You're Dead to Me - Welcome to You're Dead To Me

Episode Date: September 12, 2019

Greg Jenner introduces his new history podcast for people who don’t like history or who forgot to learn any at school.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. histories and now I'd like to do it for you. You're Dead to Me is a new history podcast for people who don't like history or at least people who forgot to learn any at school. In each of our episodes I'm joined by a top-notch comedian and an expert historian to rummage through the most fascinating things that you should know about the global past. You know you've got a law here saying witches can do things with this power of theirs, they can kill, they can harm. Was there some way that women were becoming more powerful that that made that patriarchal society panic? She should be a historian, they can harm. Was there some way that women were becoming more powerful that that made that patriarchal society panic?

She should be a historian, she's brilliant. There's certainly a period in which the patriarchy is becoming very anxious. There used to be a village and there was a pig's bladder. It's always a pig's bladder. And every, like, May, I don't know, bank holiday, a pig's bladder gets thrown into the town centre. Did you see, like, it's town square.

And one half of the village wrestle for it against the other half of the village. And it's like, and then football was born. I think that was enough for me. I was kind of like, oh yeah, pig's bladder and the town square. And like, as like a nine-year-old you'd be like, and that makes sense. And then that's kind of where my brain stopped. And then suddenly

it's Italia 90. You've got to go, you know, you've got to go, the pig's bladder, we win the World Cup in 66, and then it's Italia 90. Okay, let's go. You've missed a few steps there, but it's not bad. It's not a bad start. She had several tactics employed, so she would deploy disguises and...

Yes, I just, like, thought of a bunch of slaves wearing monocles and the moustaches, like... Good day to you, sir. Well, there are some reports that she would, you know, because she was known to be illiterate, pretend to read to kind of obscure her face or things like that. But on one instance, she was in a market and was in close proximity, about to come into contact with one of her former masters. And so she kind of launches a chicken out and pretends to follow it, causing like this big ruckus.

And he never gets a chance to see her. And so she's able to kind of make a clean getaway. Spartans, when we see them in the movie, they're in their pants. Yes. That doesn't sound very sensible. Is that a Hollywood thing? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Gerald Butler in those little leather nappy things that he has on. That's totally, totally Hollywood made up. So what did they wear? They wore the same kind of armour as pretty much every other Greek come fighting for, so they'd have a breastplate and they'd have a helmet

and they'd have greaves on their knees and they would have that long red cape that you mentioned earlier, Greg, that was supposedly red so that if they were bleeding, no one would see their blood because they'd just think it was the red cape. To fill in the blanks in your historical memory banks, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound.