What Made You Ugly In Ancient Rome?
Episode Date: May 2, 2025What was a Roman skincare routine like? Why did the beard make a comeback under Emperor Hadrian? And what did it mean to be ugly in this time?In this...
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 transcribedWhat was a Roman skincare routine like? Why did the beard make a comeback under Emperor Hadrian? And what did it mean to be ugly in this time?In this...
You could be forgiven for thinking the Greek myth of Medusa has zero relevance to us today. Snake for hair?!But as you'll hear in today's episode, she...
Charismatic, passionate, insatiable - Henry VIII is known across the world as the king who had 6 wives, and a few mistresses on the side. But was Henr...
We've been tying the knot for thousands of years in one way or another, but what did a medieval wedding look like?The church had very strict ideas aro...
Can you imagine being SO smooth-talking and seductive your surname becomes an actual noun in the dictionary to describe someone who has a reputation f...
How did a working class illiterate woman become King Charles II's favourite mistress?Nell Gwyn was an incredibly talented comedy actor who came from a...
Have you ever heard of the Emperor who made his horse a senator? Seems like a top bloke, right? Today on Betwixt the Sheets we’re going to meet (possi...
Today, it is one of the most commonly performed surgeries. But when was the hysterectomy, the removal of the uterus, first performed? How has this pro...
How 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' was Lord Byron really?We know the Romantic poet had a bit of a reputation, but how true was it? And how unusual w...
Possibly the first recorded sexually transmitted disease, gonorrhoea is still one of the most common.We're back on the itchier side of history today t...
For better or (mostly) worse, Jiang Qing left her mark on the 20th century.Even before she was married to Chairman Mao, Jiang was a charismatic actor,...
When the music hall dancer, Belle Ellmore, disappeared in January 1910, it was her performing colleagues who raised the alarm.Her murder by Dr. Crippe...
Nadezhda Alliluyeva was born into a revolutionary family, but was it always her fate to marry Joseph Stalin?She was independent, intelligent and highl...
In this episode, we're well and truly going down a rabbit hole. To unpick the controversies surrounding the author of Alice in Wonderland, Kate is joi...
What was life like as Adolf Hitler's other half?Although their marriage came (very) late in their lives, Eva Braun was with Hitler from the earlier da...
Travel back to post-WW1 London, when sex, drugs and music was exploding in Soho... causing a national moral panic.The drugs of choice? Cocaine and mor...
What was life like to be married to Genghis Khan?In this new limited series, Real Wives of Dictators, we're finding out all about the women behind, or...
When we think about Greek and Roman beauty, we think of marble statues of huge men with tiny...feet.But what did it mean to be a beautiful woman? What...
Michelangelo made religion sexy.That may not have been his initial aim, of course, but the way he portrayed the human form, and particularly the male...
When and why did Soho become a hedonistic hotspot, the home of sex, drugs and music?Kate is Betwixt the Sheets with Dan Snow to talk about post-WW1 Lo...