Do You Like Scary Stories? Spooky Selections from Spooky Conversations...

Happy Halloween! Today we've cobbled together selections from three favourite Spooky Season Conversations, featuring selections from 2022's Halloween Special w/ Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts, 2021's Scream Queens conversation with Vanessa Stovall, and 2022's Monster conversation with Jasmine Elmer. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liv Albert?

  Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful, and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com/groups.

• 0:41Speaker 01

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• 1:24Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myth Baby, and I am your host, Liv, here with a new introduction. Not a new episode, a new introduction. Because, again, like I said last time, I feel an enormous amount of guilt or like I'm fucking everything up by not being able to release new episodes, but here we are. One simply must try to build a career outside of a floundering podcast market. But I'm still here and I'm not going anywhere. It's just that, you know, I'm writing a children's

• 2:04Liv Albert?

  version of The Odyssey and it's, we're rushing it to a degree that is driving me insane, but it's worth it. I mean, anything for Homer and my main man, even though he's a piece of shit, but don't worry, I am gonna tell the kids, gonna tell the kids, "Brother, just what Odysseus did, what he, what he did, what he says he did." Let them decide. But in the meantime, I have been obviously trying to figure out other content for you all. And spooky season just means that I tend to have like a lot of stuff I want to reshare with you because I've been doing spooky season for eight years now,

• 2:45Liv Albert?

  which is wacky. And it turns out, you know, there are both a finite number of like spooky related stories and also that I've done them in beautiful ways before. They're actually some of my finest work, I think. And so I'm going to be giving you another re-air episode today, except this one, I'm throwing something together, putting together bits and pieces of some of my favorite spooky episodes, primarily conversations. And you can just kind of be refreshed by that. Find a listing of the episodes in the episode's description so that you can listen to the full ones if you want. But otherwise, just sit back and enjoy some various pieces of spooky

• 3:28Liv Albert?

  conversations from over the years. And, and also, maybe you might have something bonus in your feeds today or tomorrow. Michaela and I are trying to get together to just record a conversation between us, just about the general spookier natures of Greek myth. We're trying to, basically, it's like whether she is able to record at 8am her time, which I don't blame her if she can't. So if we manage that, then you will have more of a new episode coming out. And if not, you will just have this re-air. And one day, one day, we'll figure it out.

• 4:12Liv Albert?

  The good news is that more and more every day, the book things are slowing down. And I'm really excited to get back into full episodes, probably a play. It's gonna be good. And in the meantime, Michaela is working on a special series of history episodes for you all. So just know that we do have stuff in the works and we're still here. It's just, you know, baby steps in late-stage capitalism. What can you do?

• 5:00Liv Albert?

  Do you like scary stories? Spooky selections from past spooky seasons.

• 5:23Liv Albert?

  The underworld. I'm really excited about this. And obviously I had to talk to you about it. So you did you do your whole PhD on underworld gods? Is like that kind of where you got into it? Or like, what's the background on why you know so much about underworld gods?

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Well, yes, I did my PhD on underworld gods. It was underworld gods in Greek, ancient Greek cult and literature.

• 5:50Liv Albert?

  I'm so fascinated by the, I guess, lack of information about the underworld and the gods down there. But like, clearly they were very important. I'm interested in in what the modern world has done with them too. Like, like, when it comes to millenium, people had, I got multiple people suggesting I cover her on the podcast, like in an episode, and then I go looking for ancient sources. And it's like one Orphic hymn. And I'm like, what? Where are you all getting her name that you want me to cover? This woman who is in a singular Orphic hymn like?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's probably like one of the latest ones, like third century CE.

• 6:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and it's like, it's just a couple of statements about her.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Do you know what I genuinely reckon it is? I think people like in the, you know, Persephone and Hades retelling romance genre,

• 6:50Speaker 02

  you know, of work that's kind of come up in the last, you know, couple of years.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  I think people really want to, and I kind of glean this idea from like, you know, things I read on like Reddit and TikTok, not read on TikTok, but you know what I mean? And say on TikTok and Twitter. People want to take this idea of the romance of Hades and Persephone to like a happy ever after. And if they have children, then that is a happy ever after. Do you know what I mean? And, you know, I think people have kind of very much like latched on to Zagreus, Stynis of Zagreus for similar reasons. And as you kind of know, from having covered the Orphic tradition, like quite recently,

• 7:41Speaker 02

  it's not as simple as, you know,

• 7:46Speaker 02

  anything, like that's not a simple tradition in any way.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  But it kind of like it.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  I think it's a lot more comforting to think that, you know, even underworld divinities can have a happily ever after. And maybe they do, but they certainly don't have children and that is the point.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  And I think it probably also has to do with like Persephone being a spring goddess. Spring, like she's not, I think.

• 8:22Liv Albert?

  You don't think she's the goddess of spring either in that way?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 8:26Liv Albert?

  I love this.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  And I don't think she's a goddess of fertility either. Because she like,

• 8:40Speaker 02

  this is a very like a crude metaphorical way of putting it, but like she's the seed which is buried, not the plant that grows. Like the seasons happen because of Demeter. Persephone has nothing to do with it. She was tangentially, well, not tangentially, she was kidnapped. And, you know, her mother as a fertility divinity is the one who brings forth growth and stunts growth.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Whereas, you know, Persephone doesn't do that. And in our very earliest sources, you know, she is just a goddess of the underworld.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  And a ruler of the underworld in a way that like, kind of almost doesn't fit with the idea of of her origins, origin story of the relationship of Hades and Persephone. That's something that I struggle with a lot, because in Homer, in the Odyssey in particular, she is presented as the leader of the dead, or the leader of the underworld. She is like the custodian of the dead. She is the one who kind of runs everything.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  And, you know, in a lot of cases, it's not even particularly clear grammatically or syntactically if Hades is being referred to as a god, or just as the place.

• 10:20Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Um, like, there are places where he is, like, very concretely characterized, and very notably in the Iliad, when Poseidon shakes the earth, and Hades fears that the earth will will break away, and his realm will be exposed. And so, like, he is there, but it's almost like he's this kind of absentee lord, and Persephone is the one who kind of does the work.

• 10:55Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. One other thing I read in, I'm gonna forget where, but in my research for the episode I released this, just this week, is that also in Homer, Persephone is not named as Demeter's daughter. She's like an underworld deity. And yeah, and that is an explicit, which that is really interesting to me. And so, yeah, the opening, that question of like, was there a time when the Persephone of the underworld and Cora of Demeter's daughter were different people? And like,

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think that

• 11:34Speaker 02

  I tend to like read them as the same person uh or same divinity. Partly because I think archaic and classical Greeks read them as the same person. And so in some ways, it's almost a moot point.

• 11:50Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  You know, in terms of my research into religion and cult.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Whether they were originally separate divinities or not. Um, but then also she's called Persephone in the Homeric hymn. And so.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  If they were originally separate, then at least by the sixth century.

• 12:13Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, perhaps uh seventh century even. They're amalgamated enough um that, you know, the story makes sense. To be Persephone rather than to be Cora.

• 12:29Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  But then, you know, we also get into like the weirdness with the Eleusinian mysteries where we have. Cora and Pluton and. This other couple, Thea and Theos, the god and the goddess, or Theos and Thea, the god and the goddess. Who are Hades and Persephone. And they appear together in. Iconographic representations of Eleusis. We get both couples at the same time. And so that's also really interesting about whether there's. You know, a delineation of roles and responsibilities that. The.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  Mystery fertility, wealth gods, not fertility, but wealth, wealth and wealth creation kind of gods. And the gods of the dead, the underworld, um become separated out in some way. Um, but again, you know, like, we don't know enough about the mysteries themselves. Any of them, but in this case, the Eleusinian mysteries, we just don't know enough about. Like, what happened to really understand that.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Whether that is a deliberate delineation between those two aspects.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Or indeed, if we have read the whole thing incorrectly and Thea and Theos are not Hades and Persephone.

• 14:06Liv Albert?

  Hmm. And they're like other gods.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. That's really interesting. I had no idea any of that. And, and so. I don't even, now I'm just taking it all in, not even forming a question out of it. But that is fascinating. So there are just like two, two couples. That we think in theory are both Hades and Persephone, but also they are two different Hades and Persephone. That's so cool.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I mean. Does it have anything to do with like, I mean, I'm thinking this through as I say it, but like the.

• 14:46Liv Albert?

  Before abduction to post abduction, like I know they wouldn't have been a couple pre abduction, obviously. But like, I'm just thinking of like above ground versus underworld or something.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Well, I, I have wondered, not necessarily that it's like a pre and post. But whether it actually is representative of that change of season. Where, you know, the underworld couple come up and transform into, you know, the above ground couple.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Because Pluton still is a very underworld aspect. Aspected divinity, like, you know, he is wealth, he's Hades as wealth because of the wealth that is kept in the ground.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  And, you know, so.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. I, I mean, I don't have the answer. I wish I, I wish I had that.

• 15:47Liv Albert?

  I mean, story of like everything I ever think about when it comes to the ancient world.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Indeed.

• 15:54Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's the wondering and the like theorizing and it's why like conversations have become one of my favorite things to do. Because even just talking it out loud to somebody else, like so often you can. Like not necessarily come up with like new thoughts, but it's more like just understand things in a totally different way. Let alone the, like the amount that I learned from talking to people, but also just like, yeah. My, my, the favorite thing of mine that came out of something like that, that was so explicit in my head was like, not ever really thinking about why, um, like the children of Helios are all like eastern gods, like in Colchis, and then being like, chatting with someone one day and being like, wait, it's just because

• 16:41Liv Albert?

  and I just like lost it. It was like, oh my god.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  I love that so much.

• 16:47Liv Albert?

  But it's especially with my role in this is like, I am so in the stories that often it does take like talking to somebody else to like pull out the reality side of it because in my, I also, you know, like have an English degree alongside my classics degree. And so I always kind of come at it more of like as a text that I'm reading versus thinking about it in the real world, which is something I try to do it because it makes it so much more interesting. But yeah, like, I think that's, that's like such a result of it is like, it's why I also now bring up like absolutely constantly to my listeners, like the consideration of like what, why we have the stories that we do, why pieces are missing, like why there are so many question marks? And it's like, why we can't understand all of it. And that makes it better, I think, but also infuriating.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, very much so. I'm just like thinking about, like, so a question that I always ask my first years is some variation of like, what is the only corpus of texts that we have from the ancient world? The answer is epigraphy. Like the inscriptions. That's the only thing that we have that's genuine ancient words, right? Because everything else is mediated through like, you know, medieval and later scribes and the process of choice and all these sorts of things.

• 18:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  And it's one of the things that I think is really both super fascinating and very bothersome about studying the underworld or having studied the underworld because like this constant question of how much more stuff actually was there that somebody decided not to save because it was heretical or whatever.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  And how much would I like to go back and just be in those like rooms of scribes and just be like, no, keep this one, please. Why are you keeping all this Menander? Nobody wants to read that.

• 19:00Liv Albert?

  I've never read a single word of Menander.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Oh, I must have told you this before, but I had to translate the Pericrimony in my final year for Greek and it ruined me.

• 19:13Liv Albert?

  Now I think about it too. I think you're the only one who's ever even brought up Menander on my show. Probably for that was telling me that. But I do think it says a lot about him. Like, I feel like the only thing I know is just based on the fact that there's that statue of him in on the Acropolis. And like, otherwise, I've got nothing. Just like, cool, okay, he's the guy from the Acropolis. Yeah. Well, in the underworld, I've never thought about it in that way, too. Like, I think constantly about the decisions that were made that led to what we have now and what we are missing. And, and, you know, because of how I go about things, half the time I'm thinking about like, okay, what stories do we have? Or do we not have because a woman wrote them? Or because they featured women

• 19:56Liv Albert?

  in a different way that somebody didn't like? Or all these different things, right? Revolving around women.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:02Liv Albert?

  But then, yeah, add to that the idea of it, it must be such a specific question mark of the underworld because of Christianity in a way that I'd never thought of. Like, I just generally the paganism alone, I think is why we don't have a lot because Christianity came about doing that. But specifically, yeah, the underworld would have such deeper implications there.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. The evidence that we have is not significant in any way. Like, there's some evidence of cult activity. Like, it's not, it's, I think, very disingenuous to say that Hades has no cult. But there's certainly not a lot. And it is deeply bizarre, the bits that there are. Well, no, some bits are deeply bizarre. Some bits are very normal, like, you know, a statue of Pluton in another god's temple.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  It which, you know, Pasanias tells us quite a bit about.

• 21:09Liv Albert?

  I was just reading up on that because I'd never, I mean, I've been now like really keen on Pasanias because it's fascinating, but specifically reading up on some of the the Hades stuff was quite interesting for that. Yeah. Like little statues of him kind of everywhere.

• 21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and just in like, and you know, that's like quite normal. Pasanias talks about this sort of everywhere, like of having statues of all different types of gods in all different other types of temples.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  And there are certainly fewer of of Pluton, and he he normally calls Hades Pluton. By the time he's writing in the second century, um, you know, like the the two have completely amalgamated into one another. And that's something which is already like very clearly happening early on, um, you know, even in the archaic period as well. Um, and into the classical period.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  But then there are other bits that he kind of talks about, um, that we have other kind of corroborating evidence for that are just deeply weird, like, uh, the cult of Demetekathonia at Hermione. And the Argolid, um, and this is a super fascinating and very, very weird sort of cult in which, uh, on the test, this is all from Pasanias, um, and other kind of bits of later sources.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  In the sanctuary grounds of Demetekathonia, um, is, uh, these kind of three, what Pasanias calls places. Um, one of, uh, I'm going to forget what they're of now. Anyway, one of them is of Klimanos, um, and this is kind of seen as a euphemism, a euphemistic name for Hades. And Klimanos is, uh, Demetekathonia's brother and her her daughter's husband. So, I mean, it fits.

• 23:16Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Um, but in the.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  The festival of Demeter Kathonia is this like weird, weird sacrifice. They have this huge procession in which young children are involved, wearing like specific

• 23:38Speaker 02

  flower crowns that are inscribed with letters.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  And letters like of mourning, like of lament wailing. And then the sacrifice is, takes place inside a closed temple, which is already really weird. Like sacrifice always takes place outside. They sacrifice cows, cows or bulls.

• 24:07Liv Albert?

  Inside a temple?

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Inside the temple, four of them. And there are four elderly women who are inside the temple with sickles. Not like knives or anything, with sickles specifically. And the first cow is like pushed into the temple essentially. And they slaughter the cow. And then however that is done, so Pasanias talks about whichever side that cow goes to. So kind of read it like if the cow is killed from like the left and falls that way, left, then all the other cows have to be killed in the same way.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  And then they bring the bodies out to butcher, et cetera. But yeah, it's just this kind of really weird, first, women don't, are not often sacrifices. Elderly women even less. And to have such a bizarre sacrificial implement, like a sickle. And the vocabulary that Pasanias uses to describe this is also really interesting. It's very, very violent. He talks about it using vocabulary that he only uses a couple of other times in the entirety of his work and only for murders.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  So he, you know, it's this very, very violent, subversive.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Sacrifice for an underworld god. Um, or here an underworld goddess, actually, who is not one of our regular, you know, underworld divinities that we might think of, uh, Hades, Persephone, you know, um, but Demeter in this very kind of

• 26:07Speaker 02

  earthy, earthbound, you know, Kthonic in the actual sense of in the ground.

• 26:15Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Um, and, you know, I, I really like the link, uh, the conceptual link between that and that little section, uh, in, well, line in the Homeric hymn where they talk about burying seeds. Um, and, you know, uh, with the kind of imagery of burying bodies. Um, that, you know, it's almost as if they need to die and be buried in order to, to be reborn.

• 26:47Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  As new plants.

• 26:52Liv Albert?

  That is, that's so cool. So, I mean, I was trying to think of the practicalities too, like that alone is interesting, like the, like sacrificing indoors. Um, because

• 27:04Speaker 02

  In the dark.

• 27:05Liv Albert?

  In the dark.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, would, uh, like very likely be dark.

• 27:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, it's so creepy. I love it. Um, and then the sickle too, like, is that, like, I mean, it sounds like it's connecting with Demeter because it would be like a harvest kind of situation. But I was wondering too, like whether it can connect back to Cronos in some way. It feels like violent, like his sickle experience.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd never thought about that, to be honest, but that's, I mean, like, a decent enough connection to make. I mean, I think, uh, the thing about sickles is that, you know, they're, they're common, not household, but, you know, property kind of things that you have, like.

• 27:49Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're, yeah, things that you have around the farm.

• 27:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they're practical.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I guess that also sort of raises questions about like the role of objects in religious practice. Um, you know, I think

• 28:11Speaker 02

  that because of the way that modern religions and even modern paganism religions, pagan religions treat ritual objects. Sometimes I think we kind of forget that like

• 28:27Speaker 02

  objects don't have to be,

• 28:31Speaker 02

  objects can be made sacred temporarily.

• 28:36Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  Quite easily. You know, most religions have a way to do this. And the Greeks certainly like had a sense of making something sacred, of of purifying it um through like sacred water or whatever. Um. And, you know, sacred water uh for archaic and classical Greeks was not anything special.

• 29:06Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  It was water from a running source. So, you know, like, it wasn't something that kind of, you know, got blessed by the moon and we had to like dance around three times chanting and it wasn't something which, you know, had to be put into like a special container and blessed by a priest. Um, you know, it wasn't, and it just had to be from a running source.

• 29:34Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  And, you know, in a lot of ways, that comes back to the idea that Greek religion is like a nature religion but taken to the extreme.

• 29:46Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Um. But, so, you know, it makes sense that like you have objects around that can kill cows.

• 29:56Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  So use them.

• 30:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like it, it works.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I kind of like, obviously, there's no evidence for this. But when we find, you know, instances of those sorts of things, I do wonder, and particularly in this case, whether it's not just that, at some point, someone made the connection. Demeter is a goddess of fertility. We have the sharp tool that, you know, we use in the harvest, which is under her domain. It makes sense for us to use this. And, you know, it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. Like, we've got this thing, it'll do the job. It's already associated with the divinity that we're talking about. Let's just use it.

• 30:45Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:14Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting generally, but it led me to remember this other passage I read in the, it was on theoi.com section on the Hades cult. And I'm going to forget whether it was Platanus, or it might have been a moment where it was, I know there was a Strabo one that I found as well, but regardless, it was, it was one of the two. And it was talking about a temple to Hades in Ellis.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  The cult at Ellis. Yeah.

• 31:41Liv Albert?

  Yes. So I desperately want to hear more about that because I read that and was like, holy shit, like this is a wild little passage to be reading.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, like, I can't really tell you more than is in the passage.

• 31:56Liv Albert?

  Fair.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  It's a temple which, uh.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Is opened once a year. Um, and only the priest is allowed to enter because going in uh to the Temple of Hades is going in to Hades itself and you cannot like continually die. Um, the thing that I find the most interesting about that passage, it is in Pausanias. And it's the only time that Pausanias calls Hades, Hades and not Pluton. And I think that's really interesting, uh, because I think perhaps it indicates that this is a very old cult. That it is

• 32:46Speaker 02

  very stable in its practice.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  And which kind of makes sense, right? When you only have one person really who is doing the majority of the participation and handing that on to the next person. There's not even over large amounts of time, there's not really a lot of space for innovation. Um, and even where there is innovation, it's not necessarily something which

• 33:21Speaker 02

  is considered change. Because you're talking about one person kind of handing on to the next person, to the next person, to the next person. Um, and I

• 33:33Speaker 02

  I, I don't think that Pausanias says this, but in my mind, it's a hereditary cult. Um, I think that that like maybe is like my own headcanon for it, but it makes sense to me. Um, but yeah, I think it it kind of shows that this is like a very old sacred practice. Um, and of course there is uh the link to with the Nekumantian at Ellis. Um, on the river Akaron, obvious links to the Akaron of the underworld.

• 34:12Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. I didn't know there was a real Akaron.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Uh, there is, it is in Ellis.

• 34:17Liv Albert?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Um. And in a a little town called the Sprontia, I wanna say.

• 34:25Liv Albert?

  Um hum.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Um, and there's a temple complex there, or or a building complex there, that kind of seems to indicate um, a a movement around uh in which, you know, it has been theorized. Um, and I have a a couple of times given um papers about this using a guided meditation at the start. And actually, it's the uh the the passage that I use for this is the passage that's right at the front of my Underworld Gods book about the necumantic experience.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Um, you go in, you are given like into a very low light situation, perhaps even dark uh for several days. The only other person that you come in contact with is the priest who brings you food and drink. Um, you can hear from the from inside the the building complex, you can hear the wa- the running water. Um, you're given uh foods that have mild toxicity, perhaps uh that might facilitate hallucination. Um, at some point, the priest decides that you're ready to go on to the next step, brings you inside a a tiny uh lamb. I was about to say a tiny sheep.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  And I remembered there's a real word for that. Lamb. Um, you take the lamb in, you dig uh a pit, you sacrifice the lamb, drain the blood into the pit, um, which I I hope is kind of recalling.

• 36:08Liv Albert?

  Uh, did you see my face?

• 36:10Speaker 02

  A Samarian sort of uh sacrificial.

• 36:15Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Lamb, blood, pit, dead.

• 36:18Liv Albert?

  Immediately, I was like, Odysseus does this.

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  And various sort of other things, perhaps honey. And then you burn incense or something else. Um. It seems unlikely that you would butcher and burn the lamb, but there is an idea of something that creates smoke.

• 36:43Liv Albert?

  Um.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Which obviously, when you're in an enclosed space, is very overwhelming. Um. At some point around this time, uh, you are either given or you pick up some stones of some kind. Um. As you keep walking around, there's a point in which you have to kind of throw the stones. Uh, as you, uh, I assume, obviously, we've got no evidence for this. Um, but like pray and and do various kind of other things.

• 37:11Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Um. And then you get into uh the the main chamber of the building complex. Um, in which you uh present your your question to the to the dead. Um, whoever it is that you have have tried to call up.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Um. Now, this is all uh obviously like a reconstruction based on like the archaeological evidence of things being found in places and like burning um on the uh buildings and things like that. Um. But what's really interesting about this is there's uh the same kind of um

• 37:53Speaker 02

  uh pulley, like large crane pulley structure. Um. Behind the, almost a false wall. Uh, as you would have behind the stage at the theatre. Um. So, you know, one suggestion has been that perhaps the priest like facilitates your uh oracular experience with the dead by like sending uh ghosts, wooden ghosts, uh, down for you to talk to.

• 38:28Liv Albert?

  Holy shit.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Just that's a an enormous holy shit moment for me. So

• 38:36Liv Albert?

  was this like?

• 38:39Liv Albert?

  Like, for one, I feel like this is a thing that is not well enough known. And I think that everyone should be talking about this all the time. But also, like, do we know anything about who went to do this? And why or no, just nothing?

• 38:59Speaker 02

  No, I mean, we can make some guesses about who went and why. You know, why do you go and, and why do you go to any oracle? You know, because you want answers to something. But why specifically might you go to an oracle in which you are talking to the dead? Not underworld gods, not divinities, but specifically to the dead. You know, you might go because you deeply, deeply miss somebody and you want to speak with them. You might go because, you know, someone has left their entire fortune in a locked box and you can't find the key.

• 39:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  And everything sort of in between.

• 39:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Liv Albert?

  This episode is brought to you by Quince. You know, the drill. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton and premium stretch denim. I have been speaking into a microphone about Quince for a while now and I have no complaints. I have a bunch of their stuff. I've got a couple cute sweaters that, I mean, it's, it's nearing sweater season. So those will be back in the rotation anytime now. And I have this leather bag that I absolutely love. It's like this braided leather and I use it like basically every day. Because that's the thing, they have really great basics.

• 40:44Liv Albert?

  Like they have really great things that you can wear with so. So many other things, just the options are endless. And as the weather gets colder, like all the sweaters in my closet, Quince has everything you need to round out your wardrobe. From warm, responsibly sourced down jackets and cozy cashmere scarves and gloves to beautiful 14 karat gold jewelry. That adds the perfect finishing touch. And of course, everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And if we haven't learned anything in the last 10 years, isn't it just getting rid of the middlemen? You know, making things more affordable.

• 41:26Liv Albert?

  So find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was me. Let's talk about myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.

• 42:05Liv Albert?

  Straight up, I'm just so excited for like, I mean, any spooky season episodes, but particularly like, so we're talking Scream Queens. In Greek mythology, which is such a fun, I mean, basically you sent me that message and I was like, hell yeah, absolutely.

• 42:21Liv Albert?

  I am a huge slasher fan, like Scream is my favorite movie of all time.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Beautiful.

• 42:27Liv Albert?

  Basically, I've, I've seen it. Yes. I mean, I watch it like multiple times a year. It is like my life source. My sister and I have this whole like friendship based entirely around all of the Scream movies. I stand by all of them are great. I will love them all forever, but obviously the first one is like peak. And then the second one has Cassandra, so it's like, holy shit. Like it couldn't be better.

• 42:53Speaker 03

  Yes. I'm so excited. Yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  So yeah, very excited to be back, very excited to talk about uh this very interesting spooky topic. First, for those who don't know, uh what a scream queen is, I always figure I should go over this.

• 43:09Liv Albert?

  No, that's good. I feel like I know the idea, but I've never tried to define it, so please.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  And it is one of those sort of like tropes, archetypes, but does have sort of a few different definitions. Slash people apply it to a few different things. But in general, a scream queen uh tends to be a female protagonist from a horror film. Um either a main character or sometimes like it's even just like a side character. Uh and what they tend to be reduced down to is uh having a very intense scream uh was sort of the initial. Uh part of it, uh but then it also just sort of broadly came to be more of like a deeply emotive. Performance uh in a horror film, something that was very emotionally impactful.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  Uh usually in a very sort of intense way or heightened way, because it's horror and horror is a genre of heightenedness. So general examples I tend to give people, uh Neve Campbell in Scream, there we go.

• 44:07Liv Albert?

  Obviously.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Iconic, great, uh but people would even say Drew Barrymore at the beginning of Scream.

• 44:12Liv Albert?

  Oh yeah.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Especially as I, as I get into later, you guys might sort of uh especially what I was talking about last time I was on the show. I have a lot of feelings about Greek tragedy uh and horror. Uh but especially, I think a lot of the ways in which horror operates as a genre, especially around social commentary. And Scream is such a good example of that, because it's like such a good parody uh of the horror genre, but also like. Leaning in to sort of make this kind of new branch of horror going forward. Um and it's so good, but I think the term definitely then started getting like. Tweaked more, like I think it gets conflated a lot with like the idea of the final girl. Um which for those who don't know, the final girl is sort of this like trope and horror of like.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  There's always gonna be one girl at the end, so you know, you're killing off everyone to get to that. Uh but also, I would say many final girls are scream queens, not all scream queens are final girls. Because oftentimes, a scream queen is just a great side character. I got to a point, especially like reading a lot online of different ways people were interpreting Persephone.

• 45:20Speaker 03

  I actually got kind of defensive about her, especially a lot of the ways in which people were trying to talk about like agency and consent around her myths a lot. Because there was one aspect that I feel got overlooked quite a bit about Persephone, which is that in every version of her myth, she does the exact same thing when she's taken to the underworld. She screams and it's a very intense scream. It's actually like one of the more intense sonic events in Greek mythology in general.

• 45:58Liv Albert?

  That's so true. I can't think of another example where, you know, because the whole thing about her scream is that it's heard far and wide.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Very far and wide.

• 46:08Liv Albert?

  Like it is, is that it's that Hecate hears it and that's why she has the information to give to Demeter, right?

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. It's a fascinating scream because it's one that it is noted that like nymphs and mortals like don't hear it for some reason. So there is this like interesting sonic effect. But then it is heard by Hecate deep in her cave. It's sort of heard by like Helios, but he also just sees everything.

• 46:34Liv Albert?

  He's just kind of there all the time.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  And then the echo of it, because then it sort of goes into how the mountains and like the whole of like the earth just start like resounding and echoing like the sound back. It's the echo that actually travels to Demeter that she hears and then starts running, sees Hecate and they're both just like, oh God, we heard this thing, but like we didn't see what happened. So like, we need to figure, we need more information. And it's that scream that sort of like catapults like the entire action of like that myth. The scream is very intense and so it's actually what I started returning to when I was starting to think about screams a bit more in antiquity.

• 47:18Speaker 03

  Because I started looking at Greek tragedy sort of first where I was like, oh, there's all these figures like Io, Cassandra, like these really great big lamenters, wailers that do like a lot, Elektra.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  But then I was just like, right, Greek tradie is like playing on so many of these past narratives and these past like older myths and sort of how they like over time impact this larger network. So I started going back to archaic myth and sort of looking at these big utterances. And yeah, Persephone is such an intense one and like it's not just in her different myths. Um, it's even connected to a lot of like the religious practices around her too. So like the Eleusinian mysteries, which were the religious rites for her and her mother Demeter through like Athens and Eleusis, there was this huge procession that would move from Athens to Eleusis uh to do the mysteries before folks would come back.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  And it's often talked about how like sonic and like loud this like procession was. Um, to the extent, there's even like an anecdote in Herodotus where he talks about how there was an army and like they're coming to Athens to fight, but then like they see this like far off cloud and they're just sort of like getting bigger and they're like, what the hell is that? And then they just hear like the procession like as it's like going to Eleusis and they're just like, well, that's something to do with the gods, maybe we should back off.

• 48:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah, we're out.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  A little creepy. Um, so you do get these sort of like resonances of especially like sound uh and like lamenting with uh Persephone. And a lot of this like dovetails into my own research. I study sound a lot, so I'm always trying to get at the gods from a more sonic point. And Persephone is an interesting one. There's a lot of like, you can't talk about her rites. Uh, she has a lot of mysterious names and goes through a bunch of different naming. Actually, as we'll see in Antigone, she has one of her weirder names in that one.

• 49:15Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  And she also just like is known for being the person you're supposed to go to in the underworld for hearing your pleas or like to go about like better life or for different things. Like all these different heroes go to her for different reasons. Heracles is like, ah, yo cousin, I need to fight this dog. Can I do it? Uh, psyche goes to her for a box for Venus over in Roman myth. Oh, the apparently like the most intense empathetic emotive concert in history was played for her. And Hades in the sense of Orpheus coming down there.

• 49:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 03

  So there is like a lot of interesting like sound related stuff and especially like in like sort of the chthonic soundscape that I started getting interested in a lot more because I think you hear a lot of these like strange chthonic sort of other worldly sounds emerging a lot in Greek tragedy, especially when you get like the Furies and like all these different gorgonics sort of creatures that are supposed to also be represented by the owlos, which is the instrument of the theater and the sort of like hissing, almost like bagpipe oboe. It's hard to describe the owlos. It's like a bagpipe oboe, sort of sounding like. So yeah, that's sort of was like the push to get me to think about like Persephone is

• 50:40Speaker 03

  this sort of like, I guess like proto scream queen of like myth. And then like, once we get into Greek tragedy, we get these like very traditional in these like tragedies that I see as horror narratives, different types of scream queens coming about.

• 50:56Liv Albert?

  I love that.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  Just say a few spooky things about Persephone.

• 51:01Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, please.

• 51:02Speaker 03

  She's like creepy. And I want people to give her creepy do a bit more.

• 51:07Liv Albert?

  She's the dread goddess.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm just like, guys, remember that phase, by guys, I mean, just like, you know, folks raised and socialized as women. Like, remember that phase we all went through when we were obsessed with like murder and morbid shit? That's what Persephone is. Like, I think that's basically my thesis on her.

• 51:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I get that.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  But even like the first time she shows up in written sources in Homer's Odyssey, like it's super creepy. Like it's when Odysseus is like trying to talk to the dead, to talk to Tiresias to get more information. Tiresias who also pop up later in Antigone too. And like, but before he can go, like, Persephone is just like sending all of these women like from like a trad- And like myth who have like died uh to Odysseus to just like

• 51:55Liv Albert?

  I fucking love that part.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Give their testimony and it's it's a lot. It's like a very ghoul-y uh scene. It's very like intense. It's wonderful. But also she's just like, yeah, the sort of like interesting sort of background, like very spectral, almost kind of like haunting figure. Um, and she even like in her initial myth though, uh, this is something that I love touching on with folks more. Uh, all of the like flowers that she's gathering are all like myths of men who died uh for the most part or like heroes that like have passed. Like roses are often associated with Adonis who falls, hyacinth with hyacinthus.

• 52:37Liv Albert?

  Crocuses are somebody too, right?

• 52:41Speaker 03

  Violets with Athens. Yeah. Uh, so there's lots of, so she's like gathering all of these like traditionally like dying, going to the earth, coming back uh men right before she herself is about to be taken alive into death uh essentially before she comes back.

• 52:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  So and yeah, there's just like all these ideas of, you know, going to death, returning from death, you know? She is kind of like the Ousian mysteries where one of the bigger uh like eschatological, which is all like afterlife oriented religions before like Christianity became a very big one. Like, but yeah, no, Persephone was sort of like the person you uh would come to terms with uh as you die and but also could potentially come back to life in a different way. Um, and so, yeah, she's, you know, creepy. We love her.

• 53:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, the she's the true crime podcast loving young woman.

• 53:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. And she tends to be like, she's often not a mother, but when she is, they tend to be of like really intense things like the furies uh in Orphic hymn tradition. Or, you know, uh, she's often thought of in different uh senses of Dionysian ritual to be the mother of Dionysus or Iacchus or Zagreus uh before he's torn apart and then has to be reborn again. Uh.

• 54:02Liv Albert?

  That's all Orphic too, right?

• 54:04Speaker 03

  And Orphic, yeah, it's loops around it as well.

• 54:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah, interesting. Cause I know like I've, you know, every time people ask me what's Zagreus, I'm like, he's Orphic. I don't know. Sorry. I know he's in the video game Hades, but I don't know Orphic mythology.

• 54:19Speaker 03

  But also, like, I wanna tell people, like, even though I'm going on about, like, the creepiness, etc. Of a good deal of horror is like commentary in different way and using different types of emotions to do so. Um, so even though I love the Homeric hymn to Demeter and see it as this like maybe much more horror oriented hymn. Uh, a lot of the ways in which this horror is accomplished, uh, is actually through humor. In different ways and like the ways in which humor gets utilized like throughout the myth like really helps sort of like highlight the differences and disparities between gods and mortals. Uh, one of my favorite episodes in the entire hymn, uh, is just when Demeter gets caught trying to turn Demophon, uh, into an immortal.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  And it's like three, it's like three or four lines of like how angry she is at like Demophon's mom Mettanyra, uh, before she speaks. But like right before she speaks for like half a line, it's like, oh yeah. And then she like tossed the baby to the ground and you're like, what? Like, but then she just goes on this like long tirade of just like, what the hell, woman? Like, how dare you question me putting your child in the fire? Like all this stuff, like you're gonna regret it, like disappears. And then it's like Mettanyra is like kneeling there, her knees buckle and it's just like, she's like so in shock that like she can't even hear like the cries of her child on the ground.

• 55:42Liv Albert?

  I mean, but imagine having a goddess, like, you think this is like old woman. Who's been hanging out in your house and then she transforms into a goddess and then some and starts screaming at you for fucking everything up like. But yeah, that'd be some stressful shit.

• 55:59Speaker 03

  It's really stressful, but I was just like, I really got caught on the comedy of it all and just like, God, this is so like intense. But I'm just like, Demeter, the thing you do right before, like. Dragging this woman is you throw her baby on the ground.

• 56:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and but also you you like we're putting him in the fire and then you think that this woman is overreacting by say like being annoyed that you're putting her baby in the fire.

• 56:26Speaker 03

  And it is so great because it's like this hymn is all about grief and the relationships between parents and their children and like how these emotions come about in big and intense ways of I love that episode because it's just I mean the horror of it is so real like if you're met Nira like coming into like you know this room and being like my child is in the fire like of course like you know but it turns into this very comedic scene because of like who the gods are their nature etc and so with that note I would like to transition into the ways in which I think this form gets sort of taken to the next level in Greek tragedy which is something that yeah

• 57:11Speaker 03

  is what a beautiful medium what a beautiful genre to express all of these things and often goes between so many different emotions to try to build this sort of huge I want to say sympathy when I say sympathy I don't mean in the traditional sense I don't mean in the stoic cosmic sympathy sense I mean in a like just genuine like bringing all of the pathos all of the feelings together like in this huge thinking of symphony actually you know for me being in symphony growing up that was always you know bringing all these voices of different instruments together until we could create this like much richer symphonic narrative and I feel like that's sort of what

• 57:52Speaker 03

  Greek tragedy does it brings all these different types of emotions together to like create this much more heightened narrative.

• 58:13Speaker 01

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• 59:02Speaker 04

  But anyway, the monsters are just cool. I mean, they're just cool. I mean, I've always loved them and it's not just volcanoes that make them cool. It's other stuff. So I'm, I'm big into, I mean, it's, let's, let's just, let's just get this spoiler alert straight away out there. I'm going to be talking about human psychology and psychologists specifically and their take on it. And I'm doing it. I, I fully accept that very little of it is useful to us today. But I find it hilarious. I find it hilarious to look at what Freud says about monsters.

• 59:33Liv Albert?

  Oh God. Okay. Yep.

• 59:35Speaker 04

  You get me because it's, it's so fun. Just anyone listening, do not take any of this as real, essentially.

• 59:43Liv Albert?

  No.

• 59:43Speaker 04

  But have you ever read his essay Medusa's Head?

• 59:46Liv Albert?

  Oh God, no, but I've heard of it.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's awesome. I mean, it's.

• 59:52Liv Albert?

  It's all about like, he's got all that, that nonsensical ideas of her snake hair being like.

• 59:59Liv Albert?

  Fear of castration or something like that, right?

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, you got, you got it, you got it. Yes, it's like, so, I mean, well, he wrote it in nineteen twenty two. I think it's actually published after he died, but whatever. Um, and it's just complete, I just don't know what he's thinking. He's definitely a man sitting on a rock making stuff up for sure. Um, but yeah, you're right. I mean, it's all about what is the symbolism of Medusa, the snakes? And, you know, apparently it's a young boy that sees his mother's pubic hair.

• 1:00:29Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:00:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the snakes, it's the snakes and, and all sorts of different symbolism of that. But essentially, it's this kind of like shock horror feeling that, oh, my God, what if I didn't have a penis? And it got, and then obviously the, the heading of Medusa is the castration. And you know, you just, you kind of like, you know, it's just, you just can't follow it. It's completely insane. It's like this. I get like kind of odd dream that you think what's going, not nightmare of what's going on. So, yes, no, I'm not saying we can take anything from that. But I kind of, I kind of find it in terms of like classical reception, maybe like looking at. Um, what's going on with these psychologists?

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  And I think, you know, okay, that's the maddest example I've got, but actually that, you know, there are, there are a few things you can take from psychologists. And I think, you know, the, the biggest caveat with any of this is that they are often scientists. They might be anthropologists or psychologists. And they love like essentially a kind of unifying theory. So whereas we're like, you know, you spent a whole career deep diving into the nuances of myth. And you're going to continue doing that. You can, you go till you die. Because there's so much nuance and you can't just go, oh, well, all Romans were this, bye, because what's the point of that, you know? So that's what I find really interesting about this, you know, that, that, that's what the caveat is with these, these psychologists.

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  Cause they want to do that. They want these theories that go, oh, all cultures do this and all monsters mean this in mythology. But then there are some interesting, this is some interesting stuff about. And actually Aristotle says it about how monstrous myths need to happen.

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  Because we need a way of purging our fears to avoid us having antisocial tendencies. And I thought you would love this because it's going back to very early societies. And the need for human beings to conform. And and come together in a in a way of the heck, you know, kind of, I guess, a manner of how we behave. As a civilization, as a group of people, as an organisation, almost, of people. So we need these monsters as a way to to to purge the fears in our stories, in whatever we want to do. So that we don't take them out on each other. And I don't know what you think to that. And there's a few, Aristotle says it, but there, you know, there's a few.

• 1:02:52Speaker 04

  I guess, little bits and pieces throughout time, different psychologies, either modern or ancient, the kind of, not ancient psychologists, but ancient thinkers. That say that sort of thing. But I don't know what your take on that is. What do you think about that as sort of? Tension of early society.

• 1:03:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it it makes sense. It certainly makes more sense than Freud's nonsensical musings about Greek myth.

• 1:03:13Speaker 04

  But it's fun.

• 1:03:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah, oh, yeah. I mean, all I could think of when you were first saying that is is the Oedipus of it all.

• 1:03:20Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:21Liv Albert?

  Because, like. I I just I'll never get over the fact that, like, the entire modern understanding of, like, the Oedipus myth and Oedipal complex or whatever, based around Freud. Is like based on a willful misunderstanding of that play. It's like, it's like you had to read the play and be like, okay, cool. I'm going to completely invent a new. A new plot point, and I'm going to base an entire theory on that plot point, which is that. Somehow Oedipus knew that it was his mother. And I, anyway.

• 1:03:49Speaker 04

  It's just, what I don't get, Liv, is like, how did he get any airtime, Freud? Why didn't someone go, all right, off you go? I heard we had to say, no, thanks. Like, what is it about this blo- you? You know, you know, it's the time when these, you know, these kind of old white men get this.

• 1:04:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  You can say what you want, and we're going to say it's fine. Like.

• 1:04:11Liv Albert?

  Yep.

• 1:04:11Speaker 04

  I I don't I don't get it. I don't get it, because you just, I don't. We all know, like, you know, evidence-based things. And I know, I guess, highly, I'm, look, I'm not a psychologist. I'm so it's theoretical and these are takes on perhaps um, expressions of human behavior. But come on. I just don't get how that guy got any airtime.

• 1:04:29Liv Albert?

  No.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  So I get you. Yeah, the EDP thing's mad as well. Completely mad.

• 1:04:33Liv Albert?

  Oh, and then there's like the, there's an electro complex too, right? Forget what.

• 1:04:37Speaker 04

  Yes, there is.

• 1:04:38Liv Albert?

  Murdering your mother or something. Lord. Anyway, he, I think he just had a lot of issues with his parents and he took them all out on us. For the next hundred years.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  And he decided to use classics as much as possible.

• 1:04:50Liv Albert?

  Exactly. He just decided, like, a hundred years from now, people are gonna be really mad at me for the bullshit that I'm spewing. Ha ha. Enjoy.

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. But you know what I mean? Do you like looking at things like that, that are obviously a load of rubbish, but looking at what they really kind of tell us about? I guess the continuing relationship. But if we're going back to monsters for a minute, like, you know, kind of how how interaction with monsters are evolving over time. So here, here we have that trend in the 20th century of looking at monsters of mythology, world mythology, not just classical. And like, trying to reevaluate them for a new take on it and what they express about who we are and the monster in us.

• 1:05:30Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah, I mean.

• 1:05:31Speaker 04

  Even if the stuff is mad, even if the conclusions are mad, that on its own as a movement is interesting to look at. And how it's impacted us today.

• 1:05:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it just makes me think of Medusa today, right? And like all the different forms that she takes in our society today. Like, there, there is such a juxtaposition of like angry dudes on the internet who see Medusa as some kind of like evil, like, force that had to be destroyed in order to, you know, alleviate some kind of pressure on the world, which is basically a paraphrase of some nonsense thing that a guy once spewed to me on Twitter. And then we have her, yeah, yeah, they're ridiculous. And then that's compared to angry white men.

• 1:06:19Speaker 04

  So why they're not listening to this stuff. They're not coming from us. No, it's all good.

• 1:06:23Liv Albert?

  No. Uh, but yeah, but compared to the, the Medusa of like the feminist movement or the Me Too movement and now Medusa. Medusa has now come to symbolize a survivor of assault to such a degree that like, so I have a Medusa tattoo. Because I love Medusa and I love classics and obviously.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  Can I see it or is it somewhere where I'm not allowed to see it?

• 1:06:44Liv Albert?

  No, it's on my thigh. Uh, but it's, it's, yeah, we're not doing that today, but no, it's, it's enormous.

• 1:06:51Speaker 04

  Not on a podcast.

• 1:06:54Liv Albert?

  But I've posted pictures of it fairly recently, um, on, on Instagram and, and I post, I posted two different pictures and two different times, somebody commented and made an assumption that because I have a Medusa tattoo, I am telling the world that I'm a survivor of assault. And like, I'm not saying that I haven't had my own experiences as women. We basically all have our own, you know, varied experiences in different ways, but, but like, that's not why I got a Medusa tattoo. I got a Medusa tattoo because I fucking love Medusa. But she has become this emblem to such a degree that like, and even somebody actually recently messaged me and said like, hey,

• 1:07:36Liv Albert?

  it was a guy and he was like, hey, I, I want to get a Medusa tattoo, but my friend said that would be disrespectful because it symbolizes survival of assault. And it's just to me, it's like, I think that's great that she symbolizes that for people. I think it's bad if we are making assumptions that like, that is now all she symbolizes.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I agree. I agree.

• 1:08:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah. She's like full circle and to be like, that's it.

• 1:08:05Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, it's really interesting this actually, because I'm, I'm working on something at the moment that is about, um, essentially.

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  The unheard voices of women that have experienced um any kind of

• 1:08:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I saw your post on Twitter.

• 1:08:21Speaker 04

  Sexual abuse. Yeah, so this is, this is something I'm working on. It's something, I'm new to it. So this, I'm, I mean, I'm not new to it in life. Um, as in, I, I know of, of, of this in my life, but um, I'm not somebody that I can say has experienced it directly in the same way that you, you mentioned earlier on. But, you know, I think, I think that we, we owe it to these mythical figures to get to, get to the new wants of them. So if that, if that means something to someone, then great. You have, you own it as you wish. Take that symbol, use it as you wish. But I think it's important that we have that like plurality of, of her story too. So, you know, if a guy wants to get Medusa tattooed on him and his intentions are not ill.

• 1:09:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Speaker 04

  That he's doing that for reasons like, no, like, is the reasons are good. Like, I, I, I, I, I love her. I find the story interesting, whatever it might be. Fine. And I do, I do think, you know, that in some way, this is a difficult thing to say because, you know, I'm pro anything that makes anyone feel better, empowered, especially women. That's what I'm all about. But at the same time,

• 1:09:27Speaker 04

  you don't want to take it so far that it almost becomes a weaponized type thing. Weaponized is a very strong word to use, but I guess, I guess something like that. And also like the whole reading into you getting that, like, that's just no one's business anyway. Like that, that's up to you. Like you can do what you want. That's your body. If you want to get Medusa like to and don't infer that it's no one's business what meaning that has. That's your personal choice to do that. That's your business. Like, no one should be commenting. I mean, unless they're commenting, oh, that's wicked. Uh, I guess, I guess, you know, there's nothing, there's nothing you should, I mean wicked in, we say wicked a lot. That means really good.

• 1:10:01Liv Albert?

  No, yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 04

  Does that mean, okay, good. No, like wicked, like wicked witch. I'm like, oh my god, I just said something awful in Canada and all the Canadians are going to cancel me. Um.

• 1:10:09Liv Albert?

  That is in North America too. You're good.

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, sweet. Um, yeah, I mean, I guess, yeah, I mean, it's fascinating what you say. I mean, this is what the, this is another reason going back to like full circle where it's on fire like monsters because. I do think, although we can draw out these, these like general ideas, like we talked about volcanoes, or we can talk about elements of the human psyche that we see in these stories. But really, what you personally find monstrous is different to everyone else. And what I personally find monstrous is different to everyone else. And there might be some overlap. We did a Venn diagram or whatever it's called. What, is that the one with the overlap? I think that's the one, isn't it?

• 1:10:47Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  Um, we will find some overlap. And I think, you know, that's where we, as I guess, um, ancient historians or whatever you like to call yourself. It's in the overlap that we analyse, I think. But just, just being a person. Monsters mean something to me. Like, I've got a thing, the thing that I'm terrified of is aliens. So like, but then a friend of mine's like, I can't watch a ghost film. Like, she'll just run and she can't cope. She'll like start shaking because that's her thing. You know, um, I still don't understand the people that like squid game, like blood and gore. I can't get to that. Are you one of them?

• 1:11:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah. No, no, no.

• 1:11:22Speaker 04

  I mean, that's that, but do you get my, but that's, I mean, I don't know why, I don't, I mean, I, I'm questioning why they're watching in the first place. But if they're watching it for the horror bit that we, you know, like they, they like to be afraid of it.

• 1:11:32Speaker 04

  I don't know. I find that, that gore, that saw, all that kind of horror.

• 1:11:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:37Speaker 04

  I find that difficult. But, you know, that's why I like monsters. They're, they're adaptable. And I think, you know, they're shape shift and they do different things in different times to different people in different contexts. And that's why there'll always be our monsters, even if they might be ancient, because they're just going to be ours. Because like you say, Medusa is on your thigh right now. And that is some, some way that like, not literally, if anyone's freaking out, but. But you, you've got that for your reasons and that, that speaks to you in some way. So, you know, you've already taken something mythological, monstrous myth and, and made it your own, which I think is how we should be doing it.

• 1:12:14Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:30Liv Albert?

  Thank you all, as always, for listening. More soon, and more news soon, because remember when I was gonna launch merch? It unintentionally coincided with one of the many unhinged actions of fascist dictator down south. And so I just haven't been able to figure it out yet, because I don't know. I haven't figured out whether it's worth it, even though I'm sitting on a ton of merch. But we hope to have updates on that soon. If you can believe it, it just has not been my priority to figure out American tariff systems while also writing this book.

• 1:13:14Liv Albert?

  But that's still a plan we might be working out, like different workarounds for Americans. I'm not sure yet, but stay tuned. Mikael and I are planning a newsletter to release that will hopefully have some updates. So if you want to sign up for that, if you haven't already, you can learn more at mythsbaby.com/newsletter. I don't know, we're still around, we're still trying to build out Nemosini. We're still trying to rage against the patriarchy and you know, protect your communities. Fuck ICE, they're the Gestapo. Americans.

• 1:14:02Liv Albert?

  We are all rooting for the good ones of you.

• 1:14:09Liv Albert?

  And I think this is the time to deprogram some of the American propaganda. It's time.

• 1:14:18Liv Albert?

  Let's Talk About Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Kayla Panglish is the Hermes to my Olympians, my incredible producer. Select music was by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, which aims to do good things in the realm of late-stage capitalism historical programming. I don't know, that was poorly phrased. It's hard with all the fascism, you know? Um, free Palestine. The ceasefire was a lie. Israel is bombing Palestine right now and

• 1:15:03Liv Albert?

  I don't know, stalk your neighborhood ICE vans. Tear the patriarchal system of late-stage capitalism to the ground.

• 1:15:16Liv Albert?

  I am Liv and I love this shit.

• 1:15:22Liv Albert?

  Happy Halloween.

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