June 12, 2023 • 19 mins
This episode of “Podversations” features Liv Albert, host of the podcast, “Let's Talk About Myths, Baby”, and iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group CEO, Conal Byrne. Liv has a degree in English Literature & Classics (Classical Civilizations) from Concordia University in Montreal where she studied ancient Greece and Rome broadly. She is constantly researching new details and versions of Greek mythological stories to tell in the podcast, and especially loves speaking with experts on various ancient world subjects (always for the podcast!). Hear Liv and Conal's thoughts on why Mythology resonates so deeply with us and how these stories have evolved over the years.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
iHeartRadio presents Podversations, a weekly discussion with the biggest names
and influencers in podcasting. I want to learn the secret
psychop rituals Scrub stars Zach Brath and Donald facing us
before every Fake Doctor's Real Friends taping, how Vice News
parachutes into war zones to rescue journalists from life threatening situations,
Or why Keegan, Michael Key and Blumhouse believe three D
(00:25):
audio is the future of storytelling. Whether you're a newbie
trying to break into the podcast game or an exec
trying to refine your playbook, Podversations is the easiest way
to keep your pulse on the industry.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us for
this week's version of the iHeart Podcast Speaker series.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
For anybody who's sort of joined us in the past,
you'll know.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
We started it actually at the top of Quarantine, when
we were all sort of moving into a weird new
world and we want to stay connected with each other
and keep talking to each other about what drives us
as creators and specifically what interests us all in this
exploding medium podcasting. We have kept doing these because these
proved to be some of the coolest, most interesting conversations
(01:15):
that I have had in my life and easily my
favorite half an hour of the week podcast thing has
also continued to explode. We have a medium now that
is the newest mass reach medium in the United States.
We are in a golden age of audio of the
human conversation, if you will, and podcasting is now reaching
almost ninety million Americans a week, bigger than say Netflix
(01:37):
subscribers in the United States. You have this medium that
is just exploding. All of that explosion, all of that
new audience that's jumping into the medium is thanks to
folks like my guests today. First of all, Live, thank
you so much for hanging out with us today.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very happy
to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
So I'll do a bit of a background bio on you,
and then I want to get into questions because I
am deeply fascinated this show that you're launching, and also
sort of why you chose podcasts and to do it.
Live Albert has a degree in classical civilizations and English
literature from Concordia University in Montreal. You're a creator, a storyteller,
You're a host, You're a producer of the popular Greek
(02:14):
and Roman Mythology podcast Let's talk about Myths, Baby, where
you bring your modern perspective, your education, and classical civilization
all together to sort of explore Greek myths. But you
do it sort of from a casual, humorous perspective, which
I think helps break down walls into a topic that
can be hard. Let me start here, why mythology? When
(02:34):
did you know you were super into Greek and Roman myths?
And what about it caught a hold of you? And
I'll just give my own personal experience of this. I
have four kids, lots of kids, and as much as
I teach them, read to them get them excited about
learning and world building and imagination, there's nothing quite like
Greek mythology for a child like I've seen this across
(02:57):
every one of my four kids, that once they tap
into this world, their heads explode in a way that
only things like Star Wars or Harry Potter make their
heads explode. And so back to my question to you,
where did this start for you and why did it
become your day job?
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Well, it started when I was a kid. Surprisingly, I
mean it was really similar for me. I I'm sure
I discovered it in elementary school or something and just
decided it was the most fascinating thing in the world.
And then that just kind of stuck. I actually, I
did my degree with the intention of using my English
major and the classics was just going to be for fun,
because I just wanted to learn more about ancient Greece
and its mythologies, and then it just sort of ended
(03:34):
up years later working out that I could start a
podcast about it and turn that into a career. So yeah,
I mean, it just really like, it is fascinating, it's silly,
it's weird, it's dramatic, like Greek mythology just has everything,
and so yeah, it continues, like I've been doing this
almost six years now, and it continues.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
To just be so thrilling. I can't let it go.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
What do you think it is about Greek mythology that
grabs a hold of us and sort of shakes us
and is some of the most captivated audience as I've
ever seen, or kids are adults alike when they're sort
of hearing the stories of the Greek and Roman gods.
What is it? Is it just a basic sort of
I don't know. Why are there hundreds of millions of
Star Wars plans.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
What do you think it is?
Speaker 5 (04:12):
I mean, it's the storytelling in general, Like you know,
it's everything that we like about fantasy and storytelling and
just you know, that sort of human nature of wanting
to hear these different types of stories. But the thing
about Greek myth is that it really does have like
everything you know. It has this tragedy, it has drama,
it has really heavy comedy, and just all the different
elements that I think we all want from like storytelling
(04:34):
and entertainment all around, but it's all squished into this
ancient world that's sort of fascinating in itself. I mean,
for me, the interesting thing is that it's been going
on so long, and the way that the stories were
originally told means that we have, you know, like eight
different versions of the same story, or eight different versions
of one character. Because when an ancient people is telling
(04:56):
a story or different stories for like a thousand years,
thing change. And so then now we get access to
like a thousand years worth of storytelling and everything that
happens within that time period, and so it's endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Not to put you on the spot, but is there
a favorite Greek god of yours and why like and
is that something that's changed over the years and why.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
Yeah, it definitely changes. I mean, I like, I have
my kind of go to if I'm asked, and the
answer is Aphrodite. She's fascinating Greek goddess of love. She's
been my favorite since I was a kid because she
has like this kind of interesting freedom that a lot
of the other goddesses don't have.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
She kind of gets to do what she wants.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
She really famously was married to one god but didn't
really like him that much, so she just like hung
around with whatever other gods she did like at whatever
time that she might have liked them. She has a
freedom that the others don't, you know. Depending on where
the question comes to me or what the context is,
I have like countless different answers I can come up with.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And why do you think Aphrodite is set up like
that by the Greeks to have that sort of fluidity,
that unpredictability. Was it something and they were wanting to
message to Greeks about the nature of love, like not
to be cheesy about it, but was it intentional or
was it sort of like I don't know, it's a
good story.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
I mean, I think it's a little of everything.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Like, she's interesting because she kind of has these origins
in these Eastern goddesses of civilizations that came before Greece.
She has kind of equivalencies with this Phoenician goddess named
Dastarte and some Mesopotamian goddesses in Nana and Ishtar. She
started out in those Eastern cultures and then she sort
of was brought into Greece where they kind of adapted
her for their needs. And so I think she has
(06:30):
a lot of like leftover aspects that come from cultures
that had really different priorities and really different goals and
feelings than the Greeks, and then the Greeks kind of
taking her and making her their own. There's lots of
different ways you can interpret it. There's also a lot
of history about kind of her birth story and who
she comes from. And yeah, I mean it's sort of
an endless answer that I won't spend an hour talking about,
(06:52):
but she has like all these different really interesting aspects
to kind of all contribute to why she is sort
of different than a lot of the other goddesses.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Dumb question, admittedly, how real were the Greek gods to
the Greeks, Like, I know, we hear stories like ron
an Olympus, they're all hanging out up there at the
top of the mountain. But like, if you're walking around
Greece at the time, are you like, no, this is
like really real, Like there really are folks at the
top of that thing who were making the calls or.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Was it like no, they all understood it was mythology.
This was all allegories.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
That's a great question because the answer is interesting in
that like it's kind of a little bit of everything,
and it totally depends on the time period. The thing
that a lot of people who just think of Greek
mythology is this fun, entertaining thing, don't really keep in
mind if you don't have a background in it, there's
no reason for you to think of it this way.
But like, the Greeks were telling these stories over almost
a thousand years.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
I like to use a reference point of like.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
Compare Shakespeare's work to move movies that you see today,
and like the difference that's only like a small portion
of the time period that we're talking about when it
comes to ancient Greece. You know, if we're talking about
the Bronze Age, we have like a little bit less
knowledge as the oldest time period where we have written history,
but the languages and what they wrote down isn't that
helpful to us. But they had the gods, and you
(08:18):
get to like the early Iron Age and the Archaic period,
they're a little bit later. They're thinking more seriously about
the gods in relation to the world around them. I
think probably they weren't concerned that Zeus was going to
come down and like smite them for any personal reason.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
But they're thinking more about the world.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
You know, the sun is a god, the moon is
a god, the dawn, the evening, all of these are gods.
So it's more about kind of how they contribute to
the world around them. So I think they're sort of
existing as like a kind of a real thing in
their own kind of way. When it comes to like
something like Homer, like the Iliad and the Odyssey. For
a long period, I think that they really did consider
that to be their own history. Whether they would have
(08:55):
like seriously sat down and said, like, yes, the gods
were actively involved, you know, kind of different. And then
you get a couple hundred years later and like the playwrights.
You get the famous plays like Oedipus and things like that,
and there I think that they've sort of evolved and
they're not thinking at quite as realistically, but they're still
thinking about them as like deities worthy of worship, and
you know, it can hurt or help you if you
(09:16):
do worship them in the correct ways, and you know,
more similarly to what we think of as religion, and
then things just keep kind of changing, you know, and
like later they're controlled by the Romans and then these
sort of different aspects as well.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
I mean, there's just so much history involved.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
It's a fascinating question and a complicated answer, but the
answer is kind of mostly both. They were real and
they were not real, and they were just kind of everything.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
That is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
You're right, And it's like, over the course of those
thousand years, did certain gods rise and fall in terms
of popularity and then get totally redefined too in terms
of what they were about?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Like does that also happening across that thousand years?
