Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear it for our own Night in
Speaker 1: Shining production Armor producer Max.
Speaker 2: It is Max Williams Day, I Love.
Speaker 3: I Love James Williams, the.
Speaker 2: Third junior Senior Did you get esquire? Sure? And a
Speaker 2: doctor in there as well, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Vaughan something also, that's mister Noel Brown, the one and only.
Speaker 4: So Max, You're dubbed diploma mud and uh you've got
Speaker 4: your PhD.
Speaker 1: And they called me ben Bully tax purposes here, guys,
Speaker 1: have you ever been to Medieval Times? Well?
Speaker 2: I did once travel back in time.
Speaker 4: I woke up in it from a dream and I
Speaker 4: found myself in in a in a in some sort
Speaker 4: of dungeon.
Speaker 2: No, that's not true. I made that up.
Speaker 4: But I have not actually been to the restaurant, the
Speaker 4: themed restaurant and attraction Medieval Times. The only experience I
Speaker 4: have of it, frankly, is from the movie The Cable Guy.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, my interaction is just knowing Jonathan Strickland renaissantly.
Speaker 2: Okay, what wouldn't you agree? Though?
Speaker 4: Ben if If we've been to a Renaissance festival, we've
Speaker 4: more or less had the Medieval times experience, short of
Speaker 4: the crappier food at medieval times, because we can all
Speaker 4: argue that ren rent fair food pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, those carneies know what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Those carnies and those carnivores. All them turkey legs.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I gotta say. I took some of the
Speaker 1: friends of ours out for a group field trip to
Speaker 1: the Renaissance Festival, and my girlfriend and I completely overestimated
Speaker 1: the nostalgia factor. So we each got a turkey leg.
Speaker 1: Those turkey legs are so big. Those are two people
Speaker 1: turkey legs.
Speaker 2: And it's weird some of them.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's like on a per turkey leg basis, or
Speaker 4: maybe this is a feature of every turkey leg.
Speaker 2: They got this real weird flap of like tend any
Speaker 2: stuff in them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it kind of.
Speaker 2: Pulls out like like a little like a feather, like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like a record. Yeah, there's got to be a
Speaker 4: science name for that.
Speaker 1: There is, hopefully, you guys outside, we we do have
Speaker 1: We've been thinking about this. We've been thinking about, uh,
Speaker 1: the the iconic image of nights in Shining Armor because
Speaker 1: as round tables, lances of lots, uh, there's no shortage
Speaker 1: of fascinating painting work of works of literature and film
Speaker 1: and TV now like Game.
Speaker 4: Of Thrones, Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Is how
Speaker 4: I know anything about the medieval time at all?
Speaker 1: Frankly, yeah, 'tis but a scratch shout out to the
Speaker 1: knights and knee. But no. You recall how these things
Speaker 1: always depict these absolute warriors who were plated up like
Speaker 1: little mech like mechs, dude, and they're they're doing all
Speaker 1: sorts of crazy physical stunts and all kinds of punishing
Speaker 1: weather and.
Speaker 4: Yirling around those flaily thingies, the morning Stars, the Evening Star,
Speaker 4: morning Stars.
Speaker 1: Morning Star, You nailed the line. And then they fight,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they're carrying hundreds of pounds of
Speaker 1: armor on them. They fight for hours against anybody and
Speaker 1: they You watch this and at some point right during
Speaker 1: a battle scene, you have to say, wouldn't most modern
Speaker 1: people collapse after just a short period of even running
Speaker 1: or walking briskly?
Speaker 4: Well, because unlike the mechs ben, these don't have any
Speaker 4: exoskeletal robo attachments.
Speaker 2: This is a burden born by humans.
Speaker 4: And yes, you know, because you've got to think there
Speaker 4: are different situations where this kind of armor might have
Speaker 4: been employed. The medieval times of it all being the
Speaker 4: attorneys a little more you know, controlled, and then of
Speaker 4: course you got folks literally charging into battle against you know,
Speaker 4: an opponent that's out there to murder them.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And that's our question today. Did knights really
Speaker 1: wear suits of armor? To get into this? We were
Speaker 1: talking a little bit about sports off air. One interesting
Speaker 1: thing about football is that there's very little protective gear soccer,
Speaker 1: I mean football, yeah, with shint guards is the one
Speaker 1: that I always remember from being youth.
Speaker 2: Do they still wear shin guards? Is that part of
Speaker 2: the kit?
