The Oh So Disjointed Life of Helen of Sparta, and Hekate in the Haida Gwaii (Q&A)
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Hi everyone, it's Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb from the Today Show. No holidays like today, from festive performances and great gift ideas to tips for the perfect holiday feast. Join us every morning on NBC and make today your home for the holidays. Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby. And I am your host, Liv, who is trying to get back into the swing of this after...

Oh, what a wild. It turns out that moving your entire life seven days drive away just really disrupts kind of everything, particularly when you have ADHD. But I am back and also a cold. I missed Friday's episode. I really wanted to continue reading more of these Q&As last week. I mean, I'm back doing it this week, but I really wanted to do it last week.

And I've had a cold that just will not go away. But it is marginally better now, and I no longer sound like I am...

ridiculously stuffed up. So here we are. We are back. I am answering more of your very wonderful questions. I absolutely love these episodes. I love hearing what you guys want to know and just like allowing my brain to wander into the realm of other people's questions. It results in so many interesting moments.

There is almost certainly loads more that I could update about, but I am drawing a blank on everything right now, so we're going to jump straight into your questions. The oh-so-disjointed life of Helen of Sparta and Hecate in the Haida Gwaii. Your questions, my answers. Well, that title gave away the first two questions, but I couldn't resist, so...

The very first question that I am looking at today comes from Sonia, who says, love the show so much. I live on Haida Gwaii in BC and the Hecate Strait is right beside the island. I love knowing her history. Fits the windy strait well.

Adding to your list of Greek mythological names in BC, too. My question, do you have any idea or thoughts on how Zeus is the king of the gods, even though his powers are somewhat limited? Apollo is the god of so many important day-to-day things, it makes me wonder why Zeus does not control more. This is a great question, but first I have to say that I only found out that the strait between Haida Gwaii and the mainland, I assume it's the mainland, but...

regardless the straight by Haida Gwaii is named Hecate I only learned that recently and it was from a TikTok video of like the wildest fairy ride they'd ever seen in that straight and I just thought oh my god like is that not absolutely perfect and

I will tell you that historically it is named for a colonizing ship that was also named for Hecate. The same applies to Thetis, has given her name to a number of places on Vancouver Island, both

a lake and an island. And again, it was like named for a British Navy ship whose name who was named for the Greek goddesses. So we can still appreciate them. But what I will also tell you, and I think I did this with Michaela. Sometimes Michaela and I chat and we try to be reasonable and professional and get through our work or we end up

with me telling her that the Strait by Haida Gwaii is named Hecate and then both of us going onto a map of our own province at the time and basically finding out that there are just so many mythological names in BC. I highly recommend you go look at like

nearby. Like there are literally so many. I mean, there's a Sisyphus mountain that I'm remembering. There's a Tantalus, which I know about because it's got wine named for it. There are really so many like really niche mythological names for the, you know, many of the thousands of mountains in the

the province. Um, but thank you. And that was a good, like goodbye to BC for a little while too. Um, cause spoilers. I moved to Ontario as a province, highly meh compared to BC, but as a city, Toronto wins everything in my mind. Um,

Now to your actual question. So it's absolutely interesting that Zeus is the king of the gods, even though his powers are somewhat limited. And I have answers slash thoughts, but what you've really done is remind me of an episode, or I think it was, ended up being two conversation episodes that I recorded with, and I'm hoping I'm still pronouncing his name correctly, Maciej Proproski. And we had so,

so much fun and I was fucking fascinated by all of the stuff he had to share with me but he really looked at the gods as like these lineages that kind of you know one after the other and how it kind of stops with Zeus in that way where you know it starts with Uranus then Kronos overthrows Uranus and then Zeus overthrows Kronos but Apollo never overthrows Zeus even though like you said like

objectively, you know, we would imagine that his powers are a little broader, a little more like wide ranging than Zeus's are. But I think it just, I mean, there's a lot going on in terms of the development of these deities and their stories, but the God of the sky being the divine God is wide ranging across the Mediterranean and beyond. It's a very common thing.

in ancient mythologies broadly, and I think that's just because of the nature of the sky itself. So while we might consider, you know, Apollo's divine powers to be, you know, less limited, to be, you know, more

bigger, to be more important to us today. But conceptually, the sky surrounds everything. And so as the god of the sky, he was always going to be the king of the gods. That's why Uranus was first and Kronos was next and then Zeus. So I think that that's where that's coming in, where Apollo definitely, you know, I think...

story-wise and based on the sources, like there's definitely this kind of tension that Apollo had the potential to be as big as Zeus, to maybe even be a sky god, and that, you know, it just, it didn't happen in the quote-unquote lifetime of the divinities as we have them. But I do still think it definitely comes down to

The nature of what makes – what is all-encompassing in that realm would be the sky. There is nothing else, right? It's wrapped around the Earth itself. And so he was kind of always going to be the biggest –

even if we today are like, oh, Apollo's the god of like all of these different things and they're so important on the day to day and blah, blah, blah. Like it just still comes down to the general nature of mythology, the time it was developed and the function that it served. But thank you for asking that. Just generally, I would recommend listening to those episodes I did back then. I will try to link to them

um in the episode's description but either way i'm now you make me uh want to reach out to matchy and get in and hopefully you have another episode because it was really good and just like so deep in the mythology thank you sonia and also i mean hi in the haida guai

Next, I have a question from Cole, and they said, I'm thinking about writing a biography of sorts about Helen of Sparta slash Troy. Other than the Iliad, what are good sources for learning about the life of Helen birth to death? Does Helen die? I seem to recall that she's supposed to be immortal along with one of her brothers. Also, what translation of the Iliad do you most recommend?

Okay, first, the easy question. It's been a long time since I read The Iliad. I desperately, desperately want to read Emily Wilson's translation because I just know that I will love it. So I will recommend Emily Wilson's newest translation of The Iliad, even without having read it.

because her translation of the Odyssey was so great. And I know, I mean, I read so much about her mentality at the time. I really need to finally just reach out and try to get her on the show. But I will happily recommend it, even not having read it. As to your earlier questions, no. And by no, I just mean,

Unfortunately, what you want doesn't exist, but that is part of why Helen is so interesting, right? But it's also broadly part of why Greek mythology is so interesting. There are no sources for any character that gives them, you know, a story from birth to death.

That wasn't the function of mythology, and so it just simply doesn't exist. There are... I don't know if there are really even much in the way of text sources that describe Helen's birth. I believe it mostly comes to us in the form of visual representations, and then people have developed, you know, a theoretical understanding of the story based on those visuals, but...

But, you know, the Iliad is what we have for Helen in terms of those earliest forms. And then from there, you're really going to have to look at like

I mean, honestly, a comfortable zillion other sources. So I would recommend things like theoi.com or Tapos Text, both of which allow you to really peruse like a very, very long list of the ancient sources. Because when it comes to any character like her, I mean, any character broadly, but Helen so specifically is an example of...

you know, this character that was so important in so many ways and for so many hundreds of years that you're looking at mentions of her, you know, across the board, these little bits and pieces that might say something about her life. Bettany Hughes has written a good nonfiction source on her, if you're looking at, you

But otherwise, it's just the nature of mythology, right? Um...

In terms of her death, like, yes, you're right that she's immortal, but also she does die. And again, that's because we're talking about so many sources over so many hundreds of years. So, like, she is immortal in terms of her divine parentage and, like, the general idea of her being this daughter of Zeus. But she also, you know, eventually... There's not no real... There's not really such a thing as...

immortality among people

And characters like hers, it's really hard to explain even where that might be coming from. Because she's not a god. And so she doesn't just, you know, exist in the broad swath of mythology. There is a story of her marrying Achilles in the afterlife. But it's just like one little reference somewhere. I don't even know where it is offhand. And so like we have this idea that like according to at least one person, you know, she did end up in the Elysian Fields.

in that kind of more stylized, like happier, quote unquote, like, you know, the sort of the heroic afterlife kind of region. She said to marry Achilles, but of course that contradicts all of this other stuff, you know, that we know of both Helen and of Achilles and all of these things. So,

That's all to say, I mean, I think that's a it's a very worthwhile endeavor. You're going to have to look at a bazillion different sources and I wish you all of the luck in the world. But it's a tough one with with any kind of ancient character, any kind of mythological figure, because there is no concept of an entire lifetime. There is no concept even of like a set life.

version of her as a person as a character like there is no you know canon there is no confirmed anything um and so you're just really looking at like a thousand years worth of people who all had different ideas and and envisioned her in different ways and for different reasons and with different results it's not a very helpful answer but it was honest all right this next one um comes from crystal who says i was curious if you know anything about the goddess aklis

She is only mentioned in a few epic poems. One was Hesiod, Shield of Heracles, and I haven't been able to find too much information on her outside of that, and a few sources online that all lead back to each other. Professor of Greek Mythology at Boston didn't have any additional information either, and the library in my area did not have anything either. I'm curious to hear what you know and if you've done an episode on her. I drew portraits of Achilles, and I'm quite honestly obsessed with the few things I've discovered.

Feel free to check it out. My IG is sluglord.art for any listeners who want to check that out. So thank you, Crystal.

Uh, no. So here's the thing. You have stumbled upon, um, you know, a question that I get variations of with every Q&A episode. And I'm always happy to respond to questions like this because I know that so many people encounter this and I encountered it myself very, you know, like a decade ago. Oh gosh, longer than that. 15 years ago when I was trying to

to write my first novel of Greek mythology. You know, this idea that like you fall for this character that you read about once and then you're like, I need to know everything. But it just turns out there is no everything. Yeah.

um i will say like i don't i don't know aklis offhand i went to my go-to source um for for questions like this and and characters like this which is theoi.com i'm sure you've gone there um because i imagine it's showing me the two epic poems that you've heard of so um you know according to theoi which is a very

pretty, pretty accurate place to look. She was this personification spirit of the quote, death mist, the clouding of the eyes preceding death. And,

And so, yes, she is exactly what I imagined she would be in that she is a personification deity, like, again, the hundreds of others that exist that are seem so interesting because they're this goddess of this very specific thing. And you think, oh, God, like the death mist, the clouding of the eyes preceding death. Like, that's so interesting. I want to know everything about her.

But the thing about these deities is that that is everything about her. And that's the point, right? Like she is, she is the death mist, the clouding of the eyes preceding death. Like that is what she is. And so she, you know, isn't going to be in stories as this like physical being because she is just the death mist, right? She is just this concept, um,

And so, you know, that really applies to just so many, you know, Nike, the goddess of victory, Nyx, the goddess of night, you know, all of these, like I, they come up in every single Q&A episode I do because there are literally hundreds. And it doesn't make them any less interesting. It just means that like they serve this very specific purpose. And what you need to remember too is that like these characters' personifications, like the

characters but they are not characters like we know them and and simultaneously while being characters you have to remember that actually that's just the word right so it's simply the word um you know according to theoi it says that aklis means misted eyes so it's it's a

but it is also just a word. It is the word they had to describe this concept. And that was personified because basically all concepts like this

were personified. Like, it is, it's coming from this early means of understanding the world, right? It's coming from this need they had to understand life and death and everything in between. And so they, you know, they personify these things. It helps to, to, to understand. It helps to like fully realize reality and humanity. It's just giving these concepts a

personifications, just this idea that they are also this divine thing. Like there is a divine thing for, or divine name, divine character for like everything. Sleep, dreams, um,

Really specific aspects of sleep and dreams, like each of the winds, the seasons, the hours, the like everything. Right. There there are personifications for everything. And that's purely coming from the very nature of mythology. Right.

What it means is you're never going to find a source that actually tells you about Ackliss as a physical character who can really, you know, interact in a story. Or if you do...

you're coming from from a different place and so I'm looking at this theoi and the only two that it lists um and again it's pretty accurate but at the same time like especially with a personification deity like this where like the word is also just the word um you know you're probably gonna be able to find the word elsewhere but that's because it's

But yeah, so that lists Hesiod the shield of Heracles, which I'll say like it's speculated and probably not, you know, shield of Heracles is not as attributed to Hesiod as some of the other works. It's very fragmentary. You know, there's not a lot going on. It doesn't really have a story. It's literally just the description of the shield of Heracles. So there's not a lot happening there in terms of like fleshing out a character. And then the other reference it has here is Nonas' Dionysiaca, which

which also doesn't really seem to give Achlis much of a character. Um, it just literally is like a, a person that did like, it says, um, I believe it's referring to Hera. She procured from Thessalian Achlis treacherous flowers of the field. Like it, you know, it's this concept again. Um, she got this from the death mist. Um,

And so, like, it still doesn't provide this anything extra. But also one of the things you have to keep in mind if you're looking at a source like Nonis' Dionysia Cut, like...

very specifically this one because it comes up a lot because it has, it references a lot of characters that people are often really interested in and it gives them more of a story than most other sources. But what you have to remember about this is this is, known as Dianesia cannot be really fully described as mythology. It is referencing mythology. It is a reception of mythology. It is interpreting mythology, but it is not

reasonably a mythological source and that's because it's from the 5th century CE. It's well into the Christian period. It is like, it is very late. Nonas is writing 900 or so years after Euripides, let alone Hesiod, you know? If Hesiod was real, but like regardless of the time period, Nonas is well over a thousand years after the works of Hesiod and the Homeric texts.

a thousand years. So it is like, you know, it care, a word being introduced by Shakespeare and then God, it hasn't even been a thousand years since Shakespeare. So like, it's not even a good example. Like that's how much time had passed. Right. So nonus is not giving us mythology that we can fully understand to have been ancient Greek. What nonus is doing, which also it's like the longest surviving Greek epic. It is so fucking long. Um,

But what he's doing is rewriting the life and tales of Dionysus into this big epic. And so while it is valid, it's an interesting source and it could tell us lots of interesting things. It can't reasonably be defined as mythology because it's about it's over a thousand years after the mythology was being developed as as a concept, as like this core creation of the Greek world, like mythology.

By the time that Nonas was writing, you know, the Greeks had already been conquered by the Romans, you know, and then became the Christian Empire. All of these different things have happened that really affects, like, him writing in the Christian period means that, like, he is intentionally writing about, like,

basically almost heretical stuff like this these gods that are so pagan and like a threat kind of and so he is you know I don't know enough about him as a person as a writer but like

him as a source. Like, you're not, it's not really, it's not really ancient in the same way. Very late antiquity, just lots going on there. That doesn't make him not an interesting source, it just means that you have to, like, contextualize what you're getting. And all of that is a ridiculously long way of saying that Acklis seems like a very incredible and interesting concept, but there is, I don't believe that there is any source that you're going to find that actually tells you about her as a character with any kind of

or personality. I don't think that that exists. I can't say for sure. But if it exists, I just, I don't think it does. But it doesn't make her any less interesting. It's again like this thing that

People find to be incredibly frustrating about the ancient Greek world and I don't blame them, but it's one of those things that I love most. I think it's so interesting to look at these not as characters with personality, but as these concepts and what they as concepts and personifications like said about the ancient world. I could go on forever.

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This one comes from Liam, who asks,

P.S. I love the show. I've been listening since late 2018, and I'm hoping to become a patron again when it's feasible. Thank you. Thank you for making the show that entertained my brain throughout all the boredom of high school, and will certainly do so throughout the rest of my life. Thank you, Liam. So, yes. So translations can change a story immensely. Immensely. That's not to say that they always do, but they can. So...

It's difficult to find a way of explaining this in any kind of succinct way, but the thing you have to keep in mind is that, I mean, not only are languages different in terms of the way they sound and look and all of those things that we think about when we think of a language that we either do or do not know...

But they also like conceptualize things different because humans will always conceptualize things based on their environment and their just existence as a human. Right. And so like translations will always have inherent biases. And it's funny, I was actually just talking with someone for their dissertation about this and then jumped directly into this question, which I didn't know was there. But yeah,

That's all to say, like, it's so difficult. So translators will always insert their bias into the text, not necessarily intentionally. And I don't mean to suggest it as if, like,

that makes it bad or problematic or any way. It's just the nature of humanity. Like, the text themselves had the biases of the authors that wrote them, let alone anyone that might have copied it and made a change. Like, also one thing to keep in mind, and which I don't even know enough about, but like, there are not, there's not just one author

version of even the Iliad or the Odyssey. There are like little variations and things that have been found or, you know, might have changed over the years. And like there is, you know, we now have what we consider to be one version of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but it's not like just one version came to us from the ancient world. There was a lot of scholarly work that went into kind of

deciding on what is reasonably the most quote-unquote accurate, you know, version of that story. And that's just the nature of the ancient world. But then when you get into language itself, like, words don't just automatically translate into other words in another language. There is so much going on. There is intention. There are, you know, the fact that the ancient world is inherently going to have

different ways of conceptualizing things. You know, this goes right back to the question about Acklis. The ancient world conceptualized this death mist as a goddess named Acklis. Whereas like,

I mean, I've never thought about a death mist clouding the eyes before because I, as a, you know, Western lucky Canadian in a colonized world, like, would never have to conceptualize that because I live in this perfect little bubble of the West where we only protect ourselves and kill brown people just for the sake of not being Judeo-Christian. Anyway, um...

I will never conceptualize that. And aren't I lucky, you know? And so if I were to translate something, it is going to be incredibly different from the way that a Palestinian in Gaza is going to translate something because they have lived it so many times that, you know, it means something completely different to them.

That is a really tragic and, you know, depressing example. But I think it's a really good example about how, like, every single thing about a human's life defines how they interpret a story, how they interpret a word. I think about this a lot because I know very basic, you know, I existed in Canada slash was born in Quebec, so I should know more. But, like, I have, like, this base level knowledge of French. And...

If I have, you know, if I'm watching something with that in French and with subtitles, sometimes I will I will notice a difference where I think like, oh, well, you know.

The French really like a literal translation of the French word would be something different than the translation that they gave us in the English subtitles. A lot of the time that's because like there is a literally the same word, you know, in French and in English. But that doesn't mean that the word always means the same thing or has the same intention in both languages because it's

language represents personhood and humanity and like a bazillion different things. I've said bazillion a lot of times in this episode. I can't stop. And so like,

That's all to say that translations are always going to be different. Sometimes it's really noticeable, sometimes it's not. And that's not even including the fact that we've been, you know, if you are looking up a translation, you could be finding one from anywhere in the last 200, 300 years even. And so imagine what's happened in that time and how they conceptualize things differently and how...

Somebody writing 300 years ago would imagine, you know, the meaning behind a Greek word versus somebody now, right? Like it's always going to be so different. It's always going to have these inflections. And so I personally, when I'm looking for a translation, I want something ideally, I want it recent. I want it by, I look for translations that aren't by old white men because I'm most interested in the way that people who aren't old white men can

take in these stories and the way they would interpret them to give you just a little, just the slightest taste of what I mean without dragging this on too long. So, okay, this is, I believe, the oldest translation of the Odyssey that I have. It's by Alexander Pope, and it's so old that it doesn't obviously have even like a copyright line.

The first lines of the Odyssey from this version, which is, I believe, from at least 150 years ago, are, And the next we have the Samuel Butler translation, which is one of the other oldest. This is the one I read when I did the full readings. I believe it's also about 150 years old or so.

And the first lines of the Samuel Butler translation of the Odyssey are, Tell me, O muse of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Right? That's completely different. Completely different.

Then we'll move on to another pretty darn old one, at least as old as 1944, by E.V. Ryu. This is a really old Penguin Classics edition. And this, as I read it, I don't even think it's reasonably a translation. Oh, well, this is me reading stuff at hand. This is a very odd version. But it still claims to be just The Odyssey, a new translation by E.V. Ryu. And it begins...

The hero of the tale, which I beg the muse to help me tell, is that resourceful man who roamed the wide world after he had sacked the holy citadel of Troy. Again, completely different. These are all proposing to be the Odyssey, the first line or two of the Odyssey. And I'm not saying they are not what they are, or different interpretations by different people at different time periods who have different biases that are just inherent to their beings.

I'm not done either. This next one is a, uh, the Loeb classical library version. It's by translation by A.T. Murray. Tell me, muse, of the man of many devices, driven far astray after he had sacked the sacred citadel of Troy.

This one you can see, like, we're both getting, you know, the Citadel of Troy kind of thing. We're getting some similarities between this and the last one, but still very different. This man of many devices. And the next I'm going to read the Latimore translation, which is one of the most common ones you can find, generally acknowledged to be a pretty good and very worthwhile translation to read if you really want, you know, an actual understanding of the Odyssey.

This one begins, Tell me, muse, of the man of many ways, who has driven far journeys after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel.

Again, as we get closer in years, they're getting to be more similar, but they're still different. The words that we, people talk about this a lot when it comes to these first lines of the Odyssey, the way to describe Odysseus, right? So we have the man of many devices, the man of many ways. There's these different ways to describe him. And now I'm going to read the last one, Emily Wilson's translation. It's only a few years old.

and I'm really interested in what she did. We're going to look at it. This is how Emily Wilson, you'll know, the first woman that I've read, while often she has claimed, or not she, she has not claimed this, but often people claim that she was the first woman to translate The Odyssey. That's not true. She's just the first woman to have translated it in, I don't know, a great number of years, and certainly, you know, it got the most wide-read reaction, which is wonderful. This is Emily Wilson's first lines of The Odyssey.

Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy. So that too, right? It is objectively the same words that are the same purpose, the same point is the same purpose.

you know, first lines as at least the last two that I read. The ones before are, you know, again, they're so much older that they don't even really resemble this. And yet they are all working off the original, the same original Greek text. And even as I say this, I realize it's possible that the Butler and Alexander Pope are not. They might be working off of a Latin translation that came first. That was also quite common. There was also a time when Latin was like

the ancient language that people read in ancient Greek hadn't been read as much. And so people were translating based off of an already Latin translation of the Odyssey. It's there's so much going on. And so it's just another good example.

But the way Emily Wilson translates it is, so she got a lot of flack for saying, tell me about a complicated man. For using the word complicated to describe Odysseus. Whereas, say, you know, it was Lattimore who said man of many ways. And the other one said, what was it? Man of many turns. That's another way.

It means complicated. What they're saying is that, like, you know, there's lots going on with him. There's a lot to break down. A man of many ways. A man of many turns. A complicated man.

But because Emily Wilson is a woman and because the word complicated is, has like a slightly different connotation as something more, I mean, a man of many ways doesn't mean that much in English, but it's a more literal translation of the Greek. So the Greek is, yeah, that quite literal translation as far as I've spoken to a lot of, a lot of scholars about this, a most literal translation would be a man of many turns. But what does that mean in English?

Very little. You have to really think about like, what could that mean in English? Whereas Emily Wilson puts it as complicated. That means lots in English. That makes perfect sense. It doesn't make it different from the Greek. It's just a different way of understanding it. It is a way of putting it into phrasebook.

phrasing and terminology that is more accessible to us today. The men get angry because they think that it means that she's shitting on Odysseus, even though, hey, spoiler, being complicated is just being human. And so, you know, there really is, there's so much that goes into a translation. And yes, naturally, I spent like, what, 10 to 15 minutes answering that question. But I, I mean, I really, like, I'll take any excuse to read you these opening lines of the Odyssey with a purpose like that, with this question being asked, because it's

I think it's really easy to imagine that translating a work is just like you read the words in one language and then you put them into the words of the other language. But that is simply not how language works. And that's because...

languages themselves are developed in this very personal way, in this very specific way to the culture and what they encounter and what they care about. This man of many turns means everything in ancient Greek, and it means very little in English. Complicated, though, means something. And so it really...

I think it's just so interesting to look at the ways that these translations can affect how we see the stories. I'm not even being critical. It's just a nature of what translation you read will fully affect how you think about a story. It's unavoidable. It's not good and it's not bad. It's just the nature of translation and language, let alone the fact that there's almost 3,000 years in between the development of this story and us today. Yeah.

There's just so much going on. So that is a very long winded way of saying that translations mean everything. And and it I really do recommend if you if you really want to understand this stuff and to if you're interested in this nature of translation, like read a couple others or even just read.

Find a few like either online or even in a library. Go in and do what I just did. Find what you know are going to be the same lines and look at the ways that different people interpret those lines. It's always going to be affected by who they are, where they grew up, what languages they speak, what language they know, how they came to ancient Greek, how they understand the ancient Greek world. Like,

Everything is defined by people. It's why it's funny. I'm going to make this connection to my last Q&A episode where I talked about AI. And it's why I think that AI is not only useless but dangerous because AI

In order for us to appreciate art and literature and history, we have to understand that all of those things are inherently tied to humanity and they absolutely exist.

cannot be removed from humanity without removing what makes them tick, what makes art special, what makes literature special, is inextricably tied to the humans who are reading it, interpreting it, translating it, understanding it, taking it in in whatever physical way, whatever intellectual way. Everything is so defined by art.

human beings that that it that's what it means to have all these different translation and that's why AI is terrible and that's even ignoring the fact that again it produces more carbon than like fucking everything else we've ever done like

It's also why NFTs are equally terrible and Bitcoin is equally terrible because in order to create that stuff, it produces more carbon than like every car on the goddamn road. It's really bad. And so I've found a way to make this into a fuck AI rant, which I got a couple of comments of people who really loved that I did that, comments on Spotify. And so thank you. I really appreciate

It was nice to hear that my point got across because I'm not trying to shit on people who enjoy AI or are having fun with it. I just want to point out what else is going on there and why it may not be as exciting or new agey as people think and why it is dangerous in a whole myriad of ways. Yeah.

That was not many questions that I answered and yet we're already at 45 minutes. So this has been so much fun. I love you all so much for asking these questions. I'm going to do another one on Friday because I don't think I have anything otherwise set up and there are so many more and I'm really enjoying this. So if you didn't get your question answered today, I will probably do it again in a handful of days.

provided this cold does not come back because that's what keeps happening. But it won't this time. It won't. Thank you all so much. Let's Talk About Myths, Baby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangawish is the Hermes to my Olympians, the incredible producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke. Chaos, the podcast, is part of the

My Hurt Podcast Network. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sign up for our new newsletter at mythsbaby.com slash newsletter. No, I didn't send one out in November. And yes, I hopefully will send one out in December. I had all of these like wild, incredible ideas of like all this new stuff I could be doing. And I was so full of it.

it and I'm so excited still but then I was like haha you came up with all of these ideas and then literally had to spend basically a month moving because it took seven days to drive here I'm just gonna ramble a tiny bit if you want to listen enjoy it took seven days to drive here we had two cats because as I recently announced on the Instagram I did adopt a cat from Greece and he is four

Flippin' adorable, but also a kitten. And then I have another kitten, or rather cat, who is a rescue who is terrified of literally every human on this planet. And we moved them across the country in a U-Haul truck. And...

It was wild. And then I, uh, still had to go back to Victoria, um, to, to do a speaking engagement and also to like wrap up my old apartment. And on the first night that I did that, I was staying with my mom. Um, and the, uh, the, uh,

apartment building three doors down from hers it was unfinished and so uninhabited thank god uh it went up in a full inferno full inferno um we got evacuated at like 1am and just watched this five-story building turn to dust before our eyes um and then didn't have power for two days and then i had to fly back and then i immediately got an absolutely terrible cold that's hung on for two weeks and

And anyway, that's all to say there will be a newsletter soon. I'm really excited about it. I promise. I've got so much going on. I think January is going to really be it. We're going to launch a ton of new stuff, even more exciting things happening for me and the show. I'm really trying to find all the ways possible to get the ads out of the show as much as possible to really get them back to a more reasonable amount, hopefully with me reading some so they're less annoying. I promise I'm working on it and I'm working on ad free and I'm working on

This whole big, big, big, big, big Patreon rebrand. I think I mentioned I wasn't going to still use Patreon, but FYI, spoilers, I'm going to. It's going to be really great. We're going to offer so much more and it's still going to be fully available free with ads no matter what. That's all to say I'm really excited. My ADHD is not in check right now.

I'll be back on Friday with more answers to your questions. I am Liv and I really love this shit, particularly translations. Thank you all for asking those questions. What a joy.

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