Gone Medieval - Podcast Rankings and reviews

I look forward to every podcast episode and new documentary on the app! The hosts are incredible, the guests are wonderful, and I always leave learning something new and end up sharing what I’ve learned with friends or family - or go down to the library and get a book on a topic covered in an episode! I also really love Dr. Eleanor Janega and I’m so excited she’s hosting more episodes! Her energy is so much fun and her enthusiasm for history matches mine. I saw a couple reviews that seem to disagree, and to each their own, but my girl Dr. J is an absolute GEM! Check out the sister podcast Betwixt the Sheets too where she’s a regular guest. So glad I found history hit!

The hosts (Matt and Eleanor) make listening to Gone Medieval feel like a fun chat with friends. They make history accessible and entertaining and I look forward to new episodes each week. This is legit my fave podcast I can’t recommend it enough!

This is a podcast hosted by two extremely knowledgeable, down to earth, well spoken,
and (I can just tell) open hearted people. Matt Lewis’ love for the “greatest millennia in history” is simply infectious and his way of distilling history into succinct bits during his interviews is a rare gift. Eleanor Janega’s way of describing historic events in a way that take me back in time. She makes history so relatable. I love her insights into human behavior and do not get me started on how downright funny she can be!
In short I can’t recommend this podcast enough!

The topics are so varied, the hosts are so knowledgeable, engaging and their curiosity is infectious. An incredibly enjoyable podcast.

This series is like two different podcasts. The shows hosted by Matt Lewis are usually awesome. But the ones hosted by Eleanor Janega are horrible. The topics are interesting, and the guests are interesting, but her presentation and tone and approach are just so appalling that I can hardly stand to listen to her. She is obviously intelligent, but just really does not present well at all. She has this jokey, laughing style that can charitably be described as adolescent. The recent episode on the murder of Thomas Beckett is an example. It is so interesting to look behind the general mythology of the murder — that perhaps Beckett knew the murder was coming, and was preparing himself for it, in the hope of being sainted. But her snorting laughter about his wearing a hairshirt and general “hoo haw, this is just hilariously funny stuff” attitude toward a serious subject are so offensive. Even if it occurred in the long distant past, the subject is still one of violence and murder. Would we countenance this presentation for a description of a recent murder? I had to stop listening. Really wish the producers would pay attention to the generally negative comments about Dr. Janega and how the subject matter in this show is being presented. Her style is perhaps suitable to an audience of teenagers — but is that really the audience here? For the record, I am an American woman, and do not object to an American accent or the fact that Dr. Janega is a woman. I would feel the same about an English male presenter.

Listened to most of the Pope and the Emperor episode and it was not great. The way the investiture crisis was discussed weirdly veered between assuming one knows nothing or next to nothing about the topic and then acting like we can just hit some highlights and giggle about them. I learned about the story from listening to the British History Podcast where some of the key events were discussed as Pope Gregory, his reforms and his conflict with Henry intersected with William the Conqueror’s actions on the continent. I was hoping to get more detail on this podcast but honestly think I had gotten more detail on BHP. My criticism would be that first we have to catch everyone up on who the main protagonists, as it were, are, what their bullet point histories were and what they did. But the episode confusingly threw in dates 2/3rds of the way in, mentioned key elements off handedly and was just a jumbled mess.