Pompeii

Warning: this episode contains explicit language and discussions of sex. Pompeii is a city frozen in time and shows us exactly how the Romans really lived. Buried by volcanic ash and debris from a catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, visitors to the Roman town can still see eerily preserved homes, bathhouses, the notorious brothel, and plaster casts of victims in their last moments. Dan is joined by Dr Kate Lister to tell the story of the eruption and explain the history behind what remains in Pompeii and their top tips for visiting. This is part of our summer travel series 'Dan's Guide to Europe'. Produced by Mariana Des Forges, edited by Tim Arstall and sound designed by Dougal Patmore. Join Dan and the team for a special LIVE recording of Dan Snow's History Hit on Friday, 12th September 2025! To celebrate 10 years of the podcast, Dan is putting on a special show of signature storytelling, never-before-heard anecdotes from his often stranger-than-fiction career, as well as answering the burning questions you've always wanted to ask! Get tickets here, before they sell out: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/words/dan-snows-history-hit/. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Dan Snow?

  Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favourite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Standard-sized rugs shouldn't be the standard. Get a custom-sized rug that actually fits with Ernesta. In as little as two weeks, Ernesta cuts, finishes and delivers your rug straight to your door. No more awkward sizing, just a designer-quality rug made to work within your space perfectly the first time. Visit ernesta.com to explore Ernesta's full range of custom-sized rugs and get $50 towards any style when you order five samples for only $10.

• 1:56Dan Snow?

  The stalls in Pompeii's market overflow with grapes, figs, dates, barley and olives. Men and women in their woolen linen togas peruse what else is on offer: wine, herbs and honey. As they reach out to pick up the produce, the ground rumbles. The stalls sway, olives fall to the ground.

• 2:33Dan Snow?

  For days, tremors have reverberated through the stone streets of this affluent Roman town on the Bay of Naples. But most of its eighteen thousand inhabitants have ignored them, continuing to go about their leisure and work. The city is a retreat for Rome's rich and the people who serve them, a vibrant centre for tourism, trade, food and fancy. There are dramatic gladiator fights in the amphitheatre, there are plays and performances, there are bathhouses, sports grounds, shops and bars, places to eat, laundries and brothels.

• 3:13Dan Snow?

  Mount Vesuvius looms over the city, rising about four thousand feet above Pompeii. On its mountain sides, farmers tend to crops and vineyards. On the day that Vesuvius erupted, the town bakers put bread into ovens, not realising that these loaves will stay here for nearly two thousand years, to be discovered by archaeologists strangely preserved. At 1pm that day, a young man by the name of Pliny the Younger looks across the Bay of Naples from around thirty kilometres away from Pompeii and sees something extraordinary. A huge column shoots up from the volcano.

• 3:56Dan Snow?

  Gas, stone, ash. The sky blackens as volcanic debris rains down on Pompeii, Herculaneum and other surrounding settlements. Pliny later wrote: "The daylight was now elsewhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any night." It must have felt like the world was ending.

• 4:21Dan Snow?

  And for Pompeii, it was. The inhabitants panicked. Torn between escaping the danger of the raining debris and the terror of leaving everything behind them. People tied pillows to their heads to attempt to protect themselves while others just cried in despair. Many flee to the ports or nearby towns, but thousands remain.

• 4:49Dan Snow?

  The hail of pumice strikes the town like slingshots from the sky. Buildings struggle under the weight as it piles up and begins to bury people and things. Eventually, the pumice will form a layer roughly three metres deep. Then there is another boom.

• 5:06Dan Snow?

  The giant column of gas and ash stretching up from the volcano suddenly collapses and forms an avalanche of superheated material that rampages down the slopes, destroying everything in its path. It tumbles down the mountainside, devouring vineyards, villas, fields and forests. It moves faster than any man can run. It is hotter than a furnace. It sweeps through the gates of Pompeii in an instant. Those who have hidden indoors suffocate where they lay. Those who run die where they stand. In almost an instant, the city is gone.

• 5:47Dan Snow?

  Buried beneath metres of ash and stone, entombed to be uncovered centuries later.

• 5:59Dan Snow?

  Pompeii was rediscovered at the end of the 16th century by the architect Domenico Fontana, who were digging an underground channel to divert the Sanno River. During the project, he uncovered a series of ancient walls and frescoes and inscriptions, the ruins of Pompeii. But he was horrified to realise the frescoes depicted rather erotic scenes. He quickly covered the site up and Pompeii remained hidden for another century. Proper excavations began in the 1700s, after the discovery of nearby Herculaneum in 1709.

• 6:34Dan Snow?

  Initially, the work was haphazard and focused on finding treasures for the Royal Collection of Charles III of Naples. It wasn't until the following century that excavations became more careful and scientific. Lead archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli came up with the idea of making plaster casts of the voids that he believed had been left by the bodies of individuals who'd been buried in the ash during the eruption. Their bodies had then decomposed and left a cavity. These are the very haunting statues or casts that show us the very last second of the lives of the victims of Pompeii. During these historic excavations, and even today, we have found perfectly preserved artefacts: human remains,

• 7:18Dan Snow?

  food, buildings, artworks, all manner of ancient objects that reveal the story of life in Pompeii. Its ruins are the most extraordinary time capsule we have into the ancient Roman world. So, as fellow history lovers, I can imagine Pompeii is on your bucket list, which is why I've included it in my summer travel series, Dan Snow's Guide to Europe. I had the privilege of going to Pompeii at the end of last year to film a TV show with the incredible historian Dr Kate Lister, who is also the host of our sister podcast, Betwixt the Sheets. And it seemed like the perfect excuse to meet up with Kate again to reminisce on that trip and what we learnt, to give you the historic lowdown on what can be found at Pompeii, as well as our hot tips on how to see it if you're lucky enough to visit. Now, it's worth saying it, there's a little bit of swearing and sex talk in

• 8:02Dan Snow?

  this episode because Pompeii has the only preserved brothel from the ancient world, and we couldn't not include it.

• 8:16Dan Snow?

  Kate Lister, how are you doing?

• 8:17Speaker 03

  I'm doing very well, thank you, Dan Snow. How are you doing?

• 8:19Dan Snow?

  Good. We've just come back from a great adventure in Pompeii. Was that your first time?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  I went to Pompeii for the very first time when I was 17, but I think I was very much a petulant teenager. Like, things were being pointed out to me, like, you should appreciate this.

• 8:33Dan Snow?

  Yeah, just, I went there as a teenager, and you're like, what am I doing here?

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Why am I here?

• 8:37Dan Snow?

  But now that you're a sophisticated, you know, academic and public historian and thought leader, tell us, what do you think about it?

• 8:44Speaker 03

  It's amazing. It's absolutely incredible. It's such a surreal place to be because it's not like a museum where a group of historians have got together and gone, I think this is what a Roman place would look like. It's actually the city where they lived and you really do, you walk in their streets, this is their houses, you can go into their homes. It is very eerie to be there, I think.

• 9:05Dan Snow?

  People are drawn to the sort of box office bits, like the particular murals or frescoes or statues. For me, it's the whole thing. It's mind blowing. You're in a Roman city in a reasonable state and you just get a sense from the streets and the buildings, the layout. And then, of course, so exciting because something like a third of it hasn't been excavated yet.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  I know loads of it is still underground, isn't it? Any historian who's studying Pompeii, I guess, lives in fear, but also excitement of what they're going to discover. You could like do this whole thesis on what you think people in Pompeii would be doing. And then some bastard with a trowel over here is going to turn up and just prove everything.

• 9:38Dan Snow?

  And what's great about it is that you and I were there. It's different zones, isn't there? There's residential, there's food and bev, we might call it now.

• 9:46Speaker 03

  Worshipping places, bathing places.

• 9:48Dan Snow?

  Place for politics.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Lots of walking in Pompeii.

• 9:52Dan Snow?

  Lots of walking.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Oh, there's so much walking in Pompeii to be done.

• 9:54Dan Snow?

  That's actually a really good point. I always say to people, if you're going to, don't go in the summer and wear walking shoes because it is brutal.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  I wore the stupidest shoes.

• 10:03Dan Snow?

  I don't want to say anything.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  The stupid, do you know what? They weren't stupid for if you were just walking around London.

• 10:07Dan Snow?

  They're lovely shoes.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  They were very nice shoes.

• 10:09Dan Snow?

  I just mean they weren't ideal for Pompeii.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  They had a rather chunky platform wedge to the sandals and they would have been fine for walking around any city, but Pompeii is a different beast altogether.

• 10:19Dan Snow?

  Because you've got the volcanic, it's all made out of volcanic rock. It's the big sort of paving stones that are slightly uneven on the streets, aren't they? And you're always hopping down on the, the curbs are very high.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:29Dan Snow?

  Because as we learned. Those streets would have been filled with.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Shit.

• 10:33Dan Snow?

  Imagine the summer.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  It would have been awful, wouldn't it? Just animal waste, human waste, food, just all being chucked into the streets and free flowing.

• 10:42Dan Snow?

  As a visitor today, you're always kind of clambering up and down.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  It's hot, it's dusty. There are midges there as well. So you've got to be quite hardy, I think.

• 10:50Dan Snow?

  And all the time you've got that amazing vista in the background. You've got Vesuvius with the central cone blown out in that enormous eruption. We'll probably talk about the one that would destroy Pompeii or preserve Pompeii, however you want to look at it. First of all, I guess let's talk about the kind of character of Pompeii. It was on the Bay of Maples. It was the Hamptons. It was like

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:08Dan Snow?

  The sandbanks in Bournemouth offer the Roman eat. There were these villas all around the Bay of Maples. So Pompeii was a sort of holiday town.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  It was. It was where the posh people went to kick their knees up and to have a good time. And yeah, I mean, it's on the coast. It's very beautiful. And it must have been where rich people would go, maybe not for a day out, probably a bit longer than that. But yeah, it had a big thriving tourist industry.

• 11:31Dan Snow?

  I guess that's not surprising because they, obviously the famous Amalfi Coast is just around the corner. That's where everyone goes on their honeymoon stays. So it's still got that character. Someone said it was a bit like a cross between Vegas and Miami or something like it was a real holiday town. Did people let their hair down there as well?

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. And there was a lot for them to do as well. There were so many taverns and places to eat and it's really catering for people to go there and have a good time. If you had money. That was one of the things that struck me about being there. There was, I never saw the middle bit. It's just like,

• 12:01Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  There was this palaces and palatial environments of people that had so much money it made your eyes water. Or people living in hovels. The wealth disparity was really stark.

• 12:12Dan Snow?

