⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠

The romance between Mark Antony and Cleopatra has beguiled us for centuries. What most people don’t realize is that when Mark Antony met Cleopatra, he was already married—to someone just as epic. Her name was Fulvia.

Cleopatra had glamour and divinity and lots of money. But Fulvia had the gangs. She was a populist firebrand, military leader, and for a while, the undisputed power in Rome: both in the Senate and in the streets.

Sponsors and Advertising

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get $15 off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code FANGIRL.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!

The First Ladies of Rome—the women of Augustus’ family—played a role in building his empire. Octavia, Livia, Julia, Agrippina—these were the women who helped kill a democracy.

In this episode, we will explore how they were complicit in their own oppression—how they were manipulated, how they were used, and how they used their power and influence: for status, for safety, and sometimes for survival.  

Sponsors and Advertising

This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get $15 off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code FANGIRL.

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! ⁠

Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex, took many lovers in the mythology. But perhaps the most important was Ares. They adored each other; they had many children together; they could not keep apart . Their relationship was (for the ancient Greeks) surprisingly…healthy?

Today we talk all things Aphrodite with bestselling author Jennifer Saint: her relationship with Ares, her many other lovers, and what her story tells us about how the ancients viewed love and romance.

Sponsors and Advertising:

This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get $15 off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code FANGIRL.

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!

Due to changing marital laws (among other things), the late Roman Republic saw a rise in a certain kind of wealthy elite woman with more independence and power than her foremothers. These women were financially independent, highly educated, sexually liberated, and unafraid to seize the reins of power. One of those was a woman named Clodia.

Daughter of the aristocratic Claudii, Clodia (and her brother Clodius) changed her name to reflect a more plebeian status. A fierce populist, she was vilified by Cicero even as she was the victim of a murder plot. And she was an unlikely champion of true democratic values.

Join us as we discuss her fascinating life with author and biographer Douglas Boin—and explore what her life tells us about the state of the patriarchy then and now.   

Sponsors and Advertising:

This episode is sponsored by Taskrabbit. Get $15 off your first task at Taskrabbit.com or the Taskrabbit app using promo code FANGIRL.

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!

You may have noticed that MAGA (Republicans in general, really) are weird about women.

That weirdness is ancient. It goes all the way back to ancient Rome, all the way back to ancient Greece, and all the way back to the beginning of the city-state, when gender-based oppression was built into the foundations of the polis. Augustus was similarly weird about women, and so were (and are) many fascist leaders from more modern times.

Augustus enacted laws called the Lex Juliae two thousand years ago, as part of his project to dismantle democracy and install an authoritarian state with himself at the head. Join us as we deconstruct those laws, compare them to Project 2025 and 2026, and try to figure out why oppression of women is so important to fascism.

Sponsors and Advertising

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!

We are thrilled to welcome #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Elizabeth May to the podcast. Elizabeth May is the author of The Wolf and the Crown of Blood, a bestselling new release about deranged homicidal gods and the equally deranged princesses who drag them around like stuffie toys.

Join us for a fun and laughter-filled conversation with an author whose playground is somewhere at the intersection of sex and violence, which is just where we like it.  

Sponsors and Advertising

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!

When Augustus rolled into town after defeating Marc Antony

Standing outside those walls, anything could have happened.

But that’s not how it went down. Today we’ll explore how you kill a democracy—with a thousand tiny cuts, or one single stab to the heart.

Sponsors and Advertising

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!

When we look at the demise of Roman democracy, we think of the time of Augustus—and maybe Caesar before him. But in reality, the seeds of the republic’s destruction were planted at the time of its birth.

It’s probably not too far out on a limb to say that Caesar couldn’t have grabbed so much power if there hadn’t been a Sulla, or a Marius, or the Gracchi brothers, or innumerable revolutionaries and power players of centuries before.

That is the subject of The Storm Before the Storm, the New York Times bestselling book by author and podcaster Mike Duncan. This week, Mike takes us back to the beginning—to show us the faultlines built into the very foundation of democracy.

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!

Join us as we return to Cleopatra’s Alexandria—the glamor,

In this episode we’ll discuss Cleopatra’s life and loves, the challenges of breathing new life into a very examined historical figure, and exactly what we do and don’t know about the real Cleopatra.  

Sponsors and Advertising

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

⁠Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon!

This was the man who would be responsible for demolishing their democracy and ushering in an imperial military state that would last another 500 years (roughly).

What was it like to stand in the shadow of the walls that day? What questions were burning in the people’s hearts? What did they think that they did not dare say? Was the mood celebratory? Raucous? Rebellious? Join us as we travel back in time to the gates of Rome, to watch Octavian return.

Sponsors and Advertising

This podcast is a member of Airwave Media podcast network. Want to advertise on our show? Please direct advertising inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices