Latest / Ridiculous History / Did Knights Really Wear Suits of Armor?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
- 0:27Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for
- 0:31Speaker 1: tuning in. Let's hear it for our own Night in
- 0:34Speaker 1: Shining production Armor producer Max.
- 0:42Speaker 2: It is Max Williams Day, I Love.
- 0:45Speaker 3: I Love James Williams, the.
- 0:47Speaker 2: Third junior Senior Did you get esquire? Sure? And a
- 0:52Speaker 2: doctor in there as well, Yeah.
- 0:53Speaker 1: Vaughan something also, that's mister Noel Brown, the one and only.
- 0:58Speaker 4: So Max, You're dubbed diploma mud and uh you've got
- 1:02Speaker 4: your PhD.
- 1:07Speaker 1: And they called me ben Bully tax purposes here, guys,
- 1:11Speaker 1: have you ever been to Medieval Times? Well?
- 1:13Speaker 2: I did once travel back in time.
- 1:15Speaker 4: I woke up in it from a dream and I
- 1:17Speaker 4: found myself in in a in a in some sort
- 1:20Speaker 4: of dungeon.
- 1:22Speaker 2: No, that's not true. I made that up.
- 1:23Speaker 4: But I have not actually been to the restaurant, the
- 1:26Speaker 4: themed restaurant and attraction Medieval Times. The only experience I
- 1:30Speaker 4: have of it, frankly, is from the movie The Cable Guy.
- 1:33Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, my interaction is just knowing Jonathan Strickland renaissantly.
- 1:40Speaker 2: Okay, what wouldn't you agree? Though?
- 1:42Speaker 4: Ben if If we've been to a Renaissance festival, we've
- 1:45Speaker 4: more or less had the Medieval times experience, short of
- 1:48Speaker 4: the crappier food at medieval times, because we can all
- 1:51Speaker 4: argue that ren rent fair food pretty good.
- 1:53Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, those carneies know what they're doing.
- 1:56Speaker 2: Those carnies and those carnivores. All them turkey legs.
- 2:00Speaker 1: Oh man, I gotta say. I took some of the
- 2:03Speaker 1: friends of ours out for a group field trip to
- 2:07Speaker 1: the Renaissance Festival, and my girlfriend and I completely overestimated
- 2:13Speaker 1: the nostalgia factor. So we each got a turkey leg.
- 2:16Speaker 1: Those turkey legs are so big. Those are two people
- 2:19Speaker 1: turkey legs.
- 2:20Speaker 2: And it's weird some of them.
- 2:21Speaker 4: Maybe it's like on a per turkey leg basis, or
- 2:24Speaker 4: maybe this is a feature of every turkey leg.
- 2:26Speaker 2: They got this real weird flap of like tend any
- 2:29Speaker 2: stuff in them.
- 2:30Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it kind of.
- 2:31Speaker 2: Pulls out like like a little like a feather, like.
- 2:34Speaker 4: Yeah, like a record. Yeah, there's got to be a
- 2:37Speaker 4: science name for that.
- 2:39Speaker 1: There is, hopefully, you guys outside, we we do have
- 2:45Speaker 1: We've been thinking about this. We've been thinking about, uh,
- 2:48Speaker 1: the the iconic image of nights in Shining Armor because
- 2:53Speaker 1: as round tables, lances of lots, uh, there's no shortage
- 2:58Speaker 1: of fascinating painting work of works of literature and film
- 3:02Speaker 1: and TV now like Game.
- 3:04Speaker 4: Of Thrones, Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Is how
- 3:06Speaker 4: I know anything about the medieval time at all?
- 3:09Speaker 1: Frankly, yeah, 'tis but a scratch shout out to the
- 3:11Speaker 1: knights and knee. But no. You recall how these things
- 3:16Speaker 1: always depict these absolute warriors who were plated up like
- 3:21Speaker 1: little mech like mechs, dude, and they're they're doing all
- 3:25Speaker 1: sorts of crazy physical stunts and all kinds of punishing
- 3:29Speaker 1: weather and.
- 3:30Speaker 4: Yirling around those flaily thingies, the morning Stars, the Evening Star,
- 3:34Speaker 4: morning Stars.
- 3:35Speaker 1: Morning Star, You nailed the line. And then they fight,
- 3:38Speaker 1: despite the fact that they're carrying hundreds of pounds of
- 3:42Speaker 1: armor on them. They fight for hours against anybody and
- 3:46Speaker 1: they You watch this and at some point right during
- 3:51Speaker 1: a battle scene, you have to say, wouldn't most modern
- 3:55Speaker 1: people collapse after just a short period of even running
- 3:59Speaker 1: or walking briskly?
- 4:01Speaker 4: Well, because unlike the mechs ben, these don't have any
- 4:03Speaker 4: exoskeletal robo attachments.
- 4:07Speaker 2: This is a burden born by humans.
- 4:09Speaker 4: And yes, you know, because you've got to think there
- 4:11Speaker 4: are different situations where this kind of armor might have
- 4:14Speaker 4: been employed. The medieval times of it all being the
- 4:17Speaker 4: attorneys a little more you know, controlled, and then of
- 4:20Speaker 4: course you got folks literally charging into battle against you know,
- 4:25Speaker 4: an opponent that's out there to murder them.
- 4:28Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And that's our question today. Did knights really
- 4:32Speaker 1: wear suits of armor? To get into this? We were
- 4:44Speaker 1: talking a little bit about sports off air. One interesting
- 4:49Speaker 1: thing about football is that there's very little protective gear soccer,
- 4:55Speaker 1: I mean football, yeah, with shint guards is the one
- 4:58Speaker 1: that I always remember from being youth.
- 5:00Speaker 2: Do they still wear shin guards? Is that part of
- 5:03Speaker 2: the kit?
- 5:04Speaker 1: I don't know. But there's a great show by our
- 5:07Speaker 1: pal Miles called Ain't It Footy which is examining examining
- 5:12Speaker 1: football when we're talking about armor. What's interesting, guys, is
- 5:17Speaker 1: that for most of early human history, humanity was wrestling
- 5:23Speaker 1: with this huge life threatening dilemma. They were the smartest
- 5:27Speaker 1: creatures they knew, and the humans evolved to specialize in
- 5:31Speaker 1: various things like running long distances persistence hunting, But all
- 5:35Speaker 1: that specialization comes with a price. Humans don't have a
- 5:40Speaker 1: protective shell like a turtle or an armadillo. They can't
- 5:44Speaker 1: regenerate limbs like some lizards or other creatures. Humans are
- 5:49Speaker 1: bestified as squishy.
- 5:52Speaker 4: Yeah, they are perishable creatures.
- 5:55Speaker 2: They are dainty, delicate little flowers. For sure. We don't
- 5:59Speaker 2: do well under.
- 6:01Speaker 1: So if you don't have a shell, if you don't
- 6:04Speaker 1: have a great powerful maw of sharp teeth, if you
- 6:11Speaker 1: can't regenerate limbs, you have to rely on your tool
- 6:14Speaker 1: making abilities to make up for all the stuff you lack.
- 6:18Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, the human superpower or ultimate adaptive capability
- 6:22Speaker 4: would be the brain, the ability to reason, the ability
- 6:25Speaker 4: to think about thinking and figure this stuff out to
- 6:28Speaker 4: you know, improve their situation.
- 6:30Speaker 1: One hundred percent, dude. And this is why we find
- 6:34Speaker 1: it no surprise that body armor is an ancient human invention.
- 6:39Speaker 1: The first records of something like body armor as opposed
- 6:42Speaker 1: to you know, regular clothing is found in ancient sue Mare,
- 6:47Speaker 1: in ancient Samaria, in today's Southern Rock. And then if
- 6:52Speaker 1: you fast forward to like fourteen hundred BCE, you see
- 6:56Speaker 1: the emergence of something like heavy plate armor, usually like
- 6:59Speaker 1: a chest plate, just the one kind of like how
- 7:02Speaker 1: you would see a bulletproof vest today.
- 7:05Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, I'm always fascinated by her.
- 7:06Speaker 4: When I think about like history of armor, I just
- 7:09Speaker 4: think about the kind of stuff that those kids wore
- 7:11Speaker 4: in the movie Hook, you know, like pecis of wood,
- 7:14Speaker 4: you know, various little tracks that they find lying around
- 7:18Speaker 4: leather under carriages, you know, I mean I think that
- 7:21Speaker 4: was sort of really the earliest form of ballistic protection
- 7:25Speaker 4: would be just real sturdy hide and the material.
- 7:29Speaker 1: Way more common than the armor that you see in films.
- 7:33Speaker 1: We know, of course, shout out to the Far East.
- 7:36Speaker 1: We know those folks had a deep history of armor
- 7:38Speaker 1: because again they realized factory setting human skin is pretty vulnerable.
- 7:44Speaker 1: That's why we invent in clothing right in each of
- 7:47Speaker 1: these cases. And I know you love this concept. We
- 7:49Speaker 1: see parallel thinking. It depends the armor they make, depends
- 7:54Speaker 1: on the material resources and the crafting techniques that their
- 7:59Speaker 1: arbors had at the time. So it's interesting, and shout
- 8:02Speaker 1: out to our research associate Jabari. It's interesting to think
- 8:07Speaker 1: that if we took a blacksmith from medieval Europe and
- 8:13Speaker 1: showed him armor from far Japan or from China, he
- 8:16Speaker 1: would be fascinated by the different materials. He'd be fascinated
- 8:20Speaker 1: by the manufacturing, but he would immediately know exactly what
- 8:24Speaker 1: he was looking at because he was making the same
- 8:27Speaker 1: stuff too. Well.
- 8:28Speaker 4: I mean, this is the kind of parallel thinking that
- 8:30Speaker 4: doesn't isn't doesn't require too much of elite because, as
- 8:33Speaker 4: you said, man, humans are inherently squishy creatures, and it
- 8:37Speaker 4: is a very self serving and pretty intuitive idea to
- 8:42Speaker 4: what if we could protect ourselves from getting squished?
- 8:44Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah, And our hypothetical Blacksmith here is, you know,
- 8:50Speaker 1: the odds are stacked in his favor because armor is
- 8:53Speaker 1: human shaped.
- 8:53Speaker 4: Oh, I mean, gosh. Another one, yes, percent. Another one
- 8:56Speaker 4: that comes to mind is there is a segment in
- 9:00Speaker 4: the incredibly delightful Cohen Brothers anthology film was It Buster Scruggs. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 9:08Speaker 4: where Stephen Root, the delightful character actor who plays like
- 9:13Speaker 4: a banker who's being robbed by I want to say,
- 9:16Speaker 4: James Franco just pre cancelation. He emerges from behind the
- 9:22Speaker 4: cash counter covered in pots and pans, you know, yeah,
- 9:25Speaker 4: And it's just like this stuff could have been improvised
- 9:28Speaker 4: so many ways, just by stuff that was laying around,
- 9:30Speaker 4: and it's just such a like human instinct to be like,
- 9:33Speaker 4: how do I kind of turtle up and protect myself?
- 9:36Speaker 1: And another thing that would astonish our hypothetical blacksmith would
- 9:42Speaker 1: be the sheer cost of this heavy fit. That's that's
- 9:46Speaker 1: where we get to the myth busting. And that's why
- 9:48Speaker 1: I think you're right about people mcguvery more often than
- 9:52Speaker 1: they manufactured. You know, like we all remember those films
- 9:57Speaker 1: where we all know how Hollywood loves to spotlight military
- 10:03Speaker 1: dress and huge battle scenes. You got kitted out nights.
- 10:07Speaker 1: They're charging toward the enemy on horses, They're waving their lances, screaming, treating, yeah, yeah,
- 10:14Speaker 1: hootin and such. That stuff definitely did happen, but it
- 10:19Speaker 1: was nowhere near as glamorous as the films imply for sure.
- 10:22Speaker 4: And if you do get a chance, I know we
- 10:24Speaker 4: always are shouting out the met in New York City.
- 10:27Speaker 4: There's a wing of that massive place that is all
- 10:30Speaker 4: just like medieval armor, and you're gonna see a range
- 10:33Speaker 4: of stuff, including the much more elaborate, fearsome, looking for
- 10:39Speaker 4: lack of a better word, at the moment, ceremonial kind
- 10:42Speaker 4: of stuff. Oh, it would have maybe been designed to
- 10:44Speaker 4: be worn by a king, or to designate some higher
- 10:48Speaker 4: level figure who maybe wasn't necessarily going to be out
- 10:51Speaker 4: there swinging the sword, but needed to look the part.
- 10:56Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's weird too, because now you mentioned that.
- 11:00Speaker 1: One thing that always bugged me in the world of
- 11:02Speaker 1: rap and hip hop would be when more conservative folks
- 11:06Speaker 1: would criticize an album cover that shows, maybe shows a
- 11:09Speaker 1: guy with a bunch of chains, gold chains on his neck,
- 11:13Speaker 1: and he's holding a couple of guns and he's got
- 11:15Speaker 1: a pile of cash. That's exactly what those portraits were like.
- 11:19Speaker 4: Yeah, oh goshde only it was more like.
- 11:23Speaker 5: A sword, some sword coal, perhaps maybe a giant roast
- 11:28Speaker 5: beast of some sort, and piled up coins and perhaps
- 11:32Speaker 5: a damsel of some variety.
- 11:34Speaker 1: And of course, yeah, those suits are part of the
- 11:36Speaker 1: flex because and often.
- 11:37Speaker 2: A very skinny looking wayfish dog. Yes, weird.
- 11:41Speaker 1: For some reason, I always like to picture the great
- 11:44Speaker 1: masters of art back in the day saying, uh, well,
- 11:48Speaker 1: we can add one more thing in the corner. And
- 11:50Speaker 1: I'm actually pretty good at drawing this specific type of dog.
- 11:55Speaker 2: Oh yeah, exactly, the wayfish, little spind So this is
- 12:01Speaker 2: why it's such a flex. A full suit of armor
- 12:04Speaker 2: to get in your heads, ridiculous historians, the kind of
- 12:07Speaker 2: armor you're thinking about right now in the fourteen hundred CE,
- 12:12Speaker 2: this would have cost the equivalent of three million dollars
- 12:15Speaker 2: for one suit. What kind of materials are we talking about? Ben?
- 12:19Speaker 2: Is this made of like solid gold?
- 12:22Speaker 1: So much stuff? The problem was manufacturing these things took
- 12:28Speaker 1: so much time. You're essentially telling a team of very
- 12:32Speaker 1: highly skilled laborers this is the rest of your year.
- 12:37Speaker 2: So okay, well no, it's I mean, and I know
- 12:40Speaker 2: I've been nerding out on watches lately, as if you been.
- 12:43Speaker 2: At least we have been together.
- 12:45Speaker 4: There are some companies that will produce like fifty watches
- 12:48Speaker 4: a year because it is all hand machined, designed in
- 12:53Speaker 4: house like and those are the ones that maybe retail
- 12:56Speaker 4: might be two hundred thousand dollars, but there's so few
- 12:59Speaker 4: of them that they become worth like five times that
- 13:01Speaker 4: on auction or in resale, same deal. It's a matter
- 13:04Speaker 4: of time, commitment, and how many of these things can
- 13:08Speaker 4: you pump out?
- 13:08Speaker 2: These suits? And who are you working for?
- 13:10Speaker 4: Like, it's one thing to make stuff for the troops,
- 13:14Speaker 4: for the infantry, but it's another thing to be working
- 13:16Speaker 4: on these much more elaborate, high end pieces that would
- 13:20Speaker 4: be for generals and top folks.
- 13:23Speaker 1: Yeah, especially when you think of the ornate filigrees and
- 13:27Speaker 1: all the details, which is the armor version of complications
- 13:31Speaker 1: and a fancy watch.
- 13:33Speaker 2: You got, you got different combinations of metals.
- 13:36Speaker 4: You've got all these little touches that maybe absolutely are
- 13:39Speaker 4: gold or various precious metals mixed in with the more
- 13:42Speaker 4: durable stuff.
- 13:43Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm excited to get into this, Ben.
- 13:45Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, well we know, like you were saying, no,
- 13:48Speaker 1: most soldiers in real life, and indeed a lot of
- 13:52Speaker 1: people who are technically knights, they had nothing near this stuff.
- 13:56Speaker 1: They did the best with what they had a lot
- 13:59Speaker 1: of times, like and pants would just like a little
- 14:02Speaker 1: chain mail.
- 14:02Speaker 2: Maybe a chess plate.
- 14:04Speaker 1: If they knew the Celts. Yeah, maybe a chess plate
- 14:07Speaker 1: if they had a good lord who would supply them well.
- 14:11Speaker 1: During the early Middle Ages, a knight's armor was basically
- 14:16Speaker 1: what you described earlier. It was a padded garment. They
- 14:19Speaker 1: might have a simple metal helmet, they'd have a big
- 14:22Speaker 1: wooden shield, and if they were lucky, it'd be reinforced
- 14:25Speaker 1: with metal. Like you said, they did also use chain
- 14:29Speaker 1: mail because it let you move around still, and it
- 14:34Speaker 1: was way better at stopping cutting weapons. But it wouldn't
- 14:39Speaker 1: It wouldn't protect you against a blunt force object.
- 14:41Speaker 2: Like a mace.
- 14:42Speaker 4: No, no, gosh, rip that guy in Lord of the
- 14:46Speaker 4: Seven Kingdoms Night of the Seven Kingdoms. Rather, no spoilers,
- 14:50Speaker 4: but boiled boy, a thing happens.
- 15:00Speaker 1: I love the point you made earlier about how we
- 15:02Speaker 1: moved to the High Middle Ages around the eleventh to
- 15:05Speaker 1: thirteenth centuries, and we see, just like the janissaries in
- 15:09Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire. Stay tuned for that episode, these folks
- 15:13Speaker 1: who were the nightly class, they became more of a
- 15:20Speaker 1: political class, right. That's where we see the more sophisticated designs.
- 15:26Speaker 1: That's also where we see their horses getting kitted out too.
- 15:29Speaker 1: I feel so bad for those guys, But you've met horses.
- 15:33Speaker 1: They're skiddish.
- 15:34Speaker 4: They do tend to spook, that's true, which will cause
- 15:37Speaker 4: them to kick.
- 15:38Speaker 2: And do not want to be on the receiving end
- 15:40Speaker 2: of one of.
- 15:41Speaker 1: Those, even on a slow going farm. I'm worried when
- 15:45Speaker 1: I run into horses on friendly terms, just because they
- 15:49Speaker 1: seem very stressed out as very fast prey out.
- 15:51Speaker 2: Me and they bite.
- 15:53Speaker 1: Yeah, and they get a little attitude. Man.
- 15:56Speaker 2: No, And I don't want to sound like I'm scared
- 15:58Speaker 2: of horses.
- 15:58Speaker 4: I think horses are gorgeous, majestic creatures, but they've got
- 16:01Speaker 4: some peculiarities.
- 16:03Speaker 1: Yeah, just like the humans. They evolved to specialize in
- 16:06Speaker 1: certain things, and their thing is being hyper aware and running.
- 16:10Speaker 2: Quickly run away.
- 16:14Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, like the I picture a horse dad talking
- 16:17Speaker 1: to his kid and giving him life advice, and it's like, well,
- 16:20Speaker 1: young horseboy, you're growing up. You're gonna be a horseman,
- 16:23Speaker 1: a stallion soon. So I'll tell you what your grandfather
- 16:27Speaker 1: told me. Always run away.
- 16:31Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you're in a horror movie, never run
- 16:33Speaker 2: up the stairs. No. So it's just bad move.
- 16:37Speaker 1: So these we're just exercising empathy here, folks, because these horses,
- 16:42Speaker 1: who are already skittish, are thrust in the heat of
- 16:45Speaker 1: battle while essentially wearing an exoskeleton definitely not their idea
- 16:50Speaker 1: of good day, and horse armor was a whole other expense.
- 16:54Speaker 1: So they're these lords and these well to do nights
- 16:59Speaker 1: are spending the equivalent of millions of dollars on two
- 17:03Speaker 1: separate pieces, two separate suits of armor, one for them,
- 17:06Speaker 1: one for the horse. It's it's weird because the chest
- 17:11Speaker 1: plate was always a thing. But it's not until like
- 17:14Speaker 1: the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that we see nights in
- 17:19Speaker 1: full armor the way we would imagine them in the films.
- 17:23Speaker 1: And that's because it took a while for breakthroughs in metallurgy.
- 17:28Speaker 1: Why am I saying that wrong?
- 17:30Speaker 2: Metallurgy.
- 17:31Speaker 1: Metallurgy, Yeah, you got to hurry through it. Let's keep
- 17:33Speaker 1: that part it, let's do it. Yeah, metallurgy.
- 17:35Speaker 4: It's rare things that need to speak, though I guess
- 17:38Speaker 4: in our profession it does.
- 17:39Speaker 2: Come up from time to time, right right.
- 17:41Speaker 3: Metallurgy is one of these words that if you look
- 17:43Speaker 3: at it, you can't say it right.
- 17:45Speaker 4: Oh, and say it enough times, it loses all semblance
- 17:49Speaker 4: of meaning or reason.
- 17:50Speaker 1: Semantic satiation.
- 17:52Speaker 3: Yeah, nonsense basically like English.
- 17:54Speaker 1: I mean, most of English is nonsense.
- 17:57Speaker 2: Okay, So these this is the.
- 18:00Speaker 1: Time in history where the suits cover nearly every part
- 18:03Speaker 1: of the body. They're custom fitted to you. You have
- 18:06Speaker 1: to be rich to have one, or have a very
- 18:08Speaker 1: wealthy patron. A full suit of armor weighs between thirty
- 18:12Speaker 1: to fifty kilograms that's sixty six to one hundred and
- 18:16Speaker 1: ten pounds in freedom units.
- 18:18Speaker 4: Ben Can we talk stop it? Can we talk about
- 18:21Speaker 4: the codpiece? I think we're bearing the lead here.
- 18:24Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, the codpiece, tell us about it?
- 18:27Speaker 1: Goal.
- 18:27Speaker 4: Well, Bennet's an armored or padded if you weren't lucky
- 18:30Speaker 4: enough covering for the male groin on late medieval Renaissance
- 18:34Speaker 4: armor and clothing.
- 18:36Speaker 2: It was originally designed as.
- 18:38Speaker 4: Like a practical flap that would join the front part
- 18:41Speaker 4: of the under hose, which I guess is sort of
- 18:44Speaker 4: like a yeah, kind of a not a jerkin I'm
- 18:46Speaker 4: gonna get in trouble, you know, the sort of long
- 18:49Speaker 4: john under parts of the shit. Thank you, thank you,
- 18:53Speaker 4: remove thy shift. It protected, of course, the genitals, and
- 18:57Speaker 4: often it was a bit of a step up from
- 18:59Speaker 4: that and included a steel shaped plate on top of
- 19:03Speaker 4: the padding.
- 19:04Speaker 2: In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
- 19:05Speaker 4: By the late to mid fifteen hundreds, it became another
- 19:10Speaker 4: thing that would be exaggerated.
- 19:11Speaker 2: It was fashional status. It was so embellius.
- 19:15Speaker 1: It's out like bustles went crazy.
- 19:17Speaker 2: Witness ye, my cod piece.
- 19:21Speaker 1: That's why there are so many, so many paintings from
- 19:24Speaker 1: back in the day of a guy that we knew
- 19:27Speaker 1: was taken seriously, but has a ridiculous fake dog basically
- 19:33Speaker 1: a bulge.
- 19:34Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, it's like the spinal tap bit where he
- 19:38Speaker 4: goes through the airport security and it keeps going off,
- 19:41Speaker 4: and then finally he removes the cucumber wrapped in tinfoil
- 19:45Speaker 4: from his trousers.
- 19:48Speaker 1: Oh also shout out to all our European friends who
- 19:51Speaker 1: learned about ranch. I don't like ranch unless it's homemade.
- 19:55Speaker 1: But apparently the TSA has had to warn World Cup
- 19:59Speaker 1: visitors that you can't bring bottles of ranch on the plane.
- 20:03Speaker 2: Well you can at they're travel sized.
- 20:05Speaker 1: If they're travel sized, if you are at the point
- 20:07Speaker 1: of ranch addiction where you have to have a ranch flask,
- 20:11Speaker 1: basically you.
- 20:11Speaker 2: Gotta be got. I think you got to bring your own.
- 20:13Speaker 4: I don't think they come like that in travel servings,
- 20:17Speaker 4: but they should.
- 20:17Speaker 2: Man, people love that's.
- 20:18Speaker 1: A great idea.
- 20:19Speaker 4: Uh we we also know just travel sauces in general.
- 20:23Speaker 2: Ben you know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 20:25Speaker 1: Empty out those little Walgreens or Dwayne Reid shampoo bottles.
- 20:30Speaker 4: Because I told you how I learned my lesson the
- 20:32Speaker 4: hard way and had, like, you know, one hundred dollars
- 20:34Speaker 4: worth of nice hot sauces. Confiscated. That's right for being
- 20:37Speaker 4: in my carry on. We'll make that mistake again.
- 20:40Speaker 3: Travel Ranch did jump in here real quick. I am
- 20:42Speaker 3: actually pulling my friend Meredith, who's a weirdo. She brings
- 20:45Speaker 3: her own tortilla chips with her and stuff like that.
- 20:47Speaker 3: So I have asked her, are you a Ranch fan?
- 20:49Speaker 3: And the I'm going to ask her a follow up
- 20:51Speaker 3: of seeing if she brings Ranch on trail.
- 20:54Speaker 2: You could broad in the question just to travel sauces travel.
- 20:57Speaker 4: Oh, I'm sorry, she brings travel cononment so amazing. We'll
- 21:01Speaker 4: ask you what kind of receptacles are best for these things?
- 21:05Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, thank you. As we're waiting for the update,
- 21:09Speaker 1: let's return to knights and shining armor. Uh. This full
- 21:13Speaker 1: plate armor reaches its peak. It's real era of fanciness
- 21:19Speaker 1: in the fifteenth and sixteenth century.
- 21:22Speaker 2: Uh.
- 21:22Speaker 1: The full suit is referred to as a panoply at times,
- 21:26Speaker 1: and it's a feature basically, Yeah, it's all the stuff
- 21:30Speaker 1: together and it's a feature at the very end of
- 21:33Speaker 1: the Middle Ages going into the Renaissance. It's also it's
- 21:39Speaker 1: popular image comes to us because of the ceremonies you
- 21:44Speaker 1: were describing earlier. There jousting. They would make special armor
- 21:49Speaker 1: just for jousting because these were wealthy people with a
- 21:52Speaker 1: lot of disposable income. And you know, like you were saying,
- 21:56Speaker 1: I think it's important that we acknowledge even the fans
- 22:00Speaker 1: see his stuff was made from a series of materials.
- 22:04Speaker 1: You had iron, you had leather, textiles, you had steel,
- 22:08Speaker 1: and the plate armor is made of steel because it's
- 22:10Speaker 1: very hard, but it's also flexible if you know how
- 22:14Speaker 1: to work with it. The only reason they had steel
- 22:17Speaker 1: plate armor is because some of the blacksmith boffins, the
- 22:21Speaker 1: metal aer just figured out how to quench and temper
- 22:26Speaker 1: these steel plates so they wouldn't be brittle, because if
- 22:31Speaker 1: you don't make it the right way, then that mace
- 22:34Speaker 1: that you could have been saved from is just going
- 22:36Speaker 1: to crack your plate.
- 22:37Speaker 2: And isn't tempering where you heat it.
- 22:39Speaker 4: Up and bang it and then cool it down and
- 22:42Speaker 4: then do that again and every time it kind of
- 22:45Speaker 4: makes it stronger.
- 22:46Speaker 2: Or am I making that up?
- 22:47Speaker 1: No? I think you're right. Yeah, that's the quenching right
- 22:50Speaker 1: when you put it back in the water, and then.
- 22:52Speaker 2: What a satisfying shit makes.
- 22:55Speaker 1: That's how you know the climactic battle is coming up
- 22:58Speaker 1: in the third act of the film, right.
- 23:01Speaker 4: I always think of it's not really a night movie.
- 23:03Speaker 4: I mean, I guess it's sort of a modern night story.
- 23:05Speaker 4: But the film Mandy starring Nicholas Cage, there's a really
- 23:09Speaker 4: badass scene where he forges his own incredibly sick like
- 23:14Speaker 4: axe sword combo thing. But it also is like absurd
- 23:18Speaker 4: the timeline of it, Like it just shows them like
- 23:20Speaker 4: he just busts it out like in a you know,
- 23:22Speaker 4: an hour or even like in real time, like takes
- 23:24Speaker 4: a half an hour. It would take a long time
- 23:26Speaker 4: to make these kinds of things.
- 23:28Speaker 1: One hundred percent, and shout out to our pal, Nicholas Cage.
- 23:33Speaker 1: If you like superhero stuff and if you like investigative narratives,
- 23:38Speaker 1: do check out Spider Noir.
- 23:40Speaker 2: You're liking Spider Noir.
- 23:41Speaker 1: I'm liking it. I'm you're taking it man.
