0:40

Hi, Hello, welcome. This

0:43

is Let's talk about Miss Baby

0:46

and I am your host live here

0:48

with a conversation episode. Guys,

0:51

I so I

0:54

have this conversation. Firstly, the

0:58

conversation today is with Joel Christensen,

1:00

who is always such a joy to have on

1:02

the show, who's recently

1:05

on to speak about Homeric tradition

1:07

and a lot inside the Bronze Age.

1:10

That whole episode just generally

1:12

a joy. But about a year ago we

1:15

talked about having an episode dedicated

1:17

to Odysseus and how Odysseus

1:20

is garbage but like

1:23

why and full details

1:25

and so it just it didn't happen

1:27

until now, and I'm honestly so glad.

1:30

I'm so glad that it didn't happen until now because

1:32

I think that this is a

1:35

considerably better episode because

1:37

it happened now, And I will I

1:39

will leave you all to determine what that might mean.

1:43

But I

1:45

don't even know. I literally just recorded it, and

1:47

usually I record these introductions

1:50

much later. So now I'm just kind

1:52

of still getting my mind around

1:55

everything we talked about, but generally

1:57

is about the Odyssey broadly

2:00

and how it can be read

2:03

and how it has been misread

2:05

and misappropriated by

2:09

the Western world, but looking

2:11

at the Greek itself and what

2:13

these words can mean, what they're

2:16

often translated as in all of this, And so

2:18

Joel recited a lot of Greek and it was wonderful

2:20

and just generally broke

2:24

down the Odyssey in such a way

2:26

that just had me with this enormous smile on

2:28

my face the whole time, Like it was absolutely

2:31

so fascinating to look

2:34

at the Odyssey in this way and Odysseus

2:36

in this way and really pull apart

2:39

what is going on in

2:41

the text itself, in our

2:44

interpretation of it, in

2:46

its lasting legacy, just

2:49

so many things. It's absolutely a joy

2:51

of a conversation. And I

2:54

didn't originally plan to

2:56

release it when I'm

2:58

releasing it, which is right after

3:01

episode two of the Ion

3:03

series of Euripides, but then we

3:05

had this chat and I thought, nope,

3:08

it's because it ended up fitting in

3:10

so well with also what I was saying in

3:12

the Ion in it just

3:14

a beautiful way of

3:18

very frustratingly reminding us

3:20

all the ways in which these

3:22

stories are timeless, absolutely,

3:24

but also the ways in which the ancient Greek

3:26

world has been completely misappropriated

3:29

by quote unquote Western civilization and

3:31

it just fit. It fits so well, And unfortunately

3:35

I wasn't able to have a conversation

3:37

on the Ion just because of how

3:40

I'd been planning things and the time that I have.

3:43

So this fits well. One day

3:45

I hope to find somebody to talk to me about the Ion,

3:47

because I still can't believe this play. It's

3:50

blowing my whole mind. But for now, we're

3:52

gonna look at Odysseus too, because it all

3:54

kind of pieces together in a really,

3:57

really interesting way.

4:14

Conversations a Man

4:16

of Many turns Odysseus

4:19

and the Odyssey with Joel christians

4:22

In. I

4:37

have been guilty of romanticizing Odysseus

4:40

too much, and I know that, so

4:42

I'm happy to have somebody on the other side because

4:44

he is generally a piece of shit.

4:46

Yeah, but we can start

4:48

there or maybe end out there.

4:49

We'll see when we go.

4:50

Yeah, yeah, no, that that sounds great. I'm trying

4:52

to think of a good question to start it off. But like I

4:54

mean, why do you think Odysseus deserves

4:57

any kind of hate? Maybe we'll just start real abroad.

5:01

Why should somebody hate Odysseus?

5:04

So you start with the easy question I'm

5:07

not quite sure which way to answer this, so

5:10

we'll start. I'll start broadly, which

5:13

is that I have a pet theory, and

5:15

the pet theory is

5:17

that the greatest trick Homer

5:20

ever played was getting people

5:22

to root for Odysseus.

5:24

Well, I fell for it, you did, right.

5:26

But he's also totally it's

5:29

perverted our sense of what

5:31

a hero is.

5:32

Yeah.

5:32

Now I want to edit that by

5:34

saying, most people don't actually

5:36

know what a hero is, and we make terrible

5:39

category errors and thinking that Odysseus

5:41

and Achilles are people we should be looking up to.

5:44

But I actually think there's something going on with

5:46

Odysseus that's rather complicated.

5:50

So, if you'll permit me, I'd

5:52

like to set up so

5:55

the argument about why he's

5:57

terrible, which we talk about

5:59

why he's not.

6:00

I mean, that sounds wonderful, and I just

6:02

because of the way you phrase that, I just have to say we need

6:05

to fully start it with the first line

6:07

of Emily Wilson's translation, which is sing

6:09

news of a complicated man.

6:11

Yeah, so sing mews

6:13

of a complicated man.

6:15

So we'll

6:17

step back again, though, right, I want

6:20

to talk about that ampithet. I want to talk about his name,

6:22

and I want to talk about sort of my uneven

6:25

relationship to the Odyssey.

6:27

Right, So I think I.

6:28

Can't remember why you first had me on your show

6:31

before as a Homer.

6:32

Thing, right, Yeah, I was just talking about Homer as like

6:34

a concept.

6:35

So yeah, and so you know, I

6:37

got I've been studying Homer forever,

6:39

not forever, twenty five years, that's long enough.

6:42

And as I think I said in one of the interviews,

6:45

you're traditionally either an ilien man

6:47

or an odisty man. And I use the word

6:49

man intentionally because

6:52

until like thirty years ago, it was always

6:54

men. But I came to

6:56

the Odyssey much later, and

6:58

I came to the Odyssey from a position

7:01

of teaching it again and again

7:04

and being really sort of surprised

7:07

that I was told little shit at teaching

7:09

the Iliad, which is what I studied and wrote

7:11

on. But students were constantly

7:14

engaged with Odysseus's story, even

7:16

though I considered it to be a lesser poem

7:19

and a worse story. I don't believe either of

7:21

those things now, But I just

7:23

always found Odysseus to be kind

7:25

of unimpressive in a way. Yea,

7:28

and his story to be you

7:30

know, more repetitive, less interesting, but

7:32

turns out it's really just more subtle.

7:36

And so you know, when

7:38

I sat down and.

7:39

Started writing a book about the Odyssey, probably over

7:41

ten years ago, and it took me a

7:43

while to get through it, and

7:46

all during that time, Emily Wilson's translation

7:48

came out, and that choice of complicated

7:52

as translating the first epithet, which I'll

7:54

talk about in a minute, was

7:56

one that people made a big deal about.

7:58

They loved it, they hated it. You know, it

8:01

reflected Greek poetic metaphors

8:03

for weaving.

8:04

And all of those things.

8:06

And I just want to say, like, I like the translation,

8:10

but there's no great translation of

8:12

the epithet. The epithet is pollutropos,

8:16

and what it means in Greek is like

8:18

the polu means many, like in polytheists,

8:20

troupos means turn right,

8:23

So polytropos means a man of many

8:26

turns. And you could

8:28

take it different ways, like is

8:30

it that he has many different features or

8:32

faces? Is it that he's gone on

8:34

many different journeys? Is

8:37

it that he is different things? And

8:39

the fact is the right answer to that is

8:42

that it's all true that Poltropos

8:44

is a loaded epithet,

8:47

and if you read the Odyssey in Greek, there

8:49

are like seven different polu

8:51

compounds that described him. He's

8:54

Poulo Penthes, a man of much suffering,

8:56

Paulu, I think are a man

8:58

who's been prayed for much, Polu

9:01

Makinos, a man of mini devices. But

9:04

whatever it is, he's a man of muchness.

9:07

Yeah, rightly, Yeah,

9:09

there's an excess in his character

9:12

that I find pretty fascinating. And I haven't

9:15

got to the Odyssey yet, but still I want to talk about his

9:17

name for a minute. So you start

9:19

out by asking, like, a,

9:21

why do people hate Odysseus? Right,

9:24

it's hardwired into his name according

9:27

to the Odyssey. So

9:29

one of the things that happens at the beginning of the Odyssey is,

9:32

you know, it starts out and the gods are looking down

9:34

and look at the story of a justus,

9:36

right, the guy who helped Clydemnestra

9:39

kill Agamemnon's cousin.

9:42

And while they're looking at it, Athena

9:45

like eventually poked Zeus and is

9:47

like, what the hell is going on

9:49

with Odysseus? What are we doing with him? And

9:51

she says why do you hate him so much?

9:54

And the word she uses is

9:56

odusau, which is a

9:59

verbal form of his

10:01

the root of his name. So his name is related,

10:04

according to the Odyssey, to a verbal

10:06

odusamai, which means to

10:08

be hated or to be hateful.

10:11

Like like odious. Yeah,

10:13

absolutely right.

10:14

And and it's unclear whether

10:17

this is someone who hates or is

10:19

hated or both.

10:20

Yeah, right.

10:22

And again, because it's Greek poetry,

10:24

it's probably all fair game, right,

10:27

And so his name and this is

10:30

this wordplay happens in Sophocles

10:33

and Euripides, playing with the idea that

10:35

he's someone who is hated for

10:37

various reasons, right, And so

10:39

the thing about Odysseus that comes up, So

10:42

first I'll give you a fair like a really fast

10:44

reading of Odysseus as not a bad guy,

10:47

right, and then I'll indict him

10:49

for you, right, but not

10:51

a bad guy translation

10:54

of Odysseus, or approach to him

10:56

as as follows. The

10:59

big difference between Odysseus.

11:00

And Achilles, and the.

11:02

Largest difference between the Odyssey and

11:04

the Iliad, is that Odysseus

11:06

is immortal.

11:07

Yeah right.

11:08

He is the first person we know of in

11:10

like myth who's wholly not like

11:13

the son of a god. There's nothing

11:15

impressive about him except for his intelligence,

11:18

of course, which we can talk about. And

11:20

that's why the beginning of the Odyssey is in

11:22

a way really revolutionary.

11:24

Right.

11:24

The first line is Andre moyenepa

11:27

musa polutopas has Malopola.

11:30

Right, So that first word andre means

11:33

man, as in mortal human

11:36

being. And so the Odyssey

11:38

is a part of this cycle

11:41

of tales that takes us from like a Garden

11:43

of Eden type situation where gods and men are

11:45

together, except it's like a bad garden

11:48

to one that's closer to our world,

11:50

where gods and humans

11:53

are separate and where they're

11:55

not messing around.

11:56

With our lives.

11:57

And so part of the function of Greek epic in

11:59

this cycle is to explain to ancient

12:01

audiences where the heroes went, why they're

12:03

separate and all of these things. And so Odysseus

12:06

is like, you know, he's like one of those

12:08

here. He's like he's batman. You know, he

12:10

has no special skills, right.

12:12

You know, he's not from Crypton.

12:15

He hasn't been bitten by a radioactive spider

12:17

like he has to go through life making

12:21

it work with just the body he was born

12:23

with. Right, And so Odysseus

12:26

is a survivor.

12:27

He's a veteran.

12:29

He is someone who in a way

12:32

vocalizes our interests

12:35

in what it means to live in

12:37

a.

12:37

Complex and fucked up world.

12:40

And to think of it this way, Like the Odysseus

12:43

of the Iliad, he's like a master

12:45

sergeant. He's the one who's carrying out

12:48

all the bad ideas, all the

12:50

policies that Agamemnon needs to just

12:52

to keep things moving forward.

12:55

All right, he is, at some level,

12:57

if you want to think of him, a cipher for

13:00

what it takes to survive. Yeah,

13:03

and it's not easy.

13:05

Right.

13:05

When I teach the ilia in the Odyssey, I say, look, the

13:07

Iliad is a poem that teaches you how to die.

13:10

It asks you to think about death, what's worth

13:12

dying for, and all of that. But

13:15

the Odyssey is

13:18

a poem that's about how to live

13:21

after everything's over, Right,

13:24

when all your friends have died, when you've lost all your people,

13:26

how do you pick up the pieces and keep going? When you've

13:28

been apart from your family for five years, ten

13:30

years, twenty years, how do you go home?

13:33

Yeah, and ask questions

13:35

that I think now that I'm older, right,

13:37

that I think are actually harder to answer,

13:40

which is, knowing everything we do about

13:43

the world, it's cruelty, it's

13:45

disappointment, the

13:47

cravenness of our leaders, the

13:50

absence of any real justice in the world.

13:53

How do we go on living? Yeah?

13:56

And the truth is.

13:57

You go on living in a constantly compromised

13:59

state, right, And

14:02

that's what Odysseus is. He's compromised. He's

14:04

pragmatic, and he is

14:07

complicated. And so I want to go back to that complicated

14:09

thing because if we can, I think to make

14:11

the claim that Odysseus is in every man is

14:15

a little too broad, because he's still a

14:17

king and he's still.

14:18

Like super smart and shit.

14:21

But when we see Odysseus

14:23

in the Iliad, he's not that interesting.

14:25

And I think one of the most important

14:28

descriptions of him in the Iliad comes

14:30

in book three, when Helen

14:32

is describing the or identify

14:35

the Greek leaders for prim and Taynor.

14:37

One of the Trojan leaders.

14:39

Comes up too, and he's like, yep,

14:41

that is, in fact Odysseus,

14:44

And then he describes this thing that doesn't actually

14:46

happen in the Iliad when Odysseus and Menilaus

14:48

came with Nestor to try to convince

14:52

them through diplomacy to give Helen back, and

14:54

they're like, look, you look at Odysseus, and he looks

14:56

like a schlub, right, He's just like nobody.

14:59

You know, he's shorter than some of the other people. But

15:02

when he starts to speak, his

15:05

words are like a torrent

15:08

of of snow, like

15:10

a like a blizzard coming out of his mouth,

15:12

and he changes everything around

15:14

him. Right, And so you

15:17

know, Odysseus is in a

15:19

way clearly opposed

15:21

to Achilles, doesn't have all these physical gifts,

15:23

but it is also gives an opportunity

15:26

for us to think about, like what can we

15:28

do if we don't have the blessings

15:30

of physical gifts, Like what

15:33

ability to change the world is

15:35

left for people of middle aged right.

15:39

I say this admittedly at age forty

15:41

five, you know, And so

15:43

he's completely unimpressive in a way

15:46

until he's in action, And so sticking with

15:48

that, I actually think part of the challenge

15:50

of the Odyssey is telling a compelling

15:53

story about someone who, at first

15:55

glanced you might not.

15:56

Think much of, but then

15:59

not.

16:01

Resting on letting it rest on his laurels

16:03

and just being in a simple tale of how this regular

16:06

guy had this great journey home.

16:08

Right, And so now.

16:09

Before I'm just talking too much, I really

16:11

know it.

16:13

But let's talk about Odysseus.

16:14

In the Odyssey as a bad

16:16

dude, right, rather than a good

16:19

one?

16:19

Yeah?

16:19

Right, And how sort of complicated his

16:22

presentation is because the Odyssey,

16:24

like, if you go and ask relatively educated

16:27

people what's the Odyssey about, they they're

16:29

going to be like, well, Odysseus gets home to his wife

16:31

and son and avenges them,

16:33

and maybe they'll remember his dog dies and

16:36

then he blinded the Cyclops. But that's it, right,

16:39

But if you start the poem,

16:42

and just you know, if you can, you can assure

16:44

listeners in the future that I'm not actually

16:47

looking at the poem when I say this. But if you start

16:49

it.

16:50

It doesn't say anything about any of

16:52

that.

16:53

It doesn't the first twenty lines don't

16:55

mention his name, doesn't mention Penelope,

16:58

Telemachus, the suitors. It

17:00

starts out by saying, tell me about the complicated

17:02

man who tried really hard to get home. And by

17:04

the way, he tried to

17:07

save the lives of his companions,

17:10

but he failed.

17:12

Yeah, the word try is

17:14

doing a lot there.

17:15

Yeah, But from the beginning, Odysseus

17:18

is posed as a failure, right,

17:23

he didn't bring his companions home.

17:25

And so I think the poem is from the beginning

17:27

asked us to think.

17:28

About, like how is the a failure and why?

17:31

And then what it says, And I'm

17:33

going to give you a little Greek again. It says

17:35

that his companions, the sailors,

17:38

died spe asin atas dahliason

17:41

because of their own recklessness when

17:43

they ate the cattle of the sun. Now

17:46

twenty lines later, when Odysseus

17:49

is looking down at a justice he

17:51

like, he goes, oh shit, mortals.

17:53

They're always blaming the gods

17:55

for their problems, but they

17:57

make their fates worse than they have

18:00

to be because of their own recklessness.

18:03

And then using the same phrase spether

18:05

asin atas dahliason. Ye.

18:07

The number one problem I.

18:09

Have with Emily Wilson's translation is

18:11

that she doesn't translate those phrases

18:13

the.

18:13

Same Oh yeah, and so

18:15

you.

18:15

Don't see that a

18:18

correlation is being made and

18:20

that Zeus is actually inviting us

18:22

to read the entire palm. From

18:24

the following perspective, how

18:26

do people make their fates worse

18:29

than they had to be? And this is a

18:31

very different perspective from the beginning

18:33

of the Iliad, which ask starts

18:35

out line nine by saying diastaltabule

18:39

and Zeus's plan was being completed,

18:42

right. So from that perspective the beginning of the

18:44

Iliad, everything in the poem is

18:46

part of some larger plans set into

18:48

action by the gods. At the beginning

18:51

of the Odyssey, Zeus is like, hold up, there's

18:54

a plan, but there's

18:57

agency within that plane,

18:59

right, because I truly believe that there.

19:03

The correlative of you can make

19:05

your life, you make your fate worse because

19:08

of your rec listeners is can you make

19:10

it better by being smarter?

19:13

Right?

19:13

And so I think from the beginning we acknowledge

19:16

Odysseus's failure, We ask people

19:18

to think about how human beings cause their

19:20

own problems, and then we have twenty

19:22

four books of Odysseus suffering and

19:25

was supposed to be asked, well,

19:28

how did he solve it?

19:29

How did he cause his own problems?

19:31

You know what's going on there? And so I want

19:33

to answer that question. But then but first give

19:35

you the indictment, all right, indictment

19:37

one. And so one of my favorite versions of

19:39

this is actually in

19:41

the book Odysseus in America by

19:45

Jonathan Shay. He does a court

19:47

martial of Odysseus near the end

19:49

of the book, but he doesn't actually get he

19:51

doesn't. He only gets to like book twelve of the

19:53

Odyssey because he's treating him

19:55

as a military leader. But really

19:58

that so when Odysseus gets home, he's

20:00

lost twelve ships of men, Yeah,

20:02

twelve, and I believe the

20:04

catalog of ships in the Iliad says there were fifty men

20:06

on each. All right, that's like six

20:09

hundred people, right, yep, right,

20:11

so he killed six lost

20:13

six hundred people.

20:14

Right. Most of the time, if you send an

20:16

officer out with six hundred people and they come home.

20:18

With zero, like he's going to jail

20:20

or he's getting hanged or something.

20:22

Yeah, it's not a good not a good average

20:24

or not even word average.

20:25

But yeah, and before we even

20:27

see him, right, we find

20:29

out that his son's just sitting there with no

20:31

plan. That there hasn't been an assembly or

20:34

a council in Ithaca for twenty years

20:37

and nobody knows what's going on. Right,

20:39

Like again, like imagine, I mean you, maybe

20:42

you wouldn't be upset of the Prime Minister of Canada

20:44

just up and disappeared. That'd be fine, right, Yeah,

20:46

but if the entire government, probably

20:48

you and I could both agree, if our government's disappeared,

20:51

we'd be like, well, not bad

20:53

time starting. Yeah, But

20:56

imagine if they there was no way for

20:58

us to create a government in

21:00

the meantime, Yeah, just no

21:03

institutions of governments.

21:04

Yeah, nothing, that's Ithaca for twenty

21:06

years. Yeah.

21:07

And so like the Suitors, they're

21:09

there because some people

21:12

say, oh they want penelope or oh they want power,

21:14

Like, well, what if we think about it this way?

21:16

What if we think of the suitors as protesters?

21:18

Yeah, right, like they're not being taken

21:20

care of, Like they've had no voice in government.

21:23

There has been no government.

21:24

And like their brothers, their

21:26

uncles, their cousins went to war

21:29

and never came home. And war has been over

21:31

for ten years, and it's ten and they've

21:34

got no news.

21:35

Nothing's going on.

21:36

Yeah, and no one's making any effort to change

21:38

that.

21:39

Right.

21:39

And meanwhile, like the Palace

21:42

is presumably and certainly like

21:44

still full of wealth, and food, right.

21:46

Yeah, you know, I mean income

21:48

many quality is driving up, you know,

21:50

all those things. Right, So you know,

21:53

indictment one Disseus kills all his people

21:55

too. He's you know, in charge

21:57

of Ithaca.

21:58

He leaves no methods

22:00

for governing it while he's.

