Conversations: Real Women's Voices at Real Ancient Work, w/ Andromache Karanika

Liv speaks with Andromache Karanika about women's work, work songs, and the very concept of real ancient women's lives. Set fire to the patriarchy, my dear listeners... And learn more about Dr Karanika https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=5370. 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.

• 0:43Speaker 01

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• 1:39Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv, here with a fresh conversation episode. I'm a little annoyed because I did already record the introduction to this and then lost it, and I don't fully remember what I said. So you're going to have to bear with me and also listen to my not as great microphone just for a quick moment. But I am, I'm so excited for you all to hear this episode. It was recorded a month or two back now, but this is a guest that I have had on my to-contact list for so long. She came by recommendation of fan favorite guest Joel Christiansen. Her name is Andromache Karanika. If you can believe it, she is Greek.

• 2:23Liv Albert?

  And American. And, oh my God, we, I came to her via a book that I have been just in the beginnings of reading and have been totally obsessed by. It's called Voices at Work. And essentially, she did an enormous amount of academic study into women's voices, but specifically working women and just women with vocations, the work songs, and you know, the weaving of it all. And so we talked about ancient women, ancient women and their work, their vocations, their, their skills, and the way that they went about them, including these songs. But generally,

• 3:09Liv Albert?

  Andromache is doing incredible work on real ancient women and their stories. And I already know I'm going to want to talk to her about everything ever, because we, oh, ah, ah. Anyway, I'm gonna stop with this introduction because I am too excited for you all to hear this episode. We had such an incredible time and it is just another one of these moments where I might not be able to do the scripted episodes so much right now, but I am so thrilled to have these conversations, to have these guests, and specifically to have women working in this field to bring us the real ancient women, because more and more every day,

• 3:51Liv Albert?

  I am utterly obsessed with them and I just want to give them the whole world. So here is a moment of that.

• 4:11Liv Albert?

  Conversations, the voices of real women at real work in ancient Greece with Dr. Andromache Karanika.

• 4:35Liv Albert?

  I, oh, I am so excited for this conversation. I admit I've only like in the first couple chapters of your book because I find I'm just taking so many notes and then having so many ideas. I've been working on like some fiction myself, which is what it's been really inspiring, but also.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Wonderful.

• 4:52Liv Albert?

  Yes, it's just, I couldn't stop. I kept thinking, oh, my God, there's just, I have so many questions and then immediately had to get you on this podcast. So I'm really excited. But I mean, I know, yeah, your, your work is, this is an older book that I've discovered. But generally, I would love to hear kind of what your, I guess, main, main topic of interest when it comes to women, or what your research has been primarily in, you know, I'm reading this work songs book, but how, what kind of work have you done with, with ancient women broadly?

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, thanks for having me.

• 5:26Liv Albert?

  Sorry.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  For having me on your show. And this is, this is really wonderful for me because it's also, it also gives me the opportunity to think back of, you know, what I did more than a decade ago and what I'm doing now and where I'm heading. But essentially, my interest on women was started because, you know, I grew up as, I grew up in Greece. I was lucky that as a little girl, I had great exposure to sort of rural life, village life.

• 6:00Liv Albert?

  Can I ask where you're from? Sorry, I meant to ask it earlier.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  I'm Thessalian. I'm from Thessaly. Yes. I come from the very middle. I'm not a witch.

• 6:09Liv Albert?

  But you could be from there.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I, I do some coffee reading on the side and I'm told that I'm really good at it. My kid, my kids are scared about it. I have some great, I have some great stories about that. But no, I come from Thessaly, from a small, from a town, I mean, not very small, it's called Volos. So it's on the coast. It's like the ancient Iolcus and the Jason and the Argonauts sort of story around that. But my family comes from central Thessaly, from central Greece. So in, on the west part. And there's, it's a mountainous area. So.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  I think a lot of the things that I experienced as a young girl just watching there, and we can talk more about that. Um, have really influenced me in how I look at ancient literature. And essentially, my goal was to look at what, to find what is not there. You know, the invisible voices, the silence there, you know. And there's so much. I mean, obviously, there's the weaving, and of course, we can talk about that. But I I'm lucky that I had a grandmother whose memory this book is dedicated. Who was a fabulous weaver. I've got some of her stuff in my home in California.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  And it's it's just so moving. It became, I mean, it, I mean, this is obviously not a personal sort of project. But it's it's kind of interesting how what we experience as children can shape your intellectual life. And like, nothing goes to waste.

• 7:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  So, you know, my grandmother died many, many years ago, many decades ago. But her things are there. And I have this memory of her singing at her loom. So when I was, uh, when I first, you know, went to graduate school and started looking at what I wanted to do. I have this laundry list of trying to find out women's voices, like actual voices. In a way, I was trying to go to do, to cross the bridge and go from the mythologized version into the actual, which is not easy. And, you know, we, you know, of course, with the positivist approach that especially

• 8:33Speaker 02

  uh, older generation of scholars had, you know, it's it's not even doable, like you cannot do anthropology. But then if you have an anthropological approach and you read our sources with a greater sensitivity, then it's this world that unfolds. It's like, oh, my God, there's so much there that the text is telling us if we're willing to read it in the in the right way.

• 8:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  And and so just so of course, there's the weaving and we'll talk about that a lot. But there's so so much. I mean, there's the washing and, you know, washing the clothes, what that sort of, you know, this was a huge part for women's lives in the ancient world. And then there's lullabies and there's, you know, what you sing to your child to

• 9:25Speaker 02

  fall asleep. And I mean, there's and even children's songs, which actually echo all of these genres. So it's we have a treasure that I felt we had not paid enough attention to. So I think with my voices at work, I really set out to just do that and see both at what is there, both at how ancient literature, and especially epic and lyric, of course, but especially epic, how like the grand literature that we know, that we admire has been shaped at a very basic, at its very basic molecule

• 10:09Speaker 02

  from actual women's voices. So.

• 10:15Liv Albert?

  Okay, I mean, I'm obsessed with all of this. I I mean, I start, I this podcast has been going on for quite a while now, eight years, actually. And, you know, at the beginning, I really set out to just my point was kind of to look at how women are treated in the in the myth. Because it tends to be that the stuff we have is just, you know, it just kind of it makes women into these like objects to be sort of used and you you rarely get any kind of interiority. And one of the things that's just grown over time, particularly as I have conversations with people like you is this the utter obsession with everything that we know that we don't know about women, right?

• 10:56Liv Albert?

  Because, I mean, as you're saying here, like, all of these things being shaped and formed by women's voices. And yet those voices are absent from, at the very, you know, least the the mainstream idea of what we get from ancient Greece so specifically. It's and and I find. Particularly as somebody like I, you know, I, I have a degree that's quite old now, but I never went beyond my BA, except for now in this work where I've gone well beyond, but the, something that I, you know, I get from people coming from the outside, outside the academia is just this idea that like, because we don't have this kind of evidence from women, these voices, these,

• 11:36Liv Albert?

  you know, the, the actual real lived experiences from them at all. It's this idea that it's like, they didn't live almost like, obviously not literally, but it's just this idea that like, women sort of didn't matter because those things didn't survive. And then of course you break down into the, the work that we know that women did. Like you've said, you know, all of these weaving and, and making clothes, making everything, but making all of these things that are biodegradable and, and therefore we don't have today. And I don't know, this is, this is just sort of me forming this like epic thought base on everything you've said, because it drives me wild. And so I'm so obsessed, I guess, with, with

• 12:17Liv Albert?

  work like yours, where we can try to pick out these things that are so otherwise lost. How did, how do you go about like finding those voices, you know, from something like I, I'm, for context, have been living inside of the Odyssey right now. I'm actually working on a, a children's book, um, that's going to come out next year. And so

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Wonderful.

• 12:39Liv Albert?

  I'm, yes, it's, it's very exciting and, and hopefully going to be a, a good representation for kids. But one of the things I, you know, find over and over again is this, like the, the real emphasis that the Odyssey has on these women, and yet at the same time, you know, I, I think the Odyssey is a good example of women being actually quite present compared to so many other things from the ancient world. And yet still, we have these kind of mostly silent women or, you know, sorry, now I'm just rambling because I'm just so excited, but the, they, they're always weaving too. And so while we don't necessarily get much of like these interior lives, almost every woman we see in the Odyssey is weaving. And I think that,

• 13:21Liv Albert?

  I mean, that just sort of, again, I'm just, yeah, take it away from my rambles.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  No, no, no, this is, this is perfect because I'm, now I can continue with, with my rambling, but, uh, I I I mean, it's it's not just that they're weaving, but they're also singing. And we have, like, in two moments, we have the representation of Calypso in Book Five. And then we also have, of course, Cersei, two kind of, uh, you know, divine figures. And for both of them, we have the exact same line introducing their presence in the Odyssey that she was weaving with a beau and singing with a beautiful voice.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And of course, we don't have any uh, any remains of what they were weaving. I mean, I just loved that Emily Hauser on your episodes uh, gave all that. Uh, I mean, it was a new angle that I had never thought of before. Uh, that, you know, what if, you know, maybe Calypso was was weaving the sails for for Odysseus? And it certainly took a lot of time, you know, to for her to do that. But then we also have Si- uh, we have Cersei, and they're both singing. So it's not just the weaving, that it's also that they're doing something with the singing.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  So, uh, I think what I try to do is to look deeper into what they were singing and how much of this is actually present. And because this is diachronically, like, I mean, uh, I mean, this is the way people do, like, in every culture, not just ancient Greece.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  When there's all this, and I think there's other people who have done incredibly important work, like Professor Tuck, uh, from Massachusetts, you know, that these, and also anthropologically informed, that when you sing to, you're you're not just singing, you know, there there's there isn't just the ritual part, that you're kind of making the work just go faster, but it could also be, give you some kind of indication what kind of pattern you're doing.

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Like, you know, the the rhythm with which you're singing, it also translates into patterns. So it helps memory in so many ways. And that's why, well, it's not just you, you know, or me, who are obsessed with the the weaving, but it's also Homer was obsessed with it. I mean, because Homer is a weaver, a weaver of verses. He, you know, she, he, you know, puts all, they put all, uh. You know, the verses around this sort of weaving metaphor, they're crafting it. Yeah. And the same with words. I mean, they can be crafted and just like Penelope is weaving, it can be dissolved. So there's, I mean, such a rich sort of activity, such a rich metaphor, but it's also such a rich thing to do.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Because it it really informs of how and what you're going to portray. Very much like when you're writing, I'm sure you're, you know, you're.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Your children's, you know, a beautiful book, you know, it's it's going in its ways. And after a point, it guides you and has its rhythm. And there's times you go faster, at times you go slower. Some verses and likewise some lines or some, you know, anything you do, some parts of it can be harder. That we can't have the same pace in our work. You know, we're not, we're not robots. You know, humans have never been and will never be a robot. So there's a pace to that. So the singing kind of is part of this pacing. And I think Homer is deeply, deeply aware of that, and that's why he stages it.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  And another thing that I kept sort of insisting in my earlier work. And it was kind of a revelation to me. If you look at both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Every time, but every time that we have a woman, a female character speaking. There's reference to some kind of work that she's been doing before. Yes, that's. I wasn't, I was, at first I thought, oh, it can be true. I can't do this. I mean, and and and when I went again and again and again, when you look at how sort of speech is created. Well, then there's some kind of reference to things that, and and this is true for uh for mortal characters.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  I think divine beings are a different, divine characters are a different story, but for mortal characters, it's kind of always the case. But very interestingly, it's, it's not just for elite characters, not just for the heroines, but it's also for people who, um, uh, I mean, who work at the palace like slaves even. And my favorite example, to go a little bit away from weaving of that, is in Odyssey twenty, when we have a sl- a slave old woman. Hmm. Who's, uh, fed up with the suitors. I mean, can you imagine? These, these women, you know, they had to, I mean, this is an older woman, she had to serve,

• 18:40Speaker 02

  witness the whole sort of corruption situation going on from, from her perspective and, I mean, who knows, you know, the kind of abuse these, you know, they had to work like constantly to feed them, to provide for them, to, you know. So this woman is grinding. Hmm. And, uh, and grinding is another sort of very special metaphor, uh, and also very, very important work, because you know, you need your bread, first of all, right? So she's, and while she's, she's doing her work, she's writing, she's uttering a prayer. And this prayer is essentially a curse, a curse for the suitors.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  It's like, maybe this be their last day, Zeus father. And the Odyssey records that. Hmm. This is not Penelope, this is not Helen, this is not like an elite woman, but her voice is recorded. And of course, once again, it is precipit- you know, before that, it is, it's staged. I mean, performers are staged and she's staged as a working woman. So there's something in there, I mean, I didn't go too much the sort of feminist route, because I, it felt at the time it was obvious or self-evident, but maybe now it's, it's not as obvious and we need to stress it again, but there is an empowerment mechanism that comes out of, you know, your work, gets back into your identity and that makes, that, you

• 20:10Speaker 02

  know, when you're doing something, well, that gives you power to actually.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Utter some some words of authority. So interestingly also that there is a the word myth. And this is a word that and this is what Richard Martin's wonderful work has shown. Uh, it's not just myth, but it's, you know, it's an utterance, something you say with authority.

• 20:38Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  And authority is given not just to to heroes and heroines, but also to old slave women. Like this unnamed slave woman in the palace of Odysseus.

• 20:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that scene is so impactful, uh, having very recently read it a number of times. And I I did also, I I noticed Emily Wilson brings that up in her translation, both in the introduction and in the notes. And really goes into that. And it was really, yeah, a very interesting piece to have kind of really stand out. When I was rereading it this time, because it is such an impactful scene when this woman is grinding that wheat. And then, yeah, saying these, you know, making this sort of curse about Odysseus. And meanwhile, he's overhearing it and it's all, it's really, you know, amps up the the drama in that scene in this way. That is so impactful because she is this unnamed slave woman. And and that's, you know, we have named slave women who could be involved too.

• 21:37Liv Albert?

  But she's very specifically just like one that he overhears. It's so interesting that.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, I mean, uh, he overhears, he he rejoices, you know, he's happy to, because obviously. But but also there's a, there's also an interesting reference that her, what he overheard to him was a kleidoni. I mean, it was a kind of a, I call it a prophetic, uh, sort of utterance. Uh, it had, it had a very special ritual power. So this ritual power that comes out of of female work is also embraced by Homer. Um, and in in different parts of of the of the Homeric sort of corpus.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  But, um, and not only in Homer, I mean, we see sort of references to grinding in, you know, in in the lyric. Called in the carmina popularia, you know, it's like, there's, there's, um.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  There's even in the magical papyri. And so I tried to kind of put all these different disparate sort of pieces of evidence. And of course, there's maybe centuries apart, but just the resonance is so similar. And the the fact that, you know, what you say can become, you know, a prayer becomes a curse. Curse can be a prophecy for somebody else. It also shows how speech itself is so susceptible to transformation, because it's, you know, you you can you can read it in so many nuances.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And I think our work as scholars or creative writers is precisely that, to bring all this nuance that is that is really enriching our human world.

• 23:28Liv Albert?

  Oh, there's just, it it it's so, I just, I always wish we had more answers about women, I guess. I'm trying to think of like, what I want to pick your brain on, but I also just always rely on like, oh, there's there's just so little like, direct evidence, I guess. But mostly, I'm just curious, this is sort of going beyond the the singing aspect. Do you do you know of of references that we might have to like, any kind of specific weaving? Like, I'm I'm curious if we really ever have any kind of evidence of what these women might have been creating more, like, obviously, we know broadly, you know, they that's why people were wearing clothes and all of that.

• 24:08Liv Albert?

  But do we, I would just, you know, I think of like, Arachne's tapestry in in Ovid's Metamorphoses. And I I just have such a deep desire for like, any kind of specifics about what real women might have been creating in their weaving. Do you do we know?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Right, right. We again, we have very scanty references and they, of course, in poetry, they tend to be mythologized. But they're very indicative. I mean, our best, I guess my starting point would be the famous scene of Iliad three, where we have Helen weaving, and this is not the time when she's talking, not yet, she will talk eventually, but.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Helen is inside the Trojan Palace. And um there and you know what she's doing there, she's she's weaving a big tableau. And it's it's um a great purple web of double fold. On which she was embroidering, and the text is very specific, she was embroidering. The battles of the house taming Trojans and the bronze clad kids. So she's weaving a huge tapestry, in other words. Mm hmm. Of what of the war that is going outside the walls of Troy.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  And I mean, the these lines are a kind of so interesting to me because first of all, um. She's witnessing the war, so she's recording it. Mm hmm. So I I I mean, this is, of course, again, it's it's obviously mythologized, it's obviously crystallized. Uh but my question to to this would be, if you were a painter. What would you choose to to to to depict in in your painting? And this is how Helen functions, she's like a painter of of the uh uh of what is happening, she's recording.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Uh what is happening, but she's recording that through through her weaving, so so. So that gives us a little bit of a glimpse that is very possible that what they were experiencing, I mean, uh of course, this is Helen. Um you know, they're they're putting it out there, so they're they're creating a a mythical sort of scene. But the other thing that is, it's the question of time that we touched upon a bit earlier. I mean, the war was going on for ten years. She's creating the instant that everybody will see. That's it.

• 26:57Speaker 02

  And I'm I'm actually very interested about the fact that, you know, the it's the war between the Trojans and the Achaemenids. The Trojans are are sort of mentioned first. I don't know what if that means anything, and I never wrote about it, but but it kind of she it is she identifying as a Trojan. I mean, she's in the middle. She's a kind of a liminal figure to begin with. But she chooses to to give, I mean, what people will remember is not the ten year war, but it will remember, you know, the tableau that she is creating, the tapestry that she's creating. And if you think like, we have a moment of how museums are made.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  I mean, you go to a museum today and you see from different eras, you know, uh, just paintings, sort of trying to portray certain moments of glory or things that they want to memorialize. And that's exactly how Helen is behaving in the Iliad. She's memorializing. At something that she has essentially started, um, even though unconsciously. She's been part of this war, so she's portraying that. So that's my first answer to your question. But I think we can look for more clues in archaeology. I mean, there's this beautiful, beautiful painting of

• 28:24Speaker 02

  it's a QZ, um, it's it's a scifos. Uh, like a, you know, a smaller sort of cup-like uh vase. And we have Telemachus and Penelope and uh Penelope.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  It's very interesting because Penelope is always like weaving and unweaving, so we have this half thing and it's griffons, right? Yeah. So we have this mythical kind of creature that she's weaving. So, I mean, this is, if I remember correctly, a fourth century sort of vase, it's a red figure vase. So it gives us a very good glimpse of what could possibly be on an actual woven tableau. Yeah. And I think vases, ancient vases, should give us more, a better understanding. Because what went on for the sort of more public, uh, sort of, uh,

• 29:22Speaker 02

  you know, ornamental, sort of what went on in these vases, it does relate to what was going on on the weaving. And then, of course, there's all, there's, we have other references, like, um, there's this beautiful work with Andromache, okay, I have to use at some point your name there, uh, that she was embroiding like throne and there's, I mean, I'm not going to get into the scholarly debates about this word, but you know, it could be like a rosette, could be like a flowers, you know, sort of flowery motifs. And flowery motifs tend to be more associated with like weddings or, you know, uh, the, the,

• 30:03Speaker 02

  I mean, again, there's the ritual aspect. If you're weaving, uh, for a ritual sort of purpose, like, for example, I mean, Penelope claimed that she was weaving the shroud for her, for her father-in-law. I mean, what this, how, what the, would this shroud look like? Would it have any patterns? I mean, would it be like a blank sort of, uh, I don't know, a certain color or something? It's, we, we can't tell. Or would it have some kind of, I mean, flowers or something, you know, motifs that kind of point to, to, uh, to the underworld in a way, if it is a shroud. I mean, I would think, you know, as we know homework to do,

• 30:46Speaker 02

  um, you're creating something beautiful. So it would have to be a work of art. And in her case, it had to be. Complex, you know, or complicated in a way. So I mean, both complex, but also complicated in how, because it's, it's part of the whole, I mean, it's for a very complicated man after all, or the father of the very complicated man in this case, to use again Emily Wilson's beautiful translation.

• 31:14Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  So, and she, and she's also using this as a time device, sort of, she's using this as her way to, to delay, you know, things that she doesn't want to happen. So it's, it's, it's, I mean, time is also an interesting, I mean, weaving plays with time.

• 31:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and if you think to, because this is exactly what I want to know is, is like, what patterns, what visuals, because it's so clear that we, that there is this, this ability or this drive to create these, like you're saying, like really complex and complicated and just these beautiful pieces.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:49Liv Albert?

  I'm just like, oh, I want to know the details, especially given we have that, that, you know, Helen making something with, we have some detail there, or, you know, I think about the alternative, which is like, when Hephaestus forges a shield, we're going to get all of the details humanly possible.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 32:07Liv Albert?

  They're usually not, you know, actually possible to be on one piece of armor, you know, necessarily, but we don't have these details about women.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  They could be on a tableau, on a weave, on a woven tableau, right?

• 32:17Liv Albert?

  Exactly. Yeah. Like I think so much of, of what we are told is in this, this armor, you know, specifically in the, in the Iliad, but like elsewhere as well, but yeah, could very easily be on a tapestry way more easily than it could be on a shield.

• 32:44Liv Albert?

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  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 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. Like they have really great things that you can wear with 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,

• 33:42Liv Albert?

  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? 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.

• 34:22Liv Albert?

  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.

• 34:36Speaker 01

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• 35:24Speaker 02

  Right, right. I have another theory, actually, and it's not a theory that I put in, in, in the book that were. But it's very much in my mind. I mean, if you think of the Homeric sort of verses, they're so ornamented. They're so beautiful. And we have all these similes and metaphors.

• 35:47Liv Albert?

  So many.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Too many. And they're actually difficult to understand. Like, if you, if you're a child sort of learning this, it's very difficult to understand.

• 35:57Liv Albert?

  I'm just trying to put some into the kids' book because they're so iconic, but while making them understandable. I know, yeah.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  That actually, I, I live, you said the right word, iconic.

• 36:07Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  That's exactly what's happening.

• 36:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  I think, I really think that a lot of the similes really give us glimpses into precisely the iconic world that actually people could see around them, that, you know, and maybe as weaving patterns. So when you have, you know, someone's like a lion, where do you see the lions? Okay, okay, we have lions in certain vases, but we also have lions in, you know, the sort of the weaving patterns, or like a bird. I mean, I explored this kind of theory of mine a little bit more in my next, my other book on the wedding songs.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  But it's, it's very interesting that a lot of the sort of wedding imagery, you know, may have sort of references to like birds or ships or, you know, sort of things that kind of might be symbolic, like birds fly, you know, ships leave. So there's all these departure points. So if you go, say, to the Benaki Museum, one of my favorite museums in Athens, which has a lot of like, you know, modern Greek sort of.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Tapestries, embroideries, and you look at sort of the wed, like nineteenth century or eighteenth to nineteenth century sort of weddings, sort of paraphernalia. Like a pillow, you know, like a wedding pillow, what would you do? So you see a lot of these patterns. So a lot of like ships, birds, flowers. I mean, think of like the Homeric hymn to Demeter when Persephone um is abducted, we have that famous scene. What was she doing at the moment when Hades snatched her?

• 38:07Speaker 02

  She was plucking flowers. So you have the flower. And then when she narrates, you know, what happened to her, to her mother, she gives a list of flowers. So I'm thinking, I'm actually thinking, and in fact, I'm working on that right now for my next project. These flowers could be patterns, you know, could be parts of, you know, weaving sort of patterns, or could be parts of, they could be, as you said, iconic, they would be like little icons, they would be maybe on pillows, maybe on her her beddings, you know, on on actual people's beddings. So there is a reason why Echo American or Homer, you know, makes reference to these sort of

• 38:53Speaker 02

  these particular um things. So it's not just the plants, but it's really, you know, these would be part of things that people actually use. So can we prove it with like a hundred percent certainty? Well, unfortunately, we can go back, you know, you know, to so many centuries. We have Byzantine material, but don't have ancient Greek per se. But I think there's a

• 39:23Speaker 02

  I think it's it's a safe speculation in my view to to think that these were the things that they were actually weaving.

• 39:33Liv Albert?

  Well, and it, I mean, it makes sense, too, because if you think about the pottery that we have that survives, right? It's they loved a pattern, a meander, all of the criteria that like appear on all of these pieces, you know, like there's such specific, I mean, I have a number, we can't tell right now, I have a number of very iconic Greek patterns and things tattooed all over me because they are like particularly from pottery and things, they become this like very iconic imagery. So it only makes sense that the the weaving patterns would would have the same or their own ideas. One thing, though.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Or ivy, you know?

• 40:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  All of those different kind of plants.

• 40:16Liv Albert?

  Exactly.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Sometimes, sometimes vases are framed, they're like, oops, here it is. And then you have little ivy, little sort of leaves, you know, all kinds of ways that that image is framed. And sometimes it is an image that, I mean, relates, like you have a Dionysus and of course you got all the the ivy around him or grape leaves or, you know, the things that relate to the story, so.

• 40:43Liv Albert?

  Well, and if now I'm thinking about like Apulian vases and like, oh, I wonder if women over there tended, you know, towards more intricate, you know, embroidery and things, too, to kind of go along with how intricately painted some of those pieces were, you know, i- in in Italy or, you know, it's it's interesting to imagine how how many opportunities they had for for this type of like, yeah, for creating these patterns or what might have been super common or, but then I'm sorry, now I I've gone back to the Penelope because, you know, we were talking about how time comes in with weaving and and how she was having to, you know, continually take it apart.

• 41:28Liv Albert?

  And it makes me think like, well, what what kind of pattern could you create that could be taken apart without them noticing? You know, like it would have to be

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:40Liv Albert?

  some kind of more amorphous thing, otherwise they would have been able to tell that she was like undoing it, you know? And now, now I could think of that forever, but it had to have been something where it wouldn't be noticeable. Anyway.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you would think that otherwise it would have left its mark.

• 41:56Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Somebody would have said like, oh, didn't you finish those Griffins already? Why are they now half done, you know?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Like, or there's no flour in there, or there's no, but, but it seems like a complete, well, first of all, to unweave is very easy. You just take it apart, you just take the, the thread and then, and then you, it dissolves really, so. So, uh, e- e- even if it was like a plain cloth, just like a certain color, you know, the thread and, and even that, you know, it wouldn't exist in, in its new form, so, so you, we, we, we can't know. Uh.

• 42:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  So maybe that vase, you know, that shows us this little, you know, mythical creature that she would weave, it's, it's also trying to fill in that blank and that is very important, yeah.

• 42:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. And I, I, I, as soon as you said that, that skifos, I could picture it exactly because it's come up a lot in my research for the book and it is such a beautiful example of, I mean, just even a woman standing at a loom, you know?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 43:02Liv Albert?

  That's so rare to show the detail.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  And it, it actually reflects that line because at some point Telemachus was so eager to start his own journey and really the first four books of the Odysseus about him.

• 43:16Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  I mean, he go- goes and talks to his mother in such an authoritative way. He's kind of a mini Odysseus is like, mother, you know, you, you don't care about these things, let, let us. So she, he creates this, you stay inside and, and tend to your works, tend to your women's works. So he's, he's being this little young man who tells suddenly his mother what to do. It's all, I mean, I have to say, I'm, it's kind of annoying. And these are the exact same lines that Homer uses in Iliad, in Iliad six, when Hector talks to Andromache.

• 43:53Liv Albert?

  Really?

• 43:53Speaker 02

  It's like you go and, you know, inside and to, to, to your works. So it's, we have this kind of synergy there, you know, how a male talks down to a woman and whether it be son to a mother or a husband to wife.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  But we also have this sort of polarity between, you know, the the inside and the outside. Like you stay inside and, you know, we'll take care of the outside things. So it's uh it's fascinating to me, but because this Kifus takes on that particular sort of on these two lines. I mean, Penelope is sitting and Telemachus is standing. So he's got that kind of, you know, taller thing. But what is interesting to me especially is that she's in the middle. So her weaving is interrupted.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  And that interrupted weaving is such a trope in ancient Greek thought. Not only for Penelope, because she, I mean, in her case, this, I mean, in in that instance, I guess Telemachus interrupts her. But that's the the way it is iconized on that vase. She completely undoes her, but but then if you look at sort of inscriptional evidence of women who who died prematurely. Um, it is kind of commemorated as like, oh, your shuttle will not sing again. Your work has have been interrupted. So there's this emphasis on interruption.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  And there and there's this very beautiful, beautiful two-line fragment from Sappho, Sappho one or two, where we have presumably a younger figure, maybe a little girl, and and she says, sweet mother, glukia mete, I can no longer weave due to my love for uh for a boy. So again, we have a moment of interruption. So interruption is marked throughout Greek literature from Sappho to inscriptional evidence. And I think it has a kind of haunting element.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  So meaning that i- if something is interrupted, it will either be interrupted forever through death. And this is what the inscriptions tell us, or you're meant to return to that. So an interrupted thing is not something, you know, you can just, something is meant to be finished. So there's a ritual element to that.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like interrupted task, interrupted life at the same time.

• 46:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  I mean, Penelope is in, excuse me, Persephone, I was thinking, I mean, Penelope, of course, but Persephone is also interrupted, like, her life is interrupted. So there's, there's something about the poetics of interruption, or the myth of interruption, and it's a, it's a registered moment, and this is either death, or wedding, or both, like Persephone does, kind of in between the two.

• 47:15Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. I, I had to write down that, the inscription about the shuttle not singing anymore, too, because that's just, wow.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's, there's quite a bit, I've actually controlled in, in several inscriptions.

• 47:31Liv Albert?

  Oh, it's beautiful and sad, and it's interesting, just because it gets, you know, I guess, I don't, I'm not as good at remembering each distinct piece of the, you know, loom weaving process, but shuttles are some of the things that do survive for us, right?

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 47:49Liv Albert?

  And shuttles and loom weights tend to be all we have, yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:52Liv Albert?

  So how beautiful that, that it is like one of these very few elements that does survive today, you know, that, that is memorialized in that way, it's just, it's.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  Right, and they chose to memorialize, you know, an actual woman's sort of presence on earth by referring to, to what she did, and, and what she did was interrupted. So it's, it's, it's, it's deeply sad, it's also deeply moving.

• 48:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  But it's also, it's a kind of interesting that what she, let's say, the, the, I mean, the weaving may, may not have survived in all those centuries, unlike, let's say, vases or architecture or other things, but. But in a period of, you know, maybe even a couple or even more centuries, they do survive. I mean, as I said in the very beginning, I have my grandmother's sort of handiwork at my home, so. And I'll pass it to my kids, you know, so, so this is very precious to me. I mean, it's kind of. Every time, you know, I'm in California and every time there's, of course, we have the, um.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  I mean, with all this climate change and all the, all the sort of fires around us. I mean, they're, they're a bitter reality. And there was one time that we were worried about that we had to be evacuated. So I have, I actually have my bags and in them I have the things. And I have like embroideries and, and, and these are not things that I may have out on a day to day basis. My husband was kind of joking like, is that what you wanna take with you? I'm like, this is the thing that is irreplaceable, you know, if, if our fire, if there's fire here, you know, so. So it's, there's something that, there's a, there's a race with time.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  And even if we are not lucky to have, you know. Weavings from the fifth century BCE, they do survive our lifetime. Mm hmm. Yeah, and can be passed down. And can be passed on and can be cherished. They become, in a way, museum pieces, you know, so. So it's, it, it is also entangled with the question of memory. Yeah. And what you pass, and a memory in a very direct way, not memory like from a very distant past, but. A past that is very dear to you or has shaped you for whatever reason, so. So it's, it's very direct. Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  And this is, I think, deeply also involved with, with what women do. I mean, they. I mean, it's things that they do with their hands and they, you know, just like, just like with child care, just with. Everything, all the housework, everything is very direct. It has an immediate effect on people's lives. Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 50:54Liv Albert?

  Okay, I would love, there's, there's so many things. Um, I, I'm really, really interested in how weaving was like a, a vocation for women, you know? And I think, um, the, the memorials, the things like that are, are a really good indicator for that. Um, and just the ways that, that, that women had like a, a purpose outside of bearing babies is the thing that interests me most. You know, like I,

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:24Liv Albert?

  And it's, it's one of those things that again, because of, you know, I mean, countless reasons, how things survive generally the patriarchy. We have this idea that women just raised kids and that's it, you know?

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 51:37Liv Albert?

  And I think just what little I've been able to learn about, about weaving as this, this vocation really, or just like as the, the, the pride that, that women clearly took in it, or many clearly took in it. I'm just so, I mean, like I'm moved by that idea, but I'm also just so obsessed with learning more. And I'm imagining again, that so much of this is stuff we have to like really pick apart because of everything. But do we have examples kind of in that, that vein of, of the spindle? Um, I'm, I'm keep saying memorial and I know that's not the right word, but do we have anything kind of like that?

• 52:16Liv Albert?

  You know, beyond, um, I, I guess, or just more like that, that really shows that women were having this as like a, a vocation, as like a, a career, like a life's work more than just, you know, they were making the fabric for clothes or anything? Like, do we have much of that that survives?

• 52:35Speaker 02

  We do. And again, it's candy references here and there, but, uh, but always very, very, uh, telling.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  I mean, there are inscriptions who that discuss kind of, uh, as I said, women's weaving and even kind of record what they what they did uh as sort of uh weavers or, I mean, among other professions, but but um I'll go back to to the mythologized version because I think it really is very, very important that and I I think I'll I'll use the Odyssey example. So when Odysseus meets Nozika, and we can talk more about that episode because it's so rich.

• 53:21Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Um, when he, I mean, he has arrived in uh at the island of the Phaeacians, he's completely naked, he has nothing, so basically Nozika will have to to clothe him, to present him, you know, the the whole uh sort of thing there unfolds so beautifully. Yeah, exactly.

• 53:43Liv Albert?

  Kind of weird.

• 53:43Speaker 02

  She has to tell him to to um guide him into the palace of her mother and father. She gives him very good instructions of how to do that. She tells him, my favorite moment is that she's worried about the Phaeacians gossip, and she tells him, oh, and you know, don't be too near me, you know, we have to have certain distance because, you know, what if they start saying, who is this stranger that she brings to that? So there's all these amazing anthropology of a small town unfolding, you know, she's very aware of that, she's

• 54:18Speaker 02

  very astute. But um she uh makes him wear things that her mother, the queen, did. And when he gets into the palace of the Phaeacians, the number one thing that our text marks is that Arete recognized, that's her key word there, recognized her own weaving on her. So this is a beautiful moment that kind of shows that there is, I mean, Arete is kind of in the background, a weaver with a vocation.

• 55:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  She's not just a queen, but it is this thing that she immediately notices and immediately connects her with him.

• 55:11Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  So i- it's it's just um.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  Fascinating how that that that we have like a social network, like a small social network being sort of formed. And the same thing happens later on when Helen. Uh, also in the Odyssey, when Telemachus visits Helen. She gives him a gift and it is a gift that is specifically marked as a name as so. That's why you rightly use the word memorial, they are kind of a. A little memory of my hands, like a morabilia, let's say, of my hands. And she tells him, this is going to be for your wedding, but in the meantime, give it to your mother.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  So she creates, again, we have this social network of weavers, we, I mean, Penelope, we know she's a weaver, but now. Helen presents herself as a weaver, again, with a distinction, with a vocation, and she connects herself with the famous other weaver. So there's a lot, of course, that is happening because of that. But it's also a wedding gift that she kind of, there's no wedding, I mean, he's not getting married, but she kind of gives it. To him, but via his mother whom she doesn't know or not at the time. So there's, it's fascinating how it's not just something you do as a vocation. But something that will connect you with others.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  In one way or the other. So there's the connection part that because somebody else is going to wear it. Or have it in their house. So this is so beautifully presented in different parts of Homer.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  That really shows the pride that people took. And in a way, this is almost, I mean, I think of. Um, Helen's gift to Telemachus via Penelope as a diplomatic gift. I mean, this is practices that are going on like today, right? You go from one place to the other, you send a gift or. There's so much, I mean, it's, it's not just the weaving, it's the memory, the memory of her hands, the memory of her presence. But it's also connecting with somebody else. So it is, it is very, very intricate. And it creates an intimate connection. So, so.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  The weaving, I mean, woven things travel. This is actually really important. They have their own journey. And um, I mean Helen does that when she discusses um how she, you know, thinks around her um again, in the Odyssey, were gifts from, you know, from Egypt, from the the wife of of the king there. So there's again a social network of gifts, but these gifts are also very personalized. And they're given from one woman to the other.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  And they they travel huge distances and their tokens and their memorabilia and their stories and so it's all at once. So they've got to be beautiful. They got to be um they they tell their own story. They tell the story of, you know, who made them, how it came to you know, to be in someone else's house, uh, who wears them. And like in Odysseus' case that I started with, Arieti, you know, recognizes it's because she recognized her own weaving on him. She took a pity on him right away. So it it is diplomacy in in very subtle ways.

• 59:04Liv Albert?

  Yeah, what what really stood out to me uh with the the Arieti scene is also that he's instructed so directly to like to address her over the king like that that's what really stood out from Nausicaä to when I was rereading it. It's just this way that she's like, go to see my mother. And so and I hadn't made that same connection with the the clothing too. So I think that really just like adds so much more. It's like You know, she's kind of the one to decide and her seeing you wearing clothes that she made is going to like help that.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:41Liv Albert?

  But also you said some magic words. Um, so I'm, I'm curious. Oh, I, I just realized the pun I made and I didn't even mean to. Um, but now I'm really curious because you know, you mentioned Helen, um, and the gifts and everything and that. The, the gift of the robe is also so impactful because it really, Homer says so clearly that it's like the nicest thing she's ever made. Like it's incredible. But also, like you said, you know, she, she gets all these gifts from people all around and in, in Egypt. And obviously one of the things that. Is so iconic for Helen in the Odyssey is that she's learned pharmacia. And, and you know, that she can like make these potions kind of thing medicinal.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:00:21Liv Albert?

  You know, and obviously so does, um, Circe. I almost said Kierke. It's hard to go.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:29Liv Albert?

  Um, you know, i- it's.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  I do that all the time.

• 1:00:32Liv Albert?

  I bet, yeah. I, I try to, cause I've, I've, the more Greek I learn, the more I want to do it in a Greek accent, but then I confuse listeners. So I try to like weigh it out here and there.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  And a lot of people choose to treat it as Kierke, you know.

• 1:00:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's, yeah, it's, it's a funny, I love knowing kind of both and I'm just, I'm gonna use them all. Um, but obviously, you know, that both of them have that, that skill. And obviously this is also something really connected with women is that. Skill with herbs and medicines and, and things like that. Do you, have, have you? I mean, I'm assuming they would also be singing songs while they do that. But you know, beyond weaving, do you have much in the, the realm of, of women's work in that way too? Of the, the stuff that we sometimes call magic?

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Oh, totally. Yeah. I mean, Helen is literally like a pharmacautria. And if we go later to sort of Hellenistic literature, we go to Theocritus. Again, he portrays in his ideals and his sort of shorter poems. The, uh, again, the, this kind of pharmacautria, the, the, the women who, who make drugs. And of course these are like love potions. And love potions are very.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  You have to, I mean, the way ritual works for the ancient or even contemporary mind is kind of very um interesting because you have to do things the right way. You have to use the right ingredients and you have to utter the right words. So when they're doing their love potions, you know, there's obviously whatever they have to put in it, but you have to tell a certain line. I mean, bring this man to me. And I love it because there's a lot of imperatives, you know, it it shows that they're impatient. So Theocritus portrays that beautifully. It's like, come on.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  And it's like he he talks to, uh, you know, this kind of magical will, you know, he he turns or or she, the the woman who utters, you know, turns that will and, you know, uh, utter. So there's something that you have to do and you have to utter. So it's not just, it's action and word that have to go together, which in a way is very comparable to to the weaving and singing that we started our conversation with. So Helen, to go back to Helen, in her story about how she learned all these things and how she uses her pharmaka and how she's, well, the pharmaka, interestingly, become a story.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  So, I mean, she's, she tells these things, so it's part of her storytelling. And actually, a story can be also a pharmagon, can be a little bit of of a medicine, so to speak, or a drug, it can lull you, it can take you away. Again, this is Homer thinking about Homeric art.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Uh, just with the same thing with weaving. I mean, what you're doing, what we're doing with our creative work. We are trying to to persuade. We're trying to create a new reality. We're trying to to give comfort. You know, there's all these aspects to it, and this is all beautifully recorded. And I think, um, again, magical papyri also take on that. And they also present the same kind of impetus of the human nature to sort of impose and control in a way the materials. And they do that. Um, in order to do that, you have to kind of bring word and deed at the same time. So it really, ancient literature is magic.

• 1:04:32Liv Albert?

  It really is. It really is. Okay, now, now I'm connecting it with, we've, we've talked about Emily Wilson, or not Emily Wilson, Emily Hauser, we've also talked about Emily Wilson, but in this case Emily Hauser, um, and, and her new work Mythica, but I'm curious if you've read, uh, her previous book, How Women Became Poets. Yes, okay, because now all I can think about is, is the ways in which ancient Greek kind of prevented women from being ever on a tier with the poets, right? Without, without any kind of feminine use of that word. And, and even with sapfo, they, you know, kind of gave her a new name because they couldn't kind of conceptualize her in the same realm as, as these male poets.

• 1:05:16Liv Albert?

  And it's just really interesting to hear the ways that farmica is, I mean, particularly when you're, when you're talking about, you know, the words going along with the actions and things. There's so many cases where women are doing things that are objectively similar, you know, to the poets, to the, the singers, um, but we're not. conceptualized in the same way. And I mean, obviously, there's there's so many things going on there, but it's just really interesting to me. And I I I feel like I've also read, and this is where novel research, it might be mixing with my mind. But that, you know, the there that is there an association with the word like singer, which is obviously also poet, like,

• 1:06:01Liv Albert?

  but singers and pharmacopeia, like, and this kind of like magical that or I made it up. But I just think there's like, there's some connection there with with with women singing these kinds of songs related to pharmacopeia or what we're told then, you know, I think of love, love potions or love spells as such a good example of like, the ways men often imagine women, how women spend their time, you know, and it just makes me kind of wonder what else they were kind of singing about. This isn't forming into a real question, but like, is you thought about that connection or like that that lack of the the word for a female poet in any way and like how that kind of works along with with singing with work songs with with all of it?

• 1:06:47Speaker 02

  Right. Well, that's such actually, I've been a beautiful, it really takes me to the sirens.

• 1:06:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it takes me to the sirens and as kind of the earliest of, let's say, female poetic voices that this seeks to control. And again, it is, it's in the realm of the supernatural, so to speak, that, you know, he really seeks to, to, to get the wisdom and then get their poetic sort of power and then not only be a winner, because he, this is the kind of sort of hero he appears to be always, you know, there, his eye is staged very, very

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  effectively throughout the Odyssey, but also through that to to have full control of the the female poetic voice. And it is the same thing in a way that happens even later with, I'll dare say with Plato, if you think of Socrates and Diotima, you have like a female voice as in a way, the inspiration to what is

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  What comes out as philosophical discourse, I mean, and that's. And of course, with Socrates, there's all the midwife imagery. And I mean, he's supposed to be the son of a midwife. He practices midwifery, but a midwife is a kind of an intermediate. Sort of somebody who brings someone to life, right? So he, and and as a philosopher, he does that. So I'm I'm I don't mean to get into the Platonic world now, but it's interesting that. Again, it's female work that conceptualizes. This kind of power that the um. The complete philosophical world will will have.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  It is conceptualized as bringing it from somebody else. You know, it's like bringing a new being. Uh in in into into into the light of the of the world. So if Socrates sort of stages himself as a kind of a midwife. Inspired by a deotmas is the case in Plato's Symposium. Well, this is similar to what, in a way, Odysseus is doing with the sirens. With um really taking control of the narrative. And um, well, as as you said in the beginning, we we don't have really.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  You know, the direct sort of female authored. I mean, we only have fragments, bits and pieces, tiny fragments. But we have enough to know that there was a completely different view. My favorite is sap for steak on the Trojan War. So in her fragment forty four.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  She looks at the time, again to look at time, before the Trojan War. And she looks at the time when Hector and Andromache got married. So we have this beautiful poem in which she portrays the wedding sort of procession of how Hector led Andromache to Troy. So this is, it's a very different choice, very different to anything else that survives because it looks before the Trojan War. It looks at a time when this couple was happy. It looks at a time when the Trojan community came all together in, you know,

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  to celebrate. So it looks at celebration, very different compared to what we have later on in the Iliad. But it's still very Iliadic.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

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• 1:12:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah, forty-four.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Sophos is playing, Sophos is playing with that, but it's a very, very good. So it's the, the feminine point of view must have been very, very different compared to what God, let's say, in especially the epic narrative. So my first goal when I started The Voices at Work, and I think I continued very much on this with my wedding book, and I'll continue that, is really to see how it is that these lost genres actually shaped the epic as we have it and the lyric as we have it.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  So I'll give just two very, very quick examples. When Odysseus meets Nozika and we have all this masterminding of Athena and she says, she kind of puts in her, Athena puts in, in her mind, in Nozika's mind, that she needs to go out and, and Nozika behaves like a little, a young girl, you know, she's like, daddy, she goes to the king, can I please get a wagon? Ah, you know, because the clothes that we have in the palace are really dirty and they need to be washed and, you know, I need to go out to the river and, you know, she goes

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  to the seashore with her maids and so she prepares all that and the stage is set for Odysseus. So these are moments when we have female action and I, I love it with Nozika because we have girl action. It's, I mean, even the text kind of registered that we, she's not talking to her father in a solemn way, she calls him daddy. Papa, please, Papa, can you please give me the wagon? So we have all this little sort of girl talk, you know, with her father, which is kind of fascinating. And then, and then when the, they wash the clothes, I mean, you cannot, of course, bring back to the palace wet clothes, they need to dry.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  So we have a beautiful scene, an anthropologist scene in a way, kind of unfolding in front of our eyes. We have the women. Kind of waiting for the clothes to to dry and that can take, well, at least a day or more. Especially if you think, you know, maybe these were like woolen clothes, that would take more time. So what do you do all this time when, you know, this is a time without washers and dryers, right? So they play and they play and they sing. And I tried to look into that scene because this is a scene where Homer genuinely gives us

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  women and how they pass their time and what they did for a good part of their time. So washing the clothes is might seem a little kind of, I mean, like dry activity, but well, it's not. You know, you, it's something that people did for, and it was communal, it was very different. I mean, I was actually lucky because I remember from my childhood that when women had to, in the village, when they had to uh clean their sort of winter clothes, the heavy clothes, they would go out to the river and, you know, they would, of course, beat them and, you know, it's it's to get all the dirt out.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  And then they, you let them dry and this is like a three day celebration. Three day gossip. It gives you really time, you know, it's just they're bu- just by themselves. They don't have husbands, they don't have kids, or if they have kids, they're just running around. But it's really an anthropology that the introduction of washer and dryer, you know, made us lose. Yeah. So it was a communal act. It wasn't like a solitary thing, like I do my laundry. Yeah. At home, very, very different. Yeah. So Homer gives us glimpses of social sort of gatherings

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  um under the pretext of war, of of work, but in a very, very intricate way. So this is like one of my um favorite examples. Now I forgot what my other example was that I was gonna mention, but. Oh, I, I remember.

• 1:16:28Liv Albert?

  Oh, great. Please, please.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  Okay, so the other, the other example that will take me a little bit back to, to weaving is again moment where we have the sort of female action kind of really registered is children's songs.

• 1:16:43Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  We have a very, very beautiful song, a, a, again, girl's song. So I'm thinking of Nozika.

• 1:16:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  Like the mythologized version that I'm then I'm thinking of, and this comes from many, many centuries later, from an author called Paul Lukes, who wrote this kind of very weird dictionary. And um, in this dictionary, he talks about games, ancient games, and there is one particular game that he talks about, and this is the torti tortis. It's like torti, and this is a girl's game, and he gives it to us fully. So he gives it to us a, and we have the lyrics. So we, and, and the lyrics is like, torti tortis, what are you doing? I am weaving Malaysian uh thread.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  So, I mean, and it is a game, you know, that it's, it's a girl's game. He clearly tells us, you know, the girls go around, they um, one is the tortis and then, you know, goes over, jumps over the other. So uh it's, it's, it's again, this beautiful kind of tag game. And, you know, we can think of many parallels, I guess, that we grew up with.

• 1:17:58Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  But again, this little tag game refers to weaving. So this is now very different because we have like a young girls' game, kind of echoing the sort of elite sort of activity, the elite genre of, you know, the, the weaving songs, maybe somehow they got reduced into making this, you know, little uh tag sort of game.

• 1:18:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah. This is, this is just me with my weird tiny bit of modern Greek, but I, and ancient, I think, but uh tortis is helona, right?

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Helona, yeah. And it, and it tells, and the song is heli helone.

• 1:18:40Liv Albert?

  I thought I was picking, or I was like guessing.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  What are you doing?

• 1:18:45Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, that's really nice. Yeah, that's, that's so interesting.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Very playful.

• 1:18:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  It could, it could, it could have even, I mean, I'm not sure, but it could even refer to this heli. I mean, if you think of like, how would they say kachmi in ancient Greek, they would probably use like hele, like heleme, like kachmi, kachmi. So maybe that also refers to the, just as we were saying earlier, it's singing and doing at the same time. So this heli helone kind of refers also to the kachmi, kachmi, it's a kind of a kachmi gate and they're running around. Yeah. It's kind of like the um, London Bridge is falling down, or you know, all of these children's songs that um, you know, we may, I mean, we children still sing presumably. Yeah. So.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  So it, it, it, the, the connections are so many. I mean, you got like adult genres, adult activities, translated into sort of children's activities and it's part of these innocent kind of uh innocuous, I guess, kind of learning process. And we're just lucky to have a glimpse of that. And very interestingly, and that's, that's actually the second example. So it's, I'm gonna make it my third almost, or two, part two B, I guess. There is another poetess, Irina, who, and Irina wrote a dactylic hexameter.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  And it must have been longer, but we have about three hundred verses. So it must have been uh about, no, we don't have three hundred, it must have been a three hundred verses and um the title is this stuff. So again, a reference to weaving. Yeah. It, it's, it's a very, I mean, it's in a fragmentary condition and we, we don't know um exactly what was going on, but it's a dialogue between two girls. Some scholars believe that, you know, it's a lament for a woman who died. Other scholars, myself included, believe that's more kind of a wedding lament or a wedding song kind of it. But it's definitely a departure song. But anyway, we have a little bit like sapfo, where she remembers, like, oh, remember how we used to play.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  And she says, remember how we used to play. We used to play with our dolls. We used to play with. Um, uh, we we used to play with the tortoise. So she refers to the tortoise game.

• 1:21:23Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  And we have that presumably arena is say fourth, third century B C and we have it from like centuries later. So it's kind of like a putting putting a puzzle together of different sources, you know. That have the exact same sort of um, sort of reference. And again, this is women's voices, like. As authentic as we can have them. I mean, the nozika part is staged within Homer, but I think it really. Uh, this kind of daddy, daddy, you know, it really keeps like the authentic element. Of how a girl, you know, it it really uh staged very beautiful, but then we go into the girls.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  Sort of little tag game and arena before that. So we have like. I mean, through centuries, we have sources that can talk to each other in a way.

• 1:22:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I'm really obsessed with all of this now. I've been churning down all my crazy person notes to look up later. I I've read some arena and I but I now I need to go find that one. Um, but I just, this is sort of going back to to a bit earlier, but sort of just. Pulls everything together, but just speaking of the mythologizing of it all, you know. I just think this uh this came out of my conversation ages ago now with with Emily Hauser, but I. I think about the way the the muses are. Serve so many similar purposes mythologically where, you know, they are the inspiration behind a poet, but.

• 1:23:06Liv Albert?

  They, as the women are meant to be silent, they're meant to influence the man, but not.

• 1:23:15Liv Albert?

  Do the same thing that he does, you know? And it's just, it's, it's interesting to kind of, I mean, they're, they're all such similar kind of roles and characters in that way, where you can kind of see it in the earliest, you know, that we have mythos of this idea that the women are behind the scenes, you know?

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:23:37Liv Albert?

  And I think it even connects down to something as, as unintentional almost, as, as just the way that women's work does biodegrade, you know, in the time. And just these ways where they're just sort of unseen and behind the scenes. And I don't know, I mean, that, that's, it just, I think, links up to so many different characters and, and examples. But I'm simultaneously so glad to hear that we have these examples of, I mean, the tortoise song is fricking adorable. And I'm going to think about that for a long time. But also, I mean, the, the, the fragmentary work that we do have of women, the fact that we can get these kinds of connections, that we can see that level of sort of reality,

• 1:24:21Liv Albert?

  or just real life, is, it's just so meaningful. I wish we had so much more of it, but it is so, it's so wonderful to, to have these glimpses of just like real people, like specifically real women, but so much so real people. And I mean, even if it is just in the form of this staged Nausicaä and, and, you know, what she's doing. But like you said, like, I mean, it is staged, but the Odyssey, more than I think anything else that survives, does contain so many little moments where you can see the real world, you know, through these stories in ways that like the Iliad doesn't really have the chance in the same way.

• 1:25:03Liv Albert?

  Like, I'm sure there are those moments, but they're so hinged around this war and everything that, you know, that, that impacts what we see, whereas in the Odyssey, we get, we get some glimpses of real women and the fact that we can then kind of connect them down the line to, to the very real actions of real women, just.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  Right, right. Well, I'm so glad you mentioned the muses because I'm think, I mean, they perplex me a lot. Um, and I'm thinking about them a lot now for my next book project.

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  I'm really interested in how the muses um function as a chorus. They're like the nine muses, the nine daughters of Nemosini. And of course, that they are the daughters of memory is very meaningful. Mm hmm. But how they're also function as individuals. And you've got like Sing to Me or Muse, you know. So we have, you know, and the epic performer addressing Calliope presumably. They also have their own stories, they have their own lives, they have children.

• 1:26:16Speaker 02

  I mean, uh, Linus, uh, and I talk about Linus in My Voices at Work. May have been in one of the versions, uh, the son of Muse. Hmm. Um, again, so the, a- and Linus is also the, it's, it's kind of a, it's a song of grape harvesting. So it's, it's, it's these, uh, this we, very, very interesting kind of genres of a type of song, but also heroes at the same time. And there's, uh, usually with some kind of sad stories, uh, like a typically somebody who died prematurely, but that also reflects back on grape harvesting. Hmm. And of course, that's when you harvest, that's what you do.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  You, you take, you know, something out of life in order to preserve life, you know. So there's all kinds of, uh, interesting associations that have gone through the centuries. So the muses are just everywhere. They're in like the famous mythology, they're behind, they, they are, they have a story of their own, but they are also very present in stories that are far lesser known. Hmm. And are more directly, let's say, to sort of relevant to people's lives. So we, we have a reference to Linus, like the song Linus, on the, the artifact that you mentioned beautifully earlier, the Shield of Achilles. Hmm.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  There is there, you know, a young boy singing the Linus with his lyre. Hmm. And that young boy, to my mind, is a little bit like, uh, kind of an Achilles figure, who also sings with his formings at another moment in the Iliad. So there's interesting mirroring going on. But again, we have the reference to Linus, just like that. It's kind of like a song, a grape harvesting song. It is a grape harvesting scene and it's a scene, it's a very joyful scene on the shield of Achilles. And Hefystus, you know, chooses to portray that very beautiful scene on this uh sort of uh w- wild sort of

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  shield that goes to to depict everything, from the universe, from the sky, from the stars, from uh cities of you know, war, wedding scenes, and then also the grape harvesting scene. And of course, we have a little reference to the Linus, L I N O S, song. And Linus has a mythology there and may have been the son of the Muse. So there's, the Muse's have like all these stories that are has sort of hidden through the centuries in or in sources that we, stories that we don't even know about. But there's also a kind of a solemn presence of them in like the epic tradition.

• 1:29:08Speaker 02

  So I think more was going on with the Muse's. I mean, we know there must have been a kind of a cult of the Muse's. Uh they're definitely seen as the creativity. It's also kind of astonishing to me that we don't talk about it more. I mean, there is a muse of astronomy, that we're talking about hard science and you know, as they are kind of crystallized more and more, you know, from the archaic world down to the Hellenistic world, there, I mean, there's definitely a cult of the Muse's, but there's there's a need to talk about, let's say, the stem part in the Muse's, you know, the astronomy part.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  And that takes me back to some of the sort of less discussed, I didn't even discuss that in my early, sort of in my earlier writings, but I often think of, I mean, we were talking about weaving earlier. But to do this weaving, I mean, it really, we have a mathematical mind at work. Mm hmm. I mean, to produce these patterns, I mean, these are elaborate sort of patterns to to do, this is, these are great mathematical minds that showed their artistry and mathematical prowess in a hidden way. Mm hmm.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  So this goes back to our conversation about what is hidden, what is not there. You know, this is not an easy thing to do, and it's no wonder that people who have kind of inclination to sort of math and science, you know, they they be be very good at sort of producing these, you know, sort of crafts and and arts in in in interesting ways. So, um, I'm, I mean, we we don't talk about sort of the technicalities about it, that to produce like even like, you know, the the blouse I'm wearing, you know, of, I mean, my my mother was a seamstress. So very much, and I do think that there is a beautifully mathematical mind in, you know, when you

• 1:31:16Speaker 02

  take a piece of cloth and you have to cut it and then sort of stitch it together. That is, again, mathematics in your hands. Mm hmm. And, you know, we have to have, to economize, you know, or to go to other kinds of work, or just to do your, like, household budget. This is also like budgeting, you know, thi- this involves a lot of economy. I mean, there's a reason we talk about economy in households, but and and women doing all the work there, but we don't talk about it because it kind of escapes our notice. Yeah. That you have accounting, you have, you know, it's like how much, I mean,

• 1:31:58Speaker 02

  you you can't just produce weaving for or embroider, you know, in kind of infinitely. You are bound by your materials, you know, you've got so much thread, it can make so long or so, you know, it it has to be, you have to do a lot of budgeting there. There's a lot of accounting that that goes in there, and we don't talk about it. I mean, I regret to say that I did not talk about it in the book, but now I think it's more in my thinking. Yeah.

• 1:32:31Liv Albert?

  I I've never thought of of that side of it either, but it it's so immediately just, you know, makes me think of all i- i- it all comes down to the same larger issue, right, which is this overall devaluing of what women do.

• 1:32:44Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:32:45Liv Albert?

  Right, yeah, a- and so, yeah, so we don't even conceptualize of the skill that goes in. Meanwhile, it is an incredible skill and like when I was like twelve, I took a sewing class and made a handful of things and that'll enough.

• 1:32:59Speaker 02

  Right, right, right, right, right.

• 1:33:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah, how difficult, how difficult it is and have such like a, you know, a, a, a admiration for the people who can do that stuff. Especially coming up with a pattern, coming up with especially like, yeah, the, the, a pattern to weave into fabric. You're planning so many things ahead and.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it's.

• 1:33:20Speaker 02

  And even if you have the cloth ready and then you have so much cloth. I mean, I remember when I would go to the store and my mother would need something, she said, well, buy like half a meter. I guess I would need it more, but I have to make it work and then you have to put the, you know, the, it's like a puzzle. You have to put it together in a way, but you also have to economize because, you know, otherwise it would cost so much more. So all of that is, is things that are part of daily life that do affect like choices that were made. And it's the same with poetry or it's the same with, you know, how we write books or when, you know, when we do our creative work, you, you work within time parameters, within.

• 1:34:06Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  You have to do some budgeting, it's like which story do I choose to put in, which story do I put out? How, how many similes will I use, uh, how many metaphors, how much of that? There is inherent budgeting, there's inherent mathematical value, you know, behind the processes that I don't think we talk about.

• 1:34:27Liv Albert?

  No.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  So this is the economy, like the economy of ancient world, just as, you know, we have to, we talk about the economy of contemporary world.

• 1:34:37Liv Albert?

  No, I've never thought about it that way, but as soon as you say it, I'm like, oh, gosh, that's all I've been doing with this odyssey. It's like the budgeting out of like.

• 1:34:44Speaker 02

  It is really a kind of, uh, what gets in, what gets out, do I say this first, do I say that later, it's, it's, it's, I mean. It's creative, but it's also from a very practical perspective. For anything to become story. There is, there are practical considerations that are somewhere in the back of our mind and we, we, we don't really voice them enough.

• 1:35:09Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:10Speaker 02

  I'm actually, I'm so excited that I'm having this conversation because it's like, okay, how do I begin my next book? Do I say that with that? So there's all this back and forth in the backs of our mind that, you know, goes into and there's economizing in a way.

• 1:35:26Liv Albert?

  Yes. No, I'm obsessed with this now. It's like, I mean, very specifically because the, the, the Odyssey I'm working on is for like, eight year olds and older. And so, you know, I'm squishing down what I'm trying to make the, basically the entirety of the story of the Odyssey in its original form. I'm trying to squish it down into this tiny word count that, you know, tells the story appropriately without leaving out the important aspects and while making it friendly for kids. And it's, yeah, I've never thought about the math and the economy that's going involved. And it makes me, you know, even more proud of my work. So I appreciate you pointing that out too.

• 1:36:04Speaker 02

  It should, yeah.

• 1:36:05Liv Albert?

  No, it's so interesting. Oh, well, okay. I, I could keep you forever, but I'm going to try to wrap up. I have, I have one question about just continuing back to the muses really quick because I had some, I, I do Q and As with listeners regularly. And somebody recently asked me a question about the muses and I wasn't fully sure how to answer it because they pointed out, very rightly and interestingly, that, you know, we have all these muses for all these forms of creativity. But what we don't have is a muse for like the practical arts, things like weaving for sure, but also even creating pottery and, and,

• 1:36:45Liv Albert?

  um, metallurgy, you know, all of the art that Hephaestus does. Do you have any thoughts about why?

• 1:36:51Speaker 02

  I think of that. That's a great, that's a great question. And I think about it and, you know, like my easy, but not. Satisfying answer is that that ancient Greek thought had a little bit of these. The way uh these crafts were conceptualized as technique. Yeah. And somebody might say, and of course, there's a whole sort of way of looking at this from like. Let's say the Platonic perspective, you know, what is the technique, what what counts as kind of superior and I'm I'm I'm thinking back.

• 1:37:29Speaker 02

  Um, and I'm not satisfied at all by that. I don't think that um we have like a news for weaving. Because I don't think they um.

• 1:37:44Speaker 02

  Be- be- because in a way, um poetry, and I'm thinking back of the term poiesis, you know, uh. I- is doing. Hmm. And weaving is the same thing, it's also doing something. So I think that the muses really look um. Uh, there there's the the the practical uh part is included in there. And the material aspect uh is included in there through these sort of uh. Greater poetic words, but poetic not in a narrow sense, but really in the sense of creativity.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  Sort of more broadly defined. So, yes, we do ascribes of Calliope. As the beautiful with a beautiful voice, I guess, uh Calliope, I mean, and there's of course. Conversations about that, but I think beyond that, I I think poetry is more broadly conceived as something you make. And um if you if we trace how a verb poio to do, to make, is used in Homer, I think. This would give us really interesting results, and I know people have done it, that it's kind of the practicalist part.

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  It's embedded in this sort of grand sort of scheme of of uh sort of. Poetry and beauty, beauty and all of that, that we kind of grew up with.

• 1:39:19Liv Albert?

  No, that makes sense. Yeah, it's and that that certainly makes sense the way it would just sort of in- involve more. And also, you know, it, I mean, it also comes down to, this is something I I tell my listeners unfortunately, all of the time. It also comes down to like what we have and how we can interpret it, right? It's, you know, it's, yeah, there's a, there's a lack of somebody writing out that this muse was associated with this. But if you're going with these bigger ideas and and certainly, I mean, you know, sort of metalwork aside, it makes sense that no one recorded the immediate connections between women's work and the muses and made that direct connection.

• 1:40:00Speaker 02

  But when the poet, when the poet says weave my thought, you know, this already shows that this is how they're conceptualizing.

• 1:40:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, like it's there without somebody overtly defining it. Yeah.

• 1:40:13Speaker 02

  Exactly. And of course, we have the whole sort of conversation of Athena as a weaver and as a patron of the arts in general. And Athena is also an Athena ergane. I mean, the, the names, the different names for, for gods tell a lot. So an Athena ergane, like a worker Athena, really speaks volumes to how the practical part is really embedded in that. And of course, Athena is also connected with metallurgy and shipbuilding and the argo, you know, everything. So the practical part, the is, is really all there.

• 1:40:51Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, I mean, I again, could, could keep asking you questions forever, but I think this is so perfect and a good way of wrapping up on the muses and, and oh, I just, I mean, I could think about all of this forever. I'm so thrilled to have all of this new insight into just real people. That's the thing that I want so badly these days, you know, just the real people back then.

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  Me too. And I, and I think I'm, I'm glad to see that scholarship is doing that more and more.

• 1:41:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. I need to, you've pushed me, I need to actually read Mythica fully. I've had Emily on the show now a handful of times. I feel like I've gotten like lots out of it, but

• 1:41:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm reading it right now. I'm reading, yeah, the Penelope's Bones.

• 1:41:36Liv Albert?

  Yes, okay, yes. I do like the American name. Penelope's Bones is a very good name.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful title.

• 1:41:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and a great book. But no, and I'm so excited to read back or read more of yours now that I've spoken to you about it, too. I just, I would love to, I mean, I want to know everything about what women did. And it's very frustratingly hard. So I'm thrilled that there are people like you doing this work. I, I hope you keep doing lots more.

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  And I'm also thrilled that you're pushing the creative part of it. This is really important. And what children grow up with really makes the discipline thrive. So please keep us in business.

• 1:42:18Liv Albert?

  I mean, I am, I am trying with this podcast, which is not for children, but now I'm delving into the children's side, too. And yeah, I just think we need more of, of sharing stuff from the ancient world with a level of modern, I think, care for the content. So often it's like

• 1:42:36Speaker 02

  I mean, I see it from our students here. They just love, love mythology. It's our best seller. I think, I think any campus in the United States, you know, myth or ancient history, Greek or Roman, they're just like best seller courses.

• 1:42:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:52Speaker 02

  We're keeping each other in business. So much to tell, yeah.

• 1:42:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, and then they come and find a podcast, which is great. And thankfully, I've got lots of experts to share even more with them. So it's, yeah, oh, my God, this is my favorite part of the job, is just getting to pick minds like yours. So thank you so much for doing

• 1:43:09Speaker 02

  Thank you, thank you. This was fabulous.

• 1:43:13Liv Albert?

  Oh, I'm, I'm so glad. Is there anything you want to share with the listeners about like reading more from you or anything you have coming up? It kind of sounds like maybe not, but if you do, I would love to hear it.

• 1:43:23Speaker 02

  Well, I think a lot of the sort of continuation of my thought on beyond work, the, my wedding book, it's Wedding, Gender and Performance. It came out just last year.

• 1:43:37Liv Albert?

  Oh, great.

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  From Oxford University Press. And I have, it's, it's i- in many ways, kind of a better book.

• 1:43:46Liv Albert?

  Amazing, I'll get that one too.

• 1:43:48Speaker 02

  Uh, but, um, I mean, it's also very rich and it looks again how actual wedding songs shaped, uh, epic and lyric than what we have of them. And then moves into looking more at experience and I'm looking more into, uh, emotions, which is something I did not do as much for the workbook. Uh, I'm now working on other projects. Uh, I'm actually fascinated by catalogs, catalogs of women and we have, of course, the catalog of women. Like this hisiotic text that we, you know, have in hugely fragmentary form.

• 1:44:29Speaker 02

  But I think, uh, Poets did something really interesting by putting women to, or, or not just women, but also putting catalogs together, but especially for women, naming them. Uh, it's like to name or not to name. So there's, uh, things happening with that and I'm exploring that right now. So it's to be continued.

• 1:44:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, I'm thrilled to hear that. It's funny. I actually have a, a draft open on my computer that has been in draft form for a year or two now, but it's my own attempt to write some kind of catalog of women. Because I also become obsessed with that. And so I'm like, what could I do like with a modern form?

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  To play with.

• 1:45:12Liv Albert?

  Yes, exactly. I have to find that. But, yeah.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  But it's definitely a text that did not, I mean, Odysseus gave a catalog of women when he was talking to the Phaeacians. When he was speaking to the Phaeacians and he gave his Odyssey, but I think this is a text that definitely we missed looking at it the proper way in the past.

• 1:45:34Liv Albert?

  Really? Oh, I mean, that doesn't surprise me at all. And I want to know everything. So I'm gonna be keeping an eye.

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  It's a more collaborative text. It's a more, a text in dialogue with others. So, and that's the reason why we have been missing. But anyway, it's, I'm, I'm exploring that right now.

• 1:45:50Liv Albert?

  Well, if and when you have enough that you want to ever chat on another podcast episode about that.

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  Happy to.

• 1:45:56Liv Albert?

  Oh, I would love that so much. So. Touch. Well, thank you so much.

• 1:46:01Liv Albert?

  Thank you, Liv, so much.

• 1:46:19Liv Albert?

  Uh, thank you all so much for listening. That conversation was amazing. I kind of wanted to try to pronounce it upfront, but I'm gonna try to do it here instead. But I just want to try to say my incredible guest's name with my attempt at a Greek accent. So another huge thank you to Andromache Karanika. That wasn't as great. I'm usually better able to roll my Rs, but here we are.

• 1:46:45Liv Albert?

  We had, I just, oh my God, I'm obsessed with that conversation. I'm obsessed with her book. I'm obsessed with finding her other book that she talked about, and then also in any kind of upcoming work. And I just am so grateful for guests like this. I love all of the guests that I talk to, but when I can, look at these very real women of the ancient world, it is for me, just like honestly, next level. So I hope you all liked it just as much. Let's talk about Myths, Babies, written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangoish is the Hermes to my Olympians, my incredible producer. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, where things are ticking along or will be very soon. And we're just so excited to bring more of the ancient world,

• 1:47:27Liv Albert?

  especially right now, because things are terrible. So let's look back at the origins of patriarchy to see what got us into this mess, because spoilers.

• 1:47:39Liv Albert?

  That's, uh, that's where all the problems come from.

• 1:47:44Liv Albert?

  It's just one gender deciding that they're superior for no other reason other than, I mean, lack of bodily ability to create life. So they gotta control the one that can. Anyway.

• 1:48:01Liv Albert?

  I love this shit. I am Liv and I love this shit. But what I love most is tearing down the patriarchy brick by brick while my hands get bloody.

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