Episode #228 - You Talkin' About Myths, Baby? (ft. Liv Albert)

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Are you familiar with the story of Medea?

She's a character from the world of ancient Greek mythology who's most closely associated with the tale of Jason and the Argonauts.

Medea was a woman with a knowledge of magic from the Black Sea region of Colchis.

She was instrumental in helping Jason secure the long-sought-after golden fleece.

However, Medea's story ends in tragedy.

After falling in love with Jason, she bore him two children and returned with him to the city of Corinth.

But soon the former Argonaut decided that the foreign-born mother of his children was not the most politically advantageous partner.

If he was to marry the comely daughter of the local king Creon, that would be the making of a mighty dynasty.

So he made the fateful decision to set aside Medea and marry a princess.

This was a huge mistake.

In her grief and rage, Medea killed both of her children to punish Jason for his fickle ways.

Then, in some versions of the story, Medea Medea makes her escape from Corinth in a flying chariot pulled by dragons.

And this, my friends, is why I love Greek mythology.

The Medea story truly contains multitudes.

It's a rumination on gender dynamics, murderous rage, and feminine power, while also being a wild-ass tale where a a previously unintroduced dragon chariot can just appear.

But even that very brief summary of Medea that I just laid out for you is an amalgamation of a number of different traditions.

The earliest version of Medea's story is preserved in the work of the archaic Greek poet Hesiod, but many of the best-known details about her myth have come down to us from the play Medea by the beloved Athenian playwright Euripides.

Her story was then fleshed out much later by the Roman poet Ovid.

There are many centuries that separate Hesiod, Euripides, and Ovid, and as a result, each artist has his own twist on the character of Medea, informed by the intervening years of oral storytelling and artistic production.

Which version of the Medea story should we accept as the definitive telling?

Well, as my guest today has reminded me, that question deeply misunderstands the nature of myth.

There is no definitive version of a myth, because myth is a living tradition.

Myths are forever evolving, both informing and responding to culture.

This is why myths can be contradictory and often refuse to play by the rules of logic or chronology.

Mythological features can be malleable.

Their characteristics can change depending on who is telling the story and in what context.

Every version of a myth is part of the mythological whole.

And this might be why myths continue to break my brain.

This insight into the nature of mythology came from the podcaster Liv Albert, host of the long-running classical mythology podcast, Let's Talk About Myths, Baby.

And yes, you do need to sing it like the salt and pepper song.

Liv has spent the last eight years diving deep into the world of Greek and Roman mythology on a quest to celebrate what is wonderful about those tales while while also being critical of how this mythological tradition has been used and abused.

What other deep insights into the nature of myth can we squeeze out of Live Albert?

Let's find out today on our fake history.

Episode number 228.

You talking about myths, baby?

Hello, and welcome to Our Fake History.

My name is Sebastian Major, Major and this is the podcast where we explore historical myths and try to determine what's fact, what's fiction, and what is such a good story.

It simply must be told.

Before we get going this week, I just want to let everyone listening know that you can hear this podcast ad-free if you become a patron.

Go to patreon.com slash our fake history and start supporting at $5 or more every month to get access to an ad-free feed and a library's worth of patrons-only Our Fake History extra episodes, including shows on Eldorado, Merlin, Nicola Tesla, and finally

the episode on the Bronze Age Collapse.

Yes, friends, the long-promised extra episode is just about done.

I will be releasing that to the patrons within the next week or two.

I promise.

That show will be available to patrons supporting at all levels, even the $1

folks.

So it's never been a better time to sign up for Patreon.

This week, we have one of my occasional interview episodes.

My guest today is Liv Albert.

Liv is the host, creator, writer, editor, and producer of Let's Talk About Myths, baby.

The podcast looks at the vast canon of Greek and Roman mythology and presents the story in a way that is deeply researched and thoroughly told.

Liv also does not hold back on the details of the stories that have been sugarcoated and treated with kid gloves over the millennia.

She also brings a fresh modern analysis to many of these tales.

Liv has a degree in English literature and classics from Concordia University in Montreal.

In her time hosting Let's Talk About Myths, Liv has interviewed many of the world's leading mythology experts and classicists.

She is also the author of two books on Greek mythology, Greek Mythology, The Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Handbook, and Nectar of the Gods, a book of mythologically inspired cocktail recipes.

She also just started work on a new adaptation of the Odyssey for young readers.

Liv was gracious enough to join me for a chat over Zoom from her home in Toronto, my old stomping grounds.

Now, as you will hear, we really ended up getting deep in this chat.

This is one that I think will be of particular interest to those of you who really know your Greek mythology and have a good understanding of ancient history already.

Because we're both nerds for this stuff, we kind of hit the ground running here and go really deep into the nuances of these stories.

We also end up jumping right into the world of Athenian drama and Roman poetry.

So, in case you get lost, you should know that Euripides, Aeschylus, and Aristophanes were all Athenian dramatists who wrote many of the plays that have survived from classical Athens.

We also get talking about the myths of Oedipus, Helen of Troy, Medea, and Medusa.

And to be honest, the way the conversation evolved, we didn't really stop to give those stories their full context.

So if you're not sure what we are talking about, you may need to stop and look some of those up.

But I know that most of you listening are real heads for this stuff.

So I trust that you'll be able to follow along.

In the end, this was a really fun conversation.

I love getting into the weeds on all of this stuff, and Liv is clearly the same kind of person.

So I really hope you enjoy this chat.

Without any further ado, here is my conversation with Liv Albert from Let's Talk About Myths, baby.

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Okay, Liv, thank you so much for being a guest on Our Fake Fake History.

Welcome.

Thank you so much.

I am very excited

to, I mean, to just to speak history, but also to a fellow Canadian podcaster.

Yes, yeah.

No, obviously before we started recording here, we were talking about how the Canadian podcasters in this world need to stick together.

So, okay, let's talk about myths, baby.

It is now well over 600 episodes deep.

Congratulations.

700 today.

Thank you.

700.

I didn't even notice.

I know I punched it in when I hit schedule yesterday and thought, oh, I've really done a lot of episodes.

Well done.

That is like incredibly impressive.

So you're now 700 episodes deep.

What keeps you excited about classical mythology?

And what keeps you coming back to those stories?

I mean, I think that they are absolutely endless.

I mean, and in all honesty, the 700 is also that over the past years, I've started having conversations with scholars, experts, novelists in the field.

And so we've gone pretty far beyond mythology at this point.

The episode I released today was about

Rome's colonization of North Africa and then France's later colonization of North Africa.

So, you know, we really expand at this point well beyond myth.

But personally, I think myth is one of these things where as soon as you get deep enough into the context around it, the understanding of it, you realize that like

you can study it forever and still come up with new

ideas, new conclusions.

Like it's really because of sort of how these stories were developed, they are.

absolutely like timeless but in a way where apparently you can also just create

thousands and thousands of hours of content and still never run out.

Yeah, well, and it doesn't hurt that the stories have been iterated on so many times, right?

Like even within the kind of classic mythological canon, there's all sorts of little sort of tweaks on the tales.

And I found in my own journey through this stuff that often stories that I thought I knew.

are deeply strange and quite different when you go to like the earliest versions of them.

Yeah, the actual sources themselves.

Yeah.

Well, people love to forget because I mean, not even love to forget.

It's more just the way that we are kind of taught to understand myth, unless you are in as deep as I now am.

You know, we're taught to understand myth as sort of like a typical story, beginning, middle, end, you know, and that these are sort of the set ones with these set details.

But I mean, once you do some digging, you realize, oh, well.

For the Greek myths alone, we're talking 800 years of culture developing in that time.

So nothing's going to stay the same.

You know, I use this comparison with my listeners all the time.

Like, you know, the difference between Shakespeare and now, like, that is a shorter amount of time than from Homer just to like the playwrights, you know, and so obviously things are going to change.

These details are going to change the understanding.

And so, yeah, it's, it's really

never ending in terms of like understanding it.

It's interesting when you're reading ancient sources who are discussing the myths, because some of them seem to have a true religious devotion to the tales, while others are very flippant about them.

They joke on them.

They seem like

they don't take them particularly seriously.

In your experience researching this stuff, how

seriously or literally did the Greeks and the Romans take their mythology?

Great question.

I can't speak to Rome quite as much because I just am not as familiar.

But I will say that I,

you know,

this, there's this ongoing idea that like the Romans like, quote unquote, stole their stories from the Greeks.

And like, sure, that is definitely not it.

There's a lot to say about that, which, I mean, we could get into if you wanted, but mostly I'm just going to say I will primarily talk about the Greeks, not least because Rome then was like also quite late, a bit later.

And so they were doing really different things

with their religion.

But in terms of the Greeks, it's like 50-50.

And I, but I also think the biggest thing to keep in mind and why these things can sound really confusing to us now is just that all like so much of how we take all of this stuff in is from this like judeo-christian lens that the west has become and and just in the way that it makes it hard for us to conceptualize how the people before you know would have understood their their deities because right And I mean, and the biggest thing to keep in mind with any this question in general is how many centuries we're talking about when it comes to Greek myth.

Like, it's really easy to think of it as just this, like, one little time period where, like, Greek myth was a thing.

But, you know, if we are talking about like this question is answerable in so many different ways because, like, well, what time period, right?

Right, of course.

You know, the earliest stories that we have are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

And then, of course, what those are, like you kind of mentioned earlier, like, is this oral tradition eventually getting written down?

You know, we kind of understand that

the stories we attribute to Homer, who probably wasn't one guy, but who we

attribute to Homer, were being developed over like three or four centuries, three or four hundred years of these stories being developed before they were ever written down, if not longer, right?

They were being told and workshopped and

sung over and over and over again.

And then eventually,

in what I've heard from certain experts in this is, you know, maybe around the Archaic period, so we're we're talking sixth century in Athens is when anyone ever bothered to write it down in a way that then ended up getting preserved for us today.

But also it's important to remember that like even the oldest actual physical version that we have is only like a few hundred years old, maybe, maybe long.

I mean, that's probably.

It's probably more like five or six, maybe even a thousand, but it is nowhere near from actual ancient Greece, right?

Because that's just not how these things happen.

And so, you know,

it's like, okay, well, Homer is from this time period.

Those stories are proposing to tell a story from a much earlier time period, even.

And so we have these gods and stuff involved.

I mean, this is a really roundabout way of answering this question, but I will get there.

And so, you know,

at that time and when these earlier other archaic myths are coming about, Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days are the best other example of this, or like the sort of second oldest.

And

these things are from a time period where I think that most of it was pretty believed generally, you know, as a kind of literal belief structure, but that also revolved a lot around how the people were still figuring out the earth and science and the world around them and how they connected with it and how everything came about.

And so the beliefs are coming from this really practical place, right?

Like this, this really just sort of basic

need to understand the world like okay the earth is where life comes from gaia creates the earth well gaia needed you know a a a companion so she made the sky and then they start having children and things like that and so it's really this really practical way of understanding because there's a thunderstorm oh zeus must be angry or he's trying to get our attention.

There's an earthquake.

Well, Poseidon, you know, is shaking something in the sea.

He hid his trident somewhere.

There's a volcano.

Well, that's from, you know, this, this war we had with the giants and they imprisoned the giants under mountains and thus volcanoes.

And so it's just like this really practical way of understanding the world.

Then you get a little later and, you know, you get to things like the plays, the tragedies, which is where we get a lot of what we consider myths now.

But even that betrays this lack of context, right?

Because the plays, like say, say Oedipus Tranos, Oedipus the king, one of the most famous Greek myths.

It only survives in the form of a play.

It only survives in this form by Sophocles.

Otherwise, the earliest kind of mention,

that is mentioned in the Odyssey,

but just as like this side note, like, okay, Odysseus, or not Odysseus, Oedipus and accidentally married his mother.

There was a whole thing.

Yeah.

It's like one line.

And so, and the mother has a different name in the Odyssey.

It's Epicaste instead of Jocasta.

And so, you know, we get,

we know that it's an earlier story.

We know that Sophocles was working off of a myth.

We don't have it.

All we have is Sophocles's play.

And so people have to say, like, oh, well, the myth of Oedipus goes like this.

But that's kind of like saying that

Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet is the true original Romeo and Juliet, you know, or like that they're interchangeable, right?

Which is like, that's crazy.

To me, it's a, I mean, great adaptation, let's be honest, but like, it is not the original Romeo and Juliet or like any kind of adaptation.

It's the idea of saying that like Thor, Marvel's Thor is

inherently the same as Norse mythology's Thor.

Like that's more of a stretch.

But still, it's like, well, this play was written for an audience.

It was made to entertain.

