637. What It’s Like to Be Middle-Aged (in the Middle Ages)

Have you ever found yourself agitated or confounded or just sick of the current state of affairs and wondered what it might be like to live in another time? I do not belong to this time period. I know it sounds crazy, but when I wore armor and I'm sitting in front of a castle in Germany or in Poland, I felt like I belonged there. You know, I I I I feel at home. For some people, home is in the Middle Ages.

It appears to be a simpler time. People worked hard and played hard. It seems exotic to us now. The exotic place these people are in is New Jersey, at the Burlington County Fairgrounds. It's a warm, sticky Sunday in June, and they are attending the annual New Jersey Renaissance Fair, fair with an E at the end.

Despite the heat, They're wearing woolen vests and long sleeved dresses, heavy boots. Also, among the men a lot of very bushy beards. Matt Schwarz is one of the musical performers. He is a harpist.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (46 minutes, 7,729 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.