When the Threat of a Woman Threatens to Take Down the Patriarchy, A Reading from Medusa

A reading from Liv's new piece on Medusa, from the collection Medusa, New & Ancient Greek Tales, available now from Flame Tree Press https://www.flametreepublishing.com/medusa-isbn-9781804179338.html. CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Liv Albert?

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

• 0:35Speaker 01

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• 1:05Speaker 02

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO, and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 2:10Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv. As I kind of mentioned in some past episodes, and as you might have guessed by the re-airs recently, I just moved across the country. I'm now living in Toronto, I'm very excited, but I'm also recording in a closet, because it is the only place that won't have terrible acoustics until I get settled. I'm gonna be back to regularly scheduled content so soon, and I'm so excited, I'm so full of every idea on the planet, but until then, I'm reading something today that is very special.

• 2:49Liv Albert?

  So, I talked about this a while back, but I worked on a piece for a new book about Medusa. There's a new book of short stories, it's just called Medusa and Other Tales, I believe. I will link to it in the episode's description, but I didn't write a short story, I got to write about her. In whatever way that she is real, I got to write it. So I wrote a kind of cultural history of Medusa. I looked at the earliest descriptions of her, the earliest descriptions and depictions of her, the Gorgons,

• 3:30Liv Albert?

  the sources that talk about her, what they say, how they change, how the versions of her story have grown and changed, both in the ancient world and since.

• 3:44Liv Albert?

  I don't think I've ever been so proud of a piece of work. I'm really, I mean, not only did I get to write about Medusa, but I got to write about the type of feminism and, and stuff that just generally I want to talk about all the time. And it was, writing it came at incredibly tough time in my life, as might have you might recall from last year. I do think that writing it broke my brain, but like in a good way. I definitely had like a full anxiety break directly after handing it in, but I'm more proud of it than like anything

• 4:23Liv Albert?

  before. And it turned into a bunch of incredibly good changes in my life. So this, this work, it means a lot to me. And also it's Medusa. So I'm reading to you today a, a number of selections from it. So it'll bounce around just a little bit because the actual piece is like 28,000 words and I'm going to read to you less than 4,000. But it'll really give you a great sense of kind of what I was trying to write in that piece, how I wanted to talk about Medusa and why you might want to read more or order that book, read all the incredible short stories from some really amazing writers who've, who really poured their, their hearts

• 5:06Liv Albert?

  and souls into, into Medusa, as I would love to do all of the time. And I do, I think. But I, I highly recommend it and, and I'm just really proud of this piece. So I'm going to read it to you today. But all of that said, this is also the first time I'm recording since the American election. And, well, I didn't, I didn't plan the timing at all. But I think today's piece about Medusa is also incredibly well timed as, as women and, and particularly and queer people, trans people, everyone, everyone who, who doesn't,

• 5:44Liv Albert?

  I don't even know what to say at this point. I am horrified that Trump won. I am furious that the Democrats couldn't. Dare give someone who wasn't also pro genocide and it just was a horrible, it was a horrible, horrible situation all around. And I'm very, I'm very sorry for, to all of my American listeners. And I mean, I mean, this, the, the problem is wider than America. But to those of you who are feeling, oh, that who are feeling this right now, I'm with you. I see you too. I don't want to bring this down. Just know that I am thinking of

• 6:28Liv Albert?

  all of you. I will, I, you know, you know me. This won't be the last time I talk about it. But today, let's, let's find some righteous fury in Medusa and in the ways that we and her, she, the way that, that Medusa and we have been defined by the patriarchy, what that means. And, and maybe we can find some ways in this to be inspired, to dismantle the fucking thing from the inside out.

• 7:20Liv Albert?

  When the Strength of a Woman Threatens to Take Down the Patriarchy. A Reading from Medusa.

• 7:42Liv Albert?

  My Medusa, the word enigma comes from the ancient Greek for speaking in riddles. And though Medusa wasn't known for riddles like her fellow monstrous woman, the Sphinx, in the 21st century, she's become more riddle than myth. Medusa stands apart as a monster, maiden, victim, and survivor, all formed into one multifaceted and enigmatic creature. Because of this, too, she is wide open to all forms of interpretation. Personally, I come to Medusa as a staunch feminist. To me, she is a symbol as much as she is a character. She is an icon of the power of women,

• 8:23Liv Albert?

  a version formed by women navigating male fear of that power and how it manifests around them. To me, Medusa is also a symbol of the ways that other women participate as agents of the patriarchy and how that affects the equally feminine victims of it. I preface with this because my understanding of her character influences how I speak of her and how I read her story and the evidence surrounding it. It's impossible for me to separate myself from these notions, nor do I want to, as I believe they give me exactly the types of insights that I'm most interested in. My reading of Medusa is not universal,

• 9:06Liv Albert?

  but it is informed by the ancient sources and the world in which they were written, in addition to my modern notions of feminism and mythology. I will be sharing these ancient sources with you in great detail, so whether or not you agree with how I read them and her, you'll have the evidence to make up your own mind.

• 9:38Liv Albert?

  From sympathetic to loathsome. Somewhere in the long history of Medusa, she transformed. It wasn't a metamorphosis like the one detailed in Ovid, but a slow shifting of how we perceive not only her as a character, but her story. I wish I could trace how exactly this happened or when, but her history is just as enigmatic now as it was then. Instead, we'll look at what it means that her story has been so thoroughly manipulated.

• 10:11Liv Albert?

  One of the most common refrains you'll find when speaking to people about Medusa, or when reading modern descriptions of her story, is that she was dangerous. This manifests in different ways. Some say that she lived surrounded by the stone statues of her victims, or that she terrorized the lands where she lived, that she was an evil force whose death provided some kind of relief. Some descriptions of her so-called evil nature go even further. I once heard someone describe her death as a kind of necessary balancing force for the universe. That her presence in the world was so negative and harmful that her death alleviated some existential weight.

• 10:55Liv Albert?

  These kinds of arguments and interpretations often sound well researched and give an air of ancient spirituality, as though the ancient people saw her this way, that they saw the necessity in her demise, even that it helped them in some way. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for Medusa, these arguments have no basis in the ancient sources, as they survive for us today. In the ancient world, Medusa was feared, certainly, but I don't believe there's any evidence to suggest she was feared in the same way that she often is today. Today, you find her and her Gorgon sisters described in very distinct ways.

• 11:35Liv Albert?

  As I've dug through individual people's reactions and debates about her in YouTube comments, or Reddit threads, podcasts, and even my own Twitter replies, a very distinct version of Medusa appears. She's often seen as an abomination. She is disgusting, hideous, and animalistic. She terrorized the lands, and thus, her death was necessary. Maybe it even alleviated some weight on the world.

• 12:07Liv Albert?

  In the ancient Greek sources that survive, there are no confirmed victims of the living Medusa. There is no reference to her living surrounded by those unfortunate enough to have encountered her, who saw her face and turned to stone. Ovid is the first to suggest this. There are no references to violence or terror committed by her. There are no references even to anyone who might have feared her while she lived. She was not a monster meant to be killed for the greater good. She was not like the Hydra, the many snake-headed beast who terrorized the lands of Lerna and who was defeated by Heracles.

• 12:48Liv Albert?

  She was not like the Chimera, the lion- goat-snake hybrid that breathed fire over the plains of Anatolia. She was not like the Minotaur in the labyrinth feasting on young Athenians. Medusa, as her story survives in the ancient Greek sources, does not have a single victim that we know of. That is, until a man removed her head from her body and turned it into a weapon.

• 13:28Liv Albert?

  Misogyny's Bogeywoman

• 13:32Liv Albert?

  The modern idea that Medusa was inherently evil, villainous and violent, and so Perseus did the world a kindness by defeating her, persists to the point where it often overshadows her ancient origins. That isn't to say we shouldn't read between the lines when it comes to how she might have been imagined in the ancient world, but readings like these threaten to, if not explicitly, cross a line where what we know as the ancient myth becomes lost in new details that are, at best, unfortunate manipulations to the story and, at worst, infuse modern misogyny into an ancient character.

• 14:12Liv Albert?

  When Medusa becomes a dangerous creature who has left countless victims in her wake and thus requires killing, she no longer resembles what we know from the ancient world and instead becomes a stereotype for female rage and the male response to it. It's an invented justification that makes Perseus the good guy and Medusa the villain, a woman who is wrathful and disgusting and whose death is a blessing. We can and should understand Medusa and the Gorgons to have been terrifying figures in the ancient world, but not in this way. There's no reason to suggest that she was imagined to have been a danger while alive

• 14:54Liv Albert?

  or that she was considered a threat to humanity. Instead, she is terrifying as an idea and explicitly terrifying after her death. Her nature was a threat, but it was a threat to those who threatened her. It was a defense mechanism straight out of the ancient world. She petrified, but in defense of herself and later in death, those who possessed her image. To invent a villain arc that turns her and her defense mechanisms into a screeching, seductive female bent on killing heroic men with a simple look is pure misogyny. This form turns Perseus into a hero more righteous than he was, thereby also manipulating

• 15:39Liv Albert?

  how the ancient Greeks saw their heroes. They were not meant to be flawless beacons of good, but complex characters who sometimes did terrible things. These forms untether both Medusa and Perseus from their ancient origins to create something entirely new and which is rooted in deeply anti-woman sentiments. These Medusae scream of fearing, strong women who can defend themselves against the threat of men. They embody the patriarchal order and take a story of a woman defending herself against a man and turn her into a horrible monster who killed for the thrill of it. Medusa was a monster in the ancient world.

• 16:22Liv Albert?

  She was terrible and frightening, but what we actually know of her makes clear she was not a danger to innocents and instead protected them against aggressors. That isn't to say some of the ancient Medusa isn't also infused with misogyny, but the modern form is virulent. It suggests that a woman who is monstrous, unappealing to men, and who can defend herself against those who would hurt her is a threat deserving of annihilation.

• 16:58Speaker 03

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• 17:39Speaker 03

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• 18:20Speaker 03

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• 18:35Speaker 01

  Let them know it was Let's Talk About Myths, baby. It's the best way to support the show.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Verizon FiOS celebrates the holiday hostess with the mostess. When the whole family's over, you've got Verizon FiOS whole home Wi-Fi. Fast, reliable, 100% fiber internet in every room. So your little nephews can blast video games on full volume. Your daughter can stream football under the dinner table. And grandpa can turn on the same movie for the third time. A full house with full Wi-Fi coverage. So everyone can do their own thing. Together, 100% fiber internet for 100% holiday hosts. Switch to Verizon FiOS today. All home Wi-Fi included with all FiOS gig plans. Availability varies.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 20:09Liv Albert?

  He said, she said. It's not that Medusa isn't symbolic of male fear, just that I don't believe there's any real evidence to suggest that that fear had anything to do with genitals. But again, perhaps there is something I am lacking that keeps me from realizing what Freud believed was so obvious.

• 20:31Liv Albert?

  This is an aside inserted by me as I read this. There's a whole big gap there where I talked about Freud and you're just gonna have to read the book. Medusa's a lot, there's a lot of genitals. It's incredibly weird. It's all about being afraid because she doesn't have a penis. I don't know, Freud was fucking bizarre.

• 20:55Liv Albert?

  There are many monsters of Greek myth that can be reasonably read as representing, in some way, men's fear of women. But Medusa is almost certainly the most famous. She, like many monstrous and even divine women of Greek myth, can be seen not necessarily as representing something particularly specific that men feared in women, though that's possible too, at least for Medusa, but instead the broader fear of the potential threat... the broader fear of the potential inherent in strong women. Women were generally expected to remain in their homes for much of their lives, raising children and tending to the household.

• 21:37Liv Albert?

  This, like Medusa, is evidence of the ways in which men subjugated women in order to ensure they were as unthreatening to the patriarchal order as possible. There was a distinct fear of the reproductive power of the uterus, questions of paternity are in part why women were confined lest they run off and be impregnated by the first man they meet, and likely why so many myths feature divine impregnation. Athenian citizenship was incredibly strict and passed only through the male line, so ensuring your children were actually yours was a major concern. It's not a stretch to see something similar happening in Medusa's story.

• 22:17Liv Albert?

  She lays with Poseidon—I promise we're not finished with what this may mean—and then narratively is immediately killed by Perseus, not because she was in any way violent, but purely because she was firstly, able to be killed, and secondly, had the potential for violence if threatened. This is why he quite literally sneaks up on her while she is sleeping. She could have posed a threat to the gods, to the male power structure, and thus she couldn't live.

• 23:01Liv Albert?

  What makes a monster? A kind reading of these versions of Medusa as inherently evil, dangerous, and deserving of death is based in her status as a "monster." There's an assumption, based on that descriptor, that "monster" must equal "dangerous," and "danger" must equal "victims," and "victims" must equal punishment for the monster. Medusa and the Gorgons were monsters, certainly, but what does it mean to be a monster in the ancient Greek mythological world? Broadly, the notion of monstrosity means that she was not human and not anthropomorphic like the gods and nymphs. It implies that she was feared, and that there was something about her inhumanity that

• 23:45Liv Albert?

  inspired that fear. In the case of Medusa, I think we can safely determine her monstrosity to be her snake-like hair and that her gaze is petrifying, let alone the other features we see in Gorgon iconography. What is not inherent in this word "monster" is actual violence, victims of the monstrosity. It does not inherently mean there was anything wrong with her or the Gorgons, it does not imply ugliness or a kind of opposite of beauty in whatever way we want to define either word. Ovid's version of Medusa's story does explicitly mention that prior to her transformation by Athena, Medusa was beautiful and her hair was her most prized feature.

• 24:30Liv Albert?

  He does not, however, claim that she is explicitly "human," nor does he describe what her beauty looks like in any detail. He also, very notably, does not describe Medusa's transformed form as "ugly" or even "unattractive." In fact, he doesn't imply that any part of her transformed besides her hair becoming a collection of snakes. And yet, in countless places, Medusa's transformed form is described as "ugly" and even "hag-like."

• 25:02Liv Albert?

  I don't mean to suggest that the monstrous Medusa was what we might consider beautiful by today's standards, but instead that labeling her either beautiful or ugly is unnecessary and based in inherently misogynist ideas about who does or does not hold value. The term "hag" possesses the same implications. It implies a decrepit old woman who no longer holds the same value as when she was beautiful. The word is also often used to describe both the Gorgon's gray-eyed sisters, who are mythologically just gray, and Medusa herself, and many visual representations of her can easily earn the adjective "hag."

• 25:45Liv Albert?

  Even if they don't mean to, both ways of describing Medusa—and women broadly—suggest they "are less worthy than their more beautiful counterparts," but that they don't hold the same value. And that value is, of course, ultimately defined entirely by men, even when it is women using these terms themselves. Setting the misogyny aside, the words "beautiful" and "ugly" are so inherently subjective as to become impossible adjectives with which to describe Medusa very specifically. Who, after all, could possibly make those judgments? To set eyes on her is to turn to stone, so it is objectively impossible to call her "ugly" in any meaningful way.

• 26:43Liv Albert?

  The Monstrously Beautiful We can't talk about ugliness as a patriarchal structure without doing the same for beauty. I don't describe Medusa as "not ugly" in order to imply that she was beautiful. "Ugly" might be the literal opposite of "beautiful," but that doesn't mean if she isn't one, then she must be the other. Beauty, too, is defined not by the viewed, but by the viewer. And just as how we conceptualize ugliness today, it is also ultimately based in a misogynist structure of who is and is not attractive to men. I don't want to suggest that these are the only ways to define beauty or ugliness, just that our cultural ideas of both, in the Western world, are based in the patriarchal structure of that world.

• 27:28Liv Albert?

  We can and should redefine both, but until the patriarchy no longer defines our lived experiences, we're stuck with these archaic ideas. Ovid defines Medusa as having been originally beautiful, and so often people today latch on to that idea with the intention of it being more sympathetic to her plight. I don't mean to offend those who found comfort in this beauty, just to point out that I find it to be misguided. To say that she was once beautiful and turned ugly, or even simply monstrous because of the actions of a man, is no more kind to her story than to imagine her born agorgon,

• 28:12Liv Albert?

  born monstrous. To be born monstrous is not to be born ugly, so adding former beauty does nothing but suggest that she was something that needed to be fixed or restored. Instead, if we view Medusa as a person who was simply born monstrous, and with no concept of this being anything other than who she was, we empower both her as a character and women more broadly, women who seek not to be defined by the patriarchal structures of beauty and ugliness.

• 29:00Liv Albert?

  Western: Empathy and Whiteness. Similarly to these inherently misogynist notions of Medusa's appearance after her transformation, the way she is portrayed before it has similarly problematic implications. When describing the Ovidian Medusa when she is understood to be beautiful, modern versions often want to provide specific details as to what that beauty looked like. In nearly all modern descriptions that I've come across, Medusa's physicality, if it's described, is described as being fair, or light-skinned, and/or that she has golden hair. In one instance, I found her skin described as milky-white.

• 29:45Liv Albert?

  Again, these little details might seem minor, but they dramatically alter not only the visual representations of Medusa, but also they have wider ramifications. If and when Medusa is described as residing in any non-mythological lands, it's North Africa. As we saw across a number of sources, the Ancient Greeks and Romans were in fairly broad agreement that if Medusa and the Gorgons ever lived on Earth, they lived in Libya. Describing the explicitly sympathetic and beautiful Medusa as being "light-skinned with light hair" implies that in order to be properly sympathetic and beautiful, she must have fallen into the stereotypically white ideas of beauty.

• 30:27Liv Albert?

  From a translational standpoint, "fair-skinned" appears often in English translations of Ancient Greek texts, but the Ancient Greek isn't meant to imply "light," but rather just "nice" or "appealing." This screams of modern racism even if Medusa wasn't explicitly placed in Libya. There's a longstanding issue of placing modern notions of whiteness on the people and mythology of Ancient Greece. It's a much wider issue than just Medusa. For her specifically, not only does it erase her connection with the African continent, but by including those details so explicit in the version of her story where she was

• 31:07Liv Albert?

  once a beautiful woman transformed into a monster, suggests that in order for Medusa to be both relatable and sympathetic, she must resemble the people we now describe as "white." That isn't to suggest that these details always have racist intentions behind them. Instead, they're indicative of how much of the English-speaking world conceptualizes beauty and the type of woman who is deserving of sympathy.

• 31:38Liv Albert?

  Medusa, the feminist. Today, Medusa is both an icon of modern feminism and survivors of assault and a boogeywoman for misogynists. The two are not unrelated. She has become a symbol of strength and resilience, of the power of women and the fear that power instills in men who see it as a threat to their dominance. Feminists use her as a symbol, and so misogynists continue to perpetuate the idea of her as a dangerous creature who deserved her death. Not unlike, I imagine, how many of them see feminism itself. Medusa, the victim.

• 32:22Liv Albert?

  Today, Ovid’s version of Medusa is often described as being the “true story,” not because of anything about the dating of the source or its intentions, but because modern women have found a kind of connection with that version of her. She has become an emblem for women who have been victimized by men and found strength in Medusa’s story. Using Ovid’s Medusa in this way often comes along with the additional piece I mentioned earlier. The idea that actually Athena wasn’t punishing her but protecting her, transforming her in order to ensure that she can no longer be a victim of dangerous men.

• 33:02Liv Albert?

  This form is often viewed as a kind of origin, as though women of the ancient world told this version of the story and that’s how it came to Ovid, or some similar idea. It’s also sometimes accompanied by the “fact” that Medusa’s symbol was used as a “symbol of protection,” specifically by assault survivors of the ancient world too. Unfortunately, there is no ancient evidence to back this. I want to be very clear that I don’t intend to take this away from anyone who finds strength in this form of her, only to point out what lies beneath this idea and how we women and survivors might instead find the same or more strength in the more ancient Greek forms of Medusa.

• 33:47Liv Albert?

  The implication that the nature of the Gorgons must be in contrast with beauty suggests that there was something wrong with them, rather than the simple fact that this is just what they were. Similarly, the notion that Athena used a monstrous transformation to protect Medusa from further assaults implies, if unintentionally, that the only way to avoid sexual assault is to be unappealing to men, rather than to blame the assault on the man who committed it. Still, I don't break down the issues I find in those readings without offering an alternative that I believe to be considerably more empowering to both Medusa and modern feminists than survivors of assault.

• 34:32Liv Albert?

  Medusa the Survivor I believe that we can, and I certainly do, read Medusa as a survivor of assault in the earliest of Ancient Greek sources. The god Poseidon is well acknowledged as one of the most violent gods of Greek myth. This is in large part due to what he represents: the sea, which would have been known as a dangerous and violent place, and undeniably still is. Because of this, Poseidon himself is dangerous. The encounter he has with Medusa in Hesiod's Theogony is not something that is explicitly clarified as assault, but that isn't enough to confirm that it wasn't understood as what we would now call sexual assault or rape.

• 35:15Liv Albert?

  If the most violent god is coming upon a woman in a peaceful place like a meadow, and that him laying with her is followed by a reference to her tragic fate, I believe there is an inherent reading of violence in that experience. When I interpret Hesiod's earliest version of Medusa's story, I call her a survivor of Poseidon's sexual assault for all the reasons I just laid out.

• 35:40Liv Albert?

  I believe she was a survivor of that assault and that combined with her ability to defend herself against further violence by men, that meant she symbolized a threat to the patriarchal order. By killing her and transforming her defensive mechanism into an offensive weapon, she's effectively silenced and turned into a tool of that same patriarchy. To view her in this way today, I find, she becomes a considerably more empowering figure, both as a mythological character worth examining in near obsessive detail, and as a symbol of strength and empowerment for modern women, modern survivors.

• 36:37Liv Albert?

  Oh, nerds. Thank you so much for listening. I know that kind of bounced around a little because I've just kind of clipped it from all these different sections in the work. But I really just, I mean, I just, I'm so, so enthralled by, by breaking down these ideas of Medusa and just looking at what she is as a symbol. To me now, like, I thought, it's funny, when I, when I first heard about this book, Flame Tree Press, Medusa, again, linked in the episode description, please check it out. I'm really proud of my part in it. When I first heard of it, it was just as a call for short stories. And I was actually really disappointed, you know, I, I thought, oh, you know, people were telling me to submit.

• 37:22Liv Albert?

  And I, I love and respect short stories and any kind of fiction about Medusa, but for me, she, she can no longer be fictionalized. To me, she is this, like, this thing, like, deep in my soul and in, in Greek myth that, like, she just is. And so, literally, like, I think it was like a day after I saw that call for short stories, they reached out to me and asked to me to write this, this piece. Again, what I'm calling a kind of cultural history. Looking at what she was, what she wasn't, what she became, everything.

• 38:04Liv Albert?

  And I, I mean, I was just so excited to write that piece and I, I'm really proud of it. So please do, do check it out. Yeah, just, just check it out. Um, and I just, I'm thinking of, of everyone, I guess. Everyone who is not a straight white man or a white woman so taken in by the patriarchal structure that she's become an agent of it, as so many are. I just, we're gonna, we're gonna get all through this. There's enough of us and we are the ones who have hearts and souls. So I don't even know what to say anymore.

• 38:49Liv Albert?

  So let's talk about Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangowish is the Hermes to my Olympians, my incredible producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. Uh, read with the lovely permission of Flame Tree Press. Thank you, guys. This was, I'm so excited about this piece. I'm so excited I got to read from it. I'm so excited for any of you to read the rest of it if you so choose.

• 39:18Liv Albert?

  The podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sign up for our new newsletter, iris's [email protected]/newsletter. There's so much more coming. We're gonna, as I've been saying it to my friends and family, we're gonna build a benevolent empire of feminist, intersectional nerds just trying to do good things.

• 39:49Liv Albert?

  I hope you all want to come along. I am Liv and I love this shit.

• 40:47Speaker 04

  Pull over if you're driving, little bear. It's time to talk about why you should upgrade your holidays with Verizon FiOS 100% fiber internet. Now, your super-fast, reliable internet comes with some of the best holiday gifts. We're talking TVs, soundbars, accessories, and for all you spicy little shopping addicts like myself, tons of gift cards to your favorite stores. 100% fiber internet with 100% perfect gifts for everything we love. Wow Verizon, wow. To that, I say, bravo. This holiday, make the switch to Verizon FiOS. Visit Verizon.com/FiOS to learn more.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at GetHumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 41:57Speaker 05

  Enemy of My Dreams by Jenny Williamson is a historical romance novel set in the time of the late Roman Empire, where Alaric, a brutal Gothic warlord, and Julia, a Roman princess, with a love of good wine, team up to take down Rome.

• 42:14Speaker 06

  The much awaited sequel, Game of Thieves, comes out December 8. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart.

• 42:27Speaker 05

  And now, for a limited time, when you preorder Game of Thieves through Burning Pages Bookstore, you'll get a signed book plate and a free art print of one of Jenny's favorite spicy scenes from across the series.

• 42:41Speaker 06

  Get this amazing artwork only from Burning Pages at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves. Don't wait. Order your copy from Burning Pages today at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves.