This week, Danièle digs into medieval ideas about beauty and womanhood, and how they affect the data of the information age. Also, find out more about the saint everyone loves to celebrate: St. Patrick.

Although women were the primary caregivers of young children, and were responsible for many domestic chores, they were also savvy businesspeople, as Dr. Sarah Ifft Decker explained on this episode of the podcast.

This week, in my chat with Dr. Natalie Goodison about medieval swans, the conversation turned to badges, specifically ones which you might wear to show your affiliation with a political faction.

In all of the poetry I’ve read of Chaucer’s, The Wife of Bath is definitely a standout. In my literature classes in university, she was always described as “earthy”, a sort of polite way of saying bawdy, natural, common, and she is all of these things. And yet, as Dr. Marion Turner says in her episode on this (in)famous character, The Wife of Bath draws attention and admiration far more than those characters of higher status and class.