# Spellbreakers Ep. 166: The Myth of the Middle Ages

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/badlands-media-6674661/spellbreakers-ep-166-the-myth-of-the-middle-ages
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/badlands-media-6674661/spellbreakers-ep-166-the-myth-of-the-middle-ages.md
Podcast: [Badlands Media](https://stenobird.com/podcast/badlands-media-6674661)
Published: 2026-05-16T07:18:18+00:00
Episode link: https://badlandsmedia.podbean.com/e/spellbreakers-ep-166-the-myth-of-the-middle-ages/
Audio file: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/g82z3zd8ihuxesxj/Spellbreakers_ep_166_1_8kvfb.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/badlands-media-6674661/episodes/spellbreakers-ep-166-the-myth-of-the-middle-ages
Duration seconds: 5350

## Resource

Were the Middle Ages really a thousand years of ignorance, brutality, and superstition? Host Matt Trump, a physicist, says no and has the receipts. Drawing on Johan Huizinga's classic "The Autumn of the Middle Ages" and a revelatory 1982 essay by mathematician James Franklin, Matt makes the case that the Middle Ages were actually a period of extraordinary advancement in philosophy, science, architecture, and literature, and that the Renaissance was the gap, not the golden age. Gothic cathedrals, Thomas Aquinas, Nicole Oresme's pre-Galilean mechanics, the myth of prima nocta, chastity belts, flat earth belief, and the Black Death all get their moment. A rich, wide-ranging episode that will make you rethink everything your history class told you.

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## Transcript

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