March 6, 2026 • 37 mins
Today on Greek Mythology Retold I interview Natasha Joukovsky about her novel Medium Rare, a modern reinterpretation of the myth of Icarus told through the voice of a contemporary Cassandra. We talk about hubris, fate, warning signs, and how the ancient cautionary tale of flying too close to the sun still echoes in modern stories. If you love Greek mythology, myth retellings, and the deeper themes behind the Trojan War traditions, this conversation explores how those ideas continue to evolve today.
Medium Rare
Explore more Greek myth and epic retellings:
The Homeric Chronicles, an adult fantasy series inspired by Greek mythology and the Trojan War.
Homeric Chronicles Series
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Medium Rare
Explore more Greek myth and epic retellings:
The Homeric Chronicles, an adult fantasy series inspired by Greek mythology and the Trojan War.
Homeric Chronicles Series
WikiHow Expert Contributor
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:21):
Welcome back, murmered Ons to another episode of Greek Mythology
Retold Podcasts. I hope your world is peaceful and happy
and that you and yours are doing well. I'm really
glad to be back behind the mic and bring you
this episode where we explore a modern take on an
ancient myth of Icarus. Medium Rare reimagines the story of Icarus,
(00:45):
but instead of wax wings and a blazing sun, we
get march madness, brackets, media fame, and a man who
is convinced that he can beat probability itself. The story
is narrated by a contemporary Cassan, a woman who sees
what's coming, but not necessarily how to stop it. Sound familiar,
(01:06):
and this mythic layer is immediately what caught my attention
as someone who lives in the Greek world of myth
and the Trojan War. So today we're talking about hubris,
warning signs, modern pride, and what flying too close to
the sun might look like. Today we are joined by
a Natasha Zakowski and she is the author of Medium Rare,
(01:31):
a book that comes out March third, and I hope
you check it out, and we are going to dive
into this book. Welcome Natasha to this show.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You're welcome. Your book reimagines Icarus, who once he got
in flight, right once he was flying, his father had
told him like, don't fly too close to the sun,
don't fly too close to the sea. And when he's
in the exhilaration of flying, flies too high to the sun.
The wings are made of wax and feathers, and then
(02:04):
they belts and then he falls. So instead of wax
wings in your book, you give us this march madness, rackets,
and like media fame. So how did you decide to
come to this discussion of Hubris through Phil?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
The original high concept around basketball was my husband's idea.
He's a much bigger basketball fan than I am. But
the second he said it, I knew I wanted to
pursue the conceit at book lengths because it instantly reminded
me of the Charos myth, but not actually just the
(02:44):
Icaras myth, also the Faatin myth. And his name is
Phil Phaatin. And I think of these two myths as
twin Ovidian myths. They're both about sons with a U
and sons with an O. And not listening to your
father's good advice. And in one case, you know, well
(03:06):
in one case flying too close to the sun, in
trying to take a middle course, they're both trying to
take a middle course. In the case of Phaetin, of course,
he gets is burning up in both directions, so he's
instead of hitting the the water is getting burned up
to a cresp But you know, really really similar myths.
I think they're you know, in book two versus eight,
(03:28):
maybe in the Metamorphoses, and so they're they're six books
apart or something like that, and Avid tells them in
in such similar ways, and both of them frankly reminded
me of this, you know, this march madness idea of
flying too close to the sun.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
You have a lot of allusions to like Greek mythology
in your books. How did you come to like Greek mythology?
How what drew you to that? And I do know
that you have another book that was also the was
it the Mirrors.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
About portrait of the mirror?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Portrait of Yeah, so that's also Greek mythology.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
So well, there's the early story. In the later story.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Early in life, my father read me Edith Hamilton, And
you know, I've really liked Greek mythology, but I wouldn't
say that I was in love or you know, really
obsessed with it until I got to college and read Avid.
I would say, specifically, I'm not just reinterpreting Greek myth,
(04:32):
I'm reinterpreting a Vidian myth. The sense of leisure reza
that Avid has, the way he interacts with visual art,
these are things that have captivated me from that time. Specifically,
at the University of Virginia, I took a couple classes
with our history professor, Professor Paul Bolski, who I'm still
(04:56):
in contact with, actually got an email from him yesterday.
But he taught a class called Art and Myth where
it was a twelve person seminar and every week we
would come into class and having read one of the
books of Metamorphoses and look at related to art. And
(05:16):
the goal of this was to cultivate appreciation for the
efrastic power of Avid, but then also the reinterpretations of
and sticking power of these myths over time. So you know,
(05:37):
you'd look at so you'd read book one, you'd look
at Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, but then you'd look at
Keiki Smith's Apollo and Daphne, and you know, over the
course of the semester you get better and better not
just at recognizing the myths wherever you see them, but
also at recognizing different periods and styles of art. So
(06:04):
it was after that class I started to see Avid everywhere.
It's one of the I can't remember what that bias
has caused. You know, when you're looking for something you start.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Seeing a confirmation bias.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Is it confirmation biased? I feel like there's an even
more specific one. Maybe I can't remember, but but yeah,
I for the rest of my life, I have never
stopped seeing Avid in our contemporary world, in every flavor
and form.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
You can imagine.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
I understand that. I feel that way about Homer. I
feel that way about you know, the Ilien and the Odyssey.
And just because what you're speaking on is I wrote
down when you said sticking power, it made me think
of these things are universal, universal archetypes. And yes, stories
like Icarus resonate with us because we do see elements
(06:58):
of we understand what Hubant, we understand, you know why,
it's a cautionary tale and I and I was thinking
too that can that be used against us, like, hey,
don't try, you know, to to don't rise above the mediocrity,
Like where does that fit in? There is something about
people feeling comfortable at a level, and then if somebody
(07:19):
rises a bit above what the masses are, then somehow
the first thing you want to do is like you know,
is cut them down.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
I mean, part of part of my interest is definitely
tied to status. And this is where I feel like
Avid and you know, Jane Austen and her ilk or
maybe an unlikelier conversation then most people would put them,
but to me, they are a natural fit, particularly again Avid,
(07:52):
because of his tone. So you were you were mentioning
before we started recording that you know you're not you're
not funny, but or you don't try and be funny
or something. I like desperately want to be funny and
I'm not gonna be good at it on a podcast,
but at least in that is always the goal on
the page.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
And it's not just like blanket funny too.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's of its humor is humor of a specific you know,
it has a lightness, a wit. There's he's full of
double entendres and you know, coyness and recursivity, and I
just I just love that about him, the you know,
the the too cute, too clever. I'm not sure that
(08:36):
I think there can be a limit on cleverness.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
No, I don't think so, especially not a fiasco disuse
true good point. Yes, all right, he clevered himself right
into every situation he got himself into. Absolutely, absolutely Cassandra. So, yes,
the other character you have Cassandra. So in Greek myth,
she's figure that sees disaster coming for Troy, and she
(09:04):
tries to warn her family, whoever will listen multiple times
and it's like they hear her and then they get
a prickle of oh my god, that's horrible, and then
it fades away. She's left with being pushed to the side,
and you're just crazy. She's constantly being gas lit, but
she knows she's being gas lit. So in greet myth,
(09:26):
she's a tragic figure and her story is tragically ends
as well. So in your story, Cassandra sees phil rise
and maybe this fall. Do you see her as powerless
or does she have agency? As she tell us about
your Cassandra.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
What I was trying to go for with my millennial.
