Behind Every ‘Great’ Man… Metis, Thetis, and the Power of Prophecy
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Now Zeus, king of the gods, made Metis his first wife, and she was wisest among gods and mortal men. But when she was about to bring forth the goddess, bright-eyed Athena, Zeus craftily deceived her with cunning words and put her in his own belly, as earth and starry heaven advised. For

for they advised him so to the end that no other should hold royal sway over the eternal gods in place of zeus for very wise children were destined to be born of her first the maiden bright-eyed tritoghenia equal to her father in strength and in wise understanding but afterwards she was to bear a son of overbearing spirit king of gods and men

But Zeus put her into his belly first, that the goddess might devise for him both good and evil.

Next he married bright Themis, who bore the Horai, the seasons, Eunomia, order, Dike, justice, and blooming Arini, peace, who mined the works of mortal men and the Moirai, fates, to whom wise Zeus gave the greatest honor, Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos, who gave mortal men evil and good to have.

And Eurynyme, the daughter of Ocean, beautiful in form, bore him three fair-cheeked charities, the Graces, Aglaya, Nephrosyne, and lovely Thalia, from whose eyes, as they glanced, flowed love that unnerves the limbs, and beautiful is their glance beneath their brows.

Also he came to the bed of all-nourishing Demeter, and she bore white-armed Persephone, whom Idoneus carried off from her mother, but wise Zeus gave her to him.

And again he loved Mnemosyne with the beautiful hair, and of her the nine gold-crowned muses were born, who delight in feasts and the pleasure of song. And Leto was joined in love with Zeus, who holds the aegis, and bore Apollo and Artemis, delighting in arrows, children lovely above all the suns of heaven.

Lastly, he made Hera his blooming wife, and she was joined in love with the king of gods and men, and brought forth Hebe and Ares and Aletheia.

Hi, hello, and welcome to Let's Talk About Myths, baby! I'm your host, Liv, she who loves the ancient world maybe a little too much. Okay, so last week I attempted an introductory episode, a kind of return to the beginning, an explanation of where the myths come from and why, but I made the mistake of not scripting myself, which means I can speak for 45 minutes and not actually get to all the points I planned.

Because it turns out when you spend eight years studying myths with the depth that I do, when you've released going on 700 episodes during that time, when you end up with an absolute fuckton of knowledge, it just desperately needs somewhere to go. But today we've got a bit more direction. I was a bit inspired, too, by a recent comment I got from a listener who just missed me telling the myths like I used to.

Now, I mean, that's hard for me because, again, like it's just been eight years and that means I've grown in that time, both in my writing style and humanity and, you know, things have naturally shifted. I never made any kind of conscious decision to change the way I tell the stories, just kind of a natural progression. But I do understand the desire to return to some of the more traditional stories. And what is more traditional, let alone relevant, right?

Today, then, a story of Zeus using sexual assault as a means of subjugating a more powerful woman. That's right, we're going all the way back to episode 3 of this podcast. Revisiting a bit of 2017 in more ways than one. Today, I'm telling you the stories of Metis and Thetis and how they threatened the supremacy of the all-powerful king of the gods.

Content warning for sexual assault by gods, as you've already guessed, but there won't be any graphic details, only the breaking down of what it means to feature divine assault. Spoiler, it's more likely to result in righteous anger in your part than a traumatic response. Behind every great man, metis thetis, and the power of prophecy. The whole of Greek mythology is utterly riddled with sexual assault.

Often, in broad retellings of myth, this gets justified in seemingly endless ways. You've heard me rant on. Either it's completely ignored and the victims of the gods are presented as just these consensual romances, or it's explained away by suggesting that because the ancient Greeks didn't conceptualize sexual assault as we do now, that means it simply wasn't.

Or worse, it's presented as just a piece of a larger story, a separate anecdote, a little plot device with little meaning other than to facilitate another piece of the story. As if real ancient women weren't taking these stories in.

