Guy Windsor and friends discuss sword training, historical swordsmanship, research, and other topics. Guests include well-known instructors and experts in the f...
Episode 200 with Michael Chidester: sharing hidden treasures
For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-200-with-michael-chidester-sharing-hidden-treasures
To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
For our two hundredth episode it’s the welcome return of Michael Chidester. Michael is the architect of Wiktenauer, the online archive of historical martial arts sources. He's also the founder of HEMA Bookshelf, which produces stunningly good facsimiles of historical sources, such as the Getty manuscript of Fiore dei Liberi’s Il Fior di Battaglia. He also produces a whole bunch of academic books on historical martial arts as well. If you haven’t already heard of him, go back and listen to episode 21 as well.
In today’s episode, we talk about how Michael took on Wiktenauer and saved it from deletion, for which we all owe him a beer. It has changed and grown enormously since its inception in 2009.
For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to:
To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
We talk about translation, including how to interpret multiple translations of the same source, or even multiple versions of the same treatise, such as the different manuscripts of Fiore’s Il Fior di Battaglia. We discuss the frustration of knowing that there is a manuscript out there, owned and hidden away by the Pisani Dossi family, which we just can’t access.
Michael talks about the process of reproducing manuscripts, and the lengths he goes to to ensure that his versions are as accurate as possible. This includes reproducing the collation, and the rough and smooth sides of the original parchment.
Since Michael’s first appearance on the podcast in 2020, he’s changed his mind a little about what he’d do with a million dollars to improve historical martial arts. We also hear about what he’s got coming up and the huge project he hasn’t started yet.
Wiktenauer: https://wiktenauer.com/
HEMA Bookshelf: https://www.hemabookshelf.com/
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1:30:40
Why Guy needs a pie in the face, with Sydney Schwindt
For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to:
To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
Sydney Schwindt is an actor, fight director and clown. She is also an artist and illustrator.
In our conversation, we talk about how Sydney got into fight direction and some of the plays Sydney has worked on, or would like to work on and the swords she enjoys using.
We also talk about being a clown, and the joy of having the audience throw a pie in your face. This leads us into a discussion about some of Shakespeare’s clowns and how they have been portrayed on film by different actors, more or less successfully.
Sydney has a website for her art, called True Edge Art, and we talk about some of her designs and what inspires her. A big part of her inspiration in both her visual art and her stage work is environmentalism, and she is keen to do more work making the violence of climate change feel more real and more visceral by embodying it through actual violence on stage.
And she’s also going to do a one-person show about a clown raccoon.
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1:14:47
Safety Testing Swords, with Jamie MacIver
For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-198-safety-testing-hema-with-jamie-maciver
To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
Jamie MacIver is a historical martial arts instructor who co-founded the London Historical Fencing Club in 2016, which has grown to over 120 members and now has his own permanent training space.
We start our conversation with Vadi, and why Jamie prefers Vadi to Fiore. We have a discussion about guards and whether Vadi is more defensive than Fiore. You can find updates on Jamie’s translation of Vadi’s The Art of Swordfighting on his website, here: https://historicalfencingresearch.com/projects/translation-vadi/
Next, Jamie explains about taking the plunge into getting his club its own permanent space. The London Historical Fencing club is one of only around three in the UK that has a permanent home, so we hear how it was possible post-pandemic, and how they manage the classes to make it financially viable. Jamie also explains about the steps they have taken to ensure diversity within the club.
Having been involved in running lots of tournaments, Jamie found he was having to make decisions on what HEMA kit is safe enough with nothing much to back up those decisions. So he set up the Historical Research Company Ltd to research historical martial arts safety, starting with research into sword tips. What is the difference between having a tip and no tip on your rapier? And which tips are the safest? Do different tips affect how likely it is for sword to glance off a mask or to stick to a mask, causing concussion and other injuries? You can find out more about the project and its conclusions here: https://historicalfencingresearch.com/projects/safety-tips/ And there’s a video here: https://youtu.be/wAZgMmIak-Y
You can support Historical Fencing Research here: https://historicalfencingresearch.com/support-our-work/
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1:55:21
Russian Dissidence with Romana Shemayev
For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-197-russian-dissidence-with-romana-shemayev
To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
Romana Shemayev is an American songwriter and performer, translator of contemporary Russian poetry, and one of the founders of “Bent Blades, a gathering of Historical Martial Arts enthusiasts, who study German longsword fencing according to the principles of Johannes Liechtenauer.
The interview is a bit different to the usual. It starts out normally enough with background chat, and swords. But she is a translator and performer of dissident songs from the USSR, and she performs several of them for us. It’s only fair to say that the recording could be better- the perfectly fine normal podcast setup didn’t capture her guitar as well as it might. This episode was also edited together from two separate recording sessions several weeks apart, so it may be a bit less consistent than usual. The transcription isn’t perfect either! It won’t affect your understanding or enjoyment of the content though.
Also, her songs deal with some pretty intense subject matter. Going to the sauna to recover from years freezing in a gulag is not the most extreme example.
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2:07:26
Theory and Practice and Pole Dancing
For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-196-theory-and-practice-and-pole-dancing
To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy
In today’s show I’m sharing some excerpts from the audiobook of The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts. You can find the book in both audio, print, and ebook formats at https://swordschool.shop/products/the-theory-and-practice-of-historical-martial-arts-audiobook
I’m also revisiting my interview with the audiobook’s narrator, Kelley Costigan. Here are the notes for the episode:
Kelley Costigan is an actor, director, pole dancer, fencer, performance combatant, adventurer and pirate, currently living in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, home of William Shakespeare.
Listen to our conversation to discover the Shakespeare connection that inspired me to ask Kelley to narrate my audiobook, The Theory and Practice of Historical Martial Arts. (It’s out now: you can probably find it in your audiobook app of choice, or get it directly from me here: https://swordschool.shop/products/the-theory-and-practice-of-historical-martial-arts-audiobook.)
As a child, Kelley was told that fencing was “not something that girls do”, but she has since made up for it after taking up HEMA in her 40s.
We also talk about competitive fencing, competitive pole dancing (yes, that’s a thing,) not being a Russian spy, and what Kelley would do with a million pounds.
In case you’ve never seen someone pole dancing with a sword before, here’s one of Kelley’s performances:
https://vimeo.com/221580829
To find out more about Kelley, her website is www.kelleycostigan.com.
Guy Windsor and friends discuss sword training, historical swordsmanship, research, and other topics. Guests include well-known instructors and experts in the field. You can support the show at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy.
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