The Sword Guy Podcast

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-207-the-perfectly-rational-fencer-with-martin-hoppner To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy Dr Martin Höppner has been involved in historical martial arts since joining a local reenactment club, “Berliner Rittergilde” in 2008 before getting into historical fencing in 2015 studying classical sabre and rapier at the University of Berlin club. He then moved into sword and buckler, inspired by Roland Warzecha’s work (you can hear from Roland here) and Fiore’s Art of Arms, before being seduced by Manciolino and Marozzo. In 2017 he co-founded Schildwache Potsdam as a collaboration between the Berliner Rittergilde and the University of Potsdam’s Academic Sports Centre. In 2020 and 2021 he was on the DDHF national longsword first squad. And since 2022 he was on the Rapier national squad, where he is now head coach. He runs the Schildwache Potsdam YouTube channel, and is one of the organizers of one of my favourite events, Swords of the Renaissance. He is a research associate at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg and has a PhD in economics and social sciences. Economics is very relevant to this episode, because Martin and I discuss how Game Theory relates to fencing. What is it rational to do when sparring and what do people actually do? What is the most rational way to react to an opponent who hits you increasingly hard or fast? Should you match them, or walk away? We also talk about rule sets in tournaments, and Martin’s thoughts on how to devise them to stop people gaming the rules, and make the fencing cleaner and scoring fairer. Links of interest: Schildwache Potsdam (Martin’s club) and info on Swords of the Renaissance event: https://schildwache-potsdam.de/ The Schildwache Potsdam Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/SchildwachePotsdam Schildwache Potsdam YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/schildwache-potsdam

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/salute-before-you-cross-swords-with-damon-young To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy My guest today, Damon Young, is an Australian philosopher, author and martial artist. He has written 14 books or so, including Philosophy in the Garden, Distraction, and On Getting Off: Sex and Philosophy. He has also edited a couple of books on philosophy and martial arts, such as Engagement: Philosophy and the Martial Arts, and Martial Arts and Philosophy: Beating and Nothingness, perhaps my favourite title. His latest work is Immortal Gestures, Journeys in the Unspoken. For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy You might remember Damon from his previous appearances on this show in Episode 31, Why Swords Are Cool, and again in Episode 44, What is a Sword? Unfortunately for Damon, he’s not doing a lot of sword swinging at the moment because of an as yet unidentified issue with his arms. We discuss how he might get this issue sorted – which may involve flying to Helsinki – and how it can be tricky to prioritise your own health over other priorities and difficult life stuff. We also revisit the definition of a sword. What is a sword? When is a sword-like object not a sword? Damon’s new book is about gestures, and we talk about the weird politeness of a salute or a bow that’s absolutely essential before you try and murder someone with a kilo of sharp steel. A gesture can be an important symbol of trust and respect, and this courtesy separates martial arts or duels from a more bestial act or something a commoner might do. Our conversation goes off in several tangents, discussing whether philosophy is a scam, pens, getting rid of stuff, cataloguing your book collection, notebooks and the history of sticking two fingers up to the French.

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-203-writing-great-sword-fights-with-sebastien-de-castell It’s a welcome return for a previous guest, the brilliant writer Sebastien de Castell. His first published novel was Traitor’s Blade in 2014. Since then he has published the Greatcoats Quartet, the Spellslinger YA fantasy series, The Malevolent Seven and his latest Play of Shadows. He also has eight more books under contract, so there are plenty more to come! Sebastien has written some of my favourite sword fights in all of literature, so when I decided to update my book, Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers and Martial Artists, it was a no-brainer to talk to Sebastien about how he approaches writing action scenes in his books. We talk about more than just sword fights, and this conversation will be fascinating to any writer or anyone thinking about writing their first novel. It’s not just a chat for novellists. As you’d expect on The Sword Guy Podcast, we do talk about weapons, like a pistol within a rapier, and other strange and unusual weapons that never quite caught on. To find out more about Sebastien’s books, visit https://decastell.com/ and to listen to his previous appearance on the podcast, check out episode 69: Swashbuckling with Sebastien de Castell.

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-201-the-notebook-and-a-zibaldone-salad-with-roland-allen To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy Roland Allen is the author of The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. The book is about the development of the notebook (i.e. a book you write in yourself) in European history, and it covers everything from the development of paper as a cheaper thing to write on than vellum, to wax tablets, to Italian accounting practices, to Leonardo da Vinci's famous notebooks, to Darwin, to the modern Moleskine and where it actually comes from. In our conversation we talk about the means, motive and opportunity that enabled Roland to write The Notebook, and the challenges of covering such an enormous topic: what had to be left out; and the power of holding a grudge. There’s also great advice for anyone writing any sort of book about how to incorporate cause and effect into your storytelling. Readers need reasons and consequences to stay engaged. We talk about Roland’s favourite genre of notebook, the zibaldone, which existed in medieval Florence as a way for people to write down all the bits of literature they liked, local songs, recipes, events – anything notable was written down in a hodgepodge paper version of a mixtape. To connect this to fencing, it is similar to one of our oldest treatises, Manuscript 3227a, also known as the Döbringer manuscript. This is basically a zibaldone, with a section in it on fighting with a longsword. But it also has sections in it on other things like fireworks and recipes. There’s lots else to talk about, including our preferred brands of notebook, and our favourite paper. Find out more about The Notebook on Roland’s website: https://roland-allen.com/

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.

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.

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-195-pirates-with-dr-jamie-goodall To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy Dr. Jamie L.H. Goodall is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C. She is the author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars, National Geographic’s Pirates: Shipwrecks, Conquests, and their Lasting Legacy, Pirates and Privateers from Long Island Sound to Delaware Bay, and The Daring Exploits of Black Sam Bellamy: From Cape Cod to the Caribbean. She has a BA in Archeology, an MA in Public History and Museum Studies, both from Appalachian State University, and a PhD in history from Ohio State. In our conversation we discuss why pirates are seen as so glamorous – the clothes, the swashbuckling, the adventure, the accent. But you won’t be surprised to hear that the life of a pirate was somewhat different to this. Jamie explains about pirate culture, and the democracies on board ship, the arrangements around compensation, and the famous “Pirate Code.” We hear about the successful pirate, Black Sam Bellamy, AKA the Prince of Pirates, who had a reputation for being a kinder pirate, and how that worked for him. As you’ll expect from The Sword Guy Podcast, we have a chat about weapons and fighting. What weapons did pirates use? Were they as bloodthirsty as we’ve been led to believe? We also find out Jamie’s hopes for a biopic of Black Sam Bellamy, and her upcoming book about the taverns, inns and public houses of Virginia.

For transcriptions and more detailed shownotes, please go to: https://swordschool.shop/blogs/podcast/episode-193-kinesiology-and-concussions-with-jane-strange To support the show, come join the Patrons at https://www.patreon.com/theswordguy Jane Strange represented Team North America at the 2019 European games in Minsk, and she is a competition medallist at longsword in both open and women's competitions. She is currently teaching and training at Edmonton Historical Martial Arts but is mainly focused on pursuing her degree in kinesiology. We talk about what kinesiology is and her approach to coaching psychology. Find out what way of training works best for improving someone’s ability with a sword, and how Jane’s approach differs from Guy’s. We also talk about Jane’s experience at the Minsk European Games. The experience was a bit of a mixed bag, including food poisoning, gear issues, and even a concussion. Jane has taught a seminar on Concussion Awareness and Prevention, having suffered a serious concussion from a car crash. Click here for her slides. In the episode we discuss preventing and treating concussion – whether there’s any mask that can prevent it, and how we need to change the culture within HEMA to make concussion less likely.