The True Story Of The Odyssey (and why it matters) - Alex Petkas - #1125

31:40And the Greek there actually says, you could be translated as shameless bitch. The kunops is the Greek word. It means dog face. It's a very rude thing. She calls herself, you know, a bitch or something. Like it's, she kind of insults herself. And it's really disarming, I think. So Emily Wilson translated that line as something like, they came to take me back the one who hounded them or something. So the hound is kind of an allusion to the dog piece. But it kind of softens the fact that Helen is really kind of - Slightly more flattering. Yeah, but the point is, she seduces you by saying the bad thing that you had in mind about her.

32:29How can this woman just, you know, pretend like we don't all know the terrible things she did. And that's the first thing she names. And she's like, oh, you can get away with anything with enough self-awareness. Yeah. Yeah. She kind of insults herself to, to, to draw you in. And she does this in the Iliad too. She's, she's a really tricky woman. Um, but you know, she's behaving herself and, um, Menelaus seems happy. There's a little bit of, there's a little bit of tension between the two of them. It's a really interesting scene in book four. Um, but, but the point of this whole quest to sum up the Telemachus piece is he has to prove himself to the peers of his father when his father's not there.

33:11And he does this by making the journey, asking about his dad and say, I'm just trying to get my house in order and kind of behaving himself well. He acts very tactfully. He's pious. And they're always in this trip, the houses that he meets are all these well-ordered households that are this great contrast with the chaos at home. And one of the things that signals that they're well-ordered is there's always, there's all these sacrifices to the gods. Like every time before a meal, they pray to the gods, they wash their hands, they have a sacrifice. Never, never do the suitors pray before a meal.

33:48You know, it's a sign. They're godless. They're godless. They're chaotic. They're not doing what they're supposed to be doing. so um homework cares a lot about these things in the in the in more in the odyssey than he does about the iliad these little things that sort of signal you know good order in in culture and society okay and is that the end of this rite of passage yeah so that's that's basically the menelaus invites telemachus to stay as long as he wants and telemachus says i gotta get back you've been very kind i could stay here a whole year it's it's so nice menelaus is like one of the richest Greeks.

34:23Thanks for drugging me. Yes. Uh, I've had a really good time. Let me tell you, but, uh, I got to get back to, uh, he, and Menelaus offers him these horses. It's like really nice. It's like offering a kid a Ferrari, you know? Um, and, and Telemachus says, you know, my Island is not horse country. It's goat country. There's no, no, no place to ride around horses. It's an ugly, scraggly little island, but that's home for me. And I don't know, he knows he has to get back and take on the challenge and suffer to become who he is. But that is the kind of end of it. And while he's away, it should be mentioned, the suitors also plan, they find out that he snuck off, and they plan to ambush him with a ship on his way back and murder him.

35:13So he's got a target painted on him. What a bunch of bastards. They are, again and again, Homer wants you to know, these guys are bad, all of them are bad, they deserve everything that's coming to them. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why for the last five years, I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't.

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36:14That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. What are they supposed to represent philosophically at this stage? I think, so there's the whole anarchy versus patriarchy going on. There's the kind of usurped glory. I think the oddest - Good men, bad men, absence of good men means that there's a vacuum for bad men to step in. 100%. And I think there's a kind of, broader arc of the Odyssey is about the clash between order and entropy and sort of dissolution of complex societies into kind of barbaric or animal, you know, soup. And the suitors kind represent those forces of violence and turmoil and primordial soup out of which order needs to be established sometimes violently.

37:15And that's justice, that's importantly. To establish that is about justice. Okay. And then we switch and Odysseus wakes up one day on Calypso's island, needs to get home. Staring off into the ocean, sitting there, weeping, longing for his homeland. Calypso is, you know, this incredibly hot, divine goddess who he's washed up ashore on her island and she offered him hospitality. And basically they've been sleeping together for the past eight years. Okay. But Odysseus points out, never did they win the heart within me. So it was kind of under compulsion. Got my penis, but not my heart. Yeah, yeah.

38:00It was just sex, baby, you know. And I, Homer seems to take this as, as an acceptable explanation. We're going to darken the environment appropriately. It's getting, it's about to get spooky. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. So, so that's, yeah, he wakes up, it's book five. And, and Hermes arrives as, as he was sent from, from Zeus and Hermes goes to Calypso first. Well, first he gets to the island and he's just stunned. It's so beautiful. It's just lush fruit trees and pleasant breeze and verdant and perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. It's not like Houston humid. It's just like... So what people are saying?

38:49It's like Hermes arrives and he goes, I'm so glad I'm not in fucking Houston. Yeah. Well, you know, Houston is humid, but there's no place sweeter than one's homeland. Yeah. So, even the gods are amazed at how beautiful and how nice of a place this would be to spend eternity, which is precisely what Calypso is promising Odysseus. She says, forget about your wife, forget about your son, just stay with me forever. I will make you immortal and not just immortal, you'll be young and beautiful the rest of your years. Sometimes goddesses forget to promise the whole youth thing. There's a bad story about this happening with this guy, Tithonus, who the goddess Dawn, Eos, managed to get it arranged so that he would be immortal, but forgot to ask Zeus that he would be made youthful forever.

39:48And so he just gets older and older and older. Just decrepit. And never dies. He kind of shrinks to a little bug. Always got to read the small print. Yeah. Right. And, you know, you never know when you make a deal with a goddess, like there might be some loophole that screws you over. It doesn't always, it's not always bad. Hermes arrives. It's real nice. Odysseus has been piping Calypso for ages. Yeah. Unwillingly. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. But Hermes says, you got to let him go. And Calypso, hems and haws. This is not fair. He's my boy. toy but she says all right i'll help him get out of here so like a god says she so she's a she's a nymph which is which is a divine yeah she's she's a goddess basically sort of lesser divinity right um and um to all accounts very beautiful i mean she goes to odysseus after hermes gives her the bad news and she says all right well i have to let you go zeus told me i have to let you go but you don't actually have to go.

40:53We could still do the whole immortality thing. I mean, what does your wife have that I don't have? And Odysseus says, look, you're right. You are far more beautiful than my own wife. And this place is really nice, but I miss my homeland and I miss my wife and my kid. And she, um, essentially she's promising him something that like, why is this unsatisfying. It's kind of like your island vacation. It lasts a week. It's nice. I needed that. All right, time to get back to work. But what if the island vacation lasts weeks and weeks and months? We probably all felt that feeling. I think it's easy to understand why this offer is ultimately not appealing to spend the rest of your eternity on this leisurely vacation with a you know, a little umbrella in your drink.

41:47But it's also like particularly pointed for Odysseus. In the story, Homer gives these people epithets, these like recurring adjectives that describe them in the poetry. Odysseus is many turned polytropos. He is much, like many crafted, you know, very, very crafty, polymatis. He is also much suffering or much enduring, polytlas. So all of the things about, that kind of make Odysseus what he is, that he's crafty, that he's well-traveled, that he endures and endures, and it's just kind of what makes him special and what makes him who he is. It's like, makes up his identity. None of that would be true if he stayed on that island.

42:33It would be kind of like a loss of identity. I see why it's not appealing. But she, you know, she says, I'll help you go here. She goes to her tool shed. Chick with a tool shed, that's hot. Yeah, well, that was a vote of confidence for her. Apparently, not that great a conversation, but practical enough. Wonderful. She brings him an auger, an axe, whatever you need to make a boat. And she says, all right, here are the tools, there are the trees. Crack on it. Are you on your own? So he has to make his own raft. He's here on his own. Yeah. Completely on his own. Totally. Yeah, he's lost all of his comrades at this point.

43:13They're all dead. Sometimes it's his fault. Sometimes it's their fault. Sometimes both, but they're all gone. Uh, you know, 12 ships, I think is what he took to Troy. So a lot of guys dead and, um, and he has to make his own boat. And that's, that's a really like interesting symbolic moment there. So Odysseus is, um, we talked about Athena being his patron goddess. Athena is the god of craft she's a kind of warrior goddess she's a virgin goddess she's depicted with the spear and the helmet but she's a warrior goddess in the sense that sometimes you need to win wars through trickery and craft she is also the goddess of like weaving she's the goddess of the olive olive tree is a very domestic tree you know you have to plant it and wait many years before it ever gives you anything worthwhile and the older and older it gets the more and more olives it makes.

44:09And so it's the sign of civilization. Athena is this goddess of civilization and also kind of a goddess of technology. So the fact that Odysseus knows how to make his own boat, a seaworthy boat, is kind of important. It's kind of symbolic. And he's about to go into sea, which is the realm of Poseidon, who is this god of wild nature. He's the god of storms at sea, earthquakes, you know, the brute force of nature. And so Odysseus is going to confront those brute forces, the Poseidon world with the kind of technology of Athena. That's really encapsulated well in that image. And this is a really important kind of polarity with throughout the whole story because - Aldrin chaos again.

45:00Yeah. Yeah. And this is actually the Greeks really think of the world in these binaries, You know, there's, uh, um, civilization and barbarism, nature and culture, male and female. Um, there is, uh, cooked and raw, you know, do, do the people here eat, eat their food cooked or do they eat it raw? That's kind of a dividing point between man and animal or man kind of wild men. So, um, you know, Odysseus is clearly on one side of that through, through, throughout the story. Um, and, uh, and we'll see why it matters in a little bit, but so he, he, he escapes the island of Calypso. He has to kind of, and he has to do it nicely too, right?

45:42Like he has to have a, an amicable breakup because you don't want to piss off a goddess if you don't have to. Um, and then he gets to this island of, he's built the ship. So he's built the boat. Yes. He builds the raft, uh, not a great raft, but it's seaworthy and he's at sea for, you know, he ends up being at sea for 20 days, sailing, sailing, sailing. And at some point, Poseidon finishes his party with the Ethiopians. And he's like, what the hell? And he smashes Odysseus's raft with a storm. And Odysseus eventually has to swim to sea, to swim to shore. Calypso gave him all of these, you know, fine, luxurious robes as a parting gift.

46:29and he has to take all that off because if he keeps it on, he's going to sink and die. So he ends up kind of scrambling ashore on this new land, totally naked, which I think is very symbolic. It's a kind of death and rebirth. Yeah, almost like baptism. And he gets to shore and just collapses underneath an olive bush. And then he wakes up because a ball bounced into the grass next to him. and uh he discovers that he's he's on a civilized place there are humans there in fact a bunch of you know attractive nubile young ladies are washing washing some clothes in this little river and um and so he you know has to come up with a plan at that point like uh so this is a great scene because he basically the the next couple of stages for his journey have to do just like kind of like treating Calypso well, uh, to the extent he could, he has to, he has to really use women's agency to get him what he needs next to get home, to, to accomplish this goal.

47:42And the first girl that he, first woman he meets happens to be the princess of the island. She's the, the daughter of the, of the king and queen, as he finds out her name is now Sikah. There's a lot of, uh, like paintings of this scene. I mean, many scenes of the Odyssey, but this one in particular, um, Odysseus is stark naked and, um, he emerges from his bush and he holds a little like branch in front of his private parts so that, uh, to have a little bit of dignity and, you know, approaches these girls and all of them just like scream and run away because he looks horrific i mean he probably looks like tom hanks from from castaway at this point and he's caked in brine and uh you know they're thinking is this guy gonna try to savage savage us yeah ravage oh please no mr c-man don't savage me yeah and that that is an aspect of it there's this kind of like tension so all the all the girls run away except the the the princess now sicka is like she's taller than the rest.

48:52She's more attractive than the rest. She's clearly braver than the rest. And she's just like standing there waiting for him to explain himself. And she's 20-ish, Homer tells us. And he tells, he kind of builds up to this. She's actually, she went down to the coast thinking about marriage with like marriage on her mind. She wants to like clean some clothes and look nice and sort of make an appearance around town and see if any of the young men want to make a pass at her. She's ready to kind of move on to the next stage. And so, Odysseus addresses her from a few feet off. Wow, fair maiden, princess, I don't know whether you're a goddess or a mortal.

49:37Wow, you are just, I've never seen anything like you. You're so beautiful. One time I saw something that was almost as beautiful as you. It was this little palm tree that grew up by the altar of Apollo at Delos. And I was leading many men there. So, you know, he's kind of giving her a little backstory about himself as a respectable man. And he says, may your parents or your brothers be happy if you're immortal. And may you find a great husband, you know, kind of playing on the tension a little bit. And could you please get me a towel and show me to the town. And she's kind of flattered. He's charmed her.

50:18He's already got her charmed. And he doesn't refer to the fact that he's got a wife and kid at home. He's just kind of concealing that and kind of, you know, luring her in a little bit. And she, you know, telling him what he needs to do. And that is go talk to my mom, the queen. Not that she totally runs the show, but she's kind of like the back door to get to the king. Her mom is Arete, who is the prince, the queen of the island. And Odysseus makes his way there, and he kind of sneaks into the palace alone. She does give him more than a towel. She actually, you know, her handmaidens, like, give him some actual clothes and some oil to rub himself.

51:11He takes a bath in the river. So he looks a little better, less like a, you know, wild seaman. And he sneaks in and he embraces Arete by the knees and says, oh, lady, I've traveled many days and been shipwrecked and I'm just trying to make my way home. Please, I supplicate you. is Zeus is the god of suppliants. Would you please help me? Blah, blah, blah. And he speaks well. And she says, all right, stranger, you seem like a decent noble man. Let me introduce you to my husband. She introduces him to Alcinomas, the king. And Odysseus just like, you know, charisma 11 out of 10. Like he charms his way into the ruling family of the island just with his words.

51:57and in fact, before they even know his name, they offer their daughter in marriage to him. It just gives you a sense of, this is what he's famous for, right? Persuasion. But if he had screwed it up with the princess, if he had screwed it up with her mother, he could have lost his head, basically. If he had offended him somehow, if he had savaged or given any hint of savaging, it would have been over for him. So these women have power, but they're dangerous too. They could go either way. And then basically they throw a feast for him. They say, we'll get you home. We're going to send you home. And he declines the marriage invitation, of course.

52:45let's let's get you on one of our magic ships they have these magic ships but um first let's have a feast for you and so they throw this big party and they invite all the all the special people from the town and that's where he tells his story eventually at that at that party this episode is brought to you by whoop according to my whoop i've tracked nearly 2 000 days of my life and the thing that still gets me is that i could have predicted almost every bad day before it happens. That's because WHOOP gives you a complete picture of your health every single day. Your sleep, your workouts, your recovery, your breathing, your heart rate, even your steps.

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53:53So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that 30-day free trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.whoop.com slash modernwisdom. That's join.whoop.com slash modern wisdom. A lot of shrewdness that being upheld, like the canniness of Athena to be able to work around the issues of Poseidon, of Odysseus being able to leave in a gentle manner that doesn't get him on the bad side of Calypso. His ability then to cajole and play the game when he lands on this new island.

54:44So a lot of it is an upholding of being canny, being like a slick operator. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, would Agamemnon have charmed his way in with this young princess? I don't know. I mean, maybe. But this is the arts of Athena. And this is actually, these kind of things, these kind of tricky, canny things, are what he's going to need to eventually, uh, clean out the suitors and get his, get his home back. So yeah, it's, this is, he is a hero who can't use violence in his great arc. A little bit of violence, but mostly it's, it's like trickery and, um, in places where he just, he just vastly out, out, outmatched in force.

55:37Um, Um, so there's this, this is the, the, the moment actually when he's at this party at the Phaeacian's house, um, where we meet Demodocus, the blind bard. So there's some athletic games, you know, the Phaeacians challenge him to show his stuff. And he's like, no, leave me alone. I'm, I'm, I'm tired. I was 20, 20 days at sea. And they're like, oh, come on. What? You probably can't even throw a discus. And he's like, all right, punks. and he stands up and he chucks this giant discus, way bigger than any of the other discuses, way further than any other kids, and he shows them up. But then after the meal, they're relaxing and listening to the bard, Phemius.

56:18He tells a few stories, some of them famous. He tells a story of Ares and Aphrodite, Ares, you know, stealing Hephaestus' wife away. It's very pregnant sort of tales of what goes wrong when the husband is away, putting that fear in your mind. like, what is going to happen? But then after the last story, Odysseus himself asks the bard, Demodocus, to tell the story of the Trojan horse. And nobody knows who he is yet. They still don't know. And Demodocus tells the story. And everybody knows it, but the Greeks built a horse. They put a bunch of warriors in there, Odysseus included. It was Odysseus' plan.

57:01The other Greeks go off to an island. The Trojans see this horse and they think it's some kind of talisman of power, various versions of like, why did they bring this giant horse into their walls? But they do it and they bring it up to the citadel, doors close. At night, the Greeks slip out, open the gates, city is sacked. Long story short. But it's interesting. While Demodocus is telling this story, Odysseus, I mean, apparently he's a good bard, you know, tragic, Odysseus just starts crying. And he's trying to be discreet about it. But Homer says he weeps like a woman who's lost her husband at war and whose city has been sacked and she's been being led away by her captors.

57:49So it's almost like he's weeping like the victims of the tragedy he inflicted upon Troy. Very kind of poignant moment. Does that mean that he's sort of having sympathy for the people that he destroyed at Troy? And Homer kind of leaves it open. But Alcinoeus can tell the king. Yeah, you know, maybe that's enough epic poetry for tonight. Our guest is very tired. He can see it. Hysterical. Yeah. So, um, so he says, um, stranger, I could tell that the story was bothering you. Did you have a brother or a cousin, perhaps a father who went off to fight at Troy? You know, right after they've heard the story of how Odysseus sacked Troy and Odysseus says, all right, I'll tell you who I am at last.

58:44And that's when the great narrative begins in book, book nine, which is, I think the, the high point, the best part of the story. And, um, and Odysseus is kind of playing the bard here, notably. He's doing, he's basically let, he's allowed to be Homer for four books, just narrating these amazing tales. Felating himself. Yeah. Well, I mean, and he doesn't always come off as the best guy in the stories, which is interesting. Uh, but you know, they do, they do shine a good light on him. He's, he learns from his mistakes. Um, and, um, and, and there's a moment, there's a pause in the, in the storytelling at this book 11 where everybody's just like, you know, gawking, jaws dropped and he's, he's enchanted the room just like Homer enchants the room.

59:31What's he telling? He's telling the story of Troy. So his, he says, I'm Odysseus. I was kept by Circe and Calypso, but they never, swayed the heart in me. I'm from Ithaca. I'm just trying to make my way back to Ithaca. It's a crappy, rocky island, but everyone's homeland is most dear to them, blah, blah, blah. And then he tells the story right after they left Troy, what happened on the return journey. And, you know, some of the familiar faces appear now. They try to have a cattle raid on these Thracians, Kikonis, and it goes well for a while. And then the Thracians invite their friends and basically slaughter and chase all the Greeks back to their ships.

1:00:22And Odysseus has to kind of run, tail between his legs back to his ships, and they go on. So it's the first sign that things aren't going to go perfectly. And then they meet the Lotus Eaters. That's the next people they meet um very very tempting uh Um, a very, a very tempting spot, you know, British podcasters who just talk about culture issue all, all day. But, uh, no, the Lotus Eaters are, are basically like potheads, I think. And, um, the, the Lotus flower just makes you want to forget your return journey home and just sit and eat Lotus until you die. Uh, kind of like opium or they, they were aware of opium, but that, that's the, and then the next monster they meet, you know, it's clear that they're sort of being tempted as they're traveling back.

1:01:17And, um, and they get blown off course to this Island of, of the Cyclopses. And that's, that's like the, the grand, I think that one of the, the best, the best stories of, of this whole journey that brings all a lot of these themes to, to the fore. Um, why? Well, okay. Okay. Cyclopses are, Emily Wilson translates, uh, Cyclopses a couple of places in her translation as Cyclopean people. Like they're, uh, like people, people of color. Temporarily, uh, afflicted with being one-eyed monsters. I don't know. Her, her take is a very DEI approach to a story from 3000 years ago. Yeah. I know Emily, she's, she's a good scholar.

1:02:07she's good to her people, but I like to take some pot shots at her translations. Because I mean, like, her take would be the Cyclopses are kind of, you know, Odysseus is this Greek colonizer and he's looking at everything through the kind of, you know, Greek man colonizer lens. And then all these people that he meets are just, they're just like people. They're strange, but, you know, maybe they have their own way of doing things. And the Cyclops' way of doing things is to be a giant one-eyed monster that eats people. so um okay so that's the indigenous wisdom of the right yeah yeah all right um but uh and he plays his trick on the cyclops of it you know he goes and they go in the cave and um the cyclops eats eat some of his men and traps traps odysseus and his men with this big rock so you're watching the you're watching the troops of odysseus dwindle after each different round after round And I think the Cyclops story is really interesting because the way that Odysseus describes it is they live in little family units.

1:03:18They do not care about the gods. They think Zeus is a chump. And every man is a law to his own wife and children. so they're they're giant forceful men that think law and order is is you know for pussies and you know they're kind of like extreme libertarians you know they don't have a social order other than the household and this makes them vulnerable this makes them underestimate the power of trickery They're not coordinated. They're not unified. Yeah, exactly. And, and they, so the Cyclops himself, Polyphemus is, is the one that Odysseus faces. He had actually heard a prophecy that someday some man named Odysseus would come and blind him.

1:04:10And, and after he gets blinded, he tells the story and he's sort of raging. He said, I was not a prophet once came and told us that I would get blinded by a man named Odysseus, but I thought he would be a strong man, not some little pipsqueak, you know? Uh, so he was, he was not on guard for craft. They're, they're, they're men of force. Again, this is, this binary of like force and wildness versus cleverness and civilization. And Odysseus tricks him, you know, after they're trapped in the, in the cave and Cyclops is kind of gradually eating the men that Odysseus brought with him and making him watch.

1:04:46Odysseus gives him some wine, some really good wine and the cyclops just doesn't have the cultural antibodies of of moderation you know and he just it's like giving whiskey to the native americans or whatever like exactly what i was thinking he just he just slams it yeah he gets really drunk and he says stranger this is really good stuff and he says your gift your your your guest friend gift cyclops is a very bad host too, kind of like the suitors. Your gift is going to be, I'll eat you last. Yeah. Congratulations. Passes out drunk. And meanwhile, Odysseus has made this, this, um, spear or this kind of like stake, a six foot stake that he's, he's carved, uh, while the Cyclops was away, uh, tending his sheep and hardened with the points and the fire.

1:05:41I mean, it's a very kind of like technological sort of act too, kind of like building the ship. Yeah, more craft. Yeah, more craft. And they stab him when he's drunk in the eye and he's blinded. So, you know, moving on, that's how he defeats the Cyclops, craft. And of course, that's how he gets cursed in the first place. Because he makes the mistake, as they're kind of sailing away from the Cyclops' island, the Cyclops is foaming at the mouth and raging at them. Where are they? Where are they? Odysseus says, well, he told him, I should have probably mentioned the famous trick. When he introduces himself, he says, my name is Nobody.

1:06:23And then when the Cyclops gets stabbed in the eye, he calls out to his fellow Cyclops libertarians in the other household. And he says, nobody is hurting me. Nobody is just, you know, forcefully harming me. And they say, well, if nobody's hurting you, then that's just tough luck. You know, maybe you're sick and Zeus just makes people suffer. There's nothing we can do about it. Oh, very funny. So, and there's actually a play on words there because, uh, if you get into the, like the Greek, when, when they say, when he says, nobody's hurting me, uh, it's utis, nobody is utis. But if you put the, the no in an if clause, so the Cyclops is, the other Cyclops respond, if nobody is killing you, then the ooh, the negative changes to a may.

1:07:12So it's if maytis is killing you. And if trickery is killing you is how it sounds. It's two words in their mouth, but we hear it as one word. Oh, trickery is killing you. So basically, you know, it's just a very funny like way of saying trickery killed him and not violence or trickery, you know, blasted his eye. It's a double entendre to it. How'd he get cursed? So yeah, he gets cursed by basically giving the Cyclops his name. He says, if anybody asks you how you got blinded, tell them Odysseus did it. And Polyphemus says, oh, I knew it. I knew it. And then he says, Father Poseidon. Odysseus is like, what?

1:07:51Father Poseidon? Poseidon is the father of Polyphemus, the Cyclops. Little did he know. Oh, he fucked up his son. Little did he know that he was blinding the son of the sea god, Poseidon. And so Polythemus curses him. May he never get home, or may he have a really, really, really, really hard time and lose all of his companions. And Poseidon listened, and that's what happened. Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider a lot, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Coal last night. But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem? Sorry, man.

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1:09:22This is locked in on him still telling the story. So everybody sat around. Yeah. Mouths open. Yeah. holy shit, this is an epic story. Yeah. And, um, what time is it? I mean, yeah, this is only one of the, it's like a fourth of the way through his long storytelling. So it's really an epic narrative. Yeah. Maybe a couple more episodes are worth kind of highlighting. So, um, eventually they make their way, their way to this other island, Cersei's island. And here's another strained woman that he has to deal with. Cersei is a divine witch goddess, sort of like Calypso style, but a little bit more kind of dangerous or dark.

1:10:09And Odysseus sends his men into the island. They see smoke coming up from this hut. And he sends his men in. He waits at the ships. The men go. They find this hut in this clearing. and there are wolves and lions just prowling around like tame animals. Strange. And then there's this, you know, enchanting lady bustling around her hut, singing these strange songs. Oh, she sees them. Oh, gentlemen, please, right this way. And they go and accept her hospitality. She feeds them and she whacks them all in the head with a magic wand and turns them into pigs. so one of the men escapes as a pig as a human right he doesn't go in all the other guys are pigs he just hustles back to Odysseus tells him what happened fucked in there there's this chick she's got a wand all the guys are pigs we shouldn't go yeah yeah let's let's the nightmare party immediately go go to the ship yeah this is like almost as bad as that Cyclops guy yeah Yeah.

1:11:19And this happens a few times on the journey. People are like, please Odysseus, can we just leave? He's like, no, I just want to see what might be in store for us here. Maybe they want to give me a present. So, and then this is another one of those instances, but he draws his sword and he's like, ready for action, charges in and Hermes stops him. and he says, Odysseus, if you go in there, you're just going to become a pig. She's going to turn you into a pig. Stop and let me help you. And he pulls out of the ground this root and it's, well, it's a plant with black root and a white flower. He says, this is moly.

1:12:04And this is not where we get the word holy moly, but if that helps you remember. Yeah. I know, I looked it up, it's like, that's too good. No, it is too good. But it is a famous plant, and he tells Odysseus the nature of this plant. It's what Homer said, the phusus of this plant. It's the phesis, where we get the word physics, nature in Greek. And a lot of philosophers have made a lot about this. We could maybe go into it, but this is the first occurrence of the word nature. The idea that there is a nature, that things have natures, is a sort of... That's an idea that had to develop. but Hermes tells him the secret of this plant and um and Odysseus like you know rubs it on himself or eats some it's not really clear what but it's a it's an antidote to her magic and so he goes in you know the pigs and the wolves and the lions are there and Cersei beckons him in and she feeds him and he plays dumb and then when she tries to whack him with the magic wand and turn him into a pig nothing happens and she's like he stands up and he draws a sword he's like all right Cersei like, jig is up.

1:13:08And she's like, how did you, how did you, you know, avoid my magic? And then she asks him, as you might expect, to go to bed with her. And Hermes had warned him that this might happen. She's going to ask you to go to bed with her. You got to do it. No choice. Take one for the team, dude. Pipe the pig lady. Come on now. mana. Yeah. And, uh, he says, but she's actually trying to unman you. It's a trick. Maybe. Who knows? But you got to get her to swear an oath that she's not going to harm you. And Odysseus makes her swear an oath. All right, we'll go to bed, but you know, no harm to me or my companions and you got to change them back.

1:13:57And so she says, fine, they still go to bed. And, uh, then she changes his men back and - Odysseus puts a shift in. Yeah. You know, the only, the only people that Odysseus hasn't had sex with so far have been Cyclops. Yeah. As far as I can see. Yeah. Well, and who knows? Because he's the one telling the story. It's the Odysseus sex tour thus far. Matt Damon's really got his work cut out for him. Known the minds of many people, many men and women. Yeah.

1:14:25And so, you know, he's taking one for the team day after day after day and it takes about a year. She's changed him back into men And, you know, look, it's a nice place, right? They get the food and there's fun little pets to play with. But the men are like, all right, Odysseus, it's been a year. You're having a good time. This is a fine enough place, but we kind of miss our homes. Can we get out of here? And so he makes her help him get on to the next stage. And the next stage, as she explains, is if you really want to get home, you have to go on a deeper, darker quest to the underworld. and, um, basically he has to go consult this is to go consult this prophet Tiresias who's dead.

1:15:15He's blind. Another blind wise person who's died famous Theban Tiresias. And to get to him, you know, you don't go down to the underworld in the Odyssey, you go out. And so you have to sail many days. And so long story short, he sails many days, you know, it gets misty and weird. And, uh, they run aground finally on a strange land and he has to do this right, dig a trench with his sword and put honey and milk and barley. And he has to sacrifice some lambs, drain their blood out into the hole. And, uh, and then the ghosts of the dead come. So like you go out and then the underworld comes to you.

1:15:57Um, and this is, I think this is one of the best scenes in the whole book, but you know, all of these wraiths come, these like gibbering wraiths and they're, they're not intelligible. Um, and they're kind of, they're not like, there's, they're not like souls, like your full identity is there. They're sort of, I don't know, insubstantial, uh, remnants of people, you might say. But to basically, to get them to speak to him, he has to let them drink this, you know, concoction in the ditch, which includes blood. So they get blood, and they kind of have a little moment of liveliness so they can actually speak face-to-face to Odysseus.

1:16:41And the first one he talks to is this guy, Alpinor, who fell off the roof and died, and Odysseus, will you bury me? Yes. All right. Next. Then he talks to Tiresias. Tiresias, um, tells him, you know, you're going to get home fine. If, if you can keep your hands and your mouth off, that's came out wrong, off the cows of the sun. And you're going to, you're going to run around on this island, the cattle of the sun. If you can restrain yourself and your men, you'll get home. But if you eat of the cows of the sun, you're going to get blasted and die. So it's going to take more kind of restraint to get home.

1:17:23And he says also, um, you know, you're, he tells him about the suitors who haven't actually arrived on the scene, but he's, he's a prophet. And so it's going to be really, really tough to get back home. And Odysseus says, all right, thank you. And, um, the other, there's also this other prophecy about a quest he has to go on, which we can omit for now. It's a very strange scene. But after that, he meets his mom because his mother has died since he's left. And he meets his mom. He lets her drink the blood. He tries to embrace her. But his hands go right through her. And she tells him that's how it is with the dead.

1:17:58You can't embrace a dead person. And she kind of explains to him how the whole afterlife thing works. And, um, which I think is important for Homer somehow that, that, that, that the knowledge that upholds civilization includes this kind of metaphysical stuff, weird afterlife stuff. That's my read at least. And then I think one of the most interesting things that is not often pointed out the first group of the dead. So he meets while he's down he meets the ghost of Achilles, ghost of Agamemnon, Hercules, a few other guys. But the first people that he meets are not these heroes, these famous heroes from the Iliad.

1:18:39It's these famous women, the mother of Amphion who built the walls of Thebes. Let's see, a few other mortals who had bedded with gods. And as he's kind of letting them drink of the blood and conversing with him, it's almost like he's satisfying his curiosity. You know, he's a very, like, intellectually capacious man. He wants to know everything. He's that kind of guy. And all of these women come, and they tell him the stories of their sons or their fathers, their brothers. They kind of tell him about these heroes that he wouldn't otherwise have access to. and um you know i had a i had a friend pass away a long time ago he was a little older than me and he was kind of a mentor and after he died i think i helped at this this moment kind of helped me realize this after he died i i was hanging out with his mom after the funeral and she was just telling me all these stories about him as a young man that i never really understood why he was so impressive or what he had to go through.

1:19:53And, um, I think, I think that this is kind of about how, how women fit into the story of the making of a hero, you know, it seems really important to me now. I never noticed it until that happened. Uh, but they're sort of serving that role, um, narrating the deeds of their, of their family, upholding order. Um, all right. And just one more person I want to mention while he's down there. among the dead is he meets Achilles. And this is the moment where you see this tension between the Iliad and the Odyssey, where Homer kind of poses the question, what is worth striving after? Achilles died young.

1:20:38He traded a long life for eternal glory. He faced that choice in the Iliad, and he made his choice, and the Iliad says that was the right choice. When Odysseus meets the ghost of Achilles, he says, Wow, you were so glorious in life, Achilles. It's amazing to meet you now that you're dead. We mourned you very much. And Achilles says to Odysseus,

1:21:06Don't make light of death in front of me. I would rather be a slave, a hireling of a man with no land to his name.

1:21:27I would rather be a hired servant, lowest status person on earth, than be king of the dead. So it's, what does that mean? Achilles is telling him, maybe glory isn't all that it's cracked out to be. Maybe Odysseus has the potential to get the better thing in life, which is continuation of his line. And the other thing that Achilles says to Odysseus is, if I had one more day of life, you know what I would do? I would go to my father's house because I have heard that there are men in my country insulting my father. And I would go and slaughter all of them. I would avenge my father's name. And by the way, have you heard any news about my son?

1:22:23So Achilles, you know, this great, brilliant, glamorous warrior from the Iliad. What he cares about in death is his family, you know? This is the thing that matters. I think that's one of the big messages of the Odyssey. What really matters in the long run? What is permanent? What can you make permanent? Is glory permanent? Is people talking about you far and wide after you died? Is that really permanence? Or is permanence sort of the biological continuation of the household?

1:23:02Odysseus is maybe the greatest hero because he manages to get both of them, which requires cunning and craft and force, but also requires luck, you know? Um, so whatever Odysseus thought of that, you know, uh, makes his way back to Circe's Island and, and there's more, there's more temptations to, to face. He has to go through the sirens, um, skillet Charybdis. They finally meet the cattle of the sun and Odysseus falls asleep, uh, at some, you know, a God put sleep upon him. Maybe it was fated. And while he's asleep, his men sacrifice and eat all the cattle of the sun. And, uh, but he doesn't, he doesn't eat of the cursed beef.

1:23:51Did he warn the men? Yes. Yes. He warned them again and again. And they said, I would rather, one of his leaders of his men says, Odysseus is asleep. He's been lying to us this whole time about this and that. But maybe he's telling the truth about the cows. Look, I'd rather eat and die than starve, waste away. We're going to die anyway. We might as well have a good time while we do it. Mm-hmm. Uh, so as soon as they eat the, the cows, the wind starts to blow. They get stuck on this island. That's why they get hungrier and hungrier. As soon, as soon as they eat the cows, the wind starts to blow and, you know, they get on the ship, lightning bolts, they all die.

1:24:38Odysseus grabs aboard and kind of floats to Circe's island, or Calypso's island. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and then he ends his story and the Phaeacians say, wow, okay. um so will you be packing soon let's get you off to your to your homeland and they send him off on on a ship back to back to back to Ithaca how easy is the journey that journey is incredibly easy he sleeps the whole time he they put him down on the on the boat he falls asleep they get all the way to Ithaca they take him off the boat he's still asleep they stick him on the shore and they stick they they loaded him up with gifts they stick all the gifts there on the shore and you know he wakes up and they're gone he's like wow uh it's like those those bastards they left me on a on a what island is this this doesn't look like my home uh but eventually it turns out that it is ithaca that they left him on it's like he fast traveled in a computer game yeah in a video game he just pressed a button and moved on the map yeah one location to another.

1:25:42Yeah, it's really weird. And I think it's kind of like, I don't know, it's like, was it all a dream? I don't know. He was crossing this boundary from the, you know, adventurous mythical world where the, and the Phaeacians are kind of close to the gods there. They don't have, there's no pirates. They have these magical ships. They have maybe these like robot dogs. It's not clear. Robot golden dogs guarding the palace. Maybe they can move. Maybe they can't homer doesn't really specify but it's it's an eerie peaceful shangri-la uh again it's kind of a temptation like he he could have stayed there and married that hot young girl it was a real temptation and she was you know she was like a young penelope too good good you know great catch but he had suffering to do he had more suffering to do uh but you know he left that all behind and i think it's like he's crossing this metaphysical boundary almost between the world of like monsters and myth to the world of a harsh reality.

1:26:43Where on the hero's journey is he? Is he six o 'clock? Is he seven o 'clock? That's a good question. So yeah, Cersei's a sort of maybe serving that wise counselor role. Maybe Tiresias is. There's a catabasis, the descent. He's come out with the knowledge that he needs to get back. So he's basically about to face the final boss. And it's a very long facing of the final boss. I mean, we're only halfway through the book at this point. It gets back. But I think it's, you know, you can dispense with it a lot quicker.

1:27:20So, but, you know, he's got to use all of these stratagems that he's been sort of developing through his sufferings. Because there's 108 suitors in the house. He has no idea if anybody of his servants are still loyal. He has no idea if one of these guys maybe has seduced his wife and they're gonna, she's gonna play real nice and when he gets home and then they're gonna stab him in his bed. Yeah, Agamemnon. Right. When does he meet his son? So Odysseus makes his way to the swine herds hut, Eumaeus. He's a pig tender and one of Odysseus' slaves, but treated him really well, loved Odysseus, did Eumaeus.

1:28:07and he offers him hospitality. You know, the suitors took all the big fat pigs, but I can give you a little kind of porker and we'll have a nice meal. You know, he hosts him for a few days and Odysseus doesn't tell him who he is. He spins this kind of cock and bull story about, you know, getting seized by Phoenicians or something. I mean, but he's keeping his cards to his chest. And then it just so happens that Telemachus gets back from his travel. He eludes the kind of ambush somehow that the suitors were trying to launch on him. And he actually makes his way to this very swineherd's hut. And that's where they meet Odysseus in disguise at first.

1:28:56And then Eumaeus goes to town. and then while he's away, Odysseus reveals himself to his son. So the first guy that he reveals who he is to is his son because he needs his son to help him launch a plan. And it's like, gradually, a couple of people find out here and there. The nurse Eurycleia figures it out and he makes her swear to not tell anybody. And he eventually tells the swineherd right before they slaughter the suitors. And his wife actually finds out very last, funny enough. But he goes into his palace. How does he find out about all of the suitors? Does he see them? Well, Telemachus tells him and Eumaeus tells him what's going on at home.

1:29:40And they say, your wife has been faithful, but he doesn't know, right? He still wants to test her. and he does in disguise, uh, eventually dressed as a beggar, you know, famously. And, and he, um, there's one, one or two cool scenes that are worth narrating about this whole arc before the, the final gratifying bloodbath. The, he goes in and he wants to kind of test out the suitors himself. He wants to see it. What is the situation in my palace? And so he goes in dressed as a beggar and he gets harassed by some, you know, goat herd along the way that was a slave of his. And he's like, all right, remember you.

1:30:24And, um, and he goes around like begging for food as the suitors are all feasting and having a good time. Didn't wash their hands, didn't pray before their meal, of course. And he goes and he asks each of them for a little bit of a little morsel. and most of them give him a morsel, but one of them, this guy Antinous is one of the kind of chief suitors of the suitors. And he says, yeah, get out of here. You're just cramping my style. You're ruining the vibe. You may ask, why did you bring this beggar in here? And Odysseus kind of taunts him, but very, very subtly is, oh, you know, you seem like such a lordly prince, Antinous.

1:31:09Zeus brings suffering on us all. You know, you might be down on your luck someday, just like I'm down on my luck. I was once like you. And Antinous is like, shut up and leave. And Odysseus knows what he's doing. He's kind of needling him. And so eventually, Antinous picks up like a footstool and he chucks it at Odysseus. And Odysseus has just been prodding He's been like riling him up, you know, very politely and very calmly. And Antinous just hurls a bench at him. He gets the kid to lose his cool. And the bench just like hits Odysseus and like nothing happens, you know. And he's like, do you feel better now?

1:31:53so i think he was he was sort of testing to see whether these were serious men confirmed his hypothesis that these are not serious men they don't know how to act a hard killer like a cold-blooded warrior would not throw a bench at a beggar i mean it's just it's ungentlemanly it's unmanly i mean if you want to if you want to get rid of this guy and you're odysseus or agamemnon or achilles you're gonna like pick him up and throw him outside yourself. You're not going to hurl a bench at him. Right. Uh, so, so he, he kind of prods, prods and tests to, to see what's going on in his household so he can come up with a plan.

1:32:34And one, one final moment that really underlines the, um, the endurance that this guy has to take. He, he's, he's been, uh, given a blanket and a little cot by his wife who doesn't know who he is. He's had a conversation with her and he's told her this tale and, um, and they give him a cot and he's, he's lying there stirring in his mind how he's going to pull it all off. And he sees the maids go out. Cause there's like 50 maids and 12 of them have basically been sleeping with the suitors. They've been seduced. Um, maybe it's not their fault, but I mean, Homer really treats it as though it's their fault.

1:33:16And Penelope is really pissed. She says, these are the maidens that have been disrespecting me and disrespecting your son. They're sleeping with the suitors and they're like not loyal to the household. They're causing me problems. They're disobedient. And, you know, they're not on our side, essentially. He sees them going out. He just wants to get them right there. It's a violent poem. but he says endure my heart you have endured worse before when the cyclops was eating your men so he has to use that same restraint that he used because if he if he had charged at the cyclops when the guy was awake you know he would have it would have been over so this is a skill that he developed yeah it's a skill he developed and he's kind of reminding himself uh that the same kind of endurance that he had in Cyclops is also helping him tolerate all the, you know, righteous indignation that he's feeling.

1:34:15Nassols in his house. Yeah, yeah. No, biding his time, biding his time. He's a man of much endurance, right? It's a marathon. And how it eventually all kind of comes to a head is Penelope

1:34:32has this idea. Who knows where she gets it? Why is Penelope in on this? So she's, she's, um, I forgot to mention, there's a kind of crisis point that comes about at the beginning of the book. So she's been weaving this funeral shroud for Laertes, Odysseus' dad, who's not dead yet, but will be dead any day now, really. and she's been telling the suitors, I just want to finish my funeral shroud and then I'll pick one of you. Let me just do my wifely duty for my old household and I'll join your household. And of course she's been weaving it during the day and unweaving it at night. She's tricking them, using the craft of Athena, right?

1:35:11But one of the maidservants actually, one of these bad ones, told the suitors what she was doing. She was tricking them. So they're like, all right, you have to decide now. We know this is all bullshit about your, good bitch you fucking knitting and unknitting yeah yeah they've they've had enough and uh and so she's basically feeling like she has to has to pick now but she comes up with this contest all right maybe Odysseus is coming back she's getting all these signs you know Odysseus in disguise says I think your husband's coming back I really think he's coming back and you should just wait another day.

1:35:51And she's like, I have this idea for a contest. And she tells it to him and he says, you should do exactly that. That is exactly what you will do, which is get out Odysseus's bow, right? And set up these axes that whoever strings his bow, it's like a big, hard recurve bow that nobody could string but him. And they could shoot the arrow through the axe holes whoever does that first can marry me. And, um, and you know, it's a perfect kind of trick. It's a perfect contest because it brings out this memetic rivalry. Like the suitors all go in and start trying to string the bow and none of them can even get the string on the bow.

1:36:43It's just too big. And, you know, they're just not strong enough. And every, practically every single time they're like, oh, I failed to string the bow of Odysseus. I do not measure up to Odysseus. It kind of underlines the fact that this was what it was all about in the first place, trying to usurp Odysseus's status, credibility, and his wife. And then, of course, he's a beggar still. He's, let me try it out, young lads. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Beg, no, this would, no. And they're afraid, and they say this, what if he actually strings the bow? What if this loser from out of town strings the bow?

1:37:27He's gonna make us all look bad.

1:37:31And he manages to get his hands on the bow and, of course, shoots the arrow through. And they're like, shit. Well, now we're ashamed. But, of course, by this time, And Telemachus has hid all the weapons and the armor. Odysseus has had the swineherd lock the door. He's had Eurycleia bolt the other doors. All the women are out. Penelope's out safe. They're all trapped in this prison. And Odysseus shoots them all down, spears them. Hang on a second. So he's closed all of the doors. And now it's killing time. It's killing time. But it's just him. He's not bringing his son in to do it too. So his son is there with him.

1:38:14His son is there with him. And he's got two guys, two other guys. There's basically four of them on 108. Which, you know, it's the goat herd and this, is it a cow herd, Philoetius, one other guy. But like, you're not, not like Iliadic warriors. Like just, you know, worker dudes. And it's two worker dudes, his son and he himself. and then all these suitors who are not entirely unarmed, but I mean, still 108 guys, you might think they could take him. But he set it up so well, he had to get them off guard. He had to have the bow, this great deadly bow that only he could use. He had to have the weapons sequestered away and he kills the leaders first.

1:39:09And Antinous, the guy who insulted him with the bench, first to get an arrow through the throat. He's like lifting up a cup and then this is doesn't suspect what's going on. And instant death. And it's a bloodbath. It really is a bloodbath. If you've been an 18-year-old kid just waiting for the action scene, it's very satisfying. Spears through guts and faces and such. Yeah. And basically, they all die. Every single one of them. Even the ones that are arguably less guilty than the others. There's a kind of communal guilt. Some people think that he took it too far. Homer doesn't think that he took it too far.

1:40:00The justice of Zeus was coming down upon them. That's how everybody talks about it in the story. One guy sneaks up to Odysseus and grabs him by the knees. Leodes, the prophet, begs for his life. Odysseus, gosh, I was always trying to tell them to lay off. I never touched your maidens. I was always the voice of reason. Odysseus says, well, you're a prophet. I'm pretty sure that if you were here for four years, you prophesied many things to them about me being dead. And maybe you prophesied to your own heart that you would walk away with my wife. So die. And he drives a sword through him. it's just like it's terrifying he's become and there's there's a similar scene of failed mercy in the iliad too or achilles kills a young kid that's it's really ugly it's really disturbing um but that's sometimes what it takes i guess to reestablish the patriarchy but one final note on the bow in the iliad the bow is a shameful weapon it's not honorable to to kill somebody with a bow and you could kill them with a spear.

1:41:14You don't face them, you know, head on. It's not man to man challenging them. The bow is a kind of tricky weapon. Paris uses the bow. He's this unmanly playboy Trojan. Pandarus shoots Menelaus. It's a kind of sucker punch move. And, you know, Odysseus does his dirty work with the bow. I think that's kind of like, it's a bit, you know, well, it's a weapon of trickery, doesn't obey the rules of honor. But if you want to win at all costs, if you want to reestablish justice, maybe you need to be willing to use those weapons of trickery to kind of bracket the whole honorable warrior thing and do what needs to be done.

1:42:07And that's at least one interpretation of how it all ends. Yeah. And that's how the story ends? Well, actually, the story ends with all the suitors dead. And then immediately, Odysseus, so they actually end up hanging the 12 maidens who were sleeping with the suitors. A couple of other people get punished. But, and they clean the place up, heap up the bodies. And Odysseus tells them, all right, Like a lot of these guys' dads are nearby in the town. Some of them are off, you know, across the seas. We have to throw a party right now and make it sound like we're having a really good time so they don't suspect anything.

1:42:53So they start cooking up meats and they start playing music and it's really bizarre. But they're basically trying to buy time before people find out that there's been a slaughter of some of the most prominent young men on the island. And probably my favorite scene at the end is you actually get a snapshot of the suitors gibbering wraiths going down into Hades and wailing. Agamemnon and Achilles, the ghosts of Agamemnon and Achilles, just talking there. shooting the breeze. And, um, and the suitors come down and they're like, Oh, Odysseus slaughtered us. And Agamemnon says, that's my boy. And, uh, you know, um, they had it coming of course, and the suitors complained and, but, um, really interesting, like a final moment there.

1:43:57Agamemnon says,

1:44:01amazing work, Penelope. Penelope, the wife that I didn't have, that stayed faithful this whole time. And he says, there's a kind of ambiguity in the Greek. He says, the glory of this person will last and be on the lips because of Penelope's virtue for the rest of time. Who is this person? Most translators, I'm paraphrasing, but most translators say, the glory of Penelope will always redound and she will be an honor to women. But one interpretation is that the glory of Odysseus will last forever because of Penelope's virtue, which will be sung among women. And why is that interesting or important?

1:44:52I think the message would be Homer sees Penelope's faithfulness and her trickiness. I mean, this bow scheme was really smart on her part, even though she didn't really know. She had this intuition maybe. Penelope was crucial to the story of the greatest hero that ever lived. He could not have become Odysseus, the best of the Achaeans, without Penelope's help. And it's not like Penelope gets glory and Odysseus get glory. They both get glory because they were a unit together. And that's kind of the Greek archetype of the matriarch, of like, what a good, what is like happiness for a woman? It's to uphold the glory of a great household, in short.

1:45:39But, you know, the ending is very weird. The actual ending is like, the townspeople form up a posse and Odysseus forms up a posse and they kind of, they start a battle, you know, a revenge battle. And then Athena kind of descends from heaven and says, stop. It's a deus ex machina. It's like the first deus ex machina, you know, the God coming from on high and kind of solving this unsolvable problem in the plot. But, you know, the God makes peace and then a couple of people die. Odysseus kills a couple of guys, but then the battle stops and they all go home and shake hands. Peace is reestablished somehow.

1:46:25So he's got the favor of the gods. It seems like he's had mostly favor of the gods throughout, apart from Poseidon. Yeah, he's got the favor of the Olympian gods of order, of Zeus and Athena. he eventually wins over poseidon like after the time frame of the story like teresius tells him how he's gonna um like make amends with poseidon he doesn't have the favorite there's a lot of divine forces he has to struggle with the sirens and skill and charybdis and the sun god kind of spares him helios but but he he has the favor of the gods because he is pious and this is pointed it out at the very beginning of the poem.

1:47:05He was always very meticulous doing sacrifices. He was always, okay, he's a tricky liar, but only to his enemies. You know, he doesn't defraud a friend. He's a just man. And, you know, that's part of the lesson of the poem. Like, the good do win. This is not clear in the Iliad. But there's a kind of, there's two divine, two versions of divine justice, you might say. One of them is eye for an eye, Hatfield and McCoy, you kill my guy, I kill your guy. And then my son's going to kill your son and your son's going to... And it just never stops. That's the kind of uncivilized, brute, like, fury's justice.

1:47:47But Zeus and Athena represent this kind of... The kind of justice that puts quarrels to an end, that actually makes a settlement that people can live in peace again. And so that's the kind of justice that the Odyssey cares about, that Zeus himself, Homer has Zeus himself say that the world actually is a fair place if you play by the rules. Look, mortals think that we bring suffering upon them, but it's generally they who bring suffering upon themselves. Just this is a case in point. The guy who resties murdered his uncle. He had it coming. You know, we told him, we told him not to murder his own cousin and seduce his cousin's wife, but he did it anyway.

1:48:29And so what do you know? He got what was coming. So revenge, another big thing. Yeah. Yeah. Very much revenge. Revenge is absolutely a part of justice, but you, but it like can't go on forever. Maybe that's what the end of the poem is. It's kind of about like, you know, there's a danger there at the end that it's going to keep spiraling and spiraling spiraling, never end. But I don't know, the gods intervene to make sure that doesn't happen. And somehow it's important to get to that point somehow as a civilization after something bad has happened. Now that we know what the story is, are there any other elements of the writing process or Homer, Homer's role, how it was written, the history of this thing coming to light that are interesting?

1:49:12Yeah, I think that this oral poetry thing is really interesting. So Nolan is apparently casted this rapper, Travis Scott, I think. I think he's from Houston. I should know him better. But anyway, as a bard, as Demonicus, I think maybe, maybe as Femius. Because, hey, Homer is oral poetry. Rap is oral poetry. So maybe there's something to that. But, you know, I think that one of the differences between what we think of as like slam poetry, oral poetry, or rap, is that a kind of pillar of the moral universe in the way that Homer is a pillar of the moral universe? The way these bars kind of - Pious.

1:50:01When I think rap, I don't usually think pious. Would you have left, if you were going off to the Trojan War, would you have left your wife with Chance the Rapper. Yes. Or even Bob Dylan, for that matter. I mean, Alan Ginsberg. Lord Byron, would you have left your wife with Lord Byron? You know, I mean, it's a different mindset. But there's some parallels. The really interesting thing about oral poetry and the oral

1:50:39mental model of the universe or the kind of mental universe of cultures that don't have writing. You know, if you, um, if you go to an oral culture and you tell somebody, here's what I want done, like, you know, detailed list of instructions, they'll be like, all right. And they'll go and do exactly what you told them to do. And then when they come back, they'll say, here's what you told me to do. They'll say verbatim what you told them to do, because the brain has just been so trained to store oral information. When the pilgrims came to Massachusetts in the 1600s, they were shocked at the Native Americans' ability to just repeat verbatim.

1:51:30Like, you know, these Indian tribes, whatever, they didn't speak English. Like, you could say a sentence to them, and they would repeat the exact sentence back to you like perfectly verbatim without understanding a word. It was just, that was part of what you get when you don't have writing is you have to really have this high fidelity oral brain. And when oral poetry encounters a written paradigm, when writing starts to be the way you store knowledge, you sort of lose that ability. It's like Google Maps, you know? Now I don't know my way around my own town. Something gets offloaded cognitively.

1:52:12And that's, I think, one of the reasons why Homer is this glimpse of the way that people think in this world that is lost to us. We can't really go back. Once you have writing, it's too advantageous to ignore. Your enemies are going to beat you if you try to not have a written culture. It's just so powerful. You need writing to have science and philosophy and all kinds of stuff, record keeping. But something is also lost. Yeah, yeah. Something is profoundly lost. This tradition of storytelling and also like the role of the storytellers shifts. Like it, I don't know. The storyteller isn't like the pillar of society that he is in Homer.

1:53:01And I think you have to understand that to understand like why Homer has so much pro-barred propaganda in the Iliad, for example. But I do think it's still, these things still matter. The stories that we tell still really matter a lot for people's, you know, ability to face their own problems and happiness and confidence in life. But it's not so visceral for us. How are you feeling in advance of the movie coming out? I'm going to see it as soon as I can. I mean, you know, it looks pretty awesome. People have complained about some casting choices. Let's say, you know, Helen of Troy seems to be an Ethiopian by the Greek.

