Pod Insights Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean Greek Myth is So Much More Than Terrible Gods and Misogynist Monsters About this episode What makes a myth, and what does that mean? Liv looks at mythology as a concept and the sources that shared it with us.
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions http://mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
Learn more about Liv's next group trips https://travelbugxlivalbert.my.canva.site/ to GREECE! Application deadline is November 30 (Subject to change due to demand).
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Liv Albert? Hey nerds, really quick note from me. I want to tell you that we now have the applications open for the next set of listener group trips. This is us going back to the original, the trips that we have held in the past that have been so much fun, so successful and pretty affordable in terms of wandering around Greece with a bunch of nerds. So check out the details and get your applications in at mythsbaby.com grouptrip.
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1:05 Speaker 02 This is Nick and Jack from the best one yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business. Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing. Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment. Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need. It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com.
1:59 Liv Albert? From the Heliconian muses, let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy Mount of Helicon and dance on soft feet about the deep blue spring and the altar of the almighty Son of Cronos.
2:40 Liv Albert? Hi, hello and welcome. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby! And I am your host, Liv. Now, at the end of the episode, I'm going to provide some updates on the many, many, many things that I've had going on behind the scenes. But before that, while today's episode is going to be a little unique, I have reached the point in this podcast's life cycle where it has become difficult to sort through all of the content that I have created over the seven and a half years and 600-plus episodes. Listeners always want to know where to begin, and though I have a lot of love and appreciation for my earlier episodes, I don't actually think they're a great place to start.
3:24 Liv Albert? So instead, to ring in 2025, today I am going to give you all a kind of introduction of sorts. If you've been listening to the show all of this time, don't worry, this isn't going to be a repeat of anything, and I'm certain it's still going to be really valuable and interesting, because, surprise, surprise, Greek mythology is fascinating in all of its forms. Actually, it might clear up some things you've been wondering for a long time. Because honestly, I've been doing this so long that even I want this episode. I want to talk about mythology as a concept, about why we have these stories and what it means that we do, and what they meant in the ancient world, what they mean now, and how these things can sometimes be in conflict.
4:08 Liv Albert? But today, we won't just look at an introduction to Greek mythology as a concept, but specifically how we've come to view it through the lens of the show, too. We've been talking all things myth and the ancient Mediterranean for almost eight years, and again, nearly 700 episodes. So now it's time we look back and parse out the wonders that are these ancient gods, goddesses, everything in between.
4:34 Liv Albert? Also frankly, selfishly, a lot of podcast players allow me to set an episode to introduce the show, and I want to create something that does exactly that. An episode that introduces mythology, the show, the context, how I tell these stories, and who knows what else, because it turns out, things change over seven years of podcasting, studying, and thousands of hours of episodes.
5:11 Liv Albert? This is episode Gods Only Know What Number. Greek myth is so much more than terrible gods and misogynistic monsters.
5:35 Liv Albert? "From the Heliconian muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep blue spring, and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos. And when they have washed their tender bodies in permesse, or in the horses' spring, or olmeus, make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon, and move with vigorous feet. Thence they arise and go abroad by night, veiled in thick mist, and utter their song with lovely voice, praising Zeus the aegis holder, and queenly Hera of Argos who walks
6:19 Liv Albert? on golden sandals, and the daughter of Zeus the aegis holder, bright-eyed Athena, and Phoebus, Apollo, and Artemis who delights in arrows, and Poseidon the earth holder who shakes the earth. And reverenced, famous, and quick-glancing Aphrodite and Hebe with the crown of gold, and fair Dion, Leto, Iapus..." And Cronos, the crafty counselor, Eos and great Helios and bright Celine, Earth too, and great Oceanus and dark night, and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are forever.
6:59 Liv Albert? And one day, they taught Hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon. And this word first, the goddesses said to me, "The muses of Olympus, daughter of Zeus, who holds the aegis, shepherds of the wilderness, wretched things of shame, mere bellies. We know how to speak many false things as though they were true, but we know when we will to what are true things."
7:32 Liv Albert? That was the opening line to Hesiod's Theogony, translated by H.G. Evelyn White, and obviously, something I've talked a lot about in the show. But what, what does it mean? That Hesiod is this source for us? What does it mean that Homer is a source for us today? I'm jumping ahead. The thing that is perhaps the most difficult thing for us to understand as modern interpreters of myth, and also, honestly, the most important thing to understand in terms of understanding how myth and these stories specifically functioned in the ancient world, is what is mythology? What purpose was it serving?
8:16 Liv Albert? And why does it exist for us today? Right? We, we come to these stories from Greek myth because they are fascinating, because they are weird, because they represent this ancient culture that just did and understood things so, so differently from the way we do today. We often see them now as these stories, as narratives, like we think of stories now, in the same way that, you know, you pick up a book and it's going to tell you stories. That's how we consider the Greek myths, but that's not what the Greek myths served in the ancient world. That doesn't make it invalid today. It's just this really
8:58 Liv Albert? interesting additional piece that often gets left behind. And that's true of my earliest episodes, which is a large part of why I wanted to do this episode. My earliest episodes are coming from that mentality, that really broad overarching idea of what mythology is, these stories from the ancient world. We generally understand that like, yes, there are stories, but they included these deities who the ancient people actually worshipped, but it's still very difficult to kind of piece out what exactly is going on in, in these ancient stories. And I say stories this way because often when people come to mythology,
9:38 Liv Albert? they're coming to a complete narratively perfect, or rather narratively sensical story. You pick up a book, it's called Greek mythology, maybe it's written by me, maybe it's written by somebody else. And you get this idea that the stories are these coherent narratives that just happen to be passed down to us today. But when it comes to most, if not all of the most famous myths from the Greek world, that's honestly not what is happening. And I think that's a perfect place to start this broad introduction to Greek mythology
10:17 Liv Albert? as a concept. We think of it as these stories, this religion of the ancient people, and it was, but one thing that is often incredibly difficult to remember or even fully conceptualize is the amount of time that they were developing these stories. This is something I've talked to you guys about so much, but often in little bits and pieces, or regarding specific instances, specific sources, sources or stories, rather than the broader idea. So I want to break down what the sources look like, when they're coming from, and what they're doing. So the most ancient surviving source we have today is of course Homer's Odyssey and the Iliad.
11:00 Liv Albert? They are unique because they represent this coherent narrative, these particular stories that tell, of course, the story of the Trojan War and then the Odyssey that Odysseus had trying to get home from it. They are, they are specific in that they do tell these stories. They give us little bits and pieces of outside mythology from that world. They give us insight into which gods were popular at the time, what concepts were going on. But broadly, they are these specific narrative stories. So while they specifically should be termed mythology, they're not really giving us a lot of the broader ideas that we think of from Greek myth.
11:42 Liv Albert? They're not giving us the Minotaur or Heracles' labors or Perseus and the Gorgon. You know, they're not giving us these quintessential myths. They're giving us this very specific time period of the Trojan War, where to believe that's after the time of Heracles, and this very specific thing is happening. So they're the most ancient source, but of course, they're not giving us any of the stuff that we think of when it comes to the broader idea of mythology. They're giving us this really specific moments in the mythology. And then the next most ancient surviving source is Hesiod. That's what I read at the
12:21 Liv Albert? top. And that's where so much of what we really do think of as mythological stories are coming from, at least in part. The Theogony, of course, by Hesiod, which I have read on the show in the past, if you want to listen to it, tells the story of the beginning of the gods, the world itself. It opens with a prayer to the muses because that is how things were done back then. And then it goes into the ideas behind how the world was born and populated with divinities. There's some references later to other characters and stories, but we're not getting anything
13:01 Liv Albert? else in major detail. So what we get from Hesiod, similarly to Homer, is an idea of the names that were popular, the characters, certain marriages between gods and goddesses and elsewhere, and these general origins of the divinities.
13:23 Liv Albert? But what we also have to remember is, separate from Homer, Homer is of course coming to us as one man named Homer, but is more accurately, or more reasonably described as a tradition of oral storytellers, a great many of them, whose work was eventually recorded in a particular form that exists to us today as the Iliad and the Odyssey, and then they're given the name Homer for, for the author. But they are coming from that particularly more ancient time when we're sort of, it's before they were writing things down to that degree. They had writing, they had language, obviously, but they weren't, in the ancient world, it
14:08 Liv Albert? wasn't important to write down your stories, because what was important was to tell your stories to somebody else. They didn't consider writing to be the dissemination of information like we do today, both because it was, you know, in its earlier forms, the, the ability to have written objects and pass them around was considerably more limited, obviously, and they really did rely on storytelling. And so, you know, that's something that I talk about here and there, all the damn time, but like, what does it really mean that these stories were told over probably hundreds of years before they were written into a version that we have? Now, again, that's true of Homer. Hesiod is a little different.
14:47 Liv Albert? It's likely that he was, his work was also part of an oral storytelling tradition that then got distilled into this one form. But unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, Hesiod is actually presented as like, a first-person narrative. You heard at the end of that quote, he's saying like, "The Muses talked to me while I was shepherding, you know, on Mount Helicon, and this is what they told me. This is the story they asked me to tell." And, and then that's how we get jumping into this history of the, the divinities themselves, the theogony, which is essentially like, the birth of the gods. And of course, Hesiod is an incredibly invaluable resource, but at the same time,
15:29 Liv Albert? there's a lot of things going into that that mean that it can't and shouldn't be taken as this kind of be all and end all of the broader mythology of Greece, even at that time period. Because as Hesiod makes very clear, if we're to presume he is one person, regardless of whether that's true, like, all the other details are existing in the text, so they matter just as much. But Hesiod as a, as a potential human being was from Biocia, that's why he is talking about the Muses coming to him on Mount Helicon, which was sacred to the Muses. But again, we know that it was sacred to the Muses because Hesiod tells that to us. We also know that Mount Parnassus, which was nearby, was also sacred
16:11 Liv Albert? to the Muses, because other writers tell us that. And now, Hesiod is presented as this one person's narrative, you know, he was told all of this stuff from the Muses, but he also has another work called The Works and Days, which was much more personal. And it's like, I've read that on the show too, if you want to listen back to it. It's pretty incredible, because it's essentially like his kind of how to guide for a potential future child. And it is terribly misogynistic, because that's what Hesiod's work was. But that is all to say that Homer and Hesiod are these, like, these two of the most ancient sources that we have for any kind of Greek mythology. But both of them are really limited in what they're actually sharing with us. Again, in Hesiod, we're not getting much
16:56 Liv Albert? in the way of the, the work of the heroes. We have some general ideas of what happens. Perseus is mentioned, along with Medusa, but it's like, three lines. We're not talking about detailed narratives featuring these characters. That kind of stuff is going to come later. And now, we also know that there is so, so, so much that we don't know, right? So many poets and authors whose work does not survive, but who we know were, like, at the forefront of this stuff. There's a poet named Stasichorus, if you're ever interested,
17:35 Liv Albert? and Farakites. Both of these were poets who did a lot of work talking about the mythology of these characters and stories, but whose work does not survive in whole parts in any way. Instead, we know that they existed and we're talking about this stuff because other people then talk about it later. And that is where we come to, and I'm trying to like, jump ahead so that I don't spend all of my time talking about just the chronology of sources in this episode. But one of the most commonly used sources for any kind of full narrative of these stories is going to be a work by someone we now call pseudo Apollodorus. It's called the Library of Greek
18:18 Liv Albert? Mythology, and it's coming from somewhere around the turn of the millennia. It's sort of debated about where, when this was coming from. There was a guy named Apollodorus, but they don't actually think now that he wrote it. They think it was attributed to him, which changes the dating some. But we're working between, let's say, first century BCE to first century CE, maybe even second, on either side, honestly. But either way, what that amounts to is about, let's say, 500 to 600, all the way up to 800 or so years, in between sources like Homer and Hesiod,
18:58 Liv Albert? and one like pseudo Apollodorus. Now, pseudo Apollodorus is where we get really the stories themselves. They're not in great detail. Someone once called it the TLDR of Greek myth, and it's just so accurate. And I wish every day that I remembered who said that, but I happily took it. Thank you. But that's so true, too. With Apollodorus, we get the stories that you'll often see in these retellings. The story, the actual story of Perseus seeking Medusa and killing Medusa, all of that is coming from pseudo Apollodorus, not Hesiod. Hesiod has like, six lines. He says, basically, a couple of things happened, but he's not giving us any
19:39 Liv Albert? details. And that is true of so, so, so, so, so many of the most famous of myths. And so, what does that say about the mythology itself, that the versions that we have today, that we often find as the quote unquote canonical versions of these stories, are coming from, not only so late a period, which we'll get into what that means, but also just so many hundreds and hundreds of years after these earliest poets were telling us this, these earliest stories.
