Dr Kate Lister: Most women could benefit from 'pleasure education'

The Shift with Sam Baker

Sam Baker Ltd

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.8 • 525 Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest this week is a historian columnist television presenter and vocal advocate for better sex for women! I first encountered Dr Kate Lister when I stumbled across her brilliant instagram account @whoresofyore, along with half a million others. In a world where even back in the late 20-teens where we thought the work was, if not done, then at least going in the right direction - laughs hollowly - it was still radical for someone to stand up and say that women demanding better sex didn’t arrive with the 21st century. It has, as Kate has dedicated her life to proving, been a very long fight indeed. Kate is the host of the award winning history podcast Betwixt The Sheets, she writes a weekly column in i-news and has appeared on countless history programmes including House Through Time and Victorian Murder Club with Lucy Worsley. Kate’s brilliant new book Flick - a history of female pleasure - takes us from Mesopotamia to trad wives by way of orgasms, oral sex, masturbation, frigidity, sexual fluidity and much more. It is a 300 page battle cry against the idea that when it comes to sex women want to just ‘lie back and think of England’ Kate joined me to talk about sex as the great leveller, slut shaming, virginity and how sex has been used for millennia to control women. We also discussed her perimenopausal period hell, why midlife women could benefit from pleasure education, the price of doing all the emotional labour in the bedroom and why she wouldn’t recommend putting vaginal oestrogen cream on your face! * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, including Flick by Dr Kate Lister as well as the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by Sam Baker. * If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠buymeacoffee.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. • And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ • The Shift is created, hosted and produced by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls at Pineapple Audio Productions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to The Shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds-barred truth about being a woman post-40,
0:11.1	created and hosted by me, writer and broadcaster Sam Baker.
0:16.0	My guest this week is a historian, columnist, television presenter, and vocal advocate for better sex for women.
0:25.3	I first encountered Dr. Kate Lister when I stumbled across her brilliant Instagram account,
0:30.8	Hors of Yore, along with half a million others.
0:34.1	In a world where even back in the late 20 teens, where we thought the work was, you know, if not done, then at least going in the right direction.
0:42.5	Cue hollow laughter.
0:44.1	It was still radical for someone to stand up and say that women demanding better sex wasn't a 21st century phenomenon.
0:52.0	It has, as Kate has dedicated her life to proving, been a very long
0:56.6	fight indeed. Kate's the host of the award-winning history podcast betwixt the sheets, writes a weekly
1:03.5	column in I News and has appeared on countless history programs, including House Through Time
1:08.6	and Victorian Murder Club.
1:14.5	Kate's brilliant new book, Flick, A History of Female Pleasure,
1:20.4	takes us from Mesopotamia to trad wives by way of orgasms, oral sex, masturbation,
1:23.9	frigidity, sexual fluidity, and much more.
1:29.8	It's a 300-page battle cry against the idea that when it comes to sex, women want to just lie back and think of England. The Victorians come in with a new set of strange
1:35.9	ideas around pleasure, which is basically that pleasure itself has to be very, very tightly
1:41.7	controlled. And it's down to a lot of medicalization around
1:45.9	sex, which the Victorians were famous for, because this is the era of the Industrial
1:49.7	Revolution and scientists and doctors are really starting to come into their own and make
1:54.1	their own profession. And everything becomes overly medicalised. And sex is absolutely one of those.
1:59.5	Kate joined me to talk about sex as the
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 24 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sam Baker Ltd, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Sam Baker Ltd and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.