Greek Myth is So Much More Than Terrible Gods and Misogynist Monsters
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From the Heliconian muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Kronos. Hi, hello, and welcome. This is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv.

Now, at the end of the episode, I'm going to provide some updates on the many, many, many things that I've had going on behind the scenes, but

But before that, while today's episode is going to be a little unique, I have reached the point in this podcast's life cycle where it has become difficult to sort through all of the content that I have created over the seven and a half years and 600 plus episodes. Listeners always want to know where to begin, and though I have a lot of love and appreciation for my earlier episodes, I don't actually think they're a great place to start.

So instead, to ring in 2025, today I am going to give you all a kind of introduction of sorts. If you've been listening to the show all of this time, don't worry, this isn't going to be a repeat of anything, and I'm certain it's still going to be really valuable and interesting, because surprise, surprise, Greek mythology is fascinating in all of its forms. Actually, it might clear up some things you've been wondering for a long time.

Because honestly, I've been doing this so long that even I want this episode. I want to talk about mythology as a concept, about why we have these stories and what it means that we do and what they meant in the ancient world, what they mean now, and how these things can sometimes be in conflict. But...

Today, we won't just look at an introduction to Greek mythology as a concept, but specifically how we've come to view it through the lens of the show, too. We've been talking all things myth and the ancient Mediterranean for almost eight years and, again, nearly 700 episodes. So now it's time we look back and parse out the wonders that are these ancient gods, goddesses, everything in between.

Also, frankly, selfishly, a lot of podcast players allow me to set an episode to introduce the show, and I want to create something that does exactly that. An episode that introduces mythology, the show, the context, how I tell these stories, and who knows what else. Because it turns out things change over seven years of podcasting, studying, and thousands of hours of episodes. This is episode God's Only Know What Number.

Greek myth is so much more than terrible gods and misogynistic monsters. From the Heliconian muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon and dance on soft feet about the deep blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Kronos.

and when they have washed their tender bodies in permessus or in the horse's spring or olmeus make their fair lovely dances upon highest helicon and move with vigorous feet

Thence they arise and go abroad by night, veiled in thick mist, and utter their song with lovely voice, praising Zeus the aegis holder, and queenly Hera of Argos who walks on golden sandals, and the daughter of Zeus the aegis holder, bright-eyed Athena, and Phoebus Apollo and Artemis who delights in arrows, and Poseidon the earth-holder who shakes the earth.

and reverenced famous and quick-glancing Aphrodite and Hebe with the crown of gold, and fair Dion, Leto, Iapetus, and Kronos the crafty counsellor, Eos and great Helios and bright Selene, Earth too and great Oceanus and dark night, and the holy race of all the other deathless ones that are forever.

and one day they taught hesiod glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy helicon and this word first the goddesses said to me the muses of olympus daughter of zeus who holds the aegis

shepherds of the wilderness wretched things of shame mere bellies we know how to speak many false things as though they were true but we know when we will to utter true things

That was the opening line to Hesiod's Theogony, translated by H.G. Evelyn White, and obviously something I've talked a lot about in the show. But what does it mean that Hesiod is this source for us? What does it mean that Homer is a source for us today? I'm jumping ahead.

The thing that is perhaps the most difficult thing for us to understand as modern interpreters of myth, and also honestly the most important thing to understand in terms of understanding how myth and these stories specifically functioned in the ancient world, is what is mythology? What purpose was it serving and why does it exist for us today, right? We...

We come to these stories from Greek myth because they are fascinating, because they are weird, because they represent this ancient culture that just did and understood things so, so differently from the way we do today. We often see them now as these stories, as narratives like we think of stories now in the same way that, you know, you pick up a book and it's going to tell you stories.

That's how we consider the Greek myths, but that's not what the Greek myths served in the ancient world. That doesn't make it invalid today. It's just this really interesting additional piece that often gets left behind. And that's true of my earliest episodes, which is a large part of why I wanted to do this episode. My earliest episodes are coming from that mentality, that really broad, overarching idea of what mythology is, these stories from the ancient world.

We generally understand that, like, yes, there are stories, but they included these deities who the ancient people actually worshipped. But it's still very difficult to kind of piece out what exactly is going on in these ancient stories. And I say stories this way because often when people come to mythology, they're coming to a complete...

narratively perfect or rather narratively sensical story. You pick up a book, it's called Greek mythology, maybe it's written by me, maybe it's written by somebody else, and you get this idea that the stories are these coherent narratives that just happen to be passed down to us today. But

When it comes to most, if not all of the most famous myths from the Greek world, that's honestly not what is happening. And I think that's a perfect place to start this broad introduction to Greek mythology as a concept.

We think of it as these stories, this religion of the ancient people, and it was, but one thing that is often incredibly difficult to remember or even fully conceptualize is the amount of time that they were developing these stories. This is something I've talked to you guys about so much, but often in little bits and pieces or regarding specific events

instances, specific sources or stories rather than the broader idea. So I want to break down what the sources look like, when they're coming from and what they're doing. So the most ancient surviving source we have today is, of course, Homer's Odyssey and the Iliad. They are unique because they represent this

coherent narrative, these particular stories that tell, of course, the story of the Trojan War and then the odyssey that Odysseus had trying to get home from it. They are specific in that they do tell these stories. They give us little bits and pieces of outside mythology from that world. They give us insight into mythology

which gods were popular at the time, what concepts were going on, but broadly they are these specific narrative stories. So while they specifically should be termed mythology, they're not really giving us a lot of the broader ideas that we think of from Greek myth. They're not giving us the Minotaur or Heracles' labors or Perseus and the Gorgon. You know, they're not giving us these

quintessential myths. They're giving us this very specific time period of the Trojan War. We're to believe that's after the time of Heracles. And this very specific thing is happening.

So they're the most ancient source, but of course, they're not giving us any of the stuff that we think of when it comes to the broader idea of mythology. They're giving us this really specific moment in the mythology. And then the next most ancient surviving source is Hesiod. That's what I read at the top. And that's where so much of what we really do think of as mythological stories are coming from, at least in part.

The Theogony, of course, by Hesiod, which I have read on the show in the past if you want to listen to it, tells the story of the beginning of the gods, the world itself. It opens with a prayer to the muses because that is how things were done back then. And then it goes into the ideas behind how the world was born and populated with divinities.

There's some references later to other characters and stories, but we're not getting anything else in major detail. So what we get from Hesiod similarly to Homer is an idea of the names that were popular, the characters, certain marriages between gods and goddesses and elsewhere, and these general origins of the divinities, right?

But what we also have to remember is separate from Homer, Homer is of course coming to us as one man named Homer, but is more accurately or more reasonably described as a tradition of oral storytellers, a great many of them whose work was eventually recorded in a

particular form that exists to us today as the Iliad and the Odyssey, and then they're given the name Homer for the author. But they are coming from that particularly more ancient time when we're sort of, it's before they were writing things down to that degree. They had writing, they had language, obviously, but they weren't...

in the ancient world, it wasn't important to write down your stories because what was important was to tell your stories to somebody else. They didn't consider writing to be the dissemination of information like we do today, both because it was, you know, in its earlier forms, the ability to have written objects and pass them around was considerably more limited, obviously, and they really did rely on storytelling. And so,

You know, that's something that I talk about here and there all the damn time. But like, what does it really mean that these stories were told over probably hundreds of years before they were written into a version that we have?

Now, again, that's true of Homer. Hesiod is a little different. It's likely that his work was also part of an oral storytelling tradition that then got distilled into this one form. But unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, Hesiod is actually presented as like a first person narrative. You heard at the end of that quote,

he's saying like, the muses talked to me while I was shepherding, you know, on Mount Helicon. And this is what they told me. This is the story they asked me to tell. And that's how we get jumping into this history of the divinities themselves, the theogony, which is essentially like the birth of the gods. And of course, Hesiod is an incredibly invaluable resource. But at the same time, there's a lot of things going into that that mean that it

can't and shouldn't be taken as this kind of be all and end all of the broader mythology of Greece, even at that time period. Because as Hesiod makes very clear, if we're to presume he is one person, regardless of whether that's true, like all the other details are existing in the text, so they matter just as much. But Hesiod as a

potential human being was from Boeotia. That's why he is talking about the muses coming to him on Mount Helicon, which was sacred to the muses. But again, we know that it was sacred to the muses because Hesiod tells that to us. We also know that Mount Parnassus, which was nearby, was also sacred to the muses because other writers tell us that.

And now Hesiod is presented as this one person's narrative. You know, he was told all of this stuff from the muses, but he also has another work called The Works in Days, which was much more personal. And it's like, I've read that on the show too, if you want to listen back to it. It's pretty incredible because it's essentially like his kind of how to guide for a potential future child. And it is terribly misogynistic because that's what Hesiod's work was.

But that is all to say that Homer and Hesiod are these two of the most ancient sources that we have for any kind of Greek mythology, but both of them are really limited in what they're actually sharing with us. Again, in Hesiod, we're not getting much in the way of the work of the heroes. We have some general ideas of what happens. Perseus is mentioned along with Medusa, but it's like,

Three lines. We're not talking about detailed narratives featuring these characters. That kind of stuff is going to come later. And now we also know that there is so, so, so much that we don't know, right? So many poets and authors whose work does not survive, but who we know were poets

Like at the forefront of this stuff, there's a poet named Stasichorus, if you're ever interested, and Pharaocites. Both of these were poets who did a lot of work talking about the mythology of these characters and stories, but whose work does not survive in whole parts in any way. Instead, we know that they existed and we're talking about this stuff because other people then talk about it later.

And that is where we come to, and I'm trying to like jump ahead so that I don't spend all of my time talking about just the chronology of sources in this episode. But one of the most commonly used sources for any kind of full narrative of these stories is going to be a work by someone we now call Pseudo-Apollodorus. It's called the Library of Greek Mythology, and it's coming from...

somewhere around the turn of the millennia. It's sort of debated about where, when this was coming from. There was a guy named Apollodorus, but they don't actually think now that he wrote it. They think it was attributed to him, which changes the dating some. But we're working between, let's say, first century BCE to first century CE, maybe even second on either side, honestly. But either way, what that amounts to is about

let's say, 500 to 600 all the way up to 800 or so years in between sources like Homer and Hesiod and one like Pseudo-Apollodorus. Now, Pseudo-Apollodorus is where we get really the stories themselves. They're not in great detail. Someone once called it the TLDR of Greek myth, and it's just so accurate, and I wish every day that I remembered who said that, but I happily took it. Thank you.

But that's so true too. With Apollodorus, we get the stories that you'll often see in these retellings. The story, the actual story of Perseus seeking Medusa and killing Medusa, all of that is coming from pseudo-Apollodorus, not Hesiod. Hesiod has like six lines. He says basically a couple things happened, but he's not giving us any details. And that is true of Perseus.

So, so, so, so, so many of the most famous of myths. And so what...

Does that say about the mythology itself that the versions that we have today that we often find as the quote-unquote canonical versions of these stories are coming from not only so late a period, which we'll get into what that means, but also just so many hundreds and hundreds of years after these earliest poets were telling us these earliest stories?

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There are, of course, so many other ways that sources happen and other major sources that we are working off of as modern people trying to understand these stories. Things like the plays and then even later, Ovid. I'm going with the basics here because I just want to get through so much. But of course, the plays are interesting.

These works, these mythological works that we often see as being, you know, the canonical, again, I'm using this word intentionally, we'll get into it, but the canonical version of a story.

Take, for example, Oedipus. The entire story that we know of as Oedipus that is so famous as the quote-unquote Greek myth of Oedipus. Him killing his father by accident on the road, then marrying his mother. Additionally, without him having any idea, the finding out, the blinding, Eucasta's death, all of this is coming from not...

an actual mythological tradition, but the play itself. And the play is at its core just a play, which is the thing to remember. The play is an interpretation of a myth that existed

But it is Sophocles' interpretation of that play, like a movie adaptation of an earlier book, right? We know that it is the same storyline it is based off of or it is inspired by, what have you, but it is not a direct reproduction of the earlier source, whatever it may be.

And that's so important because we don't have earlier sources. We only have this play that survives. In the case of Oedipus, it's another good example because we know this story existed, not least because Sophocles wrote a play about it. And we understand that like if he was going to write that story, we know it was broader. We also have visual representations of it on pottery and elsewhere. So we know this was a story, but we don't have text sources because text sources weren't

important for the greater context in that ancient world they are referenced in the Odyssey Jocasta is one of the characters who comes to see I'm saying this I'm not 100% certain regardless they are referenced in the Odyssey I think actually no it's not that he comes in the underworld it is that

Jocasta is mentioned in relation to the quality of wives in one way or another. And so we know very well that these characters are pre-existing, that the story is pre-existing, that many of the elements were pre-existing, but we don't know for sure what Sophocles added or changed based on how he wanted to tell the story. It's like directorial choices. And I...

I say that knowing full well that I could equate Christopher Nolan to Sophocles right now, but I won't because Sophocles wouldn't cast Matt Damon as Odysseus. That's not what today's episode is about, Liv.

One of the other things that really often comes up in trying to understand these stories through a modern lens is, of course, the treatment of women. It's what I based like the entire first few years of the show on and certainly still base my entire personality on that when it comes to the ancient world. But there are so many things that I think get overlooked in this...

just in how we speak about the women and certainly how I used to. So again, just like how my early episodes lack nuance when it comes to discussing sources and time periods and what does and does not change between those and so many other things, the other thing I really lacked nuance on was the discussion of women. And I don't think that takes anything away from my earlier episodes, but I'm happy to have more context now.

broadly, women in Greek mythology, in whatever way you want to see Greek mythology, are treated like garbage. Or if they're not treated like garbage, it's like in Hesiod, where they're just sort of not treated as

humans at all. In Hesiod, you get the sense that women are just objects for him to manipulate either via physical means or just through his storytelling. But they are not people with personalities, human characteristics. And what that often means is this idea that like,

The ancient Greeks broadly didn't see the women as mattering or having agency or really like being human in the first place. You know, I took it as the way I don't even want to try to remember what I would have said all the way back then. But I know that I was very blunt with it and very honest.

Just like, you know, like, this is shit. We should talk about it. And we should. I think there is a really... There's a lot to be said about the way we discuss women in myth because we can and should talk about how it is simply unacceptable the way they were treated and the way that they have been treated even in the reception of those myths since. It is...

objectively terrible treatment. The women are regularly assaulted by gods or otherwise. I mean, the gods are often assaulting everyone, but by and large, it is primarily women who are the victims of it. And that is, of course, coming from the general patriarchal nature of the world where the men were the ones in power and the women were being subjugated.

Now that said, you know, regionality is a really important thing to remember when it comes to Greek mythology. That's true of Hesiod, who's writing from Boeotia, kind of in the middle of the mainland, you know, not too far from Athens. But at that time, Athens isn't at its full peak and there's so much going on. But we have to remember, too, that...

Ancient Greece was not a singular place. It was all of these different regions and city-states, all of which had their own stories and customs. And while they often shared things like...

deities broadly the olympians the the overall concept we at least we imagine they shared those things we don't know for certain what they shared unless we have evidence from each place right and and in addition to that they would still always have their their regional differences their attempts to make certain characters more relevant because they they have some more relevance to that region it's

It's really always going to be affected by, I mean, everything. And this episode is ramblier than I'd hoped it would be, but I just have so much to say. But the thing that makes it so interesting to me is just how we now see these stories. And I say this because I absolutely saw it this way. Even doing my degree, I didn't get the full grasp on

the context surrounding them. And I think specifically when it comes to mythologies like Greek, like Norse, like these ones that have become really fantastical in the modern imagination is we often forget that

not only was this a religious practice in the ancient world, but also that it was also storytelling, but it was storytelling relating so specifically to ancient culture and their attempts to understand everything, that everything was relating to this mythology. It was...

means of recognizing the world, of connecting with people either close by or further. It was a means of kind of connecting a culture. And I think because of that, it's also very important to be able to separate or at least understand the differences between things like the mythology itself, the stories, the gods as characters from the religion. There

I don't want to pretend like I have enough knowledge on the religious aspects. That's what I look to experts for. But these gods were, of course, worshipped. Temples were built to them. They were these important figures in daily life. And them as those people, as gods,

figures of daily life who are being thanked or prayed to or, I mean, what have you. That is really separate from them as people

as characters in a story. And that's not to say that the ancient Greeks would have seen them as two different people or concepts, but it's important to remember that there was this religious aspect that isn't necessarily linked directly to stories of Zeus being terrible or Heracles killing a Hydra or all of these things that we conceptualize as these Greek myths.

And that leads me to Heracles. This is going to be a bit more of an ADHD episode than I hoped, again. Heracles is another great example of how we in the modern world have had to figure out

these myths. It's hard to phrase, but essentially what I'm saying is the stories of Heracles, which are, of course, some of the most famous and iconic of all of Greek myths, you know, consider his labors or, I mean, really anything that Heracles does. It's so important that

And we think of it as these quintessential Greek myths, the killing of the Hydra, the man-eating horses, the cleaning of the stables, all of this, going down to fetch Cerberus. We think of this as this narrative of stories.

But like a great many other really, really famous and well-known stories from myth, this doesn't survive in an ancient text source that really tells the story before, again, Pseudo-Polidorus, who's coming so late. And

That is both because, you know, these stories were fluid and changing and broadly were, you know, serving specific purposes, but it's also just because they were told orally. They were stories being told around the Greek world, and we don't necessarily have the details from a text source like you would imagine, but instead we often have the details from art, right?

Heracles and specifically his labors were depicted in art across the Greek world. And so it has then fallen to archaeologists and historians and, you know, people over the last 2000 years to possibly

parse out a story from what is otherwise really only visual. This is true of Heracles. It's true of the Amazons. That's not to say that there are no text sources for the stories, but there is not what you think there should be for how important and how famous these stories were. There is no epic featuring them in any kind of detail. There's only a handful of epics that get to tell us these

really quintessential full-blown stories with narrative that makes sense and goes beginning, middle, end. There's only a really small handful that actually have that from the ancient world. Things like the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Argonautica. But otherwise, so often we are working off not only fragments, like I talk about all the time, you know, just these bits and pieces from sources that survive in all of these varied ways, but also visual mediums, which I just think is...

it's so hard to really conceptualize as just everyday people coming to this stuff because you pick up a book of Greek myths and again like I said either it's written by me or somebody else but they're going to tell you these stories as if they have this beginning middle end I know I'm really obnoxious about it I don't remember what I wrote in the book about it but now of course I'd love to remind you all that really for the most part there's no beginning middle and end I mean even the

Iliad doesn't have a beginning or really an end. It's just this big chunk of the war, but it doesn't

It doesn't feel like a narratively complete piece of literature, and that's because it was never meant to be. They weren't developing literature with those ideas in mind. They just simply had different priorities than what we do now or how we consider storytelling. And just to get back to the treatment of women...

because I am bouncing around so much. This is what happens when I try to do an episode based entirely on my knowledge and not scripted because I think, oh, I can talk about this stuff for ages, but can I keep myself on track? No. The thing that we often, you know, or I have heard in my discussions of women and the treatment of women in the ancient sources is this idea that like, that's just the way things were back then. It's fine. Or, you know, like it,

I don't even have the arguments in my mind right now because they drive me so crazy. But I think the thing that I want to say about this is simply that every time when you're looking at an ancient source or a retelling of an ancient source, the biggest thing I think that we don't think of and should is who wrote this and why?

And what does it mean that they wrote it? But not only that, but what does it mean that it survives?

Hesiod is going to be my example for this because Hesiod, again, like I said, did not give women agency. He did not, by and large, write women as if they were human beings. And that's not because everyone just didn't see women as human beings. It's not even necessarily because Hesiod didn't see women as human beings, but I think that's a fairly safe thing to say. It's more so that this is just one...

piece of work that happened to survive through, I mean, I say happened, so many different decisions over so many centuries and millennia even had to be made in order to allow Hesia to survive. But

But that doesn't mean that his work was representative of the entire Greek world or all of its people. His work, even the story itself, isn't necessarily representative of the Greek world. We know his theogony. We know how the gods were birthed and who was with who and who was married to whom, but

We often consider his to be a kind of canonical source purely because it's the most ancient and it has value because it's the most ancient, but that doesn't mean that it is any more correct than any others. We're just working with a lack of anything else. And specifically when it comes to women too, so much is riding on

pregnancy. So much is riding on fertility. I think that it's often easy to overlook or rather we want to because it's also just like so dark. But one of the more important things to remember about all of the many, many, many, many, many, many stories of women being assaulted by gods or otherwise is the

A lot of that is coming from both a fear of paternity and the question mark inherent in paternity, but also to explain paternity.

patriarchal structures, not necessarily intentionally in this way that's meant to bring women down or to heal, but more so just because it is this means of cementing men as

the ones in control. Because if they go too long remembering that women, and by women in this case, I mean those with a uterus because that's why it's relevant, that women have the power to create life. If they go too long remembering that, you know, then they really have to face the fact that they're powerless. And so I think

So often these stories of Zeus, you know, quote unquote seducing or carrying off or even raping a woman is it's not necessarily coming from this like terrible misogynist idea of women not being people or just being objects. Like it's definitely partially that. But so much it's, I think, to return power to paternity, because if a man is

whose wife gets pregnant and he's worried that maybe it's not his, if he can look to endless sources of stories of women being impregnated by gods and having these half divine children and it working out perfectly fine for the man, then, you know, he can feel better about the fact that he is ultimately powerless when it comes to that. And so now, you know,

for all that I still see the utter trauma and horror in these stories, I also think there is this means of feeling a bit righteous about it when you see that it's coming from this real immediate fear that women will overtake men or wield the power in a way that would ruin everything for them.