It had to keep people in their seats.

It wanted to win an award.

It had to fit in the stage structure.

It had to, you know, have a chorus that's going to tell this part of the story.

Like all of these things are happening and being put into a piece of reception.

It's like making a movie adaptation of history and suggesting that it's exact and unalterable.

And so it's like way more interesting to think like, well, what the hell is the myth?

We don't know.

We probably will never know.

That's cool.

But you know what you're saying?

What you're saying, I've come to believe that actually that

is just a more explicit example of what happens with all of human history.

This is like where my own head has gone after years of doing my podcast is that like anytime we sit down and decide we are going to tell a story, even a true story, we are creating artifice.

And with a play, the artifice is really obvious, right?

We are literally creating a piece of theater and we expect our audience to know some things already, right?

And like, like, and Oedipus is a perfect example where like.

the playwright is going in being like the audience knows something that the character does not know and the dramatic tension rests in that.

But already we have that artifice, and then just the more I've been studying, you know, that spot where mythology and history collide,

I've come to believe that that is the process of constructing our entire reality.

I mean, not to

get maybe too heady about it, but like, yes, I, because, because, like, you know, I think even the most

objective or

journalistic, scientific approach to history is still an act of writing, an act of creation, an act of literally editing the

deluge of information that is perceiving reality.

Yeah, everything about history is subjective.

Every single thing.

Yeah, no, and I think, you know, all you can then hope for is like a variety of voices, a variety of perspectives,

and that you can sort of draw from like, okay, well, if there's at least sort of some sort of shared

consensus on things, then that's where we can kind of grab onto something we can call truth.

But I like the idea of that like mythology just becoming a play is actually the miniature of that whole process.

I just find that so fascinating.

I love it.

No, Oedipus is my favorite example for that because it's one of these quite rare examples where we don't have any surviving myth from earlier, but we know really explicitly that it was a very well-known myth.

Yeah.

Like, cause we also know that other playwrights also did plays about Oedipus.

And that's where we, like, that's another thing that it's really interesting and frustrating, you know, when we are kind of lacking in surviving plays.

Like, I mean, the plays generally are the, they keep me up at night because we, we only have surviving plays from three tragedians, but there were hundreds.

We only have, you know, I mean, in terms of Sophocles and Aeschylus, we only have like six, I think, around then from each of them, but they were both writing and winning awards for decades.

Yeah.

With Euripides, we have lots more.

And do you know the story of how, why we have more Euripides than anyone else?

I don't.

I'd love to know.

Okay.

Oh, my God.

I would love to tell you.

So the plays are really interesting because, I mean, one, like, like I just explained with the Oedipus, like they give us this information that we otherwise would never know, both in terms of like a myth that might be lost or like an audience, what type of, you know, story an audience would be taking in that we might not otherwise know.

We get this idea of like an actual like a movie version of something, right?

In these plays.

And so with Aeschylus and Sophocles, well, and Euripides at the beginning, these are the three that

So many people had to decide were worth preserving.

The reason we have those three primarily is because they were preserved for Byzantine school children.

They were

They were the Shakespeares that we had to learn in school.

Like in the Canadian school system, we have like a handful of Shakespeare.

You read one every grade in high school and like those are the ones you know, right?

Yeah.

That's what these were.

That's what those were.

They were the ones that were preserved for schools.

So the Byzantines were copying them so that we physically have them today.

Right.

So they were the most popular.

They were the ones that were meant to teach you something.

They were the ones that they could use to teach various things, whether it's even just like reading and writing.

Like they were they've served this really important purpose yeah and that's true for a hand what's true for aescholes and sophocles and like about that same number of euripides yeah but with euripides

he

we also have like i think it's like maybe eight or so i was i need to memorize these numbers but we have like something like 19 euripides plays and a huge chunk of them maybe more than half are what we now call the alphabet plays And those exist not because they were

read in schools, not because they were considered the best or the ones to be taught.

They survived because this one Byzantine collector had a collection, like a complete collection of Euripides that was separated off into like a handful of scrolls in alphabetical order.

And one of those survived randomly.

One of those was like just managed to be preserved.

And so, we have like nine plays by Euripides that were preserved completely at random.

And what that means is, like, not only that we just like have more stuff from the ancient world, and how cool is that, but also, it means that we actually have an example of the rest of the plays.

Yeah.

Plays that weren't the blockbusters, right?

And in those plays, we learn some of the weirdest, most interesting stuff.

And also, like, an even better example of what I was talking about with the Oedipus stuff, or like these, because

you know, the changes that playwrights may or may not have made, usually we'll never know.

Um, there's a handful of examples, like Medea is not one of the alphabet plays, it was preserved intentionally, but Medea is so famous because she kills her children.

But Euripides put that in, we think.

There's no source before Euripides that has her kill her children.

Whoa, I didn't know that.

That's huge.

Really huge.

It's really huge.

So it's like, did he just make that a thing because he wanted to surprise the audience?

Or was that a thing beforehand?

We don't know.

But specifically with the alphabet plays,

the best example for like what kind of impact they have by just surviving at random is in a play called The Helen.

And so it's about Helen of Troy, Helen of Sparta.

And it proposes, it's the best, it's the weirdest play.

Also, Europet has written a lot of plays that were like 50-50 comedy-tragedy, that were just like these kind of like

body, weird escape stories.

The Helen is one of them.

And so it presents the idea that Helen

was never taken to Troy, that instead

she was like whisked away by, I believe it was a god who intervened and replaced the real Helen with an Eidolon, which is essentially a ghost, and then sent the real Helen to Egypt.

This play picks up at the end of the Trojan War.

Helen has been staying in Egypt for these 10 years.

She's been like imprisoned by this Egyptian king, and

she has just been kind of trying to get home.

She's vaguely heard that the Trojan War has been happening in her name.

She knows there's like this fake version of her

that's been there.

And

I'm forgetting like all of the beats, but essentially like it comes up that like Menelaus, while leaving the Trojan War gets shipwrecked on the beaches nearby.

He rolls up wearing a fishnet.

We know that he was like literally like

lost all his clothes in the shipwreck and he just like put on a fishnet and he like stumbles in and he's this like bumbling

fool and Helen.

Helen picks up all the pieces.

Helen makes a plan of escape.

