Gabrielle Falloppia is credited with inventing the condom. 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.
Click here to refresh the feed. 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. At the same time, the GOP is calling for a nationwide ban on abortion. But what happens when abortion is banned? It was overturned only three years later in This week, Jess talks to Dr John Christopoulos about Early Modern family planning and the difference between Church doctrine and the sex lives of real people.
We cover bans, common practice, extramarital sex, same-sex relationships in convents, and more. Nostalgia can be both good and bad—at its best, it manifests in historical reenactment, vintage fashion, and mid-century modern furniture.
At its worst, it can drive regressive political policies, fascism, and book bans. In this thoughtful episode, Jess talks to Dr. Agnes Arnold-Forster about historical ideas about nostalgia, nostalgia as a medical condition, and the surprising link to a poltergeist that took the form of a talking mongoose called Gef. Over the course of her trial, she told the story of her life—she had been a lobbyist, an abortion provider, one of the first female doctors in the United States, and a double agent during the Civil War.