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Absolutely?
Speaker 5 (09:54):
And really fascinating ways too, Like the sun and the
moon are really good examples, Like in the archaic period
where we get the earliest written sources that survive today,
like Helios is the sun god.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
He is the physical sun.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
He brings a chariot across the sky all day and
that's the sun crossing, you know, the sky. And then
Selene is the moon and she does the same thing
at night. And then a few hundred years later we
get kind of like more of a melding with these
more major gods Apollo and Artemis, who are twins and
they represent a lot of things, but as time goes on,
they each come to represent the sun and the moon
(10:25):
more and by the time we're into the Roman period,
Apolo is a sun god amongst other things, and Artemis
is a moon goddess, and so like it really does
kind of change, and a lot of it, I think
comes down to there are so many gods at the
beginning because that's how they can best understand the world
around them. And as time moves on and these people evolve,
(10:45):
they understand the world around them more and more, and
they have less need for like really specific deities, and
they kind of get like amalgamated into the more important Olympians,
who then just kind of represent general concepts versus the
literal sun or the literal moon, and then things you
change even more when you're looking at Rome. But yeah,
it's it's absolutely fascinating because through their mythology you can
(11:05):
watch as these people cover a thousand years of human growth.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, it's really interesting, and you see echoes that are
clear and also amazing in terms of Greek mythology becoming
Roman mythology becoming Roman Catholicism, Like, is it a whole
language that you're seeing and decoding that a lot of
folks aren't just privy to.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I don't know enough about Catholicism.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
I kind of like stay right out of all the
forms of modern religion.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
You know, it's safer and it's not my interest.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
But when it comes to Roman mythology, Rome mythology is
really fascinating because I think a lot of people who
dive into it have this idea and I'm like guilty
of this in my early episodes of the show before
I personally learned as much as I know now. But
like the idea that like Rome kind of quote unquote
stole their gods from the Greeks is really prominent because
they kind of all have the same equivalent gods like
Artemis In you know, in Greece is Artemis. In Rome,
(11:55):
she's Diana, but ultimately it's the same goddess. Zeus is Jupiter,
all the planets are the Roman names for Greek gods,
all these different things. But while it seems like they
kind of quote unquote copied, it really wasn't the case.
Like they had their own whole mythologies and whole religion.
Just because Rome was close to Greece, they were influenced
by Greece, they had a lot of contact with the
Greeks amongst all the other, you know, ancient people of
(12:17):
the Mediterranean. It just ends up that they kind of
have these equivalent gods. The idea of them kind of
stealing them gets worse because the most popular and common
book of Roman quote unquote Roman mythology is Avid's Metamorphoses,
where essentially he's a Roman guy who sat down to
mostly rewrite Greek myths with Roman names. His purpose was
to talk more about Greek myths. But people then get
(12:38):
this idea that like, he's just saying these Roman myths,
but really they're Greeks with the names changed. But that's
not really what it actually was. It's just the Romans
were a bit less concerned with their mythology as storytelling,
and because they're coming like a couple hundred years later,
and then by the time most of their writing is
coming in, it's even later than that. So it's just
sort of like different priorities and things. But you can
really kind of watch it all happen because Romans at
(13:00):
the same time as a lot of Greece. But when
it comes to like the most famous parts of Rome,
we're talking like after the Greeks had sort of been
conquered by Rome and then become kind of a part
of them, So.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Total non sequitor on My oldest kid fell in love
with Percy Jackson several years ago and still loves it today.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Not so much about Percy Jackson.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
But just generally when you see Greek mythology get deployed
like that in pop culture, is it a and I
don't mean to pin you down. Is it like awesome
we're talking about Greek mythology moment or is it like
roll your eyes, Oh my god, here we go.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
They're going to misuse this, that and the other, Like
where do you stand on that stuff?
Speaker 5 (13:34):
I love all of it. I mean, I think the
more mythology out there the better. You know, I think
there are people who go to novels of Greek myth
reception and they think that it's all accurately portraying Greek myth,
and like that becomes a little bit more tricky because
then you move into the actual ancient sources and you're like, well,
this is all incredibly different. But I mean, my career
relies a lot on there being retaillings of Greek myth.
It's a huge year for them. There's like ten or
(13:56):
fifteen novels coming out this year.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
You know.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
The next two months of my show have three or
four different episodes where I'm interviewing novelists about their new
books of mythology. So selfishly it's great, it's really helping me.
But also I just think it's great. You know, everyone's
got their own way of telling a story. There's a
new one coming out where it's the story of Medea,
but it's being told through the eyes of colonialism in
India during the East India Trading Company, and so you
(14:20):
can really do whatever, and it just opens up these
new ways of telling these stories where it's a myth
but it's not, and it's you know, there's just there's
endless so I am very on board with all of them.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Awesome, let me switch gears and talk about one of
our favorite things, podcasting. How did you come to podcasting?
How did it hit your radar? Are you a super
fan listener for years? Is it a new thing? What's
the story there?
Speaker 5 (14:41):
Well, I've been podcasting for six years in July, so
it's definitely long standing.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
And before that I was listening.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
For a while for sure, so I was definitely I
wouldn't say early adopter, but I was on the earlier
side with you know, before the boom that we have now.
But for me, it happened where I, like, I changed
careers and I moved across the country and ended up
just listening to a lot of podcasts because they're great
for when you, you know, are still trying to make
friends in a city or things like that. Right, podcasts,
so many people come to them because they end up
(15:08):
feeling like your friends.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
It's fun. It's a unique medium in that way. And
so that's what I was doing for.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
A long time and then loved them enough that when
I decided I needed a hobby, I just figured I
would start one about the thing that I love which
is Greek mythology, and it it went very well for me.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
So that's pretty early, like six years ago to be
podcasting definitely means you were way ahead of the boom.
Were you feeling like you were sort of like alone
in a medium that not a lot of people were
listening to yet but had really high super fandomb and
engagement or why were you so prescient? What made you
see or did you see like this medium is going
(15:41):
to explode, I'm going to get ahead of it.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Where would your head on that?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
I really didn't think.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
It through, like it's I mean, I just loved listening
to them, and it was fun. And I was listening
to a lot of like not fully indie shows, but
still the types of shows where it was like clearly
just these people who decided to make a thing because
they wanted to talk about it. So I was listening
to a lot of that for a while. And yeah,
and I mean for me, it was just sort of
a thing to do to pass the time. I didn't
really expect many people were going to listen, and you know,
(16:09):
so many different things happened where I really did come
in at the exact right time to not only hit
a like a boom in podcasting, but also Greek mythology
like also blew up at the same time as podcasting
was blowing up, and it did wonders for me, and
it went it went very well. But it was very
much me just deciding I wanted to talk into a
micro found about a thing. I didn't really have many
(16:29):
thoughts about, you know, how best to do it or
what was going to get me successful or turn it
into a career. That all kind of happened later.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I think most podcasters would probably attest to the same
thing of like, yeah, this was all completely thought out,
none of it was taught.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
No, what's great is that you can just start one
and it's like one of the only mediums of them
like YouTube, where anyone can do it.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And that's what's so lovely about it.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
What surprised you about the medium, like anything in particular
that you were like, I didn't see that coming.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
I mean, I didn't really see it coming how big
it was going to get for me. I'm really sort
of endlessly entertained and really appreciative of the fact that
it is still.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
A medium where you can be pretty unaware of tech.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Like for all that I've been doing this for six
years and I have a great show and it's really popular,
and you know, I'm with iHeartMedia now, but like I
still don't have a great grasp on how to do
things the sort of technical way. I googled everything I
know and it just keeps working.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Like I love that.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
That's great, you know, like that it could be that, yeah,
do it yourself, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I mean for me, I'm much more interested in your
take on this. But for me, what surprised me, I guess,
is the fact that it has become a medium, for
my money, the smartest, most innovative storytellers in the world,
and that ranges from you to Shonda Rhymes to Will
Ferrell and Malcolm Gladwell. It's like, it's interesting to me
that time and time again, the best I think storytellers
(17:50):
talking about sometimes the hardest, most intellectual, complicated stuff are
choosing a medium.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
It makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
It's a long form people are engaged when they listen,
but that I think has more than anything else, driven
its boom, which has been awesome to watch.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I cannot thank you enough.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Hopefully this has been fun for you too, But like
I really do appreciate it Live, you being a part
of the iHeart podcast network.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
You have an amazing show.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I always deeply connect with and respect folks who've been
doing this for a while, and you know, to have
a podcast now going on six years is the equivalent
of like one hundred years in other mediums.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
But I really appreciate you hanging out with us today.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
It's really nice to be here and I'm thrilled to
be part of iHeart now, So thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Everybody check out immediately a podcast called Let's Talk About
Myths Baby.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
It's with Live Albert, my guest today.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
It is an amazing show about amazing stories, some of
the stories that speak to the deepest parts of our humanity.
