Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 365 - The War of the Oaken Bucket

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys COME SEE US IN LONDON JUNE 22ND: https://bigbellycomedy.club/event/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-big-fat-festival-southbank/ In which the casus belli of two 14th-century Italian city states going to war was, in popular consciousness at least, the theft of a town's wooden bucket. Some Germans get involved as well. Sources used: https://allthatsinteresting.com/war-of-the-bucket https://www.historynet.com/what-we-learned-from-the-battle-of-zappolino-1325/ https://militaryhistorynow.com/2020/10/18/beyond-the-pail-the-unbelievable-war-for-the-oaken-bucket-2/ https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/bloodiest-medieval-war-fought-bucket.html http://www.zappolino.it/battaglia.htm

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one full week early. Access to all of our side series that are currently ongoing and our back catalog of those as well. Gets you ebooks, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available. And also gets you access to our Discord, which has turned into a lovely little community. So go to patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys and join the Legion of the Old Crow today. Hello and welcome to the Lines Led by Dunkys podcast, it is I Joe and with me is Tom and Nate. We've unfortunately become Italian. We're sneaking through the countryside of Bologna circa the 1300s, wearing our finest Italian combat uniforms. Pure white denim, leather

loafers without socks, and a mesh white v-neck shirt so plunging our dick and balls are hanging at the top. As we sneak up on the enemy positions, we stub out our cigarettes perched ever so delicately at the end of our cigarette holders. We unsheath our traditional Italian weapon. A single spaghetti noodle, sharpened to a fine edge. As we fall upon our enemy, we let out our battle cry. Ayy, oh, what's up, ayy, oh, laugh and groove, stanza ziti, ayy. How you doing, guys? I'm doing very good. I was thinking about traditional Italian weapons

and it's like every Fiat made between the years 1945 and 1975 is basically an SV bid by the Italian engineering. It's a really, really long pork cutlet night used as a halberd. I mean, I don't, I don't actually know that many Italian stereotypes, but I am going to have to go to Italy. So I'm going to have a lot of Italian experience shortly. And I'm excited because I've only been there once when I was seven for a day, because my dad wanted to save money by flying space available on military aircraft. And it costs us to get routed to every shitty military airport in Europe instead of where

we wanted to go I think I've pointed this out before on the shows every Italian Stereotype that I bring up is specifically about Italian Americans has nothing to do with Italians that live in Italy. Well, yeah And many Italians who actually listen to the show like those are just Italian Americans like look I know but they're funny They're so funny, but every Italian from Italy that I've met has made me think that the stereotypes aren't mean enough. I've had people tell me that I should heat up olive oil and rub it all over my baby so that she can breathe better.

I've had people tell me that it's actually bad for my baby's health if she eats mangoes because they're not fruit that can be cultivated in Europe. And it's really important that it be based in local agriculture. I've had a Chinese tell me that Chinese tourists are bringing viruses to Europe because they're digging up ancient tombs with secret viruses in them and shit. Like, they're in tomb. Yeah. Yes. They're fucking Chinese covert archaeologists are trying to make covid too.

I love the idea of like, we've uncovered a ghost virus. Brother, I'm telling you like, and that's all from like, not Italian America, it's not like, you know, Guido di Fucoli from Staten Island. This is like people from Italy with Italian passports and grew up in Italy. But only Italians would be like, oh, you know, that 2020 COVID-19 pandemic originated in Italy. I mean, I went to a really great Italian restaurant with an Italian friend of mine whose parents are immigrants to Italy. And she was like, this is randomly the best Italian restaurant

I've been to like in a really long time in the middle of Switzerland. And we bought wine and the it's the guy running it. She knew him. They'd become friends and he brought out this bottle of wine. It was called like quid, like Q U I D like, like in Latin, but it smelled like the Roman style, like Q V I D. And he's like, it's not that the Chinese are COVID, it's an Italian COVID. Oh my God. Every stereotype is real. Well, thankfully cause today's episode is going to bring us to Italy. We've been doing the show a long time. And when I ask you the question, what's a really stupid reason to go to war, it could very easily be answered by failing

a civil service exam. And by no means am I saying that that answer is incorrect. But what if I told you that once upon a time two Italian city states went to war over a bucket? I would not be shocked at all. Not in the slightest. No, not in the slightest. Joe, I have seen two Italians that I knew in Ireland sustain a beef for six years and forget what it was about, about the three year point and still go on for another three years. Yeah. You have no choice but to double down. It's like, uh, you know, uh, all the places that have like blood feuds. It's like, you know, all the places that have like blood feuds. It's like, you don't even remember what the original argument was about at this point.

The hate is self perpetuating. Everything comes back to the Balkans. I do have to point out from the top here, before people get mad at me, there's more to this battle, this war, than a bucket, and in fact the bucket is not important, but we'll talk about that when we get to the end. But before we get to the towns of Modena and Bologna punching each other full of speed holes over the world's finest spaghetti bucket,

there's a lot of history at play here, specifically when it comes to the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. This kind of goes without saying, but until 1871, Italy was not really Italy. Was not unified. Cities, regions, kingdoms, the pope, empires, duchies, all that shit existed simultaneously

all within the saucy boot of Italy. They're all constantly at each other's throats. Some of them spoke dialects of Italian that were so different from the others, they'd hardly be considered the same language, they had their own cultures. There was nothing unifying going on here other than the Catholic Church and of course doing that thing with their hand, I assume. You gotta recognize that like Italy's terrain is like so vastly different depending on where you are in the

country and like the further north you are, the closer they are to like what you would consider like Germanic and culture. Whereas like the further south you go, it's like, oh no, these are mountain people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's a large, very diverse region. All of them doing that thing with their hand. I don't know what you call it. The A. All the medieval Stanley 2 cheese just being like, it's on my mom's meatballs. But because the story takes us back to the 1300s and in reality, even before that, everyone that we're talking about, even though they're all technically believers and members of the same church, doesn't mean anything. The War of the Bucket, or sometimes as the War of the Oaken Bucket, really has its roots about

200 years before the war starts. The cause of which probably doesn't surprise you. The Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor having beef. At the time, Pope Gregory VII and King turned Emperor Henry IV sparked something of a large scale argument over what amounted to be, to make a very long story short here, ye olde separation of church and state. And by that I mean the separation over church matters. This was called the investiture controversy, and it was when the Pope and the Emperor argued over who would get to appoint Official clergy from the lowest bishops to the position of Pope itself

The Holy Roman Emperor argued that they should be able to appoint everybody and of course the Catholic Church disagreed with that it itself has roots in what's known as the Church System, or the system which European nobility would give a ton of hypothetically secular governing power to clergymen of the church rather than other nobles or laypeople. The reason for this is very, very simple. Clergymen were supposed to be celibate, meaning they wouldn't have children, meaning there would be no competing heirs born from these clergymen in these high governing positions to challenge a ruling family of a given place. If a place is ruled over by a celibate clergyman and then they die, a new one would just be selected by the local king and it would be a guy he likes and there would be

no kind of competing dynasty. It's kind of a great system. I could just see Rodrigo Borgia rubbing his hands like the Birdman meme. Hahaha! Hahaha! I mean, obviously, you can see how the system really only works if that specific ruler is also allowed to select who the clergymen were. Yeah. Because once they have that position,

which of course they would sell to people who would be loyal to them, they want people that's loyal to them as the ruler rather than people who are loyal to the church or the pope or any Christian faith at all. It's a process that they ironically defended as their divine right. I mean, look, there's a lot of things that wind up being divine rights that in retrospect You're like it It kind of sounds like you guys have a direct line to God for specifically exactly the things that you want They don't let you do exactly what you want It's sort of like granting a four-year-old a direct line to God as regards whether or not he can eat dessert first

This divine right of children to shit in their pants. Yeah. Look, they do that even if there was an injunction against it. I'm sorry. I'm excommunicating this baby. It is not covered in warm olive oil. It's like ablutions, basically. Italian ablutions.

You saute them in olive oil a little bit to, like, you know, get them back in God's good grace after they've shit themselves. Yeah, everybody knows, like a good way to, to raise your children is give them that good pan seer. Yeah. Well, people didn't realize that one of Martin Luther's teases was they must not shit their up by pans. Yeah. I mean, wasn't he like, didn't he do combat with demons in his mind and throw his shit around the room? Like I think he probably would have left that one. Yeah. I don't's this who's this say he didn't win that is true that is true yeah I do like the idea that in the in the 16th century they they didn't have tumblr so you just

had to do whatever the fuck he did you couldn't do the tactical pocket sign so you just have the tactical pan shit sometimes you end up getting go in a Protestant kumite with demons in your. There's nothing you can do when that happens. I'm fighting demons in the mind dojo, put it a Protestant way. I mean that's basically the plot of the matrix. Now like the emperor also argued that well if I'm picking all these bishops and cardinals and whatever I should also get to pick the pope. After all, I am the Holy Roman Emperor. Now eventually, of course, this does happen with the emperor picking a pope who, effectively, paid him the most money to be pope. This led to a blow up as segments of the Catholic clergy fought back

against this practice. Not because of any religious objection to it, not because if you're a true believer, of course, of this faith, this is just all heresy all the way down, but rather because some other asshole is going to benefit from the church's corruption and not them. So this goes on for decades and eventually the admittedly awesomely named Concordant of Worms is signed between the Pope and the Emperor in 1122, so named because it was signed in the lovely town of Worms, Germany, which I know is pronounced like Voms. Voms, yes, Voms. But that is way less fun.

There is, I think, another town called Worms of democracy, but it's not this one. It's Worms in English, but it's Voms in German. Yeah. Concordant of Worms sounds like a metal band that would have Their name written in a font that you absolutely cannot read. Oh, no, I mean that yeah. Yeah 100% This sounds like a band where you're gonna get hearing loss by seeing them live Yes, how many doom metal bands have I been like this is so cool for 10 minutes then at minute 11 I'm like I am leaving and I'm going really far away I'm gonna live in a cave for a year or I will never hear a sound again

It's one of those metal bands that like weirdly only tours in the Baltics because they know they can not have to wear long Sleeve shirts to cover up certain tattoos there. They are under no circumstances allowed to perform in Germany Yes, specifically the town of verbs Yes, specifically the town of Verbs. The Concordant largely put the power of selection back in the hands of the Pope, but with the Emperor allowed to play some role in the process. Then Henry died three years later. Henry is from what is known as the Silean dynasty, and so is virtually every other German

king and Holy Roman Emperor, going back several generations. However, the next man in line for the Silean dynasty was hit with a one-two punch of being an absolutely massive asshole to the point that its traditional allies really didn't want to back him in the vote to become Emperor and King, and losing at weird backdoor imperial politics to the day to the Supplenberg family, the main political opponent of the Slaans. With that, Lothar III of the Supplenbergs was selected as King of Germany and Holy Roman Emperor. What a fucking name. Yeah, Jesus Christ, yeah.

That is a guy who runs a private bank, headquartered in Liechtenstein. Lothar Supplenberg. Or Luxembourg for that matter. Or Monaco's a solid bet. True. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's the, there's so many, you can, you forget about these little European micro states all the time. You know, it's like, but I'm just, that is a great name, man. That is, that is like, I feel as though that guy has to do something fucked up and perverted because he was denied his divine right and true mission of carrying his

vihander everywhere he went. Like he was supposed to be a landis connect and because he can't, he has to be like a banker who uh let's not talk about what he's got. Let's not talk about the kind of nudes he's sending. He probably has like a dueling scar that he gave himself in the mirror with a wildly overpriced straight razor. So what you're basically saying is is that this guy, if you give him combat and chivalry and knightly orders he can become this person and if you don't he becomes Jeremy Fragrance. Now this immediately leads to conflict between him and the Hohenstaufen house who were the slain loyalists and it was their idiot kid

who was next in line for the throne. This leads to a war, this war spirals wildly out of control between the two sides until eventually the Hohenstaufen's elected an anti-king, Conrad III, who had a fair amount of support in Italy. And to make a very long story short, at which I know I'm bad at, Lothar fears losing and runs to the Pope for support and then gives up all of the rights that the Holy Roman Emperor was given in the Concord of Worms, meaning that now we have like a pro-Catholic church supremacy side of the Holy Roman Empire

and then an anti with the Hohenstofen wanting to take full rights back from the church and Lothar giving them to the pope to secure his throne. The schism blows up throughout Europe in different regions, houses and cities, and this includes northern Italy where the, for the lack of a better term, because they're both on the side of the Catholic church, but one is more pro-church to the other. I'm just going to call one Papus and the other one Imperial. Nate, I can't get over the idea of like, if Jeremy Fragrance had have been around at this time,

he would have ended up as Pope. Yeah, like this is- Fragrance Pope. You're basically doing like cloud Atlas shit, but for Jeremy Fragrance throughout all of European history. There has a, he's like the Highlander. There's always a Jeremy fragrance has existed. I hate this so much.

The number one fragrance influencer for falls follows the teachings of Christ. The fragrance that's going to meet all of his criteria, you know, and achieve like superlative scores is the secret perfume they put on you when they make you Pope. And so like in order to achieve that he's been having having to reinvent, you know, reincarnate throughout all of European history, trying to get there. I don't know what the oil they put on you when you become Pope is,

because the office of the papacy refuses to come on the show, unfortunately. I do know when I was baptized into the Armenian church, they covered me in oil that smelled like salted meat. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Gotta get the brining juice out. Yeah. It smelled like boss. Jerma man.

We may have a better chance now because like think about, think about Robert Prevost is at the end of the day, Pope Leo is at the end of the day, a dude from Chicago. Yeah. He's the only Pope that has a very good chance to have once tasted fake hope. Yeah. We could be like your holiness. We want you to come on to talk about disco demolition night at Comiskey park in 1979. And he might actually say yes.

Your holiness. I have one thing to ask you. Are you down with the clown? Yeah, but I can't believe we have, we now have a pope who was more than likely heard chief Keefe. Like, I mean, in fairness, he spent his almost entire career in Peru. So, Hey, let us believe that's what the church is all about. Even Jesus Christ loves. So, so much like these bitches love. So, so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. In Northern Italy, you have the split between the Papus, which are the known as the Guelphs and the imperialists, which are known the gibble leads. Modena was gibbeline and Bologna was wealth. As the war raged on between the Papal forces and the imperial forces, it did in Northern

Italy as well, being a smaller part of a much larger conflict that also meant that this entire thing in Italy turned into more of a settling of local beefs kind of thing than anything to do with popes or emperors. It's very important also just to recall that, yeah, this, the idea of having total autonomy as a city state to be like us, the citizens of Modena, famous for our balsamic vinegar, are going to war with the citizens of Bologna,

famous for their preserved meats. We're gonna make the world's most fucked up salad. Yeah, exactly. It's, and it's just like on a long enough timeline, this is going to get so annoying that the city state of Milan is going to put all of them between two very hot pieces of metal and flatten them out. Operation Panini is a go. This went on for years, even through different kings and emperors and popes.

And eventually Otto of Brunswick was selected as emperor who was pro-pope and he was thought to be able to bring the conflict to an end but then just as he was about to do it he did an anti-papist heel turn got excommunicated and then boom Frederick the second is now emperor. Frederick hated Otto and the pope and the pope excommunicated him too but unlike other people he didn't let that slow him down. Meanwhile, in Northern Italy, the Guelph-led Lombard lead had formed. So Frederick invaded in 1237 and crushed them, and was excommunicated yet again. He continued his advance, and this led to a very funny incident where the Pope called

for a council of church leaders to come up with a better plan for the war, only for Frederick to hear about it through spies, and then sent a fleet to intercept them. So they got in a running sea battle with a fleet of archbishops and cardinals, killing thousands of people, but successfully kidnapping dozens of high ranking church officials. But not the pope, that would have been, we would have had a pope napping. Still the war went on and on, with different popes dying and coming to power, negotiations with Frederick failing and Frederick once again attacking in the direction of Rome. The only thing that finally brought it all to an end was Frederick dying in 1250. But

with that the political factions between the two parties were not going away at this point and the war between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope is over but the Italians in northern Italy were still split along those lines, and they continued to fight and kill one another between those factions for seemingly no reason at all. And the lines between these parties, the Gloves and the Ghiblins, were never really firm. The most famous Italian families in cities like the Grimaldi or the Spinola or the names that you've probably heard of, you know, switch sides pretty frequently over the years, but the sides remained nonetheless, and they were just used as an excuse to settle local and regional power beefs between Italian city-states.

And while I keep making this seem like really really petty, like local stuff, which sometimes it was, but other times it absolutely wasn't. Between the two sides, they were empowered by people they claimed to support. They would go on full military campaigns against other city states in regions and take them over. Then the emperor or the pope, whichever side happened to be doing the conquering, whether it be the Guelphs or the Ghiblians, would then be turned to their pope or their emperor and be like, look what I've taken over, acknowledge my conquest in the name of the church. And then they would. And then the pope would call a mini crusade against people or cities that had turned against them.

And then they would offer the Guelphs indulgences and rewards for taking certain cities that would become pro-imperial or had attacked a Guelph place. So there's a lot of very small scale stuff happening, but then you got full on papal crusades happening between Italian city states. My brain is stuttering and falling apart trying to perceive this because there's a Guelph in Canada and then there's Bologna, the sandwich meat, and there's Modena, the fucking balsamic vinegar. And all this stuff is just getting thrown around and just sort of like, I'm trying to perceive it as a North American can perceive.

Warring city states fighting, heel to her neck's communications, WWE shit. Like just all of this, I think the total lack of coherence or like the fact that like you've got decisions being made by individual actors at a very low level that like normally you can like like I don't know Lincoln Park Chicago can't just decide to go to war with you. I don't know fucking Buffalo Grove Chicago suburbs You know what I mean? I mean there was that time that Michigan invaded, Ohio And there was yeah, you know by a 23 year old governor I love the idea of like the Louisville suburbs decide to go to war with Santa Claus, Indiana Like that's this is the look like that's the distances we're talking about here

But like obviously those are not city states are entirely different entities I gotta say you fucked me up in the beginning cuz when you said Lincoln Park I thought you meant like the band Lincoln Park like what if Lincoln Park went to war against Metallica? And maybe that's how Chester actually died Yeah, it's because the guitarist who wears the big headphones went to war against the turntablers who in turn went to war against Mike Shinoda. Yeah don't go to war against Mike Shinoda, that man is unaging and undying. Fuck.

Oh god man. Now guys if that isn't confusing enough, at the end of all this the Guelphs ended being the dominant force in northern Italy leading to of course a fracture between the black and white Guelphs. So now the Guelphs, the pro papal faction split because Pope Boniface the eighth, to make a very long story short, was unpopular. He was very he was taking back a lot of power for the church which is what the Guelphs were supposed to want in the first place. But the Black Guelphs supported him because to them, of course, the pope

is infallible because of papal infallibility, et cetera, et cetera. Well, the whites decided that the pope had taken too much power and influence, which is ironic coming because that's the whole point of this faction in the first place. For example, Dante of Divine Comedy fame, he was a white Guelph. So like this faction is splitting even more and getting dumber as we go. God damn, where my white Guelphs at? The white Guelphs are just gibbelines at this point, but they refuse to say it. Man, these Matrix sequels keep getting more and more confusing. This fracture resulted in in-fighting, allowing the gibbelines to make a resurgent.

Now, by the 1300s, the two groups were so splintered, powerful, but also full of a kind of unexplainable, bitter hatred that both the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor of the day kind of openly hated both factions that claim to support them. Well, if you're the pope, you have two different factions. It's stupid. So that brings us to the time of our story where Modena controlled by gibbelines and Bologna controlled by the Guelphs. The two states had hated each other for decades at this point and Bologna had already invaded

and taken over land from Modena in 1296. Now weirdly enough, it was not the Guelphs who started this but rather the Ghiblians of Modena then led by the Marcus of Ferrera, Ozo the Eight. Side note here Dante in Inferno alleges that Ozo probably came to power because he murdered his own father. Yep this would explain why the other Modena nobles really really fucking hated him Maybe he didn't wear the frilliest collars and finest white denim pants Which is we all know was the norm amongst Italian nobles whatever the reason Nobody likes him so Azo kind of becomes like a full-throated

Gibbling so far is like he wants to go to war against the Guelphs to save face throated gibbeline so far as he wants to go to war against the Guelphs to save face, which he wasn't doing before this. And then he absolutely gets his teeth kicked in. I have to suggest something really dumb, and I've mentioned it before, but there's a terrible pan-European mini-series called Borgia, Faith and Fear with Northern Irish actor Mark Ryder playing Cesare Borgia and John Doman, the guy who played the police chief in The Wire, playing Rodrigo Borgia and John Domen, the guy who played the police chief in The Wire, playing Rodrigo Borgia. And you will actually, because it's just, there's like a trillion characters and they

bring in so many of people from Italian history from this time, it will actually make a little bit more sense of like, Ferrara and the Sorsaclan and all this stuff getting involved because it's so confusing. Also it's like the world's best costume design, world's worst writing, and every episode shows topless women. Like, it's just softcore porn. I strongly recommend it though. I hope that John Doman got a lot of tax free euros for being in that production.

But Mike, my God, I'm just saying it weirdly has helped me conceive of this when you start talking about it. I do have to say, I think that's the first softcore porn the show has ever given the recommendation for. Yeah. Yeah. We go for hardcore only. It's called G called Yuki Omishima. That T-Rex shit. Joe, I know you're joking about the skin tight white jeans, but from looking it up, Georgia Armani's family lived in Milan for like a thousand years. So there is likely a descendant of my jokes have layers, Tom. It's like there

was an Armani cloak maker involved in all this. The world's tightest cloak. It's like, you know, when you see guys from the gym who are like, obviously roided up and they're wearing like those super deep V neck t-shirts. Yeah, like our combat uniforms from the intro. Like the V so deep dick and balls are hanging out the top. Then as if all of this wasn't bad enough, he gets overthrown by a coalition of rebel cities after trying to include those cities as a part of a bride price to Charles II of Naples in a political marriage to his daughter. He was replaced by an imposter, you know, Benocolci. His entire house were

gibbelings, but more important than that is he was a direct agent of the Holy Roman Emperor, Louis IV. So he's effectively a spy. Bonocolci and his house were much more powerful than Azoa's. His family had already effectively become dictators of Mantua, and his house were much more powerful than Azzow was. His family had already effectively become dictators of Mantua and their house would eventually just be swallowed by an even more powerful house and both Italy and of course American college basketball Gonzaga. Ten people will appreciate that. Thank you. I laughed a little. I laughed a little. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah next thing, you know, he's gonna be taken away

There's gonna be a intervention by a French count by the last name of Marquette You know there might be a surprise last-minute fucking naval blockade held by villain to the count of Villanova Yeah, it's all yeah, we're gonna start we're just gonna name random fucking liberal arts colleges with good basketball teams Nobody ever sees that Connecticut state woman's team coming. Yeah, exactly. The Jesuits get involved when the fucking Loyola just shows up. It's getting... I do think that's how the last pope was selected is his supporters of the Jesuit college dunked on his opponents. Getting absolutely posterized to become pope. We just have to keep throwing all of these references to specifically greater

Chicagoland region, basketball and other sports. And we can just through the ether contact Pope Leo the 14th. That's his number. Right. He's the 14th isn't he? I'm not sure of how many Leos we're working with here off the top of my head. Yeah. Well I hope I didn't get it wrong. But yeah we're trying we're trying to contact him to bring him on so he can talk about I don't know. He can give us the papal and Roman Catholic hierarchical perspective on whether or not Richard Daly was a good or a bad mayor I need to know via papal bull if Napoleon's mausoleum was just full of

I just love the idea that off kilter at slightly transgressive history comedy podcast lions led by donkeys Manages to score doing like a like a mini series with this current Pope to watch every episode of the last dance. This could happen. Pope Leo, come on. Lions led by robots. Watch Ava with us. Yeah, we will watch the documentary about Michael Jordan and his really fucked up jeans that he wore in the early 2000s. And while all of this is going on,

Modena's men mostly civilians though, sometimes it's framed as like local gangsters. So you can, you know, sub in the like soprano style stereotypes here. Keep slipping over the Bolognese border. I'm trying really hard not to say Bolin. He's border to just slipping in my meat sauce. So One after another, they just keep slipping in. First they come dressed as celery and then onions and then carrots and then white wine and tomatoes. The harvest party's getting them all to stay

for a long period of time so they can be slow cooked. Yeah, I was gonna say, you've gotta keep things at a low simmer and it's very difficult in Northern Italy in the 1300s, if you have to simmer it for an extended period of time. Citing both stuff that I've randomly encountered from reading and then also the TV series Borgia to see it's to me that nobleman would also just have what they call Bravi, which is like guys with big sticks and knives.

I got some flat nose geezers with the Italian version of Italian geezers. They had like, I have 200 geezers and they're like the best way to conceive of them is something between mercenaries and like football hooligans, but they serve a feudal Lord or like, it's like that weird Italian game that still goes on now in some regional place I forget exactly where we're just like MMA and rugby had a baby. Oh yeah yeah it's just like dudes who do that now but back then did this it's like I got a small army of guys named Francesco they do nothing but fucking growth hormone and cocaine. That rugby MMA hybrid happens once a year and it's played between the four quarters of the city for no money, only the honor of the city.

And everybody's just getting grievously injured. It's super entertaining. Everybody involved is absolutely a Nazi. It's just one of those things, it's like the simultaneous existence of past and present in Italy that you can have a guy speaking pure Sicilian dialect, doing all of the hand gestures and all of the things that you associate with Italians like gold chains, open shirt, probably use cocaine a lot, but his parents are from Sri Lanka. And it's like, choose a change, a couple of variables. And that is no different than it's ever been in Italy ever. It's always been like this, except in the past, he would have been from Sri Lanka. He would have

been from Malta or something like that. You know what I mean? But like it was always like that. Or he's Albanian. The black eagle of Albania is doing the hand thing. The Italian hand gestures. The prime minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, who's absolutely getting called a WOG growing up in Australia because he's fucking Italian, and his last name means the Albanian. It's like, do you actually know Italy? Come on. I cannot not picture just a group of like the most growth hormone out freakos that this dude is like, someone to slip over the Bolognese border and start robbing people. Because like, what is being described in this isn't necessarily a military operation.

It's like if, I don't know, like the situation from Jersey Shore conducted a military operation, it's a whole bunch of dudes going over and just punching people, stabbing them, stealing things and setting barns on fire. Nobody's taking land. It's just a countryside wide rolling. Yeah. It's a raid basically, but it's not a raid in the tactical sense. It's just brigands just robbing people yeah you're getting run for your shoes italian style everybody's getting run for their fucking leather loafers that they're not wearing socks in by a small army of francesco's dressed as clowns i hate it when someone runs up to me with a stick with a knife with a fucking huge nail through it says run me those pantaloons. I hate to get robbed by a guy whipping around

in the medieval version of a BMW M3. It's just a really shiny horse. There was probably an Atreskin guy who was really suave in the club, did too much of the medicinal powder and couldn't get it up. I mean, come on. This is eternal in Italy, I'm telling you. As a result of all this going on, Pope John XXII declared Bonacolsi a rebel against the church and offered indulgences against anyone who would go to war against him and his city. Now there's a lot more to this conflict as well like the pope, the emperor, whoever, they don't give a shit about any of these cities or

their rulers. The emperor and the pope even as far as the history of these two positions went really really personally hated one another. Before becoming emperor, Louis was in conflict with Frederick I of Austria over the Holy Imperial Throne. The Pope supported Frederick, but during a vote for the position, Louis had won. So rather than accept the results, the Pope issued a papal bull, giving the Pope the right to administer the Empire rather than the Emperor completely fucking Louis over. So this obviously infuriates Louis, who then sends an army into northern Italy in 1322, while the pope declared a crusade against Milan, and I assume the finest cloaks. Pope John was an Avignon pope, so like, Louis eventually declared an anti-pope in Rome to

spite him. We could go down this pope hole all day, but what you should know in the purpose of this story is that this blow up between a small army of brigands running each other for loafers with sharpened sticks at Modena and Bologna, it's another Pope-Emperor proxy war effectively. I was just going to say as a side note that if you're familiar or you're interested in the works of Michelangelo Marisi da Caravaggio, it's actually useful because of the fact that in a kind of anachronistic way, he painted a lot of biblical scenes where people were wearing contemporary clothes of the time, very close to where this is being described. And so some of the biblical

scenes, but even some of the paintings like the card sharps, for example, that would give you an idea of how these people looked while they were doing these feats of brigandage and scheming vizier chat brackets, Italian things along those lines. Soon Bolenese soldiers conducted their own cross border raids. And again, these are just Italian geezers with like farm implements mostly. They're hitting Modenese farms, they're stealing, they're burning as they go. And I should point out here that the Bolenese are much, much more powerful on face value than the Modenese.

They have more men, they have more money, they have more everything really. They're just much bigger. So each time the Modenese hit back, the Bolognese would hit them even harder. And they would sometimes bring actual formations of soldiers as much as they had them because both of them have very small standing armies. A lot of these Italian city-states mostly relied on mercenaries to have a standing army. So it's not like they had, you know, call in the battalions or whatever. So most of these are just dudes who have weapons at home and what amounts

to be like local city watchmen. But civilians and regular people are the bulk of it and they get involved in the conflict and Now they're pissed that their farms are getting torched at which point They form their own mobs to raid across the border and burn their farms and a lot of these groups of civilians are Effectively led by like their local mayors. It all comes back though. This is just basically turning into Chicago again It's like sometimes it's Italy's emphasis it's eternal Italy, sometimes it's the Italy that's existed throughout, you know, since the big bang. Sometimes it's just randomly Chicago.

Like I'm struggling for an accurate metaphor or comparison to make here. It's very funny to think that these people are being led into combat more like gang warfare by the local city administrators. It's wonderful. I can't imagine ever being whipped up into a frenzy by like the local city administrators. It's wonderful. I can't imagine ever being whipped up into a frenzy by like the Detroit city council. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, man. We're going to go invade Pontiac. I mean, to fair Kwame would have done it. Yeah. I mean, I was trying to think about something. It's like getting led to go commit crimes

by your mayor. It's like, well, um, I guess we can, uh, I mean, there's so many examples we can pull from, but in this case, it's like, it's not even necessarily like the senior office. It sounds like it could be just like the sort of town alderman even. Yeah. It's like your borough president, your community of sport association, fucking leader is like, anyway, so, um, I've got a couple of cases of small arms and some ammunition. We're going to go raid the other postcode. Nate, it's as if the mayor of the borough of Newham went to Millwall matches to turn to West Ham matches to fight Millwall. I mean, yeah, I'm sure that actually happened in the seventies.

He certainly wasn't going to Millwall to watch good football. And if you had a recording of it, like it, it would break the sound barrier for racism? At one point, a local mayor in Bologna led a group of civilians on a two-week-long rampage across the Modena countryside, killing dozens of people. Modena responds by allying with Mantua and borrowing soldiers from them and invading and taking over a Bolognese castle called Monteviglio. Then on one night in 1325 a group of these Modenese men, we don't know who they were, what office they were supposed to represent, but it was probably mostly just some guys.

Again, picture shirtless men juiced to the fucking gills on growth hormone but wearing the nicest pantaloons and loafers you've ever seen. They sneak into Bologna and they steal a bucket from the public well. The Modenese, delighted with their glorious war trophy, pulled back to their city, and proudly displayed their ill-gotten bucket at the city hall. The next day, Boleniz officials hear about what happened, and they demand multiple things, namely all of this stolen shit to be returned to them. Because you know, they're raiding, they're stealing property, they're stealing animals,

money, anything that's not bolted down, and they're burning the shit that is bolted down and return the castle that had been seized and also return the fucking bucket. If they refuse, it would be an open war. Not any more of this getting ran for your shit in the night kind of stuff like, well, actually, we're going to we're going to hire mercenaries and we're going to fuck each other up. kind of stuff like, well, actually, we're going to hire mercenaries and we're going to fuck each other up. Modena refused. So with the Pope's blessing, Bologna musters its army. And this is where things get, well, I would say this is where things get weird, but it's already been really weird here for about 45 minutes. Because of the open involvement of the church in the war, there's no shortage of volunteers.

It's the same shit we've talked about in countless Crusader episodes now because the pope effectively calls a crusade and he already had against Bonaculci, the leader. He offers indulgences, which meant soon tens of thousands of random people from outside of the region are coming in to take him up on his offer. This has absolutely nothing to do with the religious cult arms, just like any crusade doesn't. It's full of poor, desperate people looking to secure the pope bag. It's a green light from the highest office in the land to steal everything you can find and keep it in the name of Christ. Bologna formally requesting Modena let them borrow their bucket back.

Run that fucking bucket back to me, bitch. We really need some balsamic to go with our bologna and we're gonna invade south till we find someone who's really good with bread. But until then, I think I just invented a really disgusting sandwich. I mean, a little bit of balsamic vinegar on a sandwich can be really good. Actually, I mean, here's the thing with the Italians, right? Like we make one of them for a lot of things, but rightfully so, but they, food is good and the sandwiches are exceptional. They make a good sandwich, you know, like I know I'm hungry. It's not like East coast hot sandwich in America where the guy makes one of you for your order level. It's a whole

different culture, but they're good. You know, they're, they respect them. I, they probably had sandwiches back then of a sort, you know what I mean? They hadn't invented tomatoes yet because they hadn't stolen it from the, for the new world, but they may do with what they had, you know, I really liked the story of like when tomatoes are first introduced to Italy, it killed tons of people. I didn't, did they really? I mean, I remember people saying, Oh, that might be apocryphal or not, but yeah, I've, I've, I've heard it repeated a few times. They were poisonous for sure because they were like, these are, they were, they were just ornamentals that these are like night shade bear, big night shade berries. Basically. I also find

it very funny. The way they made it into the middle East is that they call them in Arabic. They're called Bon John roomy, which is a Roman eggplant. So yeah, you know, why not? Yeah, why not? Also let's not talk about eggplants because the Italians use it to be racist and I'm not joking Nothing about this surprises me. So once word gets around that Bologna is calling men to arms They were flooded by tens of thousands of volunteers Like I said, not only from Bologna but from surrounding cities as everyone rushed in to take part in this There is even unconfirmed reports that the Pope himself commanded a personal contingent of troops to Bologna to rally people to the cause.

Soon Bologna had massed an army of around 30,000 men, though virtually none of them were soldiers. These were just some guys who had weapons. I mean, this could happen now because I mean, Pope Leo spent so much time in Peru, you know, he ministered to members of the Shining path. He probably understands the fucking Maoist insurgency Catholic Maoist insurgency. What a curse sentence. We've got the woke Maoist Pope. I can't, I can't wait for his first Dictat. So some of these people ship didn't even have weapons and they were hoping that they'd be given one. They were not. Um, so they just kind of up'd be given one. They were not. So they

just kind of upended some farm tools that were laying around. But they do have 32,000 people who are clearly very comfortable with committing large-scale violence. But again, like I said, these people are not seasoned soldiers and neither were their commanders. These are not hardened infantry or cavalry commanders or anything. Most of them had no military experience whatsoever, but like before they were local city administrators who had leveraged their position and wealth into an official command position. So yeah, the mayor paid a bribe and became captain mayor. Modena had the opposite problem. Despite the people of the city being gibbelines or pro-imperial catholics, this was more of

a nobility thing. And yeah, there was some bad blood between the two of them due to all the raids, but their leader had just been green-lighted by the pope. He had been declared a rebel. Indulgences against him. There's a crusade marching their way, but the pope did not extend his anger to the people or the city of Modena. So as long as they stayed the fuck out of it, if you're a regular Modenese person,

you're good. So they did, they just didn't enlist to fight in the war. It's like that saying what if they declared war just none of us showed up. That's what the Modenese did, like you handle your shit, we'll be at home. But that was perfectly fine to Bonacolsi and his imperial backers. They had no intention of levying their own mob of idiots together to go get smoked by the papists. Instead, the Holy Roman Emperor sent thousands of professional knights from Germany, commanded

by the leader of the gibbelines in Italy, Azone Visconti, Lord of Milan, who was a hardened battlefield commander. Though, they did only muster 7,000 people. And as bad as this sounds, and it does not sound good, the Modenese immediately took the upper hand, marching towards the city of Zappolino in Bologna. Previous to this, the Bolognese had a hard time mustering their force, for reasons you can probably imagine because it's just a mob of randos. It wasn't organized into units and any functional thing, it was just a bunch of Giuseppis and Andretti's who showed up to do violence one day and their

commanders had no idea how to marshal that many people around. So some parts of their army would just kind of go out and do their own thing to retake land or raid other parts. Some just sat around arguing with one another all while an army of German terminators advance across the Italian countryside, crashing through mobs of armed people with like, who had knives and pickaxes and I assume ants on their feet or something. This is such an annoyingly me reference to make, but I guess I didn't realize that the final fight series was actually a metaphor for 14th century Northern Italy. Because when you think about it, the clans like the Andors, you've got all the family

members, people just using random implements or whatever. At one point, you just have a bonus level where you just punch a car until it explodes. This sounds comparable. It's like we thought it was just random violence in like an 80s, early 90s, sky-scrolling fighting game, but actually no, this was a very nuanced and complex allegory for Italy in the 1300s. What if we put the Pope in the street fighter level where he has to fight the car? How long does it take the Pope to destroy that car? Pope punch a horse so hard it explodes. So that's effectively saying that Mayor Mike Hager is the leader of the Roman

Catholic Church. He's the shepherd of the faithful. Yeah. I like their chances more if it was like Bishop Dalsim or Bishop Blanca, the green guy. There's not really any good Italian. There aren't any Italians to speak of in in the Street Fighter world It's cuz they just surrender immediately But you've got Blanca who was turned green by electricity in Brazil somehow

You've got Vega the Spanish guy who wears the mask and has the claws you have Yeah, you've got I'm trying to think of any other any do they have any other European characters? It's been a very long time. You know, there's the Russian Russian guy there's there's Zangief. Yeah, that's true. We all know Zangief. We all have a fawness for Zangief I am fine McConclay of the of the lines of my donkey's podcast. I vote in favor of Pope Blanca the first Give us the green Electrical powered Pope but then the question becomes which street fighter character is each member of this show? Thomas Zangief.

You 100% look like bisexuals. And you've said so yourself. Yes. Joe, I feel like who you look like versus who you act like you act like Ken, but you look like Colonel Guile. And I mean, everyone's going to make the comparison to me with the red hair with Blanca, but like I Blanca has way more chest hair than I do. And also like, he's also way better shaped than me, but I guess I can't really think of another one. Yeah. Blanca's got that mutant

yak like gacked to this to him, you know? Yeah. Yeah. He listened to MC Bin Laden and it turned him green and huge. So on is Chun Li then I suppose. I mean, yeah, Ani could be Chun Li. She just can pirouette kick the shit out of all of us. I'm happy with that. I think we're in a good place. I'm glad we're laying down this lore. Yeah, we're laying down this lore in the middle of an episode about medieval, you know, boring city states in Northern Italy.

We have decided that Blanca became the way that he did because he listened to Biley Funk on cocaine. Long may he reign, or whatever it is they say about his holiness, the Blanca the first. Finally, when it became clear that the Modenese army was heading towards the city of Zappolino, the Pope and the Bolenese administrators now in charge of the army managed to get all of their local idiots to walk in the same direction, forming up outside the same city and managing to get around 30,000-ish men to hang around. We're not entirely sure how many.

Now in the Modenese camp they obviously knew they couldn't just storm ahead and smash into such a large number of people. Knights or not, they'd eventually get slowed down by the sheer volume of pasta sauce at some point. So on November 15th, 1325, elements of the Modenese army feigned a retreat, withdrawing across a nearby river. I assume by luring them over by snapping a bunch of spaghetti noodles in half, like a kind of RPG-esque provoke spell for Italians. We aren't entirely sure how many

of the Modenese played the role of bait, but it's ought to be at least a thousand of them to pull off as many of the Bolenese soldiers as they could. Meanwhile, the Bolenes administrators completely lost control of their forces. Thousands, nobody's sure how, but sought to be like maybe 15,000 or something. Min just chased off across the river after these people completely devoid of any orders or leadership. Then Visconti and Bonaculci, facing off against the other 15,000 or so men, ordered their 2,000 heavy knights on horseback to charge directly into them. This worked. What happened next could best be described as a thresher hitting a field of wheat. What probably happened as we've talked about before on this show, because really in-depth accounts

of this battle are kind of hard to come by, what probably happened is these heavy knights smashed into these barely armed infantrymen, and everyone not at the front of the rank immediately tried to run. This probably created some kind of human crush as people were unable to get away, because they were pinned against the walls of the city. Not that many people died in the battle for how many people took part in it. So pretty much over about an hour or two, most of the people in the Bolognese army just took that time to try to run, which included trampling their own people around them.

They shattered. They ran as fast as they could. And due to the amount of people there, they could not run very fast. Like the press of bodies kept them in place in some cases. Like the Knights, it was said, like killed someone and the force of human bodies around them just kept them standing. That's how many people got pinned in there. Jesus. Around a thousand people died.

Yeah. I feel like if you were a 14th century Italian peasant and this happened to you, you would just react the same way we react when you're playing a notionally free non-bounded video game. But the game direction and opponent AI is set up in such a way you're not allowed to advance to this level yet. If you try, then the fucking armored cavalry you know, like armored cavalry riding, riding Gundam horses shows up and just completely destroys you.

And you're like, Oh, I, I'm not supposed to do this quest yet because it's like, yeah, it's level capped. You can't get over there yet. That that's you haven't completed the main quest enough to unlock the branch of the skill tree where you get a sword. I really fucking hate it when I try to go to war over a bucket and then the enemy casts literal Knights of the Round on me. This is the closest anyone's experience in real life to having Knights of the Round deployed

on them. That is true. They just get Knights of the Face. And by the time the men who got pulled away by the bait realized what was happening, they could not run over, nor did they want to. They never even made an attempt to go back and support the main force. And they mostly ran. They didn't really fight. When the bait turned on them and attacked, they just ran as fast as they could.

I mean, I do feel like this is a common story in this time and later as well, where you have these kinds of more or less ad hoc mobs and auxiliaries and irregulars, and then they fight, they come into contact with a kind of professional soldier, or a heavy cavalry, or a heavier munition than they were expecting. And it just completely turns everything on its head. And it's like, yeah, jokes aside, this is sort of like, oh, I thought we were just going to be doing a little skirmishing. It's very rude of you to bring out those 155 millimeter self-propelled howitzers.

But in this case, it's also just extremely funny because it's like, yeah, they were expecting to be like, you know, swinging sticks and farm implements and doing aggressive hand gestures while the people they were fighting were doing defensive hand gestures. And then all of a sudden a bunch of huge guys on huge horses shows up and it's like, that's so fun. We realized that we needed to bring in some professionals. And so we brought in all of these psychotic Germans and their armored horses. Cause I mean, like at the time, I mean, that was kind of the thing is who were the, you know, European nobles and Kings paying the services of in order to just do just lay waste

and clove people in twain. And it was either Germans or Swiss, but that's who they were. They were like the Swiss mercenaries were like a thing for this reason. The German line is connected or a thing like this as well. It's just, Hey, you know what? These guys are huge with huge swords and they swing them a lot and they're pretty good at it. And it's like, they can probably solve your problem for you. The Italian hand gestures are not very effective against like as vihander. Like if you're doing the Italian version of the jutsus from Naruto. It'd be like World War II bombers that you have like at a professional engraver, like take your Svihander and fucking engrave like the, ayo!

Like the chevoy hands for every Italian that you fucking just fully just cut into. And so like the guys were a lot of Italian campaigning experience. It's like Rococo designs all over their swords. They've just got so many severed hands. I mean, I love the idea also that that's the Italian defensive mechanism is it is a guy is swinging a big sword. The last thing you do is go, Hey, what are you doing? That kind of thing. Now they're at the gates of Zepolino and the gates are wide open for the taking. So did the Modenese march in and take the city? No! They did arguably the funniest thing they could have done, and might be one of the funniest

things to go down in the annals of military history, and what could only be described as stunting on a motherfucker. Alright, I'm in. I'm in, I'm curious. Instead of seizing the city, storming in and taking it, which would have been very easy at this point, they organized a series of horse races and feasts right outside the city walls So they could see just how much they whooped their ass. They did not invite anybody from inside the city They had to watch I love doing ye olde money spread on my enemies

Just with turkey legs Rain but it's that's everything is coinbase, you're making it fucking hail on a motherfucker. Yeah, yeah. My haters show up arm to the teeth and then just immediately have a have a barbecue. And they're like, no, it's no need to fight. We've already won. This is what you could have had if you were fly enough. A short time later, the two sides came to a peace treaty. All the things taken by Modena were returned in exchange for money.

An agreement was made that everything would just go back to how they had always been before the war, and that is how one of the largest battles in medieval European history ended. But the bucket was never returned. This is where we have to spoil everybody's fun. I kind of alluded to this in the very beginning. This war, like I said, is generally known as the War of the Oaken Bucket and has infamously gone down in history as that time two crazy city states went to war over a bucket. This is a history that two cities themselves tell today and the

stolen bucket is still on display in Modena, if it actually is the bucket. Nobody's actually sure. I think we pretty decently explained why all of the reasons why this had much more to do with a lot of other things than a bucket, but where does the story of the bucket come from? Well, what we know about this history comes from one guy, Matteo Grafone, a Bolognese historian of the time, and one of the sources I used for this episode. It's a source that anybody that writes about this is going to have to use.

It's pretty much the only in-depth history written about the battle and the war, and in turn people focused on the part about the bucket because admittedly it's pretty funny. And by all accounts, a bucket was actually stolen and it wasn't stolen for any other reason for it Like a subtle fuck you like they stole riches. They stole land. They stole buildings whatever but like we also just stole buildings I mean like they took them over But not like Katamari Damacy like fucking rolling them up and taking them away 14th century Italian Katamari Damishi would be, I'd play that game. Undefeated. They also came in and stole the local bucket for their whale as like just a big middle finger, you know? So that's why they would take

it. But eventually a poem was written about the war, which focused on the bucket. Because again, it is a ridiculous aspect of the story kind of like before when we talked about the pastry war right like focus on the most ridiculous part of the story and soon that becomes the whole story and eventually this is exactly what happens the poem becomes more read and more well-known than in Griffoni's history Modena in turn adopts that version of the story as its actual history. And now suddenly the bucket is the center point. It's held in the museum and city hall. At first it's a relic and then a war trophy and now it's

a symbol of like victory against all odds. Now it's the cause of the war itself in general. Everybody loves talking about the time a bunch of people murdered each other over a bucket. It's ridiculous. It's just such a great ploy by Medina's tourist board is like, yeah, what if we just put the bucket on display? It'll be a reason for people to come here. They actually have two of them on display. One is I believe in city hall and the other one is in the museum. And one they claim is the original one is in the museum and one they claim is the original one and the other is a recreation, which is funny because that means once upon

time they had to like hire a guy to recreate an old one bucket, but also because nobody can confirm it's the actual real bucket at all. It's like having like, what if Philadelphia had two Liberty bells? It was like the Liberty bell of the anti-Pope Liberty bell. Yeah, exactly. We just, why not? Why not? It's the bucket and the anti-bucket. I believe it quite frankly. I mean, I think you've talked about more absurd things that are true on this episode already. Oh yeah. I mean like

the bucket existed. It was known to have been stolen, but I guess it's a lot more fun to explain that time that like a thousand dudes got murdered by German armored terminators than like over a bucket then to try to explain 300 years of war history involving empires, churches, emperors, popes, anti-popes, anti-kings and anti-emperors and all that other shit. So I guess what I'm saying is fuck it. It's about a bucket. The end. I can't wait for the new pope to create the right in the center of the Coliseum, the anti bean, just a giant metal in the center of the Coliseum, the ante bean, just a giant metal bean in the

middle of Rome. That's right. Fellas, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question, you can support us on Patreon, ask us on Patreon or in the Discord, which you'll also have access to and we will answer it on air. And today's question is actually since you guys have other shows as well, feel free to answer it based on those other shows or this one, whichever. And that is, what is something that you thought was innocuous or uncontroversial that you said on a podcast or online in general

that received a lot of pushback slash criticism slash quote drama? I can immediately think of one. I mean, obviously we've done a lot of shit on like stupid Nazis and racists. And I always expect those people to get mad at me because they are who they are. But we did a series on the Russian invasion of Georgia a few years ago. And there's a certain kind of person that got very, very, very mad at what, in my opinion, is a very simple stance stance and that is Russia is bad for invading someone and taking over pieces of its territory. But nowadays though, we're all much more aware of that kind of guy, I will say. But back then I was not. But I will say, I don't really

care about that kind of thing. If you're a psycho that supports Russia invading Georgia or Ukraine or whoever, I don't fucking care about your opinion. It means less than nothing to me. But I was delightfully surprised that a lot of Georgians on the internet were very, very cool, surprisingly cool with an Armenian-American guy doing a few hours of content on Georgian history. So that was very nice. And my thoughts go out to my Georgian friends and listeners

for everything going on in Georgia right now, which is another statement. They'll piss off the same group of people that the first statement pissed off. So if that upsets you, I wish bad things onto you. Uh, what was your, your guys's? Uh, I feel like, um, the series that I've done here has a broad ire from like the most surprising corners of the internet. Like I've talked about it before when we did the trouble series, like unionists

didn't really care that much mainly because they're all illiterate. Well, I remember people getting really mad at you guys for laughing at what happened to Lord Mountbatten and basically laugh at the families of the kids who died. It's like, no, we're not at all, not in the slightest, but like, this is the first, like, I'm sorry, but you are, you are effectively taking a position of British imperialism and English nationalism in Northern Ireland and being like, oh, have you thought about the, the, the collateral damage and civilian casualties? It's like a thing you famously fucking care about. Right, right. We've gotten so much weird shit about that one.

Yeah. Alternatively, like I've had, I still get like the odd person angry about the RAF series cause they're like, Oh, you know, they'll alternatively call me like a lab or they'll call me a conservative or they'll be like, Oh, these are the God's strongest Marxist Leninist warriors. I'm like, not really. Um, I feel like that they're just dorks. Yeah. The upcoming series is going to make a lot of people very mad. That is correct.

But that kind of falls into a category we expect to piss off, you know? Yeah. I think, um, I think weirdly for me, when it comes to stuff that I've said on a podcast, I haven't had a lot of outcry about my own position so much as I think sometimes for me, when it comes to stuff that I've said on a podcast, I haven't had a lot of outcry about my own position so much as I think sometimes my co-hosts and like when we've tried to thread the needle where, you know, like on Trash Future where Riley has probably a more skeptical position as regards the current government of Ukraine and November is just extremely in favor of countries aren't allowed to just arbitrarily invade one another.

We can just agree to disagree and we can have a discussion and try to like flesh out those positions and then you find that, you know, like three people quit the Patreon, but two of them basically call us, you know, Lib Imperial, apologist NATO fanboys and then one person is basically like, you know, furious at Riley and screaming Slava, Ukrainian, even though they're like a dude, like a guy from Kansas with no fucking, no link to it at ever kind of cosplay shit. That'll happen. I think that's inevitable. I mean, there was a guy who basically tried to stalk me because he wanted me to get you Joe to atone for a passing comment about like some Chinese people dislike them.

I made fun of Mao Zedong a few times. Oh no. Yeah. I think for me, um, I don't really, I don't really know. I haven't really had a thing where specifically Nate is in the news for being Nate on a podcast, but weirdly, I don't know. There's been times when in specific contexts about talk about a thing, answering a question like this or doing a Q&A, and I talk about what's going on in my life. And I've had a lot of weird hate from British I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a

I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a Do you really think that's normal? Do you think that's normal? I just need to just finish that song. What I'm trying to say though is I think weirdly looking back on it, it's always been about

stuff that's very, very innocuous or strange or in passing or like a position that I'm not really going to go to the wall to defend. It's just kind of an observation. I made a passing comment one time on the Britnology we did about UK rave comments about how like rave music drum and bass jungle a lot of this stuff like you could see even the 80s incarnations of it and the kind of like second summer of love rave scene in the UK and things along those lines and a lot of like black music from America getting brought into when you think about Chicago house and Detroit techno and stuff like that and But then like what it winds up in in commercial sort of manifestations

that actually get on the charts will be shit like the happy Mondays, which they were a band that was doing creative stuff, but like they were drawing from that, but they were for better or worse, they were making white music for white people. And someone got so fucking mad, but not for the reason you'd think they got mad for me,

even invoking the sacred name of Detroit techno and Chicago house to talk about the happy Mondays and I'm like Well, i'm talking about like commercialization and and and appropriation of a sort But basically just flat out called me racist and quit the patreon and they called me a racist in the fucking exit survey But yeah, I mean to be honest with you I've tried to avoid it and I tried to be really circumspect about stuff that I say I had a little bit of experience with this before because you you know, being like for better or worse, like doing veteran writing shit and talk about the war from like a critical perspective, but trying to avoid stuff that's

going to be like immediately turned into, you know, fodder for like either I love the troops or I hate the troops stuff. I just try to be circumspect and like, I don't always succeed but- Oh boy. Do I know about that? Yeah. Let me tell you, let me tell you about the comment section under one of my books. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, it's easy to convince yourself that the entire world hates you. And then you realize there's like nine people who are just saying shit from all over the world.

And then you're like, if nine people showed up at a reading and there was like 200 people there who were normal, they'd be like, yeah, you're weird. Fuck off. But when you have nine comments on a post all being like, I want you to kill yourself now, it can feel a little overwhelming. Yeah, yeah, it does happen. Not so much anymore. I'll say it's gone away. It's weird that that's just that's just moved on somehow. Yeah, I think people have grown up, maybe.

But got jobs and responsibilities and all of us just adhere by the Tyler, the creator advice is like, how is cyber bullying real? Close your eyes go outside So far so good also like I mean I gendered a lot of hate online for being I mean just who I am It seems to have largely calmed down which is nice it makes me feel less shit about myself But fellas, I do believe that's a podcast, but you host other podcasts. Plug your podcasts. I am the co-host and or producer of What a Hell awaits Dad, Trashfuture, Kill James Bond and No Gods No Mayors. So they're all out there. They all have Patreons. They all have

free content too. You should listen to them if you like them. Good. I'm glad. Penitent Skin show about the history of everything told through the history of tattoos. I have actually two books coming out of a book of my photography and then a art book coming out in July. So check those out. This is the only show that I host. So thank you for listening to it. Consider supporting us on Patreon. $5 a month gets you everything. Ebooks, audiobooks, every episode early, seven years of bonus content, side series, side series first dibs on live show tickets which you can still get for our show June 22nd in London check the show notes for that and until next time may god bless his holiness uh Blanca the first fair enough