Professor Mary Beard

speaker

662 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 1 May

Professor Mary Beard’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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You're Dead to Me · Emperor Nero: ancient Rome’s most infamous ruler · 30 Jan 2026 podcast

And passions, widely defined.

So greed, lust, human wants should be kept in.

And, you know, it's fine so far as it goes.

The other thing we know about Seneca is he was absolutely loaded.

Yeah, he's the richest man in Rome.

Really?

He's got some Ponzi deals, I think, and scam things on the Roman stock exchange.

Now, somehow, Seneca manages to make that align with his Stoic philosophy.

But quite a lot of people have thought he might have been a bit of a hypocrite.

Because Nero and I think most Roman elite men usually didn't do their first shave until they were into their 20s.

I think if you don't shave, I mean, I'm not an expert.

I'm not an expert in male facial hair.

But I think if you never shave, it's a lot kind of softer and downier than you would imagine.

So Nero did what a lot of young posh Romans did.

Early 20s, he shaved it off.

He then put it all together in a nice little gold box.

And he dedicated the clippings to Jupiter.

So that was the first thing.

But he didn't stop there.

Most Roman men, I think, did stop with something like that.

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