Speaker 1: I don't know. But there's a great show by our
Speaker 1: pal Miles called Ain't It Footy which is examining examining
Speaker 1: football when we're talking about armor. What's interesting, guys, is
Speaker 1: that for most of early human history, humanity was wrestling
Speaker 1: with this huge life threatening dilemma. They were the smartest
Speaker 1: creatures they knew, and the humans evolved to specialize in
Speaker 1: various things like running long distances persistence hunting, But all
Speaker 1: that specialization comes with a price. Humans don't have a
Speaker 1: protective shell like a turtle or an armadillo. They can't
Speaker 1: regenerate limbs like some lizards or other creatures. Humans are
Speaker 1: bestified as squishy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they are perishable creatures.
Speaker 2: They are dainty, delicate little flowers. For sure. We don't
Speaker 2: do well under.
Speaker 1: So if you don't have a shell, if you don't
Speaker 1: have a great powerful maw of sharp teeth, if you
Speaker 1: can't regenerate limbs, you have to rely on your tool
Speaker 1: making abilities to make up for all the stuff you lack.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the human superpower or ultimate adaptive capability
Speaker 4: would be the brain, the ability to reason, the ability
Speaker 4: to think about thinking and figure this stuff out to
Speaker 4: you know, improve their situation.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent, dude. And this is why we find
Speaker 1: it no surprise that body armor is an ancient human invention.
Speaker 1: The first records of something like body armor as opposed
Speaker 1: to you know, regular clothing is found in ancient sue Mare,
Speaker 1: in ancient Samaria, in today's Southern Rock. And then if
Speaker 1: you fast forward to like fourteen hundred BCE, you see
Speaker 1: the emergence of something like heavy plate armor, usually like
Speaker 1: a chest plate, just the one kind of like how
Speaker 1: you would see a bulletproof vest today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, I'm always fascinated by her.
Speaker 4: When I think about like history of armor, I just
Speaker 4: think about the kind of stuff that those kids wore
Speaker 4: in the movie Hook, you know, like pecis of wood,
Speaker 4: you know, various little tracks that they find lying around
Speaker 4: leather under carriages, you know, I mean I think that
Speaker 4: was sort of really the earliest form of ballistic protection
Speaker 4: would be just real sturdy hide and the material.
Speaker 1: Way more common than the armor that you see in films.
Speaker 1: We know, of course, shout out to the Far East.
Speaker 1: We know those folks had a deep history of armor
Speaker 1: because again they realized factory setting human skin is pretty vulnerable.
Speaker 1: That's why we invent in clothing right in each of
Speaker 1: these cases. And I know you love this concept. We
Speaker 1: see parallel thinking. It depends the armor they make, depends
Speaker 1: on the material resources and the crafting techniques that their
Speaker 1: arbors had at the time. So it's interesting, and shout
Speaker 1: out to our research associate Jabari. It's interesting to think
Speaker 1: that if we took a blacksmith from medieval Europe and
Speaker 1: showed him armor from far Japan or from China, he
Speaker 1: would be fascinated by the different materials. He'd be fascinated
Speaker 1: by the manufacturing, but he would immediately know exactly what
Speaker 1: he was looking at because he was making the same
Speaker 1: stuff too. Well.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is the kind of parallel thinking that
Speaker 4: doesn't isn't doesn't require too much of elite because, as
Speaker 4: you said, man, humans are inherently squishy creatures, and it
Speaker 4: is a very self serving and pretty intuitive idea to
Speaker 4: what if we could protect ourselves from getting squished?
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, And our hypothetical Blacksmith here is, you know,
Speaker 1: the odds are stacked in his favor because armor is
Speaker 1: human shaped.
Speaker 4: Oh, I mean, gosh. Another one, yes, percent. Another one
Speaker 4: that comes to mind is there is a segment in
Speaker 4: the incredibly delightful Cohen Brothers anthology film was It Buster Scruggs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: where Stephen Root, the delightful character actor who plays like
Speaker 4: a banker who's being robbed by I want to say,
Speaker 4: James Franco just pre cancelation. He emerges from behind the
Speaker 4: cash counter covered in pots and pans, you know, yeah,
Speaker 4: And it's just like this stuff could have been improvised
Speaker 4: so many ways, just by stuff that was laying around,
Speaker 4: and it's just such a like human instinct to be like,
Speaker 4: how do I kind of turtle up and protect myself?
Speaker 1: And another thing that would astonish our hypothetical blacksmith would
Speaker 1: be the sheer cost of this heavy fit. That's that's
Speaker 1: where we get to the myth busting. And that's why
Speaker 1: I think you're right about people mcguvery more often than
Speaker 1: they manufactured. You know, like we all remember those films
Speaker 1: where we all know how Hollywood loves to spotlight military
Speaker 1: dress and huge battle scenes. You got kitted out nights.