Helen figures everything out and then it's like and then we get this like reveal that there was an idol on there and like poof it like disappears into a cloud like it's the most bizarre story and so you know imagine that survived but the iliad didn't or nothing else right and we and then we're like oh wow the story of the trojan war is like that this woman was replaced by a ghost and meanwhile she was in egypt the whole time like we would have never no idea because that's what it was and it was not his most famous it didn't win awards but it was preserved at random and because of that, we know it.

And we also know that he didn't invent that idea because there's this fragment that

survives from elsewhere.

It might have even been like Scolion, which is like marginalian notes on something like the Helen,

where we know that there was a, I believe it's Stasicaris, there was an archaic poet.

It's...

There's always two that I mix up, but it might have been Stasicaris.

Anyway, that wrote a poem that also presents this idea that there was an Eidolon version of Helen and that she was in Egypt.

So we also know that Euripides didn't make it up.

So was it like a wider story?

Were people talking about that?

Was it possible?

You know, and so it just, yeah, I don't even know where this question started, but thank you for indulging.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, we actually started with like, what did were there,

or how seriously did the

50-50, yeah.

No, no, but this is perfect because it's like, well, clearly Euripides felt like he could play with that tradition.

Yeah.

And, and clearly, an audience of Athenians sat down and were like, oh, look what he's doing with this story, you know, in the same way that, like, you know,

we might like take in like a multiversal Spider-Man story and be like, oh, look, this time, Spider-Man's Miles Morales.

Interesting.

Yeah.

You're like, oh, this is a weird version.

Yeah, this is a weird take on this.

Oh, Helen has a ghost.

Cool.

I love that, though.

Man, that's the stuff that I live for.

Live.

That's the same, which is why I can tell it at any moment of it.

The number of times I've just randomly been like, can I tell you about yourbody's like alphabet plays?

Well, see, one of the questions I actually had for you was, what is your favorite mythical deep cut?

And that, that's definitely got to be one of them.

While we're on the topic, do you have any more at your fingertips?

Like a story that you think most even fans of this type of mythology might not know?

I mean, God, God, there are so, there are probably so many.

I mean, yeah, that, that Helen one blows my mind.

One of the things, this is not necessarily like a story that people don't know, because of course that's like blanking for me right now.

But there, I think a really interesting misconception, and maybe this was good for the first question too, but is so my

absolute longtime forever obsession is Medusa.

And she's become that because of the way that both listeners have interacted with me about her, but also

the more I learn about the way that her story has been like tweaked over time.

So like the, you know, we think of Medusa as this scary monster, snakes for hair, you know, she had to be killed.

I have had people, you know,

I've had tweets back in the day when Twitter was viable where, you know, I'd tweet one thing about Medusa and I'd have all of these people like screaming this stuff at me, things like, oh, you know, she had to be killed.

She was terrorizing the land, you know, things like that.

This idea, and I understand where people are coming from, because like, there's all these, you know, we have so many stories of like these monsters that were doing that, like, you know, Heracles' kills and things like that.

Medusa does not fit any of that, but we have this idea in our head that she does.

But no,

I just love the idea of the person out there that's like, they had to get her.

I'm like, still feeling very emotionally attached to to like the evils of Medusa.

I had a comment yesterday.

This thing never goes away.

The way people react to her, it's super weird.

And I've really, yeah, I've started developing some like pretty

deep theories about her.

Just, I mean, I also wrote an introduction to a book about Medusa last year.

And so I did even deeper dives.

But

the thing that I find so interesting is

in, so in

every version of her story that survives from before

Ovid, who is Roman,

everything from before then,

there is no record of her harming anyone.

There's no mention of statues, stone people around her.

There is no mention of a single victim or a single justification for her death.

The reason why Perseus goes to to get her is simply,

you know, there's a lot to the story of Perseus that I won't fully recap, but the basics is there's this king on Seraphos, Polydectes, who wants Perseus dead because he wants to marry his mother.

It's a whole thing, but he wants Perseus dead.

And so he has a reason to ask Perseus to go get him something.

And so he's like, well, I want you to go get me the head of a Gorgon.

And, you know, depending on the sources, where things come in, but essentially we know that the Gorgons are these three divine creatures.

They are the children of gods.

They're the children of sea gods.

Um, and they live on the furthest edges of the world, they live beyond ocean, which means you're like the edge of night is how it's called.

So, it's like where they thought that the sun was going down, like that's the edge of the world.

Cool way to say that, too.

It really is the edge of night, it's the best, yeah.

Um, and so that's where they lived, and uh, so essentially, Polydectes just says, Perseus, I need you to bring me the head of a gorgon, and then we hear he has to go get Medusa's because she's the only one who's mortal.

There's nothing about why he needs Medusa's head, except that physically he can get it.

The other ones he physically could not do.

So it's like, okay, well, you got to go for Medusa.

We never have an explanation of why she's the only mortal.

It's just the way it is.

He goes, he sneaks up on her while she is sleeping.

cuts her head off, her sisters are screaming after him, and he flies away.

that that's the whole of it there is no detail on her being vicious it's just that she's like quote-unquote monstrous and so we've that all of these ideas have been developed about what that means but so much of it ties to her being a woman who could defend herself against a man like that's essentially all there is is that she is a woman who could protect herself like she could turn people to stone she was a threat only in the fact that she could defend herself ah and so so in that early version they they do say that she has this like power to turn people to stone, but not that she's necessarily used it.

Not really.

It's it's only well, yes and no.

Okay.

It comes up because once her head is off her body, she can turn things to stone.

Okay.

But there isn't like an explicit, like, she can do this while she's alive.

It's the assumption is there.

Because the other thing about myths is that they weren't there to like answer all the questions we have.

The way people, like, people come to me all the time, like, I want to know this, that, and the other thing.

And I'm like, sorry to tell you that, like, they weren't concerned like we were with.

And I love those little moments in myth as well.

Like, my favorite moment in the Theseus story is when he has the confrontation with Medea, and then she flies away on a chariot pulled by dragons.

Oh, yeah, and it's just like out of nowhere, there's just like a dragon chariot.

Well, Medea has a lot of dragon chariots, but I will say, to just be that ridiculous, nerdy person, the only time she has one in outside of Euripides's play is in Ovid.

So, technically, and this I was going to get to with Medusa as well.

Technically, not a myth.

Oh, there you go.

So, it's just this is a Roman poet putting his twist, yeah, right?

Because, also, well, and it gets Medusa's the other big, big change that Ovid does, and has it has like affected us forever, um, is that Ovid introduces all of these wild ideas that change her story fundamentally.

Ovid tells us that she was once a beautiful mortal woman, that

Poseidon assaulted her in Athena's temple, that because of that, Athena punished her by transforming her beautiful hair into snakes.

Sure.

So that creates this like completely alternate version, and people really have like held on to it because it presents some other ideas.

I personally don't like it.

I think it's much more interesting

for her to have just been born like that.

She's not a monster.

She's not, she just, that's what she looked like.

You know, she's like any divine creature.

She was born like that.

She's the daughter of gods.

That's it.

Sure, sure.

And, and, you know, I, there's so many layers to the ovid thing.

I can see we it and have talk forever, but no, but I can see how people glommed on to that, right?

Because it makes her a more fantastical creature, right?

Yeah.

And it's the image of the snakes for hair, like artists have just loved it ever since.

And even now, you know, like people, artists love drawing the

snake hair.

And I even remember as a kid being fascinated by that image because it is so

just fascinating.

There's something about it, you know?

It is.

Well, and that idea of her with like the human face and snakes for hair is like so, I mean, it is absolutely captivating, agreed entirely.

But it is also very not Greek.

Like in most versions of her from Greek art, she's a Gorgon is like a very explicit type of creature.

It's like, there are snakes for hair, but that's not even the main point.

Like they have tusks and fangs and sometimes wings and this like big gaping smile.

Like they're distinctly inhuman.

Sure.

And so it's a a really interesting thing to then have this like humanized form of her in ovid and he adds all these other layers and things you know but it

he mean he makes he's the one who's like she's surrounded by statues of people um

but that doesn't exist before that but the thing about ovid that really makes her like a batman villain you know it does exactly it makes her like a reason have a reason to be killed which doesn't exist in the in the earlier sources which is why it's so interesting but especially like just to

wrap up on ovid but but also tie in this Medea aspect that you brought up.

Because I mean, a lot of Medea's story only survives in Ovid as well, which is interesting.

Like, he has her flying around in that dragon chariot everywhere, which is my favorite.

She's just popping off on that dragon chariot.

Ripping around, yeah.

Oh, it's the best.

Um, but you know, the thing about Ovid, and Ovid writes these stories really, really beautifully.

And so people want to tell them as if they are like the kind of core myth.

And I understand that desire.

They are stunning.

I love Ovid.

But Ovid is a Roman writing stories about Greek myths through the lens of Rome and with the intention of eventually leading to the story of the founding of Rome.

Right.

You know, and

so there's so much going on.

There's also like an enormous debate to be had about whether or not it was explicitly pro-Augustan propaganda or like under the surface, like anti-Augustine

propaganda.

He and Augustus famously have a big falling out, right?

They do.

It was after that.

And this was coming around the same similar time to the Aeneid, which is like really explicit Augustan propaganda.

So, you know, there's, there's so much going on, but the core thing to keep in mind with Ovid as a source is that he wrote it, whereas myth is cultural storytelling, cultural memory that is eventually written down, but it is almost never like, I really don't think,

I mean, there's some, there's some outliers, but I think that generally when we're talking about myth, anytime it is written in that kind of explicit way, it's like reception of myth.

It's his version, like the plays, right?

It's the same as the plays in that way.

Because myth as a more, excuse me, myth as a concept is more about this, this like telling of a cultural story

more than it is about like authoring a work, you know, like the big difference is he, he sat down and he wrote it.

And that's not true for like 90% of the other stories that we have.

And that's interesting in itself.

So, I mean, Ovid does some great work with the dragon chariot.

But like I said, Euripides introduces the dragon chariot

in that at the very end of his play, Medea, with the dead children, who he also might have introduced, she flies off in a dragon chariot with her dead kids in it with her.

It's awesome.

I mean, I know it's dark, but it's awesome.

Sure.

But the most exciting part of that is that the ancient Greek theater had,

depending on the time period, but particularly when this was coming about, they had this, they had a crane that they used on the stage.

And it's called the machina, the machine.

The machina was used to bring gods over the stage for the audience.

Primarily, it was like for the ending where the gods come in and they wrap things up in a nice little bow.

It's where we get Deus Ex Machina, the god and the machine.

It's, um, that's Latin and and I always forget the Greek one.

Um, something mechanos.

Uh, and the

when it comes to Medea,

Medea uses this crane to fly over the stage in like 2,500 years ago.

She's flying over the stage in this dragon-drawn chariot with her dead children inside.

And that's one of the only examples we have of the crane being used for not a god.

And it is a woman who's just killed her children and flown off into the sunset.

And I just think, like, I mean, Euripides is my favorite for like 10,000 reasons, but that is one of them because, like, how wild is that to be like, yeah, you know, I'm just going to change this story.

I'm going to change how we use the stage.

I'm going to change the function of tragedy as an art form for this.

Yeah, no, I love that.

And that must have blown people's minds.

Imagine seeing that.

You're like, oh,

he's using the mechanos for a woman who just killed their children yeah like this is a thing reserved for the gods yeah but i could also just see like because i'm with you i really feel like the ancients were more like us than we sometimes like to think and so i'm sure there was sort of like one theater goer who was like, this is sacrilege.

Like, what am I watching?

And then another more sophisticated viewer being like, oh, no, I see.

Oh, what an inversion.

No, this guy's actually a genius.

And like, then afterwards, they're like at the symposium being like, I don't know if I get down with this

Euripides play.

It's like, no, man, he's just like way ahead of the curve here, you know?

I think about that all the time because I would have been those people.

But like, Euripides was really 50-50 in how he was received.

He didn't win a lot.

He was definitely not the most famous.

People really,

really were like thrown by him a lot.

There's a lot of

There's a lot of stories from the ancient world, particularly from Aristophanes, who's a contemporary comedy writer.

And he loved to go on and on and write it into his plays about how Euripides was a misogynist and hated women.

Interesting.

It is because all of his examples, it's so funny to me because he wrote like women talking about this, but also like all women were played by men.

So there's layers going on.

Yeah, there's a layer of yeah.

Yeah.

But all of the examples for why Euripides hated women are stories like his Medea or his Phaedra, his, like, there's just this long list of like him writing women who do bad things.

And

the Aristophanes saying that, like, that means he hates women.

Yeah.

And meanwhile, it's like, from a modern perspective, I look back and I'm like, Euripides was the most feminist version of that we have of anybody back then.

Right.

