Foolish Adventures in “The Odyssey” (Part 2 of 3)

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. In this episode, part 2 of our 3-part series, they look closely at the heart of the poem, books 5-12, in which Odysseus arrives in Phaeacia and provides the tale-within-the-tale of his adventures after the Trojan War. They discuss the significance of Odysseus’s fantastical encounters and asking what they might reveal both about his character and about the nature of our own progress—through times of safety, complacency, excitement, danger, and loss—as we wend our way back home. Thanks to our sponsors for this episode, Factor, St. John’s College, and Füm. Head to factormeals.com/subtext50 and use code subtext50 to get 50 percent off. Learn more about undergraduate–and graduate–Great Books programs at St. John’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext. Head to TryFum.com and use code SUBTEXT to save 10 percent off when you get the Journey pack today. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:12 Erin: Today we're continuing our discussion of the Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson. In this episode, part two of our three part series, we're looking closely at the heart of the poem, books 5 through 12, in which Odysseus arrives in Phaeacia and provides the tale within the tale of his adventures after the Trojan War. We're discussing the significance of Odysseus fantastical encounters and asking what they might reveal both about his character and about the nature of our own progress through times of safety, complacency, excitement, danger and loss as we wend our way back home. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. 0:49 Wes: And this is Wes Alwan. 0:51 Erin: And you're listening to Subtext. We're back for part two of our discussion of the Odyssey. It was originally going to be a two part discussion. It's now been extended. It's gotten bloated into a three part discussion for good reason, I think. We spent last time between the main episode and the postscript talking about the first four books up through the end of book four. We talked about Helen and Menelaus in book four and also Proteus, I believe in the postscript we discussed Proteus. And so today's episode, our goal is to get from books five to 12. And then in a part three episode, we'll do the back 12 books. So today we're talking about all of Odysseus's many travels and stories of his 1:41 Wes: travels, his crazy adventures. 1:44 Erin: So his crazy adventures. Those wild and crazy guys. Okay. 1:49 Wes: Book five starts in an interesting way because in a way it recapitulates the very beginning, which is it returns us to Mount Olympus and Athena pleading with Zeus. Right. 2:06 Erin: Like this whole conversation has gone on perhaps during the whole Telemachiad. We return to the previous story thread, which is Athena on. 2:14 Wes: It's an interesting frame. It'll never make sense. The gods will never make any sense. There's no consistent psychology or it's difficult to figure out why. Why they. They do what they do. But they, you know, they do have some interesting conversations at certain points. So Athena starts out by saying, let's read a little bit of this book five in the second stanza, I guess you call it Father and all immortal gods. She said, no longer let a sceptered king be kind or gentle, or pay heed to right and wrong. Let every king be cruel, his acts unjust. Odysseus ruled gently, like a father, but no one even thinks about him now. And then she goes on to talk about he's stranded on an island with Calypso forcing him to stay there. So Athena is becoming a little bit of a nihilist at this point. Poor Odysseus shows you that being good just doesn't pay. But of course that's not actually Odysseus reputation. And at certain points in the book, and this is something Emily Wilson points out, the translator, when we learn why it is that Athena actually likes Odysseus, it's because he is crafty and deceptive and good in ways of war and all that stuff. So when I say it'll never make any sense, the fact that something is framed here in terms of justice and kindness, you know, that happens at times, but it's not the overall gist of what normative framework for the gods. It's just kind of a kind of randomly shift. So if you think about metamorphosis and shape shifting, that the whole normative frame or terrain or domain is always shifting, I think between something that recognizable as justice and morality to us, or to something that's more akin to an honor society or the valuation of pure evaluation of power or violence or intelligence or strength. A bunch of different conflicting values, except insofar as they are forms of power and excellence. So pre moral in a way. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you took Nietzsche's two scales of valuation, one, the extra moral as in the standing outside of morality, the blond beast form of valuation beyond good and evil, just all about power and excellence. And then something more akin to the Christian scale of values, something again that we would recognize as morality. Both those systems are at work here and there's no clear way to say which one is going to predominate at any different moment. 4:58 Erin: Yeah, I hadn't thought much about this moment, but you're really making me see how interesting it is. It's interesting too that Athena is acting as a kind of mediatrix to her father in this moment. There's a little bit maybe of kind of anti job logic going on here, right. Like this is a sort of counterpoint. Like I was thinking, you know, with all of Odysseus trials and tribulations, how it sort of runs parallel to, but also counter to the Job story in the Old Testament. And I was thinking too about what you said in the last episode about Odysseus having that kind of twin nature of. How did you put it? It was really good. I can't. I can'. Remember now, like brains and. 5:37 Wes: Brains and brawn. 5:38 Erin: Brains and brawn. Yeah, yeah. Brains and brawn. 5:40 Wes: Is that it? Okay. 5:41 Erin: Yeah. I was thinking about this in relationship to. Well, actually, I think Wilson, too, brings this up in her introduction. I wrote down a couple of great quotes from her. She talks about this in relation to Athena, where she says, Athena's skill in weaving clothing for domestic use sits uneasily with her ability to weave deception and military strategy for the tapestry of war. And then in another section, Wilson compares or contrasts Odysseus's craftiness and Penelope's. So. And I think this is worth reading aloud too, because it's something I'd like to talk about at length, perhaps later. But she's talking about Penelope's craftiness with unweaving the shroud. The shroud with which she's delaying the suitors. And Wilson writes, this delaying tactic shows her Penelope's capacity for deceptive storytelling, a quality shared by her husband, as well as her technical skill in weaving, which is analogous to her husband's competence as a construction worker. The things Odysseus constructs, such as the wooden horse, his raft to get away from Calypso and his bed, are finished and are supposed to remain finished. Penelope's weaving is designed to be undone. Moreover, whereas the deceptive plots of Odysseus are geared towards a particular end, to invade a city, to reach his home, or to destroy the suitors, the deceptive plot of Penelope serves in the opposite direction to hold off an endpoint, to avoid the end of the story. It is meant to be forever in a state of becoming, not completion. I'm interested in that. And we could talk about that more, I think, in part three, in terms of what it reveals about Penelope's psychology. I'm just thinking about how, with Athena's emphasis here on, for instance, the fact that no one even thinks about Odysseus. Now you can have all these great qualities, as you've already suggested, the desire for power and things like that are maybe the great qualities that Athena finds interesting and excellent in Odysseus. I think I see more and more that Odysseus is brawn because of this craftiness, which has this literal construction element to it. Like he's kind of constructs his plot via these made things that he puts together. It's almost like his brawn is just his brains sort of externalized. And Athena's emphasis here on the externalization of his circumstances, where the concern is about proper tribute being paid, the concern is about hospitality and getting really good gifts from your host, not just in the satisfactions of Virtue. But to have these external gifts, to get attention, to get favor, all of these things which are about accumulating power, stature for oneself and status are the things that Athena's really concerned about. And those are the things in this moment that she's concerned are being depleted from Odysseus. Right. Not necessarily his goodness, though she kind of pays lip service to that to a certain extent. And I think that kind of is interesting in that it runs in counterpoint to the Job story as well. Right. Whereas Job loses everything. And the concern is supposed to be just for his soul and his character. And with Athena, it's about. Even in terms of the gods, it's about this losing the status and wanting to accumulate power in this Nietzschean way I think, that you're describing. Does that make sense? 8:55 Wes: Yeah, it shifts back and forth between some seeming concern with the ethical and the just, and then the concern with status and power. You know, when she says that no one thinks about him now, it's manifestly untrue. She's thinking about him. She's getting Zeus to think about him. Poseidon is pissed off at him, which explains why he is in the trouble that he's in, and she respects that. There's a point where she is reticent about intervening because she doesn't want to anger her brother Poseidon. Telemachus is thinking about him. He's searching for him, as Athena will mention later on, which leads. Or is it Zeus who mentions him now? It's Zeus who brings up Telemachus and says, use your skill to help him to come home alive. And then Penelope, of course, is the whole weaving and unweaving that you mentioned and leading suitors on, but not ever giving into one of them. It reflects the fact that she has not accepted his death. Everyone is waiting on him, even Telemachus, who will repeatedly say, odysseus must be dead. And who else says, odysseus must be dead all the time? Seems like there's someone else. Anyway, it seems like everyone's always talking about, Odysseus must be dead. Odysseus must be dead. And now Athena's. No one's thinking about him. But everyone is waiting. They're waiting for. Oh, they're waiting on Odysseus. 10:14 Erin: Yes. 10:15 Wes: So this is one of. When I say that the gods are never gonna make any sense. This is part of what I mean. It's not just the two ethical frameworks. It's just the kinds of contradictions that just crop up even within a single stanza, which Is, which is not just entirely random, I think, as we'll continue to see, but reflects something of what the divine realm means for the ancient Greeks. 10:39 Erin: In this stanza in particular, maybe it just highlights the fact that yes, there's an emphasis on goodness or virtue, but not for its own sake, right? Purely as a means to glory or remembrance. I like the fact that you point out that Poseidon is thinking a lot about him too. It's like both sides of positive and negative attention, I guess, are good. They're both attention for Odysseus. And I'm wondering if this is a mirror, the fact that people are thinking of him either because they love him or because they hate him. I wonder if this mirrors Odysseus own conflict, which I think we have yet to talk about, which is this idea that maybe he doesn't really want to go home. He has both positive and negative feelings about making actual progress in his journey, which I think is manifested in the. We could call it gently call it like a stop start journey or movement home. One step forward, two steps back, something like that. 11:31 Wes: Odysseus will say in book nine about Calypso that she held him for a while but never really swayed his heart because there's nothing sweeter when you're far away from home. There's nothing sweeter than one's native land and family. Now what happens when you're actually at home and have been with them for a while, that's another thing. But as long as you're away from them, then of course the absence makes the heart grow fonder. So I think that's part of the paradox of the ambivalence about getting home. And of course there's lots of stuff, you know, in the chapters that we're talking about today about home and the meaning of it, right? The island of the lotus eaters, his men, right, Eat the lotus and it makes them forgetful. And then specifically it makes them forget home, which is a kind of similar danger to what happens with the Sirens in book five. So I want to look at this specifically because this kind of speaks to both of these points, one about home and then the one about the gods must be crazy point that I'm making. So this is around page 186 in this translation where Calypso has been visited by Hermes. Athena sends Hermes to say, okay, Calypso, you gotta let go of Odysseus. And she's not happy about that, calls the gods cruel and jealous. But by the time we get to page 186 she's aligned herself with that mandate and even describes feeling pity, which is kind of odd, right? Because in the before Hermes visit, he's really just a mortal plaything. She's a cat playing with her toy. And there's no indication of any possibility of feeling. And then there's this divine intervention, and suddenly she's capable of pity. And then she asks him a question about home. So she says, this is at the bottom of 1:86. Odysseus, son of Laertes, blessed by Zeus. Your plans are always changing. Do you really want to go back to that home you love so much? Well, then, goodbye. But if you understood how glutted you will be with suffering before you reach your home, you would stay here with me and be immortal. Though you might still wish to see that wife you always pined for. And anyway, I know my body is better than hers is. I'm taller too. Mortals can never rival the immortals in beauty. And he says, well, yeah, you're right, your body is better than her. But I still want to go back home. And then after he says that, then they have sex. 13:59 Erin: I know. Just for old time's sake. 14:01 Wes: Yeah, it's like, okay, let's finish up here. I still do want to go home. So I think the alternative, as it's presented here, is between the perfect specimen, the woman who really is not just metaphorically a goddess, but really is a goddess and has the perfect body. And what about her soul? Well, it's unclear, right? I was thinking of her as someone who didn't have much of a conscience and then suddenly did. But in this stanza. Am I using the word stanza? Right? I think you would. 14:32 Erin: Yeah, I think so. 14:33 Wes: Call these stanzas. You know, in this stanza, she's acting like this is his decision, right? And I think we're always meant to wonder if he's really being buffeted by fate or if he's just trying to stay away or find excuses to stay away. I mean, he does reckless things, right? He got himself in trouble with Poseidon in a very stupid way, which explains a big part of his problem. But here she talks about his plans always changing. And this is a description that comes up many times in the context of, I forget who tells him. We talked about this a little in the last episode, but the idea that his plans are always flexible, right? So he can take off with one faction of the Greeks, but then return when things don't work out. I think Nestor was talking about that. Telemachus, your father's plans are always very flexible. And Here it's more about changeability. And so is he torn between the divine and the mortal or the adventurous and the domestic? He's kind of been living a jet setting life, in other words, hanging out with models. And now the question is, do you really want to go home? Is it really that I've been keeping 15:47 Erin: you captive here, the way that I'm understanding? So I do think he's conflicted about his desire to return home, but I think that the thing that's driving him is actually I think a lot about all the time, not just when I'm reading ancient Greek texts about Anne Carson's Eros, the Bittersweet, her essay about Sappho's poetry, and about the concept of Eros, in which she basically says that Sappho sees Eros as being a lack. She defines it as, I think like obstructed or deferred. So basically you can't desire the thing that you already have, right? It's just basic absence makes the heart grow fonder kind of principle, right? So the thing that you want by definition is always going to be out of reach. And so I think that is psychologically at work here, right? In Odysseus desire to return home. And that's a powerful desire. I think because he lacks home and because he lacks Penelope, he's motivated certainly very strongly by a desire to return to her. In a way they kind of have. You know, last time I talked a little bit about the fact that she kind of has an interesting situation with the suitors, but in a way, you know, Odysseus and Penelope kind of have a perfect marriage only while he's away, because then they can really desire each other, right? By a sort of like Sapphic standard, this moment with Calypso and this pity that you're calling attention to, I wonder if it's not just the result of divine intervention, but now the realization that she knows that she'll lose him is invoking an emotional response also because of this glimmering of Eros that comes into play here. So like, you know, much attention is paid to the fact that Odysseus is always like crying on the beach and saying, you know, I want my wife, or, you know, whatever he's doing. And then he goes back in and sleeps with Calypso and then goes back outside and cries on the beach because he's. But, you know, maybe, maybe Calypso too is getting a little bored of him and, you know, a little bored with this situation, right? And maybe she finds it annoying that she's like, I'm great. I have a great body. You know, we're having a great time. And all he does is go outside and cry. And so perhaps that complacency, shall we say, has been punctured by Hermes. And that is what is allowing the pity and the other emotions to come in now that, you know, now that she's going to lose him, he seems more complete and attractive to her in some way. Is that a stretch? I don't know. 18:09 Wes: Yeah, No, I think that's good. And I think that you're bringing up something which I hadn't even thought of, which is, why is Calypso even interested in him? Or Athena, for that matter? I mean, we get some evidence, you know, again, as Emily Wilson points out, we get some evidence that Athena identifies with Odysseus, in a sense, because of his intelligence. A combination of intelligence and a warlike nature, let's say, and resourcefulness and all the rest of it. But it is odd, right, that this particular mortal man is getting so much attention, negative and positive. What is it about him? So most people, they got stuck in Troy for 10 years, and then everyone either got home or they died or they didn't. And the. The one person who got home and died was the foil to the story. That's Agamemnon, right? Comes up repeatedly, as we mentioned. Why Odysseus, Is it ever really sufficiently explained why he would be the one to get. To get all of this attention in the Iliad? He seems. He's more like the consigliere, right? There's never really any question of him getting home because it's fated and it's even. It's so much fated that, you know, maybe from his standpoint, but from the standpoint of the gods, right? He's repeatedly told by Tiresias, and then by Circe again, she sends him to Tiresias to get advice on how to get home, and then repeats the same advice to him when he gets back from Hades, which is that so, for instance, don't eat the cattle of the sun God, or what not, or you'll never get home. You might not get home. But even if you do get home, it's gonna be delayed. It's gonna be a flight delay. Of course, it undermines the suspense just that we know the story, but even within the internal logic of the story, there's not a plot point or there's not a question about, oh, does this character actually. Are they gonna make it? We know the whole trajectory from the very beginning. We're made to concentrate on this idea that it's gonna take him a long time to get home. And when he does get home, it's gonna be without honor, it's gonna be without all the spoils of war. And he's gonna have to deal with a nasty domestic situation and he's going to have to deal with the anxiety that he might become another Agamemnon. Right. That he might actually be repeating that story. Which is why he has to disguise himself and feel things out, see if Penelope is actually true to him. 20:49 Erin: Right. You know, what you point out about the fact that we already know this story from the beginning. That's another thing I wanted to really highlight, I suppose, in these books when we get the whole story of his travels told through his perspective. It really struck me this time that the nature of the poem is such that it calls attention to. Yes. How obsessed everyone is with him. I suppose I can only justify this by imagining him looking like Brad Pitt or something. And then, you know, somebody where it's like, oh, okay, I understand why everyone's obsessed with you. But also just with how much he loves his own story and how much he tells his own story over and over again and how much attention is paid to the act of storytelling. And so there's a little bit of mise en abyme or something like that happening here where part of the codification of Odysseus legacy seems to be the character himself burnishing his own legacy over the course of the story. I'm just wondering what you think about the function of this. I mean, obviously it points to Homer as the poietes. Right. As the maker himself. The similarities maybe between that and the kind of maker that Odysseus is, or just that's something we could talk about. But also to the fact that like 99 times out of 100, it's not going to be. Or far more than that. Right. It's not going to be Homer that's actually telling the story. It's calling attention to the particular bard or bards who are reciting the story. And so there's something very, you know, meta about already embedded in one of the oldest stories in the Western tradition. I don't know what we could say about that or what that reveals about Odysseus. 22:29 Wes: He is a poet. He is of course, a stand in for the poet. We see that just in the fact that all these classic adventures that, you know, that we associate with the Odyssey, he's the one who tells those stories and he tells them in the Context of, you know, he's at the Phaeacians and they're saying goodbye. You kind of think he's about to get on the boat and leave at this point. Right. But he finds a chance to give a very long account of all his adventures up to that point. And it starts with Demodocus, poet, telling some of the story, I think, about Troy. And Odysseus sends him, has a slave boy give him some meat. Sends him, you know, give that guy a piece of meat on me. He's a great poet. And it says something like, poets are honored above all those who live on earth. This is not the first time someone has praised poets or defended poets. Right. Telemachus is the first one to do that when his mom is like, shut up. Don't talk about. To their bard. Don't talk about Troy. That's upsetting to me. It's not the poet's fault. 23:32 Erin: Yeah. You have no right to be triggered. Yeah, yeah. 23:35 Wes: This is reality, Mom. It's just, it's. He doesn't make. He's not making it up. So then Odysseus praises Demodocus for saying, by the way, this is around 236 or 5, praises him for saying what it is the Greeks achieved at Troy and how much they suffered. Suffering is always a very important part of. Of this whole story. And then says, but why don't you tell me about the wooden horse that Odysseus dragged inside Troy? And at this point, they don't know he's Odysseus. They've gone through the whole thing without even asking his name, because that's the custom of hospitality, is you don't ask them what they do, and you don't even ask their name. You just wind them, dine them. They have some dancers and some sports contests. And then maybe at the very end, when he's about to get on the boat, you say, okay, what's your name? 24:26 Erin: But anyway, they have gone through his wallet, though, but they couldn't find anything. 24:30 Wes: Right, right, exactly. And then Demodocus complies with that request by Odysseus and sings about that. And then Odysseus cries. And Homer compares this to the crying of a woman who's lost a husband and says she shrieks. And in the same desperate way, Odysseus was crying, which is really. We do, like I said last time, we see a lot of crying in this. 24:55 Erin: Yep. 24:56 Wes: But really, that's really laying it on thick. This is not just a few dignified tears. This is like, you Know, falling on the ground and beating it with your fist. It's a very undignified kind of picture. But strangely enough, only Alcinous is the only one who actually notices that. So Alcinous stops Demodocus notes the grieving of the guest Odysseus, and then says, okay, well, why don't you tell us your story now? Because this is really. It's really interesting that you're so worked up by this. So, you know, we gotta ask. And you wonder here. This seems like Odysseus protests a little too much, right? He's saying, sing about the horse. And then that becomes an opportunity for him to cry profusely until, in other words, it looks a little bit like he's inducing them to ask who he is so he can start boasting, which is something he does repeatedly in the poem. So he gladly, as book nine begins, he gladly begins to do that. He takes on the position of the bard and I guess perhaps the poet. And so let's just look at. I want to look at how that begins because it's really interesting, right? This is all in line with the idea that he's a liar. The idea that he's a deceiver, a dissembler, right? Which is the classic critique of the artist, of the poet, of the one who's engaged in mimesis. Not reality, but a semblance of reality. And this, the idea that he's a liar then crops up at the very beginning. So book nine, the very beginning of Odysseus account, Wily Odysseus, the lord of lies, answered, okay, I want to bracket this because at the very end of this, in all these adventures, he'll talk about his lying. And then at the very end of it, Alcinous will say, I can tell you're not a liar. The end of all of this. And this is in book 11. Alcinous says, I know you're not a cheat or a liar because your story has both grace and wisdom. You sounded like a skillful poet. So you're a poet, but you're not a liar. Even though he doesn't just talk about lying, he boasts about it. He says, I'm like the greatest liar in the world. 27:07 Erin: It's like that classic piece of relationship advice where someone's like, when a person tells you who they are, believe them. He's like, I'm a liar. I'm a liar. Like, oh, no, you're not. It's great. 27:19 Wes: Anyway, back at book nine, oh, Lord of Lies, this is on page 240. And then on 241. I am Odysseus, known for many clever tricks and lies. My fame extends to heaven. So he's no longer crying like someone who's in mourning, who's lost their spouse. He is very excited and ready to boast. And that's what we get for the next few books. 27:41 Erin: You're calling attention to how scary that is that he was crying so intensely in a way that suggests pay attention to me is kind of sociopathic. I don't know. 27:52 Wes: Well, yeah, he might be beyond that category, or it could just be why the gods like him so much. But this speaks to the brains versus brawn thing. It's like he can't decide whether he is a man of action or a man of words. Right. And he manages in this weird way to combine both. He drives the action through his skill with words and deception, but also charm, various other uses of words. So it is the poet has become an actor within the story. The other thing I wanted to say about this next, you know, the section on his adventures is just that I wonder how much of it we are supposed to believe. I think we're supposed to believe it because I think it's referenced outside of the frame as of his own narrative enough, I think I haven't put it all together. But on the other hand, you know, we are now getting Odysseus own varnished rendition of all of this and prefaced by him being the Lord of Lies. And so, yeah, we have to wonder what he's doing. And then again, the subject of home comes up a lot and at the very beginning of the account and then throughout it, and that's an important connection as well, because we wonder about whether he wants to get home, why he wants to get home. And he's directly asked about that again, you know, by Calypso, by others, and what it means to him to get home. 29:20 Erin: Yeah. In relation to what you said about this, you know, is he a man of action or a man of words? I think no episode in this story illustrates that better maybe than the episode of the Cyclops. 29:32 Wes: Yeah. 29:33 Erin: You know, it also occurs to me that there's very little action in that story until the very end, when words and action are combined intensely. But there's a lot of, just like sitting in the cave, you know, like there's a lot of inaction or arrested progress. There's a lot of attention paid to sound and say, meaning or lack thereof, from the very beginning of this little episode, even insofar as it extends to like the baaing of the sheep and the bleating of the goats. Right. There's several references to the noises that they make and those noises are obviously not ordered into speech, shall we say. And then Odysseus will kind of turn that around or do the inverse of that if you will. 30:19 Wes: Yeah, I think these are good points. And it's an episode. I think it's natural to think of this first. Right. Because I think it's the longest of all of them by far. Correct me if I'm wrong about that, but we get a lot of very brief little page by page adventures. Even the big things, right. The sirens just go by. And it's a very brief account. It's a very brief account of the Scylla. How do you pronounce it? Silla. And what's the other one? Charybdis. 30:47 Erin: The lotuses go by in a flash. Yeah, Crazy. 30:51 Wes: It's like a sentence or two. And that always surprises me when I, you know, I've only read this a few times over many decades, so I forget. And yeah, I'm always surprised by that. But this is the big, this is the one that's told in great detail down to the baaing of the sheep as you mentioned. And it begins with Odysseus characterization of this society. This is something Emily Wilson makes something of where it's a place with no agriculture, it's a place with no laws, it's a place with no. I have this wrong in my notes. 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The idea of a lack of community, perhaps. 36:55 Wes: No agriculture, no laws. Ships, which in my note was shops, which I'm like, he can't be criticizing them for not having shops. They don't have any ships. And they could have turned this place into a fertile colony if only they had boats. There is richness underground. So the idea. Of course, yeah, they're savages. And. And, you know, when he's in the cave with Polyphemus, he's not very nice and he demands gifts. Right. He gets to the point where he's gonna, in a very arrogant way, demand that the Polyphemus observe the customs of hospitality. And in a way, he's there to find out if he'll do that. Right. When he goes to explore the island, his men just want to take the flock of sheep and whatever else is there, steal it. And. And he's like, no, I want to find out if this guy is going to give me gifts. 37:49 Erin: Right. 37:50 Wes: Presumably as a test of whether or not they're really civilized. There's almost an element of perversity or prurience in Odysseus's fascination with the primitiveness of this place and the desire to comprehend that, even if it means risking his own life and the lives of his men. 38:11 Erin: Yeah, I see so much contradiction in this episode. And just as an opening gambit, too, I Just wanted to point out that I. Like when you said earlier that everyone is just waiting for O. And I was thinking about the O in Odysseus when I was. This is such a shower principle thing to say, but I was in the shower this morning and I was just thinking like, oh, the O in Odysseus is like, he's the cyclops. And I was thinking about the cyclops as being, you know, a mirror or externalization or something or, you know, whatever, like a funhouse mirror maybe of Odysseus himself, the great man Odysseus among his little peons and then the cyclops among the sheep and the goats. It's a sort of like, you know, hyperbole, externalized. And just what you said now, too, about the richness underground, then, you know, Odysseus himself will end up inside the cave. There's a lot of, like, I don't know what you want to call it, sort of thematic rhyming going on here. So I'm wondering what the primitiveness of Polyphemus and what his customs or lack thereof reveals about Odysseus, then, you know, if I can like extend that analogousness to all parts of Polyphemus, which maybe doesn't hold up, but maybe maybe just like his attraction to this or his desire to test it indicates this mirroring. 39:28 Wes: Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, I think we should contrast his approach here to the Phaeacians, right, where he's very careful, he's very reticent. Athena cloaks him in a mist. The daughter is very careful as well. I'm going to go ahead and you come by yourself. I don't want anyone to talk. He goes to Arete and touches her knees and supplicates and all that. He's willing to really debase himself when necessary. 39:56 Erin: Right. 39:57 Wes: He's willing to be very careful and not to be arrogant in the way he is here. So something about he gets into trouble here precisely because he's induced by the nature of the island and its people and it's, you know, the fact that they're quote, unquote, primitive or savages. Well, it's not. That's not the way he puts it, but that's the implication, you know, if they are wild, lawless aggressors or the type to welcome strangers and fear the gods. The whole question of whether, again, not to beat a dead horse, but the whole question of what it means to be civilized is always framed in terms of this question of hospitality. And when he Gets in there and he says, grant me a gift, as is the norm of hosts and guests. So he's basically saying, look, you savage, or you bumpkin, prove to me whether or not you're civilized. And Polyphemus says, you order me to fear the gods. My people think nothing of that. Zeus with his big scepter, nor any God. Our strength is more than theirs. I do the bidding of my own heart. And at that point, I had the same thought that I think you're describing, where I thought, that's a very interesting commonality. It seems like with Odysseus, there's something about Odysseus that is very right. His plans are flexible, his plans are changeable. Is it whim or is he being crafty, or is it just he's whimsical? But anyway, I think your point about. Is Odysseus reacting this way because he sees some of himself in them? I think that's probably spot on. You know what we see in Polyphemus, he's just casually killing people, braining two men, ripping them up, eating them. That kind of appetitiveness, that willingness to plunder and despoil. Right. That's the way his whole story begins, with him sacking the Kikones. How do you pronounce it? 41:47 Erin: Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Let's call them the Kikones. 41:50 Wes: Kikones. It's the type of thing I look up and then I forget. 41:54 Erin: But yeah, same. 41:55 Wes: I found it funny that Emily Wilson remarked on this because it was something that when he began this story, I put like, WTF in the margin, because it's just very casually. Yeah. We got pushed off course, ended up near this town, and we sacked them and killed all the men and took all their riches and wives. I don't know what happened there. Why the wives are not on the boat, so I don't know what happens after that, but. And then they get drunk. His men get really, really drunk and start just slaughtering sheep and cattle on the beach until the Kikones, their neighbors, come to the rescue. And he loses six men from each ship before they escape. So this is like the worst atrocity from a Vietnam. You know, I'm thinking of like a Vietnam movie where it's. People are totally out of control. But that's not the way that Odysseus is describing this. Right. It's completely without any conscience. I looked them up and I found out that they were actually an enemy of the Greeks during the Trojan War, which explains a little bit of it. So they're not just random people, they're considered enemies. But again, just in the offhand way that he would describe an episode like that, I think you have to wonder about what it is and isn't that's civilized. I mean, you know, it's great that they're very nice to each other and they give all each other gifts and feasts on polished wood tables and the slave girls rub them down and all that stuff when they arrive. But it's one thing to be treated nicely when you arrive at someone's house, it's another thing when they're arriving at your home and either casually slaughtering you or demanding that you observe their customs. 43:32 Erin: I want to go in so many different directions with this, but just to return to those couple of quotes that we looked at right before, the part that we quoted earlier, they hold no councils, have no common laws. There's three or four lines preceding that are they put their trust in gods and do not plant their food from seed, nor plow. And yet the barley grain and clustering wine grapes all flourish there, increased by rain from Zeus. So they don't actually have agriculture, as we already said. But this is described as a trusting that the gods will kind of provide for them. 44:03 Wes: They're on divine welfare and Odysseus does not like them. 44:08 Erin: Yes, and there's something to that. But I think it's also. Okay. A positive way of viewing this maybe, right. Is it's a form of like a receptivity. I'm thinking about. Maybe you're going to think this is crazy, maybe not. I'm thinking about how Polyphemus puts me in mind of Alien for some reason, the movie Alien. 44:28 Wes: Because I'm thinking, yeah, well, yeah, yeah, I see that. 44:31 Erin: Yeah. He has so many. Well, I don't want to get ahead of myself here. But so, so he puts his trust in the gods and allows things to grow just, just naturally. And, and he's sort of rewarded for this trust by increased rain from Zeus or. Sorry, by. By. By, you know, the increase of his crop, by the. By the flourishing of his crops because of Zeus's rain. So when Odysseus asks if they are wild, lawless aggressors or the type to welcome strangers and fear the. You know, there are three things happening there. Are they wild, lawless aggressors or. And then Odysseus twins together. Are they the type to welcome strangers and fear the gods? Well, actually, Polyphemus will kind of separate that latter half into. Into two parts. He does not welcome strangers, but he does fear the gods. Right. He, he, he, we're told he puts his trust in the gods, but he does not welcome strangers. 45:26 Wes: Well, he says he's not afraid of Zeus though. 45:29 Erin: He's. 45:29 Wes: That's right, he is Poseidon, you know, he is under the protection of Poseidon, so. 45:34 Erin: Right. 45:34 Wes: I think you're right to point this out. You know, even though he's boasting that he's not scared of Zeus and that it almost sounds like your gods are not my gods, but that's entirely untrue. Right, we know that. Yeah. Odysseus whole problem is that this guy is a made man in, you know, Poseidon's gang, cannot mess with him. 45:54 Erin: What each of these episodes I think is revealing to me during this reading is each one is playing with an interesting sort of twist on this masculine or feminine principle to, you know, to either both together to a greater or lesser degree, or one versus the other. Maybe part of this is highlighted for me because of what you mentioned about Odysseus crying like a woman, like a widowed woman. But I am thinking of Polyphemus as a kind of mother and father here. Right. You would think by looking at him, there's something quite phallic about a Cyclops, obviously. And obviously he is an aggressor, obviously. He is huge and demonstrates a lot of masculine kind of principle. But what also occurs to me is this receptivity inherent in the culture, as I'm saying, with this lack of agriculture, but this sort of willingness to let things come to them by that same token, not going out in boats and being aggressive in that way, not exerting one's will in the world, but allowing things to come to you. The idea of the, you know, the richness underground and the fact that Polyphemus lives in a cave. 46:59 Wes: Yeah, they're cavemen. I mean, some of this is about their relation to some kind of dim memory of the prehistoric. 47:06 Erin: Sure. I see him as kind of a mother to the goats and the, and the sheep that he cares for. Right. There's something, almost a suggestion that Polyphemus is like a self sustaining entity that he would reproduce asexually or something like that. Right. Because there's a little bit more balance in him, I wonder, than there is in Odysseus. And what Odysseus question points out to me too, are they wild, lawless aggressors or the type to welcome strangers and fear the gods? Odysseus too is both a wild, lawless aggressor at times and one who welcomes strangers and fears the gods. Right, Right. I don't know if we can argue that Polyphemus is better, whatever integrated than Odysseus is, or if he's just again like the funhouse mirror or the sort of maximalization and externalization of Odysseus own conflict. 47:58 Wes: I think what you're pointing to is that there might be an element of envy here. Or maybe that's not your point, but I'm sure. 48:04 Erin: No, I think that's right. 48:05 Wes: But this is what you're making me think. Yeah, because he civilization is a double edged sword and you could look on the primitive as something horrifying in its simplicity and lack of proper customs, but you might also envy that simplicity and straightforwardness. Odysseus needs ships. Ships are going to disappoint him an awful lot in this story. He needs his craftiness, he needs his deception. All of those things are wonderful talents in a way and as warlike abilities, but they're also a burden and lead to a lot of complications and, and tragedy. So civilization comes with a lot of problems. So you could take a sort of noble savage line on the Cyclopes. Is that how we're pronouncing it? And then you could say there's the possibility that Odysseus actually envies that. And so that's why he in a way wants to destroy it. And you know, when he goes out to the cave, when he has a chance to with his men to escape and steal and, and escape, he's sticking around. He wants this conflict. 49:11 Erin: Odysseus is O at the beginning of his name. Hold on, let me look this up. Okay, so Polytropos, as we talked about, is his epithet. I was just wondering about Polyphemus. So it looks like it means many voiced. This is according to Wikipedia, so take that for what it's worth. But his name means abounding in songs and legend. Many voiced or very famous. All three of which could apply to Odysseus. Right? 49:37 Wes: Again, that's another. If there's an element of the legendary. Right. And you don't even, you don't have to know who Polyphemus is to know that. Right. We are in the realm of the fairy tale and the legend and that's inherently threatening to someone like Odysseus. Odysseus is, you know, he's the story, he's the protagonist, he's the hero. And if he finds himself in a story, land in something that's very obviously a the realm of fairy tales with creatures and monsters and all that, then he's no longer the main attraction. I don't know. Am I making sense here? 50:11 Erin: Sure, yeah. 50:13 Wes: So that in and of itself he's trying to prove his right. The way this ends, he has to tell Polyphemus his name and say, hey, I'm really, really famous. Completely unnecessary. And this is after having the discipline to trick him, right, by telling Polyphemus that his name is no man. 50:31 Erin: Right. Which kept autocorrecting to Norman for me, which I really loved. 50:37 Wes: Have you ever heard of the no man conquest, Polyphemus? And it's kind of a dumb thing where the trick is that it's pretty contrived when Polyphemus is calling for help and the other Cyclopes come and he says, no man is killing me by tricks, not force. So they leave. Oh, you're crazy. You're obviously alone. I don't know what your problem is. I think a lot, right. I'm sure there's a lot made in the literature. The significance of Odysseus in that moment, attributing to himself a non identity. I am no one. But it's just as significant that he will not be able to resist yelling from the boat, hey, you know, my name is Odysseus. Here's my address if you ever want to come find me, you know, Right. Which is what Polyphemus immediately does by praying to Poseidon. So. So a lot of the story to follow, a lot of what is delaying Odysseus from getting home is completely self inflicted because he needs to be talking about how famous he is at all times. Right. He's doing that with the Phaeacians he engineered. You know, he set things up so he could do that and he even needed to do it while. It's like being in a car chase, right, In a movie and you know, having a megaphone and yelling over your shoulder about your exploits as you're running away. 51:59 Erin: Well, on that subject, not the, not the car chase, but the self thwarting element. I see a kind of logic in the subsequent episodes, like in the movement that happens from one episode to the next from Cyclops on. But I'm wondering if we can say that there's anything like a learning experience, you know, or anything like internal progress that happens for Odysseus. I think that's the case when he goes to Hades, but prior to that I'm not sure. So his desire for fame and attention and recognition seems to kind of catch up to him in the Aeolian winds story. Right. Like he goes to this island of Aeolus, which is like an extremely self sufficient land. To the extent that he's conveniently. That this king has conveniently had 12 children that are six boys and six girls who could all marry each other, which is. The birth defects that might result from this are another story. 52:57 Wes: The problem with family planning is ensuring that you balance the female male in the right way so they can marry each other. 53:06 Erin: Yeah, God forbid you have an uneven number. 53:08 Wes: I actually had that thought when I was a kid because I had a sister who was near my age. I had this idea that little kids were born in male female pairs and then would were destined to get married when I was very young. There's a bit of like in that idea. It's kind of evocative of childhood, naive childhood theories of sexuality. Right. 53:29 Erin: So Aeolus gives Odysseus the bag of winds. And then because of the fact that Odysseus keeps going and getting all of these gifts from people, it incites his men's jealousy, right? So because he has this compulsive need to continually accrue attention, and via this attention some kind of wealth or recognition that comes from being a guest, it's incurring the resentment of his men and then they're blown back to Aeolus Island. But then Aeolus has done some work on himself and realizes that he can't fool me once. Shame on you. But anyway, that he's not going to 54:08 Wes: extend himself twice his men for it to Aeolus. And Aeolus is like, no, get out, nasty creature. You're hated by the gods. 54:15 Erin: Right. 54:15 Wes: Which is not. And it's true in a way, but not true. You know, Poseidon hates him, but Athena is pretty fond of him. But this whole idea of who's to blame, you know, that's the way the whole thing starts with that he couldn't save his men and yet they were the ones, they were the foolish ones who caused all the problems. 54:31 Erin: Yes. 54:31 Wes: So who's to blame here? Was he supposed to keep them in control? Right. In a way they're representative of the impulses. As a man of intelligence like Odysseus supposed to be able to keep these more impulsive people in line, or is he in a sense blameless? 54:50 Erin: Yeah, he's not a great manager. 54:52 Wes: And then they end up with the Laestrygonians. And at that point it's like, well, didn't we already have the giant story. We need a second one with giants. 54:59 Erin: Yeah. But now there's a giant girl who starts the whole thing. And this is where I'm like, you know, this is interesting is the way Wilson puts it. 55:07 Wes: When they meet the. 55:08 Erin: Right. Yeah. And then the mountain high woman, 55:14 Wes: the baby is 7ft tall. And they don't seem to realize that they're among giants until they get all the way into town. 55:23 Erin: But with the Laestrygonians, there's also this. I don't know that I could say that there's a clear logic here, or at least I haven't sat down and charted out some sort of grand unifying theory of all of this. But we have the Cyclops, as you said, who's a giant, and then we have the Laestrygonians, who are giants again. In the meantime, we have this sort of self sustained kingdom with these clear boundaries and with this self sustaining line of descent through the family. And there's something of that in Polyphemus people as well, where they're not going outside of their own bounds, they're keeping to themselves. And then with the Laestrygonians, there's something of that as well. It sort of marries the previous two maybe. Right. So the idea of cannibalism is sort of reflecting whatever is going on with the six boys and six girls in Aeolus's family. It's like Polyphemus plus Aeolus equals the Laestrygonians, perhaps in a super simplistic way. But I wonder what that just again, like, what that reveals about Odysseus, if this represents some kind of progress. Obviously it doesn't. Right. Because these are his. He's being waylaid repeatedly. But if it represents some kind of interior progress on his part, is the point that he makes ultimately no interior progress because he was already, you know, he is what he is and he's telling the story. So he's already like, we're already getting the Odysseus that is the result of these experiences anyway, overlaid over these earlier stories. So the extent to which, as you said, we can even trust what he's telling or whether or not he's putting a spin on everything, you know, means that at the very least the version, the earlier version of him that we're getting through these stories might be heavily influenced by the way present day Odysseus wants to spin it. There are several versions of him and you know, in fact, we might even say that he's like. By repeatedly telling these stories he's whatever. He's self cannibalizing. Right. 57:15 Wes: They're not flattering to. I mean, in some ways they are. From our perspective, it doesn't seem like such a flattering. 57:21 Erin: You know, perhaps I'm asking the wrong question. You know, perhaps what's interesting about these episodes is not about the progress he's making, but about what the episodes reveal about Odysseus or how they reflect him. And maybe the Laestrygonians are again, like. I mean, obviously each one is telling something interesting or several interesting things about Odysseus storytelling and what he's choosing to highlight or not highlight. But just as I was talking, it occurred to me that the Laestrygonian's cannibalism reflects something about storytelling, like the action of storytelling and the action of having to repeatedly tell his story and chew on his past experiences or whatever that Odysseus repeatedly engages in. 58:01 Wes: Yeah, that's interesting. As you were talking about this, I was thinking about the very beginning of the poem. Tell me about a complicated man and where he went and who he meant. And in other translations, this makes it sound like more literal translations. It's. You get the sense that what this is about is someone who is going to come into contact with all different types of societies with different types of mores and maybe even religious outlooks and ways of doing things and potentially technologies and. Right. So it's like being an explorer, an adventurer, and what we get is again, the fairy tale version. I mean, we do get. We get some things that seem more realistic. Right. Like the Phaeacians, but of course, they turn out to have like these Tesla boats that just. Just read your mind and drive themselves. Right. They're not a real society. None of this is real. This is not an anthropological expedition or an exploratory expedition. Odysseus is traversing the realm of fantasy. Yeah. I don't think we see a character arc for Odysseus until he comes home. Right. In which he has to cope with what a homecoming is and what it means reuniting with a woman that he hasn't seen in 20 years and a son that he essentially abandoned and all of that stuff. So. And he's gotta be a different. You know, he's going to, as we will see, put on the Athena is gonna help him, but put on the costume of a beggar and be an entirely different person, but also, in a way, humble himself before he takes horrific revenge until there's the bloodbath at the end. All right, so Maybe there is no character arc, but we'll see. We'll see if there's some arc there. But yeah, in these particular episodes, it's more episodic than sure. 59:55 Erin: But you don't think there's anything that happens slightly, like, even on the level of what we were talking about with the pity that Calypso. Right. That Calypso suddenly feels for Odysseus? Something like that. Like, I want to say that when he goes down to Hades, there's some. Something is awakened. Not that we see a sort of progress that develops from that. Right. But that we might, if only see an additional facet to the sides of Odysseus that we were already familiar with, that maybe an additional facet or something might open up in one of those episodes. I don't know. 1:00:27 Wes: Well, let's go to Hades. Well, first, do we want to say anything about Circe first? 1:00:32 Erin: Yeah, yeah, just about. Again, you know, I do agree it's episodic, but insofar as Circe is like. Because she's a witch, you know, we have these giants. There's something giant about Circe, I suppose, on the inside. Almost like in Hindu stories in which Krishna opens his mouth and the whole universe is inside. She's something like that. Where he goes from the Laestrygonians to Circe, who can make anything happen, or who is giant in her own witchy way. Otherwise I don't have anything to say about that. And then she makes making the men into pigs also kind of rhymes or chimes, whatever, with a parallel maybe between Polyphemus and his sheep, goats, and now Odysseus. Men are literally pigs, or some of them are anyway. Eurylochus is an interesting character, which we probably won't have time to go into, but his incredulity at every single thing that Odysseus does is really, really classic Eurylochus, I guess. 1:01:29 Wes: Yeah. I mean, he's the unlucky guy who sent with 22 others, I think. Right. To go explore the house with the smoke coming from it. 1:01:39 Erin: And the only guy with a brain 1:01:40 Wes: had enough of bad experiences that why do it? 1:01:44 Erin: Yeah. And he's the only guy with a brain, like, poor guy. And then in the end, he's punished for being the only one who. 1:01:50 Wes: Well, he does advocate for eating the cattle. Right. He's the principal. 1:01:56 Erin: He's been right every time until the last time when it really counts, you know, just so unlike. 1:02:02 Wes: Then they get to the house and they meet all these drugged out wolves and lions that's already a bad sign. The most interesting thing about the episode. And of course, Hermes meets Odysseus, gives him an antidote so that he's not going to get turned into a pig as well. And there's a whole plan set where he's got to grab her after she tries to use her wand on him and they've got to have sex and he's got to make her swear an oath and all this stuff so they can make things right. And then. But I think the most interesting thing is that she'll say when he tricks her like that and beats her at her own game, I guess she'll say, you're different. Basically says, you're different. You must be Odysseus who can adapt to anything. And later on she'll say, you always find solutions, Odysseus. And then they end up at her house for a year, feasting every day, which is quite something, which speaks to the ambivalence about actually going home. 1:03:02 Erin: What a fantasy this is. Like, they sleep together. And then Circe's like, you're not like the other girls, are you? You're different. 1:03:12 Wes: So, yeah. And really he's just getting help from the gods. 1:03:14 Erin: But anyway, he keeps getting so many God makeovers that by the end it's like, what is he? Well, I guess they're balanced out by the makeunders, but. 1:03:24 Wes: So then the next step is this weird thing where he has to go. It's his men who say, it's time to think of your own country after a year of feasting. And Odysseus says, my warrior soul. Agreed. Interesting way to put it. And then Circe says, yeah, sure, you can go, but you just have to go to Hades and ask Tiresias for advice on how to get home. Which is weird, because when he gets back to her, she gives him exactly the same advice, as I pointed out before. But, yeah, let's talk a little bit about Hades. Why don't we do that? And then after that, we'll finish up in Postscript about the rest of the adventures. 1:04:03 Erin: You know, another interesting thing about the Circe episode is we get this anecdote with Elpenor, who we're told is not very brave in war nor very smart, which is okay. 1:04:19 Wes: They run to the litter, right? 1:04:21 Erin: And this will be borne out in practice, I suppose. He was lying high up in the home of Circe, apart from his companions, seeking coolness. Since he was drunk, he heard the noise and bustle. This is downstairs. The movements of his friends and jumped up quickly forgetting to climb down the lofty ladder. He fell down crashing headlong from the roof and broke his neck right at the spine. His spirit went down to Hades. So I love this, this little episode because, you know, perhaps because in death, Elpenor finally gets to be first in something which is he's the first one to go down to Hades. He gets there before everybody else. But it's such an odd moment with which to end the Circe episode before they then go down to Hades both 1:05:02 Wes: because I mean, it does just gratuitously set up them. Odysseus getting to see Elpenor in Hades. 1:05:09 Erin: Right, right. Perhaps for dramatic effect. He could have died earlier and then when we were reunited, it would be more surprising. No, but in the way that it points towards Hades immediately. It's. 1:05:23 Wes: You can go the easy way or the hard way. 1:05:26 Erin: Right, right. That Elpenor, you know, I don't know, like smooths the path for them or something. I mean, it does turn out to be relatively easy for them to get to Hades, all things considered. That. Yeah, that he breaks the ice or he breaks the surface tension on the underworld and then they can kind of drop in after him. I don't know. But anyway, I find it Curious moment. 1:05:45 Wes: Well, yeah, it highlights the fact that it's. When most of us go to Hades, it's because of an accident or. No, it's because for circumstances beyond our control, aging or war or accident. Right. So we don't. Stupidity, being drunk, it's not a decision, it's not a journey, it's not an intention. Maybe sometimes it's a suicidal intention, but you know what I mean, if there's an afterlife of some sort. So the idea of. I think it is, now that you point this out, it is an interesting contrast between ordinary death and this type of journey to the underworld that Odysseus is about to take to the world of the dying. 1:06:29 Erin: Well, and it's also. They go to the underworld and they see many men who died glorious deaths, you know, this episode, because it's kind of embarrassing. It's like, you know, an embarrassing way to die is a sort of inglorious death. Though he does, you know, as I say, precede them to Hades. So he comes first in something. But another thing that occurs to me, the fact that he's seeking coolness because he's drunk is another kind of beautiful little detail because then he'll end up being cold as a dead body. Right. So there's something, I don't know how to put it, but there's something predictive or self fulfilling or predetermined, maybe even about this accidental. Enjoy. 1:07:16 Wes: The most surprising thing about this is that no one has yet died an accidental death from drunkenness. 1:07:24 Erin: That's true. 1:07:25 Wes: They're doing a lot of drinking and driving, essentially. I mean, you don't just launch the ship, you immediately break the wine out once the ship gets going. All right, so let's do Hades. And then so that we're gonna do book 11 and book 12 and postscript, we talked a little bit about, we've referred quite a bit to book 12 and those adventures, including the Sirens and the Sun God. But yeah, there's some good stuff in Hades to get at. 1:07:53 Erin: Great. All right, thank you, thank you. 1:07:57 Wes: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com airwavemedia.com.