The True Story Of The Odyssey (and why it matters) - Alex Petkas - #1125
7/18/20262 hr 21 min
Alex Petkas is a historian, writer, and podcaster.
What’s the real story behind The Odyssey? As the ancient epic returns to the big screen, a historian reveals the original tale, the world that shaped it, and the timeless lessons hidden within it.
Expect to learn why The Odyssey is such an important story, what type of person and writer Homer was, who the important women of The Odyssey were and which ones were benevolent, heroic, or dangerous, why revenge and justice are the key underlying themes in the story, what a real historian thinks of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey and much more...
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Why The Odyssey Still Matters Today (06:19) What Happens in The Odyssey? (09:41) Did Homer Write The Iliad First? (15:20) How Much of The Odyssey Is Just Retelling? (16:31) Why Is Penelope the Ultimate Prize? (21:43) Telemachus’ Quest to Live Up to His Father (36:19) How Order Can Slip into Anarchy (37:21) Why Odysseus Walked Away From a Goddess (54:13) The Power of Cunning (01:01:09) How Odysseus Outsmarted the Cyclops (01:07:35) The One Mistake That Cursed Odysseus (01:09:23) Is Family the True Heart of The Odyssey? (01:24:57) How Odysseus Finally Returns Home (01:27:48) The Reunion of Odysseus and Telemachus (01:29:57) The Fall of the Suitors (01:42:12) Is Penelope the Real Hero of the Story? (01:46:25) Why Divine Favour Changes Everything (01:49:02) The Hidden Role of Oral Storytelling (01:53:24) Why Nolan’s Films Divide Audiences (01:57:52) Is Emily Wilson’s Translation Accurate? (02:01:26) Has the Classic Hero Disappeared? (02:11:09) Why We Need to Beware Modern Sirens (02:19:48) Where to Find Alex
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsChris Williamson· Host0:00
Why is The Odyssey such an important story?
Alex Petkas· Guest0:02
Well, it's a story that has affected a lot of people, I think because it has all of these really universal themes and problems that it, that it relates to. I mean, any good literature does that, but maybe The Odyssey in particular. I mean, Chris Nolan talks about it as this sort of archetypal story that is somehow in all of the movies that he's done. You know, there's, there's the theme of, uh, returning to your home, uh, sacrificing on behalf of the community. Um, uh, one of the things that I think is really timely about The Odyssey, and I don't really know how much, uh, the movie's gonna get into this, but it's kind of a story about the collapse of the patriarchy and how it gets restored, uh, what it, what it takes to restore that, um, which, you know, maybe is, is, is timely for our day.
Chris Williamson· Host0:54
Mm. Who wrote it?
Alex Petkas· Guest0:57
So Homer is, is the short answer. Who's Homer? Homer, Homer is the author, according to the Greeks, of The Iliad and The Odyssey, these two poems that, um, you know, modern scholars will kind of quibble about was, was it one guy? Was it two guys? Was it a whole kind of crowd of men working or, you know, people working in this tradition? Um, and, and we can get into that a little bit, but essentially Homer is the attributed