Because he wrote real women doing terrible things.

He wrote equality.

He wrote, like, and people were so, because I mean, obviously I could talk forever about like the, the role of women and, and the, the subjugation of women, particularly in ancient Athens, because they were literally like the, the elite women were meant to be in the house all the time, not doing anything out ever.

Sure.

Like, they were possessions.

And so, you know, this idea that like.

They decided that he hated women because he wrote them like killing men is like, nah, you're afraid of, you're afraid of what your Euripides writes.

You're afraid of a woman like Medea.

And so so you have convinced yourself that that means he hates women when what it really is, is that he sees the humanity in women.

He sees them as humans capable of the same things as men.

And like, what a threat to the patriarchal order that is.

It's just and if anyone is listening, if they've never like read a translation of Medea or even better, like seen a modern production of Medea,

it rips.

It's awesome.

It's like amazing.

And, but Medea has these incredible speeches that are quite sympathetic.

And then she does something truly horrible.

And depending on the production, like I've seen productions that are bloody, like bloody.

Oh, yeah.

She comes out just drenched in her children's blood and like truly a horrific, like unjustifiable act.

But she justifies it.

And she justifies it.

Yeah.

No, and again, lest someone out there listening thinks that, like, are these two advocating the killing of children?

No, but the point is that like the Euripides was able to like challenge his audience to that point, being like,

let's actually understand the humanity of someone that's going to do something truly horrific.

If you understand why she did it because of those speeches, like you get why she felt like that was her only choice, you know, like you, he makes you understand why she sees that act as the only option.

And, but at the same time, simultaneously does not make you believe that it was the right or moral thing to do.

He just makes you understand why she felt like that was it.

And that's why it's so interesting.

But I love that the criticism comes from Aristophanes.

And again, I'm thinking about the listener here, just in folks listening, if they don't know, like now we're just in the world of Athenian playwrights, but.

Aristophanes was like mostly known for his comedies.

And one of his most famous comedies is called The Clouds, where he has a famous take on the philosopher Socrates.

And a lot of people that study this stuff go, you know, Aristophanes' Socrates is not really a fair take on Socrates.

He makes him to be like a total charlatan, right?

Like that he's just like out there, just like spewing nonsense.

And it has really nothing in common with like the Socratic philosophy we get from Plato or even from Xenophon, who gives us a slightly more measured version of Socrates.

So it makes perfect sense that Aristophanes, a bit of a character assassin when it comes to these, these folks from ancient Athens, also

had a bad take on Euripides, you know?

Oh, yeah.

No, Aristophanes.

I mean, I have a real hate, sometimes love, maybe a little bit relationship with Aristophanes.

He is wild.

But yeah, it is, I mean, yeah, he, he wrote some, some

unhinged stuff, but it's fascinating to me the way that,

I mean, I won't say modern scholars, but like up until fairly recently, like there is still this idea that Euripides was a misogynist, that people in the ancient world saw him as that.

And the sourcing is always Aristophanes.

And you're like, what are you missing?

Like, I don't understand how people can read something that he wrote satire too.

Like, I mean, I don't know if he believed it or not.

He was also friendly with Euripides, I believe.

Like, so it's just so fascinating to me the way that, because people have told me, like, I love Euripides and I will shout him him from the rooftops.

And people have been like, well, you know, the ancient world saw him as misogynist, so clearly had a problem.

And I'm like, no, because Aristophanes made fun of the fact that he wrote.

terrible women.

Like, if we're going to become, like, we need to figure out how you define misogyny, because writing a woman as a real human being, that's, that's straight equality, my friend.

Like, that's not misogyny.

No, but again, I love that because that's another, like, those layers of understanding things,

right?

Where it should be.

And just the way that context matters and like that our understanding of history is based on hundreds of other people making these assumptions over time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I love, but I love that example because it really is a reminder of how much like us, people that lived thousands of years ago, you know, truly were.

Now, okay, I want to go back to something that came up before.

You were talking about how myth largely exists just in culture, right?

It's not necessarily something that is written down in one specific text.

It is something that exists orally and in art and in all sorts of sort of cultural production.

And I mean, that is the truth, right?

I mean,

I would say I agree with you, but I'd like, it's like, I just agree with a fact.

It's just a fact.

And that to me, that, that fact has always been why I've had a problem with the story of Atlantis and a problem with.

You and everyone sane.

Right.

Right.

And so, I mean, you know, I had a lot of fun with the Atlantis.

not only the original sort of Atlantis text in Plato, but also all the wild,

you know, Atlantis theories that have spun out in the centuries since.

I know you've spent some time

looking at Atlantis.

So I want to get your take.

Why do you think most folks misunderstand the Atlantis tale?

Good, good phrasing of that question because I think it opens so many doors.

I mean,

I think the biggest issue, if we're coming from the place of the very innocent interest

and

in Atlantis generally the innocent side because there's not a very not innocent side.

But the individual person who is like, well, of course Atlantis is a mythical place.

Of course, the story of Atlantis is a myth.

That mentality comes from the way, I mean, everything I was saying about myth earlier and

sources and how we today and over the last centuries and centuries have been taught to understand myth because we've not been taught the context in the same way.

Like I say we, I mean the general public.

Yeah.

Like, you know, if you're studying it, that's another thing entirely, but the general public who is,

you know, like Greek myth is so in our culture that I don't think there is a person on the planet at a certain age who hasn't at least heard the word like Hercules or Heracles or, you know, any of these people.

Like this is, this is a cultural thing.

And I think that's where it becomes a problem, which is that we understand it as this, like, this cultural touchstone, but we don't understand the cultural context behind it.

We think these are the stories, these are the myths of Greece.

We think, you know, if the story has these elements, then it is a myth.

We lack

the deeper

understanding of how something becomes a myth.

You know,

the idea that myth is cultural memory, that myth

is this cultural identity more than it is a story, more than it is any kind of like narrative structure.

It is this cultural thing that exists completely beyond the physical text.

And so because we lose that and we just think of it like, well, any fantastical story from ancient Greece is a myth.

That's the problem.

Because the story of Atlantis is a fantastical story from ancient Greece, but it is not a myth because it lacks all of the things that make a myth, you know?

And yeah, like, I mean, I don't know how much or you do or don't want to go into like the details of it because I know

we covered it.

But no, but I mean, and again, for those that may maybe have not heard those episodes, right?

The story of Atlantis comes from the writings of Plato.

It comes from a Greek philosopher writing in the dialogue format

who is trying to make a philosophical point.

A Greek philosopher, by the way, who was known to use parable and storytelling to make deeper philosophical points, especially about things like the right and wrong way to organize a society.

He had a real thing about cultures and how they were right and wrong.

And yeah, and it's, well, and all of that and the dialogues he wrote, you know, are these like theorized

conversations between people who were dead by the time he was writing it.

And in a lot of cases, people he never interacted with.

And, and in the story of Atlantis, yeah, it's this, this dialogue, this philosophical exploration of the quote unquote perfect civilization.

And it's told through a conversation with, again, like, I mean, every one of his conversations had Socrates.

We don't know.

quite how much overlap he would have had with Socrates.

We know almost nothing about Socrates as a real person

outside of Plato's dialogues.

And any, you know, he also used all of these other people.

There's questions about who, you know, there's people have a lot of the same names.

So there's even debate about that.

But, and then even, even still in that dialogue, it's like the person who's telling the story of Atlantis is like, I heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from some Egyptian priests.

That's right.

Yeah.

And so it's like, you know,

when you break it down in that kind of way, like it, there's absolutely no reason to believe it as as a myth.

There's no reason to believe it as any kind of history or story.

Like it's so funny to me the way that it's become what it is.

And even if you are the type of person that goes in for the idea that this type of storytelling does contain historical truths sometimes, little kernels of historical truths.

And I am one of those people that can get on board with that when there's that idea.

You know, yeah, surrounding evidence that can help sort of, you know, beef that up.

And it is always exciting when you're like, oh, look, there might be a little kernel of something at the heart of this story.

But in the case of Atlantis,

as you say, it was not a story that seems to have been part of oral storytelling in Greece.

There aren't vases that like show the destruction of Atlantis in the same way there are vases that show Theseus killing the Minotaur, right?

There aren't

other spots where we have people talking about Atlantis until really hundreds of years after

there's no one pre-Plato.

No, there's no one pre-Plato.

And the other thing that I also like to point out about Atlantis every time I can is that they are losers.

Yes.

They are the bad ones.

Like why?

It's so weird.

Yeah.

They're like the bad example.

Well, and I think what you're your point about how when you find, you know, those kernels of truth in these philosophical texts, you, you said that when there's surrounding evidence to back it up.

Yeah.

And that's that's the big thing.

There's absolutely zero surrounding evidence.

Like there is not a single story from, like you said, until like a couple hundred years later.

And even then, they're usually talking about Plato talking about Atlantis.

They're not talking about Atlantis outside of Plato because there is no Atlantis outside of Plato.

And there's no archaeological evidence.

There's no evidence in Egypt.

There's no certainty that Solon, who's the guy who heard the story, you know, all that.

There's too many layers, but Solon is the name of the person who was supposed supposed to have talked to the priests in egypt but definitely like you know was like two generations before plato like there's no evidence that he could speak to these egyptians or new egyptian like and we also have like herodotus went around egypt and he wrote some wild stuff because there's misunderstandings like he's my guy yeah he's a he is a fun and wacky guy we love a herodotus version of a hippopotamus i could i brought that up yesterday it's literally on my mind all the time yeah but no the other's no surrounding evidence and so yeah, it's just this bizarre thing.

And then, of course, that's like leaving out even all of the fact that now it's tied to like really horrific white supremacist stuff, which is a whole other layer.

But that's, but that's something that doesn't come in until the 19th century.

No, exactly.

There's like nothing from the point of basically Plato and there was a handful of people who referenced Plato referencing it from then until, yeah, like Donnelly comes in and he's like, Yeah.

And then also there was a true white race.

Like, right.

Yeah.

Or Helena Blavatsky, right?

And like,

uh, and the whole sort of theosophical kind of use of Atlantis.

But, you know, that's another, it's another story altogether.

I've done some episodes on that, if anyone wants to listen.

My Atlantis series is very fun and generally also, I have a great logo for it.

And I, um, I spoke with

an archaeologist who's also Canadian, just from referencing her, um, Steph Holmhoffer, who has done a lot of research into Blavatsky.

And oh my gosh,

I mean,

I find her fascinating.

Uh,

I did my own big like three-part series on Helena Belvatsky a few years ago.

Yeah.

And

because she is this sort of like fountainhead for so much fake history.

Yeah.

And

even better, her fake biography that she sort of made up for herself is.

astounding.

And like, and so I'm really fascinated by her, but obviously she's behind a lot of truly problematic ideas.

But it's also weird that there's this figure out there that was like a reference point for both like the Nazis and like new age hippies in the 60s.

You know, it's like, whoa, that is a,

that is a weird legacy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

But I know we're, we're, we're off, we're off down a rabbit hole already.

And I, you know, I've kept you for a while here.

Before we go, I do want to talk about

your recently announced new book.

Thank you.

Yes, congratulations, by the way.

It's very exciting.

Yeah.

So for those that don't know, Liv is going to be adapting the Odyssey for younger readers.

I know it's still early days for that particular project, but

right now, what do you think it is you want to capture about the Odyssey for kids?

I mean, this is like the most exciting thing that's happened to me in a long time.

So I have lots to say.

And I've, I actually delivered the first chunk just before getting on this call with you.

So it's top of mind.

I think, I mean, the Odyssey generally is my favorite.

I just think it's so interesting and exciting.

And, but I think the thing that I keep sort of coming back to in all of my research and looking at how this has been done before, both for kids and just generally for the public, is

most of the adaptations I've come across really lose

what I think ties the story close most closely to the epic tradition, the oral tradition and epic storytelling broadly.

They lose that aspect because,

and this comes back to what we've been talking about, which this modern idea about the ancient world and what we as modern

I'm gonna say readers, but I mean like anyone taking in this kind of stuff, but we, as modern readers, want

the story to look a certain way that feels comfortable to us for how we see storytelling now and how we read books now and novels and everything.

We want it to look kind of like that.

And so what people tend to do with the Odyssey is make it this like chronological story of like Odysseus leaves Troy and then XXX, like all of these different things happen.

But of course, the Odyssey as an epic tradition is like the Iliad, it starts right in the middle.

You know, that's kind of the whole thing.

In Medias Res, it's start in the middle.

And I think that that storytelling technique really serves the Odyssey and really makes you understand how this stuff was being developed, but also just like how they understood the story.

There's a lot of Odysseus lying through his teeth.

