An ancient history podcast run by two Millennial women. Misbehaving emperors, poison assassins, mythological mayhem; it’s like if Hardcore History met up with My Favorite Murder in the ancient world, with a heavy helping of booze and laughter.
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Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Have you noticed that our tech overlords cannot be normal about the Roman Empire? Elon Musk has approximately 14 known children, which he refers to as his “Legion.” Mark Zuckerberg famously took the Emperor Augustus on his honeymoon. And in some of the darker corners of the Internet (and real life), wildly rich techbros openly…
Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! Slavery touched every part of life in ancient Rome. Depending on the time period and location, as many as one in ten or one in three people was enslaved. How does it warp a democracy when so many of its people are not free? Today we talk to author, historian and podcaster Dr. Emma Southon, host of the History is Sexy podcast and author…
Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, Livia and Octavia were at each other’s throats over which one of their sons would be chosen as Augustus’ heir. The unfortunate thing is that the heirs kept dying. Meanwhile, the daughter and granddaughter of Augustus—Julia the Elder and Agrippina the Elder—were the first generations of the new autocracy. They never…
Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! In our last episode, Octavian had just defeated Cleopatra and Mark Antony. His sister Octavia had refused to renounce her wayward husband (Mark Antony), behaving with an intensity of loyalty that Octavian did not hesitate to use in his propaganda war against his enemy. Meanwhile, Livia and Octavian had both divorced their spouses,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Help keep our podcast going by contributing to our Patreon! When Augustus rolled into town after defeating Marc Antony and Cleopatra, he was greeted as a hero—because the Senate ordered its people to stand outside the gates and cheer. The reality was, there was fear on both sides. Augustus was afraid to grab power too quickly—or he’d find himself meeting Caesar’s fate. The Senators feared…