Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 253: The Battle of Hattin

Episode Date: March 26, 2023

Joe, Tom, and Nate talk about the time that Crusaders forgot that humans need water to live. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Nicholson, R. L. Joscelyn III and the Fall of the Crusader States Phillips, Jonathan (2002), The Crusades 1095–1187 Lacey, James. Crushed at the Horns of Hattin

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now back to the show. Hello, and welcome back to the Lions and By Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe, and with me again is the full production team of this podcast, Tom and Nate. How's it going, gentlemen? It's going well. How are you, Tom? How are you, Joe? I'm all good. I'm all good.

I'm excited for traveling outside of London for the first time tomorrow, so it's all going good. The first time? It makes it sound like you're in a Londonondon-sized prison even though you're irish i mean i like since i have moved here like last year i've been here nearly a year aside from like going home to ireland a couple of times and a mistaken train trip where i ended up in st albans i haven't actually left the city i mean i kind of understand that uh like i've left the country uh and like flown into europe more than i've left yorovan in the last like four months which is kind of fucking weird 100 the same i mean other than work taking me places i think the last time that i went anywhere

in the united kingdom that wasn't you know stuff was we went to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival in August. And I don't think that I... I mean, I've left the country a bunch of times since then. We toured Australia in November. My wife and I went down to France for a weekend in September. And then I've been to the US twice also. But yeah, the thing that's really funny about it in the UK, at least, and Tom can definitely attest to this, is that it's fucking cheaper to fly on a cheap plane to Europe and just go on vacation, even a quick vacation in Europe, than it is to go anywhere in the UK. Oh, that's so strange to me.

By an order of magnitude, the trains are more expensive, hotels are more expensive, and stuff like pubs and food and shit, it is cheaper outside of london but not that much cheaper and so like genuinely staying in like a hotel in bath in somerset you will you will spend more money than if you like flew to portugal for a week i swear to god it's so expensive from my time in portugal and all the british people i fully understand that now let's get what's happening um but uh like i so i went to wales for my own podcast to see like this museum collection a couple of weeks ago and the train ticket to cardiff cost 140 pounds just for the day trip so like going in the morning coming back in the evening and i'm going to brighton tomorrow and the tip like brighton is what like an hour yeah you can get to brighton on commuter

rail and it'll be cheaper but it'll still be like isn't it like 30 or 40 pounds each way uh i got the tickets for i think 40 pounds for a return but that's like off peak so i have to travel at like right right right yeah it might be a little cheaper than what i was saying but i mean i noticed it like when i was in switzerland with my wife when she was there for work like we got same day tickets and we didn't book like timed you know like timetable trains we just got like tickets you know on any train that'll go on that journey and like switzerland is not cheap compared to say like germany or france for train tickets but it cost us i think 70 pounds to go like a total for the whole day of like two multiple returns like like so four journeys total about like 100 miles each way i think we wound up spending like 70 pounds

for that day and it's just like that's we couldn't get two return tickets to brighton for that which is like what 50 miles from here yeah but like this is the thing is like you know everyone goes on about like we need to-nationalize the trains. It's not a huge amount. Well, it is quite a lot cheaper at home, but there's three rail lines. You can go to Galway, you can go to Cork, and you can go to Belfast, and that's about it.

But just how insanely expensive it is, and the fact that it goes up in price every single day that you wait. I mean, we don't we don't have like any we don't have any like cross-country rail here we have one that goes from yorovan to georgia and it that is the same train that's been there since like when the soviet union wasn't falling apart so flip a coin baby let's see if you like and not to mention it's slow as fuck like you can drive to georgia and like a couple hours but if you take the train it takes like 12 it is so funny too that's like america that's like that's like like driving to pittsburgh from philly versus

taking the train uh but i would say like also it's really funny with brits too because whenever somebody complains about how expensive trains are in this country like if you look on a social media post when someone does this there's always like salty brits complaining and being defensive about it like oh well surely if you booked that trip four years in advance you'd be able to get a better rate no why do you need to travel today why why do you need to travel on short notice and it's like because that's how life works you fucking limeys it's so weird man they're so they're so defensive about it and it's like the funniest part they're defensive about everything though they are yeah but this is like someone tried to someone tried to mug me in london and like i didn't call the cops or

anything because like i'm not so stupid as to think like they're gonna do anything you're gonna do anything yeah exactly but someone from my like the guy behind the desk at the hotel i was staying at saw the whole thing like i went back inside and he's like oh are you okay i saw what happened out there i was like yeah i'm fine he didn't get anything he's like well you know it's better here because in the u.s you would have been shot i'm like bro this isn't a competition yeah also like you wouldn't you you wouldn't have like i'm sorry but like i've lived in like you were in fucking Waterloo, not exactly the most dangerous part of London or the United Kingdom.

It was broad daylight. It was like 1 p.m. Yeah. That was so funny. Same with me. I mean, the kids didn't get my phone, but I had an attempted mugging on a running trail at like 2 in the afternoon. Yeah.

Yeah. It's so... Yeah. But the thing that's so funny, before we move on to the actual topic that I've got to say, is that most of the train franchises in the UK, the way that they broke it up when they privatized it, other train operators or companies bid to be the operator to run that segment of the train system. And I don't know the technical details because I'm not an expert. But what I do know is that at certain times, and it may still be the case, but most certainly in various periods of time, the national train companies from France or Germany or Spain have operated British train franchise, like the lines, at a profit basically so i'm dead serious the state-run companies in germany or france that have subsidized tickets that are cheap are making profits to subsidize their own nationalized system

by fucking running privatized trains in britain and like this is a hundred percent like this is this is not the only the only instance of this in the british economy where like i'm dead serious like a state-run or majority state run company from another country runs a British service at massive markup, like fucking EDF, Electricity de France, like dead serious. They are only allowed to raise electric and gas rates, or at least electric rates in France by like 4% because of like an act of the French Assembly. Like the government said, you cannot profiteer on the on the energy crisis but they can they can raise rates whatever the fuck they want in in britain so once again people in france are getting cheaper energy or like smaller rises in energy because it's being subsidized by like

capitalism running fucking rampant in britain and the brits love it this way they love it this way they're like oh this is the best fucking system on earth like you know anything else is like i don't understand why you would want it that way it's perfect but uh like once again once again once again joe napoleon was right yeah i told you nobody believes me about this are you excited for the steven spielberg miniseries about napoleon that he's making i have seen pitch maybe this not from the miniseries maybe it's from a movie of like joaquin phoenix dressed up like napoleon i was i was immediately sold i'm like i'm fucking in bro because you can just imagine joaquin phoenix full like crazy brain

from like that time that he wanted to he pretended to be a hip-hop artist for a role for like a year but like method acting is napoleon it's gonna rule it's gonna be it's gonna be corny as shit but i'm good i'm i'm a full-on mark for this shit man so essentially what's happening is there is that movie that's coming out and steven spielberg is actually making a multi-part mini series i think for like hbo or something based off it's either like kubrick or someone like that's cancelled like movie about napoleon so essentially you're getting like a movie and like an eight hour shit funded money like napoleon epic i need them both it's like that's what i need in my life but will they talk about wagon manifests though i don If I'm hired, yes.

You're going to be hired as a consultant. I hope they talk about... I brought this up when we did our series about the French invading Russia in 1812, that Napoleon's wife fucking hated him until they had sex for the first time. So clearly the dude dicks down. I hope they make sure to put that in there. I mean, if you look at proportionality like

the smaller the man the bigger the pipe it's just it looks bigger because there's less body to compare it to he's not sure he's just french no but like you know he's course i can before anybody gets fucking mad at me leave me alone but like you know how like bodybuilders like obviously when you take like um growth hormones and like peds make your ball shrink but like you know how like bodybuilders like obviously when you take like um growth hormones and like peds make your ball shrink but like makes your penis look really small because you have so much mass surrounding it yeah you can't you can't look like one of those freak show cows and expect the rest of your body to not look hilarious i mean look at every professional wrestler with an hgh skull you know like it's why like poor uh batista

will never be able to find a pair of glasses that fits him but like if if napoleon was alive now i bet he instead of trying to conquer the world he would have just like got absolutely yoked and shredded like dorian yates i was gonna say if you introduce Napoleon to macronutrients and fucking drugs that let you keep your hairline, and that dude would just... He wouldn't have to conquer Russia because he would be conquering every bedroom in Europe. Like you said, he had the winner's mentality. He just expressed it in the wrong way. And frankly, I feel like...

Just Napoleon ripping four plates off the ground and deadlift and making the booty clap like madison square garden napoleon would have just been like modern french influencer version of noel dreisel just like absolutely jacked like deadlifting like five plates only having a rom of like three inches because he's like i'm just imagining like like louis napoleon fragrance it's just basically jeremy fragrance but the french version i genuinely man napoleon as just cigarettes and cheese all right now that we've lost literally every single one of our listeners we didn't but you know what we had to fucking we only want the true, the dedicated, the serious listeners,

the ones who are willing to put up with our dumb bullshit before we talk about it. Hey, last time someone complained that we talked bullshit for 20 minutes before we started. This time I'm looking at 12 minutes and 16 seconds. We're getting better. To be honest, it feels like you could mark off everything off the triple threat, you know, bingo card. It's like me and nate complaining about london me and joe talking about like what if x historical figure was a bodybuilder you know how how big is a historical figures genitals you know these are the things that people come to the show for they knew what they were getting themselves into when

they clicked subscribe on their podcast app like 100 this is just this is what we do i just want someone to photoshop napoleon's head onto dorian yates now um no i'll do that that that is gonna be the the cover art for this episode it's gonna make no sense at all because none of those none of these people are the show at all i'll just photoshop napoleon's death mask on top of you know the really famous i think it's in like 96 or 97. No, that would have been Ronnie Coleman. That's it. You know, the famous death mask picture of Dorian Yates where he's like 0.2% body fat and you can actually see his skull underneath his face. If I can't see the outline of your skull, did you truly cut for that competition? I don't think so. I'm really starting to doubt your dedication to Sparkle Motion.

The entirety of Napoleon's army when they invaded France just went on the most extreme course. You know, I got to say, Joe, this is is a history podcast and that's why i appreciate you making reference to a a sort of like hip and thought to be fucking contemporary movie reference for a movie that's 22 years old so you know what i'm i'm truly 34 i understand that comes for us all yeah you know and death also comes for crusaders there i did it 14 minutes now we here at the lions led by donkeys podcast absolutely love crusaders no not like that don't clip that but rather because i know you are um but rather because they've given us some of like

our dumbest episodes we've ever talked about. And I know that says a lot. From the time a bunch of homeless, starving, diseased guys attempted to walk from kind of Germany to Jerusalem and died, and to a bunch of guys who set off to fight the Muslims, but took a pit stop to invade various Christian cities in order to settle a boat-related debt. They are truly the dumbest kind of guys from history which is why today we're talking about the battle of hatton otherwise known as the time a bunch of crusaders forgot that heat existed in the desert and the fact that human

beings need to drink water in order to survive i think this is perfect perfectly on the same level of like every other dumb story about crusaders like what if we like went into the desert and didn't bring any water wearing wearing chainmail and shit yeah uh also content warning i'm going to be saying french words um i i feel like i i i i feel like the crusader mentality of god wills it meaning that i don't have to bring water or supplies or do any kind of you know basic preparation kind of implies in a way that jordan peterson embodies the crusader mindset because god wills it imagine jordan you know going on a only meat diet and then basically frying your brain on nothing but benzodiazepines

like that is crusader mindset if you're doing that fucking picture of his daughter and him when he has that weird suction machine on his dick absolutely streams of tears going through his helmet screaming deus vol during the sack of jerusalem honestly honestly and he's doing it for manhood related reasons so that is not that far off from doing it because god wills it and you have to save christendom does that mean that some like random twitter uh marxist leninist is his version of saladin no uh i think literally any disney film is You're absolutely bodied by some 14-year-old

who has read Discipline and Punish twice and is just absolutely bodying him at every single turn. He did do a debate about the Communist Manifesto against the guy and didn't even read it, which was pretty impressive. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's more detail on that. He debated Slavoj Žižek

and he hadn't read anything that Karl Marx had ever written. And Žižek was just like, well, well no the point that you're making for example is like in the critique of the gotha program like all this stuff he's referencing because he's read marx and jordan peterson in this debate admitted that he basically skim read the communist manifesto which is like 3 000 words and he never read anything yeah it's I read the I watched the philosophy of live video on call remarks it was 10 minutes it was

more than sufficient look as someone who hates reading theory I could almost respect that if it wasn't Jordan Peterson all I can say is now I'm just imagining Richard the Lionheart saying up yours woke moralists we'll see who cancels who now to get to uh ye old jordan

peterson uh the era of the crusader states we have to go back to the 1100s um oh and a lot of muslim sources that i use arab scholar sources scholarly sources call them franks um rather than crusaders because they just consider them all to be from like frankia which fair enough they all look the same uh it's just white people in armor but like i have i'm calling them crusaders so it makes more sense to people listening um now things are not exactly in the peak of power for the crusaders in the middle east during this time for starters these states namely odessa tripoli and, and Jerusalem, Odessa, Texas, I assume, are all like these kind of shaky but very tactically important positions, not to mention ideologically important because it's Jerusalem. But because of that, they're

virtually always in the front line of every crusade or crusade adjacent war that erupted between the Muslims and the Christians in the Middle East. None of these states were ever self-sufficient in any way. We did not get any crusader juche. These wars that they constantly found themselves in, because their religious ideology demanded it, they could not exist without fighting these wars against their Muslim neighbors. Because again, they invaded and took that place over. Their religious ideology demanded constant warfare. It's kind of like ISIS was never going to sign a peace treaty and settle down. Their religious beliefs demanded constant slaughter.

Blood for the blood god. Yeah, except this time it's just some asshole named Guy who is king of Jerusalem. Oh, I must defend Jerusalem. God, you just made the most cursed guy. Now, these constant wars were incredibly expensive in both gold and human bodies. These kingdoms populations were dependent on Europe for both of those resources. At no point were their economies able to support themselves, nor were their populations. In order to keep these places afloat, they required a never-ending pipeline of religious money, warriors, and pilgrims to be pushed that direction from Europe. push that direction from Europe. Obviously, this kind of thing is untenable in the long run.

And the final nail in the coffin, that being the choke off the crusader states, was generally European kingdoms got better at administration, i.e. kings centralized control of their kingdoms, at least they did so better than they had done before. And they more effectively began to funnel money towards themselves for domestic use rather than letting their lords and random fiefs act for themselves and keep chucking their idiot cousin, Brother King, down in Jerusalem five bucks whenever he asked for it. So it's just like having a modern day Patreon. Jerusalem at this point is a hot couch guy. Fair enough. Also, their coffers are running low.

And the population of Jerusalem is not super high. Again, it's not self-sustaining. There's always pilgrims going back and forth. And the kingdom would do the best they could to try to get people to stay there. But it wasn't always great. would do the best they could to try to get people to stay there, but it wasn't always great. Also, the wars in the Middle East began to not even be the second, but rather the third fiddle in the local crusading racket. For starters, there was the Reconquista in Spain, which drew warriors to make the hike from the normal pool, right? And there was also the Teutonic Drangnacht Austin

to drive east that saw Germanic knights slaughtering Slavs. Thankfully, something that Germans have never done again. I was going to say, that's kind of the origin of the first Tannenberg, isn't it? Yes, this is exactly where that comes from. Yeah, in the 1400s. The Prussian League, basically, yeah, you know, driving eastward.

Yeah. The Prussian League, basically, yeah, you know, driving eastward. Yeah. Now, the Teutonic drive east had significantly more of a racial undertone, but it was also still religious supremacism. Now, it turned out that the Crusaders of Europe would much rather take a shorter trip to, you know, eastern or spain uh because they're much closer then hike all the way to the fucking middle east um and there had been previous massive losses by crusaders that taken a serious chunk out of the nailed god's followers in the region specifically the second crusade um and so things are looking a lot less appealing. Knights in Europe are like, wow, we can go do our rape and pillage over that way. Seems things are going a little better.

Also, I don't have to walk for three months or whatever. Also, Nur ad-Din had stripped away Edessa from the Crusaders and then taken Damascus. Damascus had often supported the crusader cause, and he had continually mauled the army of Antioch, which had never fully recovered from an annihilation of a battle called the Field of Blood in 1119, which is always an optimistic name for a battle that went well.

When I hear about a battle called the Field of Blood, I'm just sort of like, yeah, I think things went well. It was probably pretty organized. All the goals were achieved. Honestly, it just sounds absolutely based. I mean, it probably went well for someone. Now, a final major setback came when King Amharic, who soon after his 1162 coronation of Jerusalem,

reversed two generations of crusader strategic policy, which was for the army of jerusalem to immediately march north whenever antioch was threatened instead he decided to invade egypt three fucking times all of these invasions failed it bankrupted the kingdom and he just hemorrhaged army after army it also opened antioch to get its shit kicked in without help, and now the Crusader states were completely surrounded. Well done. Once again, I feel like there is just this, like, repeating thing through history of, like, people making the mistake of trying to invade Egypt, and then just immediately getting absolutely fucked in the aftermath. It's not an easy place to invade.

Not to mention, like, Saladin is a much better tactician than literally any king of Jerusalem ever was. It's like, just keep feeding in your idiotic French and German people into this desert buzzsaw, you moron. Now, the king of Jerusalem was also a dumbass and plunged the kingdom

into a secession crisis. The throne passed to his first teenage son, Baldwin IV, who you might remember as a leper uh he was a leper played by edward norton kingdom of heaven a noted terrible film honestly i so this is a bit of a fact so i am on some weird corners of tiktok because i i like tiktok i'm aware you send them to me all the time intentionally so i get the weirdest shit possible and there is a weird like section of like trad cath return teenagers who idolize baldwin the fourth and like use like clips from that movie to talk about how based he was despite the fact he was like

literally melting i mean return to tradition and die of leprosy. I will say that movie sucks, but Edward Norton's role is very well done. Then the throne passed to Baldwin's seven-year-old nephew, Baldwin V. The following political instability and infighting was the kind of thing you expect when a seven-year-old becomes king. Oh, and then he died when he was eight.

Nobody's entirely sure why i'm assuming someone said fuck them kids i'm always very frustrated when you hear a story in history about a seven-year-old king and you're like yeah but there was like regents and advisors and people making decisions because i want to be like no i want you to let this seven-year-old run the kingdom like all of the fucking king's horses and king's men have to be made out of candy like i don't know you have to have a out of candy. Like, I don't know. You have to have a science to invent bringing the dinosaurs back. Like even if they didn't even know what the dinosaurs were in the year 1100, like they thought they were just demons placed on Earth to test Christians faith.

