Benedetta Carlini (Radio Edit)

Greg Jenner is joined in 17th-century Italy by Professor Michelle Sauer and comedian Sophie Duker to learn about notorious nun Benedetta Carlini. From the moment of her birth in 1590, Benedetta – whose name literally means ‘blessed’ – was dedicated to God’s service by her father. As a young girl, she joined a community of religious women, where in her twenties she began experiencing mystical visions. These culminated in a number of miraculous signs and occurrences, including the appearance of the stigmata on her body. But following a papal investigation, shocking secrets were revealed, including her sexual relationship with another nun. This episode charts her life, from the miracles that occurred during her childhood, through her time as a devout nun, and to her ultimate downfall at the hands of the papal investigator. This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Hannah Campbell Hewson Written by: Hannah Campbell Hewson, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jenner?

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• 1:07Speaker 03

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• 1:12Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are whipping out our wimples and reciting our rosaries as we learn all about the scandalous 17th century nun Benedetta Carlini. And to help us, we have two very special guests. In history corner, she's the Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in English at the University of North Dakota. She's a specialist in medieval studies, especially medieval religion, women's literature and queer theory, and she's the author of several books. It's Professor Michelle Sauer. Welcome, Michelle.

• 1:46Speaker 04

  Thanks so much, Greg. It's wonderful to be speaking with you today and to meet Sophie.

• 1:50Greg Jenner?

  Yes, you're very lucky Sophie's very special. And in comedy corner, she is an award-winning comedian, writer and actor. As well as her fabulous stand-up shows, you will recognise her from TV's Eight Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown, Live at the Apollo, Frankie Boyle's New World Order, but of course you'll remember her from our back catalogue, including episodes on Atlantis and Ramsay's The Great. It's Sophie Duca. Welcome back, Sophie.

• 2:10Speaker 05

  Yay, special feels like an egg, but I'll take it.

• 2:12Greg Jenner?

  No, no, it was meant to be positive.

• 2:15Speaker 05

  I'm very thrilled to be special and to be here and to be meeting Michelle Sauer.

• 2:19Greg Jenner?

  What about Benedetta Carlini? Is this a name that rings any bells?

• 2:23Speaker 05

  Church bells. So, I don't know, I don't really know anything. That's not quite true. I think I've got the sense that she's some sort of queer icon, but I don't really know much about her. And I've already heard from your intro that she's a sexy nun.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Wait, did you say that? Or did I? I was projecting. You didn't say that.

• 2:43Greg Jenner?

  I didn't say that.

• 2:43Speaker 05

  You didn't say that. I projected. You said wimple and I was like, hot. That's what happened. How embarrassing.

• 2:52Greg Jenner?

  It's fine. It's a fantastic insight into your mind there. Yeah, I think sexy nun is probably about fair, but we'll see. So, what do you know?

• 3:06Greg Jenner?

  This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And you are promi- well, you're probably familiar with nun life, you know, from totally true documentaries like Sister Act and The Sound of Music. But you might be less familiar with a small mountain girl called Benedetta Carlini who rose to notoriety in 17th century Italy and then vanished from history until being rediscovered quite recently. But who was the real woman who, in quotes, pretended to be a mystic but was found to be a woman of ill repute? Professor Michelle, let's start with her family background. Who was Benedetta? Where was she born? When was she born? What was her family situation, please?

• 3:45Speaker 04

  Benedetta was born on January 20th, 1590, on the night of Saint Sebastian, in a small mountain village called Volano in Tuscany in Italy. She was the only child of Medea and Giuliana Carlini. Her father was the third richest man in Volano, so it was a well-off family.

• 4:07Greg Jenner?

  Sophie, I know you speak French. Well, I'll test your Italian now. Do you know what Benedetta translates to in English?

• 4:12Speaker 05

  Is it like sexy egg?

• 4:18Speaker 05

  Benedetta, is it like blessed one?

• 4:21Greg Jenner?

  Oh, yeah. Bang on.

• 4:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. Okay, she did Latin as well. All right.

• 4:28Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so yes, blessed, Michelle. Blessed, why blessed? What was the naming reason for that?

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Her mother had a very difficult labour and at one point it seemed like both mother and child would die. So her father, who was both rich and devout, prayed to God desperately that they lived and in gratitude Benedetta was named Blessed and her father dedicated her to God and promised that she would become a nun.

• 4:56Greg Jenner?

  What age does she start to sort of become nun-adjacent, Michelle?

• 5:01Speaker 04

  I mean, I think she's pretty nun-adjacent right from the start. By the time she was five years old, she was reciting the litany, saying the rosary on her own. She also experienced miracles as a young girl. She had a nightingale that followed her around, would sing on command, would occasionally sing the laws with her.

• 5:25Greg Jenner?

  That's very Disney princess to have a bird on your shoulder singing along.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  A nightingale as well. You don't get those anymore. It's crows and pigeons.

• 5:34Speaker 04

  They're all over medieval literature, but you know, not in real life anymore. I mean, they exist, but.

• 5:39Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so nightingale, good. Any bad animal appearances?

• 5:43Speaker 04

  There was a mysterious black dog that showed up and growled and slobbered and tried to drag her off and, you know, eventually it just sort of disappeared when she prayed. So that's obviously a demonic manifestation.

• 6:00Greg Jenner?

  Okay, good. I'm enjoying this. This is, this is fun. Okay, so Sophie, how old do you think the Benedetta was when she was first entering the convent?

• 6:11Speaker 05

  Okay, so if she's like reciting litanies from five years old, I feel probably quite like a young entrant. I'm gonna go with lucky number 13.

• 6:22Greg Jenner?

  That's a good guess. It's a little bit generous. It was nine.

• 6:26Speaker 05

  Oh, nine. Okay, classic age to take on a trade.

• 6:31Greg Jenner?

  So what's the name of the community that Benedetta joined, Michelle?

• 6:35Speaker 04

  She was born in Valona, which is a small mountain village. And when it came time for her to join a convent, her father basically just took her down the hill to the next biggest city, which is Pesca. And in Pesca, there were three major convents. These convents were filled to the brim. In fact, they were overflowing. And the community that she joined is something called the Theotines. The Theotines were not actually in official order as of yet. When Benedetta joins, they are still an unofficial community, although they had been sanctioned by the church. A woman named Piera Pogne founded this community in 1590,

• 7:19Speaker 04

  the year that Benedetta was born. And she had applied to the Pope for permission to make this a formal community.

• 7:30Speaker 05

  It's like a start-up convent. It's not quite recognised yet. It's like a young, cool...

• 7:36Greg Jenner?

  They're disrupting the sector. Yeah, they've gone to venture capitalists.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  Theotines are disrupting the sector of female monasteries.

• 7:44Greg Jenner?

  Okay. But what else is going on in the convent, do you think, Sophie? If we are imagining Benedetta as a modern influencer, living her hashtag nun life, what kind of content are you expecting on the Gram?

• 7:55Speaker 05

  Okay, when you started talking about Benedetta, I really thought that she was like, had been a great TikTok baby, because it's all like, her dad's making her read these litany, she's got this little bird and stuff. Like, I feel like she would have been creating content from early.

• 8:07Greg Jenner?

  Doing unboxing videos.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, just being like, it's another rosary.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  Benedetta, I think like being like a pretty, clearly a pretty smart kid, I think she'd just be like reciting chunks of the Bible, singing stuff, maybe getting the bird involved.

• 8:22Greg Jenner?

  Michelle, Sophie's painted quite a charming image there. Nun life was quite hard. Is that fair?

• 8:28Speaker 04

  It could be pretty hard, especially if you're one of, a lot of orders had something called lay sisters. They're the uneducated ones who did all the hard work, the cooking and the cleaning. Choir sisters were the ones who were educated and spent their time making silk and sewing and praying and singing.

• 8:50Greg Jenner?

  We have a young nun, Benedetta. Her life is sort of on track to be fairly conventional. And then at 23, it changes. Michelle, why 23?

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Well, you know, we don't really know a lot about her between the ages of nine and 23. Presumably she's doing this conventional thing, except that we have one sort of indication that she is still special. Right away, when she first got to the convent at age nine, she had gone into the convent chapel and was praying in front of the Theatine's Madonna statue. When the Blessed Virgin Mary sort of manifested within this statue and leaned forward to kiss Benedetta. But she sort of panicked, freaked out, and then the statue fell as she ran

• 9:43Speaker 04

  off. But she didn't tell anybody about the almost kiss.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  None of my Virgin Mary statuettes have ever tried to pash on me, so that is feeling a bit slighted.

• 9:53Greg Jenner?

  Another vision, Michelle, involves quite a sort of Eden-esque vibe?

• 10:00Speaker 04

  One was definitely Eden-esque. She was walking in a beautiful garden, full of fruits and flowers, many of which wouldn't be growing. At the time, a place in which she lived, there was a fountain full of scented water. These visions were both beautiful and reassuring because angels would also join her in them.

• 10:26Greg Jenner?

  And she's also mountain climbing. So it is the sound of music. She's climbing every mountain, she's falling every stream, she's following her rainbow, and she's going to find her dream.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  That's beautiful. She's just a nun walking through the mountains, tripping her nut off. It's...

• 10:42Greg Jenner?

  It's all very PG friendly so far, but then Benedetta's visions got quite heavy metal, Sophie.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 10:48Greg Jenner?

  We've got quite a quick mini quiz for you, actually. Which of these visions did Benedetta not claim to have experienced? So, five options, here we go.

• 10:56Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 10:57Greg Jenner?

  One, she was pursued by handsome young men in iron chains with weapons. Two, Jesus ripped out her heart and she lived without a heart for three days. Three, an angel in a white robe, gold chain, long curly hair, named Splendetello, brought her a double-edged wand made of flowers and thorns. Four, she married Jesus. Five, an angel told her to go vegan. Which of those not true?

• 11:22Speaker 05

  I think she was told to go vegan. Jesus taking her heart is very poetic, but like, walking around without a heart for three days, it's relatable content. She's basically Charlie XCX. I think that Splendetello sounds a bit much.

• 11:39Greg Jenner?

  Okay, you're rejecting Splendetello and his lovely curly hair and...

• 11:42Speaker 05

  I think he's modelled on you, Greg.

• 11:44Greg Jenner?

  I would love to be Splendetello. I don't have the looks to pull it off. I've got the curly hair and nothing else. It's actually a trick question, Sophie. All five are true.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  Oh my god, wow!

• 11:55Greg Jenner?

  Sorry, that's us being very mean there, but we thought maybe it would be fun to see if you could tell them apart. But no, yeah, she claims all five. So she claims her heart's ripped out for three days, she claims to be going vegan, marrying Jesus, Splendetello comes to her, offers her a double wand of flowers and thorns, and pursued by young men who attack her with weapons and chains. So, quite an array of visions here.

• 12:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:17Greg Jenner?

  Michelle, Benedetta also started to have the physical signs of holy interactions, what we might call stigmata.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  From about 1615 forward, she started experiencing intense pain over her entire body. The stigmata are representative wounds on an individual's body that are the same, they correspond with the wounds on Jesus Christ's body. So it would be the hands, the feet, the side wound, and in some extreme cases of stigmata, manifestation of the crown of thorns.

• 12:52Greg Jenner?

  These are huge claims to be making. I suppose the obvious question is, were there others in the convent reporting similar things, Michelle? Is she alone in this?

• 13:01Speaker 04

  There are no other people in the convent who are reporting this. This is not a typical thing. The stigmata itself is considered an extreme gift that very few saints had ever received. The most famous of these would be Saint Francis of Assisi. And there were a few others that were accepted. Saint Catherine of Siena received the stigmata in her heart, and that was internal and not external. But other than that, it's not common at all.

• 13:33Greg Jenner?

  So Benedetta's having these pretty powerful physical and visual visitations and visions. How do you think her fellow nuns were handling that at the dinner table?

• 13:46Speaker 05

  It feels like, especially if there's not other people doing it, if it's not part of the, you know, company culture to be having visions, then if you kind of state yourself out as having very disruptive and evocative visions, I feel like it'd probably get on a few of the nuns' tits.

• 14:01Greg Jenner?

  The thing that's intriguing to me, Michelle, is the community sort of give Benedetta a kind of friend to play with, almost as a bit like, all right, look, you need someone to keep you company. And they give you a young woman called Bartolomay Acquavelli, is that right?

