Katie Barclay

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340 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Aug 2026 last heard 3 Aug

Katie Barclay’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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The History of Literature · 821 A History of the Kiss (with Katie Barclay) | Wonderland Books! (with Amy Joyce and Gayle Weiswasser) · 3 Aug 2026 podcast

But then the kiss, I think, is a nice example because people continue to kiss across their relationship, especially romantic kisses, but also within families, right?

So these places where you have to do emotion work with people over time, the kiss acts to consolidate those affections.

It can be a reminder that those affections exist when you might be in the middle of a dispute.

So you're angry at your spouse, but they have to go to work.

So you kiss them goodbye because you kiss them goodbye, because that's what you do.

And so there's a sense of which these kisses, which have become everyday and routine, also kind of act as useful reminders.

that even when things aren't in the best place in your relationship, nonetheless, there's love there, there's affection there, and the kiss is kind of doing that work for you in a much quicker way than having a conversation.

stick in your mind as something that you just couldn't quite get a handle on why exactly they they thought kissing would accomplish what they were setting out to do first time i came across the kissing and contracts uh stuff this was before i ever started to write a book on the kiss i'd read that book years and years ago but i remember at the time going oh this is so weird man love it yeah what about germs yeah

And so there were kisses when you first encountered them where you're just like, oh, who knew that?

And also because it's so ubiquitous, right?

If it was one person kissing to sign a contract, you'd just be like, okay, fine.

But then you're like, everybody's kissing.

It's the law.

So then it all becomes really like...

That's a bit more exciting and more interesting, a bit weird.

But other things that surprised me more were some things that we associate, say, with the modern, like the concern about consent and when that kissy should be consensual and how do we ensure that.

It's a reoccurring theme from the 17th century.

People are often worrying about who do you get permission from?

And you might think that the women or, and often because it's usually in a patriarchal context, the woman is seen as the person who suffers consent.

from a wrong focus.

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