September 10, 2026 • 49 mins
Why does the story of The Odyssey endure this many years after it was first spoken? Listen in to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the Epic Cast. This is Josh. There's Chuck.
Jerry's here, too. We're all wearing breastplates, and that means
this is Stuff You Should Know.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
To protect our chest.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yes, I'm also wearing a codpiece, but that's not unusual
for me.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
To protect your cod.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I know. Why is it called that?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Fish of the day.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
What if you dated somebody who referred to that as
your cod? Wouldn't you be like, please stop calling it that?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah. It's like, do you mind giving me some privacy?
I'm in here washing my cod. Right.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
They would say, I'm sorry. I majored in the Canterbury Tales.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
What a weird way to start the odyssey. I know.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I know. And you're the one who wrote those lines.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I know. That's true.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Uh, yeah, we're talking about the Odyssey. You saw the
Odyssey and you were like, how's the Odyssey work? And
here we are, right?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah. I mean, you know, I saw the movie. Uh,
I thought it was really good. I am no Christopher
Nolan fan boy. I'm about 50, 50 with him. Maybe,
maybe 60, 40 with ones I like.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Which ones do you like? Aside from Memento, obviously.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, I liked Memento. I liked the prestige. I liked
the Batman movies.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Um, Didn't love, I mean, Oppenheimer was quote-unquote good, I guess,
but it was a bit of a slog for me,
and I never wanted to see it again.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I could see that.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I think you and I had the same problems with Interstellar. Yeah.
I did not see Tenet because I heard it was
so bad. So, yeah, he sort of hit or miss
for me, but I really thought the Odyssey was great,
and it kind of hit me after I saw it.
I was like, it's kind of just crazy, this idea
that this story that's this old, like one of the
oldest stories... like can still resonate with an audience in 2026.
(01:58):
And like, what is it about that story itself? And
I knew nothing about just the Odyssey as a literary piece.
And I didn't know much about Homer. Like I was
an English major, but we didn't, I guess I didn't
do the classes where we studied this stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Well, in your defense, it was written in Ionic, not English.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So, yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from.
The story has legs, I guess, is how you'd put it.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, it's just kind of fascinating to me as a
piece of work.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
For sure. And let's talk about this piece of work
because there's a lot to talk about, not just recounting
the highlights of the story and spoiling the movie, I guess,
for anybody who hasn't paid attention over the last, like,
2,000-something years. Yeah, if you can't.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
If you can't, uh, spoil something written in the eighth century, then, uh,
I'm just sorry.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah. Yeah. So about almost 3000 years ago, the 700s BCE, right.
That's where they think Homer first put this to paper. Uh,
but the whole thing, and it's attributed to the Greek
poet Homer, uh, who I guess this would have been
post bronze age, um, Like after the Bronze Age collapse,
(03:16):
I think, is when Homer was walking around. If Homer
was even walking around, we'll talk about in a second.
But they attribute both the Odyssey and the Iliad, which
is kind of the prequel to the Odyssey, to Homer.
And they think that it was first written down, like
I said, in the 700s, the 8th century BCE. But
(03:37):
it was probably around way longer than that because the
whole thing is set up as a form of oral storytelling. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I mean, you know, just you mentioned quickly that it
was sort of a sequel or the Iliad was a,
did you say prequel?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You bet I did.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, the Odyssey is 24 books, one book for each
letter of the Greek alphabet. But the Iliad that you
were talking about, um, talks about Agamemnon's return from the
Trojan war. And then the Odyssey basically covers Odysseus, uh,
his return from the very long delayed return from the
Trojan war. And what was your question that you asked
(04:20):
before I sidetracked us?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Do you remember? I asked you, uh, what, um, Christopher
Nolan movies you like.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
He said that right before.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
That's the last question I remember asking you.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Oh, that's okay. Um, But I think I know what
you said. Something about it being an oral tradition that
was much older, right?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I must have said right.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
That was my question. Am I right?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I can't believe how good we are at this 18
years in.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
18 years in.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It astounds me sometimes. Masters.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I know. It's almost like we're both sleepwalking right now.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
No, no, no. Not sleepwalking.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
On the phone.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
So we don't know how closely the Odyssey resembles the
story of That Homer told in 700s because you were right.
It was an oral.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Story.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It was an oral tradition and it was supposed to
be told by memorizing it and retelling it by, you know,
from bards telling the story to people in a crowd,
maybe changing a thing or two. You know, the idea
is that we it's pretty likely that this thing was
a little bit like a game of telephone, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
You know, like as you learned it and you passed
it on, you could kind of embellish it in this way.
You're like, I don't really care that much about the siren,
so I'm not going to give them as much play
as maybe the guy who taught you how to say
this did. And then it really started to take its
final shape again when it was finally put to papyrus.
(05:50):
I want to say pen to paper, but probably quill
to papyrus is how it was first done.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Right. Right. I love that.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
That's when it really kind of started to take a
solid form because now it was like now you just
basically copied it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
You didn't have to memorize it or anything like that.
But it was far from the only like legend or
tale of like Greek culture and Greek heroics and like
Greek moral lessons and all that.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
But it was just for some reason that I don't
think anyone's really put their finger on. It just has
resonated throughout the years. So it's the one. that we
tend to think of when we think of this whole stuff.
But it was a cornerstone of Greek culture. Like this
was just part of your indoctrination into growing up in
ancient Greek culture. You knew the Iliad among other things,
(06:39):
or the Odyssey, probably the Iliad too, among other things,
you'd at least heard it probably more than once. And
then finally Plato comes along and he's like, this is
all rubbish. We need to start using our noodles. So
he tried to actually ban the Odyssey and it didn't
take because people love it that much.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That's right. It lived on. You mentioned it was an
Ionic Greek, which is an Asiatic dialect, and it's been
gone for more than 2000 years. So if you're wondering
how we got to the point where Christopher Nolan is
working on a screenplay adapted from a 21st century novelized version,
I guess, it's sort of a winding road. The first
(07:19):
print copy came around in 1488, and it was produced
in Italy in that Ionic Greek. And then I guess
about 100 years later or so, or at least in
the next century, it was finally translated to some European languages,
some actual living languages. And then in 1616, we got
(07:40):
our first English translation of this epic poem from a
British poet named George Chapman.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
That's a pretty British name if I've ever heard one.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So, yeah. So now it starts to come into our awareness,
our understanding.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
And, you know, him translating it and then other people
translating it from the original, you know, we talked a
little bit about just the original oral translations. But when
you finally get to like written translations, it also took
a bit of a winding road, obviously.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, because the thing was written originally or created originally
to be spoken. And it actually follows a specific meter,
like the rhythm that you're supposed to say it in.
It's called Homeric hexameter. Or dactylic hexameter I've also seen.
In each line, there's six three-syllable units. And in these
(08:36):
three-syllable units, these dactyls, the first syllable is stressed and
then the next two are not stressed. So it's like, hi,
how are you doing today, guy? Right?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Do you have to sing it?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I actually saw a video of somebody not only reading
it in English, but reading it in Ionic. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
And I couldn't tell any difference from somebody just reading
it normally. But that's not something that literally translates very
well into other languages, including English. So the translators basically
had to make some big decisions, essentially.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah. I mean, it's almost like translating the Bible, you know,
through the various translations of the Bible over the years.
There was, you know, each time someone's doing that, there
are writers that are doing that. So each version is
going to be a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
You know, a language, especially, you know, in the case
of a poem, it's going to have a unique rhythm.
But people's native tongue have unique rhythms as well. And
just where they're from, there are unique cultural experiences that happen.
Some of these translate better than others, I guess.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And so, you know, you're really, you know, you're not
rewriting in like, I don't think people made up like
a ton of stuff out of whole cloth, but making
it relevant for the audience that they're writing it for,
which would have been. in their language for the people
in their country because they wanted them to get something
out of it. Yes.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Most translators have ignored the there's a joke in one
of the books about laying with a goat and it
just does not translate well into modern times.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That's right. Got to leave that one behind. And the
other thing is, you know, there's a few things here.
You're translating from a dead language, which is a big deal.
We already mentioned that they were things meant to be
spoken aloud to something read, which is going to change it.
And then it's just something that's just thousands of years
old that you have to make sense. So it's a
it's a hard job.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Right. It's a hard knock life for translators of the Odyssey.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That's right. That's what Annie said.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So there there were some. There's some like standout translations
over the years, but the one that everyone's talking about
right now is from Emily Wilson. And she, I think,
did hers in 2017. Okay. 2017 is how most people
say that.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And she basically, she turned it into English heroic couplets,
which is basically a tea drinking way of saying like
exactly the kind of rhyming words pairs that you hear
in any modern song.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah. And this is the one that Christopher Nolan used
specifically to adapt his version of the story on screen. Um,
I think we should probably talk a little bit about
the Homeric question because you, you teased earlier the, uh,
if Homer was really a person and that it's sort
of one of these things where, you know, we don't
have any hard facts when it comes to Homer, like
(11:40):
everything that we know, um, historians, literary historians have surmised
from reading the text? Like, well, it's written in this language,
so he's probably from this place that spoke that language.
Like stuff that makes sense, though.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, no, there's plenty of stuff that makes sense. It's
more just like a question of like, did he actually
exist if he was a bard, if he was a
group of people? It's very similar to the Shakespeare question, too,
we did an episode on. But there, I mean, just
even though everything is a guess that we've kind of
(12:16):
compiled from Homer, strictly from, I guess, his own writing.
I don't think he's referenced in any other, like, historical
text or anything like that. It's just the stuff he's
writing about just kind of lines up. And they think
that he was probably from Ionia, which is along the
west coast of Turkey today, because the whole thing was
(12:37):
written in Ionic. And... He almost certainly lived during this
age that they attribute it to. And they also are like,
it's possible that he might be a known historic blind
bard named Demoticus. Demoticus.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
That's the hardest one, I think, out of this whole article.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I mean, that's a character in the Odyssey that like
a lot of space is devoted to. So I think
there are people who are like, I wonder if this
is just a stand in for him because, boy, there
is a lot of stuff in there about this, you know,
minor character. Right.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
He's like, and let me sing the praises about Demodocus's cod.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
There's just verse after verse about that.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
A lot of stuff. So I also think we should
talk before we break about sort of a central concept
because in Act Two, everybody, we're going to give you
the CliffsNotes version of the Odyssey.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
It's very exciting.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I'm very excited.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
But we should a little bit more before we get
into that is sort of conceptually what the Odyssey was
about in a lot of ways was homecoming and hospitality,
which are Nostos and Xenia in ancient Greece. And these
two things were like really big deals in ancient Greece
(13:57):
that figured heavily in like their life and culture.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, they're not only like. things that you should do
to be like a good host. There are actual like
rules that you have to follow. And if you don't,
you're actually upsetting Zeus because this is Zeus, the king
of the gods, a real God's God, if you ask
other gods. This is his divine law that he's passed down.
(14:21):
That's how important these rules for treating guests are.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
So, yeah, Xenia is a big deal. And the rules
specifically are if you happen to hop through town and
you knock on a stranger's door, they're supposed to say,
come on in. I don't need to know anything. Here's
some food. Here's some wine. Why don't you go? I'll
draw you a hot bath. Sure. And then we'll get
(14:45):
to why you're here. And also, while you're doing this stuff,
like maybe while you're in the bathtub, I'm going to
stand sentry out front with my sword and make sure
you stay nice and safe.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, you have to guarantee their protection while they're staying
at your home. Yeah, like a heaping helping of hospitality
is what you're supposed to offer a stranger, according to Xenia, right?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
That figures in so much to the story that essentially
entire groups and individuals are characterized by how they treat strangers,
how they act as guests, how they act as hosts.
Like this is a really important thread that goes through
all of the Odyssey. That's Xenia. Then there's also Nostos, right?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, homecoming. I mean, that's basically what the Odyssey is.
It's about somebody coming home. And this was a very
big deal in Greek society because they were seafarers. They
were adventurers and wanderers by sea. And so they would
go out a lot and coming home was a big deal.
They would be separated from their family. They would have
these brutal, you know, sea journeys. And so coming home
(15:53):
was a very big deal. And so it's no surprise
that these two sort of prominent things that figure in
Greek culture and society at the time were sort of
the two big themes of the Odyssey. Right.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
If you're in high school and you have a crush
on somebody who likes to read the classics, just go
up to them and say, would you like to go
to Nostos with me? And they will, they'll be putty
in your hand after that.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
That's great. I started Moby Dick, by the way, just
so everyone knows it's officially happening.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Awesome. How's it going so far?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Well, I read chapter one and then I watched that,
you know, I mentioned the Rob Delaney podcast that he's
doing with the professor. And so I'm going to do
that like in lockstep. So I did that and then
I watched their chapter one recap and it's helping a lot.
I like it so far.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's awesome. Keep us posted, will you?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I will. So far, so good. Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
So that was, I think we covered Xenia and Nostros
pretty well. And that's probably a pretty good place to break, right?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
And everyone, hold on your hats, because Act 2, we're
going to go over these books of the Odyssey.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
All right. I'm back with Josh. He's screwed his head
back onto his body. Cartoon style.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And if you don't know what Chuck's referring to, that
means we edited that thing out.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Oh, perhaps. You never know. But we're going to kind
of do, like I said, the CliffsNotes version of the Odyssey.
Spoilers will abound. If you haven't seen the film and
you really don't want to know anything about it, then
don't listen to this chapter. But, you know, I think
it might help going in to know a little bit
about the story if you really don't know anything. And
I'll also point out the actors who feature in and
(18:08):
who they play. How's that?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I think that's great. Can you also do their voices, maybe?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
No, I can't do any of those voices.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You can do a great Matt Damon.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
How about them apples?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
There you go. Exactly. That actually sounded like Matthew McConaughey
trying to do a Matt Damon.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It sort of did.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
All right. So let's get started, Chuck. We start with
book one. And actually, this kind of covers books one
through four.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
And we find we start the Trojan War has ended
10 years before. And the Trojan War itself has taken
10 years. So it's been 20 years since our hero,
literally the hero of the story, Odysseus.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Matt Damon.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yes. Which I'm not crazy about that casting. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
There's a lot of people upset about this casting.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Not him, like all kinds of the casting. I know.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Everybody's like, Matt Damon's fine. So he's been gone for
20 years. And from what I understand, this was initially
considered a fairly quick errand. The Trojan War started because
Paris stole Helen of Troy. And now I think everybody
kind of set out to get her back. And it
(19:19):
turned into this 10-year Trojan War.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
That's right. Helen of Troy is played by Lupita Nyong'o
in this film. And Elon Musk is so mad about that.
He's going to make his own AI version that he
thinks is more historically accurate. That's what he said.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I heard about that. I'm waiting for its IPO.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I'm sure it's going to be great. So Matt Damon
is Odysseus. He's been gone for those 20 years, like
you said. He has a wife named Penelope, played by
Anne Hathaway in this film, and he has a son
called Telemachus, who's played by Tom Holland, who you might
know more as Spider-Man.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
All right. So where we pick up with them, they
are living in their big house, their mini mansion. And
there are 100 suitors vying for Odysseus' throne and the
hand of Penelope to marry.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
The most villainous in the film, at least, is Antonis,
played by Robert Pattinson.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I'll bet he does a great job.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
He's great. The acting is really, really good in this
entire film. But these guys are all living there, kind
of really have made themselves at home, let's just say.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And not keeping up their end of the Xenia bargain,
which is, I don't even know if we mentioned, as
a guest, you're also supposed to be awesome in return.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And these guys are not. We left that out. It's
not just incumbent on the host.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So, yeah, they're being pretty terrible. And one of the
main things they're doing as suitors, this whole hundred of
them who've taken over Odysseus' home, they're like really pressing
Penelope to be like, your husband's dead. It's been 20 years.
you need to choose a husband to sit on the
throne next to you and become king of Ithaca. Who
are you going to choose? And she keeps hemming and hawing,
(21:04):
hemming literally because she says that when she finishes the
funeral shroud that she's weaving for Odysseus's elderly father, Gary, She, um,
she will make this, this decision, right? And then every
night after she has woven all day, she goes and
undoes the weaving that she did that day so that
(21:25):
she will never finish. And this, I guess the suitors
are all idiots and it's working quite well because they
still haven't caught on, I guess.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
You know, sometimes when we get emails that are like,
I can't believe Josh said that Odysseus' father's name was Gary.
Didn't he read it or do his research? I wonder
if people even know you.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I do, too. After 18 years, you know?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
So barren, desert dry. Like, get with it, people. He
knows it's not Gary.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Chuck, I love how well you know me. Thanks, man.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I mean, you still fool me. So I guess I
shouldn't throw stones.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I'm going to take issue with that. There's probably... 98%
of the time, you're just like moving on. Not that
you don't think it's funny. Not that you don't get it.
You're just like, we're burning up time here. That's enough
of your shenanigans. I'm just going to let that sit.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
All right.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Thanks, Gary.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
So Penelope and Telemachus are, you know, it's been 20 years.
So they're also losing hope that dad and husband are gone.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Like for good. So Athena, played by Zendaya in the film,
the goddess of wisdom and warfare, she's on Odysseus' side
this whole time. She's like, hey, kid, why don't you
go out and actually do something and see if you
can find out if your dad's alive? That'd be a
good start.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I'm guessing Zendaya does a great job, or Zendaya.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Is it Zendaya? Yeah, she's awesome. She's a really good actor,
I think, in everything.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I read recently that people thought of her as like
a nepo baby or something like that. I don't know
where that's coming from. And I think she's really good
at everything I've ever seen her in.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Who are her parents? Are they famous?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I don't know. I don't know. I'll have to go
back and double check that. But I saw somebody reference it.
And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.
She's great.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, she's great. And she was also in Spider-Man, the movies.
So it's a reunion of sorts.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And Benny, I can't remember. He's one of the creators
of Uncut Gems.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Benny Safdie.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, he's in this movie. And he directed Robert Pattinson
in Good Time. That's right.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
He plays, Benny Safdie plays Agamemnon.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Man, look at all this.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Go ahead, though. I'm sorry for sidetracking us so badly.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Oh, that's okay. So she says, why don't you go
out and see if your dad's still alive? He goes
and meets with John Bernthal from The Walking Dead, who
plays King Menelaus in Sparta. And from him learns, hey,
your dad's alive. He's sort of being held captive, but
in the best way he can be held captive on
Calypso's island. And that's where book five picks up.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Right. Calypso is a nymph, a goddess nymph, who has
basically turned Odysseus into a sex toy after he washed
up on her island after a shipwreck, which we'll come
to later. That's another cool thing about the Odyssey. It's
not completely linear. It actually spins around. There's different, like
(24:32):
this entire part we're talking about is a flashback, as
we'll see.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, this starting with book five, yeah. Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thank you. And so Calypso falls in love with Odysseus.
And she's like, don't forget, I'm a goddess nymph, not
just a nymph. So I can make you stay here.
And she does. She holds him captive there for, I think,
something like seven years. Yeah. And then finally, Athena, who
has really chosen Odysseus as like one of her favorite
humans and really intervenes on his behalf throughout this whole,
(25:05):
I guess, odyssey. She goes to Zeus and is like,
you got to get this guy out of Calypso's clutches.
And Zeus is like, sure, I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
That's right. Calypso, by the way, is played by Charlize Theron. So, again,
he was being held captive. as a sex slave for
seven years to Charlize Theron and still wants to leave.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
He's like, my God, it's exhausted.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Uh, so he has resumed his journey home to Ithaca.
He leaves on a raft. Um, Poseidon, Poseidon is a
real jerk throughout this whole story. Really doesn't like Odysseus.
So he destroys, he plays Poseidon. So no one plays
Zeus or Poseidon in this.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Oh, are they CGI?
Speaker 3 (25:50):
No, no, no.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
They, they, he, bite your tongue, he uses very little CGI.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, I heard it's all practical effects, but I don't
understand what you mean. They're just off screen?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
They're not in the movie, like at all.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Okay, they're just referenced.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Like Poseidon really did me dirty.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
So Poseidon wrecks the raft as punishment because he blinded
his son, which was a cyclops. And we'll get to
that in a minute because that's coming by way of
flashback a little bit later. And Odysseus is shipwrecked once
again and taken in by the, I guess, the Phaeacians.
(26:28):
And they are showing some serious Xenia. They are like
great hosts to him. Say, come on into the royal court.
Here's everything you need in the way of food and
wine and protection.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Right. And the reason we said that book five starts
as a flashback because it's Odysseus is being really well
taken care of by the Phacians, and the Phacian king,
I guess one night while they're feasting, says, Hey, man,
tell us your story. What's going on with you, buddy?
And Odysseus basically tells the story of the Odyssey, everything
he's been through up to that point. And this is
(27:03):
kind of... I mean, this is the part where everybody's like,
when they talk about the Odyssey, this is the stuff
they're talking about, where he's recounting his adventures in flashback
to the Fascians.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's right. And this is the real flashback. I guess,
I mean, we sort of misspoke earlier, but I think
everyone gets it, right? Sure. Okay, great.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
This is the part where Matt Damon goes, do-do-do, do-do-do, do-do-do.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
So as soon as Odysseus leaves with his big fleet
of ships, there are about 600 soldiers. They're all headed
home from The war at Troy, once again. Athena sends
some storms that way, veer the ships off course. Athena
is mad at this point about war crimes that they
committed in the battles when they conquered Troy. And they
(27:50):
landed initially at the land of the lotus eaters, which are,
you know, they're eating lotus. So they're very blissful and,
you know, they're basically sort of doing drugs. And Odysseus'
crew is like, this place is awesome. Can we stay here?
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, I was curious what that's an allegory for, what
drug or whatever, you know?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
I mean, I guess it was lotus at the time, right?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
I guess, but I've tried lotus and it doesn't get
you messed up. Okay. But yes, this is what these
people were doing. And Odysseus' crew was like, I'm not
sure we need to keep going back home. Like, this
is pretty great. These lotuses are amazing. The lotus eaters
are great people. Let's just stay here. Odysseus has to
drag every single one of his men, all 600 of them,
(28:36):
back to their ships where he ties them up until
he finally gets the last one and is able to
set sail again from the land of the lotus eaters.
That is far and away the best experience that these
guys have on the Odyssey as a whole. Because the
next thing that happens to them is actually the turning
point that really brings on everything else. All of their misfortune,
(29:01):
they seem to have started. And then Odysseus really drives
it home on the island of the Cyclops.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That's right. Obviously, one-eyed beasts, cannibalistic even. And they end
up trapped in a cave there. We mentioned Poseidon's son
is a Cyclops. That's Polyphemus. And he's just eating these guys.
If you see the movie, this is an actual puppet.
It is not CGI, which is incredible.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Oh really?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Because it looks amazing, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I'll bet.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
And Odysseus blinds Polyphemus to get everyone out of there,
out of the cave, and they are able to flee
the Cyclops and then suffer another attack by a tribe
of giant cannibals called.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The Laestrygonians.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yeah, nice work.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
So I just want to go back to, is it
Polyphemus or Polyphemus?
Speaker 2 (29:57):
I would say Polyphemus.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Okay. So, like you said, he's the son of Poseidon.
I read that Odysseus and his men came onto the
island of the Cyclops and just started eating all of Polyphemus'
sheep and basically made terrible guests of themselves. Is that
not correct?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Well, I don't know if that's in the movie. I
can't remember.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Okay. But either way, I read that it wasn't just
completely one-sided, that Polyphemus was wronged first. At any rate...
After they escaped the Lestrigonians, which is another tribe of giants,
but I believe they're more human-like, right?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
They're not in the movie either. Okay. Everything I know
about the Odyssey, I know from a little research and
then seeing that movie.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Okay, gotcha. So in the book, the Lestrigonians, they come
right after the Cyclops, and they're another tribe of giant cannibals.
But from what I saw, they're more human-like. They're like soldiers,
but giant. They eat a bunch of guys. And after that,
there's the shipwreck. And the reason why there's the shipwreck
(31:01):
is because Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, prays to his father
and says, please mess Odysseus' junk up.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That's right. And so they end up on the island
of Circe, who was a goddess, sort of enchantress, sort
of portrayed like, sort of witch-like.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
And she falls in love with Odysseus. Um, she turns
the guys, his, his dudes into pigs and Odysseus gets
a little help from the gods and forces her to
turn them back into men so they can get on
with stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
I saw, I've read that that was like the coolest,
most disturbing scene in the whole movie. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I mean, I don't know. It was great.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Okay, so Odysseus ends up getting kind of hooked up
by Circe, who basically says, head on to the land
of the dead, because you're going to get a lot
of important, valuable information there. He meets Agamemnon there, who
was killed in the Iliad, and he meets his mom there,
which is nice. And then, most importantly, he meets Tiresias,
(32:03):
who is a prophet of Apollo, who, as a side note,
became a woman for seven years, which is kind of interesting.
And then Tiresias basically says, you really need to make
an offer to Poseidon, some sort of sacrifice or something,
because he's really mad that you blinded Polyphemus, his son,
the Cyclops. And one other thing, this is very important.
(32:25):
Do not let anyone eat the sun god's sacred cattle
on the island of Helios. You're going to end up
on Helios, by the way. I'm a prophet, so I know.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
So he says, all right, check. Do not eat sacred cattle.
Got it. So before going on to Ithaca, Odysseus goes
back to Circe's island. She's like, I'm going to hook
you up even further. Here's some beeswax because you're not
going to want to hear that siren song.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Protect all your guys. You need to steer towards Scylla because,
as we'll see, there's a very narrow sort of passage
that's very fraught.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
And she says, go towards Scylla and not Charybdis because
that's the bad way. Mm-hmm. And also, by the way,
I don't know if anyone's mentioned this, but man, do
not eat any of that guy's cattle.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
So now the second person to mention this, which suggests
strongly that they are definitely going to eat the cattle.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
So after leaving Circe's island and setting sail, remember, every
time they set sail, they're going toward home, toward Ithaca.
They just keep getting delayed and shipwrecked. And Poseidon's really
messing with them as per Polyphemus's request. The next challenge
that they go to is the Sirens, which is why Circe's,
(33:43):
like you said, gave Odysseus earwax. And Odysseus is like,
I got to see what all this is about. So
he gives the earwax to all of his men. And says,
lash me to the mast. I want to hear it.
But no matter what I say, while I'm under the
spell of the siren song, do not untie me. And
(34:03):
apparently it works out pretty great.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yeah. He makes it through that. They all survive. And
then they reach that strait that Cersei had warned him about,
which has monsters on both sides. That's Scylla and Charybdis.
On the Scylla side, you've got a six-headed beast who
is going to eat you. On the Charybdis side, you're
(34:26):
going to encounter some massive whirlpools that will destroy your
ship like it's going down a toilet. And so Odysseus
is like, all right, she said to steer, to avoid
that whirlpool and steer toward that monster, toward Scylla. And
they do that, and the monster eats a lot of
those guys. But Odysseus managed to escape with all but
I think like six guys that get eaten.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Right, which is a pretty good trade-off. It's like a
utilitarian lesser of two evils, right? Lose the whole ship
to the Whirlpool or lose six guys to Scylla. It's
a pretty smart move, honestly. And if you're like, wow,
he really didn't have a good option, that's because caught
between Scylla and Charybdis is the original version of caught
between a rock and a hard place. That's where that
(35:08):
came from.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
That's right. So they eventually land at Helios. The sacred
cattle are everywhere. They've gotten the two warnings by now. And,
of course, like Josh said, Odysseus' men eat that cattle
pretty quickly. And more divine punishment is wrought upon them.
And Zeus, because Helios is like, you've got to do
(35:30):
something here, Zeus. Zeus destroys the ship when it departs
the island. And at this point now, Odysseus is the
only one still living. And he washes ashore to meet Calypso.
And that is where the flashback ends.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Right. And then so let's go take a break and
we're going to come back and wrap up the Odyssey
and talk a little more about what it means for everybody.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
All right. We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Okay, Chuck, now we're at book 12. The last 12
books are about his homecoming, his nostos, which shares the
root with nostalgia. And like you said, the Fascians are
excellent hosts. So they get him directly to Ithaca, finally
get him home. But his homecoming is not just him
showing up and everything's great. Like his kingdom has fallen
(36:42):
to shreds. In the 20 years that he's been gone,
Penelope's been doing everything she can to hold it all together,
but she can only do so much. So he's got
to disguise himself, which he does as a beggar, to
kind of get the lay of the land to figure
out how to put things right again.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
That's right. So in disguise, only his old dog and
his childhood nurse, played by John Leguizamo, recognize him. But,
you know, he doesn't sell him out. He keeps it
a secret. And he is being mistreated at the palace
by the suitors, of course, who I think we've established
are big jerks.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Telemachus returns from his journey and he's like, all right,
this is my son. He's a grown up Spider-Man now.
And when I left him, he was just a little kid.
And so I got to like at least meet this
guy and reveal myself to him. And he does that.
So he reveals himself to his son at least.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
He does. And his son's like, great, let's figure out
how to get the house back, right? And your kingdom
and everything. So they get together and start planning how
to get everything back. And meanwhile, Penelope's finally like, okay,
my husband is dead. And I'm going to hold a
contest for all of you suitors. Whoever can shoot an
(37:59):
arrow through 12 axe heads in a row, which only
Odysseus has been able to do, whoever can do that,
I will marry. And so they hold a contest, or
she does, and every single one of the hundred suitors misses.
Can't do it. Then Odysseus is the beggar, is like,
can I have my try? And she allows it. And
he successfully shoots the arrow through the 12 axe heads.
(38:22):
And she knows that that's Odysseus, but she still has
a test for him.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
That's right. Well, before that, though, the big part of
that is being able to string that bow. Because apparently
it's just some bow that's so powerful that no one
has ever been able to even string it.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So Odysseus, of course, once he strings that thing, everyone's like, oh,
is that the dude? Okay. And then the shooting the
arrow through is almost like the cherry on top.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Gotcha. Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
And then, of course, the suitors are like, well, if
they suspect who he is or now they know who
he is, a huge battle takes place with Odysseus and Telemachus.
vanquishing is probably the best word for it. All hundred suitors, right?
And I'm sure it's very satisfying to see them all
get their due.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, they get their due. And after the battle, Penelope,
who is at this point, she's like, I think that
might be my guy. Like, first of all, he looks
just like him.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
And second of all, he could string that bow and
no one else could. And then he made that shot.
So it's just one of those things where you have
to suspend disbelief a little bit. It's an ancient text.
You know, Because you would think as soon as her
husband walks through the door, he'd be like, honey, I'm home.
And she's like, oh my God, it's you. But she
suspects that it's him and confirms it in this way.
(39:40):
In front of Odysseus, she's asked for a servant to
move their marital bed. Like, hey, can you move this
over here? I'm doing a little redecorating. And Odysseus knows,
he was like, You can't move that thing. I carved
that bed from a still live olive tree. So that
thing is still like literally rooted to the ground. And
I know that it can't be moved. And she's like,
it is him. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
And so they get back together. It's very sweet, I'm sure.
Telemachus is there. Everything's going really great. Then a civil
war breaks out among the Souter's families, who many of
them are ready to avenge the death of their family members.
And before things can get really out of hand, Athena,
who's also the goddess of war in addition to wisdom,
(40:23):
steps in and says, stop this war. That's enough war
for now. And everybody lays down their arms and Odysseus
is finally home and things are back to normal. It's
like the end of a Brady Bunch episode. Everything's just
back to normal.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
That's right. Except Cousin Oliver's there. So everyone's kind of
wondering where he came from. So we should probably talk
a little bit more about.
Just the history, because I wondered after I saw it, because, again,
I hadn't studied this, so I didn't know a lot
about it. I was like, I mean, what about like
was any of this true? Was there a sort of
stand in for Odysseus? And was there even a Trojan
(41:01):
War and all this stuff? And it turns out like
probably not. Right.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Well, they do think that there is probably a Trojan War.
They do think that they've kind of identified Troy. Now,
it's a town that's called Hizarlik. There's a mountain nearby
called that Hizarlik. And they're like, we're pretty sure this
is the actual Troy that was originally discovered in the
19th century by Heinrich Schliemann. And it shows evidence of
(41:29):
having been burned and rebuilt time after time after time.
But there's one layer, layer seven, That they're like, this
coincides with Homer's time. And they found some things like
they found a pile of rocks that they think is
slingshot ammunition outside of the city. And they're like, evidence
of war. So historians seem to think that this is
(41:51):
probably Troy. And it conceivably gives some backup to the
idea that there was a Trojan War and it did
take place during Homer's time. Right.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Whether or not there was a Trojan horse, there have
been some archaeological finds that were pre-Odyssey that depicted men
climbing out of a giant wheeled horse. So you might
think like, boom, of course there was.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
But a lot of people think it was probably like
symbolic or maybe a metaphor that Homer adapted. There are
definitely routes and paths that they sail that are, you know,
historically accurate throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Right. although they don't
know the exact path and if that's a real thing.
But they think that a lot of the stuff, like
(42:34):
the monsters, may be, again, symbolic about seafaring things that
you had to navigate around, basically. Like Scylla and Charybdis
are the opposing currents of the Strait of Messina, or
the Sirens are maybe the shoals along the Mediterranean that
are dangerous.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Right. Somebody pointed to Mount Etna on Sicily as the Cyclops,
one-eyed Cyclops, which was really destructive. Sure it does. It
seems like a stretch to me. But the idea that
these are metaphors for navigating conditions that you have to
look out for makes a lot of sense because these
stories were told by seafaring people. So that definitely holds
(43:19):
a lot of weight for sure.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
So my initial question is like, why is this thing
still interesting? people and it's you know, it's because the
story like it is a truly timeless story because and
it has a lot of Universal appeal because it's it's
about homecoming and everyone can identify with that kind of
thing at one point You know a hero struggle. That's
certainly nothing new like that's still a thing and you know,
(43:44):
almost every movie You know, there's coming of age there's
there's regret there's adventure Uh, there's family, there's, there's good
guys and bad guys. It's like a lot of just
the tenants of great movie making, uh, are just kind
of right there in black and white, or I guess
papyrus and whatever color they printed, uh, ink with.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
And I think it also goes to show like it
touches on values that are so universal, at least, you know,
to Western eyes and ears that they, we still hold
those same values today. They still make sense to us.
They don't seem totally foreign.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Uh, what else you got? Anything else? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
I mean, there's been adaptations over the years, uh, beyond
this movie, obviously, uh, 1922, the novel Ulysses by James
Joyce was a big one because Ulysses is the Latin
version of Odysseus. So that's what he's writing about in that. Yeah. Uh,
there was a great novel. Um, I haven't read it yet,
but I want to Margaret Atwood in 2005 wrote a
(44:45):
novel called, uh, the Penelopiad? The Penelopiad? How do you
say that?
Speaker 1 (44:51):
The Penelopiad is what I'm going with.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
The Penelopiad, I guess.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, like the Iliad and Penelope. It's Penelope. She combined
those two because it's the Odyssey told from Penelope's point
of view.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
And then, oh, brother, where art thou? is obviously an
allegory for the Odyssey. I've never noticed it before. I've
heard that ever since the movie came out, and I
still didn't ever notice it. But I wonder now if
I went back and watched it, if I would get it.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
I think so. I mean, it opens with a quote
from Homer on screen. So they clearly tell you like
what this is.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Up front. And, you know, George Clooney's characters name Ulysses,
which is, again, the Latin version of Odysseus.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
It's their journey home.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Very, you know, sort of plainly. Penelope in the movie,
his wife's name is Penny, Holly Hunter.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
There are suitors trying to. Take her hand that he
has to fight.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Stay out of Woolworths.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Exactly. There's a blind prophet that is, you know, there's
just a blind prophet in the movie. There's just like
a blind seer.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
The Cyclops is Big Dan Teague, John Goodman's character.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Why is he the Cyclops? Oh, he has a patch
over his eye. That's right. I forgot.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah. So he's a Bible salesman. Uh, the sirens are
like very clearly in there. They're like literally singing at
the Creek and like they're under their trance. Uh, Circe
and the pigs is more like the toad. They told
us you was a toad.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
So it turns John Turturro into a toad instead of
a swine in this case.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
All right.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I guess I'm convinced now.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah. And there's also like, uh, Poseidon's wrath is in there. Uh,
there's the, the song, the suitors in the song when
they sing man of constant sorrow, it's like, It's very
kind of directly taken from the Odyssey and only the
way that the Coen brothers could do something like that.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
They're great.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
They're so great. And there's a sequel too, right?
Speaker 1 (46:50):
To the O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Speaker 2 (46:52):
No, to the Odyssey.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah, the Telegony, which is about Odysseus' other son that's
not mentioned in the Odyssey. But it supposes that he
had a son with Circe on that island and they
produced the son Telegonus. And Telegonus is not quite as
loyal to his father as Telemachus is because he goes
(47:17):
home and kills Odysseus and he marries Penelope. Telemachus just
shrugs and says, OK, well, I guess I'll marry Circe's
to get back at you. And they all become immortal.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
That's right. They believe it was written by a Greek
poet named Eugamon of Cyrene. The funny thing about this
one is it was actually lost to history. So what
we know about the telegony is references from other writings
about it.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Maybe one day, if the Odyssey is ever truly lost
to history, it will listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
To write the next version.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Man, that was amazing. That's it for the Odyssey. We
could turn this into a 20-part series if we wanted to,
but we don't. And if you're like, I really like
the movie, I really like this episode, there's so much
to read about interpreting the Odyssey that's just super fascinating.
So go forth and multiply your awareness of the Odyssey.
(48:16):
And in the meantime, everybody, I think it's time for
Listener Mail.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
This is about rope. Hey, guys. Longtime listener. I love
the rope episode. I especially enjoyed the history of rope making,
the explanation of how something so seemingly simple is actually
a pretty ingenious piece of technology. Mm-hmm. I do think
you guys missed a cool opportunity, though, to talk about
rope as a transformative lifting technology. I think we might
(48:42):
have briefly said something about raising houses, but maybe not even.
While sailing ships were undoubtedly critical to connecting the world, rope,
especially combined with pulleys, is what allowed us to turn
human and animal muscle into something enormously more useful. Think
about how much of ancient civilization depends on moving very
heavy things upward. Temples, city walls, aqueducts, bridges, you name it.
Rope didn't just rig the ships and build civilizations. help
(49:04):
build the civilizations themselves. Anyway, great episode, guys. Thanks for
making me spend the rest of the day thinking about rope.
Not something I expected to do. That is from Jonathan.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Thanks a lot, Jonathan. You make a great case, just
like you did, Chuck, with comparing your brother, Warthog, and
the odyssey okay uh if you want to be like
jonathan and send us an awesome email we love that
kind of thing uh you can wrap it up Stuff
(49:38):
You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
and welcome to the Epic Cast. This is Josh. There's Chuck.
Jerry's here, too. We're all wearing breastplates, and that means
this is Stuff You Should Know.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
To protect our chest.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yes, I'm also wearing a codpiece, but that's not unusual
for me.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
To protect your cod.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I know. Why is it called that?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Fish of the day.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
What if you dated somebody who referred to that as
your cod? Wouldn't you be like, please stop calling it that?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah. It's like, do you mind giving me some privacy?
I'm in here washing my cod. Right.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
They would say, I'm sorry. I majored in the Canterbury Tales.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
What a weird way to start the odyssey. I know.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
I know. And you're the one who wrote those lines.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
I know. That's true.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Uh, yeah, we're talking about the Odyssey. You saw the
Odyssey and you were like, how's the Odyssey work? And
here we are, right?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yeah. I mean, you know, I saw the movie. Uh,
I thought it was really good. I am no Christopher
Nolan fan boy. I'm about 50, 50 with him. Maybe,
maybe 60, 40 with ones I like.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Which ones do you like? Aside from Memento, obviously.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, I liked Memento. I liked the prestige. I liked
the Batman movies.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Um, Didn't love, I mean, Oppenheimer was quote-unquote good, I guess,
but it was a bit of a slog for me,
and I never wanted to see it again.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
I could see that.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I think you and I had the same problems with Interstellar. Yeah.
I did not see Tenet because I heard it was
so bad. So, yeah, he sort of hit or miss
for me, but I really thought the Odyssey was great,
and it kind of hit me after I saw it.
I was like, it's kind of just crazy, this idea
that this story that's this old, like one of the
oldest stories... like can still resonate with an audience in 2026.
(01:58):
And like, what is it about that story itself? And
I knew nothing about just the Odyssey as a literary piece.
And I didn't know much about Homer. Like I was
an English major, but we didn't, I guess I didn't
do the classes where we studied this stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Well, in your defense, it was written in Ionic, not English.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
So yeah, good point.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
So, yeah, I can totally see where you're coming from.
The story has legs, I guess, is how you'd put it.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, it's just kind of fascinating to me as a
piece of work.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
For sure. And let's talk about this piece of work
because there's a lot to talk about, not just recounting
the highlights of the story and spoiling the movie, I guess,
for anybody who hasn't paid attention over the last, like,
2,000-something years. Yeah, if you can't.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
If you can't, uh, spoil something written in the eighth century, then, uh,
I'm just sorry.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah. Yeah. So about almost 3000 years ago, the 700s BCE, right.
That's where they think Homer first put this to paper. Uh,
but the whole thing, and it's attributed to the Greek
poet Homer, uh, who I guess this would have been
post bronze age, um, Like after the Bronze Age collapse,
(03:16):
I think, is when Homer was walking around. If Homer
was even walking around, we'll talk about in a second.
But they attribute both the Odyssey and the Iliad, which
is kind of the prequel to the Odyssey, to Homer.
And they think that it was first written down, like
I said, in the 700s, the 8th century BCE. But
(03:37):
it was probably around way longer than that because the
whole thing is set up as a form of oral storytelling. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
I mean, you know, just you mentioned quickly that it
was sort of a sequel or the Iliad was a,
did you say prequel?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You bet I did.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, the Odyssey is 24 books, one book for each
letter of the Greek alphabet. But the Iliad that you
were talking about, um, talks about Agamemnon's return from the
Trojan war. And then the Odyssey basically covers Odysseus, uh,
his return from the very long delayed return from the
Trojan war. And what was your question that you asked
(04:20):
before I sidetracked us?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Do you remember? I asked you, uh, what, um, Christopher
Nolan movies you like.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
He said that right before.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
That's the last question I remember asking you.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Oh, that's okay. Um, But I think I know what
you said. Something about it being an oral tradition that
was much older, right?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I must have said right.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
That was my question. Am I right?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I can't believe how good we are at this 18
years in.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
18 years in.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
It astounds me sometimes. Masters.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
I know. It's almost like we're both sleepwalking right now.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
No, no, no. Not sleepwalking.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
On the phone.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
So we don't know how closely the Odyssey resembles the
story of That Homer told in 700s because you were right.
It was an oral.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Story.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
It was an oral tradition and it was supposed to
be told by memorizing it and retelling it by, you know,
from bards telling the story to people in a crowd,
maybe changing a thing or two. You know, the idea
is that we it's pretty likely that this thing was
a little bit like a game of telephone, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
You know, like as you learned it and you passed
it on, you could kind of embellish it in this way.
You're like, I don't really care that much about the siren,
so I'm not going to give them as much play
as maybe the guy who taught you how to say
this did. And then it really started to take its
final shape again when it was finally put to papyrus.
(05:50):
I want to say pen to paper, but probably quill
to papyrus is how it was first done.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Right. Right. I love that.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
That's when it really kind of started to take a
solid form because now it was like now you just
basically copied it.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
You didn't have to memorize it or anything like that.
But it was far from the only like legend or
tale of like Greek culture and Greek heroics and like
Greek moral lessons and all that.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
But it was just for some reason that I don't
think anyone's really put their finger on. It just has
resonated throughout the years. So it's the one. that we
tend to think of when we think of this whole stuff.
But it was a cornerstone of Greek culture. Like this
was just part of your indoctrination into growing up in
ancient Greek culture. You knew the Iliad among other things,
(06:39):
or the Odyssey, probably the Iliad too, among other things,
you'd at least heard it probably more than once. And
then finally Plato comes along and he's like, this is
all rubbish. We need to start using our noodles. So
he tried to actually ban the Odyssey and it didn't
take because people love it that much.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That's right. It lived on. You mentioned it was an
Ionic Greek, which is an Asiatic dialect, and it's been
gone for more than 2000 years. So if you're wondering
how we got to the point where Christopher Nolan is
working on a screenplay adapted from a 21st century novelized version,
I guess, it's sort of a winding road. The first
(07:19):
print copy came around in 1488, and it was produced
in Italy in that Ionic Greek. And then I guess
about 100 years later or so, or at least in
the next century, it was finally translated to some European languages,
some actual living languages. And then in 1616, we got
(07:40):
our first English translation of this epic poem from a
British poet named George Chapman.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
That's a pretty British name if I've ever heard one.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So, yeah. So now it starts to come into our awareness,
our understanding.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
And, you know, him translating it and then other people
translating it from the original, you know, we talked a
little bit about just the original oral translations. But when
you finally get to like written translations, it also took
a bit of a winding road, obviously.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, because the thing was written originally or created originally
to be spoken. And it actually follows a specific meter,
like the rhythm that you're supposed to say it in.
It's called Homeric hexameter. Or dactylic hexameter I've also seen.
In each line, there's six three-syllable units. And in these
(08:36):
three-syllable units, these dactyls, the first syllable is stressed and
then the next two are not stressed. So it's like, hi,
how are you doing today, guy? Right?
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Do you have to sing it?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I actually saw a video of somebody not only reading
it in English, but reading it in Ionic. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
And I couldn't tell any difference from somebody just reading
it normally. But that's not something that literally translates very
well into other languages, including English. So the translators basically
had to make some big decisions, essentially.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah. I mean, it's almost like translating the Bible, you know,
through the various translations of the Bible over the years.
There was, you know, each time someone's doing that, there
are writers that are doing that. So each version is
going to be a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
You know, a language, especially, you know, in the case
of a poem, it's going to have a unique rhythm.
But people's native tongue have unique rhythms as well. And
just where they're from, there are unique cultural experiences that happen.
Some of these translate better than others, I guess.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And so, you know, you're really, you know, you're not
rewriting in like, I don't think people made up like
a ton of stuff out of whole cloth, but making
it relevant for the audience that they're writing it for,
which would have been. in their language for the people
in their country because they wanted them to get something
out of it. Yes.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Most translators have ignored the there's a joke in one
of the books about laying with a goat and it
just does not translate well into modern times.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That's right. Got to leave that one behind. And the
other thing is, you know, there's a few things here.
You're translating from a dead language, which is a big deal.
We already mentioned that they were things meant to be
spoken aloud to something read, which is going to change it.
And then it's just something that's just thousands of years
old that you have to make sense. So it's a
it's a hard job.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Right. It's a hard knock life for translators of the Odyssey.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
That's right. That's what Annie said.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
So there there were some. There's some like standout translations
over the years, but the one that everyone's talking about
right now is from Emily Wilson. And she, I think,
did hers in 2017. Okay. 2017 is how most people
say that.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
And she basically, she turned it into English heroic couplets,
which is basically a tea drinking way of saying like
exactly the kind of rhyming words pairs that you hear
in any modern song.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah. And this is the one that Christopher Nolan used
specifically to adapt his version of the story on screen. Um,
I think we should probably talk a little bit about
the Homeric question because you, you teased earlier the, uh,
if Homer was really a person and that it's sort
of one of these things where, you know, we don't
have any hard facts when it comes to Homer, like
(11:40):
everything that we know, um, historians, literary historians have surmised
from reading the text? Like, well, it's written in this language,
so he's probably from this place that spoke that language.
Like stuff that makes sense, though.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, no, there's plenty of stuff that makes sense. It's
more just like a question of like, did he actually
exist if he was a bard, if he was a
group of people? It's very similar to the Shakespeare question, too,
we did an episode on. But there, I mean, just
even though everything is a guess that we've kind of
(12:16):
compiled from Homer, strictly from, I guess, his own writing.
I don't think he's referenced in any other, like, historical
text or anything like that. It's just the stuff he's
writing about just kind of lines up. And they think
that he was probably from Ionia, which is along the
west coast of Turkey today, because the whole thing was
(12:37):
written in Ionic. And... He almost certainly lived during this
age that they attribute it to. And they also are like,
it's possible that he might be a known historic blind
bard named Demoticus. Demoticus.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
That's the hardest one, I think, out of this whole article.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I mean, that's a character in the Odyssey that like
a lot of space is devoted to. So I think
there are people who are like, I wonder if this
is just a stand in for him because, boy, there
is a lot of stuff in there about this, you know,
minor character. Right.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
He's like, and let me sing the praises about Demodocus's cod.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
There's just verse after verse about that.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
A lot of stuff. So I also think we should
talk before we break about sort of a central concept
because in Act Two, everybody, we're going to give you
the CliffsNotes version of the Odyssey.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
It's very exciting.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I'm very excited.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
But we should a little bit more before we get
into that is sort of conceptually what the Odyssey was
about in a lot of ways was homecoming and hospitality,
which are Nostos and Xenia in ancient Greece. And these
two things were like really big deals in ancient Greece
(13:57):
that figured heavily in like their life and culture.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
Yeah, they're not only like. things that you should do
to be like a good host. There are actual like
rules that you have to follow. And if you don't,
you're actually upsetting Zeus because this is Zeus, the king
of the gods, a real God's God, if you ask
other gods. This is his divine law that he's passed down.
(14:21):
That's how important these rules for treating guests are.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
So, yeah, Xenia is a big deal. And the rules
specifically are if you happen to hop through town and
you knock on a stranger's door, they're supposed to say,
come on in. I don't need to know anything. Here's
some food. Here's some wine. Why don't you go? I'll
draw you a hot bath. Sure. And then we'll get
(14:45):
to why you're here. And also, while you're doing this stuff,
like maybe while you're in the bathtub, I'm going to
stand sentry out front with my sword and make sure
you stay nice and safe.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, you have to guarantee their protection while they're staying
at your home. Yeah, like a heaping helping of hospitality
is what you're supposed to offer a stranger, according to Xenia, right?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
That figures in so much to the story that essentially
entire groups and individuals are characterized by how they treat strangers,
how they act as guests, how they act as hosts.
Like this is a really important thread that goes through
all of the Odyssey. That's Xenia. Then there's also Nostos, right?
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Yeah, homecoming. I mean, that's basically what the Odyssey is.
It's about somebody coming home. And this was a very
big deal in Greek society because they were seafarers. They
were adventurers and wanderers by sea. And so they would
go out a lot and coming home was a big deal.
They would be separated from their family. They would have
these brutal, you know, sea journeys. And so coming home
(15:53):
was a very big deal. And so it's no surprise
that these two sort of prominent things that figure in
Greek culture and society at the time were sort of
the two big themes of the Odyssey. Right.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
If you're in high school and you have a crush
on somebody who likes to read the classics, just go
up to them and say, would you like to go
to Nostos with me? And they will, they'll be putty
in your hand after that.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
That's great. I started Moby Dick, by the way, just
so everyone knows it's officially happening.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Awesome. How's it going so far?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Well, I read chapter one and then I watched that,
you know, I mentioned the Rob Delaney podcast that he's
doing with the professor. And so I'm going to do
that like in lockstep. So I did that and then
I watched their chapter one recap and it's helping a lot.
I like it so far.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That's awesome. Keep us posted, will you?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I will. So far, so good. Okay.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
So that was, I think we covered Xenia and Nostros
pretty well. And that's probably a pretty good place to break, right?
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
And everyone, hold on your hats, because Act 2, we're
going to go over these books of the Odyssey.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
All right. I'm back with Josh. He's screwed his head
back onto his body. Cartoon style.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And if you don't know what Chuck's referring to, that
means we edited that thing out.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Oh, perhaps. You never know. But we're going to kind
of do, like I said, the CliffsNotes version of the Odyssey.
Spoilers will abound. If you haven't seen the film and
you really don't want to know anything about it, then
don't listen to this chapter. But, you know, I think
it might help going in to know a little bit
about the story if you really don't know anything. And
I'll also point out the actors who feature in and
(18:08):
who they play. How's that?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I think that's great. Can you also do their voices, maybe?
Speaker 2 (18:13):
No, I can't do any of those voices.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You can do a great Matt Damon.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
How about them apples?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
There you go. Exactly. That actually sounded like Matthew McConaughey
trying to do a Matt Damon.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It sort of did.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
All right. So let's get started, Chuck. We start with
book one. And actually, this kind of covers books one
through four.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
And we find we start the Trojan War has ended
10 years before. And the Trojan War itself has taken
10 years. So it's been 20 years since our hero,
literally the hero of the story, Odysseus.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Matt Damon.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yes. Which I'm not crazy about that casting. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
There's a lot of people upset about this casting.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Not him, like all kinds of the casting. I know.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Everybody's like, Matt Damon's fine. So he's been gone for
20 years. And from what I understand, this was initially
considered a fairly quick errand. The Trojan War started because
Paris stole Helen of Troy. And now I think everybody
kind of set out to get her back. And it
(19:19):
turned into this 10-year Trojan War.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
That's right. Helen of Troy is played by Lupita Nyong'o
in this film. And Elon Musk is so mad about that.
He's going to make his own AI version that he
thinks is more historically accurate. That's what he said.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
I heard about that. I'm waiting for its IPO.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
I'm sure it's going to be great. So Matt Damon
is Odysseus. He's been gone for those 20 years, like
you said. He has a wife named Penelope, played by
Anne Hathaway in this film, and he has a son
called Telemachus, who's played by Tom Holland, who you might
know more as Spider-Man.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
All right. So where we pick up with them, they
are living in their big house, their mini mansion. And
there are 100 suitors vying for Odysseus' throne and the
hand of Penelope to marry.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
The most villainous in the film, at least, is Antonis,
played by Robert Pattinson.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I'll bet he does a great job.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
He's great. The acting is really, really good in this
entire film. But these guys are all living there, kind
of really have made themselves at home, let's just say.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
And not keeping up their end of the Xenia bargain,
which is, I don't even know if we mentioned, as
a guest, you're also supposed to be awesome in return.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And these guys are not. We left that out. It's
not just incumbent on the host.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
So, yeah, they're being pretty terrible. And one of the
main things they're doing as suitors, this whole hundred of
them who've taken over Odysseus' home, they're like really pressing
Penelope to be like, your husband's dead. It's been 20 years.
you need to choose a husband to sit on the
throne next to you and become king of Ithaca. Who
are you going to choose? And she keeps hemming and hawing,
(21:04):
hemming literally because she says that when she finishes the
funeral shroud that she's weaving for Odysseus's elderly father, Gary, She, um,
she will make this, this decision, right? And then every
night after she has woven all day, she goes and
undoes the weaving that she did that day so that
(21:25):
she will never finish. And this, I guess the suitors
are all idiots and it's working quite well because they
still haven't caught on, I guess.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
You know, sometimes when we get emails that are like,
I can't believe Josh said that Odysseus' father's name was Gary.
Didn't he read it or do his research? I wonder
if people even know you.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
I do, too. After 18 years, you know?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
So barren, desert dry. Like, get with it, people. He
knows it's not Gary.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Chuck, I love how well you know me. Thanks, man.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
I mean, you still fool me. So I guess I
shouldn't throw stones.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I'm going to take issue with that. There's probably... 98%
of the time, you're just like moving on. Not that
you don't think it's funny. Not that you don't get it.
You're just like, we're burning up time here. That's enough
of your shenanigans. I'm just going to let that sit.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
All right.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Thanks, Gary.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
So Penelope and Telemachus are, you know, it's been 20 years.
So they're also losing hope that dad and husband are gone.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Like for good. So Athena, played by Zendaya in the film,
the goddess of wisdom and warfare, she's on Odysseus' side
this whole time. She's like, hey, kid, why don't you
go out and actually do something and see if you
can find out if your dad's alive? That'd be a
good start.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I'm guessing Zendaya does a great job, or Zendaya.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Is it Zendaya? Yeah, she's awesome. She's a really good actor,
I think, in everything.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I read recently that people thought of her as like
a nepo baby or something like that. I don't know
where that's coming from. And I think she's really good
at everything I've ever seen her in.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Who are her parents? Are they famous?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I don't know. I don't know. I'll have to go
back and double check that. But I saw somebody reference it.
And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.
She's great.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, she's great. And she was also in Spider-Man, the movies.
So it's a reunion of sorts.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
And Benny, I can't remember. He's one of the creators
of Uncut Gems.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Benny Safdie.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, he's in this movie. And he directed Robert Pattinson
in Good Time. That's right.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
He plays, Benny Safdie plays Agamemnon.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Man, look at all this.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Go ahead, though. I'm sorry for sidetracking us so badly.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Oh, that's okay. So she says, why don't you go
out and see if your dad's still alive? He goes
and meets with John Bernthal from The Walking Dead, who
plays King Menelaus in Sparta. And from him learns, hey,
your dad's alive. He's sort of being held captive, but
in the best way he can be held captive on
Calypso's island. And that's where book five picks up.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Right. Calypso is a nymph, a goddess nymph, who has
basically turned Odysseus into a sex toy after he washed
up on her island after a shipwreck, which we'll come
to later. That's another cool thing about the Odyssey. It's
not completely linear. It actually spins around. There's different, like
(24:32):
this entire part we're talking about is a flashback, as
we'll see.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Yeah, this starting with book five, yeah. Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thank you. And so Calypso falls in love with Odysseus.
And she's like, don't forget, I'm a goddess nymph, not
just a nymph. So I can make you stay here.
And she does. She holds him captive there for, I think,
something like seven years. Yeah. And then finally, Athena, who
has really chosen Odysseus as like one of her favorite
humans and really intervenes on his behalf throughout this whole,
(25:05):
I guess, odyssey. She goes to Zeus and is like,
you got to get this guy out of Calypso's clutches.
And Zeus is like, sure, I'll see what I can do.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
That's right. Calypso, by the way, is played by Charlize Theron. So, again,
he was being held captive. as a sex slave for
seven years to Charlize Theron and still wants to leave.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
He's like, my God, it's exhausted.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Uh, so he has resumed his journey home to Ithaca.
He leaves on a raft. Um, Poseidon, Poseidon is a
real jerk throughout this whole story. Really doesn't like Odysseus.
So he destroys, he plays Poseidon. So no one plays
Zeus or Poseidon in this.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Oh, are they CGI?
Speaker 3 (25:50):
No, no, no.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
They, they, he, bite your tongue, he uses very little CGI.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, I heard it's all practical effects, but I don't
understand what you mean. They're just off screen?
Speaker 2 (25:58):
They're not in the movie, like at all.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Okay, they're just referenced.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Like Poseidon really did me dirty.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
So Poseidon wrecks the raft as punishment because he blinded
his son, which was a cyclops. And we'll get to
that in a minute because that's coming by way of
flashback a little bit later. And Odysseus is shipwrecked once
again and taken in by the, I guess, the Phaeacians.
(26:28):
And they are showing some serious Xenia. They are like
great hosts to him. Say, come on into the royal court.
Here's everything you need in the way of food and
wine and protection.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Right. And the reason we said that book five starts
as a flashback because it's Odysseus is being really well
taken care of by the Phacians, and the Phacian king,
I guess one night while they're feasting, says, Hey, man,
tell us your story. What's going on with you, buddy?
And Odysseus basically tells the story of the Odyssey, everything
he's been through up to that point. And this is
(27:03):
kind of... I mean, this is the part where everybody's like,
when they talk about the Odyssey, this is the stuff
they're talking about, where he's recounting his adventures in flashback
to the Fascians.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
That's right. And this is the real flashback. I guess,
I mean, we sort of misspoke earlier, but I think
everyone gets it, right? Sure. Okay, great.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
This is the part where Matt Damon goes, do-do-do, do-do-do, do-do-do.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
So as soon as Odysseus leaves with his big fleet
of ships, there are about 600 soldiers. They're all headed
home from The war at Troy, once again. Athena sends
some storms that way, veer the ships off course. Athena
is mad at this point about war crimes that they
committed in the battles when they conquered Troy. And they
(27:50):
landed initially at the land of the lotus eaters, which are,
you know, they're eating lotus. So they're very blissful and,
you know, they're basically sort of doing drugs. And Odysseus'
crew is like, this place is awesome. Can we stay here?
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, I was curious what that's an allegory for, what
drug or whatever, you know?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
I mean, I guess it was lotus at the time, right?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
I guess, but I've tried lotus and it doesn't get
you messed up. Okay. But yes, this is what these
people were doing. And Odysseus' crew was like, I'm not
sure we need to keep going back home. Like, this
is pretty great. These lotuses are amazing. The lotus eaters
are great people. Let's just stay here. Odysseus has to
drag every single one of his men, all 600 of them,
(28:36):
back to their ships where he ties them up until
he finally gets the last one and is able to
set sail again from the land of the lotus eaters.
That is far and away the best experience that these
guys have on the Odyssey as a whole. Because the
next thing that happens to them is actually the turning
point that really brings on everything else. All of their misfortune,
(29:01):
they seem to have started. And then Odysseus really drives
it home on the island of the Cyclops.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That's right. Obviously, one-eyed beasts, cannibalistic even. And they end
up trapped in a cave there. We mentioned Poseidon's son
is a Cyclops. That's Polyphemus. And he's just eating these guys.
If you see the movie, this is an actual puppet.
It is not CGI, which is incredible.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Oh really?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Because it looks amazing, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I'll bet.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
And Odysseus blinds Polyphemus to get everyone out of there,
out of the cave, and they are able to flee
the Cyclops and then suffer another attack by a tribe
of giant cannibals called.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The Laestrygonians.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
Yeah, nice work.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
So I just want to go back to, is it
Polyphemus or Polyphemus?
Speaker 2 (29:57):
I would say Polyphemus.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Okay. So, like you said, he's the son of Poseidon.
I read that Odysseus and his men came onto the
island of the Cyclops and just started eating all of Polyphemus'
sheep and basically made terrible guests of themselves. Is that
not correct?
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Well, I don't know if that's in the movie. I
can't remember.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Okay. But either way, I read that it wasn't just
completely one-sided, that Polyphemus was wronged first. At any rate...
After they escaped the Lestrigonians, which is another tribe of giants,
but I believe they're more human-like, right?
Speaker 2 (30:34):
They're not in the movie either. Okay. Everything I know
about the Odyssey, I know from a little research and
then seeing that movie.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Okay, gotcha. So in the book, the Lestrigonians, they come
right after the Cyclops, and they're another tribe of giant cannibals.
But from what I saw, they're more human-like. They're like soldiers,
but giant. They eat a bunch of guys. And after that,
there's the shipwreck. And the reason why there's the shipwreck
(31:01):
is because Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, prays to his father
and says, please mess Odysseus' junk up.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
That's right. And so they end up on the island
of Circe, who was a goddess, sort of enchantress, sort
of portrayed like, sort of witch-like.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
And she falls in love with Odysseus. Um, she turns
the guys, his, his dudes into pigs and Odysseus gets
a little help from the gods and forces her to
turn them back into men so they can get on
with stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
I saw, I've read that that was like the coolest,
most disturbing scene in the whole movie. Is that right?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
I mean, I don't know. It was great.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Okay, so Odysseus ends up getting kind of hooked up
by Circe, who basically says, head on to the land
of the dead, because you're going to get a lot
of important, valuable information there. He meets Agamemnon there, who
was killed in the Iliad, and he meets his mom there,
which is nice. And then, most importantly, he meets Tiresias,
(32:03):
who is a prophet of Apollo, who, as a side note,
became a woman for seven years, which is kind of interesting.
And then Tiresias basically says, you really need to make
an offer to Poseidon, some sort of sacrifice or something,
because he's really mad that you blinded Polyphemus, his son,
the Cyclops. And one other thing, this is very important.
(32:25):
Do not let anyone eat the sun god's sacred cattle
on the island of Helios. You're going to end up
on Helios, by the way. I'm a prophet, so I know.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
So he says, all right, check. Do not eat sacred cattle.
Got it. So before going on to Ithaca, Odysseus goes
back to Circe's island. She's like, I'm going to hook
you up even further. Here's some beeswax because you're not
going to want to hear that siren song.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Protect all your guys. You need to steer towards Scylla because,
as we'll see, there's a very narrow sort of passage
that's very fraught.
Speaker 3 (33:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
And she says, go towards Scylla and not Charybdis because
that's the bad way. Mm-hmm. And also, by the way,
I don't know if anyone's mentioned this, but man, do
not eat any of that guy's cattle.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
So now the second person to mention this, which suggests
strongly that they are definitely going to eat the cattle.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
So after leaving Circe's island and setting sail, remember, every
time they set sail, they're going toward home, toward Ithaca.
They just keep getting delayed and shipwrecked. And Poseidon's really
messing with them as per Polyphemus's request. The next challenge
that they go to is the Sirens, which is why Circe's,
(33:43):
like you said, gave Odysseus earwax. And Odysseus is like,
I got to see what all this is about. So
he gives the earwax to all of his men. And says,
lash me to the mast. I want to hear it.
But no matter what I say, while I'm under the
spell of the siren song, do not untie me. And
(34:03):
apparently it works out pretty great.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yeah. He makes it through that. They all survive. And
then they reach that strait that Cersei had warned him about,
which has monsters on both sides. That's Scylla and Charybdis.
On the Scylla side, you've got a six-headed beast who
is going to eat you. On the Charybdis side, you're
(34:26):
going to encounter some massive whirlpools that will destroy your
ship like it's going down a toilet. And so Odysseus
is like, all right, she said to steer, to avoid
that whirlpool and steer toward that monster, toward Scylla. And
they do that, and the monster eats a lot of
those guys. But Odysseus managed to escape with all but
I think like six guys that get eaten.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Right, which is a pretty good trade-off. It's like a
utilitarian lesser of two evils, right? Lose the whole ship
to the Whirlpool or lose six guys to Scylla. It's
a pretty smart move, honestly. And if you're like, wow,
he really didn't have a good option, that's because caught
between Scylla and Charybdis is the original version of caught
between a rock and a hard place. That's where that
(35:08):
came from.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
That's right. So they eventually land at Helios. The sacred
cattle are everywhere. They've gotten the two warnings by now. And,
of course, like Josh said, Odysseus' men eat that cattle
pretty quickly. And more divine punishment is wrought upon them.
And Zeus, because Helios is like, you've got to do
(35:30):
something here, Zeus. Zeus destroys the ship when it departs
the island. And at this point now, Odysseus is the
only one still living. And he washes ashore to meet Calypso.
And that is where the flashback ends.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Right. And then so let's go take a break and
we're going to come back and wrap up the Odyssey
and talk a little more about what it means for everybody.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
All right. We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Okay, Chuck, now we're at book 12. The last 12
books are about his homecoming, his nostos, which shares the
root with nostalgia. And like you said, the Fascians are
excellent hosts. So they get him directly to Ithaca, finally
get him home. But his homecoming is not just him
showing up and everything's great. Like his kingdom has fallen
(36:42):
to shreds. In the 20 years that he's been gone,
Penelope's been doing everything she can to hold it all together,
but she can only do so much. So he's got
to disguise himself, which he does as a beggar, to
kind of get the lay of the land to figure
out how to put things right again.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
That's right. So in disguise, only his old dog and
his childhood nurse, played by John Leguizamo, recognize him. But,
you know, he doesn't sell him out. He keeps it
a secret. And he is being mistreated at the palace
by the suitors, of course, who I think we've established
are big jerks.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Telemachus returns from his journey and he's like, all right,
this is my son. He's a grown up Spider-Man now.
And when I left him, he was just a little kid.
And so I got to like at least meet this
guy and reveal myself to him. And he does that.
So he reveals himself to his son at least.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
He does. And his son's like, great, let's figure out
how to get the house back, right? And your kingdom
and everything. So they get together and start planning how
to get everything back. And meanwhile, Penelope's finally like, okay,
my husband is dead. And I'm going to hold a
contest for all of you suitors. Whoever can shoot an
(37:59):
arrow through 12 axe heads in a row, which only
Odysseus has been able to do, whoever can do that,
I will marry. And so they hold a contest, or
she does, and every single one of the hundred suitors misses.
Can't do it. Then Odysseus is the beggar, is like,
can I have my try? And she allows it. And
he successfully shoots the arrow through the 12 axe heads.
(38:22):
And she knows that that's Odysseus, but she still has
a test for him.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
That's right. Well, before that, though, the big part of
that is being able to string that bow. Because apparently
it's just some bow that's so powerful that no one
has ever been able to even string it.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
So Odysseus, of course, once he strings that thing, everyone's like, oh,
is that the dude? Okay. And then the shooting the
arrow through is almost like the cherry on top.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Gotcha. Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
And then, of course, the suitors are like, well, if
they suspect who he is or now they know who
he is, a huge battle takes place with Odysseus and Telemachus.
vanquishing is probably the best word for it. All hundred suitors, right?
And I'm sure it's very satisfying to see them all
get their due.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
Yeah, they get their due. And after the battle, Penelope,
who is at this point, she's like, I think that
might be my guy. Like, first of all, he looks
just like him.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
And second of all, he could string that bow and
no one else could. And then he made that shot.
So it's just one of those things where you have
to suspend disbelief a little bit. It's an ancient text.
You know, Because you would think as soon as her
husband walks through the door, he'd be like, honey, I'm home.
And she's like, oh my God, it's you. But she
suspects that it's him and confirms it in this way.
(39:40):
In front of Odysseus, she's asked for a servant to
move their marital bed. Like, hey, can you move this
over here? I'm doing a little redecorating. And Odysseus knows,
he was like, You can't move that thing. I carved
that bed from a still live olive tree. So that
thing is still like literally rooted to the ground. And
I know that it can't be moved. And she's like,
it is him. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
And so they get back together. It's very sweet, I'm sure.
Telemachus is there. Everything's going really great. Then a civil
war breaks out among the Souter's families, who many of
them are ready to avenge the death of their family members.
And before things can get really out of hand, Athena,
who's also the goddess of war in addition to wisdom,
(40:23):
steps in and says, stop this war. That's enough war
for now. And everybody lays down their arms and Odysseus
is finally home and things are back to normal. It's
like the end of a Brady Bunch episode. Everything's just
back to normal.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
That's right. Except Cousin Oliver's there. So everyone's kind of
wondering where he came from. So we should probably talk
a little bit more about.
Just the history, because I wondered after I saw it, because, again,
I hadn't studied this, so I didn't know a lot
about it. I was like, I mean, what about like
was any of this true? Was there a sort of
stand in for Odysseus? And was there even a Trojan
(41:01):
War and all this stuff? And it turns out like
probably not. Right.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Well, they do think that there is probably a Trojan War.
They do think that they've kind of identified Troy. Now,
it's a town that's called Hizarlik. There's a mountain nearby
called that Hizarlik. And they're like, we're pretty sure this
is the actual Troy that was originally discovered in the
19th century by Heinrich Schliemann. And it shows evidence of
(41:29):
having been burned and rebuilt time after time after time.
But there's one layer, layer seven, That they're like, this
coincides with Homer's time. And they found some things like
they found a pile of rocks that they think is
slingshot ammunition outside of the city. And they're like, evidence
of war. So historians seem to think that this is
(41:51):
probably Troy. And it conceivably gives some backup to the
idea that there was a Trojan War and it did
take place during Homer's time. Right.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Whether or not there was a Trojan horse, there have
been some archaeological finds that were pre-Odyssey that depicted men
climbing out of a giant wheeled horse. So you might
think like, boom, of course there was.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
But a lot of people think it was probably like
symbolic or maybe a metaphor that Homer adapted. There are
definitely routes and paths that they sail that are, you know,
historically accurate throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Right. although they don't
know the exact path and if that's a real thing.
But they think that a lot of the stuff, like
(42:34):
the monsters, may be, again, symbolic about seafaring things that
you had to navigate around, basically. Like Scylla and Charybdis
are the opposing currents of the Strait of Messina, or
the Sirens are maybe the shoals along the Mediterranean that
are dangerous.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Right. Somebody pointed to Mount Etna on Sicily as the Cyclops,
one-eyed Cyclops, which was really destructive. Sure it does. It
seems like a stretch to me. But the idea that
these are metaphors for navigating conditions that you have to
look out for makes a lot of sense because these
stories were told by seafaring people. So that definitely holds
(43:19):
a lot of weight for sure.
Speaker 3 (43:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
So my initial question is like, why is this thing
still interesting? people and it's you know, it's because the
story like it is a truly timeless story because and
it has a lot of Universal appeal because it's it's
about homecoming and everyone can identify with that kind of
thing at one point You know a hero struggle. That's
certainly nothing new like that's still a thing and you know,
(43:44):
almost every movie You know, there's coming of age there's
there's regret there's adventure Uh, there's family, there's, there's good
guys and bad guys. It's like a lot of just
the tenants of great movie making, uh, are just kind
of right there in black and white, or I guess
papyrus and whatever color they printed, uh, ink with.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
And I think it also goes to show like it
touches on values that are so universal, at least, you know,
to Western eyes and ears that they, we still hold
those same values today. They still make sense to us.
They don't seem totally foreign.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Uh, what else you got? Anything else? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
I mean, there's been adaptations over the years, uh, beyond
this movie, obviously, uh, 1922, the novel Ulysses by James
Joyce was a big one because Ulysses is the Latin
version of Odysseus. So that's what he's writing about in that. Yeah. Uh,
there was a great novel. Um, I haven't read it yet,
but I want to Margaret Atwood in 2005 wrote a
(44:45):
novel called, uh, the Penelopiad? The Penelopiad? How do you
say that?
Speaker 1 (44:51):
The Penelopiad is what I'm going with.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
The Penelopiad, I guess.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, like the Iliad and Penelope. It's Penelope. She combined
those two because it's the Odyssey told from Penelope's point
of view.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
And then, oh, brother, where art thou? is obviously an
allegory for the Odyssey. I've never noticed it before. I've
heard that ever since the movie came out, and I
still didn't ever notice it. But I wonder now if
I went back and watched it, if I would get it.
Speaker 2 (45:17):
I think so. I mean, it opens with a quote
from Homer on screen. So they clearly tell you like
what this is.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
Up front. And, you know, George Clooney's characters name Ulysses,
which is, again, the Latin version of Odysseus.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
It's their journey home.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Very, you know, sort of plainly. Penelope in the movie,
his wife's name is Penny, Holly Hunter.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
There are suitors trying to. Take her hand that he
has to fight.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Stay out of Woolworths.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
Exactly. There's a blind prophet that is, you know, there's
just a blind prophet in the movie. There's just like
a blind seer.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
The Cyclops is Big Dan Teague, John Goodman's character.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Why is he the Cyclops? Oh, he has a patch
over his eye. That's right. I forgot.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah. So he's a Bible salesman. Uh, the sirens are
like very clearly in there. They're like literally singing at
the Creek and like they're under their trance. Uh, Circe
and the pigs is more like the toad. They told
us you was a toad.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
So it turns John Turturro into a toad instead of
a swine in this case.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
All right.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
I guess I'm convinced now.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah. And there's also like, uh, Poseidon's wrath is in there. Uh,
there's the, the song, the suitors in the song when
they sing man of constant sorrow, it's like, It's very
kind of directly taken from the Odyssey and only the
way that the Coen brothers could do something like that.
Speaker 1 (46:46):
They're great.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
They're so great. And there's a sequel too, right?
Speaker 1 (46:50):
To the O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Speaker 2 (46:52):
No, to the Odyssey.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yeah, the Telegony, which is about Odysseus' other son that's
not mentioned in the Odyssey. But it supposes that he
had a son with Circe on that island and they
produced the son Telegonus. And Telegonus is not quite as
loyal to his father as Telemachus is because he goes
(47:17):
home and kills Odysseus and he marries Penelope. Telemachus just
shrugs and says, OK, well, I guess I'll marry Circe's
to get back at you. And they all become immortal.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
That's right. They believe it was written by a Greek
poet named Eugamon of Cyrene. The funny thing about this
one is it was actually lost to history. So what
we know about the telegony is references from other writings
about it.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Maybe one day, if the Odyssey is ever truly lost
to history, it will listen to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
To write the next version.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Man, that was amazing. That's it for the Odyssey. We
could turn this into a 20-part series if we wanted to,
but we don't. And if you're like, I really like
the movie, I really like this episode, there's so much
to read about interpreting the Odyssey that's just super fascinating.
So go forth and multiply your awareness of the Odyssey.
(48:16):
And in the meantime, everybody, I think it's time for
Listener Mail.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
This is about rope. Hey, guys. Longtime listener. I love
the rope episode. I especially enjoyed the history of rope making,
the explanation of how something so seemingly simple is actually
a pretty ingenious piece of technology. Mm-hmm. I do think
you guys missed a cool opportunity, though, to talk about
rope as a transformative lifting technology. I think we might
(48:42):
have briefly said something about raising houses, but maybe not even.
While sailing ships were undoubtedly critical to connecting the world, rope,
especially combined with pulleys, is what allowed us to turn
human and animal muscle into something enormously more useful. Think
about how much of ancient civilization depends on moving very
heavy things upward. Temples, city walls, aqueducts, bridges, you name it.
Rope didn't just rig the ships and build civilizations. help
(49:04):
build the civilizations themselves. Anyway, great episode, guys. Thanks for
making me spend the rest of the day thinking about rope.
Not something I expected to do. That is from Jonathan.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Thanks a lot, Jonathan. You make a great case, just
like you did, Chuck, with comparing your brother, Warthog, and
the odyssey okay uh if you want to be like
jonathan and send us an awesome email we love that
kind of thing uh you can wrap it up Stuff
(49:38):
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