Defenestration

Citation Needed

Citation Needed Media

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4.8 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Defenestration (from Neo-Latin de fenestrā[1]) is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.[2] The term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618 which became the spark that started the Thirty Years' War. This was done in "good Bohemian style", referring to the defenestration which had occurred in Prague's New Town Hall almost 200 years earlier (July 1419), and on that occasion led to the Hussite war.[3] The word comes from the Neo-Latin [4] de- (down from) and fenestra (window or opening).[5]

By extension, the term is also used to describe the forcible or summary removal of an adversary.[6]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to citation needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the internet, and that's how it works now.
0:31.4	I'm Eli Bosnick, and I'll be breaking in and busting up tonight, but I'll need a group of disposable stooges.
0:37.8	First up, two men who aren't shy about being from Shytown, Tom and Cecil.
0:43.7	Yeah, I'm actually more pee shy than Shy Town.
0:46.8	Every time everyone has staged right at the Wrigleyville Pist Trough.
0:50.5	Everyone.
0:51.6	Thank you.
0:52.7	Thank you.
0:53.9	Stop staring.
0:55.1	I'm going to go soon.
0:58.6	I don't know why you decided to hug your mistress from that Petroff.
1:01.7	So it's such a weird, weird choice.
1:05.4	It was all yellow.
1:09.4	And also joining us tonight a New York
1:12.1	Maloink who makes sure his boss gets the money on time
1:15.0	Heath and right
1:16.3	throwing you out some windows man
1:18.5	I don't know what oh yeah I had not read the essay when I wrote the
1:22.6	intro and I thought there was going to be more
1:24.5	gangsters like you out of windows
1:26.3	all right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I thought there was going to be more gangsters. Like medieval gangsters.
1:28.4	All right.
	...

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