Conversations: Not the Glory of War, but the Horror of it... The Iliad (kind of) w/ Joel Christensen

Newsflash: the Iliad is an anti-war epic. Liv and Michaela speak with returning guest Joel Christensen about (ostensibly!) the Iliad, all the reasons it's NOT a pro-war epic, and why empathy is VITAL to humanity, not a bug. NOTE: this episode was recorded a few months ago and discusses the g-cide in Palestine and other Western war [crimes]. Submit your question for the next Q&A via email http://mythsbaby.com/questions or a voice note https://www.speakpipe.com/LTAMB. Get ad-free episodes and so, so much more, by subscribing to the Oracle Edition at patreon.com/mythsbaby http://patreon.com/mythsbaby CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. I try to provide direct warnings when there is reference to anything with overtly traumatic themes but be aware that Greek mythology regularly features assault, death, and many other potentially triggering events. Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here:mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions. Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Liv Albert?

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

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• 2:12Liv Albert?

  Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv. Now, today, we are back with a conversation episode. Honestly, and because you know me, I'm nothing if not honest, because I don't know how to hide that. So we've actually, we have a number of recordings that have been recorded over the last few months. And it's been, it's been a funny thing for me. I have had a lot of trouble getting to a point, you know, what with having to leave for a month and working on this book and everything. I've not, honestly, I've not had to listen back to a conversation in a while.

• 2:53Liv Albert?

  And I am in a weird place mentally where I just, as of the time of this recording, but I will, I will, I will break whatever has its hold on me, I will. But at the time of this, I honestly have had so much trouble listening back to conversations. I just can't, it's like I've hit a wall with listening to my own voice, which if you can believe it, when you've made a career as a podcaster, isn't great. Again, I will get over this. But as of this point, oh, my God. And that's why I've had some trouble with, we have a lot of recordings, is basically all I'm saying right now. And I'm just turning it into a ramble because ADHD is wild. We have a lot of recordings that I'm going to get through. But the reason I'm telling you that right now is that this episode was recorded like,

• 3:35Liv Albert?

  honestly, like, two to three months ago. It would have been before I left for Greece, so sometime before June, maybe even earlier. Wild. This is what happens. We, we bank up a lot of episodes and then kind of sometimes have to sort of put them out slowly. But why it matters with this one is this is a conversation with returning guest, such a favorite, Joel Christensen, and actually involves Michaela this time, which I'm really excited about. And we talked about the Iliad. But we talked about the Iliad really specifically as We talked about it in this way where, you know, the Iliad has become, it is often used by, I just want to say people, but like a very specific type of people to suggest that, you know,

• 4:20Liv Albert?

  this idea of like glory in war and, and the, just generally the, I don't know, any kind of glory in war. There's, there's so much more to it, but that's the only phrase I can think of. But we, we were talking about the Iliad as something that is not about glory in war. That is something about the horrors of war and how war tears apart both sides and neither comes out, you know, what they went in and, and how war is just terrible. Like the, the Iliad is, is a story of a lot of things, but at its core, it's about the high cost of war on both sides and how

• 5:01Liv Albert?

  neither is good and neither is bad and both are just cultures trying to exist. And so if you can believe it, um, unsurprisingly Gaza and Palestine and the genocide happening there comes up. Um, but it was recorded so long ago and everything just, I'm just so angry at our world, um, particularly my own country, which was just caught. We all knew they were doing it, but they were outwardly caught shipping arms to Israel despite saying that they weren't. Um, and they've just gaslit us all in their response. Canada is a fucking mess.

• 5:40Liv Albert?

  And I'm just, I'm just so, I'm so frustrated. Um, and so this episode is really important and I think it's really timely, but I also know that in terms of when it was recorded, horrifically, this genocide is happening so fast. Um, and they, you know, are, the people in Gaza are in a very late stage of famine and it's.

• 6:01Liv Albert?

  I don't even know what to say anymore because it's just so horrifying and I know that if you're still listening to me, you know that too.

• 6:10Liv Albert?

  So let's just keep screaming, screaming, calling all of our representatives, no matter your country, I mean, unless you're in one of the lucky, non-Western countries that, um, you know, is on the right side of history right now, but for the rest of us, call your representatives, go to marches, scream as loud as you can that this is not what we want, that this is not, that should not be happening in our names and that this,

• 6:36Liv Albert?

  this entire Western colonial project is a fucking farce at best and an absolute tyrannical criminal empire at worst and it's truth. And I just really wanted to say that before this because at this point, I will have listened back, but I don't know quite how out of date it's going to be, but I know we talked about it and I know it's really important and I'm really excited for you all to hear this episode, but I also needed to say that too. This episode is really, really powerful because the Iliad is so timeless and I think that it is so often misused by people, particularly the West and it's in its goals for supremacy and I think it's really important to be looking at this text of Homer's Iliad for what it

• 7:19Liv Albert?

  was back then and what it is still now, but has been sort of, you know, torn apart by the West.

• 7:28Liv Albert?

  And also Joel is a fucking delight. It's always so great to have him on the show and I'm thrilled that we got Michaela as part of this too. The Iliad is her baby in the way that the Odyssey is mine, so this is going to be a good episode, a powerful episode and hopefully not a too outdated episode.

• 8:01Liv Albert?

  Conversations, not for the glory of war, but for the horror of it. The Iliad with Joel Christensen.

• 8:24Liv Albert?

  We are back today for yet another episode because it turns out that Homer is perpetually relevant, like who knew? But specifically, people, oh, I don't even know how to, how to, how to broach this, but we're talking about the way terrible people misunderstand the classics, or misrepresent the classics, or Homer specifically, and the Iliad, and, and how it's not about the glory of war. And I don't know if it should be about this, but I do think it's really good timing, and I hadn't heard what you mentioned earlier off, off the mic, Joel, but do you want to recap that slightly and tell us a bit? Or like, let that lead in?

• 9:03Speaker 03

  I mean, first, Liv, thanks for having me back again. Nice to see you. Nice to meet you, Michaela. Sometimes, sometimes I internally remark on how humanists don't always act human, and that's me. But all right, so let's set this, I don't want to set the stage. I don't want to imagine what it's like to be Joe Rogan and Musk in a conversation, except I imagine it smells something like skunk weed and Axe body spray.

• 9:30Liv Albert?

  I think that's unkind to weed and stoners, just like as one-

• 9:35Speaker 03

  I said, "skunk," like it's bad stuff. I think it's good.

• 9:38Liv Albert?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, right. Terrible weed.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. And too much of it, right? It's like, it's not even done intelligently. Anyway, so Musk was having a conversation with, with Rogan, and said as part of a larger conversation, that empathy is a, is a bug in Western civilization that can be exploited. He says it's a fundamental weakness of Western civilization, and he made it as part of his opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

• 10:10Liv Albert?

  Right.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  Um, and so his argument was, you know, these weak people in the world, these masses of immigrants, they prey upon our, our weakness and we, we like give things to them against our self-interest. Um, and so as a basic argument, it's dumb, right?

• 10:27Liv Albert?

  Yeah, also the key is an immigrant. Like, I know it's not news, but I do think we need to say it every goddamn time. Like, come the fuck on, the man is an immigrant.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  Well, when they say immigrant, they don't mean white immigrants.

• 10:40Liv Albert?

  Well, exactly.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Generally, they, they also don't mean rich people.

• 10:44Liv Albert?

  No.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Like, did you see the, the nonsense thing Trump floated a few weeks ago where he said, well, there's a green card, but we're also going to have a gold card.

• 10:52Liv Albert?

  Oh, my.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  For people who are really wealthy to come in.

• 10:55Liv Albert?

  Yep.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  Um, and you're like, all right, we'll have à la carte citizenship from now on, right? If you can afford enough, you get to vote. Um, but, you know, to, to go back to Musk, um, and his, you know, ridiculous comments, um, is without even thinking about the canard of Western civilization. Um, just the assertion that there's this exploitable weakness that makes governments and people go against their self-interest. I mean, I, I would like to see any government that's actually done that. Um, I don't really know of any that have, um, maybe I'm wrong. Um, but then to go to the, the Western civilization thing, um, I mean, look, ideas about civilization only exists in terms of opposition anyway, right?

• 11:40Speaker 03

  Like, you define it against what it is not. Um, but if we were to say there is such a thing as Western civilization, um, I would say, well, you know, let's look at the list of things that's done for the past hundred and fifty years or so. Uh, well, let's go back, you know, our, our shared American heritage, you know, three or four hundred years ago. Uh, and, you know, what I see as wealth built off of exploiting and killing, uh, indigenous people off the, into the transatlantic, uh, slave trade, um, and then increasing numbers of genocides, um, in the 20th century, um, that really points to anything but empathy playing a giant role.

• 12:19Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Um, and then, you know. Yeah, and so, you know, I wrote this this op ed about it for Neos Cosmos, this sort of Greek diaspora newspaper. And one of the things I emphasize is, well, look, one, it's a simplistic and stupid notion of culture. Like, no culture is just one thing. And in fact, successful cultures contain their own negation within them. Or they contain like their own counter arguments in order to act against them, right? And so you can say, look, whatever we call Western culture may have notions of empathy in it. But where you find empathy is always in the voices of protest and antagonism against the core of power, colonialism, imperialism.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  And the very texts that, you know, certain conservative groups and people like Musk want to raise up are those in which it's really all about how damn hard it is to actually have empathy. And so three things I bring up, you know, pretty quickly, I don't love to talk about Jesus of the Gospels. But he seems to me to be pretty clearly a dude who's saying, maybe you should think more about other people, right? And put yourself in their place. And then, you know, Platonic philosophy is at the end radical for its time. When Socrates says, it's better to suffer injustice than commit it. And then you move from there to other places, tragedy and Homer.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  As Aristotle says about tragedy, and Aristotle is not someone I would say would uphold empathy as a value. But he sees tragedy as functioning almost exclusively to inspire us with feelings of pity and fear. So we achieve recognition of ourself in the other, right? And achieve catharsis, like what the hell is tragedy for? And then we get to the Iliad, right? And the reason I end with the Iliad, and I like to think about it, and why I think it's good for this conversation, is Musk has tweeted before, multiple occasions, on how people should read the Iliad. And I think it's because he saw the movie Troy and wants Brad Pitt hair in Bond, and he's not going to get it, right? But beyond that, it means he doesn't really understand the Iliad.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  Because the Iliad starts with someone I would even dare say could be a Musk analog, right? A nepo baby fail son who goes abroad and like makes trouble for other people because he's always putting his own interests ahead of them. Right? And that's the story of the Iliad, if anything, from beginning to end is that Achilles gets really upset at a slight to his honor. And that slight is represented by the subtraction of a human being from his retinue, like from his of its ownership of a person, right? And then he gets back about this slight to his honor by praying for all of his people to suffer and die because he's not honored the way he thinks he should be. If this

• 15:17Speaker 03

  sounds like a billionaire's lament, it may just be, right? And then we spend the entire epic with him like upset and angry and his lover, his best friend, Patroclus dies. And it's because of his own wish, because of his own selfishness. And so the key moment of the Iliad that people talk about as being sort of this shining moment in Western literature is when Priam and Achilles meet and they weep, recognizing each other's suffering as equivalent to their own. And the point of the Iliad isn't, oh, this is cool, right? The point is, they had to lose everything. These are two wealthy, powerful men who had

• 15:59Speaker 03

  to lose everything to see somebody else's suffering as real as their own. And so the point of the Iliad, the point, I think, of Western literature is that to be humanized,

• 16:12Speaker 03

  to see others as yourself, is takes really hard work. And for some people, it means losing everything, hitting rock bottom before you can understand that. And so that, to me, is just it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Western tradition, which is about the opposite, but also about how important the important function that the Iliad and similar literature can have in sort of reflecting the crazy house of mirrors that culture creates.

• 16:44Liv Albert?

  I'm just gonna sit with that for a second, but like I had not heard about the that whole thing before this conversation. So it works out very well. Like even regard like without that, all I you know, I think about it all the fucking time of the way that people misunderstand the Iliad at its core. I mean, Michaela and I talk about it all the time because the Odyssey is my love and the Iliad is hers, which is why I wanted her here. But I mean, it's just yeah, I just like there's, there's so much, so much going on. Michaela, do you have, do you have things to say?

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Well, I think, I think, you know, in our conversations, when you and I have talked, saying the same thing twice, is the thing I love about the Iliad is that it's, it's not, I don't see it as a story of war. It is a story of people and human emotion. And you know, Homer does that. He sets up his works like that, like that the first word is mainin. It's like, that's the biggest sign. And we lose that in English because well, I mean, we can, but it's complicated. It's asking to look at the effects of emotion. And, you know, that is what I find so powerful about it. It's just so much of looking at the human condition and how things affect people and how negative things affect people

• 18:10Speaker 04

  and people coming together in times of difficulty, too. And, you know, and I think often people miss things where, you know, the Greeks are the good guys. I don't know, the Greeks in the Iliad are.

• 18:25Liv Albert?

  I mean, if there is a good guy.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  They're patulant children.

• 18:28Liv Albert?

  Yeah. If there is one side that is the good guys, it isn't the Greeks objectively.

• 18:32Speaker 04

  I'll always say, I love Antilochus. I love Antilochus.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  I love what you say there, Michaela, by like focusing on the first word of the poem, right? Because, you know, you talk to like the randos or even the not so randos like Jeremy Tate, this guy who who's like selling the classical learning test as an alternate to the SAT. And he's like, the Iliad teaches you about being manly in war. I was like, well, let's start with the first seven lines. Because if you look at it grammatically, it's all connected to that word mainin. And it says, the rage of Gilead Achilles sent myriad Achaeans to their doom, not Trojans. Like, his own people is the point, right? And there's this thing, like, in the misreading of the Iliad is perpetuated by

• 19:19Speaker 03

  scholarship as well. When I was in graduate school, I wanted to write my dissertation on rhetoric and politics in the Iliad. That ended up being the subtitle. But it was just a few years past, people saying, you can't talk about politics, because Homer's not about politics. Like, I had friends who, like, yeah, yeah, David Elmer's written a book about it since Elton Barker has, I've written some stuff. And the point is, it's intensely political, because it's set in the Trojan War. And to go to your point, Michaela, like, you know, I think there are some Greeks who we should care about, like Diomedes is kind of, he's kind of okay, in my book, right? But but you're absolutely right, that the human component is given to where the families are, right? To where

• 20:04Speaker 03

  the women, the children, the elderly are, right? And I think we talked about this before, Liv, so I can't remember. But the equivalent today would be if we told the story, and I'll go straight on and say this, if we told the story of the conflict in Gaza, and made the Palestinians, the families, right? And the Israelis and us, the Americans, the Achaeans, the humanity is coming from people who are besieged, who don't have a choice about fighting. And to go back to, you know, I think you're right, it's about emotions. And if the Iliad's about war, It's about what violence is for and when do you choose it? And the only message about violence that it seems to justify,

• 20:50Speaker 03

  and this might get us to a solidarity comment, is you're justified in fighting and dying to defend the people you love. Everything else is suspect. You can't fight for stuff, you can't fight for land. All of it's nonsense because in the end, it doesn't matter.

• 21:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like the conversation between Hector and Andromache, where she is like, why are you doing this? Look at your child, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, it doesn't matter. Like, I have to do this. It's this is about regardless of what happens, like it's gonna be bad for you. If I win, it's gonna be bad. If I lose, it's all bad, but I have to do it for you and for the family and for our people. And it's.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  And I think like the essential thing that people get all wrapped up in is this is clay us off the tongue, right? This whole like immortal glory thing and Achilles' choice, right? He's like, oh, my mother told me I had a choice. Like I can live a noble life and go home and farm or stay here and have immortal glory. And, you know, it sounds good, but everything Achilles says is because he's a petulant man, baby, at some level. And the question we, I think audiences should ask is, well, who doesn't have a choice? Like, what does it mean? Like, sure, Achilles has a choice and he's choosing to sit there and like just look at everyone, but Hector doesn't have a choice. Prime doesn't have a choice, right?

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Andromache, Styx, they don't have a choice. And so if the Iliad is about war, it's about noncombatants. And as much as it's about warriors and this whole like Iliad manliness thing, well, primarily it's coming from people who've never like been near violence. But it's also, I think, coming from people who are suffering from a fatal lack of empathy.

• 22:43Liv Albert?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I just want to use this phrase because it, it keeps coming to me when, when both of you are the way we're speaking about this. But the, it's this question of like the besieged versus the besiegers. You know, like, these are people who are defending themselves because there is no other option. Because the other, the alternative is just watching everyone you love die. And then it's the people inflicting that. And somehow, the, the, the sort of morality has been lost of that. And it's just on its face, and maybe this is where empathy is like just this big problem.

• 23:27Liv Albert?

  Because it's like, to me, it is on its face absurd to suggest that like, that the Greeks are the good guys. That Israel and the Americans are the good guys. Like, it is on its face absurd to suggest that the people doing the, the destruction, the people initiating all of this mass murder, mass death, genocide, like are somehow the, in the right. And it's, it's one of those things, I mean, this is true of everything going on in the world for the past few, few years. I mean, I mean, obviously, like, it's been going on far longer, but certainly with like my own cognizance of all of this.

• 24:10Liv Albert?

  Like, it's just, it makes you feel like you're going a little crazy because it seems quite clear, like where the, where the empathy should lie, I wanted to say pathos, but like, like just where that, like, what we should be feeling in these moments. And that's, that's why, I mean, why I wanted to talk about the Iliad so specifically too, because it is used in this way that is just so. diametrically like opposed to what is actually there.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  I mean, it's shocking. And there's this, uh, McHale, I'm sure you know this passage, but it's something that that's been really sticking with me for a year and a half now for various reasons. And that is the beginning of book six, right? And so Menelaus, there's a whole series of of battle vignettes. It's building off of what happens at the end of book five, and Menelaus captures Adrastus. And Adrastus grabs him by the knees and says, ransom me, like, send me back. And and Menelaus says, OK, I'm going to do it. And Agamemnon grabs him and says, what are you doing? Right? What are, you know, the Trojans are your enemies. Like, we want to kill all of them, even the babies still in their mothers' wombs.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Right? I mean, Agamemnon, to my mind, pretty clearly says, commit genocide.

• 25:30Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 03

  And the reason, but the reason's important at the beginning of book six is it sets up what follows, which is first, the almost comic and absurd armor exchange between Glaukis and Diomedes that makes no sense unless you see it as reflecting conventions of exchange that have just been transgressed. And then you get to the scene in the city, which culminates with a styenax. How can you read that book, book six, or listen to it and not make the connection from what Agamemnon says to what a styenax says? And to go back to what you were saying, I mean, one of the really odd, uh, one of the odd things about the Iliad

• 26:10Speaker 03

  is that Hector keeps being depicted by the Achaeans as something really evil, right? He's called man-slaying Hector, right? Androphenos. And Agam- and Achilles builds on that. He's like, oh, you know, you'll all be praying for me. You'll have longing for me when man-slaying Hector comes after you. But should he not be a demon, right? Who of us would not pray to have that ki- kind of fight in us to defend the people we care about? To go back to that, to that thing, I mean, the Greeks had a choice. They chose to invade. They chose to set a siege. And then they're going to complain that Hector's murdering them?

• 26:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I've I've been in my Latin class, we're translating book to of the Aeneid. So you know, this is centuries after in Rome, but there was that there's one part in it where it's saying like, what is a matter of this is done by trickery or by honor like? Like this is for survival because you know, it's all from the Trojan perspective. This is the siege of Troy.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  But yeah, like it's what can you do? What what happens when that choice is taken away? When you are stuck in a situation, can you? Can you blame someone for protecting themselves?

• 27:27Speaker 04

  From slaughter? Do you really want them to just lay down and? Take it like, come on. That's what it.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  I mean, they're in the way. The Trojans are in the way of the siege of Troy.

• 27:39Liv Albert?

  Well, and I I think this is what? This is what makes it so real, not only now, but like it's what makes it so. I don't know the quite the the phrasing I want to use, but like the the way that? The West, but in this case, I mean, very explicitly like North American West. The way that? The the people who, you know, ascribe to this idea of of Western civilization, Western supremacy more broadly like? The way they latch on to it? On this side of the Greeks, like, I mean, if you break it down to its most base level, it makes all the sense in the world, right? Because North America?

• 28:23Liv Albert?

  Is never, I mean, as I've been by that, I mean, like colonized North America? Is never the one that has to defend itself. We are always the aggressor. We are always the colonizer, the invader, the destroyer. Like we, the war has never been here. And so instead, we are always the ones doing the damage elsewhere. And in these like othering places, and it's exactly what the Greeks do, right? They make up. I mean, I say make up because I think that's a a comfortable way of saying it, but they they. They created a reason to invade Troy.

• 29:05Liv Albert?

  Like it was, we could say that pretty, pretty clearly, whatever way you want to do it, like blame the gods, whatever. They created a reason to blame, to, to invade Troy and then made it all about their honor and their, you know, needs. And it's just, I mean, you know, comparing it to the Iraq war is very obvious, but like, it's literally everything North America has done.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  But what if I were to make it even more insidious, right? No, no, no. So, so let's imagine a world in which the theft of Helen is seen from different perspectives, right? From the Trojans, it's about her exercising her agency as a human being. From the Greeks, it's about her disobeying her position as property, right? And then we spell this out. And so maybe that is an extreme way to do it. But I don't think you can take away from modern reception of it, especially among certain bros, the desire to control women and also to treat women merely as a

• 30:10Speaker 03

  token of their self-esteem and position in society, right? And so I think there's, there's very, you don't get any questioning in modern conversations about whether or not it was a good idea. They're just like, yeah, they took Helen, so the heck to go do it, to go do it. Like, even if you read Herodotus and Thucydides, they look at it and they're like, this is some kind, this is some specious shit, right? Like, this is weird.

• 30:32Liv Albert?

  Manufactured consent, like.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Like, are you sure this is why people go to war? They come up with different reasons, right? And Thucydides are like, well, we all know the Greeks were always pirates and raiding each other. And Herodotus is like, you know, there's generations of people stealing women, I guess, you know? But it's so like, it's all about, maybe go back to a minute, to the Odyssey live. But one of the things I find fascinating now, years after studying, or after years of studying the, in the Odyssey, is how many of the, of the more pernicious aspects of Western civilization are anticipated by it, right? So in the Odyssey, what I see is those passages with polyphemus and as I- Islands, where you really see a proto-colonizing perspective there and proto-racism.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Edith Hall has this book that's recently out where she talks about the Iliad, in fact, as being a reflection of our relationship with the environment, of our destructive use of it, and really sort of like the seeds of a totally consumptive and corrupting approach to the world. And so this is where we get into trouble, or I get into trouble with the general public where I'm like, look, our problems are inscribed from the beginning in these texts. But partly it's because we misread them and we don't understand where they're self-critical and not. I actually think the proto-colonizing view of the Odyssey is probably a feature of Western civilization, not a bug. Whereas

• 32:01Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  But the Iliad, I really think that the Iliad is fundamentally critical of aggressive war. And I don't know, Michaela, how you feel about that.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. It is. It is a critique of war, and I think it is a critique of the horror that happens, especially for selfish reasons and selfish gains and of not treating others like people. Like, it is, it's, I don't read it as a book that's like, wow, look at these manly men off to war. I'm like, I think it's literally like, oh, my God, look at all the bad shit that happens when you just go out and start killing people. Like, it is, it is a book that is so critical of what is happening in the thing.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  No, and, and I think that, like, it, it points a lot to the, the dangers of any narrative, which is like sort of misreading, right? That so many people are, are, are read this and think, wow, this is awesome. I want to go die with a spear thrust through the back of my head.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Nah.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Does not sound nice. Doesn't sound good.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  No, not at all. It's absurd. But again, I mean, that's where, where we get to. I mean, it is, and, and you know, I think, um, I, I really like Liv, your emphasis on the particular embrace in the US and Canada, because we have been, uh, safe from, from, from state, from state to state violence, right? I mean, until we make you our 51st state.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  No, no, but, no, no, but, but I, I mean, I, I think the Iliad is read very differently in the middle of war.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  As Simone Way's, you know, Iliad poem four shows. But it's still, you know, it, it's strange to me that

• 33:58Speaker 03

  so many of our, you know, scholars from the Western tradition, eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth century, come from war backgrounds. Right? Or at least come from aristocracies where some people are involved in war. And the poem is not, in that context from, from my readings, seen as anti-war at all. So I'm wondering what we're missing.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  Well, and I think there's also something to say about sort of like what social standing you have in life and how war affects you. You know, like if you're, yeah, if you are of the upper echelons, you're, you're hanging out in the background. You're not in the front line. You're just like, I've been to war, but I was sitting in a tent drinking tea the whole time. Versus the people who are actually, whose lives are actually at stake and they're on the front line and they're the ones who are fighting and they're the ones who are getting hurt and, you know, thinking of like, um, oh God, who's the author? Um, like all quiet on the Western front.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  That is, you know, like that is such a powerful book about war because it's like, hey, look how horrible it is. Like this is what we are actually facing. So, you know, i- if you're looking at the people who are actually going out there and dying versus the people who are like really benefiting from it, you know? Those are different perspectives on war.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  I think that's smart because I think that's one of my frustrations with things like, you know, I, I think Jonathan Chay's Achilles in Vietnam did great things to getting people to think about Homer and the Iliad differently and to take the psychological a- a- aspect seriously. But it doesn't foreground it as a senior officer's perspective.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Right? Because I mean, again, even though by Book Twenty Four Achilles does feel bad and see himself in Priam, he doesn't seem to be very remorseful for, you know, all the people he killed. All the nameless ones, um, at all. Cause they, they're just dead.

• 36:02Liv Albert?

  Sorry. No. I mean, there's just, yeah, it's, it's so hard to, and I mean, this is not like particularly insightful, but it's just, it's very frustrating because like,

• 36:17Liv Albert?

  I mean, this comes back to the, the idea of like, but it's fucking obvious, you know, but like, but the Iliad is such a beautiful piece of literature. If you read it with empathy, you know, and if you read it as like with, with humanity, with this idea that like, we are all people and you can immediately see the people that you were meant to empathize with, and they're not the Greeks, they're certainly not Achilles. And so it is just this sort of disconnect that I find myself even having trouble like formulating questions and conversation about because I'm just like, but it, what?

• 36:59Speaker 03

  What if we try that? What if we try this, right? To, to push ourselves a little, right? If I were of a different mindset, I would say, so you're saying all these critical things about war, but one of the most famous passages about standing and fighting in the Iliad is from book 12, starting at line 310 in the Greek, is when Sarpedon talks to Glaucus. And he says, oh, why Glaucus, are we treated so nobly? It's because we're going to stand here and fight, so let's go and fight. Right? And people often see this as, you know, so core of what they call the heroic code. How do we answer someone who says, look, I think you're wrong about what they're saying about war in the Iliad, because look at Sarpedon's amazing speech.

• 37:46Liv Albert?

  Well, because, I mean, the, the thing is that I think that it comes back to like certain types of people who I think latch on to this most, have trouble keeping two things in their minds at once about something like this, which is that like, A work and the Iliad specifically can be both at once, you know, like it can both be about, you know, just being human and what war looks like and the ways in which it ends up being pretty terrible for everyone, the winners and the losers, while at the same time having these pieces that respect aspects of it or glorify pieces, or even just not

• 38:29Liv Albert?

  even glorify in that way, but just like recognize like the aspects that, you know, I can't necessarily relate to finding valuable, but like, you know, these things can be two things at once and having like a scene that that looks like that, that does kind of present it in a different way, you know, obviously doesn't negate everything else. And also, this is me not entirely remembering that part.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  No, well, so I think, I think you're precisely right in, in that for the, for any piece of literature to be effective and to be also a true cultural artifact, it needs to contain counter arguments, right? But I think, as I'm talking about this, that I can undermine the Sarpedon suggestion in two ways, right? Three ways. I'll give you three ways that I'm thinking of right now. One, Sarpedon isn't a Greek ally, he's a Trojan ally.

• 39:29Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  Right? And to an extent, he doesn't actually have the ability to break the social contract that brought him to war. And so this is like an after the fact justification. But two, um, wait, what was the second thing? Come on, I've got them. But two, I actually think it may also be there, like many of the ideas in the Iliad, for us to respond to its verisimilitude or its absurdity, right? Like, it's actually kind of ridiculous that, all right, so people at home give you the best cuts of meat and they treat you like a god, and now you have to go and fight and die for someone else? Are you shitting me? Like, that's the bargain? I actually think it's floated so we can look at it and be

• 40:11Speaker 03

  like, I don't know about that. And what confirms that for me in part is what happens, and so this is the third thing, in book 16. Sarpedon dies, right? He's killed by Patroclus, and sure, Zeus cries tears of blood, but in the end, like... It doesn't matter. Yeah, was it worth it? Yeah.

• 40:30Liv Albert?

  Even a son of Zeus can can die in that way. Like, I think that's a good reminder. That's that's important part, too, is the way that even the gods' children will die in this war.

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• 42:43Speaker 03

  And I think the tight narrative arc there is meaningful as well. It's not like he said it in book one and then died in 24. Like, it's within five books, right? And it's at key moments. Like, he speaks right before the Trojans break through the wall to the Greek camp, and right in the middle of Patroclus's arrest, and so the epic is like pointing at this guy to make us think about it. Like, in the best case, you get to be Sarpedon. Even that, I'm like, huh, right? It doesn't seem like such a great deal.

• 43:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  Still death.

• 43:21Liv Albert?

  It's like, I mean, any, any good and important and like affecting piece of literature and art is going to contain all of these things. Like, you're saying, like, it's never going to be, like, we don't, I mean, unless I'm completely missing something, but we don't have any, like, you know, incredible pieces of literature, let's say, that are explicitly like these lessons in morality. Because if something is explicitly meant to be that, like, it's not going to be good.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  It's an afternoon special.

• 43:56Liv Albert?

  Exactly, yeah. It, it, it's like, nobody wants that. That's not a good piece of art. Like, a good piece of art makes you think and makes you question and respond to what is happening and really like feel like, you know, I mean,

• 44:12Speaker 04

  It starts dialogue.

• 44:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. It doesn't tell you. It doesn't talk at you. It, it's, it, it posits things to you and, and starts the worrying in your brain.

• 44:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  So, so let's offer then another critique of our argument some might I offer, right? So this is one people give you all the time. They're like, you don't understand because you're not a real man. Right? No, no, because you're not from the Bronze Age. Right?

• 44:38Liv Albert?

  That's when the real men were around.

• 44:41Speaker 03

  You don't know their context, right? Your argument is anachronistic.

• 44:47Liv Albert?

  Oh, boy. Oh, well, I mean.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  Now, to that, so here, here, I, I'm going to give you a, a long counter to that. Maybe it won't be too long. But, but I remember what I said about book six, about that we're going to kill all the children thing, right? Um, so you know, there's a Greek term for killing all the men and enslaving all the women and children is called andropodismos, right? It's a thing.

• 45:09Liv Albert?

  Can you say that slower?

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Andropodismos.

• 45:12Liv Albert?

  Thank you.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  It's a thing they actually did.

• 45:15Liv Albert?

  Hmm.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  Right? And we know they actually did it because of inscriptions, but we also have the great drama of Thucydides to tell us about what a big deal it was. And i- if I may belabor it and remind any readers of what happens in Thucydides, there are two moments that still make me cry to this day. Right? When I think about it too much. First, the, the, the Athenians are having a conflict with the, uh, city of Mytilene. Um, and they decide, all right, we're going to vote andropodismos on these people. And they send their army to do it. And then the next day they get up and they're like, that was a bad idea. So we're not going to do it now. Instead, we're going to send out a ship to go really, really fast to recall the order.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  And they do it. They get there and it's a victory because like the democratic people of Athens have decided not to put all their like allies to the sword and enslave all the women and children. Cool. Uh, if, if the history had ended there, we'd all be like, that's really inspiring. Unfortunately, what happens later is the island of Melos, an ally, rebels. And the Melian dialogue is one of the things that I, I wish everyone would talk about the Melian dialogue and not the Per- Periclean funeral oration. I have some feelings about that.

• 46:28Liv Albert?

  Read a huge portion of it in January on the show.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  I, I think it's a psy-op. Let me talk to you about that in a minute, right? Um, but so the whole thing, like the most experimental part of the, of Thucydides' Peloponnesian war is the Melian dialogue. Where the Athenian envoys, mostly unnamed, go and talk to unnamed Melian leaders. Um, and basically the whole argument is we're big and tough and we can do whatever we want to. And you just have to deal with it, deal with it, which has nothing to do with the values of the city of state, et cetera. Um, and then the people of Athens vote andropodismos for Melos and they carry it out, right? And so this stuff actually happened.

• 47:10Speaker 03

  To the people who were reading the Iliad, or sorry, enjoying, experiencing the Iliad and the Odyssey. And you're telling me, so I'm now talking to a Jeremy Tate Elon Musk figure. You're telling me that the people who saw their very countrymen in threat of enslavement and murder are listening to the Iliad and thinking, yay, let's do that, right? And even if some of them are, because let's not forget, the Athenians signed up for this, right? They told, they did this to their own people. It doesn't mean there's unanimity, right? Doesn't mean everybody in Athens is like, that was a good idea.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  Right? Just think about our countries and, you know, the extent to which we're all complicit in their crimes, but we're not all like proud of it. And so when I think back to this, I, I think like, you know, there's this stuff that classicists do with the, where they say, well, you have to divorce the literature from its context. We don't know what they're thinking and feeling. The example I always use is, well, that's nonsense because in 429 B.C., when people dying of a plague, Sophocles decided to tell the story of Oedipus in the middle of a plague, right? Like, I don't think that was accidental. I don't think he was just accidentally riffing on a plague. And I think back to-

• 48:28Liv Albert?

  Euripides wrote the Trojan Women very shortly after the million-

• 48:32Speaker 03

  Like, all of that stuff. I mean, and then I think back to my own, our own lives, right? I moved to New York City three months before nine 11. I was there like half a mile up from where the towers came down. I cannot go to New York City and see the memorial without losing physical control. Like, my heart rate goes up, like, I can't talk. I didn't even know anyone who was in it, but as part of the experience of streaming out of the city. Right? It's such a strong memory, right? It is part of who I am and I have a physical reaction to it. Like, how could, why would we imagine that the people of the past were any different about violence?

• 49:15Speaker 03

  Like, that's insane. Like, we know neurobiologically that human bodies haven't changed, our minds haven't changed, like our values and caring about people. We know from the Iliad that Hector cares about his child, he cares about his wife, his wife cares about him. Like, people have feelings. So, the whole notion that our argument, that the Iliad's anti-violence is wrong because of anachronism, is just pure denial.

• 49:40Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, it reminds me of the same, I mean, it's such a similar argument when people want to divorce any kind of like modern morality ideals from the ancient world. Like, I, I mean, I think about this all the time, but like, I have spoken to experts in this field and specifically experts on women who have like refused to conceptualize the idea that the ancient Greeks understood rape as a trauma. And it's like, do you think that because women didn't have any rights, that like, that rape was not conceptualized as bad?

• 50:25Liv Albert?

  Like, but it's this idea that like, we can't place modern like things onto the ancient world. It's like, no, they weren't, we were all people. Like, we did not fundamentally change as a species. These things, rape, war, trauma, death, like, these things are human and it, it, to divorce the, the, the text, the people, anything from the ancient world from that humanity is so unkind to everyone involved and everyone who will come after us. Like, it just, it's on its face so gross and privileged and nasty.

• 51:06Speaker 04

  And you see that also pop up when you talk about like, um, how Like child death, where it would have been like, you know, easier because it's more expected. And like, I think that's ridiculous, because I'm just like, I

• 51:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 04

  Like, what do you think, losing, like, just because children were more likely to die in antiquity, do you think that was made it less hard on the parents? That's such an unkind thought. And it just think it it it

• 51:33Speaker 03

  It's

• 51:34Speaker 04

  takes humanity out of ancient people.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  It's also, I mean, to go to, um, Liv's earlier comment, it it also goes to the people making the comment.

