Medieval Vampire Epidemics with John Blair

Medieval Vampire Epidemics with John Blair

Author: Danièle Cybulskie October 30, 2025 Duration: 49:15
As the nights get longer and spookier, there's one thing that's guaranteed to make our hair stand on end: corpses that just won’t stay dead. Especially the ones interested in eating us. This week, Danièle speaks with John Blair about who refused to rest in peace in the Middle Ages, how medieval people attempted to keep the dead buried, and why some hauntings reached epidemic proportions.

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Step back in time without the dust and difficulty of old archives. The Medieval Podcast, hosted by Danièle Cybulskie, is your accessible gateway to a thousand years of human experience. This isn't a dry recitation of dates and battles, but a vibrant exploration of how people lived, thought, and created. Each week, Danièle brings her genuine curiosity and conversational style to interviews with leading scholars, uncovering the fascinating details that textbooks often miss. You'll find yourself immersed in discussions that might cover the economic significance of pigs, the beauty and complexity of Persian poetry, or the tumultuous drama of the Plantagenet dynasty. The scope is deliberately broad, touching on history, arts, literature, and the intricacies of daily culture and society, all through the medieval lens. Listening to this podcast feels like having a friendly chat with a knowledgeable guide who is just as excited to learn as you are. It’s designed for anyone with a spark of interest, whether you're a seasoned enthusiast or just wondering what daily life was really like between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. The conversations are deep yet digestible, always aiming to connect the medieval world to our own in unexpected ways. Prepare to have your assumptions challenged and your curiosity ignited as Danièle and her guests illuminate the shadows of the past, one compelling story at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

The Medieval Podcast
Podcast Episodes
Medieval Silesia with Sébastien Rossignol [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:39
One of the best things about podcasting on all things medieval is the opportunity to learn about lesser-known places – especially when those places are full of examples of long-ago thinking on cross-cultural contact, int…
The Art of War in Byzantium with Georgios Theotokis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:34
From the social media buzz we saw a couple of years ago, it seems a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about the ancient Roman Empire and its military activities, but less time thinking about how it evolved into…
Listening to the Middle Ages with Jonathan Berger [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:21
Since the new year, we’ve heard about both the development of medieval music and what it was like to live in the cultural hotbed of fifteenth-century Florence. And now, we’re going to bring it together in a way that has…
Africa and the Middle Ages with D. Vance Smith [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 45:54
Despite its vast cultural, spiritual, and material wealth, medieval Africa has too often been sidelined in the study of the Middle Ages. Or it's been peppered with asterisks to explain why its history is different, odd,…
Magic Books with Anne Lawrence-Mathers [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:35
One of the fun things about humans is our constant desire to engage with the supernatural, especially when it comes to getting a peek at the future. From reading bones, to tea leaves, flower petals, or online horoscopes,…
Alberti: Renaissance Man [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:47
If you’re going to be a writer, it’s best to find yourself in a place where there’s plenty to write about, and fifteenth-century Italy was definitely one of those places. For a young member of the powerful Alberti family…
Romanos the Melodist with Thomas Arentzen [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:04
Songs have a way of making us see and feel things unlike other forms of writing, which is why so many of us treasure the words of lyricists. And when it comes to early Christianity, no songs were more treasured and influ…
Medieval Beauty [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:09
Who’s the fairest of them all? And, more importantly, how did they get that way? This week, a new biography of Marilyn Monroe sends Danièle down the rabbit hole of medieval beauty, how it was achieved, and how it’s still…
2025: The Medieval Year in Review [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:41
If there’s one thing we can say about 2025 it’s that it was certainly full of surprises. From political bridge-burning to bridge-building, to the destruction and the restoration of priceless artifacts, there was never a…
Robin Hood and the Christmastime Tradition with Alex Kaufman [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:03
He’s a hero. He’s an outlaw. And it turns out he’s also Christmastime favourite. Given his many incarnations, from a foxy cartoon heartthrob, to the gruff and grizzled Hugh Jackman that previewed this week, it’s hard not…