How did people go to the bathroom in medieval times? Why does Greenland look bigger than Africa on every map? Everyday history, explained in about ten minutes, with the sources to back it up.
The episode that started it all. Medieval toilets, castle garderobes, and the question everyone is too polite to ask.
In a castle in the 1200s, the bathroom was a little stone closet in the wall, a wooden seat, and a long drop to the ground below. No flush, no pipes, and no privacy as we would know it.
Medieval life, map lies, world wars, and the strange corners of history. Pick one and press play.
In a castle in the 1200s, the bathroom was a little stone closet in the wall, a wooden seat, and a long drop to the ground below. No flush, no pipes, and no privacy as we would know it.
In a Roman public latrine, twenty people sat side by side with no stalls, and the toilet paper was a sponge on a stick, shared by everyone and rinsed in a channel of running water.
Africa could hold Greenland fourteen times over. Your classroom map says otherwise, and the map has been lying for more than four hundred and fifty years.
Medieval towns ran public bathhouses, and on bath day people lined up to soak, eat, and gossip in the tub. The idea that medieval people never bathed is mostly wrong.
Governments banned this drink at least five times. People kept drinking it anyway. Coffee is the most ordinary thing in the world, and for three hundred years rulers treated it like a weapon.
In France, taking to the streets is not a hobby. It is a national tradition, older than the republic itself, and it works. The French have been protesting for so long that they turned it into an art form.
The Second World War was the biggest war in human history, and it started with a peace treaty. Here is the whole story, explained simply.
Before you saw anything in a medieval town, you smelled it: wood smoke, horse dung, baking bread, rotting fish, and the open sewers that were the streets themselves.
In the year 1350, your plate was a slab of stale bread, your fork did not exist, and the kind of bread you ate told everyone your place in the world.
The United States and the Soviet Union never fought each other directly, not once in 45 years. They fought in every other way they could think of instead.
The United Nations exists so that countries talk to each other in the same room, even when they disagree about almost everything else. So what does it actually do?
Africa could hold Greenland fourteen times over. Your classroom map says otherwise, and it has been saying otherwise for more than 450 years.
Australia covers a touch more land than the 48 contiguous United States, yet on the classroom map it looks like an afterthought. The ground says one thing, the wall says another.
Alaska looks as big as Brazil on the classroom wall, and Brazil is five times its size. One American state has been puffed up into a continent, and the culprit is latitude.
Antarctica is the fifth largest continent on Earth, bigger than Europe, with mountains and a South Pole you can stand on. On the classroom map it is a white smear along the bottom edge.
Russia sprawls across the top of the classroom map like a giant blanket, bigger than Africa. Africa is almost twice as big, and the blanket is a trick of latitude.
Canada looks bigger than Africa on the classroom map, and Africa is about three times its size. The second largest country on Earth is being flattered by latitude.
On the classroom map Alaska looks far bigger than Mexico. The ground says the opposite: Mexico is bigger, by land and by water, and the map has been hiding it in plain sight.
Every year Americans eat about 46 million turkeys on one day, yet the Pilgrims probably never put turkey at the centre of the 1621 feast. The bird won its place 200 years later.
An army that lost a war to birds. A whole city that could not stop dancing. Ketchup in the medicine cabinet. Ten weird history facts, and every single one is real.
A concrete dome in Rome has stood for nearly 1,900 years with no steel inside it, and the concrete repairs its own cracks. That is only the first of three impossible objects.
The Bible never gives a date for the birth of Jesus. Not a day, not a month, not even a season. So where did December 25 come from? The answer runs through Rome, a sun god, a calendar, and a clever piece of arithmetic.
January, about seven hundred years ago, in a small village in England. No heating, no electric light, no supermarket, no freezer. One fire burns in the middle of the room, and the smoke has nowhere proper to go.
Every episode comes with book picks for going deeper. Here are a few favorites, and the full shelf is on the shop page.
The classic "what was everyday medieval life actually like" book, and the episode's own source list draws on Mortimer's approach to daily life.
See it on AmazonThe definitive modern book on human waste and sanitation, the episode's subject from every angle.
See it on AmazonThe classic on how maps distort the truth, directly behind the episode's Mercator argument.
See it on AmazonA history of washing and hygiene from the ancient world to the present, the episode's subject in book form.
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Updated: November 14, 2026
It is a YouTube channel about everyday history. Each episode takes one curious question and answers it in about ten minutes, with real sources behind it. New episodes come out regularly, and every episode on this site links straight to the video.