Some corrections:

-Cao Wei was a bad example. Qin in the warring states would be a better one.

-Khitans and Jurchens were not really Steppe Nomads nor were they central asians. Khitans and Jurchens were grouped with ethnic chinese in the north as "northern chinese". Certainly they were up in the north, but it was more forest than steppe for the most part. Apologies for the slip.

-"Uighurs and Qarluqs". Audio gets kind of cut, and I screwed the word over a bit.

-Hubei and Hunan refer to the lakes in the region specifically by name, not rivers (Hu 湖 lake vs He 河 river). That was a slip. There are lots of rivers though.

-Thought I had talked about it, Internet quality might've just been too terrible, but in a nutshell here's what goes on with the Tanguts in the Western Xia: Vies for Jin aid against Mongol invasion, after the siege Xia becomes a vassal of the Mongols, they have some part in the beginning Mongol invasions against the Jin, refuse to send troops to Mongol invasions in the Middle East, try to get Jin help against the Mongols, get fully conquered and absorbed by Mongols later.

I'll be making some additional posts here just adding some stuff that is nice little extra tidbits or details that I left out throughout the day.

At long last, some additions to the podcast!

Some examples of the art I talked about to start off.

Travelers Among Mountains and Streams is a very famous, if not the most famous piece of art by an artist named Fan Kuan during the Song dynasty. You'll notice just how heavily the trees and water, nature in general, play into this. They're the main focus. There are humans in the painting, but they're definitely not the featured players. This painting (not by Fan Kuan) is a better example of the "mist obscuring the mountains" motif I discussed. These are both in that ShanShui 山水 Landscape (Literally "mountains and water") style. Here is an example of the other style I talked about the HuaNiao 花鸟 "bird and flowers" painting. The artwork during the Yuan still often follows these same motifs, but you get more of that "nature prevailing against hardships" vibe, such as here.

Sanqu Poetry

One of the things I should've snuck in when talking about the Yuan influences and culture in the Yuan was the very popular SanQu 散曲 poetry of the time, which is a type of lyrical poetry somewhat similar to pre-Han poetry found in the Shijing 诗经 "Classic of Poetry". That is, these are "song words" created to go along with some musical pattern. Sanqu poetry was pretty popular in the Liao and Jin dynasties, and continued to be popularized in the Yuan on a large scale (persisting into the Ming and Qing dynasties). What's particularly interesting about it is that you have a marked difference between the style of this Sanqu and other styles of classical poetry. Sanqu poetry during this time is fairly colloquial, specifically reflecting Northern dialects. It was considered a mark of a proper Sanqu poem to have some sort of Northern accent or twist. In particular, this comes out in the fairly common use of Erhua 儿化 which inserts these "Er"s into traditional pronunciations ("er" is kind of pronounced like "arr", so sometimes people in the west joke and call it pirate speak).

As an example: (translation not my own, characters in traditional as opposed to previous simplified. "Er" 儿 appears as 兒, pinyin is just to see end rhyming scheme)

Credit to Professor Zong-qi Cai for translation

Nichiren

So, this doesn't really have a lot do with the Yuan, but since it's short and I didn't mention the very famous failed Mongol invasions of Japan, I feel obligated to at least sort of hint at this.

Nichiren was a Japanese Buddhist monk in the 13th century, and was a particularly kind of controversial guy always getting into trouble who had several admonishments, exile periods, and failed execution attempts throughout the 1260s and 1270s. The notable thing he did that pertains to us though, was in the 1250s predict the Mongol invasions of Japan. This was just one of many pretty controversial things the guy said, and a contributing factor to his exiles as such. It became less of an issue for him in the 1270s when the Mongols started demanding fealty and the Japanese court became a little more interested in this predicted invasion (which did, of course, occur), bringing Nichiren back out of exile.

I'll lead off the questions with one of my own that I noticed during editing: I pronounce it "Yuan," you pronounce it "Yuen." You're the one correct one, obviously, but what's the hanzi for this Mongol Dynasty and it's official pronunciation?

Good day, is there anyway to get these podcasts other then Itunes. It's odd that you promote that you promote this through a service that is really only aimed at Mac users.