the Habsburg jaw, imperial circles, and more! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy