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

1. 0:00 – 6:19

   Why The Odyssey Still Matters Today

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Why is The Odyssey such an important story?

   2. APAlex Petkas0:03

      Well, it's a story that has affected a lot of people, I think because it has all of these really universal themes and problems that it, that it relates to. I mean, any good literature does that, but maybe The Odyssey in particular. I mean, Chris Nolan talks about it as this sort of archetypal story that is somehow in all of the movies that he's done. You know, there's, there's the theme of, uh, returning to your home, uh, sacrificing on behalf of the community. Um, uh, one of the things that I think is really timely about The Odyssey, and I don't really know how much, uh, the movie's gonna get into this, but it's kind of a story about the collapse of the patriarchy and how it gets restored, uh, what it, what it takes to restore that, um, which, you know, maybe is, is, is timely for our day.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:54

      Mm. Who wrote it?

   4. APAlex Petkas0:57

      So Homer is, is the short answer. Who's Homer? Homer, Homer is the author, according to the Greeks, of The Iliad and The Odyssey, these two poems that, um, you know, modern scholars will kind of quibble about was, was it one guy? Was it two guys? Was it a whole kind of crowd of men working or, you know, people working in this tradition? Um, and, and we can get into that a little bit. But essentially, Homer is the attributed author who is this sort of semi, semi-- uh, a, a very blessed epic bard. He's, he's an epic poet, and this is a really special type for the Greeks. The, the epic poet is, um-- I mean, there are other poets that sing other kinds of songs, and poetry and song are very aligned in, in the, in the Greek mind, and there's a lot of interesting reasons for that. But, um, he's traditionally conceived of as this blind bard, um, who lived maybe in the eighth century BC. And the, the fascinating thing for me about The Iliad and The Odyssey, um, which kind of y- you know, are in dialogue with, with each other on some level, is, okay, the Greeks discover writing in the eighth century BC. They, they, they sort of steal it from the Phoenicians and, and modify it a little bit, make some improving tweaks. So, so the first time that they can really write down their language is this, you know, seven hundreds BC. And, you know, out of the blue emerges two of the greatest works of literature ever written, many people think the greatest. Uh, and it's all kind of, maybe not declined from that, but everybody's always [laughs]

   5. CWChris Williamson2:46

      The first album was really difficult to follow up.

   6. APAlex Petkas2:49

      [laughs] Right. It's, it's almost like, you know, what if today we were still talking about the first movie ever made?

   7. CWChris Williamson2:56

      Mm.

   8. APAlex Petkas2:56

      Nobody's, nobody's ever gonna top, you know, Metropolis or, uh, Nosferatu, you know, and, uh, there's probably still people today that think that, but, you know, uh, most would say that we've, we've developed a little bit as, you know, as, as, uh, the, the movie culture has gotten somewhat better.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:14

      Mm.

   10. APAlex Petkas3:14

       Um, but, you know, for f- for the case of Homer, it's, it's kind of amazing that these things kind of emerge, you know, straight from the mind of Zeus almost, fully formed with all these incredibly rich layers, and they- they're so resonant, and they have this depth to them, all these like symbolic aspects to them. And, um, how did that happen, I think is a really interesting question.

   11. CWChris Williamson3:36

       Is there any indication that this story existed before him?

   12. APAlex Petkas3:39

       Definitely.

   13. CWChris Williamson3:39

       Is it his story?

   14. APAlex Petkas3:41

       So the, the backstory of this is if you look at Homer and look at his language and look at the themes in it, all right, it's, it's, it's in Greek, but Greek is an Indo-European language. Uh, all of the Indo-European languages derive from the Indo-Europeans, this, this steppe people from, you know, middle, central Asia that went, spread out and conquered all these regions. And, um, you know, other Indo-European languages include Latin and, uh, Celtic and Germanic, also Indian, the, or, or Sanskrit, basically. The, the, the Indic peoples also are-- they have this Indo-European kind of cultural inheritance, at le- especially in northern India.

   15. CWChris Williamson4:29

       Mm.

   16. APAlex Petkas4:30

       And, um, it's the people that, that used to be called the Aryans, and now, you know, Twitter anons will call it, call them Aryans. But, you know, so, so if you look at Homer's language and themes, you can find very striking, recognizable patterns in the Vedic epic tradition of the Mahabharata, and there's a, there's a kind of common ancestor, a common poetic tradition, so the argument goes, and I think it's really right, that goes back thousands of years. So Homer's stories are uniquely Greek on some level, but they're also kind of developments that have been around for thousands and thousands of years of, of, of oral culture that kind of hits writing right around the eighth century, and it's a kind of distillation of, you know, thousands of years of stories. And, and, you know, the, the stories of the Trojan War and the Greek heroes probably go back at least hundreds of years before Homer in their-

   17. CWChris Williamson5:25

       Is there, is there anything else to know about Homer? Was he blind? Was he who people think he is?

   18. APAlex Petkas5:30

       Well, ancient poets, we don't know a lot about their lives, typically, the, the really ancient Greek ones, and so people often s- like later Greeks would look at clues to try to figure out who these guys were. And there's actually the, uh, one of the reasons, um, people think Homer is considered a blind poet is because there's actually a blind epic bard in The Odyssey-

   19. CWChris Williamson5:54

       Mm

   20. APAlex Petkas5:54

       ... that, uh, his name's Demodocus, and he appears in Book Eight, and he seems to be a kind of Homer figure in The Odyssey itself.

   21. CWChris Williamson6:02

       In the same way as painters in the Renaissance would paint themselves into their works.

   22. APAlex Petkas6:06

       Yeah, very much that's, that sort of thing. And, you know, the idea is that the, the gods have robbed him of his sight, but they've given him this deeper vision into-

   23. CWChris Williamson6:14

       Hmm

   24. APAlex Petkas6:14

       ... the mysteries of the universe and human suffering and so forth.

   25. CWChris Williamson6:17

       All right.

2. 6:19 – 9:41

   What Happens in The Odyssey?

   1. CWChris Williamson6:19

      Tell me about the story. What happens?

   2. APAlex Petkas6:21

      Uh, so if-- I mean, w- I wanna get into the narrative, uh, and the, the details, but, you know, the story's pretty simple. Uh, there's a backstory. You might, you might have heard of the Trojan War. Um, that happens before the poem begins in the, in the poem's chronology. But, you know, 10 years of war at Troy, uh, the, the, the c- the cause of war was Helen of Troy, or Helen of Sparta, was, was, um, seduced by this playboy Trojan prince, Paris, and he spirited her away to, to Troy, stole her away from the Greeks, Menelaus of, of, of Sparta. And the, you know, the Greeks assembled this massive army to go and take her back essentially, and, uh, get some plunder along the way. They-- After 10 years, they finally end up sacking and destroying the city, and the man responsible for the victory ultimately in, in the Greeks' eyes, and certainly in the eyes of The Odyssey, is Odysseus himself because he came up with the idea of the Trojan horse.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:25

      Mm-hmm.

   4. APAlex Petkas7:26

      And that was, that was his idea.

   5. CWChris Williamson7:27

      What year was this in?

   6. APAlex Petkas7:28

      So this is, you know, maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. I, I like to s- uh, ascribe to the school of, uh, higher naivete. You know, if we can't disprove it, like, let's just say maybe-

   7. CWChris Williamson7:40

      Yeah

   8. APAlex Petkas7:40

      ... maybe, maybe something like that happened.

   9. CWChris Williamson7:42

      Yep.

   10. APAlex Petkas7:42

       And there's, there's a lot of debates about this, but it would've been 1200 BC-

   11. CWChris Williamson7:46

       Okay

   12. APAlex Petkas7:46

       ... roughly.

   13. CWChris Williamson7:47

       So there's-- it's a combination of maybe some real world stuff with lots of mythology, trying to sort of root something in reality, but then also build it out into a bigger imagination.

   14. APAlex Petkas7:56

       Yeah. I think it's better to think of Homer as historical fiction rather than just, like, pure fiction. That's, that's certainly how the Greeks would have thought about it. Like, they believe that the Trojan War happened for the most part.

   15. CWChris Williamson8:06

       Mm-hmm.

   16. APAlex Petkas8:06

       And none, none of them are gonna say, you know, it happened exactly like Homer told the story.

   17. CWChris Williamson8:12

       Hmm.

   18. APAlex Petkas8:12

       Um, but they, they thought it happened, and Homer's in the eighth century imagining this conflict 400 years earlier.

   19. CWChris Williamson8:19

       Okay, so it's a sequel in kind. It's a, a story sequel to this epic myth that may have, may have happened, may not have happened quite the way that we think it does. So this is set in about 1200 BC.

   20. APAlex Petkas8:33

       Right.

   21. CWChris Williamson8:34

       Right.

   22. APAlex Petkas8:34

       Yeah. And, and it-- The, The Odyssey is kind of a sequel to The Iliad, which is a longer, somewhat longer poem and, uh, you know, this is a story about what happens at Troy itself, and Achilles is the big hero there. And famously, Achilles dies, you know, Paris shoots him in the heel, in his Achilles' heel, the only vulnerable spot on him, uh, before the, the city actually gets taken. Um, and so, uh, you know, but Achilles doesn't die in The Iliad, but his death is kind of hinted at. Uh, and then The Odyssey kind of picks up a little bit after The Iliad-- well, 10 years, I guess, after The Iliad would've ended-

   23. CWChris Williamson9:12

       Hmm

   24. APAlex Petkas9:13

       ... um, and, and makes the case that Odysseus was actually... There's this kind of dialogue between The Iliad and The Odyssey of who is the best of the Greeks or the best of the Achaeans, as, as Homer calls them. The Achaeans are-

   25. CWChris Williamson9:24

       'Cause in the first book, it was Achilles, and in the second book-

   26. APAlex Petkas9:27

       Right

   27. CWChris Williamson9:27

       ... it's Odysseus.

   28. APAlex Petkas9:28

       Yeah. Obviously, it's Achilles because whenever Achilles is there, the Greeks win, win, win, win, win, and whenever Achilles, you know, is, is, is absent from the battle, the Trojans win, win, win, win, win. But, you know, at the end of the day, who was it that was responsible

3. 9:41 – 15:20

   Did Homer Write The Iliad First?

   1. APAlex Petkas9:41

      for the victory?

   2. CWChris Williamson9:41

      Did Homer write these in sequence? Did he write The Iliad first?

   3. APAlex Petkas9:44

      Well, this, this is what the ancient critics thought. This is the kind of traditional narrative. Homer is one guy, and, uh, he wrote The Iliad as a young man in the kind of vigor of maybe he's 35 and, you know, uh, hanging around guys like you see in, in The Iliad, warriors. You know what I mean? He's seen spears go in and out of faces and just the incredibly-

   4. CWChris Williamson10:08

      Gory shit

   5. APAlex Petkas10:08

      ... gruesome stuff that, that you see in The Iliad, and a little bit in The Odyssey. But that he's one of those kind of, um, warrior class people or hanging around those kind of guys.

   6. CWChris Williamson10:18

      Hmm.

   7. APAlex Petkas10:18

      Knows people like Achilles and Diomedes. And then in his older age, he, he pens The Odyssey, and it's a slower story. It's more kind of, you know, d- there's a little more digressions. There's more kind of slices of daily life or peacetime and, and so he's kind of writing this in the twilight of his years. And it, and I, I kinda like that because, you know, The Iliad is just so visceral and, and, um, you know, stark and, and immediate and violent and glamorous. It kinda glamorizes war, not, not uncritically. But then The Odyssey is, um, is kind of-- if it's, if it's a poem by an old man, it's, it's also written for a wider audience.

   8. CWChris Williamson11:03

      Hmm.

   9. APAlex Petkas11:03

      I think this has a lot to do with its appeal today, too, and k- and kind of in, in modernity. It just, it's-- incor- incorporates a higher range of human experience. Um, and it's-- maybe it's for the young, especially, like Telemachus, who's this young guy that kicks off the poem. I mean, that, that might be the, the real target audience of, of The Odyssey. It's like a, like a broader range of people, and there's also women much more, you know, explored in depth in The Odyssey. Um, so I don't know if that answers the question.

   10. CWChris Williamson11:34

       That's the background. That's how we arrive-

   11. APAlex Petkas11:35

       Mm-hmm

   12. CWChris Williamson11:35

       ... at the beginning of it.

   13. APAlex Petkas11:36

       Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, all, all-- The Trojan War has ended. Odysseus had some trouble getting home. It's actually 20 years after the Trojan War started when The Odyssey timeline begins, and, um, we learn in the first, you know, 100 lines or so of The Odyssey that Odysseus, you know, kinda got, got, got off course trying to get back from Troy. Sev- several of the Greeks had this experience. And, um, on his way home, he met these monsters and strange people, and he pissed off the god Poseidon and for a variety of reasons, many of which are his, his own faults, many of which may be not only his fault, uh, he is stuck on this island with this divine nymph- A, a Calypso and she's, she's, she's, uh, she kind of got him as a prisoner, and she wants to make him her husband. And so he's stuck there away from home and, and then everybody at home back in his homeland, which is an island called Ithaca, is wondering where he is. You know, uh, did he die? He didn't die at Troy. Uh, the stories about the Trojan War are, like, circulating in, in the kind of w- world of the poem. People know s- something of what happened, but there's no, there's no news of Odysseus. Where, what happened? Did, did he, did he get lost at sea? Did, you know, did, did he just abandon his family? Is he, you know, gonna go off and, you know, do more pirate adventures among the Ethiopians? Or what, what, what's going on with Odysseus? Nobody knows. And, um, and, and the, the poem kind of starts with this background in place, misadventures, meeting monsters, stuck on Cer- uh, Calypso's island, um, and, uh, that's all kind of before the story actually begins. And the story begins when the gods have this meeting, and, uh, Poseidon happens to be distracted. He's pissed off at Odysseus and doesn't want him to get home. But, um, Poseidon's off, like, partying with the Ethiopians-

   14. CWChris Williamson13:41

       As you do

   15. APAlex Petkas13:41

       ... as, as one does, as, as, as the gods often do. I mean, they're, they're, they're a good hang. And the-

   16. CWChris Williamson13:47

       The Ethiopians?

   17. APAlex Petkas13:47

       The Ethiopians, yeah, yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson13:48

       They're a good hang? Okay.

   19. APAlex Petkas13:49

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson13:49

       That's news, that's news to me.

   21. APAlex Petkas13:51

       Read Herodotus. There's many details.

   22. CWChris Williamson13:53

       Cool.

   23. APAlex Petkas13:53

       You know, were they northern? Were they southern? Who knows, but they were fun, and, and, and they're far. So, so Poseidon's distracted, and then Athena says, "All right, we can-- we're gonna do something about Odysseus now." Athena's kind of Odysseus' divine champion. She's, um, his favorite goddess. He, he's her favorite hero, and she goes to Zeus, the, the, you know, the king of the gods and sort of lord of the cosmos, and she says, "Odysseus was a pious man. He was a good king. He was a good dad. It's just not fair that he's just brought away on this island with this nymph, and his son is just, you know, growing up without a father. We gotta do something about this." And Zeus says, "All right. We'll do something about this. Poseidon will just have to deal with it." And, and that's how the, the action kind of kicks off in, in, in The Odyssey. And long story short, you know, Odysseus gets released from the island, uh, by the gods' will. Telemachus, his son, is sent on this kind of vision quest, rite of passage, initiation journey, and A- Athena helps him out with that.

   24. CWChris Williamson14:55

       Mm.

   25. APAlex Petkas14:55

       Um, Odysseus tells his story, uh, at, at the center of the book. And, and if you wanna just, like, skip all of the, like, not A+ interesting parts of The Odyssey and just get to the kind of, the famous monsters and, and adventures, you can go to Book Nine through 12, where Odysseus basically tells all of the backstory in his own voice to a, a- an audience of people that he's met.

4. 15:20 – 16:31

   How Much of The Odyssey is Just Retelling?

   1. CWChris Williamson15:20

      So how much, how much of the story is what happens when he gets back, and how much is the retelling of what happened before?

   2. APAlex Petkas15:27

      So the, the first eight books are him and Telemachus. There's 24 books, so the first book, uh, four, four books are Telemachus. Then there's four books about Odysseus getting from Calypso's island to this sort of intermediary destination, Scheria it's called, the F- the Phaeacians are this people that help him get home. He tells them his story. And then from 13 to 24 is, like, him and Telemachus back on Ithaca and how they solve the big problem that has arisen at home, which we haven't treated yet-

   3. CWChris Williamson16:02

      Mm-hmm

   4. APAlex Petkas16:02

      ... which is that his house is infested with suitors trying to woo his wife away, trying to steal his wife away, uh, while he's-

   5. CWChris Williamson16:12

      50% of the book is Love Island.

   6. APAlex Petkas16:14

      50-- [laughs] Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:16

      The original Love Island.

   8. APAlex Petkas16:17

      Yeah, like-

   9. CWChris Williamson16:18

      The Lotus Eaters-

   10. APAlex Petkas16:19

       Yes

   11. CWChris Williamson16:19

       ... were Love Island.

   12. APAlex Petkas16:20

       The Sirens. Yeah, yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson16:21

       Yeah. Okay.

   14. APAlex Petkas16:22

       The Phaeacians. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of kind of sexual tension [laughs] -

   15. CWChris Williamson16:25

       Okay, okay

   16. APAlex Petkas16:26

       ... uh, especially, you know, Odysseus with the Phaeacians, wh- which we could, we should get to.

5. 16:31 – 21:43

   Why is Penelope the Ultimate Prize?

   1. APAlex Petkas16:31

      It's really interesting.

   2. CWChris Williamson16:31

      Okay, so what's the, what's the rite of passage thing?

   3. APAlex Petkas16:33

      Yeah, so it's good to start with Telemachus probably bec- so when you, when you start The Odyssey, it's kind of like, wow, I thought this was about Odysseus, and we're, you know, page after page, you know, you don't meet the guy really until Book five.

   4. CWChris Williamson16:44

      Why is his fucking idiot son in this story so much?

   5. APAlex Petkas16:47

      Yeah. [laughs] He's a weak little... But that's kind of the point, you know? Telemachus is, is stuck there at home. Uh-

   6. CWChris Williamson16:53

      How old is he?

   7. APAlex Petkas16:53

      He's 20. So Odysseus left him as a, an infant essentially, and he's never met his dad, only heard about him. Um, and he's kind of grown up in this, in this world of women, you know, his mom and the maidservants who are very loyal and, you know, there's, there's, uh, you know, loyal servants of Odysseus here and there. But, um, Telemachus' grandfather is, is kind of, uh, uh, too old to do anything, and he's kind of, kind of shattered by Odysseus' absence. Um, so, uh, it's-- I think it, I think it starts with Telemachus because Homer really wants to get you to feel viscerally what it's like when the father figure is absent, like how bad things get when the leader is gone, and that kind of motivates the rest of the story.

   8. CWChris Williamson17:39

      Mm-hmm.

   9. APAlex Petkas17:40

      So, so Telemachus is, um, uh, you know, 20. He's getting bossed around. There's 108 suitors at his house from all over western Greece, princes and, uh, big shots.

   10. CWChris Williamson17:54

       Why is Odysseus' wife so desirable?

   11. APAlex Petkas17:56

       That's a good question. So Penelope is her name, famously. She's, um, right, uh, I mean, late 30s at the youngest-

   12. CWChris Williamson18:07

       Hmm

   13. APAlex Petkas18:08

       ... maybe early 40s. Um, I mean, why are, why are, why is she the most desirable catch in, like, all of Greece? Uh, I think it's-- I mean, obviously, like, women can be very attractive and alluring at that age but, you know, for 108 eligible young rich bachelors to come and try to Love Island her. [laughs]

   14. CWChris Williamson18:27

       Yeah, it's closer to Bonnie Blue than Love Island, but yeah.

   15. APAlex Petkas18:30

       Yeah. Right That's, that's the counterexample. You know-

   16. CWChris Williamson18:33

       Yeah

   17. APAlex Petkas18:33

       ... you're always supposed to w- you know, how could this go wrong?

   18. CWChris Williamson18:35

       Yeah, yeah. Penelope-

   19. APAlex Petkas18:37

       Penelope has, has a lot of options, right?

   20. CWChris Williamson18:39

       Yeah.

   21. APAlex Petkas18:39

       So, [laughs] so he, uh, sh- she's-- I think she's desirable. She's very smart and she's well-bred, blah, blah, blah. But the real reason I think she's desirable is, you know, it's like mimetic desire. It's the kind of the Girard thing.

   22. CWChris Williamson18:54

       Fucking knew you were gonna say that.

   23. APAlex Petkas18:55

       You know? Yeah. I went there. But it's, but it's really there.

   24. CWChris Williamson18:58

       I want the wife of the guy that's a hero because if I can take her, that means I'm a hero, too.

   25. APAlex Petkas19:02

       100%.

   26. CWChris Williamson19:03

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   27. APAlex Petkas20:19

       Yeah, totally. I mean, th- that's kind of the, the story that there's all these, uh, like Homer lays out all these kind of other versions of women making different choices to sort of highlight what Penelope could do if, if she goes off track-

   28. CWChris Williamson20:34

       Mm-hmm

   29. APAlex Petkas20:35

       ... why it's important.

   30. CWChris Williamson20:35

       It's not unheard of.
6. 21:43 – 36:19

   Telemachus’ Quest to Live Up to His Father

   1. CWChris Williamson21:43

      What's that like for the son to be around this situation?

   2. APAlex Petkas21:46

      Well, you know, the suitors have been there for like four years. Um, they haven't been there the whole time, but, uh, you know, he's-- he was 16 maybe when they came, and he's, um, he's, he's far outnumbered. Uh, he doesn't feel like he's in control of his own house, and in fact, it's kind of anarchy. Like anarchy, you know, when, when the patriarchy is removed, you know, Penelope doesn't just like suddenly step in and become the man of the house. It, it doesn't work like that, in Greece at least. It's, it's kind of the rule of the most assertive at the time, which is these suitors, and there's a kind of jockeying for status among them. But certainly Telemachus is the bottom of the food chain as far as they're concerned 'cause they outnumber him and they're older and, um, and so he doesn't feel like he can reassert himself. And, and this is exactly where Athena comes in to try to twist the situation. So, um, she comes down herself. She-- You know, Zeus sends Hermes to go and sort out Odysseus with Calypso. But Athena comes herself in disguise as, uh, as a man, Mentes. She takes on this, you know, um, alter ego and shows up at Telemachus' house, at Odysseus' house one day and, um, you know, she doesn't get greeted at the gates, which is very bad hospitality. So, so the suitors are, uh, abusing the hospitality of the house.

   3. CWChris Williamson23:11

      Mm.

   4. APAlex Petkas23:12

      And, um, they're actually not doing this whole courtship thing the way you're supposed to. Like, the right thing to do from, from the Greek perspective would've been to go and talk to Ple- Penelope's dad and say, "All right, well, she's eligible now. Like, which, which one of us do you approve of?" But instead they're, they're just eating away at the, the cows and enjoying the, the fruits of the, um, the estate of, of Odysseus' house. They're, they're eating him out of house and home, eating Telemachus out of house and home. They're being bad guests, and they're not being good hosts. The s- they're not acting like they own the place on all these levels.

   5. CWChris Williamson23:48

      Mm.

   6. APAlex Petkas23:49

      So when, when Athena gets there, she's just sort of like left hanging even though she looks really respectable, and this is, this is just seen as, you know, incredibly a bad faux pas. And Telemachus greets her and he's, he's like visibly annoyed that, um, that these people haven't greeted her and, and he extends her hospitality. He welcomes her in and-

   7. CWChris Williamson24:07

      Mm

   8. APAlex Petkas24:08

      ... and, uh, and she, you know, long story short, she says, um, you know, explains the situation. She's like, "You know, my boy, have you heard of the story of what Orestes did?" And Telemachus says, "No, tell me." "Well, Orestes was the son of Agamemnon. Agamemnon was the king of the Greeks, the, the leader of the Greeks at Troy." The, the, the biggest of the kings, he organized the expedition to ta-capture Helen, and they won, and when, when he came back, like practically upon arrival, he gets murdered by his own wife, who was seduced by his cousin, who wanted to steal the throne from Agamemnon.

   9. CWChris Williamson24:52

      Mm.

   10. APAlex Petkas24:53

       And so, um, Agamemnon's murdered by his cousin and his own, his own lovely wife, Clytemnestra, and then they rule Argos in his absence for a few years, and then Orestes, his son, sneaks back in and murders them both, murders his own mother and his uncle, and takes back Argos for the bloodline of Agamemnon.

   11. CWChris Williamson25:17

       Mm.

   12. APAlex Petkas25:17

       And A-Athena says, "You might have to do just such a thing with these suitors." So she's trying to stir him up by this example of, you know-

   13. CWChris Williamson25:28

       Is she trying to create a rift between him and his mother?

   14. APAlex Petkas25:31

       I don't think, I don't think that's what's going on.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:33

       You could have read it in that way using that example, right?

   16. APAlex Petkas25:35

       Yeah, but it, it does kind of point to the issue of, hey, you know, your mom has her own mind, and she could go astray. Like, you have to be the man in the situation no matter what.

   17. CWChris Williamson25:46

       Mm.

   18. APAlex Petkas25:47

       Uh, and you have to be dangerous. You have to be-become a man of violence potentially. You have to be, you have to be able to scare these guys.

   19. CWChris Williamson25:52

       Okay, so Athena's come in to cock block 108 suitors.

   20. APAlex Petkas25:55

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson25:56

       Yeah.

   22. APAlex Petkas25:56

       Yeah, and, and, and to, you know, get, get Telemachus to, to man up finally and, you know, go on his, his quest. And basically she's-- she says, "Here's what you gotta do. Confront the suitors, uh, call out their injustice, and then get out of town and go and meet some of your dad's friends, meet some of Odysseus's old buddies on the mainland." And this is what he does, in short. And, um, and so he goes and he meets, uh, Nestor, this old guy, one of the wisest of the Greeks, very old, um, very talkative old man. It's kind of funny. Um, and Nestor at Pylos tells Telemachus some news. He hasn't heard about Odysseus other than he got, he got, uh, uh, you know, blown by the storm off into oblivion. Nobody knows what happened to him. But, but Nestor tells Telemachus about, um, gives some more details about Agamemnon actually, which is interesting-

   23. CWChris Williamson26:56

       Mm

   24. APAlex Petkas26:57

       ... for, for the bigger plot. So when Agamemnon, uh, left, uh, to go to Troy, he left-- His wife was really good when he left. Clytemnestra's a wise woman. She's well born. She was actually the sister of Helen-

   25. CWChris Williamson27:13

       Mm

   26. APAlex Petkas27:13

       ... who also started off good, you know? This is kind of the threat. You know, good women can go wrong if the cir- if the circumstances are, are, uh, are wrong.

   27. CWChris Williamson27:22

       Mm-hmm.

   28. APAlex Petkas27:24

       What did he do to keep her on the straight and narrow? He left a bard there to, to look after her. So Agamemnon kind of left a Homer there with his wife, Clytemnestra, to tell her improving stories and tell her stories of what goes wrong when, when women behave badly or what-whatever it is. But, you know, the poet is sort of seen as this upholder of the moral order. And-

   29. CWChris Williamson27:49

       It's slightly self-serving by Homer there?

   30. APAlex Petkas27:51

       You know, you might think of it as, uh, pro-bard propaganda. Um, uh, I think that would be fair. But it, it, it, it is not just Homer that thinks this. This is a very deep Greek idea that, you know, go-- you could see it in Plato, you could see it in the tragedians, and it's like the poets are kind of, especially in an oral culture, um, poets are the ones who remember the things that need to be passed down from generation to generation, right? So they kind of, they have a lot of moral credibility if they're good ones, and you know, there can be bad ones too. But as soon-- So basically, Aegisthus, Ag-Agamemnon's cousin, knew that he couldn't get to Clytemnestra. He kept kind of making advances at, uh, his, his cousin's wife, and she just kept swatting him away, and then he realized, ah, the poet is the problem. So he captures the poet, and he sends him off to a desert island, and then Clytemnestra was morally defenseless, and that's when Aegisthus swooped in and seduced her 'cause the poet was away. Um, so yeah, uh, uh, there-- I think this really does match how, how the Greeks would have thought of, like, why you need epic, epic poetry. It's like it is actually a kind of moral pillar of society.
7. 36:19 – 37:21

   How Order Can Slip into Anarchy

   1. CWChris Williamson36:19

      What are they supposed to represent philosophically w- at this stage?

   2. APAlex Petkas36:23

      I, I think-- So there's, there's the whole anarchy versus patriarchy going on. There's the kind of usurped glory. I think the Odyssey-

   3. CWChris Williamson36:31

      Good men, bad men. Absence of good men means that there's a vacuum for bad men to step in.

   4. APAlex Petkas36:37

      100%. And I think there's a kind of broader arc of The, The Odyssey is about the, the clash between order and entropy, and, um, and sort of dissolution-

   5. CWChris Williamson36:54

      Mm

   6. APAlex Petkas36:55

      ... of complex societies into kind of barbaric or animal, uh, you know, soup.

   7. CWChris Williamson37:04

      Mm-hmm.

   8. APAlex Petkas37:04

      And as the Suitors kind of represent those forces of, of violence and, and turmoil, and primordial soup out of which order needs to be established, sometimes, sometimes violently.

   9. CWChris Williamson37:16

      Yeah. Okay.

   10. APAlex Petkas37:16

       And that's, and that's justice. That's importantly. To establish that is about justice.

8. 37:21 – 54:13

   Why Odysseus Walked Away From a Goddess

   1. CWChris Williamson37:21

      Okay. And then we switch, and Odysseus wakes up one day on Calypso's island, needs to get home.

   2. APAlex Petkas37:29

      Staring off into the ocean, sitting there, weeping, um, longing for his homeland.