Speaker 1: They're charging toward the enemy on horses, They're waving their lances, screaming, treating, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: hootin and such. That stuff definitely did happen, but it
Speaker 1: was nowhere near as glamorous as the films imply for sure.
Speaker 4: And if you do get a chance, I know we
Speaker 4: always are shouting out the met in New York City.
Speaker 4: There's a wing of that massive place that is all
Speaker 4: just like medieval armor, and you're gonna see a range
Speaker 4: of stuff, including the much more elaborate, fearsome, looking for
Speaker 4: lack of a better word, at the moment, ceremonial kind
Speaker 4: of stuff. Oh, it would have maybe been designed to
Speaker 4: be worn by a king, or to designate some higher
Speaker 4: level figure who maybe wasn't necessarily going to be out
Speaker 4: there swinging the sword, but needed to look the part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's weird too, because now you mentioned that.
Speaker 1: One thing that always bugged me in the world of
Speaker 1: rap and hip hop would be when more conservative folks
Speaker 1: would criticize an album cover that shows, maybe shows a
Speaker 1: guy with a bunch of chains, gold chains on his neck,
Speaker 1: and he's holding a couple of guns and he's got
Speaker 1: a pile of cash. That's exactly what those portraits were like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh goshde only it was more like.
Speaker 5: A sword, some sword coal, perhaps maybe a giant roast
Speaker 5: beast of some sort, and piled up coins and perhaps
Speaker 5: a damsel of some variety.
Speaker 1: And of course, yeah, those suits are part of the
Speaker 1: flex because and often.
Speaker 2: A very skinny looking wayfish dog. Yes, weird.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I always like to picture the great
Speaker 1: masters of art back in the day saying, uh, well,
Speaker 1: we can add one more thing in the corner. And
Speaker 1: I'm actually pretty good at drawing this specific type of dog.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly, the wayfish, little spind So this is
Speaker 2: why it's such a flex. A full suit of armor
Speaker 2: to get in your heads, ridiculous historians, the kind of
Speaker 2: armor you're thinking about right now in the fourteen hundred CE,
Speaker 2: this would have cost the equivalent of three million dollars
Speaker 2: for one suit. What kind of materials are we talking about? Ben?
Speaker 2: Is this made of like solid gold?
Speaker 1: So much stuff? The problem was manufacturing these things took
Speaker 1: so much time. You're essentially telling a team of very
Speaker 1: highly skilled laborers this is the rest of your year.
Speaker 2: So okay, well no, it's I mean, and I know
Speaker 2: I've been nerding out on watches lately, as if you been.
Speaker 2: At least we have been together.
Speaker 4: There are some companies that will produce like fifty watches
Speaker 4: a year because it is all hand machined, designed in
Speaker 4: house like and those are the ones that maybe retail
Speaker 4: might be two hundred thousand dollars, but there's so few
Speaker 4: of them that they become worth like five times that
Speaker 4: on auction or in resale, same deal. It's a matter
Speaker 4: of time, commitment, and how many of these things can
Speaker 4: you pump out?
Speaker 2: These suits? And who are you working for?
Speaker 4: Like, it's one thing to make stuff for the troops,
Speaker 4: for the infantry, but it's another thing to be working
Speaker 4: on these much more elaborate, high end pieces that would
Speaker 4: be for generals and top folks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when you think of the ornate filigrees and
Speaker 1: all the details, which is the armor version of complications
Speaker 1: and a fancy watch.
Speaker 2: You got, you got different combinations of metals.
Speaker 4: You've got all these little touches that maybe absolutely are
Speaker 4: gold or various precious metals mixed in with the more
Speaker 4: durable stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm excited to get into this, Ben.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, well we know, like you were saying, no,
Speaker 1: most soldiers in real life, and indeed a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are technically knights, they had nothing near this stuff.
Speaker 1: They did the best with what they had a lot
Speaker 1: of times, like and pants would just like a little
Speaker 1: chain mail.
Speaker 2: Maybe a chess plate.
Speaker 1: If they knew the Celts. Yeah, maybe a chess plate
Speaker 1: if they had a good lord who would supply them well.
Speaker 1: During the early Middle Ages, a knight's armor was basically
Speaker 1: what you described earlier. It was a padded garment. They
Speaker 1: might have a simple metal helmet, they'd have a big
Speaker 1: wooden shield, and if they were lucky, it'd be reinforced
Speaker 1: with metal. Like you said, they did also use chain
Speaker 1: mail because it let you move around still, and it
Speaker 1: was way better at stopping cutting weapons. But it wouldn't
Speaker 1: It wouldn't protect you against a blunt force object.
Speaker 2: Like a mace.
Speaker 4: No, no, gosh, rip that guy in Lord of the
Speaker 4: Seven Kingdoms Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Rather, no spoilers,
Speaker 4: but boiled boy, a thing happens.
Speaker 1: I love the point you made earlier about how we
Speaker 1: moved to the High Middle Ages around the eleventh to
Speaker 1: thirteenth centuries, and we see, just like the janissaries in
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire. Stay tuned for that episode, these folks
Speaker 1: who were the nightly class, they became more of a
Speaker 1: political class, right. That's where we see the more sophisticated designs.
Speaker 1: That's also where we see their horses getting kitted out too.
Speaker 1: I feel so bad for those guys, But you've met horses.
Speaker 1: They're skiddish.
Speaker 4: They do tend to spook, that's true, which will cause
Speaker 4: them to kick.
Speaker 2: And do not want to be on the receiving end
Speaker 2: of one of.
Speaker 1: Those, even on a slow going farm. I'm worried when
Speaker 1: I run into horses on friendly terms, just because they
Speaker 1: seem very stressed out as very fast prey out.
Speaker 2: Me and they bite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they get a little attitude. Man.
Speaker 2: No, And I don't want to sound like I'm scared
Speaker 2: of horses.
Speaker 4: I think horses are gorgeous, majestic creatures, but they've got
Speaker 4: some peculiarities.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like the humans. They evolved to specialize in
Speaker 1: certain things, and their thing is being hyper aware and running.
Speaker 2: Quickly run away.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, like the I picture a horse dad talking
Speaker 1: to his kid and giving him life advice, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: young horseboy, you're growing up. You're gonna be a horseman,
Speaker 1: a stallion soon. So I'll tell you what your grandfather
Speaker 1: told me. Always run away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you're in a horror movie, never run
Speaker 2: up the stairs. No. So it's just bad move.
Speaker 1: So these we're just exercising empathy here, folks, because these horses,
Speaker 1: who are already skittish, are thrust in the heat of
Speaker 1: battle while essentially wearing an exoskeleton definitely not their idea
Speaker 1: of good day, and horse armor was a whole other expense.
Speaker 1: So they're these lords and these well to do nights
Speaker 1: are spending the equivalent of millions of dollars on two
Speaker 1: separate pieces, two separate suits of armor, one for them,
Speaker 1: one for the horse. It's it's weird because the chest
Speaker 1: plate was always a thing. But it's not until like
Speaker 1: the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that we see nights in
Speaker 1: full armor the way we would imagine them in the films.
Speaker 1: And that's because it took a while for breakthroughs in metallurgy.
Speaker 1: Why am I saying that wrong?
Speaker 2: Metallurgy.
Speaker 1: Metallurgy, Yeah, you got to hurry through it. Let's keep
Speaker 1: that part it, let's do it. Yeah, metallurgy.
Speaker 4: It's rare things that need to speak, though I guess
Speaker 4: in our profession it does.
Speaker 2: Come up from time to time, right right.
Speaker 3: Metallurgy is one of these words that if you look
Speaker 3: at it, you can't say it right.
Speaker 4: Oh, and say it enough times, it loses all semblance
Speaker 4: of meaning or reason.
Speaker 1: Semantic satiation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nonsense basically like English.
Speaker 1: I mean, most of English is nonsense.
Speaker 2: Okay, So these this is the.
Speaker 1: Time in history where the suits cover nearly every part
Speaker 1: of the body. They're custom fitted to you. You have
Speaker 1: to be rich to have one, or have a very
Speaker 1: wealthy patron. A full suit of armor weighs between thirty
Speaker 1: to fifty kilograms that's sixty six to one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten pounds in freedom units.
Speaker 4: Ben Can we talk stop it? Can we talk about
Speaker 4: the codpiece? I think we're bearing the lead here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, the codpiece, tell us about it?
Speaker 1: Goal.
Speaker 4: Well, Bennet's an armored or padded if you weren't lucky
Speaker 4: enough covering for the male groin on late medieval Renaissance
Speaker 4: armor and clothing.
Speaker 2: It was originally designed as.
Speaker 4: Like a practical flap that would join the front part
Speaker 4: of the under hose, which I guess is sort of
Speaker 4: like a yeah, kind of a not a jerkin I'm
Speaker 4: gonna get in trouble, you know, the sort of long
Speaker 4: john under parts of the shit. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 4: remove thy shift. It protected, of course, the genitals, and
Speaker 4: often it was a bit of a step up from
Speaker 4: that and included a steel shaped plate on top of
Speaker 4: the padding.
Speaker 2: In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Speaker 4: By the late to mid fifteen hundreds, it became another
Speaker 4: thing that would be exaggerated.
Speaker 2: It was fashional status. It was so embellius.
Speaker 1: It's out like bustles went crazy.
Speaker 2: Witness ye, my cod piece.
Speaker 1: That's why there are so many, so many paintings from
Speaker 1: back in the day of a guy that we knew
Speaker 1: was taken seriously, but has a ridiculous fake dog basically
Speaker 1: a bulge.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, it's like the spinal tap bit where he
Speaker 4: goes through the airport security and it keeps going off,
Speaker 4: and then finally he removes the cucumber wrapped in tinfoil
Speaker 4: from his trousers.
Speaker 1: Oh also shout out to all our European friends who
Speaker 1: learned about ranch. I don't like ranch unless it's homemade.
Speaker 1: But apparently the TSA has had to warn World Cup
Speaker 1: visitors that you can't bring bottles of ranch on the plane.
Speaker 2: Well you can at they're travel sized.
Speaker 1: If they're travel sized, if you are at the point
Speaker 1: of ranch addiction where you have to have a ranch flask,
Speaker 1: basically you.
Speaker 2: Gotta be got. I think you got to bring your own.
Speaker 4: I don't think they come like that in travel servings,
Speaker 4: but they should.
Speaker 2: Man, people love that's.
Speaker 1: A great idea.
Speaker 4: Uh we we also know just travel sauces in general.
Speaker 2: Ben you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Empty out those little Walgreens or Dwayne Reid shampoo bottles.
Speaker 4: Because I told you how I learned my lesson the
Speaker 4: hard way and had, like, you know, one hundred dollars
Speaker 4: worth of nice hot sauces. Confiscated. That's right for being
Speaker 4: in my carry on. We'll make that mistake again.
Speaker 3: Travel Ranch did jump in here real quick. I am
Speaker 3: actually pulling my friend Meredith, who's a weirdo. She brings
Speaker 3: her own tortilla chips with her and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So I have asked her, are you a Ranch fan?
Speaker 3: And the I'm going to ask her a follow up
Speaker 3: of seeing if she brings Ranch on trail.
Speaker 2: You could broad in the question just to travel sauces travel.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry, she brings travel cononment so amazing. We'll
Speaker 4: ask you what kind of receptacles are best for these things?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, thank you. As we're waiting for the update,
Speaker 1: let's return to knights and shining armor. Uh. This full
Speaker 1: plate armor reaches its peak. It's real era of fanciness
Speaker 1: in the fifteenth and sixteenth century.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: The full suit is referred to as a panoply at times,
Speaker 1: and it's a feature basically, Yeah, it's all the stuff
Speaker 1: together and it's a feature at the very end of
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages going into the Renaissance. It's also it's
Speaker 1: popular image comes to us because of the ceremonies you
Speaker 1: were describing earlier. There jousting. They would make special armor
Speaker 1: just for jousting because these were wealthy people with a
Speaker 1: lot of disposable income. And you know, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: I think it's important that we acknowledge even the fans
Speaker 1: see his stuff was made from a series of materials.
Speaker 1: You had iron, you had leather, textiles, you had steel,
Speaker 1: and the plate armor is made of steel because it's
Speaker 1: very hard, but it's also flexible if you know how
Speaker 1: to work with it. The only reason they had steel
Speaker 1: plate armor is because some of the blacksmith boffins, the
Speaker 1: metal aer just figured out how to quench and temper
Speaker 1: these steel plates so they wouldn't be brittle, because if
Speaker 1: you don't make it the right way, then that mace
Speaker 1: that you could have been saved from is just going
Speaker 1: to crack your plate.
Speaker 2: And isn't tempering where you heat it.
Speaker 4: Up and bang it and then cool it down and
Speaker 4: then do that again and every time it kind of
Speaker 4: makes it stronger.
Speaker 2: Or am I making that up?
Speaker 1: No? I think you're right. Yeah, that's the quenching right
Speaker 1: when you put it back in the water, and then.
Speaker 2: What a satisfying shit makes.
Speaker 1: That's how you know the climactic battle is coming up
Speaker 1: in the third act of the film, right.
Speaker 4: I always think of it's not really a night movie.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess it's sort of a modern night story.
Speaker 4: But the film Mandy starring Nicholas Cage, there's a really
Speaker 4: badass scene where he forges his own incredibly sick like
Speaker 4: axe sword combo thing. But it also is like absurd
Speaker 4: the timeline of it, Like it just shows them like
Speaker 4: he just busts it out like in a you know,
Speaker 4: an hour or even like in real time, like takes
Speaker 4: a half an hour. It would take a long time
Speaker 4: to make these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent, and shout out to our pal, Nicholas Cage.
Speaker 1: If you like superhero stuff and if you like investigative narratives,
Speaker 1: do check out Spider Noir.
Speaker 2: You're liking Spider Noir.
Speaker 1: I'm liking it. I'm you're taking it man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I watched a bit of the first episode and
Speaker 4: I liked it too. And I heard some complaints about
Speaker 4: the black and white color combo thing not working for
Speaker 4: some people, but it worked pretty well for me.
Speaker 2: You could switch back and forth kind of neat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, pretty neat. Right, And we know that Knights
Speaker 1: also had undergrus basically as you alluded to under the
Speaker 1: metal armor. They're not naked, right, They don't just have
Speaker 1: tidy whities or whatever the equivalent was. They have something
Speaker 1: called a gambison made of quilted fabric. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like those oh what's the Japanese name for those
Speaker 1: blanket outfits that we both love.
Speaker 2: You picturing it, but I don't I don't know the name.
Speaker 2: Do you mean like you you mean like a kigaroomy?
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, they're a roomy.
Speaker 4: Yes, often shaped like a like a fun animal or
Speaker 4: cartoon care.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So these guys had this kind of inner exoskeleton
Speaker 1: kigaroomy thing, kind of like.
Speaker 4: The old Prospector's long John with the butt flap that
Speaker 4: we often reference, like.
Speaker 1: The red wool logs. Yeah, this this was entirely to
Speaker 1: absorb the shock of a blow and also, you know,
Speaker 1: treat yourself, babe. This is going to stop you from
Speaker 1: getting chafe marks from your metal armor.
Speaker 4: Well sure, and it's also going to soak up the
Speaker 4: sweat and all of that stuff. And it does play
Speaker 4: a role in the codpiece situation we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 4: where if you needed to go poopoo or peepee on
Speaker 4: the battlefield, you had to have access, so you would
Speaker 4: like remove that cod piece and then undo the flap
Speaker 4: on your whatever the thing is, and then you would go. Oftentimes, though,
Speaker 4: to go number two, you really did need like your
Speaker 4: caddy to help you out, your.
Speaker 2: Squire squire, you know what I meant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's the same thing. It's the caddy. It's
Speaker 1: the squire. Like you had to have a squire in
Speaker 1: case you fell off your horse, because this would weigh
Speaker 1: so much that you would need somebody to give you
Speaker 1: a little upsy daisy so you could get back on
Speaker 1: the horse.
Speaker 4: Well, And understandably, the caddies were not wearing that same
Speaker 4: level of mail and armor, so they would have been
Speaker 4: like some little sitting ducks, little rodeo clowns out there.
Speaker 1: So you've got your regular underwear, You've got your gambison,
Speaker 1: which is going to be stuffed with horse hair or
Speaker 1: straw and ridden with your sweat, so, by the way,
Speaker 1: you're gonna smell terrible. But you're not quite ready for
Speaker 1: the plate yet. You have to wear something else over
Speaker 1: your gambis, and it's a tight fitting garment called an
Speaker 1: arming doublet or weirdly a poor point like pouring water point.
Speaker 1: And this stuff is important because it has little loops
Speaker 1: or little islets that let you lace in the armor.
Speaker 1: So these guys got the armor sewn on that second
Speaker 1: layer of fabric so that it wouldn't fall off in battle.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it did.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it did.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're like, oh no, my elbow is naked.
Speaker 2: And sometimes you had to poop yourself.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you did have to poop yourself.
Speaker 2: This was sometimes you had to poop yourself. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just true. That's just a life thing that just happens.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is way before the dawn of
Speaker 1: diaper technology, which was stilling into infancy.
Speaker 3: So to circle back around a friend, Meredith, she is
Speaker 3: a fan of but she would not bring a travel
Speaker 3: sized ranch.
Speaker 2: With uh ranches available in the world. Okay, okay.
Speaker 3: She insists that she will always have a hot sauce
Speaker 3: on her and her always be flying. She hasn't our
Speaker 3: work bag at all times.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, like Beyonce or Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2: Like Beyonce or Hillary Clinton exactly.
Speaker 1: Especially when they have a new project coming.
Speaker 2: Up, right, I'm really looking forward to that Beyonce, Hillary collab.
Speaker 1: I am too. Yeah, I am too, especially, I mean
Speaker 1: former Secretary of State Clinton is I'm sure to drop
Speaker 1: a hot hook or nasty sixteen bars. Okay, So we've
Speaker 1: got the armor, and we know that armor is continually
Speaker 1: innovating for the people who can afford it these innovations.
Speaker 1: This is an arms race. So these innovations also lead
Speaker 1: to the decline of the shield for practical use. Like
Speaker 1: you know, if we're out watching a jow Max and
Speaker 1: Noel and yours, truly, we might see a knight who
Speaker 1: has a shield right to bounce the lance off from
Speaker 1: their opponent. But if you're in a battlefield in an
Speaker 1: actual war, your plate armor is gonna do most of
Speaker 1: what a shield would have done. So now a shield
Speaker 1: is just an encumbrance. It's an albatross, it's another heavy
Speaker 1: thing you have to carry.
Speaker 4: Well, that's right, And it is one of those leveling
Speaker 4: the playing field kind of arguments where it's like, you know,
Speaker 4: if everyone's wearing this heavy crap, you're sort of like
Speaker 4: equally hampered and you're all just kind of like working
Speaker 4: in the same with the same drawbass.
Speaker 2: Yes, slowly, slowly clanking over. So I'm coming to get you.
Speaker 2: I'm coming I'm damning for minutes. Okay, here I am.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna come towards you too. Well, okay, well.
Speaker 1: Before we before we get through it. Yeah wait, wait,
Speaker 1: gave off. Let's everybody get a little bit of water.
Speaker 2: Hold on, gotta poop, gotta gotta poop.
Speaker 1: I'll be back. It's like twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: But then, you know, you start to think the real
Speaker 4: innovation isn't how much can weed our guys down with
Speaker 4: the stuff, is how can we train them to not
Speaker 4: need it, you know what I mean, like and be
Speaker 4: more nimble. And when we look at like Japanese armor,
Speaker 4: that stuff is clever because it's.
Speaker 2: Like shoulders, it's just on the critical parts.
Speaker 4: And like, you know, they were just badass fighters who
Speaker 4: really knew how to engage in a way that maybe
Speaker 4: they didn't necessarily. They weren't just blunt instruments a tank
Speaker 4: as you would call it in a video game.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean also with the shields, if
Speaker 1: we look at the regular guys, the non rich guys
Speaker 1: who are fighting in these battles, we're looking at folks
Speaker 1: who have stuff like long bows, right, or have pikes,
Speaker 1: and those are both two handed weapons.
Speaker 2: So shields aha, don't work for them wilding. Yeah, no, sorry,
Speaker 2: the opposite you need two hands for the big Halbard.
Speaker 2: Dual wielding would be two weapons.
Speaker 4: And you know, there is technique for fighting that does
Speaker 4: involve sword and shields, but that's its.
Speaker 2: Own kind of very separate type of engagement, right yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And these street level infantry type guys, they can't
Speaker 1: rock shields at all unless there's literally a separate dude
Speaker 1: standing next to them with a big shield and holding
Speaker 1: it up in front of them. So yes, I mean
Speaker 1: people did that, right, But plate armor then, in this
Speaker 1: great tech race, it outpaces the shield and eventually armor
Speaker 1: itself is outpaced. That's how we get to our question
Speaker 1: towards the end here, why why don't we see people
Speaker 1: in full plate armor today? Like why isn't your average
Speaker 1: Johnny Law or Wells Fargo security guard. Why aren't they
Speaker 1: clinking around?
Speaker 4: It's just it's about material science, really, you know, and
Speaker 4: it's about things like kevlar, things like ballistic gelatine and
Speaker 4: various types of low weight comparatively and high resistance you know,
Speaker 4: to impact materials like the stuff that's in bulletproofests for example.
Speaker 2: And you know, this stuff continues to improve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the I have a kevlar vest and I
Speaker 1: also have a ceramic plating things. You buy the vest
Speaker 1: and then you end up buying the plates separately.
Speaker 2: That's right. I do hear them talk about that in
Speaker 2: like swat type shows.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is still expensive and it ain't exactly light,
Speaker 4: but it's not right, you know. But comparatively it is
Speaker 4: a dream come true, comparatively to the big old plates
Speaker 4: right right plates.
Speaker 1: And so it's cool because I love this point we're
Speaker 1: getting to, like, at the height of its popularity, that
Speaker 1: full plate armor was symbolic on multiple levels. It represents
Speaker 1: so many astonishing technological breakthroughs, and if we're being honest,
Speaker 1: it represents a cartoonishly brutal and unfair class system. This
Speaker 1: is what this I keep thinking of how you would
Speaker 1: feel if you are a non noble soldier, right, and
Speaker 1: you've got whatever kit you could mcguiver together. You're it's
Speaker 1: like you were driving around in a nineties Honda Civic
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you hear a terrible horn,
Speaker 1: a great cheer from over the hill, and you're gang
Speaker 1: a little civics is getting run down by bloodthirsty hum vs,
Speaker 1: or like you said tanks.
Speaker 2: Right, like they're outmatched. So you know the question we
Speaker 2: pose at the top.