Like, I don't care. I want a seven year old king to get to rule as a seven year old. I want to see a medieval bouncy castle inside a real castle. I'm sorry, Mr. Saladin. Can we fight with gingerbread swords? I have a new edict from the king. Unrolling it.

No one is allowed to eat vegetables. The kingdom of Jerusalem is straight bussin' for real. That is all. Oi, by royal decree of the king, we are banning

homework, we are banning bedtime, and we are banning vegetables. And the king has said, gotta catch them all. Alright, that's all. We gotta kill this fucking kid. We will be investing all of our state resources to making Pokemon real.

Can you imagine if you were like like the chief minister or whatever the title was for like the sort of chief of staff to the king like the the head advisor to a seven-year-old can you imagine how many fucking stupid questions you'd have to answer like every single time there was some sort of ceremony but based on i don't know some kind of precedent or some kind of tradition just be like why why why do you do that like just why can't we kill the infidels I'm not touching you I'm not touching you please sir your

highness this is a very serious meeting just fully falling asleep in a like a absolute like high tension diplomatic meeting between like two kingdoms and saying I know what you are but what am I is this the kingdom's official stance

your face i mean like if if he was like slightly older than a just a massive war starting out because he called a an opposing leader gay i'm just imagining yes sal salvin basically able to convince all of western europe to just convert to islam because he gets the frank seven year old frankish king really really spun up that if you convert to islam you can fart with your armpit even better just like having a king with no object permanent so as soon as his soldiers like march off onto the battlefield he has no he has no idea he has an army saladine sits down he's like i have an idea to defeat this Frankish king please your highness come here

he just holds up a set of car keys and jingles them I was gonna say like playing hide and seek and just like telling the kings like oh if you hide in that chest you know no one will ever find you and then just throw the chest in the river I assume that's what happened when he died when he was eight

Saladin's courtiers managed to develop a precise Byzantine wooden carving Tamagotchi to give to the seven-year-old Frankish king. He just gets so distracted, he can't make decisions. Just like the highest trained assassins in the land playing the most deadly game of got your nose. You guys don't have any experience with kids i swear to god because it's fucking like you you're dropping object permanence like okay it's the king two years old but then you're also talking about calling them gay like only seven year olds in indiana call each other gay in other places they don't know what that fucking is no no no no to correct you i said if he was a couple years older he'd be calling an opposing leader fair enough fair enough fair enough now when he

died and he was eight, this led to an absolute shit fit in court as most of the nobles hated the guy slated to become the future king. Guy of... Lusignan? Nailed it. Moving on.

Nate, shut up. I can't see the writing, so I can't tell you what it is. I do that for a reason. I fucking nailed it. My French isn't peccable. Now, for different reasons. Now, they wanted his wife, Sibylla, who is sister of the leper Baldwin and mother of the dead king Baldwin, the child king Baldwin, to be queen.

However, they wanted someone else. They didn't want Guy. So the nobles talked her into divorcing Gi and marrying someone else who they liked more as being king. Now, this is kind of funny because this is done in this very dramatic situation where Sibylla accepts the queen's crown up on this elevated platform where the the throne is and then she's going to call forward her choice of king and there's a guy raymond the third of tripoli who all the nobles like raymond the third has been told that she is going to pick him everybody is there to watch his coronation and then she goes ha worked your ass gee please step forward he becomes king anyway uh greatest twist in the bachelor just like the fight deciding the fate of an entire kingdom yeah exactly uh now

raymond the third was fucking pissed uh he came all the way from tripoli only only to get like duped uh he was also uh almeric's first cousin. So he was pretty sure, everybody was pretty sure he was going to be king. So he attempted to overthrow the new government, which failed. So he went back home to Tripoli, threw up a big middle finger to Jerusalem, and made his own separate peace with Saladin. Now without going into it too much here,

because it doesn't really have bearing on the story, but Raymond not only made that peace, but he actively worked with Saladin to fuck with Jerusalem. At one point, he invited Al-Afdal, who is Saladin's oldest son, to lead a 7,000-man army through his territory in Galilee to pillage Jerusalem, like the outlying areas of Jerusalem. This led to a very stupid moment in Crusader history, which is most of them. a very stupid moment in Crusader history, which is most of them.

Knights Templar Grandmaster Gerard of Reedfor heard about Al-Afdal's army and mustered a princely force of about 200 guys. Remember, that army is 7,000 men strong. He charged directly at them outside of Nazareth. This, of course,

ended with most of them being slaughtered, only three of whom survived. Including Gerard. And as dumb as this was. It's even dumber in retrospect. To the story of what Batha talked about. Because Jerusalem lost a full 10% of its Knights Templar contingent. Which were their most experienced knights.

Now Guy kind of figured out at this point. That Saladin meant to invade Jerusalem. At some point soon. So he made peace with Raymond. Saying hey. I know you made some light treason out there, but can we be friends again? Forget about that whole battle thing that you did. Raymond agreed. So once again, before the coming Saladin invasion, Tripoli and Jerusalem became friends. Well, they still fucking hated one another, but they hated Muslims more because, of course, they did. By 1187, Jerusalem found itself pretty much bankrupt, which meant they couldn't fill gaps in the ranks of their army from their knights dying like idiots with mercenaries, which is their normal backup plan.

Now they had neither knights nor mercenaries. This meant when Saladin, commander of the Muslim armies in the area and sultan of Egypt, invaded Jerusalem, it left Guy forced to make a choice what exactly he was going to do with his army. Do I leave an army in the field to react to incoming threats? Or do I use that same force to garrison our fortresses? Because he no longer had enough men to do both. Neither of these choices are very good. Staying in the fortresses for months in the campaign season and refusing to meet Saladin in the field would just mean Saladin's armies would burn their crops to the ground and create a famine. Riding out to meet them could be met with devastation because he could easily be outnumbered and lose his entire army at once. While the crusaders worked out their differences, Saladin assembled an army of at least 30,000 men for an assault on the Crusader states. Previously, these two sides had a truce

that had been lasting for years, but was rapidly beginning to approach its expiration date. Saladin is famously a smart guy and could see the weaknesses in the Crusader states plain as day like anybody else could. It also didn't help that despite the truce nobody can control the knights templar who kept raiding muslim caravans so saladin simply used one of those attacks in 1186 uh from a caravan traveling between damascus and cairo as a reason to not renew the truce and a reason for war um once again i i'm just kind of reminded that everyone kind of exalts the crusaders as like these like noble people well in reality they're like a group of british men on a stag do in krakow i mean they are

fancily dressed bandits like they like they even robbed uh like pilgrims and shit especially the knights templar i mean the knights Hospitaller at least opened hospitals. But the Knights Templar, and to lesser extent the Knights Hospitaller, were just assholes robbing people and running protection records. That's all it was. Everything boils down to extortion. Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's like the pilgrims paid for their protection. It'd be like, wow, it'd be a shame if

one of those dastardly Saracens fell upon you. And then it's like some guy named Chuck from like Belgrade. Like it's not even a fucking Muslim bandit at all. It's just like, oh, you don't want to pay up. Oh, we got these other guys in that fucking bush. It's going to fuck your shit up unless

you start paying us crowns, bitch. You just look around to the guys that are meant to be protecting you look down at your waist and your coin purse is gone it's like where did that go and he's just like whistling looking away yeah i actually have a different different metaphor here i feel like every time you hear about salad and he sounds like the best comparison i can make is like imagine if the guy who who owns all of the restaurants in spain that british tourists go to and is like, obviously in charge and knows what's going on, but has to deal with just these fucking idiots who are just saying uno, biro, por favor, and just like glassing each other in the face constantly. Uno, biro, por favor. satyrs are sunburned tomato face british tourists on the casa del sol and and saladin is just sort

of like the guy who's in charge he's like do i have to fucking deal with these people again like i realized military victories and all the things he did like he was you know a great leader and strategist but in terms of affect can you imagine how often he must be like god these guys are so fucking stupid and there's so many of them yeah mean, he is every bartender in like Malaga. As someone who is, by the time this episode comes out, going to the Casa del Sol very soon. I am so excited. Now, it also helped that Saladin knew this attack on the caravan was by the Knights Templar. And he personally hated the Knights leader reynold to the point that he vowed to murder him with his own hands due to his previous

actions now my previous actions i don't mean that caravan raid i mean something that's kind of like horrifically shitty even for crusaders now in 1182 reynold led an expedition down the Red Sea coast and announced his objectives, which was sacking Mecca and Medina, the most holiest sites in Islam. This seems so short-sighted. I mean, he lost, but the principle of the matter that most sources pretty much blame Reynald specifically to turning Saladin to the concept of jihad to unify Muslims to fight crusaders. Because again, his wildly blasphemous attempt to burn down Mecca and Medina. So yeah, he has a special hatred in his heart for Reynald

as he had well deserved. So yeah, the crusader states and the knights had been fucking around and were rapidly about to find out. Guy realized quite quickly that whatever happened next would decide the fate of not only his kingdom, but probably Christendom in the area. Now when I say Christendom, I mean the Crusader States, not the religion,

because the religion would have been fine under Saladin, and often was. So he did the Crusader State version of scraping the bottom of the barrel. To desperately try to make up for his lack of manpower. Castles and cities were stripped bare. Down to like a skeleton garrison. And he ordered every able-bodied man with or without training. To show up and join the army.

At which they were generally just like given a spear or a sword. Like you're a soldier. And then the army assembled at which they were generally just given a spear or a sword and be like, you're a soldier. And then the army assembled at Sephoria, where by the end of June, he managed to get together 1,200 knights and maybe 20,000 other troops, but that other

was a wide range of mostly untrained randos with weapons he had ordered there. They are not fighters at all. Then he wanted to rally the men around him because things obviously looked kind of hopeless, right? He ordered the True Cross to be brought along to inspire the Crusaders.

And I know this is probably said quite a lot, but man, there are so many things out there that claim to be the true cross or part of the true cross that are absolutely not it. A good recent example was Russia claimed that a piece of the true cross was on the Moskva when it was clapped by a Ukrainian missile in 2020, or 2022, sorry. Now, forging relics, religious rel relics to sell to like as part of religious tourism in the Crusader States was rampant. It was actually a pretty important part of the local economy. Even today, churches regularly find out that the piece of the true cross, which they claim has lineage like all the way back to the kingdom of Jerusalem because it does because someone bought it from them like a clergy member or whatever they actually found out that oh this this is from

the 1100s because the knights templar and then the knights uh hospitaler and other groups who aren't so well known made a lot of fucking money selling this shit to idiot pilgrims and clergy when they came to the holy land uh uh to the Holy Land for their pilgrimage. Honestly, that is the only thing I will give the Crusaders as absolutely based. That is so funny. That's a solid hustle, honestly. Just imagining every single

graveyard in what's now Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, just getting fucking raided so people can boil the bones and sell them be like i totally have like the remains of lazarus like yeah i mean there's a church in armenia that claims they have a piece of the true cross it's like come on guys no you don't um why why does this uh femur that's meant to be from jesus look surprisingly like a dog's leg why does jesus have 16 femurs spread across the world

um no i should be completely clear here gi and the other crusaders definitely got hustled by this but they believe this to be the real thing um so like you know there's we're laughing at them and we should uh but you should know that this was not like uh uh you know a swerve by gee to to try to rally his men they definitely believe it was real honestly this is this just sounds like me buying ecstasy in like 2014 like oh yeah man like promise you know it's really good stuff and it's like okay it's like 50 caffeine pills yep yeah that just like jesus used to take uh by the by the end of june really really fucking hard after you've been up you know you you go you go on such a binge you wind up sleeping like the sleep of the dead for three days i mean it can happen and and also in

the true um teachings of christ you love absolutely everyone when you take them. By the end of June, Saladin's forces had attempted to lure the crusader army out of Sephoria because he knew Sephoria was their only source of water. He wanted to pull them into the open with his army that was easily two times the size of Gi. However, his actions were

pretty obvious and Gi, who will show himself to be a true dumbass here shortly, even he saw it coming. And he chose to stay in their camp, close to their supply of water. So, Saladin then attacked the town of Tiberias, which also happened to be the city where Raymond's entire family was taking shelter. Though, I don't think that Saladin actually knew that. Guy thought they should immediately sally forth out of Sephoria and relieve the city, which is obviously Saladin's knew that. Guy thought they should immediately sally forth at a Sephora and relieve the city, which is obviously Saladin's whole plan. He's again, attempting to lure them out.

Everybody agreed with him other than Raymond. And Raymond knew that his family was certain to fucking die if the city was to fall. So he squared up with this king, said, nah, man, fuck my wife and kids. We should stay here. So they stayed in Sephoria. Now, Tiberius was a pretty easily defended city and impressive fortifications.

And in the best of times, it was expected to be able to hold off any attacker. And in this era, sieges were not uncommon to go beyond a year, right? It wasn't going to fall overnight. But Saladin's forces mined through the walls and soon the city was falling quite rapidly. There was an attempt by the city like, hey, we'll give you a whole bunch of gold if you fuck off, but it didn't work. Now, at this point, everybody in the Crusader Command wanted to rally out and relieve the city, deciding they had no choice that Tiberius must be saved,

everyone other than Raymond. So Reynald and Gerard reminded Guy, it's awfully suspicious, that Raymond, who was just friends with Saladin, doesn't want to go out and fight him. That must be why. It can't be any tactical purpose like, hey, if we leave Sephoria,

we don't have fucking water. No, no, no, he's a a traitor then a letter was carried by a messenger from raymond's wife from siberius begging for any kind of help that gee could muster raymond was like no fuck that leave the city to its fate i assume he really didn't like his wife um which I still find very, very funny. Raymond correctly pointed out that this is all a distraction. He's trying to pull the army towards Tiberias, which is nothing but open desert, which they all knew. These areas are not strange to these crusaders. This is their backyard.

Once again, proving that the crusaders are spiritually British, spending but like you know once again proving that the crusaders are spiritually british spending your time fucking up a foreign country and hating your wife is the most british thing you can do now at this point raymond was completely ignored because the call to save the lady of tiberias you know raymond's wife um became a crusader rallying cry. Guy issued marching orders, falling directly into Saladin's trap. The crusader army command was split into three columns, the king in the center, the Templars in the rear, and Raymond in the front. So, mind you, this is in July, in the middle of the fucking desert. These armor-wearing idiots are now going to march through the middle of the desert.

They're bringing no water with them. They have no kind of supply train to speak of. Nothing. And they set out from Sephoria towards their only source of water between Sephoria and Tiberias. This small area called Turan. No, not that one. Which is about a third of the distance towards Tiberias.

The second that Saladin's scouts are like, hey, they're leaving Sephoria, he immediately broke off the siege at Tiberias and led his forces directly towards the Crusader army. Then the Crusaders reached Turan and just kept marching. They didn't stop to get water. They just kept walking off into the desert sun. And again, this is not an area they were unfamiliar with. This is a ride that people made all the time.

Traders made it, soldiers made it, knights made it. They constantly went to Tiberias and people from Tiberias constantly went to Jerusalem. They knew there was no other source of water. There wasn't even shade during the rest of their march that they were going to make towards Tiberias, which remember, at this point, they still think at the end of this, we have to fight Saladin.

And now... They're going to fight on faith alone. Faith is going to inspire them. It's going to give them all the electrolytes they need. Yeah. God gives you what you need. Electrolytes and salt. This is just me, like, running a pure, like, faith-building Elden Ring and just getting shocked at why I keep getting absolutely bodied at every boss. Now, in the heat of the day, the temperatures are easily, are easily between 100 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

And these guys were just getting their brains melted by the sun. Remember, there's nights they're wearing mail. Everybody's wearing, at minimum, chain mail, baking in the sun. Their clothes are probably wool. There's no way to protect themselves in any way. Come on, guys. At least get some linen pants or something you know something breathable like you know this is like going to spain and wearing polyester all the time and then saladine's troop showed up horse archers appeared on their front and their flanks immediately raining arrows down onto the crusaders now the

crusaders army immediately rushed out to attack them but the lightly armored and armed horse archers were much faster they could just pull back uh and then when the crusader cavalry got tired they would just shoot at them again each time the knights would charge out they would tire their horses out more and they were more burned out by the sun slowly sapped by dehydration with no water in the supplies to speak of, and not to mention all the arrows being fired into their bodies, which was also a problem. This went on for hours. The attacks began in the morning, and by mid-afternoon, the crusader forces were beginning to be stretched out, as this was the

point. Remember the three columns? And Saladin had troops on purpose work their way in between each separate column so they couldn't link up. Harassed by arrows and spears for hours, units would charge out on their own without orders, just frustrated and mad about this, only to be shot to hell and left in the dust. Saladin, seeing an opening, launched an attack on the crusader's rear guard, commanded by the Templars. This was a tried and true Saladin, seeing an opening, launched an attack on the crusader's rear guard, commanded by the Templars. This was a tried and true Saladin tactic and also clear as day. This tactic placed the Saladin's army directly behind the crusader army. Now, if the crusaders want to break off their advance going to Tiberias and go back to Turan or Sephoria for water, they couldn't. At 9am on the first day of battle, the crusaders' fate was sealed. They were doomed. They just didn't know yet. Their columns continued

to be strung along, shot with arrows, impaled with spears, and dropping from heat and thirst. A little afternoon, a messenger told the king that the rear guard Templars were about to be overrun. At this point, Guy had no idea what to do. Instead of acting, doing anything, he sent a messenger to the head of the column, to Raymond, asking, what should I do? Now, if there was ever a time to listen to Raymond, it would have been back at Sephoria and to never leave the camp. And now, Raymond was out of good advice. The advicehoria and to never leave the camp. And now Raymond was out of good advice. The advice he gave was to stop the army's march and set up a camp with the hopes that the army would come back together. And in the morning, they can make another push towards

Tiberius. Now, this is very clearly a dumb idea. You're being harassed, surrounded, and you just let's just stop in the middle of it i i am very impressed at the crusaders ability to create dry dunkirk but they've done it somehow and and even though raymond had the best advice of anyone yesterday not leaving which was ignored gee decided to listen to him now with his very bad advice, so stopped the army he did, making a camp in a completely bone-dry stretch of desert near a town named Moskana. At this point, the army was in pretty much dire straits. Most of the non-noble soldiers, i.e. all the guys who had gotten drafted for this shit, had deserted entirely or just dropped their weapons in the sand, refusing to fight. Because at the time, Saladin was known for taking mercy on those who surrendered.

So if the soldiers ran up and you're just an unarmed guy, like, all right, go on your way, sir. So they're like, my best option here is to not fight. You guys keep doing that night shit. I'll be back here. Might convert to Islam. I don't know. As the crusaders settled into their camp for the night, the attacks by Saladin's forces stopped. Attacking at night is quite uncommon back then, but they did start trolling them.

Saladin's soldiers surrounded the camp so closely that, quote, a cat could have not escaped, according to an Arab scholar. The crusaders were, quote, despondent, tormented by thirst, while Saladin's men were celebrated. Throughout the night, the Muslims began

to loudly pray, sing, beat drums, and chant to keep the crusaders awake. Once again, based as hell. Getting hit with that tactical drum and bass. Just playing, like, Dutch happy hardcore to keep you awake all night as a psyop.

All you hear is, y'all's hacking. Saladin doing a hack like in the dust. To punish you, I am so sorry. We have brought Berlin's finest DJ. I was going to say, they're doing Saracen Gabber.

They just like bring out the Saracen version of Scooter. Hardcore, what the floor. Just like playing the Logic song over and over again. It's all that time where you show up to a club, but you're not drunk or high. You're like, wow, this is how bad the music is, huh? Saladin has caravan bring up gallons of water and tens of thousands

of arrows for the next day the next morning's battle which everybody knew was coming he also had his men stack dry brush upwind of the crusader camp which they then set on fire this caused black smoke to waft into the camp

and not only is this annoying it dried their throats out even more. Mind you, these guys have been marching through the desert for a day and a half at this point without water, and now they're choking on smoke. It also covered the movements of Saladin's forces. As his army began to rain arrows down on the crusaders,

other parts of the army moved in. Again, not sure of what to do, Guy asked everybody else for help. Reynald and Gerard said they had no choice but to break out of the camp using their mounted knights and leave the infantry behind to die. Guy decided, you know what? That sounds great. Let's do that. He ordered his brother, who was the constable of the kingdom, to get together enough men to carry out this charge, which Raymond would then lead.

There is something of a history here, like a charge by armored crusader knights was a terrifying thing, and it had broken more than one Muslim army over the years, but they had learned. Saladin was ready for this attack this time, and he developed a revolutionary new tactic to handle it, stepping out of the way. I'm not even kidding. It's like, you know, putting your hand on someone's head that's trying to hit you and they're not tall enough to actually take a swing. Saladin

did a tactical high five too slow. As Raymond's force of armored knights thundered forward, the Muslim line simply opened and let it pass straight through. Incredible. raymond and the knights pause on the other side of the line unsure of just what the fuck had just happened like did

they just move out of the way um nobody is exactly sure as to what happens next either the muslims attack them from behind and wipe them out or the knights seeing they have broken through the line and out of the encirclement like let's just go home and they ride off leaving everybody else to die either of these situations raymond survived the battle uh though he died a couple months later um whatever had happened the mounted knights were gone and regardless of whatever happened they are now up shits creek without a paddle and uh you know i would like to believe that's if they just rode off into the sunset throwing a middle finger up to their own king now the king was left still in the trap under a hail of arrows with no amount of knights to speak of the army attempted to fight

out of that camp now changing their destination to a spring at the Horns of Hatton, which is like an extinct volcano area. But it was just completely out of the way, and it was not part of the original thing. They're under attack the entire way, eventually hiding out in old Bronze Age ruin that had still had a wall around it. Their backs are against the wall.

They try to break out a couple more times but each time they tried they failed uh and again in order to rally his men gi ordered the royal tent to be popped up which is like bright red and it placed the true cross within it declaring as long as this tent stands so shall we well unfortunately for him i think saladine immediately knew that like i gotta fuck that tent up it seems important uh they probably knew that they were all going to die at this point um and i assume the few people who didn't ride out with raymond really wish would have. Now, a Muslim historian notes, quote, no matter how hard they fought, they are repulsed. No matter how often they rallied, each time they were encircled. Not even an ant crawled out from among them, nor could they defend themselves against the onslaught.

They retreated to Mount Hatton to escape the storm of destruction. But in Hatton itself, they found themselves encompassed by fatal thunderbolts. Arrowheads transfixed them. The peaks laid them low. Bows pinned them down. Fate tore at them. Calamity chewed them up, and disaster tainted them.

And goddamn, can I just say historians used to write way better? Back when history was cool. It does, yeah, I was gonna say, it definitely, well, kind of captures the minute by minute detail of it as far as just being rent asunder which is always i mean it sucks to experience but is that always very very funny if you're just an observer of it yeah this reads more like a

diss track than a history track which is why i like it so much like i i really hate when people think the historians need to stay like i don't know central and completely flavorless and objective like it's fucking boring man it's always it's always extremely funny if you've ever had the chance to read any like contemporary literature of the day when they describe this stuff because it basically feels like you're you're they're describing a 14th century video game like it's just you know one single night cleaving 100 saracens in twain holding a sword that like is bigger than cloud stripes buster sword in final fantasy 7 just like the most absurd and it's obviously it's made up obviously it's basically propaganda it's just storytelling but it is there is this like i i remember having to read uh the

capture of orange for a medieval french literature class, and it's just exactly this. It's just like, you know, your badass crusader hero capturing the Saracen queen who's white and Christian for some reason. It's ridiculous. It's always ridiculous. And so this is an actual event, and hearing it described this way, I'm just like, yep,

Cloven and Twain, rent asunder. Just split down the middle. Incredible stuff. Tainted by disaster. Now, however hopeless the situation, though, is, like, the Crusaders did have some fight in them, and they got really close to actually killing Saladin himself. It was led by a noble named Balian, and they got, like, within sword's distance of Saladin before their charge was broken by Saladin's bodyguards. So, yeah, they almost managed to scrape a dub out of the situation.

However, after this, the Crusaders just didn't have much left to give. Fighting on for two days without water in the desert heat, they fell apart. By the time Saladin's forces broke their line, they literally just walked in. Like, knights and soldiers from Gi's army that weren't dead or wounded were pretty much just laying on the ground, unconscious and dying from heat exhaustion and heat stroke. They didn't even try to defend themselves. After the battle, both Guy and Reynald were captured and brought to Saladin, who offered them water. Guy took the water and Reynald refused. Saladin told him, quote,

drink for you will never drink again. And Reynald responded, if it pleased God, I would never drink anything offered by Saladin. And then he told Saladin, if the battle had gone the other way, I'd behead you. Now, this story also has another way, because remember, Saladin fucking hates Reynald. Saladin offered Guy water, which he then took and then handed to Reynald. But Saladin got pissed because he hated Reynald, slapped the cup of water out of his hand and screamed, quote, I did not ask for this evil man to drink and he did not save his life by doing so. Meaning he, of course, planned to murder him. And he did. He made good of his plan of murdering Reynald with his bare hands, impaling him with a sword, cutting off his head,

then sending his head to Damascus, where he was dragged through the streets as punishment for being a fucking prick. Guy was sure he was next in line to die as king of Jerusalem, but Saladin told him to calm down. Quote, kings do not kill kings. Now, unfortunately for the Templars, he was not so merciful because they're the Templars. was not so merciful Because they're the Templars They don't deserve mercy, really

Again, they're highway bandits who prey upon Muslims Now, of course, because Saladin pretty much always did this Assuming you're not Reynald He offered to save their lives if they converted to Islam Which Saladin also knew as a Knights Templar They would absolutely never do At which point, when they all rejected it, which Saladin also knew as Knights Templar they would absolutely never do. At which point, when they all rejected it, they were beheaded. Commoners were sold into

slavery, and nobles were ransomed off for large sums of money, which was all very normal for the era. Guy was held prisoner for a year before being released, and within a few months, the Crusader states had all fallen, at least for now. And it took Jerusalem nearly a year

under siege before it finally fell to Saladin. Then, in 1189, fresh out of prison, Guy launched an assault against Saladin, sparking the third fucking crusade, and probably making Saladin really wish he would have killed that guy when he had the chance. The end.

Oh, gods. These guys just need to to like realize when they're ahead and not just like get handed like l plus ratio plus if i can say that in arabic correctly like it's like really quit while you're ahead like this man has spared your life and you're like nah fuck that guy and you're just gonna get like absolutely bodied once again l plus ratio i thought i taught you this lesson old man yeah exactly l plus ratio plus no salah you simply are unable to fucking handle it now boys fellas gentlemen we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. And this one is actually quite interesting.

We all are, we're all three of us are immigrants from our home country. We migrate away from our country of birth. What is something minor that you notice that is different from where you're from? Not something like huge and annoys you to no end, but like something minor that's like, huh, well, that certainly doesn't happen where I'm from. Like, what are one of those things? The sausages in the uk silk isn't that supposed to be like their thing though i mean i don't think they're bad but they're they're not as good as other european sausages for sure but i think like as far as your general like for what they are and

for what the british english whatever fucking flavor palette is i feel like they're pretty high quality they're just not interesting no it's it's because they're like boring sausage it's like 60 pork 40 like sawdust like we 10 horse meat i'm not to be like a weird like irish nationalist about it but like there is an irish butcher around the corner from our house and like sausages are really good in ireland and they do like a irish recipe sausages and chipolatas i don't Ireland and they do like Irish recipe sausages and chipolatas I don't understand why they have to call a small sausage a chipolata but whatever and they have like Irish recipe ones and it's just like 100% pork or like 99% pork and some seasoning and it's just way better and I will like mud wrestle in the desert with someone who

will argue that like Britishish sausages are actually nice because they're just like watery pork with like loads of seasoning in it and it's like there's no actual like meat flavor to it yeah i would say um i don't know if you ever had merguez but they're uh the they're a kind of like uh halal sausage from north africa they're really common in france and like for me obviously like the quality of sausage, in my opinion, you can get in a grocery store here is better than you can in America. But when you're in France, basically, it's up a notch from Britain. And so I can understand why, if that's what it's like between Ireland and here, why Irish immigrants here would be like, what the fuck? Similarly,

I think European immigrants who live in or continental European immigrants who live in the UK are probably dismayed by what their options are because it's not as good. But for me, I think European immigrants who live in or continental European immigrants who live in the UK are probably dismayed by what their options are because it's not as good. But for me, I think, as regards your point, Tom, the general quality of stuff, even cheaper stuff in the UK is still better than in America at the same price point. In the sense that if you go to Whole Foods, you get bougie stuff in America. If you go to Fresh Market, you get bougie stuff and it's pretty high go to Fresh Market, you get bougie stuff. And it's pretty high quality, but it's not super great. It's just better than your standard. But cheap groceries in America are pretty dog shit quality. Whereas here, it hasn't gotten quite to American food safety and food preparation standards yet.

It'll eventually get there because the Brits love doing post-Soviet restructuring on themselves. restructuring on themselves. But I would say in general, I think I'm not as dismayed by it because I find that the quality of ingredients you get here in general is better than America. Just like your garden variety, you go to a Tesco Express, you go to a Sainsbury's local, you go to Morrison's, a Lidl, an Aldi, by and large, what you're getting will be better. And if you have money and you go to Marks and Spencer, it's really good. And also groceries in Britain are cheaper in general than America by a significant margin. My difference, my big thing as an immigrant, yeah, I mean, at this point, I'm not ever planning on moving back to America. So there you have it.

I think one for me that sticks out is moving from what is comparatively a much poorer part of the world than the United States. What is comparatively a much poorer part of the world than the United States? People here dress significantly better. The normal Armenian will dress significantly nicer than a normal American, which is baffling to me because the average person here makes significantly less money. Which really shocked me. Not because, oh, how do poor people afford things, but because I dress like shit fuck i stick out really badly so like i've had to purchase like a whole new goddamn wardrobe uh it went from the the single best dressed american to the worst dressed armenian yeah by

far um like even like an old man walking down the street is dressed better than i dress like when i dress up before I moved. I've noticed this being, for example, in Switzerland, obviously a very wealthy country, but in general, people just the fits are better wherever you go. I think Brits dress better than Americans in general, which is not a huge thing. It's just more that like you don't get the wild, ridiculous extremes of some of just extremely like, you know, 40-year-old guy who is dressed basically like an oversized

six-year-old. You don't really have that as much. My big difference is Brits keep their houses colder in winter. And as a result, like, there seems to be this kind of competition about, you know, I don't turn my heating on, which is baffling to me as an American. It's a small thing, but it's baffling.

So that's my difference. I also do that here. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me again. You can use this area to plug your shows that other people should listen to and enjoy. Listen to my show, Beneath the Skin, which is a history show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing.

And 33rd County would mean shocks about what it means to be Irish and Irish American. I show Beneath the Skin, which is a history show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. And 33rd County would mean shocks about what it means to be Irish and Irish American. Yep. And everyone knows about What a Hell of a Way to Die and Kill James Bond and Trash Future, which are shows that I am either producer or host of. So please listen to those. Again, everybody, thank you so much for listening. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon.

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