22:02

Gone, right, and then he comes

22:04

home, you know, and

22:07

he disguises himself. He

22:10

has his son and the swineherd Dumaeus,

22:13

disarmed people, locks

22:15

them in murders one hundred

22:18

and eight more people, has

22:20

his cowherd mutilated, eyes,

22:25

ears, nosed, testicles cut off

22:27

and then killed, has the enslaved

22:30

women hanged by

22:32

his son Telemachus, and then even acknowledges

22:35

in book twenty three when he says

22:37

to Urklea, don't make a

22:39

lot of noise about this. Pretend it's a wedding,

22:42

because this is exactly the type of thing that

22:44

you would kill someone for. Because as suitors,

22:46

families are coming to me.

22:48

Right.

22:49

So, like, he's killed seven hundred

22:51

and eight of his own people, right,

22:54

mutilated, tortured and killed members

22:56

of his own household, right. And

22:59

then in book twenty four, he's

23:01

ready to go to war with his people, right

23:04

until Athena comes down and

23:06

says, no, let's stop, right,

23:08

and she says to the suitor's families,

23:11

and they've split, you know. She says, look,

23:14

you're gonna forget what's happened

23:16

to you, and you're all gonna live in peace together.

23:19

Let wealth and peace be enough, and then

23:21

the poem just ends. Right,

23:24

So, just on the surface of the story,

23:27

like, what has Odysseus done?

23:29

That's good?

23:29

Yeah, he got home, right,

23:32

that's it. Why are we rooting for

23:34

a murderer?

23:36

Right, who's a bad leader?

23:38

Right?

23:39

But I don't think we're done yet,

23:41

right, because the big part

23:44

I skipped over in telling that story.

23:46

Is how all of his men died.

23:49

Because the remarkable thing, and

23:51

this is a let's say, laugh continuity

23:54

that I never really thought about too much,

23:56

is that Odysseus takes twelve ships of men

23:58

to Troy, and he leaves

24:00

Troy with twelve ships.

24:03

Right, so he had a fairly successful war.

24:06

And the story he tells books

24:09

nine through twelve are it

24:12

really is about how all his men died

24:14

and how he ended up washed up on

24:16

the island of Calypso. Right,

24:19

So that's the story he tells. And

24:21

the thing I want to emphasize is there's

24:23

no reason the story had to be told that way.

24:25

Yeah, right, We have

24:28

some of our.

24:28

Oldest Greek art is

24:30

images of Odysseus blinding

24:33

the cyclopes right.

24:34

Eighth century BCE. We have so many.

24:36

Images of this, we know that it

24:38

had to pre date any version of

24:41

the story that we have.

24:42

Oh cool.

24:43

So I think that the Odyssey took

24:45

this very famous giant killing tale

24:47

and spun it in a way to answer

24:50

the question Zeus asks us to

24:52

think about it at the beginning of the poem, how

24:55

did Odysseus make his own life worse?

24:58

Okay?

24:59

And so when I teach this with students,

25:01

I have a chart. It's called the Odyssey blame

25:03

chart, And as I asked

25:05

them to go through books nine through twelve

25:08

and count up every

25:10

death and then explain the

25:13

cause of that death, right, And

25:16

the balance of it is that.

25:18

Like Odysseus is at fault.

25:20

But there's a particular sequence

25:23

that I just want to highlight before I stopped

25:25

talking so much. The sequence is this, right,

25:27

most famous scene in the Odyssey,

25:30

right, and in fact, maybe in Western literature,

25:32

is the blinding of the cyclones, Right, And

25:35

the way it's set up, though it doesn't

25:38

actually glorify Odysseus, right,

25:40

And so there are three times where his

25:42

men say that's a bad idea, and

25:46

then there's a later moment with Tyresius

25:48

in book eleven where we find out why

25:50

it's a bad idea.

26:20

So, first, just to drop the scene, Odysseus

26:22

and his men pull into Goat Island. At

26:25

this point they have most of their men

26:27

still, right, and Goat Island is filled

26:30

with goats and they get

26:32

to.

26:32

Eat their fill. It's delicious.

26:34

And yet over there there's another island.

26:36

There's some smoke, and they hear some sheep bleeding,

26:39

and Odysseus is like, I'm going to go over there

26:41

and see what's happening, right, And

26:43

his men say why,

26:46

you know, like got everything we

26:48

need right here. Man, He's like, nope, I want to go see

26:51

who's over there.

26:52

Right.

26:52

So it gets in the ship with one man's where

26:54

they row over. They go into a cave and

26:57

the cave has cheese in

26:59

it

27:00

as well

27:02

as you know, lambs, goats, whatever,

27:04

and so the men are like stocking up on their cheese.

27:07

They've got their.

27:07

Lamb lambs, and like, all right, let's

27:09

go right.

27:11

And so second time they said let's go. Odysseus

27:13

is like, no, no, no.

27:15

I want to stay here and

27:18

see who lives here and if they'll give me a

27:20

guest gift. No,

27:23

this drives me bonkers for

27:25

a couple of reasons.

27:26

Like one, so, I used to teach.

27:28

In Texas, and it was always easy with

27:30

students in Texas to be like, so, if you come

27:33

home and someone sitting on your couch

27:35

drinking your beer and eating your chips, what

27:37

can you do?

27:38

And they're like, you can shoot them?

27:40

Right, And no jury in Texas

27:42

would convict somebody for shooting someone

27:45

for eating their nachos on their couch, right,

27:47

It's just the way it goes. And so but when

27:50

homers and classics in general

27:52

read that scene, they're like, well, the

27:54

problem is with paula Femus because

27:57

he eats a guest. And I'm like,

27:59

wait, like, Odysseus wasn't

28:01

invited. This is like vampire logic

28:03

here. If you're not invited, you're not a guest.

28:06

And then the worst thing is that oftentimes

28:09

people will say, well, Paulyphemus

28:11

isn't a human being, and

28:13

he is described as not living in a city,

28:16

so maybe those rules don't apply.

28:20

To killing him.

28:21

And so one of the things actually that's really sort

28:23

of insidious about this scene is

28:26

it's really a model for Western settler

28:28

colonialism because even

28:30

before Odysseus

28:33

goes in, you get this passage where

28:35

he's narrating. He's like, it's a really good place for

28:37

harbor. It's a really good place to settle

28:39

down.

28:40

But the cyclopase here, you know, they don't

28:42

have laws and cities.

28:44

And one of the things I emphasized when I'm teaching this is part

28:46

of what ethnographic narratives

28:49

do is they established a society's

28:51

definition what it means to be human. And

28:53

so for the Greeks, they're like, you live in cities

28:56

and you trade and you farm, and that makes

28:58

you human. But then what

29:00

does that do to nomadic tribes,

29:03

right like the Scythians and people who don't live in

29:05

cities, who don't trade. It says, well, you're

29:07

not human where we can do whatever

29:09

we want to you. And so one

29:11

of the things that drives me bonkers about the Cyclops

29:14

scene is that we get Odysseus

29:17

articulating this specious logic

29:20

and then Western scholars parroting

29:22

it for years, right when the basic

29:25

rules of Zenia. Are you

29:27

don't go into somebody's house and take their shit?

29:30

Yeah, Like, isn't that what the whole Trojan war was about?

29:32

Literally like a sub level, you know.

29:34

So anyway back to the scene, though, Odysseus

29:37

is man say

29:39

don't do it.

29:40

Yeah.

29:41

My friend David Elmer, teaches at Harvard,

29:43

has a book called The Poetics of Consent

29:46

of Us, and it's about the Iliad

29:49

and it talks about how crucial the

29:52

voices of the symbol a keyans

29:54

are in articulating normative

29:56

values, all right, And so he

29:58

hasn't been about the Odyssey, but I think it applies

30:00

there. Every time Odysseus's men say

30:03

it's a bad idea, we should.

30:05

Listen to him. So they're in the cave.

30:06

Odysseus says, I'm going to ask for a guest gift, and

30:08

Paulo Femous comes in, you know, rolls

30:11

the rock around, traps him in, and

30:13

then he eats Odysseus's men, right,

30:16

and then eventually Odysseus asks for a

30:19

guest gift and Polophemus says,

30:21

I'll give you a guest gift. I'll eat

30:23

you last, all right, And

30:25

then we go through this process where he gets him drunk,

30:28

he tells him his name is

30:30

nobody. The joke

30:33

there, and I don't know, you've

30:35

probably heard this is the Greek word

30:37

for nobody when using

30:39

the indicative mood, so real statements

30:42

is outis.

30:43

It means nobody.

30:45

But when you switch to subjunctive moves,

30:47

moods that we use for conditionals

30:50

or other types of unreal statements, you

30:53

have to use a different negator, so it

30:55

becomes matus. And

30:57

that's a big joke because matus,

31:00

as one word, is the Greek word for wisdom

31:03

or cleverness, and one of Odysseus's

31:05

epithets is polumatus, right, a man's

31:07

who's very clever. So all of

31:09

this is setting up for this elaborate wordplay

31:11

that people are joking about, and this great

31:14

scene where Disseus sneaks out

31:16

under the ram. He gets his men

31:18

out, and it's a moment of victory, right, it's

31:20

his greatest achievement. But

31:23

as they're sailing away and Cyclops

31:27

is blinded, you know,

31:30

Odysseus starts to taunt his men. If

31:32

you go not taunt his men, taunt the Cyclops

31:34

and his men go ssh right,

31:37

because the Cyclopes is blind and I guess he's using

31:39

echolocation to throw stones at them.

31:42

And then Odysseus gets carried away and

31:44

he brags about what he's done. Right,

31:47

tell people that Odysseus, the son of liarities

31:49

from Ithaca.

31:50

Blinded you all right.

31:52

Now, I've taken a long time to tell the story because

31:54

I want to get each of the steps up. Three

31:56

times Odysseus's men tell him

31:59

it's a bad idea, three times

32:01

he ignores them. When he finally gets

32:04

to talk to Tyresius in the underworld,

32:07

Tyresius says, look, you're

32:10

going to end up on the island of

32:13

Helius. Tell your man not

32:15

to eat the cattle of the Sun, right,

32:18

and you're gonna end up there becalmed because

32:22

they're really pissed at you. Beseidon's pissed

32:25

at you because you blinded paul

32:27

A Femus. So the logic,

32:30

though, goes like this, if

32:32

Odysseus hadn't blinded Paulophemus

32:35

and bragged about it, they

32:37

never would have ended up on the island

32:40

of Helius in a position to

32:42

eat the cattle of the sun. The

32:45

suitors did not show up at

32:47

Odysseus's home until

32:49

year seventeen. They've

32:52

only been there three years. At the beginning of

32:54

the epic, Odysseus blinds

32:56

the Cyclops and.

32:58

Brags about it.

32:59

In year eleven, six

33:02

years transpire, right,

33:05

and so at the beginning of

33:07

the odyssey. Beginning the middle of

33:09

the odyssey is this elaborate, coded

33:12

narrative that answers that question,

33:14

like how did Odysseus make his life work?

33:17

You know, simple reading as well make his

33:19

life worse? The simple reading is through hubers, right,

33:22

he you know, bragged and did

33:24

these things. But a more complex reading is

33:27

that he didn't listen to his men. He mistreated

33:29

them. He was a bad leader in

33:31

almost every scene Ian

33:34

his story illustrates this when he sees

33:36

the Lystragonians when they get there, like,

33:39

you know, they're not sure how

33:42

dangerous it is. So he sends ten ships

33:44

forward to investigate ten

33:47

and they all get destroyed. He's got eleven ships,

33:49

a dude, send one, yeah,

33:52

right, maybe send one.

33:53

Just like, let's use logic just

33:56

right, Yeah, you know.

33:58

When they get to the island of Calypso, right,

34:00

not Calypso, Circe.

34:01

Yeah.

34:01

People often see this as a great moment, like he

34:04

sends his men forward, they get turned into animals.

34:06

He shows up and he's special

34:10

antidote from Hermes, and

34:12

he beats Circe at a

34:14

game and immediately she's like, oh now I have to have sex

34:16

with you.

34:16

He's like, okay, right, and

34:19

they do that for a year.

34:21

It's a year of them partying all the time.

34:23

Also, they have sex before she

34:25

turns his men back. Is the thing that I remember

34:28

very explicitly, like he's very much

34:30

like you no, no, Like we'll go have sex, but then

34:32

you've got to turn.

34:34

And like the pigs and wolves and lions

34:36

just like hanging around watching. I don't really

34:38

want to know that somebody else. I don't want to kick

34:40

shame people or anything, right, but

34:42

it's weird, you know. And I also think

34:44

as a leader, I don't want to get too salacious here,

34:46

but like you're shacked up with this like

34:49

like Nymph for a year and your men are just

34:51

waiting around.

34:52

What are they doing yep? And what

34:54

are they all eating?

34:56

Yep?

34:57

It's a little disturbing.

34:58

Well yeah, I mean the idea that everything

35:01

every animal that they eat on Circe's island

35:03

could be a human is like very real.

35:06

Yeah, right, of course.

35:08

But but the thing that I that I really think

35:10

about that people often miss there

35:12

is that Odysseus's men are the ones

35:14

who say to him, can we go

35:16

home now?

35:19

Right?

35:20

And and so to go back to like there are two

35:22

scenes in the whole story about

35:24

Odysseus where people say, well,

35:26

he did a good thing there, right, One

35:29

is Skilla and Charybdis, right,

35:33

Whereas like he knows like you're going to sail

35:35

through and your options are lose the entire

35:37

ship.

35:38

We lose six men to skill up.

35:40

He doesn't tell anybody about it. And

35:42

to be frank, how could you You're not gonna

35:44

get six volunteers to be eaten

35:46

by a like dragon dog woman.

35:48

You know, that's just not realistic.

35:52

And so you know, maybe this is good like

35:54

crisis leadership. You know that's

35:57

a bare minimum maybe,

36:00

right, Let's be honest. He's also preserving

36:02

himself, right, But

36:05

then and he puts on weapons

36:08

on purpose, I think, to

36:11

look like he's doing something to the other men

36:14

where he's like, oh, look what just happened to us?

36:16

I tried?

36:17

You know again, maybe I'm saying this

36:19

from being in high ride for too long and seeing some pretty

36:21

bad examples of leadership. But

36:23

when I see this he's doing that, I'm like, oh, this

36:26

is performative. The other moment that

36:28

I was thinking that I think more and more about

36:31

are the lotus eaters, right,

36:34

because this is one of the first scenes, and

36:36

everyone and they, you know, the men go

36:38

in land to visit see what's going

36:40

on the loadus theaters who are essentially stoners,

36:43

right, and you know, they're munching their

36:45

lotus and they forget their homecoming, right,

36:47

you know, who hasn't munch little lotus?

36:49

Have forgotten to go home? You know? And then

36:52

yeah, not a big deal.

36:54

But Odysseus comes, he beats them, takes

36:57

them home, and he's praised by the narrator

36:59

for like protecting

37:01

his men, but I've come to

37:03

believe that he took their agency

37:05

away from them.

37:06

Yeah.

37:07

And also they die soon

37:09

after. Yeah, So my question for

37:11

anybody right now is wouldn't

37:14

they be better off munching

37:16

the lotus and still alive?

37:18

Yeah? And also like they

37:20

don't know anything else, so

37:22

like yeah, like it's sure, you know, it's

37:25

it's got its issues, but like it's not like

37:27

they would be stuck there and know that

37:29

they're stuck there, Like that's the whole point

37:31

of it. So like, yeah, is anyone

37:33

really mad? Like do they really miss home

37:36

if they have lost that consciousness?

37:39

Like, well, you know that I

37:41

think one of the

37:43

there's a line from a band called Morphine

37:46

where Yeah, the line is like when

37:48

they make a cure for pain, that's when I'll throw

37:51

my drugs away.

37:54

Right. We talked about like.

37:55

Warriors have been on a journey, like I

37:58

leave them alone.

37:59

Yeah, you know, let them smoke some

38:01

weed and live a chill life, right.

38:04

Like, Honestly, to go back to what we were saying

38:06

before, the Odyssey is about.

38:09

How you get by.

38:10

Yeah, yeah, you know.

38:12

And Odysseus is one of the things we're

38:14

leaving out in the story of what a cat he is

38:17

is the less dramatic stuff. Yeah,

38:19

he's a master manipulator.

38:21

Oh yeah.

38:22

Is there someone he doesn't instrumentalize

38:25

for his own end? Is

38:27

there someone he sees as a real person?

38:30

And that's what I'm gonna say when you mentioned the

38:32

you know, performative nature of him putting on his armor,

38:34

Like you can see it as performative in that

38:36

moment, or you can also just see it as self preservation

38:39

and like neither is kind to him

38:41

whatsoever because he doesn't like tell

38:44

the men to put on their armor that he knows

38:47

like six of them are going to be eaten, like that

38:49

he could have done something, but he's like, no, no, I'm going

38:51

to either protect myself or look like I'm helping you, Like either

38:53

one is just as gross.

38:55

Well well, you know, I mean, if he told six men

38:57

to put the weapons on, well I think.

38:59

You put all of them on, and you just say just

39:01

a case, like there is a possibility.

39:04

Case, Yeah, there might be some bad shit going

39:06

on.

39:06

Yeah, this is a dangerous spot. Let's all just pull maybe

39:09

hold on tight.

39:11

You know.

39:12

So I do this stick frequently.

39:15

Why I try to get people think about the suitors and

39:17

take them seriously and then maybe they

39:19

actually do have qualms.

39:20

Right.

39:21

And a few years back now,

39:24

well early in the COVID time, I

39:26

was giving an online lecture about the end of the Odyssey

39:28

to a retirement community. They're like sixty people

39:30

on zoom, and my daughter, who was ten

39:33

at the time, had just read Gareth Hines's

39:35

really great graphic novel

39:37

of the Odyssey. Oh I haven't yeah,

39:40

and she burst into the zoom

39:42

window and started arguing with me

39:45

about whether or not the suitors

39:48

actually were at fault. And she's like, look,

39:50

they abused Odysseus.

39:52

In his own home.

39:54

They ate up all his possessions, they

39:56

hassled his wife. He had like

39:58

and Athena told him to go home and do this.

40:00

But I was like, no, it's not that complicated.

40:03

I'm arguing with my daughter.

40:04

I'm like, they the.

40:05

Suitors are individuated in a way they didn't

40:07

need to be. And if it's so simple that

40:10

they were doing wrong, like if they had done

40:12

wrong, they had transgressed, Zenia,

40:14

Yeah, why would Athena

40:17

need them to abuse

40:19

Odysseus in his home? If

40:22

it was so clear that

40:25

the suitors were bad dudes, why

40:27

would the narrator need to ensure

40:30

that we all knew they were conspiring to kill

40:32

Telemachus?

40:33

Right?

40:33

And if they're so bad, why

40:36

do we have Telemachus telling people

40:38

I think my mom's going to marry one of them?

40:42

Right? I mean, none of that adds

40:44

up.

40:44

Yeah.

40:46

Not to sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist

40:48

with the bulletin board in the string, but

40:51

the Odyssey invites us to

40:53

see complexity in the characters.

40:55

Yeah, and we can see the suitors

40:57

perhaps as an oligarchic

41:00

coup against the tyrant right, or

41:02

we could see them as young people

41:05

protesting onust leadership

41:08

and then.

41:09

In camping house. Sometimes camping out in

41:11

a place is the only way to do that,

41:13

you know, right.

41:15

And if protest is not inconvenient,

41:18

it is not protest.

41:19

Uh huh, that's the whole point.

41:22

And if you do not have access to the levers

41:24

of power, is

41:26

writing a letter going to do any good.

41:28

You've got to put yourself in their faces

41:31

and not leave.

41:32

And that I mean we could call maybe

41:34

we could call the three year stay

41:37

occupy Ithaca, right, you

41:39

know, because that's what it is.

41:42

And then what does Odysseus do?

41:43

But what power always does overreact

41:47

and try to stub out any threat.

41:49

Yeah, you might even call it policing.

41:51

You might call it policing.

41:53

You might call it an unnecessary militarized

41:56

response.

41:58

Conflict, a brutalization, even

42:00

in response to a protest.

42:05

But I

42:08

want to return just briefly.

42:10

No, please, I'm glad we've

42:12

got to say that. But also keep going to.

42:14

Be amazing, uh

42:18

craft of the Odyssey in

42:20

getting us to boot for a bad guy.

42:22

Yeah,

42:51

because I mean I love the Odyssey, just

42:53

to like put that in there, like, because the Odyssey is my It's

42:56

the first one I read. It is my favorite,

42:58

Like it has been a while and now you're just making me

43:00

want to read it again. But like, I

43:03

love it because to me, all

43:05

of the different pieces are so interesting.

43:07

So this is just I mean, you're fueling my love

43:09

so much. But it's also why I ended up liking

43:12

Odysseus, because he's just part of this story.

43:15

But also, yeah, it's a piece of ship. So but I'm

43:17

fascinated by yeah.

43:18

Please so so And the way

43:20

I think about it this way now

43:22

is that, like the Odesty we have isn't

43:24

necessarily the only odysty we could

43:26

have had. Right, So if we think about

43:29

Odysseus, one of the things I'm fascinated

43:31

about is what's the relationship between this depiction of

43:33

Odysseus and other different

43:35

ones?

43:36

Right? So you we.

43:37

Were talking earlier about your love for Euripides,

43:40

right, and and and Esophocles

43:43

too. When you're when Odysseus shows

43:45

up, it's usually bad news.

43:47

Right. He's a person.

43:48

Who who is going to convince

43:50

Philip Tides to go back or manipulate

43:53

me of Ptolemus to bring philip

43:55

Tides back to Troy. He's the one

43:57

who's tasked with making sure that a Cyanax

44:00

is killed, right, Yeah, he's

44:02

the one, like and this is this is a

44:04

deep cut that I think people often miss

44:06

out on in the In

44:09

Plato's apology, when

44:12

Socrates has gotten a death sentence,

44:15

he says, look, this isn't such a big deal,

44:18

because death is one of two things. Either

44:20

it's a dreamless sleep for which I'll never

44:22

wake up, or I get

44:24

to go down and palor around. But the

44:26

heroes in the underworld and take

44:29

up cause with people

44:31

like me who've been unjustly convicted,

44:34

like Palamedes. Palamedes

44:36

is the one that Odysseus frames

44:40

in the stories before the Iliad, because

44:42

Palomedes tricks Odysseus into cooming a troy

44:45

and so, according to like Apollodorus,

44:48

Odysseus plants gold

44:51

and a letter from King Priam in

44:53

palamedes tent and then calls

44:55

up Agamemnon, who's like, we got a trader in

44:57

our mits.

44:58

Oh my god.

44:59

Yeah, that's another another story we get from

45:01

that tradition. Is like, so there's this weird

45:04

uh you know, the Sacking

45:07

of Troy is like the worst

45:10

the Dungeons and Dragons campaign

45:12

ever because the DM keeps giving

45:14

different tasks you have to do, like it's a horse,

45:16

No, it's not the horse.

45:17

It's Heracles's bow. No it's not. You have to get

45:19

the Palladian from Troy, okay.

45:21

And so in that story, like Diamedes and

45:23

Odysseus sneak into Troy,

45:26

steal the Palladian, and then

45:28

on the way out, Diomedes

45:30

just happens to see a shadow coming behind him

45:33

of Odysseus about to murder him because he

45:35

wants to take all the glory and Diomedes is like whoa,

45:37

and he marches Odysseus out of Troy

45:40

on a sword point.

45:41

So you have all.

45:43

These stories about Odysseus in

45:45

which like he's not a good guy.

45:47

Well, yeah, just to pull it back to what I'm doing on the show

45:49

currently, Like I'm not sure how

45:52

how Fall of Troy fits in with like

45:54

the you know Lost epics or fragments

45:57

or whatever, but like, you know, there's an entire

45:59

scene about Achilles' armor, Like I know this

46:01

is definitely you know, part of broader mythology

46:04

like that. Okay, achilleses armor

46:06

goes to Odysseus because he basically

46:08

talks his way into it, and then

46:10

freaking Ajax kills himself because of it because

46:13

it's such a shame. And then Ajax was like

46:15

their best hope, and so because

46:17

of that they have to go get Neoptolemus and then

46:19

it's a whole other thing.

46:20

And like Ajax say sorry in the

46:23

underworld, Odysseus is like, I guess he's still mad

46:25

at me. I don't get it right, Like you

46:27

get it, You're just a total cat. Yeah,

46:29

it's really fascinating though, Is that?

46:31

So?

46:32

I think in this at least Athenian

46:35

fifth fourth central familiar, Odysseus

46:38

is a bad guy. Yeah, he is

46:40

an anti hero in

46:42

a modern sense. But what

46:44

happens later on, like under the Romans,

46:47

is he gets adopted by Stoic

46:49

philosophers as a stoic sage,

46:52

someone who suffers and sticks to him

46:54

like sticks to himself and stays true

46:57

and wins out in the end. Right,

47:00

And so I think part of our modern

47:03

attachment to Odysseus comes via

47:06

that connection, But

47:08

also want to say it's not at all surprising

47:10

but also a little disappointing that

47:14

the culture that started to worship

47:16

Odysseus is one that was most about

47:18

hierarchical and vertical power and

47:20

the accumulation of amazing amounts

47:22

of wealth from violence, right, and

47:25

then calling him the stoic stage for doing so, it's

47:29

a little creepy.

47:30

So well, I mean, you know it's not not reminiscent

47:32

of life, right.

47:35

Right, But then to go back to the Odyssey

47:38

because you love it, and it turns out I do too.

47:41

I actually think that that.

47:44

It's accomplishment in taking

47:46

someone who is questionable,

47:49

yeah, really

47:51

speaks to the complexity of.

47:53

Being a human being.

47:55

Yeah, right, And you

47:57

get this from the beginning to the

47:59

end in a way that

48:01

we often miss out on because we don't read

48:03

it from beginning to end. But you start

48:05

with Telemicus and to Lemocus,

48:08

when when we first find him, is sitting

48:10

there daydreaming about, oh,

48:12

what will happen when Daddy comes home?

48:15

Right, and Athena shows up as mentor

48:17

in disguise.

48:18

Is basically like, you don't need daddy.

48:20

To come home to get off your ass, kid, here's

48:22

a plan, right, And if you follow

48:25

Telemachus from books one

48:28

through four. He starts

48:30

out by saying, well, if my daddy will ever

48:32

come home, I'll be okay. And then he's like,

48:34

I'll go find out news about my dad. And

48:36

then by the end of book four he's like, so, my dad's

48:39

dead and I have to go home and

48:41

fix my problems, right, And

48:43

so that's one story. You're like, all right, Telemachus

48:45

has grown up, he's gotten over his father, okay.

48:49

And then we get to Odysseus beginning

48:51

of book five, and so people often

48:53

don't you know, we recognize that part

48:55

of the narrative structure of Homer

48:58

is delaying things right, meeting

49:01

anticipation. But also why

49:03

is that moment, the moment that we switch to Odsseus.

49:05

Yeah, it's because Telemachus doesn't

49:07

need him anymore briefly,

49:10

and then we get to Odysseus, and he's actually just like

49:12

his son, right. He's sitting there

49:15

looking out across the sea, like

49:17

he spent seven years having sex

49:19

with Circe every night, clips

49:22

every night, crying every day.

49:24

And the one line we hear about it is

49:26

that you know, he doesn't enjoy it anymore,

49:29

even though he used to.

49:30

Yeah, I know, because a lot of people like to be like, oh, he's a

49:32

victim in that, and it's like like not

49:34

really, like he's he makes turned

49:37

himself into a victim and then did nothing about.

49:40

It, right, And so the

49:42

genesis of my book about the Audist, he was

49:44

like, well, how do we understand Odysseus just

49:46

sitting there and why does he pair with a lemnicas

49:49

that way? And my idea in

49:51

it is that there's this concept of learned called

49:54

learned helplessness in psychology, which

49:56

is when you encounter failure

49:59

repeatedly, you not

50:01

only tend to try to act

50:03

less, but you're actually less successful

50:05

when you try to do things, and

50:07

over time just stop even trying. And

50:11

so I actually think we have both Telemachus

50:13

and Odysseus being paired as people have no sense

50:15

of agency because either like

50:18

with Telemachus, he's never been in a structure

50:20

where he thinks he can do anything right, and

50:22

Odysseus has failed so.

50:24

Much he's just being he's just given

50:26

up.

50:26

Yeah, And so part of the question of the Odyssey

50:28

that follows is how do we recuperate

50:31

agency when the world has beaten

50:34

us down?

50:35

Yeah? Though I will also say, like some

50:37

of this could be well, I think a lot of it could

50:39

be read as perceived failures,

50:42

perceived world letting you down.

50:44

You know, I absolutely agree with you, which is why

50:46

I you know, early on so I tried

50:48

to use term like free will, and I gave up on

50:50

it. Yeah, and I use a sense of agency

50:53

instead, because for human beings

50:55

it's ultimately the same thing, Like I

50:57

could have agency but not feel like

50:59

it, and.

51:00

So the outcomes the same.

51:01

Yeah.

51:01

Right.

51:02

But my point in so recapping this is the

51:04

beginning first half of the Odyssey is

51:07

deeply individual and personal. It's

51:09

about people figuring out how to

51:11

act in the world and have agency in it and

51:13

then acting upon it. And what we find out

51:15

with both Telemachus and Odysseus is stuff

51:18

that's confirmed with like modern therapies,

51:20

both cognitive behavioral therapy and

51:22

narrative therapy. And that's that to overcome

51:24

a sense of lack of agency, you

51:27

need to have small stake success.

51:30

You need to actually go out and act in the world, feel

51:32

you can do it. And then you also need to change

51:34

the way you think about yourself, so you

51:37

need to talk about your story differently.

51:39

You need to see yourself

51:41

as an agent in the world. And I think part

51:43

of what's going on in the story Odysseus

51:45

tells is that he's retelling

51:48

his own story in a way that he answers

51:50

Zeus's question for us. He says,

51:52

ah, I fucked up, It's

51:55

my fault, and by

51:58

embracing his agency he can

52:00

start again. And then if you read the Odyssey

52:02

from book thirteen on, he has no

52:04

doubt once he gets home, like there's

52:07

no.

52:07

Hesitation at all.

52:09

He uses his storytelling to bamboozle

52:11

people. He tricks everyone until

52:14

he gets the moment where he is actually

52:16

the Cyclops in the cave and he

52:18

eats everybody up, like metaphorically

52:21

but essentially. And so the second half

52:23

of the Odyssey is about

52:25

family and community, right, So the first

52:28

part is about growing up, about becoming

52:30

a person, about acting in the world, and

52:32

the second part is what we exist in a world

52:34

with like other people, how do we.

52:36

Relate to them?

52:38

And Odysseus's story is really it's

52:40

two sided, because there's

52:42

the wonderful narrative that I

52:45

deeply love of his reunions

52:47

with other people and how he

52:49

needs like tokens in the world to

52:51

confirm who he is right

52:54

with Euroclea. It's the scar with

52:56

Penelope, it's the bed with his father,

52:58

it's the orchard, and you're following

53:01

it. He goes like he goes through the

53:03

most significant relationships in his life

53:05

to reconfirm who he is in

53:07

a way that I think is power for each of us, because the

53:09

narrative it tells us is we aren't

53:11

anybody alone. Yeah,

53:14

Like, our identity is constructed

53:16

in other people, right, which

53:18

I think is actually a really anti ancient

53:20

Greek idea, right, at least

53:22

the way it's activated for us by like the ann

53:25

Randians in the world, right.

53:27

The rugged individualists.

53:28

What the Odyssey tells us is like, you are who

53:31

other people.

53:31

See you to be.

53:32

Yeah, and that's the most important

53:35

thing. Like the identity is extrinsic,

53:37

not intrinsic, which is hard for

53:39

us in our very individualistic age

53:42

to accept. But then

53:44

you get the whole problem of Odysseus's

53:47

relationship to his family, Like

53:49

he can't return home to them without dominating

53:51

them, right, We often forget that

53:54

when Uriclea recognizes him,

53:56

Odysseus grabs her by the throat and tells

53:58

her not to speak. Yeah, he

54:00

never He just tells his son no

54:03

other Odysseus will come home to you. With

54:05

Penelope, you know, he manipulates,

54:08

lies to her, lies to her,

54:10

and then you know, sleeps with Theory is like, yeah,

54:12

I'm gonna leave again soon.

54:14

It's gonna be cool.

54:16

And then with his father, he tricks some tests

54:18

him and like makes him cry and then he's like, I'm sorry,

54:20

I'm Odysseus, and

54:23

you know what's going on there?

54:25

Yeah, yeah, and so and

54:27

so that that that nature

54:29

of Odysseus again, the double sidedness, the

54:31

complicatedness, like what

54:34

does it mean to be an agent in the world?

54:36

And it speaks into a way into the like what

54:38

we now call in social.

54:40

Media the main character syndrome.

54:42

Right, no, but but but there's

54:44

something to be said there by centering

54:46

yourself instead of others. Yeah, what

54:49

kind of a family member are you? What

54:51

kind of a leader are you?

54:53

Yeah?

54:54

And so I really think that

54:56

the complexity is meant for audiences as

54:59

like a test case to think through, and

55:02

that we fail the test by

55:04

rooting for Odysseus yea, instead

55:07

of rooting for caring about.

55:09

The enslaved women.

55:10

You wouldn't imagine how many homers so, like, it's

55:12

not a big deal, right or

55:15

Telemachus, So Penelope, like, you

55:17

know, Odysseus as.

55:18

A hero proves

55:21

to us in a way what we're

55:23

really like.

55:24

Yeah, yeah, and it just

55:26

screams, it screams Western values,

55:29

that concept like I say that, you know,

55:32

with like as hating

55:34

every sense of the words, like yeah,

55:36

this this idea that like in order I

55:40

don't know, I don't even know in order of anything, but just the

55:42

idea that the West is right, that like he

55:44

is right, you know, hey,

55:47

by thinking that he is the hero, we are

55:49

just presuming that everything he did was right

55:51

and that this is the like correct way of doing

55:53

things, and then we should

55:55

inflict it on other people. Like it reminds

55:57

me of the skiddy and thing you said earlier of just like what

56:00

makes people worthy, worthy of living.

56:02

So I saw a

56:04

talk a few weeks ago, a few months ago

56:07

now by Edith Hall called

56:10

It's on a book of hers that's coming out next

56:12

year from Yale called Achilles in Green,

56:15

And it's an echo critical reading of the

56:17

Iliad that makes a parallel

56:20

argument to the one I suggested about settler

56:22

colonialism in the Odyssey by

56:25

looking at the consumption and

56:27

extractive relationships

56:30

in the Iliad, positing that our

56:32

relationship to the environment, as

56:36

foretold in the Iliad is

56:38

one that ultimately is extractive

56:41

in its nature entirely and

56:43

not harmonious. And one of the things she points

56:46

to is that she doesn't emphasize

56:48

this too much, but this is at least a footnote

56:51

is the archaeology of bronze

56:54

age often doesn't

56:56

emphasize the much enough how

56:58

destructive the smelting of

57:00

bronze is and how it destroyed

57:03

and changed the natural world, like

57:05

how many trees are needed to

57:07

light the cult, to light the fires

57:09

that make it hot enough to do

57:11

the metal allurgy, of how

57:14

hard it is to

57:16

extract the metal from the earth, how damaging

57:18

it is, and how everything in

57:20

the heroic world, from the sacrifices

57:23

of a hundred bulls to the meals, to

57:25

the drinking to the burning of trees,

57:29

points to a relationship with the environment

57:31

that's totally about maxim being maximumly

57:33

extractive rather

57:36

than being harmonious. And

57:38

there's something that there is an ends

57:40

justifying the means logic

57:43

there that I want to point to. At the end of

57:45

the Odyssey as well, when Athena comes

57:47

down, she says, let

57:50

wealth and peace be enough.

57:53

And what she's asked or told

57:55

the suitors they have to do in order

57:58

not to be in a constant cycle of

58:00

vengeance is that they have to

58:02

forget that

58:04

Odysseus killed their loved ones, murdered

58:09

their families. And

58:11

the sad thing for me is

58:13

that I don't know that the Western tradition

58:16

has given any clearer or

58:18

better solution for cyclical violence

58:21

than that. This is what

58:23

we're told. You want to live in

58:25

the United States and enjoy its material

58:28

abundance. Forget about crimes

58:30

against indigenous people, Forget about

58:32

slavery, forget about our

58:35

international policy that has

58:37

killed millions of people and supports

58:39

client states that are committing genocide.

58:42

Right, forget all that. Let your

58:44

wealth and peace be enough, because

58:47

that end justifies

58:50

any means to get there, just.

58:52

To because it's impossible for you not to parallel

58:54

this with Canada, because like you

58:57

know, we're not quite the same, but we also are.

58:59

Just yesterday, the RCMP,

59:02

the you know, people like to say

59:04

the Mountain Mounties, but no one in Canada calls them

59:06

that. We call them the RCMP, And so,

59:09

like you know, our federal police

59:12

released a new addition

59:15

to their uniform and it

59:17

is a ribbon skirt, so it is an

59:20

attempt to put

59:23

Indigenous clothing and art

59:25

into the RCMP uniform.

59:27

And if it is not just like the perfect

59:31

settler colonial values

59:33

like notion like the RCMP, it's

59:36

it's it's actually is wild because

59:38

also three days ago we had the

59:40

Victoria Day Parade here because which

59:43

is inherently, you

59:45

know, it is celebrating settler

59:47

colonialism. It's literally for Queen Victoria,

59:50

like and then, and I happened to

59:52

live above the parade route, so it was

59:54

forced on me to look out my window

59:57

because the noise was absurd and it was crazy.

59:59

And at one point I looked at my window and I saw

1:00:01

a cop car in the parade

1:00:05

covered it indigenous art.

1:00:07

Victoria Police a has

1:00:09

a special car made that is like

1:00:12

decaled with Indigenous art that

1:00:14

they drive through parades. And

1:00:17

I just like, it's so gross because it's

1:00:20

it's essentially the same as like the cops in the States

1:00:22

having a Black Lives Matter sign painted

1:00:24

onto their cars, right like because

1:00:26

literally the cops kill more Indigenous people

1:00:28

here than they do anyone else. Like anyway,

1:00:31

it's just wild. But like we're like, well, the settler

1:00:34

colonialism of it all in the West, and oh my

1:00:36

god, but.

1:00:36

I actually think so.

1:00:38

But I don't think that is an inconsequential

1:00:40

thing to bring up with the Odyssey.

1:00:41

No, no, it's not, because part of.

1:00:43

What's going on I think with Homeric Epic

1:00:46

is an appropriation of

1:00:49

dissenting voices. And so one

1:00:51

way to think about the suitors in the Odyssey,

1:00:54

if we're thinking about them as being anti autocratic,

1:00:57

is that their position in society has

1:00:59

been appropriated into epic to

1:01:02

discredit them, right, It has become part

1:01:04

of it. So you bring enough of it in

1:01:07

in order to show that

1:01:10

you know, you gave him a fair chance, right,

1:01:13

And so that's why I actually think. You

1:01:15

know, earlier I mentioned the multiple

1:01:18

counts against the Suitors that

1:01:20

the Odyssey trumps up. Right,

1:01:22

If it were just enough that they were opposing

1:01:25

Odysseus, you wouldn't have to

1:01:27

frame them for abusing him,

1:01:30

and you wouldn't have to show

1:01:32

them planning to kill Telemachus. So

1:01:35

you've taken this aristocratic group of

1:01:37

men who didn't go to war, and you're appropriating

1:01:40

them into epic, and you're taking the oligarchic

1:01:43

or anti autocratic voices into

1:01:45

it in order to discredit

1:01:47

it, right in the same way

1:01:50

like you know, the levers of power will

1:01:52

expropriate from other cultures in

1:01:55

order to say, oh, we've integrated it, But you've

1:01:57

integrated it the way the borg integrates

1:02:00

something. Right, You just take what's useful

1:02:02

so that you can continue on your

1:02:04

extractive journey through the universe.

1:02:07

Yeah, yeah, no,

1:02:09

I mean it's yeah, it's so much. And it's

1:02:11

also like, you

1:02:13

know, looking at the just the way you said

1:02:15

that the suitors, you know, who didn't go to war, and

1:02:17

I think that like a lot of times, we're

1:02:20

also expected to see them that way of like

1:02:22

these men who didn't go to war, and so the

1:02:24

the the idea comes in that that somehow

1:02:27

is also a fault against them, without

1:02:29

considering the idea that the war

1:02:31

has been over or has like things. They

1:02:33

would have had to leave twenty years earlier. So

1:02:37

they but there's also no confirmation

1:02:39

of their age, so like they literally could

1:02:41

have been ten. When it's you.

1:02:43

Hear one of them, I forget one of the leading suitors

1:02:46

is like I remember Odysseus from when I was young,

1:02:48

right, like they were too young to go to

1:02:50

war. Yeah, and I think the youth of the suitors

1:02:53

again is critical because

1:02:55

if we want to use them as parallel for

1:02:57

protesters, right, I mean, they're

1:02:59

they're the youth who don't know enough, right.

1:03:02

Yeah, you know, the young he knows

1:03:04

better.

1:03:06

Right, because he's done such a good job taking

1:03:08

care of young people so far.

1:03:10

Yeah, you know, all the proof

1:03:12

to show for it.

1:03:13

No, I just feel like at the end of you know, the

1:03:15

end of the Odyssey, you know, twenty

1:03:17

three Odysseus is he's.

1:03:20

Not so bad as to say, look

1:03:22

what you made me do?

1:03:24

My god?

1:03:24

Yeah, right, but he does acknowledge

1:03:27

that people would kill him for Because

1:03:29

I just like, just back to that logic.

1:03:32

I think we've run away with

1:03:34

the wrong message from it,

1:03:36

right, because I think what happens at the

1:03:38

end of the Odyssey is you have a magical solution

1:03:41

to a problem like a diosex marketa

1:03:43

from Greek tragedy, And what's that supposed

1:03:46

that's supposed to do is startle us. We're supposed

1:03:48

to be like, whoa was

1:03:50

there no other solution to this problem?

1:03:53

Right?

1:03:54

And we should say, wait, maybe

1:03:57

we should rethink this.

1:03:58

Where did we miss.

1:04:00

A step along the way? And

1:04:03

instead, though I think we

1:04:05

have traditionally taken away the

1:04:07

the the worst message, which

1:04:10

is that you know the

1:04:12

power is ultimately

1:04:15

its own justification.

1:04:17

You have to let wealth.

1:04:18

And

1:04:21

peace be enough and forget

1:04:23

your pains. And the real

1:04:26

toxic irony of that is

1:04:28

that the biggest thing the oddysty tries to teach

1:04:31

us is that your pain defines your

1:04:34

Odysseus's scar is a

1:04:36

literal and a figurative symbol of

1:04:38

the fact that your trauma makes you who you

1:04:41

are, right and so

1:04:43

if at the end you're told, well,

1:04:45

you can live in peace with these people, but you need to forget

1:04:48

your historical trauma, you need to forget

1:04:50

your identity, then you're basically saying

1:04:52

you didn't exist at all. And

1:04:54

that logic just defaults

1:04:58

to the might makes right logic that

1:05:00

we see. And this is a

1:05:02

bit farther afield, but not an appropriate

1:05:04

for your podcast that we see

1:05:07

in Thucididies. I've

1:05:09

been thinking a lot about Thucydides lately.

1:05:11

Yeah, a Melian dialogue,

1:05:14

right, I don't do you want me to recap that?

1:05:17

I love you? Your audience knows, so

1:05:20

you know, there are two sort of really important moments

1:05:22

in Thucydides is Peloponnesian

1:05:24

wars or when it comes to characterizing

1:05:27

Athens as a as a political

1:05:29

organization.

1:05:30

So for people who.

1:05:31

Don't remember Athens and Sparta fighting this

1:05:33

long thirty year war, and the difference

1:05:35

is that Sparreda's a land power, Athens is

1:05:37

a sea power and it dominates its

1:05:39

allies.

1:05:41

And so the first of.

1:05:42

These things, Middelini is not behaving

1:05:45

and isn't paying tribute to Athens

1:05:47

and isn't following athens rules,

1:05:50

and so Athens dispatches a ship

1:05:53

to carry out a sentence

1:05:55

against Middelini, and the sentence is.

1:05:57

To kill all the men in the slave all the women and children.

1:06:00

And so they wake up the next day after making

1:06:03

this decision and they send a ship

1:06:05

to go super fast to rescind

1:06:07

the decision. Are like, wait, these are our allies,

1:06:10

these are human beings. We don't want this to happen.

1:06:12

And the ship, you know, they grow wicked

1:06:14

hard. They get there and they're successful,

1:06:17

and it's this moment where you're like, Okay, sometimes

1:06:20

when we all get together and talk things through,

1:06:22

we can make bad things not happen. Right,

1:06:25

But later on there's a thing called

1:06:27

the Melian Dialogue, where Athens goes

1:06:29

to see its closer ally me Loss. They send

1:06:32

ambassadors, and it's a fascinating thing

1:06:34

because what we get in through Cynides is a

1:06:36

dialogue between Athens

1:06:38

and me laws and the representatives

1:06:40

with ME laws. So like, look, you care about

1:06:42

the gods and justice, and you want your other

1:06:45

allies to respect you. Don't

1:06:48

push us around and don't make us

1:06:50

do what we don't want to do, like

1:06:52

respect us. And the Athenians basically

1:06:54

are like, look, we have power, we can do it,

1:06:56

and there's no other argument.

1:06:58

This is what we want.

1:06:59

So fall in line or else we're going to kill

1:07:01

you. And they do end up

1:07:03

carrying out, both historically

1:07:05

and in the narrative, the

1:07:09

sentence that they denied to MIDDLINI

1:07:12

on me Loss. They kill all

1:07:14

the men and they enslave all the women and children

1:07:17

because it serves their interests.

1:07:18

And their power. Yeah.

1:07:20

And so when I think about, like, you know, the

1:07:22

operation of imperial activities

1:07:25

in the modern day, like we have

1:07:27

this notion of progress that

1:07:30

we only buy some

1:07:32

of us buy because we live in countries

1:07:34

insulated from those horrors.

1:07:36

Yeah, and well, yeah,

1:07:39

I've been thinking a lot about the way that the

1:07:42

West it refuses to

1:07:44

accept the idea that anything else

1:07:46

should exist like that

1:07:49

that like because we've decided

1:07:52

that like our way of life is the best,

1:07:54

then it is seen as

1:07:56

like the thing that should be inflicted on other

1:07:58

cultures, even if those other cultures don't

1:08:00

want it. But it's like we use,

1:08:03

we use our quote unquote progressive ideas

1:08:07

to like enforce something on people who don't

1:08:09

want it. And yeah,

1:08:11

like it's just I mean

1:08:14

what you said earlier too, about like the just

1:08:17

going back to Odysseus because I just had

1:08:19

this thought, but like you know that this the

1:08:21

reading that we take now,

1:08:24

you know, the like sort of flawed reading

1:08:26

as we've just been talking about, like that

1:08:29

that you know, like the ends justified,

1:08:31

the means that his getting home

1:08:33

was worth the killing of six hundred people just

1:08:38

feels a little too real. And

1:08:40

I'm gonna just you know, just I guess leave it that

1:08:42

just just like the idea of saving one life

1:08:45

is worth six hundred is

1:08:49

yeah, a little it's just a little too rescent

1:08:53

a thing.

1:08:53

I often pairt with is so there,

1:08:56

I'll quote it wrong, but I'll get the idea.

1:08:58

Right. There's this notion

1:09:01

that shows up.

1:09:02

In the Qur'an and the Babylonian

1:09:05

version of the Talmut, which basically says

1:09:07

saving the one human being is

1:09:10

saving the whole human race.

1:09:13

Killing one human being killing

1:09:15

the whole human race.

1:09:17

And it's pretty ancient stuff and it's

1:09:19

probably part of an oral tradition before it got

1:09:22

embedded in the Quran.

1:09:23

But don't tell religious people I put

1:09:25

it that way.

1:09:26

Yeah, But it's just like, I mean,

1:09:29

Odysseus is someone who we could quip

1:09:35

contains multitudes, right,

1:09:38

But the real irony of the Odyssey is that

1:09:40

it seems to deny that multitudinous

1:09:43

nature to other human beings, and

1:09:46

so everybody in the Odyssey serves

1:09:50

his story. And

1:09:52

that's the thing that I think is really dangerous

1:09:56

about the Odyssey. When people talk

1:09:58

about, you know, Penelope a strong

1:10:00

woman, I'm like, well, until Odysseus

1:10:02

comes home, and ultimately her

1:10:04

strength is just there to

1:10:07

glorify him, to be a

1:10:09

good match for him. Telemachus

1:10:11

is denied ever really truly growing

1:10:13

up and having his own world. Everybody

1:10:15

in the dusty exists only for Odysseus's

1:10:18

purposes. And so

1:10:21

I really think that it's a clever

1:10:23

epic that's supposed to make us.

1:10:25

Stop, but

1:10:27

that we read it wrong.

1:10:29

Yeah, and we see it as a victory at

1:10:31

the end because we read it

1:10:33

like a Western. It's not Clint

1:10:36

Eastwood's unforgiving right,

1:10:38

it's a Tarantino movie.

1:10:40

Yeah, and we have to understand that.

1:10:42

The bloodshed there is supposed to make us stop

1:10:44

and wonder what the fuck we're doing?

1:10:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1:10:48

this is. But instead we've taken away this idea

1:10:50

that because of whatever

1:10:52

thing, one life is worth more

1:10:55

than six hundred, because of whatever makes

1:10:57

him special, he is worth

1:10:59

more.

1:11:00

And how much of that logic infects

1:11:03

the way our economy works,

1:11:05

you know, I mean, you know, whether you're

1:11:07

Bill Gates or Eli Musk, the whole notion that

1:11:09

you should be in charge because of historical

1:11:12

accidents and luck, right, or that your

1:11:14

life is worth more and all of these things

1:11:16

and the power individuals have,

1:11:19

yeah, right. And we are so

1:11:21

embedded in this individualistic

1:11:24

approach to humanity

1:11:26

that to think of collective ways of being

1:11:29

is to is seen as

1:11:32

heretical.

1:11:33

Yeah yeah, yeah,

1:11:35

oh, just not used of the word too, Like

1:11:38

it makes me think of like the

1:11:42

the way that at this point too, in both of

1:11:44

our countries but in different ways.

1:11:46

We are expected to have

1:11:49

to pick of the least

1:11:51

worst. And if we're

1:11:53

not willing to go for the

1:11:55

least worst, we are bad people.

1:11:58

Were the problem?

1:11:59

Yeah, exactly.

1:12:00

And if we can't, if we don't want to choose between

1:12:02

you know, fascism light and straight

1:12:05

up fascism, like then clearly

1:12:08

like we are in support of the devil.

1:12:10

And and who

1:12:12

is it that decides which one is fascism

1:12:15

light is another great question?

1:12:17

And like, well, the.

1:12:18

One with a slightly kinder face, yeah.

1:12:21

Or or I would argue it's

1:12:23

the one who's one

1:12:27

side helps one

1:12:30

group, but it affects

1:12:32

the whole world, but the other side

1:12:34

affects the whole world, And

1:12:36

so it's the it's the

1:12:40

the way that you can pick that, like the

1:12:42

West, the Western complex

1:12:44

is slightly more benefited by one and

1:12:47

so if you don't pick them, you're

1:12:51

the problem. It's not the problem

1:12:53

is not the them, it's not the it's

1:12:55

not the least worsts and

1:12:57

what makes it least worst? Yeah?

1:13:02

Anyway, So so like you know,

1:13:04

I mean when people ask me why

1:13:07

does Homer, I'm like, look,

1:13:10

this is a genealogy of our bad ideas,

1:13:12

right, But it's always saying it, but

1:13:15

it's also an opportunity to recuperate

1:13:18

the very truth that the bad ideas

1:13:21

weren't always our only options. So

1:13:24

I do think, like, at the end of the day,

1:13:26

I think the Odyssey is a narrative

1:13:28

that's mostly interested in supporting the

1:13:30

power structures that are there, but

1:13:32

it embeds the other possibilities

1:13:36

and lets us see the truth, right,

1:13:39

which is that Odysseus

1:13:42

lives off of other people like a vampire.

1:13:44

Right, that's what he is.

1:13:47

And I think the problem with it,

1:13:49

and the problem of human psychology in the modern

1:13:52

day, is everyone thinks they're going

1:13:54

to end up to be Odysseus,

1:13:58

when when

1:14:00

like, you can't be Odysseus if you haven't

1:14:03

murdered in seven hundred and eight people and dominated

1:14:05

another few thousand.

1:14:06

So the math doesn't add up. No.

1:14:09

What it makes me think of this the desire

1:14:12

the type of people that like

1:14:15

idealize the billionaires because

1:14:17

they think that they can reach

1:14:20

that, when the truth is that the

1:14:22

only reason that they can't reach that is because of

1:14:24

the billionaires, Like you

1:14:26

know, like it's it's just yeah, this

1:14:28

this psychology of a psychology of individualism

1:14:31

too that we have in the West and just that like yeah,

1:14:35

the who is better? Who is

1:14:37

better than everyone else? And why? Like

1:14:40

like why why? What

1:14:42

makes it better? And is it just power?

1:14:44

But also and also what

1:14:47

we come to embrace

1:14:49

an Odysseus, right, is

1:14:51

that ends versus ends justifies

1:14:54

the means approach

1:14:56

like people, you know, like this

1:14:58

whole notion of Christian classical education and

1:15:00

holding Odysseus up as like a model,

1:15:03

like all he does is lie and

1:15:05

cheat and break commandments

1:15:08

in order to achieve his ends. Like why

1:15:10

would this be a central person? How is this

1:15:12

the stoic sage?

1:15:14

Right?

1:15:15

It's because like we are addicted

1:15:17

to this idea of this main

1:15:19

character, right, rather

1:15:21

than sort of situating ourselves

1:15:24

as not being so and making

1:15:26

space for others. And so there's just I mean, I think

1:15:28

at some level the question is, you

1:15:31

know, are these texts too dangerous?

1:15:33

I don't personally think they're too dangerous, but.

1:15:35

They need to be taught in such a way to understand

1:15:37

that they are dialogues about power.

1:15:40

Yeah, they are dialogues about the consequences

1:15:42

of power. They're not hymns of praise.

1:15:45

Yeah. Yeah,

1:15:50

this is the greatest conversation. I'm losing

1:15:52

my mind. It's also just like so perfect for

1:15:54

what I was writing before I sat down with you, and

1:15:56

I just but also now all I want

1:15:59

to do is talk about the iliot. So I think we have to talk about you coming

1:16:01

back to talk about the iliod and how it fits, because

1:16:04

I really want to dive deeper into this idea of

1:16:06

like the iliod not being like the

1:16:08

the glory of war, and I think it like it would so it

1:16:10

just like.

1:16:12

Conversation a couple I've got

1:16:14

a couple of sticks on that,

1:16:18

but but I do so so and this

1:16:20

is going to be so the shameless

1:16:22

self plug bit. But I have a book

1:16:24

coming out on on Narrative in

1:16:28

December or January

1:16:30

about using biological narratives

1:16:32

the biological analogies to understand

1:16:35

how narrative functions, as

1:16:38

as having its own agency and its

1:16:40

own place in the world.

1:16:41

I talk about Homer a lot.

1:16:43

So I'd be happy to send you the proofs of that so

1:16:45

you can see it, because it's I think it might be crazy.

1:16:47

I think I may people are gonna mock me, I'm sure,

1:16:51

But I do have my current

1:16:53

sort of thinking project and my next project

1:16:55

is on I'm calling

1:16:57

it rehumanized, trauma

1:17:01

informed readings of the Iliad, And

1:17:04

it's really about about violence and about

1:17:06

war crimes and how

1:17:08

the Eliot approaches sort of a sanitize

1:17:11

and desanitize view of war. So

1:17:13

I'd love to talk to you about that and figure

1:17:15

out where I want to go next.

1:17:16

Oh my god, No, that's wonderful. Oh my gosh.

1:17:19

Uh, I

1:17:21

won't I won't keep you any longer. But this was like

1:17:24

the absolute fucking best and

1:17:27

it was going to air in like a month and a half. But now

1:17:29

because of everything we talked about, it's going to

1:17:31

air next week.

1:17:32

So well,

1:17:35

hopefully we can we can keep the tagline

1:17:37

the tagline the absolute fucking best.

1:17:40

Yeah, and see where that where that gets us

1:17:42

great?

1:17:43

Thank you so much for doing this. Do you want

1:17:46

to share anything with my listeners about like where to read

1:17:48

more or find more from you at all?

1:17:50

It's okay, they can find me. You can tell

1:17:53

them, you know.

1:17:53

I just think, you know, read some

1:17:56

homer listen to live, yeah, and make

1:17:58

our lives better.

1:17:59

Thank you, Thank

1:18:16

you all so much for listening. I

1:18:21

finished recording that conversation with

1:18:23

a level of joy, and

1:18:26

just like I mean, joy is maybe

1:18:28

the wrong word, but it is right, just joy

1:18:32

in a way of being able to look

1:18:34

at this stuff and talk about it

1:18:37

and share share that, just

1:18:40

share these these views,

1:18:43

these these musings on the ancient

1:18:46

world and how applicable it

1:18:48

is to us today and

1:18:50

how it has been taken

1:18:54

and and just I

1:18:57

don't like to use word bastardized. It's the only

1:18:59

thing that's coming to me right now. But like just

1:19:01

the ways in which we've

1:19:04

fucked it all up. You

1:19:06

know, the world is an absolute fucking

1:19:09

dumpster fire, but it is

1:19:12

so possible to find joy

1:19:14

in the solidarity

1:19:17

of it and in looking

1:19:19

at these things and in tying it

1:19:21

to the ancient world and both

1:19:24

seeing how timeless it is, but also

1:19:26

the ways in which we can claw

1:19:28

our way out, you know, just

1:19:30

as people. Anyway,

1:19:33

it was a really, really wonderful

1:19:36

conversation. Joel is always such a joy to

1:19:38

have on just because he's got to

1:19:40

be the most supportive academic

1:19:43

I've ever talked to in terms of the podcast. Just

1:19:45

truly, just truly so supportive

1:19:48

of what I'm doing in a way that always

1:19:51

is a great ego boost and sometimes when

1:19:53

I really need it. So it's just absolutely lovely to

1:19:55

have him on. We're absolutely

1:19:57

going to be talking again soon to

1:20:00

look at the Iliad because as

1:20:02

you've all, you know, if you've been listening to my Fall of

1:20:04

Troy episodes, you know, I

1:20:07

really think it is so important to look at these

1:20:09

epics for what they actually were, which is not

1:20:12

glorifying war, but just looking

1:20:14

at how how bad it

1:20:16

is and how it damages everyone

1:20:19

in so many different ways, and how it

1:20:21

benefits no one, and it

1:20:25

you know, we we in the West just so

1:20:27

often don't don't see it that

1:20:29

way because we've been conditioned to

1:20:32

accept that sometimes

1:20:35

so many innocent people just you know, quote

1:20:38

unquote need to die for Western values.

1:20:41

You know, this idea of Western values.

1:20:43

It's just it's horrifying.

1:20:45

But you know, we can look to

1:20:47

the ancient world and pick apart

1:20:49

the ways in which it has been misused

1:20:53

to promote those ideas that that

1:20:56

that any any one group of people

1:20:58

is better than another. You know, we can we can really

1:21:00

look back at the ancient world and see

1:21:03

see what they really did think.

1:21:05

And obviously they weren't perfect and they had, you know, all

1:21:07

of their own issues, but especially in

1:21:09

these works, they there is no

1:21:11

one saying that one is better than the other They are,

1:21:14

They are thought experiments. They are are

1:21:16

ways for us to

1:21:18

to, you know, look at these stories

1:21:21

and and relate to them, and and

1:21:23

look at everything we just talked

1:21:25

about, you know, all the ways in which Odysseus

1:21:28

should not be seen as a perfect person.

1:21:31

He we should look at him and consider

1:21:34

consider the cost of war, and consider

1:21:36

trauma and how people respond

1:21:38

to it, and the ways that people shouldn't respond

1:21:40

to it, because people

1:21:43

die when they respond to those things that way, and

1:21:45

the way that if you know, say, if he just looked

1:21:47

looked it, just kind of stepped

1:21:50

back and maybe examined things a little closer

1:21:52

really, or was able to see the

1:21:54

flaws in himself, maybe it wouldn't

1:21:56

have gone like that, right, Like, that's what these things are for.

1:21:59

If Achilles could have stepped back and thought,

1:22:01

you know, maybe maybe there's a flaw in

1:22:03

my plan, If Agamemnon, if menilais if

1:22:06

anyone could have stepped back and

1:22:08

really thought about it and been able to

1:22:10

see that maybe what

1:22:12

they're doing isn't always right. Maybe maybe

1:22:14

no one always knows what is

1:22:16

right, and maybe maybe there is no

1:22:19

one who should be

1:22:21

able to determine, you know, if if

1:22:24

if one culture is more or less

1:22:26

deserving of life, if one group of people

1:22:28

is more or less deserving of life, it's never

1:22:31

true. And and

1:22:34

uh, it's just you know, it's dark.

1:22:36

I don't know. This is such a just a wonderful,

1:22:39

just a really great conversation. I've

1:22:41

linked in the episode of description to Joel's

1:22:43

Twitter and website because it's really it's

1:22:45

really great stuff too, as much as

1:22:48

he doesn't promote himself, so it's you can

1:22:50

find more for sure. There's a lot of really

1:22:52

really interesting and accessible translations

1:22:54

of Greek stuff that you'd never find

1:22:57

otherwise because it's just like weird.

1:23:00

Weird poems are just these things that aren't

1:23:02

famous or even just like you know, close

1:23:04

looks at what's really going on. I do highly

1:23:07

recommend it. It's just about

1:23:09

me trying to say the Latin sententii

1:23:11

anti qui. I don't know if that's right.

1:23:13

Anyway, it's linked and just

1:23:17

thanks to Joel. Truly this is just a I'm

1:23:19

still reeling from it, and

1:23:22

it's just it was a really great, really great time

1:23:24

and makes me so excited to go back

1:23:26

to writing the Ion. So you can stay tuned

1:23:28

for more of that, because oh it's fucking

1:23:31

good. I just you know,

1:23:34

I'm saying it too early, but Jesus, I

1:23:36

just I fucking love the ancient world

1:23:39

and everything we can learn from it. I really,

1:23:41

it's just such a joy and I haven't felt

1:23:44

this type of joy in it in a long time, so

1:23:47

I'm pretty happy. Let's talk about

1:23:49

this. Baby is written and produced by Me Live Albert

1:23:51

MICHAELA. Smith is the Hermes to My Olympians.

1:23:54

My assistant producer, Laura Smith is

1:23:56

the audio engineer and production assistant.

1:23:59

The podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast

1:24:01

Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple or

1:24:04

wherever you get your podcasts. Help

1:24:06

me continue doing this by supporting

1:24:09

the show, supporting the two free

1:24:11

episodes I give you all a week. I'm Patreon

1:24:14

patreon dot com, slash myths

1:24:17

Baby, But don't

1:24:20

don't pick me over

1:24:23

people who need help. Every

1:24:25

time I've been saying this lately, I just want

1:24:28

to be like, or go

1:24:30

find it, go fund me for people who are trying

1:24:32

to just get

1:24:35

out alive, you

1:24:38

know, so maybe do that instead. Thank

1:24:41

you all so much for listening.

1:24:44

I am live and I

1:24:47

love this shit.