folks, we've started a new series and this one is all about Weird Medieval shit. the Middle Ages were an incredibly fascinating time and we want to celebrate and emphasize that by looking at the events, people, and things that make you go, "damn that's wild." we're going to cover stuff from all across the entire one-thousand-year Medieval era and on every continent save Antarctica. in this first part, we take a look at the following three events: that time Justinian I sent two monks to China to steal the secrets of silk for the Byzantines, the Erfurt Latrine Disaster that killed sixty nobles in a lake of shit, and the Fourth Crusade that permanently split Christendom forever.