So I really do appreciate you being a part of
it Live. Thank you everyone for hanging out with us today.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
We will see you next week.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Podversations is a production of iHeartRadio. You could find more
from the biggest names in podcasting on the iHeart Radio
app or wherever you get your podcasts.
iHeartRadio presents Podversations, a weekly discussion with the biggest names
and influencers in podcasting. I want to learn the secret
psychop rituals Scrub stars Zach Brath and Donald facing us
before every Fake Doctor's Real Friends taping, how Vice News
parachutes into war zones to rescue journalists from life threatening situations,
Or why Keegan, Michael Key and Blumhouse believe three D
(00:25):
audio is the future of storytelling. Whether you're a newbie
trying to break into the podcast game or an exec
trying to refine your playbook, Podversations is the easiest way
to keep your pulse on the industry.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hello everyone, thank you so much for joining us for
this week's version of the iHeart Podcast Speaker series.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
For anybody who's sort of joined us in the past,
you'll know.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
We started it actually at the top of Quarantine, when
we were all sort of moving into a weird new
world and we want to stay connected with each other
and keep talking to each other about what drives us
as creators and specifically what interests us all in this
exploding medium podcasting. We have kept doing these because these
proved to be some of the coolest, most interesting conversations
(01:15):
that I have had in my life and easily my
favorite half an hour of the week podcast thing has
also continued to explode. We have a medium now that
is the newest mass reach medium in the United States.
We are in a golden age of audio of the
human conversation, if you will, and podcasting is now reaching
almost ninety million Americans a week, bigger than say Netflix
(01:37):
subscribers in the United States. You have this medium that
is just exploding. All of that explosion, all of that
new audience that's jumping into the medium is thanks to
folks like my guests today. First of all, Live, thank
you so much for hanging out with us today.
Speaker 3 (01:49):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very happy
to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
So I'll do a bit of a background bio on you,
and then I want to get into questions because I
am deeply fascinated this show that you're launching, and also
sort of why you chose podcasts and to do it.
Live Albert has a degree in classical civilizations and English
literature from Concordia University in Montreal. You're a creator, a storyteller,
You're a host, You're a producer of the popular Greek
(02:14):
and Roman Mythology podcast Let's talk about Myths, Baby, where
you bring your modern perspective, your education, and classical civilization
all together to sort of explore Greek myths. But you
do it sort of from a casual, humorous perspective, which
I think helps break down walls into a topic that
can be hard. Let me start here, why mythology? When
(02:34):
did you know you were super into Greek and Roman myths?
And what about it caught a hold of you? And
I'll just give my own personal experience of this. I
have four kids, lots of kids, and as much as
I teach them, read to them get them excited about
learning and world building and imagination, there's nothing quite like
Greek mythology for a child like I've seen this across
(02:57):
every one of my four kids, that once they tap
into this world, their heads explode in a way that
only things like Star Wars or Harry Potter make their
heads explode. And so back to my question to you,
where did this start for you and why did it
become your day job?
Speaker 5 (03:13):
Well, it started when I was a kid. Surprisingly, I
mean it was really similar for me. I I'm sure
I discovered it in elementary school or something and just
decided it was the most fascinating thing in the world.
And then that just kind of stuck. I actually, I
did my degree with the intention of using my English
major and the classics was just going to be for fun,
because I just wanted to learn more about ancient Greece
and its mythologies, and then it just sort of ended
(03:34):
up years later working out that I could start a
podcast about it and turn that into a career. So yeah,
I mean, it just really like, it is fascinating, it's silly,
it's weird, it's dramatic, like Greek mythology just has everything,
and so yeah, it continues, like I've been doing this
almost six years now, and it continues.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
To just be so thrilling. I can't let it go.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
What do you think it is about Greek mythology that
grabs a hold of us and sort of shakes us
and is some of the most captivated audience as I've
ever seen, or kids are adults alike when they're sort
of hearing the stories of the Greek and Roman gods.
What is it? Is it just a basic sort of
I don't know. Why are there hundreds of millions of
Star Wars plans.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
What do you think it is?
Speaker 5 (04:12):
I mean, it's the storytelling in general, Like you know,
it's everything that we like about fantasy and storytelling and
just you know, that sort of human nature of wanting
to hear these different types of stories. But the thing
about Greek myth is that it really does have like
everything you know. It has this tragedy, it has drama,
it has really heavy comedy, and just all the different
elements that I think we all want from like storytelling
(04:34):
and entertainment all around, but it's all squished into this
ancient world that's sort of fascinating in itself. I mean,
for me, the interesting thing is that it's been going
on so long, and the way that the stories were
originally told means that we have, you know, like eight
different versions of the same story, or eight different versions
of one character. Because when an ancient people is telling
(04:56):
a story or different stories for like a thousand years,
thing change. And so then now we get access to
like a thousand years worth of storytelling and everything that
happens within that time period, and so it's endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Not to put you on the spot, but is there
a favorite Greek god of yours and why like and
is that something that's changed over the years and why.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
Yeah, it definitely changes. I mean, I like, I have
my kind of go to if I'm asked, and the
answer is Aphrodite. She's fascinating Greek goddess of love. She's
been my favorite since I was a kid because she
has like this kind of interesting freedom that a lot
of the other goddesses don't have.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
She kind of gets to do what she wants.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
She really famously was married to one god but didn't
really like him that much, so she just like hung
around with whatever other gods she did like at whatever
time that she might have liked them. She has a
freedom that the others don't, you know. Depending on where
the question comes to me or what the context is,
I have like countless different answers I can come up with.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And why do you think Aphrodite is set up like
that by the Greeks to have that sort of fluidity,
that unpredictability. Was it something and they were wanting to
message to Greeks about the nature of love, like not
to be cheesy about it, but was it intentional or
was it sort of like I don't know, it's a
good story.
Speaker 4 (06:07):
I mean, I think it's a little of everything.
Speaker 5 (06:09):
Like, she's interesting because she kind of has these origins
in these Eastern goddesses of civilizations that came before Greece.
She has kind of equivalencies with this Phoenician goddess named
Dastarte and some Mesopotamian goddesses in Nana and Ishtar. She
started out in those Eastern cultures and then she sort
of was brought into Greece where they kind of adapted
her for their needs. And so I think she has
(06:30):
a lot of like leftover aspects that come from cultures
that had really different priorities and really different goals and
feelings than the Greeks, and then the Greeks kind of
taking her and making her their own. There's lots of
different ways you can interpret it. There's also a lot
of history about kind of her birth story and who
she comes from. And yeah, I mean it's sort of
an endless answer that I won't spend an hour talking about,
(06:52):
but she has like all these different really interesting aspects
to kind of all contribute to why she is sort
of different than a lot of the other goddesses.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Dumb question, admittedly, how real were the Greek gods to
the Greeks, Like, I know, we hear stories like ron
an Olympus, they're all hanging out up there at the
top of the mountain. But like, if you're walking around
Greece at the time, are you like, no, this is
like really real, Like there really are folks at the
top of that thing who were making the calls or.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Was it like no, they all understood it was mythology.
This was all allegories.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
That's a great question because the answer is interesting in
that like it's kind of a little bit of everything,
and it totally depends on the time period. The thing
that a lot of people who just think of Greek
mythology is this fun, entertaining thing, don't really keep in
mind if you don't have a background in it, there's
no reason for you to think of it this way.
But like, the Greeks were telling these stories over almost
a thousand years.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
I like to use a reference point of like.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
Compare Shakespeare's work to move movies that you see today,
and like the difference that's only like a small portion
of the time period that we're talking about when it
comes to ancient Greece. You know, if we're talking about
the Bronze Age, we have like a little bit less
knowledge as the oldest time period where we have written history,
but the languages and what they wrote down isn't that
helpful to us. But they had the gods, and you
(08:18):
get to like the early Iron Age and the Archaic period,
they're a little bit later. They're thinking more seriously about
the gods in relation to the world around them. I
think probably they weren't concerned that Zeus was going to
come down and like smite them for any personal reason.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
But they're thinking more about the world.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
You know, the sun is a god, the moon is
a god, the dawn, the evening, all of these are gods.
So it's more about kind of how they contribute to
the world around them. So I think they're sort of
existing as like a kind of a real thing in
their own kind of way. When it comes to like
something like Homer, like the Iliad and the Odyssey. For
a long period, I think that they really did consider
that to be their own history. Whether they would have
(08:55):
like seriously sat down and said, like, yes, the gods
were actively involved, you know, kind of different. And then
you get a couple hundred years later and like the playwrights.
You get the famous plays like Oedipus and things like that,
and there I think that they've sort of evolved and
they're not thinking at quite as realistically, but they're still
thinking about them as like deities worthy of worship, and
you know, it can hurt or help you if you
(09:16):
do worship them in the correct ways, and you know,
more similarly to what we think of as religion, and
then things just keep kind of changing, you know, and
like later they're controlled by the Romans and then these
sort of different aspects as well.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
I mean, there's just so much history involved.
Speaker 5 (09:29):
It's a fascinating question and a complicated answer, but the
answer is kind of mostly both. They were real and
they were not real, and they were just kind of everything.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
That is absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
You're right, And it's like, over the course of those
thousand years, did certain gods rise and fall in terms
of popularity and then get totally redefined too in terms
of what they were about?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Like does that also happening across that thousand years?
