Dirty Sexy History

Written by: Jessica Cale
  • Summary

  • Going beyond the sanitized and idealized to the dirty reality of human history with Jessica Cale. There's more to history than what you learned in high school, and we're going to skip to the good stuff together.
    Jessica Cale
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Episodes
  • Episode 4.8. Warm Bodies. The Life and Times of a Renaissance Anatomist
    Aug 8 2024
    Gabrielle Falloppia is credited with inventing the condom. He didn’t, but he did discover the fallopian tubes, all while battling academic rivals, accusations of heresy, a syphilis epidemic, and the pirates who kidnapped his boyfriend. He has been accused of vivisecting the criminals given to him by the Medicis—that is, dissecting them while they were alive—but he didn’t do that. To be clear, he *did* kill them…just not in that way. It’s all in a day’s work for legendary anatomist Gabrielle Falloppia. Our guest today is medical doctor and historian Dr Michael Stolberg, retired chair of the history of medicine at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Dr Stolberg’s new book is Gabrielle Falloppia 1522/23-1562: The Life and Work of a Renaissance Anatomist, and it’s out now from Routledge.
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    53 mins
  • Episode 4.7. Love and War: The Secret Lives of Ancient Women
    Jul 25 2024
    Ancient history has traditionally been dominated by the lives of great men, while ancient women are confined to the margins or omitted altogether. In The Missing Thread, award-winning classicist Dr Daisy Dunn pulls these women out of the shadows and puts them center stage, where they belong. This week, we talk about the lives of ancient women: love, marriage, extra-marital relationships, divorce, sex, contraception, same-sex relationships, and even dildos made of bread?! We also talk about women leading armies, ruling nations, and the very first woman to win at the Olympics, long before women were even allowed to compete. Daisy’s book is The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World, and it’s out in the US on July 30th from Viking. [Listen notes for further reading: the women mentioned include poet Sappho, Messalina, the goddess Ishtar, Clytemnestra (wife of Agamemnon), Cornelia (wife of Tiberius Gracchus), orator Aspasia, Olympic victor Cynisca, Tomyris, Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and Artemisia of Halicarnassus] Daisy can be found at daisydunn.co.uk.
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    50 mins
  • Episode 4.6. Tea in Colonial America
    Jul 10 2024
    Burned, hanged, and symbolically “executed,” tea was a controversial commodity in 1770s America. This week we talk to Dr James Fichter about tea consumption, bans, the protests like the Boston Tea Party in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War. Dr Fichter’s new book is Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773-1776.
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    58 mins

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