Dr. Z came into the studio recently and recorded the third part of our series on medieval urbanization,

and it was a lot of fun.

We ended up talking for about two hours, which I think is our longest chat yet,

and we covered pretty much everything. Here's a small sample.

Dr. Z. What do you have for us today? All right. Today we are finishing our little series on

urbanization in the early 12th century, and we're going to talk about daily life inside a town.

And I'm not going to follow like a, like pick a fake person and try and follow it through because I think we'd miss too much detail of what's going on.

But if towns had a vibe that was distinct, infection and infestation, I would imagine, would be that vibe.

I'm not going to say that's not there,

but that wasn't the one I was going to pick. It's hustle culture. Like people in towns are

hustling all the time. As we drive towards this cash economy and a rent economy, there is now

a structural incentive to always be making cash, either because you're on the lower end of

this and just trying to survive because, again, money's just going to be going out of your

pockets all the time to pay for your living.

Like the five layers of people who are all paying rent to the bishop.

And it seems like there's a practice of renting even small things. Like

you're renting your room, you're renting the stall at a market if you're selling at a market.

And there's also just a lot more buying of goods continually rather than like making stuff in your

own home that was happening out in rural areas.

Right.

So money's going out the door constantly.

So you've got to be constantly making money.

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