Cassandra was a I really liked the idea of just
an omniscient first person narrator done before in fiction. I
can't really think of a perfect comp there, So the
idea tickled me in its novelty in and of itself.
(10:07):
And then, you know, I'm also thinking about my Cassandra
as kind of a prototypical every woman alongside fills every
man and specifically, you know that they have so much
in common even though they're contrasted, and there's a tricky
(10:29):
thing about you know, to some extent, I think that
all women feel they're they're always telling the truth, and
I never believed like it's just a I told you
there are there are shades of it, Like if anybody
hasn't had a male boss that has made them feel
that way, I guess I guess I kind of envy.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I envy them.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
But I think there is a contemporary thread there, as
women have gained increased agency that there are still there
are still shades of this Cassandra feeling for women specifically,
and I, you know, I was looking to explore and
(11:11):
contrast that with you know, the more the more every
man nature of film.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Part of what I was trying to.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Get at in the book as well, with you know
the way it explores multiple different arenas, if you will,
the sports arena, the political arena, the Hollywood arena, all
of these spheres. They may have different incentives, but they
all have incentives, and people still, even if they respond
(11:39):
differently because the incentives are different, people as human beings
respond pretty predictably to incentives. And I talked a little
bit about this more and maybe explicitly in my first
book about how the problem with incentives is that they
work too well. Whatever you incentivize, you're going to get
(11:59):
in space and more. But I'm enduringly fascinated with this.
Part of my day job is designing incentives, so I'm
around and thinking about it a lot in and outside
of fiction. I think it's just a really interesting philosophical question,
being so tangential to what we want.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
In a world of social media, things are incentivized. If
I'm understanding this correctly, My thoughts are that just the
neurology of why we do what we do, and it
gets chemically shifted into these processes that become our habits,
and then the more it's our habit, then the more
(12:42):
it feeds us, feeds back to us, and I like
Gary Vee. So he says that it's not the algorithm,
like you are the algorithm. You're cheat and then it's
conforming to what you want. So if you see things
you don't want, what are you looking at? And I
was like, hmm, that's interesting, Like we're the algorithm.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I guess my take on that is the algorithm.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Incentive models, if you will, are not fundamentally different than
offline ones. They are architected on the same enduring principles
of our psychology, but then just kind of exacerbated.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
So it's not like the.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Internet and social media is this new thing in terms
of humans are still being human in some ways because
they're so specifically hacking our minds and our psychologies, our incentives,
the way we tick, the way we work. It acts
as an accelerant, I think more than more than anything else.
(13:45):
So you're you know, how we work is in some
ways just more visible and put put on the surface.
But you can still I think you can still connect
it back to twenty century novels I'm thinking about, you know, Ulysses,
an infinite jest a lot there. You can connect it
(14:08):
back to nineteenth century novels I mentioned, you know, Austin.
I think a lot about George Elliott, Henry James as well.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
And then you can take it all the way back
to Auvin and Homer, and you know a lot of
a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Is it just it connects beautifully, the thread remains unbroken.
You can follow it like like Ariadne.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
I like that. Yeah. So in in Greek myth, hubris
often looks like pride in battle or power Achilles. You know,
so we look at achilles rage with Agamemnon, and how
when Agamemnon took Preses, Achilles withdrew from the battle, him
and all his men, and he knew that the Greeks
(14:53):
were going to suffer. So his thing was that I've
been dishonored, you are not giving me my due, and
therefore everybody else can burn. Wow, and then Agamemnon, so
I picked like three. So Agamemnon was basically, well, I'm
the king and I get to make all the decisions,
and he doesn't see that there's any He shouldn't have
to pay any consequences for that. He doesn't make that connection.
And of course Odysseus has to be known as like
(15:15):
the architect of everything that happens. Like, well, I came
up with this plan, even though it was Athena putting it,
whispering in his ear through a dream, Like I did that.
I made the Trojan horse I did. I got Neoptolemus
to come back, look at all the things that I did.
He taunts the Cyclops. He's already blinded the Cyclops. They're
out on the ships, and he starts yelling back at Paulyphemus,
(15:36):
it's me. It's Odysseus, like I did, like like dude,
And then they almost all get killed.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
But here's a big difference.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Here's a big difference between those three guys and Icarus, Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus.
They are all proud, but these are these are great men,
like Achilles has some things to be proud of. Gamemnon
is a king.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
I think what.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Pulls me about, and the reason that I was drawn
to Icarus and Phaeton, not those guys, is for their normalcy.
Like Icarus and Phaeton are nefo babies like that, they're
they're they're the sons of really remarkable people, being the
(16:24):
son of Daedalus, being the son of Saul, but I
mean they're really unremarkable in and of them okay selves.
And you know that That's when when I was thinking
about Phil, like I mentioned before, he's in he's in everyman.
I really really wanted him to be, you know, not
not too great and and but also not horrible, like
(16:46):
a truly average, mediocre man.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah. But and then he gets his little menut of
fame and rides it a little too.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Exactly exactly because like how many guys do you meet
out there? And this, I mean this goes to like
the contemporariness of the adaptation too, And like when when
when I'm thinking about what I you know, both with
narcissism and ICUs and what their natural uh natural connection
points for me writing contemporary fiction is how many guys.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Do you run across? Like are like, oh, that guy's
like Achilles? Is not that many, right, you know?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
But you run into Icarus is.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
All the time everywhere, right, you know?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
You in terms of a certain brand of narcissism, not
like malignant, psychopathic narcissism, but just in terms of like
garden variety narcissism, I think you're hard pressed to find
somebody who isn't going to display something you know, something
or other, and that was really the kind of narcissism.
I was more interested in the narcissism of an average
(17:54):
person because at the end of the day, the reason
that I'm writing and the reason that you know I
first of all, it's to have a good time, and
you know it's for the entertainment value. And that was
the same you know in Homer it's time and a
it's time too.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
But to understand how people work.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
And the myths of more regular people getting thrown about
by the fates, I think sometimes not that Achilles and
Odysseus can't behave very humanly, but they're also to a
certain extent super human.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Achilles especially. I was just writing about how Achilles he's
not really a demigod because he's so his potential is
so great. That's why he had to have a mortal father.
So the prophecy was that the son of Thedus would
rise up and be greater than his father, and that
was terrifying for any of the gods. So in order
to put a cap on what Thedus's son was going
(18:53):
to be able to do, we have to make the
father mortal and he's not going to be a demigod.
We're not going to give him any special but still
he rows up to be the fastest, the most beautiful,
and in my Achilles is a grown man looking. You know,
it's not like a teenage boy looking Achilles, because by
the end of the war he's close to like twenty eight.
(19:16):
But he out fights and he's and by the end
he's absolutely terrifying, more so than any other mortal. He's
not quite one and not quite the other. So I
have him in this category of like he's othered even
among his own people.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
You know, I hear that. I think that makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, did you want your readers to like, sympathize with
Phil or be frustrated with Phil?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
These types of questions are always so hard. I think
I usually just want readers to react and think and
have fun and want to read it again.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
So I don't think that.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I had a a particular for any of the characters,
one single desire reaction in mind.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So you did mention that your business outside of writing fiction,
you work with patenting or you patented.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
I just have one patent from from a client project
I did where I developed a recursive estimation algorithm.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
That kind of analytical background. How did you bring that
to storytelling? Because as a writer, I know that there's
a lot of things that I do as a historian
or in the teaching world, I bring things that are
in my real life they do come to the storytelling.
How you how did those two things?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, I think it was opposite order. Actually, I studied
Austin really intensely in high school. I wrote high school
equivalent of a thesis on Irony and Jane Austen, and
then I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Joyce and studied
Ulysses really intensely. Obviously another that's where kind of the
(20:59):
mod or mythic interpretation inspiration comes from.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
To me, that was.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
A much more analytical enterprise than I think literary criticism
often gets credit for. And so I didn't realize in
reading Ulysses that I was training myself to be a
strategy consultant, but I absolutely was. I mean enormous pile
of incomprehensible, incomplete data set that you need to somehow
(21:29):
try and make sense of, and you know, write something
about and sound like you know what you're talking about
that is extremely relevant to working and consulting, so Ulysses
was kind of like my first case interview, I guess.
And so when I got to when I got to
business school, like all of this strategy operations, like all
(21:50):
of that stuff really came quite naturally to me. And
I was working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at
the time and in a not particularly creative role, and
I sort of realized was that I personally cared much
more about what I was doing day to day versus
a meaningful mission. So I traded a great mission where
(22:12):
I had a boring job for a mission that I
don't really care about with a job that I find
very very interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So I don't want to I don't want to give
away the book because you have it's not out yet,
but people are going to read it.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
So here we go, hopefully hopefully, you know, with literary fiction,
like is there really such a thing as spoilers? I
hope that you know there are a little bit. And
I do try and write entertaining plots, but like when
it's billed as a retelling of the myth of Icarus,
like you kind of know what's right, yeah, I mean specific,
(22:49):
So maybe we'll try not to spoil, like deep in
depth specifics, but I think we can, you know, generally,
talk talk about what happens safely, right, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
So I mean you you never know because some people
I didn't know that was going to happen. And I
assume everybody knows everything about the Iliod and the Odyssey.
I assume they know about all the characters. And so
sometimes I do say things and they'll be what I'm like, well,
you know, like and they're like, oh my god, they
died they did what? No, sorry, I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
You didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Imagine you're out there spoiling that Achilles dies.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Well, I do get into the I have. I don't
mean to get in those the arguments about things, but
sometimes people will post they think that the movie Troy
that was the Iliad and I'm like, oh god, I
mean I hate.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
So, I don't even know where it's wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Well, they have they have Achilles sacking Troy, basically like
that never happened. He died. He died before Troy was sacked.
That's why his son had to come. His son picked up,
you know, to fulfill the proper See that's neither here
nor there. But so the crash, the crash Feils crashed. Yeah,
(24:06):
it was very cherin And I wrote that you build
up the fall of Phil by at first he's flying
to you said, new heights of rage. You know, he's
getting upset and he's going higher. So there's sort of
you've had this internal heightenedness and then the physical mid
air rising and then falling and falling as you know,
(24:28):
he goes into the river. Is that something that you
plan from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, I mean, well, in following I planned on, you know, loosely,
loosely doing that. I will say that I had two
potential falls because you may notice.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
The pool fall, yes as well.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
But yeah, you know, I.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Was thinking about one versus the other, and then I
ended up just using both of them. And I really
liked the idea of like a like a false fall,
if you know, if you will. And it also worked
to me in my mind with the the doubling of
both uh, you know, Phaeton as well as Icarus, and
the doubling of you know, Phil versus Cassandra and Cassandra
(25:11):
versus Raley, and you know, the doubles in doubles recursively.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
So I did have the.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
You know, the general idea from the beginning how but
but not not the specifics. All of all of those
specifics kind of got got worked out as I was going.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Did you know he was going to go off a bridge?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Did you?
Speaker 4 (25:31):
Had you?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Did you? How did you see that? Because sometimes I'll
think I'm gonna do a certain thing with the character,
and then when it actually comes to it, I'm like, oh, wait,
it's gonna happen this way, and it's completely not how
I thought.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Did you Yeah, we should probably put a spoiler warning
on that one.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
It's okay, sorry, no, not okay, it's.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
I mean, I like talking about this.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
It's just you know, for people who don't don't want to.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Be spoiled, we won't.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
But no, I I but I'm happy to answer the question.
I love the question and I want to talk about it.
I really did the bridge I was pretty sure about.
Early on, I thought that a plane crash. So here's
why I didn't want to do a plane crash. I
didn't want to do a plane crash because the Choris
Jet thing I thought was very, very funny, and because
that's a real company. By the way, there's a real
(26:19):
company named Chorus Jet.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No way, Yes, I would never fly on that.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
I just it is well whatever.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
It's like a concierge service for like service for private planes,
and I just think it is so funny.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
And there's actually.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Multiple aviation Icoris companies, like talk about people not realizing,
you know, the Troy the Troy movie mishap is like
the least the least of the reinterpretation problems. You want
those you can go into. The advertising can get really
really really funny. But so I have that the allusion
(26:57):
to Choris Jet, which is a real company, So I
didn't I thought it would just be a little too
on the nose number one, and it would just stracked.
Phil isn't going to be flying a plane himself. And
the actual tragedy of pulling others down.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Which Phaeton actually kind of does.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I mean, the world like blows up in a kind
of Great Flood fire corollary, right, it's a it's very
much a kind of a version of the Great Flood story,
but with fire. I didn't want the collateral damage. So
I thought that a car crash in you know, in
a Mustang and a horse. Phaeton is driving the chariot
(27:38):
of horses and I, you know, stealing his dad's car.
It all felt now we're really really spoiling.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Right, I should put like a big olding spoiler spoilers
from here.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Yeah, I think it does, maybe like halfway through to
talk in depth about the ending.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
But yeah, I've been dying.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
To kind of talk about this because there is always
the fear of spoiling to us.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
But is that's that was?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
I thought a lot about about the specifics, but I
came to I came to decide on the car over
the plane pretty you know, pretty pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah. I wouldn't even have thought the plane thing. Yeah,
but if he wasn't flying it and the plane wasn't empty, yeah,
that would change things a little bit. Let me just
take you all down with me exactly. You wrote that
truth plus beauty plus suffering, that that was art.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Well, I'm going off Auden there, Auden's poem Muse de
Bozart about Brougel's painting of Icarus, which is itself very
a Vidian in nature. And you know, I did conceive
of medium rare in that specific lineage, right Avid to
Brougl to Auden to medium rare, And the first line
(28:55):
of that is, you know, about suffering. They were never wrong.
The old masters, how well they understood its human position,
and it goes on from there. But you know the idea,
and of course in Brugles painting.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
It, Chris's little tiny legs are very small.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
What you actually see in the foreground is the plow
the plow man's back kind of.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
You know, there's a.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Lot kind of in the in the early first half
about the painting, specifically when one of the senators is
trying to court fill and his fame and kind of
ends up taking a plow person role.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
But yeah, no, I do.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
I think it's the suffering beauty and truth. I wouldn't
say that suffering, in my opinion, is like on the
same level as beauty and truth. I think you can
have beauty and truth without suffering, for sure, But there
is kind of a beauty and truth to suffering, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
When I think about even just the stories that I
like to read, it's that sliver of the suffering or
the bitter sweet oh that got me. And then I'm
reading Red Rising right now, and so I just I
just have to shut the book because the way the
suffering is laid out, there is a beauty to that.
And I don't know and I think even like visual art,
(30:11):
I don't know that just that resonated with me because
I thought there is there's truth in that. But I
feel like as human beings, we we connect with that
piece of suffering, and somehow in that connection we find
the beauty that makes Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
I mean, I don't think there's ever been a human
who hasn't suffered. I think this is this is related
to why I'm so interested in the tragic comedy as
a form. And you know, in both my novels have
been really keen to take both tragic and comic elements
and put them together in ways that they you know,
(30:50):
maybe it's not purely one or the other, because I
think that A I think that funny things are funnier
when they are also a little bit sad.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
And I think that sad.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Things also tend to be sad or when they're a
little bit funny. So yeah, I'm a I'm a big
fan of the overlap between humor and suffering, between comedy
and tragedy. I liked I liked that my publisher, Melville
House build this specifically as tragic comedy.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, and it's perfect too.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Yeah, actually, because both both my novels are, but The
Portrait of a Mirror was billed as a comedy, and
to me that it never felt quite right, right, Like
I love I love it when people.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
Say, oh, it's hilarious, I mean great, I agree.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I hope I hoped that it would be hilarious but
also just devastatingly sad at the same time.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah. Yeah, for someone who loves Greek mythology and they
pick up your book, what would you hope they would
recognize from medium rare.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
There's tremendously popular, kind of more faithful reinterpretations. Often they
are you know, like changing the identity of somebody, but
it kind of mostly is the same story. I think
what I would ask is that if you pick up
medium rare, you got to be prepared. In the spectrum
(32:18):
of retelling, there is less emphasis on the re there's
you know, it's telling and it's it's but it's I'm
taking a lot of licenses. I'm recombining myths. It's set
in a contemporary environment. I love what you know Madeline
Miller does, and I know she has a lot of
(32:38):
imitators as well, but this is not that it is
much closer in you know, tone and temperament to something,
you know, twenty first century Ulysses.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I found that it's the literary illusion that you do
throughout that is interesting that you that you brought that
up about the retelling. In that space of Greek mythology,
you have like retellings that's very close, you have like
a reimagining that's more loose. Then there's like the illusion.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
So maybe maybe I think you just might have hit
on a really good framework. You have retelling, then reimagining,
then reinterpretation. I would say I am all the way
on the reinterpretation side. It's really not a retelling.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
I mean in a sense.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
I think somebody said this to me in another interview
that like all mythic tellings are always retellings because of
the you know, connection to the oral tradition and going back.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
And I really like that.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
But these books, my books are really reinterpretations more than
more than retelling. As long as you're going in with
those expectations, that's good.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
I often talk to my students about how we are
as humans were quick to label something as that's my
fate or destiny, or but when something painful happens, then
it comes that's not my fate or destiny that was
just coincidence or that was just bad luck. So oh yeah,
the idea that if if it's our destiny or our fate,
(34:09):
then it has to be both. Are we blaming systems
now or what? How does that look like for you?
In the modern world.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
We systematically tend to over index and think that, you know,
when we succeed it's due to skill, and when we
fail it's due to luck. And again there's a specific
bias associated with that that I'm forgetting the name of,
but it is, you know, super super well documented in
(34:39):
psychological research, and you know, I was definitely thinking about
that from a you know, more more psychosocial perspective. How
some of those biases are. They're so strong that like,
even when we're aware of them, we still can't totally
count interact then, So I mean, I like, on one level,
(35:04):
of course, I know it's not true that luck and
skill they can go either way, and there's some amount
of both involved in pretty much anything, and it's pretty
hard to split that orange if you will. But however
you split it, it's probably you know, working on the
(35:24):
same way to your benefit and and not so much
to your benefit.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
If Cassandra existed today, What do you think that she
would be trying to warn us about if she was, Yeah,
the Seer of Cassandra the Seer were popped up on
a social media all of a sudden, she had she
has an Instagram or whatever. What do you think she
would be warning us about today ourselves? That's deep, actually,
(35:54):
and that would be a message people wouldn't want to hear.
The hardest thing to do is look in a mirror
and be reflective. What did I do to bring this about? Like?
How am I contributing in some way to this scenario
in my own sphere that I'm uncomfortable with or I'm
not happy with?
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Now that's what my first book is all about.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yes, well we are hitting about the hour and I
have enjoyed speaking with you so much, and.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I likewise thank you so much for having me. Go
pick up a copy of Medium Rare. It's out on Tuesday,
March third. All the normal places.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
You are appreciated fascinating and wonderful conversationalists, and I have
enjoyed speaking with you so much, So thanks so much
for having me and thanks for coming on. Well, that's
it for today. Murmadan's Thank you so much for joining
me with this conversation about myth and pride and modern
(36:55):
day chorus stories. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave
a rating on your favorite podcast platform. It truly helps
more than you know. I always love hearing from you,
so feel free to connect with me on social media.
You can find medium rare wherever books are sold, including
Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And if you're looking for
(37:15):
epic retellings rooted in the Trojan War and the deeper
emotional currents of Greek myth, you can find my Homeric
Chronicle series on Amazon as well. Remember the sun is
always there, Fly wisely and drink your wine and be merry.
Murmadant's
Welcome back, murmered Ons to another episode of Greek Mythology
Retold Podcasts. I hope your world is peaceful and happy
and that you and yours are doing well. I'm really
glad to be back behind the mic and bring you
this episode where we explore a modern take on an
ancient myth of Icarus. Medium Rare reimagines the story of Icarus,
(00:45):
but instead of wax wings and a blazing sun, we
get march madness, brackets, media fame, and a man who
is convinced that he can beat probability itself. The story
is narrated by a contemporary Cassan, a woman who sees
what's coming, but not necessarily how to stop it. Sound familiar,
(01:06):
and this mythic layer is immediately what caught my attention
as someone who lives in the Greek world of myth
and the Trojan War. So today we're talking about hubris,
warning signs, modern pride, and what flying too close to
the sun might look like. Today we are joined by
a Natasha Zakowski and she is the author of Medium Rare,
(01:31):
a book that comes out March third, and I hope
you check it out, and we are going to dive
into this book. Welcome Natasha to this show.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
You're welcome. Your book reimagines Icarus, who once he got
in flight, right once he was flying, his father had
told him like, don't fly too close to the sun,
don't fly too close to the sea. And when he's
in the exhilaration of flying, flies too high to the sun.
The wings are made of wax and feathers, and then
(02:04):
they belts and then he falls. So instead of wax
wings in your book, you give us this march madness, rackets,
and like media fame. So how did you decide to
come to this discussion of Hubris through Phil?
Speaker 3 (02:21):
The original high concept around basketball was my husband's idea.
He's a much bigger basketball fan than I am. But
the second he said it, I knew I wanted to
pursue the conceit at book lengths because it instantly reminded
me of the Charos myth, but not actually just the
(02:44):
Icaras myth, also the Faatin myth. And his name is
Phil Phaatin. And I think of these two myths as
twin Ovidian myths. They're both about sons with a U
and sons with an O. And not listening to your
father's good advice. And in one case, you know, well
(03:06):
in one case flying too close to the sun, in
trying to take a middle course, they're both trying to
take a middle course. In the case of Phaetin, of course,
he gets is burning up in both directions, so he's
instead of hitting the the water is getting burned up
to a cresp But you know, really really similar myths.
I think they're you know, in book two versus eight,
(03:28):
maybe in the Metamorphoses, and so they're they're six books
apart or something like that, and Avid tells them in
in such similar ways, and both of them frankly reminded
me of this, you know, this march madness idea of
flying too close to the sun.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
You have a lot of allusions to like Greek mythology
in your books. How did you come to like Greek mythology?
How what drew you to that? And I do know
that you have another book that was also the was
it the Mirrors.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
About portrait of the mirror?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Portrait of Yeah, so that's also Greek mythology.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
So well, there's the early story. In the later story.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
Early in life, my father read me Edith Hamilton, And
you know, I've really liked Greek mythology, but I wouldn't
say that I was in love or you know, really
obsessed with it until I got to college and read Avid.
I would say, specifically, I'm not just reinterpreting Greek myth,
(04:32):
I'm reinterpreting a Vidian myth. The sense of leisure reza
that Avid has, the way he interacts with visual art,
these are things that have captivated me from that time. Specifically,
at the University of Virginia, I took a couple classes
with our history professor, Professor Paul Bolski, who I'm still
(04:56):
in contact with, actually got an email from him yesterday.
But he taught a class called Art and Myth where
it was a twelve person seminar and every week we
would come into class and having read one of the
books of Metamorphoses and look at related to art. And
(05:16):
the goal of this was to cultivate appreciation for the
efrastic power of Avid, but then also the reinterpretations of
and sticking power of these myths over time. So you know,
(05:37):
you'd look at so you'd read book one, you'd look
at Bernini's Apollo and Daphne, but then you'd look at
Keiki Smith's Apollo and Daphne, and you know, over the
course of the semester you get better and better not
just at recognizing the myths wherever you see them, but
also at recognizing different periods and styles of art. So
(06:04):
it was after that class I started to see Avid everywhere.
It's one of the I can't remember what that bias
has caused. You know, when you're looking for something you start.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Seeing a confirmation bias.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Is it confirmation biased? I feel like there's an even
more specific one. Maybe I can't remember, but but yeah,
I for the rest of my life, I have never
stopped seeing Avid in our contemporary world, in every flavor
and form.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
You can imagine.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
I understand that. I feel that way about Homer. I
feel that way about you know, the Ilien and the Odyssey.
And just because what you're speaking on is I wrote
down when you said sticking power, it made me think
of these things are universal, universal archetypes. And yes, stories
like Icarus resonate with us because we do see elements
(06:58):
of we understand what Hubant, we understand, you know why,
it's a cautionary tale and I and I was thinking
too that can that be used against us, like, hey,
don't try, you know, to to don't rise above the mediocrity,
Like where does that fit in? There is something about
people feeling comfortable at a level, and then if somebody
(07:19):
rises a bit above what the masses are, then somehow
the first thing you want to do is like you know,
is cut them down.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
I mean, part of part of my interest is definitely
tied to status. And this is where I feel like
Avid and you know, Jane Austen and her ilk or
maybe an unlikelier conversation then most people would put them,
but to me, they are a natural fit, particularly again Avid,
(07:52):
because of his tone. So you were you were mentioning
before we started recording that you know you're not you're
not funny, but or you don't try and be funny
or something. I like desperately want to be funny and
I'm not gonna be good at it on a podcast,
but at least in that is always the goal on
the page.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
And it's not just like blanket funny too.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's of its humor is humor of a specific you know,
it has a lightness, a wit. There's he's full of
double entendres and you know, coyness and recursivity, and I
just I just love that about him, the you know,
the the too cute, too clever. I'm not sure that
(08:36):
I think there can be a limit on cleverness.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
No, I don't think so, especially not a fiasco disuse
true good point. Yes, all right, he clevered himself right
into every situation he got himself into. Absolutely, absolutely Cassandra. So, yes,
the other character you have Cassandra. So in Greek myth,
she's figure that sees disaster coming for Troy, and she
(09:04):
tries to warn her family, whoever will listen multiple times
and it's like they hear her and then they get
a prickle of oh my god, that's horrible, and then
it fades away. She's left with being pushed to the side,
and you're just crazy. She's constantly being gas lit, but
she knows she's being gas lit. So in greet myth,
(09:26):
she's a tragic figure and her story is tragically ends
as well. So in your story, Cassandra sees phil rise
and maybe this fall. Do you see her as powerless
or does she have agency? As she tell us about
your Cassandra.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
What I was trying to go for with my millennial.
Cassandra was a I really liked the idea of just
an omniscient first person narrator done before in fiction. I
can't really think of a perfect comp there, So the
idea tickled me in its novelty in and of itself.
(10:07):
And then, you know, I'm also thinking about my Cassandra
as kind of a prototypical every woman alongside fills every
man and specifically, you know that they have so much
in common even though they're contrasted, and there's a tricky
(10:29):
thing about you know, to some extent, I think that
all women feel they're they're always telling the truth, and
I never believed like it's just a I told you
there are there are shades of it, Like if anybody
hasn't had a male boss that has made them feel
that way, I guess I guess I kind of envy.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
I envy them.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
But I think there is a contemporary thread there, as
women have gained increased agency that there are still there
are still shades of this Cassandra feeling for women specifically,
and I, you know, I was looking to explore and
(11:11):
contrast that with you know, the more the more every
man nature of film.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Part of what I was trying to.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Get at in the book as well, with you know
the way it explores multiple different arenas, if you will,
the sports arena, the political arena, the Hollywood arena, all
of these spheres. They may have different incentives, but they
all have incentives, and people still, even if they respond
(11:39):
differently because the incentives are different, people as human beings
respond pretty predictably to incentives. And I talked a little
bit about this more and maybe explicitly in my first
book about how the problem with incentives is that they
work too well. Whatever you incentivize, you're going to get
(11:59):
in space and more. But I'm enduringly fascinated with this.
Part of my day job is designing incentives, so I'm
around and thinking about it a lot in and outside
of fiction. I think it's just a really interesting philosophical question,
being so tangential to what we want.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
In a world of social media, things are incentivized. If
I'm understanding this correctly, My thoughts are that just the
neurology of why we do what we do, and it
gets chemically shifted into these processes that become our habits,
and then the more it's our habit, then the more
(12:42):
it feeds us, feeds back to us, and I like
Gary Vee. So he says that it's not the algorithm,
like you are the algorithm. You're cheat and then it's
conforming to what you want. So if you see things
you don't want, what are you looking at? And I
was like, hmm, that's interesting, Like we're the algorithm.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
I guess my take on that is the algorithm.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Incentive models, if you will, are not fundamentally different than
offline ones. They are architected on the same enduring principles
of our psychology, but then just kind of exacerbated.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
So it's not like the.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Internet and social media is this new thing in terms
of humans are still being human in some ways because
they're so specifically hacking our minds and our psychologies, our incentives,
the way we tick, the way we work. It acts
as an accelerant, I think more than more than anything else.
(13:45):
So you're you know, how we work is in some
ways just more visible and put put on the surface.
But you can still I think you can still connect
it back to twenty century novels I'm thinking about, you know, Ulysses,
an infinite jest a lot there. You can connect it
(14:08):
back to nineteenth century novels I mentioned, you know, Austin.
I think a lot about George Elliott, Henry James as well.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
And then you can take it all the way back
to Auvin and Homer, and you know a lot of
a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Is it just it connects beautifully, the thread remains unbroken.
You can follow it like like Ariadne.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
I like that. Yeah. So in in Greek myth, hubris
often looks like pride in battle or power Achilles. You know,
so we look at achilles rage with Agamemnon, and how
when Agamemnon took Preses, Achilles withdrew from the battle, him
and all his men, and he knew that the Greeks
(14:53):
were going to suffer. So his thing was that I've
been dishonored, you are not giving me my due, and
therefore everybody else can burn. Wow, and then Agamemnon, so
I picked like three. So Agamemnon was basically, well, I'm
the king and I get to make all the decisions,
and he doesn't see that there's any He shouldn't have
to pay any consequences for that. He doesn't make that connection.
And of course Odysseus has to be known as like
(15:15):
the architect of everything that happens. Like, well, I came
up with this plan, even though it was Athena putting it,
whispering in his ear through a dream, Like I did that.
I made the Trojan horse I did. I got Neoptolemus
to come back, look at all the things that I did.
He taunts the Cyclops. He's already blinded the Cyclops. They're
out on the ships, and he starts yelling back at Paulyphemus,
(15:36):
it's me. It's Odysseus, like I did, like like dude,
And then they almost all get killed.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
But here's a big difference.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Here's a big difference between those three guys and Icarus, Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus.
They are all proud, but these are these are great men,
like Achilles has some things to be proud of. Gamemnon
is a king.
Speaker 4 (16:01):
I think what.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Pulls me about, and the reason that I was drawn
to Icarus and Phaeton, not those guys, is for their normalcy.
Like Icarus and Phaeton are nefo babies like that, they're
they're they're the sons of really remarkable people, being the
(16:24):
son of Daedalus, being the son of Saul, but I
mean they're really unremarkable in and of them okay selves.
And you know that That's when when I was thinking
about Phil, like I mentioned before, he's in he's in everyman.
I really really wanted him to be, you know, not
not too great and and but also not horrible, like
(16:46):
a truly average, mediocre man.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah. But and then he gets his little menut of
fame and rides it a little too.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Exactly exactly because like how many guys do you meet
out there? And this, I mean this goes to like
the contemporariness of the adaptation too, And like when when
when I'm thinking about what I you know, both with
narcissism and ICUs and what their natural uh natural connection
points for me writing contemporary fiction is how many guys.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Do you run across? Like are like, oh, that guy's
like Achilles? Is not that many, right, you know?
Speaker 3 (17:25):
But you run into Icarus is.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
All the time everywhere, right, you know?
Speaker 3 (17:30):
You in terms of a certain brand of narcissism, not
like malignant, psychopathic narcissism, but just in terms of like
garden variety narcissism, I think you're hard pressed to find
somebody who isn't going to display something you know, something
or other, and that was really the kind of narcissism.
I was more interested in the narcissism of an average
(17:54):
person because at the end of the day, the reason
that I'm writing and the reason that you know I
first of all, it's to have a good time, and
you know it's for the entertainment value. And that was
the same you know in Homer it's time and a
it's time too.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
But to understand how people work.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
And the myths of more regular people getting thrown about
by the fates, I think sometimes not that Achilles and
Odysseus can't behave very humanly, but they're also to a
certain extent super human.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Achilles especially. I was just writing about how Achilles he's
not really a demigod because he's so his potential is
so great. That's why he had to have a mortal father.
So the prophecy was that the son of Thedus would
rise up and be greater than his father, and that
was terrifying for any of the gods. So in order
to put a cap on what Thedus's son was going
(18:53):
to be able to do, we have to make the
father mortal and he's not going to be a demigod.
We're not going to give him any special but still
he rows up to be the fastest, the most beautiful,
and in my Achilles is a grown man looking. You know,
it's not like a teenage boy looking Achilles, because by
the end of the war he's close to like twenty eight.
(19:16):
But he out fights and he's and by the end
he's absolutely terrifying, more so than any other mortal. He's
not quite one and not quite the other. So I
have him in this category of like he's othered even
among his own people.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
You know, I hear that. I think that makes total sense.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, did you want your readers to like, sympathize with
Phil or be frustrated with Phil?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
These types of questions are always so hard. I think
I usually just want readers to react and think and
have fun and want to read it again.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
So I don't think that.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I had a a particular for any of the characters,
one single desire reaction in mind.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
So you did mention that your business outside of writing fiction,
you work with patenting or you patented.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
I just have one patent from from a client project
I did where I developed a recursive estimation algorithm.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
That kind of analytical background. How did you bring that
to storytelling? Because as a writer, I know that there's
a lot of things that I do as a historian
or in the teaching world, I bring things that are
in my real life they do come to the storytelling.
How you how did those two things?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, I think it was opposite order. Actually, I studied
Austin really intensely in high school. I wrote high school
equivalent of a thesis on Irony and Jane Austen, and
then I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Joyce and studied
Ulysses really intensely. Obviously another that's where kind of the
(20:59):
mod or mythic interpretation inspiration comes from.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
To me, that was.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
A much more analytical enterprise than I think literary criticism
often gets credit for. And so I didn't realize in
reading Ulysses that I was training myself to be a
strategy consultant, but I absolutely was. I mean enormous pile
of incomprehensible, incomplete data set that you need to somehow
(21:29):
try and make sense of, and you know, write something
about and sound like you know what you're talking about
that is extremely relevant to working and consulting, so Ulysses
was kind of like my first case interview, I guess.
And so when I got to when I got to
business school, like all of this strategy operations, like all
(21:50):
of that stuff really came quite naturally to me. And
I was working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art at
the time and in a not particularly creative role, and
I sort of realized was that I personally cared much
more about what I was doing day to day versus
a meaningful mission. So I traded a great mission where
(22:12):
I had a boring job for a mission that I
don't really care about with a job that I find
very very interesting.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
So I don't want to I don't want to give
away the book because you have it's not out yet,
but people are going to read it.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
So here we go, hopefully hopefully, you know, with literary fiction,
like is there really such a thing as spoilers? I
hope that you know there are a little bit. And
I do try and write entertaining plots, but like when
it's billed as a retelling of the myth of Icarus,
like you kind of know what's right, yeah, I mean specific,
(22:49):
So maybe we'll try not to spoil, like deep in
depth specifics, but I think we can, you know, generally,
talk talk about what happens safely, right, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
So I mean you you never know because some people
I didn't know that was going to happen. And I
assume everybody knows everything about the Iliod and the Odyssey.
I assume they know about all the characters. And so
sometimes I do say things and they'll be what I'm like, well,
you know, like and they're like, oh my god, they
died they did what? No, sorry, I didn't know.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
You didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Imagine you're out there spoiling that Achilles dies.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Well, I do get into the I have. I don't
mean to get in those the arguments about things, but
sometimes people will post they think that the movie Troy
that was the Iliad and I'm like, oh god, I
mean I hate.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
So, I don't even know where it's wrong.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Well, they have they have Achilles sacking Troy, basically like
that never happened. He died. He died before Troy was sacked.
That's why his son had to come. His son picked up,
you know, to fulfill the proper See that's neither here
nor there. But so the crash, the crash Feils crashed. Yeah,
(24:06):
it was very cherin And I wrote that you build
up the fall of Phil by at first he's flying
to you said, new heights of rage. You know, he's
getting upset and he's going higher. So there's sort of
you've had this internal heightenedness and then the physical mid
air rising and then falling and falling as you know,
(24:28):
he goes into the river. Is that something that you
plan from the beginning.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, I mean, well, in following I planned on, you know, loosely,
loosely doing that. I will say that I had two
potential falls because you may notice.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
The pool fall, yes as well.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
But yeah, you know, I.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
Was thinking about one versus the other, and then I
ended up just using both of them. And I really
liked the idea of like a like a false fall,
if you know, if you will. And it also worked
to me in my mind with the the doubling of
both uh, you know, Phaeton as well as Icarus, and
the doubling of you know, Phil versus Cassandra and Cassandra
(25:11):
versus Raley, and you know, the doubles in doubles recursively.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
So I did have the.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
You know, the general idea from the beginning how but
but not not the specifics. All of all of those
specifics kind of got got worked out as I was going.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Did you know he was going to go off a bridge?
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Like?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Did you?
Speaker 4 (25:31):
Had you?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Did you? How did you see that? Because sometimes I'll
think I'm gonna do a certain thing with the character,
and then when it actually comes to it, I'm like, oh, wait,
it's gonna happen this way, and it's completely not how
I thought.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Did you Yeah, we should probably put a spoiler warning
on that one.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
It's okay, sorry, no, not okay, it's.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
I mean, I like talking about this.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
It's just you know, for people who don't don't want to.
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Be spoiled, we won't.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
But no, I I but I'm happy to answer the question.
I love the question and I want to talk about it.
I really did the bridge I was pretty sure about.
Early on, I thought that a plane crash. So here's
why I didn't want to do a plane crash. I
didn't want to do a plane crash because the Choris
Jet thing I thought was very, very funny, and because
that's a real company. By the way, there's a real
(26:19):
company named Chorus Jet.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No way, Yes, I would never fly on that.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
I just it is well whatever.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
It's like a concierge service for like service for private planes,
and I just think it is so funny.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
And there's actually.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Multiple aviation Icoris companies, like talk about people not realizing,
you know, the Troy the Troy movie mishap is like
the least the least of the reinterpretation problems. You want
those you can go into. The advertising can get really
really really funny. But so I have that the allusion
(26:57):
to Choris Jet, which is a real company, So I
didn't I thought it would just be a little too
on the nose number one, and it would just stracked.
Phil isn't going to be flying a plane himself. And
the actual tragedy of pulling others down.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Which Phaeton actually kind of does.
Speaker 3 (27:15):
I mean, the world like blows up in a kind
of Great Flood fire corollary, right, it's a it's very
much a kind of a version of the Great Flood story,
but with fire. I didn't want the collateral damage. So
I thought that a car crash in you know, in
a Mustang and a horse. Phaeton is driving the chariot
(27:38):
of horses and I, you know, stealing his dad's car.
It all felt now we're really really spoiling.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Right, I should put like a big olding spoiler spoilers
from here.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Yeah, I think it does, maybe like halfway through to
talk in depth about the ending.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
But yeah, I've been dying.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
To kind of talk about this because there is always
the fear of spoiling to us.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
But is that's that was?
Speaker 3 (28:01):
I thought a lot about about the specifics, but I
came to I came to decide on the car over
the plane pretty you know, pretty pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yeah. I wouldn't even have thought the plane thing. Yeah,
but if he wasn't flying it and the plane wasn't empty, yeah,
that would change things a little bit. Let me just
take you all down with me exactly. You wrote that
truth plus beauty plus suffering, that that was art.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
Well, I'm going off Auden there, Auden's poem Muse de
Bozart about Brougel's painting of Icarus, which is itself very
a Vidian in nature. And you know, I did conceive
of medium rare in that specific lineage, right Avid to
Brougl to Auden to medium rare, And the first line
(28:55):
of that is, you know, about suffering. They were never wrong.
The old masters, how well they understood its human position,
and it goes on from there. But you know the idea,
and of course in Brugles painting.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
It, Chris's little tiny legs are very small.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
What you actually see in the foreground is the plow
the plow man's back kind of.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
You know, there's a.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Lot kind of in the in the early first half
about the painting, specifically when one of the senators is
trying to court fill and his fame and kind of
ends up taking a plow person role.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
But yeah, no, I do.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
I think it's the suffering beauty and truth. I wouldn't
say that suffering, in my opinion, is like on the
same level as beauty and truth. I think you can
have beauty and truth without suffering, for sure, But there
is kind of a beauty and truth to suffering, if
that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
When I think about even just the stories that I
like to read, it's that sliver of the suffering or
the bitter sweet oh that got me. And then I'm
reading Red Rising right now, and so I just I
just have to shut the book because the way the
suffering is laid out, there is a beauty to that.
And I don't know and I think even like visual art,
(30:11):
I don't know that just that resonated with me because
I thought there is there's truth in that. But I
feel like as human beings, we we connect with that
piece of suffering, and somehow in that connection we find
the beauty that makes Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
I mean, I don't think there's ever been a human
who hasn't suffered. I think this is this is related
to why I'm so interested in the tragic comedy as
a form. And you know, in both my novels have
been really keen to take both tragic and comic elements
and put them together in ways that they you know,
(30:50):
maybe it's not purely one or the other, because I
think that A I think that funny things are funnier
when they are also a little bit sad.
Speaker 4 (31:00):
And I think that sad.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Things also tend to be sad or when they're a
little bit funny. So yeah, I'm a I'm a big
fan of the overlap between humor and suffering, between comedy
and tragedy. I liked I liked that my publisher, Melville
House build this specifically as tragic comedy.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Yeah, and it's perfect too.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Yeah, actually, because both both my novels are, but The
Portrait of a Mirror was billed as a comedy, and
to me that it never felt quite right, right, Like
I love I love it when people.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
Say, oh, it's hilarious, I mean great, I agree.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I hope I hoped that it would be hilarious but
also just devastatingly sad at the same time.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah. Yeah, for someone who loves Greek mythology and they
pick up your book, what would you hope they would
recognize from medium rare.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
There's tremendously popular, kind of more faithful reinterpretations. Often they
are you know, like changing the identity of somebody, but
it kind of mostly is the same story. I think
what I would ask is that if you pick up
medium rare, you got to be prepared. In the spectrum
(32:18):
of retelling, there is less emphasis on the re there's
you know, it's telling and it's it's but it's I'm
taking a lot of licenses. I'm recombining myths. It's set
in a contemporary environment. I love what you know Madeline
Miller does, and I know she has a lot of
(32:38):
imitators as well, but this is not that it is
much closer in you know, tone and temperament to something,
you know, twenty first century Ulysses.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
I found that it's the literary illusion that you do
throughout that is interesting that you that you brought that
up about the retelling. In that space of Greek mythology,
you have like retellings that's very close, you have like
a reimagining that's more loose. Then there's like the illusion.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
So maybe maybe I think you just might have hit
on a really good framework. You have retelling, then reimagining,
then reinterpretation. I would say I am all the way
on the reinterpretation side. It's really not a retelling.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
I mean in a sense.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
I think somebody said this to me in another interview
that like all mythic tellings are always retellings because of
the you know, connection to the oral tradition and going back.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
And I really like that.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
But these books, my books are really reinterpretations more than
more than retelling. As long as you're going in with
those expectations, that's good.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
I often talk to my students about how we are
as humans were quick to label something as that's my
fate or destiny, or but when something painful happens, then
it comes that's not my fate or destiny that was
just coincidence or that was just bad luck. So oh yeah,
the idea that if if it's our destiny or our fate,
(34:09):
then it has to be both. Are we blaming systems
now or what? How does that look like for you?
In the modern world.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
We systematically tend to over index and think that, you know,
when we succeed it's due to skill, and when we
fail it's due to luck. And again there's a specific
bias associated with that that I'm forgetting the name of,
but it is, you know, super super well documented in
(34:39):
psychological research, and you know, I was definitely thinking about
that from a you know, more more psychosocial perspective. How
some of those biases are. They're so strong that like,
even when we're aware of them, we still can't totally
count interact then, So I mean, I like, on one level,
(35:04):
of course, I know it's not true that luck and
skill they can go either way, and there's some amount
of both involved in pretty much anything, and it's pretty
hard to split that orange if you will. But however
you split it, it's probably you know, working on the
(35:24):
same way to your benefit and and not so much
to your benefit.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
If Cassandra existed today, What do you think that she
would be trying to warn us about if she was, Yeah,
the Seer of Cassandra the Seer were popped up on
a social media all of a sudden, she had she
has an Instagram or whatever. What do you think she
would be warning us about today ourselves? That's deep, actually,
(35:54):
and that would be a message people wouldn't want to hear.
The hardest thing to do is look in a mirror
and be reflective. What did I do to bring this about? Like?
How am I contributing in some way to this scenario
in my own sphere that I'm uncomfortable with or I'm
not happy with?
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Now that's what my first book is all about.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yes, well we are hitting about the hour and I
have enjoyed speaking with you so much, and.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I likewise thank you so much for having me. Go
pick up a copy of Medium Rare. It's out on Tuesday,
March third. All the normal places.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
You are appreciated fascinating and wonderful conversationalists, and I have
enjoyed speaking with you so much, So thanks so much
for having me and thanks for coming on. Well, that's
it for today. Murmadan's Thank you so much for joining
me with this conversation about myth and pride and modern
(36:55):
day chorus stories. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave
a rating on your favorite podcast platform. It truly helps
more than you know. I always love hearing from you,
so feel free to connect with me on social media.
You can find medium rare wherever books are sold, including
Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And if you're looking for
(37:15):
epic retellings rooted in the Trojan War and the deeper
emotional currents of Greek myth, you can find my Homeric
Chronicle series on Amazon as well. Remember the sun is
always there, Fly wisely and drink your wine and be merry.
Murmadant's
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