   3. CWChris Williamson37:36

      Mm-hmm.

   4. APAlex Petkas37:37

      Calypso is, you know, this incredibly hot, divine goddess who, uh, he's, he's washed up ashore on her island, and she offered him hospitality, and basically they've, they've been sleeping together for the past eight years.

   5. CWChris Williamson37:51

      Okay.

   6. APAlex Petkas37:52

      [laughs] But Odysseus points out, "Never did they win the heart within me." So it was kind of under compulsion-

   7. CWChris Williamson37:58

      Got, got my penis, but not my heart.

   8. APAlex Petkas38:00

      Yeah, yeah. It was just sex, baby, you know? [laughs] Uh, and I-- Homer seems to take this as, as an acceptable explanation.

   9. CWChris Williamson38:10

      We're gonna darken the environment appropriately too.

   10. APAlex Petkas38:12

       It's getting-- It's about to get spooky.

   11. CWChris Williamson38:13

       Yeah, exactly.

   12. APAlex Petkas38:14

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson38:14

       Okay.

   14. APAlex Petkas38:15

       Uh, so, so that's... Yeah, he wakes up, this is Book Five. Um, 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, uh-

   15. CWChris Williamson38:47

       That's what people are saying.

   16. APAlex Petkas38:49

       It's like, [laughs] like-

   17. CWChris Williamson38:50

       Hermes arrives and he goes, "I'm so glad I'm not in fucking Houston."

   18. APAlex Petkas38:52

       Yeah. Well, well, you know, Houston is humid, but there's no, there's no place sweeter than one's homeland.

   19. CWChris Williamson38:58

       Yeah.

   20. APAlex Petkas38:59

       [laughs] So-

   21. CWChris Williamson38:59

       Yeah

   22. APAlex Petkas39:00

       ... so, uh, the g- even the gods are amazed at how, you know, beautiful and at how nice of a place this would, 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 for-forget to promise the whole youth thing. This-- There's a, a, a bad story about this happening with, um, this guy Tithonus, who the goddess Dawn, Eos, uh, managed to get it arranged so that he would be immortal, but forgot to ask Zeus that he would be made, uh, youthful forever. And so he just gets older, and older, and older-

   23. CWChris Williamson39:50

       Just decrepit

   24. APAlex Petkas39:50

       ... and never dies, and he kind of shrinks to a little, little bug.

   25. CWChris Williamson39:54

       Always got to read the small print.

   26. APAlex Petkas39:55

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson39:55

       Right.

   28. APAlex Petkas39:56

       And, uh, you know, you never know when you make a deal with a goddess, like there, there might be some loophole that-

   29. CWChris Williamson40:02

       Fucker

   30. APAlex Petkas40:02

       ... that screws you over.
9. 54:13 – 1:01:09

   The Power of Cunning

   1. CWChris Williamson54:13

      A lot of shrewdness-

   2. APAlex Petkas54:15

      Yeah

   3. CWChris Williamson54:15

      ... like being upheld, like the, the canniness of Athena to be able to work around the issues of Poseidon, of Odysseus being able to leave in a, a gentle manner that doesn't get him on the bad side of Calypso, uh, his ability then to cajole and, and play the game when he lands on this new island. So a lot of it is a, again, an up- an, an upholding of being canny-

   4. APAlex Petkas54:48

      Mm-hmm

   5. CWChris Williamson54:48

      ... being like a slick operator.

   6. APAlex Petkas54:50

      Yeah. Yeah, I mean, would Agamemnon have, have, uh, charmed his way in with this young princess. I don't know. I mean-

   7. CWChris Williamson55:00

      Hmm

   8. APAlex Petkas55:00

      ... maybe.

   9. CWChris Williamson55:00

      Hmm.

   10. APAlex Petkas55:01

       Uh, but, but this is, this is the arts of Athena, and this is actually, it's actually, these, these kind of things, these kind of tricky, canny things are what he's gonna 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.

   11. CWChris Williamson55:27

       Mm-hmm.

   12. APAlex Petkas55:27

       A, a, a little bit of violence, but mostly it's, it's like trickery and, um, in places where he's just, he's just vastly out- out- outmatched in force.

   13. CWChris Williamson55:36

       Hmm.

   14. APAlex Petkas55:38

       Um, so there's this, this is the, the, the moment actually when he's at this party at the Phaeacians' 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, just 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, he chucks this giant discus way bigger than any of the other discuses, way further than any other kids, and he, he shows them up. But then, um, after the meal, they're relaxing and listening to the bard, Phemius. He tells a few stories, some of them famous. He tells a story of Ares and Aphrodite, uh, Ares, you know, stealing Hephaestus' wife away, and these very pregnant sort of tales of what goes wrong when the husband is away-

   15. CWChris Williamson56:33

       Hmm

   16. APAlex Petkas56:33

       ... putting that fear in your mind, like what is gonna happen? Uh, but then after, uh, uh, 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.

   17. CWChris Williamson56:49

       Hmm.

   18. APAlex Petkas56:50

       And Demodocus tells the story, and, you know, everybody knows it, but the Greeks build a horse. They put a bunch of, you know, warriors in there, and Odysseus included. It was Odysseus' plan. The other Greeks go off to an island. The Trojans see this horse, and they think it's, uh, some kind of talisman of power. Various versions of like, why did they bring this giant horse into their walls? [chuckles] 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 the story, Odysseus, I mean, apparently he's a good bard, you know, tragic-- Odysseus just starts crying, and, um, he's trying to be s- 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.

   19. CWChris Williamson57:48

       Hmm.

   20. APAlex Petkas57:49

       So it's almost like he's, he's weeping like the victims of the tragedy he inflicted upon Troy. A very kind of poignant moment. Does that mean that he's sort of having sympathy for the people that he destroyed at Troy?

   21. CWChris Williamson58:05

       Hmm.

   22. APAlex Petkas58:06

       And Homer kind of leaves it open. But Alcinous can, can tell the king, "Hey, you know, maybe that's enough epic poetry for tonight. Uh, our guest is, uh, very tired. Uh, [chuckles] he can see it, see it in his eyes."

   23. CWChris Williamson58:20

       Hysterical.

   24. APAlex Petkas58:21

       Yeah. [laughs] So, um, so he says, um, "Stranger, I, I could tell that this story was bothering you. Pr- Did you have a brother or a, or a, 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 O- Odysseus says, "All right, I'll tell you who I am at last." And that's when the, the great narrative begins in book, Book Nine-

   25. CWChris Williamson58:47

       Hmm

   26. APAlex Petkas58:48

       ... 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.

   27. CWChris Williamson59:03

       Filating himself.

   28. APAlex Petkas59:04

       Yeah. [chuckles] Well, I mean, a- 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'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, it's Book 11, where everybody's just like, you know, gawking, jaws dropped, and he's, he's enchanted the room-

   29. CWChris Williamson59:30

       Just-

   30. APAlex Petkas59:30

       ... just like Homer enchants the room.
10. 1:01:09 – 1:07:35

    How Odysseus Outsmarted the Cyclops

    1. APAlex Petkas1:01:09

       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, and, um, and they get blown off course to this island of, of the Cyclopses.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:01:24

       Mm.

    3. APAlex Petkas1:01:24

       And that's, that's like the, the grand, I think one of the, the, the best, the best stories of, of this whole journey that brings all, a lot of these themes to, to the fore. Um-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:01:38

       Why?

    5. APAlex Petkas1:01:38

       Well, okay, Cyclopses are [chuckles] -- Emily Wilson translates, uh, Cyclopses a, a couple places in her translation as Cyclopean people, like they're, uh, you know-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:01:52

       Like people, people of color

    7. APAlex Petkas1:01:54

       ... yeah, you know, temporarily, uh, afflicted with being one-eyed monsters. I don't know. Her, her take is-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:02:00

       It's a very DEI approach-

    9. APAlex Petkas1:02:02

       [laughs]

    10. CWChris Williamson1:02:03

        ... to a story from three thousand years ago.

    11. APAlex Petkas1:02:05

        You know, I know Emily. She's, she's a good scholar. She's, she's good to her people, but I, I, I like to take some potshots at her translations 'cause, I mean, like her take would be the Cyclopses are kind of a, you know, Odysseus is this Greek colonizer, and he's looking at everything through the kind of, you know, Greek man colonizer lens.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:02:24

        Mm-hmm.

    13. APAlex Petkas1:02:24

        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. But, and the Cyclops' way of doing things is to be a giant one-eyed monster that eats people, so, um-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:02:37

        Okay, so that's the indigenous wisdom-

    15. APAlex Petkas1:02:39

        That's [laughs]

    16. CWChris Williamson1:02:39

        ... of the-

    17. APAlex Petkas1:02:39

        [laughs] Right.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:02:40

        Of the Cyclopses.

    19. APAlex Petkas1:02:42

        Right. [laughs]

    20. CWChris Williamson1:02:42

        Yeah.

    21. APAlex Petkas1:02:43

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:02:44

        All right.

    23. APAlex Petkas1:02:44

        Um, but, uh, and he plays his trick on the Cyclops. You know, he goes, and they go in the cave, and, um, the Cyclops, uh, eats, eats some of his men and traps, traps Odysseus and his men with this big rock in the cave.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:02:59

        So you're watching the, you're watching the troops of Odysseus dwindle after-

    25. APAlex Petkas1:03:02

        Yeah

    26. CWChris Williamson1:03:03

        ... each different stage.

    27. APAlex Petkas1:03:03

        Round after round.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:03:04

        Yep.

    29. APAlex Petkas1:03:05

        And I think the Cyclops story is really interesting because w-the way that H- uh, Odysseus describes it is they are, um, they, they live in little, uh, family units. They do not care about the gods. They, they think Zeus is a chump, and, um, 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.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:03:36

        Mm.
11. 1:07:35 – 1:09:23

    The One Mistake That Cursed Odysseus

    1. CWChris Williamson1:07:35

       ... to it.

    2. APAlex Petkas1:07:35

       Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:07:36

       How'd he get cursed?

    4. APAlex Petkas1:07:37

       Uh, so yeah, he gets cursed by, uh, 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." And Odysseus is like, "What? Father Poseidon?" Poseidon is the father of Polyphemus, the Cyclops. Little did he know-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:07:58

       Oh, he fucked up his son

    6. APAlex Petkas1:07:59

       ... little did he know that he was blinding the son of the sea god Poseidon, and so Polyphemus curses him. May he never get home or may he, uh, have a really, really, really, really hard time and lose all of his companions. And Poseidon listened, and that's what happened.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:08:16

       Jared, have you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem?

    8. APAlex Petkas1:08:20

       I don't consider a lot, Chris.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:08:22

       Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Co. last night.

    10. APAlex Petkas1:08:25

        But they're non-alcoholic.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:08:28

        And that's not a problem?

    12. APAlex Petkas1:08:30

        Sorry man, I, I just kept chugging, waiting for the regret to creep in. Never happened.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:08:35

        See, most people, like Jared, don't want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off, and that is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They make the best NA brews on the planet. [burps] You can find Athletic Brewing Co.'s best-selling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you, or best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped direct to your door. Right now, get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom and MODERNWISDOM at checkout. Near beer terms and conditions apply. Athletic Brewing Company, fit for all times.

    14. APAlex Petkas1:09:16

        Bottoms up. [laughs]

12. 1:09:23 – 1:24:57

    Is Family the True Heart of The Odyssey?

    1. APAlex Petkas1:09:23

       So-

    2. CWChris Williamson1:09:23

       This is locked in on him still telling the story. So everybody's sat around-

    3. APAlex Petkas1:09:27

       Yeah

    4. CWChris Williamson1:09:27

       ... mouths open.

    5. APAlex Petkas1:09:28

       Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:09:28

       "Holy shit, this is an epic story."

    7. APAlex Petkas1:09:30

       Yeah. And, um, time is a-- I mean, yeah, [laughs] we're-- this is only one of the-- it's like a fourth of the way through his long storytelling. So it's, it's really an epic narrative.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:09:42

       Yeah.

    9. APAlex Petkas1:09:43

       Uh, maybe a couple more episodes are worth kind of highlighting. So, um, l- eventually they make their way, their way to this other island, Circe's island, and here's another strange woman that he has to deal with. Circe is, um, s- a divine witch goddess, sort of like Calypso style, but, but a little bit more, a little bit more kind of dangerous or dark. And the-- Odysseus sends his men into the island. They see smoke coming up from this hut and, um, and then, you know, 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 and they-- oh, she sees them. "Oh, gentlemen, please, right this way." And they go and, um, 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.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:10:58

        As a pig.

    11. APAlex Petkas1:10:59

        As a human.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:11:00

        Right.

    13. APAlex Petkas1:11:00

        He doesn't go in. All the other guys are pigs. He just hustles back to Odysseus, tells him what happened.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:11:06

        It's fucked in there. There's this chick, she's got a wand, all the guys are pigs. We shouldn't go.

    15. APAlex Petkas1:11:11

        Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Let's, let's leave this island-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:11:12

        It's a nightmare party

    17. APAlex Petkas1:11:13

        ... immediately. Go, go to the ship.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:11:16

        Yeah.

    19. APAlex Petkas1:11:16

        Odysseus is like-

    20. CWChris Williamson1:11:17

        It's almost as bad as that Cyclops guy

    21. APAlex Petkas1:11:19

        ... "Hell, no." Yeah, yeah. And th- this happens a few times on the journey. People are like, "Please, Odysseus, can we just leave?" He's like, "No, I just wanna see what, what might be, uh-"

    22. CWChris Williamson1:11:26

        Yeah

    23. APAlex Petkas1:11:27

        ... "in store for us here. Maybe they wanna give me a present." [laughs]

    24. CWChris Williamson1:11:29

        Yeah.

    25. APAlex Petkas1:11:31

        So, um, and then this is another one of those instances. But he, he, he, he draws his sword and he's, like, ready for action, charges in, a-and Hermes stops him and he says, "Odysseus, if you go in there, you're just gonna become a pig. She's gonna turn you into a pig. Stop and let me, let me help you." And he pulls out of the ground this root and it's g- well, it's a plant with black root and a white flower, and he says, "This is moly." And, uh, this is not where we get the word holy moly, but if that helps you remember.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:12:07

        Yeah.

    27. APAlex Petkas1:12:08

        I know. I, I looked it up. I was like, "That's, God's too good." No, it is too good. But, um, but it is, uh, you know, famous plant and he s- he tells Odysseus the nature of this plant. It's what Homer said, the physis of this plant. This is the phys- physis. It's where we get the word physics, you know, nature in Greek. And, uh, a lot of philosophers have made a lot about this. Uh, we could, we could maybe go into it, but this is the first occurrence of the word nature. Like, the idea that there is a nature, that things have natures, is a sort of, like, that's an idea that had to develop.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:12:40

        Hmm.

    29. APAlex Petkas1:12:41

        But Hermes t-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, the pigs and the wolves and the lions are there, and Circe 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, [gasps] he stands up and he draws his sword, and he's like, "All right, Circe, jig is up." And, um, she's like, "How did you, how did you, you know, avoid my magic?" And, uh, and then she asks him, as, as you might expect, to go to bed with her Uh, and Hermes had warned him that this might happen. She, she's gonna ask you to go to bed with her. You gotta do it. Dude, no choice.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:13:32

        Do the take one for the team, dude. And pipe the pig lady, come on now.
13. 1:24:57 – 1:27:48

    How Odysseus Finally Returns Home

    1. APAlex Petkas1:24:57

       Ithaca.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:24:57

       How easy is the journey?

    3. APAlex Petkas1:25:01

       That journey is incredibly easy. He sleeps the whole time. He-- They put him down on the sh- 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, and he's like, "Wow, uh-"

    4. CWChris Williamson1:25:25

       It's like he fast-

    5. APAlex Petkas1:25:26

       "Those, those bastards, they left me on a, on a... Uh, 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.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:25:34

       It's like he fast traveled in a computer game.

    7. APAlex Petkas1:25:36

       Yeah.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:25:37

       In a video game, he just pressed a button and- Moved on the map-

    9. APAlex Petkas1:25:40

       Yeah

    10. CWChris Williamson1:25:40

        ... from one location to another

    11. APAlex Petkas1:25:42

        Yeah. It's, it's, it's really weird, and I think it's, it's kind of like, I don't know, it's like was it all a dream? I don't know. The, the ... He was crossing this boundary from the, you know, adventurous, mythical world where the, the ... And the Phaeacians are kinda close to the gods. They're, they don't have, um, there's no pirates. They have these magical ships. They have maybe these, like, robot dogs. Um, it's not clear. Robot golden dogs, um, guarding the palace. Uh, 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 a kind of a temptation. Like, he, he could've stayed there and married that hot young girl. It was a real temptation.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:26:24

        Mm.

    13. APAlex Petkas1:26:25

        And she was, you know, she was like a young Penelope too. She's a good, good, you know, great catch, but he had suffering to do. He had more suffering to do. Uh, but you know, he, he left that all behind, and I think it's like he's crossing this metaphysical boundary almost-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:26:38

        Mm

    15. APAlex Petkas1:26:39

        ... between the world of, like, monsters and myth to the world of the harsh reality, the Odysseus.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:26:43

        Where on the hero's journey is he? Is he six o'clock? Is he seven o'clock?

    17. APAlex Petkas1:26:48

        That's a good question. So yeah, he, he, uh, Circe's the sort of maybe serving that wise counselor role, maybe Teiresias is. There's a, there's a katabasis, the descent.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:26:59

        Mm-hmm.

    19. APAlex Petkas1:26:59

        Uh, and he's, he's come out with the knowledge that he needs to get back. So he's, he's about, basically about to face the final boss.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:27:05

        Mm-hmm.

    21. APAlex Petkas1:27:06

        And it's, it's a very long facing of the final boss. I mean, we're only halfway through the book at this point-

    22. CWChris Williamson1:27:11

        Yep

    23. APAlex Petkas1:27:11

        ... he gets back.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:27:11

        Mm-hmm.

    25. APAlex Petkas1:27:12

        Um, but I think it's, you know, you can, you can dispense with it a lot quicker. Um, so, uh, but you know, he's, he's gotta use all of these stratagems that he's been sort of developing through his sufferings 'cause 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.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:27:46

        Yeah, Agamemnon and-

    27. APAlex Petkas1:27:47

        Right

14. 1:27:48 – 1:29:57

    The Reunion of Odysseus and Telemachus

    1. CWChris Williamson1:27:48

       ... um, when does he meet his son?

    2. APAlex Petkas1:27:51

       So he, he, Odysseus makes his way to the swineherd's hut. Eumaeus, he's a, you know, pig f- pig tender, and, uh, one of Odysseus' slaves, but, like, uh, treated him really well. Loved Odysseus-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:28:05

       Mm

    4. APAlex Petkas1:28:05

       ... did Eumaeus. And, uh, he, you know, offers him hospitality. You know, the suitors took all the big fat pigs, but I can give you a little, 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, he spins this kind of cock-and-bull story about, uh, you know, getting seized by Phoenicians or something. I mean, but he, he, he, he's, he's keeping his, keeping his cards to his chest.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:28:37

       Mm.

    6. APAlex Petkas1:28:38

       Um, and then it, it just so happens that Telemachus gets back from his travel. He eludes the, the kind of ambush somehow that the suitors were trying to launch on him, and he, uh, he actually makes his way to this very swineherd's hut, and that's where they meet Odysseus in, in disguise at first. And then Eumaeus goes to town, and, 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-

    7. CWChris Williamson1:29:07

       Mm

    8. APAlex Petkas1:29:08

       ... launch a plan. And it's like gradually he, every, you know, couple of people find out here and there. The, um, 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.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:29:28

       Mm.

    10. APAlex Petkas1:29:29

        Um, but he goes in, he goes into this, his palace, you know-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:29:32

        How, how does he find out about all of the suitors? Does he see them?

    12. APAlex Petkas1:29:36

        Well, Telemachus tells him, and Eumaeus tells him-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:29:39

        Right

    14. APAlex Petkas1:29:39

        ... what's going on at home.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:29:40

        Mm.

    16. APAlex Petkas1:29:40

        And they say, you know, "Your wife has been faithful," but he doesn't know, right? He, he s- he still wants to test her, and he does in disguise, uh, eventually, dressed as a beggar, you know, famously. And, and he, um,

15. 1:29:57 – 1:42:12

    The Fall of the Suitors

    1. APAlex Petkas1:29:57

       [laughs] there's one, one or two cool scenes that are worth narrating about this whole arc before the, the final gratifying bloodbath. The ... He, he goes in, and he wants to kinda 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, goatherd along the way that was a slave of his, and he's like, "All right, I remember you." And, um, and he goes around b- 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, he goes, and he a- asks each of them for a little bit of, a little morsel, and, uh, most of them give him a morsel. But one of them, this guy Antinous, is q- well, one of the kind of chief suitors of the suitors, and he says, uh, "Man, get out of here. You're, you're just cramping my style. You're, you're, you're ruining the vibe. Eumaeus, why did you bring this beggar in here?" And Odysseus kinda, kinda taunts him, but very, very subtly. He's, "Oh, you know, you, you seem like such a lordly prince, Antinous. Um, Zeus 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." [laughs] And Odysseus knows what he's doing. He's kinda needling him. And, um, and so eventually, uh, Antinous picks up a, a, uh, like a footstool, and he chucks it at Odysseus. And Odysseus has just been prodding him. He's just been, like, riling him up, you know, very politely and very calmly, and Antinous just hurls a bench at him, gets, he gets the kid to lose his cool. And the bench just like, like hits Odysseus and like nothing happens.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:31:48

       Mm.

    3. APAlex Petkas1:31:48

       You know? And he's like, "Do you feel better now?" [laughs] So 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 wanna, if you wanna get rid of this guy, and you're Odysseus or Agamemnon or Achilles, you're just, you're gonna like pick him up and throw him outside yourself. You're not gonna hurl a bench at him.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:32:23

       Mm-hmm.

    5. APAlex Petkas1:32:23

       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. And, and 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, 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, he's lying there stirring in his mind how he's gonna 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, it's their fault.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:33:16

       Mm.

    7. APAlex Petkas1:33:16

       And Penelope is really pissed. She says, "These are the, the maidens that have been disrespecting me and disrespecting your son. They, they're sleeping with the Suitors, uh, and they're like not loyal to the household. They're causing me problems, they're disobedient, and, um, you know, they're, they're not on our side," essentially. He sees them going out, and he just wants to get 'em right there.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:33:41

       Mm.

    9. APAlex Petkas1:33:41

       It's a violent poem.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:33:42

        Mm-hmm.

    11. APAlex Petkas1:33:44

        But he says, "Endure, my heart. You have endured worse before when the Cyclops was eating your men."

    12. CWChris Williamson1:33:51

        Mm-hmm.

    13. APAlex Petkas1:33:53

        So he has to use that same restraint that he used, 'cause if he, if he had charged at the Cyclops when the guy was awake, you know, he would've, it would've been over.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:34:00

        So this is a skill that he developed.

    15. APAlex Petkas1:34:01

        Yeah, it's a skill that he developed, and he's kind of reminding himself, uh, that the same kind of endurance that he had in Cyclops is, is also helping him tolerate all the, you know, righteous indignation that he's feeling and-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:34:15

        Assholes in his house.

    17. APAlex Petkas1:34:16

        Yeah, yeah. You know? Biding his time.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:34:19

        Mm-hmm.

    19. APAlex Petkas1:34:19

        Biding his time.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:34:19

        Mm.

    21. APAlex Petkas1:34:19

        He's a man of much endurance, right?

    22. CWChris Williamson1:34:22

        Mm.

    23. APAlex Petkas1:34:22

        It's a marathon. And, um, and how it eventually all kind of comes, comes to a head is Penelope, um, has this idea. Who knows where she gets it.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:34:35

        Why is Penelope in on this?

    25. APAlex Petkas1:34:37

        So she's, she's, um... I, I forgot to mention, she-- 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. [laughs] Uh, and she's been telling the Suitors, "I just wanna finish my funeral shroud, and then I'll pick one of you. Let me, let me just do my, my wifely duty for my old household, and then I'll join your household." And of course, she's been weaving it during the day and unweaving it at night.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:35:07

        Mm.

    27. APAlex Petkas1:35:07

        She's tricking them using the craft of Athena, right? But one of the maid servants, actually, one of these bad ones, told the Suitors what she was doing. She was tricking them.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:35:19

        Mm.

    29. APAlex Petkas1:35:19

        So they're like, "All right, you have to decide now. We know this is all bullshit about your-"

    30. CWChris Williamson1:35:24

        Okay, bitch.
16. 1:42:12 – 1:46:25

    Is Penelope the Real Hero of the Story?

    1. APAlex Petkas1:42:12

       Yeah.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:42:13

       And that's how the story ends?

    3. APAlex Petkas1:42:14

       Well, actually, [laughs] the story ends with all the suitors dead and, um, and then immediately, uh, you know, Odysseus... Uh, so they, they actually end up hanging the 12 maidens who were sleeping with the suitors. Uh, a couple of other people get punished, but, um, and they, they, they clean the place up, heap up the bodies, and Odysseus tells them, "All right. A lot of these guys' dads are near- 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." [laughs] So they, they, they start cooking up meats, and they start playing music, and it's really bizarre, just... But they're, they're basically trying to buy time-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:43:03

       Mm

    5. APAlex Petkas1:43:03

       ... before, um, you know, people find out that there's been a, a, a slaughter of s- you know, some of the most prominent young men on the island. Uh, and, uh, my, probably my favorite scene at, at the end is you actually get a, a, a snapshot of them, the suitors' gibbering wraiths going down into Hades-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:43:26

       Mm

    7. APAlex Petkas1:43:26

       ... [laughs] and, uh, wailing. And 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." [laughs] And, uh, you know, um, they had it coming, of course, and the suitors complain and... But, um, really interesting like kinda final moment there. Agamemnon says, "Amazing work, Penelope." Penelope, the wife that I didn't have, that, uh, had 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, uh, because of Penelope's virtue for the rest of time."

    8. CWChris Williamson1:44:26

       Hmm.

    9. APAlex Petkas1:44:27

       Who is this person? Most, most translators, I'm paraphrasing, but the, 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? I think, I think the message would be Homer sees Penelope's faithfulness and her trickiness, I mean, this bow scheme was, was really smart on her part, even though she didn't really know. She had this, like, intuition maybe. Penelope was crucial to the story of the greatest hero that ever lived. He could not have become Odysseus, the great- the best of the Achaeans, without Penelope's help.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:45:14

        Hmm.

    11. APAlex Petkas1:45:14

        And it was, it was a, it's not like Penelope gets glory and Odysseus get glory. They both get glory 'cause they were a unit together.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:45:20

        Hmm.

    13. APAlex Petkas1:45:22

        And that's, that's kind of the Greek archetype of the matriarch, of, like, what a good-- what a, what is, like, happiness for a woman? It's, it's to uphold the glory of a hou- of a great household-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:45:36

        Mm-hmm

    15. APAlex Petkas1:45:37

        ... in, in short. But, um, yeah, you know, the, the ending is, is very weird. Uh, the actual ending is, like, the townspeople form up a posse, and Odysseus forms up a posse, and they kinda, they start a battle, you know, a, a revenge battle, and then Athena kind of descends from, from heaven and says, "Stop." And it's a deus ex, ex machina. It's, like, the first deus ex machina, you know, the god coming from, from on high and kind of solving this unsolvable problem, uh, in the plot. Um, but, you know, the god makes peace, and then a couple of people die. Odysseus kills a couple guys, but then the battle stops, and, uh, they all go home and, like, shake hands. [laughs]

    16. CWChris Williamson1:46:22

        Mm-hmm.

    17. APAlex Petkas1:46:22

        And peace is reestablished somehow.

17. 1:46:25 – 1:49:02

    Why Divine Favour Changes Everything

    1. CWChris Williamson1:46:25

       So he's got the favor of the gods. Like, it, it seems like he's had mostly favor of the gods throughout, apart from Poseidon.

    2. APAlex Petkas1:46:31

       Yeah, he's got the favor of the Olympian gods of order, of Pos- of Zeus and, and Athena. He eventually wins over Poseidon, like, after the timeframe of the story. Like, T- Tiresias tells him how he's gonna s- um, like, m- make amends with Poseidon.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:46:51

       Hmm.

    4. APAlex Petkas1:46:52

       He doesn't have the favor-- there's a lot of divine forces he has to struggle with, the Sirens and Scylla and Charybdis, and the sun god kinda spares him, Helios. But, but he, he has the favor of the gods 'cause he is pious, and this is pointed out at the very beginning of the poem. He was always very meticulous, doing sacrifices. He was alw- he, okay, he's a tricky liar, but only to his enemies, you know? He doesn't defraud a friend. Uh, he's a, he's a just man, and, uh, 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 is 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, then, then my son's gonna kill your son, and your son's g- and it just never stops.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:47:40

       Mm-hmm.

    6. APAlex Petkas1:47:41

       That's the kind of uncivilized, brute, like, Furies justice. But Zeus and Athena represent this kind of, uh, the kind of justice that puts quarrels to an end, that actually makes a settlement that people can live in peace again.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:47:58

       Hmm.

    8. APAlex Petkas1:47:59

       Um, and so that's the kind of justice that, that The Odyssey cares about, that, that, that, that Zeus himself, Homer has Zeus himself say that, you know, "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."

    9. CWChris Williamson1:48:18

       Mm-hmm.

    10. APAlex Petkas1:48:18

        Like, justice is a case in point. The guy Orestes 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, and so what do you know? He got what was coming.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:48:33

        So revenge, another big theme.

    12. APAlex Petkas1:48:35

        Yeah, yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:48:35

        Or justice.

    14. APAlex Petkas1:48:36

        Revenge, very much revenge. Revenge is, is absolutely a part of justice, but you, but it, like, can't go on forever. I, maybe that's what the end of the poem is, is kind of about, like, [sighs] you know? There's a danger there at the end that it's gonna keep spiraling and spiraling and spiraling, uh, and never end, but I don't know. The gods intervene to make sure that doesn't happen.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:48:55

        Mm-hmm.

    16. APAlex Petkas1:48:56

        And it's somehow, it's important to get to that point somehow as a, as a civilization after something bad has happened.

18. 1:49:02 – 1:53:24

    The Hidden Role of Oral Storytelling

    1. CWChris Williamson1:49:02

       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, the history of this thing coming to light that are interesting?

    2. APAlex Petkas1:49:12

       Yeah, I, I think that this, this oral poetry thing is really interesting. So, so Nolan, uh, [scoffs] is apparently casted this rapper, Travis Scott, I think. I think he's from Houston. I should know him better, but anyway, as Ho- as a bard, as Demodocus, I think maybe.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:49:31

       Hmm.

    4. APAlex Petkas1:49:31

       Maybe as Phemius. Because, hey, Homer is oral poetry. Rap is oral poetry. Um, so maybe there's something to that. But, you know, I think that one of the differences between what we th- think of as, like, slam poetry or 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, and the way these bards kind of-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:50:00

       Pious.

    6. APAlex Petkas1:50:01

       Is it pious?

    7. CWChris Williamson1:50:01

       When I think rap, I don't usually think pious.

    8. APAlex Petkas1:50:04

       Would, would you, would you have left, uh, if, if you were going off for the Trojan War, you know, would you have left Your wife with-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:50:12

       My wife with Chance the Rapper

    10. APAlex Petkas1:50:13

        ... yes. Or, or even-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:50:16

        Or P Diddy

    12. APAlex Petkas1:50:17

        ... or even Bob Dylan, for that matter.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:50:18

        Yeah.

    14. APAlex Petkas1:50:18

        I mean, Allen Ginsberg. I don't know, Lord Byron. Would you have left your wife with Lord Byron?

    15. CWChris Williamson1:50:23

        Yeah.

    16. APAlex Petkas1:50:24

        You know, I mean, it's, it's a different mindset. But there are, you know, there's, there's some parallels. The, the, the really interesting thing about, about oral poetry and the oral mo- like w- mental 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, 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.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:51:02

        Mm.

    18. APAlex Petkas1:51:02

        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, to store oral information. When, um, when the Pilgrims came to, uh, Massachusetts in the, you know, 1600s, they, they were shocked at the Native Americans' ability to just repeat verbatim, like, you know, these, these, uh, Indian tribes, whatever, they, they didn't speak English. Like, you could say a sentence to them, and they would repeat the ex- exact sentence back to you, like, perfectly-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:51:40

        Mm

    20. APAlex Petkas1:51:40

        ... 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-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:51:50

        Mm-hmm

    22. APAlex Petkas1:51:50

        ... aural brain.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:51:51

        Mm-hmm.

    24. APAlex Petkas1:51:52

        And when, when, when oral poetry encounters a written paradigm, when, when writing starts to be the way you store knowledge, you, uh, you sort of lose that ability, and it's like Google Maps, you know? Now I, I don't know my way around my own town.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:52:09

        Mm.

    26. APAlex Petkas1:52:09

        Some- something is, gets, like, offloaded cognitively, and that's, I think, one of the reasons why Homer is this, 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, I mean, it's too, too advantageous to, to ignore. You know, your enemies are gonna beat you if you try to not have a, a written culture.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:52:35

        Mm.

    28. APAlex Petkas1:52:35

        It's just so powerful. You need, you know, you need writing to have science and philosophy, you know, all kinds of stuff, record keeping. Um-

    29. CWChris Williamson1:52:41

        But something is also lost.

    30. APAlex Petkas1:52:42

        Yeah, yeah. Something is profoundly lost, this tradition of, uh, storytelling and, um, and also, like, the role of the storytellers shifts. Like, it... I don't know. The storyteller doesn't, isn't, like, the, the pillar of society that he is in Homer, and I think you have to understand that to understand, like, why Homer has so much pro-bard propaganda-
19. 1:53:24 – 1:57:52

    Why Nolan’s Films Divide Audiences

    1. CWChris Williamson1:53:24

       How are you feeling in advance of the movie coming out?

    2. APAlex Petkas1:53:28

       I, I'm gonna see it as soon as I can. I mean, [laughs] you know, it, it looks pretty awesome. Uh, people have complained about some casting choices. Let's say, uh, you know, Helen of Troy seems to be an Ethiopian if, by the Greek-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:53:43

       Great at partying

    4. APAlex Petkas1:53:44

       ... stand, stands. Yes, which, which are great at partying, so maybe there's, maybe there's a logic to it. Um, but I, you know, people complain about the Laestrygonians. So I didn't mention... I don't think I mentioned the Laestrygonians. It's one of these monstrous people that Homer meets. Like, after he meets the Cyclops, uh, there are these giant people. They're not, like, super giants, but they're giant enough. And, uh, they try to, you know, see if they can get a gift from the Laestrygonians or maybe make a little alliance, and his men meet them, and they just get eaten. So, um, the Laestrygonians just charge out in force and slaughter the Greeks. They, they're the ones that are depicted with this sort of futuristic steel armor-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:54:25

       Mm

    6. APAlex Petkas1:54:25

       ... plate mail armor. Uh, people complained about that as, oh, it's not historically accurate. Eh. I think, I think that, uh, it's really cool, even, even if I don't like the way that Nolan tells a story, which, I don't know, I, I think he's a great director. He's, he's, um, he's filmed the whole thing on IMAX. It's the first time it's ever been done. It's almost three hours.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:54:44

       Yeah.

    8. APAlex Petkas1:54:44

       It's gonna be, it's gonna be a good thing to watch. I'm 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, 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 s- somehow. Um, so you gonna see it?

    9. CWChris Williamson1:55:14

       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 roundtable-

    10. APAlex Petkas1:55:36

        Wow

    11. CWChris Williamson1:55:36

        ... 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'd been working up to it, and it's something that I really needed, and I promised myself in January that I was gonna take this time off, and mañana, mañana, mañana 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 I've ca-... I love Nolan. I love, I love The Odyssey. Like, it's gonna be exciting. Matt Damon's a legend. Again, it's, uh, what, you know, when, when it happens, so that other media week is precisely-

    12. APAlex Petkas1:56:09

        Mm

    13. CWChris Williamson1:56:10

        ... 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, 1,100 episodes. And I was like, I, I think it's gonna be kind of a s- 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-

    14. APAlex Petkas1:56:43

        Yeah

    15. CWChris Williamson1:56:43

        ... 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 'cause 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, Zendaya, ba ba ba ba ba ba, um, would've been on the show. But I'm pretty excited for it. It looks pretty cool. I'm not so excited for what might end up being another culture war, uh, flashpoint.

    16. APAlex Petkas1:57:12

        Mm-hmm.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:57:12

        You know, Nolan, the stories that he puts out are controversial because of what happens inside of the movie.

    18. APAlex Petkas1:57:21

        Mm-hmm.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:57:21

        Is, uh, in- inception, at the end of Inception, is he in the dream or is he in reality? Tenet, is the guy secretly the father of the main dude, or is he actually not related at all? Ba ba ba ba ba. 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.

20. 1:57:52 – 2:01:26

    Is Emily Wilson’s Translation Accurate?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:57:52

       I guess, do you know if he's used the Emily Wilson translation as the source material?

    2. APAlex Petkas1:57:56

       He's, he's talked about that, yeah. Uh-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:57:59

       How do you feel about that?

    4. APAlex Petkas1:57:59

       Uh, well, he's, he's commented on, uh, you know, her calling Odysseus a complicated man. Um, I think, um, yeah, th- this is like the first line of the poem. "Tell me, muse, of a complicated man," is how she translates this. Polytropos, many turned. And, uh, to me, that sounds like he's a man of many issues, you know? Uh, I think that this is a guy that divine nymphs fall in love with. You know, he's like the most badass of all the Greeks that got back from Troy. He's not the kinda guy that you would call complicated, probably. Complicated just seems a little bit like, uh-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:58:37

       How would you translate him? What's many turns to you in that?

    6. APAlex Petkas1:58:40

       Well, that's a kind of almost, you know, uh, somebody might say, "Well, that's a failure to translate." It's just, it's, you know, you have to interpret it to translate it.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:58:47

       Oh.

    8. APAlex Petkas1:58:48

       Polytropos. Tropos is this really multivalent word. It means turn, like he could be turning around in various places, sort of spinning about the, the seas. A turn is like a, a trick.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:59:03

       Mm-hmm.

    10. APAlex Petkas1:59:03

        Many, many tricks. Or, um, at least in later Greek, it's a character. It's like a kind of, uh, tropoi is like your, your character. He could be a man of many sort of guises, many, many sort of personas that he can inhabit. Uh, so I think that the word is about alluding to his, to his master of craft and trickery, not to his moral ambiguity. I think, I think this is, this would be my main... I, I wonder how, how Nolan's gonna deal with this, because, um, and he said something about, well, [chuckles] you know, Homer says, uh, um, "Lying Ody- lying Odysseus said to her, 'I will tell you the truth, my lady.'" You know? [chuckles]

    11. CWChris Williamson1:59:50

        Mm.

    12. APAlex Petkas1:59:50

        Just there is, he is a liar, strategically.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:59:54

        Mm-hmm.

    14. APAlex Petkas1:59:55

        But I don't think that-- I- my sense is that Wilson suspects Homer is, is, is, feels ambiguously about Odysseus. Like, is he really a hero worth emulating?

    15. CWChris Williamson2:00:06

        What do you think Homer feels about Odysseus?

    16. APAlex Petkas2:00:08

        Hu- 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.

    17. CWChris Williamson2:00:18

        Mm.

    18. APAlex Petkas2:00:19

        But, you know, like giving your name to the Cyclops, um, falling asleep when your comrades try to, um, you know, are, are, are at risk of opening up the bag of the winds or eating the cattle of the sun or, or even, you know, being a little too curious. Like, curiosity is a vice in, in some Greek philosophy. Like, wanting to know too much without necessarily having an end in mind. And this is, this curiosity is brought up by the sirens example, um, where he, he wants to know and, uh, what the sirens say, um, plugs up his companion's ear with the wax and doesn't plug up his, but he sort of got, gets his- gets himself tied to the mast. Um, maybe that was playing with the line. He ended up fine from it. But I don't think that, I don't think that Homer questions Odysseus' values, which is civilization over barbarism, you know, order over chaos, patriarchy over anarchy.

    19. CWChris Williamson2:01:21

        Mm.

    20. APAlex Petkas2:01:22

        That doesn't seem complicated. That part doesn't seem complicated

21. 2:01:26 – 2:11:09

    Has the Classic Hero Disappeared?

    1. APAlex Petkas2:01:26

       to me.

    2. CWChris Williamson2:01:26

       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.

    3. APAlex Petkas2:01:34

       [chuckles]

    4. CWChris Williamson2:01:34

       And, like, even in that, Tom Cruise is trying to do this, uh, retcon, make your, 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 ne- ba ba. Like that, I guess. Um, I, I remember looking at this, uh, video essay that explained how the world of the hero is just unsatisfactory anymore, for some reason has n- removed from movies that it's no longer enough for- protagonist who wants to make the world a better place, to work real hard, overcome challenges, be flawed, but, but get through. Now 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.

    5. APAlex Petkas2:02:48

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CWChris Williamson2:02:48

       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-

    7. APAlex Petkas2:02:57

       Mm

    8. CWChris Williamson2:02:58

       ... 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, 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.

    9. APAlex Petkas2:03:16

       Mm-hmm.

    10. CWChris Williamson2:03:16

        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, well, 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, in some ways is richer, right? Because there's conflict and there's tension. Um, but I would-- I, 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.

    11. APAlex Petkas2:03:53

        Yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson2:03:53

        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 there to have to be an asterisk after, after every hero-

    13. APAlex Petkas2:04:12

        Right

    14. CWChris Williamson2:04:12

        ... of good. But let's not forget, let's not forget when he... You know? Let'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.

    15. APAlex Petkas2:04:35

        Learned from the best.

    16. CWChris Williamson2:04:36

        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, uh, storytelling from, uh, other areas of life too, like, uh, uh, war stories and things like that from, from Special Forces guys.

    17. APAlex Petkas2:04:56

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CWChris Williamson2:04:56

        A big part of that is I think people have got a, a degree of exhaustion with overthinking.

    19. APAlex Petkas2:05:00

        Yeah.

    20. CWChris Williamson2:05:01

        Um, I think there's a big anti, anti-optimization trend at the moment that we're, we're feeling. And it's not-

    21. APAlex Petkas2:05:05

        Yeah

    22. CWChris Williamson2:05:05

        ... necessarily people being against optimization. I think it's people being against the fatigue of trying to be perfect.

    23. APAlex Petkas2:05:11

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson2:05:12

        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. So it's a line that I came up with last year that most people consume information the same way that they consume calories, too high of a dosage to be able to metabolize. And that was great w- w- five hundred years ago when there was like three books that you could read.

    25. APAlex Petkas2:05:35

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson2:05:35

        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 s- scarcity problem to an abundance problem. Same thing, calories 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 in the show, and like some of the guys that I'm dealing with, I'm seeing in them, even these v- 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."

    27. APAlex Petkas2:06:18

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CWChris Williamson2:06:19

        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?

    29. APAlex Petkas2:06:29

        Mm.

    30. CWChris Williamson2:06:29

        I'm like, I get it, I get it that there is a, a, 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 gonna start to mirror that with simplicity in the heroes.
22. 2:11:09 – 2:19:48

    Why We Need to Beware Modern Sirens

    1. APAlex Petkas2:11:09

       This is, uh, a good time for Homer to come back for that reason, I think. Well, b- because I think that this is, um... You know, there is a sim-- There is a kind of moral simplicity in a lot of ways to Homer, but he, he tells the story from multiple perspectives, partly because he's, uh, just like Nolan, you know. He's got a, a, a wide audience. Homer is, uh... You know, these epic poets travel from city to city. They're going from Aeolis to Sparta to wherever, Ithaca, and they have different people of different classes and different tastes everywhere, and this-- You know, they gotta get a story about Odysseus to work for a lot of different people. Some people are gonna want to take the side of, uh, of, of, of Odysseus, or some people are gonna see themselves in the Suitors or, uh, maybe that's not a great example. But, you know, some people are gonna say, "Hey, this is a lying bastard," and other people are, are gonna say, "No, he did what he had to do." And, and that's kind of-- That's on you. Like, to draw out the message is, is not so much the poet's job. I mean, he can have his own opinion, but really his job is to, is to help you get charmed, get disengaged like Odysseus does for the Phaeacians, like the bards do in the story.

    2. CWChris Williamson2:12:25

       Mm.

    3. APAlex Petkas2:12:26

       And I think also, if I could kinda allegorize a little bit, the sirens in particular, that we didn't go into too much.

    4. CWChris Williamson2:12:32

       Mm.

    5. APAlex Petkas2:12:32

       I think they're really... It's a timely image because, you know, for me, I, I, I kind of autobiographize Odysseus going to the sirens. All right. The sirens are these divine-- They're kind of like bad bards. They're these women who sing whatever they sing, and they, they make you just wanna go and listen to them. And piled up in front of the Sirens' island is just rotting bones of people who, 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, 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 at Troy, all the things that you didn't know." Sh- 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. Well, we know them. We know everything that happens on Earth." We-- They, they can give him infinite knowledge.

    6. CWChris Williamson2:13:47

       Mm.

    7. APAlex Petkas2:13:47

       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, the moly. He's seen how powerful it is to know the secrets of a little plant.

    8. CWChris Williamson2:14:09

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    9. APAlex Petkas2:14:09

       The kind of power it can give you. What if I could find out something interesting that I could apply to my morning routine from the sirens?

    10. CWChris Williamson2:14:16

        Yep, yep, yep, yep.

    11. APAlex Petkas2:14:16

        And it, you know, for me, I think it's also the temptation of being an academic. It's one of the reasons I left academia 'cause... Well, it's one of the reasons I was in it, because I had this, I-- Tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more. I wanna read more. I wanna find out the, the, the end of that story or, oh, jeez, five more books I need to read. And- And that can, if you, if you follow that too far, you end up potentially a, a rotting pile of bones at the feet of the sirens and never getting home and never doing what you need to do. It's this kind of temptation of, of knowledge. And, you know, maybe there's a person or two in your audience that can relate to the tem- temptation of the university, but we can all relate to the, 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 y- you're, you're, you tell yourself, "I'm gonna get some insight on, you know, what, what the Bitcoin price is gonna do from this Iran thing," and, "Oh, well, how can I ignore the blah, blah, blah?" And it's, it's, it's all, it all seems actionable. It's, it's, it's constructed s-

    12. CWChris Williamson2:15:17

        Feels important

    13. APAlex Petkas2:15:18

        It feels important. It's designed to feel important-

    14. CWChris Williamson2:15:21

        Yeah

    15. APAlex Petkas2:15:21

        ... because it's risen up in the algorithm.

    16. CWChris Williamson2:15:23

        Yeah.

    17. APAlex Petkas2:15:23

        And I think this is really, speaks to a profound, uh, inclination that people have, a temptation that people face that leads in, not just to inaction 'cause, you know, but, but to unreflection too.

    18. CWChris Williamson2:15:38

        Well, certainly if you're permanently on absorb, you have very little time to do reflect.

    19. APAlex Petkas2:15:43

        Mm-hmm.

    20. CWChris Williamson2:15:43

        You know, if the fire hose of new information is s- bukkaking you in the face, you don't have that much time to think about what you've already ingested, said Bonnie.

    21. APAlex Petkas2:15:52

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson2:15:52

        And when-

    23. APAlex Petkas2:15:55

        That wise sage.

    24. CWChris Williamson2:15:56

        Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the philosopher B. Blue. Um, [laughs] that, that sense of I'm drowning in information, I don't know what to do about it. Uh, th- th- this was a line that I had a, a, Bill Thompson, this, this, uh, old, uh, informations expert from, worked at three letter agencies, US, uh, like Army. He, he was basically the Special Forces Q 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, uh, my current working theory is not that most of the propaganda and most of 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-

    25. APAlex Petkas2:16:48

        Mm-hmm

    26. CWChris Williamson2:16:48

        ... and they just sort of give up entirely. Now, that might be that at some point in future their apathy can be, uh, 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, "Ah, dude, I'm fucking... I have no idea." Like, 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. These are the physics of the conspiracy system.

    27. APAlex Petkas2:17:17

        Mm-hmm.

    28. CWChris Williamson2:17:18

        For, for every conspiracy, there is an equal and opposite conspiracy which is even deeper, and then there's an equal and opposite one. The, the iceberg never stops. It just comes out the other side of the planet.

    29. APAlex Petkas2:17:26

        Mm-hmm.

    30. CWChris Williamson2:17:26

        And that's the tip of the other side of the iceberg. So yeah, this, this endless Ouroboros of just looking at uncertainty and information-
23. 2:19:48 – 2:20:27

    Where to Find Alex

    1. CWChris Williamson2:19:48

       yeah. Alex Petkas, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you're the best. Where should people go to check out all the amazing things you do?

    2. APAlex Petkas2:19:53

       Cost of Glory podcast available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, @costofglory on X, costofglory.com. Cost of Glory, Cost of Glory, Cost of Glory. [laughs] Pretty easy to find if you look for me.

    3. CWChris Williamson2:20:04

       All right. Dude, until next time. Let's come up with something else to talk about.

    4. APAlex Petkas2:20:07

       Do it.

    5. CWChris Williamson2:20:08

       All right. Goodbye, my beauties. See you next time.

    6. APAlex Petkas2:20:10

       Dude.

    7. CWChris Williamson2:20:10

       Yeah.

    8. APAlex Petkas2:20:11

       Fucking the man. So good. So good.

    9. CWChris Williamson2:20:16

       Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, YouTube knows who you are deeply. It thinks you're gonna like this one even more. Go on, press it

Episode duration: 2:20:27