• 51:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:44Liv Albert?

  Yeah, no, exactly.

• 51:45Speaker 03

  I I don't know any, any woman who has thought of bearing a child or is born a child who would make that assertion.

• 51:52Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And even like those of us who want nothing to do with children. It's very reasonable.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  No, right, right. No, I said, who had thought of it?

• 52:00Liv Albert?

  Well, I've never thought of it.

• 52:02Speaker 03

  No, no, but like, but the thing, look, we don't, we don't have any literature from Greece that's not through Med.

• 52:11Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  And don't, don't mention Sappho, because Sappho was only saved because Med liked her.

• 52:15Liv Albert?

  Yes, or accidentally.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Or accidentally. And we've lost, um, you know, the entire tradition of women's song and myth. And that's assuming that, and and that's stating the, a fact that most people won't accept, which is that they did exist.

• 52:33Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Right. There were entire traditions. A friend of mine, Homerest Andromache Karinika, who teaches at UC, I can't remember if it's Davis or Irvine, but she wrote a, um, a book about women's work songs that just started to touch the surface of the songs that we've lost from antiquity. But if you, you can get a sense of it from, from, um, medical literature. Like, if you do a deep dive into Galen and Hippocrates, um, the information about women's health is pretty damn limited.

• 53:03Liv Albert?

  So on Friday, I released the first part of, at this recording, the first part of my episode with Kristy Vogler, looking at, like, Hippocratic like history of medicine leading into women's health and part two is coming out this Friday as a recording. So like, yeah, yeah.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  No, but so, but this doesn't mean, so all you need to do though, is spend some time in some non-textual, non-Western medical traditions, right? And suddenly you realize that, wait, there are women's health traditions. It's just the women control them.

• 53:36Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. And so

• 53:37Speaker 03

  They know about them.

• 53:39Liv Albert?

  And so then we've like, it's just been removed from our history in a lot of cases.

• 53:44Speaker 03

  There is some access to the information, or at least the magnitude of what we lost, if you look at the fragments of the catalog of women, right? So Hesiod's Catalog of Women is the story of just the creation of the universe from the perspective of the women who bore the heroes and the men, right? And it is just an outline, but it gives you a sense of how much deeper of a mythical tradition there was than is told and how you can look at it differently. And there are a couple of books out, coming out now that do this. I know Emily Howser has one of them that recently came out. But like, we lost everything. Like the women sang while weaving, they sang while working in the fields, they had their

• 54:27Speaker 03

  own myth traditions, their own story traditions. And just because we don't have them, doesn't mean they weren't there. And so, one of the things that I'm sort of obsessed about, I think I mentioned this to you before, Liv, but I like to hear some from Michaela about this, is how we recuperate the pluralistic audiences of Homer, right? Like, the Homeric epics would not have been successful if they were just to the dominant audience, because all those aristocratic men still had women and children and poor people and slave people there. And the poems were reflecting them too. And yet, the history of interpretation,

• 55:07Speaker 03

  reception, editing, has only favored one viewpoint. And so I think like, the next, the final frontier of interpreting Homeric epic is trying to figure out how to bring those voices and impressions back.

• 55:22Liv Albert?

  Oh, boy. That's a task and a half, is what that is.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  We'll do it on Friday.

• 55:30Liv Albert?

  I mean, that is part of our like collective ideals and the values we're establishing is the acknowledgement of all of that, that it has, that it existed and has, has not made it into our histories. And I, I want to hear what you think, Michaela, please. But like, I, I also just wanted to add that because I think it is so important. It's what we think about all the time.

• 55:47Speaker 04

  But I, I think it is about it being accessible to people outside of sort of like the dominant cultural position, you know, it's, you'll never know what the general public thinks about it, unless they have accurate accessibility to it and thoughts about it, you know, and it's hard because like, how, how do you make it accessible within context? But also, how much does that context matter? Because at the end of the day, what is, you know, we, we're gonna, I'm gonna, you know, I will perceive the Iliad constantly, consistently

• 56:28Speaker 04

  through my own cultural experience, you know, as an Indigenous woman in Canada, I can't remove that from myself. And when I approach it, it'll always be there. And so, I don't, this is where I get really like, great question. I don't know, get more people reading it, but also make sure they have the right context for it, but also, but also, how much does context matter? Because at the same time, it's like, what is the cultural bias that envelops each person as they interact with it?

• 57:05Liv Albert?

  So I think with that cultural bias, though, too, to all, like, just because that's not talked about enough, is that everyone, everything is existing within this bias.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  So, so it may seem self-serving that I think one of your first answers, have more people read it, is a good one.

• 57:21Speaker 04

  Well, I think it's true. Yeah.

• 57:23Speaker 03

  But it's also, you know, I think communities of interpretation.

• 57:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Right? Because here's my proposal, right? Let's say there's a woman identifying equivalent of me, same age, same culture, and we read it and we have differential responses. That's a starting point for thinking about differential responses to the poem. And this is one of the reasons why I think authorizing readers and audiences from diverse backgrounds is the most critical thing we can do. Because people who have been enslaved are going to respond to the elea differently. People who are differently able, different ages, across the board. It's going to give us, let's say, a delta of interpretive range, right?

• 58:10Speaker 03

  That we can then start to restore. I think, you know, the people of the past, we can never recuperate.

• 58:15Speaker 04

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  But we can start to imagine, right? What differences may have been possible, given starting at the same point.

• 58:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I think it's also important, especially

• 58:29Speaker 04

  like when you try to bring people who are not

• 58:35Speaker 04

  like deep in the study of classics and of this stuff, to also like emphasize to them,

• 58:43Speaker 04

  you don't need to get everything and you're like, you don't, this is not a test. You are not being graded. This is not, this doesn't say anything about like who you are. Or like, oh, how do I say? Basically, like,

• 58:59Speaker 04

  we want your authentic experience with this. And it doesn't need to be profound in the way that perhaps scholarship can be seen as profound or as like upper echelons, upper class. Your experience with it is valid, no matter what it is.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  So I- I think that's perfect. Like, when I, when I teach the Aline, the Odyssey, I try to encourage students to engage in radical anachronism. But I just say, like, what's your response to it? I started doing this in, in part, um, when I was, so I, I taught at UT San Antonio for nine years. And what was remarkably different about UT San Antonio, it was a, at the time, the largest Hispanic serving institution in the US, and the largest veteran-serving institution. And my classes would be like eighty percent women. And one of the things I noticed right away, and I've known for a long time, um, is that generally, women are better readers of literature than men. I know I'll get some hate notes there. Not on my show, you won't.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  Not on yours, but, but here's why. But here's why. Have you all heard of standpoint theory, of feminist standpoint theory? Uh, no. Okay, so it's a basic, I'll, I'll just break it down, make it really simple, and maybe I'll get some feminist hate mail for this. Um, but the simple thing, no, it's simple, it's like, to survive in a power-based hierarchy, people lower down on the hierarchy have to be able to read the mind intentions and desires of the people above them. Yeah. Right? Um, and so what this means is that marginalized people, regardless of what the force of marginalization is, and by the way, marginalization is now banned by, by the Trump federal government as a word. I'm gonna fight them.

• 1:00:41Speaker 03

  No, no. So marginalized people end up having to develop more rigorous interpretive skills, because to survive, they need to be able to figure out what the people in power are thinking. And so this maps on to gender, it maps on to ability, all these different things. Right? Um, and so I found this theory accidentally, I was reading in different things, and it immediately answered for me what I saw every day in my classes, which is that men could read male characters, but nobody else. Yet women, and especially women of color, could read and figure out everybody's motivations in the text. Oh, yeah. And so to go back to your everybody reading thing, Michaela, um, I, you know, there's a model of reading texts that comes from, uh,

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  A cognitive theory and Liv has heard me talk about this before. And the model is basically that when the three of us hear the same story. We don't actually hear the same story. We create a cognitive blend in our mind. Of the story that's some of the details of the story plus our own experiences, right? So mine are naturally going to be in sort of a set in sort of a solid state. Like white male American cis het experiences combined with that narrative. Right? And you guys will have different ones. And so we're each inhabiting our own cognitive blend. Until we start to talk about it. Right? And so it's that community of interpretation that makes a difference.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  Because we start bridging the gaps between our interpretations and therefore between our among ourselves. Through the conversation of interpretation. And I think this is a fundamentally different thing about ancient performance for modern reception of literature. Is that we mainly read alone.

• 1:02:25Speaker 04

  Yes. Yeah. See, and then I have like the different experience. I know Liv and I have talked about this. I've maybe mentioned it before and because of. My being indigenous and First Nations, like I have sat in. Many ceremonies and like as a kid growing growing up, going to ceremony and powwows and potlatches and such. And like I've sat at elders. Feet and listened to the stories and then we all talk about it and we go off and we tell our parents and our uncles and so it's like. I I've lived within sort of like that oral tradition and it's very familiar to me and so. It's like that's how I got into Greek myths is because my sister discovered them and was like, sit down, you're gonna hear a thing. She just imitated our elders and told us these stories, but it's, yeah, and then.

