We're Not So Different

We are back with a brand new episode! Luke and Eleanor continue their series on Medieval China by talking about the Silk Road. It wasn't just commerce and trade goods that flowed along the road, it also carried inventions, armies, and even cultures from the Pacific to the Mediterranean.

hello! no new episode this week due to real world stuff getting in the way, so we're unlocking one of our Patreon episodes for everyone to check out. it's an interview with podcaster and historian Patrick Wyman about a bunch of topics, including his forthcoming book, The Verge. check out the show and if you like what you hear, preorder Patrick's book and subscribe to the patreon for $5 a month at patreon.com/wnsdpod

Luke and Eleanor are back to continue their series on Medieval China. This episode is the second part of the introduction to Medieval China and gives a very high-level overview of some of the long history of Ancient and early Imperial China, including a look at the early dynasties.

Luke and Eleanor are back to start a series on Medieval China. of course, Medieval China is so different from our general conceptions of the Middle Ages that we have to spend some time introducing Chinese history. after all, China did go through a period of serfdom, they just abandoned the practice over 200 years before the birth of Christ whereas serfdom would last into the 19th century AD and later across the rest of the world. so yeah, things were a bit different

Luke and Eleanor close out the series on the peasants by finishing the final peasant revolts of the medieval era, including the Samogitian Uprisings and the only successful, European medieval peasant rebellion, the Wars of the Remences. Then we wrap up our series on the peasants by talking about how things changed for them during the medieval era

Luke and Eleanor are back for another episode on medieval peasants revolts and this time it's mostly about the English Peasants Revolt of 1381. we discussed how the revolt failed in its immediate goals but did eventually bring about the demise of serfdom in England and we relive the bitter betrayal of Wat Tyler who suffers his very own red wedding moment at the hands of evil nobles after trusting norms. rip

welcome back! in this episode, Luke and Eleanor discuss what happens when the peasants get fed up with everything and the world around them generally turned to shit: they rebelled against the nobility. we discuss what gave rise to all the medieval peasants rebellions, talk about the early medieval revolts, and then get into the Jacquerie. Next episode, we will continue to discuss the rebellions, including the Peasants Revolt in England under Wat Tyler and the War of the Remences

Luke and Eleanor are back, continuing the series on the peasantry. This time, we get into the peasant mindset by seeing how they thought about themselves, what they did in their free time, and how many of them got more vacation time than we do today. Then we begin to discuss the growing friction with the nobility that caused the spate of peasants revolts in the 14th and 15th centuries, which we will get into next time on the show. check out the patreon if you're interested in hearing more: patreon.com/wnsdpod you can find the painting by Bruegel that Eleanor was talking about here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Games_(Bruegel)

Luke and Eleanor are back to continue the series of the peasantry and this time it's all about the process known as Enclosure and how it fundamentally altered property ownership forever by alienating the people from the land they lived and worked upon and accumulating even more capital in the hands of the elites. also, we talk about the Green Knight trailer, fun! here's a link to what land looked like under the Open Field System, before Enclosure started. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure#/media/File:Three_Field_System.svgUpdate 2, 3/27/23: The issue has been resolved after an older recording was found. Thanks to our patron Adam for the assistUpdate 1, 3/26/23: Please note that we recently discovered that this episode (Enclosing the Peasants) is actually a duplicate of the previous episode (The Peasantry). The files must have gotten swapped or wrongly uploaded by mistake at some point in the last 2 years. We apologize for this but it seems to be lost to time since the master files for early episodes were all lost during a hard drive crash in late 2021 and we didn't discover this until we had migrated the episodes to Spreaker. Hopefully we can scrounge up an old file somewhere but until then, sorry.

Luke and Eleanor are back to begin a series on the peasantry. Who were they? What were their lives like? Were they all farmers? And much more! Also, a brief preview of our newest Patreon episode featuring an interview with Patrick Wyman