Even I, in the long arc that is this podcast, have gone through my own journey in terms of how I interpret these assaults. They were always egregious, but I didn't always see what was hidden underneath. A kind of simmering legacy of the women who came before. But what if we looked at these stories of divine assault as exactly that? As an assault that is absolutely an assault, but which ultimately means so, so much more for the myth and the ancient Greek world as a whole.

I'm speaking like this is the first time I'm going to dig into the gods raping women. Somehow it kind of feels like that, since I'm so intentionally bringing us back to just the beginning of it all. The third episode of this podcast and the many, many women whose sexual assaults by Zeus laid the groundwork for the entirety of not only Greek myth, but Western patriarchal culture as we know it. But I promise I'm also going to tell you the myths.

So this is how I originally told Matis' story back in July of 2017, the earliest days of this podcast. Matis was a titan, or titaness if you want to get gendered with your nouns, which I don't. Chronologically, it's unclear when this went down, given Zeus ultimately locks the titans up, but regardless, Matis is a titan. She's wise and she's cunning and she's got some trickster qualities as well.

Zeus, as king of the gods and giant slut, has sex with Metis, and apparently he immediately fears the consequences. As with most men, he does not seem to have considered the consequences beforehand because there was an offer of sex. So he has sex with Metis and he fears the consequences because it's foretold that she will bear him children, one of which will be more powerful than him. And he is, after all, the son of Kronos, who was the son of Uranus, and we all remember how that went down.

So, of course, Zeus does what any rational person would do after they choose to have sex with someone and then regret it because they would have a child that overthrows them. He eats Metis.

But alas, it is too late, and Metis is already pregnant. Because Zeus has rocket sperm, apparently. And this is Greek mythology, so eating her does little to stem the pregnancy from developing further. Instead, Metis immediately begins constructing a helmet and robe for her fetal daughter. This is all from within Zeus, mind you. That's right, Metis is alive and functioning within Zeus. Because mythology. It's great.

So here she is just hammering away at this helmet using some sort of internal forge and poor Zeus is really suffering from all the noise. He's got a tough life, you know? So he develops an awful headache, the poor guy. And his solution is to have Hephaestus, the god of the standard external forge, cleave at Zeus's head with an axe.

You know, as we all do to save ourselves from a migraine. In fact, I'm feeling one coming on now. I wonder where my hatchet is. So Hephaestus cracks open Zeus's head and bam! Out pops Athena. She's born a fully grown adult. She's fully clothed in a helmet and the robe that her mother made for her. And she's armed with a shield and weapons. And she utters a deafening war cry as she springs from the crack in Zeus's head.

Athena is badass from day one. The annoying thing about this story, though, is that the mythology at large takes this to mean that Zeus conceived Athena himself, which is obviously bullshit because patriarchy. So there are so many references to Athena being basically a pseudo like virgin birth, like Zeus is the new Virgin Mary. Sure. But fuck.

Fuck that because Metis was her mom and it only makes sense frankly because Athena is the goddess of wisdom and Metis was also all about wisdom and the word Metis even means wisdom in ancient Greek. So fuck the idea that Zeus had her all on his own. We know it doesn't work that way.

That clip, eight years ago live, on episode three of the show, is honestly still the perfect way to examine how this story shifts when the thousands of years of context get brought into the mix. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So the passage I read at the top of this episode was from Hesiod's Theogony. It's Zeus and the many women that he quote-unquote married leading up to Hera, and is the earliest surviving written version of Metis's story.

This is going to be hard because metis and thetis, I'm going to try to emphasize. Metis. This next passage is from Pseudo-Apollodorus. So a very late version of essentially the same moment in mythology.

Zeus had intercourse with Metis, who turned into many shapes in order to avoid his embraces. When she was with child, Zeus, taking time by the forelock, swallowed her, because Earth said that after giving birth to the maiden who was then in her womb, Metis would bear a son who should be the Lord of Heaven.

From fear of that, Zeus swallowed her, and when the time came for the birth to take place, Prometheus, or as others say, Hephaestus, smote the head of Zeus with an axe, and Athena, fully armed, leaped up from the top of his head at the river Triton.

So many of these moments are shared with Thetis. I can't wait to get into it. So unlike so many stories from Greek myth, Metis' experience with Zeus doesn't change that much over the centuries in between the versions.

That's in large part because hers wasn't a story of heroes and monsters, but a simple explanation. Where the goddess Athena came from, and how Zeus became a god of wisdom in any way and maintained his hold over the Olympians.

In the earliest days of divinity, when Zeus and the Olympians were still in this midst of solidifying their power against the Titan gods who had come before them, Zeus raped Metis, this Titan goddess of wisdom, council. Metis was a second-generation Titan, alongside the Olympian parents, Cronos and Rhea. Now, Hesiod's Theogony describes her as Zeus's first wife. Pseudo-Apollodorus says she was raped by the god.

In a way, both are true. At this point, I think I will spend my entire life looking at the way Hesia describes women and their sexual experiences because it's terrifying.

It's terrible. But for now, we can just say that he never really bothered to consider women as human beings with agency who might not be keen to fuck a god. So instead, when he says that Metis was Zeus's first wife, he's not referring to some officially recognized legal state, but rather a sexual union sanctified in some way to warrant the children that are going to result from it. Because of course, it's Athena that comes from this terribly troubling union with Metis.

Not through a traditional pregnancy and birth, but through still more tragedy for Metis. After Zeus has assaulted Metis, he learns that she's prophesied to eventually give birth to this son that would be more powerful than his father. Having just overthrown his own father, Kronos, who overthrew his father, Uranus,

Zeus isn't keen to have a prophecy like that hovering over his head. But the prophecy also stated that first, before a son, Metis would give birth to the daughter already growing inside her. This is important, because Zeus' solution to this problem is not to stop Metis from having that second child that's prophesied, but to stop her from even giving birth to the daughter.

Because if men have learned anything from spending millennia stamping out the flames of a matriarchy or egalitarianism in general, it's that in order to solidify one's power, you have to make an example. So Zeus eats Metis. Zeus cannot kill a titan goddess like Metis, but he can consume her and her abilities, her strengths, and her status completely.

Zeus consumes wisdom, he consumes good counsel, and he takes control of Metis' pregnancy, making the daughter his alone. This is how Hesiod tells the story of Athena's birth, just a bit later in the Theogony.

But Zeus lay with the fair-cheeked daughter of Ocean and Tethys apart from Hera, deceiving Metis, although she was full wise. But he seized her with his hands and put her in his belly, for fear she might bring forth something stronger than his thunderbolt. Therefore did Zeus, who sits on high and dwells in the ether, swallow her down suddenly.

But she straightway conceived Pallas Athena, and the father of men and gods gave her birth by way of his head on the banks of the river Trito, and she remained hidden beneath the inward parts of Zeus, even Matis, Athena's mother worker of righteousness who was wiser than gods and mortal men.

There, the goddess Athena received that whereby she excelled in strength, all the deathless ones who dwell in Olympus, she who made the host-scaring weapon of Athena. And with it, Zeus gave her birth, arrayed in arms of war. That was a bit messy and fragmentary, but essentially we get this idea that Zeus gave birth to Athena.

I don't even know what to say. Now, later versions of the story say that Matus remained inside Zeus. You know, the tellings get a bit campy with Matus just living inside of Zeus.

Athena coming to term and grew to adulthood all within the king of the gods. And, you know, that's silly and fun. But ultimately, those adjustments to the story serve to sanitize the story even more. Because let's be honest, what's happening here, Zeus is threatened by a woman notably wiser than him who will have children wiser and more powerful than him. So he takes her out. But not only does he take her out of the equation, he quite literally consumes her.

He becomes a god of good counsel. He takes on the intelligence of Metis and presents it as his own. When Athena is birthed, she too becomes Zeus's alone. And that's not even focusing on the fact that in the pseudo-Apollodorus version, she is like fighting him. It's terrible.

Zeus, this king of the gods and supreme ruler, had to consume a woman in order to determine both good and evil. Like as if this wasn't in him to begin with, he needed a woman to make him have, I don't know, a conscience and empathy and the ability to determine anything. And as a result, because Athena becomes this Zeus's daughter alone, her mother just fades into the ether.

Except her mother isn't gone. She's living inside Zeus, ensuring that he can recognize good and evil. But think back to the episodes I did earlier this year, looking closer at the theogony and all the women that it brings to heal generation after generation. Also, I just realized I said earlier this year. It's January 2025. I meant earlier last year.

These stories of Zeus assaulting women, impregnating them with gods and heroes, they're not just icky stories of gods doing terrible things. They're ripples from something much bigger and much more nefarious. They're examples of women who threatened the male power structure or remnants of a time when there was no male power structure. They're the remains of this time when women had more power, more agency, when there was

a slightly more even playing ground. When women were the keepers of history and wisdom, they were the storytellers. Metis Wisdom is a goddess who doesn't get to be the goddess of wisdom any longer than two lines of a poem, because the men took it from her in order to keep it as their own. Metis represented not only female threats to the male power structure, but she was also a kind of test case for the gods.

Zeus had just, and I mean just, seized power from the Titans who came before him, and here's this prophecy that one of them, this woman, could give birth to a god more powerful than him. Ultimately, this prophecy goes far beyond Metis. It's this example of what would be the biggest and most constant threat to the patriarchal structure of not only the Olympian gods, but mortals too.

Women held the power of reproduction. In the ancient world, the womb is the threat to the patriarchy more than anything else.

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I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

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Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And then there is Thetis.

When I first thought of returning to episode three of the podcast and revisiting when I broke down all the horrible stories of Zeus assaulting women for his own power and general creepy nature, I hadn't planned on including Thetis. You know, she wasn't in that original episode and actually isn't assaulted by Zeus at all, or rather not by him directly.

Instead, our girl Thetis is connected to Metis through this prophecy. Another prophecy that spawned another bout of male fear of women capable of more than them. And if you're curious, we will get back to more of the women directly associated with Zeus because they have stories to tell too. But like Metis, Thetis had the potential to take down this patriarchal order and thus she had to be handled by those same Olympian gods.

Thedas is, of course, mother to none other than Achilles, but it's what came before Achilles that concerns us. When we meet Thedas in the Iliad, she's already been brought to heel by the Olympian Order. She has these remnants of power, but ultimately holds no sway aside from being able to call in a favor or two.

But unlike Metis, because Thetis still walks the same earth as the god, these remnants of her power and potential reverberate through the story of Achilles. And again, unlike Metis, the full extent of Thetis' power before the prophecy was used to bring her down isn't at all clear. Like the Iliad is the earliest reference we have to her, and there Homer already seems to know something we don't.

Thetis here is a figure who clearly holds sway, whose presence means something well beyond her just being this mother of Achilles, but there is also this echo of when she held much, much more. Still now, she is this guiding force behind him, seemingly just this enormous part of what makes Achilles so impressive.

But it's not until the poet Pindar writing in the Archaic period where we get a sense of what it meant to have Thetis as your mother. So this source comes after the Iliad, but based on how Thetis is treated and spoken of in the Iliad, it's pretty likely that this background story, or at least some part of it, existed before the Iliad ever brought Thetis and Achilles into our modern tradition. This is how the poet Pindar tells her story. Quote,

when zeus and splendid poseidon contended for marriage with thetis each of them wanting her to be his lovely bride for desire possessed them but the immortal minds of the gods did not accomplish that marriage for them when they heard the divine prophecies

Wise Themis spoke in their midst and said it was fated that the sea goddess should bear a princely son stronger than his father, who would wield another weapon in his hand more powerful than the thunderbolt or the irresistible trident if she lay with Zeus or one of his brothers.

no cease from this let her accept a mortal's bed and see her son die in battle a son who is like ares in the strength of his hands and like lightning in the swift prime of his feet

My counsel is to bestow this god-granted honor of marriage on Peleus, son of Iacus, who is said to be the most pious man living on the plain of Eolkus. Let the message be sent at once to Chiron's immortal cave, right away, and let the daughter of Nereus never again place the leaves of strife in our hands. On the evening of the full moon, let her loosen the lovely bridal of her virginity for that hero."

Now, I know I said that this episode wouldn't have any kind of graphic telling of divine assault, but I hadn't quite realized how dark Thetis' story could get. So just be warned, while it's still mythological, there is more to come. Because God, the damage a prophecy can do when it is placed in the hands of a man. Both Thetis and Metis have their fates tied to a prophecy, one that is so similar to the other.

For all we want to imagine Zeus as this eternal king of the gods, as some kind of all-powerful figure all the time, the ancient Greeks did not see him that way. Zeus had seized power like any other tyrant. He'd been born into it, but then took it by force. And though he may be a god, Zeus doesn't have any kind of job security. He's the king of the gods because he took the throne, not because it was inherently his to take.

What doesn't get enough airtime are these attempts on that power, though, either via the coup attempted by the other Olympians or these gods forsaken prophecies. And naturally, Zeus didn't give a shit whose lives he fucked up in an attempt to hold on to his power.

It's not lost on me that I'm speaking of holding on to political power at the cost of others. What would it be like if politics were actually about helping people, making their lives better and easier and kinder, rather than power and influence and money and the endlessly destructive strength of patriarchal capitalism? The moment Zeus learns of the prophecy, you know, that Thetis would give birth to a son more powerful than his father, more powerful again than the Thunderbolt, or who could wield a weapon more powerful than the Thunderbolt,

He not only wants nothing more to do with her, but he also can't let this woman just, like, exist with the potential to overthrow him or give birth to a child who could. Instead, with the help of Poseidon, who also wanted to marry Thetis before this reveal of the prophecy, they set out to absolutely ruin this woman's life. And that's putting it mildly.

I've been reading an article by past guest of the show, Maciej Pryprowski, about this part of Thedas' life and story. And I think I could reasonably dedicate multiple episodes to his article alone. So instead, I will just preface that much of what I'm about to say, though not taken from his article because I had to finish writing this before I could read all of it beyond the introduction anyway, but was inspired by the introduction.

I was also inspired by, well, just like just how incredibly fucked up the so-called marriage of Thetis and Peleus is. On the surface, Zeus's decision seems on par with the rest of his poor decisions. He doesn't want Thetis ending up with an immortal and giving birth to a supremely powerful god. So he decides to give her away to a mortal hero, Peleus. And even if she'd gone willingly, that would be bad enough.

But instead, in nearly all descriptions of their so-called wedding, we're told of just how hard Thetis fought. This is how the late source, Pseudo-Apollodorus, tells it. Quote, Next, he, Peleus, married Nereus's daughter Thetis, over whom Zeus and Poseidon had been rivals. But when Themis had predicted that the son of Thetis would be stronger than his father, they bowed out.

Some say that when Zeus was eager to have sex with Thetis, Prometheus told him that his son, by her, would take over the dominion of the sky. Others say that Thetis was unwilling to have sex with Zeus because she had been reared by Hera, and that Zeus, in fury, wanted to marry her off to a mortal.

At any rate, Chiron warned Peleus to grab Thetis and hold on while she changed her form. So he watched for his chance and carried her off. And although she changed into fire and then water and then a wild animal, he did not release her until he saw that she had returned to her original shape. They were married on Peleon and the gods celebrated the marriage with hymns and a banquet.

I'm not sure I'll get over this. The connection between Matus and Thetis and how they both changed their shape into everything imaginable in an attempt to get away. And the fact that Peleus and Thetis' wedding becomes one of the most famous. And that strife ends up... We have more to say. We have more to say. But today we're talking about Thetis. So that...

was Thetis' punishment for simply just being the bearer of a theoretical, like a prophesied son. Because as we learn with the story of Metis, let alone that of Zeus himself, the sons are always the biggest threats to their father's power. But naturally, it's the women who are affected by that threat. It's the women who are punished because they have the potential to bear sons who might defeat their fathers.

Thedas is a bit of a mystery for endless reasons. Unlike so many other women of myth, the pieces of her story that we know are missing likely tell us even more about her potential. Like about what made this particular goddess so special that she had to be handled in such a way. Because of what survives too, we can be certain that Thedas is a woman of myth.

That she was powerful in a way that we do not yet fully understand. That there was some background, some history that made Thedas a bigger threat than almost anyone else. Again, I'm thinking back to my recent revisit of Hesiod's Theogony and the way that we can see this slow breakdown of female power over the generations of the gods.

Thetis is an ancient goddess on the same level as Metis in terms of primordial power. Both women were generationally more powerful than Zeus and the Olympians, and both women promised threats to that newly established patriarchal order. Metis, though, was a goddess who Zeus could bring to heel by himself. All he had to do was devour her like his father had devoured his siblings.

Not only did he get the threat of prophecy out of the way, but he consumed the Titan goddess of wisdom, thereby taking all of that wisdom, all of that good counsel, for himself. But Thetis, though the reasons don't necessarily survive, we know that she was too much for him. He couldn't do to Thetis what he had done to Metis. She needed to be brought down to the level of mortals in order for her to be sufficiently weakened.

Here's another passage that tells of their so-called marriage, their wedding. This is also from Pindar. Quote,

His nereid bride he won from her high seat, and saw round him enthroned the gods of sky and sea proffer their gifts, foretelling the kingdom he and his race should rule. It's like the establishment of a patriarchy. The translator here explains that the, quote, "...devouring flames and the sharp claws of fearless lions and tearing teeth safely endured..."

That refers to just how only Thetis's ability to transform into various shapes in her attempts to escape Peleus's assault. That explanation, it seems a bit simplistic to me. The experience is obviously traumatic. It's horrifying. She fights with all she has and what she has is a lot. And it's so similar to Meta's.

But this is a patriarchal story at its core, one meant to solidify Zeus' status as supreme ruler and to lay the groundwork for the famed hero that is Achilles. So we call it a wedding! It's just a wedding. We call it a wedding when this woman fights for her life against the man that other men, men less ancient than her, less powerful, have assigned to her as a so-called groom.

This won't be the last time we talk about Thedas. Every time I learn more about her, I'm a little bit more consumed. This article that I got stuck on the introduction of because I had to write this script goes on to really, really examine what those transformative assaults did to her. And I can't wait to read more and hopefully get a repeat guest conversation or at least an episode out of it.

Just every time I learn something more about Thedas, I'm a little bit more just utterly consumed. Did I already say that part? I'm trying to go back to my script after getting off of it. We're finishing up with, okay, this is a quote from this article by Maciej Popowski. Though, as you'll hear, he's referencing the work of Laura Slatkin alongside his own, who is another big name in Thedas. Quote,

In her seminal work, The Power of Thetis, Loras Lackin demonstrates that the Iliad presents Thetis as a formerly powerful, yet ultimately marginalized deity. The mistress of cords and binding, Thetis could avert destruction, or bring it on. Once, she played an active role in divine affairs, having rescued Hephaestus and Dionysus, and freed Zeus from bonds put on him by rebellious Olympians.

Curiously, in the time frame of the Iliad, Thetis appears mostly passive. She inexplicably knows much about future and past happenings. She carries enormous clout, and she indirectly influences the war. But she exercises her power indirectly, only through calling in favors owed from Zeus and Hephaestus.

Slatkin noted that Thetis still blames Zeus for her arranged marriage, yet she never directly opposes him, as if some unseen factor forestalled her wrath. End quote. Nerds. Thank you for listening as always.

I'm really excited to be getting back into the nitty gritty of this podcast. This is the first script I have written in I don't even want to guess how long. Stuff to get back into writing 5,000 words a week. But really, I'm so pumped. I'm so excited to be recording new episodes and conversations and finally diving deep into the Patreon, our new Oracle edition, just so much more. Now in my personal life, things have been really looking up for like the first time in a while.

That's been nice. But of course, alongside that, the world is on fire, both literally and figuratively. And I've been struggling with what to comment on and how. And I'm thinking of everyone affected by the fires in L.A., not the billionaires, though. I actually wish the fire would eat them before anyone else. I'm fully Syria. You know, there's a billionaire couple in L.A. who use like 60 percent of the water of like the whole country.

Yeah, anyway, eat the rich. But the rest of you, I mean, honestly, I hope alongside all of the heartbreak and the sadness, we can all reach this point where we accept... where we just don't accept this any longer. Where...

We no longer allow the billionaire class to own the water supply, to continue to fuel climate change with their wealth simply because they can afford private firefighters so they don't care. Where we realize that this is not a world built on fairness. It's not one built on hard work and grit. Capitalism is not an even playing field. Maybe it was originally, but it isn't any longer. And the more we ignore that fact, the worse it's going to get.

Israel's genocide of Palestine, Gaza specifically, has been the single biggest contributor to climate change in the last I don't even know how long. Their bombing of children and refugee camps and hospitals and every other piece of civilian infrastructure has produced more carbon in the last year than we can possibly imagine. There are numbers. I'm not going back to find them, but gods, they're fucked up.

They've dropped more tons of bombs on kids in Palestine than the number of bombs dropped during, or rather the tonnage, I believe, the tonnage of bombs dropped during the entirety of World War II. In one year on one tiny strip of land that they're trying to convince us they're not committing genocide in, they've dropped more bombs than World War II. The governments in the West still want us to believe that this is a war and not a full-blown extermination.

The fires in California are inextricably tied with the genocide in Gaza. And we can't ignore that. Like add to that that the 30 percent, 30 percent of California's firefighters are prisoners working as slaves. 30 percent of California firefighters are prison slaves. And you they can't even if they fight in all of the wildfires, they cannot work as firefighters when they get out of prison.

capitalism is a disease that's going to kill everyone except the billionaires if we let it. It's also not lost on me that I started this podcast right at the beginning of the first Trump presidency. The show's first years, its aim and its eventual purpose, honestly, was formed by those years. This next one seems ready to be so much worse.

So for all I think that Democrats are worthless genocide heirs who only campaign on being non-Republican warmongers versus like real forces for real change and equality. Maybe if they just tried that a tiny bit, they'd win. Even though I think that I still recognize that Trump will do a whole other type of damage. And while I don't like to pick which war criminal is worse, I do recognize just how fucking terrifying he is.

And that this is so fucking real for an enormous amount of the American population and beyond, because apparently I live in the 51st state. I am thinking of all of you too, even as Canada seems poised for the same. None of us are free until all of us are free.

Next week, Zeus's abductions and assaults of Europa and Semele, and how they too tie into the long arc of destructive patriarchal power structures. Because if we're going to take it down from the inside, it's best to understand how we got here.

Let's Talk About Myths, baby, is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pengawish is the Hermes to my Olympians, my incredible producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. Listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find ad-free episodes.

and so much more via the Oracle edition at patreon.com slash mythsbaby. If you want just ad-free and nothing else, too, a bare-bones Apple subscription is coming. And sign up for the newsletter that's definitely absolutely coming sometime soon, along with which it will have photos of the new merch that's just arrived in my apartment and which awaits this new website that we're also working on. Anyway, sign up to that newspaper newsletter.

Sign up to that newsletter at MythsBaby.com slash newsletter. I am Liv and I love this shit. I also fuck the patriarchy, fuck capitalism, billionaires burn in hell.

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