Eleanor Herman
speaker
363 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 3 Jul
Eleanor Herman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Thank you so much.
Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Eleanor Harmon. How are you doing?
I know. I love every single one of them. But this one feels particularly pertinent because this episode will be going out on November the 5th, which in the UK is remember, remember the 5th of November when Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament. But for you guys, that's the day of the election. Bum, bum, bum. Ah!
Doesn't it just feel like it's gone on forever and ever and ever? I mean, I look at this stuff and I think this is a gift for future historians. In 200 years, there'll be a different Kate Nell in a sat here trying to work out what the hell happened.
Well, our lawyers have told us that we're not allowed to talk about the sex lives of living presidents or potential presidents. Which is really a shame. Which is a shame.
Oh my God, could we ever? So if anyone wants to hear that, you're going to have to come back in like 10 years. That's what you'll have to do. But you have written a book called Sex with Presidents, The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House. What made you want to write this fascinating book, Eleanor?
Do you think – it's kind of – it's a weird one because most of us have sex. Most of us have sex. But there is something about power and sex that goes together. Do you think with all the research you've done around kings and queens and presidents that something happens when you get given that much power when it comes to sex?
Wow.
Oh my God.
That makes sense to me because one of the questions I was going to ask you as we're going through this is why are they so stupid when it comes to sex? I know we haven't spoken about anyone in particular yet, but this will become a theme as we're going along. The recklessness of it and the entitlement of it and the fact that at any point, if this scandal got out, it could bring down a government.
I've never understood why people risk that.
I was talking to my friend about this just the other day, and she just looked at me and she said, Kate, there is nothing stupider on this planet than a horny man. And I thought, maybe that's true. But I'm glad that it actually has a name. What was that? Hubris syndrome. So let's talk about one of the big American presidents. The first one, actually, I think. George Washington.
What do I know about George Washington? He was tall and he had false teeth. That's what I know about him.
Oh, okay. That doesn't sound too scandalous. So there might not be too many skeletons in George's closet there.
Okay. All right. So, George, okay. Let's move across to Thomas Jefferson. Hmm.
Was it scandalous at the time? I mean, I know that he was the president and his political enemies would have been on the hunt for anything that they could get their teeth into, but a slave owner having a family with an enslaved woman, how scandalous would that have been at the time?
It's just awful. The thing that I can't get my head around that. I mean, you just keep going and it just gets worse and worse. But how could you enslave your own children? That blows my mind.
And what happened to Sally? What do we know about her, Sally Hemings? Was she ever freed? Did he ever free her?
And at the time, this seems like it was quite a scandal. It seems like it's quite an open secret. But it was one of those kind of did they, didn't they, what was really going on? Is it just a vicious rumor for a long, long time? But they did actually prove this with DNA evidence, didn't they? That this is what happened. Yeah.
I think you can go out on a limb and say that. I think I would agree with you there, Eleanor. So Thomas Jefferson is a jerk, and that would be putting it very, very mildly. Is he the worst one that you found in your research? Was he the worst one that just made you go, oh, God, no, no. Put it away. Keep it in your pants, you horrible man.
Showing 321–340 of 363 · page 17 of 19
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