It's utterly fascinating to me and perhaps is a fine way to start wrapping things up. I, there's so much to say about the sources. There's so much to say. I really just, I want to remind this, this, this was meant to be an introduction on mythology broadly. And then naturally I talked for half an hour about sources. So maybe we'll, we'll look more in the future, but I just, I wanted to have this kind of introduction to remind everyone that, um,

While the stories as these like complete narratives that you might find online or in books have incredible value and are so interesting and fun and weird, nothing is coming from any kind of certainty and isn't that cool? You know, we are all working to interpret these ancient sources that

were developed under completely different circumstances, that were developed with a completely different mindset from our own today. And so what does it mean to be interpreting those stories, either in written, if often fragmentary forms, or visual forms, or all the many other ways that we can interpret these things from the ancient world? You know, what does it mean to

that this is the source we have and what other sources maybe were lost, either intentionally or otherwise, what other stories were being told. Because I think the most important thing to remember is that everything that we have from the ancient world is just this tiny, tiny piece of an enormous puzzle that we will probably never know or never get to complete, but we

But what does it mean that we know so much is missing and how much can we read in between and how much can we reinterpret even our own understandings? I say all of this because I want to also keep reinterpreting my own earlier understandings of these stories because I think it shows...

I mean, it shows my own growth, but it also just shows a growth in the broader understanding of where these stories are coming from and why. And what do they mean, really? Yeah.

Well, nerds, I should have known I'd be able to ramble on for all that long. If you're listening on Spotify and you would like me to expand upon this idea, this introduction in any way, I would love to hear from you in the comments or any suggestions about what else might be good to put into a kind of episode like this, a kind of starting point. I really want... I want to present it as this starting point and also...

as a way to kind of, I want to contextualize my own work, contextualize my earlier work,

in a way that makes these nuances of mythology easier to understand because I am obsessed with them and I will never let them die. All of that said, I'm really looking forward also to getting back into the nitty-gritty of myths alongside so much more in terms of conversations on historical concepts and mythological ones and really...

For all there's been a little bit of slow silence over the past couple of months, that's really ramping up to be like a really exciting year. I have so many plans and schemes and there's so much going on, which I guess will lead directly into this little update that I have. So I've been working on finding ways to...

not only, you know, present ad-free options because my ads were getting a bit over the top, but just generally I would like to find a way to make the show less reliant on ads broadly. Not only because I hate capitalism, but also because there's going to be some changes, um,

On the back side, I believe that the ads are going to get less annoying. I'm really hopeful that I'll get to read more again in the future. We're just changing some stuff on the back end. But that change came from an enormous, if I'm being frank, enormous drop in terms of the funds that the show will have going forward coming from ads. And I'm really optimistic about it. But...

It's a thing that we're going to work on. So I'm working on building up the show outside of the nastiness that is ads and that side of capitalism broadly. And so...

differently from what I had been leading up to because I realized some things I am now relaunching the Patreon that is the big thing that's happening we're relaunching the Patreon with bigger and better things that is going to be the Oracle edition that I have promised I

It's going to have ad-free access to all new episodes, along with we, under certain tiers, we will be adding past episodes as well. Because there are going on 700 and there is no, there's no way to mass upload episodes.

So because of that, it won't be all of them all at once, unfortunately, but I will be calling upon patrons to suggest episodes that they would like to have ad-free, and we'll just slowly get them all added in. But in the meantime, I've gotten some fun new things created. We'll be doing stickers for...

Most of the paid tiers featuring the Oracle Edition logo, which their holographic stickers are going to be really cool. They're arriving on Friday and I will post photos. I also have gotten some enamel pins made. They will be for sale on a new web store that's coming soon, but also the logo enamel pin

will be given out with, again, certain tiers. I have these like beautiful thank you cards that I'll send to most tiers. And you'll just get access to lots more, including the Hermes Historia episodes, which Michaela and I do intend to do twice a month now that I am moved and settled. Michaela was even visiting in person and we had a great time. So we're all

We're all really excited about what is to come, but there are some changes that are going to be happening. I'd love to pull Michaela into more episodes. She and I had an amazing time, not only doing our Battle of the Bastards a couple weeks ago, but also our first ever in-person video recording, the video of which I did forget to send to her so it can go up on YouTube. It's been sent to her now.

I'm saying this like a week later. So it will be up soon. We may or may not keep video as a common thing, but it was really fun at the time. And we're going to be doing lots more like that. We have some incredible conversations lined up for the next few months. I'm going on a spree of recording with people and you're all going to live for it.

In addition to the Oracle edition, which will be the big place to get not only ad free, but lots of bonus content, including that physical merch and everything that I'll be getting giving out. So in addition to that, we will be having a simpler subscription option that is just

ad free. I'm still working on whether or not it will have bonus episodes as well, but it will be primarily meant to be just ad free. That's going to be through Apple subscriptions. Now that's going to be simple and to the point because frankly, Apple takes 40% and I don't want to give them 40% of 20%.

too much. So if you're just a person who's looking for an ad-free listening experience, that's going to be the place to go. But if you're looking for more, if you're looking to better contribute to the show because transparency, Patreon takes 5% plus some fees. Apple takes 40%.

So go to Patreon where you will get ad-free content and so much more. We've just started up an invite-only Discord server where we can be chatting about all things ancient, mythological, everything in between. Michaela and I will be on there when we can.

Um, so Patreon is going to be the best place to support the show. Join in, uh, with the group of nerds who just want to nerd out. I'm hoping to have it be a lot more interactive, to have a lot more going on in the Patreon, to really, um, we're going to really devote ourselves to, to adding more and more, uh, to give you as much as possible for those who do want to contribute and support the show in that way.

The regular show will remain free as always with ads. Nothing will change there. Again, I will have merch coming soon. We're working on building out a web store where I'll be sending stuff out myself. So far we have Euripides enamel pins.

and enamel pins of the logo and a couple of tote bags, logo and Euripides again, and a bunch of stickers, including the new Chthonic Cuties design, which I have not launched enough because so much has been going on, but it's so beautiful. I'm also going to be reaching out to you guys to ask what kind of other things you want. Since I'm going to be doing it all myself, I'm like buying it all up front. So we're going slow, but I'm really excited to be able to do this. It means I get to send it all to you.

I get to handwrite thank you notes. I get to toss things in. I am just, you can have some of my little Greek kittens fur. Like we can just have a whole time. It's going to be really great. So really so much is ongoing and I hope to get right back into the scripted stuff. We're going to return to Euripides. We're going to return to the classic roots of this podcast and speak with so many fascinating people. And 2025 is going to be a big year.

Stay tuned. And in the meantime, thank you all. I love you all so damn much for hanging along. It's been a great seven and a half years and I only see even more exciting stuff in the future, including, and I don't know how much I can announce of this yet, but I am writing kids books. That's a real thing that's happening. So stay tuned for whenever I can announce anything about that. But it's a thing.

Contracts have been signed. The novel is going to be submitted hopefully very soon. Things are happening. Let's Talk About Myths, baby, is written and produced and rambled by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Panga wishes the Hermes to my Olympians, my producer. Select music in this episode was by Luke Chaos. Listen to the podcast on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

Check out the new Patreon tiers at patreon.com slash mythsbaby and sign up for our newsletter, which again, I will do. I will. I will do it and stay up to date on all of that stuff, including the web store when it comes at mythsbaby.com slash newsletter. I am Liv and I love this shit so damn much.

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Hey y'all, I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. This January, join me for our third annual January Jumpstart series. Starting January 1st, we'll have inspiring conversations to give you a hand in kickstarting your personal growth. If you've been holding back or playing small, this is your all-access pass to step fully into the possibilities of the new year. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Nikki Glaser. So I hosted the Golden Globes at Hollywood's biggest party. Honestly, you've probably seen all the headlines this week, but like any good party, there's a lot of wild stuff that goes down behind the scenes that you don't know about. And since I hosted the Golden Globes, I'm letting my podcast listeners, my besties, in on all the behind-the-scenes tea. Stuff that didn't make it to the live TV taping, what went down at rehearsals, who said what at the after-party. You're going to hear it all.

Listen to the Nikki Glaser podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.