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Absolutely?
Speaker 5 (09:54):
And really fascinating ways too, Like the sun and the
moon are really good examples, Like in the archaic period
where we get the earliest written sources that survive today,
like Helios is the sun god.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
He is the physical sun.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
He brings a chariot across the sky all day and
that's the sun crossing, you know, the sky. And then
Selene is the moon and she does the same thing
at night. And then a few hundred years later we
get kind of like more of a melding with these
more major gods Apollo and Artemis, who are twins and
they represent a lot of things, but as time goes on,
they each come to represent the sun and the moon
(10:25):
more and by the time we're into the Roman period,
Apolo is a sun god amongst other things, and Artemis
is a moon goddess, and so like it really does
kind of change, and a lot of it, I think
comes down to there are so many gods at the
beginning because that's how they can best understand the world
around them. And as time moves on and these people evolve,
(10:45):
they understand the world around them more and more, and
they have less need for like really specific deities, and
they kind of get like amalgamated into the more important Olympians,
who then just kind of represent general concepts versus the
literal sun or the literal moon, and then things you
change even more when you're looking at Rome. But yeah,
it's it's absolutely fascinating because through their mythology you can
(11:05):
watch as these people cover a thousand years of human growth.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, it's really interesting, and you see echoes that are
clear and also amazing in terms of Greek mythology becoming
Roman mythology becoming Roman Catholicism, Like, is it a whole
language that you're seeing and decoding that a lot of
folks aren't just privy to.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
I don't know enough about Catholicism.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
I kind of like stay right out of all the
forms of modern religion.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
You know, it's safer and it's not my interest.
Speaker 5 (11:32):
But when it comes to Roman mythology, Rome mythology is
really fascinating because I think a lot of people who
dive into it have this idea and I'm like guilty
of this in my early episodes of the show before
I personally learned as much as I know now. But
like the idea that like Rome kind of quote unquote
stole their gods from the Greeks is really prominent because
they kind of all have the same equivalent gods like
Artemis In you know, in Greece is Artemis. In Rome,
(11:55):
she's Diana, but ultimately it's the same goddess. Zeus is Jupiter,
all the planets are the Roman names for Greek gods,
all these different things. But while it seems like they
kind of quote unquote copied, it really wasn't the case.
Like they had their own whole mythologies and whole religion.
Just because Rome was close to Greece, they were influenced
by Greece, they had a lot of contact with the
Greeks amongst all the other, you know, ancient people of
(12:17):
the Mediterranean. It just ends up that they kind of
have these equivalent gods. The idea of them kind of
stealing them gets worse because the most popular and common
book of Roman quote unquote Roman mythology is Avid's Metamorphoses,
where essentially he's a Roman guy who sat down to
mostly rewrite Greek myths with Roman names. His purpose was
to talk more about Greek myths. But people then get
(12:38):
this idea that like, he's just saying these Roman myths,
but really they're Greeks with the names changed. But that's
not really what it actually was. It's just the Romans
were a bit less concerned with their mythology as storytelling,
and because they're coming like a couple hundred years later,
and then by the time most of their writing is
coming in, it's even later than that. So it's just
sort of like different priorities and things. But you can
really kind of watch it all happen because Romans at
(13:00):
the same time as a lot of Greece. But when
it comes to like the most famous parts of Rome,
we're talking like after the Greeks had sort of been
conquered by Rome and then become kind of a part
of them, So.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Total non sequitor on My oldest kid fell in love
with Percy Jackson several years ago and still loves it today.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Not so much about Percy Jackson.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
But just generally when you see Greek mythology get deployed
like that in pop culture, is it a and I
don't mean to pin you down. Is it like awesome
we're talking about Greek mythology moment or is it like
roll your eyes, Oh my god, here we go.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
They're going to misuse this, that and the other, Like
where do you stand on that stuff?
Speaker 5 (13:34):
I love all of it. I mean, I think the
more mythology out there the better. You know, I think
there are people who go to novels of Greek myth
reception and they think that it's all accurately portraying Greek myth,
and like that becomes a little bit more tricky because
then you move into the actual ancient sources and you're like, well,
this is all incredibly different. But I mean, my career
relies a lot on there being retaillings of Greek myth.
It's a huge year for them. There's like ten or
(13:56):
fifteen novels coming out this year.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
You know.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
The next two months of my show have three or
four different episodes where I'm interviewing novelists about their new
books of mythology. So selfishly it's great, it's really helping me.
But also I just think it's great. You know, everyone's
got their own way of telling a story. There's a
new one coming out where it's the story of Medea,
but it's being told through the eyes of colonialism in
India during the East India Trading Company, and so you
(14:20):
can really do whatever, and it just opens up these
new ways of telling these stories where it's a myth
but it's not, and it's you know, there's just there's
endless so I am very on board with all of them.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Awesome, let me switch gears and talk about one of
our favorite things, podcasting. How did you come to podcasting?
How did it hit your radar? Are you a super
fan listener for years? Is it a new thing? What's
the story there?
Speaker 5 (14:41):
Well, I've been podcasting for six years in July, so
it's definitely long standing.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
And before that I was listening.
Speaker 5 (14:48):
For a while for sure, so I was definitely I
wouldn't say early adopter, but I was on the earlier
side with you know, before the boom that we have now.
But for me, it happened where I, like, I changed
careers and I moved across the country and ended up
just listening to a lot of podcasts because they're great
for when you, you know, are still trying to make
friends in a city or things like that. Right, podcasts,
so many people come to them because they end up
(15:08):
feeling like your friends.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
It's fun. It's a unique medium in that way. And
so that's what I was doing for.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
A long time and then loved them enough that when
I decided I needed a hobby, I just figured I
would start one about the thing that I love which
is Greek mythology, and it it went very well for me.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
So that's pretty early, like six years ago to be
podcasting definitely means you were way ahead of the boom.
Were you feeling like you were sort of like alone
in a medium that not a lot of people were
listening to yet but had really high super fandomb and
engagement or why were you so prescient? What made you
see or did you see like this medium is going
(15:41):
to explode, I'm going to get ahead of it.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Where would your head on that?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
I really didn't think.
Speaker 5 (15:45):
It through, like it's I mean, I just loved listening
to them, and it was fun. And I was listening
to a lot of like not fully indie shows, but
still the types of shows where it was like clearly
just these people who decided to make a thing because
they wanted to talk about it. So I was listening
to a lot of that for a while. And yeah,
and I mean for me, it was just sort of
a thing to do to pass the time. I didn't
really expect many people were going to listen, and you know,
(16:09):
so many different things happened where I really did come
in at the exact right time to not only hit
a like a boom in podcasting, but also Greek mythology
like also blew up at the same time as podcasting
was blowing up, and it did wonders for me, and
it went it went very well. But it was very
much me just deciding I wanted to talk into a
micro found about a thing. I didn't really have many
(16:29):
thoughts about, you know, how best to do it or
what was going to get me successful or turn it
into a career. That all kind of happened later.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
I think most podcasters would probably attest to the same
thing of like, yeah, this was all completely thought out,
none of it was taught.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
No, what's great is that you can just start one
and it's like one of the only mediums of them
like YouTube, where anyone can do it.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And that's what's so lovely about it.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
What surprised you about the medium, like anything in particular
that you were like, I didn't see that coming.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
I mean, I didn't really see it coming how big
it was going to get for me. I'm really sort
of endlessly entertained and really appreciative of the fact that
it is still.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
A medium where you can be pretty unaware of tech.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Like for all that I've been doing this for six
years and I have a great show and it's really popular,
and you know, I'm with iHeartMedia now, but like I
still don't have a great grasp on how to do
things the sort of technical way. I googled everything I
know and it just keeps working.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Like I love that.
Speaker 5 (17:24):
That's great, you know, like that it could be that, yeah,
do it yourself, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I mean for me, I'm much more interested in your
take on this. But for me, what surprised me, I guess,
is the fact that it has become a medium, for
my money, the smartest, most innovative storytellers in the world,
and that ranges from you to Shonda Rhymes to Will
Ferrell and Malcolm Gladwell. It's like, it's interesting to me
that time and time again, the best I think storytellers
(17:50):
talking about sometimes the hardest, most intellectual, complicated stuff are
choosing a medium.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
It makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
It's a long form people are engaged when they listen,
but that I think has more than anything else, driven
its boom, which has been awesome to watch.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I cannot thank you enough.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Hopefully this has been fun for you too, But like
I really do appreciate it Live, you being a part
of the iHeart podcast network.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
You have an amazing show.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I always deeply connect with and respect folks who've been
doing this for a while, and you know, to have
a podcast now going on six years is the equivalent
of like one hundred years in other mediums.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
But I really appreciate you hanging out with us today.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
It's really nice to be here and I'm thrilled to
be part of iHeart now, So thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Everybody check out immediately a podcast called Let's Talk About
Myths Baby.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
It's with Live Albert, my guest today.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
It is an amazing show about amazing stories, some of
the stories that speak to the deepest parts of our humanity.
So I really do appreciate you being a part of
it Live. Thank you everyone for hanging out with us today.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
We will see you next week.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Podversations is a production of iHeartRadio. You could find more
from the biggest names in podcasting on the iHeart Radio
app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Conal Byrne
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