- 23:42Speaker 4: Yeah, I watched a bit of the first episode and
- 23:44Speaker 4: I liked it too. And I heard some complaints about
- 23:47Speaker 4: the black and white color combo thing not working for
- 23:49Speaker 4: some people, but it worked pretty well for me.
- 23:51Speaker 2: You could switch back and forth kind of neat.
- 23:52Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, pretty neat. Right, And we know that Knights
- 23:58Speaker 1: also had undergrus basically as you alluded to under the
- 24:02Speaker 1: metal armor. They're not naked, right, They don't just have
- 24:05Speaker 1: tidy whities or whatever the equivalent was. They have something
- 24:09Speaker 1: called a gambison made of quilted fabric. So it's kind
- 24:13Speaker 1: of like those oh what's the Japanese name for those
- 24:16Speaker 1: blanket outfits that we both love.
- 24:18Speaker 2: You picturing it, but I don't I don't know the name.
- 24:21Speaker 2: Do you mean like you you mean like a kigaroomy?
- 24:23Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, they're a roomy.
- 24:25Speaker 4: Yes, often shaped like a like a fun animal or
- 24:28Speaker 4: cartoon care.
- 24:29Speaker 1: Yeah. So these guys had this kind of inner exoskeleton
- 24:33Speaker 1: kigaroomy thing, kind of like.
- 24:34Speaker 4: The old Prospector's long John with the butt flap that
- 24:38Speaker 4: we often reference, like.
- 24:40Speaker 1: The red wool logs. Yeah, this this was entirely to
- 24:44Speaker 1: absorb the shock of a blow and also, you know,
- 24:49Speaker 1: treat yourself, babe. This is going to stop you from
- 24:52Speaker 1: getting chafe marks from your metal armor.
- 24:55Speaker 4: Well sure, and it's also going to soak up the
- 24:56Speaker 4: sweat and all of that stuff. And it does play
- 25:00Speaker 4: a role in the codpiece situation we were talking about earlier,
- 25:04Speaker 4: where if you needed to go poopoo or peepee on
- 25:08Speaker 4: the battlefield, you had to have access, so you would
- 25:10Speaker 4: like remove that cod piece and then undo the flap
- 25:13Speaker 4: on your whatever the thing is, and then you would go. Oftentimes, though,
- 25:18Speaker 4: to go number two, you really did need like your
- 25:21Speaker 4: caddy to help you out, your.
- 25:23Speaker 2: Squire squire, you know what I meant.
- 25:26Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's the same thing. It's the caddy. It's
- 25:28Speaker 1: the squire. Like you had to have a squire in
- 25:31Speaker 1: case you fell off your horse, because this would weigh
- 25:34Speaker 1: so much that you would need somebody to give you
- 25:37Speaker 1: a little upsy daisy so you could get back on
- 25:41Speaker 1: the horse.
- 25:42Speaker 4: Well, And understandably, the caddies were not wearing that same
- 25:46Speaker 4: level of mail and armor, so they would have been
- 25:49Speaker 4: like some little sitting ducks, little rodeo clowns out there.
- 25:52Speaker 1: So you've got your regular underwear, You've got your gambison,
- 25:56Speaker 1: which is going to be stuffed with horse hair or
- 25:58Speaker 1: straw and ridden with your sweat, so, by the way,
- 26:02Speaker 1: you're gonna smell terrible. But you're not quite ready for
- 26:05Speaker 1: the plate yet. You have to wear something else over
- 26:08Speaker 1: your gambis, and it's a tight fitting garment called an
- 26:11Speaker 1: arming doublet or weirdly a poor point like pouring water point.
- 26:17Speaker 1: And this stuff is important because it has little loops
- 26:22Speaker 1: or little islets that let you lace in the armor.
- 26:27Speaker 1: So these guys got the armor sewn on that second
- 26:30Speaker 1: layer of fabric so that it wouldn't fall off in battle.
- 26:35Speaker 1: But sometimes it did.
- 26:36Speaker 2: Sometimes it did.
- 26:38Speaker 1: Sometimes you're like, oh no, my elbow is naked.
- 26:40Speaker 2: And sometimes you had to poop yourself.
- 26:42Speaker 1: And sometimes you did have to poop yourself.
- 26:45Speaker 2: This was sometimes you had to poop yourself. I mean,
- 26:47Speaker 2: that's just true. That's just a life thing that just happens.
- 26:50Speaker 1: And you know, this is way before the dawn of
- 26:53Speaker 1: diaper technology, which was stilling into infancy.
- 26:56Speaker 3: So to circle back around a friend, Meredith, she is
- 26:59Speaker 3: a fan of but she would not bring a travel
- 27:02Speaker 3: sized ranch.
- 27:03Speaker 2: With uh ranches available in the world. Okay, okay.
- 27:07Speaker 3: She insists that she will always have a hot sauce
- 27:10Speaker 3: on her and her always be flying. She hasn't our
- 27:13Speaker 3: work bag at all times.
- 27:14Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, like Beyonce or Hillary Clinton.
- 27:17Speaker 2: Like Beyonce or Hillary Clinton exactly.
- 27:20Speaker 1: Especially when they have a new project coming.
- 27:22Speaker 2: Up, right, I'm really looking forward to that Beyonce, Hillary collab.
- 27:26Speaker 1: I am too. Yeah, I am too, especially, I mean
- 27:29Speaker 1: former Secretary of State Clinton is I'm sure to drop
- 27:33Speaker 1: a hot hook or nasty sixteen bars. Okay, So we've
- 27:43Speaker 1: got the armor, and we know that armor is continually
- 27:47Speaker 1: innovating for the people who can afford it these innovations.
- 27:51Speaker 1: This is an arms race. So these innovations also lead
- 27:54Speaker 1: to the decline of the shield for practical use. Like
- 27:57Speaker 1: you know, if we're out watching a jow Max and
- 28:00Speaker 1: Noel and yours, truly, we might see a knight who
- 28:04Speaker 1: has a shield right to bounce the lance off from
- 28:07Speaker 1: their opponent. But if you're in a battlefield in an
- 28:11Speaker 1: actual war, your plate armor is gonna do most of
- 28:14Speaker 1: what a shield would have done. So now a shield
- 28:17Speaker 1: is just an encumbrance. It's an albatross, it's another heavy
- 28:20Speaker 1: thing you have to carry.
- 28:21Speaker 4: Well, that's right, And it is one of those leveling
- 28:23Speaker 4: the playing field kind of arguments where it's like, you know,
- 28:26Speaker 4: if everyone's wearing this heavy crap, you're sort of like
- 28:29Speaker 4: equally hampered and you're all just kind of like working
- 28:32Speaker 4: in the same with the same drawbass.
- 28:34Speaker 2: Yes, slowly, slowly clanking over. So I'm coming to get you.
- 28:38Speaker 2: I'm coming I'm damning for minutes. Okay, here I am.
- 28:41Speaker 2: I'm gonna come towards you too. Well, okay, well.
- 28:44Speaker 1: Before we before we get through it. Yeah wait, wait,
- 28:46Speaker 1: gave off. Let's everybody get a little bit of water.
- 28:49Speaker 2: Hold on, gotta poop, gotta gotta poop.
- 28:52Speaker 1: I'll be back. It's like twenty minutes.
- 28:54Speaker 4: But then, you know, you start to think the real
- 28:56Speaker 4: innovation isn't how much can weed our guys down with
- 29:01Speaker 4: the stuff, is how can we train them to not
- 29:03Speaker 4: need it, you know what I mean, like and be
- 29:05Speaker 4: more nimble. And when we look at like Japanese armor,
- 29:09Speaker 4: that stuff is clever because it's.
- 29:11Speaker 2: Like shoulders, it's just on the critical parts.
- 29:13Speaker 4: And like, you know, they were just badass fighters who
- 29:17Speaker 4: really knew how to engage in a way that maybe
- 29:21Speaker 4: they didn't necessarily. They weren't just blunt instruments a tank
- 29:25Speaker 4: as you would call it in a video game.
- 29:27Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean also with the shields, if
- 29:30Speaker 1: we look at the regular guys, the non rich guys
- 29:33Speaker 1: who are fighting in these battles, we're looking at folks
- 29:37Speaker 1: who have stuff like long bows, right, or have pikes,
- 29:40Speaker 1: and those are both two handed weapons.
- 29:43Speaker 2: So shields aha, don't work for them wilding. Yeah, no, sorry,
- 29:47Speaker 2: the opposite you need two hands for the big Halbard.
- 29:51Speaker 2: Dual wielding would be two weapons.
- 29:53Speaker 4: And you know, there is technique for fighting that does
- 29:55Speaker 4: involve sword and shields, but that's its.
- 29:57Speaker 2: Own kind of very separate type of engagement, right yeah.
- 30:01Speaker 1: Yeah, And these street level infantry type guys, they can't
- 30:07Speaker 1: rock shields at all unless there's literally a separate dude
- 30:11Speaker 1: standing next to them with a big shield and holding
- 30:15Speaker 1: it up in front of them. So yes, I mean
- 30:18Speaker 1: people did that, right, But plate armor then, in this
- 30:21Speaker 1: great tech race, it outpaces the shield and eventually armor
- 30:26Speaker 1: itself is outpaced. That's how we get to our question
- 30:30Speaker 1: towards the end here, why why don't we see people
- 30:34Speaker 1: in full plate armor today? Like why isn't your average
- 30:39Speaker 1: Johnny Law or Wells Fargo security guard. Why aren't they
- 30:43Speaker 1: clinking around?
- 30:45Speaker 4: It's just it's about material science, really, you know, and
- 30:49Speaker 4: it's about things like kevlar, things like ballistic gelatine and
- 30:54Speaker 4: various types of low weight comparatively and high resistance you know,
- 31:02Speaker 4: to impact materials like the stuff that's in bulletproofests for example.
- 31:06Speaker 2: And you know, this stuff continues to improve.
- 31:10Speaker 1: Yeah, like the I have a kevlar vest and I
- 31:13Speaker 1: also have a ceramic plating things. You buy the vest
- 31:17Speaker 1: and then you end up buying the plates separately.
- 31:20Speaker 2: That's right. I do hear them talk about that in
- 31:22Speaker 2: like swat type shows.
- 31:24Speaker 4: Yeah, it is still expensive and it ain't exactly light,
- 31:30Speaker 4: but it's not right, you know. But comparatively it is
- 31:34Speaker 4: a dream come true, comparatively to the big old plates
- 31:37Speaker 4: right right plates.
- 31:39Speaker 1: And so it's cool because I love this point we're
- 31:41Speaker 1: getting to, like, at the height of its popularity, that
- 31:44Speaker 1: full plate armor was symbolic on multiple levels. It represents
- 31:49Speaker 1: so many astonishing technological breakthroughs, and if we're being honest,
- 31:54Speaker 1: it represents a cartoonishly brutal and unfair class system. This
- 31:58Speaker 1: is what this I keep thinking of how you would
- 32:01Speaker 1: feel if you are a non noble soldier, right, and
- 32:04Speaker 1: you've got whatever kit you could mcguiver together. You're it's
- 32:09Speaker 1: like you were driving around in a nineties Honda Civic
- 32:12Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you hear a terrible horn,
- 32:15Speaker 1: a great cheer from over the hill, and you're gang
- 32:17Speaker 1: a little civics is getting run down by bloodthirsty hum vs,
- 32:21Speaker 1: or like you said tanks.
- 32:23Speaker 2: Right, like they're outmatched. So you know the question we
- 32:26Speaker 2: pose at the top.
- 32:28Speaker 4: You know, did nights of your really wear these big,
- 32:32Speaker 4: massive suits of armor like you might see in a
- 32:36Speaker 4: fancy drawing room in a detective movie.
- 32:40Speaker 2: The answer is yeah, but not the way myths might suggest.
- 32:45Speaker 1: One hundred percent, because we have to remember that this
- 32:49Speaker 1: was a pretty limited window of time. As defensive measures
- 32:52Speaker 1: like armor improved, offensive technology improved as well, So now
- 32:57Speaker 1: we barely.
- 32:58Speaker 2: Do battlefield fighting at all anymore.
- 33:01Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, napolet warfare is thankfully gone. But despite all
- 33:07Speaker 1: the time, blood, research, and money poured into suits of
- 33:11Speaker 1: plate armor, this tech gets outpaced by a new kid
- 33:15Speaker 1: on the block. That's right, gunpowder. And I didn't know
- 33:19Speaker 1: this originally.
- 33:20Speaker 4: I guess I should have should have gotten a gunpowder
- 33:22Speaker 4: before I dropped kevlar and bulletproof.
- 33:24Speaker 1: No, no, it's fine, man. We know that we know
- 33:27Speaker 1: that kevlar would have been more effective than played armor
- 33:30Speaker 1: for sure, but I didn't know this at the beginning
- 33:33Speaker 1: tool before we started researching this armor at the time
- 33:38Speaker 1: was actually good enough to block early musket balls, which
- 33:42Speaker 1: were themselves a crapshoot with terrible aaming sure, so you
- 33:45Speaker 1: could get you could get a little ping pong shot
- 33:49Speaker 1: to your chest and keep going because it would take
- 33:51Speaker 1: the guy firing at you so long to reload their firearm.
- 33:55Speaker 2: Well.
- 33:56Speaker 4: Yeah, we've also seen examples of, like, you know, as
- 33:58Speaker 4: a twist in the plot of some sort of a
- 34:00Speaker 4: murder mystery type show, a bullet being stopped.
- 34:03Speaker 2: By a cigarette case, perhaps in the front pockets.
- 34:06Speaker 1: I always love that, you know, like there's that iconic
- 34:09Speaker 1: scene where somebody looks to be dead, but did they
- 34:12Speaker 1: pull out as you're saying that, and.
- 34:15Speaker 2: It's like a bibyes, oh yes.
- 34:20Speaker 1: Or this case, weirdly enough, a lottery ticket.
- 34:22Speaker 2: Okay, we'll take We'll take all the luck we can get.
- 34:26Speaker 4: This is super fun, man, And you know, I think
- 34:29Speaker 4: where I'm not like a gun person per se, but
- 34:32Speaker 4: I am fascinated by, uh these YouTube videos of people showing, uh,
- 34:37Speaker 4: what kind of materials can block what caliber of bullets
- 34:40Speaker 4: and stuff like that, And you do get into as
- 34:43Speaker 4: they escalate the materials into like stuff like ballistic gel
- 34:46Speaker 4: and all of these modern you know, gunpowder and bulletproof materials.
- 34:51Speaker 1: Yeah, like the spider silk experiments. That's pretty nuts.
- 34:55Speaker 2: I don't know, about that one.
- 34:56Speaker 1: There's been work into making armor base off spider silk,
- 35:02Speaker 1: which is like we always see it in what you know,
- 35:05Speaker 1: a tiny a web of tiny strands, but it turns
- 35:08Speaker 1: out if you knit it together, which is very time consuming,
- 35:12Speaker 1: then it actually makes a pretty good material.
- 35:15Speaker 2: For armor, almost like carbon fiber.
- 35:18Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd have to look into it because I don't
- 35:21Speaker 1: I don't know if it's cost effective yet, but we
- 35:23Speaker 1: do know, we do know. Plate armor became less cost
- 35:28Speaker 1: effective or even practical as firearms evolved, because look, the
- 35:33Speaker 1: reality is, uh, if you're wearing a bulletproof vest, even
- 35:37Speaker 1: now a modern one, and you get shot, you're still
- 35:41Speaker 1: going to have a screwed up day. It's gonna hurt,
- 35:45Speaker 1: you'll have nasty bruising, but the advantages will be alive.
- 35:50Speaker 1: The problem with plate armor is if these folks got
- 35:53Speaker 1: shot and the armor got mangled, you would injure the
- 35:58Speaker 1: guy even more or by trying to get it off them, like,
- 36:02Speaker 1: how are you gonna get his arm out of there? So,
- 36:05Speaker 1: as we said, that's the reason people aren't wearing plate
- 36:08Speaker 1: armor right now. Outside of coseplay and historical celebrations, body
- 36:14Speaker 1: armor is still around today. It's more expensive than we'd like,
- 36:19Speaker 1: but this is a great setup for a future episode
- 36:22Speaker 1: we have about another mythical fighter, the Bersoker.
- 36:28Speaker 2: Oh yes, yeah, remember that song from Clerks.
- 36:34Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
- 36:36Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a pretty pretty blue language. And so I'm
- 36:38Speaker 2: just gonna go with.
- 36:41Speaker 1: I had big big thanks.
- 36:43Speaker 2: Were they hopped up on goofballs? Maybe?
- 36:45Speaker 1: Maybe big big. We're gonna find out big big thanks
- 36:48Speaker 1: to our super producer, mister Max Williams. I've been our
- 36:51Speaker 1: research associate for this big thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka
- 36:56Speaker 1: the Quister, who I miss a little bit, though I'm
- 37:01Speaker 1: never gonna tell him that.
- 37:02Speaker 4: Doesn't he doesn't he owe us an appearance oppressed to
- 37:05Speaker 4: digitation a summoning.
- 37:07Speaker 1: Yes he does. He's also a fan of stage magic.
- 37:09Speaker 2: That's true. Who isn't I love stage I'm not a
- 37:12Speaker 2: fan of it. Well I am.
- 37:13Speaker 1: I love this stuff.
- 37:14Speaker 2: You know what to each to each their own indeed,
- 37:18Speaker 2: and jolly good time today. Ben enjoyed this one. Thanks
- 37:22Speaker 2: for the for the research, and we'll see you next time.
- 37:24Speaker 4: Folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
- 37:35Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.