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23:36 Liv Albert? There are, of course, so many other ways that sources happen and other major sources that we are working off of as modern people trying to understand these stories. Things like the plays and then even later, Ovid. I'm going with the basics here because I just want to get through so much. But of course, the plays are these works, these mythological works that we often see as being, you know, the canonical, again, I'm using this word intentionally, we'll get into it, but the canonical version of a story. Take, for example, Oedipus. The entire story that we know of as Oedipus,
24:19 Liv Albert? that is so famous as the quote-unquote Greek myth of Oedipus, him killing his father by accident on the road, then marrying his mother. Additionally, without him having any idea, the finding out, the blinding, Yocasta's death, all of this is coming from not an actual mythological tradition, but the play itself. And the play is, at its core, just a play, which is the thing to remember. The play is an interpretation of a myth that existed.
24:55 Liv Albert? But it is Sophocles's interpretation of that play, like a movie adaptation of an earlier book, right? We know that it is the same storyline it is based off of, or it is inspired by, what have you, but it is not a direct reproduction of the earlier source, whatever it may be. And that's so important because we don't have earlier sources. We only have this play that survives. In the case of Oedipus, it's another good example because we know this story existed, not least because Sophocles wrote a play about it and we understand that like if he was going to write that story, we know it was broader. We also have visual representations of it on pottery and elsewhere.
25:36 Liv Albert? So we know this was a story, but we don't have text sources because text sources weren't important for the greater context in that ancient world. They are referenced in The Odyssey. Jocasta is one of the characters who comes to see, I'm saying this, I'm not 100% certain. Regardless, they are referenced in The Odyssey. I think actually, no, it's not that he comes in the underworld. It is that Jocasta is mentioned in relation to the quality of wives in one way or another. And so we know very well that these characters are pre-existing, that the story is pre-existing, that many of the elements were pre-existing, but we don't know for sure what
26:21 Liv Albert? Sophocles added or changed based on how he wanted to tell the story. It's like directorial choices. And I say that knowing full well that I could equate Christopher Nolan to Sophocles right now, but I won't because Sophocles wouldn't cast Matt Damon as Odysseus.
26:41 Liv Albert? That's not what today's episode is about, Liv.
26:46 Liv Albert? One of the other things that really often comes up in trying to understand these stories through a modern lens is, of course, the treatment of women. It's what I based like the entire first few years of the show on and certainly still base my entire personality on that when it comes to the ancient world. But there are so many things that I think get overlooked in this, just in how we speak about the women and, and certainly how I used to. So again, just like how my early episodes lack nuance when it comes to discussing sources and time periods and what does and does not change between those and so many other things.
27:29 Liv Albert? The other thing I really lacked nuance on was the discussion of women. And I don't think that takes anything away from my earlier episodes, but I'm happy to have more context now. Broadly, women in Greek mythology, in whatever way you want to see Greek mythology, are treated like garbage. Or if they're not treated like garbage, it's like in Hesiod, where they're just sort of not treated as humans at all. In Hesiod, you get the sense that women are just objects for him to manipulate, either via physical means or just through his storytelling. But they are not people with personalities, human characteristics.
28:14 Liv Albert? And what that often means is this idea that like the ancient Greeks broadly didn't see the women as mattering or having agency or really like being human in the first place. You know, I took it as the, I don't even want to try to remember what I would have said all the way back then, but I know that I was very blunt with it and very. Just like, you know, like this is shit. We should talk about it and we should. I think there is a really, there's a lot to be said about the way we discuss women in myth because we can and should talk about how it is simply unacceptable, the way they were treated
28:58 Liv Albert? and the way that they have been treated, even in the reception of those myths since. It is objectively terrible treatment. The women are regularly assaulted by gods or otherwise. I mean, the gods are often assaulting everyone, but by and large it is primarily women who are the victims of it. And that is of course, coming from the general patriarchal nature of the world where the men were the ones in power and the women were being subjugated. Now that said, you know, regionality is a really important thing to remember when it comes to Greek mythology. That's true of Hesiod, who's writing from Boeotia, kind of in the middle
29:40 Liv Albert? of the mainland, you know, not too far from Athens, but at that time Athens isn't at its full peak and there's so much going on. But we have to remember too, that ancient Greece was not a singular place. It was all of these different regions and city-states, all of which had their own stories and customs. And, and while they often shared things like deities broadly, the Olympians, the, the overall concept, we, at least we imagine they shared those things. We don't know for certain what they shared unless we have evidence from each place, right? And, and in addition to that, they would still always have their, their regional differences,
30:24 Liv Albert? their attempts to make certain characters more relevant because they, they have some more relevance to that region. It's It's really always going to be affected by, I mean, everything. And this episode is ramblier than I'd hoped it would be, but I just have so much to say. But the thing that makes it so interesting to me is just how we now see these stories. And I say this because I absolutely saw it this way. Even doing my degree, I didn't get the full grasp on the context surrounding them. And I think specifically when it comes to mythologies like Greek, like Norse,
31:06 Liv Albert? like these ones that have become really fantastical in the modern imagination, is we often forget that not only was this a religious practice in the ancient world, but also that it was, it was also storytelling. But it was storytelling relating so specifically to ancient culture and their attempts to understand everything. That everything was relating to this mythology. It was a means of recognizing the world, of connecting with people either close by or further. It was a means of, of kind of connecting a culture.
31:51 Liv Albert? And I think because of that, it's, it's also very important to, to be able to separate or at least understand the differences between things like the mythology itself, the stories, the, the, the gods as characters from the religion. There was, I don't want to pretend like I have enough knowledge on the religious aspects. That's what I look to experts for. But these gods were, of course, worshipped. Temples were built to them. They were these important figures in daily life. And them as those people, as, as figures of daily life who are being thanked or prayed to, or I mean, what, what have you.
32:34 Liv Albert? That is really separate from them as, as characters in a story. And that's not to say that- The ancient Greeks would have seen them as two different people or concepts. But i- i- it's important to remember that there was this religious aspect that isn't necessarily linked directly to stories of Zeus being terrible, or Heracles killing a hydra, or all of these things that we conceptualize as these Greek myths.
33:08 Liv Albert? And that leads me to Heracles. This is gonna be a bit more of an ADHD episode than I hoped again. Heracles is another great example of how we in the modern world have had to figure out these myths. It's hard to phrase, but essentially what I'm saying is the stories of Heracles, which are of course, some of the most famous and iconic of all of Greek myths, you know, consider his, his labors, or, I mean, really anything that Heracles does. It's so important. And we think of it as these quintessential Greek myths.
33:46 Liv Albert? The killing of the hydra, the, the man eating horses, the cleaning of the stables, the, you know, all of this, going down to fetch Cerberus. We think of this as, as this narrative of stories. But like a great many other really, really famous and well-known stories from myth, this doesn't survive in an ancient text source that really tells the story before, again, pseudo Polidorus, who's coming so late. And that is both because, you know, these stories were fluid and changing and broadly
34:29 Liv Albert? were, you know, serving specific purposes, but it's also just because they were told orally. They were stories being told around the Greek world. And we don't necessarily have the details from a text source like you would imagine, but instead we often have the details from art. Because Heracles and specifically his labors were depicted in
34:53 Liv Albert? Art across the Greek world. And so it has then fallen to archaeologists and historians and you know, people over the last 2000 years to parse out a story from what is otherwise really only visual. This is true of Heracles. It's true of the Amazons. That's not to say that there are no text sources for the stories, but there is not what you think there should be for how, how important and how famous these stories were. There is no epic featuring them in any kind of detail. There's only a handful of epics that get to tell us these really quintessential full-blown stories with, with narrative that makes sense and, and you know, goes beginning, middle, end.
35:37 Liv Albert? There's only a really small handful that actually have that from the ancient world, things like the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Argonautica. But otherwise, so often we are working off not only fragments, like I talk about all the time, you know, just these bits and pieces from sources that survive in all of these varied ways, but also visual mediums, which I just think it, it's so hard to really conceptualize as just everyday people coming to this stuff, because you pick up a book of Greek myths. And again, like I said, either it's written by me or somebody else, but they're going to tell you these stories as if they have this beginning, middle, end. I know I'm really obnoxious about it. I don't remember what I wrote in the book about it, but now of course I'd love to remind you all that
36:17 Liv Albert? really, for the most part, there's no beginning, middle and end. I mean, even the Iliad doesn't have a beginning or really an end. It's just this big chunk of the war, but it doesn't, you know, it, it doesn't feel like a narratively complete piece of literature. And that's because it was never meant to be. They weren't developing literature with those ideas in mind. They just simply had different priorities than what we do now or how we consider storytelling. And just to get back to the, the treatment of women, because I am bouncing around so much. This is what happens when I try to do an episode based entirely on my knowledge and not scripted, because I think, oh, I can talk about this stuff for ages, but can I keep myself on track? No.
37:03 Liv Albert? The thing that we often, you know, I have heard in my discussions of women and the treatment of women in the ancient sources is this idea that like, that's just the way things were back then, it's fine, or, you know, like, I don't even have the arguments in my mind right now because they drive me so crazy. But I think the thing that I want to say about this is simply that every time when you're looking at an ancient source, or a retelling of an ancient source, the biggest thing I think that we don't think of and should is who wrote this and why? And what does it mean that they wrote it?
37:47 Liv Albert? But not only that, but what does it mean that it survives? Hesiod is going to be my example for this because Hesiod, again, like I said, did not give women agency. He did not by and large write women as if they were human beings. And that's not because everyone just didn't see women as human beings. It's not even necessarily because Hesiod didn't see women as human beings, but I think that's a fairly safe thing to say. It's more so that this is just one piece of work that happened to survive through, I mean, I say happened, so many different decisions over so many centuries and millennia even had
38:30 Liv Albert? to be made in order to allow Hesiod to survive. But that doesn't mean that that his work was representative of the entire Greek world or all of its people. His work, even the story itself, isn't necessarily representative of the Greek world. We know his theogony, we know, you know, how the gods were birthed and who was with who and who was married to whom, but We often consider his to be a kind of canonical source purely because it's the most ancient and it has value because it's the most ancient, but that doesn't mean that it is any more correct than any others. We're just working with a lack of anything else.
39:16 Liv Albert? And specifically when it comes to women too, so much is riding on pregnancy, so much is riding on fertility. I think that it's, it's often easy to overlook, or rather, we want to because it's also just like so dark. Um, but, but one of the more important things to remember about all of the many, many, many, many, many, many stories of women being assaulted by gods or otherwise, is a lot of that is coming from both a fear of paternity and the question mark inherent in
39:58 Liv Albert? paternity, but also to explain patriarchal structures, not necessarily, you know, intentionally in this, this way that's meant to like, you know, bring women down or, or to heal, but more so just because it is this means of cementing men as the ones in control. Because if they go too long remembering that, that women, and by women in this case, I, I mean those with a uterus, because that's why it's relevant, that women have the power to create life. If they go too long remembering that, you know, then they really have to face the fact
40:45 Liv Albert? that they are powerless. And so I think so often these stories of Zeus, you know, quote unquote, seducing or carrying off or even raping a woman is, it's not necessarily coming from this like terrible misogynist idea of women not being people or just being objects. Like, it's definitely partially that, but so much it's, I think, to return power to paternity. Because if a man
41:18 Liv Albert? Whose wife gets pregnant and he's worried that maybe it's not his. If he can look to endless sources of stories of women being impregnated by gods and having these half divine children and it working out perfectly fine for the man, then you know, he can feel better about the fact that he is ultimately powerless when it comes to that. And, and so now, you know, for all that I still see the utter, utter trauma and horror in these stories, I also think there is this means of, of feeling a bit righteous about it when you see that it's
41:54 Liv Albert? coming from this, this real immediate fear that, that women will like overtake men, you know, or, or wield the power in a way that would ruin everything for them. It's utterly fascinating to me. And perhaps is a fine way to start wrapping things up. I, there's so much to say about the sources. There's so much to say. I really just, I want to remind, this, this, this was meant to be an introduction on mythology broadly. And then naturally I talked for half an hour about sources. So maybe we'll, we'll look more in the future. But I just, I wanted
42:39 Liv Albert? to have this kind of introduction to remind everyone that while the stories as these like complete narratives that you might find online or in books have incredible value and are so interesting and fun and weird, they, nothing is coming from any kind of certainty. And isn't that cool? It, you know, we are, we are all working to interpret these ancient sources that were developed under completely different circumstances, that were developed with a completely different mindset from our own today. And so what does it mean to be interpreting
43:23 Liv Albert? those stories, either in written, if often fragmentary?
