Surely all of us can understand how infuriating it can be when a neighbor builds some damn thing or other that blocks our view. And then won't take it down. And maybe even laughs. What to do? Take the case to court, obviously. But what if we lose the case, on account of our view-blocking neighbor is a lawyer? Well. We can resort to harassment. With maybe a machine we build that makes the neighbor and his guests think that a bad earthquake is happening, in a region constantly bothered by bad earthquakes. And, hey, let's add in some storm effects. Our neighbor might be a lawyer, but we are one of the greatest architect/engineers of our day, and probably all of the days to come. Earthquake machine? Not a problem. Anne wants to talk about the history of earthquakes in Byzantium, and found an awesome cat poem written by the historian who gives us this story. Michelle explains to you just why it is that the engineering of Hagia Sophia is so extraordinary that it survives all those earthquakes. And is really big. Anthemius was a hell of an architect/engineer.

In April, 1321, the lepers of Southern France found themselves accused of poisoning the community wells, with some sort of powder. They were, the theory went, attempting to spread leprosy to the rest of the population. They weren't doing that, or anything like that, but they were tortured and executed, and the leprosaria, the houses where they lived, were taken over, and all of the goods and moneys belonging to either the lepers or the leprosaria were confiscated. Soon after the lepers started getting decimated (along with foreigners, just cause they were there), the focus moved to the Jews, who were also tortured and executed, the survivors mostly leaving the country. For a while, Southern France had few lepers and few Jews. Anne is really happy that she gets to explain leprosy and tout the Leprosy Museum in Bergen, Norway, and Michell adores the scholar she found who explains why the whole horrible debacle happened. It was money. Follow the money.

It's our April Fools' Episode, in which we explain how it is we know that things purported to have existed in the Middle Ages did not actually exist! It's late, for April Fools' Day, by any known calendar, since it's the end of June, and also the Bisley Boy, who did not exist, did his not existing after the Middle Ages, thereby qualifying this episode as a Special Episode. Anne explains the stupidity of the Bisley Boy Theory, which is, in short, that Queen Elizabeth I died at the age of 9 and got replaced by a little boy from Bisley, and Michelle, who found herself at the bottom of a rabbit hole consisting of Bram Stoker's book Famous Imposters, from 1910, in which Bram Stoker reveals WAY more of his concerns about gender identity than he probably meant to, and gives Anne even more reason to dislike Stoker, has a great deal of enjoyment and gets to explain to us the Chevalier d'Eon, who confuses Stoker even more than Queen Elizabeth.