The History of Sex
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2020
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kate Lister started tweeting as Whores of Yore in 2015 to kick off a conversation about how we talk about sex. She has just published A Curious History of Sex which looks at everything from slang through the ages to medieval impotence tests, the relevance of oysters, bicycling and the tart card. Robin Mitchell's new book is called Venus Noire: Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France. In it she traces visual and literary representations of 3 black women: Sarah Baartmann, popularly known as the Hottentot Venus; Ourika, a young Senegalese girl and Jeanne Duval, long-time lover of the poet Charles Baudelaire. Fern Riddell's books include The Victorian Guide to Sex and Sex: A Brief History. She hosts the podcast series #NotWhatYouThought and is a historian on the New Generation Thinker scheme which aims to put academic research on the radio. It's a partnership between BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find her talking about depictions of Eroticism in a Free Thinking conversation about The Piano and Love https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6t06b and exploring the life of the singer and suffragette Kitty Marion in a Sunday Feature https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04n2zcp
An exhibition called With Love opens at the National Archives in Kew displaying letters spanning 500 years, which explore intimate expressions of love. You can hear archivist Vicky Iglikowski-Broad talking on a Free Thinking programme called Being Human: Love Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b6hk Anne McElvoy explores who and why we love with philosopher Laura Mucha, poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw, novelist Elanor Dymott and poet Andrew McMillan. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002hk8
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, |
| 0:34.5 | music, radio, podcasts. Well, hello, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:43.4 | Well, hello, this is the Arts and Ideas podcast, and I'm Matthew Sweet, and this edition is about the history of sex. But you probably knew that. I mean, you probably googled it, |
| 0:48.8 | and that's why you're here. But that's cool. That's between me, you and the private browser button. |
| 0:54.6 | First, though, you have to listen to these messages. |
| 0:57.6 | We promise not to start without you. |
| 0:59.7 | An American capitalist, a Russian tax advisor, and a breathtaking heist. |
| 1:05.4 | You're saying fraudsters have stolen more than quarter of a billion dollars from the Russian state. |
| 1:10.9 | Based on a true story, a musical about doing the right thing at any cost. |
| 1:16.4 | Mr Magnitsky, if we changed our mind. |
| 1:19.9 | Stand up and fight for justice, stand up for the law. |
| 1:23.2 | If we don't stand for this, then what is it we're a for? |
| 1:26.8 | Magnitsky, the musical by Johnny Flynn and Robert Hudson on BBC Radio 3. |
| 1:32.3 | Why are you telling my story? |
| 1:33.7 | Because you were unbreakable. |
| 1:36.5 | Available now on BBC Sounds. |
| 1:41.9 | Thanks very much, and thank you for swiping right on us. You won't regret it. We don't exaggerate on free thinking. We like to get our stats right. And if we promise you something, we give it to you. So tonight we promise you sex history and how to do it. We're going to feel the pleasures and the pains of researching the history of human desire. |
| 2:02.3 | We're going to use words to do this, so you might hear some of the vulgar ones that you're |
| 2:06.8 | thinking about now, or as we like to call them, strong language. We're going to talk about the |
| 2:11.6 | places where sex and empire meet, not least in the body of an 18th century South African woman called Sarah Bartman, |
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