  You're right, because we went to a few of those places. And what's interesting, sometimes it's on the same block. So there'll be like a really rich house. And it's sort of, it's grown organically. I suppose he or she have bought their neighbours out. But then there'll be like a blacksmith's. There'll be a smithy and then like a tiny little dwelling right in amongst that same. So it must have been quite intense and noisy and to a certain extent confusing. You wouldn't necessarily know you were in a smart part of town or not.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  All the rich houses had really high levels of security, didn't they? To keep the oipoli out, obviously. They're like, their windows were really high to stop people nicking all of their stuff.

• 12:42Dan Snow?

  And we were lucky enough to see some new excavation that was really cool. I'll never forget seeing those handprints on the wall. Do you see those handprints on the wall that kids had drawn around their hands in charcoal?

• 12:52Speaker 03

  No, when did you see that?

• 12:53Dan Snow?

  I think maybe you were at the baths that day. They've just uncovered them. And if you think about it, that means between the kids doing that and the eruption of Vesuvius, it probably didn't rain or anything. So it could have been days, weeks or hours. And there was also next to those hands, there was some childlike graffiti of gladiators fighting as well.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  There's lots of eerie things like that, like the bread that they've got that was put into the ovens the morning of the eruption and that's been preserved. That's quite eerie. Like it was just, it was never eaten, it was never touched. It was obviously put in almost immediately before the thing happened.

• 13:23Dan Snow?

  We were very lucky because we got shown to some of those back areas, the storage. Because I think the buildings are special, but they're like skeletons, aren't they?

• 13:30Speaker 03

  You forget that, don't you? That obviously when they've excavated it, they've taken a load of stuff out. What you're looking at when you're walking around is basically the shell of it. All of the treasures and the things that they found are kept in. It wasn't a museum, it was like a storehouse in the centre, wasn't it? And we were lucky enough to go and have a look around it. And it's just shells really close together, absolutely stuffed with these artefacts. I felt terrified being in there.

• 13:53Dan Snow?

  Terrified?

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Terrified of being in there. Like it's just wall to wall, glass, boxes, things that they've found, thousands of years old.

• 14:02Dan Snow?

  Cooking utensils.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  And you know, one false move, one stumble, one sneeze, and I could smash this.

• 14:09Dan Snow?

  There were sort of things that you would put as a centerpiece of a dining table. There was that earthenware jug that had all those eggs in it, and the eggs had baked and the shells had cracked, but they were all still there. In that storeroom, there was the statue with the enormous penis.

• 14:22Speaker 03

  The huge penis.

• 14:23Dan Snow?

  The reason it was in the storeroom is someone had broken it off and tried to take it home.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  See, that's why we can't have nice things because people do that.

• 14:31Dan Snow?

  It was in someone's handbag leaving the site. I'll never forget that.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  That was Dan who tried to steal that, by the way.

• 14:36Dan Snow?

  No, it wasn't.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't.

• 14:37Dan Snow?

  It was not. And but I did do a little Instagram video of it. Now, let's try and talk people through Pompeii in case they want to visit there. You go in through this wonderful gate, an original gate in the defensive walls, which is something like two miles long. There were several gates, but you go in through this wonderful gate. And when you go in there, like we were lucky enough to do before the crowds, the sun shines straight down that. It's a magical experience entering and it's quite magical. Then you get into the forum where there's temples and the basilica. So there's sort of the court area for local politics. And then around the forum, what does one do if you're an ancient Roman in the forum?

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Well, ideally you'd be a man because I did learn that looking around is that most women were just supposed to stay at home and out of the way. But the forum was the place where the politicians and the local officials would meet and have discussions and thoughts and do business. And all around that would have been people trading catering to them.

• 15:30Dan Snow?

  A lot of gossip.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of gossip.

• 15:32Dan Snow?

  Thing that people, men like to say, we don't gossip.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Oh, you gossip so much.

• 15:35Dan Snow?

  We gossip so much.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  You gossip so much.

• 15:37Dan Snow?

  The whole forum idea is based around the idea of gossiping.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  There's so much gossiping that goes on.

• 15:42Dan Snow?

  And there's temples around that forum. There is a slave market there that was interesting.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was grim, wasn't it?

• 15:48Dan Snow?

  That was very prominent. And then you've got the Abundanza, which is called the Road of Abundance. That's a modern name for it, with lots of commercial properties, loads of shops, loads of stores and just bars. As you say, bars and taverns everywhere.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Because they would eat on the way home. That was something else that I learnt when I was in Pompeii is that rich people would eat at home. They'd have people to cook for them. Poor people wouldn't have the facilities to do it because they would live in a one roomed establishment. So they would be buying food on their way home.

• 16:16Dan Snow?

  So I thought in terms of public spaces, I think the forum's extraordinary and the buildings around the forum. And then you go down the Via Abundanza and look at the shops, but the baths are amazing. I didn't do much, but you did a lot of time in the baths.

• 16:27Speaker 03

  That's impressive when you go in there because they've, obviously they're divided by sex. You've got men's baths and you've got the women's baths. And the men's baths is it's got quite a. It's weird to say like a masculine vibe about it, but the images on the wall and the frescoes, there's sort of like nude men with big muscles and tiny penises all over the place. And when you go into the women's baths, the frescoes on the wall is it's flowers and birds and, and nice things. And in the men's baths, they've got, it's like a big fire pit thing that they must have used to put uh water on to get the steam. And you can see the dedication on it. It was put there by somebody who was trying to get elected. So he was appealing to the men by just basically going, remember me. I'm, I'm like, I'm really rich. I'm really cool. Like I put that thing in the bath.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Nothing like that in the women's baths. And when I asked Sophie, our guide about that, she went, yeah, but they can't vote. So, oh yeah. So who cares?