There's a lot of back and forth.

There's a lot of big question marks.

And so the biggest thing that I'm trying to do is

honestly tell the story in the most

accurate way possible.

And by accurate, I obviously don't mean like factual or anything like that, but like accurate to the original source.

I'm, my biggest goal is to like not reinvent the wheel.

I want to just put

the Odyssey into

a format and narrative structure.

that works for kids without changing the narrative structure that is the odyssey sure

And I mean, generally, I'm just excited.

Also,

I think also we try to sanitize these things for kids.

We, we ignore, we, people love to think that the Odyssey is like this big, you know, wild sea adventure story with all of the monsters and the witches and the magic.

And it is, except that that's like three books out of 24.

You know, The Odyssey as a thing is not inherently that.

And I am like, you know, really hyping that part up because it's for kids and that's fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But what i also you know am not leaving out the darker parts i'm not leaving i'm not pretending like the narrative ends at a certain place where it doesn't or things like that like i really just want it to be this thing that that's as true to homer as i can make it sure sure going going to hades and having achilles tell you that death really sucks yeah and that like you know like um

Ajax is just so mad at Odysseus because, I mean, Odysseus did a terrible thing that led to Ajax's death and, you know, not leaving out the fact that his, his, one of his oldest friends gives him the cold shoulder in the underworld because Odysseus basically got him killed.

And, you know, it's, there's so much and, and, you know, the, the women in the underworld are my current obsession too.

People,

any kind of adaptation tends to leave out the fact that there is this moment where Odysseus is in the underworld and, you know, he's seeing all of these people who come, see him of his own accord.

And then there's this moment where Persephone, the, the goddess of the underworld and the only named god in that section, Hades, does not come up at all.

She, this goddess, sends

a really large number of women to go to Odysseus and tell their stories.

Sure.

And that is something that, you know, we really rarely have any kind of stories of women, let alone stories about, like, told by the women in some way and where the men are not the primary focus.

And, and so, but people tend to leave it out.

It's not like super important to the narrative, but it is super important to the cultural idea.

And like the Odyssey has really great women, and I think they're also left out.

And so I'm just, yeah, I'm excited to just tell the Odyssey like it is in the Odyssey, which sounds like real basic, but it also, I've, I've found it's not something that happens often in these kinds of retellings.

Right on, right on.

Yeah.

Well, the text is rich, right?

And as soon as you actually dig into it, there's, there's like, there's always going to be aspects of it that sort of previous adapters have sort of left on the table.

It's honestly the way that I approach making my podcast.

Oftentimes I'll get people that are like, hey, maybe I can do some research for you.

I'm like, I appreciate that.

But like the thing I'm trying to do is like look at these sources and like find that nugget that maybe someone else didn't focus on.

Not to me.

In the same way, I'm like, no, no, but I've, I've, I relate to that so hard.

Like I do have a, my producer does research for me on a lot of the historical stuff, but anytime there's, anytime there's like a myth that I'm doing or anything, I'm like, don't even bother because I'm always going to go back to the sources myself because I physically have to.

Like, I have to pick these things out because it's like, it's so tied to my brain.

And like, yeah, because you're doing this specific thing, you know?

I just, I just, I used to do a activity with my English students that was all based around the idea that like all human creativity is connected to the fact that you notice things that other people do not, just by virtue of being an individual.

And so, you know, just by you being you, when you read the Odyssey, things will pop to you that don't pop to me.

And then your job then, as the sort of adapter, is to underscore those things that pop.

And you're like, look at this thing, notice this thing that I notice that others have not or haven't for a while anyway.

I can't wait to see what you create.

It's gonna be really great.

Thank you.

I'm very excited.

And I'm also going to use that whole

explanation you just gave as a way to

point out why AI is terrible.

So thank you.

Oh, sure.

Yeah.

I just, it's like, my.

I just,

human creativity is why we have everything, every piece of art, and story and history and context.

And all of this is because individual human brains look at it and understand things differently, just like you just said.

And that's why, that's why asking a robot to understand humanity when that robot has been taught by humanity, but lacks humanity

is pointless and also uses more water than anything on the planet.

Yeah, anyway.

Fair enough.

No, hey, and as someone that is profoundly committed to the ideal of human creativity,

I'm completely with you.

It's the only thing that's going to save us, Liv.

Truly.

But if the AI eats up all the water, then the humans can't keep going.

We're going to win the war against the robots.

You and I

together.

Sadly.

Anyway.

Thank you so much for coming on, for being so candid, for nerding out with me here.

It's been a pleasure.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

It was really fun.

It's also so lovely to be on the other side of this where I'm normally the one asking all the questions and doing the thanking.

It's delightful being on the other side, thank you.

Yeah, I know, you just get to riff, you know.

Yeah, I'm good.

That's the part I like.

Right on, all right.

Well, thanks again, and I'm sure we'll be talking again soon.

Thank you.

Okay,

that's all for this week.

Join us again in two weeks' time when we will explore an all-new historical myth.

Thanks again to my guest, Liv Albert, for coming on the show today.

Her podcast is called Let's Talk About Myths, Baby, and you can find it everywhere that you get your podcasts.

Now, this is normally when I would throw in my Patreon shout-outs, but I'm recording this a little early this time, so I'm going to hold off on my shout-outs until the next episode.

So don't worry, I will get to you if you recently pledged $5 or more on Patreon.

I hope everyone also enjoyed that bonus episode I did last week.

It was a lot of fun.

The plan is to do another one very soon.

Feel free to comment on anything that you heard in the episode today.

If you want to be part of the conversation with me and Liv, send me an email at ourfakehistory at gmail.com and perhaps I will use that question on the next bonus episode.

You can also get in touch with me by going to facebook.com/slash our fake history.

You can find me on all the social media.

We're talking Instagram at OurFake History.

We're talking TikTok at OurFake History.

We're talking Blue Sky at OurFake History.

And I am also on YouTube.

Go to YouTube and check out the OurFake History digital shorts that I have available there.

You can also get Our Fake History merch by going to ourfakehistory.com and following the link to our TeePublic store.

As always, the theme music for our show comes to us from Dirty Church.

Check out more from Dirty Church at dirtychurch.bandcamp.com.

And all the other music you heard on the show today was written and recorded by me.

My name is Sebastian Major.

And remember, just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it isn't real.

One, two, three, five.

there's nothing better than a one-play sign.