Speaker 1: Hi, Hello, welcome. This is Let's talk about mis Baby
Speaker 1: and I am your host live as always, there's never
Speaker 1: anyone else here to start the podcast, and I am
Speaker 1: here today with a very fun episode once again for
Speaker 1: Women's History Months. I mean, I like it. It feels
Speaker 1: a little performative, you know, the whole thing. I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: and it is pretty white. But from an entirely personal
Speaker 1: perspective when it comes to Women's History Month, I just
Speaker 1: appreciate that it really does give me a theme to
Speaker 1: work off of, because honestly, sometimes the hardest thing about
Speaker 1: this show is just picking a topic. You know, seven
Speaker 1: years in, it's tough, which is why I then get
Speaker 1: to like hord episodes and ideas for months like this,
Speaker 1: so you know, if anything, I can be grateful for that,
Speaker 1: and that is what leads me to today's conversation. Today's
Speaker 1: conversation is with returning guest and generally lovely human and
Speaker 1: fellow podcaster and homeric specialist. I'm really bad at academia
Speaker 1: terms anyway, it's Julia Pirni, who is just so lovely.
Speaker 1: Julia is the host of the podcast Classically Trained, which
Speaker 1: you know because its hosts are like doing PhDs and shit.
Speaker 1: It's you know, not necessarily as prolific as mine, but
Speaker 1: it is a wonderful podcast about reception of things featuring
Speaker 1: the classical world. So much fun. But a while back,
Speaker 1: a while back, I'll be honest, Julia and I sat
Speaker 1: down to record this episode. It had you have been
Speaker 1: in the fall, but you know, Women's month, and it
Speaker 1: was such a thrill of an episode. I still remember
Speaker 1: that I basically was on Twitter in the olden days
Speaker 1: and Julia tweeted about writing a dissertation on a queer
Speaker 1: theory reading of Circe, and I literally just replied like, okay,
Speaker 1: so you're coming on my show to talk about this,
Speaker 1: and then here we are. So the preface is this
Speaker 1: was recorded a while back. It's obvious and things like
Speaker 1: talking about Twitter only recently becoming x. It's a whole
Speaker 1: deal a little timely, but it was just like a
Speaker 1: true joy to talk with Julia about this and to
Speaker 1: listen to all these incredible queer theory readings when it
Speaker 1: comes to Circe in Homer's Odyssey. And so that is
Speaker 1: what today's episode is all about. It is all about
Speaker 1: Circe as another just as an alternate someone beyond the binary,
Speaker 1: the dichotomy that you know typically existed in reading these
Speaker 1: types of things from the ancient world. So I just
Speaker 1: want to clarify that is what the topic is about today. This,
Speaker 1: this sort of Circe beyond the confines of the old
Speaker 1: school binary, utterly, utterly fascinating. Really, I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna let you all listen to it, because I just did,
Speaker 1: and I really, I really enjoyed it. It was so
Speaker 1: much fun having Julia back. I could talk about I mean,
Speaker 1: either Circe or the Odyssey literally forever and be perfectly happy.
Speaker 1: So this was a joy, and it was a particular
Speaker 1: joy listening back to it after so long since I recorded.
Speaker 1: Those are just those are just fun when you're like,
Speaker 1: oh right, oh my god, this was great. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad I get to finally share it with people. So
Speaker 1: on that note, enjoy conversations on Circe's Island, Anything is
Speaker 1: possible queer theory with Julia Paroni. So I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this. I was thinking about the like, how I
Speaker 1: would open this conversation earlier, because I've done with you
Speaker 1: what I've done a couple times with other guests, where
Speaker 1: like I will hear a topic and be like, I
Speaker 1: want to learn. I want you to come on and
Speaker 1: talk about it, and then I'll like jot it down
Speaker 1: and then I'll promptly like not forget the topic, but
Speaker 1: like forget all the details that made me want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about it. So like in your case,
Speaker 1: I wrote down like queer Circe and then that's all
Speaker 1: I remember. I mean, it's pretty self explained where I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be fair, I think that's basically all I
Speaker 2: said in the tweet that caused you to like go
Speaker 2: I emoji at me. So there wasn't much substance to
Speaker 2: the pitch.
Speaker 1: As it were, Well, it doesn't take much for you
Speaker 1: said ords, yes.
Speaker 2: I mean listen that is you know, it's all you need.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, yeah, we're seriously here for it. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just excited tell me everything.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally, I mean, and I can just kind
Speaker 2: of I So I I read through the thesis this
Speaker 2: morning and sort of made some notes for myself of
Speaker 2: like the highlights of stuff that I felt like I
Speaker 2: could explain in a reasonable way and some stuff I
Speaker 2: I can go into, like at great length and probably
Speaker 2: not make any sense because it's like dense queer theory stuff,
Speaker 2: but other things are like here's a fun highlight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, I mean I we can kind of
Speaker 1: go into anything. Like I've definitely like, this won't be
Speaker 1: the first episode touching on queer theory, not that I
Speaker 1: have done that, but other people have come on and
Speaker 1: taught me about it, which is great. So yeah, like
Speaker 1: whatever you want, honestly, but like, why don't you tell me,
Speaker 1: like how you got the idea to study this concept
Speaker 1: of queer sercey and then like the basics and then
Speaker 1: we can kind of go from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. So I've been working on queer like
Speaker 2: Homer stuff for a while. Actually, when I did my
Speaker 2: first master's degree at King's College, London, I wrote my
Speaker 2: my master's dissertation, which is what they call it in England.
Speaker 2: They go the other way master's dissertation doctoral thesis than
Speaker 2: we do here.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know because I have a BA and
Speaker 1: we didn't even have to do like whatever one in
Speaker 1: the BA is for mine.
Speaker 2: So yeah, no, I yeah, so I but I while
Speaker 2: I was in the UK, I wrote a dissertation quote
Speaker 2: unquote master's dissertation and that was on Achilles and I
Speaker 2: was dealing with a sort of queer approach to Achilles,
Speaker 2: and I have remained interested in thinking about queer approaches
Speaker 2: to Homer. So not the spring that just passed, but
Speaker 2: the spring of twenty twenty two. I took a seminar
Speaker 2: on queer and feminist theory, and you know, when I
Speaker 2: was fishing around for a topic, I knew that I
Speaker 2: wanted to work on something Homeric. I'd kind of already
Speaker 2: had that in my head. I did a book review
Speaker 2: on a book that was about like women in Homer,
Speaker 2: and then I was kind of thinking about seriously jumped
Speaker 2: out to me, and I think it was kind of
Speaker 2: it was one of those like gut instinct things that
Speaker 2: I then had to go hunt for an academic justification for,
Speaker 2: which is like pretty common. I was like, okay, like
Speaker 2: there's something here that is that is like ringing a
Speaker 2: little queer bell in the back of my mind, and
Speaker 2: I need to dig it up. So I went thinking
Speaker 2: about how to go about that, and I wrote a version.
Speaker 2: I wrote a paper for that class that turned into
Speaker 2: essentially the first draft of what became my second master's thesis,
Speaker 2: which I can tell you the title of, Actually Please
Speaker 2: So Desire the title of which somewhat a somewhat boring
Speaker 2: title Crossing Path, Crossing Lines reading sirci as Queer in
Speaker 2: the Odyssey, which I wrote and submitted this spring, and
Speaker 2: the sort of the crossing Lines part of that is
Speaker 2: a reference to what I ended up choosing as the
Speaker 2: kind of the main theoretical framework of the project, which
Speaker 2: is Sarah Ahmad's Queer Phenomena, which is a great book.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend it. But it is also phenomenology, which
Speaker 2: is like very very philosophical and kind of complicated and
Speaker 2: hard to explain, but essentially comes down to a system
Speaker 2: of ideas about how objects in the world acquire meaning
Speaker 2: through interaction, like that a table isn't a table until
Speaker 2: it's used as a table in a repeated way.
Speaker 3: That makes sense, If that makes sense, Yeah, I like that, And.
Speaker 2: Yes, phenomenology nomenology a study of phenomenon in the world
Speaker 2: and how we and how we, yeah, how we experience things,
Speaker 2: and how by experiencing them and by interacting with them
Speaker 2: they come to take on these meanings and we change
Speaker 2: like action creates the meaning of in the world. So
Speaker 2: that sort of school of philosophy is where the early
Speaker 2: groundwork of Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity came from,
Speaker 2: for example, that gender is something that you do, not
Speaker 2: something that just is. So in some ways it's quite
Speaker 2: foundational to some of some very foundational queer theoretical stuff.
Speaker 2: But phenomenology itself is like very it's like very theory.
Speaker 2: But Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology is I think, a mercifully lucid
Speaker 2: book and like written in a way that makes sense
Speaker 2: of the whole thing. And of course I cannot possibly
Speaker 2: explain it very well because it is an extremely dense idea.
Speaker 2: But some of the stuff she touches on in that book,
Speaker 2: particularly the concepts the sort of central concepts of orientation
Speaker 2: and disorientation and relatedly ideas about comfort and feeling at
Speaker 2: home versus feeling disorientated or being disorientated due to the
Speaker 2: way that we interact with each other and the way
Speaker 2: that we encounter social expectations which are in themselves which
Speaker 2: sort of create objects that we interact with, and what objects,
Speaker 2: in both the physical and abstract sense, we are able
Speaker 2: to like connect with in the world. So and how
Speaker 2: as a queer person those interactions, the things that are
Speaker 2: in the objects or bodies that are in reach are
Speaker 2: different from the sort of standard what she calls sedimented
Speaker 2: line or pattern of experience and behavior, and a lot
Speaker 2: of this is very interesting and useful for thinking about
Speaker 2: and she does a bunch of stuff not only with
Speaker 2: sexuality but also with rape and thinking about migration in
Speaker 2: later chapters in the book, which is very useful for
Speaker 2: dealing with the Odyssey, which is a book about a
Speaker 2: story about traveling, you know, and about encountering the strange
Speaker 2: and then finding like working your way back towards something normal.
Speaker 2: And so my thesis really focuses on Seius and what
Speaker 2: is what seriously is embedded in which is the what
Speaker 2: are sometimes called like the journey books or the story
Speaker 2: books or whatever, like where Odysseus, when Odysseus is narrating
Speaker 2: the tales of his many adventures to the feats books
Speaker 2: eight through twelve, I think wine through twelve, Yes, the
Speaker 2: ones that everybody knows all the stories from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the best parst people, honest, totally.
Speaker 2: When when most people think about what happens in the Odyssey,
Speaker 2: they're thinking about these particular like four and a half
Speaker 2: ish books, because all of the actual adventures happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all in flashbacks. It's so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's it's a Disseus telling what happened
Speaker 2: to him, which introduces this like aspect of the unreliable narrator,
Speaker 2: you know, mister nobody king, King of unreliable narrators, but
Speaker 2: also provides an opportunity to think about orientation to narrative,
Speaker 2: orientation through narrative, like how Odysseus interacts, but also how
Speaker 2: his interactions are shaping the audience's expectations, because in many
Speaker 2: ways people have made compelling arguments about how the stories
Speaker 2: that Odysseus tells are meant to kind of model correct
Speaker 2: behavior to the theations so that they will do the
Speaker 2: right thing and let him go because he's aware when
Speaker 2: he's telling these stories that, uh, I A guess I
Speaker 2: think is the name of the king embarrassing that I
Speaker 2: can never remember. I always want to call the King
Speaker 2: of the Theations Aolis. But that's the that's.
Speaker 1: The But I feel like it's not because I was
Speaker 1: just reading someone somebody else. I know, there's like lots
Speaker 1: of double up names.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm Alkinois Alcinois is the is the King of
Speaker 2: the Theations. I always have that there's too many a'sus
Speaker 2: is someone else here, right, But yeah, so that he
Speaker 2: wants al kins because well, Kennowas has kind of there's
Speaker 2: sort of a sense I think that al Kinos wants
Speaker 2: Odysseus to marry his daughter in Nowsa Keia and like
Speaker 2: stay and be absorbed into their people, and Odysseus doesn't
Speaker 2: want that to happen, so he's telling stories about his
Speaker 2: great escapes, you know, to sort of say I'm not
Speaker 2: I don't want to stay here, which is kind of
Speaker 2: interesting in itself, and it means that as a scholar
Speaker 2: of this, of the Odyssey in general, but of the
Speaker 2: section of the Odyssey, there's some interest in looking at
Speaker 2: the different ways that Odysseus deals with all the different
Speaker 2: encounters that he has and which ones sort of disarm
Speaker 2: him the most. And Susi is by far the most
Speaker 2: weird and dangerous in certain ways because of all of
Speaker 2: the others. I of the opinion that she is the
Speaker 2: one who comes the closest to actually taking Odysseus himself
Speaker 2: off track. He's like committed to getting home and all
Speaker 2: of the other negative encounters he has and dangerous encounters
Speaker 2: places where he loses his men places where you know,
Speaker 2: he's detained by a host various things. He himself has
Speaker 2: never fully taken in by that, except with Sirs, where
Speaker 2: he actually does forget about his nostas, his homecoming and
Speaker 2: his desire for that for a full year, and he
Speaker 2: has to be reminded by his men. It's the only
Speaker 2: time that happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: So I ended up digging in a little bit and
Speaker 2: thinking about what it is about Sirs that is so disorientating.
Speaker 2: What is it about her that drags him away from that,
Speaker 2: you know, wrenches him out of that pattern and that
Speaker 2: thing that he has been doing all along, this desire
Speaker 2: to return home to his you know, his lawfully married
Speaker 2: wife and his legitimate son. You know, like it's this
Speaker 2: very like heteronormative cis heteropatriarchal like mold that he's trying
Speaker 2: to get back into, and seriously almost manages to get
Speaker 2: him out of that. And in fact, like at both ends,
Speaker 2: he's only spared in the initial sort of volley with
Speaker 2: her because Hermes intervenes. Hermes comes down and says, hey,
Speaker 2: I'll help you. You're going to be in trouble. He
Speaker 2: knows there's a problem, but he has no way to
Speaker 2: fight her without help from the gods. And then at
Speaker 2: the end when after their exchange and he seems to
Speaker 2: come out on top, then he forgets for a full year.
Speaker 2: So what is it about her that is so out there?
Speaker 2: You know? And I mean, I love seriously, I think
Speaker 2: she's really interesting. I wish we got more. You know,
Speaker 2: obviously it's you know, it's Homers, so we don't really
Speaker 2: get what's going on in her head.
Speaker 1: No, and she doesn't really like appear anywhere outside of
Speaker 1: Homer until you get later where they're just playing on
Speaker 1: her in Homer, but like, yeah, you don't really like
Speaker 1: the sense of her she's most interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and she gets so the next like, I think,
Speaker 2: the next thing I can think of is her appearance
Speaker 2: in Apollonius, where she is quite defanged. She shows up
Speaker 2: in the Argonautica and she she performs this ritual to
Speaker 2: to clear the miasma from Jason and Media for their
Speaker 2: murder of Media's brother, but then she she sort of
Speaker 2: turns them away. She agrees to do it, but then
Speaker 2: she turns them away because you know, that's also her
Speaker 2: nephew that they killed. So she's like, you know, I'll
Speaker 2: do this because it's within my power and you're my niece.
Speaker 2: But but then you have to go essentially, so it's
Speaker 2: it's a much more defanged Serius than what we get
Speaker 2: in the Odyssey, where she is extremely scary. She's she's
Speaker 2: like very threatening because she just can't be stopped. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so and one of the things that I kind of
Speaker 2: laid out in my thesis is that one of the
Speaker 2: reasons I think she's so scary is that that there
Speaker 2: are these two So when as a disseuse travels through
Speaker 2: the story, there are these two kind of patterns that immerge,
Speaker 2: which a lot of scholars have picked up on and
Speaker 2: talked about. There's a lot of scholarship on the Odyssey
Speaker 2: and sort of Homer in general is very like structuralists.
Speaker 2: You know, here are these dichotomies that emerge, and we're
Speaker 2: gonna talk about things in contrast to each other, but
Speaker 2: they tend to be very binary, which is why I'm
Speaker 2: like want to stick my little queer theory fingers in
Speaker 2: there and be like, nice dichotomy, you got there, what's
Speaker 2: outside of it? You know?
Speaker 3: Like I just.
Speaker 1: Say, you've given me now two possible titles for this episode,
Speaker 1: and because like earlier I wrote down that ringing a
Speaker 1: little queer bell, but now you just said like sticking
Speaker 1: your little queer fingers. It's like, I'm like, maybe that
Speaker 1: one's weirder, But I just want to say I really
Speaker 1: appreciate both options.
Speaker 2: H both are good. Well, I'm sure I will continue
Speaker 2: to say such unhinged things.
Speaker 1: You're gonna keep I'm just gonna have to pick from
Speaker 1: so many.
Speaker 2: Well, I wish your luck. Yeah. The nice thing about
Speaker 2: classically trained is we just get to use the title
Speaker 2: of the media. It's very easy.
Speaker 1: See anyway, I like to have some fun. But sometimes
Speaker 1: there's just too many wild things to you. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's a good it's a good problem to have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: But yeah, like I love Yeah, that's That's what's compelling
Speaker 4: to me about queer theory is like picking apart dichotomies
Speaker 4: and binaries that other people have identified and saying, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: what's working about this?
Speaker 2: Was not working about this and the thing that, And
Speaker 2: so I kind of built my own. I sort of
Speaker 2: built my own binary, which I'm like four months out
Speaker 2: from this thesis and I'm already like I didn't need
Speaker 2: to do that, or like I could have done it
Speaker 2: in a more sort of this is a spectrum, and
Speaker 2: Cerc is still weird or like at the far end
Speaker 2: of it, or even defies it entirely, but like, there
Speaker 2: is a spectrum here than this sort of dichotomy that
Speaker 2: I set up in the argument of the original. But like,
Speaker 2: I did that in part to point out the way
Speaker 2: in which Searsly tends to get identified either as like
Speaker 2: scary witch who's going to hurt you or kill you
Speaker 2: or whatever, or like exotic seductress who's gonna like make
Speaker 2: Odysseus stay forever with her sexy wiles, you know, which
Speaker 2: is are kind of to be fair in some ways
Speaker 2: the two types that we get in the Journey books,
Speaker 2: But in other ways I was like, well, I think
Speaker 2: really what we're seeing is like the encounters that he
Speaker 2: has where he's dealing with people who are to a
Speaker 2: lesser or greater extent like host types that they welcome
Speaker 2: Odysseus and his men. They feed them, they offer them
Speaker 2: conveyance on to their next place, they give them gifts.
Speaker 2: They sort of are at least semi obedient to uh
Speaker 2: what's called Xenia, the like guest friendship sort of tropes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then people and then the encounters that are like
Speaker 2: the exact opposite of that where they try to eat
Speaker 2: Odysseus and his men and we have a bunch of
Speaker 2: kind of cannibals that are floating around and Seriously manages
Speaker 2: to be both of those things.
Speaker 1: And good for her, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's it's very interesting because like it means
Speaker 2: that she's not really she doesn't fit in, and also
Speaker 2: she very actively manipulates the expectations of a host in
Speaker 2: order to entrap and kill and in my opinion, eat
Speaker 2: the people who come to her island. This is the
Speaker 2: like conspiracy theory section of the paper, but I strongly,
Speaker 2: I am like fully on board, even though I can't
Speaker 2: one hundred percent defend this academically with seriously also being
Speaker 2: a cannibal or kind of a cannibal because she's not
Speaker 2: really a human, but none of these guys are. They're all.
Speaker 1: You know, because the idea would be that she eats
Speaker 1: them after she's turned them into pigs, right yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So then that's really interesting too because it's like what
Speaker 1: counts as cannibal, Like does she decide that she's not
Speaker 1: one because she's like, well, no, no, I've made them pigs,
Speaker 1: so it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And and like does she does she eat them?
Speaker 2: So there's there's kind of two things to that particular argument,
Speaker 2: and one of them is that pigs in the Homeric
Speaker 2: world are meat animals. They are raised basically just for
Speaker 2: eating and for sacrificing. And when you sacrifice an animal,
Speaker 2: you then eat the meat. Some of it's offered as
Speaker 2: food to the gods and some of it's consumed by humans.
Speaker 2: But like that's what pigs are for, is for eating.
Speaker 2: So I think pigs is kind of an interesting choice
Speaker 2: in a certain way, like they have no other livestock purpose.
Speaker 2: And then the second thing is this this sort of
Speaker 2: creeping horror of Cirses Island where it seems like it's
Speaker 2: it's plausible that all of the animals that they encounter
Speaker 2: on the island are transformed humans. There's like two reasons.
Speaker 2: One of them is that the same so there's similar
Speaker 2: language used of the like the like lions and stuff,
Speaker 2: and that she has these like enchanted lions, it fun
Speaker 2: like dogs and are you know, sort of under her
Speaker 2: sway that that scare the men when they're approaching her
Speaker 2: house and they're described in similar terms to the men themselves.
Speaker 2: Once they've been transformed, there's like language that's the same
Speaker 2: and then the other thing, and they're also there's a
Speaker 2: particular word that's that's used. The Greek word is pelaron
Speaker 2: or paluron, and it's it means like monster in a
Speaker 2: very specifically like this is some kind of magical creature
Speaker 2: kind of sense of monster. And that word, interestingly, and
Speaker 2: here's the like galaxy brain moment. That word also gets you.
Speaker 2: I don't claim credit for this someone. There's like a
Speaker 2: paper that I cite in the thesis, which I can
Speaker 2: I can look up so you can put it in
Speaker 2: the show notes by a guy named Russell. But that
Speaker 2: that word paleron.
Speaker 1: It's okay, I'm just gonna joke about it. I don't even
Speaker 1: have show notes I have just because I'm a lazy.
Speaker 1: I mean some of it. I put out too many episodes.
Speaker 1: But if people are interested, we can get it for them.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, I'm happy to tweet about it
Speaker 2: when the episode comes out. But that that word palron
Speaker 2: also gets used. Of the stag. There's a giant stag
Speaker 2: that Odysseus encounters in the forest when he's scouting the island,
Speaker 2: and he hunts that stag and kills it in language
Speaker 2: basically exactly the same as it's very like iliatic language,
Speaker 2: like describing two warriors meeting in combat, and he kills
Speaker 2: the stag and he and his men eat it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I feel like I've heard the argument of
Speaker 1: the stag being possibly a person before, and I'm fascinating.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then you've got so much more going on in it.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so there's this like the thing with the stag,
Speaker 2: and then there's the thing with the pigs, which, for
Speaker 2: the record, and edgart Baker's Eggbrit Bocker's book The Meaning
Speaker 2: of Meat, which is all about the Odyssey and food
Speaker 2: and feasting and eating in the Odyssey, great really interesting book.
Speaker 2: He talks about this very briefly. There's like a half
Speaker 2: page where one of the things he brings up is
Speaker 2: that in sort of journals of like the like journals
Speaker 2: of explorers talking about cannibalism in the sort of exploration age,
Speaker 2: sometimes human flesh gets referred to as long pig quote unquote,
Speaker 2: because apparently human flesh is very similar in texture and
Speaker 2: even flavor to pork.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, there's okay, and this is like deeply
Speaker 1: not scientific. It's just like existing in the world. But like,
Speaker 1: I mean, pigs are used as the closest to humans
Speaker 1: in like countless ways, right, like in terms of intelligence
Speaker 1: and like everything about them, or maybe it is intelligence,
Speaker 1: probably not at human level, but like I know that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: pigs are weirdly, weirdly similar to humans. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: choice of them in the Odyssey, like I'd never thought
Speaker 1: of that sense.
Speaker 2: It jumps out in a certain way, and like maybe
Speaker 2: that's us putting sort of modern ideas about pigs back
Speaker 2: on the ancient text. Like I don't have very much
Speaker 2: to like corroborate this like pig flesh cannibalism thing in
Speaker 2: the ancient Greek context. Unfortunately, I wish there was more,
Speaker 2: but I still think it's like a compelling reading. And
Speaker 2: the thing that I'll add the last thing is that
Speaker 2: Odysseus refuses to eat until he's seen his men restored.
Speaker 2: So after he and Seriously have their confrontation, you know,
Speaker 2: they go to bed and like seal their pact with
Speaker 2: the you know, embrace of love TM or whatever. There's
Speaker 2: some euphemism that's not what it is, but I'm just
Speaker 2: making it up. In any case, they have sex, and
Speaker 2: then you know, Susy lays out a bath for him
Speaker 2: and some of the sort of nymphs that live on
Speaker 2: the island. He gets brought a meal, and it's not
Speaker 2: specific what he's been brought. Some people just translated as food,
Speaker 2: some people translated as meat. It's an unspecific food word
Speaker 2: I think often taken to mean meat, but like hard
Speaker 2: to say. But he very specifically turns down the meal
Speaker 2: and says to sirusly, before I accept any more of
Speaker 2: your hospitality, I need to see that my men are okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is such a red flag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think it's kind of funny because it's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, dude, if that was one of your men,
Speaker 1: like it's too late anyway.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, too late anyway. But there's like the there's
Speaker 2: like the anxiety about eating another person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even if they really did.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, the history of Greek mythology, like it's not the first,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: For sure, And there's such an interesting thing with how
Speaker 2: cannibalism is such a like strong taboo going all the
Speaker 2: way back in time, all the way back to the Odyssey,
Speaker 2: and in fact the sort of cultural discourse around cannibals
Speaker 2: as the quintessential savage can be traced back to the
Speaker 2: in the Western world, can be traced back to the
Speaker 2: Odyssey in certain ways that when you meet a truly
Speaker 2: savage foreigner once you've sailed across the sea. And I'm
Speaker 2: like using savage with big air quotes here, of course,
Speaker 2: because like, obviously these are perfectly normal indigenous people, some
Speaker 2: of who may have practiced some form of anthroprophigy, which
Speaker 2: is to say, the eating of humans, and some of
Speaker 2: whom probably didn't and just got this slapped on them,
Speaker 2: but because it was like the ultimate form of uncivilization
Speaker 2: and therefore being ripe for like the civilizing force of colonialism. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's so embedded and it really comes back like you
Speaker 2: see it. You can see it in the Odyssey in
Speaker 2: a very similar way. It's a bit of an archetypical
Speaker 2: text for that exact discourse. The Odyssey is a great
Speaker 2: like text for post colonial studies.
Speaker 1: Oh I bet okay, before I forget to ask this
Speaker 1: because it's just occurring to me, but also like now
Speaker 1: I want to learn everything about honesty in that context.
Speaker 1: But do you know offhand, like I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: of the sourcing on. You know, before we started recording,
Speaker 1: I told you about how excited I am to talk
Speaker 1: to study or read Senecus Thiestes for similar reasons because
Speaker 1: I think ancient mythological cannibalism is fascinating. But I'm wondering
Speaker 1: whether that curse on you know, Agamemnon and menialisis family
Speaker 1: is Homerican origin or whether it comes later. Do you
Speaker 1: know offhand?
Speaker 2: I I'm not one hundred percent sure. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's Homerican origin specifically, I could check, but I
Speaker 2: don't know offhand. That said, I do think that the
Speaker 2: sort of of mythos of like like Tantalus Pelops, that
Speaker 2: whole Atrius, that whole family line is cursed as fuck,
Speaker 2: and the like the cannibalism recurs because you get you
Speaker 2: get Tantalus, and then you get a Trayas. And I
Speaker 2: think that those stories do go back, like we have
Speaker 2: evidence of them existing in the tradition before, like the
Speaker 2: sort of references that we get, like I think I
Speaker 2: think that Cassandra makes a reference to the kind of
Speaker 2: curse and the house of Atreus in her dialogue in
Speaker 2: Esclosis Agamemnon.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, yeah, I know it's definitely at the very
Speaker 1: oldest or at the youngest, it's it's Eschylus. But I
Speaker 1: was curious whether it does appear in homer because that
Speaker 1: would kind of make that connection to the Odyssey and
Speaker 1: that idea of totally cannibalism. But yeah, no, I mean
Speaker 1: it's very specific. Now I'm just gonna look at myself
Speaker 1: after because it's fascinating totally.
Speaker 2: Well, and we do have so one of the things
Speaker 2: I brought up, and so one of the things that
Speaker 2: is kind of interesting, especially if you do accept the
Speaker 2: argument that SEUSI is kind of at the very least
Speaker 2: arguably a cannibalistic figure, is that in the Homeric Hymn
Speaker 2: to Hermes, we have the injunction against divine like gods
Speaker 2: eating food of any kind, like regular food, that that's
Speaker 2: not a divine thing to do. So we don't yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so we don't see ceusly eat because she is divine,
Speaker 2: and so this is another this is another one of
Speaker 2: these contradictions where she's kind of both things that she
Speaker 2: is a goddess and like witches in this period of
Speaker 2: Greek literature are divine or semi divine figures Circe, Helen Medea.
Speaker 2: They're descended from God quite closely, if not actually divine themselves,
Speaker 2: like seriously, kind of seems to be because she's the
Speaker 2: daughter of a Titan, but she's also vulnerable, like Odysseus
Speaker 2: nearly kills her, and it's not like she almost gets
Speaker 2: the better of him, but as soon as he turns,
Speaker 2: you know, he turns back her trick and resists her
Speaker 2: her sort of volley of secrecy. She's not able to
Speaker 2: resist him by physical force and seems to genuinely believe
Speaker 2: that he could kill her, which so she's not immortal.
Speaker 2: And she's also given the epithet speaking with human voice
Speaker 2: several times, so which that comes up in matdal Miller's Seriously,
Speaker 2: much is made of it. But she's got this kind
Speaker 2: of semi mortal aspect to her, this mortal vulnerab ability
Speaker 2: to her, while also being divine. That is very complicated,
Speaker 2: And it's all these aspects of liminality and being sort
Speaker 2: of in both categories or between categories mortal and divine
Speaker 2: that she is, that she has all this power over
Speaker 2: animals and the sort of defiance of the firm boundary
Speaker 2: between human and animal, between you know, civilized and wild.
Speaker 2: That she has this very civilized house that's like out
Speaker 2: in the middle of the woods. Basically, it's in the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere. It's on the very edge of the map.
Speaker 2: That she is. You know, she's a consummate host and
Speaker 2: she protects and preserves Odysseus and his men once she's
Speaker 2: been convinced not to turn them into pigs, but then
Speaker 2: she sends them to the underworld. So she has this
Speaker 2: connection to death and this knowledge of the dead also
Speaker 2: that is very like spooky. Yeah, she just like she
Speaker 2: exists across categories, and I mentioned this earlier that she's
Speaker 2: also able to sort of manipulate the expectations of those
Speaker 2: categories in order to get the better of Odysseus that like,
Speaker 2: and of his men. That they arrive and they're treated like,
Speaker 2: you know, with sort of quote unquote civilized hospitality, and
Speaker 2: then the food that they're offered is what transforms them
Speaker 2: or gives her the power to transform them. So there's
Speaker 2: that kind of duality there as well, that she's a host,
Speaker 2: but her hostship is what allows her to do harm.
Speaker 2: And then on the other hand, it's at the moment
Speaker 2: that she's the most threatening, that she becomes kind of
Speaker 2: this objective desire that at the peak of their confrontation,
Speaker 2: Odysseus says, she says to Adssey, like, Okay, let's like
Speaker 2: go to bed together. And you know, so it's it's
Speaker 2: the moment of terror turns into a moment of desire,
Speaker 2: and that those things kind of go hand in hand,
Speaker 2: and that it's her, her her like erotic sway over
Speaker 2: Odysseus that then causes him to forget about his like
Speaker 2: beautiful sis, hetero marriage and and all this stuff. That
Speaker 2: there's just like so much caught up in that, and
Speaker 2: and that I mean that goes back to a sort
Speaker 2: of idea in Ahmed that I brought up in the
Speaker 2: in the thesis that an object of desire doesn't create
Speaker 2: the desire, but desiring a particular object object can, or
Speaker 2: a particular body can drag other things with it, other
Speaker 2: encoded meanings, and that in this case, by desiring such
Speaker 2: a kind of queer object, Odysseus is dragged off of
Speaker 2: the normative path. And so regardless of cirruses identity, like
Speaker 2: we don't have access to her personal identity really, but
Speaker 2: she is in many ways defiant of norms and associated
Speaker 2: with things that are kind of scary and out there
Speaker 2: transformation death, you know. But even without that aspect of identity,
Speaker 2: she has a queering force on the narrative because of
Speaker 2: what she's able to do to Odysseus due to her
Speaker 2: sort of you know, the disorientating effect that she has,
Speaker 2: because she brings into his world things that he shouldn't
Speaker 2: be able to sort of be in contact with in
Speaker 2: this normal way, and brings out of reach things that
Speaker 2: he should have and desire, you know, like his his
Speaker 2: return home. Yeah, there's a lot going on.
Speaker 1: There's so much, and I mean it's just all like
Speaker 1: I could listen to this stuff forever. Hen It's just
Speaker 1: like I just I like to say mm hm a
Speaker 1: lot because it's also interesting. Also I just have to
Speaker 1: say what the listeners can't see, and also you probably
Speaker 1: can't either. But behind me there I have this little
Speaker 1: replica well it's not even replica, but like a little
Speaker 1: Cantharo's from Athens that has Circe turning men into pigs
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that's a great me.
Speaker 2: That's actually it's probably the same. I actually think I
Speaker 2: made a reference to maybe even that same cantaros. There's
Speaker 2: there's a particular one very like.
Speaker 1: Doesn't look ancient at all, but it's cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. But that image because there's a paper that
Speaker 2: I read for this as part of my research that
Speaker 2: sort of talks about that and other images of her,
Speaker 2: which of course that art is much later, like it's
Speaker 2: quite significantly post Homeric, but there's an interesting emphasis in
Speaker 2: the imagination of serous and what she does that positions,
Speaker 2: that depicts the men between states and that that's the horror, right,
Speaker 2: It's not just ceirs and pigs, and it's not SEUs
Speaker 2: and men threatening them. It's seriously and this amalgamation that
Speaker 2: defies anything normal or acceptable, because like, animals are one
Speaker 2: thing and humans are another thing, and you can't be both.
Speaker 2: But she creates she's the steward of the transformation, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's it's this this really like intense thing, and
Speaker 2: it's it's a very violent thing too. There's a particular
Speaker 2: there's a particular formula that gets used for her transforming them.
Speaker 2: It's uh robdo pepliguia striking with her wand and that
Speaker 2: gets used twice of her and the verb which I
Speaker 2: think is plago or something like that. I could check.
Speaker 2: The verb that is used is used about fifty times
Speaker 2: in the Homeric lexicon, and it's pretty much always violence
Speaker 2: or force. So it's a very distinctly like she is
Speaker 2: like hitting these guys, and that's that's also that's another
Speaker 2: thing that removes her from the kind of host mold,
Speaker 2: because she's the hosts never offer violence, even if they're
Speaker 2: kind of trying to detain Odysseus and his ment. They're
Speaker 2: never violent towards him or his people. But seriously, is
Speaker 2: she hits them? She strikes them physically, and like, there's
Speaker 2: a very distinctive thing. The only other time, and in fact,
Speaker 2: the only there's I like wrote a long footnote about this,
Speaker 2: and then I had to take it out of the
Speaker 2: final thesis because one of my advisors on the project
Speaker 2: was like, this is long enough and sort of important
Speaker 2: enough that you either need to work it into the
Speaker 2: text or you need to take it out. I was like, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: so I took it out, but I it's it's like
Speaker 2: in my brain, I'm here for totally, and that the
Speaker 2: only other time somebody like rabdop peplaguia, somebody's striking with
Speaker 2: her wand is actually Athena in book I think twenty
Speaker 2: two or something like that, where she so Athena has
Speaker 2: transformed Odysseus into this guise of an old man to
Speaker 2: disguise his identity from everybody on Ithaca. And uh she
Speaker 2: the first time she transforms him, she comes down and
Speaker 2: she says to him, hey, I'm going to do this,
Speaker 2: like just so you know, I'm going to transform you.
Speaker 2: You will look different whatever, and she she like taps
Speaker 2: him or like she like touches him with the wand
Speaker 2: but it's a different verb, and it's it's definitely just
Speaker 2: a like pap it's not a blow. The second time,
Speaker 2: you may ask thee this swineherd is like coming back suddenly,
Speaker 2: and Athena doesn't have time or she doesn't take the
Speaker 2: time to come down and say to a Disseus, hey,
Speaker 2: just so you know, I'm going to do this now,
Speaker 2: and that time she strikes him. So I am I
Speaker 2: have again like a conspiracy theory thought that the thing
Speaker 2: that divides those two instances is the question of consent.
Speaker 2: The first time, she's very clear to Odysseus, this is
Speaker 2: what's going to happen, informed consent to yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like the second time opportunity to say no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly the second time. No such thing. It's a
Speaker 2: forcible transformation without knowledge or consent, and that is what
Speaker 2: Sears is inflicting because that's the BacT same language. It
Speaker 2: draws the mind back to oh right, like what sirrs did,
Speaker 2: where she's forcibly transforming them. So I think there's there's
Speaker 2: like a real aspect of of hitting to uh to
Speaker 2: what the what what Cirrus does and which is is
Speaker 2: quite interesting and that, you know, I mean, also there's
Speaker 2: all the there's of course also all the like I
Speaker 2: don't know, Lakhanian or Freudian or both stuff about the
Speaker 2: fact that she wheels a want which is very phallic.
Speaker 1: Uh, I don't know, but okay.
Speaker 2: I also don't know. But I on the like, on
Speaker 2: the one hand, I'm kind of like, does everything have
Speaker 2: to be about dick's especially when we're talking about women.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, there's something very funny about thinking
Speaker 2: about CEUs and Odysseus's confrontation before they go to bed
Speaker 2: together as a dick measuring content and a Disseus comes
Speaker 2: out on top.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will agree with you that if I if
Speaker 1: I hear it that way, it's not so bad. But
Speaker 1: every time I hear Freudian ship like that, I'm just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, dude, like we get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like yeah, it's like I've had enough of you, Frida.
Speaker 2: And also like god, fellow, centrism is out.
Speaker 1: I'm finished with it, and I just say, like, I'm
Speaker 1: really thrilled. I brought up the silly little cantharos I've
Speaker 1: had for like five years because that was so interesting
Speaker 1: to think about it in that context of like like
Speaker 1: I have this thing sitting behind me. It's literally there
Speaker 1: all the time I'm in this office all the time recording,
Speaker 1: and it's never occurred to me how much like to
Speaker 1: describe it for the listeners, And like, even though this
Speaker 1: is like a silly little replica about a tour shop,
Speaker 1: it is like the guy's head is a pig and
Speaker 1: the body is still very human. But I also think
Speaker 1: he's got a tail. Yeah, very tale. It's like it's
Speaker 1: it's very in the vein of min which is quite
Speaker 1: interesting because like I like to think a lot about
Speaker 1: how the minatar is like singular in in mythology, in
Speaker 1: like I think in mythology itself. He's pretty singular in
Speaker 1: the way that like, not only is there only one
Speaker 1: of him, you know, on like say the centaurs or
Speaker 1: satyrs or all these other like half human half animal hybrids,
Speaker 1: but he also is the only one that's like top
Speaker 1: half animal, and that makes him behave like an animal
Speaker 1: in a way that like, yes, you can argue that
Speaker 1: the centaurs are violent as shit, but they still have
Speaker 1: like the cognitive ability of humans.
Speaker 3: They just like.
Speaker 1: Choose to wield violence, whereas the minotaur has the cognitive
Speaker 1: ability of a bull and the body of the human.
Speaker 1: And that like the connection to yeah, that Circe's transformation
Speaker 1: with that, I don't know, just interests me, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the sort of ramifications of like that mid transformation or
Speaker 1: what you said of like the actual force of b
Speaker 1: being transformed and how that's what the art depicts and stuff.
Speaker 2: Totally, and and I think that like there's also that
Speaker 2: that aspect of hybridity remains with cearcs pigs that when
Speaker 2: we get the description of them once they've been put
Speaker 2: out into the art, that they they're like weeping and
Speaker 2: crying because they still have their human minds, but they
Speaker 2: have no ability to express themselves or act on their sorrow.
Speaker 2: So there's there's still that element of very and again
Speaker 2: like very troubling in the Greek mindset hybridity, that they
Speaker 2: really don't go for boundary crossing except in these exceptional
Speaker 2: cases where it's either a source of heroism or horror
Speaker 2: and sometimes both. And that that is also a very
Speaker 2: like that's like a very classic that the sort of
Speaker 2: two things can go together can can also be a
Speaker 2: very classic sort of queerotrope of like the com nation
Speaker 2: of the desired thing and the terrifying thing, and I
Speaker 2: think seriously exhibits that all its It's really common in
Speaker 2: the Gothic sort of Gothic tropes of like the queer
Speaker 2: is a figure of both desire and terror, because then
Speaker 2: you can have a sort of you can you can
Speaker 2: look at them and desire and like work through these
Speaker 2: taboos in a way that is still scary and so
Speaker 2: therefore it's fine. It's like quite quite common in gothic
Speaker 2: and horror tropes. It's quite it's quite interesting. So yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it's it's good stuff. And like, I don't know, Serius
Speaker 2: is just so rich, like there is so much going on.
Speaker 2: I didn't even get that much into in the paper.
Speaker 2: Like I think there's like a sort of whole other
Speaker 2: thing going on with how with her her sending them
Speaker 2: to the underworld and them coming back to her, that
Speaker 2: she's like the last way station between death and the
Speaker 2: real world and they have to stop at with her
Speaker 2: both ways. And that also like she is the one
Speaker 2: who gives Odysseus this advice about how to handle Skilla
Speaker 2: and Charybdis that like he's just gonna have to run
Speaker 2: the gap and some of his men are going to die,
Speaker 2: and that's just the advice that she has is like sorry,
Speaker 2: you got to kill your men if you ever want
Speaker 2: to get home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is.
Speaker 2: Itself like kind of a terrible like all of her
Speaker 2: advice is like time to die, I guess, yeah, But
Speaker 2: the fact that Odysseus like lives is yeah, almost beside
Speaker 2: the point.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's but it's like I like that
Speaker 1: because you're I mean, you're so right. And then it
Speaker 1: also all like comes back around to like Odysseus just
Speaker 1: doesn't really care, you know, like he's just so willing
Speaker 1: to sacrifice his men like at any possible opportunity, and
Speaker 1: like he gives us this idea that that he is
Speaker 1: affected by it, but it doesn't ever, it's like affecting
Speaker 1: in a very like impersonal way because he's like, I'm
Speaker 1: affected because I'm a I'm a human. But like he
Speaker 1: would never let the tragedy of how many of his
Speaker 1: men die actually affect anything that he does or like
Speaker 1: any decisions, which is like, to be clear, exactly all
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, but like you know, like as it's going,
Speaker 1: you know, he's like, oh, I lost so many men,
Speaker 1: but he never wants is like, so maybe I should
Speaker 1: behave differently going forward to avoid losing more. Like it's
Speaker 1: just sort of like it happens because they're just there
Speaker 1: and the only point is to get him home. Like
Speaker 1: the other people are just kind of like you know
Speaker 1: it actually, you know what, even just talking about this,
Speaker 1: The one time that he does make a real effort
Speaker 1: is with Circe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he that they have a full funeral for the
Speaker 2: guy who falls off her roof and breaks his neck.
Speaker 1: But even also in Pigs, like yeah, that him getting
Speaker 1: them turned back, Like I feel like there's very other,
Speaker 1: very few other times, if any where he actually makes
Speaker 1: an effort to save anyone going forward, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that he's very like prepared for them to die.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's it's interesting because like one of those sort
Speaker 2: of arguments that I've heard and that I kind of
Speaker 2: agree with about the arc of the Odyssey is that
Speaker 2: it's a lot about Odysseus sort of clawing his way
Speaker 2: back to society and like participation in society. That when
Speaker 2: he first is setting out, he's still very much in
Speaker 2: like the iliatic mindset that's extremely like some of you
Speaker 2: may die and you know, which is like great, thanks,
Speaker 2: like you jerk, and he still wants to like demand
Speaker 2: hospitality from all of these strangers and ideally received like
Speaker 2: get gifts from them, and you know, if he has
Speaker 2: to steal them, okay, But that as he goes along,
Speaker 2: he's kind of more and more like, oh uh, maybe
Speaker 2: this is bad and and I think that. But but
Speaker 2: also that his men keep pissing him off, Like on
Speaker 2: the island with the cattle of the Sun, he's like
Speaker 2: you idiots, like you fucked.
Speaker 3: I gave you one job, yeah, one job.
Speaker 2: And same with the bag of winds. So there's there's
Speaker 2: definitely like this tension I think where Odysseus kind of
Speaker 2: needs to get rid of all of his men, or
Speaker 2: he seems to like not care in order to accomplish
Speaker 2: his I'm coming but and as you said, and doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to care. But at the same time, it's like
Speaker 2: as he loses them, he seems to kind of come
Speaker 2: more and more to thinking about like, oh, maybe maybe
Speaker 2: I should be like a little more careful that like
Speaker 2: these guys are in fact helping me, and that like
Speaker 2: and I mean it's also to come back to, like
Speaker 2: circle back to something I said earlier, that he's the
Speaker 2: one telling the story about how this all went down,
Speaker 2: so he's free to frame what happened in a way
Speaker 2: that puts him in the most heroic light, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and like it's Odysseus, so he's going to
Speaker 1: and he's going to do it well of course, where
Speaker 1: it's like that's his entire personality in both epics. It's
Speaker 1: that he is a man who can talk himself out
Speaker 1: of anything. And so it's it's especially interesting to think
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, what how much he could be lying
Speaker 1: about with that in mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, And it's yeah, it's just it's great stuff.
Speaker 2: And and yeah that he that he then sort of
Speaker 2: tries all this out on al Kinois and the other faces,
Speaker 2: and yeah, and that and that it does work too,
Speaker 2: that al Kinowis is like, great, what a great story here,
Speaker 2: have like all this treasure and a boat and you
Speaker 2: can you can sail home, you know. So there's yeah,
Speaker 2: there's just like layers and layers with Odysseus and the
Speaker 2: Journey books are so interesting because of that like narrative thing,
Speaker 2: and and they are also very interesting to think about
Speaker 2: through that sort of queer theoretical lens, and I thinking
Speaker 2: about like whose story are we hearing and how coherent
Speaker 2: is it? Because with Odysseus as like the focal like
Speaker 2: he's giving as the focal point. It's yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: very possible to like connect what he's going through with
Speaker 2: what is actually directly being said to us in the narrative,
Speaker 2: and how we can interpret those things, which is kind
Speaker 2: of fun. And I mean, obviously it's all like you
Speaker 2: could decide any scholar, any reader is going to decide
Speaker 2: how seriously they take like, oh, is this happening because
Speaker 2: Odysseus is Odysseus in the story is doing something on
Speaker 2: purpose or is it just sort of convention? Is it
Speaker 2: just what had to happen. Like characterization in the Greek
Speaker 2: literary sphere not so consistent usually, so you can like
Speaker 2: kind of take it with a grain of salt, but
Speaker 2: it's it's still I don't know. I like to do
Speaker 2: the like deep dive and really take it seriously because
Speaker 2: I think it's more fun that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree entirely. I Okay, there's one thing that
Speaker 1: you mentioned a couple of times, but like I would
Speaker 1: love to know more of your thoughts on it because
Speaker 1: it really stood out to me and it's never really
Speaker 1: occurred to me. But like the Circe and Xenia aspect,
Speaker 1: it never really occurred to me. And like Sennia is
Speaker 1: something I feel like I haven't mentioned it in a
Speaker 1: while on the show, but it's something that I've tried
Speaker 1: to like emphasize, you know, in the past, like this
Speaker 1: guest host relationship, that's.
Speaker 2: A big deal.
Speaker 1: It's a really big deal. And and like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think just that we brought up, you know,
Speaker 1: Tantalus and Atreus, like they are so well I guess
Speaker 1: maybe not Atrius quite as much, but like Tantalus is
Speaker 1: such a good example of the problem with breaking Senia,
Speaker 1: where you know, you like you're not supposed to feed
Speaker 1: your child to your guests, Like that's a big no no.
Speaker 1: And of course, like the idea is not just the
Speaker 1: feeding your children. It is like breaking anything when it
Speaker 1: comes to this like sacred guest host relationship. And it
Speaker 1: had never really occurred to me how much Circe does
Speaker 1: not give a flying fuck. It seems like about Senna,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, like like she she purports
Speaker 1: to care. You know, the whole reason why she can
Speaker 1: change the men into pigs is because she feeds them
Speaker 1: or gives them something to drink. Yeah, and that's really
Speaker 1: interesting because that is inherently Senia, which is why they
Speaker 1: trust her. And then she's like, wait, no, I don't care,
Speaker 1: Like it's that that's really interesting, and I would. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I'm asking a question, but
Speaker 1: like I want to hear more about that.
Speaker 2: If there's no there totally is. So I'll say a
Speaker 2: couple of things. Xennia as a concept has been like
Speaker 2: a lot of ink has been spelled. The idea of
Speaker 2: Senia in Homeric literature reflecting something historical that was going on,
Speaker 2: is very distinctly an idea that was championed by Moses Finley,
Speaker 2: who in like the seventies, sixties and seventies, who's a
Speaker 2: very influential scholar. And I think that's like a divisive
Speaker 2: opinion these days because we don't have a ton of
Speaker 2: other like evidence from the Homeric period to know whether
Speaker 2: the Homeric literature is reflecting a real social custom or
Speaker 2: if in some ways it's a function of the the
Speaker 2: formulaic nature of the story, because there is a very
Speaker 2: distinct there is a distinctive senia pattern, like that this
Speaker 2: is how hospitality scenes type scenes go down. There is
Speaker 2: there's quite an interesting book by a guy named Reese
Speaker 2: who breaks it down into like elements and compares different versions.
Speaker 2: And one of them that he talks about is Serruc
Speaker 2: and it's very clear that she follows a lot of
Speaker 2: the aspects, but also you can see where the certain
Speaker 2: divergences are give color to the scene. So like one
Speaker 2: of the earliest aspects of a xenia scene in the
Speaker 2: Odyssey is the dog at the door motif that happens
Speaker 2: at the beginning of a number of these scenes, and
Speaker 2: like one of them is the golden dog statues that
Speaker 2: are in Uh but that the theationans have set up
Speaker 2: that are at the door of Alkinous's court, and they
Speaker 2: give this like sense of majesty and wealth and power.
Speaker 2: And one of them is Argos, you know, the loyal
Speaker 2: guard dog who sees Odysseus and then immediately dies. That's
Speaker 2: sort of idea of like the passing of the watch
Speaker 2: maybe like that kind of thing, or like that the
Speaker 2: weight is over. There's that kind of intense thematic thing.
Speaker 2: And then seriously that the dog at the door is
Speaker 2: these enchanted beasts and there's this like spooky like wild
Speaker 2: thing that is going on that's reflected in this particular
Speaker 2: version of this element of a type scene. And that
Speaker 2: she then also you know, she feeds her guests, she
Speaker 2: provides a seat, she provides a meal, she provides a
Speaker 2: bath in a bed, She does all of these things.
Speaker 2: There are a couple other divergences, like Odysseus is brought
Speaker 2: into the house to her bed rather than being given
Speaker 2: a bed sort of in the ante room, which is
Speaker 2: the typical version. I believe, she bathes him herself, which
Speaker 2: is also a bit of a divergence. So there's these
Speaker 2: kind of particular like where Odysseus is being drawn into
Speaker 2: her household, into her like web of I'm making a
Speaker 2: hand gesture that it is not kind of translate, but
Speaker 2: she like she's she's reeling him in using these tools
Speaker 2: of hospitality in this very real way. So it's like
Speaker 2: it's she knows it, she knows social behavior, and he's
Speaker 2: not shy about using it to get what she wants
Speaker 2: and like very actively perverting what hospitality should be. That
Speaker 2: you know, okay, Like another aspect is the giving of
Speaker 2: Pompeii conveyance onto the next place, and the conveyance that
Speaker 2: she provides is go to this like go to the underworld.
Speaker 2: Like that's the gift that she gives them is death
Speaker 2: in a very real way, which is also a derec
Speaker 2: It's this kind of subversive thing.
Speaker 3: That she does.
Speaker 2: And it's not the only time that we see the
Speaker 2: kind of tools of hospitality used to make something work.
Speaker 2: And this is like a thing that so Helen does
Speaker 2: something that is comparable. I think when she uses her pharmica,
Speaker 2: her magical drugs in the wine when Telemachus is at
Speaker 2: Sparta to make the men stop crying about all of
Speaker 2: their grief from the war and go to sleep, and
Speaker 2: she like manipulates their emotions using this sort of tool
Speaker 2: of hospitality. But it's essentially an intensification of what wine
Speaker 2: already does, and she's not changing them, whereas ceuses Pharmica
Speaker 2: physically alters the men who consume her food and drink
Speaker 2: her wine. Also that somebody, I can't remember what who
Speaker 2: pointed to this out something that I read points out
Speaker 2: that she what she feeds them is food that is
Speaker 2: typically given as like grave offerings, like particular types of grain,
Speaker 2: is what she like gives to the to the pigs.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: So there's this this thing where like everything that she
Speaker 2: does is like technically correct according to Sennia, but for
Speaker 2: like from bad intentions or done wrong in this just
Speaker 2: slightly off way that is so enticing.
Speaker 1: And there's no you know, there's she doesn't get any
Speaker 1: kind of of punishment for it in a way that
Speaker 1: like anyone else who breaks Sennia Wood mythologically like no, no,
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like fine. And then at the end
Speaker 2: she turns around and she does send it Assius off
Speaker 2: like for better or for worse. Yeah, she tells him, okay,
Speaker 2: you have to go, and like here's you know, these
Speaker 2: are the hazards that are ahead of you, but she
Speaker 2: gives him this incredibly useful advice, like yeah, okay, that
Speaker 2: a bunch of his men die when they go past Scilla.
Speaker 2: But if not for her advice, either they wouldn't have
Speaker 2: even known about it and would have died anyways, or
Speaker 2: they might have sailed into the whirlpool. And then also
Speaker 2: the whole thing with the sirens. She tells him how
Speaker 2: not to get caught by the sirens. So she gives
Speaker 2: him some of the most useful advice that anybody gives him,
Speaker 2: and she does send him off when he expresses her hey,
Speaker 2: I want to go, like he's been under her spell
Speaker 2: for a year, but she doesn't stop him once he
Speaker 2: gets his mind back enough to say I'm ready to leave,
Speaker 2: which is again like it's another reversal. She doesn't stay
Speaker 2: in any role is the way that you know, would
Speaker 2: people would maybe want. And I think that's one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that scholarship is kind of divided on her
Speaker 2: or why she, because she gets brought up in any argument,
Speaker 2: structural analysis, anything about like the structure of the odyssey,
Speaker 2: how these episodes work. She always is a center point
Speaker 2: to some extent, which makes sense she kind of comes
Speaker 2: in the middle of it all, but she also, like
Speaker 2: her behavior can be framed in such a way as
Speaker 2: to support basically any argument because she's doing it all,
Speaker 2: which I think, in and of itself, is like, okay,
Speaker 2: so maybe instead of fitting her into this category or
Speaker 2: that category, we should be talking more about how uncategorizable
Speaker 2: she really is as a figure, because she is so
Speaker 2: out there and it's really awesome stuff. Like I love
Speaker 2: she's so great.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've always loved her because she is fascinating.
Speaker 1: I mean, I also just think like she's one of
Speaker 1: very few women characters in Greek myth that are seemingly
Speaker 1: totally empowered, Like she is agency in a way that
Speaker 1: is incredibly rare, and so it's just so easy to
Speaker 1: fucking love her. But I also like, so I've always
Speaker 1: been really interested in her as like a contrast to
Speaker 1: Calypso too, which everything you're saying is just like emphasizing
Speaker 1: that so completely, because like, like I think it's so fascinating,
Speaker 1: cause like Calypso, I mean, we don't get a lot
Speaker 1: about her, but she presents this idea like she's a
Speaker 1: hot nymph who presumably like based on Odysseus's character. He
Speaker 1: was probably really into it at the beginning, and then
Speaker 1: she locks him down and like doesn't let him leave,
Speaker 1: and it's like it's like a full nine years or
Speaker 1: something that he's with her, right, Like.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's it's it's like a really long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's absurd, And like, you know, so she she
Speaker 1: has like all of everything about her suggest that she
Speaker 1: should be the one that he enjoys kind of spending
Speaker 1: time with, I guess, like comparatively to to Circe, who's like,
Speaker 1: you know, she's changing his men into pigs, she's threatening him,
Speaker 1: like all these different things that seem to make her
Speaker 1: a figure who should be like more dangerous or more
Speaker 1: like like he should be more wary of her, I guess.
Speaker 1: But then yeah, like you're saying, she lets him leave,
Speaker 1: she just lets him go because she you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, she just serves this totally different role to Calypso,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, like seems to be the
Speaker 1: one who would be more likely to do what Calypso did,
Speaker 1: you know, right, yeah, vices Calypso would be chill. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, and it's it's also like we there's there's
Speaker 2: this complicated thing where like we don't know, like I
Speaker 2: slotted Calypso in when in this sort of argument that
Speaker 2: I was making kind of more with the host types
Speaker 2: to be like yeah, like she detains Odysseus with excessive hospitality,
Speaker 2: like she just keeps she keeps keeping him and you know,
Speaker 2: keeps him in her house and so on. But we
Speaker 2: don't see his arrival on Ogigia, her island, so we
Speaker 2: don't know what kind of reception she gave him and
Speaker 2: he returned. Like we we really have no idea. All
Speaker 2: we know is we we don't see Odysseus and Calypso
Speaker 2: until after he's miserable become miserable. So there's it's like
Speaker 2: so hard to gauge because yeah, like it's so interesting
Speaker 2: because it seems like the two of them are almost
Speaker 2: mirrors of each other. That with Susie he starts aggressive,
Speaker 2: hostile and becomes comfortable and feels safe, and with Calypso,
Speaker 2: probably the other way around. But we don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: maybe she he washed up on her beach and she
Speaker 2: was like great mind now and he was never into it.
Speaker 2: Like it's very hard to gauge and that like I mean,
Speaker 2: I have like a whole Actually, Odysseus is a pretty
Speaker 2: good husband thesis living in my head rent free from
Speaker 2: when I was in undergrad about how he's like shockingly
Speaker 2: faithful to his wife and you know, treats her like
Speaker 2: a human being, and you know that the two of them,
Speaker 2: like he sleeps of other women, but not willing. We
Speaker 2: never see him willingly climb into bed with like Susi
Speaker 2: is kind of the exception of that, but even that
Speaker 2: is transactional. It's like they're making a piece agreement. They're
Speaker 2: going to go to bed together to seal that agreement.
Speaker 2: But we don't know what the situation is with clips.
Speaker 2: So he's clearly miserable while he's there, and Susie has
Speaker 2: a spell on him by the end, like he has
Speaker 2: been twisted out of his mind by being on her
Speaker 2: island by the end. So there's this like complicated thing
Speaker 2: there that you know he comes across as an ADULTERO.
Speaker 3: I don't know, is he see thank you?
Speaker 1: I support. This is what all of the facial expressions
Speaker 1: I was doing earlier was it was like I feel
Speaker 1: like I have gotten a lot of shit for loving
Speaker 1: Odysseus because he is my fai.
Speaker 2: I mean, don't get me wrong, I still think he's
Speaker 2: a snake.
Speaker 1: But oh for sure, he's a shit, but like I
Speaker 1: think he's a lovable piece of shit. And I do
Speaker 1: think I have always also appreciated the Penelope relationship. Like
Speaker 1: I think that in terms of what we have visibly
Speaker 1: seen in relationships in mythology, they are arguably healthier than
Speaker 1: I mean, I won't say everyone, but like there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of healthy relationships and myth for us to
Speaker 1: basically getting off of.
Speaker 2: I mean, say what you want. The man loves his wife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's very hard.
Speaker 2: That's like the one thing about Odysseus's character that's very
Speaker 2: hard to argue with. He very clearly loves his wife
Speaker 2: and wants to be with her. That is the whole thing.
Speaker 2: That's the whole thing all the way along is he
Speaker 2: wants to be with her.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: make a lot of arguments about that when it comes
Speaker 1: to like being faithful, because I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: evidence or it's just presumably like you know, during the
Speaker 1: ten years of the Iliad, because they have a lot
Speaker 1: of enslaved women, like probably he was doing things there
Speaker 1: and like and then you have jersey and clips or whatever.
Speaker 1: But like, I mean, I also think a lot of
Speaker 1: even just like our our thought processes on that kind
Speaker 1: of thing are entirely Christianized at this point, where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, yeah, we don't know that that
Speaker 1: was necessary, like that we don't know that Penelope was
Speaker 1: home being like Odysseus is one hundred percent faithful to me,
Speaker 1: and that's why he's a good husband. Like, we don't
Speaker 1: know that that was the mentality or whether the mentality
Speaker 1: was at one hundred way for a time year war,
Speaker 1: he's he's doing shit, you know, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean that's like I don't think that
Speaker 2: any woman really expected that her husband was going to
Speaker 2: be one hundred percent faithful to her. It was a
Speaker 2: huge double standard in Greek society. But like all of
Speaker 2: these guys were having sex with women that weren't their
Speaker 2: wives and also men like that's just that, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure. And so to say that he's a bad
Speaker 2: husband because he has sex with other women is like
Speaker 2: a little bit of a it's a very modern perspective
Speaker 2: on the issue. I will say this I saw. This
Speaker 2: is like a complete sidetrack, but I saw a screenshot
Speaker 2: of like an old Tumblr post that was like, the
Speaker 2: first one reads straight character of the day nobody, and
Speaker 2: the second one reads, hey, I disagree, Odysseus is plainly bisexual,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I think Odysseus is like the
Speaker 2: least bisexual Greek. Here, the ven diagram of Greek heroes
Speaker 2: who both don't have a weird situationship with another man
Speaker 2: and also actively demonstrate interest in women is very small
Speaker 2: in the middle. He is the straightest Greek hero.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I'm just like literally, my brain's just flying
Speaker 1: through different people. And also yes, on.
Speaker 2: Right, Like basically all of them either have no demonstrated
Speaker 2: interest in women, which doesn't necessarily mean anything, but like
Speaker 2: because you know, loving being into women is cringe in
Speaker 2: misocupist Greek society.
Speaker 1: Me reading.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or have some kind of weird situationship going on
Speaker 2: with another guy. Uh, like Achilles and Patrick Liss being
Speaker 2: the obvious ones, but like Arrestes has some shit going on,
Speaker 2: Telemachus has some shit going on, Aga like Greater Ajax
Speaker 2: and Tucer. Clearly there's some like stuff there, like a
Speaker 2: lot of them have like a male.
Speaker 1: Buddy beyond Homeric too, it still lies, like yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and even theseus has pitheus like, yeah.
Speaker 2: The is yeah, I guess, I guess Jason also is
Speaker 2: fairly straight.
Speaker 3: But yeah that's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Straits can have Jason for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one just is like yeah, yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: because like to me, my immediate thought on that being
Speaker 1: Jason is like, it's because Jason is the most boring,
Speaker 1: useless person in the world, so like, of course he's
Speaker 1: a straight man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like he's like a shitty straight man. Odysseus
Speaker 2: is at least an interesting straight man. Yeah, exactly, Like
Speaker 2: there are straight men who are just seemed to be
Speaker 2: straight by default, and then there are straight men who
Speaker 2: are straight because they love women.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is interesting. He's got nu once and
Speaker 1: and yeah to his straightness, whereas Jason is like straight
Speaker 1: in the most I am boring and I have nothing
Speaker 1: going on at all in my head type.
Speaker 5: Of yeah, which is why, to circle back to the
Speaker 5: original point, it is so interesting that Odysseus gets dragged
Speaker 5: away from that.
Speaker 2: Desire for his wife and towards like wanting ceriously and
Speaker 2: wanting to be part of cirses like weird like genderfucked,
Speaker 2: like human animal fucked society on her island that he
Speaker 2: ends up kind of integrating there in a way that
Speaker 2: he doesn't anywhere else. He never forgets about Penelope except
Speaker 2: for while he's there, and he yeah, he just like
Speaker 2: ends up soaked into cirss like big queer bubble where
Speaker 2: everything is topsy turvy. She's and you know, she's like
Speaker 2: she's a female, Like she's a woman, and she's this
Speaker 2: female head of household. Also weird. For the record, women
Speaker 2: don't usually women single women do not act as primary hosts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's no men for her island, no.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, And I mean her nymphs
Speaker 2: are like there's some nymphs around, but they're very anonymous.
Speaker 2: And so even that she's like very outside of society
Speaker 2: of any kind, uh physically as well as like conventionally
Speaker 2: removed from normative society. And yeah, like she just creates
Speaker 2: this kind of queer society on her island that the
Speaker 2: people who arrive there can't help but become involved in it.
Speaker 2: And it happens to Odysseus and his men immediately as
Speaker 2: soon as they kill that stag like they're kind of
Speaker 2: in and she lets them go. But only like yeah,
Speaker 2: like only once Odysseus realizes what's happened, you know, he
Speaker 2: he gets dragged out of his regular again orientation to
Speaker 2: use on its word and onto this other line or
Speaker 2: into contact with these things that regular patterns of belief,
Speaker 2: these these sedimented ways of being would have you never
Speaker 2: come into real contact with, always be sort of existing
Speaker 2: only in the imaginary. But on Circe's island, anything's possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh maybe that's your God, damn it.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I'm making your life really hard.
Speaker 1: There's too many good options. I'm writing that one down. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Love her. She's so great.
Speaker 1: She really is, Like she's just fascinating. I actually just
Speaker 1: spoke with an author who who's written a novel and
Speaker 1: it's about Circe after Odysseus and like very fictionalized past
Speaker 1: that point, but introducing like a humanized version of Scilla
Speaker 1: and Glaucus and like some things within that kind of
Speaker 1: like realm. And it was just interesting, you know. I
Speaker 1: was speaking to her about Circe and she comes from
Speaker 1: she's like Greek, but moved to the States when she
Speaker 1: was really young, and just like the really an interesting
Speaker 1: kind of like mindset as well. Of course I'm going
Speaker 1: to forget her last name, but it was Sophia and
Speaker 1: it will come out soon and the book is called
Speaker 1: an Unexpected Ally for my listeners. But yeah, it was
Speaker 1: interesting having that was just like last week, and so
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, I'm thinking about Sarcy in all these
Speaker 1: different kind of ways, having you on and then having
Speaker 1: spoken to her, and it's just like, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know I could talk with Rcie honestly for like ever,
Speaker 1: because she's just she is so interesting and she's so
Speaker 1: unique in the mythology in so many totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think in a certain way, like it's
Speaker 2: almost demonstrated how interesting and scary she is in the
Speaker 2: Homeric version that her later versions are so flattened and
Speaker 2: so defanged. I heard a really great paper about this
Speaker 2: at a conference, talking about how you can really see
Speaker 2: the like development of the way that male later male
Speaker 2: authors are processing their discomfort with her by making her
Speaker 2: not threatening or turning her into you know, a caricature
Speaker 2: of the seductress or whatever, because they don't know how
Speaker 2: to deal with her her Homeric incarnation is too complicated
Speaker 2: and we never see her like this again really because
Speaker 2: there's just so much And yeah, I mean if that's
Speaker 2: not queer, I don't know what I say that can
Speaker 2: deal with her.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh well, this is absolutely fucking fascinating and I love
Speaker 1: it so much. Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: This has been.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for yeah, thank you for having me on.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm happy to talk about Susie at great length.
Speaker 2: And also like queer approaches to homer because I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just like I mentioned this earlier, so much Homeric
Speaker 2: scholarship is is very structuralist in certain ways, like thinking
Speaker 2: about like things men do versus things women do and
Speaker 2: comparing the two and this and that and and that
Speaker 2: makes it so fruitful for queer analysis because like yeah,
Speaker 2: like like that's that's where queer theory is the strongest,
Speaker 2: is where a dichotomy has been constructed, because queer theory
Speaker 2: is all about pointing out how unnatural those things are.
Speaker 2: And like that's seriously is in that way very quintessentially
Speaker 2: queer because she she points she by paying attention to
Speaker 2: her role in the text, it really points out how
Speaker 2: unnatural or how sort of constructed through repetition. The patterns
Speaker 2: that we detect in the text are because she violates them,
Speaker 2: and so they just jump out all the more when
Speaker 2: we're looking at her, which is is so interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean every time I hear anyone who's got
Speaker 1: something to do with queer theory in the age world,
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, please, yeah, come tell me about it,
Speaker 1: because like, yeah, just yeah, it's different, Like I want
Speaker 1: to hear I want to hear these like these ways
Speaker 1: of looking at this stuff that is just vastly different
Speaker 1: than what we've been used to or what has been
Speaker 1: you know, constructed, like you're saying, you know, through these
Speaker 1: things where it's just like you're just putting this onto
Speaker 1: the text, it's not not there, just like dichotomy, Like
Speaker 1: we can just break it all apart and look at
Speaker 1: what's actually going on and all the weirdness around her.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and like even where the dichotomies are present
Speaker 2: in the text, like what does that tell us about
Speaker 2: how this culture that we study is constructing things and
Speaker 2: how are we reading them? You know, Like I think
Speaker 2: it's a very fruitful. I mean, obviously I'm biased because
Speaker 2: this is what I'm like hanging my scholarly hat on,
Speaker 2: but I genuinely do think there's a lot of work
Speaker 2: to be done and that like queer theory has a
Speaker 2: lot to offer to classics, but also that classics has
Speaker 2: a lot to offer back to queer theory in terms
Speaker 2: of thinking about how we study cultures and constructed constructions
Speaker 2: within cultures, and how we process other cultures because they've
Speaker 2: been gone for so long that like all we have
Speaker 2: in a way is our own perspective, and that that
Speaker 2: can be really really fruitful as well, which I mean
Speaker 2: is why I make a reception podcast, but.
Speaker 1: Which leads me to what I was just going to
Speaker 1: say next, is do you want to tell the listeners
Speaker 1: about your podcast?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: For sure, Well it was at.
Speaker 1: This point, but let's remind everybody but classically trained.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course, not that I have put out an
Speaker 2: episode in a while, because I was in fact in
Speaker 2: Europe all summer. But for you, yeah, first I was yeah, first,
Speaker 2: I was dying writing the thesis that I just spent
Speaker 2: an hour and a half telling you about, and then
Speaker 2: I was in Europe, so that we haven't had an
Speaker 2: episode in a while, but we do have some coming out.
Speaker 2: Myself and Alison Marlin are the co hosts of a
Speaker 2: podcast called Classically Trained, where we talk about modern media
Speaker 2: that depicts the Mediterranean, world history, myth and we talk
Speaker 2: about books, movies, games hopefully eventually, and music, comics, all
Speaker 2: kinds of stuff. We range pretty widely. Our next couple
Speaker 2: of episodes, the ones that are recorded but not yet released,
Speaker 2: are The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, which is like
Speaker 2: a great it's a great book I recommend, and also
Speaker 2: I think we did our I think our Prince of
Speaker 2: Egypt episode is also coming up soon because I know
Speaker 2: we recorded it, but I don't think it's out yet.
Speaker 2: It's not out yet, so I'm like forgetting. It's been
Speaker 2: a long time since we recorded, so I'm forgetting what
Speaker 2: we recorded. Yeah, but we have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: So if you're interested in listening to me, a homer scholar,
Speaker 2: and my partner, a late antique archaeologist, talk about various
Speaker 2: media and the way that it deals with these stories
Speaker 2: that live so kindly shares with you, then yeah, come
Speaker 2: check us out. Classically Trained. We are everywhere podcasts are found.
Speaker 1: You guys do a lot that I explicitly don't, which
Speaker 1: I so I think it's such a great like accompanying
Speaker 1: podcast too, because like people often want me to talk
Speaker 1: about media and stuff, and like unless I have a guest,
Speaker 1: because that's the thing about doing two person podcasts, like
Speaker 1: you can talk about that kind of stuff, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just me, and like can't. That'd be weird because
Speaker 1: it's just like me listing things if it's not a discussion.
Speaker 1: So I'm like other podcast for that, go find them. So, yes,
Speaker 1: classically Trained is a perfect option.
Speaker 2: Yes, we do. We do do media. We've done a
Speaker 2: few of the like big hits of classical media, like
Speaker 2: we did Troy two thousand and four, but we haven't
Speaker 2: done three hundred.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I have you don't know, I mean have fun.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but you've done Percy Jackson, right, because my
Speaker 1: listeners are always asking about Percy Jackson.
Speaker 2: Yes, we did. In fact, we did a full like
Speaker 2: five parter. We did each book of the first series individually,
Speaker 2: and for anybody who I will, I will say we
Speaker 2: are not afraid to be critical, but we do both
Speaker 2: love person Jackson. So you know, even though I like
Speaker 2: to believe that we're critical readers and watchers and listeners
Speaker 2: of all of the things even the ones we really like.
Speaker 2: Those episodes were really a joy to do, so hopefully
Speaker 2: they are also enjoyable to listen to.
Speaker 1: I bet, I'm sure. I yeah, I was like just slightly,
Speaker 1: I was slightly before the Percy Jackson generation and it
Speaker 1: perpetually frustrates my listeners. And I don't blame them, but
Speaker 1: I was like eighteen when the first one came out,
Speaker 1: so just like, yeah, it didn't happen for me, but.
Speaker 2: I mean I didn't read them until I was a
Speaker 2: bit older, but yeah, I was still they were in
Speaker 2: the air when I was growing up. So yeah, and
Speaker 2: like the I mean, I'm really looking forward to the
Speaker 2: live action series dropping so that we can talk about
Speaker 2: that and think about particularly so that we can kind
Speaker 2: of have a conversation about like racial race, blind casting
Speaker 2: and race and antiquity and stuff like that in light
Speaker 2: of that, because also there's some like one of the
Speaker 2: conversations that we had about Percy Jackson was like, we're
Speaker 2: required and please stop saying Western civilization challenge.
Speaker 1: Oh oh interesting.
Speaker 2: It's definitely it's like very mid two thousands, like Layman's parlance,
Speaker 2: and it really makes sense. But it's also like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a problem. We need to talk about it.
Speaker 2: So I look forward to revisiting that when the show
Speaker 2: comes out, and also just in general getting to put
Speaker 2: out some new episodes and hopefully you don't get some
Speaker 2: stuff going. But yeah, so the podcast is on Twitter.
Speaker 2: I am on Twitter at Julia m Paroni Underscore M
Speaker 2: Underscore Parni, and I'm also on Blue Sky Now.
Speaker 1: Me too, I guess say that on the podcast I
Speaker 1: haven't once.
Speaker 2: Oh well, there you go, me and live on Blue Guy.
Speaker 1: What's your handle on Blue Guy's all right? Interrupted by
Speaker 1: real life.
Speaker 2: I'm at Julia m Peroni without the underscores on Blue Skuy.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I can be found pretty easily there, and
Speaker 2: I'm attempting to migrate because yeah, me too, not least
Speaker 2: because every time I see the phrase X formerly known
Speaker 2: as Twitter, I take two D eight of psychic damage.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's like at this point, it's just like you've
Speaker 1: just made it the most annoying app like because it's
Speaker 1: just like a constant reminder of how stupid that man is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, an killer.
Speaker 1: Billionaires are inherently immoral and they should not exist.
Speaker 2: You are so right preach right.
Speaker 1: In any case, thank you again so much for doing this,
Speaker 1: Yes so much, thank.
Speaker 2: You for having me live. This was so fun. I'm
Speaker 2: you know, always enjoyed to talk with you about this
Speaker 2: stuff and also about everything.
Speaker 1: I mean a great I was just glad I saw
Speaker 1: the tweet and was like, Hi, you're coming on my show.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about this.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean happy too, Ugh Nerds.
Speaker 1: As always, thank you so much for listening, for joining
Speaker 1: along on these fun, weird little journeys into the depths
Speaker 1: of the ancient sources. Like I am just, I am
Speaker 1: perpetually thrilled by the type of niche topics that I
Speaker 1: get presented for the show, for guests on the show,
Speaker 1: like it is just It is always so interesting and
Speaker 1: specific and opens up all of these new and fascinating
Speaker 1: avenues to think about these characters or the text or
Speaker 1: god everything. So oh my god, it's just what a joy.
Speaker 1: As I said, though it is a bit of a
Speaker 1: uh was recorded a while back. You can also tell
Speaker 1: by the reference to the Percy Jackson Show Still to come.
Speaker 1: Obviously it exists. Now I won't pretend that I know
Speaker 1: exactly how much of it exists, but it does, and
Speaker 1: I know that Classically Trained is back with at least
Speaker 1: one episode since we recorded this. You can go listen
Speaker 1: to that, and I mean, just god, it just bask
Speaker 1: in the queer theory reading of Circe and how she
Speaker 1: just doesn't fit into anything, and oh my gods, doesn't
Speaker 1: that just make her so much more interesting than she
Speaker 1: already was. I could listen to this stuff forever. Thank
Speaker 1: you all so much for listening. As always, let's talk
Speaker 1: about mis Baby is written and produced by me Live Albert. MICHAELA.
Speaker 1: Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians. My assistant producer,
Speaker 1: Laura Smith is the production assistant and audio engineer. The
Speaker 1: podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on
Speaker 1: Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Find
Speaker 1: me on Patreon. That's what I say at the end
Speaker 1: here Right on Patreon, you can get access to bonus
Speaker 1: episodes and more and just support the show because I
Speaker 1: give you two free episodes a week. So let's be honest.
Speaker 1: My Patreon does not have much bonus content because the
Speaker 1: free stuff is enough. So if you want to help
Speaker 1: me with the free stuff, show your love and support,
Speaker 1: consider that for that, consider that to be what Patreon is.
Speaker 1: This is me explaining how incapable I've been of providing
Speaker 1: bonus content, but honestly, I've also had that Patreon for
Speaker 1: seven years, so like there's a lot of stuff that's
Speaker 1: on there, So take a listen. Patreon dot com slash myths. Baby,
Speaker 1: I will stop trying to remember my script without it
Speaker 1: in front of me. I am live, and oh my god,
Speaker 1: I love this shit. I also just recorded an episode
Speaker 1: that to be coming out next month about Homeric shit,
Speaker 1: and now I just want to live in the Homeric world,
Speaker 1: like forever and always and