• 14:15Speaker 04

  That's right. With these violent visions, they were worried about her. So she gets her buddy.

• 14:20Greg Jenner?

  Her buddy Bartolomay. And Benedetta now sort of steps it up. She starts preaching from the pulpits, which is a big no-no, isn't it? That's a man's job, right?

• 14:28Speaker 04

  Huge no-no.

• 14:30Greg Jenner?

  Okay. And then in 1619, the other nuns elect her the abess of the nunnery, Michelle. So then she's not unpopular.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  She's not unpopular at all.

• 14:40Greg Jenner?

  The following year, the community received its official papal permission to become a closed community, Sophie. Benedetta starts living her best life with her BFF Bartolomay, and of course Splendetello the Angel.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  Splendetello, can't forget him.

• 14:53Greg Jenner?

  But that official stamp of authority then means presumably the church is then looking more closely at what's happening because suddenly the church authorities show up and go, hang on a second, what? There's a woman preaching, claiming mystic visions? We'd better check this out because we now get an official process of interrogation, Michelle?

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, she was starting to make the church nervous, right? Women with too much authority and too much pull, for one thing, made ecclesiastical powers nervous. But just in general, visions were looked at with suspicion more and more. They could be coming from the devil, especially when they involve such bodily sorts of visions.

• 15:37Greg Jenner?

  Oh, so the fear here is that she is being visited by Satan, not by an angel?

• 15:42Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 15:43Greg Jenner?

  Gotcha. Okay, so we get the Provost of Peshia, Stefano Cecchi, sort of showing up to physically examine the stigmata, the wounds, starts asking questions, Sophie, it's becoming a bit official. What do you think Bartolomayev does, Sophie, the sort of best friend who's been appointed?

• 16:01Speaker 05

  So like, they're like besties at this point. Is she like a waiting maid or are they just like companions?

• 16:05Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, a bit of both, is it, Michelle?

• 16:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, she is there to, I guess, help out Benedetta, make sure that she's brought back to earth after her visions, that her body is cared for. If her heart's removed for three days, somebody has to take care of what's left behind.

• 16:27Greg Jenner?

  And Bartolomayev says that she had to put the heart back in?

• 16:32Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 16:33Speaker 04

  Yes. She is a devoted companion. Not only does she confirm to this inquiry board, to the Provost of Peshia, that Benedetta did indeed, you know, exist three days without a heart while this exchange with Jesus was going on, but that she herself pushed it back into Benedetta's body.

• 16:56Greg Jenner?

  Sophie, have you ever done that for a friend?

• 16:57Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 16:58Greg Jenner?

  Have you ever?

• 16:58Speaker 05

  Have I ever pushed a heart back in?

• 17:00Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  No, I've held the hair back while they've been sick, but I've never pushed the heart back into the body. I've never reversed Temple of Doom to a friend.

• 17:12Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so Benedetta has a very loyal friend here and Bartolommea is going on the record saying, yes, the heart came out, I saw it, I put it back in. So that means Benedetta passes the first interrogation, the first investigation, but there will be another, because obviously we said that woman of ill repute is a phrase that gets used. Why does she pass the first test, but a second one is launched, Michelle? What does she do, Benedetta, that's more provocative, or claim to do?

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Benedetta dies, but then she comes back to life.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  So 1621, she, you know, she's dead. And then Father Paolo Ricordate commanded her in a loud voice to arise. And she did.

• 17:59Greg Jenner?

  That's all it needs, right? That's all you need. You just need someone. You just need a man to say, get up, come on, sort it out.

• 18:05Speaker 05

  And you're like, not dead anymore.

• 18:06Greg Jenner?

  Not dead. Let's talk about the second investigation, because this time round, Sophie, it's not the local authorities who are sort of showing up to have an interrogation. The Pope has sent someone.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  The Pope!

• 18:18Greg Jenner?

  Mr Pope himself. He sent a nuncio, which is an official figure, a sort of a bunch of officials showing up in 1622. They're there for several months. They're outsiders, right? They're not used to the community, they're not used to her. So they're a bit more interrogative. It doesn't go so well this time, Sophie. They're suspicious.

• 18:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'd be suspicious. I feel like Bartolommea sounds like a liability. I feel like she's adding like little embellishments, like, I, yeah, I saw the heart, I pushed it back in. Like, it feels like Benedetta's got quite a lot of charisma, but I'm not sure Bartolommea commands quite the same amount of reverence, no questions asked, as her friend does. So I feel like she's possibly not going to be the weak link in questioning.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Where she really started losing people was continuing to preach from the pulpit. It was understandable, maybe, the first few times, because she was reporting what Jesus had said in these visions. But continuing to do that... Wanders into dangerous territory and and who would inspire someone to continually act in such a manner contrary to God, but the devil. So the local community starts turning against her and suggests that her parents had been possessed by devils. And then all of this sort of comes to a head when the nunzio comes to town. He is very suspicious

• 19:45Speaker 04

  of things like the heart exchange and the mystical marriage and especially stigmata.

• 19:51Greg Jenner?

  And they find satanic signs and around the kind of the sort of the general locale of the nunnery. Michelle, what is the evidence gathered against Benedetta?

• 20:00Speaker 04

  The biggest sign of all of demonic, if not possession, association is that she didn't go vegan anymore. She started secretly eating meat. And in particular, she had a love of salami and mortadella. And I mean, I can't blame her. Mortadella is delicious. So.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  Wow, the nun who loves salami. It's not how I thought she would be described, but.

• 20:32Greg Jenner?

  So, Michelle, is this, I'm slightly worried where we're going next, but are we going next into sort of, you know, demonic territory of, you know, naughty things?

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Not quite. Instead, we end up with Benedetta having sex not with the devil, but with her best friend, Bartolomea.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  No. What?

• 20:54Greg Jenner?

  Sophie's back on board.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  What? Those two good friends?

• 21:01Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Speaker 04

  They were just roommates.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  The roommates, what?

• 21:05Greg Jenner?

  More than that, Sophie, Benedetta is claiming that the angel Splendetello is making them do it.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. Yeah, I've had that one as well. It's like, like, there's someone watching. He's got, like, curly hair.

• 21:20Greg Jenner?

  Uh oh, yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 05

  Uh oh. Wow.

• 21:23Greg Jenner?

  So, Michelle, I think the question I have to ask at this point now is, you know, we can all have a laugh about these sort of things. But actually, what's quite interesting is. There is a sort of moment in that testimony where Bartolomea sort of says she was sort of made to lie on her back, and that brings up ideas perhaps of coercion, perhaps of one person having more power than the other. So is this a standard, you know, typical lesbian relationship between two consenting women? Or do we have something more problematic here?

• 21:50Speaker 04

  I think that it is more problematic, but there's multiple levels of coercion, I think, going on here also. It's not just that Splendetello made them do it for his own benefit, but Benedetta claims that Splendetello really inhabits her body or takes over her body in certain ways, so that she herself is actually subject to coercion in a way to then make Bartolomea also go through with this.

• 22:27Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's definitely a problematic relationship, but it's also problematic for us because it comes to us through the official testimony of nuncio, papal legates, and it's all, it's slightly refracted through. So the phrasing that is used in the official interrogation is called the immodest act. So what is the outcome of this investigation, Michelle, the second investigation from the Pope's man?

• 22:49Speaker 04

  So the final investigative visit was in November of 1623. There's no more evidence of stigmata or of a mystical wedding ring. Benedetta is no longer seeing visions. Splendetello has left her. Benedetta agrees that she had been deceived by the devil and lived very obediently under a new abbess. We don't really hear from her again, although the convent records basically indicate that she died when she was 71 years old, that she had been ill for 18 days. But this

• 23:34Speaker 04

  diary also reveals one interesting fact. She had been imprisoned in solitary confinement for 35 years. So it appears that her recantation and her reformation to live the good life under, you know, a new abbess was for naught.

• 23:53Greg Jenner?

  Oh, Sophie, that's a bit of a vibe shift on the episode there, isn't it?

• 23:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's so sad!

• 23:58Greg Jenner?

  Sorry.

• 23:59Speaker 05

  35 years.

• 24:02Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. The Nuance Window.

• 24:10Greg Jenner?

  Time now for the Nuance Window. This is the part of the show where Sophie and I set down our needles and sit in silent contemplation for two minutes while Professor Michelle takes to the pulpit to preach something that we need to know about Benedetta Carlini. So my stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes. Take it away, Professor Michelle.

• 24:27Speaker 04

  I really wanted to talk a little bit about medieval lesbians. In the introduction to her book, Immodest Acts, about Benedetta Carlini, Judith C. Brown says, "Had the material belonged to a later epoch, the sexual allegations against Benedetta would not have been all that rare." But what about medieval lesbians? Looking for medieval lesbians, one of the things about studying them is that it allows for participation in the creation of social and sexual histories and forefronts the female experience in a field that continues to be dominated by white, straight men. And even the term homosexual has been co-opted and used only to describe male same-sex encounters.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  So it's good, on the one hand, that we have Benedetta Carlini. Bad, of course, because of the situation. But good because the scant handful of documented lesbians are generally documented for being caught. Benedetta Carlini was on trial, oddly enough, mostly for preaching, and the Immodest Act came out. We can find medieval lesbians and joy in medieval lesbian activities in such places as mystic texts, where female saints called Jesus their mother, then suckle from his side as breastfeeding before crawling into the open vaginal-shaped wound.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  One such woman was Catherine of Siena. She describes climbing Christ's body that has been clearly transformed into a feminized creation as he possesses her and presses her to his breast and the opening there. We know that the Church of theologians were concerned about the possibilities of women being with other women in a sexual manner. Elred of Rovoe, who wrote a letter to his sister and Ankerus, cautioned her against teaching young women because she would clearly be enraptured by them and want to kiss them. Saint Augustine wrote a similar letter to his sister.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  So there are deep concerns about these women. Therefore, we know that they exist, that they're out there. And we really need to keep looking more completely into this history so that we don't foreclose the possibilities of a long history of women who loved other women.

• 26:57Speaker 05

  There's such a scant amount of evidence and testimony, but when it does pop up, it's really visceral. And like those images of like licking Jesus's heart, it's very intense and very lesbian. I think that, you know. I am, I am gonna go to a lesbian bar tonight and I am gonna ask the gathered congregation if anyone's ever asked to lick their heart, which I think is probably quite likely, given East London.

• 27:27Greg Jenner?

  Thank you, Sophie. Thank you, Professor Michelle. Listener, if after today's episode you want more Juka in your ears, check out our episodes on Atlantis, Ramses the Great, Ashanti Ghana, and the Chevalier de Saint George. What a back catalogue. And if you've enjoyed hearing about the naughty nun, why not listen to our episode on the profane popes of the early medieval papacy. Those guys were, they were extra. Let's, let's just put it that way. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds so you never miss an episode. But all that's left for me to do is say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner, we had the magnificent Professor Michelle Sauer from the University of North Dakota. Thank you, Michelle.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 28:03Greg Jenner?

  Awesome. And in Comedy Corner, we had the sublime Sophie Dujca. Thank you, Sophie.

• 28:08Speaker 05

  Bless you, Greg. Bless you, Michelle.

• 28:12Greg Jenner?

  Thank you very much. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we investigate more historical friendships, in inverted commas. But for now, I'm off to go and offer Saint and some of my salami. Bye.

• 28:30Speaker 06

  In 1984, an IRA bomb planted under a bath in Brighton's Grand Hotel came close to killing Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. It was the biggest direct assault on a British government since the Gunpowder Plot. From BBC Radio 4, I'm Glenn Patterson, and in The Brighton Bomb, I tell the story of the deadly attack, unraveling the threads that brought all involved, often by heartbreaking chance, to that place and time. 2:54 a.m. on the morning of the 12th of October, and I reveal how the police only just averted a follow-up bombing campaign aimed at England's beaches. To hear The Brighton Bomb and many

• 29:12Speaker 06

  other great history documentaries, search for The History Podcast on BBC Sounds.

• 29:22Speaker 04

  It's the film that convinced Americans the Second World War was worth fighting. A reason to be in Hollywood that is really quite a terrifying situation. And its production is an extraordinary story in itself. Ronald Reagan had been named as the potential lead. Join me, Mischa Glenny, and three expert guests for a special live edition of In Our Time, where we discuss Casablanca. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.