Conversations: The Wonders of the Ancient and Mythical Mediterranean, More Sea Monsters w/ Dr Ryan Denson

Everyone's favourite Sea Monster Guy, Dr Ryan Denson, is back for more! Liv and Ryan talk all things ancient and mythical sea monsters, Liv's lifelong love of sharks, and the overall WONDER of sea creatures, real, mythical, or otherwise. Pre-order Ryan's Sea Monster book here, and use the code SEAMONSTER (singular!) to get 35% off before September 2, 2026 https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/a-zoobiography-of-the-ancient-sea-monster-9781350451872/. **Please consider signing the petition https://c.org/QGNpXjVpRP against Exeter University's potential gutting of the Humanities Department, a decision that would affect not only multiple past podcast guests' work, but the ongoing study of Classics and Humanity more broadly.** AVAILABLE NOW! The Odyssey: a Modern Retelling. https://geni.us/TheOdysseyBook 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. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Liv Albert?

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

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• 2:20Liv Albert?

  Hello and welcome back to Let's Talk About Myths, Baby. It's Michaela Pangarish here to introduce you all to the next episode with a past guest, Ryan Denson. Here to talk more sea monsters. God, do we love sea monsters on this show. But I will say, there was a little too much praise for seals happening on this one. I will forgive these two for their seal love. They didn't grow up at a time when seals were terrorizing children and dragging them to the depths as I did. A little, you know, West Coast, Canada, early 2000s reference. Anyways, that's fine. We also have some talk here about the current troubles happening at Exeter. And please feel free to go to our description to sign

• 3:04Liv Albert?

  the petition to help stop the university from gutting the humanities departments. This is ridiculous. Can we stop just going after the humanities generally? I don't know. That's up to

• 3:20Liv Albert?

  patriarchy, colonialism. I'm tired. I finished my thesis last night. Brain isn't working. Just mad, just mad about things. But that's fine, because we're going to talk sea monsters on this episode. Love you all.

• 3:49Liv Albert?

  Conversations, the wonders of the ancient and mythical Mediterranean. More sea monsters with Dr. Ryan Denson.

• 4:09Liv Albert?

  I am so excited to have you back, Ryan Denson. Oh, doctor now, of course. You were doctor on the last episode as well. But Dr. Ryan Denson, because you come and you tell me about sea monsters, and that is why you are always a fan favorite. I actually talked to my roommate and I was like, oh, today's episode will be good because it's the sea monster guy. And even she has heard of the sea monster guy. So thank you as always.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be back on the podcast. It's always just great to speak to you.

• 4:37Liv Albert?

  I mean, thank you. I love when I have guests who are comfortable like this and also want to come back and tell me more things. And I mean, when they're about sea monsters, there's a real bonus there. I'll never forget, like, just basically asking yelling questions about sharks at you from our first episode. I feel like I barely let you talk, and I just had to talk about sharks and whales the whole time. So it's always good to have you back.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  I have made a new discovery on sharks, too, that we'll get into in a bit, too.

• 5:07Liv Albert?

  That's exciting. Well, then we'll introduce it that way. The reason that you're back with more sea monsters is that you have a sea monster book coming out. So do you want to just do a quick introduction about that before, and then we can dive into sort of everything else?

• 5:21Speaker 05

  Yes. So the book itself is called A Zoo Biography of the Ancient Sea Monster. It is being published by Bloomsbury for their Ancient Environment series. So I'm very happy to be in that series in particular, because the environmental humanities are really taking off these days. So it is basically going to be focusing on the Quetus as a sort of lost classical monster in a way, and basically recovering the image of that. And that's essentially, I mean, the majority of the book. And we'll talk in a second, too, about, I mean, why it sort of gets lost as well. And specifically for your audience, too, Bloomsbury has been very kind enough to give me a discount code that will be valid on

• 6:03Speaker 05

  pre-orders if they would like to preorder it as well up until September 2, I believe.

• 6:08Liv Albert?

  That's so cool. And we just said this off air, but I'm going to say it in here again. We, this is the first, you're the first guest who has come equipped with a promo code for a discount. And I actually think that's so cool, especially because these academic books are pricey. We all know, you know, they're so worth it, but the, they're always so pricey. So it's so nice to have that. So yeah, to the listeners, that is all in the episode's description. You can get a discount, which is very, that's just cool. I'm proud of your publisher. I'm impressed that you asked also and got one. Like, that's generally great. So it's very exciting.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Yes. It's very generous of them, too. So we appreciate that very much, the support there. I mean, before we get into the book, there is something else I want to talk about to bring to your audience's attention really quickly as well. And it's something that's, it is very close to me. As people might know, I did my PhD at the University of Exeter, which is, it is a big humanities school as well. I mean, it is, became kind of famous for that. It is in the Russell Group for that reason, because a lot of their leading research is in humanities specifically. So you can do all sorts of fun things at Exeter,

• 7:21Speaker 05

  obviously do a PhD on sea monsters. They also have an MA program on magic and occult sciences, which they are now starting. You can do a PhD in magic and occult sciences at Exeter as well. And I preface this to tell your audience to sort of make them aware of a situation that's going on there, which is, last month, the University of Leadership

• 7:48Speaker 05

  announced that they are looking to now cut 150 full-time academic jobs at the University of Exeter. And this is supposedly possibly going through later this summer as well. So they're trying to very quickly push this through. But the Exeter branch of the UCU, which is this faculty union for universities in the UK, has pushed back against this. And as they have pointed out quite rightly, I think this is a sort of manufactured crisis because the university leadership, their rationale for doing so is that they're on a five million pound deficit, which sounds bad. But as the UCU and others have pointed

• 8:33Speaker 05

  out, the university actually has over 200 million in cash reserves. So this is not, you know,

• 8:40Liv Albert?

  It was a deficit.

• 8:41Speaker 05

  Exactly. It's a yearly deficit, but it is by no means a situation where the university is in danger of going, running out of money, going out of business, or anything like that. And the other thing the UCU and others have pointed out is they're looking to, you know, fire so many academics, yet the vice chancellor has a salary of just under 400,000 pounds per year. And many other executive, you know, provosts and, you know, that sort of thing also make extremely high pay and they keep, you know, getting a higher raise. So again, this is one of those things to point out. And I wanted to preface this by saying, you

• 9:22Speaker 05

  know, how good Exeter is for the humanities with another alarming fact, which is 85% of the people being targeted for these cuts are in the humanities. And the university has provided no justification for that imbalance whatsoever. They have, you know, ignored any requests from the UCU or others to explain why this is occurring, why they are targeting the humanities at, you know, such a high-end university for the humanities like this. And this is, as I say, affecting all of the humanities in Exeter, but I want to talk specifically about where I come from with the classics department there. And, you know, your audience will be familiar with a couple of other people there. It is targeting many

• 10:05Speaker 05

  of them, and Exeter's classics department is ranked the fourth in the UK, and I think within the top 50 in the entire world.

• 10:13Liv Albert?

  That is so wild.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. It is world-leading as a department, you know, 100% of their research outputs are ranked in the REF, the sort of UK, you know, ranking for research outputs as being internationally excellent. 100% of their research, you know, everything they're putting out. And your listeners might remember two of two people there in particular, Emily Hauser, who does amazing work on research on women in the ancient world. And she also writes her own novels as well.

• 10:49Liv Albert?

  And is generally the best. Emily's a good friend of the show. And yeah, I know, I've seen her writing about it. Because did she write an article or for the Gart? I know she wrote about that on the scene, you know, like, but did she, I feel like she also wrote And I just will link to it if I'm right.

• 11:04Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, so people, yes, if you go to Emily Hauser's social media, she is one of the people that is leading the charge against this. And as she and others have pointed out, I, you know, it is, it is, again, it's very ideologically motivated. There is another colleague of ours that said that it was, you know, ideological vandalism and we should not shy away from calling this this because Emily is one of the people, it has not been decided yet who is going to potentially be fired by this, but Emily has already posted on her social media that she is one of the people being targeted for this. So again, you can see the sort of haphazardness that this is happening at a humanities university and it's targeting major people.

• 11:48Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Speaker 05

  The other person, I mean, in the Exeter Classics Department that your audience might remember is a good friend of mine, Daniel Ogden, good friend, and he was my PhD supervisor as well. It is a remarkable achievement for an academic to be a world-leading expert in one subfield of classics, but it's no, it's no exaggeration or anything to say that Daniel is a world-leading researcher and academic in multiple fields within classics. He's talked on here about, you know, magic and curses and ancient religion. He is a world-leading expert in that and in folklore and in mythology.

• 12:28Liv Albert?

  He is on, his name is on a lot of books that have been used on the show for like the entirety of the show. Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 05

  Exactly. So all of that and maybe, you know, less distant from the myth route is he's also an expert in Hellenistic history, Alexander the Great, Hellenistic dynasties, that sort of thing. So again, it's no exaggeration. I'm not just saying this because he was my PhD supervisor or anything like that. He is a world-leading expert in a lot of things. Yet he is like Emily, one of the people being potentially targeted for this. So it just goes to show that what, you know, the fact that they're so heavily targeting the humanities and with no discrimination for who is doing what work or how much they're putting, because both Emily and Daniel too, they are

• 13:17Speaker 05

  well-known for their teaching within the department as well. So on that side too, the Classics Department is doing quite well. There's just no justification for this.

• 13:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  And I should say too, I mean, again, we don't know who, you know, might get fired or anything like that, but regardless of who goes and who stays, this puts a lot of pressure on the people that remain, both the students and the faculty, because it's going to end up shoving more teaching loads onto other faculty members, class sizes increase, and anyone that's been in a university, you know, the difference when you have a, you know, giant fifty, sixty-person class you're dealing with versus a smaller, you know, ten-person or so seminar. It's worse on both the teacher and the student. So this very much does impact the quality of teaching and things going on at Exeter.

• 14:10Speaker 05

  And this is why I wanted to speak out against this. And one thing that your audience can do, it's a very small thing, is that the UCU has put up a petition and I'll give you the link to this. It is, it's gotten, I think, over thirty-five thousand signatures as well. Several people, MPs, former MPs, I think Stephen Fry as well, have shared this, because this is a, for all the reasons that I've talked about here, this is just massively unpopular. And so if you, if any members of your audience, I mean, if they've enjoyed my work or Emily's work or Daniel's work, we've also had a couple of other Exeter PhDs, Freddie Kempton, Imogen Briscoe, soon to be Charlotte.

• 14:54Liv Albert?

  I was like, I know that there would be, I mean, just through you alone, I know I've gotten so many guests, but I was like, I can't name them off the top of my head. So thank you.

• 15:02Speaker 05

  Yes. And even as they're, even as those ones are not faculty members that are being targeted by this, they are examples. They, Freddie has done work on Ovid, Time and Ovid, you know, Imogen, similar work on Ovid and his portrayals of women. These are things that you can do with a strong humanities program at a university like Exeter, that this is threatening. And Charlotte, who your audience will meet soon, I think, she does curse tablets. So again, this is another robust thing you can do with a good humanities education. So it is, you know, it sounds insignificant, but it is one little thing that no matter where your audience is, if you can just

• 15:43Speaker 05

  please, you know, take, literally take like a minute of your time to pause this podcast and click on the link and sign that petition to, you know, add your name to that because it is a very popular petition, we'll say, because these are very unpopular changes that they're doing.

• 16:02Liv Albert?

  Yeah. No, and I'm glad, I'm glad that you wanted to mention that. I mean, you know, we, to the listeners, obviously we prepared this ahead of time, but it is something that like, you know, for all I'm outside of the academic world, I mean, I'm certainly like adjacent enough that I am able to see that this is a very, it's a bigger issue than just at Exeter, you know, off the mic, we talked about how there were similar, similar issues in, in other UK schools and certainly in North America too. And, you know, the, the humanities seems like it's, it's always kind of, or recently, first of the chopping block, particularly, you know, as

• 16:41Liv Albert?

  the West certainly gets, you know, more and more right-wing. And one of the things that cannot be understated about just learning the humanities broadly, like, you know, there's so much to be said for these specific topics and, and just, you know, our love of classics as humans, but humanities broadly are the things that just teach us to be better people. They are, you know, I, I mean, I had to double major in English Lit and, and Classics, so Humanities for Life, like, these, these things are just, they, yeah, they make us better people. They help teach people empathy and, and just like, understanding of the world around. And, you know, we were, we were

• 17:24Liv Albert?

  talking off, off mic about that, I don't know when this episode is going to come out, it'll be soon, but, you know, to the listeners, I had just rambled about the Odyssey movie, which I'm trying to remember to call Nolan's Odyssey, because I distinctly don't want to call it just The Odyssey, because it's not. But, you know, when we see these Hollywood epics of these stories, like, without people being allowed to learn the humanities, no one is going to know sort of what is going on beyond that. And, and I'm saying this very poorly, but like, the propaganda that exists in movies like Christopher Nolan's Odyssey is going to go considerably less checked than it

• 18:07Liv Albert?

  already does if, if fewer and fewer people are able to access the humanities, because it truly, these are things, these are learning experiences that just make people more empathetic humans, make you better at understanding the world, other people around you, the history, and, you know, if we are only focusing on STEM and things like that, which are very valuable themselves, but without, STEM is useless without the humanities, because it's like how AI cannot do the thing, all the things that they think it can, because it, we require a human interaction. There, there must be human, you know, understanding in order for anything to keep going as it should,

• 18:52Liv Albert?

  you know, that, yeah, it's, it's hard to put into just a handful of words, but, yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  Yes, I mean, exactly. I mean, the humanities, especially if you bring up AI, I mean, humanities are even more important these days, especially when, you know, we're being pushed, this AI to push your thinking onto these things. And it's just, AI is just such a hollow thing. I won't go too much on an anti-AI route, because, you know, other people can frame this better, but it is definitely oriented in a weird way. It's sort of hollowness, a soullessness of knowledge. When the thirty-minute thing you put out over the, over this past weekend on The Odyssey, just even off the cuff, is infinitely better than anything that could have been, you know, auto-generated by AI slop or whatever, because it is a human who is very aware of humanities and using that to

• 19:44Speaker 05

  critically think about this piece of media, comparing it with another ancient piece of media. Neither one has particularly good representations of women, but seeing that, using that comparative focus is what the humanities is strong at and how we can understand the world around us. But, you know, these sort of ideological pushes to eliminate the humanities, they're motivated by what seems to be a sort of very thin conception for what people want education to be, that just outsource stuff to AI and, you know, don't bother thinking too much about this movie, just consume it and all of that sort of stuff. And that's just, it's just a rather ugly image of what you

• 20:26Speaker 05

  want education to be and what you want human life to be, because

• 20:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Speaker 05

  the humanities just add depth to it. I saw a meme a couple of weeks ago that was just like, me and my humanities degree against the world. And I'm going to print that on a T-shirt or something and wear that, because just, I will never, I mean, give in to this sort of thing. I mean, if the Exeter situation seems distant from a lot of your listeners, it is happening in many other places. I was talking to a friend in Australia that she, I'd mentioned what I said about, you know, the vice chancellor salary at Exeter, and she was telling me that, well, vice chancellors at a lot of Australian universities, they, they regularly make over a million Australian

• 21:12Speaker 05

  dollars a year. And a lot of them are pushing to, you know, downsize the humanities and all that for the same sort of bullshit supposed financial reasons that don't, aren't as serious as they make them out to be. So it's just bleak times. So it's like, you know, I would encourage your audience, yes, to sign the UCU petition for the Exeter thing, but do what you can to support the humanities wherever you are. And it doesn't necessarily have to be in a, you know, a university context. That's something obviously, you know, key to, to where I am and where I'm focusing in, but this is a much larger issue beyond just academics, jobs and all of that sort of thing.

• 21:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 05

  Support the humanities where you can. I was very happy to hear in the past couple of weeks that my, my little hometown in Georgia in the US, they, they might be getting a new library. So little things like that

• 22:07Liv Albert?

  That is good.

• 22:08Speaker 05

  is always helpful. So just do what you can to support the humanities and whatever you can, whether it's just sharing a podcast or thinking critically about media and stuff like that, because it, again, it makes the world a better place, I think.

• 22:22Liv Albert?

  Honestly.

• 22:23Speaker 05

  These AI tech oligarch bullshit.

• 22:26Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, I mean, well, yeah. I could go on for a thousand years, so I won't. Um, but thank you for using the term critical thinking because ironically, that was the term I couldn't uh, think of when I was uh, rambling about the importance of the humanities because brains are hard. Um, but it it's true. I mean, like, it's not about, yeah, not about like whether you just, you want to go to this university or or you know, somebody who wants to go to this university. Like, it's not about that. It's about the wider issues of humanity and and how the learning about humanity fits in with that. And, you know, it's,

• 23:06Liv Albert?

  it's one of these things that sounds so straightforward, like, well, I think as humans, we should probably learn about what it is to be human, which is all that is. Um, and and yeah, so just a wider, it's just about the the wider acknowledgement that like humans are are good and um, we need them. It's such a weird thing to have to explain to be like, I'm defending the existence

• 23:30Speaker 05

  Humanity.

• 23:31Liv Albert?

  People and of our ability to think for ourselves. What a weird world to live in. And I mean, also, like, just on the uh, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, AI is just stupid for so many other reasons, including that it's using up all the water. And I recently learned that they don't need water to cool it. They have all of these other ways that they can cool the um, the like servers or whatever, but they're more expensive than water. So so they're using fresh water instead, which we are going to run out of, which is

• 24:02Speaker 05

  As as long as the billionaires can save a buck, you know, what else matters, I guess.

• 24:07Liv Albert?

  He needed that money to move to Argentina. That's where all of the most reasonable and empathetic.

• 24:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:18Liv Albert?

  Anyway, I've never cared about soccer in my life, but it was cool to see Argentina lose. And on that note, I

• 24:29Speaker 05

  To hopefully give your audience some peace from the madness of the world. We will now talk about sea monsters for a bit. So you can rest from that horror after you sign the petition, please.

• 24:40Liv Albert?

  Exactly. Yep. I it is fun to have this as the topic because so often I have such like serious rants and then we go into like a very serious topic, which are also good. And I love those episodes. But it's particularly nice to be like, here is the horrors of um, the world at this moment and why we all need a little bit more socialism. Um, and also sea monsters. So what? Yeah. Like, I mean, it's been years since our first sea monster chat, so I'm not worried about like us retreading anything. I'm probably just gonna ask more about sharks and whales. Um, but yeah, I mean, what? What is, I guess, what is like different that you've gotten out of or like, what are some particular?

• 25:22Liv Albert?

  I don't know, new and exciting ancient whales things?

• 25:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. So this is a great, I mean, and it's good to sort of, I mean, if we retread, uh, you know, that's always good because my thoughts have changed in a lot of ways. Because I think if I remember correctly, someone's gonna look this up. But I think it was like 2022, we did the first one.

• 25:42Liv Albert?

  If that, yeah, 2022, 2021. It was a while ago now, which is also weird for me. Because, yeah, I mean, same, my my thoughts have changed. The amount that I've grown as like a researcher and stuff do in these four years. So I mean,

• 25:55Speaker 05

  Which is always a good thing, too, to learn something AI can't really do.

• 25:59Liv Albert?

  Exactly. Let alone even get the right answer on like, what's the capital?

• 26:04Speaker 05

  Yes. And so, yeah, I mean, when we did the first one, I was still writing the PhD thesis. So I was still sort of collecting stuff and didn't really have it all together. And this sort of main innovation with this book. Um, this book, I think I I probably said it before. I mean, there are really three main sea monsters um, in Greco-Roman antiquity. Two of them, Silla and Chrybdis are kind of attached to the Odyssey. They're very recognizable. They're very known. Um, and in previous scholarship, um, there's a wonderful monograph by Marion Hoppman on Silla that I think it was like 2012. That is just incredibly comprehensive. That just does everything.

• 26:45Liv Albert?

  I don't know about that. Sorry. Now I'm just gonna take notes for myself.

• 26:49Speaker 05

  I think it is. It's called um, Silla Myth Metaphor and Paradox, which you know, it it's great. I mean, it's it should be reasonably priced these days since it's been out for a while. Um, but that, I cannot beat her on Silla knowledge or the depth and the lucid analysis that she does there. So all things Silla, go to her in that book, please.

• 27:12Liv Albert?

  And I will, but can I? Because, sorry, now you you brought it up. And uh, can I? And this is, I I really have to always have to preface, but I really love the hard C. So I'm just gonna say that I say Skilla. I know they're both right. Um, but just as I say it differently than you, I want to preface. Um, and also the Odyssey said Silla, and I know that it's not wrong, but my brain went, oh, I want that hard C sound. Um, in any case, really what I have to say is, has anyone told you what Skilla looks like in Christopher Nolan's Odyssey?

• 27:46Speaker 05

  Oh, no. Should I? Do I want to ask this?

• 27:52Liv Albert?

  Well, she's really just like a worm blob. Like, I think I, do you remember the movie Tremors? Is anyone? Yeah, it's, I mean, it it looked like those.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  So is it like a hot, like hot, warm and half?

• 28:06Liv Albert?

  No, they didn't even, we didn't see anything. We all all you got to see was this weird worm blob. It didn't even, it barely even seemed to have teeth. I was kind of like, what am, what am I looking at? It was kind of, yeah, like a, like a

• 28:22Liv Albert?

  out of the water eel worm blob thing that just snatched the men off the ship. And I also need you to know, and I really don't want to make this about the Odyssey. I'm gonna try not to, but Odysseus like rode and he helped and he didn't do the thing in the actual epic, which is that he like puts on all his armor and he's like, I'm gonna fight you despite everyone smarter than me telling me not to do this. And I thought that was a real missed opportunity. They really made Matt Damon into the hero. Um, sorry, this is not about the Odyssey, but the Skilla. Because Skilla's fucking best and they made her into a weird worm blob.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  Yes. I thought you were gonna, because we we were talking before we hit record

• 29:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 05

  about the sirens, how they're, you know, they're half naked, you know, of course he got the naked part, right? But they're fishtailed, um, not birdlike as in antiquity. So, I mean, I, God, at this point, did he even read the Odyssey or?

• 29:17Liv Albert?

  Honestly, apparently he read Emily Wilson's, but I don't know which I I I saw very little evidence of that.

• 29:24Speaker 05

  He read the front and the back cover, maybe, but uh, did he read inside it? It would be the better question.

• 29:31Liv Albert?

  I've been jokingly saying for the last year that my kids retelling is going to be more accurate. And now I can say with 100% certainty that it's like 100% more accurate.

• 29:42Liv Albert?

  In any case, sorry, that was not meant to be about the Odyssey or Skilla. I'm really excited to know about this monograph.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  No, but that is a good point. Uh, and Skilla too, that is more faithful to the Greek.

• 29:53Liv Albert?

  Thank you. Yeah, that's, I mean, you know, not to be obnoxious about it, but

• 29:57Speaker 05

  It is just an, I don't know, an American habit I picked up a lot.

• 30:00Liv Albert?

  No, it is. And it's like, I think the English often have a silent as well. You're not alone. I just, every time I say it. But then I also feel weird about pronouncing something differently than someone I'm talking to, which is why I explain.

• 30:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. And uh, so, yeah, I mean,

• 30:14Liv Albert?

  So yeah, so so Skillas and Chrybdis are some of the most famous, bringing it back to like, who are the other monsters? Because you didn't write about Skilla. I just had to make it about her.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  It's all good. Uh, but that's actually a good thing. Uh, because those are very recognizable monsters, you know? They have somewhat been translated into modern media. Ever, you know, you don't have to be a Greek mythology buff to know those. You could broadly, same thing with something like, I mean, say the Minotaur is the example I use in the introduction. It's something that, yes, it exists. People are familiar with it because of retellings of Greek myth, but it's also kind of been translated into the modern fantasy genre. So you could broadly, you know, walk down the street today in Canada or Poland or any country pretty much. And people ask someone, they would be familiar with what the Minotaur is, right?

• 31:01Liv Albert?

  Or as the Brits say, just because I'm on a pronunciation bent and my brain is bad. They say Minotaur, and I also find that one incredibly annoying. So

• 31:09Speaker 05

  I hate that one. No, I can't. I can't abide by that one regardless of what the Greek says. No.

• 31:16Liv Albert?

  I think the Greek would be Minotaur because I don't really have like a hard I sound anyway. So I think we're right.

• 31:22Liv Albert?

  But you're quite right. Like, there are these monsters in Greek myth that have become like so well known. And yeah, and I keep distracting you, but I think the point you're making is the Kidos is not one of them.

• 31:33Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. So cer- certain monsters have been translated and some of them have been lost essentially. And this is, I the introduction is titled A Lost Classical Monster for that sort of reason. Because if you did the same thing, I mean, certainly probably mythology buffs would know this from the Andromeda myth and Hesione myth. But you wouldn't get very far just asking people, you know, even some classicists, if they're Greek, is not good, would not be familiar with what a Kidos is.

• 32:00Liv Albert?

  No, and you think like just sea monster. You like, yeah, I feel like you don't, like the the Kidos does not have like a recognizable. Yeah, visual aspect, especially because, because even if you are familiar with Andromeda or Hesione, like you're going to, I mean, less so with Hesione because she's not been adapted, but like Andromeda, you're gonna think like of the movies, you're gonna think Kraken, you're gonna think all of these silly things that are not necess, you know, that don't aren't really representative of actual Greek myth, let alone what a Kidos was.

• 32:33Speaker 05

  Yes, that that just randomly reminded me to in Clash of the Titans, you know, it's it's loose loosely based on uh, the Andromeda myth. I won't get off on that for a second.

• 32:44Liv Albert?

  It's a fucking Kraken.

• 32:45Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. And the pure and sole reason why they did that, why they made that change is just because modern audiences will recognize the name Kraken more than Kidos. Um, so they've just done that for that that that reason. Um, but I mean, the question to ask then too is, I mean, why do certain monsters get preserved and translated into modern culture? But why not others? What's the deal with that? Why is there that unevenness? Um, and what I've said in the introduction is that A lot of monsters, they benefit from what I've called sort of stability of conceptions. Um, so the Minotaur, you know, it is obviously half bull and half man. That's an invariable feature of the Minotaur. Yeah, that might look a little bit different depending on depictions and such.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  You know, there's a whole myth behind why that is and all of that sort of thing. But to be half bull, half man, you're never going to get anything else. It's never going to suddenly be half snake or half fish because that would be not the Minotaur. That would be something else, right? But with the Ketus, it is a mixture of different animal parts, but it is not a consistent mixture throughout. So you will see in ancient art representation, sometimes it's like a, just like a giant fish. Sometimes it's a slender sort of sea serpent. Sometimes it's a dog-like looking thing. Um, and what I've come up with for this is to basically say it is a sort of interrelated association of Pisces, serpentine and canine elements.

• 34:16Speaker 05

  But again, it's not consistent, like one third, one third and one third. It varies because unlike the Minotaur, the myth that that comes from, it kind of doesn't matter what the physical form is. So different artists do different things and it gets genericized a lot in a lot of retellings. It just gets translated as sea monster. And, you know, that's not a bad translation, but it does kind of imply something that's so generic that it has no associations, no, you know, even as it does have variable associations, it's not random. It does throughout the centuries come back to canine elements or serpentine elements.

• 34:59Speaker 05

  So, you know, different shifting things, but it's not random. So this is one of the things that I'm targeting in this book. Throughout the book, I don't just translate the term Ketus um as sea monster. I use that throughout because an ancient Greek would recognize that sort of monster. They might have a different picture of it from another ancient Greek, but it is a known monster, even if it is a bit of a variable one.

• 35:38Liv Albert?

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• 36:23Liv Albert?

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

• 37:07Liv Albert?

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

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• 38:52Liv Albert?

  Well, one thing that's, it's so interesting to hear you say that because I mean, that's so true of how I've kind of taken in Kitoi over the years, but also makes me think of how like mythologically there is like a Kito, like as a singular goddess, like origin sea monster. And then there's also like Ketus as in just like, that's just the word for sea monster. Like the word is both a name, which is of course very common in, in Greek mythology broadly, that, that some mythological person is both, it's their name and, you know, the noun used to describe them. But, but with Kito, it's interesting because it is this, this goddess who isn't really in stories.

• 39:36Liv Albert?

  She's just kind of like the mother of a handful of characters and therefore known that way. But then simultaneously, her name is then used to just describe like all of that kind of like, yeah, like, you know, monster in whatever form.

• 39:52Speaker 05

  I'm so glad that you mentioned Kito. I have a forthcoming article on her that'll be out next year, actually.

• 40:02Liv Albert?

  So she's another of all my favorite people.

• 40:06Speaker 05

  So yes, I mean, Kito does appear in Kito. It is derived from Ketus. And so I wrote this article for this journal, Creator Nature, which is, did ancient Greek mythology have a goddess of sea monsters? So that will be out eventually.

• 40:25Liv Albert?

  And what is the answer? Yes, right?

• 40:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, kind of, in a way.

• 40:30Liv Albert?

  Kind of.

• 40:31Speaker 05

  So it depends. And what I've done with that, so the reference is in Hesiod, it begins in Hesiod. And other people have theorized this before too. There's a very famous academic called Martin West, who, who, he wrote in like the 1950s, a commentary on Hesiod, and people still hail it as one of the greatest things that's ever been produced in classics. So that's how good it is. But he theorized that Hesiod, he made up Kito from the word Ketus. So not the other way around as some people. Some people have tried to claim that, you know, the goddess gave her name to the animal when it's probably the other way around because we already have Ketus mentioned before Hesiod in Homer.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  So it's likely that he made up this. And the reason for it is just to sort of have a matriarch of monsters or yes, of monsters in this branch in his genealogical system. Because he's it's theogony, it's this basic giant, you know, genealogical mapping of a lot of the gods. And Kito is the mother of a lot of monstrous figures. Her entire branch is just monstrous figures.

• 41:43Liv Albert?

  So, yes, but then now I want to know what your thoughts are on the fact that most of her children are not related to the sea. Because that's always been so interesting to me, but that I guess, but then that, that would make me wonder like why Hesiod would pick a sea monster name for this goddess? Cause she's the, just for the listeners, she, she along with Forkus, who's like another kind of sea god, is the mother of, um, but the Gorgon, so all three of the Gorgons, but also the Grey Eye, who are, you know, equally kind of bizarre, but land dwelling. And those are the only ones I could think of off the top of my head, but, but both sets of like three

• 42:25Liv Albert?

  are very specifically these creatures who live like by the sea, but not in the sea. But their mother, their parents are both sea monster-ish.

• 42:34Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 42:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I don't have an exact answer. I mean, my guess would be that it's kind of Forkus, we don't know a whole lot about him, too. I mean, he's, he is mentioned in Homer, so he's not made up by Hesiod. We know that for sure. It does seem that Hesiod is making Kito to have a female counterpart for this genealogical system. And so it might be that, hey, he's a sea god, you know, I have another sort of sea goddess there. That might be the rationale for it. But yes, as you say, I mean, a lot of her descendants, they don't seem to be sea monsters themselves. And I mean, we do read, there's a lot of ambiguity in the Greek text. I'm not gonna get into

• 43:19Speaker 05

  this too depth because it's hard to say. But there's a lot of ambiguity in the way the pronouns are structured in her genealogical line to the point where it's possible, because later lines will say, and she gave birth to, and it's completely ambiguous in the Greek text, whether that refers back to Kito, or back to Echidna, or something like this. So you'll find versions of her descendants that are drawn in different ways, because it's so ambiguous. And that might be a sort of deliberate feature, too, for this weird sort of monstrous branch of that genealogical line that Hesiod seems to be stitching together, that he wanted some sort of, you know, mother figure for that that

• 44:02Speaker 05

  didn't exist before. And that's the Hesiod reference. The interesting thing to wonder there is, I mean, Hesiod is a big text, or a big author in the rest of classical antiquity. So did any ancient authors, this is what I look at in the article, did they take this figure of Kito and do something else with her to envision her further? Because we have other figures like Triton in, he says, the agony, that's the first reference to him chronologically, but he becomes other sorts of things in a lot of later narratives. So

• 44:37Liv Albert?

  Including plural, like Kito.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  Exactly. There's a lot of weird, you know, differences there. So I wanted to basically put together all of the references to Kito in the ancient world, which was doable, because it's less than a dozen. Sadly, we have,

• 44:58Speaker 05

  what is it, probably about half of those are just repetitions of Hesiod. So just repeating what he said. And there are some other things. There's a fragment of another Greek author that basically suggests that, I mean, she and Typhon had some sort of kids as well. Don't really know what's going on there, because it's a fragment, and it doesn't say, you know, who and all of that sort of thing. But what we can tell from the extent of evidence is that no one ever develops Kito. She is, she doesn't really do anything beyond what Hesiod does. And so I've said in the article that, I mean, she is a figure there, but she seems to be completely non agential. She, you know, she ostensibly exists,

• 45:42Speaker 05

  she gives birth to this line of monsters, but we don't ever hear any texts like you do with other elements of mythology of her interacting with one character or another, or, you know, Zeus or Apollo talks to her, or she has some role in a narrative. There is no role ascribed to Kito whatsoever. She's just sort of like a genealogical contrivance.

• 46:05Speaker 05

  And this is really interesting in a lot of ways, that they just never did anything. So some people have assumed, this is the, why I say kind of, if ancient mythology had a goddess of sea monsters, is some people assume that this would be a figure that it's in Percy Jackson in a little bit, that she's a figure that goes around commanding Kite to attack whoever there's one of his novels. Where that happens, I think Percy and his friends piss her off, and she sends sea monsters. Sadly to say, that doesn't occur in any extent bit of ancient text. Sadly, you know,

• 46:45Liv Albert?

  I wish it did. That would be cool, but.

• 46:48Speaker 05

  But this is something, too, as well, that is one of these interesting differences with the ancient and the modern imagination. So Hesiod created her in that sort of bare bones fashion. She doesn't do anything in his text. And later Greeks and Romans, for better or for worse, they seem to be just intent with that, just leaving her as a figure that's always offstage. But we seem to assume and hope for them to be larger, more agential figures.

• 47:16Liv Albert?

  I mean, that, that's so true of so many mythical characters. It just makes me think of the number of times, you know, I get asked all the time, like, can you talk about X? Can you talk about this person, this person? And it's just like, not really, sorry, you know. So often, they're like, functional, which is kind of just what I like that side of it, because to me, it is, it is this reminder of like, what myth is as compared to what we conceptualize as storytelling today, because we want those, the answers to those questions. But so often, these characters are functional, like, they are, they are meant to sort of lend themselves to the real world, but it, but otherwise, like, not included. I mean, this is a, a different example, because she's objectively like, more important, but like,

• 48:01Liv Albert?

  Hestia is a great example of that, too, right? Like, functionally, Hestia, on a day to day basis, was like, invaluable to the ancient Greek world. She, you know, she was the hearth, she kept everyone's house going. But she does not appear in stories. And I often think, like, not really applicable to Kito, but I often think, like, it's almost indicative of how important functionality was as compared to storytelling. And like, we want there to be a story, but it wasn't necessarily about that. And I mean, Kito's an interesting, like, comparison to somebody like Hestia, because it's like, what kind of function? But at the same time, she is functional.

• 48:39Speaker 05

  Yes. And that is a great way to put it, too. I mean, using a saying functional for it. Because her, her function, too, I mean, we, sometimes we have to make a distinction, too, that a lot of people don't realize this, that, I mean, there is a distinction to be made with a lot of characters, that you can have Zeus as a mythological or literary character, and Zeus as an object of religious worship, you know, that, that they do have connections, too, of course, but there is a bit of a difference. But some figures are only literary characters are only in textual sources, too. And kind of the opposite with what you just talked about with Hestia, that it's, I don't know, we're somewhat uncomfortable with this when we find this, that, I mean, the Greeks seem to have just made up gods, but

• 49:25Speaker 05

  it's perfectly natural when you make that literary distinction, in the same way we make up literary characters, too.

• 49:32Liv Albert?

  I also think it's one to be said for like, how we, you know, and in the past few hundred years, however it may be, but like, how we, as a more modern audience, understand this kind of like, polytheistic world? Because, I mean, they had gods for everything, but also because, like, I mean, you know, there's, there's so much to be said for, like, why? And there's like, hundreds of gods that don't function in a story, or don't like, appear in any kind of story. And, and we often think, like, like, the, the one I can think of off the top of my head is like, Atae, who's like, uh, considered like a goddess of, she hunger, or something in that realm. And so there's, you know, there's like,

• 50:15Liv Albert?

  a goddess of X, but like, there's no story, there's no purpose. It's, it's also just because, like, X thing was something of concern. And so to an, an early culture that is polytheistic in this way, they're going to assign a deity to it. But we so often, it's so hard for us to kind of conceptualize that. So you think, like, oh, goddess of sea monsters, she must be, she must be calling upon them, she must be controlling all of these things that we want out of a quote unquote goddess of sea monsters. But it's, you know, it's important to remember, like, that's not what they were using these characters for. That's not why they were being created.

• 50:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, exactly. That's a perfect way to put it, because I wanted to write that article, I mean, because a lot of people had asked me, I mean, at conferences and stuff, and interviews, I mean, what about Kito? I mean, she's a sort of big player in your research. And some people have, have sort of asked me, well, I mean, surely, you know, maybe the Greeks, like, did sacrifices to her to ensure they wouldn't get attacked by sea monsters at sea. And I, I cannot tell you how much I wish we had an ancient text that would say that. I wish that was the case.

• 51:24Liv Albert?

  That's my answer, too. I'm like, I'm pretty.

• 51:27Speaker 05

  That's why I had to say in the article at the end, I, I specifically said, regrettably, this did not work that way. But it is, it's another sort of fascinating thing to compare the way their imagination works versus ours. Because I wrote that article, and I submitted it in January. And then I saw a new book came out, which they're not gonna be able to see this, but I don't know if you've come across this one, Yes, MacLeod's Andromeda.

• 51:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I haven't read it yet, but I've done, I've seen a lot of it and done a lot of reposting, because it seems great.

• 51:58Speaker 05

  It's so good. I highly recommend it. Because it takes Andromeda, another figure who doesn't get much agency in her myth, just being chained to a rock, not given a whole lot. And it makes her the central character along. So it's a sapphic romance with Kito.

• 52:16Liv Albert?

  Oh, I did not know that. That's so cool. Oh, my God.

• 52:20Speaker 05

  Amazing. And so I, you know, I submitted that article in January, and this came out in May. Fortunately, the article came back, that I was able to now put that in there as a reference as well. So that is in there, too. And it is a, it's a beautiful story, and it's a wonderful story. So Kito, I mean, it is titled Andromeda, but in, in some ways, I think of it as a story about Andromeda in Kito, because it is a romance. It is, she is just as fleshed out as Andromeda, has a personality. In all of that. So that is a beautiful illustration, too, of the ancient Kito,

• 52:58Speaker 05

  very bare bones, functional use, or is the modern Kito by MacLeod, is a living, breathing, emotional character, a very. Great story. Highly recommend it. A more of a, you know, realistic person in a sense, not just a plugging a hole in a genealogical system or something like that.

• 53:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and that's the fun of retellings too, right? Like, that's why I like them. And that's why I like them as like a counter to myth, because people want those answers and they don't exist. There, you know, there is no satisfying goddess of sea monster story. But you can write one and that's cool, too, you know?

• 53:37Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 53:37Liv Albert?

  And it, I'm so glad to know that's what that is about because I have seen it and I've just been like, I'm always supportive of women writing, you know, these retellings and just generally retellings existing. But I did not know about the connection with Kito. And now that's way more delightful.

• 53:53Speaker 05

  Yes. And I've, I've mentioned it specifically in that article, too. A lot of people, hopefully not anyone that listens to this podcast, but there's stupid people out there that will say, oh, well, but that's not accurate to the original myth or some dumb bullshit.

• 54:05Liv Albert?

  They love to say original myth.

• 54:06Speaker 05

  Uh, ye- yes. As if there was just one version or whatever. And I, I said, uh, not, not in this exact words, but I mean, but that's the fucking point, you know, to retell is just expanding and reconfiguring too. So a lot of people will, you know, and this is the sort of like tech bro, again, they're probably not anyone that listens to this podcast. So I don't know. You know, nobody in this audience probably, but a lot of people do this sort of thing where they, they sort of slag off these retellings for that. But I want to say, I mean, I did all of this work in January to find all of these references to Kito, which isn't very many.

• 54:44Speaker 05

  And I read this and it's clear that MacLeod has done exactly the same sort of stuff because you read different references and like, I can tell which ancient texts you got that from. Um, because there is, Kito does appear, um, in Hesiod, of course, but Kito is also mentioned in one of the Nairid list of names. And it's not certain. It's probably just another sort of made up name as well that they needed fifty names for that as well. But the way she structures it in the novel, so she, we don't know what's going on there with that Nairid name, of course, how they perceived that, because no one in the ancient world comments on that. Um, but she's basically made her Kito the Nairid.

• 55:25Speaker 05

  And she says somewhere in there that, you know, her aunt is, you know, that the monstrous matriarch, I think is how she phrased it. So very much creatively stitching together the ancient material in ways the ancient material itself doesn't do. So highly recommend that as well.

• 55:42Liv Albert?

  Oh, great.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  And I, this is not, it's, it's mentioned in there. I mean, very early on. Um, it, Kito in the novel, I mean, she has the power to transform into a sea monster where she's known as the Kito. So.

• 55:58Liv Albert?

  Goddamn delightful. And I will say, like, I don't, I, I just wanted for the audience to know that also I'm gathering that Andromeda is black in that, in that story, right? Which is also correct and necessary.

• 56:12Speaker 05

  Yes, but exactly. And another thing that, I mean, I, again, Clash of the Titans and other things don't do, because it is set in Ethiopia. The ancient idea of Ethiopia is rather vague. Um, but that is explicitly a characteristic. Yeah. Um, so that is good, too. And that's another central thing that MacLeod wanted to do with that novel as well.

• 56:36Liv Albert?

  I love that because Andromeda is one that I, I mean, I fought for that in, in past episodes and like, you know, when all the racist shit was coming out of, over Lupita Nyong'o playing Helen, like, that was something that I was also, there was a couple of times where I, on like a burner account, not associated with myself, was out here being like, you know, Helen is, Helen is, um, depending on how you see it, like, you know, she is, uh, descended from, we can't find words today, descended from Andromeda, who is from ancient Africa slash Greek Ethiopia. So actually it works fine and it's great, actually.

• 57:13Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 57:14Liv Albert?

  So it's, it's nice to see. I mean, Androm- yeah, Andromeda is very, um, of Ethiopian, I don't even know what I'm saying now. Sorry. My brain is, is malfunctioning when to blip over this. Um, but I'm so glad you brought up that book because I'm just delighted to know the, the premise now and way more eager to share it with my audience. Um, and generally so nice to know when, when you can tell that authors have done that kind of research because it's often what holds me back from reading retellings, not out of any kind of judgment of the author, because I, you know, do however you want to do it. But for me, I find those, that's often distracting is me wondering

• 57:53Liv Albert?

  what source they got it from or being like, that's definitely totally made, like, there's just, it takes me out because I'm constantly questioning choices in all these different ways. And so it's so satisfying to hear of one where you're like, I can tell all the sources that you got this from, like, that's what I want.

• 58:11Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly that. Cause that's, that's the sort of me being a nerd there too. Cause like I said in the article, like, I, I phrased it more academically, but I, I'm pretty sure her, her description of the central event of the Andromeda myth in that book is based on Ovid's version, because it just sounds very Avidian, the way it's described. So, yeah.

• 58:31Liv Albert?

  Oh, I love that. Also, Ovid is like one of the most detailed stories of Andromeda, because so little actually exists. Another great example of these myths that we know were like, you know, we, they were just more functional than, than, or in a way that just didn't survive in writings. That, okay, speaking of that now, I'm taking myself on a tangent. Um, do you, I mean, maybe this, you know, there's so much to talk about when it comes to the, the key, key toy, is key to, that's, that's.

• 58:57Speaker 05

  Keyte.

• 58:57Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 58:58Speaker 05

  Keyte, yeah.

• 58:59Liv Albert?

  Try to print, imagine it spelled. Um, but yeah, the, there's, I'm sure so much to say, but when it comes to any kind of, like, I'm just fascinated by lost or fragmentary work. So was there anything particularly interesting there? Or do you find that she's just sort of so, or not, I say she, I mean, the monsters broadly too, but you know, was there anything fragmentary that you're particularly interested by, or you think maybe there's something lost that we don't know?

• 59:25Speaker 05

  Oh, that, yeah. I mean, there are a lot of. There's a lot of interesting things we don't know. I mean, there is one bit, and this is one of those things that I've sort of developed my thoughts on a bit more. Cause I say this canine element too.

• 59:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 59:39Speaker 05

  Um, and people have, you know, that's usually the thing people question me about, because you can understand why a sea monster has Pisces or serpentine and stuff, but why, why the hell canine type stuff?

• 59:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 59:50Speaker 05

  And this is something, um, I, I wrote another article specifically the canine stuff with Silla a little bit too, because there are canine.

• 59:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah, she's very explicitly, yeah.

• 1:00:01Speaker 05

  And we hear it as early, um, as the odys- Odyssey, actually, because it's mentioned in book twelve of the Odyssey. Um, when Cersei is describing Silla, it's said that she snatches up dolphins, sea dogs, and whatever greater Kite um, wander into the strait. So right there at the beginning of Greek literature, we've, we've got some sort of reference to a sea dog. And really I'm translating it there, but it really is just the word dog. They don't even add the sea part.

• 1:00:31Liv Albert?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:00:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. Um, which is, is an interesting habit. So if, and we see that in later texts too. Um, and it's likely these are references to sharks and possibly other sea monsters, that there's, there's not really a fine distinction there, um, between what is a shark and what is not, because these things just become so blurry. But the question still remain, why, you know, why look over at something in the sea and name it a dog? Where, where does this come from? I mean.

• 1:01:04Liv Albert?

  Are there seals? We talked about, although of course there are seals, because there are seals in the Odyssey. Because then I go, seals are dog-like. But at the same time, it makes me think like, I mean, what, like, I mean, I guess dogs have been domesticated for so long, but like, it's just, that's interesting to me broadly that, that that word is kind of used, I guess. But then at the same time, it does continue on deeply into English. And it's like, you know, which can first chicken to the egg, but like, because, you know, I mean, even, even, and here's where my shark nerdery comes out. But I mean, there are multiple like types of sharks that are called dogfish in varied forms. And, and so like, these are things that, I don't know. I don't, it's interesting.

• 1:01:46Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:01:47Liv Albert?

  Seals were there, because what are the seals called in ancient Greek then? In the Odyssey, they're clearly not.

• 1:01:52Speaker 05

  Well, this is, the Greek word is foké.

• 1:01:55Liv Albert?

  Okay.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  So, I mean, this is another interesting thing too, that this is in there. Um, because I've said, you know, the Kito's is Pisces, serpentine and canine, but I've also said some other elements too, one of which is seals. And this is something that gets lost in translation a lot, but the Greek text of the Odyssey, when you're in book four in the Proteus episode, where Menelaus and his men, you know, they're, they've been covered with seal skins to, um, wait out for Proteus. The way it's described in the text, the poet is actually using the word foké and the word Kito's interchangeably.

• 1:02:36Liv Albert?

  Ooh.

• 1:02:37Speaker 05

  Which basically implies that he seems to have understood, um, seals as a type of Kito's.

• 1:02:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:44Speaker 05

  Because this, this term, it's, again, it's very variable. Sometimes it can be literal dog-like, sometimes it can be seal-like looking in conception. And so this is an interesting case where a sort of ima- imaginary animal gets intertwined with a real animal in that way.

• 1:03:00Liv Albert?

  Do we know etymologically? Cause like, it feels to me like Kidos broadly is used to describe like danger things in the sea, right? Because there are sharks, there are whales. You know, there, I guess, but dolphins were always something separate, weren't they?

• 1:03:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, dolphins are generally separate. We do hear a lot of cases where Kite kind of chased dolphins. So, and it might be because, you know, dolphins are a bit more well-known in a sense. I mean, it's not that seals weren't well-known, but it's, they're more distinctive in a way, if that makes sense. And they have certain behaviors.

• 1:03:37Liv Albert?

  We know that they would follow ships and, you know, they, they, they jump out of the water in ways that like, just objectively easier to witness than a lot of the things that live in the depths.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  Yes. So dolphins, from my estimation, because I also do a section where, okay, what is not included in this category? And I, I've said, dolphins are one of them. Um, but also, I mean, people might think of later stuff with these sort of cephalopod sea monsters. So I've said that octopuses, they seem to have considered those basically different, because that again, has a very distinctive shape.

• 1:04:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And they were very aware of octopus.

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  Yes, they liked those.

• 1:04:18Speaker 05

  But other thing, because the seal thing, that could account for part of the dog like stuff, because seals are in terms of, so seals in one case, I mean, they're very dog like in terms of their facial shape and stuff, and they can be trained a little bit. I actually, last summer, there is a seal sanctuary up in Gdansk, on the Hill Peninsula, as it's called. I went up there and it's amazing animals. I'm obsessed.

• 1:04:45Liv Albert?

  They are. I mean, because of where I grew up, I fucking love seals. Like seals, they're everywhere in Victoria. It used to be, I mean, that you could just go and like toss them fish. But I mean, they are delightful animals.

• 1:04:58Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:04:59Liv Albert?

  And, yeah, sorry.

• 1:05:02Speaker 05

  No, just agreeing exactly, because I spend an inordinate amount of my time. If I open up my phone to Instagram, the For You page is just seal videos everywhere. Because that's what I do.

• 1:05:14Liv Albert?

  I mean, they're really cute and weird.

• 1:05:15Speaker 05

  They're amazing. I love them. I might send you some seal videos on Instagram now, because they're beautiful animals. And I am, I am writing another article on seals and this sort of stuff. Because sad to say, in the ancient Mediterranean world, they were mass hunted for their skins.

• 1:05:34Liv Albert?

  Okay, because I was gonna say, like, I can't imagine seals being very common there now.

• 1:05:39Speaker 05

  They're not. So the scene we have in The Odyssey, where, I mean, it's on the coast of Egypt, where there's masses of seals, this seems to be their natural habitat, because human encroachment has pushed them out further. The type of seal, the Mediterranean monk seal, at this moment, I think it's classified as a vulnerable animal, like one step above endangered. Not a great position, but they've basically been, they've suffered a lot from human coastal dwellings. But it seems their natural habitat is to be fairly abundant on the beaches. There are references, I think it's like 16th century, when Portuguese explorers started sailing down West Africa, there'd just be seals everywhere along the coast.

• 1:06:23Speaker 05

  But of course, you don't see this as much.

• 1:06:26Liv Albert?

  I will say, in nice news for the seals, you do see that on the west coast of Canada, and probably the States too. Like, yeah, we, there's, I went, I mean, whale watching is a problematic thing, so I won't say that I like support it generally, but like a good decade ago, I went whale watching. And there are a number of little islands that have just like, you know, a lighthouse on them, because we have hundreds of islands off the coast. And you will just go to an island, that's this tiny little island, and it's just covered. Like, you'll just go by it in a boat, and it's covered in seals, like only seals.

• 1:07:01Speaker 05

  That is so wonderful.

• 1:07:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I do, I mean, at least in the Pacific, I mean, I'm sure that they have still, you know, in, there's not, you know, as good as they used to, or as not many numbers as there used to be, surely. But, but I definitely grew up seeing a fuck ton of seals in the best possible way, I will say.

• 1:07:18Speaker 05

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:07:21Liv Albert?

  They're delightful. They do love to just pile up on, on islands. That I can see from experience.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  They're amazing animals.

• 1:07:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah, they just lie out in the sun.

• 1:07:30Speaker 05

  We have a very positive views of them today, because when I went to go see the seal show, you know, it's, you can, they won't let you do this, of course, but it's, you can, if you wanted to, you could reach your hand out over the open water where the seals are. It's just a sort of like low concrete barrier. It's not like a, you know, cage where a lion or something would be. They're not regarded as dangerous animals.

• 1:07:51Liv Albert?

  Oh, no.

• 1:07:51Speaker 05

  Which is very different from the ancient world, that we, we read references that the, you know, seals could defeat bears or something like this. And they're considered very ferocious and very dangerous animals. Probably due in part due to this, this overlap with the ketos, this cultural conception, that they're a type of sea monster.

• 1:08:10Liv Albert?

  That was gonna be my question then, too, because I was, you know, I take in a ketos as being dangerous, but then, like you say, I don't think of seals as being dangerous. But I guess, you know, if, also if you're just like seeing them from afar, and, you know, they're weird. And I guess you could understand them seeming dangerous, at least, at least in that kind of realm. But I also, this is, so the, one of the few things I really specifically remember from our first conversation is, is just generally me, like, vocalizing thoughts on, on how the ancient world would be learning about these things, because they're not exploring the sea in detail. Like, we know how, how mysterious

• 1:08:51Liv Albert?

  it is for us now, and we, we know everything, or so much about it. And yet still, so, it would be so much about like what little elements they have access to, and what, what little things. And then also the imagination, right? Because, and I'm sure I said this last time, but it's like, somebody gets a bit by a shark, but you don't see the shark, and then you see a seal, or you see a whale carcass, and you're like, oh my god, like, these are the scary things of the sea. It's just so mysterious.

• 1:09:20Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. That's a good way to put it. And especially, I mean, the, you know, whales can't actually swallow humans. And I think if one did...

• 1:09:26Liv Albert?

  And yet, so many ancient stories will tell you they can.

• 1:09:29Speaker 05

  I think if one, I don't know, I'm not a marine biologist, but I feel like if one actually did, it would probably kill the whale, or cause some serious health problems. I don't think they can digest something that big. But from the perspective of, you see this gigantic thing that's, you know, beached itself somewhere, you know, you would assume it must have eaten a lot. Because this is a story, too, that it becomes big in the Christian period with Jonah, of course. And Jonah's whale, we know it as today, is not actually whale, ketos is the term described over and over again. And there's something, I mean, this is a new thing that I found out, one of the, I wouldn't call it a fragment,

• 1:10:10Speaker 05

  because it's in a very prominent author, Augustine of Hippo, the church father, him and a couple of other sources, they actually mentioned that, you know, because in late antiquity, not everything snaps to becoming, you know, immediately Christian, all of a sudden, there's this sort of tension with all these pagans around. And Augustine, he actually complains that a lot of pagans are out there, they're making fun of the Jonah story, because they consider it ridiculous, right? You guys, this religion is, one of its central prophets is about this silly tale of a man, you know, getting eaten by a sea monster, and, you know, survives it, apparently. What a ridiculous new religion we have on our hands here.

• 1:10:54Liv Albert?

  Okay, what is the overlap then with Lucian? Because in Lucian's true history, you know, the, you know, the, the so-called, you know, the Lucian character gets swallowed by a whale, and then inside that whale, there's like an ongoing war, and like land grabs within the whale. Is that before or after the biblical?

• 1:11:18Speaker 05

  That's before it. So Lucian's about 2nd century CE. Some people have, we don't know for sure. The Book of Jonah is written in the original Hebrew in 4th century BC. Some people have wondered if Lucian is parodying the Jonah story. It's not impossible, we don't have any exact evidence of it, but he does seem to be parodying the fact that people claim these things are so gigantic in a lot of ways, because there's a lot of exaggerated things, which I'll...

• 1:11:46Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, they have, they have a war inside the whale.

• 1:11:49Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:11:51Liv Albert?

  Lucian, he's got to have a war whenever he's doing weird things like that, but...

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  And in Lucian's text, he says it's 1500 states long, which, if I remember correctly, the trans, you know, in modern measurements, I think that's like 200 something kilometers or so. Ridiculously giant. So he's sort of parodying a lot of stuff that's out there, these exaggerations. But the other end of it, too, is, is, you know, people like Augustine, for their religion, they want to defend the plausibility of the story. So this is the interesting thing about Augustine's references. He actually mentions, well, I mean, people, he says, you know, people think this is ridiculous, but all we have to do is point to the sea monster bones that are on display in Carthage. So sea likely whale bones or something like

• 1:12:40Speaker 05

  that, because we know in other cases, too, in cases where the Andromeda myth is sometimes said to occur at Joppa, there were allegedly sea monster bones being exhibited there, and it was said that this is the monster from, you know, the myth. Whale bones kind of give what seems to be proof of these sorts of things. And religious authorities like that can point to that and say, and he says something like, you know, you imagine what it, it must have been like maybe a full whale skeleton, because he literally says something like, it's so big, it could easily admit a person into it. So this is, we're correct, guys, stop making fun of our religion. And it's amazing, this happens in multiple sources,

• 1:13:25Speaker 05

  too, because there's, there's another one, a Greek author named Cyril of Alexandria, who defends the Jonah story in another way, by, I mean, pointing to references to the Scianid myth in Lycophron, that they're claiming that it's basically, I mean, this Greek text, this pagan text, is basically foreshadowing what will happen with our religion. So they didn't necessarily kick out all of the pagan literature and stuff, but they found ways to interpret it to prove that their religion is correct.

• 1:13:58Liv Albert?

  Yeah, like how some Christians talk about living alongside dinosaurs.

• 1:14:03Speaker 05

  Yes, in the modern world, we have that.

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• 1:16:14Speaker 05

  Cause there's one more of these two that I can think of too. And another Christian source called Jerome, he translated the Bible into Latin among other things. But he defends, he defends the Jonah story because he has to. And the way that he defends it is actually, you know, he makes fun of the pagans for exactly the sort of stuff that Zeus does that you think we're ridiculous. You guys have a story where your God, you know, turns into a swan and sleeps with women and stuff. So if that's possible, then, you know, lay off our religion.

• 1:16:51Liv Albert?

  Oh, that's so delightful. Those moments that like interaction of, of, I mean, just like mentalities, I guess. And then the, the, the way it echoes down to us, it's fascinating.

• 1:17:05Speaker 05

  Cause it's

• 1:17:06Liv Albert?

  No, sorry, go ahead.

• 1:17:07Speaker 05

  What I was gonna say, cause it's a lot of people too ask as, as what, I mean, did the Greeks believe in this? And that's a very sort of, you know, you wouldn't ask that, you know, it's a very sort of generalizing question. If you ask it today, did the Canadians believe X or Y? Well, that's however many millions of people, you know, it's a very oversimplified thing. But with these sorts of things, you see, they believe, sure, but in different ways. And someone like Lucian, I don't know his personal thoughts on sea monsters, but the fact that he's parodying it, he's poking fun at these sorts of people. Because one of the other, I think I knew this before when we talked, but it's a fascinating one.

• 1:17:46Speaker 05

  So Lucian's, his narrative, I mean, they sail westward out of the pillar of Hercules. And they go to the moon and back before the sea monster bit occurs, this whole thing.

• 1:17:58Liv Albert?

  They have a war between the moon and the sun because everything has to have a war.

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  As you do, but then

• 1:18:04Liv Albert?

  They ride on like bugs and stuff.

• 1:18:07Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. So it's, it's meant to be deliberately farcical. That's why it's 200 something kilometers or something. But he's probably making fun of people, we do hear these references to Kete in the Atlantic as being exceptionally massive. Diodorus Siculus, he has this reference to the pillars of Hercules that he says, the reason Hercules built them up the way they are was to keep the largest of sea monsters out of the Mediterranean.

• 1:18:39Liv Albert?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:18:41Speaker 05

  And, you know, it depends on where you're reading that myth. But if, if someone reading that, if they were aware of the actual distance of the Strait of Gibraltar, I think at its narrowest point, it's like 14 kilometers or something like that.

• 1:18:52Liv Albert?

  It's still pretty big.

• 1:18:53Speaker 05

  Gigantic.

• 1:18:55Liv Albert?

  It'll keep out of megalodon, maybe.

• 1:18:57Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. So it's another interesting way. It was a way to sort of organize the world that, I mean, they, they knew that there were, we have other references to. Yeah, the smaller ones are in the Mediterranean. And the implication is there's larger ones on the edges of the earth. Like what you'll still see in medieval maps with it famously, you know, here be dragons or something. The monsters, the crazy shit is always on the edges like that.

• 1:19:23Liv Albert?

  Well, and this is when I also, I'm sure I told this story last time, but I, when I was in Greece once years ago with a Greek friend who I just met on like that trip, I think, but we thankfully became friends. I say that because of the story, but we were at a beach and I was talking, or I have a shark tattoo. So maybe that was what it was, but somehow sharks came up. And I was talking, you know, I could talk about sharks forever. And so, and, and I was talking about like, oh, I love sharks. I'd love to see a shark. And I forget how it came up, but basically this Greek friend of mine was like, oh yeah, but there are no dangerous sharks in the Mediterranean. And I was like, I mean, yes, there are. And this guy's like born and raised in Athens and he was like, he was like, no, no.

• 1:20:05Liv Albert?

  And I was like, I mean, yes, there are. And I Googled it and it was like, yeah, there are great whites in the Mediterranean. Like, but I, I just think of that as like, I think it's culturally like a mentality too, that kind of gets carried on. It's just sort of, well, the med is really small and like, I don't know, maybe that makes it feel a little safer. It's just kind of delightful. I think great whites are rare in the med, but like they're in there. The water's all connected, guys.

• 1:20:29Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. Cause it's, I mean, I think it's supposedly relatively calm. It's not, I, I think like the Pacific Ocean is much more turbulent and things like that. So it's not entirely wrong. Probably the Atlantic is more turbulent too. We do hear

• 1:20:44Liv Albert?

  And I mean, great whites are primarily in the Atlantic.

• 1:20:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:20:48Liv Albert?

  Scientifically. So like that makes, you know, it does make, make sense too.

• 1:20:51Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:20:52Liv Albert?

  And the med is so calm. And one thing I always notice about it as someone who grew up on the west coast of Canada is that like also the tide doesn't move almost at all. And I wonder too, like how that affects kind of what ends up living in there. But okay, I have to go back to when you were talking about them having keto skeletons displayed. Because one, this is where again, I know I told this story last time, but this is where I say that because of where I grew up, my high school did have the skeleton of a whale hanging over a stairwell, a random back stairwell. And I found out the story and it was that like a biology teacher, his class found it in a garbage dump somehow. And were able to turn it into a class project to put it back together.

• 1:21:37Liv Albert?

  And it is displayed at Claremont Secondary School, bizarre high school, high school reference to make. But it makes me think, cause I could picture staring at this whale skeleton as I was like 15. How would they like, how do you imagine they would have put it together? Because surely it was very wrong because they didn't fully know what like the full, the actual living creature looked like. So then it makes me think like, what was it? Was it, was it multiple bones? I mean, I know I brought this up last time too, but certainly they would have been finding shark teeth. Like, you know, shark teeth are some of the most common things you can find. And also because they're bones or they don't have bones rather, they have cartilage.

• 1:22:20Liv Albert?

  And so it doesn't survive, but you would have shark teeth and then you would have whale bones. And maybe even something as big as like a megalodon tooth. And so maybe, you know, these ancient people are, are seeing a beached whale or a beached skeleton of a whale or whatever. And then also the teeth of sharks, putting it all together. So then it makes me think like visually, what on earth were they recreating with these skeletons?

• 1:22:45Speaker 05

  Yes. You know, I, I'll be, this is, you were brilliant because I've never thought of this, to be honest. Because now I, it's popping through my head, there's so many references. Cause I mean, there's a lot of sort of, you know, the site at Joppa where they, they claimed that the Andromeda myth occurred there. It seems to be like an ancient tourist type thing.

• 1:23:06Liv Albert?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:23:07Speaker 05

  You know, how would the, the locals have arranged the bones for that? And we have a reference in plenty that about a century prior, a Roman official, he allegedly brought the bones of the sea monster from the Andromeda myth and processed and paraded rather, them down the street of Rome. And what does that look like is now the immediate question there.

• 1:23:32Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I just think it could have been wacky. Like it could have been right and it could have been

• 1:23:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:37Liv Albert?

  off the charts insane. It could have been like a skull and then they had like eight megalodon teeth that they would like put under it and be like, these were their teeth, like.

• 1:23:45Speaker 05

  Yes. And how my, what bits are missing too.

• 1:23:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:23:50Speaker 05

  Cause another one that we have is Pausanias, he mentions the bones of Aquitos were kept in a temple to Asclepius. And Asclepius is a god with a lot of serpentine associations. So you wonder, I mean, you know, maybe the one that Augustine was seeing it had the full rib cage. So he could sell, yeah, definitely a human could fit in that. But what if this one was just the spinal column? So it looks like a, you know, a giant long serpent or something like that.

• 1:24:17Liv Albert?

  Yeah. It just, there's so many weird possibilities for like, what?

• 1:24:22Speaker 05

  God, that is, that is an ingenious point because that could account for different, you know, they're all, maybe all whale skeletons and stuff like that, but the, what is left and what is not could determine what they're thinking of it as.

• 1:24:36Liv Albert?

  Well, and like, you know, again, I know, I mean, I know, I know from bizarre personal experience that whale skeletons do look like a whale, once you've put them together correctly. But then at the same time, like, I mean, I'll never get over the fact sharks don't have bones. The only thing that survives after they decompose is the teeth. And so you're left with these super scary teeth. And then, and I mean, I don't know how likely it would have been that everyone, anyone could have come across like a blue whale. But imagine a blue whale skeleton and then you also have megalodon teeth. Like you're imagining a megalodon right up is like living in the waters. And that, yeah, I could speculate about this.

• 1:25:21Speaker 05

  Yes, that's fascinating because there's, there's a sort of famous article on whale bones that some, someone, some archaeological dig, they found what seems to be a whale scapula. It was hidden in a Athenian whale that they were, well, is what I'm mixing the words, you know, the thing you get the water out of.

• 1:25:43Speaker 05

  And why is this object there? One interpretation of what this object was used for is it seems to have, you know, cut marks into it and they think that maybe someone was using it as a cutting board in their kitchen.

• 1:25:56Liv Albert?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:25:57Speaker 05

  Something like that, which is, you know, did you just find that one piece that just showed up on, on the beach one day and use that in your kitchen or something? What else was left?

• 1:26:09Speaker 05

  God, I mean.

• 1:26:10Liv Albert?

  Well, and so much washes up on shore from like so much stuff, you know, and, and now it doesn't seem like as my, I mean, obviously we have garbage and stuff today. But I, I still remember like, I mean, I was a very young and I know my, I was maybe like four or five and we went to Florida. And I know we came back with like a Ziploc bag full of shark teeth that my dad and I had just like found on the beach. And I mean, I don't know how common that is now, but I know, I mean, certainly that long ago, like imagine the volume of stuff that's washing up. I mean, you know, you think of it now, like even just, I love going to tide pools and just like digging around and like seeing what I can find in there.

• 1:26:53Liv Albert?

  Can you tell I grew up like also homeschooled on the West Coast? My God, it's, it comes out only in my episodes with you. Um, but like, I just, yeah, the, the ocean is so mysterious to us that it just makes me so obsessed with the idea of like what on earth they were imagining. And this idea that, yeah, like they, they sometimes look like snakes and fish or, or, or dogs. And yeah, having just the bits and pieces, like think of what, what, what does a seal skeleton look like too, right? Like these are all things that they would have. And I mean, I'm sure that they would have, you know, a, a fully, a full seal would have washed up and like a whale here or there. But it's also, you know, to, it was so important to remember like that, that we're talking like a thousand years of history too, right?

• 1:27:38Liv Albert?

  And so it's like, what kind of evolution of that idea did they have and, and what went further? And sorry, my ADHD is going wild. Um, but I also want to know, because dolphins were not keto, keto, keto.

• 1:27:54Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:27:55Liv Albert?

  But at the same time, so in my head, I go, okay, because well, I want it to be because dolphins aren't scary. But dolphins are scary and specifically ancient Greek and Roman depictions of dolphins are evil demons of the sea. They always look like they are going to viciously murder you. Like Greek and Roman, specifically Roman dolphins are terrifying. Do we know if they were scared of dolphins? Do you have any thoughts on dolphins or why they're not? They don't count as like keto? It's just interesting to me.

• 1:28:31Speaker 05

  It's interesting. I mean, you bring up the, the art element. I mean, I don't, I can't think of any reason to be scared of dolphins specifically. Unless you're confusing them with other things, of course.

• 1:28:42Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And like Roman paintings, they're like, like they literally look like they're going to.

• 1:28:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, we do read, I mean, this is an aberrant reference and this is in no way representative of how they thought of dolphins. But, um, I've said it in the book where the, the section where I discount dolphins, it's only rarely, you know, so seals, it's very common for seals to be interrelated with, um, sea monsters, keto, but it only happens in like two different instances in, with dolphins. And one of which is this weird reference in Elian that he says there's a type of dolphin in the Indian oceans and it's something he's not actually experiencing that has sharp teeth and will attack people. Uh, so it's just, I don't know, an anti dolphin dolphin or something like that.

• 1:29:32Speaker 05

  Um, but that's a completely aberrant thing. He speaks favorably of, you know, actual Mediterranean dolphins.

• 1:29:38Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:39Speaker 05

  Elsewhere. So I can't, I don't think there's many references that they're afraid of them or anything like that. But what's interesting too, that you point out, they're in art quite a lot too.

• 1:29:50Liv Albert?

  Constantly, yeah.

• 1:29:51Speaker 05

  And we have no depiction, no realistic depiction of a whale in any extent, pic, picture or depiction of ancient Greek or Roman art. It just does not appear. And I had claimed in that article I wrote on the canine aspects of sea monsters that there are no representations of sharks whatsoever. And the peer reviewer corrected me, there is one representation. And it's something that I and a lot of people have probably seen, but passed over. If you Google, I mean, you've probably seen it. A lot of people have seen it. If you Google something like, you know, Pompeii octopus mosaic. It's a very famous image where the, the octopus is wrapped around a crawfish.

• 1:30:35Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:37Speaker 05

  If you look in the lower left-hand corner of that full mosaic, there's a depiction of a lemon shark there. And that seems to be.

• 1:30:46Liv Albert?

  I'm Googling right now, sorry.

• 1:30:47Speaker 05

  The only, um, depiction of a shark we have. And I completely missed that. So, um.

• 1:30:55Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah. And it's so sharky.

• 1:30:58Speaker 05

  Yes, it is. It's very recognizable too, um, very clearly a shark and the rest are, I mean, some marine biologists might hate me for this, but the rest are look just like generic fish, you know, I, but I, I'm not a, you know, fish expert. So what do I know? But.

• 1:31:15Liv Albert?

  No, but that does look, oh, what a cutie.

• 1:31:18Speaker 05

  It's very distinctive, isn't it? Like you could

• 1:31:20Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:21Speaker 05

  See that in, in the ancient world and be like, that's something different from a normal fish or something. It's recognizable. We need to give that a name.

• 1:31:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah, it's interesting too, to have it be, I mean, Pompeii for once was like somewhat late. And then also what you said about Elian talking about scary dolphins or like dangerous dolphins, like Elian is also very late. And so it's just an interesting thing because, I mean, like mythologically and so I assume historically as well, like dolphins are a very early concept in Greek myth and like connected, I mean, Delphi is connected to dolphin, right? Cause dolphin is like connected, sacred to Apollo. And there's this whole, and let alone the story of, you know, Dionysus transforming all the pirates into dolphins and them jumping overboard. Like there's, there's a lot of references to dolphins. So it's just interesting the way they've sort of been separate from these keto.

• 1:32:15Liv Albert?

  And also fascinating that there isn't a depiction of a whale at all.

• 1:32:19Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly. And it's, it's my, you know, because when you get representations in the Christian period of Jonah's story, it will be a keto and it will be something that's dog-like or in serpentine-like, you know? Because the reason we call it a whale in modern culture, that really only began in the 16th century when translations of the Bible are trying to rationalize what's going on there. So the nameless sea monster became a whale because they thought, uh, you know, kind of, well, a whale can swallow a person. So that makes sense as a translation. But of course it doesn't bear out, but that's why we have that. But you see in ancient art, sometimes the thing that swallows Jonah is just a very slender serpentine thing. It's not a, it doesn't have to be a big portly whale.

• 1:33:03Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, it makes me think of just Greek depictions of sea monsters too, which are in, to my like immediate memory, very, just very big scary fish, but very much fish rather than whale and not shark, which is, you know, like, which is, yeah, generally fascinating. I mean, it makes sense. Like whales are the only thing big enough to swallow a human whole, but like, but I mean, other than that, yeah, what, what is it that makes a keto, a keto directly a whale? Other than we know that whales exist and that's the only thing that it, you know, physically could have been big enough.

• 1:33:41Speaker 05

  There was another scholar that published, uh, something on, you know, the archaeology of whale bones. Um, who had a very good point of saying that the whale in antiquity, it's covered by a veil of the uncanny, you know? So it's not just, you know, you, you walk down the street and you, you see a, a cat or a dog or something, you know? This isn't a very mysterious animal to you, but whales, you only really capture a fleeting glimpse, or you might see a half rotting corpse on the beach or something, but it's always some sort of distorted or mysterious image. And that really impacts, it seems, the way that they are depicting and thinking about these, that they don't have a clear image in art or anything, it seems.

• 1:34:23Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm sure we talked about this last time, but there must be orcas of some kind in the Med. Cause those, that would be like an interesting format of like, you know, it's a whale, but also it has teeth slash eat, you know, meat.

• 1:34:40Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, and orca is actually a Latin word originally. Um, we have this word, but the thing that I've had to say too, is when you have these cases, the ancient word in Latin doesn't necessarily correspond to modern ones as deceptive as that is. But we do have a very fun reference in Plenty the Elder that apparently during the reign of Claudian, a sea monster that he calls an orca at least, um, wandered into one of the harbers at Ostia. And it's said that Claudian, you know, got out soldiers to try and detain the beast. However, this was going to work. Uh, you imagine being on.

• 1:35:20Speaker 05

  Yes, being on duty that day and the emperor is like, you get, get out there with a net or some shit and right, you know, bring this up on land for me. And you're like, yes, sir. Um, but it's plenty, he actually, he doesn't tell whether they successfully killed it or anything like that. It's just soldiers trying to spear. But he does say, um, and it might be an orca, this might be exaggerated, that the, the sort of, it spouts out water and that overturned one of the ships of the soldiers that was trying to detain it. So it seems, it's implied a sort of like accidental thing because plenty has a lot of, you know, he's a very big nature person and he, he likes to tell stories and point out cases where like

• 1:36:01Speaker 05

  nature got one up on the people or something like that. So that seems to be his purpose in telling that. But it's very fascinating. You have that, that was thought to, hey, we gotta detain this weird thing in the, in the harbor, guys.

• 1:36:17Liv Albert?

  The word detain is just delightful. There's something about that very specifically. Detain that whale.

• 1:36:24Speaker 05

  We'll do something with it.

• 1:36:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, I truly, I, I could talk about this forever. It has been an hour and a half, so I'm trying to keep. But is there anything that you want, like more that you want to make sure you get in here? Cause I would like to hear more if you have it.

• 1:36:42Speaker 05

  I have another shark bit for you.

• 1:36:44Liv Albert?

  Oh, great.

• 1:36:46Speaker 05

  That it's, it's not quite a fragment, but it's an interesting, very unexpected piece that I, I definitely didn't know of before. But I mean, going on this, I mean, we don't have a direct answer from the beginning. Why from Homer onward, they call sea dogs, sea dogs, right?

• 1:37:01Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:02Speaker 05

  But we have this interesting bit, you know, not in any of the nature writing by plenty or Elian or anything. We have it in Galen, the medical writer who mentions this. Because he is getting into this very philosophical discussion about diseases. And he brings up the issue, well, why do we call all diseases diseases? Because, you know, each disease has a different effect on you, you know? One makes you have chills, one makes you burn up, blah, blah, blah. Yet we all call these things disease. We all have one name for it. And the reason he says for that is that diseases, they all have the same form.

• 1:37:40Speaker 05

  In Greek, it's idos and form here is this is the word that Plato is using for the form. So it's not necessarily external outward form. It's like an inner essential characteristic. And then Galen gives the example of, well, this thing with, you know, calling all diseases diseases is the same way with the reasons that we call sea dogs, sea dogs. Because both dogs and sea dogs, they have a shared ethos, a shared form. And so the point he seems to be acknowledging is that, you know, a shark and an actual dog, they look completely different outwardly. This is why I think modern audiences have trouble with this sort of thing.

• 1:38:25Speaker 05

  Cause if you define a dog, what is dog like or canine is four, four legs, a tail and furry. Well, that's not a shark. But if you, you know, define it as some sort of internal characteristic like that, maybe that it bites or something like that. Then yes, maybe that is a sort of canine like animal. And this seems to bear out with other things that you find too. We have some, it's about four centuries later, Isidore of Seville, who's writing in Latin. He has all these etymologies in this text. He says to us that, well, we call sea dogs, sea dogs because they bite, you know? So that seems to be, it's a behavioral characteristic there.

• 1:39:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:08Speaker 05

  So it's just a different way of considering what he's dog like, really, it seems. And it's just very odd to us, but it made sense for their culture, it seems.

• 1:39:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, and it, it again, does make sense when we think about this, like Kiti all kind of falling under this umbrella. And, and how it's like, okay, we know today, you know, there's all these different species. And was it a whale? Was it a shark? Was it a seal? Whatever. But yeah, if you are, if you are conceptualizing a ketos as being, you know, this scary thing in the sea that maybe bites. Maybe that's part of it too. Like if, if that's part of it, then yeah, all of these things certainly fall under the same umbrella. And especially when you think about how mysterious it all would be.

• 1:39:57Liv Albert?

  Cause I think that's the thing that like, just can't be understated about these sea creatures is they can't see where they live, where they go, what they do. Like they just get these brief glimpses or maybe someone falls off a ship and then suddenly it's bloody and there's a leg floating. And you can tell I've watched a lot of shark movies, but like, you know, it's the, that's all they would know. And when you're in the depths of the Med and it's the wine dark sea and you can't see into it at all, like, yeah, it would just be this super mysterious, scary place full of monsters.

• 1:40:31Speaker 05

  Yes. And that's a good way to characterize it. Cause I think sometimes people, you know, the ancient Greece and ancient Rome, they're very sea adjacent societies. They sailed regularly, you know, Rome will claim to have conquered the sea and all of that. But really the only conquered.

• 1:40:44Liv Albert?

  Tried to fight it, the one guy.

• 1:40:46Speaker 05

  Oh, collegial.

• 1:40:47Liv Albert?

  Thank you. I know somebody tried to fight the sea.

• 1:40:50Speaker 05

  Yes. It didn't go well for him in a lot of ways. But really, I mean, because they, at best, you can only conquer, you know, the surface of the sea. Because you can, you can't, there's no diving technology. You can only go as far into the depths as you can hold your breath for, you know? I, I don't know, a few meters or so. So it's this very sort of eerie void of the unknown in the middle of your empire for the Romans. It's very much like modern space travel. We've only really skimmed the surface of outer space today. It's just, the rest of it is a gigantic void in a sense that we're interested in, but it's, it's very eerie in a lot of ways, of course.

• 1:41:31Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. And if you can't, yeah, there's no exploration, then there's no visualization, there's just nothing.

• 1:41:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. And that just leaves room for interesting things like this.

• 1:41:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Big old monsters.

• 1:41:44Speaker 05

  So, I mean, the last thing I would say, and then I'll give the discount code as well for your audience that are definitely itching for this. Is that, you know, I've done this and I've broken this material down into three traditions essentially. And I've put together, it's hundreds of textual references and hundreds of artistic sources in this book from Greco Roman antiquity. But I also want to say, and I say this in the conclusion as well, there is still much to be done with this topic. So if you are a researcher or an undergrad or someone that is maybe looking to do another PhD thesis on sea monsters or an article or something, there is a lot of material out there. I've talked a little bit about the serpentine stuff here.

• 1:42:29Speaker 05

  There was a friend of mine and a good academic colleague, Dominic Ingamark, who he's now published an article on the sort of eels in the ancient world that a lot of this can account for certain references to dragons and serpentine sea monsters. So I didn't have time, I've got a brief reference to that in the book, but didn't really have time to incorporate it fully. But that's another example of, he's definitely doing something different and it is a good addition. And there's other things too, that the ketos, it might've died out in the modern world, but it seems to spread in other places. Some people have thought it might spread, well, it did spread, we do know this for sure into Indian art.

• 1:43:14Speaker 05

  And it seems to have influenced some depictions of the Indian sea monster, the Makara as well. Some people have theorized it's influenced the Chinese dragon. That might be a bit more speculative, but those are areas that I don't really know. So I don't really get into that, but those are areas fruitful for study and same sort of thing. The Jonah story becomes a big story in Islam as well. So there is a question, how much does the ketos influence those depictions and those ideas of sea monsters? Tons to do in the medieval stuff and the Eutrosian material too. There's lots of representation.

• 1:43:54Speaker 05

  So I just wanted to say that, you know, if this is a topic you're interested in, don't sort of be down on, oh shit, you know, this guy's already written the the comprehensive book, because it is not the case. I'm writing a Byzantine sea monsters article now myself. There's tons more to be done here, both within the Greco Roman world and elsewhere. So if this is something you like and you want to research it, tons of stuff out there. I would love to see other people, whether you agree with my assessment or not, it's always good to have competing opinions on things too.

• 1:44:25Liv Albert?

  It's my favorite part about working with academics because it just like, everyone just wants more people to be researching. Because truly, and again, this is a reminder of why it's about humanity, singular and the study of. Because we, everything, you know, there's always room for fresh interpretation and fresh research, but specifically interpretation. Because everything is biased by the, based on the human that is interpreting it. And that is the wonder of humanity. Like that's a good thing. And, and I mean, it's why I've been doing this show for almost 10 years and I've been, I've done the same story like four different times.

• 1:45:04Liv Albert?

  Or even you and I are having what is ostensibly a very similar conversation to four years ago. But I know is a completely different conversation to four years ago. Because that is just how human interaction and interpretation works. And it's just, it's lovely to hear that. I mean, I think most academics feel that way too, which is so nice of just like, no, everyone come research this thing. We can all learn about it and then we're all just going to learn from each other and then build off of each other. And it just gets bigger and better. And it's exactly why we need the humanities. So it's a perfect.

• 1:45:38Speaker 05

  That is a per, yes, absolutely perfect. So yeah, exactly that. If you have competing ideas or, or you want to correct me on something, I'm happy to be corrected too. You know, so if someone does know of a Greco Roman representation of a whale or another shark.

• 1:45:53Liv Albert?

  Oh my God, yeah. Tell us both. Yeah, me too. Because I would really like to know. Yeah.

• 1:45:59Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and I don't know, that's just, that's the best thing about learning and why I don't understand why people want AI at all, because like, the learning is the fucking fun. And talking about it with other people, too, like, that always expands the ideas, always. Like, you can research something to the ends of the earth, but the second you start talking about it to another person, you're going to get a completely new idea from it. And that is such a good thing.

• 1:46:25Speaker 05

  Exactly. Why we need the humanities more than the

• 1:46:28Liv Albert?

  Exactly. And also, why I love having these conversations. So, thank you for

• 1:46:32Speaker 05

  Yes, thank you for having me. So, yeah, I mean, the, the thing I said at the beginning, the discount code, the discount code, and I didn't even ask them to put it as this, they did this themselves. The discount code is sea monsters, all one word, and that will get you thirty-five percent off of the book price. So, very generous, and we thank Bloomsbury for that. The couple of caveats to give for it, it's valid only for pre-orders up until September 2nd. So, the book itself comes out on September 3rd. So, you just got to preorder it before then. And I think the money doesn't come out until it's actually shipped

• 1:47:13Speaker 05

  as well. And the other big thing is to, I mean, the code is not valid for shipping to the EU. Anywhere else in the world, it is good for a thirty-five percent discount on the hardback. So, that's code sea monsters there, all one word. And there you go.

• 1:47:33Liv Albert?

  Yeah, and it'll be linked in the episode's description, so it'll be easy to find. And again, that's, that's so great. I love that, yeah, that they, they gave a discount, that it's such a high discount that makes it so accessible. And I hope that it means you get lots of book sales. And also, I mean, I don't know how, you know, it works on the academic side, but preorder sales always count towards the first days of days sales, which is why they matter. And I think everyone could use to know that.

• 1:47:58Speaker 05

  Yes. And I mean, another thing, if you just don't have the money for it, remember, you can always ask your local library to potentially purchase it. And same thing, if they enter in the code, it's only on Bloomsbury's website, which will give you the link there. They still get thirty-five percent off your local library or your university library, if you're there. And in some ways, getting a library to order it is actually better, because this helps out the humanities, it helps more people, it lets your librarians know what sort of books you want to be stocked, and just lets other people get access to it. So, if, if purchasing it by yourself is not possible, then yeah, consider that option. And that is one of those small things you can do to support the humanities, too.

• 1:48:41Liv Albert?

  That's such a good general reminder, too. Because even if you want to buy it yourself, you can also suggest that your local library buy it, too. And that's true of all books and all libraries, and a very good and timely reminder to everyone.

• 1:48:54Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:48:54Liv Albert?

  Um, thank you so much for doing this again. I'm always so thrilled to speak with you, and also love that you are always sending me more people to have on the show.

• 1:49:03Speaker 05

  I will continue to do so.

• 1:49:05Liv Albert?

  That's, you are the one I can count on for that, always, and I really appreciate it. And also, it's just nice to know I'll have a fun conversation about monsters with somebody. So, thank you.

• 1:49:15Speaker 05

  Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to talk to you again.

• 1:49:19Liv Albert?

  Agreed. Same here. Do you have anything else you want to share in terms of, like, following you or reading more, other than the book?

• 1:49:24Speaker 05

  I mean, this will be in the future. I mean, you can find all of my projects, just Google my name, pretty much. And I mean, the best is, is my academic CV on academia.edu, all the links to all my articles and stuff. This will be in the future. This is coming down the line. I actually have to write it first, but I have a contract for a second book already, and it's going to be a book on Triton, the god that we mentioned before. It's going to be for Routledge's God, or what is it, Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World Series. It is under contract, and it's, yeah, I just have to write it now, is the, the thing. But basically, a big study from He C. It all the way, actually, up to

• 1:50:08Speaker 05

  the modern representations of Triton. So, that will be

• 1:50:12Liv Albert?

  Like, straight out of Little Mermaid?

• 1:50:14Speaker 05

  Yes, probably. Because, yes, that's the, the name

• 1:50:17Liv Albert?

  That is the king's name. Yeah.

• 1:50:18Speaker 05

  Father. Yeah. So, yeah, that will be there, too, at some point. Again, I don't know when, because I have to write it.

• 1:50:27Liv Albert?

  Fair.

• 1:50:27Speaker 05

  By the time that you submit it, it takes a year or so with Academic Publishing. So, at some point, that will be out.

• 1:50:36Liv Albert?

  That's great, though. I didn't, I like, I feel like it's most, there's not a lot of text. We'll talk about this again when the book comes out. And I won't ask you too many questions now. But I feel like, yeah, it's mostly going to be, like, visual that you're working with, right?

• 1:50:50Speaker 05

  Yes, it is going to be a very art-heavy, because if you, so the, those sort of, in classics, we have a standard Greek database of text. If you put in the word ketos in that, you get about three thousand results. If you put in the word Triton, you get about two hundred and fifty. So, that's a good indication of the, you know, the relative difference. And it's partially why this is stretching into modern stuff as well, because there's just fewer there. Which is not to say it's Triton's obscure or anything. It's just kind of an accident of sources in a lot of ways, too.

• 1:51:25Liv Albert?

  No, totally. And, and it's one where, like, visually, very represented, which is why it's interesting. And again, but like, minimal text, I know, because I feel like I've tried to cover, I mean, I've tried to cover any, like, sea deities as much as possible. I'm just like, there is minimal sorts of

• 1:51:40Speaker 05

  Yes. It's, it's, and that's, that's why it's fun to do in a lot of ways. You learn a lot more about the minor gods in a way. I mean, you can do a multi-volume series on Poseidon, probably, but there's a lot of background stuff you can get by looking at the more minor figures, too. So, that will be in the future sometime.

• 1:51:59Liv Albert?

  Delightful. Well, you'll have to come back on the show. I know I can expect that you will. So, please. Well, thank you, as always, because this was really fun.

• 1:52:07Speaker 05

  And thank you very much. It was great.

• 1:52:22Speaker 07

  Let's talk about Myths Baby. It's written and produced by Liv Albert. You all know her. Michaela Pangorish is the Hermes to all your Olympians, the producer. Tired, actually, done with school. What do I do with my evenings? I don't know. Select music by Luke Chaos. Thank you, Mr. Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, a collection of creators that all strive to bring you accurate and reliable information on the ancient world. These include the wonderful friends at Movies We Dig, The Partial Historian, Sweetbitter, and so much more. Get ad-free episodes and other things by subscription to the Oracle Edition on Patreon at patreon.com/MythsBaby, or via the link in the episode's description. If you, I don't know, are someone who has

• 1:53:05Speaker 07

  some sort of experience in antiquity and expertise, and would like to talk to us on the show about it, we'd love to hear from you. Please go to www.mythsbaby.com/contact and fill out the contact form there, and we'd love to hear from you all. All right, I'll see you all later. And I promise, I promise this for watching us next week. Love you all. Bye.

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