The Canterbury Fails

Matt and David trip, stumble, wax, and explode about Gawain arrival in the castle, the two ladies, and how to make fish. Plus a double double of a double cocktail.

Yes, a Cyndi Lauper shout out. A swirl of seasons, feasts, and yesterdays many as our brave-faced hero sets out into both imaginary and real landscapes, while Matt and David enjoy a breezy floral delight and an abyssal dark power of not one but two drinks. Coley really outdid himself.

The Green Knight wants to play the sketchiest Christmas game ever and Gawain both wins it and loses it. David and Matt drink a failure of cocktail that is baby-shit hued and jet-fuel strength .

David and Matt stan out on the world's greatest poem, discuss the Fall of Troy and poetic ambiguity, and drink a twice flamed wildly dramatic saffron-tinted heavy hitter.

A wild romancish history--human faced bears, swamps, English-dubbed knights--coupled with a delicious smoky honeyed treat: the Scotch Neg!

Special guest stars Matt Sergi and Dylan Coley crash the Fails to discuss the unheralded and wild morality play about Life learning to Die and learning to Live, while Matt and David slowly sip a brown and yellow stripey concoction .

Secret codes, schizoid populism, radical Christian National MEGA-lomaniac spit-swapping doggerel and the seismic priestly violence washed down with an allspice lemon delight.

The barrage of William's assholery as he wrecks his own people, and the barrage of high Scoville agony as David wrecks Matt.

Ex post facto fake news propaganda for Henry 4 with a purple ass-crap Nixonian cocktail.

Tyrants resists dreams and a tiki exploding fire brain breaker

Is Chaucer out of control? Is the Canterbury Fails studio out of control? Is this whole thing completely out of control? With tiki drinks.

5 minutes after David gets home from a late flight and breaks into his own house, we have to answer the simple question: "Can a poem be both a justification and an interrogation of the ways of God to man?" We try and mostly fail to figure out this Biblical epic, but we enjoy a potent monastic Calvados Pow! Right in the kisser. .

Can a compendium of terrifying recipes for female health problems represent resistance to patriarchal authoritarianism? And can a violet brandy disaster taste any worse? Find out on this week's Canterbury Fails.

A bearded Coley and plain faced Hussey debate Cynewulf's ethnic ideological steamroller with special guest appearance by a demon, Judas (not the one you think), and a very stern war-lady. Plus an anisette and smoke blasted cocktail.

CHAUCER'S DEAD. So dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dr. Gillespie and Dr Echard discuss this, plus John of Gaunt's decaying phallus, Gower's poseur tomb, King Arthur's butterfly bishop, and more.

The rank and brutal foulness of the brown fizzy berry cruelty overwhelmed the judicial malfeasance and filicidal love of these Middle English moral exempla. Everything sucked.

Matt and David freak the hell out about Beowulf after an exploding flaming cinnamon disaster / triumph, and one of us still has glitter in our teeth. Hwæt?

In the first episode of season 5, Matt and David ask--and do not quite answer--whether we can read medieval English literature in terms of fascism or antifascism. The new direction for the podcast. Plus a literally on fire cherry themed shot. BAM. Join us!

Matt and David bring the Canterbury Fails roadshow to Kalamazoo with six amazing guests: Valerie Allen, Ruth Evans, Martin Foys, Jordan Zweck, and Jeff Stoyanoff and Kara McShane. They cover some kooky and intriguing Fails. Happy Summer!

The set up is so juicy: dissolution, gluttony, corruption--but no, it's a moral Scottish march through politics, ethics, and penance, with a 3x3 drink that does what it should but not what it could.

Buried in an eighth-century Latin letter from a monk who keeps his name a secret is a two-line maybe heroic nugget of juicy maybe heroic wisdom. We read it.

Matt and David try to grapple with a late Middle English anti-money tract, but there isn't much to work with, and the cocktail is a citrusy paean to sadness.

A reflective reading of Jesus and his loaves and fishes, chock full of allegorical goodness, and a world class Old Fashiouned (TM): thank you Canada!

A very special stunt episode where Matt and David read unseen (by them, but no doubt Furnivall has read them all) and give their gut reactions / hot takes, as they peregrinate through breweries in Port Moody. Chaos, 80s music, and revelry ensue.

A poem in Old English that is wildly ambivalent but brutally clever coupled with a vegetation-rich perversion of an English classic.