Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Renaissance Faires

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why Renaissance faires are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Ren Fairs. Known for being geeky. Famous for being historical-ish. Nobody thinks much about them so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Ren Fairs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of Renaissance Fairs? You have to ask the right person, Alexander,

for Tiszae, Percy Prisselot, and I have my lute and I am wearing it. I'm going to be editing out a lot of pumpkin pants sounds on my ends. And then I think frills and corsets and dresses on Katie's end. Because it's just difficult to... The rough is really bad for podcasting. I don't know if you can tell. Yeah, no, I've been to one or two. I think one. Okay. Like one time or one location of a... One time. Okay. It was because in my middle school, we did a Renaissance fair. I was playing a bard, a minstrel. That's not...

A minstrel. I was playing a minstrel. Not... Soon as ladies became bards. That's how it went, folks. Boy, oh boy. Not a minstrel. And then I played the next year, I actually, because I was a big girl and I was in eighth

grade, I auditioned to play Queen Elizabeth. They were like, you know what, you're giving us dead villainous vibes instead. Why don't you play Queen Mary, Mary Queen of Scots instead? And so I did that and me and this other girl who played Queen Elizabeth had a whole skit where we were like, I was mad at her for having killed me and screaming at her. And we went to the Renaissance Fair

and I bought a snood and I ate some mutton. And yeah, I'm a fan. I think now, if I was to go to a Renaissance Faire, I'd do a new character. I have this idea, like a barmaid, right? But usually you go for a sexy barmaid at Renaissance Faire, right? Like a busty sexy barmaid. I'd go for the most disgusting barmaid. Her name would be I'd go for the most disgusting barmaid that you like, her name would be like Drusilla. And she'd be like, oh, you want your maid. And then just spitting in the mug, you know, having some leprous lesions, fleas, always scratching up my fleas. Yeah.

This is very exciting because I'm glad we're both into them. And also the bonus show this week is about a historical person who I want to be a Renaissance Faire character now. And you never see them as a character. They're like a real person who'd be an amazing villain at Ren Fairs. Is it Drusilla, the leprous barmaid?

No, it's a terrible guy from British history. There's so few terrible guys from British history. How did you even find a single one? Right, the list is like the Black Prince and that's it. There was just one Black Knight and that's it. I have never dressed up for one, but we went to the Bristol, Wisconsin Renaissance Fair most summers when I was a kid. Oh, nice.

And I would eat a turkey leg and my brother would eat a pickle. A pickle, you say? Are pickles typically Renaissance? We did a whole episode on pickles. I don't remember us talking about their Renaissance origins. Yeah, we'll talk about it later. They could have plausibly been available in Elizabethan England. It's a possibility.

All right, my new, my Renaissance character, Drusilla, the, the, the leprous barmaid now offers pickles at her establishment and she calls them warty cucumbers. Would you like a war-y-Johnston? And it's a pickle. And the person at the Spotted Dick stall is like, we're losing all our customers. We're going out of business. We're sounding food. Yeah. Yeah, I really like Ren Fairs. And by the way, we're going to use the term Ren Faire. People call them Renaissance festivals, other variations. It's not really significant what name it gets

called. And also thank you to Ned de Corbeau for the suggestion of this topic, which blew up in the polls on the Discord. People are very excited about it. So thrilled to be talking about this. It's mainly a US and Canada thing. There are European fairs and festivals that reenact some of the events that happened there in Europe. There's a US and Canada phenomenon we're talking about today. Also, isn't Turkey... I thought Turkey is like... That is such a common thing at these Renaissance festivals, but Turkey's like an American bird,

right? It's a New World bird. It is, and it made the Colombian exchange fast enough for that to be available in the Renaissance. Oh, okay, cool. I mean, not cool necessary. Yeah, okay. I get it. Yeah, it's surprising that the food is actually kind of right for the most part. We're gonna get into where this came from because on every episode we like to lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week that's in a segment called...

If I had a million numbers. If I had a million numbers. Well I'd find you some stats. I would find you some stats. And if I had a million numbers. If I had a million numbers. If I had a million numbers. Find you some averages for your stats. Maybe a nice cosine wave or a median.

Yeah. Folks, that name was submitted by Jeff B, our buddy who attended the London show among other stuff. Thank you so much, Jeff. Hey. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Massillion Wacky and Bad as possible. Sub it through Discord or to sifpot at gmail.com. Also thanks to everyone who showed up to that and thanks for coming to meet us. Great audience.

Really lovely to meet you all. Yeah. It was like my first, very first, baby's first meet and greet and everyone was so sweet and so lovely. I really appreciated it. And coming from Canada and the Netherlands and England and it was great. And we got a weasel drawing. Yeah, we talked about the least weasel and our buddy drew the most weasel for us. The most weasel. It was very good. We want the most. Thanks guys. Yeah. And speaking of the performing arts, the first number this week is approximately nine months

That's how long it takes to have a Renaissance baby Soon as I said that lad I was like nine months is mainly that right like it's mainly babies and the school year I guess yeah Renaissance means rebirth. Naissance is birth means rebirth. Renaissance is birth. That's true. That's true. So, you know, you have to, the birth takes nine months and then the rebirth takes another

nine months. It's a big nightmare. And nine months is about how much of the year there is a Renaissance fair happening in the United States. That's a loose number, but the general fair calendar is February through October. Okay, so there's like a season. Yeah, and a pretty long one. I thought it would kind of be just the summer and early fall, but it's actually a lot of the year. I wonder why there's no like winter Renaissance Fairs in the snow. Yeah, oddly there's an amazing

source this week. It's a book called Well Met Renaissance Fairs and the American Counterculture. And that is by Rachel Lee Rubin, who's a professor of American studies at UMass Boston. And they say that there's that fair season and then also some additional stuff that those performers do. In particular, in winter, a lot of places have a Charles Dickens themed Christmas fair. Oh, interesting. And so then they can kind of extend beyond the nine months too. Now, I love some good Dickens, but it does seem a little strange to give Dickens just

a monopoly on winter. I know he was big on Christmas with the Christmas carol and so on, but like why not have like caveman caveman Christmas? You know what I mean? Like that would be fun. Change it up a little bit. Have future Christmas, you know, like what's Christmas going to be like in the future? Are trees going to be just like, you know, holograms? There is a weird American pop culture thing where I feel like both the past and the future

are British. Like in Star Wars, there's a bunch of British accents and then in ancient Rome, there's a bunch of British accents. And so Charles Dickens gets to like glom onto that. Also a lot of the performers will do multiple fairs, but going into this, I had a misconception that it was kind of one group of performers for everything, and there's just way too many fairs for that. The amazing number there is more than 200 annual Ren fairs across the United States.

Wow. More than 200. So a bunch of them overlap. There's many, many groups of performers all over the country and all over Canada as well. Are Renaissance Fairs pretty much the same between the US and Canada? Are there some cultural differences between US and Canada or even within the countries depending on which state you're in? Some of them in Canada have more of an emphasis on French culture.

And then in particular in Maxwell, Ontario, there's the Glengarry Renaissance Fair, which recreates a Scottish village. These are generally somewhat affiliated, somewhat not. I looked up my old favorite Bristol Renaissance Fair. That overlaps somewhat in the year with the one closest to me in New York State, but also they have exactly the same website template. When you pull up the websites, it's just the same thing with Bristol or New York swapped in.

So there's connection and not. I didn't often go to Renaissance Fairs as a kid, but we did go to the Highland Games almost annually, I think, just had there was one near San Diego so we would go and I guess that is somewhat of a like I mean it's a similar vibe to the Renaissance Fair there's a bunch of Scottish or Irish food which is Scottish or Irish like art or jewelry or tchotchkes a lot of kilts happening so many many kilts, bagpipes. Ren fairs tend to be specifically Elizabethan England. Yes.

And then other events do those other things. And there are so many of them. You will get different experiences and performances because it's different people from region to region. Ren fair performers tend to do it a lot of the year, not all of the year. And then there's a patchwork of how they kind of fill their time and income. Partly those Christmas fairs. Also, some performers have a remote or online job and just do two jobs all year. Right.

Like they're at their laptop when they're not in pumpkin pants. I think they should unionize. And I think there should be like specific unions depending on your role in the Renaissance Fair. Like are you the town goon think there should be like specific unions depending on your role in the renaissance fair like are you the town goon there should be just a union for renaissance fair the goons guild the the goons guild uh there should be like busty barmaid guild uh I I really think you guys need to unionize I know it's's not easy with all those, you know, nights going around hassling you. Right, feudalism. Yeah, it's tough. Feudalism makes it quite difficult to form a union. I also want a king's union. That's fun. A king's union. They're all the king, but they also have to sit through a union meeting and raise their hand and stuff, you know? The union of Queen Elizabeths, like all the Queen Elizabeth actresses, and they have their

own union. Where they demand things like less pore clogging face powder. And then there's also a lot of performers who are students and then fill a lot of the year with school. And then crafts people, there's a whole other set of ways to fill the year because Renfairs have a lot of like craft shops and between sales platforms like Etsy or gig platforms like TaskRabbit, they can often fill a year that way. Apparently carpenters and leather workers are particularly successful at having enough

work for the whole year. Yeah, that is interesting. I love that part of it, especially because it's like there's so many old hobbies or crafts things that are hard to kind of have space for in our modern iPhone society. Because then you kind of have an opportunity to be like, hey, I still do leatherworking. Is anybody interested in that? And it turns out, yes, people are. Yeah, you can sell it globally and then also to a specific and interested audience at a stall in a field. Yeah. And yeah, part of the similarity of different fairs is that within a region, those people will keep traveling to the various ones.

My favorite example is it's from a piece from an alt-weekly called Little Village based in Iowa City. It's written by fair performer Elizabeth Cretaen, who says, there's so much to do just in Iowa that they don't really get out of the state a lot to do other rent fairs. They're based at one in Amana and they can also perform in Des Moines, Davenport, Sioux City, Council Bluffs, and Lennox, as well as some related events where it's a pirate fest or it's a Mother's Day, spring fling, spring festival thing. These performers have a lot to do.

It's not easy to score a bunch of work, but there's a lot of things going on and it can be pretty regional. And then also these performers have an interesting range of situations for where they live during the year. Because some of the fairs have permanent buildings, most of it will be tents that come and go, but there's a few permanent structures and fair performers will live in that for part of the year. Or live in campers, vans, tents.

They also might have a regular residence and kind of trade it in a rotation. Rachel Lee Rubin interviews a craftsperson named Shane Odom, who talks about being a Renny. Renny is the nickname for a full-time renfair worker. And he jokes that the qualifications are not performing or doing any specific thing. It is, not performing or doing any specific thing. It is, quote, waking up six months of the year looking at plywood. Like that you're really a carny in a good way. Like you're really out there. Right. Right. Yeah. I guess it is very comparable to carnivals, to the circus, right? Like I don't know how big circuses are really anymore in the US.

Maybe they used to be more popular than they are now, but yeah, it sounds like a very similar lifestyle. Yeah, it's very transient and moving around, yet also pretty stable if you're set up, like if you have work, so. And are they still quite popular in the US? Like are a lot of people going? Yeah, they're generally doing well. Like there's a few that have had specific business problems

and I'll link about an abandoned one in Virginia, but otherwise there are huge festivals still thriving to this day, including the very first one ever held. People love to go and wear pumpkin pants and drink some mead. I mean, it's just, what's not to love about it? Yeah, they even, apparently COVID was bad, but also somewhat workable because of people's

comfort with the outdoors. Like, some of them closed for the first year or for more years, but it is more outdoors than most activities. And so it was somewhat doable. Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense. You can also like have a theme, right? Like, hey, it's the plague, right? Ha ha. A lot of nervous laughter. Oh yeah. Those mask guys when it's a big bird or something. Yeah. Everyone's donned the bird masks for the plague. There's a lot of weird drawings. And the big lot of weird drawings.

And the big question of how did this start at all? How are there more than 200 fests in the US, dozens more in Canada? The answer is takeaway number one. Renaissance fairs were invented by Californians in opposition to the US Cold War Red Scare. Hell yeah, brother. Yeah, this is like left wing in a positive way.

It was in opposition to like Joseph McCarthy and that kind of stuff. Hang ten and when we say hang ten, we don't mean hang ten witches, we mean just surfing. Yeah, it was especially the Los Angeles area. Yeah. And there's an event called the Renaissance Pleasure Fair that is now in Irwindale, California, but it is the ongoing first ever Renaissance fair since 1963.

So how is this meant to be, because like I know the Red Scare affected a lot of creatives, a lot of actors and stuff. So how is this connected to combating the Red Scare? Yeah, it's mostly a manpower thing. It was a bunch of blacklisted or graylisted or upset Hollywood area creatives. And also the main person was actually a school teacher because there was a whole separate phenomenon of educators refusing to swear an anti-communist loyalty oath that they felt was un-American and a restriction of their First Amendment rights and general freedoms. Wanting freedom of speech sounds pretty commie to me. It's been said so many times in American history.

Yeah. Socialism for like trying to talk. Yeah. And so, yeah, Gizlors is here. That amazing book by Rachel Lee Rubin. There's also a piece for Smithsonian magazine by writer Gillian Bagwell, who cites Rubin, also expands on it and finds other things too. Yeah this started in May of 1963 the Renaissance

Pleasure Fair and it was initially on a ranch in North Hollywood and the key founder was a school teacher named Phyllis Patterson. That's a very like 50s 60s name. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, to go from that to forming the Renaissance Fair is fun. It's cool. Yeah. And in 1960, she left her job as a California high school teacher at a public school. And in like later press interviews, she just told people she wanted to be a stay at home

mom, but the private real reason was that she wouldn't swear a political loyalty oath required by the state. Good for her. And that's kind of a forgotten part of Cold War history that starting in the 1950s, a lot of professors and public school teachers would either refuse or have to quit because of some kind of loyalty oath where they were forced to swear that they were not communists. A few of them maybe were communists, but most of them felt that this was not proper or American to demand political tests. This is America.

You're allowed to be a communist. I am not personally a communist, but it's just such a weird thing where it's like, hey, you got to promise not to have these ideas we don't like. And it's like, that seems kind of oppressive. And by kind of oppressive, I mean ridiculous. Just like, here, swear this loyalty oath where you won't think certain things or have certain beliefs. Exactly.

Yeah, Patterson and others said, we can't beat Joseph Stalin by doing Stalinist thought police stuff. That's not the way. Yeah. It seems weird. But I do love the energy of trying to make me sign some kind of weird dystopian loyalty oath. make me sign some kind of weird dystopian loyalty oath? Well, how about I eat some chicken legs and drink some meat?

Kind of, yeah. And the other spark for it was Phyllis Patterson's teaching because she was not telling the truth about just wanting to be a stay at home mom. She quit teaching public high school and started running an entire youth theater program at a youth center in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles. Did she originally start as a theater teacher or did she move into that after quitting? Little of both. She taught theater and English and social studies. I see.

Perfect. And then just got this not publicly funded job where she didn't have to swear a loyalty oath. Yeah. I mean, English, I guess I see a strong association between English class and Renaissance Fairs because that was where basically our English class was the one that like went, like we would go to the Renaissance Fair, all the English classes would. Cool. Because like in middle school,

that's when at least for our curriculum, we started learning about Shakespeare. So like, you know, the natural thing would be to go to a Renaissance fair and think about how much poop there were in the streets. Although I think the poop stuff might've been exaggerated. I have since learned that it was not as nasty as it was made to seem.

Yeah. And that kind of thing is the other big influence because not only is Patterson aware of Shakespeare, whose life overlapped with Queen Elizabeth I's life, and that is a fit, but the thing she really liked to teach at this program was something called Commedia dell'arte. And Commedia dell'arte is sort of a footnote in the history of US improv comedy, but it's a like 1500s Italian theater form where actors would adopt one of a set of stock characters that was pre-written,

but then improvised dialogue between each other. Yeah, I remember I took improv classes not at UCB, so I did not join a cult. But I... And I did. Woo! I'm wearing my robes and my Del Close necklace. Let's see what else. Yes. But yeah, you know, and I remember like being taught about this form of like improv where it's like you kind of have like a play. So you have like long form improv where you're all playing certain characters. You kind of have a premise and a setting and an idea, but then you just go for it. Yeah. And like, as Patterson was doing this, UCB, which has roots in a few other American theaters, that hadn't quite happened yet. In the late fifties, there was a group called

the Compass Players in Chicago that is the germ of Improv Olympic and UCB and more improv. But Phyllis Patterson didn't know about that. She was saying, this is a cool Renaissance acting form where you make up some of it. And so she is in Laurel Canyon, which if people know like 1960s culture, that becomes a home to a lot of creative music and art and writing and stuff in the 60s. And it's partly because a bunch of blacklisted and gray listed Hollywood talent is hanging out. And Patterson and her husband connect with a married couple of actors. Doris Carnes was forced to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1959 about alleged Hollywood communists and then proceeded to be one of 20 people who was officially blacklisted. Her husband was an actor who got graylisted, which means there's not an official

blacklist, but nobody will hire you because they think you're tied to something that will get them in trouble. And the four of them say, what kind of entertainment event can we put on completely outside of society's systems, which are very red scare right now? Yeah. And it's Eatin' Mutton in the Woods, which is completely, completely up my alley. Maybe you've gotten the same sense, but I always get the sense that, say, Ren Faire's, D&D, a lot of nerd culture kind of has this intersection, but there's also this concept that this type of nerd culture is either created by or predominantly visited by men. And it is really interesting that Renaissance Faires, it does seem like the kind of the

founding mother of it was a woman and that it's like this association between sort of like nerd culture and it being for men, it just like seems like that is not historically accurate. That's right. Yeah, it seems like some women have been written out of the origins of those things and then we find out later. And yeah, this specific event, it was driven by men and women, but especially Phyllis Patterson and Doris Carnes. And yeah, this specific event, it was driven by men and women, but especially Phyllis Patterson and Doris Carnes. And according to Rachel Lee Rubin, Phyllis Patterson gave later interviews where she was, quote, emphatic in her conviction that the Renaissance Fair was able to flourish thanks to the Hollywood Blacklist, which had the effect of making

gifted and skilled people available to lend their talents." They put up the first fair on a ranch owned by a guy who had been accused of being a communist organizer. Their lead construction guy was a Navy veteran who quit the Navy because of its fixation on communist fear-mongering. It was a bunch of actors, construction people, organizer people who were all pushed out of their jobs or where they felt comfortable by fear about communism. Yeah, that's another thing that's interesting to me is that art, even when it's like nerd culture or something, but it's still very political, right? Because clearly the origins are from people who were politically exiled from society.

I think if someone's just casually seeing a Renaissance Faire, you would think like, well, there's nothing really political about just reenacting some kind of like historical period, something so removed from us and just having a good time with Shakespeare and some mutton. But yeah, it's just, we can't really escape what is happening in our society at the time. So I find that interesting. Exactly. And the big inspirations for going into history like this where we can make it educational, we can use tropes from this very freeing, commedia del arte genre from the Renaissance. And we can kind of pretend the Red Scare is not happening. That's why it's a Renaissance fair rather than just like a carnival of art

or something. Right. Yeah, no, I mean, it is, that is so interesting. Like it is so it's, I guess we take it for granted that there's so much focus on the Renaissance. But I feel like that's in part because of, I mean, obviously the Renaissance, because it was such a huge era for art and culture and writing that there's still a huge emphasis on it in our current art culture and writing. So that kind of makes sense. But yeah, it is like they did specifically choose that period. and like the seems like are all Renaissance Fairs kind of based on that time period where it was like, you know, the Queen Elizabeth and

Shakespeare or are there Renaissance Fairs that you know, because like the Renaissance was not just during Queen Elizabeth's reign Yeah, we'll we'll dig more into that in the next takeaway and The short answer is almost all of them are Elizabethan specifically. I see. Okay. This first ever event cast actors to play Queen Elizabeth I and her figuring out her feelings for the Earl of Essex, who allegedly could have been one of the people she was in love with even though she never married. It's mostly because we're English speaking, but also partly because women ran this,

we're excited about a queen, you know? And also it's just a very significant era in British and American history. I remember, like when I think about like European history, I do remember predominantly being taught about like medieval times and Renaissance times, also French Revolution. But yeah, there was so much emphasis on those time periods. Yeah, like castles and knights and then paintings of Queen Elizabeth. That was kind of it. I think there's also kind of a... And Shakespeare.

Yeah, I think there's also maybe a bit of a flattening of our perception of time of Europe because it's like, oh, the dark ages. Then the Renaissance came and that's Europe. And then World War II, right? That was next? And then World War II after that. Yeah. So I think that at least in elementary school and stuff, there's a bit of a like, oh, you

know, like first there was, everyone lived in filth and poop. And then Queen Elizabeth was like, no more of that. And then we had art. And which I don't think is actually accurate, but you know, that is the concept. And this first fair ran with that. And they were also a massive hit, partly because they made it a fundraiser for a public radio station. So then the radio station advertised it for free and they made a profit of about $6,000, which is almost 62 grand today.

It's not massive money, but it's definitely success, like all their expenses and they were able to do it again. And each next fair used a bigger site, more days, made more money. The key turning point was 1967, the year of the fifth fair. For one thing, there were hippies really getting going as the sixties went on. And so in 1967, there was a Human Be In event in San Francisco. There was a Love In event in Los Angeles. Both were heavily attended by ren fair participants, many of whom wore their ren fair outfits to the hippie event. The counterculture and the ren fair boosted each other.

Yeah. I mean, one person's got braids and the other person's got a rough and it all works together somehow. Those crazy kids make it work, you know? Yeah. I mean, both the people in the Renaissance and hippies could have long hair. It's true. Yeah, that makes sense actually. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Those like William Shakespeare looking guys. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Exactly. He's just a hippie out in the woods, having picnics, hanging around fairies. Last week with Pachelbel's Canon and then the bonus show we talked about Midsummer Night's Dream.

That is a very hippie play. Boy oh boy. Very hippie. Like fairies loving each other. That's like free love right there. When you can love a man that was turned into a donkey. That's like free love right there when you can love a man that was turned into a donkey. And then he's playing a guitar with his teeth like Jimi Hendrix. I don't know how it works, but you know, you get it. Strong teeth, donkey teeth. Anyway. And then 1967 is when the Ren Fair becomes a flashpoint of the counterculture fighting the mainstream. They'd had a bunch of successful events in the LA area. 1967, they said, let's move to Ventura County, Northwest of Los Angeles. Then and now that's a wealthy and conservative area that's kind of different from LA. The

county proceeded to launch a massive legal battle that managed to cancel one of the two planned weekends of the fair. On what grounds? How do you just say, no, you're not allowed to have a festival? They did a lot of like nonsense permit bullsh** that was secretly about political reasons, but just like paperwork red tape stuff. And then also they also ran scaremongering local news headlines such as, quote, proponents of free love, free dope, and free education join forces to deceive the unwary. Wait, is that literally what they said?

That's a headline, yeah. That sounds really cool though. I mean, I don't personally partake in the devil's lettuce, but if someone's saying like free dope and free education and free love, I'm like that's a lot of free stuff. I might as well go get some swag. One of the other things people have said throughout American history, that description of the left sounds cool that you're trying to scare me with? Yeah that sounds awesome man. What? I thought the Renaissance fair would just be about like Shakespeare stuff boring but you're saying I'll get some free dope? I like Shakespeare I don't

think it's boring but you know I'm just saying. It's great yeah. The scaremongering could only work so well. Apparently, both weekends almost got canceled to the point that Ventura police tried to like storm the fairground during construction wearing riot gear to like probably find an excuse to smash everything. You know, that's a really good time for those professional jousters to get on their horses

and be like, oh really? I too have shields and a jousting weapon. Right, cavalry. The thing that defused the tensions is that earlier I mentioned the lead construction guy was a Navy veteran who left the service. It turns out the lead police officer had served with him in the Navy. So they saw each other and hugged and then all the cops were like, oh, I guess we don't break all the stalls and stables and stuff because we're friends.

Okay, cool. Great. Man, you shouldn't just have to serve with a guy in the Navy for him not to stomp on your civil rights. Like, what a weird bar to have. It is not the reason it should have worked out, but it worked out. It's just, can't we just have fun without it being a big culture war? I just want to have fun.

I want to wear a snood. And like after the Ren Faire survived that Ventura issue, they moved out of Ventura and spread nationwide. Great. Later that same year, they held the first event outside LA. It was in San Francisco. There was no riot cops or other problems. Then they founded a fair in Minnesota in 1971, Texas 1974, Maryland 1976. And then also these are separate organizations because of some issues with the original people running it. Phyllis Patterson and her husband divorced down the line and then Phyllis was not able to run all this on her own. And then also the Minnesota and Texas fairs are run by a guy named George Coulombe, who's had a documentary made about him recently because he's bonkers. He's in his late 80s and fixated on both running the fairs and being a sexual titan.

What? His personal website specifically describes him as sexually active. So it's all weird and there's not one umbrella organization for this because it came apart. Does he have groupies? What does he mean he's a sexual titan? It's a documentary called Renfair, but most people call him King George. The documentary is about people obsessively worshiping him, toting toward him, and it's strange.

It's not like- You guys went too feudal. It's feudal, yeah. Go easy on that feudalism, man. Yeah, it's not quite crimes, but it's weird. It's not good, and so. Yeah. Man, why does everything turn into a cult? Like anytime you involve improv, it turns into a cult.

UCB, Renaissance Fairs, Scientology. These fairs vary a lot and are broadly just very positive. Like they've really remained counter-cultural from jump. And I'm linking a Vice news piece by journalist Mary Frances Knapp, who describes and participates in the sex positivity and openness of the LA Renaissance Pleasure Fair, which is specifically called a pleasure fair partly for the you-can-be-who-you-are reason. There's not sex stuff happening, but you can be who you are. You can wear a codpiece, have ample bosom, or both.

Like, to me, that's great. I love that energy. I don't like so much having a monarchist, having a monopolizing all the sex, calling yourself a sex titan. I think that it should be more like a bunch of cool sex serfs. I don't know. I'm not really sure what my politics are on this situation. Cod pieces though.

I think their politics is like consensual, whatever you want to be. That's the thing that is good. Yeah. That would be good to maintain, I would say. The other surprising thing is that I think a lot of people think Ren fairs are pretty niche and outside of the mainstream culturally, but because of this counterculture and LA origin, they're surprisingly central to mainstream media. The very first fair was able to score performances by Carl Reiner.

Carl Reiner did like monk on the street interviews as a bit. He was already on television performing with Mel Brooks. He had already created and written a lot of the Dick Van Dyke show. He was huge and at the very first Ren Faire. In the 70s, celebrities like Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and Nancy Sinatra talked up the Ren Faire on TV. And then there's also a history of future celebrities finding work at Ren Faires when they were not well-known people. Mark Hamill, some of his first paid acting work was six shows a day at the LA Ren Faire. My favorite one is that in 1968, two members of the band The Doors just attended the fair as people hanging out. And they

were trailed by a camera crew making a documentary about them. And one of the secondary cameramen was unknown Hollywood carpenter Harrison Ford. Just like making a living, filming the doors hanging out at the Ren Fair. And later he and performer Mark Hamill are in Star Wars. So was he a carpenter and then the doors were like, we need a carpenter because we're the doors? Like how do you get hired by the doors? Yeah, you have to respect wood.

If you respect wood, you can work for the doors. Right, you gotta respect wood if you gotta work for the doors. You gotta know your way around a hinge. But folks, that's the amazing origin of all this to me. There's more Cold War and Star Wars than you'd think. We are going to take a quick break then return with a lot of numbers and takeaways about The podcast podcast podcast. It is a podcast pitching and creation show. So the three hosts, O'Neill, Tyler, and Olivia, pitch each other different podcast ideas and

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We have a lot of experience and a lot of stories and a lot of time on our hands. So check us out. It's one hour a week and we drop it every Wednesday on MaximumFun.org. Hello, Podcast Recommendation Service. Hello there, young man. I'm looking for a new podcast to listen to. Something amusing, perhaps. Oh, what about Beef and Dairy Network? Something surreal and satirical.

Well, I would suggest Beef and Dairy Network. Ideally it would be a spoof industry podcast for the beef and dairy industries. Yes, Beef and Dairy Network. Maybe it would have brilliant guests such as Josie Long, Heather Ann Campbell, Nick Offerman and the actor Ted Danson. Beef and Dairy Network. Maybe it would have brilliant guests such as Josie Long, Heather Ann Campbell, Nick Offerman and the actor Ted Danson. Beef and Dairy Network. I don't know, I think I'm going to stick to Joe Rogan. The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is a multi-award winning comedy podcast and you can find it

at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and we're back with takeaway number two. Most Renaissance Fairs only depict the final and most English chunk of the Renaissance. And we mentioned this earlier, it's basically the very end of the Renaissance, if not the start of the next period after it, if Queen Elizabeth I is ruling. And it's never Italian, which I find to be very anti-Italian. As a new, no one could possibly count me as an Italian. I have no Italian heritage. I'm not a citizen here, but I've lived here for a few years. And so I do personally feel offended by it. The Italian word for Renaissance is rena-shin-to, which is again re-na-shin-to, which is rebirth. Yes.

Yeah, that's very birth oriented. Yeah. Yeah. The Renaissance is named after a rebirth of interest in Greek and Roman culture in Europe. Yes. And there are other things that have been called Renaissance, right? There's a Harlem Renaissance of black American artists and stuff, but the European Renaissance starts in the mid 1300s and ends in the late 1500s or early 1600s.

We've got a lot of sources for this takeaway and they all agree on that general timeline. It was not limited to England. That's right. It especially started in Italy. That mid-1300s, it's scholars there like Petrarch getting excited about writing and art from Greece and Rome. And a lot of advancements in painting, sculpture, techniques were very much Italian, right? Like a lot of Italian artists boosted that. Yeah, yeah.

Not saying that Italy has claim over the entire Renaissance. It's just a little odd how focused it is on this very specific English part. Yeah, exactly. And it's basically entirely because the United States feels connected to Britain. But, you know, if we just called these Elizabethan fairs, they would pretty much solve it. And it's not a problem problem, but there's a whole

renaissance before her, basically. I'm in favor of irritating the Italians because it's just good fun. No, I'm joking. Joking! Please don't be mad. Because yes, some of the many key dates of the Renaissance. In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg builds a printing press. In 1453, the city of Constantinople falls and the Byzantine Empire ends. It lasted that long. Columbus 1492, Martin Luther's theses in 1517. None of these are English people yet. Yeah, the painting of the Sistine Chapel early 1500s.

And then after every one of those things, 1533, Queen Elizabeth is born and is a baby. Yeah. Like an infant, not the story of a renfer yet. Yeah. And she doesn't start ruling until 1558. William Shakespeare is born 1564. And a lot of historians say as early as the late 1500s, we get into a new era called the early modern period, which is a little bit more nation building and also some of the more kind of key English events. England was not necessarily a major power of the more kind of key English events. England was not necessarily a major

power of the Renaissance. It was mostly at wars with France. Yeah. Yeah. I thought Italy was one of the more, had been a major power at this time because of the amount of wealth. There were a lot of very rich ports. It was also not a country yet. So what is known as Italy did not exist yet. It was a bunch of separate countries. And a super pope, yeah. But yeah, Italy had not formed yet. It had not congealed into a nice sort of a sort of glutinous mass. But still, there was a lot of very, very powerful Italian countries at the time. Yeah. Yeah. And so these are basically Elizabethan fairs and that's good. But it's just interesting that we skipped German printing presses, Italian art, so much of the Renaissance. Oh, and other

footnote about eras, Pachelbel's canon is from the Baroque, which is an era after the Renaissance. So if you enjoyed that last week, not Renaissance. And if it ain't Baroque, don't make it non-canonical, right? That's how it's... Nice. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm jigging. I understand. I'm jigging about it. You're jigging. The next number here, we mentioned this a little earlier. The number is as early as 1500, as early as the year 1500. That's how quickly Europeans brought turkeys back to Europe from the Americas. According to the Ohio Historical Society, there are five subspecies of wild turkeys in North America. And native North Americans in what's now Mexico started

domesticating them as early as 800 BC, possibly earlier. Yeah. So thousands of years of domesticating turkeys. Yeah, I think I kind of remember reading about how we like found some evidence of like animal pins and then some animal bones that indicated we were domesticating these birds quite early. Yeah, because it's smart and they're great. And then the first turkeys in Europe were Spanish invaders who took them in Mexico, brought them back. And turkeys were a huge hit spread continent wide.

So it actually helps you have turkey legs at your Ren Fair historically, if you're doing Elizabethan times. It's later in the Renaissance, it's more likely turkeys had reached England. That's why we said it in Elizabethan times, so everyone could have turkey legs. And kind of pickles? Well, I'll link the past episode you and I did with Elia Kalin about pickled cucumbers.

And the produce is from Asia, in particular India. Pickling happened all over the world. So as cucumbers progressed from Asia to Europe, it's more likely the later you go in history that there would be pickled cucumbers in England. There had to have been some pickles. I'll say that confidently. Yeah, we love it. And so I'm glad the foods fit.

There's probably more pickled eggs than there were pickled cucumbers, but nevertheless, there may have been some. There's no takeaway for it because it's just a philosophical thing. There's a long running debate in the Renfair community about how much to lean toward history, how much to lead toward entertainment. But I feel like the food is geared to be at least a little kid friendly. And I love the idea of giving them like weird pickled eggs as children. But also if it was supposed to be completely accurate, the food would not have much salt on

it because the salt would be reserved for the royalty, the nobility, and even they wouldn't have like a ton of salt. Like we have so much salt now in our food because we have such easy access to salt, which you could learn about on our salt episode. Yeah. Salt mine actually. Minding the salt. Yeah. Salt mines, but yeah, like there used to be a lot of,

like bland food that people didn't consider to be bland because you wouldn't have a comparison. But yeah, I mean, so I don't think it's going to be accurate regardless. Right. Also, there was Pepsi. Don't check. Anyway. The last thing with historical accuracy is our last takeaway because takeaway number three, clothing in Elizabethan England was made for a surprisingly different climate than modern America. Huh, yeah. Not just the famous climate change of recent times, it was a lot different. So was it colder?

Yeah, there was a little ice age across Europe during Elizabethan times and pretty much all the Renaissance. That's why my costume was too hot for me in Southern California. Yes. It's like a significant problem and we really need to warn people to hydrate as much as possible at renfairs. Because the clothes are not correct for now at all. You need to hide like a stillsuit from Dune underneath all those ruffles and corsets and

ruffs and tights and pumpkin pants because it gets hot. And corsets don't have to actually be constricting. I know that there's the popular concept of them being like really tight, but that was like a very sort of brief fad. I think we even covered that on one of our episodes, right? Like on bras. Yeah, that came up. Yeah. Like some people did it and some didn't and it wasn't dominant. Right. It wasn't like, but it's still, it's still hot. It's like, that's a lot of stuff to wear. I've got too much stuff on me. When we are saying, Hey, I'm going to go to the Ren Fair. I'll wear Elizabethan clothes.

We wear clothing that's often not for the summer maybe when you're going. Yeah. And for a totally different year round climate. There was a phenomenon called the Little Ice Age that could be a hundred podcasts, but the gist is from the early 1300s all the way into the 1700s, so the entire period. Europe had a gradual year over year dip in average temperatures. And for that 400 years, average temperatures for the year dropped by two degrees Celsius, an entire two degrees.

What caused this? And there's actually a bunch of theories we don't totally know. They range from like sunspot activity to the death mainly by disease of most Native Americans. And then land was used differently and forests re-grew and that could have thrown off the whole global climate. But there's other theories too. We don't really know why it happened. It is really a shame because I think a lot of this history is probably lost because of

genocide and also just the loss of records of this period of time. But there were a lot of practices where land management like controlled burns, which would have a big impact on local ecology and probably also a global impact, honestly. But yeah, it's just one of those things that, hey, when you do a genocide, that can actually have a impact, not just on the people who are suffering the genocide, but on the entire world. And at this point, it would have been due to disease

that was brought over by the Spanish settlers, right? Yeah, there was some active fighting, but there was just a huge burst of death from disease pandemics. And so that is what we're talking about with if something changed the climate, it's probably that. And yeah, and then this climate change changed European culture a bit. There were food shortages and fuel shortages throughout those centuries in many places. There was also an interesting new form of fair in Elizabethan and Renaissance England. During the reigns of Henry VIII and

Elizabeth I, London's climate got colder in a way where they could hold frost fairs. Frost fairs were carnivals on the frozen surface of the Thames River in London because it was freezing more and longer than it had in previous generations. And so they put on all their many layers of clothes and threw a carnival. And then some of us saw drawings of that and said, I'm going to wear that in Wisconsin in the summer. That sounds great. I have so learned my lesson about the importance of clothing and materials in the summer because I was like, I have become a linenist, Alex. I'm big on linens, wearing 100% linen during the summer because it's so breathable and

it is so nice. And now when I put on something that's like polyester in the summer, I'm like, oh my God, why am I doing this? This is awful. Yeah. And so all of those climate reasons and then also massive industrial global heating of the world, it means that what we wear at Renfairs is a lot more difficult than it would have been to wear in late 1500s England. And shout out

to Sources Southern Fried Science, which is a research blog, and also UK historians Ariel Hessean and Dan Taylor writing for theconversation.com. They have graphs, charts, and history about why an accurate Elizabethan outfit is probably not a great idea if you want to be comfortable at a US Ren Fair. And man, if you brought to a US Ren Fair like a giant sheep's bladder full of water and just were drinking that, that's also a great vibe for the Renaissance Fair, right? Like you get, maybe even it's Gatorade, like sort of a reddish-orange-ish Gatorade, and it just seems like you are imbibing quite a bit of

mead. I do like the idea that you've time traveled and you're totally passing at Elizabethan England and then you get out one of those Nalgene bottles and you're burned as a witch immediately. Just like like deaf, deaf. Also what is Arizona State University printed on it? I have no idea what any of that is. Hydro flask sounds satanic. Yeah. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week.

Welcome to the outro, with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Renaissance Fairs were invented by Californians in opposition to the U.S. Cold War Red Scare. Takeaway number two, most Renaissance Fairs only depict the final and most English chunk of the Renaissance. Takeaway number three, clothing in Elizabethan England was designed for a surprisingly different and colder climate

than modern America. And then so many stats and numbers about the scale of the Renfair world, how the performers live, how turkeys and pickles could have made their way to England, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Because members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating

story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Henry Stewart, aka Lord Darnley, a real historical figure too bizarre to be depicted in Renaissance Fairs. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show. For a library of almost 18 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows, it's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFund.org. Key sources this week include a wonderful historical work.

It's called Well Met, Renaissance Fairs, and the American Counterculture. That's by Rachel Lee Rubin, professor of American Studies at UMass Boston. In parallel with that, there's a piece for Smithsonian magazine by Jillian Bagwell building on that, doing new interviews. And then we had so much journalism on this show from large sources like NPR and the New York Times, and smaller sources like the alt-weekly Little Village, based in Iowa City, Iowa. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land

of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoat people, and others. Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIFT Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip

on another episode? Because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 159, that's about the topic of graveyards. Fun fact, the United States is one of the strictest countries in the world when it comes to not relocating dead people. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unhaven by the

Budo's Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to The Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members and thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.