Podcast: Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society (LS 62 · TOP 0.1% what is this?)
Episode: Sex & Pleasure in the Ancient World
Pub date: 2026-06-02

Get Podcast Transcript →
powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarization

Sex in the distant past is often thought about with all the fun taken out of it.

Pleasure must have been a part of the sex lives of women and men in the past, so what evidence do we have to back this up? What evidence of queer sex and attraction is there? And how did the Victorians try to cover up sex and pleasure in Ancient Greece and Rome?

Joining Kate today is the wonderful historian and author Jean Menzies, whose new book explores all of this and more.

*TW: sexual violence discussed at the start of the episode*

Edited by Hannah Feodorov. Producer by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.

Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  

You can take part in our listener survey here.

All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.