Speaker 4: You know, did nights of your really wear these big,
Speaker 4: massive suits of armor like you might see in a
Speaker 4: fancy drawing room in a detective movie.
Speaker 2: The answer is yeah, but not the way myths might suggest.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent, because we have to remember that this
Speaker 1: was a pretty limited window of time. As defensive measures
Speaker 1: like armor improved, offensive technology improved as well, So now
Speaker 1: we barely.
Speaker 2: Do battlefield fighting at all anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, napolet warfare is thankfully gone. But despite all
Speaker 1: the time, blood, research, and money poured into suits of
Speaker 1: plate armor, this tech gets outpaced by a new kid
Speaker 1: on the block. That's right, gunpowder. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: this originally.
Speaker 4: I guess I should have should have gotten a gunpowder
Speaker 4: before I dropped kevlar and bulletproof.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's fine, man. We know that we know
Speaker 1: that kevlar would have been more effective than played armor
Speaker 1: for sure, but I didn't know this at the beginning
Speaker 1: tool before we started researching this armor at the time
Speaker 1: was actually good enough to block early musket balls, which
Speaker 1: were themselves a crapshoot with terrible aaming sure, so you
Speaker 1: could get you could get a little ping pong shot
Speaker 1: to your chest and keep going because it would take
Speaker 1: the guy firing at you so long to reload their firearm.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've also seen examples of, like, you know, as
Speaker 4: a twist in the plot of some sort of a
Speaker 4: murder mystery type show, a bullet being stopped.
Speaker 2: By a cigarette case, perhaps in the front pockets.
Speaker 1: I always love that, you know, like there's that iconic
Speaker 1: scene where somebody looks to be dead, but did they
Speaker 1: pull out as you're saying that, and.
Speaker 2: It's like a bibyes, oh yes.
Speaker 1: Or this case, weirdly enough, a lottery ticket.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll take We'll take all the luck we can get.
Speaker 4: This is super fun, man, And you know, I think
Speaker 4: where I'm not like a gun person per se, but
Speaker 4: I am fascinated by, uh these YouTube videos of people showing, uh,
Speaker 4: what kind of materials can block what caliber of bullets
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, And you do get into as
Speaker 4: they escalate the materials into like stuff like ballistic gel
Speaker 4: and all of these modern you know, gunpowder and bulletproof materials.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the spider silk experiments. That's pretty nuts.
Speaker 2: I don't know, about that one.
Speaker 1: There's been work into making armor base off spider silk,
Speaker 1: which is like we always see it in what you know,
Speaker 1: a tiny a web of tiny strands, but it turns
Speaker 1: out if you knit it together, which is very time consuming,
Speaker 1: then it actually makes a pretty good material.
Speaker 2: For armor, almost like carbon fiber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd have to look into it because I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's cost effective yet, but we
Speaker 1: do know, we do know. Plate armor became less cost
Speaker 1: effective or even practical as firearms evolved, because look, the
Speaker 1: reality is, uh, if you're wearing a bulletproof vest, even
Speaker 1: now a modern one, and you get shot, you're still
Speaker 1: going to have a screwed up day. It's gonna hurt,
Speaker 1: you'll have nasty bruising, but the advantages will be alive.
Speaker 1: The problem with plate armor is if these folks got
Speaker 1: shot and the armor got mangled, you would injure the
Speaker 1: guy even more or by trying to get it off them, like,
Speaker 1: how are you gonna get his arm out of there? So,
Speaker 1: as we said, that's the reason people aren't wearing plate
Speaker 1: armor right now. Outside of coseplay and historical celebrations, body
Speaker 1: armor is still around today. It's more expensive than we'd like,
Speaker 1: but this is a great setup for a future episode
Speaker 1: we have about another mythical fighter, the Bersoker.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, remember that song from Clerks.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a pretty pretty blue language. And so I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna go with.
Speaker 1: I had big big thanks.
Speaker 2: Were they hopped up on goofballs? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Maybe big big. We're gonna find out big big thanks
Speaker 1: to our super producer, mister Max Williams. I've been our
Speaker 1: research associate for this big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka
Speaker 1: the Quister, who I miss a little bit, though I'm
Speaker 1: never gonna tell him that.
Speaker 4: Doesn't he doesn't he owe us an appearance oppressed to
Speaker 4: digitation a summoning.
Speaker 1: Yes he does. He's also a fan of stage magic.
Speaker 2: That's true. Who isn't I love stage I'm not a
Speaker 2: fan of it. Well I am.
Speaker 1: I love this stuff.
Speaker 2: You know what to each to each their own indeed,
Speaker 2: and jolly good time today. Ben enjoyed this one. Thanks
Speaker 2: for the for the research, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 4: Folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.