• 17:18Dan Snow?

  Amazing. And one of the very useful things about Pompeii anyway, is that unlike ancient Egypt, the whole place is full of inscriptions of this is who I am.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:26Dan Snow?

  This is the year. This is who's the emperor. This is what I'm trying to achieve. I'd like to get elected to this office. Please enjoy this nice drinking fountain. So for historians and archaeologists, they're like, well, that's quite useful.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  And graffiti everywhere.

• 17:38Dan Snow?

  Everywhere.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  That was their version of social media is they're scrolling on walls, on doors, on, there's so much graffiti around Pompeii.

• 17:46Dan Snow?

  It was that fun one by the wall. I think it was on the north side. It was like, please stop doing your business outside my house. People just defecating on the street, obviously outside this poor person's house. And they just scrawled this massive sign up on the wall.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Fair enough.

• 17:59Dan Snow?

  Yeah. So the baths, of all the Roman customs, I'd like to get involved in that.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Well, I thought that too. And when you're looking around, you're like, this actually feels quite familiar and quite modern because they've got a plunge pool and they've got a hot room and they've got another hotter room and like you move through them. And it sounds all lovely until you realise they don't have any plumbing system in there. It's all the same water being recycled again and again and again. So it's, yeah.

• 18:26Dan Snow?

  That's not something.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  That's not something, is it?

• 18:28Dan Snow?

  But I thought the idea of the community coming together, like they do a bit of work in the morning and then you go and all meet up for a chat and a hangout.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Go and have a shower with your mates.

• 18:35Dan Snow?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  I quite like that too, but they were, they were very important to them in the baths. It was where they would get a lot of business done, a lot of chatting and you just go and hang out.

• 18:45Dan Snow?

  That does have a modern feel because we've got leisure centres and spas and things today. I also felt the palastro, which is that huge, big square, colonnaded square, where you and I spent quite a lot of time. And that was. Well, I think strangely, a lot of elite kids would go there and have schooling in one of those colonies with their clever Greek tutors and things. But also in the middle of that swimming pool, so it was a big athletics ground as well. And the swimming pool had like a shallow end and a deep end.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  I like that.

• 19:10Dan Snow?

  What about the night time, well, the night economy? Because it's quite a, well, as you say, it was a place that attracted tourists. It's a place where that night economy seemed to be quite important.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  One of the things that you really learn when you're walking around it, I think that when you can actually do that, you learn a lot about history just by actually being there and physically experiencing it that you hadn't realised before. Like how dark it would have been. That was one of the things that, like, obviously, if you think about it, you do realise that. But we were there at night at one point and it is pitch black. You can't see anything in front of you and we had a few torches and a few lamps. I mean, it must have been terrifying to have gone out and walked about in Pompeii when it was that dark. And there are a lot of records about people getting robbed and that you wouldn't want to go out after dark.

• 19:54Dan Snow?

  If you were wealthy, you'd be accompanied by someone.

• 19:56Speaker 03

  If you were wealthy, you would be at home. You would be at home on your sofa or whatever the Romans had instead of a sofa.

• 20:02Dan Snow?

  But you might want to sneak out at night because there's lots to do, isn't there? There's the theatres, which I was very struck by.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 20:07Dan Snow?

  There were two theatres right next door to each other, two main ones. And clearly, getting together and doing things together is a big part of life for these Romans, being in a town like that. You're training together, you're bathing together, you're in the theatres together. That's something that now feels quite alien to us.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  There wasn't a lot of privacy in Pompeii. Everything was in on top of one another. I think that would get on my nerves after a while, to be completely honest. Like you were never, ever alone. It seems like there wasn't any space for anyone. There's no introverts in Pompeii. Everybody has to be social with everybody else.

• 20:41Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History and this is My Guide to Pompeii.

• 20:50Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail. But suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialised. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us: mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.

• 21:32Dan Snow?

  This episode is brought to you by Decagon. If you've ever been trapped in phone tree hell, pushing zero 50 times while a voice robot pretends not to hear you, you know true psychological warfare. It's brutal, folks. Thankfully, that kind of horror is now confined to the history books. Customer service has evolved. Decagon helps companies create personalised, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice and SMS. They're available 24/7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own, so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Plus, because workflows can be updated using natural language, teams can make changes themselves.

• 22:15Dan Snow?

  Decagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation, helping to power millions of conversations every day. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to decagon.ai/dansnow to see what Decagon can do for your team. That's decagon.ai/dansnow. Check Decagon out at decagon.ai/dansnow.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 23:33Speaker 04

  Outdated technology isn't going to improve a disconnected healthcare system. Next. So what will? At Optum, we wake up every day and work for better. We call it healthy optimism. It's how we use insights and technology to help providers focus less on paperwork and more on patients. Will we fix it all overnight? No, but we'll wake up trying again and again, until healthcare works as one for everyone. That's healthy optimism. Learn more at optum.com.

• 24:10Dan Snow?

  I guess the other activity that you'd really find out would be the Gladiator Arena.

• 24:15Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:15Dan Snow?

  That we went to, it's right on the other side of town from the Forum.

• 24:17Speaker 03

  They loved the Gladiator, didn't they?

• 24:19Dan Snow?

  Yeah, and that is just one of the great Gladiator arenas of the Roman world. Women weren't allowed to attend the games. They could if they sat right at the top, I think.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  They were allowed to go, but they had to sit in the back and they had to behave themselves.

• 24:29Dan Snow?

  It fits something like 20,000 people in, so possibly more than the population of Pompeii.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Was it a big deal there, the amphitheater, do you think?

• 24:36Dan Snow?

  I think so.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Like a big, it was a big amphitheater.

• 24:38Dan Snow?

  I think it was a big draw, I think it was, wasn't it?

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you get a lot of graffiti around the amphitheatre that tells us how the gladiators reviewed and they have this kind of celebrity status, even even a heartthrob status. There's one that says, "Crescen, the net fighter, will make the girl sigh."

• 24:55Dan Snow?

  They obviously were the slaves, but they also enslaved, that's.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  That was weird, wasn't it? Trying to trying to get your head around that, right? Okay, so how does your system of slavery work then? Because you enslave a lot of people. I think some of the historians are saying up to a third of people were enslaved, but like also doctors, midwives, teachers, they were all slaves.

• 25:13Dan Snow?

  White collar accountants, yeah, they could be slaves.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Gladiators, sex workers, like, I I trying to get your head around that, right? So these are quite skilled jobs of people that live in your house, but they're also slaves and they don't have any rights. I found that really jarring to try and work out how this system of slavery works for them.

• 25:32Dan Snow?

  Speaking of sex workers, that's something that feels quite present in Pompeii. There are these places that we think are brothels.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:40Dan Snow?

  You visited a lot of them. Were they out of the way places? Was it was it something that was kind of shameful? Was it kept a lid on or was it quite out there?

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Well, there is one known brothel in Pompeii, and there's quite a lot of historical debate around how do you classify a brothel, not just in Pompeii or in Rome, but any time throughout history? Like, what is the definition of it? And the definition they've come up with is it's a place that has to be used exclusively for the sale of sex. It's got more than one bed in it. It's got these kind of classifications. Because obviously you get other places like taverns where someone might have been selling sex out the back. And there's a few of those in Pompeii where some of the graffiti suggests that might have been happening. The brothel is the only known establishment that that's all it was doing. It was there to sell sex.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  And it's the most popular tourist destination in Pompeii. Everybody wants to see it. Everybody wants to go. But from a historical point of view, it's a really, really important. Sight a really important find. It's the only surviving brothel that we have from the ancient world. And even more important than that, it's got graffiti on the walls that were written by the people that work there. So for the first time ever, you get a snapshot into lives that would have absolutely been lost to us had that not happened.

• 26:54Dan Snow?

  Part of the attraction people of the brothel are the frescoes.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  They're not actually that erotic when you look at them. It's kind of.

• 27:00Dan Snow?

  I've seen worse.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  I've seen. There are worse in Pompeii. There are worse ones in Pompeii than what's on the brothel.

• 27:06Dan Snow?

  And is the suggestion that people can point and go, can I do that, please?

• 27:09Speaker 03

  That is what the tour guides tell you, but that's not the case. No, it's not like it was a menu and people were just pointing out what they wanted. It's more to create an ambiance, a kind of an erotic setting. And when you're actually in there, like the rooms are kind of sectioned off, but they would have had curtains perhaps covering the doorway. So it would have all been very open and all very present. I mean, there's not much that you can conceal behind a curtain. Like perhaps you conceal your view, but everyone's aware of what's going on there. We know that when they excavated it, they found things like razor blades, things for cleaning yourselves. So perhaps the clients were being asked to have a wash before or maybe afterwards. It's two stories, but we don't know what the top

• 27:54Speaker 03

  floor was used for. Maybe the person who owned it or ran it lived up there. We just don't know. We've got a few names of the people that worked there, men and women. Most of them were enslaved, so forced to do this. Some of them seem to have had freeborn names. So they might have just been people trying to make a bit of extra money. But nowhere else in the whole of history do we have the voices of someone who's enslaved and somebody who's a sex worker. That's the only place.

• 28:20Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 28:21Speaker 03

  That we have it. There was a guy who worked there called Isidorus. And one of the pieces says that he's a great cunt licker. So fair play, Isidorus. They're making fun of clients as well. There's one piece that calls one of the clients Mr. Garlic Farts.

• 28:34Dan Snow?

  Oh.

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Which I know, I know. But that's also funny. That's a good joke from 2000 years ago. There's also a piece of graffiti that says something to the effect of weep girls, my penis now will penetrate men's behinds. So we know that there was a lot of gay sex going on there. There was another person that worked there called Mola. Her name appears a few times, but we don't know very much information about these people. But the fact that we know them at all is frankly amazing.

• 29:02Dan Snow?

  And what should we make then of the sexy murals that seem to be in private houses? Were they just artistic fashion? Or were there rooms in their private houses where these rich people were trying to create their own little mini brothels?

• 29:11Speaker 03

  That is an argument that a lot of historians have made. There's one house, the house of the Vetii, it's called. There is one room that has got very erotic frescoes in it and what looks to be a price list. So there's some suggestion that that was being used as a brothel perhaps. Or perhaps that was somebody that they were enslaved and made to do that. We just don't know. But also the thing is like trying to understand what the Romans saw when they saw the things that they looked at and what we see. Is it so different? You must have noticed all around Pompeii, there were just penises everywhere. They're on the pavement, they're on the wall, they're in the frescoes.

• 29:48Dan Snow?

  You're the expert on things like this. Why do people do that?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  So another thing the tour guides might tell you is that they're pointing towards the brothel. That's not true. That's not true. Like if you tried to follow those and find a brothel, you would just get hopelessly lost for hours. It looks like they're good luck charms. So like that they're warding off evil and there are other cultures and civilizations that do something similar. Egypt, for instance. So it just seems that they were, they were good luck charms. And the other thing that you realise when you're walking around Pompeii or indeed Rome is how masculine it is, how macho it is. It's a really bros, bros, bros culture. They didn't think an awful lot of women and they had to stay home most of the time. You don't get vulvas around Pompeii. They've got this huge love of penises, not one vulva to be found.

• 30:33Dan Snow?

  Yeah, so that's men carving them for men. This is not women just going, oh, I love a penis.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  There are penises drawn on the women's baths, on the walls of women's baths, really big penises as well. I like to think that a woman drew that.

• 30:49Dan Snow?

  I'm seeing male artists there, I've got to be honest. What if the penises and the frescoes and the fact there is at least one brothel? What does that tell us about attitudes towards sex in the Roman world?

• 31:00Speaker 03

  They clearly had very different attitudes to our own. And you can tell that by how shocked we are by Pompeii. The Victorians really freaked out when they started excavating it. They were absolutely horrified about all this smut and all the penises that they were finding. They'd locked it up in a secret room in the Museum of Naples. But even today, the fact that we're so fascinated by it, like, oh my god, look at this penis, that statue's got massive penis, it's a brothel. I don't think that it would have bothered any of the Romans at all. I don't think that it would have been a thought in their head. That's how normal it was to them. They had quite a bawdy sense of humour. They have quite a permissive attitude around sex. They have a lot of hangups. Let's not pretend it was some kind of sexual utopia.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  But they obviously have a much more open dialogue around sex than perhaps we do today. Probably borne out by the fact that, again, we're back to that issue of privacy. If you have your own bedroom and if you have your own space, that is a very modern phenomenon. That is a luxury that our ancestors could only have dreamt of. And if you are all living piled in on top of one another, naked bodies, sex, these kind of things are going to have a much more immediate presence than they do when we try and lock everything away. So obviously, they're very, very different attitudes to sex than we have today.

• 32:13Dan Snow?

  You mentioned the brothel and everyone wants to see that. But everybody who visits Pompeii wants to see the plaster casts of the bodies as well. That is just, they're so striking. People just want to know where those bodies are and they want to see them. And they are extraordinary. We should say how they were formed, right? Because when they were excavating, they would find these hollows, wouldn't they?

• 32:33Speaker 03

  Yep, where the ash and the pumice had rained down from the volcano and it's squished down and compacted. And it had basically encased anything that was underneath it. And then over time, that material rots away and what you're left with is a shell of a body that was once there.

• 32:51Dan Snow?

  And so they were sort of breaking through the volcanic debris and they'd find a sort of a cavity with some human bones in it or some animal bones. They'd be like, what is this? And then they had the idea in the 9th century to fill that void with plaster. And what do they find? The shape of bodies.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  It's really eerie, isn't it, is to see them, to see. It was one of the most giant things about Pompeii. You can have so much fun, like walking around going, oh, there's a brothel, there's the baths, there's, and you have such a good time. And then you sort of face to face with one of these bodies and you go, oh, oh, the terrible thing happened. I'd almost forgotten about the terrible thing happening. It is very moving when you see them because a lot of the time their bodies are convulsed in strange positions and they're holding things to their mouths. Or the really moving ones is where you've got people huddled together.

• 33:35Dan Snow?

  I know.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  And little kids.

• 33:36Dan Snow?

  I know, the mother and child, or an adult and child, certainly.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we just, you just don't know who these people are. Your heart just breaks for them when you realise that that was their last moments.

• 33:47Dan Snow?

  More Pompeii coming up after this.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favourite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  A rug shouldn't just fit your room. It should make your home feel finished. Ernesta creates designer quality rugs, custom fit to the exact size of your space, so every room feels beautifully pulled together. Explore Ernesta's range of options, all ready to be custom cut, finished and delivered to your door in as little as two weeks. Start with five samples for just $10 and get $50 toward your rug when you order. Visit ernesta.com today. That's E R N E S T A dot com.

• 35:24Dan Snow?

  And also, they've restarted doing that with organic material as well. Some of the old wooden doors, they've now rendered those in plaster. And I went down to a big house, I think it was just outside the walls. And in the slaves, of course, they've got enslaved people's beds. They've got two beds in this tiny room, little place for a candle, little bit of whitewash and they'll all try and reflect the light of that candle. And now they've been able to preserve, through this method, these beds all sort of recreated in plaster. It's fascinating, yeah. So the technology and the science and the archaeology is just coming on leaps and bounds. It's a very exciting place, isn't it? But in that house, they have the only horses they've recovered, so Plata Paris horses, with their bridles on and stuff. So it's conceivable that they were being ready to try and gallop out, try and escape if there was a gap in the volcanic debris. And there, they found two bodies, two men, I think.

• 36:09Dan Snow?

  One possibly a master and one an enslaved person, so they were together.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 36:13Dan Snow?

  It was in a little corridor of this house, so fascinating stuff.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  That really is, isn't it? And you've just seen them in their last moments. Yeah, it's powerful, it's powerful.

• 36:22Dan Snow?

  I think equally powerful is the dog that was chained to the post near the temple of Isis. And the dog's back is arched, its feet are straight out, its head's twisted away. Very rare in archaeology, isn't it, to sort of reach back and touch a nanosecond from nearly 2,000 years ago? But that feels like that, that dog has just been hit by this wall of heat and volcanic debris.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  A lot of the bodies are convulsing in strange positions, they're contorted in strange positions, not because of the heat that hit them, it causes the muscles to go into spasm. It was the heat of the pyroclastic flow that caused the body to contract.

• 36:53Dan Snow?

  And we say, people that don't know, in August, although they're just thinking now it could be later in the year, sort of October, in 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius, which towers over Pompeii and is part of a supervolcano, by the way, everyone, new fear unlocked, that will blow up one day and destroy most of Europe.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Is that what a supervolcano is?

• 37:11Dan Snow?

  No, yeah, Vesuvius is part of it. The flagrane fields are all under Naples and all round.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 37:16Dan Snow?

  So that whole area, the Bay of Naples, is a supervolcano.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  Who told you that?

• 37:19Dan Snow?

  A volcanologist on the programme.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  All right, I'll believe that.

• 37:22Dan Snow?

  Yeah, and he says he's got a car... Ready to go with stuff in the back for when his readings start going off the scale. The supervolcano is going to blow at some stage.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  They didn't tell me that.

• 37:32Dan Snow?

  Well, we didn't. We didn't tell you that before we took.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  I didn't know I was walking around a supervolcano.

• 37:36Dan Snow?

  Oh, that. Well, you were. And you know what? We made it. We made it. And that's why if you go to Naples, you see lots of volcanic rock and lava and things. That whole area has been subject to repeated eruptions. But Vesuvius, the catastrophic, the enormous eruption that blew the top off was in seventy nine. And it's the first volcanic eruption in history for which we have a sort of scientific observation of. Because plenty of the younger was watching it. His uncle, plenty of the elder, went to help and actually ended up dying in this eruption. He described this huge column going up in the air, like a pine tree, I think he said it was, and there's little fragments going. And then Pompeii was subjected to a rain of pumice.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:13Dan Snow?

  And ash.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:15Dan Snow?

  And some bombs. Remember those volcanic bombs, bigger, bigger rocks that are superheated and would land like a mortar bomb on the.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  It would have all been really bad news because when you pick the pumice up, it doesn't feel that heavy, does it? And you could be, you could be forgiven for a moment thinking.

• 38:28Dan Snow?

  This'll be all right.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  This'll be all right.

• 38:30Dan Snow?

  Well, I think that's why lots of people stayed. Then there was a few hours when, you know, pumice was building up on roofs and they were collapsing and the streets were filling up. And I think people were making that some people, lots of people went down. We know in Herculaneum, they went down to the water and.

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Are you going to risk it? Are you going to go for it?

• 38:43Dan Snow?

  Indeed, some ships in the Bay of Naples came to help people, but then they were sunk by these rocks landing on them. And pumice was floating on the surface of the Bay of Naples, they thought.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  And it's, it's like, it's really thick, isn't it? It's like metres and metres.

• 38:54Dan Snow?

  So you could sort of almost drown in pumice and then volcanic ash falling. I think there was a little tsunami as well. And then.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Throw that in there.

• 39:01Dan Snow?

  Quite a few hours later, there's this extraordinary, superheated, so three, four hundred degrees centigrade, pyroclastic. That enormous column collapses and rumbles down the side of Vesuvius like an avalanche.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:12Dan Snow?

  And just smashes Pompeii.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Super hot.

• 39:15Dan Snow?

  And Hercules. Super hot, super heated, immediately carbonising all that wood and the bread that we saw. I saw that also grass, there was a lawn which they've preserved and it's just blackened grass.

• 39:25Speaker 03

  When the end actually came for these people, would it have been quite quick?

• 39:28Dan Snow?

  Yes, it would have been very quick. When that pyroclastic surge hits, it's instantaneous.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  That's it, done.

• 39:32Dan Snow?

  And you've got lots of skeletons in Herculaneum, but all puddling next to the port, where we think they were trying to evacuate from there. But what's also really interesting is there's Roman settlements that survive. The cloud sort of collapses and this pyroclastic avalanche travels across the countryside. Because the wind was in a certain direction, actually, if you're on the edge of it, you could survive. So the hot take, what I've learned is sometimes you want to escape by heading towards the volcano.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  That's terrible advice, Don. Don't give people that kind of advice.

• 39:58Dan Snow?

  No, but if you're downwind, if you run that way, it's going to fall on you. If you actually go around the edge of the volcano and go upwind, you might be all right.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  We know people escaped. How many bodies have they found, is it?

• 40:08Dan Snow?

  I don't know. I don't know the answer.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  It's not. Well, we know that there were thousands of people living in it there. And they haven't found thousands of bodies. So clearly people did.

• 40:15Dan Snow?

  Many people escaped and we got accounts of a town nearby, which had a huge influx of refugees, for example.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Would you have gone? Would you have run?

• 40:23Dan Snow?

  Um, I think so. Do you know why I would?

• 40:25Speaker 03

  Tell me.

• 40:25Dan Snow?

  Because, like you, I'm a historian and I've studied a lot of the disasters in the past of people getting it wrong and not right. I'd run quick. My main lesson from history is at the slightest whiff of trouble.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Leg it.

• 40:35Dan Snow?

  Political, geological, get out. My kids, we got a rendezvous point.

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Oh, do you? Where's your rendezvous point? In case a volcano goes off.

• 40:44Dan Snow?

  No, we got, yes, we have different, in fact, we have different rendezvous points for different crises. Tsunamis.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Is this true?

• 40:49Dan Snow?

  We go, yes. I told my kids, we go to the highest point in the New Forest, where I got the Ordnance Survey map out. It's not very high and we're going to go and stand there if there's a tsunami.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  What, if there was an earthquake?

• 40:58Dan Snow?

  Well, I don't have a plan for that.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  Did they know it was a volcano?

• 41:01Dan Snow?

  They knew it was a geologically active area because there's the Flegrean Fields, the earthquake, in fact, there's been an earthquake right before.

• 41:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was still repair in from that, weren't there? It must have been fuming.

• 41:10Dan Snow?

  They must have been fuming because there's a big, almost imperial sort of royal villa slash palace quite near Pompeii that was also covered. And they think that might not have been used at the time because they could have been repairing it from the earthquake.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:22Dan Snow?

  So, yeah, some, some of the rich people may have stayed away. But, yeah, so I guess they knew it was an area of, but they, they didn't know about Plato's atomics, they didn't know about geological time.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 41:32Dan Snow?

  As somebody who'd visited for the first time as an adult, what was the one thing you take away?

• 41:36Speaker 03

  Hmm, wear sensible shoes.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Don't be wearing silly fashion shoes. If you're gonna go, go later in the day, I think, because everybody tries to get there at nine, but by five, six, it's actually cleared out.

• 41:49Dan Snow?

  Yep.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Quite a lot. If it's what I learnt about the Romans, when we were putting on togas, when the toga experts came along to put togas on us, I hadn't realised how much balance was involved in that, because it's not pinned. It's like it's all draped over you.

• 42:05Dan Snow?

  Yes, that's true. You have to stand in a way that keeps it all together.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  You have to be like, you know, have a good core muscle and you can't be messing around and trying to walk wearing that. I learnt that bakeries were horrible places to work.

• 42:17Dan Snow?

  Horrible places to work.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Hadn't realised that.

• 42:19Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  I thought that would be quite lovely.

• 42:21Dan Snow?

  Yeah, fresh bread, artisanal bakery.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it was, it was awful. The air was thick with flour as you were pushing that mill stone thing round. I learnt that there were diseases that you can get when you're inside a volcano. I learnt that and the name of the disease, if I can get this right, pneumonio ultra microscopic silico volcano coniosis.

• 42:41Dan Snow?

  Where did that come from? That was amazing. Is that a lung?

• 42:45Speaker 03

  That's a lung illness that you get from volcanoes.

• 42:48Dan Snow?

  See, I went into the crater and no one mentioned that.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  Well, no one mentioned that it's an ultra volcano to me either.

• 42:55Dan Snow?

  So we were both lied to. In the same way that you went to the bakery, I went to the laundry and I learned about how the enslaved people had to use urine to clean things.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  They were really mingin', weren't they?

• 43:06Dan Snow?

  Really disgusting places and hot and enclosed and in the back, you know, there'd be these huge big tubs and you got in there with your feet and let's stamp them down for hours and hours on end.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  The garum, the Romans go on and on and on and on about, which is effectively a rotted fish.

• 43:22Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Sauce. And I was given the opportunity to try it and I had it in my head that it can't be as disgusting as it sounds because the Romans were nuts for this stuff and Pompey made loads of it. They exported it. So I had this idea that when you tasted it, it would actually be, oh my God, that's a revelation. No, it's not. No, it's not. It was like cat food. It was awful.

• 43:40Dan Snow?

  Italian food, folks, before tomatoes, potatoes, before the Americas, Italian food, not great.

• 43:46Speaker 03

  It really wasn't great. Nice desserts though. The desserts were good. There was that cheesecake thing that we tried. That was all right, but my whole mouth tasted a rotten fish by that point. So everything was horrible.

• 43:57Dan Snow?

  Well, anyway, Kate, thanks for sharing that with us. And people should go to your podcast to find out more.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Yes, that would be very nice. We would love to see them there. It is Betwixt the Sheets, A History of Sex Scandal in Society.

• 44:07Dan Snow?

  Wherever you get your pods, go and check it out.

• 44:13Dan Snow?

  If you're listening to this and you're in the UK and you want to see the TV show Kate and I Made, you can watch it at channel5.com. It's called Pompeii: Life in the City. If you're outside the UK, well, we have got plenty of Pompeii content on our digital history channel, History Hits, so go and check it out. You can also, of course, get more of Kate on her history podcast, Betwixt the Sheets. Join me for my next instalment of my guide to Europe on Monday, where I'll be walking the streets of Napoleonic Paris to discover how that great French emperor transformed the city into what he dreamed would become the capital of the universe. And discover how Paris in turn shaped him, a young, ambitious military school student determined to make an aim for himself.

• 44:55Dan Snow?

  Do you know the reason you get bread with a meal at restaurants in Europe is all because of Napoleon? Bet you didn't know that, so keep it out for that episode on Monday because it's full of fascinating little bits like that, which you use to impress your friends. See you next time, folks. Bye bye.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favourite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 46:17Dan Snow?

  Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, and there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.