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PODCAST

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

Natalie Haynes takes a fresh look at the ancient world, creating stand-up routines about figures from ancient Greece and Rome.

comedy stand-up

All Episodes

27:52

The Aeneid

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2025/09/02

In a tour de force solo performance, Natalie takes on Virgil's great poem in 28 minutes.. and wins.In 12 books of Latin verse we follow the hero, the Trojan Prince Aeneas, as he leads the survivors of Troy to found a new city in Italy. Along the way he battles vengeful Juno, tells of the Trojan Horse and the Fall of Troy, loves and leaves Dido in Carthage, enters Hades, eats some tables and then sees his ships turn into sea nymphs and swim away from attack. Then there is more fighting until our hero

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27:42

Hestia

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2025/08/26

The overlooked Olympian who was the resolutely unmarried goddess of the hearth and home. In fact, Zeus awarded her a glorious gift for remaining unmarried, a tradition Natalie very much feels should be continued. In Hestia's Roman form of Vesta her Vestal Virgins guarded the sacred flame in her temple. Edith Hall thinks she's like Nigella, a domestic goddess, which may explain why references to her are hard to find, but that her importance both to men and women at the time cannot be overestimated

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27:52

Catullus

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2025/08/19

The brilliant Roman love poet is the poster boy for teen angst. He feels everything intensely, from the stealing of his favourite napkin to the death of his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow. And then he dies young. Of course the Romantics loved him, as do his biographer Dr Daisy Dunn and Professor Llewelyn Morgan. Born to an aristocratic family in Verona, Catullus is fearless in abusing in sophisticated verse his father's friend Julius Caesar, his ex-lover Lesbia and the poets unlucky enough to be his

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27:56

Hera

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2025/08/12

The Queen of the Olympian gods is swallowed whole by her father at birth and then marries her brother Zeus, who turns himself into a cuckoo to seduce her. Hera, or Juno to the Romans, has her triumphs. She adds the eyes to the tail feathers of her sacred bird the peacock by plucking them from the hundred-eyed monster Argos. And in the Iliad she dons a magic bra given to her by Aphrodite to persuade Zeus to support the Greeks against the Trojans. Her loyalty to the Greeks begins when Trojan prince

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28:00

The Women Poets of Ancient Greece

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2025/08/05

Natalie is joined by Edith Hall and Nikita Gill to tell the stories of the Nine Earthly Muses, the most admired Greek women poets. They are Sappho, Myrtis, Corinna, Moero, Anyte, Nossis, Erinna, Praxilla and Telesilla. The idea was that these "divine voices" had been nurtured by the Muses themselves.Sappho's magnificent poetry offers a different perspective from Homer's. Her Helen of Troy feels no guilt at all about leaving her family to be with Paris. The poets provide funny, inventive and

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27:30

Alexandria: The Library

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2025/07/29

Natalie is joined by Professors Islam Issa and Edith Hall to tell the story of the great library of Alexandria. It was included in Alexander the Great's original design for his city, located in the Nile Delta. Alexandria was to be a city of knowledge. The founders of the library were ambitious: they wanted nothing less than to collect all the books in the world. They were willing to pay huge sums, but they were also ruthless and unscrupulous. The Ptolemies would write to fellow rulers and

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27:29

Alexandria: The City

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2025/07/22

Natalie is joined by Professors Islam Issa and Edith Hall to tell the story of the ancient city of Alexandria. Located on the Nile Delta, this spectacular and highly innovative city was founded by Alexander the Great around two and half thousand years ago. And like all great ideas, it came to him in a dream.'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about

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27:30

Saturnalia

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2024/12/27

No togas today please. Natalie celebrates the mid-winter festival of Ancient Rome, Saturnalia. According to Catullus, it's the 'best of days'. Expect cross-dressing, sweets, drinking games and the wearing of special pyjamas. Oh and anarchy and jokes. Sounds a bit like a Christmas pantomime? Not surprising, according to veteran pantomime dame André Vincent, who traces the origins of panto back to the fifth century. Early in that same century - late antiquity - a Roman Christian named Macrobius

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27:31

Tacitus

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2024/08/12

Tacitus is the great historian of imperial Rome. His writing is beautiful, unsettling, extraordinarily persuasive. We know many of his likes and dislikes about people and politics, but facts about his personal life? Not so much. His memoir of Agricola tells us much fascinating detail about Roman Britain: that it's an island (the Roman fleet sailed all the way round, just to check), that it's very close to Spain (with only Ireland in between); that invading Anglesey was a great victory for the

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27:42

Aesop

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2024/08/05

Aesop is probably the most famous author from antiquity, judging by the ongoing sales of his fables about animals. It should be easy to do a show about him, thinks Natalie. But it turns out that everything we know, or think we know about Aesop, is contradicted somewhere. He may have been Thracian, Phrygian or Ethiopian; mute - or talkative; clever, provoking and possibly blasphemous. It's a complicated story, and fables aren't even a Greek invention. With guests Edith Hall and Adam Rutherford,

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27:42

Artemis

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2024/07/29

Natalie stands up for the goddess Artemis. She's a predator, a hunter, an archer. Goddess of wild creatures, the moon to her brother Apollo's sun, she's not averse to the odd human sacrifice. And if you forget her in your prayers, she's liable to send a really big pig to dig up your orchards.'Rock star mythologist’ and reformed stand-up Natalie Haynes is obsessed with the ancient world. Here she explores key stories from ancient Rome and Greece that still have resonance today. They might be

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27:31

Aphrodite

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2024/07/22

The Greek goddess of love, sex, desire and beauty, Aphrodite is mostly depicted naked and/or wet. And depending on your age and taste, that could be by Botticelli, Bananarama or Lady Gaga. Born from the sea foam, you can still visit her rock in Cyprus, where there's always a crowd of tourists. No one is immune to her charms, says Hesiod. In fact we can all learn from Aphrodite's stress-busting strategy: when something annoying or stressful happens, she goes to Cyprus - for a bath.'Rock star

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27:42

Hesiod

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2024/07/15

Natalie stands up for the prize-winning Greek poet, cataloguer of gods and author of a flatpack wagon manual, Hesiod. She's joined by Professor Edith Hall and poet Alicia Stallings.Hesiod is highly regarded by the ancients for his sublime poetry, and he won a prize for his Theogony, a detailed account of the origins of the gods. He also wrote a farming manual, including the wagon-building instructions, and an epic on how to pickle fish. Hesiod rails at the hardship of the farming life in

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27:52

Cleopatra

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2024/07/08

Natalie Haynes returns with a new series of sparkling stories from the ancient world which shed light on the world today.Cleopatra was a brilliant politician, a ruthless leader and a massive brain-box, who spoke nine languages. The Queen of Egypt had charisma to burn, but she probably didn't look like Elizabeth Taylor. Her intelligence and magnetism were more than enough to attract the attentions of the world's most powerful men, and to keep her in power - in a notoriously lethal dynasty - for

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27:43

Livia

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2023/12/20

Livia was the first Empress of Rome, a faithful wife, excellent friend and trusted advisor. So why is she still best known as a serial killer?Natalie is joined by guests Dr Emma Southon and Professor Llewelyn Morgan to discuss the life of Livia. Her marriage to the Emperor Augustus (Octavian) was a love-match. They were both married to other people when they first met, but that didn't last long, despite the added complication of her pregnancy and existing child. Before he became Emperor,

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27:42

Athene

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2023/12/12

Athene is charismatic and bloodthirsty, goddess of wisdom, war and...handicrafts.Owl-eyed Athene is not interested in love, although she is very fond of the hero Odysseus and gives him a leg-up whenever she can. War is Athene's thing, the bloodier the better. She's perfectly happy to humiliate and degrade her enemies, including the feisty and talented weaver Arachne, who challenges Athene to a weaving competition. Athene loves a scrap so it's game on: looms at dawn. She weaves a depiction of her

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27:34

Demeter

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2023/12/05

Natalie tells the powerful and painful story of Demeter's fight to get justice for her daughter Persephone. Hades conspires with his siblings Zeus and Gaia to abduct Persephone and force her to live with him in the underworld as his wife. Many versions of this story are sanitized for children but the original is not. It is clear that Persephone is tricked and trafficked, that she hates and fears Hades and never becomes accustomed to life among the dead. And that her mother Demeter is furious and

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27:29

Martial

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2023/11/28

Epigrams, jokes, highly-polished poems in praise of the emperor. Oh, and absolute filth. These are what made the name of the first-century Roman poet Martial. It has taken nearly two thousand years for Martial's work to be considered a fit subject for study by classicists. His poems to the emperor may have been as highly crafted as a Fabergé egg, but nestled beside these jewels, in the same volume, were works of 'incomprehensible obscenity'. The Romans loved both, apparently. His work is still

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34:57

Homer: The Odyssey

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2022/09/04

Natalie retells Homer's epic story in an extraordinary tour-de-force performance recorded in the BBC's Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House. The ancient original would most probably have been performed from memory, and Natalie does the same: twenty-four books in twenty-seven minutes. It's a story of homecoming. Odysseus returns from the Trojan War, loses all his men in the course of his adventures, pauses for some pleasurable interludes of infidelity and some less pleasurable interludes of kidnap,

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28:49

Lucretius

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics ·

2022/08/28

The poet Lucretius's major work is a six-book poem on epicurean philosophy and physics. Doesn’t sound exactly promising? But his contemporaries and poetic descendants RAVED about it, even Cicero, who is mean about everyone. Ovid says that ‘the verses of sublime Lucretius will die only on the day the world ends’. But the world nearly did end for his work because only one manuscript survived, lost for centuries, only to be rediscovered in the Renaissance. ‘Rock star mythologist’ and reformed

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50 results

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