43:27 Liv Albert? Forms or visual forms or all the many other ways that we can interpret these things from the ancient world. You know, what does it mean that that this is the source we have? And what other sources maybe were lost, either intentionally or otherwise? What other stories were being told? Because I think the most important thing to remember is that everything that we have from the ancient world is just this tiny, tiny piece of an enormous puzzle that we will probably never know or never get to complete. But, but what does it mean that we know so much is missing?
44:11 Liv Albert? And how much can we read in between? And how much can we reinterpret even our own understandings? I say all of this because I want to also keep reinterpreting my own earlier understandings of these stories. Because I think it shows, I mean, it shows my own growth, but it also just shows a growth in the broader understanding of where these stories are coming from and why? And what do they mean really?
44:55 Liv Albert? Well, nerds, I should have known I'd be able to ramble on for all that long. If you're listening on Spotify and you would like me to expand upon this idea, this introduction in any way, I would love to hear from you in the comments or any suggestions about what else might be good to to put into a kind of episode like this? A kind of starting point? I really want, I want to present it as this starting point and also as a way to kind of.
45:27 Liv Albert? I want to contextualize my own work, contextualize my earlier work in a way that that makes these nuances of mythology easier to understand because I am obsessed with them and I will never let them die. All of that said, I'm really looking forward also to getting back into the nitty gritty of myths alongside so much more in terms of conversations on historical concepts and mythological ones. And really, for all, there's been a little bit of of slow silence over the past couple of months, that's really ramping up to be like a really exciting year. I have so many plans and schemes and and there's so much going on,
46:12 Liv Albert? which I guess will lead directly into this little update that I have. So I've been working on finding ways to to not only, you know, present ad free options because my ads were getting a bit over the top, but just generally, I would like to find a way to make the show less reliant on ads broadly. Not only because I hate capitalism, but also because there's going to be some changes on the backside. I believe that the ads are going to get less annoying. I'm really hopeful that I'll get to read more again in the future. We're just
46:54 Liv Albert? changing some stuff on the back end. But that change came from a enormous, if I'm being frank, enormous drop in in terms of the funds that the show will have going forward, coming from ads. And I'm really optimistic about it, but it's a thing that we're going to work on. So I'm working on building up the show outside of the nastiness that is ads and and that side of capitalism broadly. And so
47:27 Liv Albert? Differently from what I had been leading up to because I realized some things. I am now relaunching the Patreon. That is the big thing that's happening. We're relaunching the Patreon with bigger and better things. That is going to be the Oracle Edition that I have promised. It's going to have ad-free access to all new episodes, along with we, under certain tiers, we will be adding past episodes as well, because there are going on 700 and there is no, there's no way to mass upload episodes. So because of that, it won't be all of them all at once, unfortunately, but I will be calling upon patrons to suggest
48:11 Liv Albert? episodes that they would like to have ad-free and we'll just slowly get them all added in. But in the meantime, I've gotten some fun new things created. We'll be doing stickers for most of the paid tiers, featuring the Oracle Edition logo, which they're holographic stickers. They're going to be really cool. They're arriving on Friday and I will post photos. I also have gotten some enamel pins made. They will be for sale on a new web store that's coming soon, but also the logo enamel pin will be given out with, again, certain tiers. I have these like beautiful thank you cards that I'll send to most tiers.
48:55 Liv Albert? And you'll just get access to lots more, including the Hermes Historia episodes, which Michaela and I do intend to do twice a month now that I am moved and settled. Michaela was even visiting in person and we had a great time. So we're all, we're all really excited about what is to come, but there are some changes that are going to be happening. I'd love to pull Michaela into more episodes. She and I had an amazing time, not only doing our Battle of the Bastards a couple of weeks ago, but also our first ever in-person video recording, the video of which I did forget to send to her so it can go up on YouTube. It's been sent to her now. I'm saying this like a week later, so it will be up soon.
49:37 Liv Albert? We may or may not keep video as a common thing, but it was really fun at the time and we're going to be doing lots more like that. We have some incredible conversations lined up for the next few months. I'm going on a spree of recording with people and you're all gonna live for it. In addition to the Oracle Edition, which will be the big place to get not only ad-free, but lots of bonus content, including that physical merch and everything that I'll be getting, giving out. So in addition to that, we will be having a simpler subscription option that is just ad-free. Still working on whether or not it will have bonus episodes
50:19 Liv Albert? as well, but it will be primarily meant to be just ad-free. That's going to be through Apple subscriptions. Now, that's going to be simple and to the point because frankly, Apple takes 40%, and I don't want to give them 40% of too much. So if you're just a person who's looking for an ad-free listening experience, that's going to be the place to go. But if you're looking for more, if you're looking to better contribute to the show because transparency, Patreon takes 5% plus some fees, Apple takes 40. So go to Patreon where you will get ad-free content and so much more. We've just started up a
51:02 Liv Albert? invite-only Discord server where we can be chatting about all things ancient, mythological, everything in between. Mikaela and I will be on there when we can. So Patreon is going to be the best place to support the show, join in with the group of nerds who just want to nerd out. I'm hoping to have it be a lot more interactive, to have a lot more going on in the Patreon, to really, we're going to really devote ourselves to adding more and more, to give you as much as possible for those who do want to contribute and support the show in that way. The regular show will remain free as always with ads. Nothing will
51:45 Liv Albert? change there. Again, I will have merch coming soon. We're working on building out a web store where I'll be sending stuff out myself. So far, we have Euripides enamel pins and enamel pins of the logo and a couple of tote bags, logo and Euripides again, and a bunch of stickers, including the new cathonic cutie Design, which I have not launched enough because so much has been going on, but it's so beautiful. Uh, I'm also going to be, uh, reaching out to you guys to ask what kind of other things you want. Since I'm going to be doing it all myself, I'm like buying it all upfront. So we're going slow, but I'm really excited to be able to do this. It means I get to send it all to you. I get to handwrite thank you notes. I get to toss things in. I am just,
52:30 Liv Albert? you can have some of my little Greek kittens fur. Like we can just have a whole time. It's going to be really great. So really so much is, is ongoing and I hope to get right back into the scripted stuff. We're going to return to Euripides. We're going to return to the classic roots of this podcast and speak with so many fascinating people and 2025 is going to be a big year. Stay tuned. And in the meantime, thank you all. I love you all so damn much for hanging along.
53:01 Liv Albert? It's been a great seven and a half years and I only see even more exciting stuff in the future, including, and I don't know how much I can announce of this yet, but I am writing kids books. That's a real thing that's happening. So stay tuned for whenever I can announce anything about that, but it's a thing. Contracts have been signed. The novel is going to be submitted hopefully very soon. Things are happening. Let's talk about myths. Baby is written and produced and rambled by me, Liv Albert, Michaela Panga wishes the Hermes to my Olympians, my producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. Listen to the podcast on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
53:47 Liv Albert? Check out the new Patreon tiers at patreon.com slash myths, baby. And sign up for our newsletter, which again I will do, I will, I will do it. And stay up to date on all of that stuff, including the web store when it comes at myths, baby.com slash newsletter. I am Liv and I love this shit so damn much.
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56:35 Speaker 01 Enemy of My Dreams by Jenny Williamson is a historical romance novel set in the time of the late Roman Empire, where Alaric, a brutal Gothic warlord, and Julia, a Roman princess, with a love of good wine, team up to take down Rome.
56:53 Liv Albert? The much awaited sequel, Game of Thieves, comes out December 8. In this sequel, Julia and Alaric must overcome centuries of conflict to work together, or the turbulent riptides of rebellion and the demons of their past will tear them apart.
57:06 Speaker 01 And now, for a limited time, when you preorder Game of Thieves through Burning Pages Bookstore, you'll get a signed book plate and a free art print of one of Jenny's favorite spicy scenes from across the series.
57:20 Liv Albert? Get this amazing artwork only from Burning Pages at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves. Don't wait. Order your copy from Burning Pages today at burningpagesnc.com/game-of-thieves.
Previous RE-AIR: Conversations: Beware of the Splash Zone! Gladiators in the Greek World w/ Alexandra Sills Next Conversations: They Weren't Always F***able, the History of Sirens & Harpies w/ Dr Ryan Denson Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated