RE-AIR: Conversations: But How Many Bears Is It? Sharks, Whales, and Sea Monsters in Greek Mythology w/ Ryan Denson

Hermes here! Sorry for the re-air but unfortunately life got in the way. Today we will go back in time to 2022 with this episode with Dr. Ryan Denson all about sea monsters. Hope you enjoy, and I will be back with the end of book 2 of Herodotus next week. Liv speaks with Ryan Denson who studies ancient SEA MONSTERS... Ketos and beyond, sharks, whales, and everything in between. It's possible Liv feels too strongly about ocean life... 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. Enter ourpodcast guest https://www.mythsbaby.com/contact form if you'd like to be on the show as a conversation guest! CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. 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.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Hello everyone, it's Michaela and I'm so sorry to say we're having a re-air today. I had every intention to get you guys the last Herodotus episode out and I will still be doing that next week. However, had a bit of a rough past couple of days. A family member's cat was ill and they were out of town and since the one who lives with them can't drive, I had to be the courier for said animal. Basically, there were lilies in the house that the cat was munching on and if any of you know cats, lilies are extremely toxic to them and can destroy their kidneys,

• 1:14Speaker 01

  but don't you worry, Drusilla, sweet, sweet Drusie, is A-OK. She is fine. She has gotten a clear bill of health from the veterinarian and she's very lucky to be alive. Now, the reason why we're not having a Herodotus episode today is quite frankly, it is 4:15 PM on the 9th and I have been awake since about noon on the 8th. So, my brain is not in a place to put together a good episode for you all. I had a midterm, I just started studying and didn't stop. And yeah, so I will get the episode to you, but in the meantime, how about we enjoy some more wacky

• 1:54Speaker 01

  animal fun with a past conversation with Dr. Ryan Denson on all kinds of sea monsters. Give me more, I love them so much. Thank you all. I will see you next week. I think I'm going to be talking to you on Friday as well. I'll be doing the intro for that episode. I love you all. Bye-bye.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work, and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans, and their spouses get automatic MyLowe's Rewards Silver Status benefits. Plus, 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms, and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at lowe's.com/terms. Subject to change.

• 3:54Liv Albert?

  Oh, hi. Hello there. How's it going? This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby. And I'm your host, the woman who loves sharks just as much as she loves Greek mythology, Liv. And yes, today I am here with an episode that features sharks. Sharks, you guys.

• 4:16Liv Albert?

  I spoke with Ryan Denson, who is doing a PhD studying ancient sea monsters. And I just, I can't express how much fun I had recording this episode, how much I learned. And then also how much I got to talk about sharks and whales and ocean life in general. Perhaps too much. Ryan was very patient. It was so much fun. I love sharks so much. And thankfully, Ryan had so much to say about ancient sea monsters and it was just so, so, so in my realm of interest that I honestly can't get over it.

• 4:52Liv Albert?

  Okay, so a peek behind the curtain that explains a lot about my personality and my own reaction to this conversation as we were recording it. I was homeschooled as a child and my mom basically was just like, oh, what are you interested in? Like, find your passion and you can just use quote unquote "school" to learn whatever you want about that passion. And mine was sharks. I learned everything about sharks that I possibly could when I was like four. It was ridiculous and over the top. I once corrected a volunteer tour guide. It was like just this nice senior citizen showing us around some aquarium or some, something. It's a family story.

• 5:33Liv Albert?

  Add to that, I moved to the Pacific Northwest when I was seven and homeschooling became, let's just learn about the sea. It's everywhere here. I didn't realize how much of this background of mine would come up during this conversation, but oh, did it? Because I'm, I am intense when it comes to the ocean, apparently. I've always been interested in the idea, though, of sea monsters in Greek mythology. You all have heard me talk about them. But somehow I've never really thought about the connection between sea monsters in myth and like ocean life in the real world. But obviously sharks and whales were the inspiration and turns out there are stories of ancient shark attacks. And honestly, now I will never think of anything else, like ever. Ancient shark attacks are giving me life.

• 6:16Liv Albert?

  Ryan's research is so fascinating and I'm just so grateful. I definitely feel like I added way too much to the conversation, uh, because I'm obsessed with sharks and whales. So just a big thank you to Ryan again for his patience with me. I fucking love sharks, uh, you guys. It's ridiculous.

• 6:46Liv Albert?

  Conversations, but how many bears is it? Sharks, whales, and sea monsters in Greek mythology with Ryan Denson.

• 7:09Liv Albert?

  Sea monsters, you're studying sea monsters and then you have some specific ones that you're looking at, right? So why don't you kind of introduce them?

• 7:17Speaker 04

  Yes, so I mean, in terms of classical sea monsters, the main, the big three in terms of Greco-Roman antiquity are the keita, or you know, the singular is ketos, but the plural is keita. So I'll probably say that a lot, just so people know. And then of course, scylla and charybdis, which are the probably the more well-known ones, but we can get to those in a bit. But the ketos is something that's, it always fascinated me and probably why I made it such a heavy part of my project, that it's always got my interest because it's something of a lost mythical monster from the classical world. I mean, we have all

• 7:57Speaker 04

  of these famous mythical monsters, Minotaur, the centaurs and all of that, the Hydra. These are names that are, you know, basically household names, even someone that's not a mythology buff, you could just, you know, it seemingly just approach someone on the street and ask, hey, do you know the myth of the Minotaur? And they know it very widely. Whereas this term ketos and keita, I mean, it's just kind of lost in terms of reception, in terms of even a lot of classicists won't know that name as well. I mean, obviously the Clash of the Titans movie that's based.

• 8:33Liv Albert?

  I was just gonna say, I blame Clash of the Titans, absolutely.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  It's a fascinating thing. I once, I read something about an interview with the director on that. I mean, the re, apparently the reason they chose the name Kraken for that is that they, you know, they needed something emphatic to call the monster of, you know, now in the, the remade version, release the Kraken. And of course, that goes into Pirates of the Caribbean as well. It's a very interesting bit of modern reception, how in terms of big name sea monsters, we get that one that really takes over a lot of the rest of the ones. And of course, Chethus is just, interestingly, just lost in a sense. And I've always thought it might, well, I've seen it in terms of translations, even well-meaning classicists, they'll just translate the actual

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Greek word or the Latin variants as just a generic sea monster. And I imagine this is how it came down to the, the directors of Clash of the Titans originally. If you're reading the Andromeda myth just purely in translation, that name just gets lost. It's just Poseidon, you know, then sent out a generic sea monster, no name or no nothing to it, which is, is just fascinating in terms of how we've handled these myths in terms of modern reception. And yeah, that's, that's one of the things that's, I don't know, in a way, kind of like got me to really look deep into this because when we, when we talk about ancient myths around the Chethus, the first points of contact are usually the Andromeda

• 10:06Speaker 04

  myth and the Hesione myth as well. And I mean, both of these, just to, you know, give a quick explanation of them. I mean, they're broadly the same form and structure. The Hesione myth, we know, well, we have it attested a bit earlier. It already appears in Homer in like two lines of the Iliad. But the basic story there is that the king of Troy, you know, when he was building the famed walls to Troy, basically, it's sometimes not clear in some version of the myth of, he basically seems to have made a deal with Poseidon for the construction of these walls. Usually it's said that he promised to sacrifice to him after, you know, the deal is done. But

• 10:50Speaker 04

  He, of course, didn't actually do that. He just, for unknown reasons, just goes back on that deal, doesn't offer the proper sacrifices. This, of course, encourages the anger of Poseidon. And so he sends Akkites, as well as usually sometimes a flood, to destroy the plains of Troy as well. And another common feature of these sort of myths is that then it's just proclaimed out of nowhere, seemingly, that usually by an oracle, that in order to assuage the sea monster, a maiden has to be sacrificed. In some versions, they draw lots and ultimately ends up being the king's daughter, Hesione, in that myth. And, you know, that's where

• 11:34Speaker 04

  it gets very similar to the Andromeda myth. Of course, they put her out to be sacrificed. Heracles comes in, saves the day, slays the sea monster, and that's that. In the Andromeda myth, again, similar structure. It's always with these myths of someone being attacked by Akkites, it's always because someone has enraged Poseidon for some reason. And this one is usually said because the Ethiopian queen, Kasopea, she compares herself, usually said to be herself, as being more beautiful than the Nyerids. And the Nyerids are another figure that is major in my thesis study as well, in terms of the more sea people category.

• 12:16Speaker 04

  But the Nyerids themselves are usually held up as divine, beautiful women. And so this is in that sort of motif of, that you see a lot in other myths, where someone tries to outdo the gods or goddesses, compares themselves in some way to being better to them. And obviously, it ends up badly for them, because this enrages Poseidon again. And you see the same similar sort of thing of dispatching Akkites onto the city. And in that one, you have, instead of Heracles, of course, Perseus comes in as the role of the monster slayer, and duly slays the monster in the same sort of way. So those are the

• 12:55Speaker 04

  two sort of go-to myths that we think about when we think of the Akkites. But something I've found interesting is that Those myths, as prominent as they are, both in the ancient and the the modern imagination, are far from the only instances of the Ketay that we see in the ancient world. There is an interesting little episode, or I wouldn't call it an episode, more of a one of the Odyssey's lines, where it alludes to something that could have happened. If you remember Book Five of the Odyssey, when, you know, Odysseus is on his raft, he's just gotten off of Calypso's island, and Poseidon, of course, sees this,

• 13:37Speaker 04

  raises a great big storm to harass Odysseus, and he ends up clinging onto a rock. The text then has Odysseus exclaim something to the effect of, you know, "I fear that the that some god might send a Kethos after me now, for I know the famed earth shaker hates me." So that's another interesting instance of, I mean, and of course, it doesn't happen, just we presume for narrative purposes, because Odysseus does have to live on past this point. But that's another interesting thing that the Odyssey poet seems to have alluded to, that if Poseidon wanted to, he could have sent a Kethos after Odysseus in that moment.

• 14:20Liv Albert?

  That's really interesting. And so I'm I'm mostly also familiar just with Andromeda and Hesene. And I, because I've looked into into the Kethos a lot. And I'm also interested in the difference, you know, if there's some, this is something that you look at, the difference between Keto, like the goddess of sea monsters, the primordial, I don't know if she's fully primordial or just a titan, what have you, but but Keto versus this like, Ketai, generally the the sea monsters, where like, how does that kind of change? I don't think Keto really figures into many stories herself. It's always more of just the the monsters themselves.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's it's an interesting thing. It was one of the the early things I looked at that, I mean, especially with her name, she is suspected of being derived. Well, it's it's interesting when you talk about the etymology of the word ketis itself. There's among the people that actually like, you know, make a living writing scholarship on etymology. The word ketis itself has just been assumed to be some sort of pre-Greek word. They can't tie back an etymology to that. For Kito herself, though, I know Martin West, one of, I mean, his commentary on Hesiod's Theogony is is usually one of the go-to works for that. He has theorized that the word Kito actually comes from ketis itself.

• 15:46Liv Albert?

  Oh, so not the other way around?

• 15:48Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly, which, yeah, I would have assumed that it might be the other way around as well, but one of the reasons he assumes that is just, well, on the basis of the formation of the word, we have the word keto in Greek, it has, it ends in that omega, the long O, and just the way a lot of other names of he that Hesiod formulates in his Theogony, they they exemplify that sort of pattern of taking a different word that ends in that OS and just making it a long O like that. So that's one theory that, you know, when Hesiod is basically doing this project of Theogony, stitching together this genealogical structure,

• 16:30Speaker 04

  sometimes you might have to kind of create characters like that. And so that might be where Kito comes from because as much as I I wish there was a goddess of sea monsters, we really don't have hardly anything else on her in the rest of ancient texts. There is a, it's kind of a weird bit by Pliny the Elder when he's talking about the yes, the Andromeda myth when it's located at Joppa. He claims that there are sacrifices that are conducted to Kito around there in his day, but some people speculate that he might also be talking about a Syrian goddess called Der Kito,

• 17:13Speaker 04

  which is, yeah, another whole direction. You could speculate the origin of her name. Is it possibly derived from that Syrian goddess as well? But yes, sadly, not, not a whole lot on her.

• 17:26Liv Albert?

  That's so interesting. I'd never thought about that so much. And I, you know, I think of her a lot because she is the mother of Medusa. But is it only Hesiod who says that? And now I'm, I can't keep track. I, but it might be. I mean, he's, he's who we have for so many birth stories that it's, it's kind of like, you know, it ends up being sort of ubiquitous because it's, we don't have anything else for so many people, not just these, these select characters. Oh, that's so interesting.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it's, it's always harder to know in, in later texts. I mean, if, if someone else repeats a detail from Hesiod, are they repeating it because he said it? Or is it because it's from, you know, an outside of Hesiod tradition as well?

• 18:11Liv Albert?

  Oh, I love the speculation on, on what, you know, where things actually started and if somebody just made them up, or if it is a longstanding tradition or?

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I mean, with the, with the connection of, I mean, I can't remember who, who wrote an article, but I mean, there is definitely, like you said, that Kito is in Hesiod, at least the, the mother of Medusa. It is definitely a thing in Hesiod too. He seems to align a lot of the monstrous creatures with being descendants of whatever the, the, the marine or oceanic gods are. So it is tied into this sort of monsters come from this, this element of the sea, which.

• 18:51Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Now, sorry, now I'm just thinking because there are definitely later sources that call these characters like Medusa and the Gorgons, and then the Grey Eye as well, as the daughters of Forkus. But are they maybe aligning it with a different mother or haven't thought about the mother? And so now I'm just speculating because I'm realizing, you know, I, I covered Prometheus, Prometheus Bound fairly recently and the, the Grey are there are very specifically called the daughters of Forkus. But now I'm thinking who he meant by the mother. Oh, so many new thoughts and questions all the time. It's the best.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, there, I mean, there's another thing. I mean, when we get more on to Scylla, of course, the the Odyssey mentions Scylla's mother as someone by the name of Creteris, which I'm probably mispronouncing that as well. But I mean, it's one of those things that, you know, basically, I mean, the Odyssey poet mentions that name, and we have basically almost nothing on whoever that was. And and later texts, of course, could be just deriving it from the Odyssey itself. So that's another interesting mystery as well.

• 20:02Liv Albert?

  Well, and there's so many differences, you know, in and in the Iliad specifically, I can think of, but like parentage in the Iliad that differs from parentage in Hesiod, which is always interesting as well. And so, yeah, where are these things originating? And and how widespread they were? That's, that's interesting. I didn't know that about about Scylla. And because I know also the thing with her and and whether it's her or just another woman of the same name, but there are so many origin stories. So I don't know if you want to dive into that or keep, keep on with Keto. I'm, I'm more than happy with with either because I just love all of these. Oh, one thing I was interested in, sorry. Now I'm just.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  No, it's all good.

• 20:43Liv Albert?

  So one thing I love, because, you know, you're talking about the the Ketus and Ketai, how they have been kind of forgotten and, you know, partially due to the kraken and and so many other things. But I do love, I was recently looking into various other etymologies, because I like to learn the word shark in lots of languages. That, I mean, it made it makes sense, so much sense now. But Cetacean, I don't know if it's a hard C or a soft. But yeah, like, you know, the, the scientific term for the whale species is derived from Cetus, which is very interesting to me.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. And and I mean, it makes sense. It's probably, I mean, probably the only way a version of the Cetus actually survives into the modern day world is just that word that's used for marine biology, the Cetaceans, I think is how it's sometimes said. I'm sure marine biologists will correct me of that somewhere.

• 21:42Liv Albert?

  I won't even try to fully say it. The whales. I mean, I know it's even beyond whales, but.

• 21:48Speaker 04

  It is, it is a very prominent thing of, I mean, in my thesis, I have a whole section that's basically attempting to define the ketus of what does this, what is the sort of semantic field of this word, what does it encompass? And whales, I mean, we're talking here about the Andromeda myth of sea monsters and stuff like that, but it does seem in a lot of contexts to have corresponded to generally ideas of whales, which is, I mean, you think about it in, I mean, there is, trying to think which one would be a good example, there is in Arian's Indica, an example where they, they see what they call as a beached ketus on the, you know, on the coasts.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  And this is a near, well, the general of Alexander the Great, Nierkes, who claimed he saw, you know, this giant ketus on the coast, and this is most likely a whale corpse. And we have other instances where it does appear that whale bones, whale corpses could correspond to the word ketus as well. And, I mean, I've, I've spent a good deal of time with my supervisor just watching YouTube videos of whales. And it's, it's so fascinating, you, I mean, you, on one hand, you, you might not think of them as sea monsters today, but if you watch all of these videos of them sort of jumping out of the water and making this twisting motion, well, and, and you see that

• 23:13Speaker 04

  just for a brief glance over the, over the prow of a ship or something, and that very much looks monstrous. And it's weird it is to say to us, I mean, the ketus also does have very strong serpentine associations, a big, you know, portly type of animal like a whale might not seem serpentine at first glance, when you, when you think of it in modern, very clear pictures, but just a brief flash out of the water, it can seem that way for sure. And there's also, if you've ever seen pictures of whale bones that people have dug up, because most of the whale, I mean, that gives it its bigger shape, all of that will be decayed away.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  When you see the slender spine of just the whale left over, that gives the impression of some like giant serpent, essentially, a lot of times.

• 24:04Liv Albert?

  Absolutely.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  So whales definitely feature prominently in a lot of this work.

• 24:10Liv Albert?

  I, because I live on the West Coast, so I live on Vancouver Island. And, I mean, we're in the Pacific, we're also like, this, the coast, the west coast of Canada is just very whale crazy. A lot because our indigenous peoples were very whale crazy because similarly to the Greeks, they would have seen them. And, and, you know, it was, it was such a big part of these ancient and more modern ideas of our coast. But, so I inexplicably went to a high school that had a whale skeleton on display, but like, not even like centrally in the high school. It was like hanging over a back stairwell, truly bizarre, but it's something I think about a lot, even like 15 years later. I'm like, why, why did we have that?

• 24:53Liv Albert?

  Why did I grow up just like with the whale skeleton in my high school? But I, so I can picture one very well. I think it was a humpback because we have a lot of humpbacks out here. But that leads to another question of, do we know, well, I guess it's probably similar to now, but with what whales were in the Mediterranean then, what types?

• 25:13Speaker 04

  I, I'm probably not qualified to say which types. I, I know for sure they, they were in the Mediterranean. They're, they're not as prominent in the, in the actual like Atlantic Ocean, but they, they do appear from time to time. And of course, I've read a little bit into the sort of science of whales that, you know, if, if, usually if they die at sea, you know, presumably if just of natural causes or something like that, and the, the corpse of the whale is not ruptured, it can actually just float to shore. That's how so many of them end up on shore rather than sinking into the depths as well.

• 25:51Liv Albert?

  I think it's all that blubber.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's, there's a nice passage of Saint Augustine where he, he talks about seeing one of these on the shores of Africa as well and just marveling at, at the size of these types of things.

• 26:04Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I mean, I'm mostly interested because I'm, we primarily out here have, have orcas. And so I think orcas, because they are so much more similar to dolphins, like wouldn't, or visually at least, I don't know the science. Um, but it, I feel like if there was primarily orcas or something, they probably wouldn't have developed the same type of mythology around them. Um, because we, they clearly knew, or like you visualize dolphins very differently, because they would have leapt fully out of the water, they would have fully been able to see them. And then they developed these completely different mythologies around them. So that's just so interesting, looking at how these things developed and, and why.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's another interesting thing of, I don't, the word orca is actually a Latin word as well. Um, but it's one of these things where it's, it's always hard to judge when you, when you're looking at ancient names for animals, how much does that correspond to our actual terms for them? Because I do have a mention of a passage of Pliny the Elder where he mentions, and what he calls an orca that basically came into one of the ports of Rome. Um, I believe that was, that one was in the reign of Claudian, he says as well. And they, they draw out nets and everything to basically try to capture it as well. Um, that's, I mean, there's no telling what this thing, thing actually

• 27:25Speaker 04

  was other than, I mean, he seems to, for some reason, use the word orca to differentiate it from what he, the more standard word in Latin for sea monsters is belua. And I don't, I don't know what sort of distinction he's trying to make there, if any. But yeah, it's, it's another confused thing of they're not always clear when they're referring to words like these, the distinctions that they want to make versus distinctions that there actually exist between these animals.

• 27:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and of course, you know, so many of our modern scientific names for things are based in Latin and not necessarily because that's exactly what the Latin meant. So that makes sense, especially like you said, if, if the Latin name was it like, I mean, it just sounds like Beluga to me. So I'm like, oh, well, clearly they probably got Beluga whales from that.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that might be, it's belua, that might be where it comes from exactly. I, I can imagine that that's probably another thing. I mean, belua is. It's used a lot of times for sea monsters, but it can also generally just mean beast. So sometimes it's also confusingly used to refer to elephants as well.

• 28:28Liv Albert?

  Oh, interesting.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  It's just a frustratingly vague word where you just really have to look at the context of what's going on in a certain passage.

• 28:37Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's, yeah, that's really fascinating. I love that. Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  We're talking about skeletons. I did just remember another story that Pliny also recalls that in fifty eight B.C. during the idol ship of a certain city official, basically. They actually supposedly brought the bones of the Cetus from the Andromeda myth for public display in Rome, which isn't a, you know, it's probably not the exact same monster. It's probably someone again using whale bones to get a bit of public prestige for themselves as well. And that's supposedly they had brought it all the way in from Joppa, which

• 29:21Speaker 04

  is is another thing. In addition to Ethiopia, Joppa is also sometimes recorded as a location for the Andromeda myth. But I mean, you just imagine the amount of logistics if they if they actually did transport it all the way across the Mediterranean like that.

• 29:35Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I imagine they have to put it back together and everything. Well, once, once more, my knowledge of of sea life is colliding with my knowledge of mythology. So one thing that's interesting to me to learning all of this and, you know, where they would have developed all these ideas is,

• 29:56Liv Albert?

  I mean, I'm sure it's slightly different because certainly like a shark washing ashore, like a full shark would be very visible, but they wouldn't wash ashore in the same way because they don't have the blubber and they would actually do sink. And then on top of that, though, sharks don't have skeletons to be preserved. They only have the jaws. So they, you know, they would never find a shark skeleton to form a different opinion. They would only ever have the whales, which is an interesting thing because they certainly had sharks in the Mediterranean. And I think the the word for shark is like, is islamia or something like that, right? Or if you know, but.

• 30:37Speaker 04

  Sometimes it can be. I mean, sometimes it also seems to, again, this is, this is another frustrating thing with the word ketus is that it can sometimes refer to whales, but there are instances where it does seem that they're referring to shark attacks with the word ketus as well.

• 30:54Liv Albert?

  That certainly makes sense because they would just think of like, you're getting attacked in the water. It's a ketus.

• 31:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, there, there is a very interesting story that Plutarch reports that one of the, the, basically the initiates of the Eleusinian mysteries that he was down in the, the port of Athens, washing a pig and, you know, in preparation for these sacrifices. And he was attacked by a ketus and had his lower half devoured.

• 31:24Liv Albert?

  I love how sharks is really coming through. This is, that's so, I love the idea that there are stories of shark attacks in the ancient world. Like, of course they are, there are, but I've never thought about it. And now it's all I want to look for.

• 31:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's another good one in Herodotus, who he, he, you know, recounting the war with the Persians. He mentions, you know, that a storm basically kicked up at sea and some of the Persian soldiers were thrown overboard and they were devoured by, the word he uses there is just beasts, but I mean, we suspect sharks at least, or something like that.

• 31:59Liv Albert?

  Well, nothing else in, I mean, an orca is not going to devour you. So really, nothing else in the sea is going to really devour anybody. That's so interesting. I'm sorry, I'm, I'm writing this down because I'm so into it.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  No, that's all good.

• 32:12Liv Albert?

  That's so cool.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  It's one of those things too, that, I mean, the Plutarch reference, because it is, you know, an initiate of the Eleusinian mysteries that got attacked in this horrible way, they, they seem to read that as a bad portent as well, which is, is another interesting thing with the ketay that sometime, sometimes they're, which one, what, it's in Cassius Dio two that mentions an exceptionally big ketus, basically came ashore.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  At one point, and this was regarded, I believe with the passing of a comment as both being portentous instances. And that reference is also an interesting one, because the way that they like to describe sizes of animals is, obviously, they don't usually use like standard forms of measurement that we do.

• 33:02Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 33:02Speaker 04

  But the way he describes it is that it was so big, you could have fit fifty bears on the inside of it.

• 33:08Liv Albert?

  Wow.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Which is, is just a great unit of measurement.

• 33:12Liv Albert?

  It absolutely is. Wonderful.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  How many bears is the size of this other animal?

• 33:20Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, that's incredibly big. That's a very big whale.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 33:25Liv Albert?

  It depends on how big the bears in question were as well, but still. Oh, I love that. That's fascinating.

• 33:34Liv Albert?

  Didn't really expect how much my, like, existing knowledge of, of ocean life and passion for it would come out in this. It's great. I've loved sharks since I was like, literally four years old. Like, they were the first thing I've ever loved in this world. And so much knowledge sticks in my mind because of that. Oh, that's wonderful.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  It's, it's the same for me. I remember a kid just watching Shark Week. That would be the, the big thing you get excited for.

• 34:00Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah. And knowing that they have no bones. I love that they have no bones. Fascinating.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I, I didn't actually think about that before. The, I mean, why you don't see shark bones like that. And that's, that's a fascinating thing.

• 34:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  That if there's only whale bones, that inclines a lot of people to think that the remains must be giant of these sort of things.

• 34:21Liv Albert?

  Well, and like, you know, they'd only see whale bones and then they, but they would see shark attacks, right? So that, I mean, like, in this example, somebody falls overboard and they're eaten by a shark. And, but you don't see the full thing because not a lot of sharks breach. If you're, if you're lucky enough to see that, like, you know, it's probably a whole other scenario. But for the most part, you're gonna see just like fins. The fins are gonna be the same as the whale fins you see later. The, you know, the beached whales or whale bone. Obviously, whale bones, you're not gonna see the fin, but like, it, so you're imagining, you're seeing this attack, you're seeing a shark attack, but you don't know it's a shark. So then the, the beast you see later, that's enormous. You have to make the assumption that that's what does these attacks that

• 35:06Liv Albert?

  you've seen. And like, and then also the only thing that you'll find from a shark that's fully decayed. And and in terms of like the actual, you know, fossils and stuff too, is just the teeth. So if you're just finding teeth that are like enormous, because especially if you've got megalodon teeth, I'm gonna go. I have a megalodon tooth and I don't even have a big megalodon tooth and it's like almost six inches long. And so if you're just finding something like that, and then you're seeing these whales, like you're assuming that these whales create these teeth because it's all the only thing in the sea and they just must be the most enormous and terrifying and like man eating like monstrosities.

• 35:46Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 35:47Liv Albert?

  Oh, my imagination's going wild, sorry.

• 35:50Speaker 04

  No, it's you mentioned megalodon teeth. I haven't, I, to be fair, I haven't really looked into it, but I I can't remember seeing this in a in an actual academic source, but I do remember years ago, reading a popular article that I mean, it claimed that megalodon teeth had been found inside a Greek temple. Um, which is is an interest. I mean, you know, we think of temples today as as a very holy sanctuary type thing. Uh, but no, they they did keep sort of like ominous relics like that in temples. A lot of times there is I I can't, I think it might be in Palsanias somewhere that he he does mention the bones of a of

• 36:31Speaker 04

  large bones of what is possibly a whale in a temple to Poseidon as well.

• 36:38Liv Albert?

  But yeah, I mean, yeah, if you find these teeth, you're going to assume that they're the teeth of the whales that you've also found. Because you've never found other bones.

• 36:44Speaker 04

  Exactly. And of course, I mean, just the size of these things. I mean, it seems to be a lot of the assumption that something that big, well, it must eat, you know, big things like humans or something like that. It would have never occurred to the ancients that whales just subsist on like plankton.

• 37:02Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Well, because and it, you know, I don't know if. I don't know if like what remains after whales, like if you can see the lack of teeth, or if you're just seeing like, I think, I don't think that the, um, I don't know the word for them, but like the super fine things that they use to like, you know, actually eat their food. I'm imagining they're somewhat like teeth, but you know, I don't know if those survive because they're so small and brittle, where it's like, so the whale skeleton that was hanging in my high school definitely didn't have anything that looked like teeth, like it was just a jaw. And so I would imagine, yeah, if you're seeing like an empty jaw and then you're finding teeth, like obviously you're not gonna, or it would be very coincidental to find them in the same location, but shark teeth really are everywhere because that is the only thing.

• 37:45Liv Albert?

  So they wash up on beaches all the time and like, you know, especially ancient ones and, and well, prehistoric in this case, like megalodon teeth or anything like that, like they, you know, there are so many of them. I, you know, I have one, somebody gave it to me as a gift once because they're so, they're the only thing that survives and they just fossilize and then you have so many. So I would imagine it wasn't, wasn't something that they were unlikely to find, especially that long ago before it became like something that people went looking for.

• 38:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, especially you see something that, that big in terms of teeth, it must be really quite a thing, especially, I mean, we, we talk a lot about the sea and it's interesting to also think about the ancient perspective on the sea in general that, you know, we're so fascinated by, we have things like Shark Week, we have all these high def cameras, you can easily visualize what it's like to be down in the sea from all of this exploration work we've done in the very modern times that we can go down as divers or see high res footage and that sort of thing of inside the sea. But in the ancient world, of course, there's no diving technology. So. As far down into the sea is basically just limited to how far down you can swim and

• 39:00Speaker 04

  the field of view, of course, is very limited there as well. So you have that other aspect of not only are these strange things popping up, but they're popping up from an unknown element, essentially.

• 39:12Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it would just be so ominous and and they, you know, they have to use the sea for travel so much and for food and everything like that. But then it also has this like very scary and dangerous element. Like no wonder, you know, they were in fear of Poseidon because he can throw a shark at you. And even like, I don't know. And again, I don't know what kinds. I don't think that there's like a lot of big sharks in like great white style, big sharks in the Mediterranean. I think they often have smaller ones. Someone in Greece once told me that there were no sharks. And I said, that is not true. That is definitely not true.

• 39:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:47Liv Albert?

  Uh, I think they're a pretty small. I think there's actually like a type of shark that is called like a Mediterranean reef shark or something like that. But even still, like, I mean, any shark tooth tooth that you're finding, like, you know, prehistoric or not is big and scary for the most part. And like, sometimes really like, oh, anyway, I I won't continue to talk about like the intricacies of shark teeth. But now it's all I can think about of them. Yeah, finding these teeth and and whale bones and making these connections, seeing this completely mysterious place that they can't really explore. They can't get very deep into. They've watched people die horrific bloody deaths if they do fall in in the wrong place, or if they're bleeding or what have you. Like shark attacks are rare,

• 40:29Liv Albert?

  but not if you're like, you know, regularly having bloody humans fall overboard. They're going to be less rare than they are now.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And I mean, it, you know, as much as we we talk about the these monsters also, I mean, being derived from sharks and whales, uh, the, you know, by, I mean, whichever period, uh, you want to pick to basically choose to live in. No matter what, you're already basically being exposed to these idea of the ketus before actually going out on sea. So that sort of creates a bit of a feedback loop that you're already, before you even get onto the sea, and we have so many artistic depictions of them. There are actually some coins from the ancient world that have ketay on them as well. So you're already going out into the sea, being exposed to, you're hearing the Andromeda myth, seeing all of these images and representations.

• 41:20Speaker 04

  It colors your expectations for what you're gonna find out there as well.

• 41:24Liv Albert?

  Yeah, that's really interesting. This is a question purely for my own very specific interest, but do you know anything about the mystery cult on Samothrace? Because it was all about like, protection on the sea if you were inducted. And so now I'm so curious like whether that just meant like safety on your boat? Or like actually from like a ketus?

• 41:46Speaker 04

  Hmm, this is interesting. Samothrace comes up in a different passage, but it's not like this. I might have to look into this more, actually. But when you mentioned Samothrace, I immediately, there is another story recorded by Elian, who does his, it's called the History of Animals, sometime basically a catalog of beliefs about animals. And he has this story of the pilot fish, which is sacred. He says it's sometimes sacred to Poseidon, sometimes sacred to Samothrace, which it never dawned on me why Samothrace there. But anyway, he goes on telling the story of this fisherman who, once upon a time, long, long time ago,

• 42:32Speaker 04

  he was basically fishing and he couldn't catch anything in his net. And one day him and his son, they instead drug up a net of pilot fish. Now, pilot fish, of course, being sacred to Poseidon or to the gods of Samothrace, you probably shouldn't eat those. But you know, as it's a long day of fishing, he didn't have anything else, apparently. He decides to eat them. And of course, when something happens that displeases Poseidon, a ketus comes out of the water and literally what Elian says is that it devoured a popius before the eyes of his son.

• 43:07Liv Albert?

  Whoa.

• 43:10Liv Albert?

  So badass.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:13Liv Albert?

  Yeah. So I mean, I'd recommend looking at it because like basically I've done a lot of research lately on Samothrace, but it, I mean, it was, it became biggest in the Hellenistic period and later for this mystery cult that I guess was like second only to Eleusis. Like it was huge. And it essentially promised inductees safety upon the seas. So I imagine that their sea life was also a big part of that because Samothrace was otherwise like pretty nothing. Like it's this tiny, tiny island up in the northeast and it's like, you know, it's so far removed from the Greek mainland and so many other places, like so close to Thrace,

• 43:54Liv Albert?

  obviously, given the name. And, and then you have this, yeah, this like, and it not only did it promise a safety upon the seas, but then the sanctuary there was like dedicated to the, the great gods, the Theoi Megaloi and like was all about very specific mysterious gods of Samothrace that are like very specific to that island and very mysterious. And so I wonder if that's, if that's what is being referred to.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, I will definitely look into that more for sure. Cause yeah, that's, that's another thing. Cause we have all of these, when you're going out onto the sea, you oftentimes want to give an offering for just safety that you'll make the trip all right. Essentially, you know, oftentimes to Poseidon as well. And it was a thing I tried to look on. A lot of these are very vague in what they say that it's, it's just for safety at sea. Not much of it seems to be protectioning from sea monsters that I've seen thus far. But yeah, I will definitely look into that more for sure. Cause that might be a connection as well.

• 45:17Liv Albert?

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• 46:02Liv Albert?

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• 46:44Liv Albert?

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• 47:10Speaker 02

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• 48:29Liv Albert?

  So, Ketis in general, Ketai, I never... It's hard with their plurals. But it just sounds so utterly fascinating. But I also want to make sure that we talk about Skil and Krybdis, because they're some of my favorites, if only for their names, but also because I love The Odyssey so much. So I would love to hear any and everything you have to say on those two.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, they are basic... I mean, whereas the Ketai have this sort of like widespread tradition, Silla and Krybdis are basically tied to The Odyssey. When we mention their names today in the modern world, you immediately think of The Odyssey. It was the same way in the ancient world as well when people are recalling the events of The Odyssey. Silla and Krybdis are some of the... Well, that episode, well, really kind of two episodes of going through that straight is one of the... Seems to be one of the most memorable moments.

• 49:22Liv Albert?

  I mean, they're badass.

• 49:24Speaker 04

  Exactly, especially with Scylla, the way it's first described in that text from Circe telling Odysseus about this, you get this just wild description of this beast with so many limbs and all of this. And it's very interesting in the context of the Odyssey that a lot of the other Odyssey monsters, you don't get any description whatsoever. The sirens are completely, they're just called sirens, no description whatsoever. So to have this sort of lavish, wild description like this is something that a lot of people have written scholarship on. And what is this sort of thing of, I mean, Homer wasn't the

• 50:08Speaker 04

  single guy that wrote the Odyssey in whole. I mean, most people would know about the oral tradition and all of that. You know, sometimes within that massive oral tradition, you can see the effect of singular individuals making their way through that. So it's one of those things is this wild description, just the effect of some creative person at one point that inserted this just wild monster into it. And we notice in the beginning, even with describing Scylla, the way that Circe describes, you know, she has this mechanism of pulling up whatever wanders in the straits. And when Circe describes that, it's mentioned

• 50:52Speaker 04

  that she pulls up dolphins, sea dogs, and quete. So for all of the grandeur of the quetus as its own great monster, Scylla already is kind of the top dog of the food chain in terms of sea monsters. It's able to pull that, even that up, which you think about, obviously, it's something the size of a whale or even a dolphin, the amount of force it takes to yank something on a cliff like that is a good testament to the terrifying nature of Scylla.

• 51:26Liv Albert?

  Absolutely, and and sort of completely the opposite of the Cetus in the way that it does not resemble anything that we could imagine to be real.

• 51:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's that's another thing. And there is there are basically no there's sometimes said to be one depiction of the Homeric Scylla on a Eutrosian box, but other than that, you never really see this monster being depicted as a mainstream thing in ancient iconography. It is why that happens is is another interesting question. You see Scylla in ancient art is being more so this hybrid form where clothe, not quite, I wouldn't call her a mermaid, because mermaids don't quite come along yet until the medieval period, but very much resembling that form, other than having the three dogs at the front as well.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  So that's it's just another interesting thing. Why is the Homeric version of Scylla so different from what comes about in the later traditions?

• 52:32Liv Albert?

  That's so true. I hadn't thought about that, but she it is not resembling what with a physicality that's required of Skyla to be what she is in the Odyssey. The way the heads come down and yank people up and all the different things. Yeah, is not what you then see on pottery. It reminds me of of like Typhon and and like the Hecatonchires, how they're never depicted, you know, in the way that they're described. And I almost think it's because like, oh, my God, how would you do it? But it's so interesting to think about, like, you know, whether there was a reason beyond just the general logistics of like, okay, how do I paint a thing with quite so many arms and heads?

• 53:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, that is a very good point, especially to mention Typhon for the serpentine connection. I mean, Daniel Ogden has has written a lot about, I mean, you see elements of of serpentine or draconic features with Scylla already this just the way it's described in the Odyssey just seems elusive of some sort of beast like the Hydra almost with that multiple head type thing as well. And the Odyssey text, it is such a memorable scene for a lot of reasons, but it always strikes me as something out of a horror film, especially that, what is it, the, the last scene after the men have been plucked up and they're going through the strait and they're yelling out Odysseus'

• 54:00Speaker 04

  name. Just fascinating stuff there.

• 54:03Liv Albert?

  It's so good. I love the Odyssey so much for, I mean, that among so, so many other reasons, but it really is like a really good movie.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  God, it, I always remember too, I mean, another way the, the Odyssey text really sort of amplifies the just sheer terror of Scylla is that, you know, Circe basically gives Odysseus, presumably privately, this rundown of the things that he's going to face and describes this monster to him. When they're actually going through the strait, the text actually says that Odysseus did not tell his men about Scylla. And it's, it's always somewhat of a comical scene to me because you, you have Odysseus, he knows about the monster and he actually, he puts on all of his armor despite Circe's request that he not do so. And it's,

• 54:52Speaker 04

  it's this very interesting scene where he's looking up at the rocks above, looking for Scylla, and the rest of his men are overlooking at Charybdis. And so you've got this scene where he's wearing full armor, looking at the opposite side, and the men must be wondering, I mean, what, what is the leader doing? Why, why is he looking up at the other end of the rock? And then out of nowhere, the six of them get grabbed up.

• 55:19Liv Albert?

  Well, and he basically is like, well, at least six are going to die. We're going to try to make it only six. And that's kind of the best I'm gonna do. Not to say it's the best he could do, because I do think probably telling them, warning them in advance could have helped at least a little. But yeah, it is so interesting to just be like, all right, that's the absolute best case scenario is like only six get taken and we get out quick enough to avoid another six.

• 55:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, it, it's, it's just another interesting thing with, with the Odyssey as well, comparing her to the other monsters that. Odysseus, of course, he grabs his spear and his armor there presumably intending to fight Scylla, but Scylla's in terms of monsters, that's not a monster you can really fight at all. And you have Odysseus's famous trait of being polymechanist, this guy that can kind of worm his way out of other things like with the Cyclops of you're not going to be able to reason with a monster like Scylla either. So it's just you're kind of helpless against it no matter what.

• 56:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah, the the two are so unique that way in the Odyssey because as much as it has so many kind of like, you know, mythological creatures, they are the only ones that are completely, you know, you cannot fight them, you cannot outwit them, you can't do anything. It's just sort of like get through and and hope not everybody dies. Whereas, yeah, you know, otherwise you have the Cyclops and you know, Odysseus can trick him and or you have the Lystragonians and like the ways in which that they they're still fightable, they're still human in a lot of ways. But then Scylla and Charybdis are like, no, just completely something else entirely. I mean, and Charybdis even more so.

• 57:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, we have actually, I mean, with both of the monsters, I mean, there are little bits that, again, just emphasizing the the sheer terror of these, Cersei at one point says something to the effect of Scylla is so terrible, not even a god would want to meet her, basically. And then with Charybdis, describing Charybdis, which is, of course, the whirlpool monster, essentially, when she's describing that, she says something to the effect of if you get sucked down into Charybdis, not even Poseidon could pull you out. So, I mean, these are creatures where it's like presumed not even the gods can help you out against. And of course, Athena, the usual helper of Odysseus, is completely absent in this scene.

• 57:46Liv Albert?

  Should just make her look bad, would just make her look bad. Yeah, yeah, and Charybdis, I mean, is is so cool. The idea of Charybdis, this whirlpool. I don't know if it is it clear, like, is there is there meant to be like a gaping, you know, maws at the bottom of the whirlpool? And it's just like this thing.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  So I'm I'm actually speaking at a conference on Charybdis this summer at Warwick. But basically, on exactly this issue. It's been a thing in the modern popular imagination to assume that Charybdis has some sort of body. If you've ever seen from that Percy Jackson movie, I think it's called just The Sea of Monsters, where there's a clip where they encounter Charybdis. And it is like that. It's a, you know, basically giant gaping mouth that sucks down water. But the Odyssey gives no indication of a body whatsoever.

• 58:42Liv Albert?

  I was thinking that, too, even when I said it. Sorry, I was just like, even when I said it, I was thinking like, I don't actually think that I'm getting that from the text. I think it's just a whirlpool, which is cooler.

• 58:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, the text of the Odyssey at one point does. It's a line that's it's very hard to read. It says that she is revealed, basically, in the in the actual Greek. But we don't get any description. So, I mean, the lines are ambiguous when it says she was revealed. I mean, that's not necessarily an indication of some she within the water, as it might be the inside of the whirlpool or something like that.

• 59:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  What I've I've gone through with all of the other texts is I have found no ancient reference to any sort of thoroughgoing body when Charybdis appears in this manner. And yeah, that's basically what I'm I'm going to be doing at that conference this summer as well, is arguing that it's basically a disembodied sea monster. It is the sea itself.

• 59:42Liv Albert?

  That's very cool. I mean, and I think it is so indicative of, you know, the way that the Greeks really did understand their world in an impressive way, because the sea itself is just as scary as a sea monster. I mean, it is today, even if you, like, even with all our knowledge, it still is, like, i- in itself, a terrifying thing, you know, at the right times. And, and yeah, just this idea that they were like, nope, that that's just the sea. The sea is scary. There's, there's a whirlpool. It's just water. It's gonna get you. And i- it's, it's, I think it's more terrifying than picturing a mouth. I, I, I can only see,

• 1:00:24Liv Albert?

  for some reason, I'm like, trying to imagine what the Odyssey said, and instead I'm seeing the, the, um, the pit in Star Wars. The, like, Sarlacc pit with the mouth. And I'm like, that's not Charybdis, but somehow it's in my head right now. Uh, but yeah, i- it's, the idea that it is just the ocean is so much more interesting and terrifying.

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz I mean, there's a lot of times, especially with something like the ocean, that it's, it's just seemingly a natural element, but you have all of these, e- even without the, the sea monsters in it, it's, it's still a very dangerous thing to fall overboard in the middle of the ocean, middle of the Mediterranean Sea. And you see storms come up, these terrifying storms, of the question of agency, of whether there is something behind all of that chaos or not, is always a very ominous thing to humans to, to ponder. Is this thing happening because some god or some supernatural force is directing it, or is that just there, just on its own, eerily without agency at all?

• 1:01:25Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, that's great.

• 1:01:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Liv Albert?

  Uh, I, yeah, I mean.

• 1:01:34Liv Albert?

  That the sea is very impressive. I don't have anything more to say. It's just like, that's so, that's so interesting. I love, I love the idea of, of thinking about how they thought of these things and what they thought of the sea and whatever was inside it. Because obviously it provided so much for them, you know, in terms of fishing and life and, and everything, but then at the same time, was this place that could kill you really easily. You know, even if you're a good swimmer, it's terrifying. But I have to imagine that there weren't like a ton of really good swimmers back then. Like, when it came to the Greeks, it was more so about the ships that they had versus the need to swim a lot, you know, and like learning that as a, as an actual skill.

• 1:02:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've, I've always heard it said that, I mean, swimming as a recreational activity, we definitely, it definitely wasn't a thing in the ancient world. That you don't swim for fun the way we might today.

• 1:02:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine them necessarily wanting to for any reason. But yeah, well, and I mean, I'm, I'm sure swimming to survive was like, you know, and it maybe an important skill for, for people whose lives were on the sea, but even still, you're going to rely on your boat. Like you're going to assume that like, the key is to just not falling off. Because once you've fallen off, I imagine it's, it's not an easy thing, even if you are a good swimmer, to, to get back on alive and unharmed. And not that like, you know, just because you fall off your boat, a shark's going to get you like. My love of sharks would have me say very clearly that shark attacks are incredibly rare. But if you've fallen off the boat for some reason where, where you're bloody, they're less rare.

• 1:03:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Liv Albert?

  And then, you know, we're also in a time when sharks have not been overfished. And so I imagine they were more common back then, especially if you're, you know, falling into the sea, bloodied. Um, so yeah, I mean, it's, it's just like, that's a dangerous thing to, to fall off your boat. There's so many things that can get you and, and sort of, yeah, the key is to just stay on there. Anything more that we should know about these incredible monsters? Or monsters or concepts or oh my god, Charybdis is just like so cool.

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  Yeah. Charybdis, I mean, another fascinating thing with with Charybdis is that it's it's an interesting thing that in terms of what we would call rationalizing monsters like that, they they were well aware, I mean, after the Odyssey text never alludes to it being located there, but eh by at least the Hellenistic period, it becomes located at the Strait of Messina. And they're well aware of eh that they're, you know, and this is, this is borne out in modern evidence, too, that a lot of the currents in the Strait of Messina are probably not the best to sail through. Um, but they they were very intimately aware. We have a letter from Seneca talking to one of his friends that was visiting Sicily, and he basically asked him

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  to check out what he calls the Charybdis down there. Is it a natural phenomenon? What is this thing? And I bring that up because it seems in a lot of cases that the word Charybdis, it just refers to a whirlpool, not the monster itself. So you get an interesting sort of uh dual nature of the term there as well. It can be this mythological monster associated with the Odyssey, but also in some cases, just a banal instance of a whirlpool as well.

• 1:05:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, especially, you know, if you've got a strong current and a particularly like, eh you know, rocky or I don't know the right word to describe it, but like, you know, the right type of situation for these whirlpools to appear like they're depending on how big they are. And so I mean, they're always going to look interesting and ominous, but if they're big enough that they're actually like affecting boats, like it would be so easy to immediately connect that with the idea that you already have preexisting of of Charybdis. And and sort of think like, well, obviously, this this has to be Charybdis, like

• 1:05:41Liv Albert?

  look at the the way that this the sea is swirling this way and you know, it's affecting our boats, it's taking them out, like causing them to hit the rocks. It's basically the same idea. Um, if like slightly less dramatic than than how it is in the Odyssey.

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, precisely, in some ways of having some sort of agency, some sort of creature behind that, it's kind of comforting in a sense to know, I mean, hey, something is something living, some entity is causing this to happen, whereas the sort of eerie ominous tone of that's just nature type thing is is a little bit unsettling sometimes to humans.

• 1:06:20Liv Albert?

  Well, yeah, especially if, you know, your whole sort of society is based around the idea that the gods are behind so many natural phenomena that, you know, I would imagine it would be very hard to wrap your head around anything being completely natural or completely random, because the gods, you know, I mean, if it's Zeus that makes that lightning appear in the sky, then it's got to be, you know, a god causing this dangerous and destructive whirlpool, it can't possibly just be nature.

• 1:06:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's the same thing I've I've run across time and time again, too, with the quete are so fundamentally attached to Poseidon in a lot of instances. I mean, we've mentioned a lot of the hostile context of the quete, but there's actually this interesting scene in Iliad 13, where it describes Poseidon going across the sea. And there it said the quete come up from the hollows and frolic around him.

• 1:07:19Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's lovely.

• 1:07:21Speaker 04

  It's a very playful word. I've checked through the Greek a lot of times on that, but it is deliberately a playful word. So you see, not only is that sort of agency question of associated not just the sea, and the sea in that scene, it said that the sea, you know, parts jubilantly for Poseidon, which is an interesting thing to think about, you know, obviously going across the sea is is no easy feat for humans, but of course, for the sea god, when you have that agent behind it all, well, it's just, it jubilantly parts for him. And same thing with the sea monsters, they're playful pets to him, essentially, it seems.

• 1:07:58Liv Albert?

  That's lovely. Yeah, well, I like, it's nice to hear that they could at least see these, these creatures as, you know, a, a, as sort of a, a nice addition to the sea, at least for the gods, like maybe not, if not our humans.

• 1:08:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is another very prominent one. An example in ancient art you see a lot of times is the keita are usually served as mounts for the Nyerids sometimes.

• 1:08:25Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:26Speaker 04

  And one of the best representations for this is on the Araipacus, which this, a picture of this is actually my Twitter profile, in, in my Twitter, I don't think I've mentioned it, is at sea monster guy, appropriately enough.

• 1:08:41Liv Albert?

  Amazing.

• 1:08:42Speaker 04

  But you have this depiction on the Araipacus, the altar of peace, on what's called the tellus panel of a Nyerid, what's, well, what I suspect is a Nyerid that's riding a keitas that, and it's, it's just a very lovely depiction that you wouldn't, in our terms, you wouldn't associate sticking a sea monster on something you're calling the altar of peace. That just seems a bit odd, but for them, I mean, sea monsters appearing with marine divinities aren't necessarily hostile entities like that.

• 1:09:14Liv Albert?

  No, it makes sense because to them, they, you know, that's just a part of their, their lives. Like, I'm a, I'm a sea goddess, so this is what I do.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:09:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Oh, that's lovely. Now, I realized too, you also mentioned when we were first talking about the biblical, I'm gonna even forget, I'm really bad at, at biblical anything. So, how, how can I not, leviathan, right? You were talking about,

• 1:09:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Liv Albert?

  also the leviathan. So I'm interested in that as much as it's not Greek and Roman, but I mean, any kind of sea monster, I'm in.

• 1:09:46Speaker 04

  Well, i- in a way, it kind of, it, it becomes Greek and Roman. So the way that this fits into my thesis is this is actually a bit of a continuation of the story of the keitas. So, you know, if you were to arrange basically all ancient texts that mentioned the keita going from Homer to late antiquity, once you started getting Christian texts, you We start to see a lot of mentions of the Ketus, the Ketay as basically evil monsters. And there's a lot of quoting of references of God will slay the Ketus. And why that comes about is essentially because the main translations of the Old Testament for the Greek translation of it from the basically from the Hellenistic period is called the Septuagint.

• 1:10:31Speaker 04

  When it translates Leviathan, it takes it as sometimes Dracon or sometimes it's Ketus. So essentially the Ketus becomes, and of course, the Church Fathers will later take that on and interpret it in a very Christian sense as sometimes being the devil. And Jerome's Vulgate translation into Latin does a similar thing with sometimes taking it as Draco and sometimes Ketus as well. So you see, I mean, the Ketus essentially gets infused with these ideas of Old Testament sea monsters.

• 1:11:04Liv Albert?

  Right. I mean, that makes sense because I mean, like so much of mythology of the time and just Mediterranean broadly, there are so many connections between all these people that, you know, you're gonna connect it with what you know as, as the sea, the, the big sea monsters. And, and make the same kind of connections with somebody else's reference to a big sea monster.

• 1:11:26Speaker 04

  Yep, precisely. So in a way, we get this sort of reorientation of the Ketay's relationship to the divine. Whereas, you know, you have this nice sea god Poseidon that they're basically the pet slash attack dog of the sea god. When it comes into the Christian imagination in late antiquity, it's placed in opposition to the Christian god, whereas because of a lot of the Old Testament references involves God slaying Leviathan, either he already has slain him or he will slay him in some sources.

• 1:12:00Speaker 04

  It becomes very much like what happens with the classical Dracon, that it becomes seen as an entity of evil opposed to God.

• 1:12:08Liv Albert?

  Right, right. Because, I mean, yeah, all the references to the, the Dracon is something that is immediately killed by, by at least one god, if mostly Apollo, but. Yeah, that's interesting because I'd never thought about the, the way certain types of these sort of dangerous quote unquote, in whatever way you want to say that, but dangerous creatures, sometimes they need to be killed and sometimes they're just there. And it's sort of the way it is.

• 1:12:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's sometimes said to be what's called a chaos khaft myth with a lot of other Near Eastern myths that the slaying of some beast is intimately bound up with the project of creation. Um, as well, and that scene, I mean, there are sort of vestigial remnants of that idea in the Old Testament as well. And it gets in a certain passage of the book of Isaiah. It basically gets moved not to a beast that has already been slain at the dawn of creation to a beast that will be slain in the end times essentially.

• 1:13:09Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:10Speaker 04

  So it gets read a lot of times in Christian sources as basically a metaphor for slaying the dead. I did just come across one exegesis of Psalms that basically interpreted the slaying of Leviathan as basically slaying of demons in baptism as well, which is just a fascinating reference too.

• 1:13:32Liv Albert?

  Hmm, I know so little about Christian, I want to say mythology, but I feel like that is a loaded word, but that's what it is.

• 1:13:41Speaker 04

  A lot of it coming from the, the Old Testament stuff, which is, is, you know, pre-Christian in a sense, but it's the Old Testament sea monsters Leviathan is actually based on, well, I think it's, it's pretty universally declared at this point to be based on a figure from Ugaritic mythology called Lotan. Um, which you have another instance there of, of the god Baal who slays, uh, Yom, the sea god and and the sea monster Lotan as well. So it's in a way it becomes influenced, the Old Testament becomes influenced by earlier mythologies. And that trickles down to what we see in Christian light antiquity with seeing all of this through the lens of the Cetus.

• 1:14:26Liv Albert?

  That's really interesting. Where is that mythology from? I'm not familiar with the.

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  The Ugaritic mythology?

• 1:14:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:33Speaker 04

  Let me look up the modern.

• 1:14:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah, fair.

• 1:14:37Speaker 04

  Location for it. I mean, it is, I don't know the, the exact location for it, but I mean, it is one of the sort of neighboring cultures around Israel. Uh, so that's where it comes in is that it influences, uh, basically the Old Testament in the Hebrew there. That Leviathan, I mean, it's, it's another thing I've, I've had to just the past couple of weeks has been when I've been working on this, this bit. So it's involved reading a lot of Old Testament salt scholarship and they suspect that the word Leviathan comes into the Hebrew from the, from this Ugaritic material essentially.

• 1:15:15Liv Albert?

  I need, I always sort of looking for ways to go beyond the Greco-Roman, but I, I know so little about the other regions. I never want to do it wrong, but I'm always so fascinated to hear about everything beyond.

• 1:15:26Speaker 04

  Yes, it's in about Northern Syria ish, so.

• 1:15:30Liv Albert?

  Okay. And what time period? Like, is it, I mean, I guess I just don't know enough about any of this stuff.

• 1:15:36Speaker 04

  I mean, it is usually, I mean, the dates are always fuzzy with this, but maybe around like 1400 B.C. to 1200 B.C.

• 1:15:46Liv Albert?

  Oh, wow. So quite early.

• 1:15:47Speaker 04

  Yes, very, very early. And this stuff, I mean, in terms of scholarship, this is still like very new. The Ugaritic material was only discovered like just under a hundred years ago. So.

• 1:16:00Liv Albert?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:16:01Speaker 04

  It hasn't actually wormed its way into popular consciousness yet. So it's, it's totally understandable for people to not understand that word yet. Cause honestly, I only barely knew it before I started the thesis as well.

• 1:16:14Liv Albert?

  Fair enough. Good to know. I'm, I'm not totally, I'm like, it is very rare that I'll hear a name of, of a mythology from that realm, the whole of the Mediterranean kind of world that I've not, never heard before.

• 1:16:26Speaker 04

  It's, I mean, what we have on it is very, very, very fragmentary anyway. So and just trying to reconstruct it is a whole nother challenge that I'm only getting secondhand from other people that are basically more adept in the language and in this culture as well.

• 1:16:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:44Speaker 04

  But it does seem to have that trickle down effect of a lot of the sea monsters like that end up being influenced from earlier images of them in a way.

• 1:16:54Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Well, I mean, it makes perfect sense, right? These, these places were so interconnected. And I think that's certainly something that I'm trying to emphasize more and more on my show, like even if it is a, you know, I basically do Greek unless I'm diving into Roman for some reason. But, but yeah, the idea, you know, I think it's a really problematic, but very widespread idea to kind of imagine these places as, you know, existing in a vacuum and developing everything themselves and it's theirs and and anyone else is copying or what have you. And, but everything was just so influenced by the whole region around them and people traveling around and hearing things from others or seeing things. And it's so interesting to think of it that way, but also important, I think, and, and certainly coming about more and more.

• 1:17:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's, that's something I've always wanted to do. I mean, kind of, I mean, to my shame, in a way, my thesis is mainly like Latin and Greek sources, because that's what we have, you know, the most sort of databases on in classics and stuff. There is, there is that things are going in the usual groups of where the, the scholarship has traditionally been. And those languages are the ones that I mostly know. So I'm in a way kind of forced to go that direction. But yeah, especially getting into the Ugaritic and the Old Testament material, it's, it's always wanted to make me learn Hebrew and learn other languages. Because obviously, I mean, there are other traditions of sea monsters as well to be exploring too. And much to my shame, I'm not quite yet at this

• 1:18:23Speaker 04

  point in my career qualified to do more thorough investigations of them, but hopefully one day.

• 1:18:30Liv Albert?

  Well, and I think that that's the way the field is moving, though, is to looking at, to be looking at more of these places and broader context of the wider Mediterranean region and beyond, obviously, like into Africa and Asia as well, but obvi- like, there is only so much you can do when everything before focused so explicitly on Greece and Rome and, and you know, but to be looking at other things, I think, is certainly the right step, especially if you're only in your PhD, it just means you get to move on afterwards, too. But it is, that's the thing, right? It's like classics as a term is so broad, like so typically used to just be Greece and Rome. And it's like, you know, there was way more other places around there, but, you know, the Western canon, the Western civilization, whole mess,

• 1:19:13Liv Albert?

  has just allowed us to sort of just consider these two places as if they were kind of alone. And maybe Egypt was down there, they were cool, too, and then sort of nobody else, almost.

• 1:19:24Speaker 04

  Yep, precisely, and I'm, I'm hopeful for the way the field is moving, at least towards it, at least that sort of recognition, and hopefully get more things going, because, like I say, and in terms of my research, it's, it's been forced in one direction, because in terms of searching through ancient texts for this word ketis, I mean, we have a great big database of ancient Greek texts, which is very easily searchable, but we don't really have that in a lot of other languages, so it really kind of hinders doing the same sort of mass projects like this, where you can drag up all of these references like that.

• 1:19:59Liv Albert?

  Mm-hmm, yeah, yeah, it's so true. Interesting, I mean, my BA was, I finished it 10 years ago now, and even, like, it's classics, but it was just Greece and Rome. Like, there was one Egyptian class I was able to take, but it was like the first time it was ever held, and I don't know if they continued it. Like, it was great, but yeah, it was just interesting the way that it is just so specifically. Just those, those two little places and hopefully that's changing now and you know, all of that. But yeah, it's a, it's quite an interesting thing to consider that all of these other places existed and, and are equally important, especially in understanding the wider and even in important in understanding Greece and Rome. So it's like, we would only understand Greece and Rome better if we understood all of these other places and their languages and everything.

• 1:20:44Speaker 04

  Yep, e- exactly. Cause I mean, that's what I'm, I'm hoping to show with this bit, of course. I mean, they do get influenced by cultures like that and depictions that were centuries before like that. And you, you don't often think of it, of it in that way of, of seeing basically one mythical monster as an image, not an image of, of basically being infused with another in a sense, or one being seen through the lens of some other dominant cultures, ideas of a certain type of sea monster or monster in general like that.

• 1:21:17Liv Albert?

  Well, I think sea monsters are so perfect for it too, because they are based in reality. And obviously like everything kind of is in its own way. Um, but you know, like, and I don't know enough about dragons and whatnot, but like, obviously like a big dragon, it's harder to imagine what that's based in versus a sea monster where like, it's a whale or like, it's an idea of a whale or a shark or what have you.

• 1:21:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:21:39Liv Albert?

  But yeah, yeah, it's so interesting to, to think about those things.

• 1:21:43Speaker 04

  It, um, yeah, it, it occurs to me. I mean, you mentioned dragons in the, in that case as well. There is, I mean, my supervisor again, Daniel Ogden, he just put out a new book on dragons, actually basically theorizing a lot of, you know, how do we get to that point of, of this idea of the, the classical dragon as we, we know it in the modern popular imagination from Game of Thrones and all of that, that a lot of that might actually have been influenced by the Cetus as well in a, in a way.

• 1:22:12Liv Albert?

  Great. Well, I was thinking about that as I was saying that because I was like, I do have that book. I just haven't gone into it yet because I got it after last year's, I'd like to save these things for, for October because I like a spooky season series.

• 1:22:26Speaker 04

  Oh, his books are good for that.

• 1:22:27Liv Albert?

  His books have been like so vital to basically all of my spooky season episodes. Yeah. Werewolves and witches and all of that stuff. So it's, yeah, it's exciting. The dragons one is on deck for next October.

• 1:22:44Liv Albert?

  Well, is there anything else you want to share when it comes to these sea monsters? Or your findings, or theories, or what have you?

• 1:22:51Speaker 04

  I mean, I think the big thing that'll probably interest the listeners to know something is this project of basically seeing Old Testament sea monsters through the lens of the Cetus actually comes to affect Jonah, what is usually called Jonah's whale, a lot of times. We were talking earlier about the Cetus and the whale, but the Septuagint translates the, in Hebrew, it's called a dagadal, which is, it just means like, big fish, essentially. But this gets translated as Cetus as well. So, that's, it's another interesting thing, the way that that comes into Greco-Roman culture as well.

• 1:23:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 04

  And in a very interesting way, whereas, we don't really have any ancient art of Leviathan or anything like that, but when it comes for Jonah, I mean, I tell all the listeners here too, if you just Google like Jonah in ancient art, you will see depictions of Jonah's whale as not a whale, but as a Cetus. So we have all of these depictions where he's being swallowed by a serpentine type looking thing. There are a couple of marble statuettes where it's a version of the Cetus that has four legs and looks very dog-like as well.

• 1:24:07Liv Albert?

  Ooh, that's really interesting.

• 1:24:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:09Liv Albert?

  So, visualization of the Cetus, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Because I realize we haven't even gone into that, but I, yeah, it's such an interesting, I've seen, not a ton, but, you know, the, some of the pottery and mosaics and things, and they're such interesting creatures when they visualize them.

• 1:24:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's another thing that, it has a kind of evolution over the course of Greco-Roman antiquity, when you start to see some of the earliest depictions of the Hesionean Andromeda myths, it's usually this basically almost a giant fish-looking thing, sometimes has scales, and the size of it varies quite a lot in ancient depictions. There are some, there is, we have fragments of a couple of versions of the Hesione myth, where the way that Heracles kills it is by being swallowed whole by the creature and basically hacking it to death from the inside. So there's a, one very nice ancient depiction where it's... It's depicted, I mean, he's basically drawing his sword as he's going into the maw of the

• 1:25:09Speaker 04

  Cetus like that. And you see very interesting stuff of they, they look like a lot of times like big fish, but with very pointed details on the teeth, of course. And another very interesting element that that might surprise some of the readers is that there are canine associations with the Cate a lot of times as well. They have these very particular pointed ears for some sort of reason. It's, I, I don't know exactly why, because obviously this doesn't have much to do with the way whales look, of course, but I think a lot of it might have to do with this sort of er image of what a beast is supposed to be.

• 1:25:51Speaker 04

  Do you just sort of naturally graft on canine associations in a way?

• 1:25:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah, I wonder, and I, you know, you can't even really see any connections with sharks. Like, obviously sharks have more fins than whales do, but nothing that I think would, would immediately make you think of like, dog-like ears. That is then a connection to Skilla in an interesting way, where Skilla has all these dog-like qualities, which are also sort of bizarre, because even in the Odyssey, she's dog-like, let alone the depiction of her visually.

• 1:26:25Speaker 04

  Yep, exactly. That, I mean, that's another reoccurring thing of why Scilla has, has dog-like associations to that of, I think it, it does come through, at least partially through the sea monster tradition as well, because that it, we do have a couple of Minoan,

• 1:26:44Speaker 04

  what we have of it is very, very fragmentary, but Minoan depictions of what appear to be sea monsters, and they do show similar dog-like characteristics, sometimes with the pointed ears and very, you know, canine-looking snouts as well. So it seems to be just another tradition thing that the Greeks may have inherited from earlier ideas.

• 1:27:06Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Oh, that's really interesting.

• 1:27:08Speaker 04

  And in terms of the quita's evolution in art, by starting maybe around the Hellenistic period, they actually start to begin to grow four legs as well. And the reason for this that Daniel's got in his new dragons book as well, and that I very much agree with, is that it's because of the hippocamps as well. These sort of ideas that sea creatures not only have this fishy tail behind them, but that they should have some sort of four legs or four flippers, four limbs in that seems to also affect depictions of the quetus as well. And when you, when you get to reading Daniel's book, that seems to be a lot that

• 1:27:51Speaker 04

  also accounts for the development of the dracon as gaining, you know, legs essentially of what we would associate with today, because in the ancient world dracon, you know, just a serpent's a lot of times no legs whatsoever, but that seems to affect that as well.

• 1:28:09Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Oh, that's really interesting. What about the dogs? I mean, it just feels so odd to have them be dog like at all.

• 1:28:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's one of those things that I have had to mention in thesis, but I, I can't, I, no one can come up with a coherent theory on it. So it's just one of those things you have to put out. It, it's a thing. It happens there. I mean, another odd thing sometimes, you never see it with the quetus, but sometimes with hippocamps, depictions of them, they are depicted as being winged as well. And it's, it's very, again, another, another thing, why do they depict that? It, it might just be a sort of artistic innovation because you think of the idea of a winged hippocamp. Well, you've got land, air and sea in a way, all represented there. So it might've just been a nice flourish in a way.

• 1:29:02Speaker 04

  But we don't really know why things like that occur.

• 1:29:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I can't think of any sort of logical, logical reasons. Oh, that's so interesting. This has been so incredible. Is there, would you like to tell my listeners, I mean, you already mentioned your Twitter handle, but remind them maybe, and if you want to be followed anywhere else or want to share anything, please.

• 1:29:24Speaker 04

  Uh, yes, I mean, I think the main thing is, yeah, my Twitter at C Monster Guy. I sadly don't post too much myself, but I do retweet a lot of C stuff. So that might be an avenue for you to see more on this in general. And I suppose in general, I'm finishing my PhD, hopefully at the end of this year. So hopefully going to start publishing, I mean, different things related to this. I have other projects as well. And hopefully eventually one day publish a thesis into a monograph. So I suppose just be on the lookout for my later scholarship at some point.

• 1:30:01Liv Albert?

  Wonderful. I mean, God, C monsters, that's such a, this is what makes me want to go back to school because I like hear of people just like doing a PhD in C monsters. That's so cool.

• 1:30:12Speaker 04

  Well, it's something, I mean, I also say to people too. When I was first in undergrad and my, I did a masters as well of it didn't originally occur to me that you could do like a full thesis in this kind of field. But I mean, to the, anyone out there that's possibly interested in like actually getting into academic study of this, this is a really good time to do so because it seems, I mean, usually monster studies is said to have begin, you know, around the 1990s with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's book. But it is becoming a very, I don't know what the, a very expansive field and it's getting a lot of popularity, same thing with folklore as well.

• 1:30:55Speaker 04

  So, I mean, if any of the listeners are interested in going the similar route, I mean, it's a very good time to do so now because a lot of scholarship is coming out on this stuff. Whereas, I mean, previous decades in classics, you might've had someone post the occasional article on Scylla or Charybdis, but not many people would have made a full study of the ancient dragon like Daniel has done in previous decades. So it's becoming a, a growing field for people.

• 1:31:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and that's so cool. I mean, there is so many really weird and interesting things from the ancient world that I'm glad that that is something that you can, you know, study in that way because it there's such weird and weird, weird and weird, weird and wild stuff that, you know, that existed back then. And I think often it gets kind of like pushed aside in favor of the more common ideas, or, I mean, in my opinion, the more boring ones. Yeah, yeah, it's all just, I mean, I'm thrilled to know that that's that that's something that can be studied in that way, or all of these different things, monsters in general. I actually am about to edit an episode I have coming out soon about monster theory with the conversation. And so it's just, there's so much, it's so great. I, I clearly

• 1:32:09Liv Albert?

  love everything when it comes to the ancient world and, and the mythology around it, but especially sea monsters. I was excited for this and then it turned out my, I just desperately needed to know all of this. So thank you.

• 1:32:21Speaker 04

  Well, thank you so much again for having me. It was a pleasure to come on.

• 1:32:24Liv Albert?

  I'm so glad. I'm so thrilled. It's been incredibly fun.

• 1:32:43Liv Albert?

  Oh, nerds, nerds, nerds. And that is deeply directed to me always, but particularly in today's episode. I am an enormous nerd. I was re-listening this to edit it and I found myself just as ridiculously excited as I was during the original recording, which was like two months ago. The idea of ancient sharks and shark attacks just thrills me to no end. Trying to figure out what they would have seen and understood about undersea life is my new passion. It's so incredible. I could think about it for hours. So again, huge thank you to Ryan for his research and for sharing it with me. Sea monsters. I fucking love them. As always, Ryan's Twitter handle is in the

• 1:33:25Liv Albert?

  episode's description, so please follow for more. And well, I'm just gonna go ahead and think about ancient shark attacks for the next, I don't know, forever. Let's talk about myths, maybe, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians. Oh, she handles so much, everything, really, just truly helping me so immensely, I can't possibly explain it. Stephanie Foley works to transcribe the podcast for YouTube captions and greater accessibility. The podcast is hosted and monetized by Acast. Thank you all for listening. I hope you loved this episode as much as I did, and I hope you enjoyed how absurdly excited I got when talking about sharks and megalodon teeth and the bizarre whale skeleton that hung over my high school's math wing

• 1:34:08Liv Albert?

  for absolutely no discernible reason. I am Liv, and I truly love this shit and sharks. I love sharks so much.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 1:35:44Speaker 03

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• 1:36:14Speaker 05

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• 1:36:32Speaker 06

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• 1:36:46Speaker 05

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