1:53:43Great at parting. Yes. Which are great at parting. So maybe there's, maybe there's a logic to it. But I, you know, people complain about the Lystragonians. So I didn't mention, I don't think I mentioned the Lystragonians. This is one of these monstrous people that Homer eats. Like after he meets the Cyclops, there are these giant people. They're not like super giants, but they're giant enough. And they try to, you know, see if they can get a gift from the Lystragonians or maybe make a little alliance and his men meet them and they just get eaten. So the Lystragonians just charge out in force and slaughter the Greeks.

1:54:21They're the ones that are depicted with this sort of futuristic steel armor, plate mail armor. People complained about that. Oh, it's not historically accurate. I think that it's really cool. Even if I don't like the way Nolan tells the story, which I don't know. I think he's a great director. He's filmed the whole thing on IMAX. It's the first time it's ever been done. It's almost three hours.

1:54:47It's really excited about how we're talking about the odyssey and we're debating about it like just having the the debate about what does this mean i think i think it it tells you something about what's going on in culture that people care about this a lot that that that nolan would get so much criticism and so much attention on from either direction i think it shows that we sort of need this story somehow um so you're gonna see it i will absolutely go and see it uh i also have an admission to make which is for the first time in history i've decided to put my uh like personal burnout health ahead of the podcast uh we had the offer to do half an hour with half the cast and half an hour with the other half of the cast all on a single round table in new york in 10 days time but i'd already booked to go and take like the one digital detox week that i've ever done so i'd already booked this meditation retreat and i've been working up to it and it's something i really needed and i promised myself in january that i was going to take this time off and manana manana manana for like you know 150 days or whatever like 25 weeks until i get to this i've got this thing booked and then it was like yeah sure like of course i love nolan i love i love the odyssey it's going to be exciting matt damon's a legend again you know when when it happen so the media week is precisely at the back end of when you're supposed to be doing this thing and i tossed and turned last week about it and uh just the coin fell on the side of i've made way too many sacrifices for like eight years of doing the show 1100 episodes and i was like i i think it's going to be kind of a i really hope that i don't fucking regret it um but it feels like a symbolic decision uh to do something that helps my peace of mind and my longevity as opposed to like fire up the fucking engines again let's do it let's spin up this huge production in new york as opposed to this one thing that was supposed to be for me so anyway all that being said i'm gonna have i'll be conflicted watching it because i'll be thinking fuck like that the one of the big moments of the movie's promo could have been or two of the big moments right tom holland would have been on the show.

1:57:01But... I'm pretty excited for it. It looks pretty cool. I'm not so excited for what might end up being another culture war. Flashpoint, you know, Nolan, the stories that he puts out are controversial because of what happens inside of the movie. is inception at the end of inception is he in a dreamer is he in reality tenet is the guy secretly the father of the main dude or is he actually not related or um that's cool casting choices is this some sort of cultural commentary that's less cool so i'm kind of not i hope that that doesn't happen because i'm a massive fan of everything that nolan's done I wouldn't want it to be tarnished by that but yeah I'd be I'll be excited by that I guess do you know if he's used the Emily Wilson translation as the source material he's talked about that yeah uh how do you feel about that uh well he's commented on uh you know her calling Odysseus a complicated man um I think um yeah this is like the first line of the poem tell me muse of a complicated man it's how she translates this polytropos many turned And to me, that sounds like he's a man of many issues.

1:58:20I think that this is a guy that divine nymphs fall in love with. He's like the most badass of all the Greeks that got back from Troy. Not the kind of guy that you would call complicated, probably. Complicated just seems a little bit like... How would you translate it? What's many tons to you in that? Well, that's the kind of almost... Somebody might say, well, that's a failure to translate. It's just, you know, you have to interpret it to translate it. Polytropos. Tropos is this really multivalent word. It means turn, like he could be turning around in various places, kind of spinning about the seas.

1:59:00A turn is like a trick. There's many tricks. Or at least in later Greek, it's a character. It's like a kind of, tropoi is like your character. He could be a man of many sort of guises, many, many sort of personas that he can inhabit. So I think that the word is about alluding to his master of craft and trickery, not to his moral ambiguity. I think this would be my main... I wonder how Nolan's going to deal with this because... And he said something about... Homer says, lying Odysseus said to her, I will tell you the truth, my lady. He is a liar, strategically. But I don't think that... My sense is that Wilson suspects Homer feels ambivalent.

2:00:02about Odysseus. Like, is he really a hero worth emulating? What do you think Homer feels about Odysseus? 100 % worth emulating. But that doesn't mean he's perfect. Like, you can be the greatest hero and somebody to admire, but you can also make mistakes. But, you know, like, giving your name to the Cyclops, falling asleep when your comrades try to, you know, are at risk of opening up the bag of the winds or eating the cattle in the sun, or even, you know, being a little too curious. Like curiosity is a vice in some Greek philosophy, like wanting to know too much without necessarily having an end in mind.

2:00:44And this curiosity is brought up by the sirens example, where he wants to know what the sirens say, plugs up his companion's ear with the wax and doesn't plug up his, but he gets himself tied to the mast. Maybe that was playing with the line. He ended fine from it. But I don't think that Homer questions Odysseus' values, which is civilization over barbarism, order over chaos, patriarchy over anarchy. That doesn't seem complicated. That part doesn't seem complicated to me. How long has it been since we've had a movie that was a relatively simplistic hero? I mean, the closest thing has been fucking Top Gun 2.

2:01:34And like, even in that, Tom Cruise is trying to do this retcon, make the son of my ex-flight partner feel okay about me. there's this like supplanted patriarch thing that's going on where the parental figure comes back into his life and it's the redemption of the son through the success of the new father, which is the old father's, like that, I guess. I remember looking at this video essay that explained how the world of the hero is just unsatisfactory anymore. For some reason, has removed from movies that it's no longer enough for protagonists who wants to make the world a better place to work real hard, overcome challenges, be flawed, but get through.

2:02:32Now it has to be somebody who has a dark streak and needs a kind of redemption that's not quite there. And then you get to come full circle all the way back around to something that's more like Suicide Squad, which is the bad guys are actually the good guys but the only way that they can be the good guys is if they are their bad guy self and their badness is the virtue in their badness is closer to congruence than it is to actual virtue it's like they just know who they are and they are who they are and they're deployed and all of the uh motivations for why they do these things they're pulled around and then loki is loki in avengers is he really part of the hero he flip-flops back and forth so much you don't really land in a satisfying place with him he's more a question mark even though he ends up being unbelievably powerful and fucking captain marvel who's the most powerful person in the universe appears to be fucking off just like doing bullshit all the time like why are you not anyway um i get the sense that that like complicated hero thing is kind of more so obviously it's in some ways is richer right because there's conflict and there's tension um but i would i think it would be cool to just see what an uncomplicated virtuous hero that's flawed and overcomes his flaws what that would look like like just follow me the fucking hero's journey please like just follow me some campbell shit from 12 to 12 and let's see let's see how that feels in 2026 um i don't want that to have to be an asterisk after after every hero of good but let's not forget let's not forget when he you know that's and i i i've got it in my head that um part of the reason what i'm doing with the show at the moment spending time doing more stories which you're just the fucking best at it's your storytelling ability is like out of this world learn from the best um also doing episodes where it's just me and the boys hanging just chilling out talking about what we've got going on uh more um storytelling from other areas of life too like uh war stories and things like that from from special forces guys A big part of that is I think people have got a degree of exhaustion with overthinking.

2:05:01I think there's a big anti-optimization trend at the moment that we're feeling. And it's not necessarily people being against optimization. I think it's people being against the fatigue of trying to be perfect. And that is, at least in part, fed into by the fact that they're overwhelmed with information. And they feel like there is more input than they have time to be able to metabolize it. this line that i came up with last year that most people consume information the same way that they consume calories and too high of a dosage to be able to metabolize and that was great 500 years ago when there was like three books that you could read uh and almost everybody in the village couldn't read uh and maybe there wasn't a printing press i don't know that was like 1400s i think something like that um not so good now when there's an abundance we've gone from scarcity problem to an abundance problem.

2:05:47Same thing, calorie sparse to calorie dense, information sparse to information dense. People are sort of like, oh, fuck, like I'm just a little overwhelmed with all of this. I don't want everything to feel like homework. I don't want everything to feel like there needs to be a decision that's made to it. You know, we're going through a bunch of big business decisions on the show. And like some of the guys that I'm dealing with, I'm seeing in them, even these very, very impressive business people who are at the forefront of what they do. there is a sense when i'm speaking to them of dude just fucking tell me what i want like can you not can you just fucking tell me what i want please can you just give me a thing that you are high conviction in and just deliver that i'm like i get it i get it that there is a fatigue an exhaustion that a lot of people have and i wonder very long-winded way of saying i wonder whether or not movies are going to start to mirror that with simplicity in the heroes again complexity in the story simplicity in the hero um you know we had adolescence that thing on netflix that was about um young boys in the uk and one of the reasons kind of you know pretty majestically that the the series made such an impact was that it did not really tell you what to think.

2:07:09There was a lot of question at the end. How much was the young boy actually impacted by what he'd seen on the internet? How much was he a disciple of the manosphere and like an incel? How much was he to blame versus the lack of supervision that had come from his parents? How much did the parents blame themselves? Was this a righteous comment on overreaches of the internet or just male loneliness like both sides kind of raw shock test it to see it as the their own propaganda to some degree um is this kid a psychopath did he at what point does a boy become a man and then therefore become culpable for his own actions and what that resulted in was just this fucking furor of people debating what this means how important what should we take away from this like just tell me that how many times do people want to find out um ask nolan well is uh can't remember the guy that leonardo is leonardo dicaprio's characters in the dream world or is he alive it's like in some ways that's not even nolan's decision to make after you get to that stage of a story it's almost on you but because of the lack of conclusion it sucks in speculation and that's what drives a lot of the conversation about this stuff um i just generally get the sense and sort of making a bet at the moment that i like telling people what to think but just a little bit more simplicity i think of the opportunity to uh sort of sit back in your own mind and just observe things as they go and not feel like this is another fucking decision i need to make or there's more like work that i've got to do i'm kind of exhausted by all of this stuff my future is ai going to take my job in 10 years time i don't know what about the middle east apparently i should be worried about that there's like some problems with gas prices i hear are inflation like taiwan do something with computer chips and i don't really know what i'm supposed to do all of that together is making people fucking exhausted and if you're not careful people are going to find escapes that are way more destructive than just being able to relinquish listen to an awesome historian tell a story for a couple of hours the oldest story that's ever been written and oh okay that oh i've had a bit of a reprieve isn't that nice and um i i you can't iterate movies as quickly i can iterate this podcast three times a week and i have done for you know a very long time um and i can lick my finger and sort of tell where the cultural winds are going.

2:09:50And also what, what most of this is just me doing it for me. Like I don't want to leave and feel like I've got this big laundry list of things to do. I'm just left with like interesting philosophical questions and insights about the virtue of loyalty and justice and revenge. And when you're supposed to apply aggression and when you're supposed to sit back and when you're supposed to be diplomatic and when you can be crafty and whether lying is justified in that, all of that stuff's just nice. I don't feel burdened by it. I don't feel burdened by learning about the story of the Odyssey in the same way as I feel burdened if it's some very prescriptive new life direction that I need to take.

2:10:30And here is a huge, big list of all of these things. But actually there's not that much conclusion because maybe veganism might not be the... Dude, just fucking... Either make it simple and direct or just give me a little bit of chance to breathe. And I think at the moment, at least I'm feeling in me, that's a motivation that I'm enjoying. That's a sense, a tether that I'm being pulled forward through. And maybe we'll see that crossover into other mediums as well. So this is a good time for Homer to come back for that reason, I think. Because I think that this is, there is a kind of moral simplicity in a lot of ways to Homer, but he tells the story from multiple perspectives.

2:11:26partly because he's just like Nolan, you know, he's got a wide audience. Homer is, you know, these epic poets travel from city to city. They're going from Aeolus to Sparta to wherever, Ithaca. And they have different people of different classes and different tastes everywhere. And, you know, they got to get a story about Odysseus to work for a lot of different people. Some people are going to want to take the side of Odysseus or some people are going to see themselves in the suitors, or maybe that's not a great example. But, you know, some people are going to say, hey, this is a lying bastard.

2:12:02And other people are going to say, no, he did what he had to do. And that's kind of, that's on you. Like, to draw out the message is not so much the poet's job. I mean, he can have his own opinion, but really his job is to help you get charmed, get disengaged, like Odysseus does for the the Phaeacians, like the bards do in the story. And I think also, if I could kind of allegorize a little bit, the sirens in particular that we didn't go into too much. I think they're really, it's a timely image because, you know, for me, I kind of autobiographize Odysseus going to the sirens. All right. The sirens are these divine, they're kind of like bad bards.

2:12:47They're these women who sing whatever they sing and they make you just want to go and listen to them. And piled up in front of the siren's island is just rotting bones of people who started listening and they could just never leave and they starved and died. And I think the reason that Odysseus wants to hear is because he's this man of great curiosity. And when they actually speak to him, Homer, no, Odysseus tells them, the Phaeacians, he tells what the sirens told him. And the sirens say, we can tell you the story of everything that happened to Troy. All the things that you didn't know, and I'm paraphrasing, but like all the things you didn't know about the backstory, what was going on at Troy, all of the different, you know, perspectives of the generals that you were trying to guess at, but you just couldn't know.

2:13:40Well, we know them. We know everything that happens on earth. They can give him infinite knowledge that whether or not they would say the same thing to his crew, that's what they're saying to him. And this is the thing that a man of those kind of proclivities wants most in life, or at least he knows the power of that insider knowledge, that special insight into the universe, the moly. He's seen how powerful it is to know the secrets of a little plant, the kind of power he can give you. what if I could find out something interesting that I could apply to my morning routine from the sirens and it you know for me I think it's also the temptation of being an academic is one of the reasons I left academia because well it's one of the reasons I was in it because I had this I just tell me more tell me more tell me more I want to read more I want to find out the the the end of that story or oh geez five more books I need to read and and that can if you if If you follow that too far, you end up potentially a rotting pile of bones at the feet of the sirens and never getting home and never doing what you need to do.

2:14:45It's this kind of temptation of knowledge. And, you know, maybe there's a person or two in your audience that can relate to the temptation of the university, but we can all relate to the doom scroll. Like, and it's often, it's not just like, it's not stupid humor all the time. A lot of it is you tell yourself, I'm going to get some insight on what the Bitcoin price is going to do from this Iran thing. And, oh, well, how can I ignore that? Blah, blah, blah. And it all seems actionable. It's constructed. It feels important. It feels important. It's designed to feel important because it's risen up in the algorithm.

2:15:23And I think this is really speaks to a profound inclination that people have, a temptation that people face that leads in not just to inaction, you know, but to unreflection too. Well, certainly if you're permanently on absorb, you have very little time to do reflect. If the fire hose of new information is bukkaking you in the face, you don't have that much time to think about what you've already ingested, said Bonnie. and when at wise age yeah yeah yeah the philosopher b blue um that that sense of i'm drowning in information i don't know what to do about it this was a line that i had a bill thompson this this old uh informations expert from worked at three letter agencies US, uh, like army.

2:16:24He was basically the special forces queue from James Bond. And, um, he would help them to get to where they needed to. He would take phones apart, do all this sort of stuff. And I was asking him, my current working theory is not that most of the propaganda and most of it, even the information online is trying to make people convinced of any one narrative. It's to drown them in so much information that they become, uh, apathetic and they just sort of give up entirely now that might be that at some point in future that apathy can be formed into something useful and sort of thrust forward in like some vector um but for the most part i think when you when you fire hose people with information after long enough they just go i dude i'm fucking i have no idea if you try and go down any rabbit hole any conspiracy rabbit hole for every one that you find out there is an equal and opposite the physics of the conspiracy system For every conspiracy, there is an equal and opposite conspiracy, which is even deeper.

2:17:21And then there's an equal and opposite one. The iceberg never stops. It just comes out the other side of the planet. And that's the tip of the other side of the iceberg. So yeah, this endless Ouroboros of just looking at uncertainty and information. And yeah, I think I'm certainly feeling, I'm feeling detached. I'm feeling somewhat salved after getting in touch with something that's got a bit more firm foundations. And this is what you've got to think is so appealing to a person like Alcinous, maybe, or a person like Odysseus, or a guy like Julius Caesar, about a great story like that. Because they've just got information coming in them, and decisions to make, and all the time.

2:18:04And a long narrative is a way of slowing down your brain and reflecting. But it's not just entertainment. It has it has something useful in there, that narrative structure. We're like programs to

2:18:22ingest and process information in that way much more effectively in long form when it's put into a story. Yeah. Because we can remember it and we can actually store that framework of here's what happened with Odysseus and then we can draw lessons out of it years and years later that we need because we have that archetypal narrative within us. And I think this is one of the reasons why an oral culture like the Greeks spent so much time on these kinds of stories about heroes, about somebody to emulate. And mind you, they're not simplistic. I mean, the Odyssey doesn't... He makes a lot of mistakes.

2:19:08You can debate about his actions. The Greeks would debate about his actions. I mean, a lot of the later Greeks thought he was a bad guy. He was a liar. He's a cheater. A lot of the later Greeks thought he was the greatest hero. I mean, there's admits of debate. And if you brought back real hero stories that didn't always have them having a meth addict addiction on the side or banging their secretary in secret, you could still have complexity, you don't have to undermine everybody with a kind of secret mob story or a very open mob story. I think we need more of that to get through what we're, what we're facing.

2:19:46A lot of us at least. Heck yeah. Alex Petkus, ladies and gentlemen, dude, you're the best. Where should people go to check out all the amazing things you do? Cost of Glory podcasts available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, at Cost of Glory on X, costofglory.com, costofglory, costofglory, costofglory. pretty easy to find filler for me dude until next time let's come up with something else to talk about do it alright goodbye my beauties see you next time dude yeah fucking the man so good so good a burst pipe a dead water heater the AC calling it quits who do you call HomeServe is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs with plans covering stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't instead of scrambling for a contract you make one call to get the repair process started.

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