The Truth About Mythical Women
Episode Date: December 2, 2025Myths are incredibly powerful, especially when it comes to creating nations.Why are mythical women so central to how we think about our nations? When...
Join sex historian Dr Kate Lister on Betwixt the Sheets as she gets intimate with the stories that would make your history teacher blush.What were the Victorians really like behind closed (bedroom) doors? How did the Black Death favour women in medieval England? And what was Caesar like in the sack? Join Kate as she bed-hops around different time periods; from ancient civilisations, to the middle ages, to renaissance and early modern...right up to now.You’ll laugh, you’ll wince, and you’ll ask yourself how much has actually changed.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - a podcast from History Hit.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
415 episodes transcribedMyths are incredibly powerful, especially when it comes to creating nations.Why are mythical women so central to how we think about our nations? When...
Who was Aphrodite? She's often thought of as a goddess of sexuality, but there's so much more to this woman.Which ancient civilisation was she created...
The Mitfords could rank as the strangest family of the 20th century.Unity and Diana were passionate fascists who became obsessed with Adolf Hitler, wh...
She was 'the Other Boleyn Girl' - Anne's sister, Mary, who supposedly had an affair with King Henry VIII. Such drama!What evidence is there that the t...
The Twits, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda. Roald Dahl wrote some of the world's most loved children's books.But what do we know about the...
What did Queen Isabella of France do to deserve the nickname She-Wolf? What sex scandals happened in the 14th century? And why did the Black Death imp...
However you pronounce his name, one thing is for certain: Van Gogh made made his mark on the world.But how did he interact with the world around him?...
Odourless, tasteless, colourless, lethal. In the mid-17th century, men were dropping like flies in Italy. And this wasn't just the plague - it was the...
Frankenstein and his monster are household names - even if one is often confused for the other. But what of their creator?In this episode we are meeti...
Picture a witch. Chances are, you're thinking of a woman.But in 17th century Iceland, over 90% of the people killed for being a witch, were men.Why we...
Before Mary I was Queen, no other woman had worn the crown of England.This made her a Tudor trailblazer, and a target.During her short reign she burne...
Why, just why, would one put a leech up their .. you know where? It's all in the name of virginity, or the faking of it.Kate is joined by Dr Julia Mar...
Even among Holocaust researchers, this subject is taboo. Starting in 1942, the Nazis set up brothels inside some of the camps, not for the guards, but...
The 16th century was a dangerous time to be talking about magic and hidden forces, so how did John Dee end up being invited into Elizabeth I's court?H...
Shoot outs, hard drinking and gambling. The Wild West is remembered for it's general lawlessness, but what might life have been like for the first wom...
She was executed on Henry VIII's orders alongside Catherine Howard, and was sister-in-law to Anne Boleyn and the King. She lived in the heart of the T...
After the first licensed brothel opened in the 17th century, how was sex work thought of in Japan throughout the following centuries?From the brothels...
Is this strangest threesome in royal history?!We're endlessly fascinated with the lives of royal mistresses, and this has to be one of the most notori...
Why did a British ship carry over 200 women to Australia in the late 18th century? In this episode, we are going inside the Lady Juliana, a convict tr...
Rasputin presented himself as a mystic healer, and preached that the only way to salvation was through sin — which sometimes, if rumour is to be belie...