EPISODE · May 1, 2026 · 46 MIN
Episode 125: Weird Era feat. Yann Martel
from Weird Era · host Weird Era
About Yann Martel: YANN MARTEL is the author of Life of Pi, the global bestseller that won the 2002 Man Booker Prize and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada. About Son of Nobody: Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea, but known to all as son of nobody. As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the two-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love, and grief. In this masterpiece of myth, history, and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live—then, now, and always.
What this episode covers
About Yann Martel: YANN MARTEL is the author of Life of Pi, the global bestseller that won the 2002 Man Booker Prize and was adapted to the screen in the Oscar-winning film by Ang Lee. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada. About Son of Nobody: Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem The Psoad, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea, but known to all as son of nobody. As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears. Despite the two-thousand-year gap between the two, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of ambition, love, and grief. In this masterpiece of myth, history, and domesticity, Son of Nobody explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live—then, now, and always.
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Episode 125: Weird Era feat. Yann Martel
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