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  I think when you get stuck in sort of like not being able to discuss things or. It's like getting stuck in like an echo chamber. You're only talking with people who sort of have the same. Thoughts and feelings like thinking of sort of like, you know. Love the internet, but sometimes forum boards are just places to find people who will say the exact same thing as you and bolster your shit.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  Right. No, no, but I mean, so, but I think I love, I love the example you just gave because I think part of your receptiveness then to a different model of Greek literature is based on your own lived experience.

• 1:03:44Speaker 04

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:03:45Speaker 03

  Which is that stories are frameworks.

• 1:03:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  For understanding the world.

• 1:03:48Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  Rather than propaganda for telling you what's in the world.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

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• 1:06:00Speaker 03

  Right, but to go back to our opening fool,

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  Elon Musk and the champions of Western civilization think that there are scripts to tell us how to be, not dialogues to make us question that fundamental precept.

• 1:06:17Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:06:18Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. It's scary. It's scary.

• 1:06:21Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  He, you know, it's, it's sometimes those moments where I'm like, you never, you never, you didn't, your mom didn't tell you stories in a room with like, at nighttime, you didn't share one room with all your siblings and your mom came in and told you all a story, then walked out and then, you know, you stayed up for an hour discussing it. You never had that experience.

• 1:06:40Speaker 03

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna say something else that's probably someday gonna get me into trouble. But I think there's also something that has to do with the approach to authority in textualized Christianity. And that's, and so I'll give you, right, uh, uh, one of the things, so I, obviously, probably you could infer from my last name that my family's Christian. Right, um, and when you go to church, right, there is the Bible and the person who has the authority to tell you what it means is a minister. Right, or priest, and it's pretty clear, right? And so my integration to other traditions introduced me to some surprises. One was I taught at a Jewish day school, still in high school, I taught, sorry, college, I taught Latin there, which was a weird thing to do anyway.

• 1:07:25Speaker 03

  But on the first day of teacher training, we had a day, we had a religious pluralism conference in the morning. And I went to it and it was actually, I was like, oh, we're gonna talk about like different religions. And no, it's all about Jewish pluralism, because we had rabbis from every different possible, like, version of Judaism talking about this. And then what became clear to me is the practice of Madrasch, of interpreting a Talmud, is about debating with people with nobody in the room who's the exact authority, because you have the authority to negotiate it yourself. Another example that people are gonna hate, um, i- is that, uh, so my wife is Muslim, they, I don't know if they'll hate that or not, um, but the-

• 1:08:04Liv Albert?

  They better not if they're listening to my show.

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  Once again, I will fight.

• 1:08:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, one of the first times, like, I saw how different this was culturally, was we were at the graveyard burying her grandmother.

• 1:08:17Speaker 03

  And there were a couple of moms, many men from the family, who broke into an argument about whether it was more Islamic to bury, to put her in feet or head first. And we're there, and I'm like, dudes, like, this is a ceremony, but it just broke down. People are quoting from the Quran. Everybody had equal access to authority and the truth, if they could quote the scripture, right? And so, like, those traditions have distributed authority, instead of straight up and down hierarchical authority. And so, when I hear people like Musk and all of these return figures online.

• 1:08:55Liv Albert?

  Christian nationalists?

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Liv Albert?

  Is that the right time to call them Christian nationalists?

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  They want a simple authority, right, that's clear and hierarchical. They want singular interpretations of the truth. I'm going to psychoanalyze them here, because they never got over their disappointment with their daddies.

• 1:09:20Liv Albert?

  Accurate.

• 1:09:22Speaker 03

  At some level, isn't that what's wrong with Jordan Peterson?

• 1:09:25Liv Albert?

  I mean, on every level.

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  Isn't that what he wants, like, more than anything, is clear, simple truth that nobody can debate?

• 1:09:36Liv Albert?

  He needs an older man to look at him and say, proud of you, buddy.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  You're doing a good job.

• 1:09:42Liv Albert?

  A little pat on the shoulder.

• 1:09:47Speaker 03

  Okay, so I probably drank too much coffee. I'm hitting all of these public enemies.

• 1:09:51Liv Albert?

  I mean, no. I recently got a comment on some, I don't even know what episode, I don't remember mentioning Jordan Peterson in it, but I got a comment on Spotify from someone who just said, Jordan Peterson has never advocated for violence against women. And my reply to it was just a long string of, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, you're just so funny.

• 1:10:12Liv Albert?

  But like

• 1:10:12Speaker 03

  But he is violence against women.

• 1:10:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 04

  Literally.

• 1:10:15Liv Albert?

  His entire, everything about his platform is advocating violence against women, but like

• 1:10:21Speaker 04

  You don't have to say it explicitly for it to be there.

• 1:10:23Liv Albert?

  Well, exactly, exactly. Like, if you are a person taking that in from this, like, white man's perspective, where you are the victim of the woke agenda, and, and this man does not explicitly say, "Go punch a woman in the face," then he did not advocate violence against women, right? It's like this, it's like cognitive disconnect between like what of any kind of nuance or like intentions behind these kinds of statements, like, it, it, but, yeah, please.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  I just think at some level, that's why these people are so attracted to Achilles.

• 1:11:00Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  And why they don't get to the end. It's because he offers a model for tearing the whole world down because there's a slight to your self-esteem and your notion of what you should get.

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  But, okay, I love Achilles. I love the boy.

• 1:11:15Liv Albert?

  But I've been waiting for this. I've been waiting for it.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  He does fucking nothing. He just goes and throws a little temper tantrum in his room, and it's like, mommy, they're not being nice to me.

• 1:11:27Liv Albert?

  They can't play with my toy.

• 1:11:29Speaker 04

  Oh, my God, Thetis is a boy mom. Oh, God.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  I mean, just imagine rewriting the early goddess in the rage of Achilles, who is upset because the woke mob canceled him.

• 1:11:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Liv Albert?

  Honestly.

• 1:11:41Speaker 04

  That's, that's, that's so. But it's just, I don't know. I

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  No, but, but I think just the key of it, like, like, look, I don't know if you guys are following what's happening in the US and New York, but

• 1:11:52Liv Albert?

  We have to.

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  No, but like, this guy Mahmoud Khalil, who led the protests at, at Columbia and was a student there

• 1:12:03Liv Albert?

  Green card.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  Was, was arrested by ICE, and then they're saying his green card is destroyed because of this, right?

• 1:12:10Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Speaker 03

  Where are all the, you know, the Atlantic and Harper's cancel culture people right now, right? Because they're upset. No, what it points to is what they're upset is they can't use the N-word. They're upset that they don't get to write whatever they want to write, right?

• 1:12:26Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 03

  But when real censorship comes out, when real suffering's happening, they're silent.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 03

  Right. And I think that again, you might say, well, what does Mahmoud Khalil have to do with with the Iliad? What he has to do with the Iliad is it starts out with a slight to someone's honor that's pretty fucking minor. And then many people die and have real suffering and you're wondering where is the umbrage there?

• 1:12:49Liv Albert?

  Yeah. And, and I mean, just to like, really hit the nail on the head because I have absolutely been following this. It's utterly horrifying. They are like attempting to disappear this man. And, and but like, really clearly, like, the Palestinians are the Trojans here in this way that is so undeniable if you have like eyes and a brain. Like, the, these people are, have gone through everything and this man has a green card and he organized protest against the genocide of his people and the government is attempting to disappear him for it. And it's this, I mean, I don't even, I don't even

• 1:13:34Liv Albert?

  fully know where I'm going with I just by ha- I had to connect that because it is so undeniable and yet like, nobody will say it. And, and it's the same, it's, it's the same reason, you know, why people are not writing about this more, why they are not treating his detainment as the like overt crime that it is. Like, it is an illegal detainment. He has a green card. Apparently, they first tried to tell him that his visa was revoked and he's like, I have a green card and it's, it's terrible and they've hung up the phone on, on his lawyers. It, it's overt, it's so on its face illegal. But like, but we're not talking about it because the Palestinians are the, the, the, the victim that

• 1:14:14Liv Albert?

  everyone is, is happy to continue to, to demonize in, in all of these ways, no matter what happens to them. And yeah, I don't know where I'm going with that, but I, I just had.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  No, I, I, I mean, to take it back to Thucydides earlier, right? I, I think at some level, like,

• 1:14:33Speaker 03

  An evaluation of how of how humanized you are and your ability to feel sympathy is where your where your priorities rely on on hierarchy and power. Right? Like, if you're siding, if you're siding with the bully, if you're siding with the expansionist, if you're siding with the imperialist and colonizer, you're probably on the wrong side, right? You know, like, again, but take it back to the Iliad, like, who has the choice?

• 1:15:05Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:06Speaker 03

  Who has the choice to fight and who doesn't?

• 1:15:08Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 03

  Right? And if you're rooting for the person who chooses to be there.

• 1:15:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Speaker 03

  Then maybe you're on the wrong side.

• 1:15:17Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Oof, oof.

• 1:15:22Liv Albert?

  I'm just jotting down an episode title. The goof.

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  I know this is supposed to be a light episode about war in the Iliad. So let's talk about our favorite death scene.

• 1:15:34Liv Albert?

  Oh, God. Must we?

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  No, right. So I want to go back to a little bit because like I think what people often miss, so they'll look at like, so the stately nature of war in in isolation. And that's why earlier I brought up the triptych that you get in Iliad six is you get the brutal decision to to kill non combatants from Agamemnon. And then you get that exchange in the middle and then you get the scene in the middle of the war. And I think there's, in a way, this is a metonym for microcosm was happening throughout the Iliad. Right? Which is the poem starts out with the breakdown of reciprocity, of a basic social function that everybody knows you should follow.

• 1:16:23Speaker 03

  Right? So my friend David Elmer's book, The Poetics of Consent, starts with that scene. When, you know, when Crises comes and says, I'm going to give you this ransom, you're going to give me my daughter back. All the Greeks shout out, yes, do it. Right? And Agamemnon's like, nah, I'm going to go against the

• 1:16:43Speaker 03

  communal opinion and what everybody else says, right? And just do whatever fuck I want to do. Right? Everything falls apart. And so the the thematics of the Iliad aren't closed until the right of exchange is returned. Hmm. Right? And this happens multiple times in book twenty four. And the first is the argument with really the court case, the International Criminal Court, um, where Ha- uh, Hera argues for the right of Achilles to continue mistreating He- um, Hector's body. And Apollo is like, no, that's nonsense. Right? And this goes back in part to what uh, Zeus says about Sarpedon, to get back to my Sarpedon comment in book sixteen,

• 1:17:23Speaker 03

  which is that the gerastoronton, oh, sorry, gerastononton, the right of the dead is burial and memory. Right? And so part of what's happening in the Iliad, that again, people miss, is it is trying to establish what I would even at this point consider a bill, a universal bill of human rights. Hmm. Right? And that's that you accept exchange that's fair, um, even in war, you bury the dead and you acknowledge each other's humanity. And that's where we are at the end of book twenty four. Like it makes, like, everything that happens in the Theban War saga, where like, oh, we're so upset that the Theocles and Polynices aren't both buried. It's prefigured by the Iliad.

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  That's going out there and saying, this is the most basic fundamental human right, right? To be honored in death, right? And then to accept a fair exchange. Um, and then as well to allow people time to remember the dead. I mean, like, that is where the poem is going. And anybody who says, well, it's about glory in war, like, like, you, you didn't read to the end. Like, you gotta get to the final book before making sense of it. Yeah.

• 1:18:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  Big thoughts, big feelings.

• 1:18:44Liv Albert?

  It's just, it's just so relevant.

• 1:18:47Speaker 03

  Well, I did, I did say Universal Bill of Human Rights for a reason.

• 1:18:50Liv Albert?

  Yeah, but even just the way the, the, the, the mourning of the dead and all of those things that are now being completely denied to people who are, have experienced a genocide. And I'm just like.

• 1:19:04Speaker 04

  It's, it's, it's sort of like how there's like this sort of basic fundamental, certain places should not be targeted or certain things should be allowed, you know, you don't, you don't go for the medics.

• 1:19:15Liv Albert?

  We used to, well, we used to agree that.

• 1:19:17Speaker 04

  Well, yeah.

• 1:19:18Liv Albert?

  Not anymore. Now you target the medics, right? If you're from the West. Now you target the schools. Now you target the hospitals.

• 1:19:25Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, so, I mean, I, I'm a total proponent of the discussion that we're having, but I'd actually like to dial it back to the, no, no, to the, to the war on terror.

• 1:19:36Liv Albert?

  Yeah, please, please.

• 1:19:38Speaker 03

  We as Americans actually don't know, um, the full toll of our 20 year war on the world. Right? We also have no, because, you know, it was dis- disparate, discreet. It wasn't well covered. Um, we didn't have same access to social media, especially in the height of, of Iraq and Afghanistan. Um, and so I, I really believe that playbook in the Middle East is the same. Like we wrote it. It's just now being used on a population that has nowhere to go.

• 1:20:11Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, and I, I won't, and we don't need to go too deep into this as it's difficult. Um, but, sorry, weird. Um, but I, I have been thinking fairly often lately about just like.

• 1:20:29Liv Albert?

  Who we get to call, and by we, I mean, North America and beyond, obviously, but who we get to call a terrorist and who doesn't get called that, right? Like, who, who maybe are like sometime, I mean, I don't know, it's so hard to say, but yeah.

• 1:20:44Speaker 03

  No, but I think you can make this, you can make this concrete pretty quickly. I don't know what it was like in, in Canada during the eighties, but you could walk into almost any Irish bar in Boston and donate money to, for the children of the IRA, right? But my, my dad knew lots of people who had connections and it wasn't for the children, you know? You know, in the, in the US, at least in the eighties, like there was this weird sort of, let's root for Ireland in, in a way that I think now we'd say it's a little questionable. But we also have, you know, the war and terror created the Patriot Act that is partly responsible for what happened to Mahmoud Khalil,

• 1:21:29Speaker 03

  right? And another connection to my wife's family, they're originally from South India and they're Tamil. And as you guys probably know, there's a longstanding Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka, where the, you know, Tamils and the Sinalis were in conflict. And a family, a loose family associate, whose name was somehow Socrates Aristotle. Yeah, wild. What was, a Tamil guy was swept up by, by the FBI because he had been sending money to the Tamil Tigers. And part of our international agreement for coalition willing was that was a particular group we were going to stop funding.

• 1:22:10Speaker 03

  And so suddenly someone who you could have seen as a ethno-state patriot a year before was now aiding and abetting terror. And I think about this every time it's a holiday, a Muslim holiday in my family, we send money to the Islamic Relief Fund. Right? I don't know what they're doing with the money, right? But I guarantee there's a chance that some of it's going somewhere that people in the US wouldn't be happy with. Right? And so

• 1:22:40Speaker 03

  at what point in our, in our future, am I picked up for criticizing Elon Musk? And someone looks into my credit card translations and says, you, sir, are now an enemy combatant and your citizenship doesn't matter. I mean, that's a territory we're in.

• 1:22:55Liv Albert?

  Yeah, well, I mean, even here, I would say on, on the specific topic that it's very similar, like in terms of our governmental structure, we might not be, you know, we are not in, obviously in the situation of, of Trump and Musk. But in terms of the politics of our country, like, I mean, I give monthly to the PCRF. Who's to say when that one becomes, that, that becomes something that we're not allowed to do is, is to give to a children's relief fund because of that P. You know, and, and what is, yeah, and, and, and what does that mean? Or, I mean, I think about it with this show all the time too, and I'm like, please stop killing innocent children. And, and that is potentially controversial. Yeah.

• 1:23:37Speaker 03

  No, yeah, it's, it's supporting a terrorist organization.

• 1:23:41Speaker 04

  And then they come for you.

• 1:23:42Liv Albert?

  Oh, yeah, I give money to UNRWA too. I guess that's where.

• 1:23:48Speaker 04

  Well, then I think what scares me about that is the disenfranchisement that happens next where you remove people's, you know, it's, you know, removing people's green cards, fucked, what the fuck? They've gone, they've gone about it the right way. They went about it the way you want them to. And now when they say they exercise free, freedom to speech, freedom of speech, you, you take that away. What happens then when it comes to taking away citizenship? Because especially in the States, one of the things is. What happens then when you take away citizenship for people who have nowhere else to go? And what I'm thinking specifically also with indigenous people? Where do you send us? This is, this is my home. This is my ancestral home.

• 1:24:31Speaker 03

  I mean, but you saw, I don't know if you saw this, an early proposal from, I can't remember which briefing it was in, but a Trump administration lawyer had said that indigenous people in the US weren't really citizens, shouldn't be citizens, because their first loyalty was to their nation. I was like, are you like forgetting?

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  Why we're in this situation?

• 1:24:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Speaker 03

  But I think a lot of this, to take it back to the Iliad.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  Please.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  But the reason why it's important that we have this discussion.

• 1:25:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:05Speaker 03

  And that we continue to have it is people of certain cultural bent want to say that our culture is monolithic, right? And that the Iliad, Antigone, to use that play as an example, right, support a particular worldview about politics and power and who matters in the world. Right? But both through our own readings and by recuperating ancient readings, we can show it's much more complicated, right? Like the example you mentioned, Liv, with the Trojan Women. Like, how could you ever imagine that that wasn't a text that had protest

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  like embroidered in it, like as part of its very fabric? Acknowledging the pain and suffering of people who've been captured in war and using the past as a, you know, as a canvas on which to imagine and work through our own anxieties. Right? It's that sort of like, you know, I used this metaphor the other day. It's like, it's like the statues in Polychromy, but it's much worse. Right? Like, this is what people from Oxford and Cambridge want to do or have done to the Iliad and the Odyssey. They've said, oh, look at these beautiful white marble statues. When actually like they're moving and stinky and they have different colors

• 1:26:29Speaker 03

  and they're changing and you can walk around them and see something different depending on your angle. And part of our job as interpreters and teachers and discussants is to return the color.

• 1:26:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think of like the humanizing the the other side, like that's that's the thing I I I I love so much about. One of the things I love, I just love the Iliad. One of the things I love about the Iliad is how you are um. You know, the people who are not are not the good guys, and I guess uh not, I don't want to say a traditional reading, but in a very based reading. How real it makes the Trojans, how real you see them as people, as you know Hector with his family, Priam coming like. Putting his life in enemy's hands, really, to go in and be like, please give me my son back. And then I wonder, like, could you pair this, read read the Iliad and also read Persians?

• 1:27:22Speaker 04

  Um same time and sort of seeing, there is a humanization of the other happening there, which we don't. We wouldn't expect from sort of.

• 1:27:32Speaker 03

  I'll be even more bold in support of you, um but first I'll give an anecdote from the movie Willow. I hope you guys remember Willow, right? It's a weird movie, but at the beginning, the main character is like trying to be a wizard. Right? And there's a test and the one question from the chief wizard is like, in which finger is a power to like control the world? Right? And the correct answer is supposed to be your own, right? But everybody else, everybody gets it's wrong. They pick one of the wizard's fingers. He's like, no, your own finger is the right one. Right? Um and this will make sense in a minute. I think one of the codes, one of the cheat codes to understand the Iliad happens on the shield of Achilles.

• 1:28:12Speaker 03

  And in that scene, there is the debate about um, there's a juridical scene. Right? Where there's a debate about whether or not someone should take money for a murder. Right? And there's a several talents of gold set aside, but the gold isn't for either side of the of the argument. The gold instead is for the person who comes up with the best interpretation. Right? The person who renders the best judgment is the winner. Right. And so Michaela, that to me i- i- is to arm you because I think that's exactly what the Eliad's saying. Like, yes, the Trojans are preferable. Right? I agree. Right? Um, but the weight of the entire poem

• 1:28:54Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:54Speaker 03

  falls on audiences to interpret it well. And that's where the real prize is because we're not supposed to be getting a static message.

• 1:29:02Liv Albert?

  No.

• 1:29:02Speaker 03

  We're supposed to be walking away with something that helps us to live better outside the poem.

• 1:29:07Liv Albert?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, it's supposed to make you think, make you reflect. Get those cogs whirring.

• 1:29:15Speaker 04

  Let them go on.

• 1:29:18Liv Albert?

  No, that's, yeah.

• 1:29:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah. I feel like that, I don't know how you feel. That might be a beautiful place to wrap it up, but I also don't want to step on any toes if people have more to say.

• 1:29:31Speaker 03

  I think we could go through and we could start and look at every violent moment of violence. We could sit here and talk through the poems from beginning to end.

• 1:29:39Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:39Speaker 03

  And I think we'd get to the same place.

• 1:29:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and the thing is, people should read it. People should read it themselves. But in context, and I

• 1:29:48Speaker 03

  With people.

• 1:29:49Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 1:29:49Speaker 03

  With others.

• 1:29:50Liv Albert?

  Yes.

• 1:29:51Speaker 04

  With people that you don't, and you know what? And I think this is also something that, um, I, this is general life advice. If somebody has a different opinion in you or doesn't like what you have to say, don't take it so personally. It's fine. It's okay if others have diff- that doesn't mean they're, if they're being mean about it, you could be upset with them being mean, but it's okay if they disagree with you.

• 1:30:14Liv Albert?

  Provided they're not disagreeing on human rights.

• 1:30:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah. Unless they're advocating for like

• 1:30:20Speaker 04

  Violence.

• 1:30:21Speaker 03

  That other people aren't humans.

• 1:30:22Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:22Speaker 03

  Or their names are Jordan Peterson or Elon Musk.

• 1:30:25Speaker 04

  Agreed. And always remember, you know,

• 1:30:27Liv Albert?

  Or Joe Rogan.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  Whenever you get the chance, punch your local Nazi. It's okay to punch Nazis.

• 1:30:32Liv Albert?

  That's exactly right. That's exactly.

• 1:30:34Speaker 03

  On board with that.

• 1:30:34Speaker 04

  Yep. Yep. Yep. And I can't believe that's relevant again.

• 1:30:39Liv Albert?

  I'm pretty sure I ended most recent episode. A recent, I ended a very recent episode instead of saying like my usual tagline. I just said punch a Nazi. So I just think like, I think that that's It's it's like, it feels good, though, to even say, like, I feel like we also need these things, like, it like, I just, you know, or like, burn it all to the ground. I don't know. Like, there are just these things that I think, these moments of rage.

• 1:31:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Liv Albert?

  That at least for me, help, because I, I think I need to feel that, otherwise, it's, you know, it's despair, like, the rage, you know, the rage of Achilles, but the rage.

• 1:31:13Speaker 04

  Rage of us all.

• 1:31:14Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, maning, right? If we just, like, you need something, that's not. Maning, that's probably not great for the whole argument we're making.

• 1:31:21Speaker 04

  It's fine.

• 1:31:22Liv Albert?

  It's about, but still.

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  Read the Iliad, read it in conversation, read it in dialogue, don't, don't be so, let, you know, let others have differing opinions, don't be so fragile with your own opinions. Stay them with your whole chest, and be okay if someone disagrees with you, because I think that's one of the beautiful things in life, is disagreement politely.

• 1:31:44Speaker 04

  Because I think it opens, it opens you up to seeing things from different perspectives, or perhaps, gives you a chance to solid, if you feel so strongly about something and somebody disagrees with you, gives you a chance to learn how to say it confidently, and, and, and speak why that matters to you. Um, and, yeah. Read the Iliad.

• 1:32:06Liv Albert?

  Read the Iliad.

• 1:32:07Speaker 04

  So good. Read, learn Greek, read the Iliad. No, don't do it, man, it's so.

• 1:32:13Speaker 03

  I, I, I'm with you there.

• 1:32:15Speaker 04

  Actually, I know, it in the Greek, it is, uh, when I read, the first time I read Crises, um, you know, asking for his daughter back, I legitimately cried. Because I was like, oh, you feel it in a way that you don't feel it in English. I'm like, oh, damn, that's.

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  I can't, I, I can't read it in English.

• 1:32:36Speaker 04

  I'd like to get to that point.

• 1:32:39Liv Albert?

  This is why I wanted both of you on, because I'm just sitting here with my, like, very, I don't want to say no knowledge of Greek, because I have ingested a lot of it, and it stuck, but not enough.

• 1:32:50Speaker 03

  I've inges- I've ingested a lot of whiskey, and I haven't turned into a bottle.

• 1:32:53Liv Albert?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Speaker 04

  I just, uh, my god, my favorite Greek, my favorite Homeric Greek word, I think it appears once, and I think it's just in the Iliad, and my Greek professor told me, because she knows that we were moving on to Attic, she says, you don't need to remember this word, and because she said that, I can't forget it, but it's a polyphlorosbos. I'm like, ah, I love that one.

• 1:33:18Liv Albert?

  For me and the audience.

• 1:33:20Speaker 04

  Polyphoric, just like loud thundering, loud roaring.

• 1:33:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, it it shows up.

• 1:33:24Speaker 04

  Crashing.

• 1:33:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, in the formula, parthena polyphospho- polyphospho- phyllosace. Um, and it shows up in very specific circumstances.

• 1:33:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the sea. It's an automatic pier too.

• 1:33:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's about the sea.

• 1:33:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Love it. Anyways, read the Iliad.

• 1:33:41Liv Albert?

  Yeah, yeah, read the Iliad.

• 1:33:43Speaker 04

  Read whatever translation you want, as long as it's good.

• 1:33:46Liv Albert?

  Well, and and and once again, like, this is a great, I mean, I I feel like every conversation I've been recording lately is a is a reminder of why we're trying to start this collective and and just be sharing these things with the context that I think is often so lacking and through other perspectives that is again also so lacking, particularly in just in the most accessible of spaces. And and so I'm excited to be sharing that. This episode will be part of it. Um, thank you so much, Joel. This has been, as always, really fun.

• 1:34:18Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:34:19Liv Albert?

  And also terrible, but thank you. It wasn't your fault. It was terrible, so.

• 1:34:24Speaker 04

  Yay.

• 1:34:27Liv Albert?

  Is there anything you want to share with my listeners, our listeners, um, before we go or anything of that sort?

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  Just following up on Michaela, read, read the Iliad, read the Odyssey, read with each other and, uh, do good things.

• 1:34:57Liv Albert?

  Thank you all so much for listening, as always.

• 1:35:02Liv Albert?

  I don't know, more soon. Call every member of your government that you can. Make them see. Let's talk about myths, baby, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Panghuis is the Hermes to my Olympians. The Iliad is about how horrifying and unnecessary war is for both sides. Select music by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network. More on that coming soon.

• 1:35:34Liv Albert?

  Feel like I'm falling behind on everything, but it's all worth it. Um, if you're interested in bonus content, uh, thank you, gifts and primarily ad free episodes, consider joining our Patreon, patreon.com slash myths, baby. Everything is available under the oracle edition. It's easy to sync to your phone. You can listen straight from Spotify ad free and you can help support the podcast and help us dig ourselves out of a capitalistic hole. Thank you. I am Liv and I love this shit, even if it drives me mad.

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