Inside Imperial Japan's Brothels

Why did 200 people queue to give blood in the San Diego summer heat on 16 July 1983?During the AIDS crisis, many people living with HIV developed severe anaemia as a result of the disease and the treatments available at the time, leaving them dependent on regular blood transfusio ...  Show more

Marlene Dietrich was unapologetic in her love of sex, and she had a lot of it.She took Hollywood by storm in the 1930s and slept with some of tinsel town's most famous men and women.What made her so unique and create such a legacy? As a sexually liberated German woman what did th ...  Show more

With six wives, Henry VIII must have had something going for him, right? Was he handsome? Charming? Intelligent? Just plain powerful? In this episode, the tables are turned on Professor Suzannah Lipscomb as she becomes the guest of Dr. Kate Lister on our sister podcast, Betwixt t ...  Show more

Warning: this episode contains explicit language.Medieval people weren’t prudish—far from it. Dan is joined by medieval historian Dr Eleanor Janega to explore sex, marriage, and desire in the Middle Ages. They delve into the beliefs around sodomy as “non-procreative sex”; pilgrim ...  Show more

Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Professor Jan Clarke to explore the life, legend, and legacy of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin — better known as Molière. From his audacious rejection of bourgeois expectations to his controversial plays that rattled the Catholic Church and deligh ...  Show more

In this enchanting episode, Dr. Eleanor Janega dissolves the boundaries between history, folklore, and music to explore the haunting world of medieval ballads. Joined by author Amy Jeffs, illustrator Gwen Burns and composer/singer Natalie Brice, Eleanor uncovers the timeless stor ...  Show more